Horse Manure Park

Yesterday was just a little less bright after learning of the passing of Maya Angelou.  As I posted on Facebook yesterday, she went to heaven because God needed a consultant.  She may have been the wisest woman to ever walk the planet. One of my passions is reading and I honestly have Ms. Angelou to thank for that.  If it wasn't for her, I don't think I would have ever made it past D.C. Comics. Sgt. Rock was an old favorite of mine.  Once upon a time, a long, long time ago. Like everyone else, my introduction to literature was in high school.  We read novels such as The Great Gatsby and The Grapes of Wrath , and while these are great works of literature, they are poor choices to get young people interested in reading. By the time I made it to college, my feelings toward reading were ambivalent: I would read if I had to, but why would I choose to?  It was boring.  Mind-numbing, even. But I was about to encounter a life-changing experience....

I think I need a weekend from my weekend.  My gosh, what a crazy few days. For some reason, we always find the hard way to do things.  Yet we always seem to get it done. We continued with the next phase of our home improvement project this weekend.   The goal was to get two coats of fresh, new paint on the walls and get everything hauled out of the upper level so the flooring folks can come in and do their thing bright and early Tuesday. Saturday morning the Wife and I both woke up with an intestinal bug complete with nausea, bad muscle aches and other unpleasant unmentionables that come with a lower GI virus.  However, we powered through the nastiness and got the first coat of paint on the walls, even though the Wife went to bed at 5:00 PM and didn't emerge again until 7:00 AM Sunday morning.  The first coat of paint was not the easiest or the most pleasant.   Let's just say frequent potty breaks were needed. But by Sunday, we both were ...

We are about to begin a long awaited project here on the home front.  We've had this on our calendar for the past eight months or so and we finally got the ball rolling this weekend. Starting next week, the upper level of our home is going to be gutted and hardwood flooring will be installed.  Likewise, the entry way will be stripped and ceramic tile will take its place. A lot of thought and planning has gone into the project and it will hopefully be done by June 1st.  Once everything is installed I think it will give our crib an entirely different character. The first step: changing the color of the walls, which we started this weekend.  It has well over a decade since we've painted the upper level.  I guess it's about due.  Of course both the Wife and I work all week, so we are going to have to work in shifts to get it done.  But we will get it done. Slathering on the primer.  Excuse the mess, we're remodeling. Unfortunately, a c...

Still trying to figure out this crazy cat, Donald Sterling, owner of the Los Angeles Clippers. So last month, recordings surfaced of him spewing out racist garbage; he pleaded with his mistress to stop bringing black people to basketball games and to stop taking pictures with them. He was quickly fined by NBA commissioner, Adam Silver, and received a lifetime ban from league activities. Sterling went on CNN last week, publicly apologized and asked America for forgiveness. Now Sterling (or his lawyer) is reversing course;  he won't pay his $2.5 million fine levied by the NBA commissioner, because he "didn't do anything wrong" and he was "not granted due process."  In fact, Sterling (or his lawyer) plans to sue the NBA. First of all, the NBA (like the NFL, NHL and MLB) is a private club; it's a league with its own constitution and by-laws, and it is governed by an appointed commissioner.   It is not a government bureaucracy. When Commissio...

Every now and then I become so inspired by something that I can barely sleep.  I had just such a moment last night after reading an article posted on Facebook by my former English and drama instructor. The article was from Huffington Post and it featured 11 old slang terms which the author argued needed to make a comeback.  I instantly thought to myself, " What a brilliant idea! "  Fashion trends go in cycles, so why can't expressive language? I mean, when I was in high school in the 1980's, mini skirts made a comeback.  As a teenage boy with raging hormones, I can assure you this did not suck.  Mini skirts were big in the 1960's and it took two decades for it all to come full circle. Hot '80s chicks with mini skirts and big hair. Likewise, I see kids today wearing things which would have looked right at home in 1987.  I'm still waiting for the big hair, however.  I loved big hair. ...but I digress. So if old fashion trends c...

There are literally a dozen things I should be doing today.  Instead, I've accomplished basically nothing.  Spent the day at home letting the Girl and the Boy burn energy outside. My dad would have called me a bum.  As usual, he would have been correct. Actually, I spent a part of the day looking through my mom's old recipes.  In March, my sister-in-law Marilyn (the world's best cook, just in case anyone was wondering) brought a cardboard box full of my mom's cookbooks and recipe cards for me to look through. I already had a large box of recipe cards (all in Mom's handwriting) and this is a wonderful addition to my collection.  I'm trying to decide what to do with all of them and I'm seriously thinking of launching another blog dedicated exclusively to her recipes.  Most likely, this will be my next winter project (always thinking ahead, I am). One of Mom's worn and much-used cookbooks.  This one is from 1967. Mom loved to cook and there a...