Gearing up

It's late August and that means that two things are about to happen.

1) Fall is approaching and that means that new TV shows are going to start--which means that I will soon have to research and write my Fall TV Preview columns.

and

2) Sarah is beginning 1st Grade next Monday.

First Grade!

That will mean Lynda and I will slightly adjust our work schedule. At least one of us will be arriving at work around 7 am (gulp!) and leaving around 3. Getting up that early will be a challenge, not just for me and/or Lynda but also for Sarah.

- - -

and this has just become the most boring post I have ever written since my series on the air conditioner in our backyard.

Man, I'm just trying to find something to write about and it seems clear that I am failing miserably. I guess it's because I have no original thoughts of my own and am waiting impatiently for qualified journalists to do all the research on the new Fall shows and then I'll just parrot their words back to you.

However, I must try to be original. But it has been hard to get motivated lately (and I don't really know why.) I'll give it a try.

Maybe we'll start tonight with ABC.

The only new show on ABC Sunday Nights is called Brothers and Sisters. I don't know anything about it except that the headliner star is Calista Flockhart. Can she bring the same zeitgeist-stirring power that defined Ally McBeal during its hey day? And what about the presence of Sally Field? Does she have enough Q-rating to matter? I am intrigued by Ron Rifkin, however . . . but is he a bad guy or a good guy? (He'll always be Arvin Sloane to me.)

Monday Night is no longer Monday Night Football night on ABC, so that means for the first time in about 35 years, the network will fail miserably. It a vain attempt to make Monday's relevant to TV viewers, the alphabet network offers us two reality shows (Wife Swap, The Bachelor) and a retread (What About Brian). Will anyone care?

Tuesday Night's new shows are bookended by Dancing with the Stars and Boston Legal. The new sitcoms during the nine-o-clock hour are called The Knights of Prosperity and Help Me Help You. "Knights" is from the creators of Ed . . . and if that isn't exciting enough for you, well then how about this. The funny band of misfits the show centers around is planning to break into Mick Jagger's Central Park apartment to get the money to fund a bar. So, it's sort of like Oceans Eleven meets "Can't Get No Satisfaction." Help me Help You somehow involves Ted Danson and is therefore tainted by the stench of Becker. 'Nuff said.

Wednesday Night on ABC begins and ends with LOST at 9 pm. Incredibly, the 8 o'clock hour is devoted to the Dancing with the Stars Results Show. I've got to think that the producers of LOST are a bit cheesed off about the crappy lead-in they've got. At 10 pm, ABC offers something called The Nine.

The multi-gendered and multi-racial cast makes me think of LOST's ensemble cast a bit and the premise sounds influenced by it as well. A group of nine strangers is thrown together during a bank robbery and their lives will never be the same. There WILL be flashbacks! It all sounds a bit like Identity. (It might be good, I guess.)

Thursday Night features a show called Ugly Betty. Based upon the fifteen seconds that I spent reading the synopsis of the series, I would call it a cross between Less Than Perfect, Veronica's Closet, and Freaks and Geeks, with just a dash of Project Runway. The other show on Thursday Night at 10 pm is called 6 Degrees and its another show that features a set of strangers who's lives are intertwined in a mysterious way that will change their lives forever. Yeah, it's another LOST clone that plays off the Six Degrees of . . . theory. Now, if Kevin Bacon shows up . . .

No one cares what's on TV Friday night (at least no one who isn't watching Battlestar Galactica.But it's clear that ABC isn't devoting a whole lot of their budget on this night. The only new show is called Men in Trees. It seems to be a show about relationships . . . on a night when people who aren't in exciting relationships are sitting at home watching TV. Seems kind of sad, really.

. . . Sorry, but I just can't say it!

Last night Lynda and I helped provide food and service at one of our friend's wedding rehearsal dinner. It was fun, the food, provided by some of our other friends, was good, and everything went off without a hitch. The wedding is this afternoon and then its off to the grocery store to by MORE food for coffee hour at church tomorrow. (It's been several days of cake-baking and cheesecake-making. I'm pretty tired of dessert right now.

But that's not what this post is about.

It's about a site that I refuse to reference directly by name. Luckily, the site URL is an acronym of the hated phrase--a certain bit of film dialogue that should NEVER has crossed noted actor Sean Connery's Scottish lips.

The site is www.ytmnd.com.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Helpful Hints

While researching to update a graph to show the current supply curve for corn (WHEEEE!!) I was perusing the impenetrable pages of date at the Bureau of Labor Statistics (no, seriously . . . WHEEEE!!).

Through a series of mouse clicks that I can't exactly reproduce for you now, I hit upon the Occupations Classifications System Manual, an amazing list of government-approved Census Bureau job titles. I hope that some of these are more historical than current, because if they are not, the dizzying array of occupations for today's American worker is staggering beyond belief . . . and would emphasize to anyone out there that if you don't like your job, there are about a bazillion other ones that someone is doing.

For example, every wanted to be a Hot-tamale Man? No? Well, what about Hoister. House girl, Horser-up, Hook-Up Man, Hole Filler, High-speed-warper tender, High climber, Herb digger, Hedge Trimmer, or Heddler?

How about Headline Writer, or Headman (sure!)?

Want to be in a position of authority? Okay, then try out Head worker . . . or Head swamper (yes, please!)? Head ironer, Head loader, or simply Head holder.

For variety you could be a Hash slinger by day and a Harpist at night. A Harmonica maker or a Harmonic analyst. A Handy Man (or Handy Girl). A Hand weaver, Hand sander, or Hand grinder (ouch, ouch, and OUCH!).

Maybe you want to be a Hand clerk or a Hand passer (is that government lingo for Center and Quarterback?).

Or maybe working for the Man just isn't for you? Well, sorry bub, but the government even classifies the Hucksters.

So, get out there and follow your Bliss. Do the thing that defines YOU!

"It will be the talk of the town in Prague."

What do you think the quote that serves as this post title is referring to?

A new international agreement hashed out at the UN?

Some new art project by Christo (the one who wraps buildings in colored cloth)?

The latest runway fashions?

Well, the answer is No, N0, and No.

The REAL talk of Prague is in regards to the status of Pluto. And no, I'm not talking about Mickey Mouse's dog.

I mean the planet Pluto.

Or should I say "planet." That's right. Despite what you, I, and everyone around us has been taught for generations, astronomers are disputing the definition of planet--with regards to Pluto and other small astral bodies.

My immediate reaction is conservative--"Don't tread on my planets!" or "Not in MY solar system."

But isn't there a problem either way? If Pluto is too dinky to be a planet, then the holy meme of 9 planets in their sacred, memorized order is forever thrown into question. But if Pluto IS a planet, then maybe the number is expanded and even more dinky space objects get added, throwing off today's accepted grouping in the other direction.

Knowledge can be a dangerous thing.

What do YOU want?

Driveway stories

I've been sick with a head cold since Friday and spent almost all of this past weekend laying in the bed, trying to give my body the space it needs to kick the sickness. (Thanks always goes to Lynda for allowing me the opportunity to even consider such a thing when there is food to be cooked, laundry to be done, kids to be played with and bathed and listened to and etc., etc. . . . You get the idea--she's great.)

But there are things that must be done.

One of those things that must be done is our preparations for a friend's wedding that is coming up this Saturday. MF and his fiance are members of my weekly bible study group and our group decided that in lieu of wedding gifts to them (which they really don't need) we would provide the food for the rehearsal dinner on Friday. Lynda and I volunteered to handle the desserts.

Since I was laid up all weekend and Lynda was otherwise occupied, we REALLY needed to get started with the cake baking tonight. We need to make at least two white chocolate cheesecakes and two pineapple cakes by Friday. Handling one a night won't be too hard.

But then we discovered that our lone springform pan (that is crucial for the creation of the cheesecake) has gone missing. I think it was left at a friend's house when we did a trial run on the cake a few weeks ago.

So, long story short, I found myself driving to Meijers tonight to buy a new springform pan. (We'll get the other one later, but as I mentioned, four cakes in four days doesn't allow for a night off.) On the way I heard an NPR story about painting porch ceilings blue and why that is useful.

It was part of NPR's ongoing collection of porch stories. The idea of the story collection is that the mythical front porch serves as a unique place to set outside of our insular selves and reach out to the strangers who just happen to be our neighbors.

I, myself, have never lived in a house with a porch so I can't contribute a specific story that fits the theme. But I thought about it anyway. I could provide stories that fell under the theme of Driveway Stories, since my childhood home featured a driveway and even those of us without porches do have driveways. So, here are a few driveways stories that immediately came to mind.

Turning 14: Purple Rain

When I turned fourteen years old, I invited a handful of my friends to spend the weekend celebrating at my house. I think there were five or so of my friends that I asked to come. People began arriving in the late afternoon of a Friday. Everything went well until S. Parker showed up. S. didn't have the best of relationships with his parents, especially during those awkward, difficult early teenage years. I had spent weekends over at his place many times before and had witnessed shouting matches and lots of blustery anger.

It was not that much of a surprise, then, when (for some reason which I can't recall) S. got into it with his mom in our driveway as he was being dropped off. I was inside playing pool with the other guests when I noticed the problem through the front windows of the house. After a few minutes I went outside to see if I could resolve the problem, but it had degenerated into a battle of wills. S. wasn't going to give in to whatever had set the two of them off and was demanding (for some reason) to be taken home. He was going to drop off my birthday gift and then he wanted to go. In fact, he was sitting resolutely in the backseat of the car and wasn't going to budge until he got his way.

After a few more minutes of this driveway standoff, it finally blew over. I don't recall if one of my parents came out to smooth things over or what exactly happened. I think I even gave up waiting and went back inside to continue playing pool. But eventually, S. gave up his driveway vigil and came inside.

Other than that, the things I remember about that birthday (1985) was that a. I got Prince's Purple Rain cassette as a gift (which we listened to quite a bit that weekend--especially "Darling Nikki.") and b. I heard the next day that my grandfather had died of a brain tumor and we would be heading up to Kentucky for the burial. He was actually buried on my birthday.

The Great Blizzard of '02

I think it was in 2002; I know we were living in our first house at the time so it had to be between 2000 and 2004. It was February and we drove to Louisville, KY to visit Lynda's aunt and uncle for the weekend. While we were in Kentucky, a severe snow storm blew over the Midwest. In our area of Kentucky it wasn't cold enough for snow, so we had slick sheets of ice everywhere. Lynda's aunt's truck went off the road and hit a tree. My car also went off the road, but luckily we didn't hit anything.

When our visit in Kentucky was over we drove north to get back home to Ohio. Luckily the interstate were well plowed and that part of the journey was fine, but we knew from weather reports that mid Ohio has received somewhere around a foot of snow over the weekend. (That's pretty unusual for central Ohio to get that much all at once.)

We knew things were rough when we drove up to our house. In our old house, the driveway traveled from the street past the house's south side and into the detatched garage in the back. Our neighbor to the left had a chain link fence dividing their driveway from ours. This made the back half of the driveway a narrow chute from which snow had to be pushed.

Left unattended, the long, narrow driveway was completely blocked with several inches of snow. There was no way the car was making it back to the garage. I parked at the curb and slowly trudged my way to the garage to get my snow shovel. Lynda took young Sarah inside while I tackled the drifts of snow that rose up to my knees (at least). All I had was a shovel and daylight. I started.

After a few minutes of pushing the snow this way and that way, trying to create a pathway for the car to move in and our Monday morning, my neighbor appeared with his brand new snow blower. He immediately began chewing up the snow in the lower part of the driveway with gasoline-powered speed while I focused on clearing a pathway from the back door to the garage.

That was one of the nicest moments of neighborly interaction that I had with those guys. I would have been out there for probably an hour or more trying to shift that stuff. He showed up and we made short work of it in less than half that time.

So, do you have a driveway story? Let's hear about it.