Tuesday, February 27, 2024

Remembering Simon

 I have to note the passing of a popular subject from blogs past. My son's rascally Boston Terrier Simon made his last trip to the vet this past week.

It's been a while since I've written about him as he'd lost his spunk being an old dog, living far longer than the average Boston Terrier, his 16th birthday falling last year. We watched him this past weekend while his keepers were on vacation. Here's a picture of him we took while he was resting on a bunk bed.

I remember one blog where I wrote about his catching a rabbit in the back yard and dragging its carcass inside our house. Probably not the only rabbit he caught in his lifetime either. This past weekend when we let Simon outside, there happened to be a rabbit in our yard. Simon either didn't see him or ignored him as the rabbit hopped away.


Simon was not a sociable type when it came to other dogs either. It wasn't that long ago that he crawled under our cyclone fence in the backyard so he could charge the pit bull the neighbor had let outside in their yard. Not the best judgment on his part. Thankfully there was another fence that stood between the dogs which allowed just enough time for my son to vault the fence himself and retrieve his terrier.


When we let him out this past weekend, the pit bull next door barked, taunting him. Simon either ignored him or didn't hear. The only life he showed was when Wendy told him his worst nemesis, a squirrel, was scampering around out back. Simon ran a bit to check the situation out, but decided against a chase or vocally letting him know who was in charge.


Poor Simon. Besides his diminished faculties, he was in obvious pain,no longer able to jump up on his favorite chair or even stand normally. But his heart remained strong to the end.


My son Greg got some comfort out of reading the old blogs I'd written about Simon. For him and his wife, Simon was their first foray into creating a family, becoming the prince of their household. When firstborn son Grant came along, Simon was very reluctant to share the spotlight and made sure he would not be forgotten by photo-bombing pictures of our first grandson including these.


Simon . . . you may be gone now, but you'll never be forgotten.

Tuesday, January 30, 2024

Hail To My Victors

 I'm breaking precedent here with this blog. I'm doing something that I don't recall ever doing so long as I've been writing here. I'm posting a picture of myself.

Of course, it would take a major event that would coax me into doing this, something unprecedented in my lifetime. And it finally happened. My favorite team, the University of Michigan Wolverines, won the college football playoff championship in January. We're number one.


So that's me getting my picture taken with the trophy awarded to the top college football team in the country.


I just have to share the photo. And not just here. There's been a couple people who have needled my allegiance to the Michigan Wolverines over the years. My old boss and I use to have spirited discussions, his favorite college team being Michigan State. Our arguments over various games were loud enough that once we had someone come into his office just to make sure all was okay.


So I attached this photo to an e-mail which was sent to my old boss. His response came quickly: I can’t tell if that’s the sign stealing trophy or the illegal gambling trophy. I did see the asterisk next to the sign.


Mmmmm, I don't see any asterisk and I don't know anything about sign-stealing or illegal gambling. Well, at least he responded. I also sent my picture to my old friend Bob whom I haven't heard from in well over a year. When we used to exchange e-mails, the subject of U of M versus MSU often got heated, he being a State fan. I never heard back from my latest e-mail to him.


But I did get a pen pal letter recently from a third-grader. I volunteered to be a pen pal through our local senior citizens center. One of his questions asked, “Michigan or State? I like State more.”


What??!! His letter was written after Michigan had won the national championship. And still he prefers State??? Makes me wonder about the quality of teaching going on in our elementary schools. In my response, I pasted the above picture. In his letter he also asked what was my favorite song. So I pasted this picture to his letter as well.

In my letter, I did tell them that they let Michigan State fans get their picture taken with the trophy too. In fact, I saw some young fellow all garbed up in MSU colors getting photographed with the trophy. It's understandable. It'll probably be the best chance he will have to get such a picture.


Sorry to be so partisan. It's not like anyone who reads my blog is a die-hard MSU or Ohio State fan. But there used to be one. I remember Bonnie, this former blogger from Washington--by the way the team U of M beat for the national championship--who used to pick on me when my Wolverines suffered the occasional defeat at the hands of her fav team, the MSU Spartans.


You never know though. She still could be lurking out there somewhere. C'mon, Bonnie, check in and join me in a rousing chorus of Hail to the Victors. It just does wonders for one's soul.

Friday, December 29, 2023

Next Student Please

 I was asked this month to read to the “young fives” class of kindergartners at the local elementary school. There's a table out in the hall with two chairs, one for me and one for the kindergartner who listens as I read a book. Not much of a challenge, right? But I soon learned the challenge was to get the right student to come out of the classroom to join me. The plan was that when I finished reading to a particular student, I asked him or her to summon the next student on my list into the hall to read with me,


When I asked one boy to send out the next student into my hallway station, he returned saying that Caroline didn't want to come out and read. So I went down the list to Gavin, the next kid. That same boy told me that Gavin had a cast on his foot and might not be able to come out to read either. Not sure how a cast would prevent someone from reading, I said at least try to get him. And Gavin did come out though he took the long way, circling around a set of lockers behind me before getting into the chair.


After Gavin read, I tried again to get Caroline to come out. Gavin went to the open classroom door and shouted, “Caroline, you need to come out to read!” You could have heard him from down in the principal's office. I overheard the teacher telling him he needed to be quieter. But Caroline came out immediately. Another time I asked one kid to send out “Brenson”. It's “Brinn”, she said. “Oh so that's what they call him?” I asked. She nodded and went to get Brinn.


When Brinn came out, I was surprised to find out that it was a girl. And dismayed that I used the wrong pronoun, a no-no with the current educational climate. The next student on my list was Luca, another name I heard is mainly a male name, but when the next kindergartner came into the hall, it was another girl. Her name was Poppy and I located her name last on my list, along with her two brothers. They're triplets.


“We can't find Luca,” she said. Was he in class today? Yes, she said. How can you lose a kindergartner in a classroom? Never mind. I read the book to her. I went back up the list of names, skipping Luca, and caught the next kid. Things went normally for a while till I asked for the next kindergartner on my list, who happened to be Brinn. Two kids in the same class who go by Brinn?


Nope. When the kindergartner came out it was the same Brinn that I had read to earlier. So I asked her if there was a Brenson in class today. Yes, there was. So I had her get Brenson. And he was a boy. After he read, another boy immediately showed up telling me he thought it was his turn to read. “What's your name?” I asked. “Owen,” he said. I checked my classlist and no Owen. Turns out he was from a totally different kindergartner class. I said maybe next month he and I could read together.


After an hour and a half, I felt I'd gotten through everyone on my classlist. I collected my materials and went into the classroom. This smiling little boy came up to me and asked if it was his turn to read. I had a hunch. “Are you Luca?” I asked. Yes, he was. I really, really had to restrain myself from asking the obvious question: “Where were you Luca, sleeping with the fishes?” (borrowing an iconic line from the movie The Godfather) Not sure he would have got the joke though.


Earlier, this one girl came out with a gaudy jacket with colorful tinsel embedded. “I look like a rock star,” she observed. “Are you a rock star?” I asked. “No,” she replied. “I'm just a kid.”


Well some of these kids are just as entertaining nonetheless.

Thursday, November 30, 2023

No Go With GoPro

 One of the best presents I got when I was young was a Poloroid Swinger camera. It was easy to use and produced pictures on the spot. I actually still have it stored somewhere in my personal museum of memorabilia. It was great for taking pictures like this one of the kids in the neighborhood.


In the past ten years I've been through a few cameras, small portable ones whose quality deteriorates with age. Last year I upped my game and got a GoPro camera. It's tiny but it's supposed to be state-of-the-art. But one thing I found out is that state-of-the-art technology in the hands of a 70-year-old like myself is not a great fit.


It has more settings than the control panels at NASA,. What does “time warp” mean on my camera? Or a “live burst”? I can imagine THOSE prompts being on a NASA control panel but not on my everyday ordinary camera.


There is a manual for my GoPro. It's 144 pages long. Who has time to study a 144 page manual so you can get a quick photo of the grandkids as they're decorating gingerbread cookies? With my old Swinger camera, you would just “swing it up”, turn a knob until you got a “yes” message, then press the shutter. End of story. No live bursts. No time warps.


Honestly, I'm not even sure how to turn it on properly. It only has two buttons but no matter which one I press, the camera turns on and immediately begins taking a video. I click a button to stop that but I then have to delete all these two-second videos of my hand, the floor, the ceiling, etc.


Okay, so my GoPro likes to take videos. I indulge it. I take lots of videos because I have a VLC photo editing program on my computer that will extract one or more still photos from a video I've taken. That's a handy feature when you're taking pictures of grandkids since if you're taking pictures of more than one grandkid they rarely sit still or smile simultaneously.


Yet my GoPro, as is its nature, doesn't want to make anything easy. For some reason, a video I take in my perfectly normal fashion turns up sideways when I download it to my computer. 


 Why, I have no clue. There's probably something in the 144-page manual about it but then again maybe not.


I thought, no problem, as my VLC video editing program has a feature that will rotate the picture back to normal. So I did that, but once I rotated my video to normal view, my VLC program only plays the video a few seconds before it crashes. No clue why.


Plan B. I have Shotcut, another video editing program. I upload the sideways video into Shotcut (it somehow knows to automatically rotate the video normally without my having to tell it). Then I export a finished video into a format that my VLC can play without crashing. Then I can extract the photo that I want.

If that sounds complicated, it is. While I'm jumping through all these hoops, something in the back of my mind is remembering the old Swinger jingle: Swing it up--yeah yeah--it says yes—yeah yeah--take the shot—yeah yeah—count it down—yeah yeah—rip it off.


You'll never hear a similar jingle for GoPro.

Sunday, October 29, 2023

Too Scary?

 Upon seeing my ghoulish Halloween cemetery in front of our house, my six-year-old granddaughter Gwen scolded, “Your yard is too scary for the neighborhood.”


Since my youngest five grandkids moved to Michigan this year, they've gotten to know their grandpa here better, particularly my affinity for Halloween and all things scary. I drove three of them and their cousin fifty miles north to participate in the Halloween Ghosts and Goodies Event which included a ride on a real ghost train. 

My wife and I also took the three youngest, including two-month-old Miles, to a pumpkin hunt in the woods.


Some things are too scary for them . . . like my “zombie mask” hung from a nail in a brick on my house. Four-year-old Charlie was so terrified by it that I put it back into storage. Still, every time Charlie would exit our front door afterwards, it was head first so he could take a peek at the wall near our porch to make sure the mask was still gone.


I don't deliberately try to scare them but sometimes I slip up. When my wife and went over to their house to help decorate Halloween cookies I forgot that the t-shirt I was wearing had images of Jason, Chuckie, Freddie as well as other horror icons. I'd no sooner walked into their house when Gwen said, “Could you go home and change your shirt. Charlie and I get nightmares very easily.”


I turned my shirt inside out and wore it that way. I've heard they do that sometimes with offensive t-shirts at school. That satisfies the principal and my shirt reversal satisfied Gwen and Charlie.


Since Gwen is in first grade and learning addition and subtraction now, I gave her this little Halloween math problem. If you have two skeletons in one bucket and three skeletons in another bucket, how many buckets do you have? “Five,” she said. “Wrong,” I replied. Then right away she corrected herself: “Two. I thought you were going to say skeletons.”


I'll have to post here a picture of my Halloween yard display lit up at night and you can judge whether it's too scary.

Here's another little anecdote regarding my graveyard. We had a recliner delivered a couple weeks ago. When the deliverymen arrived, I heard the doorbell ring. I'm sure the deliveryman heard it too from outside. We knew approximately when the chair was being delivered so we were prepared to move quickly to answer the door. And I did move quickly.


But apparently not quickly enough. The delivery guy knocked at the door while I was en route, then knocked again as I arrived to open it. Patience! You have to figure that whoever orders a recliner is likely someone who doesn't move too quickly.


When I opened the door, the deliveryman deadpanned, “You have dead people in your yard.”


“What?” I asked, trying to understand what he meant.


“You have dead people in your yard,” he repeated.


“Oh, my Halloween decorations,” I said realizing what he was referring to. I didn't think my ghoulish props would make an impression on adults. But maybe it did. That was the quickest delivery and set-up I'd ever experienced.


Thursday, September 28, 2023

A Day in My Life

 This is  the latest entry to my quinquennial journal, a collection of random thoughts and events which I record throughout the year every five years.  I recorded my first journal when I turned 35.  I'm writing this one since I'm now 70:


A rainy Tuesday which is frustrating since most of the stuff I have to do requires me to be outside—powerwashing, painting, getting my Halloween coffins out of the shed, etc. Maybe it didn't matter that I overslept this morning. When I awoke I thought it was just after six a.m. But it turned out that it was going on eight. Maybe that's why I still recall my weird dreams including one where I was back at college trying to find my way around campus and angry that I couldn't find the free food that was promised.


I forgot to mention here an unusual configuration that occurred this past weekend in the pew section we normally occupy during mass. Actually, we don't sit in the normal pews but in the corner off the altar where padded chairs are set up, mostly for those with mobility issues. That includes Wendy with her arthritic knee. There were only two other couples seated in this section but it was a re-union of sorts. The two other couples along with us attended a church-sponsored married couples retreat near Flint 24 years ago. The retreat was programmed to strengthen the bonds of unity. Since we three couples are still together almost 25 years later, I guess it worked. We don't know the other couples personally but I remember them.



Baby Miles was a real sleepy-head when we babysat him yesterday. Even a rough and tumble stroller ride over hard ground at the park failed to rouse him from a nap. Well, we tried. If he wakes up at 2 a.m wondering “What's up?”, sorry dad and mom. Since he turned two months old this past week, we both tried to produce some Miles smiles, camera in hand. He did manage a couple half-smiles while Wendy sang the alphabet song for him, but it would require instantaneous reflexes with the shutter button to capture them for posterity.


Big trip today to the optical shop at the University of Michigan to fill my eye doctor's prescription for new glasses. I hope they help me to see more clearly. While driving on the way over, I asked Wendy whether she saw this upcoming white line appear as if it were something white gliding across the road.


“Why don't you tell the eye doctor stuff like that?” she asked.


Because if I told them I saw something ghost-like crossing the road ahead, the best possible outcome would be that they'd take my driver's license away. The worst? Maybe men in white suits would accompany me somewhere. Anyhoo, it's going to be ten days before I get new glasses. Maybe then everything will appear sharp as a tack just as it did when I was young. But I doubt it. Not even in my dreams.

Wednesday, August 30, 2023

Mr Grumpy Here

 Time for a new blog but I haven't been feeling too well of late. Worse yet, my wife and I are supposed to start out on a driving vacation beginning tomorrow. We'll be circling Lake Superior going up and around through Ontario, Canada.


Do you need proof of Covid vaccination to enter Canada? I don't think so anymore. But what if you have Covid? Do they still let you in? I better do a Covid test to make sure that's not what's causing my aches and pains.

I have some KN-95 masks so I'll bring those too even though I don't think they're required in Canada. A Newsweek article reported this week that mask mandates are returning but when I clicked on the article it named places like Morris Brown College in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as Lionsgate Entertainment in Los Angeles. I think the article is what you might call “clickbait.” I hate clickbait.


Being sick makes you grumpy. In my case, grumpier. My wife sometimes, actually quite often, calls me Mr. Negativity. I need to practice my smiling more.


When we watched our two-year-old grandson Lewis this week, I had him accompany me to the local grocery store to cash in three full bags of returnable bottles and cans, Michigan being one state where you can do this.


After I parked the car, I snagged an empty shopping cart and opened the back of my Chevy. A bag of plastic bottles and cans toppled over, spilling half their contents onto the parking lot asphalt. A few of them started making a run for it and I had to stop them from rolling down the hill just as the shopping cart was making a break for it too.


I had to corral the cart, keeping it close to me with one foot while I bent over to pick up the plastic bottles and cans still playing their version of “catch-me” on the pavement, by the way a very cruel game for seniors to be playing. About then a handful of glass bottles were about ready to roll out of the back, figuring they would rather commit returnable suicide by smashing themselves than to go through the recycling machine.


It was very frustrating trying to keep everything together but I managed. Now to get my two-year-old grandson. As soon as I unfastened his child seat restraints, he bolted away from me, getting into the back of the car where I couldn't reach.


I went around to the other side of the car, opened that door figuring it would be easier to reach him but he was inspired by the returnables' version of “catch-me” and was going to make it even harder on this old grandpa to get a hold of him.


I lost my temper, yelled at him, and grabbed his ankle pulling him mightily to where I could wrap my arms around the rest of him. “My shoe!,” he said, as he lost a shoe in the struggle. I immediately felt bad I lost my temper. Sure I had a headache, I was tense, irritable, but I shouldn't have taken it out on him.


Wasn't that a commercial way back when? Anyway, I hope I feel better soon. One good bit of news. My Covid test was negative.