It's the Holiday Season....

...so hoop de doop, and dickery-dock. (Don't ask me, Frank Sinatra sang it.)

It's been an interesting start to the stretch from Thanksgiving to Christmas, more from the personal end than the job end. Heck, the job half of the equation I half-expect to be chaotic, stressful and basically a pressure cooker. I'll start the narrative last Wednesday, when Kel and I put our initial holiday plans into play. Kel and I had planned to go up to her folks' estate in Sauk City, where we would dine with the fam and she would go to the new Twilight: New Moon with her sister (who oh-so-conveniently lives across the street from the parentals) and I would hang out in the basement and watch DVDs. We would spend the night there, take part in the preparation and consumption of the Thanksgiving feast the day after. After watching some televised football, I would drive back home Thursday evening to work at 6 a.m. Black Friday morn while Kel, her sister, mother and aunt would scour the doorbuster ads and plan their early Friday strategy accordingly.

So I get done with work, get packed for the little trip and soon we were off, she in the van and I in the red Neon. The whole way it is raining cats and dogs, so we take the highway instead of the interstate. Once the highway meets Madison's beltway, traffic has slowed to a crawl and we get separated (no doubt because I am an over-cautious driver and she's a decent driver.) So I eventually meet her at the in-laws, which is...empty. They had gone out to eat in Baraboo 35 minutes previous. Kel's sister soon arrives and she is not feeling well at all. So no dinner, no movie. Kel decided to chek in with her aunt, who was staying at a hotel at the Dells. On a lark, we contact the hotel itself to see if they had any openings. The clerk told her the regular rate (which was a little above the imaginary price in our collective mind) but then gave us a much lower rate if we came in that night (which our collective mind liked.) If nothing else, it meant not having to share a twin bed in the basement, which by previous experience is a bit cramped. We left the car in the parents' driveway and drove the van up to Tourist Trap USA, er, Wisconsin Dells.

We checked back with Kel's aunt who gave us general directions to the hotel. We agreed that we would find the hotel and then find somewhere close to there to eat, sicne we were both famished at that point. It only took us one wrong turn and some clever guessing, but we found the place and then took off to the nearest Mickie D's to catch some quick grub. There, we were surprised to find out the assortment of things that normally came to about $11 in town cost over $20 at the Dells! (We should have been suspicious when we looked at the Drive-Through menu and saw no Dollar Menu... the McDouble cost $1.70!) We passed and instead went to a Burger King, where the prices were a little more reasonable AND they had little Twilight: New Moon postcards with coupons on the back. Score?!

At the hotel, we figured out why we got such an awesome rate, because the place was practically deserted -- if the hotel from the Shining had an indoor pool park, that would have been the place we were staying. We ate, watched a little TV and then decided to try out the pool facilities. (Since we knew Kel's Aunt was staying there, we had packed swim trunks anyway in case we decided to do some post-turkey swimming.) The hotel had two separate pool areas on the grounds: we went to the smaller one as it was doors away from our room, but it still had a generous pool with a small slide, a hot tub and a steam room (which sadly was out-of-order.) Kel and I spent most of the time in the tub, and her aunt and uncle joined us soon afterward. We had a lovely conversation that I heard about ten words of; with the hot tub bubblings and a child's birthday party happening nearby, I could basically see jaws move and little else, so I just nodded occasionally, hoping that would cover. After hitting the main pool for a spell and another hot-tub soak, we said our good-byes and headed back to our room, where we watched some DVDs before getting some shut-eye.

Morning found us behind schedule and in packing to leave we nearly forgot our swim outfits. While still at the Dells, we got a pivotal Thanksgiving paper stuffed with all the Black Friday ads and then took the short drive south back to Kel's folks. When we got there, Kel's dad tried to get me to help him out with something on the computer, which we figured out after Kel came in. It seemed a little tense for whatever reason, which was weird because not only was it Thanksgiving but it also happened to be Kel's sister's birthday. So the birthday girl came over, we lengthened the table to accomedate everyone, and the newspaper began to get dissected as the turkey was tanning.

I was going through an ad so I missed the main brunt of it, but words were exchanged between parents and kids, Tracy was out the door and we soon followed. Tracy walked back to her house and after getting the Aunt and Uncle from the hotel into the house without actually entering the house, we decided to head back home. Kel's folks have had a lot of stuff on their plate this month (we had just buried Kel's grandma a few weeks before) and rather than take part in potential fireworks just decided to bow out. Don't get me wrong -- I love eating turkey, potatoes and all that jazz but it seemed to me there was a black cloud looming over the whole thing. So we headed back to home and had a quiet Turkey Day with us and the doggies. (Kel's sister returned to the house after a bit and the rest of the party had their dinner as scheduled, and even went to the nearby casino.) Kel cooked up some cocktail weinies and that was our holiday dinner. Obviously it was not at all how we planned it, but it was still cool, and it really showed how tight a couple we are that we were still able to enjoy it. I really can't commentate on what went or will go on with Kel's folks; I guess time will tell.

Among the notable drawbacks to un-inviting ourselves to the Thanksgiving meal was leaving the ad paper at the house -- we visited a gas station because the Neon was running on vapors, and a large paper right by the doors said "SORRY NO PAPERS." I suspect they weren't the only ones. As it turned out, the only Door Buster sale I attended was the one I, you know, get paid for. Working at a 24-hour store makes doing early morning sales a bit strange, as the whole need for someone to actually open the door to begin the sale is eliminated. Previously, we had started the sale at 6 a.m. and had someone behind each and every register, which guaranteed at least 90 minutes of white-knuckle cashiering. This year, the powers that be decided to start the sale at midnight, which meant the white-hot portion of shopping was handled by our graveyard shift, who reported that they were crazy busy for about two hours. While it must have sucked for them, it was nice to have a pretty quiet, unpanicked morning as far as customers went. Of course, we did have to unload and put away a 550-plus piece truck, so at least we weren't bored -- and it did seem to pick up after 1pm. After my shift, I looked for a few things at Target, went back to my job to get the best sales there (Patroit Candles 3 for the price of 1 and $1.99 Red baron Pizza and $1.99 pints of Ben and Jerry) and cleaned up my office as Kel had gone to Madison with her sister to see New Moon and 2012.

Saturday we cleaned the house a tad before visiting one of Kel's cousins for an early dinner in Rockford. We took a scenic route to avoid the tolls and made one wrong turn so we were a little late to meet cousin and hubby. The place had the same general idea as Kel's current fave Madison restaurant Hu Hot, so we went to see how close it was to that. I thought it was OK, but I am also not as big a fan of the "put all your ingedients in a bowl and we'll cook it" style. Since my knowledge of cooking techniques doesn't go much beyond preparing freaking Jello, I'm not the person to know what sauces and spices go with each meat, etc etc. So I basically wing it with each successive trip and while I like everything, nothing knocks me out enough stay with something consistently. (Once I get a combination I like at a restaurant, it's always good, which is reflected in my loyalty to my local Subways and Qudobas.)

After our meal, we departed to head back home and decided to hit the Target in the next town north and see if there were any great sales left to test our newly expanded Target card limit. Without saying too much, we gave it a good test. Kel got a new jacket, we got a new scanner and I got new work pants and a crap-ton of DVDs and milk (which was the only thing we truly came in for.) We were home by 8:30pm, which still gave us enough time to go to my work's holiday party which was fun, if sparsely attended. (We had the party at a bowling alley, which allowed me to display my sub-triple digits bowling dominance, which paired with three other co-workers who actually bowl more than once a decade guaranteed me last place.)

The next day brought a new wrinkle to my day-to-day, which was working on Sunday, which I hadn't done since I got promoted back in March. I had forgotten what a different pace and wavelength working on Sundays is. That might sound funny for those of you reading who don't work retail, but every day has a different vibe -- both referring to days of the week and the weather outside. Sundays happen to be the first day of our sales flyers, so we get a steady stream of bargain shoppers who fill their carts to bursting. It was also cold, so people seemed more likely to wheel around the store leisurely. Normally, Sundays in winters are quieter but since the Packers had already played Thanksgiving Day, that didn't seem to be the case this Sunday. Whether it was working Sunday, having three days off or working more of a mid-day shift (I started at 10am when usually I come in at 7:30am at the latest) I wasn't feeling it 100% but still got most of my projects done. With time and routine, that'll change. The worst thing about working Sundays mean I'll have to miss a few Packers games, but that's why there are DVRs, I suppose.

Believe it or not, we're looking pretty good coming up to Christmas. Almost all of our holiday gifts are purchased and ready to be wrapped, and that for me is the most stressful part of all. The tree, the trimming, the endless parade of Christmas programming, all of that is a little easier if the gifts have been bought already. So whatever holiday or holidays you have coming up, I sincerely hope your next few weeks are plagued with as little stress as possible. And maybe Santa Adam will write a blog or two in December.

Weekend notes

I tend to leave my little blog corner a little dusty, and for that I apologize to the ones and ones of you that actually read this. There is a rather large blog post that is ongoing and will dwarf any of my other posts, but as it is ongoing, I will make a pitstop and describe my weekend and what I did.

When I came home Friday afternoon, Kel and I did some last minute house-tidying. This was our weekend of respite for two sets of two kids (we will refer to them as M(f), M(m), R and A, as per foster care decorum in concealing identities.) M(f) and M(m) were to arrive right around 5pm, but they had some home issues to resolve and they didn't find their way here until just about 6:45pm. We are quite friendly with their foster mom so we were told that they would be in trouble for a few things, and we followed through once they got there. We've had all four kids in the past so we know what mischief they can get into, but it helped that M&M would have an evening to themselves to get settled in. A & R were to arrive Saturday morning, and lucky Kel would get to supervise/police/referee their morning and afternoon monkeyshines, as I (irony alert) would attend a foster care workshop. (Our agency requires foster parents to procure 24 hours of workshop training -- Saturday would enable me to lob off a quarter of that in one fell swoop) Everyone was supposed to pass a dish around so Kel found a recipe and I did some late-night grocery shopping to get some ingredients, as well as returning some overdue library stuff. I picked the grocery closest to the library, which is not my favorite but it's lack of customers ensured my full slob dress attire (generic Madison t-shirt with flimsy Gears of War sweats) would be noticed by as few folks as possible.

As Saturday morn arrived, I beat everyone to the morning sun, and was able to get a load of dishes and laundry going before attending to kids waking up. M&M got up around 8ish, we talked for a little bit and then Kel came down as well. R&A came about a half hour late, which wouldn'tve been an issue had we not said M&M could eat when they arrived. So as all four kids got situated, we realized the number one requested breakfast option (toast) was scandalously low, and so off I can to the local gas station conveneince store. Grabbed the bread, went up to pay...and my debit card is not in the debit card slot. I have the cashier hold my purchase, I mentally re-trace my steps, and start rifling through the car in search of my card. I fail to find it, realize my wife's purse (and, by extension, debit card) is in the back seat, and jazz improv off of that to get my vittles. I get home, breakfast continues to be served, Kel goes through a list of house rules and responsibilities charts to keep the Four Horsekids at bay, and before I know it, I'm off to Milton and training.

The training was pretty low-key; it was me and one other older couple. The first half was a DVD on parental guidence of teens based on logic and love, which Cliff-Notes into letting your child have choices and have them learn from the mistakes they make along the way. Some of it made sense, some of it I questioned. Overall I'm noticing with these presentations the people doing them try too hard to be comedians, so it comes off like open mic night for doctors and pyschologists. After a lunch (spicy chili and the dessert Kel made for me) we went to the second half, which was an audio presentation on grief and coping by the same guy that was on the DVD. Having the voice with nothing to attach it to was a struggle, as the educator guy had a sing-songy, melliflous voice that caused more than a few eyelids to flutter. His main brunt of handlibng tough sitautions was to talk it through with the kids by asking the right questions and offering your own analysis of it as one of many tactics. Again, thumbs up on some, thumbs down on others, and the two minute examples of his plan "working" sounded unconvincing. We were able to wrap up a few minutes early, so I headed back to the car and searched a bit more for the debit card, which I eventually found in that half-inch of carpet floor between the passenger seat and passenger door.

Back home, Kel had a friend of hers over I hadn't yet met as well as her infant son. We chewed the fat for a bit, got dinner ready as by now it was almost 5pm, and brought the kids downstairs. The rest of the night the kids watched a Halloween movie on one of the Disney networks, played a Press Your Luck DVD game and then some full band Guitar Hero where I played roadie/band manager/instrument assigner. And then, after a few too many interband arguments/ego trips (which, considering their instrumental acumen was roughly The Shaggs Pop Warner level, was a bit funny) I played Yoko Ono and broke up the band with a quick flick of the power switch. It was almost time for them to head up to bed, anyway, but they managed to soothe over any hurt feelings. After going through their responsibilities charts and figuring out the perfect balance of in-room lights (for the boys, one night light; the huge lamp for the girls), I computed while they and Kel went off to dreamland.

When the alarm went off Sunday morning, I habitually did my snooze tap and turned to Kel's side of the bed, which was empty. I took this as an excuse to sleep in a little, and had it budgeted to be longer, but even the best of dreams will be interrupted by a black lab sitting on your head. (The dream as I remember it was quite a doozy; Kel and I had bought an old Prange Way department store as the rent was low --- $200/month -- and we actually lived in the department store, except people still tried to enter the store to shop and the dogs kept going out the automatic doors. So we took our complaints to the mayor, whose office told us to wait as he was "getting prepared" and as Kel and I waited in the lobby, we saw people frantically taping up sheets of paper to the mayor's door. Curious, I peeked through a corner of the window that had not been covered up and saw a bunch of people creating this paper mache fellow with bits of newspaper and rubber cement. That's when the alarm went off.)

All the kids were scheduled to be gone by 9am: R & A's ride came almost right on schedule and M&M left about 35 minutes later. (They forgot their school folders, which had projects they were to do that day.) I picked up here and there, pleasantly surprised at how smoothly things had gone and how much of the day I had to loaf around. Then, Kel decided to go see her sister in Sauk City, leaving me to myself for the rest of the day.

It's amazing how much little I did. I watched the Pack game, which was probably one of the most underwhelming 26-0 victories an NFL team can have. (The New England Patroits in the 3pm slot took it upon themselves to deliver the Week 1 Tecmo Bowl stomping we should have delivered.) The Ravens came **this** close to ending the Vikings' perfect season, which I didn't mind much as it keeps the hope alive that the Pack can hang their first L on them in Lambeau. I did a little computing, way too much Bejeweled, made a half-hearted stab at re-organizing my CDs, which are mostly corralled in cardboard boxes at the moment, and watched Amazing Race which was fun, despite my favorite team being booted the week previous. (And which I would have missed had it not been for me coming down to check on it -- CBS having a football doubleheader almost always wreaks havoc on the primetime schedule, and so my 7pm show did not start until 8:15pm!)

So another five days of work loom in the morning. Plus, Kel's grandma has been in the hospital, and she is having some procedure done Monday, and having loved ones around at times like those always helps. So I end this at the stroke of midnight, which will guarantee me yawns for most of the morn.

Adam Has a Posse...

...well, OK, gathering a posse. *sigh* OK, to be more honest, a group.

As a megasuperhumongous music fan, I'm always looking for other people who are into music. One of the best places that I know of is last.fm. I have pimped it many a time, and will continue to do so. What last.fm does is keep track of the music you listen to on your iTunes through an app called AudioScrobbler. The device "scrobbles" the tracks you listen, whether on shuffle, playlists, albums, etc. and sends that info to last.fm which tallies the artists you're listening to. From that data, last.fm suggests other artists you may also like and also finds people that share your musical taste. (It also opens up a Pandora's Box of metadata stat geekery that you could break down like fantasy football addicts, but that's another post.) From last.fm I have met people literally around the world who also display their musical tastes for all to see, both as individual friends and as groups of various musical ideologies. One I happily discovered was called the Weekly Album Appreciation Club in which we dissect a new and different work each week or so. From this group, I've gotten into stuff by The Walkmen and The Wipers and other bands that don't begin with "W." At some point late this summer, I thought, this group is neat, but what if we did it face to face in person?

And so in late August/early September I sent a Craigslist post to the Janesville and Madison boards putting out feelers for a CD of the Month club. A few people responded, this led to that, and so tomorrow we're having our first meeting. We as yet do not have a name, but I have quiet confidence that will come in time. The debut meeting I'm planning as an informal meet and greet just to kind of see how people got to be into music, what they're into, etc. Our first CD of the month (which we will discuss at our second meeting proper) will be Creedence Clearwater Revival's Cosmo's Factory. I have no overriding reason for including it beyond it being very close to my person as I was thinking of candidates. (It's not even mine: I'm borrowing it from a friend.)

I'm kind of excited to see where the group goes from here. I've put off putting flyers in record stores/concert halls/coffeehouses because I want to more sure I have a good foundation to start from and I want people, at least in the start who are **honestly** into broadening their musical horizons and who aren't afraid to have a honest discussion about music. Obviously this idea is an offshoot of Books of the Month club or film discussion groups, but why isn't there a musical equivalent to this? Music is as important to the arts as books or film, so why should they not be as available as a subject? Maybe I'm the only one who gets that passionate about music and the meetings will turn into me lecturing the empty seats next to me. But I am hoping there are open-minded, music freaks like me who are excited and motivated to find new stuff for their ear-holes. If there is, then a posse I shall truly have. I'll keep you posted, maybe.

It's actually going to be a Sunday afternoon full of music for moi, as I have the meeting at 3pm and then at 8pm I'll be heading to the Majestic to watch Liam Finn + Eliza-Jane. Liam is the son of Crowded House figurehead Neil Finn (and by extension, the nephew of Tim Finn, who founded Split Enz and works with his brother here and there.) Eliza-Jane is a childhood friend of Liam's who's toured with him off and on for a few years. They have a joint EP called Champagne in Seashells and both are prominently featured in the recent 7 Worlds Collide project that also features all the Finns listed above, Radiohead, Johnny Marr, Wilco, KT Tunstall and many others. (Liam, in fact is playing this gig as a one-off, as he is actually opening up for Wilco in much larger venues throughout the Fall.) So it should be a fun gig, which would make it 2 great gigs in two weeks, as I saw Carbon Leaf, Toby Lightman and Stephen Kellogg & the Sixers two Sundays ago. And then Monday, some football game is on. Can't remember who's playing.

A Body at Rest Does Not Tend to Blog....

....but how about we try to refute that truism I just made up?

So yeah, today was the first day of a seven day break from my job. At my work, taking vacations the final two months of the year is a no-no. This means you must use your vacation days before October 31st and you lose them unless you can bank them. I had 8 days remaining and could only bank three, so I took Monday-Friday off and had the weekends off anyway, so that worked out well.

We had planned for about a month or so to head up to our parents' cottage in the northeastern part of WI, about 20 minutes away from the Michigan border. The cottage is nestled deep in the woods, and quite rustic; there's no indoor pumbling and our electricity will come from a gas generator. But I think it will be quite nice not to be tied to the internet or my Playstation or DishTV for a little bit. Not in any kind of Walt Whitman-esque yearning for the sanctity or nature, but just to be....away? If anything, it will be an adventure.

The last time we were up there was the last weekend we had the boy we had in our care for 1 1/4 years and he had a blast. My middle brother came up with his wife and their five kids and my folks came up, too. It was a nice goodbye to him under some less-than-ideal circumstances, so now hopefully this trip will allow Kel and I to have our own memories of "The Shack", as my mom refers to it.

Of course, as seems to happen with any long-term plan we start executing, we hit a few snags on the road. The main one came to light about three weeks ago when I got a call from Chris, a former co-worker who had worked her way up the ladder to where she had recently become the Operations Trainer for the group of stores in our territory, or "District" in our vernacular. I am currently doing the job she did when she worked at our store, and she helped train me when I was promoted back in March. I can't remember how the conversation flowed word-for-word, but basically she told me there were openings for her position at the Milwaukee district office and in her opinion I would be a great candidate. After a few fits and starts, I applied electronically and had it on my mental back-burner until this Sunday, when I realized going for the interview might mean curtailing or even cancelling the shack excursion. Obviously, for such an amazing opprotunity, I'd cancel it and not think twice about it -- you're not guaranteed any shots at the fabled "brass ring" so you go for it when such a chance falls in your lap.

One of the fellows whom was to interview me called just before I got home Tuesday, but he was gracious enough to give me his cell number, so I quickly called him back and it turned out he wanted to talk to me...but for scheduling purposes it pretty much had to be Friday morning in Milwaukee. It was nice that I didn't have to eat up part of a vacation day, but my store has a supply truck come in Friday AM and part of my duties entail scanning all the merch. I explained this to my interviewer and he said he didn't think it would be a problem and just to let my manager know. His intuition was correct -- my manager gave me the thumbs up and got the second-in-command to come in and replace me (thanks again, Troy!) so I could make my way. Since I was looking fairly shaggy, I got a haircut and -- for the first time in about eight years -- ended up with a complete lack of facial hair. Kel purchased me a nice little outfit, and by early Friday AM I was ready.

I took my Neon, which was badly in need of an oil change. As a result, I budgeted time for an oil change along the way. I stopped to the local lube joint just before 7am. The lights weren't on and there were no hours of operation posted, but there was a fellow behind the register, emmersed in a magazine. I got his attention, but he stated the store wouldn't open til 7:30am, which would not fit into my timetable. Instead of trying to Lincoln-Douglas my way into him opening early or finding another place, I made my way to the Cream City. "Hey," my internal logic joked as Janesville shrank in my rear-view, "if the car breaks down along the way, that's a big sign the job wasn't for you, anyway." My internal logic is such an optimist....

My voyage to Milwaukee was fairly smooth, my soundtrack provided by the newest Mew album (I won't type it out, this blog is long enough already) and Grizzly Bear's Veckatimest. The only minor hiccup was a minor misunderstanding of the Mapquest instructions I had transcribed in my notebook. (General hint: following step 8 becomes much easier when you make sure you've complete step 7 first. Oh numerical order, what would we do without you?) Even with the lovely detour around downtown Milwaukee, I still managed to end up at the locale with 20 minutes to spare.

It's weird how little I remember of the actual interview itself. I remember seeing my store's old pharmacy manager, as he had been promoted to a district position earlier in the summer, but other than that, I have snapshots in my head rather than discernable YouTube clips. I think by watching too many inspirational sport movies, people tend to equate Potentially Big Events with the dramatic slow motion scene where a second or two of real-time gets elongated to gain suspense and drama. That isn't really something you can convey by having two people on one side of a desk asking questions to a fellow on the other side. Still, the interview lasted right around the time budgeted and both of my interviewers seemed pretty upbeat at the end. I guess the future will tell. After stopping at the Walgreens for some liquid refreshment (my interview took place in a building with a Walgreens on one side, an empty shoe place on the other, and the Office up the stairs of an unmarked area between the two) I headed back to Janesville to finish my shift, but took a lunch break at the local Burger King as I had a Buy One Get One coupon for a chicken sandwich.

As I came back to work, I estimated I had three hours before I could punch out. Funny related note: if half your day is travelling multiple counties to take part in a potentially life-changing interview and then coming back, the other half of your day is going to go as slow as Paris Hilton doing long division. Maybe even longer. Still, eventually the little hand got 90 degrees to the right and my vacation time could offically begin.

Today was supposed to be Packing Day, and tomorrow we were to leave bright and early in order to meet the parentals in Green Bay at noon. But Kel has been sick all week, and my motivation to do anything is solely lacking. (Although I do have my clothes, most of my tolietries and a crap ton of books and board games ready to go as I type this.) I'm bringing a notebook and will hopefully have a few reflections while up there I'll jot down. Considering how earnestly I blog and transcribe stuff in my notebooks, expect the read the results... by 2010? Maybe?

Remembering...

I’m gonna philosophize with you for a little bit. It’ll set up the main point on this blog, I assure you. It’s my assertion that there are two types of memories. The first is the kind that just sort of happens, like if you accidently hit the record button on your VCR or DVR and you get a small sliver of whatever’s happening at the time. Like when I hear the Beatles’ song “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” I flash back to being 4 or 5 years old in Green Bay, WI, coming home from shopping at the Port Plaza Mall. I’m in the back seat of the car, a brand new Presto Magix in my grubby lil mitts and we’re on the road on route to UWGB where Bay Beach Amusement Park is to your left and the Wildlife Sanctuary is to your right. I was digging to “doo waaa oooh” background vocals, and just then the car followed a curve so the sun hit me with the perfect amount of warmth. Now, there’s a million things I did as a kid that were more memorable, or meant more in the overall scheme of my life, but for whatever weird reason my brain took a hold of *that very moment* and I can recall it, even today, with crystal clear clarity. But my 8th grade graduation? Nope, don’t remember that.

The second type is the kind of feel obliged to remember, or you remember only because you would rather forget it. An example, keeping with the Beatles motif: I remember waiting for the school bus in the dining room, and I think it was cold and wintery. The radio was on but I wasn’t paying attention, and then my mom peeked around and told me John Lennon had died. Now I was 6 or 7, so I couldn’t claim to be that deeply affected by his stuff back then. But I remember how sad my mom was. I don’t think she was crying, but her face suddenly had this weight attached to it, something you could see and even feel to some degree. I also remember parts of Hands Across America, and that was specifically because I was **told** to remember it as it was going to be a great moment in our country’s history. (The fact that some of you may have to go to Wikipedia to find out what exactly “Hands Across America” is shows how insightful that advice was.) I mostly remember our small Catholic school and a few other people in a line of about 50, with no other clusters of hands to connect to the left or the right.For some bizarre reason I thought the line was going literally snake across the country and that you’d be able to see this huge mass of people on either side of you, and you would complete the connection wherever you were. Yes, I was a weird little kid. I also remember the Challenger exploding and them announcing it on the building’s PA. All the teachers took us to the gymnasium (at the time I went to a small Catholic grade school, so the whole K-8 was probably a little more than 100 people) and they wheeled out a 19 inch TV on one those wheelie holders that brought the TV up to about a six foot height and we watched a hour or so or the news coverage following the disaster. I still to this day cannot understand the internal logic behind that, beyond that it was a “historic” moment. Now on the less gloomy side of things, there are certain events in your life everyone seems to remember: your first kiss (hi, Kimberly!) Your first day on the job (ah, the carefree days of being a dishwasher at Ledge View Supper Club!) Your first day of school (crying at kindergarden, wanting to cry at high school, being at first overwhelmed and then bored in college, followed by my first of many walks from the Lakeshore dorms to State Street to pick up the new Sonic Youth CD.) The first time you touched a girl’s bra (again in college, a few weeks later....OK, the aforemantioned bra – a red one – was in the dryer as I was putting in my clothes, and I oh-so-smoothly asked the only other person there, “Uh, hey, uh, is this yours?” and indeed it was)


So obviously the date of my post might clue you in to where I’m going here. Yeah, 9/11 was an event few will ever forget, an event that shakes every generation exposed to it. Much like how your parents or grandparents can tell you where they were when Kennedy was shot or when man landed on the moon, the Internet generation can paint a pretty vivid picture of 9/11 through their eyes. My eyes at the time were spending my days at my future wife’s apartment in Mazomanie, small and cozy. We had been dating for a few months, and were starting to adjust to each other’s routines, and our main routine was our work schedules. I was an assistant manager at Walgreens in Madison, WI, specifically the store that used to be located at the Hilldale Mall. Being a manager meant you had erratic schedules, and so that Tuesday I was scheduled for the afternoon closing shift. This meant I got to sleep in, which even back then was a nice luxury. Kelley, however had a Monday to Friday morning gig at MCI Worldcom in Middleton, so by the time I woke up she was already dressed, arrived and punched in.

In the weeks before the event in question, the radio had started playing two different songs. One was “Rockin the Suburbs,” the first single from Ben Fold’s first solo album of the same name. I had enjoyed all the albums he had released with the Ben Folds Five, and enjoyed the single, which mocked the rap/rock genre that was florishing at the time. The second was by a (then) largely unheralded band from Canada called Nickelback. It was called “How You Remind Me” and Kelley really enjoyed cranking it up when it came on (which was a different station than Ben’s song, and played a lot more often) I had thought it would be a nice gesture to get her the CD when it came out, which happened to be September 11th. So around 8:30am, I woke up and got ready for work early. My plan was to get the CD at Target on the west side, which was the closest CD-selling store to her work, coming to her office and surprising her with it, and then maybe going out to lunch with her, giving me plenty of time to be at work by 1:00 pm. I had a love/hate relationship with the radio at the time, and pretty much the only time I would listen to the radio was AM radio, and then only when Jim “Pimp of Dead Air in the Box” Rome was on. Since it was not 11am yet, I decided to take a CD with. (My Buick did not have a CD stereo, so what I did was attached my Discman CD player to the dash with some cleverly placed velcro and plugged in the cassette adapter.) The CD in question was Split Enz’s Anniversary, which was a concert of the seminal New Zealand band’s 20 year reunion in the mid 90s. I’m not a super big Enz fan, but I am a big Crowded House fan (Neil Finn, before forming Crowded House was in Split Enz with his brother Tim, who would later briefly rejoin his little brother in Crowded House as well as the aptly named Finn Brothers) and found the Anniversary disc cheap enough to give it a shot. So as the Twin Towers burned and the Pentagon was breached, and as Flight 93 abruptedly landed in a pasture in Pennsylvania, I was heading into work early, listening to Split Enz, with no idea of the horror that was happening one time zone ahead of me.

My first inkling something had gone horribly wrong was when I stepped into Target and almost everyone – employees and customers alike – were huddled around the TVs right by the entrance gate. I thought this was weird until I turned toward the TVs and saw buildings with huge clouds of smoke coming out of them. Like the rest of the people I wacthed for what must have been a half hour, before the scene got too much for me. I wandered around, trying to distract myself from the ugliness of the TV. I saw the Ben Folds CD and then the Nickelback CD, and thought of purchasing both before remembering we were trying to save money to pay for a washer and dryer at Sears. So I just got the Nickelback CD and hurried back to the car, eager to surprise Kelley and discuss the crazy events that had happened just a couple hours before. By this time I knew how to get to MCI blindfolded and a few miles later, was in the building and heading up the elevator to the MCI office. What I saw when I got there I had never seen before during working hours: the entrance room was dark and there was no one behind the desk. Since that’s where Kelley was supposed to be, it was a little off-putting. I hung around the dimly lit office and went to the door where the main offices were. I heard a TV in the distance, filtering in the latest information on the attacks, and nothing else. I didn’t want to barge in, since I figured everyone’s collective paranoia was at a peak. So I wrote a quick note to Kel, stuffed it inside the Target bag with the CD, and headed to work.

I was about 2 ½ hours early, so I parked in the lot and just listened to the radio as facts and rumours trickled in. By noon I was hungry, so I walked in the mall to get my lunch special (the baked chicken breast at Sentry) and was taken aback at how barren the mall was. After eating, I came in to work, and everyone to a person was shellshocked and in a catatonic. And when I say “everyone” it was about five employees and maybe 10 or so customers the rest of the night. (They had closed the rest of the Mall around 2pm, but since Walgreens closes for absolutely NOTHING, we remained open regular hours, and they left the closest outside doors in the mall open just for us.) Some of my co-workers couldn’t stop talking about it, some were already tired of hearing about it. The canned muzak, either on the 11th or the day after, abruptedly changed to a mishmash of patriotic marches and pop songs with the word “America” or “USA” in them. Some were obvious (Lee Greenwood? You betcha) and others less so (there was a Frank Sinatra one right after Prince and The Revolution’s “America” that had ol’ Blue Eyes rhapsodizing about kids playing in the park) There were only about eight or nine songs in this instant mix, which despite the noble intent, made it really annoying really quickly. (Plus, it seemed to go on for the better part of a week, before the country was ready to heal and listen to Seals and Croft and Air Supply again.) All the way home, and then at home, was catching up with the crisis. Since we had no TV in the apartment, we listened to the boombox radio, which made it feel like my grandparents probably did when trying to get the latest on the wars of generations past.

In the days and weeks to follow, more would be learned of the attacks, and the nation's collective paranoia would level off to the point it could be rated and color-coded. The drive to and from work was now suddenly dotted with American flags on either side of the road. On a personal note, we would end up moving less than two months later, right next door to a post office, just as the anthrax terror would reach a fever pitch. (Despite the numerous signs they were legally obligated to tack up, our local postmasters in Arena, Wisconsin didn't seem too worried.) And yes, I did end up getting that Ben Folds CD a few days later from Kel.

Of course, I ‘celebrate’ not one, but two big events on 9/11. Because two years after the Towers fell, my wife was rear-ended by a semi on her way to work, the after-effects of which (bad back, numb leg) she suffers til this day. I only remember bits and pieces of that day (but I remember again I got to sleep in) other than Kel’s dad leaving a message, telling me Kel had been in an accident but that she was OK. It's weird that I almost seemed to have shut that day from my memory completely. Obviously it happened, and we still deal with the ripple effects even now. But the voice of my father-in-law on the answering machine is the only thing that has stuck with me.

So on the anniversary of 9/11, all I can say is: my thoughts are with all the people who died on that fateful day, in New York, in Washington DC, on Flight 93, and all those who loved them and knew them. It was a sad day that the whole world still feels the effects of, and hopefully the best thing that comes from it is that we can stop something that horrendous from happening again.

So I was thinking....

So why DO people read blogs?

I think wanting to connect to people is a basic human emotion, and being able to keep track of a person’s growth (be it spiritual, physical, etc etc.) can also be a way you yourself can rate your own growth. Back in the olden days, before internet, motorized transportation, traffic grids, etc. this sort of connection was confined to your general area. You’d probably be on pretty good terms with your neighbors and the people at your church, and how much else would depend on how willing you were to travel and where you travelled to. Nowadays, the internet allows us to span the globe and easily access thousands, if not MILLIONS, of potential friends. Yet, I would reckon a lot of you out there have only passing familiarity to your neighbors, and maybe only hobnob with a few people at your place of worship – if you even HAVE a place of worship you frequent.

The main point I’m getting to is the unique relation a blogger has to their audience: for the audience, a blog is a great way to get personal, but at a safe distance. You can follow someone’s relationship drama, experience their pain and anguish (at least as much as they are willing to share) just like you would a close friend. But chances are you won’t get that 2 a.m. “Screw me, I hate my life” confessional you might get from that hypothetical friend. It’s all berries and no nuts, quite literally. Plus, if someone’s online ruminations get to be too much, you can simply take it off your bookmark folder and move on with the rest of your life. Real friendships don’t tend to just stop like that. But yet, the blogger will sometimes reveal stuff they may only tell their bestest of the best friends.

Weird, eh?

So as I continue with my blogging experience, I have to look back upon myself. Exactly how much of myself do I want out there? I don’t plan on running for a political office any time, so I don’t have to censor any of my legally dubious endeavors. (Of course, all those who know me know that my legally dubious endeavors are between rare and scarce... can’t serve a buffet with an empty pantry!) I could give my thoughts and analysis of the great matters of the day, but I’d rather not come off as sermonizing or judgmental. How about my friends, relatives, etc? How much of their lives can I share? Simply put, it’s a tightrope to walk.

I know this was kind of a heavy blog, but it’s something that’s been nagging at me, and something I’m sure I’ll internally wrestle with a bit. Feel free to let me know your thoughts and feelings ... it’s interesting to know peoples’ differing philosophies, especially considering how new this whole enterprise is.

Crazy weekend ahead!

Quick life alert: this weekend we will be performing our first official stint as foster parents with our new agency by performing two simaltaneous respites for two foster families. ("Respite" basically is time you are accorded by the agency whereby the kids are not your responsibility. With our first agency, we elected to not use much of ours.) This means we will have SIX kids sleeping under the roof from Friday to Sunday. The nice thing is that all of them have been here before, they know the rules, and all are generally well-behaved and do not cause much grief for us. As bad as the weather looks for this weekend (to paraphrase the Eurythmics, "Here Comes the Rain Again....and Again...and Again") hopefully we can still have some fun. We are going to a wedding on Saturday which should be entertaining. We are unable to get to a wedding last weekend which both Kel and I deeply regret. So, maybe by Monday I'll have a play by play of all the shenanigans. I also want to give my take on the Brett Favre situation at some point, so to whet your appetite, here's a haiku I found on the web about ol' #4.

Throw It Up For Grabs
Hope That My Guys Bring It Down
Go to Hall of Fame

Wall Of Ice Ahead... ! or ?

[NOTE: I also posted this at my normal home for musical musings, which is right here.]


So the hot music news of the weekend revolves around a leaked mp3 that may or may not be an advance for a new Radiohead extended play release that may or may not be available for public consumption on Monday. They're speculating on Stereogum, they're pontificating on Pitchfork. Heck, the buzz on this has been so large it woke up grandpa at the old folk's home and he dutifully told his floormates at Rolling Stone. Whether or not there is an actual Radiohead release at the end of this Rainbow (pun intended) is not the point of this blog, at least not the main part of it. Instead, let's take a step back and dissect exactly what the discovery and overanalysis of a single mp3 floating in cyberspace means.

Firstly, I think any doubts that Thom Yorke and co. are NOT the band of this generation can be quelled. Let's assume all this research is somewhat accurate and this track is indeed a cyberteaser for a Radiohead EP. Honestly, when was the last time a large audience got excited about a freaking EP? (My guesstimate would be around 1992-3 when Nine Inch Nails released their Broken Ep... people were jonesing hard for some new NIN and The Downward Spiral would not see release until 1994. I recall it doing really well, and you still see it here and there when used CD shopping.) EPs are habitually the redheaded stepchild of the music industry -- sometimes they fulfilled an artists's record contract, sometimes they are halfhearted attempts to keep a band's buzz, most of the time they were too much money for too little content. You name it and it's been used to fill up an EP: live tracks, band interviews, dub versions, remixes, versions of songs in a different language, etc etc. If Radiohead can get the masses excitedly expecting an EP, clearly they're a tail wagging a pretty damn big dog. Nickelback, purely in terms of raw sales, are like 10 times bigger than Radiohead... but if they tried a stunt like this, it would get 1/10th the publicity, if that. Love them or hate them, Radiohead get people excited about music.

Now, let's do some thinking here. Obviously, this leaked track has been the music news of the weekend, or the month (well, not counting Les Paul's death, but we'll say good news to qualify.) Radiohead don't really seem to be the type of guys who crave constant press attention, and that's probably why stunts like these (if this is, indeed a stunt) are right down their alley. U2 as an example wouldn't use this as a promotional tactic; they'd have a press conference involving robots and firecrackers and maybe Bono wearing a spacesuit. Now think about your run-of-the-mill aspiring band who have hope, dreams and a MySpace page to boot. Like a kajillion bands in this day and age, let's imagine this hypothetical band's two biggest influences are U2 and Radiohead, and so they want to try to appeal to the listeners of those two heavy hitters. Chances are they don't have the budget or the cache to do a U2-style press conference. But leaking a track anonymously and putting "Radiohead" in the ASCII code? Just like Anyone Can Play Guitar, anyone can reasonably do that. Based on this weekend's wild speculation, you can get thousands, if not millions, of people to check out your song if it sounds enough like Thom Yorke and co.

Now if you're dismissing this out of hand and claiming that no band would have the gumption to try to piggyback off another band's existence, there is historical precedent for such a thing. In the 70s, a struggling Canadian band named Klaatu made slightly proggy, Beatlesque '70s rock. One single newspaper article made a passing reference to the contents sounding like something The Beatles would made if they had re-united, and a Pandora's Box of hype, speculation and notable silence from the band itself ensued. Time passed, people eventually discovered Klaatu were NOT Paul, John, George or even Ringo, and they went back to obscurity. But during that time, Klaatu sold a fair amount of records, simply based on people thinking the Klaatu might or might not be the Fab Four, secretly back on good terms. Sound familiar?

Whether a band would go to such unseeming depths to get people to check out their stuff is a interesting topic to consider. (Your run-of-the-mill record company, on the other hand, would do it in a heartbeat. In fact, they're probably checking with their lawyers to find loopholes as I type this.) What do you think? Is Radiohead, by taking part in secret leakings and other tactics, simply creating a new way to sell music? Or are they opening the floodgates for lesser bands to try similar tactics to get a step ahead? (Let's not forget the flood of bands who released material from 2008 on with the "Name Your Own Price" online gimmick. I am not saying Radiohead were BY NO MEANS the first band to try that tactic, but their success with the "online tip jar" really and truly legitimised such a practice.) I guess in less than 24 hours, we may know if we hit a Wall of Ice...

{UPDATE: Monday came around and the track in question ("These Are My Twisted Words") did end up being a Radiohead song. The "Wall of Ice" EP however, was nowhere to be found. The band simply put the song up on its site for free, with another song dedicated to last surviving WWI vet Harry Parch, available for a small donation.}

What I did this weekend

So I spent the weekend pretty much wifeless. Not by any plan or any blow-up, but she went to a party in Madison Friday night, had a lot of fun and stayed up until about 7am. She then decided to go up to her hometown and hang out with her folks and her sister (who coincedently lives across the street with the parentals.) They went to movies, went out to eat, did this, that and the other thing, and now plans to come home early this Monday AM.

So what did I do? Well, Friday night after Kel left, I listened to my iTunes and transcribed my diary. (I keep track of every CD I listen to and keep a daily tally, which I call my diary. I started on notebooks and did have them typed onto my computer, but it crashed and I lost 7 years worth of stuff. So slowly but surely I am catching up.) I was going to load the van with all the front porch stuff so we can clear that out and make it into something useful, but I lost time and motivation and decided it could wait until the morning.

Come Saturday morning it was rainy and miserable. Sadly for me, with my current work schedule Saturday is the only day I can do a dump run. So I steel myself and begin loading the front porch stuff into the van while it's coming down ***sheets*** of rain. The nice thing is that after two minutes out in stuff like that, you begin to not notice it -- you reach your saturation point, as it were, and can go on. So I fill up the van fairly quickly, only getting tied up trying to wedge in a cheap wooden cabinet. (Ingenious solution: attack that bad boy with a hammer at the pressure points. Made a lot more room, too!) I drive the van to the city dump, only a mile or so away. I pay my dues, drive to the designated area and start unloading. Now I should mention the back door of our van is wonky so all of the loading and unloading I have to do from the side doors rather than just popping open the back. So I try to back the van up at an angle to the dumpster below to make less trouble for me. (The dumpsters and drive-ups are situated where the tops of the dumpsters are level with the concrete you stand in, so you can throw stuff down and ahead and as long as the dumpsters aren't teeming full, you're OK.) I back up and after a while stop, because my senses tell me I'm dangerously close to the concrete devide. I get out and I'm a good 12 feet away, which causes the fellow using the dumpster beside me to giggle to himself. (When it comes to backing up and parking, I skew HEAVILY towards safe on the safe/sorry axis.) Since I already stopped the engine, I decide to work from there, and of corse the rain just then goes from a meager splinking to a virtual downpour. I empty the van out with a quickness, and hit my work (The Pharmacy America Trusts) as it's on the way and I still haven't had breakfast. My co-workers are amused at how wet and miserable I look and I yap with my buddy and co-worker Rob while I scarf down a Yoo-Hoo and a Honey Bun. I got some money back as I was just short of being able to afford another load, and then went back to the van once the rain let up again.

It takes me a few hours to work up the enthuisam for load #2 (we have stockpiled a LOT of junk on our front porch.) But it gets done, delivered and paid for, and on the way back, I hit the local record store (yes, in Wisconsin we have a chain of stand-alone record stores, and even as the rest of the record industry collapses, they seem to be doing OK.) I see if I can afford anything and find a wrestling DVD I've actually been looking for (New Year's Revolution '06, notable as the pay-per-view where John Cena successfully defended his belt against five other people in a cage-like structure called the Elimination Chamber. Right after that, Edge invoked a "any time, any place" instant title match clause he earned the year before, picking up his first world title in fairly easy fashion.) used for only $6. I head home, watch that while doing little odds and ends around the house. After that, I putter on the compy a bit more, play waaaaay too much Bejewled Blitz (the crack cocaine of Facebook game apps) and by seven, decide I should eat something. So I hit the Subway on the south-west side of town, pick up a few subs and some energy drinks at the connected gas-n-gulp and then decide to hit Blockbuster. Now I normally go to Family Video as they seem to be more reasonably priced and usually closer (and no, I do not do Netflix, but I may one day) but I was in the neighborhood. I found two PS2 games for $7 apiece and rented the Wire season one first two discs. Having suppressed my retail jones, I headed home and watched the first few episodes and ate. I had budgeted an 11pm bedtime, but by the time I hit the sack it was 1:45 am.

So I wake up around 9:30ish and commit myself to a few solid hours of diary typing, which works out well except for all the air guitaring I have to do while listening to the Queens of the Stone Age. Then downstairs for brunch and the rest of the Wire that I rented. I spend a little time downstairs with the laundry and then head back up to compute. I send off a few emails to friends that I need to catch up with, talk to my wife and figure out where she's at. Then I make what is, in hindsight, the worst mistake I made all weekend. I went to eat out at Wendy's.

I still had a little money left over and decided to get a small burger meal, and absolutely nothing tasted good. The drink tasted soapy, the fries were cold, and the burger was grisly and bland. But I have the logic malfunction that dictates that I don't want to throw away the food I had spent good money on, and so I finished every bite, threw it away and headed home. Ever since then -- that would be 8:30ish pm, I have had what feels like the Barnum and Bailey circus performing in my stomach, and NOT doing their best show ever. I puttered around the rest of the night, feeling progressively cruddier. I do manage to make a run to the recycling area to dispose of a few trash bags of plastic stuff. I manage to get about 35 minutes of sleep in, which wouldn't bother me if I didn't have to work a 7 hour day at 7:30am (and do the truck order, which involves marching up and down the store, ensuring all the empty spaces get ordered.) Kel and I also have to meet up with our foster care liason and finish up our licensing late in the afternoon. I am awaiting that with the excitement I normally reserve for extensive dental work (NOT because I don't want to foster, but I know by then I will be flatlining and my body will basically go on strike.) But if nothing else, I wrote this blog....

Seriously, though, Wendy's? Why oh WHAT was I thinking? Wendy's is way down my fast-food depth chart, but I guess I felt I did Subway the day before, it seems like I do Taco Bell and McDonald's more out of habit and proximity, and I hadn't been there in a while. It will be several whiles before I go willingly again. It's one of those stomach sitautions where all that needs to be done is to throw up and the recovery will begin. But that sickness is doing the backstroke around your stomach lining, and refusing to get out of the proverbial pool. I normally do not advocate random violence against fast-food mascots, but I seriously want to fling that fleckled hussy Wendy around the living room by her pigtails. (And before you get a nasty misogynist vibe from me, had Ronald McDonald or the Burger King had wrecked my tum so badly, I'd be just as dementedly malicious towards them. I'm an equal opprotunity mascot mauler in my imagination.) Hopefully I can talk my store manager into giving me a 1/2 day once I do my order. Otherwise, I am going to be one grumpy zombie the rest of the day.

IN PRAISE OF #1: GOURMET LOLLIPOPS

Believe it or not, quite a few things have happened on a personal level since I last blogged (I got a minor case of the gout, had my wing-fest, we passed our home inspection for our new foster care provider, etc.) but I will address none of them here.

Instead, I will christen the first of (maybe) many whereby I will closely examine a random person, place, thing, animal, vegetable, mineral and offer you reasons why I think it is awesome. (I may or not include musical offering, more than likely... something like that I'll probably leave to my ongoing last.fm journal log, as I'm sure me geeking out about music bores many to tears.) My first offering is a flashback of sorts, as the younger version of me enjoyed the heck out of them and I had one today for the first time in at least 5 years. It's weird how certain things can burrow in the mind, gradually buried under the constant steaming of new data and new situations. Yet, when they are again brought to the forefront, your recall becomes eerily focused. This comes to mind both from the subject at hand and from renting a CD from the library which I owned on cassette and hadn't listened to since before 1990 (Falco 3, which featured both kitsch classic "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Vienna Calling.")

Anyhow, yeah, GOURMET LOLLIPOPS. For some reason, gourmet lollipops seem to bring Door County to mind as a knee-jerk word association way. I am pretty sure they are not made in Door County and certainly not exclusive to that area (the one I bought today was at a ShopKo in Appleton, WI.) But there was a mini-tradition I'm sure that revolved around me getting gourmet lollipops when we traversed up Wisconsin's "thumb." Basically, gourmet lollipops differ greatly from the plain-jane Spangler Dum-Dum pops, the (IMO grossly overrated) Charms Blow-Pops or even the Tootsie Pops. Let us break down why the gourmet lollipop reigns atop the suckable hard candy on a stick mountain.

1) Gourmet = more expensive. You could probably get one of those Tootsie Pop/Spangler "bunches" for the same price as a single one gourmet dealie (I paid $.59 for mine today... when I was a kid I want to say they were $.49 or 3 for $1.00, something like that.) Conventional candy logic, in comparing the two options, might lead towards the quantity over quality, but only if you had never enjoyed the gourmet stylee.

2) Exotic, "adult" flavors. Even though lollipops are invariably kid-orientated, the preponderance of the big brands did not address one concern all kids shared: variety. Sure, Tootsie Pops had orange and chocolate, raspberry, grape and strawberry, and the Dum-Dums had ten or so myriad flavors including the dreaded "mystery flavor" with the question mark wrapper (which I almost always seemed to get Root Beer Barrel, my least fave.) But the gourmet had crazy, out of this world flavor offerings. I seemed to remember always wanting Strawberry Daquari and my mother always cautioning me against it ("you won't like that, dear. Trust me.") I think I would end up with either Cotton Candy or one that was very vivid blue -- blue moon, maybe? Today I enjoyed German Chocolate Cake. It was as though the makers wanted to ensure the money you spent on your candy concoction would be remembered, and so they splurged on stuff like Key Lime Pie and New York Cheesecake, knowing the Spanglers and Charms wouldn't have the cojones to follow suit.

3) More Suck For Your Buck. (Yes, that sounds bad. Deal.) For my money, gourmet lollipops were the utmost in long-term lollipop enjoyment. Now I can already hear some of you thinking about this subject and retorting "Oh, but Adam! If we're talking about lollipop/suckers on a strict size scale, surely you're not saying these gourmet lollipops can offer as carnival suckers?" Now if we're talking strictly square footage or inchage or whatever, yes, those circular suckers that are about half an inch thick and big enough to hide your face behind beat the gourmets hand down. But there are two HUGE drawbacks to the carny pops that ultimately put them at a disadvantage: first, you never never EVER finished a carnival sucker. It would break off the flimsy stick, you would set it down for a second and an army of ants would find it and inhabit faster than toothless people at the local flea market, any number of things, most of which nicely dovetail into drawback #2. Basically, carny suckers taste OK for about 3 minutes and then begin resembling the probable taste of sugar-spun asshole. So while you get a lot, you don't take advantage of it. With gourmet lollis, you suck that candy treat until only the stick is left. Along the way, you notice a few things the gourmet style do that other suckers cannot.
For one, they are deceptively big. You can take your run-of-the-mill grocery store pop and do what you like with it the second you prise the wrapper off. It can go straight in above the tounge, below the tounge, on the side of either cheek (the Popeye as I like to call it.) The gourmets, not so much. You try the Popeye with a fresh gourmet pop in your mouth and you will stretch your cheek to painful dimensions. So the first few minutes of a gourmet pop you have to suck at it like a pacifer, creating a small lake of sugar, flavor and saliva in your mouth that will become so large it will cascade over the side of your bottom lip if not careful. After a while, you can finally set it in a cheek and enjoy it from there. Gourmet pops also tend to wind down a bit differently than their more common brethren. I find that the top of the stick will protrude out, leaving the final 1/4th of the process with the customer tasting both the pop flavor and a hint of that cloudy paper taste. While this isn't ideally the taste sensation one shoots for, I would imagine the sheer weight of the pop forces it to be placed lower on the pop in order to remain firmly on the stick until it ceases to be a choking hazard. (This would be the point where, had I paid attention in high school science class, I could cite some fancy theory and provide an equation as to why. Yet, all I remember from science class was my Chem teacher asking bizarre questions to the class and uttering all sorts of weird non-sequiters. But that's a blog for the future. Thanks, Mr. Kaiser!) The other after-effect of your gourmet stick is another result of its mass: the poor thing will likely be hanging by a thread of rolled up paper by the time the pop has completely dissolved. Granted, this happens to every pop, but with the gourmets it seems so much more drastic.

Now, the same thing that makes gourmet pops great also work against it. Where I could enjoy a Tootsie Pop every day for a week, I can't conceive of having gourmet pops on a regular rotation, even with the wide flavor assortments. It's almost a delicacy, maybe like a fine wine or a cuban cigar. (I can only speculate on that front, as I have never had the latter and only had the former once. But I definitely feel as though I'm at least two tax brackets higher when I've got a gourmet pop tucked in the jaw.)

So that's my spiel on gourmet lollipops. Stay tuned for more installments of "In Praise Of" which hopefully concern more mature subjects....

@ 35

I celebrated my 35th birthday yesterday, which was pretty much a non-event. As far as I know, there's aren't too many more doors that open to you that don't at 34. (Skimming wikipedia briefly, it appears as though I can now compete in the European Masters Games, but they won't have another one until 2011... guess I should start training, eh?) Plus, the big event I requested -- all you can eat wings at Quaker Steak and Lube -- isn't happening until the 21st.

But at any event, the 35th recognition of my birth lends itself to looking back, or perhaps looking forward. It's not a thing I do often or relish doing when the mood strikes, and I'm not sure why. Some people are able to look back at the events of their lives and are able to detect themes, progressions, etc. (Such people probably are able to draft killer resumes as well.) But don't mistake my reluctance to delve extensively into my past as an admittance of dissappointment, or any kind of regrets. I have a great marriage, a job I enjoy going to most days, a house and a lot that I own, two pets that adore (and annoy from time to time!) and a bevy of family and friends. No major health calamaties (although the top of my left foot hurts like a bitch for some reason!) no financial sword of Damocles hanging overhead, no chemical addictions or illegal activities, etc etc. I've got a damn good life in sum, although I'm certain if a random soul stepped into my life for a day, they would be bored out of their skull. Some see their lives as peaks, valleys and a crater every now and again; I'm perfectly OK with my life being the equivalent to driving through Iowa -- flat and predictable.

Granted, much of that is not having foster kids for the past 2 months, and that will begin anew, hopefully soon. But even with kids, I strive to be the even keel, the calm lake, the safe harbor. (With a lot of our placements, it's either a philosophy they like and/or they need.) But should I have a bigger picture goal, a personal achievement I can treat as a finish line? Or, perhaps more telling, should I really be bothered that I don't have one and don't feel the need for one?

Now when I was a kid, I had a few things on my mind in terms of my future. Some days I wanted to write or draw comic books; later on I wanted to be a rock'n'roller. From 1987 or so on, I had a hankering to be a pro wrestler here and there. In college, I studied and attained a degree in journalism but every experience I had with "real" news didn't gibe with me. I did quite well doing entertainment writing, but several attempts to seek employment through that never matieralized. My childhood interests all had logical obstacles to them -- a career in rock would be a struggle with no instrumental aptitude and a voice that sounded like Kermit the Frog going through puberty. My interest in funnybooks waned when comics got to be over $1 per issue, but my drawing skill had atropied well before then. As far as the wrasslin, I had some of the mind but none of the body (and didn't have the discipline to correct the latter.) Plus, having a good friend actually run a local promotion allowed me to see a little into the "inside" of the biz, and from that determined I did not have the skin to handle some of the stuff that goes on outside the ring. Right now, I'd still love to write, and reading a crap ton of books in the past few years gives me a little confidence (i.e. "Holy hell, **I** could write something better than that!") The hurdle now is the subject, the message. But aiming for the shelves of bookstores and libraries nationwide is pretty daunting.

OK, I do have a minor dream and goal but the concept at its ideal is ambiticious to an unwieldy degree. I would like to have an entirely self-written music website, which would consist of my reviews of as many albums as I could. I like sites like the All-Music Guide and Pitchfork but how many dozens of people oversee and review stuff, all of whom have totally different agendas and philosophies as to what's "good" and "bad." There are sites where only one person deleves into their collection (the sadly defunct Only Dreaming and another one I can't find now) but this one will be mine. I'd have a chat board where I would have a monthly discussion topic, and essays on various things. I'd also have a spot where I review the music books I read. Plus, I could have my CD diary up for all to see. In total, it would be the music universe as seen through my eyes, and a good place for music junkies to hang out. I know thnaks to my wife I could get the space an d she could do the hard programming stuff, but I would not even want it up until I have a good 500 or so reviews, and unless I find a way to split myself in half, getting them written is gonna take time.

See how wrapped up I got in that? Hmmm, maybe I can put that on the back burner. But even if I don't, I'm looking at 35, and it looks pretty good to me. Could be a lot worse....

I Rant and Rave About Politics

Writer’s note: This is a ramble-as-I-type manifesto and those things either turn out to be insightful in a really cryptic way or the literary equivalent of a newly-purchased 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle dumped on your table.I may retool it or delete it in the future.


I just got done reading a lengthy piece published in movie critic Robert Ebert’s blog about the tenor of modern media, and now today’s news differs from the news of generations past. While Ebert took pains to turn it away from a political bash piece, mentioning Bill O’Reilly in the headlines was enough for more than a few of the readers, based on the responses. That, along with the bizarro “Applachacian hike” taken by Governor Mark Sanford got me to thinking in the “big picture” sense about politics and life and how we react to it.

The PROBLEM is I don’t feel very qualified to comment on such matters. I read a political blog here and there, but do not immerse myself in cable news (I get the bulk of my news from NPR, to be truthful) and know the workings of government on a very rudimentary basis. What I do know is my personal philosophy and how it reflects on what politicians I support. I tend to lean liberal on just about everything, and yet have a hard time explaining why. I guess you could say having parents that leaned Democratic helped, but then again one of my brothers is a dyed-in-the-wool conservative. (I am unsure of how my oldest brother aligns himself – getting into political discussions rarely ends well, especially with my uneasy grasp of politics as mentioned above, so I tend to let those discussions pass me by.) For me –and this is painting it into the broadest strokes as I can define – everyone in America deserves a fighting chance to live and prosper. Not all of us were born in a lucky situation where we have a family that loves us and gives us the chance for three square meals a day. Some of us, for whatever reason, don’t get a fair shake in life. While it sucks to pay taxes, I don’t mind as long as the government uses the proceeds to make America better. In a nutshell, I guess that’s why I vote the way I vote. But now, looking at these words I just typed, I can imagine an opposing viewpoint attack each of my tenants one by one, or twist my phrases away from their intended meaning. That’s not right (Right?), that’s naive, you’re a bleeding heart, etc etc. I guess I’ve watched enough cable news to see even my own personal beliefs can be dissected in “talking points” and fair and balanced criticism.

That’s probably my biggest issue with the tenor of the media... how the confines of news bites turn every thing into a black or white issue, a pro or a con. This constant duality makes politics hard to handle for me.... this is America, where free speech was priority number one when we wrote the rulebook 200+ years ago. Yet when we vote, we only have two real choices when we get to the ballot. What kind of ice cream store would survive offering only vanilla and chocolate as flavor choices? Here’s the rub, though: most Americans understand conflict better than ambigiouity. Setting up the issues as one side versus another side like it’s a sports contest is an easy concept to grasp from a viewing standpoint. From a practical standpoint, though, it fails miserably – and if the argumentative tone of the nation isn’t an indication, how about all these disgraced politicians?

Being a politician means you have to appeal to the masses, to tailor your personal beliefs in a way to make them admirable to the lever-pullers. So the tired-but-true cliche of the baby-kissing, grinning-and-waving person of the people comes to life. But remember what I said above about making issues black and white, one side or another? The kind of people who genuinely are happy in public, who are wonderful and positive contributions to their town/city/state/country tend to not worry about being one way or another. (This is based not on any sort of scientific poll but rather over three decades of life and 12+ years working retail.) People may have one or two pet causes they feel strongly about, but by and large people have a “live and let live” philosophy towards others. These people, as you can imagine, tend to be pretty lousy politicians. Politicians have to be aggressive about pushing their agendas and/or party agendas. Still, to get the vote, politicians must give off the aura of approachibility and kinship even to people whose feelings directly contradict theirs. I think it’s the tightrope of this delicate balance that makes these politicians hire hookers, send lurid emails to their employees or go to Argentina unannounced to hang with your mistress, or any other crazy crap folks from both parties engage in. (It’s a shaky theory, but it could also be that “regular” America does the exact type of crazy crap as well, just not in the public eye.)

Disgraced politicians bring up another thing that deeply resonates as part of my core beliefs: accountibility and a lack of hypocrisy. As I said above, I do tend to lean liberal, but the thing that tips me from pro-liberal to anti-conservative (and yes, I believe there IS a difference between the two camps) is when people say one thing and do the polar opposite. Let’s keep looking at Mark Sanford, because the proverbial iron is hot and as time passes he’ll be little more than a Trivial Pursuit question worth a blue slice. This guy went to Argentina for seven days to hang out with his Argentine concubine, skipping Father’s Day and not even informing his wife. But a decade ago, while investigating Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial, he thought that "I think it would be much better for the country and for him personally (to resign)... I come from the business side," he said. "If you had a chairman or president in the business world facing these allegations, he'd be gone." Whether Sanford has to shed his Governorship as well as his Republican Governors Association post is irrelevant; if you’re willing to condemn someone else’s sexual conduct in public, abandoning your job for a week without telling anyone for some extramarital nookie should not even be a thought in your head. Sanford isn’t the first to fall from political grace and probably won’t be the last. But having these kinds of things happen to people who supposedly stand for morals and family is disheartening, whether he’s a Donkey or Elephant.

Maybe that might be why people tune off on politics in general, and accept the good/bad branding of topics on the nightly news. Why invest time and thought into these people who aren’t accountable, put on a false front and are hypocritical to a fault? I really don’t want this to be a party-bashing diatribe, as I have people I respect to both sides of the fence, and both sides have unclean hands in these issues. I just want to repair the few rogue gears of the American Government machine before the whole thing breaks.

Throwing the flag on FWD: progress

Am I tired? My head is woozy, my body is wavering, and my eyelids are gaining weight. Yet there are certain things that are compelling me to write at this late hour. So I am foregoing sleep at the moment to transmit a minor gripe I have with a few people who email me.

Let me preface by saying I **LOVE** getting emails from all my friends/readers/admirers/etc. I enjoy staying in touch with people and being updated on their progress. This is IMO the genius of Facebook, as it's a up-to-the-minute ticker of what people you know are up to. Yeah, a lot of times it's mundane and pointless -- like most of my Facebook posts, heh -- but it's a valid slice of someone's life they are nice enough to share with you and the dozens of other people they befriend. With this in mind, getting a personal email written and directed for you is a treat that I relish. Sadly, instead of emails I tend to stockpile forwards.

Forwards are the worst of both worlds: they have the appeal and time-sucking properties of stamped junk mail, but they're sent to you by people who supposedly like and care about you. (Fun trivia: the wide, wide majority of the worthless forwards I get nowadays eminate from one source -- my folks, which means my dad, as my mom doesn't get computers and internet and doesn't want to.) It's like getting snail mail, and noticing the return address as one you know by heart, and you open up the envelope -- and it's one of those Publisher's Clearinghouse envelopes with Ed McMahon's grinning mug on it. Uh, thanks?

Now, I've been receiving email for almost two decades, so I'm well aware of the usual cast of characters that populate the forwards that litter the web. The guy from Africa who needs to transfer money out of his country and will give you a cut, the transscripts from old Paul Harvey broadcasts from when I was in high school, the "OMG OBAMA IS A MUSLIM/SOCIALIST/CHECK HIS BIRTH CERTIFICATE" all-in-caps memes, the [name of popular chain store] is giving away $25 gift certificates if you forward the email, etc etc. Chances are you know them, too. (Hey, if I don't, I'll foward em to ya! Haw haw!) After you get the same email with the same premise for the umpteenth time, from someone whose opinion you like and respect, it's more than a little disquieting.

I am far from an Ann Landers type, but I feel there should really be some sort of etiquette for dealing with this. As it stands, if I get a forward and it's something I've never heard of before that sounds even slightly suspicious, I do not pass go, do not collect $200 and go directly to snopes.com and decipher how on the level the forward is, and 99.9% of the time, it's so far off the level it's like that one negative mystery world on Super Mario Bros. where all you do is swim and collect coins. (WARNING: if you're never been to Snopes, you could easily spend an afternoon rifling through all the hundreds of urban legends they ran into and define the "truthiness"of each, if any. Don't say I didn't warn ya.)

After this, I used to reply back to the sender with a quick note to always check the validity of the forward, include the Snopes link, and be on my merry way. But I realized one day that such an act is akin to emailing all the kids you know and telling them what you know about Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. Sometimes people are happy with the truth they perceive. (The one that prompted this rant detailed a poor child who allegedly had a limb-compromising accident, and with each forward, the email provider will donate money towards her cause. It's the kind of benign, feel-good gesture to take part of forward every person you know so this girl can get the treatment she needs. Except that the accident never happened, the girl doesn't exist, and the email providers tend to not throw money around just by people sending out forwards.)

But still, am I the only person who gets annoyed by this? I suppose it rankles me a tad more just because I'm a journalism major and it's good journalistic sense not to take things at face value, esp. on the net. It's amazing that as more and more information seems to be spreading through the web, the less and less people feel like taking a few extra keystrokes and doing that research. Now this is NOT something I'm grabbing the pitchfork for and hunting people down. (After all, as I said above, my number one offender is my pops!) Truth be told, there are still a lot of forwards I send here and there (not so oddly enough, the lion's share come from my wife -- what can I say, she knows my humor!) But it's just something I noticed and have actually been ruminating on for the better part of a year, and am finally taking the time to write about it at length.

It All Has to Begin Somewhere....right?

OK, so it's 11pm on a Saturday night, I'm feeling my energy drink pulsing through my body (Rip It's A'tomic Pom, if you're curious -- if people can be liquor connoisseurs then maybe I'll be an energy drink connoisseur) and I'm been reading lots of divergent thoughts throughout the internet, through all forms of media, and it's inspired me to maybe create a blog of my own. Now, I already have a presence on the internet, if only social networking sites... more on that later. But if all goes according to the plan, this blog will serve as a headquarters to my prolonged thoughts on matters and how it relates to who I am as a person. So maybe I should begin with a (hopefully short) summary of where I am now. Kind of like "my origin story" if I were a comic book hero. (Disclaimer: I am *NOT* a comic book hero. Far from it. I mean, do you SEE what they wear?)

OK, so. My name is Adam, I am on the cusp of the 35th birthday, I am happily married for just past six years, to a lady named Kelley. I live in a house in Janesville, WI with Kelley and two dogs. I work full-time for a major pharmaceutical convenience chain as an inventory specialist. Prior to being in Janesville, I spent my childhood/adolescence in a small town near Green Bay, then graduated from UW-Madison with a BA in Journalism. My deeply boring pastimes include listening to music, playing video games and reading. Although raised Catholic, I no longer regularly attend services; however, I still consider myself a fairly well-moraled person. I strive to follow the Golden Rule daily, and also attempt to learn something new each day. Although I've worked for my current company for over a decade, I have a wide and varied work background that includes getting paychecks from such myriad companies as Proctor & Gamble, Virgin Records, Asylm Marketing, The Badger Herald, the State Department of Revenue, Handleman Company, and the Janesville Gazette, as well as a recent stint being a foster parent which will hopefully continue with a different organization.

I've been a follower and fan of the web/internet since the first year of college, when email was a newfangled thing. Through some college buddies I discovered alt.net newsgroups and later, Mosiac, and never looked back from there. I did have a Geocities site waaay back in the late 90s, but have long since forgotten exactly where it was. I've had at least a dozen email accounts, but now have my main two at yahoo and gmail, as well as one I give out for people/companies that I suspect will spam the living daylights out of me. I have a Facebook account where I post all my nugget-sized updates and play waaaaaaaaaay too much Bejeweled Blitz and not enough Mafia Wars. I also have a MySpace page where I **used** to display all my random thoughts before it became overran with bots, famewhores and general clunkiness. My favorite internet extension of meself would easily be my last.fm page, which tabulates all the music I've listened to on my iPod and on my computer, song by song, since August 2006. Look in the "Journals" tab and you'll find a few dozen posts which are more music related -- I haven't yet decided whether I will keep my music blogs exclusively there going forward or drop them here as well.

OK, so a hour or so typing later, and the energy drink is wearing off, so I'll finish here. Where the blog goes from here on out is a mystery. I lead a very reserved life, so maybe this blog will allow me to show more of my opinionated, caustic side as it pertains of matters. Maybe I will unleash my zanier, freakier side some of my co-workers see brief glimpses of and that my older friends seem to relish. Maybe I'll just post a bunch of dirty limericks. But feel free to check in often; it may be fun.