A Dorothy Lamour Dress

My neighbour told me she had purchased a Dorothy Lamour type dress, although when she described the vintage as late 80’s I thought  that Dorothy was long gone from this earth by then. I was wrong. Wikipedia says : Dorothy Lamour (December 10, 1914 – September 22, 1996) was an American film actress. She is best-remembered for appearing in the “Road to” movies, a series of successful comedies co-starring Bob Hope and Bing Crosby.

The dress in question is a light weight, floral print wrap around dress with an asymmetrical hemline. It was quite stylish at another time and looked pretty good for today, especially because she was going with my wife and another friend to Stratford, ON to see Shakespeare, and have lunch and make a day of it. She felt it was the perfect dress for the occasion and for the beautiful spring weather.

After she put it on she looked in the mirror and surely something was wrong. The hemline looked a bit wonky and she could not determine immediately what was wrong. She stared at herself and suddenly, as the blood drained from her face, she realized the bottom of the dress, hanging precariously near the office equipment in their home, had gone through the paper shredder!
Her husband, hereafter referred to as the culprit, addressed the situation and agreed to recut the hem with a pair of scissors retrieved from the garage where they did not belong but did reside. The culprit in question is not a straight cutter, or so it seems, but she was able to wear the dress, albeit a bit skewed to one side, to the play.

The actors showed her their talents and she showed them her legs and maybe her underwear, assuming she was wearing any, but that was not my place to ask about.

My wife had agreed to work on the dress and see if she can hem it and make it better, maybe even bring it into the 90’s.

The culprit has agreed to put, or build a baffle type devise for his shredder so that only paper can go through, or barring that, he will learn to sew.

Bus Stop

I stood in the Bus Station in Toronto this morning, waiting for an errant daughter who had missed an important bus and now had to drive all night from Washington, DC to Toronto. Her original bus was to leave, she thought, at 11:30 a.m. and really left at 10:45 a.m. and she didn’t make it. So the special $20 ticket went to $30 with an original day change, and now with a miss went up another $40. The 12 hour overnight bus was a punishment God gave for missing your original bus, and the 9:20 a.m. pickup in Toronto arrived at 11:00 a.m.

It would have been an easy hour in and an hour out if she had been on the 10:00 p.m. arrival bus originally scheduled. Now, it was an hour and a half in rush hour in and an hour out causing me to miss a funeral in the process.

What can I say? I was there and had to first go to the bus washroom, always a pleasure. It was bad, and it smelled bad. The odour of urine pervaded the men’s room and added to my already perfect day.

I bought a coffee and waited listening to my book on my MP3 player, the saving part of my ride and my wait. The daughter texted and suggested I look for food and keep busy as this was going to be long, so I eventually went downstairs again and after another quick trip to the men’s room (I never met a bathroom I didn’t like) and I found a snack bar and treated myself to a small bag of pretzels and a coke.

Back up to eat, listen, wait and observe.
In the last two times I’ve waited in the bus station I’ve seen drug deals go down, or at least I’ve perceived them as drug deals, and it could be from watching too much TV. Two different people asked me to watch their bags while they went off to do something which never will happen in an airport because they perceive this as a terrorist activity. One was a young woman and one was an elderly woman and I guess in a bus station, I fall into a reputable character category, which would not be the case in most other places. The young woman went off leaving me with her back pack and luggage, the older woman left me with luggage and worked the crowd trying to get someone to let her into the handicapped washroom which took 15 minutes to do. I don’t blame her and they sure don’t make that one easy, and she sure didn’t deserve the downstairs washroom if the ladies is anywhere near as bad as the men’s.

My daughter arrived and left me with her backpack and her luggage and went downstairs to use the washroom (there’s a theme here) and we left for the parking lot, a $17 deposit and at $5 a half hour I got no change. My car was wedged in by others and it took my daughter running from front to back to get me out of the space. This took about 15 minutes, a few inches at a time.

As one says at this kind of time, “So other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”

Appliances

Most of our major appliances were purchased in December, 1999. They all were bought from Sears, and were all Kenmore, as I seem wired that way. I have strayed afield once or twice, for most my life it’s been Kenmore and Sears.

The dishwasher has been replaced twice, but the word on the street seems to be that a dishwasher today has about a five year life span if used all the time, as ours is.

Our stove has done its best but is at the end of its life. The front flat top burners are all but dead, the body is a bit chipped and the little turning handles (I know this can all be replaced) have lost their markings and I keep drawing on new lines with a fine point marker. The bottom drawer has a mind of its own and the whole thing is a bit shabby. After spending 45 minutes boiling water for pasta, we decided tom bite the bullet and get another.         

There are lots of stoves on the market with a huge range of prices. We needed to replace our current model with a similar one, one with a flat electric surface, an automatic over cleaner and a convection oven. We also needed a plain while one, no stainless steel needed here. So as boring as it may seem, waiting for the right sale, we bought a Kenmore from Sears. It will be delivered next week and it comes with an appropriate payment plan so we are not sent to interest heaven. All seems to be fine. We haven’t told the stove yet.

Appliances may have a life. It seems crazy I know, but we have been talking about this is the kitchen, and all of our appliances are the same age, so the word may have spread. All of them approach their last legs, but the stove was first. The dryer was to be second, but we have been waiting for the end. Heavily used, it has gradually become louder and louder. We use it with the door closed so we can hear ourselves think. It works, but is impossible to be around. This has been going on for months.

Today, after hearing we have replaced the stove, the dryer stopped making noise. It simply works, and is quiet. We have no other explanation.

Appliances understand.

One Hit Wonder

When I arrived at the office today I found a surprise waiting for me. The original plaster ceiling was shaken up by various construction bangs etc. and seems to have given up one of its ceiling fixtures.

 If I had been there, I would have been sitting in the chair when it happened. It even missed the computer when it hit the desk. It swept past the chair and the computer to land smack dab into the desk causing only minor damage, but depositing plaster and broken glass from florescent tubes all over the place.

 If it happened in the daytime when I would have been in the chair, it would have taken out a good part of the side of my head.

 But, no bull’s-eye was available here.

The Manhattan

I came home tonight and after a few minutes I answered the phone. While I was talking my oldest daughter came in, fresh from seeing Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris. She was delighted, as were we, with the film. She fooled around a bit and I got off the phone. She started to gather things together and I wasn’t paying much attention when suddenly, as if out of a dream, my daughter said to me, would you like a Manhattan?”

I stood dumbfounded. “Of course”, I said, not knowing where to turn.  This is so out of character for her, especially coming up with a retro drink at 19. For my US readers, 19 is the legal age in Ontario and it’s 18 in Quebec where my daughter goes to school.

It had been years since i had a Manhattan, and it was great!

Hers was made with Canadian Club, Sweet Vermouth, Bitters and a maraschino cherry in the glass, over ice.

Sitting and drinking cocktails with my daughter at the end of a good day was a milestone for us! I told her old bar story experiences and she was even interested in them, a far cry from our usual non banter.

This was a red letter day, and a little booze goes a long way to cement relationships!

Block Busting

Wikipedia says: Blockbusting was a business practice of U.S. real estate agents and building developers meant to encourage white property owners to sell their houses at a loss, by implying that racial, ethnic, or religious minorities — Blacks, Hispanics, Jews et al. — were moving into their previously racially segregated neighborhood, thus depressing real estate property values. Blockbusting became possible after the legislative dismantling of legally-protected racially-segregated real estate practices after World War II, but by the 1980s it disappeared as a business practice after changes in law and the real estate market.

In the early 60’s, some friends of mine were the first African Americans to move into their neighborhood in the suburbs of Baltimore, moving into the area of Baltimore County out on Liberty Road.

They went not as far out as Randallstown, it was close to the city line area but clearly suburban, and it was perceived that they posed a threat to the neighborhood.

I can no longer remember if there were incidents beyond the first few families who immediately put their houses up for sale, but they were full of stories for me about discrimination in Baltimore, in the early days.

The couple was older than me so they had experiences relating to the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s that were before my time as an adult, and I hadn’t realized their predicaments. They are both gone now, the wife having passed away in 1976 and her husband in 2005. However, I prefer to leave out their names because their story is probably just universal for the times.

I had many questions of them because their culture was not mine, although of course it was. I had come from growing up in a segregated background and had not really seen discrimination from their perspective. Where I lived, the discrimination against Jews was talked about but never seen much in my life.

I learned from them that they could not, for many years, enter Baltimore Department stores, save one. For the one store that let them in, they were not able to try on clothes, just look and purchase. They were not allowed to return items of clothing.

They always paid their bills at the Department store central office cashier, and when asked why, they told me that banks had never let them have checking accounts, so even after they were allowed to have them by law, they chose to continue with the old, more comfortable ways.

Learning from them was a rich cultural experience for me, and one I will always remember.

The story however, that came to mind was one where the husband was out mowing his lawn. They had a beautiful lawn and garden. A man pulled up and watched him mow for a bit, rolled down his window and beckoned my friend to come over to speak with him.

He stopped the mower and went over to speak to the man. He was told how beautiful the lawn and garden were and the man wanted to negotiate with him to come over and do his lawn.

My friend was a bit dumbfounded, but smiled politely, and suggested to the man that this was his own lawn and unlike a gardener for hire, he was just a poor schnook with a Masters Degree in Education, forced to mow his own lawn.

The man was stopped in his tracks. He would have apologized sooner we believed, but it took a while at that point in our history for the man to believe what he had just been told!

Good Cookies!

My daughters make these fantastic cookies and I asked them how they did it. They said they saw them on the web and they just made them with Pillsbury Refrigerated Cookie Dough and some Oreos.


The following are some significant package FAQ’s. The girls said just use the dough and put on the Oreos and bake. This seems to make sense. I looked on the web and found several actual recipes but don’t seem to need them but I’ve included one for the die hards in my audience.

These are fantastic!

Pillsbury Refrigerated Cookie Dough FAQ's

What are the package directions?

Chocolate Chip 350º F. 10-14 minutes SPOON heaping teaspoons of dough onto ungreased cookie sheets Chocolate Chip Walnut 350º F. 10-14 minutes SPOON heaping teaspoons of dough onto ungreased cookie sheets Chocolate Chunk 350º F. 9-14 minutes SPOON heaping teaspoons of dough onto ungreased cookie sheets Double Chocolate Chip & Chunk 350º F. 9-14 minutes SPOON heaping teaspoons of dough onto ungreased cookie sheets Gingerbread 350º F. 7-11 minutes SLICE dough into 1/4-inch thick slices. Place slices onto ungreased cookie sheets.

Can I add extra ingredients to the dough (candy, nuts, raisins, chocolate chips, coconut, etc.)?

Yes. In a large bowl, break up the cookie dough. Add the desired ingredients and mix well. Drop the dough by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake according to package directions.

Someone’s Actual Recipe

Ingredients

2 1/4 Cup Flour

1 teaspoon Salt

1 teaspoon Baking soda

3/4 Cup Granulated Sugar

3/4 Cup Brown Sugar

2 teaspoons Vanilla Extract

2 large Eggs

12 oz Semi-Sweet Chocolate Chips

1 16.6 oz Package Double Stuffed Oreos {You won't use all of the cookies only about 12}

Directions

1. Combine Flour, Salt and Baking soda

2. Beat softened butter, sugar, brown sugar, and Vanilla

3. Add eggs one at a time to mixture

4. Add flour, salt and baking soda mixture slowly to mixture

5. Add Chocolate Chips to mixture

6. Set Chocolate Chip Cookie dough aside.

7. Pre-Heat oven to 375 degrees

8. Set up 6 Double Stuffed Oreos on parchment paper covered cookie sheet

9. Using your hands put a small handful of cookie dough on each side of the Oreo and roll into a ball. Make sure Oreo is completely covered. Repeat until aprox. 14* cookies are covered.

10. Bake for 12-15 minutes at 375 degrees!

As an old time guitar player...or just an old guitar player

As an old time guitar player, who seldom plays but enjoys it when I can, I get nostalgic for the memory. You know if you’ve read these pages, that my most musical daughters have forbid me from even trying singing, playing any instrument, or even clicking my fingers in a rhythmic way. Their knowledge of music and its variances does not include me. I have been shunned to another place for a musical experience.


The other day I received an email from the library that my Jackson Browne CD was in and my wife was going to the local library and she was going to pick it up. I guess in my haste of ordering, instead of ordering a CD, I ordered a music book. How happy and surprised I was to find “Running on Empty” and "The Pretender" in sheet music form on my dining room table.

I took my guitar from the rack and tried to tune it (yes, I do know how to do that) and sat at the table and tried to play a bit, however, my eyesight was so bad I had to get up and go to the kitchen to get one of my eight pairs of dollar store reading glasses so I could see the music. When I returned, I couldn’t find my pick. Of course I have others, but still there was one woven in the strings, and it was gone!

I picked up the guitar and shook it and sure as shootin’, the pick was inside! This is no surprise, as guitar players lose picks in guitars always and have to play with them to get them out.

I shook it up and down for a while and played with it to make it work. I put the guitar down to answer a phone call and when I came back the pick was gone! Where did it go? I know I shook and shook but never saw it leave. What had happened?

I put the guitar back in its holder and went away to do something else and some hours later I returned and looked down and this was what I saw!

I play by ear mostly, so maybe playing by foot will work as well.

The Meeting

There were a bunch of us at the meeting the other day, about fifteen or so, and it was a two hour meeting including a nice lunch. As usual, in my meetings, I was the only guy which is not a bad thing; it’s just become the usual. It has made me look at meetings in a different light, as we get to the same conclusions that we would in any other meeting, it’s often that the road to the conclusion is often more circuitous.


We were beginning an interesting part of the discussion when people started to get lunch. It was just after 11:00 a.m. and I couldn’t eat that early. I am just a creature of the clock usually, and needed it to be noon. There were no hot foods involved, it was sandwiches, fruits, salads and desserts. We had just started and the conversation was good when it broke off into why I couldn’t eat until noon. It was no big deal, and in a meeting of all men this would never have even been noticed rather than take us in a new and unproductive direction. However, the highlight for me was the conversation breaker, a spider appeared.

A woman screamed, jumped up and took off her shoe. She put her shoe in her hand and beat the spider vigorously while someone else was screaming at her to let the spider go and did we ever look into the cute face of a spider and we could catch and release.

The meeting was good, everyone seemed to be happy with the results, and I was left feeling there must be a simpler way to do this. Maybe they need a meeting with no men involved, because probably no one else is at home is writing about the experience.

Salad Days

In the old days, my favourite restaurant in Baltimore was the Chesapeake, a great sea food restaurant of the past. When we would have a lunch there, on someone’s expense account, I would order a seafood salad with lots of large shrimp and crab involved. It was amazing, and was $4 . If you wanted blue cheese dressing, it was an additional $.50. That’s “old school” eating. This was the early 70’s, and a $4 salad was a huge amount of money, as I allowed about $2 for lunch at the time.

This morning I went on the scale, a major event for me as I almost never want to see how much I weigh. I knew it would be bad, and it was. I had reached back to an earlier weight level I had hoped I would never see again. So I decided to cut back a bit, before I made a big decision to seriously diet.
I thought I’d like a salad for lunch, and considered all the possibilities. The supermarket salad bar would have been a good one but iy meant going and bringing it back, or eating  in the car, a usually big mess. The local pizza place has a great salad but eating in is dirty and not conducive to eating, so I passed. A local Italian restaurant was good but I thought it would be expensive, because it’s either $7.99 or $9.99 plus a diet coke is $2.75 plus a tip so I thought better about it.

McDonalds has good salad sort of, but they get a bit crazy at lunch and Wendy’s is all right, and is good before 12:45 p.m. when the high school kids arrive.
Not great, but I settled on Wendy’s.

I know they have a half salad but l knew I wanted more and they had a ½ plus something else, but I decided to go with a Spicy Chicken Caesar and a Diet Coke.

It was OK, probably too high in fat and calories, but it was cool and quiet,. My complaint is it’s all so damn expensive! You can see it here, in the attachment, with our awful government HST, a mere 13%!

I know the early 70’s were a long time ago, but when the best salad I can remember cost $4 (plus $.50 for blue cheese dressing), it seems a sacrilege to offer a salad and a coke for more than $11!

I rest my case!

The Questionable Question

On Friday night we hurried to an opening, one we could not miss even though we were very busy, we had to show up.

The event was nice and while wandering the crowd I ran across a guy I knew from the Chamber of Commerce. Although I couldn’t remember his name, we were old friends and stood around a while just talking.

He asked about my health with quite specific information about my knee problem which I don’t really remember but knew it was a problem way back when. He remembered that and I went on to talk about my upper arm and shoulder problem which I’ve written about recently in relation to dumb falls I’ve made. So, enough of the small talk, and he startled me with the question, “How’s your sex life?”

OK, I’m a big boy. I’ve been asked that before, like when I was 17! It is not in good taste, unless he knew something (or thought he did) about something I was supposed to do, to ask such a question. I was dumbfounded. How do I respond?

I quickly thought about lots of funny answers but reconsidered because I wasn’t sure what he was getting to He’s an old guy (like myself) and maybe he was having erectile dysfunction problems and was asking me in a disguised way if I had them, or maybe this was just a normal question for him. I didn’t know what to say and I gave the lame answer, “Fine!” for want of a better answer. I was going to give him references, but decided that was not the way to treat this. Or, I could have said, “Why, did your wife complain to you?”

He went on to tell me some jokes, which may have related to this query, or not. I really don’t know.

I am seldom thrown off base by a question, and if I were a teenager, I could have handled it. It was just rude.

Going for a visit with my father

Sometime in the late 60’s, I went with my father, who was home and not feeling too well, but not yet in the hospital (so I can place it in time) to visit a shiva house.


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

In Judaism, shiva Hebrew: שבעה ; "seven") is the week-long period of grief and mourning for the seven first-degree relatives: father, mother, son, daughter, brother, sister, and spouse. As most regular activity is interrupted, the process of following the shiva ritual is referred to as "sitting" shiva. Shiva is a part of the customs for bereavement in Judaism


It is considered a great mitzvah (literally "commandment" but usually interpreted as "good deed") of kindness and compassion to pay a home visit (make or pay a shiva call) to the mourners.


I don’t remember whose house we visited or who had died, I just remember going with my father which was unusual because my mother would usually have accompanied him.


We were there a while and my father struck up a conversation with a woman I didn’t know. Somewhere along the line he told me that it was a woman who had been in his class in the fourth grade and he hadn’t seen her since. I was shocked!

How could he remember her? They were both very old and didn’t look the same at all. It floored me that they would recognize each other.

How dumb was I? How unsophisticated or lunk headed I must have been.

As I look back at the scene in my head from this vantage point, I was just a kid who couldn’t have known any better. My father, at the time, was younger than I am now!

I would be happy to run across an old classmate from elementary school, and surprised as well, as he was.

I was in my mid-twenties at the time, and never considered getting old. As an immortal, I guess it was the shock of old that left this impression on me.

and no reasonable answer can be accepted.

This is the strange story about a journey taken by my daughter’s drivers license, with no reasonable answer accepted.

On Saturday night of last week, my oldest daughter went to “The Government”, a club in Toronto, to see some DJ who had just arrived from the coast. In any case, it was a well planned night with friends, including a stay over in a local hotel.

When she came back to her hotel she realized that her purse had been either robbed, or she had dropped a lot of stiff out of it that evening. Missing was her wallet with all her money ($11), her credit card, her debit card, her drivers license, her health card and her school ID card as well as her camera and a few other makeup objects. It could have been a simple drop, although none of it has shown up in the lost and found at the club leaving us to believe it was a theft.

The items, a great bunch of stuff for an identity theft, were all missing. She called in the credit card missing at 4 a.m. and it had not been used. The cards had no pin numbers (thank God) written on them. The health card was called in the next afternoon, the drivers license replied for by Monday and the only loss so far is the student ID that will be replaced at school when she returns. It looked clean.

The surprise ending was a phone call on Tuesday afternoon from the Ancaster post office, where we live. Her driver’s license was deposited, along with another drivers license from Mississauga, ON (suburban Toronto) in a Dundas, ON neighbourhood mailbox.

Because both Dundas and Ancaster mail ends up in our local post office, they called to see if we lost it. Delighted, I told him yes and they delivered in yesterday. They did not receive any other cards, and she does not know anyone from Mississauga, ON. We have no idea, and can’t imagine the journey this license has taken to get back to us. Was it just a stroke of luck some kid from Dundas found these two licenses in a bar in Toronto? I can’t imagine such luck.

Is it Ockham’s Razor, and the easiest explanation is the simplest, it was a kind thief who wanted to return something?

Who knows?