When I went downstairs to the garage after work today, my car was gone. “Damn, I’m sure that I parked it in my normal spot.” I’ve risen to the level in life where I have reserved parking at work. Underground no less. I had my keys. I didn’t get a ride with anyone for lunch, I just cruised home for a bit. It was 5:30 and Beck needed the car at 6. “Gangestad, we have a problem.”

Someone had grabbed my keys off my desk and moved it out into the parking lot. I’d had a really exasperating day. I kind of popped a bolt over it, before I started buying into the humor of it. I know who did it. I will get my revenge.

Becky went to a play with some of the women from the neighborhood. I headed over to the smoke shop for a stogie. I started thinking about the full moon and October nights and my mind drifted over to high school football. It was a perfect night, not cold but clear and crisp. I decided it would be a perfect night to go see my niece’s boy play football for the number one team in the state, Eden Prairie. At six feet and two-twentyfive he’s an undersized offensive guard. I asked the boys at the shop if they knew where Eden Prairie High was, and they gave me a vague discription and mentioned that it was kind of a maze over in that part of town. I came home and googled the location, printed a couple of maps and headed out. About five minutes after I turned off of 169 I was completely disoriented. I drove around for awhile, thinking I could find it with dead reckoning and luck. Then it dawned on me. Look for the lights. I looked up and there they were. Had to be a stadium. So I drove toward the lights. I found a parking place about a half mile from the stadium, downhill. I got all the way down to the ticket counter when I saw that I was at the home of the Hawks. Eden Prairie is the Eagles. Eagles, Hawks, Falcons we have a regular raptor center around here. I was in Chaska, the next town over.

I made the long trudge back to my car and started to drive home. I had visions of myself as one of those poor people whe drive off and are found six states over, dead of exposure in a gulley, picked over by coyotes. But soon enough I got to a road I recognized, and now here I sit safe and sound, listening to my cat crunch his food while he thinks about his next piss attack.

Today for a period of time I was wearing two belts. A black one and a brown one.

Not only am I a dork, I’m a senile dork.

Note, this post is as you see a month old. I unknowingly had it set to private until 10/4

We’ve had children living with us for twenty one years. Until today. Yesterday we moved Quinn into her dorm at the U of M. Along with 5000 other freshmen. She’s starting an exciting new phase of life and so are we. It’s a strange feeling to wake up and not have any children in the house, with really no prospect of any for a couple of months. And then only temporarily. Kind of scary. Will Becky and I be able to tolerate each other without the mutual project of raising children to hold us together? Will I use the free time in anything close to productive fashion. And will we figure out a way to retire before we’re too old to enjoy it much. Not likely with the loans we’re piling up for college.

In the mean time our aging cat seems to be having aging cat problems. Like forgetting where to pee. My wife is now wrestling a carpet cleaner around the family room trying to get to the point where we could actually invite people over to our house without them turning us in to county public health. That’s correct, I’m sitting here blithely typing away while she cleans the carpet. It’s a well established social convention in this country that any excrement inside the house and outside the plumbing was in the bailiwick of the wife. And so it should be. I did my time shoveling dog shit after the snow melt.

Is any odor more pervasive than cat pee. Or nasal burningly disgusting. Houses that smell like cat pee cross all socioeconomic strata, consider the women in Grey’s Garden, an aunt and a cousin of Jackie O. who let their beautiful seaside house in the Hamptons turn into one of those cat infested garbage houses that pop up everywhere from time to time. I’m sure that when visitors come to your house when it reeks of cat pee, they think that you are teetering on that slippery slope. “I think maybe the Keller’s have gone a little nuts since the girls left. We should be sure to check in on them once in awhile.”

Los Lobos were, of course, great. For their encore, they filled the stage with dancing women from the crowd. You could barely see the band.

This morning we’re going to a sixtieth birthday brunch for a college friend. I’m old.

I just finished reading Everyman by Phillip Roth. I don’t recommend it to anyone my age. Depressing.

Tonight we’re seeing Los Lobos at the Zoo. Should be a great show.

…that some people cannot stand the fact that I am able to navigate through life soley on the basis of my good looks and charm?

We’re taking Lucia down to Ames today. She’s moving into an off campus appartment with three Landscape Arcthitecture students. Them in two weeks we deliver Quinn to the University of Minnesota and we will be alone in the house together. For years I’ve joked about how glad I’ll be to get them both out of the house, but faced with the reality of the situation, I’m starting to feel a little anxiety. I know I’m going to miss them a lot. They’ve grown up to be such vibrant young women.