Relative Something

The new major league baseball field in town is getting its grass installed! The Twins won 5 games in a row! Are we getting baseball fever?

I am a pretty intermittent baseball spectator. That’s too bad, in a way. I think one big charm of true followers of baseball is their ability to harvest entertainment from the periods when individual games don’t seem to hold great value. They get creative, transforming a game that on the surface can appear boring to the casual observer, by manufacturing intensity, tracking and recording statistics down to every single pitch, if necessary. I don’t seem to have that level of interest, even though Dad was one who seemed to track every game on radio or TV. It didn’t rub off, at least, not thoroughly. I do recall he taught Judy the art of filling out the scorecard on a game.

I don’t pay close attention to every game, but I tend to peek in on at least part of a majority of Twins games on a regular basis, if they are being broadcast. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve felt like my watching must be bad luck. All too often, when I stop the channel surfing on a game in progress, it ends up being just in time to see an inning get away from my team and it goes from bad to worse until I can’t stand to witness any more and surf on.

I admit that one of my favorite features of the broadcasts has become the “Circle Me, Bert” routine. Something that has very little to do with the actual game. One of the best things about a gimmick like this is that it is the fans that have made it so popular, and I believe a bit of dumb luck for the team’s Marketing Department to have it take off as it did. Television color commentator, Bert Blyleven, uses his telestrator to circle fans who hold up signs urging him on during the broadcast. I love how it inspires fans who show up at away games to put a lot of effort into being very visible Twins fans.

I think we could all do with a little circling of our cheery little selves in a whole variety of life’s day to day situations. Doesn’t really translate, but somehow, I think it should. Or maybe it’s just that I like uttering the phrase, “Circle me, Bert!” regardless whether there is a ball game on, or not.

We are dancing with glee and banging gongs over our good fortune! Yesterday we traded in our 27-year-old clothes washing machine for a new model with the latest in high efficiency technology. The old one has given us everything it possibly could. Our Service Plus plan paid off more than once to extend the life of the old beast, once even installing a new motor that was reportedly a very rare component to still exist, but the guy had one in his truck that day.

But lately, the old machine was starting to fall to pieces, literally. One day recently, as I was pulling clean, wet laundry out of the tub, I heard a clank and figured it was some coin or metal button that had come from the clothes. To my surprise, I picked up a rusty chunk of metal that had come from somewhere within the machine itself! The wash tub did seem to have gotten kind of wobbly lately. We didn’t have a problem accepting that it was time.

I am a bit embarrassed over how gleeful we get over this stuff. Hours before it was scheduled to be delivered, we were preparing a path and cleaning for the new arrival. We cleaned up that laundry room like we were setting up a baby’s new room. Jake and Tish, I don’t know what the communication was that you maybe didn’t receive, but I found the envelope with your address looking ready to be mailed, but lost for who knows how long, tangled in the dust bunnies under the old machine.

Between how incredibly prepared we were and the fact that our laundry room is on the main floor, the installers must have been in and out in 5 minutes, even with running through a quick tutorial on the fancy electronic control panel. (Don’t tell their boss, I think they deserved to take advantage and use any spare time for a long lunch.)

I’m not proud of this extreme adulation for an appliance, but Cyndie and I seem to feed off of each other and together we somehow end up becoming overly exhilarated. For example, we jointly plotted for an anniversary present to each other one year and came out with a vacuum cleaner. But it was a Dyson! We felt it a grand way to say, “I love you!”

I wonder if the new machine will still maintain its energy efficiency rating if we keep finding something else to wash every few hours, just so we can use it again?

“You never know when you’re making a memory” from Young Blood by Rickie Lee Jones

A few weeks ago I was writing about some family history, and during that time I had pulled out a box of memorabilia that contained surveys I had family members fill out on a Thanksgiving back in 1990. I completely forgot they existed. Originally the idea was to bring them out in the year 2000 to share what everyone had written. It didn’t happen until almost 19 years after we recorded our answers.

Now I’ve uncovered even more memories from the ’90s, but these have taken a bit more effort. From 1992 through 1994, I tried to write a paragraph or two every morning when I got to my office at work, recording stories about what our kids had been involved with the day before. I wrote directly to my children and hoped that someday they would find value in hearing some of the day-to-day activities. I also was hoping to capture some of what Cyndie’s and my intentions were in our nurturing and educating of the kids.

When I conceived the idea to do the daily writing, I was infatuated with my new access to a Macintosh computer and a software novelty called, Hypercard. Hypercard is no longer compatible with the current operating systems. The software can be downloaded, but it won’t run unless you have an old operating system. Finding the folder of files, called Hypercard Stacks, on an old external hard drive was exciting for me, but I couldn’t get any of the software on my computer to cleanly read the text of the Hypercard Stacks.

It took a few tries and some research, but I finally have it all working again on an old computer at work. So far, Cyndie and I have read through the first three months of ’93 (unfortunately, ’92 is nowhere to be found). There are some stories that are real gems, and some revelations of things we don’t recollect, and also some descriptions of times I’d rather not remember. I don’t like revisiting moments of gnashing of teeth and intense sobbing. Sure, it happened, but some memories are better left faded by time.

One thing that struck me was how many times the kids were allowed to fall asleep in our bed and then later moved to their own. There are also a lot of mentions of kids they played with at the time, most, long gone by now. Overall, it is a treasure trove of memories. I highly recommend the exercise to parents of young children. Consider what you can do now, that when stored for a decade or two becomes incredibly valuable in subsequent years. …You never know when you’re making a memory.

For all the patience that I boast to practice, I have plenty of experiences that I credit to my impatience. Maybe I’m more balanced than I realize. As much as I had hoped to wait for the ideal pose to match images, seeing the latest shot has me unable to wait for the one I really wanted. This will just have to do. You need to rearrange the order between the two, but here is a great representation of the passage of time.

David, John, & Elliott

John, David, & Elliott

The funniest thing I’ve seen regarding the news about Brett Favre yesterday was a faux announcement that after one day of practicing with the Vikings, he announced he was retiring again. Ah ha ha ha! Seriously, I cannot come to a conclusion about how I feel about him and this whole melodrama he orchestrates. A big part of me wishes we had never given him the platform from which to play out his attention-getting soap opera. However, there is still a part of me, the life-long Vikings fan, that is pleased to have a veteran quarterback with a history of having achieved greatness, leading our offense. I can’t decide whether I think it is sweet that he came from our archrival, or sour… because it is indeed both.

Does anyone else think it a strange coincidence that he comes to town and then suddenly a tornado strikes? In Minneapolis, of all places! And on a day that didn’t appear to have the expected raw ingredients to spawn such an occurrence. It wasn’t very hot out, it was generally rainy for much of the day leading up to the damaging funnel, it was early afternoon, and in the absence of the normal symptoms, there was no advance warning from the weather service. There was a lot of rain, but the tornado was a surprise.

There was so much rain, in fact, that the roof of the building where I work sprung a leak. Unfortunately, that leak occurred in the area of our suite that has a drop ceiling with the fiberboard tiles suspended in a metal frame. That means there are tiles to get wet and that’s not a good thing. Also, the leak was dripping at a point where it hit several things above the tiles; an old florescent light fixture from before the drop ceiling was installed, and a large round air duct are two that I was able to identify. Those cause splattering that creates a situation requiring more than one simple bucket to contain. Also, the splattering water collects on these other obstructions from which eventually there comes secondary sources of dripping. (More buckets.)

It is really frustrating to be working beneath this, near the tubs and buckets collecting the drips from the primary leak location, when suddenly I hear the sound of rapid dripping onto a tile overhead. Is it going to last long enough that I should jump up and get a ladder to pull back the tile? How long do I sit there and wait to decide? Then, when I finally do get up to react to it, I have no idea if the water is in a puddle on the tile I’m about to tip, or already soaked in.

I’ve got friends doing the BAM (Bicycling Around Minnesota) tour right now down in the southeastern part of the state, riding and camping during all this weather. It does add a lot of adventure and makes for good stories to tell, but riding in the cool wet is not something I wish on anyone. I hope they are doing all right, and I hope those who suffered property damage from the tornado(s) recover their loss quickly and get trees cleaned up without trouble.

By comparison, my frustrations are insignificant.

we make our own gravity to give weight to things
then things fall and they break and gravity sings

From “Hour Follows Hour” by Ani DiFranco

I like the idea that we make our own gravity. It explains a lot of drama that people entangle themselves in. A lot of what Ani writes sings to my sensibilities.

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I don’t recall ever watching a golf match on television before, but this weekend, with a PGA tournament being held in a community next to mine, I found myself drawn to engage with it to see a national broadcast (global, even, as I hear it was showing in South Korea– home of yesterday’s winner –at a 14-hour time difference) and how they would portray my part of the world. It was also interesting to compare the weather between my home and that golf course, in terms of wind and rain showers. The commentators made reference to how nice the people of Minnesota were. Is that a stereotype?

It boggles my mind to comprehend the number of people that both attend this event and work to put it on, and the significant effort and expense that is assigned to it. I leads me to consider that tournaments like this are happening all summer long, and most of the time I am completely oblivious to it. Then I begin to wonder, how many other things are going on that people are putting huge amounts of effort and expense toward, to which I also remain oblivious.

It reminds me of a time when I came across a magazine rack and began to actually look at all the magazines for special interests that exist. Subjects that I wasn’t even aware of had entire magazines dedicated to them and businesses in place to pay for advertising to the target audience. Entire industries rise up to respond to any area of interest. Back to golf, I’m flabbergasted that instead of just a sports equipment store providing clubs and balls to golfers, super stores exist that exclusively focus on the one sport of golf. Isn’t it just a little weird how we take things to such extremes? Maybe it is to me because I don’t have any interest in the sport.

That leads me to things like makeup and jewels, two more things that fail to hold value for me. When I hear about how much money is associated with an industry like cosmetics, I am dumbstruck. Just think about how great it would be to win a prize of an unlimited shopping spree in the cosmetics department of a fashionable store. There would be nothing that I value. Ok, I recognize that my gender may define much of that discrepancy, but that just magnifies the craziness to me, that the cosmetics industry would involve huge sums of money and only be marketing to one gender of end user.

What if I was offered a large diamond? It really has no value to me. What would I do with a diamond? Carry it around in my pocket? Or give me a Rolex watch. Sorry, no value.

But these things have incredible value to other people. How is it we get such discrepancy in the human race?

I like Ani’s concept that when things fall and break, gravity sings.

I have complained previously about how few thunderstorms have moved through my area this summer, but now, after having a few make their way past the invisible barrier of a heat-dome that rises off the most populated city in Minnesota, I have a new complaint. I have yet to be available to witness any of them as they were happening. I’ve been stuck at work inside a building with few windows or inside a movie theater or some other distraction. Last night, I actually benefited from not having the storms hit while I was available.

On pretty short notice, Cyndie and I were invited to join her dad for dinner and a show downtown. Just as we were parking at the restaurant, it began to rain. Fred had offered us two options: park near dinner or park near the theater. We picked dinner and it worked out great. While we ate, it rained, but after we were finished and ready to head to the theater, it had stopped. We were able to enjoy a very nice walk.

During the intermission of our show, we overheard someone mention that it was pouring rain outside. By the time we left the theater, it was no longer raining. We enjoyed another very pleasant summer evening stroll downtown to our car. On the drive home, it rained  hard, off and on. There were a couple of flashes of lightning in the distance, but the storminess was pretty much over.

Luckily, on this night, I missed out on all the storming. Oh, and we ended up getting really fine second-row seats for the show, “Ella” at the Guthrie, even having waited until just that morning to order tickets.

Do you remember what it was like to be a little kid when it was thundering in the night? I would dread the coming peak of storm when the rumbles started in the distance and the intensity slowly increased with time. To this day, I think I feel the same reaction when one booms right overhead, as I did when I was little. As much as I enjoy storms, I could do without that level of intensity. When our children were young, I wanted to somehow encourage them to respect the weather and storms without undue fear. During episodes of dramatic thunder and lightning, I recall propping ourselves in an open window to watch, in a posture of defiance toward the onslaught, sort of demonstrating a “you don’t scare me” attitude. We would rate the lightning flashes with “ooo la la” or “ho hum,” to acknowledge the level of extreme and intense, happening before us.

I’m not sure how defiant toward the storm they were each actually feeling, but they impressed me with their willingness and ability to play along and hang in there with me. I am pretty sure we drew strength from each other. I know I had moments of doubt during some of those charades in the window. It is a lot harder to feel that defiance when all alone in the dark as the storm rolls in.

If it was Saturday morning and you had nothing to do and nothing to worry about, even though there are lethal conflicts being waged, and typhoon floods dislodging entire communities, and contagious viruses being spread, and fearful, angry people cultivating discord, you may as well get on with your day and not worry about any of it.

It is strange to live my life in isolation from so many of the world’s ills and carry on as if nothing is amiss, but for me, to acknowledge what is wrong all the time, well… just the thought of it is paralyzing. Conversely, I could equally consider all the health and happiness that surrounds us. How come I have traveled safely on our highways as long as I have? Every day that I survive unharmed, there are any number of benefits bestowed on me. I have equal chance of becoming a victim as anyone else on the road.

Friday morning at my indoor soccer games I experienced a small dose of harm that will serve to balance the great many days I play without any ill effects. I kicked at the ball in close quarters with an opponent and all I connected with was a planted foot that stopped my toes hard, inducing more pain than I’ve experienced in a long, long time.

“Doc, it hurts when I do that.”

I’m not quite sure which toe took the worst of it, but my big toe and its immediate neighbor on the right are on limited duty for a while. Now as I walk, I get a little reminder with every step, of how much work toes actually contribute to the effort of a stride.

And today I am going to practice some additional appreciation for the relative ease I enjoy in my current situation compared to so many who are enduring much more grave concerns.