Gym Rat

I'm a little sore today. I've gone and joined a gym after seventeen years of laying about, eating tons of food, and watching lots of television. I used to go to a gym three times a week and I looked marvelous. Now I look like a fat, old fart and it isn't pretty. I started last week but decided not to write about it right away just in case I wimped out and quit. What got me to finally start working out again was Mark. No, he didn't suggest it. Mark's doctor told him to go to this gym for some exercise to improve his breathing. I figured as long as Mark is going, I might as well join in.

I've started slowly, with light weights and short reps. Over the next couple of weeks I'm sure I will do better, but I am really out of shape. I probably should cut out some of the horrible, fattening foods I eat too. For instance, Sunday night Mark made brownies and by Monday afternoon they were all gone. Such a pig. Mark has been whining about not wanting to go to the gym, he hates it. I told him, now that I've paid up for at least one month, he is going. Besides, it's kind of fun to watch Mark exercise.

Merry Christmas?

A week ago I watched 60 Minutes, and they had an interesting segment featuring Oprah. She interviewed a bunch of voters from Michigan, some Trump voters and some non-Trump voters. One of the Trump voters mentioned that she felt safer now that Trump was president and Oprah asked her, "In what way?"

The Trump voter then said, "Well, now I can say Merry Christmas without fear." An interesting statement. I thought about it for a few days, wondering if it really was okay to walk around saying Merry Christmas. So I decided that I would give it a try. I would see if you can walk around Chicago and say Merry Christmas without any repercussions.

First I walked up California Avenue, north into the very ethnic West Rogers Park neighborhood. As I passed the fire station near Granville Avenue, I noticed the firemen had the door open and were wiping down the fire truck.

"Merry Christmas!" I called out to them.

They looked up from their task for just a moment. One of them shook his head and then they continued wiping off the truck. Hmmm.. not very cordial. The closer to Devon Avenue I got, the more people I encountered. One man, wearing all black clothes and a wide brim black hat was walking towards me.
I smiled and said, "Merry Christmas!"

"Debil", was what he said back to me.

Obviously he did not speak English. I continued on and turned up Devon Avenue, where I stopped in a little food store. I grabbed a soda from the cooler and as I walked up to the counter to pay I said, "Merry Christmas."

"Merry Christmas? What drugs you are on?" asked the man in a heavy Middle Eastern accent.

"I just want to wish you a Merry Christmas." I told him.

"Two dollars."

So far nobody seemed very happy to hear me say Merry Christmas, but also nobody told me not to say it. As I walked up Devon, a person wearing a full burka was coming towards me. Once again, in my most pleasant voice, I exclaimed "Merry Christmas!"

Not only was this person not friendly, but the young man accompanying the person under the burka, yelled at me in a foreign language. It was disappointing to find that nobody was in the Christmas spirit. Again and again I would wish people along Devon Avenue a Merry Christmas, and again and again they would look at me as if I were nuts. I decided to make my way back home. I walked along the sidewalk, past a school, and I decided to try one more time. To the little children leaving the school, I said "Merry Christmas." I made sure that I said it to each and every one of them. Apparently the staff at 'Yeshivas Bet Sefer' did not appreciate my Christmas greetings to the children. They started screaming at me and called the cops.

After my little experiment, I realized that the woman on 60 Minutes who voted for Trump and said that she now feels safer, was mistaken. I think what she is actually feeling, is emboldened.

Always Lock the Door

 Re-enactment

Jewel Food Stores are the big grocery chain here in Chicago. The thing is that not all Jewels are created equal. Some are cleaner, some are laid out better, and some are nothing more than a human zoo.

I stopped for groceries at the Jewel in Andersonville on the way home from Mom's house yesterday. I was going to make dinner and I needed to pick up a few things. Right off the bat, in the parking lot, I encountered a derelict pickup truck parked not just in a handicap parking space, but across two of them. It was smashed in the front, it was smashed on the side, the rear was also smashed in. At one time it had been white, but now it was mostly rusty brown. It did not have a handicapped tag. Fine, none of my business that the city of Chicago doesn't enforce that law. So I locked my car and started walking across the parking lot when a man came running past me, screaming obscenities, and waving his fists. About ten feet in front of me he caught up with a maroon SUV and began beating on it with his fist. His eyes were bulging, his veins were popping, and the most filthy cursing I have heard in a long time spewed from his quivering lips. From what I could figure, the SUV had almost run him over and then had the nerve to honk at him. Again, none of my business. Besides, I had just driven the long drive from Tinley Park and my bladder was screaming. So I entered the Jewel store and quickly skittered my way to the back where the public restroom was. I was hoping against hope that it was not occupied because it's not a nice big restroom with multiple stalls. It has but one toilet for one person, gender is not important. I turned the door handle and it was not locked. Perfect, I could relieve myself and then do my shopping. I flung the door open and immediately tried to grab it back and slam it shut.

"Oh, excuse me. So sorry, so sorry... " I sputtered as I tried to close the door. 
There on the toilet, sat an obese, naked, pink blob of a man. So big that the actual toilet was not visible because he had enveloped it.

"Oh god, sorry, sorry...." I continued as I finally got a grasp on the door handle and slammed the door shut. Oh, and when I finished my shopping and returned to my car, guess who was getting into the beat up truck parked across two handicapped spots?

The Big Cleanup

Monday and Tuesday were rainy, but warm days. A very nice change from snow and cold. It hit sixty degrees at our house on Tuesday and melted every last trace of snow in the backyard, so the dogs were happy about that. Tuesday morning I took them down to the yard for their morning poop and pee session and I noticed that the grass was looking very brown. 'Oh my' I thought, 'That grass looks dead'. Then I saw that Chandler was tip toeing through the grass looking for a place to go. He was trying not to step in the massive amounts of dog poo. Chandler hates to step in his own poop. So my yard was not dying, it was covered in dog shit. I sprung into action, fetching my dog cleanup tools and tying two Jewel grocery bags onto my feet to protect my shoes. (Jewel has really thick plastic bags, perfect for poop duty.) I then waded out into the sea of excrement with my dog poo shovel and rake, and started cleaning the yard. I use a five gallon bucket for this job and after thirty minutes of scraping and shoveling, it was almost full. At one point I started going poo blind. It all was looking the same to me.

Is that a turd, or is it a leaf? Is that a turd, or is it mud? Is that a turd... squish. Yes, that was a turd.

It's mostly cleaned up now and Chandler should feel better about walking around out there. Some of it was a bit too soupy to shovel up, so I'll let that just soak into the ground for now. Besides, it's still only February. Another nice, clean white layer of snow could show up at any time.

My Home Movies

It doesn't work

Five hundred and seventy five years ago, Gutenberg invented the printing press. That technology has endured. It's a pretty good run for that technology. The history of moving pictures, or "Movies" goes back to eighteen ninety five when the Lumière brothers screened their first films in Paris. Basically it consisted of a bunch of sequential photos strung together that made it appear that people and things were moving. That basic idea was improved upon and continued to be used right up until now. Sure they added sound, color, and CGI, but it's still called movies. My problem with this technology is that they haven't kept it for consumers. In 1963 my dad bought an 8mm movie camera, projector, and a screen to show his movies. Which means we have a bunch of old movies rotting somewhere in my Mom's house. In 1969 I bought an 8mm movie camera, projector, and screen to show my movies. I took a lot of movies. Stupid, worthless, wastes of movie film, and because I was a shiftless hippie in those days, most of those movies are lost. However, about sixteen years ago I found some of those movies in my junk trunk. It's an antique trunk from the late 1800s that I've been dragging around with me for fifty years. Unfortunately the technology of home movies has changed drastically in that time. Nobody has a 'film' camera anymore. Nobody has an 8mm movie projector anymore. Nobody has a movie screen to project those movies on anymore. Nobody, but me. I acquired the movie projector about fifteen years ago in Florida. My intention was to convert the movie film to VHS tape. VHS tape went belly up before I could do the job. A few years later I acquired a digital video camera. I would now take video of those movies with the digital camera and transfer them to DVDs. But I needed a movie screen. Couldn't find one, until this week. I wanted a cheap one from a second hand store, but I ended up buying one on Amazon. Okay, so now I was ready. I had the old movies, the projector I had bought fifteen years ago, and a nice, new screen. Funny thing, Florida humidity does horrible things to machinery. It rusts metal, it rots rubber, and it clogs things that are supposed to flow smoothly. It turned out that my projector is now crap. I fed the first movie film through the thing yesterday afternoon and it jammed. It wouldn't reverse, it wouldn't go forward very far, and  the picture jumped and blurred. I fiddled, I twisted knobs, and I tried my best to make it work. Out of nearly one hour of home movies, this is all I got. One minute. Enjoy.