Memorial Day Weekend

Pat Tillman goes from hero to victim.  Bush has Saddam's pistol as a souvenir.  John Ashcroft and Tom Ridge are in a turf war.  Reminds of Donovan's version of "And The War Drags On."

Clan Schwoopie over yesterday for a Dunk 'n Dine.  The adult wimmens wouldn't dain to wetten, but Bella was, as always, a gamer.  Because Gabe jumped in from the side, ear plugs and all, Bella had to, too.  Comes up sputtering and blowing, eyes wide, says, "I did it!!" and flashes a grin and a big (relatively) thumbs up for the cameras.  I lobster over to where she's bobbing and she confides, sotto voce "Grampa, I scared."  What a brave little toaster.

Gabe made good and repeated use of the inflatable slide until I plucked him up and flang him mostly up to the top of the slide where he bounced twice and skidded down, kersploosh.  Ensued what must have been hours of One More Time. 

Postponed the rotator cuff healing process by about a year, I think, judging by the way it felt during Shrek 2 today.  Sat with Gabe on my left and Bella alternating twixt Nanna's lap on my right and mine.  Great movie, great fun, great holiday.  Tomorrow I'll kick Larry's ass around Dobson for the trifecta.

Mobile Log

aka Moblog - folowing Molly's lead, I'll be adding some snaps to this site from time to time.      http://lylemob.textamerica.com/

Adieu MollzerDollzer

K & I spent Molly's last day as an Arizona resident with her and Brian in La Casa Viejo.  K was very brave, only reddening up and overhumidifying a couple times.  Me, I'm a man.  It's only my little girl abandoning me to the clutches of her evil sister and her sister's mother.

K & B cleaned M's apartment while M & I did what we do best.  Movers came, packed, loaded, left.  We went to lunch at Olive Gardens, took back the extra packing boxes. 

Immediately liked Brian alot.  The perfect foil for Molly.  Real smart, quick, gives as good as he gets but always pulls the punch.  Tried to help him into buying a new car, but he's obviously been hustled before and learned his lesson.

This morning, Molly had some challenges getting past airport security with her one-way ticket into Dulles on Memorial Day weekend, but she's airborne now.  We already have our tix to visit over the fourth.  Realize I don't want things changing anymore.  Just everything stop, right now.  It's perfect.  Since I'm putting the kabosh on all things temporal, maybe I'll just back it up to the day before Molly accepted the position in Virginia.

A Glimpse Into My Future?

I hadn't won a putt pot in ages.  Figured it had to be the putter (not the puttor). 

Monday night I burrowed into the dark, roach-infested corners of my garage, digging out putters from daze of yore.  Hefted a couple, swang 'em, tried them against the one I've been using - father-in-law's last putter with a faux diamond on the toe - and decided to stick with the current one.

Tuesday morning I'm on the green of the first hole at Dobson, and I panic, then start pawing through the clubs in my bag with both hands.  "Oh Man!" I cry out to my buds, "I think I left my putter in my gar - - -" and then I notice I have it tucked under my arm.  Many whoops and much hilarity ensue. 

Thankfully, these are thoughtful, sensitive, considerate, non-abusive fellows who will doubtless never bring the incident up again.

GFI

Ahhh the springtime ritual.  Trim back all the pointy, sticker-laden things around the pool, vackum up everything the trees have shed on the cool deck.

The good news is: everything worked the way it was supposed to.  The bad news: because of my lifelong philosophy of Ready, Fire!!, Aim, it took about twice as long as necessary and involved some extra steps.

After collecting all the effluvia in a nice pile, I picked up my Toro Extra Suck and shoved its snout into the pile.  FaWOOOP as most of the pile was expelled out into the middle of the pool through the unzipped-up bag.  Sigh.  You'd a thunk I'd a remembered from last year.  Some of the stuff made it all the way to the other side of the pool, so I drag the TES around to - SNAP  POP.  Oh yeah, don't drag the old, chewed up extension cord through the water.

My brother and some other similarly misguided folk actually look forward to their yard work.  I'll bet their tasks rarely end up being as interesting, even exciting, as my forays into the nether world of suburbia.

Ain't Gwine Follow De Debil No Mo'

One of my best friends opposes downloading (he calls it "stealing") music without paying for it so much that he won't accept, nor listen to CDs I burn from my ill got goods.  This guy is not a prig at all, in fact,  he's one of maybe four non-family members I'd give my wallet (ok, my rubber band bundle) without counting it.  My way of saying I believe in this guy's opinion, for the most part.  So I've been thinking hard about this - hard for me, anyway.  To the point I thought I could smell grease burning.  So I stopped.  Abruptly.

I was an early subscriber to MusicMatch, and, happily for me, at least in this instance, paid for lifetime upgrades.  I really like their player, their on-line radio is excellent when RadioParadise gets on a Grateful Dead kick or something, and now they have ninety-nine cent downloads.  They don't have everything I want, of course (Incendio's Black Opal, Eels Birds), but I've cleaned out both Kazaas, BearShare, Grokster, etc. and am now pure as the driven snow. 

Am I going to delete the +/- 450 tunes I stole? 

Let's change that to "pure as the driven slush".

Pasture Emeritus

My Dad phoned to say he's being feted by Sunset Hills church June 6, naming him Pastor Emeritus.  Certainly the call was to get me to come (it was the first time he has phoned me in the better part of a year (not that I phone him that often)). (The rare double elipsis.  Don't often get a chance to use that.) 

My immediate instinct was to get my plane reservations, show up dutifully, nod and smile for a couple hours at well-meaning congregants, toss a few back con mi hermano y su esposa, wait while the hours drag by until my flight back.

So what means this?  Emeritus, an adjective: 1 : holding after retirement an honorary title corresponding to that held last during active service. 

That's been a given for about a quarter century.  The church has been limping along with declining attendance for years.  They finally dumped the most recent pulpit-doofus and are now operating under the aegis of a temp.  This 'ceremony' is doubtless an attempt to boost the Nielsens and was probably instigated by Floretta, who I suspect is about single-handedly supporting the financial obligations of the church, and thus dictating its direction.

Cheapest tix available at this late date would cost me about half a g note.  Can think of no compelling reason to go, not one. 

Re-reading this, I wonder why I sound angry?  "Paging Doctor Freud; patient waiting in the lobby."

Virginia Visit

K signed us up to fly into Baltimore to spend the 4th of July weekend with MolzerDolzer.  Sounds like she has a really neat apartment with a great view and amenities.  Apparently, the complex has furnished apartments available on a nightly basis so we'll be right on site.  DC always puts on a terrific fireworks show - last we were there was during the Desert Storm Massacre celebration under Bush I.  Enormous parade and more than an hour of non-stop fireworks.

Owning Mahowny

This is Philip Seymour Hoffman in monochrome.  No emotional range, no nothing.  Minnie Driver phones in her most insipid performance yet, which is saying something.  Director  Kwietniowski resorts to hackneyed plot devices and choppy scene selections.  "So" asks the Gentle Reader, "Did you like it or not?"

Old Nemesis

Have despised Sears since my company used to clean several of their stores, in the 80's.  Their managers were the meanest, nastiest, least honorable people we had to deal with in The Dirt Bidness, almost as if they had a special finishing school where managers-to-be were taught to abuse, belittle and take advantage of their contractors.  (I understand the people who ran that school now work for our intelligence agency in Iraq.)

Regardless, when the casino moved out of Moovalya Plaza I had this gaping hole in the rent roll.  In a town of 3500, who is going to rent a space of more than 20,000 feet?  Along comes a Sears franchisee.  Blah, blah, blah and I cut out a prime space for him of 8000 sf on a percentage rent basis based on his predictions of how much business the store will do (dumb, dumb, dumb).  End result: effective rent/sf is half of the second-lowest rate in the entire center; most obstreperous tenant, least professional staff, won't clean up their trash out back etc.etc.

Now comes said Sears schmutz, axing for an extension at the same terms.  Heh, heh, heh.

As Tony Soprano so eloquently put it, "Revenge is like a plate of cold cuts."

Arizona Science Center

Picked G up from Montessori.  We ran a couple errands, lunched at Mickeys, and tradfatted down to the Arizona Science Center.  Love a place with signs all around that say, "Please Touch."

Three hours later we were ready for our ice cream so we headed home.  Am tutoring the boy in Taunting & Baiting.  "You're a mound of monkey meat!"  "Oh, yeah!?  Well, you- you're- you're a poopy diaper!!"  "Oh Yeah!?  Well YOU"RE a pooperoni pizza!!"  " Oh Yeah!?!!"  oh yeah.  Next week it's on to spitting on the sidewalk.

. . . . Sweeter Than Whine

K suprised me with an early morning blood glucose check and has now pronounced me "pre-diabetic."  Already am set up for heart disease - high cholesterol and triglycerides, family history - so this is another asterisk for the loss column. 

Have been instructed to test my blood in the morning "fasting" and again an hour after a big meal.  A lot less problem finding the right time for that second one.  Bled all over my good shorts.  The joys of being a man in his fifties. Bleck. 

If I didn't have Larry's ass to kick around the golf course, dark chocolate, my grandbabies, rocky road ice cream, Radio Paradise, hey, wait a minute - maybe this isn't too bad yet after all.

Gettin'My YaYas Out Again

It's been so frustrating to have my computers audio output jack not.  Almost a month I've been without my mp3s and even worse, without my beloved Radio Paradise.  Finally today, pulled my courage up and took the 'chine into Best Buy.  The main tech fix-it guy there is the prototype computer tech; six three, overweight, splay footed, thick glasses, haircut needing, and for me, a savior.  Twenty minutes after dropping it off I get a call that it's ready.  "Just pulled the bejimminyator out, put it back in and there ya goes!"

Walt's World

Five days together at Disneyland, and we're still talking to each other.  Pay up, Molzer.  Got stiffed on the rooms in a hotel being converted to a La Quinta.  DiGiorgios moved into, I think, three different rooms and never did get one with a working a/c.  Molly's room had a relentless drip from the a/c return above the door, so you stepped into a puddle and got dripped on when you went to visit her, and we all went to visit her.  Rinnnnnnnnnnnng   Rinnnnnnnnnnnng "Grampa, will you walk me down to Tia's room?"

The big new ride at Disney's California Adventure, The Hollywood Tower of Terror, was having a 'sneak preview'.  Molly and I rode it twice.  She thought it was real good, I yawned.  Splash Mountain is scarier, and the roller coaster is the best ride by far.

Understood what it would be like to be 45 pounds heavier, carrying Gabe around on my shoulders.  K did an amazing job lining everything up, from airplane to rental car to rooms to passes.  Kudos, darlin'.

Only sadness was the news that Molly has accepted a new position with AOL requiring her to move to Virginia.  That's a tough one.

He's Baaack

Thanks to unanimous, if tepid, response, will continue.