Thrown off the bus in a North Dakota oil patch town

Back when I was a softball coach I acquired a fairly high quality 100 foot fiberglass measuring tape.  The deal was that the recreation department sponsoring our softball league established rules specifying distances between bases and pitching distance.  But then they just issued rubber bases to all of the coaches and sent to each game an umpire whose only qualification was an apparent willingness to accept payment for showing up at a specific time and place.  The umpires had no clue, no measuring devices and absolutely no interest.  The actual practice that developed was that one or another of the two team coaches would walk out onto the infield and throw down the bases more or less where he or she thought they were properly located.

How is a person expected to coach people to play a game when the dimensions of the game change every single time they play?

I bought a tape, a tape which according to the label I can still read all of these many years later meets US Bureau of Standards for Accuracy.  The label says suitable for Surveyors, Realtors, Landscapers and Contractors.  Further the tape surpasses US Government specs for durability.

I bought a tape and forever thereafter all of the games which included the team that I was coaching featured bases set accurately at the actual distance specified by the league rules.  I always knew this to be true because I showed up early and measured and placed the bases.  With this extremely high quality 100 foot fiberglass measuring tape.

I caught a ride with a long haul trucker but was only able to get as far as Wyoming.  Fortunately there I was able to cadge a job as a dishwasher in a cowboy bar where I was able to convince the topless waitresses that they should share tips with me.

With my share of the tips I was finally able to save enough to make a move that advanced me a significant step back towards the life that I had previously lived.  Everything has finally worked out OK.  OK especially considering being thrown off the bus.

During the course of all of that or perhaps merely because I didn't have a softball player living in my house anymore, I lost contact with the tape.

A couple of years ago I either had saved enough from the tips to get back here or I had a need for the tape.  I knew I hadn't thrown or given the tape away.  It was a discouraging search with many dead ends but as with most such searches the tape was in the last place I looked.

A long way of getting around to I have a measuring device way more than adequate for driveway dimensions.

Straight down the center crack about 40 feet, a few inches longer at the two edges.  About 16 feet across edge to edge just below the garage.  The driveway flares out at both edges at the bottom for a couple of inches in the last couple of feet of the distance towards the street.  There is also the front steps and there is also a bit of concrete leading over to the front steps.  Mostly the front steps are under the overhang so there isn't much snow over there.

It seems to me that a good rough approximation is 40 feet by 16 feet.

640 square feet.

A fairly uniform 5 inches of snow.

640 times 5 divided by 12 equals a bit under 267 cubic feet.

That's very nearly 10 cubic yards of snow removed from my driveway yesterday by a gentleman well past his best if used by date without use of power tools.

Numbers are fun.

Food freshness labeling update

I am referring to the modern addition to the labels of all things consumable, the best if used by date.

Of late I have begun occasionally answering the question of "how are you" from folks who I have not seen recently with the explanation that I believe I am doing pretty well for a person quite clearly past my best if used by date.

Which is a long way to get around to the actual title of this post.  Yes, you must ignore what appears at the top of the post.  That is really only the introduction to the definitions section.  The real post title is:

Gentleman well past his best if used by date subdues residue of 5 inch snowstorm without use of power tools.

Our earliest requirement for a start today was TOPWLH wanting to leave for an open house by about 4pm.  I started my shoveling about 7 hours after TT.  I know that the municipality where I live plows after every event of 2 inches or more so I spent the morning hunkered down waiting for the plows to plow.  This is the preferred approach here.  If you clear the snow before the plow arrives, that just means you have to go back out after the plow leaves and redo a considerable portion of the task anyway.

So after the plow left I opened the garage door and started as I always do with a shovel to push away that snow nearest to the garage door.  This is a necessary step.  The garage door MUST be closed when using a snowblower.  With the door closed it is necessary on the up driveway bit to turn enough before you actually get to the door to leave room for a human being between the machinery and the door to allow someone to be in control when the down driveway bit begins.  Where the snowblower turn leaves snow covered pavement is a bit that is going to have to be shoveled anyway.  My approach is to do that bit of shoveling first.

I pushed the snow down the driveway, it was light and fluffy (albeit 5 inches of light and fluffy).  That first push went pretty smoothly so I gave one more across the width of the driveway repetition of the down driveway push.  My driveway has four sections of concrete between garage and street and after the third round of push I was very nearly at the end of the first (and longest) of the sections.  I had also discovered that the car tracks from early morning newspaper delivery (two cars pull in, two cars pull out, a four repetition compacting) were reacting to the relatively balmy temperatures by still being available for easy scraping.  The compacted snow came up with it only being necessary to apply about the same amount of force that I was applying just to move the increasingly deep light and fluffy pile.  Most often the driven on stuff is packed down hard and is well on its way to being there until April.  Not today.

Well now, soon enough I had two sections of driveway done and I was starting to think that this might be possible.

And it almost was.  Finally though I had to quit at about this point.  My pulse, breathing and body cooling mechanisms were all beginning to complain.

In short that was about all I could do, I was more or less completely used up, knackered.  I required a bit of a lie down.

That's pretty darn good though.  On the house side of the driveway there I have completed shoveling all four sections of my driveway.  That remaining snow is actually in the street and although I generally do clear that I feel considerably less responsible for that than I do for the bit actually on my concrete.

On the field side of the driveway I am down two sections.  Also at the bottom I have shoveled a foot path through to the street (what I refer to as reestablishing contact with civilization) and I have gone around and rescued the trash container from deep in the deep stuff.  Friday is trash day here, what with the recent Festivus, today was the day when our trash was actually picked up.

I was out there when the trash guy showed up.  It was such a horrible day for travel that our trash company had to put auxiliary trucks into service to try to get pick ups completed.  The guy who showed up at our house was using some sort of antique truck that did not even have a side dumper.  He had to stop the truck, get out, get a firm grip on the trash container and drag it to the back of the truck where it hooked up to a lift.  He then had to move a lever on the side of the truck to get the trash to dump into the back.

Really, really old school truck from back in the day when trash pick up was done by trucks with two man crews.  Today being operated by a single man.

He seemed pretty thankful that I pulled the receptacle out of the snowdrift and moved it out towards the middle of the street for him.

The mail came, I chatted with the mail lady.  But I really had pretty much nothing for additional snow removal.

So I went back inside and took a fairly significant lie down.

I am pleased to report that even a gentleman obviously past his best if used by date can still rally if given an opportunity for a fairly significant lie down.

Lighting conditions probably tell most of the story.  The above picture is sunny mid-afternoon.  The picture below is just before the light went out.

At least a couple of hours had passed.

But my driveway looks great and it was all done by a gentleman well past his best if used by date without use of power tools.

Did I mention we had about 5 inches here?  Because I definitely meant to.

Boxing day

I have been cooking on Christmas Eve for TOPWLH and her parents for many, many years.  Until the last couple of years this was always at our house.  I would cook and chit chat with Bud while the three generations of ladies attended Christmas Eve church service at Saint Anthony Park Lutheran Church.  Barbara calls her parents the Ancients and the simple truth is that they no longer travel very well.  Most recently for Christmas Eve we have traveled to their home and I have cooked there.

Bud loves the old photos and is very protective and territorial about them.  This year we were a little surprised that we were able to convince him to let us borrow one of the old photos with the promise that I would scan the photo and it would be returned the next day.

Opal and her seven brothers in 1971.  The occasion was the funeral of their mother.

Front row: left to right, Floyd, Opal, Earl.
Back row: Kenneth Jerome, Orlin, Darrel, Myron and Roderick.

According to Bud, Opal would have been 47 for this photo.  She would have been the mother of children aged 28, 24 and 17.  None of her grandchildren had yet been born.

She was in attendance yesterday at a Christmas Day celebration also attended by her three children, four of her grandchildren and four of her great grandchildren.  And her husband Bud.

Pagan winter holiday progresses

Shopping?  Check.

Menu planning?  Check.

Chocolate covered cherries?  Check.

Today Wireless came over and constructed this year's version of the nativity scene.  Again, as has previously been mentioned, this is a very definitely small "c" catholic (definition 2) display.  Our only intention is to be all inclusive.

New this year are William Shakespeare and a bread deliveryman, aka on the packaging as livraison du pain (I think Wireless may have acquired this figure in Quebec).  I think this might possibly be the first appearance in this particular context of the pink flamingo.  There is an alien area, there is a men of science area, and there is a sports guy area.  I believe it probably goes without saying that the mice are present and that there is a Snow White and the Seven Dwarves area.  And R2D2.

Late edit:

The tree, final version featuring a nice bunch of gaily wrapped gifts:

Joyous Festivus to all.

Turn your head and fail to watch carefully enough, 44 years pass.

I got my draft notice early on in 1969.  That moment was a time of acceleration of the war effort by our government.  I recognized that entering as a draftee at that time meant I was likely to be trained for military service as an 11B20, aka 11Bravo, Light Arms Infantryman.  I just kept trying to delay the whole mess, hoping against hope that somehow, someway it would all go away.

It didn't.

I enlisted just prior to the deadline and received in exchange for offering an extra year of my life a deferred entry date and the opportunity to be trained as a 76P20, Stock Control and Accounting Specialist.

I would be there for 3 years instead of 2 but I would work in a warehouse instead of in a light infantry squad.  A lot of paperwork instead of an M-16.

I entered the military on 12 September 1969.  Woodstock had already occurred on 15, 16 and 17 August 1969.  The festival created a small sensation and by the time of my military entrance it had already over the Labor Day weekend of 1969 been featured on the cover of the then still culturally significant Life magazine.

I arrived in Cam Ranh Bay, Republic of South Vietnam at the 22nd Replacement Battalion on 1 April 1970.  I was assigned to the US Army Depot, Cam Ranh Bay.  I was being processed by a sergeant in the personnel section of that unit for placement with some unit or another of the large warehouse district located on the south end of the peninsula.  He typed poorly and with only a couple of fingers.  From behind him I announced that I could type a lot better than that.  I had taken typing as a 9th grader at District Junior High School in Bovey.

He turned towards me, looking slightly irritated but also slightly amused.  He turned back to the typewriter.  He rolled the personnel form out of the typewriter, rolled in a fresh sheet of paper, and then moved away again as he offered me his chair and the typewriter and the opportunity to prove that what I had just said was true.

I was an A student in typing in 9th grade.  I had absolutely no trouble convincing the sergeant that I could type.  This was before computers, obviously.  In 1970 if you could actually type the US Army needed you to type.  I was an A student in typing.  After that I typed.

The combat zone assignment came with something called R&R, rest and recreation.  After 6 months in country the military would provide a 7 day free leave and transportation to one of several locations.

The movie "Woodstock" had come out in May 1970.  When R&R came up for me in the fall of 1970 the only thing that I really, really wanted to do was see the movie.  I took R&R in Honolulu.  I went to the movie, it was practically the first thing I did after arriving in Hawaii.

Nothing I saw in that darkened theater that afternoon changed my life.  My life had already been changed.  But I saw performances that stunned and amazed me, performances that to this day continue to stun and amaze me every time I watch again.

I loved the Joe Cocker.

I loved the Who.

I loved Ten Years After.

This one though, by a then completely unknown Santana, is the one that killed the most.

And after all this time, it absolutely continues to kill.

I love the guys at the beginning of the piece doing volunteer percussion on the plywood fence.

Late edit:  there is a musically more complete (including the full drum solo by just turned 20 years old Michael Shrieve) available here.  The video isn't quite as good in this version as the full wide screen is compressed for the available video format.  Musically it is superior and despite the video quality it still definitely does it for me.  At the time of the performance at Woodstock Michael had just turned 20 and Carlos was 22.

Inching towards the light

The really awful November here has had the effect on me of reducing my level of dismay about the completely dark season.  All of that snow and really horrible outdoor conditions just kind of blunted the usual whole it is getting dark hysteria.

Still, it is pretty dark now.  No matter how late one rises all of those hours before noon are still just morning.  Even 9am seems only a little past dawn.  Inching along towards noon.

And no matter how you care to parse it 5pm is night.  It is dark.  But in a couple of days it will start getting better and that feels pretty good this time.  The horrible weather was so horrible that it prevented me from fixating on the loss of light.

And now instead I find that I can celebrate the fact that we are now inching towards the light.

The next step is the solstice.  The solstice brings all of the various celebrations of the returning of the sun.

Here is our offering to this most recent returning of the sun:

Best of season greetings to any and all who might find themselves viewing this page.  We here are doing well and are pleased to share our good times with all of you.

New record

On the Gopher Women's Hockey Facebook page you can find where a loyal fan requests information on how many teddy bears were actually tossed.

GWH responds:  "The bears have been counted, and Gophers donated a record 473 stuffed animals during this year's Teddy Bear Toss. Awesome!"

We done good, I think.

But we could do a lot better, there were 1,672 in attendance at the game, it seems to me that 1,672 should be the minimum number of bears tossed onto the ice.

Teddy bear toss

We were instructed to participate.

Please notice that the team captains (also known as the Rachels or sometimes as the Rachaels, they each spell it the way her mom wanted it spelled doncha know) specify that stuffed animals other than bears are totally acceptable.

That's why our tossees looked like this in their last moments of safety inside our house.

Clearly neither one is a bear.  One appears to be a frog, anyone with any species identification of any kind on that other thing is invited to weigh in.

Gophers win 7-0 tonight, a bit of a let down after winning 12-0 last night.

Current record 16-1-2, good for a #2 in the country rating.  They are really good.