25 years old and gone.

I was in downtown Indianapolis a week or so ago and happened to drive by the remains of the Hoosier dome. I thought it would make an interesting picture but I didn’t have a camera with me so the next day,my son Jason  volunteered to take some pictures.

I’m going to count these towards my project 365 even though I don’t know if the rules allow it. In any case, I gave myself a dispensation since I recently had open heart surgery.

the smokestacks are the IPL steam generating plant.

 

 This is, I assume, the remains of the upper deck.

Damned if I’d be under all that concrete

I hope we don’t see the same thing with Lucas Oil twenty five years down the road. Well, I probably won’t anyway.

Another success story.

It was past time for my regular haircut and today was a good day for getting that accomplished. Susie did the honors and unlike last time when the clippers slipped and left a pretty good impression of a taco shell on the side of my head, this haircut turned out fine.

No, that’s not Robert Redford.

Susie gave me the high dollar version of the job, working hard to match the height of the sideburns, trimming the beard and even going so far as to rid my ear canals of any unsightly hair. She drew the line at my nostrils and I was forced to do that job without benefit of a mirror, using a trimming utensil that buzzes about like a bumblebee.  I’m almost afraid to look at what damage I may have done. 

I also think I may send this photo to the newspapers to be included with my column heading.  It’s about time  lost that cowboy hat.

You would think I’ve never seen snow.

Ah, wintertime in Indiana. We awoke this morning to about a foot of snow. It began yesterday afternoon and we ventured out to take a few pictures.  Our first stop was the bridge over the interstate. Susie snapped a couple of pictures from the truck. It was too damn cold to get outside.

After we snapped these, I debated the wisdom of going to the store and laying in a goodly supply of milk, bread and eggs. This is a favorite Hoosier activity when faced with a coming snowstorm. Susie, who knew we had plenty of supplies, vetoed that idea. Our next stop was the entrance to the Timbers complex, where we are now making our home. 

Our truck made the rounds pretty easily considering this was the first time it had ever seen snow.  We spent a quiet evening at home watching the uncut version of ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’.  Having grown up with G-rated Doris Day movies, I guess it’s safe to say that we’re a still a bit shell shocked.  The copy came from the Library so we weren’t expecting all that bare skin, not that’s there’s anything wrong with that.    

This morning,  I opened the door to get the newspaper and was greeted by all that snow.   It was beautiful. I took one picture and then Susie let the dog out and the serenity of the scene was lost forever what with Susie digging through the snow trying to find the newspaper. There were also the dog tracks and the yellow spot in the snow left by Poco’s morning toilette.  Me? Having been housebroken for several years, I stayed inside. The picture turned out to be dark and fuzzy so I deleted it and went to the back of the house and took the following picture. 

Luckily, I got to this before the squirrels showed up looking for food.  We now have little squirrel holes in the snow.  I also got this good picture of Susie looking for the the newspaper but under threat of pain and suffering, I won’t be publishing it.  

 I finished up the morning calling folks and casually mentioning that I was going outside to shovel snow. The reactions ranged from “Are you crazy” to “Like hell you are.” to “let your wife do it.”  These reactions all came from people who know me well and should have remembered that I never shoveled snow even when I was young and virile.  My last picture was taken from an upstairs bedroom window.

It’s beautiful today but we’re looking for forty degrees on Sunday so by then, it will turn into that blackish, nasty slush that makes for blocks long lines at Mike’s Car Wash.

Just in case…

you were wondering what’s wrong with our schools, here is exhibit 221:  a story on Virginia parents forcing the school board to lower grading standards apparently in order to keep up with the rest of the country.

Woo – Hoo!

I just finished lunch and for the second day in a row, we had weightwatchers soup because Susie, even though I love her just the way she is, is attempting to lose a little weight. This means I am too.

In case you’re not familiar with WW soup, The recipe was first developed in the year 1521 by Charles the first during the Inquisition and used to feed the prisoners who weren’t burned at the stake.  The soup later surfaced in1838 and served as the model for the gruel in the book ‘Oliver Twist’  by Charles Dickens.  

I did manage to get most of my soup down except for some stray pieces of cabbage clinging to the side of the bowl and , oh yeah, the carrots. My spoon managed to skirt all but one or two of them leaving the bottom filled with cut up orange things. I just cannot do carrots; hence the thick glasses. I think my aversion to these things  has something to do with a bad night years ago at the Ritz and a Bugs Bunny cartoon. It’s a long story, very complicated and I’m sure no one would be interested in hearing about it.

But I digress. Today, as an added bonus, we also had tuna salad sandwiches (1 each) with pickle. 

I hesitate to mention this because I’m not really looking for sympathy but this is also the second day in a row that we have had oatmeal for breakfast. Luckily it did not have carrots in with it.

If you don’t hear from me for a few days, it means that I have become to weak to type. Call the authorities.

A great move for Race relations.

I know. I know.  This incident may not really have been a racial incident but I’m certain a lot of people will see it that way. It involves an A-A player stepping on the face of a white player as he lay on the floor.

I could see it as racially motivated if I were in a curmudgeonly mood but mostly I see it as a product of professional sports tough guy role models and the affinity for hoodlum activity that some A-A males have adopted because of it.

The kid was ejected from the game but I personally hope that this is not the last that we’ll hear about it. A suspension of some kind is in order. Basketball (college and even the high school version) as I knew it,  is about dead anyway and this kind of stuff only hastens its demise.

Haven’t seen this for a while.

I have gotten a little concerned about our current practice of sleeping in until 7:30 or eight o’clock. We have started doing this because of the cold weather and the fact that we don’t have to get up. I was concerned because I thought perhaps that when the need to get up early arose, we would have trouble doing so.

My worries were for naught. Yesterday, our granddaughter, Riley Marie, spent the night with us. She needed to be at church in Mooresville at eight this morning for the Catholic version of Sunday School.  I set the alarm for six and was up drinking coffee a few minutes later. After rushing two females through dressing and hair combing (an almost impossible task) and then  followed by a quick bowl of yogurt and blueberries, We left the Condo where we live at 7:30 for the 35 minute drive. 

Along the way, the sun came up and I wasted two more minutes on this picture for my project 365 endeavor.

A winter Indiana sunrise.

   The morning temperature was at 10 degrees when I took this.   I have probably seen something akin to this a hundred times over the years and I felt sure I would be filled with warm, gushing memories of my younger days in Indiana when I had to get up like this every morning.

Nope!

Why you shouldn’t just leave the camera laying around.

Especially when some people who live in the same house that you do have no regard for a person’s privacy. 

I’m pooped.

I don’t do this on purpose. What it is is that people who have recently undergone open heart surgery wear out easily especially when just coming in from the cold. Also being on the far side of 65 means that naps are a god given right. 

maybe they should have called them Rita and Ruth!

I try not to comment on stuff like this because I learned years ago that a story about people who will do anything to make a buck is not exactly a man bites dog event.  I also know, in this age of instant news, that other folks have probably commented on this a million times. Still, this ploy is so obvious, I felt I had to say something.   

A doll manufacturer has introduced two new dolls  with brown faces to the general public. Their names, as marketed, are Sasha and Malia. According  to the manufacturer, however, these are not modeled after Barack and Michelle Obama’s children, they’re just the newest beanie babies.  

Good Lord!  Do these Beanie baby people think we’re idiots??

While I’m on the subject, I didn’t realize that Beanie Babies were still being sold. I went through the original BB craze back in the nineties (maybe eighties) when folks were scrambling to get their hands on the dolls and collectors were predicting astronomical prices for the future. Two of my co-workers (one a man, if you can believe that) would disappear from their cubicles every Tuesday morning when the Nordstrom’s people brought out that week’s releases.

The gentleman collector kept the dolls in the original package and put them away for his retirement. The lady co-worker had the back seat, the dash and the back window of her car loaded down with these little fellers. It would have been enough to give Lemuel Gulliver a case of the hives had he stumbled across them.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaahhhh. part 72

A teenage American Idol contestant ‘writes’ his ‘memoirs’ and gets an interview on ‘good morning, America.  I wrote my memoirs and  the best I can do is a talk with the St. Thomas More Senior Citizens lunch group. I need a new manager.