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Officially, food defines who we are
As everyone knows, Read the rest of this entry »
the Greatest Dessert
Ever Invented
is the Boston Cream
Pie, which isn’t a pie at all but
a yellow cake split horizontally,
filled with custard, and topped
with chocolate. Cake, pudding,
LeBron-Sampson duo would turn world upside down
I’ve been waiting for today Read the rest of this entry »
for quite some time.
Today is the beginning
of NBA free agency, and
it’s all that has been discussed
by ESPN since mid-May.
The plus-side of not being perfect
I guarantee you will Read the rest of this entry »
never hear anyone say,
“Wow, that Sherri always
looks so coiffed.”
Losing the comics is just not funny
I guess we all saw where Little Orphan Annie is no longer in the newspapers, joining a long list of things that are no longer in the newspapers (including, in the case of the one where I used to work, news).
Read the rest of this entry »
House sitting almost turned painful
A friendly favor almost went horribly wrong for me last weekend. Read the rest of this entry »
Many people are on vacation this time of year and ask friends and neighbors to watch their homes while they’re gone. That’s what I’m doing now. My friend, Katie, is a brief jog away from Evansville on a pharmacy school rotation and, for some reason, called on me to look after her apartment and all of her possessions.
Pest control is the secret to a happy marriage
I’m not sure why I do it. But every time my husband steps in the backdoor at the end of the day, he asks, “What’s for supper?” And then I instantly get honked off.
Read the rest of this entry »
Our View
The hearings focused on BP CEO Tony Hayward have done little to solve the problem in the Gulf. Partly because he answered few questions in detail, but also because it didn’t seem he was asked many questions he could possibly answer.
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Trumpet that vuvuzela and join the rest of the world in heralding soccer
Well, the World Cup is up and running, literally. Lot of running in that game. Seems like they’d get smart, strap on skates and play it on ice.
Anyway, what little watching I have done has left me with the distinct impression that this soccer stuff is going to catch on, one of these days. I’m just kidding. I know soccer is the planet’s main game. I’m actually a big fan, and I like the World Cup almost as much as I like the hockey cup playoffs named for Stanley.
I like the purity of soccer – this is the ball, those are your feet, over that way is the goal, have at it and try not to (a.) use your hands or (b.) kill each other.
Now, I can’t say I understand everything about it. Goals, for instance. I know they’re few and far between, but is it really necessary for the guy who scores a goal to run around the stadium doing all that hugging? I’m not kidding. He kicks the ball into the net and he’s mobbed by all his teammates on the field. Then he runs over to the bench and he’s mobbed by all his teammates there. Then he goes across the field and hugs all those guys. Then he runs up in the stands and hugs Sections 107 through 121, Rows A through NN. Then he puts his shirt back on and they start playing again.
You never see this sort of behavior in other events, such as, oh, bridge tournaments.
Another thing you do not see, or more rightly, hear, is that ceaseless racket in the background of every broadcast. It’s made by something called a vuvuzela (when it’s not being called a lepatata) and basically, it’s a horn that makes a sound described as a giant hive of very unfriendly bees. Or bees flat, since B-flat is the note produced.
Although the presently annoying version is South African, you see horns like this at soccer games all over the world except, of course, for pee wee league games at public parks on Saturday mornings. Although I suppose it’s just a matter of time before some parent shows up with one. Which, now that I think about it, might be far preferable to some of the things parents shout at kiddie league games of all varieties.
One of things I enjoy about the World Cup is the fact that vuvuzela players from every corner of the globe descend on it. You see every variety of human available, and a few that I suspect haven’t yet been categorized by the anthropologists.
I used to work with a sports editor who made fun of soccer. If it wasn’t part of his big four – football, basketball, golf, auto racing – it was to be mocked. I guess he reasoned that the only real sports were the ones he considered American (never mind that golf originated in Scotland and race cars are worldwide).
But I also worked with a wire editor who reminded young reporters like me that most of the world is not American, not white, not male, and doesn’t speak English. He could have thrown in something about most of the world playing soccer, too, but we have the World Cup to remind us of that.
Hand me my vuvuzela.
Time-over-money defense works every time
I’m a habitual speeder. When I have to explain my actions to an officer, however, I always frame my over acceleration as a one-time mistake and the result of a momentary lapse in focus. Trouble is, they keep records of that stuff. They can see that I’ve had a few tickets, been issued a few warnings and am by no means a one-time offender.
Don’t get me wrong, though. I’m never going 95 down country roads or 20 over in a school zone. Instead, I take the five-miles-per-hour cushion that everyone agrees exists and double, maybe triple it. I’m always safe and in control. But speeding is speeding, and it doesn’t take much to get a ticket.
That’s why my fiancée Jess is always leaning into my personal space and checking my speedometer. I have to block the gauges if I don’t want her telling me “This is a 30” or “I see cops on this road all the time.” Until recently, I always tried to fight a losing battle and convince her I wasn’t speeding by that much, I never see police on that road or even that I’m only speeding because I just went downhill.
It wasn’t until the other day, though, that I realized the perfect defense for her speed monitoring. In fact, my new counterpoint is like nacho cheese sauce; it can be used with almost anything.
Now, when she gets upset with me for speeding and potentially throwing money away through citations, I argue that it’s worth that risk. “If I speed just a little bit every day but can get everywhere a few minutes sooner,” I say, “it’s worth getting one or two tickets a year.”
When she expectedly balked at that during the first go-round, I said “You can’t put a price on time. I can make more money and pay for those tickets, but I’ll never get back those precious few minutes.”
She was fairly silent the first time I said that, and for good reason. Yes, it’s an absurd argument, but it’s also almost impossible to rebut. She stumbled into a response with “Your insurance will go up” but quickly realized she was in checkmate. The same time-over-money argument applied there, as well.
It wasn’t long before I realized I’d struck gold with this foolish, yet fool-proof logic. Armed with this defense, I feel like Superman. Bullets of criticism fly my way, but when they hit this shield, they shoot back from where they came.
And I’m optimistic about what this weapon can do if properly honed. I like to think of it the way many think of the rainforests: After I explore it further, I’ll find that it can help or solve many of my problems. Even now, it’s applicable in so many situations.
“You’re broke, so why don’t you get a second job?”
“Why’d you pay someone to clean up your mess?”
“This movie’s a year late! Why didn’t you return it?”
Almost everyone agrees that time is more valuable than money, but no one expects that fact to be used in petty arguments. It’s indefensible and quite ingenious, if I can say so myself. The only thing concerning me is this tool being used by the wrong people – the ones who might use it against me.
The other day, Jess and I noticed some Hamilton County drivers have driven through steel poles to jump on I-465 at the last minute. They could have made a U-turn at the next light and tried again, but they chose to make an entrance where there wasn’t one before. I was noting how stupid that is until Jess corrected me and said, “It doesn’t matter what they do to their cars because they could have never replaced the time they would have spent turning around.”
It was funny, but in the back of my mind I was thinking, “Oh, no!”
A string of little surprises can make life happy
I just love little surprises, don’t you? It’s wonderful to walk right in on a bit of happy and never see it coming. That is exactly what happened to me last Saturday night.
What was predictable about the evening was the graduation party we attended and the plan I made to grab groceries before the storm came through. With my very bad, sweating-my-butt-off-in-an-outdoor-tent hairdo, I headed west after the party to grab a few items, especially sausage for the spoiled farmer’s Sunday morning gravy and biscuit ritual. And I ran smack dab into a former colleague I hadn’t seen in years and always placed on an incredibly high professional pedestal.
My second happy moment occurred as I rushed out of the store, shoving my cart at least 20-miles-per hour. I thought I wanted to miss the rain. But the sky opened up and the rain absolutely pelted. And I stopped rushing; because nothing smells more wonderful than warm, summer rain. Nothing feels more refreshing, either. I strolled through that rainstorm and splashed across two puddles just because I could.
I started the truck just as the wind started to kick up. Then my cell phone rang and my friend yelled that tornado warnings were everywhere. She instructed me to stay there, in the parking lot.
Umm. Nope.
Staying there, in the parking lot would not allow me to watch the trees bend and bow and dance while I drove. I don’t like safe. Never have. And I have the bruises of life to prove it. But I’d still rather move and get bumped on occasion, than be afraid at every turn.
So I get home and I’m carrying my soggy groceries into the house when the farmer announces that friends of his have gathered up the road in a barn. They would like for us to join them.
Looking like I just stepped out of the shower, I wiggled out of my wet duds and into my favorite, massive overalls … because I’m 50. And I stopped trying to impress anybody.
My final happy moments of the evening occurred when I met with these other women, all of whom spoke openly about their brat men, their menopausal spews of rage and their hot flashes. “Nothing better in the world,” I thought to myself. “I’m sitting in a barn, surrounded by wonderful, fun women, listening to the rain.”
I just love little surprises.