Letters to Holly

Thursday, April 5

Plow, Plow, Plower Wheels

I ran Wednesday and again experienced the unusual leg pain. I stretched out well (I thought) and eaten well enough to avoid cramps (I thought). But my shins kill me before I go a half mile. I wonder if my stride was gone out of whack. I also wonder if my weight is more than I thought. The scale says I'm just a little heavier than I was when I ran the 5k. I'm not experiencing the side pains yet, but I don't think I'm running that much slower to cause a paid reduction. I'm confused.

I got home last night to find Your Sis tilling the long-dormant garden. We talked about starting it back up since we moved in, and we even tried to rent a tiller last year but the weather confounded us. She got out of work and decided to plow the ground, and so she did. She mentioned that the renters gave her a full procedure and that she had never even cranked up a lawnmower before. We'll fix that next week. I want her to be able to use all our equipment in case something happens to me. As she tilled, I did my exercises. She showed Unbreakable for the school movie room was was surprised by how many kids didn't know about it.

As we make our way through the last 25 episodes of "Six Feet Under," the characters are currently in a stretch of universal bad stuff. No one is happy, and everyone is getting bitchy. I need a drink after deleting each finished episode.

We got some surprising news from Your Aunt yesterday, and it's the kind of revelation that knocked me off my feet almost literally. She said she had talked to you as well about her plans, and I'm still not sure I can put into words just what I'm feeling. It certainly will help this here at Chez Debacle.

I'm working today and will be off Monday. I uploaded the Saturday Night Fever CD to my iPod so I can BeeGee my way to work.

Picture of the Day

Wednesday, April 4

We Got Movie Sign!

As Spring Break approaches the Mayberry district, Your Sister's school holds its occasional "screw it, we're not getting any work done" day on Thursday. She is in charge of a movie room but doesn't know who's supposed to bring movies. I recommended some of ours, but she reminded me that you can't show Disney movies in schools, or they'll sue you. Yes, they sue over large-scale babysitting viewings. That knocked out Incredibles and Pirates of the Caribbean. I suggested maybe Star Wars or Casablanca. The kids will dig the latter if they give it a chance. It's got Nazis, smart-ass humor, the French Resistance, a venal police chief exploiting the desperation of female refugees, gunplay, gambling, and drinking. It's a family-friendly parade of vice with a hundred quotable lines. I thought about Serenity as well, and I can't think of any major objectionable scenes from that film. I'll let her decide obviously since she'll be accountable. She's buried under school projects (which is why I commandeered the tech display), and this week is gonna be rough on her. She got out of school late yesterday, and we hit the local sports bar for pizza.

Picture of the Day
A new still from the upcoming FF2 movie. I wasn't fond of the first film for a lot of reasons, but it wasn't the blasphemous attack the vocal majority of comic fans would have you believe. I mean, the X-Men film franchise takes just as much liberty with the source material, and most people dig those films (except for those who think it fashionable to be grumpy killjoys). But this FF picture retains the sad resistance to go with the comics' outrageousness. The costumes are needlessly adjusted from the classic designs, and Thing is just too small. He must be broader, more inhuman, so we can immediately acknowledge the difference between being freakishly removed from the rest of us and merely inconvenienced by his new form. He should be CGI. And if I can nitpick, Sue and Johnny's hair don't jibe with what we seen for more than 40 years on paper. But the new film possesses the potential for a big-screen Galactus the World Devourer, and if the producers can just trust that original, cosmic-crazy design, then the movie will get my ticket money.

Tuesday, April 3

Victory of Creativity

I met up with Your Sis at the local library to view the technology displays. It was larger than we thought, featuring teachers from the entire district. The dedicated room was packed with displays, laptops running PowerPoint, and students of all sizes. Our display did indeed stand out. But another teacher brought a giant mess of props for her sewing demo, and those items were blocking our display. We simply turned the display around to be read from the other side, a vantage that had more traffic and better visibility. As soon as we moved it, people started reading it. I overheard her talking to another teacher that some students jokingly planned to steal and burn our display because it blew theirs out of the water. The lesson for all: Don't fuck with art majors. We will stylishly bury you. The whole affair was like a mini-convention -- slowly strolling attendees, a corner for heavy food, both vendors trying to make eye contact and hawk their material. Not that I'm slamming the event. I'm shocked it was that well populated. The parking lot was a mess, and folks left their cars anywhere they could find ten feet of asphalt.

After this we went to the recently reopened eatery for bar food. It's just so weird eating a languorous supper and exiting the establishment to encounter bright daylight. And yet I'm surprised by this every year. When will it become old hat?

Picture of the Day
And just how can this be done, anyway?

Monday, April 2

I Assemble Things

I walked out of the office Friday to discover the back left tire was dead flat. As I walked up to it, I saw the embedded metal shard that caused it. No problem, I thought, I'll get the spare. I had to call Your Sis to find where the jack and wrench are located in the car, and when I finally did replace the tries with the spare, I find the spare is also dead flat. It's almost falling off the rim, and there's no way I can drive it to a garage for a fix. Now it's right at 6 p.m., and tire stores close at that hour on Fridays. There's a tire garage within eyesight of the office, and the garage bay doors are still open. I write down the tire numbers, and run flatout to the front door, nor their posted hours indeed say it's practically closing time, and plead my case. The very nice clerk says they can help me. He looks at my tire numbers and notes they have a similar tire in stock. I run back to the office, grab the dead tire, and run it back to the garage. Yes, I'm running with a flat, wide, sports car tire in my arms. They confirmed it was dead and beyond repair, but sold me a new one and put it on the rim. They clerk then drove me back to the office, and I put the new tire on.

As I'm driving home, I take the back roads to break in the tire and witness, in the opposite lane of traffic, a dramatic arrest involving a running K9 unit, guns, and two shouting cops in all-black gear. So, yeah, my day could have been worse.

Your Sis got home late from work, and my hops for working on the tech fair display were dashed. We briefly talked of my ideas, but shelved it for the next day. I got up Saturday to reassemble the lawnmower. The manufacturers recommend winterizing the mower -- sharpening the blade, changing the oil and air filter, and cleaning the spark plug. I did all that and put the mower back together, and, to my shock, it cranked up and ran fine. But the grass was too wet to mow, and I went to work on the display.

After getting the picture files from her classroom, I showed her my idea on the home PC in a page-making program. We went with a Frankenstein theme, narrated by Igor from Young Frankenstein. I wanted it to be light-hearted. These kinds of display are usually so dull, and I always advocate the use of humor to present potentially dry material. Because she had to work on research papers, this became my project to assemble, but she checked off on all facets. After raiding K-Mart and Wal-Mart for the last 3 bottles of rubber cement and getting Igor images through Google, we started the tight design work. After getting the package ready on the PC, we let it sit for the next day. That night, we went to a local house party, drank some, ate some, and listened to a teacher couple play the gee-tar. It was a good break from working on the display.

I got up early Sunday to make the text. She proofed it after I cut out the header text and images. We ate, got groceries, and went back to the school to grab sound file samples for a CD to play along with the display. I printed out the text with the accompanying classroom pictures and we glued the whole thing together. Then we prepared for the night's WrestleMania PPV party by putting out a spread of eats and cleaning the house. It was a great time. We had four guests, gave a tour of the house, and they watched most of the show before heading out. The short report: It was a good show with some standout matches amid a few utter crap bouts. But the spectacle was worth it. I drank so much that I'm still a little bleary this morning.

Tonight, we go to the library to see the other tech displays. There's no way anyone can beat ours.

Picture of the Day
See? The white spaces around Igor's head were cut away in the printed version, and the final topper includes lightning behind the text.