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Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo collected his first official sunburn of the season this gergous day. (Robbo’s doctor has been fussing at him recently about Vitamin D deficiency. A few more outings per month like today’s and that problem ought to rectify itself.)
First, he spent the morning bench coaching the younger Misses Port Swillers’ softball team to a 12-7 victory. (They now stand at 8-1 on the season). Among other things, he was delighted to discover that the youngest gel has the apparent super power ability to become two-dimensional at will, this being the only explanation of how she managed to slide under a tag at home plate. I’d swear when she pancaked, she went absolutely flat.
Next, he spent the afternoon puttering about in the yard, mowing, trimming, weeding and (just to mix things up a bit), giving the front door portico its yearly scrubbing.
We are paying the wages for our sinful slothiness in not having got round to cleaning out the gutters last fall, insofar as one of the ones on the front of the port swiller mansion, chock full of dead leaves, mulch and new maple saplings, recently wrenched itself away from the fascia board and started bowing out ominously. Yesterday, we finally got them cleaned. Today, we had a local handyman out to re-attach the bowmeister. As I stood about jawing with him, I discovered that he is a licensed bow-hunter and helps the county with keeping the local deer population within something approaching reasonable limits. When I mentioned that I used to hunt deer myself in my misspent yoot and that venison sausage was amongst my very favorite foods, he replied that he makes his own (among other products) all the time and would I like to have some of it?
This looks like the beginning of a bee-u-tiful friendship.
So now it’s just a matter of waiting for five o’clock to roll around. As a treat for a productive day’s work, I hied me to the butcher’s counter at the local Gourmet Giant (pronounced “GER-may GEEE-aunt”) and nabbed one of their extra thick ribeyes. Yum. After dins, it’ll probably be Buckaroo Banzai. The Nats are playing tonight, but I feel I need a break from watching them strand so many base-runners. Not good for ol’ Robbo’s ulcer.
A sultry afternoon coupled with a line of thundershowers coming in juuuuuust after ol’ Robbo finished grilling the evening cheeseburgers put this particular piece in mind. I am not, as a rule, particularly fond of programmatic musick, but sometimes it is the note juste.
This is an outstanding performance, by the bye, and illustrates an argument Robbo was recently making to the Mothe about Baroque musick in general. There are people of a certain age (mostly seniors, although there are also those younger persons who have never actually heard the musick but are willing enough to ape conventional disdain) who often say that they don’t like Baroque musick because it’s too stuffy, lifeless and la-di-dah, and doesn’t have enough feeling about it. (Or, to put it in another, more cringe-worthy way, isn’t authentic enough.) I firmly believe this is because of the performance practices of the mid-20th Century, which, when dealing with the Baroque, were stuffy, lifeless and la-di-dah, and which were, often, either the only or the primary source of exposure to such musick for these people. (Can one even imagine, say, Furtwangler dealing with Bach? The thought is unbearable.) Said performances were, almost invariably, over-instrumented, slow, stodgy and, for lack of a better word, lifeless. If that’s the way I was exposed to it, I probably wouldn’t have liked it either.
Fortunately, such was not the case. I consider myself positively blessed to have grown up with the period instrument movement, to have been exposed to the Baroque as performed by this and other historickally informed groups. I often say (well, to myself at any rate) that I would much rayther listen to the most ordinary, conventional Baroque musick than all but the best of any other genre.
Ol’ Robbo does love him some closely-reasoned polyphony.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo spent his Saturday morning out working in the yard and is now sitting down to a tall, cold glass of iced coffee (aka the Sweet, Blesséd Nectar of the Gods), smug and complacent in the knowledge that he got all of the mowing, weed-whacking, raking and blowing over and done before the rains come in later today and tomorrow. There’s still some weeding to be done, but we’ve been suffering a bit of a drought ’round here and the ground is getting rayther hard, so I feel it’s best to blow off put on hold the weeding until after the skies let loose. At least that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
The port swiller yard has, I’m afraid, deteriorated a great deal over the course of the years, now consisting more of weeds – clover, dandelion, that little low-growing, round-leafed, blue-flowered thing - than of grass. However, I have become quite comfortable with this: So long as the stuff is green and can be cut neat and trim, I no longer really give much of a damn what it’s composition may be.
Whilst laboring in teh vinyard, so to speak, I heard my first catbird of the season. As much as I like catbirds (and they are among my favorites), I can never compute how the expression “sitting in the catbird seat” can possibly mean the same thing as sitting pretty or being on top of things. To me, catbirds sound fussy and neurotic, and always seem to be working themselves up into some kind of tizzy. “Eeeeeh! EEEEEEeeeeh! EEEEEEEEEeeeh!!” they say. After a while, I find myself answering. What? What do you want? What can I do? I can only think that the expression “sitting in the catbird seat” is a bit of mellifluous nonsense and was never meant to be any kind of observation on the bird’s apparent character.
Now, had it been mockies, then it would make sense. But I suppose “sitting in the mockingbird seat” just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
Speaking of sitting in catbird seats, how does the paterfamilias properly reply to the eldest gel’s, “Dad! Can I take my friends to see the Nats game this afternoon? Pleeeease!!”? Like this: “While I’m out working in the yard, I want this house cleaned top to bottom, or not a smell of the game do you get, even if it means calling your friends at the last second to tell them your dad banned you.” That’s how. And it works. Leverage. It’s all about leverage.
So Mrs. R and teh gels, together with their friends, are off to Nat’nals Park even as I blog. I’ve got a few more jobs to take care of and decided to stay behind, but will probably flip the game on teevee myself later.
Speaking of ballgames, may I just note here that the younger gels’ softball team has roared out to a commanding 4-0 record to start their spring season? Last evening, the middle gel got two doubles, a walk and 4 ribbies. And these weren’t your little league Keystone Kops defense doubles either, but a pair of ropes that she positively crushed to deep center. Then she ended the game by deftly one-handing an awkward grounder to short and gunning down the runner at first. Proud? Moi?
Well, I suppose I had ought to go and finish up my chores so that I can spend the shank of the afternoon loafing in good conscience. And I do need a bit of R&R. Although I normally don’t post much about politics these days out of prudence, I must say that my nasal passages have been rubbed absolutely raw by the volume of beverages – hot and cold – I’ve been snarfing up over all those Dog Wars photoshops that have been appearing around the intertoobs. Hi. Larious.
Ah, how delightful to see the local doppler radar, a blank screen these many, many days past, covered for a change with green of varying shades.
How equally delightful to go outside in teh wet and see streams of liquified pollen running down the storm drains. Go! Go away! Shoo!!
If we could get a hard soaking that washes the air out good and proper, I might even start feeling like something more closely approximating a human being.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Ol’ Robbo doesn’t mean to indulge in wanton self-pity, but really, this continues to be an absolutely miserable allergy season. The combination of symptoms makes me simply want to crawl back into bed and stay there until, oh, June or so.
It also knocks about twenty points off of Robbo’s cognitive skills, reducing him to gratuitous random posting instead of developing something longer and more in-depth. So here we go:
♦ Today is the home opener for Robbo’s beloved Nationals. I can’t tell you how pleased I am that baseball is once again in full swing. However, I was rayther startled to discover that over the off-season, MASN let go the lovely and talented Debbi Taylor, who has for some time served as their dugout reporter, replacing her with some, ah, young person named Kristina Akra. I can’t say that I’m pleased with this move. Change is bad, m’kay? (UPDATE: The Nats hold on to win a nail-biter in 10. And Life is Good.)
♦ Today is also the opener for the younger gels’ softball season. At practice the other evening, a ball caromed off the youngest gel’s glove and hit her in the forehead, raising a considerable lump over her eyebrow. Debate has raged in the port swiller household since then over whether the lump was the size of a marble, a golf ball or a grapefruit, provoking testy questions from Dad such as, “Haven’t you people got anything better to squabble about?”
♦ The past few nights I have awakened to the sound of an owl hooting in the woods. (I have a dim memory that I’ve posted on this phenomenon before, perhaps at about this same time of year.) Anyhoo, it’s a delightful sound – unless, of course, you happen to be a field mouse. Do different types of owl have different calls? This one goes, “Whoo-huh-whoo-huh-WHOOOO!”
♦ Speaking of nights, I had a dream some time during Lent that I rescued a Jesuit missionary from a lynch mob on the National Mall. I have no earthly idea what this was supposed to mean.
♦ Speaking of Lent, now that it is over, ol’ Robbo has got back to his regular reading schedule. As has been the case for some years past, the very first author I have revisited is Evelyn Waugh. It is my resolution this year to read and reread all of his works, finally getting around to Helena and also going back to Brideshead even though I don’t especially like it. This may surprise (and outrage?) some of you friends of the decanter, but the fact of the matter is that I find it too syrupy and earnest, too melodramatic. I much prefer Sword of Honour as his greatest literary achievement.
♦ A conversation:
Eldest Gel: Hey, Dad, why don’t you mow the lawn?
Self: Why don’t you mow the lawn?
E.G.: Okay!
We’ll see how long that lasts.
Greetings, my fellow port swillers!
Regular friends of the decanter (and former camelidophiles) are familiar with ol’ Robbo’s perennial spring griping about the fact that the short hedge of forsythia that anchors the northwestern side of his garden never produces more than a paltry, token flowering each spring. (As for the rest of you, take my word for it – this is one of my evergreen grumbles.)
Anyhoo, this year is no exception. The golden yellow buds which ought to cover the bushes in their thousands are, once again, scarce as, oh….. similes fail me; scarce as elite law school students who genuinely can’t afford condoms.
However, what separates this year from previous anni floribus horribile is my radical response. You see, last year I noticed a sturdy young sapling starting to shoot up in the midst of the hedge, a sapling that I believe to be an offspring of a nearby pear tree. It was already so thick about the trunk when I spotted it and so firmly rooted that I couldn’t bother myself to try and dig it out. Not wanting it to interfere with the forsythia, however, I cut it way back along with all the bushes around it.
Not this year. Oh, no. The young tree is already shooting forth again in a blaze of fresh, young green. So be it! This year, I’m going to let the tree alone and hog the forsythia round it back all the way to their very foundations. Whether said forsythia then choose to simply turn up their roots and die, or whether they decide to come to the aid of the party, well, that’s their lookout. I wash my hands of them. (Or will, once I finish cutting them back.)
While ol’ Robbo is off having his gastrointestinal workings examined, friends of the decanter may, instead of contemplating that image, instead feast their eyes on one of my favorite bits of ancient Roman art work in celebration of the first day of Spring.
Oh, and if any of you had made plans to attend any of the Centennial Nat’nal Cherry Blossom Festival events scheduled for next month, I hope you like strolling in the leafy shade because the blooms are peaking now (already) and will be long gone in another couple weeks.
Cheers!
Greetings, my fellow port-swillers!
Ol’ Robbo has a confession to make: He was rayther a bad boy yesterday.
You see, the morning was taken up with a tour for accepted gels and parents at the middle gel’s new school – a little talk by the head, the gels shadowing current inmates through their morning classroom rotation with parents hovering about in the background, that sort of thing.
I had duly planned for this ahead of time and had put in the proper request for leave down to the shop on the idea that I would roll in some time mid-afternoon.
Weeeeelllll…… Round about lunchtime, I found myself sitting in the school courtyard. The flowers were all out, bees were buzzing around, the air was warm and humid, with just enough breeze to keep it from becoming sultry, and the Cathedral sat atop the hill bathed in sunshine.
And I thought to myself, Who are you kidding?
Hey, blame global warming.
Greetings, my fellow port-swillers, and Happy 3/14!
It is, indeed, a glorious day ’round here, with a forecast high of something not far short of 80. The only thing marring the picture is the pollen count, which is causing ol’ Robbo to feel as if somebody absentmindedly left their bowling ball in his sinuses and forgot to fetch it. Do you suppose Blue Cross covers nose amputations?
At any rate, as of last evening, the sides officially came off of the ol’ Wrangler for the season, meaning whoever sits in the back seat between now and the next snowfall will be getting Ma Nature, in all her moods, right between the eyeballs.
Speaking of Wranglers, reports I hear from up north indicate that the Mothe is thinking of buying one herself. Not a soft-top like mine, and probably not a stick-shift either, but hey, close enough. Perhaps I can talk her into raised suspension and oversized tires? Also, I may send her a pair of Click n’ Clack fuzzy dice and Yosemite Sam “Back Off!” mudflaps.
Oh, and don’t forget, Mothe: Wrangler drivers have a custom of waiving to one another as they pass. (Seriously. I find it to be a most amiable custom.)
Last evening found ol’ Robbo on the mound pitching a scrimmage at the gels’ softball practice. Granted, I was serving them up specifically so that the batters would put the ball in play, but the number of line drives I had to duck or sidestep made me feel even more like Charlie Brown than usual. The rest of the coaching staff and players evidently found my efforts to avoid getting beaned to be comic gold. Gold, Jerry!
A conversation: Eldest gel – “You people [i.e., Mrs. R and Self] drive me crazy sometimes!” Self – “Just returning the favor.”
Owing to all the excitement over the weekend regarding the middle gel, together with a visit by Mr. & Mrs. Former Llama Military Correspondent and their brood (three adorable but noisy childs who, combined with the gels, generate enough power to shift the port swiller residence on its foundation), which left ol’ Robbo decidedly drained, I decided to give myself a mental health day today.
One of the ways I spent the morning was in pottering about the yard, taking care of some late winter/early spring tasks like cutting back the local Buddleia population (well-known to friends of teh decanter as Kong and the Konglings), and generally surveying things in order to get an idea of what projects would most need doing as the weather warms up. (I’m afraid that at this stage of life my gardening efforts most resemble something along the lines of horticultural triage, putting my scant resources of time and energy to use simply to try and keep the jungle out.)
Anyhoo, regular port swillers might recall my mention last fall of the peach tree around the side of the house that fell over thanks to the gentle caresses of tropical storm Irene. Well, what with crumbling chimneys and internal plumbing issues and the like, I never got round to actually doing anything about said tree, apart from briefly toying with the idea of purchasing a chainsaw (which some of your Comments of Inevitable Doom convinced me to shelve for fear that I would somehow manage to amputate my own leg before I even got the durn thing home). At any rate, it still lies where it fell, blocking the approach to one of the gates to the back like an abatis, but not really noticable from anywhere else about the place.
As I pottered about today, I went over to inspect the tree, only to discover that it is still very much alive and putting out new buds, thank you very much. This got me thinking: It’s not as if much traffic goes that way and it’s not as if the thing is an eyesore. Why not just….leave it be. In fact, now that it’s down, it’ll be a lot easier for the Family Robbo to gather peaches than it has been heretofore. And indeed, the horizontal trunk now makes an admirable bench on which to sit while eating said peaches.
(I’ll never make a good gardener because I’m not nearly ruthless enough.)
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