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captainsblogJuly 11- returning from first steps on holy ground in almost three years:
By all predictions before the event and according to all reports after, Saturday’s celebration at the ballpark was the biggest and alivest crowd ever at Citi Field for a regular season game. From the time I came down the steps of the elevated 7 tracks, you could see it and feel it.
That photo was taken at 12:30. over three hours before the scheduled first pitch of the game (it wound up almost exactly four hours before it once the ceremonies finished), and 90 minutes before the gates would even open, but everyone was there early for two important reasons. One, to acquire the promised swag of the day: Keith Hernandez immortalized in broadcaster bobblehead form, limited to the first 25,000 of the expected crowd of 43,000-plus. This artificial diminishing of the supply is an old ballpark trick, encouraging people to show up way early so they’ll spend more time and money inside the gates.
But we were not there early just for that. We were asked to be in our seats an hour before the scheduled first pitch so we could take in all of the moments of honoring a man who has been with the team, on the field and in the booth, for most of the past 40 years.
That has it backwards, since I was in the cheering section in the outfield stands. I still got to hear every word, and had a perfect view when they unveiled the number in the rafters that will never be worn on the back of the uniform by anyone other than Keith at an Old Timers game.
But again, we are getting ahead of ourselves.
----
Those 90 minutes waiting to get in were an experience unto themselves. Other than the couple I'd seen behind me on the train, I didn’t know a soul, but I knew every soul. Some were a little older than me, some very very young; most in Met paraphernalia, many in jerseys and tees honoring number 17, a wide variety of that gear commemorating this very retirement day. I was in my 7 line T-shirt from the Toronto trip four years earlier and an obscure Buffalo Bisons hat, but I was still among my people.
Since I wasn’t going to have the chance to find anybody outside the stadium, I did some quick texting to find out where people would be inside. I knew that one couple had had to beg out due to a COVID outbreak in their house, and I found that one of my favorites from the blogging community, who attends many games, decided to sit out the craziness of this one. But I confirmed where my friend Rebecca would be, who had fixed me up with the seat in the Army section, and got coordinates for one other friend I really wanted to meet who would be further up. Then it was just waiting and people watching for another hour or so.
My only regret in not being able to explore outside was that I might not get to see the new iconic feature just added at the start of the season. Tom Seaver had previously ticked off all the honors: Halls of Fame inductions in Flushing and Cooperstown, his number 41 the first Met player's to be retired from the rafters in Shea days, a gate at the new stadium named for him before he died, and the address of the ballpark changed to 41 Seaver Way shortly after his passing last year. But the new thing in sports circles is to put a statue outside the stadium, and his, unveiled this spring, was our first. I hope there would be enough time after I left to find it and get a photo.
As the line began to move, I realized I had no worries: I was right next to the thing.
Also within sight as the queue moved along:
The obligatory street preacher-
-sorry, but I prefer to believe in Dog.
Also, this Dog:
But our line moved quickly, the security and mobile ticket checks almost instantaneous, and the designated bling was in hand:
I later learned what "connecting" meant, and why Keith only had the word "New" in front of his broadcast platform. Their plan is to honor Gary and Ron, his partners in the booth, at later games.
Which had better be much later, because I'm not doing this again any time soon.
----
From there, it was find the seat and find the food. The former: third row of the section overlooking close to dead center field, the homefield home of the 7Line Army. This was my third and a half outing with them- the half came when I scored a seat close to their section at Yankee Stadium- and, spoiler alert, the Mets are undefeated in those four visits, a far better showing than my overall lifetime record with them. Despite the militaristic theme, this section is basically full of well-intentioned baseball nerds. Most are there for all of their events, many keep those seats for all 81 home games, and the cameraderie among them, of all ages, genders and ethnicities, is inspirational. They also exude kindness: I never made it to that third-row seat, opting for an empty one on the aisle a few rows up, and when its owner (Travis by name, Travisty on the back of his 7 jersey) showed up, he encouraged me to stay where I was. I wound up listening to the whole ceremony and the ensuing game on the MLB app on my phone for most of my drive home from Beacon, and you could hear some of our section-specific cheers on the air. These began during the retirement ceremony. It began a little late and ran a good 20 minutes past the scheduled first pitch, but nobody minded and there were no "network stooges" from a national broadcast to make the game start on time.
Keith was humbled, funny and grateful- to the team staff that set up the event, to his family and fellow 80's players in attendance, and to the current manager and players who came out of the dugout- every one of them- to form a receiving line of appreciation for the event we were witnessing. His current successor at first base even grew a mustache (Keith's signature facial feature) in honor of the occasion, and the 7 Line people passed out fake ones to all of us:
(Yeah, it's a little off, but then so am I;)
The moment we all were waiting for finally came-
and I took one more trip through the stands to get some other views, including of the Home Run Apple all decked out with Keith's number on it:
(That's the orange-clad 7 Line section to the right of the 408 sign in straightaway center.)
Oh, right, forgot about the food. One big change since I was last here three years ago? No change; every concession stand was cashless. I only wound up hitting two for the entire event: the signature Shake Shack with the final topping from the old Shea Stadium scoreboard above it-
- and a beer stand where I bought my only bottled water of the night, which I would refill about eight times from the well-hidden fountains. I was also seeking out places to charge my phone after all this picture-taking and texting, and those were also hard to come by. At one other food stand I walked by, there again was that couple I'd been running into since the first train down the Hudson; the husband had a real mustache of his own, and his wife politely declined one of the extra fake ones they passed out in the Army section.
I did also head up to a higher altitude to finally meet up with a friend from the social media world I'd never gotten to before:
Maria is often the first person to post about a win or loss after I've checked out for the night; I'm still hoping to meet her husband, also a kind and funny soul, but he's got MS and navigating the ballpark is always a challenge for them, especially with a sellout crowd. It was on that attempted visit that I had my one and only cognitive fail of the event: I realized I was short one bobblehead. Fortunately, (a) I realized it almost immediately, (b) I remembered exactly where I left it, and (c) unlike the Bronx where someone once stole a once-sipped beer from me while I grabbed a napkin, it was right there untouched, because Met fans don't let Met fans steal stuff.
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After all that, why not take in a ballgame?
Most of one, anyway. With the late start, a couple of delays for injured Met players and the typical length of an MLB game, I made it only to the middle of the 8th. I got to see the Home Run Apple come up twice to give the Mets a 1-0 and then a 3-2 lead, but the bullpen coughed both of them up and it was tied 3-3 when I headed back to the 7 train right around 7 to begin the long journey home.
I would later hear the end of the game on my phone, reaching the bottom of the 10th inning somewhere north of Binghamton. Miami scored their almost automatic run in the top of the 10th, aided by some bad Mets defense, but this team refused to lose on Keith Hernandez Day. In fact, they won it in historic fashion- winning a game on a walkoff error for the first time since Keith's teammates did it, thanks back then to Bill Buckner in Game Six of the 1986 World Series.
I'd heard a few minutes of it on the subway, but the phone battery was again fading fast. I'd staked out a 7:45 Metro North departure to my station, but the 7 train got in just a few minutes too late for that, so I spent the hour to the next one just exploring Grand Central and a couple of streets around it, looking for caffeine and an outlet to recharge the phone with. I found neither; the city that never sleeps looked pretty sleepy for a Saturday night, with very little open in the terminal itself and nothing on 42nd or Lexington of a Starbucky variety. One thing that was open in the terminal was a newsstand, which did actually have newspapers- there were none for sale anymore in the station platform joint at Beacon because nobody buys them anymore- but I settled on a cheap paperback to keep my eyes moving once the 8:45 got going....
and there, literally in front of me when the doors opened, was a seat next to an AC outlet I could charge my phone with.
I was back in my car a little after 10:20, needed one stop for gas halfway up 17, and otherwise made it in the door in just under five hours.
And the steps that went into all of that? Almost double my higher-than-usual 7,000 plus from the day before:
That step count wouldn't be matched for many months, if at all. The team went on to post the second-best record in its history, but it only qualified the Mets for a three-game play-in series which they lost two of. The off-season has brought much movement already, with a few stars not returning, some new faces arriving but most of the core remaining. Those orange steps look like they may leap forward in 2023:)
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August 16- Ya got me, Doc, I'm goin'!
I didn't post on August 15th, which is unusual for me. Pick any random August 15th in my archive (click on the 8/15 entry from last year, or fiddle with the scrolly thing below it to pick an earlier 8/15) and you'll know why I still remember that day in 1978 as my Independence Day. For unlike the more traditional College Trip a year earlier where Mom and Dad dropped me off for the school year at a Cornell dorm and an army of red-shirted Orientation Counselors shlepped my stuff, this trip was just me, my sister and a helpful then-boyfriend. No red-shirted army to help with the loadout, and lots more stuff, because this time I had no intention of ever going back. I was the first of three roommates to arrive on the day our lease started, and those couple of weeks before sophomore classes were dedicated to learning the apartment's area, where to shop, what the difference was between heads of iceberg lettuce and cabbage, and that there was no housekeeping staff to replace the TP when it ran out.
Twelve moves and ten years later, I was married, in the first home we ever owned, settled into a real job and only two moves of house and three of job would follow over the next 34 years. Still, a lot of that independence and confidence began on that day and in that place.
So how did I celebrate it this year? Mostly by sleeping more in 48 hours than I have since I had mono in 1984:P
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Sunday morning's dawn broke with a cough. They sometimes do, but this one was different somehow. I of course assumed the worst, broke out one of our 300 Mister Wizard Home COVID Tests, and was pleased to see it come up negative. But test again in 48 hours to be sure, they said.
I stayed close to home. No walkies for the dog. Head hurt a little, chills, body aches (yet oddly the hamstring felt pretty good). It was mostly the lethargy: I spent hours communing with a pillow. The animals were wonderful; Pepper must've known something was up and kept the whining about the reduction in her supply chain of chores. Jack spent hours cuddled against my knee.
The 15th itself brought only one court hearing, which I had to do by phone anyway. Filed one case from home, answered some emails, returned not quite as often to the curled-up ball. By now I did have a slight fever I didn't the day before, but the chills were gone.
Another overnight, still not better. Took the test again this morning and,...
Yup, the Grim Reaper finally got me. And, a couple hours later, we confirmed Eleanor has it, too.
There are worse things. We're both fully vaccinated and boosted, which majorly increases the chances of it being mild. Other than the phone call yesterday, I have no court or client commitments this week, and the only inquiry could be done by Zoom if they're okay with that. I've informed the two clients I met with last Friday and people in both offices, and all have been kind about it. This wasn't my idea of when and where to take a vacation, but sometimes the universe makes those decisions for you and I accept it.
The CDC drill is basically to wait. Take the test again Thursday to see where the antigens are; two negatives 48 hours apart mean I can go roun in the parp! again. Masking just became mandatory again, and next week is fairly quiet, too, which will help if the thing hangs around. I have work I can do from home, plenty to read and maybe a dent will be made in the streamings I or we are falling behind on. The bills are all paid.
Call it a different kind of Independence Day.
Fortunately, that wound up being the worst of it. We were symptom-free by week's end, testing negative by the end of the month, and thanks to boosters and caution, the later variants haven't hit us. Neither has the flu, or rickets, or any of the other wonderful things out there that can throw you for a loop.
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September 7- A question.
I've been kinda getting this feeling:
At least about this whole blogging thing, anyway. The immediate trigger for it was coming across this yesterday, from a guy who's a professional entertainment writer and former baseball broadcaster, so, yeah, my kinda guy. The thinking really nailed a lot of what I've been wondering about myself:
I have decided to finally end the blog. This will be my last post. After doing this almost daily for close to 16 years it is not a decision I made lightly. To be honest, I had been contemplating it for about a year.
Why am I stepping away? Well, first of all, I’ve outlived blogs. Mine may be the last one on the internet. When I started and blogs were the thing, I figured this would be fun to do for a couple of years. Other bloggers advised I post something new every day as a way to build an audience. That was a little more work than I had planned but okay. Eventually the blog took on a life of its own and I found myself posting daily for well over ten years. I can’t believe I didn’t run out of things to write by 2010.
But what was once fun has become a chore. I think I have run out of things to write about, or at least they’re getting much harder to come up with. I began reducing my schedule hoping that would help, but it hasn’t. I just feel it’s time.
I’m also involved in a number of other creative pursuits and really want to focus more on those. The podcast will continue. I’ve been doing that for six years and nearing 300 weekly episodes. I thought initially a lot of my blog readers would subscribe to the podcast, but that hasn’t been the case. I seem to have a largely separate audience for the podcast. But it’s still out there if you wish to follow me.
There follow some links of his, to those other things that I've either completely avoided (Twitter) or rarely use (IG). Notably, he does not include a link to Facebook, the other dying form of social media that I'm still hanging onto by the vine it's dying on. That platform is constantly trying to play catchup with the other new forms of social media designed for the Short Attention Span Theater crowd. Never mind the literal third of Facebook content that's just unavoidable paid and targeted advertising; so much of their push now, in the other two-thirds, is away from the simple and preservable narration of experiences and into disposable "stories" (their attempt to mimic Snapchat) and, more recently, the endless parade of what they call "reels" (that are reel-y just a ripoff of TikTok). Those are designed to be visual and ephemeral. They do not lend themselves to creating content that a writer would actually be proud of.
He also mentions podcasting in there. That's a fascinating medium: just its name references the long-obsoleted iPod, which was the device most were originally played on (and for a long time subject to a claim of a patent troll that went back to even older playback methods). Now that's a format that seemed to be briefly "a thing" about a dozen years ago. I had a bunch on my phone, mostly NPR and BBC things tied to actual broadcasts and the pioneering Welcome to Night Vale. Eventually, these shows lost their lustre for me and I stopped listening. Lately, though, it seems the podcast has come back in a much bigger way: media companies are majorly integrating them into their online platforms, and Steve Martin's Only Murders in the Building has made a major show out of spoofing them. So maybe the "blog" can make a similar comeback! Whadya think, Steve?
Plus, there's the sentiment he expresses: what was once fun has become a chore. I've gone months at a time having something to say literally every day. Toward the end of that most recent run, which was right around this time last year, I was really starting to feel that it was just an extension of the workday. I was usually doing it at the end of the day, after Eleanor had gotten home on the relatively few days a week she was working then. Once I freed myself of the need to say something daily, there then arose the new chore of having to decide whether to say anything. Lately, that choice has been not.
One reason for that is feeling the absence of this, which is also from Ken's Last Post:
What I will miss most is you. I’ve made a number of good friends and have really enjoyed the little community that has formed via the comments section. Often times I found the comments more interesting than my posts. So I will miss the daily interaction and your contribution.
Beyond that, I sincerely hope you got some value out of this sixteen-year labor of love. You were entertained, maybe learned a writing tip, enjoyed the assorted adventures of my various careers, and looked forward to the occasional photo of Natalie Wood.
(Don't worry about that last reference; I don't read him daily and don't get it, either)
Problem for me is, I've already lost most of that daily interaction. At the height of the "blogs were the thing" craze, I had a Friendslist with dozens of daily interacters. They posted their own thoughts every day, offered comments and reactions on mine, and even participated in communities of shared interests of words (![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
metaquotes, a "best-of" place you were honored to see one of your posts shared in) or places ( buffalodorks was a source of many local friendships) or fandoms. Those are all long gone, or at least petered out to the edge of nonexistence. At most, I'd say, there are a dozen people who regularly post to what DW calls my "reading page," a deliberate separation from its predecessor's code-assumption that You Are Friends with these people.
Yet I am, or at least was. But without the interaction and the inspiration, it's harder.
So I'm not making any pronouncements or even decisions about pronouncements this morning. I'd welcome any feedback about it, but given recent interactions (or lack of them), I'm not expecting a ton of them.
A ton? No. But enough interest from enough people, here and elsewhere, to keep it going. Not daily at first, but I seem to be heading back to that, sometimes, like today, even more than once daily.
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October 22- the middle post of a month full of music, titled "Somebody Saved Me."
That Townshend number is one of several songs I cued up on my way home from the concert last night. I decided to go exclusively with artists I had heard in person at one time or another, or (as in the case of Pete and, yes, even Phil Collins) as parts of bands I'd seen, from this week to over 45 years ago. What their music saved me from was drudgery, delays and general feelings of dopiness about doing my job. And it was specifically echoed by last night's amazing performer, who overcame those same feelings in her own "day job" to devote her full-time career to music. I said at the end of my last post that I would be working through a very long day of it. That turned out to be quite true- a little frustrating early, but ultimately very redemptive.
Since I was going to be away from Buffalo most of the day, I started early with a grocery run and delivered a couple of thank you cards to two realtor friends. I had tried to refer a client who very much needed their kind of services, but they ultimately wound up going with another broker, and another lawyer. We all did a ton of work to try to fix the client's problems that we’re never getting paid for.... but wait! In the middle of my travels yesterday, I got a call on another matter from my successor lawyer on the deal, and when I asked about this one, he told me my friends might get a crack at it after all. It was only mostly dead to them, and as we know,....
So we’ll have to see where that goes.
After that, on the road to Rochester, a couple of errands, another frustrating sit down with someone who’s been blowing me off but will not be the one that gets yelled at in court next week (that will be me), and finally a side trip down an under-construction 390 to meet a new client in Geneseo. And that is where music started to turn the day.
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After meeting the new client at a coffee shop, I saw the beloved bastion of music across Main Street:
I've been to, and written about, Buzzo before. It was close to closing time, but I couldn't have come that far without stopping at the most sacred of musical institutions in the southern 585. Buzzo is working a cane these days, but he’s still very much with us, as is his biggest firetrap of dusty vinyl you will probably see anywhere. One of his few CDs on offer was by Engelbert Humperdinck, and when else would I get to tell him "I was just listening to that dude!" except the night after watching Bullet Train. (One sentence review: pretty good, barely tolerable violence level, Brad Pitt makes it worthwhile.)
The workday ended, I headed back north, only a very short one-lane construction patch on 390 in that direction, and had some time before meeting my concertgoing friends for the somewhat later downtown Rochester show. Again, I detoured through an old neighborhood, this time the first condo I ever moved to and later bought right after we got married:
The siding's new, as are the windows and blinds, but otherwise this is where we used to live, with our first two cats- no garage, shitty TV reception (thanks to a farm of radio transmitters around the corner), and the Erie Canal running behind an embankment at the edge of the complex. This was my first-ever home requiring full furnishings, and my sister and college roommate helped me load in what little I could acquire before we went shopping at a long-gone Monroe Avenue furniture store for bedding, tables and a sofa-loveseat combo, the smaller of which still lives on about ten feet behind my ass in this office.
Met friends, went out for Indian at one of our old longtime favorites in the South Wedge. Longtime, that is, except the place just did a major reno and not everything got unpacked, so no serving spoons. I was reminded of a place from our honeymoon up in Stoke, ironically called "The Grand"- a hole in the wall English-breakfast restaurant with eggs and sausage to die for once you were done waiting for them. Ian, the proprietor, didn't have enough dishes to meet the demand, so we had to wait for Lilibet and Phil to finish so he could wash them out and then serve us.
Doors downtown were at 8, with Danielle Ponder due to go on at 9. We killed most of that difference finding on-street parking three blocks away, then headed in for one of the strongest musical nights of our lives.
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You may not yet have heard of Danielle, but don't worry- you're going to. She's up for multiple Grammy nominations, is making the late-night television rounds, has sung with the likes of Marcus Mumford and Elvis Costello, and performing for Austin City Limits is hardly the limit of her upside. She still handles her own social media, enduring things like You ain't got nothin' on Lizzo! from one commenter and the sweet cluelessness of an older fan who thought she was Tina Turner.
She is not. She came home to us, crying when she got her first greeting from the crowd. To many, she's still Dee, a lawyer from the Rochester PD's office who made it out and big, with that mani you see being a set of press-on nails from CVS. 
She sang about how far she's come while being who she still is, in an updated version of this song with her newer three-piece backing band. The floor was shaking during this song, and no, I still haven't had a thing to drink:
Watch on YouTube
Yet it wasn't that long ago that the road to the gig was just as much of a struggle. She told us a story of how she came to Buffalo to sing not too long ago, and played a room to eight people, splitting the pay with her bandmates- $34 each. Now she’s selling out bigger cities than Buffalo, much less Rochester as she did last night. Deservedly. 
She also told us about how, literally half a lifetime ago at 21, she tried to kill herself. Best failure of her life, and one she encouraged the room to avoid as well, as we la-la'd along with her uplifting song of self-worth and redemption.
Her encores? Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love" and Radiohead's "Creep." She said she wished she'd done them in reverse order, because the story of the night was the whole lotta love shared by a beautiful singer and thousands of people who needed to hear what she had to sing.
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Me and my sore feet (from a long day of work and a night of standing five rows from the stage) headed back for the drive home, passing this old-school reminder of Rochester's weird promotional past:
This bizare feel-good ad campaign for the city supposedly paid Frank Sinatra to record a jingle based on it,which I may vaguely remember from the radio when I got there on its tail end. I do not remember the lobster, though.
I got to tune into the final out of the Phillies-Padres playoff game, which no doubt saddened the San Diego fan in front of us at the concert wearing an 80s retro Dave Winfield 31 jersey from that team. Mets fans are almost required by law to hate all things Philadelphia, but when their radio announcer called the final Philly out giving them the win, he told us who the last Philly was before last night to record a 6 out save in the playoffs:
Tug McGraw.
Sorry, I can’t help but like these guys.
After that, it was Danielle's EP (I still need her grammy-nominated full-length), Dayna from three nights before, some Phil and Pete and 10,000 Maniacs. All I've seen live, all have lifted me, all have saved me more than any Trumped-up religion ever did.
That concert followed one back at the Little- a more intimate evening with that singer named Dayna Kurtz- and then was not-in-person followed by one the following week in Buffalo with Carbon Leaf. All their tunes are now on my phone as well as in my heart. Oh. and the Phillies made it all the way to the World Series, only to lose.
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November 18- Snowetry and Poetry
At the moment, the landscape here looks pretty Normal Late November:
Just over six inches atop the Lamppost-o-Gauge™, the plows have done street and driveway, but we may be a little slow on my One Job of getting the sidewalk cleared.
I have a note, though:
Dear Neighbors,
Ray can't come out and shovel the sidewalk this morning. His quads are still hanging from meat hooks in the freezer from the Incline-a-palooza workout Coach Stephanie put them through almost 48 hours ago.
Signed,
Epstein's Mother
Yeah. That was the beginning of my past 48 hours or so, back when the first flakes hadn't even fallen. My second chiro appointment was confirmed and reconfirmed for 4:40 Wednesday afternoon, and exercise right after a treatment is not recommended, so I headed in for 60 minutes of fun first thing Wednesday morning. Usually the soreness from a workout is gone within a day. Not yet, not this time. It was, as they say, a "good class."
The foot treatment went much better. Despite leaving in plenty of time for a 4:40 appointment at the other edge of Buffalo's everything-in-20-minute zone, 4 PM is early afternoon rush hour most days and even earlier and crazier when they're predicting an OMGSNOWPOCALYPSE. I got there barely on time, just in time to wait another 20 minutes because, doctor's office. The treatment went quickly and seemed to help (the feet, anyway- quads not included). I then drove home in the dark past two nasty accidents on the other side of the 90. First, one near the 290 split with at least four fire trucks, then a smaller one just onto the 290 that was still backing up traffic the other way probably back to Grand Island. And this without a stitch of snow around here, yet.
We had a quick dinner and I headed out again, this time to my first appearance at a live poetry reading on Elmwood in probably over three years.
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Another friend usually hosts, but that night had a number of other arts-related events going, so our friend Brittany stepped up and took over the hosting duties, plus reading several of her own poems:
(The honeydrippers you see from the thorax down have little ghostie sheets over their heads that you can't see behind her poems, hence the BOO BEES joke.)
First up was Brin, or possibly Bryn, who I hadn't met before:
And finally, Lissa, who we have seen at these many times:
Oh, and in between? Me. When only four people are at one of these, yer all reading and yer all LIKING IT. Which, eventually, I did.
I thought Britt made me look pretty angelic in that. Somebody else saw that picture and thought I was doing a Mr. Spock hand salute. (Well, I always do that on the 190 passing the Vulcan Street exit while intoning Live Long and Prosper.) My five minutes were closer to stand-up than poetry, with a recitation of my Two Word Hall of Shame piece from Tuesday and an extended riff on the Bank Sex Line story from earlier Wednesday.
This gentleman, at least, appreciated the work. He was also the only one who remembered having a phone number starting with two letters (GR for GRant).
Then home again, home again, jiggety jog, for another day of Calm Before the Storm. Or possibly, the Crime.
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I started out yesterday working from home while waiting for the forecasting and reality to develop further. All the night before, on electronic signs on the various 90s, were impending doom warnings:
This, before barely a flake. The best part, though, was the bit about it ending at 1 PM Sunday. For that, sports fans, was when the Bills were scheduled to kick off their weekly game at home against the Cleveland Browns, in the center of the usual county snowbelt that is Orchard Park. My reaction: I knew the NFL was powerful, but wow.
This will be important later.
I divided my Work at Home between actual productivity and fighting with a west coast website which my favorite record shop had contracted their mp3 download business to. Eleanor was looking for an old folk album from her Ute, and they had it for ten bucks. Three different browsers refused to download the tracks for security reasons, I eventually got all but two through the checkpoints, but the final two resisted. Other sites with "free" options were either too skeevy or circled back to the same stupid "legal but stupid" server, so I put in a support ticket with them and maybe they'll show up someday. Meanwhile, not a single flake had fallen, though schools and events and public buildings were already announcing closings. But I think the cats knew what's coming, because they began acting more squirrelly than usual.
About this time yesterday: I’m at my desk, fighting with three different browsers over the download, when Bronzini appears, comes behind my computer and hauls off one of the toys I keep on my desk. I let it go, but about a minute later, the desk starts shaking. The little shit has returned for more. His paw is reaching up from behind the back edge of the desk like a hand reaching out of a grave, and he grabs my Funko Pop Jim Henson and tries to haul HIM off.
Don't mess with my Muppet merch, boy:P
I eventually made it into the office on the snow-free roads, left a little early to make a pre-storm Wegmans run, screwed up a phone conference with a court but eventually got through and recovered, and then got a weird email from another court that looks, by all accounts, to be evidence of a crime.
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I'll get into the weeds of it in another post, but the short version: Bankruptcy Court has an unclaimed funds depository. It's similar to the ones that state governments run, and occasionally publicize (usually right before elections) with smiling State Comptrollers handing out oversized checks to happy finders of abandoned property. When you apply for such an amount in bankruptcy, the court sends everybody in the case an electronic notice and a copy of the application. This debtor was not my client; I represented a creditor. And the 2020 case was dismissed in 2021 and my client (only recently) got his property back.
From the debtor's widow.
And here he was, supposedly making application for "his" money over a year after he died.
Maybe that paw coming out from behind my desk was his.
Anyway, I've reported it to the appropriate authorities. It'll be interesting to see what they do to catch the guy. Maybe with one of these:
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Made it home after that on clear highways- although a number of other idiots got into a 4-police-car accident just the other side of Sheridan Drive from us- and, fittingly enough, we started the final season of Dead to Me as the evening entertainment. Portends of doom got worse, though:
* The Bills moved that Sunday 1 p.m. game to the snow-free city of Detroit, where they moved a game the last time such a Sno-vember event hit. Then they play as the road team against the real Detroit team four days later as the early Thanksgiving game. Maybe they'll never come home.
* The county announced an all-out travel ban for all of Erie starting at 7 last night, before a flake had even fallen in our entire town. His tweet about it got the usual vitriol about "Mandate Mark" from all the complainers on Eight Buck Musk- most of whom are the same ones who will be the first to whine that Poloncarz doesn't plow the roads on time.
* And, of course, there will be memes. This old chestnut quickly surfaced, funny since I was just riffing on that album cover a few days ago:
My only two-word addition to it was retitling the album for the local color:
Abbott Road.
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That area remains much more heavily hit than ours, though the Worse is promised to head this way and stay over like an annoying weekend guest through all of tonight and tomorrow. One of my besties lives in East Aurora and posted this report 'Round Midnight:
Spectrum weather forecaster just called East Aurora the “meat” of this storm burger. That’s lingo I can relate to as I possibly throw 4 feet of meat snow off the Mini this weekend.
Thundersnow. Meatstorms. This is the upside down. Someone play Kate Bush asap.
I replied during my 3 AM weather check with just three Bushy words, from a duo of hers just covered in another great streaming show:
Watch on YouTube
Don’t Give Up.
The crimey guy trying to steal the surplus money never showed up in court. I've been back for poetry night a few times since but haven't read. And that wussy-for-us storm isn't the one we're going to remember for 2022.
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Which gets us to, the final month's memory- this one. Which I haven't even written yet.
I will link to a March 2021 post, though, for it was when I first heard of a potential development back in Rochester which I felt compelled to riff on:
A group discussion today reminded me of my plan for repurposing bad 80s retail. They turned one of the old Marketplace Mall anchor stores in Rochester into a big medical building. Since malls are dying, I proposed they make over the whole place into medical practices. Old Navy Injury, H&M for Hernia & Miniscus, Pain That Sears, Love Pinkeye and Victoria’s Secret UTI- and we’d just leave Dick’s the way it is.
It took well over a year and a half before I drove by yesterday on my way home and finally saw that medical building come to life, on what used to be the pad for the Pain That Sears. Even more shocking, though was seeing what was left of another of that mall's original anchor stores:
Most recently branded as a Macy's, a Kaufmann's before that, the original sign on the outside was that of Sibley's, the city's most famed and widespread of upscale department stores through the early 1990s. Eleanor worked in their downtown construction department in that era, and before I even met her she was involved in building that store, with two-story columns that had to be attended by cherry pickers to get to the mannequins on it. Marketplace was The Place To See And Be Seen when it opened, but it was eventually supplanted by Eastview Mall in the tonier tracts of McMansions just over the county line. That's where the Cheesecake Factories and Ulta boutiques have moved to. Marketplace is now destined to be little more than its Obamacare namesake.
With that, we end our countdown before, ten hours from now, we peel the final minutes off this carcass of a 2022. May the New Year bring long life and prosperity for you all, and indictments for a chosen few:)
no subject
Date: 2023-01-01 02:56 pm (UTC)Partly because formatting, partly because it is such a long post, I come away without clarity about whether you intend to close this blog. If you do, I will miss you, but that's bot a reason to continue if it is no longer rewarding for you.
Happy new year. Let's hope it's a good one, without any fear.
Bot going anywhere....
Date: 2023-01-02 10:35 pm (UTC)The people have spoken, and I just can't quit this. Until something better comes along, I'll be here, maybe mot every day, but whenever there seems to be something worth saying.
What haven't spoken, on the other hand, are comment notifications via email. Those seem to have disappeared in the past week.
no subject
Date: 2023-01-02 12:41 am (UTC)Or Ir-ish, either....
Date: 2023-01-02 10:41 pm (UTC)BREAKING NEWS: In a final vote to ensure integrity among members of the august body, the outgoing Democratic majority has voted 218-214 to amend the Rules of the House. They will now require the immediate expulsion of any member who lies to the voters about their educational background, past employment history or religion.
It is fully expected that the incoming Republican majority will ignore this provision and seat the incoming Congressman from NY3 despite his confession to all of these lies.
Which means, yes, that the Republicans in Congress will be saying there is no such thing as a Santos Clause.
I'll see myself out. As he should.
One of his fellow incoming NY colleagues wasn't kidding, though: as soon as he's seated, he intends to introduce the "SANTOS Act":