An end-of-summer medley

Because nothing much new or interesting has happened the last week or so (except every Republican in sight resigning from something or other -- Gonzales and Craig are actually resigning and, even more importantly, Sen John Warner of VA announced that he wouldn't run again in 2008. Now if only that Hoonyack from Kentucky who sullies my surname would hang up his squirrel gun ...), here's a contextless melange' of stuff from the old WCA archives. I thought it was funny, back then, and I still sort of think so now.

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From 2000:
Ann Arbor: Recently, WCA Facilities staff purchased two new smoke detectors for HQ. Like the lazy, featherbedding weasels I am -- that is, they are, they failed to install them, and the two units were left sitting on a credenza in the executive dining room. Last night, one of the executive staff, namely a large black cat, jumped up on the credenza and sat down on the detectors, one of which promptly went off. After I picked myself up off the floor, laughing, the question I had was: what did it detect?

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From 2000:
OH, WHAT AN HONOR!

Ann Arbor: There's this person, Judy Rose, who writes about Detroit-area real estate in the Free Press (not unlike being the quality of life Editor at a concentration camp). Her column in a recent paper was headed, "St. Clair Shores looks like the next Royal Oak." And as if that wasn't enough, the lead points out that, in past years, Berkley and Ferndale have also been the next Royal Oaks.

Ok, I see how the game is played. Pick a depressing near-in suburb with one or two early buildings left in what can be described only geographically as a downtown. Pick another one nearby, where someone has recently opened -- say -- a new restaurant, and write 250 words on "X is the new Y." Ok, I predict that in the next 10 years, Inkster will be the new Taylor. How's that? Or Wyandotte is well on its way to becoming the next Ecorse? Warren the next Sterling Heights? Gore the next Clinton?

Folks, these are not cities we're talking about. They're either small towns that were swamped, devastated, and destroyed wholesale by urban sprawl, or they're development-driven accretions of the fifties, refugee camps for white folks fleeing the big bad city. And Ms. Rose, it takes more than (and I quote from your encomium to St. Clair Shores), "... brick pavers, trees, flowers, a park with a pond and bridge, and a trolley to transport visitors from one Nautical Mile site to another" to make them anything but a hellish endorsement of rigid urban planning policies.

Meanwhile and much more existentially, Ann Arbor is all set to be the next Ann Arbor.

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From 1999:

WHAT?!?
Ann Arbor: By now, your WCA Food Editorial staff have heard pretty much everything out of new, ill-trained, and/or just plain young wait personnel. Our long time favorite was the response from an employee of a now-defunct Ann Arbor brunch venue, when our son asked if he could have hard boiled eggs: "We just don't have the facilities for that." However, two new instances have just recently come to hand, and we thought we'd share them with you.

First, from a waitress at that new place out in Saline, Mac's Acadian: she brought a bottle of wine, uncorked it with at least a reasonable degree of ability, poured it around, and then asked, "Now, should I let it breathe, or should I put the top back on?"

And not a week later, 1500 miles away, a young man in a Santa Fe restaurant took our order, noted our wine request, and was turning around when Linda said, "... and we'd all like water, too, please."

"Oh," he said, "Um, Ok. The water will be a few minutes. We're out."

A whole new product opportunity!

The following story illusetrates a fantastic opportunity to take
products somehow related to a disgraced celebrity (in this case
Michael Vick, the Atlanta Falcons pond scum who plead guilty this
week to various charges related to running a dog fighting enterprize)
and disdain-ize(tm) them by having dogs chew on 'em.

Now between the various dogs residing with us and our near acquaintances,
I figure we can achieve a throughput of 10 to 15 thousand chewed sports cards
a day, especially if we "sweeten" the deal a bit with beef broth
and other chew-performance-enhancing substances. (Even allowing
for the occasional completely-eaten object d'art.)

Then, when we're really up and running, we approach the owner of a
local wash-your-dog shoppe about turning the dog-o-mat into a chewed sports collectibles venue. Imagine: Babe Ruth signed baseballs with ferret bites! Dale Earnhardt NASCAR keychains with St. Bernard slobber! Videos of David Beckham being chased around a soccer pitch by pit bulls! It'll be huge, man!

And don't even get me started about the potential of other
once-precious artifacts with their value enhanced by disrespectful
animal behavior -- reliquaries with paw prints, full size replicas
of Michelangelo's David with a pomeranian gnawing on its ankle,
prints of the Mona Lisa with dog hair on her gown ... the sky's the
limit!

And you cat owners -- no need to be left out!
Let's get the business plan lagged down and get this off the
launch pad! I haven't been so excited since the Y-prize (a million
dollars to the builders of the first rocket to crash on Cleveland.)

Vocabulary Tests

Some mornings are better than others; mornings when I get up and immediately take a Vicodin are not necessarily the best. Viz, our coffee technology consists of old Chemex drip pots and a Capresso grinder. The Capresso features a clear plastic lid on the bin where the unground beans go. Making a morning's worth of coffee involves grinding twice, once for caffienated and once for decaf. (Can you see this coming, yet?) On more than one occasion, I've removed the grinder lid, poured in one kind of coffee, replaced the lid, ground the coffee, dumped the results into a chemex, come back to the grinder, measured out the next set of beans, and dumped them ... onto the nice, clear lid, which I've forgotten is still in place. Beans here, beans there, beans all over the place. And it makes such a great noise as it's happening, too. Definitely exercises my vocabulary.

And then there was last week, when I dropped 4 or 5 of Coney Dog's allergy pills on the floor (yes, the dog's on meds, too). I can't quite bend down that far -- my knee complains -- so I thought, ok, I'll go get one of those nice upholstered cylinders we bought (Ottomans or Ottomen or whatever the plural is), sit on it, and that'll get me down far enough to rescue the doggie benadryl. That worked, but then in getting up, I shifted my weight slightly and the damn thing collapsed, dumping me on the floor, again causing me to resort to my great facility in the language of abuse and complaint.

These are the things that Doctors and physical therapists should know about -- they're the great motivators, the events that make you want to get better fast, throw away those crutches, and have fewer reasons to take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.

The Hanging Gardens of Joseph St

I've mentioned to a couple of people that we were trying the "hanging tomato" thing this year. The blank looks suggest that y'all are not reading enough airline magazines ... anyway, here's the result so far. You put the plants in at the bottom of this thing, fill the sack with potting soil, water it religiously (thanks, Linda), and in fact, tomatoes grow out the bottom. These are supposed to be Romas, as you can see. I'll report further when we actually eat one, but so far, so good.

Downtown, Eastside, Lamb Chop News

Last night, we took our dinner plans downtown and again found that the Earle's outside tables are the best seat if what you want is sunset action. Yes, I said "sunset" in the context of Ann Arbor. We do have 'em, here in the midwest, although they tend toward pastels and not the flaming pallettes of seaside venues. And since it's a block off Main and doesn't specialize in huge plates of medium-competent tourist food, like most of the Main Street Ventures shoppes, you can usually get a seat, more or less on demand.

So we ate, and my meal included half a dozen frenched lamb chops, the bones of which I requested "to go" for a certain Shepherd who'd had a hard day -- jumped unexpectedly by a traumatized grayhound. No damage except to Coney's ego, I suspect. Anyway, we took the bones home to the Eastside, presented her with one, and -- and then, what DID we do with the rest of them? Whatever it was, it wasn't secure, since the box appeared on the floor at bedtime, autoclave cleaned of every last organic molecule, no bones to be found. Oh, well. Stealth dog. We knew that. No osteoporesis for her, she's getting her calcium.

Marnee Thai

Went to the downtown incarnation of Lotus Thai (which is over in the Target Mall, whatever it's called), namely Marnee Thai, in the Ashley Mews building, just south of Main and WIlliam. (Whew, that was a long, comma infested sentence.)

Still working the liquour license, so nothing to drink but Thai Iced Coffee, etc. Otherwise, an identical menu, in a smaller, much more pleasant venue. The views leave something to be desired: the BP gas station or the DTE local office. Kitchen not quite as fast and one or two items might have been a touch overcooked -- otherwise, a near replica, food wise, of the suburban food, and a more relaxing place to eat. And they were doing well, seemed like. 3/4 full at 8:30 on a Wednesday night, several other couples after us, and 2 or 3 walk-in take-out customers. All with no booze license. Maybe this will work out for that silly development, finally, and actually accomplish the extending of downtown by another block south. After all, Leopold Bros. is down there in the valley, just another two blocks' walk, and a block past that is the old Ark locale, where Susan Chastain is moving the Firefly. And both of those places have PARKING, for God's sake, as do the immediately nearby sidestreets (as we well know, since we used to live a couple blocks up from the Ark, then the original Main Street Market.) Now, if we can just keep global warming from flooding Allen Creek and making a lake out of Fox Tent and Awning's parking lot, maybe the Downtown Development Agency can actually claim a win, for a change.

But don't bet on it.

Dogs are Literal-minded

Wednesdays, we take Coney to a doggie day care place, partly so she gets
some extercise and partly so, as an only dog here at home, she stays socialized
and friendly with other dogs.

Yesterday, we all left the house to implement this policy. I got into the
passenger's seat, and Linda and Coney were still out in the yard, browsing
the fresh, green crab grass (Coney was, not Linda.) My car door was still
open, but the back door wasn't. Linda said, to Coney, "Are you ready to get
in?"

Apparently she was, since she leapt -- not crawled, but leapt -- into the front
of the car, into my lap, all 65 pounds of shepx. It took, oh, a good two to
three minutes to sort this out, in between the hilarity (I was laughing
uncontrollably) and the knowledge on Coney's part that there are biscuits in
the glove compartment, but that her usual place to receive one is in the back
seat.

Guess you had to be there.

Nothing Earth Shaking

Last MRI was as positive, when someone who knows what he's doing looked at it, as the previous one. Basically, tumors in head gone, good.

We have also, however, backed off on the steroid that I was taking, down from a big 'ol 40mg 4 days a week to 1mg, daily, just for the fun of it, far as I can tell. This has its interesting aspects, since while I was taking the big dose, I never, ever, got anything resembling a headache. Now, it's possible to get one, and I'd gotten used to being immune, even to things like slighly misadjusted glasses frames. Bugger, back to reality.

What's next? We haven't really decided -- a different drug, probably, but not clear which or how. And once I can successfully navigate more than 10 or 20 steps without a crutch (a physical one -- my psychological crutches are far, far too deeply ingrained), I'll be back at work, physically, instead of just virtually as I am now, a mere wispy voice on the phone, demanding compliance with standards.

Meanwhile, it's Sunday night, and that starts with "S" and that rhymes with "don't mess," and that means "rawfish." Time for our weekly religious observance at the shrine of hamachi and others. Yum, can't wait.

The following appeared in the WCA news in 2000, when the original Sweetwaters cafe' on Washington was my morning stop, before work, and I used to hear a lot of this kind of thing.

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AND SPEAKING OF AFFIRMATIONS

Ann Arbor: Overheard in the cafe this morning: two women (regulars, who I suspect of being public school teachers) -- one says, "It's one thing to LOVE your dog, but it's something else to LICK your dog." Her friend gives her a completely emotive, between the eyes, I'm really listening to you look and says, "Mmm-hm." Minutes later, they were discussing sushi and giggling.

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Very Random Semantic Rambling

Returning from a walk with the dog, Linda said, "Coney got a horse biscuit."

Consider the possible range of meanings, there. A biscuit FOR a horse? A biscuit MADE OUT of horse? A biscuit SHAPED like a horse? A crude euphemism?

Turns out, it was a biscuit FOR horses, a thing we didn't have in my youth, when horses were lucky to get a sheaf of hay and some sweet feed and maybe a pat on the back with a shovel. But it raises some other questions: what animals now have their own snacks, that I don't know about? I know that Purina makes "chow" for just about everything that's held in captivity -- are there high-end, gourmet treats for primates, for example? Bonobo Bites? Rhesus Pieces? Macaquearoons?

This is apparently how going off steroids makes you think ... if "think" is the right word, here.

Can you interpret MRI Imagery?

So I had another MRI of my head last week, and they gave me a CD of the results. Trouble is, I have no clue how to interpret the results. They look a little funny to me -- both the stills and the motion. Anybody have any ideas?

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Look kind of interesting, don't they?