Michael Perry's Blog, page 403
January 6, 2010
Dozens!
Hard to imagine with the mercury dropping to negs nightly, but the globe is rotating…our chickens are back to laying. Getting into double digits some days. And especially fun…a few quail-sized eggs from small starters.
January 5, 2010
A Different Age
Research has led me to read The American Boy's Handy Book; What To Do and How To Do It, by D.C. Beard (1907 edition). Included are instructions on How to Bind a Prisoner without a Cord, How to Light The Gas with your Finger, How to Make a Blow-Gun, and How to Make a War Kite (including a section on How to Make the Knives).
Also included is an advertisement for The American Girl's Handy Book ("By the Misses Beard"). It is instructive to note that the subtitle of that one is How To Amuse...
January 4, 2010
Generation Gap
January 3, 2010
Home Again
Rolled in the yard at 3:30 a.m. With help from my dear wife and two junior roadies-in-training (OK, and a dollop of portable DVD player) (not allowed non-stop, but when you are trolleying a 2 and 9 year-old across that stretch of I-76 and I-80 nonstop in January and after dark, you will try something other than license plate bingo), we drove straight through from Greeley, Colorado. Visiting family out thataway. So good to see everyone, fun to see how much the little tykes have grown, good ...
January 1, 2010
New Year, Same Message
Not big on significant dates or anniversaries or holiday observations but do know enough to look back over the last 365 and say it heartfelt: Thank you.
December 31, 2009
Spoonful of Sugar?
The 2.5-year-old is on the verge of out-lawyering me. Didn't want to take her medicine. Two nights in a row I pulled the 'big girl' card ("Can you drink your medicine like a big girl?") and it worked. Tried it again last night. She said no, pitched a fit, and just for good measure said, "When you are a little girl, you can drink the medicine."
December 30, 2009
Tonight Show for Authors
I don't recall if I ever posted this. Last spring during book tour in Seattle I was invited to sit down with Nancy Pearl, the librarian who has her own action figure. If you are an author, going on Nancy Pearl's show ("Book Lust") is like having an audience with the Pope, being on the Tonight Show, and meeting Elvis – all rolled into one. As of this typing, I haven't seen the whole interview, but I did watch enough to come up with a question of my own: Did I even answer her first...
December 29, 2009
I Give It 3 1/2 ZZZ's…
On a long drive with 2 y.o. daughter, listening to one of my favorite musical artists. "I want to listen to Daddy's music!" says the little one (a nearly-finished version of the next Long Beds album is also in the CD player). I admit I am smiling inside as I punch over to my album.
By the second track, she is sound asleep.
December 28, 2009
Customer Service Hypertension
Trying to set up a business credit card. Strictly for convenience and to make tax-time simpler. After we went through the whole blankety-blank application process I have just now got off the phone with a certain large credit card company saying they can't issue a card unless I open a business bank account (that I don't NEED…already have a business checking account that has worked for over a decade now but apparently it's not with the right institution), wait 30 days, then send them the...
December 27, 2009
Canada Fishing Trip
Got a cranky little message from my computer saying my email mailbox was too full. So I'm trimming things out. Coming across some misplaced memories. These photos were taken in Canada on a fishing trip I took with my friend and former ambulance partner Bill and his father Don, who very graciously shared their boats and cabin. Don just couldn't get over my obsession with catching Northerns.
What a fun trip. Time stamp says 2003. Man, time goes screamin' past.
