Category: Life

You know, even when I was reading Hondo and looking at the films atop my video cabinet for something to watch, it took me several passes to realize that this John Wayne movie which I bought in in 2023, a year before I bought the book, is the film version of the book. And after I finished the book and clearly after I made the connection, I popped in the videocassette.

I won’t recap the plot of the film as it does closely track with the plot of the book, although it does cut out some of the interiority of the characters, especially Hondo. In the book, he’s a rougher character at the outset. In the film, he’s John Wayne.

I will comment on some of the places where the film would have differed had it been made in the 21st century. Uh, spoilers below the fold (but no pictures of Geraldine Page, the only woman in the film):

Continue reading “Movie Report: Hondo (1953)” →

Yesterday, I said something was not a poem:

The housebound, television-informed senior wanted steak,
went to order Walmart delivery
but gasped because the price was so high,
her vote for Kamala
safely in the mail.

That, gentle reader, is contemporary commentary with line breaks.

Why do I not think it’s really a poem?

• No real imagery to speak of; I mean, I guess you could “see” a television or a mailbox if you stretch, but the text is not very evocative of any senses.
• Not univeralish. It speaks of one situation, one moment in time, and a very particular situation: The election of this year. Would a reader in 2038 know who Kamala was? I hope not! Assuming anyone reads in 2038, and he or she likely won’t be reading this.

It’s short, though, and might serve as filler if I were padding out a book of poetry, but probably not. It targeted to people of a certain political persuasion in an overheated environment instead of all of humanity even if it’s not derogatory to the opposition’s supporters.

So, no, not a poem. Not worth thinking about or mentioning again. Although your mileage may vary.

Spoken as a man who read part of an Ideals magazine’s Easter issue which will be forty when next Easter rolls around and then went to bed with the doors open and thought, “Ah, the smell of spring” because he was under the influence of poems about new flowers.

So your mileage and my sanity may vary.

I mentioned that I inherited a console stereo from my aunt who passed away in 2019 and that I took delivery of the stereo courtesy my brother and nephew in December of that year. When it came, it had a known issue of the turntable not working, and I placed it on my list of someday: I would talk to the guys at the local record store and get their recommended repairman out to fix it or start taking it apart myself to figure out what was wrong. Someday.

Well, that someday became now because once my moose of an oldest son and I lift this stereo onto the record shelf that will go under it. The other record shelves from the Labor Day weekend are already holding records in the parlor; however, when sizing the shelf to go under the stereo, I go the width/length of the console correct, but I did not factor in the depth of the unit. the shelf is 13″ deep and the console is 18″ deep. So I constructed a couple of little “wings” to go under the ends of the stereo. I built them that they can hold records, without the backing I usually put on the units as this might just end up being a tunnel for cats. I screwed the two-by-fours together over the weekend, but this was apparently an Ozarks rain dance, so I have not yet been able to paint them.

The delay, though, has given me time to consider the problem of the turntable. So I watched a couple of YouTube videos on console stereo turntable repair and started my troubleshooting by popping one of the hillbilly gospel records I got in the grab bag gift I received in May. It kind of picked up some sound but not clearly, but the sound was strong. So I looked closely at the needle and cartridge and–wait a minute, this arm does not appear to actually have a needle.

So I went to TurntableNeedles.com and found what I hoped I needed (I was going on the console model number, which they do not recommend because someone might have replaced the cartridge which holds the needle which would mean the needle won’t match the console spec). I ordered it, waited for eleven days for the first class envelope to arrive, and then….

In two minutes, I popped out the old needle assembly which did, indeed, lack a stylus and popped in the new needle, and….

Hillybilly gospel loud and in the deep, rich low sound of an old console stereo.

I speculate that console stereos have that deep, rich sound because they were optimized for the lower end frequencies that AM radio preferred (or so I learned from Jean Shepherd’s Pomp and Circumstance on a show where he talked about the different microphones and why they changed–FM handles higher frequencies better, which might be one of the reasons vocal styles changed from low crooners in the AM days to higher pop music singers when FM became more prevalent).

So it took me five years to spend the two minutes to fix it. Which is about what one would expect from me.

I played a couple of records which sounded good, but about the third or fourth, they began to get stuck. Maybe I have the needle on the wrong side (it’s a needle you can turn for different reasons, one of which I presume is to better work with 78rpm records). Or perhaps I just need to tape a penny on the arm. Time will tell. And, to be honest, it might take another five years to get around to it. Otherwise, I will have to rearrange the living room to better support spending more time in there reading.

A week ago last Friday, I received an unexpected FedEx package. The contents reeked of scam.

A genealogy researcher–actually, one of a whole firm of them–found someone who just filed for probate on behalf of the estate of a distant, up-and-down the removed generations of my family tree, relative and offered to retain an attorney to place a claim on the estate as an unknown heir.

I asked my brother if he received one, as he should if it had any chance of legitimacy. He did not; I posted on the work Slack that I was pleased that some grifter thought I was a big enough whale to try to impress me with a FedEx.

A little while later, my brother reported that he, too, received one, and he called the number. My brother told me that the story was that the person died without a will and without any close relatives, and if recipients did not put in a claim, that the money would go to the state. That’s what my brother said, anyway, so I started to dream a bit, a little more than I do with lottery tickets. Even a small windfall would come in handy at Nogglestead these days as major household systems need repair or replacement–a roofing inspector from our preferred roofing company came out to look at our single skylight, and his recommendation was to pray for hail storms this spring. So I thought maybe we could replace that, and perhaps the deck…. But when I actually read the letter I received, the story my brother told did not match the letter.

But: I did a little research of my own, and discovered:

• The probate court filing is Personal Representative Supervised With Will.
• The cousin on the mother’s side is the deceased’s first cousin, not some distant relative whose relationship to the deceased is as convoluted as ours.
• The maternal cousin is not a she as mentioned in the FedEx letter.
• The common ancestor is our great-great-grandmother who was sibling to the deceased’s ancestor. However, they were 2 of 12 siblings, which means this FedEx could have gone to twenty or fifty people, not just my brother, me, and our remaining aunt on that side of the family.

So: The “investigator”‘s cut is a third, minus the fees for the Missouri attorney that he has to hire (and anything shared between the attorney and the “investigator” such as a finder’s fee) of whatever settlement is made. Given there is a will, they might be angling for a “go away” settlement of some sort, where the estate is big enough that the executors/personal representatives can carve out some cash that is less than actually fighting the claim in court. To be shared amongst all claimants who received FedEx envelopes and signed on. So they might get a coupon for their next spurious claim for free at the end of the day. Illegal? Probably not. Sketchy? Eh….

I, on the other hand, cannot in good conscience lay claim as the deceased had at least one direct cousin, and a will, and the “investigator” got the pronoun wrong and might have misled my brother on the phone. Also, I am skeptical and suspicious, probably too much so.

On another limb since I’ve already used both hands, my brother has triggered the process (or is one of many of our other cousins twice or three times removed who have). So it’s entirely possible that in a couple of months, my brother might not only have a 25-acre homestead but a million dollars or two. At which point, I will really have to ask myself if I’m playing this game right.

And I wonder how I would react if my brother’s portion of a settlement is indeed sizable. How high would my price be? Where would my chest-thumped integrity go then?

I mentioned last month that painting the fence and tending the pool left me with a number of empty buckets in my garage and in my driveway, and I was not sure if I knew what I was going to do with them.

Well, this weekend, I used a bunch of them in lieu of saw horses to keep the new record shelves I was building out of the grass so I could paint them.

Also in Nogglestead news: I have finally built the record shelving that I’ve needed since, well, before I got deluged with free records in May.

I have three short stackable shelves to fit the empty wall in the parlor where we used to have a CD holder. But my beautiful wife took it to furnish her office downtown, giving us space for more record storage.

But! She gave up the office before I built the shelving, so the CDs are now in our foyer.

I hope to put the longer set of shelving under our console stereo. However, in the middle of the night, I spent far too many brain cycles thinking, “Aw, man, I measured for the length of the stereo, but what if the shelving is not as deep as the stereo? What will I do then?”

I guess I will find out this afternoon when I bring the shelving in.

And then I guess I’ll finally put the buckets in the shed with the extra wood that I bought for the shelving which I did not end up using.

Will this be enough to make me comfortable going to the book sale next weekend and buying a stack of fifty cent records? This, too, will be TBD until I get all the records off of the desk in the parlor (and maybe out of the boxes under the desk in the parlor which we received as part of my mother-in-law’s downsizing two and a half years ago–not to mention the box or two of my mother’s pop records which have been in storage for a long time as well).

The cardboard twelve-pack cartons that convince you they’re soda dispensers.

They’re oriented so the cans are on their sides, which means that if you tear them to act as a dispenser by tearing the top of one end comes off with perforations, it leaves a half of the end glued to hold the cylinders in. However, one often over-tears or loosens the glue holding the bottom part of the end, leading to unwanted dispensation.

Also, they ensure that they consume the cubic volume of 12 cans in your refrigerator whether they contain 11 cans or only 1.

My oldest has taken to bringing them home and opening them according to the instructions. After which I empty them and stand the cans on their ends properly in the refrigerator to make room for delicious leftovers, and that lasts a couple of days until the next twelve packs arrive.

when I lived there: Public housing is home: The story behind the stories of Greentree apartments in Milwaukee:

Through the O’Brien Fellowship in Public Service Journalism at Marquette University, I spent 15 months capturing life at Greentree, a low-income housing complex that sits on 14 acres on Milwaukee’s north side and is home to more than 700 residents.

An apartment in there was my first home, where my father fished my first bike out of the communal dumpster.

We moved into the housing projects about the time I was four.

After finishing my death march of painting all of my fence in a single year, I had another project to tackle: The toy box in the pool area that we use to store pool toys and floats.

It started out as a recepticle for my young children’s outdoor toys. You know, big plastic trucks, various balls, a wiffle ball set, a batting tee, a big ball-with-handle for bouncy rides, plastic lawnmowers, and so on. As it was built to hold large toys and with the thought that young boys might climb it, I built it strong. And, let’s face it, fine furniture at Nogglestead, at least the things I build, are really just two by fours screwed together (see also the record shelves I built five years ago). Although the toy box had some two by twos and one by threes screwed on it as well for some reason. Aesthetics? Extra stability? Who knows.

Well, my boys outgrew the outdoor toys, so I painted the toy box red and moved it to the pool area where it could hold the pool toys, noodles, floats, balls, dive toys, and such.

Over the course of a decade, the dripping toys made their mark on it. I noticed that the base of it was rotting at one side. So I thought I would bang out a couple of boards and replace them and repaint it.

Oh, but no. The rot was not just the end of the boards on the bottom, but also the framing holding the walls to the sides and the smaller boards at the bottom as well.

So my youngest and I completely took it apart, cut down the rotting boards, and rebuilt a new similar structure from the remnants, and painted it red again from the same can of paint, and:

It’s smaller, but that’s okay. Even though I’m personally spending more time in the pool these days–I try to hit it once a day, but that’s fallen to only a couple times a week this month–it has lost its enchantment for the boys, who hit the pool four or five times a day the first summer we let them swim without us. I have been told that the oldest got into the pool for the first time this year last week, and the youngest has let us drag him out there a handful of times. We haven’t had anyone over to swim in a long time. Maybe once last year?

So it might be the last time I deal with the pool fence and certainly with this toy box.

And, I am pleased to say, the garbage men did not balk at a little scrap wood in the bin. Which is another story in itself.

But what shall I do with this small amount of red paint I have remaining? Put it back in the garage for the next round of garage cleaning, which is on track to be a multi-year project.

Ah, Brian J., you might wonder, what has your fecund imagination invented to worry about today?

What if a coronal mass ejection hits the earth and is mistaken for an act of war by a nuclear power?

It might keep me up at tonight. If we make it that long.

(Inspired by a post at Silicon Graybeard.)

Well, gentle reader, I have done it, and I want a cookie.

I mentioned in the beginning of July that I was painting my fence this year, albeit slowly, as part of cleaning my garage.

In past years, I have started with, what, fifteen or twenty gallons of paint in the orbit of my close-in back yard, but I’ve generally turned fence painting into a multi-year endeavor. I’d start out with the outside of the whole fence, and that would end up taking a couple or three weekends of painting four or five hours each day, and by that time, I would decide I was done painting for the year. Then, the next summer, I would tackle the inner part of the fence. I’ve only painted the fence inside the pool deck once, in the cycle that started in 2020. And this does not count the time it would take to paint our rather large deck which also tends to be on a multi-year cycle. Judging by the color, I painted the deck portion during the 2020 cycle, and it must have been in the spring, as I also painted the vertical surfaces that border my beautiful wife’s flower garden, probably before it had grown. But I must have turned to the outside of the fence at that time, as only that part of the outside of the deck is Mission Brown, the 2020 color. The remainder of the exterior of the deck is Russet Brown, the 2016 or 2012 color.

This year, instead of spending four hours on each weekend day, I instead spent an hour or two (or three) most days so far this summer to march around the fence lines.
Continue reading “Besieged By Buckets” →

It’s been over a week since I’ve had to repair a major appliance at Nogglestead (the dryer and more). It must be time again!

This morning, when I opened the dishwasher to empty it, I heard a ping, and suddenly the door was heavy and a bit loose.

A little investigation indicated that the door spring on one side had broken. I mean, I can say it like I knew what it was right away, but it took a little probing and prodding to figure it out.

Who am I kidding? Nico told me what was wrong and how to fix it.

So I’ve ordered the spring ($35 for OEM? Eesh.) and will likely have to unhook and move out the dishwasher to replace it when it arrives.

And hopefully not introduce any leaks when I put it back.

Well, I’m not bragging. No, really. Because it was more a week of attempted repairs at Nogglestead.

Continue reading “The Week In Repairs At Nogglestead” →

…it would have been about right.

I mentioned in 2018 that I had been saving aluminum cans since we moved to Nogglestead, and I only had half of a garbage can full at that time.

Well, my boys have discovered canned soda, and the oldest has been buying it himself for a while. So we ended up with a full can, a large bag, and a partially full bag (and a crushed piece of downspout which was only a couple years old and cost more than pennies when we had it installed). As scrap yards are not open on weekends here in Springfield, we loaded them up and took them to the near north side of Springfield this weekend, and we got…

$19.25. Which is about a dollar and a quarter per year that we’ve been collecting the cans.

55 pounds sounds about right. But that tare weight: 20 pounds. They took all of the cans out of the bags and cans and put them into cages so they could see what was in them before weighing them, so it’s not like they had to account for steel garbage cans. Do they normally apply that much to account for the moisture in the cans? Or did they rook me of $5 to increase their profit that scant amount? I mean, the scale doesn’t have numbers on it; it’s connected to a computer that I couldn’t see, and I didn’t get a receipt from it until I got my receipt and money at the window in another building.

I am a cynic and a misanthrope to even think it, but I am a cynic and a misanthrope.

Of course, today, I come out to sort my other recycling into the bins I take to the government recycling center (that is, an alternative route to the landfill for my refuse which keeps me from having to have two waste containers for pickup), and my son has put a Diet Coke can in it. I could add another bin or small can for me to take an accumulation to the city recycling center (which accepts aluminum cans dropped off as well as paper, cardboard, steel cans, and plastic). But, more likely, I will start the process all over again. But when the time comes some years hence to redeem them, I will not make a special trip. It is certainly not worth that.

One of my favorite mini-games in the role-playing game of life is to count how many magazines in the racks at the grocery store checkout stand have Taylor Swift on the cover.

On a recent trip, I thought the answer was three (the range generally runs between three and six) when my son pointed out that she was also on the cover of one of the digest-sized puzzle magazines. So it was. Four.

I thought about picking it up, and at the last minute did throw it onto the belt. And now I own it.

Mainly, I wanted to see how they could make a Taylor Swift-themed sudoku–what, did they only fill in the 8s and 7s? But, no. The regular sudokus are regular sudokus, but apparently, they have invented a “picture” sudoku, presumably for puzzle fans who don’t like math, and these have little images kinda related to women singers.

I probably will bag this and throw it into a collectible magazine bin. I mean, I don’t do puzzles that frequently. I have several crossword puzzle books that I inherited from my sainted mother which still have more of her handwriting in them than mine. I have a collection of old GAMES magazines from when we got a subscription for our young son who liked games (but preferred dot-to-dots). Wow, that’s been a while; GAMES merged with another magazine in 2014.

Not that anyone will collect anything in the future, but it will be a little something to burn to keep warm when needed.

Ah, gentle reader, as you might know, I hate to part with anything. But as part of my recent urge to very, very slowly clean the garage and other events have led me to repurpose or get rid of a couple of things.

For example, the Scipio Africanus tour shirt which I bought in 2020. You know, this one:

Nico, the kitten (who is now two years old but forever a kitten) likes to jump on my shoulders to ride around the house or to get atop the bookshelves or game cabinet, so many of my t-shirts are now getting holes in at the top of the chest or upper back.

It’s a shame because it was a cool shirt; for some reason, at dinner the other night, my oldest son brought up the general with the elephants, and I mentioned that Scipio beat him and some of the tactics at the Battle of Kama. Which is more than he was hoping to learn while eating. But I wore the shirt and showed it to him, and it turned out to be the last wearing.

I’ve cut it into scrap cloths for cleaning so I’ll still have it near me.

Also, I “cleaned the garage” by putting a couple of Green Bay Packer automobile floor mats in the trash.

We received them as a gift probably more than a decade ago, and they were the floor mats in our Highlander. The rubber backing on them was pretty thin, so they started breaking down and curling several years ago. The Highlander became the oldest’s default driver, and it was totaled in an accident in December. We brought them home when cleaning out the vehicle in the tow lot, but the breakdown of the backing meant they were not likely to go into another vehicle. So, what, eight months later, I have discarded them.

It’s a two-fer: A gift, and Green Bay Packers paraphernalia, so it’s surprising that I did. But I kiind of felt like they deserved an official retirement ceremony at the local Green Bay Packers pub or something. Not just getting dumped into the trash bin. But there they are.

I know, you’re riveted by the minutia of Nogglestead. But me getting rid of anything is remarkable. And so much of the garage cleaning so far is throwing out a couple of things and recycling some glass. Eventually, we will have a clean garage. Maybe in 2030, but more likely after my estate sale.

Sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink, the Philosopher has said. And sometimes you can tell how I spent the day by the smell on my hands.

Not that I am asking you to smell my finger; however, many times you might see me smelling my hands to see if I have yet washed them enough to get a scent off of them. Most days, I only have one scent to worry about, but some days, most often Saturdays, I stack up tasks that end up trading one smell for another (or not, if the first smell was dominant).

So, this weekend, what did my hands smell like? Not that you asked, but since you haven’t ewwwwed on to another page or post yet, let me tell you.

1. Skimmersam and chlorine.
   I cleaned the pool early in the morning, which means that my hands got a combination of chlorine and organic decay from the things caught in the skimmer baskets. Although the skimmer baskets do have handles, so I don’t have to touch the grass, bugs, frogs, and occasional other critter in the basket itself, I do pick up a bit of its scent that handling chlorine tabs does not completely cover.
    
2. My boxing gloves.
   Or, worse, the inside of my boxing gloves which smell of years-old and fresh sweat. I’ve tried to clean them, putting absorbing powder in them, but it might just be part of the material now, to forever scentedly scar me after a martial arts class. Because, let’s face it, I am unlikely to wear them out and buy new ones.
    
3. Salsa.
   After a shower after martial arts class, I mostly neutralized the smell of the gloves and made myself a bit of lunch which was cheese “burritos”–basically shredded cheese and Pace Picante sauce or salsa microwaved until the cheese is melted. Whilst eating them, I tend to get a little salsa leakage onto my hands. This is the least difficult scent to wash off.
    
4. Gunpowder.
   I have tried to get the whole family to the range for a pistol safety class for a while–how long? Well, I had us signed up in January 2021, but I had a sniffle and wanted to postpone because we still weren’t sure that sniffles didn’t kill other people around whom you sniffled and besides you didn’t want to be judged as evil for sniffling around strangers. But at that time, the instructor was going to be out for some number of months, and it took me over three years to make it happen.

   But I did, and the boys had a great time, and my beautiful wife got over her initial trepidation.

   How did I do?

   

   Not bad, but it was just a .22 at 10 feet. Essentially tied with my oldest who had marksman training with JROTC a couple years back. And I’d like to point out I shot faster. Because it’s important that I still sort of win at something sometimes. Sheesh. Those guys have been hitting the gym almost every night, and soon will be able to lift more than I can (who only hits the gym once or twice a week these days,

   Oh, and you might be asking, Is this really the first time you’ve been to the range since 2012? Yes, gentle reader: for a longtime member of the NRA, I have popped off a relatively small number of rounds in my life. Perhaps this will change in the near term. When I can find time to head to the range again.

With those four scents, I am pretty sure that I only missed gasoline from some attempt at small engine repair to hit for the hand odor cycle (GoJo hand cleaner would have been included after the gasoline smell).

I am pleased to say that my hands smell of hand soap this Monday morning, which means I will not keep smelling them, and you will not have to wonder why.

Not that you ever did. But you might now.

Ah, gentle reader. As you might know about me, I tend to put things off, especially home maintenance or repair projects. They will sit for weeks months years, and then I will do them in a short period of time. Instead of a sense of accomplishment, a look what I did triumph, I’ll then recriminate myself for not having done it sooner. And this very week, I have the topper of all stories in that ilk.

In late summer 2009, we had house-shopped in Springfield for a couple of months on intermittent weekends, and we settled on Nogglestead (like our home in Old Trees, we magickally found a house on the very last day we were house-shopping). I made the round trip after the paperwork was in motion for the home inspection and followed Dennis, the home inspector, around the house with my own tools to poke and prod what he was and what he was not (after all, home inspectors adhere to a checklist closely, and they’re paid by the home sellers, so they don’t go off book at risk of their continued employment).

One thing he pointed out was that the insulation around the copper line from the external air conditioner condenser unit to the house, the pipe that brings the cooled, erm, coolant back into the house was breaking down. It was an easy fix: just take it off and replace it with standard pipe insulation. It wasn’t on his checklist, and I didn’t make it part of the nickel-and-dime remediation conditions for purchase. But shortly after we bought Nogglestead, I went to the hardware store and bought two lengths of pipe insulation. And then I put them in the garage, a little out of the way, and….

Almost fifteen years pass.

Gentle reader, I have alluded to the fact that I am in a slow motion process of cleaning up my garage (which includes the slow grind of painting my fence so that I can get the three five gallon buckets of Mission Brown and three smaller buckets of Russet out of the garage). On Monday, I used a cardboard poster tube that originally contained a poster that we framed and gave to my mother-in-law for Christmas probably twenty years ago (when we lived in Casinoport, undoubtedly). It was on the top shelf of a, erm, shelving unit with round things: Rolled up replacement screen material, rolls of kraft paper for landscaping and/or painting, a couple of poster tubes in case I ever got back into the Ebay thing selling movie posters (which I have not for almost a quarter century), and the pipe insulation.

I noticed when running the line trimmer around the house that the line was almost bare copper these days, and it was sweating as much as I was. So it was time.

I got the insulation down, took a scissors and a roll of duct tape, and spent five minutes replacing the insulation. I peeled the remainder of the old insulation off, cut the new insulation down to size, wrapped it around, pulled the tape to the adhesive on the edges, pressed the edges together, and added a couple loops of duct tape, and….

It took almost as long to walk around the house and back as it did to fix the thing.

I probably put it off so long (as with other repairs like it) because I have little experience with HVAC and I was afraid I would somehow damage the unit. The next morning, the fear was almost realized, as the condenser had a weird rattle that it had not had before. However, I discovered that I left the duct tape on the condenser unit, and it was rattling. So, apparently, I have not damaged the unit.

I hate to think how much the delay cost me in energy costs.

But it’s done now, and I don’t think I can even top this procrastination record. And it’s a small step in cleaning my garage as well. So, ultimately, it is a funny (in a sad way) story and a small win anyway.