Dancing in the Park

Bopping in Beach Chairs.

The '80s were alive and well at La Freniere Park Thursday night. Mostly the '80s. A little of the '90s and some contemporary. But mostly the '80s.

It was the Mojoeaux Band playing in the park's spring Thursday concert series. They're a local party band, and they're pretty good. They had the audience, which I'd guess around 500 to 800 people – mostly around my age, so that was a little funny watching them try to rock, bopping in their beach chairs. There was also a host of little kids – 2 or so to 10 – who knew just what to do when the music pounded. Get up and move! Tori and I and a handful of other adults joined them and were on our feet most of the night.

The band name, of course, is pure NOLA. Pronounced mojo, but since this is Cajun country we spell it with a lot of imported extra verbs. We have signs that say "Geaux Saints" and Tostitos ads that say "We Kneaux How to Party."

We'd been meaning to get to the concert series for a month, but it was always something. A school activity. Then I got sick and that ate up three Thursday nights – I don't want to dwell on it since I wrote about it recently. I'm mostly better now, Even have my voice back, just still feel a little wrung out.

So anyway, Thursday was also the last day of school, so we celebrated by walking down to the park. We strolled through the bird sanctuary than around the pond. It was peaceful, quiet, even with the band starting up not far away. We were fascinated by the maneuvers of a Roseate spoonbill circling around, his beak in the muddy water, to pull up his dinner.

Then we entered the area where the concert was, and things got very lively. We had a couple of excellent tacos each while the band played a blend of '80s favorites – Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'," Whitney Houston's "I Want to Dance with Somebody," bunch of other songs that made me go, "Oh, yeah! That song!" and a few more contemporary songs. They'd be a fun band to have at a wedding or something.

Soon as we finished eating Tori was on her feet and, unlike me, she can dance and she got into it. We haven’t' had a lot of fun lately, so this was a great chance to let go, and she did. She even got me on my feet, sort of bopping in my middle-aged white guy way.

Mojeaux rocks out.

Max and his friend met us there. Max enjoyed dancing and moving to the beat, especially when Mojeaux rapped ("Gangsters Paradise") but his friend seemed unwilling to let the beat infect her, she seemed self-conscious. She'll get over that pretty quickly if she hangs around our family for any length of time.

Anyway, we had a great time last night. Just a lot of fun, and fun is something that's been in short supply the last month, The Louisiana Philharmonic orchestra will play in the park tonight, and we plan to go give it a try. Sounds fun!

Random Thoughts from the House of Menthol

Almost better now, but not quite well. Been sick for over a week now, a cold/cough/fever/ that just doesn't want to go away. It's finally breaking up, but I mean, in my life I have never been this sick for this long. Back when I had pneumonia in '89, it only lasted five days.

We've had the vaporizer going full steam, tried a variety of OTC treatments. I was kind enough to pass this on to Tori and Kate. Neither of them have had it as bad as I have, but it's still unpleasant. Max seems to have avoided it. (Knock wood.)

Worst for Tori has been that every time I lay down and close my eyes, I start coughing, which wakes both of us up. Several nights I've given up and gone to sit in the armchair in the living room, where I've been able to snatch a few hours of sleep.

So random thoughts are really all I've been able to come up with for the last few days.

• Nothing tastes as vile as Robitussin. It's the nastiest tasting medicine there is. Yet, I have to say, I've never taken anything as effective.

• Laying on the couch watching daytime TV, the endless reruns of "Law & Order," "Supernatural," "Friends" and the occasional awful sci-fi movie on the SyFy channel, I had one of those epiphanies for a story that could be really good, blending a couple of the shows I saw. At least I think it's a good idea, but that might by the NyQuil talking. But Tori agreed it has promise, so I'm working it up as a movie treatment and we'll see what I can do with it.

• It's almost as deep a divide as between religions. Tori was raised in a Vicks Vapo-Rub family. I've always been a Mentholatum man. It's ridiculous, they're both essentially the same thing, doing the same job in the same way. But Vicks just smells wrong to me as I slather it on my chest. I can't even describe the difference. But that doesn't mean it's not real.

• Kate commented last night, "Wouldn't it be an awful world if cherries actually tasted like the cherry flavoring in cough medicine?" Yes it would. What a sad, sad place the world would be.

• I have raised six children. I know what pink eye looks like. So how come I have to go to a doctor's office to get a doctor to look at it and say, "Yup, that's pink eye?" Instead of paying ten bucks or so for the drops, which are the same drops I've been using on pink eye for 30 years, they want me to pay 80 bucks or more for an office visit to confirm what I know. Fortunately (fortunate in a relative sense) we had a case of pink eye last year and some of the drops are left. My eyes are fine now, thank you very much. There's little about the health industry that pisses me off more than that.

• I am a terrible patient. I've always known that. I don't like being sick, don't like acting sick. Don't like complaining, don't like carrying on about being sick. Don't like surrounding myself with the accoutrements of being sick. This means I'm always trying to get up and do things before I should. It drives Tori crazy. She's all but had to set a timer for me to stay in bed, and of course there are issues about me, say, making school lunches for example. No one is more ready for me to be over this than me. But Tori is right behind me in line.

Today I'm not bad. Tomorrow I'll be fine. Monday at the latest.

Unrelated note: Wednesday we went to our very last middle school spring concert (last unless something surprising happens.) Max moves up to high school next year, so this was it. The band was really, really good, better than many high school orchestras I've heard. Band is Mr. V's thing, and the kids sounded great. Sadly, the choir was not nearly as good. They sang all the same notes more or less in sync, but there were no harmonies, no dynamics, and most of the girls apparently learned to sing by watching American Idol, with all the swoops up to the notes and crap like that.

So great job band! And to Mrs. Cafarella, Kate and Millie's choir director back at West Albany, thank you for being such a great teacher. They were as fortunate to have you as Max is to have Mr. V.

The Only Thing Better

The only thing better that I can think of than lasagna for dinner (Tori makes GREAT lasagna) is ...



Wait for it ...



Leftover lasagna for dinner the next day!

Not a great photo, but great lasagna!

There is no photo of the leftover lasagna, because we ate it too fast!

Is This as Low as it Goes? I Hope So

I honestly didn't know what a Kardashian was until last year, so I may not be qualified to even discuss this, but the story in the news this morning was the lowest thing I've read in a long time.

A young woman who had been on MTV's "Teen Mom" show, which I also was unaware of, was desperate to extend her 15 minutes of fame. She'd tried singing, and writing a book, and bikini modeling (why not? What's the difference between being a writer and a bikini model?) Didn't work. So she made a sex tape which then "leaked out" on the Internet. She claims she made it for her own personal use, the fact that her partner is a professional porn star notwithstanding.

There was a survey, gosh, it must have been more than a decade ago now, in which teens were asked what their goal in life was. The majority said they wanted to be "famous." Not a famous singer, or a famous lawyer, or a famous artist or even a famous accountant. They didn't say they wanted to be so good at something that it made them famous. They just wanted fame.

And that's why we have today's news about some 21-year-old woman "leaking" a sex tape online so that people will keep talking about her. She didn't even sell the recording, so there would at least have been a monetary reward. All that mattered was to keep people talking about her.

The story was complete with all the tongue-clucking about pop culture reaching a new low. But the worst part of it was this comment from a woman who runs a pornography production business.

“The fact of the matter is a few weeks ago this girl was just some girl on a past season of a reality TV show. She was actually one of the more responsible moms on the show – yes I watch it – which should be a good thing, but unfortunately it made her yesterday’s news really quickly. The more messed up moms on the show, like A**** and J******, are in gossip magazines all the times because they are constantly in and out of rehab or jail or whatever. In any case, everyone is talking about her now. And what is she going to do, get a ‘real job?’ It’s hard to go from being on TV to being a manager at Best Buy.”

Yesterday's news. Horror of horrors! Is that like the worst thing ever? Might as well be dead as to be yesterdays news. In or out of rehab or jail, whatever it takes to keep the camera on you. Makes it sound like Lindsey Lohan is a role model rather than a cautionary tale. Heaven forbid someone should go from being on TV to having a "real job."

There once was a notion that a celebrity was someone who had done something worth celebrating. Now it's just a person people talk about, for whatever reason. Like the late Zsa Zsa Gabor, who as near as I could figure out was only famous for being famous. The definition of a Kardashian. And really, is this that different from the PBs (professional beauties) of the Edwardian era? The human race has never been short of people willing to sell their soul. Now it's a career goal.

From where I sit, being manager of a Best Buy would be kind of a cool job.

Guess I'm getting old. Very very old.

Big Pot of Red

Made some really good chili. I'm a basic chili kinda guy, nothing fancy and no beans. Spicy but not burn-your-head-off hot.

Stew beef, a bottle of beer, an onion, garlic, chili powder, paprika. A little salt. Would have used a red pepper and cumin, but we were out of both. Then just cook it until you can't recognize any of the constituent parts, about six hours. Adding water as needed, but not much. I like my chili thick.

Man it was good. Tori made a pot of beans and rice for those who just have to have beans with their chili, and there were no complaints. It's probably been 25 years since I made a pot of chili, and I wonder why I waited. So easy, just requires attention so that it doesn't burn, and so damn good.

We realized we'd been falling into a rut at dinner time, the same eight or ten things over and over, and decided to change it up. We began a concerted effort to try new things, or things we haven't made in years, and so far no complaints. Tori turned out some fabulous chicken enchiladas a couple of weeks ago – it's probably been three or four years since she made those and they're always good – and a nice beef stew. I have made the chili, and barbecued pork sandwiches. Well, I can't really call it that since I didn't barbecue the meat, but it gives you the idea.

And it's so much less expensive than buying processed foods, or ordering out, and so much better. And the cooking is fun.

Friday has been pizza night at the Baurs almost as long as we've been married. I came home from work about 20 years ago and the kids were all excited, telling me Tori had decreed that "Friday night is pizza night!" These days we make our own, because it's less expensive and way better – everyone gets what they want on the pizza they make. Kate has taken over making the dough and takes a lot of pride in her bread-making prowess. Max grates the cheese, we all chop of the vegetables and whatever else we've got. It's a family thing.

And now Sunday is turning into, "What have we not made in a while?" night. And so far it's working out.

Weather and GPS

Where was I?

Weather – The weather in Oregon was the primary reason we moved in 2008. Cold and wet almost all the time, except for a couple of months in the summer when it was dry and hot, and a couple of glorious weeks in spring and fall. The rest of the time, cold and wet. My dad once pointed out that every time they visited – every single day they spent in Oregon, even in the dry, hot summers, it rained. So in 2008 we moved to the Caribbean. On St. Croix it was always the same weather unless there was an actual hurricane going on – high in the upper 80s, overnight low in the low 70s, "chance of rain, 30 percent," as the voice on the Weather Channel said. Always.

So getting used to the weather here has been challenging. Not that it got particularly cold, but colder than we're used to. Sometimes. In the last few months we've had cold days followed by sunny warm days followed by muggy days followed by light rain or torrential rain. There have been days when we woke up shivering, and by afternoon had the air conditioning running.

The problem isn't with the kind of weather. It's that there's SO MUCH weather.

Visitors and hobbies – A few weeks ago we had a visit from some Oregon friends, Phil and Linda Brown. Ever since Phil retired a couple of years ago they've been traveling. In fact, they spent a week at St. Croix two weeks after we moved away. Bad timing. We could have made their trip a lot more enjoyable.

Anyway, it was nice to see them, catching up on news. They're daughters are doing well. When the girls got into high school Linda missed the kind of things they used to do, she was a Girl Scout leader for them and had really enjoyed it. So she borrowed Kate and Millie a lot. Took 'em on camping trips, running lemonade stands. Lots of stuff like that. They had a good time.

Linda's new hobby is geocaching, so we spent the afternoon – well part of the afternoon, we spent the longest part of it waiting for service at a really disappointing restaurant – walking around the French Quarter fixated on her GPS device. Found three of them. There's a sense of accomplishment when you find some tiny container that someone hid years ago, some as small as the end of your little finger, few larger than an old film canister (remember those?) You sign your name and the date on a little piece of paper and replace it, then go home and log it on the geocache website.

We found one in Pirate Alley, and as Linda was signing it, a group of college students from South Carolina came by, peering at their GPS devices. We told them to wait, turn their backs, and replaced it. We found another across the street from what is reported to be the New Orleans home of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

Tori thought it seemed like fun, so it prompted her to learn to use the GPS feature on her new phone. Right now she and Max are out prowling Mike Miley Park, a half block south of here, tracking down several she found on the website. One we had search for last week, but couldn't find it and then it started raining. (See comment above about lots of weather.) She checked again on Google maps, and the site came up exactly where we'd been standing. I mean, when we clicked for the satellite photo I recognized the area instantly. We'd been standing right there. Either it was extremely well hidden or someone had removed it. She and Max will take apart the fence if need be to find it.

UPDATE – They're home, and they found it! Plus had several other adventures.

Well Mow Me Down!

It took two weeks and I'm almost crippled, but the front yard has been mowed.

Don't talk to me about the backyard. I'm counting on a fire, or a miracle. Or a miracle fire.

Our lease requires that we take care of the yard. That's not unreasonable. When we moved in last August we acquired through Craig's List a push mower. It was what we could afford. It got the job done and didn't kill any of us, although it was a lot of effort. Then thankfully the fall and winter came and the lawn didn't grow much.

But time moves on, as it will, and as spring approached we were quickly becoming the bane of the neighborhood. Our neighbors are people who take their lawn care seriously, out there at all hours of the day and dusk edging and blowing and mowing. And our lawn was as shaggy as a pirate's beard.

We had gotten the push mower out two weeks ago and were eyeing the tangle of grass, when the guy across the street came over. He's a nice guy who is having his own trouble with the neighborhood home care Gestapo, and may well be leaving soon. Lawn care is the least of his worries, and he offered us his lawn mower. It had been given to him by a neighbor and he'd never been able to get it running, but it should work fine, he assured us.

It didn't. I will spare you the monotonous details, but it didn't start. We drained the gas, which was green. Our benefactor had thought it needed two-stroke oil in the fuel. He was mistaken. Replaced that and we could get it to start, sputter and die, start, sputter and die. Obviously there was a problem with the carburetor. Tori thought it was just dirty. I was sure the choke valve was stuck. We probably were both right.

Sunday, after two weeks of fiddling and fussing and swearing (mostly the latter) we gave it one more try without any better luck. It was maddening. We knew the problem – gas was not getting from the tank to the cylinder – but nothing we tried worked. I threw up my hands – one of which had a broken blister from repeatedly pulling the start cord, and my breath was coming in short gasps. "I'm done for today." I said.

I gave it one more tug. The motor sputtered to life. And ran. 10 seconds. 20. It coughed but kept going. It ran for two minutes. Three. When it sputtered, Tori would spray a little more starting fluid and it kept going. Four minutes. Five. At seven minutes she decided to see how long it would keep going without the spray. At 12 minutes, we realized it was running.

Max came out to do most of the actual mowing. It is not at all a well lawn mower, and the thickness of our tangled lawn almost did it in. But we were able to get the whole front yard mowed. Every time it died – and it did often – we were able to start it again. I can barely lift my right arm, but our neighbors may stop cursing at us, at least about the lawn.

The real proof of the pudding will be the next time. Will we be able to start it cold?

And then there's the backyard, a mess. But thanks to the fence, our neighbors don't see that. So screw 'em.