I’m still home sick. It’s really cold. My daughter hates me.

This is the view from my computer. Actually it’s the view from the backdoor of my garage. The computer is 10 feet to the right but the screens on the windows make photos look wierd. I live in a second tier suburb, well inside the metro area. But my backyard butts up to the west end of a cemetery that isn’t even half full of graves. The Archdiocese has let the west end go wild so I live next to about nine city blocks of tall grass prairie and hardwood forest. Among the long list of critters I’ve seen out my back window is a wild turkey. Three years ago I was losing a battle with rabbits intent on eating my garden. I would get up in the morning and there would be eight of them grazing in my yard. Then, just before I bought the high powered air rifle, the foxes moved in. There are very few rabbits these days. I’ve identified 53 species of bird from my backyard. In May of ’93, I spotted 23 species in one day. When I die, the plan is to wrap me up and catapult me over the fence.
Princess L, knowing that I was home sick, brought one of the recent victims of her catch and release dating program home to watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. I’m going to have my revenge by going in the downstairs bathroom, right next to where they are and making really gross noises and a horrible gaseous cloud that has become my trademark.
Godspeed, friends.

At some point I Laid down a mental list of subjects I wasn’t going to touch in this blog. Health issues was one of them. But with readership down and me no longer taking prednisone, I’ve decided I can’t afford to not tap this goldmine of self-depricating neurotic humor.

This is dedicated to Quirk who’s having existential discomfort over turning thirty-seven. I think I dislocated my sachroiliac.. That’s the joint that connects your spine to your hips. I feel like I have some credence when it comes to diagnosing a dislocated sachroiliac because it’s happened to me at least twice before. The first time, or any of the pre going to the doctor with it times, I just rode it out, stretched and heated until it popped back in by itself. The first time I took it to the doctor was after a management conference at Lake Okoboji. (I’ve got the Iowan’s, Nebraskan’s, Minnesotan’s and South Dakotan’s attention now.) I was driving down to this North Central Iowa party center. I kissed Beck goodbye and leaned over to pick up my lightly packed duffle and POW, something snapped at the base of my spine, just right of center. I couldn’t stand up straight, I couldn’t walk without considerable pain. I immediately did Minnesota first aid, which is to say, “I’ll ignore it and see if it goes away.”
There’s nothing like a few hours in a car to really make a bad back into a really bad back. But I didn’t notice much after the Iowa border because I came screaming over a hill on a two lane country highway, 20 over to see a trooper with a car stopped. As I went by, I realized the miscreant was my boss, who I’d been teasing about driving too fast since I started working for her. Still chuckling to myself over that, I arrived at the resort to find it full of bikini clad high school cheerleaders. I was told that I couldn’t get into my cabin yet because the cheerleaders were leaving. The clerk saw the obvious disappointment on my face and said, “Don’t worry, there’s another group coming in tomorrow.” Picture this. Sitting in a room with thirty other people most of whom are hung over, taking turns reading from technical and process training manuals. The room has a great view of the swimming pool below. The swimming pool is crawling with semi naked teenage girls. It’s way too hot in the room. I am delirious with pain.
I made it home, still miserable. Went to work and decided to go to urgent care. I get assigned to a woman doctor who looked more like one of the volunteers from the local high school. It’s a real milestone in your life when all the doctors start looking like Doogie Howser. She was about 5’3” and couldn’t have weighed much more than a hundred pounds. First she examined my to see if there was any nerve problems. And then she started pulling on my legs. She looked up, gave me a big smile and said, “The bad news is that you’ve dislocated your sachroiliac, I can tell because your legs aren’t the same length, the good news is I can fix it. Hang on a second, I don’t think the other doc on this shift has ever seen this done. I’m going to go find him.”
She returned without her associate and said she was just going to do it. I’m trying to remember the wrestling hold she had me in. It involved me holding the opposite knee to my chest while she used my body for leverage and push pulled on my leg and torso. “I’m going to count to three and you push as hard as you can on that leg when I get to three. One, two three.” I had assumed she meant push off like I was going up for a rebound. She flew across the room and hit the wall. Bouncing off, she comes at me with this look of amused anger. “I meant a slow, steady push, I didn’t mean you should kick me!”
So getting our signals straight, we tried again. There was a pop. She said, “You should have some residual pain from the joint trauma, but you’re fine now. Just take some Tylenol. I stood up from the examination table and was immediately able to stand up straight and walk without pain. She gave me some exercises to do to help prevent it happening again. If I had gotten her associate, he probably would have given me some muscle relaxants and said to put some heat on it. It would have eventually popped back in by itself. In a week or two or three.

Did anyone get the license number of the truck that hit me? I got home from the game yesterday afternoon feeling a little tired so I took one of the catnaps I’m famous for. When I woke up I was still not feeling so good. Coffee didn’t help. I figured I’d just hang out until it got late enough to go to bed without too much embarassment. At about seven I was sitting in the family room trying to enjoy the heat from the gas fireplace, but I still felt cold. Pretty soon I was dressed in about six layers and I was uncontrollably shivering. I went to bed at 8:30, fully clothed and shaking like a leaf. I woke up several times duing the night soaked with sweat. I slept until almost noon today. Other than the fatigue and a headache I don’t have any other symptoms. No cough or flu symptoms. Wierd. Someday when I’m feeling more energetic, I’ll write about my experiences as a raging hypochondriac.

It’s lucky that I got the guitar, because I’m singing the blues! Sportsgoddess asks, “What on earth has happened to the Lady Gophers?” That my dears is one hell of a good question. I don’t get it. They lost by one to Michigan State at home, pretty much taking themselves out of contention for the Big 10 title. They lost because Michigan State wanted it more. They were nonchalant in their ball handling and passing in the last five minutes, no one other than Whalen seemed to want to shoot and again they got outhustled. I was a little upset about the fact that at the end of the Purdue game I saw smiling and laughing on the bench like they didn’t care that they were getting beat. Did they think they were done when they were 15-0. Did they think that the Big10 wasn’t going to be the toughest part of there schedule? Have they been hanging out with the Vikings?

So far no buyer’s remorse. I love my new axe. Either amped or not it sounds great, it’s relatively easy to play, even for my electric pampered fingers. I’m looking forward to improved playing from increased hand strength. I’m not sure why the call it Hawaiian, it’s not particularly set up for slack-key or slide playing. Maybe it’s just because it looks so different from a folk guitar. I think it’s a little smaller than a normal dreadnaught, but still has a deep body. The neck is narrow and the strings set up close. It looks like an old jazz guitar. Me and Django.
In 1970 my college roommate played the guitar. In those days I was listening to Cream and Butterfield and Taj, really great guitar driven blues. I wanted to play. Mike showed me the basics of the 12 bar blues progression, the Chuck Berry “spread” and what he called the blues scale, which is the minor pentonic scale. One Saturday morning I was in the music store in Northfield with a crushing hangover amplified by too much coffee. I forked over $65 for a Fender Mustang and a little Fender Champ amp. I still have them both today. I didn’t help the value of the guitar when I put decals on it, even though it already looked like it had been dragged behing a truck. So I took my new toy home and played that blues scale about a million times. BB will tell you that in our shack in Silverton, Idaho, I almost drove him and Configliaco insane. That being a pretty short drive in 1972. Mike had given me a gift. Because he didn’t sit down and show me any specific songs, just gave me the format and let me figure out how to find my way around in it, I learned how to improvise. It’s beyond a joke to compare myself to Stevie Ray, but I often go back to something he says at the beginning of one of his songs. “Roll it and I’ll just FEEL something.” I cannot begin to play Stairway to Heaven.

I just looked at the 10 day forcast. They are pedicting a high of -1 and a low of -2 for Friday. Ugh.

I was in great self indulgent form today. I went out to buy some art supplies. And I came home with a guitar. I dropped into Music-Go-Round and when I saw this axe I thought now that’s a pretty guitar, a Gretch, it was priced way below what I’d expect to pay. Considerably below what I was figuring to spend for a folk guitar, something I, well needed is probably too strong a word. Now you have to understand that I’m not a rich man and I just popped for a camera. It was funny, me on the phone in the music store trying to sweet talk my wife into not killing me if I brought it home. I appealed to her love of good deals and it’s one of those instruments that dresses up a room, so I risked a couple of weeks of domestic unrest and now I own a Gretsch Hawaiian Style acoustic guitar with built in pick-ups so I can play through an amp.

Yesterday on Public Radio I heard someone talking about blogging. I can’t remember who it was and I can’t identify the source of the quote he used but here it is. “The only people that have freedom of the press are the ones who own one.” Or something like that. His focus was the way that bloggers are effecting the presidential campaign, but I think what he’s saying applys to blogging and the internet in general. It’s a new paradigm for publishing. It’s never been easier or cheaper to publish to a huge audience. So, blog brothers and sisters, BRING IT ON!

Vonnegut fan takes up running
Becomes endorphin crazed freak!

Believe it or not this is a quote from the first site I landed on this morning:

Today in History: January 23
Do you know I’ve never voted in my life, never been able to exercise my right as a citizen because of the poll tax?

“Mr. Trout.”
Homer L. Pike, interviewer,
Atlanta, Georgia.
American Life Histories, 1936-1940


History_Pig

I’m taking today and Monday off. Four day weekend. I wanted to enjoy the weather. Not. I’m actually working on a site that I’ve wanted to get going for awhile.

Lady Lions crush Gophers behind record setting Mazzante.

Kelly Mazzante showed the silky smooth shooting touch and quick release that earned her the record for most points scored by any Big 10 players. With a tough supporting cast that out hustled the Gophers throughout the second half Kelly and the Lions pulled away at the end to win by 19. Mazzante got a steal early in the second and went coast to coast for the record eclipsing hoop. The victory puts Penn State in the driver’s seat for the Big 10 title. They play the Gophers at Williams Arena on February 8. Mazzante is about 300 career assists behind Lindsay Whalen who also is a 2000 point scorer. And I’m sure no one thought I was goiing to continue to be magnanimous thoughout this paragraph.

I do most of the cooking at our house. I enjoy it and frankly I can cook circles around my wife. I am blessed with a great memory for taste. I can still call up the flavor of a Special Export or Wild Turkey in my imagination even though it’s been almost twenty years. I’m always looking to expand my repertoire. So on Saturday when my eyes fell on a can of lima beans at the grocery store, I decided I would take on the ultimate culinary challenge, make lima beans edible. Remember when you were a kid and your mom tried to get you to eat lima beans. The texture of soggy cardbooard, flavored with yard clippings and dandelion milk. And it seemed like each bean was about the size of your fist.
I decided to do a variation on a theme that I’ve seen before with other legumes. The real trick to making those vegetables that you hated as a kid taste good is to straighten out their PH balance. You have to add some acid to the mix to cut the bitterness. If you are into heart healthy food, stop now, just reading this recipe is worth a .1 jump in your cholesterol level. I cut up four strips of bacon and fried them up with onions and garlic. When the bacon was done I added balsamic vinegar and brown sugar and chopped up a sprig of fresh rosemary that happened to be in the fridge as well as a dash of port that I bought for cooking. I opened the cans of beans and discovered that they weren’t the kind that are the size of your fist, but tiny like a regular navy bean. That’s a big plus right there. I nuked the beans and stirred in the sauce. I liked them, I’d do it again, Princess Q had seconds.

STATE OF THE UNION LINKS
The official spin
Move on ad.
Trash Bush
Token positive press
Shoulda posted this one yesterday

Send me more, I’ll post them!

Buy the Poster…I’m not an affiliate but if I give them a link maybe they’ll be less pissed off about me using their image.

Princess Q and I crossed paths this morning at 3:40. I woke up for some reason and knew I wouldn’t get back to sleep. She was just finishing up her homework after a three day weekend. The acorn didn’t fall too far from the tree here. My motto has always been, “Never do today what you can put off ’till tomorrow.” I’m a little concerned though. In her defense, the big stumbling block was a group project, sort of a procratinator’s mind meld. But if she’s reached this level at 15, what’s she going to be like in college. She’s also discovered coffee. Poor kid, way too much like her father. Wouldn’t it be nice if I could sit her down and say “OK, we share these traits and this is how they will bite you in the ass, so avoid X, Y and Z and you can skip a shitload of the pain I went through getting my gray hair.” But I guess there’s a reason why everyone has to live there own lives.

Maybe it had something to do with the circumstances of her birth. She came, in the tradition of our children, a couple of weeks early. Beck and I were attending a Twins game. It was Oakland. When you leave the metrodome, there is a terrific air pressure drop, you practically get shot our the door by the rush or pressurized air. Something to consider if you’re pregnancy is dragging on and you want to get the ball rolling. So as we walked to our car, Beck got a strange look on her face and said, “My water just broke.” This in the middle of a huge crowd of people. So we went home, experienced baby producers that we were, to calmly get ready to head for the hospital. That’s all great, but I had two spot drawings due at the publisher the next day. I brought my drawing stuff with me and we settled in at the hospital, with the usual, “We’ll see how it goes and if nothing happens by morning, we’ll induce.” So I got to work on the drawings, but fatigue, nervousness and the strange environment conspired to grind my creativity to a halt. I called the art director in the morning, “Hi, the good news is, we’re having a baby. The bad news is, I don’t have your drawings done.” This is the same art director that had told me earlier that she didn’t give me false deadlines because I was always on time. Fortunately for me the a.d. called my good buddy and fellow emancipated animation slave, Steve Mark, who whipped the job out and made the deadline. So my putting off the work until the last minute (I probably had a week to work on it) created an aura that was directly assimilated into her young brain.
Someday, I might tell about the delivery, but that’s another story.