Just Rewards

Fuck it.  I'm the writer, and I'll write "fuck" if I want.  It's therapy.  Try to live with it.

I broke my collar bone, I have a cold, and my wastebasket is overflowing with kleenixes soaked in snot.  (Kleenix:  Fuck you, too.  No ™ for you today.  Sue me: I have a poetic license and know how to use it.)  When I sneeze, everything hurts.  Especially my normally sunny disposition.

So here goes.  Jethro Tull is cranked on the stereo.  (Under 40?  Look it up.)  I'm venting and I can't stop.

I got a speeding ticket.  Yeah, I know, my fault.  I did the whole "Yes, Officer" thing to no avail,  "Yessir, my car is a very bright shade of red."  No avail there either.  Ticket No. A1O1AFA.  $281.  That's not even what makes me cranky.  I have a line item in my budget for speeding tickets.

In Florida, you see, you can avoid points on your license (and potentially retirement-ending increases in insurance premiums) for anything short of manslaughter by going to an optimistically-titled Driver Improvement School.  I did that.  Aced the online course and got my certificate excusing me from further just reward for Ticket No. A101AFA, which I duly presented at the courthouse.  The smiling clerk had the decency (or maybe it was some private amusement) to roll her eyes at her own explanation: "That there's for Ticket No. A101AFA.  What you got here is Ticket No. A1O1AFA."

I still am not truly fluent in Southern, but I get that "that there" and "what you got here," when used together, are Southern for "incompatible."  A1O1AFA.  You see that character in the Ticket No. between the two "1"s?  That's the letter "O."  It is not the numeral "0."  "Don't feel bad," the smiling lady said, "It happens all the time."

Feel bad?  FEEL BAD!!??

I didn't let my inner crankiness leak out until I got back to the courthouse parking lot.  I'm cranky, not stupid.  (Although, as we shall see, that too is open to question.)  But, let's set that aside for now.  Fast-forward to two weeks ago.

This is Florida, where little makes sense on the best of days.  They closed the Pinellas Bike Trail for badly needed repairs -- OK, that makes sense -- but without notice.  With fat little legs pumping furiously and hellbent for the Starbucks in Clearwater on a sunny Saturday morning, I fetched up short against the new signage.  (This was before the broken collar bone, you see.  I'm getting to that.  Hold yer water.)  Anyway, I discussed the overall situation with a clipboard-toting supervisor who was turning back a stream of cyclists, all suffering from varying degrees of cranky. 

"Where," I queried, "is the detour?"

"I'm sorry, sir, I can't give you that information."  (Huh?)

"Why not?"

"Well - don't quote me on this - but the lawyers recommended against it."

That's a quote.

Lawyers or not, I picked a not-too-safe route around the closed section and made my rendezvous with my Vente Coffee Light Frapuccino, One Extra Shot.  On the way home, the clipboard wielder had gone for the day.  So I pissed on his sign.  Don't quote me on that.  I noticed there were a couple of other fresh puddles around the sign.

(Wait - I need another box of kleenix ---)

Feeling flush from my spontaneous expression of discontent over the trail closure, I approached Taylor Park (the very Taylor Park of my dreams), which sits three miles north of home-sweet-trailer-park.  Nice pond, nice  walking trails, nice park benches at strategically beautiful and peaceful locations.  I angled cautiously -- oh, so cautiously -- off the bike path toward the first bench I saw.

And woke up looking up at the trees.

The little old lady who woke me up said I must have hit a tree root under those leaves over there.  More likely I was still pissed enough at the smiling ticket lady or the clipboard guy that I suffered the momentariest lapse in attention.

Fast forward once more to the ambulance because nothing good happened in between.  The EMT manning my IV line casually flipped the question up in the air, "So - have you ever had a stroke before?"  Lucky for the EMT, I had just pissed on a sign, or he would have had an issue with his damn ambulance.

No, I didn't have a stroke, just a broken clavicle.  "Use this sling and take these pills.  You'll feel better in about six weeks."  That doctor didn't know I was going to catch this damn cold.

Now you know why I'm cranky.

(Reminder to self:  When the pain pills wear off, you should probably delete this.)

Newt

(Subsequent Note to self about Reminder to self:  Nah!)

Generation Gapping at the Golden Bear Cafe

Habitues of the Golden Bear Cafe & Hash House down on Starkey reflect the surrounding demographic: old, ancient, paleolithic.  Those on their way out are served their eggs and flapjacks by those on their way in.  Occasionally, someone founders in the resulting turbulence.

Sunday mornings, ol' Jasper holds court for those who will listen. 

"Howdy, Miss Lorraine.  Lovely new walking stick you're sporting."

"Jimbo, do you believe I finally sold that old Harley?  Had that thing since '63.  Still starts on the first kick."

"Mary, you look just like my third daughter."

Mary is 75 if she's a day.  But she blushes and nods.  Or maybe that tremor is back.

Wait staff at the Bear are hardened vets, except for Amber, whose shyness whispers around her like a lace veil.  She flusters when she brings Judy a bagel toasted instead of grilled or fills my cup with high-test instead of the damned decaf I've been drinking.  She is awkward beyond the time when awkward is her due.  She's a sweetheart through and through.

I watched this week as Amber delivered Jasper's eggs Benedict, cooked soft, with home fries done not-too-dark.  He pointed to her upper arm as she leaned in to fill his coffee.  "What's that there?"

"A-an owl," she stammered.

"Oh."  Long pause.  "Hmmph."  The twinkle dropped out of Jasper's eyes, and his opinion was clear.  A tattoo on a sweet young thing like that...

Amber didn't respond and went about her business.  Judy and I hung around after Jasper finally made his imperial way to the door.  I invited Amber to sit with us for a minute.

Her tattoo is a pixelated owl in soft pastels, after an embroidery that her grandmother had made when she was born.  It evokes another age in a modern medium.  The huge eyes mirror her own. 

I told her my tattoo story, the one I told you last week, trying not to dodder while I did so.  She brightened a bit, and so did my day.  Funny the different ways what goes around comes around.

That's all -- no more tattoo stories.

Newt

Gator Ink

Here in the anteroom to eternity, we are awash with folks whose trendy body art from the millennium has drooped alarmingly.  We're law-abiders here, and no law demands so much of our baby boomer bodies as the law of gravity.  Florida is closer to the equator, you know, and gravity here pulls a bit harder on our hangy-down parts.  The place is lousy with long-long-long-stemmed roses, stretched-out dolphins, and ducks that have morphed into swans.  It's not often pretty.

I knew this would happen.  Back in the '00s, when my son returned from his fourth tour of duty - a dangerous year in Iraq - he sported a nicotine habit and a dragon inked across his chest and left shoulder.  In a rare moment of discretion, I decided not to comment on the smoking.  He was long grown and a war veteran, and I held my tongue about his addiction.  But I casually pointed out that gravity might have its way with his tattoo by the time he hit 60.

I immediately wished I had kept my arrant presumption to myself, and a quiet rift opened between us.  In truth, the dragon was beautifully rendered, subtly shaded and allowed to peek out coyly from an open collar or a short-sleeve shirt.  But what's said can't be unsaid, and I lived with it.

Fast-forward six months to Thanksgiving dinner.  Beers were consumed, times were good, and Erik was still smoking.  I had what seemed an inspiration at the time and announced that if he would quit smoking, I would get a tattoo.  I'm not sure what reaction I expected, but there was nothing.  Nothing at all.  I sensed I had jammed my foot still further into my mouth.  Oops.

Six more months passed, and we hosted a pool party on the deck, with Erik and his friends among the guests.  Beers were consumed and times were good.  One of Erik's co-workers struck up a conversation.  Then, from nowhere: "So, Mr. Newton, I hear you're getting a tattoo."

I have always been proud that I didn't miss a beat in my response.  "Yes," I said, "Yes I am."  I love simple declarative sentences.

Erik accompanied me to the tattoo parlor a few days later, not without a certain glee I think.  And I sat for a portrait on the back of my right shoulder.  I didn't need to worry how the tat would look when I was sixty - I was already on the cusp of that venerable age.

The design will be familiar to fans of M.C. Escher.  I think it's rather fetching.  And my relationship with my tobacco-free son has never been better.

Newt

The Tyranny of the Empty Page

Uh, world?  Yeah, it's me - - -  Newt.  I'm still here.  I got lost for a while, but I'm back.  Now I have nothing to write about except the damn fool that . . .  No, wait a minute.  Let me start again.

I got back on my bike yesterday after almost three years of indolence and lipid accretion.  They say you never forget how to ride a bike.  As usual, they're wrong.

I took a short and cautious spin around the block, reveling in the breeze on my face and the bugs in my teeth, fat little legs pumping furiously.  Then triumphantly back into my driveway. 

You know that precarious moment between stopping a bike and planting your feet on the ground?  The moment when all your ponderous weight is still on the pedal but your forward momentum is spent, when gravity suddenly demands your full attention?  And you're supposed to tilt gracefully toward the other foot, the foot not on the pedal? 

Yeah, I did that wrong. 

The bleeding has largely stopped, Tylenol being chemical proof that God loves me still.  Part of me wants to feel healthier because I actually exercised for a few minutes.  But another part of me looks at the gash in my shank, perplexed.  "Why, the damned fool forgot how to ride a bike." 

I wonder if I remember how this blog thing works.  Let's see what develops.  And next time, I'll lean the other way.

Newt

Naked Anxiety

It happened again last light.  I was OJ-ing through an airport when I looked down.  I was naked.  Again.

I thought, "Screw it; it's just that dream again," and hopped on the down escalator, hoping I was right.  I still feel the escalator stairs stinging the soles of my bare feet, and I wondered if the cowcatcher at the bottom would rip my toes off or worse.

I'm getting better as I age.  Time was I would discover my nakedness while frantically searching for the room where my Advanced Calculus exam was being conducted, thinking, "How I could have missed an entire semester of classes?"  Now when the stress dream kicks in, I just wonder what happened to the pants where I put my plane ticket.

I expected when I retired that stress would wither to a curious artifact of a prior life.  Nope.  Here is an eternal principle:  stress expands to fill the emotional space available.

Last week I flew to Robinsonville, Mississippi, which is a suburb of Clack and is usually called Tunica, hard by the Mississippi River.  Permanent population about 6, plus the droves visiting the ten gambling houses perched by the levee.

Of course, you can't fly to Robinsonville, with or without clothing.  You have to fly to Memphis, Tennessee and drive your rented Toyota Yaris 40 miles south on US 61.  The "US" designation on the route number is surely aspirational, since everyone from the area speaks only Clack.  Flying and driving, however, give me no anxiety.  I'm at peace with those things.

I went to Tunica/Robinsonville-near-Clack to play cards.  Duplicate bridge, specifically.  I took up bridge when I retired, hoping to ease the stress that I expected never again to encounter.  Just in case.

In due time, I got pretty good at bridge, in a newcomer sort of way.  It's a demanding game, and I dreamed often of dealing naked.  But I progressed faster than whatever norm applies, and the dreams subsided  That's how I knew I no longer had enough stress in my life.  So I volunteered to teach newbies how to play the game.  And to write a blog for them.  (If you have nothing better to do in life, the blog is here.)

Teaching is a good way to learn.  You need only be a lesson or so ahead of your students, and you can fake the rest.  While you explain timeless principles, those principles become gouged a little deeper in your own grey matter.  In theory.

Teaching's fine, but writing it all down in public raises stress to a new level.  It's not just ambitious newcomers who read the blog, but also players with the decades of experience that I lack.

So there I was in Robinsonville, playing the game and collecting a new bridge credential that I pretend does not matter to me.  That, I think, should give me the confidence to wear clothes all the way home.

When I got smugly home to beautiful Tampa Bay, I fired off a blog article on the subtleties of a peculiar bridge hand that appeared at the tournament:

♠ Q

♥ A J 10 9 5 4

♦ A Q J 10 9 7

♣  (void)

(I just did that to show you I could.)

I explained on-line that the hand should be bid in a certain way to take advantage of the lack of black cards.  Great lesson for new players.  QED.

Not Exactly.

If bridge players share a common trait, it is the criticism gene.  So when I recommend Doubling over 1 Club, there is always someone to argue that the Unusual 2 No Trump would have been a superior tactic.  The fact she was right made matters all the worse.

So here I am waking up on a Memphis Airport escalator again, starkers.  I'd take up checkers, but I have a bridge blog installment due Saturday.

Newt

My Navel Engagement With HIPPA

So I took some time off to contemplate my navel.  As it happens, my navel is surrounded by so much acreage that it took me the first six months to find it.  Now, however, my umbilical year is done, and I have returned to the startling awareness that little has changed.  Case in point --

My Darling Judy picked up a prescription for Prednisone this morning.  Long experience has taught us that the P drug is not taken in the usual once- or twice-a-day fashion, but invariably requires a big initial dose, followed by sequentially smaller doses, until you're taking just one pill a day, and then the bottle is empty. Otherwise you may experience sweaty palms and death-like symptoms.

The Rx label said, "Take one a day by mouth."

My DJ did not get caught up in how else she might take pills than by mouth, but she did call the doctor's office to inquire whether this simple instruction might be incorrect.

Right - you can't just call a doctor's office, ask a question and expect a simple answer.  So she pleaded with the computer to have the medication nurse call back.  Then she went off to play bridge, oblivious to the regulatory machinery that she had set in motion.

I was still rooting around in my navel when the phone rang.  It was Mitsy, the medication nurse, looking for Judy.

"I can help you," I said.  "She just needs to know how to take the Prednisone: once a day or on a more traditional graduated schedule."  That's when I discovered that the world had not changed during my omphalic musings.

"I'm afraid I can't talk to you because of HIPPA," said Mitsy.

"I'm her husband; you can talk to me. My name is on a form somewhere in your office."

"Um ..."  It was a pregnant "Um ...."

"I promise I will not tell the government that you have disclosed the ultra-secret instructions for taking Prednisone."

"Um . . ."  She was considering how long it would take her to find Judy's HIPPA form with my name on it.

"Look," I said.  "If the FBI comes to your office and accuses you of breaching Prednisone security, you can swear that I threatened your first-born child."

I almost had her.

"Okay, then," I continued, "I guess the patient will just have to follow the instructions on the bottle.  The worse that can happen is sweaty palms."

"Oh, no," she blurted. "There's death-like ... um ... symptoms... Um ... theoretically, that is."

"Okay, I'll wait while you check the HIPPA form." 

I got my answer with surprising alacrity, and now I'm waiting for the FBI to appear on my doorstep.

Newt

P.S. ---

Dear N.S.A.:

This blog entry is a work of fiction, and any reference to Mitsy is a fragment of my loyal and patriotic imagination.  She doesn't even have a first-born child.

"These aren't the droids you're looking for."

--- Alec Guinness 1977 

Sweat

It's quiet now, here in God's waiting room, the foyer of forever.  The Canadians have gone home, unfamiliar as they are with the miracle of Freon.  A fly buzzes against the window for a bit, then sputters and spirals one final time to the floor, silent.  It's the dead of summer.

In the North, people ask, friends ask, "Isn't it hot?"

How to answer?

I flip off a sardonic, "You don't have to shovel Hot."  But that dodges the issue.  Of course it's hot.  Damn hot.  Egg fry hot.  Milk curdles on the counter while you hunt down a cereal bowl.  I love it.

It's true.  Air conditioning is fair respite, but the outdoor heat is to revel in.  The Finns invented saunas so they could bask in the essence of Florida's summer.  The Romans had their caldaria, the Aztecs their temazcal.  They knew:  sweat cleanses the pores and the soul.  Florida folk have the cleanest pores and souls in the known universe.

Life slows in the Florida summer.  Folks stroll.  Yesterday watching a youth football team practice, I saw a tough old coach twirling a parasol.  At mid-day, there is nothing but you and the heat.  The mosquitoes have all cooked off, and your skin glows incandescent.  The off-shore breeze is a blow-torch.  The siesta is the great restorer.

I have been here four years, and each year the absence of winter cold is more normal, as is the infinite heat of summer, both reasons to render thanks to the weather gods.  Except perhaps the hurricane god.

This year we had record heat.  I'm alive and thriving.

Newt  

Thinking About What's Important

I stepped in poison ivy yesterday, and now I have a skull-shaped red patch on my instep.  I really think Judy could have been more sympathetic, but she just looked and uttered a flat, "Oh."  Then - - nothing.

How hard would it have been to expand a bit, like "Ooo, that looks sore.  Does it hurt much?'

But no, she just moved her attention back to The Girl Who Played With Fire.  The sore patch on my foot may as well have been just some awkward birthmark as this annoying, itching skull of pain.  I mean, I love her dearly, but she can be so oblivious to the suffering of others.

Not all others, actually, just mine.  I mean she was horrified that time the cat stepped on a rat trap in the stupid neighbor's yard and got its right front paw fairly mashed.  And another time a hummingbird slammed into our picture window (as least insofar as a hummingbird can be said to slam into anything) and she ran out and quickly nursed it back to health.  But for my poison ivy - - nothing.

I have put off saying anything to her, thinking that perhaps her lack of empathy -- or sympathy (I get those concepts confused) -- may be the result of a defect in her upbringing, or maybe something the nuns said to her in grammar school.

I think if Judy ever gets out of that hospital bed, I'm going to have a talk with her.  She is likely using her little diabetes attack as an excuse for  focusing on herself rather than those unfortunate ivy-poisoned souls around her.  Why else would she get woozy like that in the middle of my vacation?  The ambulance ride alone consumed a good part of my day.  And you know what I think of hospital cafeteria food.

It's not like this is anything serious: the doctor says she'll be fine in a day or two once they balance her medications.  But that's no reason for her to be so cheerful in the presence of real suffering.  My poison ivy skull is going to be there long after she's up and around.

Maybe I'll buy myself a get-well card.  That'll show her.

Newt       

The Reluctant Horticulturist

I am a lazy gardener.  No, uh, wait.  Let me start again.

I'm not a gardener.  I squandered too much of my youth as an under-aged farmhand to appreciate the finer points to forcing junk to grow where it does not want to be and keeping other junk from growing where it so desperately does want to be.  Who am I to say where our green brethren and sistren should be and where they should not?  Humble; that's what I am.  Humble.  And lazy.

But there is a stretch of barren sand in front of my trailer manufactured home where nothing wholesome grows of its own volition.  My whole front yard - not really "front yard" in the classic sense, but more like "square yard located in front" - is shaded by a couple of scraggly live oaks.  Grass, or what passes for grass in Florida, hasn't a prayer of survival, let alone thrival. 

My personal aspiration for home decor - inside and out - has always been that sweet spot just south of the neighborhood median:  not so bad as to draw angry glares from neighbors, but never so fine as to prompt unsolicited praise.  I'm fine with mediocre.

I was propounding my laissez faire approach to landscaping to friends Anne and Chris recently, when they pointed out that their entire yard is overrun by low-maintenance, self-sustaining Florida flora called "bromeliads."

"Nothing to it," they promised.  "Just plant 'em and forget 'em."

It seems that bromeliads thrive on a little shade, poor soil and whatever occurs naturally for rain.  If I just blow the oak leaves off them a couple times a year, I'll be assured of lush greenery with occasional spectacular and long-lasting blooms. 

My kind of agriculture. 

Anne  and Chris pulled up a few dozen of their excess bromeliads and popped them in my trunk.  I'm still trying to get the dirt out of the trunk.

I brought them home, dutifully scooped out a bunch of divots in the sand, jammed the plants in up to their root line, covered them with sand, and went in the house to stanch the bleeding.

Did I mention that bromeliads are festooned with razor-edged leaves?  And the few specimens that don't have razors have hypodermic thorns.  The Edward Scissorhands of the plant world.

For the past two months, these no-care bastards have ruled my life.  I've been dividing those that have "pupped" and replanting them in a pattern designed to not look like a pattern.  I want the place to look as though these things crawled in and took up residence of their own accord.  It's that humility thing again.  The trouble is that all that grass that wouldn't grow before, now sprouts from every inter-bromelial gap.

Still, the place is lush, in a random, just-happened-to-sprout-there way, and the neighbors are intrigued.  "Newt," they ask, "What is that stuff with all the sharp edges?"

I mutter a few Greco-Latin names that I made up.  "Bromelius scissorhandius."

"But they make it difficult for my dogs to do their business in your yard." 

As God is my witness, this is a direct quote.

"Yes," I reply with mystic serenity.  "I noticed that.  Would you like to take home some pups."

Newt

Restaurant Review: Bistro L'Hôpital

The Old Man dropped into Morton Plant last week to get his gall bladder prodded and his bile duct bored out and re-lined.  That gave me a chance to check out the renowned MP Bistro L'Hôpital.  As a true connoisseur of fine hospital cuisine, I was supremely anxious to sample the lunch menu, which is daringly similar - the very same, in fact - as the breakfast, brunch, and dinner menus.  I was duly impressed by the chef's approach, deftly spurning the creativity and originality that mars the work of so many poseurs in the field of contemporary hospital dining.

The MP Bistro is simply but elegantly appointed, with great splashes of organic color on the walls: liver mauve, muted mucous beige and, no doubt in the Old Man's honor, bile.  Furniture was understated Formica in necrotic tan, with chiropractic seating done up in a surgical instrument motif - a humanizing touch of medical kitsch.  The open kitchen featured acres of gleaming stainless steam tables, and an attentive chef regaled in artfully splotched whites, festooned with dabs of multicolored sauces and exotic cooking oils.  A very "together" look indeed.

I sampled first the Jello-mold appetizer with freshly drained irradiated grapes and just a hint of pineapple and - was that mango, by any chance?  The promised mold itself was barely in evidence, a disappointing bit of overstatement, I thought.

Choosing an entree was a daunting challenge, as racks and racks of gorgeously foil-wrapped goodies lounged under infrared lamps, aged to perfection and emitting marvelously unidentifiable aromas and wisps of steam.  I chose a freshly reheated hamburger, billed ostentatiously as the "Burger Chez Nous." It lived up to its billing, presenting on a crunchy white bun no doubt out of the oven only in the past few days. The array of options was staggering: cheese?  no cheese?  pickle wedge?  Embarrassed by my own gluttony, I went with the full boat.  Damn the calories, I thought, this is the opportunity of a lifetime.

I peeled the burger from its mylar cocoon and devoured it like a man desperate for sustenance.  Nothing could stop me from stuffing myself with delectable bits of charred beef and oozy-oleaginous cheese-like substance.  I had swaddled the burger in freshly opened packets of yellow mustard, preternaturally green sweet relish, and just a hint of Morton Plant's famous catsup du jour.  Perhaps this was gilding the lily, but the flood of condiments went far to embellish the je ne sais quoi rush of tantalizingly vague meat flavor, reminiscent of long-dead cow, with haunting notes of dry-aged armadillo.

Sated to the groaning point, I reluctantly passed up the dessert tray heavily mounded with whoopie-pies and Cool Whip parfaits sweet enough to send Paula Deen into paroxysms of diabetic shock.  Small wonder that the entire Pinellas County medical establishment calls this noisome bistro its home away from home and the wellspring of its livelihood.  Before I waddled toward the swinging doors, empty tray in hand, I took enough notes to recreate for you the recipe for Morton Plant Hospital's prodigious entry into the anals of hamburger fame.

                 Cheeseburger Chez Nous  

Remove from the freezer a generous 3-ounce slab of the finest USDA Commercial Quality ground beef, preferably prepared with pink slime and added water.  (Ask your butcher.)  Without allowing the frozen meat-product to thaw, drop the burger onto a hot grill - it should make a satisfying "clank" - and go find something else to do for a half-hour.

When the burger is burnished almost black on both sides, quickly quench in a cauldron of tepid water to halt the cooking at just the perfect shade of drab, which the Morton Plant chefs refer to as au pointe.  Allow to marinate up to forever, adding burgers periodically as swarming patrons locust down the first-cooked specimens.  (Oops - I suppose "specimens" is a poor choice of word.)

To finish, pluck the meat puck from the marinade, allow to drain briefly, and flip adroitly back onto the hot grill.  Cook tenderly until last vestiges of color dissipate.  Turn and cook 20 minutes more to drive off any lingering flavor-causing elements.  For the final 5 minutes, drape the burger lovingly in slices of cheese-like substance and allow to congeal slightly.

While your burger finishes charring, drop a bun cut-side down on the greasiest part of the grill to soak up residual cooking essence from previous burgers.  Allow to toast gently until soaked and delectable.

To serve, quickly pop the burger with its cheese-like mantle onto the glistening bun, wrap quickly in foil, and nestle into a paper plate folded into the shape of an origami coal scuttle.  Garnish with small pickle wedge and an overwhelming heap of fresh kale or any inedible green foliage.  Serve tomorrow.

Bon appetite!

Newt

The Inevitability of Blivets

The following is reprinted with permission of the author, who submitted it as a comment in the delightfully irreverent Horse Pucky.  Therein, the lovely Pam had referred to the military standard "blivet," which consists of 10 lb of digestive effluent in a 5-lb bag.  But wait!  There's more!

This is for the engineers in the group.

Aerospace engineers (one of which I once was) recognize a unique commercial mutation of the military specification blivet.  As you may not want to know, airplane toilets are "serviced" via an offloading hose attached to a valve on the side of the fuselage.  Sadly, this valve inevitably gets - um - clogged.  With further inevitability, these valves leak a little.

Leakage speeds up as the altitude increases (there is a formula for this), and the leak continues apace as the airplane cruises at 30,000 feet.  It's really cold up there.  So the leakage tends to form a frozen - shall we say - globule, which adheres tightly to the side of the aircraft.  Our globule grows ever bigger as the flight continues and the back-pressure on the valve continues to increase.  Inevitably.  There comes a moment when our burgeoning "blivet" - you can see how it might have gotten that name - becomes heavy enough to lose adhesion, and it plummets from the heavens.

No, it does not burn up on re-entry (this is no meteorite).  Inevitably, the bright blue blivet - you do remember that airplane toilets flush blue, don't you? - anyway, the bright blue blivet always lands in a farmer's field, usually in Iowa, frightening the cows something terrible.

Upon discovering the source of the cows' discomfiture, the farmer inevitably phones the authorities with tales of imminent extraterrestrial invasion.  The authorities, having heard it before, call the local airport to inquire.  The resulting report inevitably appears in the weekly report that crosses a certain aerospace engineer's desk.  About once a week.

That's a blivet. 

Newt

Wimple, Wimple on a Bun

I fell asleep last night thinking about wimples.  This doesn't happen often.

A wimple, for those of you raised in some heathen tradition, is the starched, white linen gadget that nuns used to wear around their head and face, like a Catholic ḥijāb.  Sally Field wore one in The Flying Nun.  Yes, before there was that Academy Award thing and even before Burt Reynolds - but after Gidget, of course - there was Sister Bertrille.  Okay, okay - I watched it some.  There was a period in my young life when I was still confused about some things.  More confused than now, I mean.

Anyway, Sally Fields wore this funky wimple - "funky" was a legitimate word back then - with a couple of giant gull-wing appendages that magically imbued the hot little nun with the gift of flight.  Nobody ever really got the point of all this, but Sally was still Gidget back then, and you could get away with a lot if you were Gidget.  At least with guys you could, despite the fact that the wimple and the rest of the white habit rendered Sally effectively sexless.  Unless you had a hinky little wimple thing going.

So I watched.  Television and sex were simpler in the 70s.  Or the 60's.  But who's counting?

Enter the James Beard Society.  If James Beard was the Pope of Food, then his Society, even today, is the College of Culinary Cardinals.  They might have been the Bishopric of Bon Appetit, but given the state of contemporary priestly society, "Bishopric" carves a bit too close to the bone.

Recently, the JBS decided to name five "Classic American Restaurants."  It's what the JBS does - name things.  It canonized Shady Glen, from my hometown of Manchester, Connecticut.

Shady Glen's glory is its "classic" cheeseburger.  The Glen's original owner, long before Burt Reynolds and even before Gidget, discovered that if you drape three big pieces of cheese over a hamburger while it's grilling, the overhanging cheese crisps up like some God-blessed cheesy potato chip.  As the cheese begins to crackle, the grill man lifts and sculpts it into a soaring, swooping set of wings:  a cheeseburger wimple to make Sally Field jealous.

I have worshiped Shady Glen's cheeseburgers since long before I discovered Gidget.  Girls, after all, come and go.  (Okay, most of them come and go; my wife reads these things.)  But a wimpled Shady Glen burger was, is, and I hope always will be paradise on a bun.  The James Beard Society got it right.

Newt.. 



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Pedaling My La-Z-Boy to Glory

I own three bicycles, not one of which rides itself.  Two of them live on my front porch lanai behind my comfy La-Z-Boy.  That's the nice thing about a La-Z-Boy.  You never have to pedal a La-Z-Boy.

A couple of months back, in the height of our gloriously mild winter, I cleaned and polished my bikes to a gleaming luster, oiled the chains, greased the nice leather saddles.  Put them carefully back on the lanai behind the La-Z-Boy and headed out to play bridge.  Bike cleaning takes so much out of you.

Before I retired to Florida, I averaged about 5000 miles a year cycling.  As such an experienced cyclist, I am rather demanding, as you might imagine.  I have expectations of bicycling that Florida has a tough time meeting.  There aren't any damn hills here, for one thing, hills like the ones I used to devour in Connecticut.  Nothing here gets even remotely vertical.  And what's the point of riding on endlessly flat terrain?  Not enough of a workout to bother with, really.

But I do subscribe to Bicycling magazine, which I read while sitting in my La-Z-Boy in front of my two gleaming bikes.  The third bike, by the way, is a beach cruiser, a relaxed rider that I bought especially for riding on the packed sand along the miles of  beautiful beach that we have here.  I keep it in the shed, where I have to climb over it to get to my gardening tools.  That's why I never use gardening tools.  In fact, I dropped my subscription to Modern Gardening magazine.  The bike in the shed makes gardening ridiculously difficult.

I paid $40 a few months back for a three-month membership in the municipal athletic facility, which has a nice selection of bike machines.  Trouble is, they are not like the real thing - no wind in your face, and the artificial "hills" you can program in are not at all convincing.  Waste of money if you ask me.

I once rode a bicycle from Manchester, Connecticut to Bar Harbor, Maine.  Yessir, fully loaded for camping and cooking along the road.  The stories I could tell you about that week in the saddle; it was the adventure of a lifetime.  I would definitely do that again if I still lived in Connecticut.  When it comes to bicycling, you can't beat Connecticut.

Recently I decided that I should ride again, even if the roads are too flat.  I bought nice new pedals for my favorite bike and installed a new bike computer so I can track all my miles on my laptop while sitting in my La-Z-Boy.  I get tremendous inspiration from the statistics of exercise; it's the engineer in me, I suppose.  The software was much harder to install than I expected.  Stupid programmers!  How am I supposed to ride if my bike computer doesn't read accurately?

My favorite bike is a custom touring job that set me back more than any new car I owned before the age of 40.  If you look at my new picture at the top of this blog, you can just make out the seat post of that bike sticking up over my right ear.  (The picture was taken sitting in my La-Z-Boy.)  That bike has a Shimano Deore XT drivetrain and Chris King hubs and bearings, which make the bike ride like a dream.  I get tremendous satisfaction owning a fine piece of equipment like that.  It's best use is fully loaded touring, like that ride to Bar Harbor.  That was a ride, all right.  Hard to do that here in Florida.  Bar Harbor being so far away, I mean.

Anyway, I'm thinking of buying new tires to replace the ones that have gotten ratty after sitting for the past two years.  I would not want to go out on a long ride only to blow a tire 30 miles out.  Modern technology is great for tire shopping.  I can sit here in my La-Z-Boy, scanning the tire ads in my magazine and order them on line without getting out of my chair.

For shorter rides, I have a great carbon fiber bike that is super fast on flat roads and even up hills if we had any.  Trouble is there's really no place to ride here in Tampa Bay because of the traffic.  The traffic is so bad they put in a long bike trail that goes from Tarpon Springs down to the waterfront in St. Pete, about 40 miles.  That would be great except it's too flat and kind of boring, since it goes mostly in a straight line (it used to be a rail line).  Not much to look at except the scenery, which is barely above average. 

I have Google Earth on my laptop.  Maybe I'll lay out a route for next weekend.  Except it's getting kind of hot in Florida for riding.

Newt

Driving for Jesus

Once in a while something comes along that profoundly improves one's understanding of the human condition.  Take religion, for instance.  Some go to church and do good works.  I get that.  I have a daughter and granddaughter on their way in July to equatorial Africa to build a church for some friends' families.  Africa in the summer?  Sure - temperatures run cooler than in Connecticut and WAY cooler than Tampa Bay.

There is another side of religious joy that words cannot convey.  Behold the Jesus Truck:

Newt

Good Times at TPA

Nothing rattles 63-year-old bones like a week in the thrall of a couple of 11-year-olds on spring break.  Katy and friend Noelle arrived a week ago and - sandy beach be damned - headed straight for the refrigerator.  Boy-howdy.

As a non-traveling grandfather claiming children off an airplane, I still had to go through security.  It's okay; I know the drill:  I left everything in the car but keys and ID, and approached the groping zone in shorts, unbelted and wearing the battered boat shoes I now live in.  Not that I expected to be invisible - the beard alone elevated every TSA agent in the place to Defcon One.

So I shuffled on command into the electronic peeping Tom, barefoot and naked beneath my clothes.  Oops.  The machine beeped at my knees.  I knew it was my knees because the conspicuously sexless stick figure on the wall flashed two blinking red squares where you would expect to see knees.  That and the TSA guy growled, "There's something wrong with your knees.  Please step over here."

So I stepped over to the groping station with my knees.  Did I mention I was wearing shorts?  It's Paradise; shorts is the uniform of the day.  You would think the guy in the blue gloves could look at my knees and see there were no devices strapped to them.  Not really, no.

"Spread your legs wide, sir, please."  Still barefoot and unbelted, I knew that any such big athletic moves risked widespread embarrassment, but I had no interest in spending the weekend in the pokey or the newspapers.  So I spread 'em. 

Now tell me honestly: don't you think any terrorist clever enough to hide Semtex in his skivvies would know not to wear shorts if he had bombs on his knees?  I did not point this out to the groper in the blue gloves.

Eventually, I got the girls home in their customary advanced state of starvation, despite stopping on the way for sandwiches. 

Vignette:  Stick-thin Noelle standing in the kitchen at 11:30 in the morning, munching a hastily assembled PBJ - I knew it was hastily assembled because J was dripping on the floor - deadpanning: "What are we having for lunch?"

It doesn't get any better than this.

Newt

Incandescent in Clearwater

Here in sunny FL, it has been 85F these past several weeks - unseasonably lovely, even for Paradise.  Would someone please explain why my bride of 43 years has been swaddling herself in flannels and sweatshirts?  At night, our A/C is tuned to "swelter," yet Sweet Judy, blithely indifferent, cranks her electric blanket to "fry" and, for good measure, piles on another blanket in case global cooling sets in overnight.  Outvoted on all counts, I avoid fatal scalding only by kicking everything onto her side and fluffing the remaining sheet that covers me.

In related news, a mysterious puddle of glass appeared last week in the middle of glorious Clearwater Beach, which is currently in the throes of annual Spring Break.  The common thread here?  Well, the beach throbs to the beat of throngs of thonged and nubile coeds.  It's hot out there, folks.  If you take a wall of flesh, douse it liberally in Wesson Oil (SPF -50), inject it with alcohol, and lay it out in the Florida sun for a few hours, you know what is bound to happen. 

Yes, Human Spontaneous Combustion.  How else to explain that glass puddle in the middle of several hundred hectares of beach sand?

Really, Human Spontaneous Combustion.  Stay with me here.  There's this Michael Faherty guy who detonated recently in Ireland, leaving nothing but a blackened husk.  And get this: there was no apparent source of ignition nearby other than an empty Guinness bottle.  Experts all agree: HSC is the only reasonable explanation.  You could Google it in a jiffy.

So, in the light of Human Spontaneous Combustion as a true scientific phenomenon, let's peek back in on my bedroom.  Sort of.  I mean, the connection should be obvious: Judy's maiden name is ...  Flaherty.  Get it?  Faherty-Flaherty?  Pretty obvious, don't you think?  With her raging internal furnace, her risk of Human Spontaneous Combustion must be astronomical. 

I'm going to start sleeping in the spare room.  With a fire extinguisher.

Newt

Triple Witchin'

I know - I've been hard to find lately.  No really, there have been Silver Alerts with my license plate on them.  And all those milk cartons.  But no - I'm still here.  I've been caught in traffic. 

Now, I know what you're thinking:  this guy gets all Chicken Little when he starts whining about the traffic in the Sunshine State.  Nothing can be all that bad.

Unbelievers.  Heathens, all of you.  Birthers, even.

It is the triple witching hour in Pinellas County.  The place is hip-deep in snowbirds.  It's Spring Break, so we are inundated with swirling hordes of practically-naked coeds.  (Okay, okay:  that one's not so bad.)  And now the Florida DOT has touched off Armageddon smack in front of my trailer park manufactured home community. 

I want you to study carefully the picture that follows.  It was shot a couple weeks back.  You'll see the intersection of Ulmerton Road and 101st Street North.  You have to squint a little.  This - just out of the picture frame to the left - is where I reside in blissful retirement. I negotiate this intersection 2, 4, sometimes 6 times a day because it lies between me and the nearest beer store.  Staying home, naturally, is not an option.

In the photo, you will notice a tiny green sign located just aft of the white van there on the right.  See it there?  I thought not, but trust me:  it's there.  See it now?

 

Anyway, the sign bears the crushing news:
 :
      "Construction Scheduled for Completion Fall 2015"

Twenty.  Fifteen. 

And you Northerners -- all you have to crab about is global warming and a few potholes?  Hah!

For the foreseeable future, I'll be holed up with a six-pack of Bud Light and fending off the swirling nubiles.  See you in the Fall of 2015.  In the meantime, watch for me on a milk carton coming to a supermarket near you.

Newt