Moss acquired by the Titans

PP and Unky Herb were around today. UH was playing hooky from work, because of some sudden stomach disorder brought on by the raw eggs in the tiramisu that he made last night. It's a surprise treat for Ying, and it's also the first time he's ever made it. He's repeating the process tonight, now that he has a feel for the process. We had an afternoon walk, over to Linwood, down St Clair Avenue and up the 100 step stairs, then home past Norm Coleman's house. After we made it home and because the youngsters were feeling their oats, I got them to pose for a blog picture. They were having a good time. PP is exhibiting one of her poses from her days as a figure skater.  UH is goofing.

There was Wooddale tennis tonight with the hardcore girls and Jerry. Again this week, I came out on the short end - losing the first set and being forced to quit in the second set tie breaker when we were up 5-4.  We ran out of time.  It was close, but we were unable to claim the cigar. I'm blaming the tennis shoes again.  To ease my frustrations after the tennis, I stopped at Yang's Chinese Restaurant for some of their tasty vittles.  Chicken and veggies in a brown sauce.

There have been photos of Paris popping up on some of the other family blogs, to show that they had been there lately, I guess. I was there, too, and took this photo on a Paris street of some random Americans ambling down the street. I know they are Americans because they were my traveling companions, and an entertaining group besides.

Notice the tatoo on the calf of the guy wearing shorts.  American??

Nineteen seventy-four

I'm still scanning old slides. These two are from 1974 in Minneapolis. They should both be recognizable to some of the readers of the blog, and I'll send them via email to requestors. In 1974 Andy Miller graduated from high school. This is Mark Miller a while before the festivities began, as I remember it. It was a time of long hair and hippy attire, which somewhat explains his appearance. He was 17 at the time.

And the graduate, Andy, standing proudly in the late afternoon sun.

So much for history and scanned slides. I played tennis again today at Fort Snelling after three consecutive days off. It was nice to be back on the courts and I appreciated the chance to smack some forehands again.

The election has brought another round of ballot recounts in the North Star state. The distance between the two top vote getters in the race for guv is less than one half of one percent at the moment and that triggers an automatic recount. Mark Dayton leads, but the forces surrounding Tom Emmer vow to fight on. It reminds me of two years ago when it took 8 months to elect Al Franken to the Senate. PP's choice in the election, Ken Pentel, managed to gather 6,172 votes for governor, in fifth place, with .03% of the total vote.

An interesting sidelight to the election is that Jim Oberstar, a 36 year veteran of the House of Representatives, lost his re-election bid. He served the eighth district of Minnesota - including Duluth and the Iron Range. He has been a strong advocate of biking and bike trails nation-wide. He is well known in Washington D.C. as a biking enthusiast who rides more than 2500 miles a year. Not a bad total for a guy with a job, but a bit shy of Mr. Moohoo's annual output.

I only voted once

I went to the polling place this morning with PP and UH. We meant to do our civic duty, to cast a single ballot and await the results. The Voter Fraud patrol was out, making sure that the law was obeyed. I managed to get a photo of their movable sign, parked a legal distance from the voting cathedral, the Linwood Park Recreation Center. We managed to vote and get home unmolested... and unarrested.

Upper Lake in Crosby Farm was picturesque when I visited yesterday. The lake was calm and the reflection from the dock made a fetching photo. The autumn has its own understated beauty.

I'll be watching the election results as the evening goes on. I don't think my votes will make much difference, but I have a rooting interest. PP is off to help her gubernatorial candidate, Ken Pentel, make it through the night. That party, too, has election night aspirations.

The election madness is nearly gone for another couple of years. A good thing.

Public Transportation

Theme day has to be respected to some extent. The theme for November first is public transportation. The paddle wheelers on the Mississippi at Harriet Island may or may not be publicly owned, but they are available for hire and run in the summer time at least once a day.

The Metro in Paris certainly qualifies as public transportation. The sign above the entrance to the underground station may not be sufficient for purists, but I'm going with these two photos. The Metro sign photo was taken in May, the paddle wheeler a few weeks ago while there were still leaves on the trees.

It seemed like a busy day today, and I'm feeling some fatigue. Mostly, I raked leaves in the yard, bagged them and toted them to the leaf recycle center on Pleasant Avenue. Later, because it was such a nice day, I had a walk at Crosby Farm. There is still some standing water near Upper LAke from the fall flood that came down the Mississippi earlier this fall. It takes a long time for that much water to disappear.

Election tomorrow. The last of the irritating political attack ads should be off the air by the end of tonight. There oughtta be a law against that stuff.

Halloween

There were Halloween parties all over last night. PP dressed up as a pirate and went off to celebrate. She had a parrot and a jug of rum - very much like a pirate. The parrot was not a real parrot, not even an ex-parrot.

And then today before the Vikings football game, I went for a walk on a very nice, but crisp day. There were several cyclists on the street, and as I got close to the House of Hope on Summit Avenue, I encountered a familiar face on a bike, dressed for the weather, putting in some miles on a late October Day. We chatted a while and he continued on his way down Summit Avenue. It seems odd that we haven't crossed paths earlier this summer when he has biked in the area, but it is a pretty big town.

Election day on Tuesday. Vote early and often.

Mounds Park Meanderings

I don't get to Mounds Park very often it seems, but it does have a nice high level view of the Mississippi as it meanders through the Capitol City. Today was a nice day, especially for this late in October, so after a satisfying session of Saturday morning tennis, I took a trip there to see if there had been any changes. A couple of years ago I had a series of photos featuring "Minnesota Rocks" - sculptures done in Minnesota stone by established sculptors that are located around the city. This is one of two in Mounds Park - "The Sacred Dish" by Dewey Goodwin, an Ojibwe Native American from Bemidji.

I wandered around the top of the bluff for a while, taking in the crisp fall air and enjoying the view of the river. The Mississippi flows through an industrial area here, including passing the St Paul Downtown Airport. I'm fairly close to the Bruce Vento Nature Sanctuary, too, which is at the base of the bluff.

As I mentioned, tennis went pretty well. I'm using my old Nike shoes, but they are not going to last much longer unless I locate some ShoeGoo to patch up the hole in the left toe area. The usual Saturday crew was in attendance and we had a couple of close sets, but this time I felt like I was balanced and hitting the ball pretty well. Now I have a couple of days off to rest and decide who I'm going to vote for in the election on Tuesday.

I hear that the Stewart-Colbert rally in Washington D.C. drew over 200,000 people to the activities. I don't know if was politics or comedy, or perhaps just a nice day, but the rally was a success. I hope some sanity returns to public discourse.

I have a new recipe for Asian Slaw, purloined from the InnerTubes, but easy and pretty tasty. I was looking for a good pasta salad when I found the recipe. There is some pasta in this (crushed ramen noodles), but also almonds and sunflower seed kernels. I may post it on the cooking blog the next time I make it - when I have photos. Unky Herb and PP can attest to its level of deliciousness.

Nineteen Eighty-three

I must report that I switched back to my old, battered tennis shoes for today's tennis activities and the results were much better. For whatever reason, I played somewhat better. The old shoes were Nike's, and after the match, I came home and found the exact same shoe for sale on the Internet and bought a new pair. They'll be here next week sometime, probably after the election on Tuesday.

It's a big week. Halloween on Sunday and then Tuesday election. Talk about a scary season.

I'm still scanning slides. A little at a time helps to maintain my eyesight. The task is pretty simple, but I have to do some editing on almost all of the slides. These are from late spring on 1983, about the time of PP's baptism.

This is Unky Herb in his Superman phase. It was a long phase and he was joined in it by his good friend and neighbor, Andy. I think they both wanted to be Superman. For a while I pretended to be the real Superman, but Andy was onto me almost right away. He told me that "Superman doesn't have a mustache." My response, "Yes, I do," was less than convincing. Herb even had a cape in his Superman PJ's. This is his day time attire.

And this, a small group including the prairie princess as a baby with her Uncle Gino and Aunt BB. This was a few short weeks before "Wireless" was born.

Land hurricane disrobes my maple tree

This week we had a large wind storm that some of the more grandiosely inclined weather creatures have named a land hurricane. I guess there was record low barometric pressure for Minnesota and it was low enough that, had we been at sea, it would have been a level 3 hurricane. We had some big winds blow through and about seven inches of snow fell to earth near Duluth. Here we just had strong gusts of wind. In my backyard there used to be a maple tree with a lot of beautiful orange leaves. Now it looks like this. I guess summer is over.

I did get outside some today. It was cold enough for gloves, the first necessary use of gloves for the season. I guess the first hard frost is arriving over night tonight. October 29 is a latish date for the first frost. There will, of course be many more.

The project to scan old slides continues. Most of the slides are mostly interesting to me and so I'm not likely to put them all up on the blog, but some are of more general interest. Tonight, a pair of photos of infants who have appeared as adults on this blog. The first is Unky Herb from April of 1980, in the Minneapolis hospital where he was born.

The second is the Prairie Princess in the same Minneapolis hospital where Herb was born and where she also made her arrival. This was April, 1983. A long time ago.

The tennis wars continue. I seem to be in a slump. Maybe it's age related, but I'm blaming the new Adidas tennis shoes that I've been wearing the last week or so. They are fancy shoes with a six month guarantee on the soles. But because the soles have to last that long without being worn through on the toes or heels, they seem to have an unusual thickness of rubber - and thus they are a tad heavier than my old Nikes. And for some reason, I'm feeling a little out of balance when I hit some shots, and my usual fancy footwork is leaden. Tonight at Wooddale with Jerry and the hardcore girls, my side went down 1-6, 6-2, 6-2. Then I went to Yang's for Singapore Rice Noodles to share with the Prairie Princess.

I'm buying some cheap Nikes tomorrow and hoping that that fixes the shoe problem Otherwise it's age related and I'm not ready to admit that yet (a la Brett Favre)

Diamonds and Rust, mostly rust

That Judas Priest cover of "Diamonds and Rust" on the Moohoo blog keeps running through my brain.  I recommend it for its novel appeal.

When it's this windy and you have 37 trays of slides, and you're a retired guy, you, too, might spend most of the day scanning in the slides and arranging them into a semblance of order. I think that the ones I'm posting today are in sequence.  The boxes have dates written on them and the individual slides have the date of development stamped on them.

This is from the summer of 1978.  I think the place is a well used lake resort near Grand Rapids.  These people are currently Michiganders.

This is is stamped September, 1978.  Maybe it was taken in August, but the box says it was taken in a medium sized city in Illinois.   I think that's correct.  A girl (OSLO) and her dog.  Brownie?  Duke?

This is also September, 1978, in the same medium sized city.  Notice the monogramed top on Santini.

Also in 1978. The slide is stamped October, and was taken in this very house. Mr Mohoo in his salad days and in need of a shave.

This was taken very near to April 5, 1980. The baby is my son, who in these pages and on occasion in Michigan, goes by the alias, Unky Herb. He's sleeping peacefully in the photo, an activity that usually happened during the day, so that we could have quality time together in the middle of the night.  I think we borrowed the bassinet for the first few weeks of his time here.

This slide scanner is working well enough for my purposes. I have used iPhoto software to enhance every one of them, but I am pleased with the results. I have about thirty boxes to get to, but there is no hurry and the winter in these parts seems interminable.

["Time, you thief..."  from Leigh Hunt's "Jenny Kissed Me"]

About those boxes of slides

The scanner started me down this path. I haven't seen these photos in a decade or more and now I'm using them on my blog. They may mean something to some of my regular readers. I'm scanning 1974 events and happenings today. The boxes have photos up until 1987.

This is one of the few photos of me playing tennis. It was the Hamline alumni tennis tournament at the old courts before they were improved. I'm using one of those T2000 tennis rackets that Jimmy Connors used and made popular. The slide was a little dark, but I was able to get it presentable using the magic of iPhoto. In the summer of 1974 I was 31 years old, just a year older than my own son today. PP said something like, "nice shorts, Tousan," when she saw the image.

Time, you thief.

A photo of Tom Miller on the occasion of Andy's high school graduation. There are some photos here of a very young Andy, too, which may get an airing the next marginal photography day. Dad was 65 when the photo was snapped - just three years younger than I am. [Insert another curse at Father Time here].

Other than photos there was actually other action today. The USTA mixed doubles team that I am a part of had its first match today at Wooddale. Jerry is the captain and he put me and a new woman on the team, Kathy, in the number one doubles spot, a dubious honor - we played their supposed best team. This is an open age team, so the folks we played were youngish (while I'm geezerish), but we gave it a run. We won a set but lost in the third set tiebreaker - a ten pointer - 11-9. The scores 4-6, 6-0, 1-0. I kiddingly accused Jerry of "throwing us under the bus" to get our other teams an easier match - sandbagging, it's called, but he reminded me that we only lost by two points, the thinnest of margins. The other two doubles teams won, so the team as a whole is now 1-0 in the league.

The Vikings were not so lucky losing in Green Bay 28-24 in Sunday Night Football. It was a fun game to watch with that Favre guy doing his usual Favre stuff.