Ingy

I signed up for a half-marathon today. I’d always planned on sticking to the 10k’s until my times plateaued but recently had a change of heart. If I’m going to run a marathon sometime in my life, I may as well do it while I’m not too old and get a decent time without killing myself. So a half-marathon (13.1 miles, approx 21k) will be my investigative foray into long-distance runs. I’ve only run longer than 10k (6.2 miles) twice in my life… and that was only 8 miles.

Plus this one is the inaugural one and it has an awesome route through Little 5, Virgina-Highland, Piedmont Park, right past my old Midtown apartment I shared with Keith and his Impala, and then down Peachtree to Downtown.

Pricey though… but hey, that’ll keep me honest.

Smells Like J. Crew

Kerry and I were at the mall last night before seeing “Casino Royale” which turned out to be a great James Bond flick by the way. She stopped in this place with all these scented candles and oils that you warm up all billed as “home fragrance”. To me this is just like the whole teeth whitening thing where a perceived need is created out of thin (and allegedly smelly) air.

Just like I can understand a smoker wanting his or her teeth whitened up a bit, a shot of Glade or some potpourri in a bathroom or maybe near a catbox makes sense. But now, at the dentist’s, I’m surround by teeth bleaching pamphlets and what are those stupid whitening strips? People walk around with those things in their mouths? “Oh my gosh, my teeth aren’t white enough! Suzy’s smile is so dazzling! I need to do something about my disgusting teeth!”

So now there are people walking around with teeth that are snow white AND HUMAN TEETH ARE NOT THAT WHITE!

And now… “Oooh, Candi’s home smells like Pumpkin Vanilla Melonberry. If I don’t get this Jasmine Butterscotch scented oil heater, my home will smell like a… like a…”

Like a HOME, you moron!

Holly Jolly

Ok, now I must vent.

I’ve been in the continual presence of Christmas songs on the radio now since Thanksgiving. I like a lot of them… almost all of which are from the 50’s (“Baby, It’s Cold Outside”, “Santa Baby”, “White Christmas”, etc.) or Christmas shows I grew up with especially Vince Giraldi’s stuff for the Charlie Brown one. That soundtrack, by the way, is my all time favorite Christmas CD.

But this year, it seems like every other song is either “Jingle Bell Rock” or that Bruce Springsteen version of “Santa Clause is Coming to Town”. I’ve always hated the Springsteen thing and other similar versions but I didn’t loathe “Jingle Bell Rock” until this year. I’ve probably heard it twenty or thirty times just this season.

It also seems like this song is big this year and this is another one that makes me cringe.

But all is not lost, I’ve heard this schlock-heap only once this year.

Life is good.

Countdown

Havin’ the traditional Noel thing up here… last night while Uncle Mike (or Mr. Christmas as I’ve taken to calling him because of his “fervor” for all things Santine) puttered with the lights for the tree, Liam played with a Lego train, Erin hung ornaments, and everyone else bounced the new grandson on their knee… all bathed in the glow of Rudolf’s nose on the TV… I sipped Egg Nog with a generous helping of Jack Daniels, just taking in all the Christmassy goodness.

Today, just before the milling chaos of Friday night and the final weekend leading up to December 25th, I hit the mall to do my shopping. Because Kerry does all of it, I only had to get two gifts… one for Kerry from myself and the other for Kerry from Erin. Erin and I ran into two places and I was done in less than 40 minutes. Schweet.

However, there is one thing glaringly absent from Xmas 06. Snow! Apparently, New York is having a holiday heat wave. I swear, I was even looking forward to shoveling the driveway not to mention snowmen, tentative igloos, snowball fights and all the stuff I never really had as a kid growing up mostly in the Sunbelt. There were some flurries the 2nd day we were up here which was kind of cool as I was jogging in them. Cool for the novelty but not exactly safe as the roads around here are rife with dumptrucks and schoolbuses. But still cool… although I’ve jogged in Fargo, Green Bay, and St. John’s, I’ve never run during a snowfall

Upstated

Right now we are once again in northern climes, this time in Syracuse, NY. We drove up from Kerry’s aunt’s in Baltimore today and yesterday did the 12-13 hour ordeal from Atlanta. We took the usual fast food breaks and I stuck with my road trip diet of Diet Mountain Dew and Funyun’s.

Drinking Problem

I was back at the bag plant in Louisiana last week. The morning before going in I awoke early and couldn’t get back to sleep so I decided to try out the “Fitness Room” of the Holiday Inn I was at. However, I required coffee first.

Usually I never touch the coffeemakers in the room preferring the coffee in the lobby instead since I can get real half & half instead of that fiberglass non-dairy creamer stuff, but it was 4:30 am. But I had no water to make it with. Typically I’m fine with tap water and even if it’s a little funny I make do but the stuff in this place was rank. If it was a little chemical-tasting or bleachy or something, I’d probably shrug my shoulders and drink it figuring it can’t be deadly or there’d be all kinds of lawsuits but this was a little brownish AND smelled like a sewer so amscray on the aptay.

So I headed on down to the lobby hoping to score a free bottle of the water they give you when you walk in the joint but I am denied and cannot even buy one. The attendendant gives me twenty one’s in change and sends me to the vending machines. There, I found only Dasani with lemon or raspberry. I figured it’s water with a slight hint of lemon and get that but, no, it’s like Fresca with a cloying lemon thickness and Splenda to boot.

With no other recourse, I opted to make coffee with the materials at hand. Not a good idea.

Tragedy on Blood Mountain

Today, Liam and I hiked with Steve (the guy I’ve been hiking with lately) and his son, one of Liam’s best friends. We went up Blood Mountain, a very steep climb that I considered a bit of a test for Liam to see if he was going to be a “hiker kid”. The presence of his friend helped a lot and if it had been longer than the 4.6 mile total, things would’ve gotten rough, but we made it and he had a good time.

After the trek to the beautiful summit, we had a little lunch. Liam finished his bag of trail mix and was munching happily on his nothing but ham and cheese sandwich (his favorite topping even the classic PB&J) when a dog came trotting into our area and quickly scooped up the scattered Cheerio’s from Steve’s son’s lunch as well as two strawberry tops. His owner entered the scene with a group and said his name was “Moochie”. I jokingly warned Liam to watch his sandwich but then suddenly the dog snapped it out of his hand… his hand that wasn’t flailing about but was almost putting the sandwich to his mouth.

The guy barely mumbled a sorry then resumed talking with his friends like nothing had happened. I consoled Liam and made comments that, if I had owned a dog that had pulled a similar stunt, I’d have wailed on it. The guy and his group started wandering off and Liam pointed, shouting “Look… they’re even giving him a treat! Like he saved someone’s life!”

And so continues my son’s growing annoyance and outright dislike for canine culture. I still like to give most hounds I meet a ruffle behind the ear or the heavy back tap but with every morning that I'm awakened by the barking dog next door and with every "yard bomb" I cleanup from the dog on the other side, I'm pretty much keeping right up with Liam.

Potent Ponderable

Why is it that after a night in which I fall asleep without brushing my teeth, my mouth tastes better the next morning than if I had brushed'em?

Perturbed Cajun

Last week I was in Monroe, Louisiana. In the section of town I was in, if the wind happened to be blowing the wrong way, you might think you were standing in line for the port-a-let row at Midtown Music because of the nearby paper mill. Also, although I’m usually not overly sensitive to stuff like this, the water was a bit rank and I stuck with the bottled water that the Holiday Inn included in a goody bag. And from what I heard from a guy who stayed at another place, the Holiday Inn water was pretty good.

But the people at the plant were great… super-social, funny, and helpful. They reminded me of folks in the Wisconsin area with the accent from the movie “Fargo”… the same refreshing non-self-conscious niceness. As if it’s perfectly ok to be friendly… the nerve!

In one bizarre scene, I was trying to make a call on my department’s Blackberry and I had to go out a back door and crawl past a dumpster to get a signal. Right across a one-lane road from me, with his prize hanging from a rope slung over a tree in his front yard, was a guy methodically skinning a deer.

Also, we had lunch at a Bennigan’s. Yes… a Bennigan’s! The one that started it all… the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” of casual dining. I had thought they were all closed but it was exactly the same as I remembered… the same layout, the same stupid crap on the walls, and the entire time I was there, the same lame 80’s music. It was awesome! Too bad about the food though…

But let me tell you about the best airport lounge in the US.

First off, right away I knew I liked the airport when I got off the plane. By the time I would have been barely two gates down the concourse in Atlanta, in Monroe I was at the rental car counter. Two days later, after a crazy-hectic install at the plant, I was back at my happy little airport. Unfortunately, our plane was due to take off in 45 minutes so I would get hardly any time to eat let alone wind down and enjoy a beer.

But what’s this? Our flight is delayed for an hour? Woo hoo! I realized my cow-orker is heading into the security line and I point out to her a sign indicating there was no restroom nor water in the gate area but she would not be swayed. Our paths diverged.

Dreamily, I followed the giant COCKTAIL LOUNGE sign with a little martini logo and ascended 60’s-style steps up to a landing that was empty of people and was lined by a wall with several blank, non-descript doors. My heart sunk. I was sure the lounge was no more.

Then I saw it. The portal to Shangri-la... a giant, padded-leather door set into the wall and reeking of swank. I entered still half-expecting it to be locked or opening onto a cobwebby room full of old furniture and ripped-up boxes stuffed with files but it was exactly what a lounge should be: wood-paneled, neon sign-bedecked, and cigarette smoke-filled with a string of goofy Smirnoff bottle Xmas lights over the bar, a jukebox spilling out classic rock standards, and a matronly bartender with orange hair quaffing Jaeger shots with the abundance of regulars.

But no food.

I had worked through lunch and had had nothing but two sips of water and a coke since my bagel breakfast at 6:30am so even the chips and Slim Jims behind the bar and the potential prospect of having to actually pay for one of the tabs myself could not keep me from returning downstairs for a roast beef po’boy with gravy. It may have been my ravished state but the gravy and French fries were fantastic.

By the way, I have always thought “po’boy” applied only to a sandwich of oysters, shrimp, or some other small fried denizen of the sea but it’s actually in the same league as “submarine” and “hoagie” and indicates any longish sandwich. And while we’re on the subject of trivia, Monroe Regional Airport is the original home of Delta Airlines.

Anyway, back at the lounge, I started a tab of Amberbock drafts. Apparently, even though it’s an airport bar, it’s big with the locals. There was one girl helping out with serving even though she didn’t work there although I’m sure the pitcher of beer under the bar helped. Strangely considering, another girl that did work there came in to hang out but didn't help out.

After two beers, I was considering moseying down to the gate but the guy next to me, who was on the same flight, looked over his shoulder out the windows overlooking the airfield and laughed, “It ain’t even here yet, have another!”

Midway through my third, I implored again, pointing at the clock which showed 10 minutes until the most recently-scheduled departure time. Again he shrugged it off with a look out over the runway, explaining that half the people in the bar were waiting on the same flight and the bartender would tell us all when to clear out.

And that’s exactly how it happened.

Where art thou, Fob?

During the visit to Florida, we drove by by UCF, my alma mater in Orlando. The area along Alafaya (one of the main strips) and Oviedo (a little town to the north) has been completely changed and built up from the undeveloped fields it was 15 years ago but the section I lived in for most of my stay, the roach-infested, beer can-strewn student housing slums across from the main campus, is basically unchanged.

The old Pizza Hut has been converted to a Mexican restaurant with the classic "hut" building and the Knight's Out Pub, the staple for quarter beers, leaden burgers, and sweat-soaked forehead-inducing wings, is boarded up. Still in operation is the Subway I worked at for several years where I hated the Pub next door for it's nightly disgorging of rowdy drunks directly into said Subway one f'd-up hour before closing.

Fish Head Notch

Well, we're headin' down to Central Florida, lightning capital of the world. You'd think this'd liven the joint up a bit but nope... it's still Florida.

I hiked 16 more miles of the AT Sunday... from Dick's Creek Gap to Unicoi Gap. Everything's a friggin' "gap" on the thing. Does it change up North? Not here in Georgia... every 40 minutes, you're in a gap.

Indian Grave Gap, Winding Stair Gap, Woody Gap... even Gooch Gap.

BO-RING!

How about "Nimrod Hollow" or "Upchuck Cleft"?

"Weaselface Vale"?

"Punchdrunk Pass"?

The Outside Scoop by Jim Harvey

Ok… I was going to write a rant deriding this inane song that I keep hearing on one of the radio stations but no matter how I write it up I’ll come across as some old out-of-touch Ward Cleaver-type… not that I have a problem with that… but, aww forget it…

Over the top, men!!!

All right, I don’t have a problem with songs about sex per se but isn’t there a regulation or torte or something requiring it to be innuendo? Or at least allowing room for another however completely untrue interpretation (ie., oh yeah, it’s about dancing)? Or I guess if it has to be directly about sex, hide it on the CD somewhere (classic example: Red Hot’s “Special Secret Song Inside”) instead of blazing it out on the radio.

And that song is a little more a celebration of sex not a misogynistic, objectifying stripjoint song like the Buckcherry thing.

Actually, I like a fair amount of the machismo-laden “I’m a bad ass” stuff… Van Halen, AC/DC, Iggy Pop, and Mudhoney all have songs with this theme… well, David Lee Roth IS that theme and Iggy actually IS a badass but you get my point.

But this Buckcherry thing is just the penultimate reason why I turned away from glam in the first place. It’s too blatantly a frat-boy rape theme but probably this is what they were going for… to piss guys like me off!

And, daggum, when Erin’s a teenager if some degenerate punk comes ‘round here playing this kind of crap, I’ll give him what fer!!

It is 5 am and you are list-en-ning to Los An-geles

Kerry left for the west coast Monday morning and her dad came down to help out with the kiddies. She's cruising around on the beach in a silver Miata and I'm making sandwiches and changing the catbox. Not that anyone's complaining around here!

He's ok now but for a while, Liam was having a tough time dealing with it. He told me last night that yesterday at school he kept his jacket on all day and had the collar zipped up to below his nose so that no one could see his upside-down smile.

I told him he'll make a great poet.

Ode to Joy

It took a week and a half more after the last exciting Gnarfigbjorn adventure until the fridge was finally fixed... crikey.

And, then last Saturday, on the way to meet a few guys in Gainesville for some mountain biking, the clutch on my 99 Honda goes out. I missed out on the biking but I didn’t miss out on standing on the side of 985 from 8-9am waiting for the tow truck and I sure as heck didn’t miss out on dropping $1200 for the repair.

13:30 cool cave, could camp in it

Last Sunday, kind of spur of the moment, I went hiking with the husband of a friend of my wife’s. He’d been doing single-day sections of the AT and I decided to join him. Although he’s done a fair amount of hiking, he didn’t have much of an idea how long it would take or what distance was doable. And the only long-distance hiking I’d done was with a 40lb pack on my back so I had no real estimate on a maintainable pace.

Originally, his plan was to hike the AT from Amicalola Park to Woody Gap… a distance of about 28 miles. That sounded a little long to me so I found a way on the Net to get closer to the actual start of the AT on Springer Mountain. This cut off 8 miles but took a while to get to. Although we left my house at 6:20am, after dropping my car off at the start, we began the trek at Woody Gap just after 9am.

He told me a story about getting stuck up on a mountain on the AT at night without a light. He used the glow from his cell phone to make his way along the rocky trail to his car. I had no desire to end up cracking my skull after a slip in the dark so, although we both carried lights in our packs, I planned on finishing way ahead of sunset… typically pretty early in the mountains.

Now, I am ragging this guy a little for his lack of planning but, to be fair, I’m a little far out on the other end. I’m a pretty frugal packer and I’m down-to-the-basics with the stuff but on this and my last hike, I recorded my progress to an obsessive degree. At any peak, stream, forest road crossing, or even a nice tent site, I’d jot down the time on a scrap of paper in my pocket. I did this an average of every 12 and a half minutes over the course of 9 hours. Here’s a typical series:

14:02 peak, Sassafras Mt?
14:08 stop, duct
14:18 go
14:32 Horse Gap (some FS road)
14:41 steep climb to peak
14:54 parallels a forest road
15:00 peak?

At first, I was doing this so I could get a pace and estimate our finish time so I’d know whether to kick it up or not. And also, knowing where a good tent site is and where water is will help for future hikes and knowledge of the forest roads could help in the event of an emergency.

But really I’m doing it because I want to. The whole 9 hours I was never bored. Hiking through rocky terrain (and all these goddamn leaves!) is enough activity to prevent thinking deeply for any length of time so, basically, the entire time I’m loosely thinking about my pace interspersed with typical thoughts.

Turns out, we were going to be cutting it really close. The car was parked a mile before the top of Springer Mt, the start of the entire Appalachian Trail and damned if I was going to hike 19 miles without finishing the last 1.

So I left him behind about halfway along the hike. I stopped to transfer water from the big bottle in my pack to the little one in my pocket and to eat but other than my quick data-gathering stops, I trudged it at a fairly high rate the rest of the way. Oh, that “duct” mention above was putting pieces of duct tape on hotspots on my feet to prevent blisters. Sounds weird but, so far, it’s worked for me.

When I got to the car, the sun was setting but I decided to risk it and do the mile and back. There was still a decent glow, I had my headlamp, and I’d be coming back over familiar territory. It was starting to get cold so I left the car unlocked with a note with the time I left. When I got back, I was happy to see his light in the car… I had felt a little bad leaving him although he typically does solo hikes and I had kept telling him we needed to go faster if we wanted to do Springer. He was fine but I felt even worse when I discovered he had run out of water and drank out of a stream.

Then he said he usually has to do this!!

The Great F'd-Up Week of Ought-6

My "achy flue" turned out to be strep throat... caught from Erin who caught it from Liam who you could barely tell had it. Man, what a week. Plus Kerry got a ticket for running a red light... couldn't see over the truck.

Calgon, take me away!!!!

But she did win a free trip to LA so that's 1 for our side.

The Icelandic Saga of Gnarfigbjorn continues....

So now I know it's the compressor, a part that is expensive to replace and not a DIY job... not even for a genius like myself! I had been assuming that I only had a 1 yr warranty but that was based on bad info. I called Sears and they said the compressor was covered but only for the parts... not the labor which could easily run $300 or more... who knows?

So do we buy a new one? Although you can get some for pretty cheap, we were likely going to drop a grand for a nice albeit scratch'n'dent one. I scheduled a tech to come in... which meant 8-4 on Saturday... joy. But, par for the course this week, last night I came down with some kind of achy flue so staying home was no big loss.

The guy walked in at 3:30, looked at the model #, and said "compressor's shot". Apparently this particular model has a compressor that routinely shuts down after 3-4 years. AND I wouldn't be able to get it replaced until NEXT FRIDAY! But, guess what, it's all covered... woo hoo! The very knowledgeable guy gave me basically the entire recent history of Sears refrigerators which I will spare you although a tad unwillingly.

And, instead of living out of an ice chest like we've been doing for the past week we bored a little fridge which will be a relief. And no more APPLIANCE FORUM blogging... for a while, that is.

An Inconvenient Truth

Continued from Box'o Bugs...

As is typical for a Kerry-hosted party, there were cakes galore but one of the highlights specifically requested by the birthday boy himself (a strict, no nonsense event coordinator) was an ice cream cake. Unfortunately, although it had been in the freezer for hours, it was still ice cream soup. I didn’t have time to check it out but it turned out that the refrigerator was busted and the compressor wasn’t working.

Searching the Net for clues and hearing a few stories over beers with some guys pointed in the same direction: get a new one. If the compressor’s fried, it’s not worth replacing what with the refrigerant restrictions and welded connections and all.

But dammit, I had bought this fridge myself only about 5 years ago. Every other fridge I had ever lived with in the past had been handed down through the generations like a painting or an ugly lamp. And I had never seen one fail. I had lived in digusting, roach-infested student ghettos where apartments were routinely abandoned and often ransacked and yet the fridges survived. I remember walking through one place right next to the building that my own apartment was in where the patio door was shattered and the fire extinguisher had been expelled everywhere. The place had been this way for weeks and weeks and stupidly, I opened the fridge… a glimpse of a completely black/green interior caused a quick closure but the whiff was there. But I bet it would still run if the power were on!!!

So I pulled it out from the wall, lied down in the crud behind it, and pulled off the lower back panel. Being an engineer does give me the knowledge that machines aren’t magical creations and actually work by definite and logical processes but it doesn’t tell me how those processes are done by a big metal ball with copper tubing and several small buzzing plastic boxes with wires all over the place all coated in a half inch of lint.

As I posted earlier, having had a lawn mower, a washer and dryer, a CJ, an Isuzu beater of a truck, and most importantly, a lack of funds to spend on maintaining them, has taught me that having monkeyed with and lost is better than never having monkeyed with at all. Some folks, knowing that they have no idea what’s going on will understandably call for the repair guy or buy another. I, knowing that I have no idea what’s going on, will now go in both guns blazing. Poke around, blow on a few things, connect and reconnect wires, screw and unscrew… I’d say 8 times out of 10, this will fix whatever it is.

And that’s exactly what happened.

Let me point out here that typically I do seek a jog in the right direction before diving in. I don’t jump in totally blind. I’ll look at the manual, maybe talk with a handier friend, and peruse a few Internet forums on the more serious ones. But I’m not breaking out a voltmeter or measuring spark gaps or anything… mostly just un- and reconnecting. So far, it’s worked pretty well and I’ve hardly ever actually had to replace anything with this method.

So I had taken off the back of the fridge and had found out on the Net that a warm freezer but cool fridge section was likely a bad compressor. The recurring whining followed by a click and silence that I heard was probably the compressor trying but failing to start. In desperation, I hung my hopes on a “bad relay” diagnosis I had caught in my search and removed a few components trying to identify the relay.

They all seemed fine and I figured I’d be spending all the next day shopping for a new fridge and dealing with getting it installed and the old one removed. But I followed my gut and at 2am, re-installed everything and turned it on. It hummed smoothly and after an hour was still purring along and it seemed like the inside was cooling.

I slept well that morning.

Unfortunately, Kerry didn’t as Erin decided to continue the “I Hate this Cast” campaign.

D’oh!!!! And here, as I was actually writing this a few nights back, was where I heard the compressor whining and shutting off again… right at the point where I was practically gloating about my manly powers of mechanical ability.

So no fridge once again. And this after we had emptied the fridge of food, brought it to a neighbor’s, then when I thought I had fixed it, cleaned it all out and re-populated it with the grub. Faaaantastic.

Kill Your YouTube

Great... here I am once again, up at all hours watching Ren & Stimpy and Starblazers reruns.

Joy.

Box o' Bugs

A rather hectic 3-day weekend so far.

Thursday afternoon. It’s near the end of the fiscal year so I’ve got to get my orders shipped which makes it all the more tough when my boss signs me up for a 3-day training class… there’s no one else doing my job when I’m gone. So this means late nights and when I get home it’s rush-rush trying to prep for Liam’s Halloween birthday party.

During a meeting at work, the office administrator interrupts and asks me to step outside. Kerry’s been trying to reach me. I call her up. Erin’s fallen down some stairs and likely broken her arm.

Turns out she’s broken it in three places and now has a cast… she picked blue which surprises me given her and every single other 3-year old girl’s predilection for pink. Kerry was with her at the hospital for a draining 7 hours while they looked her over. For a bit, surgery was discussed which did wonders for our nerves but it turned out not to be necessary.

She spent the first night here at home waking up every few hours yelling about how she wanted it off. This breaks your heart coming from a 3-yr old little girl but it’s a lot better than “It hurts!”. Her anger and legendary stubbornness I can take but I’m glad I haven’t yet had to deal with her pain.

Friday was the day of Liam’s shindig. He’d been planning this for months. We had had a big party for his 5th so we weren’t planning on anything huge for his 6th but he kept building it up. At first he wanted a “trick party” in which various shenanigans would be played on the kids… the piñata would be filled with jello, the cake would be loaded up with salt and pickles, you know...fun stuff like that.

But as Halloween rolled around, it evolved into a haunted house theme. We put up a graveyard in the front yard and set up a haunted house in the garage complete with “m.f. snakes in the attic”, me lamely dressed up as a mad scientist, and one of those kiddie rows of boxes with holes in them where you poke your hand in and feel eyeballs (peeled grapes), dead bugs (packaging peanuts), worms (spaghetti), or a brain (a head of cauliflower dripping in vegetable oil).

She had spent most of the day resting in bed watching Dora and Backyardigans but, never being one to be left out of anything, Erin joined in the fun a little but was very low key compared to the usual fireball. Liam had a good time especially when he and all the other kids were chasing the mad scientist with squirtguns through the graveyard.

And then... with Kerry's coup de gras ice cream cake inside, the fridge decided to crap out.

It's the killer crabs!!!

Last Saturday, a friend invited Erin and me to go with him and his daughter to the Georgia Aquarium. His company was giving everyone an "office picnic" for everyone that included tons of food, crafts for the kids, free parking, and free passes for family and friends to the aquarium.

Must be nice.

Although there are plenty of good things about my job, in the 13 years I've been there, we've never had a company-sponsored "event".... unless you count free Domino's in exchange for spending your lunch hour listening to the group's growth numbers as an event.

Anyway, like we figured she would, Erin loved the aquarium. We had a conference room with it's own huge window on the main tank with the floating bus-like whale sharks as well as one on the beluga tank. Pretty sweet!

In amongst the commoners, we saw sea otters, penguins, giant sea crabs, eerie sand worms,luminous jellyfish slowly dancing as if to Lush, squadrons of rays, and a very creepy school of piranha. They all stood still in the water.. each one barely moving a fin... staring at the crowd... as if in wait for a pudgy hand to break the surface to spring into action.

We walked the entire thing without a hitch. She's gonna love the zoo.

Now Liam is another story. I can talk with him for days about lightning or icebergs or even glue machines but he couldn't care less about animals. Erin has had a pretend dog named Charley for a few months but when asked if he wants a dog, Liam will give an unequivocal "No". We took him to the Chattanooga Aquarium when he was Erin's age but he mostly just wanted to jump around on things.

When I took Erin with me to the Georgia Aquarium Saturday, he didn't bat an eye. No "What? Why can't I go?" He was way into helping Kerry setup the garage for his upcoming Halloween-style birthday party. More on that later....

Remotely Chipotle

Today, lunching at Chipotle Grill, sitting out on the porch… I bathe in suburban splendor. I am surrounded by a busy parking lot in a strip mall itself surrounded by traffic-choked roads and I am sure that 80% of the people in the cars work within 2 miles. Not that I walked… I’m just as guilty myself but it made me wish fondly for the pedestrian areas in Europe, in which even the small towns have festive plazas bigger than anything similar in the entire city of Atlanta. And before any dittoheads start start telling me to emigrate, believe me, I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else but the US… it’s just this automobile prison we’ve built for our fat asses is stifling! And we’re so used to our cozy, air-conditioned, XM radio-bombarded, cup-holder-festooned personal spaces that actually interacting with the environment has become strange. There are at least 20 other tables on this porch and it is an absolutely perfect day and my cow orker and I share the outside dining area with no one. It’s almost as if they add these just to put on trendy, urban airs knowing that rarely will anyone use them.

But I am ranting… and need to get another beer.

There… that’s better.

Now, where was I? Oh yeah… so I’m telling this guy how some friends and I got lost mountain biking in Amicalola. We parked our cars at the top of the falls and hit the trail with about 4 guys (Mark, Keith, Ashim, and myself) and 2 dogs (Andy and Sasha). We ride around for a while… not a great trail nor even good but when it got even worse, we realized we were lost. But given that we had rode a lot of downhill, damn if we were going to go back.

We kept up our backcountry wandering and, at one point, came out on Springer Mountain, right at the start of the Appalachian trail. About half a mile down a fast hill from there, I realized I had left my helmet behind. Again… damn if I’m going back!

We emerged on some paved roads… still with no idea where we were and, in front of a house with a kennel full of what must have been around thirty Jack Russell terriers, all bouncing, barking, and kinetic in a blur of canine Brownian motion, we hailed down a passing Camaro and got directions to a main road.

We were all pretty exhausted, each having ridden further than we ever had before and the dogs were in sad shape. We got to the main road and realized we were now in the area of another mountain bike trail, Bull Mountain, which was 8 miles along mountain highway back to our cars!

Ashim and Keith stayed with the dogs who’s paws were bleeding and Mark and I began the up and down road trek back to Amicalola. When we got there, it was almost too dark too see and I begged a ride up the hill to my Jeep from a couple at the Visitors Center… a hill I would not have been able to make. I was feeling ill so Mark drove us back to pick up the rest of the crew and return them to their car.

Unfortunately, I did not bring the top along with the Jeep… nor did I include a parka… something I realized I was in desperate need of on the long, cooold drive home. We stopped at a Burger King at some point and I puked in the bathroom… from exhaustion, I presume.

We ended up getting home around 10 and relaxed a little, overcome by the day’s ordeal. Someone rang up saying there was a big party at the Black Hole and we stayed out until 5 in the morning.

One Day in the Life of Jim Kindovisonovabich

A typical weekday in my life in 2006 starts at 6:20am. After I pet the cat a little (no, it’s NOT a euphemism), I shower and do all the other morning grooming routines. I get the coffee going then wake up Liam and fix his breakfast (usually cereal but starting to become oatmeal more and more as the cold weather seeps in) while he dresses then chat with him for a little. Kerry usually wakes up around now and sometimes Erin too. I munch on a bagel at the bottom of the driveway and chat some more with Liam until his bus picks him up.

I make about a 20 minute commute to work which isn’t too bad for 8am traffic in my neck of the woods… the rapidly-disappearing ones splitting their seams with giant showpiece homes, “lifestyle” centers, and Chipotle Grills. I spend about an hour answering e-mails then onto my usual stuff: answering questions from Sales, putting together Bills of Materials for Quotes, and trying to expedite parts for my system orders. At lunch, I’ll either run or work through most of it.

Back at home, I play in the backyard with the kids a little, we eat dinner, then a little more play until it’s time to get them to bed. If I’ve got Erin, then it’s an ABC or Richard Scary book then another one or two from the library then maybe a made-up Dora story. If I’ve got Liam, probably one of the kid science books my Mom got them then a library book and then we talk about stuff or I make up a story about Transformers or something else sci-fi. Then the rest of the night I'm making my lunch for the next day, getting my jogging stuff ready, cleaning up around the house, and talking with Ker.

On the weekends, I’ll work on the outside (mowing, raking, etc.) and we usually have a soccer game or a birthday party to go to and hopefully we fit in a hike somewhere. This weekend, we found out a way to go camping even if we have some kind of engagement to attend. We camped at Shady Grove Campground on Lake Lanier… it’s about 15 minutes from our house so we did two nights and a soccer game! We found a great spot right on the lake.

Yes, it’s a far cry from backpacking through the Smokies but, hey, I can sit around a fire, drink beer, and eat campfire hot dogs… the best meal in the world!

Waiter! What's this fly doing in my soup?

I tried to find the non-jokes I mentioned in the replies to the last post without success.

The only one I remember goes something like this:

As the doctor was setting his arm, the patient asked, "When my arm heals, will I be able to play the violin?"

Doctor: "Yes, definitely."

Patient: “That’s a relief… I’m a concert violinist for the London Symhony.”

But I did find this.

The waiter/fly joke is the closest to the jokes Mark sent me but the Holocaust one is a keeper....although the whole humor analysis thing pretty much knocks the funniness out of it.

I just got back from Vegas and boy are my arms tired…

It’s a good thing I went out there for the end of the trade show… things were winding down and some of the crew I was with took the “what happens in Vegas” thing pretty seriously! Just my two nights had me feeling wiped out the entire day I headed home. The whole city is a giant adult playground for endless drinking and spending lots of money and I don’t know how some of the salesguys did it for 5 nights in a row.

Actually I do know. People always say how they can’t drink the way they could when they were young but I don’t think age has much to do with it. It’s the tolerance you lose when you stop livin’ the viva loco. These guys probably pull a bender at least once every week… like I did back in the day when I could wake up after a night of carousing and go mountain biking. Now I’m lucky if I can stay vertical for longer than 5 minutes straight.

Vegas, Bobby.... Vegas!

No bloggin' for a few nights as I will be carousing with adhesive dispensing equipment salesmen and window manufacturers in Vegas.

Yes, son... some day, all this will be yours!

A Busy, Busy Day in Busytown

Started off last Saturday with the East Atlanta Strut 5k. I parked behind Grant Street Pizza but they were telling everyone that you couldn’t park there. They said I was ok because I was coming back after the run but apparently 3 ladies emerging from a hair salon draped in shampoo capes didn't get the word. Definitely a bizarre sight at 7:30 Saturday morning in East Atlanta!

Then a girl was going off about an empty beer can (stressing “Budweiser”) on the base of a lightpole. What type of person would be surprised at this? It’s a bar area downtown. Even the cleanup crew at the Country Club misses the occasional empty, right? Am I some sort of hip cynic for being annoyed?

Ran the race. Drove BACK to Cumming for Liam’s soccer game. It was a hot game and they had no subs, partly thanks to another winy girl… however this one was 5 years old so a little more understandable but I was not too happy seeing my son exhausted while she sat on the sidelines in her uniform the entire game.

Builds character, I guess.

Then off to one of those bouncy-room birthdays we OTP’ers occasionally have. Typically, it’s a large unit in a business area or a strip mall with a giant room containing half a dozen inflatable rooms… sturdy, well-constructed ones, not cheapies. They pump in the latest bubblegum techno tunes and the kids (and a few of the adults) go nuts.

Then BACK downtown to the East Atlanta festival where we promptly escape the heat by plopping down on the comfy chairs in the corner of the Graveyard, the newer restaurant/bar place. We stay there for almost 2 hours… some festival! Actually, K and I loved seeing all our old friends but I figured the kids were bored. Turns out it was Liam’s best time of the entire day.

Oh, you guys!

Ok… a little break from the end of the world stuff… plus I reached the end of what I’ve typed so far and I’m not in the mood to continue.

A few days ago I was eating my lunch at work. I bit into my polyvinylturkey (PVT) sandwich and, about ¾ of the way into chewing it, my brain started registering that something was a little off. Part of me knew exactly what it was but the part of me that doesn’t care about anything said keep going, maybe it’s your imagination. Plus I was on the Net with one hand, sandwich clenched in the other, so investigating would’ve meant stopping what I was doing.

So I took another bite.

My hunch was confirmed. It was a piece of the plasticy paper they put between cheese slices. But instead of spitting out the bite, I finished it, swallowing away, before dissecting the sandwich and getting rid of the paper.

I’ve never been particularly discerning about food. One roadtrip, long ago, a friend and I grabbed some food at a Wendy’s drive-thru. I got a burger and he got a chicken sandwich. When he started into his, he realized it was a burger. Unfortunately, I had already eaten half of mine… err… his. He was amazed that I hadn’t even noticed. In my defense, I don’t think I’m the only one who thinks all the gloppy fast-food concoctions taste like mayonnaise and salt.

My roommates in college, Matt and Mark, quickly realized this about me and exploited it for a laugh, as we all viciously did every single nuance about each other at every opportunity. A napkin in a Subway sub and one of those goofy rubber bracelets masqueraded as licorice were the highlights. Of course, there was no alcohol involved in either of these incidents. I’m shocked you would even ask.

911: 9/14 Bethany Beach, Delaware

Alexis decided she needed to get contact w/Kruel immediately so we left the shop and went across the street and up 2-3 stories to her office. By the way, we had passed lines of people waiting at pay phones because the cell’s didn’t work.

9/15/01
Today’s Anne’s wedding and all is chaos. The plan was to have the entire wedding, ceremony, and reception on the beach bit it’s gotten way too windy so the reception has been moved to a Holiday Inn… the ceremony should prove interesting.

Alexis’ office building was an old brick converted warehouse kind of place. Everyone was huddled around the PC screens and the phones trying to make sense of what was happening.

[again, note that this is a journal… days and events are happening while I’m tryin’ to record the day of 9/11. I had to cut in here because that whole wedding bit seems way out of place but this is life]

9/19/01 11PM
First the Trade Center attack (Liam, [sometimes I’m journaling to my kids] it’s still the biggest thing by far in the news… other stories are only just starting to crawl in at the end… everyone has flags on their cars and houses and they’re all over my office), then a bunch of decision wrangling about whether or not to take you and Kerry up to Amherst, OH, with me on a week-long trip next week, then closest to home, Keith…

[what follows is a around 4-5 pages describing a very close call with death that a friend of mine had that I’ll skip for this]

9/22/01
Right now I’m in a Comfort Inn in Lexington, Kentucky. I’m on a drive to Amherst where I’ll be staying all next week for work and decided to drive up and bring Kerry and Squeaky [Liam’s nickname back then]. Mainly because Kerry was a bit freaky about being left alone for a week with all these crazy things happening: new job for Jim, a friend dying,, and the US embarking on a military mission to “wipe-out” terrorism because of the Trade Center toppling (Jeez! Still hard to believe… I swear, a picture in the new Newsweek looks exactly like a movie poster). I hate this pen… going to the rental car to get a different one.

911: 9/12 - 9/14, back with Team K

The crazy thing is that if this had happened (wait… there were a lot of crazy things about this…) one of the sobering points about all this is that if it had happened about an hour and a half later there is a very good chance (I’ll say 75%) that I would’ve been up in one of the towers or at least at the base depending on how much the ascent cost and what the observation deck was supposed to be like. But I can easily see me grabbing a bagel and a cup of coffee after dropping off Alexis and heading to the towers. I had the whole day to kill and intended on walking all over Manhattan. Since I was right near Wall St and had already seen the Trinity Church before, I would’ve probably trekked over to the WTC and tried to replicate Kruel’s shot of the two towers from the ground between them. I had this as my PC’s background picture once.

RT: My stop’s coming up again. Hopefully this works out.

9/13/00
Two days after the attack and, of course, it is still about the only thing on TV. Right now, I’m at the beach with Kerry’s family. It was great to get back with Kerry and Liam… Team K is whole again! Kerry was pretty upset after the incident and is scared to fly a plane. I believe they resumed flights today.

Last night at the station in Wilmington, Kerry and Mr. Scanlon picked me up since no one could get in touch with Rosemary who was in the Wilmington area but her cell phone wasn’t working.

9/14/01
So I had about two hours to kill in Wilmington so I asked an attendant where to get some food and ended up down the block at a place called Bernie’s. I think it said on the wall outside “Since 1948” or something also that they were famous for chicken cheese steaks. A placard outside the door said tonight’s special was 2$ Juenling’s, a local beer (that I can’t spell… “Yuenling”?) that supposedly is one of the oldest beers in the States and I think it’s pretty good… sort of a perfect medium between the body and heartiness of Bass and the smoothness of Bud. [Yuenling is not really local unless you consider the entire middle east coast “local” and the draft is much better than store-bought].

Turns out the place was like something out of a TV show: the wise-cracking, tough guy behind the bar (who I think was the owner), the heavy-set but fiery waitress, and the peanut gallery of regulars… plus the cheesesteak was great. Talking to a big beefy guy at the bar who was putting down shots of whiskey followed by beer, I found out the place is mainly a cop/fireman hangout.

The place was awash with the “Let’s bomb’em back to the stone age” sentiments but tempered more than you might think with reason especially from the owner. It’s going to suck being an Arab right now with the inevitable ignorant backlash. The whole attitude of some people that all people of a certain ethnicity are a certain way is the ignorant thing… people are individuals and though I’m sure some cultural stereotypes are true in general… you still can’t apply them to all.

Anyway, the bar was great. The guy bought me a beer. And both he and the waitress wanted to help the situation. He was planning on joining the military and she wanted to put up separated children in her house. Nice.

Now I’m back with Team K. It’s Friday and Kerry still maintains she won’t fly. I guess we’ll end up taking the train and might miss some of the wedding… we’ll see.

Alexis and I walked to a coffee shop across from her office in the South Seaport building. I think that’s where we saw a TV and realized it was two planes that hit… then we knew it was terrorists.

911: 9/12 on Broadway, then on a train out

I had mentioned that all the stores were closed south of 14th but there were plenty of food places and a bar or two… mostly, it was only little Mom and Pop-type stores that were open… none of the department-type stores were operating. Walked across Broadway… took a picture of the Flatiron Building framed by the dust cloud.

Of course, the attack is all anyone’s talking about. I’m in a perfume shop buying t-shirts (more on this later) and a master haggler mentions to the counter guy she’s furiously workin’ that her cousin was up in one of the towers and got away. The pizza guy is raving unintelligibly about it… an Arabian-looking homeless guy is screaming about Afghanistan… the guys behind me on the train are discussing it… the guy I asked about how you know what track to get on was down where I was and is only now getting out… amazing.

Around 30th and Broadway, which is I guess the perfume district given the abundance of fragrance shops… many open but most closed… I pass by a place selling t-shirts 4 for $10.

RT: On the train in New Jersey, looking back at the “adjusted” skyline , with the massive blot rising from the center of lower Manhattan. Weird how just 3 days ago I was on an identical train looking at the same scene only with the two beautiful towers pre-dominating the skyline.

I go in and look them over, looking for ones with the WTC featured prominently, the same thing I did about a half hour earlier with postcards… with the postcards, I got a plane one that even showed the seaport section Alexis and I ended up in when the towers crumbled I didn’t want the ones with a colorful “Welcome to New York!” Usually that goes well with my typically dark humor but, for some reason… too soon I guess, too all around me… I felt funny about the whole thing… especially about the shirts. I was thinking Liam might think it was cool to have a t-shirt (cheap that it is) with the WTC on it bought by his dad in New York the day after it happened. The whole “collectible” thing is ridiculous as they can always print these up and plus there’s millions of them… but then I felt funny again about it… like I was demeaning all the people killed, hurt, and affected by the tragedy… I feel like a newscaster using that word but it’s hardly an exaggeration… like I was cheapening the affair to tourist attraction. So I left.

A street away I called Kerry and talked to her mom about it and she thought I should buy them. My sister later agreed so I went back to the store and bought up shirts. Plus 3 baseball caps with NYPD on them as a tiny tribute… to the officers that (I believe) lost their lives and to all the men and women working hard to stabilize the city and assist with the cleanup and rescue efforts.

In Princeton Junction , grabbed a Village Voice that someone left on their seat. The cover is of the two towers… one burning, the other immediately after the impact of the airliner… “The Bastards!” is the headline.Only mention of it inside though is one pretty good account of a guy that must have been a little closer than me… similar story though. I guess the paper was all printed and ready to go but they worked overnight to change the front cover and add a story.

I’ll continue my account of the events yesterday. I left off just after the fireball from what I now know was the 2nd plane hitting the other tower. But the train is about to get into Trenton and I need to figure out how to get to Williamsburg… I mean, Wilmington, Delaware, around 6pm so Rosemary (Petunia?) can pick me up and take me to Bethany Beach.

Now I’m on the SEPTA train, the subway system for Philly, heading for the center of the city (30th St. Station) where hopefully I can manage to change trains with the one going to Wilmington.

These three old “sitting around the bar, having a few cold ones, rehashing war stories”-kinda guys are making comments like “they oughtta dust off that old bomb they got and drop the big one on’em” and one guy’s talking about putting on his old uniform. Two ladies I was talking to getting into Trenton had come up to NYC just today to check out how everything was… I’m kind of surprised at that… but then again, after yesterday, I probably won’t be surprised again in my whole life. Man!

Right before the cops started moving everyone out, we were standing at the base of a small staircase going up to a plaza in front of a building. From what Alexis said, we were on Maiden Lane between Nassau and William looking W or NW at the north tower and the edge of the southern one (I’m looking at the map right now). I can’t remember what side of the N tower the news said the first plane hit… the north tower is the one… well, WAS the one with the huge antenna structure. But the side we were looking at (I assume this was the east face) was a fiery hellstorm of deep black smoke and giant flames. Apparently (and I could be wrong) the 2nd plane came from the south and hit the southern side of the south tower… I don’t remember hearing a plane but we were deep down between the buildings and there were sirens (actually the sirens didn’t start til a few minutes after we came out of the subway… I’m assuming the first plane must have hit at about the time we were rolling into Fulton Station) and all sorts of commotion. Apparently, the explosion and maybe even parts of the plane came entirely through the building emerging from the north face and, from our perspective, toward the “first” tower (the northern one). But, again, we were thinking the fire had set something off in the N tower causing the fireball.

After the fireball and the brief stampede, we moved down Maiden Lane to the stairway. There was a wall at the side of it that we could jump behind if there was another explosion so we stopped there for a while. That’s where we took some more pics including ones with ourselves in them and where Alexis picked up the papers. The one I retained must’ve been from the first hit on the N (or the NW) tower because I doubt all the papers coming down from the 2nd had landed by that time. [?]

RT: NE Philly is not very attractive in the slightest… old industrial areas, abandoned factories, empty parking lots, rundown houses… looks like Paper Street from “Fight Club”. My stop’s coming up.

Approx 6pm.
Now I’m on the train to Wilmington where hopefully I’ll meet up with Rosemary. My phone’s running down so hopefully things will work out. Damn those Amtrak’s are fast!

I think we were on the south side of the Fed Reserve Building but I’m not sure about that. So we were moved from our spot and began walking east making our way to Alexis’ office. There’s a large promenade we passed where apparently the Kruels had ate with Smulley and LP during their visit. Now it was a mass of people all staring over our heads as we came up to them. A limo slowly made it’s way west [this is wrong… it was going east… away from the WTC] along with us through the throng with it’s rear window and part of it’s roof completely smashed. It was like being in Beirut or something… insane.

911: 9/11 at the Kruels' in Brooklyn

9/11/01
Someone on the news mentioned the only significance of that date that I’ve heard: 911. I feel I may have come across as casual or flippant in some of my immediate conversations and and postings and the fact that we took pictures, picked up pieces of paper as souvenirs, etc. For one thing, the person at home is seeing the extreme scenes over and over interspersed with solemn newscasters gravely and emotionally trying to report the situation. For much of the early part of the action, we didn’t know what’s going on. We had no idea 2 planes full of people were destroyed and this lack of knowledge adds to the already extreme surrealness, the other-worldliness of the situation plus the fact that the whole thing seemed straight out of a movie enhanced the feeling that it wasn’t really happening. When extreme things happen to me (the bear, a crazy plane ride, etc.) I admit I often smile… I don’t really know why… the fact that the control of events is beyond me and I’m just riding it out… I smile. I also make extreme comments… I don’t know, it’s how I deal with the absurdity of the situation. I have yet to panic or feel an emotional rush in [any of] the extreme situations I’ve been in.

Besides we’re dealing with it in all real-time and I feel many people deal with it all by acting normal and matter-of-fact… everything’s ok here, just a normal day, etc.

9/12 About noon
I’m on my way back home. Although I could’ve taken the subway to 34th which is right near Penn Station, I wanted to see more. According to the news that we’ve been watching continuously all businesses south of 14th are closed so I figured the train wouldn’t stop. But it did so I got out at Broadway and Layfayette which is south of 4th. Right now I’m sitting on Broadway in the doorway of an Urban Outfitters store, an overpriced trendster clothing store identical to the others around here which are all closed.

The doorway next to me has a contraption that places spikes on the steps so a bum couldn’t sit… the city. The only traffic car-wise is cop cruisers parked at the intersections. Sirens, loudspeakers, klaxons, and bullhorns are the extent of the noise. Though there is a fair amount of foot traffic… seems like the normal mix to me. Everyone seems a bit quieter and calmer than usual… solemn I guess.

Once again it’s a beautiful sky besmirched once again by the brown pillar that has replaced the magnificence that was Trade Center towers. Absolutely unbelievable.

12:20pm
At the 14th line of demarcation (Union Square), a girl next to me is on the phone trying to get a hold of lost loved ones… half crying… “we’ve called the hotline, I’ll keep trying…” horrible… the catastrophe. I just walked up a bare, end-of-the-worldish Broadway. I walked up the middle of the street at noon! At 10th, you could look straight down the empty avenue to the cloud of atomized cement glowering over the city like a mocking genie… given its probable origins, a “djinn” is the more appropriate spelling.
2:40pm
Now on the train sitting at Penn Station bound for Trenton, NJ. Heard all the NJ Transit trains are free as they’re just trying to get all the people trapped in Manhattan out… since all… repeat, ALL… airplanes are down. No planes flying in America save for military and emergency. At Union Park Square, there were banners laid out that people were writing messages on… pretty sad… mostly messages of hope and healing and remembrance … WTC always!

911: 9/11 on a rooftop in Brooklyn

9/11/01 2PM Tuesday

Well kids, if you look up the date I just wrote, you’ll see what I’m about to write about… and I was about 2-3 blocks from it!

They knocked down the World Trade towers!!

HOLY FUCK!!!

Right now I’m sitting on a rooftop in Brooklyn. The giant plume of ugly ashen smoke from lower Manhattan cuts a brown-gray swath across a beautiful hot sunny sky. The world’s greatest city is burning! Here’s how it went down…

Bryan, Alexis, and I were on the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan. Bryan got off and Alexis and I headed toward Wall Street. It was the last day of a short stint in NYC and I was carrying my big bag. The plan was to drop off my bag at Alexis’ office at (fill in later) [the South Street seaport] and walk around the city on my own then pick up my pack and catch a train at Penn Station around 4:30. With visions of a nice cup of coffee and a bagel, I stepped off the train (very crowded) with Alexis at Fulton St. station. We walked toward the surface and emerged.

It must have been just after 9… I’ll check later. Anyway, something was up… literally. Everyone was pointing. I look up and see tons of smoke everywhere… a fire! There must be a big fire somewhere. At first all I think is inconvenience what with traffic and all but then as we get through the throng the realization dawns on me. The World Trade Center is on fire!

We stop at a corner [corner of Nassau and Maiden Lane at the Federal Reserve building] and since we brought the Kruels’ digital camera… I was going to borrow it for the Gotham trek… we started snapping pics. Oh my God! Look at the flames… it’s getting bigger. Wow!

The streets are filled with people pausing from their commute to stare in awe as this New York icon… Hell, this America icon burning. Wow, what are they going to do? They can’t get water that high… are people trapped? Wow! This is crazy! Millions of pieces of paper are fluttering down… only a few are really raining about us.

Suddenly there’s a huge crash! Not the deep rumble of an explosion you might expect but more of a metallic crash like a hundred car wrecks or a million beer cans being crushed. A huge orange-red-black fireball roils and grows filling the center of view we’re staring at.

Screams! Screams! Screams! Immediately and simultaneously, like an instant street marathon on speed, the entire crowd in front of us is stampeding at us.

I’m jumping up and down screaming “Holy Fuck! Holy Fuck! Ho-ly-Fuck!!!”

RT: Jets are flying overhead… the only things in the air right now are military… more later.

And Alexis is (new pen!)

More RT: Pieces of paper are fluttering down even over Brooklyn… 2 pieces settled about three rooftops away. Now I’m going to (I’m inside watching the news) go out and walk Devo with the Kruels and try to find a working ATM (they’re all not working).

Alexis is freaking but snapping pictures. I suddenly became aware of our danger with the stampeding crowd and pulled Alexis up against the building… but the panic eased enough as suddenly as it started.

We walked down the street a halfblock and stopped. I figured something had exploded in the building due to the inferno. There was a huge damaged corner of the other tower that was surrounded with flames and burning/smoking sections… we couldn’t see the rest of this tower because of all the buildings. I figured a chunk or something from the explosion had hit the 2nd building… we both had no reason to think the 2nd tower had exploded, too! I just thought it was a big fire.

Then, from people running around on their cell phones, we started to realize a plane had crashed into the building. Oh wow, so that’s what caused the fire and explosions! We still didn’t know about the 2nd plane.

RT: Right now, the sun’s gone down and I’m back on the Brooklyn rooftop. The smoke plume is still growing strong and seems wider over Manhattan. For a short time before sunset, the pillar was pink. Right now everyone’s inside watching a TV as the events of the day are repetitively and agonizingly gone over and regurgitated to a hungry populous.

Alexis picked up a piece of paper ringed with char. There was tons of it coming down… just to the side of the tower it looked exactly like a ticker-tape parade from the newsreels. She handed me a piece neatly lined with black… turns out it was a sheet from a safety procedure with discussions of emergencies and and evacuations and such… ironic.

Our cell phones weren’t working… all the channels or whatever were slammed with traffic. The cops started clearing the area so we walked to Alexis’ office…

Oh, right after the explosion I saw a lady crying… an end of the world “how can this be happening” wail… chrissakes, this was a constant in the lives of New York, the fucking World Trade Center! Both buildings were on fire and burning strong, black smoke billowing skyward and the entire sky dotted by millions of elegantly falling pieces of paper.

It looked just like a scene from “Armageddon”, the horrible movie where in one scene, New York City is hit by meteorites. Someone in the business left a video game at Matt’s which he let me have called “Red Alert” which has scenes of NYC being attacked and skyscrapers burning from missile attacks. The World Trade Center is burning!

911: 9/9 on a northbound train in NJ

9/9/01
THERE ARE A MILLION STORIES IN THE NAKED CITY…
THIS
IS ONE OF THEM…

It was a beautiful sunny day in the city. A September afternoon with no signs of autumn to this untrained eye. I stepped off the train at Penn Station… in the same state of “What now?” befuddlement that afflicts everyone new to the din.

RT: Linden… about 30 more minutes till Penn.

Pulling along with the river of stone-faced denizens seemingly griping and unhappy with their lot (who else would travel the NJ Transit?), I spy a tall, lanky fellow who looks like he just left a lousy 80’s Brit-pop band to pursue solo projects.

Enough of this, back to journalistic-style… or lack thereof! We’re now in Elizabeth… North Penn Station is next according to the disembodied squawk overhead. North? Is there more than one place to get off? Ahhh!

There it is! The typical New York skyline view… Empire, Trade Center, and all… cast against… well, “backdropping” the stereotypical version of New Jersey… old, trashy, rundown buildings, factory shells, smoke stacks, hundreds of buildings resembling either government buildings from the 50’s or stalwart prisons… blech!

I think I heard the intercom wrong or it was wrong… I don’t think we’re near Penn Station yet but we’ll see… yeah, this is Newark. Penn is next.

Actually, I think I did this part (Newark to Penn) with Kerry last time but I’ll write about it this time anyway.

Warehouses, loading docks, rail yards, wires, nasty brown dead scrub… the city still looks like the dream city, the Emerald City, Cibola, or all those mythical cities whose names now escape me… what’s the one in Yemen?

Bridges, power stations, cable towers or whatever they’re called marching off like the robots in Berzerk. Empire State Building stands alone from out here… kind of a pretty little marsh right here.

About 10 minutes out, we’re underground!

911: Intro, 9/9 on a northbound train in NJ

Ok, here it is… basically straight from my journal. It is not chronological and jumps back and forth between just-happened events, things from the past, and even real-time (RT) happenings going on while I’m writing. Also, I guess my overall journal style is basically just getting the facts down… as if I were planning on writing a novel someday and I’m recording the bare-bones events planning to flesh out the reminders later. The end result of this is that it’s often pretty boring and trivial.

But that’s what I’m going for here right now. This is what I wrote down at the time… no hindsight and no elaborations. I have added a few things but they are very minor and they are enclosed in brackets. I’ve also omitted a little for personal reasons but you’ll probably end up wishing I had cut a lot more.

9/9/01
Here I am sitting on a train which I hope is bound for New York City… the numbers on the ticket don’t match the numbers on the info screen which don’t match the numbers on my internet printout which don’t match the @X!!*½%! numbers on the *@!?! train! Oh well, Danger is my middle name, yadda-yadda!

Ok, quick wrap-up of the Colorado trip. On Erik’s ATV I was going a bit too fast on the dirt roads and slid into a ditch and mashed my right index finger… no swelling , no cuts, no scratches but it hurts when I use it strongly (like opening a beer bottle) or push it up against something but the thing is, it hurts in exactly the same way and it’s been 1½ – 2 weeks. Hmmmmm…

We’re moving…NYC here I come…I hope!

I’ve only been on a train… a real train, I’ve been on Marta subways and subways in Toronto, Chicago… Actually, I guess the trains in Toronto and Chicago are trains and this is just a glorified subway so forget it… I know trains, I guess.

I’ve been to NYC once before but I think I covered it in this journal so no info here except that I was with Kerry and no locals so this trip should be different…on my own w/the Kruel’s.

Right now we’re [“we” referring to me and my fellow passengers] leaving Trenton, NJ, kind of a rundown city outside Philadelphia where we [now “we” is Team K] landed yesterday. We stayed at Aunt Mary Jane’s and Kerry, Liam, Helligram, and others are jetting down to Bethany Beach, Delaware, today. I’ll meet up with them Tues eve… Kerry’s Dad (Coach!) will be picking me up at Mary Jane’s and driving me down, Sat next week is Anne’s wedding on the beach and that’s why we’re up here.

Colorado! Climbed up Trinchera, another 13er, with young Erik [my cousin]. It wasn’t near as tough as West Spanish Peak in a couple of ways. We drove 3 miles up in his Cherokee which was actually a cool, 4WD road… definitely a Jeep road but really only a bit hairy in 2 spots. From the side of the mountain we started up on it looked like it was going to be an insane equipment-necessary rock climb but turned out there was a meadow going up the other side… though it was still steep it wasn’t as steep as WSP and not covered in tumbling rocks! There was a kinda-crazy rock climb at one point which was actually fun. Anyway, of course it was beautiful and windy and all that… loved it.

At another time, Kerry, Liam, and I were hiking around the cabin. We weren’t really on a trail and Kerry was a few feet ahead of me.

Real-time: All I see so far are nice green woods and cute country roads… very pretty especially considering all the bad press that New Jersey gets… wait, it’s getting uglier… no, it’s ok again… we’ll see.

Suddenly, Kerry turns back to me with this look of aghast on her face and I see a fairly-big bear (not huge but bigger than a big St. Bernard) lunging away from us across a little clearing. It was probably closer than 50’ from us where I saw it first… the closest I’ve been… especially scary w/ Liam & Kerry present! So we made a bunch of noise on our hike back… I was impressed with Kerry’s attitude esp since we kept off a trail in the woods… Aspelin is a bit freaked out by bears but I guess that’s the safe way. Puss!

RT: Wow, an Amtrak just passed by us. Even though it was going the same direction, it was a freakin’ blur! Better be, considering the cheapest Amtrak fare I could find was 5x what I paid for this NJ Transit train. It’s still going to take 1 hr and 15 min and it seems fine to me “niceness”-wise so I don’t know why the hell anyone would pay for the Amtrak. I have a feeling it’s all corporate paid for. Plus Amtrak is taxpayer subsidized! What the hell?

Just pulling out of New Brunswick, NJ, on-schedule and still pretty.

That same bear (we think) showed up that evening in the cow pasture behind the Aspelin’s cabin… just snuffling about. We took a bunch of pictures from the deck but who knows how they’ll turn out. The digital ones were lousy and even the little movie barely showed anything. I think that’s about it for Colorado but I may touch upon it again.

New Jersey is getting uglier (Metuchen, NJ) but old factories, junkyards, and warehouses could easily just be clustered next to the tracks.

RT: Metropark, train now crowded, trendite next to me.

Well, now it’s time to flip the book over [I write on both sides of the pages in my journals: one way on one side then flip the book over and go back on the other side]. Good thing because I think NYC is going to come into view soon… right now the train is at Rahway.

The Dart Chronicles - Intro

Ok, I don't really have a lot of time to post here but I'm trying to distance myself from the kitten fiasco...

The car I remember most from my college years was my 74 Dodge Dart Swinger and although it's condition was a far cry from the one shown here, at least you will (or hopefully will) see the allure... it's allmighty coolness. Mine was bright banana yellow with a white vinyl top.

Featured prominently in several of the stories to be told is a punch to the face in Daytona, a shopping cart, a newspaper machine, a hammer-beaten axle, and many cases of Busch beer.

I opened the bag, my mind a whirl of “what if”s and “why didn’t I”s.... I think I knew what I was going to find. I don’t even really know why I hadn’t opened the bag right when the meowing stopped. I guess I wanted to keep things simple and release the kitten in it’s temporary home and I guess part of me kept maintaining that the bag was not airtight and even if the kitten was passed out, it would be ok for the less than a minute it took to get to the balcony from my Jeep.

The kitten was lying still in the bag...its mouth partially open, its gray tongue a bit large and dry. Its fur was matted in places with I don’t know what...saliva from it’s frantic panting? Urine? Sweat... do cats sweat? And it had defecated in the bag.

I knew it was dead....

...but I wanted to make sure. I laid the open bag down in the box my fiancé had prepared for it (I had called her on my cell phone) next to a little bowl of water and a plate of catfood. The pain of the situation hit me when I glanced at this little setting...forcefully illuminating the fact that this had been a little kitten wanting a home...and someone to be with.... and now my bungling had killed it. It would have been better off eating bugs and worms back at my workplace but instead it had died a horrible hot and stifling death at my hands.

It stayed completely still as I moved it...no reflex when I touched it’s ear. Then I noticed that its eyes were half-open and I had my proof. It was dead.

Why? 911, that's why.

Ok…ok… what’s with the kitten story? Well, I’ll tell ya.

Some of you already know that, except for the Eyes of Bast bit, I actually wrote it about 5 or 6 years ago. I posted it because instead of spending time writing up the blog, I’ve been putting my 911 journal account into PC form because we all know that if something is not in a computer, it never actually happened.

I started writing a journal when I made the drive with my sister to Newfoundland in June of 99. After the trip, I didn’t write in it until April 2000… it was more of a travel journal then rather than the life journal it’s become although even now, I usually only get time to write in it when I’m sitting on a plane or in some hotel. When Liam came into my life, I started a new journal just for recording details of Kerry’s pregnancy with him, his birth, and his life. Later on all the travel and Liam journalizing merged and now I’m on my 6th book.

I was just getting to the ½-way point of journal #1 when we visited Kerry’s aunt in Philadelphia in September of 2001 and I decided to visit the Kruel’s, two friends of mine who live in New York City.

Anyway, I was a few blocks away from the WTC when the 2nd plane hit. I wrote it all up in my journal, pages and pages of it… and have yet to put the whole story into a form that I could send to people.

So that’s what I’ve been doing and what I will be doing for about a week more. Or hopefully only a week more. I’m a lousy typist… hunting and pecking, huddling over the keyboard for sentences and sentences with only the occasional glance at the screen. I took a typing class back in junior high where the test every Friday was to see how fast you could type “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” on the typewriter. At one point, I could do it faster looking at my fingers than I could the correct way so moronically, I stuck with the cheating way. Listening to Little Steven’s Underground Garage on the Net helps pass the time some but it’s still a slow and painful process.

So bear with me a little if I keep the blog posts small and infrequent for the next week or so. I’ll post the gruesome and now anti-climactic kitten finale soon... for the good of the country.

You can't handle the truth!

Ok guys... I need to end this kitten thing. But should I just stop right now where I'm at or post what actually happened?

It's almost over, folks...

Just a wee bit more...

Test Ending #3, Part 2 of 2

I was about 10 feet below the doorway when a chimp appeared in it. He made to bring his machine gun up then, smiling a ch-impish grin, he let it return to its position hanging from his shoulder and barked something towards the cockpit.

Suddenly the copter lurched in a descending arc towards the buildings below and it was all I could do to hang on while the chimp in the doorway casually watched me.

Damn dirty apes!

Using all the strength I could muster, I began struggling up the ladder, making most of my agonizingly slow progress in the brief respites between the copter’s screaming dives and wrenching turns. When I was five feet from the doorway, the chimp barked at me, pulled out a large knife, and began sawing at one of the two tethers securing the ladder to the copter.

In a matter of seconds he was through. He looked up at me as he brought the knife to the remaining tether. Suddenly, he lost his balance as the copter went through another rapid maneuver. He nearly fell from his perch but managed to grab a handrail mounted to the side of the doorway. He hissed at me and brought his arm back to slash at the tether.

I felt a small shove on my shoulder and saw a black furball attach itself to the ape’s face. In his surprise, the ape relinquished his grip on the rail to claw at the thing in his face. It was the kitten!

I managed to reach up, grab the front of the chimp’s flightsuit, and yank him out. I was planning on making a grab for the kitten but, as if it knew what I was going to do, it had leapt from the hurling ape into the inner recesses of the helicopter. I took a brief glance down to check that the chimp had not caught the end of the ladder – I’ve seen a lot of movies! – and pulled myself up into the copter.

Test Ending #3, Part 1 of 2

In the three seconds it took to get to the porch (the patio door was open), I realized things were awry in my life to a much greater extant than when I thought I had just a dying kitten to contend with. There were monkeys in my home!

Or more accurately, very large chimpanzees!

The situation: I am on the balcony. A giant chimp in Army-like clothing is sharing the small space with me. A flexible, roll-up ladder is rapidly ascending past the floor we are on and I can hear Kerry’s screams from above over the incredibly loud roar of a helicopter. I can see another soldier chimp in my apartment struggling with an apparently jammed machine gun.

I spring into action! With my right foot, I aim a kick to the jaw of the now leaping chimp in front of me. Simultaneously, I pull a short-fuse grenade from under my light jacket with my left hand and flip it into the apartment. My right hand shoots out to grab the ladder and I am pulled off the porch.

Immediately after my left hand swings around to affirm my grip the balcony below explodes in an eruption of glass, wood, and shards of that cheap plastic everything is made out of these days.... oh, and monkey guts, too. As I soar out over Freedom Parkway and the throngs of rush hour traffic, I begin working my way up the ladder to the sleek black copter above.

My mind races. This is it! The Chimp Council had finally put together the scattered bits of information gained from their spies and had tracked down the focus of Project Messiah to Kerry and I in Atlanta! Just 3 weeks before Liam would be the first human incarnation of magic in seven hundred years. With him as the vanguard, the human race could leave this dead universe as almost all the other civilizations had and enter a world where even the smallest child could fulfill it’s every need merely by thought!

Unfortunately, the Council of Thirteen for the chimpanzee species had been thwarting this goal for the last two decades. Why? No one knew but they. One would think the chimps would actually benefit from the absence of primarily the menace wreaked upon them in recent times by humanity. Perhaps they were the agents of forces out in Paradise that did not want humans entering...who knows?

“Anyway,” I thought as the shadowy doorway above loomed. “I have a job to do.”

Unnoticed by me, a kitten’s head poked from the lunch bang dangling from my shoulders.

To Be Continued

Test Ending #2

Stepping out onto the patio from my living room, a leggy brunette held a gun at waist-level aimed at my chest.

“Give me the bag,” she said. Straight. All business.

I started to unzip it. “But – “

“Now!” The gun came up.

I handed her the bag. Slow and easy does it.

“All that’s in there is a cat,” I said. “A cat about to cash in on it’s ninth life.”

She glared, backed into my apartment, and picked up the phone.

Dialed. “I’ve got it.” She put the phone down.

I didn’t miss the smirk as she walked out the door.

Too bad.



Ten seconds passed. I heard a commotion on the landing below. A man’s yell of surprise. A shot.

I snaked down the steps and found Beautiful in a heap, blood streaming from her forehead. I checked it. No real damage. She’d be fine.

I looked up. The cat sat there looking at me. Calm and relaxed. Like it’s owner had just filled it’s dish and was getting the brush-off. Fucker.

Beautiful stirred.

“Honey, what happened?” I aped.

“I – I opened the bag… and it really WAS a cat… and then this guy with a backpack walked up and – “

The glare was back.

“You’re the cat guy.”

She stood up. A little shaky but like I said, fine.

“You’re the cat guy,” she repeated and walked down the steps.

I sat there. I watched the sun going down behind the city. I went back to my room and poured a drink.

I looked at my lunchbag on the table and finished my drink.

With my pocketknife, I cut the stones from inside the lining.

So these were the Eyes of Bast, the flame-orange sapphires stolen from an Egyptian museum two months ago and the cause of six deaths.

That I knew of.

Shows That Make Ya Go Wooh

My wife is addicted to the new big thing on network TV which is an endless barrage of talent shows... dance competitions, comedy laugh-off's, singing contests... and every night, every single pause between every single act and every single comment (save for the boo's following those of the token critic) is filled with the sounds of the crowd's WOOOOH's.

"I don't think I can handle
She goes channel to channel
Cold lookin' for that hero
She watch channel zero"

I'm about to throw a brick through the goddamn thing.

By Popular Demand

Marky Mark: This story is not testing well with its target audience. You're going to have to change the ending if you want any hope at movie rights.

TEST ENDING #1
I opened the bag and the kitten leaped out with a hiss and immediately buried its teeth into my thumb. I yelled and accidentally kicked the bowl of food my fiancé had laid out (I had called her on my cell phone) scattering kibble all over the place. The kitten made a dive for the railing, three stories over the parking lot below. I clutched at it to prevent it from killing itself and it sunk all four claws (each with five happy daggers, mind you) into my arm, wrapping itself like a boa constrictor about my now bleeding forearm.

Continuing to scream with even more gusto then before when I had had a paltry thumb wound as my only concern...bah...a piffle when compared with the Death of a Thousand Pinpricks streaming with Sadaam Hussein's "rivers of blood” that my formerly satisfied and content limb had become.

Somehow... I guess some survival instinct kicked in... I managed to pick up the water bowl also placed by my fiancé who was now laughingly gleefully behind a half-inch of glass, safe from this feline torment...and dumped it’s contents over the kitten. Immediately, it dropped to the floor of the balcony and began casually licking itself as if absolutely nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

In my pain-fueled rage, I made to give it a little smack but then the kitten swished its tail and gave me a look as if to say “Don’t go there”!

INSERT LAUGH TRACK HERE

Just Two Words

Bad Music for Bad People

Into the Lupins, Part Four: Dead By Dawn!

I am a little surprised at the huge amount of calls and e-mail’s requesting further episodes featuring my lawn equipment. Given the lackluster response from the kitten story, I’m amazed that the daily appeals of “How’s the mower doin’?”, “Bring back Strike Force Delta!”, and “More lawn stories please” have not abated.

Well, sorry dear readers, but you are going to have to wait a little longer for further yard adventures. My northern tale must be told.

The last time I had been on the ferry was almost exactly seven years ago when my sister and I drove my mother’s Geo Metro from her winter place in central Florida to Newfoundland. I reveled in the wind and spray then too but the only other thing I saw was the inside of the bar. I spent the first 10 hours of the trip buried in this dim, low-ceilinged cave of a place downing Keith’s Ales with the Canucks.

Half the time I was huddled over an array of twelve postcards in which I drew a giant mural glorifying some Posse party that was coming up. My confused and befuddled mind thought that the various recipients of these postcards would notice that other’s had received similar ones and, DaVinci Code-esque, the mural would eventually be pieced together.

Ha! What an idiot.

Big man on campus

Liam started kindergarten today... first time in a full-time school scene. It was crazy sending him off on the bus this morning... kind of a line of demarcation in the little guy's life. East lies toddlerdom and the rest of a life completely dominated by the parents. West lies a new world with a huge part of life away from Mom and Dad.

"Wow... I'm a real kid now!"

Unfortunately, Sir Francis Drake got a time-out on his first day for talking.

Not today, Megatron!

Well, unlike I predicted, Transformers have indeed turned out to be Liam’s next obsession. He has seven or eight of them now… mostly from relatives, a few from us.

I’m assuming everyone reading this knows what Transformers are… a series of cartoons and toys from the 80’s in which robots that can change into cars, truck, and jets battle other robots than can change into cars, truck, and…

Well… jets.

I can just see the executives at the toy company that ended up with this absolutely incredible concept aka freakin’ goldmine.

“Ok, you say this toy is for boys.”

“Ummm. It’s a truck. Well, Mr. Gozhu, it’s been a pleas-“

“Wait a sec, what are you do- you're breaking it - it's.. it’s a truck that changes into a GIANT ROBOT WITH MISSILES AND A GUN??!!???!!”

“Can I get something for you, Mr. Gozhu? Some tea, a soda, perhaps my daughter’s phone number?”

Gads… sheer genius!

Anyway, I was a little too old when the Transformers came out and really knew nothing about them until now. I was into Speed Racer and Star Blazers (both super-cool) when I was pretty young plus Ultra-Man before I can even remember (apparently, I had some lung problem when I was a tyke and I was in some kind of chamber at the hospital and I called it my Ultra-Man tent) but that’s where my Japanimation exposure ends… after that it was all Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers for little Jimmy.

Now, of course, I know why the Autobots fled their homeworld of Cybertron and why Megatron needs energon cubes for his nefarious schemes, but mostly I’m the guy that can clip Prowl’s door back on and fit Ultra Magnus’ lower rear rack to his side panels.

Plus I’m psyched for the movie coming out next July 4th!

Get On the Bus

To me, it's always nice to get back into the usual routine following a vacation. Unfortunately, my current one is about to be scrapped forever since Liam is heading off on the bus for kindergarten this Monday... the first time he's had an all-day school week.

This is truly a big deal in the fam. We're setting up charts, adjusting lights-out and wake-up times, and optimizing pre-bed drills. Quite the event. And no I'm not the Great Santini but without some normalizing of the usual screaming and pleading chaos in my household, that ol' bus will be arriving at the school Liamless more often than not.

West and wewaxation at wast…

We’re back from a relaxing week at Kerry’s aunt’ s house on the beach in Delaware. How relaxing? Well, for 7 days and nights, I never had anything on my feet more constricting than Target Teva’s and until an hour before starting the long 14 hour drive home, never had a shower that wasn’t in the outside one downstairs. Yup, the whole sunblock-slathering, castle-constructing, body-surfing, spitting-sand-from-sips-of-beer beach thingie… sweet.

Why isn’t there a PC simulator for sand castle building?

On the way back, we overdosed the kids on the old Disney live-action movies… the Fred MacMurray ones… “The Shaggy Dog”, “The Absent-Minded Professor” (aka “Flubber”), and the madcap Sandy Duncan/Dean Jones romp “The Million Dollar Duck”. Shoot me but without actually seeing any of the videos, they all sounded pretty funny to me. The voices that the guys had in some of these things were hilarious.

I know I used to watch the TV series “My Three Sons” that Fred MacMurray was in but I can’t remember more than a few fragmented images. One thing I do remember was bit from HBO’s “Not Necessarily the News” where Rich Hall of Sniglets fame walks into a mensroom urgently looking under the doors for a stall empty of feet. The last one had three sets and one foot began to tap while the themesong from “My Three Sons” kicked in. Yeah, I know, I know but a) this has been lodged in my neurons for over twenty years, and b) I still think it’s funny!

Outlander!!!

Well, I'm back from a 3-day visit to a filter plant two hours outside Chicago... deep, deep within the corn belt. Monday it was easily 110 deg in the plant... quite the disgusting sweatfest.

And now Team K is off to Delaware for a week on the beach.... woo hoo!

Into the Lupins, Part Three: Sheez… what a ferry!

We boarded the ship and spent the next 14 hours playing card games, watching movies, and walking around the ship. I have almost zero experience on the water but, for some reason, I have read a ton of novels set on the seas: The Sea-Wolf, Caine Mutiny, all of the Aubrey-Maturin series of which Master and Commander is the first, and more. So whenever I got any free time from keeping the kids entertained (translation: about 20 minutes total), I would stand outside in the wind and spray, reveling in the elements.

Although the wind was fierce (in some spots on the ship, you could walk into the gale leaning at 45 degrees), it wasn’t that cold. Since the ship was enshrouded in fog for the entire voyage… same for the way back… there wasn’t much to look at but it never got dull.

In fact, when I do this again, I’m going to bring some hardcore rain gear and put in some time on the Ahab thing.

Sure... I'll have one... thanks.

Well, after spending all day in the backyard, I was gonna put in some time blogging about my Friday night intown plus more of the Canada trip but ended up drinking a few in the garage of the next door neighbors talking about trees, hiking, dogs, and the Clermont. Nothing wrong with being neighborly, right?

Into the Lupins, Part Two: Here There Be Moose

At Cape Breton Highlands National Park, I set off on my own on the Skyline Trail, a 2-3 hour hike that wanders through woods and vast clearings peppered with dead balsam fir trees, killed off by the spruce budworm and moose. I saw moose prints and scat everywhere so at every turn, I was poised to run into a moose but I never saw one. One part of the trail comes out onto an amazing point of land jutting out high over the ocean… windy and beautiful.

Returning to the trailhead and getting picked up by the rest, I am a bit pissed to find out they saw 4 or 5 moose while driving on the road. Here I am, hiking right through the middle of prime moose stomping grounds, and they see a bunch from the minivan! Oh well, I did too later.

Speaking of moose, here is a pic of the road sign seen in Maine and here is the one you see in Newfoundland. Note that the US one looks like a spindly Bullwinkle compared to the burly he-moose of our northern neighbor. And here is one that we never saw but it would sure keep me driving slow with the high-beams.