Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Happy Birthday, Daddy

It's August 30, 2006. My father would have been 88 today and might still be around but for the asbestos-induced cancer he contracted in the automobile repair business.

The older I get, the more I understand my dad. He wasn't exactly an intellectual--it took him a couple of years to get through high school and he didn't bother with college--but he had a wit about him and was a genius with mechanical things. The smartest thing he ever did was marrying my mother, who should have gone to college and would have done well if she had, but she was the financial brains of the family and did really well with what little an auto mechanic brought in. With two kids of my own, I realize more now how hard a job being a parent is, something I didn't get as a child in the old days. He wasn't a big one for hugs or telling me all the time how much he loved me, his generation wasn't always that demonstrative, but he was there when I needed him.

I miss both my folks every day and wish they were still around to talk to. Happy 88th, Daddy.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

The Usual

Well, Mrs. Blue, Littlest Blue and I had a good time in Atlanta. We survived the traffic, the multiple streets called "Peachtree" and the financial drain called Lenox Square Mall. Lots of pretty things, odd people and fairly good food were part of our experience during our stay in the hub of the South.

Life, upon our return to our fair city, has returned to what passes for normal for us. I did come back to my office and was told I'd gotten a raise on top of the one we'll all get in October, so I was pretty happy. I'm still underpaid for what I do, but it was a nice start.

Littlest Blue has left the fields of our local big public university (sniff) and gone back for the sorry excuse of what our School Board calls a "high school". No wonder the kid wants to dual enroll ASAP, even the so-called "magnet" program at her current place is so poorly run as to make the kids bored to tears. I'm not a big fan of the voucher program, so highly touted by the neo-cons as the answer to all our educational problems (since it is really just an excuse for the taxpayers to fund religious schools--"Rah, rah, GO BIG TALIBAN!"), I just want my daughter to get the education I'm helping to pay for. Lots of kids less well off intellectually than she will never learn much from the way things are currently going.

Meanwhile, Israel has stopped bombing the bejeezus out of Lebanon (at least for a little while), North Korea says it might preemptively strike at the South Korean and American troops running maneuvers in the South, Iran says it's ready for "serious talks" about its nuclear program (as long as the West kowtows to its demands, of course) and the Big W has said in a news conference that Iraq has damaged America's "psyche" (which to him probably means something like Tai Chi). Yup, life goes on.

Mrs. Blue turned....uh....39 on Saturday. She doesn't look a day over 38 if you ask me.