Happy 50th Birthday Lisa!!!!

So this girl I met when she was only four months past her 18th birthday 

has somehow managed to squeeze in another thirty-two birthdays over the years and turns FIFTY today. 

That, of course, is ridiculous.  There's no way, my mind says, that Lisa has reached the half-century mark. 

It's all been the blink of an eye, and I wish we could do it all over again. 

She's been the best mother I could have hoped for for my children; a tireless advocate for me even on days she couldn't stand me; and my best friend for four decades. 

I love you very much and I hope you have the best birthday imaginable,  and fifty more to follow. 

Sto Lot Sinatra.

Our Afternoon in Cabo San Lucas

Cabo San Lucas has no berth for a cruise ship, so you board a tender (a smaller ship) to the city. Once you're there you negotiate with a local to take a water taxi to Medano Beach. $20 round trip for both of us. 

 

What everyone fails to mention is that the water taxis have no dock at the beach - they make you climb down a ladder and wade to shore, like a peacetime recreation of D-Day. Because of where I was in the taxi, I not only had to lower the ladder into the water, but I was first off. 

The sand beneath the water at Medano isn't compacted; you sink into immediately, as if you're walking on deep snow. Our taxi stopped about ten feet from shore, in knee deep water. That sucked. 

But apparently my disembarkation was impressive,  as the other two guys in the boat commented on it and felt the need to do the same without complaint. 

At Medano we purchased a large beach blanket and rented an umbrella.  Once set up, Lisa went out to swim.  As I'm supposed to stay out of the water with my surgical wound still healing, my time in the Pacific was relegated to the walk to the beach. 

The beach is public and some locals were using it, but with a ship in the harbor the beach was overrun with vendors who came up to just about every single minute of our time there - hawking food, jewelry, massages, cigars, you name it. After awhile it's very annoying. 

Lisa only spent a half hour in the water. Not only were the waves a little rough where she was swimming, the sand made it difficult to return to the beach. She spent the rest of the time hanging out with me  Thankfully our taxi driver gave us a pick up time only two hours after drop off (as it would be his last run for the day) so we were back aboard the cruise ship in time to shower and dress for dinner. 

That was about 3 or 4 hours less than we planned on the beach, but it was just the right amount once we were there.

A very nice day in the sun in Mexico!

Ps. We also saw a lot of birds, including a ton of pelicans. Oh, and a sea lion in the water!

This is Tony of the Jasmine

Thank Goodness it's Environmentally Friendly

For years we've subscribed to Grove for environmentally friendly home products. Each month we stock up on bamboo toilet paper, dish and hand soap in aluminum not plastic containers, garbage bags made from post consumer recycled plastic, Yada Yada.  Today they premiered a product that was a little..... unexpected

Why?

I guess instead of HOMES school kids can memorize the Great Lakes as SHAME now

My Evening

This . .   .clerk at Walmart asked me to spell my full name for a pickup.  They don't usually req more than "slap" to pull it up in the computer,  but nope, she "needed" all 11 letters.  Then she said, and I f'ing quote "And what's your last name?" Surely I heard wrong, but no - when I said Slapczynski again she demanded my LAST name. 

"Do you... do you honestly think Slapczynski is my first name? Are u shitting me?"

And now, bc I insulted the intelligence of an idiot, I've been made to sit and wait for the last 28 minutes. 

Update: 

57 minutes after my arrival I went in to customer service and got a manager.  He walked with me to the pickup dept where they now claimed they'd never seen the item.  

Manager walked me to shoes where he asked employees who had "picked" the item - it was allegedly taken off the shelf around 3pm for me. 

One employee denied knowing anything and seemed to talk about me in Spanish.  Another went in back with the manager.

They came out and said they can't find it and it was the last pair but they have one left in tan. Ok. 

But the manager wants to cxl my order, refund the money onto the card, and have me buy the tan pair outright.  I said that won't work it's bought on a GC that my wife has with her at work. 

So he said go wait on the bench by the restrooms.  If I can't find your order in ten minutes I'll  back and just hand you the tan pair and I'll figure it out later. 

Ten minutes later he walks up with the 2nd shoe dept employee. She had found the original order - which I still feel The idiot employee had hidden as payback for me being insulting. 

So one hour and 28 minutes later I will now be leaving walmart

Also, back on Dec 23rd the dermatologist removed some moles and sent them for testing. "I'll only contact you if they come back pre-cancerous. No news is good news. Enjoy the holidays!"

While I'm at Walmart I get a message from him on the live well app with the subject line "test results."

Ah F I think. Melanoma runs in my family. Dang it.

I open the message. "All tested material came back benign. Hope you had a great holiday!"

@$$%÷# ahole

Rob Reiner

Shocking news out of California tonight, as director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were found dead of knife wounds in their Brentwood home. Reiner was 78.

Reiner first found fame on All in the Family, playing Archie Bunker's son in law,  a role that earned him two Emmy's. Afterwards he became one of Hollywood's most successful directors. Among his films:  Stand by Me,  This is Spinal Tap, When Harry Met Sally, Misery, The Princess Bride, A Few Good Men, and When Harry Met Sally.

I grew up watching Reiner, and then his films.  I'm genuinely appalled at this apparent double murder. 

RIP

Seneca Crane

Smiley tonight as Seneca Crane from The Hunger Games movies.  He was on his way to a Halloween party with Yaya, who was costumed as fake heiress Anna Sorokin. To be honest, aside from an ingenious homemade ankle monitor, she just looked like a normal woman on her way to a party.  Which, I'm told, was the point?

Happy Halloween from Plagg!

Jerry Taff

Jerry Taff, the main anchor for Channel 12 WISN from 1979 through 2005, died last night at his home in Texas.  He was 85.

Taff was a ubiquitous face in my first three decades on this planet.  My family most often tuned in to watch the news on Channel 12, which famously had its real life newsroom running in the background of the newscast. (We watched Channel 6 less frequently, bougie Channel 4 rarely if at all).

Taff, a Texas native who mentored documentarian Michael Moore while working in Detroit, was the face of WISN, and a trusted one - the Cronkite of Milwaukee in that regard. 

 

He had his faults: he was fired for two years in the mid-80's, for reasons I know longer recall, causing him to miss reporting on a passenger jet crash here in '85. He also had an alleged feud with longtime co-anchor Marty Burns Wolfe that wasn't a very well kept secret.

When he signed off his newscasts, he did so with a signature phrase that still sounds like the best wish possible to me:  Good Night, and Better Tomorrows. 

Good night Jerry.  Rest in Peace.

Love and Diet Pepsi

35 Years Ago Today

Pearl Jam - at the time still known as Mookie Blaylock - played its first ever gig on this day in 1990, at the Off Ramp Café in Seattle Washington.

 

The setlist consisted of eight songs:

Release

Alone

Alive

Once

Even Flow

Black

Breath

Just A Girl

And history was made. 

A Pathetic LCS So Far

Diane Keaton

Diane Keaton, the talented and iconic actress best known for Annie Hall and for playing Kay in The Godfather trilogy,  has passed away at age 79.

Her Academy Award winning career spanned from the first Broadway run of Hair in 1968 to the current day. 

The photo above is from her 1987 comedy Baby Boom which my parents took us to see at the theater. It was the start of quite the crush for me, a feeling that deepened the next year when my freshman crush Joanie had a passing resemblance to Keaton.

RIP

I Do Not Like This Word

There is no word in the English language that irritates me quite as much as "whilst."

I do not mean that the meaning bothers me, or the sound the word makes when pronounced. I simply react, instinctively, with both revulsion and condescension whenever someone trots it out. 

I do not like it, and I have no explanation for my preference. 

What A Day That Was

30 years ago today I had the honor of watching as an innocent man was exonerated, despite the machinations of the state. RIP  Orenthal. I'll think of you every Thanksgiving 

RIP Huckleberry, We Will Miss You Always

This post is long overdue.  It should have been published on the day it happened, September 8th, but it was just too hard to get myself in front of a keyboard and put it out there for the public. 

Huckleberry, the greatest dog that ever lived, has passed away. He was only 5 years old. 

On September 28th I took him to the vet and dropped about $500 on tests. He'd been sick for a few weeks, but honestly the only symptom seemed to be a decrease in appetite. He refused so many kinds of dog food that we tried human food, but our good boi would turn down that too. With his weight loss noticeable, I took him in. 

I expected the doctor to tell us he had some parasite or an allergy. Instead, before she even ordered the labs she told me she thought it was cancer, lymphoma to be precise. Sympathetically, but firmly, she said "He will be gone by Halloween."

WTH. 

"And if we treat it?" I asked. 

"Then he will still be gone by this time next year, but he'll have spent a lot of that time sick from the chemo."

But, she then backed up a little and said that I should wait until next Tuesday for the blood results before making any decisions.  (Monday was Labor Day)

On the way home, distraught, I took Huck for a car ride and let him explore the expansive fields north of the airport. 

I kept the news secret for a day before I couldn't bear it alone. After work the next day Lisa sent me to pick up dog stairs to help him get into the bed, after noticing he suddenly had trouble making the leap. 

Late Friday I was rattled by a disconcerting phone message from the vet, telling me if Huckleberry were to decline rapidly over the weekend and was suffering, I should take him to XX for euthanasia . .  . just how advanced did she fear it was????

Tuesday we got the answer, It was cancer, it was bad, and it had affected his stomach as well, causing some internal bleeding. We started him on 2 medicines and continued to pamper him like mad. 

The prohibition on dogs riding in my car? Temporarily lifted. 

If someone went out, Huckleberry went with them. 

Each day he declined a noticeable degree. His attempts to get on the bed were sadder and sadder. We booked a camping excursion with the intent of taking him on one last adventure, and booked it for the second week of September. He would not live to see it.  

Meanwhile everyone spent time with him, friends stopped in to see him, and he spent time at the dog park with Lulu

and Lisa and I, with my MIL in tow, took him to a sniff spot in Kenosha County, where he and Sawyer had sole possession of two acres in which to roam. 

Unfortunately, by that time he was declining  quite a bit, got tuckered out, and largely just lounged. Not that there's anything wrong with taking it easy. 

We made the decision to put him down, scheduling it for September 8th, only 11 days after his diagnosis, as he was beginning to suffer, and his bowel movements were liquid and he no longer always had the strength to get outside fast enough to dispose of it there. 

My friend Seth heard of Huckleberry's illness and dropped off plentiful treats for his last day

Likewise, my long time friend Tre asked if Huckle could come over and visit. He and his family gave me a chocolate bar to give him in his last moments - "no one should die without knowing the goodness of chocolate" he said - and my Godson TJ walked him around their block. Although it wore out Huck, he enjoyed it immensely. 

His last day he was taken to the dog park and pampered throughout the day. When I got home from work a little early, Lisa, Junie, and I took him to the vet. I have pictures, but will not post them here. He wagged his tail for the vet (he was Huckle until the end), and devoured with relish that Hershey bar Tre bought him. 

 Lisa sang to him as he passed away 

HE'S THE BESTEST BOI AND WE LOVE HIMMMMM

SOOOO MUCH 

HUCKLEBERRY HUCKLEBERRY HUCKLEBERRYYYYYYYYYYY

HE'S THE BEST

And then he was gone. And so was a huge part of our hearts.