Snow Country for Old Men

Suburban living for the 21st century male has several key milestones.

There's the point where you decide to pay a guy to take care of your yard because who needs that aggravation?

There's the point where you switch from a propane grill to a wood chunk charcoal smoker (dude, don't even bring that charcoal brick stuff around my house. What do you think this is, Gladstone?).

And then there's the day when you get your power snow thrower.

Of these three, I think the final one represents the furthest stage of "maturity." I mean, it seems like a bit of an extravagance. You're spending a couple hundred bucks or so on an appliance that you'll use maybe once or twice a year? But when you have a snow event the likes of which we had this week, you damn well are grateful that you have a snow shovel that you can plug in or power up and just walk behind to clear your driveway. That goes double if, like a majority of the guys on my block, you have "advanced experience in the role of life."

Me? I kind of take it as a point of pride that I haven't yet crossed that threshold. I'm still young. I'm able bodied. I ain't 'fraid of a little cold white stuff, and shoveling it off my driveway is my manly duty, a rite of passage each winter that, like the out-taking of the trash and the smashing of the spiders, proves how important I am to this family.

So I wasn't at all daunted when I opened the garage door Thursday afternoon to attack the thick layer of white stuff in my driveway. Hell, I was kind of looking forward to it!

Before: A tabula rasa

10 inches exactly

Then, I moved the first shovel full. This was a heavy snow.

And when I say it was a heavy snow, I don't just mean there was a lot of it. Don't get me wrong, there WAS a lot of it, but it was also quite wet and heavy. This was going to be a tougher job than I was expecting.

Frost thing's first. I shovel a path from the garage door to the end of the driveway. Whew, this is tough. Next, shovel out the rest of one side of the driveway.

Halfway done with half the driveway

By the time I'm halfway done with half the driveway, I've worked up quite a sweat -- a manly sweat, mind you. I can see that I'd better do little advanced planning for the post-shoveling recuperation.

I'm going to need this later...

I shed my coat and get on with the job. Soon, I've got half the driveway cleared. That's enough to get one of our cars out of the two-car garage, just in case we have some kind of emergency (like running out of Scotch). I've also got a helluva backache, which makes that Scotch emergency all the more likely.

After

It all got me wondering just how much snow I moved. We had our driveway and sidewalk replaced last summer, so I know that the area I shoveled is about 907 square feet (130,608 square inches). Multiply that by the 10 inches of snow over the whole thing and you end up with 1,386,080 cubic inches of snow, or 802.13 cubic feet¹. That all converts into a pretty seriously stiff back the next day.

But numbers aside, I was prepared to reward myself for a job... well... done.

Time for a cold one

Also, I'm totally going to get a snow thrower before next winter.

1) All math calculations done by the Internet and may be subject to my complete ineptitude at mathematics.

  tagged: winter, snow, Kansas, shoveling, beer, snowstorm, blizzard, weather

End zone

Let's face it. In the grand scheme of things, sports American style, aren't all that important.

To misquote my good friend Rick Blaine, "The problems of grown men playing a child's game don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."

But then again, in the grand scheme of things, what is important? Spending time with friends and family? Getting the most enjoyment of what little time we have together? Accepting that life is suffering, and it's better to do it with people we love than alone?

Curtis Kitchen has a great post today. It's about an old story. A tragic story that happens over and over, and will happen to all of us eventually. 

Still, there's something to be said for an old story well told.

Five of his sons were in the room, as were a daughter-in-law and an infant granddaughter, a full group that would spend the next week together starting the next day, nearly 24 hours per day, in a hospice care facility. The NFC Championship game was on the hospital television, and while the volume had been kept low for the most part, it was turned up as a replay was analyzed. The camera flashed to San Francisco coach Jim Harbaugh, who clearly disagreed with the replay call on a disputed completed pass.

As his morphine intake increased in a morbid race against his body’s increasing pain, Dad had spent recent days mostly asleep, only waking when his failing body demanded water, or when a nurse would attempt to move him in his bed. However, as it turned out, that replay moment came in the middle of Dad’s last rally, and he had gone as far as to sit up a bit in bed, fully alert, enjoying both the company in his room and the game.

That’s when, despite his voice being mostly a loud whisper by that point, Dad let the 49ers coach have it.

“Shut your mouth, Jim Harbaugh!”

tagged: life, sports, football, NFL, death, family, cancer

Get Glue

It is said that over time, married couples begin to resemble one another.

Fortunately for my Supermodel Wife, this isn't the case in our situation. I mean, it would be a tragedy for her to begin to look like an old, fat, bald guy just because she had the bad judgment to marry a wildebeest like myself.

But that's not to say that over the course of years, shared experiences haven't given us a few physical similarities. Such an experience happened over the weekend.

It was the first Saturday in forever that we didn't have some kind of social or familial engagement. So I had the day open to focus attention on some much needed yard work. I spent the morning trimming trees and bagging up the debris in the back yard, spraying weeds, putting out cancer-causing crabgrass preemergent and cleaning some spilled plutonium off the back patio.

Pretty typical suburban stuff.

By about noon I'd worked my way to the front yard where I was shearing back some shrubbery that had become overgrown due to the sudden spring and our many busy and out-of-town weekends as of late. I was making pretty quick progress on the overgrowth thanks to the Black&Decker cordless electric hedge trimmer that I received as a Father's Day gift a few years ago.

(Ever notice how all Father’s Day gifts are either clothing or tools to "help” you work more?)

Anyway, I was happily buzzing along removing twig after twig of overgrown Japanese Snowball and ornamental apple tree in front of our house. I was trying to avoid disturbing a robin’s nest (with three bright blue eggs in it) when I reached up to remove a severed tree branch with my left hand. Stupidly, I simultaneously brought the electric hedge trimmers down with my right hand, getting the business end close to my left ring finger… a bit too close, as it turns out.

The pain of the cutting blade biting into the fatty tip of my finger was still radiating up my arm as I ran cursing into the kitchen, a trail of blood droplets left on the grass, sidewalk, driveway and garage floor (not to mention my t-shirt and shorts). Instinctively, I put my injured finger under a stream of cold water in the kitchen sink. It took about a second to see that quick medical attention was in order.

The pad of my ring finger, from about the middle of my finger nail to about 60 percent around my finger, was neatly sliced and dangling by the remaining 40 percent of the fingertip, which was still attached and in pretty good condition, all things considered.

I wrapped a piece of ice to my finger with a paper towel while my wife and hero, who was making lunch, recruited our next door neighbor to watch the kids. We headed to the emergency room at St. Luke’s South. After a quick three and a half hour wait, a tetanus shot and me explaining the accident three or four times to various nurses and doctors, I returned home with my finger tip superglued back in place underneath a Band-Aid with instructions not to get it dirty or wet.

Now, for those of you who have been reading this blog for a few years, some of this might sound vaguely familiar. But I can assure you that I’m not making up new stories due to a lack of anything else to write about. I mean, I do have a lack of anything interesting to write about, but I’m not repeating stories because of it.

It so happens that a similar accident befell my Supermodel Wife a couple of years, only in her case the cutting instrument was a cheese slicer, and she lost part of her thumb. You can read more about that at the link, but here’s a reminder of what it looked like after a week or so of healing.
For comparison, looking at this picture of my ring finger after a day or two of healing, you can see that it’s not near as bad.
But still it’s one of those shared experiences that helps make us old married folks begin to look like each other.

UPDATE:
There's still a lot of healing to do. The glue used on my finger turned out not to be so super so I went to the walk-in clinic this morning to get it redressed and re-glued. According to the Nurse Practitioner I saw, the glue used costs about $200 per .5ml vial. Thank you Obamacare!

tagged: injury, finger, medicine, home improvement, accident, hedge trimmer

To do ...

I thought I'd post, as a seed for discussion, a few random items from by bucket list in no particular order.

By the way, I'm really not fond of the term "bucket list."

• See the Grand Canyon
  
• Learn to play the guitar
  
• Visit all 7 continents
  
• Lower my cholesterol
  
• Win a $100-million lottery
• Own a hand-made bespoke suit.
  
• Vacation in Ireland
  
• Bicycle from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico
  
• Invent a sport
  
• Take a computer class
  
• Drive a fusion-powered car (preferably a DeLorean)
  
• Lose 25 pounds

Okay, discuss.

tagged: bucket list, Europe, travel, bespoke, DeLorean, fusion, cycling

Mr. Emaw's Neighborhood: Chapter 2 — For the Kids

When your kids start going to school, you're bound to run into minor differences of opinion in regards to parenting.

On occasion they can be major differences, but mostly (at least in our school district) all the parents want pretty much the same thing for their kids: good education, health, happiness, etc.

Well, it was one of these minor differences of opinion that I experienced the other day. I was picking up my kid from the after-school care in the lower level of the elementary. I bumped into the mother of my kid's best friend, and we were chit-chatting while our respective kids got their respective gear together so we could go to our respective homes.

Nothing but respect here.

As we were chatting an hyperacting 7-year-old boy came scurrying down the hall like a gerbil on meth. Eyes wide, hair wild, he looked at me and exclaimed, "Did you see all the snow we got! I can't wait to get home and play in it! Woooooo!"

This was followed by a back flip and a maneuver in which he ran up one wall, across the ceiling and down the other to stop and gave an unreturned high-five in front of me.

I, without so much as a pause, gave him my best "sorry to burst your bubble" look and said, "Oooh, yeah. Have you been outside since you got to school this morning?

"No," he said.

"Mmmm. Yeah. Well, it's been so sunny today that all the snow has melted. It's just a soggy muddy mess out there right now. Bummer, kid."

I swear, the kid shrank at least an inch. His shoulders, formerly held high in excitement, slumped in disappointment. His face, a few seconds ago alight with the enthusiasm of youth, was suddenly gloomy as a San Francisco summer.

With heavy feet, he trudged despondently back into the nearby classroom to ponder the cruelties of fate at robbing him of his fun in the snow.

My neighbor, the mother with whom I had been visiting, looked at me, a little surprised but also amused.

"You're mean," she said, smiling at my little joke.

But you know what? I don't really think it was all that mean. Sure I was having a bit of fun at the expense of this kid. But isn't that why we have kids in the first place? For the LOLZ?

But the way I see it, I was doing the kid a favor.

I mean, think about how happy he was when his parents picked him up and he went outside to see his winter wonderland intact and ready for sledding.

And besides, it was a valuable lesson for the young chap. Don't trust everything people tell you, especially if they're over 30. Gather evidence before jumping to conclusions.

And above all, don't let the words of a bunch of nattering nabobs of negativity dash your dreams or winter fun.

tagged: snow, school, neighbor, neighborhood, life lessons, kids, parenting

Mr. Emaw's Neighborhood: Chapter 1 — The Elevator Incident

It struck me one day that over the years, I've had some pretty interesting neighbors. In fact, the people I've lived and worked next to have always been much more interesting than I am. So I thought I'd do a series of posts about some of them.

This story takes place about ten years ago. It was shortly after the first internet bust but before that quaint little (by today's standards) Enron financial implosion.

When the web startup I'd been working at closed up shop and headed to New Jersey, I took my first job at a cube farm corporation. It was a pretty good gig. The hours were flexible and me and a few other guys had a shared hard drive where we stored all the mp3s we downloaded from Napster.

I was lucky as the new guy to get a cube adjacent to a wall, so I only had one cube neighbor. We'll call her Janet. She was a great cube neighbor. Pleasant personality, always smiling, great sense of humor. She was a recent college grad and had snagged her job after doing an internship for the company.

She kept me up to date on all the pop culture news of the day.

She was one of the first on the block with one of those new-fangled "TiVo" devices and would give us daily updates on celebrity gossip and the latest exploits of the characters on Survivor and
The Geena Davis Show.

Janet was the social glue for our core group. There were about five of us who started having lunch together daily. As a group it was easier to rationalize, or maybe just ignore, the fact that you're leaving for lunch a few minutes early and getting back a few minutes late.

It was during one of these lunch jaunts that The Elevator Incident happened.

On these lunch outings, we typically would pool rides since it was ecologically the right thing to do and it provided a certain level of mutually assured destruction for getting back too late from The Olive Garden.

Anyway on this particular day, Janet and I had arrived back at the office from lunch. We strolled into the elevator, hit the "6" button and waited for the lift to deliver us to our floor.

As a joke, I always used to like to bounce the elevator a little bit by doing a few quick knee bends — kind of a fake jumping up and down when the other person's not looking to make them thing the elevator is falling or something. You know, for the laughs.

Well, to this day I maintain that that little stunt had nothing to do with our elevator doing an emergency stop between the first and second floors.

Nonetheless, stuck it was. Not moving, door closed and to make matters worse the emergency phone inside the elevator didn't work. It could have been my imagination, but I swear the lights were flickering and the vent fan had turned off.

Janet was ready to freak out. To calm her down, I told her that the building probably wasn't on fire and there almost certainly wasn't a Twilight Zone-style nuclear holocaust going on outside.

Still,I knew that if I couldn't find a way out of this, it wouldn't be long before we hit DEFCON LUDICROUS. But before I tried my daring escape through the ceiling access hatch, I pulled out my cutting-edge circa 1999 Nokia cellular mobile telephone.

With my phone's antenna extended, I dialed up the security desk to apprise them of our situation and get a maintenance dude to get us out of here.

Next I called my manager to let her know that Janet and I are stuck in the elevator, no, for real, we're in the elevator and the elevator stopped between floors. No, she's okay at the moment What? Well… of course we both have all of our cloths on…I mean, I slipped my shoes off but we all have our own coping mechanisms…

Before I was done with the call, an elevator technician had opened the doors. About waste level (for me) was the first floor ceiling/second floor floor. We were looking up (to the second floor) and a small crowd of or coworkers who had come to watch our daring escape. You can imagine the entertainment value we were providing.

The janitor elevator technician told us the plan was to help us crawl up to the second floor, then worry about getting the lift running again. Being the chivalrous sumbitch I am, I insisted that Janet go first. I would be able to help boost her up and, more importantly, if the elevator were suddenly to let loose it wouldn't be me getting sliced in half by a gigantic guillotine.

Well, to make a short story longer, we made it out of the elevator car safe and sound and had a good laugh for the next few hours and came away with a mildly amusing story to boot.

Eventually, I left that company for other professional pastures. It was eventually acquired in a corporate merger, and I kind of lost touch with Janet and the rest of the crew. It happens sometimes. Friends and neighbors go their separate ways.

Janet and I actually work at the same company now. She sits not too far from me on the same floor, but we don't have the same rapport that we had then.

And she still refuses to ride an elevator with me.

tagged: Enron, Napster, elevator, Geena Davis, Survivor, Nokia, neighbor

No good deed

So I'm waiting from clearance to back out of my parking spot this morning after picking up a Colombian Supremo from the QT.

It's a busy parking lot and lots of cars are going back and forth behind me, coming or going or whatever. The car next to me, a older Honda beater driven by two younger girls who look like they woke up just long enough to drive to QT and get a convenience store breakfast, sees an opening an quickly backs out.

Being the gentleman I am, I grant them the right-of-way out of the goodness of my heart. Keeping an eye on them to make sure they're clear before I back out as well, I notice the passenger rear tire is about 90 percent flat.

So again, being the gentleman I am, I signal to the driver, I point toward her rear passenger tire. She stares back at me like a cold cup of coffee. By now she has backed out and turned, giving me room to back out and turn the opposite direction. This has the affect of lining up our drivers side windows.

So roll down my window and signal again. She lowers her window and I explain about her tire being flat. She glances at the passenger, then back at me. She doesn't say anything, but gives me a look like I told her I just ran over her cat.

No "thanks for the tip." No "at least I'm glad I didn't head out onto i-435 with it."

Instead just a stink-eyed glare full of kill-the-messenger.

tagged: traffic, good deed, do gooders, QuickTrip, Honda, commute, car

Because She Would Ask Me Why I Loved Her

If questioning would make us wise
No eyes would ever gaze in eyes;
If all our tale were told in speech
No mouths would wander each to each.

Were spirits free from mortal mesh
And love not bound in hearts of flesh
No aching breasts would yearn to meet
And find their ecstasy complete.

For who is there that lives and knows
The secret powers by which he grows?
Were knowledge all, what were our need
To thrill and faint and sweetly bleed?

Then seek not, sweet, the 'If' and 'Why'
I love you now until I die.
For I must love because I live
And life in me is what you give.

-- Christopher Brennan

tagged: poetry, poem, love, Valentine's Day, Christopher Brennan

Vocabulary

I was doing my dadly duty last week, taking my 7-year-old daughter to a school skating party.

She had missed the previous skating party and was totally jonesing for a skate. She was so eager to go to the party that we were able to hold it over her blackmail-style and get some extra good behavior and chores "or else your not going to get to go skating."

Anyway, we get to the skating rink, put on her skates and let her out on the floor to knock herself out -- not literally of course, she's not a great skater but she only fell two or three times. And with the exception of a quick snack break, she spent pretty much the whole time on shuffling around the skate floor.

Toward the end of the skating party, I was standing on the carpet waiting for her to come out to return the skates. She rolled off the floor and we went over to a bench to change shoes.

She pulls me down to say something into my ear.

"One of those bigger kids out there said the 'F Word'" she said.

I just kind of blinked and I think I may have done a short sigh.

"Well, just don't listen when you hear that," I replied. I was pretty calm. I said it in the same tone you might use when saying "Just remember to wash your face after the dog licks all of the peanut butter off."

You see, I'd done this quick calculation in my mind. I don't want to fly off the handle and make "The F Word" seem like it's this big magical mystery word. I don't want to encourage her to say the word by banning her from uttering it. It's human nature to want to do something that someone tells you you can do.

I didn't want to turn "The F Word" into some kind of forbidden fruit.

But I also want to let her know that I do not approve of her using that word at her age.

But later, when we got home, I know she was still curious. Out of earshot of her Supermodel Mother, she came and whispered in my ear once again...

"Do you know what the F Word is," she asked, as if she were privy to secret information that I didn't have. "Do you want me to tell it to you?"

"No" I said. "I don't want to hear it and I don't want you to say it."

I don't think the issue is over. I'm sure she heard it at school. In subsequent conversations, she implied that one of the boys (Boys... sheesh... don't even get me started!) in her class had been saying it.

Well, I guess first grade is when you start learning these things...

tagged: family, vocabulary, parenting, F Word, first grade, fatherhood

Just a little prick

"You have to relax your muscles if you don't want this to hurt," she said as she finished rubbing alcohol on my skin.

I honestly thought I was relaxed, but this was my first time doing this so there was probably some background anxiety that I wasn't consciously aware of.

So I took a deep breath and tried to relax while I waited for the little prick of the hypodermic needle injecting dead flu virus proteins into my shoulder.

I don't get the flu. My theory is that I've got a super immunity due to a near-fatal (at least it felt near-fatal at the time) pneumonia I contracted years ago.

Still, with a kid in school and a new baby in the house, I bowed to the pressure of my (admittedly much smarter than me) Supermodel Wife to get the seasonal flu inoculation this year.

The nurse who gave me the shot -- I think her name was Becky or Ashley or something like that -- was sure to point out that "this is the seasonal flu shot, not the shot for the H1N1 flu."

According to Tiffany, the CDC identified back in April/May the flu strains that it thought would be a problem. At the time, they didn't think Swine Flu would be a problem.

"If you want a Swine Flu shot, you'll have to come back in a few weeks when we get the vaccines in," she said.

Now this may be my first flu shot, but I know a scam when I smell one. I'm not sayin' that the Swine H1N1 ain't a real thing. I just find it interesting the way things are working out.

I mean, look at it this way. You know how Apple is always working on the next new release of the operating system and they always give it an animal name (usually feline in nature). You had Mac OSX Cheetah, then Puma, then Jaguar all the way up to Leopard...

The point is, it's just good marketing to give something a name that people can latch on to.

I'm pretty sure that's what's been going on with these annual flu vaccinations. They started out a few years ago with the "Bird Flu" (later called "Avian Flu") that was killing people in Asia. Nobody was scared of it when it was just called "H5N1." But when the media got it's talons on "Bird Flu" -- well, there's a hook you can build some hysteria around.

This year it's the Swine Flu -- very catchy. Gets the media excited. Gets the citizenry in an uproar. Gets some much needed demand for the pharmaceutical industry right in the middle of a consumer recession.

Ah, now we're getting somewhere. It's How to Survive a Recession 101: Create A Demand For A Product For Which You're The Only Provider.

Anyway... I'm not really sure where I was going with this.

My arm is kind of sore.

tagged: swine flu, vaccine, Avian Flu, Mac OSX, Panther, conspiracy theory, shot

A pink carnation and a pickup truck

I'm going to my high school class reunion this weekend, (yes, there was a time when I had class). To mark the occasion I thought I'd take a little stroll down Amnesia Lane and pull this story out of the dusty archives of my past life for your entertainment.

It was the spring of 1989, a completely different time in America. We were euphoric as the Berlin Wall was torn down and democracy erupted and was then crushed in Tienanmen Square.

Gasoline still cost less than a dollar a gallon despite Capt. Hazelwood dumping a bajillion gallons of crude oil into Alaska's Prince William Sound. TV audiences were introduced to a comical animated family known as The Simpsons, and Milli Vanilli had lip-synced their way into our hearts with with Girl You Know It's True.

In Smallville, Kansas, that clear spring evening, we had just finished the formal dinner portion of our prom. Dressed to the nines in tuxes and gowns, we were making our way across town to the sock up in the school gymnasium. But first, nearly every kid in school hopped into a car for the traditional main street cruise.

I'd borrowed dad's car for the evening. My date, Samantha, was riding shotgun and our friend Andie was in the back seat. We were full of smiles and laughter and youth as we cruised the streets jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive. Windows down, radio blasting, waiving and yelling at friends in passing cars as the cool spring air blew through our hair. There was only the now.

We'd completed a circuit of the Main Street cruise and pulled into the convenience store parking lot to do a U-turn and another lap.

The next few seconds were strange, because they seemed to happen in slow-motion and at hyper speed at the same time. I had been waiting for an opening in the heavy traffic to make the right-hand turn back onto Main. When I saw the opening I quickly accelerated into the street. At the same time some unknown traffic obstruction down the street caused a sudden domino affect of seven or eight cars breaking in quick succession.

The result was that the car in front of me hit the breaks just as I hit the accelerator. The result of that was severe front end damage to my dad's car -- so severe that it was undrivable.

So prom night, dressed up, cruising main, smashed up car -- my life had become a John Hughes movie.

It took an hour or so to get everything taken care of, make sure nobody's hurt, clear the street, call my parents, try to explain -- eventually I made my way with my best friend (shout out WT!) to the prom dance. I don't really remember much from the dance, except for the drama between Andie and Blane (it was good to see Blane stand up to his snobby friends, but sheesh, Andie has to make everything about her).

The PTA sponsored an after-prom party (strictly non-alcoholic, thank you very much) which I went to since I was now hitching a ride with my friend Cameron Frye and his date. It was a good enough time, snacks, dancing, movies and stuff.

But what sticks out are the door prizes. Every 20 minutes or so they would have a drawing for a door prize, a gift card for local restaurants for example -- one of my friend even won one of those cool newfangled Compact Disc players.

Well in a final ironic kick in the metaphorical crotch, my number was called for one of the door prizes. What did I win? I'm glad you asked.

It was a gift card for $50 worth of gas a the local convenience store.

tagged: prom night, car crash, ironic, High School, John Hughes, reunion, Hazelwood

We only roast the ones we love

Today is a big, big day in our little corner of the blogiverse. It's a day we honor one of our own. One Mr. Xavier Onassis is coming face-to-face yet again with another year of his seemingly eternal misery.

Although we know today is his birthday (he's told us as much) nobody knows for sure how old XO actually is. We sent a DNA sample away for carbon dating (kudos to Keith for obtaining the sample, that couldn't have been pleasant) and the result pegged his birth to sometime in the late Triassic.

But today we come not to praise XO, but to bury him. A few of his best online friends have come together to present this bloggy birthday present.

Happy B-Day XO! Here's your Virtual Birthday Roast!!



You know how this works. We all submitted a few short remembrances of our favorite stories about XO. For example, there's the time when a slightly less geezery Xavier Onassis yelled at Moses to "Get off my lawn, ya' damn kids!"

In fact, Xavier Onassis is so old, he calls Walt Bodine "sonny."

Anyway, I don't want to hog the stage. Let me surrender the dais to some other people who have contributed their thoughts. Just remember, it's all done out of respect.

We kid, because we love.

"XO is still trying to figure out how to tweet with his abacus!"

-- Logtar

XO amazes me! Have you seen his balls? They're spiked. Really! I've seen photos. I bet they clang when he walks."

-- Spyder

"Legend in Ireland has it that Xavier Onassis was the model for all the Old World carved phallic stones, but he left for the New World when the Christians came and started carving crosses on every phallus they saw"

-- Eolaí gan Fhéile

Absolutely Feisty says...
XO... Okay... I LUMI XO too much to ever provide you with an insult... but I will say this... XO IS the best friend I have ever had in my life. I am a better person for having met him. I consider myself a lucky person to know him. I tried all day to find an insult.. and as much as I do insult him in person... regularly =) Today, I am short of those words. I appreciate every fiber in his being.

okay... wait. lol I can't be the only one who doesn't have an insult... lol how about this...

XO is SO old... the only gift he could think to ask for was a video of Woodstock, as if those were the BEST days ever, and I'm not even sure in what city Woodstock was held... maybe my mom knows?"

Muddy Mo says ...
XO's idea of an exciting night is to sit and watch his leg fall asleep.

I was so impressed when I first met XO. He seemed so life-like.

XO is so old, his favorite porn download is "Debby Does Dialysis".

When XO dreams, everyone has @ symbols where faces should be.

People don’t invite XO out anymore — they go without him and livetweet him about it.

Shane says...
Eve's original sin: She was XO's first wife.

XO's an atheist. As a Christian, I'd have a problem with that but then again, he's old enough that he was around for the Creation, so he would know..."

from Meesha...

Nightmare says...
XO was asked once "Boxers or Briefs?" he responded "Depends"

XO is so old that when he takes a walk in the park Trees salute him.

XO is an avid left wing anti Gun nut or as we like to call him.......Bait

Saying XO is a leftist liberal wing nut, not only is unfair to Wing nuts, but also means he is wrong.

XO is so cranky his hair died outta spite.

XO has a collection of Playboys dating back to when they were known as cave paintings.

XO was brought to the Florida Hospital ER with a fractured hip. The ER doctor knew that surgery would be in order for the patient

“Have you ever undergone surgery?” he asked.

“Yes,” XO said.

“Remember what type of surgery was it?”

“I’m not sure,” XO said. “It was a long time ago.”

The physician noticed a scar on the right side of XO’s abdomen. He pointed to the scar. “Is this where you had the surgery?” he asked.

“No,” said XO. “It was in Brooklyn.”

Cara says...
I'm not saying XO is old, but damn has he had his share of wives. When his first wife used to say, "get out the plastic" he'd get out a condom. When his second wife said, "get out the plastic" he'd get out his credit card. Now when a woman says "get out the plastic" he gets out his bed sheets.

from Doc...
It is said that one of the most unexpected things that happens to a man is old age. perhaps that's just a perspective thing: reading X.O. you just know he was old loooooong ago, perhaps as long as 20 years ago...when he was 40.

from what Spyder says, X.O.'s aging with a vengeance: first he just forgot the occasional name; next it was faces, followed closely by asses. Then, so Spyder swears, he started forgetting to pull up his zipper. Now he has now forgotten to pull it down...

Orwell once said that at 50 every man has the face he deserves. if that is the case, X.O must be ashamed of his. why else would he post an image of himself on his blog from 30 years ago?

but enough with the insults, a piece or two of advice, X.O. i barely remember when I turned 54. it is nowhere as bad as I had thought . sure, all of a sudden i had many, many little lit rooms inside my head, and people in them, acting out various conversations, plays and memories. that was the fun part. and, eventually, i got used to the fact that i knew all these people, but just couldn't quite put names to them. you'll adapt also. after all, as bush was heard to mumble between misunderestimating children books to himself, "Old age is no place for sissies."

Many happy returns on the day...as far as you know.

from Nuke718...

No wonder why XO is single, I have seen no picture of him with women but I HAVE seen a picture of him with The Batmobile.

I'd pick on XO's age, but with that many digits it is too easy a target.

If we all pooled our nickles and dimes we could buy XO a dream present for his birthday, a trip to space. One way. I didn't say it was HIS dream present.

from Midtown Miscreant...

When emaw asked me to take part in this Eulogy, I jumped at the chance to say a few words over XO....What's that? He's not dead? Shit, and here I thought I wouldn't have to suffer through another, "Why conservatives suck" posts.

What can you say about a guy who is over a half a century old, who once drove an Ice Cream Truck, plays with swords, heh, and has been known to wear tights and a cape? I've checked the sex offender registry, so I can say "he's clean", at least in Missouri.

All kidding aside, Xo is a generous guy. I met him for lunch a couple of times. He left the waitress 50 cents and a jesus fish with the head bitten off.

And don't even get me started about XO and his Obama love fest. If XO was any more infatuated with the President, the Secret Service would have him under surveillance.

And lonely! Jaysus christ, this is one lonely fucker. Ladies, hookers, short balding men, send him an email. If I have to suffer through another of his Dating Website posts, I'll remove my eyes with a spoon. At one point he thought he had made a love connection. Her name was Lena. She had a wooden leg with a kickstand on it, a Star Wars Millennium Falcon tattoed on her ass, and was a card carrying member of the World Socialist Party. Then he found out she was also packin a light saber. XO don't play that, at least not since that drunken transgender drum circle back in the 70's.

I kid. Happy Birthday XO. Here's hoping you get everything you have coming to you, even if it means more taxes for the rest of us.

from Chris Packham...
I want to descend into old age gracefully, or at the very least not with a wet, farty splat on the pavement accompanied by a clattering spill of loose dentures and insulin injection paraphernalia. So I've been looking around for old-guy role models other than Colonel Sanders (I cannot tie a string tie) or computer-generated Orville Redenbacher (I cannot tie a bow tie). So when my grandchildren ask me why I'm wearing a Kangol hat with my Star Fleet dress uniform and my replica of Legolas' sword, the answer will pretty much be that George Clooney set way too high of an Old Guy standard and I had to lower my sights. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, X! --

from Erin...
XO is so old that the first time I met him he told me he would send me an Internet to tell me where his tube was in the series.

XO is so old he thought Tumblr was a dryer setting and Twitter was a part of the female anatomy.

XO is so old that back in his day kids didn't have computers, they just drew on the walls in their caves.

XO is so old that when AOL told him he had mail, he went outside to check.

So there you go, XO. We all did our best to make your birthday a memorable one. Sure, maybe you didn't get the Samurai sword or the Bugatti, but maybe next year.

At this time I would invite anyone else to say a few words of encouragement/condolence in the comments.



tagged: Happy Birthday, Xavier Onassis, roast, old, humor, XO loves George Bush

That's the ticket!

I'm a big believer in random acts of generosity.

That's why I took advantage of some interstitial time this morning to make a quick donation to the City of Overland Park.

I had just dropped my daughters off (one at school, the other at daycare) and was cruising to work down one of the many residential side streets near one of the many suburban school areas when it just occurred to me that, hey, I should make a random donation to The City.

Sure, I pay my taxes. But sometimes I think that's not enough. I mused, if only there were a way I could give a little more on top of that during these times when the mood strikes me.

That's when I realized that Overland Park has a method for me to do just that. For, as I drove down the street I noticed the familiar form of one of the Overland Park city police cruisers parked in the shade of a tree.

I was able to get his attention and get him to follow me a few hundred feet where he pulled up behind me. He put his flashing lights on and even made the effort to walk up to my car window to talk.

I explained the idea I had about wanting to donate a little more to the Overland Park general fund. I showed him my driver's license so that he knew I was indeed a resident of our fine burg. He inspected it briefly, then went back to his squad car for a moment.

When he returned, he notified me that he had a suggestion for my quandry. He provided me with a ticket, a sort of voucher, notifying me that I had the opportunity to donate $105 to the city sometime within the next 30 days. I had the option of visiting the municipal court to get a free tour and make my donation. But I could also choose to donate over the phone at my leisure.

And not only was I able to donate this small sum, but in return I was granted a one-time opportunity to exceed the posted speed limit by more than 10 miles per hour. It was lucky, since I had done just that mere moments before seeing the officer in his patrol car.

So it was a double win for me. Not only did I get a short thrill of driving 36 mph in a 26 mph speed zone, but I also received the personal satisfaction of making a small contribution to the financial security of Overland Park.

I just hope my random generosity will be an inspiration to you all in your daily commute.

tagged: Overland Park, police, donation, Johnson County, ticket, speed limit, generosity

Death

I've been thinking a lot about death recently, trying to process a lot of things that are too maudlin to get into around here.

But it's what my mood is these days.

Here's a clip from top-selling album "The Prophet" by Lebanese sensation Khalil Gibran that I've found particularly helpful. Just thought I'd share it along...

Death

Then Almitra spoke, saying, "We would ask now of Death."

And he said:
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.

tagged: death, Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet, poetry

Crackin' wise

This morning I stopped at the Quick Trip for a morning cuppa before work.

It's on the way to the office and I have a refillable mug and the office coffee is worse than drinking turpentine (and I should know), so there's really no reason NOT to get my java fix.

Anyhoo, I head up to the counter with my hot Colombian Supremo (with a squirt of half&half) and pay the cashier. I get my change and turn to head out the door.

As I'm turning, I overhear the woman next to me say "... sorry, I don't have the extra two cents." Turns out her items cost a total of some number of dollars and two cents. I realized that when I received my change, part of it included two pennies.

Now was my chance to do a random good deed.

"Here you go," I said as I tossed the Lincoln's on the counter.

I got the expected "Thanks" and smile. And I felt pretty good about it I guess. But I didn't do this random act of kindness for the thanks, or the smile, or even the feeling of doing something nice for a complete stranger.

Rather, I did it for the chance to be able to say "No problem. It's just my two cents."

Yeah. I'm corny like that.

tagged: coffee, pennies, two cents, Quick Trip, kindness

Iron man

The ironic thing is that as I was trying to iron my pants this morning for work, I would iron one side but at the same time I was accidentally ironing new wrinkles into the other side.

I know. Ironic.

tagged: irony, iron, pants

In my head

This post probably falls into that "random thoughts" category that you see so much of when people are feeling particularly uninspired.

Except, this is probably a step lower than that, since these random strains of non-contemporaneous stream of conscientiousness aren't really meant to be cohesive thoughts as such, just a snapshot of the words that happen to have bounced around my gray matter at various moments in the past couple of weeks.

Anyway, submitted for your ennui:

• Damn, it must be time to get out a new razor blade. It feels like I'm shaving with a rusty Ginsu knife! Shit! I just cut my upper-lip mole. That's going to bleed like crazy.
  
  
• Oh c'mon lady! Who writes out a check these days! We're living in the future now! Fer cryin' gyahhhh!
  
  
• Where the heck is everyone, it's only 3 o'clock in the afternoon. Did I miss the "take the day off early" memo?
  
  
• Ooookay, by the looks of these urinals I guess housekeeping took the day off.
  
  
• It was nice to sleep in. But wait a minute. If you get up at 3:30 in the morning then go back to sleep at 5, then get back up at 6 then go to sleep at 7 and sleep until 9:30... is that really sleeping in? or does it count as an early morning nap?
  
  
• That Peter Sarsgaard is really coming off like a pretentious douche (I was watching him on Conan at the time -- Edit.). "Oh, I live in England and I got married in Puglia and had my honey moon on the Amalfi Coast and I'm soooo much better than everyone." Just take it easy man. We're both from the same side of the tracks here. Orphan is just another lame horror flick. It's not the second coming of Citizen Kane.
  
  
• What the...?! Who the...?! What are you talking about?!
  
  
• I wonder who decided that an ellipsis is three dots and not, say, two or four.
  
  
• Peter Sarsgaard's name is fun to say in a pirate accent. "SAAARSGAAAAHHHHHRRRD!!!"
  


• I need to stop intentionally mispronouncing the word nuclear just for laughs. It's getting a little too easy.

tagged: blog, random, stream of conscientiousness, Peter Sarsgaard, nuclear, ellipsis, ennui

Persona non blogga

Hello? (tap, tap, tap) Is this thing on?

Wow. Funny how real life can get in the way of the internetz sometimes. Not funny like "ha ha" funny. More like funny in that ironical, makes-you-think kind of way.

So anyway, here's an update from my Awesome life. A few highlights from my week (like you care).

• I finally mowed my grass in the back yard. Due to a series of unfortunate events that included business travel and lots of rain, some of the grass back there was nearly a foot tall. And don't even get me started on the weeds. My back yard has more weed than a Rotterdam coffee house.
  
  
• Kicked ass at Need for Speed Undercover on the Wii. I think my real life driving style has really prepared me for success in this game.
  
  
• Contributed to the Xtacles second-place finish in our weekly bowling league match up. I have a feeling that Logtar and Chimpotle are getting frustrated with my unconventional overhand bowling style. Trust me guys, it will start to click soon.
  
  
• Planted some upside-down tomatoes. Also, some upside-down cucumbers. Up next: Upside-down carrots and upside "home-grown herbs."
  
  
• Installed a keypad garage door opener. Yeah, most people in the 'burbs already have one of these, so I thought I'd bring us into the 1990s. Email me if you want the combination.

Let's see. It seems like there was at least on other big thing that happened. Well, I don't know about "big," but it's probably worth mentioning in passing...

Our second daughter arrived!!!

That's right. I'm doing my part to pass on superior genetic material to help delay the inevitable demise of the human race. Now mind you, I'm not talking about my genes. The world doesn't need more fat bald guys. But it's important that my Supermodel Wife's Supermodel Genes get passed on to future generations. For our purposes, that means a second future-Supermodel daughter.

And she was an early bird, arriving about three weeks early. Four pounds. Twelve ounces. Tons of heart.

Yeah. It's been a good week.

tagged: family, baby, tomato, Topsy Turvy, bowling, Xtacles, environmentalist

Serendipity do

I think it’s cool when things seem to happen for a reason.

Doesn’t have to be a great big chain of cosmic events altering the time-space continuum and creating alternate realities. Although I guess in a cosmic sense we wouldn’t really know when that sort of thing happens anyway.

What I’m talking about is those seemingly trivial, seemingly insignificant events that happen every day that just fit together so well that it makes you wonder about fate, providence, whatever.

I say they’re seemingly insignificant, but I think these chains of events happen more often than we notice. And perhaps they are more important than we think they are.

Here’s the latest example from my awesome life.

So I’m at a certain sports/entertainment event well known for the proliferation of product sponsors. I’m wandering around a concourse area when a helpful chap comes up and offers me a free sample box of Goody's Headache Powder - Cool Orange.

It's a powder (like Kool Aid) that you pour into a bottle of water, let it dissolve, then drink the potion for headache relief. Nifty idea, I thought. Wonder if it works.

I stuck the three dosage packs in my pocket, anticipating a headache later in the day from too much sun and fun. But with all the merry-making and being awesome, I soon forgot they were there and it turned out I didn’t need them anyway.

Now fast forward ten or eleven hours. It’s two in the morning and I’m returning to the hotel. I stop at the front desk to check for messages and mail. There’s another fellow talking to the front desk attendant. The woman behind the counter seems to have disappointed him, saying something like “I’m sorry sir, we just can’t give out that kind of thing here.”

But the guy is insistent.

“Look all I need is some Tylenol, or some ibuprofen or something,” he says. “My wife is next door and she’s got a terrible headache. There aren’t any stores open around here.”

I instantly remember the headache powder packets I've had in my pocket all day and it all seems too perfect. I size up the guy and quickly conclude he isn’t some kind of ibuprofen junkie. I pull the medicine out and slide it down the check-in desk counter to him.

“Try these,” I say. “I don’t know if they’ll work, but it’s better than nothing.”

He recognizes the packets and is very gracious.

“Aw thanks man!” he says. ”This is great. You’re really helping me out. I really appreciated it.”

He offers a handshake which I return.

“No problem,” I say. “Hope it helps.”

“I want to repay you. Are you going to be in town for a while?” he asks.

I tell him I leave in the morning – actually, in a few hours. But no repayment is needed.

“Well are you going to be back next week? I own the bar across the street and you can be my guest for drinks or something.”

Tempted as I am, I’m pretty well exhausted from being awesome all day, and I’m already thinking about the travel day tomorrow – er, later today. I tell him I won’t be back in town and repeat that no repayment is necessary. It's just me doin’ a solid for a brutha (hell, I didn’t pay for the stuff anyway).

And besides, I couldn’t help but mull over the possibility that God... The Universe... karma... or whatever... had me bump into the medicine marketer and get a free sample for the express purpose of delivering it to this guy’s ailing wife a few hours later.

For that matter, the entire purpose of my life could have been to be in that specific place at that particular moment with free samples of headache medicine in my pocket just at the time when someone needed free headache medicine.

That may sound trivial and unimportant, but how do I know that the guy’s wife wasn’t working on a key breakthrough in the cure for cancer and if she could just get rid of her headache she could concentrate on finally working out the solution.

Or maybe she was about to finally figure out how to achieve peace in the Middle East? Or perhaps she'd worked out a way for newspapers to make money? Or it's possible that she was about to develop a treatment for Larry Moore's extreme geezerism.

We just don’t know, is all I’m sayin’. And I couldn’t very well take payment for playing such a pivotal roll in this cosmic drama. It just wouldn't be good karma, you know?

So I left him with these words before heading up to my room.

“Look, you don’t owe me any money. But some day, and that day may never come, I’ll call upon you to do a service for me. But until that day, accept this headache medicine as a gift from me.”

tagged: fate, karma, serendipity, Goody's Headache Powder, medicine, anecdote

untitled

It's a common story, but one that people are always happy to hear.

A close friend or relative is diagnosed with cancer. The prognosis is grim, but the patient fights the cancer with everything that modern science, medical technology, a strong support network and a vast reservoir of faith can muster.

In the end, the cancer goes into remission or is removed altogether.

It's an inspirational story. The stuff that plays and movies are made of.

But it's not what happened with my next door neighbor, George.

When I first mentioned George's cancer 8 weeks ago, he was optimistic. Not optimistic that he would live forever, but optimistic that he would fight the disease and take each day as it came.

I didn't know at the time that would be the last time I talked to him. I saw his wife a couple of weeks later. She gave me the bad news that the chemotherapy had not gone well and that the doctors had stopped it. George was now on hospice care. His wife said he had maybe a couple of weeks left.

In the days that followed, George was surrounded by family at all hours. Relatives were at his house daily, making sure he wasn't alone, trying to make him as comfortable as possible.

Then one day in late April, I saw long lines of cars parking along our street, throughout our neighborhood. Hundreds of them. A lifetime's worth of friends who came to pay their final respects to a good man. Maybe one of the best men, but who am I to say.

Like I said, no heroic, happy ending here. Real life isn't a Lifetime movie of the week. Sometimes all of the faith and medical science doesn't lead to a miracle recovery. Sometimes the best people die while undeserving scoundrels make off with billions in ill-gotten TARP money.

There's no inspirational lesson, unless it's the message that some day we are all going to die. And when that day comes, the best you can hope for is that you won't be alone -- that you will have made enough of a positive impression on people that they will remember you for being a good man.

Even if they were just your next door neighbor for a couple of short years.

tagged: pancreatic cancer, health, neighbor, death