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Casual Sundays with Mr Curry
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My sis-in-law sent out this email yesterday;
"They say that only people with an IQ of 120 or higher can figure this out:
If
2+3=10
7+2=63
6+5=66
8+4=96
then
9+7=?"
Then there were instructions on using the answer to open the file to which you could add your name, proving your brilliance.
Roy added the note that she was glad there was no time limit on this. Really?
Immediately emails began flying back and forth among all of us bragging as to who got the answer the quickest. Let's just say that at 10 seconds, JP lost. There were a couple of relatives who answered "I saw it was math and I don't care" which, as I'm sure you'll agree, is an answer only a Mensa candidate would dare reply.
My favorite answer was Bill's: 144. Three seconds! What do I win?
All we win is the privilege of laughing at Roy. She sent this out and then had to admit with chagrin that it took her twenty minutes and a calculator to figure it out.
She has a degree from Yale.
I have no degree from anywhere, having dropped out of the UofM to get married and have babies. I solved the equation in about 5 seconds but I am far too stupid to be able to add my name to the list, after I opened the attachment. A window kept popping up telling me an error had occurred. Then Bill "Mr. 3 Seconds" (he holds a degree from the University of St. Thomas) told me it was all a scam to get me to join the army.
I think he's probably wrong about that but who wants to take the chance?
I did succeed in erasing a couple of names that were already on the list. I have no idea how but I did.
You're welcome.
This little anecdote is proof of the Wisdom of William F. Buckley who said fifty years ago, that he'd rather be governed by the first 543 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculties of Harvard and Yale, which, coincidentally is exactly the situation the country now finds itself!
Clinton advisors famously said "It's the economy, stupid."
Update that for the Obama administration "It's the math, stupid."
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It's one of those gorgeous, sunny bright freezing cold days we tend to get in January. In my mind, December is always dark and starry but January is blindingly bright. It is today.
Josie woke me up from a weird dream (was I here at home, back at the house I grew up in or on Diagon Alley? I couldn't tell) to drive her to school. Whenever I get unnaturally awakened from a dream, I suffer the sleep bends all morning. It's taken three hours and an entire pot of coffee to feel awake and my head still hurts.
So there's no point in going to work, is there?
We had three new windows put into our living room after Christmas. All the south facing double hungs are now new, thermo-paned windows and the room is ten degrees warmer than it was before. No more kite flying drafts whooshing through the living room. One of the windows was so old that it didn't even have a combination screen, just an old wooden storm. We had a new screen combo made for it and the carpenter just finished installing it twenty minutes ago. With the new front door and storm door, and the new windows, it's like a new room.
I really, really like my house.
Which is a good thing, since I live and work here and spend all my time here. Today every inch of the place is filled with sunshine.
I stayed up too late last night, watching Grandma's Boy, at Zack's recommendation. It was funny, but I don't find stoner humor as amusing as he does. I didn't start the movie til 10:30, since we'd been at a basketball game. Jay's team easily handled their opponents and won by twenty. It could just as easily have been fifty.
They only have one regular season home game left. Then it's "Goodbye. Thanks for the memories" and vanishing into the mists of time.
Jay took over the basketball program twenty years ago. The year before, the Marauders were 0-22. Since he and Ron Gates took the reins, the team has had mostly 20 win seasons, been perennially ranked in the top five nationally, won several Conference championships, fielded over a half dozen All Americans and made four appearances at the National Tournament.
And it's all being dropped because this guy doesn't feel like having sports at MCTC anymore.
If you made a movie about this program, every single viewer would say "That was the stupidest ending I've ever seen."
but I digress.
After dropping Josie off at school, I came home around the lake. The sun is noticeably higher in the sky and farther north on the horizon than it was a month ago. The sky was mostly blue but there was enough of an icy haze in the east to form a bright and beautiful rainbow flair streaking up from the horizon a quarter of the way up the sky.
I have to believe it's going to be a good day.
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Josie gave me Disney's Pinocchio for Christmas. I hadn't seen the movie since I had it on video when all the kids were little. I remembered that it was very funny and a spectacular piece of animation. My memory hadn't done it justice; it was better than I recalled.
So last week, I bought Snow White, the very first full length animated feature. This is the Mother of all Disney Movies.
Several things occurred to me while Josie and I watched it the other day, the first being that this was clearly made before the concept of "Disneyfying" a fairy tale had sprung forth from the marketing department. Snow White is a frickin' scary movie.
In the first few minutes, the Evil Queen graphically describes to the Huntsman how she wants him to take the innocent girl out into the forest, murder her, butcher her and bring back a TROPHY!!
In a box.
"Jeeez!" Josie said "This is a Disney movie?!"
Hey. The Great Depression was a much more honest time than now. Shit happens. Kids should know this.
The second thing that struck me was how magnificently GORGEOUS the movie is.
Not knowing how an animated feature would be received, Disney and his crew pulled out all the stops to make this one a movie worth watching and over seventy years later not only is it unsurpassed, it's untouched.
This is like if Star Trek 2009 had come out in the 1930s and movie makers were still trying to figure out how they did it.
Specifically; every single background of Snow White is a richly detailed, beautifully executed water color painting. The composition of every single frame is perfect; hit pause anywhere in the movie and the screen is filled, corner to corner with beauty and interest yet it's so well done that nothing ever detracts from the main focus of what the story is telling at that particular moment.
Snow White herself is an education. The performance of this character, made of ink and paint, is better than many Oscar winners I've seen. Every moment is perfect, every movement she makes, every gesture, right down to her fingertips, adds to her personality. She has weight, mass and grace.
It's been over twenty years now since Beauty and the Beast wowed audiences and reminded them of how good animation can be. I remember people saying things like how stunning it was when Belle first appeared in her golden gown, how wonderful the computer generated background of the library and the ballroom were...
Let me go on the record; Belle is a galumphing oaf compared to Snow White and that ballroom is nothing compared to the Dwarfs' diamond mine.
Don't get me wrong; I love all the Pixar movies. I love them because they are brilliant, well told and original stories not because the CGI goes beyond hand drawn capabilities. Snow White proves that nothing is beyond hand drawn capabilities. I've heard people say things like "Look at "Finding Nemo"; you couldn't do that by hand!" Really? In the first scene of Snow White, there's a shot looking up at her through the water of the wishing well that's better than any frame of Finding Nemo.
I'm aware of the fact that even if the studios could find anyone who draws like that anymore, it would take too long and be too expensive to produce a Snow White today but that's a very different thing from convincing yourself that CGI's quality is better.
Back before it became the all "House Hunters" all the time channel, HGTV used to have a show that featured a gorgeous, designer room and then demonstrated how viewers at home could copy the look of it for a fraction of the price. Does the Taj Mahal feature hand carved inset tile mosaic floors that cost a million dollars and took twelve years? You can get the same look with this laminate for three hundred bucks and it'll be in next week!
I'm not saying that Snow White is the Taj Mahal and everything else is a trailer park. Pinocchio is a masterpiece as well, and if you over look the Rite of Spring segment in Fantasia, it's almost perfect, too. The folks at Disney quickly figured out that they didn't have to be as elaborate as Snow White to produce a great animated movie. Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmations and Robin Hood are all great with very, very different looks to them.
I'm just saying that Snow White is the greatest animated work the world is ever likely to see.
That's all.
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Last night I went and saw our team play Anoka Ramsey.
Anoka is a suburb just north of town and the two schools are perhaps ten miles apart, so they brought quite a few fans along for the game. Years ago, Lady Gator and I would go on up to see the Marauders play at Anoka but we stopped. Even winning in someone else's gym just wasn't that much fun and losing? No. And back in the day, the possibility of losing always seemed more real. Now, when we lose it's shocking. Shocking, I tell ya.
Sometimes winning can be shocking, too.
Because we are perennial favorites, teams tend to come into our gym hyped up and loaded for bear. They usually play their very best against us. At least for as long as they can. Sometimes it's enough. Sometimes we don't respect our opponents enough and that's the Achilles heel of a great team and I'm not even sure this year's team can be considered good, much less great.
Anoka Ramsey looked very good, indeed. They jumped out to a lead on us and pretty much thrashed us throughout the first half. They had several guys who were hitting from outside the arc seemingly at will and we didn't seem to be able to make a layup with any kind of consistency. I'm not sure what the most was we were down by but for quite a while we were down by 8-12. It may have been as much as 15, which is really depressing.
There were a lot of AR fans sitting in the same section that we were in. (There were seven Pivec's adding voice to the MCTC crowd) The AR fans were having a lovely evening with plenty to cheer about. They had us by five at the half.
But we're a second half team. Always have been. I knew Jay and Ron were cooking up something brilliant in the locker room. Someday, Jay should write a book about what happens in his locker room. Once, his team played so badly in the first half that he left the bench a minute or two early and when his team came in, they found him there dressed head to toe in game gear, announcing that he would play the second half himself, cuz he couldn't be any worse than his guys. Turns out all they needed was a good laugh to clear their heads and they dominated the second half to win.
So, while down by five isn't where I like to be at the half, we weren't too worried.
But we came out in the second half and not much seemed to have changed. We'd score then they'd hit a three. We'd steal the ball then turn it over before we could score. I don't know anything about basketball, but I'm pretty sure that's not good. We managed to claw our way to within a point but we just couldn't break it open.
Right around the 15 minute mark, we called a time out and I noticed Jay and Ron conversing with each other, away from the team and it reminded me of the scene in Bull Durham where onlookers wonder what sort of discussions occur during those pitcher's mound meetings.
In retrospect (I haven't asked him yet) I'm pretty sure Jay and Ron were wondering if it was time to unleash the O.
Omar Omar (number 0) is one of the smallest guys to play for us. We've had a few tiny guys over the course of the years. Think about it; in order to be that small and play for this team, you've gotta be able to do something really well.
The AR fans around us were hooting and cheering and having a swell time. I resentfully thought to myself " this is our house and this game isn't over yet." That thought was quickly followed with "I'm gonna punch Jay in the head if we lose."
I think the fact that I'm such a bad loser is part of why Jay wins so much. I've never actually punched him in the head.
Of course, I've wanted to.
He knows this.
ANYWAY one turnover later Jay and Ron opened the O box.
Like Frodo Baggins, sneaking into Mordor on small, quite feet to do what the mightiest armies of Middle Earth couldn't accomplish, Omar Omar, #0 took Anoka Ramsey by the scruff of the neck and shook them till their teeth fell out.
THREE POSSESSIONS IN A ROW, HE HIT THREE POINTERS FROM WAY OUTSIDE THE ARC AND BOOM! WE WERE UP BY TEN.
Not only did that completely deflate AR--they couldn't do anything right for the rest of the game--it was as if it gave the rest of our team permission to get on their A game. The rest of our guys ramped up their play a few notches and in no time, we were up by twenty.
We dominated the last ten minutes so thoroughly that when we gained possession of the ball with 25 seconds left to play, the crowd began to clap and the two teams began shaking hands on a game well played as the clock just ran down to 0.
It was the sickest game I've ever seen.
And I have joined the cult of Omar.
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Josie's volleyball club team had their first big tournament in Rochester this weekend. Josie asked me last week if I would volunteer to drive since we have a van big enough for her four b-squad team mates. I said yes, because Rochester is only about 80 miles away so I figured it would be an easy one.
Josie also suggested that since the first game on Saturday was at 7:45 a.m., which meant we'd have to hit the road by 6 it made most sense to have the girls sleep here Friday night so everyone would be ready to go on time.
What the heck, I said yes. I made a lasagna for dinner. Jay got home later to find the house full of girls. When I told him the plan, he suggested that I take the Audi instead of the van, since it's a better car, gets better mileage, is more comfortable, has more trunk space than the van has cargo space and he knows how much I enjoy driving it and since he would be on the road with his team, he wouldn't need it.
Everything fell into place beautifully. I sent the girls to bed shortly after ten and hit the sack myself. What could possibly go wrong?
I popped awake at 2:00 a.m. feeling the weird stiffness in my tongue that signals imminent swelling. I ran to the bathroom and checked my tongue in the mirror. No sign of swelling but I didn't want to take any chances; I downed two benadryl.
The good news is that the anti histamine has been successful in stopping any edema in it's tracks. The bad news is that the stuff causes me to pass out for several hours.
The good news is that I had three hours in which to pass out and recover before I had to hit the road for Rochester. The bad news is that I couldn't tell for sure that I did pass out. I couldn't really tell if I fell asleep either, but I assumed one or the other had happened as the alarm sounded what seemed like a few minutes later.
To cover my bases, in case the bennies hadn't knocked me out yet, I made and power drank an entire pot of coffee.
That was fun.
I felt fine. Wide awake. But usually after knocking me out, benedryl gives me the nervous jumpies and I didn't feel that at all. Maybe the quart of coffee sloshing around in me eclipsed the after effects of the drug, I don't know.
We stuffed the car full of the girls' overnight bags (they were all in their game gear) and off we went. It was kind of fun. I do love driving that car! The road to Rochester is easy and in the pre-dawn Saturday morning hours there was no traffic. I had the directions to the RCTC sports center and had no trouble at all finding it. It helped that the sun was almost to the horizon so we could see what we were doing.
I helped the girls haul all their stuff inside and we quickly found the grown ups in charge of the team. I had no interest in much of that because I really really had to find a ladies room. Quart of coffee ninety minutes ago? Screaming to get out.
Friday night I had toyed with the idea of sticking around and watching at least the first game but by Saturday morning, all I could think was that there still may be a chance that the benedryl I'd taken was going to affect me. That wasn't a rational thought; I'd taken the pills almost six hours ago by now but that's one of the reasons I hate taking the stuff; it makes me stupid. Anyway, the moment I'd handed the girls off to a responsible adult, I said "No tags back!" and ran for the parking lot.
The sun was just over the horizon and it looked like it was going to be a glorious sunny day. I was back on the highway in minutes and floored it. I got home in an hour. Then I went back to bed.
I was up in my office working by 10:30 but it wasn't a good day. One of the affects of benedryl, not to mention waaaaay too much coffee, is that I felt jittery and paranoid. This feeling of ominous dread just filled me and I kept thinking "What is wrong? did I see something suspicious in Rochester that didn't register in my conscious mind that my subconscious is trying to warn me of? Am I having a horrible premonition?" Finally it dawned on me; too much coffee and no food. duh. Again; benedryl makes me stupid. I ate some lunch, drank some water and calmed the heck down. Then Josie called to say they'd played two games and were having a lot of fun. I told her to call me again when she was in her hotel that night and then I could really relax.
I felt much, much better in the afternoon so I ran some errands and visited a bit with Pam and then dropped in on my Mom. Mom was feeling giddy, having just gotten her brother, who had been staying at her house for a week after emergency surgery, out of her house and back in his own. Dad was happy that it was safe to come out of his office.
I got home just in time to watch Reservoir Dogs with Zack, who had also ordered a pizza.
I hadn't seen Res.Dogs since it first came out on video and I remembered that I liked it but had no intention of ever watching it again. But when my adult kids invite me to do stuff, I usually do it.
Reservoir Dogs is a really good movie.
Zack pointed out the discrepancy in the final scene; three guns, three shots, four deaths. Who shot Nice guy Eddie? Mr. Orange had emptied his gun into Mr. Blond and no one was pointing a gun at Nice guy Eddie.
Ah well. It's good, but it's not perfect.
Zack went off to play hockey and I watched Cinderella Man, the movie that made me forgive Ron Howard for The Grinch.
I'll never forgive Jim Carrey.
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Not content with beating the bloody hell out of the seventh ranked team in the nation last Saturday, our unranked Marauders (Mavericks to the eunuchs in the crowd) kicked the teeth out of and then squatted over the remains of last night's opponents.
What an opening line! Grantland Rice, eat your heart out.
It was just the sort of game I enjoy most. We were up 53-18 at the half. Jay cleared the bench and let all out guys get plenty of floor time in. At one point in the second half, Ridgewater was only down by 16 but we got tired of toying with them and quickly bumped the margin to over twenty. The final score was 80-60 but the game really wasn't that close. We could've beaten them by 50 if we were mean and greedy. We're neither. We just want to win all the games, all the time. That doesn't make us greedy that makes us winners.
Clearly, this is a program that should be abolished. What kind of values are those?
A new national poll came out this week after we trounced a top ten team and the new poll showed....no movement.
No change. The opponent we squashed like an overripe banana remains in the top seven and we are no where in sight.
That gives you an accurate idea of what polls are worth.
Sports ranking polls, anyway. It seems silly to spend so much time ranking teams who all have to play out their schedules and then continue to perform in tournaments. At the end of the season, we will all know who is number one, two and so on. All this conjecture before hand is just a pleasant waste of time.
Like American Idol, which began this week.
I watched about a half hour of it, which is all I can stand this early in the game. I get tired very quickly of the long line of talentless losers who don't even care that they are being made fun of by millions so long as they can see themselves on tv. It makes me sad. Not so much for the individuals caterwauling on the screen as for what it says about us that we love this public humiliation as entertainment so much. For about a hour, the joy of hearing a truly beautiful voice makes the awfulness of the starry eyed delusionals worth suffering through but soon it just feels like cruelty.
Like if we had kept our starters in, shooting 3 pointers while up by 30.
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My weeks go from Tuesday to Monday.
On Tuesdays, I drop off my work, pick up new orders and a check. I do this in the morning and spend the afternoon running errands like going to Sam's club and filling up my car. I frequently take Wednesdays off to do whatever I feel like. Then I have five days in which to work, filling as many orders as I can.
The problem with being self employed is that without self discipline you're screwed and self discipline is hard.
I made enough this week to buy groceries with the check I'll get but that's about it. I had planned on making about twice as much but stuff kept happening. I started off just fine. Then I took some time off, cuz hey, who doesn't like time off once in a while? I still had three days to squeeze out some painting. Then, Saturday Josie and I spent the morning taking down Christmas decorations and the next thing I knew, it was time to go to Jay's game.
Our Maverick were playing Rochester, who is ranked higher than we are. I think it was the first time outside of the State tournament when we were underdogs in our own gym.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!!
In front of a fairly large crowd, we fed Rochester their own ass. We jumped out to a 17-4 lead in the first few minutes and that's the way the whole game went. They got within ten a few times, but we quickly beat them back.
After the game I was too tired to work so I watched the second season of Californication instead. I still had two days to work.
Instead of painting, on Sunday Jay and I drove out to Tim and Mary Lou's place to cook them dinner. That was the present they got on Christmas eve; a tenderloin dinner with all the fixin's cooked by Jay. We went out to their place right after church and spent the afternoon and evening. It was really fun. In a big family you have to take pains to ever get to see each other in small gatherings. The huge parties are a blast but there's no chance to really visit when there are thirty of you. It was really fun to just hang out for a few hours with them. Jay and Tim aren't nearly so Jayandtimmish when it's just the two of them. They save the power of their personalities for an appreciative audience.
I had great fun all weekend but that just left today and I woke up with a sinus headache. I've been fighting this thing for a month and I'm about ready to surrender and go to the doctor. I may need antibiotics to clear this thing up. I did spend the day in my office but with my face throbbing like it wanted to jump off my head I can't say I was on my A game. I did finish two new designs and I like them both a lot, which is lucky. Usually, if I paint feeling sick, I hate what I come up with.
I really have to get to work next week. There's stuff I want to buy.
Mostly, I want to get the second season of Star Trek, the original series and it's expensive, no matter where you get it. I also want to get the second season of Friday Night Lights. Katie gave me the first season for Christmas and I really enjoyed it. I must say, Kyle Chandler makes a tasty grown up. I first saw him as Buddy in Pure Country. I love that movie, but Buddy is a jerk. Coach Taylor is not.
My wide streak of materialism is the only thing that keeps me painting. My natural instincts are to lay around all day. You may think that makes me singularly unsuited to self employment but since I'm the only one who can make me do anything, it turns out I'm not.
I have no idea what that last line meant.
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We're getting back to normal, or whatever the new normal is.
The temperatures are very low. It's been below zero far more often than above it this week. Josie dove back into the deep end of school and volleyball. She was up too late one or two nights due to homework concerns but she's very conscientious about getting everything that's expected of her done. Anyone in the world would be making a good bet to hire her, someday.
We've gotten a lot of snow so far this winter, too, which is a very good thing. For the last few years, the Minnehaha creek has been reduced to not much more than a mud streak winding it's way through town and that's not a good indication of things. The lakes are all low and we need snow. I expect we'll get a lot more of it before next May and that's all good, even if it's a pain in the ass to clear off our ten mile long, uphill all the way drive. My job is to rake off the roof where the ice dams form. I don't mind doing it but it's pretty darn cold up there. I made a bunch of salt sleeves and put them in the gutters to thwart the ice. I'll probably have to replace them soon but that's okay.
I'm trying to get back to work. I've been designing needlepoint for over 35 years and I've always said it was recession proof. I was wrong. Yes, I still have orders but the thing is that during the recessions of the 80's and 90's, which didn't last this long, I was much, much slower. Back in those days, I had a house full of little kids and if I spent an uninterrupted hour a day at my drawing board it was a productive week. Also there's no exaggerating the benefits of experience. I can now paint in an hour what used to take me three. The result of this is that in the past, where despite an economic downturn I still had several weeks and a few thousand dollars worth of orders in my inbox at any given time, now I only have a few hundred dollars worth of orders and while that's enough to keep me busy this week, what if there aren't any new ones next week?
Plus, I don't think this economy is going to turn around any time soon. In fact, I'm of the belief that it's going to get a lot worse, due to rising taxes and inflation. We haven't returned to the 1970s yet but we're still headed in that direction. On the other hand, America in the last twenty years has gotten really good at turning on a dime so I'm not going to worry too much about a future that may not happen.
Enough of the gloom and doom! Today I have work to do, a Christmas tree to dismantle and a basketball game to attend. The sun is out, the temps are far below zero , I'm full of coffee and I still have two pieces of dark Godiva chocolate left in the box I got for Christmas.
Life is good.
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