"Summer blondes, revealing tan lines/I'll make more moves than Allied Van Lines." - Blotto, from "I Wanna Be A Lifeguard", 1980
Hope you had a good July 4th - beer and pyrotechnics all around.
Not much exciting is going on out here. We're having a large tree removed from our backyard. This is the tree that dropped a branch on our garage in May, and it's a very large, dead tree. I don't know the exact dimension, but I most definitely can't put my arms all the way around it. Maybe half-way around it, if I'm lucky. Margaret got to watch the guys in the cherry-picker, which they drove onto our backyard. (Part of it is paved in concrete, put there by a former owner who presumably wanted a nice place to park his Winnebago. Very Minnesotan.) I haven't seen so much dead wood since I left Kodak. (Badda-BING thank you very much...) It will be nice to have a sunny backyard now.
Insurance companies paid out $848 million to Twin Cities homeowners in the first half of 1998 - more than the last 31 years combined. I guess the storms really were a fluke. We'll be having our roof replaced and the side of the house re-sided in the fall, when the demand dies down and hopefully, the quality of the repairs goes back up.
You might have noticed that everyone's favorite supermodel, Cindy Crawford, married some guy named R. Gerber. Needless to say, this makes me very proud to be an R. Gerber.
In one of the more surreal occurrences in my life, my friend Mia-from-Tucson showed up at our house a few Wednesdays ago. Ding-dong... HI! I was just in the neighborhood and thought I'd stop by! (!!!) Most surprising, since it's something like an 1800-mile drive to Tucson. She was driving across the country, and thought she'd say HI before she drove off to Chicago. She took pictures, had some lemonade, watched South Park with us, and drove off toward Chicago. Very very surreal.
Margaret and I spent the last few days in NY with mom. Grandma was coming in from Florida, so my brother and I had orders to come home to see Grandma. We ate lots of black-and-whites (the same cookies once featured on Seinfeld) and NY pizza, replaced the faucets in mom's bathroom, and saw Grandma. We also made into Chinatown one night, and Margaret bought a $10 watch from some guy who sells watches on Mulberry Street. What a hoot! And despite the fact that my mom's car hit 77,777 miles at precisely 4:44 PM on 7/28 (no joke!), I did not win $290 million in the PowerBall lottery.
We recently spent a day at ValleyFair - the local amusement park. Seagate picked up the tab - it's their annual "Appease The Masses" day. Most excellent, if you go on a weekday. The numbers from "The Wild Thing", their new rolley-coaster are as follows. Maximum velocity: 74 MPH. First drop > 200 feet. Altitude: Highest thing around for quite a few towns. Color: Green, the scariest of all colors. Margaret and I had a very good time, even though she punched me when I kidded her about the "you must be THIS tall" thingy. She's 5 foot 4, and she'll hurt you pretty good.
Rented "The Sweet Hereafter" and "When We Were Kings" - both excellent. Saw "Lost In Space" in the cheapie theater - stinky. There is a cheapie theather within walking distance to our house that's undergone some renovations recently, so it's now the "Cinema Grill". You sit at tables, just like at TGIFriday's, and you order food that's just like at TGIFriday's for prices comparable to TGIFriday's. I don't know if this food-at-film will start a national craze, but it's an interesting experiment. It's good as long as it's not a super-serious movie. ("Shindler's List" with potato chips? I think not.)
I have a friend working in radio in Boston who recently commissioned me to put together some CDs with the worst possible music I could find. I mean jaw-dropping, nausea-inducing, bad music. It's part of a Chinese water torture-type contest for his morning show. No problem! I've sent off 2 CDs already, and I can't even imagine the bodily harm that would come from (a) listening to the discs straight through, or (b) the retribution that one would take from being made to listen to the discs straight through. "Pac Man Fever", Milli Vanilli, the two guys from Milli Vanilli actually singing, "Rock Me Jerry Lewis" (sorry Mike, he asked for it by name), The Kingsmen's "Louie Louie" massacred by Barry White, the Shaggs, and many many more. Plus a whole CD devoted to horrible medleys like "Stars on 45" and "Hooked On Classics"! I am beaming with pride that these atrocities are getting airplay, and I am very proud to be the unofficial Godfather of Crap. (Tune in to WFNX Boston to hear the Pain firsthand, and tune in to "Crap From The Past" at www.kfai.org to hear my own show. It hurts real bad.)
In the last two weeks, my organization chart at work has changed twice. We now have a new CEO, and I don't know what effect this will have on my day to day routines. If I have to eat lunch at a time other than 11:30, I'm gonna get mad.
Hope all is well in your far-away places. Stay warm...
Ron "There's a lot of crap on the radio, but there's only one Crap From The Past" G
