Point Made

I know I'm moved into the castle on the hill because not only have I waved at my neighbors, which they returned by using all of their fingers, but I know the school crossing guard, Dennis. Dennis is a ten-year veteran of the Appleton School District crossing guard organization. He volunteered that his wife is also a crossing guard. Dennis also expressed his happiness in that our house was occupied. He was watching it lay empty for the last two years. He knew the lady that occupied the house before. She was taking care of her invalid mother when the bank finally foreclosed on her. Ouch! that kind of hurts.  He was a little surprised when he discovered that I didn't come out of the house to introduce myself to him, but I was actually waiting for the bus. I had an interview downtown for my restaurant column in Appleton Monthly. I've mentioned before in this space my enjoyment in meeting the people who run restaurants in the Fox Valley. Man...

No, not the fitness course at Xperience, my gym of choice. I've now become, after 5 moves in five years, an expert at packing boxes. I thought I was doing well when I worked in Bob Va Asten's Halloween Pop Up store, Spirit . The merchandise we had was on consignment. At the end of the season, we closed down the store which entailed boxing all of the leftover product for shipment back to the consigner. Trust me, we had to be careful how we packed all of the product since we were probably going to get it all back next season. Packing for a personal relocation is not much different. There is a difference in moving across the country as we did when we moved to and then back from Louisiana. First of all, you try to balance the weight of the loads. You do not fill, even a small box, with books.  You wrap (Yes I'm a Wrapper, Watch out Snoop Dog) all breakables with bubble wrap and you secure all boxes with good carton sealing tape, one strip to close the flaps a...

We are not frozen yet, but we got a bite of Jack Frost the other day. You know the days are getting colder when you observe the person waiting for a bus that has a parka on, back to the wind and gloved hands. Confusion could result because walking past him is the high school student in shorts, flip-flops, and a T-shirt. Never judge the weather by what young people wear. They have all of those raging hormones keeping them warm. It felt really cold. How cold was it Oh Great One? It was cold enough to end the invasion of mosquitos. The biggest downside to this was that nobody had anything to complain about until they realized it was cold. It was so cold I had to pull on a jacket when I took the dog out for her tour of the yard. She didn't need to put on her coat of course. Lucy makes me so mad. She never flushes, puts the lid down, or washes her paws. It felt so cold that the day we took the air conditioner out of our bedroom window, Maria put the...

Maria and I had finished our traditional Saturday morning trip to Mary's Restaurant for breakfast and were on our way to look a gas fireplace insert for Maria's new house. It was on this journey we met the nicest lady. I'm glad to say we didn't run into her but sad to say she did run into us. As we approached the intersection of County Road CE and Railroad St in Darboy, the light turned yellow. Maria remarked afterward that she checked the rearview to make sure no one following her was counting on her running the caution. Seeing no one, she stopped. Seconds later, we were hit in the rear. According to the police report, the woman was distracted by devices (phone, GPS). She wasn't aware she was approaching an intersection at an estimated speed of 40 MPH. Upon seeing us, she attempted to avoid the collision by pulling to the left. To little to late, but she did prevent full front on rear contact. Interesting fact, rear-end collisions don't trig...

It started in 2004 when we moved to our condo off Downer in Milwaukee. Then we mover to the Westside of Milwaukee when we rented from Ken Karr, the former landlord, now a current friend on Highland and 29th St. Then we moved to Mandeville Louisiana for a little less than a year. Returning to The Fox River Valley, we rented a home in Fox Crossing, formerly The Town of Menasha. When the tree fell on the roof, and the landlord felt no urgency to fix it, we moved to W. Commercial in Appleton. Here is a shocker. Are you sitting down? We are moving. No, I don't mean off the couch and out to the patio. There are too many damn mosquitoes for that to happen. No, we are packing our stuff, or at least the stuff we unpacked from the last move and moving to a home Maria purchased on Mason and Glendale in Appleton. Let me unpack that last sentence (pun planned for). We are moving at approximately the end of September to a house. The house has been in t...

Picture me as hair-faced Chuck Todd moderator of "Meet the Press". He usually starts his program with the line, "If it's Sunday, It's Meet the Press". In my case? "If it's Wednesday, my blog is a day late." No excuses. And my apologies to new blogger and old friend Julie Rowley, who I was advising on her attempt to Blog. Not a good example here Julie. First of all, let me get this off my mind. I was at "The Game" Sunday night in Green Bay. My old friend, John B. and traditionally go to the opening game in Green Bay every year. I have been going to Packer Games since the mid-sixties. That means I've saw Gerry Kramer lead Paul Horning around the end on the famous Packer Sweep and I saw him Sunday night hobble out to receive an ovation with the rest of the veterans that returned for recognition, which by the way included Paul Horning. So it goes without saying, I've seen a lot of great games and players on that field. Many of...

I'm not going to go on and on about my playing the worst round of golf I've played in 2018. The best round is laughable enough. And then no one remembers when I was a good golfer because, sadly, that's a day that never was. As always, the company, the weather, and the course were excellent. (Lenny Nagler, warm and sunny, and Ried GC). No, it was the golfer that let me down. Aretha Yes, we lost two important and admirable people this week. When I was a child one memory of my father my father was his unabashed love for black music. An interesting note, I believe that on my fathers side of the family that we had kin on both sides of the civil war.  Let me remind my peers that when we were young there were black radio stations and white radio stations. When my dad heard Nate King Cole, Little Richard, Ray Charles or Aretha on the radio or from one the records in his collection, the volume went up and everything else went on hold. R...