Be Safe

 

Things You Don't Say to Your Wife

You might have seen this before,but I just saw it recently, and it had me rolling on the floor (Jenn even liked it, too. . .)

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Things You Don't Say to Your Wife
by Tim Hawkins (with apologies to Green Day)

Hey honey have you gained some weight in your rear-end?
That dress you wear reminds me of my old girlfriend
And where'd you get those shoes? I think they're pretty lame
Would you stop talking 'cause I'm trying to watch the game

If you're a man who wants to live a long and happy life
These are the things you don't say to your wife

I planned a hunting trip next week on your birthday
I didn't ask you 'cause I knew it'd be ok
Go make some dinner while I watch this fishing show
I taped it over our old wedding video

If you're a man who wants to live a long and happy life
These are the things you don't say to your wife

Your cooking is ok but not like mother makes
The diamond in the ring I bought you is a fake
Your eyes look puffy dear, are you feeling ill?
Happy anniversary I bought you a treadmill

If you're a man who wants to live a long and happy life
These are the things you don't say to your wife
If you're a man who doesn't want to get killed with a knife
These are the things you don't say to your wife

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Just for fun, here it is on YouTube (or, the Tube o' You, as my late friend Buck would have it ). . .

Bliss 36. . .

36 years of Connubial Bliss. . . and counting. . .

Thank you, My Beloved, for throwing your life (and your DNA) in with mine, these 36 years.  I am utterly grateful. . .

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It might have been six years ago, when we were celebrating our 30th, that I stopped at the store and, in preparation for the anniversary festivities, bought a dozen roses, a box of Jenn's favorite candy, and a magnum of champagne.  As I was checking out, the clerk, a woman about my age at the time, looked at me with wide eyes, and sputtered, "WHAT DID YOU DO?!?"

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And it seems a fitting observance that this coming weekend, Jenn and I will be helping to put on a retreat for married couples at a parish Up North, not far from my hometown (of course, when you're Up North, 'not far' is still an hour's drive. . .)

Cracking the Bible Code???

The other night, 8M was texting with one of his buddies, when he stopped and chuckled to himself.  Jenn looked at him; "What's so funny?" she asked.

"I just realized that, to text 'Mom' from my phone, I key in '666'."

Serves her right for asking, I guess. . .

Long-Stemmed WHAT?

This is a re-post from many years ago (seven, to be precise), on my old blog, which I thought you all might enjoy. . .

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Jenn and I have never been particularly big on Valentine’s Day. We’ve tended to view it as pretty much an over-hyped ‘Hallmark holiday’, designed to sell candy and greeting cards. And we’ve figured that really, it’s much better if we spend 365 days a year finding ways to express our love and commitment to each other, than it is to ride in on a white horse every February 14th to say what, honestly, we should be saying (albeit, perhaps not in quite such extravagant form) all the time.

But, maybe that’s just us.

I did get in trouble once over Valentine’s Day, though. My birth-mother, as it turns out, is a HUGE fan of Valentine’s Day. And so, when the first V-Day after our reunion rolled around, and I gave it my typical blasé non-observance, she was pretty upset with me, and told me so. I mean, how hard would it have been for me to send her a card, or some candy hearts with cheesy ‘romantic’ messages stamped in them, expressing the true depth of my feelings for her, right?

So, I didn’t make that mistake again. The following year, I was in the card shop a month ahead, searching for the perfect V-Day card. And I found it. On the front, it had an old photo of a gnarly, scowling old gentleman, standing behind a chair on the lawn. The caption read, “Here’s your damn Valentine”, and inside it said, “Now sit down and shut up.” Jenn wouldn’t let me send it to my mother. But I still have it in my files, to this day (I swear I still have it; I was gonna scan it for y'all, but I couldn't immediately lay hands on it).

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We have occasionally had a bit of fun with V-Day observances, though. Many years ago, when we were married only a few years, I was in my office, working, on Valentine’s Day, when I got paged to the receptionist’s desk by the front door, so everybody in the office could hear it. When I got there, there was a long white box sitting on the desk – the kind that long-stemmed roses often come in. “Your wife was just here,” said the receptionist. “She said she couldn’t stay, but she left this for you.”

Curious. . . Jenn is definitely not the sentimental sort. She used to pooh-pooh it when I brought her flowers, but over the years she's grown more appreciative of the thought, and the effort (and the flowers are nice, after all). Anyway, getting roses for me would be way out-of-character for her.

I picked up the box. It was heavy. WAY too heavy for flowers. What the heck? So I set the box back on the desk, and opened it, to see what in the world it could possibly contain, that was so heavy.

And I saw six cans of beer, laid end-to-end. A linear six-pack.

Sometimes, you know, there are just no words. . .

I married a great, great woman. . .

Divided By a Common Language. . .

OK, this is a story which I tell with some frequency, on the general theme of the sometimes-humorous (or is it humourous?) things that happen when British English-speakers try to communicate with American English-speakers (and vice-versa). . .  (I could also refer you to my reply-comment to the Brighton Pensioner in the comment-space attached to this post). . .

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A business-woman I know was travelling to London on business.  She was met at the airport by a gentleman who worked for the company on which she was to call the following day.  Said gentleman drove her from the airport to her hotel, and then, by way of making arrangements to pick her up in the morning and convey her to the office at which meetings were to take place, he asked her, "Shall I knock you up about eight, then?"

Absolutely true story. . .

Middle School English Class. . .

8M, a 7th-grader about to turn 13, is having a lot of fun in his English class, just lately.  They're doing a unit on Poetry; his English teacher is a young woman who looks like she might not be much older than Middle School herself.  She's wonderfully creative, and puts across real joy and love for her subject, of which 8M, at least, seems to have caught a most virulent case.

She had them memorize two poems of their own choice.  8M asked Jenn and me what our favorite poems were; I told him Lewis Carroll's 'Jabberwocky' and Poe's 'The Bells' (inveterate lover of wordplay that I am; I thought about giving him 'I Am the Walrus', but wasn't sure if that would count as an actual poem).  Jenn gave him Rudyard Kipling's 'If'.  So the three of us spent a couple weeks memorizing all three poems, and had great fun doing so.

The class held a 'tournament' of everyone's favorite poems.  The teacher paired off the poems, and the class voted on which one of each pair they liked, one round every day.  Alas, 8M's poems were eliminated fairly early (evidently, our predilection for whimsical wordplay is not widely shared; pity).  The ultimate winner was a limerick by Ogden Nash (which seems about right for a middle school class):

A flea and a fly in a flue
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
     Said the fly, "Let us flee!"
     "Let us fly!" said the flea.
So they flew through a flaw in the flue.

I love limericks. . .

Another recent assignment asked 8M to write a statement describing himself in three words.  He wrote, "I am a rebel," and showed if to 6F, who was standing nearby.  She looked at it and said, "But that's four words."  8M just looked at her, grinning. . .

A Belated Happy Presidents Day to You All. . .

When I was a kid, we didn't have Presidents Day; we had separate observances for Lincoln's (Feb12) and Washington's (Feb22) birthdays.  It seemed like a bit of a ripoff (and honestly, kinda disrespectful) when they folded them together into a single holiday, lumping the two great men together with Chester A. Arthur and Warren G. Harding (among, you know, others). . .

Anyway, I know that Presidents Day was last week, but I just found this:

(Hat tip to The TOF Spot)

It Just Doesn't Make Sense. . .

Day of the Drunken Birds

These days, I'm not posting so much, and occasionally, I'm leaving some good, post-worthy stories as comments on other folks' blogs.  Such is the case with this one, although by now I forget whose blog I left it on as a comment.  It really does deserve to be preserved for posterity along with the rest of my stories, though, so here you go. . .



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The house I grew up in, Up North, was situated at the end of a dead-end street, out near what, in those days, counted as the edge of town.  There were no other houses within a block of ours, and our back yard was bordered on two sides by what could only be honestly described as a swamp.  In one corner of the yard was a mountain ash tree, the kind with the little orange berries.  For most of the summer, the tree would be liberally speckled with orange berries, which made for a colorful splash in that corner of the yard.



Now, birds (mostly robins and blue jays) loved those little orange berries, and would come from far and wide to descend on our yard in order to partake of their orange-y goodness.  And throughout the summers, the, uh, bird-lime that was splatted around our yard (and on our cars, and house, and back porch, etc) had a distinctly orange-ish hue, sometimes containing the stems and other accoutrements of the birdly-eaten berries.


The birds usually kept the berries eaten to a degree that meant that, by summer's end, the berries were gone, and the tree wasn't producing any more of them.  In the fullness of time, the leaves fell, and the following spring, the cycle commenced anew.


One summer, though, the berries lingered into the early fall.  I don't know if the birds were otherwise occupied that summer, or if the tree put out a particularly abundant berry crop that year, but September came, and there were still berries on the tree, where, in a typical year, there were none.


Then suddenly, one day, a massive flock of birds descended on our yard and denuded the tree of its remaining berries.  The berries, however, having remained on the tree so much longer than usual, had begun to, uh, ferment.  In fact, they were well-advanced in the process of fermentation.  And so, by afternoon, we were treated to one of the most bizarre spectacles I've ever witnessed in my young life, which has gone down in family lore as The Day of the Drunken Birds.


Dozens of birds were reeling and stumbling around our back yard, staggering sideways, hopping on one leg, trying desperately to keep (or regain) their balance, like something out of a Red Skelton skit.  I was still a couple years away from heading to college, but, in retrospect, it was reminiscent of last call at a college-town bar.  Birds were bumping into each other, knocking each other down, and struggling to regain their feet with indifferent success.  A few of them tried to take flight, but they simply couldn't get their wings and tail-feathers working together, and they would careen sideways, a foot or two off the ground, until they crashed awkwardly back onto the lawn, somersaulting a couple times before coming to rest.  I didn't witness it first-hand, but I'm sure that, scattered around the yard were numerous small puddles of worm-scented bird-puke.


By evening, a few, maybe half, had recovered enough to have moved on, but our yard was still scattered with several comatose, semi-comatose and near-comatose birds.  Some were just lying there, awake, their wings splayed out from their bodies on the ground, staring with glazed eyes off into the sky.  Others were asleep, dozing off their unplanned bender.  If my mom had been inclined to serve robin for dinner, marinated in ash-berry wine, we could have invited company and had enough to go around.


By the next morning, they were gone (perhaps amazingly, I saw no evidence that any of the neighbors' cats had come marauding overnight).  I smile to imagine them, one by one, drifting groggily awake, shaking their heads to clear the fog, wondering what the hell had happened to them, complaining about how loud the damn crickets were chirping, then taking weary flight while promising themselves, "never again. . ."

Honeymoon in the Hotel Chevette

Since our wedding anniversary was just a few weeks ago, I got to thinking about our honeymoon (and hey, who doesn't enjoy thinking about their honeymoon?), and recalled that I had posted a story from our honeymoon, some years ago, on my old blog.  It's been a long time since I re-posted anything, so I suppose you all won't mind too much.  Besides, it's a pretty good story. . .


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For our honeymoon, Jenn and I went on a tour of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We actually spent our first night in our own house, then went to Mackinac Island. We spent two days and a night on the island, then drove on to the tiny village of Paradise (sign on the outskirts: “Welcome to Paradise; Glad You Made It”), where we spent our third night of wedded bliss (yes, we really did spend a night in Paradise on our honeymoon) before taking in Tahquamenon Falls the next day. At the end of that day, we drove on to Munising, where our plan was to take in the Pictured Rocks the following day.

Now, other than Mackinac Island, I hadn’t made any reservations. Northern Michigan, especially along the shores of the Great Lakes, is blanketed with hundreds of little mom-and-pop cabins, and it is not usually a very big deal to just drive along the road near the area you intend to stay, looking for a ‘Vacancy’ sign to be lit at a place that doesn’t look too nasty. I’ve done it dozens of times, and never had a problem. Except once.  On our honeymoon.  Oh yeah. . . Good, good times. . .

After a delightfully scenic drive from Tahquamenon Falls to Munising (I think I'm not supposed to mention skinny-dipping at a secluded beach on Lake Superior, so I won't), we began to see the little cabins popping up as we got close to Munising. ‘No Vacancy’. Hmmm. . . OK. With the Pictured Rocks, though, there ought to be no shortage of other cabins available to choose from.

Next place – ‘No Vacancy’. And the next place, and the next place, and the next place. We were into town by now, looking for a not-too-seedy-looking motel, and we found several, all with the ‘No Vacancy’ sign lit.

Hmmmm. . . well, we’ll just head on down the road on the far side of Munising, and see what we find there. . .

Again, ‘No Vacancy’, ‘No Vacancy’, ‘No Vacancy’.

I’m starting to get frustrated now, and Jenn is starting to get a little concerned as I’m getting more and more agitated as the ‘No Vacancy’ signs continue piling up. Finally, I pulled into a gas station, and asked a guy where I might look that I haven’t tried yet. He suggested a couple back roads out into the hinterlands surrounding Munising, and I thanked him for the tip. We followed his directions, and found the places he was sending us to.

‘No Vacancy’.

I actually went into the office at one of the places, just to confirm that they really didn’t have any rooms, and the neon ‘No’ wasn’t just inadvertently lit. Alas, the sign told the truth. But the manager pointed us farther down the road, to the little village of Christmas, Michigan, about 10 miles or so west of Munising. I thanked her, and we drove off.

We arrived in Christmas (greeted by giant plastic candy canes, and a giant plastic Santa Claus, as we drove into 'town', such as it was), and found a small cluster of three or four cabin-resorts.

‘No Vacancy’, ‘No Vacancy’, ‘No Vacancy’

‘Vacancy’

What!? Was this a mistake? Did one of these places actually have an available room? Or was the neon ‘No’ cruelly lying in its unlit state? I pulled into the parking space by the office, and fairly sprinted in. When I walked through the door, there was a guy standing at the desk, with a mildly disgusted look on his face, and I heard him say,

“Well, if that’s the only room you’ve got, I guess I’ll take it.”

My heart sank. I looked imploringly at the manager, as if to say, please tell me you didn't really just rent out the very last room you have? The very last possible available room within three days’ drive of Munising? She shrugged, nodded, and said, “Sorry.”

I asked if she had any suggestions for where else I might look, and she said, “Well, you might try the KOA.”

I thanked her, and retreated to my car (a still-pretty-shiny ’79 4-door Chevy Chevette) to weigh my options, as the neon 'No' flickered into light above our car. At this point, I was NOT a happy camper, despite the prospects of spending the night at a KOA. On my honeymoon. Here I was, four days into my marriage, and I was already an abject failure. Tasked with nothing more onerous than taking my bride on a nice vacation so we could (*ahem*) get to know each other, I had failed miserably.

As the steam slowly seeped out of my ears, Jenn tried to be helpful. “You know, we’ll look back on this and laugh, someday.”

I was in no mood to think about how funny this predicament would come to seem, from the vantage point of some future time. All I knew is that I had failed. The Universe had conspired against me, to make me look like a fool in front of my bride, in whose eyes I had previously been able to do no wrong (well, OK, maybe she wasn’t quite that star-struck, but I wanted to think she was). And I was, how shall I say it. . . pissed!

I think I spent a couple minutes having a small tantrum in the car (it was a small car; there wasn’t enough room for a really big tantrum), before Jenn finally got me to calm down. She said how it would be fun to sleep in our car at the KOA, and c’mon, we could make it work out, and it would be fun, and a great story to tell afterward. I wasn’t really mollified (those of you who remember my old blog will get the pun that this used to be), but, lacking any better alternative, agreed that the KOA was probably our best (meaning, 'only') option, at this point. The sun was setting, and it was too long a drive to our next destination (the Porcupine Mountains, if anyone is interested), and besides, we really wanted to see the Pictured Rocks.

So I drove back toward Munising, and pulled into the KOA. The very portrait of dejection and defeat, I moped into the office. Approaching the desk, I simply asked the clerk, “What’ll it cost me to stay here tonight?”

“What have you got?” she cheerfully replied.

Now wait just a minute, missy – I wasn’t born yesterday. I may be desperate for a place to sleep tonight, but you just tell me your price, and I’ll pay it.

“No, no – do you have a camper, or an RV, or a tent, or what?”

Oh. Uh, we’ve got a Chevette.

“What’s that?”

Our car – we’re sleeping in our car. Do you just have a place where we could park it for the night?

“Oh, um, sure.” She seemed almost embarrassed, like I was some poor unfortunate homeless person asking her for a handout. “I guess two bucks is plenty for that.” I shoved a couple dollar bills at her, and shuffled resignedly back to our car.

When I arrived, Jenn was well into the process of transforming our little Chevette into the Honeymoon Suite Munising. She collected every towel, or grocery bag, or t-shirt we had readily at hand, raided the first-aid kit, and taped towels/bags/shirts over all the windows with band-aids. “There!” she declared triumphantly. “That ought to do the trick!”

My wife is a great, great woman.

I could only smile at my new bride’s resourcefulness, and her glee at having rendered our little car honeymoon-worthy was just irresistible. I grabbed one of the towels that she hadn’t used as a window-covering, and went off to take a shower. When I returned, I poked my head in through the car door, to find Jenn wrapped in my bathrobe, flashing me her very best ‘come-hither’ smile. The back seat was folded down, and our sleeping bag was rolled out. The car was too small for us to stretch all the way out – when it came to sleeping, the most comfortable arrangement involved us draping our legs over the backs of the front seats.

But it was our honeymoon, and we had business to attend to. Getting to (*ahem*) know each other, and all that. . .

When we emerged from the car the next morning, and began taking down the window-coverings, and packing up to get back on the road, I think the folks on the neighboring campsites were looking at us a little bit oddly. But who cared? We were on our honeymoon! We were going to see the Pictured Rocks!  Life was good!

And our very first marital crisis had been successfully defused, besides. . .

Alas. . .

Place Names in Michigan

I was born in Michigan, and I have lived virtually my entire life here.  At one time or another, I've traveled to just about every corner of my native state.  I'm sure that your states have some pretty fun place names, too (I'm thinking of one small town in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in particular) (also Pee Pee Creek, and its eponymous township, in Pike County, Ohio), but here's a sampler from where I live. . .

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In Michigan, we have both a Hell and a Paradise.  In Hell, there is, as you might suspect, a bar (called the Dam Site Inn, as it sits next to, you know, a dam), and a post-office/country store/gift shop (called The Handbasket), where you can buy a "We've Been Through Hell Together" bumper sticker, or a miniature baseball bat, bearing the inscription, "Genuine, Official Bat Out of Hell".  (Incidentally, the road into Hell from the east is named Darwin Road; just sayin'. . .)  On the other hand, Jen and I spent a night in Paradise on our honeymoon (really! It's the closest town to Tahquamenon Falls) (that's ta-KWA-ma-non). . .

We have both a Romulus and a Remus, which are pretty much the polar opposite of twin cities, even aside from the fact that they're 150 miles apart.  Romulus is the home of Detroit / Wayne County Metropolitan Airport; Remus is the post office (and that's just about all there is there) closest to the farm where my dad grew up. . .

And not far from Remus is Mount Pleasant, which sits on some of the flattest land in the state of Michigan.  Some years ago, there was a waggish bumper sticker proclaiming, "I Climbed Mount Pleasant". . .

Then there's Needmore; I've been there, and they do. . .

And Maybee; or, you know, Maybee not. . .

And speaking of bees, way Up North, there's a tiny village called Topinabee; go ahead, guess how to say it, I'll wait. . .  It's top-in-a-BEE. . .

Then there's Paw Paw, which is not far from Kalamazoo, about which more below.  As it turns out, it's actually named for the pawpaw fruit which was abundant in the area, once upon a time.  Nowadays, it's more-or-less the center of Michigan's southern wine region, besides having a cute name.  (And hey, we've got Paw Paw, Ohio's got Pee Pee; anybody care to raise their hand for Poo Poo?)

Michgan's 'Thumb' is home to a couple of my favorites: Bad Axe (which is, you know, a pretty BA name for a town) and Ubly.  I understand what a bad axe is, as opposed to a good one; I'm just not sure I'd name a town after one.  And then, I imagine the cheerleading squad from Ubly High chanting, "U - B - L - Y, We ain't got no alibi, we're Ubly!"  And I wonder if the winner of the local beauty pageant might really be called 'Miss Ubly'. . .

Also in Michigan's Thumb is the village of Yale, pronounced just like the Ivy League university, which hosts the annual Bologna Festival, and elects a Bologna Queen to preside over the festivities. . .

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Native-American-derived place names can be an ongoing fount of amusement, for folks whose minds twist that way -

Of course, as I promised, there's Kalamazoo - When I was in college, there was a guy from New Jersey who lived on my dorm floor, who went through most of the fall term insisting that Kalamazoo wasn't a real place, and someone had obviously made it up as a joke.  Finally, we introduced him to a guy who was, you know, actually FROM Kalamazoo. . .

And heck, even Michigan itself, which derives from the Ojibwa 'mitchee-gamee' which, in turn, is related to 'gitchee-gumee' (as in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's Song of Hiawatha), meaning 'Big Water', which seems sufficiently self-evident. . .

Also the Manitou Islands, in northern Lake Michigan.

Then there's Muskegon (mus-KEE-gun) and Ontonagon (on-tuh-NOGgin), which, in spite of what they look like, really aren't geometric figures. . .

On the border between Michigan's Upper Peninsula and Wisconsin lies the city of Menominee, which I can't say without imagining a cheesy chorus singing "doot-DOO-du-du-doo" in the background. . .

And of course, the aforementioned Tahquamenon Falls and Topinabee.  And even Saginaw, though I've never hitch-hiked there. . .

Also Wequetonsing (wek-weh-TAHN-sing), just because it sounds cool. . .

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The French fur traders who roamed the Great Lakes region before the days of settled civilization bequeathed us with some place names that are wonderfully counter-intuitive to English-speakers -

Start with one with which you're probably all familiar - Sault Ste. Marie (known more coloquially as 'The Soo', which is pretty much a dead giveaway for how to pronounce the first French word in the name), meaning, 'St. Mary's Falls, since there is a long stretch of rapids in the St. Mary's River there, which, in the fullness of time, necessitated the digging of the Soo Locks.

There's Mackinac Island and the Straits of Mackinac, spanned by a majestic bridge bearing the same name.  The village on the south shore of the straits punted, and called themselves Mackinaw City, with a 'w'; I suppose, because they got tired of tourists from out-of-state calling them Mackin-ACK (somewhere, Billy Joel is singing, 'ack-ack-ack-ack-ack'). . .

Twenty miles or so east of the Straits of Mackinac is Bois Blanc Island ('white woods').  Which all the locals know is pronounced 'Bob-Lo'.

And Cadillac, which is in the opposite corner of the Lower Peninsula from where luxury cars are made. . .

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We Michiganders (or Michiganians; I think it's still something of an open question) also seem to have a unique proclivity for 'mispronouncing' place names, particularly ones that have obviously been borrowed from other places and things whose pronunciation is well-established.  A few examples -

Lake Orion - Not The Hunter from your star chart; this one is pronounced ORRY-un.

Charlotte - The emPHAsis goes on the second sylLABle: sher-LOTT (some locals aren't very punctilious about the 'r', and it comes out more like 'sha-LOTT').  Once, when I was in college, there was a girl named Charlotte in one of my classes (pronounced in the usual way); one might think, given the large city in North Carolina, and the eponymous children's-story spider, that the pronunciation of her name might seem somewhat obvious, but the instructor kept calling her sher-LOTT, for the entire term. . .

Milan - Named after the city in Italy, right?  Maybe, but it's pronounced MY-lun. . .

Chesaning - Just look at it, and you think you know how to say it; but it's chess-NING

Pompeii - POMpey-eye; 'nuff said

And Durand - DOO-rand; I am not making any of this up.

Armada - Think of the Spanish fleet that sailed against England in the 1500s?  Try ar-MAY-da. . .

Mikado - In a similar vein, it's mi-KAY-doh

Argentine - the final syllable sounds like the points of a fork (I know, right?)

And, it's not the general, common, pronunciation, but I can't resist mentioning that my mother-in-law (who, I should also mention, I dearly love, and is the best MIL anyone could ever have) pronounces Lake Huron, and the city of Port Huron, at its southern terminus, not HYER-ahn (or maybe HYOO-rawn, if you affect a slightly snooty accent), like most of us do, but homophonically with 'urine' (dropping the leading 'H', and clipping the second syllable just a bit); sometimes the city comes out sounding like 'porch urine', like your dog had an accident.  I've not been above asking (teasingly) (very affectionately teasingly) if the water at the southern end of the lake had a yellowish hue, or what. . .

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And finally, we come to my favorite river, the Tittabawassee River (pronounced pretty much how it looks: titta-ba-WAH-see); just because it's fun to say 'Tittabawassee'. . .

"Tittabawassee". . . heh. . .

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And wow - yesterday got up to 60F around these parts (and Friday was in the 50s, so the snow was all gone).  I really wasn't feeling good.  At all.  I think I had some kind of very mild flu, or something; just kinda achy and lethargic.  But you don't get many 60-degree days in January around here, so I dragged the bike out of the basement and got out for 10 miles, just because.  Now, 10 miles is just barely enough to get out to the cornfields and wave before heading back into town.  But it's miles; real, live, outdoors-on-the-road miles (and it's odd, how 45 minutes on the road will wear me out WAY more than an hour on the stationary bike indoors).  And this is now the 23rd consecutive month in which I've had outdoor miles; the last time I flipped the page on the calendar without any outdoor miles was at the end of February 2011. . .

Fun With Units

It might surprise you to know that, as an engineer, I have spent virtually my entire career working in metric units.  When I go to the supermarket, I'm used to buying food by the pound or ounce, and I still think miles per hour when I'm driving my car (but there is something fun about those 'Speed Limit 120' signs on Canadian freeways, isn't there?).  I'm not sure what it says that soft drinks by the liter are pretty universally accepted - but when our local dairy tried to introduce 4-liter jugs of milk, it flopped spectacularly.

But when I go to work, it's all millimeters, and kilograms, and Newtons and Megapascals, and all that happy stuff, and if someone tries to talk pounds, or inches, or psi, I mentally convert them back to metrics to get back in my 'comfort zone'.

Anyway, being an engineer, when I see stuff like what you'll see below, it probably amuses me out of all proportion.  This is what happens when engineers try to have fun, I guess. . .

1 unit of suspense in a mystery novel = 1 whod unit
1 milli-Helen = amount of face that will launch one ship
10^12 microphones = 1 megaphone
10^6 bicycles = 2 megacycles
500 millinaries = 1 seminary
453.6 graham crackers = 1 pound cake
10^12 pins = 1 terrapin
10^21 piccolos = 1 gigolo
10 rations = 1 decoration = 1/10 C-ration
10 millipedes = 1 centipede
3-1/3 tridents = 1 decadent
5 holocausts = 1 Pentecost
10 monologues = 5 dialogues = 1 decalogue
2 monograms = 1 diagram
8 nickels = 2 paradigms
2 snake eyes = 1 paradise
2 wharves = 1 paradox
2000 mockingbirds = Two Kilomockingbirds

'Til next time. . .

Regrets. . .

That I never took a photo of the situation I'm about to describe to you here (which, alas, no longer exists) . . .

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In Our Town, there used to be a large Planned Parenthood clinic at the edge of an even larger open-air mall.  It's sort of a giant strip mall, on the 'plan' of those huge outlet malls, with shops all around the perimeter, and a massive parking lot in the middle.  The PP clinic was in one of the 'strip' buildings that formed the southern edge of the rectangle, and was actually on the 'outside' of the mall (ie, on the side facing away from the huge central parking lot).  Right next to the PP clinic, to the east (ie, to its right as you faced the common front) was a much smaller veterinary clinic.

Thus (and it was especially prominent after dark), an observer would see a large, brightly-lit 'Planned Parenthood' sign, leading the eye smoothly and naturally to the vet clinic's sign, which was considerably smaller, but no less brightly-lit, saying, 'Spay/Neuter Surgery'.

You can't make this stuff up. . .

Godlike. . . Or Not. . .

One more piece of evidence that Bill Watterson is a cartooning genius. . .



There's just something emblematic about this, isn't there?  We never have as much control over our lives and circumstances, or those of others, as we like to think we do.  I imagine Chevy Chase saying, on behalf of the Almighty, "I'm God, and you're not."

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Today is my birthday (Suldog's was yesterday, but he's a whole year younger than me; okay, a year less one day).  And just for fun (and cryptic-ness - crypticity?), for the next year, my age and my birth year will be the same (hmmmmm. . . come to think of it, the same would be true of this year's six-year-olds).  Jen will join me this summer.  But we're not even the first members of our family to reach this milestone - 8M beat us to it by eight years. . .

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On March 3 in history -

in 1820, Congress passed the Missouri Compromise
in 1845, Florida was admitted as the 27th state
in 1873, Congress passed the first Comstock Law, prohibiting the sending of 'obscene, lewd and lascivious' materials through the US Mail.
in 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk was signed, ending Russia's involvement in WWI
in 1923, the first issue of Time magazine was published.
in 1924, the last Ottoman Caliph was deposed, giving way to the modern state of Turkey
in 1931, the United States adopted The Star-Spangled Banner as its national anthem
in 1969, Apollo 9 was launched
in 1991, an amateur video captured the beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles police officers

I was born the same day as -

Jim Barton, an Olympic bronze-medal yachtsman,
John F Reid, a cricket-player from New Zealand,
and Zbigniew Boniek, a Polish soccer player.

(*ahem*)  Well, now.

I was born

eight years before Mexican cyclist Raul Alcala,
six years before Herschel Walker and Jackie Joyner-Kersee,
two years before Bob Bradley, who coached the US soccer team in the last World Cup,
and nine years after American astronaut Bonnie Dunbar.

Princess Lee Radziwill (whose sister was Jackie Kennedy Onassis) was born 23 years before me;
James Doohan (Star Trek's Scotty) preceded me by 36 years;
Hall of Fame baseball player Wee Willie Keeler by 84 years;
Alexander Graham Bell by 109;
German mathematician Georg Cantor (discoverer of the transfinite numbers) by 111;
and George Pullman (inventor of the eponymous railroad sleeper car) by 125.

Please - hold your applause. . .

And I am, beyond a shadow of a doubt, not God. . .

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(edit, 3Mar)

As if the previous sentence needed any empirical confirmation. . .

I also share my birthday with my (step-)sister, who was born two years after me, and came into my life when I was nine.  Happy Birthday, Barbie. . .   {{{hugs}}}
 

Eschew Obfuscation; or, Politics as Usual?

One of my all-time favorite humorous bits is one that I first saw in Mad Magazine when I was 14 (does it cause you to think less of me that I read Mad Magazine when I was 14?).  Just in the interest of giving credit where it's due, I found it here.  It's a wonderfully obfuscatory piece of vocabulary-stretching brilliance (although I promise you, when I was 14, I had no idea what 'obfuscatory' even meant).

Since 2012 is a presidential election year, we are already well into 'all politics, all the time'.  So, as a brief, subversive respite from the exaggerated self-importance of all things political, I offer it here for your enjoyment and edification.  (OK, 'edification' might be a stretch; but I hope you'll find it enjoyable. . .)

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Guaranteed Effective

 All-Occasion Non-Slanderous Political Smear Speech

(By Bill Garvin; MAD #139, December 1970)

My fellow citizens, it is an honor and a pleasure to be here today. My opponent has openly admitted he feels an affinity toward your city, but I happen to like this area. It might be a salubrious place to him, but to me it is one of the nation's most delightful garden spots.

When I embarked upon this political campaign I hoped that it could be conducted on a high level and that my opponent would be willing to stick to the issues. Unfortunately, he has decided to be tractable instead -- to indulge in unequivocal language, to eschew the use of outright lies in his speeches, and even to make repeated veracious statements about me.

At first, I tried to ignore these scrupulous, unvarnished fidelities. I can do so no longer. If my opponent wants a fight, he's going to get one!

It might be instructive to start with his background. My friends, have you ever accidentally dislodged a rock on the ground and seen what was underneath? Well, exploring my opponent's background is dissimilar. All the slime and filth and corruption you could possibly imagine, even in your wildest dreams, are glaringly nonexistent in this man's life. And even during his childhood!

Let us take a very quick look at that childhood: It is a known fact that, on a number of occasions, he emulated older boys at a certain playground. It is also known that his parents not only permitted him to masticate excessively in their presence, but even urged him to do so. Most explicable of all, this man who poses as a paragon of virtue exacerbated his own sister while they were both teenagers!

I ask you, my fellow Americans: is this the kind of person we want in public office to set an example for our youth? Of course, it's not surprising that he should have such a typically pristine background -- no, not when you consider the other members of his family:

- His female relatives put on a constant pose of purity and innocence, and claim they are inscrutable, yet every one of them has taken part in hortatory activities
- The men in the family are likewise completely amenable to moral suasion
- My opponent's second cousin is a Mormon
- His uncle was a flagrant heterosexual
- His sister, who has always been obsessed by sects, once worked as a proselyte - even outside a church
- His father was secretly chagrined at least a dozen times by matters of a pecuniary nature
- His youngest brother wrote an essay extolling the virtues of being a homosapien
- His great-aunt expired from a degenerative disease
- His nephew subscribes to several phonographic magazines
- His wife was a thespian before their marriage and even performed the act in front of paying customers
- And his own mother had to resign from a women's organization in her later years because she was an admitted sexagenarian

Now what shall we say of the man himself?

I can tell you in solemn truth that he is the very antithesis of political radicalism, economic irresponsibility, and personal depravity. His own record proves that he has frequently discountenanced treasonable, un-American philosophies and has perpetrated many overt acts as well.

- He perambulated his infant son on the street
- He practiced nepotism with his uncle and first cousin
- He attempted to interest a 13-year-old girl in philately
- He participated in a seance at a private residence where, among other odd goings-on, there was incense
- He has declared himself in favor of more homogeneity on college campuses
- He has advocated social intercourse in mixed company -- and has taken part in such gatherings himself
- He has been deliberately averse to crime in our streets
- He has urged our Protestant and Jewish citizens to develop more catholic tastes
- Last summer he committed a piscatorial act on a boat that was flying the American flag
- Finally, at a time when we must be on our guard against all foreign "isms", he has unashamedly announced his belief in altruism -- and his fervent hope that some day this entire nation will be altruistic!

I beg you, my friends, to oppose this man whose life and work and ideas are so openly and avowedly compatible with our American way of life. A vote for him would be a vote for the perpetuation of everything we hold dear.

The facts are clear; the record speaks for itself.

Do your duty!

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And, just because I'm kind of a geek on history, and my home state. . .

Please join me in raising a celebratory glass in observance of the 175th anniversary of Michigan statehood, this past Thursday.  January 26, 1837; God bless Andy Jackson, for signing the statehood bill just before he left office (and even though we got jobbed out of Toledo, the Upper Peninsula is more than sufficient compensation; just imagine if it had taken two governors, and two state legislatures agreeing, to build the Mackinac Bridge. . .)

Perspectives

The Optimist says the glass is half-full. . .

The Pessimist says the glass is half-empty. . .

The Engineer says the glass is twice as big as it needs to be. . .

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Among Roman Catholics, today is popularly called Gaudete Sunday (because Catholics like to be all high-falutin' and throw Latin words around all the time, an' stuff; 'gaudete' just means 'rejoice'), the Third Sunday of Advent; the 'rejoicing' being because Advent is (at least) half-over, and it's all downhill to Christmas (so to speak).

Our family traditionally procures our Christmas tree on Gaudete weekend, although we might not set it up for a few days (if it's cold enough outside, we'll just stash it behind the garage), and we won't decorate it until it's at least less than a week 'til Christmas.

But - it's gettin' close. . .

Life Is Like That, Sometimes. . .

Recently, I was cleaning out my desk, and I came across a file of some of my favorite old cartoons.  Now, I don't have any plans to turn this humble blog into a Xavier-style clearing-house of visual humor, but perhaps some of you will appreciate a few of my favorites (quite aside from the insight they might provide into the bizarre twists and turns of my psyche) (and of course, my ego must be simply titanic for me to think that any of you might even want such insight. . .)

Anyway, in honor of All Saints' Day -  this one hit me where I was living, a few years back. . .

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I rode another 33 miles this past weekend, which gives me a total of 1238 miles for the riding season, through October (which is down a bit from my usual mileage, because of my dad's death, and a couple bouts of unplanned illness) (but hey - who plans their illness?).  In past years, I've had three or four good riding weekends in November (recent years haven't afforded me any rides in December, but if the weather is agreeable enough, I'll go out any time), although my miles will start to decrease with the temperatures (once it gets below 40F or so, it becomes an issue of keeping my toes warm, and that limits my rides to around 20 miles; below 32F, I stay indoors).  So, I've got maybe another 100 miles or so before the season ends. . .

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Also this past weekend, Jen engaged in her annual ritual of Providence and Resourcefulness, aka The Canning of the Applesauce.  I don't know how many bushels of apples she started with, but by the time she finished, we had 75 quarts of applesauce in the pantry.  

Mmmmm. . . home-canned applesauce. . .

I love my wife. . .

Catholic Signs?

While we were down for my dad's memorial, we were driving along a road that was lined with several fast-food places.  8M, who is 9 years old, seemed particularly interested in one of the establishments, and asked Jen and me, "Are they Catholic?"

What?

"Are they Catholic?" he repeated, pointing to a particular franchise.

Um, why do you ask, son?

"Because it says, 'Pope Yes."

Pope Yes?

And at that point, Jen and I could only burst out laughing, because 'Popeye's' could easily be read as 'Pope Yes', if you're not too careful about where the breaks are. . .

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And to make it even more, um, fun (and, you know, keeping it in the family). . .

Another time, we were driving along in a minivan with one of my brothers and his wife, when she pointed to a glass storefront we were driving past.  On one side of the door, the word 'Roman' was painted on the plate-glass window, and 'Tic' was painted on the pane on the other side of the door.

"Now," my SIL mused, "what the heck do you suppose a 'Roman Tic' is?"

"I think," I replied, with my tongue planted firmly in my cheek, "that it's one of those 'Catholic guilt' things; when a Catholic feels remorse for his sins, he develops a nervous twitch."

"Oh. . . really?  I guess that could make sense.  I don't know, though; why would they paint it on a storefront?"

Finally my brother, who is a singularly reticent man, chimed in.  "Ummm," he began, with a bemused smirk on his face, "I think that's supposed to say 'Romantic'. . ."

The she punched him for pointing it out. . .  'Cuz, you know, she's always tryin' to get him to be more romantic, and all. . .

And, you know, the funny thing is, there's not even any genetic connection between 8M and my brother's wife. . .

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Dad's memorial was good, and blessed, and rich.  I got to give one of the eulogies, which I basically took from my recent Father's Day blog post.  My youngest brother also gave a eulogy, and between the two of us, I think we gave a pretty good account of Dad's life.  I was able to say some things about his early life that most of the others might not have known about, and my brother said some things about him from after I'd left home, that I was less intimately acquainted with.  Jen and I and our kids sang a couple of songs ('For All the Saints' is a great funeral/memorial song); I was a little surprised by how many of the folks in attendance hadn't known how musical our family is, or even that I play the guitar. . .

The whole time we were there, it was just great family time, full of reminiscences and fond affection.  I even got invited to one brother's house for the first time in the 15+ years he's lived there. . .

I've shared some about our wacky, yours-mine-and-ours family, and I was appreciating my family on a whole new level this time.  I couldn't help thinking that it was, in lots of ways, a uniquely happy place for an adoptee (at least, this adoptee) to land - our family was formed out of folks coming from so many different, odd directions, that my adopted-ness was really no stranger than anyone else's path into the family.  And, given what I've come to understand in the intervening decades, about the unique challenges of 'blended' families, I cherish all the moreso that our family is still together, and we still love each other.  And it was very gratifying to experience that again this past week, in what could have been a particularly stressful time for us. . .