Last Post of 2005...

...probably.

One of my many, many readers sent an anonymous post a day or two ago, saying "You suck" because I haven't posted in a while. So, here you go, Paul.

It's almost Christmas, and what has this world come to? There are now arguments about people saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." I, for one, will say "Merry Christmas." If you don't like it, go vote for John Kerry.

There. A new post.

Yes, we need a little Christmas...

...right this very minute. NOT!

What is wrong with these retailers? Yesterday it was October, and today there are Christmas decorations and promotions all over the place. I heard an analyst on the radio today saying that the traditional "day after Thanksgiving" shopping day would still be the busiest of the year, so why do they want to start promotions now?

As an adult, I have come to hate Christmas, but I loved it as a kid. Even though it meant fighting my way to the tree through my eight siblings, and then having my brother break my transistor radio, after which he then sold me his transistor radio for the eight dollars I got for Christmas (until Dad found out and intervened), and suffering through the post-Christmas depression because I didn't get that...whatever it was I didn't get. On top of that, my birthday is on the 12th day of Christmas (January 6), and most of the time, I got the Christmas/Birthday combo gift. Bummer.

That's why I used to put LSD in the eggnog. Not because it was right, but because I could.

Dead in the Water

Alas, another boating season has come and gone.

The boat came out last week, it's already been winterized and shrink wrapped, and all I have to do now is pull the batteries off and bring them home for the winter.

The perch fishing was dismal this year. It got too hot too fast, and the weather didn't cooperate most weekends. There were maybe 5 good weekends for fishing...when the weather was comfortable and the waves were less than 3 feet. That accounts for this year's small catch. We caught 212 perch this year, with nearly half of them coming in the last weekend (97 perch on October 1 and 2). That compares to 475 perch last year, and 574 in 2003.

My usual practice of taking perch to my local watering hole on OSU football Saturdays will be reduced to one game this year, most likely the Michigan game. I'm not sure why I do it, many people eat it that don't even say 'thank you.' Some do appreciate it, and they show it by buying me a beer. But when I think about what it costs, in both time and money, to get that perch into the deep fryer, I'm sure I'd be better off just buying my own beer. But, hey, I'm a sharing kind of guy.

As Maxwell Smart would say...

...missed it by "that" much.

I checked out the odds on the Bucks winning the national championship while in Las Vegas last month, and those tight SOBs would give me only 5 to 1 odds, so I passed. I thought about it, though, but some invisible imp on my shoulder urged me not to do it. Looks like I made the right call, I could get WAY better odds now that they lost to the Texas Longhorns. If I see one more of those people walking around Columbus with their index and little fingers raised in the Longhorn Salute, I'm going to puke. Now I can only hope for a rematch in the National Championship game.

My daugher Natalie joined me to watch part of the game Saturday, after she had traveled the campus-area bar circuit helping a friend sell t-shirts. It took me a while to figure out the shirts, but they made sense after a few more Bud Lights. Here's a link to the site. Go to the Texas link, she is Natalie, featured in several pictures.

http://www.donkeypunchshirts.com/

HOWEVER: the sports book at Harrah's gave me 50 to 1 against the Tribe winning the World Series and I took it. Seems like a reasonable bet, they are on fire. I could be wrong about this, but I think they have the best record in the Majors since June 1. It was April and May that were tough on them, but they sure have turned things around.

The Browns...well, let's just say we're going to have another "rebuilding" year.

Can't Wait For Summer To End

I love the outdoors. I started golfing again this month, about 7 1/2 months after the surgery, and about 2 months before my surgeon wants me to. No real pain, but I can't make a full turn when I swing, my back gets tight around the 9th hole, and I really can't control the clubs very well. I was playing to an 11 index this time last year, but right now I'm playing to about a 24.

Beside golf, I've managed to get out on Lake Erie to fish a few times, and I've also made several trips to the islands.

This week I'll be going to Dallas for a conference, then up to Put-in-Bay for 3 days the following week (Legislative Days at Put-in-Bay, followed by a fundraiser for the House Minority Leader). Then the week after that, I'm heading to Seattle for 5 days for another conference, and I'll be stopping in Las Vegas on the way back (for 4 days) to attend the wedding of one of my many nieces.

So why can't I wait for summer to end? I don't like heat and humidity, and we've had both in spades this summer. I'm never home on the weekends during the summer, so I always feel like I need to catch up on things at home. And although I like to travel, too much of it stresses me, and I'm certain I'll be stressed for the next 3 weeks.

But there's one more reason...The Ohio State Buckeyes. I am very optimistic about this season, and I plan to place a bet at a sports book in Vegas that the Bucks will win the national championship. Just to hedge, I'll probably also bet that they will win the Big Ten.

Any Michigan fan reading this post can kiss my butt.

Another Put-In-Bay Tale

It's been quite a while since I've posted, even though I meant to do so right after the annual Memorial Day trip to PIB.

The nephew and the friend (whose name I will not use here, for reasons which will become obvious) were my guests for a fun filled weekend on the island, their reward for cleaning and waxing my boat in April. The usual ground rules applied: be careful, if you run out of money you can drink on the boat, and I do not bring bail money, so stay out of trouble.

We hit the Roundhouse around 2 o'clock in the afternoon, just in time to see Mike "Mad Dog" Adams do his routine. Funny as usual, although Mad Dog could spruce up his act a little. I heard some of the same jokes last year.

After a few hours of Mad Dog, I told the boys that I was going to the boat to take a nap. I'm old enough and wise enough to know that I can't hang from 2 o'clock in the afternoon until the late hours. So I crashed for about an hour, then headed back to the bars.

We met up at Mr. Ed's, and it turns out an old friend of mine from Bellevue is running the joint. He was kind enough to send a few free beers my way, for which I was grateful (especially with Bud Light costing $4.50 a can), but it pretty much ruined me for the night. I went back to the boat around 10:00 or 10:30, popped open a can of beer, and reflected.

About a half hour later, the nephew hopped on the boat. "Uncle Sam, #$@%% just got thrown in jail!"

This was interesting news, although not totally unexpected.

I replied, "I hope he has bail money, because I told you guys I wasn't going to bail you out of jail."

"He doesn't need bail money, Uncle Sam, they're going to let him out when the bars close."

And so it went. He came back to the boat around 2 o'clock in the morning, and to this day I don't know what he did to get thrown in jail.

The next morning, after breakfast, I walked to the cop shop with the boys to see if there was something I could do to help. Would it be OK for him to sign a waiver and pay the fine so he wouldn't have to come back for a court appearance? No, he had to come back Thursday. In the end, it cost him a $200 fine, plus the cost of the ferry ride, and the rest is history.

I hope they'll still help me out next spring, so I can take them to Put-In-Bay for Memorial Day weekend, and I hope they are a little older and wiser, and they remember to bring bail money.

The Masters, The Tribe, The Nigerian

THE MASTERS

Can you believe that shot of Tiger's on number 16 on Sunday? Just before he took his shot, I commented to a friend that I had seen David Duvall at about the same spot in 2001 (having had the great fortune of actually having badges for the Sunday round at Augusta, one of the highlights of my life), and as I recall, he bogeyed the hole, letting Tiger slip back into the tournament. That was on the day Tiger won the "Tiger Slam," and I half expected Tiger to bogey the hole this year to give DiMarco a chance at the Green Jacket. After all, he hit his 8-iron well over the green, and mere mortals would be lucky to extract a par from the position Tiger was in. Heavy rough, severely sloping green, the whole bit...but I also noted that I had seen Tiger make a very similar shot on number 14 at the Memorial Tournament a few years ago. Number 14 at Muirfield Village plays very much like number 16 at Augusta, and let's face it, you can't NOT expect Tiger to come up with the clutch shot.

THE TRIBE

I was able to go to the Cleveland Indians' home opener on Monday, and although the Tribe lost the game 2 to 1, it was a great game, and a great day for baseball. Well, it might have been a bit nippy -- it was about 72 degrees and sunny in Columbus on Monday, but Jacobs Field is only about a mile from Lake Erie, whose temperatures probably are still in the 40's, following the long cold winter we just went through. So it was 48 degrees in Cleveland, very windy, and it was hard to believe that 120 miles would make that much difference in the weather. Having grown up in these parts (a lot closer to Cleveland than to Columbus), I know the weather can be much different, but it still amazes me.

THE NIGERIAN

Well that Nigerian guy who got my bank account and routing number (see previous post) still hasn't made the deposit. (Mgoto - if you're reading this, please make the deposit!) I only have a few days of work left, then it's off to retirement, but if I don't get that cash in the next day or two, I'm going to start wondering about Mgoto's sincerity. Maybe the Nigerian authorities caught wind of our arrangement, in which case I'll have to make some contacts in Washington to see if we can prevent this from becoming an international incident.

Striking It Rich -- Finally!

I had an incredible bit of good luck this week, and on Monday I will let my boss know that I'm leaving the company to take an early retirement.

It all started with an e-mail. The gentleman who sent it, Mgoto Mumguboo, has access to $26 million. Due to some strange and unfair Nigerian banking law, he isn't able to withdraw the funds himself. That's where I come in.

All I had to do was send him my account and routing numbers from my checking account. All of the $26 million will be deposited into my account within 10 days, and all I have to send him in return is a paltry $3 million, which nets me the other $23 million. I can't wait!

March Madness

Don't you love/hate this time of year?

I'm in three NCAA pools, and in one I was virtually locked out by Thursday night, thanks in large part to Alabama.

In the second, I was also hosed after Thursday night, thanks to a whole lot of bad picks.

In the third, I was hanging in the middle of the pack after Thursday, and by Friday night I was the leader (results are updated online). I had a smooth 14 out of 16 on Friday, and I even picked Bucknell over Kansas in the first round, which gave me some extra points. I was perfect in the Albuquerque Region, and I was nearly so in the Syracuse Region, missing only one game in the first round.

By Sunday morning, I was tied for the lead, and had the most potential points remaining. All I needed was for UConn to win (my pick for national champion), and to pick up a couple of lesser games, and I would be in good shape. Among Georgia Tech, Mississippi State, and Southern Illinois, I figured if I got three of three, I'd be a virtual lock to win the pool, and even if I got only two, I'd have a pretty good chance.

Sunday. The Wisconsin and North Carolina games were the only ones I won all day, and I think everyone had NC. So I moved way down the list, and I have no chance of winning the third pool.

An entire weekend of roundball overdose, and all I have to show for it are three pool sheets that have more X's on them than a cross-stitched quilt.

I'm looking forward to baseball season, when my beloved Tribe takes the field on their way to the World Series.

Heigh-Ho! Heigh-Ho! Part 2: E-Mail Hell

It was back to work, part time, on Monday.

It took me three days to get through my e-mail inbox. During my absence, I received mail from 348 people. I saved many of the e-mails, but trashed 1685 messages. That should tell you something about the quality of the e-mails I received.

Relativity

If I were a cartoonist, I'd draw a cartoon with two old men sitting on a park bench, one being Albert Einstein, the other being either Plato or Thomas Hobbes (I don't know what either of them looked like or even if they lived long enough to be old, which is why this cartoon doesn't work without some explanation).

Plato (or Hobbes) would look at Einstein, and say, "So, you really think that everything is relative?"

To which Einstein would reply, "Absolutely!"

The Castle

One of the greatest experiences of my life was seeing the Gerhardstein Castle.

I was stationed at Spangdahlem Air Base in Germany for three and a half years in the 1970's. Anywhere I traveled in Germany, I looked in phone books trying to find another Gerhardstein, but never found one. I went to various government offices trying to find any family history I could, but I was always told the same thing: what probably happened was that the ancestor who arrived in America probably was named Gerhard Stein, and my last name was a corruption thereof. Although I did find a fifth cousin of my Dad's in Oberbexbach -- a man named Otto Ruffing -- I had no success in finding a Gerhardstein.

We would go to a rifle range near the town of Gerolstein, about 25 kilometers from Spangdahlem. You may have seen Gerolsteiner Sprudel Wasser (mineral water) in the store, and it comes from Gerolstein. Because I got there by military bus, and our time there was limited to the range, I was not able to explore the town, and in fact I had no compelling reason to do so.

Imagine my reaction when a distant cousin, while traveling in Germany in 1985, found the Gerhardstein Castle in the town of Gerolstein. For 42 months, I had been a half-hour drive from our ancestoral home and didn't even know it existed.

Then, while recovering from back surgery in 1999, I did an internet search of German telephone directories and found a Peter Gerhardstein listed in Wiesbaden. I immediately wrote a letter, and about a week later, I received a phone call from Sandra Gerhardstein-Bishoff, Peter's daughter. (Peter had died several years earlier.) She thought she was the only Gerhardstein in the world. Sandra's English is not great, nor is my German, but we managed to communicate, and over the next several years we swapped many stories and family pictures.

In late 2002, I took a trip to Paris to visit my daughter, who was studying at the Sorbonne. We rented a car and drove to Wiesbaden to visit Sandra, her husband Manni, and her mother Luise. On our second day there, we hopped in the car and drove to Gerolstein to see the castle.

The castle was built on a hill overlooking Gerolstein around 1115, and is little more than a ruin today. No matter. Seeing the ruins and the carved stone lions guarding the castle at the foot of the hill was worth the trip. This is a partial view of the ruins.

Near Death: Volume 2 - 1989

I was working on a radio project at Toledo Edison, and three of us (myself, Mark and Jim) went to Lynchburg, Virginia to visit the Motorola plant where the radio system was being engineered.

As long as I had known him, Jim had a fear of flying. We got to Lynchburg without incident, but he especially did not like flying on the puddle-jumper that took us from Baltimore to Lynchburg.

On the way back to Baltimore, we ran into a storm system, and after flying around Baltimore for a while, the pilot announced that we could not land there. Instead, we were going to a small airport at Salisbury, Maryland to wait the storm out. Our landing in Salisbury was awful, by far the worst I had ever experienced, but that's not the point of this story.

After about two hours on the ground, which gave us time to reschedule our flight from Baltimore to Detroit, we were cleared to go to Baltimore. This was one of those little planes with one row of seats down the port side and two rows on the starboard side. I sat in the front row, immediately behind the cockpit. I could easily see all of the instruments from where I sat.

We took off, and at about 2000 feet we were in clouds so thick I couldn't see a thing. At 6400 feet, something happened. The plane suddenly starting going down, and every loose item in the cabin was on the ceiling. The chart books in the cockpit were also floating, and the co-pilot kept pushing them down to keep them out of the way. The pilot and co-pilot were working frantically to regain control of the plane.

I turned around to see how Mark and Jim were doing. If you can imagine what sheer panic looks like, that is what I saw. Jim was holding onto the seat in front of him, his fingers digging in so deeply that I thought the material would rip. Mark's face had drained of all color. They probably didn't appreciate the huge grin on my face. I still don't know why I was grinning, but I guess I figured I might as well enjoy the ride.

I looked out the window while pushing down on the ceiling to try to stay in my seat. Nothing but clouds and rain. The men in the cockpit were not having much luck righting the plane, although occassionally the plane seemed to level off for a second or two, and then the descent continued.

I realized that I was going to die, and I waited for the ground to meet us. I wouldn't see it coming because of the weather, and I was sure it would be swift and painless. And I was okay with it.

As I was on my way to meet my Maker, I thought about my life. I've made a few mistakes, but on the whole I had led a good life and had been good to people. I thought about my daughters, who were 8 and 5 at the time, and I was sorry for them that they would grow up without Dad. And I had only one regret: I didn't have enough life insurance.

Suddenly, at 1800 feet, the plane slammed into a pocket of air, and as swiftly as we had gone down, we started going up. The force drove me back into my seat, and all of the objects that were floating came crashing to the floor. A few minutes later we were at altitude and flying smoothly through the sky.

When we landed in Baltimore, I waited for the pilot and co-pilot before walking to terminal. I had to know: were we as close as I thought? Yes, we were. The pilot explained that we had hit a wind shear, and he simply could not regain control. The only thing that saved us was the other side of the wind shear, where the current rushed up instead of down.

We immediately headed for the airport bar, where I ordered a beer and a shot of whiskey. I don't like whiskey, but I needed something stronger than beer to settle my nerves. Jim was absolutely beside himself, and asked Mark (our supervisor) if it would be alright to rent a car and drive back to Toledo. Mark denied Jim's request, and we eventually made it back to Detroit, where we got in the car and drove home. Jim swore he would never fly again.

Post script: the following day, I contacted our benefits department and increased my life insurance by a factor of four - a small price to pay for peace of mind while falling to your death.

That Lincoln guy is getting old

Happy birthday to Abraham Lincoln, who is celebrating his 196th birthday today.

In keeping with the non-partisan nature of this blog, I won't get into a discussion about how Lincoln was hated by many northerners (who thought he was a very stubborn man) during the civil war, and that it took a great deal of fortitude on his part to stay with the program to save the union.

Things That Make Me Happy

It's amazing how much one's perspective can change over time and circumstances.

Here's what made me happy today: I put away the elevated toilet seat that I've been using since coming home from the hospital.

My reaction: Yeah, baby, that's what I'm talkin' about!

Near Death: Volume One - 1973

It was 1973. Nixon was President. Idi Amin still had hundreds of thousands of people to kill. "W" was in the Air Guard. And I was coming back from Tiffin in my Dad's Ford LTD with Mike Newkirk as my passenger.

We had gone to a bar in Tiffin (Club 224) and the band that was playing that night was famous in those parts for one song: Smut. The words that I remember were, "S-M-U-T, you love that smutty smut." Really profound stuff. They did a lot of covers, but that was their only original song, and they played it several times every time they took the stage.

I was drinking beer back in those days. Hell, I still do when the mood strikes. On this night, Mike and I were on Rt. 18 barrelling toward Bellevue. I was in a hurry to get home (not wanting to get grounded for coming home late on a Sunday night). As you approach the city limits, there's a railroad crossing, and about a half mile from the crossing, the warning lights came on.

We're cruising along at about 80 miles per hour, and I didn't want to wait for a train, so I asked Mike how it looked. He said, "Looks good."

It looked good in my direction, too, so I ignored the flashing red lights and drove over the tracks.

When I was exactly over the tracks, I took a gander to my right and saw a very bright light about 10 feet from the car. It was a light from a train that was moving toward us at what seemed like 800 miles per hour. I've always been good with math, so I knew the train could not be moving that fast, because the sound of its horn reached us the same time as the light. The instant we cleared the tracks, I looked in the rear-view mirror and saw the train speeding by.

There is a grocery store just past the tracks, and I pulled into the parking lot trying to catch my breath. My heart was pounding so hard that I thought my ears would bleed. I looked over at Mike.

"I thought you said it was clear!"

"I looked your way," said Mike. "And it was clear. I didn't think to look the other way."

The moral of the story: Look both ways before you cross.

Dave's Wisdom

Dave is one hell of a guy, never mind that he's recovering from hip replacement surgery. And, I pity the fool, he's married to my sister.

A bunch of us went to Acapulco last February to live it up a little bit. Months earlier, I was considering whether to go, when Dave came up with one of his Davisms:

We'll all be dead someday, so don't even waste your time thinking about it.

That's not exactly what he said, but that's the gist of it. And he's right. I have 10 years or 20 years or 3 days left, so if I want to see Acapulco, there's no time like the present. I went.

This could be a story of great irony, except that I lived through the trip. I love jumping into the waves and letting them carry me back toward the shore, and I spent a good deal of time playing in the water. Without going into great detail, I didn't appreciate the severity of the undertow, and one day the lifeguards had to come out to save me. Thank God and my lucky stars that my brother Thom was close enough to know that I needed help. The day before, I was alone while challenging the waves, and had the undertow been as powerful...

I've not spent a day since that I haven't thought about that experience. When the tsunami hit the Indian Ocean, all I could think about was the wave (no tsunami, certainly) that almost did me in. I was minutes from giving up. I have a sincere appreciation for the power of water in large volumes.

So maybe Dave is not so smart. Then again, if I had not gone to Acapulco, I would have missed one of the four or five near-death experiences of my life. And nothing makes you appreciate life more.

My Dinner Table - No Place For Amateurs

Yesterday was my birthday, and the discussion around the dinner table turned to frog legs...

DP: We used to hunt frogs at the pond with this three-pronged spear. My dad would shine a flashlight in their faces to stun 'em, then we'd spear 'em and throw 'em in this mesh basket that they couldn't get out of.

ZP: Frogs are cute and cuddly, who'd want to eat them.

SG: Frogs are cute and cuddly?

ZP: Yeah. And how'd you like to be one of those frogs?

SG: I'd be hopping mad.

Nothing better than a good pun, especially if it's at the expense of an unfortunate frog. My sister Linda says that the pun is the lowest form of humor, to which I reply, "That's because you didn't think of it first."

Cabin Fever

I visited the surgeon today for the first time since my December 1, 2004 back surgery.

The good news: all of the hardware he put in my back is right where it was when I left the hospital. (He removed the titanium from the last surgery and gave it to me the day of the surgery. If anyone is in the market for some scrap metal, drop me a line.) I can stop wearing the back brace while in bed, and that will help immensely in the sleep department. I'm now allowed to drive, but only for short distances.

The neutral news: it's too soon to tell if the fusion is taking. He showed me the x-rays they took this morning, and explained that on one side of my spine, he used a man-made protien as the fusing agent. On the other side, he used my own bone -- from bone spurs he removed from my spine. Time will tell if one agent is better than the other, but I feel a bit like a guinea pig.

The bad news: I will see him again on March 1, and I cannot return to work until I see him then. I really expected to go back during the second or third week of February because I feel like I'm way ahead of the game compared to the last surgery. He told me I could go into the office to sign papers and pick up mail, but I'm not to stay there for more than an hour at a time. Since I've arranged for weekly mail deliveries to my house, there's really no need to go to the office at all.

So I'll keep reading my books, watching my movies, and tinkering with the iLife software on my computer. I've also made the mistake of resuming my hobby of coin collecting, and I'm much the poorer for it.

Home

What is the significance of the Golden Hill? It's the name of the farm near Bellevue, Ohio, where I grew up.

Toward the south end of the farm was a huge sand hill that my Dad knocked down before planting peach and nectarine trees. It was too steep for an orchard before he leveled it. The other significant things about the hill are: 1) there were scads of sand burrs, so it was nearly impossible to walk the hill barefoot; 2) as a kid, I had nightmares about the sand swirling and sucking me into the ground, a la "Invaders from Mars"; and 3) the hill is now the site of the Gerhardstein Cemetery, where my Dad, my sister-in-law Debbie, and my brother Rodger Jr. are buried. I suppose I'll end up there too, someday. Then the invaders from Mars will have won.