Getting reacquainted

We reconnected with folks this week. My brother Robert was in town last weekend with his family. Adam and Laura met us this week, too and I saw my cousin Joe for the first time in maybe six or seven years.

You'll notice in the stories that I'm telling here that I'm withholding a bit. It's not for tax purposes. While I like to tell a lot about my personal life on here, I know that not everyone does. I try and respect other people's privacy while telling my story.

Robert was in town for work on our father's estate. That's progressing. There was a tree (two trees?) on the land that had root rot. At least that's how I've defined it. These two trees were apparently (meaning as far as I can tell and I know little about trees) some sort of pine trees and joined at the roots. They were tall — 40+ feet — and joined at the base so that they made, when they were healthy, a narrow "V". Anyway, one of these two started to lean before Dad died. I don't know how long. As of last week this one leaned over from vertical to maybe 30 degrees from vertical. Significant and I started to worry about the house and it hitting someone. Sometime earlier this week it fell over, killing another tree and flattening a section of fence. I'm happy to report that no people or things I cared about were harmed in the creation of this blog post or the falling of this tree. On Thursday I chopped down the companion tree. It took me almost two hours and my hands are still sore. Very satisfying, though.

Adam and Laura had chocolate and wine with us this week. These are our old friends (I've known Adam since high school) who moved to Raleigh NC last year. They looked well and we had a good time catching up. Uly warmed up to both of them.

My cousin Joe from Las Vegas was in town this week and I introduced him to Uly over at my Grandma's. It was good seeing him. We have nearly polar opposite political views on many things, but I can honestly say that he discussed these things as a gentleman without getting riled. Not everyone can do that. It sounds like he's having a good time with his family - his wife and two boys - and has his hands full, too.

There are two photos of my dad attached to this post. One is a photo from when he was a baby. I think he looks a lot like Ul.

- Steve

Earache Day Three

I slept a few hours last night. The pain came back today and spiked high just before dinner. Less congestion, but what's there packs a whallup. (SP?)

Saw my primary physician today and got some antibiotics. Horse pills. Amoxicillan 875mg. Feeling stable and just discomfort now. Bed at 1:30am.

Saw Oceans 11 and 13. 13 sucks.

Steve

Ear clog part 2

3:30 a.m. and the blockage is moving very slowly.

More pink stuff.

Using a humidifier to help open up.

Steve

Terrible clogged eustation tube and what I did about it

Damn. I really screwed up.

You may have heard me raving about the wonders of the Neti Pot. This is the pitcher that is used to pour salt water into the nostrils and clean the sinuses. Sweet! How awesome. Does what modern science can't! Well, I modded this techniqe, using a squeeze bottle and a snub nose with a one way valve. If pouring is good, pressure washing is better, so I reasoned.

Well, for the past day and a half I've had clogged ears. The left got especially bad today. Painful earache and I was convinced that I had air trapped by mucous. Then I bent over and got a bad headrush (earrush?) Air doesn't do that. water does. It was water! I forced water into my eustation tube and it's stuck!

The phrase, "Only the penitent man shall pass" came to mind and I am in my office bowing in a variety of angles to drain the slop from my tubes. Some greenish yellow and pinkish stuff has come out. It's working, but slowly.

2:30am

Steve

Almost 200 posts in four years

Really, it's been just under four years since we started this blog. 50 bits of stories each year for that long. What is it that makes up a life, anyway? Are most moments dull and drab and just a handful are worthy of telling about? Is it just how we see them?

These are questions that I have. I've also wondered if, when I'm writing, I'm missing out on living. One thing I am sure of, after asking these questions for two decades (that's about how long it's been since I was sixteen!) is that I spend too much time on surfing crap on the web, hanging out and (most of this next one is past tense) inebriated to worry about the entirely constructive activity of writing.

Dying to tell. That was what Mark Flanigan called this drive. Driven by it and away from it. The muse is a fickle mistress.

- Steve

Got Milp?

So I'm getting out of the shower and Uly sees a pimple on my side and asks, "Milp?"

Then he points to my nipple and asks, "Milp?"

And I smirked and said, "Sure baby, come here and nurse from Daddy."

He looked disgusted and shook his head and ran away.

:)

- Steve

Floor Sanding, Home Stretch On Remodel

Attached to this post are a few pictures, before and in-process of the work I've been doing on the floors at Mom's house. The wood floor - Maple I think - was pretty beat up. After working with Jim to fill in all the cracks in the walls and ceiling, repaint the ceilings, walls and trim, I'm now working on the floors.

Getting this floor refinishing job professionally done would have been more than $2500, My cost is around $500 in materials and about 40 hours labor. Not bad!

I rented a drum type floor sander from Schulhoff tool rental in Walnut Hills ($30) and bought sandpaper - 36 and 80 grit, 20 sheets each ($50). The sander is like a lawn mower with a cord that you pull backwards. It's very heavy and it is physically taxing work, but not at all hard to get the hang of. As a novice, I learned how to handle the machine in just half an hour, without doing any damage of note to the floors. You can gouge it if it stays in one place too long. The keys are 1)keep moving 2)work with the grain and 3) Change your paper often. I did two rough sands and one fine sand and it looks great. Photos of that later this week. There are lots of guides online. This would make someone a terrific side business. Wear a respirator, spend a few thousand on the tools and you could make cash hand over fist, I think.

I'm working with my friend Dan tomorrow morning to do the edging.

- Steve

A happy post in a sad week

The 1992 Toyota Corolla base model is the medium brown dog of cars, a true bastion of mediocrity. It was exactly what we wanted, a $425, 200,000 miles on the odo replacement for our 2004 Toyota Camry V6 LE with 39,000 miles on the clock.

I inherited the Camry from mom. It was the nicest car I ever owned. It was hard to let it go, but we did, for $12,500. The day after I sold it, I sat down and paid $6,500 in bills. The IRS, student loans, the tax bill on my mom's house and more. All paid. It felt damn good. Better than a vacation. Better than a massage. The brown dog runs great and we're very happy with scaling down. I do have to say I miss keyless entry. 33mpg will make up for it.

Steve

Dad died.

My father died last week. We're working out plans for his cremation and a memorial service. It will most likely be on Wednesday.

It was sudden, of illness he had for a long time.

More on this soon.

Steve

NICE photos from the Ferrell's NYE party

Less than nice photos are posted below.

Just a quick caveat before anyone blows a cork

The following photos were all taken in good fun and I mean well. Don't look if you don't want to see some of my friends making obscene gestures.


- Steve







Dangerous pictures below this point.





I warned you.

Last set

More NYE party pics

Greetings from the Ferrell's New Year's Eve Party

I love my friends. ;)

Contract renegotiations and more

I'm in the midst of craptastic contract negotiations today on my side job. I hate haggling over money, but the cost of living has increased. I asked for 15 percent and was offered 7.5 percent, but only if I accept paypal payments. Paypal takes about 3 percent, so accepting means I get 1/3 of what I wanted. Refusing means maybe walking. We'll see.

Well, I'm glad that today's the day we brought the car to Kevin's shop. He's fixing some scratches and chips in the paint so that we can sell it. It's a really nice car, we know. It would last us forever, but if we had $13,000 sitting around, we wouldn't spend all of it on this car. So that's why we're doing it. Also, both houses 1114 (my mom's) and 1746 (ours) need work - furnaces, floor sanding and maybe a roof. You can do the math. We could buy an older car and have capitol to get a lot done. My work still does not require a vehicle and I don't expect that it will.

Countercultural aspects of car withdrawl
I have felt a good deal of popular resistance to the possibility of us going carless. Some folks hate the idea even though 1) we're just considering a carless life, though we'd like to do so pretty much for sure one day and 2) we're not asking anyone else to do the same thing. I have encountered some shock and even a little hostility at the mention. a - d - d - i - c - t - i - o - n.

related anecdote
During the '04 elections I was running a bit one night with Justin Jeffre (of boyband 98 degrees fame) and some woman was way into him and he wasn't so into her. She asked excitedly if he and I watched the Daily Show together and I told her, "I don't have a tv. I got rid of it years ago."

"What?!"

"I got rid of it. I don't watch television."

She shrieked, "Oh my god!" She turned on a tack and was gone.

- Steve

Christmas eve eve

The first two days of work on Mom's old house are behind us. Jimmy (Beck's dad) and I worked Friday and Saturday and got most of the repairs and painting done in the living and dining rooms.
Jim will be moving in on the second week of January. The house is going to look pretty good. We still have to take care of the furnace issue, and that's going to be expensive.
There are still a few things up in the air today about what we'll be doing this week. I know that we're having dinner tonight with Mary Ellen and Ben and maybe that's enough.
Listening to Scott Joplin today (now). I heard a bunch of his music interpreted by another musician this week on old tape reels. I bought a $10 reel to reel player/recorder so I could transfer some old interviews. So today I downloaded a bunch of Joplin's music and I'm listening to it now. I think he plays too fast. The arrangements I heard seemed smoother. Tape has a warmth to it, too, that doesn't seem to be duplicated by mp3. I won't be switching back, I'm just saying.

One other thing. I'd like to show off our Christmas photo. I kept taking good pictures of Uly and Beck where I looked bad or good pics of me where they didn't look so hot. Anyway, I photo shopped the picture above, cribbing from two other pictures. I bet you can't see the cutline - it runs around the left side of Beck's head and through her shirt. The originals are shown in black and white.

Could I see a show of comments so I know who listens to me ramble? Just curious.

Steve

It's all pretty much the same to me

I try to be no more a connoisseur than I am a fetishist. By that, I mean that cheap coffee is okay by me (at least the taste is, though I try and support fair trade products when possible. I'm just using this as an example, okay?) and so is cheap bourbon (there again, though, I have more or less given up drinking, so this is just an example). Likewise, a holiday is pretty much the same as another day to me, with the exceptions of time off for reflection and meeting with family and friends. I don't like the idea of fetishizing days of the year. We should behave one way, decently, all year round. I'm writing all this to say that I've had the sense from some people I know that they think I might be down because this is the first holiday without Mom. And, that's only true - it being harder around the holidays - if I thought better of those days than I do others. Which I do not.

- Steve

Christmas cards from the edge

Becky and I were writing out and addressing Christmas cards tonight. (Oh, we're running soooo late!) We ran out of cards three-fourths of the way though and I went downstairs to my desk in the basement to find more blank cards.

First stack was some large promo envelope full of cards from the Abbey at Yalta or something and promised a mass in the name of the receiver. Not interested in promoting these folks in so shameless a way, so I threw that out.

Next was a box marked, "Traditional Assortment," and I thought that sounded fine. I start perusing this assortment and find cards that are sealed in envelopes and stamped, with addresses on them. Eleven of them. They use 33 cent stamps. Two of the intended recipients are dead, so I open those and I wince, sweetly, at seeing Mom's signature for herself and her dog Gussie (a rendering of his pawprint). These were cards she wrote and never sent. One was to my uncle Mike when he still lived in Cincinnati which I think was more than five years ago. (Mike and Sharon, how long ago was that?)

The impact — I'm paraphrasing something I heard recently — was difficult to speak of. The unexpected, improbable, impossible artifact of my mother's life was a meteorite and it was charged with symbols. I decided to disperse it. I decided that I should send the remaining nine and I left them as they were, in the envelopes with Mom's return address and wrote this brief note:

I just found this. It was sealed. - Steve 12/07 (and then my phone number)

One more set of Christmas cards. Mom loved Christmas. :)

- Steve

I am legend and how to pirate a movie, overcoming security detail

Not me - Will Smith is, or at least that's the title of his new movie.

I saw it tonight and the line stretched on for quite a ways. I was surprised that so many were trying to get into the sneak preview. If we hadn't come so early, we (Jimmy, the father in law, Bill Williams and Thurman) may not have gotten a seat. At least not a good one. Bill likes down in front and that's always (really) fine by me.

There was security using metal detector wands and bag searches for cameras to prevent piracy. It occurred to me that there was an easy way around this. They don't search popcorn. Go to a movie at the target theatre, get a bag of popcorn and take the bag home. Put your video cam rig in the bag with the lcd screen pointed up. Make a false bottom above the cam and put a plexi window in it. Take this in a bag (like a purse or something fabric) to the theatre on the night of your target film's preview and buy another bag of popcorn. Go to the john, into a stall and close the door. Pour the new bag into the old bag and throw out the overage popcorn. Fold up the new bag for use next time. (Don't waste. Recycle! Reuse!) Toss the throwaway cloth bag or fold it up (better). Get in line and they'll look you over but not your grub. Go in and tear open a window for the lens to see and point it at the screen. Eat away the popcorn on top so you can see the viewfinder. Film the movie onto your dv cam and then stow the rig in the fabric bag and leave. Anyway, if I cared to make a living this way, it should work. How much money can you make at this anyway?

The film was jarring. Lots of good scares and shocks. I was glad to see downbeats in the resolution and in the core of the flick and Smith was good, but the film suffers from poor cg animation. Better that the monsters were unseen as to be seen in such a state. Good solo acting by Smith, but mediocre ensemble play. C+.

Steve