I Already Had a Line on a Saddle

It was treats day yesterday at work. Relatively speaking (of course), and very few of my relatives would have treated me so that's why I work in the Glass Menagerie because I'm dependent on the kindness of strangers and yet look nothing like Rue McClanahan unless you close your eyes very tightly.

My entire building got new hallway molding!! Of course, it's not actually my building, or it would be called Billding instead of building and I overdosed on the exclamation marks in the hopes that I might fool your eye into convincing your brain that this was more exciting than it actually was. And since it wasn't exciting at all, it was a fool's errand which is why I did it.

I think the new molding looks a lot look the old molding ('and the beard's have all grown longer over night') though I couldn't really tell you because while I saw it every day I really didn't, if you know what I mean.

I believe the color is the same as well and the height, but I could be wrong but I am not fearful if I am as I see no consequence for not being accurate. It's not like the fellow who did all of this will come back and take it away, or ?

I'm not sure what we did to rate the new molding and I'm a little uneasy at a rewards scale that has new hallway molding as a prize somewhere especially since I don't know if it's a top prize or a thanks for entering prize.

What if first prize in the drawing is actually a full week in the building? And second prize is two weeks? I've been here a little over twenty one and a half years, so where did I finish when the drawing was held? Outside the hat?
And what about those pony rides I hear so much about?
-bill kenny

I'll Never Look at Rice-a-Roni the Same Way

Our weekend sojourn South to my roots, Central New Jersey, went well over the weekend. Michelle and Sigrid enjoyed Suzanne's bridal shower as did the guest of honor, always the most important part and the weather held off being drippy and moist until we were home again, home again, jiggity-jig.

Patrick and I had a bit of a close call on Saturday after the Free Because No One Would Pay Money for It Continental Breakfast with the wood nymphs and the troll re-enactors from North Carolina, West Virginia, and Queens in time for we never did figure out what.

We decided to walk off breakfast and took off retracing by foot the route we had taken in the dark the night before in search of dinner. Fifty-seven minutes later in what we thought would be a twenty minute walk we found our way back to the hotel, but it was dicey for a couple of minutes.

Luckily our son has his levelheadedness from his mother. I'm not someone who finds things when he gets lost, like where he should be going. I end up in Westerly heading for Waterford or can see the skyline of New York City while driving towards Derby. History not hyperbole. In other words, skills, but not the kind you put on the resume.

That old adage about take only pictures and leave only footprints didn't work out at all. However, the old saw, out of sight, out of mind certainly did. Because, and I will insist on this forever, because the door to the room blocks the hideaway closet in the room to the right, when we opened the door to leave and check out, we managed to leave our jackets on the hangers in the closet, out of sight.

Standing at my back door Saturday evening, about thirty minutes after we returned, I flashed on the realization, I had no idea what had become of my new Members Only jacket that Sigrid special ordered for me for my birthday so she could finally bury perhaps in  the backyard the green one I had worn since very close to the birth of our first child.

Sigrid called the hotel and their housekeeping people rang us back Sunday morning to confirm they were hanging out in the old room waiting for the guys who'd dropped 'em off. No worries-Patrick is sending them a UPS label and they'll ship them back to us. I'm starting to get a hankering for cable cars and Tony Bennett, so I'm wondering where I left my iPod.
-bill kenny

One Trick Pony Less than One Trick

The thing about real life is that sometimes it's surreal.  And the more different you think we are the more frequently you find out how much the same we remain when you remove the edifice and the artifice.

Who among us hasn't wanted to be invisible? Having been treated that way for prolonged periods of time by huge numbers of people, I confess to no longer seeing the appeal but I remember as a child the idea that this would be an ideal super power.

Maybe true for you as well, but my favorite part of Star Trek TV shows and movies has always been when one side or the other activates the cloak of invisibility and I remain fixated and fascinated by the idea of the Stealth fighter and bomber. The technology I don't understand and have no chance of ever grasping but the 'now you see it, now you don't' aspect pegs the Very Cool Meter.

So I can understand how this fellow could have been enticed, especially since the pay-off promised to be so simple and immediate. Considering where this story purportedly happened, I'm amazed and grateful we, the US of A, weren't blamed for this. Take a look at the picture again and tell me his eyes don't creep you out, just a little bit. And his explanation to the court was only lacking something to the effect, "I can burrow through an elephant" and he'd have gotten a walk. I just know it.
-bill kenny

Excluding Snooki.....

My family and I are spending part of our weekend, actually last night and most of today with my brother, Adam, and his family in New Jersey.

Suze, their older child and the one who loves chicken Marsala (and don't tell me you didn't think I'd work that in!), is getting married in late summer to a marvelous young man, Ryan, who, despite having met my brother, remains deeply in love with Suzanne.  He's a man with his priorities in place and intact.

I should note my niece, Suzanne is a remarkable combination of kindheartedness, exuberance and caring (with a touch of ninja Girl Scout thrown in for variety), despite now residing in The Lone Star State and that, like her mother, she's a Jersey Girl.

I have a pronounced fondness for two syllable girls as the two I live with are German girls. And I know a little something about Jersey Girls, having three as sisters and two as sisters-in-law. You can always tell Jersey Girls. You just can't tell them very much, but you usually don't have to.
-bill kenny

When in Doubt, Wear Red

Edgar Allen Poe grandly called it "The Imp of the Perverse" but that's a bit swell-headed ever for a Raven's fan-I tend to refer to it as "my evil twin, Skippy" and have it on good authority that many acquaintances refer to me as "Skippy's stupid twin, Bill." (Sadly, we're all correct which is a singular sensation of a sort rarely seen in these parts)

It's when your ears hear your voice and mouth say something that your brain refuses to believe it formulated in the first place and Michael Jeffries of Abercrombie and Fitch is the most recent and, admittedly, egregious example that comes to mind.

As a reward for what I'm sure he sees as unflinching and a to be admired and emulated corporate fearless honesty in defining whom he sees as his company's customers, Mr. Jeffries has been pummeled from Pinterest to YouTube and back. As someone who used to fantasize incessantly in prep school about strafing the cool kids' lunch table, I haven't shed many tears over the beatings.

Some have been high criticism, sharp as knives and as caustic as lye while others have made him a victim of a smug self-righteous kind of holier than thouness which makes me throw up a little bit in my own mouth.  Perhaps I am a little jealous-as I can't afford to spend so much and get so little so I avoid A & F the way a bulimic skips an all you can eat buffet, but I can't help but concede to the eternal inevitability of the  wisdom of Messrs. Beard, Gibbons & Hill.
-bill kenny

Sometimes You Feel Like You Live Too Long

I've been stuck on standing for some weeks now and as a cause and effect guy I'm flummoxed by what is happening, or better phrased, not happening in what passes for my life.

Maybe I'm another casualty of this graceless age in which we live but I can't get to sleep or stay asleep at night, awakening around three in the morning (though the last two days I've been 'sleeping in' to nearly four) only to run out of energy at some point close to mid-day and drift for hours not sure if I'm waking or dreaming until I come home in the evening when the cycle starts again.

Perhaps it's spring fever, delayed onset? A malaise that starts in the joints and eventually devours the spirit as well. It's like having a head full of stones and having to stack them in order to move forward.

I've looked around at work and in the shops and I think I see others with it as well which makes for some tricky negotiations as, in my case, I'm not a convivial person to start with and give me a serious case of the "meh's" and I am not anyone's idea of a day at the beach.

I keep waiting for something to happen to cause me to be here now and at my age, that's not always a good sign. The Young Turk that I was a lifetime ago still has a place of pride in my heart, but the arteries are narrow with plaque and somebody needs to tell the Wild Child to set the rheostat to mild or getting even older will be a lot more of a chore than it has been for the last year or so.

There's just so long you can channel swim and not get farther along before you settle and sink. I know what I want to do, what I'd like to do and what I need to do but I can't summon the strength or stamina for any of it for anything resembling a prolonged time. And I can hear the footsteps of others departing in a dozen different directions, all without me. "It's as if the thing were written in the constitution of the age.  Sooner or later you wind up pacing the cage."
-bill kenny

From Status Quo to Quo Vadis

In the last couple of weeks around here we've seen the part about small town life I've never been especially fond of, the small people. You know who I mean. The ones who don't have a dream of their own anymore so they enjoy stepping on those of other people, questioning their motives and motivations, abilities and aptitudes and their courage and competences.

Across the pages of our local newspapers we've had folks, on-line anonymous assassins offering pellets of poison and arch advice to those struggling to help fix problems they didn't create. And right now, in terms of 20/20 hindsight, it's a target rich environment for all those who not only know everything but know everything better.

As you may have noticed, we're in quite a pickle with our municipal budget. Not intending to dazzle you with my mad math skills, let's just say it appears our wants and appetites have grown geometrically but our means and abilities to pay have only increased arithmetically.

In that gap between the desire and the deliverable is where we are, and no one seems very happy about it to include the City Manager, the City Council and at every public hearing on the budget so far, nearly everyone of those who will have to pay for all of it, the residents.

It's probably a trick of my memory (and yours as well), but every year it seems we are told 'this year's budget will be very challenging' or 'economic conditions aren't right' for some big, new initiative for public education, public safety or economic development.

We're counselled "when things pick up" we can have a discussion about restoring foreign languages to schools, adding an additional fire-fighter or maybe paving another street that's turning into a wilderness trail. Never a word about pony rides.

We weren't doing all that well when times were good. We did not need a Not So Great Depression (or market correction or other, more obscene name for the last half a decade) experts are telling us we are slowing climbing out of to fall so far behind in our lives that giving up or giving in seem like the only two options.

Everyone knows a neighbor who's lost a house or who packed and left in the middle of the night. You know we didn't get in this mess overnight and we're not going to get out of it without working very hard. And you think you're working hard, and you are but we still have a long way to go. We can plan our work and work our plan or pray for a simple solution and whine when it doesn't happen. But we can't keep doing both because we really suck at that and the constant practice isn't helping.

If talking about a better tomorrow made it happen, we'd be there already because we love to yak. Ideas? Please! We have them by the bushel but are we willing to offer them aloud and work to make them real? I go to a lot of meetings and rarely hear any idea except "don't."

"Don't" is not a great way way to live your life, but it's an especially lousy way to run a city. And when we add a heaping helping of 'if only' to create a hypothetical situation so bizarre it's painful I start to believe if my mother had married a Kennedy, I'd be living in the White House, but she didn't so I'm not and that's why I didn't wish her a Happy Mother's Day on Sunday because she ruined my life.
It certainly beats accepting that responsibility myself.
-bill kenny