Jon Lowder

Morning People

One of the unfortunate things about summer coming to an end is the fact that we'll be back to using alarm clocks in this house in a couple of weeks.  Esbee's written about weening her boys off of the summer sleep-in schedule and slowly working them into their normal school wake up routine.  We'll probably try to do that soon as well, but with our two oldest going to high school this year and with high school being the latest start in this county (middle school is earliest, followed by elementary school) we'll only have one that has to get up pre-dawn this year.  Normally I'd say that's a good thing except he's also the only one we can absolutely depend on to sleep through his alarm and to not make the bus, and since his uber-responsible sister won't be up to roust him that means Mom or Dad will have to do it.  That's truly unfortunate since no one in this family is truly a morning person. Now, we're not the grumpy types. We don't wake up surly and stay that way for an hour, rather we are just slow to wake up and we kind of ease our way into the day.  In other words we don't pop out of bed ready to conquer the day.

I was thinking about this and also thinking about our vacation last week and it occurred to me that we were very fortunate that our travel companions (my brother and his family, my Mom and Bert) weren't conquer the world types either.  All week we just kind of eased into the day, not having to rush around because someone just HAD to be at the beach by 9 a.m. because the day was awastin'.  In fact if I ever write a travel guide I'm going to spend an entire chapter on choosing appropriate travel companions, and the first point I'll make in that chapter is that morning people should not travel with those who are not because the nots invariably end up hating the morning people within 24 hours of the trip's start, or whenever the first morning happens to fall.

And it's not just travel.  Working with a morning person is a royal pain in the butt for me.  I need my half hour to catch up on reading, cull my email, drink my coffee, etc.  Having a co-worker who insists on a 7:30 meeting or who starts the day with a perfectly neat desk and a bullet point to-do list perfectly centered in the middle is, to me, comparable to working with Attila the Hun.

My neighbor keeps trying to get me to go to the Y on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 5:45 a.m. to play basketball.  That's when the "mature" people such as myself play, and as much as I'm sure I'd enjoy it and as much as I miss my regular game of hoops, the idea of playing an hour and a half of hoops before sunrise is just too repulsive.  Why can't they find a gym that stays open until midnight and play from 9-11 p.m.?  I'd be their most dedicated player!

I don't have anything against morning people, especially when I don't see them until lunch time.  It irks me when they say things like "I don't understand how anyone sleeps past 6:00.  I find those hours before 9 to be the most productive of the day" and look at me like I'm somehow deficient or immoral.  My retort is usually, "I don't understand how anyone falls asleep before midnight.  I find those hours after 9 to be the most peaceful and enjoyable.  Maybe it's because all those priggish morning people are asleep."  Mind you, I don't break out that last sentence unless they've really lorded their morning superiority over me.  Live and let live I say, but if you're gonna bring your air of morning superiority into my life then I'm gonna treat you like the puckered-butt you probably are.

For the most part I don't get that condescension from morning people so we usually all get along.  And honestly I find that they are valuable members of our community, even if I don't understand them.  Sure there's the occasional problem, like mowing the lawn at 8 a.m., but for the most part I think they're good people.  I do resent that they get preferential treatment from certain organizations, for instance the YMCA opening at 5-whatever yet closing at the entirely too early hour of 10 p.m. during the week and 7 p.m. on the weekends.  What's up with that?  Of course we night owls get it back at the movie theaters and certain fine watering holes, but like most people I prefer to resent what the other folks have and focus only on what I'm denied.

Now where's that coffee?

Over 20 Years of Bad Golf and Good Times

Recently I got to go golfing with my old college roommate Robert Figuracion (Bobby or Fig to me and other old friends, Robert to those who met him after age 22).  We roomed together for many years while we were at George Mason, were in each others weddings along with our other roommate Tony Walsh, and Bobby and his wife Beth are largely responsible for Celeste and I finally deciding to move to Winston-Salem.  We'd always visited my family here, but when Bobby and Beth moved here from Northern Virginia and started telling us how much they loved it we finally started seriously contemplating the big move.

I've lived here for over three years and had only played golf once, at the soon to be demised Grandview course with my cousin Chris who affectionately called it "Goatview."  So Bobby took me out to Tanglewood and for $37 we got to play as many holes as we wanted to all day.  Actually the $37 got us an all day pass for the Championship course, but if we'd wanted to we could have just played the Reynolds course all day for $25. They'd just aerated the Reynolds course so we opted for the Championship course instead.  Whether you're talking $37 or $25 you don't see greens fees like that, with the cart included, at courses in the DC area.  We played the Championship in the morning, had some lunch, and then figured we might as well play Reynolds in the afternoon because I kind of wanted to see it and bumpy greens were something we could live with.  To be honest I thought the Reynolds course was more attractive, and it was definitely a damned-sight easier to play.  Real golfers would definitely prefer the Championship but to a duffer who's there as much for the scenery as the golf the Reynolds course offers a lot.

At some point we got to reminiscing about the first time we'd golfed together.  It was in the spring the first year we were roommates and it was my first time golf outing ever.  We played on the Par 3 at Burke Lake Park and Bobby, who thinks I'm the luckiest human being alive, remembers clearly our first hole.  I hit my tee shot about 30 yards wide of the green and then crushed my second shot with a pitching wedge and it was going to fly the green by another 30 yards except the ball hit the flag stick and dropped six feet from the hole.  I think he was ready to walk off the course then and there.

Throughout our early and mid-20s Bobby and I played lots of the public courses in Northern Virginia, and at least once at Bryce Resort when my mom had a place there. We played enough that Bobby's Christmas gift to me one year was a set of re-built clubs that he bought from a guy who rehabbed clubs in his basement.  They were honest-to-God wood drivers and I remember distinctly how blown away I was by the gift.  I also remember being pretty embarrassed about whatever lame gift I got him, but hopefully that's water under the bridge.

Eventually kids and real jobs happened and we rarely got to play in the subsequent 12-15 years.  That made our Tanglewood outing a real joy to behold.  Bobby's gotten a lot better in the years since we last played and I still hammer out the 120+ rounds with abandon.  Of course it really didn't matter since the true purpose was just hanging out, shooting the breeze and trying not to lose more than half a dozen balls or kill any wildlife.  I've killed two geese with errant drives in the past.

We've promised to go out more often and Bobby mentioned Pudding Ridge.  To me it doesn't matter where we play, but I'd like to go out soon so I can try and get in some practice before October 13.  That's when my cousin Adam gets married and as part of the festivities I get to go golfing with my uncles and cousins who all somehow manage to shoot scores without triple digits.  However I don't need an excuse to get out there again with Bobby; days like we had at Tanglewood are priceless and will be even more so if I can manage to shoot sub-100.  Of course that'll be the day I'm ice skating in hell too.

Tee it up dude.

Mrs. Tarmey at Bookmarks 2007

Danielle Tarmey was one of my daughter Erin's 5th grade teachers the year we moved to Lewisville and she was one of our son Justin's 5th grade teachers this last year.  She and her husband, Joseph Mills, co-authored A Guide to North Carolina Wineries and they will be appearing at the Bookmarks 2007 festival this Saturday (Sep. 8) at Historic Bethabara Park.  Unfortunately Justin will be out of town, but Erin's soccer game is in that neck of the woods on Saturday so we should get the chance to swing by and check out the festival and say hi to Mrs. Tarmey.

Tell Us What You Think Rick

An old friend (and boss) of mine, Rick Biehl, recently had a letter printed in the Washington Post sports section.  Let's just say he doesn't think highly of the team the Nationals is putting on the field this year:

It's unfortunate that, with the weak attendance the Nationals are about to have this season, you already raise the issue of whether the D.C. area deserves a Major League Baseball team, noting [last Sunday], "the game is here now."

The 2007 Nationals are not a Major League Baseball team, and no city in the country would support the kind of game this crew is about to play. The Nationals are not only the worst team in baseball, they could be the worst team since the 1962 New York Mets. It's unfair to judge the Washington region if it fails to go crazy for this team, which in addition to being horrid, also plays in fan-unfriendly RFK. The test of whether D.C. is worthy of a Major League Baseball team should await the day when it actually has one.

Rick really needs a blog.

Orni...,uh, Ornithol..., Aw Heck, Just Call it Birdshit

One of my lasting memories of childhood is my mother freaking out around birds.  Any birds, big or small, caused her to melt into a stuttering, jittery mess if they got within arms length of her.  Her condition resulted from a childhood run-in she had with a rabid chicken on some family member's farm (I think that's the story) and she'd never been able stand them after that.

When I was in college I was living in an apartment with a couple of guys, including my longtime roommate Fig (cool story: Fig moved to Winston-Salem two years before I did and we now see him and his family more than we ever used to in DC).  He worked at a pet store and then at the Fairfax County Animal Shelter and would often bring home the animals that were considered hopelessly ill and try to nurse them back to health.  One of those animals was a large, white thing that I think was a cockatoo. Whatever it was it had a condition that caused it to lose its feathers over time, resulting in a constantly decaying state of plumage and an attitude more surly than a 13 year old girl deprived of a cell phone (I know where of I speak).  It lived on a pedestal placed on our only table which was located at the central most point in our apartment. That meant you couldn't go anywhere in the apartment without the thing hissing or trying to fling poop at you.  Thankfully it couldn't go anywhere due to its bald state and you were safe if you stayed about a foot outside the perimeter of the table.

Needless to say once the bird from hell moved in Mom stopped visiting, but not until she'd stopped by before I could warn her about our new roommate.  She walked in, was hissed at, let out a kind of cry/whelp, blanched whiter than our bald bird, turned around and didn't come back until it moved out. Note: "moved out" is a euphemism for "croaked".

All this is a long preface to the true topic of this post which is the amazing change Mom made a couple of years ago when she met her leading man, the estimable Dr. Bert Dickas, retired professor of geology and avid bird watcher.  In the years since they met she's joined him on numerous birding expeditions and can now tell a pigeon from an emu.  She's gone so far as to fly to a Caribbean destination with the express purpose of tromping through the jungle looking for exotic birds rather than basking on a beach.  Even more impressive is that he's talked her into driving to destinations not on either of the coasts, heretofore known as "the other America", to watch migrating birds.  Never underestimate the power of love.

I thought of this after reading about the website of Cornell University's Lab of Ornithology. I'm sure Bert will find it interesting and maybe Mom might even take a look at it.  Me?  I'm going to see if they have anything on surly, balding cockatoos.

You Gotta Smell This Stench

One of my favorite bloggers and a guy that I wish I could get together with more for lunch is Jeff Martin, aka Fecund Stench.  His Christmas wish list is a perfect example of why I love his writing.  Here's the link and here's the list:

To the following, I wish anything but the Joys of the Season:

• Telemarketers - I’m sorry that you are poor and this is the best job you could get.  It’s still no excuse.
• Banks - There may be a good one out there. If so, I apologize. But the conditions that bank employees and customers endure is inhuman.
• Politicians - I could put all the good ones in a small closet with Howard Coble.
• Rabid Liberals - You’re just not helping.
• Rabid Conservatives - You’re just not helping.
• Rabid Libertarians - You just want to legalize pot.  We get it.
• Food Lion - Again, inhuman conditions for employees and patrons.
• News & Record - One day when you are retired, I want someone to explain the editorial gestalt. I don’t get it. See, when I make a booboo, I apologize and get on with it. I don’t stand there quietly looking at the 800 Pound Gorilla in the room.
• New Car Dealers - I pray there is a special place in Hell for you.
• Property Developers - My hands ache to get a hold of you.
• Jesus Freaks - Why is Jesus such a babe?  Would you not have fallen for an ugly man?  Or God forbid, a woman.  Wake up and smell the coffee.

I Knew Him When He Was Just Bill

An old friend and brother in the Iota Xi chapter of Sigma Chi (George Mason U) is making a name for himself.  Bill "Will" Carter used to be Sen. John Warner's press secretary and completely changed careers a few years back when he went to New York to try his hand at acting.  He's in California now and is starting to get some juicy roles, including a role in Running with Scissors in a scene opposite Annette Bening and Gwyneth Paltrow.

There's a nice article on Bill in the latest Mason Spirit alumni magazine, and it is absolutely awesome to see Bill making it after such a big gamble.  Still, he'll always be "Billy from Appomattox" to me.

Self Flaggelation

Quit snickering, the title is self-flaggelation not self-flatulation.  Every time there's an election I think of this term as it relates to one of my oldest friends, Dimitri (Jimmy) Kesari.  Jimmy and I went to high school together and from the go he was more involved in politics than anyone I've ever known.  He talked me into running for Student Body president my senior year, got me elected and got himself elected secretary.  Of course he then ran the student body behind the scenes while I stayed busy flirting with the girls on the student council.

Jimmy's an arch-conservative and has walked the conservative walk his entire life.  He went to Grove City College which is so conservative that they proudly refuse to take any federal funding so they don't have to play by the government's rules (at least that's what he said).  After college he started a solid wast recycling business in Northern Virginia and hired me to keep an eye on all the ex-cons running his heavy machinery.  I survived that for about six months before deciding I valued my life too much to continue dodging front loaders and hydraulic mulchers that mysteriously seemed to attack the only college kid in the yard.  Eventually Jimmy had a split with his business partner and he went into politics, which is where the self-flagellation comes in.

Jimmy became a campaign manager for a couple of different hard-right conservatives running for the House.  Even in conservative Virginia these guys were unelectable so Jimmy's guys would get something like 12% of the vote. Each time I'd talk to Jimmy after an election he'd say things like, "The campaign was a big success.  The last time my guy ran he got 5% of the vote and this time we doubled him up to 10%."  The man is a conservative martyr.

Now Jimmy's working for Right to Work and running their state level political operations.  I talked to him this summer and he was getting ready to spend a month away from his family in October working the hotbed states.  Although our politics are very dissimilar I know that in Jimmy's case the conservatism is heart felt and he does walk the walk, which means I'll enjoy disagreeing while never losing respect for him.  I can't say that about a lot of people in politics these days.  I haven't talked to him about it but I can almost guarantee you he's not too happy with the way the Republican Party has steered its course of late.  For his sake I hope he's back home right now enjoying his wife and kids and refueling for the next fight. 

Section 67, Grave 2711

1986 was the first time that intimate death entered my life.  Until that point I had never had anyone close to me die and then in the span of a couple of months my Grandpa died and one of my closest friends from high school was killed.  I was reminded of this two weeks ago when I visited Arlington National Cemetery and found the headstone (Section 67, Grave 2711) of my friend Louis Robinson, Jr. (L CPL, US Marines), who was killed August 31, 1986, a week after his birthday and the same day his child was born.

We, my friends and I,  never really knew the circumstances of Louis's death, but we were told that while stationed out west he was waiting for a transport flight to go to Tennessee to be with his wife for the birth of their child.  He went to a park with some buddies and was having some beers.  Another Marine was at the park with his family, and after being told by his wife that Louis had offered their young son a beer (according to the story his buddies said he was joking around) he went back to his car, got a gun out of the glove box and shot Louis in the chest.  Louis's buddies threw him in a car and took off for the hospital, lost control of their car and ran over a sidewalk and into a storefront.  He never made it to the hospital alive.

I'm not sure how much of this story is true, but I can tell you that it wouldn't surprise me too much if it was.  It has all the earmarks of the silly or stupid crap we did in high school.  We always seemed to get ourselves in little jams by acting like stupid kids while cruising the streets of DC and the suburbs.  Heck we'd even been caught in the vicinity of gunfire twice before.

We laughed off all our misadventures.  After all we were invincible, as yet untouched by the truly horrible punishment that life can mete out.  Sure we all had a little something we could point to as painful: divorced or alcoholic parents, bad break-ups with girlfriends, a car crash or two, but few of us really believed that true tragedy could, or would, touch us.

Louis's death changed that.  I can't speak for my other friends, but it rocked me to the core.  The invincibility that I'd felt disappeared and was replaced by hesistance for the first time that I can remember.  Not that I had never felt fear or uncertainty before, but I felt a truly visceral fear for the first time ever.  Events that I had previously looked at as a crazy kind of fun -- can you believe we just did that? -- I now viewed as events that I had miraculously survived -- how the hell did I not die?

One of my closest friends died doing the kind of thing we'd done for years.  Silly, juvenile, stupid and totally within the norm for your average 19 or 20 year old American idiot.  It saddens me to no end that he died before he outgrew that stage of life, that he never had the opportunity to become a real man, to watch his kids grow up, to experience the pain and joy that it is to be a parent and an adult member of society.

And it shocks me that it has already been 20 years since he died.  To be honest I didn't realize it had been that long until I saw Louis's headstone, and it really knocked me for a loop.  I have no idea what became of his child or his wife; she was from Tennessee and none of us met her before the funeral or saw her after that day.  The fact that Louis was a black city kid from DC and she was a white country girl from Tennessee made the situation a little awkward, and I'm not sure if she stayed in touch with Louis's family.  Unfortunately I know for a fact that I didn't and that is something I regret to this day.

Now I'm thinking of my own kids.  They're just now entering their teenage years and I'm wondering what kind of trouble they'll get into.  What stupid, short-sighted, totally inane mischief will they perpetrate?  Should I share my own misadventures in hopes of making myself an object lesson, or do I risk giving them the wrong idea?  I have no idea and I guess Celeste and I will just have to do what parents have always done: play it by ear and do our best to minimize the damage. And hope to God that good luck is hereditary.

I really wish Louis had lived to face these hopes, fears and questions himself.  We could have talked and  laughed about it over a beer with all our other friends.

There's Bad Beats and Then There's BAD Beats

Before moving to Winston-Salem I played a lot of basement poker, usually at my friend Kevin's house.  I don't get to play with them much any more, but they keep me in the loop via email.  For the last two years a bunch of them have been going out to the World Series of Poker and it usually leads to some funny stories, and most of them have to do with "All-in Ben" (that's him to the left), the craziest and loosest player in our group.

Kevin just got back from WSOP and here's this year's story in full from Kevin's email:

"Just got back from Vegas.  Have an all-in Ben story.

 

Ben sits down at a Texas Hold-em  $25-50 No limit "CASH" game. Starts with $3,000 in cash.  Builds his chips to just under $8,000.

 

The Hand heard around the world!!!

 

Ben:  pocket 7's

player 2:  pocket 9's

player 3:  pocket A's

 

Player 3 bets $500 pre-flop and Ben and #2 call.

 

Flop:  7,7,9

 

Ben checks his 4 7's.

#2 bets $1,500 with full house.  #3 raises $1,500 with AA77.

$3,000 for Ben to call so he raises "all-in Ben" to $7,400

 

Player#2 raises $1,500 and player #3 calls.

 

Main pot that only Ben can win is just under $24,000.

 

Side pot $3,000 for player 2&3.

 

As the turn card comes, Ben is thinking of the new van he is going buy, pay off other gambling debts, prob. buy Erica something.

 

Turn card is A.

 

Player 2 bets big and #3 raises big.

 

River card comes and it changes Ben's life forever:  9

 

Player 2 bets big and player 3 raises and player 2 re-raises.

 

Side pot at about $100,000 and main pot just under $24,000.

 

4 9's beat 4 7's and A's full of 7's.

 

Player 2 wins $124,000."