Thankful to be back home

We rolled in about 1:45 a.m. (CST) today from a whirlwind Thanksgiving trip to Indiana and woke up eight hours later with head and chest colds.

We didn't get out of here Wednesday evening until about 7 o'clock and arrived at our house in Thorntown sometime around 5 a.m. (EST), grabbed a couple of hours of sleep on an airbed in our mostly empty house and made it to 9 a.m. Mass at St. Joseph's Catholic Church in Lebanon to help celebrate Maria's parents' 46th wedding anniversary.

Then it was back to her parents' house for Thanksgiving dinner with the extended family - Maria's kids and her two brothers and their eight of their nine kids. I suspect that's where we picked up the cold bugs.

By the time we left her parents' place in late afternoon, I was starting to freak out over the remaining work to get our house ready to market. Maria, however, insisted on a nap, so we crashed, picked up Morgan around 7 p.m., had a quick dinner at Denny's and worked on the house until about 1 a.m.

More house work Friday morning, culminating in a clusterfuck of a lunch at the new BW3 in Crawfordsville. What was supposed to be a festive family lunch with Maria's kids and parents turned into an ordeal because of general incompetence among the kitchen and wait staff.

It took more than an hour to get our food, despite the fact that all around us were being served. I occupied myself with the wireless trivia game where I narrowly beat Austin and Morgan.

After a long absence, our waiter began reporting to us that our food was nearly ready. First it was my Black & Bleau burger that was the holdup. Then he came over to say we were just waiting on the wrap.

"Nobody at this table ordered a wrap," I told him, fixing him with an icy glare and growling, "We want our fucking food and we want it Goddamned now!"

Morgan and her grandparents were off to the restroom at the moment. Maria looked horrified, while Austin grinned and suppressed a laugh.

It was one of those time when I just freaking snapped. As I was flaming the hapless little fuck, I found myself thinking, "Wow! Where did that come from?"

Eventually, the food arrived and a few minutes later, the owner came over, apologized profusely and told us half our bill would be comped.

Before we left, I changed the six-character player names on our wireless game pieces to NOFOOD and SERVUS.

The restaurant had opened six days earlier and they were apparently working with a staff that had not been properly trained and prepared for business. Oddly, our friend Lauri said she and  her family were there on opening day last Sunday and reported the service was prompt.

We drove Morgan down to Bloomington, threw a couple of quarts of oil into the Subaru engine after it flickered the oil pressure light at me, took Ind. 46 to Ind. 59 to get onto I-70 south of Brazil and were off on another Friday night long haul to Arkansas.

We were forced to leave a few items in Thorntown that should have come with us, but we'll be back at least once more before the house sells and we can retrieve them then.

The dogs are still at the kennel - I'm picking them up at 3:30 p.m. - and now I'm going to whip up some soup for lunch before Maria heads for work at 1 p.m.

The photos are my nephew Marek with a dinner roll and my mother-in-law Sandra studying the BW3 menu.

"E, A, D, G... What time is the gig?"

Granddaughter Lisa and son Steve tuning up.

Where are we?

Close scrutiny of the map shows our house is about halfway between Goobertown and Buck Snort.

Really.

I couldn't make this stuff up.

Thank God for my telephone headset

I'd be in serious neck pain right now if it weren't for my wireless telephone headset.

I spent more than an hour this morning sorting out a screw-up on our first AT&T phone bill for our new home in Arkansas.

When I was looking for phone/cable/high-speed Internet service back in October, my first call was to AT&T. With their assurance that I could make changes at will, I signed up for bundled service for all three with AT&T. The bundle included satellite TV and Internet service with DISH - with a $49.99 credit card charge - and I did it with the fervent hope that my next couple of phone calls would lead me to DSL or cable high-speed Internet.

I found the local cable system has high-speed Internet, so I called AT&T back and told them to cancel the DISH part of the package. A couple of days later, I got a call at our new home from a DISH installer, saying he was on the way. I told him to cancel the visit and make another phone call to DISH. They assured me they had canceled the order and my refund was in the works.

Sure enough, a $49.99 refund rolled into our bank account on Nov. 7. I assumed that was that.

Until I got our first AT&T bill yesterday showing a $49.99 charge for DISH service.

I'll spare you the details and just say that I spent more than an hour on the phone, talking with no less than five AT&T and DISH representatives, before I was assured that the charge was removed from our account and won't show up on next month's bill.

I'll believe it when I get next month's bill.

BTW, satellite Internet is crappy at best and our year-long experience with DISH satellite TV made us absolutely joyful about going back to cable.

BTW, the telephone headset I love so much is the RCA ViSYS. It's a pleasure to use.

Squeezably dead

Dick Wilson

July 30, 1916-Nov. 19, 2007

Dick Wilson, the character actor who played grocer Mr. Whipple in more than 500 Charmin commercials from 1964 to 1985, died today of natural causes. He was 91.

Wilson was born Riccardo DiGuglielmo in England and was raised in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.

His free lifetime supply of Charmin, given to him by Procter & Gamble in appreciation for his commercial work, ran out today.

I guess this makes us Arkansans

Maria and I got our Arkansas driver's licenses this morning.

The local Revenue Office got their camera "flashbub" replaced, so they could issue the photo licenses, but the color balance is hideously off. We both look terminally jaundiced - so yellow that we could do guest appearances on The Simpsons.

And, yes, we remembered to transfer our motorcycle endorsements from our Indiana licenses, so we're legal to ride in Arkansas.

Yesterday & Today

Here's Maria admiring Deb's K75 at yesterday's toy run. Maria's shot of bikes filling Main Street is on the front page of this morning's Sun.
It's 57 degrees here at midday on Sunday, which is a helluva lot nicer than the 43 degrees in Indy right now.

Back home in Arkansas

After three days of painting, carrying out trash and tying up loose ends, I decided I'd had enough of Thorntown and headed home Friday evening.

I left Thorntown at 5:33 p.m. and pulled into our driveway seven hours and 45 minutes later - a new record for me. I had earlier planned to wait and make the drive this morning, but I'm glad I just sucked it up and hit the road.

We had an invitation from Charlie and Deb Parsons, our BMW rider friends here, to join them at the ABATE toy run and since it was sunny and 60s here (cloudy and chilly 40s in Thorntown), we accepted.

There were about 500 bikes, almost all Harleys. My K1200GT was one of only four BMWs. Maria rode pillion and shot about 66 frames with a D-100, including these.

The procession of bikes, which strung out for nearly a mile, filled Main Street and everyone waved to Crystal Fowler and her bridal party as they posed for photos in front of the First United Methodist Church.

Hey, that's Sean's work

USA Today has a story on page B4 about the next generation Zune, illustrated with a graphic from Microsoft showing 3 new Zunes.
The most prominent - the 80 gig - displays the Shins' Wincing the Night Away. My son Sean was an engineer on the album, which I predict will do well at the Grammys.

Tips

Author Elmore Leonard (3:10 to Yuma and other Westerns) has published his "10 Rules of Writing."
They are:
1. Never open a book with weather.
2. Avoid prologues.
3. Never use a word other than "said" to carry dialogue.
4. Never use an adverb to modify the verb "said."
5. Keep your exclamation points under control.
6. Never use "suddenly" or "all hell broke loose."
7. Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly.
8. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters.
9. Don't go into great detailed describing places and things.
10. Try to leave out the part that readers tend to skip.

Deja vu all over again

..to quote Yogi Berra.
Breakfast at the Lebanon Denny's, en route to Carmel for a bank errand.
I took advantage of the last warm day this week to weed-whack and paint the outside trim of the back door.
This afternoon and evening will see the installation of a new ceiling light in the parlor, painting and wallpaper touch-up.
Also trash hauling, since tomorrow is trash day.

Boone Co. Clerk's office

Waiting for a copy of Maria's first marriage license so we can satisfy Homeland Security that we're not foreigners or terrorists or both.

Rolling

Heading back to Indiana.

Welcome to Arkistan

We got up early this morning to go to the Department of Revenue office in hopes of swapping our Indiana driver's licenses for Arkansas licenses.

Hah!

We came away empty-handed, me exasperated and amused and Maria in a blind rage.

The experience reminded me of a Third World border crossing where the rules and regulations are subject to arbitrary and sudden change and are interpreted at the whim of whatever petty official you're dealing with. The only thing missing was the solicitation of a bribe.

Maria and I thought we had done our homework. Maria phoned ahead to determine what documentation she needed. I went online and checked the requirements as summarized on the Arkansas page of dmv.org, a site that lists the ins and outs of DMV regs for the various states. Maria learned she needed a copy of our marriage license since she had changed her name when we got married. So she called the Boone County clerk's office in Indiana and spent $4 for them to mail her a couple of copies. DMV.org said all I needed was my birth certificate and Social Security card.

We slogged through a heavy thunderstorm in morning rush hour traffic to arrive at the Revenue office a few minutes before 8 a.m. Walking through the door, we felt lucky that we didn't have to wait for them to open, since the hours posted on the door listed 7 a.m. as the beginning of their business day.

But that was the end of any good luck.

A portly guy in a woodland camo hat and jacket was at the counter listening to the clerk explain why they couldn't issue any driver's licenses today because the "flashbub" was out on the camera and the technician would have to come up from Little Rock to replace it.

Not wanting to waste the trip, Maria asked the clerk to confirm that she had all of the necessary documentation: Her marriage license, Indiana driver's license and Social Security card.

No, said the clerk. Under Homeland Security regulations, Maria needed to present a marriage license for each of her marriages (there was one before ours) documenting all of her names, as well as her birth certificate.

"We don't use Social Security cards. We haven't for a long time," the clerk said.

Maria was fuming because she has to have a valid Arkansas driver's license to make application for a program her newspaper is paying for. And it has to be done soon.

The clerk said the information on the official Arkansas DFA Office of Driver Services website is incorrect.

She said the person responsible for the site had tried to make changes for the last year and a half but can't seem to get it done.

She stared blankly when I suggested that person should be fired and replaced by someone who can do the job. I suspect the concept of someone being fired from a state patronage job is beyond her comprehension.

So the information on the official website is wrong and the information Maria got on the phone from the Revenue office was wrong and the only way to find out what is actually required is to physically go to the Revenue office and be turned away.

Fuming, Maria stalked out of the office.

I stayed behind to learn this clerk's version of how to plate our two cars and two motorcycles and what everything would cost.

We have to jump through an insane number of hoops to get our vehicles plated, including inspections and assessments from the county assessor's office.

But the one that blew my mind was her answer to the question, what is the fee for a driver's license.

"It depends on what state you're coming from and how old you are," she said.

Huh?

I asked if astrological birthsign or blood type entered into the formula and she didn't even blink.

When I got home, I went to the official Department of Revenue & Finance website to compare her information with what is allegedly the official line.

Licensed drivers moving to Arkansas must surrender their home state license and:

...Arkansas law requires persons obtaining a license for the first time to show proof of legal presence in the United States Acceptable documents are: a U.S. birth certificate, photo military/military dependent ID, Naturalization certificate, a U.S. passport or Visa, an Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) photo document. (Border Crosser documents are not acceptable.) You must also show two forms of identification.

If name is different from what is on the Birth Certificate, applicant will need to bring document which changes name, Marriage License, Divorce Decree, specifically stating that you may change your name, or court order for name change.

Elsewhere on the site, we are told:

Each applicant must show either:

• An Arkansas Photo DL/ID, or
• Two (2) primary documents, or
• One (1) primary document and one (1) secondary document.

Primary Documents

• Photo Out-of-State DL/ID
• Certificate of Birth (US Only)
• Photo INS Documents-(Immigration and Naturalization Services)- (No Border Crosser)
• Valid Passport (if foreign, INS card or US Visa required)
• Naturalization Certificate
• Court Order - must contain full name, DOB, court seal. Includes adoption name changes, gender change.
• Photo Military/Military Dependent ID
• Armed Forces Discharge Papers

Secondary Documents

• Photo Work/School ID
• Vehicle Registration/Title
• Bureau of Indian Affairs Card/Indian Treaty Card (No Tribal Card)
• Marriage License
• Health Insurance Card
  Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Kaiser, HMO, etc. (Medicaid card NOT acceptable.)
• IRS/State Tax Forms (W-2 NOT acceptable)
• Court Order (Date of Birth not present)
• Medical Records (from Doctor/Hospital)
• Concealed Handgun License
• Cert. School Transcript
• Pilot's License
• Parent/Guardian Affidavit
  Parent/guardian must appear in person, prove his/her identity and submit a certified/notarized affidavit regarding the child's identity. Applies only to minors.
• Court Records
• Prison Release Document

LEGAL PRESENCE AND IDENTIFICATION DOCUMENTS MAY BE COMBINED
Proof of legal presence documents may also serve as proof of identification. If a person shows a U.S. Birth Certificate as proof of legal presence, that will also serve as a primary identification document leaving only a secondary ID document requirement.

I checked the Indiana Bureau of Motor Vehicles site and found even more stringent identification regulations in place, making it obvious that the Department of Homeland Security is the source of this ridiculous series of hoops through which we are required to jump.

I don't mind playing the game, however silly its rules, as long as the requirements are clearly stated at the outset.

I'm leaving for Indiana in an hour to spend a few days tying up loose ends and doing what I hope is the final bunch of fix-ups and tweaks to get our house ready to market.

I'll stop by the county clerk's office and get Maria's earlier marriage license and see if I can pick up a copy of her birth certificate if she can't find one in our garage full of boxes.

Then we can go back to the Revenue office in Jonesboro and hope we get the same interpretation of the regulations that we got this morning. I'm not counting on it.

Here and gone

Our first houseguests just left to return to Indiana.
Morgan, Shaylan and Mark drove down Friday to surprise Maria. I took them shopping Friday afternoon at Dillard's clearance center where they were dazzled with the bargains and loaded up on clothes, an experience we all repeated Saturday morning and then Maria and Morgan went back for yet another round Saturday afternoon.
I arranged to meet Maria for dinner after she got off work Friday evening. She was waiting outside Shorty Small's at the new mall when the four of us came traipsing across the parking lot. Needless to say, she was stunned to see her daughter and two friends turn up unexpectedly in Jonesboro.
By the time they left about noon today, it was a bit of a challenge to stuff all of their new Dillard's duds into the trunk of Shaylan's Saturn.
Now it's Lauri's turn.

Breakfast for lunch

At Cracker Barrel.
Notice how much more relaxed Maria looks now that we're semi-settled into our new house?

Bargains!

Shaylan, Mark & Maria with amloads of killer clothing deals Saturday afternoon at Dillard's clearance center.

Guests!

Morgan, Shaylan and Mark showed up this afternoon to visit for the weekend. The only thing missing is Lauri.

Pros and cons

We had lunch today with a local woman who wondered about my impressions of Arkansas and Jonesboro after living here a week or so.

I told her I'm compiling two lists - one of things I like about the place and the other of things I hate about it.

The photo on the right is an illustration of what I hate the most. It's a slow-moving mope in a clapped out pickup truck creeping through a left turn at the intersection of Main and Highland in Jonesboro.

It seems that drivers around here refuse to make turns at a reasonable speed. It's like they think they're driving on ice and they're terrified that their cars or trucks will slide out of control or overturn. God knows what they'll do when winter comes and they actually encounter slick pavement. There seems to be an unnaturally high percentage of unconscious slow drivers - mostly hideous potato-faced people on cell phones who don't seem particularly keen on actually getting anywhere.

I also dislike the fact that Craighead County is dry. The only saving grace is the fact that you can drink in several area restaurants by paying a $5 annual "club" membership fee. And it helps that our house is only about 5 minutes from the county line and liquor stores.

I'm told that the women of the county voted it dry during World War II when the men were off fighting the Axis. Imagine their surprise and outrage when they came home and discovered what their wives had done.

And, I'm none to happy that the nearest Subaru dealer is about 80 miles away in Memphis. Ditto, the nearest BMW motorcycle dealership.

On the positive side of the ledger, I love the weather so far. It's been consistently sunnier and warmer than in Indiana. Also, Jonesboro is a very easy city to learn. I've had no problems navigating and I'm also getting familiar with the county road network around our rural home.

The county road numbering system, however, falls into the Things I Hate column. It's capricious and makes absolutely no sense to someone familiar with the numbered grid system developed at Purdue University and in use in most Indiana counties.

Happy 40th Birthday, Sean!

Sean, my oldest son, is 40 today.

As Hunter S. Thompson used to say, it gives a man paws.

Here's Sean in the late summer of 1970 with his puppy, Copy. He was an only child at the moment. His brother Steve was born about three months later.

Sean is an alumnus of Orchard Country Day School and Broad Ripple High School in Indianapolis and has a degree in audio technology from Indiana University. He moved to Portland, Ore., after college and pursued a career in music and recording.

He was an engineer on the wildly successful Shins album, Wincing the Night Away. I fully expect the album to earn at least one Grammy. It's that good.

Sean's wife Ruth Greenberg is a phenomenally talented ceramic/mosaic artist.

I am enormously proud of him and don't get to see him nearly often enough. I hope that will change now that Maria and I are off of the Journal Review treadmill and I'll have more free time.

Overwhelmed, freaking out and ready to kill a dog

The garage is full of boxes, many of which never should have been shipped, but they got loaded because I couldn't stop them.

We picked up our bikes this afternoon from Charlie and Deb Parsons's house, where they have been stored in Charlie's shop - my bike since Labor Day weekend and Maria's since I rode it down on Oct. 6.

There is barely enough room to squeeze the bikes into the garage and I'm frantically trying to empty boxes to create enough space to accommodate what's coming out of the last vault tomorrow morning. But I'm getting no help. So I've decided to say fuck it, get drunk and let the car go off the cliff.

I will, however, not permit boxes of kitchen stuff that could be quickly and easily put into cabinets and drawers, displace the bikes and I will throw them into the rain before I'll let the bikes sit out at night.

We discovered this evening that Ruthie has repeatedly pissed on the new dining room carpet, thoroughly soaking it. I am close to killing her. From now on, her life here will consist of her kennel in the garage and the back yard. I will not have an idiot incontinent dog wreck our new house. I will have her stupid furry ass put down before I will let that happen.

I fucked up - I trusted them

Vault SV6669 shipped empty. The loaders were supposed to be loading the vaults sequentially based on their positions in the driveway and yard. When I asked them if it was loaded and ready to go, they said yes, so I locked and sealed it.
I called SmartMove and it looks like we won't have to pay for a vault we didn't use, even though it shipped. The saving grace was that we used their packing/loading contractor.
So we only have 8 vaults to unload today.
But the crew isn't here yet...

They're heeeeere

The UPS truck with 5/9 of our stuff arrived about 10 a.m.
Got to inspect them and photograph the contents if damaged.

I can quit anytime I want. Honestly, I can...

When it comes to buying clothes for myself - not counting motorcycle riding apparel - I'm notoriously cheap.

I say this as a defense for my recent spending binge at Dillard's Clearance Center, because I feel kinda guilty about letting myself be drawn back there on a daily basis.

But looking back on what I've been wearing for the past few years, I notice that about 95 percent of the time, I'm in jeans and some kind of BMW rally or dealer t-shirt. I imagine some people think that's the extent of my wardrobe, and they're pretty much right.

If you took away all of my BMW-related shirts, I'd be down to a handful of Willis & Geiger and denim shirts, all of which have been worn and washed so much that they're coming apart at the collars and elsewhere.

Likewise, I was down to about four pairs of jeans - some of them threadbare. I recently had to throw away my favorite pair of Timberland shoes because the right sole was separating from the upper part of the shoe.

Fortunately, the packing process unearthed a nice, broken-in pair of Columbia shoes that still have lots of wear left in them and still look presentable. I have no idea why I stopped wearing them and stuck them into one of my armoire drawers, but I'm glad I rediscovered them.

My problem was that if the occasion demanded semi-dressy casual attire, I was pretty much screwed.

So when the opportunity to buy really nice and normally expensive department store casual clothes at insanely discounted prices presented itself, I went a little nuts.

Maria, who loves to indulge me whenever I get the notion to buy clothes, has been more than supportive.

And, after all, in our new life here it would be bad form for a newspaper managing editor to be publicly embarrassed by a husband who dresses like a bum.

So tell the folks at Dillard's Clearance Center that I'll probably be in again today.

Happy Birthday, Steve!

My son Steve is 37 today.

He says he just found a gray hair on his temple. It runs in the family. I was completely gray by my early 40s. There are worse things.

Here's Steve with his gorgeous daughter Lisa.

Oh, yeah. It's Halloween.

Sitting in my car at McDonald's and I see this apparition coming at me across a field.
Gave me pause until I remembered it's Halloween

Chairs

Imagine living in a house with no furniture. Or more to the point, a house without a chair, couch or stool - where the only way to sit down is on the fireplace hearth or the back steps or the toilet. Or if you're really desperate for a proper seat, you can go into the attached garage and sit for awhile in a car seat.
That's how it's been here in the new house since we moved in on Saturday. Maria is a floor-sitter, but I inherited the Flora inflexibility and find sitting on the floor excruciatingly uncomfortable.
We've been sleeping on an air bed, so I'm getting all of the floor time I can stand.
So we eat, talk, compute and think on our feet.
We decided we can't wait for our furniture to arrive Thursday and Friday, so we started looking for a couple of lawn chairs.
I shopped at Lowe's and Big K-Mart yesterday, but came up empty. Lowe's home & garden shop is devoid of summer stuff and full of Christmas crap.
We went to the Super Wal-Mart after lunch today and found a small cache of lawn furniture in a corner. We settled on these glamorous $16 models and I'm finally comfortably seated on our screened back porch watching the dog explore the yard and enjoy this fine sunny autumn afternoon.
I did another drive-by shopping raid on the Dillard's Clearance Center this afternoon and picked up five pairs of pants - four pairs of corduroys and a pair of cargo pants - two turtleneck pullovers and a rugby shirt with a combined list price of $413 for 8 cents on the dollar.
This is scary because I'm turning into a freaking shopaholic. I go shopping while Maria works. Sounds like a serious role-reversal, doesn't it?

Remembering a mentor and a friend

I got an e-mail Saturday while driving down to Arkansas from Lonnie Miller, one of my best friends back from my school days in Delphi, Ind.

The e-mail asked if I was going to post something about Dick Laughlin at dicklaughlin.com.

Huh?

So the next day when we stopped by Maria's apartment to haul a carload of her stuff to our new house, I connected my laptop to her Internet hookup and went to the website.

Holy crap! Laughlin died Sept. 5 and they had a memorial celebration for him on Oct. 15. I guess my ties with the Delphi crowd have gotten pretty loose, because I would have liked to have been able to attend.

Dick Laughlin was band director (the entire music department) at Delphi from my eighth-grade year through my junior year. And he was unquestionably the most influential teacher in my formative high school years.

Delphi was Dick's first teaching job after he graduated from what was then Indiana State Teachers College in 1958. He was only 22, so he wasn't that much older than his students and his arrival marked the first time any of us had seen a teacher who seemed to have the same enthusiasm and values as our generation. Not finding anyone interesting his own age in Delphi, Dick quickly took to hanging out with his students.

And he had flash and style. He drove a white Buick convertible with red leather upholstery. He was quite clearly the coolest person we'd ever seen and we reveled in his flamboyance, even down to the pink rhinestone-encrusted eye patch he affected. And anytime I think of him on the podium or in his office, I see him with a click-type ballpoint pen behind his right ear.

For the first couple of years, Dick lived in an couple of rented rooms in the upstairs of an elderly widow on Franklin Street. He had a Fisher console Hi-Fi that he eventually had converted to stereo and introduced those of us who were interested - me, for sure - to grand new musical vistas and the world of jazz in particular.

Were it not for Dick Laughlin, I would never have had a complete Dave Brubeck collection, anything by Dizzy Gillespie or Thelonius Monk or Charlie Mingus, or a subscription to Down Beat magazine. And I probably wouldn't have known anything about Dimitri Shostakovich if Dick hadn't made me research and write a report on the Soviet composer as penance for some infraction in junior high school band.

Delphi High School's music program was lackluster before Dick Laughlin showed up. He quickly instituted a series of winter and spring concerts, made drastic improvements in the marching band and, among other things, recruited me from the trumpet section to Sousaphone in marching and concert band. He also created a swing choir called Top Twenty, made up of the top 20 vocalists in the school (I sang bass in Top Twenty my sophomore-through-senior years), and the dance band (I played third trumpet) that performed at concerts and even played a couple of low-budget proms at other schools.

He inspired a lot of us to major in music in college. I went to Dick's alma mater, Indiana State, with the intention of majoring in music. I quickly discovered that I was way out of my depth, not having the background in music theory that students from larger high schools brought to State. I wanted to be a musician, but I just didn't have the natural talent for it. My love for music, then, made me an avid listener and collector, something I like to think bore fruit in the musical careers of my two sons. They grew up on a world filled with music. There was music playing almost every waking hour in the house, in the car, wherever. And when Sean and Steve showed an interest in music, I did whatever I could to support and encourage their growth.

Somewhere around 1960, Dick got married to a girl he had dated in college. Her name was Carol and she was a music teacher in nearby Monticello at the time.

I think the marriage lasted about a year and through the experience, Dick came to terms with the fact that he was gay. This was at a time when gays - especially small Indiana towns like Delphi - kept their sexual preferences in a very deep closet.

If my parents figured out he was gay, they never said anything to me about it or discouraged me from hanging out with him. He was always welcome in my parents' house and my parents treated him as something between a peer and a contemporary of mine.

Needless to say, we were all devastated when he decided to go back to Indiana State for a teaching fellowship. Dick's popularity made him an incredibly hard act to follow. His successor, a little guy from Nashville, Ind., named DeWees, made a game attempt, but I think he knew he was working with Dick Laughlin's musical legacy.

I remained peripherally aware of Dick's career in the late '60s and beyond. I think the last time I saw him was around 1972 or '73 when he came to my house to pick up a caricature of himself that had been drawn by Indianapolis News artist Ron Schwartz and that had appeared in The News in connection with Dick's work at Beef & Boards. We lived a few blocks from each other in Indianapolis for probably 20 years, but had virtually no contact.

I'm still processing the news of his death at 71. It's hard to digest, especially since my memories of him are of a musical force of nature in his 20s with a world of possibilities laid out before him.

He wrote some very complimentary and flattering things in my high school yearbooks and I'd quote from those if I could, but unfortunately they're in a SmartMove vault somewhere between Indianapolis and Brookland, Ark., at the moment. Maybe later, if I find something worth adding.

Even though Dick Laughlin hasn't been a presence in my life for nearly 45 years, it's hard to realize that he's really gone.

Good thing the angels have choirs.

Not a toy

In the Jonesboro Public Library parking lot. It's a late '60s model, I think. Definitely newer than my '65.

Warning!

Thank God McDonald's warned me that my coffee is hot and that the plastic bag that held my parfait spoon and granola can cause suffocation.
I'm sure that's how I avoided scalding and suffocation for all of these years.
No warning on the stir stick about poking oneself in the eye, though. Sounds like serious liability exposure.

Hey, Lauri!

Sunday morning shoe-shopping at Kohl's.

Oops, forgot the pic

One of the new shirts.

Yeah, this is pretty cool

After almost seven years in a cell phone dead zone, I'm almost giddy over having such a great signal in our new house that I can call and blog at will.
That's especially convenient right now because we have no land line or wired Internet connection.
The dogs are absolutely joyful at having the run of the house and a big fenced yard after weeks of being confined to kennel and kitchen, going for walks on a leash and capped by a gruelling nine-hour car ride jammed into the same kennel.
My shirt, BTW, came from Dillard's close-out store where I picked up about $635 worth of new shirts for something like $85.

Pete likes his new home

Pete, doing what he loved to do at Pearlsend - sit with his back against the back door and study his surroundings.
It doesn't quite feel like home to me, but neither does Pearlsend. And I've only been here about 12 hours and there's no furniture.
Maria is enjoying the spa tub immensely.

Rolling

On my way to Arkansas with the dogs behind me.
Approaching Champaign on I-74.

Hello Dalai

The Dalai Lama spoke at Purdue University yesterday.

When asked how to bring peace to Iraq and the Middle East, he offered a straight-up, "I don't know."

Asked about his impressions of President George W. Bush, he said, "In spite of my disagreement with some of his policies, as a person,I love him. We immediately became friends. He's a very nice person."

Breakfast at Denny's

I was up with the dogs at 4:40 a.m. Since I went to bed about 8:30, I had enough of sleep and was ready to get the day started.
With coffee maker, coffee and cups packed, I had a warm beer while taking a last soak in the hot tub about 5:15.
Now I'm at Denny's in Lebanon, finishing a proper breakfast with a headful of last-minute details before I head for Arkansas with the dogs.
The UPS guy should arrive to collect the last vaults about 11 a.m. Then we're off to our new home.

Vaults

Here's one of the UPS seals they gave me to affix to vaults, once they have been loaded and locked for shipping.
The first four are loaded and scheduled for pickup today. They're sending another three out, along with 25-30 more furniture pads, but I find it hard to believe that we're going to need 10 of these things to ship all of our stuff.
Nevertheless, there is still a bunch of furniture and boxes in the house to be loaded today and if things are not packed tightly and judiciously, we could eat up more than the three empties that are sitting in the driveway this morning and maybe slop into some or all of the three that are presumably on their way here.

Breakfast, sorta

I awoke this morning to realize I had very few breakfast choices and nothing with which to eat.
All of the dishes and silverware are packed. I have soymilk, but the cereal is packed, as is the box of Sweet 'n Low packets, which also rules out making coffee to drink from the go-cup I held out.
So I drank a bit of soymilk, slurped down a cup of peach yogurt and washed it all down with the last bottle of Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale.
Now, all that remains in the fridge is beer and Coke Zero, which will go into a box and travel to Arkansas with me tomorrow.

Obeying my dog

It's 4:55 a.m. and I've been up for about an hour, prodded out of a sound sleep by the incessant barking of my older dog, Ruthie.

Ruthie is having a difficult time with the chaos surrounding our move. Confined to her kennel, next to Pete in his, she barked pretty much nonstop all morning yesterday while the packers worked in the house.

I finally went to the vet's office and got some dog tranquillizers for her. We've used them before and a half of a tablet usually does the trick. The drug kicked in after about a half-hour and she was reasonably calm the rest of the day.

Then, about 3:30 a.m. today she started in, barking and yarking and clawing at her kennel door. I lay in bed hoping she'd calm down, but by 3:50 it was obvious that this was going to continue until I responded. So I got up and got dressed and took both dogs out to the back yard where they peed.

Now, I'm wide-freaking-awake, beginning what will be my last full day in this house as a continuous resident. I'll be back in a week or so to finish up the fix-up and clean-up work preliminary to putting the place on the market, but when I roll out of here with the dogs sometime around mid-day tomorrow, I will consider myself an Arkansas resident.

Four down, three to go

The packers have completely filled the first four vaults and, since the weather has turned cold and drizzly, are spending the rest of their day here packing boxes.

In the meantime, I've been dragging stuff to the curb that we have no need for in Arkansas. A lot of it probably never should have come into this house in the first place because it spent the last six years unused and in the attic.

Passersby have been obliging, carrying away most of the items I've set out, including:

• An octagonal end table
• An old desk
• A large BMW carry-all with a broken zipper, thanks to Northwestern Airlines' baggage handlers
• A kitchen chair
• Three big brass lamps
• A metal office cabinet
• My mother's two-tier round curio table
• My mother's old Samsonite suitcase
• My parents' telephone table with a gray princess phone
• Other odds and ends

Nobody has bitten on the cross-country skis or the old breadmaker that looks like R2D2.

Thanks to Lauri for the inspiration, my fixit guy is going to cover the place where Pete the Aussie savaged the wallpaper in the back foyer with wainscoting. He figures one sheet of whitewash beadboard will cover the entire back door area. It will be a very elegant fix - one that will dress up the area significantly. He's going to have his guys come late tomorrow after the packers/loaders will have made most of their trips out of the back door.

Maria had initially planned to keep her apartment for another week and begin sleeping in the new house Thursday when our bed arrived.

Then she discovered that a queen-size air bed costs about as much as a week's rent on the apartment. Plus, when you're done, you have an air bed to show for your investment. So she'll make that purchase and, instead of waiting until next Wednesday to head for Arkansas, I'll roll out of here with the dogs in the Subaru as soon as the UPS truck collects the last three vaults on Saturday morning.

And then there were seven

The packing and loading crew was supposed to be here between 8 and 9 a.m. They're late.

But the three additional shipping vaults were early - a day early.

When I took the dogs out for their morning walk about 7:30 a.m., I was startled to see a UPS flatbed truck idling at the corner and loaded with three SmartMove vaults.

I consulted with the driver and we concluded it made the most sense for him to drop the three that were supposed to be swapped for the four on site tomorrow and go back empty.

That way, the packers and loaders have no chance of running out of loading space today and may be able to accomplish more than they would have under the original plan.

Of course, this means UPS has to make two trips to pick up all of the vaults, since they can only haul four at a time, but that's their problem.

My trick today is to get as much stuff into the vaults as possible while leaving the materials I need to work on the house and survive here.

At the same time, I did some frantic check-writing and bill-paying and made sure our important payment books and checkbooks will go into the laptop carrying case, rather than disappear into a vault for God knows how long.

A neighbor just knocked on the back door to ask how things were going and, in the course of the conversation, it became clear that his real reason was to ask if our hot tub is for sale. I told him it goes with the house, since we want to do whatever we can to sweeten the deal.

Camo shoes

Marked down to $10 at Dillard's clearance shop. She bought 'em on a lark.

It's almost home

We've closed on the house and we're another day closer to living in it, but it's hard to feel like an Arkansas homeowner now that I'm back in Indiana.
I stopped at the new house on the way out of town to drop off a TV, some shirts and a vacuum cleaner and to drag the trash can in from the street.
The previous owners were nice enough to vacuum the carpets and clean the floors, so there won't be much for us to do before our furniture arrives.
The packers and haulers come to our Thorntown house Thursday and Friday and the vaults are scheduled to be shipped to Arkansas next Tuesday, arriving a couple of days later.
I'm going to bed early tonight because I have a doctor's appointment at 9 a.m. tomorrow and the rest of the day will be spent getting things ready for the packers/haulers.
I spoke with son Steve while driving home from Arkansas this morning. He said they've accepted a buyer's offer on their Cincinnati house and their furniture and belongings are on their way to Las Vegas. Steve flies out on Friday and Nicky and Lisa will follow a couple of days later. They have a six-month lease on a rental house while they search for a more permanent place in Vegas.
While talking with Steve on the cell phone, I missed the Boomland exit where I'd planned to gas up the Subaru. I continued on to Cairo, Ill., with the fuel warning light glowing brightly. Cairo is one of the most depressing towns I've seen in a long time - a Main Street lined with failed businesses, gas stations with bags over the pump nozzles. I bought $5 worth of gas at a ratty station at the edge of town, which got me 30 miles up the road to a real Citgo station where I filled the tank. That fill-up got me to Crawfordsville, Ind. The Subaru averaged 24.12 mpg on the drive home, which is not bad for an SUV, but nowhere close to the 33+ mpg I got driving the del Sol down to Arkansas.
I shot a few photos while at the house, most notably these of the front door and the foyer.

Done!

We are now officially residents of Arkansas.

Ouch

Maria woke up with intermittent severe back pain this morning, which altered our plans for the day.
We've been hanging out in the waiting room of an immediate care facility most of the morning.
We're scheduled for the final walk-through of our new house in 39 minutes and she' now in an exam room waiting for a doc.
We also have to get a $110 cashier's check before our 4 p.m. Closing.
Never mind getting the utilities changed over. That may have to wait until tomorrow, delaying my return to Indiana.

Hey, Lauri!

Shoe-shopping at the new mall.

In Jonesboro

Inspecting yard sculpture.
Now we're at Barnes & Noble, where Barry Manilow is on the sound system.

Rolling south on I-57

The Tuscola, IL McDonald's drive-thru is closed. Crap.

On the Arkansas run

I-74 west of Danville, IL at dawn. Heading for Jonesboro in the del Sol, listening to A3 on the iPod.
And yes, the odometer really does read more than 201,000 miles. It's a 1994 model and it has been the most trouble-free, low-maintenance car I've owned. Other than some transmission work around 1998 and a new muffler (which has been replaced twice for free under a lifetime Honda warranty), it's required no major work.

Flash bulbs and flak jackets

In the continuing media coverage of Britney Spears self-destructing, the latest bulletin has it that she accidentally ran over a paparazzo's foot while exiting a Beverly Hills parking garage.

What caught my eye in the oh-so-glib Reuters report was this paragraph:

Spears was exiting a Beverly Hills parking garage in her white Mercedes convertible as flash bulbs popped. Video footage showed an unidentified photographer in a flak jacket falling to the ground as the car apparently rolled over his foot but he quickly got up.

Flash bulbs? Nobody uses flash bulbs anymore, especially not the paparazzi who need fast-cycling electronic flash to get the money shots.

And in the next sentence, we learn the guy was wearing a flak jacket. A flak jacket, for the benefit of Reuters writers and editors, is body armor - originally designed in World War II to protect U.S. aircrews from anti-aircraft (called flak in German) shrapnel. This is not an item found in a paparazzo's wardrobe.

Viewing the video of the incident on hollywood.tv, I see the photographer was actually wearing an Army surplus camo field jacket.

Sorta calls into question all of the other descriptive narrative, doesn't it?

Here is a flak jacket (actually a vest):

And a camo field jacket:

You are now smarter than the Reuters entertainment writer. But then you probably were before you read this.

Storm thoughts

The power went out last night as a thunderstorm rumbled through town.

I was sitting in the parlor with the dogs. They were gnawing on big bone-shaped dog treats and Pete was sticking close to me because he's terrified of thunder and lightning.

And then everything went black.

It was a little surprising, since the storm we'd seen in the south on a dog walk a few minutes earlier didn't seem that close or that violent. I supposed lightning hit a transformer some miles away and the sudden imbalance caused our local power grid to fail. But I'm just guessing because I have only a sketchy understanding of how that stuff works.

So I sat in the dark with my dogs and looked out at the storm through the big arched living room window. With the exception of the occasional set of car headlights, I was seeing a thunderstorm exactly as it would have appeared to the original occupants of our house back in 1903. I don't know why, but it was a good feeling to see this old house with a slightly different perspective and to see, however dimly, how it looked and felt to that family a century ago.

It's a wonderful old house and even though I've cursed it as a "money pit," it remains one of the finest homes in this little town. Certainly, it's one of the best-built, since it was built by the man who owned the local sawmill. He had his pick of the best lumber and used it wisely for the structural and decorative components. When we moved in, the previous owner had carpeted the downstairs and her dog and cat had used the area as a toilet. We dragged the dripping carpet (ack!) to the curb, spent hours pulling the staples out of the floor and had the original quarter-sawn oak floors refinished by one of the best wood floor guys in central Indiana.

With this week's work to replace the stairway and upstairs carpet, we can say that none of the previous owner's ratty, animal-stained carpet remains in the house.

Despite that and the $30,000+ kitchen remodel, the new roof, new deck, hot tub, electrical service upgrades, porch repair and countless other improvements we've made, there are still lots of things to do here. But that's the nature of an old house. We're tried to remain true to the original style of the house, while bringing it up to date.

What this all adds up to is this: I'm looking forward to moving into our new home in Arkansas. I think it will be very comfortable and low maintenance and we'll have more time to do the things we really like to do.

But as Maria said the other day, we'll never again own a house with this much character and style. It was in its day, and maybe still is, a mansion by Thorntown standards and if the original owners can see us, I hope they think we did right by their house while it was in our care.

It's dog walk dog

Pete likes to control Ruthie on our walks by grabbing her leash.

What? No "Stormy Weather?"

Attention, Weather Channel fans.

The first-ever album of music from the Weather Channel's "Local on the 8s" is now available on Amazon.com.

The Weather Channel receives lots of inquiries from viewers about jazz played while the local weather report is shown, so the decision was made to release a CD of selected "8s" music.

As you can see, it's titled The Weather Channel Presents Smooth Jazz. Click on the image to visit the Amazon.com listing for the CD.

Here's the list of selections:

1. Mildred's Attraction - Joyce Cooling

2. Shakin Up The Shack - Dave Koz

3. Bab Bad Simba - Paprika Soul

4. Viaduct - Four 80 East

5. Santa Monica Triangle - Jeff Lorber

6. Ocean View - Pieces Of A Dream

7. Windows - Chick Corea

8. Simple Pleasure - Jeanne Ricks

9. Holding Hands - Ryan Farish

10. Wait A Minute - Mark Krumowski

11. Sidewayz - Najee

12. The Gift - 3rd Force

The real Wayback Machine

If you're old enough, or a fan of classic TV, you know about Mr. Peabody and his boy Sherman from the Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.

Mr. Peabody, a dog savant, built the Wayback Machine, which transported him and Sherman back in time.

You may be surprised to learn there is an Internet Waback Machine, that has been capturing and archiving web pages since 1996.

Go to www.wayback.com and click on Internet Archive at the bottom of the page. Then, you can enter the URL of pretty much any web page that's been on the Internet since 1996 and see one or more copies of it, captured and archived at various times during its lifetime.

I was pleased to discover that my long-defunct web site www.indyrider.com is archived there. I maintained it until I got married and moved out of the Iquest ISP area in May, 2001. I finally let the domain name lapse a few years ago. I see it now is held by someone selling motorcycle and parts.

More floor work

You never know what you'll find when you start digging into things in a century-old house.

We've been constantly amazed at how many odd things - modifications, remodels, idiotic half-fixes - can happen over the history of a house like ours.

The floor covering guys are back this morning, tearing out dog-stained and ugly carpet to replace it with something that will be more appealing to would-be buyers.

When they removed the brown Berber carpet running up the stairs from the kitchen, we discovered a layer of goofy linoleum with a pattern that looks like a photograph of tan carpeting.

We also found that the upstairs landing has the same fine old hardwood flooring as the other bedrooms, albeit in need of refinishing. Although there is luan or plywood in the office, I suspect there's good hardwood under that too.

If we weren't hell-bent on getting this project done as quickly and inexpensively as possible, I'd put all of the hardwood floors back to near-original condition. But the object of the game is to have a house that shows well. We can mention the hardwood floors to whoever buys the place and let them decide whether to take on that project.

In the meantime, the dogs are in their kennels in an upstairs bedroom with the door closed. I'm waiting for the workers to get all of the nails and staples out of the steps before I take them out because I don't want any hurt paws.

The ancestral home (one of them)

This is the farm where my dad grew up, along with eight brothers and sisters. As far as I know, he was born in this white farmhouse.

The place is on Carroll County Road 700 South about 2 miles southwest of Cutler, Ind. Google Maps says it's 40.445904, -86.532164.

This aerial photo was taken in the late 1940s or early '50s and ran in one of the weekly Delphi, Ind., newspapers as part of a "where is this?" series. The view is from the southwest of the property. According to most recent satellite photos, the woods in the background is almost all farm fields now.

My dad lived here from his birth in 1910 until sometime in the 1930s when he moved to Delphi to serve as deputy county treasurer under his father who was appointed, then elected to the post.

I've never been in the farmhouse, but my uncle Joe - dad's older brother by 10 years - owned the farm directly south across the road from this one from my earliest recollection until he retired to Florida about 1965 or so. I can recall visiting Uncle Joe and Aunt Cassie at a time before they had an indoor toilet and when they still used an old crank-style telephone on a party line. (It occurs to me that "party line" may be an unfamiliar term for younger readers. It was a shared telephone line where each home had its own distinctive ring pattern: two longs and a short, or three shorts, etc.)

This subject comes to mind because the process of moving to Arkansas has me thinking about the fluid concept of "home." My father had maybe four homes - five if you count the nursing home where he died - in his 87 years. I've only been around 62 years and can count at least 10 places I've called home - more if you count college dorms and Air Force basic training - and the Arkansas house will make 11.

It's been probably seven years since I drove past the farm in this photo and it occurs to me that I may never see it again. So it goes. I've got the photo.