A Health Update

First of all, the picture I posted yesterday was taken weeks ago, so to all of you who said how awful I looked and how I must be in pain to look like that: [redacted] you.

Second, I wound up getting the hip ck'd out, and it was diagnosed as a 5"x 7" hematoma (a pool of standing blood outside a blood vessel). They're giving it til Friday to dissipate on it's own, otherwise it'll have to be lanced and drained. I'll have to deal with it 'til then.

Me

 

 During the snowstorm a week ago last Thursday I slipped and fell down the back stairs and landed on my right hip. It's been bruised and painful since then, but I'm fully mobile, even taking long walks with the kids. But at around 11 this morning it all but exploded; intense pain followed by a raised bump the size of a pair of softballs on my hip. No idea why - I was just watching TV when it happened. As loathe as I am to see a doctor, I went over to Urgent Care but they couldn't see me for hours so I said F it and returned home to ice it and pop some Advil. Not a great way to spend an afternoon.

Mindy McCready

Country music star Mindy McCready, perhaps best known for her reported affair with Roger Clemens, has reportedly committed suicide at age 37. RIP.

Zoinks

 Yesterday, in our standard Saturday evening post-Mass dinner out, we stopped into Hamburger Mary's. If you're not familiar, Hamburger Mary's is a kitschy, gay-themed eatery here in Bay View. During dinner one of the TV's was playing the movie "My Best Friend's Girl".

When asked how everything was, I told the waiter "The foods fine, but how can you play a Dane Cook movie and expect people to want to eat?" The table was suddenly quiet. Apparently, Lisa (and possibly the waiter) heard it as "How can you pay a gay cook and expect people to eat", which is just a weeeeee bit of a different thing.

Zoinks!

Today in History

Today is the 70th anniversary of Joseph Goebbels's Sportpalast speech, which warned Germany that dire days were ahead and that victory was in jeopardy.

Congratulations to Danica Patrick

 Congrats! "Danica Patrick became the first woman to win the pole position for the Daytona 500, posting a lap of 196.434 mph Sunday. In doing so, she also became the first woman to win a pole at any NASCAR top-division race."

Life Choices

LuLu says she wants to be a marriage counselor when she grows up. I'm not sure what this says about her childhood . . . .

'Tis True

 I am, I admit, a bit of an acquired taste

The Eisenhower Years

I’ve finished 3 books on President Dwight D. Eisenhower. Mandate for Change and  Waging Peace are Ike’s memoirs of his first and second Presidential terms, respectively.  Going Home to Glory is the story of Ike’s final eight years of life, as told by his grandson David Eisenhower, along with his wife Julie Nixon Eisenhower. 

The two White House memoirs are very dry and told in a strictly factual, unemotional fashion. I still adored them, and finished with a great appreciation for a President overshadowed by the unwarranted adoration for his successor (JFK). Kennedy and his supporters campaigned on the idea that the Eisenhower era was stagnant and parochial, an erroneous assertion that survives to this day.  The truth is far different.

Here was a President who kept the peace in the face of near constant Soviet and Chinese provocation, while simultaneously expanding the ring of ‘containment’ that would eventually break the USSR;  a President who balanced the budget multiple times, at times refusing to cut taxes to do so, and led America to unparalleled prosperity ; a President who included women in his Cabinet and sent federal troops in to desegregate Little Rock schools; a President who warned that any dollar spent on defense above the level of military adequacy was a dollar misspent, and had the military reputation to enforce that doctrine; a President who refused to intervene in Vietnam barring a coalition effort; a President convinced that aiding Latin America and Africa was not only moral but a means of fighting the Cold War; a President who valued bipartisanship and the UN, advocated for a “United States of Europe”, and expanded the reach of social security; but also a President who believed in self-determination, the value of duty, limited Federal intervention, free markets and the moral greatness of America.

His Presidency deserves a second look.

Their contents deserve an A, but given the dull style I can only grade these two a B.

Going Home to Glory begins with the conclusion of his administration and ends with his death in 1969. book is the opposite of his Grandfather’s stylistically; it is warm and endearing and a joy to read. Grade: A.

Also read so far this year: Belles on their Toes by Frank B Gilbreth Jr and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey

 and The Rise of Ransom City by Felix Gilman.

I’d rate the former a B- and the latter a well served A. 

Argo

 Argo is a fine movie, just about as good as advertised, and I hope it does well at the Oscars.

Kudos to Ben Affleck, who never deserved all the hate the media piled on him over the last decade. I will say I thought the final airport scene was a little much, and the opening montage (which seeks to explain the political situation) is horribly skewed to favor a Democrat's rationale of events.

Excusing those two miscues, I’d rate this as well deserved A+

No Z

 Total sleep on Thursday: 2 hr 45 min. Total sleep so far today: Zip. This is gonna hurt.

Coming to Summerfest!

 

My Thoughts - Hypocrisy

 Hypocrisy doesn't necessarily falsify a premise

Ash Wednesday

 

Has anyone ever told you, that for a guy with such dashing good looks and a well developed sense of humor, you have eyebrows designed and engineered by nature to make people fear for their lives? - Fred Bryan

A Friend's Van was stolen!

Last night around midnight my friend Erv came over to visit for half an hour. During that brief stay someone STOLE his van from directly in front of my house, in the middle of bleeping Bay View! 

We spent the next three hours either talking with police or driving around the neighborhood looking for the punks. The van was recovered this morning - where else? - at Bay View High School.

Nothing was stolen from it; not his ladders, his radio equipment, or the three laptops he had in the back. Apparently someone just wanted a joyride in a 2003 Chevy work van.

Tee-Hee

 Walked PD and OJ home from school today, while GC and LK drove home with Mom (da wimps)

Stache's for Team Slap

 

House Hockey

Junie is rollerskating around the house wearing a skateboarding helmet and using a broom as a hockey stick; her Mom's pumice stone is the puck and the net is the space below the ottoman.

Fred Bryan: 

Any sweeter, and I'd need supplemental insulin

At the Dentist

 

2 Facts

1. 70 years ago today Guadalcanal was declared secure by US forces.

2. The world needs a new biography of Nelson Rockefeller

Thrift Shop

According to Energy 106.9's FB page, Macklemore's Thrift Shop" has gone double platinum, with digital sales at 2.3 million copies and counting.

Beautiful Work

 A sampling of the arrangements Lisa has made at Michaels Craft Store!

Mean Ol' Junie

My five year old who looks like the sweetest blue eyed angel thinks she's gangsta. I cleaned out her folder, and apparently took out her "words"...I don't recall any flash cards this go-round. Anyway....this morning when I couldn't find "her words" she gets in my face w/ her little pointing finger and whispers (so daddy can't hear her trying to bully her mama) with a gritty threatening tone "you BETTER find my words or..." and she let it trail off like that....lol...or what lil mama? OR WHAT? - Lisa