live from new york, it's...

...friday morning and Joan's last day in New York, which I'm sure she's lamenting as she sits in her favorite 42nd Street (or thereabouts) breakfast place... But let me share with you the texts that she sent me late last night after she saw that new production of Driving Miss Daisy:

Joan:  "Hi.  Just met Vanessa Redgrave.  She was very gracious and talked to me several minutes and posed for a picture with me."
Me:  "Wow, that's impressive!"
Joan:  "It was very cool.  She held my hand the whole time she talked to me."
Me:  "Such a classy lady."
Joan:  "Very much so.  Now I met James Earl Jones.  Also very gracious and stopped and shook hands and talked to each one of us.  Neither one does autographs but that was ok."

Cool, huh?.. I guess it pays off to hang out at the stage door.

driving miss joan

My sister Joan, who lives in St. Paul, texted me from her cab ride, JFK Airport to Manhattan, yesterday morning, excited that she was back in the city she loves for her twice-a-year Broadway getaway.  She sees three Broadway shows in two days and hangs around stage doors and diners and museums and everything that is wonderful about New York City.  It's become her reward to herself for working so hard and coping with life all year.

The shows she is seeing this visit:  Catch Me If You Can, a musical version of the Leonardo deCaprio film from several years ago; Good People, a new play starring Frances McDormand (who I loved as the pregnant sheriff in the movie Fargo); and Driving Miss Daisy, a limited-time new production starring (!) Vanessa Redgrave and James Earl Jones.  How great would it be to see them together? 

She texted me earlier that she liked the first two shows and was in the first row for each.  Tonight is Miss Daisy.  She gets home late tomorrow night, and I'm picking her up at MSP.

an empty-calories moment

Okay, I just had to do this.  I closed my office door and turned off my phones and am savoring a Pepsi, trying to become more coherent before my next client shows up.

It's one of those days when things go wrong or need to be re-done or just find ways to keep us from making progress.

... Then my brother Ronnie called.  He's back in a Philadelphia hospital, is in very rough shape, sounds awful, has me worried.... Makes it hard to concentrate on the fleeting necessities of a work day.

I've gotten texts today from my sister Joan, who is in New York, her favorite place in the world, for her semi-annual three-day Broadway-shows visit.  I'll tell you more about that tomorrow.  The client has arrived.

reelin' in the years

As I was driving my sister Joan from her appointment back to her office, the 70s station was on my Sirius Radio, and she was saying that she thought that Steely Dan was a pretty dull band. I said, what about that one Steely Dan song that I always liked so much? and I couldn't think of the name of it.... I hate it when I can't remember things....

We had lunch at KFC after her appointment, were both feeling a little down because our brother Ronnie went back into that Philadelphia hospital yesterday and was having another blood transfusion any minute, according to his phone texts to us. Joan had just gotten a text from him saying, "Keep praying that I'm going to beat this thing, dammit!" (We were proud of him for his determination and also for using "praying" and "dammit" in the same sentence)

She and I talked about how do people as they age ever get used to seeing their family and friends having serious health problems? Older people seem to learn to take it in stride and somehow not be in constant depression. Or maybe things are not always what they seem.

"Oh, I remember the name of the Steely Dan song!" I said as it finally occured to me when we were almost back to her office. "'Reelin' in the Years!'"

"Are you reelin' in the years, stowin' away the time?....."

I bet you remember that one.

definitely not a susan

I was in the 6th grade, and the teacher, Mr. Taylor, announced to me and the class that my dad had just called to tell me that my mom had just given birth to a baby girl. I am the oldest of six siblings, this new sister is the youngest: three boys, three girls, a good balance. In those first couple days, I lobbied my parents hard to name my new still-unnamed sister "Susan". I'm not sure if they even paid any attention to me, but they named her Joan, and she sure seems like a Joan now.

There are twelve years between me and Joan, but somehow it has turned out that she is the sibling that I know the best, and we are very close.

That 6th grade day was 52 years ago today. Happy Birthday, Joan!

can you picture donny osmond throwing up onstage?

Well, that didn't happen. But it could have. Theoretically. He called in sick instead.

After risking our lives slip-sliding on icy roads last night between Minneapolis and Mystic Lake (20 miles or so) to see Donny & Marie, we sat down for a quick bite to eat at the casino's food court. I went to get us some sodas, and on the way to the free-soda machine, I saw the signs that said that Donny had the flu, hadn't been able to make the trip to Minnesota, and that Marie would be performing solo. We were there for my sister Joan, the Osmond fan, and I had the dreadful task of going back to the table and telling her that our plans had gone awry, that her beloved Donny was a no-show. I give her lots of credit for not bursting into tears on the spot. She had already decided that 2010 was a bust, and this was just icing on the cake, the year's last gotcha.

But you know what? Marie's solo show turned out to be pretty darn entertaining, and we had a good time regardless. The casino gave us gift cards to partially make up for Donny's non-appearance, we gambled a little afterwards and rang in the New Year as we went slip-sliding home.

wolves and lambs

Busy as the year winds down....

Went to the Timberwolves game last night, we took my nephew-in-law Ryan, the Wolves played well but lost (big surprise - they are now 8-25), we had a good time anyway. Came out of Target Center to a rainy evening, and the rain continues today: Lots of rain and melting snow, big puddles everywhere, it should be interesting when it all freezes later tonight. Sometime this evening we're going over to our former neighbor Dee's house for a combination one-day-early New-Year's-and-Jerry-and-Howard's-anniversary dinner/get-together with former neighbors. Dee has made this sort of an annual tradition, and it will be good to see former neighbors and Dee also. Sad news from Dee -- her cat Ming is dying, so we may be saying our goodbyes to Ming.

Tomorrow evening, we will have kind of a bizarre send-off of 2010. We are taking my sister Joan to see two of her favorites from her '70s teenage years, Donny and Marie Osmond, at Mystic Lake Casino. Why bizarre? Well, Mystic Lake allows no-alcohol anywhere in the building, so it will be an alcohol-free New Year's Eve party, which is a little hard to picture. The no-drinking piece of it, though, will fit right in with the squeaky-clean Osmond Mormon image. And, wouldn't you know it? These are performers that I'm not at all excited to see, and somehow we managed to get perfect seats in the second row center -- surrounded of course by aging Osmond fans (This show sold out immediately).

Saturday, the first day of the New Year, back for another Wolves game. I sure wish they could think of a way to avoid all those turnovers.

MSP to SFO to HNL

The phone rings at 6 a.m., and our land-line phone has this weird music it plays instead of a normal ring, and I can't wake up enough to know that it's the phone and not the alarm (even though I knew I hadn't set the alarm).... So I played with the alarm, trying to turn it off, and when I finally woke up enough to realize it was the phone, it had stopped that annoying song and I worried about what the call might have been that I missed. It was Joan, my sister, and she called back a few minutes later... Her cat had not-being-able-to-pee issues and was in distress, and we needed to get him to the vet asap. So I headed to St. Paul, on a rescue mission, and I'm hoping that by now after was probably a very unpleasant experience for him, the cat is free-flowing once again.

That's how some days start, and then they end up in a totally different scene. In a couple hours, I get on a plane to Honolulu, Hawaii (with a stop in San Francisco), and when I'm in that warm other-worldly paradise tonight, it will be funny to think that my day started with a plugged-up cat.

joan's cat

My sister Joan is a cat person and has been grieving for her beloved cat Alex, who died this past summer. She needed some space, apparently, between the loss of Alex and getting another cat, but she said she would know when the moment was right.

*

Yesterday the moment was right. My son Tom and I drove her to the Animal Humane Society to find an adoptable cat, which turned out not to be as easy to do as we thought. She just couldn't pick just any ol' cat, of course -- there had to be good chemistry. We ended up going to three different animal shelters -- one in Golden Valley, one in St. Paul, and one in Woodbury -- before finding the right cat -- meaning one that was the right age (not a kitten) and the right temperament (a lap cat).

*

So last night was their first night together in Joan's apartment. I talked to Joan on the phone a few minutes ago. This cat (named Tony by previous owners but subject to change) is a very energetic cat and slept perhaps not a wink. My first thought is, "Good thing the Humane Society has a 30-day return policy!" But I know Joan well enough to know that she's already hooked on him.

hangin' out with the Mormons

Greetings from Salt Lake City, Utah, which is actually kind of a nice city (for a couple of days, anyway)... We had some preconceived notions about this Mormon-headquartered state that have been de-bunked -- for instance, that because Mormons don't ingest caffeine that we would have problems finding coffee or Pepsi, but there are plenty of Starbucks and other coffee outlets everywhere. We have gotten a good flavor of the city and did some Mormon stuff too -- my favorite part being attending a recital on the beautiful Mormon Tabernacle pipe organ this afternoon (Remember, I'm a pipe organ freak). (click on the photo at right).

***

We're staying at a hotel across the street from the arena where the Utah Jazz NBA team plays (The "Utah Jazz" to me being the funniest name in major league sports, in this unjazziest of states). Am having a good time traveling with Jerry and Nancy and Joan.... Finding some interesting things out about these two sisters of mine -- that Nancy is sort of attracted to guys who drive Harleys (!) and that Joan is very attracted to clean-cut 20-year-old Mormon boys in their white dress shirts (Although I'm not sure she'd like to keep them all that clean-cut)... :-)

***

Heading tomorrow to Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming.... Staying tomorrow night in Jackson Hole...

sometimes the ending is the best part

I hate those weeks when I'm either too busy to blog or wearing a head filled with garbage unsuitable for my blog-reading public... This was one of those weeks, juggling between a merger that I need to make happen by the first of July and the normal real work.

But it's a beautiful Saturday here in Minneapolis, and I spent most of the morning on the deck reading a book and drinking coffee and un-cluttering my brain. This afternoon I went to the gym and worked off some of my week's frustrations and then, what do you know?, ran into my sister Joan downtown as we were both waiting for busses home.. (Is the plural of bus buses or busses?) And here I am, sitting on our front patio writing to you all. The week ended nicely.

Say, did you watch the Tony Awards last Sunday night?.. Of course, you didn't, and I bet you can't name one new Broadway show from this past season, can you?.. But we always watch the show, and this year my niece Ruthie and my grandnephew Corey came over to watch with us since Ruthie never has anybody to watch the Tonys with, and what good is watching an awards show if you have nobody to make sarcastic remarks to? So we had fun with it and shared throwback Pepsi (which of course Ruthie hated) and potato chips, and maybe that was the highlight of the week, sad to say. This week will be better.

and since you, like most of the world, missed the Tonys, here's a clip of the highlight of the show: Neil Patrick Harris, the host, singing the closing number:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-cB2HpNQ2k

brother in a strange land

My friend Barb, the leader of my book group (that I am usually AWOL from), was surprised several months ago when I mentioned that I had a brother who lived in Shanghai. Barb, one of the select few people in the world who read my blog, said she only knew about my sister Joan, who gets a frequent mention here in these meandering lines, so Barb assumed she was my only sibling. Actually, I have five siblings, and what's amazing is how well we get along and how much we still like each other and keep in touch with each other. Joan just happens to be the only one who lives nearby.

It's my brother Davy who mostly lives in Shanghai. He teaches English there, loves China, is very fluent in Chinese. When he is back in the States between semesters, he lives in San Antonio, Texas. He's in San Antonio right now, skipped a semester to take care of some medical issues, which thankfully he came through great.

But it's funny to think of a brother in a place that is so foreign. No, not China. Texas. Yes, I know what you're saying, it's one of the 11 states I haven't been to yet, so I shouldn't judge a place by pre-conceived notions. Well, why can't I? And then last month the governor of Texas suggested that Texas should secede from the United States because it's so out of touch with what's happening in the rest of the country. I say, why the heck not?.. (although I say he should have to take all the states between him and South Carolina with him)... I really can't picture the rest of the country bothering to fight another Civil War to keep them in the Union.

So, if I don't go visit Davy sometime soon, I might be visiting him in a foreign country. Who knows which one?

And I need to get down to visit my sister Nancy in North Carolina sometime soon also. It's been a year already.

Next week, though, I'll get to see my brother Ronnie and sister Mary when Jerry and I vacation for a week in our family's home state of New Jersey, the only state that's totally in touch and of which nobody ever has pre-conceived notions.

"i hate wind", i say

"What wind?" Jerry responds.

This was after Joan and Tom and I had been complaining in unison about what an awful April it had been because of the gloom and mostly too-cool temperatures and especially the wind. The wind blew like crazy (and is still blowing, even today) even on the relatively nice days!

(I realize there is nothing more pathetic and trite than a guy in Minnesota blogging about the weather, but bear with me....)

"And how can you hate wind, anyway? Think how awful it would be to have no breeze on those warm sunny days!" he says.

But I'm not anti-breeze! I'm anti-wind! -- the kind of wind that makes it hard for me to even walk one block to work or for Joan or Tom to stand out waiting for the bus -- day after day after day. It's not much consolation that it might be hot wind instead of wind-chill wind. Let's have some calm days! What if I wanted to golf (which, thank goodness, I don't!)?

... or how do I get into that windless bubble where Jerry apparently resides?

zone flipping at 7:10

I have one of those funky non-electric satellite alarm clocks, the kind you used to buy at places like Sharper Image stores (back when there were Sharper Image stores)...

Well, I woke up one morning last week and looked at my alarm clock and it said 7:10 -- time for me to get up. So I did my usual morning stuff -- shaved, showered, had breakfast, woke up Jerry, and went to the office. I was sitting at my computer at the office when I noticed what the time was -- 7:10! huh?

So I called Jerry and told him I must have looked at the clock cross-eyed an hour ago -- it must have been 6:10 an hour ago instead of 7:10 -- and he actually had an extra hour to go back to sleep or whatever. He went over and looked at my clock, and it said 9:10! My clock was skipping from time zone to time zone. Either the world is spinning haphazardly or my satellite clock needs new batteries!

But i've been thinking how my mind has been less than focused lately, skipping all over the place, not ever sure what day or time it is! so that's enough of that. Focus. Focus. Today is the thirtieth of April 2009, tomorrow is the first of May. Okay. Okay.

And what did I miss commenting on in the meantime?:

-- The Obamas' new dog.
-- Susan Boyle.
-- Arlen Specter becoming a Democrat.
-- The swine flu (but stayed tuned)...

But here's one I can't leave commentless: the death of Bea Arthur last weekend at age 86. Jerry and Tom and Joan and I were all so sad to hear that news. I can't begin to tell you how many times over and over again we have watched all The Golden Girls shows and quoted from them to each other, and Dorothy was always my favorite character. Even though the show hasn't actually been on the air in 15 years, it always seemed fresh and familiar and welcoming in reruns and on DVD. Consider how many hours we have spent with Bea Arthur and the other Golden Girls actors and characters. It's no wonder we take it so personally.

beware the ides of march -- 2009

This morning, a Sunday at the Four Inns restaurant in downtown St. Paul, Joan, my barely-limping sister, was giving me a hard time for not updating my blog in two weeks -- "I'm so sick of opening your blog and seeing that Joan Rivers photo!" she said. Jerry and Tom looked on with blank looks, since they never look at my blog and of course had no idea what she was talking about.

So here I am, back at it, mostly to move Joan Rivers out of the spotlight but also to let all my faithful fans know that I'm alive and well. The first two weeks of March are always nuts for me at the office -- major deadlines on the 15th, the Ides of March (although this year since the 15th fell on a Sunday, the deadline extends to the 16th, so I can take a little breather today). I'm hanging in there just fine, except for being nap-deprived.

Non-work happenings of March 2009:

-- Both our houses are still for sale. Lots of lookers, lots of great comments, no buyers.
-- Jerry took a couple of overnight trips during the past two weeks (while i'm slaving away over a hot computer) -- the first to New York City, the second up to northern Minnesota (Lutsen, on the North Shore of Lake Superior) to go skiing. Either trip sounds great to me (as long as I wouldn't have to actually ski) (Of course, right now getting out of town sounds so wonderful that I wouldn't care if it were to Topeka, Kansas!).
-- I've been reading the newest John Grisham novel, The Associate, for at least a couple of weeks. This is a book that should have been done in a weekend, but, wow, is it a pathetic excuse of a Grisham novel! He used to be a better writer than this, or at least less lazy than this. Not recommended.
-- Everybody is talking about the economy and it may be just that it's a sunny day and I'm feeling blindly optimistic, but I'm wondering if maybe in some ways the worst is over. Let's all get over being depressed about it and make some adjustments.
-- Obama is doing ok, but, wow, who would ever want that job? And I'm feeling kinda sorry for Republicans, who are stuck with Rush Limbaugh (their chubby new "face"), Bobby Jindal, and Sarah Palin. Oh, more March 2009 news -- Bristol Palin and her trash boyfriend broke up. What a big surprise -- wonder when they'll show up on The Jerry Springer Show.

Back to normal soon, guys. My version of normal, that is.

presidents' day

This morning, I asked Jerry who he would rather spend today, Presidents' Day, with -- me or Barack Obama? -- and was surprised when he answered "Barack Obama." Ouch!

Doesn't matter. We're both working today anyway (and I bet Barack is also).. We did take the morning off to take my sister Joan to the doctor to have her cast removed. She is now once again among the walking! The wheelchair is history.

What is "Presidents' Day" anyway?.. When I was a kid in New Jersey, we had both Lincoln's birthday (Feb 12) and Washington's birthday (Feb 22) as holidays every year, and somehow it all got merged into a Monday holiday called Presidents' Day, which meant that Lincoln and Washington got smushed into bad company like Franklin Pierce and george w. bush. Maybe that's why fewer and fewer companies have this as a paid day off. What's to celebrate??

#100

I realized that this is my one-hundredth blog posting since starting Et Maintenant? in August of '07. As I sit at my computer here on Blogger.com, often with a blank brain, I still try to keep in mind the book Jon gave me, Nobody Cares What You Had For Lunch, and make an effort not to be too mundane or at least to keep the mundane relatively interesting. Sometimes I get reactions, often I get silence.

At my book group this past week (which I hadn't attended in a couple years but was happy to get back to at least for a visit), there was some discussion of blogging. My friend Barb was putting in a good word for my blog, and others were saying they can't imagine putting thoughts in blog form for the whole world to potentially see.

What the heck, I enjoy it anyway. I doubt that many strangers stop by this blog site and pay much attention to it.

The site I don't really understand is Facebook. I do have a Facebook page, due to peer pressure I guess, but I don't get the overall point of it, especially the "What are you doing right now?" part. Barry, in the book group, said his wife is on Facebook and must have too much time on her hands because she puts things on there like "Right now I'm having a Coke".... and of course that comment goes out to all her Facebook "friends", who I'm sure are thrilled that she is having a Coke....

Others are very into Myspace. My sister Joan (who is recuperating nicely from her ankle break, thank you) has favorite Myspace sites that she checks almost day, like Lindsay Lohan and other celebrities and controversial characters. I don't do Myspace. You can only read what a Myspace member has to say if you are accepted by them as a "friend".. and I'm sure I couldn't emotionally handle a rejection if I asked to be somebody's Myspace friend and got no response!

So I stick with my blog, which is apparently there for the world to see, friend or not, and I'll head into the next hundred posts. Try to contain your excitement.
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Our book group selection, by the way, was The White Tiger (the 2008 Man Booker Prize winner) by Aravind Adiga, which we all liked. It's a novel about India, life in the lowest of castes, definitely not a book that would prompt you to buy a plane ticket to India however. For me, reading it was a good companion experience to seeing the excellent new movie, Slumdog Millionaire, also about dirt-poor Indians, which, unfortunately, no one else in the group had seen yet. (I'm on my annual mission to see all five of the Best Picture Oscar nominees -- have so far seen two of the five.)

'98/'99, '08/'09

At one time, Jerry and I had considered having a party tonight... Not a New Year's Eve party. A 10-year anniversary party.

After all, neither one of us has ever liked New Year's Eve (The end of a year to me always seems sad). That's why each of us was sitting at home in front of our respective computers ten years ago tonight instead of at a party or a bar. And that's where we met. In an AOL chat room.

We didn't stay at our computers that night, though. He drove over to downtown St. Paul, where I was living, and we went to Over the Rainbow, a bar now long defunct, and joined the New Year's Eve party there.

And the rest is history. We are one of the internet success stories.

As it turns out, it's a good thing we didn't plan that anniversary party. For one thing, we're both too worn out. And tonight we'll help care for Joan, who is having her ankle surgery today. And no New Year's Eve party either. We still don't like them.. well, except for maybe that one.

HAVE A WONDERFUL 2009!!!!

crisis on ice

Picture it: late afternoon last Friday, the day after Christmas, St. Paul, Minnesota:

My sister Joan, an all-around cool person with just the right touch of eccentricity, was leaving work to catch the bus home.. The streets and sidewalks were wet, deceptively so. You wouldn't have realized there was ice. It just looked wet.

I was just leaving the gym, and Jerry came rushing in to find me. He had just gotten the call. Joan had just fallen and broken her ankle. An ambulance had taken her to the hospital.

So we rushed to the Emergency Room and sat with Joan while she endured xrays and doctors and nurses and being (almost) knocked out while they reset her ankle. She was in remarkably good spirits, which apparently says something good about the drugs they had her on.

Now she is confined to her apartment for a while, surgery lined up for Wednesday (New Year's Eve day -- good riddance, 2008!).... We bring her Big Macs or whatever else she requests. Our sister Mary arrives tomorrow from New Jersey for a few days to help out. And Joan's cat Alex is also looking after her (Cats sometimes when sense something is wrong?).

The doctors say she may be out of work for as long as two months. Life changes in a split second. Hang in there, Joan!

a late-autumn sports update

A few days ago, Jerry's business partner Clark said he'd like to play some racquetball with him... Now Jerry has never played racquetball in his life, and with his back and neck problems, a game of racquetball would put him in traction for a week at least... So I said, tell Clark I'll play some racquetball with him... That offer threw my sister Joan into a tailspin... "You're not going to play racquetball!", meaning, I guess, that she thinks some intense exercise would give me a coronary. Hey, I used to play tons of racquetball, who cares if it was 20-some years ago?!.. I still have my racquetball trophies, who cares that they're dusty and falling apart?! so we'll see if Clark, 20+ years younger than myself, gets desperate for a game and if I survive it.

So to my sister, I guess my involvement in sports can only be as a spectator. I was thinking about that night before last at the Vikings-Bears game. There was actually a lot of exercise involved, lots of jumping up and down and high-fiving people around us... What a great game... Vikings 31, Bears 14. What made it even sweeter was that we had a lot of glum Bears fans sitting not far away (Have you ever noticed how Chicago Bears fans never have necks?). Plus there was a dopey looking guy sitting behind us wearing a "Palin 2012" shirt. It doesn't take a lot of brainpower to be a spectator, obviously.

Anyway, I had to hurry and blog something about the Vikings because at least briefly they are in first place in their division (even though they are only 7-5). A typical Vikings reaction to winning a big game like the Chicago game would be for them to lose next week to the lowly Detroit Lions (The Lions are 0-12).

Other local sports teams at the moment: NHL Hockey: the Wild are 14-8-1. Typical Wild season. NBA Basketball: the Timberwolves are 4-12. Not unusual for the Wolves. Guess we're going to go for the draft pick again.

That's it for sports talk, fans.
***
A later note, 12.7.08. Fortunately, I was wrong, and the Vikings managed to beat Detroit (just barely). So, for the moment, they are still in first place, and the Lions are 0-13.