I’m seriously brain dead. I can’t think of a single thing to write about. Or at least nothing that could possibly hold anyones interest. I know, that’s never stopped me before you say. I could mention that Q got letters from Duke, Columbia, and U of Chicago yesterday, but then I’d be one of those obnoxious parents that goes on and on about the brilliance of their offspring. I could write about my snobby affluent book group of which I’m the token suburban schmuck, but that’s for another time, I don’t have the energy to take on that subject now. I could write about how sick of winter I am, but I’ve already done that, and I’d just sound like a whiner. I could write about the Gopher women getting their asses kicked at Ohio State, but then I’d have to go vomit. I’m certainly not going to write about Janet Jackson’s right tit. I could write about all kinds of work stuff, but that has to stay off limits or at least couched in mysterious general terms. And besides there is nothing about my job that could interest anyone. So with not much else to say, here’s wishing you all a great weekend!
Adios commrades.

Annie Milner retires after 85 years at Dayton’s. You’ve got to read this story. This woman just retired from Dayton’s the local department store that eventually became the Target Corporation after 85 years of employment. No, not at 85, 85 years with the company! She’s decided to pack it in at 101. I didn’t think that happened anymore. I’m amazed that they let her stay. I guess it’s a tribute to the company. She sounds like she had a great time. It reminds me of a story I heard not long ago about a farmer who decided to stop bailing his own hay because he didn’t want to invest in those new fangled bailing machines that make the big round bails. Didn’t like the payoff time. He was 103!
I personally will retire about 2 seconds after I can financially swing it. Which will probably be sometime after my 100th birthday, given my current financial state.

My wife is much cooler than I am. Can I say that? Is “cool” a really dated expression? Am I dating myself? Do I care? Anyway, today I was wondering just how cool she is. So I consulted the Oracle of Bacon at Virginia and found that she has a Bacon number of 3. Yes only 3 degrees of separation between her and Kevin Bacon. She once produced a spot with Tim Conway who was in Speed 2: Cruise Contol (1997) with Colleen Camp who was in Trapped (2002) with Kevin Bacon. But I guess as far as Ham goes, I read History_Pig so that just might put me on equal footing on the coolness scale. Of course my ex-girlfriend slept with Taj Mahal (while we were dating) and I once told Ralph Nader that the non smoking section was closed, so I guess I have some claim to fame.
That’s a good story. I was bartending the lunch shift and just after things calmed down a guy comes up to me and says that he has a party coming in and they’d like to sit in the non-smoking section. I told him that I was sorry but we closed it because we didn’t have enough waitresses to cover it after the lunch rush. He insisted that the party would be adamant about sitting in non-smoking. So, smart-ass that I am I said, “Who is it, Ralph Nader?” The guy gave me a wierd look and said, “As a matter of fact, it is.” So we opened the section for him. If I’d have known that 30 years later we could thank him for George W. I wouldn’t have done it. And by the way, the guy really, even back then, looked like a total spook. I mean he was the palest person I’ve ever seen and his eyes were sunken so far back under that brow ridge that they were barely visible. Not to mention the fact that he was one of the few people I ran into in those days who was actually skinnier than me. But then again there is absolutely nothing cool about Ralph Nader so that doesn’t count.

The image is a promo that I did for myself back before I became a coporate lacky and was trying to make a living as a freelancer.

Smilestone. er Milestone Reached
Forgive the aweful pun. Or don’t. It’s a big moment here on the edge of the graveyard. The youngest got her braces off, we are an Orthodontia Free Family! Now you might think that this frees up some money for us, but I got real creative with financing this miracle of oral engineering. I couldn’t tell you if I’ve already paid for it or I’m going to be paying for it for the rest of my life. We seem to move debt around like a frisbee on Venice Beach. Just about everyone these days has some experience with braces. Suffered through the pain of torn lips, the pain of newly tightned torture devices, the pain of monthly payment. Anybody ever get locked up when kissing your girlfriend who had braces as well? I never got in many fights, but it seems like the ones I got into were when I had braces. Bloodbath, literally. And of course there was the great sacrifice of not chewing gum for a couple of years. Yeah right, everybody stuck to that rule.
Have you noticed how many more adults are doing braces these days. There’s a woman in my office who I thought was a crabby bitch for the longest time, but then I realized she never smiled cause she had braces on. Turns out shes actually one of the bright lights in the crowd. My kids admitted that it’s not fair but the way you look is important. Which, I think is a good reason for me to trim my ear and nose hairs more often.
Adios fellow travellers.

This is how some people feel about winter around here. After a long run of fairly mild winters, this one seems to be packing some of the punch of the winters of my youth. Lots of snow, long periods of below zero temps, the kind of weather that makes people feel like the snow sculptor featured above. I was doing pretty well with winter this year. I have a theory that if you are out in the cold, don’t let it make you cringe and shiver, stand up to it and it doesn’t make you so uncomfortable. And on the snow removal side of the equation, my neighbor has a huge snowblower that he loves to use so much that he blows out my driveway for me when we get a big snow. So I was rolling through pretty well until I had a flair up of my Crohn’s disease right when the bottom fell out of the temperatures. Among other things, Crohn’s makes it hard to stay warm and saps your energy. For about three weeks I was really hating winter, I was cold all the time, I never went outside and I always had about ten layers of clothing on. I’m feeling better now and yesterday I went out to clean up my driveway, shovel the snow that the plow had pushed onto it and get off the light dusting we had gotten overnight. It was about 15 degrees and sunny, the driveway faces south so the snow wasn’t rock hard. After about 45 minutes of shovelling, helped by my amazingly cheerfull daughters, the driveway was pristine. And I was feeling great. It’s so invigorating to get out there on a day like that. Plus it’s February. How much longer can it last. And I have crocuses planted in my lawn. It’s gonna look so cool when they come up!

Yesterday the person in charge of sending out the company production schedules emailed a revised version. It’s a big deal and schedules are constantly changing. In the email, I think she meant to say “Pass this on to those who wanted to know.” Instead she wrote “Pass this on to those who whined to know.” Thank you Dr. Freud.

Cable Repair

History_Pig writes about computer struggles this morning. I was fighting with my techno buggaboo last night. TV. The background on this story is that when I called the cable company a couple of years ago and said I wanted high speed internet, but wanted to drop the cable tv package, cutting back to the one that only had the local channels, they sent out some recent Russian immigrant to disconnect me. He took the box off the tv in the basement, but never disconnected anything, so I’ve been enjoying cable tv for free for a couple of years. Beck and I sat down to watch West Wing last night and what we saw was a blur with a purple stripe down the middle and lot’s of noisy static. She discovered that the tv in the basement brought it in fine so techno genious figured there must be something wrong with the way the upstairs tube was connected or set up. I pulled everything out from the wall, wiggled all the cables, found nothing supsicious, put everything back. It was working fine again. The touch of genious I guess.

Seems like everybody’s doin’ it:

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

I’m going to knock off Oregon this year, Benson is now living in Bend and I’m going to get out there at least once.
There were no coffee filters this morning. I improvised one out of a paper towel. Not bad.

Piggy would have hated me as a Junior High student. In seventh grade at South Jr. High in Moorhead Minnesota the class was divided into seven sections. That’s right, the Baby Boom was in full swing in ’49. Section seven-seven was obviously reserved for the miscreants. And even though I tested very high on standardized tests I was put in section 7-7. Two problems, I though I knew everything and I thought I was funny. I remember in seventh grade science I once had an argument with the teacher over the logic of the answer to a quiz question. I wouldn’t drop it. I think it went on for days. I researched material to back up my argument. He finally gave up and gave me credit. My eighth grade science teacher was one of those great teachers who makes the subject matter interesting by introducing some humor into the lessons. I can’t remember his name but he was a round little guy with a graying brush cut. Probably a WWII vet. Problem was, I was constantly trying to upstage him. In the course of that year my desk was placed at the front of the class, at the back of the class and finally out in the hall. I still got straight A’s. The nice thing about those days was that I wasn’t diagnosed as ADHD and put on drugs. I was just smacked around, which was kind of fun. Although still hold a grudge against the one guy who smacked me around the most, Iverson the sadistic shop teacher basketball coach. He not only was always standing behind me when I started acting up, but he used to love to humiliate me in shop class because I had absolutely no knack for that kind of thing. I still have daydreams of hunting him down in a nursing home and pummelling him with his walker. Come to think of it he’s probably only about 75 or so, he’d probably still kick my ass, and then he’d call me a girl.
Beck just informed my I woke her up in the middle of the night with a fart. The romance isn’t gone.