A MEMORABLE BIRTHDAY

Eli (Hizzownself), with Toni, his Better Half.

We celebrated the Old Man’s eighty-fifth birthday last weekend in grand style.

Earlier that day, we had driven out east to do a little winery hopping. It seems that Long Island, in the past three decades, has become a mini-hotbed of viniculture: Who knew? About forty wineries dot the various towns on the eastern end of the island, with most on the North Fork... so that is where we headed.

At the Lenz Winery in Peconic, we stopped for a tasting amidst a profusion of carefully manicured vines. Barbara, our charming blonde tasting host, played Long Island Geography with me as she poured our wines - as it happens, she was a year younger than me and had lived in the same town - and on the same street, on the opposite side of the nine-hole golf course that bisected the neighborhood.


SWMBO and I at the Lenz Winery, Peconic.

The wines were good - the North Fork microclimate is particularly suited to Merlot - and SWMBO and I ordered a few bottles before we all went on our merry way.

That evening, we enjoyed a fine dinner at Tellers, a chophouse tucked into a vintage bank building in Islip. As impressive as the surroundings were - thirty-foot-high ceilings tend to add a bit of tone - the food and wine were at least as impressive. My filet, a handsome, softball-sized chunk of prime, dry-aged beefmeat, had just the right beefiness and texture; Eli elected to have the braised beef short ribs, a ridiculously flavorsome, tender example of the genre. And the wine, a 2007 Merlot from the South Fork’s Wölffer Estate Vineyards, complemented the meal perfectly.

As we were polishing off our various entrées, we saw a waiter glide past bearing an enormous trencher with what appeared to be Fred Flintstone’s dinner: a huge baseball bat-sized bone with a clublike wad of meat attached to it. What in Gawd’s name was it? According to our waiter, it was the house speciality, a forty ounce (!) bone-in ribeye. Since I have no compunctions about making a fool of myself in front of complete strangers, I got right up and walked over to the table where that monster steak had been delivered... to a guy who looked like he could work as an NFL player or a bar bouncer.

“Excuse me, but that’s a mighty impressive steak. Would you mind if I took a picture of it?”

Somewhat bemused, the fellow allowed me to photograph his meal. Alas, the picture did not turn out well, but I could’ve sworn that piece of meat bore the legend “Callaway FT-iZ.”

There would be more celebrating the next day, complete with cake and The Other Elisson’s homemade blueberry cobbler, but this was a Birthday to Remember.

ANOTHER TRIP AROUND THE SUN FOR THE FAMILY PATRIARCH

Eli, Hizzownself: The older you get, the less inhibited you are in many ways.

SWMBO: Oy.
* * *
Today is Eli’s eighty-fifth birthday. Yesterday, he kicked off the morning by playing four games of doubles racquetball - something he does routinely twice a week. He only won the first and last games, a clear indication that he is slowing down.


Eli shows his less-inhibited side.

Despite his age, our Dad is not a complete Luddite. I’m writing these words on his very own computer, the selfsame machine that The Other Elisson and I purchased as a birthday gift for him last year. After a lengthy delay, it’s now hooked up to the Inter-Webby-Net and Eli is taking his (very tentative) first steps into cyberspace.

Whether this evolves into any sort of electronic comfort zone is completely up in the air. Dad is very much a child of the pre-computer generation, from the days when secretaries would type his business correspondence, telephones did not sport automatic answering devices, and mail was something that you stuck in an envelope with a stamp.

But it’s nice to imagine him using a few rudimentary tools such as Wikipedia and IMDB... and maybe even reading this stupid-ass blog once in a while.

Errr... maybe this computer business isn’t such a good idea after all...

A BIRTHDAY SHOUT-OUT TO MY FIRSTBORN

A two-year-old Elder Daughter (then Only Daughter) checks out her shadow.

Today is Elder Daughter’s birthday.

Alas, I will not be with her to hoist an Adult Beverage with her and drink her health, or to snarf down a chunk of birthday cake. We can blame geography for that: I’m here in Atlanta, and she’s in Washington D.C., 650 miles away. But next week, the Mistress of Sarcasm and I will pay her a visit, and so I will get a chance to extend my greetings in person then.



She’s an amazing young woman, our Elder Daughter, able to juggle a busy professional life with a boatload of side projects and interests. She has lived overseas and traveled to parts of the planet I am never likely to see. She can dance up a storm and can sing with a Broadway-caliber voice. She is creative, intelligent, funny. And she is easy on the eye.


Elder Daughter, traveling companion: at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo.

If I sound like a proud and happy daddy, I am. Happy birthday, Elder Daughter!

DIA DE LAS MADRES

Or in plain English, Mother’s Day.

This is the day set aside by the Greeting Card Consortium, the Amalgamated Florist Combine and Trust, and the Restaurant Industry for honoring our maternal parents. And it is fitting and proper that we do so, for all of us who walk the planet had a mother.

My mother has been gone for twenty-two years now - I always think of her on Mother’s Day - but there are other mothers in my life.

There is Ceil, the Mom-in-Law d’Elisson, who did me the estimable service of having a daughter who would eventually become the mother of my own children. I can never thank her enough.

There is Toni, who never got to be a mom to me while I was growing up, but who momma’ed four wonderful children of her own to adulthood before meeting and marrying my daddy, Eli hizzownself.

And, of course, there is She Who Must Be Obeyed, my true love and helpmeet these past three decades and change, the mother of my two wonderful daughters. Raising our family together has been the adventure of a lifetime, filled with challenges, happiness, tears, and occasional heart-clenching fears... and it has been my great good luck to have done it all with her.


SWMBO and the Mistress of Sarcasm enjoy Mother’s Day together. If only Elder Daughter could’ve been here...

To these wonderful ladies... and all our motherly friends near and far... Happy Mother’s Day!

READING ALOUD

When Elder Daughter and the Mistress of Sarcasm were little tykes, there were few things in the way of Family Activities we enjoyed more than Reading Aloud.

Back as far as Toddler Days, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I would read to the girls. Little Golden Books featuring Cookie Monster and Grover were huge favorites... as were others such as Bembelman’s Bakery, Eloise, and Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs.

[It took them twenty-seven years, but Hollywood finally figured out a way to bring that story to the big screen... and completely fuck it up in the process. The book, written by Judi Barrett and illustrated by her (then) husband Ron Barrett, is utterly charming. The movie? Not so much.]

We would read, read, read those books until our throats were hoarse - and then we’d read some more. The girls never tired of hearing ’em.

Elder Daughter, even back in her toddlerhood, had a frighteningly prodigious memory. After hearing a story only once or twice, she could quote great swaths of it at the slightest provocation. This posed no problem with tales such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit and other components of the Beatrix Potter oeuvre, but the day came when a two-year-old Elder Daughter (at the time, Only Daughter) proceeded to recite the entire text of perhaps the most politically incorrect story of all time - Little Black Sambo - to the eleven-year-old African-American girl sitting next to her on our flight from New York to Atlanta. Things might have gotten a bit sketchy had Elder Daughter’s elocution been a bit clearer... but as it was, SWMBO and I were trying to decide how both of us could fit underneath the seats in front of us.

As the girls grew older, so did our choice of Read-Aloud material change. On long car trips, we would read weighty tomes like Great Expectations and Gulliver’s Travels, the latter being one of the all-time great satirical novels.

The girls were greatly entertained... although SWMBO was horrified to learn that “Pumblechook” was actually the name of a Dickens character, not merely a deliberately mispronounced descriptor for a certain type of Body Hair.

Many years have gone by since Elder Daughter and the Mistress of Sarcasm lived at home. Reading aloud is one of those family activities that has gone by the wayside... hopefully to be resumed when, at some unknowable future date, the Missus and I are blessed with grandchildren. And yet...

...a few evenings ago, the Mistress stopped by for an overnight sojourn, and out came the old Eloise books. And now it was her turn to read aloud. To us.


“Nanny says she would rawther I didn’t
talk talk talk all the time
She always says everything 3 times
like Eloise you cawn’t cawn’t cawn’t
Sometimes I hit her on the ankle with a tassel
She is my mostly companion”

Ooooooooooooooooooo, I absolutely love The Plaza

MADISAURUS REX

During our recent all-too-brief sojourn in Texas, we had a chance to hang out with our nephew William and niece Madison... not to mention Elder Daughter, who also made the trek out west to be with us.

Madison, who is all of three years old, is what you might call a handful.


Madison rides her Artificial Horsie. Yippee-ki-yay!

She is already a past master at the art of manipulation - no surprise, given that she has her big brother upon whom to practice. But she is sweet as sugar... most of the time.

Even though she shares none of my DNA, she seems to have inherited some abilities from me. The tale is told that one recent day, after having completed her toilet training, she announced to her Daddy that she would be “making a poop.” He in turn asked her to call him when she was finished if she needed help cleaning herself up... and when he arrived in the bathroom upon receiving the summons, she announced, “Daddy - you do not want to see what’s in here.”

Perhaps not... but the Guinness Book folks might have. That’s my niece! [When she reads this in twenty years or so, she’ll strangle me.]

Her Daddy has taken to calling her “Madisaurus Rex.” I think it’s a perfect cognomen.

BLIZZARD!

Elder Daughter is dealing with the effects of a record-shattering snowfall in Washington, D.C.



Lanier Place, one of the streets in the Adams Morgan neighborhood, is buried under more than two feet of snow in this shot from Elder Daughter’s iPhone.

Those white lumps on either side of the road? At first I thought they were bushes... but they are not. They’re cars.

Holy Fuckamoley.

This being a Sunday, and with plenty of food in the apartment and a functioning electrical grid, Elder Daughter is not inconvenienced in the slightest. Hell, it’s like being a kid in Connecticut again. Sledding in Rock Creek Park! Hot chocolate and freshly baked cookies!

The commute to the office tomorrow, however, will inject a cold note of reality into the proceedings...

NOT SEPARATED AT BIRTH

But you’d never know it from looking at them.



On the left is Liv Tyler, cavorting with Eva Mendes. On the right is the Mistress of Sarcasm.

Maybe I need to start working on my guitar licks...

THEN AND NOW

The Elisson Ladies today... and as they were eighteen years ago. [Click to embiggify.]

It’s always a treat to have Clan Elisson together under one roof, as we did for the past several days. It’s just like the Olden Days, when our daughters were young and impressionable. Back then, they actually believed that the twisted song lyrics I would make up were the real thing; later, they would discover to their chagrin that they had been pwned. It’s one of the pleasures of being a Daddy.

Here, the Mistress, She Who Must Be Obeyed, and Elder Daughter pose behind a photograph taken sometime shortly after we had moved back to Sweat City Houston in 1991. I love this picture, but I suspect I will be thrashed for posting it. It’s one of the hazards of being a Daddy.

MOIST EYES, BRIGHT LIGHTS

Yesterday evening, as dusk began to duskify, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I stood in our sunroom and prepared to light the Chanukah lights.

I say “lights” and not “candles” because we use Ner Lights, little glass ampoules of olive oil, each containing a wick. You just snap the top of the ampoule off and you’re good to go. They’re not cheap, but they are far less messy than paraffin candles, and they cast a beautiful warm glow.

As we said the blessings, I saw that SWMBO’s eyes were moist... and I knew why.

With the Mistress of Sarcasm having just relocated to her own apartment, it was just the two of us: empty nesters once again. It would take some adjustment time for us to not feel a little lonelier, just the two of us rattling around in Chez Elisson. Sure, Elder Daughter was on her way to Atlanta... but for the moment, it was Just Us.

It had been a while since it was Just Us on the first night of Chanukah. Last year, even though both the girls were away, we had had a small army of friends over to celebrate with us. Following our long-standing tradition, there were platters of Chinese food... and heaps of potato latkes. Thus do we honor the memory of the Momma d’Elisson.

But yesterday evening it was just the two of us.

Holidays have a way of reminding us of the passage of time. Every year they seem to come around sooner, as the perceived pace of our lives accelerates relentlessly. We remember those same occasions and how we marked them in years past... and we cannot help but think of just how many years have passed. Was it all that long ago that we would say these same blessings with our girls eagerly waiting for us to trot out the evening’s haul of gifts?

This evening, things were a little different. For the first time in years, both of our daughters were here, standing with us to chant the prayers and illuminate the lights.

And SWMBO’s eyes were moist once again... and I knew why.

EIGHTY-TWO

The Momma d’Elisson in 1943... not quite sixteen years old.

Today is my mother’s eighty-second birthday.

I’d have baked a cake, except for two reasons. First, Mom hasn’t walked the planet in over twenty-one years... and so a cake is not on her agenda these days. Nor is much of anything else.

Second, Mom never was much of a baker. She liked cake well enough, but I can only remember her baking one cake in the entire time she and I shared space on this Mortal Coil. Perhaps because it was such an unusual event, I can still remember exactly how that cake - a spice cake, of all things - smelled and tasted.

No, Mom would have been perfectly happy with store-bought cake. Her watchwords were, “Why do anything yourself if you can pay someone else whose job it is to do it?” Hilaire Belloc said it best:

Lord Finchley tried to mend the Electric Light
Himself. It struck him dead: And serve him right!
It is the business of the wealthy man
To give employment to the artisan.

[Which explains why I don’t do electricity or plumbing.]

Mom may be gone, but she lives on in her granddaughters. Both Elder Daughter and the Mistress of Sarcasm have inherited bits and pieces of her personality, her sense of humor, her intelligence and common sense, and even her looks...

     

I sure wish she could see them now. And, who knows? Maybe she can.

REUNITED

Reunited and it feels so good
Reunited ’cause we understood
There’s one perfect fit
And, sugar, this one is it
We both are so excited ’cause we're reunited, hey, hey

- Peaches and Herb, “Reunited”





The Momma d’SWMBO is reunited with her old Nancy Lee doll, a doll she was given as a child... 67 years ago.

Earlier this year, we dug Nancy Lee out of the cedar chest in our basement and arranged to have her restored. Seeing Mom’s reaction this afternoon when she encountered her old friend was priceless.

ART IS WHERE YOU FIND IT

They (whoever “they” are) say that Art Is Where You Find It. All I can say is, whenever we are with Uncle Phil and Aunt Marge, we manage to find plenty of Art. For at their pied-à-terre in Hollywood, Florida, it’s all around us. Their house is a veritabobble treasure trove of Gorgeous Stuff. I won’t even try to be snarky and call it “Gorgeous Crap,” because none of it is crap.

The only other person I know with the same kind of gift for discovering Found Art is the Mistress of Sarcasm. It must run in the family.

Here, for example, is a terra-cotta statue. I call him “Pre-Columbian Dude,” although I strongly suspect he is post-Columbian.


Pre-Columbian Dude.

Next up we have a Portrait in Relief, a fellow I like to refer to as “Cracked Caesar.”


Cracked Caesar.

So many philosophical metaphors you can build with this as inspiration... and so little time.

There’s lots more. Some of it is left over from Phil’s career as purveyor of miscellaneous scientific equipment:


A brace of antique microscopes.

These babies are solid brass, and they are gorgeous. I can almost imagine Louis Pasteur using a ’scope like this.

How about these? Every one a work of Modern-Age Art... but what are they? I’ll provide the answer in the extended entry.


Mystery Art. WTF are these things, anyway?

Maybe a better title for this post is “Home Is Where The Art Is.” As long as we’re talking about Phil and Marge’s home, that is.

Not all the art in Broward County resides with Phil and Marge, though. There’s this fellow we caught up with at the Fort Lauderdale Airport, parked contentedly in a waiting lounge all by himself:


Airport Dude.

I can only guess that his name should be Art... for that is what he is. He’s either a very realistic sculpture or an amazingly immobile ascetic, because he was in the exact same position in the exact same place on two separate days...

Toasters!

Yes, indeedy - they’re all toasters. Aunt Marge has a formidable collection of antique toasters, all of which (I believe) are in working condition. Toaster aficionados - yes, there are such people - will recognize the copper number above as a Model 1B14 Toastmaster, a highly popular style that was introduced in 1947 and lasted for seventeen years. (Most people are familiar with the chrome-plated version, the classic image of the pop-up toaster.)

How ’bout that? Utilitarian Art!

AT WORK WITH THE MISTRESS

The Gold Museum in Dahlonega.

Yesterday evening, the Mistress invited me to join her at a college recruitment fair in North Georgia. “Why not?” I thought. It would give me a chance to see her performing in her new gig, as well as providing a couple of hours of Father-Daughter Bonding Time in the car together.

It was time well spent. We arrived at our destination early, the better to reconnoiter... which gave us time to wander the town square and grab a snack.

We got to the fair location a half-hour early, plenty of time to get set up. And then, slowly at first but in an ever-increasing stream, came the students.

I watched from a distance as the Mistress informed, charmed, and cajoled. It was a beautiful thing to see. Several colleges had sent representatives to this event, but it was to the Mistress’s table the prospective candidates flocked, each one leaving with an armful of literature and some new ideas on where to get a focused Higher Education.

I’ve seen the Mistress function in her workplace before, but this was different. A real Salaried Job. And she was professional and personable every step of the way.

Can you tell I’m a Proud Daddy? Of course you can. But if I take a step back and try to look at things as a disinterested party, I still come to the same conclusion: My little girl is awesome.

And not just because she can sing along with me to Fishbone’s ska-punk tunes.

VOTE!

Elder Daughter is quite the jet-setter these days. She just got back from a trip to Lagos, Nigeria (with a nice stopover in Paris on the way home), and she’s getting ready to head out to Johannesburg, South Africa in a few days. At the rate she’s going, she’ll make the Million-Mile Club well before I did. She has already had to have new pages added to her passport, something I had to do once as well.

Her continent-hopping doesn’t impress me nearly as much as the kind of work she does.

Her employer, the Discovery Channel Global Education Partnership (DCGEP), is up for a U.S. Chamber of Commerce Business Civic Leadership Center (BCLC) Partnership Award... with the recipients to be determined by popular vote.

There are five pairs of award nominees, but the team of interest - to me, anyway - consists of DCGEP and Chevron. DCGEP is a not-for-profit arm of the Discovery Channel, the main business of which is putting up education facilities in various third-world countries and supplying content for same. In their words, it is “a charitable organization dedicated to using the power of television to improve lives in underserved areas of the world.” Chevron (yes, that Chevron) supplies the funding; DCGEP does everything else.

You can learn more about DCGEP here. That “Stories from Uganda” video? Elder Daughter was there when it was shot.

To vote for the Chevron-DCGEP partnership, go here and follow the instructions to sign up and vote. Sure, it’s a modest pain in the ass... but you’ll be sending good vibes and recognition to people who really are working to educate people... a real tikkun olam (repairing the world) concept if ever I have heard of one.

That’s what my Elder Daughter does for a living: repairing the world. Am I a proud daddy? You betcha.

Now go vote. It won’t cost you anything but time... and not a whole lot of that.

A WEEKEND IN SOUTH FLORIDA

We spent the last weekend visiting my Uncle Phil and Aunt Marge, running around Hollywood, Florida and its environs.

It was with more than a little shock that I realized that we had not been to South Florida in seven years. Seven years! That’s when we had gone down to celebrate Phil’s eightieth birthday. Since then, we’ve been to Eli and Toni’s winter hideaway in Citrus Hills several times... but that’s about five hours northwest of Hollywood.

During all this time we had been able to see Phil and Marge fairly frequently, since they were always all too willing to jump in the car or on a plane and come up to Atlanta... or wherever we happened to be. But time marches on, and mobility is becoming more problematic for them... which simply means we will henceforth have to do the Heavy Lifting, travel-wise.


Aunt Marge and Uncle Phil.

SoFl has changed a lot since my Snot-Nose Days, when we would make annual pilgrimages... and since my days with the Great Corporate Salt Mine, when I would visit clients in the area. The traffic is more fearsome than ever, with I-95 a frantic autobahn where frail seniors duke it out with hot-blooded Latins at 75 MPH. The Atlanta freeways are bucolic country roads by comparison.

Saturday, we met my cousin Debi and her husband Mike for a tasty lunch by the beach in Fort Lauderdale. Then we headed up towards Pompano Beach for one of the local Shopping Adventures: the Festival Flea Market Mall.

Years ago, there was a department store in my hometown that went belly up. Instead of razing the building, the Powers that Be converted it into the sort of retail space that would be immediately recognizable to anyone who has traveled the souks of the Middle East, the frenzied and fragrant markets of Asia. A flea market! In a (former) department store! Thus was the infamous Busy Bee Mall born.

The Festival is simply the Busy Bee writ large, a huge single-story interior space crammed with merchant booths, laid out in a grid pattern... a humongous Bargain Basement at ground level. My mother would’ve loved this place.

Looking at the merch made my teeth hurt, but the pain was more than made up for by the people-watching opportunities. It was a perfect place to observe Moronus Americanus (Florida Australis variety) in its native habitat. Anyone ever tells you that America has become a homogeneous mass of Monoculture, they’ve never been to this place. Trust me.

Dinner Saturday evening consisted of sushi at SushiBlues, a little joint just a few blocks from the Hollywood Circle at the intersection of Federal Highway (US 1) and Hollywood Boulevard. That circle still lives in infamy in my mind: When I was twelve, we went to the Gourmet, a (now long defunct) all-you-can-eat buffet place that sat on the southeastern quadrant of the circle, and I ate until I was in pain. It was an early lesson in the results of a mismatch between Desire and Capability. (We old guys know all about that mismatch... but that is a story for another time.) Our dinner this time was anything but painful, with a Bombay Sapphire martini easing the passage of the various Fishy Goodies to their digestive oblivion. The Ikura Shooter - a blob of salmon roe crowned with a raw quail’s egg, served with a shot of cold sake with which to wash it down - was noteworthy.

Sunday morning, after feeding our faces at the Original Pancake House in Aventura, we took a spin along Collins Avenue - the legendary A1A - down into Miami Beach, and I was bowled over by the massive Wall o’ Hotels and Condos that has sprouted in Sunny Isles, just north of Haulover Beach Park. MB itself is still heaven on earth for fans of Art Deco architecture and Cuban coffee... and, for that matter, pretty much anything Cuban.

We drove back, crossing from Miami Beach into Miami on the MacArthur Causeway, a drive that afforded a nice view of the city and its port facilities. I remembered a similar drive on that same causeway back in 1962, back when the Goodyear blimp Mayflower was based on Watson Island, when we saw that legendary airship land there, seemingly close enough to touch. The blimp base is long gone from Watson Island, alas, but somewhere buried in the Elisson Archive is a photograph I snapped with my little Brownie camera that day...

All too soon, it was time to go. As thunderstorms rolled through the area, the operators of the Silver Aerial Bus somehow were able to find a window of opportunity in which to get out of Dodge, and a few hours later we were back in our familiar environs... with a weekend full of happy memories.

More pics below the fold.

Art deco hotel façades in South Miami Beach.


The iPhone camera shutter distorts a moving target in a manner reminiscent of the old Speed Graphic.


Cousin Debi and Mike.

GROW OLD EAT CAKE ALONG WITH ME

She Who Must Be Obeyed, 1977 edition.

Eat cake along with me!
It’s Choc’late, can’t you see?
Your Day of Birth is why this cake was made!
The icing’s rather grand -
Don’t get it on your hand -
Dry Cleaner-Man is looking to get paid!

Today’s cause for celebration is the completion of yet another Circumsolar Journey by my beloved She Who Must Be Obeyed.

We did most of our celebrating this Saturday evening past. Both the Missus and our friend Doctah Marc celebrate birthdays within two days of each other, and so we generally try to have a combined Double-Birthday Happy-Fest. And if you can’t be happy after a well-constructed Martini, a perfectly seared bone-in ribeye steak, a choice of not one, but two candle-laden cakes, all in the presence of good friends - well, you’re just not trying hard enough.


Doctah Marc, Donnie Joe, and SWMBO in a celebratory mood.

Birthdays come and birthdays go, and this one of SWMBO’s has no especial numerological significance. The second digit is not a “0” or a “5,” and the total does not represent a critical multiple of important factors. It is also not a prime number.

And yet none of that matters.

The Missus and I, we’ve been together a long time... something on the order of 60% of our entire lives. And somehow, each succeeding year reveals new facets of her personality, new aspects of her to love. Though I should be beyond surprise, every day has the capacity for surprise.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is that she still sees fit to put up with me. May it be ever thus.

Happy birthday, my love! I wish you many, many more, all in good health... and in my company!

SCREWED UP

“Screw.”

What a wonderful, useful word.

It can refer to the sexual act: “They were screwing in the back seat.” (Presumably, this is a more effective style of coupling than simply nailing someone.)

It can be used as an insult, hurled as an epithet. “Screw you.”

It can refer to a person’s being non compos mentis: “He’s screwy.” “Mona has a screw loose.”

It can indicate an unsatisfactory state of affairs: “They just transferred me to the most screwed up sales territory west of the Mississippi.”

And, of course, it can refer to a piece of hardware that is used to connect various objects, a simple device consisting of an inclined plane wrapped around a cylinder: “That deck will stand up to a hurricane - Charlie put it together with screws instead of nails.”

Well, I am here to tell you that She Who Must Be Obeyed is screwed up...

...but not in a bad way. As you can see from the X-ray photograph above, her jaw is riddled with little titanium screws, a legacy of the mandibular extension surgery she had three years ago. They were put in there to hold her jawbone together until it knit in its new configuration... and to provide Joke-Fodder for years afterward.

Yeah, the Missus is screwy, all right...

...and after she reads this post? I’m screwed.

TESTING THE WATERS

There is a saying that water, flowing drop by drop, can eventually wear away the most adamantine of mountains. That this has some small basis in reality is attested by an astonishing statement Eli (hizzownself) made several months ago at my retirement party: He was considering getting a computer.

Only if you know Eli do you know how jaw-droppingly unexpected this pronunciamento was. He, aided and abetted by his bride Toni, is a technological Luddite of the first water.

Getting the two of them to use modestly innovative devices such as cell phones (for safety if for no other reason) and answering machines took years of gentle persuasion. I’m sure they still harbor private doubts about electricity and indoor plumbing.

Years ago, in the workplace, even as the day-to-day functioning of his business became more computer-dependent, Eli continued to do things the way he had learned as a youth: by writing things out longhand. It was left to others to transcribe and handle the word processing tasks, a way of doing things common to men of his generation. Any pressure to become computer-literate that his work may have imposed evaporated, of course, as soon as he retired.

For years, Eli was proud - even a bit defiant - concerning his computerless status. Didn’t want one. Not interested. E-mail? Fuhgeddaboudit.

I’m not sure when the first cracks in the armor started to appear. Was it the Garmin, that semi-magickal GPS device - a device that actually proved useful? Was it the monthly grind of paying bills by the labor-intensive process of hand-writing chack after check, addressing and stamping envelope after envelope? Was it a gradual feeling of being disconnected from the rest of the Internet-savvy, e-mailing, Facebooking, Twittering world?

Who knows?

But She Who Must Be Obeyed actually heard Eli utter those unexpected words back in March, and so she came up with the Brilliant Suggestion that my brother (the Other Elisson) and I buy Eli a computer for his 84th birthday.

We discussed the matter at length, my brother and I, and when the Missus and I were in New York at the end of May we floated the trial balloon before the Old Man himself. And, shockingly, he did not demur.


Eli, flanked by his two Elissons, checks out an H-P laptop. Note the look of sheer horror and/or consternation on the Other Elisson’s face.

The first of June found us at Costco, checking out the offerings. We settled on an H-P laptop, adding a Canon printer, a wireless mouse, and a few other minor (but necessary) gewgaws and doodads. And home with Eli went all the Electronic Swag.

Eli and Toni are now in the process of negotiating a steep Learning Curve. They’re taking Computer Kindergarten courses, dipping their toes gingerly into the Aqua Electronica. Those are deep waters, as we all know, and there is much, much to learn.

So far, they’ve mastered the art of Computer Solitaire... and they’re using the wireless mouse. Baby steps... baby steps.

But the mere fact that, at the age of eighty-four, Eli is willing to give it a shot - why, that is simply one more reason (in a long list of reasons) to admire the guy.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, O MISTRESS

The Mistress of Sarcasm in her Youthful Days.

The Mistress of Sarcasm celebrates having completed twenty-seven trips around the sun today.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe how much water has passed under the proverbial Bridge o’ Time. But it has... and the evidence is right before our eyes. A beautiful, talented young woman, where once there stood a little girl.

She is one of the few people who can (almost) make me laugh unto the point of unconsciousness. This is especially scary, because we find the same things amusing.


The Mistress of Sarcasm celebrates with the help of an inflated King. How ’bout a hunka hunka birthday cake?

I did say “talented”, didn’t I? Take a gander at that pendant. One evening, she was inspired by an antique electric fan - one of the many items in her Great Accumulation of Arty Tchotchkes - and decided to render a miniature version of it in sterling silver, for use as a piece of jewelry. Here it be, in closeup:


“Antique fan” pendant in sterling silver, created by the Mistress.

Snazzy, eh?

She Who Must Be Obeyed may have put it best: it may be the Mistress’s birthday, but we’re the ones who received a gift twenty-seven years ago... and it’s a gift that we continue to treasure more every day. Happy Birthday, O Mistress of Sarcasm, my love!