Itchweed aside, life bounces along very nicely, and I’ll hit the high points of the last few months chronologically:
Mid-May – I got my crown put in, completing my least favorite dental ordeal ever. It was a two-visit procedure, where they made a temporary out of a two-part epoxy while I was there, then two weeks later I came back for a permanent, which a lab made out of ceramic. They gave me some recommendations with the temporary crown, like be careful when flossing and no sticky foods, etc. But all that changed once they replaced it with the permanent crown, because they told me there’s absolutely no way that the permanent one’s coming off. No way at all. My jaw will give way before the cement does, or so I’m told. Apparently, I’m bionic now.
And the insult-to-injury part is that they pipe Lite FM throughout the office, so you can hear the Eagles’ “Peaceful Easy Feeling” while they grind your dead tooth down to a nub. That Lite FM totally rocks. But they let me keep the temporary crown and all the intermediate castings, so that’s cool. And, no, I didn’t watch “The Marathon Man” before going to the dentist.
Late May – A group of twenty-two (22!) of us all went rafting/camping on the Peshtigo River somewhere in upper Wisconsin. Quite the weekend, and no, we didn’t watch “Deliverance” beforehand.
This was the third annual rafting trip, carefully orchestrated by my friend Kris. Somehow I’d missed the first two years, and going into the trip I was 97% enthusiasm and 3% apprehension, since I’d never been camping before. (I come from a proud tradition of non-camping.) Fortunately, our friends had lots of extra equipment, and I was able to share a tent and borrow an inflaty-mattress. For the rest of my gear, I threw myself on the mercy of Margaret’s favorite – Unique Thrift Store in the northwest part of town. For a total of $28, I got myself a heavy camouflage-colored raincoat that I wound up wearing for the entire weekend (except while on the river), a sleeping bag, an extra blanket, a pair of nylon pants with suspenders (which I didn’t wear but brought along just in case), and quite possibly the greatest purchase in the history of all mankind: an incredible electric blue nylon jumpsuit to wear on the river.
As I was changing into the incredible electric blue nylon jumpsuit, I had second thoughts: “I’m going to look ridiculous. Everyone’s going to laugh at me. It’s just like going through adolescence again at 35.” So I stepped out of the tent, and the other 21 were all silent for an uncomfortable second or two. And then the votes came pouring in – I looked fan-tas-tic. Just like an astronaut, or the tour manager for Abba! And to make life even more stupendous, the rafting place gave out electric blue helmets that exactly matched my incredible electric blue nylon jumpsuit! In my outfit, I dare say that I looked like a comic book superhero – sort of like Suzy Chapstick with a Helmet.
The whole weekend was pretty terrific. My friends, Matt & Janice, borrowed Matt’s dad’s HUGE van, which seats four comfortably with camping gear. So I tagged along with them along with Liz, a friend of Kris’s who we hadn’t met before. As you might imagine, the drive was fun – a six-hour drive each way across Wisconsin in a giant van with random tunes from the iPod. On one particular exit ramp between highways, we caught sight of quite possibly the most Wisconsin-ese establishment anywhere. The sign next to the place left no doubt, and read, “Porn! Fireworks! Cheese!” Tempting, but we didn’t stop. I bought a round of gas for the van, and had to apply for financial aid from the gas station.
On the whole, the weather cooperated. If I remember correctly, it was in the 50s during the day, and the 40s at night, and it rained on and off and stayed dry during the important parts. Walking around and sleeping in t-shirt, another t-shirt, sweatshirt and camouflage raincoat worked just fine.
People brought crazy amounts of food, and most of our waking time was spent eating, drinking and to a lesser degree, throwing around a frisbee. I myself contributed to the food mayhem by going with Kris to Sam’s Club beforehand – bad idea. I thought that Pop-Tarts would be a nice addition, and they were, but we really didn’t need 36 packages of them. I wound up eating the leftovers during the entire month of June, and I think I gained a few pounds because of them. Stupid, I am.
The rafting itself was a blast. Two-person rubber rafts, and one paddle each. Not a kayak-style paddle, just a one-sided paddle. Although it didn’t feel too strenuous at the time, most of us had insanely sore shoulders for a few days once we got back into town. On the drive back, we looked like hell, we smelled like smoke from the campfire, and we stopped at a little family restaurant about an hour away from the campsite. Maybe it was the Pop-Tarts talking, but that place had the best food ever.
After I got back from the trip, I threw everything in the washer (except the Pop-Tarts), and I found out what happens if you run an entire tin of Altoids through the laundry. Nothing – they dissolve and the tin comes out perfectly clean.
Also in Late May – It rained for 11 days in a row. The grass gets very tall after it rains for 11 days in a row.
I heard an ad on the radio for a little drugstore in Wisconsin. They were advertising that they had sunblock for all SPF values from 0 to 50. Now I’m not a stickler for little details, but I just had to laugh. And it’s from the way SPF is defined – for an SPF 15, it takes 15 times longer to get the sunburn as when you’re not wearing any sunblock at all. So SPF 45 – 45 times as long. SPF 1 – means basically that you’re not wearing any sunblock at all. So the mathematical idea of an SPF 0 sunblock means basically that you burst info flame when you put it on – instant sunburn without spending any time at all in the sun. No, I didn’t say it was hilarious, it just made ME laugh.
Early June – I’d been thinking that my cat Stinky was bored and could use a playmate. After all, her cat friend Pukehead died last year, and Margaret had just left and taken all the good junk with her. While I was delighted with the empty spaces, it seemed that Stinky was bored.
My friend, Janice (owner of the aforementioned iPod and daughter-in-law of the huge van owner), volunteers one night a week at a no-kill cat shelter and offered to bring me in to scope out the kitties. I found one that was a year old and was very playful, so I thought to myself, “Good playmate for Stinky.” However, I didn’t think, “Clingy needy noodge who wouldn’t leave me alone for a second and kept me up all night meowing and who scared the pants off Stinky, who in turn spent three days hiding behind the furnace.” The shelter was nice enough to take the new cat back, and Stinky was happier than ever once she figured out that New Cat was no more. One awful week, and no permanent damage to any of the parties concerned.
At what point did I think this would have been a good idea? Getting a 1-year-old playmate for a 10-year old cat? I distinctly remember one point during the first night with New Cat – it must have been about 4 AM and New Cat was still crying outside the door – yelling, “Shut up! Shut the hell up!” Which is a phrase I learned in grad school from Jimmy Z and hadn’t used since. Until New Cat.
We came up with a good name, too, which I’ll reserve for any future cats that come along post-Stinky. And it fits right in with Stinky and Pukehead: Latrina!
And some of you had doubts about my potential parenting skills… Ha! I got nothin’!
I found that there’s a nice little sidewalk near my office that leads past a lake, so I’ve been taking little walks in the middle of the workday. Half mile out, half mile back, twenty minutes of sun and fresh air, and I feel much better afterwards. One day, my walk back was interrupted by a flock of geese, slowly crossing the road. A BIG flock of geese – I counted about ten grown geese, and over 60 little baby geese. Little fuzzy wobbly baby geese! So cute! I’d never seen so many of them in one place out for a stroll, and it put me in a good mood for the rest of the week.
Mid June – My car turned over to 100,000 miles. Aside from regular maintenance and a pre-emptive replacement of the battery, it’s still on the original everything. 100,000 miles on the original brake pads, and they said that they’re only about half worn down. God bless my ’96 Corolla. I got it one month after I got married, and it turned over one month after Margaret left town. So I was married for exactly 100,000 miles.
Hebrew school would have been far more interesting if they’d called it, “Torah! Torah! Torah!”
One of the neighbors near my mom’s house in New York moved recently, and mom found out just how much her house is worth. I know what she paid for it in 1975, and the new number seemed astronomical in comparison. So I crunched the numbers and compared with my own house here in Minneapolis, and I found out an amazing thing: both our houses have been appreciating at exactly 7.5% per year! Which is a pretty good investment, in addition to the tax benefits of home ownership, etc. I just thought it was a neat coincidence.
I started getting some new furniture in the house. In the last letter in May, I explained that I had enough furniture in the house to adequately furnish a one-bedroom apartment. Well, it was time to get some grown-up furniture, so I got a new bed and nightstands, and now I’m looking into some new living room furniture. (At present, the living room is barren except for the cat throne – two big pillows next to the giant window – and some little cat toys.) The good stuff is pricey, so I’m saving up.
On my first order, I’d ordered a complete bedroom set, with dresser/mirror and the works. I’d taken measurements on the bedroom, and it all looked pretty promising. However, it had not once occurred to me that the dresser wouldn’t fit up the stairs. The two huge guys from the delivery service couldn’t get it to turn the corners, and since I was pretty sure that I wouldn’t have any luck after the two huge guys left, I sent the dresser/mirror back with them. Rats! Fortunately, I still have my old dresser/mirror, and it looks like that should be just fine for now.
Margaret had been a fan of our old reel-type push mower, and while I liked it principle, it just didn’t cut very well. In the words of our neighbors, the old mower gave us a “comb-over lawn”. So after she left, I was asking around about lawn mowers, since I thought my friends would have some opinions about them. Wouldn’t you know it – one of my co-workers moved out here into a condo and has no need for his old lawn mower. It’s a nice little gas-powered not-self-propelled Craftsman 4.5 HP, and it’s exactly what I was looking for. He let me have it for $25, and I’ve never been happier. No more borrowing the neighbor’s mower when I needed a “real” mowing.
Plus, since it’s my mower now, I have license to take it into places that I really wouldn’t dare to take the neighbor’s mower. Specifically, the waist-high patch of weeds that occupied a full half of my backyard needed a cutting, and I didn’t have a scythe. So I set the blades as high as they would go (so that hopefully I’d avoid rocks or stumps), and one blissful hour later, I could actually see the ground in parts of my lawn that had been no-man’s land for 5+ years. A liberating experience, on par with the dumpster!
So I relayed the mower story to my brother, who reminded me of something similar (and equally not-so-smart) I’d done back in my high school days. Back then, I was in charge of mowing the lawn for the parents. Well, one week I decided that I’d had enough of the weedy patches in the corners of the backyard, and I mowed my way through everything. Boy was I pleased with myself. Well, in short order, I found out that the bulk of those weedy patches was poison ivy, and I was pretty much covered head-to-toe with itchies for a week. You’d think that I’d remember doing something that stupid, but nope. My brother has the knack for the good stories…
Late June – There’s a little mom & pop ice cream place in St. Paul called Izzy’s, and they’re mighty good. Every year, they have a tasting contest which is to die for. You pay one cover charge, and then you get to try 24 potential new flavors, then vote on your favorite. The top two make it permanently onto the menu! It’s an annual event, and it may very well be the high point of the whole year (not just the high point of June). My friends and I each had 24 scoops of ice cream, and it made me deliriously happy. It turns out that one of my poker buddies was responsible for one of the flavors – he’s a dessert-creating genius. I voted for his ice cream, which involved some kind of beer, if I remember correctly, but it lost to a carrot-cake-like creation called “Chubby Bunny”. Mmm…chubby bunny… O Boy am I looking forward to next year…
I came across a patent examiner by the name of Melba Bumgarner. That poor woman.
Early July – This year’s fireworks display was sponsored by Clear Channel. Instead of small displays in each neighborhood like in years past, we had one giant fireworks display to serve the entire midwest. And it was beamed in from Dallas.
Been finding jeans in my size on the clearance rack (it’s good to be tiny), so I’ve been dressing better. Like I’ve been saying, I’m the epicenter of fashion: Paris, Milan, Richfield.
Because so many of you came up with witty band names when I asked for them a few months back, I will throw out another challenge. We’ve all heard of the prestigious Mile High Club, in which a couple goes at it in an airplane bathroom. Well, I’m trying to come up with a name for something similar but not quite as “classy”, in which a couple goes at it in a Port-a-Potty. You’d think such a thing must have a name, although no one seems to know what it is. (Your suggestions will be compiled and distributed in the next Big Life Update for all to see.)
Mid July – I came up with a great idea for a band. It’s a rock band with the usual guitar/bass/drums, but with three lead singers that all try to outsing each other all the time, on every song. My friend Carla suggested the name “This Means War”, which captures the cartoonish aspect just perfectly. (Imagine the combative screeching of Yes’s Jon Anderson, Styx’s Dennis DeYoung, and Rush’s Geddy Lee, all vying for sing-time, and you get the idea.) I’m not sure what to do with This Means War, but it seems like such a good idea…
Why does no one sell a toilet seat with heat and massage?
Late July – I resealed my driveway, for only the second time since I moved in in ’97. It took six buckets of gloop, but only took two weekday afternoons after work to get it done. The stuff has the consistency of chocolate pudding (and you can imagine my Pavlovian response to 30 gallons of chocolate pudding), and they sell it with cheap little brooms that you use to spread it around. The driveway looks much better now. No punchline there, it just looks much better.
One day, I pulled into a parking spot at work and noticed that in the spot next to me, there were two tiny red flowers growing in the space between the asphalt and the concrete curb. They were the same kind of flowers that the office building’s landscapers use (whatever they were), and it was such a cute sight to behold – these pretty little flowers growing in something as mundane as a parking lot. Later that day, as I was working on the lawn, I noticed a yellow flower growing out of the dead tree stump that’s in the backyard. The stump must be about five feet off the ground, and there was this single happy little yellow flower growing from it. Two of these in the same day! Late July must be some kind of Mardi Gras for flowers.
As always, Crap From The Past is doing quite well. We’re up to five affiliates: an FM in Minneapolis, an AM/FM in New Zealand, an AM in Phoenix, an internet-only in Phoenix, and now an FM/internet somewhere in northwest England! Three continents! I can’t get arrested in Minneapolis, but they love me in Phoenix.
Saw a bunch of movies over the last few months, and will now play critic:
Super Size Me – Big fun! Healthy guy eats nothing but McDonalds for 30 days and gets severe health problems. Loved it.
Kill Bill, Parts 1 & 2 – Expected a hack-em-up film on par with Kung Fu Theater (from Saturday mornings on Channel 5), but discovered an elegant piece of storytelling on par with Pulp Fiction. (Makes me want to see Jackie Brown.) Kudos to Q for using Kaboom Cereal and “Goodnight Moon”, an excellent but obscure pop record from 2000 by Shivaree.
Van Helsing – If only there existed a drill bit that could bore into my brain and drill out the memory of this movie. Quite possibly the least enjoyable film I’ve ever seen. (Not the worst film, mind you, because I deeply enjoy really bad movies. Glitter, Waterworld, I’ve seen ‘em all.) So Kate Beckinsale has a tiny waist – big deal; I have a tiny waist! The most enjoyable part of the movie is the closing credits, mostly from your knowledge that the movie is over.
Fahrenheit 911 and The Corporation – One got a lot of hype, the other slipped under the radar, and both are well-executed, left-leaning documentaries worth seeing. The premise of The Corporation is that things have gone to heck since corporations attained the same legal status as a person. Highly recommended.
Blacula – Dumb but fun 1972 reissue on DVD of the first in the sparsely populated genre of blaxploitation vampire films. Followed by sequels; I know for a fact that one of the sequels, Scream Blacula Scream, contains a line like “How long do I have to sit here and listen to this crap?”, which is perfect fodder for one of my Crap From The Past IDs. Someday, I’ll rent and dub…
At some point you must have heard me talk about Black & Whites, my favorite cookies. They’re huge, cake-like things, and they’re strictly a northeast phenomenon. Actually, they’re probably only in New York City, and the places where NYC retirees go. So NYC, in fact, that they were featured on an episode of Seinfeld many years back. In the interest of spreading the goodness, I will now give you the recipe for Black & Whites (and I know that the recipe works because Margaret made a batch of them and they came out great).
From More magazine, October 2002, page 126:
Black & Whites
- - - -
COOKIE DOUGH
1½ cups all-purpose flour
¼ teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar [note that ½ cup = 8 tbsp]
5 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
¼ cup vegetable shortening, at room temperature
1 large egg
2 tablespoons buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla
FONDANT ICING
2½ cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted
2 teaspoons corn syrup
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons hot water [note that 2 tbsp = 6 tsp]
½ teaspoon vanilla
1 ounce unsweetened chocolate, melted
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- Heat oven to 350°. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper; set aside.
- Sift flour, salt and baking soda into a large bowl, and set aside.
- In the bowl of an electric mixer, cream sugar, butter and shortening at high speed until fluffy. Beat in egg, buttermilk and vanilla. Add dry ingredients, and mix at low speed until just blended.
- On prepared sheet, portion dough into 8 mounds, and flatten slightly. Bake for 16 minutes, or until edges are golden. Place sheet on rack; let cookies cool.
- In a mixing bowl, whisk together confectioners’ sugar, corn syrup, hot water and vanilla. Transfer half of mixture to a separate bowl, and whisk in melted chocolate and cocoa. If necessary, use double boiler to warm the chocolate glaze. Frostings should form a thin layer. If needed, thin with water, or thicken with confectioners’ sugar.
- Peel cookies off paper and turn over; ice half the surface with the vanilla fondant and half with the chocolate. Let stand at room temperature until icing sets (2–3 hours).
Happy eating, and enjoy the rest of your respective summers!
Ron Gerber
