Category: Life

Well, it sounds dramatic, gentle reader, on purpose. To be honest, she was not that old–older than me, but not a crone, and it wasn’t a marketplace, it was an estate sale in Republic last Saturday. And she didn’t mean it as a curse.

As you might know, gentle reader, I have been on a multi-decade quest, well, not so much a quest as something I think of from time to time, to replace the remaining Sauder particle board printer stands used as major pieces of furniture at Nogglestead. These printer stands come right out of the 1990s, with a slit in the top where you can slide the pin-fed paper for your dot matrix printer. Back shortly after the turn of the century, one often found them at garage sales for a couple of dollars, or at least I did, when I was furnishing an apartment and later a house or two. So I picked them up, and they have faithfully served as side tables and entertainment centers for almost a quarter of a century.

So I’ve started stopping at intermittent garage sales and an estate sale or two, maybe one a month, looking for an actual end table. Not just any end table, but an end table that costs about $20.

So I made an outing of it on Saturday, going to breakfast with my oldest son and stopping at a couple of yard sales on the way. On the way back, I told the bored boy (well, almost-man) that the estate sale whose signs we followed deep into a subdivision would be the last one. It was billed as an estate sale, but it was not run by a professional company–it was mostly in a garage. It looked like the man of the house had passed and the mother was downsizing. The garage was full of tools and whatnot, but a sign said “Furniture inside.” So I went inside, and I found what looked to be a serviceable end table, and it was only $20.

As I carried it out, the woman cursed me: “If you’re looking for projects, there’s a cart in the corner. If you like to refinish things.”

I had my hands full, so I could not make a gesture of warding, so I was cursed.

When I got home, I looked at the end table, and it had some dings in it and some of the parts were colored a little differently, so I decided maybe I would refinish it before bringing it in. Instead of bringing it into the house right away, I set it down in the garage.

I had a little time on Saturday afternoon, so I thought I would strip the finish off of it and apply one of my 20-year-old stains (some are younger, only a decade or so old, but I don’t remember which). But my 20-year-old can of stripper was empty, having sublimated sometime in the passed years. So I stopped at Ace Hardware and bought a new can of stripper and a new can of dark stain for $40. Which, if you’re accounting, makes this $20 end table into a $60 end table.

If it makes it out of the garage. I still have a coffee table and two end table set that my brother gave me about 20 years ago, broken down into pieces for easy refinishing (and, more importantly, easy moving from our first rented house to Casinoport to Old Trees to Nogglestead). I also have a little child/doll rocking chair, again broken down for refinishing and it turns out easy moving, that I picked up at a garage sale over 20 years ago. And a desk I bought in 1999 whose metal pulls and accents I removed to refinish, but it got pressed into actual service sometime in those years and has adorned my office, sans pulls and accents, for two decades. Somehow, one of the metal accent pieces has ended up on my workbench in the garage. I’m not sure where the others are, but I presume they’re together.

So the new end table is out in the garage, where projects go to be forgotten or ignored for a long, long time.

Perhaps the woman cursed the end table and not me. But time will tell how soon I get any of this done. After all, playing a couple of turns of an old version of Civilization that turns into a couple hours of an old version of Civilization is far easier, and as we go into summer, cooler.

Whereas I am known for pronouncing wary as war-y because it has the word right in it and because I’ve been known to pronounce vapid and rabid as vay-pid and ray-bid because they come from vapor and rabies,

Let it be known that hereafter, I shall pronounce diplomat as DIPLOMAt because it has the word diploma right in it.

Ah, the things that come to me at 2:30 in the morning instead of sleep.

I keep getting ads like this on my LinkedIn feed:

I’d like to come home, but the political climate of the state does not suit me.

But I will use Springfield, Wisconsin (in Jackson County) for test data today. Wistfully.

We watched the church at the end of the farm road set up a garage sale last week, and I thought I’d stop by one day. I didn’t get out in that direction until Saturday, when my beautiful wife and I headed out to do a little shopping. Although the sale had plenty of things–furniture, clothing, glassware, and books–it had few things I was interested in. I did however pick up two records:

Hold On by Connie Scott was up by the register because it was a signed copy. My beautiful wife found this version of Toscanini’s Pictures at an Exhibition in the one box of gospel and classical records they had for sale.

It turns out that this was quite a find: The Hold On album goes for (that is, sells for between $15 and $45. Unsigned. So quite a score at $2.

I have not been buying records very much, gentle reader, because I have not built any storage for additional accumulation–and the existing records have gotten pretty tight in the shelving I have already.

Also, the receiver I picked up in 2021 flamed out. A similar failure: A blinking power button light, I press the power button, and a capacitor blew with a spark that was actually a small explosion. And no records again for a couple of months for Brian J.

It’s my own fault. The receivers have sat on the desk in the parlor, atop the 100 disc CD changer that proved to be a foolish expensive gift right before ripping songs to electronic formats became predominant. I put the receiver on top so that it would have the best air flow to cool it. Unfortunately, that made for a warm place for the cats to lie, and old Radar Love lie up there all day. And shed into the vents of the receiver all day. And occasionally vomited into it.

Late this week, my beautiful wife decided that we needed a new receiver. I mean, I had been looking for a secondhand one at antique malls, estate sales, and garage sales, but I’ve not been going to many of them lately as the season is only now spinning up for garage sales, and we’re entering that period where component stereo equipment is not going to appear in the wild as fewer people have them to unload cheaply. Maybe I should have tried pawn shops. Maybe next time.

I have speculated why she wanted one now. Perhaps she bought me an awesome record for our anniversary. Perhaps she tired of listening to the radio playing in the console stereo, as it only picks up country stations well. Or maybe she misses records spinning during dinner. Who knows?

We also bought a large painting of an Italian cafe scene, which is a genre of painting my wife likes a lot. And so does little Nico.

Well, we did give him an Italian name.

The painting and records were under $20. It was half price day.

At any rate, the new receiver arrived. It’s very small, and it only accommodates a record player or modern inputs (Bluetooth, USB, and so on). And, to Roark’s chagrin and our relief, it’s too small for a cat to lie upon.

I was in the drawer of the second desk in my office, the smaller desk that I bought at a garage sale in 1999 and promptly removed the metal handles and trim so that I could refinish it. And, for coming up on a quarter century, the desk has been in five different offices while the metal bits have been in the workshop room and now garage. Somewhere. I might think about putting the metal bits back on someday, maybe when I come across them.

I was in the drawer looking for a needle, as the fob I encased in needlepoint, started to fall apart after almost four years’ worth of getting jammed into pants pockets.

And floating at the top of the drawer of unused pens, spare luggage tags, and the mirror from the driver’s side mirror of a 1986 Geo Storm, I found a voucher from Dave & Busters.

From 2002.

That voucher has traveled in that drawer since then, from Casinoport to Old Trees to Nogglestead.

Gentle reader. brace yourself for this revelation: After scanning it, I discarded it.

I know, I know, you did not see that coming.

But I must be getting into a spring cleaning mood or something, but I’ve been putting things away recently. Things that have not been put away for years.

Maybe I’m just making it easier for the people who put on my eventual estate sale.

But the coin tokens from the Millennium arcade that was at Crestwood Plaza Mall at about the same time, the turn of the century? Not so fast.

They say it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert, and I still play the game at Settler or Chieftain, the two lowest game settings.

Just think what I could have learned in that time over the last 20 years. To actually play a musical instrument instead of just buying them. I could have written a couple more novels, although they would have probably only sold as well as John Donnelly’s Gold at best, which is not that well. Or something.

On one hand, these hours played actually represent the cumulative time that the game has been open, and most of those hours are time I’m not actually playing them–sometimes, when I start a game, it will run for 48 or 72 hours while I’m not at my computer. C’mon, 175 hours in the last two weeks? I haven’t even spent that much time at my desk.

But, on the other hand, this only represents the time since I bought this game on Steam. Civ V, if I recall, was the first that required a Steam login to play. So the Steam version only comes with, what, my current computer, which is only a couple of years old.

Still, I could better spend my time. Although, as you might know, gentle reader, I’ve gone through phases of my life where I play a lot of Civ and then patches where I don’t. I just happen to be in that patch of playing it for a bit every afternoon or night now.

And practicing guitar or harmonica or maybe getting to some of the I’m Gonna projects in the garage? Not so much.

On Wednesday afternoon, my oldest son asked me to come outside. He was not asking me to a game of Horse or 1-on-1. Instead, he was showing me that he had sheared the passenger side mirror off of the truck that he uses to commute to school. As it is a power mirror, it was hanging by the cabling. Instead of pulling the whole door apart that afternoon, we duct-taped it with a little support beneath it in an effort that would prove mostly futile to stabilize it until we could get another mirror ordered and then only pull the whole door apart once (and hopefully put it back together again).

As I was putting the duct tape away, I noticed someone coming across the private drive that separates us from our nearest neighbor, D—. D— and her husbandlived there when we moved in, and I’ve talked to them on a couple of occasions, and I’ve even been in their house a time or two to help trouble shoot computer issues or help move a refrigerator. But because our 80s era homes have garages that face each other and because we have a football field between our homes, most of our interactions have been waves or shouting “Hi,” across the private drive if we’re going out to get the mail at the same time.

The husband passed away some years ago, and D— has been in declining health recently. One of her children basically moved in with her, and I saw him more than her over the last stretch of time. So when I saw someone coming, I thought it was bad news about D—.

But, no.

Let me back up a bit. When we first moved here, the house at the end of the private drive a quarter mile away was owned by the Whitakers who not only bought the property with the house, but also bought several acres from the previous owners of Nogglestead and built a twenty horse barn (in addition to the 8 horse barn on their property) as they wanted to run a boarding stable. When their dreams fell apart, the banks foreclosed on both parcels. The house has been bought and sold three times, once by the Jones family whom we got to know a little better because the wife was a dental tech at our dentist before they moved out of the area to a real ranch. The next people were only there for a year or so, and I never met them. And I’ve only spoken to the parents of the Russian family that now live there once, and they’ve been there about a year now.

The large barn, though, that was another matter. I went to the auction on the courthouse steps when the barn and its acreage were foreclosed upon–only to discover that the other bidder is likely to be the bank that holds the note, and they start the bidding at the amount of the mortgage. Which is why it was not my twenty horse barn for almost a decade now.

As that parcel and barn originally belonged to the owners of the house at the end of the private drive, its access was through the private drive, and it was landlocked as the easement on the private drive ended before the beginning of the property. And my neighbors across the lane were not eager to allow a business to buy that property, so they refused to offer easements to it for any number of businesses.

Until one man and, I presumed, his wife wanted to make it into a dog ninja warrior training facility. So they bought the property and sued for access to it. To bolster their case, they built a little “house” on it for their residence and said they weren’t going to use it for a business–just parties (or so I heard. Well, once they got access to it, they moved out of their little shed and bought a small house about a mile down the road. Then, when the house opposite our neighbor across the private drive went up for sale, they bought that house and moved into it to be closer to their barn.

I only talked with him once, I think, when he asked about Internet availability (we’re at the end of what was possible with cable, so he’d probably have to go with satellite) and once with his presumed wife when she came to the door to ask if we’d seen anything when someone stole a trailer from that property (we hadn’t). Other than that, it was waving across vast pastures when mowing the lawn or waving at cars when they were coming or going down the private drive to the barn.

Which is why I did not recognize the woman crossing the grass on Wednesday afternoon. I thought it was one of D—‘s daughters, as numerous cars have been parked on the grass over there for the last few days (not likely good news, as I mentioned). This woman said they were having an auction in a week and that there would be lots of cars, so that was what was going on. She handed me a poster for the auction, and when she got halfway across the grass, I asked, “Does this mean you’re leaving?” And only when she got to her car did the full realization hit me. “C—- died” I told my son.

I did a little research, and I found the online guestbook/obituary. He died in December, and I hadn’t noticed. I’d seen increased activity back there in the past few weeks, but that has been typical as they prepared for “dog parties” in the spring and summer. But I guess this year, she was getting ready for the auction.

I kind of feel a little bad that I didn’t notice, and that I didn’t get to know him better. David Burton, whose book A History of the Rural Schools in Greene County, Missouri I read in 2010, has been writing columns on how to be a good neighbor for years, recognizing in the modern world how easy it is to not get to know your neighbors. The modern world combines with my suspicious nature so that I keep neighbors at a distance. Since I’ve been an adult, I’ve really only gotten to know one of my neighbors in five different locations.

Which is not to say we have not tried. We brought Christmas cookies to neighboring houses the first couple of years we lived here, and that never really spurred a lot of communication. I did end up with the phone number of the family of the dental tech at one point, so we had a couple of interactions.

But I’m not a good neighbor. Not a bad neighbor. Just a guy you might wave to and will never miss when you don’t.

Geez, Louise, but I’ve never head the condition of my garage better than this:

Because that’s my theory as to what hoarding really is: Reified potential. What might have been, in physical form. Again, n=1 here, so take this for what it’s worth, but the hoarder in my life has elaborate justifications for every single item she’s got, and they’re all of the “I’m gonna” type.

All those newspapers? I’m gonna make a scrapbook. The empty perfume bottles? I’m gonna turn them into wind chimes. She fancies herself an artiste — she even introduces herself that way — although the only actual art she’s ever produced is a series of sketches… from back in high school, which was a long time ago. They’re buried at the bottom of a big stack of sketch pads, all filled with nothing but “gonna.” I’m gonna start sketching street scenes. I’m gonna start tomorrow.

As you might remember, gentle reader, when I moved to palatial Nogglestead, I was spending a lot of time with a couple of toddlers and watched a lot of craft shows like Creative Juice and That’s Clever and hitting lots of garage sales where I bought a bunch of craft materials and things to do inexpensively. And although I did some woodburning and made a couple of clocks and other things, my purchasing ran ahead of my doing, and the completed projects piled up in a couple of boxes when I ran out of people to whom to give things. I’ve held onto broken things, stereo equipment or small appliances, that I’m hoping to fix.

I mean, for a partial example, here are some shelves:

What do we have here?

• 8-Track Tape shells I bought at a yard sale and gutted with hopes of making cell phone cases out of them. But phones have gotten too big for that.
• A bunch of wooden plaques and objects for wood burning.
• A colander missing a handle. Whatever will I do with that?
• A bunch of glass bottles that I’d hoped to cut the tops off of and turn into candles. Or to etch and make into little lights.
• Green pipe cleaners, or whatever the modern equivalent is. I think they’re designed to look like coniferous needles. Clearly, I was gonna make Christmas decorations with them.
• Various bits of old light fixtures. For my art, when I get to it.
• A vast collection of woodworking and repair guides. For when I get serious about those hobbies.

And that’s just one set of shelves. Not depicted: The boxes full of beads for making jewelry, the 1960s dressers that had been with my beautiful wife and I since our respective childhoods, the cookie sheets that I started painting with chalkboard paint but never finished (which have been on improvised tables in the garage for years now, buried under other accumulata), old computer monitor bezels that I intend to make into whiteboards, various découpage materials, a box of old National Geographics we got when my mother-in-law downsized which I will probably never look at but cannot discard or cut into découpage material, and so on, and so on.

The Nogglestead library is a bit the same way. The stacks contain more books than I can read in my lifetime, and I still buy more (but no longer by the dozens as when I would really go nuts at book sales). Very aspirational in that I’d like to read them all someday. But at least I can generally find something to read when I finish a book.

We’re fortunate enough that we have a large house for all the books, records, videos, and the personal relics that make up the other half of my semi-hoarding kind of life. As you know, gentle reader, my family, or at least the family that I had contact with in the latter part of my growing up, has mostly passed away. So I am loath to part with anything that I have received as part of their legacies, from the figurines that were on the living room shelves in the housing projects, trailer parks, and beyond (and which appear on the cover of Coffee House Memories) to the little tchotchkes that my grandmother has given us over the years (a little boy doll and train music box when my first son was born and a motion sculpture later) and beyond. Without people who remember my history to validate my existence or correct my stories as needed, I rely on these little icons to remind me of where I come from.

Regardless, the I’m gonna does capture the essence of a lot of crap around here and a very cluttered garage.

I guess I have three choices:

1. Do instead of gonna.
2. Go all Marie Kondo and clear the crap out.
3. Die and leave it for my heirs to sort out.

C’mon, man. You know which one I’m going with. The Nothing.

It’s Nogglestead’s plate:

I came upstairs this morning to find an inverted plate on top of a napkin just inside the door to the deck.

Now, normally, I would attribute this to the boys, who would never think of littering outdoors but let wrappers, empty bottles, and anything else fall from their hands wherever they are inside our house. But they’re on their band trip this week, so they’re not around.

I would attribute it to the cats, especially the kittens, but the plate would probably be too heavy for them to carry by mouth, and there’s nothing nearby for them to have knocked it down.

So it must be that my beautiful wife put it there for some purpose, and as I do not know what that is, I cannot pick up the plate.

She’s in a long business call right now, so I still have plenty of time to let my imagination go wild. Is there a dead mouse or bug beneath it? Something she does not want the cats to get, and she did not have time to clean it up before her call?

Cruel blogger that I am, I might not bother to update this post with the solution so you’ll never know. Or, as likely, she will pick it up before I ask her about it, and I will forget about it until I read this post some years hence, at which time I might bring it up and she will be unlikely to remember.

(Chesteron’s Fence explained.)

UPDATE: Apparently, the unneutered kitten marked his territory by the door. His neutering is in a couple of weeks, and it cannot come quickly enough.

I was at a conference this week, and one of the stars of the show was one of Boston Dynamic’s Spot robot dogs.

As you know, gentle reader, in the grim future, the last remnants of humanity use dogs to spot infiltrator terminators:

Very clever of Skynet to send its agents back in time to get humanity to replace real dogs with robots before it unleashes the terminators. Very clever indeed.

Bill Walton facing backlash for using a derogatory term on broadcast.

I always wonder if the news story will mention what the offending word is. If it’s really, really, double plus ungood, no. But if it’s only a single plus ungood or less, it will, and it did:

During halftime of Arizona State’s eventual 77-72 win over USC on Thursday, Walton — who serves as a broadcaster with ESPN — used the “m-word” while complimenting the in-game host.

“He does not need a little chair because he is a giant in a world full of shriveling m—–s,” Walton said.

Walton then turned to his broadcast partner, Dave Pasch, and joked: “Speaking of shriveling m—–s, what is your name again?”

The m-word. Time will be there will be too many words to be the letter word. But fortunately, when all dictionaries are electronic, they will update automatically.

In the meantime, comrade, if you see one of these offensive cars:

Remember to bash it with whatever is at hand. For s- – – – – j- – – – – -!

Suggested for me, because apparently Facebook thinks I’m impressionable:

Wow, 1825 miles in 24 hours. Which is, what, 76 miles an hour for 24 hours straight with no breaks to, I dunno, fuel the motorcycle?

I thought maybe it was a joke I didn’t get, an actor from a movie or something, but this guy is in the American Motorcyclist Association Hall of Fame, and the Web site mentions his feat.

So if it’s on a Facebook suggested post (why the motorcycles all of a sudden? Did I like a post about hockey, so I must like all sports with helmets?) and the Hall of Fame Web site for an organization I’d never heard of, I guess I have to admit the very small chance it might be true.

Don’t trust the government when it says:

“If you come across a bear, never push a slower friend down…even if you feel the friendship has run its course⁣,” NPS [the National Park Service] tweeted Wednesday.

C’mon, man. If the friend is already slower than you are, don’t waste your time and energy pushing them down. Just outrun them.

If your friend is faster than you, though, it’s worth the second or two to hip check them to the dirt before or as you take off.

(Link via Blackfive’s Facebook feed; it looks like Blackfive.net has been dormant for almost four years now.)

Last month, I posted about Hollywood Squares with Paul Lynde in the center square.

Guess who showed up in my Facebook feed last week?

Sure, sure, coincidence. I mean, where doesn’t a comedian who died forty-plus years ago pop up in the 21st century?

Day before yesterday, I texted my brother “I need a side hustle. What do I like to do that can make money?” (Because, gentle reader, blogging ain’t it.)

Yesterday, someone whom the algorithms had determined I don’t interact with because I don’t interact with her shared a cartoon about side hustles.

And the algorithms for some reason decided I should see it.

With each of these posts, I am less joking and more serious.

I run the risk of divulging biosecurity information that is undoubtedly already on the Dark Web, but today is a special day for me.

Not an extra special round number on the end–that was last year–but my beautiful wife asked me yesterday if I had any especial memories from my birthdays.

My birthdays are generally low-key affairs mostly now because there aren’t many who think beyond posting “Happy Birthday” when Facebook reminds them of the day. I could actually only come up with, on the spur of the moment, a few:

• On my tenth birthday, I got sent to my room during my own birthday party. Not by my mother or by my mother’s friend, the former country and western singer (one single to her credit) who came with her boys, our friends. No, this was a friend of that friend who was somehow along, perhaps to help manage a gaggle of kids with my newly-separated mother. Annemarie, her name was. Perhaps still is, but that was a long time ago. I probably deserved it, but I’m still indignant.
• On my 26th or 27th birthday, my new girlfriend wrapped a little gift for me that was “Two bookshelves too big for [my] car” spelled in Scrabble tiles along with handwritten “Now don’t forget to unwrap your girlfriend.” Perhaps this is not so much a memory as a personal relic, as I still have the cardboard and Scotch-taped tiles in a box. I still have the girl, too, I should note.
• We had a pretty big party on my 30th birthday with my co-workers and some of my beautiful wife’s co-workers, including the Libertarian candidate for Senate who kept up with me and El Guapo, beer for beer. And I almost put out Dennis’s eye showing some others how high our tan tabby could jump by whipping an elastic cat toy back and forth about head height. Unbeknowst to me, Dennis was about head height at about the range of the back part of the back and forth.

As it stands, on my birthday, we sometimes go out to dinner (a steak house last year), sometimes we eat in. Sometimes there’s a cake. Sometimes not. I get a little gift, the boys wish me a happy birthday, and that’s it. My aunt who died in 2019 was the only one to send me a card outside of my insurance agent and my dojo. I’ll get Facebook greetings and an automated mention on my employer’s Slack. But I won’t see anyone today aside from immediate family who will wish me a happy birthday.

Which means this will not be a birthday I will remember except when clicking through old posts and coming across this one.

Please click each image containing a violin:

But what if one is a viola, which looks almost exactly the same as a violin but it’s bigger? Without perspective and side-by-side comparison, you can’t be sure.

But, c’mon, captchas are just guessing games these days, ainna?