MaineCourse

Mike and Bill

Dear Bill,

So, how are we coming? I'm assuming you've finished your downstairs bathroom, but still have to tile upstairs. The chopstick comes out of my finger tomorrow so I'm ready when you are.

Say, when are you going to write another story for the blog?

Michael

Dear Mike,

When the chopstick is out, and you can hit the right key on the billing data base, please send me the correct bill. Granted, the Christmas gift I gave John was pretty weak. But still and all, I don't feel like paying his bill for his garage leveling and siding. I do owe you a sheckle or two, but even as you come from the John Joyce school of billing, I reject paying for someone else's job. Ya know, 15 years ago, when we were trying out the name TGH, Inc, (Two Guys Hammering), I told you I could devise a computer program to do the billing. It might have been better, on the 256K, Lotus 123, DOS based program PC I had. Maybe not, but it would have been able to tell the difference between I lewis and B lewis. I figure I owe more like $75. Or maybe more. Let me know.

Our Xmas card delivery was pretty sketchy this year. And my best intentions, unrealized, were to visit or at least call you guys on Christmas morning, but it didn't happen. I missed our annual visit; seeing your holiday house, trying to level the pool table, listening to a new CD, having a taste of whatever new single malt you were serving, and most of all, having a traditional time to catch up with you.

I got a chop box, home owners 10" size, for Christmas, so I can now go back and refine the shaky angles I cut for the ceiling trim. Almost done. Seems like the oomph is gone, as the bath is functional and as I sit on the pot each morning, not bad to look at. Can't seem to finish.

I'll write the story, you tell me what to write about.

Bill

Dear Bill,

One year, many years ago, which wipes about the senior moment excuse, I sent a bill with a date like 1968. The customer saw it as more evidence of my incompetence and fired me. I trust you can differentiate between my window trim skill and my billing program and continue to hire me for your fun two man jobs. Especially those which require working in your attic on scorching summer days, or in the way-to-close confines of your bathroom where I'll wonder why I can't pick up a hammer until I realize I was trying to use your hand, not mine.

Mike

P.S. How about your yearly student story which begins, "Have I ever told you about the time I almost died?"

Missed Photos

I cleaned out my attachments folder and found these two which should have been posted with their entries.



From birdbrain's trip to Morocco. Incidentally, her next destination - Botswana.
Full Photo



And one that makes me laugh everytime I look at it. Rakkity in Japan.

Full Photo

Reflections

Taken during our (Adam, Mark S and Dan) last lunch at La Provence in Concord. The glass table provides the reflective surface.

View image

---

I received my latest lab tests, from a previous physical, on Saturday and that carried us into a conversation on diet, health, and longevity. To which Matthew offered, "Dad, you're not dying from high cholesterol or disease. You gonna bleed out someday. That's a fact. Just accept it. I have."

And this is a perfect segue into my plea for anecdotes. I've gotten a few but not as many as I'd hoped for. It's not too late to send me yours. I'm going to post the ones I've collected early this week (see how smart I am not to give an actual date?). And since Diane stole the one I was going to use, maybe I should have saved the one above, but they are so easy to collect.

And one more thing. The blog is changing addresses and design. I hope to have the new one up on or before Friday.

Sudden Death and Beyond

Patrick and I met at the gym entrance for our 5-oclock game on the dot of 4:59, and were tapping on the glass of court no. 1 at 5:02. The couple who were playing there couldn’t be serious players, after all, it was a boy-girl match, which couldn’t be as important as a father-son tournament, could it? They gave up the court gracefully (more gracefully than we had at the end of our unfinished sudden-death match last week).

Patrick scored the first point, and my adrenaline levels notched up a tad, but I got the serve back with a modest kill shot. As I racked up a few points, I relaxed my serves a little, and Patrick got the ball back. He scored 2 more points with wall grazers, and I got more serious, and returned his serve with a wall grazer on the wall opposite to his position. If I had been given that shot, I wouldn’t have even tried, but with his impressive speed, Patrick dove for it. The ball hit the corner and bounced back along the wall without a millimeter of air between rubber and plaster. Patrick gave it a terrific smash, but the ball just blooped towards the front wall, missing it by a yard, and he lost the serve. From that point on, it was all downhill for him.

So after winning the continued sudden-death game 15-10, I went on for the kill in the next game. Patrick served and scored twice. I was already behind 2-0, and the adrenaline surged. I began with a series of alternating shots to the left and right corners. We volleyed about a dozen times, with Patrick steaming to the right wall to return, steaming to the left wall, then the right, then the left. On and on, he returned shots that I would have missed 2 out of 3 times. I could have made a kill, but I wanted to see if he would tire. Impossible. He was sweating a little, but moving just as fast after 10 minutes of sprinting, swinging, reversing, sprinting, swinging,.. I ended the game with a final kill to the depths of the lower right corner. Patrick dove for it, as he always does, but to no avail.

So Patrick was down 0-2 after losing 10-15 and 12-15. I was getting a little tired myself, but P was as sprightly and eager as at the beginning. He served first, and scored twice, as in the 2nd game. This game I was determined to think of new shots that he might not even attempt to return, but it was hard to do that. Two passing players outside the glass stopped to watch his patented back-hand reverse bounces off the glass. No one I’ve ever seen can do that back-hand reverse as well. But a couple of serves later, I got balls deep into the left corner, and his back-hand reverse bounced off his chest—one of his few failures.

For my first several points, I was bearing down hard on my serves, but after getting a margin of 5 points, I relaxed and made easy serves. Patrick surged on, and was within two points, so I bore down again, restoring my 5-point lead. Then I relaxed, serving to Patrick’s right hand, and he picked up 3 points. My right arm was sore, but I went back to the old reliable underarm left-corner smash. Surprise, surprise. I found that I could return a few shots over P’s head, high enough that he couldn’t reach them, and crept ahead to 14-8. Then Patrick gained 3 straight points on front kills that I didn’t bother to chase, and I began to worry. Regaining the serve, and, panting, I banged one that even The Dominator wouldn’t have returned, but P blooped it to the front. I was so surprised that I didn’t even go for the ball, and P had the serve again. Then he scored twice, and was within one point of tying. After regaining the serve when P swung wildly and missed an easy shot, I changed tactics. I served a Z-shot, which Patrick fielded easily, but I moved into a position for a Dominator front-z shot that ended up moving parallel to the front wall, grazing it gently. P. dove to the front for the ball, returning it, but left himself vulnerable to my return that came off the front wall behind him, and headed towards the back glass just two feet off the floor. P sprinted and dove, but he was 10 milliseconds late. So I won 15-14.

It was now 6:00, and new players were now advancing on the court, so we had to quit. As we walked together towards the exit, Patrick pointed out that he had come closer to winning in each successive game. I agreed, and smiled, saying, “If we had played several more games, you would have won them all.” But privately, I said to myself, that I would have worn my right arm off, and wouldn’t have relaxed, if I had thought there was a possibility. But, bravado aside, Patrick was probably right.

• rakkity
jan 14, 2005

Upcoming

Mike,

In about an hour, rakitty & son will have their sudden-death match continued from last week. Somewhat repaired after the Dom match two days ago, I'm ready & raring for this one, and the adrenaline is
already coursing through my veins.

To be continued...

rakkity

Joan and Wally's Wedding

More wild and crazy people from Ginger's sister's wedding.

View the whole kit'n'kaboodle

The Schreibers

Christopher, Cole, Mark, Molly and Cole's mom, Kay

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Blood Sport

Mike,

Unfortunately, there isn't much to the story. Dom and I got to the court about 10 minutes before time and started up after no warmup. This is usually a mistake for me, but this time it wasn't. Dom failed to return any of my first 8 serves, and he went on to lose 15-3. The next game wasn't so easy for me, but the Dom couldn't score more then 6. By then I was relaxed--a bit too much relaxed--and Dom started off scoring 6 straight. I buckled down and chased after him, catching up at 10. He failed to score after that. By then I was so relaxed I was a standing puddle of jelly, and the Dom was scoring steadily. He was up 9-2 in the 4th game, when the adrenalin began to re-flood my veins. We reached 14-13, Dom's favor, when he blasted an unhittable serve past me and won his first of the night.

The sweat pouring down my face, I looked at my watch. We'd been playing an hour. I said, 'How many games have we played so far? Six?" Dom was a better counter than me, retaining 6 or 7 functioning brain cells to my 3, and said, "Let's play a fifth." By then we were both physically shot and refused to chase after any ball further than 3 feet away. By the time we got up to a 10-10 score, The Dom was just standing in one place, swinging pathetically, and I won that one just by spinning balls 4 feet away from him.

As we walked out, Dom panted, "I'm going to be sore tomorrow." I smiled, but didn't tell him I'd have to recover for my game Friday with Patrick. 

Now it's Friday morning, and the Ibruprofin has kicked in. The court reservations are for 5 pm. Whatever happens, I have the weekend, with no snow-shoveling or tree sawing, to recover.

---

Now on to Friday's challenge by rakkity-son--

Patrick returned to the challenge court on Friday at 5, and we played two long games, followed by an interupted no-decision. The first game was a wipeout for Patrick (15-3), but he wore his old man down in the 2nd game and managed to get 10 points before losing. It's a good thing for me that our games are so long, because time ran out in the middle of the 3rd game. We were tied 8-8 when a knock on the door from two other players interrupted us on the dot of 6. Patrick asked them if we could play until one of us scored and then we'd quit.

So it was sudden death between Rakkity & Son.

It was my turn to serve, and P. fielded it well. I lost the serve, so P. served, and blasted a good one. I
returned it to a low corner. He dove for it, and missed it, losing his serve. My subsequent serve made a ridiculous bounce--impossible to return. Nevertheless, P. returned it, and I was so surprised I missed my return. Three serves now, and neither one of us had scored. This went on for 5 more serves without a point.

We figured we had exceeded the good will of the anxiously waiting players,so we quit. At least we gave them a good show. And now we await next Friday's match for a final decision.

rakkity & son

Baffling Art

From today's Book Section in the Boston Globe.

Art that baffles and Exhilarates

By James Sallis

The beauty of the novel, the great fascination of it, I often proclaim, shoehorning my words into a space taken up by sputtering attention spans, the latest celebrity news, and remakes of films that apparently (though who could have thought it?) were not bad enough upon initial release, is that it can do -- can be -- anything.

And is that, I wonder, looking out into the classroom, a vague terror I see in the eyes of my postulant writers? Nietzsche (I might continue) observed that every philosophy, every great summation of thought, however grand its intent, finally comes down to ''a confession on the part of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir." The same may be said of fiction, another, more modest summation of human experience.

More Blog Notes

In the recent comment section you can now roll over to see email addresses. In the past when this was an option for all comments, folks would make up addresses which would further add to the content of the comment. I suggest continuing to do that, or to alter your email addresses in some other way to thwart spam bots from harvesting them.

Important Breaking Blog News

Thanks to Dan for pressing me, there is now a recent comment section just below the calendar archives. Now Adam, Rakkity and La Rad can't have private conversations back in the dusty archives.

Assorted Exported

Someone wrote to tell me a solitary poker pic doth not a blog entry make. Well, phooey. How about twelve images from the holidays with captions?

January Poker

Poker at Al Carpenter's in Carlisle
View larger image

A Bed Instead

These days, my mother rarely sits in front of the computer. I’ll log-on with iChat and she’ll be lying in bed, napping, watching TV or otherwise playing dead. Late Saturday morning I saw her bright face, up close, clicking away.

“Something funny happened last night,” she said as soon as she realized I was watching her.

“What?”

“Do you remember our friend Fred Howard? Mack tutored him in high school and I gave him your aquarium.”

“No memory at all of him. Go on.”

“He doesn’t have a job and what work he gets pays almost nothing. I don’t know where he lives, but Saturday night he knocks on our door. He’s had a fight with his wife Tiesha, over his cell phone. She thinks he’s sold it. “

“Fill me in a little more. He’s beginning to sound like your friend Ron who added a zero or two to that check he begged Mack to write and then ended up dead.”

“No, Fred’s not a drug addict. He’s a good looking guy, he’s big, over six feet tall, and no fat. He looks like he’s capable of doing hard work. You might hire him, but here he is asking for money or a place to sleep.”

“This young guy – he’s in his twenties now? – looking for a handout at what can be charitably described as a private nursing home? He has no one else to turn to? Or he knows he’ll get a few dollars from you?”

“He said, ‘I need ten dollars for a place to sleep.’ I wanted to give him the money, but Mack wanted to give him a bed. The next thing I know, Mack’s rummaging around in the linen closet for blankets so Fred can sleep on the futon in the living room.”

“This story is too good.”

“But it gets better. The next morning Fred gives me this big hug as he’s about to leave and says, ‘Thank you Mrs. Miller. I tell him, ‘You don’t need to be this homeless person wandering around in the cold rain looking for a place to sleep. You’re better than that.’ He says, ‘I’m never going to be in this position again and he walks out our front door. But standing outside is his wife, Tiesha. She’s screaming at him about how he’s sold their cell phone. I can just see the blinds going up in the neighbors' houses. They walk away together and then the police arrive.”

“Who called the police?”

“You know I’d never tell your sister this story, or my friend, Phyllis.”

“Who called the police?”

“I don’t know. I guess his wife. Two officers come up to me on the porch and they ask if Henry Howard lives here. You know I’ve never liked the police leaning on me. Anyway, I turned to Mack who doesn’t want any part of this and ask, ‘Is Fred called Henry?’ Of course he can’t hear me. So I tell them no, Henry Howard doesn’t live here, but there was a Fred here. All this time I’m doing everything I can not to laugh. Can you imagine what they’re thinking? Here are these two old white folks and Fred is black of course. I tell them it’s nothing more that a domestic disturbance and they can leave now. “

“And did they?”

“They spoke to each other in some kind of code. And then they left.”

That’s the end of the Fred story, but not the end of the conversation. Helen continues to fill me in on the days events and how happy she is and how much she appreciates her kids. “You know, I really have had a good life. My kids are loving and successful, I have lots of friends - everything Is fine. Except for the relationship. Then she laughs loud enough for Diane to hear her in the other room.

As she talks I watch her intently looking at her computer screen. She then asks, “Is that Ginger on the blog?”

“Not recently,” I answer. "You might have clicked on some old pages. She is in there.”

I log on to her computer using Timbuktu. I look at her screen and what do I see?

The cursor scurrying around flipping solitaire cards.

“HEY! You mean you’ve been talking to me AND playing solitaire at the same time?”

I hear an embarrassed, hand-in-the-cookie-jar giggle and then, “How do you know?”

“What do you mean, how do I know?”

“Oh, you can see my screen. Sometimes you see too much.”

Hotel Burnham

Susan called near dinner time to say she'd made it to Chicago. The pet-friendly hotel had a special cocktail hour for dogs and I guess Wex and Duffy needed to be carried back to their rooms.

Found Photo

Click here

Susan's Journey

Susan left Sunday morning and called later that evening from The Green Roof Inn in Girard, Pennsylvania, which is an I-90 town mighty close to the Ohio Border. Tonight she hopes to make it to the pet-friendly Burnham in Chicago. And from there, weather permitting, home.

I’m still marveling at this adaptable woman. Leaving the order of Torroemore to move in with us, in all of our near-finished or given-up-on chaos, not to mention our way over-committed social life, without a sign of complaint. Yeah, you say that’s easy given we’re all family, but imagine five weeks of trudging to the dungeon that is our basement to do your laundry, the kitchen drawers that fight back as you attempt to open them, the overly occupied bathroom, not to mention our icy driveway that remained a hazard worse than the slopes of K2 for most of her visit.

I know we'll miss her, but I don't think I'll have to strain to hear that sigh of relief when she walks into her house tomorrow night.

Cross Off Checkov

Dan Downing

And by deliberate association, cross off The American Repertory Theatre.

At Michael's suggestion, for Christmas I gave Linda tickets to see The Three Sisters, and so we pilgrimaged into definitely-not-our-old-Harvard Square Thursday evening.

We dined at The Harvest, and began feeling like interlopers in a wealthy-Cambridge-academia milieu that is not us. Good, but way overpriced, oysters, Caesar’s salad , and Tuna.

As we approached the ART, I prophetically said to Linda, “you know, hun, this may not be our scene”.

It wasn’t.

The theatre was small, our seats had a good view -- but not the intimate feel-the-actors-sweat Mike experienced when he and Di saw Desire Under the Elm Tree (or something like that) earlier this year. The main thing is we had aisle seats (I can explain to anyone interested how I managed to trick the on-line box office into giving me those).

The play was supposed to be about three unmarried sisters stuck in a provincial Russian town, yearning to go to Moscow, and finally being wooed by soldiers stationed in the local garrison.

Within 15 minutes I thought we’d mistakenly walked into Sartre’s No Exit, with the audience, rather that the actors, trapped in hell.

The action was glacial. What passed for dialog were meaningless utterance separated by 45-second pregnant pauses that were acoustically hard to hear. The characters had to have been insane.

“Delirious ennui”, the Globe said about the first act. We agreed. We up and left before the intermission, having given the drama more than enough time to unfold and explain itself, along with another couple.

On the walk back to the car, Linda and I mused about how many empty seats there would be after the intermission, versus how many would stick out the 3 ½ hour production.

Definitely not our scene.

We learned later that Mark and Ginger saw this play in London and loved it. Go figure.

Here’s $100 to send Director Krystian Lupa packing back to Prague.