Two weddings and two funerals

It dawned on me this week — two months from my eldest daughter’s wedding — that as father of the bride I will be expected to say something at the reception. I am more than a little nervous. So I did what everyone does these days — I googled “Father of the Bride speech.” In the top five hits were the intimidating: Father of the Bride Speech Has to Be Carefully Written; Best Father of the Bride Speech 2013 (YouTube); and the seemingly helpful: What Does the Father of the Bride Say in His Speech?

I guess the latter was genuinely helpful, offering up the basics in a single, if poorly punctuated, paragraph (thank you, Ask.com):

The bride’s father in his speech should act as the warm up man. He should give comprehensive introductory remarks and welcome the groom's family. He must also get the groom's name right, and should not indulge into embarrassing any person especially the x wife, His speech should also look to the future of the families.

I’ll bear that in mind.

About.com takes it a step further, providing three sample speeches. One presents the standard advice, and I wonder if I should deliver it out of tradition or skip it because it’s common wisdom.

Be true to each other always; share your joys and your burdens; love much and laugh much; be each other's best friend. Always speak well of one another, even in private. And when things don't go well, forgive as often as it is required. Married life is an adventure and you embark today on that adventure together. Even though you are individuals, your covenant today makes the couple more important than either of you separately.

I suppose the best plan is to dig deep into my heart and search for the words I want to impart to my daughter and son-to-be. I’m sure some will cover the common ground and I’ll be certain to remember the introductions and salutations, having been reminded by those Google answers.

I’ve delivered one wedding speech, as best man a year and a half ago, and two eulogies — for my best friend in 2010 and his father two years later. So this one will balance the scales. 

Now it’s time to start thinking.

Today's Stats (Saturday, March 22)

Temp: 33 degrees F

Distance: 3.99 miles

Weekly Total: 8.6 miles

Treasure: 33 cans

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):

Waitingfor a Girl Like You - Foreigner

Hard Day - George Michael

ThePromise - When In Rome

And Your Bird Can Sing - The Beatles

Time - Pink Floyd

The Battle of Evermore - Led Zeppelin

The Nightis Still Young - Billy Joel

Peaceful Valley - Ryan Adams

Safe – Phil Wickham

Raspberry Beret - Warren Zevon

Catch MyDisease - Ben Lee

Maybe better than beer

It’s no secret that I enjoy beer. But as an Irishman by heritage I am a little ashamed to confess I like something even more than beer around St. Patrick’s Day: Irish Soda Bread.

Technically I could procure soda bread any time at Uncle Billy’s Bakery, but I have to think about it and request it the day before. I have done that, but it requires thinking and remembering (I would feel bad if I ordered it and forgot to pick it up, though I’m sure somebody would buy it).

That’s the joy of March and St. Patty’s Day season. I know, since when did it become a whole season like Halloween and Christmas? Well, since the bakery started baking Irish Soda Bread at the start of the month. Anyway, I remembered that a week into the month and headed in for my fix. Since then I’ve been in about eight times, usually buying two loaves (are they loaves? Mini-loaves?) at a time — just in case. …

Now, it’s a little disappointing to learn that what Uncle Billy’s calls Irish Soda Bread isn’t traditional. It’s a variant. It may be a variant brought over by immigrants at least. But traditional Irish Soda Bread is a savory quick bread, not sweetened with dried fruit and sugar and filled with caraway seeds. Still, that’s the way I like it — dessert- or breakfast-like. And that’s how I enjoy it: breakfast, afternoon snack, lunch, dinner. I figure the fruit and seeds make it quasi-healthy.

So what’s the deal with Irish Soda Bread? I scoured the Internet in search of the story and found several. The best, which starts off with the information above — that United States “Irish soda bread” isn’t really Irish — was on Epicurious, which turned to chef/cooking teacher Rory O’Connell. With a name like that, I don’t really care what his credentials are, but O’Connell “also founded the renowned Ballymaloe Cookery School with his sister, Darina Allen, in 1983 — both continue to teach there and are regarded as two of the foremost experts on Irish cuisine and food history.

O’Connell tells us bread soda (baking soda) was introduced in the early 1800s, enabling those without an oven to make bread — cooked in a cast-iron pot with a lid, called a bastible (sounds like a Dutch oven). He goes on to explain that the addition of dried fruits — raises, currants, what-have-you — would have been a luxury.

For more on the bread, you can visit Epicurious. But I want to share this one question and answer, mostly because the loaves I’ve bought the past two days didn’t have the cross cut into the top, which made them slightly less fun to eat.

Epicurious: What is the purpose of cutting the shape of a cross on top of the bread?
Rory O'Connell: It's scientific, primarily, because it allows the heat to penetrate into the thickest part of the bread, so it assists cooking. And obviously the cross is a cruciform shape, so in a Catholic country that had a resonance—it had the symbolic note of crossing the breads and giving thanks. There was also the expression "to let the devil out of the bread," so it was slightly superstitious. And if you make that cruciform shape on the bread, when it comes out of the oven it breaks beautifully. So you've got the blessing of the bread by putting the cross on it and then you've got the symbolic breaking of the bread.

Today's Stats (Tuesday, March 18, 2014)

Temp: 34 degrees F

Distance: 4.61 miles

Weekly Total: 4.61 miles

Treasure: Soda Bread! Bought Monday, St. Patrick’s Day.

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):

Soak UpThe Sun – Sheryl Crow

Saturday Night – Bay City Rollers

Sullivan Street – Counting Crows

Rhinestone Cowboy – Glen Campbell

Kelsey – Metro Station

Pour SomeSugar On Me – Def Leppard

What The Hell (Bimbo Jones Remix) – Avril Lavigne

Captain Jack – Billy Joel

I’ll Wait – Van Halen

Hold MyHand – Hootie & The Blowfish

Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl) – Looking Glass

What The Hell (Acoustic Version) – Avril Lavigne

Exercise hurts

It’s time for a little exercise. Yes, I know, I should include physical, but this time I’m going to stick to mental. I’m growing ragged, rusty — slack. I need to write.

George and Winnie in front of Toad Lake Town Hall.

Some people don’t understand bloggers — exposing our inner selves to the harsh, sadistic or just plain uncaring world around us. Sharing one’s life with the masses is dangerous. Nobody else needs to know, unless they’re a close friend, in which case they can ask.

That’s valid. Perfectly. I didn’t understand the concept when my former brother-in-law started a blog while in college several years ago. Why would you want to put yourself out there? Who besides family would care to read it anyway?

Some of us just need to do it. I don’t share everything. I have been perhaps too open with parts of my life and yet I’ve held back, too. And I’d just like to remind those folks that blogging doesn’t have to be personally revelatory.

How about I write about someone else’s life? Someone I don’t know. In fact, I’ll concoct their life from fragments I’ve seen through time. Remember those vacation slides from the 1950s and ’60s  — from Minnesota and Arizona? It took some digging to find those two entries; it was a year ago —— last February! Let’s explore some more of those photos…

George and Winnie loved Toad Lake, Minnesota. Bambi Resort beckoned every summer and they would pack up the Packard and join Lou and Mary and sometimes another couple or two and spend a week in the woods, fishing, frolicking in the lake and lounging around one of the rustic cabins. It's easy to see why they loved it there. The scenery is beautiful.

Bambi Resort, established in 1949, is on Toad Lake is situated between Detroit Lakes and Park Rapids just off Minnesota Highway 34 on the edge of Smokey Hills State Forest. Sometimes the “campers” would make a side trip to the state forest to walk the trails and scout wildlife. But most days they'd tool around the lake on a boat, looking like typical 1950s vacationers. 

Anyway, George and Winnie were boring old farts, so we may have to check on their friends later to see what fun they had at Bambi Resort.

p.s. I started this Thursday and didn’t finish. When I came home from work today I decided to go for a run — it was 44 degrees after all!

Today's Stats (March 7, 2014)

Temp: 44 degrees F

Distance: 3.47 miles

Weekly Total: 3.47 miles

Treasure: 22 cans.

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):

Trampled Under Foot – Led Zeppelin

Sarah – Ray LaMontagne

Helter Skelter (live) – U2

TheReflex – Duran Duran

Two of Us – The Beatles

Why Can’t This Be Love – Van Halen

O MaryDon’t You Weep (live) – Bruce Springsteen with The Sessions Band

Stuck in the Middle With You – Stealers Wheel

A Certain Girl – Warren Zevon

Scenesfrom An Italian Restaurant – Billy Joel

Back on Track

It’s been a while. Six weeks in fact. And after all that talk Jan.1 about a new beginning, a fresh start. Well, I really have no excuse. Sure, it’s been cold, snowy, icy — the usual winter weather in Illinois. But I’ve run in it before. For some reason, though, this year is different. It’s colder. Snowier. Icier.

And my focus is elsewhere. While I haven’t been running, I have been writing. Would you believe love letters? Nearly 60 of them in the past couple months. She lives all of three miles away so most people think I’m a little nuts for writing. What’s wrong with email, text, Facebook, they wonder. We use that for everyday communication like anyone else. But expressing yourself to the one you love is best done the old-fashioned way. Even with lousy handwriting like mine.

Hold on. I took a break to organize my blog files — recently migrated to a Macbook Pro — and discovered I did run twice in January, the second time around Jan. 12, though I didn’t complete a blog. (See note on distraction and focus above.) Hooray for me. So it was only a one-month hiatus, not six weeks.

Anyway, I wouldn’t qualify this single run as really being back on track, but I came up with the seemingly clever — all right, clichéd — title when I crossed the railroad tracks on Farnham Street near Fifth Street. It seemed a good location for a selfie with the tracks stretching out behind me. Unfortunately I didn’t get the effect I was going for, as I’m pretty inept at self-portraiture. I do know someone who is maybe as bad, but I won’t mention any names. Would that I could capture myself with the skill of my friend Jane Carlson, who makes the most awesome self-portraits for her Facebook profile pics.

So this isn’t the most satisfying or interesting blog. I’m struggling getting back into the swing of it. I need a really good run — one that is not only physically and emotionally uplifting, but also productive in the scavenging. I haven’t found squat in months. Winter used to be so rewarding: gloves, hats, scarves, stuffed toys, frozen foods. I need to find something good … and soon!

Today's Stats (Thursday, Feb. 13, 2014)

Temp: 17 degrees F

Distance: 3.66 miles

Weekly Total: 3.66 miles

Treasure: 2 cans

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):

Radio – Matchbox Twenty

New Deep – John Mayer

The Difficult Kind – Sheryl Crow

Can’tFight This Feeling – REO Speedwagon

I Want to Know What Love Is – Foreigner

Let Her In – John Travolta

City Love (live) – John Mayer

Don’t Ask Me Why – Billy Joel

BlindedBy the Light – Manfred Mann

A New Beginning

Time flows on, a river of events and experiences carrying us to our destination – The End.

Who knows what the new year will bring. In a sense it is a revival, a renewal, a starting over. A chance to start with a clean slate. And yet, time is fluid and we are not limited to making a fresh start – or making resolutions if that’s your thing – at the start of a new year. We can embark on new paths at any time. 

But the convenience, or the conformity, of the calendar year gives us a ready milestone, It’s an easy mark from which to set out on our personal goals: From this day hence I shall do X. We set that starting point with an endpoint in mind. (Is anybody else bothered that starting point is two words and endpoint is one?)

And sometimes it’s nice to have an easy mark by which to set the course. The wise men had that star. Luke had that tiny exhaust port in the trench around the girth of the Death Star. Frodo had Mount Doom. Ah, I’m getting off track. But I like those analogies, even if they don’t completely fit.

I don’t really make resolutions, at least not in the traditional sense. Of course I set goals and I have dreams and desires and sometimes I even have a plan for achieving those. And sometimes I follow through.

My point is this: I began a new journey about two months ago, and it continues. I hope it goes on and on. I was struck then by the appropriateness of the song that shuffle randomly selected to start my run this morning, my first run of the new year. My first run as I fully embark on this journey.

I love the live version of Fleetwood Mac’s “Don’t Stop” from “The Dance,” the band’s 1997reunion. The concert featured the USC Marching Trojans on “Tusk” and “Don’t Stop.” Any band geek must love it. And just look at the lyrics:

Does my face make this road look fat?

If you wake up and don't want to smile,
If it takes just a little while,
Open your eyes and look at the day,
You'll see things in a different way. Don't stop thinking about tomorrow,
Don't stop, it'll soon be here, It'll be better than before, Yesterday's gone, yesterday's gone.
Why not think about times to come,
And not about the things that you've done,
If your life was bad to you,
Just think what tomorrow will do.
Don't stop thinking about tomorrow,
…
Don't you look back,
Don't you look back.

(Emphasis added. And no, my notation undoubtedly does not meet APA style.)

Well, as 2014 dawns I am done looking back. I’ve tried looking forward for a while now, but it wasn’t until late October that I cleared the fog and could see down the road. Before that, I kept retreating into the past – the fog seemed less obscuring in that direction. The past has its miseries, but they’re in the past and easy to gloss over. The good times gone by are easier to latch onto and hold tight to. But they are beacons of misguided hope – you can’t go back. Kind of like will-o’-the-wisps, they lead you away from the path until you are lost beyond hope. Better to admire them from afar for their pretty light and then focus your attention on the future.

That’s what I’m doing these days. And my future is looking pretty bright. I’d say it’s so bright I gotta wear shades, but that line’s been taken. Suffice it to say, I’ve a good feeling about 2014.

Today's Stats

Temp: 13 degrees F

Distance: 4.6 miles

Weekly Total: 4.6 miles

Treasure: Auto dealer stick-on logo (V.J. Neu, Inc. – Aledo, Ill.) 

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):

Don’t Stop (live) – Fleetwood Mac

Countin’ On A Miracle – Bruce Springsteen

Games – Ryan Adams

Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) – Billy Joel

Helter Skelter (live) – U2

Downfall – Matchbox Twenty

All Your Reasons – Matchbox Twenty

Girl Like That – Matchbox Twenty

Best of Times – Styx

Caught Up In You - .38 Special

Shoot To Thrill – AC/DC

Happiness – The Fray

Christmas Eve Morning

It was good to get out again after another week off. Need to be more regular about this to really benefit. I’d say that goes for the writing, too, but I am writing regularly, just not for public consumption. I suppose I need to do more on the blog to build my following and monetize and retire on the riches I acquire from online ads. 

Until then, I’ll have to sell my glove collection to pay off the Christmas bills. Found one more (glove that is) yesterday, but I don’t suppose unmatched gloves will be big sellers.

Today's Stats (Dec. 24, 2013)

Temp: -5 degrees F (-2 at the finish)

Distance: 3.06 miles

Weekly Total: 3.06 miles

Treasure: One brown fleece glove, left hand.

iPod Playlist (Shuffle):

After Some Time – The Usual

Walk Between theRaindrops – James McMurtry

A Last Request (I Want Your Sex: Part III) – George Michael

Vital Signs – Rush

Come Back to Bed – John Mayer

Just Like a Pill – Pink

She’s So Mean – Matchbox Twenty

Neon (Live) – John Mayer