I am totally burnt. Toast. Melted. I should not be in the office.

boDeans at the river...... they still rock....but I sure found out that my limitation level has constricted.

I like the way you dance

I like the way you paint your lips

And if I had a chance to be with you, I wouldn't slip

So hey what do you say

Do you see a thing or two in me

Then let's be on our way

We don't need no other company

If I could Hold you tonight

I might never let go

If I could Hold you tonight

I might never let goIf

I could Hold you tonight

I might never, no never, let go

Blood, gore, guts and donuts

Just got back from the blood drive..... yadda, yadda..... I donate all the time. I think I have donated over 543 gallons in my life time. Makes me feel like a really nice guy.

And it is amazing how much like donuts blood cells look like..... when you look really really close.

I had a dream

I woke to a vivid dream at 3:23am this morning. It wasn't a weird nightmare or indigestion, but it had an urgent, compelling electrical charge that had me wide awake. It also featured my ex.... and usually those dreams are brought about by indigestion, but it only took me a few moments to realize that this was completely different. My daughter was born twenty years ago, at precisely 3:10am. Wowsers! My ex...... ah, forget this "ex" thingee, Cheryl.. her name is Cheryl, and she was a prominent actor in that drama twenty years ago, too. Go figure that one! And the real deal is that the story of my daughter's birth was really a good one and for that I will always have a good thought for Cheryl for as long as I live.

It was a hot summer in 1989 and July was a real heat wave. I remember the day-time high temperatures were consistently in the mid to upper 90's and would only cool off in the evening to the mid 70's. Now that can't be a lot of fun for a pregnant woman who is ten days overdue. We were living, for the most part, in a air-conditioned second floor bedroom. I was remodeling the downstairs bathroom.... I had that sucker ripped out to the bare walls; had finished re-wiring the room and had installed the new sink.... but the heat and the extra time I spent being a supportive father & husband to a nine month along pregnant had rather curtailed that project. I would be home at five; too hot to cook downstairs so I would run and get carry-out or deli, fruits &salad, play with three year old Max... do the chores, laundry..... then try to get some remodel work done. It was a hectic time, but we were all good and very happy. ( except those moments when Cheryl would tell me, in flourished terms, how fucking lousy she felt being nine months pregnant during a heat wave. Oh, the vocabulary she had in those moments!)

So at 2:30am on July 15th Cheryl wakes me up with a scream, actually several, and then nonchalantly said, " I think I am having the baby now!" I sensed a certain veracity in the way she made the pronunciation and called up Uncle Mike to come watch Max and then did the Fatherly kind of stuff.... threw the bag in the car, watched a little MTV, smoked a joint..... no, I jest. Mike was there in minutes and seconds later I have assisted Cheryl to the car where she takes one look at the open door and says," Oh, my God, I can't sit down!" Well, having a baby in the drive way is not an option, so I help maneuver her into the back seat where she crouches on all fours. Now, this is where the fun really starts.

Now the Oshkosh hospital is only five blocks away but Cheryl has checked this all out and has decided that we will have our babies at the regional medical center in Neenah.... state-of-the-art stuff for having babies and a really neat-o spiffy emergency neo-natal center& bells&whistles. If anything was to go drastically wrong they would ship her there anyway and it was really only a nine mile ride up the lake road from our house. And it is truly not my call. If she had told me she would rather have had the babies on the moon, I would have helped make the arrangements.

So I am doing about 75mph up Cty A while periodically reaching over to the back seat and bracing her butt so she doesn't tip over. "CAN YOU PLEASE HURRY!!!", she demurely implores. I push the needle to 80 and hope there are no errant raccoons on the road. Now the whole deal starts seeming kinda funny and I start chuckling a little. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU LAUGHING ABOUT AND CAN YOU PLEASE FUCKING HURRY." I believe there were a few other comments she made and a few screams and that deep breathing shit that they tell women to do. I have a quick thought of picking up a six pack at the Payne's Point Bar, but realize that they are probably closed. The thought makes me chuckle. "THIS IS NOT FUNNY!!" I believe the volume from the back seat is getting louder and so is that deep breathing thingee.

So we make it to Theda Clark Memorial.... I pull up to the main door, which of course is locked, run to the emergency room, grab an orderly with a wheel chair and run it back to the front door where the orderly and I prepare to extract Cheryl from the back seat. "I CAN'T MOVE!" she calmly states and continues panting. Ok. So he grabs an ankle, I grab an ankle and we slowly help her get out of the car. When she is standing, she looks down at the wheelchair and casually says, " I CAN'T SIT ON THAT GODDAM THING!!", and when she puts it that way makes good sense, but she also can't walk and the water has broke and if a drive way at home is no place to have a baby, a sidewalk in front of a hospital isn't going to be a lot better. So my buddy, Mr. Orderly, and I arrange to have her kneel on the seat of the wheel chair facing backwards. He pushes and I help brace her in while we cruise right through the hospital and up the elevator to the maternity section. I remember seeing a clock on the hall wall that said 2:55 and thinking that I really made good time on the drive up the lake road.

So we are in the room, I have a nurse with me and the orderly now. The nurse tells Cheryl to 'just climb into bed' , to which Cheryl calmly replies "I CAN'T!!!!!!", So the orderly guy, the nurse and I help her get into bed; the nurse says, to me, "Take her panties off...I'll get the Doctor" to which I think, simultaneously, that there is no way the Doc is going to be here and it is underwear, not panties. They were panties before she was pregnant. I barely finish taking off her underwear when the Doc walks in (there was a record number of babies that day... he was in house) goes into a crouch like a baseball catcher and immediately stands up with a beautiful baby girl. I cut the cord, the nurse finishes up the stuff, Cheryl looks at me and says, "You were a dear, but I am a little tired and think I will take a nap." It was just all that quick.

And I was a Dad, again.

Thank you, Cheryl.

I love you, Bug! Happy Birthday!

I spent last weekend with the boys. Or at least we were boys when we all first met. Tim and Rosey I have know for about 35 years, Ray and John for about thirty.

They are all great guys, all successful business types (except me---I wouldn't know success if it bit me in the ass) and are all well read and well informed. For the most part our children are all the same age. John's daughter, Melissa, and my daughter Miriam were born on the same day in the same year. They are also all in long term marriages (again, except me. marriage did bite me in the ass) with really great women.

So when we get together on these outings we inevitably talk work,,,,,,, and move beyond that quickly. Then we discuss the kids; rising tution, their collge classes, their boyfriends/girlfriends, jobs.... and the talk moves to golf outings, camping trips, movies, books, music and stupid shit we did in college that we hope the kids never find out about.

Inevitably, though, and usually late in the evening around the campfire, the discussions seem to channel themselves to a subject I can only call...... "Sometimes I just don't GET the way my wife thinks"

"she want's a new garage door.... just 'cause she thinks it doesn't match the rest of the house!!"

"she want's to remodel the kitchen....we just did it FIVE YEARS AGO!"

"she THREW away my MUSKIE fishing sweat shirt!!! I caught my biggest muskie wearing that sweatshirt! It was only 20 years old!"

"I really can't see why she thinks golfing four times a week is excessive"

"The woman bought another pair of shoes! She must have forty pairs! I keep telling her she only has two feet!"

"The thing about marriage," Tim said, " is that there is serendipity....... and then there is just the plan old Dipity."

Sunday morning I am making breakfast. My turn. And I can hear the phone calls being made.

To Ellen. Monica. Dana Lynn. Christie.

Drunk on a saturday night a man's thoughts may move to Dipity..... but Sunday morning it seems to move to right back to serendipity.

Monday

"If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern."

I am having and 'out-of-office' experience while at the office. Kind of like a 'time-out' yet I am getting paid.

What about love?

my sister sent me this from a grad school class she took. (or at least I think that is where she got it.....

OBJECTIVE, MULTIPLE-CHOICE FINAL EXAM PHILOSOPHY OF SEX AND LOVE

1. Why are there no good movies about sexy, exciting, friendly and durable relationships?

a. Forget the movies--why are there no such relationships?
b. See Bergman's Scenes From a Marriage--that's why.
c. There have been plenty, but no one's seen them.
d. The question betrays a confusion and lack of understanding on the part of the questioner.
e. none of the above.

2. Is love a lie?

a. Freud: love is projection onto the beloved of our own desires, so yes.
b. Firestone: love is a trick played on susceptible women by patriarchal systems to keep women submissive, so yes.
c. Jung: love is projection onto the beloved of our own next desired stage of development, so yes and no.
d. Probably yes, but so what?
e. None of the above.

3. Using the definitional method of genus and differentium in answering the philosophical question, What is love, really? which is the genus?

a. Love is a feeling.
b. Love is a way of being.
c. Love is a wanting.
d. Love is an ideal .
e. None of the above.

4. Using the same definitional method, genus and differentium, what is the differentium?

a. without feathers.
b. an ascent of the soul toward mystical union with truth, goodness and beauty.
c. doom.
d. being cut in half as one cuts an egg with a hair or wire. [Plato]
e. none of the above.

5. How are men and women different?

a. Men are stupider; more rational; more direct; more interested in sex and less interested in love; more worried about control, power, competition; less manipulative in covert ways, less affected by relationships, more desperate for justification for their existence.
b. Men are always mooning around because of love while women just want sex.
c. There are no differences that make a difference except those systems and cultures construct.
d. Women just know and men try to know.
e. None of the above.

6. How are your experiences of sex and love ("mine," for short) different from other peoples' ("your," for short) experiences of sex and love?

a. Weelllllll, yours are yours and mine are mine.
b. Language gets in the way of my understanding your experiences but does not get in the way with mine.
c. "Experiences" are mythological beasts--all that's real is just nerve endings and friction.
d. The names of my experiences (e.g. "orgasm") are also the names of your experiences, so they aren't.
e. None of the above.

7. Why won't love stay? (Tom Robbins' question)

a. We screw up.
b. All too often, lover and beloved spend time together and find out about each other.
c. Time keeps mucking things up with changes.
d. It was a mistake at the beginning.
e. None of the above.

8. What is the relation between sex and violence?

a. I mis-heard during the review session and thought it was sex and violins. I'm not equipped for this question. (apologies to Gilda Radner)
b. It's love, not sex--lack of love, especially from parents, leaves us wounded and morally numb--perpetrators are victims of lack of love and often worse, with the most atrocious perpetrators those most atrociously abused, and for them violence is a sick substitute for sex and love, but all they have available to cope with this universal need.
c. Pathological violence and pathology in sexual matters are two sides of the same coin.
d. Whatever it is, it is all men's fault.
e. None of the above.

9. Upon what are moral judgements in matters of sex and love properly based?

a. "There's no right or wrong; what's right's what's right for you" (Oscar Wilde)
b. "Is that right?" (Socrates)
c. There have to be standards which apply to all everywhere, rules or ethical systems or commands, or else morality is just chaos.
d. Every example justifies the moral judgments it justifies, regardless of cultural acceptances or absolutist rules.
e. None of the above.

10. What is the most important thing you have learned from this course?

a. Hide.
b. Always use a condom.
c. Thinking and happiness are not necessarily correlated.
d. I'm not alone, maybe.
e. More than the above.

Have A good weekend..... I'm off to the woods!!

I am a pretty agnostic type guy and follow no religion, but really have no problems with most folks who truly practice their religion rather than wear it like a smug badge of Uppitty-ism. Fortunatly I know more of the former and few of the later.

Anyways..... I was cleaning out some old emails and files& stuff and came across this. It's old, but I still think it is amusing. It also makes me smile when the off-the-wall types like the Westboro Baptist Church or Pat Robertson get me down.

TOP TEN REASONS WHY BEER IS BETTER THAN JESUS "When Christian students at Texas A&M University donned pro-abstinenceT-shirts titled 'Top Ten Reasons Why Jesus is Better than Beer,'Steve Berry of Texas A&M's Agnostic and Atheist
Student Group knewhow to respond:

10. No one will kill you for not drinking Beer.

9. Beer doesn't tell you how to have sex.

8. Beer has never caused a major war.

7. They don't force Beer on minors who can't think for themselves.

6. When you have a Beer, you don't knock on people's doors trying to give them away.

5. Nobody's ever been burned at the stake, hanged, or tortured
over their brand of Beer.

4. You don't have to wait more than two thousand years for a second Beer.

3. There are laws saying Beer labels can't lie to you.

2. You can prove you have a Beer.

1. If you've devoted your life to Beer, there are groups to help you

I think I will go pray tonight. :)