Time for a skirry story, well for Bucky anyway

When Bucky and I were young we used to share a bedroom. We used to talk and giggle. I would make up stories to tell her and she always love them.

One night I was talking to her about Amelia Earhart. That is, Amelia Earhart who was flying a plane with only a navigator when it disappeared over the western Pacific ocean in 1937.

I think I was mostly just musing aloud when I said, "Just think, her bones are probably lying out there," when I heard this "AAAAAAAAAAAAH!" coming from the other side of the room. She had plugged her ears and was trying not to hear me. I was kinda puzzled and started to say something about Amelia Earhart one more time when little Bucky started up with "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" again.

It's a wonder our parents didn't hear. I would've been in trouble even though I hadn't meant to scare her. But for a while after that I had to do was say Amelia Earhart to get her skirred all over again.

Love American Style

Well, I had an entirely different plan for my post here today but my sister mentioned that I called her in an inebriated state. I had all of two and half glasses of wine, but I'm getting ahead of myself here.

Ichabod and I decided to go to dinner last night. We headed a couple of blocks over to a little restaurant called One Trick Pony. Just as Ichabod was opening the door I reached up and slammed it back closed.

I had to see the poster that was on the door. It was for a live show that evening hosted by a local indy radio station WYCE. The show that night was going to be Susan Cowsill. I had been a big fan of the Cowsills when I was young. It was a family band, including their mother. Susan was the baby of the family but sang with the rest of the family. They were the inspiration for The Partridge Family. (This link also mentions the group I loved before the Cowsills, the Monkees.) So it seemed funny that Susan Cowsill was going to be in this little restaurant in the middle of Michigan on a Wednesday night.

Well, it was before 6:00 when we got there. I figured she'd probably play around 9:00 or something like that. Someone was going around selling her CDs and shirts. I bought a CD just for the hell of it. When we were almost finished with our meal I finally asked our waitress what time the show was going to start. She said it was going to start at 7:30.

I'd already had two glasses of wine. I usually only have one, but a second one just sounded good. When I realized the show was starting so soon I thought maybe we could just hang around for it. Ichabod and I split one more glass of wine by 7:00.

By then I'd gotten antsy. I didn't feel like hanging around. We decided we'd go home and I'd get my camera. Maybe if I left the flash off I'd be able to get away with taking some pictures.

I knew better, really. Once we left I wouldn't feel like going back again. I didn't know if I'd like her music, I just thought it would be something different to do. So, instead of going back over I called Bucky and told her. Bucky's younger than Susan but that was the one in the Cowsills with whom she identified. They were both the youngest in their families and Bucky was also destined to be into music.

Two and a half glasses of wine does not a drunkard make, though, little sister. I was feeling it but I wasn't slurring my speech or anything. Bucky's just never quit trying to embarrass me. She's been doing that since she could talk and I guess she'll never stop. I suppose I love her anyway. :-)

Idiosyncrasies

I was tagged by tshsmom with a meme on idiosyncrasies. I'm sure we all have plenty of them. I know I do. The question is, where to start?

One reason I would have had trouble being in the military is that I always want to start off walking on my right foot. The army expects you to start marching on the left. I think they might have had to give me a section 8 after a few weeks of that.

When I eat a saltine cracker I like to eat it in four bites. If it's small, then two bites. It should always be an even number. Unless I turn into a pig and eat the whole thing in one bite.

Even if I've been busy and haven't made the bed, I must make it before I get into it. The sheets and blankets have to be straight at the beginning of the night. We won't go into any "details" about how it might get messed up after that. :-)

I will leave my radio to the on position when I turn off my car, but I have to turn off the fan, wipers, anything else. I hate those things going on when I turn on the car.

I almost always have a song in my head. But that's not the idiosyncratic part. The problem is that I find myself clicking the beat with my teeth. I don't think that's really good for them.

There are probably many more but I can't think of any right now. Tell me about some of yours.

Thinking about last Friday this Friday

Last Friday Ichabod and I went over to Grand Haven to walk out to Harbor Island. It's a favorite of ours. Of course I had to take lots of pictures.

This one is between the library and the community center. It is appropriate as there are many, many seagulls there.


This is a shot of the house on the tracks where we used to live.


This is the house where Spanky played his late-night music. It's actually smaller than it looks.


Here are a couple of shots down the tracks that we used to walk on a regular basis.



Here are some eggs and butter wildflowers that were growing along the tracks. I love them in the larger picture view.


Here are some of the views going down the tracks.


This one, below, used to be a train station but now has offices.


The moon was almost full. I know you can hardly see it but I couldn't resist.



Here's a caterpiller called a wooley bear.


A couple of pretty sunset/water shots I couldn't resist.



This is the track that I used to, bravely, walk. Scared the crap out of me. After we moved away they put this little walkway for wusses on.


One last sunset shot.


And one last moon shot.


Tonight will be totally different. We're going to an opera, Turandot, and a nice restaurant for dinner.

And then there were four

Most of you are familiar with my family, including Bucky, Tardist, and Timmy (who has no blog of his own). There is one other sibling who’s not been in the talk here in blogland. He’s our older brother, JD.

JD was the eldest of the five of us. He willingly and graciously welcomed me, Tardist, Timmy, and Bucky into the family with no jealousy or rivalry. There was an age gap of almost 3 ½ years between him and me. Because of this he was always just a bit removed from the rest of our rowdy, Irish bunch.



There is musical and artistic talent running through our family. But, hands down, we all agree that JD had the most musical talent. He started piano lessons in second grade. By sixth grade he was learning to play the huge pipe organ at church. When he was eleven he got his first electric guitar.

Soon after, he started a rock group called the Rockets. He played lead guitar, one of his buddies played rhythm guitar, and another played drums. Their music was mostly Beach Boys and Beatles. And they were good.

Moving to Michigan at age 14 was hard for him because he had to leave his band behind. Before moving he had been in his high school band playing saxophone. This was one way could find a connection over that long-distance move.



He also discovered sports. He was a good athlete. Football and track were his main sports through high school. In his senior year he even joined the baseball team. As his younger, male siblings got older he started let them join him in the neighborhood sports he’d play.

I suppose because of practical reasons, he got a business degree in college. But before long he was working in bands again. Not long after college he moved to Texas for his music. But eventually he wound up in San Francisco.



He had an apartment in a building that was probably, originally, a single-family home. He had the upstairs apartment and the garage/basement. The garage/basement was where his computerized keyboard equipment was. He continued writing and recording songs (an audioblog of one of his songs is included at the end of this post), but made his living from composing and recording music that was background for videos, commercials, and movies.

JD was occasionally doing some gigs during that time period. In fact, he was playing a New Year’s party, almost twelve years ago, when all the feeling went out of his legs and he collapsed.

We received the call the next day that he’d gone to the hospital and they found out that he had cancer. He started receiving chemo and had a rough time of it for a while. Four and a half years later Ichabod and I went over to visit him. Because of the placement of the tumor he still had trouble controlling his legs. He described his walk as looking like he was drunk.



He kept fighting it and the cancer finally went into remission. We were all so thrilled. Then one Christmas Kathy, the stepmother of his downstairs neighbor, came to visit her. Kathy and JD ended up talking all night long. They were so compatible in so many ways. One thing they had in common was that he’d battled cancer and she had very bad lung disease. She lived in Iowa and the phone bills were getting ridiculous. They decided to marry soon and on May 1st, in San Francisco, they got married. He actually moved from San Francisco to her home in Iowa. We knew it had to be love. Well, you couldn’t miss it. The honeymoon never ended for them.

Life was good until JD’s cancer came back again. He was already into health foods and alternative health methods. He tried a lot of things before agreeing to chemotherapy again.

A bone marrow transplant was going to be his cure. No one in our family was compatible to donate but there was someone on the registry list who was a perfect match. The bone marrow procedure was supposed to happen the end of October 2003.

But something went wrong in September. His legs and arms started to swell. JD had already gone from being a big, muscular, athletic guy to very, very slim because of the cancer. When he began to swell like that it showed right away. The doctors weren’t able to reverse it.

On October 20th, 2003, he was lying in the hospital, sick and in great pain. He seemed to be holding on. He wasn’t letting go. When Kathy, reluctantly but lovingly, told him it was okay, he went. Two months before his 51st birthday he left the pain and this life behind. And our love still goes out to him.

We miss him.



Make Believe - composed, arranged, and performed by JD, circa early 1980s.

This could be a good Halloween mask

A number of people have been using this transforming site lately. I found it at Susie's. You just need to take a picture of yourself and put it on this site to see some interesting transformations. you can't save but you can do a screen capture and paste it into a graphics program.

This was my favorite of my transformations.

Full moon again

I was on my way to work this morning when I saw the full moon. Since I was rushing I didn't try a second shot. The blurriness was a disappointment, but I'm posting it anyway.



Then I got to see the sunrise and had to grab a few photos. Michigan is very gloomy in the winter and I want to be able to look back at these when I need some color and sunshine.





This one was about twenty minutes later when I was dropping my car off for service.

A good friend gone

Seems like in blogland a lot of people are losing their beloved pets lately. Ichabod and I don't have any pets so I "adopt" them through other people.

Ichabod's parents' last three dogs have been female Afghans. The first, a beautiful blonde named Farrah, had passed before I met Ichabod. Then next, a mixed brindley kind of color, was a sweet thing named Alexandria. I loved her very much.

After she passed they decided they needed another Afghan. Cassie was a funny little black and tan hound-looking thing when they got her. She loved everyone. In fact, she was a little rambunctious which put people off a bit. If anyone here knows Afghans you know that, like cats, they don't do anything they don't want to.

But Ichabod's mother would take her to the seventh grade classes that she taught and Cassie was a gem. Well-behaved and well-loved by all. She was so good with people that she had even been certified as a Therapy Dog. That means she could go to nursing homes and places like that and just hang around for lots of love.

Around last March her moods seemed odd. She didn't respond as well. By June, when this picture was taken, she was starting to have seizures. Cassie just wasn't herself. They tried thyroid treatments, which is an Afghan problem, but that didn't really do it. The seizures got worse. She didn't seem to recognize people or be herself at all.

Two weeks ago, just four weeks after her sixth birthday, Ichabod's parents make the hard decision to let her go. We'll always remember the sweet girl that she was.

Power Color

I found this through Eclectic, who found it through Momentarily Distracted. These are always fun to take, though I don't usually post them. However, since I can't think of anything else on a Saturday morning, here's my Power Color:

Your Power Color Is Red-Orange

At Your Highest: You are warm, sensitive, and focused on your personal growth. At Your Lowest: You become defensive and critical if you feel attacked. In Love: You are loyal - but you demand the respect you deserve. How You're Attractive: You are very affectionate and inspire trust. Your Eternal Question: "Am I Respected?"

What's" Your Power Color?

Minding my own business

So I'm sitting here, quietly, at my desk. Suddenly I hear a middle-aged woman bellow, "Thanks for taking the monkey out of my back." All I could think was that Bucky would've bust a gut laughing at that one.

Gargoyles, I mean Grotesques. I stand corrected.

For some reason, October seemed like the month to post these pictures. These gargoyles are on an old building downtown, close to where I live. There used to be a bar there called Tiki Bob's. It must have been the cheapest one with the most drink specials. The reason I say this is because after it closed down the noise level at 2:00 am (Michigan bar-closing time) dropped significantly when it went out of business.

But I still love the building and the gargoyles and felt the need to share with the Internet as a whole. Hope you enjoy them, too.

Doin' my duty

**Update** I have now added the picture that Kitty Photoshopped for me.

Well, the place where I work does its civic-minded things and I like that. I enjoy working someplace where they'll put their money and time into worthwhile things like Green workspaces and blood drives.

Here's the picture Kitty took of me today after I gave my pint. Ichabod treated me to a steak dinner tonight and I feel great.



You can also see my very desk behind me as I'm very busy these days. :-)

A nice night walk

We've been having some pretty decent weather for early fall, here in Michigan. So last week Ichabod asked me if I wanted to go for a stroll on the boardwalk. It was really nice walk and I was really having fun with the camera.

Here's some Grand Rapids in the evening. Again, these look better if you click on them and look at them in the large size.



This is Ichabod almost falling in the river.



Starting to get dark.



Getting darker.



Then, suddenly, a wind came up and Ichabod had to hang on for dear life.



Then, finally

Banned book week.

I just got a good from Doc Ern's site. It's about Banned Book Week, which runs from September 24 to October 1. The idea is to take the list of 100 most frequently challenged books and highlight the ones you've read.

As I am an avid reader this one really hits close to home for me. So here's my list.

Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
Daddy’s Roommate by Michael Willhoite
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
Forever by Judy Blume
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Giver by Lois Lowry
It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
Sex by Madonna
Earth’s Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
The Goats by Brock Cole
Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
Blubber by Judy Blume
Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Final Exit by Derek Humphry
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood
Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Beloved by Toni Morrison
The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
Deenie by Judy Blume
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
Cujo by Stephen King
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
What’s Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
Fade by Robert Cormier
Guess What? by Mem Fox
The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Native Son by Richard Wright
Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women’s Fantasies by Nancy Friday
Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Jack by A.M. Homes
Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
Carrie by Stephen King
Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
Family Secrets by Norma Klein
Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
The Dead Zone by Stephen King
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
Private Parts by Howard Stern
Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford
Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
Sex Education by Jenny Davis
The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

If you'd like to play, please do.