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Monday, July 16, 2012

Windows Pinball


My first computer was an all-in-one Compaq given to us by my brother-in-law in 1996 or '97, and this ubiquitous pinball game is fondly cemented in my memory - although it couldn't hold a handle to the real thing. 

Also mastered: Windows Solitaire and Minesweeper, In the latter I would craft my own 100 mine puzzles and figure them out, something I was really proud of at the time lol

Bye Baby Bye by Max Allan Collins

On Saturday I finished reading "Bye Baby Bye", a Nate Heller mystery by Max Allan Collins. In this one Nate, PI to the famous and infamous, is drawn into the last few troubled months of Marilyn Monroe's life. As with all/most of Collins' work it's a good, enjoyable read, and I certainly learned a few facts about MM along the way. I doubt I'll remember this book in twenty years, but I'm still glad I read it. Grade: B

Annoyed

Very annoyed. Had a doctor's appt scheduled this AM, called ahead to see if he was running on time and was told he was out of the office for the day. He'd "tried" to inform me but that I was "unreachable" by phone. Uh, noooooo. I have my cell on file, why not call that when I didn't answer the land line? The only plus is that I'm spared a cross-town trip.

LOL

(referencing my post about how putting away the kids footstool marked a milestone in our house): 

You're in the years between the bathroom stepstool
and the walk-in bathtub! - Fred Bryan

In Cold Blood




I finished reading "In Cold Blood" by Truman Capote, and unlike other "classics" that alternate "suck" and "bore" with every page, this was a thing of beauty. Not one word was wasted and his prose sings. His description of the handwriting in Nancy's diary, equating her different styles with a teenage search for identity, demonstrates perfectly his ability to dissect a moment and reveal its truth. Great book, and all praise to Capote. Grade: A+ (with extra credit on the side)

Sunday, July 15, 2012

A Minor Milestone in the Slapinions Home

On June 26th I posted the following tidbit on Facebook:


A milestone reached today with the kids, the 2nd event in less than a week to reduce me to a depressive mess. It is not fair. When the youngest gets too old for something, it is time to make a new kid . . . but no new models for 5 years :(


What was this milestone? This:


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Moments before Lisa had announced the removal of our footstool from the bathroom. I balked - clearly Ginger wasn't old enough to reach the faucet without it. Lisa promptly rounded up the lil' one and proved me wrong. 


:(


It's bad enough that my youngest is growing up waaaay too fast, but her milestone meant the end of an era. The footstool was one I remember fondly from our old house on Windlake Ave (circa mid to late '70's) and it has served all four of my children well. Until that day. 


Here's a picture of the stool. You'll have to excuse the stuck on Pokemon cards Smiley left on our table that day. I assure you, they aren't a normal part of our decor. 


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Yes, I know it looks like dung in its current state. But when new, oh so many decades ago, it was lime green and featured a white line drawing of a lamb leaping through a field of flowers. Sadly the lamb lost his top half many moons ago, long before my kids inherited it. 


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What I always felt was neat about it was that in addition to being a footstool it instantly converted to a toddler sized chair, one that's supported the behinds of two generations of Slapinons. 

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So, my little one isn't so little anymore, and a battered but beloved icon of our time as parents is going into storage. Someday, Lisa claims, we'll take it out , restore Lamby to his proper dimensions, paint the whole thing, and let our Grandkids use it. 


I hope that comes to pass :)






On Jeter

i think this community [Baseball Think Factory] sounds stupid when we claim that jeter was/[is] a horrible defensive shortstop given that:

--flies in the face of how he has been perceived by his peers/other baseball people his entire career
--that in his career he was and is one of the smartest players in baseball
--he was in the center of the action of what could easily be argued was the best team in baseball over the past 15 years
--he's still playing an every day ss at age 38 and he's not embarrassing himself by any stretch. there are no willie mays moments here

i want to believe in the metrics. and i understand the origins of how jeter is assessed 

but i think jeter and the metrics clash and we are missing something

- Harveys Wallbangers

Eureka: Brain Box Blues by Cris Ramsay

I finished "Eureka: Brain Box Blues" by Cris Ramsay, a novel based on the Scyfy series. In brief, I thought it captured little of the series charm, had a weak plot, and failed to find the 'voice' of the characters. I was not impressed. Grade: C

Mr. Polk's War

A week or so ago I finished reading "Mr. Polk's War: American Opposition and Dissent, 1846-1848" by John H. Schroeder. This was a book I bought at a UWM library sale years ago and finally crossed off my TBR list. 

It's a story of the domestic opposition to the Mexican American war. It's a work strongly influenced by the era in which it was written (early '70's/Vietnam) so you have to allow for some bias in his POV, but overall I thought it was well written and informative. 

I will say it'd be a hard book to follow w/out some prior knowledge of that war, as Schroeder dang near *ignores* the war itself while still referencing domestic reaction to those events. 

I'd grade this a pleasant B+

A Great Quote

Progress doesn't come from early risers -- progress is made by lazy men looking for easier ways to do things. 
~ Robert Anson Heinlein, Notebooks of Lazarus Long )1973)

Struggle

I continue to struggle with a two week long wave of depression, more accurately described as a wall of bitter despair crushing down on my chest. Yes, I continue to function as normal - I am, after all, Amazing - and yes, it is slowly diminishing, but for a day or two there . . . yowee. What's the cause you say? Maybe I'm stressed about the state of independent film-making, or the plight of the endangered kittywampus rat of the 12th moon of Jupiter. Or maybe it's biological. But I do know this: if an attention-whore like me wanted to discuss it, it'd have been plastered all over FB for weeks now. TY for your concern, but this will be the last discussion about it, online or in 'real' life.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

Scuba

After work I took Gracie to a 3 hr SCUBA class at Juneau High School offered by the Milwaukee Rec Dep't. She LOVED it. No sooner was she out of the pool than she said it was a lot of fun, thanked me for suggesting it and signing her up, said she wanted to take the full certification course and - AND - on the way home said "I'm proud that you're my Dad". :)

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Andy Griffith

A much belated RIP to Andy Griffith. I was too busy to notice his passing on the 3rd, so my apologies. Matlock remains my ideal choice if I ever need a defense lawyer (with Perry Mason as his second chair.)

*****

Oh, and according to Redbox this is the 3rd anniversary of my first rental with them. 


Monday, July 9, 2012

Friday, July 6, 2012

Wednesday, July 4, 2012

A Quote for the 4th of July

My friend asked if I was free this weekend. Of course I am, this is America -

 swiped from a Twitter feed of [domonique.@ObeyTomlinster].

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

A Shadow of a Distant Life

This is the story that won me a public reading at a local library back in 2009.



It was three in the morning when the ghost  returned to visit Steven.

At first, shortly after moving into the house, there had had been  only the sound of heavy, careful footsteps in the night. Alarmed, Steven would leave the imagined safety of his bed and venture down the hall, terrified of finding an intruder. But it was always the same; the kids asleep and unaware, the doors bolted, the windows locked.

In the morning he and his wife found it amusing, a curiosity to liven up the anecdotes they told about their new home. Neither, of course, believed in ghosts.

That was how it started.

What followed was a lull, two weeks of undisturbed and blissful sleep. Then, an escalation: the footsteps again, this time breaching Steven's room and stopping just beside his bed.  After that the mornings brought no peace. The restless nights made tempers flare, and he grew angry each time his wife blamed it all on the shifting frame of a century old house.

Steven, for his part, was no longer sure what he believed.

Soon his wife let the news 'slip' to his mother. "I don't understand why you're worried," his Mom said, scolding him. "Our family has owned that house since it was built. The only people to pass away there are your great-grandparents, and even if they could come back, you know they would never hurt you."

They were words meant to comfort, but did the opposite. He felt no kinship with a couple dead and gone twenty years before his birth. Nor could he fathom caring about his own descendants, at least those he wouldn't live to see. If there were angry spirits in the house, why would they be obliged to tolerate him? For the sake of a relationship four generations removed?

That was the night the figure appeared. There were footsteps of course, loud enough to wake him but no one else (although, to be fair, he never really slept well at night anymore, surviving on catnaps scattered throughout the day). They came forward slowly but confidently, as if the spirit no longer cared to mask its presence, and again, they paused by the bed. Ignoring his fear Steven opened his eyes.

Before him stood a shadow, a man-but-not-a-man. While there was no physical form, the shifting darkness  worked to craft an illusion of strength and bulk. Remarkably, through the pressing, physical weight of his fear Steven felt himself begin to climb out of bed.

Not yet, a voice said, and he had no doubt it echoed only in his mind. Not yet.

That was the beginning of the end.

In the weeks to come Steven would stop trying to sleep at night altogether. His work began to suffer; his children, sensing something wrong, grew distant, and his wife, concerned, begged him to seek help. When he refused her pleas he found himself banished to the living room couch. For Steven it was a hidden blessing. His few nights on the couch gave him his first true rest in months.

                                                              A Shadow of a Distant Life  pg 2


On the night the shadow returned it there was no sound, only an icy shiver that wrenched Steven awake with a stunning abruptness. The figure stood at the head of the couch, leaning over and staring - if it had eyes at all - directly into Steven's face.

Now, it said.

The figure walked away, heading for the kitchen. Steven's mind and body screamed caution, and he resolved to stay where he lay. To his surprise  he found himself following the shadow.  They entered the room together, and in time it took Steven to blink his eyes the figure disappeared.

Once again Steven's head screamed retreat, but instead he searched frantically around the room, as if instead of vanishing he'd simply lost sight of the figure in a crowd. After a moment he heard the familiar footsteps coming from the basement stairs that lay off the pantry.  He followed the sound without thinking, and without bothering with the stairway light.  His eyes had grown accustomed to picking out human forms in the dark of night, and they came quickly to rest on a figure below.

At that same moment he noticed the broken basement window, the strangely unfamiliar shape of the shadow, and the glint of a knife in its hand as it rushed up the stairs. Before these thoughts could raise an alarm the intruder slammed into Steven, slashing at him in a frenzy. The first blow missed and struck the wall, but the intruder never hesitated.  A second later the man was on him again, pushing him down against the stairs before raising the knife for a final blow.

Steven's eyes went from the knife, to the eyes of his assailant - and then to the familiar figure emerging from the dark behind him.

Pitch dark arms ignored the blade and encircled his neck, leveraging him up and off of Steven. It was then, only for a moment, that Steven saw the face of the shadow. It was no face as we know it, simply the impression of one, but in its imagined features was not one face but many; his great-grandfather and his father before him, his sons and his future grandchildren.

Even in the surreal chaos of that moment he knew that  in the end the fight would be his own. Now the shadow said, and Steven struck, knocking the intruder unconscious and sending him tumbling down the stairs.

He would see the shadow only once more in his lifetime. Many years later, babysitting his grandchild, Steven stirred and wandered into the baby's room, sitting in the  rocker alongside the crib. From the corner of the eye he noticed a shadow distinct from the darkness, but did not turn to meet it.

Together, the pair was content to admire the future in silence as it slept peacefully in the crib.

Monday, July 2, 2012

Tennis did not go well

After we picked the kids up from rec all six of us went back to the tennis courts. It was a disaster, as most family outings are. Junie refused to pick up a racket until we were ready to leave, LuLu had a fit the first half of the time we were there, and YaYa took over that gig for the last half. Only Smiley was behaved (and not half bad). It was still better than dealing with most of the adults I know. Afterwards a trip to Home Depot and then on to Woods Cemetery to visit my grandparents' grave.

Tennis Anyone?

Just back from playing tennis in the park. Mayhaps not a great idea in this heat . . .