SIGNS AND PORTENTS

As is not unknown to happen around these parts, I had a bit of a revelation last night whilst walking home from a local pub.

I was not struck blind, did not see a burning bush, had no dreams of angels or ladders, was not slyly approached by Athene dressed as a cute shepherd boy, no. It was much more mysterious than that.

The message I received has been plaguing my waking and sleeping hours nonstop since my 10 p.m. stroll, and still I come no closer to unraveling its mysteries, unscrewing its inscrutability.

So I’m turning to you, my faithful readers, for help.

The message is deceptively simple: two letters and a punctuation mark.

Ready?

CI!

That’s the letter “C” as in “cacophony” or “criminologist” or “cunning”, followed by the letter “I” as in “illumination” or “I-Mac” or “immunodeficiency,” followed by an exclamation mark!

What does it mean, what does it mean?

Perhaps the way in which the secret message was transmitted to me may shed some light on its significance.

Between most of the better quality pubs in Saratoga and the sanctuary of Kate’s Landing, is, quite naturally, a bridge that crosses what in ordinary years we fondly refer to as the North Platte River (but this year tends to get called “that $$^&#&!ing trickle we have to save for the cranes in Nebraska” or some such). And in that river live many, many things... minnows, insect larvae, crawdads, water snakes, the occasional labrador in search of his frisbee, dying trout, and of course, my new option in oracular organisms, mallard ducks.

As in a whole flotilla of them.

Just north of the bridge.

All facing in the same direction (south), like a marching band awaiting a signal from the drum major.

And like a marching band on the move, as I approached the midpoint on the bridge and stopped to lean over and look at them, they began their drills.

Some turned around and headed north. Others headed south along their previously-chosen vectors. Others remained quite firmly in place, their gazes still locked on some strange unknown fixed and immovable point in the distance.

Then, slowly, the whole flotilla began to drift gently north, still performing its intricate drills that, I realized, seemed almost to form, you guessed it, letters.

Indeed, they were letters. English letters! And then possibly, now that I think about it, some Greek ones... I kept waiting at the time for the little bar to appear on what looked emphatically like it was going to be capital “A” (CIA! Ohmigodeverybodyduckandhideyourguns!) but just now I realized in my oracular fashion that an “A” without a bar is, in fact, a capital LAMBDA (the Greek letter “L”).

So maybe the message was CIL!

Yeah, that makes much more sense, doesn’t it?

So anyway, my first thought this morning was that maybe what was being designated was Roman numerals, which would make the original message “101!” perhaps the number that would be the “winning” number at coffee this morning and thus one to be chosen at all costs.

Of course, given that “L” I just realized was there, the number would actually be something like “149” (C=100, I=1, L=50. Usually a smaller unit before a larger, like the I before the L designates that the actual number is the value of the larger minus the smaller, i.e., 50-1, i.e. 49).

But the winning number at coffee today was less than 100 because there were only like six of us there and was actually 85 (for those who care about this sort of thing, the number I chose was 84, meaning I NAILED THE CANTINA OWNER, who accused me of channelling the Sewer King and the Pressman, which maybe I was, maybe I was. Anyway, Macklebrains bought coffee today. Woo!). So whatever the message was had nothing to do with the numbers game (unless 101 or 149 were the magic numbers for the High Table at lunch today...).

Actually, of course, the Roman numeral theory is a pretty weak one, else why would the final “digit” have been in Greek instead of the Latin alphabet we use for English?

So I guess I have to get more exotic.

Again, just dangling off the first conclusion to which I jumped, LAMBDA in days of yore was the symbol the Spartan army had emblazoned on its shields (“L” for “Lakedaemon,” that part of the southern Peloponnesian peninsula where the city of Sparta stood). And as everybody knows, Sparta was one of the two combatants in the Peloponnesian war, about which the first proper history was ever written, Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (one of my very favorite books), the other being, of course, Athens, and didn ‘t I already mention that city’s patron goddess, Athene? WEIRD, man. WEIRD!

So maybe I can expect a visit from 101 Spartans sometime soon!

That’s unlikely, though, since there really aren’t any anymore.

So... hell, I dunno. Maybe the ducks were just telling me to “Congregate In Lebanon.”

Or “Concentrate Intense Lager.”

Or “Consume Insect Larvae” (hey, maybe they were just telling me the fishing is good?).

What do you folks think?

I just know this meant something, dammit!

SO WHERE IS THISGUY SHOPPING?

My out of town readers are probably getting a little bored with this (then again, maybe not), but Beautiful Bob has struck again, and this time, as many predicted, he’s wasting his energy on your humble blogger.

I say wasting not only because he is making it inherently difficult to take him seriously, but also because in attacking me he is attacking someone who can’t get voted out of office for two more years. So, fine with me!

His schtick this time requires a bit of background information to fully savor.

About two years ago, when I was still working for a certain local media outlet, I did a big splashy feature story during an extremely slow news week profiling “Saratoga’s Dogs of Business.” It was a big photo-and-feature article on all of the interesting dogs who served as “official greeters” or what have you in Saratoga’s business community. It was cute and widely regarded as one of my more interesting efforts (myself, I’m still prouder of my column about trying to fry an egg on the sidewalk that appeared in that same issue, but never mind) and was considered for a Wyoming Press Award at the time.

Now BB is on about “what a difference two years makes.”

In wildly hilarious fashion.

To wit:

Rollie, Megan, Gunner, Tula, Sam, Skippy, Rascal, Princess and Whiskey we miss you, even if the New Sheriff in town thinks you’re quaint.

Now, there’s a lot that is wrong with this sentence even from a strictly rhetorical point of view (why would we MISS something just because it’s found QUAINT?) (MISS: “To feel the lack or loss of” [I’m assuming this is the use of the word he wishes to make - none of the other definitions, such as “to fail to hit, reach, catch, meet or otherwise make contact with”, seem to apply]; QUAINT: charmingly odd, especially in an old-fashioned way), but it’s also pretty wildly inaccurate from a factual point of view.

Oddly enough, I had been contemplating updating that very article for this very web page, because contrary to the implications made by BB “(a new town council and a new sheriff in town (directed by the Mayor) with a no dog agenda has stripped this small (and getting smaller) community of all its personality and made it like any town USA)” there are still plenty of dogs in residence in Saratoga’s downtown and outlying businesses.

I’ll first account for those listed in my original article that are “missed” (noting that BB left out poor Squeaker at Zeiger Enterprises, as well as the much-loved dogs at Town & Country Realty but I’ll get to T&C in a moment).

Rollie - his daddy closed up the barber shop to go RVing. But Rollie - actually spelled “Raleigh” like the tobacco, my original mistake in the article - was there in the barber shop like a “little black mop” until its very last day in business.

Megan - Still holding court at Laura M. Usually there are photos of her featured on the web page, too.

Gunner - Missing, presumed dead. His daddy has since acquired a golden lab puppy who has yet to appear at the Cantina, but his grandpa has a new chocolate lab puppy, Bud, that is often to be seen either at the Catina or Saulcy Land Company, depending on whether it’s grandpa or grandma who got dibs that day.

Tula - Almost stepped on her the last time I was shopping at Buggie Bear Station. Most definitely still there, cute, nervous and cuddly as ever.

Sam - Still bravely guarding Erickson’s Gifts and the Hot Dog Shop, still getting lots of treats from Hot Dog Shop patrons. I will also note that “Aunt” Ellie sometimes “forgets” to charge regulars for the “naked” hot dogs we order for our own pets. What a sweetie!

Skippy - Hat Creek’s “Bow Legged Cow Dog” mascot is still there from time to time, but he’s getting old. He was already mostly blind and largely deaf when I first did the story two years ago, but last I saw, just a few weeks ago, he was still hanging on.

Rascal - His mommy no longer works at the Chamber of Commerce, so he stays at home. In his place at the Chamber of Commerce are not one but TWO dogs: my enabling assistant’s wacky Wheaton Terrier/Poodle mix, Hobbes, and my own beloved Collie of Folly, Molly. Sometimes you can see both of them, perched in either window, watching people go by and waiting to lick the next office visitor to death. They are definitely a draw here.

Princess - Too, the store which Princess ruled has closed down due to owner’s ill health. Dear Vi doesn’t live here anymore and we do miss her.

Whiskey - While it is true that one of our officers DID ticket Whiskey for having a paw sticking out onto the sidewalk during said officer’s first week on duty, that foolishness has not been repeated, and Whiskey is still very much in evidence at Do It Best, and also frequently joins us for coffee in the morning at the Cantina, where his duties are most assiduously performed: he serves as drool spigot, pony whip and toast thief, and takes his responsibilities most seriously.

Some BB failed to mention... Leo and Romo used to hang at Town & Country Realty, but Leo is no more and Romo’s mommy has moved to Shepard ERA Realty. I’ve not seen Romo there, but it is a big office to find such a little dog in.

Zeke the Tree Climbing Dog can still be met at Hack’s Tackle and Outfitters when he’s not farting around in the river behind the store.

Plus there is a pomeranian, whose name I can’t ever remember, romping around most days at Second Impressions, and Far Out West Bed and Breakfast is home to not one but two bichon friezes.

So, um, by my reckoning, the difference that two years has made is that there are MORE dogs of business in Saratoga, not fewer.

I wonder where it is that BB has been shopping that he hasn’t noticed this trend?

I’LL GET YOU, MY PRETTY!

I confess it. It’s all me. Everything you’ve been reading, imagining, seeing in your alcohol soaked delerium in the early morning, every transmission that’s made it through your little tinfoil hat, is true.

There is a conspiracy, and qui bono indeed. Nobody benefits from it except me and the secret cadre of investors who were wily enough to see the unique opportunity for profit that my scheme offered them. Early retirements, houses in Monte Carlo, immunity from SEC scrutiny or prosecution – this plan has it all.

So why am I revealing it now?

Because it’s too late, ha ha ha hahahahahahah! There’s nothing you can do! There’s nothing any of you can do! So like a good cartoon villain, I lay it out here in all its glory.

And even if I’m bullshitting you, I’m still providing myself with the perfect defense, aren’t I? Who’d be dumb enough to expose her own nefarious plots on her very own web page for everyone to see, just to fill some space and get the monkey off her back for a day?

Me, that’s who!

It’s true, you see. The Saratoga Police Department is out to get the dogs. All the dogs. Little, hideous yappy ones that leap out of the fake fur place when you walk by, giant ordinarily friendly chocolate labs who inexplicably growl at their owners’ coffee buddies from the back and of said owners’ pickups when said buddies walk innocently by on the street, vicious doberman pinschers who would like nothing better than to rip your head off if they weren’t tightly ensconced in a classic car parked at the Donut Ranch, regal springer spaniels with modeling careers, leg humping wheaton terrier mixes, daffy mixed breed ditch swimmers, all of them. All of them.

It’s a concerted effort, a flawless campaign with two dovetailing goals: make dog ownership an overwhelmingly inconvenient and ultimately expensive and humiliating proposition, and meanwhile drive the stubborn fools who persist in keeping the silly animals despite these horrors right the hell out of town.

They’re systematically ridding the town of all dogs, big and small, smart and foolish, hunters and herders and pointers and pissers, fixed and fertile, friendly and evil. When they are done not a dog will be left drawing a free and happy breath anywhere in Saratoga. They’ll all be adopted out to homes in Rawlins or Encampment, or else gassed, or moved to Colorado with their owners. Muhahahahahahahahahahahahah!

And when they’re all gone (except, of course, for my own dear personal faultless, flawless Collie of Folly, because we do after all need a model), my plan really goes into action.

It will start with a provocative but vague two-line ad on the classifieds page.

“Miss your canine companion? Come pet my pal.”

A lot of people will think it’s some kind of sexual come-on, of course, but since there won’t be a phone number or anything, they’ll have no choice but to remain curious and intrigued and to watch that space for details the following week (the fact that a few of them will assume that the editor screwed up and left off the phone number by mistake will simply add to the fun).

And the following week the ad will simply say “I miss my dog, don’t you?”

Similar plants will appear for another few weeks before we spring it on ‘em good:

DON’T GO ANOTHER DAY WITHOUT THE COMPANIONSHIP YOU CRAVE, THE UNCONDITIONAL LOVE YOU DESERVE! Repressive local laws, expensive new carpets and furniture, and the high cost of quality feed make ownership of dogs an impractical hassle. But that doesn’t mean you have to be alone! PLASTIPALS can help. Specify the breed, the size, the color and we’ll custom make a pet just for you. No one needs to know it’s not a real dog, or show off your unique sense of style by ordering your PLASTIPAL in custom colors and patterns. Plaid poodles, checkered chihuahas and tartan terriers a specialty. Or how about a rainbow rottweiler? A jaquard jack russell? Let your imagination run wild, because your pal won’t – it’s guaranteed never to wander from home, never to bark after 8 p.m., never to poo on your neighbor’s lawn (unless U want of course) and no cops will ever call! Order today!

This is going to be a complete BONANZA for my investors, my employees-to-be who are standing by, and most of all, ME!

And you all are acting exactly according to plan. Muhahahahahahahah!

Muhahahahahahahahah!

MUhahahaHAhahahaHAAAAAAAA!

THE SAGA CONTINUES

Last week I reported on the latest salvo in the on-going prank war between the Fat Cat Republican Bastard/NAPAman axis and that comprising Obie the Artist and Tad the Grocer (not, of course, their real names): Wednesday night, Mr. and Mrs. FCRB thoughtfully transferred several bursting bags of exceptionally stinky garbage from Obie’s pickup bed to his cab, with predictable results. Mr. FCRB then bragged about it at coffee Thursday morning but asked we keep it secret – fully forgetting where Tad’s loyalties truly lie...

Obie had been ready to exact revenge on some other friends of his who have not yet made an appearance in these, my chronicles of Saratoga life (and they still won’t because, well, so far they’ve been pretty boring) when Tad came rushing into Obie’s studio with the news that it was the FCRBs.

For his part, Obie had recently visited the NAPA store to buy an industrial-strength air freshener for his truck and had been told by Mrs. NAPA (aka The Chicken Lady) that her husband “had nothing at all to do with it.”

“To do with what,” Obie asked, as innocently as she.

“What happened to you yesterday.”

“And how did you know about that if you’re innocent?”

“We heard about it at lunch,” she said, making the sign of the cross or some other appropriate hex mark to ward off the karmic shitstorn Obie surely had brewing.

“Hmm.”

Several hours later, as I was walking the Collie of Folly home from work in preparation for a night’s hawking rubber ducks in all the bars (a whole ‘nother story I’ll save for another post), I noticed Obie loading his truck with what looked like a bunch of signs. Since one of Obie’s “will paint for food” profit centers is custom sign-painting, I thought little of it, though in retrospect he did look a little furtive...

These were not just any signs, you see.

Once loaded, they were strategically deployed around the FCRB’s rural property, a large piece of land north of town that can be reached by several roads, including the road to the dump, the recent trip down which had surely given Obie his inspiration.

For, as the FCRB found out that evening when Mrs. FCRB took the drastic and unpleasant step of calling him up in the middle of a Lion’s Club meeting, these signs directed travelers to “The New FCRB Ranch - Garbage Dump” (this posted at the turn-off to the property), announced that “We accept all waste free of charge” and furthermore indicated areas upon the property set aside for such categories as iron, toxic waste, animal waste, and recyclables.

The FCRB himself had not yet seen it, but the Mrs. had, and she was unimpressed – both with the intent and the workmanship of the signs themselves which in addition to having been hastily done were also still wet, as the paint drying on her hands proved.

The Mrs. in addition had some plans to perhaps speak to her local school board member to urge him to reconsider the hiring of Obie the Artist as the middle school art teacher for the coming year, since he was obviously not talented enough to teach her son – or so she is said to have informed the artist himself when the FCRB forced the phone on Obie at the meeting.

The signs were down by the time the FCRB reached his castle, but their effects linger on... Friday morning the manager of our actual landfill called him up and asked him if he had a permit to operate his landfill and threatened to report him to the state Department of Environmental Quality, for instance, as we all learned later that morning, at coffee (of course), when the FCRB and his artistic foe again faced one another across the table, eyeing one another warily and sniffing at their respective cups for evidence of tampering or other unsavoriness.

The pair even talked about perhaps calling a truce, but thank goodness Tad and others (including your humble chronicler) intervened to prevent that discussion’s going any further.

Summer is almost over, after all, and we need something to talk about besides the Forest Service and the weather.

A LITTLE MATH PROBLEM

I hate story problems as much as the next sane individual, but in the wake of more wackiness from the increasingly verbose Beautiful Bob (whose inforhetorials are getting too long and complex to bother retyping for this web page. As I said in the beginning, if he really wants to be online he can start his own blog, and my hands are kinda tired), I can’t resist just throwing this one out there.

A police commissioner, let’s call him “Mr. Frank” has to provide 24-hour coverage of a town, seven days a week. “Coverage” in this instance includes not only at least one police officer on patrol, but also one dispatcher in the office answering the phone and using the radio to keep police, fire and ambulance services in touch, so let “coverage” refer to “at least two employees on duty.”

Postulate #1: Every officer or dispatcher that works more than 40 hours in one seven-day period (also known as a “week”) gets paid OVERTIME, defined by law as pay at a “time-and-a-half” rate, meaning the person in question gets paid his or her regular hourly pay PLUS half again that rate for every hour over 40 he or she has worked.

Say Officer A, who makes $15 an hour (the current average hourly pay for a Saratoga police officer), wound up putting in a 60-hour week last week (real life example from last summer). Officer A would get $600 ($15 x 40 hours) for the regular 40 hours worked, plus $450 ([$15 x 20]+[$7.50 x 20]) for the OVERTIME, for a grand total of $1050 before taxes.

With me so far?

Postulate #2: The police department is trying to work within a budget.

Postulate #3: Working OVERTIME sucks, even if you’re not being required to ferry home drunks, break up domestic disputes, round up vicious or stray dogs, chase pedophiles away from the swimming pool, investigate burglaries, or endure mindless tedium during the many hours in which you merely have to patrol and be ready for these and other unpleasant occurrences. When you are, OVERTIME really sucks.

Postulate #4: Too much OVERTIME leads to crappy performance on the job through lack of sleep, bad attitude, etc.

THE CHALLENGE: Determine the minimum number of police officers ANY police department needs to have on staff in order to provide 24/7 COVERAGE while avoiding COSTLY OVERTIME.

SUB-CHALLENGE: Determine if COSTLY OVERTIME is actually more expensive than maintaining a full staff.

THE SOLUTION:

First determine the number of hours in a week by multiplying 24 (the number of hours in a standard Earth day - adjust this figure for other planets or satellites upon which you personally are orbiting of course!) by 7 (the number of days in a week according to the calendar in use by all of Western Civilization since before the dawn of Christendom):

24 x 7 = 168

(your results may vary depending on how much attention you paid in Mr. Hileman’s math class. No, actually, you should have learned that in Mrs. Blom’s class)

Now, according to Postulate #1, a standard work week is 40 hours. Determine the number of standard work weeks, and thus the number of officers needed to avoid COSTLY OVERTIME by dividing 168 (the number of hours in a week) by 40:

168 / 40 = 4.2 officers

Hmm. Is it possible to hire .2 of an officer? Well, maybe you can find some schmuck who will just work part time (.2 x 40 = 8, meaning he or she would only work eight hours a week for a whopping $120 a week before taxes!) and maybe save a little money on benefits, but anyone who is already a certified police officer is probably not exactly going to leap at this opportunity, and anyone who was willing to do so is either a) a greedy officer who is already working for somebody else and thus is probably not going to be giving us the finest of him- or herself for those eight hours a week or b) a certifiable loon or c) a wealthy dilettante who doesn’t really need the money and will probably quit the first time something happens that he or she doesn’t like.

So, especially when things labor laws basically require of employers like vacation time, personal days, sick leave and the like, it’s best to round that 4.2 up to 5 (FIVE) officers, which, goodness me, is exactly what we have (plus the chief, who does not patrol for reasons I don’t find entirely satisfactory but am going to save for another column).

So the answer for the CHALLENGE is FIVE OFFICERS, which is WHAT WE HAVE but THANKFULLY we the townspeople are only directly paying for FOUR of because we do have a federal grant to pay for the fifth, at least for another year or so.

So how about THE SUB-CHALLENGE.

We’ll just look at it on a weekly basis, if that’s all right with you. Is it? Good.

If we have enough officers (5) on staff and can therefore cover the work week with no OVERTIME, the weekly cost in raw salaries (i.e. before taxes) is determined like this:

168 hours x $15 per hour = $2520 in salaries per week

Now say we only have four officers on staff, and therefore have eight hours of overtime someone’s going to have to take on (because four officers can cover 160 hours before running into overtime, and there are 168 hours in a week):

160 hours x $15 per hour = $2400 regular pay
8 hours x $22.50 per hour = $180 overtime pay
$2400 regular pay + $180 overtime pay = $2580

For a difference of $60 per week. Which doesn’t seem that bad by itself, BUT

$60 a week x 52 weeks a year = $3120

And it gets worse if there are only three officers:

Three officers x 40 hours = 120 hours that can be worked without overtime
168 hours in a week - 120 regular hours = 48 hours of overtime per week

120 regular hours x $15 an hour = $1800 regular pay per week
48 overtime hours x $22.50 an hour = $1080 overtime pay per week
$1800 regular pay + $1080 overtime pay = $2880

We’re now paying three officers $360 more per week than we would be paying five officers.

$360 extra per week x 52 weeks in a year = $18,720 more per year we’re spending to have two fewer cops!

Still think we have too many?

MIRABLE DICTU!

I have shocking news for everyone.

Brace yourselves.

Grab something heavy.

Take deep breaths (or better yet, a deep draught of a cold and bracing drink).

Something miraculous has happened.

As of today, there is a phrase in the English language that I hold dearer to my heart, that is more pleasing to my ears, that is more likely to bring tears of pure joy to my eyes, than any that has ever gone before, up to and including my reigning champion all-time favorite utterance in any language, just knocked out of its seemingly permanent position at #1 on my list, “Hey Kate, let me buy you a Guiness.”

No, now there is something even more euphonious, more delightful to imagine and more wondrous still to actually hear unaccompanied by a post factum “Ha, made you look!”

What is this most harmonious, most stirring, most deeply beloved of exclamations, maybe ever?

“Hey look, it’s raining outside!”

When at first my Enabling Assistant (not her real name) made this statement this morning, I was fully expecting it to be another in a long line of faintly humorous attempts at the kind of “gotcha” of which only my coffee buddies are properly capable (why, only just last night, as he reported to us this morning, the Fat Cat Republican Bastard [not his real name] came upon the irresistibly tempting sight of the pickup of Obie the Artist [not his real name], its bed crammed to the gunwales with bursting trash bags. The degree to which Mrs. FCRB [not her real name] bears responsibility as accomplice or instigator is yet to be determined, but reliable sources, including MFCRB herself, do testify that it was she who first noted that it would be really funny to cram those bags into the cab. I hope I’m around for the reciprocal prank – at a safe distance of course)...

But no, rain it most certainly did, lightly last night (enough to dampen but not to wash the Punk Martha Stewart out of the “guest bedroom” at Kate’s Landing; she had wisely put on the rain fly a few days ago) and with a little more authority this morning and over the lunch hour today.

Oh, it was glorious.

We didn’t see the kind of big, meaty, splattering drops characteristic of the east coast or midwestern storms of fond memory, but nor did we see the typical thirty-second drizzle complete with glaringly clear and cloudless sky straight overhead with which the weather gods delight in teasing us even when we aren’t in a drought year. The rain was falling mostly straight down (maybe just five degrees or so away from perfect verticality) and even accumulating a bit, as a few very small puddles forming in our little-used storm gutters attested.

So now I shall have to play hooky for a moment soon to go and check on The Hollow, site of our ecstatic commemorations of the last real rainstorm we had here in early August of last year.

See, last year, the rainstorm fell gratifyingly on a Saturday, and had to be celebrated accordingly, especially since we were fortunate to have, in the persons of Mr. and Mrs. Blackdonald (not their real names) an in and a plausible excuse for being at The Hollow, a wide, somewhat pronounced depression at the entrance to a large driveway/parking lot shared by the home of The Oracle (aka the Bird Lord) [neither being, of course, his real name] and Bonaparte of the Boondocks’ little office cum apartment building. When it rains, this hollow fills up nicely and offers unparalleled mucking opportunities.

The game last year was “float the rubber sandal” and gleefully did we race them down the gentle current that drew the water slowly into Saratoga’s primitive storm sewer system. Gleefully did we race and splash and dance and sing praises to the puddle and the rain and the bizarre chance that we all had a stupid afternoon off to enjoy it all.

Of course The Oracle found us at play, as he grumpily prepared to drive off to his store up north to do god-knows-what on a late Saturday afternoon. He pulled up beside us harrumphing in his pickup and giving us his sternest possible looks (how dare grown men and women frolic so shamelessly, the look told us, but we would have none of it, of course). He began to give me a lecture about the dignity of my office, the dear old fuddy duddy, and how I was compromising that by appearing shoeless in public and covered with mud for all to see, but about halfway through his lecture he appeared to remember to whom he was speaking, giggled (it’s rare that The Oracle giggles. The only other time I’ve heard him do so was when he described to me the planning and execution of his presentation of that fine suit to the Chicken Lady I described in THE PASSING OF THE POULTRY in January), shook his head and drove off.

Alas, the rain stopped soon after lunch, but I suppose that’s just as well. The Blackdonalds now live in Idaho and I have a responsible job of sorts again, so I don’t suppose there’s any puddle mucking in my immediate future, but hey, the rain has added some to the water level in my backyard river.

I sense some quality innertube time in the offing this evening. All we need is a beer run first...

Maybe this time they’ll even float.

THINGS DONE, PLACES GONE, PEOPLE SEEN

Chicago is the best city. I decided that yesterday as I splashed around in the Lake Michigan surf at Gizmo Beach (our name for a stretch of beach near Loyola University where a fellow Sec-J'er found an apartment last fall – it's quite the Chicagoland equivalent of Kate's Landing: an enviable location on the water combined with cheap digs and easy access for all one's local yokel pals).

The beach has fine, fine sand, the lake features oceanic waves and tides, and just above the rocks and almost smack against the shoreline is a row of picturesque 1930s-era apartment buldings that look like they just washed up there or else are the ones that haven't yet fallen into the lake.

My feet sank deep into the wet, dissolving sand while the water played about my knees. I had a belly full of good Indian food (we lunched in the deep sari-and-samosa district of Devon so I could enjoy some stuff I can't even begin to make for myself in Saratoga; the very reason I vacation in big silly cities and would continue to do so even if the cities I visit weren't teeming with people that I love dearly).

I had in just a quick three-day mini-vacation been reunited with an old nerd camp buddy I hadn't seen in 13 years, married off my best friend and laid my case for a groomsman's moving to Saratoga to be with me on the line (alas, I have nothing to offer as a counter to his scuba diving in the Pacific – looking for your favorite fishing lure that snapped off in the seaweed in Turpin Reservoir doesn't count, apparently), slept over in three different-and-yet-eerily-identical oversized suburban houses, discovered ruefully with about 20 of my dearest friends that 32 year olds cannot dance properly to "Rock Lobster" without cost – immediate cost – left a famous used bookstore with only two books because it was so hot int here I didn't feel like delving anymore, played four different stupid cellphone pranks, downed two purple vodka lemonade drinks at lunchtime (very cool and refreshing), and placed bets with all of my pals as to whether a friend we all know as The Queen would succeed in picking up the leathery-looking barmaid he kept insisting was no older than we are (he succeeded).

I toured the childhood neighborhood of three of my favorite people in the world.

I attended a naked Shabbat.

I have been lied to by one online booking service (Expedia* - see below for diatribe if you dare) and two airlines and now know why they are called "redeye" flights.

I have been hilariously and dramatically late to a civil service in the sun (somehow, my chauffer and I wound up with directions to the wrong country club) so that there was a minor uproar when I skulked in to sit behind the photographer (people I had never met before knew all about my Expedia woes, so all night long I felt I had been re-christened Oh You Made It Sherrod).

(The naked Shabbat happened in Fort Collins, CO. It was notable not only for the nakedness but also for the tender age of the celebrant, a friend's 3 1/2 year old son already known in the family as The Rabbi, whose pants had been removed a few minutes earlier after I made him laugh too hard with my bubble blowing skills and he went with the flow. His younger brother The Priest [who is none to good at waiting for the right time to sip his "wine" in addition to, hey, being the child of a Catholic mom and a Jewish dad. It could happen] wanted to join The Rabbi in Shabbatting sans cullottes but mom got some pajama bottoms on them at the last minute because they had dinosaurs on them, like in the song. So it wasn't really a Naked Shabbat, but isn't it fun to say? Naked Shabbat! Naked Shabbat! Oh, some days it's a drag to be Presbyterian!)

I have watched a movie set in Chicago and its outskirts in 1931 ("Road to Perdition") in a movie theater that, counterfactual conditionals being what they are, could have been built on the site of the ramshackle farmhouse to which the youthful hero retires at film's end.

I have, for the first time in six years, wasted two blissful hours in a good comic book store. My investments are doing nicely. It's good to know. I even augmented my portfolio a bit. It was a good feeling.

And through it all, I did my job, not only answering the occasional and surreal tourist inquiry on the cell phone I brought "just in case" – nothing quite like giving directions to Lake Marie whilst sitting over cocktails at Wicker Park's Silver Cloud cafe – but also selling the simple joys and overwhelming beauties of my Wyoming home to a passel of young professionals on the brink of making big decisions, like where to raise their kids, whether their paychecks are worth the bullshit and ennui at work, the soulless sameness of their commutes and the mass media-dominated idiocy of their leisure pursuits. I didn't pull any punches (though I did cement my reputation as a "nut" with at least one of my friends, who sincerely doesn't trust anyone who doesn't have cable TV).

For while Chicago is the best city, Saratoga is still the best place, and I was happy indeed to see Kate's Landing in the twilight as I pulled into my driveway... and rushed to change clothes for the first ever meeting of the Saratoga Schmomunity Center Board. No rest for the wicked...

**********************

Now, for those who care, here's my Awful Expedia Story in full excruciating detail. I have pretty much adapted this account from the one I posted to Sec-J, who I found in an uproar Friday morning after I'd originally had to call the groom in this weekend's big wedding and tell him I'd be jiggered if I could figure out how the hell I was going to make it to his wedding since Expedia NOT ONLY NEVER BOTHERED TO TICKET ME, BUT ALSO NEVER BOTHERED TO LET ME KNOW THEY HADN'T TICKETED ME (little Executive Summary, there).:

(Note: the Jim mentioned in the following account is a programmer friend of ours who works for Expedia, and who was catching about 20 kinds of hell from the rest of Sec-J because it looked like I was going to miss the wedding)

OK, I'm still piecing all of this together, but here's the basic narrative. I bought my E-ticket online on Monday (had had to wait until the last minute because I was still wrangling with my board over how much time off I could have). Everything was all good.

Tuesday morning I got an e-mail saying call Expedia asap. 1-800-Expedia. I called with my itinerary number, booking number, all that good stuff. The agent I spoke to said "I have no idea why you got that message; everything is fine, you're all set, just present your e-ticket number at check in."

Later Tuesday, my secretary at work got a phone call from Expedia. Please have her call us. I called, same story as above. The agent said "everything is fine, we don't know why you got that message."

Wednesday I noticed that in my itinerary I still didn't have an actual e-ticket number, so I called Expedia again. They said check with Frontier, so I did. Frontier gave me a number and said I was good to go. Just present the number when you check in, yadayada.

Thursday I double-checked with Frontier and Expedia (because I'm a paranoid soul). Both parties still told me everything was cool. Great. I packed serenely and wrote a bigass essay on my hopes for Buzz and Gravy's marriage and posted it to my website.

Friday morning, my parents give me a lift to the airport in Laramie (about 76 miles east of here). We take the Snowy Range road. We see the sun rise over Lake Marie (about as beautiful a sight as there is anywhere).

I arrive at the airport. Panic ensues because I've managed to walk off without my driver's license, but the absolutely fabulous guys at Great Lakes Aviation (the puddle-jumper who partners with Frontier to get people from places like Laramie to Denver) say no sweat, I'm just going to have some extra security hassles but it's okay.

I'm all set for my flight to Denver when, just as a courtesy, the GLA guy checks on my flight status from Denver to Chicago. Uh oh. I'm not on the passenger manifest.

His boss calls up Frontier with a copy of my itinerary and receipt in hand.

Frontier tells the GLA guy that Expedia never ticketed me, and I need to hash this out with Expedia. They can sell me a ticket for the flights on which I was originally booked (they did have that record, of course) for $900, which of course I don't have because Expedia has my money.

I call Expedia (first of four Expedia personnel I talked to. I tried to get them to connect me to Jim, but they said there's no way to do that. I wail inwardly but still have hope that this can be worked out). The agent tells me hey, we forwarded everything to Frontier and we don't know what went wrong from there and I need to talk to Frontier.

So I call Frontier myself. They got my RESERVATION from Expedia, but never got payment or issued a ticket. Talk to Expedia.

I call Expedia back. By this time I have my itinerary number memorized so it goes a little faster telling the booking agent what's going on. This booking agent tries to convince me, that, get this, FRONTIER HAD CANCELLED THE FLIGHTS I WAS BOOKED ON and that's why no tickets were issued.

Funny, the GLA flight I was to take out of Laramie was TAKING OFF as this Expedia agent was telling me it was cancelled, and the GLA guy had already verified for me that the Frontier flight out of Denver to Chicago was on schedule and on track.

I call this ass on his fib. He hands me over to another chick.

This chick tries to tell me that the issue was that GLA does not accept E-tickets, so there's no way Expedia could have issued me an E-ticket in the first place and that's why I had no ticket. The GLA guy hears me incredulously repeating this information and informs me that in fact he had just put 12 E-ticketed passengers onto the plane I was supposed to be on that just left. So I call bullshit on this Expedia chickie too.

She passes me up to a supervisor, Mary Beth KW (may a thousand horny billygoats suddenly develop a conditioned response to the smell of her sweat during the hottest week of the year right after her air conditioning goes on the fritz so that she is condemned to being raped by a thousand different goats until she finally dies). This woman suddenly informs me that on Tuesday a call was placed to my office and a message was left for me that I had to call Frontier within five minutes of receiving that call or I would lose the whole thing!!!!

But as I said above, my secretary took that call. All she says they said was that I needed to call Expedia asap. When I got back to my office 15 minutes later, I called Expedia and the agent said he didn't know why I had the message to call, everything was just fine. If there was really such a dire issue, wouldn't something like the fact that I'd lost out or something come up on his screen for my itinerary number? Hmm?

Anyway, this Mary Beth person insists that because she has documentation that she left a message with my secretary that I had five minutes to call Frontier or I'd not get my ticket (why? why on earth? what is the fucking point of using expedia if I'm going to have to call Frontier myself anyway, and in a blind sweaty five minute panic at that? SHITTIEST SERVICE EVER) I'm completely shit out of luck.

I inform her that I am never using Expedia again, that I'm going to share my story with untold hundreds of others via my website, and that when this weekend is over one of the nine or ten attorneys with whom I have coffee every morning will probably be contacting Expedia if they don't give me back my money (which was back in my bank account when I got back into Saratoga) and come up with some satisfactory way of compensating me for basically having to tell my best friend on the entire planet that I can't be at his wedding.

(My mommy is very impressed that I didn't use a single swear word through any of these exchanges [obviously she's not here now as I type this]. My father, whom I take after in millions of ways including a very hot temper, was not so restrained. He wanted to get to Cheyenne and hit Sutherland's and buy the bathroom sink he wants. Ass.)

So anyway, thanks to Orbitz, I will still be at the wedding (provided someone can get me from the airport to the country club tomorrow). And Expedia (except for you, dear Jim) is at the very top of my shit list forevermore.

IMPOSSIBLE?

In his essay "Marriage is Impossible" written for the Marriages issue of James Hillman's "journal of archetype and culture", Spring, Joseph Jay Landry expressed "One final crazy idea:

Make all marriage licenses expire after five to seven years. Instead of going to court to get divorced, make couples who wish to remain married go to court to present their case for marriage license renewal. Eliminate divorce lawyers in favor of barristers who can clearly articulate the mystery of each marriage case.

He goes on to imagine a bit of what such courts might be like:

Testimony from both husband and wife, children, relatives... teachers, coaches... could provide the court with children's report cards, science projects, Little League participation, etc. as a measure of the family's success. And last but not least of all, attorneys could get depositions from all in the community who act to support the marriage. Maybe all who were present during the wedding could be re-invited.

This "crazy" idea which I actually find rather a sensible one has been much on my mind of late as I prepare to take part in the wedding of one of the people I love best in the world (I would dare Chicagoland in July for no less a person, I assure you). I will witness their vows and sing and dance in the square because they have found each other and decided to get serious. I will toast them and their hope and their love and give my blessing on the creation of something new, the joining of new ancestors.

And in being there, I'll be making a pledge, too. I'm pledging that my love for my friend will extend now to his wife and to their marriage and any future children, and that I will be a friend, advocate, helper, counselor, crutch, for any and all of them. I imagine it being rather like standing as a godparent to a newborn in its implied shift in priorities; I've got more to look out for now.

Another friend of mine, who is divorced, remarked to me as I was musing over this essay that she had found "very little room for error" in marriage. I'm still recovering from this statement because it bespeaks an attitude toward marriage, what it is for and why we as a culture and as individuals keep on trying it even if it is "impossible" that is exactly opposite to what I (engaged twice but never married) would ask of marriage were I ever to undertake it myself.

There should be every room for error. Marriage is meant as a place where it's enough to be human, to make mistakes, accept mistakes, to forgive and be forgiven. Not unconditional love (another Platonic abstraction we could all do without) but conditional love – the conditions being a very generous margin for error, change, surprise, failure, hope, loss. Any other approach to marriage – expecting, for example, perfect sympathy, perfect accord, perfect devotion, all the other idealized crap implied by all of those novels and movies and folk tales in which marriage is the goal, the end of the story when it's really just the beginning – is childish and is the surest way to make it fail (aside, of course, from shutting out all those godparents, all those witnesses who saw the two of you coming together and said yes, this is okay, this is good for them and for us).

My parents' marriage hasn't succeeded because they approached it with those illusions or thought they could do it themselves, for example. They're still learning to live with each other after 35 years. But they're doing it with help, a lot of help. Sometimes it's a moderator that's needed between them. Sometimes he needs to gather with other men and swap bossy wife cliches and laugh. Sometimes she has had to turn to her mother, her colleagues, her daughter, to get over some horrible thing he said. Sometimes he has needed the same thing.

And it's on-going, and will never stop, this round of little wounds, adjustments, patch-ups – all necessary work on their part and ours to help them keep all the good stuff: the companionship, the environment they've created, the stories they have to tell, the mutual attentions, the small kindnesses, the knowledge of one another that has evolved over years.

Yes, ultimately it has been up to them. But it has been easier for them because we have all surrounded them and nurtured them, their marriage and their children.

And that's what I'm hoping for my friends who will wed on Saturday. I worry, though, I really do, as I worry for many of the marriages I've helped to bring about, because these two, like so many of the others, do not enjoy the kind of intimate community life that has been a factor in the marriages I have witnessed here in Wyoming, where in the summertime the classifieds in the newspaper are cluttered with 50th wedding anniversary announcements, 60th, 75th.

No, the weddings of which I have been a part so far have led to marriages lived in big cities or bigger suburbs: dwellings in which the neighbors are strangers or at best barely tolerated acquaintances, teachers have 50 other sets of parents and step-parents and whatnot with which to deal, workplaces are vast and impersonal, pals live miles of hideous traffic away, and the "close" friends are ones from the past who visit occasionally from far away to "catch up" but are not part of daily life. In such circumstances, a lot more of the daily grind of marriage, the toil, the effort and the strain fall on the two people who said "I do."

I've drifted away from most of these marriages because of the distances – Boise, Las Vegas, Vancouver... So I have not been a good steward for them, and I'm feeling this keenly as I write.

Now that I am aware, will I do better for Buzz and Gravy (not their real names) (well, their Sec-J names)? I want to think so. I want to believe, for instance, that our connection through the giant never-ending chat-cum-work of performance art that is Secular Johnson will make a difference. It does a lot. But can it substitute for my presence in the kitchen over coffee lending a willing ear while Gravy freaks out about Buzz's stupid RPG buddies who are always underfoot and then reminding her why he and they are still worth having around?

I don't know.

But I hope for them and for me that we can prevent either one of them from finding little room for error in their marriage.

I don't know - having never married I'm probably still just naive about the whole thing, too much so to be hoping anything but general good fortune for them both. I am certain my divorced friend, who quietly went into the house to play in the kitchen when I told her to shut up and let me write this and then I'll argue about it with her (at least she no longer gets mad when I ignore her [on good days] or snap at her [on less good days] when she wants to talk and I want to scribble. Friendship is an art just like marriage is) thinks I'm completely off base on this.

But I call 'em as I see 'em, as she likes to say, and these are my thoughts as I pack for my trip to go to the wedding.

And the completely amazing wedding present I'm bringing with me will be pretty hard to divvy up if they split.

A final note: Otto von Bismarck had it mostly right, but he forgot one thing one should never see being made. Not just law, not just sausages, but wedding plans, too.

BEAUTIFUL BOB STRIKES AGAIN!

I wanted to get this on yesterday, but I had other things to post (the landfill stuff is important, the landing stuff is entertaining, and this guy could just get his own website), and anyway I’m a horrible, horrible slacker. So shoot me. This guy apparently wants to, or something.

This guy being the provocateur who made last week’s classified section so spectacular. He’s outdone himself this time, and put it in the main part of the paper, and I just have to share it (even though I’m being tarred with the same brush – actually perhaps heavily tarred, as the phrase “Good Times Valley” is a slogan I use in promoting our area in newspaper and radio advertising. Woo Hoo!). It’s too good not to share with the masses. As was true last time, what follows is verbatim and (sic). Here goes:

Polise Report

The following was reported by the Saratoga Polise Department.

July 4 - Received a report that people who came to the Good Times Valley were having too much fun down town at street dance and 4th of July celebration (no alcohol involved) four uniformed officers and two patrol cars were dispatched. People having fun took smiles off faces and had less of a Good Time, Officers kept up intimidating presence and many people left area, looking to have a Good Time and spend money in other town, local economy suffers.

July 9 - Complaint of smelly gas, with loud inane pompous redundant and unnecessary noises coming from River street. Officers responded and found town council meeting in progress. Officers supported loud inane, pompous, redundant and unnecessary behavior, joined in and no citations were issued. Look for more redundant, inane, pompous and unnecessary legislation at next town council meeting.

July 2 - Reported that people were having Good Time at hot pool. Polise responded and tourists toned down Good Times, stopped laughter and became quiet and subdued by over reactive polise supervision. Many tourists heard to comment that polise were not friendly and they may not come back to the Good Times Valley, local economy suffers.

July 10 - Emergency personal was summoned to Bridge Street. Found that call was for officer with strained neck caused while looking too hard on streets of Saratoga to see what hard working citizen was breaking some insignificant law not relevant to our everyday lives. Neck brace was issued and officer continued search.

July 7 - Report of Polise Officer who smiled and waived at local resident while on patrol. Officer was demoted and reprimanded, promised not to do it again. Case still under review.

July 5 - Man and dog from Colorado spotted swimming and having a good time in lake. Man given citation for dog not on a leash while swimming in city controlled lake. Dog comments that he will not return. Local economy suffers.

Local elections are coming soon... you can make a statement for change. Remember the Town Council, the Mayor and The Police Force works for you the Citizen , not the other way around.

This Polise report brought to you by The Bob For Anybody else but the Present Mayor and Town Council Fund and Police Chief. Donations welcome.

There was also a short news article in the same paper in which BB declared he is not running for political office.

A pity.

(Niggling, nitpicky note: July 9 was the planning commission meeting, not the council. I agree 100% about the planning commission, though. That's why I go to the Joint Powers Board instead. I'd rather talk sewers than zoning any day of the week.)

EVEN BETTER THAN OBC?

I can't think of a worse time ever not to have a functioning camera on hand than this evening at Kate's Landing.

Picture this: as I sit in a comfy lawn chair sewing a new button onto my favorite pair of khaki shorts, the Toast Mistress seated calmly at grandpa's picnic table, a citron and tonic in within reach and a beatific smile on her face on this, her first visit to my funky little abode. She is watching the hummingbirds at my feeder and the ducks on the river; the Collie of Folly rests adoringly at her feet (until very recently the Toast Mistress, she who not only made our toast but brushed it with melted butter, was also the Jerky Mistress. Dogs who came to morning coffee on her watch were always invited behind the bar for a snack while we old farts chawed the fat, so yes, the Collie adores the Toast Mistress).

Hovering above her is Erin-Go-Braless, brandishing an intimidating array of clips and spray bottles and SCISSORS! EGB, you see, is a cosmetologist of some renown, formerly the manager of the salon at that summer camp for grown ups, the Old Baldy Club, always happy to engage in the local bohemian barter economy. Obie the Artist will paint for food, I write for Guiness, EGB cuts hair for green chili. And the Toast Mistress makes some fine, fine green chili.

Speaking of chili, my dear brother Chilly showed up just as EGB was finishing up. And to him we all owe a debt of gratitude for helping us to narrowly avert the disaster that loomed, that of EGB's dropping hair into the Toast Mistress's drink.

As she sipped that mercifully hair-free drink a few minutes later, the Toast Mistress observed that in her opinion, the Kate's Landing Beauty Salon was even better than that at the Old Baldy Club.

Hey, I'm not going to argue with HER of all people. Because after all, the view is much better. And I certainly don't skimp on the booze...

MAJORITY REPORT

I was expecting to have to call this one something else, but I was actually on the winning side of the latest town council controversy (the advertising antics of Beautiful Bob [sorta his real name] notwithstanding), albeit narrowly.

We renewed the town’s contract with the Upper Platte River Valley Solid Waste Disposal District (aka the landfill board) last night on a narrow 3-2 vote.

Why was it a narrow vote?

Because the landfill board wants control of its money – a perfectly legitimate thing to want.

The way our agreement with this board has worked since it was formed and the town gladly, GLADLY! gave up the headache of administering the dump, is that in exchange for a waiver of dump fees on trash removed from town dumpsters and trash cans (i.e. the nice ones along Bridge Street, the dumpsters at the lake and in the parks, the cans at Town Hall and the town shop, etc.) and 45¢ out of each billing, our Town Hall staff takes care of all of the landfill board’s billing and collection responsibilities. Your share of the baseline landfill costs shows up as a $9 line item on the same little postcard that also bills you for water, sewer service and weed & pest control.

Our staff has also had the responsibility of depositing the money collected through regular billing and “excess fees” (what you pay if you bring an appliance or a lot of construction debris) into a WYOSTAR account in Cheyenne (click on the link for full details on WYOSTAR. Basically, it’s an investment pool for local governments maintained by the Wyoming State Treasurer’s Office).

Now, however, our staff is going to begin transferring this money directly to the landfill board, who plan to deposit it in our two local banks. It may earn a miniscule amount less interest there than in the WYOSTAR account, but on the other hand it will be staying in our community and will be easier for the board to access when it gets going on the projects coming up – namely the necessary expansion of the actual physical landfill.

Really, that’s the only thing that’s changing from the old contract.

But that’s not what caused the discord!

The bone of contention actually just boiled down to who eats it if a lot of individual accounts go delinquent. Who gets stuck if a bunch of people decide not to pay, the town or the landfill board?

Of course, that wasn’t the language used until a certain colleague of mine on the council finally quit interrupting me for long enough to allow me to point this out. He, dear man though he is, had decided to make an issue over the fact that the contract contains two numbers.

Those numbers are 95% and $134,000, as they appear in the following exerpt:

...These fees will be forwarded to the District on a monthly basis. The fees forwarded monthly will be at a minimum, 95% of the total of:
*The number of municipally billed households within the Town limits times the resident fee plus the number of commercial accounts within the Town times their respective District established fee.
*This total currently equals $134,000...”

So yes, we are expected to pay at least 95% of the amount we have billed for landfill services every month, whether or not we have collected it all.

My colleague did not want to commit the town to an agreement like that, even though historically there has never been a problem in meeting this commitment. Last year, for instance, the landfill board was expecting $140,000 in monthly fees from us, the citizens. The Town collected from us and paid to the board over $160,000 because of those excess fees I spoke of. And last year was not a great financial year, was it? Still, no problem.

But, but, but, Chicken Little would say. What if times get tough and people start defaulting on their landfill fees? Should the Town be left owing $134,000 (which is 95% of $140,000) to the board anyway?

I say yes. Or at least, better the Town than the landfill board, which doesn’t have the resources the Town does to enforce payment. Joe Average might not care at all if the landfill board considers him persona non grata. Hey, he never has to go to the dump, does he? Ooh, he’s so scared.

But chances are if he’s delinquent on his landfill fee he’s also delinquent on his water bill, since it’s all on the same convenient little postcard.

He will care, when his water get shut off.

See where I’m going here?

But this is all theoretical, because people do pay their bills!!! They really do!!!

Sigh. At least the mayor and the other guy who’s definitely still going to be on the council next year (well, unless he gets elected county treasurer, in which case I might be the only holdover!) voted with me. ‘Twas the lame ducks voted no...

...As the minutes will show or Squeaky is going to get a come to Jesus meeting out of all of this...

HOME IMPROVEMENTS...

How do I love my by-pass lopper? Let me count the ways. There is the elegantly fetishistic language with which it is described in the packaging – straight out of William Gibson's material porn. I mean, read this copy and try not to think of Neuromancer – "High carbon, non-stick coated steel blade • Hardwood handles." Sounds almost too nice to use in the yard, doesn't it?

By the way, what is "high carbon?" Carbon that has taken too much of its medication? Is carbon a quality of something a blade or anything else that can be described in degrees? Is it possible to say something like, "that diamond is sooooo carbon?" the way we say "those eyes are sooooo blue?" But I digress, as usual.

As already discussed several days ago, I am also deeply amused by the name, though upon closer examination I have learned that is simply a "lopper" rather than a pair of "loppers." However, like a pair of "scissors" or "clippers" this device has more than one blade. I'm not going to dwell too much on this detail, however. This may just be some kind of linguistic oversight on the part of the GreenThumb company. The lopper was made in the USA, so the manufacturers' grasp of English syntax might not be so good.

How do they work? Beautifully.

Over the last two days I have completely cleared out the riverbank that forms the back boundary of this property I'm renting, a bank rank with dense willows and grasses and weeds, oh my. There was nothing there, though, that could stand up to the unstoppable lopping machine that is formed when the raw animal strength of my own two hands combines with that high carbon and I go to town.

Lop! Lop! Lop! And the willow switches piled up beside me (village small fry, beware!). Lop! Lop! Lop! And the view from my kitchen window improved dramatically. Lop! Lop! Lop! And now Kate's Landing is truly a landing. All I need now is a little dock or something.

Actually, "All I need now" is becoming rather a dangerous phrase. Every weekend this summer has brought new little projects, purchases, all aimed at some heretofore unknown and ultimately unreachable peak of outdoor leisure perfection. The cintronella-saturated tiki torches. The paint on the picnic table. The lawnmower. Two or three different varieties of bird feeder. Inner tubes to float on the river...

And that's where the latest idea has come in. Once the lopping was done, how better to relax than to throw one of those tubes into the river and flop onto it, more or less fully dressed, to cool off? We lazily enjoyed the rest of the scorching afternoon, splashing ourselves down every few minutes to further lower our core temperatures and wash off our sunscreen and watch the golf carts go by on the Bridge Street bridge. We'd been there for maybe an hour when I piped up with the following suggestion:

"You know what we need now? Those drink holders that you just screw into the ground!"

And so, we will not be satisfied again with merely floating about on the surface of our sluggish little river until we can do so with a beer holder handy. Sure, we could make do now by just holding the damned cans in our hands and keeping a cooler on the shore, but that would involve effort and mar our effort at perfecting our leisure.

This is not without irony: I have cut myself from as much media as possible largely because I have concluded it is designed not to inform or entertain or enlarge the soul so much as to make that soul dissatisfied, crave more shit that it doesn't really need. It's why I'm so picky about the films I bother to see (oddly enough, my favorite of recent movies is Minority Report, a film so saturated in media-to-come that its paradoxical plot is almost completely obscured, a film in which holographic ads identify each individual by his retina pattern and tailor their pitches accordingly. At one point, a huge face appears out of nowhere, brandishing my favorite big dark can and saying "John Anderton, it's time for a Guiness." But such films as these only re-enforce my stance on avoiding magazines, television, and anything else that might tempt me to spend money on things other than books and alcohol) (didn't know I was an ascetic, did you?) and about where I get my news. I crave the feeling that my choices are truly my choices, even if it is an illusion even on my restricted media diet.

But still it gets to me. I walk into my local hardware store or the grocery store or the feed store and see something I don't need (caramel flavored coffee creamer, a hummingbird feeder that looks like a hot air balloon, shoelaces tougher than the actual shoes I would lace with them) and take it home, just like everyone else.

So my stance is all a fraud.

But, when the rest of you are sucking on the glass teat (Harlan Ellison's memorable name for television), *I* am sitting lazily on the river, cold beer in my hand, watching the blackbirds fuss and the mallards muck about and Erin-Go-Braless jump 20 feet out of the water at the sight of a six-inch-long water snake.

I think I'm getting the better deal.

WHY ARE YOU WEARING THAT STUPID MAN SUIT?

Hmm. It's been quite a while since I've written about a film, which is odd since it's something of an obsession of mine.

Caveat lector: I have, especially for Saratoga, a very rare taste in films; what I like is what is frequently called "disturbing" cinema, so in general what I recommend might not be for everyone. Peter Greenaway and David Cronenberg and Wim Wenders are my favorite directors, and films with endings that bring the entire preceding narrative into question and force one to watch again and again to catch all of the possibilities, hints, nuances, are my favorites. Thus I particularly like the director's cut of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner, which demands the viewer rethink the protagonist's identity and role completely. Ditto M. Night Shamalayan's The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable.

With this in mind, it's no surprise that Robert Kelley's Donnie Darko is right up my alley. It's full of mordant humor, disturbing imagery, wild metaphysics and has an ending that demands a second, maybe even a third or fourth, viewing almost immediately (such films are great in theaters, but really come into their own on video. I think some directors have totally tapped into this potential for videotapes and DVDs to transform the way people read movies, and this explains the explosion in seriously tricky films like Christopher Nolan's Memento and Bryan Singer's The Usual Suspects. I, for one, applaud this trend, but I do sympathize with people like my young friend the Ski Bum who screams about them as "mind fucks" and refuses ever to discuss them).

But it's got something else, too, something that I find makes it a film worth being examined much more widely than it has been before now.

Robert Kelley has found a way to make sense of senseless tragedy, and has found a way to communicate it with enough style to reach even the most benumbed teenaged moviegoer yet with enough substance to keep even a picky movie snob like me paying attention.

There is, Kelley maintains, a way of dealing with whatever horror has hit you, and it ties bizarrely in with a concept from Microeconomics 101: opportunity cost. If one particular life is saved at a particular time, what are the repercussions of that apparent thwarting of fate, of God's will (this movie is largely set in a Catholic school; I'm not engaging in bullshit theology here. God is part of this film, in all sorts of subtle and not-so-subtle ways)?

The film really gets going when protagonist Donnie is rescued by a hallucination that resembles nothing so much as a demonic vision of the easter bunny, who summons him from bed to tell him the world is going to end in 28 days. His life spared, Donnie's questions are what to do in those 28 days, how seriously to take Frank the Bunny, and what really is going on with all of his weird intuitions and visitations. Is it because his therapist upped his meds, or is something bigger going on?

"Why are you wearing that stupid man suit?" Frank asks Donnie at one point, and by that point in the movie the idea that life, that humanity, might just be another suit to choose to wear can send the viewer reeling.

Meanwhile, Donnie meets a girl just as weird as he is and falls in love, and engages under Frank's tutelage in a spree of mayhem that is truly inspiring for an old high school anarchist like me to watch (the film is set in 1988, the year I graduated and the year in which a number of truly unpleasant tragedies happened in my little town, the kinds that leave tremendous holes in untold numbers of families, group efforts, hopes – and a year when, as Kelley none-too-subtly points out, this country could have been very different now had the voters of the time chosen Dukakis over Bush. Myself, I voted for Frank Zappa, so maybe I bear some of the blame-according-to-Kelley?). He brings about the downfall of a truly evil man whom many have adopted as a guru (and whose fate and purpose the ending calls into serious question, and rightly so. It would be a betrayal of all the craft of this film to tie up all of its loose ends and make its strangely happy ending too perfect). He broods and laughs through madnesses and moments common to us all.

Honestly, I am somewhat surprised to see this film available at our local video store, which (sorry, Michelle, I know business is business...) is mostly crammed full of big box office crap. But there it is and since there's no Frank Capra or Christopher Nolan or Peter Greenaway or Wim Wenders to be had (though oddly enough they have one of the most amazing and crazy-making films ever, Warner Herzog's Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [English: Aguirre, Wrath of God] stashed in amongst the Rambo films in the Action/Adventure section), it's pretty much the best thing currently on offer at Saratoga's Video Home Theater.

I'm probably going to hang on to it and watch it a few more times before I turn it back in, though, so be patient. Maybe even wait until such time as you find you need it; such time when you are regretting a stupid loss or just wondering how in the world anyone could ever explain the kind of horrors we endure just in being human. Donnie Darko doesn't have THE answer, but it has AN answer that will do pretty well for a while.

SATURDAY FIRE UPDATE

Once again, many thanks to Jerry Silvio of the Laramie office of the United States Forest Service for the information I'm passing on here.

There are now two fires burning in our Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest: the fire upon which I reported yesterday that is now known as the "Bear Mountain South" fire, and another that is actually in Colorado called the "Hinman" fire.

The "Bear Mountain South" fire, which is 12 miles southeast of Encampment, has grown to 400 acres and is burning heavy timber on steep terrain. The same six residences and six commercial buildings are still threatened and are still being protected by county volunteer fire crews.

The incident management team from Montana has arrived. The group will use ten 20-person hand crews, 12 engines, three bulldozers and five helicopters, as well as air tankers making retardant drops.

The Hinman fire, first reported yesterday afternoon by, among others, the Saratoga Parks and Recreation Board (that being the Minister of Fun, Officer Aimee, and myself, who were heading south for some hiking) is believed to have been started a few days ago by lightning.

The Hinman fire is burning between the Coulton Creek and Hinman drainages about 20 miles north of Steamboat Springs, Colorado. By nightfall last night, this fire had grown to in excess of 500 acres. Like the Bear Mtn South fire, the blaze is going in heavy timber on very rugged terrain. Access is limited and there are reports of extreme fire behavior, including torching, spotting (Mass transfer of firebrands ahead of a fire front) and significant downhill runs.

A lot of residences and commercial property are threatened. No one has been evacuated yet, but everyone has been notified.

Four 20-person hand crews, three helicopters, five engines and an incident management team have been ordered and should arrive today for the Hinman fire.

Once again, the weather forecast calls for sunny skies, moderate winds and hot temperatures.

THE LONG-AWAITED OUCH

Well, it’s happened at last, and it’s sort of a relief for many of us, who at last have a location and a region upon which to focus the anxiety we’ve been just sort of stewing in since April, when the first big wildfires hit Colorado.

As of yesterday afternoon, we are host to the #2 priority fire in the Rocky Mountain Region.

The Bear Mountain fire, right near my buddy Dick’s favorite hunting grounds, currently covers about 200 acres 12 airmiles southeast of Encampment, according to a news release I received from the US Forest Service just now (12:45 p.m.).

Crews are seeing torching and crowning in the treetops (torching happens when a tree is in the vicinity of flame and lights up as though on its own due largely to the heat – in wildfires like this, fire does not have to physically travel to spread; direct contact with something already burning isn’t necessary. Imagine being able to light a candle by waving a match somewhere near it).

Even the aspen, normally something of a barrier or at least a retarder of forest fire because normally these trees are so damp, are burning up.

Local volunteer firefighters are providing structure protection for six residences and six commercial buildings. There are two heavy lift and two medium lift helicopters providing water drops on the fire. The news release also indicates that some slurry drops (big planes that pour that cherry red fire retardant on the fire) should also be available soon today.

Meanwhile, a national Type 2 management team from Montana is on the way, along with additional fire and hotshot crews who are en route to the Encampment area to help build firelines.

According to the Forest Service release, this fire was first reported at 3 p.m. Thursday and was burning about three acres of land and heavy timber.

“Conditions were so dry and hot that an hour later it had grown to 75-80 acres,” the release says.

Weather forecasts for the weekend call for sunny skies and hot temperatures.

*****************

I’ll do my best over the weekend to keep everyone posted on what’s going on up there, since the newspaper only comes out once a week.

OKAY, I THINK I GET IT...

Some days are just meant to humble us. Oh, we see it coming; too long a string of good fortune (I just typoed “goof” for “good.” I’m sure that means something) and we get suspicious. We feel we are being set up for a pratfall. Soon it becomes excruciating and we start suspecting all of our friends of plotting sillily against us. We get downright paranoid. We stop answering the phone lest we fall for the Prince Albert joke or something. We stop accepting dinner invitations. We retreat into small, dark corners of our houses and cower, driven mad by good fortune and the promise of its departure. Soon our friends and neighbors start asking one another, whatever became of old so-and-so? and nobody has any idea. Our mailboxes start to overflow and our lawns become buried under so many newspapers that have landed like giant thudding snowflakes on our unwatered grass....

Where was I? Oh yes. Some days are just meant to humble us. And today, for your humble blogger, is one such day.

In the last 24 hours I have been in various and entertaining ways burnt and stunned and yanked to the ground, wakened rudely by rude smells and terrible sounds, bonked and gashed severely on the head and just plain humiliated in general (for of course the most spectacular of these occurrences happened in front of spectators).

It all started last night when I was enjoying a peaceful evening on the lawn at Kate’s Landing, and my buddy revealed he just happened to have a supply of our favorite cigars on hand.

Now, on paper, I hate smoking. I am thoroughly indoctrinated as regards its effects on health, well being, sex life. I have made regrettable, regrettable deals with my own dear personal dad (up to and including removing the stud I wore through my tongue for five very happy years, gift of my last boyfriend in Boston, who was a body piercer, for my 24th birthday, amusing plaything, dirty little secret, storage facility for Lifesavers... I can’t believe how much I miss it) to get him to stop smoking. I avoid certain bars because they are too smoky. I get a little upset every time I find myself dating a pack-a-day man (though I have never ended a relationship over this).

But here’s the thing: I love cigars. I love them sentimentally and sensuously, love their look, their feel in my hand, their taste, their accoutrements, the memories associated with them (yes, I’m one of those who mark important occasions with a cigar: my first fish caught ice fishing, my high school graduation [which was also my first CUBAN], both of the times I’ve gotten engaged, the new millennium [smoked many cigars with the members of Gyrating Bhtch at the Mueller Millennial Meltdown]), the relationships I’ve built over them. I love cigars.

So when my friend pulled one out for me last night, of course I was delighted, and thought nothing of leaning over and letting him gallantly light it for me.

Then a gentle breeze picked up and began gently wafting around us, gently stirring the leaves and making them sing, gently inspiring the willows on the bank to bow and curtsey, gently jingling the chimes...

And gently blowing my long, thick hair right into the flame.

Next thing I knew, I was stunned and channelling Michael Jackson while my companion simultaneously laughed his ass off and tried to help me put out the flame.

Nothing serious, I’m not even scorched, and to look at me you can’t even tell I’ve lost any hair because I have so much. But still. MY HAIR CAUGHT FIRE.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Those wacky, wacky gods, and their wacky, wacky sense of timing, I remember thinking as I settled back at long last to enjoy the damned cigar already (after having sensibly pulled my hair back into a knot) (you didn’t think I was going to pass up the smoke just because of a few little flames, did you?) (something had to kill the aroma of burnt Kate fur that was lingering in the air).

Then I remember thinking, well, I had something like this coming. I’ve been way too smooth lately. Too much has been going my way. I have gotten smug and comfortable and have succumbed again to the silly notion that I can just sail through the rest of my life on this wave of contentment – and this little incident was my friendly reminder that it wasn’t so.

Apparently I needed more, however!

Cut to, oh, about 2 a.m. I awaken to a hideous smell. At first I think one of the burners on the stove must still be on and something is melting. Then I remember my hair. Must be that. But no! It’s a trespasser of sorts...

You see, there was a skunk right outside my window. And my beloved dog (really!) the Collie of Folly, Molly, whose color scheme is not unlike a skunk’s herself, and now I know why, had taken umbrage at the intrusion on my behalf.

But instead of politely asking, shall I just shoo off this interloper for you, Kate dear? She just made a dash for it, trying to use the big room’s window as a doggie door.

Problem #1: It was not open widely enough to allow her eager egress.

Problem #2: There is (or was) a rather substantial curtain hanging over that window.

There was, however, no stopping the Collie of Folly. Skunk, begone!

Please note: all of this is mere interpolation on my part. My own direct experience of this event involved my awakening slightly to the odor and then bolt out fight-or-flight AWAKE with the curtain rod and various sharp little hangers protruding therefrom clocked me over the head.

The bleeding stopped fairly quickly, but now there was a little problem of light pollution; I’m directly across from a street light, and suddenly my nice dark slumber had given way to freaking Las Vegas in my living room. If I wanted to sleep again, the curtain would have to go back up.

Nothing doing; the curtain rod (brand new just last week after a similar case of Folly) had been twisted into some weird new wire sculpture that could have taken the 3-D prize at last weekend’s arts festival. Phooey.

So I lay fuming in my bed for a few hours and waited with dread for the inevitable dawn. Eventually I dozed, but then, then, OH GOD, IT BURNS, THE BURNING, IT BURNS.

Photon torpedoes were shooting through my head. White hot lasers lacerated my eyes. My scalp was on fire (no wait, that was hours ago). Oh Jesus the SUN. Turn it off!

The Collie of Folly, meanwhile, was quietly whimpering on her couch. She’s basically a passive solar collector on four legs. Serves her right.

Never have I felt such a burning need to make the trip to yon hardware store. Must get curtain rod. Must get curtain rod. Unendurable. The pain. The horror.

Then I wrecked my bicycle (still making do with that ancient front tire – and I don’t think I got the brakes aligned right when I hastily threw the thing back on there). Right in front of the store. In front of a parked pickup, which I narrowly missed hitting on my trip to the ground. Thank god no one saw THAT, I thought, dusting myself off, checking for embarrassing tears in the pants and that sort of thing, and gimping over to lean my bike against the store.

Then I looked into the pickup again. And there they were. Lawnboy and the Sewer King.

I was never going to live this down. Ever.

What could I do? I sailed into the hardware store and bought a new curtain rod. For good measure, I also bought a pair of “Loppers” I had vague notions that my project for this weekend would be tackling the overgrowth of willows on the riverbank that mess up the fishing from my backyard. I thought a pair of pruning shears might do, but then the King and I fixed on those “Loppers” and if you think what finally sold me on those “Loppers” was that I really like the idea, the sound, the word “Loppers” then you have learned much about me indeed from reading this page.

“Loppers”

The “Loppers” cheered me up immensely.

Then on my way home I wrecked on my bike again. This time only a long legged rat grazing on my neighbor’s lawn witnessed my fall (too bad; it was far more spectacular than my earlier performance at the hardware store). I turned over my bike on the spot and tightened up the offending nuts. Sheesh.

Upon my arrival at home, the Collie of Folly was apoplectic, and enthusiastically tried to help me hang the curtain rod by choosing to lick my very ticklish instep every time I perched myself on the back of the couch to reach the mounting brackets way up there.

Mounting brackets. Mounting brackets (I keep typing “mountain” for mounting. It’s that kind of a day). Not that I knew what they were called. I know NOW... Because they were bent out of shape. Bent beyond recognition. No curtain rod would ever hang from these again.

Meanwhile, searing, scorching solar radiation bathed my bod. I could feel the hairs on my arms and legs crisping. I could actually see the flesh toasting. Soon my dog would think I was a midday snack, nicely browned like a sausage.

Back on my bike, back to the hardware store. Five different employees all took a stab at figuring out what it is I’m looking for. At one point I resorted to drawing the thing on my hand. At long last the King Emeritus of the hardware store made some sense of my babbling and together we found new mounting brackets for my new curtain rod.

All before coffee!

To which I went with relief. Because I had learned my lesson about gloating over how good I’ve got it. Namely, don’t do it.

Uncle! Uncle! Uncle!

BEST CLASSIFIED SECTION EVER!

At a recent convention of the Wyoming Association of Municipalities, I attended a workshop on communicating with the public, a sort of free-for-all brainstorming/gab session about dealing with the news media, with public comments and complaints, and especially with crank provocateurs.

I was especially entertained by my friend Jeanne, the mayor of Jackson, who has a whole stable of crackpots dogging her every move in the newspaper and elsewhere (and some of them work for the newspaper). People who never attend a council meeting or ask a question of anyone who has anything actually to do with town business nevertheless exfoliate her weekly in the pages of the town’s two newspapers (who fan the flames of controversy as much as they can to beef up circulation).

I was so jealous.

So imagine my delight when I opened our own local media outlet this morning after coffee. The classified page of this week’s Sun is one of the greatest things I have ever, ever read! It’s so wonderful that I’m going to treat you all to a sampling.

What follows are two verbatim box ads on that page. Masterpieces!

#1:

“It seems ironic, no shameful, no tragic that as the town of Saratoga’s population continually goes down, the town government seems to think that the dwindling population of hard working citizens needs more police supervision at an ever greater cost.
“Saratoga seemed to be quite, safe, and certainly nice and more friendly place to live when the police force was more like Mayberry’s rather than the Police State it now resembles.
“The Town Council and ultimately the Mayor has the final say in who the police force is comprised of and what direction it takes. Remember the Council, Mayor and the Police Force works for you the citizen, not the other way around. If you have any views on this, contact The Bob and H.A.N.K.g. For a New Mayor Fund.
“Local elections are coming soon... you can make a change!

(H.A.N.K.g = High time for A New Kind of government)

Note to out of town readers: Hank is also the first name of our current mayor.

#2:

“A casual observer reading the weekly police reports regarding dog enforcement would be under the impression that our police department is woefully understaffed.
“It seems we need a lareger police department to not only enforce all the dog laws to the letter, but to also enforce the many other very important laws that effect our everyday lives.
“Heaven knows that we do not want to go unpounished tohose unlawful folks who stop to talk in the middle of the street or jay walk to talk to a neighbor. Such unlawfulness must not go unpunished!
“We must keep a vigilante watch on our neighbors because they must be violating some law. If you see a neighbor violating a law, no matter how trivial, please contact the local police department as they are probably busy taking care of the more important business of ticketing dogs.
“If you have any views on this, contact: The Bob and K.C. For a larger More Intrusive Police Department Fund

(KC = kinder and caring)

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I just wish this Bob person would come to a council meeting once in a while and stir the pot in person. Or better yet, run for office. Council meetings are so boring it’s all I can do to pay attention and not write smut stories while I sit there on the dais. I’ve been tempted to start making up really and seriously ridiculous ordinances and shoving them through just to see if anyone is paying attention or cares at all.

(Of course, I could never top the “missile” ordinance about which I wrote a few weeks ago in terms of sheer outrageous uselessness. By the way, the thing passed on a 4-1, with me being the only “nay.” Next time you shoot a BB at a deer or a feral cat, better hope the projectile’s kinetic energy poops out before the extent of your property does)

But that’s just pie in the sky wishing on my part. I guess I’ll probably have to settle for the classified page.

Can’t wait for next week!

TIRING ADDENDUM

Oh, bah. It's not the Bird Lord but the Sewer King from whom I must aspire to get a new tire. And he doesn't have one in stock, so I have to wait until Friday, which means I must put the less wretched of my two OLD tires back onto my bike with a new tube inside and pray the whole apparatus doesn't blow out as I race from meeting to meeting through the rest of this week.

Of course, I could just wait it all out and walk for a while, but walking is too damned slow. I can break the speed limit (with impunity: the police here never train their radar guns on cyclists) on a bike. On foot, an arthritic bee can lap me. Phooey.

OH, HOW TIRESOME

Every once in a while a day comes along that I can only describe as a "theme day."

Today was one. And what a theme.

The main topic of discussion at coffee this morning occasionally foreshadows the rest of my day in tone if not in detailed fact, but today, today if my coffee boys started calling themselves my psychic friends I'd get creeped out and then start a 1-900 line and put Miss Cleo out of business.

I don't remember what got everyone rolling, but the weirdass gods who preside over our conversations decreed that today was the day that the coffee boys would swap horrible tire stories. Tires that blew out on the road to Tulles. Tires that are defective right out of the factory. Tires newly bought from the Bird Lord (he who once or twice a year plays host to a new variety of poultry in his yard - see my poetic entry on New Year's Day), taken out on some of our truly horrifying county roads, stock trails and two-tracks and consequently blowing out the same day and having to be replaced (at a rate only slightly faster than the Bird Lord's own tire replacements). The joy of taunting one of our number, a former CEO of Bridgestone-Firestone, with compliments for the products of Goodyear & Co. Tires, tires, tires.

I sat amongst my friends amused but mostly silent, for I had no tire stories to tell. Clearly, I have led a deprived and colorless life, I thought, and smiled a cold and polite smile to hide my depraved jealousy as gem after gem was brought out, examined, dished over.

Meanwhile, at the store of the Bird Lord, Erin Go-Braless, her sister Karin-Go-Braless, her mother Jane-Go-Braless, and future brother-in-law Gigglepuss were all dickering with said Bird Lord over some inner tubes. They wanted to float around on the surface of the lake where sister, mom and FBIL are camping, and as everyone knows, for aimless floating old truck inner tubes are just the thing (they have since been donated to the Kate's Landing Grown Up Playground and Tent Farm for use of the denizens thereof in the very nearby trickle that in better years we call the North Platte River. My home is almost perfect). I learned of this and giggled at the coincidence.

Then as we were getting dinner (to be consumed at grandpa's picnic table – more memories in the making, always more) the topic of a certain brand new pair of bicycle tires came up, and how they've been sitting behind the dining room table for a few weeks awaiting employment, and wouldn't it be great if KGB and Gigglepuss put them on my bike!

The old tires came off easily. The wheels less so (of course I was out of WD-40). The inner tubes seemed undamaged and so good enough to use again. We were almost to the step where the new tires and the tubes go back on the bike (and discussing how best to get the tubes reinflated, since I currently do not have a bicycle pump) when the Minister of Fun, who fancies himself (correctly) quite the bicycle mechanic, happened along.

His solution of course was to load up the tires and the wheels and haul them into the town shop to air them up. What could be simpler?

But, this is my brother Chilly, and when Chilly and I get together something weird always happens.

First, it turned out that we had managed to introduce minute holes into the inner tubes while we pried the ancient mismatched tires that I'd ridden nearly bald off my bike. No problem; Chilly had a patch kit. We patched away and all was in readiness.

Front wheel: In goes the tube, on goes the nozzle for the big electrical air pump, pssssssssssst! in something like two seconds, the tube and tire are at a perfect and ideal 40 psi. Slick! I remember saying, or words to that effect. We'll be done in no time.

The second tube, also patched in one spot, was neatly in place within the second tire when disaster struck! The nozzle was applied, the air had just barely, and we're talking a very tiny fraction of a second here, begun to flow when there came a godawful firecracker of a noise and Chilly, who like me startles easily and rather spectacularly, I don't call him my brother for nothing, children, EXPLODED into wild and comical action before instantaneously recomposing himself at the side of my now burst tube and brand new bike tire.

It wasn't even blown at the patch, the tube. A brand new spot was blown, and the sidewall of the brand new tire with it, as clean a split as if someone had presented it pre-slashed for my riding inconvenience.

So now my bike sits in my driveway, upside down, its partially reassembled wheels waving in the air like my dog's legs when she's napping, motionless and as sad as I am sitting here at my desk when I long to be out on my nightly midnight ride through the streets of Saratoga.

Sure hope the Bird Lord has another 26" tire, and a tube, in stock. It's a long-ass walk out there.

And now I have a tire story. Yay.

TIME MANAGEMENT, THE L.I.A.N.T. WAY

I just sent in a batch of articles for the 2002 edition of Wyoming Next, a publication aimed at persuading graduating high school seniors and junior college students to stay in our state. These are fun little articles to do and the magazine pays very well, so I'm happy to crank out whatever sort of foolishness they want, but one of my assignments damned near drove me nuts.

They wanted me, of all people, me, your humble blogger, who is also the chamber director, a town council member, a speech coach, etc., to (snicker) (chortle) (guffaw) give the kids some advice on time management.

I know, I know.

So, I started doing what I usually do for this magazine, consulting the business press and whatnot for general interest articles on my subject with an eye towards couching them in the sort of weird semi-youthful/pop-cultural language that Wyo Next and similar publications pay me for, but being the power slacker that I am, the advice I was finding and considering passing on to my young readers made me want to retch.

The horrible combination of the old Protestant Work Ethic combined with the new managerial "stockholders first" philosophy and assorted other modern ills (I just heard about a suit filed against Wal Mart over its policy of requiring sales employees to work overtime off the clock) is creating a whole new class of datebook drones, a tyranny of time commitment to which most of these books and articles I was seeing seems to be preparing students to submit without complaint or proper preparation. Keep 'em too busy, too frantic, too worried over money and they'll never stop to question the pap and crap we're feeding them about what the good life is or what constitutes a good person... aw, I sound like Tyler Durden.

Point is, these kids are going to get enough of that kind of "advice": keep a date book, plan adequate time for projects, give yourself five minute mini-breaks to "recharge your batteries," blah blah blah and they're going to wind up blaming themselves for their migraines, failed marriages, whatever.

So why not plant a little time bomb while I've got their undivided attention?

Such is my internal apologia for the article which follows. I've still, in other words, got a streak of defensiveness about the advice I concocted and which, to hell with it, I'm going to try like hell to follow.

I wonder if they'll actually pay me for this. Somehow, I doubt it's what they were looking for. But here it is, just so it gets published somewhere:

WHO'S IN CHARGE HERE?
Master your calendar instead of letting it master you.
By Kate Sherrod
I’m going to give you a piece of advice that is probably exactly the opposite of what most time management gurus will tell you.

When it comes to time management, the important thing isn’t keeping minute track of appointments or planning out how much time each project is going to take or even focusing on prioritizing deadlines.
The important thing is YOU.

Yeah, it’s a good idea to keep a datebook. It’s awfully embarrassing to have a lunch date scheduled at the very same time you’re supposed to be getting your hair cut AND have a job interview. And if you know it’s going to take you three or four hours to do the research on a project it’s a good idea not to only give yourself 20 minutes.

I’ll tell you something, though: datebooks have a way of becoming tyrants. Even with my secret, which I’m going to share with you, there are still times I open up mine and scream!

There is no shortage of work in the world, no shortage of people who think they have a right to your time, your energy, your resources. And only YOU know how much of all of those things you have.

But here’s the thing: your time, your energy, and your resources are only as valuable as your own current level of well-being. If you’ve been running yourself ragged to meet a deadline or juggle ten commitments or whatever silly pie-in-the-sky promises you’ve made to yourself and others, you’re not going to see any quality in your work OR your play.

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF FIRST!

That’s right.

TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF FIRST!

Every month, open up your datebook and block out eight hours of sleep a day. Block out at least two hours each day in which you will do NOTHING (you can always decide to do “something” with it later, whether that’s see a movie, take a nap, or go out for a cup of coffee with a friend). Plan the fun stuff FIRST and be RUTHLESS about conflicts with your personal time.

THEN, schedule out your work hours (if you have a regular hourly job), your meetings, your volunteer work, whatever other demands on your time. Believe me, your boss and your fellow volunteers and your friends and your significant others will appreciate you a lot more if you’re showing up to your responsibilities rested, prepared and with a good attitude.

They’ll only call you a slacker out of jealousy.