I read that the Lay's potato chip company plans to change their recipe so that it conforms to the World Health Organization standards. My only question is, can you actually make healthy potato chips? And, who would want to?
All right, two questions. Just don't be messing with my yummy, salty chips y'all.
Snow fell overnight in Detroit Sunday evening into Monday morning, our first measurable snowfall of the season. Oh joy, oh rapture. I do hope you heard that in the sarcastic voice intended.
Around 7 AM I set out to clear the steps and the cars. There was nothing to shovel from the concrete walks but the wooden steps were cold enough for the little white flakes to stay where they fell. The same thing with the metal cars. Light, fluffy snow had to be brushed from them.
Three or so hours later as I returned home from a couple local trips, I saw exactly where our three vehicles had been. The snow lines from the brushing appeared just like police chalk lines around a murder victim.
I almost took photos of the car outlines like a police photographer might. I could have been a detective saying, "Yes. Ma'am, that's right where we found your husband. Pretty big guy, eh?" Only a detective wouldn't actually say that. At least, he wouldn't have offered an opinion on the husband's girth to his grieving widow. I don't think so anyway.
We got the Christmas tree up Saturday, and it's the best tree ever. We almost needed to get new strings of lights thanks to a blunder by yours truly, but someone caught the trouble before then.
I got the old lights out to discover that half of each strand didn't work. Rats. I wasn't about to take three hours or more trying fix them; lights are too cheap these days to warrant that much trouble. It turns out, as me son discovered, that what I thought were bundles of long light strings were in fact double bundles of shorter lengths, two light strings per set. When you found the other plug, those lights worked.
I felt a bit silly. But it saved a trip to the store and let us get on with decorating, so all was well.
I don't need a Church to tell me I'm right when I'm right. I need a Church to tell me I'm wrong when I believe I'm right. So said Mr. G. K. Chesterton.
He's onto something. What's the point in belief if you're okay exactly as you are? What's the point of anything if we're all all right anyway? And what's the point of a critical institution if it can't be critical?
A parent who never instructs or admonishes their child can't much of a mom or dad. Well, perhaps if the idea of parenthood is to create arrogant and self centered offspring, but that doesn't strike me as a sane way to raise a family. It strikes me as cruel to the kids and inconsiderate of the general society.
But maybe that's just me.
I never imagined myself saying this, because I am most certainly not Mr. Lions Fan. I do want them to win, I simply quit expecting it, given their history. Even earlier this year I was preaching caution because, yes, they look good and, yes, there may just be a different vibe to this squad, but there's a long road in front of them. Yet after their Thanksgiving loss two days ago I actually feel that I need to be the one putting a positive spin on things.
I know the last three games haven't been pretty, especially the Turkey Day loss. But judging from the reactions of several of my Facebook friends, it's the Apocalypse, the end times. "I knew Goff (the quarterback) wasn't the answer!' screamed one. "Thank you Lions, for sucking the joy out of Thanksgiving!" another lamented. "What was Campbell (the head coach) thinking on that fake punt?" moaned a third. "Their defense if awful!" I read on several pages.
Those are just examples to illustrate the point. But football fans, being far, far too emotional about what's only a game, seem to me the most fragile in the sports world. Goff's had a great run of 18 or 20 games; it's almost time he had a couple clunkers. And he did helm the Rams to the Super Bowl before Stafford did, you might recall. Campbell is doing what he's always done: being aggressive. It bit him this time, and he manned up and admitted his error. And everyone lays at least one egg (if not two, or even three) in a football season. This was one of Detroit's. It happens.
Take a breath, Lions fans. A deep one. I'm not sold on this team yet, but they are 8-3 and in command of their Division race. Okay, maybe they are tanking. Yet seeing what they've done the last half of last season and the first 11 games of this one, let's at least give them the chance to do good things. If I can manage that, so can you.
Of all things that I know little about, electricity tops the list. What I do know applies more to electric motors and not household power. I can replace an outlet or a light switch if I know that's the problem, but diagnostics are way above my pay grade. That's why when the kitchen lights went out yesterday I was at a loss.
The outlets worked, thank goodness. There were no worries about food spoilage due to the refrigerator not running. But the lights were off.
I tried all the usual suspects, flipping switches to no avail while checking the circuit breakers and the fuse box (yes, we still have a small auxiliary fuse box in our old home). The fluorescent bulbs seemed fine and appeared solidly in place. I was stumped.
I had stepped off the ladder which I had set up to check the bulbs and light fixtures without any clue what to try next. Absentmindedly, I reached for the light switch, flipping it. Viola! The lights came on.
Now I don't want to turn them off. I bought new on/off switches from the hardware and new cords in case I need them. But it might be January before I dare try killing the lights.
It doesn't have to be perfect. Indeed, it can be quite flawed and still be a good holiday. The food doesn't have to be fit for, well, the Food Network. The house doesn't need to be set for, well again, House Beautiful. I would go so far as to say that if any holiday can past muster if all is simply okay, Thanksgiving is it.
Of course, I mean that in the sense of the trappings (the trappings being the least important part of any holiday). But the point of the day, to remember all the good things which we have and, Lord willing, shall continue to have, that's the idea. Be thankful. Thankful for friends and family. Thankful for the roof over your head. Thankful, yes, for the food and festivity. All those things are little perfects which, left to themselves and seen by themselves, will allow you to have a very good day.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
For those who might like a more serious on somber look at what makes Thanksgiving important, and why we should guard its origins zealously, click here: 400 Years of Thanksgiving
While channel surfing in the wee hours this morning, I came across a music station which asserted it was offering 'the Sounds of the Season'. They were claiming to play Thanksgiving songs. But does Don McLean's American Pie count towards that? I mean, it's a bit of a downer, isn't it?
Yet what counts as a Thanksgiving tune? I can't think of anything in particular. Vague ideas about something hymn like or patriotic float within my mind, but nothing specific. Let's see what that channel offers next.
It's Louis Armstrong singing What a Wonderful World. All right, that's a good choice. I might just listen to a few more.
The phone rang yesterday morning; it was a customer in distress. "Oh, man, Marty, I'm glad you're there! I need help, and you're the Patron Saint of Drain Cleaners!"
Well, how about that? I'm a patron saint while I'm still here on Earth. But what would my stained glass window look like?
It would be in a large cathedral, of course, with me operating a genuine Electric Eel Model C, hands firmly on the handle, cable held straight, my eyes turned piously towards Heaven as the water begins to drain down the pipe. An aura, a subdued halo would be around my head as I gaze, perhaps. I might be wearing the brown robe of a monk. Bright, shining yellow glass from above my head would appear to bless my task. Just imagine the actual Sun coming through all that. Saint Marty of Detroit, Patron of Drain Cleaners, would be on a small plaque at the bottom of the window. An Angelic Choir can be heard in the background.
I like it.
They're all over the place: ads from law firms which talk about how much money they win for their clients, and about their spectacular winning record. All they care about are you. All they care about is getting you the money you deserve. The money for you which they take about a third of by the way. They need it to pay for their advertising. And their Mercedes.
The typical come-on is that they have free consultations. And that's the rub, so far as I'm concerned. They want to see how much money, if any, your case is worth. They won't 'fight' for you if it won't pay. They pick and choose. They don't give a tinker's dam about you if they don't believe it'll get them the big bucks.
I don't blame them, quite honestly. Who wants to work for nothing? But cut the crap, the overwrought assurances. It ain't about your clients, law firms, it's about whether you think you can win. I'm not impressed by your chest thumping.
In working to get my books reviewed I'm also trying to be kind to other authors and review their books. It's reached the point where I get asked to read something and give my opinion. If a certain tome looks interesting I'll get a copy and do so. I need stuff to read anyway, right?
I was asked yesterday to review a collection of word search puzzles. It isn't by one specific author but, apparently, an effort of a company which publishes fun books, crosswords, sudokus, and obviously word searches.
Well, okay. I find it difficult not to be a bit of a twerp about reviewing word searches though. "Wow, those words really were hidden!" seems patronizing. "I couldn't find a single word, you hit them so well!" keeps repeating itself in my mind. "Is this English?" I think of replying in all silliness, "Because I doubt WXHTTR is a real word, even backwards or diagonally."
Ah, yes. Too proud of myself yet again.
You know how computers and electronics are literal, right? You know how this includes alarms and alarm clocks? You know how you have to set the clock for either AM or PM?
Yesterday morning I slept until 8:45 or so. Upon wiping the sleep from my eyes and realizing that it was clearly beyond 7 AM, I was incredulous how I might have missed my alarm. I knew I had set it. I was certain I had set it.
Of course, I had set it. For 7 PM. I didn't pay enough attention to the practical particulars. And I'm simply glad that all I had on the docket for Friday was working at the old barn. I suppose that's what happens when you're up from 2 in the morning until 5:30 and decide to take an extra nap.
I had a fairly long day on the road yesterday. It wasn't helped by two traffic delays, one caused by construction, another due to a fender bender. Such is life.
They were aggravating enough as it were, but even that was complicated. Neither time did my phone app which was supposed to alert me to delays actually inform me of the backups. Technology is great until it doesn't work. Then, we have our patience tried.
I have said quite seriously and honestly that I pray for patience. Apparently the Almighty is taking me at my word by trying it. I believe He is demonstrating that to learn patience we must be faced by incidents which call for it.
Well played. Now I simply must put the plan into action. I can't say much else, because I asked for it.
Me Pops had a lot of great stories about his time in the welder rental and drain snake business. I hope to one day tell them all. One that just popped back into the front of my mind today involved the biggest man Dad ever dealt with. He was a good guy just the same, genuinely helpful and gregarious. But he was big. And he had the strong to go with his size. I'll leave exactly how big and strong to your imagination. But think bigger than you think big is.
To give an example of his size and strength, there was a job where me Pops was delivering welders along with the heavy cables necessary to weld with. These cables weighed a touch over a pound a foot. That particular day Dad had several 200 ft. lengths to deliver.
Guys were coming up to the back of Dad's truck and doubling up, two to a cable, to carry them over to the tool crib. Big Jim walked up and offered Pops a shoulder. "Put one there, Bill," he instructed.
"They're two hundred footers, Jim."
"Put one there," he replied simply, wagging his shoulder at the old man. So Dad did, setting it down as gently as he could. Then Jim turned about and said, "Give me another," indicating his empty shoulder.
"They're all two hundreds," Dad reminded him. Jim replied, "Give me another."
So me Pops set another cable on that shoulder. Big Jim walked away with more than 400 pounds of welding cable on his shoulders as though taking a stroll in the park.
I want him on my side in a rumble.
From an article I read on AOL (so it must be true) Costco, WalMart and many other chain stores are rethinking their self checkout lines. They may be getting rid of them. Well, okay. Personally I like the process. I feel that it gets me out of the stores faster than traditional checkouts. But, whatever floats yer boat.
Many folks have complained that they don't like to use them because they don't work at the store. A-hem: you just spent an hour walking around the place to pick and choose the items you put in your cart, that is, self-serving, yet you're high and mighty about self serve at the register? I ain't impressed at the complaint. If you really mean what you say about not 'working' at the store then how about you move to Hooterville and have Sam Drucker collect your purchases from behind a counter, price them and bag them? Otherwise, you're just virtue signaling.
But here's what struck me about this 'rethinking' process. The stores in question are considering a return to human cashiers because, they say, customers want it. Oh, and due to theft and/or loss because of wrongly checked foods and what not.
A-ha. It ain't customer service concerns for them. It's about the profit margin.
I get that. As an essentially self employed man myself, you have to be in the black. You can stay home and go broke, me Pops used to say. No point working at it. Yet Big Box Stores are at the same time trying to sell (I love puns) the back to the past idea due to customer demand. People, at least some of them (curmudgeons such as I aside) like 'the human factor' and WalMart and friends are trying to appear empathetic.
I ain't impressed by that any more than the whining about self serve checkouts. Y'all just be honest about things, the both of you, and I may learn to respect you each just a tad more.
Yesterday my energy bills - for electricity and gas respectively - came in. They were higher than I expected, although I expected that. There's a Yogi-ism for you to contemplate.
To be fair though, don't we always complain about what things cost or how well they work? It's certainly been a mantra for me and among family and friends for as long as I can recall.
Has it always been this way? Did hunter-gatherers thousands of years ago say things like, "The sticks we use for kindling sure are harder to find these days."
"When I was a boy, fires lasted a lot longer than they do now," Grandpa might have complained from his rock recliner as the family lounged around the cave.
Just wondering.
A friend of mine, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, decided for whatever reason several years ago to tour Russia. He and his wife began making plans for the trip.
The travel agent suggested that it would be easier to move around even within that country if they obtained Russian passports. Cloyce never imagined that such things were available to non citizens, but on that advice he and Mrs. Cloyce applied for and were issued Russian passports.
You know how so many pictures of old Soviet leaders look as though they had just been force fed three servings of pickled herring? That's what Cloyce looked like in his Russian passport photo. Comrade Cloyce, I've called him ever since. He truly looked mean and unsavory although he's actually one of the most gregarious men I know.
Why the grim look? "Because you better not smile especially for a Russian passport picture," Cloyce explained.
Nowadays the operators of drain snakes are taught never to handle the rotating steel cable because of the threat of serious injury. But that wasn't always the case.
Time out of mind, drain cleaners opened sewers by shoving the spinning cable into the line by hand. The real old timers actually did it bare handed, would you believe it? They handled the greasy black cables, the greasy black coming from the sewer sludge, without gloves. One old plumber, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, took it to a new level.
To tell it true, Cloyce was a top notch sewer man. Still, his personal habits left something to be desired. He did not for example wash his hands while working. He allowed all that greasy gook to build up on his paws while unclogging those drains all day.
When lunch came, typically an oily sardine sandwich, he would find a place to park his van and eat. With horribly dirty hands. Cloyce would hold his sandwich by a corner, and eat around it until all that would be left was that corner held by slick, black, greasy fingers.
Cloyce would then throw away that part. He wasn't that gross.
Dear Marty,
You don't have to explain anything to me. I'm fine.
Your money is your money. Your time is your time. You can spend your time and money with whoever you want to. If you want to spend them on those brazen, shameless hussies 'Up North' then that's what you do.
You know what? Things are fine. I'm just fine.
West Branch.
Dear West Branch,
Look, I know it isn't your fault. You're just a victim of circumstance, a geographical accident. But you are half way to Hessel. And that's exactly the problem.
Part of that's on me. When I go Up North like last Wednesday I should be happy to see you because the trip is half over. Yet I'm not. I can't be. I'm only 50% to da U. P. A lot of time is still on the clock.
Grayling, Gaylord, Indian River; that's when you start making time. That's when you're really picking up and laying down those miles. Then you make that curve around mile marker 334 and the Mackinac Bridge rises to greet you...
I'm sorry, I'm sorry. that was rude of me, West Branch. You can't help where you are.
We've had great times, right? Coffee stops, lunches, dinners; even breakfasts when I've left Detroit early enough. Let's focus on them. Let's remember the good times. I'll still stop, I'll still check in from time to time. I promise.
Friends?
Marty
Me Grandpa Joe once had this big black Cadillac, I think it was an Eldorado, and it was a monster. A veritable battleship. I mean, that thing was huge. It's passing by would cause a solar eclipse. And like most of Joe's cars, it was, well, unique.
We never did get the brakes working quite right. You learned while driving it to anticipate traffic lights, slowing down blocks away when it looked like the light would go red soon. Me Uncle John known in some quarters as Zeke once suggested we install those big parachutes like they have on drag racers to help the car stop on time because, being big and heavy, it took a lot to stop that vehicle. The engine required so much work that Zeke also quipped that once he saw the car on the street and almost didn't recognize it with the hood down.
But what got me the most about the car was the first time Joe had me changing the oil. Crawling under the belly of the beast to drain the motor, I couldn't help but see that the oil pan had apparently once sprung a leak. The clue? The pan was covered in heavy roofing cement.
I called to me Grandpa, "There's roof cement slathered on the oil pan. Maybe it used to have a leak."
"Does it look like it's leaking now?" he yelled back.
I studied it closely and replied, "No."
"Then we won't worry about it," Joe answered.
A typical Grandpa Joe view of a typical Grandpa Joe car. Damn, I miss that old man.
Last year when I ventured into Canada I took my new old van. Invariably the border guards would ask me to open the sliding door behind the driver's seat. The door not being automatic (it's a new old van, as I say) it took the act of a contortionist to get the dadburn thing open, for them to peek inside from their seat just quickly enough to go, "OK, thanks, close it." Repeat the process.
This curling season as I cross the border I purposely drive my newer older van, my 1996 Chevy. Why? Because it ain't got no stupid sliding door on the driver's side. You want to see more closely into my vehicle? Get out of your guard booth and walk around to the other side. I'll gladly use the power locks to unlock it for you as I perch comfortably in my Captain's chair behind the wheel.
It's only been three weeks, but they've yet to ask.
Any little way to protest, I'm protesting.
I get it. There's a certain irony in what I'm about to say. Make of it what you will. But I can't tell you how glad I was to pick up a Sunday paper and see an article about baseball on page one of the Sports section.
I know the Lions are doing well, and yes, being sports they merit the attention. Yet the main Lions headline yesterday was that they need a team song. Can you say filler? That's all it was, as they don't play this week. Yawn.
The University of Michigan football program is in a sign stealing scandal. Let it play out; it's all can we do. If they broke the rules they deserve an appropriate punishment. But everything right now, pro or con, is guesswork. Uh,uh, (I'm about to be facetious) there's a great new conjecture in the news every day, and on social media every minute Marty. It'll settle the whole question! Paint me uninterested. I would be if it were any other school too.
There's far more college football coverage in general than is truly worth reporting. The Red Wings and Pistons seasons merit scant attention in November. We simply make too much of sports and games. I mean that. Then I see a positive report (three in fact) about baseball and I think, ah, here's something worth reading.
We all like what we like in sports, and that's fine so far as it goes. I understand that. But sports are still too important in our lives. I'm a victim of that too, in my own little way.
Confession is good for the soul. I mean that as a general rule; we ought to examine our lives from time to time to consider what we might have done better at this point or that. We shouldn't beat ourselves up about it either as that's it's own downward spiral which can hurt more than it helps. But if we can't look at ourselves and concede, all right, I ought to have handled that better or acted differently, we probably aren't being honest enough.
As a Catholic, I'm obligated to attend our sacramental Confession. That can bring up some interesting moments even as I prepare for it, moments which touch on what I've just said.
The last time I went, for whatever reason, things were going slow. It was taking forever (well, a comparative forever, not, of course, literal forever) and I found myself getting impatient and upset. What have all these folks done that it's taking so long? What can the priest possibly be telling them that keeps the line from moving? It finally hit me that my convenience wasn't the point. The people were telling what they had to tell and Father was saying what he needed to say. And I had just, I suppose, found something else I needed to confess.
This weekend, early tomorrow morning in fact, we 'fall back' to regain the hour we lost in the spring. There's talk about keeping Daylight Savings Time year round. I don't like the idea.
I know there are complaints about the early evenings which are coming, but do we actually want sunrises after Nine AM for around six weeks in these parts? I don't. I far prefer the sun in the morning than late afternoon. What sun we get anyways, these also being the cloudy, dreary days of the year too.
But, whatever. We take what we get I suppose. Not much you or I can do about it, is there?
Another Halloween has come and gone in Woodbridge. We think we had over 300 trick or treaters, which seems down but was still a good number.
One of the nice things about living in an old style neighborhood are days like Halloween. There's lots of activity and quite a few houses passing out candy. And people, trick or treaters and parents and neighbors were all kind and courteous. It's a good feeling.
Happy Belated Halloween all. I hope yours was good.
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