Long Drives

So we made it to the Heart of Texas, Austin, last night. Corrie drove from about forty miles before Texarkana through to about forty miles to Dallas, which was the reprieve I needed to finish what I started.

We left Brooklyn Sunday morning after finishing the packing of the little things and digging the truck out of the snow. The City got about 18 inches of snow the previous night, and it had blanketed everything. It wasn't cold enough yet for it to have hardened into white concrete.

I drove Sunday from Brooklyn to Roanoke, Virginia. There was snow piled up on the side of the highway the entire way, as well as covering every tree and mountain within eyesight of the road. It was a pretty straight shot, down to Atlantic from Malcolm X, over to Flatbush, which becomes the Manhattan Bridge, across Manhattan on Canal Street--the Manhattan Bridge dumpoff--through the Holland Tunnel and onto I-78. We took that to I-81, which we stayed on all the way to Knoxville.

That was the second day; 81 from Roanoke passed Knoxville, when the 81 turns into I-40, then through Nashville, and eventually staying in Dickson, Tennessee. Two southern metropolises in one day...damn, Tennessee is a long state. Somewhere before Knoxville the snow along the highway stopped abruptly...poof--and there wasn't any snow anywhere. Bizarre.

The third day we zoomed passed Memphis, Little Rock, switched drivers before Texarkana, switched back before skirting Dallas, through Waco, and eventually here, Austin, around 12:30 last night. We'd planned to stop in Texarkana for the night, but felt like we could make the drive, and wanted to save the money.

I have some pretty cool pictures, but I'll post them later.

Happy Belated Winter Solstice!

Happy Birthday Mary!

Today brings us the 21st birthday of my sister-in-law Mary. I hope she rocks it. I debated weather or not to put this post up, since I forgot to put a similar one up for her sister, Steph, back in November. I settled on doing it, obviously, since 21st's come around once in a lifetime.

Also, Steph had a pretty cool birthday last year, actually turning 18 on November 4th, so she was just old enough to vote, coming in under the legislated hour. Sometimes I think that as technology moves forward at lightning speed generations move further apart more quickly. But, when looking at elections, I think that anyone aged within the bands of having the ability to vote in their first presidential election for either the 2000, 2004, or 2008 elections must be inexplicably joined.

In any case, Happy Birthday Mary!

One More Thing for Norm

I couldn't resist.

Macon Street, just east of Ralph Ave. You can check it out on Google maps if you want.

Survivor Bag

Last November, as in thirteen months ago, during a wind storm a black bodega bag was swept up into the bare branches of the tree outside our apartment building. All throughout the fall and winter that followed, the sound of it whipping in the wind was a constant annoyance.

The snow storms couldn't bring it down, and neither could the rains. I almost climbed into the tree and yanked it down myself. Corrie has some good memories of my complaints, my bitching and moaning.

Spring came, and like all trees during spring, green life returned to the tree. Summer came, and leaves covered the tree instead of pollen dropping fronds. The rains were here once a week, and yet, visible as ever, that bag remained. It stopped being so annoying, at least.

Now, as it feels cold enough to be winter, it's still technically fall for a few days more, and the bag is still in the bare-again tree. It's been ripped into shreds, but it remains, more than a year later.

Sad Day in Sacramento

On November 20 this year, the Maloof family, owner of the Sacramento Kings and Monarchs franchises, of the NBA and WNBA respectively, announced that they were no longer going to be operating the Monarchs, essentially folding the team.

A frenzied two weeks passed while the commissioner of the WNBA tried to find a suitable owner and arena in Oakland and the East Bay area, where interest seemed the highest. This ultimately failed, and the team was picked apart by the other remaining WNBA teams in a dispersal draft.

Ugh.

These are obviously tough times for the WNBA. The Houston franchise also folded this year, and the Detroit franchise has moved to Tulsa, but has yet to be given a name, so currently they're just WNBA Tulsa. They have some time before the season starts before they need a name, I suppose...

But between Sac, Houston, and Detroit you had three of the original eight franchises, all of which had been playoff perennials, and all three had won championships. For as fanatic as Kings fans are in Sac, and they are pretty damn fanatic, it was he Monarchs that brought Sacramento their only professional sports championship. The Solons were okay during the PCL heyday, but were never really good enough to beat the Seals of SF, or the Hollywood Stars, or the Los Angeles Angels. The River Cats might have taken the AAA Minor League crown a few years back. But the Monarchs, in 2005, won it all.

It was my understanding that when the WNBA finally formed, and pushed the more exciting women's professional league that had just started, the ABL, out of the picture, that they awarded teams to cities with loyal and idiotically fanatic fan bases. Sacramento definitely fits the profile. The ABL, though, had started two years prior, played more games in a season, and had more teams on occasion. It also had the refreshing business of having an acronym that didn't automatically signify that it was chick-oriented. The ABL. The best the NBA could come up with is the WNBA, or NBA for women. Am I the only person annoyed by that? In golf we have the PGA, and the LPGA, when on a television screen it shows up as a delicately cursive "L", as in Lady...At least in tennis and volleyball, which have been established as a dual gender professional sports for decades, you get the ATP and AVP respectively, without any "W"s or "L"s.

I've read that the NBA has been operating the WNBA every year at a loss, which begs the tragic question that hangs around the pro ladies basketball constantly: when will the boys decide that the girls are no longer financially viable, and scratch the entire thing?

Nasty Saturday

This past Saturday at the market the weather was easily the worst I've ever had to work through.

Some days during the summer can be gross, with the heat and humidity bearing down on you with force, making your arms and forehead dripping and salty. There is some relief, though, when you take a handful of ice and drop it onto your head, or splash your face and the back of your neck with icy water. Of course, when you run across the street to the big-ass (for Manhattan) Barnes&Noble bookstore to use their restroom you catch a chill once your sweaty hide comes flush with the powerfully air-conditioned climate.

But, this past Saturday was worse.

It was cold. Not really cold, but cold enough to still shock your system because it hasn't been that cold yet; it was in the mid-thirties. Boo-hoo, you might say. The wind was going as well, with a general 20 to 30 mph baseline with regular gusts into the 40s, and an occasional shove that felt much higher. That combination, while lame, is able to be dealt with. The wind cuts at your skin, but it's not so cold (like February) that it feels like cold glass shards on exposed skin.

But, this past Saturday it was raining. Or maybe the verb is slushing. Mostly it was rain coming down, but for a while it was like clear slurpee was falling from the sky. From a distance it kinda looked like snow. But walking through it, trudging through it, getting people's dairy for them in the exposed outness, showed you the truth.

After three-and-a-half years the weather still mystifies and amazes me.

Nuts and Bolts...

This post (and its predecessor) were compiled on Corrie's lappy, but I have a new toy myself, and I'm trying to work the kinks out, so if, fair readers, you happen to find a post with small font (like the haircut piece) please understand that I'm working on it.

The new lappy/toy has a tendency to erase everything I write once I highlight it, and it then becomes unrecoverable. This new feature has been a royal pain in my ass, and I'm trying to fix it, so bear with me if you don't mind. Growing pains were expected with the new toy, and thanks a bunch, it was perfect...just a little agita every once in a while.

The posts about Thanksgiving and the haircut I had to rewrite three times each. In full. But, all will be good in the end.

Again, thank you.

Congratulations to Corrie and Me

If this isn't self indulgent, I don't know what is.

The weekend after Thanksgiving used to be the days that Corrie and I celebrated our "anniversary", our dating anniversary as it were, which makes this year's post-thanksgiving weekend nine years we've been together.

Nine.

Wow...that's almost as long as I went to college...

Thanks for the great times, baby, it's been a blast, through the good and the bad...always an adventure. Love you!