CiCi's Pizza

We took YaYa to CC's Pizza yest. for her bday, and to preview it for her bday party there today. Great price, good salad/soup, no decor whatsoever, mediocre pizza, artificially pleasant staff. The cinnamon buns rocked, I'll give 'em that. I wouldn't choose to return on my own, but YaYa and Lisa walked away as fans.

A New Game

New drinking game: take a shot whenever LuLu trips, bumps into a counter, pokes herself in the eye, or otherwise finds legitimate reason to yell "Owieee!". I guarantee even a lush would be drunk by noon. And here's the rub: she's a natural athlete and dancer. Seriously.  It just .  . . doesn't seem to carry over to everyday life. ;)

Language!

Eat shit and die, you purple wearing hillbilly Judas.

CNR

A preview of a future profile pic . . .

Thievery Corportation

Good album

Birthday Signage!

I had Smiley and Junie greet YaYa with birthday signs outside her school!

Artie Shaw on a rainy night

As I drove home tonight it was storming and I discovered, to my chagrin, that I'd left my Artie Shaw cassette at home. Since I purchased it in the early nineties, it has been *The Perfect Rainy Night* companion.

Eventually the tape will wear out, be damaged, or lost. I've never been able to find this combination on CD, so I'm including the track list here so Future Dan can compile it on his own.

Oh Lady Be Good

Deep Purple

What is this Thing Called Love

Nightmare

Indian Love Call

Begin the Beguine

Traffic Jam

Stardust

Summit Ridge Drive

Back Bay Shuffle

Comes Love

Serenade to a Savage

Frenesi

Special Delivery

Stomp

Temptation

Moonglow

(1990 Delta Music Inc, Lazerlight #79713)

Frozen

After work Lisa & I watched "Frozen", a movie about 3 skiers who are mistakenly stranded on a ski lift when the resort closes for the week. From the start you *know* it's going to get ugly - and it does - but it was a solid effort and enjoyable (for us, not them).

Bony Legs by Joanna Cole

LuLu is a big fan of 'Bony Legs' by Joanna Cole

Happy 9th Birthday!

Nine years ago today, at 4:20 in the afternoon, our YaYa came into our lives. Happy Birthday kiddo!

Happy Birthday YaYa!

Happy 9th Birthday YaYa! May you celebrate 100 more in health and happiness!

xxooxx

Dress Up

Attractive Parkey !

Disappointment

I received notice today that I *didn't* get that job. A 90 min interview that went like buttah, passed the reasoning/honesty test, good references, the right experience  & education . . . & nada. At this point I usually doubt my own worth, but in this instance, the last step (credit ck) had to be the nail in the coffin. Two yrs ago, w/ every bill pd promptly on time each month, this job would have been mine. F*ers.

Early August - YaYa has her tonsils out!

7ugust 1st

Another morning of demo work, with me ripping up 3 layers of flooring to expose the subfloor. The bad? I'm sore head to toe. The good? Hang on, I'm thinking.

August 2nd

‎"Damnit Smiley, go to the bathroom and wipe your butt! Yes, now! Because you've got a big chunk of poop hanging from your a**, that's why!" - Lisa

{re Kara DioGuardi being fired from American Idol} Shoulda done this two seasons ago . . .

August 3rd

‎#1 Thing you don't want to see when you walk into a Chinese restaurant to pick up your order: Not one, but *two* health inspectors berating the owner.

{I pd for the food and went home. Deeeee-lish! :)}

"Broadcast TV sucks donkey balls" - Lisa, after sitting through Leno only to be rewarded with Jimmy Fallon. OTOH, The Black Crowes were Leno's musical guest. A bit of trivia: I drove their drummer to the airport in the middle of the night after his wife called to say she'd gone into labor back home.

August 4th

YaYa had her tonsils & adnoids (?) removed today. The surgery was quick, but w/ the wait and recovery it was a 7 hr day. She was in good spirits b4, in agony right after, & seemingly back to (nearly) normal now. Here's a good sign of her overall health: when I took her pain med script into Walgreens they had *NO* record of her having meds filled with them in the last several years - so long she was no longer in their system. Knock on wood.

{her recovery was nearly flawless. She was sore for a week or so, but fully in the swing of things and active within a couple of days. Well done YaYa!}

{re: Alex Rodriguez becoming the youngest man to reach the 600 home run plateau)

Yankees. Arod. Greatness. They really do all go together, don't they?

A bad dream - yeah, I'm aware that it makes me sound nuts

Ok, here's a nightmare I had two nights ago.

There was a killer on the loose. He'd killed before, but I don't know if he fit the bill of a 'serial' killer. He gave notice that he was going to strike on a playground east of some mangrove trees. I was on a balcony in a high rise apartment building, looking down on the beach, when I noticed a playset that matched the warning.

Immediately the cops were dragging in the killer, a blond man with curly unkept hair, along with a messenger bag of 'trophies' in his hand.

Then I was in a movie theater, once of the lush, velvet palaces that would be extinct if not for places like The Oriental. It was storming, and rain was pouring in from dozens of holes in the roof. There were five gallon buckets on many seats to catch the water. I knew it was my friend Tre's theater, and I literally climbed over rows of seats - passing his father as I did - to find him.

I did - Tre was weeping to the side of the stage. I seemed to know what was wrong; it was the reason I had journeyed there, but as I went to comfort him . . .

I was now outside a home, one superficially similar to my mother-in-law's home. It wasn't the same tho'. There was a long driveway, and there was a house with its side 'crossing the T' at the end of the drive, and another running parallel to it. There was dumpster full of large, broken pieces of blue ceramic. I asked what it was, and was told [Dirty Jobs host] Mike Rowe had a workshop there, and those were the discards of his attempts at pottery.

Then, presumably because Rowe's appearance sparked thoughts of reality TV, I noticed a very steep and snowy, forested hill across the road in front of the house. A huge pine tree was being cut down. It slipped out of control and slid down the hill at high speed, right into the busy motorway. Much of the tree broke off on impact, but the rest continued skiing down the road towards houses in the neighborhood. People began running after it to witness the carnage.

Then I was a child in the house I stood next to, and my 'mother', a woman dressed in an apron and house dress, picked up a large lambskin copy of the constitution and began to read aloud. She then declared we had a right, under law, to claim the lumber from the tree as our own. We set off to the scene of the accident.

Once again I was an adult, and I remember I felt very weary and emotionally drained. In my hands was the messenger bag from the start of the dream. I was in a garage with a workbench, and I told my (female) partner it was wrong that no one had looked inside the bag when the arrest was made. It was now old and water-logged, and removing the items was like sifting coins from the sea floor. The last item out was a womans wallet.

Inside was some money, misc. cards, and a high school ID that was now decades old, showing a girl about four years my junior.

"So he killed her," my partner said. "At least now the family can get some peace. Nice job."

And then I woke up.

The Kids Enjoying Trying New Food

We had white chili and cheese quesadillas for dinner, & the kids gobbled it up without complaint. As a matter of fact there were no leftovers. Bully for them - when I was a kid I wouldn't have tried so much as a bite of it. We've more or less agreed that since the kids are so willing to try new food, we'll cook up Indian soon. Quote Lu: "Indian? Like, Indian corn and stuff?"

LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL

We watched LESLIE, MY NAME IS EVIL (alt title Manson, My Name is Evil). It's either a poorly written attempt to rationalize the Manson murders as a by product of Vietnam, -or- a platonic love story btwn a fictional juror and Leslie Van Houton. It wasn't awful, but it wasn't good either. Yuck. C.

Quote

Most people are mostly good, most of the time - Gerald Ford

Lauren Cooper and Doctor Who clash in class - Classic Comic Relief

LOVE it! I forgot just how much I miss David Tennant until I saw him walk on screen.




To my (happy) surprise, my oldest girls not only asked to watch the vid clips I posted of Catherine Tate's show, but declared themselves big fans of 'Lauren Cooper' and her tagline "Am I bovvered?". As late as a few minutes ago LuLu recited the line, which inspired my own Ginger to walk up to me and say "You not bovvered Daddy, you not bovvered"

My FB posts from the end of July

Following the stress of the events of the prior (FB) post, I couldn't sit down and write for nearly three weeks. Not here. Not Facebook. The explanation I gave below wasn't a lie - we did lose the services I listed - but I could have stopped and used a public computer to check in with folks. I just didn't have it in me at the time.

July 22nd

For everyone kind enough to ask about my absence from FB - - I couldn't afford to keep TimeWarner so I returned their equipment. For the last two wks we had no TV or internet. Now we have broadcast TV (shudder) & AT&T DSL. The next inevitable step down as my finances plummet: public radio and snail mail. I may just cry.

July 23rd

2:40 am - Wicked storms today. The kids day at camp was ruined, and here at home we have 1/2 an inch of water in our basement, which is a vast improvement over the flooding of '08 & '09. I guess that drainage trench did some good after all. Meanwhile a friend texted to say she had more than a foot of H20 in her basement. This city floods a heck of a lot more often than it did 20 years ago.

08:02 am - Miraculously, most of the water in the basement vanished down the drain w/out my help - another welcome change from prior years. Now all I have to do is get rid of the rest, mop up, wash ~10 loads of clothing that got wet, replace the litter boxes that were soaked, run some errands, and go to work. Easy Peezy Lemon Squeezy.

11:11 am - OK, most of the water that was left has been removed and I'm the second load of laundry. I'm loaning my shop vac out to help a friend, but if anyone in striking distance has a good dehumidifer they can loan *us* for the weekend, please holler.

2:54 pm - Hey, get this: MKE rainfall Thurs was 2nd-most on record - 5.79 in. But the *Highest* 1-day total was 6.81 on Aug. 6, 1986. That would be the day I had my tonsils out, a day when St. Francis Hospital's elevator shafts flooded & they lost power during my surgery. A memorable day all around.

July 25th

Great Dad Moment of The Day: after Ginger fell 3x in an hour & sought my attention - "Are you OK? Good. Now be more careful, 'cuz real soon I'm going to just stop caring & call you a f*ing klutz".

This evening Ginger put the stopper in the bathroom sink, left the water running & shut the door. Eventually it leaked into the basement, and the result was worse than the storm flooding. Whole areas of my basement, including the furnace, some storage, and clothes, were soaked. She's still damn cute tho'.

July 26th

Weird request: 1 - if anyone has an old but new-ish Cricket phone for sale, let me know. 2. If anyone has a copy of the 1997 documentary "Ending Welfare as We know it", hosted by Meredith Vieria, kindly drop me a line. A friend of ours is featured in the film.

July 27th

Lisa and I took a, ahem, 'nap', and when we ventured back downstairs the house was destroyed. It's not like the kids were a hurricane; more like a hurricane that broke the levees, and the Army decided the city wasn't worth saving and razed it all. It's amazing how much damage the kids can do when you're gone for three and a half minutes.

{this post led to several insulting - and funny - comments such as " Soo... you took 3 and a half naps??}

July 28th

{re: France declaring war on al Qaida} No snark - my respect for the French has increased tenfold in the last year. It really has.

I spent the morning ripping out door frames and windows for a friend who's renovating her house. I will note that *contrary to the vocal opinions of my wife* I not only made it through in one piece, but removed the windows w/out damaging the surrounding tile. I've even been asked by the contractor to return and rip out flooring. So to Lisa I say, with love: pbbbbt. ;)

July 29th

An afternoon trip to the zoo was aborted when we were stuck in a traffic jam on 894. We detoured to the pool at my in-law's apartment complex & the kids had a blast. Meanwhile an anonymous Good Samaritan left two + boxes of toys & games on our porch. The clear favorite so far? The Lincoln logs, which were spread out over my dininig room most of the evening.

{the Good Samaritan turned out to be a neighbor two houses down, looking to forge an alliance w/ us against a shared neighbor, a longtime friend turned recent enemy. We wisely kept out of the disagreement}

Being limited to broadcast TV sucks in every possible way (ok, maybe not when 'America's Test Kitchen; is on), but it *was* bearable. Sort of. Then I saw a FB ad announcing that the new season of Project Runway starts tonight . . . plus no Doctor Who, no ESPN, no HGTV . . what's the point of even waking up in the morning?

July 30th

Ellen Degeneres has quit American Idol after one season

Our First Christmas Card of the Season

We received our first Christmas card of the year (!), from a blog reader in Great Britain. She wrote that she was sending it on what her post office claimed was the "last possible" date for overseas mail to arrive by Christmas, but acknowledged they were probably full of it. I guess mail service employees are the same the world over, eh?

Write it When I'm Gone" by Thomas DeFrank

'finished "Write it When I'm Gone" by Thomas DeFrank. It's a collection of Gerald Ford interviews done over a 30yr period, all w/ the understanding they were off the record until his death. No surprises, other than that he was quite an astute predictor of future political events. The text is often circuitous & repeats the same anecdotes chapters apart, but it's an interesting read. B-

Happy Birthday Lisa!

Happy Birthday to my one and only! Have a great day/year baby!

{sure, it's an old Halloween picture, but she's so cute in it!}

White House Diary by Jimmy Carter

Despite philosophical differences with Jimmy Carter, I enjoy reading about his Presidency, in part because it is the first administration I can remember. The Iran hostage crisis and the failure of the Desert One mission made an impression on a five year old in Milwaukee, and I clearly remember my Dad watching a Reagan ad in 1980 and deciding - reluctantly -to vote Republican.

Thirty years later Carter himself has allowed us into the inner workings of his Washington years by publishing an abridged but personally annotated copy of the daily diary he kept from 1976-'81.

Having read Keeping Faith, his memoir of the same era, it wasn't hard to grasp the 'storyline' unfolding with each entry. Younger readers, or those with only a passing familiarity with Carter, might have a more difficult time, despite a modest timeline presented at the start of the book.

Still, there are no major historical surprises to be found; his combative relationship with Ted Kennedy is well known, as is the personal fondness for Gerald Ford and the equal disdain he had for Reagan. Each major crisis in the diary has been discussed in depth in prior memoirs, sometimes while quoting the diary itself.

So why bother reading it?

Day by day you explore the thought process behind the decisions that have shaped our world - a better question would be, why would you not want to read it?

That aside, I think it's invaluable for two reasons. One, while I've always had personal admiration for Carter's intelligence and ethics, it is reassuring to see that it wasn't an act (or if it was, a virtuoso performance worthy of equal respect). In particular, he seemed to be genuinely in love with his wife to a degree not seen by most honeymooners, much less an 'old' married couple. Good for him.

Two, it provides plenty of fodder to discuss just why his Presidency failed (or was/is perceived to have failed).

He is very intelligent, as I noted, but it's something he seems to take pains to impress upon the (future) reader. The annotations inevitably point out how he was correct, then lists the ways subsequent Presidents got the issue 'wrong'.

You get the impression this created a rigid, unshakable belief that he was in the right - leading, in turn, to a firm reluctance to tolerate criticism or change direction, and a horrific tendency to micromanage. The last bit just jumps off the page at the reader time and again.

He seemed to take his 'outsider' label a bit too seriously as well, charging headlong against the status quo, regardless of whether it was in the best interest of his Administration or its goals. He alienates his own Party, members of Congress, NOW, the Jewish community, Republicans, and perhaps most foolishly of all: the press. He (privately) calls several well known journalists liars, dictates scathing entries about The Washington Post, and refuses requests to appear at journalist dinners. Not the wisest path to take.

Carter finishes the book with an epilogue that agrees with my take (and goes even further). Of a more subjective nature is my feeling - and it is just a feeling - that there may be an undercurrent of Anti-Semitism in the diary. Unconscious, but there all the same.

It's one thing to disagree with Israel and its actions. But even taking into account his rather disagreeable experiences with Israel and its domestic supporters, there seems to be an inordinate amount of references to "American Jews", their backstabbing of his Presidency, and on at least one occasion a brief string of adjectives that straddle the line of caricature. He also seems to quickly dismiss the personality and value of the Israeli PM while slathering love on (Egypt's) Sadat.

Hey, maybe its legitimate gripes against an overbearing and presumptuous special interest group. I just got a feeling its a little bit more than that. I could be entirely off base. In fact, I hope I am.

I was also floored to discover that during his Presidency he was a member of a congregation that denied African-Americans the right to worship in the church. (see entry for 5 July, 1980, among others). Yes, as a member of the church he had voted unsuccessfully to allow them entrance, but that was in the '60's. That means that for at least a decade after the vote he continued to attend a segregated church. (in 1981 he left the congregation)

To me, that's inexcusable. By 1977 no President should have tolerated that discrimination so close to home, and I find it hard to believe it hasn't garnered more criticism over the years.

In closing - a good read and a valuable insight into the Presidency. A+

Not Good

I've been listening to Yankee radio out of an Albany station. So far Texeria pulled a hammy, the Yanks can't bring a run to the plate if you gave them an armed escort, and Josh Hamilton has homered twice tonight (4 for the series). We're going to lose this game, but hopefully we'll regroup and come back to win 3 in a row.