101 Accomplishments in 1,001 Days

Well, it's definitely been a while. I've just come out of a pretty intense period of work and school and am beginning to see a reasonable semblance of a life on the horizon. I graduated with a Masters of Public and Nonprofit Administration (think an MBA for nonprofits), coordinated a massive celebration for the 150th anniversary of a county, and still maintained a marriage and a series of friendships. Basically, I have lived my life, so I'll stop congratulating myself.

The last few weeks have been kind of dull as I have tried to decompress and relax. I started a second blog about food and cooking, and have decided to put a little bit of direction to my boredom by trying one of those "101 Things To Do In 1,001 Days" lists. The full list is found on the left-hand side of the blog and I hope to blog about each accomplishment over the following 1,001 days, which should mean multiple posts to this blog between today and March 8, 2010, just short of my 35th birthday. Wow. I wonder how different my life will be then.

The Duke Chronicles, vol. I

The coffee can seems to have worked. The first night I threw it twice, the second night I didn't throw it at all. However, I think that he knew I was down there the second night and was quiet because he was satisfied with my company.

Last night I slept in my own bed, and he whined a couple of times right away, but Ms. stu merely shook the can of marbles and he relented. But this morning he started again at 4am. Ms. stu tossed the can down the stairs, and that was modestly effective. But he still urinated in the kennel (I think I forgot to write about that---he's also been urinating in the kennel over the last week, it had not been a problem previously.) and we're not sure how to handle that.

I am beginning to realize that he is a lot less trained than I thought he would be. He's more fresh of the track I thought. We've decided to put up an x-pen around his kennel that let's him get out of the cage and walk around a little bit. We also put a mirror near the kennel in the hopes that he would feel less lonely.

An addition to the family

We adopted a retired greyhound a few weeks ago. Ladies and gentlemen, may I present Duke:



This is generally his normal pose. Unless he's outside, when he like to destroy rubber squeakie toys:



We've been talking about getting a dog for over a year now. Since Ms. stu graduated with her MLIS last fall and my hated masters program has its end in site, it seemed like the right time. We had a few requirements in our search for a dog.

• Bigger than thirty pounds (we've got two cats, why would we want a cat sized dog?);
• A dog that could handle steps (we've got a lot of stairs in the house and intended to kennel him in the basement);
• We wanted a dog that wasn't very hyper;
• We preferred a dog that didn't shed a lot;
• Ms. stu wanted a dog that could wear sweaters;
• A dog that didn't mind being home alone for 8-9 hours while we are at work.

A classmate of mine said that a greyhound would be the perfect fit for us and I thought that was the dumbest thing I'd ever heard of. I figured that a greyhound, being a sprinter, had a high amount of energy and would be bouncing of the wall. But, it turns out that greyhounds are really laid back and sedate. The bumper stickers marketed to greyhound owners read, "Adopt a greyhound, lose a couch," and "the 45 MPH couch potato."

And, for the most part, Duke is just as advertised. He tires from a short walk, he's gentle and sweet, and gets along/ignores the cats. The first two weeks went great, but the last week has been extremely stressful. Duke suffers from a mild separation anxiety. He cannot stand to be even one room apart from us and when he is kenneled at night and during the day he is urinating in the kennel. At night he whines and barks for twenty minutes straight, takes a break for a few minutes, and then starts again. He's in the basement, were on the second floor, and it keeps us up all. Night. Long.

The Minnesota Chapter of Greyhound Pets of America has a message board, and I've been asking questions on there. Most of the responses have told us to let the dog sleep upstairs in our bedroom. At this point, we are resisting this. We decided to make the second floor of the house a dog-free zone so the cats had a place to get away from the 75 pound hound.

So, tonight we unveil a drastic plan: I'm going to camp out on the concrete basement floor, in an area where Duke can't see me. The first time he whines, I spring into action. The action? I toss a coffee can half filled will marbles at the cage. Then I yell in my deepest voice, "NO CRYING!" And here's the genius part, the can is attached to a rope, that allows me to pull the can back to me, without the Duke seeing me, thereby not making him scared of me. This plan was sent to me, via e-mail, by one of the MN-GPA members. I assume he sent it to me by e-mail rather than posting it to the forum because most of the people on there would disapprove. I'm going to do it anyway. I need to have him learn not to do these things, and if I sleep upstairs, come down the stairs and spray him with water saying, "NO CRYING" it won't work. Why? By the time I get down the stairs he's stopped whining, because he's gotten what he wanted: attention.

I think I'll blog a bit about the progress. We start obedience classes in two weeks.

I guess it's not so new...

I was reading the death record for a U.S. soldier that died in Vietnam in 1965. It read that he died from shrapnel wounds from a "satchel bomb" thrown by a terrorist. I was surprised to read that word in an official military record from 1965. I know the word was used for Palestinians that early, and I had sometimes heard the word used to describe the Viet Kong in a contemporary contextual writing, but there is was. 1965.

EDIT: Rereading this post, I see that it might be confusing about which word I'm referring to. I'm talking about terrorism, not satchel. I believe satchel ceased its popular usage around 1965.

My fun life

For the most part I'm way too busy for this blog. My hated masters program is at a fevered pitch, but the end is in sight! Work is really hard too. I put in 113.25 hours on my last pay period (the joys of being on a salary!). Usually, the job is fun. Like when I get to visit an ammunition factory. Those are empty shotgun shells coming off the line.

RIP Larry Batson

This is a really late post. Larry Batson, former newspaper man died a couple of weeks ago. I know his two sons, Billy and Ernie and if they are any indication of what kind of man there father was than we lost one of the greats. Billy and Ernie are two of the jolliest men I know. Very kind and they are members of two of the greatest rock bands in history: The Hypstrz and the Mighty Mofos.

Here's two stories on Larry's death:
http://www.startribune.com/466/story/215447.html
http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities/news/columnists/joe_soucheray/13759637.htm

Here is one of my favorite music columns ever, written by Larry about the Hypstrz in early 1981. Any typos are to blamed on me, not Larry.

Between rock, young band finds itself in a lot of hard places

The young man who sleeps upstairs and the rock band that practices under my bedroom are preparing for another tour. As they make their plans, memories of the last one emerge. Not the stuff about crowds and encores and radio and TV interviews that we heard immediately. These are the more intimate details that mothers want to hear, then wished they hadn’t asked about.

For weeks now, part of each performing fee has been saved to cover transportation and lodging. Individuals keep reminding each other to put aside something for personal expenses.

That’s what they did the last time. Remind each other. Then at the first gas stop, one player asked the keeper of the band kitty for money for a Coke. He hadn’t saved quite enough. (At the end of that 4,000-mile tour the band used its last $20 to buy the last tank of gas it needed to get home.)

Milwaukee was the first stop on the tour. A brief one, professionally speaking. They weren’t allowed to play. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals had closed the club that hired them.

“The band that was supposed to play there the night before announced it was going to kill a pig onstage,” one musician explained. “So the SPCA got a court order banning live music in the club.”

Chicago, the next stop, went well. Gary, Ind. Spewing flame and choking gas, was passed in the night. “The smell inside the van changed every 20 miles,” said Scott, guitarist, “depending on what the factories made.” The six young men from Minneapolis arrived at the home of Mrs. Wombat in Cleveland at 3 a.m.

Rock musicians live largely by the generosity and good work of mothers, who generally are referred to by the name of the band by which they owe first allegiance. Mrs. Wombat is the other of the lead singer of the band of that name. Vic, another Wombat, also possesses a most kind mother who speaks little English. When confronted by a young musician, she feeds him, points him toward a shower and a bed, then washes and irons his clothes while he sleeps. This is exactly what he needs.

All these ladies are addressed by musicians as Ma’am, like the Queen of England. They seldom meet, but through tense phone calls late at night—“Did they get there?”—they come to know other mothers all over the country.

The Wombats joined the band that practices under my bedroom for performances in Cleveland, Detroit, Washington, and Baltimore. This meant that Mrs. Wombat had to telephone around and find someone in Cleveland who would lend the Wombats a car. Another mother came through.

The Wombats run on a very tight budget. At one performance Vic dropped his guitar pick. He immediately stopped playing, got down on his hands and knees and began searching.

Other memories of Cleveland include a low ceiling in a dressing room and something that looked like a string dangling from a crack in it. A musician pulled the string. It was the tail of a huge mummified rat.

Fat rats frolicked and played like squirrels under the streetlights behind Ford’s Theatre in Washington. Scott recalled. The hotel was not what they expected. “The bathroom was down the hall,” one son of Middle America said, still slightly shocked months later.

Bunce, muscular and energetic roadie, went sight-seeing. Opposing groups of Iranians were demonstrating in front of the White House. Bunce wandered into the pro-Khomeini group and, as is his custom, asked them what they were beefing about. He disagreed with their position and, also his custom, said so immediately. The protest began to turn into mass debate with Bunce.

Police broke it up. Bunce was just getting warmed up. He suggested the whole band find the Iranians and resume the discussion.

Baltimore was next. No member of the caravan will forget Baltimore.

The hotel that housed the club where they would play had once been an elegant hostelry, playground of the famous, the rich, and the discerning. Fred Astaire had danced on the marble bar in the club and had admired the room’s white leather walls. It appeared neither had been cleaned since. The owner, a jovial sot, was drunk through the band’s stay, roaring with laughter, slapping backs, forgetting every word as soon as it passed through his lips.

The rooms provided, two for 10 musicians, had no air conditioning, so they demanded at least one that was cooled. When they plugged in the window unit, fuses blew. Now they had no lights. There was trash on the floor and no sheets on the beds.

They demanded another room. “We’re full,” the clerk said. It was a palpable lie. Doors sagged all over the place. “Repair man’s on the way,” the clerk claimed. He was still insisting on that when they left 24 hours later.

A tenant from across the hall confided that he had been there nine days and had his room broken into six times. There were pigeon feathers all over the rooms. The got in through broken windows, flew along the hallways and became lost or trapped in rooms. Where was the SPCA when they needed it?

Mark, the bass player, flatly refused to touch anything in Baltimore but his guitar. He drove the van to a suburb and slept in it.

Because they had no light, the young man from upstairs and Donn, the second roadie, had to leave the hall and bathroom doors wide open when they showered. “Less light the better, actually,” Donn said. The next morning he found a 4-inch cockroach under his pillow.

They stopped for a few hours in Atlantic City, N.J. Bunce stepped in front of a woman who was playing a row of slot machines in sequence. He won $20 with his first coin. The woman cursed him bitterly. That would have been her next machine. Donn took a solitary walk. His mood was not cheerful. Two band members spotted him on the Boardwalk and shouted greetings. He walked past without responding.

New York was next. From New Jersey they phoned Mark Freeman, singer and guitarist and transplanted Minneapolitan. “Roll up your windows and lock your doors,” Freeman said, then gave directions. Later he mentioned the time a knife-wielding junkie threw himself at his car and clung to it for half a block, shouting threats. This was right before they dropped Tommy at his sister’s apartment. Happened right close, Freeman said.

Rooms had been found for all. The young men from upstairs stayed with Freeman, who rode with him to “the only safe parking garage in Manhattan,” a fortress where they left the van. Nearby, packs of Great Danes roamed the docks, looking for pilferers of vagrants to rip into shreds.

Not far from the garage, as they left, they saw a man methodically stripping a car. He had piled the radio and choice parts on the sidewalk, had broken off the steering wheel and was taking the seats. He paid no attention to the two young men.

Freeman had a studio apartment with a sleeping loft and a bathtub in the kitchen area, the first clean tub the visitors had seen since Mrs. Wombat’s in Cleveland. Nest day the young men from upstairs was relaxing in the bath when a 5-foot iguana, resting hidden on a window ledge, flicked its tail over his shoulder. Freeman hadn’t mentioned his pet.

Saturday came and the band drove to the Peppermint Lounge, probably the only club in America all their middle-aged parents could name. As they got out to unload equipment, a man raced past them, ripped the necklace from a nearby woman and ran away.

This time the band will tour the Sun Belt and the West Coast. Their parents are following news reports of the California mud slides with horrified fascination.

Not Dead Yet

I really want to blog more. Really, I do.

I just finished my third week at my new job. So far I like it quite a bit. The staff is really great, even if they are all women in their fifties and sixties (not that I have anything against the gender or the age group, but as a thirty year old male I don't have a lot of common ground with them). I'm still arranging meetings with all sorts of people, and learning who hates who, who is allied with who. The town that I work in has a lot of small-town politics, which is something new to me.

I start school again this week for my hated masters program. It will be my first semester with eight credits (two four credit courses). The last two semesters I've taken six credits. We'll see how well this experiment goes. I don't want to drop a class because I really want to be done by the end of the summer.

Tonight I'm going to the staff holiday party. I made a Boston cream pie to bring. I hope it ensures their undying devotion to me.