Cellar dweller.

It's been very cold for several weeks now -- really, since winter began. Usually we get a few warm spells in the winter here in the Hudson Valley. We'll have a couple of wind-blasted days of misery, ice and snow, the usual, but then a few days in the forties to kind of reset, melt some of the snirt, and wash off some salt with a little rain, before it's back to the cooler. Not this winter. One below-freezing day after another. Regularly colder here than in Anchorage. 

So my basement, which I never finished nor cared to, remains chilly. 

Unfortunately I have a lot to do down there. 

Artist's depiction of my cellar

As the Great Lileks is doing, we are aiming to get the house ready to show. This has meant a number of steps, all challenging, like:

• Paint the porch -- a frantic job done in late October before winter hit
• Spray wash the siding -- reluctantly accepted this recommendation, but it made the house look like new
• Dumpster rental -- frantic tossing of decades of old stuff
• Large item removal -- old fridge in cellar, book shelves
• New carpeting -- another great idea, painfully expensive, and made for one exceptionally stressful day for us and the dog
• Professional deep clean -- this also was nice, but I'm not used to strangers cleaning up after me
• Prepare for real estate photographer -- frantic removal of all personal effects and making rooms look like hotel rooms

And now:

YOU ARE HERE →🞋←

And here means getting ready for showtime. 

The problem is that all those other steps resulted in box after box of things going into the cellar, with no time to arrange them. That was okay to this point, as the photographer wasn't going to bother with pictures of the basement or garage. But NOW, we have to make the clutter neat. And this is where I am today. 

It's all for the good, but man, I am tired, and I am cold down in the cellar. I hear it's warmer down south, and they don't bother putting cellars in houses. I think that's where we'll go. Any suggestions? 

Foodball!

You may have heard there is a large football game going on tonight.

Big bin of these in the store Friday:

As you probably also have heard, Glad Take-Alongs are helpful food-safe plastic containers that are as airtight as Tupperware but cheaper and not expected to last for generations. They are often used for party situations -- if you're bringing food to a party, you don't want to demand your Tupperware back before you go home; you also don't want to demand your host do the dishes for you and return it clean at some point. With a Take-Along, the thing can be chucked or washed and reused or returned and no one feels like he or she has been taken advantage of. You see them around a lot for Christmas, but this is the first time I have seen sports-shaped containers -- here, American footballs with the classic brown.

I'm not going anywhere tonight, or I might have been tempted to pick up a pack. But why? As I considered through my aisle wandering, it occurred to me that the individual containers are not that large -- too small for, say, a party-size serving of wings or Swedish meatballs. (Sorry, Vikings.) Also, while the containers are heatsafe and microwaveable, they are not great for transporting hot foods, and they have no natural insulation. You might be riding in the car with a lap full of really hot beanie weenies. 

Further, they're too small for chips, too large for dips, too small for salads, too funny shaped for desserts . . . In fact, I can't think of any party foods that would work well in these containers. Maybe that's why there were so many of them in the bin with two days to go until the Super Bowl. 

Will unsold units be sold at a discount? Will they be returned to Glad? I'd be interested to know. But I think that either these things will be used for leftovers, or they will be leftovers. 

Good luck, Glad. Maybe basketball-shaped bowls for NCAA March Madness would work better? 

Is this thing on?

Hello, out there in Internet land! After a long absence I have returned! 

Don't all go crazy, now!

No? Not even a little crazy?

Fine, be that way. 

Anyway, yes, due mostly to work obligations, I have been unable to post for some time. I have come somewhat out from under the pile of said obligations, but my main reason for priortizing my online presence is this: 

Some of you may know that the fine folks at Raconteur Press have published my YA novel I've Got This, and it was put to me that my readers (who are all tasteful and good looking) might want to find a way to contact me. So here I am. Come at me, bro! 

The book is available from the typical sources (like Amazon, Books-a-Million, maybe the dumpster at Publishers Weekly) and my contact email remains the same:  frederick_key@yahoo.com. Someone has to give Yahoo something to do, after all. 

I hope to post regularly, but have not figured out a schedule yet. For those just peeking in for the first time, the general topics are books, comics, food, work, home ownership, what my dog did, the perils of modern living, and everything else. The last file, oddly, is the smallest. Maybe I should get out more. 

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope to see you again soon!

-Fred

Have a super new year!

There's mixed feelings about the trailer for the new Superman picture coming next year. I liked it, but I don't much bother with movies anymore. Still, one has to admire the endurance of the titular hero, who turns 87 next year. This is what he was up to 80 years ago.

Never mind the February issue date; this would have been on sale in December 1944. Comic books posted a cover date three months in advance to retain their shelf life, or did until the newsstand business collapsed. 

In 1944, Supes had been around for six years, a hero of radio since 1940 and Fleischer cartoons since 1941. While the big star of Action Comics since its first issue, he was not the only character with a story. Others in issue 81 featured explorer Congo Bill, the Vigilante, and Zatara the Magician. You got a lot for your dime in those days.

While the cover scene wasn't in the issue, it makes me think of what American readers guessed but couldn't know would come along in the "little chap's" year of 1945. The end of the war was hoped for and expected, yes, but the death of the president and the sudden entry of humanity into the atomic age would be shocks. There were fewer than 10,000 television sets in homes in 1945, but that would balloon to six million in five years. The top-grossing movie of 1945 would be The Bells of St. Mary's, if you can believe it. And Superman would meet Batman for the first time -- not in the comics, but on the radio show. (They would not officially meet in the comics until 1952.) 

As this highly bizarre year draws to a close, I wish you a super and happy 2025 -- I can hardly believe we're a quarter of the way into this far-futuristic 21st century! -- and that no one drops any nuclear bombs or anything crazy like that. May our wars stay cold and our economy hot, and peace and happiness and good health be yours. Thanks for stopping by.

And a Milk-Bone in a pear tree.

Traffic at the supermarket was on the light side Friday morning -- I could only suppose that people were still reeling from the celebrations or still had a lot of food left in the house. Maybe both. But I was there, although my list was short, and the PA system was still playing Christmas music -- mixed in with a few secular tunes, as it is important to detox slowly. 

Near the entrance I saw this for a big discount and snapped it up. It is billed as an advent calendar but it is NOT; it is a 12 Days of Christmas calendar, and therefore just a couple of days into its usefulness.  

 As you can see, Milk-Bone called this an "Advent Calendar for Dogs," but the theme is the "12 Days of Woof-mas." It works as a treat-a-day display as such, since there are 12 days of Christmas, but as an Advent calendar it would fall short by weeks. And yet, there it was, five dollars off, so apparently everyone is out of whack on this one. 

The thing has fold-out backing to stand up, and each little doghouse has a medium-sized treat from the Milk-Bone catalog behind it. Had I bought this new it would have cost ten bucks, which is way too much for a handful of treats for a heathen dog. (He was blessed on St. Francis's feast day, but still.) Actually, five bucks was still too much, but it was worth it for the novelty. 

Well, pup got two treats yesterday and will get two today, on the fourth day of Christmas, and that will bring him up to speed. One way or another, I am sure he is enjoying them more than he would four calling birds, which would probably just fly off and annoy him. Ditto the French hens et al. A treat in the hand is worth any number of birds in any number of bushes to a dog. Actually, for me too. 

A small light.

The smallest window in the house is in the laundry room, which faces the side and does not provide much visibility for anything. However, I still stick a light-up angel there every year, because you can see it from the street as you come down the hill. The front windows are accounted for; the east side of the house has no windows at all. On the west side is just the one tiny window, and it has an angel in it. 

One of the oddest memories of Christmas I have is sitting in the backseat of the family's car on the way home. It was a few days after the holiday itself, and we'd been to see family friends -- and stayed out late, much later than we normally did, hours after midnight. I remember it was cold, maybe cold enough for Mom to recommend the blanket that we kept in the back of the car, which was made of rubberized plastic and had frozen and was not much help.

It seemed like the whole town, the whole city was asleep as we pulled away. Houses were dark; if anyone still had Christmas lights up, they had unplugged them. It was all just black, bleak, cold winter to look forward to now. 

I recall seeing one light, though, in the window of a large house before we got to the main road. I used to think it was a Santa Claus face, outlined in green lights, but as time goes on I am not certain. What I do know is how it made me feel -- some joy, some peace, but mostly longing for that one holiday light in that one small window of that dark house in that whole dark town. I have forgotten what it looked like, but I have never forgotten its effect on me. 

Christmas was not over, it said; in fact, in a crucial way, Christmas is never over. Sometimes the smallest things have the largest greatest strength; no amount of darkness can dim the smallest light. The tiny miracle of Christmas opens the door to all the others, and it is Christmas every day. 

So I wish you a very happy, peaceful Christmas, today and all of your days. Thank you for reading, and best of all things to you. 

Christmas earworm.

Got a famous Christmas number stuck in my head. I replace it with something else but it keeps coming back.

Is it a gorgeous hymn like "O Holy Night" or "Hark, the Herald Angeles Sing"? Is it a beautiful poem set to music like "O Little Town of Bethlehem"? Is it a hopping number like "Boogie Woogie Santa Claus" or "Little St. Nick" or even "Christmas in Killarney"? 

Nope. 

Actually it's the Mellencamp version that I heard in the supermarket, so it could be worse. It wasn't the original or the Spike Jones version or anything with soggy child singers; it wasn't the Jackson 5 version either. Nor was it Kip Addotta's "I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus," so I guess I ought to be grateful. 

Still, Christmas time is about the only time you can hear music in public that isn't less than fifteen years old, so I kind of hate when a lousy song wheedles its way in. 

Well, thanks to Dr. Stiiv, I know the cure for earworms. It may not be particularly festive, but the theme from Danger!! Death Ray (courtesy of MST3K) is known to drive other music out of active memory. 

Wishing you a boppa-dop-doppa-bop-bop Christmas!