Goooood morning Boys and Girls!

Tomorrow is Halloween.

Where I live now, I doubt there'll be even a single Trick-or-Treater just because it's a fairly rural area and I'd think that even most of the kids who live around here would want to hit the more densely populated areas in town to maximize the "candy intake per minute's work" ratio, at least that would have been my thinking as a kid.

Back then we called it "begging" but that term seems to have vaporized, at least with regards to this particular holiday activity.

At seven, I began my three year run as a damn fine Superman for Halloween, until I got caught up in the TV Batman series and did that for a year or two before I felt too old to go out any longer.

I've been so impressed with the Superman costumes I've seen for sale this year and last, what with the muscles sewn in and the realistic three-dimensional emblems, though I remember my Dad working darn hard to help me have precise facsimiles of both logos even back in the sixties. What we wouldn't have given for those little colored sheets of foam that these days you can get in any craft store for a buck each, though I'd guess a dollar would have seemed like highway robbery to my folks who would have considered that even a dime for such an item would have been something you'd have to really think through before plunking it down.

And how could I forget Mom dying my long underwear to get it just right. and sewing to beat the band to get things looking just so.

I remember wishing the blue was brighter on the Superman outfit, but the grey of the TV Batman she got exactly right and sewed a hell of a form fitting mask complete with the right look on the nose and ears. The gloves and boots were pretty cool too, small stiff partial bat wings attached to the cuffs of each.

Alas, my stuffed rag muscles weren't close as cool as the ones on these new store bought costumes. Oh! -but the Batman tool belt I wore that Dad and I put together was quite special and I remember having fun explaining its intricacies to those homeowners who asked about it as part of the candy extraction process - anything to get that extra piece from those who determined how many pieces to give to a child based on some internal sliding scale only they understood, but that my little group of friends came to believe we'd figured out.

Funny, we felt sorry anyone stuck wearing a store bought costume, though, there was a good reason. By and large, back then, they just looked awful. Big changes.

These were the rules our folks insisted we follow, and we were glad we did as they also seemed to add to our collective haul:

Only go to houses with their porch lights on, or at least have Jack-O-Lanterns lit. (Yes, we used the term Jack-O-Lantern almost exclusively. It was a pumpkin only till it was carved.)

Always stay on the sidewalk; no cutting across lawns.

Always ring the doorbell as we yelled "trick or treat" (or, I swear to God, though I'm embarrassed to admit it, "Help the Poor." The two terms were interchangeable back then... amazing isn't it?)

Always smile and be extra polite and answer any questions.

No repeating the "good" houses.

God we loved it. And from what I understand, it's pretty much a dying "art."

Of course, we didn't have the X-Box or Playstations or the internet or Cartoons 24-7 or, or... It's a long list. And for not having any of them as I grew up? I say, "Thanks."


Be good to everyone

This post was triggered by reading ankkittmathur's post earlier this morning. A good read.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

First thing I noticed this morning was that the clock on my puter was arguing with the clocks on the wall.

Go back to sleep. Come back in an hour and read this. You'll feel better and I'll get the credit for you being well rested. Win-win.

Got home around one a.m. this morning after watching Ry's gig and heading out from Detroit around ten-thirty. He was good. Lots of laughs too, which for me was important because there were a few folks in the audience I hadn't seen in a long time and there were some honest-to-God emotional pangs and tugs to deal with.

Today is change-the-batteries-in-y our-smoke-detector day, always one of my favorite holidays, and yet, I'm not celebrating since they're all hard-wired here (six I think?) and I put new batteries in as back-ups just two months ago during the move-in. I saw on television that, around here, some group is giving away free smoke-detectors at some of the big-box hardware and home-goods stores this weekend. Nice.

Last night Michelle, Ryan's girlfriend, told me of her recent adventures in carbon monoxide poisoning. She's just moved into a new apartment, and the furnace there is only a few years old, but she noticed she wasn't feeling well a little too often. When the furnace came on, it would stay on for just a few minutes and the shut off again, then come on again, right away.

Last week Ryan loaned her a wall-socket style carbon monoxide monitor, which started chirping like crazy soon after she plugged it in. Turns out the heat exchanger was cracked and she's been at her folks house the last week while the landlord deals with the issue. Scary, but, the real problem was one that not too many folks know about, at least I didn't till I studied up on it a few years ago.

The furnace her landlord bought a few years ago was simply too large for the apartment it was heating, so it would kick on and off way too often, meaning that the thin metal that all heat exchangers are made of was heating up and cooling down too often, causing constant expansion and contraction, a real strain on the welded seams of the exchanger.

You know how when you put a cheap cookie sheet in the oven, sometimes they'll bend all at once when they get to a certain temperature, and then upon cooling, you'll hear a clang when they bounce back into shape?

Same-a-tang, as my Dad used to say.

So, Rule 1 (a.) Always better to have a slightly under-sized furnace than a slightly oversized one. (b.) Buy a carbon monoxide monitor.

Thankful they found out what the problem was. Michelle's a joy.

Oh wait, that sounds awful, doesn't it? -as if, if I didn't like her, I'd have wanted something bad to happen to her. NOooooo.

Let's see. Aw forget it. Y'all know what I meant. In fact, just because you're being so snotty, forget that going-back-to-bed-for-an- hour thing. Get your lazy butts out of bed and change your batteries!


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

I'm sitting at my kid's computer looking at the proofs and artwork for his new solo album, a compilation of songs either he or the band have determined aren't right for Eyestrings or that he just wanted to do on his own. Many are quite funny.

Sorry for bringing up his music again, but I swear it's for a good reason - bear with me. The cover art is cute, shows a doctored photo of him about to fall off the bottom of the planet which evidently has lost its gravitational pull - and he's hanging on for dear life looking quite worried.

Looks like each of the songs have a little cartoon logo that he's drawn having to do with the lyrics. Some are of old characters of his I recognize from earlier in his life.

The best pic is from the CD itself. It's a rendering of a Superman type guy, standing, hands on hips, looking slightly up and to his right with quiet confidence. He's got a red shirt on, a blue cape, and blue boots.

No tights.

His bristly and hairy pink legs are apparent as would be his "super equipment" I assume, if not for the center hole on the CD.

It's truly a funny pic, and somehow makes you guess that the guy has simply forgotten to put on his pants as opposed to him deciding to publicly "flaunt."

And, oh my, haven't we all felt like that at some point? I don't mean, sans clothes, but just unexpectedly exposed in some way?

I remember reading a Mothers' Day tribute thing I'd been asked to write at my family's Church when I was 12 or so. Just a day or two before my voice had started to change, and I had a very hard time reading the damn thing, my voice cracking every other sentence. God, was I ever embarrassed.

Or the time I walked into the office of a guy I'd done work for for years and was very friendly with - and though I forget what it was that triggered it, right off, I started teasing him. Told him how if he didn't straighten up and fly right and move some product, I was going to see his ass fired! -which, unbeknownst to me, he had just been, and I do mean JUST! -an hour earlier maybe? I hadn't noticed, but surely had I looked around for a tenth of a second before I started yapping, I would have - at that very moment, he was cleaning out his desk.

Talk about wanting to swallow your tongue!

Anyone else out there ever mention "Hey, there's a smudge on your forehead!" before realizing it's Ash Wednesday? -or ask a woman when the baby's due before realizing it just might be a little pot-belly?

Okay, that one I've never done. In fact I got a forwarded-to death email some time ago warning that unless you see a woman lying naked in a delivery room on the obstetrics floor of a major hospital, her feet in the stirrups, a baby's head poking out of her, a doctor there crouched like Johnny Bench ready to receive the pitch, AND the father standing by with the pruning shears ready to cut the umbilical cord, you should never, and I mean NEVER, assume a woman is pregnant - at least to the point where you bring it up.

Cuz, what if it's a misplaced goiter?

Be good to everyone. 

Good morning Boys and Girls.

6:25 a.m.

Cold, clear with the leaves departing fairly quickly from many of the trees after giving a standing ovation generating performance over the last few weeks while other are hanging on, having learned to love the spotlight.

It's the time of year around here where, for me anyway, when I've gotten to work the last week or two, I've needed a sweater, a fleece vest, and a medium weight jacket for the first hour or two. Then as the sun warms things up, I start peeling off the layers till, by some time after noon, for an hour or so, I've been comfortable in shirt-sleeves.

Later, around three, the process gets reversed till by the time I start for home, I've been fully bundled up again.

-My favorite time of the year.

Put out a bag of sugar beets a week or so ago back by the salt block to give the deer a reason to come around. For the next couple of days, there they were, does all, enjoying the treat both morning and evening. Then about three days ago, I was standing out on the deck watching them, maybe seventy-five feet away, when all of a sudden I sneezed.

OH my!

In a single choreographed move, they jerked their heads up to look at me, ears straight up and clearly outraged. The oldest of them, I'd guess, began snorting in what sounded like especially derisive mockery of my sneeze, before, on her signal they turned and bounded up the hill, leaving me feeling enormously guilty for interrupting their dinner.

Then, as if to punctuate their disapproval, they've declined to show up again since, at least when I've been home and looking for them.

Women. One little mistake... Geez.

..............................

Oh man, get this, I'd recognized the fact that this post is a little lame and I'd decided to think for a little while before posting it to see if anything better came into my head to either add or replace some of what's above... so now it's 7:25 a.m. -Just went up to pour myself another cup of coffee and there was one large buck eating at the pile.

Too funny.

I saluted him.

Pretty sure he nodded and winked and wanted to tell me a blonde joke.

Life is interesting.


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls!

BIG NEWS!

I just woke up, flipped on MSNBC, and the first thing I read on the little crawl at the bottom of the screen was that, in a stunning reversal, evidently George Bush has decided to discontinue using the the phrase "Stay the Course" to describe his administration's policy in Iraq.

Evidently, in a briefing to the White House press corps yesterday, Tony Snow explained that "Stay the Course" was too restrictive a term to describe the dynamic tactics being employed wage the war on terror.

To quote Don Imus a few minutes ago after his side-kick and news-person Charles McCord read the story on the air. "You can't make this stuff up." The he added, shaking his head, "Before this is over, Bush'll be saying he was ALWAYS opposed to the war!"

I humbly offer a few suggestions for new catch phrases...

"We're gonna wait and see what happens."

"Tomorrow is another day."

"Hummus?"

"Holy SH*T. What the F*CK were we thinking? We had no idea!"

...and my personal favorite, though I think it might run into a little opposition from a few of the more strident defenders of the now defunct "Stay the Course" policy:

"Oops!"

No word yet as to whether the White House is still conveniently suggesting that people who oppose the the way we're fighting the war on terror are saying we should simply "Cut and Run."

We (I'll include myself in this ill-defined group) have been hoping for a few years now that we might be allowed to define our own thinking with a slightly different phrase, perhaps like:

"Um, THIS was a dumb idea. First, let's have the stones to admit it. Let's get out of the region and, secondly, let's implement the rest of the suggestions made by the non-partisan 9-11 commission. Then, third, let's go the world community, admit we screwed up and appeal for assitence to help us go after the terrorist groups specifically in strikes designed to capture and or kill them - which will be far easier when we've included the folks who wanted to help us do that right from the get-go but couldn't stand still for our bone-headed Bull-in-a-China Shop mentality."

Doesn't have a very nice ring to it though, does it. -A few too many syllables, maybe? Probably so complicated the Boss can't comprehend it. Easier to call us "Cut and Run"ners.


Be good to everyone!

P.S. As usual, when DrForbush and I tackle the same topic on the same day, he does a much better job. Go read his post!

Good evening Boys and Girls.

Just got an email from my son begging off a visit this weekend as he's getting ready for a little solo gig next week and feels he's not as ready as he ought to be.

I'm hoping to see it next weekend. Don't remember ever seeing him perform as a solo before - except for maybe a single song here and there. It'll be fun to hear him do the singer song-writer thing without the powerhouse boys in the band behind him. He's doing this to support his first solo CD in over ten years. He's calling it, "the Noble Knave," and it's due out in a few weeks.

I've heard most of the tracks and it's far more approachable music than the stuff he writes for the band. Lots of hummable tunes with very clever and sometimes downright hilarious lyrics.

Now that I think about it, even I got to perform with Ryan once - sort of.

A few years ago I arranged some traditional Christmas carols for, I swear, a piano and two trombones. Ryan and I and the choir director from church I was attending - on behalf my ex - played a few of them during a Christmas eve service. I did the piano stuff and they traded melodies and counter melodies on the trombones. What was fun, was that I arranged them with slightly unusual rhythms and harmonies which made for some interesting listening, or I hoped it would. It came off quite well, especially considering I hadn't done any arranging at all in years, (and come to think of it, I haven't done any since either.)

Hey, friggen' Mannheim Steamroller's got nothin' on me.

I'll write real post in the morning.

Bored? I just went to the kid's blog and saw a cute newish story.

Go to ryanparmenter (dot) com and click on "Choose."


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Stutter-step start this morning.

I've started this post three times and interrupted or distracted myself three times - and by now, my whole premise is gone, dropped into the ether.

I'll let it work its way back into my consciousness and if it was important enough to me, I'm sure it will bubble back up to the surface for use at a later date.

How about an epic non-sequitur?

Worked on this page for an hour last night.

From something I'm working on called "Dougie." This is from the middle of the third chapter and and more properly introduces an ancillary character we've met earlier, though fleetingly.

..................................

Sunday mornings Freed usually slept in, or tried to, and he had this morning. No calls all night, a relief, and no alarm because, well, it was Sunday morning.

The paper was there on the stoop and he grabbed it, tossing it on the dining room table as he walked into the kitchen to make coffee. He loved the fact that he'd so carelessly tossed the paper like that. It was so deliberately out of character.

He checked the half-and-half. The expiration date was still a week away. A good thing, since had it been much closer, he'd have poured it down the sink and settled for the powdered creamer he hated, but kept on hand for just such emergencies.

Milks and dairy products were disposed of prior to when the date stamps suggested they ought be opened, sold, or used by, and produce, especially bananas, went into the rubbish at the first sign of aging. He dutifully froze any leftovers he wished to keep, even if he planned on eating them the very next day, and kept and added to a collection of tupperware and other plastic storage containers far beyond his true needs toward this specific purpose.

Freed carefully counted out the scoops of coffee, overfilling them and then using a butter knife to level off each one. He used six scoops, though he'd figured out that because of the curvature of the knife's blade, which left a slight depression in the top of each scoop, he was probably only using five and a half scoops - maybe five and three quarter.

Just so it was the same.

At forty-two, Freed had just now crossed the strange mark all divorced people noticed - where he'd been single again for as long as he'd been married. Seven years married to a lovely woman he knew he'd always adore, he'd been almost relieved when she had him served with papers right there at the precinct in front of everyone. She'd done it to humiliate him, he knew, but he didn't care.

He'd wanted out of the marriage for five years by then, though he couldn't say why. He'd wanted out even before his daughter came along and briefly stole his heart. He'd wanted out even before Sherry had told him she was seeing someone else; that since he couldn't or wouldn't love her the way she needed, she'd had to look elsewhere for comfort, and then having found it, done something about it. He didn't care. It was a relief.

That was seven years ago, and his daughter, now ten, would be coming over later today.

And, if he was honest with himself, he didn't care much about seeing her either. She was, if anything to him now, a reminder that he'd chosen foolishly; not in choosing Sherry, but in marrying at all. He just didn't have enough of himself to give any of what he did have away - and he'd known it since he was a kid.

Pretty little Amanda was a reminder to Freed, not of failure - for failure was a temporary thing to him and something that any policeman knew and dealt with constantly - but of a knowledge of and, once again, if he was honest with himself, a largely unexamined comfort with his own carefully cultivated, unchanging and unchangable emptiness.

He shut the lid on the coffee-maker and started toward his bathroom grabbing the paper as he walked by.

.............................................

I hate this character. I've had nothing but problems getting a handle on the guy - and the prick doesn't even seem to care he's giving ME grief! -Plus it needs work on the pacing. Oh well. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite.


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

In a pleasant fog here this this morning, been chuckling to myself every now and again like a crazy person.

Why?

Went to sleep during the Daily Show sometime before midnight, then woke up at some point with the T.V. still on. They were rebroadcasting the Colbert Report. It was toward the end of the show and Colbert was finishing up an interview with Randy Newman.

After the commercial, to close the show, Newman sang a very funny song about us "dropping the big one now" on just about everyone (allies and enemies alike) for trivial but continent and country-specific reasons. Satire to be sure, but light and truly funny. Woke up this morning thinking about the lyrics and trying to put them back together in my head. Every time a line has come back to me, I start smiling. What a clever guy.

We are expecting snow here in a couple of days. I'm thrilled.

I played golf Sunday in shorts and a polo shirt. Autumn? AUTUMN? How about a few weeks of AUTUMN? It's that nice season after summer when things slowly go dormant, in PREPARATION for winter.

Goodness. Even during the best of years it's too short by half, but this is re-dic-kle-ous.

The flock of does that greeted me every morning has disappeared since the first, though I saw one good-sized buck last night after hearing him snorting and clicking his rack on the trees up behind the house, showing off, I assume, trying to impress and entice some unwitting innocent babe with his virility.

I'm assuming the bow hunters have spooked most of the deer around here into hiding and that they'll be back when they feel safer. Hope so.

Decided to go find them. These lyrics are copyrighted by Randy Newman. I post them at my own peril:

Political Science

"No one likes us
I don't know why.
We may not be perfect,
But heaven knows we try.
But all around
even our old friends put us down
Let's drop the big one
And see what happens.

We give them money,
But are they grateful?
No, they're spiteful, and they're hateful.
They don't respect us, so let's surprise them
We'll drop the big one and pulverize them.

Asia's crowded, Europe's too old,
Africa is far too hot, and Canada's too cold.
And South America stole our name
Let's drop the big one,
There'll be no one left to blame us.

We'll save Australia, don't want to hurt no kangaroos.
We'll build an American amusement park there,
They got surfin' too!

Boom! goes London, Boom! Paree
More room for you and more room for me.
And every city the whole world round,
Will just be another American town.

Oh, how peaceful it'll be!
We'll set everybody free!
You'll wear a Japanese kimono, baby
And there'll be Italian shoes for me!
They all hate us anyhow
So let's drop the big one now,
Let's drop the big one now!"

Too funny.

Be good to everyone.

By the way, yesterday's post was inspired by one of doeeyed's posts from a few days ago. I should have said thanks yesterday, but it slipped my mind. Thanks!

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Today is my "long drive" day. Every other Monday I go to a small city called Hastings to work. It's only about 40 miles from here, but it takes me about an hour and twenty minutes to get there. Most of the rest of my clients are within a half hour drive, give or take, but a friend of mine (Mike A.) I knew over near Detroit years ago, owns a little dealership there and I was determined to make time for him when I found out he was there. Since I started working for him six or seven months ago, a couple of other accounts in the same town have developed and it's turned into a decent day, worth the drive... not the point.

Wanted to tell a little story about Mike.

It's 1980. This was pre-cell phone days and I'd yet to get my first pager, (they were very primitive and expensive) though this incident changed that.  I was in this business, traveling around to various car joints doing my thing.

My wife was pregnant. One day she wasn't feeling good and as she started feeling worse, she decided she'd better get a hold of me to take her to the doctor, as at the time we only had the one car and I had it.

She called the place I was usually at Wednesdays and then a couple of others where she thought I might be working. Couldn't find me. After a little while, she called the first place back again and had me paged. Mike, who knew me, but not all that well, really, picked up the phone to tell the caller I wasn't around. Evidently my wife's tone of voice told him something was amiss and he asked her if she was okay. She told him she wasn't feeling well and she thought she ought to get to the Doctor.

He dropped what he was doing, got directions to my house and took my wife to her doctor's office where he used a pay phone to continue tracking me down. Ended up I was next door to his place out behind the service department working. Once he found me, he went back to work and I went to the doctors office to be with my wife.

Turned out to not to be too serious - or at least it didn't threaten my wife or the baby (my daughter) but it was scary for my wife.

I was so thankful that this guy, who I didn't know very well at all, would do what he did, and it's something for which I've always been thankful.

As for Mike?

He doesn't even remember it.

Isn't that kind of cool?


Be good to everyone.

Oh. I forgot.

Sure glad North Korea isn't as close to having weapons of mass destruction as Iraq was, aren't you?

Oh.

Really? 

Hi.

Jesus Reporting today.

I'm writing from Montreal. I've been here for a couple of weeks - since the 23rd of September, I think. A friend of mine had major surgery on the 25th and though it went well and it looked like he'd recover fairly quickly, things haven't worked out that way. He's having some bad reactions to the drugs they're giving him. So, the doctors are trying to figure out what to do next.

Now he's back "in hospital" possibly looking at more surgery, but maybe not. They're trying to figure out a different approach since the first one isn't working out they way they thought it would.

surrogate and I became friends in a coffee shop in Royal Oak Michigan ten or so years ago, and as our friendship has grown, sometimes he's taken liberties when it comes to assuming my time is his to schedule. And, every now and again I have to remind him this isn't so, though he doesn't always seem to understand it - or choose to.

I'm only saying this because he's been on me to write more often even though I've said most of the things I felt I needed to say in the early days of this blog. I tell him to recycle my old posts if he wants, but no, he wants fresh stuff, complaining that in the beginning we said we'd share the responsibility 50-50, which we did - but I didn't know he was going enjoy this so much he'd be writing the thing for years! At the time, he was upset about the '04 election and I had some things I felt I ought to clarify. I didn't think about how long it would go on, but I think I figured we were looking at a few months at the outside. Oh well.

These days, sometimes I feel like I'm just restating the obvious - but he says to go ahead and do that if I need to, but write SOMETHING, he says. Okay.

Love God.

Love your fellow man - love yourself, your friends and and love your enemies. Whether they love you back isn't the point. Love them.

Need a good defense policy? Turn the other cheek. It wasn't meant simply as a way to deal with personal affronts. It is a show of strength. Only weak and foolish people figure out ways to justify, re-label and channel hate.

Don't judge. Do I need to go through this one? Come on.

You ARE your brother's keeper.

I was just thinking, though this is off the subject I guess, but maybe not, what if the Doctors ignored all these signs that my friend isn't responding well to the procedures and drug therapies they've tried using on him? -and even in the face of results of the tests they've ordered pointing out what they're doing simply isn't working and, in fact, seems to be doing him harm; what if they were so smug in their need to have been "right" that they simply continued down the same path?

Wouldn't rational people see that as irresponsible? In fact, what kind of people would support a Doctor who assumed such a stance? Fans? Groupies of the Doctor? Are there such people?

I know, sometimes drug therapies take time and the patient can continue to get worse until they slowly start to do their work, but I'm talking about cases like my friend's where the drugs themselves are doing the harm and a new regimen is called for.

I'll be leaving for London the day after tomorrow and will be back in the midwest of the U.S. sometime next week. (This is a hint to you surr. I'll need a ride.)

Have a good week. 

Good morning Boys and Girls!

Chilly, clear and beautiful here this morning.

Fell asleep watching the Tiger's playoff game last night (which they won - beating the evil Yankees 6-0) and then woke up sometime around 2 a.m.

Checked the blog for comments, answered a tmail and went outside for a few moments. The moon was full or perhaps a day either side of it and was so bright I could see up the hill a full hundred yards in back of the house. It cast the coolest shadows. Wonderful sight. Ended up going for a walk around the property. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see easily. Fun stuff.

Today I'll start putting together a wood-shop here. I've been hitting garage sales like crazy and I'm about set. Other than the table saw, nothing will be new. My hope is that, over the winter (when doing my regular business simply isn't as much fun and things slow down a bit anyway), I'll have some time to make a few of the products I designed and made for a while in Florida. Then, in what amounts to feeling like a ten-year rush for retirement cash, in the spring, I'll hopefully start selling them to well-to-do lake-dwelling Michiganders up along the Northern Lake Michigan shoreline - where money seems to grow on trees along with the cherries, meaning, hopefully, I won't be forced to give my labor away in the prices. We'll see. If it works out? -Great. If not, I'll enjoy doing the work anyway.

To that end, I've been working on a couple of designs for two unseen, but critical parts that I'm considering having molded for me out of a super-strong glass-filled polyester. In my design, I've always made these parts out of wood and I've never had any problems with them, but molding them would allow for a more uniform and classier product function-wise, and would save me a minimum of five or six hours per job allowing me to concentrate more on varying the look and style of what's seen.

Plus, hopefully it will allow me to sell my molded parts to a couple of other larger manufacturers who make a similar item, (but go through the same headaches) and may be able to easily adapt my parts to their own versions.

Time will tell. (I try to use at least one cliche each day for ruined, who's called me the King of Cliches - a crown I wear proudly. And where has he been?)

Innovate, deviate, extrapolate.
Innovate, deviate, extrapolate.
Innovate, deviate, extrapolate.


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls!

Well, Jesus stood me up this weekend. Left me a voicemail that must have come during my flight to Baltimore and my phone was off. He got hung up in Montreal at the home of a sick friend, so it was just me and a good friend this weekend.

We did the marathon sight-seeing thing in DC, checking out all the major monuments, the White House, the Capital, a dozen or more lessor - though no less impressive - buildings and seats of various sorts of governmental power.

Some observations:

The new WWII Memorial is incredible. Halfway between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial (at just the other end of the reflecting pond) it's oval in shape with a pond and fountain in the middle and a raised ring around the whole thing supported by wreath adorned pillars that represent each of the states, D.C., Puerto Rico, and a couple of other U.S. affiliates. Done in primarily in polished granite, the scale and artistry of design make it a fitting addition and does those vets proud.

The font size of the names on the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial is shocking... This isn't a criticism, it's just that in my mind, I saw the letters as about an inch high. They're not. Maybe half an inch, meaning each name takes up about a quarter as much space as I'd previously thought. The wall is very long and, of course, completely filled with names of American men and women who were lost in that awful conflict.

-Was thinking as I walked away from it, holy moly, if you tried to list all the people who died in other wars on a similar wall, say, the Civil War, for instance, it would have to be ten times longer.

Just a few hundred yards from the White House, had my picture taken with a G.W.B. cutout thingy, me scowling. That was fun.

We rented a car this time which was nice for going to the concert, but even on Saturday, parking in D.C. is really tough and totally unnecessary. Take a shuttle or train to the metro station and move around using the underground. It's clean and safe and is more convenient.

Baltimore's Inner Harbor is about as nice a touristy urban environment as I've ever experienced. We spent a few hours there yesterday morning and even with a Raven's Home Game in the offing, people were kind and the view is spectacular. I'd love to see Detroit do something like it, but I don't see it happening.

Good weekend.

Here ends the travelogue posts. I promise. Tomorrow? I defend poor Mark Foley's right to badger lusty sixteen year-old House ex-pages with lewd emails and I'll defend the Republican House leadership for their handling of this when it first came to light five years ago.

As proof there has been no cover-up, I'm going to spend the day trying to find out when, for instance, Dennis Hastert informed any of the Democratic members of House about the first discovered batch of inappropriate emails Foley sent and was counseled for in 2001.

 
I'm sure I'll be successful.


Be good to everyone.

Good morning Boys and Girls.

Well, some weekend.

Friday, the jeep headed toward the airport. Decided to take a detour to Ikea since there was an hour to kill and I hadn't been to the new Canton, Michigan location that sits, blue and yellow, five miles from the airport. Called Daughter Dearest to see if she'd have time to meet for lunch, but she had to work in a few hours and had to get a couple of things ready as she was planning to take her first jump tomorrow morning (Saturday.)

"Es-cu-seth me?" I asked. "Your first jump?"

"Oh, yeah Dad. Eight of us. We're going skydiving tomorrow morning."

"Oh." I said calmly. "Well," (What do you say to your daughter when she tells you this? Break a leg? Good luck? Do you have a will?) I said, "Well, that's great Hun. Hope you have a wonderful time. Love you."

"Love you too Dad."

"And you'll call me to let me know how it went?"

"It'll be fine Dad."

And so, last night, here in Baltimore at a time he was trying to get ready for a show, when I saw her older brother, (and house-mate) I asked him if he knew anything about this. "Oh yeah, eight or ten girls... All their names start with "A." Andi thought that was strange."

"Did she happen to call you today to tell you how it went?" I asked him, meaning, 'why the hell didn't you tie her to a chair and keep her from doing this until I could get there to guilt her out of the crazy stunt?' Moot, of course as it had already taken place, and safely - I  assume - since I received no frantic phone calls from anyone - like the police or coroner.

The Show was simply... well, I'll sound like a stage Dad. Screw it. They were awesome and the audience loved it. Smooth, tight, fluid and damn near flawless. I was the last person standing for an ovation afterward but even I didn't wait for more than a couple of seconds. Ryan was so gracious with the crowd. That alone made me as proud as his confident proficiency behind the mike and on the keys. Along with his Band mates Bob, Mat and Alan, they pulled off tightly written passages and rhythms all night long that not 2 percent of the rock world could even conceive of, let alone play with such musicality and feel.

Pretty cool show.

Maybe Andi will call me today to tell me she's oky-doaky.

Off to Baltimore's inner harbor for breakfast and then to the airport and home. what a fun weekend so far, assuming there's still a third dimension to the daughter, of course.

Be good to everyone.