knave

I like to think I'm pretty literate, and I have always known this is a word for a bad guy.


Watching an ancient (1939) Sherlock Holmes movie starring Basil Rathbone, he used the word to describe his mortal enemy, Moriarty.


In order to be precise, I looked it up in my iPhone Mirriam-Webster app, and their definition was "a tricky deceitful person" - in other words, a bad guy.


Whoo, sometimes I impress even myself.

Creatures

It seems every winter a creature invades the rafters above my tv room. I have absolutely no idea how it gets in,what it is,  but it sleeps 22 hours a day, not unlike my cats.


It seems quite benign, but make a noise and Tiger the wondercat goes into high gear (I hope it is to protect his chief-of-staff). Clawing his way over me, he listenens intently, and then promptly falls asleep.


I am willing to let the next owners to figure things out.

Kolchak - the night stalker

Although not forced watching in the curmudgeon handbook, I am quite the fan of this show.


Sadly, it only lasted one season, but it starred the delightful and talented Darren McGavin (You all, of course, watch "A Christmas Story" every Christmas, what with a kid getting his tongue stuck to a frozen metal flagpole, and all manner of other mayhem).


But, Kolchak is entirely different - it is sort of a blend of his brand of very active acting - I really think he did a lot of his own stunts - and co-starred Simon Oakland, also a treat.  Like John Steed, Kolchak leaped out of his convertible, rather than using the door.


It involved villains like werewolves, doppelgangers, vampires, diablos, and really, really odd other evil things.


Hollywood attempted a remake with a younger cast.  It failed in about a week.


That was the power of Darren McGavin.

First (and only) fight

Growing up, I lived in a nice small community where you walked to school, unlike the modern model of idiot mothers parking SUVs the size of Mars to await their, apparently, physically challenged offshoot.  After all, my town is 2 square miles, including 2 colleges.


As a kid, I would roll around in the dirt trying to gouge my brother's eyes out, generally sending my Mom shrieking out of the house to save face.


My message is about Jim, who lived right up the street, and for reasons I now forget, I hated him, so we scheduled a fight.


We all lived near a high-tension field that was our baseball field, model plane flying field, dog pooping field, the whole bit.


So the fight began - I am an admitted geek - I had no idea what I was doing.  So I threw a punch into his stomach and we all (we had an audience) paused while he threw up.


Voila!  Victory.

Second Gear

As I have mentioned, I am a fan of performance cars.  Today's automatics have like a zillion gears, but back in the shift days there were four.


One got you started, but it was two that really started the zip, and three only held it.  Four was more or less a highway gear.


Owning a nifty 4 cylinder BMW 320 from 1979 that could outperform my wife's 6 cylinder Datsun 380, I took great pleasure in second gear.


There were, of course, tickets involved, but when you can sneak a moment, you are thrilled.


You were part of the car, shifting as you watched the speed of the engine and all.


Aah, the days.

Curried Chicken

I just had a delivery of chinese food - pork fried rice, a favorite, and curried chicken, another favorite.


Then Tiger, the wonder cat went into high gear.  This guy eats Doritos, potato chips, and now, apparently spicy chinese curried chicken.  Boy, he can zip in and steal something off the tv tray  in a heartbeat when there is food afoot. He is now happily asleep, having nabbed his chicken.


What the heck was he fed on his home planet?

The "SPAM"

The curmudgeon's little 16-foot fiberglass sailboat was a real racer. It took all my energy to corral the sails and steer at the same time.  There were foot straps so you could lean across the deck to balance the boat (see keel boats as an entirely different species).

At the reservoir where I kept it, they actually had a club of them.  They were always trying to engage me in exercises of flipping over and managing to right the boats.  You know, standing on the centerboard and bringing the thing back upright.

My principle was, never get into that situation, and my long training in sailing saved me from ever having to do that.

I think I sold it in the nick of time.

The Cleaning Guy

For the last 30 years, being very preoccupied professionals, we have had the same guy come in to clean the house.


For bizarre reasons, we race around, sort of "pre-cleaning" for reasons that still escape me, seeing as how he was coming to clean and all.


Apparently, I am not alone - a dear employee did the exact same thing.


But, he still gets our pound of salt.

Glassware

I was just cleaning out the dishwasher, and realized I have 8 casual-day glassware styles easily adding up to about 100 pieces.


8. 100.  There are two of us.  That doesn't include the crystal in the dining room and the rarely used red somethingorever collection on the top shelf of the cabinet, used occasionally to match the decor of the occasional dinner party.


For the purposes of the repor, I will omit the 40 champaign glasses from our New Year's parties and assorted plasticware in the basement bar area (that's where they put them 70 years ago).  Although, two glasses have very clever double walls filled with liquid that you can chill and they keep your drink cool throughout a picnic.


I have sort of lost count.


Again, 2 of us.

Waking Up

In my prime, waking up in the morning was simple - stop the alarm, leap to your feet, do the morning ablutions and rush off to work.


These days it is a way more measured ritual - realizing that vivid dream you were just having isn't reality, getting Scruffy off your chest, and actually trying to stand up.  This takes at least 5 minutes.


The curmudgeon takes things slower these days, but what wonderful days!  Less 5 minutes.

Spotliter

In this curmudgeon's opinion, Black & Decker has produced two home product beauties - the Dustbuster and the SpotlLiter.


I have mounted the latter on the wall going downstairs from the kitchen.  It is a clever thing, given that all I do is open the basement door, and is within reach, and I have a handy flashlight, always charged.


The thing is, there are rarely electrical connections on basement stair walls, so it was rather tricky business finding a way to dress the source wire, find a source and fire it up.


Can I be impressed with myself?

"Hold"

The curmudgeon invested in a high-tech thermostat for his house many years ago.  It has kept him warm in the winter and cool in the summer.  


It has a button labelled "hold" to hold a temperature, if different from the painstaking programming it needed - and believe me - pain was part of it.


Apparently the "hold" button was completely misnamed.  Sort of a "hold when I feel like it" button.  So when I have a Dagwood moment for a late night snack, I find it hasn't held anything.


My feet are really, really cold right now.

Cat Tails

I have observed dog tails in action - they more or less wag.


Cat tails are entirely different - they can do all sorts of things.  Tiger, the wonder cat, as he falls asleep, which he does often, the last 2 inches of his tail still wags up and down, while the main part doesn't move.


What the heck are in these things?  And where does the motor control come from?


I think I just scared myself.

British Cars

Chapter 6 of the curmudgeon handbook demands that I broaden my international skills at being, err, curmudgeony.  So I have been watching reruns of "The Avengers"


What is perhaps the most entertaining part, to this engineer, is that the show has functioning British cars.  Steed's Rolls (Bentley?) burns oil at a furious rate, and Emma Peel's little sports car actually starts and runs.


I garaged my brother's classic Jaguar XKE for years in Cranford, and to this day, it still delights me that when it was in the mood, it would start up.  As an appreciator of performance cars, once underway, it was an exciting vehicle.  In high performance, your passenger couldn't lean forward to touch the dash.


But, being a British car, those were the rare days.

Bell Labs

Does anyone remember Bell Labs?  It was the birthplace of the transistor, Unix and one or 3,000 patents..


It was the must-work-for place for top-notch technical geeks, and, boy did it amass them.


Then the idiots running our company thought "hey, these are smart people, let's let them run things" - not the schooled MBAs in Business Management, but some pushy intelligeek who up until yesterday was writing software code.


Down the drain we went.

Mine!

This is not about coal or gold mines, but the curmudgeon's personal space.


Tiger, the wonder cat, a hunter-killer, sneaker of chipmunks into the house, and, in arm wrestling, frequently drawing blood, and then flopping over to become adorable, can be quite the pest.


But one thing he has never mastered is what foods are mine. Let me hasten to assure you I don't go after his.  As a curmudgeon, I must take a tv dinner into, oh, I don't know, THE TV ROOM, and a competition begins.  He goes for the food, and I yell "mine!".


In 8 years, this has had no effect.  His home planet must have missed this word in their training.


Eat fast.

Hats

As part of curmudgeon training, I am catching up on old (really, really old - Black & White) Perry Masons.


Manly men used to wear hats, until Kennedy screwed that up as well.  My Dad had actually carved a special hat holder on the door of our downstairs closet for the hats he wore to work.


John Steed, on the classic "Avengers " used his steel bowler to knock out ruffians.


Manly men. And hats. Not backward baseball ones, which sort of say "I'm a dimwit".

High Winds

A few years ago, high winds sailed my favorite picnic table into Jan's "rock necklace", and being safety glass, promptly exploded into, say, 1 or 2 million little bits of glass.  We spent the entire next summer retrieving them.


Our new table is cast iron, and even hurricane Irene couldn't budge it.  


But it is 2" higher, and eating at it was like being in kindergarden.  Being the engineering genius that I am, I carefully measured and removed 4 patio bricks (no simple feat), dropped the table feet into the new space, and voila!  Back in business.


Of course, you can no longer move the table, but there are sacrifices in life.

Gnats

"You have the attention span of a gnat"


I heard that a lot growing up, and in my more senior years seriously wonder if gnats have attention spans, or even brains.


But there are these moments, when I set off on a mission to the basement that when I arrive, I am dumbfounded what I came for.  I look around, seeking clues, but a crowded basement makes things more confusing. And, trudging back upstairs to recall the mission is not fun any longer.


Happily, I have a couch and tv down there, so one can always pause until something mission-related finally resurfaces.


I DO have the attention span of a gnat.  There is a "span" in there.  There's always hope.

Ogee

Thanks to my parents, I grew up quite the literate guy - despite choosing engineering for my lifelong career.


But, despite all my reading, searching the dictionary for words (a really mean device of Mom's - "look it up") - if I knew that, I wouldn't have had to paw through a dictionary looking for my word.


But with our recent kitchen redo, in addition to about a zillion decisions, there was the "ogee" decision.  Thanks to my good training, I was able to find out just what ogee was.


Good find.  Beautiful new kitchen counters.

The Avengers

I am watching my newest toy - the entire collection of "The Avengers" - a classic British show about really, really weird mysteries, but starring Patrick Macnee and Diana Rigg.  That is worth the price alone (which, by the way, wasn't insubstantial).


Just watching Steed's classic Rolls fly along British country roads warms the heart.


It must be my British heritage.

Hard Living

I have no idea who came up with this term, but I suspect it applies to me - drinking way too much, living on the couch at hours like this, the whole bit.


Actually, for you initiates, there really isn't any hardness on the couch, so relax.


My father is 88, and strong as an ox. - a gene I apparently didn't inherit, being 62 and on a couch at 3am.


But there is a steely side to me - I just need to find it and exercise it. 


Then there's the couch, and Murder, She Wrote reruns.


I can hardly think right now.  Hey - there's that hard word.

MR-8s

Many years ago, we let our garden designer talk us into a pergola over the garage entry.  At the time, I had no idea what a "pergola" was.  But according to his very creative plant designs, things grew along it and it really did look nice.


It also had three beautiful Halogen lamps to light up the garage apron.


Then, some years later, a very wet spring snowstorm tore the thing out of our garage walls.  He was personally embarrassed, and promptly built us a new one.  But along with the new came new lights - the dreaded MR8s.  They are marvels of tiny Halogen spotlights, as long as you can tolerate one burning out, say every week or two.  You, of course, cannot find these at the local hardware store.


I order them by the dozen on the web - actually I have only 2 left - but I fear a burnout coming on.


Give me incandescent.

Spices & Knives

Our kitchen is undergoing a major redo - granite countertops, new floor.  After 20 years, I can't really argue, but believe me, you can't kill formica.  But, times move on.


I had arranged a couple of drawers long ago - the spice drawer, where I had built a series of angled shelves and arranged the spices alphabetically.  Just because I still had some Ann Page spices that certainly had lost their potency, there was order.


The knife drawer is no different - I built an extremely clever 10-knife holder, the big ones on the right, down to the paring knives on the left.  There was a knife order, so you could shoot in, and claim the knife you were after.


It was the engineer in me.  Certain others, who will go unnamed, although we are a 2-person household, would slam the knives in wherever.


When great plans go awry.

Fraternity Hijinks

As part of the getting into the fraternity I joined at Brown, we all were required to take road trips to prove our worthiness.


No big whoop - a quick trip to the Providence waterfront, or the river we used to sail,  maybe even Boston, and all was OK.


Hah!  Gene Nelson and I were sent to Buffalo, NY.  Do you realize how far from Providence, RI that is?


We had to hitch hike, and a lovely older lady in a Thunderbird picked us up.  She used that car to it's potential - even the toll booth guy was greatly impressed at how quickly - like 90 mph - we got there, seeing the entry time stamp.


While there, we shot over into Canada - our invented piece of the adventure.  So I sent an old friend a postcard with, what I thought at the time, was a whimsical note that I had escaped to Canada to avoid the Vietnam War draft.


Unbenonced to me, he promptly called my folks.


After my safe return, I called home for my weekly checkin.  I believe my father's famous words were "we're still trying to scape your mother off the kitchen ceiling"


I defied gravity.

Crispy Crust Pizza

Despite Chicago's attempt to lay claim to pizza, NJ has the best.


I was a slave to a local place called Pat's - actually run by Pat - good crisp crust, and great flavor.


He retired, but Papa John and Dominos moved into town (it is a college town), so I thought great!


I miss my crispy crust.

Trash

Since when it was the responsibility of the guy in the household to take the trash out?

I have put up with it for 30 years, but yikes, it is getting really, really tiring.

You pull a bag out of the bin in the kitchen, and voila!

Even monkeys can do it.  Husbands have Murder, She Wrotes to watch.

Murder, She Wrote

As part of my furious training to keep in the Curmudgeon fraternity, I watch a lot of Murder, She Wrotes.


As anybody knows, it is framed in Boothbay Maine (although called Cabot Cove) - a place I have actually never been to.  But they are always referring to Rockport, which - a beautiful little seaside community - is scarily close to my own place.


What if California tourists invade? 


I think I need to buy a gun.  

Fishing

Growing up summering in Maine, the curmudgeon found that fishing in the harbor was about the most boring thing in a kid's life.


Even though it inadventurtanty produced a delightful free dinner of fresh flounder,it required patience that no little kid had.  Had the water not been 50 degrees, he would have simple dived overboard and swum home.


But, boy, that flounder was good.

Hidden Chipmunks

The curmudgeon, keeping some late hours, was, as ever, having horseplay with Tiger, the wonder cat.

Now that winter has set in, there aren't any chipmunk "buds", and I, his chief-of-staff, have become the chief victim of his enthusiasm.

We recently had a battle with my new "Universal" remote - boy - he can chew hard, and with 20,000 little buttons, a rage-inflated chew manages to send the tv into a foreign land, the cable box into axoplexy, and the DVD into perpetual displexcia.

Yeow - this is a hunter-killer cat.

Oh - then he plopped over and became adorable.  Who knows how to handle this?

Perry Mason

Perry Mason was an ought '57 tv series.  Paul Drake, his "operative" was forever stopping in front of drug stores, racing in, hot on a case, jumping into their phone booth and then dialing a number.


For those of you a lot younger than the curmudgeon, that was how calls were made - you dialed.  But the very image of someone racing to a phone in the breach of some emergency or other, and then spending at least a minute dialing is endlessly entertaining.  


I don't even know my wife's number - I just push a button.


Even Paul Drake would be impressed.

Fuel

In my furious efforts to be a good curmudgeon, I have been watching a lot of the original Hawaii 5-0.  Chapter 4 of the handbook rather insists.

Noting all the incoming plane activity in Hawaii, the plane of choice was a Boeing 707.  Four engines, it couldn't burn fuel fast enough.

No wonder we like them Arabs.

Dreams

The curmudgeon is an intense dreamer - he often awakes wondering if all that stuff was real - full color, the whole bit.


Then he bores his wife to death recounting the dream, because he remembers them, which, apparently many people don't.


Of late, in his advancing years, he does awake thinking the dream sequence actually happened, and sort of panics - actually, really panics.  But in the 5 minutes or so to awake, he settles down because Scruffy is clawing at his face for breakfast and reality sets in.


But, boy, that was a good dream.

Fawning

I have two cats.  I feed them, I house them, I expect a little lap time & such.

It is 1:30 in the morning, I'm doing important curmudgeon research with Hawaii 5-0, and they are laying about nearby.

No fawning whatsoever.

They are like teenagers.

Noshing

The curmudgeon is a world-class snacker.  Potato chips (especially with onion dip), Doritos, pretzels, nuts, you name it.


When you are a couch potato, this is a very necessary food source.


Chapter 3 in the curmudgeon manual is quite clear "snacking" is the term of choice, "noshing" actually being to old for old coots.


Now THAT is a life lesson.  Snack on.

Model Railroads

The curmudgeon was gifted with an American Flyer model railroad set by his grandfather.  My Dad converted a basement ping-pong table into a wonderful adventure for young kids.


Unlike that fake thing, Lionel, this remarkably clever thing ran on two tracks, not unlike the real thing.


And, like any genius product line, it gave my grandfather an annual gift - new engine, cattle shaky thing, special under pads that closed RR crossing arms as the train approached - I have quite the collection.


In the early 70s, I refurbished it all, setting up a small circle of track around my Christmas tree.


Remember, WD-40 had been invented.

Middle-aged coot

As part of his ongoing training, the curmudgeon heard this term on his endless watching of Murder, She Wrote.


I, dear readers, am an OLD coot, the only kind of coot I thought existed.


Like 8-track tapes, I think I missed something.

Cat Patrol

Shortly after forcing me awake at 5 am and getting fed, both of my cats ask to go outside.


Scruffy just wants to do her business in my wife's garden - which is wonderful, lessoning my litterbox work and all, and is back within minutes.


Tiger, the wonder cat, goes on patrol.  Goodness knows what this involves, but he owns the neighborhood, and I would not want to be the creature he encounters.


Then he pops back in and eats treats out of my hand.  Does life get any more rich?

When Worlds Collide

I was recently cleaning up in the kitchen, and had to wet the sponge alive to clean up some wet matter.


Wet it to clean up wet stuff.


My head nearly exploded.  This was just like Tiger licking himself dry after his famous inadvertent plunge into the pool.


I only passed out for a moment.  Tiger licked me awake.

Stability

Growing up learning how to sail, I learned from the skipper that very smart boat designers had figured out how to balance sail power and keel weight.


And, when you are sailing a 40 foot racing sloop, and the wind is really high, you kind of hope they got it right, because a two ton keel could sink you in 50 degree water rather quickly.  


I bought myself a centerboard boat - a real beauty, if you think buying a boat in Cranford, NJ makes any sense whatsoever.  The not sinking required rather athletic work, and, of course, good sailing training.


Keeping things stable.

Life Lessons

As I was preparing this little note, Tiger, the wonder cat joined me on the pc keyboard.


I have no idea what I sent the President this time, but he settled in on the keyboard, purred (a killer for the curmudgeon) and I realized something - life moments are way more important than littler things, like trying to pound out a new blog.  So, we bonded, and as usual, he hit keys I never knew existed.


I think I'm about to cry.

Grass Plants

I grew up hating grass, mostly because I had to mow it.


When I bought my house, I discovered there was an actual grass PLANT.  Like grass, it grows endlessly, and needs a tad more than mowing in the fall.


This requires the curmudgeon to invest in some sort of exotic device to shave it down, until the evil plant regrows next spring.


Give me the rain forests - they have snakes and stuff, but no grass plants.

Sheds

I have a beautiful pool shed, and gifted my wife a garden shed.  Both live on railroad property that our entire neighborhood has taken over as back yards over the years.


But my thinking was this: my brother did an inventory of sheds/outbuildings/well covers, etc. at the compound in Maine, and came up with 20.  I think I suffered a stroke.  Worse, I even contributed a shed.


The guilt is palpable.

The Brits

The curmudgeon is the first one to admit he is of British descent.


While keeping up his training, watching a Murder, She Wrote (it is in the manual), he was reminded that during the Revolution, they ran a few ships into the shore in the East River in NYC  to serve as prison ships.


Hapless American POWs were tossed into these things, lived in their own filth (those that lived) and ate fly larvae on their bodies to stay alive.


Yes, dear readers, the Brits with the cute accent.

Doors

I recently engaged our favorite painter to refresh the paint on our doors.  Now, bear in mind, I live in a cute 2,500 sq. foot cape, so you would think, big deal.


There is the front door, the back door (we're up to 2 here - keep count), the side door, the side door onto the breezeway, the breezeway door that Tiger, the wonder cat can manage to open, then the breezeway door to the garage, and the garage's own back door.  (I'll skip the fancy door between the living room and the breezeway).


They all take weather and get wear and tear.  It was time for a repaint.


So I called our favorite painter, and things went right down the drain.


When I was growing up, there was a paint color called  "white".


Slap it on the dinghy, and all was well.


Then I got married - there was bone white, atrium white, brilliant white, OW-6 (an apparently secret white).


It is no wonder I drink.

Heat Surge

I recently fell prey to an infomercial for a very pretty product called the "heat surge".  It is pretty indeed - I now have a beautiful fire wherever I want, without all that Boy Scout splitting wood, finding kindling, building the correct fire base, etc.


But, "heat surge?" - my hair dryer - yes, I once had had hair and needed one - produced more heat.


Nowhere near as pretty;  life is a balancing act.