Making a Life

Happy Pentecost!

2010-05-22T18:33:00.001-07:00

Did I ever tell you that Pentecost is one of my favorite holy days? It ranks right behind Easter in terms of my attachment to it. I have this thing about the Holy Spirit. I suppose the intellectuality of the Spirit appeals to me. The Spirit represents wisdom to me. It is one gift of the Spirit I have always coveted—if you can covet such things.

We used to warn each other not to ask for patience, because then God would give us trials in which to display such a gift. Tongues—I used to think that that would be a cool thing to have. Later I realized that through the opportunity to read scripture at Mass, as Isaiah said, the Lord indeed has given me a well trained tongue, that I might speak to the weary a word that will rouse them.

A friend of mine used to wear a button on his cap that bore the legend PBPGIFWMY, that is, Please Be Patient. God Isn’t Finished With Me Yet. I have lately been reminded that this growing in the Spirit is a process that goes on for your whole life.

In the belief that I can’t do it alone, I am exploring a new Men’s Bible Study and prayer group that is being formed in my parish. I used to belong to a small group of four or five men who met in each other’s houses, but it has been many years since I’ve done anything like that. Pete is still in the parish, but Emerick has passed on, Joe moved away.

I still remember Emerick’s simple question: what is grace? Sure that I could find the answer, I scoured scripture for instances of grace in an effort to arrive at a definition. I presented my findings to him at a later meeting. He responded, not with satisfaction at my answer but with another question—something like, “What else?” That stopped me cold. I obviously never recovered, since I still talk about it.

Sometimes you can't catch a break

2010-05-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

I took Friday off to go to the dentist, and decided to get the chest xray that my doctor wanted. So anyway I was in the backyard when our neighbor Aleta called across the yard, “Are you busy?” “What do you need” I asked.

Now for those of you who don’t know Aleta, she is a very nice lady who has been our neighbor for thirty years. She worked as a legal secretary before she retired. She was divorced long before we met her, and several of her kids still live in the area.

She came over and we stood in the driveway while she told me, “I got troubles” and started to cry. She said she had just been diagnosed with breast cancer--and she's 85. She is always in her garden all summer, cutting her grass, weeding—she said, “I’m still going out to buy plants” as if she weren’t going to be around to see them produce vegetables in her garden. Kathy called her later and we reassured her that she was in our prayers.

The Big 3-9

2010-04-25T14:49:00.001-07:00

Kathy and I celebrated the big 3-9 on Saturday by going out to a little French restaurant here called Le Bistro du Beaujolais. You can find the menu here: http://www.lebistrodubeaujolais.com/home. We both opened up with the Mini Vol au Vent d’Escargots. I had called ahead to make sure they didn’t mince the little guys like some places do. (They didn’t.) Kathy had the Pavé de Romsteak Sauce au Bleu , I ordered the Truite farcie au Crabe. We are pretty sure there was heroin in the mashed potatoes. She let me have a taste and I was so infatuated with both her steak and the potatoes that she ordered a whole dinner to go so I could have it for Sunday.

It was a small place in an old house, but it held a lot of people. When we arrived, the tiny parking lot was full, so we made our own space. Once inside, there were rooms of empty tables, so we couldn’t figure out where everyone was. We must have arrived early by their standards, since the tables filled up later. There was an honest to goodness French family sitting next to us (what’s that they say about Chinese restaurants? If real Chinese people eat there, it must be good?) I gave Kathy an anniversary card that she found amusing, such that the woman at the other table looked over and wondered what was so funny. We passed the card around their table, too.

We both had dessert—Remy Martin for Kathy and chocolate mousse for me, though the red wine pears were sounding pretty good. When we go back, I’ll get the steak and Kathy wants to try the
Boeuf Bourguignon. Remembering mom’s big vat on the stove with a quarter inch layer of congealed fat on top kind of put me off beef burgundy, though.

Appropriately, we had started the evening out by going to 4:30 Mass in the same church in which we had been married, so that was kind of nice. There was one photo of us sitting in the sanctuary on that day, that I remembered, so I sort of superimposed that over the scene at Mass while we sat in our pew.

Happy Resurrection Day

2010-04-03T20:37:00.000-07:00

We’re just home from a wonderful Easter vigil Mass. It was even more special than usual because Kathy was a reader, taking a part of the Exodus reading. A woman who had read at the vigil for many years (Maureen) passed away a few weeks ago, and two readers decided to leave, so I was really stuck. Kathy volunteered to read—only the second time she has ever been up there—and she did a great job. Holy Saturday is always the day when I think about how my life, how my family, how the whole world would be different if Jesus had not existed, if He had not come, taught, died and rose. Would all our cities resemble Pottersville, from "It's a Wonderful Life", where the 'working poor' are crushed by avaricious landlords like Mr. Potter? Or would they descend into the hedonistic vision of "Back to the Future", where Biff uses the sports almanac to build a gambling empire? If we couldn't be 'good Christians', what would we be? How would we treat each other without Christ's example to emulate?

Take a look around at your world and imagine all the church spires gone, no minister to turn to in times of despair, no one to share your faith with, because you wouldn't have any to share. This is the one day when we can say "What if", and maybe come to a better appreciation of tomorrow's gift. Perhaps Easter is a better time than New Year's Eve to resolve to do better in the coming year, since it marks the beginning of our real New Year, our acceptance of salvation.How would your life be different without Easter?

Poker night

2010-03-13T18:06:00.000-08:00

Seven year old Max came over on Tuesday, which is getting to be poker night, since that’s what we’ve been doing lately with him. Before the big game, though, he had some of Nana’s famous mac n cheese. We shut off the TV to visit, and I asked him about school. He was typically noncommittal, though he did talk to two girls in his class, Krista and Katerina.

He started talking about those hand buzzers that kids use to shock each other, and how one might be built. His dad cautioned him strongly about playing with electricity, but asked him, theoretically, how he might go about making such a thing. Max surprised us all by saying, “I have a diagram in my pocket.” Sure enough, there it was: an exploded view of a buzzer, complete with “battery holder” and “copper wire”. Shane said it looked like the kid version of the Anarchist’s Handbook.

Nana was the big winner in poker, taking the “all in” hand at the end.

Look who' s 60

2010-03-06T17:52:00.001-08:00

Today is my 60th birthday. I’ve come to terms with it. It was a little rough for the past year or so leading up to it, as I thought about what it might mean. Growing up, anyone who was 60 was really old! I remember that 50 kind of felt good. 60 is not much different, though I might be creaking a little more than I did ten years ago.

I’m fresh from my birthday dinner with the in-laws. We tried a place that none of us had ever been to before. It bills itself as “comfort food with a twist”. We had a nice time with great food—one brother in law even cleaned his plate of his chicken parm, and the other liked his steak. I had lamb chops and discovered that I really don’t care for lamb chops, but I could see where they were going with it.

Everything was going along just fine until the checks came. There were errors on all three of them. Ours was correct the second time (we wound up owing more). Kathy and I left, though, while the others waited for their checks to be corrected for the third time. Too bad. We were thinking of returning there some time.

I spend the day doing things I like to do: I got a haircut, and walking back from the barber, I saw a pretty girl in a red Corvette stuck in the snow across the street from our house. What to do? I got a board and some carpeting from our garage and went to the rescue. Later I went to Borders and got a book on the photo software I use, and wandered aimlessly around the store for a while. So it was pretty much a perfect day.

As long as I keep up with walking the dog a few miles a day, swimming and weight training, I should be able to keep age at bay. After all, isn’t 60 the new 40?

Memories of Maureen

2010-02-21T12:37:00.000-08:00

One of our friends from church, a woman named Maureen, died a couple of weeks ago. We think she had pancreatic cancer, since she went so fast. Two weeks before she died, she was in church, telling us how she was having a hard time with her treatments, with blood counts so low that they couldn’t even administer the treatments. She went into the hospice which is just up the hill from our house. I went to see her one day, but I yielded my time to a couple of ladies who had driven over from the east side to see her. They used to teach with her. Turns out I should have just gone up with them, since on that day she was lucid, talking to visitors, but by the next day, when I finally got back there, she was just sleeping.

I was fortunate to be invited to do the readings at her funeral, since her two adult children said they would not be able to get through it. The night after she died I was in her house, planning the liturgy with her husband and the priest who was going to help with the Mass. Her kids traded stories about their mom while the five grandchildren meandered, crawled and otherwise orbited the table where we grownups sat.

Maureen and her mom (who passed away two years ago) had a standing hair appointment every Thursday. Sometimes the kids would go with them. Her daughter said it was a wonder they didn’t develop lung disease, since the women would get into the car after the appointment and pull cans of hairspray out from under their seats and liberally spray their hair, locking it into place. The kids could (and did) bounce wadded up paper off their mother’s hair helmet.

One time when Maureen and her husband John were in Las Vegas, the hair appointment loomed large when, at the airport gate, the agent announced that they needed two people to give up their seats for some VIP’s who needed to fly out that night. They offered a sweet deal: two $500 ticket vouchers, transportation to a hotel, dinner that night, and first class seats back home on the following day. John wanted to grab it, and Maureen said no—she had to get to her hairdressers the next day! Once on the plane, John couldn’t help himself, “I hope you enjoy your $1,000 hair appointment,” he scowled.

We gave her a nice sendoff, with trumpets and a tympani and some great hymns.

If you lived during the 60's

2010-01-30T17:12:00.000-08:00

We just finished a heck of a cold snap here, with temperatures staying in the teens for the last week. The other day the wind was whipping through town as a front came through, but then things calmed down. Fortunately, Tank and I did not have to contend with much wind on our walks. I did keep it short, though, since he doesn’t have a very thick coat.

I took him for a bath on Saturday, this time just the two of us went. I had reserved the shower room at the dog wash place. We have the routine down pretty well now. They give you about a half gallon of shampoo and they expect you to use it all. I applied his medicinal shampoo after the oatmeal mix they give you, so he is super clean right now. His coat is repairing itself well now, such that unless you know where to look, you can’t see the former bare spots. Later, I cleaned his ears and brushed his teeth, so he’s ready for his close-up.

My goals at work on Friday were a) Leave early, b) Get my email cleaned up and c) Get control of my desk. I accomplished all three, but not in that order. Ever since the Great Flood, I’ve felt out of control, with papers strewn everywhere. Fortunately, most of what I found had already been handled and could safely be recycled. I got my email down to about two inches worth of screen.

Grandson Max stopped over on Saturday for a visit for a couple of hours. Max discovered a Lego set that had never been touched—I think he took it with him. He did goof around with a some pieces of something for a while, then he and I watched cartoons while he had a lunch-snack. We watched something called “The Kids Next Door”. After a while I thought the show was getting a little out of hand and I remarked, “I wonder if we should be watching this…” and Max responded by saying, “It’s OK. It’s funny violence—like Tom and Jerry.”

On Saturday night, we all went to Bonefish for my brother in law's 60th birthday celebration. The waiter wasn’t the sharpest, it was crowded, we had a crappy table, but we still managed to have a good time. My contribution to his birthday booty was a CD of Procol Haram, a group from the 60’s that he liked. It was interesting talking to a twenty something sales clerk in a music store, trying to explain what I was looking for. His manager wasn’t any more hip, as he confused the group’s big hit “Whiter Shade of Pale” with Simon and Garfunkel’s “Hazy Shade of Winter”. Jeez—where do they find these people? I told daughter Ann this story and she said, Oh yeah—the Bangles’ song. No—you have to go back a little further.

Woo-hoo! Burning through a four day weekend

2010-01-17T17:07:00.000-08:00

Four day weekends are the way to go. Kathy and I both took Friday off last week, and I had MLK Day off. We had a nice day on Friday since it had stopped snowing and warmed up a little bit. We ran errands, went grocery shopping and then went out to lunch at Outback.

One highlight of the errands was taking Tank for a bath at the dog wash. This time we used the shower room and it went much more smoothly. Kathy was there this time, though she practically had an anxiety attack over the prospect of bathing the beast. He behaved quite well and stood patiently while we worked him over with an oatmeal shampoo and then his medicated stuff. He was unperturbed by the all the yap dogs that surrounded him.

I kind of treated Saturday as a work day, though, since I was working on staff evaluations. There is a new on line way to do those things now that is supposed to be “easier”, “faster” and “more convenient”, but I think that just applies to the people in HR. I was so frustrated and infuriated by the new system. At first, every time I tried to open the instruction page, it would freeze my computer. I called the help line at work and of course then it miraculously started to work.

My plan was to do all my evaluations (I have five to do) and then tell the staff to do their part of the evals. I finally figured out that I cannot do theirs until they do theirs, even though the instructions don’t come out and say that directly. So I printed out the version the system uses and then wrote out as much of the evaluations as I could without using the computer. In the end, I was only able to do half of the work. I can’t access the rest of the work until the staff fills in their part of the forms.

The person who is resigning—Sharon, the one who works with the College of Education who broke her arm January 4—was the easiest to write. I just gave her all the highest marks, and wrote glowing things about her, and she deserves it. I really have some good people working for me. They typically don’t cause trouble and do their work well.

Water, water everywhere

2010-01-09T17:44:00.000-08:00

We had another bunch of snow this week, such that I was clearing the driveway each night and then the next morning. On Friday they were promising 4-8 inches of lake effect snow, but it never materialized. I felt cheated.

This weekend it’s sort of cold, but the sun came out brilliantly on Saturday afternoon, prompting me to wear sunglasses when I walked Tank. He loves the snow, incidentally. He’ll throw himself into the deepest drift he can find, and enjoys snapping up mouthfuls of the stuff as we walk along. I told him he might find a chewey surprise left by another of his species if he keeps that up, but he was undeterred.

In other news, we had a flood in the office this week. On Monday we noticed water coming under the door of an equipment room where electrical and heating equipment is housed. The water kept coming until about half our space was covered with it. Several offices had soggy carpeting, the whole career library floor was soaked. It even started moving into our storage room. The housekeeping people came with all their equipment and sucked up all the water, shampooed the carpets and left by 2pm.

They had just left when a pipe snapped in my own personal office, and brown yucky water poured out, flooding the floor and moving into the space outside my door. Now, you must understand that the floor is part of my filing system. Anything on the carpet was soaked, but fortunately, I don’t keep very important stuff down there.

So we called the cleaning people back, and they sucked out the water and treated the carpet with antimicrobial solutions and then left. The carpet was still very stinky, though, so I called them back to redo it. We’ll see how it is on Monday morning, but when I left on Friday, it wasn’t too bad. Someone else’s office that, didn’t even have as much water as I did, had an awful stench on Friday.

It’s all an academic exercise until it’s your own office that is involved. I moved all my furniture out including a big filing cabinet and couch, along with two small filing cabinets and all my chairs. All that is in there is a bookcase and my desk, which is covered with junk that belongs in drawers somewhere. Or on the floor in my filing system. The building engineers have to come back and check their repairs before I can put my space back together again. Every time I look for something, it’s in the hallway somewhere.

Turns out the University thought they could save money by turning off the heat over the winter break. The result was that the water pipe that supplies the sprinkler system froze and broke. My boss had a geranium cutting in a Cool Whip bowl of water in his office sitting on the radiator. The bowl was frozen solid.

Let's give ourselves something for a change

2009-12-27T16:58:00.000-08:00

Christmas was lots of fun with all the kids home. Our grandson was thrilled with every package he opened--probably because none of them contained underwear or socks.

Our big news this week is that we have a new car. We went to the Toyota dealer on Boxing Day and leased another Camry, but this time we decided to treat ourselves to the next level up. The interest rate was only 1.2%, and everyone assured us that prices would be going up after the New Year. So, for “only” thirty dollars more a month than we were paying for the last three years, we now have the following goodies:
-leather seats
-heated seats
-power moonroof
-fog lights!
-17” wheels
-six CD changer in the radio, with XM Radio free for three months
-slightly more powerful engine with supposedly better gas mileage
-steering wheel tilts and telescopes
-power seats on both driver and passenger sides

I think those are the main differences between our old car and this one. These are all things we’ve never had on a car, but wished we did. Kathy was especially pleased with this package.

We bought the one we test drove. Given that it was a frigid day outside, the heated seats were a big selling point. We may not need the CD changer, since we only go on short trips to work and back, and if I drive to NJ, I just plug in my iPod, and XM Radio is not something we necessarily care about.

The last time we had a sunroof was on the 1974 VW bus. It had a hand crank, and it opened the entire roof into a four foot square hole. Fog lights are exciting because we’ve only had the holes where they go in our other cars.

There is a history of landmarks, watersheds, benchmarks—whatever marks you care to use—a trail of “firsts”. For instance, we remember:
- the first car we got with air conditioning
- the first car with power windows
- the first one with remote control side mirrors
- the first car with a CD player
- the first one with a power seat on the driver’s side
Maybe other people take these for granted, but we think they are pretty neat. For a long time we couldn’t afford air conditioning, though we would pay extra for the automatic transmission. Power anything seemed a long way off for us. Now that we are approaching our dotage, darn it—we deserve some creature comforts, especially those bun warmers.

The latest news

2009-12-20T15:44:00.000-08:00

I am still here. The dog did not eat me, though he has eaten into my free time in a huge way. Once I get home and walk him, eat dinner, and try to read something, it’s time to go to bed. I have some time off from work now, so here I am.

Here’s what’s happening:

Our youngest has accepted a new job! He will be moving to Tacoma, Washington in a few days to begin work for the Tacoma Habitat for Humanity affiliate. He is pleased with his choice, and we are glad he can stick with Habitat, since he knows it so well. Of course, we are less pleased with the prospect of having him 2,422 miles away, but we kind of used to his peripatetic ways. He does have two sea kayaks as well as a snowboard, so recreationally speaking, he is well prepared for the region.

Max’s tonsillectomy worked out just fine. He had the usual discomfort, didn’t feel like doing much except watch movies and maybe play a video game. We saw him for a while on Saturday and he was a little subdued, but otherwise feeling fine. He helped decorate the tree, played a card game with his dad, and uncle and aunt.

Our daughter is in from Ireland for a couple of weeks, and she came with lots of goodies you can’t get over here. She hasn’t been home for Christmas since 2007, so Kathy is quite pleased. She has been visiting friends from high school and hanging out with her brothers, squeezing as much fun as possible into these weeks.

We seemed to do a lot of our Christmas shopping at the supermarket this year, since gift cards are so easy and people like them. Kathy and I missed our usual shopping day last weekend because I had to work at commencement, so this was a good way to get it done.

Last night the sermon was about how we’ve spent this Advent season: is Jesus any more present in our lives on this last Sunday of Advent than He was on the first Sunday? Uh oh. I better get crackin’.

Better late than never?

2009-11-14T16:49:00.000-08:00

Last week we had a meeting up at church for all the “Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Eucharist” (not supposed to say “Eucharistic Minister”). Anyway, after we got the word on the choreography changes the bishop wants, we all left to go home. On the way across the parking lot, I wound up walking next to a guy I’ve seen in church for thirty-some years, but to whom I had never spoken. He is eminently recognizable, since he’s a big tall guy with a luxurious handlebar mustache. So I made my move, telling him that I’d seen him in church ever since 1976, but never introduced myself. So we did that, and he said, Oh I’m shy, but once you get me talking…And so we talked for a few minutes in the parking lot and then went our separate ways.

Later I realized that I had missed out on 33 years of knowing this man, all because I had never said anything to him in all that time. I think I'll get cracking on meeting more people.

What did you do with your extra hour?

2009-11-01T10:13:00.000-08:00

I had to carve a frowny face in our pumpkin this year, since we did not see Max on Halloween. Fortunately, we did see his bat costume last weekend, so it wasn’t a total loss. He has been doing well in school, so we are glad about that.

Halloween 2009 was a cool blustery one. We had 53 kids this year, before we packed it in at 7:15pm. Trick or treating runs from 6-8pm, but things got very quiet so there was no point in sitting out there any longer. We had the requisite Ninjas, Scream guy, demons and even a tiny Yoda. We also had a little fireman in flannel, a shark, a Gene Simmons girl, a cow, two butterflies, a bloody princess and a banana. One enterprising character walked up with a cardboard box wrapped in foil on his shoulders and two squares sticking out of it. It wasn’t until he had walked away that I realized he was a toaster.

The strangest incident was watching a new neighbor back out of her driveway from two houses down, park carefully in front of our house and have her daughter come up to me for a treat, then drive off.

Kathy’s office participated in a trick or treat event for the neighborhood kids at the hospital. Over a hundred came over and walked around the cafeteria, stopping at tables that various departments and offices had set up. Kathy wore a little witch’s hat decorated with marabou feathers. She recently got her hair cut so it’s much shorter than it was, and sometimes it looks a little poufie. All this to say that one little girl remarked to Kathy, “I like your hat” and the little boy behind her added, “And I like your wig.”

I love the Sunday when we “fall back.” I just luxuriate in all the extra time. It’s not even 10am yet and I’ve already done a wash, defrosted the basement refrigerator, gone to breakfast with Kathy straightened up the house and finished this letter. Now I’m going outside to finish winterizing the yard. Too bad no one needs a house painted or something.

Trooper Day

2009-10-10T17:07:00.001-07:00

If you had been on Cleveland State’s campus this past Wednesday, you would have seen dozens of state troopers, the SWAT van, mobile crime labs, the canine unit and the mounted unit all up and down East 18th Street. If you thought we were under siege by a deranged gunperson, no one could blame you. But wait—all is well. It was “Trooper Day”, with the Ohio State Highway Patrol and the Pennsylvania State Police coming to recruit students. Many students did think something was wrong and were afraid to come over to that side of campus. We had to go over and convince them that everything was OK.

The PA State Police landed a helicopter on the soccer field, and that was a big hit. I have a photo of our director standing by the helo with the pilot and a couple of troopers. I told him the caption should be “Governor Klein arrives in the state helicopter”. The troopers were happy with the number of applicants they had and they want to do it again next year. We have some ideas on how to make it more welcoming: balloons, a DJ, and a popcorn machine. We also want to do it earlier, since we stood in a freezing cold, rainy wind all day. And the helicopter? Turns out he landed on the wrong field. He should have been on the practice field—they had to chase him off because there was a game scheduled that same day.

Silly Season

2009-10-04T17:35:00.000-07:00

We are gearing up for elections in November here. There are several seats on the school board, another school tax issue and miscellaneous judges running. I called and asked for a sign for our front yard urging passage of the school tax, and it arrived the other day. Even though we don’t have any kids in public schools and only one of ours ever did attend public school here, the high school art program was very important for our son years ago. Besides, good schools should help property values.

On Saturday afternoon, a little old lady came to the door and asked Kathy if she could put a sign in our yard supporting one of the school board candidates. Kathy said, oh sure, and the little old lady stuck the sign in the ground and went on down the street. I missed all this action so I looked up her web site and discovered she was a Republican! The horror! But she was also an art teacher for many years, a school principal, and has worked in almost every school in the district. Who else could know the issues as well? I showed Kathy the photo on the site and she said—how about that—it was the candidate herself. So the sign stays. Hey—she’s 73—I don’t believe she’s the next Sarah Palin.

An international affair

2009-09-19T17:44:00.000-07:00

We had a new guy start this week at work—the one I mentioned who is from Nigeria. His supervisor and I took him out to lunch on Tuesday, and had an interesting conversation. It was my fault. I asked him about Nigeria, and he stretched out his arm on a vacant chair next to him, stopped eating, and began an expansive discourse on the major tribes of Nigeria, the regions in which they live and the relative political power of each. While it was a remarkable presentation, I broke in to relate some tidbit of my own in order to give him a chance to eat, since, after all, we did eventually have to get back to the office. He politely sat and listened to me, but he didn’t start eating again. I had to indicate that it was OK to eat while I talked.

I am so glad he does not report to me. His supervisor was run ragged all week taking him to meetings and events. I just had to sit with him for about an hour to explain our database system to him, and he understood it easily, since he has an IT background.

One of the coordinators who does report to me was out sick a couple of days this past week. She sounded awful on the phone. The director’s secretary had also been sick, so I hope whatever it is is not marching through the office. When the coordinator returned to work on Friday, I hung a biohazard symbol on her door. She didn’t think it was all that funny. I got a kick out of myself, though.

Puttin' on the Ritz

2009-09-13T17:45:00.001-07:00

This was the weekend for Kathy’s Big Adventure at the Ritz downtown with Lois and Priscilla. This is their third such outing. Apparently lounging in opulent surroundings and being spoiled by an attentive staff never gets old. They went to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum (the operators are persnickety about including the words “and Museum” in the title) on Friday afternoon after checking in. Kathy was enthralled with all things Mick Jagger and her sisters of course made fun of her. On Saturday they window shopped around the mall that makes up much of the Terminal Tower complex and then went to dinner at a fancy-dancy place a few blocks from the hotel. The wait staff was all over them and the food was magnificent, so they had a great time. Kathy even had a piece of cake with a candle in it as a surprise from the restaurant.

The room did not have the fabulous view of the river that they had last time, but the registration people remembered them greeting them saying, “Oh, you’re back for your pajama party!” Looks like this could be habit forming.

Not to put too fine a point on it...

2009-09-09T17:13:00.000-07:00

Tank has been settling in this past week. We’ve been walking a mile and a half at 5am and another two miles at 5pm and one of us should be in pretty good shape soon. On Saturday of the Labor Day weekend, our extended family met at the same park we had had breakfast in back on the Fourth of July. Tank was the big attraction since most people had not met him yet. Shane’s girlfriend, the tri-athlete, took him for a run back and forth in a big field; a nephew's girlfriend took him for a walk in the woods, then my brother and sister in law took him for another spin on the trail. By the time we got home, he was exhausted. This is significant because we’d never seen him like that. He had always seemed ready to go. In any case, everyone was suitably impressed with him. He was, of course, a perfect gentleman. Oh. Except for the crotch thing, but hey—he’s a dog.

Kathy and I went out to breakfast on Sunday, did a little PetSmart shopping and then came home to give Tank his first bath with us. We did it outside since it was so warm. He did very well, but Kathy did not. You see, Tank took out my good knee during the Saturday outing. He swung his head at just the right angle and that was it. She was afraid he was going to take me down during the bath, but he behaved quite well.

The 24 Hour Report

2009-08-28T17:10:00.000-07:00

We have been dog owners again for twenty-four hours, and here is our report.

Tank is very well mannered and has lived up to his former owners’ glowing description. They dropped him off last night with all his equipment: two beds, feeding bowls, toys, leashes, food and food container. Kathy slept downstairs so he wouldn’t feel lonely, but it turns out he spent most of the night out in the living room.

I took him out for an early walk at 5:30am this morning, as he excitedly explored the neighborhood. Apparently he is not as interested in marking his territory as our former dog Kodiak was, since Tank just pees until he is done, all in one spot. Later in the afternoon, we went for our first mile walk and he did not even stop to sniff anything but just walked briskly down the sidewalk watching everything.

He knows many commands and is very easy to direct both inside and outside. They warned us he does not like the rain, and I found that out tonight when it started to sprinkle during our evening constitutional. He shook himself every few steps, though it wasn’t even raining very hard, and he plunged ahead trying to hurry us along, as if he were about to melt.

He really is a great dog and it’s wonderful to have such a beast in the house once again.

Tank is coming!

2009-08-22T17:52:00.000-07:00

Our big news is that we are taking possession of our new dog on Thursday this week. The owner called us a few days ago to let us know that we were the successful suitors. They felt good about us and our house and believed that Tank would be loved and cared for well here. We are very excited. At first we were going to take him in on Labor Day weekend, but since the owners are going away next weekend and needed someone to watch him anyway, they asked to transfer him to us earlier. I was anxious to get him in here, so I was happy to agree.

They are giving us a bag of food, his bowls, toys, bed and a “manual” on how to take care of him, so we should be in good shape. When Ann Kodiak, she had a seven page owners manual. Tank’s is only three pages, but that should help. Kathy will take Friday off to help him ease into our household. So here we go!

Interview with the dog

2009-08-16T15:35:00.000-07:00

We had an exciting Saturday morning being interviewed by a prospective dog. I had worked myself into a state over this beast—I didn’t sleep well on Thursday, on Friday night I couldn’t sleep at all so I came downstairs for a while. Finally, It was D-Day ( D for Dog). We were waiting on the front steps when “Tank” and his owners pulled into the driveway. He bounded out of the back hatch of the SUV and our first thought was: Jeepers! He’s big!

Anyone who has been in our house probably wouldn’t recognize it after we staged it for this dog. We put four or five chairs in the basement, along with the exercise bike and an end table, all to make the house look bigger to the owners. Kathy had a brilliant idea to collapse the dining room table down to the size of a bistro table, which opened up the whole room. In fact, once Tank had settled down, he laid on the dining room rug and filled the whole space. He really is the size of small horse, weighing 135 pounds.

Max was here this weekend, so they got to meet everyone, too. The owners brought their three year old daughter with them, and she and Max got along famously. They brought down toys and played together while the grownups talked and Tank paced around the house. Near the end of the visit, I took him for a test drive around the block and we did very well. We should know in a week or so if we are the winners.

Checking in again

2009-08-09T17:54:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize it had been so long since I've posted. Bad blogger, bad! It's just too nice outside at night to be in front of a computer screen.

Last week I was in Chicago for a conference. OK, not exactly in Chicago, but in Lombard, a surburb that wound up being 45 minutes away from the airport, provided the traffic is moving. The conference was pretty good altogether. I got to see my friends from around the country, take photos of everyone, hear some useful ideas and also present a workshop. I heard later that people liked it, so that was gratifying.

We are closer than ever to a new dog. The friend of one of our son's Facebook friends has a Great Dane that she cannot keep and so she is looking for a good home for him. He is five years old, all black with natural floppy ears, 135 pounds, and reportedly very smart and sweet. I spoke to the owner the other day and we had a long conversation as she vetted our credentials as potential Great Dane owners. At first she said she had several people interested and that she would get back to me, but at the end of the call, she agreed to bring Tank (an apt name, from his photos) to meet us this coming weekend. It turns out that I know the owner from our interactions a few years ago when she worked in HR for a hotel here in town. It’s a small world after all.

We feel as if we are adopting a child, getting nervous, hoping that the “parents” will like us, approve of our living arrangements, and allow us to take their baby. We are trying not to get too excited in case they decide we are not worthy. Kathy pointed out to me that we are "staging" our house for a dog: moving furniture around to make the house look bigger, so they can visualize their baby romping in our space. We are trying not to get our hopes up, pretending that it's OK if we don't get him. But it's not OK. How do people do this when they are adopting a child? How nerve wracking.

Sorry I missed your call...

2009-07-11T19:03:00.000-07:00

Seeing first run movies is not something I usually do. “Public Enemies” was an exception last week. Kathy said she would treat for rental movie—one I would watch, since we rarely agree on what’s “good”. Blockbuster has a deal right now whereby for ten dollars you can take out as many movies or video games as you like for one week, one at a time. Woo-hoo! I went for it. Wish I had known about it during my vacation week.

There were four movies that I knew I wanted to see: Taken, Defiance, Gran Torino, and Knowing. I watched Taken tonight and promptly switched it out for Defiance, which I will watch tomorrow some time. Have you seen Taken? It’s sure to ruin many college age daughters’ plans for a European adventure this summer. It is a guy movie, I suppose, with lots of car chases, fighting, shooting and the like. It was also the fastest movie I ever saw as the 90 minutes or so just shot by. I felt my heart rate rocket and honest to goodness I was on the edge of my seat the entire time.

This afternoon I knocked off another Robert B. Parker novel, a western called “Resolution”. Very fun read with wonderful good guys who hardly say two words at a time—in other words, typical Parker dialogue.

So why this burst of entertainment-seeking activity? I caught up on my New Yorker magazines.

Back on Wednesday three of us from the office volunteered at a local TV station to work a phone bank where people called in with job search questions. The first call I took was from a woman in her fifties who had been temping for the past ten years. I was on with her for half an hour. She managed to shoot down every idea I came up with. I felt I was kind of representing the TV station, so I didn’t tell her what I really thought. Shall I tell you? Well, she’s dug herself a pretty good hole over the last ten years—employers might now wonder what’s wrong with her, that she hadn’t taken a full time job in all that time.

Many of the other calls I took were from people whom I am not equipped to help, at least not over the phone: lots of blue collar guys who did die casting, mechanical assembly—that sort of thing. One poignant call was from a guy who did have some college and I was able to encourage him to get back to school somehow. As we talked he eventually told me he had a felony arrest, but no conviction. I didn’t ask him about the details, nor did he volunteer them.

Another was from a nice little old lady (I imagine) who had been retired for the past fourteen years. She had worked for thirty years in one company, and was now concerned about people who could have served as references, but whom she can longer find. I think that thirty years is reference enough. Why was she returning to work? She had been raising her grandson since the day he was born. Now he’s a teenager and no longer needs her 24/7 care. See what I mean? Nice lady.

It is hard to stay optimistic with announcements like last week’s of another 400,000 jobs gone. Makes you wonder where we will be in another year or two.

2009-07-02T08:01:00.000-07:00

This is my ninth day of vacation, if you count last weekend. The first four days were devoted to painting the garage, the rest to messing around in the house and doing decadent things like going to the movies in the middle of the morning. It’s been raining for several days now and cold—cold enough for some Barry’s Tea in fact.

On a recent warmer day, I was sitting in my favorite chair on the deck thinking if this is what retirement would be like. I could see my retired sixty-three year old neighbor who rarely leaves his house and I thought, boy—my world would be pretty small without work or something to do. Kathy assured me that I would be volunteering somewhere probably, doing more at church. I suppose so. There are still four more years before I have to deal with that, though.
Tomorrow everyone is off for the Fourth of July holiday, so Kathy and I wanted to do something together, get out, go somewhere.

When I asked her what she had a taste for, she thought of a casino about an hour and half away in Pennsylvania, some place where we’ve never been. I was a little surprised, but said sure, let’s go. We’ll bring some rolls of quarters and see what happens.

Since I was complaining about my keyboard last time, I should tell you what I did. A genuine Microsoft Natural Ergonomic 4000 keyboard now graces the slide out tray on my computer table. It does take a little while to get used to, but I’m starting to get the idea. It won’t fit under the table with the big plastic strip that raises the front of the board, so I remove that and just snap it back on if I have any extensive typing to do.
At first I was skeptical about buying such a thing, but I went to Best Buy to try it out and when I looked at my hands I was surprised to see that they naturally fell off to the sides anyway. The keyboard I have is not too swoopy with those crazy separate sides for left and right, but seems to be just right for what I need. Best Buy wanted $80 for it, so I got it from tigerdirect.com for $50.

One more note on the new computer: I finally got my “Favorites” over to the bookmark section so I can easily find all your blogs again.

Oh--what movie did I see? "Public Enemies" with Johnny Depp. It was something that I knew that Kathy would never want to see, and I was curious about Depp, since I've seen him in other things like Willy Wonka and Benny and Joone. He was pretty amazing. You're left feeling sad about his death, but you have to remember that Dillinger killed a lot of people himself. Even though you know how it will end, it's still a good story.

What the well dressed seven year old is wearing

2009-06-20T19:18:00.000-07:00

My mother used to joke about someone’s birthday going on for a week like the Queen of England? That seemed to be the case for Max this week. We took Max out to dinner on June 16 for his birthday, the same day he had had a celebration with his mom and that side of the family. On Saturday, we had Kathys' sisters and their husbands over for yet another birthday bash. Max certainly cleaned up on presents this year with all these relatives chipping in. His dad's girlfriend, bought him the winner—a new game and movie player with all the bells and beeps. Shane dazzled our hero with a big mounted poster of his favorite video game with Max’s face Photoshopped into the character’s helmet and armor. Shane also bought forty yellow and green helium balloons for the party. We tied a few to the porch railing out front and Shane and Michelle put together several balloon trees that sprouted around the living room. Later we released a few balloons into the wild. OK—not the most environmentally sound action, but it was fun. Even more fun was watching Max play with his new water toys. He and his father donned (do people still “don” things, or do they just “put them on”?) plastic vests. When you hit your opponent’s chest with a stream of water, a little ball moves up a channel—kind of like the indicator on a dehumidifier—and when it hits the top, you lose. So they chased each other around madly while the rest of us civilians stood safely back from the fray.

In other news, I am still wrestling with my new computer, trying to make it truly mine: changing settings and such. iTunes is an issue, since it won't recognize my original ID; Sams Club suddenly doesn't know who I am; and they've shrunk the darn keyboard so much I can hardly use it. It's too much like a laptop, with the keys all squished together. My big fat fingers are always hitting wrong notes

Where have I been?

2009-06-05T18:13:00.000-07:00

Jeepers, I didn’t realize that it had been that long since I last posted—May 17. So here’s what’s been happening:

I spent Memorial Day weekend in NJ visiting my dad and sibs. We had a great time catching up on everyone’s doings, especially those of all my talented nieces and nephews. One niece’s summer job involves delivering clothes from a fashion designer to celebrities’ houses. She’s met some au currant people I never heard of, though. A nephew—a law student—is working for a judge, another niece leaves soon for a teaching job in Switzerland—they are a busy bunch.

On Memorial Day itself, my sisters and I were drafted as marchers for the Democrats in the town where our brother is on the town council. We were a small but popular group as we slung candy at the kids lining the parade route. It’s gotten to be like Halloween now, as kids expect treats at every parade, even to the point of bringing bags to haul away their loot.

Back at home, Shane and Max went to a classical kids concert on Saturday, both of them dressed up in pants and collared shirts like young gentlemen. Since Max knows all the words to some song called “Holla back” and likes a song by Beyoncé, Shane thought he better get some culture. They both liked the music, sitting in a box in the big concert hall. Back on Election Day, Shane took Max to the polls and allowed him to fill in the circle by the issues on the ballot. Later Shane told us that Max had voted. He reached out his hand and touched his father’s arm saying, “Technically, Dad, technically”. Earlier in the week, he had to go to the ER for a cut on his heel. They put a purple bandage on it, and he groused about how everyone would laugh at him at school since to him it looked like a “girl’s “ bandage. What did he do when he returned to school the next day? Went around saying, “Hey everybody, look at my cool bandage!!”

Battling malware, treating myself

2009-05-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

I have been battling some extremely malicious malware on my computer—something that rendered it virtually useless, so I haven’t been a good correspondent lately. The worm I had would put up irritating notices about my computer being under attack, and then would try to get me to buy some bogus antivirus package (“Spyware Protect 2009”). This thing was so insidious that it would not let me go to malwarebytes.org to get the solution. Eventually any browser I would use would be shut down immediately by this program.

If it happens to you, go straight to www.superantispyware.com and get the free version and do a complete scan of your computer to clean everything out.

Even now, there is still something wrong, since when I click a link in a Google search, IE will go to some random site and not the link I wanted.

Anyway, I decided to get a new printer, since the color stopped working on my current one. I don’t do a lot of printing, and I probably could have limped along with this one for a while but someone else offered to buy it for me, so how could I refuse?

After dithering about it for a week or so, researching HP, Canon, reading reviews (“Love it!”…”Hate it!”…”Waste of money!”…”Fabulous color!”…”Blows through ink cartridges like crazy!”…”Wonderful buy!”), I decided to stay with Lexmark after all. When I bought my Dell six years ago, a LexmarkX75 (scan-copy-print) came with it for free. The darn thing has been plugging along all this time with no problems. Soon Amazon will ship a brand spanking new Lexmark X7675 All-in-One Printer.

HP seemed to have humongous drivers, poor ink management and set up headaches. At least, that’s what stood out for me in the reviews. I have an HP at work and it’s fine if you don’t mind all the clicking and clacking it goes through before producing a document. We have two older HP 2500’s with footprints like dinosaurs that rotate four big toner cartridges, cycling them all through before it spits out what you want. Also, there are approximately forty-two skillion models of HP printers and I just started to get lost after a while.

Canon was a possibility. I had a small Canon back in the 90’s with my first home computer and it worked fine. I guess I didn’t want to pay for features I won’t use, like fax or super dupe photo printing. (I use my Canon Selphy for quick 4x6 prints.) Wireless—I also don’t care about wireless since I don’t have a network at home, and the wireless feature seemed to add fifty bucks to the price.

Today, fourteen hours after I bought the printer, I checked on Amazon and saw that the price had dropped by 32 dollars! I was mad—how stupid! I should have waited till today! But I used that cool feature Amazon has now where they call you—and I clicked the button and my phone immediately rang. I thought it was my sister in law and I was about to tell her I had to get off the phone, and here it was a nice lady in India calling from Amazon. She adjusted my account and I got the new price. I was very pleased.

So, here I’ve gone and spoiled myself again. It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.

Putting in the crops

2009-05-09T13:45:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a lazy blogger lately. The weather has improved, and it’s time to sit out on the deck and read until I can’t see the pages anymore. Since I’m not wireless, I won’t be blogging from the backyard either.

Today it started out warm and sunny, but a cold front blew through this afternoon driving the temperatures into the 50’s. It didn’t keep me from my landscaping projects, though, as I planted the pansy bed again in the back. One year I used Miracle Gro soil, but it just caused the poor dears to become all stalky. What usually happens by July is that it stops raining and no amount of watering can keep them going.

So why bother? They are Kathy’s favorite flower and that’s reason enough.

Happy Mother’s Day!

Dixie, all that

2009-04-26T18:42:00.000-07:00

This past week was our big trip to the Deep South—Americus, GA to see our son and his girlfriend and of course, their house. Before we left, we asked our local son for a AAA triptik and the book for Kentucky and Tennessee. I also mapquested every leg of the trip. When we left, I plugged in the GPS (nicknamed “Penny”). So we had three sources of directions, and they didn’t always agree. This is what our trip looked like:

Cleveland to Knoxville
Knoxville to Americus
Americus to Seneca, SC
Seneca to Chattanooga, TN
Chattanooga to Lexington, KY
Lexington to Cleveland

In Knoxville, the restaurant hostess was from Binghamton NY; the server was an underemployed Psychology grad from the University of Tennessee and the hotel clerk regularly drives up to the Cedar Point amusement park in Ohio. It was fun driving further and further south and seeing stronger and stronger signs of spring. In Kentucky, the dogwoods were in bloom and in fact Knoxville was getting ready for their Dogwood Festival.

Kathy was not pleased with the crowded bypass around Atlanta, but soon we left that behind for the empty country roads heading into Americus. I did not realize that Andersonville, the notorious POW camp run by the Confederacy was located in Americus until we drove right by it. I added that to our list of things to see later.

The house was wonderful: a “Craftsman” (no, it did not come from a Sears kit or anything).It has three bedrooms, two and half baths, a ginormous kitchen, a big comfy living room, a formal dining room, a sitting room off to the side, a nice big porch out front and a screened in porch out back. They put a lot of work into it, staining the woodwork and restoring a lot of its former glory. It used to be a group home, then the owners just previous to our son knocked out some walls to enlarge the kitchen, and were in the process of removing all the paint from the woodwork. They pleaded with our son not to just paint over the wood but to stain it as they had planned, and he was fine with that.

During our stay, we walked over to an “Art in the Park” event. There was a Shakespearean troupe strolling around in costume, promoting their production of “Taming of the Shrew” for that night. A woman on stilts was a hit as she effortlessly glided through the throng, occasionally stopping to juggle bowling pin-like objects. We watched glass blowers in action and bought a nice vase made by one of the college students raising money for a trip to China.

We got a glimpse of southern gentility when we bought tickets to a Porch Walk—another fund raiser, this time for the Americus Historical Society. We walked up and down Lee Street, visiting a total of six houses with grand wrap around porches. The hostesses had prepared finger sandwiches and cakes and provided liquid refreshment (vodka was a popular choice). We met some nice people along the way and saw some great houses.

There are 62 churches in tiny Americus, Georgia. Of those, 38 are some variety of Baptist. There is one Catholic church. I called the church one night before we left to get the Mass schedule. They had two Masses in English and a few more in Spanish. So we planned to go to the English 10:30 Mass.

Instead, we sought out Maranatha Baptist church in a town right next to Americus. We realized that it was not often that we’d have a chance to go to a Sunday School session taught by a former President of the United States. Sure enough, Jimmy Carter was our teacher for a lesson on the last chapter of Luke. Of course, he spent about fifteen minutes talking about politics and his upcoming travel plans—he’s going to Lebanon, Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. He was funny and warm and engaging and we all had a great time. After the service, we walked outside and waited for a moment to get our photo taken with Jimmy and Rosalynn. I am not making this up.

Kathy’s favorite story about this adventure goes like this: We pulled into the church parking lot where a large black man in a suit stopped us. He told her to roll up her window, as he was about to have an explosives sniffing dog walk around our car. Of course he was Secret Service, not the valet. At the front door of the church, there were more agents searching purses and wanding everyone before they entered the building. Kathy was a little embarrassed when she realized she had a pair of panty hose stuffed into her bag. The agent rummaged around in there but handed it back to her without comment. It could have been worse, I suppose.

The jaunt to South Carolina was to visit some retired friends, then we backtracked to Chattanooga, staying at the Chattanooga Choo Choo Holiday Inn. Trite, I know, but an interesting place.

Truly more important than Christmas

2009-04-12T10:48:00.001-07:00

On Holy Saturday, Kathy and I were in the flower shop buying something for her sisters as an Easter present. The cashier was wearing bunny ears. I wondered (to myself) if a crown of thorns might be more appropriate. I suppose it would be, but it would also be somehow less festive.

Happy Resurrection Day!

Stay tuned

2009-04-05T17:57:00.000-07:00

Lately, we have been deluged with coverage by the television stations and newspapers since the economy is the big news these days. One station taped a staff meeting a week ago; on Monday I have to call a reporter about a question she had. So who comes to our Government Career Day? A television crew! They wanted to interview me about what we were doing that day, since they didn’t have anything like it in their country—Russia! So I was interviewed by a Russian TV crew. A woman would ask me to explain what all the people were doing at the event, and I tried. Then, she would ask for clarification, since the concept was so foreign to them. I’m still not sure I was able to communicate in terms their audience could understand. Later, I thought it was kind of funny that they didn’t know what I meant by a government “agency”—come on—you’re from Russia! Surely you know what the word “government” means. Later, Kathy said I should have said, “Bureau” and that would have made more sense.

All this meant lots of standing and walking, and by Saturday, I just couldn’t move anymore. I slept a lot, went to Mass with Kathy. I read the part of the “Speaker” in the Passion. I scheduled myself deliberately for that part, since all I have to do is say “I will not betray you!” a couple times, and a few other lines, with conviction, of course.

Today will not be a day of rest, though. It’s Palm Sunday and food packing day for Social Justice. With the change in the Mass schedule, we can start an hour early, and we should have plenty of help, since the cub scouts have again offered their services.

Creative process

2009-03-28T18:34:00.000-07:00

There was the most amazing set of poems in the March 16 New Yorker by John Updike. Written in November and December 2008, a few months before he died, they reflect his last recorded thoughts about his illness. Or at least, the ones I know about.

What struck me is that these were either written in his hospital room, or at home between stints on the oncology floor. He was turning out still more work, converting his experiences into art, instead of bemoaning his fate. What did I do in the hospital a couple of weeks ago? Whatever it was, it certainly didn’t involve crafting amazing images to convey the meaning of those events.

Usually, I keep a notebook on my hospital bedside table to track the comings and goings of my doctors, vital signs, and random insights. (“Usually”? How sad to couple that word with “hospital”.) Anyway, composing poetry is not paramount at those times. Watching out for myself and not annoying the nurses are activities that generally top the list.

Here are the last ones in the set, apparently written on December 22, 2008:

Needle Biopsy
By John Updike

All praise be Valium in Jesus’ name:
a CAT-scan needle biopsy sent me
up a happy cul-de-sac, a detour not
detached from consciousness but sweetly part—
I heard machines and experts murmuring about me—
a dulcet tube in which I lay secure and warm
and thought creative thoughts, intensely so,
as in my fading prime. Plans flowered, dreams.

All would be well, I felt, all manner of thing.
The needle, carefully worked, was in me, beyond pain,
aimed at an adrenal gland. I had not hoped
to find, in this bright place, so solvent a peace.
Days later, the results came casually through:
the gland, biopsied, showed metastasis.

Fine Point
By John Updike

“Why go to Sunday school, though surlily,
and not believe a bit of what was taught?
The desert shepherds in their scratchy robes
Undoubtedly existed, and Israel’s defeats—
the Temple in its sacredness destroyed
by Babylon and Rome. Yet Jews kept faith
and passed the prayers, the crabbed rites,
from table to table as Christians mocked.

We mocked, but took. The timbrel creed of praise
gives spirit to the daily; blood tinges lips.
The tongue reposes in papyrus pleas,
saying, Surely—magnificent, that “surely”—
goodness and mercy shall follow me all
the days of my life, my life, forever.

Waking up

2009-03-21T18:56:00.000-07:00

So I went back to work on Monday after a leisurely five days off with my “procedure”. I felt really logy, walking around in a fog. If I drove somewhere, I was surprised at how uncoordinated I was, and would hurry home before anything happened. I kept slogging along, and then finally, I woke up on Thursday morning in more ways than one. At last I felt like myself: rested, alive and ready to go. I realized that it was the long sleep under anesthesia the week before that had taken so long to wear off.

The doctor ordered no exercise for a week, so as soon as my sentence was up, I jumped in the pool at work and did my regular half mile. I was quite proud of myself. The exercise bike is seeing some action, and next week I’ll be back into my regular rhythm.

I’m sure you were all glued to the set on Friday night, following the Cleveland State University Vikings basketball team in the NCAA tournament. Ohio State (who?) was playing at the same time, but they had the CSU game on a different channel so we could see it without interruption. As I’ve always said, my favorite team is whoever is playing Ohio State—lowly Siena beat them in the first round. Not sure CSU will get past Arizona, but I’m glad they got this far.

It’s always in the last place you look

2009-03-14T17:07:00.001-07:00

This past week was my big heart health event. I had my TEE on Monday, where they run a camera down your esophagus to look at your heart, and then the “procedure” on Wednesday. It’s properly a PVI—a pulmonary vein isolation.

There was an electrical problem in my heart that would send me to the ER at odd moments. There didn’t seem to be a particular trigger. Sedentary reading could set it off. Walking down the hall—completely random. The electrophysiologist was 70% sure he could fix it so we gave it a try.

They put me under general anesthesia instead of the usual “twilight” state that they use. Good thing too, since the whole thing lasted eight hours. When I woke up, the doctor said he’d found the problem and fixed it. He was about to give up when he got one more idea about where to look and that did it.

Eight hours! That was impressive. He never took a break; just kept on working straight through. Kathy and her sister were waiting that whole time without a single word of his progress or lack thereof. He did warn us that that could happen and that they shouldn’t read anything into it. Also, they take the family into a separate room to explain the results, and again they were warned that the private session did not imply that any disaster had occurred.

He said that I was “tough”. Imagine that. My blood pressure stayed steady through the whole deal—guess all that swimming and biking paid off.

When I got to the room, I was woozy and kind of out of it. Then the phone rang. Stupidly, I picked it up.

“Hello?” says I, groggily.
“Arak?” a gruff voice barked.
“No.”
“Arak?”
“No.”
Arak?”
“You have the wrong room.”
Click. He hangs up, no word of apology.

This happens three more times, with calls for three different people. Finally, after the fourth call, this woman says, ‘”Oh, they moved him, huh?” I said, as politely as I could, “Ma’am, I just came out of eight hours of surgery. I have no idea.” She at least apologized, and that was it, since they turned the phones off on the floor at that point.

A pair of nurses came in to introduce themselves. Get this: They were named Faith and Sara. I love it! God’s gift to us, and God’s faithful servant. And there they were. I knew I was going to be fine.

Of course they checked my vitals every half hour—I mean it—they were in there every thirty minutes all night. So sleep was impossible.

The next day I was a sleep deprived goof. I was supposed to be discharged by 11am, but my neck was bleeding where they had put in a catheter. It took them five hours to get the bleeding stopped. There was a hierarchical parade of nurses, residents and one of the partners in the practice as they each tried a remedy. Finally, the partner came in with some needles and injected lidocain and epinephrine (Nora Ephron?) and for some reason, that did it.

So, much prayer brought us all through this. We thank God for his Spirit, guiding the doctor, giving him “one more idea”.

Now if I could only wake up.

It's my birthday

2009-03-06T19:10:00.000-08:00

Today is my 59th birthday. This means I am still in my 50’s, in case anyone asks.

So what did I do on my big day? Stayed home from work and napped. Does this sound like something an old person would do? To be fair, I am recovering from a bad cold which went to a sinus infection, as my colds are wont to do. It was a good call, since I do feel better. I saw my regular doctor last night for some antibiotics and that seems to be working.

I am reading “The White Tiger” by Aravind Ariga. It won the Man Booker prize—an award for fiction for writes from the British Commonwealth and Ireland. It took me a while to get into it. My daughter and I have rules for books. Give it a hundred pages—if you can’t get into it by then, forget it. This one was oddly seductive. It draws you in and before you know it, you’re speeding along with the story. Give it a try.

Cardiac News Department: On Monday I have a TEE (transesophageal echocardiogram) scheduled. It’s the third one I’ve done so far. The last one was about ten years ago, though. I do remember you have to gargle with this stuff to freeze your throat, then they spray your throat with something to numb it further, then they sneak up on you and slip a camera down your gullet before you realize they’ve done it.

On Wednesday, I go to the hospital for the ablation procedure. They will try to induce the arrhythmia that typically sends me to the ER. by using my pacemaker to fiddle with my heart’s electrical system. “Fiddle” of course is a technical term. If they can do it, they’ll stick a laser thingie (another technical term) in there and burn out the offending circuits. The doctor is “70%” sure he can do it. If it doesn’t work, I guess they’ll stop and that’s it. I’ll have to ask if they can try again when the rhythm kicks in naturally next time.

Work was so busy lately that I didn’t really think about next week. Now I am free to obsess all I like.

Made another one!

2009-03-01T10:24:00.000-08:00

The 30th Annual Spring Career Fair is in the books. We had 1,519 people through the doors and 138 organizations there. The attendance for candidates was a new record, eclipsing the old mark of 1304 from a couple of years ago. The number of employers was the lowest in many years, though. Counting the number of employer representatives, the number of candidates and the number of Career Services Center staff, we figure we had 2,000 people in the gym on Friday.

This year was especially hard on me for some reason. I was dead on my feet when I began work on Friday at 6:30am. I felt the way I usually feel at the end of the fair, but it was only just beginning. Fortunately, we have a pretty good crew who did what they were supposed to do and everything worked out well.

I told everyone how I had woken up at 2am worrying about things I had forgotten to do, and the wind was howling outside and the rain was lashing the windows and I was so distracted, that I couldn’t get back to sleep. So I began to pray. I asked the Holy Spirit to settle over the building where we hold the Fair, and to grant us wisdom and peace—and He did. Ordinarily there are small moments of panic when someone comes up to me and asks for something I had forgotten to get, or there is some error I’ve made that scrambles things momentarily, but there was none of that this year.

On Saturday following the Fair, after sleeping for nine and half hours, I got up, took the car to shop at the end of our street for an oil change, walked home, sat for a while, walked back up to get the car and then fell into bed for another three hours of unconsciousness. Today, Sunday, I am feeling a little better, but probably shouldn’t operate machinery or make major life decisions for another twenty-four hours or so.

Work, work, work...

2009-02-24T17:15:00.001-08:00

Been busy. I worked from the moment I got home on Friday all the way through Sunday afternoon. One of the people who report to me got 60 resumes to review in her email and I said…”Give me half.” Then I worked some more on the big Career Fair coming on Friday, the 27th.

We have 139 employers coming. Last year we had 205. Some registered, then cancelled as time went on. Today UPS cancelled. Shipping volume is down so much, they are not hiring. We are expecting many more candidates to show up than ever before. My secret wish is for 2,000 people to come. We seem to be stuck at about 1200 each year. Now, the word is out everywhere. Other fairs have been flooded with people, so we are preparing for the onslaught.

If you want to see a neat interview that a local TV station did yesterday, go here: http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=107959

I about fell through the floor when they gave us such a great plug.

I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

What I learned from John Updike

2009-02-13T18:12:00.000-08:00

The first book by John Updike that I ever read was “The Centaur”. I don’t remember why I picked it up. No one I knew was reading it. Maybe a high school English teacher suggested it. In any case, I was hooked. I loved his writing, his descriptions. Evocative, I guess critics would call it. When he described a skiing trip in a short story in a collection called “Trust Me”, I could see the snow, feel the cold. My sister in law doesn’t like him. Too much description, she feels. His descriptions could run on for an entire page without a single period. I couldn’t figure out how he got away with that.

Family Safe Alert: if you are related to me, you might want to skip the next paragraph.

How did I first learn about the mechanics of sex? “Rabbit Run”, of course. Something about how “their loins joined”. That’s as close as I got at the time. “Couples” just blew me away, all that running around with people not your spouse. Infidelity was such a major theme of his, I always wondered if came from his own life. Now, when I read his obituaries and tributes, it seems he wrote about what he saw going on in the post world War II U.S. He was “chronicling” it all, not necessarily living it.

As I do with my favorite authors, I hoard their books, afraid to finish reading them all. If there are no more books to read, something will happen. Something will stop. I’m not sure exactly what’s at the end of that road—it just seems to dissolve in the distance like the arms of a pinwheel galaxy, dribbling off into space.

A few years ago, my daughter called me from a book sale in Chicago. She had stumbled across a rich vein of Louis L’Amour western novels. OK—this goes into my “secret pleasures” category, so don’t tell anyone. I love those stories, can see myself as the hero in each one. She had called to ask me which ones I needed. Yes, I keep track of the ones I’ve read. She bought a dozen or so for me and shipped them over. I treated them like Krugerrands, like the last quart of Cherry Garcia. I finally pulled the last couple out of the dusty box I had stashed in corner of the bedroom. To keep from spinning off into space, I’ll start re-reading old ones before I finish the last one from the box.

I have a big collection of Updike’s short stories in one hard bound volume, “The Early Stories”. I bought it a few years ago but never opened it. Now you know why.

I own fifteen of his novels and seven of his short story collections. “Pigeon Feathers” was the first short story collection of his I read. In one story, I think it’s in “Pigeon Feathers”, he describes breasts as scoops of vanilla ice cream. I was still in high school when I read that. Who remembers lines like that from something they read forty years ago? People like me, I guess.

I noticed that he would crank out a new novel in December each year. I knew to go to the bricks and mortar bookstore at that time to see what would be that year’s prize. I was thrilled to find first editions right there on the shelf, and I happily scooped them up.

Then I realized that the reason I could so easily buy first editions was that no one else was grabbing them first. Usually I would find the Eighth Printing of a book and be happy with that. I vaguely knew that first editions could be valuable, so I was glad to own a few. One day I discovered a bunch of first editions of “Toward the End of Time” on a remainder table. I wept.

Well, no, not there in the store and not even in the car. Still, the idea that such a master’s work would languish on the remainder table in a common bookstore was incomprehensible to me. What was wrong with people? I bought them all and put them away as investments.

The guy was so prolific, though, with dozens of novels and short stories and hundreds of reviews for The New Yorker, perhaps it’s unlikely that I will run out of Updike to read. If I actually did finish everything, I know I could just start from the beginning and feel those same feelings and see those same visions all over again. I’m kind of looking forward to that.

It's a miracle?

2009-02-07T19:08:00.001-08:00

Tonight our pastor talked about how Jesus was not a miracle worker, meaning that that’s not what He was all about. Some people were disappointed when He didn’t work a miracle cure or some other wonderful thing, but when He did, it was for a specific purpose.

I thought about how when I was much younger, maybe eight, nine, ten years old, I used to pray for Jesus to make an appearance in my bedroom. I wanted Him to float down in a glowing ball like Glenda the Good Witch from Oz. Couldn’t He do that for me? Of course I was disappointed when it didn’t happen. In my little kid brain, though, I believed it was possible. Who was I that I merited such a heavenly apparition? Again, little kid brain did not take that into account.

Later on in life, I realized that He has made many appearances, in the form of the people He has brought into my life, beginning with wonderful teachers, continuing with good friends, insightful mentors, and strangers.

Especially the strangers. I’ve told you about Paige and Tabitha sharing their faith journeys with me. There have been other angels along the way, and I know there will be others, depending upon what I need in the future.

Even co-workers. On Friday, Yolanda, the woman who is a manager at work, just as I am, came into my office after a staff meeting, closed the door and said, “Let’s pray for Career Fair.” It was a good idea, since we are having a tough time convincing companies to invest in such a venture in this economy. So we prayed. She has such an eloquent Spirit—I wish I could pray as she does.

So did it work? Five more employers signed up that afternoon.

Then I got an email from a woman I met ten years ago, when e-commerce was just taking off. She was an HR manager for several start ups and had invited me downtown to see their offices. The CEO would dream up an idea for a dotcom and bang—it came into existence. One of his ideas was books.com, the first on line bookstore, before Amazon. There were literally stacks of books in the corners of these rooms in his downtown Cleveland company. It’s gone now, subsumed by the big guys.

Anyway, over the years I had tried to contact this woman but she was always too busy to get back to me. I never forgot her, but I gave up. Then here comes this email, asking about registering her new company for the fair.

So I ask you, just how cool is our God?

Enjoying the ride

2009-01-31T16:14:00.000-08:00

On Friday last week, I was just heading out the door to a reception for one of my friends at the University who is leaving, when a student named Paige called and asked for help applying for a job with the Diocese of Cleveland—the deadline was of course the next day, Saturday. I said, sure come on over, with one eye on the clock, I figured I could still make the reception. So Paige rushed over from the coffee shop where she had thought to call us, and she hadn’t even taken time to print her resume, so we huddled around the screen of her laptop. She was a sergeant in the Army Reserves, a clarinet player in the Army band. She had held three jobs simultaneously, including one at Starbucks, and she was applying for a job as an office assistant at the Diocese.

What made her story especially compelling was the fact that she was in the RCIA program in a parish near Parma—the program that prepares converts to Catholicism for baptism. She wrote the sweetest, most touching paragraph in her cover letter about her faith journey, how her mother had not allowed her to be baptized as a child and how she was finally coming into the Church. At first I wondered if we should keep that in there, but she reminded me that the job description called for “knowledge and understanding of the Roman Catholic Church” , so we left the language in the letter. She was just so thrilled at the confluence of her religious studies and the discovery of this opportunity at the Diocese. She promised to let me know how it all turns out. Oh, and that reception I was in such a hurry to get to? I finished up with Paige, raced over to the building across snowy Euclid Avenue, only to find that the darn thing is next week.

Remember the phlebotomist, whose story I posted about on Jan. 3? Her name was Tabitha.
I went back to the same lab today and asked for her and she was working, so she did my draw again. She reported that both she and her husband were back in church and that they had re-dedicated themselves to Christ. She looked much much happier than she had just a month ago.

So between Paige and Tabitha, I am just so excited about how God is bringing these people into my life, enriching my own experience. We closed Mass tonight with the hymn, "Seek Ye First", just a perfect ending for this amazing week. Laying up treasure in heaven is all well and good, but I'm enjoying these little dollops of joy right here.

Retire?

2009-01-24T20:31:00.000-08:00

In the wonderfully arcane public retirement system here in Ohio, there is a marvelous provision that allows you to buy time earned elsewhere in public service, thus resulting in an earlier retirement date. Having taught for a couple of years in New Jersey back in the 70’s, I filled out the paperwork and sent it off into the bureaucratic void to see what would happen.

I had gone through this exercise once before and had never heard anything back. This time I followed up with a phone call to my former employer in the Garden State. The woman I spoke to said that my records were stored off site in a trailer somewhere, and may have been lost in a flood (no—not the Great Flood. I’m not that old.) Buoyed by this cheery bit of news, I anxiously awaited her letter which would surely tell me that my paperwork had been washed out to sea some years ago.

Instead, imagine my surprise when I received a nice note with a copy of my application, saying that she had forwarded my records on to the Great State of Ohio. Then, another heartening piece of correspondence arrived from said State, requesting eleven thousand dollars for 1.8 years of service.

That may seem like a lot of money, but it’s really not. A friend of mine got a bill for forty thousand for six years. I can handle eleven.

But the strange part was my not so subconscious reaction to all this. My brain ricocheted around my head like a cartoon bullet as I struggled to get its smooshy mass around the idea that I can retire in a scant four years.

What does one do in retirement?
Will we have enough money?
Can I keep it together at work for the next four years?
Why do I suddenly feel so insecure?

I would be 63, not the 66 I had originally thought. This is good, right? So what’s wrong with me?

Jeepers! I just realized there are three operations I want to have before my health insurance changes! (The heart ablation my electrophysiologist wants to do, a new pacemaker and oh yes—a knee replacement as long as we’re at it.)

Like Steve Martin’s “Jerk”, all I need is this ashtray. This ashtray and this paddle game. That’s all I need. This ashtray, this paddle game and this ablation. That’s all I need…

Everyone's a critic

2009-01-16T17:39:00.000-08:00

A little over four years ago I finished writing the textbook that we use for our job search classes. I was very excited and very pleased with myself for having completed such a project. Even now, people ask me how long it took me to write the three hundred page book. The answer is probably twenty years, since all I did was write the book I always wished I had had as an instructor, pouring everything I had learned over the years into it.

A few small schools around the country have adopted it; students at my own college buy most of them. Last year we actually had to reprint some to cover the demand, so that was gratifying. Naturally, I asked the publisher to help me out with a marketing campaign to promote the book, since people constantly remarked on how helpful it was and how much they liked it.

The other day the publisher’s answer came in the form of a spreadsheet put out by their marketing department grading my book on different factors. One item that stung a bit was the rating of “7” out of 10 for the quality of the writing. This struck me as odd, since in my world, people come to me looking for just the right phrase or for sharp edged editing. I have never gotten anything approaching a “C” for my writing, as this rating seems to indicate.

I received a zero for “Outside Adoptions”. This struck me as nonsensical, since it begs the question: how can someone adopt it if they don’t know it exists?

Worse, they had “comments”. Essentially, they said that the information was rather basic and should probably be sold to two year colleges. Nothing against community colleges, but I wrote it for use in universities. The information is pitched at a certain level, the whole book talks about Bachelor degree candidates and third and fourth year internships.

Enough about that, though. I am disappointed and that spreadsheet did knock the wind out of me, but it also woke me up to the fact that this is just a business transaction. Kind of takes the romanticism out of it for me; makes it less fun somehow. As long as they pay me, I’ll keep cranking out new editions, perhaps with less enjoyment and enthusiasm for the project.

This brings me to another story altogether.

Last weekend I spent my Saturday at a downtown church, working at a special career transition day. Dozens of people had been laid off at our big city newspaper, and one of the well known columnists organized the event to help them and other people in the business who were out of work.

I brought three other people from my office to help out, since the organizers expected a crowd of over one hundred people. We weren’t sure we would make it downtown safely, since we had to drive through a heavy snowstorm that dropped ten inches of frozen sunshine on us. A car in front of us slid right into a ditch as we navigated the on ramp to the interstate.

The day turned into a five hour career advising marathon for me and the other “career coaches” who had volunteered to do resume critiques and transition brainstorming with the participants. I was completely drained by the end of the event.

I talked with a crime reporter, a fashion writer, a cartoonist, even a PhD candidate who wanted to teach journalism and several other job seekers with the same sort of newspaper experience. These were people who had received numerous awards for their writing from the Associated Press and others, and you want to know something? Not a one of them had any idea of how to write their own resume. In fact, the phrasing was abysmal. I was so surprised. I went into this project feeling a little intimidated by the prospect of telling professional writers how to construct a resume

So how is my book “too basic” when people who make their living with words cannot even put together an effective description of their experience and skills designed to move their career to the next level?

Praying with your phlebotomist

2009-01-03T20:06:00.001-08:00

This morning I went for my monthly blood test at the hospital. I go there because there’s no co-pay and no hassle waiting at the doctor’s office. I showed up a little later than usual and so missed the opening rush at the lab.

A phlebotomist that I had not seen before called me back to the bloodletting room. I wished her a happy new year, but she remarked that her year was not off to a good start, and something told me that there was a special sadness about her, so I took the plunge:
“Do I need to add you to my prayer list?” I asked her.

She responded that yes, that would be good. She wondered what church I was affiliated with and I told her. She asked if I was a deacon or a priest or something and I said no, nothing like that.

We went through the mechanics of the blood draw and as she finished, she said, “Can I ask you something?” and then posed this painful question: “What makes a man, separated from his wife, think he can sleep with another woman and that there is nothing wrong with that?”

I suspected she was talking about her own husband, but I didn’t explore that. All I could think of to say was that it was a selfish act of someone who had forgotten the place of God in his life. She considered that thoughtfully and allowed that that could be so.

Finally, as I was about to get up from the chair and leave, I was struck by how much pain she was obviously suffering. She had remarked earlier that this was a new job for her and even though she was so sad, she could not afford to make a bad impression on her new employer by calling off sick.

I took both her hands in mine and prayed with her briefly. Oddly, we were the only people in a normally bustling lab. So, I don’t know if I did any good, but I’m glad she confided in me and she is on my list—perhaps I’ll see her next month.

Bridge freezes before road surface usually

2008-12-31T20:40:00.000-08:00

Here is another scene. It’s New Year’s Eve day—today in fact. I’d been rushing around for the past week of my ‘vacation’, shopping, spending hours in the basement rearranging junk into more appealing piles of junk, blowing an afternoon cleaning out a bookcase—removing some books to make room for still other books, getting rid of various bits of paper stuck here and there: generally not ‘vacating’ much at all.

Today it must have caught up to me because a couple of hours after Kathy left for work, I fell asleep in my chair for an hour. Then I was still tired so I went up to the nice cozy warm waterbed and slept for another hour. Coming downstairs, I thought it seemed a little chilly, so I checked the thermostat. Set for 66 degrees, the room temperature had dropped to 63. The furnace had quit working.

It was twenty degrees outside with wind blasting the house with forty mile an hour gusts, producing an uncomfortable wind chill, and the house was cooling fast, hitting 58 degrees very quickly.

So I called the people who had installed the furnace, the same people who had serviced it in the fall, and thankfully they were able to get a guy out here in about an hour. It turned out to be the same man who had worked on it in September. He got it working in short order and said I should probably replace the doppelganger doohickey and the frissen mast chunk-a-blunk and I agreed. He went back to his truck, called his boss and explained the situation. The upshot was they did not charge me for the parts, just the labor to install them which was great news given the price of doohickeys these days.

By that time, Kathy was home from work. So what, right? Well, you don’t understand. Kathy hates to be around when someone is working on the house. She really had nowhere else to go, so she had to break one of her rules and stay in the house while the furnace guy worked. It turns out that she was so distracted by a harrowing escape she had had on the highway, that she wouldn’t have cared if John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy were tinkering with the heating system.

We had some snow overnight and the wind kept spreading it around over the roads, such that some stretches were fine, while others were fit for a Red Wings-Rangers game. The past couple of days, I had accompanied Kathy to work so I could run around in the car doing useless errands, but today she ventured out alone. She made it to work driving very slowly along the treacherous mountain passes in the eight miles between our house and her office. (OK, but the road does take a little dip there at that one point.)

She decided to take the “Big Girl” way home on the interstates—something she rarely does. There is a tricky bit where three highways converge and no one ever yields to anyone else lest they appear weak. Some character came whipping past Kathy going about 70 when he hit a hockey rink strategically placed at the merge. He spun violently around, hit the gas and ran up the hillside whereupon clouds of white smoke issued ominously from under his hood. Tree branches festooned the fuselage as he flattened two tires. Undaunted, he slide back down to the highway and tried to continue his mad dash. The car would have none of that, though, and he mercifully gave up and limped to a stop alongside the road.

Her heart in her throat, our terrified heroine wisely eased up on the gas and watched this solo ballet unfold before her, all the time fearing that the crazy driver would carom into her car next. She came home full of her tale of horror on the highways, and regaled our guests with all the details later that evening.

Everyone went home early this year, so it’s a quiet New Year’s. Every year we say why bother to stay up? and every year we’re standing in front of the TV as the ball drops. I wish my readers (all two of you) a year in which you have everything you need, and even a few things you don’t really ‘need’ need; and a year in which you make even more progress in your spiritual journey. And let’s have some fun along the way. See you next year.

Miracle Shmiracle

2008-12-25T08:42:00.001-08:00

OK. This was the scene. Kathy and her sister and I went to church for 4pm Mass on Christmas Eve. The decorations were beautiful; the place was packed with people, SRO, in fact. I was chatting with friends before I had to go back to the sacristy to get ready for the procession into church. I was doing the scripture readings, as I have for at least the last ten years, and I felt comfortable with my preparation.

One of the ushers came to get me, saying that there was a woman outside who needed help. He knew I worked in the Social Justice group and that we help parish families with food throughout the year. At Christmas, the people of the parish donate great mountains of presents for the children, and they had come through again for us this year. Everything had been delivered the Sunday before Christmas.

In the vestibule of the church a nervous woman in her thirties told me her name was Jennifer and I asked her what was going on. She explained that her husband, a construction worker, had been laid off three days ago and his last check had not yet arrived. She was worried about her three children and how they would not have a Christmas this year. I dug a scrap of paper out of my suit pocket and wrote down her name, address and phone number and said I would see what I could do. She started to cry and she thanked me and then she left.

She left the building. I thought she was staying for the service, but she just left. Then it dawned on me that she did not belong to our parish. She mentioned that she lived a few blocks away, just off West 54th. I realized after she left that that would put her outside our parish boundaries.

A couple of years ago our group reviewed the list of people we had been helping and saw that many of them no longer lived in our parish, or had never lived in our parish, and certainly did not go to church, any church. We asked each family to register with our parish. Those who did not would be dropped from our list. As a result, we no longer serve about half of those families.

So, this realization kind of cooled my jets. Then I thought about what I could do for her on such short notice and put a little plan together. Then I wondered how I would explain to Kathy that somehow we had to help this family, even as we were hosting fifteen people at our house in a matter of hours. All during Mass I thought about it. I did still have a good time with the scripture readings because they are a couple of my favorites from Isaiah 9 (“For every boot that tramped in battle and every cloak rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for flames. For a child is born to us, a son is given us…”) and the letter to Titus.

Predictably, Kathy blew a gasket when I told her what I had to do. Then she turned to and wrapped some games that I had in storage—thankfully there was one age appropriate toy for each child in Jennifer’s family. These were games I bought last year for Social Justice in case some pledges were not fulfilled. I thought there were some more toys up at church but found that nothing was left after our day of Christmas packing.

We put a twenty in each of four envelopes for each kid and the parents, and my brother in law and I went up to church (again, thankfully I had kept the keys to the food room after the food packing last weekend). We filled a couple of boxes with food staples (cereal, pasta, PB&J, vegetables—that sort of thing, and then set off to find Jennifer’s house.

Turns out she lived a couple miles away, much further than we thought.

My brother in law and I carried the food and presents into the house, and he went back to the car while I talked to Jennifer. She started to cry, and asked me, “How do I keep from feeling guilty about not being able to give Christmas to my kids?” I was caught off guard by this whole scene because I planned to drop off the stuff and zip right out of there, and now it was turning into a counseling session, or was it a teachable moment?

I didn’t have any lesson at the ready, so I just mumbled something about how everyone passes through times like this and then told her to come to church on Christmas. She asked me the Mass schedule and I told her. We hugged and then I escaped.

So. What is the likelihood of her actually turning up at services today? Was I just being played? I called her before we left to go to her house, and she said that while she did not belong to our parish, she wanted to join. She wanted to get the kids involved in church, because she hadn’t done it when they were younger. Privately I thought it was a little late, especially for the twelve year old boy, but I didn’t say anything about that to her. She suggested that I might be able to send her some “literature” about “Sunday School”. That sounded like something you’d say to a telemarketer to get off the phone when you don’t want to say ‘No’ directly, but I wasn’t selling anything.

My feelings are all jumbled up about this. I’m as torn as a manic depressive person cycling through moods like riffling through playing cards. Here is the hand I am holding:

--I ought to feel good about helping someone in the nick of time on Christmas Eve,
--but I have this nagging feeling that I’ve been somehow made a fool of.
--On top of that, I feel bad that I couldn’t do more for Jennifer and her family.
--Layered on that is the fact that she doesn’t belong to our church or any church and seems unlikely to do anything about that.
--And who is she anyway that I should care so much?

Aww-let’s call the whole thing off.

Christmas card list

2008-12-20T17:39:00.000-08:00

Not that anyone asked, but I was looking over my Christmas card list the other day, musing about the different people I found there. Here are some of them:

-The friends we’ve made on Caribbean cruises. A couple from Regina in Canada. That pronounication (with a long i) always gave me pause. Couples from British Columbia, Maine, North Carolina and California.

-The guy I went to grad school with back in the 70’s. He was from Philadelphia and we both wound up at the University of Illinois, out in the middle of the cornfields. I wore a Villanova t-shirt to class one day and that got a conversation started. We’ve stayed in touch since then.

- A couple with whom we used to be close. We drifted apart a few years ago. I saw him in the supermarket the other day and I remarked that I had been thinking about him and his wife. “What have you been thinking?” he asked. “Why did we drift apart like that? How come we don’t go to your house for our annual Christmas get together or celebrate family events like we used to? What happened to our friendship?” That’s what I had been thinking, but it’s not what I said to him, standing there by the meat counter in the store.

-Dave-Here’s one for a guy I used to work with. He hired me, a failed Social Studies teacher, back in 1977 for a job he thought I could do. He was my first mentor, but I didn’t know the word at the time. He was rather irreverent, did not suffer fools; it took a good bit to earn his respect. Smiled a lot. His card this year said he was now retired.

-Vince and Jan—He and I were in the YMCA Indian Guides program when our boys were little. I wrote a note in our card bemoaning the fact that they are now called “Adventure Guides”. He wrote back advocating lawyercide. He worked for big city newspapers on the press gangs. Moved to Arizona years ago to “shovel sunshine” as he joked.

-Frances, the widow of a older friend from church. We used to have a men’s Bible study group that occasionally met at their house. I was never sure if she approved of us. He once posed a question to the group: “What is grace?” Well, heck. I can find that out. I pored over my concordance in a scripture research project and later presented my findings to him. I talked about what I had learned about grace from all the reading I had done. He listened politely and when I was done, he—well, he said something like: “What else you got?” something that indicated he wasn’t satisfied with my findings. What a guy he was.

- Here’s the only high school friend I exchange cards with—John. Isn’t that odd? I had come over to the public high school fresh from Catholic elementary school in 1964. Plopping down into ninth grade, in the midst of Protestants and Jews who had been together in public schools for eight years already. At some point we got to be friends and I would go to his house to watch Star Trek and Wild Wild West on TV. He always anguished over his ineptitude with girls. Compared to him I must have been a smooth operator. His wife writes their Christmas missives and we wait each year to see which medical procedure or mishap she will be describing in great gory detail. It hasn’t arrived as of this writing. Sometimes it doesn’t show up until after Christmas.

-Oh here’s a strange one. Maureen. She retired from our office back in the 90’s sometime. She’s a staunch Republican. Used to listen to Rush Limbaugh during her lunch hours, tried to interest me in that activity, but I didn’t go for it. Anyway, one day she said we were going to do some “employer development”, visiting companies to tell them about our services. She picked me up at the leisurely hour of 10am. We did a few visits, then went to lunch. A long lunch. We did a few more after lunch and then knocked off at about 2pm. She was close to retirement—can you tell by her pace?

-Kathy lives down the block. She is a couple years older than me, and already a widow. Her husband John died four years ago after a brief futile struggle with an especially virulent form of Lou Gehrig’s disease. It just swept over him and quickly robbed him of any ability to move and finally to breathe. Some time ago, my Kathy and I started going out to breakfast with her about once a month. She’s doing OK—leaving our parish now to go to the church attended by her children and grandchildren. We still plan on breakfast, though.

- Gene, my eleventh grade English teacher. She was also the advisor for the school newspaper and talked me into writing for it, thus sending me into a life path that I have enjoyed immensely. In each Christmas card she sends me suggestions about what I might want to read. She’s the one who got me into Annie Proulx. Isn’t she wonderful? (Yes—I mean either or both: my teacher and Proulx.)

So who's on your list?

Water water everywhere

2008-12-18T05:34:00.000-08:00

Work was closed yesterday due to a water main break.
They sent us home at 10am because we had no water. Something like 22 million gallons of the stuff ran down the streets until they could get the ancient valves closed. The pipes were first put in during early Roman times (actually it was 1897). In order to get the valves closed, they had
to turn them 800 times! They showed two guys running in a circle around the valve pushing a big t-handle wrench, kind of like the dance of the water fairies or something. Sadly, we are back at our desks today. Happily, it's the office holiday (don't say "Christmas") party today.

The Tree Discussion

2008-12-13T19:52:00.000-08:00

Every year at about this time, Kathy and I have the Tree Discussion. If we must have a tree, she wants a small tabletop model, much like her mother used in her later years. For my part, I lobby for a monster that goes to the ceiling. Sometimes we compromise, and I buy a four or five foot tree. One year we were leaving for a cruise right after New Year’s Day, so we bought a too expensive evergreen decoration from LL Bean and plopped in the front window and called it done.

This year, she tried a different tack. Since Stuart Little’s relatives have been showing up in the basement traps lately, she said, “What if a mouse gets into it!?” I thought, oh swell, here we go again. I left the room for a while and came back to get my breakfast out of the microwave (blueberry pancakes I’d made last week, if you must know.)

She said, “Are you upset with me?”, because of course she knows me. Instead of denying it, I said, “I’m hurt and I’m mad about not having a tree” and left it at that for the time being.

I went off the bank, she went off shopping with her sister.

As I drove I tried to figure out why I had reacted that way and why I felt hurt. This comes up every year, after all, so I should have figured it out by now. I usually push down feelings but this time I admitted them—in several senses. I admitted I had them, and admitted them to my consciousness.

This is what I came up with: when I was a kid, we always had a tree that towered over us, smushed against the family room ceiling, decorated with those horrendously inefficient big bulbs. Some had liquid in them that bubbled when they got warm. This is safe? Glass ornaments whose population dwindled each year, due to dropsy; kid-crafted masterpieces and miscellaneous mismatched doo dads dangled from its branches. And tinsel, great gobs of tinsel were strewn over its mass, clumped and dumped until we learned to lay each piece individually to be the ‘icicles’ the box proclaimed they were.

I want a tree like that. Every time.

The darn tree connects me to my youth. Setting up the yuletide shrub is encoded in my DNA. First choose a seven foot cheap old white pine, cut off the bottom three inches to keep the veins open, stick it in the stand and then weave the lights around the branches, then the ornaments then the tinsel then the garland. This sequence is as much a part of my genetic makeup as the markers for blue eyes and distinguished gray hair. Lemmings, salmon, men in my family. Same thing.

Further, it makes me feel young. I’m again a young father doing something for his kids. They aren’t here to see it, so maybe it’s not for them after all. Not putting up a tree is admitting I’m too old to bother. Never! I’ll drag myself to the tree on my last day, stringing the lights just so, to make the tree appear to be lit from within. It’s my light, flickering still, glowing brighter, searing the Christmas night.

Preparing for the worst

2008-12-06T19:14:00.000-08:00

Why was this past week so long? It just took forever to get to Friday. It’s not as if we were looking forward to anything in particular, it’s just that each day was about 28 hours long.

I did do a nifty thing at work that I was quite proud of. In thinking about the economy and the lay offs and the poor outlook for new grads, I decided to do a training for the staff on how to help people who can’t find a job, or who have been laid off. We have some new members who have never seen a down market, so I thought they could use some help before the onslaught.

Instead of just lecturing at them I decided to get them involved. I wrote some case studies incorporating pieces of different problems I’d seen before: men, women, different ages, different majors, different stages in life, various degrees of career decidedness. With the staff divided into groups, I had them analyze the cases and report how they would help the individual in each story. It worked pretty well, in fact, in the heat of their discussion, one staff member remarked, “I know this guy!”, and of course they were all composites of people I’ve met over the years. It was then I knew I was on to something.

So, a few people came away inspired to learn more and try some new things. A few of them thanked me—how about that! I finished the session with a short presentation on what I learned from the recruiting trends conference last month. (It’s bad and going to get worse.)

My professional group has a summer conference in August and the program proposals are due soon. I can never think of anything to present, but this time I’m going to put my staff training session in and see if the program committee goes for it. Of course, there is that small matter of a ban on out of state travel at the University.

Max was at our house this weekend, just in time for St. Nicholas Day. Kathy explained how it worked and Max urged his father, “C’mon, Dad, put your shoes out, too!” St. Nick brought him some slippers, some simple toys and five bucks. One of the toys was a very small flower pot with special soil and seeds, so we’re intrigued about how they will turn out. On Saturday, I suggested that Max might want to put out Christmas decorations in our house. He was up for that, so I said we had to dust first. He happily proclaimed that “Dusting is my game!” and so dad supervised his cleaning. They did a nice job and then set out the house Christmas bric a brac. Later they headed down to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where kids get in free. Max was drawn to the Johnny Cash exhibit, since his mother likes him.

Big changes at church for 2009. As you know, our pastor died a month ago, and we only have one priest now. We are not sure if we will get another one any time soon, so our priest, who is called a parish administrator—not quite a pastor—is cutting the number of Masses in the parish from five to three. We will now have 4:30pm on Saturday, and only an 8:30am and 11:00am on Sunday.

It was apparent that something had to be done after an attendance survey showed that an average of 925 people came to Mass each weekend. The capacity of the church is 910, so it took five Masses to fill the church one time. Now I wonder if people will drift to other churches who have earlier or later Masses than we do. We’ll see what happens over the next few months.

A record of existence

2008-11-19T11:04:00.000-08:00

Bantering back and forth in a email exchange today with my children, the youngest decried the fact that his baby book was empty, that there was no record of his existence. This is a running family joke, but I took it to heart today and answered him:

A record of existence. You were born between two blizzards in January 1978. God gave us a breathing space to allow you to appear. I went to work that morning of January 11, thinking we still had some time before you would enter the world. When I got the call, I remember driving home in that 1974 Volkswagen bus, and having the accelerator cable stick—frozen in its long passage from the rear engine to the gas pedal up front. I was turning the corner at 82 and 21, using the side roads because I was afraid of the interstate in that weather. I threw it into neutral as the engine raced and I thought—great--my child is about to be born, and I’m about to die. Miraculously, the cable came unstuck and I worked my way home.

I was working nights and your mother was working days. One morning I woke up and found you sitting quietly on the couch in the living room. You must have been about two. Apparently you thought you were alone in house. I was sleeping and you didn’t realize I was there. I hugged you and told you not to worry because everything was alright.

We had a conversation once when you were older, in eighth grade? High school? You told me how you had been a nerd pretty much up to that point, but you made a conscious decision to change direction, and I remember how proud I was of you in that moment. You decided not to let people pick on you, but to stand up for yourself, and it worked.

High school football didn’t work out, but elementary school was fun. I remember that one assistant coach who thought I was a spy, videotaping the games for some opposing team. What a goof. All I was doing was preserving those memories for us.

Teachers remember you. That high school was never the same after you.

Who was the driving force behind the first ever John Carroll Habitat for Humanity house? Who would never tell us how much money he had accumulated for the project because…because why? You didn’t want to jinx it? That was a stunning achievement, never equaled.

How many people have you touched in your HFH trainings, your campus meetings, in all your work so far? The well of inspiration that you are for all those people seems bottomless—but be careful to take care of yourself in all this, too.

A record of existence indeed.

Going home

2008-11-15T17:58:00.000-08:00

Father Robert Hoban, our pastor for the past ten years, died this week. Two weeks ago, the associate pastor, Fr. Vrana, informed us all that Fr. Hoban had decided to forego any further treatment for his esophageal cancer. He had had enough of doctors, drugs, patchwork surgery and the relentless pain. He was 54.

He always looked a lot younger than his years. He just had that kind of face. He was a big guy at six four, with something of a paunch. It didn’t help that all the little old ladies in the parish were always bringing him baked goodies to eat.

Standing at the door of the church after Mass, he would keep his mitts in his vestment sleeves, not too keen on shaking hands with people as they left. Someone asked him about that mannerism one day and he said there was no sense in making friends here since he was only going to be rotated to another parish in a few years. It was one way to look at it, but I wondered if that made for a lonely life. The alternative would be to have friends in every parish in which he’d served—people all over the county he could call on for help or whatever he needed.

So, he had a streak of cynicism.

Still, he would always remember if you had been sick, or something had happened in your family and he’d ask how things were going. Even if he seemed distracted while you were telling him something, he was still able to recall the details the next week as you were leaving church.

He was kind of a one man band in the parish for a couple of years, doing everything himself. There just aren’t enough priests to go around, and even though we are a big parish with about three thousand families on the books, for a long time I guess the bishop didn’t think we warranted a second priest to help out.

One thing he could do very well was compose and deliver some pretty darn good homilies. (They’re not “sermons” now, they’re “homilies”.) That skepticism of his did not affect his ability to talk straight to you about the lessons in the gospel. He was usually able to leave you with something to think about, a principle to apply, a tweak in your attitude. That’s what I’ll miss.

He was an excellent steward of the parish’s finances, running several successful fund raising campaigns over the years, and cleverly using investment interest to pay our diocesan assessments. (You may know that the diocese takes a cut of our weekly collections, and we have been seriously in arrears in the past.)

Fr. Vrana remarked the other day that Fr. Hoban would roll over in his grave if he knew how much we were spending on his funeral. I understand that 125 priests are expected to attend. We have a vespers service on Sunday at 3pm and Fr. Vrana asked me to read there. The funeral is Monday at 11a.m., and while he also asked me to read there, I believe they have family members who will handle that.

The associate pastor, Fr. John Vrana, is 66. He was one of Fr. Hoban’s professors in the seminary. I don’t think this is what he signed on for. He has been administering the parish for the past year and will likely become the next pastor. The bishop has options, of course, since he has been closing and consolidating parishes throughout the diocese. With our falling attendance and weak financial status, we are not sure what will happen.

Fr. Hoban was first diagnosed back in July of 2007. We all knew something was going on, since he lost a lot of weight very quickly. He was not very forthcoming about his condition until it was impossible to conceal. His doctor delayed testing and treatments that might have helped control the cancer early, but who knows if it made any difference in the end.

Post election reflection

2008-11-08T18:12:00.001-08:00

At about nine thirty each evening I start closing things up, getting ready for bed. I’m up at a little past five a.m. each morning, so it makes sense to crawl under the covers early. Tuesday November 4, 2008 was an exception, though. I stayed up till half past midnight in order to see the speechifying that I knew would follow the election results.

It was funny to me how at precisely 11:00 p.m. they declared Obama the winner, just as the California polls closed. Kathy sat at the kitchen table like a little kid with a red crayon and a blue crayon, coloring in the states as they were called for McCain or Obama. She was the one who volunteered us to make phone calls and to canvass for the Obama campaign. She was also the one who made herself ill over the whole battle in the closing days. “I can’t stand it” she would say. “I wish the election was over already!”

I thought McCain’s speech was actually his best of the entire campaign. It was reasoned and heartfelt and conciliatory. If he had shown a little more of that and a little less maverick, it might have been a different story.

By the time Barack came out, I was too tired to listen. All I could see was Michelle Obama’s hideous dress.

What usually happens to me after an election is that while I follow the daily rounds of revelations, charges and countercharges before the big day, I rapidly lose interest and stop watching MSNBC and figure that things will work themselves out. I’m going to try to stay on top of current events this time.

When I was in maybe seventh grade and a Catholic president was in the White House, we Catholic grade school kids had memorized the names of all his cabinet members. I couldn’t tell you who is who today, though. I want to see who Obama picks and where they come from, since past is prologue.

Anyway, I know what Michelle Obama meant when she said that for the first time in her adult life, she was proud of her country. Many people jumped all over her for that remark, but you can’t deny there is a spark now in people’s eyes, standing a little straighter, smiling a little more with the knowledge that we’ve done something significant and it’s more than just “one bright shining moment.”

Madeleine Albright comes to town

2008-10-24T18:25:00.000-07:00

You missed it. Tonight I went to the VFW hall a few blocks from my house to see former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. She came to town to stump for Obama. I just started reading one of her books, “The Mighty and the Almighty” about the role of religion in international relations. Anyway…

She was amazing—very smart, great sense of humor, down to earth, very sensible, approaching everything with unassailable logic. She made a brief presentation about six major issues that she sees as critical for the future:
- dealing with Al Qaeda
- nuclear proliferation
-restoring the good name of democracy (supporting not imposing democracy on others)
- negative aspects of globalization—i.e. gap between the rich and poor
- energy-environment, global financial mess
- two wars : Afghanistan Iraq and unintended consequences like the rise of Iran. She sees it as being worse than Vietnam especially because of the pressure of refugees on surrounding countries.

At times it was like listening to a college lecture, but what a professor!

She remarked that the next president will need to work with China, Russia, India. Latin America, Africa—everyone.

In describing Obama, she feels he makes good judgments, thinks through problems. Will be a ‘confident’ president, rather than a ‘certain’ president. A ‘certain’ president doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. Obama asked questions, getting different viewpoints. Will be able to prioritize issues.

In answer to questions from the audience, she was confident that we will be out of Iraq in sixteen months. She characterized Vladimir Putin as very smart, but mean. President Karzai of Pakistan is a very nice guy, but he’s more the mayor of Kabul than president of the whole of Afghanistan.

Gosh, I think it would be great to have her as Obama’s Secretary of State. ATt 71, I wonder if she's interested in the job.

Not unexpected, but still unwelcome news

2008-10-18T19:41:00.000-07:00

Just before Mass ended tonight, the priest asked everyone to sit down and he went back to the ambo. We knew this could not be good news. He read a letter written by St. Ignatius of Antioch who was telling his followers not to interfere with his impending death sentence.

We were all a little confused, but then he explained that our pastor, who had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer a year ago, had just informed his family that he would not seek further treatment, but would eventually go into hospice care.

The priest who told us this has been the administrator of the parish for the past year, doing a lot of the pastor's work. He had been our pastor's professor in the seminary, and he got kind of choked up delivering this news.

We knew the pastor was getting worse. At 6’4” he had always had a little paunch—he was a big guy, but now he was down to 125 pounds and just looked so gaunt. He hadn’t been able to eat very well all year and probably lost about a hundred pounds. In the past few months, try as he might, he could not work. He was very tired all the time. The last time I saw him, he was coming from the church, crossing the parking lot to the rectory. I knew he wasn’t feeling well and I certainly didn’t plan to engage him in a long conversation, but in reply to my inquiry into his health, he simply said, “I’m tired—I’m going to take a nap” and he kept on walking without breaking stride.

So there we all were in church, just kind of stunned. I could hear people sniffling, and saw women leaving with reddened eyes, clumps of people standing with tears on their cheeks.

The pastor will be staying with his parents for the time being, but will move to a hospice if necessary in the coming weeks.

So he’s that much closer to heaven. So why are we crying? I have a relative who had a “Coming Home” party for our grandmother when she died, complete with a cake that she made for her children. I can’t quite do that. I was inconsolable when my mom died ten years ago, and if anyone was bound for glory, she was.

Maybe I’m not walking by faith but by sight—stumbling over obstacles that block my way to seeing God’s promise clearly. Wonder if I’ll ever get over that?

Perfect fall weekend. OK, it was warm, but still...

2008-10-12T17:10:00.000-07:00

This was Max’s weekend at our house. On Friday night Kathy cooked him a hamburger—I guess he’s forgone the vegetarianism he maintained early in life. I enticed him into a game of War and we didn’t have a war until we were almost through the pack. I won that one and Shane came in to tell him it was time for bed. Shane granted him five more minutes to play and Max put down his cards and said, “I’m going to play something else for five minutes!” Evidently he wanted to maximize the value of those five minutes and playing cards with the old man was not gonna get it. The allure of video games can be too much at times. He was playing one called Up Your Arsenal—fortunately he’s too young to get the joke. On Saturday, I did hit on something he liked. I had a pair of walkie talkies that I was holding until he was old enough to be able to use them. I brought them out, showed him how to use them and then we played walkie talkie hide and seek. He ran off and I “hid” on the front steps. I had him going up and down the stairs inside the house until he finally found me outside. We played a couple of rounds and had a great time laughing at each other.

On Sunday we drove out to the country and took Max and Shane to the farm where we have been taking Max since he was two years old. This year he was looking forward to seeing the pumpkin cannon and the hay bale maze. When he was younger, he couldn’t see over the bales so it made for a more interesting experience. Now he can easily find his way through. This year he was eager to try to corn maze, as well. Years ago he was immediately frightened by the high corn stalk walls and turned right around and crashed through them to get out. This time he navigated the field very easily. The hay ride was another attraction and we enjoyed a nice comfy ride around the field. We bought some pumpkins and gourds and squash for our holiday decorations and had fun walking around on a beautiful sunny day.

The farmer uses an air compressor to power his pumpkin cannon and it used to be mounted on an old vintage fire engine—quite a sight. This year the fire engine was gone. I asked him about it and he said he turned it into scrap! At first I thought he was kidding, but he went on to say that it was loaded with 900 pounds of brass, and even the motor was valuable. He wound up with about $7,000, having paid his neighbor $500 for it years ago. Still, I was sorry to see it go, since it was probably worth something in terms of history, but maybe not seven thousand dollars worth. Besides, with fuel costs tripling in this past year, I supposed he made an economic decision not colored by sentiment.

From the Wild Animal Department: the other day Kathy saw a mouse skitter into the heat vent in the kitchen and she screamed like a cartoon character. I was immediately dispatched to the hardware store to buy traps. I set one by the suspect vent another by the refrigerator. Kathy suggested I put one in the hole that the goofy electrician punched in the basement ceiling a couple years ago. The holed leads right to an open space under the family room. Sure enough, the remains of Stuart Little were found in that trap the next day. Cute little fellow—nice ears, tailored jacket. His hat was lost in the melee, though.

Vineyard Wedding

2008-10-05T17:10:00.000-07:00

On Saturday afternoon Kathy and I drove out into the country to a vineyard where our friends’ daughter was being married. It was the strangest wedding we’d ever witnessed. To begin with, the bride and her father appeared walking over the hill between the lines of trellises down to a sort of arch way of woven branches (I tried not to think ‘Blair Witch Project’, I really did).

The minister was a woman who made various signs with her hands—almost a sign of the cross but not quite, along with pronouncements about the sanctity of marriage (this is called foreshadowing—see my conversation with her below). She did say one thing that stuck with me: something about how over the years the annoying things about your partner become “endearing”. There were several readings: one from the Tao and a couple I couldn’t quite catch. The bride’s father, a staunch Catholic guy, recited a sonnet from memory. All the readings blathered on about love and stuff like that, which was fine. Periodically a woman dressed all in black with a 1930’s hat perched on her head stood up to sing various selections. One was in French, another was in Italian and the third again I couldn’t quite catch. Mind you, we had no scorecards to tell us who was on first.

There was no best man, but rather a woman who happened to be a lesbian served as “best person”. The bride and groom said some things to each other that no one could hear, they exchanged rings, looked expectantly at the minister, unsure as to whether they were done or not, and kissed exuberantly at the end.

It was a brilliant sunny day in the fifties, and there was a tent sent up with rows of tables and chairs inside, a DJ, and about a hundred people milling around after the ceremony. There was no formal cutting of the cake because the “cake” consisted of tiers of Krispy Kreme doughnuts. If you wanted a piece of the wedding cake, you simply grabbed a donut. Appetizers and wine flowed freely and after about three hours we were ready to leave. The sun was sliding behind the trees, the temperature was dipping with it, and we didn’t want to be driving around the countryside in the dark. Our hosts said, “Wait—the food is coming out!” It took three hours to get to the food? We made our excuses and slipped away.

It was something of an artsy fartsy crowd, since both bride and groom are creative types. He seems to be vaguely employed, with dreams of doing something with wind turbines in California. The poor guy had injured his foot and wore dress shoes for the ceremony but switched to one of those big Velcro shoes later. He had to trudge through the vineyard with a cane on that bad hoof.

Kathy had a chance to catch up with the mother of the bride, and I walked around and met some interesting people. One of the bride’s brothers had a girlfriend who had gone to the same college as I had, so we talked about that for a while. She told me she is now a “life coach”. I thought to myself: you’re 28. What do you know about life? Come back in thirty years and we’ll talk. They live in California, though, so that makes all the difference. Another couple consisted of a cabinetmaker and an artist of some sort. I also talked to the minister and her husband (second marriage for them both). She wanted to talk about the gender of God. I edged away toward the hors d'oeuvres.

Nothing to see here...

2008-09-28T17:36:00.000-07:00

Nothing to see here—move along, folks. Show’s over. I’m out of the hospital and safely home. Earlier this week, on Tuesday, I had a racing pulse and a heart flopping around like a freshly caught sunfish twisting on a boat dock. By the time I got to the electrophysiologist’s office, everything was fine. The car always runs great when the mechanic drives it. On Friday night, the heart palpitations returned. The moment my head hit the pillow, it took off again. I decided to sleep through it and see how I felt in the morning.

On Saturday morning, Kathy and I debated about whether or not to call the doctor, and finally I did leave a message with her service. After talking to the service, then a nurse then a couple of “fellows” (fellows in an academic sense, not goodfellas sense) from the hospital, they sent me to the ER at Parma hospital. They took me right away of course, slapped the EKG leads on me and then parked my butt in an ER cubicle down the hall. Four hours later I was admitted.

One of the EP’s from the practice came and tuned me out of the PVC blues by using my pacemaker. He then prescribed an additional medication to control the arrhythmia and kept me overnight. I was discharged Sunday afternoon at 2pm. The hospital chaplain spilled the beans in the sacristy before 9am Mass t one of my friends and then the word went out through my network. He came to see me just as I was leaving. Mostly he talks about his own problems when he comes to visit you in the hospital, which is kind of funny. Today he was having back problems from trying to move fifty bank boxes of books to a different rectory.

So, we’ll see how it goes with the new pills.

Good news—my landscaping project in the front yard seems to be working as planned. We’ve got little green shoots all over the place. I felt like a farmer fretting about the crops and weather, nursing the lawn along.

Green green grass of home

2008-09-20T18:15:00.001-07:00

It is finished. It took me about twelve hours over the last week, dozens of garbage bags, 1200 pound of dirt, 400 square feet of the grass patch stuff and about $85, but it’s done. Our front yard, that is. Since the blue spruce came down a week and a half ago, I’ve been working on clearing out the debris and preparing the ground for new grass. Today I dumped all the dirt (four trips to Lowe’s) and spread lime and then sprinkled the patch stuff over half the lawn. Now I just have to keep it watered for the next couple of weeks and we’ll have new grass just like that.

Next door neighbor Joe kept bringing me helpful tools while I was working, including a couple of picks that were very handy for chopping the giant roots left behind, and a seventeen pound pry bar to encourage them to let go and pop out of the ground. He has also been thinking about ways to “improve” my new snow blower, including cutting the cables on the safety controls. I graciously declined, but then he came back with an idea that might actually be helpful—tying down the auger control so I use that hand to direct the chute. Promises to be a very interesting winter season.

Max popped out of his father’s car the other day when I was working on the yard and announced that he wanted to help. He went into the house for dinner and an hour later he came out as I was putting my tools away. He and Shane went right to it though and did a nice job cleaning up the rest of the mess. Kathy gave him a dollar for his help and he was all excited saying, “Now I can buy a lottery ticket!”

Without her

2008-09-07T09:31:00.000-07:00

I spend the night in the chair
Thinking she’ll be there but she never comes
And then I wake up and wipe the sleep from my eyes
And I rise to face another day without her.

It’s just no good any more
When you walk through the door of an empty room
And you go inside and set a table for one
It’s no fun when you spend the day without her.
(Harry Nilsson, “Without Her”, 1971)

Thirty-five years ago, Kathy and I were living in Illinois. Our daughter was only a few months old. I was in graduate school (a move that didn’t pay off for another twelve years, but I didn’t know that at the time). Kathy was working in a hospital, but even so, we were on food stamps. She was desperately homesick, so when we drove back to Ohio to visit her parents at Easter in 1973, she announced that she and Ann would remain with her parents and that I was to go back to Illinois and finish that degree just as fast as I could.

Harry Nilsson hit it on the head for me back then, and he still does even now.

I sent Kathy and her two sisters to The Ritz for her birthday weekend. They left on Friday and should be back any time now. Turns out this time alone gave me pause. What will it be like if she precedes me in death? I obsessed about that on Friday, leaving work a little late (Kathy hates that) and stopping at the grocery store on the way home (she also hates that).

We have befriended one of the women who work around the cash registers, you know—the one who runs around OKing wine and cigarette sales and fixing problems with the computer. Jackie noticed I was alone and she asked about Kathy, concerned that she was OK. I reassured her that she was out having a wonderful time at the hotel. Jackie patted me on the shoulder and said, “It’s a good time for you to have some ‘alone’ time.” Still, I was dogged by the thought that being alone could be a permanent thing.

Finally, on Saturday morning I shook off those thoughts and concentrated on doing other things that Kathy hates: going to the big box hardware store, going to the local hardware store, working on things around the house that make her nervous, banging on things that needed banging on, generally enjoying myself.

I walked down to the end of our street to the Ariens dealer and put down a deposit on a big honkin’ snow thrower that I’d coveted for years. This thing has six forward speeds, two reverse (why do you need two reverse speeds?), a six horsepower engine and a 24” wide auger. For the cognoscenti, it’s a two stage machine with an overhead valve engine. Bring it on, baby, I’m ready for anything.

Now Kathy is back, tired and happy, full of tales about their adventures in the big city. It seems they thoroughly enjoyed themselves, living it up on the Club floor with fabulous hors d'oeuvres, tempting martinis and a sweeping view of the river. Gosh it’s good to have her home.

Blue Angels and one not so blue

2008-08-30T18:01:00.000-07:00

Imagine—it’s the end of August already. Winter should fly so fast. This past week was the first week of classes at the U. As usual, I worked the Welcome Table in front of my building on Monday and Tuesday from 7m-9am. In the past we had two people at a table, but this year for some reason, they had trouble finding people willing to work them. I like to do it because it’s fun helping new students find their way around and answering their questions. I wound up working alone both times, but that’s OK. On Monday I was so busy I handed out hundreds of logo'd planners and pencils and pens and keychains—hardly had time to get the table set up when people started streaming by.

It was noisy work, since there is a huge construction pit right in front of the building, with five excavators hammering on old concrete, loading up old rebar, and generally roaring around without let up. They tore down the old student center and will open a new one in about year and a half. The wing of our building where our offices are has been shuddering since the beginning of July, since we all seem to be sitting on the same concrete pad as the demolished building.

On Thursday and Friday last week we had the Blue Angels streaking around the city at practically tree top level, practicing for the Cleveland Air Show that’s held every Labor Day weekend. We had a great view from my office, as the planes zipped by in formation, climbing into the sky, disappearing and then roared in from a completely different direction.

I had my last physical therapy appointment last week, and I wanted to do something for my therapist, so I asked one of the aides what she liked and learned that chocolate would be a good thing. Kathy and I drove out to the only mall with a Godiva store and I bought a good sized box for Laura the therapist and a smaller one that she could use to share with the other people at the clinic. I also bought her some swim goggles that I thought she could use. When I arrived for my appointment, she wasn’t there yet, so I was able to stash the duffel bag with the goodies in it in a closet without being observed. After the appointment—during which we really worked hard by the way—I made my presentation. I told her that I had been treated by five orthopedic surgeons, five physical therapists, three emergency room doctors and my own doctor, but she was the only one out of all those people to take the time to diagnose me properly and find the source of my problem and fix it. She was touched—she was mostly excited about the goggles, I think. Then she went to the computer and told me that there are still three more sessions.

Dusty day

2008-08-27T17:14:00.000-07:00

Still no rain this week. The lawn, such as it is, has browned up nicely and those odd weeds that thrive in drought have popped up here and there, the kind that make you think you should mow the grass just for the sake of cutting those weeds. Each day for the past two weeks we’ve pulled into our street wondering if the tree surgeon had come to slice and dice our big evergreen out front, half expecting to see a pile of pine rubble where the monster once stood. So far, the tree still stands, heedless of its fate.

In the backyard, most of the pansies have withered away, sun loving though they maybe, they still require a modicum of water that must now come from the hose, if I can stir myself to go out and sprinkle them at all. The dogwood leaves look ready to fall, discolored by drought, though I do dump some water on it every couple of days. Meanwhile, we are ensconced in air conditioned comfort keeping the August heat and humidity at bay.

Six year old Max was trying out a new word this week. I was sitting with ice on my knee and he looked over and said, “I would be pleasured to bring you more ice when that one wears out.” I knew what he meant, though. Later, when he was headed home, Nana Kathy thanked him for doing something, and he replied, “It was my pleasure!” On Saturday we went to an early soccer game to watch him play and got there a little late. It was already hot by 10am and Max was in no mood to race around a soccer field. He sat out the third quarter and reluctantly agreed to play goalie for the final stanza (as the sports writers say). No threat to his team’s unblemished record as most of the action as always was at the other end of the field. Just as well as Max managed to get a good dust storm going at his end, kicking dirt and ignoring the game.

Summer musings

2008-08-16T19:10:00.001-07:00

What happened to summer? It’s still warm, but cool nights have moved in, as they do during August. The days are dry and sunny, the nights comfortable for sleeping—don’t even need the air conditioning anymore.

I sat on the back deck and watched the moon rise the other night. The breeze had quieted. The first star came out. OK, it was probably a planet, but still. The crickets were ratcheting up their calls, some other insistent insect was buzzing, not doubt looking for some bug-love. Fireflies soared and swooped. First here, then there, then gone again.

Crickets used to make me feel a little ill. Sick to my stomach, marking as they do the waning days of summer and warning of the start of another school year. This was back when I taught high school. I dreaded going back, but then I got there and it was pretty much OK. Now it still means the start of another school year, but I love my teaching now, though I’m more often training other people to teach the courses I write.

Maybe January, February and March will go by just as fast as June, July and August seem to.

There is a blue spruce in the front yard that my mom and wife bought for our “new house” 28 years ago. It was a little stick that almost didn’t survive its first winter. Now it’s probably forty feet high and takes up half the front yard. I just signed the contract to have it cut down. The guy will be out in the next couple of weeks. My neighbor has been really good about it, but he’s mentioned that guests parking in his driveway can’t even get out of their cars on that side. We already know it’s impossible to see down the street when we pull out of the driveway. Are we rationalizing?

I’m a tree guy. I planted another blue spruce in our postage stamp back yard and keep it trimmed so it won’t take over the landscape completely. (You know it never occurred to me to trim the doomed one in the front yard.) There is a pink dogwood that we call our anniversary tree back there too. It flowers each year on our wedding anniversary. The birds planted two maple trees by the back fence and I’ve let them grow. The goal is to have them drop leaves in the back neighbor’s pool someday.

All this is to say I’d rather keep the tree, but I will replace it with maybe a river birch to dress up the front yard. Something that won’t completely block our vision or annoy our neighbor to the east.

Every prom photo and graduation portrait featured that tree in the background. One of grandson Max’s first “jobs” was collecting its pine cones one spring day. Generations of birds have made their homes in it. The lawnmower has been bouncing over its roots for years.

Being on the north side, it probably won’t affect the amount of light in our living room, but it will certainly open a vista long hidden: that of the neighbors’ houses across the street. We kind of liked the privacy it afforded us. No reason to buy fancy curtains if no one can see them, either.

It will be different here once it’s gone, but I think it will be a good thing. We won’t have so many close calls with people driving down the street, we won’t have to worry about it blowing over in a storm. But still, visitors will not have that landmark tree to help them find our house (“Just look for the big blue spruce. That’s us.”)

So the tree is coming down, summer is winding down, school is cranking up and pretty soon we’ll be carving pumpkins and sending out Christmas cards.

So where have I been?

2008-08-10T10:20:00.000-07:00

So where have I been? In that city with the Gateway arch for a professional conference. I hadn’t been there for twelve years. Since I spent five days in the hotel without venturing out, I’m glad I did some touristy things twelve years ago—things like going up inside the arch to see the view. OK, we did go out one night for dinner, but that was in taxis and didn’t really count.

We had some interesting speakers including Bill Rancic, who apparently was the first winner in the TV show “The Apprentice”. I didn’t know who he was, but I guess he brought a little star power to our group. He told some funny stories about how he got into business and a little about the TV show. No great earth shattering insights, just some thoughts about bringing different strategies to different problem solving situations and the importance of setting goals.

Different people have talked to us abut Generation X and the Millenials and their different characteristics and how they think and what they want from a career, that sort of thing. I couldn’t really keep it straight. This time, though, a speaker divided up the 400 or so people in the room into groups according to our birth years. We had enough different aged people to represent all these groups: “Traditionalists”, Baby Boomers, X-ers and Millennials. Then we answered questions about our own experiences growing up.

We covered things like TV shows we watched, what family dinners were like, what we thought of performance evaluations—ten questions all together. Then she had each group report on their answers. It really brought the generational thing to life to hear people talk about their group and how they were shaped and why they do the things they do. Very much fun.

A friend of mine did a workshop on Multi-Cultural Counseling Competency that was very rich in content. She has been training her staff on how to talk to people coming from different backgrounds. She covered womens’ issues, African-American, Gay/Lesbian, American Indian,--all sorts of different perspectives.

Then it was off to New Jersey to see my family there: Dad, sister and brother, nieces and nephews. Dad is 85 and doing better these days in terms of walking. He got some sort of shots that helped him. It had been a year since I had seen him, so it was time to go again. Plus, I love driving alone for seven or eight hours and listening to my iPod tunes coming through the radio speakers. That’s my idea of fun.

Also , it’s hard to sit down at a computer and keep up with blogs in the summer. If it’s nice outside, then I’m outside. What’s that? I should get a laptop and wireless network? Donations cheerfully accepted.

Let's get packing

2008-07-26T17:07:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a bad bad blogger these past weeks. It’s summer—no time to sit in front of a computer! I’ll have to check on the rest of you.

Tomorrow I leave for St. Louis for a conference. Lots of meetings, a chance to see some of my friends from around the country. I’m on the executive board as the Treasurer ,of all things, so there are meetings for that, then speakers and workshops to cover for the association’s newsletter. I also take photos for the website, which involves running from room to room capturing fascinating scenes of people sitting in groups.

One officer turned in a shady expense report and I have to talk to her about that. She claimed hundreds of dollars in expenses that just didn’t make sense. She has a history of taking vacations on our dime and I suspect there was some of that going on . Other than that, it will be good to see everyone else.

How do you pack for trips like this? I like to make sure I will be as comfortable in my hotel room as I would be at home. There must be the right sleepie clothes, the right play clothes, appropriate “business casual” stuff, enough socks and underwear for any emergency, with shoes.

There could be a reason for this, if we go back far enough. One time—Oh. You didn’t ask to go back there? That’s OK. It’ll be worth it.—So, one time when I was about ten, our family was out in a state park in New Jersey, staying in a cabin for a week. While I was goofing around, acting like a ten year old, I slipped and fell into the stream that ran past the cabin, soaking my pants. My mother said, “Where are your other jeans?”

There were no “other jeans”. I’d only brought the ones on my little butt. No spares. Ever after, I’ve overpacked. Never been caught short since.

2008-07-15T17:48:00.000-07:00

July 4, 2008

2008-07-15T17:46:00.000-07:00

Did you get my email?

2008-07-15T17:33:00.001-07:00

Today I was so busy I didn’t even have a chance to check my email. Messages piled up with no regard to my busy schedule. While I was in meetings, these electronic newsy bits kept piling up.

Listserves are the bane of modern existence. People chatted away, though I wasn’t’ there to follow the thread. When I finally looked at my inbox tonight, three was an entire inane conversation about something really important and half the members did not participate.

I sent an email to over 9,000 people last night and accidentally forgot to change the email return address to something other than my own. Consequently, I wound up getting all sorts of responses ranging from pleas for help to complaints about our database system.

Maybe it’s email news subscriptions that are the bane of modern existence. Of course, like listserves, it’s our own darn fault. We signed up for them, so we shouldn’t be upset when they show up. But how much information does one really need, anyway? I read the news articles and promptly forget what I read, but boy I sure had to have that information for some reason.

No wait—it’s spam that is the bane of modern existence. We have a pretty good filter at work and an address to send it to in order to prevent future messages from different sources. Lately there has been an outbreak of spam from Lilly—or something that purports to be the pharmaceutical company. I keep forwarding them to the filter and they keep popping up like e-weeds It just takes time away from anything else I want to do.

We all ask ourselves: what did we do before email? I guess we picked up the phone and asked a question, got an answer and went on our way. People email me from their offices located a few feet from mine. Why not get off your duff and come see me?

You know what email is? It’s free. We love free. We will use the heck out of free. Not that we should be charged for it, like text messaging or something. Just be sensible. Think before you type. Ask yourself: is this message necessary?

Don’t mind me. I’m just tired tonight.

A Glorious Fourth

2008-07-06T19:08:00.000-07:00

It was a Max Marathon this weekend, as he stayed with us Thursday Friday, Saturday nights and Sunday until late evening. He was very excited to see Auntie Ann and they had lots of fun together. He brought out a box containing a paper airplane kit and the three of us sat out on the deck folding our planes. Ann said, “C’mon Max, what’s taking so long?” Max retorted, “You can’t rush perfection.” Shane and Ann and Max had some outings together over the weekend, and they invited me to see the fireworks on July 4th with them. We got to the general area at about 8:30pm, and the show didn’t start until 10:00pm. Max was pretty good the whole time, but he petered out before the finale, so we left a little early. Sunday evening I took him for a walk to get some air—it had cooled off a little by then—and we stopped at our friend’s house a couple of block away. Her name is also Kathy. Kathy offered Max some fruit punch, which he accepted with thanks. When she noticed he had finished it, she asked him if he wanted some more. He responded by saying he wanted a marshmallow. We couldn’t figure out what he was talking about, so friend Kathy said, “I’m sorry honey, I don’t’ have any marshmallows.” Max looked surprised and said, “Why’d you ask me if I wanted a s’more, then?” What we got here…is failure to communicate.

Daughter Ann arrived last week, coming home to go to her high school friend’s wedding. Her friend is Indian—dot not feather—and they will have an traditional Indian ceremony along with an American style reception at a nice hotel in downtown Cleveland. I am taking Monday off so we can go dress shopping. Maybe Ann will find something, too.j

We had left a suitcase in Ireland since we didn’t need it for our return trip. Ann filled it with fifty pounds of junk food: specially flavored potato chips, Cadbury cookies, Cadbury chocolate, Rollo mints, Mars Bars and other goodies that we can’t get here in the States. We were thrilled.

She also brought Max a special treat: a tipi kind of tent that they set up in the living room. Ann didn’t count on Max’s growth spurt, but he still enjoyed crawling into the tent and playing with his toys in there.

On July 4th, we made a day of it, going to the parade in the morning and then the fireworks at night. Max was excited about the parade because he remembered that different groups threw candy to the kids last year. He came home with a bagful, like Halloween in July. Every politician and obscure candidate made an appearance, along with more incongruous entries, like a semi from a truck driving school, and another semi from a freight company. No decorations, just big trucks. A few units did have more traditional floats with historical themes, but most did not get very fancy.

All three high school bands from the city were there, a small veterans group, and then a big crowd of “Adventure neé Indian Princesses and another group of boys. When our boys were in the group, sponsored by the YMCA, they were called Indian Guides. Apparently, about a year ago, someone decided they had to be politically correct, I guess, and they changed the names. I never thought anything racist was going on with the name “Indian”, in fact, it was an honest to goodness Native American guy who started it all. I always thought it was a great idea, rather than the Boy Scouts, since every boy had a father with him at the camp outs and monthly meetings. I liked the fact that they didn’t just hand the kids over to one or two adults to run everything. Anyway, it looks like the group is still strong, it just has a new name.

At the fireworks, we sat at the high school across the street from the community college where the show was being done. We agreed with Shane that we didn’t want to be too far into a crowd in case Max needed to get home. It cooled off in the evening, so we had jackets with us, lawn chairs, drinks and snacks. We were prepared! Once the show started, it was evident that we were very far away and there were some trees in the way. I scurried off to set up my tripod in the parking lot to get some better shots. (My camera has a “fireworks” setting and I always wanted to try it.)

Sure enough, Max asked to go back to the car before the show was over since he was getting cold and of course the car was only a few feet away. He and Ann were in the back seat and he said to his aunt, “Let’s close our eyes for a minute” and then he was out. I did get a few good shots but next year I might get a little closer.

Hope you had a fun weekend.

Surgery!

2008-06-21T18:39:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday this past week I had my arthroscopic surgery. Kathy and I drove out to a surgery center for the procedure. I was a little skeptical at first, but it turned out to be much nicer than being in the hospital. There were lots of people working there and it was all about me. Afterwards, the doctor told Kathy that I have severe arthritis in my knee, that it is pretty much bone on bone in there, and it would be up to me to decide when to do a knee replacement. He didn’t really see anything in particular that could be causing all the bleeding, but I am hoping that just the fact that he cleaned up some of the arthritis will help.

The first twenty-four hours after the surgery were kind of bad, but after that I started to feel much better. In fact, I feel better now than I have for more than a year, already walking without crutches. The doctor said 5-7 days on crutches, but I didn’t need that much time. I started my own version of physical therapy, with the official visits commencing this coming Wednesday.

I took four days off this week, but I’ll be back to the office on Monday. There’s really no reason to sit around any more. Of course I’ve been working at home, anyway. Once I started to feel better I went right back to my computer. We have a lot to do to get ready for the transition to a new software system, so that’s what I worked on. We are pretty much ready for the switch on Wednesday. This new version will cut staff time spent on paperwork in half or better, so that in itself is worth the price. Speaking of which, the price is ridiculously low, so we are very pleased.

My new monitor arrived this week, and Shane set it up for me, since I was incapacitated. It’s a Dell 20 inch widescreen. The photo software I ordered also came in (Adobe Lightroom), so now I am in business. I started messing around with the photo editing software tonight and I can already see how I can improve my photos. There is a lot to learn, though.

We had something of a gully washer come through here this afternoon with heavy thunderstorms, but our basement is safe. It’s cooled off considerably. Of course we had the AC guy come out to inspect our system today and it was fine. We haven’t used it much yet this season, but when we need it, it’s nice to have it.

We celebrated Max’s sixth birthday last Sunday with a small family picnic at a public park a few blocks away. Mostly the adults chased each other around with water pistols and water balloons. We bought Max some more Lincoln Logs to supplement what we gave him at Christmas. He also got something that lets him create his own aliens—no self respecting six year old should be without one of those. His soccer games are over for now, though they pick up again near the end of summer. It’s an odd schedule. He has decided to work on his goal tending skills for the second season.

Kathy has been nursing me back to health (best move I ever made—marrying a nurse—) She makes sure I take my pills and urges me not to overdo. She played hooky on Friday to she is having a nice three day weekend. I am coming off a six day weekend myself.

Ireland, part two of two (and a link to photos!)

2008-06-13T18:17:00.000-07:00

One adventure we had as a family in Dingle was a search for a pair of pliers. In order to read the meter and pay the electric bill for the cottage, we needed pliers to open the access panel outside the house. A guy in a convenience store directed us to a place that was a combination bar and hardware store. We didn’t quite believe it until we walked into Foxy John’s Bar and Hardware: half bar, half hardware store. The left side of the room was a bar where some locals were quite lit at 10:30 in the morning. The right side of the room was a rabbit warren of cubby holes with all kinds of junk stuffed in them.

The bartender changed hats, so to speak, coming out from behind the bar and going behind the hardware counter. Sure enough, he went right to certain box and pulled out a pair of pliers for about €5. We were saved!

One curious thing I noticed was that as Ann drove around the back roads, every time a car came from the opposite direction, she would raise a finger or two. I asked her about it and she just said, “Country wave”. Gotta love the country wave. There is a certain convention, apparently about the correct use of this salute. Unless you recognize a friend, one or two fingers is sufficient. If you see an acquaintance, a whole hand wave is required.

On our last day in Dingle, we traveled around to see the famous beehive huts, famine houses and an ancient stone fort. After sightseeing, we stopped for an early dinner in Dingle at Ashe’s—turns out someone named Scanlon is the owner. We couldn’t find any “an”s anywhere, but there were plenty of Americans to go around. One sales clerk was from Louisiana, a server was from Bergenfield, and some other tourists on the Fungi boat were from a town a few miles from Parma.

Kathy and I went to Mass on Sunday in the country church in Ballingeary. We were able to walk there fortunately, since there is no parking to speak of. I had been looking forward to that Mass all week. They had five servers: two girls who did all the work, one boy who was on the same side of the altar as the girls, and two little boys who had nothing to do over on the other side of the altar. The Mass was partly in Irish (the prayers and readings) and partly in English (the homily). It was a rather joyless affair, though, with no music at all. It all seemed so …obligatory. We sat near the front, about eight pews back with no one in front of us except two grandparents and five grandchildren. Then there was a no man’s land of about ten empty pews behind us and then about 150 people were jammed into the back of the church.

Our second week, we went ‘round the Ring of Kerry. All this time I thought it was some stone structure we were going to see, but of course it’s rather a string of towns with different sights to see, all around the Kerry area. One highlight was a trip through the Gap of Dunloe, a long winding road through a boulder strewn valley. There was one point in the trip where you had to pass between a kind of Scylla and Charybdis—two big rocks with only enough room for one car.

The absolute best part of the trip for me was a secret visit to Skellig Michael with Peter. We stole away one morning without telling Kathy where we were going. Everyone else know, though. Skellig Michael is a forty minute boat ride out into the Atlantic. Monks lived there beginning a few hundred years after Jesus finished his work on earth. They had to carve hundreds of steps into the stone, leading to the top of this big rock that sticks out of the ocean. They built bee hive huts there and a hermitage. They considered themselves living at the edge of the world, and it certainly seems that way when you are there. I hope you can see the photos on http://www.flickr.com/photos/44964247@N00/.

You had to walk along the edge of the cliff for most of the hike, so it was no place for acrophobiacs. We met one on the way up. She was terrified of crossing a rather wide ledge—actually an easy part of the trip. She did make it to the top eventually and had someone walk her down later. I allowed myself a half hour to get down to the boat, and I just made it. Peter hot footed it down the trail and was the last one aboard.

My knee held up just fine through all of this and then gave out on our last day.

Our last round of sightseeing included the Cliffs of Moher, which we saw both from the top and from a boat (courtesy of Ann). They were very impressive, despite the cloudy weather. Kathy made a new friend, Sean, on the boat. Sean coaxed her out onto the bow and told old jokes to keep her entertained. You can see him in one of the photos.

I have some classic shots of the 5,000 year old portal tomb at Poulnabrone—the last nifty sight we saw on our trip. After that, we headed for Shannon Airport for our last night in Ireland. Ann’s plan worked out very well. In fact, everything she planned for us worked wonderfully well. She was a terrific travel agent, guide, cook, driver, hostess and daughter throughout the whole two weeks.

I’ll leave you with some Irish-isms we heard during the trip:
- In one little town, a woman bent down in front of our car to pick up a coin. She came over to the driver’s side to say, “I always pick up money, because the angels have left it for me.”
- What time does the restaurant open? “When they get there.”
- How do I get to ______________? “Well, I wouldn’t start from here.”

Introduction to Ireland

2008-06-07T18:34:00.000-07:00

We only slept a few hours on the way over to Shannon. The in-flight movie was “The Bucket List” which turned out to be very good, funny and sad. This time we had a plane with the TV screens built right into the headrests in front of us instead of the ones that swing down from the ceiling every few feet.

Our party split up with Kathy and her sisters Lois and Priscilla going off with Peter directly to the house. I left with Ann to go pick up their dog Toby. He turned out to be a great dog. He’s about fifty pounds, a medium haired Alsatian. We’d hate to see a long haired one, since he was plenty furry himself. We learned that “Alsatian” was just a politically correct term for German Shepherd.

Their house is only two years old, the garage about eight months old, so everything is very new. They have two bedrooms upstairs where the sisters slept, and three downstairs. Kathy and I had the one opposite the bathroom. It normally serves as a workroom for Peter, but they were nice enough to set up a bed for us in there.

The back of the house is a very big space with a kitchen that sprawls along one wall and an eating area set up in a sort of glass enclosed patio. They put down a line of black tape, scribing a arc around the food preparation area in the kitchen that is a Toby-free zone. He is not allowed past the line.

We spent a lot of time lounging at the dining table reading, talking, eating, looking out at the hills searching for the pheasant we knew lived in the bushes. Ann had set up our places marked with coffee mugs full of chocolate, and we wound up staying in our assigned spots for the whole visit.

Staying awake the first day is always a challenge. If you can stay up till 8pm or 9pm, you feel much better than if you sneak in a nap. To ensure our wakefulness, Peter and Ann took us out to an enchanted forest called Gougán Barra. OK, maybe it’s not really enchanted, but it’s my vision of a place likely to be populated by fairies and hobbits. The moss covered rocks and boggy ground with groves of pine trees are very picturesque. In fact, Peter has some wonderful shots of the area in his portfolio.

As part of our sleep deprivation routine, Priscilla and I decided to walk into Ballingeary proper—the village located just a mile down the road. We were instructed to walk on the right side facing traffic on the narrow country road. We dubbed it the Highway of Death because the cars race along without a thought for anyone foolish enough to be on foot. As you approach the village, you come to the Bridge of Death, as we called it, since there is nowhere to go if two cars approaching from opposite directions meet on the bridge. You have to go over the side. Fortunately, we survived the excursion and in the end we became rather blasé about cars rushing by us on the rural lanes.

Priscilla and I walked into the little store in town to get a head of lettuce, and had to ask the produce driver if he had any on his truck—fortunately he was just making his delivery. The store clerk was chatting with him as he worked. Since we were visiting an Irish speaking or Gaeltacht area, we heard lots of things we didn’t recognize. Later we saw the produce driver outside and he asked us, ‘Could you understand that lady in there?” We said no, and he said, ‘Me neither!”

Day Two
Ann and I drove out to the “Community Amenities Center”---read Recycling Center. Ann’s favorite activity is to smash the glass bottles she has brought inside the glass bin. It’s quite a carnival trick to get them into the hole in the bin so they won’t just smash on the parking lot.

Our next adventure was driving down south to a lighthouse point called Mizen Head. It was a cold and windy seascape there on the southwestern-most point of Ireland, with fingers of rock reaching into the ocean and waves crashing over them. Sea caves in the cliffs are a dramatic feature as are the folds in the rocks along the walkway that takes you to the light house buildings.

We stopped for a late lunch at O’Sullivan’s, a little pub on the water in Crookhaven. Most of us had the crab sandwich, complete with bits of shell, so you know it was authentic. Lois had a rum and coke—they pour the rum in the glass and hand you a small bottle of Coke. Priscilla decided that her favorite part of a glass of Guinness is the foam.

Day Three
We had plenty of authentic Irish weather on Wednesday, with pouring rain the primary feature. It gave way to scattered showers and sprinkles. Do the Irish have many words for rain, as the Inuit have for snow? They should.

Our inside activity was a visit to Muckross House, a big estate in Kilarney Our tour guide Niall took us through all the rooms up and down and into the basement as well, explaining the function of each room. We asked about why the beds were so short, figuring it was just that people were shorter then, and Niall pointed out an additional factor—that they often had respiratory problems and they thought that sitting up in bed was better for them.

In the scullery, the guide pointed out the sinks that were built low to the floor, remarking that that was because the children of the servants would work at those sinks. The whole group groaned at the prospect of children inheriting their parents’ station in life.

One of the owners of Muckross House spent most of his fortune and all of six years preparing for a visit from Queen Victoria. He hoped to garner a title out of the deal, so he went all out. She spent a total of two days there, and after all that work and expense, she completely forgot about granting a title to the owner. Her husband, Prince Albert, died shortly after this visit and in her ensuing depression, she never gave it a thought.

I asked the guide about the name “Muckross”. It was derived from ‘Muck” meaning “boar”, since there were once boars on the property, and “ross” meaning peninsula, since it’s situated on a peninsula. No one else asked that, so I was quite pleased with myself.

We had a sumptuous lunch at the Lake Hotel in Kilarney. The sisters decided that this was their favorite place to eat so we did come back here the following week. After lunch, Lois, Priscilla and Peter went back to Ballingeary since the sisters were flying to London for three days. Ann, Kathy and I split off for Balliferriter, a village on the Dingle peninsula where we had booked a cottage.

The “cottage” turned out to be a three bedroom affair with a nice kitchen, dining area and a big living room, all very comfortable. The only thing we lacked was bath towels. We bought a couple rolls of the paper variety and that did the trick. Kathy felt like she was camping.

We drove into Balliferriter for dinner at the hotel/restaurant/pub. I ordered Irish stew and got four whole potatoes, carrots as big as tree trunks and meat in a big bowl of broth. If I had worked all day building stone walls, I could probably work up enough appetite to handle it. As it was, I asked to take the rest home and the woman serving us bit her lip, considered the problem and said, ‘I’ll try to find something to put it in.” Turns out no one had ever asked for a doggie bag before. Fortunately I did not use that phrase—it might have really set her off. She returned with a plastic container that she had obviously scrounged from the kitchen. I felt kind of dopey after that.

Day Four
Ann and I walked down the lane to the beach near our cottage in the morning to collect shells and check out the scenery. The day before had been so rainy we couldn’t see anything. Today we saw the mountains surrounding us for the first time. There is a set of peaks called “The Three Sisters” (ironic for our visit) across the water from our beach. There were photos of them in the cottage, and I took a stab at capturing them on film, er, memory card too.

One thing we got accustomed to this trip was “elevenses”, or what the Hobbits might call “second breakfast”. At about 11am each day, we would find a café and get coffee, tea, croissants, cake or whatever we could find. Kathy was shocked to find me ordering a pot of tea at each stop, since I never ever drink the stuff. I decided to give it a try on this trip.

What I learned was that, at least for me, tea kind of slows things down. First, you have to wait for the tea to steep in the pot. Then you pour, add milk and brown sugar to taste, and wait some more for the cup to cool enough so you can drink it without scalding yourself. By then, things have slowed down to a manageable pace. How civilized.

Next stop was Dingle town and the search for Fungi. Nope, not the mushroom variety—this Fungi is the dolphin variety. We boarded a small boat and set out into the bay to look for the famous dolphin. The deal is, if you don’t see Fungi, you don’t have to pay for the excursion. This seems like a fair deal until you realize that he is a mammal after all and has to come to the surface to breathe. If he were a shark or something, that would be a different story.

Of course we spotted the critter, but often it was just a glimpse of a dorsal fin. One time everyone but Kathy was leaning off the port side, and the tricky little guy showed up along the starboard rail, grinning at Kathy. She jumped up and whooped at the sight!

At lunch at Murphy’s pub, I told Ann to text the following message to Peter: “Sighted Fungi, Sank Same”, hoping he would get the reference. He did.

During this trip, I was in search of a CD from an Irish traditional group called OSNA, who had played at the afters party at Ann and Peter’s wedding. After checking three stores in different towns, I finally went to their website and discovered that the new CD is not out yet. It’s really the thrill of the hunt that I was after, so I didn’t immediately take the easy way out on the Internet.

Peter and Ann are really of the Internet generation, since it is their first resource. Ann uses her laptop as her kitchen radio, listening to NPR stations. It’s also her typewriter for communicating on her blog and her movie studio for DVD’s and game arcade just for fun. Peter has servers running in his computer room that take care of his web site, and of course he has a desktop for his photo business, not to mention a ginormous printer producing those elegant prints of his.

After dropping Kathy back at the cottage, Ann and I took off for Connor Pass, circling around the mountain to approach it from the more difficult side: the side with a single lane road with two way traffic.

At one point, a car was coming down and we had to back up to find a spot to inch over to the left to allow the car to pass. There were a couple of problems with this. First, there was already a car behind us, so we had to get them to back up too. Next, the woman coming down the hill was in a rental car and thus not familiar with the area and so she panicked at this situation and froze. She made us come right up against the rock wall on our left until she finally crept past us.

I told Ann she deserved the Connor Pass Driving Merit Badge. Part of the test for an Irish drivers license requires one to back up around a curve. It was surprising how often this particular maneuver was needed on narrow country roads. There is another trick you have to use when stopped on a hill facing the crest. You need to pull the emergency brake, then release the brake while applying the accelerator—it almost feels like the collective on helicopter controls. Ann is also a star when it comes to this trick.

Triumphant, when we reached the top of the pass, I bought her a “99”, an ice cream cone with a chocolate stick poking out of it. We enjoyed the view of the mountains to one side and Dingle town to the other. It was cold and windy, so after a brief rest, we climbed back into the car for a trip down the mountain on the easy three lane road for a change.

A word about Ann’s car: it’s a diesel Peugeot, four door hatchback with amazing power. Ann has nicknamed the vehicle ‘Leo”. Leo did an outstanding job during this whole trip.

We next ran down to Sleá Head drive, a nifty road that takes you down to a hidden beach that is covered in high tide. (The beach, not the road.) There is a section where a stream runs over the road. It’s too expensive to build a bridge at that spot, so they didn’t. You just have to be careful when you come around that curve.

This being an Irish speaking area, the traffic signs and messages were in Irish. Here are some typical ones:

“Go Mall” - go slow

“Tog Bóg Ė” - Take it softly (slow down)

“Failte” - Welcome

“Sían” - Come Again (or something like that. Appears when you are leaving a town.)

(more to come)

Off to Ireland!

2008-05-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

We are all packed for our trip to Ireland—the place our Irish pastor calls “the real Holyland”. I printed our boarding passes and played the role of help desk with the other relatives who coming with us: Kathy’s two sisters and maybe one brother in law.

He is still on the fence about whether he will board the plane or not. He must decide before he goes through security, so we don’t know what he’ll do until he does it. Saturday night he said he wasn’t coming, then he changed his mind. He did check in, but that doesn’t mean he has to get on the plane. His OCD is giving him fits, such that he did start taking Ativan, but that only dulls the symptoms for a while. He called us many times Friday night and into today with questions.

Shane took Max to the store last weekend to buy Mothers Day flowers for hi mom. He didn’t choose them on the basis of how they looked or the varieties included in the bouquet—he made his choice based on how they smelled. We saw him briefly this past week before they took off for bunch ball practice (or soccer, as it’s known in some circles). We explained that he would not see us for two weeks, and that we were going to visit Auntie Ann in Ireland. Kathy asked him if he wanted us to get him a present over there and all he said was “Bring me back something cool—the coolest thing you can find.” So—we have our assignment.

I took Friday off to prepare for the trip, but I still stopped in the office at 7am, before anyone else got there. I spent four hours Thursday night putting together some training schedules for the two new people who start on Monday. My boss had hoped that I would have time to do that, and since the regulation clock ran out, I had to go into overtime to get them done. He did come into the office just as I was leaving, so he was pleased to see what I accomplished.

We talked to our daughter Ann a couple of times Friday night and Saturday, so now it’s all over but the boarding.

Ethiopian Visitors Rock Cleveland

2008-05-11T06:50:00.000-07:00

This past week was very busy at work since we have a delegation of eleven people from Ethiopia visiting the campus. They are here to learn about American business and American education so they can go back and train their own business owners and students about ways to be successful. In the past, the delegations consisted only of two or three people and no women. This time there are four women in the group which makes it more interesting. One is only 22 while the others are probably fifteen and twenty years older than that.

The men are college professors at Addis Ababa University and business leaders. One named Johannus is the president of the Ethiopian Employers Federation, kind of a chamber of commerce for the country. He is interested in doing his PhD in Business at my college. Another is a teacher at AAU and requested a copy of my textbook to bring back to Ethiopia! Does that mean I am now an internationally known author? Maybe.

I went to an evening reception in their honor on campus on Wednesday night and the event was catered by an Ethiopian restaurant with authentic food. With my delicate constitution, I was a little leery of that, but the food was delicious! Later we learned from a woman named Seble that to her taste, the food was terrible—not authentic at all. It wasn’t prepared properly and the correct spices were not used. Now it would seem that I have fallen in love with bad Ethiopian cuisine.

This reception was my first chance to meet them all, so it was a little awkward at first, and kind of formal. We were impressed when some of them got up to address the group about one topic or another and bowed first to the assembly before they started orating. Johannus talked about their goals for the visit, Seble talked about the status of women in Ethiopia, a man named Alemseger talked about the recent history of his country, recounting the damage done by seventeen years of a communist government that came to power in the ‘70’s. When Johannus pronounced “Ethiopia” to my ear it sounded like “Utopia”, which I found quite amusing, though I did not share this insight with anyone else. Seble remarked that the membership of their legislature is about 30% women.

There was yet another party at my boss’ house—he and his wife put on a dinner for everyone and Kathy and I attended. This time was more fun because it was more informal, with some of us in jeans. I sat with Alemseger for a while and he seemed fascinated with Paul’s neighborhood. There were some African American kids, ranging in age from maybe ten to eighteen in the yard across the street. Alemseger said, “That looks like it could be one big family.” I didn’t know who they were so I said, sure. “Are there many accidents here? It looks dangerous for the kids to play on the sidewalk like that.” I said, well, you try to teach the kids to stay out of the street. He said, “But the ball—they will chase the ball into the street.” Yes, I suppose they could. He couldn’t get over that.

Kathy was a little apprehensive about going, but I told her that she would love them and they would love her, and it turned out to be just as I had predicted. She made a friend of everyone there. One of the younger guys, Yaschilal, asked her if she had another daughter that he could marry. Apparently he wants a green card.

He and I got into a discussion of capitalism, somehow. When he was growing up, the only thing he knew was what the communist government had told him. Even though they are gone now, he still carries images of the treacherous capitalists stealing from children--the posters he saw as a child. We were interrupted at that point, to go in for dinner, so we'll have to pick that up next time.

There was an older woman who sat between us at dinner, and Kathy kind of bonded with her, as well. Later, our host, told us privately that the woman had confessed to him that she was “not welcoming”, I guess she meant she was not outgoing. I had wondered if she was feeling well, since she seemed so withdrawn. She also turned out to be a very nice person.

They all invited us to Ethiopia, so who knows? Maybe we’ll go there some day. I mentioned to Seble that we were considering going on a cruise that stopped in Alexandria, Egypt. Earlier we had been talking about how the famous skeleton of “Lucy” had been found in Ethiopia, the oldest evidence of human life. She pointed out that Alexandria is located at the mouth of the Blue Nile, which has its source in—you guessed it—Ethiopia.

Ode to Spring

2008-05-04T16:50:00.000-07:00

For some reason, this spring’s beauty seems to have lingered a little longer; a reward for surviving another winter---a winter whose swirling snow and frigid air has already faded from memory. We were just complaining a moment ago, wondering if spring would ever come, and now we’re stuffing sweaters away for next year and digging out our favorite summer t-shirts.

The flowering trees—dogwoods and whatever the heck the other ones might be—the pink and white and purple clouds scattered down the sidestreets hover just a little longer before the blossoms rain down, coating the lawn with their color—yet one more spring treat.

It’s a cliché, but darned if our yard isn’t perfumed by the lilacs in the neighbor’s yard—a pleasant smack in the nose when we walk out the door and head for the car to go to work. Just a reminder that wonderful things are going on despite our conceit that we are in control.

Just for a moment, it’s OK that dandelions dot the landscape. Right now they are part of the whole panorama of color that comes with spring. Tomorrow I will murder them in their sleep.

Blood, Soccer and a Real Date

2008-04-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

This week was my fifth instance of hemarthrosis. I had my knee drained on Thursday. This time it was the woman DO that took care of me. She and the RN did a great job—much better than any of the men. The RN would smoosh the blood pockets around so the doctor could suck it up with needle. They got a world record 72cc’s out of there. This is the best I’ve felt after one of these incidents all year. I will meet with the surgeon next week to set a date for arthroscopic surgery in June. I was thinking I would wait until later in the summer, but I don’t want to go through this again. My own doctor is afraid of infection, and the more often they stick me, the more likely it is that I’ll get an infection. So, I hope the surgery clears all this up.

Today I had the honor of attending our grandson’s first soccer game. We got sprinkled on a little bit, but soccer goes on regardless of the weather. Max’s approach to the game was much like his attitude toward t-ball last summer. He always seemed to be facing in the wrong direction, was not interested in “hustling” anywhere, and would converse with the opposing team at odd moments. If they kept score, his team won 9-0. Max made contact with the ball at least twice. One time their leading scorer got close to the goal and then let Max have a go, though to no avail. Max played alternating quarters, today it was the first and third. He spent his sideline time curled up on his mom’s lap under her umbrella.

At work, I’ve been training a new person who we thought had some experience in the sort of thing we do, but she just looks so puzzled every time I explain things. Finally a little light went on this past week, so maybe I managed to break through. This Social Work professor sent me 45 resumes to review before I speak to two of his classes next week, so I gave the new person a healthy stack and showed her what I wanted her to do. We’ll see how she did next week.

It looks like we will be able to hire two more people finally, though they are not the ones we originally wanted. One is the wife of a political science professor that I see in the locker room all the time. The other is a woman who did an internship in our office working for the director, and I never did interview her—for some reason I was out of the office the day she came in. I still have to train these two, but they may be arriving when we are gone in Ireland. We should have been able to fill these vacancies back in January, so I thought we would be well on our way by now.

Kathy and I went out on a date today to celebrate our 37th wedding anniversary that happened on April 24th. We went to Ruby Tuesday since we liked the takeout we had had from there, but going inside the restaurant did not work out. I had some chicken and crab meat, but there was something “fishy” about the crab meat and I wound up sending it back, thanks to Kathy who agreed that something was wrong. Guess I’ll stick to hamburgers. After we left the restaurant we stopped in a new park/reservation area that we had not seen before. A few years ago some people stopped the area from being developed and got the city to keep the wetlands and build hiking trails in the woods. It’s really a great refuge for people and animals—a little bit of country in the middle of the city. We sat for a while and listened to the birds and watched them swoop around a pond—better than HD TV.

Things on My Computer Desk

2008-04-19T16:48:00.001-07:00

A half used sheet of labels for our church envelopes with the wrong amount typed on them.

The TV remote, so I may multitask.

A pen, a pencil, a black Flair pen, a yellow highlighter.

The remote to my Bose iPod sounddock that sits in the next room, but which I can still control from here.

A card for a free Blockbuster movie that I received for complaining about something or other. It came with a beautifully composed letter of apology that I still have somewhere around the house.

A birthday card for my sister’s big day later this week.

The September 2007 issue of DISCOVER magazine open to a page that says “20 Things You Didn’t Know About Hygiene”. My favorite item from the list: “There is no ‘five second rule’ when it comes to dropping food on the ground. Bacteria need no time at all to contaminate food.” Darn.

The Lonely Planet guide to Ireland. We leave in one month—woo-hoo!

A paperback copy of “The Original Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases”, printed in 1966. That’s when I bought it—42 years ago. Never found another as good.

Loose photographs of my family, Max at the baseball stadium.

A 12’ Stanley tape measure I’ve owned for 37 years. Still retracts, too.

A business card from the Phe’be Foundation (www.phebefoundation.com), a nifty organization that educates teens and college students about credit and finances.

A used Barnes and Noble gift card. (Thanks, kids!)

A rough budget for the Ireland trip.

A wonderful draft itinerary for the Ireland trip, drawn up by our wonderful daughter.

A new thank you card ready to go in case I have to, you know, thank someone.

A picture of Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer’s Apprentice in a plastic sleeve that we bought for grandson Max but haven’t given him yet. Of course it’s been on my desk for probably two years. Better take care of that.
I wouldn’t presume to tag you, but—would you like to play?

Nice work if you can get it

2008-04-13T08:56:00.001-07:00

Last week I was only in the office on Monday and Friday. I spend a couple of days in Des Moines at an executive board meeting for my professional group. I am the treasurer, which is kind of funny because I don’t know a balance sheet from a bed sheet.

Since I didn’t get home until very late on Wednesday night, I stayed home of Thursday. I did do a little work, but I slept in until 9am. It was a good rest day, since I was exhausted the whole time I sat in meetings, having been up at 4am to catch my flight on Tuesday, going long hours the whole time.

We have an interesting group of people on the board, exemplifying diversity. If you just look around the room you would see the following:
- an old white guy (me)
- a mature white woman
- two African American women
- one African American man
- one Vietnamese American man
- one gay white woman
- two straight white women

It’s a pretty good group of people who care about the organization and serve on the board for it’s sake rather than any personal glory one might garner in such a position. Actually, I think most members don’t even know who’s on the board, so there’s no point in joining if you are looking solely for personal gain.

I’m not sure why I do it, myself. Maybe it’s for the neat plaque you get at the end of the year.

Moment of Truth

2008-04-04T19:14:00.000-07:00

I had never watched this show until its finale tonight. Apparently spouses go on TV, sit in a lie detector chair and answer devastating questions about very private matters in an effort to win money.

As the contestant gradually erodes the bedrock of his or her marriage, the host of the show idiotically keeps “congratulating” them on progressing toward the goal of wining more money. Why people would subject themselves to such a brutal display of their inner lives before a nationwide audience just for the sake of a few thousand dollars?

Contestants’ answers bring their families to tears, dredge up old hurts, , shred relationships , and reveal things that should never see the light of day.
Why would anyone in their right mind answer questions like:
- Have you ever regretted marrying your husband?
- Have you ever had sexual relations with one of your best friend’s old boyfriends?
- Were you in love with someone else on your wedding day?
- Have you ever had a sexual fantasy involving your best friend?
- Have you ever stolen money from the family business?
- Have you ever had sexual relations with someone other than your husband during your marriage?
- Have you ever considered hiring a private investigator to follow your husband around?
- Do you blame your father for ruining your childhood?
- Do you consider yourself to be a better mother than your own mother was?

Now come on. Sometimes people think terrible things, do terrible things, but they wouldn’t dream of making these blunders public. Are we really so shallow that we’d willingly bare our soiled souls for a few bucks? Apparently some of us are.

The thing is, while an unexamined life may not be worth living, a thoroughly scrutinized life may be the death of you. Everybody mutters under their breath, wishes plagues on pests, fantasizes about the people in their lives, but how serious are we in these momentary lapses? Following through on crazy thoughts is one thing, and even if you do something foolish, no amount of money is worth revealing a secret that has the potential to wreck your life and ruin relationships with your closest friends and family.

How much are your secrets worth?

Oh, the people you’ll meet!

2008-03-29T19:37:00.000-07:00

On the way home from work on Friday, Kathy decided we were going to play hooky and not go home right away. She had a taste for mussels from Bonefish, and that was where we headed. She even drove the big girl way down the interstate to get there. We had a nice dinner all by ourselves and relaxed for an hour and a half or so. She had had a rough week at work and so we deserved it.

I’ve actually been having some fun at work lately, feeling more like a counselor, since I’ve had so many appointments lately. I was a little rusty, but now I’ve been able to really nail it with some people, coming up with the perfect thing to say, or getting them to tell me what they really want.

The other morning at about eight o’clock, an interesting person came to the office without an appointment. Turns out she was an erstwhile art teacher who graduated 12 years ago when there were no jobs in that field. She started doing secretarial work and stayed with it, but now she wants to give it another shot. I got her to talk about what she’s been doing and how it relates to her goal. She’s the one out there with the neighborhood kids playing badminton, organizing crafts—now it’s on her resume.

Some of the other people I met included:

-The serious young social worker who is relocating to the Carolinas—she mentioned an air force base. Maybe that’s where a boyfriend may be stationed. She didn’t volunteer that information and I didn’t ask. I did get her to smile a few times, though she kept focused on the task at hand: getting her resume together and figuring out how to relocate to a new city and find a job..

-The harried linguistics major with a tiny diamond nose piercing who wants to teach English overseas. She wants to go to Greece—Crete, in particular. I mentioned that I wasn’t sure there was a market for that there, but that’s what she wants, and she’s certainly not going to listen to some old guy tell her how it won’t work.

-The earnest, not-so-young any more man who spent the last ten years working in finance instead of teaching math, which is what he really wants to do. After seven years of school, he’s anxious to make his move, but feels like the Colossus of Rhodes, straddling the gulf between the sure thing (boring old job) and the uncertainty of landing his dream job in teaching.

-The secretary with the Tracy Chapman ‘do, who majored in fashion merchandising of all things, and worked for HBO in New York City, had a daughter and is now back living with her mom, looking for “something stable, but in an artistic environment.” How’s that for a tall order?

Even though I complain about having to do three peoples’ jobs—and it has been hard at times—it’s been good to get back to what I liked about this job in the first place. Kathy had to remind me of that lately. Maybe some day we’ll get some more people to help us, and I hope they are good people, but in the meantime, I am fortunate to be in the company of such wonderful students, so motivated, so driven, so hopeful. There is an amazing group of young people coming up—Generation Y, Millenials, whatever you want to call them—we’ll be in good hands.

Woo-hoo!

2008-03-22T15:59:00.001-07:00

So this is the day between Good Friday and Easter. A day when I wonder what the world might be like if Jesus had not risen from the dead. I can’t help but think we would all be living in a world ruled by Biff—the bully from Back to the Future who makes a fortune betting on games whose outcome he already knows, due to the sports almanac he filched from the future.

It was an amoral place, full of vice and empty glitz, where pursuit of material things was all that seemed to matter. There was no reason to look out for anyone but yourself, no code of conduct other than that of Mammon. It would be a difficult place to exist, because that’s all we would do—exist—not really live.

But I believe He did rise from the dead, and that makes all the difference.

Now there is hope. Now we know there is a better way to live. We have an alternative to self interest and avarice. It’s called love.

Tonight I’ll be in the Easter Vigil service, celebrating the wonderful gift of the Resurrection.

Happy Easter!

I had too much to dream last night

2008-03-15T19:41:00.001-07:00

I had a temp job as a guest lecturer in a math class in France. I had nothing prepared—I just know I was supposed to talk about U.S. math for an hour. The classroom was full, but there were all kinds of people: men, women, young twenty-somethings, older people in their 70’s.

There was music blaring from different corners of the room, so I messed around trying to shut it off. I finally got one section quiet and the class applauded.

The room was very wide and resembled a hunting lodge or pub, with log walls and wooden booths in a the back with traditional school desks scattered around haphazardly.

I said things like, “My sister is a French teacher.” They thought that was very funny. I asked if numbers were different somehow in the U.S.—they thought that was funny, too. I asked if anyone liked to count things, and this one woman answered, but her accent was so strong that I couldn’t understand her. While asking her to repeat her answer, I realized she was naked from waist down. No one else thought anything of it.

All of a sudden a group of older people gathered around a TV right in the middle of class. “What are you doing?” I asked. They mumbled something, but it was apparent that some sort of national sweepstakes horse race was on, and they didn’t want to miss it.

I considered storming out in a huff, but I was afraid I wouldn’t get paid—that’s if I were paying paid at all. I wasn’t too clear about that. Meanwhile, some kids were trying to shut off the music in a corner of the room and I went to help them, but that area of the room was like someone’s kitchen and we couldn’t find any switches. I went back in front of the class to try to continue and I looked at my watch and a whole five minutes had passed the class had started!

The Blizzard of '08

2008-03-08T16:18:00.001-08:00

We have been hunkered down since Friday night with this huge snowstorm howling outside. This morning the weather guy on one channel was giving the official definition of a blizzard—a certain wind speed, snow fall and visibility—and declared that we hadn’t yet met those criteria but then he looked at the camera and said, “But, that’s pretty much what we have out there—it’s a blizzard.” Kathy tried to clear a little path by the backdoor, since we could hardly open it against the snow, but much of her efforts were obliterated by the blowing and drifting snow. I stuck a tape measure into the snow by the backdoor Saturday morning and it was nine inches deep. Now there are drifts three and four feet deep in the driveway, and it’s impossible to tell what our local total might be. It should subside over night and be sunny on Sunday. The lector for 7:30am Mass called me to say she wouldn’t make it to church. I told her I wasn’t going at all myself—we’ll watch the shut-in Mass on TV Sunday morning. The paperboy called fishing for a snow shoveling gig, and we asked him to come on Sunday when the weather clears. He asked, "How much will you give me?" We said twenty dollars (we knew he had been asking $10-15 the day before, but now he knew how much work it was!). He seemed pleased and said he'd be over around 11am. You know we'll give him another five dollars just because he's a great kid. The roads were closed to all but essential traffic, with the police telling everyone to just stay home. Two major malls closed, so you know it must be bad for retail commerce to grind to a halt. Of course the airport was closed—I am very glad I didn’t have to go anywhere this weekend.

We have heat, lights and the Internet. What could be better than that? We have plenty of food and no reason to go out until Monday morning for work. We watched some episodes of “Northern Exposure” on dvd—just the thing for a snowbound afternoon.

How I Spent My Birthday

2008-03-06T18:23:00.000-08:00

I got up early as is my wont, and started several loads of wash. Then I took Kathy to work so I could have the car. I came home and checked email and cycled the washes into the dryer until it was time to leave the house.

I drove to FedEx and shipped the draft of the third edition of my textbook. Do you know the sort of redneck comic named Bill Engvall? He’s famous for the “Here’s your sign” routine. That is, some people should wear a sign saying “Stupid”, so that we’ll know not to rely on them for anything. So I’m in the FedEx store and I put the box on the counter and the woman says, “You want to ship that?” “No, I just thought you might want to admire my neat printing on the address label….here’s your sign.” I didn’t actually say that, of course. Her name tag said “Christine—Team member since 1998.” What I did say was, “So Christine, you’re coming up on a ten year anniversary” and she got this stricken look on her face as if to say, “Ohmigod, have I been here that long?” as she multi-tasked shipping my package and printing color copies for a little old lady standing further down the counter.

Then it was over to Sams Club for paper products, chips and Advil—just the essentials. Then to a big mall where I was determined to do some damage with the Macy’s gift card Kathy had generously given me. There was $47 left on it and I didn’t see why it shouldn’t be wiped clean in one fell swoop. I wound up buying the most expensive pair of black dress pants I could find.

It was nearly lunch time and I was feeling rather peckish. (Always wanted to use ‘peckish’ in a sentence, but first I accidentally typed “puckish”, which I believe is a whole ‘nother thing.) I stopped at a Dippin’ Dots place, I think it’s called. Ever see that stuff? It looks like crumbled cookie toppings but magically turns into ice cream when you put it in your mouth. The was my first experience with the concoction. I also picked up an Auntie Anne’s pretzel, since I was celebrating anyway. Dippin’ Dots is a little tricky, requiring most of one’s attention, so I sat on a couch in the middle of mall eating my Dippin’ Dots, by myself, on my birthday. Then I realized how pathetic that was, and I left to go to the car and eat my pretzel, washing it down with the dregs of a can of Coke I had left in the car. Aware of how sad that was, I headed home.

Desiring to surprise Kathy with an ice-free driveway, I went out and chopped ice and snow for a while. Probably just long enough to screw up my knee again.

For some months I’ve been promising myself a new watchband for my Mickey Mouse watch, since the old one has these sharp edges that ruin my shirt cuffs, I drove to another mall to get one. The young lady at the mall kiosk has been there for years and really knows her stuff, so together we picked out the right one for me. She even gave me 10% off when I told her I had bought the original band from her ten years ago. I didn’t even have to play the birthday card, so to speak.

After picking Kathy up at work, I came home and fielded calls from ~~family members who felt obligated to call~~ admirers with birthday wishes. Still, it was fun catching up with everyone.

So. What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain? Try to catch up with New Yorker magazines that have piled up.

So glad it's finally March!

2008-03-02T08:43:00.000-08:00

This year’s Spring Career Fair was the most emotionally draining one ever. Fortunately, we had rented an electric scooter for me to buzz around the gym with, so I didn’t have to stand all day. That helped my knee considerably. Irene, the secretary who helps me with the Fair, found a place that rented them for $50 a day. When they heard we wanted it delivered downtown, they said Oh, we’re going to charge you a month’s rental for that. So I said good, give me the scooter for the whole month then. Bernie, the secretary whose electric scooter is broken, can use it until hers is fixed.

Anyway, I think I have to find another way to do these fairs, and spread the work around a little. I kept forgetting things during the weeks leading up to the fair. For instance, there were some banners that should have gone up a week ahead of time, and I finally asked someone to put them up two days before the fair. She started to give me attitude instead of help, and I lost it! I was holding part of the stand that the banners hang from and I threw it to the floor and said, “Jeez!” and went off to find someone else. I haven’t been that frustrated in several years.

Weird things happened during this fair that I’d never seen before.

There was a woman who came up to me with a problem. She had lost all her resumes in a snow bank because of the wind and snow outside. She said she had given one to a hospital, since she was going into the OT program, but they said they weren’t hiring people at her level. She left and came back saying that she wanted them to return the resume to her, but they insisted they didn’t have it. So I went over and they let me look through the resumes and it wasn’t there. I felt kind of funny doing it, but I thought it was worth a try.

The woman was waiting for me around the corner. I told her it wasn’t there and then gave her a way to spin this to her advantage: she could tell employers that she was updating her resume and it wasn’t ready yet, and could she send it later? That way she could collect business cards and then tailor her resume specifically for the different companies. Her resume would arrive by itself instead of in a big pile from the fair, and thus would get more attention.

She seemed pleased with this and went off again. Later, I saw her loitering around the lobby, not so obviously, but still obviously waiting for me. She thanked me for the idea and said it worked pretty well. Then she went on to explain why she was so upset about losing the resume. It seems she had been a victim of identity theft a couple of years ago. Someone she knew slightly had charged thousands of dollars to credit cards in her name. It was a nightmare trying to get it all straightened out. So, understandably, she was concerned about her employment history floating around out there.

In the afternoon, a woman fainted and collapsed to the floor. Someone called 911 and no fewer than twelve people from various safety forces showed up: they came from the Cleveland State police, the Cleveland Police Department and the Cleveland Fire Department. The woman did say that she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything all day, and that probably contributed to her fainting. They wheeled out in a wheelchair and that was that.

All during the fair, people kept asking me where Pfizer and Eli Lilly were, and I knew they hadn’t registered. Saturday morning I went back and started looking at some of the problems and realized that the computer system we use had generated some highly inaccurate lists that we then printed up and distributed, thinking that they were just fine. It turns out that they were wildly random.

I haven’t looked at the evaluations yet, though one employer felt he just had to scan and email his evaluation to me right away. He complained that there was no one to help him unload his stuff. I know I had four or five students out there, so I wonder when he arrived. He may have come later and missed them. I wonder what other nuggets I’ll find in the rest of the papers.

If you want to know what’s going on in school, we have learned that you cannot ask Max directly. “How was school?” is not likely to elicit a news-filled answer. So, I asked him what happens if you get tired at school. He answered by saying, “Can’t put your head down! It’s bad to put your head down.” Even more emphatically, he said, “Just keep on goin’” .Friday night he decided that wrestling was on the agenda. We rolled around the living room floor, first he would pin me and then I would pin him. Finally he said, “Best five out of twelve!” We had to continue after dinner, though. He invited me upstairs to play with Lincoln Logs, so we made some ingenious houses which he gleefully destroyed. Then we turned to Legos and he instructed me to build a “mega suit”, whatever that is. We grabbed random pieces and built contraptions and then competed to see whose invention could do more things. Mine could fly, roll and fall down. On the other hand, his could fly left, right, backwards and forwards, “save lives” and had “crystal power”. He won because his turned out to be more versatile. On Saturday night there was a potato chip can on the steps. Max was going up to bed and he looked longingly at the can. Shane it would be OK if he had a chip, and when Max opened the can, those springy snakes shot out! They got me good. He delighted in pulling that trick over and over.

On Saturday night Kathy and I met her sisters and their husbands for a birthday dinner for one sister at a restaurant that had gone out of business years ago and recently reopened. The food was great and the portions were huge. Too many times places charge a bunch for too little, but not this place.

I’m taking a few days off this week to recover: Monday and then Thursday and Friday. That way I don’t have to work on my birthday. I am so glad February is over. It sure seemed like a long month.

It finally happened

2008-02-27T17:12:00.000-08:00

I lost it at work today. I finally had an angry moment. Thi is a hectic week for us and I asked someone for help putting these banners out on campus. Our director said, "Get N to do it." There are some alumninum pieces parts that have to be assembled, and I had the telescoping pole in my hand. When I asked this person for help, she said get the students to do it. Well, that might work, but I wanted her to do it. The student workers were coming and going and we needed them for something else. I threw the pole down and said, "Jeeez!" and went to find a grad student to help.

This person's typical atttitude is having someone else do her work if at all possible. I saw this as another example of her poopy attitude toward work. It turns out she had to go to a workshop in half an hour. I had forgotten that. Keep in mind that this is a workshop that she did not have to teach herself--she got someone outside the university to do it. Anyway, I wound up apologizing to her, even though she wasn't completely blameless. She apologized, but I don't know if this is the end of it or not. Fortunately, she doesn't report to me.

Anyway, I just wanted help, not attitude.

Obsessing?-- I'm not obsessing

2008-02-24T11:51:00.000-08:00

It only took me 16 hours this weekend to assign table locations to all 200 and some employers coming on Friday! Actually, I don’t remember it taking so long in the past, but maybe it did. You have to make sure that everyone who wants an electrical hookup gets it, and only certain rows have electricity available. You can’t put FedEx and UPS next to each other. You have to watch out for the Civil Engineering firms because they can’t be next to each other either, since there is such a dearth of civil engineering grads, they get frantic looking for them. The banks and insurance companies cannot be put together either, because of their competition, and never put the Army, Navy or Marines together. They don’t play well with others.

If you want to see what I did, go to http://www.csucareerfair.com/ and click on “Table Map”.

Max stopped over here briefly on Thursday, after a rollicking good time at McDonald’s Playland. Shane said Max was showing off how tall he was to a girl in the first grade. She asked him if he had been left back. He doesn’t know what that means, but I’m afraid that’s a sign of things to come. People will always think he’s older than he is because of his height. When you pick him now (if you can pick him up now) his legs dangle down past your knees. He’s still a kindergartener, but we think he has a good enough self concept that he won’t be hurt by such comments. There was some change laying on the living room coffee table and I asked Max how much was there. Darned if he didn’t add and multiply and get the right answer: 86 cents. (“Let’s see… four dimes, so four times four is….”) and he could do it.

Each day last week was consumed with Spring Career Fair. Every night this past week I’ve come home and gone right back to work on the computer, doing the rest of my job that I couldn’t get to during the day: answering the office email, answering my own email, checking student resumes for the database, approving new employers and jobs for the system—that sort of thing.

On Friday, the secretary I was depending upon to help me with the Fair did not come to work. (The regular secretary was in Las Vegas—this is the last time we ever let anyone go on vacation at this time of year!) Anyway, the secretary’s son’s girlfriend was having a baby Friday morning, and she was very excited about becoming a grandmother (the secretary, not the girlfriend). She had done something for me the day before and I needed it, so I went to the computer where she had stored it and found that the files were not there, and the ones I could find were wrong. So all that has to be done all over again on Monday.

Kathy has been sick all week with something that Shane had. Of course she soldiers on and keeps going to work. Her sister Lois reminded her that barley is a good thing, so I went to the store today to get some, and it took me forty-five minutes to find it. Usually they have these guys blocking the aisles as they stock shelves, annoying everyone by cutting off the flow of cart traffic. Do you think I could find anyone today? Of course not. The guy I did ask at the laughably named “Customer Service” counter sent me to the wrong place. After circling likely looking aisles for a while, I stumbled upon my quarry and made it safely home.

It’s spectacularly sunny here today—foreshadowing another winter storm, no doubt. Should be good and miserable on the Career Fair day, Friday February 29. Mark your calendars.

Woke up, it was a Chelsea morning...

2008-02-17T18:55:00.000-08:00

There was a bit of excitement around the University this week as Chelsea Clinton stopped in to stump for her mom. I went over to check it out and I was glad I did. I remember Chelsea as kind of a funny looking kid, but she is really a quite attractive young lady now. She was only twenty minutes late which was remarkable because these things are notorious for running hours behind schedule. After a mercifully brief introduction by the University president and the son of a local pol, she started right in asking for students’ questions.

There were several hundred people gathered in an atrium that is five stories high, so there were people ringing the balconies as well as sitting on the floor in front of the risers. A real Secret Service nightmare. The first character to ask a question wanted her to compare Hillary and Obama, but she put him in his place by insisting that she had come to talk about her mom, not anyone else. I got some pretty good photos of the event, and after a few minutes I had to get back to the office.

As you all undoubtedly know, we are hosting the next Democratic debate on Feb. 26. We just got word at the end of the day on Friday that classes will be cancelled on that day. It’s not a very good deal for us because we all still have to go to work, which I don’t mind, but more importantly, that day falls smack in the middle of our big deal Spring Career Week. We have several workshops scheduled that day that we hope we can move, but if not, we will have to cancel them. Last year it was a snowstorm that caused classes to be cancelled during Career Week. We can’t seem to catch a break around here.

Max.is.so.tall. He was sitting in his little red plastic chair tonight and his knees were up to his chin. We asked him if he is the tallest in his class. He answered, “No, Miss Barlett is.” (We didn’t ask if he was the tallest kid in his class, so he answered the question we asked.) We started the evening with pierogies, as Max wolfed down three of them. He was especially looking forward to salting them, since he’s ordinarily not allowed to salt his food, probably a good idea. Then we moved to “Gooey Louie”, a particularly disgusting game, appealing to a five year old’s sense of humor. It required pulling boogers out of Louie’s nose until his head explodes. We then played a short round of the Memory Game with “Finding Nemo” characters on the cards. Then Shane and Max started on building a robot. There is no end to the fun around here. I bought eight cases of water for work, and Max immediately saw the possibilities: “Let’s build a water fort!”

On Saturday afternoon Kathy and I drove out to her sister's house to watch a movie on their new 52” big screen TV. The movie was “Across the Universe”, a kind of musical love story written with Beatles’ songs to tell the story. In short, it was wonderful. It tracked the characters through the Sixties, and we had fun picking out symbols and historical artifacts, plays on words and funny scenes and secret messages. The characters were named after characters in Beatles songs. It avoided kitsch when other movies might stumble, and even handled the psychedelic scenes without embarrassing us. Like my brother in law said, it was the best movie no one ever saw. Later he cooked up some great hamburgers and we had a pleasant dinner.

Today is the Social Justice Social up at church. We’ll have about 30 people from our group, counting spouses and such. It’s warm rainy day, so it’s good day to do something like this.

Cannelloni, Catholics and Cold

2008-02-10T04:11:00.000-08:00

Hi all
(We welcome one Norah Scanlan to this distinguished mailing list.)
Every year at about this time, Kathy makes cannelloni, using my sister's famous recipe. The papers are stained and tattered, but we have kept the original copy lo these many years. This past Saturday was cooking day. Kathy wisely invited her sisters to come over and help. To get ready, Kathy boiled five boxes of manicotti noodles on Friday night. That took four hours to cook, cut and lay them all out on trays. Saturday Lois and Priscilla arrived and the three sisters set about making the stuffing. My contribution was staying out of the way. I was working on the third edition of my textbook in the next room. I had planned to plug my iPod into my ears so I could concentrate, but it was so much fun listening to the sisters, that I didn’t bother. It was most interesting listening to them decide what to do at each step. They looped around and went this way and that before deciding things.

Kathy is famous for her malapropisms, and she had a doozy yesterday. Discussing Hillary’s chances for the nomination, she said something to the effect that Hillary would do better “without that alabaster around her neck”—referring to Bill. Alabaster, albatross—close enough.

Max was intrigued with the idea of a day being called “Fat Tuesday”. He wound up eating too much and went home sick from school the next day. Shane was at his house this week playing Wii games with him. He said Max can now beat him handily at some of the games, even as Shane honestly tries to win. No need to throw the contests anymore.

I think I was punished for going to Ash Wednesday Mass at work last week. One of the bishops came to celebrate Mass. I ran into a friend in the hallway early Wednesday morning and he reminded me about the Ash Wednesday service. I had never gone to one at work and I was going to pass on this one, but then I remembered that I had told myself I would have a better Lent this year than in years past. Maybe God put that guy in the hallway to remind me of my commitment! Maybe I better go! So I went. We were in an auditorium with no kneelers, of course, so we stood throughout the Mass. Sure enough, I strained my knee standing on the steeply pitched floor. Now I have to rest it for a few more days before I can resume exercising.

During the Mass I looked around and was surprised to see who was there. I felt like I was at a gay/lesbian meeting: “I didn’t know you were Catholic!!”

I am in the midst of planning for the big Spring Career Day on February 29. So far we have 171 employers registered. Looks like it will be another monster day. Now we just have to get the students to come out. We sent 10,000 Career Week calendars in the mail and printed another 10,000 to hand out to classes. Think that will do it?

Should be four degrees tomorrow. Can’t wait!

Need to clear my head

2008-02-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

Lately, I’ve been thinking about old Kodiak, how much I miss the big lug. The weather has been cold, but not unbearable. It was raining on Friday, and I came home from a day of squinting at a computer screen, looking forward to a walk outside to clear my head. Since there was no dog to go with me, and for some reason, no wife wanted to accompany me either, I didn’t go.

Our walks were a time to rest a bit from the world and get off by ourselves. Let thoughts swirl around our heads like flakes in a snow globe, and then settle as our minds cleared. We could share a laugh at a silly squirrel, or some Scooby snack of a canine who dared approach us. Maybe we’d stop and sniff a neighbor…um, speak to a neighbor for a moment and then move on.

We would return home, refreshed and renewed.

Well, a bit of anthropomorphizing there, but you get the idea.
__________________________________________________
Good news: my colonoscopy was fine. It was a crappy way to spend 24 hours, but everything came out all right in the end. While I was waiting for the doctor to appear, one of the nurses told me that the doctor had come in on a Saturday and taken care of all the nurses, colonoscopy-wise. I said, “What, did you all have a sleepover?” They thought that was pretty funny. The doctor arrived, shot me full of the good stuff, and as I was slipping away, the nurse said, “There is a student here, would it be OK if he watched?” and I slurred, “That would be wunnerful.”

Dear Abby?

2008-01-21T05:29:00.000-08:00

The other day my daughter remarked plaintively, “I miss your blog.” I almost gave in and told her about this one—she does indeed have me wrapped around her little finger—but I resisted the impulse. I had to remind myself why I shut down the original one and went into the Blogger Protection Program. When I want to read her blog, I am always careful to log in under my old user name so it appears to be coming from my original blog.

With this blog, I can express my reality, free from my children’s editing or now ex-daughter-in-law’s censorship. I can say what I like without fear of hurting someone’s feelings or being accused of “misremembering” events.

What I gained in freedom I lost in readership. Before, my blog was read more widely because of the crowd I was running with. I envy my daughter’s long list of commenters. If I told you her address, though, she could find me using the Stat Counter tracking program. She’s not searching for me or anything, this blog would just show up in the “coming from” section. Here is where she can be found, though: forthelongrun dot blogspot dot com.

If I told her about this blog, she would of course mention it to her friends who may or may not read it, but her brothers and aunt and uncle would also find it, and I’d be back where I started, worried about censorship.

Here is an example I something I want to say that I would not want them to know about:

Grandson Max’s dad Shane lives with us. He’s been back in our house for over a year and is likely to stay another year until his alimony commitments have been met. He might be able to afford his own place once that is done. His current girlfriend gave me a DVD for Christmas: a bootleg copy of “I Am Legend”, a movie I planned to see or rent at some point. I put off watching it, and she asked me if I’d seen it yet, and I had to say no and then I finally dropped it into the DVD player.

I wasn’t that comfortable with the idea of a bootleg DVD anyway, and wasn’t quite sure what that meant, but after a few moments it was clear that someone had sat in the movie theater and simply videotaped the entire film and burned it to a DVD. You could see the people in front of him moving around---it was just so strange. I stopped it after a minute or so. The whole idea just made me queasy. The guy stole the movie. I don’t want anything to do with stolen property.

Do I say anything to Shane or his girlfriend? How can I say anything without appearing judgmental or disapproving or ungrateful? I’d like to prevent any more stolen movies from showing up at my house, but how do I do that without damaging our relationship to her or her relationship to Shane? What do I say the next time she asks about it?

I suppose there are other things I should be doing

2008-01-20T11:12:00.000-08:00

t’s going into the single digits here today and tomorrow. I’m off on MLK day, but it’s the sort of day you’d like to go to work just to stay warm.

Yesterday was Kathy's mom's birthday. Kathy and her sisters were on the phone talking about her. They reminisced about past birthday celebrations, including the pajama party at the Embassy Suites for her 90th. Kathy and I went out to the cemetery where Kathy placed a single rose and a few M&M’s on the grave, since her mother liked both those things.

The director was in a meeting in Atlanta for most of last week. I was not in charge, except for Friday morning. There are so few people now in the office, with the ones who quit, a couple out sick and one on vacation, that on Friday there were only three people counting me who were working. Fortunately it was a slow day. Unfortunately, I get all the questions because there is no one else around to answer them.

This weekend I spent about eight hours working on a DVD project for the Education majors. We want to show them what to expect during the big interview event that we will have in April. I went through all the raw footage and wrote down the time codes for all the bits and pieces I wanted for the final production. Next, I want to work on the new site map for the web site for my professional organization. It’s something we were supposed to do two years ago and finally I said I would do it. I sent a draft to the web person at our management company and she liked it. I felt pretty good, considering I’d never done such a thing before.

Oh—I should also work on the third edition of my textbook, but maybe I’ll find some time during the holiday on Monday. I talked to the publisher the other day and they are happy with what I’m doing, and they are sending me another royalty check in March, so I am happy with what they are doing. We actually had to reprint the second edition to cover the spring and summer semesters, so I was very pleased about that.

The other night Max made S’mores for us, standing at the stove with one hand on his hip and the other expertly cooking the marshmallows in the flames on the stove. This weekend the temperature dropped into the single digits. Kathy asked Max if he was warm enough in his jammies, and he responded, “I’m as warm as a kangaroo in a pouch!” On Saturday, he and Shane went to the zoo. It was nice and toasty in the Rainforest exhibit, which is always about 85 degrees and steamy. They bought a battery operated tarantula that moves in a lifelike way. Max delighted in terrorizing Nana with it all afternoon.

Kodiak

2008-01-12T19:09:00.000-08:00

Kodiak is gone

2008-01-12T18:18:00.000-08:00

We had to put Kodiak to sleep a couple of weeks ago. There were reasons to do it and reasons not to, but we felt it would be best for all. He was incontinent, peeing and pooping in the house when you least expected it. His hindquarters were getting weaker, and he was falling a lot. He could not cross the kitchen linoleum without his legs collapsing under him. Kathy was afraid he was going to break a hip falling down the stairs.

He loved sleeping in our room, so we always left the door cracked so he could get in. We could hear him carefully making his way up the staircase once the lights were out. In the morning he would come up alongside my side of the bed, and rest his chin on the rail of the waterbed and look at me. Sometimes he’d nudge me with his snout to encourage me to get up and feed him. Then he would pick his way down the stairs—always a dicey situation, since he had tumbled down several times in the past.

At 95 pounds and four feet long from the tip of his nose to his butt, he was a big dog. Little kids were consistently amazed by the sight of him—not scared, just astounded. He was patient with them, never nipping or growling at them as they crowded around him to pet him.

He was a scrounger, ceaselessly seeking nutritional supplements, whether on kitchen counters, sidewalk treelawns or frozen snow banks. He would snuffle into a pile of snow in search of a perceived treat, triumphantly coming out with a comical snow covered snout and some disgusting bit of garbage as his prize. Even on his last walk, he snagged a treat when he gobbled up an old pecan cup pastry that had been sitting on the sidewalk for about a week. I had successfully kept him from wolfing it down on previous outings, but this time I forgot it was there. He hadn’t, though.

Being part Lab and part Great Dane, he had bits of both personalities in him as he was friendly and brave and seemed to bond with me. He had what I later learned was a Great Dane trait—leaning against your legs, being possessive? I’m not sure. Endearing, that’s for sure.

Thunderstorms unnerved him, though. Just a falling barometer would send him cowering into the kitchen, huddling at our feet for protection. At first we wondered what he was doing in the kitchen, since he knew he was not allowed in there, and then we realized that a weather front was coming through. Who needed the weather channel when you had Kodiak? Somedays we would find him in the basement, where he sought shelter from the booming thunder outside.

We look around now and see all the accommodations made for him.

For the three years that he had lived with us, we had to keep the kitchen garbage can in the downstairs bathroom in order to keep him from getting into it. We had a child gate set up in the passageway between the kitchen and dining room to create a space for his food and water bowls. There was a dog bed in the family room and one in the living room to accommodate his penchant for wandering from room to room during the day. We had just bought an eighty dollar egg crate bed for him a few months ago. The idea was to make him more comfortable. His idea of comfort, though, was to simply step up onto the family room couch and sprawl out. If you wanted to share the couch with him, he would put his massive head in your lap and go to sleep like a giant cat.

I would walk him twice a day through rain, snow, heat, cold—no matter what. He loved a good snowstorm, plunging into the frigid wind with great energy as snow flakes swirled around us. The only weather that really got him down was a steamy hot summer day. He would plod wearily along, gamely making his way, as I guiltily looked for a way to shorten our regular mile course.

He was a wonderful dog. We’ll miss him.

Back to work

2008-01-05T17:29:00.000-08:00

I went back to work this past week—a short three day week that seemed longer somehow than a regular week. I was large and in-charge, since the other managers were on vacation. Fortunately, nothing managerial happened the whole time. Many people were out, so it was just us skeletons there. It was so quiet I actually got some things done, working on the third edition of my textbook and the second edition of a DVD we did for the teacher job fair last year. I am reading the textbook over word by word, and I still like most of what I have there, so it gets harder to find things to change for each edition. The DVD will be much cooler than the first edition, since we plan to sprinkle interviews with recruiters and students throughout. Before it was just me as a talking head and some video of the different segments of the teacher job fair.

Good news—I have just about caught up on my pile of New Yorker magazines! All it took was about two weeks off of work. I read several articles about Iraq that helped my understanding of the whole thing, as well as some wonderful fiction and opinion pieces. I was on the web the other day and pulled the trigger on another year’s subscription. Let’s see if I do a better job of keeping up this time.

Max was at our house this weekend. On Saturday he and Shane were making cookies. Kathy remarked that it was a good thing, too, since Da (me) was a cookie monster. I told Max that he looked like a cookie and so I would eat him. He went to great lengths to show that he was not, in fact, a cookie. “Look, he said, holding out his arm, “A cookie is flat and I’m not flat!” I responded that maybe he was one of those gingerbread men. He said, “Put your hand here”, indicating his chest, “A cookie doesn’t have a heart that beats! Look, I have veins!” I had to agree that he was a boy after all, and not a tasty treat. He and Shane worked on the Lego “Mission to Mars” construction project. It is very complicated and very cleverly designed—nothing a five year old could do alone. I hope it stays together for a while. He and I watched a DVD of an old TV cartoon show—“Pinky and The Brain”. He was very intent on the show and didn’t say anything until it was almost over—laughing at a joke that I thought he wouldn’t get. For the cognoscenti, it was the episode where they build a “chia Earth”—that’s the line that broke Max up, flashing a great big gap-toothed grin (as he is missing three teeth across the front.)

New Year’s Eve was a bustling event, since everyone came to our house: Lois and Greg, Priscilla and John, their daughter Lisa and her boyfriend Brian (who for some reason is known as “Lambie-sheepie”) and the his mother Chris (who was at loose ends with nowhere else to go), their son Matt and his girlfriend Meghan, who is cute and smart and likes horses. By 10pm, everyone was still here and it looked like they were here for the duration. We were boring ourselves talking about basement flooding and household stuff, so I asked if anyone would like to play Scrabble. Lois enthusiastically jumped in, but several others said, no, that’s boring. We got four of us together and we started playing. I figured that the people who didn’t want to play would just sit in the living room and continue boring themselves. Wouldn’t you know it, they didn’t want to play but they came over to kibbitz, tormenting poor Meghan with their ideas for words. The rest of us told them to leave her alone and let her play. The boyfriend’s mother sat behind me and started poking me, so I turned around and said icily, ‘I know what I’m doing.” That shut her up but she still hung on my shoulder for the entire game.

I did win with a crushing triple word score, he says modestly.

At midnight we all went out on the porch and shot off those little champagne bottle poppers. Then our guests made their way home, full of the prospect of a new year and another chance to put things right.

Dad's birthday

2007-12-29T06:27:00.000-08:00

My dad’s 85th birthday is today. When he was a boy, having a birthday so close to Christmas could be problematic. One year his parents completely forgot his special day. When I heard that, I told myself that I would remember each year no matter what.

So I’ll be sure to call him today. The card has already been sent. If I was feeling better I might try to make a run to see him. It’s a 500 mile run, though, and as far as I know, there aren’t any festivities planned. My one sister was down from Boston for the weekend before Christmas to see him, but she had to turn right around and go home when she realized she’d suffered another tear in her retina. Our youngest and his girlfriend were there on Christmas Eve. What I’m driving at, is that this year is not a year when everyone can be there.

My sister said something very perceptive about our father on the phone the other day. Speaking of his children, she said, “He’s just not very interested in us.”

That’s probably so. He figures he did his bit, we are all in our fifties now, we have our own families, our own lives; he’s content to be an outside observer, like an old family friend invited to holiday gatherings out of habit and respect.

In our families, Kathy’s and mine, it was Mom who held things together. After each of our mothers died, the bonds of family loosened, then unraveled. There seemed to be less reason to come together. Distances that meant nothing years ago were now formidable barriers. Irksome personalities that we tolerated are now revealed as racist, profane, bullying people that are no longer welcome in our homes. We certainly will not travel miles and miles to suffer their presence. We used to do it for Mom, but Mom’s gone. So is our capacity to endure those full frontal swarms.

Mom’s gone and Dad’s not interested. For many people, that was their experience from an early age, but not for us. Two parent family, parents stayed married, lost one child to cancer, kept going, were touching role models for all four of us survivors who also got married, stayed married all these years.

I remember when I realized I was no longer the center of my father’s universe, worthy of all mindfulness. I was teaching in the town where we all grew up and where he still lived. After a late night at school, probably working at a wrestling match or something that would pay an extra ten dollars, I swung by his house and saw him in a neighbor’s garage. I bounded over like a puppy expecting to capture his full attention just by my appearance. He kept talking to the other guy, probably said hi to me, but turned back to the engine of the old car the guy had been working on. I slunk away to go say hi to Mom. I got the point.

He left for work everyday around six and got home again about six. He always made sure he was home for dinner with us, no matter what. He was a civil engineer selling steel for Republic Steel in New York City. He worked out estimates, visited work sites, talked to contractors—he was very good at his job. So good, the company kept offering him a promotion to sales manager and he kept turning them down. When I asked him why, he said, “Officers get shot first”—a lesson he learned on the battlefields of World War II in France.

He never talked about his experience in the war. What we knew about that, we learned from Mom. She related one story about how dad had been knocked out by a mortar shell explosion. When he woke up in the hospital, they wanted to make him a lieutenant. He said no thanks.

It was true: sales managers were routinely fired, while salesmen stayed on, plugging away. Somehow he and my mother put all five of us kids through college and launched us all into adulthood.

So, while he didn’t say that much, I learned a lot by his example. I too am leery of promotions that might make me vulnerable. I try to let my kids live their lives as the adults they are without interference. Thanks to him, I know how to set up and take down a campsite (though there’s not much call for that knowledge these days).

So I’ll call him today and wish him a happy birthday whether he wants me to or not.

Irish news

2007-12-22T17:46:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, our daughter left some Irish newspapers for me to read, because she remembered I have a fondness for their writing style. For instance, I love their weather forecasts: “It will be cloudy today with spells of rain.” Who ever says “spells of rain”? In the US they say “scattered showers”. How boring. The Irish style is more vague, more ephemeral. While the US forecasters pride themselves on their scientific accuracy, the Irish are content with a more human outlook. Spells of rain are much more acceptable than scattered showers. You don’t know how long a spell can last, but knowing it was just a spell of rain makes it more bearable somehow.

“Fog early on, then the best of sunshine and largely dry.” Almost sounds like something you’d wish for someone, or a blessing you might bestow.

Here is another story, rather un-Irish if you ask me from the Evening Herald of 20 November 2007: Santas in the town of Sydney have reportedly been told not to say the immortal phrase, ‘Ho, ho, ho’ in case it offends women and they think they are being called a slang American word for prostitute—they’re being asked or replace it with ‘Ha, ha, ha!”

The story points out that thanks to the Santa recruitment agency, children in that Irish town now know that ‘ho’ is also slang for prostitute. The author goes on to decry this latest incident of Political Correctness, and how people get all excited about such miniscule things while the major issues of war and poverty and famine will prevent so many children from enjoying this Christmas season.

Someone sent me one of those emails that make the rounds periodically at this time of year, but it was one I hadn’t seen before. It talked about Christmas from Jesus’ point of view, saying don’t fret about nativity scenes being banned from city hall lawns—put one in your own yard and soon we won’t need a crèche at city hall. It was kind of neat and gave me some ideas, like when to say, “Merry Christmas” to people.

I have decided to wage my own private war on political correctness, so every time I say “Merry Christmas” I strike another blow for freedom. Let’s take back Christmas! Have a merry one!

Near blizzard conditions

2007-12-15T19:14:00.000-08:00

This was a tiring week. First, I actually had to work a full five days! Then I had a meeting of our Social Justice group on Monday night, then I packed food boxes on Wednesday night, and then I attended a dinner sponsored by the Fenn Foundation on Thursday night. Every year I go to the dinner, which honors our Co-op students, but it just came at a busy time. Consequently, I was looking forward to resting up this weekend. I suppose I will be able to at some point, but today, Sunday, is our packing and delivery day for Christmas angel presents and food. Of course they are predicting near blizzard condition for the afternoon, just to make it more interesting.

Fortunately, I got caught up on everything at work: database updates, web page updates, read and dealt with all the office email, set up appointments next week for candidates’ interviews and did miscellaneous stuff around the office.

Also fortunately, I got some great antibiotics which finally kicked whatever I’ve had since Thanksgiving right out of my head. I feel better now than I have for weeks, Justin time for the big day.

My children will be shocked to learn that I have declared this to be the last year for a real tree. After Christmas, Kathy and I will shop for an artificial one. Of course, we will argue over what size it should be. I want one taller than me, and Kathy wants one shorter than her. I told her I don’t want a Christmas “shrub”. We’ll see what happens.

We have not seen Max for a while. He developed pneumonia, but seems to be coming along. The last time he was here he was having a little problem with diarrhea. He said to his father, “I seem to have dropped something in my pants. Can you help me?”

Back in October we had an event that ran on a Friday and a Saturday. Our director decided the easiest way to handle everyone’s comp time was to give us all the same day off. Consequently, we have closed the office for Monday, December 17. I plan to do some Christmas shopping and malling, as long as the weather cooperates. If not, I might do my shopping on line, though that’s not nearly as much fun.

Support the troops?

2007-12-08T19:59:00.000-08:00

It had been probably ten years or more since I had been in Washington DC before this week. I was there on business, visiting federal agencies with my boss, and we had some time between appointments on Thursday. He wanted to go see a couple memorials, so we grabbed a taxi and went on down near the Mall.

We walked along the sidewalk toward the Korean War Veterans Memorial, which I had never seen. All of a sudden I saw these life size figures of soldiers walking across a frozen landscape, themselves frozen in sculptured metal. That day it was about thirty degrees and there was snow on the ponchos worn by the figures, and an inch of snow on the ground. It was very striking to me, since the histories that I have read say a lot about how cold it was that first winter of the war and how ill equipped the soldiers were for the weather. You could almost feel what they felt, walking along next to them.

I have just started reading David Halberstam’s history of the Korean War, “The Coldest Winter”. I am only about a hundred pages into it (six hundred more to go), but already his considerable research allows him to tell stories moment to moment of battles on the level of the individual soldier. For instance, the first Americans to contact Chinese soldiers are overwhelmed by their sheer numbers. A chaplain bravely rescues a wounded soldier by defying a befuddled Chinese fighter who is not sure what to do with these strange people he’s just encountered. Meanwhile, back in Tokyo headquarters, MacArthur refuses to believe that it’s really the Chinese—in fact, the people receiving the information about these early fire fights are afraid to tell MacArthur that their opponents are now the Communist Chinese and not just North Koreans, so they bury the reports. Consequently, a lot more people die before the truth is finally accepted.

Moving in reverse chronological order, we then walked over to the World War II Memorial, which is a big oval shallow concrete pool surrounded by columns with the name of each state on them. It’s kind of like an oval Parthenon without a roof. There are stone wreathes hanging on each column, as woven wreathes worn by the victors in Greek contests. My boss remarked, “This is really big!” and I responded, “Just as the war itself was big.” The columns were in not in any particular order, alphabetical or any other, and he also remarked on that. My thought was, “Just as they were in war, when men from different states were all mixed together in different units”.

There was a low waterfall that was still running, despite the freezing temperatures. It was designed so that it produces a low insistent thunder, almost like the sound of artillery, it seemed to me.

Sometimes advocates of war mock people who say, “Support the troops—bring them home” since their idea of supporting the troops means supporting the goals of the particular war all the way. I don’t have any trouble supporting individuals who are sent somewhere to fight if support means praying and working for their safe return and a cessation of hostilities. I certainly do not support Bush and his war in Iraq or his plans to attack Iran.

There is a birthday card I just bought for my friend that shows a graph depicting an indirect relationship between “the number of ribbon magnets on car” with “grasp of issues”. It’s perfect. To me, “Support the troops” cannot mean blindly following an ill conceived plan and the president that wrote it, but it can mean “bring them home”.

2007-12-02T09:04:00.001-08:00

Kathy has been sick for about two weeks now with an ear infection and a cold. I have my first cold of the season, but I can’t blame it on her. I just spent too much time walking around in the cold wind on Friday. I know—that’s not how people get sick, but it’s how I get sick. Kathy never calls in sick, though she was tempted this past week. Turns out someone else called off on Friday, so she wound up doing a lot more work and feeling crummy the whole time.

Daughter Ann flew back to her little piece of heaven (Peter or Ballingeary—I’m not sure) on Thursday after what she characterized as her best visit home ever. She and I went to the outlet mall on Wednesday where she bought armloads of jeans and shirts. I spent a little at the Bass shoe store and the Jockey store, though I hadn’t planned on spending anything. Shopping eased the pain of failing her driver’s test. She lost points on the dreaded maneuverability test trying to move our clunky Camry through its paces. Her learner’s permit is good for a year, so if she wants to take it again, we’ll rent the smallest Ford Festiva or something that we can find, in order to improve her chances.

A few days ago Max got upset in school and threw his glasses to the ground, breaking them. When he got home, he said to his mom, “There was an accident at school…” Jessica told him that the teacher had already called her to tell her what had happened. Max parried, saying, “Maybe it wasn’t an accident after all. I just get confused sometimes.” I’m not sure the “confusion defense” will take him very far.

This week I will be in Washington DC with my boss Paul. I was waiting for him to set up appointments or something for us, but then I just decided to do it myself. So, we have a couple of places where they expect us, and there are others where we will probably just show up and see what happens. On Friday, Yolanda, the other assistant director in the office, is appearing in a panel discussion with the governor of Virginia and some other VIP’s in Washington, so we will go to see that as well. The boss wants to come back on Saturday, (yuk!) but maybe I can convince him to steam out of there on Friday afternoon.

This is a busy time for me at church, with Social Justice projects like the Angel Tree and Christmas food and present packing, and working up the readers schedule for the Christmas Masses. Fortunately, I have lots of good people in both groups who are willing to help out with whatever I ask of them. Did I tell you? A few weeks ago I told Kathy I was going to join the “Education Commission” at church. Her eyebrows shot up but she didn’t say anything. Sure enough, after one meeting, I realized I was overcommitted, and so I immediately resigned. She was very smart not to remark on the whole thing, since I probably would have bulled ahead, trying to show I could do it all. I’m learning!