Valentines Day, Dinner and a Movie, Thanks to the Spirit World.

"Hey, good looking, where have you
been all my afterlife?"

Last week was Saint Valentine's Day. A day for grand romantic gestures and overt displays of love and affection, sweet, chocolaty morsels, bouquets of fragrant, flowering beauty. My wife does not want a lot of chocolate, she is worried about the calories and the sugar. So, I got her a Ouija Board game.

A Ouija Board is has the alphabet and numbers 1 through 9, plus the words yes and no, and the
shortcut words of hello and goodbye (for ease of communication) printed on the front. By placing your fingers on the "planchette"  and asking questions you can seek guidance from the spirit world. Nothing says love like the ability to communicate with the dead.

We sat down to find solutions to a few problems we have been struggling with. Mostly they involve what to have for dinner*. It can be a struggle to find the right thing night after night. Week in and week out. An endless parade of meals, pots, pans, dirty dishes, and countless trips to the grocery store. And as soon as you finish washing, drying and putting away the plates from one meal you have to start thinking about the next.

"Dang, that was good. What do you want for dinner* tomorrow night?"

"I don't know. What do you want?"

Every night for almost thirty years. Since we had the Ouija board game anyway, and we didn't really know what to ask this seemed like genius.

Oh my God. Don't ever ask anybody who roamed the earth thousands of years ago about planning a menu. They ate like animals. No wonder everybody died so young. It was better than eating dinner*.

So, we're back to square one. Though we won't be having anything with brain. Tonight we are going to see if the spirits have any advice on evening television, we can never agree on what to watch.

I would like to apologize to President's Day. Life Explained is running a little behind and we should be able to cover the importance of today by Wednesday, Thursday, at the latest.



* Feel free to substitute the word supper here. Some people are very indignant about this. I don't want to step on anybody's toes, so supper, dinner, you can call it evening breakfast, I am fine with them all.

Spring, another season, another hassle.

Spring, a new beginning, the birth of summer, the end of winter.  A time for celebratory, feckless exuberance, when we finally get to put away the snow shovels, gloves, stocking hats, boots, and coats.  Time to air out the shorts, and sandals, and visors.  As you leave work today look to the north and tell the Polar Vortex, "hey, you aren't so tough."  But, then jump in your car quickly, before it can grab you, and rip your heart out with frosty, ice covered, malevolent fingers.  Hey, it is still the Polar Vortex, after all.  

But, when you get home, don't forget to remove your lawn mower blade, so you can take it in and have it sharpened, now is the time for that sort of routine maintenance.  Also, you will need to unroll the garden hose, make sure it is leak free, because this weekend you will need to wash out the drop spreader and make sure it is in good working condition.  A decent lawn regimen requires about 60 treatments to be effective.

Oh, and don't forget the rake, you will need to get all of the thatch out of your yard if you want grass to be able to grow.  And, there is plenty of assorted, rotting flotsam in the flower beds, that will need to be raked, bagged, and put in the yard waste.  Also, make sure you clean the shovels, there will be plenty of digging once your wife decides where she wants the garden. Yeah, right, garden my aching butt, it is more like the Ponderosa, next thing you know she will want to get some chickens...  Hey, don't say that so loud, she might hear you.

You might want to drag out the ladder, the gutters won't clean themselves.  While you are in there grab the patio furniture, of course it will need to be cleaned.  Keep an eye open for spiders, though, I read on the internet that they are everywhere, literally everywhere.  Brother, I could tell you stories about spiders, but I am saving those for future blog posts.

And with spring, and summer coming the spiders are going to be multiplying like crazy.  Not to mention wasps, bees, snakes, bats, and those annoying little flies that are always diving into your beer just to die, man those things are awful.  

You know, winter was terrible, but summer ain't sounding so hot either.  We should really come up with a new way to divide the year, something comfortable, and bug free.

Saint Valentine's Day

As we approach the confectioners, to purchase chocolate covered offerings, the florists to buy flowers, and the stationary store to pick out the appropriately affectionate card for our chosen one, let us not forget the man responsible for all of the love, joy, and romance of the day.

An artist interpretation.
Not the real Saint Valentine.

Let me introduce, Saint Valentine.  A Roman priest from the 3rd century, during the time of Claudius the II (Roman, for Junior) who thought the best soldiers were single men (apparently, Claudius II (Roman for I + I) was never married, if you catch my drift), and banned the marriage of all "young people."  Young was Roman for "able to shove a spear all the way through one of our enemies."  

Valentine, the priest, did not care for this mandate and performed many ceremonies, marrying young people without concern for the silly rules of Claudius II (Roman for III - I).*

Here is where the romantic bit came in, Claudius II (Roman for almost as good as I,but a lot cheaper) for was so moved by this brave, and noble gesture that he ended the siege of the Balkans, freed the slaves and granted Carthage sovereignty.

No, he didn't really do that, Roman emperors were not normally very tolerant of disobedience.  Preferring the blind loyalty that comes with being in charge of the a hideously large empire that even now, hundreds of years later it still is covered in scholarly research, popular art and web logs.  Claudius II (Roman for, "wow, that was kind of overkill) had him beaten, stoned and decapitated. 

Well, at least they are better than Peeps.

Which is why we celebrate Saint Valentine's day, with chocolate, flowers, dinners, dancing, romance and love.  Yeah, I know, it doesn't make any sense to me either.

Anyway, here is the perfect opportunity to mention my wife.  A woman of infinite patience, who has learned to suffer foolishness gladly over the years, and who saved me from an early and bad end, though sometimes I am sure she wonders why she did that.  Thank you, for everything, Happy Valentines Day!

* Yes, I know there are other beliefs about the origin of this day, but it is my blog, after all.

Spring, a Real Manly Season.

In honor of John joining us on the "information" super highway it seems we should focus on home improvement.  Since it is spring, the weather is warming, the days are getting longer, and it is time to shake off our winter doldrums we are going to focus on gardening during this episode.

As you can see gardening can be a rewarding, wonderful past time.  There are few things that can bring more satisfaction to a man than a well tended flower garden.  Nothing brings more masculine bravado and macho posturing to a weekly poker game than the competitive, annual rites of flower garden braggadocio.

"You guys should jump on your choppers and rumble over to my place and check out my peonies, they look lovely."  One man will say as he pops open a cold beer, strikes a wooden match on his face and lights up one of the biggest, most gawd awful smelling cigars a person can imagine.

"Your peonies are such girly flowers, when you are ready for a real mans garden, climb up into the cabs of  your monster trucks and drive all over the tops of cars, mail boxes and traffic signs to check out my marigolds.  Marigold, that's a real man's flower, now."   Says another as he spits into an empty glass, slams down a shot of whiskey and plays a flush.

"Marigolds are just pest magnets, WUSS!!!!" The first man screams, breaking a sour mash bottle on the edge of the table, waving the jagged neck back and forth menacingly.

Pulling a revolver from a shoulder holster the second man yells "Why you sissy, I ought to"...

On second thought, maybe we will talk about growing tomatoes.  Food crops, that is the real point of gardening, right?

The first, and most important part of growing tomatoes is site selection.  You want an area with 8 hours of sunlight, good drainage, and low ph soil, (whatever that means).

Next you need to prepare the site.  This involves a shovel, and fertilizer and compost (not too sure what that means, but it sounds pretty rugged).  Take your shovel and mix them together, and make one homogeneous mixture, soil, fertilizer, and compost.  Ah, the smell of dirt, fertilizer and compost.  Makes a man proud to be a man.

Now, you dig a hole.  This home gardener went a little too deep.  You just want to bury the roots, not the whole garden.  Carefully place the plant in the small hole and gently cover the roots with the loosened soil.

Next, we need to water, and water, and then we need to water some more.  Oh, and don't forget to fertilize, and watch for bugs, because they love tomato plants.  So, keep your eyes open for cutworms, aphids, psyllids, leaf miners, hornworms, stalk borers, white flies, spider mites, slugs and stink bugs.  Next you need to pray it doesn't get too warm, tomatoes won't  "set fruit" if it is too warm, and hope against all odds we don't have an unseasonable frost, or too many cloudy days.   Dang, how did plants ever survive out in the wild?!!??

Maybe hunting down and catching fresh tomatoes in the super market is where the real action lies.

Don't forget to turn in next week, when we learn how to assemble a counter balance catapult from bags of fertilizer, tomato cages and a slightly used shovel.