Drivin’ All Night, My Hands Wet on the Wheel

What a miserable drive. It took twenty hours to go right at a thousand miles. It took just under 15 hours total to get to Florida last Friday night/Saturday morning. Coming home yesterday, u-g-l-y. I don’t know why either. There wasn’t construction. Just heavy traffic driving like idiots. We would cruise along at 75 mph for five miles or so, then all three lanes would just slam on the brakes and we would crawl at 5 mph for five miles or so. Then, for no reason, everyone accelerated up to 75 again. All Day Long. It took five hours, counting lunch, to just clear Orlando to Georgia. We left at 11:00 am yesterday morning and pulled in the driveway at 7:15 am today. 

Since we didn’t plan on an all-nighter, we didn’t arrange our sleep shifts. I ended up driving most of the way, with a sleep break from Atlanta to just past Knoxville. 

Backstory: the daughter rented a house in Mickey Mouse Town and invited us to stay. We had a great time hanging with the grand girls and the kids. We swam, drank some beer and Pina Colatas. I smoked a couple of stogies on the front porch. Yes, we went to Evil Political Disney. The tickets were bought back in a February and I sure wasn’t willing to give up that kind of cash in a political protest. Besides, the girls have been looking forward to going for months. Two and seven year-olds don’t care about a Florida law or LGBQRSTUV protests. 

The weather was mostly great, warm and sunny with a rainy afternoon on Thursday and on Saturday when we arrived. We had a wonderful time. 

Now I get to leave tomorrow on a business trip. Back in the car! 

Finally

 

It is about time baseball started

London Calling

Inflation is at levels we haven’t seen since Carter micromanaged the White House tennis courts. It takes half a paycheck to fill up your car with gas. American citizens are struggling, and Biden is passing out free healthcare, education, tax refunds, and cell phones to illegals. WTH? My cell phone bill is expensive. Granted, that is on me and the features, products, and plan I chose. That is because I am paying for it. I guess I’m also paying for Jose and Juan and Naillely’s cell phone too. 

Look it up. You are paying too.

Bluey cracks me up

I’m late to the old blogeroo this morning because reasons. The Obama made an appearance at the White House yesterday. I almost felt the sea levels start to drop and peace break out throughout the globe. Almost.

The bigger news is I believe I have caught a cold. I’m probably sicker than anyone else ever who caught a cold ever. I’m just sayin’. I have a runny nose, watery eyes, sneezing, and coughing from the post nasal drip. I expect you will be lining up to deliver appropriately seasoned chicken noodle soup. Work out the schedule among yourselves, I’m too sick to take charge. I might add a postscript note I prefer homemade, but I’ll take canned if necessary. 

Say, if you are already cooking, you might throw in a grilled cheese, bacon, or a nicely grilled New York Strip. If you are bringing steak you can substitute a side salad and baked spud for the soup. Thanks.

elections have consequences. This time they were negative

I’m on my second cup of coffee. I just finished eating an apple danish. It is typical springtime weather. Blah, blah, blah. 

Biden is driving our country into the ground. Kamala sounds like a cartoon character every time she opens her mouth. Inflation is raging and the only answer this administration has is to either blame the Russians or recommend we all go out and buy a $50,000 car to save $80 bucks a month. Even if we all had the best of credit a car payment on a fifty grand car would be around three hundred bucks minimum to save eighty dollars? Even this history major can calculate that math doesn’t add up. But the good news is we don’t have the Orange Man tweeting mean stuff. 

I notice the liberals in my neighborhood who had the BLM and Biden/Harris signs in their front yards have scrapped the Biden stickers from their bumper. I wonder why? It cost me $80 bucks to fill up my car. Think that has anything to do with it?

I’m sorry

OK, I will pop up another post to move the springtime honey down the page. No need to bleach your eyes or reach for those knitting needles to do yourself Equis-style. 

The day started off a chilly just-above-freezing 34F this morning, but it is supposed to reach the mid-fifties this afternoon. I may throw some burgers on the grill. I may not. 

True confession, I’m a decent cook. I do all of the cooking around here. I can make about any of the comfort foods almost as as well as your mom, and  am always surprised to see I use most of the same techniques as many of the hosts on cooking shows. That said, I am not a great BBQ grill cook. I type that with trepidation, knowing my Man Card is at risk. 

It is strange I am so...mediocre...at grilling, since I learned to cook in the Boy Scouts over open fires and coals. By the time I was in my late teens I could cook nearly anything over a fire or in a cast iron Dutch oven. I learned while camping, Mom sure as heck wasn’t letting my touch her stove. 

That’s not entirely true, I cooked my own lunch often since she worked, if you count heating jarred tamales or putting TV dinners in the oven. The real kind, in foil trays. 

After we were married I discovered my wife couldn’t cook anything beyond pancakes or a French roast, so I naturally took on the task. I like cooking and am pretty competent at it. Except grilling. 

So it goes.

Have a great Sunday.

Springtime

 

You know it is spring when the girls start to show off their belly buttons 

Sorry, you cannot unsee it.

I got in the wayback machine and ended in a time warp

Here is a re-run of a post published in 2005. It is part of a story I started writing back in the early1990s. This dates from probably 1991 when I was working third shift.

Monday, December 05, 2005

Prologue 

The silence of the pre-dawn morning was broken only by the occasional car or truck passing on the snow-slick two-lane highway. A car slowed to a crawl as if closing in upon its prey. The rear end slid a little as the sedan skidded to a stop. The darkness was broken by the white flash of backup lights as the vehicle slowly backed up four dozen yards and turned into a narrow driveway. The sounds of a straining engine could be heard through the barely falling snow as the car lumbered through the mud and slush. The headlights bounced up and down and side to side in duplication of the rutted road. Snowflakes danced in the twin beams like chorus girls in the spotlight. Round and round they spun, climbing and falling to the ground in the wake of the slowly moving automobile.

The car coasted to a stop in front of a run-down farmhouse. The roof was partially caved in and the awning over the porch had long since been consumed as firewood. The glow of a cigarette could be vaguely seen through the frosted windows of the idling car. The engine cut out as the door opened. A short figure in a bulky overcoat climbed out of the dark vehicle. The cigarette arced a path through the darkness as it was flipped into the distance. The man looked to the east as the first rays of dawn began to spread their pink and orange fingers through the clouds of the night sky. It had stopped snowing. The man's breath made clouds around his head in the early morning cold. 

The man huddled next to the car until the sun began to peak over the horizon. He opened his trousers and relieved himself on the left rear tire before clearing his throat and spitting in the direction of the vanished cigarette. He slowly made his way toward the house.

The man mounted the sagging steps, hesitated and ducked through the doorless entryway. The sun’s weak rays provided just enough light for the figure to navigate the littered hallway. He made his way to what was the front living room. The television set and VCR were strangely incongruous in the surroundings.

He started the gas-powered generator. Its sound filled the early morning air. The man involuntarily winced at the noise. He lit another Camel and turned on the TV. Static changed to a blue screen as the VCR powered on. The tape was over after three minutes. He poured steaming coffee from a large green Thermos and went to the corner to relieve himself yet again. He sat down and watched the tape twice more.

His assignment was clear. The Vice President of the United States was to attend the “Greatest Spectacle in Sports” – the Indianapolis 500 in just four and one half months hence. In May the Indianapolis 500 gets top attention in the papers: not this year. This year the Vice President would be assassinated while attending the race. The man in the bulky overcoat watched the film yet again. The man would go to Indianapolis tomorrow and begin laying the plan to kill the heir apparent to the Presidency.

He picked up all of his cigarette butts and placed them in his pocket. From his briefcase, he took a wad of plastic-like gel. He first stuck the plastique to the side of the generator and then added a detonator. He was seven miles away on the interstate when the farmhouse disintegrated into a ball of flame.

I know all of the words to The Ventures’ Pipeline

There is a skiff of snow on the lawn this morning. That is an official measurement.  I thought it was supposed to be spring? Some April Fool joke from Ma Nature.

I am dumbstruck by the reaction to Florida’s new law saying you can’t teach SexEd to seven year olds. I cannot believe there are people angry, weepy, and outright hysterical that they cannot do this. I’m even more surprised to see Disney taking a political stand. Why do companies go out of their way to antagonize a significant portion of their customers? I avoid talking politics and religion at all costs with my customers. 

One more week until real baseball. I am finding it hard to get excited about the Cubs decent back into mediocrity. At least the team did not change their name to something idiotic (I’m looking at you Cleveland and you NFL Washington). 

I got a quote to remove the giant chunk of tree from my backyard. It is only $50-$70 more than what I estimated it would cost to do it myself. Since I won’t have to do the work it seems like the way to go. He just won’t be able to do it for a week or two.  

No April Fool jokes from me today. Go forth and prosper.

Sing along:

Time Passages

It was a windy rainy night. A stiff breeze that would have some sort of maritime nomenclature, were I to live closer to the sea, continues to blow. I am sure lots of whip-like willow branches are down in my backyard. I won’t notice since about thirty feet of willow tree is already filling that space. Some of the nearby neighborhoods are without power this morning. I’m fully electric at the moment. 

I have spent a good part of the evenings this week with my nose stuck in a book. I knocked off an old Robert Ludlum thriller I last read back in the 1980’s and then I read a Louis L’Amour western in the course of two evenings. I am now embarking upon Barbara Tuchman’s The Proud Tower, a Pulitzer winning history that covers one of my favorite time periods, the Guilded Age and the years leading up to the Great War. While I say it is one of my favorite  periods, I will readily admit I have not studied those times as in-depth as some other epochs. 

I have often said that if I could go back in time it would be to the turn of the Twentieth Century. I wouldn’t choose the Civil War, what if I found myself with the Tenth Indiana at Chickamauga? Nor would I choose the Napoleonic period. Any earlier time period and I would face living standards and hardship I am unprepared to hazard. 

The period 100 to 125 years ago would be familiar enough I could perhaps navigate, provided I didn’t immediately catch diseases my body is unprepared for. Sanitation and health standards were a far cry from what we have become accustomed to. Just imagine the piles of horse crap, human waste, and garbage that littered the streets of even the most wealthy neighborhoods. Ponder the smog of thousands of cooking fires, the danger of gas lighting, and the outright body odor of the gen pop. 

It is better I go back in time through words and history. It’s a lot safer that way.

Wimpy Dads

Two kids are arguing over whose father is the wimpiest.

The first one says," My dad is so scared that when lightning
strikes, he slides underneath our bed."

The second kid says, "That's nothing. My dad is so scared that
when my mother works nightshift, he sleeps with the woman next door."

You Tell Me

We went to Dairy Queen for lunch today, the wife, the littlest granddaughter, and I. They were playing oldies on the overhead speaker. Baby, I Love Your Way by Peter Frampton came on. The wife mentioned she hadn’t heard that for a long time. It muttered that I hate Peter Frampton. She asked why. I told her.

Always full of sympathy, she told me I was a dork and it had nothing to do with Peter Frampton. 

Here is the story, as related in these pages back in 2015. You be the judge:

Why I hate Peter Frampton

It must have been my freshman year in high school. Frampton's live album was all the rage that bicentennial year. Perhaps it was the winter of '77. I was a scrawny short nothing: the quiet kid in the back row of the advanced English class. The weird kid who turned red whenever a girl spoke to him.

Miss Parker was teaching about poetry. She told how a poem came in many forms from traditional, to the plays of Shakespeare, to a song. Our assignment was to find a poem that we liked, that spoke to us as a person. We would read our poems to the class.

I had been reading a significant number of books about the Revolutionary War, it was,as I mentioned, the bicentennial. Somewhere I had acquired a thin tome of writings related to the Revolution: Patrick Henry's Liberty or Death speech, essays by Paine, and Emerson's Concord Hymn. Perfect. That was a poem!

The day came. The first girl stood up to read her poem. She read lyrics from a Peter Frampton song. I sat smugly, I had a real poem. Everyone would see how smart I was, finding a poem that marked our country's revolutionary struggles.

The next girl also read lyrics from Frampton Comes Alive. So did the next. A guy read lyrics from another song. My head began to pound. Another girl read song lyrics. Another student read more Frampton. Panic starts slow and builds. At fourteen embarrassment is the worst possible outcome to any situation.  More lyrics. I hated that fucking Frampton guy.

Just a few students left. Look down, Joe. Maybe Miss Parker will forget about you. No. My turn. My brain screams "Turn it to your advantage". I take a superior tone and tell the class I have a "real" poem of historical significance. I read my Emerson. Blank faces stare at me, even Miss Parker has that WTF? look on her face. Oh god, I'm the weird kid. Loser, geek, nerd, spaz, "didja hear about Joe Hoosierboy?", dork.

 The final two or three students read their poems to the class. All read song lyrics, my memory says they read Frampton, but I was in catatonic embarrassment shock. Woe. I was very short. Very skinny. Couldn't play basketball. Read some kind of weird-ass poem in freshman English class. It was going to be a long four years of high school, but I was sure of two things -- I would never ever knowingly take a poetry class in the future and  Peter Frampton was an asshole..

Problem Solver-in-Chief

Cappy tells me I gotta quit using logical on the leftists. Since I just want to help my fellow man, I have some more thoughts to easing the strife of contemporary society.

We are told that sex and gender is a matter of feelings. If you think you are a man or woman and identify as such, then it is incumbent upon society to accept you as you are. 

We are told that one of the greatest problems in America is the historical and endemic racism that permeates every aspect of our culture. 

If you feel that way, why not just maintain you have different levels of melanin than is generally perceived by the public? Identify as a middle-aged white guy. Then you will be accorded all of the privileges you maintain we enjoy.

Problem solved.

You are welcome.

Post 7346, or 84 days of bird crap

The wind chill is a un-springlike 15F this morning. That is cold any time of the year. I should have braved the weather to snap a picture of the neighbor’s yellow daffodils poking their blooms through the snow yesterday. I didn’t. So it goes. 

As is often the case I peruse the interwebz before I compose a post. I read not only your blog, but other interesting and not so interesting stuff. This morning I read about a woman who let a baby bird nest in her hair for a couple of months. I’m not going to link. If you find that fascinating you can search it out on your own. 

Sometime last week I passed my...carry the one...multiply by pi...divide by the square of the hypotenuse...apply the mathematical associative property...my 53rd no, let me do the math again, make that my 17th blogversary. This makes post seven thousand, three hundred and forty six. That is a lot of words. That is a lot of fluff and crap and lectures and politics and old war stories and sheer nonsense. If you do the math, that comes out to almost every day. 

I have slaved over a hot keyboard to bring you whatever this is. Why? I don’t know. The bigger question is why seventeen of you show up to read it? What’s wrong with you? You could be reading about women who let birds nest in their hair, or why a Congresswomen thinks it is racist to arrest people for not paying subway fares, or how Sleepy Joe just threatened to remove the leader of one of the most powerful nations on Earth. Instead, or also, you bother to glance at whatever I hack together; typos, poor syntax, faulty logic, Neanderthalic politics, unedited prose and all. 

Thank you. 

And the title of this post is a lie. I’ve written (not necessarily published*) 7347 posts. Tomorrow’s effort is already written. While it may be canned, it is of uncompromising genius. A Monday post, when as many as 20 readers stop by. I want to reach the masses, not just my loyal weekend crowd. 

Thank you for your loyalty, your patronage, your bothering to read my words.

* just think, there are posts I thought were too crappy to publish. Scary, ain’t it? 

PS, to give you an idea how these posts are composed, purely extemporaneously, I intended to write about baseball when I started typing this morning. See how easily you get me off subject? 

PSS Yes, she let a bird nest in her hair for eighty-some days. I can’t get past it. 84 days: some dude went around the world in less time. Sheesh.

I Don’t Know No Cool Lines

I look out the window to a winter wonderland. Yes, we have an inch or two of snow covering the grass. It is disappointing. After we were in the seventies on Monday, we have...this. Don’t get me wrong, it is beautiful outside. The snow is wet so it stuck along branches and tree limbs. But it is snow. 

Freddie, DO NOT READ FURTHER.

I woke with this song stuck in my head this morning:

This is from Melencamp’s ( then Johnny Cougar) 1980 album Nothin’ Matters and What if it Did?. 

Side note, in 1980 I dressed pretty much like John in this video. I was grunge before it was cool. I didn’t have the nasty greasy hair though.  My every day fashion sense hasn’t improved. 

There you have it. Go forth and enjoy your Saturday.

And so is Lola

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson says she cannot define what a woman is. Ponder that. In all of her years of education we are expected to believe she never once had a class in biology? Even a redneck state like Indiana requires one to take biology to gradjeate high school.

If she doesn’t know what a woman is, how can she adjudicate sex discrimination cases? 

What is it with Democrats and defining the word “is”? 

Maybe the judge should consult the works of Ray Davies and The Kinks.

That passage of time can’t go quick enough

The servers are still down at work. I suspect it was a big hack/ attack. Giant spreadsheets detailing all my stuff seemed like a good idea. I’m not sure now when I can only access them via my phone. Not ideal working conditions.

The rain has finally abated a little. I thought for a while yesterday I was supposed to use the big piece of tree filling my backyard as a start on an ark. I don’t think willow is a desired wood for ship building. I cleaned my gutters during a brief lull in yesterday’s downpours. More rain is expected later tonight and into the morrow. I hope the standing water can soak in the saturated ground by then. 

The wife is off babysitting at the grandgirls’ house. The oldest is sick. I think I will either have grilled cheese or a peanut butter and jelly sammich for lunch. Both sound good. Decisions, decisions. 

If you think I ramble, try listening to this train wreck:

She is just a bad stumble and Biden head bump away from grasping the nuclear football. She proves you don’t have to be smart to sleep your way into politics. I’m not sure she can spell potato either. 

Does anyone know the Finnish word for “Horrible”.

The servers are down at work, so I’ve got some time this morning to write a great, insightful, entertaining post. Too bad I have nothing. Ain’t that the way of life?

“Wait a minute, Joe”, you say, “That never stopped you before. You ramble on nonsense all of the time”. 

Perhaps. But today my brain is frozen. 

I could tell you I’m not overly fond of the French Roast coffee I bought. I’ll drink it, but I don’t love it. Why would you even care? It is the cheap Amazon brand K-cup and part of a variety pack. The dark roast and medium roast are pretty good. The breakfast blend is comparable to the WalMart breakfast blend, a very good cup of coffee, believe it or not (the one in the yellow box). Note: when I say “variety pack” I mean an assortment of roasts, not that flavored crap. Things like pumpkin, cinnamon, chocolate, vanilla, hazelnut, sugar, or cream do not belong coffee. If you think otherwise, you are just wrong and probably kick puppies and sneer at babies when no one is looking. 

With last week’s warm spell and this week’s rain, the tulips and day lilies are pushing up through the dirt and mulch, a welcome green amid the browns of winter. The grass is even starting to show some signs of life. The front sidewalk and drive are covered in the red bud casings from the maple tree in the front yard. Soon the seed helicopters will start falling and the wife will start her annual push to cut down that tree because she hates the seed pods with unreasonable spite. It’s not like she has ever had to clean them up or mow over them. 

She did have to learn how to operate the mower last year when I was off my foot most of the summer, but not in the spring. Technically, I’m right. 

No surprise there. 

There you have it, a real post. We have done it yet again. Our blog writer/blog reader social contract is fulfilled for today. Together we conquer writers block, providing you are still reading. If not, then piss on you. Of course, you won’t know I said that if you quit reading already, now would you?

Go forth and drink black coffee, like nature intended.

Come on Over

...and bring your chain saw. 

A big limb just fell from the giant willow in back. Too bad it wasn’t one of the dead ones. Getting rid of this is going to be expensive. No one wants to carry it through the gate and around the house. I guess I’ll try to saw it up. How to get rid of the debris is the issue. 

The whole tree probably needs to come down, but it will change the whole backyard. The tree is probably 50 feet tall. The trunk is six foot or more in circumference. I suspect it will cost thousands to bring it down based on location. It sits right between three houses, enclosed by my privacy fence.

Can’t do anything until it quits raining.

Manther Sighting

A small tourist hotel was all abuzz about an afternoon wedding where the groom was 95 and the bride was 23.

The groom looked pretty feeble and the feeling was that the wedding night might kill him because his bride was a healthy, vivacious young woman.

But lo and behold, the next morning, the bride came down the main staircase slowly, step by step, hanging onto the bannister for dear life.

She finally managed to get to the counter of the little shop in the hotel.

The clerk looked really concerned,

“Whatever happened to you, honey? You look like you’ve been wrestling an alligator!

The bride groaned, hung on to the counter and managed to speak,

“Ohhh my God! He told me he’d been saving up for 75 years and I thought he meant his money!!”