Breaking Wood

My nephew, Joey, recently advanced another belt color in karate.

Joey is actually focusing on a very specific form of martial art, and he is no doubt distressed that I have not remembered the name of the specific discipline. But for those of us who are just everyday folk, karate gets the point across.

To earn his belt, Joey had to break a board with his hand.

Apparently karate instructors are not aware of recent technological advances - saws.

I could no more break a board with my hand than Superman could fly with kryptonite tucked into his shorts.

I know it's all about mind over matter, but my mind would think it mattered that I was trying to break something houses are built from with a part of my anatomy that could fracture if I tripped over my shoelaces.

Then again, perhaps I should take advantage of an opportunity to work on proving that an old dog can learn new tricks. There are some fallen tree branches I need to clean up in the back yard...

Hostage Pizza

I was sitting at a traffic light today. The car in front of me had a pizza delivery sign mounted to the roof. It's a fairly common sight that I normally would not have given a second thought.

But as I waited for the light to change from red to green I noticed the pizza delivery vehicle had a handicapped license plate. I began to wonder...

Was the person in front of me able to delivery only to handicapped accessible locations? Perhaps the driver pulled up in front of the delivery location and then used his or her cell phone to call the customer and ask them to come out and get their pizza.

I think either scenario would be great - someone overcoming a disability to function as best they can in the everyday world.

If it were me having to overcome challenges I think I'd have to interject some humor.

Hello, Mr. Smith, please listen carefully. I am holding your thick crust pepperoni hostage. If you ever want to see your pizza please bring fifteen dollars in small denominations to the car parked at the end of your driveway. Do not try to contact the police. Oh, and please include a three dollar tip.

Tasmanian Wind

The weather here today was such that the windows of the house just had to be open. Sunshine, upper seventies, gentle breeze - just beautiful.

Around mid afternoon that gentle breeze increased to a gale force wind.

The change started with a distant moan that grew to an approaching howl. The sound came not in a head-on rush but shifted back and forth as though the wind carrying it was bouncing between obstacles.

I pictured the Tasmanian Devil from the Looney Tunes cartoons. A whirling tornado bouncing around like the ball in a pinball machine.

And then the gale reached our doorstep. Screens rattled in the open windows, curtains stood out nearly parallel to the floor, and anything weighing less than an infant was blown to the floor.

Thank goodness I had eaten a hardy meal earlier. I remained anchored in my chair as the wind sought exit on the opposite side of the house.

Quiet Places

Busy day today

Here's a short contemplation.

The quiet places in your mind are the ones you most need to visit frequently.

Buzzard Shield

The last thing I expected to see directly in front of my windshield was a big old ugly turkey buzzard.

I have often wondered what they looked like up close. I must admit I never imagined the opportunity would occur while I was traveling at 40 mph.

A quartet of turkey vultures were flying low to the ground on a course that took them directly across the road near my house. Apparently the color of my car blends well with the local flora and fauna because the buzzards seemed totally unaware that a ton or two of steel was closing in on them.

I was certain the buzzards would change course so I didn't bother reducing my speed. My error in judgment became apparent when I realized I might have to explain talon gouges in my windshield to the insurance company.

Worse, I might agitate the birds. If one were to attach itself to each corner of my car, the four buzzards could have probably lifted my vehicle from the road.

Finally, AEVDS (Avian Early Vehicle Detection System) kicked in and the buzzards altered course.

All in all, the encounter was close enough that I can scratch getting up close and personal with an incredibly ugly bird off of my list of things to do.

Movie Frustration

Just as I was waking up this morning, I heard the distant high pitched scream of a motorcycle engine racing into high RPMs. The sound made me think of the cry of a Banshee - and that thought reawakened memories of a search that has frustrated me for thirty years.

Somewhere around the year 1968 I saw a Disney technicolor movie that scared me to death. The movie started innocuously with the discovery of an old trunk in the attic of a farmhouse. That discovery led to the countryside suffering the wrath of a howling Banshee.

About ten years later, having recovered from the initial trauma of the movie, I decided I just had to see that fantastic movie again. I remembered the special effects that had me convinced the banshee was reaching out from the screen in the front of the movie theater as it wailed an ear-piercing scream.

I could have sworn that the movie had been called Cry of the Banshee but searches of film magazines proved my recollection of the title to be incorrect. Oh there is a movie by that name, but not a Disney film. And there is a Disney movie involving a Banshee, but it's filmed in black and white.

I've been searching for the movie off and on ever since. I've checked video stores, film publications, internet sites - all to no avail. There have been a couple of times when I believed I'd found it, only to have the search turn cold.

And now that dag blasted motorcycle with its banshee scream is going to have me renewing my frustrating search once again.

If I ever track the movie down I'll be sure to share the title because, if it lives up to my memory, it's a movie everyone needs to enjoy.

Which Came First?

I'm wondering which came first. No, not the chicken or the egg.

I was talking with College Dude, our son, today. After our phone conversation was finished, I started thinking about some of the conversations we had during his last visit home.

One of those conversations centered around unusual words College Dude had come across in the course of his schoolwork.

One of those words was flibbertigibbet. I tracked the word down in the dictionary. The definition is a silly, flighty person.

Seems to me it would take a silly, flighty person to come up with a word like flibbertigibbet in the first place.

Which begs the question. What came first, the word or the person?

Anticipation & Imagination

I was looking at the front of a cereal box and noticed the enticement Magic Compass Decoder.

Cereal boxes contained all kinds of great things when I was a kid too. Whistles, magnifying glasses, decoder rings, and more - all sealed in a paper pouch.

I had impatient friends who would empty a newly opened cereal box into a mixing bowl so that they could get to the free prize right away. I sometimes envied them (my mother would have had a fit if I had done that). But looking back, I realize such hastiness lowered the value of the prize.

Those friends lost the excitement of anticipation - wondering if this would be the day the paper-wrapped prize would poke above the top of the remaining cereal. They also lost out on all the days of imagining what uses the prize could be put to.

In these days of instant gratification, perhaps we would all do well to revisit our childhood and rediscover the value of imagination.

Nurse Media Girl

I have mentioned before that Media Girl, our daughter, is in a special high school curriculum that combines courses from high school, technical college, and nursing. When Media Girl graduates from high school, she will be a CNA (certified nursing assistant).

Today was Media Girl's first day of hands-on hospital work. She left the house dressed in her "nurse whites".

The sight of her dressed so professionally left me light headed. Years of parenting challenges were showing promising results. I was glad Media Girl was already CPR certified. If I passed out she would be able to revive me.

In the not too distant future, Nurse Media Girl will be helping to improve somebody's quality of life. That somebody won't know the challenges Media Girl had to overcome in order to be at their side - but I will, and I'll be proud of her.

Fleeting Sounds

I was working outdoors today when the droning of a single engine propeller plane caught my attention.

Pausing to focus, I realized that the sound of the plane's engine had been in the background for a while.

So what was it that had finally caused me to pause and listen? The plane was in the distance, not even in view. It wasn't like there was a deafening roar overhead.

Listening to the engine of the plane made me think of sitting on the beach, reading advertising banners being pulled across the sky.

I resolved to hold that thought in my mind as I continued with my yard work - then promptly forgot both the mental picture and the unseen plane before the third drag of the rake across the lawn.

Faucets and Cereal

I was out with Queen B today shopping for fixtures that will be going into the addition for her part of the house.

I discovered that shopping for faucets is like shopping for cereal. The selections are endless and there is no reason or rhyme to how they are arranged on the shelves.

I know some of you are going to say that there is logic to the cereal aisle in the store - but it's not my logic so I don't like it. I say put all the Raisin Bran's beside each other and let me decide whose brand I want.

Same with faucets. Put all the vanity faucets together, then sub-group by handle style, etc.

Imagine how less frequently stores would have to polish the floors in the plumbing and breakfast sections. All of that wear and tear resulting from customers pacing from one end of the aisle to the other and back again would be eliminated.

Goose Horn

A flock of geese were flying overhead this morning and it occurred to me that the honking of a goose sounds like a bicycle horn.

I'm taking about the kind of horn you see on the tricycles of four and five year old children. The sparkling plastic horn with a big rubber ball on one end.

Squeezing the ball produces a loud, flat noise that passersby can't help but react too.

And so it is with geese. When that loud, flat honking sounds overhead we can't help but look up.

Only this morning I am picturing two dozen five year olds pedaling furiously across the sky like the Wicked Witch of the East - and frantically squeezing the rubber bulbs of their horns.

SATs

I'm studying for the SAT's. Seriously.

Media Girl registered on line for the upcoming SAT's. The registration process allows the student to sign up to have an SAT study question e-mailed to them once a day. It also allows their parent to receive their own copy of the question. So I signed myself up.

I'm batting 100 percent so far.

I'm betting Media Girl is blowing the questions off (she didn't realize I had selected the question of the day option for her while I was helping to trouble shoot the registration process. I'm sure she was ecstatic when they started popping up in her Inbox.

Maybe I should start asking the questions at the dinner table.

Yeah right. Our darling 17 year old daughter already looks for any possible excuse not to have dinner with the so uncool old farts also known as her parents. Adding an SAT question to the dinner menu would be about as appetizing to Media Girl as spreading Maalox on a barbecued chicken breast.

Irish Daffodils

It never occurred to me before that Irish folk and daffodils have something in common.

They're both sporting the green today.

All around our area daffodils have pushed up their leaves to proudly display their deepest, richest green. Perhaps so that Leprechauns will have foliage to hide in. (Bein' that shamrocks are devilishly small things to be hidin' beneath don't ya know).

I'm sure Saint Patrick would be pleased to be associated with daffodils. Since he spent many of his early years tending sheep, the new growth of spring would have been a happy time indeed.

Maybe St. Patrick's jurisdiction needs to be expanded. In addition to the patron saint of Ireland, he could be the patron saint of daffodils as well.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Mistaken Identity

I mistook my neighbor for a chattering squirrel and tried to plunk her in the head with an acorn fired from my slingshot.

It was an understandable mistake. After all, some guy recently mistook his neighbor for a monkey and used his rifle to try and shoot her out of his tree.

At least my approach wasn't potentially lethal.

I'm kidding about myself and my neighbor of course, but couldn't resist after reading about the man who filled his neighbor's butt with a load of buckshot.

I'm wondering just how high up in a tree a woman has to climb to look like a monkey. Which leads to the next question. How and why did the woman climb that high in the first place?

I always try to learn from the experiences of others. In the future, before I do any tree trimming I'll be sure to give my neighbors a copy of my schedule.

The Rain In...

It's been raining here this weekend. The kind of steady drizzle that turns everything to slate gray, like the blankets of mist that form in the valleys between mountains when cool nights follow warm days.

Despite the gentleness of the rainfall, it sounds like there are marbles rattling in the downspouts on the house. One of those downspouts is just outside my bedroom window. The continuous percussion is a terrific sleep inducer.

The misty drizzle is also a great reason to get a fire blazing in the fireplace, pour a glass of wine, and select a book by a favorite author.

In fact, I think I'll do just that.

Android Player

Queen B was watching baseball spring training on the television today. On my way through the family room I noticed there was an information ticker running across the bottom of the screen. I paused long enough to read that some player had been Shut Down due to an injured shoulder.

Shut Down? Do we have android ballplayers now who get switched off for joint repair?

I would have read more sports news, but my attention kept shifting between the words and the baseball action. Trying to read words sliding left across the screen while the batter was swinging to the right was making me woozy.

Sort of like spinning in place and then trying to focus on a single spot while the room continues to swirl around you.

I decided not to linger. Falling and hitting my head could not have been remedied by pushing a reset button.

Cutting Back

It caught my eye - the article about how Americans are cutting back.

Only in this case I guess snipping back would be the more appropriate phrasing.

It seems vasectomies are on the rise. Men are taking the course of action in order to avoid unexpected new drains on the household budget.

Okay, I can see the argument for wanting to avoid budget shortfalls. And I can understand there could be many reasons for getting a vasectomy. But the combination of the two just seems wrong somehow. I mean, what if the man or his spouse were to change their mind once the economy gets straightened out?

So I'm thinking Pres. Obama needs to include sperm bank funding in his stimulating - er, ah stimulus- package.

We should be increasing sperm depositories at the same rate that vasectomies are increasing. Otherwise these same gentlemen who believe themselves to be acting so responsibly could be setting themselves up for extended psychological counseling. They and their families need to be able to have a bailout plan.

Jobs can be created here: Facility construction, nursing positions, receptionists, storage administrators, file clerks, magazine staff (if I have to explain the last one, then my humor has failed and you're already clicking your mouse to navigate away from this page).

Building Rhyme

The foot bone's connected to the ankle bone...

Remember that rhyme?

Well, I'm learning that there's a rhyme to building inspections too.

We're putting an addition on our house for Queen B.

Progress has just been halted by the inspection rhyme. It goes like this:

Oh the framing can't be inspected 'til the electrical is. And the electrical can't be inspected 'til the plumbing is. And the plumbing can't be inspected until the inspector answers his phone.

Bureaucracy will forever be the antithesis of productivity.

Hmmm... maybe I could get a grass roots movement started in order to jump start the economy. I'll call it Productivity at the Expense of Bureaucracy (PEB for short). What do you think?

School Schedule

Media Girl's school day doesn't begin until eleven o'clock today. In fact there are five days out of the upcoming eight that are late starts for her due to state aptitude testing.

What's up with that?

When I went to school (yes, back when we walked up hill, backwards, in the snow) the schedule was much more rigid than today. In fact, if they could have gotten away with it, I think school administrators would have shackled us to our desks.

High school started promptly at 8:00 a.m. and dismissed at 2:20 p.m., five days a week with very few exceptions. Those exceptions could be counted on your fingers.

Today, a day planner is a minimum requirement to keep track of when school is and is not in session.

A friend recently told us she was planning on activating a service on her cell phone plan that would send a text message to her anytime her child went beyond a specified radius from the school grounds when school was in session.

Why? The data entry required to establish school in session parameters would be more stressful than wondering whether her child was really in school.

Maybe students would be less stressed and better able to concentrate if they had a schedule they could depend on.

Rhapsody

I had the pleasure of attending an evening of music last night.

There were two musicians performing in the back room of a local restaurant (no, not a Soprano's style back room). The room is the perfect size for a private gathering, which made for a delightfully intimate evening.

One of the musicians proved to have a flair for classical music and gave an absolutely fantastic performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.

I enjoy classical music. Last night was the first time I've ever had the opportunity to actually watch it being played.

The position of my seat allowed me to see the keyboard and I was astounded at the effort that went into playing the classical piece.

The pianist's fingers were a blur of movement and his hands were crossing back and forth over one another like hummingbirds on steroids.

There were extended periods of time when the pianist's eyes were closed and I wondered how he could possibly know where to place his fingers when his hands were flying from one end of the keyboard to the other.

Imagine lifting your fingers from the keys of a piano, shooting your hand three feet to the right (crossing over your other hand) and bringing your fingers back down on the exactly correct keys - with your eyes closed.

Amazing.

Weather and Life

This time last week I was staring out of my window at a ghost town. Life as I knew it had been brought to a halt by a winter storm.

Last night I went to bed with the windows open - the temperature having flirted with eighty degrees during the day.

This morning sunshine, blue sky, and grass colored brown by winter hibernation are what lie beyond my window. The paralyzing snow of last week but a memory.

It occurs to me that weather patterns are reflective of life. Periods of predictable expectations interrupted by the occasional tumultuous storm.

In current times I find that reassuring - knowing that predictable expectations lie at the horizon.

Cats and Time

One of our cats, Ginger, prides herself on being the first member of our household up and about everyday.

I'm convinced Ginger takes perverse pleasure in sitting at the foot of our bed and emitting rapid fire half meows. Sort of like a rooster prides itself on waking the farmyard.

Of course Ginger had no idea that daylight savings time rolled in Saturday night.

So when I woke before Ginger Sunday morning, she eyed me suspiciously, her almond shaped eyes reduced to scrutinizing slits.

I plodded out to the laundry room and filled the cat bowl with a fresh serving of a yummy seafood blend.

Ginger sat and blinked, refusing to accept the generous breakfast. No doubt she thought I had poisoned the food. Why else would I have wakened before her?

Shrugging my indifference to whether Ginger ate or not, I continued on with my morning. Ginger followed me every step of the way, her curiosity still unsatisfied.

I settled into my recliner with a book and a cup of tea.

Aha, the opportunity Ginger had been waiting for. She jumped into my lap, draped herself across my book, and meowed her morning wake up.

Satisfied that she had finally been able to be annoying, Ginger headed off for her seafood breakfast.

Hidden World

It was closing in on seventy degrees here today, making thoughts of the recent snow storm fade into history.

I headed down to the boardwalk, parked myself on a bench, and prepared to lose myself in a book.

The insistent surge of the ocean soon had me gazing out toward the water. I was in a near trance when I noticed something amiss. Handrails for stairs - but no stairs.

During a recent beach reclamation project, thousands of tons of sand were shaped into man-made dunes to protect the boardwalk from storm surges. A five foot high by thirty foot wide wall of sand was pushed hard up against the boardwalk. Apparently it was decided just to bury the existing stairs rather than dismantle them.

It made sense. The stairs were no longer needed. The five foot drop from boardwalk to beach was changed to a gradually descending path through the massive sand dune.

But - the handrails for the stairs were left in place. Waist height at the boardwalk, the weathered boards now slope downward only a short distance before disappearing into the sand. A seeming invitation into a hidden world.

Tiger Wii

Motivated Mom (my wife) and I make use of our Wii game console on a fairly regular basis. For months we have challenged one another in bowling and golf, occasionally experimenting with one of the other sports.

We recently decided it was time to expand our horizons in golf, so Motivated Mom picked up Tiger Woods Golf for Wii.

The minute the options popped up on the screen I could see Tiger Wii was going to be a challenge. Not because the first hole looked intimidating but because the menu indicated we were going to have to select a golf persona, a course, a level of difficulty... the list went on.

We finally made it to Tiger's tutorial screen. Okay, no big deal, I was a semi Wii Pro.

I took my first swing and a message appeared on the television screen telling me I could do better.

Thirty swings later I was still being told I could do better. Apparently Tiger's coaching team didn't realize I was an accomplished Wii golfer.

Since there was no way to interact with the coaching staff, I turned Tiger Wii off. Let the coaches bemoan having lost their chance to be associated with me when they later see my name appear in the Golfing Hall of Fame.

Abominable Fangs

Remember the Christmas animation classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer - the one that begins with a singing snowman who sounds remarkably like Burl Ives?
Remember the abominable snow monster in that show - the over sized white shaggy ape with the wicked set of teeth? Well, abominable (or mumbles as Yukon Cornelius later called him) lost his fangs in my front yard yesterday.

At least it sure looks that way.

My car had been backed far enough up the driveway that the rear bumper was hanging over the mound of shoveled snow. When the icicles that had been hanging from the bumper softened enough to fall, they dropped point first into the snow mound. And there they stand, in a variety of lengths, like a lost set of vicious looking choppers.

Those things could have killed somebody if they had fallen from above.

Come to think of it, there are some very similar icicles hanging from roof eaves all around. Let a pair of them fall at an inopportune time and they could imbed themselves in an unfortunate person's head. The poor person would end up looking like Uncle Martin from the television show My Favorite Martian.

More fuel for my argument that temperatures were never meant to drop below fifty degrees.

Old Vs. New

I have been paying for my sins recently.

There have been a plethora of computer issues in our home recently and I have spent more than my fair share of time on the phone with technical support people whose dialects make understanding of tech-speak all the more difficult.

Today I was getting Queen B's computer rigged up for wireless internet communication.

I think Queen B is just a little intimidated by the idea of computer data beaming past her head while she sits at her keyboard. - I have to give her credit for her willingness to learn though - not all seventy-eight year old's go through withdraw if they can't e-mail daily.

With the help of a techno-geek on the other end of the phone line, we got Queen B streaming.

Queen B signed onto her e-mail account. For some reason the screen displays differently than it did when Queen B was using a DSL connection (don't ask me what DSL means - I have no idea - I only know it's different than wireless).

Queen B was a little put off the screen change and set about e-mailing with a certain trepidation.

Relax, I said, The worst that can happen is you'll turn off the power to all of Sussex County.

I'm sure she felt much better after that.

Language Lass B-Day

Up until now March 4th has always stuck in my mind because of the play on words that first reached my ears in grade school.

What do you do on March 4th? You march forth.

Now March 4th has far more significance. It's Language Lass's birthday.

(For those of you who may be new readers Language Lass is engaged to our son - College Dude).

If I had been thinking ahead, I would have run to the library and learned how to write Happy Birthday in four different languages. I'm thinking that would have really impressed Language Lass.

Maybe startled is a better word. Language Lass would have been startled there was so much intelligence behind my vacant stares.

Huh? What? Where was I?

Oh yes, getting ready to march forth to celebrate Language Lass's birthday.

Happy Birthday Language Lass

Shovelcise

I was engaged in my least favorite activity today - shoveling snow.

An hour into the drudgery, I realized I had stumbled on the next workout craze - Shovelcise.

Okay everyone, before we start remember to lift with your knees, not your back. Ready? Grab your shovels and..

Lunge - and - step. Push - and - slide. Lift - and - throw.

Good. That's it. Again. A little faster this time.

Lunge - and - step. Push - and - slide. Lift - and - throw.

Excellent, remember to keep the knees bent and your eyes straight ahead. This time we're going to throw to the right. You can do this. Here we go.

Lunge - and - step. Push - and - slide. Lift - and - throw to the right.

Now we're going to throw to the left. Ready.

Unh, unh, uh. I see you reaching for the starter rope on the snow blower. None of that. This is all about building stamina. Get that shovel back in your hands. Here we go.

Lunge - and....

In Like a Lion

March is coming in like a lion.

The weather service is doing a terrific job of talking up the perfect storm.

It seems snow is converging on us from two fronts and our area is to get up to eight inches of the white stuff.

You need to understand that with significant snow a rarity in lower Delaware, the potential impact of eight inches would be like Vermont getting eight feet of snow.

So of course everyone is racing to the grocery store.

I could never figure that knee jerk reaction out. Does anyone really need twelve loaves of bread and ten gallons of milk while waiting for the snowplows to clear the roads?

Of course not. The requirements are a case of beer, a bottle of hard stuff, and jumbo container of nuts - which is why I headed for the liquor store.