I Got A New Hat!

I was at a birthday party Saturday night after work with some friends from the Renaissance Festival, and while it wasn't my birthday, I received a present! My great good friend Ryan (whom I adore!) made me this hat with his own two hands and his remarkable knitting skills, toiling away for... Minutes on end? Days? Weeks? I don't know how to knit, nor do I know much about the activity knitting, so I imagine that he labored day and night for weeks between the beginning of October and last Saturday night to create this wonderful hat! Or possibly he knocked it out in one afternoon and he's been holding on to it. I couldn't say.

What I can say is that Saturday night's birthday party marked the first opportunity for him to present the present, and to do so he had to lure me from the house into a chilly, windy night. He brought it from his car as I stood, shivering. When I saw what he had, my discomfort was forgotten and I squee'd a little, ditching my winter hat to try it on.

"Does it fit?" he asked.

"As a matter of fact, it does. This is great!" I replied. "It's feckin' cold out here - let's go back in!"

He wouldn't let me wear it because he hadn't brought a gift to the party and it's probably... Tacky? Yes, tacky to bring a gift to a birthday party when the gift is for someone else. So I left it in my car and in the epilogue I've got a nifty new hat, which is awesome on all sorts of levels. Not the least of which is how I loves me some hats!

You might be wondering why Ryan made me a hat. That's a legitimate thing to wonder, and here's a story of what happened.

I've been working at the festival for quite a while, and over the years I've accumulated some costume parts. Ryan has been going to the festival for quite a while - his wife works there - but he doesn't have any costume bits. He made plans to be there on Festival Friday, a "field trip" day that was added to the last weekend of the run a few years ago. Some other "shop slaves" and I have made Festival Friday the annual date for a drunken site stumble, which is exactly what it sounds like. Festival Friday tends to be somewhat sparsely-attended, and the drunken tradition started when fellow shop slave Lewis and I were sent on an information-collecting mission. In the rain. With drinks.

This year it became "Strunken Dumble", and Ryan wanted to attend. In costume. So I let him borrow a kilt and a shirt, and when everything was done, he wanted to buy the shirt. Instead, I gave it to him.

So I suppose the hat would be more of a "barter" item than a gift.

The Best Meal I Ever Had

Today, a post, and my first since September. I wrote what follows a number of years ago. With a pen. In a notebook. Kicking it old-school, I think you call that.

-----------

The Best Meal I Ever Had
Including attempted vivid descriptive recall which
hopefully can demonstrate at least one
"why?", which was a portion of
the requested assignment which was
assigned to me by my much-loved
sister-in-every-way-but-biological, Deena.

The city of Duluth, MN is built on a hillside that slopes toward the western end of Lake Superior. It's the largest city in the northern half of Minnesota & is home to the College of St. Scholastica and the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

The city is a major shipping hub, with miles of railroad situated near the harbor. Duluth is connected by the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean, and by the Atlantic Ocean to the rest of the world.

Because of Lake Superior, Duluth doesn't get particularly warm in the summer. It can be beastly cold in the winter, as well as snowy, and because of this, travel from downtown - on the lake - to anywhere-other-than-downtown can be treacherous.

Myself, I've never been much of a fan of Duluth. More to the point: I despise that city. For no reason that I've ever been able to pin down, I've always had a deep and abiding dislike for Duluth. There are others who share my opinion, and I'm sure this affects Duluth not one bit.

There are others, though - many others - who cherish & worship the city.

That I can't understand it doesn't change it.

Maybe it's because of The Depot, a rail museum & history center. Maybe it's because of the lift bridge & the lake itself - it is a beautiful place. Maybe it's because of the nightlife. Or the educational opportunities. Maybe it's a combination. Probably no one could point at one single thing and say, "this is why I love Duluth!". Or, "This is why I hate Duluth!"

Life just doesn't work that way.

There are good things about the city.

One of them, dining-wise, is Grandma's restaurant. Or perhaps it's a bar-and-grill. I don't remember exactly. Grandma's is the kind of place that does burgers & fries, and does them well. I wouldn't say that it's world-famous - I don't know if a person from Dublin or Moscow would know what it was, or even someone from Akron, for that matter - but it's certainly well-known in Minnesota. Grandma's also sponsors an annual marathon, and while they're not a national chain, they do have at least one other restaurant ...

Forget Duluth. Assuming it's not snowing & you can drive up the hill, leave it in your rear-view mirror. Drive up Central Entrance & take Highway 53 north, past the Miller Hill Mall, past the airport, past everything. Keep driving north through Twig, past the entrance from Cloquet, and twelve miles from there, take a right on Kauppi Lake Road. Kauppi Lake Road is a gravel track, barely two lanes wide. You shouldn't worry about that, though, because once you've turned right on to Kauppi Lake Road, you should stop, get out of your car, and find a way to be able to have a good look at The Sign. Posted by the land owner so as to be visible from the highway, The Sign is well worth the stop, should you ever find yourself driving north on Highway 53, about 10 minutes north from the Highway 53 entrance from Cloquet. Anyway ....

It's still a bit of a drive from here, so take one last look at The Sign, get back in your car, get turned around, and get back on the highway.

Next town is Cotton, home of the annual fiddle contest.

Ten minutes north of that, you'll see a small, tiny little shack on the right, set back from the highway about a hundred yards. If it's summer, the grass is always neatly-trimmed. Winter, the driveway is plowed free of snow. Yet there never seems to be any other sign of life ....

Ten minutes after that, also on the right, you'll pass Half-Moon Lake. Just past it is the exit for Highway 37, which will take you east to Hibbing. That drive takes about 25 minutes, if that's where you're going. But you're not. Stay on the highway.

As you continue to drive north, you'll pass Porky's Building Center - this time on the left - a rest stop (right), the Paul Wellstone Memorial (right), the Eveleth Golf Course (right), the Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation Board building (left), you'll drive through the town of Eveleth, through Midway, then through an underpass & to the left ... And a vista will open up in front of you.

Highway 53 winds through the city of Virginia, curving gradually to the west, then back north again. Down in to a minor valley then back out again & across the Laurentian Divide, to continue north through Britt, through Cook, through Orr, through a hundred little towns on the way to International Falls, a hundred miles father north.

Once you're through that underpass & you've rounded the corner, though, the view is pretty spectacular. To your right rises a mountain of dusty, rust-red rock & dirt, what was excavated from the iron mine pit just to its north, and at the top is parked a retired mine truck, a dump truck bigger than a modest-size house & painted bright yellow. There are observation decks & informational plaques as well, and the view from the top is wonderful. In the valley below you, straddling Highway 53, is Virginia. symmetrical streets criss-crossing the landscape, with some of the bigger buildings in town rising from the grids as landmarks: the Arrowhead Economic Opportunity Agency's building, public works building, the high school, the town's water tower, the steam plant ....

Beyond the town, other mountains of iron ore are visible, as well as mine buildings, steam issuing from them to tower high in the air. Between the mines, pine forest - dark green & lush - stretching in all directions toward the ends of the valley.

Drive down into the valley, about a mile father north, and you'll come to a stop light. The cross street is 12th Avenue South. Turn right here, with a Holiday gas station to your right, followed by a McDonald's, with Target set behind both. To the left is the Thunderbird Mall. At the end of the block on the right, just before the stop sign, is Grandma's.

Years ago, when I lived in the area as a kid, it was a Mr. Steak. Directly inside the door is a cash register & hostess' station, a partition behind that running most of the length of the rectangular building, separating booths set on either side. At the end of this, an area for busing, and for waiters & waitresses to wait. On the left side, tables are set against the wall. Windows on that wall face 12th Avenue South and the mall & houses beyond. On the right-side wall, more booths are placed leading up to the kitchen. Beyond the kitchen, the employees' area, and end of the tables on the left wall is an open area bordered with booths, and filled with tables.

In the Mr. Steak days, this was the smoking section of the restaurant. As Mr. Steak vanished, so eventually did the smoking section of any Minnesota restaurant. Or bar.

I'd been to the restaurant a million times with family, both when it was Mr. Steak and as its Grandma's incarnation. The dark wood, dark carpet, and dark walls didn't change with the name - the only thing to change significantly was the menu. Oh, and posters and pictures and signs went up on the walls. If you think of the decor in any Applebee's, you've just about got it. That's the restaurant. It turned from a place that did steaks and dinners fairly well, to a place that does burgers and sandwiches fairly well. Nothing spectacular. Nothing out-of-the-ordinary. But still, good.

I have to imagine that the time was nearly fifteen years ago now, probably early July of 1994. There was a time - and it doesn't seem like it was all that long ago - that I couldn't remember anything really significant from fifteen years ago! Time flies, I guess. Whether or not you're having fun.

We'd gone north to visit family, and a stop that we'd always make was to see my mom & brother & step-dad. This time we'd arranged to meet my mom for lunch - I don't remember why, as we'd normally just visit the lake house - just the four of us. Kat hadn't been born yet, and Adam would have been not much more than two years old. It was one of the rare times that we got to have her all to ourselves - there was always a hustle & bustle at the house, with family & company coming & going - and because of that, it was special. She'd brought a present for Adam, a stuffed Simba (from the Lion King) that he dragged with him everywhere he went for the longest time. She loved him so very much, and she was one of his very favorite people. I'm sad for him, sometimes - he doesn't remember her much - and for Kat, too. She never met her namesake.

I don't remember what I had to eat, or whether I enjoyed it. I do remember sitting next to her, enjoying a quiet lunch before we parted, all of us back to rushing here and there, back in the thick of the rat race. I can remember that it was a beautiful, sunny day, and that for a time on that long-ago July afternoon, we were happy just to be, as the world outside rushed by.

It's sad to think of how easy it is to take those sorts of moments for granted.

A quick note....

This morning I'd like to thank the universe for... Everything.  I have the best friends and family, I have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food to eat, the weather's been lovely, and I have music in my ears.

So thank you.

An Apple Pie

I like pie.

Lemon meringue, blueberry, cherry, chocolate cream, strawberry, apple, raspberry, rhubarb... Cheesecake. It's all wonderful. Pie makes me happy.

Until today, though, I've never really had a favorite pie – I love them all equally. Or I did. Today my favorite pie is apple pie. And once I've finished eating the apple pie that's in my fridge, I might have to give up eating pie for good, just because this pie is the best pie I've ever had, the best pie I ever expect to have. It is homemade, though I didn't make it, and I expect that anyone else in the world would taste it and say, “ok, it's decent pie, but it's definitely NOT the best pie ever.”

Which is fine. Everyone knows what opinions are like, and why.

Also, this particular apple pie tastes a bit like freezer – not surprising, seeing as how after it was prepared it was placed, un-baked, into a freezer 240 miles north of here an unknown number of years ago. Then it was partially thawed, transported, and re-frozen. And then forgotten until Friday, July 29th, the day our freezer died. I baked it yesterday (Wednesday, August 3rd!) after it sat thawing in the fridge.

You might think eww, that particular pie sounds like it's had almost no chance of being edible. Forget “the best pie ever”. That's what I thought.

But then I cut a slice for myself a little while ago and immediately had a pie-nostalgia-gasm.

This wasn't just any apple pie. The freezer from which it was transported had belonged to my Grammy in life, the apple pie the last one she'd ever make. I almost threw it out because of cooler-space considerations when we were deciding what was to go where after she passed, but my dad said to me, “you should take that. The last “Grandma's apple pie” on earth!”. Caving to the sentimental impulse, I did.

I encountered it every so often as I took this thing or that from the freezer, avoiding it because.... I don't know why, really. I'd become a little bit phobic about one single un-baked pie in an aluminum pie plate for no reason I could give. Or can give. Or will be able to give.

On that Friday – a week ago tomorrow – the pie was almost thrown away once again, but once again “the last “Grandma's apple pie” on earth” saved it. And I'm glad. The slice of pie came out of the pan in sixteen different pieces, a thing that always made Grammy nuts when it happened to her, and it made me smile to think of it. I sprayed it with aerosol whipped cream, the smell making me think of all the times I'd “helped” her to make pies like this one, she a patient angel with a tiny, distractable assistant. I took a bite and suddenly I was nine years old again, sitting at the kitchen counter with both of them, my Grammy and Grandpa. Her pie has cool whip. His has a slice of cheddar cheese. Mine has a scoop of vanilla ice cream. They're drinking coffee, I'm having milk, and the kitchen smells of warm apple pie, of the cardamom bread in the oven. Each bite of pie - freezer-flavored, undercooked pie - makes me remember something else, gives me the warm fuzzies.

I can't help but to think that my pie isn't going to last long enough.

The Weekend That Ended Up Being So-So

Owing to my somewhat-cockeyed work schedule, weekend means "Friday, Saturday, and Sunday."  I've tried explaining my schedule a number of different times to people I know who work "regular" hours in the following (and apparently incomprehensible) ways:

• The days I work one week are the days I'm off the next.  For example, if you know that I'm working on a given Monday and Tuesday, you will also know that I'm not working the following Monday and Tuesday.

• I work three twelve-hour shifts one week and four twelve-hour shifts the next.
  

• A "pay period" for my employer is a two-week period starting on a Sunday.  The way I'm scheduled during a pay period is like this:  I work Sunday, I'm off Monday and Tuesday, I work Wednesday and Thursday, I'm off Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I work Monday and Tuesday, I'm off Wednesday and Thursday, and I work Friday and Saturday, which is the end of the pay period.
  

Admittedly, the last explanation is a bit more wordy than it could be, and most people I know have a tendency to tune out not long after I've started explaining. So I don't use it that often any more.

But that's that. This is something else, or at least it was intended to be. I don't really like thinking of work when I'm not there.

Anyway, my weekend: I didn't do much of anything on Friday, except to return to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things that I'd forgotten on Thursday when I went after work. Saturday, though, I'd made plans to help out some folks I help at the MRF, getting their booth ready for the upcoming run.

Any other year, I'd be at this booth on most - if not all - of the sixteen dates of the festival.  This year, though, I can't.  I used up most of my available time off in the end of March and the beginning of April, before my short-term disability benefits started, allowing me to be off work for 73 days and have a mobility-restoring surgery.

But that's a story for another time.

Saturday wound up being called off because of the threat of rain and was rescheduled for Sunday, which is OK. I'm flexible.  Sometimes.  Kind of.  At least, I didn't have anything planned for Sunday.  So it worked out.

I made myself some coffee and started up the Interwebs Fetcher, poking around some dusty corners for a bit, enjoying some breakfast, and so on.  Until I got to thinking about how I've really been itching to get another tattoo, which made me get restless, and it eventually made me leave the house.


I went to this place and talked to one of the artists for a while, and wound up getting this

on the inside of my left forearm, just down from my elbow.  Apparently this was a minor miracle on its own, it being Saturday and the shop's busy day, and me without an appointment.  A few people came in during my two hours (and a tiny bit of change) in the chair, but the artist and the new guy/intern/apprentice were both surprised by how quiet it was while I was there.  Clearly, the universe approves of my new tattoo!

Or something.

This image was one of several I've been considering for quite a while, and I decided to get it done partly to declare my love and admiration for the body of work of the band They Might Be Giants generally, and for this album specifically.  I don't like it any more well than any of their other work, but I received the CD as a gift a number of years ago - it's a sentimental attachment. I also wanted to celebrate the occasion of my post-surgical-feeling-much-better-and-continuing-to-improve, something I could've done by composing haiku or burning... I dunno... A "Back-Malfunction Goblin" in effigy.  The tattoo seemed more permanent, somehow. 

the top of a torn sock

Anyway, he finished, took some pictures, bandaged me up, took my money, and sent me on my way, a happy little man with some new colorful ink.  Before I left, I was given after-care instructions, one of which was the advice cover that with something before you go to sleep or you'll ruin your sheets.  I'm glad I did.

Here you see the top of a sock I used to cover the work before bed.  You can plainly see that my arm became something like an offset-printing press.  Cool and gross at the same time. 

Which I discovered Sunday morning.  That was the day I was supposed to help with final prep on the MacGregor Games booth at the MRF site, so I was up shortly after seven, enjoying a breakfast and coffee before getting ready to go.  I brushed my teeth, washed myself, and collected the various items I'd need to be gone for a good part of the morning, then got in to my car and left home.

photo not taken sunday

It was a foggy morning, and still.  I set out from home listening to this album and made it about four miles before this car of mine began hitching and gasping, losing power, and eventually stalling on the side of Highway 169, a bit southwest of Alloy Hardfacing & Engineering.

"Well, shit." I said to myself, imagining the great good fun of the long walk home from here in the fog, the cost of a tow from here to... Someplace not here.  Preferably a place with auto mechanics.

The car started again and idled wonderfully, so I drove off on the shoulder of the highway, hazard lights flashing, Nissan Maxima choking and lurching along and unwilling to go faster than 25 m.p.h.  We made it to the parking lot of the OK Corral, Suzette's, and a used-car lot that seems to change hands at least once a month.  I shut off my poor car and sat for a minute, my mind racing agitatedly...  My savings has been wiped out by my recent eleven-week leave from work, combined with my return consisting of half-shifts, six-hour days - a slight pay cut from the 60% I was being paid by my employer's short-term disability provider.  When I combined that with the thought that I'd just taken a loan from my 401k to pay my out-of-pocket medical expenses and that multiple loans aren't allowed....

I started the car again, and again it ran just fine until I asked it to go.  It reluctantly sputtered its way through the rest of the parking lot to nearby County Road 59, a "back way" to return home.  I thought that there wasn't anything to lose in trying to get back home, dodging the expense of a tow, so up the hill on CR 59 we went.  Before the hill began, I managed to get the Maxima in to 4th gear with much sputtering and protest. By the time I got to the top of the hill, I was down to 1st gear, rocking forward and back in my seat in the hope that my added momentum would be enough to get her to CR 66 and the right turn (and the other side of the hill!) that would take me home, saying I think I can, I think I can, I think I can to myself over and over.

We made it, barely, and the rest of the drive was fairly uneventful.  By the time we got home, the car was whistling and because I wanted- no, I needed to pull something positive out of this whole mess, I discovered that I could control the pitch of the whistle with the accelerator and considered playing with it for a while, make some Sunday morning music for my neighbors to enjoy.

photo also not taken sunday

"Probably the car's not a toy, though." I said to myself before I went inside to make a couple of phone calls.

I left the ailing Max in the street instead of my driveway in case she was planning to vomit any or all of her fluids in her malaise, enjoying the still of the morning and basking in the sunshine for a moment.

Inside, I set about emptying and rinsing my travel mug, fixing a fresh batch of coffee, visiting the restroom, making phone calls, and in general restlessly knocking around the house.  It wasn't long before I discovered that Megatron had struck again in the short time I'd been away.

a cat who wasn't named for a long, long time

Because I mean "six pounds of female tortie kitten" when I say Megatron, and not "sixty thousand pounds of evil Transformer", I found a houseplant uprooted and on the floor with potting soil everywhere.   You know, instead of a heap of smoldering rubble where my house used to be.  So, preferable.

Even so, a plant that was older than the kitten lying on the floor amid chaotic sprays of soil over the computer desk, my books...  It was the straw that broke the camel's back and I sent her to the shower stall in the bathroom for a time out to think about what she'd done while I vacuumed up the mess and put the plant in a vase with water in the hopes that it will grow new roots.

Maybe the universe doesn't approve of the new tattoo.