An update including our local HIE stay

 It's a lazy, chilly, late March Sunday, the day after celebrating birthdays and Easter with my extended family at a restaurant. As I sit at my desk watching a Will Ferrell marathon while I look for interesting articles to read or sports stories to follow, I decided it would be a perfect time to write a blog entry. But what to write about?? 

My shoulder is ready to go for golf season as I'm able to do pushups on a bench, maybe even the ground, but I haven't tried. Today I went to Golf Galaxy to take some swings with new drivers, but there were too many people there. I'll go back midweek and see what I can do then. 

On Friday, the pergola off the back of the house was taken down, piece by piece, as we prepare for construction to start on our three season room. Very excited!

The Bears decided to allow the man who traded up one spot to select Mitch Trubisky instead of (at the very least!) standing pat at taking whichever of three QBs would fall to him. Spoiler alert, the other two were really good and Mitch was really bad. That same guy had just signed Mike Glennon for a guaranteed $19M in the offseason. He also sucked. Then the same guy trades a fourth round pick for Nick Foles and guarantees him $21M. He also sucked. So the Bears give him one last shot in free agency to right the ship, secretly extending his contract for a year (I'm virtually certain of this) to match his head coach's contract, and he lands Andy Dalton for $10M guaranteed for one year, more than triple what Dallas paid him last year. It's a clusterfuck at Halas Hall. Only a marquis, proven QB can save them. 

One final note, we decided to do a staycation at our local Holiday Inn Express. Below is the letter (and review) that I wrote and posted on several travel sites. No response, 3 weeks later. Contrast that to the local Domino's which gave us flat bread bites  and received a strong rebuke from yours truly. The manager there gave us essentially 4 free orders of bread bits and two desserts. Here's my HIE letter: 

Before posting our review on Yelp and travel websites, we wanted to provide you with a recap of our experience at the Mokena Holiday Inn Express last Friday, February 26.

"We live in town and decided a few weeks ago to have a staycation at this hotel for a night and let our two children, 6 and 8, swim to their hearts’ content.  To make sure the pool was open, we called two weeks ago, at which time they told us that they couldn’t know for sure that the pool would be open, but that it was open currently. Midweek last week, we called again and actually made the reservation at which time we were told the pool was indeed open. Finally, we called FRIDAY MORNING at 10:00 to make sure the pool was open and told the desk person that our SOLE reason for coming to the hotel was for the pool. We were told the pool was open and, in fact, we could check in early (1:00). How nice!

 So you can understand our immense frustration upon checking in at around 1:30 when we were told that the pool was closed. Several times over the next 90 minutes we called the front desk to ask about when the pool would open, why was it closed and why were we told it was open when it wasn’t? We were also told that the front desk had to wait for the General Manager to call and tell them it was okay to open the pool and that the GM was offsite currently and they couldn’t reach them. This means if there was a robbery or the hotel was on fire, nobody on site could reach the GM? That hardly seems likely and if it is then it’s almost worse than lying to us. What an absolutely ridiculous chain of command you have in place if that’s true. “Here’s the only person who can make decisions, but they are unreachable.” That should never be the answer.

Finally, I went down to look at the pool myself and there was a genuinely pleasant, bearded man there skimming the pool. He told me the pool was completely fine and we could come down and swim whenever. I went over the front desk to both inform them and verify that this man had the authority to open the pool (though he was obviously an HIE employee). There were two women working the front desk and one, who checked us in, was at least pleasant while being unhelpful. The other, with red hair, was an embarrassment to all customer service employees. When approached with the information about the pool, she reiterated that she had to wait until the GM gave approval. To which I replied, “Then who is working on the pool and telling me it’s ok?”

“I don’t know.” She replied.

“What do you mean you don’t know?  It’s a bearded guy.”

“I don’t know who it is. I can’t see through walls!” She obviously wasn’t planning on moving from behind the front desk and traverse the 25 yards to the pool and see who it was.

“So there’s a guy working on your pool and you don’t know who it is? This isn’t Disney! It’s not like you have thousands of employees. You probably have, what, 5 people working here today?”

“No sir, we have more than 5.”

“Well one of them is working on the pool and he said it’s okay to swim.”

She continued to insist on hearing from her unreachable GM. She also declined to go investigate who was working on the pool and what they had to say, so I had to go over and ask him to talk to the women at the front desk because they weren’t listening to me. Again, he was super pleasant and said that he would. 

It’s seems to me that pretty high on the list of duties of a front desk person at a hotel,  right behind checking people in and out, is knowing who is in the building and especially who is working. Her rudeness, unpleasantness and shirking of responsibilities would certainly prevent her from working at any company that I would run, so I figured someone in charge there would want to know about our experience. "

Those who know me well, KNOW that my first version had a ton of swearing in it. I really wanted to convey to the owner of this property though that they had a subpar employee. If they choose to ignore it, that's on them. 

Where are they now?

 

Lighthearted entry today covering an interesting topic (to me): the 1971 MLB draft.

Now, how the hell did I get on this topic. Well, you want to talk about a rabbit hole? Actually it wasn’t too bad. It started by looking at baseball cards on Ebay and specifically one entitled “Baseball ReDraft 1971”. 

It’s an interesting theme for a card: who would you choose in the top four given the benefit of hindsight?  Since I was 5 in 1971, it really struck a chord with me as the guys on the card were stars while I was growing up. So that card made me look up the 1971 draft to see if I agreed (I take issue with Hernandez being #4). Looking at the MLB draft for 1971 also took me down memory lane as the players in that draft I remember from seeing play or collecting their baseball card or because they have ridiculous names (like Biff Pocoroba who was drafted in the 17^th round by the Braves and had a 10 year career).

We always hear about those who slipped in the draft and made it big (most famously in the NFL with Tom Brady getting drafted in the 6^th round ,199^th overall and the 7^th QB selected).  In baseball, with technically 48 rounds in the draft (not all the teams even went that deep), those who got passed up and made it, occur more frequently, but not as often as those in the top 10 who turn into busts. As I take a stroll through the list, I’ll be tossing out some of each!

The top 14 are filled with misses except for Frank Tanana at 13 by California who threw from the left side and was a force to be reckoned with when starting after Nolan Ryan. Whew, tough combo.

Tom Veryzer was taken at 11 and had a 12 year career, but only played regularly in six seasons and was traded several times. Not an awful utility man, but not a top 15 draft pick either.

Jim Rice comes along at 15 and he’s definitely well positioned on the card as #3 overall. The two in front of him, drafted in the second round with picks 29 and 30, were also great hitters but played the much more important 3^rd base position.

Larry Herndon was picked at 54 and had a 14 year career that included winning the World Series with the Tigers in 1984. Didn’t help out the Cardinals who drafted him though. I was still very much into the Tigers in 1984 and listened to most of their games on the radio, even during the day in my senior year in high school.

Dennis Lamp was taken at 62 by the Cubs, who wish they took Ron "Louisiana Lightning" Guidry instead who went 3 picks later.

There was a long talent drought then until Warren Cromartie was taken at pick 143, but Dave Freisleben, who was taken at pick 96, is a name I always knew growing up, at least since his rookie card in 1974. You see, that was the year the San Diego Padres were garbage and were being sold to a businessman who was going to move them to Washington. Freisleben was a rookie in the Padre system and appeared with three other players on a rookie pitchers card. Some of his cards, and other Padre players, had the team name replaced with “Washington Nat’l League”. Ray Kroc, yes, the McDonald’s owner, stepped in last minute and bought the Padres and kept them in San Diego.

Then we drop all the way to pick 278 where Dave Bergman was drafted by the Cubs (his favorite team) in round 12, right out of high school. Bergman opted to go to college at Illinois State and was drafted again in 1974 by the NY Yankees. He had a 17 year career including also being a member of the 1984 Champion Tigers.

Not much else talent wise was selected until Keith Hernandez at pick 776. Ron Wrona, Rick Wrona’s (one of three Cubs catchers in 1989 when they won the division) father, was selected by the Dodgers at 788. 

Joe Theisman was drafted with pick 764 by the Twins, but he was also drafted by the Dolphins, though he opted to play in the CFL with Toronto for $50k a year.

Joe wasn’t the only QB drafted in 1971. Steve Bartkowski, who would eventually be taken #1 by the Falcons in 1975 just ahead of Walter Payton, was drafted out of high school by the Royals at #699.

James Van Der Beek was taken at pick #570 by the Washington Senators, the father of the James Van Der Beek that you know from Dawson’s Creek.

But what happened to some of the other guys in the draft? Players like: Otis Zagorski, Hiawatha Roberson, Walt Rzepiennik, Steve Kooshkalis and Don Stackpole, the last player taken in the draft at #794. I bet they have stories too.

The Non-Queen's Gambit

Much like many folks during this pandemic, I've watched a lot more television.....or at least tried to. Unfortunately, the pandemic closed down the movie and production studios as well, so there hasn't been a ton of new shows to watch. As such, you get some shows that EVERYONE sees, just because there's nothing else on. Tiger King is one of those shows and yes, we watched it. But we also watched Queen's Gambit, a six episode show about an orphan chess prodigy in the 1960's. 

While only six episodes, it was an extremely compelling story about savants and how they deal with life as a savant (in whatever area, this one happened to be chess). As a child in an orphanage, the 9 year old heroine sees the janitor playing chess and eventually has him teach her how to play.  You can imagine that it starts out a little rough on her, but she catches on surprisingly fast (as you would expect from a savant) and away the story goes. 

She learns many lessons along the way and one that she learns early and that the story flashes back to a few times, is that you lose gracefully. When you are defeated, you resign. You don't play out every last move wasting people's time, you resign. You don't abruptly get up and walk away either; you tip your king or just stand up and shake your opponent's hand. We just watched the last episode last night and it struck me as a great life lesson for people of all cultures, but certainly here in the U.S. Our competitive nature is often like that of a child; play until there's no more hope instead of resigning with dignity and acknowledging your opponent.

Now, in some sports you play to the whistle as they say and that's absolutely fine. But down by 30 with 2 minutes to play in football or a similar amount in basketball or hockey, seems to make less sense. 

In politics, t-Rump continues to embarrass himself, the republican party, the presidency and the U.S. with his ridiculous, hopeless, classless lawsuits. When cornered by multiple pieces and no where to go, he opted to play it out to the last, filing some 57 lawsuits including one just the other day with the SCOTUS who has already sternly rebuffed him once. Any dignity that t-Rump had was lost probably before he did his television show, but he is clearly now showing how much of a buffoon he has always been. He would have been a reprehensible chess player. 

Giving Thanks

It’s hard to believe that there’s much to give thanks for after the year we have. Two days ago was the anniversary of Laura breaking her foot, which was the swizzle stick stirring the Molotov cocktail that would become 2020. There’s always something to be thankful for.

For instance, Laura ended up with a blood clot in her leg that was diagnosed on her final visit to the doctor for her broken foot.  Super thankful that it was discovered. The doctors, while checking for blood clots in her lungs, found out she had pneumonia. Very thankful that they discovered and treated that as well. Very thankful that we have great access to doctors.  

Having good health insurance is another thing to be thankful for as I had asymptomatic ventricular tachycardia for a long time and it flared up over the last year. After getting all sorts of scans and monitors, I think it’s because I started getting a large iced coffee in the afternoon and it had a bad effect on me. Since cutting back to a medium coffee in the afternoon, I’ve been fine! We’re also very thankful that we have solid home owner’s insurance when our sump pump and backup both failed in January.

Nobody in our family has contracted Covid-19 (yet) thankfully, despite another resurgence of the disease that’s killing 130 people a day in Illinois alone. Just awful. Our cleaning lady, neighbor and one of my business partners have all contracted it. Not fun for them. Fortunately, they have all recovered as most people do who contract it. If you’re immunocompromised though or have certain underlying ailments, there is no recovery. There’s no good time of year for all of these people to be dying, but it’s a particularly bad time of year. As I’ve said since April, we need these inexpensive, quick turnaround tests distributed and available to people as quickly as possible. If people can quickly and easily test themselves at home, they will quarantine themselves. If people don’t know if they’re sick for sure, they’re going to go about their daily routine and infect other people.

And of course we’re thankful that the slug of a human, t-Rump, has been ousted from office, despite his ongoing disbelief. Recently he actually said that he would leave office if the electoral college voted as such. NO SHIT SHERLOCK! Such an unbelievable dumbass. Every case his monkey Giuliani has presented in court fighting the election results has been thrown out for lack of evidence, most of them when they were first presented to the court with the comment from Rudy’s team that they didn’t have any actual evidence but that they believe there was fraud going on (https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-attorneys-described-giuliani-deranged-122255613.html). Nice work Rudy. Good choice t-Rump. What a clown. Now he’s pardoning anyone and everyone he can, even from prosecution for charges yet to be brought. Why? Because you know damn well he’s in violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution (Saudi room rentals, et al) and likely treason for asking foreign governments to interfere with the election. He was already impeached for obstruction of congress and if not for a republican stacked senate, would have already been removed from office.  One pardon was Michael Flynn, the guy who confessed to lying to congress for t-Rump. Unbelievable.

The ability of outgoing elected officials to pardon people is a farce, always has been. Whether POTUS or Governor, it should not be allowed. It really shouldn’t be allowed AT ALL in fact, whether you’re an outgoing official or not. A court and jury have declared this person guilty and now you have, potentially, some television personality with the attention span of gnat deciding they were wrong. It’s just not the right way for a judicial system to run. At best, maybe, they should allow for another trial. At best! Even that has a negative taxpayer consequence.

On a lighter note, Santa came into my office today and said he shaved his beard, changed his glasses, shrank and oh yeah, made himself less old. Ha! Outstanding. Love that kid a ton. Oh, the non-smile was him being very matter-of-fact about his statements. 

Fall 2020 Update

 It's been a crazy few months since I last wrote, to say the least! As of today, we finally voted that toxic, rodent of a human t-Rump out of office and we can finally bring some honor back to the role of POTUS. The consistent lies he pushed (I've read over 21,000 or 14 a day from one source, but also "only" 4-6 per day which is closer to 7,500) have just been too much. He's done nothing positive for the country that I can recount unless you're a top 1% or mega-business owner. His tax break certainly didn't help me out (or anyone else in a highly taxed state) as it limited state and local deductions to $10k, so that cost me close to $10k. The economy outperformed under Obama by a factor of 4 vs. him according to some measure that I read, so I assume even a rock could have done better than t-Rump. Finally, and probably most devastatingly, he ignored ALL science and health warnings about the coronavirus even openly mocking doctors, mask wearers and other "losers" as well as calling it a democratic conspiracy, while the virus took a firm hold in the US and killed hundreds of thousands and hospitalizing 2 million. And these really don't deal with what a despicable human being he is, though that much lying is obviously a pathological issue. The guy is an orange ass clown who only cares about himself. January 20th can't come soon enough. 

Finally, after three years from initial injury (my guess at least), I was able to have surgery to repair my torn rotator cuff and labrum in my left shoulder. That was just over 3 weeks ago and recovery has been pretty good. I'm still on the passive motion machine for several hours a day and then I ice it for 30-60 minutes, so it's taking up a good chunk of my day. 

While all this is going on, I have been able to make progress on a good project: the whole home back-up generator. No more power outages for us!! Covid set us back on this front as well due to delivery issues and changing the gas meter delays, but it's going to be installed next Thursday. Yay! No more worrying about the weather. 

Other projects that worked out this year: hanging pictures, getting a new sump pump and waterflow back-up system (after the flood), spray painting the front light fixtures, installing garage organizing system, bought a freezer for the garage, new downspout pipe that leads to the yard from one corner of the garage (it was clogged and backing up) and new mulch. I tried to move the gate for the fence and install a new gate in the back, but covid interrupted the fence folks supply chain so I can't get it done until the spring. 

A project that's just taking off is creating a three season room off the back of the house. The overall size and materials seem to be finalized, but there are many, many details to go.

The kids are doing great, though as Covid spikes again (10,000 new cases a day in Illinois alone), there is a likelihood that they will be returning to e-learning from home. 

Marissa as Willa from Zombies 2

Thomas as a vampire (with a spider kicker)

A large turtle that we found in the yard (we think) trying to get back to its pond.

Sign of the Times

States and the country have stages they are, somewhat arbitrarily, defining as we open back up. While Illinois went on full shutdown for two months to really limit the impact on hospitals’ ICUs, some states did not take the same tact or do it for as long. Now, two weeks after Memorial Day, those states are having a significant influx of new cases of Covid 19 and their ICUs are near capacity. From what I’ve read, there is some number of people who are going to get infected and be hospitalized (and die). Our goal has always been, just don’t overwhelm the hospital system and make doctors choose who gets a chance at living and who is not "worth" treatment, much like a triage unit in war time. New York and Detroit early on had to basically take this tact. Fortunately we did not in Illinois. 

On a more personal note, since this is my blog, I thought it would be interesting to “track” the impact of the virus based on what I can and can’t buy at the grocery store. First it was toilet paper and paper towels, followed by tissue. If you find yourself at the start of something that will cause sheltering in place, you want to get some of these and I would recommend hitting your secondary stores (for me, Meijer and Jewel are level one and Berkotts is secondary) as well as the hardware stores (which also usually have cleaning supplies. The latter might have a supply for a few days after the others run out. And the smart stores should have really put an immediate limit on the high demand items to prevent hoarding as much as possible.

After the paper products (which people use more of at home when not going into the office), yeast was almost impossible to find. People are staying home and they need projects to work on with their kids and don’t want to go to the grocery stores, so they bake at home. Makes sense. Milk never seemed to run too low, but eggs ran out more than one day. Along with these, cleaning supplies and laundry detergent start to run out. As meat processing plants started to shut down, there was some shortages in pork, beef and chicken, but now there seems to be a fair amount of all of them and very few times have I been unable to purchase these items.

Eventually you get to where the random stuff starts to run out: Brummel and Brown butter spread made with Yogurt was the poster child of these products. You couldn’t find it anywhere until just about a week ago. I’m not sure what the supply chain looks like for it, but it was out for almost three months.

Other things on my shopping list that we could not find: 2% Swiss cheese singles and more recently, shelled edamame has been gone (even shelled has been tough to find). Obviously things like Clorox wipes are still non-existent as are large bottles of hand sanitizer (which I fortunately had bought two of last year).

So now that we are about three months into the shelter in place order and four months into when the hoarding started, you’re finally seeing a CHOICE in toilet paper and facial tissue available at larger stores. Yeast became available more readily in the last few weeks. And interestingly, fruits and vegetables, which have a shorter shelf life and different supply chain, never seemed to really be unavailable completely.

The Day to Day

There seemed to be so much hope for a reasonable transition to normalcy in my last post, but sadly that has not come to pass. Daily here in Illinois, as they ramp up the testing to more and more people, the number of infected people continues to increase, as you might expect. However, the deaths continue to trend higher as well, which is not necessarily an expected consequence of more testing. I’ve been keeping a spreadsheet and following the trend line on deaths related to Covid 19 and the 14 day average continues to increase (now about 110 people per day). Daily I listen to two, three or four infectious disease doctors regarding what’s going on in: new treatments, old treatments being resurrected, idiotic things the potus says (the doctors really, really show great restraint when talking about him, it’s impressive), treatments for Covid, vaccine development, anti-body testing, and of course the current figures for those tested, those infected and those that have passed.

But I also read some stories online and one, which was a story from a few days ago on the news that just got onto the internet news feed revolves around potential positive impacts of vitamin-D, or more accurately, the NEGATIVE impacts of vitamin-D deficiency. Those two things are not the same thing. Patients with a vitamin D deficiency have seen notably worse outcomes, but it has not been tested, only observed, which means it could be a coincidence.

Remdesivir has also been observed to alleviate some symptoms of the most adversely impacted it appears, increasing recovery time by 3-4 days. So that’s promising, but still, best not to need it.

Vaccines have been in development and various stages of testing since January, while the potus still espoused that the virus was a democratic hoax. Good call orange man.

While I didn’t want this to be a political post, I can’t help but remind my future self of what Turtle man, Mitch the bitch McConnell said yesterday to reporters. He blamed Obama for the U.S.’s inaction to Covid 19. Somehow he felt that it was Obama who cut the infectious disease budget the last three years.

It was not.

That it was Obama who removed the infectious disease liaison in China early last year.

It was not.

That it was Obama who ignored the scientists and other countries under the belief that first the disease was a conspiracy and then that it would just disappear once warm weather arrived.

It was not.

That it was Obama who ignored Dr. Rick Bright and fired him for trying to warn us early on about Covid 19.

It was not.

That it was Obama who did not leave a 69 page National Security Council “playbook” on what to do in case of a pandemic.

He did leave one and it’s been ignored.

And just as bad as any of that, if Mitch or Trump thought our pandemic response was insufficient, they had three damn years to do something about it. Instead they were too busy repealing anything Obama touched and far too concerned about partisan politics. It’s much easier to edit than to create. Obama created. Trump just edits.

So now some states are opening up a bit and some are more aggressive. Already I’ve seen videos of bars in Texas and Wisconsin that are bustling, with no social distancing and no masks. You’d like to think, “Well, the rona will take them out.” But it doesn’t work that way. It may take out some of them, but more likely they will just be carriers and infect other people who may be following stricter guidelines but cross paths with one of these clowns. It’s really embarrassing how people can’t live a somewhat restrained existence for two months without freaking out. Their selfishness is overwhelming. But it also says something about our society and it’s not just about people wanting to get back to their normal. First, they have no knowledge of, or interest in, history. And that’s not even history back to 1918 that I’m talking about, though that pandemic should have served enough notice to all people to work towards solutions for the next one. Just go back to Swine Flu or SARS. Look what South Korea did and how they developed social tracing to isolate infected people and test possibly infected people more quickly. We do none of that. Sure, if you get someone terribly sick with ECOLI, they’ll trace it back to the Denny’s, but that’s about it.

Thinking on a lighter note, I’m hopeful that the football season will be played, with or without fans in the stands. I’m truly fine either way, though of course if fans are allowed, it means we have effective treatments and possibly a vaccine. Here’s hoping!!

Covid 19 April update

Another three weeks have passed in this shelter in place world and not much has changed. Well, the one thing that HAS changed is that the state is finally testing people in large numbers, but it's still not available to everyone. If you have significant symptoms, are a front line worker or know you have been exposed to someone with it, I believe you can get tested now, but it's not easy. One testing location yesterday stopped taking new people about 5 minutes after they opened because they already used their allotment for the day. Crazy. The state is testing like 15k people per day for the most part which means that the number of cases has jumped up (makes sense) to about 2k new cases per day but deaths are pretty erratic still. Yesterday I think there were only like 50 deaths in Illinois. Over the last 5 days actually, the deaths have dropped steadily: 123,107,79,59,50. The two prior days were 119 and 97 so we may be really bending the curve and buying ourselves some time to come up with a vaccine.

A study on 6 Rhesus Macaque monkeys heavily exposed to Covid 19 after given an experimental vaccine, have been symptom free for 28 days. Very promising!!

More people around the country, mostly in states where they believe gun ownership is a God given right and not just a constitutional one, are protesting businesses being shut down, especially as unemployment hits 20%. Their argument is stay home if you want to or are at risk, but don't force me to stay home. They don't really consider that potentially infected people will: go to nursing homes, go shopping, engage in social activities, etc which will jeopardize the employees there and, in turn, their at risk contacts. It's just more of the selfish, ignorant Americana we've come to know and love, especially the last four years.


Anytime there is nice weather, the family heads out for a walk. Our nanny still shows up 4 days a week and goes through e-learning with the kids while Laura and I work.  Not too much has changed there except the kids don't go to school of course or Daisy Scouts or dance. I don't go to the grocery store daily, or almost daily, like I used to. Now I go maybe twice a week and we stock up. Neither of us go into our office one day a week like we used to, so that's saved commuting time, gas and such.

Oh, gas! Let's talk about this whole pandemic and oil. Late last year, the Russians got pissy with OPEC about limiting oil production and went AWOL from OPEC meetings. So the Saudi's said eff you and flooded the market causing oil to plunge to depths we have not seen in some time. THEN the pandemic hit and nobody is driving. Nobody is flying. Nobody is producing things. Smog around LA has lifted. Venetian canals are hosting jellyfish. The world is a much cleaner place as its demand for oil dropped dramatically. Last I checked, oil was around $10 a barrel. If you actually had storage for oil available, you would have gotten paid a week or two ago to accept a contract. Crazy! Gas at the pumps around here are still $1.89 or so, but just 40 minutes south in Kankakee, gas was $1.35. I've heard it's even cheaper in Indiana.

The New World Order

It's been a really busy couple of weeks since I last wrote. My consulting clients (who are no longer going into the office and doing all of their day to day work) have been monopolizing my time with conference calls as we make progress on "other" projects. On the real estate side, I had one closing on 3/31 that had a hiccup on 3/30 that was resolved, but if it hadn't been, the closing would have been delayed. Another deal was supposed to close in late March and that buyer lost his job, so we went onto one of the other offers we received initially and have been trying to keep that on track for a 4/20 closing. And today we had pictures for a new listing going up on the MLS next week. Crazy busy!!!

Two weeks ago on a Monday, I went out with clients in Kankakee to look at some homes that were on the market and to get my oil changed and tire repaired. Later that week, the dealership would close due to Covid-19. My clients have a dog and some of the homes we looked at had dogs, all of which caused my allergies to flare up. Then the grass starting coming out as well trees, so my allergies hit with full force. Tueday-Thursday or so I had post nasal drip and my throat started getting sore. The coughing started Friday and has persisted. Wednesday morning of this week, I woke up and had several minutes of coughing while laying in bed (not unusual for the last week) but really hacked up some mucous from deep in my lungs. Again, not unusual for me in the spring. At no point have I had a fever (88% of covid patients have a fever) nor have I had fatigue, lack of a desire to eat, or lost my sense of smell or taste. It seems unlikely that I have Covid, but boy would it be nice to have enough tests around so that I could actually go get tested and find out!! That's not possible right now though, at least around here. 

After new cases of 900+ and 700+ the last two days, I was wondering if we were flattening out the curve here in Illinois. Unfortunately the number of new cases jumped to 1200, so that thought is out the window. Today Pritzker suggested that we wear masks whenever we leave the house, however he didn't say where we were supposed to acquire these masks. I have a drywall mask out in the garage, but that's about it. 

So that's about it. I'm hoping I don't have Covid-19 and am pretty busy with work. LL has likewise been very busy with work, but the last two days were supposed to be part of our vacation (a trip to St. Joe's with the kids) so she has been back to focusing on cleaning while our cleaning lady is stuck in Poland. Not sure when she's going to be able to get back home, but I think she's scheduled for 4/12. We'll see!

Sheltering at home

So we're under a Shelter in Place order from the Governor, which doesn't mean too much different than what we've doing all week: we're working from home, schools and "non-essential" businesses are closed. Non-essential is being thrown around loosely though as Binny's (a liquor store) is still open, Home Depot is open, restaurants are cooking and delivering/providing pick up, grocery stores are open, Starbucks has drive thru open only, Dunkin Donuts is open, so not much has changed for us personally.

Actually, yesterday, I developed a little bit of a cough, but it seems to just be seasonal allergy related as I definitely have post nasal drip, which doesn't seem to be a symptom of Covid-19. And I'm not feeling bad except for my throat sometimes being a little sore from the drainage. Keeping an eye on things!!

An unfortunate side effect of staying home more than normal is snacking more than I should. Throw in some drainage, which usually causes me to eat or drink, and I could be packing on the weight, if I bothered to weigh myself at least. I'd love to say the gym closure is the reason, but I haven't been going regularly enough to justify that excuse. The hospital did cancel my "elective" surgery on my torn rotator cuff which was supposed to have been done in December. Ugh. Now I'll be lucky to have rehabbed at all by the end of golf season. Ugh!

A very irritating scandal in congress is four politicians who knew about Covid-19 and how bad it was in China, selling stocks ahead of public awareness. Richard Burr is the worst of the group as he downplayed the pandemic and while selling stocks. Kelly Loefller didn't talk up the pandemic like Burr, but she made 16 significant stock trades, 14 were sales and one was purchasing Citrix, the teleconferencing and high tech company. Diane Feinstein from California had a mess of sales as well, but her assets are in a blind trust, which means she doesn't have control over what is owned or not owned or when something is bought or sold (obviously). Jim Inhofe sold $400k and doesn't seem to have any similar excuse, though he wasn't in on the Covid briefings like Burr was. Who knows what he knew or not, but there should be an investigation into the lot of them!

Quarantine: day 3

When the stock market rose significantly on Friday going into an uncertain weekend, I hoped some stability would come to the markets this week. That has not happened AT ALL.  Monday the Dow was down 3,000, followed by moving up yesterday 1,000 and now it's down 900 today so far. So, the instability continues as there is no clarity to the treatments and outcomes and duration of Covid-19 victims, or Sars Cov-2.

It's been a really interesting few days as each day, some new restriction was announced. First it was kids were going to be out for three weeks. Then all sporting events were cancelled including March Madness. They didn't happen all at once though, they sort of trickled out. First they were delayed, then delayed further then ongoing leagues were cancelled. It's nuts. The NFL capitalized on it by keeping their free agency timelines and such so the only sports news to talk about is the NFL. Then bars and restaurants were closed and only available for pick-up or delivery. The recommended group size went from no more than a thousand to no more than 250 to no more than 10. You'd like to see the restrictions just be definitive instead of ever creeping.

I still go to Starbucks in the morning for my coffee, but I can't sit there and relax like I was able to do even on Friday of last week. In the afternoon, I still go to Dunkin for my afternoon coffee and go to the grocery if we need anything. Berkots had plenty of toilet paper yesterday, but they have restricted you to one six pack purchase per trip which is very, very reasonable.

At the beginning of March, there were 6 new cases a day in the U.S. Now there are 1,600 new cases a day, in part because tests are starting to become available finally. They aren't readily available yet, but some exist at least. If you're displaying symptoms, then you can get tested. Otherwise they are reserved for those working with the elderly or government services (police, fire, hospital, etc).

So what are we going to do over the next few weeks? I'm hoping to write here for posterity, finish our tax return, make a decision on the whole home generator and organize the garage. We need to get stuff up off the ground and onto the walls. We'll see how much progress I make!!

Oh, and here's Trump's timeline of disbelief. February 28th he called it a Democratic hoax. March 6 he STILL denied it being a threat and that if you wanted to get a test, you can, which is still not true today. That's what happens when you surround yourself with yes men. Since you can't find the info on Fox, here it is on CNN.

Covid-19

Historical
It's an unusual time in our history, though not just the United States' history, but the entire world's history. And it's not JUST because of Covid-19 or the corona virus. It's the combination of that and the wide spread availability of social media. SARs in 2002 and the swine flu in 2009 really didn't have the same social media exposure. SARs was basically a TV and newspaper disease while the swine flu had more exposure, but not like today.

I KNEW about the swine flu, but really didn't know how many people it impacted (11-21% of the world population) and killed (150k-500k people). Apparently a follow up study said it was no worse than the regular flu though and the only oddity with this variation was that it didn't disproportionately impact the elderly and young.

Social Media and the Fools
So now we get to experience a pandemic in the age of social media. The disease started in Wuhan China, though some Chinese are claiming that American soldiers brought it TO them when they did some sort of military olympics in the fall of last year in Wuhan. I'm doubtful as the crackpot espousing this theory has led several anti-American theories in the past. But that's just the type of thing than any nut job with a keyboard and/or a Twitter account can throw out there, even though Twitter is banned in China.

For me, I'm tired of seeing fools on Facebook talking about how it was a Democrat conspiracy to take down Trump and they had these ignorant thoughts because of people (and I use that term loosely) like Limbaugh and Hannity and their soapbox, Fox News. In general, Fox will dupe their legions by disavowing science, providing opinion as fact and then sometimes just outright making shit up. Then you let those viewers loose on Facebook and look out. Even up to Tuesday or Wednesday of this past week, while the ENTIRE COUNTRY OF ITALY was on quarantine, they were STILL claiming it wasn't that bad and it's a media concoction and "even Dr. Drew" said the media should be held accountable. Well, Dr. Drew is a psychiatrist not a fucking doctor of infectious disease, so his opinion is about as valid as Cardi B's (my first Cardi-B reference in writing by the way). And if you want to believe these dopes, then you'd have to believe that all major sports organizations around the world, the government of Italy, Australia, Singapore, Hong Kong and China all want to negatively impact the POTUS at the expense of their own citizens, fans and wallets. Just ridiculous.




And the final bad part is that if we quarantine effectively (or implement social distance, etc), then we will flatten the infectious outbreak curve and not overwhelm the healthcare system which is what this all about. The virus is going to spread, there's no doubt, but we want to prevent an enormous spike that causes our hospitals to run out of beds, respirators, doctors, nurses, etc. And if the curve is indeed flattened, these dumb asses who are constantly espousing that this is an over reaction and we never needed to do it in the first place will, in their tiny, tiny minds, truly believe they were right. Since you can't prove a negative, we'll only have logic to refute them with and we know how that will go. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

The Market
The broader stock market started declining in late February as reports of Covid-19 became more common and cases started appearing outside of China. Over two plus weeks, the Dow dropped from the mid 29k's to the mid 21k's. That's massive. Basically the Dow went back to where it was mid-2017. Since Wednesday the 4th, the Dow dropped: 900, 300, then cratered 2,000 on Monday, up 1,200, down 1,500, and down 1,300 on Thursday which left Friday to be a very important day. Was it going to be a third day down or a move up that would signal (possibly) a bottom going into the weekend. Friday moves in a time like this are really important because so much information can come out over the weekend and if investors don't want to take the risk of holding securities over the weekend, Friday will be a sell-off. If the securities are too much of a value, they will accept the risk/reward tradeoff. Well, the market soared 1,900 on Friday which is very good news in my opinion. Sure, we'll have up and down days for the next month or so for sure, but getting things under control can bring investors back into the market.

For the stock pickers out there, where can you find value? Not oil companies with the Russia/Opec dispute that's flooding the market and cut oil from $60 to $30. Not airlines or cruise lines either. Or Disney, despite their launch of a channel. One compelling play could be Home Depot ($205) and Lowe's ($96.5). As folks are quarantined, I see many a honey-do list finally getting attacked. Netflix ($336) could get a boost as well. Some super markets may get a bump, but I don't have enough info on any one of them in particular to list it here.  Stay well my friends and wash your hands!

Sports Changes

2020 continues rampaging our house as now I have come down with a cold. Ugh. LL came home yesterday from physical therapy on her foot and she was as white as a ghost (or as pale as Jim Gaffigan). She had to stop on the way home and throw up more than once. No fever, but she had had a headache.
Not sure what the root cause was, but we tried to eliminate things.
Food poisoning was an option.
What did she eat?
She had some hashbrowns from Burger King. Seemed safe enough. Oh and 1/4th of the sandwich she made for Marissa's lunch.
What was on it?
Salami, cheese, mayo.
Uh oh. Let me check the mayo.
It has a "best if used by date" of July 2019. That can't be good.
Call the school and get them to pitch the rest of that sandwich just in case. Make a new sandwich. Run it to school before lunch is over.
Mission accomplished.
LL is feeling better today, but I got worse overnight. And so the year rages on.

As usual, I've been thinking about my dad, especially when I hear of people passing like Robert Conrad. RC starred in a show my dad and I watched in black and white, The Wild, Wild West. It was James Bond meets spaghetti westerns and it was great. Pops and I rarely missed an episode (and this was pre-DVR mind you).

But the topic I wanted to write about was changes in sports that my dad has seen. We always talked about the sports news of the day when we spoke on the phone and often we'd discuss how we'd make a particular sport better. Many of those changes have actually occurred and I'm confident more of our improvements are to come (except quarterbacks wearing tutu's, which was more of an indictment on the lack of hitting and aggressive plan than a literally idea to improve football).

So I thought I'd list out the changes that my dad and I have seen in our lifetime, though I'm certainly missing some from his. These don't really include improvements in sports equipment. It's more about the rules or the way the game is played.

For baseball, he saw the DH introduced in the American League, but neither of us like that rule. We saw limits put on mound visits, automatic walks, screens put up in foul territory, phantom tags of bases and runners being eliminated by play reviews (all things we discussed frequently) and wildcard teams for the playoffs. Even lights at Wrigley qualifies I guess!

In hockey, TV review was a big one along with automatic icing being called, the trapezoid behind the net where goalies can play the puck, two line passes being allowed, and the addition of a second referee, not to mention the overtime shootout.

Football introduced challenges, 2 point extra points, moving back of kicked extra points, playoff expansion, the number of teams and divisions expanding, though we sort of went backwards on defining what a catch actually is. In college football, their overtime is one of the best things in sports and they have also created a four team playoff for the national championship.

In college basketball, they introduced a shot clock and the 3 point line at both levels. I remember many a low scoring game because a team went into the four corner stall. 

Two changes we didn't talk much about were the use of lasers in tennis for line calls and leaving the flag in now when you putt in golf. 

Changes I'm sure my dad would agree are still needed: actually be able to hit QB’s again, college football have to play in a conference tournament to be in playoffs, Super Bowl Sunday needs to be moved to Saturday, four pre-season NFL games reduced to two (starters don't  plays anyway), move the kickoff back to the 30, remove the DH in baseball and move to an electronic strike zone. 

Yeah, my dad (and me quite frankly) have seen a lot of changes, mostly for the better. Now though, I don't get to talk to him about the improvements left to be made or how "they" screwed it up.

A new year, a new decade, a bit of a flood

I guess every year and even every day starts a new decade, but this is my second entry of the more conventional decade: 2020. The year didn't start off well with LL breaking her foot and it's taken about 8 weeks to get to the point where she can walk without a boot or crutches.  She then developed a blood clot in her calf and pneumonia!! Just crazy. Then my sump pump and backup pump both failed during an unusual January rain storm and the basement flooded. It's been a crazy start. Here's what I wrote just after the flood:

I’m not much for astral plane creatures or ghosts and such. Luke 16:19-31 is a fascinating embodiment of why, religiously, it’s unlikely that someone would come back even to warn you about what’s on the other side. That said, this summer and again this fall, I had the urge to replace my aging sump pump (15 years old most likely). If something were to go wrong though, I do have a battery back-up pump just in case.

A week or two ago, something told me I should spend some time to get all of our framed pictures off the ground in the basement and organized to be put up. Framed were wedding pictures, kid pictures autographed stars and athletes. All sorts of wall pics that we just haven't figured out where they should go yet (even though it's been 3 years). I just had this nagging feeling that I needed to get all of these frames up off the floor at a minimum. 

Last night, while LL and the kids were at her folks’ house, I was weathering the storm at the house alone. Earlier in the evening, I had my company party downtown and had been at the office all day, so LL, with her bad foot, didn't join me. Though I didn’t hear the sump pump running, I figured it was on and I was just not hearing it when it flipped on. Still, I had this feeling that I really should go check on it. Turns out it wasn’t running and we got a LOT of rain.

This morning when I went down to see if my intuitions were accurate, I saw and felt the water immediately. Ugh. An hour later I had a new sump pump since I had been in contact with someone already. Another hour and a restoration company first responder was at the house assessing the damage. Two hours later and there was a crew of 6 stripping out the 15 year old carpet.

All in all, the whole thing sucks and I’m sore and it’s back breaking work to clean up. We had two shopvacs and another carpet cleaner picking up water for three hours. Getting the new sump pump working was key though as the flow of NEW water was halted at least. The pump ran pretty continuously for a few hours as more water from the drain tiles found its way to the pump.

So, this is not great but here’s why I’m writing about it: something or someone wanted me to get a new sump pump. Something or someone wanted me to get those pictures off the floor in the room by the sump pump so they wouldn’t be ruined. Someone, but who or how? Well, all I know is that this is exactly the type of thing my dad would want me to have taken care of in advance, just in case. And he would be pissed that I had not.

Sorry Pops!

Connect the Dots

Today was NOT the day I thought it would be; not even close. LL and I spent 5+ hours seeing various doctors and having tests run and images taken; all of them on LL. But if I told you that the events of today were the direct result of me trading in my 2017 Honda CRV for another 2017 Honda CRV, but for one with AWD, you might think that I'd be exaggerating or flat out lying.

But it's true!

The events begin back in August when I decided that with all the driving I'm doing to clients' and the office, and with winter approaching, I really needed to have a car with AWD instead of just FWD. The 2017 Honda CRV I had was the base model and a fine car in good shape with relatively low miles, but I knew I was going to get screwed on the trade in. As I told many folks, including a dealer or two, I'm okay getting screwed a little, just don't fuck me over! And so the search began. Some of the best deals were from dealers who didn't finance or didn't take trade-ins, neither of which I even knew existed. Eventually I found one car and was following it online. The price dropped about $4k one day so I hopped on getting a test drive. Turns out, the car was advertised as having 44k miles on it (mine had 31k I believe), but it really only had 34k! Boom! Did the deal and got the AWD version which also came with the sunroof I wanted, Apple Play for the phone, lane departure warnings, blind spot detection, cruise control that adjusts to the car in front of you, auto headlights including auto bright settings and heated seats for LL.

The car has been great and I've been very happy, until sometime in November, I started getting a low tire pressure warning light. Turns out there's a slow leak in the rear passenger tire and about every three days I need to fill the tire from 24 lbs of pressure to 32 lbs. Clearly it's something I need to take care of, but November was a busy month and I first had to get new tires for the mini-van (which I did) so that it was ready for winter. Since I had to fill up the tire every few days, I left the relatively small inflator (about the size of a shoe box) plugged into an extension cord that was plugged in near the door to the garage. Made sense to me as I had to use it so frequently.

And so it existed in this state for several weeks. Unfortunately, LL decided to hurriedly clean up one day and run things back and forth from the garage. You know where this is going don't you? Yep, she tripped over the cords and fell, breaking her foot. BREAKING her foot. Yikes. The doctor said three weeks with no weight bearing, lots of ice and we'll check it after that. Three weeks later the doctor says another three weeks, only now there's an infection in the foot too. Antibiotics, no weight bearing for another 3 weeks, we'll check it then. Today was the end of 6 weeks so we were planning to go to the appointment and hopefully have her just in a walking boot at worst.  Boy were we wrong about that.

LL had mentioned that her foot seemed discolored often during the last three weeks and that seemed odd. She also complained of cramping in her calf. Both things were mentioned to the doctor's assistant on Monday, but were dismissed and non-emergency details and just come in Friday (today) as planned. When discussing these things with the doctor, there was a perceivable change in demeanor of the doctor. She immediately applied pressure to the calf area asking if it hurt when she did so. LL indicated it did indeed. Well, the discoloration is normal and not a worry, but the calf pain could be a blood clot. Yikes! We need to go get an ultrasound on the calf and see what comes up.

Go to another area of the building, wait, have procedure, await results. Go to PCP instead of foot doctor for interpretation of results.

Yep, there's a blood clot. Now we need to go another section to have a CT Scan with contrast to see if there's any clots in the lungs.

Go to another area of the building, wait, have procedure, await results. Go back to PCP for interpretation.

No blood clots in the lungs. Phew. Oh, but there IS pneumonia in one of her lungs. WHAT? Yeah, pneumonia. She'd started coughing a bit earlier in the week and with her inability to really go outside, someone must have brought it in to her (I'm looking at you Thomas!).

All of that took 5+ hours. Now, I could be all pissy and complain about the time, but you know what I said thanks for at dinner during our prayer? I was thankful that there were no other clots. I was thankful that we have insurance. I was thankful that we have access to all of these types of doctors and their medical equipment so that we can get LL on the road to recovery.

It'll be 10 days on anti-biotics and blood thinners and two weeks of restricted walking followed by a week of easy walking before PT starts for gosh knows how long. Not a fantastic way to start the year!!!

And it all started because I needed AWD on my car......in August. Isn't that the way?

Favorite Smells

Lots has been going on around here including the non re-signing of Joe Maddon as Cubs manager. Much like the firing of Lovie Smith from the Bears after going 10-6 but failing to make the playoffs, I get it. Joe won the world series, but the Cubs have slowly declined since then. Most of that responsibility falls on Theo Epstein the GM for the type of players he has brought in…what they call three outcome players: home run, walk, strike out. They hit a lot of dingers but fail to do the little things to keep an inning alive, like making contact, advancing a runner, sacrificing. This year I yearned for a player like Rod Carew, Tony Gwynn, Cecil Cooper, Pete Rose or George Brett. They made contact….a LOT. Way too many unproductive outs on the Cubs and their pitching staff got old in a hurry.2020 will be an interesting year as there should be significant changes. I’d be fine dumping Bryant, despite his pedigree. We need more players like Zobrist or Hoerner who make contact and work counts. Rizzo does that as well and Heyward when he’s in the leadoff spot. Otherwise the team gets two strikes and just swings harder. Ugh.

670 The Score radio replayed an all-star game interview with Joe where they asked him a ton of questions. https://670thescore.radio.com/media/audio-channel/joe-maddon-answers-laurence-holmes-outside-box-fun-questions One of them was what are your favorite smells? That’s a great question. 

Two of my favorite smells are burning leaves and a gas/oil mix used for small motors like a boat. The former reminds me of nothing in particular, other than vacation and relaxing. You can’t burn stuff in the city, but when you travel to remote places, people there can!

The gas/oil mix smell reminds me of fishing with my dad up on Beaver Island Michigan. Not only was it vacation (though I was a kid so when is it NOT vacation really?), but it was great times with just pops and me. Mostly it was quiet time out on a lake, except for when he farted, but once in a while we interrupted the silence by accidentally catching a splashy fish. My dad was tired of me asking for help baiting my hook, (or did I just really want a lure?) so he put a huge Red Devil spoon on my line which was as big as most of the fish I had caught on any trip up to that point. Much to his chagrin, I caught a 19” Northern Pike using that spoon. Ha! I do remember catching a 16” Rainbow Trout at some point too, but those are the only two memorable catches.

Fresh blacktop has a particular smell that is always appealing to me. I remember when I was 5-6, the park district re-topped the small asphalt parking they had at the end of my street. I can’t pinpoint the other positive associations with that smell, and maybe that’s just the big one, but it was always a summertime smell and that meant fun!!

Late Father's Day

Father’s Day just passed and it was the first one since pops passed away. LL and the kids showered me with gifts and affection all weekend and that really took some of the sting out of him not being here. He was never big on celebrating Father’s Day, or his birthday or whatever, anyway. He just liked to get everyone together. Every Father’s Day, on Facebook, I like to post these pictures in a montage.

I need to find out my great grandfather’s name. For some reason, probably because I never met him, it’s escaping me. The oldest picture there is from 1936 and if there were a picture of my grandfather as a baby, it would have been from 1900! 

On a hot day like today, 90+ in the burbs, pops would be definitely not be going outside, so I'm sure we would have chatted on the phone about who knows what, but most likely what time the Cubs played (since it wasn't 1:20), the weather and if his joints hurt because of the weather, but we'd talk about the sports events of the day and what we were or were not watching. I'm sure he would have asked if LL and the kids got home from Michigan safely or not and to let him know when they did. It would have been a not overly complex or lengthy conversation, but boy do I wish I could have another one with him. 

*****Edit: More information from my mom through some old correspondence. My great grandfather's name was Harry T. Sutton, born in Cambria County, PA 10/26/1873. Son of David and Mary (Boland) Sutton. How about that?? Joseph Earl was my grandpap (that's what they call them in PA). The Sutton's "up the mountain" in Cambria County 

Harry was a carpenter by trade and a member of the union. He passed around 8/1948 and was survived by his wife Marie (Gutierrez), son M. Lee Sutton, Joseph Earl, Mary Schmidt, and Beatrice Eisenberg. Harry had 6 grand children at the time he passed and 7 great grandchildren. Harry had one sister, Molly Weakland. 

Harry was a member of Mount Carmel Church in Altoona and Knights of St. George. He's buried in St. John's Cemetery in Altoona, PA. My mom thinks Harry's parents were married by Prince Gallitzin (a Polish royalty member who gave it up to be a priest in PA). Cool stuff!

1949 Bowman

My dad and I were pretty different people, though we certainly had much in common as well. We both loved sports, mostly baseball and football, but I also enjoy hockey (including skating myself), skiing, tennis, racquetball, lacrosse, and during the World Cup, soccer. Pops called soccer “a communist sport” while we were growing up and ironically one of my sisters played on the first women’s high school team at my high school. Communist sport or not, he was proud of her.

Pops collected knives, watches and guns. He also really liked antique cars from the ‘50’s. I collected baseball cards….and that was about it. Oh, stamps for a little while. Not that I didn’t like guns, but it never seemed all that necessary to own one much less a dozen. Now I do own one though and will probably get a second. Knives just seemed a bit odd to me to collect and I was never a big fan of watches, though my dad collected pocket watches which seem to have some redeeming quality about them. Grandpa Sutton worked on the trains and I think that’s where my dad got an affinity for pocket watches. Some of the pocket watches he collected were actually pretty cool.

The Fox network received most of my dad’s attention, while I prefer actual news. Regardless of how much I loved him, he was always able to fall prey to the tripe they peddle and how they peddle it. I guess that’s the point (as to why they exist) and why they make money hand over fist. Nothing irritated him more than when I would send him a Snopes link that would completely dismiss a “fact” he heard on Fox as complete hokum. Though I took some joy in it, I really just wanted him to find another news source so we could have intelligent conversations about current events. But you weren’t going to change dad’s mind….on pretty much anything!

We both had great senses of humor though, enjoyed Seinfeld WAYYY too much, loved watching football, enjoyed a good baseball game, loved my kids and a good bowl of chili. Loved getting the family together at the holidays and giving gifts. Neither of us were too good at receiving gifts.

Speaking of which, I’m reminded of probably the best gift I ever gave someone and certainly the best I ever gave my dad. It was a Christmas gift and involved baseball. My dad was 13 in 1949 and he was collecting baseball cars, despite not having much money. Cards were not very expensive, but if you’re poor, everything is expensive. Pops collected just about half the set of 1949 Bowman’s, the second year of baseball cards printed in color. Fast forward to the mid 1970’s and my dad has a wife working the second shift, he has two jobs himself while taking college classes and oh yeah, they have three kids. Those roughly 100 baseball cards from his childhood fetched $100, which would make a wonderful Christmas for his family or buy food for nearly a month. There was no decision to be made and he sold the cards.

Fast forward again, this time to 30 years or so. While going through some papers, we came across a list of those baseball cards typed up by my mom. I asked what it was and they relayed the story to me. I was crushed, especially knowing how I felt about the cards I collected as a child. So over the next few years, given a list of the cards that my mom had saved, I bought every card he had sold, and then some.  I like to think that at least one of them was actually one of the cards that he owned. Until the day he died, it was the only gift I saw him open that made him tear up.

The Black Guy from Springfield

Now, I know I’ve jumped all around while putting down these memories, but that’s ok. It doesn’t have to be sequential. My memories of dad flood back all at the same time, as one point in time, so me organizing them into a particular decade or based on where we lived, is really just for the reader’s benefit. The past is the past and while it happened over time, it’s as much a point in time (the past) as anything.

Not many people know that while I graduated from the University of Illinois with two degrees, I didn't actually get into the business school right away. The application day snuck up on me and my family as we didn't have anyone have to meet an application deadline for college before. Even getting an application in at all was somewhat lucky as it was just casually mentioned to me at lunch in the cafeteria that the deadline was the next day. With a late application and acceptance into the liberal arts school, from which I transferred as soon as possible, I also got a late housing assignment. The late housing assignment came with a questionable classmate who turned out to be a very obnoxious person with whom I only had minimal contact in short bursts during my class days. But that's not all. I was actually in a "triple" that would later be turned into a "quad" with two other people! Yikes! One of those guys, a notice from the University told me, was Samuel Moore from Springfield. My dad was very upset, because he was positive "Samuel" was a black guy. It didn't bother me at all, but having TWO roommates, and later THREE, DID bother me. As it turned out though, Sam was not in fact black, and the worst roommate ever was the one I selected from my high school class. Sam and I moved into a double after our first semester. 

While I was in college, my parents came down to see me a few times pretty much every year. Those were great visits, filled with love, new shoes and food. Due to my academic performance in high school, making the honor roll every semester of every year, my dad lost a bet and bought me a car, albeit a used one (1977 Buick Regal in 1984). It ran well enough to get me back and forth from school as needed, so even if my folks couldn’t come visit me, I could go back home some weekends.

But sometimes my dad would want to make his presence known without visiting. On my 19^th or 20^th  birthday, he did just that. I was working my shift in the lunchroom, refilling beverages I believe was my main task that day, when in comes a belly dancer. Yep, my dad had conspired with my roommate to get me a belly dancer in front of everyone eating lunch that day. She had me sit in a chair in the front of the lunchroom and danced right in front of me. My dad howled on the phone later that day when I called him, and anytime we talked about that day in the years following. Ugh.

Pops knew Sam was a good guy and let him know it every chance he could. When my folks came down to take me out to dinner, Sam came with. Food for Joe meant food for Sam as well. And that was just fine for Sam, the second youngest of 13 kids and whose father had passed away. Sam would end up going to law school and we’d room together for my 5^th year as well, making it 3 of the 5 years that we lived together. He certainly could have asked for a better roommate, but I couldn’t have!!

Sam in his Adidas shirt with me standing in the doorway. 

This was me on the left of the picture, Sam in the middle and Keith (across the hall) on the right. 

We were dressed in our bathrobes for Halloween. 

Whistling Memories

Before cell phones and the internet, everyone played outside after school and all day during the summer. We’d wander around the little wooded area down the street, or play a sport in the street (softball or football usually) or ride our bikes around the area. It was glorious. The only problem was: when was it time to go home? 

One family, the Kibbys, had a light on their porch that we could all see and when it was turned on, they had to go home. My dad would whistle. That’s right, whistle. He could whistle really loud and not one of those stick your fingers in your mouth and make a piercing noise whistle. Nope. His whistle was melodic and unmistakable.  If we were playing within a two to three block area, we could hear the whistle or someone we were playing with would hear it. Normally that was the call for dinner, but sometimes it was also the “Hey, you’re out too late and I don’t know what the hell is wrong with the Kibby’s porch light but it’s time to come home!” whistle. It was truly a sound of summer.

Another sound of summer, though not relegated to the summer, was my dad farting. You may be appalled, but it wasn’t uncommon to hear farting around my dad. He honestly couldn’t care less and often thought it hysterical. One vivid memory I have of him farting is when we were fishing up on Beaver Island. Now, we’d go “fishing” on one of the lakes, but it was mostly just time for my dad to relax and do a whole bunch of nothing in the nice calm, serene environment. 

We didn’t get up early to catch the early fish feeding or stay until dusk to get them hitting at the end of the day. Nope, we’d securely lock in the late morning to early afternoon, sun directly over-head time slot.  The old 5 h.p. Evenrude motor would get filled up and we’d have the reserve tank as well all lined up. To add insult to the fishing injury however, he would often put an impossibly large lure on my hook, essentially ensuring that I wouldn’t even get a nibble. One year it bit him in the ass though as I caught a 19” Pike that he then had to clean so we could eat. But clean it he did, as with other fish of size that we caught over the years. He definitely had those basic “dad skills” down pat.