They razed the local Taco Bell and build a new one on the same spot. That troubles me.
 
What led to that decision? Did corporate come out and say, "This one's too far gone to salvage or add anything onto. Let's just start over," and call for a bulldozer?
 
Was it mice? Termites? Bad attitudes? I've heard that once morale falls to a certain point, the only cure is to fire everybody and start over. But that doesn't explain the wrecking ball. Unless attitudes can permeate walls, like mold, afflicting each worker as he's brought into the fold.
 
Apparently, it is just that which inspired this rebuilding.
 
The new Taco Bell is, of course, aesthetically better than the 1960s painted-brick border-town motif. The old place had all these arching pillars in its very small seating area, so I always felt as if I were about to bump into someone. The new open-yet-subdued layout looks like a kid-friendly Starbucks inside, with dangling pendant lamps in amber tones and chest-high bistro seating in the middle.
 
But the biggest effort seems to have been put into staff motivation. On the wall next to the counter, a placard exhorts employees passing through to become "customer maniacs." (Should I expect a grappling hug?) They've also given new meaning to the bell, inviting customers who've received excellent service to yank on a clapper by the exit door.
 
My advice is, don't sit on that side of the restaurant. Random clanging noises aren't my idea of ambience, even for fast food, unless the mascot is a rodent with a middle initial.
 
The food is unchanged, I'm sorta happy to announce. I was driven to TB by the recent round of price hikes at Chipotle, which was a tad expensive for fast food already. I will miss my Wednesday routine of sitting at the bar reading the Dallas Observer over tacos, but I can transfer to this new-and-improved competitor without feeling as if I've gone downmarket. The clientele isn't quite as well-appointed as Chipotle's, and that has as much to do with location as with image. The Chipotle on Lemmon Ave. drew medical staffers from somewhere; I can't imagine they come from as far as the hospital district on Harry Hines, but that's all there is for miles. I always knew if I choked on something, I'd be in good hands at Chipotle. At Taco Bell, if my gordita gets stuck halfway down, one of the guys will run out to his truck for an auger to clear my airway.
 
At today's lunch, I sat writing for a while before realizing I was directly facing another male in the adjacent booth. Strange chemistry abounded. Guys aren't comfortable facing each other for long, the experts say; it's considered a challenge, even at this distance, roughtly 10 feet. His heavy brow, hulking posture, and olive skin said one thing to me: Palooka. If we had locked eyes for more than a second, I'm convinced we'd have suddenly, involuntarily lunged at each other. Explain that to the cops, huh?
 
My receipt came with the usual invitation to win $5,000 filling out a survey online, and I've wasted enough of my employer's time on those. If you want my opinion, you'll have to pay me for it, not play lottery games with my emotions. I want money, or a personal thank-you from Mr. Bell himself.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:22 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
Post contains 567 words, total size 3 kb.

Automation of certain processes, such as desktop publishing, does not make for higher productivity.

Rather, it enables decisionmakers to put off making decisions longer.

Think about that. When we used to publish things via Linotype, "paste-up" (which means exactly what it sounds like), or on web presses with metal plates, the higher-ups had to decide on a message and verbiage up to weeks ahead of when their publication hit the street.

Now, they can make changes literally minutes before press time.

And that's exactly what they do.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 06:10 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 90 words, total size 1 kb.

I had baby duty this afternoon, and the rascal fell asleep in the backpack as we walked the dog. I transferred him to the sofa, then set one cell phone next to him and called it from the other. I call this the Verizon Baby Monitor. He stayed asleep while I showered, phone at the ready.
 
this also gave me time to troubleshoot the sedan, online. Yesterday its power steering seemed to fail intermittently. Squeeky said it happened to her, too, and the windows wouldn't work. I heard clicking under the dashboard simultaneous with all that and the seat-belt warning light, and the combination of symptoms put me in dread: Gremlins.
 
Simply put, the steering shouldn't act up simultaneous with electrical items such as the windows and radio (a late-discovered symptom). Those systems don't talk to each other, or at least they should not. Way back when, Gordon Baxter wrote a delightful column about a friend's brand-new Chevrolet Caprice that behaved as if its electronic mind had gone M5. No one ever solved the problem; they just sold the car in the daytime, when no one would be turning on the headlights, trigger of all the weird interactions.
 
Problems that complex befuddle me. The only way to remedy them is to talk to someone who's done it before. For that, I again have the Innertubes to thank.
 
At the Ford Taurus owners' club, I keyed in "steering windows radio" and racked up a dozen hits from other Taurusians who'd had the same problem. Reading them in chronological order, I found myself rooting for each troubleshooter as he blew money on wrong answers and reported back to the thread: it's not the alternator; not the battery terminals; not the connectors under the dash. Without this narrative, I'd have been as blind as the first victim.
 
Finally, someone nailed it: the transmission selector indicator, also called the neutral safety switch.
 
which makes absolutely, positively no sense. The gear shifter should not affect the windshield wipers. But on this car, and maybe others, it does, and I confirmed it by shifting into neutral when the radio failed. The radio promptly came back on. I would never, ever have guessed the connection.

If I ever need my sense of wonder restored, I will go back to the Ford Taurus message board and search for "crazy."

The good news is, I got the part shipped to me for $25. The best news is, it appears to be a 15-minute operation with no spillage of oil, or (with any luck) blood.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:25 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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i simply have to work faster.
 
Glenn Reynolds just pointed out that "Chattanooga Choo-Choo" was as old in 1969 as Pink Floyd's "The Wall" is today.
 
Yet, radio stations still play "The Wall."
 
I had started making notes on a similar observation at the neighborhood pool last week, on the Fourth. The teenage lifeguards had a boombox going, which they were free to operate until the hired deejay arrived. Lynyrd Skynyrd, Van Halen, and other 1970s "classic rock" poured out of the speakers. I mentioned to Squeeky that this would be like us playing Bill Haley and the Comets at our high-school parties, a thought that never would have occurred to us. In fact, back then we turned on the Skynyrd-Halen axis, too.
 
"Maybe it's because they know today's music is trash."
 
And that stopped me. One of the symptoms of Old Farthood I'm trying to avoid is the tendency to dismiss whatever the teenagers like as garbage. That's what the stereotypical parent-type did 25 years ago, and we rolled our eyes at them.
 
But, really. Most of today's music is garbage, although some of it is not. The gangsta rap I'm sick of because it's unoriginal. I'll also pass on Britney and her clones because even the catchy tunes have none of the subtleties that make a song enjoyable after the first few listenings.

i did like what i heard on the radio in 2004, when I spent almost every night for a week in the garage rebuilding Scooter's engine. I tuned in to a station that catered to teens, hoping the upbeatness would keep me going—unlike NPR, which either delights, angers, or bores. (Two of those are bad for precision labor.)

In that week, I learned that if it's hot in here, we should take our clothes off; it just takes some time, little bit a little bit; the real world is a lie you can rise above; and I'm a hazard to myself. Largely the same sentiments I felt as a lonesome teen, and I got the same guilty pleasure listening to it this time around. It's the music that doesn't ask more of you than a little resonance, that's all.

But no teenager plays this stuff in public, where others might hear. The sentiments—I'm a failure, I just need to be silly, I want her but she doesn't want me—are too embarrassing.  No one wants to be seen identifying with it. It's what you play when no one else is in the car.
 
So I was heartened by my garage music experience; all is not lost, culturally speaking. I just haven't heard anything else on the radio lately that was worth anything. (Maybe that's why there's so much illegal file-sharing. Who wants to pay for that junk?)
 
Musical-culturally speaking, we've hit a cul-de-sac, with the last "new" thrown in being gangsta rap, and all anyone can think to do with that is to go evermore vulgar and louder. And I think they've hit bottom. Is there anything too rude to say now? Is anything shocking, or worth getting riled about? Nope. Jabber on about murdering your girlfriend in a particularly misogynistic manner, then slaughtering the cops who come after you, and nobody bats an eye. It's all been sung before. You can even "freak" to it.

perhaps that's why it appears more kids are listening to the same music their parents enjoyed at their age. I'm not sure how to handle that. Frankly, I'd be uncomfortable if a youngster I knew expressed a sincere interest in my dated music, or worse, my books, movies, and drinking habits. I've heard there's been a revival of '80s music in the dance clubs, and that makes sense because that's when the best dance music was made. They fill the floor for Spandau Ballet's "Gold," and they all raise their hands when Tony Hadley soars into "You could leave me standing so taaaaaallll." All I can think of when I hear that is, that was my music! And I wonder if the clubs are as much fun now as Angles nightclub was in Austin circa 1984.
 
I hope so. The exuberance with which we took to the floor, even with complete strangers, is something I longed for even after I'd passed the acceptable age. And that's where I start to feel like the teens listening to the personal, embarrassing stuff. I'm not sure I want to share it with anyone. And from a social standpoint, I don't want to be identified with the next generation.
 
The only thing worse than a reactionary is an older person trying to act young. He embarrasses himself and those he's trying to imitate; nobody wins. Perhaps I fear that more than I should. Maybe there really shouldn't be this great divide between the children of the '60s and the children of the '90s in what they like to hear. Maybe the idea of generational strife is one of those 1960s falsehoods our media have promulgated and echoed for all this time, and it's time to shake it off.
 
In that light, I couldn't be happier to know that my nieces and nephews—and (gulp) their children—have a healthy curiosity about my CD collection. I'll even burn copies for 'em, evil uncle that I am.
 
Maybe then they won't fight over that part of my estate.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:59 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
Post contains 978 words, total size 6 kb.

Every time I start to think, "Maybe I'd write more if I just had a softer chair/LCD monitor/bigger desk," I try to remember that Anna Karenina and all of Shakespeare were written before typewriters. Or electric lights. So what's my excuse?

a banner day in the free-stuff business. Housketeers will know that I can rarely pass an opportunity to acquire something I might use someday, especially if it's free or on clearance. Leaving for the office, I passed Giant House (seen here under construction) just after the HVAC team had left, and spotted piles of flex-duct in the trash bin out front.

I have a ventilation problem in my study (low airflow), so I stopped the car just as the contractor himself appeared out front on his phone.

I am not sure what contractors did all day before the advent of cell phones. In my experience with them, they are either on the phone, or measuring, which means they are about to make a phone call or have just finished one.

So I entered the site and waited a polite distance until he finished talking, then introduced myself and asked if he had plans for the duct scraps. He said no, and I could have anything else in the bin, for that matter, as it all needed to be picked up anyway.

(I should note here that this is a smart contractor. One of the first things he does after the lumber arrives on-site is erect a fence to keep passersby from thinking he runs a charity building-supply store for the whole neighborhood. Smart, but not paranoid; at least he lets the scrap stuff go to people like me.)

His bin overfloweth, the pile of silver duct ends looking as if the Robinson family's robot had crossed Dr. Smith one too many times. No way could I move this stuff home with my sedan, especially not in the time left before work. I reversed to my house (about 180 feet) and returned in the Explorer. And this is how the operation concluded, as seen through Squeeky's lens from the kitchen window:

That she did not lock the doors immediately means she loves me. Right?

That afternoon, Squinx helped me tote the stuff through the house and into the attic. I have enough to do something ridiculous, so I'll report back once I have done so.

we saw the sun this weekend, and all the greenery coughed and sputtered and shook off the water long enough to take in some balance. Heat comes with sun, and our sweat glands took a while to adjust. Hard not to stay inside for that first wave; we have barely seen a day over 90 this year.

Even mice are taking a break. I set two traps in the attic, having heard a high-speed chase going on up there the other night.

The traps are a new type put out by Victor, longtime maker of the old metal-bar-on-wood rodent-capital-punishment dispensers. (These have been around so long, the red "V" printed on them could serve as the international symbol for decapitation.) I was skeptical buying them, remembering the better-mousetrap saw and thinking that plastic is not a good material for killing things. At least not quickly.

My suspicions were confirmed when the little rascals made off with both pieces of raw shrimp. One trap sprung; I am convinced they have learned to operate hand tools.

Squinx has a hard time accepting that mice must be killed to get rid of them. Too much Disney, I fear. So I must explain that real mice don't understand they aren't welcome at Rittenhouse, and remember all that Pink Panther stuff Daddy put in the attic to keep us warm all winter? The mice poop all over it. She accepted the story, though I can tell her heart's not in it.

so it's another day for you and me in paradise, aka the office and some pressing, nighttime freelance work I hope will pay for this month's trip to Arkansas. That will be an undertaking—worst double-entendre I've ever made—to put Dad's ashes back into the ground he inhabited as a boy. As you might imagine, that event will shake me to the core, as I'm leading it and I haven't been back to the farm in more than 20 years. Prayers for me, please. Have yourself a good week.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:43 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Note to all marketers of high-end products:

I am an upwardly mobile, early-adopting, fulltime professional head-of-household with lots of discretionary income. I am also an opinion leader in the community. It's been suggested I am among my city's trendsetting Fickle 500, which I will neither deny nor confirm, because the Fickle 500 are just that way.

Anyway, my point is, if you have some sort of tony event in town to introduce your product or service, and you need early-adopting upwardly mobile professionals with lots of discretionary income to create buzz via free samples in exquisite surroundings, I am your man.

I am most interested in helping you evaluate my likes and dislikes of high-end items like cigars, wines, prime beef, sports cars, and exotic new cocktails. I'm even open to new concepts in marketing, so if you ever decide to put women's swimwear through focus-group testing, I am willing to help you establish your focus.

You could even re-roof my house, just to see how it impacts me as a consumer.

I'm available most evenings from 6-11 p.m. I can be reached on my cell phone (which needs replacing!) or by e-mail. However, I am most impressed with printed invitations delivered by courier. Preferably during hours when my neighbors would notice.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:47 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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When the first McCastle went up down the block, one neighbor at an impromptu block party observed:

"Who would pay $600,000 to live around us?"

Good question. The builder, however, is having no problem finding buyers, even though his houses cost three to four times the ones he's replaced. They're falling like dominoes and going up like weeds in spring. One walk down my block and you'd think the place was sponsored by Tyvek.

So we must be pretty good neighbors, even gritching as we do about the transition we find ourselves in the midst of.

We should be thankful. Some areas are downwardly mobile, a few upwardly, but most are neutral. This one sat dormant for 50 years, one of those clichéd "best-kept secrets" in Dallas that was neither exorbitantly priced nor undervalued to the point that riffraff found their way in. Let's be honest, as I have in another post: Everyone wants to live in a relatively safe neighborhood among people like themselves. This is one of those places, if you're a middle-class family that doesn't want to live more than 10 miles from downtown.

The Rittenhouses squeaked into this enclave a few years ago, just before it shrugged off the telecom bust and resumed its climb beyond one-earner affordability. This particular plot was the subject of a years-long legal battle after which the inheritor said "whatever" to our concession demands and gave us one-sixth of the asking price back.

We needed every penny, too. Yet, for all the sweat equity we have in this place, there are moments when I wonder if I should put a bulldozer through it, stash the wife-and-kids in a hotel, and build a McCastle for a $200,000 profit. Which I would probably lose in code violations.

Then I look at the trees. They're why people pay more than half a million to live near us. Mr. McCastle knows that, and it's why he leaves every one of them standing, if he can, and builds around them. There is no substitute for a 50-year-old royal oak arching over your front walkway. I try not to envy my neighbors, but one of them has six or seven full-grown sycamores towering over his house. They whisper to each other at the slightest breeze and drop huge, easy-to-rake leaves in the autumn. Cottonwoods, magnolias, red oaks, lace-bark elms, live oaks, and crape myrtles make this place easy to parse on Google Maps. You just look for the big, green blotches you know, then pick out fragments of rooftops between them.

Still, I don't quite know how people make what they need to buy a home here. I would have to acquire a second, wage-earning spouse to get into Rittenhouse Estates now. And that's not legal, at least not yet.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 06:58 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 467 words, total size 3 kb.

Way back when I was a kid, maybe six or eight, I remember seeing a commercial that was shot in downtown Houston. It struck me then because most of what I saw on TV seemed to happen elsewhere, like L.A. or New York or Mayberry. Houston? The only thing we had was the local news. So the image stuck with me of all these kids singing in a park downtown where you could see the Tenneco building right behind them.

I pestered my father to take me there for so long, he finally gave in one evening when we were in that part of town. We drove around for a while, and I never actually found the spot. But now I wonder why I felt the need. Did I expect the chorus to still be there, maybe with lights and cameras on them? I don't know.

i can understand this sort of curiosity in a child trying to bridge the gap between television and reality. But now I know there are industries built on that same impulse felt by sane adults. One example is the tour buses in Los Angeles that drive people around just to look at celebrities' houses, as if. "On your left, the home of Barbara Feldon," and what do people expect to see? Miss Feldon through a window lavishly entertaining the cast of Laugh-In? Or standing out on the walkway in curlers waiting for the newspaper?

But even I, a full-grown cynic, have fallen for this. While roaming Manhattan on foot with my wife just a few years ago, we suddenly decided to seek out the 12th Precinct of NYPD Blue fame.

Never mind that we knew NYPD Blue was shot in L.A. like every other police show, and that the 12th we knew was probably made of painted foam blocks and now serves as a backdrop for most of the street scenes in CSI: Law & Order.

We asked a policeman to point us toward the 12th, and I'm grateful he spared us the humiliation we deserved. We must've seemed genuine, because he told us the 12th Precinct did not exist, and he showed no trace of sarcasm or condescension. In fact, he rattled off the precincts he knew before it dawned on him that we were only looking for the 12th because we'd seen it on TV. He chuckled a bit, but I think he understood, probably having encountered more tourists on his beat than criminals. Then he knocked the crap out of us.

Okay, not really. Regardless, we felt more than a little foolish. What were we expecting, to walk into the 12th and see Sipowicz at his desk? The cameras still rolling outside?

in my travels, i have been shown bob newhart's building in Chicago; the house in San Francisco where Basic Instinct was set, and the long, Georgetown staircase where Father Karras met his fate in The Exorcist. Each time, I paused, looked, and said something like, "Huh." And I know my life was not enriched as a result of having seen those things.

Nonetheless, if I were driving through Scranton, Pennsylvania, today, I would keep one eye open for the Dunder Mifflin building, and if I found it or one that looked close enough, I would expect to drop in and find Michael Scott bounding around the place.

I think there's a connection here to an essay I haven't written yet, about the human mind's vulnerability to images. When I get around to it, I'll link back.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 07:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 592 words, total size 4 kb.

If it rains any more, we will need a vacation, preferably to Oman. I hear it never rains there, and the locals who have money take trips to Burma in typhoon season just to feel the stuff falling on them. I will swap houses with an Omani for a month, cheap. Just feed the dog, please.

When I first moved to Dallas, and for about the first five or six years thereafter, there was a three-week period twice a year when it rained pretty much nonstop. "Jungle rot weather" I called it, and I felt miserable. Of course, I didn't have a lawn then.

But some time in the late 1990s, the rains dried up. The summers seemed to get hotter. After I obtained a lawn, a drought commenced. Burn bans, rationing, etc. I wondered where the jungle-rot period went.

As you've probably heard, it is back in North Texas with a vengeance. We've been fortunate not to suffer any flooding here at Rittenhouse, but I haven't dared to look in the crawlspace. When the two-foot-deep water-meter hole out by the curb is brimming, that tells me all I need to know about what's under the house. No need for a dipstick, but it'd give the neighbors a laugh to see me using one.

I arrived home yesterday to find the whole family on the sidewalk, playing in the rain. Why not? It was warm, the water fresh, and the kids don't care. Too many hours in the house, anyway.

Everything outside is green, lush, fertile. Such a contrast to the winters around here, when the grass turns brown and stubbly and the trees go stark and sclerotic against the pale-blue sky.

We haven't had rain like this in years. I like the green, most of all. It's the color of life on earth.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 306 words, total size 2 kb.

Today, I sat across a table from a man who told a lie. But I didn't call him on it.

The story sounded legit. Maybe you've heard it—the one about staying in a foreign hotel and communicating an innocuous request to the staff in your broken version of their language, only to have your words taken for something bawdy.

The first time I heard this one, years ago, it involved someone's Spanish-speaking uncle calling the front desk in an American hotel. He needed a light bulb replaced but he didn't know the right English word to complete "I need a ___." So he took the Spanish word for bulb (foco) and just lopped off the o—uncles being uncles, you know.

Naturally, the clerk took this as a request for a call girl.

This time, the story was told in first person. The English-speaking businessman said he asked the Italian maid for more of the delicious figs that had been set out in a fruit bowl in his room. However, the Italian word for fig comes in two genders, and he got it wrong, inadvertently requesting an intimate part of the female anatomy. The blushing maid bolted the room, and hilarity ensued between the insulted hotel manager and the hapless traveler.

I didn't connect these two tales until about an hour after I heard the second one. Even so, if I'd realized our raconteur was fibbing as he spoke, I probably wouldn't have pointed it out. We were in a social setting, where even to imply that someone present is lying—particularly when the story is told for amusement and not to push a timeshare deal or something—is considered bad manners.

Furthermore, the situation reminded me of my early teen years, when I'd make up adventure stories to prove to my friends that I was just as—or more—daring. I was either good with details or they didn't have the argumentative skill to point out the unlikeliness of my tales, because I continued for years. Only the older boys would call me a liar, and I quickly learned not to ply them.

So, to some extent, I could empathize with this latter-day locutor. But I'm still perturbed that an adult would lie in the first person. It degraded his status in my eyes. It's one thing to pass along an urban legend; quite another to claim it happened to you.

I still have no proof the story is made up, though I found a similar theme at Snopes. For me, hearing a similar story from two different people is just too much of a coincidence. Maybe foreign-language instructors tell these stories to illustrate the dangers of guessing, and they get passed along just to have something funny to say.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:47 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 462 words, total size 3 kb.

Little Roo arose at 4:45 and bounded around the bed for half an hour. No way was he going back to sleep on his own.

I took him into the kitchen, made coffee, then sat down with him at the computer, where I searched YouTube with the term "psychedelia."

I played this three times full-screen, and he slumped over asleep.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:15 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 64 words, total size 1 kb.

I'd like to see what Michael Moore has to say now, but I don't want him to have my money.

So, I'm going to the multiplex, buying a ticket to another show about the same start time, and ....

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 08:12 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 43 words, total size 1 kb.

Finally, a full night's sleep. I awoke nearly recovered from the previous night's wake-a-thon, greatly relieved that we weren't tested any harder than we were.

Of course, I'm assuming Squeeky slept as well, or nearly as well, as I did. Perhaps I just didn't wake up with Little Roo last night. I'll have to wait to find out, as both of them remained unconscious as I slipped out of the bedroom.

for once, the state legislature has pleased me. The only bill I felt compelled to contact my rep and senator about was this one, pertaining to the red-light cameras that sprang up all over Dallas this year.

I've always hated that kind of Big Brother stuff. People are not robots, and they should not be surveilled and indicted by robots. There are too many variables in law enforcement that need the human touch. Robots lack discretion and know nothing other than zero-tolerance. It's just not keeping with the American way of treating each other.

Plus, they're eyesores, and a local company gets a cut from each citation, which I find deeply disturbing because the incentive is there for mischief. Matt Labash at Weekly Standard wrote the kind of article I would write if I were a full-time journalist, on this very topic. The corruption he found suggested to me that our Sen. Carona would be unsuccessful in his bid to untangle the smarmy public-private conspiracy that brought this nanny-state project to life. Sometimes, there's too much money and too many cronies for a decent legislator to fight.

Which is why his success astounded me. I'm going to guess that ACS, the company making a buck on the Dallas traffic-camera deal, lacked the lobbying horsepower to stall Sen. Carona's bills. They may have also been weakened by a recent stock-option backdating deal that ended in a couple of resignations at the top.

Regardless, I'm a happy guy over this. I was ready to go all Minuteman on them. I had even video-recorded the duration of yellow lights at one of the monitored intersections just before the cameras went up, hoping to catch the city shortening the light to run up the ticket count. That's one of the aspects Labash wrote about, and it didn't surprise me. Government has no shame when it comes to shaking down its citizens.

squeeky just came in to tell me she was awakened only once all night. Praise God. We have what might be a very busy weekend coming up. Good to head into it with a full load of sleep behind us.

I hope you have a good one, yourself. And remember to have some kind of fun.

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:30 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
Post contains 447 words, total size 3 kb.

We are back to nights when both children seem to conspire in robbing their parents of sleep. Squinx arose just as I was nodding off and began bawling inconsolably. I tried to talk to her, hold her, ask her questions to snap her out of it; nothing worked. She sat bolt upright and wailed, staring past me so hard that I even turned to look. Too many horror movies have taught me that children can see things adults can't, so imagine my relief when behind me I found no towering zombie or horned beast.

Little Roo just has nights where he sleeps on a thin branch, falling off anytime one of us moves -- or doesn't. Eventually, the fear that he will awaken keeps me from a deep sleep, and I arise at 5 a.m. thinking I'll have time to write, only to stop at the living-room sofa to recapture something, anything of a night's sleep in the hour I have before breakfast, Bible study, and shower.

So I've fallen short of writing a daily entry in this space. My apologies for that. I know it's disheartening to visit a site expecting new stuff each day, only to find the same ol' thing as yesterday. (RSS feeds can fix that, so as soon as I can set one up for you, I will.)

Posted by: Michael Rittenhouse at 05:55 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Oh, no way is this going to be any good.

I have enjoyed the michelada in a Mexico City ice house that didn't care whether I was a tourist. The bartender shredded at least one whole lime, maybe three, into a frozen mug before drowning them with Modelo and a splash of tomato juice and black pepper. Makes a beer into a meal.

By the time Miller gets its recipe past the "taste engineers" and focus groups, I'm confident it will be the Taco Bell of micheladas. You simply cannot replicate fresh crushed citrus in a product that ships nationwide.

That's the beauty of crossing age 40: You've had time to earn your prejudices.

That bar—I wanted to turn around and leave the minute we walked in. Like everything in Mexico, it operated on razor-thin margins, hence the flourescent lights overhead. That's right: a drinking establishment lit like a hospital. The rest of it fit the standard Western Hemisphere tavern template: narrow and deep, tables on one side, bar running down the middle third of the other. All the male staff wore white shirts and black pants. I do not recall any waitresses.

We were in town for my best friend's wedding a couple of days hence. He took the four of us out for drinks in some crevasse of the city where we passed an outdoor market that had fruit and vegetables piled so high they looked ready to topple over. Unlike those near the capital, where signs in English warn that the products have not passed any kind of inspection, these stalls looked like Hollywood sets. For the first time visiting Mexico City, I felt charmed.

so it was momentum that kept me walking into the bar against my impulse to about-face. We found a table in the middle and ordered a round of micheladas, confident that although we were obviously gringos in this most parochial of foreign-city hangouts, there were four of us after all, so we could let our guard down a bit. That no heads had turned to follow our entrance helped. Then we began to get a funny feeling that we were being watched.

Clever use of the bar's mirrors allowed me to spot our surveillors before they knew we knew they were watching. Four girls at a table a few yards away were staring holes in us. First one, then another, then two at a time, before returning to a conversation that anyone could tell was about the well-dressed norteamericanos across the room.

I say "girls" because the drinking age in Mexico is 18. We were all 20-somethings, so it didn't matter. But their shamelessness surprised me, anyway. All I knew about Hispanic women was: None of them ever wanted anything to do with me.

Years earlier, a Chicano workmate had clued me in: "You got to speak Spanish," he confided, "else they won't listen to you." And he was right. I had never tested my fragmentary, college-credit español, and probably never would, it was so bad. But another honky friend had warned me the worst line ever to use with a Latin American woman was, "I've seen you someplace before," because she—having been reared in a traditional society—cannot ever acknowledge having noticed a strange man anywhere else. His girlfriend had the Phoebe Cates look and spoke only Spanish, so I figured he knew.

still, even though we'd made no overtures toward them, those four wouldn't take their eyes off us. I'm sorry to say our nerve and circumstances failed us, in the end. But what would we have done, even if we'd hit it off? A thousand miles was the least of what separated us. A cheap rendevous was out of the question, as we all shared rooms at the hotel and, frankly, we weren't the type. So, after a couple hours' telling each other tales over bracing, tart micheladas, we settled up and ambled out.

That marks probably the only time I've left a bar and the girls were the ones disappointed.

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The other shoe turned up. I spotted it out walking Wolf Dog about 100 yards east of here, in the alley behind a house under construction.

Hard to know what to do with this. Technically, no crime occurred, unless I can charge the guy with illegal dumping. Does EPA care what one does with old rubber thongs?

Maybe I should wear them about, just to see if anyone looks at me a little too long.

pre-father's day spoiled me. Tomorrow cannot top today, when Squinx prevailed on me to buy her a set of training wheels at Big Box. We had accepted a hand-me-down bicycle from a parishioner two weeks ago, and the only hitch was, no training wheels came with it. Squinx having just barely mastered the tricycle, we set the bike aside and figured it would be months before she'd be willing to mount it.

Peer pressure prevailed, however. A neighbor girl leads her family out cycling at least once a week, and although their name isn't Jones, the competition proved persuasive.

So this afternoon I got out the tools and set 'er up for the road. (Curiously, the bike was not metric. It felt strange and comforting to hold a 9/16 ratchet end-wrench again.)

With the seat at the right height, her only challenge was figuring out the pedals. Trikes are direct-drive: Once you get the forward and backward down, that's all there is to learn. Bicycles take a master's degree in locomotion, relatively speaking. There's that coaster brake, for one thing. Then there's the coast feature, a strange and probably unnerving sensation of neither input nor output, nor feedback. The pedals just hang there and the bike continues along on its mysterious, stored-up momentum.

I think that's when the relationship begins between man and machine. We put our labor into it, and it pays us back on demand. The trike, you just crank it and it goes. Stop, and it stops. But the bicycle remembers all your legwork, and saves it up to pay back when your muscles tire.

We pedaled halfway down the block, where new neighbors were moving in with four little girls age 10 months to 5½. Naturally, they had to show Squinx their hobbyhorse, even as their parents were struggling to cart things into the house. Squeeky invited them all to join the Village Women on the next sunny afternoon. This looks to be a long, pleasant summer.

We capped the day off by taking advantage of the 74º evening at the fire pit. I had a few pounds of piñon wood and no place to store it all summer, so we lit it off and toasted marshmallows. Squinx demonstrated a healthy respect for flames, refusing to light a match when I asked her for help with the kindling. "Maybe when I'm five," she answered, and I was reminded once again what a blessing we have in her mother, who spends all day exploring the world with her.

her italian godfather was supposed to fly in today, but when his plane got delayed four hours by weather we agreed that was too long to spend at an airport only three hours away by car. We'll try to make up the time next week.

Middle of June, and I feel as if spring has just begun here. Maybe it's all the rains. I'm just happy to be where and who I am today.

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Twenty-five minutes for the SUV, including filter.

Warm oil runs out fast. Note I found on the truck's maintenance log: "13mm end wrench (drain plug)." That saved me time finding the right tool.

Plus, it's so tall, I don't have to jack it up.

New note added to maintenance log: "Wear a rubber glove."

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Today we found a man's flip-flop in the backyard, and the back gate open.

Wolf Dog has thus far refused to comment.

If you know who owns this shoe, I'd be interesting in talking to him. Or to whatever's left of him. Me, I'm checking the corners of the backyard for freshly turned earth.

today's spanish lesson comes courtesy of the U.S. Postal Service, specifically a lobby poster I had lots of time to translate while one clerk served 15 customers:

Ponga su bienestar en buenos manos.

I'll admit that at first, I was fooled.  I was thinking "dialect," and mistook ponga su for a reference to Ritchie Valens' adaptation of Buddy Holly's hit Peggy Sue, which peaked at #4 on the Uruguayan Top 40 in 1958.

But the rest of the words didn't match up, so I studied the visuals for context: Three young people gathered affectionately around a matron. They appeared to be getting ready to take her somewhere. That's it!

Put your grandmother in good hands.

The caption included details on how to pack your grandmother for shipping.  Foam peanuts only, as the bubble wrap tends to suffocate.  Be sure to use ZIP Code (9 digits) and no string, which snags on machinery. Insurance? Delivery confirmation? (Suggestive selling?) All right here, for nominal additional cost.

The Post Office also hosted a couple who must have dressed each other. They'd settled on black athletic shoes, black (now gray) socks, shorts, and black concert T-shirts. Between them they carried about 150 lbs. extra of road-hugging weight. One of the T-shirts listed the European and American tour cities for Styx, with the graffito classic rock my ass! scrawled across them.

I guess no one ever dressed up to visit the Post Office, so no particular tradition was broken, or established, here.

The mention of Styx will always cue the single "Babe" in my head, from when they began to sound more and more like the Partridge Family. In my junior-high years, specifically 1979, you had to like Styx. No, really: You had to like Styx, and it went without saying. You could like all sorts of bands, but Styx? Duh. Even the self-identified rednecks put Styx at the top of their list. This trend culminated with the band's 1979 tour. The Monday after that concert defined your junior-high status. If you showed up in the correctly dated, brand-new T-shirt, you stood about one foot above the commoners. And no, you could not have gotten someone else to buy a shirt for you. You'd be found out for that lie, and shamed.

One hardy soul appeared wearing a knock-off T-shirt, which could only be bought outside the stadium, and that effort counted for something. It meant he'd risked getting mugged on the grounds of Houston's Summit just to pay $6 for a souvenir whose silkscreen wouldn't survive two launderings. Whether he actually got in to see the band was secondary. He tried, and at least that meant his Mom was cool enough to let him be out late.

If you didn't like Styx in those days, you were wise not to say anything. Not liking Styx was worse for your status than liking Styx was good for it. Not liking Styx put you in active opposition to those who did, and implied they had poor taste. Junior-high elites could not tolerate criticism.

in other spottings today, I saw a car exit the freeway with "$4,800" blazing across its windshield in three colors. I guess he'd just bought it. I'd have certainly "bought it" trying to drive with that much paint blocking my windscreen. Whose responsibility is it to scrape that stuff off once the car has been sold? Does the dealer leave it there to remind the purchaser of his monthly payments? Or did the proud new owner leave it in place until the next heavy rain, to show his neighbors he'd bought a "new" car?

There was a time when actual new cars were well within the reach of the middle class. Dad brought it home and parked it at the end of the driveway so all the neighbors could see. New cars came with stickers -- still do -- and even if you had a convertible (top down for display), you'd leave that window up so everyone could see what you'd paid for it. I suppose that was more dignified than having the price on the windshield, but it achieved the same end.

anyway, back to styx: By 1982, Styx had become a penny stock, reduced to opening for the Rolling Stones on their first "last tour." The crowd at the Astrodome, waiting hours for the 'Stones to appear, could not have cared less about the "rock opera" Styx was staging for their benefit. I don't know what the junior-high crowd was listening to by then. But nobody cared about Styx anymore.

And now, you can only find their fans at the U.S. Post Office.

still wondering about who owns that shoe. Wolf Dog, however, seems nonplussed.

update: Found the other shoe.

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Let's tackle these one at a time:

• The SUV didn't pass inspection last week.

And despite extensive probing of the Ford Explorer message board, I haven't had an "A-Ha!" moment. Today I cleaned the mass-airflow sensor (again) and re-set the computer. I'll try the inspectors again next week.

• The picture-windows still need some finishing out.

Rained out. Though I did get some more foam sealant pumped into the perimeter before it came a-gulley washer. A lot  more, actually: so much that some of it squished around the side and obstructed one of the panels from sliding. What that actually did was demonstrate how much air is leaking at the moment.

• Roomba's invisible barrier projector mysteriously burst in two, and warrants a bit of solder and epoxy.

First thing I did this morning was solder the wires into place and epoxy the housing back together. Roomba has direction again.

• Wolf Dog is running a two-walk deficit.

Solved with a brisk morning stroll, where I observed Giant House's progress:

Apologies for the low-quality photo. It still conveys how badly this house dwarfs at least one neighbor's.

Along the way, we saw the results of last week's high winds: sycamore bark lying around, looking as if each of these magnificent trees had been startled out of its wits:

• And, oh yes, the family needs its father for the weekend.

Fell short on that one. Squeeky took the kids to the Galleria to give me some working room. I'll make that up tomorrow.

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Schooling children at home keeps one on the lookout for "teachable moments."
 
So when we arrived at church one morning to find a big tree branch had spiked the nursery's ceiling, I rubbed my hands in anticipation of Squinx's questions.
 
We would get to talk about gravity, aging, structures, and the statistical likelihood of getting hit by a falling limb ... and what would happen to the soul of a Christian who got in the way of one. Physics and metaphysics all in one! A perfect teachable moment.
 
Her first question: "Did it make a loud noise?"
 
Stopped me cold.
 
Of course it made a loud noise, sweetie. Anything that big striking something that hard will make a loud noise.
 
However, since no one was around to hear it, according to science, there was no sound.
 
now you see why i reject scientific explanations and definitions that get in the way of understanding. According to science, the fact of sound waves' existence is negated by no one's hearing them. If a deaf shark farts in the Indian Ocean, it can be detected by seismic listening posts in Guam. But 100 years ago, before we had such instruments, the same emission would, technically, make no sound.
 
How, exactly, does that make sense?
 
Only to a scientist.
 
I have other beefs with them. I did well in my science courses, but I refused to accept that a person ascending stairs is "doing work" under the definition of work, but the same person descending them is not. Supposedly, in the latter case, the stairs "do work" on him.
 
That kind of noodle-noggining exasperates me. I want to chase a dozen science-textbook authors down the Sears Tower's fire escapes, then see which one at the bottom still thinks he hasn't done any work.

Counting our blessings, no one was hurt by the plunging lumber. The tree itself had looked dead all spring, probably from root failure after all the new construction nearby. I'd noticed it failing this year from my post as morning-mass server; its position outside a window right next to another tree of the same type highlighted its absence of foliage. I'm usually skeptical of tree-trimmers' opinions of the health of trees they're called upon to examine. They don't make money not cutting them down, after all. But this one was obvious, and I do regret not speaking up. A healthy church is tended by all its parishioners, not just by the vestry.

i believe i have enough to keep me busy today. The SUV didn't pass inspection last week; the picture-windows still need some finishing out; Roomba's invisible barrier projector mysteriously burst in two, and warrants a bit of solder and epoxy; Wolf Dog is running a two-walk deficit; and, oh yes, the family needs its father for the weekend.

Next post under Fixing Stuff, by day's end.

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