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.