when in santa fe on our holiday we stayed with another family. they had four kids. all but one was older than our kids, their oldest months from driving. one day while we were lazing about i asked the kids if there was a rule in their house they didn't like. after about thirty seconds the fifteen year old boy excitedly answered, "yes, the like jar was pretty lame." his sister immediately seconded the thought. i asked what the like jar was and before my sentiment was even complete, their mother groaned and her head sagged and to avoid her children's editorial she confessed the following, "i just couldn't take it anymore. the word like. it was constant. each and every sentence out of anyones mouth was peppered with five or seven or more likes. it was maddening. so i made a rule that every time someone said the word like in conversation and not in meaning they had to pay the like jar." her son then brightly added, "but it happened so often that mom couldn't keep after us about it and it died after, like, a day or two." i smiled at his enthusiasm as well as his slipping a 'like' into his taunt.

i said to the mother she should have promised them each fifty dollars at the end of the month but each time they said like, the month-end booty dropped a buck. with this she eyed the kids and with that they stopped smiling. or stopped smiling so obviously at least.

i felt a step behind all day yesterday. it started when bella got up at 6:15 to go to the bathroom and the wind from the open window blew the door shut and woke me up. and then while walking to work i just missed crossing a busy street before the eternal light turned green and released an endless throng of traffic. and then there was the painfully slow-moving elevator i arrived to just in time to see the doors pinch shut. then there was the person who called me a second time moments before i returned their first call. like i said, one step slow all day.

then last night i was slated to go for a bike ride. for these rides, i try to leave by 10pm but was still sitting at my desk at 10:30. i didn't actually push off until 11pm. i ride for 30 miles and it takes me two hours. thirty minutes into the ride lightning started flashing in the distance. at the midway point i take a ten minute break. the lightning was intensifying and i smelled rain so i jumped back on the bike after just a few minutes and started back. about ten minutes later i was coming up on one of my favorite stretches of this particular route. it is a long, winding section of blacktop that is slightly downhill and is flanked on either side by stately homes with deep lawns and the occasional hanger-on farm. the road is wide and smooth and on a good day i can maintain a clip of just under 30 miles an hour for a mile or two. i had one street to cross before starting this alpha-stretch and was approaching a green light which meant i could hit it on a run. moments before i would have pulled through the intersection the light went yellow. i pulled up and stopped.

after taking a dejected pull from my water bottle, my mind immediately began replaying all the near misses the day had dealt me. the quiet around me was interrupted by a muscle car coming down the street that currently had the green. they turned onto my road heading in the direction i was waiting to go. after negotiating the turn, the car accelerated with a groan and sped forward. after straightening out the driver didn't notice, see, mind or care about a slight bend in the road and ran his/her car straight into the curb. the raised edge caused the front tire to jump in the air and sent the car crazily veering off to the left. the driver effortfully worked to regain control and once he did he continued down the road like nothing had happened. as i watched the taillights diminish in the distance it occurred to me that had i made it through that light, i would have been in just about the very spot that car hit the curb when it hit the curb. for the first time that day i didn't feel a step behind. in fact, i felt in perfect sync. my light clicked green as did every other light i approached for the next ten miles.

i also beat the rain home.

a good friend of mine teaches high school math. but he's not that math teacher. he's the math teacher who for class takes his kids out out to the track field and asks who in the class thinks they can run faster than him. he says this in a tone that reveals he doesn't think any of these young, lithe, athletic bodies can outrun his older, balding frame in a hundred yard dash. hands start ener...

it was tuesday morning, a little after seven. marty and i were just stirring from sleep. the house was still, the boys obviously still asleep. this was the first morning that bella was away. she was due to call in the next twenty minutes to say how her first twenty fours had gone.

as marty and i drifted from slumber and waited for bella's call, marty began recalling a time she spent a week with this same aunt. marty was twelve or thirteen. this aunt, aunt cyntha, had two daughters, rachel and melissa. rachel was a few years older than marty and melissa was several years older. both of the parents worked, one as a fireman and the other as a hair stylist. when the girls woke up in the morning, there would be a chores list on the counter. come the end of the day, if the items on that list weren't done and done well, there'd be trouble in the evening.

many years later aunt cynthia explained to marty that she was a believer in physical labor, both for chores and punishment. she felt it worked towards a tangible work ethic. her favorite punishment was to make a misbehaving child scrub a toilet with a toothbrush. one time cynthia's husband came up from the basement saying he could barely get the freezer door closed and asked if they had plans to defrost it. cynthia said there was a plan but that rachel, their youngest and more incorrigible child, was having a streak of good behavior and that the freezer would be defrosted after her next mis-step. cynthia admitted such a system required patience. fortunately she had it.

marty also remembered her cousin rachel had become interested in boys and marty not so much just yet. given her cousin's pre-occupation, their days involved biking around the community to pools and tennis courts, namely to meet girlfriends and an inevitable clot of boys. marty deflected most of the attention sent her way spending most of the time wishing the boys would stop talking to the girls so the girls could resume their games of tennis.

another, and more vivid, detail marty recalls was that she had her second ever period during this week at her aunt's. it took a day or two to work up the courage to ask her aunt for supplies. consequently she burned through her stock of underwear much faster than expected ultimately leaving her with only one pair of gangly and tattered briefs. during those days, over her hand-me-down underwear obtained from her sisters, she wore hand-me-down soccer shorts obtained from her brothers. these were the thin nylon colorful shorts that wore loose. during one of the tennis court pow-wows one of the boys looked at marty sitting on the ground and said to her derisively, "nice underwear" in reference to her ragamuffin briefs that were visible through the short's gaping leg holes. to this day the boys' sneer and tenor has stuck with marty.

the suck part of that story for me is that had i been one of the young men standing on those courts with marty, her cousin and her cousin's friends, it's unlikely anyone would have beaten me to that observation and subsequent remark about marty's ratty underwear. fortunately, i was safely hidden away three states to the west and by the time marty and i finally met, making fun of girls' underwear was long behind me, by several months at least.

oh, and bella's first day went swimmingly. so much so, it's questionable how we're going to ever pry her from in-house cable, forty horses and a deep-county farm.

marty has an aunt that works at a farm rehabilitating horses. last year she offered to let bella come out for a day. the farm attracts a lot of young kids who want to experience the life. for most, this translates to wanting to ride horses. not wishing to run such a business the keepers of the farm operate under the policy of if you want to ride a horse you have to do all the things relevant to this experience, because they are running a farm, not a petting zoo. as for what all things relevant entails, it seems it's the routine matters that happen on the farm: mucking stables, collecting eggs, brushing horses, cleaning hooves, exercising horses. after paying some dues you then get to do what you came to do, ride a horse.

bella's first day out, or more aptly, bella's first ten minutes out, she was handed a scoop and a rake, pointed to a stall and told to clean it out. bella struggled with the large scoop and lugging the buckets out to a rear paddock and dumping the waste, but she did it. when she was done, she moved to the next stall. seeing this her aunt told her she only had to do one and could now move onto another chore. conflicted, bella looked into the second stall and said that it was dirty and needed to be cleaned. her aunt said someone else would get it. that someone else was bella. and, it was bella for four more stalls (or every one in the barn). she gets this obstinance and love of cleaning and organizing from her mother. given this adoration for chores, bella became a quick hit at the farm.

that was last year. this summer bella has been spending a couple days a week at the farm. this morning we took bella there for the day but this time she has been invited to stay a few nights with her aunt so she could get some extra time in. bella was thrilled. marty and i were moderately apprehensive at having our girl away for such a period. alex was concerned at losing his sister. anthony is just glad he gets the legos to himself. we woke up at 6am in preparation for the one hour drive. when i walked by the kids room, i saw alex hand bella his christmas snow globe. this is one of alex's most prized possessions and is his forth such snow globe and more importantly the first to survive more than four days in his care. this particular globe was a present from my mother and was obtained at a flea market. the scene inside is of an indistinct city skyline but is so old (and cheap) that the paint is coming off making the water inside murky looking and hard to see through. bella held the globe to her chest, thanked alex for it and promised to take very good care of it. i think everyone in the house was feeling a bit like alex at seeing bella go. alex was just better at showing his feelings than the rest of us.

when bella and i arrived, the farm was in full motion. two other young, local girls who work there were helping bring the forty plus horses in from the pasture. bella immediately put her bag in her stable locker and took a nearby spot at the ready. another girl who i would guess was about ten was told to take the tractor and close the upper gate. the girl left the barn and pulled herself into john deere's version of a golf cart. bella's aunt turned and told bella to ride up with the girl. bella quickly took the seat next to the young driver. the girl backed the cart up and off they rode into a pasture and out of sight. not having said goodbye to bella i milled about. the aunt saw me standing to the side, gave me a wave and said, "see ya troy. i'll have bella give you a call before she goes to bed tonight." i thanked her and moved towards my car. i looked into the rolling hill bella and the girl disappeared into. i wasn't sure how far away they were going or how long the task would take them. i waited a few minutes. still no sign of them. the aunt saw me again and asked if i needed something. i said i wanted to say goodbye to bella before leaving. she took an apprising look into the distance and said they should be back any minute. a few minutes later i heard the tractor chugging and then saw it round the corner and the two miniature farm hands rumbled in like they'd been doing that particular task together for better than five years. the girl stopped the tractor, took it out of gear, put on a parking brake, hopped out and walked back into the barn and out of sight. bella slid out of her seat, walked wordlessly to me, wrapped her arms around my waist pressing her sideways face into my chest, giving me a tight squeeze. she then loosened her grip, said, "see ya dad", turned and followed the first girl into the barn. as i watched her walk in her confident strides out of view i realized that one day that moment will be the real thing and she won't be leaving my house for three days but three months, or better. i hope i'm more prepared then than i am now.

shortly before i stopped being a corporate whore, i had an unusual-ish lunch. two things made it odd. first off, i went with five guys, colleagues, i didn't know all that well, only one of which would have even rated as an acquaintance (i usually eat lunch alone or with one or two people i like pretty well). the second curiosity was the conversation itself. it dealt with, of all things, male grooming. when the topic was first floated, and it was not raised by me because such matters aren't even on my radar, i scanned the table thinking in a group of people who push ones and zeros around for a living this subject might have a life-span of 36 seconds. but as i studied the five expressions i didn't see disdain and disinterest but instead mild intrigue and readiness. i almost yelled at the whole lot of them saying they can either like network gaming parties or shaving their genitals but not both.

seeing the subject had legs i turned my attentions to the conversation's sponsor. you groom? down there? unabashedly he said he did. he then asked me. you don't? at all? unabashedly i said i didn't. he asked me why i cut the hair on my head. i said because it would be unprofessional not to. he asked why i shaved my face. i admitted that even though i was still as of yet unable to grow cheek hair if i could i would still shave because i felt face pelts were also unprofessional. he then started asking about marty. and if she shaved and groomed. i said she did but certainly not at my demand. and frankly, i could care less if she did or not. the whole table groaned loudly and recoiled like slugs to salt. what's the big deal i asked. are they afraid of a natural woman? it seems they were afraid of the potential. a few of them had seen movies and were witness to what was in fact possible.

seeing i was getting nowhere with the first guy, i sought support from the rest of the table. one by one i asked them if they owned a male epilady or some such device and one by one they confessed they did, my acquaintance included. i saved my sure bet for last, a contractor straight from the india homeland, arranged marriage country and all. he said to me in the most classic and quintessential accent, "i am sorry troy, but i am unable to help you here." even the indian guy was sitting on the closed-lid toilet, with his knees flayed apart, tweezing groin hairs with his free time. does he know how to tie a slip-knot? has he read the the count of monte christo? can he spin a pencil in crazy ways on his hand? no, but he doesn't have a body hair on the outside of the elastic leg band of his underwear. how admirable is that? as weak as it may appear, that last guy really took the wind out of my sails and in the end, i quit the fight. there were too many of them and they proved immune to any powers of persuasion i thought i may have had. sad to find myself spending time with such a lot, i became morose.

perhaps my despondency drove the guy who started the whole preening debate to share the following story about a friend of his who was uber-manic about his hair removal. it seems this guy's appearance was a real house of cards given his hirsute genes and required more routine care than a fertilized lawn in portland. after he moved in with a girl he'd been dating, he was finding it difficult to find enough private time to keep the hedges at bay. he was having to go to work late or come home for lunch to get his primping time in (sheesh!). one day his girlfriend wasn't feeling well and left work early. after walking in the door and setting her keys and purse down she heard something coming from the bedroom. she moved to the door, listened for a moment and then opened it. she saw her boyfriend lying on the floor, on his back, naked, and with his legs pulled over his head. he had an electronic thing in his hand but she didn't have time to make out what it was or what he was doing with it before he sprang forward into a sitting position, and started yelling at her through bugged-out eyes to get out of the room. she slammed the door shut and stood there with one hand still on the knob and the other covering her mouth. some minutes later he came out of the room fully clothed and aside from a huffiness about him, acting like nothing had happened. seeing that he wasn't going to volunteer an explanation she asked him what he was doing in there. he exploded saying it was none of her business and she should learn to knock on closed doors before entering rooms (her own bedroom included it seems). he never told her he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks and she never recovered from not being told that he was shaving the hair from between his buttocks so they broke up shortly after the incident. if i recall the story correctly, she let him keep the apartment.

i rebounded from the evil outing by imagining the guy in the story was the guy pushing the topic at my lunch table (he was reasonably hirsute). i had to do that because that meal happened four years ago and i still hold an image of a slightly overweight naked guy rolling around on plush carpeting contorting a braun razor in his hand fighting for the last, perfect angle. typically, i'm the stamper of such imagery and not the one having uninvited images pressed into the walls of my brain. call me a sore loser.

if i had to buy the life story of someone i know i would choose a friend of marty's. i would do so based upon the following facts.

1. she grew up with the last name of Grief in a small, midwestern town.
2. in her family there were six girls and one boy, born last, which made them known around town as The Grief Girls, even after the arrival of the seventh.
3. her home had a communal underwear drawer which meant on any given day you could be wearing a lean pair of jockey briefs or a tattered pair of hip-huggers worn by your mother the week before.

if you don't think the above points to a house, a home, or a group of lives of interest, you and i do not agree on what is note-worthy.

nursing homes freak me out.

my grandfather lives in one now. most times when we visit my folks, they bring my grandfather from the nursing home to the house. but times when he's not feeling well or doing good, we go there to visit him. the last time we went out was around christmas time. we arrived late on a saturday night. nursing home late is like 8pm. we set up with our presents in on...

when i was in college i spent one year in a dorm. the name of the dorm was hudson hall. i lived on spencer floor. our mascot was a smiling spermatozoa holding a beer and since there were a bunch of us and a bunch of them (sperm) we were known as the spermies. so in full we were the hudson hall, spencer spermies. life rarely gets more predictable than this.

i worked most nights and drove home to see a girlfriend on weekends so was not very connected to my dorm-mates aside from a few that lived immediately around me. it seems in dorm-life different floors have squabbles and grudge matches. one floor did not like my floor very much. i don't think i had anything to do with this, not because of my good choices or bright spirit but because i wasn't around much. one night 7 to 10 guys from this other floor came down to our floor one after the other and emptied their bowels into one of our bathroom toilets. they never flushed, making deposits only. they didn't even use toilet paper (somehow). they just left a large porcelain cauldron of feces. by morning the matter had dissolved and settled, caving in on itself to form a flat and pristine looking object. i imagine through the night it was like a time-lapse study of how our world was formed over time only instead of needing billions of years, this model was architected between 3am and 8am.

in the morning a small group of boys from my floor stood outside the stall door wearing towels and bath robes, holding plastic bins of soap and shampoo. they talked quietly, but mostly looked in the stall. the number of comparisons between this small band of young men and the chimps in 2001 space odyssey were significant. first they all stood around deeply pondering the white structure. they struggled with where it came from, how it was made and what its purpose was. then one reached out and touched it. the result of that touch (in this case a flush) caused mass hysteria and they all shrieked and jumped and ran maniacally into one another trying to escape the resultant mayhem.

the reason this distantly-filed image has resurfaced in my mind is my children are currently employing the strategy of that innovative hudson hall floor by refusing to flush our family toilet. my childrens' technique is less sophisticated though in that they will put toilet paper and toothbrushes and play cars in the bowl. but like the boys in my story, they won't flush. i heard bella instruct the others that unless someone goes poo, this toilet is not to be flushed. i stepped forward to ask if five pees could equal one poo. i was told they cannot. and dismissed.

why i work

my sunday began sometime after 8am but before 9am. marty had already been up for hours. i was taking the three kids on an errand to the hardware store to buy L-brackets to fix our living room's coffee table that had finally succumbed to having multiple children dance on it for more than three years. this was the only item i was buying at the hardware store because i know trips ...

let me first say that i grew up a steelers fan. let me next say i'm still a steelers fan. let me add that i've never rooted against the steelers or ever doubted their ability to win a game. all that said i think the vastly superior steelers are going to lose the super bowl to the just burgeoning cardinals.

here's the deal.

three years ago the head coach of the steelers announced his retirement. rumored and favored to take the spot was the steelers offensive coordinator, a man named ken whisenhunt. whisenhunt had been with the steelers for five years and was responsible for the offense which had just won them the super bowl the year before. when it came time to name a successor to bill cowher, for reasons never made public, the steelers decided to go with someone other than whisenhunt. whisenhunt immediately quit and went on to become the head coach of the arizona cardinals.

now the cardinals suck. the cardinals have always sucked. and they surely sucked when whisenhunt took over. yet, just four games into the job, his former team, the undefeated steelers strolled into the arizona desert only to get their ass handed to them by a one and two team now managed by their former offensive coordinator.

whisenhunt doesn't like pittsburgh. whisenhunt has something to prove. whisenhunt has a fire in his belly that is burning hotter than anyone else at the table. guys like that don't sleep and people who don't sleep are hard to beat. i wish you luck pittsburgh but i also hope you appropriately watch your ass because someone is seriously out to chew it up and eat it twice.

update: i'm aware this story is being glossed over and whisenhunt is saying he holds no angst towards the pittsburgh organization. i'd buy a dell computer before i'd buy that story.

marty's father passed away on new year's eve.

when the phone rang, marty was at the store with alex. after answering the phone, i couldn't understand the caller. i couldn't even tell who the caller was. this was because the caller was sobbing uncontrollably. after placing the voice, it took effort to understand what they were trying to say. twenty minutes later i was the sobbing individual trying to tell my wife her father had just died.

at the hospital, marty's mother described the morning. she said they slept in late. when they woke they sniggled. her word. i don't know if sniggled is a pet name for snuggled or a euphemism for something else. either way it sounded warm and special. they went downstairs for breakfast. she was sitting at the table reading the paper and eating. ken put a cup of coffee in the microwave and came to join her. in her peripheral vision she noticed that the hand he placed on the table when sitting down began to slide across the table top. she looked up already saying, "ken, what are you doing? are you alright?" he collapsed. it was that quick. that immediate.

when we told our children alex was the first to speak, "grandpa? not grandpa. we need grandpa. he's the only one who can fix the trains in the basement when they stop working."

for me, ken was a man who took me into his family without an outward ounce of angst or judgement. and at the time i came to him, i wasn't a young man exactly brimming with potential (i assure you, i was no stranger to overt demonstrations of displeasure from young women's fathers regarding their daughters' taste in men). when i asked ken and nat for their blessing to marry marty, ken explained to me that he was catholic. that he raised his children as catholics. that he educated them in catholic institutions. and that obviously he would prefer that they marry catholics. after a measured pause in which his wife watched him with curiosity, he went on to say that i seemed like a good man who loved his daughter, treated her with respect and made her happy and that he supposed he couldn't really ask for more than that in a husband for her. i learned that he later confided in someone that he thought it was also a plus that marty could 'take me' in a scrap if she ever had to.

papa ken's support for me did not waver in time and he was never anything but a kind, interested and supportive father-in-law to me. in that he was all i ever knew i didn't realize how special his role in my life was until after receiving that mid-morning phone call on the last day of the year, twenty years to the month after i first met him. this is something i will forever be sad i did not tell him.

obituary

i began my first day of forty sick. i'm not in tune enough with my body to know if it was rebelling against leaving my thirties or being pissy about entering my forties. either way, the coughing and hacking kept me home. i wasn't about to go in public on my first day in a new decade sounding like a feeble old man.

marty spent much of her day out and about giving me an unusually quite house to recuperate in. i puttered about trying to catch up on my chores which piled up given my on-the-couch state the day before. intermittently i sat down at the piano. i'm learning to play jingle bells so i can support alex while he sings 'jingle bells, batman smells' on christmas day.

my folks were coming down for dinner. when they arrived marty and the children were still out. we sat and caught up for a bit. when marty and kids did arrive my dad told bella that it was thirty-nine years a some months ago that they went to the pound to get me. i added it was good they were ok with taking home a mutt. bella gave the two of us a practiced eye roll.

we went to my favorite eatery at the moment. it's a persian place on south grand called kabob international and their food is ridiculous. the maternal owner seems smitten with our children and dotes on us like we were kin. anthony was drawn to a ramp connecting two rooms that had beads hanging in the doorway. he kept animatedly running through them with his arms waving until he lost his balance and face-planted into the bar. also eating there was a neighbor with his two sons (a week earlier i saw his wife eating there as well). we exchanged pleasantries and our adoration for the food. when i said i was here for my birthday he said he was here a month earlier (nov 7th) when he turned forty. crazy little world.

for dessert we went to ted drewes. drewes sells custard year round and custard and christmas trees during the holidays. the place is a scene straight out of christmas story with old-school traditionalist on the hunt for that perfect christmas tree. they have everything but the barrel-fire to keep the workers warm. no matter how cold or late it is our kids always fight to eat their various concrete mixtures in the parking lot, lazing about on the car. this night we went home.

when we walked in the door the house was richly decorated with helium balloons. there were scores of them throughout each room. they weren't there when we left. marty and the kids had spent much of their day down the street at a friend's house. they were drawing my cards and readying these balloons which the mom agreed to decorate our house with while we were at dinner. these are the touches in life that let you know you are part of something.

after eating dessert and sending grandparents home and getting children to bed, i called my friend snake in colorado. he had sent me an email earlier in the day and i was months overdue in returning a call to him. we caught up and compared our thoughts on the boons and bites of aging. i ended the call by saying "see ya dave" which is probably the first time i haven't called him by his snake moniker since our friendship began some thirty years ago. this could be one of the bites of forty.

marty and i then sat in front of the fire, each looking minutes from bed. instead we held our comfy spots and talked for over two hours about when we were young and re-visiting how we met and the nuances and fortunate twists that surrounded our coming together. this more than any other component of my life makes being forty not only ok but actually better than being thirty-something or twenty-something. i think i'm going to be ok with this leg of the marathon.

i work on a university campus. it's an old one and has tree lined sidewalks flanked by classic, gothic-stone architecture. it's on the edge of the city border and is fully land-locked by its urban surroundings. yesterday morning while walking to work i saw something quite unexpected. on the school's main quadrangle, amidst fast-walking backpacked students was a young, delicate female deer. the sight stopped my feet.

i watched this deer hesitantly try to pick a path through these unusual environs. it cautiously edged along grassy patches until encountering a walkway. here it would pause looking each way for students and stepping back sheepishly when some would pass. when a break in the traffic would come she would quickly step over the walkway to another large swath of grass on the other side moving to the next walkway.

now the oddest part about this moment for me was that i was the only one to stop and gawk at this deer. others walked briskly by not giving it as much as a glance of acknowledgment. that no one else looked at it, i thought i was hallucinating. when it continued, i thought i may have died in my sleep and this was what the other side of things looked like. regular world just with unexpected shit all around. kind of like a dali painting. after about sixty seconds (and about ten seconds before i screamed, "doesn't anyone else see the deer!") one girl glanced up, did a double take and then effortlessly pulled her phone from her bag, snapped a photo and then kept on walking. after this trend-setter, more students did the same.

i was just glad i wasn't dead.



photo was taken later in the day by a colleague.

i'm a voyeur. but of a very innocent and pedestrian type. that is, i like to see the parts of life no one else feels is interesting. i like hearing about people's hobbies, their proclivities, their favorite toys when young, what they do when they get home from work, odd surgeries they may have had. essentially i like learning about things that do not deal with education, profession or relationshi...

i had just come out of the smokey mountains into tennessee and needed gas. i veered onto an exit advertising a BP station. i couldn't see the station but the sign pointed to the left saying it was .5 miles that way. i wended my way through a few turns in the still hilly region and when i still didn't see it i started feeling duped and wondered if i was being sent into some neighboring town. i passed a wood sign that announced in painted-cursive letters that i was entering cocke county. i was about to turn the car around but got distracted by wondering if the name was pronounced cook, coke or cock and by the time i put a foot on the brake, i saw the clearing and then the pumps.

the building had a stone foundation and dark brown timber walls. aside from the few recently hung BP signs, this was an old general store which has surely been on the side of this country road for a great while. after getting the gas flowing i stepped inside to ask about a bathroom. while the majority of the store looked like your standard stop and go station, one corner sported a full sized deli operation. on the customer side of the counter sat three tables that looked like they came straight out of a nearby resident's breakfast room. the only people in the store were three people sitting at one of the tables. an older man reading a paper, an older lady wearing an apron and a younger woman who looked at my kindly.

the youngest of the crew asked if she could help me with anything. i motioned toward the menu board hanging over the deli asking what people liked. the girl told me that people liked everything but she liked the club sandwich most. i said i'd like to try one of those. the older lady immediately pushed back from her chair and moved to the other side of the counter and began working.

after using the bathroom and moving my car away from the pump, i poured a fountain drink and took a seat. the young woman seeing another car pull up moved behind the register. two shirtless men walked in the front door and greeted her by name. she asked how they were doing and one of the men stopped at the counter to say he was ready to do some cuttin' and would be working down by the riverbed today. the other man moved back to the refrigerated section and returned with a carton holding six bottles of beer. some more people walked in and more names were exchanged. when people's eyes found me they studied me sitting in the chair at the empty table before giving me a quick nod of their head.

a girl wearing a home-made shirt that said 'compromise' in neon, air-brushed letters came in with a heavy set guy wearing a shirt that didn't quite cover his stomach, shorts and cowboy boots without any socks. the girl moved to the deli counter but the guy held up at the register. after greeting the girl, the boot guy said he mangled his foot earlier in the day and he would show her but he didn't want to take the boot off, adding that it was quite gory inside. the girl asked him if he was going to law school this semester. he said "while it would be an honor and privilege to" he didn't think it was going to work out because of finances and he hoped to start up in the spring semester. the girl he came in with was waiting at the counter. the deli-woman broke from my meal to ask what she wanted. the girl said, "four hot dogs, all the way". i took this to mean four hot dogs with everything on them and wish i knew to order my food with such knowledgeable flourish.

moments later the woman got my attention and handed me my food on a ceramic plate. the sandwich was not like what your mom would have made you, but like what your grandmother would have made you. it was fat and cut into four pieces. each wedge had a toothpick stuck through. and it was quite delicious. or perhaps i was just heady from studying the stream of people and listening in on their comfortable and friendly banter.

upon finishing my meal, leaving a 100% tip and walking out the door with a wave of thanks i realized i obtained more culture, education and curiosity in this out of the way service station than i have in every previous interstate-exit fast food experience i've ever had ... combined. it will be interesting to see how this goes over when i've got the rest of the family with me.

when my folks left north carolina they decided to not sell their home and rent it instead. at this time i'd had some experience with people who owned and rented vacation properties. all of them said the same thing to me; if you ever have a rental property, employ a property management company. i suggested this to my father but he waved the advice off saying those companies wanted five or ten perce...

summer at our house ends today in that next week we have kids starting back up at school. the biggest impact for me does not deal with resuming the fight to get kids out of bed, or the rush to get them to school or enduring the dinner table's long battle stories of recess trespasses, but what i will miss most is that my full entourage will no longer escort me to work.

i guess most know i walk to work. it's about a nine minute commute on foot. the family doesn't come the whole way. just down the street until i turn a corner. but when i do turn that corner they all stand there waving and bye-ing and wishing me a good day and alex always yells that if i see any broken glass i should walk around it. yesterday as i turned and looked back at my still pajama'd crew waving and shouting as they left my sight i had the sad realization that it will never be just like that again.

one of the very last old, saint louis movie houses closed a few months back. several years ago it was absorbed by landmark when they came to town along with a few of the other small, privately held theaters. for several reasons landmark decided to cease operations of the hi-pointe theatre, originally built in 1922, and shuttered its windows.

but then, with the release of the new batman film, the hi-pointe's lights mysteriously came back on. while showing my support at a 10:15 viewing, i was told that a landmark employee based out of chicago quit his job, leased the space and is resuming operations of the historic theatre as a private business venture.

oh, and i was also told that next week is free popcorn week. so grab your girl or guy and take in heath ledger's farewell performance, which is worth seeing, in one of saint lou's last theaters with character. and i'd call about the popcorn. i may have heard that wrong or it may just be a few nights or whatever. i just don't want anyone getting pissy with me because i botched a detail. but, either way, at the hi-pointe you can actually load up at the snack bar for less than ten bucks.

and i have to comment on something said in the article linked to above. in it landmark ceo ted mundroff says that part of their decision was based upon the fact that "people prefer to go to multiplexes." i'm going to pause for a moment to collect myself before continuing. ok. almost there. alright. i think i can proceed now. let me start by saying HEY TED! SHUT THE HELL UP! and please, please, please don't ever again apply you imbecilic and self-serving notions about movie culture to me again. feel free to say your mother prefers multiplexes or your neighbor or some college frat brother, but don't ever imply that this is the true choice of the people. unless you are equating the sheer paucity of options left to the consumer after the corporations razed the land.

typically when i go to a movie theater i go to see A movie and i don't take my seat and reflect at how pleased i am that there are fourteen other movies playing at the same time in the same building as the one i actually came to watch. because you know what ted. the second i walk down the aisle of your multiplex theatre the first thing i feel is claustrophobic and that is because you shrunk and shrunk and shrunk the rooms so you could shoe-horn two or three or five more screens into the complex. but once i find my seat and sit down i'm welcomed by the inviting feel of a piece of fabric stapled to a piece of cardboard glued to a metal chair that is welded to a string of twenty other chairs so that when the four hundred pound guy eight seats away hefts himself out of his chair mid-film to refill his rubbermaid size tub of day-old, butter-it-yourself popcorn the whole row rocks because all the damn seats are connected to one another because the are cheaper by the dozen. but thankfully my mind doesn't dwell on this nuisance given the explosions and music and screams emanating through the wall of the films playing on either side of the room i'm in, movies, mind you, i did not come to see OR hear. so ted mundroff, someone may have put you in charge of a movie theatre chain and told you to do good but it is not because of your love of film or knowledge of the theater-going experience or even because you know what movie-goers like, want or need. it is because you know how to work a casio calculator and your gifts could just as easily be applied to shoes, valves or tampons. so again, don't ever pretend that you have my or any other customer's best interest in mind. it insults your patron's intelligence and reveals your lack of it.

and ted, there ain't a multiplex in this nation that has better:

• urinals
• marquees
• ticket booths
• style
• or class

than the hi-pointe. you pompous douchebag!

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. short-lived

when i was young and we lived in colorado my dad had a friend he played music with. his name was jim-bob. jim-bob was every bit as affable as you'd expect from a guy with such a feel-good moniker. the only detail i recall about jim-bob, other than his persistent grin, was his academic career. he was enrolled at colorado state university so long his credits started aging off. the problem was he was...

it was big news when it happened. it continues to be a bit of a thing around here, rightfully so. that is the sale of anheuser-busch (AB) to a belgium-based company for 52 billion dollars.

in 1999 i began planning to leave my employer after the company was purchased by an out of state bank. i put a single condition on the new job. the condition was this: i would only work for a company that would never be purchased. at the time of this missive i narrowed my local options down to two. the first was a well-endowed, private university and the second was this storied beer mill. they were the two institutions i felt were immune to and bigger than the standard ills of corporate greed. i guess i was wrong about one of them.

i was lucky too because my first job offer actually came from AB. in the end i turned it down for a couple of unrelated reasons. first i couldn't see dedicating myself to the promotion of alcohol. i myself don't drink and am more times than not annoyed by those who do. secondly, they had a long-standing policy of not giving vacation during the first year of service. they considered this point not negotiable and wouldn't budge. coincidentally, i felt the same and now, because of this dual stubbornness, i sidestepped a major professional catastrophe. had they been humane and granted me a respectable amount of vacation up front i may not have been paying attention when an opportunity opened up at my second employer of choice and where i currently hang my hat, in a building named anheuser-busch hall nonetheless.

but back to the acquisition. i don't know how many people realize how bad this development is for saint louis but it is a true and real tragedy. i read the article and almost wept crossing phrases like ...

The companies will, however, sell off "noncore assets" that they would not name to raise some $7 billion to finance the deal.

seven billion dollars! if that isn't a call in the night that the pillagers have crested the hill i'm not sure what is. i surely have experienced such language before and will say this is a mournful day for saint louis (and many other affected states) and not just because an iconic beer baron fell but because one of our cities last historic institutions just became a line-item in another company's ledger. a company who has no interests in the surrounding communities other than what they can trim and bleed from the people and real estate. AB has been part of the landscape for so long, it's hard to have a realistic notion of just how much they routinely re-invested in the city and subsequently, how severe the imminent raping will be. we are so far from corner taverns and neighborhood businessmen where the merchant's kids and your kids shared the same schools and the proprietor knows your name and what kind of house you own and what sort of drink you like after work that we're completely numb to the implications of it all. professional pride has been replaced with collective apathy and distrust. and whenever that is the case, community pride ain't never far behind.

even though i didn't join your ranks or consume your product, i was a big fan of what you did and am sad to see you fall. rest in peace AB. rest in peace.

last summer i visited a close friend of mine who lives out of state. his brother had recently got engaged and during my stay i was invited to meet the woman about to enter the family. the four of us went out and had a fine evening together. the brother and his fiance seemed well suited for one another and the evening contained lots of laughter and stories from our younger years.

a month after my visit the brother and his fiance were eating dinner. she asked him about that guy who came to their place. he asked what guy. she said that movie guy. he thought on this and replied that he didn't know who she was referring to. she said the movie guy who makes gay movies. he said, 'huh?'. she said 'you know, that movie guy who makes gay movies that your brother brought over'. he said 'troy?'. and she said 'yes, troy'.

now ... the people involved in that evening, aside from her, the culprit, have talked about this and why my friend's brother's fiance would think, based on our short time together, that i am an actor in gay pornographic films. truthfully, not one of us could raise a certain story or comment or utterance which may have directed someone to this conclusion. and let's be clear, this does not seem like a detail that would escape three guys who would revel in holding such a nugget over the other. when the brother asked his fiance why she thought troy made gay movies she said she didn't recall exactly why but just walked away from the night thinking that's what troy did.

it has since been alluded to that i may get an invitation to this wedding. if anyone thinks i'm showing up in something other than daisy dukes, a spaghetti-strap tank top that says 'i promise i'm a virgin' and some knee high jack boots, they would be tragically mistaken.

update: to clarify, i don't own any of that clothing yet. i would have to buy it.

except for ... maybe ... the daisy dukes. but that is a story for another day.

on the way home from having dinner out on saturday night walt and i dropped in on friend we haven't seen in awhile. in fact we hadn't seen him in so long we learned not only was he moving out of his house the next day (they were doing their last minute packing when we arrived) but he and his new girlfriend were expecting their first child in a few weeks. during the few hours we sat with them amidst a bunch of cardboard boxes and stacked art the guy mentioned to me that a mutual friend of ours recently bitched to him about my website, this website, saying that i should try writing about something other than my kids. while i have gotten my share of complaints and requests for different sorts of content (i.e. too long, too short, more pictures, more stories) i must say this was a first. no one had ever told me to stop talking about my kids and talk about myself more. if there ever was a common thread among readers of this site it is an agreement that my parental observations are the life-blood if not the only content of merit on this site.

of the rare instances i've meandered through my archives to the the pre-bella days, i'm embarrassed by what i find. truly. it is some really horrific and boorish stuff. so much so, every time i see it i consider culling the first few years out of the database en masse. what keeps me from doing so is the documented genesis in my life and written voice. for me personally it is noteworthy. most of all though when i look at that early stuff i wonder what kept my seven visitors coming back. i guess i have better friends than i thought. or more deluded perhaps. but ... to show i can be a good listener, this one time, for this one guy, i'm going to do something i've never done and deliver some on-demand, by request content and share something of myself instead of my kids or my wife.

as any routine reader of this site knows, i sleep naked. fact is anyone who speaks to me, lives near me or even drives by my house knows this. as for the people who live directly south of me, they really, really know this given their window's vantage points to my stairwell and kitchen (sorry about that one morning ann). the other day i overheard marty on the porch telling a neighbor-lady that since my surgery i was no longer sleeping nude. i heard both women express surprise. marty almost sounded concerned for my well being. not so much so that she addressed it with me though. curious, i drifted onto the porch and both women uncomfortably looked at me. the neighbor lady, who is charmingly forward broke down and asked. i took a seat and began to explain. first, i said that right after my operation there were a bunch of different people in and out of my bedroom where i was permanently laid up. at one point, even one of my female college students dropped by. obviously i felt quite vulnerable and helpless in this state so always made sure i was presentable to any audience. as i started to heal and could get around a little bit, i continued to always have something on. when the ladies asked if this would be a continuing trend i confessed that only as long as i remained on crutches. when they asked why the crutches mattered, i explained that i had already tried returning to my ways but the first time i crutched to the bathroom with nothing on i was struck, intensely, by how unseemly my swinging and hanging and slapping business was. it was so striking, i actually turned around before ever making it to the restroom and put on shorts before resuming my trek.

what i've learned is this. it is one thing to stand or walk cooly about your home with all your business out there, it is totally another to thrust it through the air in confident and sweeping arcs of your body forcing a daunting 3D experience onto any who have the misfortune of being between you and your destination. i wouldn't wish that on you, my children or the one woman in the world generous enough to sleep with me.

so there you go, a troy-story or as close to a troy-only-story as i'm able to give you. hope that slakes your unique need.

last week i had my second annual review at work. it was favorable. and it came with a raise. just as my first review at the new job did. some folks may consider a raise mandatory but my last job taught me that this is just not so. while at the bank, one of the largest in the country, i went several years without a wage increase. this trend came after the bank i worked for was purchased. the new co...