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Sun, 22 Mar 2009 19:52:43 -0700

(A work in progress, please be patient Rose.)
When I thought about spending what is the only real vacation we have had in years (if ever) that didn't revolve around some newspaper function or school-related activity, Pittsburgh did not sound like an ideal destination. Now that we are packing to head back south in the morning, I find that I am already beginning to miss it.

Our last evening in the company of the head of the art department where my daughter is about to receive her Masters was not the experience it was anticipated to be either. The hours spent with this extraordinary Irish gentleman and his daughter - a charming lass with a delightful accent, who is as sharp as she is lovely - seemed to melt away into nothing. And now we are back in my daughter's house loading the car. Why does everything so pleasant have to propel us instantly to the ending moment? I still have a little while to spend with the books of images of Pittsburgh they've lent us, but it will be bittersweet enjoyment alone here knowing I'll be leaving in the morn, and have no way to know if my path will ever cross that of these new friends again. And, Rose, you still need to send me that audio file.
Dan

1:30 a.m. OK. I've skimmed the Bridges of Pittsburgh and am on page 36 of Downtown Pittsburgh. Please note that these are the small books. The ultimate cruelty: Having wonderful books to read and not enough time to read them. (I'll check the libraries back home-possibly interlibrary loan.)
1:18:45 p.m. We were finishing the loading of the car when I couldn't find my jacket. I realized that I had left it at your house. No matter Jenn can ship it to me...except that I have my GPS unit in the left pocket and my humongous kidney stone in the right, neither of which I am prepared to leave behind! I honestly don't think I can make it out of Pittsburgh without Mabel. (The GPS lady, I don't name my stones. That would be weird.) So, I'll use the time wisely and look at the books.

OK. A quick trip to the house in which we ended the above evening and my trusty Mabel is in custody. I also got to meet the wife/mom who was out of town last night. These people have been doing a lot of looking after my baby girl, who is still little but very much her own woman now. If living in Pittsburgh would mean a steady diet of evenings spent with people like this, I would have a hard time resisting too.

http://soopergrape.stumbleupon.com/review/28489558/

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:17:30 -0800

A Funeral For A Friend
At the newspapers where my wife worked there were a lot of people who I saw on a now and then basis. Since she was Managing Editor, these were technically her employees, but if you've ever been in a newsroom you soon realize that either the editors, reporters, photographers, and all the other staff that help put ink on paper work for themselves-or they don't do much work at all. Some do prodigious amounts of the piles of miscellaneous stuff to be done that has no real set boundary or clearly written job description. After a couple of years my well tuned ear began to realize that few names of the couple of dozen or so in that area were used when something absolutely positively had to be done-and the trade-off was mostly the Boss Ma'am's good will. When they began to run their own printing plant as well with it's more extreme circumstances, the list contracted further. Of all the names called upon late at night to pull off some super-journalistic feat, one name stood out: Clay.

That's it, Clay. If there was a problem with the press, Clay would stay until it was solved. If there was an issue with the image-setter*, Clay would usually resolve it. He was a jack-of-all newscraft trades and a master of many, with the dedication of the best dog a man (or woman) had ever had. He was devoted, loyal, respectful, kind, hard-working, determined, intelligent, and absolutely dedicated to my wife in her position as his boss'm. He loved her dearly, as a man who adores in someone else the very same traits he strives so hard to perfect in himself. In my few extended interactions with him I always came away a better man. When I once had the privilege of obtaining a replacement workstation for him I was only too happy to buy the best unit (though used) that I could find with double the processors and faster ones at that-then scrounged around and located as much ram as I could find by swapping out sticks with units performing more mundane tasks than his. I wanted him to have it as soon as possible, so I drove over and set it up after the paper had closed-his normal working hours. The crowning honor was the ability to grant his request for the outdated machine, which would have been relegated to my growing collection of unused but too good to toss Macs in the garage and spare bedroom. His appreciation was far disproportionate to the gesture. Now I wish I had offered to come over and help him get it set up, and made sure he had all the parts he needed, ...and become the friend that today I wish I'd been.

http://soopergrape.stumbleupon.com/review/28489928/

Wed, 17 Dec 2008 00:16:42 -0800

(A Funeral For A Friend, cont.)
After my wife left the newspaper business he too moved on, utilizing other skills at sometimes less and at times a level more deserving of his abilities. As the economy soured a position that may have leveled his financial playing field and made up for some not so good times began to turn. When he was called into the office a few days ago I'm certain he knew what to expect. The stress of once again losing his ability to provide-due to no fault or lacking of his own, was more than he could endure. I'm sure they said that there was no hope from the beginning. A massive stroke had eliminated the electronic indicators of life.

I didn't think I'd take it this hard when I first heard the news. It was one of those deaths that was just far enough removed to allow us to feel concern without the social obligation to actually do anything. As time passed I pondered the relationship my wife and I had had with this man. I came to know that every way and every thing he had done to bless my wife had made him my friend as well. Whenever I would be at the office for this reason or that and we'd say hi to each other as he was was once again taking care of some little need or "Honey Do" type of chore around the office-I felt waves of gratitude as all the myriad details my wife had told me about him were cemented in place. I knew that I could entrust her in his care as much as I would my own at home.

I prayed for a miracle that did not come, a last ditch effort since calling my wife only happened after his family had gone home to plan and his room was prepped for the next patient. I saw no reason for it not to happen-but it still didn't. I waited while everyone else dissipated in the freezing weather. I watched them roll up the grass and take up the chairs. I saw him slowly lowered automatically to the bottom of the neat space carved for him. I finally saw all of the supports and the canopy rolled away. When the front end loader lowered the concrete slab and it was fixed in place, I left. At that moment the world became a little bit less of a place I loved than it had been just a few hours before.

http://soopergrape.stumbleupon.com/review/28193802/

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 09:45:56 -0800

I posted three scenes from "Green Is For Go!"
The way things are going by the time it sees the light of day the postal service it whimsically depicts will be a historical institution.
http://Writing.Com/authors/soopergrape

http://soopergrape.stumbleupon.com/review/27488953/

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 18:39:01 -0800

Shipping rates for humans
We are planning a trip to Pittsburgh to see our oldest do whatever it is they do when they get their Masters Degree. This is a major deal because, while I have been to Seattle and Maine (if the inside of a closed airport terminal counts), we have never been north of Tulsa Oklahoma as a family. While debating the positives and negatives of each mode of transportation, my son exclaimed "It costs over two thousand dollars to fly!" (each!)
To which we asked if this was for first class. His response:
"What else is there, Bulk?"

http://soopergrape.stumbleupon.com/review/26060697/

Fri, 03 Oct 2008 02:00:11 -0700

This website is worth*
I assume there are two more spaces to the right of the 7.

What is your website worth?

*This website=http://www.Google.com

http://soopergrape.stumbleupon.com/review/26030698/

Thu, 02 Oct 2008 07:04:19 -0700

Wanted: Minions

Old fart with ADD seeks uninspired (bored) talent to produce web, art, and other work for mutual benefit.* Inquire within.

*This would be a paid position

http://soopergrape.stumbleupon.com/review/23992199/

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 07:40:10 -0700

Baby You Can Drive My Car

I get out and she gets in.
I arrive and she departs, some mornings.
I chafe at the injustice of such a life,
But smile-remembering a time
That she never left alone.

Turn on your lights.
Adjust the mirrors.
(She must change the seat-so close I can't get in.)
It will be days before I get it back
Just the way I like it,
And she will change it again
Before I am done.

I say I love you too
Straight out and in plain sight.
I'll carry her purse-buy her pads,
And even read the labels to match
What is written on my list.
But, on some mornings when I am getting out
And she is getting in, it sounds like that:
Turn on your lights, adjust the mirrors, (change the seat).
You are more precious even than this.

My Neon was old when she got her almost new Honda. A few years later we got the almost new Chrysler and sold my Neon to ease my leg cramps and so we could go to her folks more easily. (This IS good...really.) Then we loaned her Honda to our daughter when she sold her share of her papers and didn't need it every day. Now she works part time at the library. I still do late nights, and we share. This is not a poem. It's just a paragraph or so that came to me this morning when...(you are not that slow I hope.) I just divided it up on lines where the thoughts seemed to fit.
PS: Some folks try to save their lights by not even turning them on when it is obvious that they can't be seen. Studies show improved safety by virtue of improved visibility using lights during daytime. Maybe that is why so many fail to signal turns, they don't want to wear out their lights! Lights almost never survive a crash, and they are much more easily replaced than loved ones.

http://soopergrape.stumbleupon.com/review/22246336/

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 08:19:01 -0700

a new cat in town
(a work in progress)

I have a confession to make. I guess that's two posts in a row, so I must be really guilty lately. I've been holding out on you. I just felt like it was time to come clean. I am a two cat man. There, I said it. It's out there forever. So be it. It didn't start out that way, I mean lately, anyway. I mean, we had cats when I was a kid, sure. My dad was a "Cats inside, dogs outside!" kinda guy. I knew that some people had dogs in the house, but nobody we knew did. We were cat people. Some times there were a LOT of cats in my house when I was a kid. I recall a brief period when there were twenty-three cats in our house. Some of them were very small cats. Actually there were three sets of very small cats, and all were honestly given away to what we believed would be good homes. (I was maybe ten years old, give me a break!) Some of our cats were of a higher social stratum than we were. There was Samantha, who could simply not bring herself to perform certain bodily functions in public. She would hang from the back door window frame until someone let her in, and then scream through the house, power-sliding the corners and banking off of walls to get to the sacred box. Then there was Meanness, whose name really does say it all. Named as a kitten who would attack your hand as if it were a life or death struggle in the African wilds, she had such a maternal drive that she once brought home a chicken to feed her cubs. A whole fryer in the plastic bag. We don't have a clue where it came from, but it had to have crossed at least two fences to arrive in our back yard-and it was still cool. Mom, having a strong sense of social justice, cooked it and fed it to the cats. (The fact that she wouldn't have touched a chicken that had been brought home by a cat might have helped.)

So I do have a cat person background, but I had been cat-free for a number of years. The story of my first cat in this married life is recorded here. So I will get on with how I managed to acquire yet a second feline female, also completely against my will:

It was warm in the city. I was tired after a long night working at the terrible place, followed by an even longer drive across...well, the CITY! I had decided to fill up at the Shell on the corner by the exit ramp because they had free air and the left rear was a bit soft. I pulled in and got out before I looked over and saw the new air machine. They say that it isn't so much the situations that get to people, it's how much different they are than what was expected. What was expected was free air, what was there was a new machine to replace the old one that kept getting it's hoses cut off-a new machine that charged 75 cents. I really don't blame them for being tired of replacing hose ends, I mean what is it with people that they would cut off the hose end at a station that gives FREE air for cryin out loud? (Really, what kind of a bozo cuts off air hose ends in the first place? I mean, you have to have a compressor and hose to even have a need for such a thing. If you do, you already have the doo-hicky at the end of the hose!)

I digress. I got back in the car resolved to buy my gas at Minyard's where air costs 25 cents less. I arrived at home with neither air nor gas. I drove up to the last pump on the right (my usual pump) and got out of the car. While I was getting my card out I noticed a very loud meowing coming from somewhere close by. My initial though was that some crazy cat person had brought their cat with them in the car. (continued...)

http://soopergrape.stumbleupon.com/review/22248556/

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:59:13 -0700

a new cat in town
continued:
I do understand dogs in cars, sort of. To a dog a ride in a car is like a walk around the block on steroids. It is a mind blowing action ride they can take while seated on the equivalent of the living room sofa.Pretty cool, from other people's dog's point of view, at least. For mine, taking a trip in the car has always been for them what I imagine a trip in a Care-Flight helicopter would be like: A terrifying ride to who-knows-where with someone cradling/stroking your head and repeatedly saying "It will be all right, we're almost there."
The best experience I ever had with a cat in a car was on a trip to Washington state, the cat simply disappeared for two days at a time. The weirdest was on a much shorter trip of a few miles. The cat perched on the package tray like a gargoyle with a weird cat-grin on it's face and a look in it's eyes like it was perpetually experiencing the leap into hyperspace. I can easily imagine a ride with our current old cat ending in a side trip to the ER for some routine stitching up.

So, it is with naivet� based upon my knowledge of transporting cats that I began to search for the source of the determined meeeeeeeooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwws that seemed to be coming from an invisible and incredibly long-winded cat right in front of my face. My first thought was to look in the car next to me, not really knowing what to expect in the car of someone so desperate for company that they would haul such an unwilling beast around with them. I saw no cat, but my attention was drawn to a young Hispanic male periodically kicking the right rear tire of the same car. While I was unsuccessfully trying to make some kind of sense out of all this, I saw the demon he was vigorously attempting to dislodge so as to make his escape: The head of a black kitten appeared at the top of the tire and jumped back as he kicked at it. This seemed to me to be a stupid way to get a cat off a car tire. It so happens that I had a long and successful career as a child doing just exactly what this man was attempting to do. You see, when an inside cat gets out of the house, one of the first places they try to hide is under parked cars. When cornered under a car by an organized and experienced cat recapture gang such as the one my dad had raised, one thing a cat may try to do is to climb on top of a tire to escape. This usually resulted in a quick recapture and return to the safe environment of the house. This kitten wasn't even trying to hide, so I confidently stepped up and said: "Do you want me to get that cat?" Hiding his shock at this fantastic turn of great luck in the arrival of such a willing dupe, he simply said: "Yeah." So I reached down and grabbed the cat and held it like it was mine. He immediately got into his car and drove across the street to buy a winning lottery ticket. As I held the trembling, shivering, purring and somewhat outspoken and very thin ball of fur, she became in that instant...

"My Second Cat."