2007

There were 200 posts published in 2007 (this is page 10 of 20).

Unrelaxing Weekend

What a long, unrestful weekend! I’m not saying it was bad — there just wasn’t any time to read, write, or relax.

A large part of this was due to our annual neighborhood garage sale. This year our guest sellers were Will, Marla, and Tiffany. Day one went very well — we sold $290 of stuff (compared to $153.25 on the same day in 2006, and $123.50 in 2005). Friday we collected $172.75 (compared to $206 in 2005). But Saturday was a bomb.

Saturday dawned cold and wet. We couldn’t set up in the driveway, so we held our sale in the dungeon-like garage. Few people drove by, and even fewer stopped. We only sold $11.25 before we closed up shop at 2 p.m. My total wasn’t bad — $295, thanks to heavier-than-normal book sales — but nobody else broke $100. After talking with neighbors, we think that the rain and the Rose Festival combined to put a damper on things. Nobody on the street did well this year.

When we weren’t selling our old junk, we were busy being social. On Friday night, Kris had the WITCHes over for dinner. WITCHes == Women in Teaching at Canby High School — Sue, Linda, and Coleen were three of Kris’ closest friends when she was teaching, and the group still gets together several times a year. (Tiffany joined us Friday, too.)

After we packed up, Andrew and Joann stopped by for a chat. They were up from San Francisco to spend a long weekend taking in the Rose Festival. We had hoped to join them for dinner with Dave and Karen, but scheduling conflicts prevented such a happy feast. Instead we shared a pot of hot Thai tea and talked about travel. (Andrew travels a lot for work, and was able to impart some good tips for our upcoming trip to Europe.)

On Saturday evening, we gathered at Vildana’s house in Aloha to discuss this month’s book group pick, Three Cups of Tea. Opinion was divided. Most of us thought the book was okay, but some (Courtney) loved it and others hated it. I thought the story was okay, but that it was needlessly padded, and that the writing style was gratuitously descriptive. (“This guy has never met an adjective he didn’t like,” I said.) I felt that this might have made a strong essay in Harper’s or The New Yorker, but that as a book it was rather weak.

We were supposed to host the garage sale on Sunday, too, but Kris and I didn’t feel like fighting the intermittent showers. Besides, we hadn’t had any time to ourselves.

We got a slow start on our day, but it took a turn into the twilight zone when Amy Jo forwarded a Craigslist ad for canning jars. Our day was sidetracked by an excursion (with Rhonda) to the home of Jim, the jar fanatic. Kris has promised to write the story of our experience, so I won’t elaborate here. When we arrived home, we had an hour to unwind before heading down to Hubbard for the MNF movie night.

Ron and Kara did a great job of turning their hay loft into a movie theater. They hung a sheet on the wall, set out movie popcorn and candy, and used a video projector to show Charlotte’s Web for the kids. Actually, it was only the adults who watched the movie. The kids watched a part of it, but most of them spent the evening climbing and leaping over the hay mound. (Maren, Daphne, and Diego all sat through the entire film, though.)

“You know,” I said on our drive home. “I didn’t write a single thing all weekend.”

“I know,” said Kris.

“That means most of my week is going to be spent writing,” I said.

“I know,” said Kris.

Writing has become real work! But I love it.

My Comic Book Conundrum

I’m facing a dilemma. I want to collect the Marvel Comics I knew and loved as a kid, but I’ve turned into a tightwad. (Actually, I’m not a tightwad — I’ve just become more sensible about the way I use my money.) There are several ways I could go about maintaining this collection, each with its own distinct advantages and disadvantages.

The four methods I could use to build my collection are:

  1. Collect the actual comics. I could buy the old comic books I remember reading as a kid. Most of these are available at a reasonable price — a couple bucks each — but some would cost $40 or $50 of dollars, even for reading copies. By collecting individual comics, I could pick up just the issues I read and loved as a kid. This method would provide the best tactile experience — there’s nothing like holding (and smelling) and old comic — but it would also take the most space. My collection of actual comics is pretty weak at the moment.
  2. Collect the hardbound color editions. Marvel publishes a series of hardback books called Marvel Masterworks. Each book collects roughly ten issues in a restored format. These are beautiful books, but they retail for $50 each. (They can be acquired for $25-$35 each with careful shopping.) I already own about fifty of these volumes (about 80 have been published, with another one coming every month), and have paid about $28/each for them. I’m wary of damaging these books: I don’t want to read them in the bathub. I don’t want to read them while eating. They take a lot of space. Some are highly collectible right now, going for big bucks on eBay. (Though with a reprint program about to begin, these prices are going to drop quickly.) The Masterworks only reprint a very limited part of the Marvel library, primarily material from before I was reading comics.
  3. Collect paperback black-and-white reprints. Marvel also publishes a series of reprints called The Essentials. A volume of Essential Spider-Man might reprint 25 issues of old comics in black-and-white. Each of these volumes retails for about $17, though they can be purchased for about $12 online. I have several dozen of these, but there are dozens more I haven’t purchased. Nearly anything that has been published as a Masterwork has also been published as an Essential. These are great books to read in the tub or over a bowl of breakfast cereal. They’re fun to read. There’s a wider range of material available, too, including a lot of minor titles, and a lot of material from the late 1970s when I was actively reading comics.
  4. Buy comics on DVD. Marvel has begun producing DVDs that collect their core titles. Each $40 DVD holds every comic ever printed for a particular title. For example, the Fantastic Four DVD holds 40 years of the comic book. These are actual scans of the comics, so aside from reading them on your computer, it’s as close to the real thing as a person can get. There are two huge advantages to this method: cost and completeness. But let’s not forget the space advantage, too. There’s no shelf space required for comics ripped to a hard drive. There are some big disadvantages to DVDs, too: only core titles are being collected so far (with Ghost Rider being the sole exception). Also, these discs must be viewed on a computer.

I honestly have no idea which way to take my collection. The only option I know I’m not going to choose is to purchase the original comics. I have no interest in that. So which of the other three options should I choose?

I could sell my Masterworks for a modest amount of money ($1250?), but it would take time and effort. The proceeds would easily fund DVDs as replacements. I could also sell my essentials, but they’re unlikely to fetch much money at all.

If I decide to continue collecting Masterworks — I haven’t purchased a new one in almost a year — then I’m committing to spent about $35 a month on them. Essentials would only run about $24 a month. DVDs would be one-time expenses of about $40 each time a new title was released, which is apparently every three months or so. I only expect a small number of titles to be released on DVD.

Video Killed the Radio Star

“Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles was one of my favorite songs when I was in high school. I loved it because of its sweet poignancy, not because I think it’s kitschy. Browsing YouTube, I found a zillion video clips of the song. Here are some of the best.

First, the original:

Here, 25 years later after the original, a liver version from The Buggles (in which the opening sounds very Spandau Ballet-esque!). This version is actually very good. Uptempo!:

Here’s the version by The Presidents of the United States of America, used in the film The Wedding Singer:

I like this live cover by a band called The Feeling:

Here’s a remixed dance version:

This guy calls himself Duke Special. Apparently he has a little following. He sounds promising. (Here’s Duke singing “Tainted Love”.

“Video Killed The Radio Star” played on the theremin by Jon Bernhardt at the Ethermusic 2005 festival in Asheville, NC, August, 2005. Video shot by Jason Barile of thereminworld.com:

Finally, here’s my favorite version of the bunch. I’ll quote smileypen, who posted it to YouTube:

I was roaming Balboa Park before a wedding and this three piece band caught my attention. A small boy with an upright bass, a bespectacled giant with a mandolin, and an unassuming girl with a harp. They call themselves The Wrong Trousers. Talk about odd choices in musical instruments. But they have tremendous talent. Their style won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but there’s no denying they know their instruments and are comppletely unique. These kids are still in high school! A good size crowd had formed and they were getting lots of cash donations.

I agree. I love these kids.

Cat Time

When Kris and I lived in Canby, we had a summer ritual. During the evenings, when it was warm, we would take a walk through the neighborhood. We’d head down Sixth street, take a right on Fir, stroll over to Eighth or Ninth, and then head home once we’d reached the highway. It was a pleasant, familiar pastime.

It didn’t take long to become accustomed to develop rituals. Kris would stop to look at the gardens that particularly pleased her. I picked up flyers from in front of any home that was for sale. But our top ritual was the counting of the cats.

I’m not sure how we began, but soon after starting our walks, we discovered that there’s a certain part of the evening that might be dubbed “Cat Time”. After dinner, about an hour before dusk, when the heat of the day has begun to fade, the cats came out to take their ease. They sat in the grass, or under cars, or by the curb. In some places they would gather in twos and threes, but most often they would sit alone, watching.

We would count them as we walked. In fact, we would place bets as we started out. The first person would pick a number, and the second would call “higher” or “lower”. The fewest cats we ever saw during Cat Time was seven — the most was twenty-nine.

Kris would stop to pet her favorite cats. At one house on Ninth there lived a cat we called Cookie. Cookie was a whore. When he saw Kris, he would prance down the driveway and roll at her feet. I would sigh and sit on the curb as Cookie and Kris exchanged their affections. There were other cats who were glad to see her, too.

Cookie was not this cat’s real name. His real name was probably something like Tom or Mario or Bubba. We named him Cookie ourselves. We’ve always named the cats we meet if we don’t know what they’re really called. So, along our walk, we had names for the thirty-or-so various cats we encountered on a regular basis.

Spurge was the cat next door, so named because he was always in our yard, like a noxious weed. Thirteen was the beautiful orange cat that lived on Fir. He got his name because the first time we saw him, he was the thirteenth cat on our walk. Otot looked just like Toto. Dee and Dum were the twin Persians that lived near the Bemises. Sad to say, I can’t remember many of the other cats’ names, though at one time I knew all thirty.

I mentioned this story to introduce the concept of Cat Time. For fifteen years, we’ve been under the impression that Cat Time was about an hour before the sun set. Not so.

I’ve been rising at 4 a.m. for the past week. I tumble out of bed and immediately head out the door for a walk around the block. After seven days of this, I can assure you that Cat Time does not occur during daylight. Cat Time is 4 a.m. You would not believe how many cats I see in my sixteen minute stroll through the neighborhood. Where do they all come from?

This morning I passed a gang of cats. There was a cluster of five or six of them sitting in the middle of Arista, sitting near each other, but not too close. (Those of you with cats know what I mean.) They were having a meeting about something, and I could not help but think that their subject was me. “What should we do with the interloper? How can we get him to stay in bed? He’s violating our sacred hour! Let’s speak with Simon about it. Maybe he can do something…”

There’s good news and bad news on the sugar front. I made it through my week without sugar. So far it’s the most difficult thing I’ve done on my list of goals. It frickin’ sucked.

I allowed myself to eat fruit, but that was about it. No cookies, no candy, no cake. No white starchy foods. No condiments.

So I made it through that week of hell. That’s the good news. The bad news is that my wellness coach, Lauren, has asked me to do this for two weeks instead of just one. So, I’m just half-way through. Argh!

I just had a grapefruit for breakfast, which was a pleasing combination of sour and sweet, but it’s just not the same as a couple of delicious Sno-Balls, you know?

Hemorrhoid Remedy

Recently Kris shared some strange recipes from her father’s side of the family. Kris’ mom, Claudia, phoned to share a strange recipe from her side of the family. I promised that I would post it if she sent me e-mail. (Claudia is a technophobe — she refuses to touch a computer.)

Well, she didn’t actually write me an e-mail, but she did dictate one to Kris’ father. I guess that’s close enough. Here, then, is the top-secret McGee Family Hemorrhoid Remedy.

This hemorrhoid remedy came from Kris’ great-grandfather on my side of the family.  He was Charles Isaac McGee who was born March 25, 1882 in Wellsville, Kansas [J.D.’s note: that’s exactly 87 years before I was born] and died October 22, 1965 [J.D.’s note: that’s exactly 1250 days before I was born] in Alhambra, California.  I received the recipe from my aunt, Lorraine McGee (Charles’ daughter) who died December 15, 2000.  Lorraine was one of seven children born to Charles and Eva McGee.  My father, Claude W. McGee, was the middle child. The recipe:

Hemorrhoid Remedy
Combine one teaspoon of Sulfur, 1/2 teaspoon of Vaseline, 2 or 3 grains of Salt, 3 drops of Mercurochrome. Do not use a metal spoon for mixing.
 

One has to wonder: if this mixture is not safe for a metal spoon, how on earth is it safe for your ass?

I Learn Ping-Pong

Kris told this story around work last week to the amusement of all her little friends. I’ll do my best to reconstruct how she told it, but no guarantees that it’ll be as funny.

One of my goals lately has been to “just say yes” when people ask me to do things. So long as the requests don’t violate my morals (no drugs, no sex with goats), and so long as I have the time, I’m giving new things a try. I’m not just saying “no” out of fear and trepidation.

Charlie Lam, my grade school soccer coach, stopped by work a couple weeks ago. He came by to evangelize his table tennis club. He tried to convince Jeff to join, but he wasn’t interested, so Charlie turned his sights on me. I’ve always like table tennis, and I have nothing going on Tuesday nights (except writing — but then I’m always writing), so I agreed to give it a try. “Just say yes.”

So I went to play table tennis a couple weeks ago. I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. How good would the other players be? Charlie had assured me that most everyone was just a beginner. “Do you remember Danny Hunt?” he had asked me.

“Sure,” I said. “Is Danny playing?”

“No,” he said. “But Danny’s mom is playing.”

Playing table tennis with Charlie and his group brought back a flood of old memories. He was my soccer coach for four years (five?) when I was a boy. I was always intimidated by him, though I’m not sure why. His son, Torey, was a good friend of mine. They lived a half mile away, so we spent a lot of time together. I was on Torey’s horse when my brother Tony ran into it with a bike, causing the animal to throw me to the ground and step on me.

Anyhow, playing table tennis with Charilie and his group felt like old times. He took some time to teach me proper form on my forehand. I didn’t do a good job (and even at my second session the other night I was having trouble), but I tried. We did drills together. We played some mini-games in which other players and I competed to be “king of the hill” (or “king of the table”, in this case).

Eventually, we played some full games. The rules have changed in recent years, I guess. I was confused at first. For example, the serve alternates every two points now instead of every five points. There are infinite “lets” on the serve. The ball must be tossed into the air on service, and must be struck behind the table. The biggest change, though, is that a game goes to eleven points, not 21.

Anyhow, I did well. I won several games, which made me happy. Not bad for my first night. I drove home in a great mood.

“So how was ping-pong?” Kris asked when I got home.

“Exhausting,” I said. “But fun. I’ll go back next week.” I told her all about the night. I told her how I was able to beat a lot of the other players.

“That’s great,” she said. “Who else was there?”

“Oh, nobody you’d know,” I said, getting ready for bed. “It was mostly just a bunch of fifth- and sixth-graders.”

That, my friends, is the story that delights my wife. I don’t think it’s quite as funny as she does. Those kids are good. They’ve been practicing for a while. I’m just starting. Still, Kris yuks it up every time she thinks about me gloating over twelve-year-olds.

The Early Bird

The last time Kris left town, I was a lonely man. I felt lost. She’s been gone all this week, too, but I’m not lonely yet. “Do you miss me?” she asks when she calls. I hesitate because I know the right answer. But I tell the truth.

“I haven’t had time to miss you yet,” I say. And I haven’t. I’ve been on the go non-stop ever since she left. If she were home, this would be one of those weeks during which it feels like we never see each other. In a way, this is good, I suppose, but ultimately it’s running me ragged.

I sat down at six yesterday afternoon to read Mark‘s story for the Woodstock Writers Guild. I dozed off. I slept for three hours, slumped in my easy chair. I woke at nine, cursed myself for missing the writers group meeting, and then trudged upstairs and went to bed.

My alarm woke me at four.

After some e-mail conversations with Leo, I’ve decided that best way for me to add time to write into my day is to build it into the front end. Leo suggests getting up at 4am, writing for a couple of hours, and then living life as normal, squeezing in extra writing if there’s time during the rest of the day. This may sound a little crazy to non-writers, but it makes perfect sense to me. I need a large block of uninterrupted time alone, during which I can get things done.

In order to wake up at 4am, though, I’m going to need to take a slightly different approach than normal. Usually I wake up, roll over, grab my laptop, and look at my site statistics and handle any e-mail crises. It’s 4:35 right now, and I haven’t checked e-mail or looked at stats. My goal is not to do so until 7. This may seem obsessive, but trust me: it’s a compulsion I have that I’ve been trying to break for months.

Instead, I pulled on some sweats, grabbed an apple and my pedometer, and headed out into the night. I took a walk around the block in the cool morning air. I communed with the morning cats; I listened to the Western screech owl in the neighbor’s tree; I watched a raccoon cross the road.

The trip around the block is one mile. I walked it in sixteen minutes. I munched on my apple and grogged awake. It felt good. I’ve been sitting at my computer typing for twenty minutes now. That feels good, too.

This plan holds much promise. Ten years ago, during the period in which I lost so much weight, one key to my success was that I got up at 5am most mornings to exercise at the high school track. I walked, biked, or ran a couple of miles, then went home and had a small breakfast. It was a great way to start the day.

I’m going to try something similar this summer. But most of all, I’m going to write.

101 Goals: May 2007 Update

Several weeks ago I shared my list of 101 things I wanted to do in 1001 days. I’m pleased with my progress so far. It hasn’t been stellar, but that’s because I’m not trying to overload myself. I’ve started by trying to tackle several health-related goals.

Tomorrow is the last day of my “one month drinking only water” challenge, for example. During the month of May, I’ve only allowed myself to drink water and two water-based derivatives: mineral water (including Talking Rain flavored waters) and non-caffeinated tea. At the same time, I’ve started my “three months with no alcohol” project.

These were easy at first. Water is fine for a week or two, and I don’t crave alcohol under normal circumstances. The past few days, however, has been a trial. More and more, I’m craving jazzier beverages. I want a diet Pepsi. Or some fruit juice. Or, especially, a glass of wine.

Actually, I’ve only craved the wine under two particular circumstances. Last Saturday, we held a small dinner party with the Bankses and the Jolstead-Woodruffs. Typically at events like this, I’d join in the wine-drinking. This time I didn’t. It was a struggle. Then on Monday, I went over to Craig and Lisa’s for a fine meal of salmon (and other tasty treats). Again wine was on the bill. Again I felt the urge to drink, and regretted that I couldn’t.

But otherwise the alcohol gives me no trouble.

But, as I say, the water is more of a problem. I only have a little more than a day left there, though, so I’m not too worried. I’m going to make it.

Meanwhile I’ve begun my “one week without sugar” experiment. Yesterday was fine. Today was fine until after lunch. After lunch I craved something sweet. In a bold and creative move, I discovered a way to have both something sweet and a non-water liquid, all without breaking my pact. Today at Costco I purchased some jumbo-sized grapefruits. “Those look sweet,” I thought to myself, and I devoured one in just a couple minutes. Then, as I do, I squeezed the juice into my mouth. Awesome! Buying juice in the store would be cheating. But drinking it from the fruit? Fair game, my friends, fair game.

So, after tomorrow, my progress on my 101 Things in 1001 Days list looks like this:

Health and Fitness: give up sugar for one week (3 days out of 7, in progress); drink only water for one month (complete); give up alcohol for three months (1 month out of 3, in progress). I’ve also begun biking again, and Mac has agreed to loan me his free weights.

Financial: fully fund Roth IRA (2006) (complete). No further progress.

Home and Garden: no progress.

Personal: purge wardrobe of anything I haven’t worn in the past two years (in progress); learn to shave with a safety razor (complete); hold a gourmet potluck (scheduled); create the indispensable comic strip library (sketched out).

Self-improvement: no progress.

Adventure: no progress.

Entertainment: a little progress on all three goals.

Photography: no progress.

Reading: I finished one more Pulitzer winner.

Writing: I’ve begun collecting recipes for the Friends Cookbook.

Work: the GRS forums have been implemented; I’m still working on a GRS podcast; Success Daily has a template, and I’ve even written a couple entries, but the site won’t launch for several months; I have some keen ideas for Vintage Pop; I’ve registered domain names for Too Much Cat.

I’ll post progress reviews every couple of months. It’s the only way to keep me accountable!

What We Are

One of the benefits of having many blogs with many readers is that these readers send me many, many interesting things. It makes my life easier. (Sort of.) Here’s a piece sent to me by David Hatch, who sends me a lot of good stuff (though it’s usually about personal finance).

This video pretty much sums up my world view.

“Laugh while you can, monkey boy!” — John Whorfin, Buckaroo Banzai