Luckily for everyone involved, it soon turned and der blitzenkriegen was again on!
I suppose 12-wheel tractors are commonplace in the Kansas, Nebraska and/or Dakota Territories, but we don't see such contraptions in these here parts!
Less than 24 hours later I rolled my slow into MHMH for an early morning diagnostic:
I didn't get a cool t-shirt, but on my fastbreak for the exit they handed me this card:
It will no doubt come as a shock to many of you to discover that I was radioactive for only three days [cool!]. And here you thought that was a permanent state of my being. One question; When did all of the nurses become kids?
I celebrated that evening by attending a viewing of the latest Muppet caper, Muppets Most Wanted. Regrettably, I do not think it measured up to their previous effort. I should have been tipped off when, one minute to trailers, this was the scene inside the theater:
The next day I received an update of the McDonald's Double Cheeseburger Inflation Barometer:
This marks a 50% increase over the unit price of two years' past when the McD double chee was an integral element of Ronnie Mac's "One Dollar Menu." The good news is that in 2016 President Paul Ryan (Miami University, class of 1992) will ram through a Republican-controlled Congress his signature piece of legislation, RyanCare, which will provide subsidies to cover the spiraling cost of double cheeseburgers. Double cheeseburgers which, it must be mentioned, you will be required to purchase or incur a "tax penalty."
This week I engaged in a bit of spring cleaning and found in the back of one bedroom closet a pair of Levi's jeans that I hadn't worn since the Joe College days. I know they haven't been worn since the mid-1990s for two reasons; 1) The microscopic 32-inch waist size [don't ask], and 2) The crisp $20 bill folded and neatly tucked into the watch pocket, a tactic I used as a measure to not blow my bottom dollar on buckets full of Vulcan Mind Probes at The Saloon. In the hall closet I had four Levi's denim jackets, the smallest of which I outgrew shortly after frosh year at THS. Before that jacket went into the pile for Goodwill, I discovered a treasure trove of mid-1980s artifacts in its various pockets. First, a veritable stack of event tickets. Here, below, is but a small sample:
Some of the tickets belonged to Lou (The Firm, for example), I carried those for street cred. The rest were all mine, baby.
In another pocket I found a handwritten note - a relic of my never-to-be-published memoir Stellar Moments From An Otherwise Suspect Academic Record - from a fair-haired maiden written in the spring of 1987 that, evidently, I cherished:
Her identity hidden from your prying eyes, this class of 1989 Cassandra was responding in a coy way to my impertinent entreaty:
Her "Maybe" turned out to be a "Yes" as she, like so many innumerable other debutantes in the 1980s, found my dashing charm an irresistible force. Pride is but one of the Seven Deadly Sins which I practice regularly, along with gluttony [see; waist size, above], and so I carried this note as my own Red Badge of Courage. In keeping with our radioactive theme, I think it only took me three or four weeks to blow up that relationship. Prophesies of doom, indeed. Poor girl deserved much better [see; Am I a Man or Am I a Muppet?, above]. Didn't they all?
It should be noted, here, that my most famous Levi's denim jacket of the 1988-1992 "live era" is on permanent loan to the J.A. Killy Museum of Rare and Seriously Cool Antiquities and Assorted Chicago Cubs Useless Junk where it is on display as a central attraction of the "Heavy Artillery Through The Years" exhibit. Someday, The Incomparable Joe Wilhelm and I hope to be invited to see it. Or at least maybe have lunch with the curator.
Spied this week on the former yard of local pharmaceutical industrialist of bygone days, John Minnis, a rarity in the botanical world; the Northern Hemisphere Railroad Crossing Gate Tree.
I zoomed my R2 Android in for a closer inspection:
If you look closely, you will observe that there are two sections of railroad crossing gates in that tree. And should repeated thematic references be in short supply, these two photos were taken from just about the exact place where I'd park for school back in the 1980s.
Roll the credits!
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