If you lived in the 60's

We just finished a heck of a cold snap here, with temperatures staying in the teens for the last week. The other day the wind was whipping through town as a front came through, but then things calmed down. Fortunately, Tank and I did not have to contend with much wind on our walks. I did keep it short, though, since he doesn’t have a very thick coat.

I took him for a bath again on Saturday, this time just the two of us went. I had reserved the shower room at the dog wash place. We have the routine down pretty well now. They give you about a half gallon of shampoo and they expect you to use it all. I applied his medicinal shampoo after the oatmeal mix they give you, so he is super clean right now. His coat is repairing itself well , such that unless you know where to look, you can’t see the former bare spots. Later, I cleaned his ears and brushed his teeth, so he’s ready for his close-up.

My goals at work on Friday were a) Leave early, b) Get my email cleaned up and c) Get control of my desk. I accomplished all three, but not in that order. Ever since the Great Flood, I’ve felt out of control, with papers strewn everywhere. Fortunately, most of what I found had already been handled and could safely be recycled. I got my email down to about two inches worth of screen.

Grandson Max stopped over on Saturday for a visit for a couple of hours. Max discovered a Lego set that had never been touched—I think he took it with him. He did goof around with a some pieces of something for a while, then he and I watched cartoons while he had a lunch-snack. We watched something called “The Kids Next Door”. After a while I thought the show was getting a little out of hand and I remarked, “I wonder if we should be watching this…” and Max responded by saying, “It’s OK. It’s funny violence—like Tom and Jerry.”

On Saturday night, we all went to Bonefish for my brother in law's 60th birthday celebration. The waiter wasn’t the sharpest, it was crowded, we had a crappy table, but we still managed to have a good time. My contribution to his birthday booty was a CD of Procol Haram, a group from the 60’s that he liked. It was interesting talking to a twenty something sales clerk in a music store, trying to explain what I was looking for. His manager wasn’t any more hip, as he confused the group’s big hit “Whiter Shade of Pale” with Simon and Garfunkel’s “Hazy Shade of Winter”. Jeez—where do they find these people? I told daughter Ann this story and she said, Oh yeah—the Bangles’ song. No—you have to go back a little further.

Woo-hoo! Burning through a four day weekend

Four day weekends are the way to go. Kathy and I both took Friday off last week, and I had MLK Day off. We had a nice day on Friday since it had stopped snowing and warmed up a little bit. We ran errands, went grocery shopping and then went out to lunch at Outback.

One highlight of the errands was taking Tank for a bath at the dog wash. This time we used the shower room and it went much more smoothly. Kathy was there this time, though she practically had an anxiety attack over the prospect of bathing the beast. He behaved quite well and stood patiently while we worked him over with an oatmeal shampoo and then his medicated stuff. He was unperturbed by the all the yap dogs that surrounded him.

I kind of treated Saturday as a work day, though, since I was working on staff evaluations. There is a new on line way to do those things now that is supposed to be “easier”, “faster” and “more convenient”, but I think that just applies to the people in HR. I was so frustrated and infuriated by the new system. At first, every time I tried to open the instruction page, it would freeze my computer. I called the help line at work and of course then it miraculously started to work.

My plan was to do all my evaluations (I have five to do) and then tell the staff to do their part of the evals. I finally figured out that I cannot do theirs until they do theirs, even though the instructions don’t come out and say that directly. So I printed out the version the system uses and then wrote out as much of the evaluations as I could without using the computer. In the end, I was only able to do half of the work. I can’t access the rest of the work until the staff fills in their part of the forms.
The person who is resigning—Sharon, the one who works with the College of Education who broke her arm January 4—was the easiest to write. I just gave her all the highest marks, and wrote glowing things about her, and she deserves it. I really have some good people working for me. They typically don’t cause trouble and do their work well.

Water, water everywhere

We had another bunch of snow this week, such that I was clearing the driveway each night and then the next morning. On Friday they were promising 4-8 inches of lake effect snow, but it never materialized. I felt cheated.

This weekend it’s sort of cold, but the sun came out brilliantly on Saturday afternoon, prompting me to wear sunglasses when I walked Tank. He loves the snow, incidentally. He’ll throw himself into the deepest drift he can find, and enjoys snapping up mouthfuls of the stuff as we walk along. I told him he might find a chewey surprise left by another of his species if he keeps that up, but he was undeterred.

In other news, we had a flood in the office this week. On Monday we noticed water coming under the door of an equipment room where electrical and heating equipment is housed. The water kept coming until about half our space was covered with it. Several offices had soggy carpeting, the whole career library floor was soaked. It even started moving into our storage room. The housekeeping people came with all their equipment and sucked up all the water, shampooed the carpets and left by 2pm.

They had just left when a pipe snapped in my own personal office, and brown yucky water poured out, flooding the floor and moving into the space outside my door. Now, you must understand that the floor is part of my filing system. Anything on the carpet was soaked, but fortunately, I don’t keep very important stuff down there.

So we called the cleaning people back, and they sucked out the water and treated the carpet with antimicrobial solutions and then left. The carpet was still very stinky, though, so I called them back to redo it. We’ll see how it is on Monday morning, but when I left on Friday, it wasn’t too bad. Someone else’s office that, didn’t even have as much water as I did, had an awful stench on Friday.

It’s all an academic exercise until it’s your own office that is involved. I moved all my furniture out including a big filing cabinet and couch, along with two small filing cabinets and all my chairs. All that is in there is a bookcase and my desk, which is covered with junk that belongs in drawers somewhere. Or on the floor in my filing system. The building engineers have to come back and check their repairs before I can put my space back together again. Every time I look for something, it’s in the hallway somewhere.

Turns out the University thought they could save money by turning off the heat over the winter break. The result was that the water pipe that supplies the sprinkler system froze and broke. My boss had a geranium cutting in a Cool Whip bowl of water in his office sitting on the radiator. The bowl was frozen solid.

A present for ourselves

Christmas was lots of fun with all the kids home. Our grandson was thrilled with every package he opened--probably because none of them contained underwear or socks.

Our big news this week is that we have a new car. We went to the Toyota dealer on Boxing Day and leased another Camry, but this time we decided to treat ourselves to the next level up. The interest rate was only 1.2%, and everyone assured us that prices would be going up after the New Year. So, for “only” thirty dollars more a month than we were paying for the last three years, we now have the following goodies:
-leather seats
-heated seats
-power moonroof
-fog lights!
-17” wheels
-six CD changer in the radio, with XM Radio free for three months
-slightly more powerful engine with supposedly better gas mileage
-steering wheel tilts and telescopes
-power seats on both driver and passenger sides.

I think those are the main differences between our old car and this one. These are all things we’ve never had on a car, but wished we did. Kathy was especially pleased with this package. We bought the one we test drove. Given that it was a frigid day outside, the heated seats were a big selling point. We may not need the CD changer, since we only go on short trips to work and back, and if I drive to NJ, I just plug in my iPod, and XM Radio is not something we necessarily care about.

The last time we had a sunroof was on the 1974 VW bus. It had a hand crank, and it opened the entire roof into a four foot square hole. Fog lights are exciting because we’ve only had the holes where they go in our other cars.

There is a history of landmarks, watersheds, benchmarks—whatever marks you care to use—a trail of “firsts”. For instance, we remember:
- the first car we got with air conditioning
- the first car with power windows
- the first one with remote control side mirrors
- the first car with a CD player
- the first one with a power seat on the driver’s side.

Maybe other people take these for granted, but we think they are pretty neat. For a long time we couldn’t afford air conditioning, though we would pay extra for the automatic transmission. Power anything seemed a long way off for us. Now that we are approaching our dotage, darn it—we deserve some creature comforts, especially those bun warmers.

The latest news

I am still here. The dog did not eat me, though he has eaten into my free time in a huge way. Once I get home and walk him, eat dinner, and try to read something, it’s time to go to bed. I have some time off from work now, so here I am.

Here’s what’s happening:

Our youngest has accepted a new job! He will be moving to Tacoma, Washington in a few days to begin work for the Tacoma Habitat for Humanity affiliate. He is pleased with his choice, and we are glad he can stick with Habitat, since he knows it so well. Of course, we are less pleased with the prospect of having him 2,422 miles away, but we kind of used to his peripatetic ways. He does have two sea kayaks as well as a snowboard, so recreationally speaking, he is well prepared for the region.

Max’s tonsillectomy worked out just fine. He had the usual discomfort, didn’t feel like doing much except watch movies and maybe play a video game. We saw him for a while on Saturday and he was a little subdued, but otherwise feeling fine. He helped decorate the tree, played a card game with his dad, and uncle and aunt.

Our daughter is in from Ireland for a couple of weeks, and she came with lots of goodies you can’t get over here. She hasn’t been home for Christmas since 2007, so Kathy is quite pleased. She has been visiting friends from high school and hanging out with her brothers, squeezing as much fun as possible into these weeks.

We seemed to do a lot of our Christmas shopping at the supermarket this year, since gift cards are so easy and people like them. Kathy and I missed our usual shopping day last weekend because I had to work at commencement, so this was a good way to get it done.

Last night the sermon was about how we’ve spent this Advent season: is Jesus any more present in our lives on this last Sunday of Advent than He was on the first Sunday? Uh oh. I better get crackin’.

Better late than never?

Last week we had a meeting up at church for all the “Extraordinary Ministers of Holy Eucharist” (not supposed to say “Eucharistic Minister”). Anyway, after we got the word on the choreography changes the bishop wants, we all left to go home. On the way across the parking lot, I wound up walking next to a guy I’ve seen in church for thirty-some years, but to whom I had never spoken. He is eminently recognizable, since he’s a big tall guy with a luxurious handlebar mustache. So I made my move, telling him that I’d seen him in church ever since 1976, but never introduced myself. So we did that, and he said, Oh I’m shy, but once you get me talking…And so we talked for a few minutes in the parking lot and then went our separate ways.

Later I realized that I had missed out on 33 years of knowing this man, all because I had never said anything to him in all that time. I think I'll get cracking on meeting more people.

What did you do with your extra hour?

I had to carve a frowny face in our pumpkin this year, since we did not see Max on Halloween. Fortunately, we did see his bat costume last weekend, so it wasn’t a total loss. He has been doing well in school, so we are glad about that.

Halloween 2009 was a cool blustery one. We had 53 kids this year, before we packed it in at 7:15pm. Trick or treating runs from 6-8pm, but things got very quiet so there was no point in sitting out there any longer. We had the requisite Ninjas, Scream guy, demons and even a tiny Yoda. We also had a little fireman in flannel, a shark, a Gene Simmons girl, a cow, two butterflies, a bloody princess and a banana. One enterprising character walked up with a cardboard box wrapped in foil on his shoulders and two squares sticking out of it. It wasn’t until he had walked away that I realized he was a toaster.

The strangest incident was watching a new neighbor back out of her driveway from two houses down, park carefully in front of our house and have her daughter come up to me for a treat, then drive off.

Kathy’s office participated in a trick or treat event for the neighborhood kids at the hospital. Over a hundred came over and walked around the cafeteria, stopping at tables that various departments and offices had set up. Kathy wore a little witch’s hat decorated with marabou feathers. She recently got her hair cut so it’s much shorter than it was, and sometimes it looks a little poufie. All this to say that one little girl remarked to Kathy, “I like your hat” and the little boy behind her added, “And I like your wig.”

I love the Sunday when we “fall back.” I just luxuriate in all the extra time. It’s not even 10am yet and I’ve already done a wash, defrosted the basement refrigerator, gone to breakfast with Kathy straightened up the house and finished this letter. Now I’m going outside to finish winterizing the yard. Too bad no one needs a house painted or something.