I Have NOT been Tagged

My wife was tagged to list seven random things about herself. She complied. I thought I should beat her to the punch in case she ever finds out that I’m once again blogging. I know she would want to reach out and tag me, seeing that she is constantly poking me in facebook.

So here goes. Seven random things, things that will probably surprise those who don’t know me that well.

1. I’m now taking an improv class at a local high school Monday nights. It’s pretty wild.
2. I lettered in high school. Not in baseball, not in football, but in debate.
3. I was murdered once, when I was the lead in a one act play in college--”The Claw.”

Well, that’s enough excitement for today.

Gooooooogle Again!

They continue to surprise me. I was looking for an address this afternoon. I went to click on satellite view and found something new to me--a button labeled "street view." Of course I had to click it on. And low and behold, there in living color was a view from street level, allowing one to look up and down a street or over at the houses or businesses on the block. Coooooool.

What will gooooooogle do next?

Happy Birthday Abe!

It's now Fat Tuesday plus one week. It's also Abraham Lincoln's birthday.

Because of our government's decision a few decades back, we can now give Clinton and old "W" equal billing with Abe and celebrate President's Day next Monday. An early happy birthday to all.

Unable to comment on my wife's blog

I actually read my wife's blog today, and caught up on reading what she's been up to for the last three weeks or so. However, since I'm blogging incognito, I'm unable to comment on her blog, lest she suspect that I'm blogging again.

So here is my comment. The swamp story???!!!???!!!

My iPod holds approximately 10,000 songs or one of my wife's retelling of her swamp story. (Sorry Steven Wright. I stole that joke from his recent CD, "I Still Have a Pony," which I got Saturday with my Christmas gift card from Best Buy.)

Steven Wright still has his edge. It's worth a listen.

Declining Social Status

Facebook is fun, sort of. I don’t have time to go into how it all started for me, (maybe some other time when I’m not enthralled in a tough head-to-head battle of Scrabulous.) But following is the real rub.

Facebook, as almost everyone knows by now, is a social networking site. It’s a great way to connect or reconnect with people from all over the world, helping to make this planet even more “flat.” One way this is done on facebook is through the countless number of applications. Some are useful, helpful, interesting, or fun. Others are downright stupid and annoying. I won’t say which category this applications falls into, but this one ranks people. I think it’s called “Compare People.” I don’t know how I got included in this app, but somehow I get notices on a regular basis on how I stack up against those on my friends list.

This morning’s notice let me know that my status has slipped. I am no longer ranked as high as I was. Others among my group of friends are now considered better than me. I have dropped a full 13 places. Ouch. How will my ego deal with this?

The category in question?? “Two left feet Tim” has fallen from #13 to #26 in the category of best dancer. This should probably make all my Baptist friends ecstatic. On the positive side, it will probably help if my wife ever asks me again about square dancing. And I suppose it’s not a bad thing to happen during Lent.

Idea # 2

Grateful for the Game I'm in.

comment: probably not the strongest memoir, because of the four two- & three-letter words.

P.S. This is kinda cool--writing undercover. The Warden has no idea I'm doing this.

Possible Epitaph

Building bridges by boldly embracing paradoxes.

I Can Summarize my Life in Six Words or Less

This morning we listened to my son’s iPod. He has an extremely wide repertoire of great songs, and he always comes up with a great mix for us. But by 1 p.m. I needed some talk. I needed some Mischke. (Tommy Mischke, for the uninformed, hosts a show from noon to 2 and is easily the funniest guy on radio.) Mischke was his usual self today, having us alternately grinning and chuckling out loud.

At work with my son and I this week is a friend from Moldova. He moved here about four years ago and is proficient in all phases of construction, drywall included. His English, however, is still in its infancy. He probably didn’t catch much of what Tommy was talking about, but his comment was enlightening. After listening for about a half hour, he said “that man is very happy.” He didn’t say funny, but rather happy. Funny is usually the label that Mischke gets tagged with, but I like happy. Happy is usually how I feel after listening to him.

He had us laughing at lots of things today, but the item that stuck with me wasn’t a laugh out loud funny one. Rather it concerned summarizing one’s life. He talked about a magazine, Smith magazine and a book that they publish, which includes “six-word memoirs by Writers Famous & Obscure.” The topic was intriguing. Supposedly the impetus for this book was a challenge once given to Ernest Hemmingway, the master of pithy sentences.

Ernie was challenged by a guy in a bar to write a short story in six words. He took the bet and responded to the guy with these six words.
For sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Those simple six words quickly conjure up some pretty strong feelings, emotions, and pictures in the old mind.

Anyways, back to the book, it has almost 1,000 six-word memoirs. And their website allows folks to add their own to the mix. So I’ve been thinking. But I think it’s still too soon for me to come up with something worthy of putting on paper.

So for now I’ll leave it merely as a challenge for myself and for those who read these words.

Blogging For Lent

It should be too early for Ash Wednesday. It’s only the first week in February. The snow is piled deep and the winds are still cold. Cool is still weeks away.

But it’s here. That holy day that falls furthest from the weekend.

It got me thinking--about lent and self-denial and self-discipline and self-sacrifice. I never checked in anywhere to get my ashes, but lent is still here, ready or not. Am I ready? Do I still play along? Should I self-examine and find something from which to abstain?

Since I don’t consider coffee a bad habit, and fast food red meat is never a temptation, what is a good old Midwestern boy supposed to do?

After some sole searching (by myself that is), I figured that I would give a run at abstaining from my blogging abstinence. Forty days during the height of the infamous American tax season, that time of year when I personally moonlight and ignore my wife, might not be an optimal time to attempt such a feat. But who knows, miracles do happen.

Thursday

Didn't blog today. Watched the Office.

Wednesday

I didn't blog on Wednesday.

I am woman, my wife is man, hear us roar

Both of us, unbeknownst to the other, answered some questions to determine which "Office" character we were. This was a facebook application that was a temptation to each of us. The results, as hinted to above in the title, I am Pam Beesly and my beloved is Jim Talpert. We've got some sorting out to do. Maybe that's what happens when you turn 50.

Happy Birthday

That says it all.

The Return of THO

There are rewards for blogging. After posting my blog this evening, I took a quick look at it only to have my eyes stray to the the right where I saw that much loved link "The Holy Observer," with the sad message that it has not been updated since 2004. I click on it anyways. And to my surprise, IT IS BACK!!!!!!

Hallelujah. What a Christmas present. Check it out.

Some kind of Play

Now that I’ve broken the ice and blogged, here I go again. In episode two of Suzi’s birth week I venture to give a report of last evening. Vada voom vada voom. Well, not quite. We headed to bed a little earlier than usual and popped in a DVD. It’s one that I bought with my belated birthday gift card to Border’s Books. After hours of perusing and lusting over the too many books, I broke down and purchased two DVDs—a Neil Young concert and a documentary.

We’ve kinda sorta gotten into documentaries this summer. Maybe it started when we watched one at Cornerstone on Reverend Billy and his stop shopping campaign. After coming back from our July vacation I started picking up DVDs at the library. I think the first one was “Word Wars,” a look at the competitive Scrabble champions of the world. What an odd collection of delightful eccentrics. Then we grabbed one called “Devil’s Playground” chronicling the lives of horse-and-buggy Amish teen-agers who are given the chance to sow their wild oats when they turn 16, without any parental restraints. As Laugh-ins Arte Johnson said “very interesting.”

Then it was one on the Hindenburg and then some others, but to move this story along: last night we watched “Wordplay.” “Wordplay” looks into the lives of people who complete and compete for the New York Times Daily Crossword puzzle. Besides starring Bill Clinton, Bob Dole, and the Daily Show host, John Stewart, it featured the editor of the NYT puzzle himself, Will Shortz. I was amazed at how different themes were built into each puzzle and surprised by how quickly the regulars could solve an entire puzzle. However, even with the amazement and surprise and delight, we didn’t quite make it all the way through, falling asleep before the final credits rolled.

Well, maybe tonight.

Turning Fifty

I read a blog today. So is that big news? Well, maybe if it’s been four months since I’ve completed such a task.

It was a good blog. It chronicled the day after Thanksgiving. And I was even mentioned in the blog. That always makes reading material more interesting, when you see your own name in print. It’s worth reading.

I’ve thought about blogging a bit these past many months. But how would I break back into it after such a long absence? What would be important enough to write about?

I guess being married to a fifty year old woman might be reason enough. In a mere two days I will be married to a fifty year old woman. Maybe I need to write that again just so it will sink in and not be such a shock—a fifty year old woman. I guess if I contemplate this too long, it might lead me into some sort of depression or despair. It could cause me to confront my own mortality.

However, as I roll things around in my head, as I consider who that soon-to-be-50 gal is, my mind is not unsettled. My heart in fact is gladdened. As that brochure, which my S. O. referenced, brought laughs to her many friends, so the thought that the “half-century one” is none other than my wonderful Suzi, my whole being rejoices. She’s a lot of fun, and I still appreciate her great big heart. It’s great to be loved. I hope I can return the favor for many years to come.

And the Blog Goes On

It’s down to the last minute for me to blog this month. Tomorrow we leave the comforts of Minnesota for the oppressive regions of middle Illinois. And most likely I will not have internet access, so the time is now.

Last Tuesday evening I sat in a circle (as we always do) at our Bible (or sermon) discussion group at Solomon’s Porch. Each week to “break the ice” we start by giving our full name (first, middle, and last) and then answering a question, in brief or at length, about ourselves. The question de jour for Tuesday was “what are you skilled at, or at what do you excel?”

That is a tougher question than it appears—at least for me. At first I thought about work related stuff, i.e. drywall taping, but then I decided to share my passion for playing board games, i.e. Scrabble, Risk, Blokus, Carcassonne, Settlers of Cataan, and on and on. I claimed proficiency, yeah even excellence at these endeavors. I love to strategize and plan around a table. For me it’s a wonderful meaningful way to socialize.

But the reason I mention this story is for the response of the gentleman seated to my immediate left. He’s a very thoughtful, articulate, well-read, maybe a bit nerdy, yet attentive guy. Maybe he struggled too in coming up with an answer. But he responded by claiming that he must be pretty good at blogging. He said he wasn’t sure, but he was amazed at how many hits his blog has received since its inception a year and a half ago. Then he gave us a number which was too high for me to remember. I forget if it was tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or more. Whatever, I figured he must have something important to say.

Well, in checking out the site I find out he writes about crossword puzzles! Crossword puzzles as in the New York Times daily crossword puzzle. Why didn’t I think of that? I ramble on erratically about no specific topic, when I could have picked a frivolous activity and thereby captured a focal point upon which to build my words. Oh well.

Also interesting, I found out when searching for his blog that earlier this decade this chap actually taught a class at a local university on the very subject of blogging. (They sure didn’t offer any blogging classes at the college I attended—back in the late 70s.) And I found that our blog rolls, shared a common blog, namely “Katie’s Beer.” (However, one might never realize that since I have given this blog a more personal, endearing title.) The things one learns at a Bible discussion group.

Well, I did it. I broke the ice. I kept my buns in the chair long enough. I gave my wife something to read. So here it is—another month, another post.

Suzi sent me flowers (it's a double petunia!)

 

Double Petunia (bless you)

To beat the rush at the end of the month, I've decided to post my monthly blog on this 19th day. Early.

For some reason (certainly unknown to me) the phrase "double petunia" popped into my head this afternoon. It was an expression I haven’t thought of since high school. So I asked the Warden, “do you know what double petunia is?”

Well, she didn’t, and doesn’t, and probably will not in the foreseeable future unless I tell her.

So here is my best recollection of what is double petunia:

A petunia is a flower like a begonia,
A begonia is a meat like a sausage,
Sausage and battery is a crime,
Monkeys crime trees,
Trees a crowd,
A rooster crowd and made a noise,
A noise is on your face just like your eyes,
Eyes is the opposite of nays,
A horse neighs and has a colt,
You go to bed with a colt and wake up in the morning with double petunia.

I now beg absolution for not burying that ditty further in my brain, away from any chance of surfacing again.

This does speak volumes of my high school education. Hail Armstrong!

Last chance to blog in April

the title says it all