hold on to that feeling

this is tim, a former colleague, who left charleston, s.c., wednesday morning and drove about 700 miles to watch the phillies win the world series in five games with a 4-3 victory over the tampa bay rays in philadelphia that night.

i was amazed and impressed to learn the story behind the photo. he said he couldn't believe that he made the trip -- and that the phillies finally won almost 30 years after their last title.

i wrote he should relish that feeling -- the grueling trip and the sweet reward he enjoyed for having the faith to make it -- the satisfaction that comes when a long-suffering sports fan's loyalty is rewarded.

after our mere fortnight of discontent, my west virginia university mountaineers pulled their fat out of the fire with a confidence-building smackdown of the similarly disappointing auburn tigers of the storied southeastern conference.

whether this was a case of one program finally getting its act together to reach its potential or a battle of attrition between two middling programs on the skids likely won't be answered until the bowl season is over.

until last week, there was plenty of waiting for signs of life after two bad stumbles. three uninspired wins gave no confidence that we were headed for anything but mediocrity, if not out and out failure.

that this began to enter the thoughts of three guys i regarded as the voices of reason -- mike, jack and frank -- actually became cause for despair, in that resigned, sports page kind of way. i mean, to hear it from fans spoiled by the view from the college football penthouse is one thing, but to hear doubts from impartial, knowledgable observers like these was truly depressing.

(seriously, though, wvu has enjoyed only a 3-year stay near the top of the heap. why should we have ever felt justified that we should always belong there? unlike the notre dames or alabamas who earned the expectations with a lineage of national championships, we were nouveau riche right down to the bedazzlered denim. we have all of zero titles in the major sports.)

still, living in momentous times with a national election only days away, and anxiety simmering from the international financial community down to our own little newspaper building, i'm almost embarrassed to express the great comfort i took in an impressive football performance.

seriously -- for a while there, i think i was more concerned with the productivity of our formerly high-powered offense and the ability of our school's coaching staff than i was with the economic policies being proffered by the republican and democratic candidates for president.

seeing the possibility that chef stew's new mix of ingredients might actually be cooking up into something appetizing allowed me to savor new bragging rights, bask in renewed regard and dream about more spectacular things to come.

the outcome of a 3-hour game gave me a happy place for my mind to wander. it provided diversion in the truest sense of the word.

well, we've had our 10 days to relish, dissect and re-live a big victory. come noon saturday, it will be time to prove our mettle yet again.

trick or treat

after last night's county-mandated trick-or-treat night, it's for real all hallow's eve -- and probably the last entry of the month.

it's also the last weekend of what sure feels like the most important election since i've been voting -- not the lark of a callow collegian who believed the country was on auto-pilot.

this is real substantive stuff -- issues i hope will mark the beginning of the end of the brutish and divisive, calculating and corrosive politics we've been practicing for almost 20 years.

with any luck, i'll have voted by this time tomorrow.

by this time next week, we'll see what kind of country the majority of my fellow citizens desire. i pray i may find reason to abide by their choice.

sweater vest weather

sweater vest
Originally uploaded by grumpnet

the day after we turned on the furnace for the season, i donned the sweater vest for work for the first time this fall.

the hidden bonus of sweater vest weather is that it leaves you that much less dress shirt to iron.

now in a real, professional situation, i probably wouldn't try it, but in a dress-down newsroom where i roll up my sleeves anyway as soon as i get to my desk, i figure it passes.

shot this with the photo booth app on the mac after work today.

octoberfesters

woke up this morning making full use of our wedding comforter as it was all of 39 degrees outside.

we figured 7 degrees above freezing outdoors and 59 indoors was reason enough to cave and kick on the furnace.

it was a great way to get things going for a full-on fall fest of housework.

kris did two weeks of grocery shopping after seeing the great deals in the kroger circular. (apparently, everyone did, to hear her tell of her trip for provisions.)

we figure the 10 staples for $10 was their response to no one buying anything in these amazingly uncertain economic times. might as well capitalize by encouraging stockpiles of nonperishables and frozen goods.

meantime, for me it was updating the web site with the stunner of colin powell breaking party lines and endorsing the democrat barack obama for president. (whoa, nelly, i say.)

between updates, it was lots of folding and hanging a couple of loads of laundry.

then came the work of autumn.

seeing the forecast for today on saturday, we punted on the leaf clearing in favor of a warmer and sunnier sunday.

and it was glorious -- sunny, blue skies and temps barely in the 60s. the leaves were dry and crunchy. it smelled like fall. (if only someone were burning leaves, it might have been perfect.)

kris finally got to use the lawn mower to mulch the leaves while i climbed up on the roof to clear the gutters.

i suspect i'll be back up since the tree out back still has green and the maple out front has yellow and brown stragglers still hanging on and may be just waiting for clear gutters to fall into.

kris tidied up around the yard as we made plans for some kind of attention to the garden in the spring.

more and more, we're getting into this nesting thing. i'm trying to memorize this establishment of a home and putting together the little things that will become the parts of our home that any children the Lord gives us will regard as simply "always having been."

we ended our labors with a yummy butternut squash soup, lima beans and pork loin. soup and oven-cooking weather is finally here.

it was a perfect little day; we were glad and rejoiced.

suddenly, she sees

i suppose it was because of wanting to emulate my father that i always liked eyeglasses -- even when i didn't need them.

i remember putting on a pair of sunglasses with the lenses popped out to see what i looked like. then, in the third grade -- mom says second -- i did. oh happy fault.

as big as a hassle they were for me -- in athletics and water-related activities in particular -- i figured i looked better in them. (possibly as something to hide behind? discuss.)

but for convenience, they always beat contacts, which were a terrific pain in the ass in the one or two years i used them.

plus, every few years, i'd get a new pair, which not only re-sharpened my vision, but gave me a new look, too, so i always looked forward to picking up that new pair at the optician's.

kris today experienced that for the first time since grade school when we picked up her new specs.

this culminates the chain events that started when she tried on her friend's new glasses and saw what she was missing. it became health priority no. 1 and she finally went last week.

the intervening hours since she picked them up have been amusing.

she kept expressing her amazement at the things that suddenly had focus and sharpness and legibility -- like highway signage.

it was like traveling with helen keller.

"look at that!"

"pretty!"

"i can see (insert name of person or thing here)!" (this she says with lots of giggles in familiar places that suddenly have detail.)

even when we got home, looking out the window, she couldn't stop marveling at the shapes of leaves on trees that before i suppose were blocks of color.

she's very much like a newborn baby taking in all the wonders of the visible world.

she keeps looking outside. she couldn't wait to see how she sees in the dark. she suddenly notices how dirty the kitchen floor is.

she also says she wants binoculars so she can spy on our neighbors, but i suspect we won't be seeing that any time soon.

now for some one-handed driving, no-look video that i don't recommend for young motorists to shoot. (all edits done at home, btw.)

out of gas

today was the last day of operation for frosty's chevron downtown.

marvin, the owner, decided he was too old to be running the place and decided it was time to shut it down.

it was one of the last full-service gas stations in town. tire patches, oil changes, state inspections -- they did it all.

i may have gotten a state inspection there years ago, but i haven't had any work done lately.

i kept coming for the reason a lot of his customers did -- free air.

as most stations that offered full service pumps did, frosty's sometimes charged a few cents more for a gallon of gas than convenience store stations.

but if you factored in the cost of putting air in your tires at those "convenience" shops -- which was 50 cents when i first moved here and is now 75 -- those few cents per gallon didn't add up to the cost of adding air to a tire, so here i went.

it bums me out that we're running out of shops that make it easy to care for your car. 

the great american love affair with the automobile is losing more of its romance. the service station -- now bereft of the come-ons of free drinkware, advertising trinkets and a squeaky, squeegee-cleaned windshield -- is headed for extinction.

even in its modern, diminished form, if you went to full-serve, it was like a mini-check-up every time you filled up -- pop the hood, check the oil, coolant and tire pressure. good to go.

now, if you don't know how to do it yourself, well, that'll cost you more -- at another auto center in some place other than where you get fuel. real convenient, right?

maybe it's just me mourning another piece of americana falling away as the country draws a bead on offering less and less for more and more.

one last link in people talking to people is almost gone as we move to card swipes and buttons for informational exchange; much more cost effective, apparently, than paying a friendly, knowledgeable person a salary and benefits.

i'm not sure how much a "how's it goin', buddy" costs, but over the years, i think it becomes an investment in trust. 

i'm not sure i'll ever get such a return from a magnetic strip.

sarahndipity

one of my favorite nuns, sister janice, back in beckley, gave me a great little line about the wonder of chance: "coincidence is God writing anonymously."

my lovely wife late last week began experiencing an odd affliction -- a hot, red breakout on her face and right forearm that would flare up for no apparent reason.

our colleague brad pointed out a little rash on her cheek at work last thursday, which turned into a full-fledged breakout at dinner.

inquisitive worrywart that she is, kris started searching up and down the internet her symptoms and found illnesses ranging from toxic shock syndrome to shingles.

by saturday, when she awoke to find her eye swollen, she added lupus to the possible ailments.

the rash struck me as an allergic reaction. and, indeed, every time she'd take a dose of benadryl, the swelling would subside.

we tried to think about anything new we'd added to our diet or anything different in our clothing or linens and came up with nothing. same food, same detergent, same everything.

this was what she told her doctor today, who prescribed antibiotics to tame the bit of infection in her follicles that the allergy had roused. he also told her to stop washing with ivory soap, which he called the worst thing to put on your skin.

but barring food-related allergens, he suggested washing all her clothes and our linens in dreft, that hypoallergenic laundry detergent. i wondered what i was doing buying fragrance-free cheer all these years.

anyway, since she had the car, kris picked me up in front of the newspaper office after work.

while waiting for me to come down, she looked in the visor mirror and noticed that her face was flaring up again. this sent her into a new tizzy because she'd just taken the antibiotic.

at this point, a friend from across the hall at the gazette, sarah, swings by on her smoke break and they begin chatting about this new breakout.

i was downstairs by now and putting my junk in the back seat as i listened to their conversation.

sarah was recounting how she developed a similar rash after pouring orange juice for a church function.

i threw out the idea that maybe the organic oranges kris picked up could be the culprit. it was the first time she'd ever gotten them, i remember her saying, as we normally bought non-organic citrus. (organic was cheaper by the bag rather than in wrapped 3- or 4-packs.)

we began connecting dots and linking flare-ups with her orange consumption. we were beginning to see a pattern when sarah headed back to the office.

the little rash brad noticed was from some juice on the plastic bag where kris put the sliced oranges for work. she must have touched her face. the full-on breakout followed after she ate them with lunch.

she had some before dinner that night. and on and on through the weekend. (she ate the orange slices with her right hand. sometimes the juice would run down her wrist; hence the outbreak on her right forearm.)

the benadryl calmed the reaction before she'd eat more slices. then it would start all over again.

we always ate oranges, so we overlooked them as "new" to our diet. but maybe it was either the organic fruit or that kris hadn't had them in a while that she either developed a new allergy or was sensitive to something in the specially grown citrus.

and if we hadn't spoken with sarah out on her break, kris would've completed her drug regimen and we would have washed loads and loads of laundry to no avail. i don't want to imagine the panic and frustration that would have followed if these offered no abatement. (well, aside from finishing up the bag of oranges.)

one recollection shared opened just enough of a crack in the door for us to see the way through to a solution.

i'd been praying small prayers for a little help in this very minor ailment -- especially since i'm already praying very hard for those with some major ones -- but would have liked just a small touch off the hem of His garment, y'know?

so at grace tonight, we thanked the Lord for what we called the miracle of coincidence, a serendipitous meeting that pointed to a calming of little fears.

we will continue to pray for those dealing with much larger ones.

speed demon

here are a few numbers from the trip back from central florida:

total distance: 794.4 miles

total drive time: 13 hours, 20 minutes

average speed: 59.7 mph

average gas mileage: 21.4 mpg

fuel stops: 3

costliest: $63.50 @ 3.99/gal, yemassee, s.c., bp

cheapest: $55.50 @ 3.50/gal, wytheville, va., hess

the numbers going down aren't as complete, but here's what i've got:

total distance: 795.4 miles

average gas mileage: 22.2 mpg

fuel stops: 3

costliest: $62.25 @ 3.85/gal, palm coast, fla., shell

cheapest: $58.00 @ 3.79/gal, cola, s.c., bp

drive time was a little over 13 hours. didn't think to log this stuff until the trip home.

overall, i was pleased with the stat count. the average speed up was probably dragged down a bit by gawkers at a fender bender near some road construction outside of lake norman, n.c.

i'd set the cruise control at about 65 mph, maybe the slowest i'd driven since what was either a mileage or time experiment back in the late '80s. (my brother who was riding along told me if i ever drove that slow again, he'd kill me.)

with kris' civic temporarily off the road, it was up to brutus the jeep to take us down to sunny florida. 

and while he's great hauler and a willing off-roader, fuel economy isn't his strong suit. so the slow cruise speed was a real-life effort to save some gas. 

i'll have to say the deck was stacked in the jeep's favor: brutus had a new set of state inspection-mandated tires and had just had an oil and filter change.

all told, with the new tires, clean oil and slow, steady speed, the mileage was improved over the 19 mpg i normally got driving around 70 and much better than the 14 to 15 mpg around town.

i read not long ago that studies apparently still showed that 55 mph was the most fuel-efficient speed for highway travel.

what i'd thought in my youth was some government conspiracy to keep the public driving like little old ladies actually still held water or, in this case, gasoline.

still, you'd think in the 20-some years since the feds allowed more pedal to the metal that an auto engineer would have designed an internal combustion engine that would perform more efficiently, say at 70 mph. perhaps technology has hit the wall for gas consumption.

anyway, while the opportunity to test the validity of the 55 mph recommendation in actual highway conditions was tempting, the prospect of stretching a 12-hour drive (by aaa reckoning) much longer forced a compromise between my normal highway speed and the ideal, so i split the difference.

i gained some additional perspectives in addition to my fuel economy insights.

you know those people who putter along in the far right lane as traffic whizzes on past? well, for this trip, i was one of them.

and it confirmed what i'd always noticed when driving the speed limit: you rarely have to deal with slow moving vehicles ahead of you.

i can remember for years justifying my high-speed passes as the necessary evil required to keep the road ahead clear of obstructing vehicles.

the problem, of course, is that there is always a leadfoot who wants to stay in front of everybody.

or the person who's driving just one mile an hour faster than your cruising speed and won't let you pass.

or a whole host of traffic peeves that all the speed and driving skill in the world won't rid you of without either someone ending up in jail or on the highway to heaven -- or the other place.

nope, if you can practice planning and patience, there's a whole world of aggravation -- including white knuckled anger and gas pain -- that can be bypassed by staying in the right lane.