A Leap Year Geo Quest

   Note to my non-geocaching friends:  for an explanation of geocaching, click here .  

   Glancing at my geocaching.com statistics page late last year I saw above my twelve-month grid that I had logged caches on 244 days of the year. I thought that was pretty good until I realized that I’d not logged anything on 122 days. That’s exactly one third of the year. Since this is a leap year, only the second in the eight years I’ve been caching, I figured this was a perfect time to get rid of all those zeroes and show at least one cache logged for each day of the year.

   It’s September now and I’m three-quarters through the quest. I needed only one for this month and that was on the 9^th so I thought I’d sit down and write about how it’s going before next month’s quest days roll around.

   It didn’t start out well. New Year’s Day was a Sunday and I’d slated my first quest find for the trip home from church. Maybe it was the fact that I was in my church duds and didn’t want to get dirty or that the wife was waiting in the car, my first quest cache was logged as a DNF (did not find). Fortunately, I’d programmed a backup hide and got it on the way to my daughter’s New Year’s Day gathering. The quest had officially begun--1 down, 121 to go.

   My dictionary defines a quest as an adventurous journey in search of some thing or goal. My goal is to remove a bunch of zeroes from a grid on the Internet. In that regard, it’s definitely a quest. The jury’s still out on the “adventurous” part. While I tried to seek caches hidden in the woods such as my eight-find hike through the Milestone Cache Corner in the Cook County Forest Preserves on Leap Year Day, many finds were PNG’s (Park n' Grab, easy hides in parking lots). It was brutally hot this summer and the thought of traipsing through the woods soaked in sweat and DEET didn’t appeal to me. Now that autumn is here in northeastern Illinois and the weather’s cooled, I’ll head back into the woods for more adventure.

   How’s it going? So far, so good. I’ve logged finds on the first 84 of the quest days with 38 left to go. Now it gets interesting. The months of October and December are very busy for me. Most days I leave for work just after sunrise and head back way after dark. There are no days off, either. I’ve set aside a good number of PNG’s for those days. Will they be enough? I’ll let you know in January.

  

  

Ask A Stupid Question, Get A Smart-Ass Answer

  You’ve seen them at parades, fairs, and other civic events but you don’t really pay attention. They normally handle traffic and make sure pedestrians are safe. Some wear badges and uniforms. Others wear safety vests. You think they’re police and that’s just fine with them. It helps avoid trouble. They even drive police cars, albeit olds ones the police departments don’t want any more. The cars have lights and sirens but, instead of “police” they read:  Emergency Services or ESDA.
   They are EMA’s, members of your local Emergency Management Agency. Some are volunteers and some are paid on call but they’re always there when you need them. When severe weather threatens they’re out spotting storms. If a storm does occur, they help with the clean up and recovery. They also aid police and fire personnel, directing traffic away from incidents.
   The only time you notice them is when they have a street or road blocked between where you are and where you need to be. Most people will see the roadblock and find another way to their destination. Others will drive right up to the emergency vehicle and start asking questions. This blocks traffic and makes the EMA’s job more difficult.
  EMA’s are trained to be helpful and courteous when dealing with the public but that training is severely tested when their directions aren’t followed. To help you understand that conflict, here is a sample confrontation between motorist and EMA. The motorist’s questions will be in italics, the EMA’s responses in regular type, and what he really means in bold.

   Scene: a semi-rural intersection near your home. One or more emergency vehicles with all their lights flashing have blocked the westbound lane of a two-lane road. In front of them are barricades, traffic cones, or flares, or any combination of all three. An approaching driver who has the option of turning north, south, or going back east drives right up to the roadblock and tries to go around. He looks surprised and incredulous when the EMA has the temerity to yell at him to stop.

  I’m sorry, officer, is the road closed?
  Yes, sir.
  Or course it is, you idiot. Did you think I had nothing better do to on this blisteringly hot/brutally cold/torrentially rainy/incredibly windy night than to get out of my nice, warm bed at this ungodly hour and come out here to set up all this stuff?

  Why is the road closed?
  There’s a (insert your choice of disaster here: rolled-over truck, downed tree, downed power lines, washed-out culvert, fire, tornado damage, flood, plague of locusts, zombie apocalypse) just around the bend.
  Well, if you must know, I heard you’d be coming this way and did all this just to piss you off.

   So why can’t I go down there?
  I just explained that to you, sir.
  Get the shit out of your ears, assface.

  I know the mayor.
  Is that a fact.
  So does every other mope who stops here.

   You don’t believe me. I’ll call him right now.
   I can’t stop you, sir.
   Go ahead, smart ass. I’m sure he’d love to hear from you at this hour of the morning.
 
  C’mon, I just need to go a couple of blocks. 
  I’m sorry, sir. That’s beyond the incident.
  Unless that piece of shit you call a car can fly, you’re not getting past me.

  But I don’t know any other way.
  There are several other ways.
  Ever heard of a map, Magellan? Either get one or figure it out for yourself. I’ve got better things to do than try to explain to a dimwit like you how get your stupid, sorry ass from here to there.

  So how else can I get there?
  I’d be happy to give you an alternate route, sir. Go south from here, take the first right, the next right after that, then the first left. That’ll put you on this same road but past the obstruction.
  Do I look like Rand-fuckin’-McNally to you?

   That sounds complicated.
   It’s the easiest way, sir.
   You’re shitting me, right? Two rights and a left complicated?? Nobody’s that stupid.

   OK, I’ll give it a try.
   You’ll be fine, sir.
   A geographically challenged fuckwad like you’ll be back here in twenty minutes if you don’t wind up in bufu nowhere first.

   Thank you, officer.
   Have a nice night, sir.
   Go fuck yourself. 

   So the next time you approach a road blocked by your local EMA you’ll follow their directions and go the way they send you--if you know what’s good for you.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 



 

Number Two On The Job

   Welcome to Number Two On the Job where your Number Two stories are Number One with us.
   My son-in-law, Al, an electrician, loves to regale anyone who’ll listen with stories of his prowess at clogging toilets while on the job. It’s a great source of entertainment at family gatherings, weddings, baptisms, and funerals as he talks of McGuyvering ways to clear the clog with items on hand, usually 8-gauge wire and a long screwdriver. 
   On the way home from a Bulls game last year with my sons Jim and Ed he was talking about his latest adventures when Ed, a carpenter, chimed in with some shit stories of his own. This went on all the way home and I said I oughta put these gems together in a book.
   The book idea sat like water in a toilet tank until a family Christmas vacation to Wisconsin Dells helped flush it out. While the women went shopping and the kids played in another room, the four of us sat in Al’s bedroom smoking cigars and drinking Maker’s Mark as the stories started to ooze out again. This time we said we were gonna do it, but what to call it? We pinched out several ideas but “Number Two On The Job” is what stuck to the wall.
   Now we have a title and a few stories but not enough to fill a book to the rim. Even Jim, Ed, and Al together can’t do that. This is where you come in.
   If you have a story about a time at work when nature called at a most inconvenient moment, we want to hear about it. Did you make it? Did you come up short? What obstacles did you have to overcome? How did you hide it? Don’t spare any details.
   Not a writer? Not to worry. Just send us your story in your own words and be as descriptive as possible. We’ll take care of the rest. To give you an idea of what we’re looking for, here’s my story.

 Buddy, Can You Spare A Dime?

   It was the spring of 1970. I was a senior in college looking for work in the real world. On many a morning I drove into downtown Chicago, parked, and hoofed it through the Loop to meet with some recruiter. This was such a morning.
   It was a warm for the time of year because I remember not wearing a coat. I was looking good in my gray double-breasted Edwardian suit jacket. The matching pants flared over my black wingtips secured not with laces but silver buckles. My silver shirt was outsilvered by my wide shiny silver tie with the huge knot. I was stylin’ big time.
   I was headed north on the east side of State Street to some office building when the rumbling started. It quickly turned into the gurgling and churning that makes you afraid to laugh, cough, or sneeze. The thought of farting is terrifying. It meant I had to go NOW, sooner if possible.
   Looking around, I didn’t see too many options but I knew the Palmer House was right around the corner on Monroe. I walked through the ornate lobby quickly but not so quickly as to attract attention, up the ornate stairs, step by agonizing step, and into the ornate, marble-lined men’s room. There was no one by the sinks or urinals and it appeared no one was using the stalls. This was going to be loud and messy. I sure didn’t want to share it with anyone. Being inches away from safety I started to relax, then–Oh Shit!  Pay toilets.
   It was ten cents but could have been a million dollars. I had no change. There was no attendant and no time to go back to the lobby. I couldn’t be sure if they’d even make change for some mope with a red face contorted in agony.
   There was no time left. I hung my suit jacket over the door and crawled under, hoping the floor was dry. It was, and clean, too. I had made it. What came out of me was a torrent of brown liquid that caused enough splashback to make that toilet seem like a bidet. After several attempts to leave the stall only to be forced back for another round of gut-wrenching bowel evacuation, I finally opened the door and headed out. The attendant had returned but I didn’t tip him. Thanks for nothing, pal.
   I went to my interview like nothing had happened. I didn’t get the job but I didn’t have to clean my suit either. 

That’s my story. Surely yours is better. If it is, we’ll stop calling you Shirley. 

Send it to nbr2otj@gmail.com.  Your highly-trained editorial staff is waiting to hear from you.

Jim Riley         Al Gioia         James Riley          Ed Riley

Here’s the fine print and other semi-legal crap:

   Before you start, here are a few ground rules. Once the publisher’s asshole lawyers get ahold of this there’ll be a whole lot more, but this is good enough for now.

1. Stories should be first-person accounts. Either it happened to you or you witnessed it happening to someone else.
2. If other people are involved, we’ll need signed authorization to use their names. Better yet, refer to them as “some guy,” “my co-worker,” “or “the douchebag in the next cubicle.”
3.  Please include your name and address. Got some balls? Tell us who you work for. If we use your story we’ll try to get you (and your boss) a free copy of the book.
4.  Don’t hold your breath. Publishers are notorious for being miserly bastards who hate to give anything away–like royalties to deserving writers.
5.  We’d like to use your real name but will withhold it on request. We don’t blame you for not wanting the world to know what happened.
6.  There is no rule six.
7.  Lots of jobs have a lingo all their own. Use it to make the story authentic. Be sure to include an explanation of any terms that might not be well-known to the general public. We’ll be contacting you if necessary.
8.  There is no minimum or maximum number of words per story but 200-300 words will fit perfectly on one page. We’re trying to keep the stories short for reading in the can. Don’t limit yourself,though. If your story needs more space to be told, let your creativity run wild. BTW, my story is 421 words.
9.  Have fun and send your story to nbr2otj@gmail.com today.

Thanks,

Jim Riley, author of "O Really, Riley?"
  


  
  
  

  

A New Voice In Rock n' Roll Heaven

   The local news tease blared: “the latest on Whitney Houston tonight at ten.” I turned to the wife and said, “The latest? She’s still dead, that’s the latest.”
   Once again, the media has provided us with ‘round the clock  “team coverage” of something we knew was going to happen anyway–the untimely death of another superstar gone bad. Meanwhile, some of the not-so-famous met their fate last week actually doing something for the betterment of us all. American soldiers, firefighters, police, their passing may have been noted in a few lines of their local paper, if at all.
   So a celebrity train wreck has booked an early departure for rock ‘n roll heaven, paid for by drugs, alcohol, paranoia, or the pressures of superstardom. Each pays a different fare but the one-way passage gets them to the same destination–the end of the line. The passenger manifest is a long one: Amy Winehouse, Michael Jackson, Elvis, Janis Joplin and others too numerous to list, each talented in his or her own way, each tossing that talent to the wayside like so many empty bottles and syringes.
   Whitney Houston’s talent was amazing. Even though I’m sick of hearing “I Will Always Love You” after the constant repetition this week I’m still awestruck by her power and range. From the throaty whisper of the opening lines to the soaring final chorus, she covered that song and made it her own. Anyone who’s thinking of singing The Star Spangled Banner at any event from a high school basketball game to the World Series should take a lesson from her stirring performance at Super Bowl XXV. Those who butcher our national anthem by adding notes and words that don’t belong should watch the video over and over until they realize Whitney wrote the book how it should be done.
   Talent like that should live forever. It will in audio and video but we’ll never know where it could have taken us if she hadn’t thrown it away to the lure of chemical highs and lows. 
   Maybe if she hadn’t been discovered  in her local church and thrust on the national stage, she’d still be singing praise to God instead of explaining to Him.

Weird Tricks Under The Sheets

   Maybe you’ve seen this ad, maybe you haven’t. As someone who’s been on the buying end of advertising and the end that writes advertising copy, aka the butt end, I look at all advertising. It doesn’t matter if it’s on TV, on line, or in print, I look at it all.  Some ads leave no doubt as to what they’re selling and the benefits thereof. Others are obtuse, leaving you wondering just what the heck the product is. Some ads are genius; just watch the Super Bowl. Others are pure garbage but you usually have to stay up past midnight or watch obscure cable channels to see them.
  This one shows up on Yahoo and intrigues the hell out of me.
   One weird trick to stay asleep? Judging from the picture what could it be? Maybe you’d have to be a large-breasted woman. Then you gotta wonder how she’d get any rest at all with those things bouncing around all night. No matter how she tries to sleep, they have to get in the way.
   If you’re a guy, maybe it means you have to find a large-breasted woman to sleep with you. Yeah, good luck with that. I can guarantee that if something like her was next to me in bed, nobody would be getting any sleep. But there’d be more than one weird trick going on.

The Never-ending Season

   Christmas 2011 is over. All the wife’s decorations, crammed into more than a score of 32-gallon plastic storage boxes full of every possible item associated with the holiday, are back on their shelves in the garage. Bigger items such as the artificial green plastic tree and decorations too large for the boxes reside on their own shelves awaiting the first week of December 2012 when they’ll be deployed again.
   But is it really over? Not until the last vestige of the season is put away and the final remnant cleaned up. Therein lies the reason for the never-ending season.
   Lurking somewhere in our living room carpet are rogue needles from the tree. Yes, we’ve vacuumed scrupulously with both a standup machine and a shop vac. Still they lurk, invisible to the naked eye unless you happen upon them in just the right light, at just the right angle. There it is! Pick it up now before the light changes or you move a millimeter in one direction or the other. That has to be the last one. Hah! They scoff at our feeble attempts to get them all.
   Every year we vacuum what seems to be thousands of needles after we get everything set up and again when everything comes down. After all these years of shedding, our tree should be just a metal rod with bare, twisted wires hanging from it, more Festivus pole than Christmas tree.  Yet, it still looks full. It must somehow regrow a new crop of needles as it spends the summer in its cocoon-like storage bag.
   We have a lot of grandchildren and we vacuum a lot. Crumbs of every sort, torn candy wrappers, and other reminders of their visits are sucked up on a regular basis. Still, we find at least one needle with every cleaning. Invariably, one will survive the entire year although every square inch of the living room has been vacuumed more than once.
   Our pastor suggests to us each Yuletide that we should leave something from Christmas on display to remind us of the warmth and good cheer the season provides. Consider it done, Father. I have opted for my leg lamp, ala “A Christmas Story.” But even if we put that away there will always be a green needle popping up as the seasons change to call to mind the good times with family and friends–and that we should be more diligent in our cleaning.
  
  

Snowmageddon

   According to the calendar, winter’s been here since December 21 but you’d never know it by the weather. Today is January 11 and the thermometer got up to 53 degrees. That’s more like March or April around here.
   The news this morning was all about dire warnings of the winter storm to come: three to six inches of snow over twenty-four hours. Oh my God  Better get to the grocery store and clear the shelves. It’s gonna be a long winter siege. Schools will close, businesses will be shuttered, and we’ll never see the light of day again.
   Now, just hold on a minute  If you live in Florida or Tennessee, six inches of snow in twenty-four hours is a lot. Down there, six inches in a month is huge. This is Chicago. Six inches in that time period is only a quarter inch per hour. You could go out there with a broom every hour and sweep away a snowfall like that if a few minutes. Remember the big snow last February? Good. That means you survived that one and you’ll survive this.
   Still the taking heads yammer on. “It’s coming. We’re all gonna die,” they maintain.
   You wanna know who’s gonna die? In addition to those people who insist on going out to shovel when they know they shouldn’t, it’s SUV drivers.
   This is not a blanket indictment of anyone who owns an SUV, just those ego-inflated mopes who buy Hummers, Escalades, and Durangos, etc. with the wrong-headed notion that their vehicles bestow a cloak of invincibility upon them. Sure, their high ground clearance and four-wheel drive transports can get through snowdrifts that mere cars can’t even attempt. But there’s one fatal flaw. They have the same weakness that every four-wheeled vehicle has: tires. Every car, pickup truck, and SUV has only two square feet of rubber that keeps it in contact with the asphalt, gravel, snow, or ice under it.
   We mortals who dare to take to the highway in our puny cars realize the limitations winter driving sets for us and drive accordingly. Some SUV drivers think their vehicles grant them some dispensation from the laws of physics as they apply to highway traction. They drive in the snow like it’s summer outside.
   They’re the ones who will die in this winter storm, their vehicles wrapped around trees or rolled over in ditches. If they don’t take any of us with them, it will do the gene pool some good.
  
  

My First Member

   This is just a short note to welcome the first intelligent, discerning, good-looking lover of great prose to do me the honor of following my blog. I write this, of course, under the peril of this person leaving due to the public embarrassment of this becoming public knowledge. Therefore, I will not name names and will use the genderless, and grammatically incorrect, plural when referring to them.
   I apologize to all my high school English teachers who pounded, literally, good grammar into my head, but sometimes the rules must be broken to protect the innocent.
   Since starting this project last year I have tried to be positive by stating that my blog had "almost one" follower instead of  the less than positive "none". Henceforth, I will use that verbal ruse no longer. I will say it proudly, "I have a follower." Until they get fed up and leave, that is.
   To prevent that I vow to pen thought-provoking and awe-inspiring posts that tickle the imagination and make you yearn for more.
   Or I could just write about the daily crap that pisses me off. That seems to work, too. 

A Knotty Question

   What’s up with shoelaces these days? The last couple of pairs of shoes I’ve bought had laces that were way too long, almost to the point of being unsafe.
   The laces on my running shoes were 48 inches per shoe. No amount of knotting, double-, or even triple-knotting would keep the loops from dragging on the ground. If I made the loops smaller, the aglets dragged. (That’s what those things on the ends of shoelaces are called. Look it up.) For full disclosure, I am not a runner; this particular pair of shoes was on sale–my top priority. That they looked and felt good was just icing on the cake. I replaced the 48-inch laces with 33-inchers and could have gone with 30-inchers. Just what was I supposed to do with the extra 15 inches of lace anyway? Don’t answer that.
   You would think in this tough economy that shoe manufacturers would look for ways to cut back wherever they can. A million pairs of shoes with an extra thirty inches of lace per pair adds up to almost 475 miles of unnecessary material. That’s a sizable dent in the old bottom line.
   I’ll wait while you get out your calculator and check my math. Satisfied? Let’s move on.
   I wear work boots on the job. This is not because I labor in some manly trade where heavy-duty footwear is a necessity. My ankles are shot from years of standing on concrete floors and they need the support. The laces on my last pair were dangerously long even when wrapped around the back of the boot, twice. I think they measured 72 inches. After nine years with shorter laces, my trusty boots have finally given up the ghost. They still look great on the outside but the inside support and padding is shot and they’re painful to wear.
   Today I was in Target picking up something for the missus and took a look at replacement boots. I found some that were being discontinued and were half price. Bingo! I tried on a pair and walked around like a prisoner in leg irons with the elastic string that keeps them together still attached.That was in case I didn’t like them. I loved them. They look good, fit right, and they make my feet feel like I have slippers on. Did I mention they were on sale?
   If you think you’ve guessed the problem, you’re wrong. These laces are too short. Doesn’t anybody measure these things? They’re fine if I don’t lace them up to the top hook but suppose I wanted to. Not only that, they weren’t even laced equally. There were at least six inches more on one side than the other. Whatever happened to quality control?
   That’s it! In the future all my footwear will be slip-ons or have Velcro fasteners.