Stupid things I've done...and am(No. 93 in a continuing series)

Those of you who give attention to my life and activities (more than I do, as this post will indicate) might remember that the Ticketmaster website screwed me over on the purchase of some concert tickets a few months ago.


But Ticketmaster's screw job pales in comparison to what I did to MYSELF!

Because, as you can see above, concert tickets contain a lot of important information; they tell you what musician(s) are performing, where you're allowed to sit, the location of the event, and (I can't emphasize this last point enough) ...

The date and time of the event!

Any reasonable person knows that the only indispensable person at a Jackson Browne concert is...Jackson Browne.

If you're anybody else, you better show up at the time on your ticket.
And I know that. I understand the protocol.

So Monday (July 27, the day that I was supposed to be attending the Jackson Browne concert with the Middle-Aged Woman, our friends, Chico & (his daughter) C-One), I left work at 7 pm, got home around 7:30 pm, changed clothes, went out to get something to eat, came home, sat down at my desk to work on balancing the checking account, launched my browser and accidentally clicked on a link to Facebook where I saw C-One's comment about the concert that had started approximately 90 minutes earlier - that I was supposed to be at. And I realized at that moment, I was not giving my life the scrutiny it deserved.

I picked up the tickets (which have been sitting next to my computer monitor where I see them nearly every day) and sped to the room where the MAW lay throbbing (as usual).

Styro: Guess what? [Holds out concert tickets]
MAW: I thought the concert was tomorrow night.
Styro: No, it's today. [Hands tickets to MAW]

Perhaps it would have been better if I hadn't been reminded of the concert at all. I suspect the MAW felt that way - but she got in the car with me anyway.

I think of myself as a decent writer - but there are not enough words to express the incredible mix of emotions I felt as I drove 27.6 miles (according to my GPS) to the show. I tried to let my mind go blank as much as possible - because all of my thoughts were dark, angry and filled with self-loathing. Here's just a sample:

"What sort of idiot forgets about a concert when he's had the tickets sitting in front of him for 3 months?"

"What in the world can I say to Chico and Christie to explain this insanity? 'Oh, sorry - I guess you're just not important enough for me to bother remembering I was supposed to attend a concert with you tonight.'"

"We'll never make it in time. The show will be over."

"&*%$#()*&*^&%^&^&$*$(&(*^##!!%*)()*&$$*^%%^$&*%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

I truly can't remember being more disgusted with myself since...

...since The Boy was small and left the house* while I was (supposedly) watching the kids - and walked out into a busy street before I could locate and catch him.

Anyway, I wasn't feeling too good. The only bright spots, in retrospect:

- I didn't drive like an idiot
- I kept quiet; no ranting and raving
- We didn't have to pay for parking (they don't really plan on people arriving two hours late), and
- The beauty of the music made me (briefly) happy

I wouldn't have thought it possible during the drive there - and it seemed like a distant memory during the drive home - but for a few minutes, as I listened to the music**, I was able to forget what a stupid idiot I was - and just enjoy the sound, the energy, the joy of a live performance, the uplift of a large group of people enjoying a shared experience. [Chico and Christie were very cool about the whole thing - just glad we hadn't ended up dead in a roadside ditch on the way to the show.]

If I get the opportunity again, I think I really need to show up at the time shown on the ticket.

Take care.


* I still can't believe he left the house by himself!
** The end of The Pretender (a personal favorite of mine - as we crossed the parking lot to the band shell), Running on Empty, I Am A Patriot ("The river rolls for the righteous...someday"), and The Load-Out.

If excuses were horses...beggars would ride

Above is pictured the stack of debit card slips that I entered into Microsoft Money last night - instead of writing a decent blog post.

Once they are entered, they get placed into envelopes - until I balance the checking account (for that month - or, in this case, quarter...millenium) - and look like this:



Lastly: A big THANK YOU to Jess at This Life Is Mine for the cool award she bestowed.



I hope someday to prove myself worthy. But not today.

Take care.

RTT: Post-IT Notes from the Knight Gathering

(A few final glimpses from this year's family reunion)

• My Sister-S' two young daughters, the Double A's, standing in the hallway outside their room singing "Daddy took my blankie away - Daddy give my blankie back" over and over.
  
  [It appeared they had been temporarily evicted from the room while Mommy and Daddy packed up to check out of the hotel. The girls told me they expected to have their blankets returned in the car - but this mild protest was clearly designed to hasten the restoration of those beloved blankets.]

• Overheard* during a card game: "You're arrogant - but in a nice way."
  
  [My Sister-W...to me. Every once in a while, I just don't know what to say.]

• Cousin-A's two boys sitting in the waiting room of Mercy Hospital Cadillac - mesmerized by the Disney Channel.
  
  [They are both under age 10 - and it was impossible to tell from their demeanor how much they understood of their grandfather's condition in the Emergency Room. Of course, none of the adults understood much more than they did, in truth.]

• Littlest-A (my youngest sister's younger daughter) pretending to be be a fearsome monster in front of her great-grandmother.
  
  [This exemplary performance took place immediately following the annual Group Photo shoot outside the hotel. Her attempts to be fearsome where somewhat undercut by her overall size and appearance, i.e. small and very cute.]

• Sister-W and The Boy leaping up for a Nerf football like the deciding touchdown for a Super Bowl was on the line.
  
  [It clearly would have garnered a pass interference or unsportsmanlike conduct call from the referees (had they been present). When I called out to The Boy, "Don't hurt your Aunt-W!", he responded incredulously, "Me? Hurt her? She's trying to kill me!"]

• Watching my mother and Sister-W playing cards together - and seeing how they have become the same person.
  
  [My sister is the younger model of her mother; they look alike, they sound alike, they think alike. It's kind of frightening actually.]

• Overheard during a euchre game:
  
  Mom: I see you're wearing your sexy shirt?
  
  Sister-S: What?
  
  M: Well, you can clearly see...
  
  S: What? My nipple? I'm wearing a bra!
  
  M: No - but you can clearly see your cleavage.
  
  S: Mom - I've got no boobs!
  
  [As a semi-objective observer, the top was not very...revealing.]

Well, that's the news from Lake Wobegon...where the men play euchre, the woman wear revealing clothing and the children are all singing for their blankets.

Take care.

Uncle-R Update:
He is scheduled to be released from the hospital today. I will try to update Twitter or Facebook with more news during the day if possible.

* OK - she said it right to my face

Knight Gathering: It's all fun and games...

Until someone gets hurt.

Editor's note: I recorded audio for this post because my good friend, Leslie, wrote to tell me - "What I like best about your blog...your voice.....you could be on radio." And as a guy easily influenced by flattery, I had no choice but to resume recording ASAP. Hey, I need all the fans I can get!]

I have long felt that one certain measure of success in any endeavor is whether all participants have emerged unscathed. "Not getting hurt" are words by which I try to live. And while I'm the first to admit that Jim Morrison was speaking pure truth when he wrote the lyric - "No one here gets out alive" - he did not write "Everybody here is going to end up in the Emergency Room".

But sometimes Life takes us there anyway. I was there just yesterday morning.

To bring you briefly through the weekend at my family reunion: After a Friday night filled with cards and drenched with alcohol, Saturday dawned cloudy and rainy. But the forecast called for better things later in the day, so we proceeded with our plan to spend the day at Kenwood Heritage Park in Cadillac, MI. Cousins B4 & S drove over from Houghton Lake with their mom (Aunt-D) and their families. Sister-S and her family stopped to pick up Grandma on their way to Cadillac. And by about 1 PM, we were all assembled at the park. The Boy and I made a quick run to the local grocery store to pick up the 30 hamburgers, 30 hot dogs and 24 bratwursts I estimated we would consume - along with buns and condiments. As usual, I overbought - but we were able to keep the leftover meat cold and send it back to Houghton Lake with my cousins at the end of the day. After a second straight night of cards and drinking, there was some quick pool time for the kids Sunday morning after breakfast, then packing to check out.

Here's where the excitement begins. When my mom brought Uncle-R some breakfast to his room, he complained of feeling lousy. I stopped by his room a little later to check on him and he said he was starting to feel much better. He told me he'd slept most of the previous night in Cousin-A's room (so that his room with the kitchenette could be used for late-night card play) but had woken up early that morning feeling poorly and decided to head back to his room to try and get a bit more rest. Unfortunately, his room key was giving him problems and he nearly passed out in the hallway - but in the nick of time, the key opened the door and he barely made it to his bed.

Uncle-R told me things had taken a turn for the better around 9 AM - and by the time of our visit (between 9:15 - 9:45 AM), he was feeling better. So I left him to pack up my room, load the car, and get cleaned up for departure. When I emerged from my shower not quite an hour later, The Girl told me that a doctor was in my uncle's room. By the time I had gotten some clothes on, an ambulance had arrived and they had him on a gurney for transport to the hospital. He was shaking and clearly agitated (although he told me that he was not in great pain), so I put my hand on his shoulder while they waited for the elevator and urged him to do what he could to calm himself. When the ambulance headed out of the hotel parking lot a few minutes later, I was the only family member in a position to follow (since most of the others had children to look after or had been interrupted in packing the cars for checkout), so I headed to Mercy Hospital Cadillac with the Girl and The Boy.

I was able to provide the hospital staff with some of the information they needed to formally admit him and after a few minutes was allowed to go back to see my uncle. Although it was unclear what, if anything, the staff there had been able to do for him, Uncle-R was clearly feeling better. He was no longer agitated - but seemed in good spirits, teasing The Boy about wearing his baseball cap at an odd angle - very much as he had seemed to me when I visited his room earlier that morning. Both The Boy and The Girl got a chance to see Uncle-R (to ease their minds); soon Cousin-A and his wife (BK) and two sons had also arrived. I watched their boys so that A & BK could see The Patient, sending The Boy and Girl out to get some food after a bit (since The Boy had slept sufficiently late that he had missed breakfast at the hotel).

At around 1 pm, the medical staff had still drawn no conclusions as to whether Uncle-R would have to spend the night at Mercy Hospital, if he would be discharged, or some other alternative. I offered to BK that I would take their kids and mine to my Grandmother's house (about 45 minutes away) so that they would not need to worry about hospitalized parents and bored children all at the same time. This turned out to be a good plan since the decision to hold Uncle-R overnight and move him to a regular room was not made until very late in the afternoon. Although it was suspected that some malfunction of his pacemaker caused all of Sunday morning's excitement, I still can't confirm that as a fact. Doctors are also concerned about the function of my uncle's kidneys (or lack thereof) and think he may have had a heart attack.

So, at present:

- My uncle remains at Mercy Hospital Cadillac,
- My mother spent the night at her mother's home outside Evart, MI
- The last we saw Cousin-A and his family, they were passing us heading south on I-75
- The Middle-Aged Woman arrived safely home from Chicago before 5 PM local time
- The Girl, The Boy and I arrived home about 9:45 pm from the 2009 Knight Gathering...

Where almost nobody got hurt. So don't you go getting yourself hurt. Or should I say -

Take care.

Euchre as a blood sport

Every family has, I think, its own unique ways of interrelating - accepted methods of showing affection, of speaking to each other, of spending time together. I would describe the distinguishing characteristics of my mother's family in this way: simple devotion to the supremacy of blood ties over all others - combined with aggressive extroversion and fueled by intense competitiveness. If this all sounds rather pathological...well, in some ways it is. We're the people you see who have too much to drink at a party, who talk too loud, who say things they regret the next morning.

But before you, dear reader, get the wrong impression - I should add: My mom's family are also quite a tight-knit group; they are affectionate, they are playful, they are funny. They don't take any sh*t from anybody. They've got your back. I'm one of them.

One of the popular ways to pass time at our family reunions is to play cards and have a drink. Drinking is optional - but card playing is expected. And it is a rather serious business, too. The game of choice is euchre. Oh, we'll play other things: cribbage, spades, pinochle, crazy eights. But the real game is euchre.

Friday night, I was involved in two noteworthy euchre incidents. The events are rarely about card playing itself - but more how the game can be a revealer of character (or, sometimes, lapses of character).

In the first, I was playing a game partnered with my Uncle-R against my mother and The Boy. And they were kicking our @$$es. Normally, this would grate on my uncle a good deal - but he was actually taking things pretty well. In fact, what was really getting on his nerves was my mom's seeming inability to keep her mind on the game. She was oftentimes more preoccupied with providing (or eating) snacks to keep play moving forward. [Note: Euchre is a simple game played with five cards dealt to each player. The pace of play is expected to be brisk - particularly amongst seasoned players.]

By the third game, fortunes seemed to have shifted, and Uncle-R and I were finally leading by a few points. Then my mother bid a hand and, during the third or fourth trick, when it appeared she might lose the hand, reneged (failed to follow suit during play). When this was pointed out, she said she had forgotten which suit was trump (even though she was the one that had "named" trump). Anyway, this was the last straw for Uncle-R; who was more p*ssed off, I think, by my mother's inattentiveness to the game than her error. He wanted the two points that the rules say our team was entitled to. My mother was offended at his tone - declared the game was over and kicked my uncle out of her hotel room (where he was supposed to sleep that night). I invited Uncle-R to bunk in our room for the night (since we had two beds and a sleeper sofa) and the world continued to spin.

Later that same night, I got involved in another euchre game with my Brother, Cousin-A and his wife, BK. BK and I were partners against Brother and Cousin-A. By this point in the night, all of the other players were feeling no pain (I was not partaking of alcoholic beverages that night). Until Brother made a remark that aroused the mock outrage of Cousin-A and BK; whereupon they began to strike him about the head and shoulders - literally!

Now, don't get me wrong - it was kind of fun to watch. But both Brother and I were surprised by the aggressive nature of the blows. Mine was more amusement - with a few comments thrown in that I hoped I would not be the next target. Brother's was more pain and shock combined with a bit of whining (looking for sympathy that would never come). But, in any case, they gave him a few good wallops. And play soon continued as though nothing unusual had happened; and, of course, nothing very unusual had happened. That's just how we roll.

I'm glad to say that no blood was actually spilled in any of these incidents. But the reunion is far from over. You never know what might happen next.

I'm just hoping for a loaner hand.

Take care.

Knight Gathering: Day One

The Trip: The Girl, The Boy and I traveled from Redford to Cadillac yesterday afternoon. I got off work early so we were able to get on the road a little after 4 PM, each of us armed and dangerous with a fully-loaded iPod. The Girl had prepared a special 18-song Steely Dan playlist for the trip. The Boy was up next with an impromptu DJ session featuring a few current faves downloaded from iTunes (Ben Folds, Eric Hutchenson, Mat Kearney) and some prime ELO cuts. I get in a few songs at the very end of the trip from Springsteen, Was (Not Was) and Nat (King) Cole. The best part is listening to the kids sing harmony parts on a song that was popular long before they were born; all three of us wailing to Mr. Blue Sky or Route 66, for example

Arrival: Mom, Uncle-R, Brother and his family, Sister-W and her family, Cousin-A and his family were all present when we arrived around 8:30 pm local time. [Sister-S is picking up Grandma for arrival this morning. Still waiting to hear from Cousins-B4 and S.]

The kids all enjoyed the pool - the adults enjoyed having the kids entertain themselves. The Girl was a big hit in our room with all my cousins' younger children gathered around her and her laptop as she found kid-appropriate content on YouTube. I got my wireless router and Roku player hooked up in the room so the kids could watch part of a movie before bed. The adults played cards.

Which is a post unto itself. So come back soon for our next installment -

Euchre as a blood sport

Don't miss it!

Take care.

Meet the cast

The Girl, the Boy and I travel to my family reunion later today; specifically, a gathering of the progeny of my mother's parents. Since I expect my posting for the next few days will center around reunion events, let's meet our cast, shall we?

Grandma: My mother's mother is 98 years old. She'll be 99 next March 1. She lives in Evart, MI - so we hold the reunion in the nearest garden spot, Cadillac. My grandmother is one of my favorite people on the planet.

Aunt-D: My grandmother had three children. Her oldest, Bill, was deaf. He and his wife, my Aunt-D, had two children; the oldest (a boy) is my Cousin-B4 and his sister, Cousin-S. My Uncle Bill died in a car accident before I was born. His children were so small, they hardly knew him. My Aunt-D is a wonderful, gentle woman. When she was growing up, use of sign language by the deaf was strongly discouraged. She can lip-read like nobody's business. Although I have always been somewhat self-conscious when talking with her (tending to speak too loudly, instead of just exaggerating my enunciating slightly to make the lip-reading easier), I love her dearly.

Cousin-B4: is the oldest child of my generation. My great-grandfather (my mother's father's father) was William Wallace Knight (remember Braveheart?), nicknamed "The Boss". WWK was born in Scotland before emigrating to the US. His son, my grandfather, was William Wallace Knight II. My Uncle Bill, who I never had the chance to meet, was WWK III. And so you can see why I decided to refer to my oldest cousin as B4. He can be gut-bustingly funny; he also knows how to build a great bonfire. He and his lovely wife, MK, have three pretty girls. The oldest is almost exactly the same age as The Girl (Ms. Partly Cloudy, first-fruit of my loins). They also have twins. There will be no William Wallace Knight V. But if that ever caused my cousin a restless moment, he never let on. He loves his girls with a passion.

Cousin-S: is also slightly older than me. She and her husband, MN, have three boys - and (finally) one girl. Then they stopped. Their oldest is about the same as The Boy (second - and last - fruit of my loins).

Uncle-R: My mother's older brother is in his mid-70s. Some recent health problems have slowed him down a bit; but he is still the original Angry Old Man. He loves to read and collect art - but he has no room to keep any more books or prints. Although he has a prickly personality, I love my Uncle dearly. He is old-school; family comes first. Although it is never discussed, I think he has been in some measure like a father to my Cousins B4 and S. And I think he still misses his brother, Bill, after all these years. I'm not sure he ever had a better friend that his brother.

Uncle-R had three boys with his wife - then he had a rather bitter divorce. I remember as a kid being somewhat afraid of my uncle. He used to have quite a temper and - like nearly everyone on my mother's side of the family (including me) - can be QUITE LOUD!!!

Cousin-A: The oldest of my Uncle's three boys (about a year younger than me - close in age to my Brother). Along with B4, he is a premiere jokester. After a brief marriage and divorce, Cousin-A has settled down with his second wife, BK, and they have two boys.

Cousin-T: Lives with his (relatively) new bride in Washington. They are expecting their first child this summer and I don't expect them to be in town for the reunion.

Cousin-J: The youngest of Uncle-R's boys. He and his dad don't always get along. He and his wife have one son. They have been to the reunion in several years.

Mom: My mom was the youngest in her family - and the girl. So, my Uncle says, she got away with murder. She and my dad (now divorced) had four kids. I am the oldest.

Brother: Is slightly less than a year younger than me. We both have June birthdays - mine is the 29th, his is the 7th. He is a regional manager for K-Mart living outside Green Bay, WI. He used to be the black sheep of our family - but he's become Mr. Family Man. He and his wife, BW, have three kids (girl, boy, girl).

Sister-W: Is four years younger than me. She has twins, two divorces, and a new man in her life. We sometimes go for years at a stretch without seeing her at the family reunion - but she is supposed to be coming this year.

Sister-S: My youngest sister is the one we tend to see most often. Her husband and I have compatible interests; and the Middle-Aged Woman likes Sister-S better than anyone in her own family (I think); so it makes for a good double-date. They have two beautiful little girls.

Well, that's probably more than you wanted to know - but hopefully it will come in good use when trying to figure out who I'm talking about in my posts for the next couple days. When next you hear from me, I will be in Cadillac, Michigan.

Take care.