Tied up in NOTS

I think I am the last remaining man on earth who likes to wear ties. I see more women these days wearing ties than men though, which kind of makes me wonder about myself? Ties are still sold in every store I go into, so I have to believe somebody is buying them for work – but who is wearing them?

I kind of consider ties as my definition of a work uniform or something more formal than just hanging out and eating cheese doodles while surfing the net. No I don’t wear a tie at home while writing but it might not be a bad idea for something to dab my furrowed brow. The only problem is that I do not have any perfect ties that will compliment my particular shade of underwear.

My first job out of college REQUIRED me to wear a suit and tie every day. Once at the office, I would then switch into a perfectly bleached white and pressed smock which was also required. Most of the ladies in the office hated putting on a smock of any color after they had spent all that time dressing to the nines before arriving. But I loved wearing that smock with my tie underneath because I looked dressed for business, but I could get messy whenever the job required it.

Once I wore my smock out of the office and went to fill up my car at a gas station. As I got out of the car and fumbled with the gas nozzle, a woman came up to me with a worried look. She asked ‘is something wrong with the gasoline’? She thought I was some lab monkey that had escaped and was testing the fuel at the station. Lucky I had not worn a bow tie with the get-up or she may have asked me the weather too?

Other than at weddings or with a tux, I never wear bow ties just for fun, though if I had a spinning one I might? Let’s hope the ladies do NOT follow the men down that path too. I am NOT sure if it is safe for girls with spinning bows on their bushy heads . All of that hair flying around will NOT look good tightly tied up in nasty kNOTs.

To Sew me is to love me

I do not know much about sewing. Actually it is not my fault since my own mother never bothered even teaching me to sew on a button or hem a pair of pants. The truth be told, even after my Dad got her a sewing machine in the 1970’s, she never took much to becoming a seamstress herself much less teach anyone. Fortunately my wife can stick a seam together these days if I can ever corner her long enough to thread the machine

I will have to admit, for somebody who NEVER liked sewing my Mother gave it her best though. I remember her buying a then ‘oh so fashionable’, simple long skirt, as well as a wide tie pattern. She would make those same two articles of clothing over and over again in hopes of sparking a love of thread. My Dad had all kinds of weird ties with monkeys and other odd Disco patterns and colors but nary a shirt with all its buttons with which to wear them.

I was in the marching band at school and with our new uniforms it was required that we had to tailor our slacks. By then, even I understood that this was an untenable requirement for my family. I certainly did not know my thumb from a thimble, and my Mother had all but put the sewing machine on mothballs. Happily however, I was amazed the next morning to find my pants perfectly hemmed to the proper length. Turns out she had used iron-on hem tape and it had worked just fine. What my family lacks in traditional homemaking skills, we make up for with technology.

Now since those early days, we’ve blessed my Mother with a hand sewing machine, a button puncher, a glue gun - anything you can think of to try and help her stick cloth together. It is of no use, I am sure all of those sewing artifacts will be part of my considerable inheritance someday. Yes those fancy gizmos all remain boxed and unused year after year - or at least I am pretty sure they are not being used? Why else would my Dad still have so few buttons on his shirts – the 70’s Disco era has long since passed!

Furniture salespeople frustrations

I’m not sure why I don’t like furniture sales people. I know it is not fair since all they are trying to do is help me find that perfect padded fabric-covered platform for my lazy posterior. That is not an easy task either, since I have somewhat of a bad reputation for destroying chairs and recliners. Who can afford this stuff too? These days I need to get a letter of credit from a bank just to buy a set of TV stands.

I think the fundamental problem is that those irritating furniture sales folks flock so quickly and attack me when I walk in the door. What if every business operated this way? Can you imagine trying to pick out a nice piano crate to bury your favorite fat, but dead Uncle, when all of a sudden a half-dozen pale morticians descended on you like Robin on a yard worm?

I know it is tough competitive sales work to be locked in a barn full of sticks and cushions that most people don’t really need. I mean you KNOW most everyone that walks in a furniture store already OWNS stuff to sit, sleep, and eat on. In my case it all just happens to be the same dusty, broken down easy chair. Yeah I have thought occasionally about replacing the beast when the buttons and springs start leaving indentations on my body. But invariably, I pull out the duct tape, plump the pillows, and then brush off the runaway Froot Loops to make that old recliner as good as new.

I don’t know, maybe like my bar stools, I am being too hard on these velour vendors of furniture row. I should be more considerate and try to ‘couch’ my displeasure better when greeted on the sales floor. I’m sure if my paycheck depended on how many rumps I lowered into loveseats every day, I would be even MORE irritating than I am now too. I’m not sure if that is possible though? Fortunately all the salary I need can be found underneath the ample nooks and crannies of my favorite bank, ‘Lazy-Boy Savings and Loan’.

Frying Pan Opportunities – Don’t knock it!

I had a great time last night. I was invited to attend a BBQ / bon-fire with some of my robot-creating colleagues. Actually that is a fancy way of saying that some techno-geek students and their parents had me over to engage in two of my most favorite activities - ‘playing with fire’ and eating charred meat! Many in this gang have put up with my family for years and willingly subjected their children to my warped influences and pickled pinhead.

Beyond the food and the obvious camaraderie that only informal parties can bring, I looked around and was impressed at our motley collection of TRUE individuals. How can all of these lucky people be in this one tiny gathering? Each one, young and old, ALREADY have chalked up endless experiences and will continue to face countless future opportunities if embraced when least expected. Amazing – not a bum in the group (well ok, maybe one bum, but as long as I blog nice things I could stay).

Conversation included wide ranging topics such as firing machine guns for recreation to collecting Hot Wheels and classic toys. We pondered autism to speech therapy; cake-baking to the best marinade for chicken wings. After admiring the huge hunk of wood that fueled the bon-fire, naturally the topic turned from cutting down big trees without dying, then on to making homemade root beer, wine, and money on the internet.

As I drove home, my mind was reeling with a myriad of ideas, new interests, stuff I wanted to read, learn, try and obviously write about. This iconic handful of common everyday people, who each of us know and interact with daily in our own lives, are teeming with meandering opportunity. Who knows what the next ‘BIG’ idea will be or who will design, write, or sell it to the masses for billions? Even at play our lives are filled with these untapped reserves of opportunity at literally every turn. So the moral is don’t be afraid to learn and try new things with new people. It’s quite easy really. . . Just stop playing with the fire and jump head-first right into the frying pan.

Boo-tiful Girl

My kid has been working on a kind of a tropical project around the house. So today she came in dragging these hunks of giant bamboo shoots that she needs cut in half lengthwise to use as sort of an edge trim. I have become immune to her artistic proclivities by now so anything seems normal even if it isn’t. Uh, I guess she forgot that we do not live in Hawaii or even Florida. The only bamboo and sand we see around here is in the cat litter box display at Petland.

Anyway, I think I can cut her giant 'BOO' poles on a table saw or probably better yet with a saber saw. What strikes me though is how versatile these big tubes could be, even beyond her trim application. Honestly they look like big straws to me. I cannot tell you how much I wanted to stick one of those into a vast vat of milk and start attempting to draw up a mouthful of cow.

Obviously if that is not weird enough, I wondered how much toilet paper I would have to wad and chew up to make a half-way decent spit wad. I doubt I have the lung capacity to motivate anything out of that big tube but I bet my compressor could do the job. Is this the kind of stuff Hawaiian’s think about all day when tromping through those giant racking bamboo forests or is this just a Missouri problem?

I hope my kid has a couple of bamboo ends left over. I am thinking they would make very unique, exhaust tip extensions for my car. Maybe if I drill a few holes in those tropical tubes the car will sound like a motorized recorder hooting all the way down the street. Bamboo in Missouri – is that even legal? I’ll never understand why, but I have to admit it, my kid is so weird – I think she gets it from her mother.