The Blog: Spellbound by our own imperfect lives...

We have gorged on meat this weekend. We keep thinking that every day is the last day we'll be able to cook comfortably on the grill (without down coats and boots) so in the last three days, we've made chicken wings, babyback ribs, and tonight, big New York strip steaks with Jack Daniels sauce. Regis was in charge of the meal, being the grill guru, and he made those monster baked potatoes with crunchy skins and big hunks of salt. It was all too delicious but not too healthy. It was a beautiful day...the birch tree dropped splotches of bright yellow on the ground, a few red maple leaves clung to the branches, birds eating like crazy, a tiny bit of warmth from the sun...all the things we love about fall. Peter and I made a fast trip to Mankato late this afternoon to get him a computer. We've had lots of bad computer karma in our house lately. The one that Peter was going to use but which does not play music (an essential element for school, you know) will become Regis' com...

Made it through the week finally! I got a big project done yesterday about noon and it was like the clock stopped and the rest of the day dragged on forever. Went to Mankato after work and picked Peter up for the weekend. Regis and Amber stopped...cooked a bunch of chicken wings and twice baked potatoes from the deli. Drank a few Hamm's. Perfect Friday night. We bought two big racks of babyback ribs to cook on the grill today. That's our only mission. It's a gorgeous fall Saturday and we're going to enjoy it. We have tickets for The Little Ghost Theater later tonight. Check it out if you're from the area!

We just got home from the second night of safe driving class. I'd say we enjoyed it, which we did, but here is a list of things that pissed me off on the way home: The smell of chocolate The sound of candy wrappers The radio The car moving The dark The lights You can see how this goes. It took me thirty seconds flat to get into my nightgown. Kramer jumped on my lap, Regis poured me a glass of wine, and my nerve endings retreated back into my skin where they belong. Tomorrow is another day.

I've had two 7 o'clock meetings this week, two after school meetings, then we taught our first safe driving class (you know the one I mean) tonight. It was marginally fun but it's been a long week of earlies and lates that I don't cope so well with. By tomorrow, after the second night of safe driving for old people, I should be ragged cranky. I'm doing my annual "let's see how long we can leave the house plants outside without really killing them" thing. I don't know why I do this. Maybe it's my other risky behavior, not flossing my teeth being the first one. I have an oxalis plant, an amaryllis bulb, and a Christmas cactus on the front step and tonight it's going to be 35 degrees. I think it's the same behavior as driving to Mankato with my gas tank on empty. Some people take hot air balloons across the Atlantic or climb mountains but this is my feeble ass adrenalin rush....almost freezing plants. Last year I froze a tree of some kind ...

I know you can't identify us in the photo...maybe can't even tell these are human beings...but it's Regis and Teresa, Dick and Jane, Betty and Tom. There we are, to the right of the light pole on the northeast corner of the intersection. We stood for five minutes, arm in arm, waiting for the webcam, which is up next to the spire on the Nicollet County Court House, to update itself. Bob called as soon as he had the picture of us. People passing by on the highway thought was were nuts, or drunk, judging by the funny looks they gave us. For some reason, this whole thing amused us. Bob called it "funny old people stuff". We were on our way to Patrick's for pepperjack cheese omelets and Bloody Mary's with beer chasers. We'd had a wonderful weekend and were winding down and saying good-bye. Good friends and goofy stunts...nothing like 'em!

It has rained hard all day. I heard on the radio that by tomorrow night we'll have 2-4 inches and possibility of flooding. What if it floods then freezes? We'll be traveling around all winter on skates like Hans Brinker. Now, that's funny. I had a good day. Dug out some crap (favorite word lately) around the house then went to Mankato. Peter continues to amaze. He says he likes to watch CNN and wanted to talk about the super bacteria. He says he thinks he'll be a writer someday and plans to start a book soon but he wants to write longhand like William Kent Kruger. I just shake my head. We had lunch, he filled out some paperwork for school, then we moved the first of his stuff. I started a new book last night called The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries . It's fascinating. One 0f those books I think I'll talk about for a long time. I kept telling Regis things I was reading until he asked me to stop. Just read the review...

I have a cell phone that takes pictures. I never thought I had a need for that (it also has a tiny drive for a tiny disk for music) but tonight, as I sit in my messy house in the dark, I'd like to take a picture with the phone and send it to the computer because I'm too tired to get my lazy ass up to find a camera. It's been a rough start to the school year as I figure out this new job, of sorts. More like a redesign of the old job...more to do for the same money. I seem to spend all day reading, staring at papers and the computer screen, and trying to make sense of things so I can explain them to someone else. We have the next two days off for the state teacher's convention, which I have never attended, and it couldn't have come at a better time. It's an institutionalized vacation in the fall...we aren't paid for it and there's no expectation that you do anything work related...but everyone gets two days off. Nice. Tonight I went to a poetry reading at ...

It was a slow day, but a busy one. It rained off and on all day, Annie. I heard a guy on MPR talking, I suppose about Minneapolis, but he said since August 1st, we've had 17 inches of rain which is 50 some % of our yearly average total. And in the first 15 days of October, we've had trace or measurable rain 13 days. How's them for some weather stats? If the weather models for tonight are accurate, we could get 1-2 more inches of rain. We went up to let Gonzo and Fletcher out in Tom and Betty's absence so we watched Emerill. We miss the cooking channel, having no cable tv. Most things I don't miss. I get my kitchen fix by reading books like Heat and Kitchen Confidential. We're watching the last part of Cinderella Man tonight. It's a good movie except for the fight scenes. (I liked Witness except for the murder.) Renee Zellwiger just said, "You're everybody's hope, Jimmy." and of course, I cried. Our next Netflix pick is The Straight Story : ...

Regis and I spent a few days at Cragun's in northern Minnesota. I tried to tell him what it was like...not exactly the lavish resort they try to make it look like in the pictures. More like the resort in Dirty Dancing, if you remember. A little long in the tooth, a little past its prime. And that's exactly how we found it. We got there Wednesday night about 10:00, expecting to have a frozen pizza in the bar for dinner. No such luck. A cranky bar tender who must have thought the season was over, was not helpful. We discovered, on our own, the deli in the lobby with gas station food, so we had a beer and a bag of popcorn for dinner. The next night, tired of resort buffets, we went down the road to Madden's, a much more lavish and friendly atmosphere. We had dinner in the Classic Grill, right on the edge of their golf course where they have a bag piper to start and end the golf season. They must vacuum the leaves because there wasn't a leaf on the ground anywhere, even bac...

I'm not going to mention amoebas again since I read there is a variety that goes up your nose and eats your brain. That's not funny even on Sunday night. We've had a nice weekend. A great combination of being lazy and getting things done. Besides which we slept until 8:30 yesterday which must have helped us catch up on some sleep deprivation due to the 3 a.m. awakenings of the last month. Today we're cooking a prime rib roast on the grill. Regis loves that charcoal grill and likes to read Grilling for Dummies and Weber's Real Grilling . I have French bread rolls rising and we might have some garlic mashed potatoes. I'm reading Heat by Bill Buford . What a damn hoot. It's about a year he spent cooking in Mario Batali's kitchen. I don't know who's funnier... Bill or Mario. I can't help myself...I read things aloud to Regis then laugh and laugh. Makes me wish I had television again so I could watch Molto Mario . I'm going to sit in the shad...

It must have been a bad week in education judging by the crowd in the parking lot of MGM. I saw two teachers I know there and another one later who was on her way to the liquor store OUT OF TOWN. That's a teacher with some discretion right there. I sent her on her way and said to get home as soon as possible and try beer therapy for that foul mood. I meant to clean the house tonight but there was little gumption for that. I managed to get to the store to buy a broasted chicken and some cole slaw, and to the liquor store for some Night Harvest cabernet. That was the extent of my ambition. And I'm pretty sure that was a balanced meal with the Reese's granola bars we had for dessert. P.S. I just read this again (which I like to do...sometimes the next day to see if what I wrote was interesting which it mostly isn't but sometimes is) and remembered that Dad used to talk about when he first started teaching and it was verboten for teachers from the local district to drink or...

I wonder if I went to bed when I was tired and got up when I was done sleeping, if eventually I would be going to bed at 4 o'clock in the afternoon and getting up at midnight. I get so drowsy in the evening I can hardly keep my eyes open. It's really a waste of my time. I read this on a blog: If you want me to stop feeling superior, stop acting like such a dumb ass. That crossed my mind more than once today. It was one of those days. I see there is a book on Amazon called No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas for Your Blog. Nobody better give me that for my birthday. I like people to pretend they care about the boring details of my life. Those are probably stupid things anyway. Like the prompts they give you to write about when you're 8 years old. Pretend you're a marshmallow. Crap like that. I think I'm cranky and should go to bed and read.

As a morale booster at work, they had costume days and yesterday was Hippie Day. Hey, that's our decade. Betty helped with the costume and this was the result: Regis was the monster hit of the day and people from other departments were coming to look at him. His manager came and thanked him for helping with morale so Regis pulled the fake joint out of his headband. They all admired his ability to learn the rolling technique is such a short time.