Wednesday, 1/11

As I do every year, I did it as a little tip of the hat to my grandfather. I mean, I don't actually wear a hat, so it wasn't a literal “tip', but you get the idea, right?

My grandfather died thirty years ago, but in a way I see him every day. You know those ungainly long legs and arms I'm always complaining about? They come from him. The sunken eyes, too. I'm sure that I picked up a few of my odd quirks and idiosyncrasies from him, as well. Those quirks may be lurking in the background, or they may present themselves out in the open like one in particular that happens every Christmas Day.

And that's what I'm talking about here.

When I was a kid, my grandfather would slowly unwrap his gifts and then, if at all humanly possible, put the present back in the wrapping paper and make it look as close to an unwrapped gift as he could. I don't know why; all I know is he did it, and it made him happy. I grew up watching him do it, and probably pretty much every year since he passed away, I've tried to carry on the tradition.

Here's this year's example--

Because I have nowhere near the skill level that he had, I always have to try it with a book. I'll slowly undo the tape (much to Loraine's consternation, who just wants me to get on with it), pull the book out, see what it is, thank who gave it to me, and then slip the book back into the wrapping paper, where it sits in its little cage acting as my little tribute to my grandfather, at least until I open it again to read the book, which I did last night (but not before taking the picture you see above).

Yeah, I know. I need help.

8-)

There's no real reason for me to do it other than to carry on a rather weird tradition, but you know what? For me, at least, it wouldn't seem like Christmas without doing it. And then every year in January when I re-unwrap the gift, I smile a little smile and think back to a guy who left an impression on me, not only with those long arms & legs I see every day, but in a much more quirky way, as well.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 1/10

You know what? It's not as strange as I thought it would be.

We've had the discussion in here before about how some people don't think I'm a Yooper because I don't do certain things in my life. Doesn't matter that I was born in the U.P. and have spent most of my life in the area. Just because of how and where I live my life, there are some people who don't think I'm a true Yooper.

And it's true. I'm not a stereotypical Yooper. I don't hunt, I don't drive a truck, I don't have a 3 or 4-wheeler, and I live in Marquette, which some people seem to think automatically disqualifies one from even being considered a Yooper. But I've now done something that plays into the Yooper stereotype, and you know what?

It's even something that I'll do again.

In a couple of weeks, you'll start seeing episodes of “High School Bowl” in which the Trenary Home Bakery is a question sponsor, which means that the dorky host has to read their names. Well, as you may know, the dorky host sometimes forgets to read those lines, which led my Mom to give me a light-hearted and very sweet Christmas gift, one ostensibly from my newborn nephew Abel. She included a note that said something along the lines of “Uncle Jimmy, please remember to read the sponsor names so that someday I can be on your show”. And she attached that note to a bag of the Trenary Home Bakery's most famous product, Trenary Toast.

A product that, believe it or not, I had never sampled.

Shocking, isn't it? And maybe even more ammunition to those who don't think I'm a Yooper. But, for whatever reason, I have not in my long life ever had the chance to try this true Yooper delicacy...at least until I was given the bag for Christmas. So this past weekend I opened it up, grabbed a slice, and much to my joy and/or amazement, actually enjoyed it.

Who knew?

Now, technically, I haven't yet tried what some might consider “real” Trenary Toast. The bag I was given was of their vanilla-flavored product, and seeing as how I love vanilla-flavored products, maybe that played a little into how much I enjoyed it. But that shouldn't matter. I have no eaten Trenary Toast, and to quote a great American philosopher, I liked it. The hardness of the product didn't bother me, even though I didn't dunk it in anything, and the touch of vanilla to go along with the cinnamon they use was actually rather sublime. If I knew they had the vanilla flavored toast, maybe I would've tried it a while ago.

Not that that matters. I've now tried Trenary Toast, and I have to admit I'm a fan. Whether or not that makes me more of a Yooper, I'm not quite sure. But that doesn't play into it one way or the other. I've tried it, and I like it.

So thanks, Abel. And thanks Mom, too!

(jim@wmqt.com)

Monday, 1/9

It's amazing how a good piece of clothing can make you feel.

New Year's Day, Loraine and I were at Kohl's so she could use a gift card she got for Christmas. While she was looking for shoes, I wandered over to the men's department and looked at suit jackets. As you may recall, with my slight frame and my extra long arms, I have trouble finding suit jackets that actually fit me. If I find one that fits my torso the sleeves go halfway up my forearm. If I find one with sleeves that are long enough, the torso is two or three sizes too big. It's a problem I always have, and it's one of the reasons I was strolling through the men's section at Kohl's.

While looking at jackets, and playing the usual “too short/too big” game, I came across one that caught my eye. It was in a gorgeous charcoal color, and was a “slim fit” jacket, which you don't often see. And because it was slim fit, I dug through the racks, found one that had sleeves that were long enough, and put it on. Because it was slim fit, it fit my torso perfectly, and because it had long sleeves, my arms were covered the way they should be.

It was like they had tailored the jacket just for me. Keeping it on, I went to find Loraine, who looked at it and said, “it makes you look so skinny”, which is something everyone likes to hear. She then asked how much it cost, something I hadn't even looked at, and my heart almost sank.

It cost a lot. Well, maybe not a lot to some people, but it was more than I've ever paid for a suit jacket. So I took it off and put it back on the rack, joining Loraine as she was looking for a pair of pants to go along with her new shoes. My mind, though, kept returning to that jacket, and in either a moment of weakness or a moment of liberation, I went back and bought it.

And am I glad I did.

It fits me perfectly. Unlike every other suit jacket I own, the arms are the right length, and the cut makes me look like I actually have a torso worth showing off. I wore it for the first time last Friday taping “High School Bowl”, and had several students (and student moms in the audience) tell me how nice I looked. I'd like to think that I don't have much of an ego, that it doesn't matter how people think I look, but you know what?

Apparently I do.

I never would've thought that one piece of clothing could make a person feel so good about how they look, but for whatever reason, that suit jacket does it for me. The cut, the color, the...everything about it is just perfect. Who knew? Even though that one piece of clothing cost more than any, oh, four items in my wardrobe, I think it was worth it. You know that old saying about “you get what you paid for”?

I'm glad I paid for it.

(jim@wmqt.com)

Friday, 1/6

Because I have to haul my butt out in the freezing weather in a few minutes to tape the first “High School Bowl” of 2017, I'm gonna leave you with something you may have read before...at least if you were reading these back in 2013.

Back on Monday with new stuff...assuming, of course, my typing fingers don't freeze off this weekend. Stay warm!!

(jim@wmqt.com)

*****

(as originally posted 1/15/13):

It’s not as much as you think it is. Trust me on that one.

I guess I wrote about chocolate in here on occasion, right? I mean, sure, when I say “occasion” I actually mean “writing about it so much that it borderlines on pathological obsession”, but I write about chocolate in here, and I mention it quite often on the air, as well. So when someone asked me yesterday just how much chocolate I eat in a week and I gave them my answer, they actually refused to believe me.

Trust me, though--I wasn’t lying!

I know some people seem to think that I eat nothing but chocolate, including the person who asked me the question, but it’s not true. If you look at my chocolate consumption on a weekly basis, you’d probably be stunned. This doesn’t happen every week--some weeks I eat more, many more weeks I eat less--but on average, I’ll enjoy a three ounce (100 gram) bar from Europe on the weekend, and then parcel out another 3-ounce bar of dark chocolate the rest of the week, eating one (or two) pieces a day at work. So on average, I eat two chocolate bars a week.

Not the two or three bars a day the person who asked the question assumed!

Actually, I don’t know if anyone could eat that much chocolate in a day; not only would your health probably suffer quite a bit, but if you ate that much chocolate it seems like you’d get sick of it fairly quickly. At least I know I’D get sick of it fairly quickly if I ate that much on a daily basis. Nope; I’m quite happy with the amount that I eat each week. And I’m even happier with the quality of that amount!

Take this week, for example. On Saturday and Sunday I consumed a bar I bought in Germany (from Heilemann, I think) that was marzipan covered by dark chocolate. It was heavenly; in fact, I plan on picking up more when we go back this summer. Then during the week I’ve been nibbling on a Ghirardelli Intense Dark bar, made of 72% dark chocolate goodness (the perfect percentage for all those good antioxidants dark chocolate provides). I’ll finish that Friday, and that’ll be my chocolate consumption for this seven day period.

Surprised? I hope I haven’t misled you guys all these years. I mean, sure, I write about chocolate a lot because I have a bit of a passion for it. But maybe--just maybe--I may have, well, misinterpreted the depth of my passion for it. I don’t consume mass quantities. For one thing, if I ate as much chocolate as I sometimes infer, I’d probably weigh twice what I weigh now. And like I said, if I ate as much chocolate as I infer, I’d be sick of it by now. I mean, I love chocolate as much as the next person, but I also like fruits and vegetables and everything else that’s included in a balanced diet.

I’m almost being blasphemous when I say this, but there IS more to life than chocolate, despite what & how I may write in here on occasion. So now you know the truth--two bars a week, max. Just try not to hold it against me the next time I go off on a great new bar I’ve tried, okay?

8-)

Thursday, 1/5

While I enthusiastically agree with the sentiment, I'm not quite sure I agree with the end result.

Let me explain. Over the holidays, I read an article online from Slate magazine in which the writer talked about the run of classic albums Stevie Wonder produced during the 1970s, five albums (three of which won Grammy awards for Album of the Year) that rank among the best ever recorded. Like I said, I enthusiastically agree with that statement. The albums are among the best ever recorded. But what I didn't agree with was the idea that the last of the five albums, “Songs in the Key Of Life”, an album that produced classics like “Sir Duke” and “I Wish”, was, and I quote Jack Hamilton, the dude who wrote the article, “perhaps the most ambitious work ever made by a pop star at the height of his or her powers ”.

Now, you guys know how much I like Stevie Wonder. Lord knows I've written about him in here enough. And while I'll certainly agree that Stevie Wonder is a genius and “Songs” is an amazing album, is it REALLY “perhaps the most ambitious work ever made by a pop star at the height of his or her powers ”? I might personally posit that it's not even Wonder's best album (hello, “Innervisions”). And when I re-read that statement, I had these albums pop into my head--

-Marvin Gaye's “What's Going On”

-Brian Wilson's “Pet Sounds” for the Beach Boys

-Pete Townshend's “Tommy” for The Who

-Prince's “Purple Rain”

-Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the USA”

Who's to say that you couldn't make the very same claim about any of those five albums, plus the others that didn't pop into my head in the 30 seconds to which I devoted any thought to the subject? “Songs in the Key of Life” is a great album, well deserving of the Grammy for Album of the Year and the two number one songs that sprang forth from it. But is it appreciably that much better than any of those I listed? Is it any more groundbreaking, revolutionary, or hit filled than any of those five?

I don't know.

I always feel uncomfortable when someone makes an “absolute” statement—something is the best ever, or “everyone” thinks a certain way about a certain thing. If there's one thing I've learned, it's that there are no “absolutes” in life. Yes, I think Stevie Wonder is an amazing artist, and he's one of my favorite singers ever. But as much as I admire him and love his work, I'm still uncomfortable that “Songs in the Key of Life” is, and I once again quote, “perhaps the most ambitious work ever made by a pop star at the height of his or her powers ”. Maybe it's a personality quirk/fault on my part. Maybe I'm just weird that way.

It certainly wouldn't be the first time, you know.

But like I said, “Songs” is an amazing album. Don't believe me? Then listen--

Amazing, right? Incredible, no? But “it is perhaps the most ambitious work ever made by a pop star at the height of his or her powers ”? For me, at least, the jury's still out on that one.

(jim@wmqt.com), once again overthinking things waaaaay too much.

Wednesday, 1/4

It’s weird what pops into your head without warning.

I was out running yesterday morning, as I’m wont to do. The snow was falling; while it wasn't heavy it hadn’t been cleaned up yet, and the end result was like trying to run four miles on a sandy beach. It was hard work, but I managed to do it.

Several times while I was running I had a brief thought float through my head, the brief thought being that I would never finish the run. I knew there was no logic behind the thought, because I knew I WOULD finish, but the third or fourth time the thought popped up I flashed back to another time I thought I would never finished a trek through the snow, a time and an occasion I hadn’t thought about for decades.

When I was nine or ten years old (or somewhere around there) I had to walk down to the area around NMU once a week for something (and I don’t remember what that something was, only that I was in or around the University Center). I was a student at Whitman at the time, which means my family lived on the 1100 block of Norway Avenue. Once I finished school for the day, once a week I had to walk down to NMU for something, and then walk home when I was done. That’s how you did it in the early 70s, at least in my world. You walked.

Anyway, while I was out running as an adult yesterday I flashed back upon those days; specifically, upon a day when I had to walk back from NMU when it had been snowing quite a bit. Now, remember that I was nine or ten at the time, but for some reason I seem to recall that the snow was so deep and so hard to walk through that, at the time, I thought it would take me hours to get home (if, in fact, I ever did make it home). Every step seemed like it took all my energy—kind of like running in the snow yesterday—and the distance I still had yet to travel seemed insurmountable.

At least that’s what it seemed like to me at the time. Obviously, I eventually made it home the seven or eight blocks with no problem. The journey probably didn’t even take that long. It’s just that, at that time and with the snow, it seemed like those seven or eight blocks were half way around the world. Sure, I know now, as an adult, that I could walk that distance in ten minutes; heck, I could even probably run it in two minutes. But when you’re nine or ten and staring a seemingly endless journey in the face, it must make an impression on you.

Or, at least enough of an impression that you flash back to it over four decades later, for no reason other than it’s snowing again and the journey in front of you once again seems endless. The human mind is a delightfully weird piece of equipment, isn’t it?

(jim@wmqt.com)

Tuesday, 1/3

It’s only two days late, but I’ve started to use my 2017 calendars!

I actually received three of them, if you wanna count the giant wall calendar at work. That one’s in my office and it’s how I keep track of everything that’s going on in my life, at least to the extent that I keep track of everything going on in my life. Another of the calendars is the one Loraine gets me every year, one that features a different region of France in pictures each month. Must like past years, a few of the places highlighted (highlit?) are places that we usually visit are on this calendar, which is always cool, plus it features beauty shots of French food and French places. How can you go wrong with that?

The third calendar I have? Well, that’s the 2017 edition of “365 Stupidest Things Ever Said calendar, a calendar I get every year for Christmas. I’ve asked for it for, oh, the past 15 or so years, and every year I have this pre New Year’s tradition--I sit down, pull out the calendar, and read each and every page of it in one sitting. This accomplishes a great thing--there’s a point where the cumulative effect of all that stupidity catches up with me, and whatever control I have dissolves in a big puddle. I start laughing uncontrollably, with tears running down my eyes, and for the next couple of minutes, I’m unable to do nothing else. Loraine then just stares at me for a second, and shakes her head the way she’d shake her head at a puppy trying to chase its tail and accidentally running itself head-first into a wall.

Except I do it on purpose.

The page that set me off this year? Well, there were actually two of them, and read by themselves they’re not necessarily that funny, but when you consider I’d just read 200 or so other pages of stupid stuff; well, like I said, the cumulative effect was just something else. The first was this newspaper headline--

“Ohio residents cautioned against using toilet bowl cleaner in their hair”

I wasn’t aware of it, but that must be a big problem in the Buckeye State. The other? The statement from a “High Yield” account at a bank, which had, at the start of the month, a total of $688 in it. At the end of the month?

$688.02.

Yup, that’s quite the high yield!

Like I said, in and of themselves those two items aren’t gut-busting, but when placed near the end of a long line of stupid quotes, sayings, and newspaper headlines, it was the trigger that set my annual bout of self-induced hysteria off. And yes, I know I need help. What’s your point?

8-)

(jim@wmqt.com)