Sabbatical

To all my loyal readers:

The Curmudgeon Societé Generale Executive Council reports that they are quite pleased with how, through my work, I have actually managed to humanize curmudgeonry. They had nearly given up hope that our thinking could be effectively communicated to you "normals."

As a reward for all my hard work, they have granted my request for a little sabbatical this summer. As my loyal readers well know, I haven't taken a break for 2 years now. 

Stay strong: I will return to the task at hand in a few short weeks. 

Knees

Looks like this spring was the tipping point - I finally broke down and bought a pair of knee pads. Sure, the need for these things has been sneaking up on me - I've found myself grabbing my Sainted wife's "gardening aids" for kneeling-related work outside. 

And at my age, getting down on one's knees - and worse, getting back up off them - is quite a production, so any assistance in this department is most welcome. 

Knee pads it was. 

Put those suckers on and you can prance about like a pro. Actually, they sort of give me a sailor's swagger. AND I cut quite the figure of "I'm doing manly stuff" with the women. 

Still waiting for that last bit to kick in. 

Prom Night

Yes I'm a curmudgeon, but like most humans, I did go to my senior prom. Actually, way back in high school I was, er, affable. 

Back then the "girls" decorated the gym up real nice - none of this renting hotel ballrooms I see so much of around here these days. I washed the family station wagon to whisk my date to the prom in style - albeit not the same as today's de rigueur limo rental. 

It is nice to see that kids today take prom night as seriously as we did, even though Taco Bell hadn't made it to the east coast back then. But these kids are doing it in style. 

Cell Phones Come to Maine

It's quiet here in our little cottage in a small fishing village on Maine's scenic coast. Life slows down. Heck, as a kid, we only dialed 4 digits to call anyone else on the peninsula. TV came through the air, so being on a steep hill, that meant it never came to us. No TV. Very dark nights. Lots of Monopoly. 

But times change. We had to go to the standard 7-digit telephone dialing plan. And satellite TV arrived, bringing, well, TV. 

And finally cell phones. They built a tower we could actually see from our front porch, but strangely, no cell service. This bore looking into. And there it was - an Osprey had promptly built a nest atop it and as a protected species, they couldn't have us uncaring citified folks from away bombarding Osprey chicks with evil cell phone rays. 

So, for two years, there it stood - a million-dollar condo for a bird. I have no proof of this, but winters are long here and a lot of people around here have guns. All I know is that we now have great cell service.

Maybe Osprey poop is a conductor. 

Wind Chimes

I made the Curmudgeon Societé Generale position on lawn tchotchkes quite clear back a year ago in May: avoid. This was before my Sainted wife set her sights on wind chimes. 

These things offend on multiple levels - they don't just sit there and annoy like most tchotchkes; they make noise, too. 

In an afternoon breeze, these things can actually be...as annoying as fingernails on a chalkboard. In a movie, they are used for like 5 seconds -  at best - to set a mood. In real life, well, the movie people smartly limited things to a few seconds: the constant noise makes you want to commit murder. 

So I, ever the caring curmudgeonly husband, got a new chime. It sounded just like a Maine coast bell buoy in the fog. Sort of fighting fire with fire.