I heard today on the radio that GWBush has broken RReagan's record of most days vacation taken while president.
It will come as a surprisie to almost no one that it took the notoriously languorous Reagan eight years to set a mark Bush eclipsed in fewer than five.
Today is the birthday of Mother Teresa who was born in the city of Skopje, Macedonia (1910), from a family of ethnic Albanians.
Her father was murdered when she was seven. The family fell into poverty. She was educated by Irish missionary nuns and went to Dublin to train for missionary work. She was sent to Calcutta where she founded the Order of the Missionaries of Charity, devoted to anyone "unwanted, unloved, and uncared for."
Mother Theresa became famous and when journalists came to talk to her, she wouldn't give them an interview unless they spent a day working among the poor.
When the pope gave her a white Lincoln Continental limousine, she sold it without ever taking a ride in it. And when she won the Nobel Peace Prize, she asked the committee to skip the awards dinner and give the cost of the dinner, (about $7,000) to the poor.
Makes me think of Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and their ilk. Makes me think of them and spit.
I'd been searching the oddsmakers' listings for my formerly beloved Huskers' first game. Usually they play two or three patsies to get the smell of the hunt into their psyches; kind of like throwing a squirrel into a pack of Dobermen to give them their taste of blood. It's never been seemly, but playing some pitifully inept team to kick off the season is as much a tradition in Lincoln as is the color red. But this year, I'm wondering, do they have a bye week to start the season?
Finally I to to their web site, wherein the mystery solves itself. The reason there is no point spread is that to start this year's glorious march to January, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, nee the Bugeaters, are hosting MAINE. Who knew Maine even played football? They gots pigs and pigskins in Maine? An ignominious new low for a team I didn't think could ignominerate any lower.
And Robert Moog died, he of the eponymous synthesizer. My buddy Dave Rinehart bought one of the first ones built - it could play only one tone at a time - back in 1970. Somehow he got an invite to play it for a performance of Holst's The Planets with the Omaha Symphony Orchestra, and I came along as his roadie. The only unpleasant part was when the orchestra conductor, to introduce himself, came into the room where Dave and I were, uh, prepping for the performance.
Anyhow, I was reading Moog's obit in the Times, about how Switched On Bach by Walter Carlos was the album that really turned the corner for the Moog. I still love that album's transcendence, a perfect vehicle for Bach's virtuosity. I'd never seen anything more after a second album by Carlos, but I had seen that Wendy Carlos had picked up where Walter had left off. Little did I know. I figured Wendy was Walter's daughter. The obit obliquely noted that Walter Carlos had had a sex change operation and now is Wendy Carlos.
Lastly for now, The Kinkster, Kinky Friedman, late of Kinky Friedman and the Texas Jewboys, is making what is more than a half-hearted run at Texas's governorship. He and the 'boys haven't played for a long time; the Kinkster's been writing fiction, running a ranch for abused animals, the usual thing. Anyhow, he's got some folks worried that he just might have a chance, me not among them.
Some of my favorite Kinksterisms include, "Get your biscuitsinto the oven and your buns back in bed." His thought on the Baptists: "They don't hold them under long enough." Kinky swears that when he's elected he'll lower the speed limit to 64.95. And my favorite, about the job (and a former holder of the job) he hopes to be elected to, "Hey, how hard could it be?"
At yesterday's golf outing I was mumbling and musing about how tempus fugit, and I says to my bud Tom, (whose divorce hurt me none at all, but whose re-marriage and subsequent reception, chronicled here earlier, caused semi-permanent damage to my cranium and my other friend's car), I says, "You know, this is nuts. Already my grandson has started first grade, has gotten himself a girlfriend, and his teeth have come loose."
Tommy glances at me, kind of sighs, says, "That sounds just like my last year, except for the school part."
Ha. Jack and Meg should try living with a nurse for three-and-a-half decades, and then see what they think.
RRRRIIINNGG mid morning
"Hey Pops! Did you know tonight's the White Stripes concert? I think we should do it up, dude!"
Still able to get seats on the main floor. Do I hate Ticketmaster? Those bastards. Jump through their hoops, print out our tix. Wife and daughter confer in low tones on "what's he gonna wear?"
Newly showered, dressed in my spiffies, stomach pulled in, hair strands carefully, symetrically arranged (I hope).
The lanky one picks me up just before five, "We got one stop to make on the way. I need your help loading something into the Element from IKEA." Like I didn't see that one coming. About a half-ton of bookshelf boxes later, I'm sweating like a N'Orleans longshoreman and some of the bloom has definitely come off the rose.
We get downtown in plenty of time to walk to Tom's for an Amaretto sour and a piece of chocolate cake, and a cup of chili and a bottle of beer, respectively.
The concert was great. Jack coaxes more incredibly tuneful smashmouth noises out of a six-string than anyone since Jimi. His sister was, at best, a distraction. A less skilled drummer I've never beheld, even in the old days of The Barbarians, and that's saying something.
There were two other guys there who may have been older than I, and several at least as bald, though their conditions appeared to be by choice. Opening act The Greenhorns was lamentable, but the ninety minute set by the Whites was fabulous.
We'd had the North Rim Perseids trip planned for months. The frau lined up the accomodations, the buddy lined up the trailer for our scooters, all I had to do was gas up the Burb and steer.
The buddy goes to pick up the trailer, and none of the three on the lot had working lights. No trailer, the bikes stay home. No biggie. However, each of the three nights we were in Kanab, UT, perfectly situated at about 5800 ft on the east edge of a small, dim (in multiple ways) town - it stormed. Completely overcast. Couldn't see stars, much less meteorites. Thinned a bit on Saturday night to the point you could make out where the moon was, but not much more. No Perseids.
We did have great weather for three rounds of golf and for our visits to Zion and Bryce Canyons, and to the North Rim. I'd forgotten that Bryce runs up above 9000 ft elevation. The North Rim is about 8000 ft and is so much nicer than the south side. We rode the tram through Zion for 90 minutes and spent some good time in the museum there.
Ended up driving right at 1200 miles in the four days. The good news is that the behemoth got a bit over 18 mpg, fully loaded with telescope, luggage, four sets of golf clubs and four full sized people on board. The bad news is that, when filling it up, the pump automatically shuts off at $75.00 whether you're full or not. I wasn't.
I was talking business today to a guy who doesn't know me. I mentioned the name of a third party, another broker who is, unbeknownst to this guy, a good friend of mine. The guy says "Oh man, I hate negotiating a lease with (broker friend's name). He's so smart about leases, and, you know, he's just plain mean enough that he makes my life miserable."
In this business, and with the kind of friends I have, you don't get much better of a compliment than that.
The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found
A hedgehog jammed up against the blades,
Killed. It had been in the long grass.
I had seen it before, and even fed it, once.
Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world
Unmendably. Burial was no help:
Next morning I got up and it did not.
The first day after a death, the new absence
Is always the same; we should be careful
Of each other, we should be kind
While there is still time.
- Philip Larkin
K rented us a 4-bedroom in Pinetop for a long weekend. She and I headed up Thursday mid-day, swinging by Club Schwoopie to get the grandkids' bikes. Got to the "cabin" in about three hours flat, gaining more than 5000 ft in elevation and losing forty degrees. Amazing what the smell of pine trees, a rainy day and even minimal oxygen depletion can do to a guy.
The owners of the property must be rookies at this rental business, as it was way better equipped than it should have been. A sixty inch tv with surround sound downstairs, tv's in every room, and another tv with surround sound on the loft. Also not nailed down was a boom box by the jacuzzi, and another really nice stereo/cd/dvd system with speakers taller than I. Most B&B's give you some rustic (read rusty) silverware, ancient non-matching plastic dishes and let you chase the roaches out of the sinks yourself. This place was great - tons of towels, etc. Hope they don't get burned.
The kids came up Friday afternoon and, as usual, any semblance of serenity vanished. We rode bikes, caught crawdads in the adjoining marsh, threw rocks (a sport one of us is much better at than he really should be) and had a ball. Saturday morning, really early, a bright smiling face burst into view above K and my bed, wondering what was taking so long, what with the sun already being almost up and everything. More bike riding, a nice hike along the Rim Trail, bowling in the afternoon, pizza, wings, the kids recapturing the crawdads each time a certain tall blond would surreptitiously empty the bucket back into the marsh, and a couple hours of Uno in the evening. Really nice.
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