Lance Armstrong

I'll have a column on Lance Armstrong running in the Journal-Sentinel later this week.

Replacing the Back Porch

We are having our back porch replaced today, and I have tried my damnedest to encourage polite and civil interaction btwn the kids so we could *appear* not to be dysfunctional to strangers, but it only seems to have revved their engines. Today, life is hard.

Repainting

Repainting the bunk beds!

Diet A&W

Diet A&W root beer is heaven. Seriously.

Rodney King

RIP Rodney King, the unwilling impetus for the LA Riots, was found dead today at the bottom of his pool. He was 47.

My Father's Day 2012

It's been a pretty darn good day.

For starters, late the night before I stopped by my parent's place and dropped off a gift for my Dad. I gave him my copy of Jeff Shaara's A Blaze of Glory and two catcus plants that Lisa put in a wicker gift basket and packaged beautifully, finishing it off with a bow. Naturally, the first thing my Dad did was stumble and overturn the plants, ruining the effect! LOL (no matter; he loved them).

(Lisa bought me a 14" cookie to celebrate the day, and I'm proud to say I only enjoyed two pieces and left the rest for the kids.)

For much of the day the holiday was spent as it should be, sans kids. As I wrote on Facebook:


I have successfully rid myself of all but one kid and I aim to keep it that way as long as I can. The best Father's Day gift you can give a father of four young'ins? Keeping them the bleep outta my hair before I lose what little is left of it. :)

For lunch Lis and I went alone to La Salsa, a restaurant that opened for business only the night before, although another location has been in business for years.




 The food was cheap, great tasting, and plentiful. The fajitas I ordered filled me up halfway into the order, and wound up being my dinner too.  It's within walking distance of our home, which is another plus.

Then it was time for a true rarity, a short but wonderful nap.

I ran to Home Depot for some items for LuLu's room re-do, then spent much of the next three hours enjoying my long-awaited gift, a brand new lawnmower Lisa had had on lawaway since April! Whoo-hoo!



What the hey - a beauty like this deserves two pics!



Or even three!



As I was putting the mower together LuLu returned home, which was a bit annoying (see the FB post above), but turned out to to be a blessing as she was pretty darn adapt at helping me assemble it. We then walked to the gas station while YaYa prepped the yard, but as we were filling the gas can we noticed a big crack on the bottom. Luckily the attendant loaned me a spare can and so the mowing commenced . .




'Twas a thing of beauty, it was. While I was cutting the lawn YaYa commenced to trimming with our brand-new trimmer



but sadly, that didn't go as well. Oh, the trimming got done, but the shield you see attached in the picture broke off a few minutes later, 20 minutes after being unboxed. Back to the store tomorrow!

So the lawn got mowed and trimmed, I took out the edger and did the backyard, and then pruned the so-called "Bonsai" bushes in front of the house. At about that time my neighbor Glen came home and asked if he could see "the new baby".

Basking in my manhood I showed him the new beauty. He marveled at it, and I offered to let him borrow it (he had loaned me his while we were waiting for the lawaway). "No, I couldn't, " he said. "Using this and then going back to mine, man, it would only make me cry."

Darn tootin'

After all that I was exhausted but rounded up the family, got them off to bed, then showered and hunkered down for a night with Lisa only to discover she wasn't feeling well and went to bed by 8:30. So it was on to Blogger, and, shortly, either a good book or a cheesy movie.

Best. Fathers Day. To. Date.

I hope all the Father's out there can say the same! We deserve it!

Happy Father's Day

Happy Fathers Day everyone. I have successfully rid myself of all but one kid and I aim to keep it that way as long as I can. The best Father's Day gift you can give a father of four young'ins? Keeping them the  heck outta my hair before I lose what little is left of it. :)

Boom

Yanks win 8th straight with a great 14 inning win. Yanks now 39-25 on the year. Boom baby.

When FDR Died

When FDR Died is a 1961 book by Bernard Asbell that chronicles the events of April 12, 1945, the day FDR died while vacationing in Warm Springs, Georgia.

I've owned the book for close to 20 years now, so I'm happy I finally got off my duff and crossed this off my 'to be read' list. It's a very readable, very informal account of the day and the events culminating in his funeral, and I certainly learned a lot. For starters, I always assumed he died in the White House, and I never could have guessed at the extent of the public mourning for the man.

Regarding that mourning . . . well it strikes me as over the top, even creepy. Sharecroppers literally prostrating themselves before his funeral train. A Madison factory going on strike because the owner wouldn't fly a US flag in mourning during a rainstorm. Newspapers refusing all commercial advertising. Stores closed. Concerts cancelled. The public warned that the expected run on mourning clothes could cripple the wartime cotton industry. People of all ages falling to their knees and weeping to the heavens.

I was born 29 years after his death, so I can't begin to put myself in the shoes of your Average Joe of the day, but it seems so excessive. I can understand it for Lincoln, a man murdered by a vengeful enemy in the hour of his triumph, or Kennedy, a young icon struck down in his prime. But for a frail, sickly man who had propped himself up as President for Life? No. It's very nearly blasphemous.  He was a man, not a diety.

I'm sure it's a generational gap. But I'm equally certain my opinion was shared by contemporaries of the event, and that the love affair was not quite so universal as advertised. Said William C Murphy, Jr, later an RNC publicity director but at the time a beat reporter on the funeral train "You guys will be coming back as soon as the old man is buried, but not me. I'm going to sit by his grave for three days and see if he . . . rises."

A worthwhile, detailed look at a watershed moment for the Greatest Generation.

Grade: A -

Boook #44 of the year