Long Shrift

all by myself

It had been a long day. As I left the office, the late afternoon sky became ominously dark. A National Weather Service alert broke through on the radio. I drove through intermittent rain, but by the time I got home the clouds had parted.

My wife was in the kitchen; it would be a little while before dinner. I suggested to Quinn that we go out on the porch. The air had that freshness, clarity and electricity that only happens between storms. Just being outside at all, after the torrential rain we've had over the last few days, was a joy.

Not that Quinn was having any of it - he wanted to go back inside and wait for dinner. I showed him the peonies that had started to bloom; I pointed out that the slight breeze was enough to keep the mosquitoes away; we gazed up at the contrails left by jets on the way to places unknown.

Quinn got up and headed for the screen door. "Daddy, are you going to be lonely if I go inside?"

"Yes, I am."

"I am not," he said, disappearing inside.

renumber of the beast

From a recent article in Baseline, Bovine Intervention:

The National Animal Identification System was conceived to track outbreaks of animal disease—whether as a result of natural causes or bioterrorism. The catalyst for NAIS was the 2003 mad-cow scare in Washington state, in which a single Canadian dairy cow, which entered the United States along with 81 other cows, was found to have bovine spongiform encephalopathy. Because there wasn’t an adequate traceback system, only 29 of the 81 cows could be identified, so agriculture officials were forced to oversee the destruction of more than 250 animals from 10 different herds.

The impact was dramatic: U.S. beef exports fell off a cliff, and sales have yet to return to pre-2003 levels.

As you might expect, the article that follows is not surprising: the US Department of Agriculture had good intentions, there was an outcry from special interest groups, and the Amish started a ruckus:

... many Amish and Mennonite farmers have quit agriculture as a result of NAIS, claiming the Bush plan is a sign of the "mark of the beast" foretold in the Bible’s Book of Revelation. In a letter to Wisconsin agriculture officials, a group of Old Order Amish farmers said the "premises registration animal ID issue is an act of the anti-Christ."

I suspect that these folks are using this as a excuse to bail on farming. I guess they can dust off their Social Security cards and apply for a job doing something else. I'd love to hear from any Amish out there who... oh, wait. Never mind.

Jorge the arborist

My friend Pablo has had sporadic problems with water leaking into his basement. He had gotten estimates from a number of contractors, most of whom suggested that he put in French drains. (Which, apparently, have nothing to do with the France, so this is not an opportunity to, er, undermine our European friends.)

Lately, it's been monsoon season in Milwaukee, with severe storms dropping record amounts of rain. So Pablo spent some time mopping up in the basement over the weekend. His mistake was mentioning this to his dad, Jorge.

Jorge has a deep and completely unwarranted distrust of contractors of any sort. "Contractors love leaky basements," he warned Pablo, "because they can make a lot of money without having to do a lot of work." Pablo wasn't sure how tearing up a concrete floor, hauling out the debris, hauling in bucket after bucket of gravel, and replacing the concrete is an easy gig.

Pablo's house was constructed almost 90 years ago, so it would be difficult to say what the builders did to waterproof the basement walls. Jorge suggested that Pablo should do some exploratory work, so as to better position himself against crooked contractors.

Pablo's eyes narrowed. "So you're suggesting I dig a hole and see what the basement wall looks like?"

"It wouldn't have to be a big hole," Jorge explained.

"Let's say I dig a hole - it's not like I would know what I'm looking at. What do I know from basement walls?" Pablo, who lives between two contractors, laughed. "I can picture my neighbors standing over me and chuckling."

"Listen, if your neighbors ask what you're doing... well, you just go and buy a tree, so they think you're digging a hole to plant it."

As he told me later, Pablo realized then that all he could do was let Jorge run his course, and thank him for the advice. We did wonder what his neighbors would think when Pablo explained that he was planting a tree against the basement wall, under his front windows.

registering a complaint

As I've mentioned before, part of my job involves working at conferences, typically at the registration desk. Last week, I was at a conference in Boston - not that it matters much, because I generally don't get to see the city I'm working in. For several days at a time, my universe consists almost entirely of moving from the registration desk to the staff office to the bathroom. At the end of each day, I usually fall asleep over a late-night room service dinner. It's a glamorous life.

Yesterday I got a call from our meeting manager, who was going through the hotel bills to make sure everything was in order. She thought that I had been double-billed. "Did you get room service on both Wednesday and Thursday nights?"

"Yes, I did."

"And you got the same thing both nights?"

"Yeah. I really liked the turkey club sandwich, so..."

"Did you know that you ordered both of them at the same time each night?"

"What?"

"Yeah - 9:24 pm, both nights."

"Wow. That's lame."

"Yeah."

"And a little creepy."

"Yeah."

combine

Scott and I were IM'ing about combines - you know, those monstrous machines farmers use at harvesting time.

Scott: why are they called combines, anyway?
Me: I don't know
Me: it's not like they combine anything
Me: except maybe corn and rabbits

(For the record, they are so named because they combine "the tasks of harvesting, threshing, and cleaning grain crops.")

he probably fantasized about stuffing Blanche's corpse in the trunk of a car

I learned two odd things in the past couple of days. I suspected that these were common knowledge to everyone else - something on the order of knowing the first video MTV ever played, or shouting 'Linus Pauling!' as the answer to any question involving Nobel prizes. But my informal survey of co-workers indicates I am not alone.

One: On the Yahoo! home page, if you click on the exclamation point, it yodels. (And it should, since it's worth about $2 billion.)

Two: Quentin Tarentino appeared on two episodes of The Golden Girls, just two years before Reservoir Dogs came out. I suspect that playing an Elvis impersonator probably motivated him to do something different.

the neighborly thing to do

The other day, after dinner, I took Quinn out for a walk around the neighborhood. He asks a lot of questions, many of which I can't answer. If he sees anyone, he asks who they are and what they're doing. And why - always why. Despite having repeatedly explained to him that I don't know most of the people in our neighborhood, the questions persist.

We were walking by a beaten-up pickup truck, and I noticed that there was a set of keys hanging from the passenger side door. I stopped and looked around, pondering what to do next. I knew what the right thing to do was - I had to start knocking on doors until I found the owner. The only thing that gave me pause was that I'd have a whole host of things that I'd have to explain to Quinn, plus the potential for an awkward moment or two ("Daddy, why is that man not wearing pants?" "Daddy, why does it smell like someone tooted?").

Just then, a man came by. He walked with his eyes down, as if checking the edge of the sidewalk - which struck me as a look I usually reserve for homeless people. I asked him if he knew whose truck that was. He seemed startled at first, then he looked around at the closest house, and paused. "I think that's his truck. Well, I'm not sure if he lives there any more, but he did a couple of years ago. Wait, yeah, he lives there. I'll go ask him." He knocked, the door opened. I didn't hear the conversation, but I heard the man in the house exclaim "Oh, shit!" He thanked me as he grabbed the keys.

I guess having a kid changes you. Years ago, in the same situation, I might've just kept walking rather than break that barrier between myself and the rest of the world. Years ago, though, I probably wouldn't have been walking around the neighborhood, either - having a kid gives you an excuse to be a tourist on your own block.

As we walked away, I expected an interrogation, but Quinn was strangely quiet. He was probably still processing what had happened - as was I. I'm not sure what Quinn took away from that incident, but I'm hoping that he'll learn to be the kind of person who knows his neighbors by name.

bartender wisdom

Ran into my friend Dave yesterday. He had been managing at a college bar for years, and recently took a job at another bar/restaurant with a more mature crowd. He made an astute observation: the crowd at the new place comes in to drink and to socialize; the crowd at the college bar comes in to "drink and see what happens next."

dispatched

Last Twitter message:

Just need to get over to the offramp so I
10:28 PM May 14, 2008 from web

Heather Armstrong almost ruined Mother's Day

I'm not good at thinking up gift ideas for my wife, and I often end up trying to find the right gift at the last minute. This is exacerbated by her uncanny ability to get thoughtful gifts for me, and that she tends to think of ideas far in advance. Mother's Day filled me with dread. And then inspiration struck: Milwaukee's Department of City Development has a series of posters, one for each neighborhood in the city. Jenny had been meaning to get the Bay View poster for some time, but hadn't mentioned it for months. A quick Google search turned up the posters, and $5 later it was mine. I figured I had the perfect gift - it implies that I actually listen to her and even remember the things she says.

Earlier this week, she and a friend went to the Body Worlds exhibition down at the Milwaukee Public Museum. (The verdict? Amazing. However, some of the bodies might appear artificial... until you see the hair.) As she was telling me about it, suddenly she lit up. "And wait until you see what I picked up at the museum."

She told me to close my eyes and wait. I wondered if I was going to open my eyes and see a sinew keychain or something. Of course, it was the Bay View poster. She saw the expression on my face, and I had to tell her that I had another one sitting in the trunk of my car. (By coincidence, the very next day, a co-worker who had recently moved to Bay View expressed an interest in the same poster, so he just got the world's cheapest housewarming gift.)

Of course, I got points for the gift anyway, but now I was in trouble. I had a couple of gift ideas, but the poster was to be the centerpiece. The other gifts included:

• The slightly kitschy upside-down tomato planter (which I saw advertised on late-night television, so I knew it was a product I could trust).
• A CD that wasn't going to be a surprise. First of all, we had recently talked about it, and it's not like you're fooling anyone when you wrap up a CD - they're probably not going to think it's a puppy. (Side note: I'm a fan of R.E.M., and I like the CD, but if describe a 36-minute CD as "defiantly lean," you're inviting people to make jokes about how it was not so much an act of defiance, but that the aging band members needed frequent naps.)
• Ergonomic garden tools. My wife has carpal tunnel, and loves to garden, but still, it says "You're an excellent mother, and you deserve gifts" and follows with "It seems like there's a lot of creeping charlie invading the flower beds."

I had an ace in the hole, though. My wife's a big fan of Dooce.com, and I read that the author, Heather Armstrong, recently published a book. Perfect! I meant to go and pick it up one day after work, but the week got away from me. I'd have Saturday to get it, since Jenny would be working. So a quick jaunt to the local Barnes & Noble and done.

Except that B&N didn't have it. They offered to call the other store at Mayfair, a shopping mall that is everything I hate about shopping malls and more. But they had a copy, and they were holding it behind the counter for me. Another fifteen minutes in the car with a fidgety toddler, an aggravating search for parking and a walk the length of three football fields to get to the store... but hey, this book was the centerpiece now. I was so happy to be finished with the shopping, and Quinn was being good, so I even braved the children's book section so that he could get something. (He picked a box of animal puzzles that came in a little suitcase-like box. I later remembered that trying to show a toddler how to do puzzles is extremely frustrating, and I also realized that he was only interested in the suitcase.) The book was waiting for me at the counter - I glanced at the cover and got out the plastic.

Home at last, and time to wrap. I took my first actual look at the book, and realized I had made a horrible mistake. I had been expecting a book by Heather Armstrong, but she was actually the editor of a collection of essays by several bloggers (including herself). The big problem was that it hadn't dawned on me that a book entitled Things I Learned about My Dad (In Therapy) might be, oh, I dunno, a series of essays on fatherhood.

When Jenny came home from work, I told her that I had a gift that she had to open on Saturday, not on Mother's Day. As I routinely get quizzical looks from my wife, I have developed a shorthand approach using a Likert scale; this look rated a 2.

Please indicate your agreement with the following statement:

My wife thinks I'm insane.

1. Strongly agree
2. Agree
3. Neither agree nor disagree
4. Disagree
5. Strongly disagree

She unwrapped the book and laughed. "So why did you have to give this to me today?"

"Because it's about fatherhood, so it just didn't seem like the ideal gift for Mother's Day."

"I was wondering if this was something you didn't want my family to see, like porn or something."

For the record, I have never given her porn. Also, she had already purchased a copy of the book to give to me on Father's Day.