Bears rack up another win

This Jay Cutler guy’s performing pretty well. I love the dramatic last minute wins (too bad we didn’t have that at Green Bay.) Hope the Bears keep it up!! Love to see ‘em win.

Tired…

I’ve been too tired to come up with something fascinating for this thing. I’ve been dealing with contracts and estimates and contractors and reluctant co-owners. I’ve been going through my pop’s books (many, many, many) and dealing with a computer that seems to be having memory problems and is overheating this past week – grr. And to top it off, animals fighting outside my window at 4 AM in the morning and being woken up by loud people after an hour of sleep (it doesn’t help when these incidents occur during the same night.) I could go on, but I won’t. I’m exhausted just typing and looking at this entry.

Well, I guess this is one of those “honest and accurate” reflections of my life that I promised in About, not great reading that inspires dot connecting. I better stop now before my computer starts error-messaging me. Hopefully, there will be better entries to come. Please stand by…

A driving rant…

So many possible topics here, so little time. I’ll just focus on one that I’ve noticed a lot lately and is really getting to me. It seems that right of way on major arterial streets does not exist anymore (maybe it never did, or maybe it did for one second…) I can’t count how many times I am in traffic flow and someone comes barrelling down a side street and comes within inches of me driving legally down the street with traffic - the driver looks at me like I should screech to a halt and let them barrel down the street in front of me (And if this sets off a chain reaction rear-ending, oh well.) The stop sign at the side street intersection apparently does not exist. This happens, too, from parking lots along the arterial streets, but if someone pokes their car into stopped traffic, that’s a little less dangerous than almost forcing a merge.

Perhaps these misguided individuals think they are on the entrance ramp to an expressway rather than a side street. I’m now being forced to scan every single side street I pass to prevent collisions. I’m really hating this trend.

Looking forward to…

Whip It, which opens October 2 (I’d add a picture, but it could vaporize tomorrow – grumble) Ever since I heard about this movie earlier this year, I was curious. I like Drew Barrymore (also directing the movie), I like Ellen Page, I like Kristin Wiig, and I love roller skating. Plus I like the old junior Girl Scout uniforms they wear in the roller derby (I had one of those green deals.) It just looks really fun and is making me want to go roller skating like I used to do in front of my house for hours and hours.

Oh, and my “friend” Aaron Eckhart is playing a motivational guru who’s screwed up in Love Happens, which opens next Friday. I so enjoy watching his acting…sigh… 

I guess I know where I’ll be the next few weeks. Thank God the fall films are now here!!

S***myoldmanwrote…

I checked out the s***mydadsays Twitter feed, like everyone else. The pops really can come up with some gems. In a weird way, it’s comforting to see that other parents say some major wild stuff. My pop didn’t swear like the Twitter dude’s, unless he was really mad and damn or s*** might come out of his mouth. I’m not on Twitter, but maybe I should really go through the carbon copies of letters my dad wrote to everyone from health insurance companies to Chicago library directors to Senators to an old Army Air Corp buddy in Colorado.

I’ve skimmed most of them and am not a fan of some of them because he was bitching (unfairly, IMHO) about me (parents tend to do that, don’t they?!) But maybe the passage of time can help there. I just pulled one of the carbons. What a surprise, grandpa shows up in a story: “When I first met my wife, I was on a Shakespeare kick (this would have been around 1957 or so.) I recall my father was working on my car – replacing piston rings, to see if he could really do it. He (my grandpa) operated a gas station but rarely did any mechanical work and he was then near retirement.  I was reading some play of Shakespeare while he was under the car, and he’d asked me for some wrench and I gave him the wrong tool. He came up from under the car, slightly incensed, and said to me ‘Shakespeare never had a Chevrolet, did he?’ My old man was good on one-liners.”

There are plenty of other gems. Maybe I’ll start a s***myoldmanwrotestarringgrandpa blog! My dad was fond of quotations – maybe he deserves a book.  Stay tuned for more s***myoldmanwrote!

Kids think the darnedest things…

Parents are worried that their kids will be brainwashed by listening to Obama’s speech next week to the schools. Hopefully, he will not be infusing his speech with some blatant political views.

My thought – regardless if it’s a Republican or Democrat President giving the speech, parents and kids, regardless of the parents’ political leanings, can have a discussion about the speech. If parents want their kids to learn about and hopefully absorb their political beliefs, what better way than to look at an opposite view and discuss why the parent doesn’t agree. Exposure to all political views helps educate a child and gives a parent an opportunity to guide.

Of course, parents may not be able to ultimately influence a child’s politics as they mature, along with a lot of other values/beliefs. Kids often rebel against a parent to assert their individuality. The maturing child alone, though, is responsible for how he or she thinks and the soon-to-be-adult’s beliefs may end up differing from his/her parents’. 

But parents should have the opportunity to present their beliefs and argue for their position. Speeches could become potential educational tools…  

Obsolescence…

Finishing the final cleaning of my dad’s stuff (a “few” years late) has really brought home how his life stuff doesn’t fit the 21st century (sometimes it had some trouble in the 20th!) Pop was known for being old fashioned, not enjoying the library computer that his coworkers tried to get him to learn. But stuff that 20 years ago would not be obsolete now is. Pop loved encyclopedias and had three of them in the basement and one in the living room. The last one was thrown in the trash over the weekend. I know he’s not here, but trashing them still bothers me a little. I wish they could be of some use, but even the local book sale site noted that only encyclopedias less than 10 years old would be accepted (how many of those were even printed?!)

Then there are the typewriters. One of mom’s last vestiges is her manual Royal typewriter that she insisted on always using and was very happy to have. It’s going in the Tuesday trash. I’ve also been trying to see if there’s any demand for my dad’s two Remington manual typewriters, and not surprisingly, there isn’t. There were maybe 24 auctions for them on Ebay with a handful of bids, most of them 2 bucks or less. Sigh. So they will probably be joining mom’s typewriter in Tuesday’s trash. I distinctly remember both of the parentals using their typewriters and being thrilled with them. Alas, it is no longer 1960 (neither would ever upgrade to an electric.) It’s just sad to have to throw out these relics of a different time that has gone by the wayside…and of course, there are plenty of things that right now are depreciating in value.

Such is the rhythm of life. I can hear the value hissing out of stuff now (along with a screeching cicada)…

Go Bears

They had a great win last night. It’s still pre-season, but they seem to be doing well. I hope they keep it up. We need a winning Bears team here – now!

Expect a duller blog…

I give up. I tried to liven this blog up with a couple of videos and pictures this year. In the past week, many of them have vaporized. Why bother having a video-embed capability for blog posts when the videos will eventually vaporize?! I’ve been trying not to screw-up someone’s copyright rights, but maybe I inadvertently have. It’s getting to the point that you can only post images and videos out of your own cameras, and that just won’t be happening here. I’m no budding photographer or filmmaker.

So anyone stumbling upon my little piece of cyberspace will have to use their imagination from now on to picture something I’m saying. Sorry.

RIP, Ted Kennedy and Dominick Dunne

Double duty sad news today. Ted Kennedy passed away. I figured he would be gone soon when he didn’t attend his sister’s funeral. Whatever may be said, he ended up being a surrogate father for 13 kids at age 36. That had to have been tough, with all those kids traumatized with the brutal murders of their fathers. The rest of his family had ideas, but he was the one through being able to live who implemented those ideas. He certainly was not a perfect man, but took on his duty to his family and its ideas.

And then we lost Dominick Dunne today. That has really saddened me. I’ve read Vanity Fair for probably close to 20 years and his column was always my favorite, to be saved and savored for last. He knew so many people and always shared his knowledge. His trial reporting was always interesting because he was always running into someone in the bathroom or inside or outside the courtroom. I’ve missed his missives.

May both men rest in peace.