Ron's Big Life Update - February 2004

Margaret and I are splitting up. Divorcing later this year. I didn't know how to break the news gently to all of you, so I thought you'd appreciate directness.

We got married in December 1995, one day after I got my Ph.D. in Tucson. (It was a truly perfect match - we were born only six days apart, and even had the same shoe size.) We'd planned to do it in April '96, but in a spur of the moment decision, we drove down to city hall on a Friday afternoon with my parents in tow, telling them that it was "happy hour", and we had to get there by 5. They had no idea what we were doing until we ended up in the waiting room with maybe 15 other couples, and some women were wearing wedding dresses. A spectacular start, and looking back, I wouldn't have changed a single thing. (Well, just one thing - I still regret that my brother was already on a bus headed back to St. Louis by the time we decided to get hitched that Friday. If I had even the slightest inkling that we'd rush down to city hall, I would have certainly kept him around.)

When we got married, neither one of us wanted kids. That's a big issue, naturally, and we had talked about it quite a bit beforehand. Eight years later, I still don't want kids, but Margaret seems to have changed her mind. It looks like the nieces and nephews have gotten to her, now that they're old enough to have personalities of their own. She feels that if there's any hope at all of having kids, it's probably not with me.

(from Margaret:)
The correct word for MY feelings about having kids is "VACILLATED". As in I would begin thinking, "I wonder what it would be like to have kids? Probably about the same as raising a puppy, only it takes longer and you can't have the psycho ones put down." Then I would be forced into close quarters with some OTHER PEOPLE's horrifically ill-tempered and ill-behaved spawn and I would immediately react by loathing anything under 4'6'' for the next six months. Then I would begin thinking, "I wonder what it would be like to have kids?" But now, even the horrible brats seem to have potential to me, and it's been that way for a while. It doesn't help that of all the fathers out here about our age, the only one who actively wanted children was my brother. (And if you ever met his dogs, you'd see that he was very well-prepared for fatherhood.) Every other husband was issued an ultimatum or an "accident" and just had to deal with the results. Some said, "Hey! This is great! Why did I fight it for so long?", while others resented the outcome and buried themselves in 60- to 70- hour work weeks to avoid their own children. If I am going to have children, I want a WILLING partner in crimes against humanity. And Ron is not it. That's all. No big drama.

(back to Ron:)
Needless to say, it's not a decision that happens overnight. We'd talked about it quite a bit over the last few years, and while Margaret's been hinting more strongly each time it comes up, I pretty much stand firm. I just can't see it. I know it must sound selfish, but the few grains of happiness I get out of life are from things that would most certainly disappear if I had kids, like the radio show (which recently turned 12 years old. Mazel Tov - next year it gets a Bar Mitzvah).

Everyone says that once a baby shows up, life as you know it is over. The same people tell me that the new life that replaces it is wonderful and the most rewarding experience in the world, but I just can't see it. Instead, I see the screaming kid in the restaurant, or the kid behind me kicking my seat in the airplane. (Which just happened AGAIN on a quick visit to Florida - details later in the letter.) Everyone says that it's different when it's your own kid, but to me that just means that I can't leave the restaurant or get off the plane - it becomes my responsibility, and my problem. Forever. The word that keeps springing to mind is "trapped", and I know that after six months, or a year, or two years, I'd probably walk out on Margaret and the baby. A horrific thought to me, but very plausible.

Sounds dark, and kinda stupid now that I read it over, but it should be very apparent that I am not in any proper mindset to become a daddy. Heck, I even get annoyed when Margaret leaves sawdust all over the house - imagine how I'd react to The Permanent Mess of kids - finger paints, the woodburning set, all the hideously loud and obnoxious gifts that we sprung on the nieces and nephews!

Margaret says that once everything's finalized and signed, she'll move back to Denver to live closer to her family. I'll stay here in Minneapolis with the house and my good job, my good friends, and the one remaining cat. (Of course, I'll pass along her contact info when she eventually settles down.) Until then, she'll be in the house with me. And don't feel like you should hesitate to call us because one or the other might pick up the phone - we're certainly not at each other's throats, and never have been. We just drifted in different directions. My goal is to make her last few months here as pleasant as possible (oddly similar to the last week on earth for our cat, Pukehead, who died this past May). Naturally, she can have whatever she wants from the house. And to our friends in town, don't quit calling us; we still go places and do things together, and there's probably less tension between us now than in the past few months, now that everything's out in the open. We don't read each other's e-mail, if that's a concern for you. She'll be here for at least another six months while the papers go through and if anything, we should all spend MORE time with Margaret while we can; she probably won't be visiting too often after she leaves...

I can't say that I agree with Margaret's decision to leave, but she's made up her mind, and I'm in no position to stop her. She's probably the most headstrong woman I've met in my entire life, and undoubtedly the most beautiful and creative. (And every single one of you knows that I'm not just saying that...) I'll miss her terribly...

Sadly, I had just picked up my Valentine's Day present for her right before she told me. It was a framed print of a series of pictures that were on the dedication page of my Ph.D. dissertation eight years ago. I never even got to write out the card, which would have said that I loved all of her, one photon at a time.
Many of you know that Margaret loves dogs. I don't particularly like dogs, and it's been a running joke for years that I'd get a divorce before I got a dog. I also used to say that I'd get a dog before I have kids. Well, it looks like Margaret can get all three now...

...in other news...

In the nonsensical language of karma, my yin and my yang have sprinted off in opposite directions. So I suppose that on average, I'm doing fine, like the guy standing in a pail of ice water with his head on the stove.

The radio stuff just keeps getting bigger and bigger. I'm on the Board of Directors at KFAI now, and while it's not like I get to decide Who Lives And Who Dies, it's still fun to be involved in some of the decision-making process at my station. I don't really want to Decide that much anyway.

"Crap From The Past" just turned 12 years old, and it did it on the day it hit -24 degrees F, and -43 degrees F with the wind chill. That's some serious cold, and I'm relieved that our cars started. If you've never experienced -40 wind chill, imagine your nostrils freezing up on the very first breath you take outside. That's crazy cold. Three days later, it warmed up a bit, then snowed 14 inches. I take great pride in shoveling off my driveway (by hand - none of that wussy snowblower stuff), and I shoveled four different times over the course of the whole storm. That's Minnesota!

About two months ago, I stopped for some take-out from my favorite pizza place in town, and I ran into a local TV journalist there. Keeping in mind that TV people are probably not too fond of "Hey everybody look it's the guy from TV!", I politely introduced myself as a radio guy and complimented him on the work he does for the newscast. All true, since I watch his station every night at 10. Turns out that he'd heard of "Crap From The Past", or at least someone he works with had heard of it, which surprised me to no end. We exchanged a few emails about '70s music. Nice guy.

Wouldn't you know it - about a month later, his editor (news director? I don't know the names of the hierarchy) assigned him a five-minute piece on the 1980s as a decade: what was it like in Minnesota? It was part of a '60s/'70s/'80s series of pieces, and he got the '80s. Apparently, my name sprung quickly to mind, and he actually brought me down to the station and interviewed me! On tape! With video! A first for me, and I got to show off my huge collection of Prince records and some other local music from the '80s, as well as my first-generation CD player from 1983. (It's a Philips, and it has a European plug on it. It still works, and it probably weighs close to 40 pounds.) I have no idea if my clip will make it into his piece (it is only five minutes and he did talk to a lot of people) but I was pleased as punch to help him out, and I got to see the inside of a TV station. Neat! Plus the more people I know in the world, the better.

(For those of you here in Minneapolis, the '80s piece will run on KARE 11 on Tuesday, February 24th, on the 10 PM news. I still don't know if I'm in it, but it was a blast just to help put it together.)

My grandmother turned 93 in January. 93! And since my mother was heading down to Florida to visit her, I thought I'd take a weekend to visit them both. I flew out on a Friday and back on a Sunday. Amazingly brief, but long enough to recharge the batteries. I spent many hours walking around outside in short sleeves. No particular activity, no particular destination, just the mere act of being outside in short sleeves in January felt very very good. I took my mom to a Colombian restaurant that we'd discovered the last time we visited, and I think she actually liked it. Who knew?

A fine trip, marred only by some stupid two-year-old sitting behind me on the plane, kicking the seat. I'd like to think that I scared the bejeebus out of him, because at one point, I turned around and scowled at him. Eye contact and everything. I think I even grunted a little. I also scowled at the dad, sitting right next to him, with no discernible effect. Stupid parents...

And I discovered to my dismay, again, that another record store in south Florida closed. Everywhere I go, this keeps happening! This time, the casualty was run by an old guy who had a store full of cool old records. Maybe 10 CDs in the whole place, but thousands of cool old records. Now, just a vacant store front. Apparently, the old guy wanted to give the business to either of his two kids, and neither one wanted it. I've discussed this at great length in some of the previous Big Life Updates, and it just saddens me even more.

We did our taxes, and because I was unemployed for most of 2003, our income was laughably low. So low, in fact, that after deductions, it was effectively zero. Now if I was living on the street, there would be nothing funny about it. But since I still have my house and a good job now, I can laugh. Zero! 2003 sucked rocks.

My band still doesn't have a proper name, which is starting to cause some headaches. (We're a four-piece cover band. We play bars n stuff.) We got one gig under the name It Figures, but that name really does nothing for me. I've suggested about a bazillion others, but the rest of the band doesn't seem to share my tastes on band names. For example, behold my list of most triumphant suggestions, in no particular order:

Fly Monkeys Fly
Catch And Release
Bait And Switch
Quote Unquote
Squeeze The Shamen
The Punch Cards
Trial Size
Wind Chill
Control-Alt-Delete
Schrödinger's Catbox
Aruggio
The Skeleton Keys
Au Gratin
Rocket Science
Vic 20
Paper Or Plastic
Dad I'm In Jail
Fries With That
The Perforations
Forty Finger Discount
Paper Scissors Rock
The Dotted Line
Deep Bass Nine
The Stick Figures
Rush Limbo
Dot Matrix
Brimstone
Fold! Spindle! Mutilate!
Därt Börd
Plus Tax
Gravel Pitt
Pyridium
The Cavity Creeps
Spinnell [sic]
Plum Igneous
The Three R's and Marti
Mudflap Girls
Don't Encourage Us
Older Than Rose
The Dryer Sheets

I didn't say they were the greatest names ever - they're not "Comatoast" or "The New Originals" - but you'd think something on the list would have stuck. If you've got potential band names rolling around in your head, I'd love to hear them. I'll certainly pass along any suggestions to the rest of the band and maybe, just maybe, one will click with the four of us, all at the same time!

And just for giggles, some impossibly horrendous band names (just imagine them on the marquee):

Owner's Nephew's Band
Tour Cancelled
Open Mike Night
Sold Out
All Ages Show
Closed For Repairs

And so it goes.

Happy Valentine's Day to all of you! It's a good time to tell that loved one how you really feel. Except if you want a divorce... that can wait a few days...

Stay well!
Ron & Margaret

Ron's Big Life Update - December 2003

Well, it's not Christmas yet, and Hanukkah is still going on, so it's still appropriate to wish everyone a happy holiday!

You all heard from us in October, and really not much has changed since then. I did come up with the ultimate Hanukkah gift for the Dungeons & Dragons fanatic: a 20-sided dreidel. But aside from that, and one particular patent infringement case that I looked at involving Christmas lights, where I spent two days mapping out the wiring diagrams to eight different light nets so that I'll never want to look at Christmas lights ever again, not much going on. It's just like on TV: "Patent Law And Order".

As the temperature out here heads up into the 30's and the snow cover melts, I'm reminded of an incident from this past summer. For the past two years, Margaret had been telling me about an albino squirrel that lived in our neighborhood. She said that it did all the normal evil things that little evil squirrels do (like eat whatever's in Margaret's garden), only it was completely white from its evil nose to the tip of its evil poofy tail. Well, this past summer, while I was eating breakfast and staring out the window, I got a chance to see the albino squirrel in our very own backyard. Sure enough, perfectly white all over, and it jumped around and ran across the power line and ate acorns and plotted evil just like all the other brown squirrels in the neighborhood. Cute, though! And not at all evil-looking. I got to watch him for a good ten minutes until he'd had enough of our backyard, and then he left to go be an albino squirrel in our neighbor's backyard. Naturally, I gave Margaret the full report and she approved, although with the slightly condescending look that said, "Silly New York City boy." (I first got a taste of that look when Margaret found a passage in a book describing a particular bird, "known as the Upside-Down Bird to children everywhere and adult New Yorkers.") I thought about what the white squirrel's name might be ("Earl The Squirl"?) and if his squirrel friends ever made fun of him for being completely white, and then went on my way, happy that I'd gotten to witness one of life's more interesting mutations and one of my block's more interesting fuzzy creatures.

Later that day, as I turned onto 76th Street, I noticed a flat squirrel in the right lane. Not an unusual occurrence, since 76th Street is pretty busy, except this one was white all over. Yep, it was unmistakably Earl, and he was now completely flat, with his little limbs extended outward just like you see in the cartoons when a cartoon animal expires. (I half expected to see little X's where his eyes were.) Drat.

Now as fables and tales go, I realize that this may not have the deep moral and philosophical implications of, say, The Boy Who Cried Wolf or The Littlest Giant. In fact, I'm having trouble drawing any kind of conclusion at all from The Tragedy On 76th Street. Well, maybe it's this: In the spirit of this holiday season, try to respect and admire all of the neighborhood's creatures, regardless of the color of their fur. And do what they taught you in driver's ed - aim for the brown squirrels.

Good night and God Bless,
Ron and Margaret Gerber

P.S. from Margaret: For those who are curious, The Upside-Down Bird is also known as the White-Breasted Nuthatch, it climbs on tree trunks in an upside-down position in order to get the bugs hiding in bark crevices that right-side-up birds miss.

Ron's Big Life Update - October 2003

So why has no one done "Queer Eye for the Straight Girl", in which five stereotypical lesbians demonstrate the joys of flannel, Melissa Etheridge, and really short hair to a stereotypical straight woman?

Well, HI again. The last time you heard from me, it was nothing but bad news. (Cat died, no job, bleh.) Seeing as how Karma owed me big, I think this installment of the Ron Big Life Update will be considerably more upbeat.

First up - I got a job. And not just a jobby-job - this is a really good job! I'm now working as a patent engineer at Altera Law, an intellectual property law firm here in Minneapolis. I write up other people's inventions. (I went through the process about 30 times for my own inventions, so I got pretty good at it. At present, I think I'm up to 13 patents to my name as an inventor.) Because I don't have a law degree, the firm can charge less for my hourly rate, and that savings gets literally passed on to the clients. I'm actually quite valuable at this firm, and they'll probably be looking for a few more PhD's with good writing skills over the next few years, as they plan to become one of the foremost IP firms for the dozens of medical companies here in town.

It's an astoundingly dignified job! I have an office, not a cube. Not only do I have a door, I have a super-heavy wooden floor-to-ceiling door! As an engineer in the capacity of my former jobs, there is literally no hope of ever having a door, let alone an office, unless you go into management - not for me. I don't just have one of those little computer print-out name tags on my office door, I have a real order-from-the-place-that-makes-signs nameplate! I don't just have a window, I have gigantic windows on a full wall of my office, looking out over trees and stuff. After 14 months of unemployed tedium, I have earned it.

Although I was one of the nicest-dressed engineers (am I not tres chic?), I didn't quite have the wardrobe required for a law firm - tie is just about mandatory, and the only serious ties I had were red ones for interviews. (We don't count the Jerry Garcia tie or the '70s throwbacks.) Dang - I needed more clothes, and I really hate clothes shopping! So this past weekend I trudged out to a men's store at the Outlet Mall (God I hate the Outlet Mall...), and bought a whole bunch of shirts and ties. I hadn't bought a shirt with pins in it since I left Tucson! And in order to keep my sanity (my wrinkle-free without ironing sanity, that is), I bought the shirts with some polyester in them. Not that I stay up late worrying about these things, but about 10 years ago I'd worked so hard to make sure that everything I owned was nothin'-but-cotton. Oy! I did notice that the shirts are a little on the shiny side - maybe a little TOO shiny under the wrong lights - and if wear them without ties, they do look a wee bit pimp-tacular. Next time, maybe I'll spend the big bucks at Brooks Brothers...

So this past week has been the biggest Fashion Thing since May 2001, when I celebrated New Pants Week. Ah, the unbridled joy of New Pants Week! In hindsight, that was even better than the current New Shirts Week, which doesn't seem to have the same punch. And in my new threads, my friend Carla called me the "man in charcoal".

I've been at the new job since the beginning of October, and it's been the best first few weeks I've ever had at any job. It appears that at 35, I am the youngest person at the entire firm. A strange tradition - it seems like I'm always the youngest person in the department at whatever job I have. I dunno why.

The place is literally the exact opposite of my summer job, which I mentioned in the last letter. (From June through September I was working at a music promotion company, and it was T-shirts every day, music cranked up all day, hours start late end late. A great job, and I'm very grateful they let me work there for the four months.) It appears that law firms are quieter than libraries. Or at least small law firms - Altera has 5 attorneys, about 6 paralegals, maybe 3 patent engineers, and about 4 admin people. Very much unlike the Seagate environment with 5000 people under one roof and not a single moment to yourself.

I need to thank all of you for your support over the last 14 months - my time between jobs has been unquestionably the worst 14 months of my existence, and I'm grateful for such considerate friends and family. So I'm back to work, and it's a career change that most likely won't crash and burn every 18 months like my optics jobs! Stupid telecom...

Margaret's been working also. About a month ago, she started work at Rose Galleries, a furniture auction place way across town. She found an ad in the paper, went in for an interview (where she bluntly spoke her mind - in stark contrast to the last few interviews she had), and got the job! So far so good - it takes her about 90 minutes to get there by bus, and she's been getting a lot of reading done.

That's the BIG news from our end. And now the smaller news, in sorta chronological order.

At the beginning of the summer, I got to DJ a wedding way up in the northern part of the state. When we hear people talk about goin' up north to the cabin with the boat on the lake, they're talking about places like this. Beautiful terrain, four hour drive from Minneapolis. And a really great party, but it was outside, literally right next to a lake, and at the beginning of summer in Minnesota - the Great Mosquito Factory In The Sky was working overtime for us. After a four hour drive back home, we still had mosquitoes in the car, and all over my equipment and tux. My neighbor saw the car the next day, and remarked that I'll be OK in a day or two when they die off. Unless they start to breed...

The high point of the drive was a little place in Rice, Minnesota. The sign read, "Live bait, mini-storage, deli".

My summer job, which I described in the last letter, was working for The Conclave, a convention for radio people that's held every July here in Minneapolis. We had 800 attendees this year, and the highlight was a live appearance by Willie Nelson. There are lots of famous people in this world (like Hank Aaron, Nelson Mandela, Charles Nelson Reilly, ...), but few of the stature of Willie Nelson. One of my responsibilities was to print up badges for everyone, so I printed "Willie Nelson, Country Music Hopeful". Sadly, that got nixed.

The other highlight of the summer was a wedding in Boston in early September. Many of you might remember Seth, my college roommate from the University of Rochester. Well, he got married to a lovely woman named Gami, who has a PhD in physics from the U of R, and they both live in Boston as "Dr. and Mr. Maislin". Since I had an excuse to go out east, I decided to stretch it out to a week and fly in and out of New York, just to see family there.

I wanted to fly Sun Country Airlines, a little niche airline that's based here in Minneapolis (just because they're NOT Northwest), and they only fly into the New York area at Kennedy Airport, not Newark or LaGuardia. I figured that was good enough, and an airport wouldn't last very long if it weren't convenient, right? AAAAaaack - what was I thinking? JFK was literally 100,000 miles from mom's house, with $3.2 million in bridge tolls! An unfortunate start to the week, although the flight was very pleasant.

As timing would have it, the week I was in New York was the very week that mom began a vacation of her own. (She was visiting her friend, Mickey, in Arizona, and then her mother, Min, in Florida. The Mickey and Minnie tour!) Margaret and I got to stay in mom's house, but we never actually saw mom. The closest we came was leaving obnoxious post-it notes all over the house. For example, one of my favorite things to do is rummage through mom's fridge and throw out all the expired salad dressing. (Mayonnaise from 1993? That's gotta go!) I do this every time I visit, and it's a tradition at this point. This visit, I went through the vast medicine closet and assembled a giant pile of outdated drugs. I left them on the kitchen table with a note, "Careful! These are expirated!" What's not to love? And besides, I think mom misses us a little bit less now than before we trashed the house.

Driving around New York, I got to hear a little bit of the last days of "Blink 102.7", which in hindsight, may be the least successful big-market radio experiment in history. It was an extremely uncomfortable mix of Entertainment Tonight-style reports (Wow! J Lo did something!) and light rock (Wow! Celine Dion songs!). Every single thing they did sounded like a train wreck, and I, the rubbernecker listener, was glued to the radio. About two weeks later, 102.7 changed format and the "Blink" experiment came to an end, just five or six months in. What a mess! I believe that somebody is currently writing a book about the history of 102.7 FM in New York, and that will certainly be in there.

We picked up our college friend Charles from NYC and drove up to Boston. (We've done this before; it's part of the driving-to-Boston tradition.) One of the big thrills for me about the drive to Boston is that if you plan your route correctly, you can drive the entire length of the Saw Mill Parkway - a seemingly ancient highway that extends north from New York City through Westchester County into the odd void of New York State east of the Hudson River. It was probably built in the 1200's when the indigenous New Yorkers stacked some rocks along a cow path. Since then, it's been paved and the speed limit has been upped to 55, but not much else has changed. It's got to be one of the most dangerous highways in the whole country (outside of Boston proper). For most of the highway, the entrance ramps have no merging lanes and a "stop" sign at the end. (Really.) You have to somehow accelerate from 0 to 55 in about ten feet before you get rear-ended by the cars coming around the blind curve right before your exit. It's a life-threatening experience, and to me, it's more thrilling than any of the rickety wooden roller coasters at some of the NY amusement parks. And truth be told, I only braved it because I got to drive the whole length of it all at once without getting on or off; that's a lot of left-lane driving - the equivalent to clutching the roller coaster safety bar with both hands. But what a ride!

The rest of the drive to Boston was pretty uneventful, and I only got lost once trying to find our hotel. Boston is so incomprehensible that even MapQuest just throws up its hands and gives up. Once we got there, though, a good time had by all indeed. The weather couldn't have been any more perfect, and we found our way around very nicely on the T. Walking around downtown, we counted 12 Dunkin Donuts shops. Twelve, all seen in one day by us tourists. We also had some pretty terrific seafood, not at the Dunkin Donuts.

The wedding was a good time, as expected. Seth and Gami had the DJ do a rather untraditional thing - an open mike after dinner, during which guests tell stories, wish well, and the like. I, not one to retreat from a microphone, thought I'd convey a little story. I could have told the embarrassing story of The Laundry from when we were college roommates, when Seth would wait until his dirty laundry reached the light switch, then go the bank, take out a whole roll of quarters, and take over the whole laundry room for the day. Nope, didn't tell that one. Instead, I talked about the first radio show I ever did, in November 1986. Seth was there with me in the studio as I tried to push all the buttons correctly and sound like I knew what I was doing, even though I didn't. We had a lot in common - Seth and I were both musically inclined, and he and I both had a knack for writing. (He is currently one of the world's foremost indexers, and even gives seminars on the topic.) I can't remember my exact wording, but I said that Seth and I both share an appreciation for the beauty and precision of words and music. Seth was right there as I began my radio career 17 years ago, and I'd like to think that every time I turn on the mike, there's a little bit of Seth in there. And every time I leave it on just a little too long, well... that'd be Seth...

We also went bowling in Boston, with the proper 10 pins. None of that crazy 9-pin stuff for us. Besides, you can't throw the ball as high with 9-pins, as I recall.

One of our Boston friends had us over to her house, north of the city, right on the ocean. Whatta place! We wandered around on the beach and Margaret collected a bag's worth of seashells and beach glass. I was surprised that you can take home the shells, because the California beaches that I saw strictly prohibit removing anything at all. Cool! Shells make Margaret very happy. And they had a brand new kitten, named O.C. (orange cat) - kittens make Ron very happy!

So we drove back to NY, dropped off Charles, and retreated back to mom's house for a day or two. I thought I'd visit some of the old record stores in Rockland County while I was there, and boy was I in for a shock. Tapeville - the primary source for used records and old 12" singles - closed in May. (The Italian restaurant next to Tapeville, where mom used to get take-out all the time, also out of business.) Pic-A-Disc, the indie store that would always order the strange, pricey foreign singles with rare B-sides, had a big "Liquidation Sale" sign in the window. The word "liquidation" was tucked under, but it looked like he'd be unfolding it soon enough. The store opened during my senior year in high school, and I'd visit every time I was home from college. I talked to the store owner for quite a while, and he attributes a lot of the downturn in business to teens; teens just don't go to record stores anymore, like I used to do 15 or 20 years ago. Historically, teens have always driven the entire music industry, and the current generation just doesn't buy music - they download the individual songs that they want, and if they want a full album for some reason, it's right there at Target or Wal-Mart. There is no more niche market of teen music collectors, and the little stores are suffering for it. I was really affected by talking to him - I mean, we've all heard that music sales are down, Napster, blah blah etc., but this struck a really unpleasant chord for me. All the stores I used to love as a kid, the stores that pointed me down the musical path that I walk all these years later, are going away. Certainly, I don't buy as much music as I used to (at least in stores), but the reality that nobody was following in my proverbial footsteps was quite a jolt to me. I ended buying quite a bit of stuff at Pic-A-Disc, knowing that the next time I'm back out east, the store probably won't be there. Very upsetting.

Moving on... I've always wanted a stage name - a cool fake name that I can use on the air, like one of my former colleagues from 98PXY named "Rocky Martini". Well, this trip out east has provided me with one. From now on, I shall be known as "Pip Helix". Yes, Pip Helix. My friends and family may call me Pip, but I'm Mr. Helix to all else.

And just where did I come up with "Pip Helix"? As the Palisades Interstate Parkway feeds into the George Washington Bridge, the road goes through a cloverleaf and passes under itself, and the little green sign posted atop the underpass, identifying the road that's overhead, reads "PIP HELIX". I love it.

So I threw Margaret a surprise birthday party when she turned 35 on October 16th. She wasn't surprised at all, but it seems like she had a good time anyway. We all signed a card that said "All your friends think you're old!", which got a laugh, but laughter probably masked the Evil Eye...

[rebuttal from Margaret]

There was no evil eye, mostly because I certainly don't feel old, unlike my cranky gray-haired spouse who is always railing on about "Damn kids!" "Damn Rock and Roll music" "Things just aren't like they used to be - why, back in my day.." "Oy! My lumbago is killing me!" Maybe it's the difference in lifestyles. He wears a tie, I'm still catching the bus with a backpack. I also spent the entire summer resurrecting the ghost of my first bike which I found "as is" on E-bay after two years of looking. Next summer, maybe I'll learn how to skateboard. My new job is great! All my mad skills I have accumulated over the years about old books, furniture refinishing, jewelry repairs, etc., well, at this job, they really ARE mad skills! And there are two dogs at work, so it's like I have dogs, only I don't have to put up with Ron whining and scratching! I don't know why Ron is the way he is, but I'm ALWAYS ironing my clothes, I keep the ironing board next to the t.v. and do them when I have nothing good to watch, but Ron refuses to let me iron his shirts for him unless it's for an interview. Even then, there's usually a shouting match because I refuse to let him leave in a wrinkled shirt. He won't let me iron his suit, either. The woman who had the house right on the beach was on no ordinary beach, she was right on Marblehead! And the mussel shells on her beach are cobalt blue! The locals call them "Periwinkles". My 90 minute bus ride is the alternative to 60-90 minutes in a traffic jam. I'd rather teach myself to knit than grind my teeth, so bus it is! Stinky is getting fat from not chasing Pookums, and she won't chase us instead.

[/rebuttal from Margaret]

Lumbago?

"Crap From The Past" bounces along nicely. Apparently, it's bouncing in the right music collector circles, and somehow, I've managed to enter the innermost sanctum among pop music geeks. I now own MP3's of every single song that's ever hit the Billboard Hot 100. All of them, going all the way back to 1955. And now that I have every song that's ever hit the pop chart, EVER, I don't really know what else to collect. It kinda takes all the fun out of it...

And that's about it from the land of ice and snow. Stay warm, and Happy Halloween!

Ron & Margaret Gerber

Ron's Big Life Update - July 2003

[Written Friday, May 23, 2003.]

Well, I'd been holding off since December to write another installment of the Ron Big Life Update, in the hope that something interesting would happen. And as of mid-May, still no sign of interesting. But the last few weeks have given me more interesting than I really cared for, so here's the long-awaited Big Life Update from Minneapolis, conveniently complete with Bad News and Good News.

Bad news first - we had to put one of our cats to sleep, due to chronic renal failure. (That's her kidneys.) I will explain.

Margaret and I have had our two cats, Stinky and Pukehead, since we got married over 7 years ago. I graduated from grad school, we got married, I got a job, we moved across the country, I got a new car, and we adopted the cats all within the space of one very busy month in early 1996. The jobs have come and gone (and I'm really not THAT attached to my car) but the cats have been with us the whole time.

Well, last week we noticed that Pukehead wasn't herself. A trip to the vet determined that her kidneys were shot - some protein or other in her blood had a level of 200, and it should have been only 25. The vet told Margaret that Pukehead had less than a month to live. Egad! Margaret and I agreed that we'd give Pukehead the Best Week Ever then have her put to sleep while she's still happy, rather than watch her health and happiness deteriorate slowly. My mission was clear...

The biggest symptom we noticed was that she was weak, and couldn't jump up to her usual spots, or go down into the basement to use the litter box or visit me while I was on the computer. So we moved a litter box and another water dish onto ground level so she wouldn't have to negotiate any stairs. She had no interest in the usual cat food or water, which panicked us a bit. Fortunately, she'd been drinking the leftover milk out of Margaret's cereal bowl for years, and we found that even with no appetite for her conventional food, she'd still devour a small bowl of cold milk straight from the fridge. (And as I type this, I realize that we should have gotten some whole milk for her, rather than the skim milk we usually drink. Rats!)

We thought we'd try another Pukehead favorite - turkey. Whenever Margaret roasted a turkey, we could always count on Pukehead getting the crazies, and following Margaret around with eyes as big as her head! So Margaret cooked a turkey, and Pukehead even ate a few pieces. Not up to her usual turkey consumption, though (when she was healthy, she'd probably have eaten her own weight in turkey if we'd let her.) It was the only solid food she ate at all during the last week. And to add insult to injury, I left the Tupperware container of cooked turkey on the counter overnight, rendering the rest of the whole 11-pound turkey inedible for all parties concerned. (Doh!)

Both our cats have been primarily indoor cats. When the weather's nice, we put Stinky out on a leash and let her wander in the yard, but Pukehead didn't like the leash and we generally kept her indoors. She could easily jump from the floor to the top of a 5-foot-tall stack of records in the basement; with no leash she'd have exited the yard in a heartbeat.

Since the weather outside was beautiful, and we saw that she was fairly immobile inside, we thought we'd completely indulge her and put her outside. Best Week Ever indeed! We'd plunk her down on the patio in the backyard, and she'd slowly make her way to a new corner of the yard while we essentially babysat. It couldn't have worked out any better - when she was inside, she slept constantly and was basically an uncomfortable blob. But outside, she came alive and wandered around with the curiosity of a kitten. She moved slowly, and we made sure that no other wildlife would bother her when she was resting, but being outside made her Happy with a capital H.

And that set the tone for the last week. Neither Margaret nor I was working (I'll get to the employment situation later), and we devoted ourselves to giving our sick little cat the Best Week On Earth. The cycle became a comforting routine: We'd wake up Pukehead, carry her over to a cold bowl of milk straight from the fridge, she'd drink, she'd wander over to the newly-located litter box and take care of business, then wander over to the backdoor where she'd wait for us to let her out into the Great Outdoors. Then we'd go out with a book and keep an eye on her for an hour or so until she got tired. Then we'd carry her back inside, more milk, and back to sleep for an hour or two on a comfy pillow in the sun. A good life indeed.

Margaret and I spent about a week spoiling Pukehead. If I understand that factor of 7 thingy correctly, then the one week that Margaret and I put in translates to about 7 weeks for Pukehead. It must have felt like Fantasy Summer Camp for her, and she purred her way through most of it, despite her obvious discomfort. She really didn't seem to be getting worse, but she had already lost a lot of weight by the time we had her diagnosed, and she had existed only on milk for about five days. We knew she wouldn't have been able to hold out much longer without any solid food, and we decided to have her euthanized before she got much worse. We agreed that we'd have it done on Thursday.

It was cold and rainy on Thursday morning, but Pukehead was determined to go outside anyway. So I threw on yesterday's clothes and a jacket and grabbed an umbrella, and followed her out into the backyard. I sat on the bench while she explored a bit in the rain, but she gave up quickly and wandered over to the bench, where she jumped up next to me and crawled up onto my lap. It was the only time that week that she'd sat on either one of us (it was always a sure thing when we watched TV). I sat for an hour outside with her in my lap, cold but dry under my umbrella, with no sounds at all except the falling rain and a faint purr from Pukehead.

Once Margaret got up, we rounded up everything we'd need to take Pukehead to the Humane Society. It turns out, the only thing we needed was a big pillow; Margaret drove, and I held Pukehead on the big pillow in my lap in the passenger's seat. Wouldn't you know it - Pukehead absolutely loved the drive! She was purring the entire trip, and watched in amazement as the scenery zipped by at 60 MPH. From the parking lot, I carried her in on my shoulder, and within about two minutes' worth of paperwork, we left her in one of the cages at the front desk. She was still calm when we left, and we like to think that the end came quickly and painlessly shortly after that, while she was still marveling at the magnificent drive she'd just had.

(For those of you that aren't pet people, I apologize for the letter thus far. This is therapeutic for me, and it feels good to get it on paper.)

In dealing with the past week, I couldn't help but think about when my father passed away five years ago. He was 70, and I guess technically Pukehead was also 70 if that factor of 7 applies. When my father was sick, I felt it was my responsibility to make him and the rest of the family as comfortable as possible - a role I found myself again playing this past week. I'd forgotten the feeling of powerlessness that you have when a loved one's health is failing, and how much it hurts. Yes I know, this time around it was only a cat, but the cat's been around for as long as I've been married and I'm going to miss it. This is the same cat that sat on my lap (or on the back of my high-backed desk chair) while I edited down every single "Crap From The Past" show every week for the last 5 years, and wrote every single Big Ron Life Update. I'm going to miss Pukehead, and so are Margaret and our other cat, Stinky, who lost her playmate. Seven years of joy certainly outweighs our short period of grieving; we'll mourn, and we'll move on.

I have three favorite pictures of Pukehead - (1) Standing in the bathroom sink, and (2&3) Happily immersed in a big box of Styrofoam peanuts. Born circa 1993, adopted Feb 4 1996, died May 22 2003.

[Written June 29]

So yesterday we went to a Twins game. We had no agenda for the day, so we drove into downtown about five hours before the game and planned to just wander around until game time. Plus, you get a great (free!) parking spot on the street if you get there insanely early. It was a great plan, and we even stopped for a snack at an outdoor café on the other side of the river. Until... it rained cats and dogs on the walk back. Big, fat, cold raindrops, lots of wind, and all while we crossed back over the river on the scenic, uncovered bridge. Soaked to the bone, we shivered our way through the entire game. And for you baseball fans, I abused the concessions stand at the Metrodome: I "ate for the cycle" - a hot dog, a pizza, a BBQ sandwich, and an ice cream sandwich, all in one game. I probably could have eaten a pretzel, but I was cold, wet, and running out of cash.

And strangely enough, we also got soaked at a St. Paul Saints game less than a week ago (minor league baseball). You'd think we'd bring an umbrella to these games, but no.

"Crap From The Past" still continues to shock and amaze. This past April the show even got some press from Minneapolis's very own City Pages! I even got a picture! You can't see the top of my essentially-shaved head, but you can see my hexagonal glasses that I wrote about in the last letter.

I noticed that my old band, Thinland, released a CD a few months back. I played drums with them for about a year and a half, and we parted ways 2 or 3 years ago. No hard feelings at all. They even thanked me in the liner notes, although they thanked me dead last; apparently I was the least useful contributor on Earth to their sound. But it's nice to be acknowledged at all, and I genuinely hope their album does well.

Remember when I had The Plague two summers ago? (I really did have The Plague.) I may be one of the few people out here that can look at the recent Plague outbreak in New York and say, "Pah! I had that! It's nothing three weeks of doxycycline can't cure!" Well, I unearthed a photograph of the actual bunny that gave me the plague. The picture was taken on Margaret's mom's farm in Yuma, Colorado, about three hours east of Denver. The bunny was, in fact, cute, so it's hard to summon up the proper amount of hate that such Diseased Rodent deserves. Stupid bunny...

I suppose I should discuss my job situation. I was hoping to have some good news by now, but nope. I got laid off last August from ADC Telecommunications because telecom crashed and burned, taking ADC with it. Since then, it's been one disappointing interview after another, including a local law firm (where I'd be a patent engineer), a local college (where I'd be the department chairman for their school of broadcasting), my alma mater Seagate, and an optics company on Long Island, among others. Especially grating is Seagate, where each job requisition will pull in literally hundreds of resumes, some of which are certainly more qualified than I am. It's frustrating to know you're not qualified enough to do your old job.

So optics in Minneapolis is essentially gone. I still have a handful of leads, but they're not going anywhere, and there's certainly no growth in the optics field out here. The situation in other fields seems to be just as bleak - I have four good friends who all got laid off in April. Four! And I don't know all that many people!

The worst part of being out of work is not having the regular routine to your day. Weekdays and weekends all bleed together, and holidays completely lose all meaning if you have no job. For a while, I took on some heavy lifting at Margaret's old store, Williams-Sonoma, and helped them unload the truck twice a week. While we were in no danger of running out of money, I needed some kind of signpost on the weekly calendar. Plus it was cheaper than joining a gym!

And one small novelty item from W-S. When you're dealing with hundreds of boxes a week, you learn pretty quickly what the little icons on the boxes mean. Like an umbrella means it shouldn't get wet. Or a little martini glass means that it's made of glass. Or a hook means that you shouldn't use a hook. And so on; it's not rocket science. So imagine my confuse-ment what I ran across this very strange icon on a box of pasta imported from Italy. No idea. So I scanned it in, and here it is, for your baffle-ation.

I'm not at Williams-Sonoma anymore, because I actually found a pretty cool summer job - I'm working at a small music promotion company here in town. I'm helping them out with preparations for a radio conference, which takes place here in July. Plus I'm handling some of their day-to-day responsibilities, like tracking playlists from a lot of the Midwest radio stations. I get paid for talking to radio people on the phone and playing music at work! The main benefit of my working there is my sanity (regular hours and all that), but an unexpected bonus may be knowing all the regional program directors! Cool!

So I'm actually enjoying my summer job. It's like summer camp for me, where I get to decompress from everything from the past few months and even get paid a little for it. At least I know I'm going to enjoy the rest of the summer, even if I don't get rich in the process.

My mom retired this past week. She's been an elementary school teacher since before I was born, and has taught the lower elementary school grades at her school in The Bronx for something like 15 years. And now she's done, just like that. Mom has always had her summers off, but the rest of us had our routines to act as the signposts for her schedule. Not this time - it's just her and the house. Well, based on the past year or so, I know firsthand that retirement scares the daylights out of me, and I hope my mom will cope well with going from strict routine to no routine at all. I heard some good advice from other retired teachers, and a good answer to "What will you do after you retire?" is "Not this." I'm sure she'll enjoy NOT teaching every day, and in due time she'll figure out what to do next.

And now a rebuttal from Margaret:
Well, this is indeed an unusual Big Life Update in that I, the wife, have no rebuttal at all this time.

Ron's Big Life Update - December 2002

First up - happy holidays!

Okay, it's been since April since you heard from Margaret and me. A bit has happened since then, so I'll give you the end of the story first: I'm out of work, Margaret's working, we're in good health (no emergency room visits for either of us), and the house, cats, and cars are all just fine. Families on both sides are well also, so this would be a terrifically upbeat e-letter if I had a job. (And if you don't have a thing for details, you can stop reading now. If it's the fine print you want, read on, and I'll lead you through everything roughly chronologically.)

April 2002 - My radio show of the last 10 years, "Crap From The Past", made the finals at the NFCB's Golden Reel Awards. My show was one of four finalists in the category of Best Local Entertainment/Music Series. Fame and fortune did not immediately follow. Surprisingly.

May 2002 - My brother Kenny flew in for a weekend, and boy did he pick the right weekend! In the span of two days, Kenny went to an ADC party (all funded by the employees) over the border in Wisconsin, complete with a live band (ADC employees), a few deep-fried turkeys, and a whole lot of seafood. Margaret adopted a crawfish. ("No, honey, it's food." "But I want one!") We took it home in a big coffee can, and she kept in the backyard in a huge flower pot that held around 30 gallons. She came up with a name after about two days of deep thought: Claude. Claude lived happily for a few weeks, which is a few weeks longer than anybody would have guessed. Margaret attributed some human qualities to Claude ("He looks happy today."), and all were amused until Claude passed away a few weeks later. And no, we did not eat him.

One day after the Claude-adoption party, Kenny got to attend the bestest party ever, thrown by us: Cinco De Mayo, Gerber-style! The menu was straightforward - microwave burritos for everybody, and you had to eat five (cinco) of them. For the record, only Kenny and I had that many. And for dessert, a mountain of Little Debbie snack cakes. I vote, Best Party Ever.

The rest of May was dull.

June 2002 - Started off DJing a wedding in Hibbing, the hometown of Bob Dylan, which is about 3-1/2 hours north of Minneapolis. I was the DJ and Margaret was a guest, so I'd have company on the road - a good thing. When it came time to load up my car, I had a flat (dang!), so I took all of Margaret's junk out of her car and replaced it with my junk, and off we drove. About 30 miles into the drive, the muffler gave way and started dragging on the ground. Long story short - Margaret, after years of experience with her Pinto and '83 Accord, successfully climbed underneath the car and tied up the muffler with some bailing wire and a large piece of cable. It made noise like a jet engine, but it didn't drag on the ground, and we were able to get back on the road after a delay of only about 90 minutes. We made it up to Hibbing, and I got the equipment set up and ready to go with a whole 9 minutes before the ceremony started. Sweet!

Now normal people would have rented a hotel room and driven back the next morning. But not me - I had another DJ gig the next morning at 9 AM. So we drove back, and I pulled into the driveway about 4:30 AM. The next morning, left at 7:30 with the same noisy carload full of equipment, and did my gig. I don't remember much about the second one, to be honest. Later in the day, we got the muffler fixed properly, and I bought two small compressors that plug into the cigarette lighters, one for each car. Then I got my tire patched and we lived happily ever after.

Last weekend in June - My cousins threw a surprise anniversary party for my aunt and uncle, who were married 35 years! Margaret and I took a weekend off and flew to Washington DC for the party. (DC in June? Not hot & sticky at ALL!) It was a major affair, and they invited around 75 people to the restaurant, including family members I'd never met before, and my 91-year-old grandmother who flew up from Florida. It went flawlessly - my aunt cried, and my uncle (a lobbyist who has never ever been at a loss for words) was at a loss for words. Magnificent. There's a special place in heaven for my cousins, who arranged the whole thing.

While out in DC, Margaret and I had a few minutes to kill at some point, and wandered into a dollar store. Since I have a strange fascination with off-kilter food, we found ourselves in the cereal aisle. (Recall that last year, I mailed four boxes of Kaboom cereal to my house in Minneapolis from my sister-in-law's place in Tampa. Ate two, two left.)

This store in DC carried a whole line of not-quite-right knock-offs: Corn Pops became Corny Toots, and Frosted Flakes morphed into Frosty Flakes. And just like Kellogg's had Tony The Tiger, this off-brand had their own trademarked spokesman for Frosty Flakes: Berg. Yes, Berg. (Because frosty means cold with the iceBergs, I suppose.) This Berg creature was a trademarked character, and I can only imagine the fine line of Berg products that blossomed from Frosty Flakes...

There's a particular Italian restaurant here in town that my friends and I go to for lunch on Wednesdays. It's a long-standing tradition, well over 2 years at this point. When they bring out the check, they always leave a handful of Dum-Dum lollipops, and we go out of our way to avoid the "Buttered Popcorn" flavor. When one of our little group said that he likes the Buttered Popcorn Dum-Dums, the restaurant gave him a huge bag of just Buttered Popcorns that they filtered out from their assortment. The novelty wore off quick (2000 nasty lollipops - ack!), and the bag sat untouched for a few weeks until Weimin, a co-worker, discovered that he likes them. We gave him the whole bag, and all was well for a few months until he got a toothache and had to stop eating them. And just for the record, the official Dum-Dum Pops website said that they stopped manufacturing the Buttered Popcorn flavor as of Nov 2001. Apparently, nobody likes them at all.

July 2002 - For the first time, it was legal to sell and use sparklers in Minnesota, so we threw the Best July 4th Party In History. Keep in mind that my family never got to play with sparklers or fireworks of any kind, so we never got past the pyromaniac phase of development. Much to Margaret's dismay, we set fire to EVERYTHING on our concrete patio (Woo-hoo!), and when we ran out of stuff, we sent some friends out to buy more! Unfortunately, the only place that was still open was Walgreen's, and they returned with a package of gauze and a bottle of rubbing alcohol. Which worked quite well, actually. And we left a permanent stain on the patio.

End of July - Margaret found a nice set of Oster clippers, like the barber uses. She suggested that she cut my hair, using the logic that I didn't have very much of it and no one would notice if anything bad happened. (The same logic that says that since I don't have any cavities, that even Margaret could be my dentist.) The first time we tried it, it came out OK. Pretty good. Looked just fine. Nice job.

The second time she tried it, I heard "Oops" after about 15 seconds. OOPS?!? Without even looking, I grabbed my keys and drove over to my barber, where I explained everything up until Oops, and asked him to fix it. We laughed and laughed, and he fixed it, but it came out mighty short. Plus he gave me a little paper temporary tattoo, the same one that he gives little kids when they try to cut their own hair and mommy brings them to the barber to fix it. Did I mention that my hair was now mighty short?

Well, chronologically, we were up to mid-summer. I think it's time I brought you up to speed on my job situation.

By April, I knew my job (as an optical engineer) at ADC (a telecom company) was in jeopardy. WorldCom, one of our biggest customers, filed for bankruptcy sometime in early '02. Adelphia, a cable company and another big customer, made headlines when charges were filed against its top management for embezzling millions. Great. I ain't no Harvard Business student or nothin', but I figured out that if all of your big customers go bankrupt, then you're in deep trouble.

And that's what was happening at ADC. We figured out when the layoffs come, down to the day. They started on Aug 1, 2001, and continued like clockwork (plus or minus a day) every three months, to coincide with the beginning of every fiscal quarter. Aug '01, Nov '01, Feb '02, May '02. Like clockwork. And somehow they kept me around through all of those.

Until August 1, 2002. They let half our building go, a total of about 75 people. They let the other 75 go three months later on Halloween, thereby eliminating all of photonics from a company that had essentially bet the farm on photonics. I predict there won't be much left of ADC in a year or two.

So the days got a lot longer for me in August. The first two weeks were great. The weather was gorgeous, and I put a whole lot of effort into planning some Crap From The Past shows, which came out sounding spectacular. After two weeks of not working, though, I got a bit restless and underfoot, since the house belongs to Margaret during the day and I'm not really supposed to be there.

End of August was the Minnesota State Fair, always a highlight of the summer. There was the ever-present food on a stick, and this year's novelty item was deep-fried macaroni and cheese on a stick. Ish! But still better than last year's deep-fried candy bar on a stick. Margaret and I showed up extra early on a Thursday to beat the crowds and to see the llama judging. She likes her llamas.

Aug 31 2002 - I got a new pair of comfortable Rockport shoes that I've worn every day since. Black, slip-on, no laces, dignified enough to wear to work, although the work thing wasn't much of an issue for me.

By September, I had plenty of time to fill, so I started doing more work at KFAI, the all-volunteer radio station that runs "Crap From The Past". I even got to host a morning show, which increased my visibility at the station about a hundred-fold. Miraculously, a show called the Friday Night Poker Party decided to call it quits after a 7-year run, and I (after a slow but thorough selection process) inherited the Friday night time slot. Blam - from graveyard to prime time, starting at the beginning of October. So CFTP now airs on Friday nights from 10:30 to midnight, and normal people can listen now, and I'm not dopey on Mondays for the first time in 3-1/2 years. (Not that I need to get up on Mondays right now, but I will presumably have a new job at some point.)

End of October 2002 - I didn't have anything better to do, so we rented a van and drove to Margaret's hometown of Yuma, Colorado. (Recall that during our last trip to Yuma last summer, I caught the bubonic plague from a diseased bunny. Now that cases of the plague turned up in New York, I don't look as crazy as you thought, eh? Somewhat of a trendsetter, I must say...)

So off we drive to Yuma in a cargo van the size of Connecticut. At least that's how it drove. We filled it up with stuff from Margaret's mom's house, and drove back. All pretty uneventfully, actually. And because Margaret's mom takes pictures of the oddest things, I now have pictures of the actual bunny that gave me the plague. Stupid bunny.

November 2002 - I told my barber to give me the shortest haircut ever. He did. It was plenty short. A few weeks later, I took the plunge and cut my own hair with the adjustable clippers that Margaret found over the summer. My hair is now about 1/4-inch long all over my head, and I've rendered my barber obsolete. I feel kinda bad about that because I really like my barber, so I'm trying to get some friends to go there and replace me.

For those of you that haven't seen me in a while, there wasn't a whole lot left on the top of my head anyway. Rather than go down the comb-over route, or the unwieldy Gallagher/David Crosby route for that matter, I'll be keeping my hair supa-short from now on. You won't even miss it when it's gone.

And I figured that as long as I was updating my image, I may as well get new glasses. My old frames are circa 1991, and the little round glasses are fine for Harry Potter, but Margaret voted them off the island. Intrigued by a small mom-n-pop optical shop that we discovered way across town, I decided to get new frames. And not just any new frames. Margaret always said that I look like my grandfather in his wedding picture, so I brought in my grandfather's wedding picture from 1936, and had them copy the frames and lenses. As you might imagine, the small staff there went bananas over it, and my job was probably the highlight of their month. I now have a pair of rimless glasses, with sorta-hexagonal lenses. The guy at the optical place had been doing this for 30 years, and he immediately recognized the design as frame xxx, manufactured by company yyy, located right here on page zzz of their catalog. (I forget the specifics, but he sure knew his stuff.) My new glasses look pretty cool, I must say, and the shape of the lenses exactly matches an antique pair of sunglasses that Margaret already had - apparently this was a very common shape back then. I'm hoping they won't look as dated as my last pair in 10 years, but after 66 years, I'm not too worried.

And another item to make me feel old. I was talking with a friend who's 8 years younger than I am. He said he used to listen to Rush back in high school. I told him that I used to listen to Rush aw well - those Canadian guys could rock! He said no, he meant Rush Limbaugh. I was verrrry disappointed.

And a friend noticed that you can go into any restaurant and order a "kicker". It can be a drink, an appetizer, a rack of ribs. Darn near anything. But it's always on the menu...

Last year, as part of the holiday festivities on the radio show, I did a show devoted entirely to the work of pop songwriter Holly Knight (punnily called "Silent Night Holly Knight"). She's not a household name, but her songs were huge in the '80s: "Love Is A Battlefield", "The Warrior", "Better Be Good To Me", "The Best" (that Tina turner song that shows up in TV ads), and over 20 others. The show came out great, and I've been in touch with her since then.

This year, she agreed to do a phone interview with me, and on the Dec 6 show, she sat in for the entire 90-minute show on the phone, talking about her career and all sorts of interesting music stuff. I was in heaven, as you might imagine, and the show came out great. I'm a bit awkward for the first 10 minutes because I'm inexperienced as an interviewer, but she was terrific start to finish. It was certainly a high point for me, and I think Holly enjoyed it as well. Can you imagine - she had all sort of media attention about 15 years ago, and out of the blue, this radio guy does a serious 90-minute interview with her because he thinks that she deserves more recognition for her body of work from the '80s. Must be pretty cool, and I only hope that my radio work is remembered in 15 years.

In a strange development, my radio show is now heard on *2* radio stations: KFAI in Minneapolis, and GoldRush Radio in Lawrence, Otego, New Zealand. Yep, CFTP airs on Saturday nights at 7 in New Zealand! The station there doesn't have a website, but I think they're a community-run station just like the one here in Minneapolis. What a hoot!

So it's mid-December and I'm not working, but Margaret is. When my benefits ran out in October, she got a job at Williams-Sonoma, a high-end kitchen store at the Galleria, an uppity mall just over the border in the uppity suburb of Edina, about a mile from the house. The hours aren't bad, her co-workers are pretty nice, and I appreciate the effort she's putting in. I'm not altogether comfortable with the role reversal - the laundry is done and the house is spotlessly clean, but the food is not as good as when Margaret was cooking. And I've noticed that Margaret's co-workers are the most attractive women in the state, all somehow squashed together under one roof. She pointed this little factoid out to me, and I had to check it out with my own eyes. It's true, although I don't understand how. (Powers at work that are far greater than my little brain can comprehend.) It's fun to go visit, knowing that I'm the only straight guy in the store who wants to be there...

I've gone on a few job interviews so far, but nothing yet. Each time I get my hopes up, I get crushed like a bug. Which is why I haven't written lately - I'd been hoping for some shred of good news so I could end the letter on a happy note. But no.

(and now, a word from Margaret:)

...And now, time for the rebuttal. The car would have been fixed much faster, but we had wasted time trying to find a garage in a crappy, awful, little town called NORTH BRANCH that no one should ever, ever visit. You would think two city slickers with a busted car and a credit card would be any small-town mechanic's ..., um, "dream", but this horrible blight of a town just kept telling us, "Well, we always close at noon, and it's almost noon. Bye." So, I used a coat hanger, a tomato paste can, and some JB Weld to fix the muffler. It lasted five minutes, then back to the soothing strains of jet wash rumbling out from under the car. How can a lowly imported four-banger sound like a cargo plane? There were two ironies that morning: 1 - I had to argue strenuously with Ron that he couldn't take "all that crap" out of the back of the car. ("Oh, come on, there's an empty can in there! And a coat hanger! Why do you drive around with all this crap in your car?") 2 - since we would be traveling through some long stretches of nothing, I had taken the precaution of putting "deer whistles" on the front grills of both cars. They are supposed to emit an ultrasonic shriek that scares deer from running across the highway. "Good for blank hundred feet" the package said. All the way up, and all the way back, I really don't think the deer ever got a chance to hear the whistles because they had been deafened by the muffler about 3 miles before we got near them.

When we went to Washington, D.C., we stayed in the outskirts and drove into town to rendezvous with the family. Every time, we passed a street called Gibbon. Every time, I did my best imitation of one. Ron said it got old. Not for me!

Ah, Williams-Sonoma. It is very, very strange. The rest of the country is in the grip of a recession, but not at that location. It's the #1 selling location in the U.S., no qualifiers, #1. It's even doing better this year than it did last year. The doctor/lawyer neighborhood it's located in is apparently recession-proof, also, as a small "boutique" mall, we are the only ones with any kind of real parking. So people who drive up from Iowa to do Christmas shopping hit the Target across the street, then shop in the snooty mall because it's easier to get to than a "real" mall. For all their huge money-making, Williams-Sonoma refuses to pay benefits to full-time employees, claiming that we are "casual" employees even though we work full-time and don't choose our hours. Hmmm... I also don't think they hire straight men. Demographically, the employees are a bit abnormal. But all very nice and friendly.

Ron's new "do" makes him look a little like Matt Lauer from one of the morning "news" shows that I can't figure out what their purpose is. If you're going to work, you don't have time to waste watching someone else's weather. If you're not working what do you care what the weather is anyway? Oh, well, I'm complaining because we can't afford cable anymore and broadcast is a Vast Wasteland. After cable, even PBS sucks.

Ron forgot to mention that on the way back from Yuma, we were forced to spend the night in Iowa and were subjected to the local election ads. Oh my god, Iowans are not nice at all! Their ads were the worst, slanderous, most mudslinging collection of exaggeration I have ever seen. The Saturday Night Live skits didn't even come close to the real things we were subjected to. Oh, yeah, the hotel was across the highway from some kind of bar called "The Icky Nickel" located in the midst of some stockyards. I'll let you speculate.

(back to Ron:)

So at the end of the year, all goes well except I'm unemployed. (If you've got an extra engineering job in Minneapolis, then we need to talk.) Looks like the Emergency Room Competition will end in a tie at 0-0. Could be worse, I suppose. Here's hoping that you and yours have a warm and fuzzy holiday season, and we'll talk to all y'all soon.

Ron & Margaret Gerber

Ron's Big Life Update - May 2002

"Sweden is the most Americanized country in the world. The U.S. is a close second." - a co-worker from ADC Sweden

"Stockholm is just like Manhattan, without the constant sense of fear" - me

"Munkar till alla!" (Donuts for everyone!)

Hej!

Well, Sweden was a blast. Along with two co-workers from Minneapolis, I spent five days in Stockholm and a day in Reykjavik, Iceland. We stayed at the house of an American ADC-er and his wife. They're there for a year, and they put up ADC folks at the house when they visit. It saves money for the company, and it gives the rookie travelers like me a little less to worry about.

Sweden is an awful lot like Minnesota. Most of the people live in a big city about a third of the way up (Stockholm/Minneapolis), and the population thins out the farther north you go.

For someone who has never traveled overseas, I can't imagine a better introduction to Europe than through Sweden. They say everyone from age 10 to 70 speaks English; these are the ages at which they've been taught English in schools, and I had no trouble communicating with anyone at all. I only got stumped once at an ATM, and had to ask the woman behind me what the text on the screen meant (Oh...it wants the amount I want to withdraw. Got it.)

All the people spoke English, but just about everything in writing was in Swedish, including road signs, sale signs in the store windows, and everything in the train and bus systems. I can now recognize a word here and there, but I still can't pronounce anything in Swedish. To my untrained ear, the language sounds a lot like German. Completely unintelligible to me.

We were impressed at the English skills of everyone we ran into at ADC Sweden. We had about four full days of meetings and tours, including some very technical discussions, and there wasn't a single concept that we couldn't communicate in English. Occasionally, they'd talk amongst themselves in Swedish for a few sentences (probably to clarify things; I doubt that they just didn't want us to know what they were talking about), then seamlessly switch right back into English for us. Remarkable linguistic dexterity! Afterwards, they told me that they still think in Swedish and have to translate into English on the fly, and that unless Americans are around, they hardly ever speak English.

Getting around in Stockholm is amazingly simple. Car traffic in the city is strongly discouraged, from the high prices for parking to the teeny narrow streets, and the city has amply compensated by setting up the most impressive public transportation system I've run across. To get downtown from the suburban house we stayed at, we walked about 5 minutes to a bus stop, took the bus to the suburb's train station, and took the train to a central station downtown. You pay when you get on the bus or train, and you get to ride anywhere you want on the system for an hour. Transfers are free, and train/bus transfers are free. Our American host took us on the system once, reminded us that we always want bus #527 to get back to the house, showed us the landmark we need to hit the DING button on the bus (I still had trouble with the actual street names), and turned us loose on Stockholm. A painless way to get from here to there.

Unlike in a lot of cities, the trains and buses are clean, and are used by everyday people in the city. The locals told me that I wouldn't have any trouble just wandering around in downtown, and I indeed felt pretty safe at all times. Even coming back to the house late, there were single girls on the trains and buses, and it looked like nobody would give them a hard time. Quite a refreshing change from the U.S.

Downtown Stockholm looked a lot like parts of Manhattan - a solid block of buildings, 3 or 4-stories tall, stores and businesses on the ground floor, apartments or offices above, and the streets laid out in a grid. It all felt very familiar, even though Stockholm celebrates its 750th birthday this year. (Yes, Stockholm was founded in 1252.)

Stockholm is OLD. I got the impression that a lot of the buildings were built with longevity in mind - even some of the suburban residential houses, which had ceramic tile roofs. (I toyed with the idea for about one second when we got a new roof on our house four years ago.) We ate lunch one day in a castle from the 1700's. The streets in Old Town are paved with cobblestones that must go WAY back, and Old Town does indeed mean Old Town.

And despite being old, the city looked sparklingly clean and (for lack of a better word) well-oiled. Public restrooms in bars and restaurants were pretty tidy, and I even got to use my first pay-toilet in the train station - 50 cents well-spent! I didn't see any homeless people at all, and practically no litter in the streets (I counted one pop can, total.) Very impressive.

I think overall, there was a fundamental difference in thinking between the Swedes and the Americans. We Americans like to have our Stuff - the house, the car, the backyard, the office at work with a door. While I'm sure that Swedes like Stuff too, I noticed a much greater feeling of community while I was there. People rode public transportation instead of driving. I noticed that a lot of them lived in apartments in high-rise buildings, rather than owned houses. (Many more apartment complexes than in the US.) In the Swedish ADC offices, many of them worked at desks adjacent to one another, instead of little individual cubes like we have in Dilbert-land. There was less of "my" space in the offices, and much more of "our" space. People congregated to a common area for well-attended coffee breaks, and they used office mugs which they kept in a little office cabinet, and washed daily in a little office dishwasher. It beat drinking coffee out of a styrofoam cup, and people were pretty good about rounding up their mugs and making sure they found their way back to the sink. (The building receptionist was responsible for running the mugs and glasses through the dishwasher. It was part of her job responsibilities, like sorting the mail.)

I'm sure a lot of that philosophy is tied to the economy in Sweden. The income tax is really high, but health care is essentially free. (A doctor's visit costs about $20, regardless of what you're seeing the doctor for. Same for prescriptions.) Schools are free to Swedish citizens, including college, where you even get a small stipend from the state! Apparently, the ability to take classes is a right of the people, and there is no "flunking out"; if you fail the same class 18 times and pass it on the 19th try, you continue along in your education from that point with no real penalties. I'm sure that many Americans might be put off by some of the socialist leanings, but I found Sweden to be a refreshing change from the cutthroat American Capitalism. (To over-generalize and put things in my naive terms: The Swedes seem to have a respect the infrastructure and the System. Americans seem to use the System only to benefit Me; to heck with you-all.)

The food was surprisingly good. I was told to expect fish, and they indeed had fish, but it was tasty (not my usual fish stix.) Lots of red meat animals as well, including reindeer (I still doubt that reindeer even exist. Just like Santa Claus.) Chicken is less common. Plenty of fruits and vegetables, and tasty veggies at that. We commented on how good their tomatoes were, where Minnesota tomatoes aren't so hot in the winter. Unfortunately, there was lots of McDonald's restaurants all over Stockholm. In downtown, you walk down the street, and there's usually one McDonald's in eyeshot at all times. And usually a Burger King across the street trying to keep up. There is a Swedish chain that competes with McDonald's, with a similar menu. We ate at one of them as a snack one day, and the food from the Swedish chain wasn't bad.

Swedish women are unbelievably attractive - I can see why everyone joked about the Swedish bikini team. I probably would never have survived adolescence if I was surrounded by such beauty at all times. God bless.

People drive smaller cars over there, which you probably already knew. Mostly European cars, like Volkswagens, Audis, BMWs, Mercedes, and Volvos. There were a few American cars, and very few Japanese cars. Hardly any Hondas! Plus a bunch of manufacturers I've never heard of (Opal? Who is Opal?). Plus, the models were all different; Ford apparently makes a teeny tiny little mini-car called a "Ka", about 2/3 the size of a VW Beetle. Tough to describe, but I'd love to own something that cute. Gas is expensive - about $4 a gallon.

I didn't get much of a chance to listen to the radio over there. All I had access to was a little clock radio in my room in the house, so I got about 10 minutes a day. The FM band had the same smattering of formats as the US - classic rock, top 40, lite rock, etc. The top 40 music over there has caught the same infection as American pop music, so it wasn't very accessible to my snooty ears. The classic rock station was pretty cool in small doses. They played familiar American and British rock from eons ago, all squashed together: ZZ Top, Sweet, The Clash, Blue Oyster Cult, and mercifully small amounts of Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles, only the zany male host and his female sidekick were speaking Swedish.

We had the tastiest pastries in Sweden. They're called semlor [I think], and they said they're only available between Christmas and Easter. (Kinda like how you can only find candy canes around Christmas.) Start with a little bread/cake roll, cut off the top 1/2-inch, add a 1/2-inch of whipped cream to the exposed part, then re-attach the top. Mmmm. Oh, and somehow, add a sweet almond filling inside, like the filling in a jelly donut. Mega-mmmm...

On the way back to the U.S., we spent a day in Iceland. Iceland was baffling. The landscape between the airport and the city looked a bit like the southwest desert - mostly flat, a small hill here and there, and mountains in the background - only the ground was covered with black, jagged volcanic rocks. We stayed one night in Reykjavik, and learned that nightlife starts pretty late out there. We walked to a local restaurant for some excellent seafood, then hit an Irish bar and left just as the place was filling up, at about midnight!

There's a lot of volcanic activity in Iceland, and the entire city of Reykjavik is heated geothermally, by pumping naturally hot water out of the ground. Cool! No pollution at all! Ever cooler is that next to the power plant, they artificially created a giant hot spring that you can bathe in: The "Blue Lagoon" was very cool, and we figured that there was an 80-degree difference between the water temperature and the air temperature. Yep - baffling.

Fortunately, I didn't have jet lag in either direction, which is pretty weird considering that Minneapolis and Stockholm are seven time zones apart. (Midnight out there = 5 PM at home, 7 AM out there = midnight at home the night before) They told me that the key to avoiding jet lag was to try and stay awake until the proper local bedtime. On the way out there, we made it until 8:30, and it was like staying up all night and going to sleep at 1:30 in the afternoon the next day. But it worked.

Unfortunately for the music world, I didn't get a chance to visit any record stores in Stockholm. The closest I got was 30 seconds in a mall store, which carried a boatload of CDs that I'd already heard of. Fooey. As a consolation, I did find a few pop compilation CDs in the Iceland airport, with a total of about 15 songs in Icelandic that were local hits there in the '70s and '80s. I can't pronounce any of them.

Oh, and we saw three moose. (Mooses? Meese? Mice?) We were driving through one of the small peninsula neighborhoods southeast of the city, and we spotted three mooses about 20 feet off the side of the road, just grazing and doing what mooses do. They grazed for a little while, then lumbered across the road to the other side. They're HUGE, but not the most graceful creatures. Our American ADC-er wasn't with us at the time, and was pretty annoyed to learn we'd seen meese; he's been there almost a year and hasn't seen one yet. We saw three deer, too, but that wasn't nearly as impressive as the meeses.

So now I've been overseas, and that pretty much dominated my little existence in February. While I was out of the house, Margaret took up the linoleum on the kitchen floor and refinished the bare wood underneath. It looks very nice, but I was less than thrilled about the seven weeks during which I couldn't walk in the kitchen.

Sweden observes daylight savings time just like us, but they start a week earlier than us (or is it later? I forget.)

The first half of winter was way warmer than average, and we got spoiled. After mid-February, it's been way colder than average, and we've had one of the snowiest Aprils on record. In fact the April weather has done this, all in the space of two weeks: snow, 91 degrees, snow, snow again. And so far, May is cold and rainy, with highs in the high 40's. Ah, Minnesota...

I did a bit of clothes shopping, and in April, we celebrated New Pants Week. It doesn't sound like a big deal, but consider that I buy clothes less often than I buy a house. The novelty is starting to wear off, but it's going to be hard to top New Pants Week for action-packed excitement.

My (extremely short) brother, Kenny, was out here last weekend. Minneapolis was a stop between Saskatchewan and Boston, and Kenny got to hang out with us for the whole weekend. And what a weekend it was:

Friday - Kenny flew in. Margaret made enchiladas for dinner, and for dessert, we rounded up our friend Kris and drove out to...the new Krispy Kreme donut shop, which opened only about a week ago. This may not sound like a big deal, but Minneapolis has practically no Dunkin' Donuts shops. (And there's a great story behind that, only I've forgotten too many details to retell it. If anyone has the urge to research why there aren't any Dunkin' Donuts in the Twin Cities, I'll gladly reproduce the story in my next letter.)

So, we drove up at 9:30 PM on a Friday, and there was a traffic cop directing the cars into the drive-thru. What a zoo! We parked across the street and got on line. It was a half-hour wait, and Kris, Kenny and I eventually got a total of 6 dozen donuts. Good eatin's! They were gone by the end of the weekend.

Saturday - A co-worker threw a party just over the border in Wisconsin. Serious meat activity: barbecued ribs, deep-fried turkey, and piles of crawfish. Margaret took a crawfish home as a pet, and now he's named Claude. Good eatin's! (No, we're not going to eat Claude.)

Sunday - We threw our now-annual Cinco De Mayo party, and I think it was a smashing success. The theme was low-end food, and included five different varieties of microwave burritos, plus a boatload of Little Debbie snack cakes for dessert. Kenny's birthday was right after the party, so he got what amounted to a Little Debbie birthday cake. Good eatin's! Unfortunately, there were a LOT of leftovers, and it looks like I'll be eating these things until next year.

Crap From The Past got a major upgrade to the website (crapfromthepast.com) It now has an archive of every CFTP show I've ever done (except for about 40 shows in 1996, which should be up by the end of the year.) Ten years worth of shows, and over 450 HOURS of streaming RealAudio, available on demand anytime. Good eatin's!

Otherwise, I'm (remarkably) still employed. I think ADC is trying to sell off its photonics division, since we're not making any money, and our forecasts show that we won't be making any money until around 2005. Oy vey! The 45-minute commute has made me cranky and irritable, and I am no fun to be around when I get out of the car at the beginning of the work day, and right after I get home. Oh well, something's gotta give soon, and any change will be welcome.

So Happy Mother's Day to all, and may all of you have a great New Pants Week!

Ron & Margaret

Ron's Big Life Update - February 2002

Well, I think four months is certainly long enough between these giant life updates. So happy holidays, and a safe and happy new year to you all. If that doesn't qualify me for the latest holiday greetings in history, just wait until next year...

The last time I wrote was in November, when I was in danger of being downsized by my company, ADC. Well, I'm still at ADC, and it looks like we're free and clear until May, which is when any layoffs would occur on the calendar. Living fiscal quarter-to-fiscal-quarter is not the way to run a business, and for a while last year, we were living layoffs-to-layoffs. The telecom industry is still far from healthy overall, but it looks like we hit rock bottom late in 2001, and at least we've stabilized there for a while. So I'm just happy to be working at all.

My day-to-day activities have changed quite a bit over the last few months. During our last "reorganization" late last year, I was essentially traded to another ADC facility, about 40 miles from the old building, and 25 miles from my house. The change doubled my commute, and now I'm in a building with no cafeteria (oh GREAT!), doing computer modeling for telecom lasers. Our product looks like a computer chip with a fiber coming out of it, so it doesn't have the whiz-bang cool look of a laser pointer or a CD. Drat! But there's plenty of work to be done, and I'm just happy to be working at all.

And the irony of me working on lasers is plentiful; every time I took a lasers class in grad school (spanning two schools and three time zones), I always got the lowest grade in the class. Without fail. I tried hard, but I couldn't make it sink in. And now I'm exposed to it every day...

On the plus side, I get to do a bit of corporate travel, and I leave Monday for SWEDEN! I have a few days in Stockholm, and I'll be traveling with two other guys from ADC. I wanted to bring Margaret along (a perfect Valentine's Day present), but the three of us are staying in somebody's house over there, and Margaret got vetoed. I still feel pretty bad about not bringing her, so we'll probably take a trip somewhere this spring to appease my conscience.

So the big news: Last year's Emergency Room competition ended in a tie, 1-1. Margaret got stitches in her thumb, and I had The Plague. Personally, I think The Plague beats stitches hands down, but a tie is still a tie. So far, 2002 is tied up at 0-0. Dull...

"Crap From The Past" turned 10 years old in January. I have the longest-running retro show on the Twin Cities airwaves, and (as expected) my anniversary was virtually ignored by everyone in the business. Oh well. I'll be making fancy CFTP shirts next month for pledge drive premiums, which should be sty-lin'!

There have been quite a few holidays since the last time I wrote, so I'll retrace my steps.

We celebrated Thanksgiving with my family in New York. Mom made turkey (yay!), my brother Kenny flew into town (yay!), and we et and et and et. Mom inadvertently cooked the turkey upside down, and it was the best turkey we've ever had anywhere, so I heartily endorse cooking your next turkey upside down. Juuuuuuuuuuicy...

And immediately after we finished eating with Mom, Kenny went out with his friends to go eat some more. Ain't life sweet?

Kenny had some nice stories about the pearls of wisdom he's received over the years from convenience store clerks. A Dunkin' Donuts guy in New Jersey once told him, "You must learn to live with disappointment." Which is unquestionably the most dignified way of saying Tough Patooty that I've ever heard.

Kenny recalled an incident at a 7-11 in New York that sounds exactly like Apu from The Simpsons. Kenny wanted a fountain drink, and was pointing at one of the sample cups on top of the machine. "Do you want this one?" and the clerk pointed to the 12-ounce cup. No, bigger. "This one?" to the 16-ounce cup. No, bigger. 20-ounce? Bigger. The clerk's expression got more and more surprised as he worked his way down the line. 32-ounce? 44-ounce? 64-ounce? Finally, Kenny reached the end of the line, much to the horror of the clerk: 96-ounces. He told Kenny, "This will make you very happy," and it indeed made Kenny very happy. Those guys know everything.

The weather was perfect in NY last November, and we spent 3 or 4 full days driving around New York and north Jersey visiting friends I haven't seen in a while. We had brunch with Karen and Brian, the couple whose wedding we missed when Margaret had her gall bladder removed two summers ago. (Gall stones are still in our fridge, and still look unpleasantly like old hard-boiled egg yolks.) The running joke during the brunch was that Karen offered to make pancakes if we wanted them, but there was so much other yummitude that we politely declined. A few days after we got back, I told Karen that we changed our minds - we'd like pancakes after all. Ha-ha's all the way around. Well, about a week later, we got a priority mail box from Karen and Brian: a pancake and strawberry syrup, sealed in a ziplock bag! Big HA-HA's all the way around. I kept the pancake for a few months, sealed inside a few concentric ziplock bags, but I finally tossed it when it looked like the green pancake creatures wanted out. A joke is only funny until the EPA gets involved...

I noticed an unfortunate trend in suburban NYC - the replacement of small local stores with giant national chains. Granted, some of the old stores were all that terrific (Caldor, Pergament, and dozens of others that Kenny and I didn't work at when we were kids, like Rickels, Bamberger's, Rock Bottom), but at least they had some sort of personality of their own. Now, virtually all of them are gone, replaced by Home Depot, Target, Wal-Mart, and the 2nd biggest mall in the country (right behind Minnesota's own Mall Of America - joy!) Case in point: While at Mom's house, I needed to buy shaving cream, packing tape, and a set of Allan wrenches. These are three fairly unrelated items, and while I could see finding all of them under one roof at a Target/Wal-Mart store, I just wanted to stay away from traffic (on the day after Thanksgiving, mind you) and pick them up at a small mom & pop place. Once I thought about what was still left in the county, I realized that there just aren't any more mom & pop places. I couldn't think of a single drugstore or hardware store that didn't involve a trip to the giant mall. So I trekked out to the Target at the giant mall on the day after Thanksgiving, cursing and swearing at the poorly-designed traffic patterns and trying to avoid the thousands of other disgruntled shoppers who also ran out of packing tape, shaving cream, and Allan wrenches. If the New York City area is an indicator of what the rest of the country will be like in 20 years (as I read somewhere), then wave goodbye to local culture and say hello to giant, impersonal corporate Americana. Quick easy shopping at the huge Wal-Mart, fancy dining at the Subway, Applebee's, and Starbuck's, and nary a dissenting voice left to be heard. I was appalled.

Unfortunately, that's the very same issue that I've been dealing with in the radio world for years. I work for a tiny, local station that's run by community people. The contrast between my station and the corporate-run commercial stations gets more apparent every year, and I think people are wising up to their cookie-cutter mentality. I say, go local, and I'll step down off my soapbox now.

While we were in NY, we drove into Manhattan for a day, and hooked up with some old friends (Charles and J) who've lived there almost as long as I've known them. J lives on a little-traveled street, and there's always parking in front of his apartment (yes, that's FREE parking in Manhattan). J, you can't ever move from that apartment! We did all the things that New Yorkers do - ride the subway, eat pizza, and curse and swear a lot. (I'm kidding about that last one. To be fair, Manhattanites are some of the most polite city dwellers I've run across anywhere. The Big Apple has come a long way since the dark days of the '80s.) We also went down to the World Trade Center site to see how the cleanup was going. It's been hard to describe to Minnesotans just how big those buildings were. It's probably three times bigger than anything in Minneapolis, and I mean three times bigger in all three dimensions. (Total volume - 27 times larger than anything out here.)

While I had a pretty good knowledge of Manhattan, most of my experience was farther north than the WTC site, and I didn't know the surrounding streets very well. It's at the southwest corner of Manhattan, with nothing to the west but the Hudson River, and only a few blocks to the south. Unless you were on an elementary school field trip to the financial district, there wasn't much of a draw to locations that far south in Manhattan. J knows the area much better than I do - he used to cycle along some of the west side streets that have been closed since September.

We took the subway down to a stop a few blocks south of the site, then walked north. At the time, the streets had barricades so that you couldn't get within three or four blocks of the cleanup. What a mess! We'd all seen the pictures on TV, but it was very humbling to see just how far and wide the damage spread. If you were to follow the barricades around all three sides (the fourth side would have been at the Hudson River), you'd walk about a mile. A few of the surrounding side streets were completely torn up to expose the utility lines underneath. (That was fascinating all by itself - nobody ever gets to see all the stuff two feet underneath the pavement, and I can easily see why local utility service has been spotty since September. Lotsa pipes. LOTSA pipes...) And it's still tough for me to get a sense of scale, since I hadn't spent much time gazing upward from the base of the buildings. There were some 30-story buildings just adjacent to the site, and it was very difficult for me to imagine the two towers, THREE TIMES TALLER than these giant 30-story buildings that were standing in front of me. God bless the New Yorkers - those folks have been through a lot lately, and still rank as the most polite of all the big-city people I've run across.

So Thanksgiving was in New York, which was nice. Christmas was in Florida, which was even nicer. We flew into Tampa, rented a car and drove down to Fort Lauderdale to spend a few days with my grandmother (now 91) and Kenny, who flew in for the weekend. After a few days in Fort Lauderdale, we drove back up to Tampa to spend Christmas at Margaret's sister's house with her side of the family. Seven days in Florida does a Minnesota-body good...

We rented the smallest tin can we could get - a brand new 2002 Kia with 900 miles on it. (We would put another 900 on it before we gave it back.) The gas mileage was fine and it drove OK, but I wouldn't want to own one.

Tampa was fun - family and gifts are always a good time. Margaret and I ate at our favorite Cuban restaurant again (Viva "La Teresita"!), twice. It would be wonderful to go there with the whole family, but I don't think something like that will ever happen until the nieces and nephews are grown and out of the house. Aside from the time that Margaret and I sneaked away, Tampa was a kid-centric visit, to say the least.

Fort Lauderdale was a blast. We drove out there through one of the two-lane highways right through the Everglades. Margaret loves the weird nature stuff, so we stopped at a pull-out deep in the heart of the Everglades to check out nature. Margaret found two feathers while she was wandering around. ("I'd say they were from some type of bird." "Thanks, Ron. You've been very helpful.") We showed up at Grandma's house, and Grandma was waiting for us, along with an anniversary card from my aunt and uncle! (Six years already? We keep forgetting our anniversary because it falls so close to the holidays.)

Naturally, we were given a short list of little chores around Grandma's house. (Last year, we bought some furnace filters and changed the battery in the smoke detector. Very easy for us, not so easy for Grandma.) She wanted one of her lamps re-wired, so after an easy trip to Home Depot (I know, don't get me started), and five minutes with a screwdriver, I delivered a perfectly-functioning lamp. She also wanted some flowers planted in the front yard, so Margaret used the same trip to HD to buy one of every color for some particular kind of flower (I forget which kind - she's the gardener in the family). I re-wired, Margaret planted, and Grandma was very happy indeed.

When my grandparents moved down to Florida in 1972, one of the first decorations on their lawn was a ceramic mushroom that my grandmother had painted by hand. It sat on the lawn uneventfully for 29 years, until it mysteriously disappeared in 2001. Someone took Grandma's ceramic mushroom?!? Why?!? Margaret and I thought that was pretty funny, so when we found an incredibly ugly ceramic mushroom at a dollar store near Grandma's house, we bought it, and Margaret planted it right next to the new flower bed without telling Grandma. As Grandma was inspecting her new flowers, the resulting conversation was priceless: "Margaret, where did that come from?" "Well, mushrooms sometimes just sprout up." That seemed to make everybody happy.

Then Kenny showed up. We let him replace a curtain in the garage, because he's the tallest. (You want to be the tallest one in the family? Then, fine. YOU get the tall jobs...) Then the eating began, as it always does at these family gatherings. My grandmother took us to a local Italian restaurant, where the "lighter fare" section of the menu included eggplant parmesan. (No joke.) Tasty, and heavy.

The next day, Grandma wanted us to take her to the restaurant of our choice. We weren't so sure this was a good idea, since I couldn't see her really enjoying the Cuban-style food of the local places. But we found a Colombian restaurant about a mile from her house (walking distance!), and it looked promising enough, so we brought her there. The restaurant was probably new, and still had the sheen of people trying really hard to please. Very friendly wait staff, huge portions, and even live music (a guy playing a little keyboard and singing). They were putting in the effort, and we appreciated it. Margaret, Kenny, and I got sort of a sampler plate - one of everything. Slab of meat, slab of different kind of meat, pork rind thing, beans. All in all, mighty tasty, and a bit similar to Cuban food. (I'd never had Colombian food before.) Fortunately, Grandma found something on the menu that was closer to her tastes - a grilled chicken breast, tossed salad, white rice, french fries. She said her food was very bland. She said that a couple of times, until we realized that being bland was a good thing for her. Well, if she didn't like it, then she was a good sport about it, and we probably won't take there the next time we visit. (We'll go without her and eat ourselves silly!)

We got some good stories out of her during the visit. One time, she went to use a pay phone, put in a dime, and essentially hit the jackpot - a flood of dimes came out the coin return! Wow! Just like in the cartoons! Another story was from our childhood, from when we used to visit the grandparents as kids. There were always plastic pitchers of lemonade and iced tea in the fridge, and the way that we could tell them apart was that the lemonade pitcher had a big masking tape "T" on it. The tea pitcher had no distinguishing features, but the lemonade was "T". I still don't know why.

We were told to pack our bathing suits, because we'd have to go to the pool. It's the law. As kids, when my folks would bring us down to visit, the highlight would always be trips to the community pool. The residents were all senior citizens (it was a senior community, after all), the younger adults were children of the residents, and the only kids running around were somebody's grandkids - just like us. Just adjacent to the pool were the shuffleboard courts, and there were always people playing shuffleboard. If you've never seen shuffleboard, the goal is to give your little plastic disc (about the size of a small frisbee) a shove with a big stick, and try and get the disc to land in one of some painted squares at the other end of the court. A leisurely game, to say the least. The different squares had different point values, and you'd keep score on some small blackboards at one end of the courts with a piece of big, oversized chalk. (Why was the chalk always so big?) I remember shuffleboard being a big deal back then, and Grandma tells me that everyone played; there were shuffleboard leagues that would compete pretty seriously, and I remember having to wait my turn on the courts to play against Kenny. Well, this time, after we dried off from the pool, we showed Margaret the shuffleboard courts. She'd never seen the game before, and it was fun for Kenny and me to explain the significance of the game from our childhood.

The equipment was still in the creaky little closet - the wire racks that held a series of mismatched discs (so that you always had to mix and match to get a full set of your color), the poles that were coming apart just enough so that they always need to be screwed back together, some bowling pins that we never figured out how to incorporate, and a set of erasers and oversized chalk. Kenny and I marveled that it was just like we remembered it - we even joked that our scores were probably still on the blackboards from our last visit in 1982.

Except that this time, there was no one on the courts. It slowly sunk in that all the people who played this sport 20 years ago have passed on. Shuffleboard, apparently, belonged to a particular age group at a particular point in time, and was not something that got passed from generation to generation. I can't speak for Kenny, but I felt a very real sense of loss as we played our first game of shuffleboard in 20 years, knowing that we were probably the only people to touch the equipment in eons, and that we would probably be the last people to play until another set of full-grown grandkids wandered onto the courts out of curiosity. However, it didn't stop us from playing the kind of game that would have gotten us kicked off the courts instantly, 20 years ago...

So we had an afternoon to kill, and Margaret and I decided to drag Kenny to the giant swap meet in Fort Lauderdale. Back in Tucson, we used to go to the swap meet to get our fill of sunburn and cheap junk, so we thought we'd check out the local flavors in Fort Lauderdale. It was HUGE - probably 4 times the size of the Tucson swap meet. I don't think we bought anything, but we ate chili dogs and ice cream, and spent too much time in the sun: it's the True Meaning of the Swap Meet. We used to joke that you could get everything you need in life at the swap meet, and that was certainly true here. Margaret found a guy who sold jewelry tools. She was looking for a tiny anvil, but his English wasn't so good, and the only way she could convey what she wanted was to draw it. He immediately recognized the drawing as "Oh! Poosnya! I don't have." I don't know what language the word "poosnya" is, but it clearly meant "anvil", and he clearly didn't have any. I was most fascinated by the vast array knock-off products, like the "Halo Kitty" items. There were even two different knock-offs of Crest toothpaste - Chance and Crescent, both with artwork in the same Crest font. Bizarre! And now that we've seen it, we probably won't go back. That thing ties up traffic for miles in all directions.

On our last afternoon there, we had a few hours before we were to meet Grandma for dinner, I had a bizarre idea. I must have been in a reflective mood from the shuffleboard, and I wanted to drive up to West Palm Beach to go see the apartment where my other set of grandparents used to live (they passed away many years ago). I hadn't been up there since I was 12, and although I didn't remember much about how to get there, I figured my keen Gerber sense of direction would guide us there intact. Kenny hadn't been up there since he was 12 either, and he seemed up for the ride. Margaret didn't object, so the three of us piled into the Kia, and off we went.

From my childhood, I remembered only sketchy details about the drive up there. I knew you get on the Florida Turnpike north, and I remembered something about the distance 37 miles, and that was all. I figured that there was a ticket you got when you got on the Turnpike, and the distance between exits must have been 37 miles. But beyond that, I was putting my faith in that tiny bit of directional instinct - the same instinct that lets a cat find its way home from hundreds of miles away.

So we drove north, and the Turnpike looked completely unfamiliar. Maybe it's because I used to sleep on the drive, or maybe it really has changed in the 20 years since I last rode on it. But either way, when I saw the sign for "Okeechobee Blvd", I knew immediately that was the exit. Kenny agreed. And sure enough, it was 37 miles from when we got on the Turnpike.

The exit ramp looked completely unfamiliar, and when we came to a traffic light at the end, we just guessed, uh... let's turn left. We drove only about 100 feet when Kenny pointed and said, "There it is!" Yup, we'd just passed a sign on the left side of the road for "Century Village", the large retirement community whose name we'd completely forgotten, but a name that Kenny recognized immediately. We turned around and drove up to the gate.

I was unprepared to talk to the person manning the gate. (The gate was unmanned back when we were kids.) He asked who I was visiting, and rather than explain that the people I knew in Century Village had been gone for 15 years and that I just wanted to drive around and see if it still looks the same, I gave him the names of my grandparents, knowing full well that they wouldn't be on the directory. I'm a terrible liar (I probably should have given the just-driving-around explanation) and we got turned away at the gate. Kenny and I remembered that there was another gate around the corner, so we got back on Okeechobee Blvd. and marveled at how large Century Village was. We turned left at the first light, and Kenny predicted that there would be a Dairy Queen right...THERE! How did he remember that? He was right, of course, and a short distance later we found the other gate and turned into the driveway. It, too, had a gatekeeper, and since I didn't want to bother anybody, we just sat in the car on the driveway for a minute, looking in and trying to remember what it looked like on the inside.

Seeing the second gate brought back all sorts of memories for me, and although our Kia remained parked at the driveway, my mind's eye could travel vividly past the gate to the square perimeter road that encircles the entire community, where you turn right at the pool, go all the way around to the northwest corner of the complex, turn right, then right, then left, onto streets whose names escape me, then you park in the visitor's spaces, walk up the concrete staircase (which had big side rails - big enough to house a bee's nest; I got stung once), turn left at the top of the stairs, and Lila and Dave, my grandparents, lived in the first apartment on the left. "208 Dorchester I". (Kenny, how on earth did you remember that?) I remembered their cozy little apartment, with the sliding doors on the bathrooms and another one that separated the living room from the bedroom, as if there weren't enough room for hinged doors. I remembered the little screened-in balcony outside the bedroom, with the green astroturf carpeting. I remembered their little radio and record player, with their copy of Bobby Freeman's "C'mon And Swim" album. I could picture it all clear as day, and from the few glances I caught over the wall, it all looked exactly the same, just like the shuffleboard courts.

With little else to do in West Palm Beach, I pulled out of the Century Village driveway and headed back toward Fort Lauderdale. We were very quiet during the drive back. I felt stupid for driving all the way up there and then getting stopped at the gate, and I think Kenny and I were both lost in Century Village, circa 1980. Maybe I'll go back the next time I visit Florida and try to smooth-talk the guard at the gate. Or maybe I won't, knowing that Century Village will probably still be there, looking like it did when I was a kid. Except that there won't be anybody on the shuffleboard courts.

Well, I hope you and yours have a happy holiday season, and a happy new year. (!) We're on pace for the warmest winter on record here in Minneapolis, and I'm not complaining one peep.

Stay warm,
Ron & Margaret