Living With One Arm

Two weeks ago I had rotator cuff surgery on my right shoulder.  The pictures above are step-by-step photos taken during the surgery as the tear in the rotator cuff is being sewn up.  I first hurt it about 5 years ago while playing softball for a local Minneapolis beer-league team, the Gonghitters.  We were an awesome, fun bunch of friends and we had a lot of good times and even managed to win a few ballgames.  One night while playing in center-field I tried to throw out a runner in a close game and I felt my shoulder pop as I had given it all I had on the throw.  Raging shoulder pain and my right arm was dead.  For the rest of the game and the season I was relegated to playing first base.  It hurt but as long as I did not make any throws or try to reach something from a high cupboard I could live with it.

 

Coincidentally later that summer I injured my left shoulder during a routine drinking accident.  I was at a family reunion in Amherst, WI playing ‘kick-the-can’ with all my fun, cool cousins at my aunt and uncle’s farm.  It was about 1 a.m. and while running around with a huge beer mug full of cheap wine in my left hand I slipped on the wet grass.  My feet went out from under me while rounding a corner and my main concern was saving the wine.  As my feet slid out to the right my arm went out to the left and I landed flush on my left side with my arm straight out.  My beer mug was still in hand resting on the ground, vertically with wine intact.  Phew.  I was drunk but vaguely aware of intense pain in my left shoulder.  The left was not as bad as the right, but now both shoulders were shot.

 

When we got back to Minneapolis I went to a doctor and was prescribed physical therapy.  Over the last 5 years I would rehab the shoulders for awhile, they would feel better, but then the first throw of a ball or pulling my kids on a sled and the shoulder(s) would be shot again.  More rehab in my gym at work, I would feel better for awhile, then throw them out again.  I finally decided this April to have them re-looked at by a doctor.  X-rays determined the left side had a torn labrum, and the right side had a torn labrum and rotator cuff damage.  A follow-up MRI on the right side revealed the rotator cuff was indeed torn.  With my 2 and 4 year old kids starting to get into sports, I decided I wanted to be able to play ball with them and it was time for surgery.  I would have surgery on the right side, and then rehab both sides with physical therapy.

 

The surgery was fine but I do not remember much of the 3 days afterwards as I was zonked out on Oxycontin and Percocet.  While sitting home on the couch those first few days I made the mistake of watching some of my dvr’d TV shows, including the season finale of ‘The Following’ which I now have no recollection of.  I do not enjoy being a zombie as well as the constipation that goes along with it (is that why zombies in real life are so angry?) so I quit the pills cold turkey after the third day.  The constipation and fogginess ended but I went through a withdrawal period complete with hot flashes, nausea and massive headaches.

 

That is all over with now but in the weeks since I have had to wear a sling on my right arm 24 hours a day, taking it off only for showers and my daily arm exercises.  I cannot lay down flat with it on so I have to sleep in a recliner chair surrounded by pillows.  I have to wear it for one full month before it comes off permanently and I start physical therapy.  My wife Nadia and the kids have been great, picking up the slack on all the chores around the house while Dad slums around.  I had taken 2+ weeks off of work, but after 8 days I got bored of sitting around the house watching soap operas and decided to come back to work.  (On that note, ‘Days Of Our Lives’ has gotten really juicy lately...I am so glad that jerk Nick is finally dead...or is he?!).

 

Learning to be left-handed sucks though.  Showering and getting dressed for work takes twice as long.  Brushing my teeth, shaving, combing my hair, wiping my butt, eating...it all sucks doing it with the wrong hand.  I have gotten used to it, but a few things still remain a challenge.  The little things that require two hands like tying my shoes, reading the kids a story, putting on a coat or buttoning my shirts and jeans are maddening.  I now only wear pullover shirts (a challenge in itself) and have abandoned jeans in favor of my black Hugh Hefner lounge pants with an elastic waist band.  Putting on my seatbelt or belting my kids is a struggle and has turned me into a contortionist.  Typing is no picnic and after 8 hours at work sitting in front of a computer my shoulder gets a bit sore.  A lot of little things that I normally take for granted have now become work.

 

I have also found out that it is hard to pee with one hand.  Try it guys, peeing with only your left hand.  Usually I hold my shirt up with left hand while my right hand does all the heavy lifting, shaking, etc.  It is difficult with just one hand to pull down the front of my lounge pants, pull out my weiner and hold my shirt up while peeing.  Just this morning here at work my shirt slipped down and fell in front of my weiner while it was going.  The onrushing pee soaked my shirt, splashed down onto my pants and while trying to get everything back in its right place I got pee all over my hand as well.  Gross.  I washed my hand in the sink and used water and a paper towel to mop up all the pee on my clothes, but my clothes are all wet.  I made a dash for my desk and have not moved since.

 

As I said typing is a pain and this story is taking awhile.  My clothes are starting to dry off now and I should get back to work, so I think I will close this entry.  All in all this surgery and the follow-up care has not been nearly as bad as I thought.  You do what you got to do and move on.  It has made me appreciate both my arms and how hard life must be for amputees.  I am looking forward to getting the sling off in two weeks and get on with rehab, but in the meantime I may start bringing an extra pair of pants to work...

1994 New Years Eve w/The Radiators In Colorado

A couple of days ago I was at work listening to the cd’s of a 12/30/94 Radiators show at the Double Diamond in Aspen, Colorado.  I had a huge smile on my face thinking about the whole trip surrounding that concert and the next night's concert.  I was there with my then-wife Lona, my best-'man’ at my first wedding Debbie Hentches, and my buddy Sean Morrison.  This is one of the great things about live bootlegs...you can pop a cd into your boom-box at work, strap on your headphones, kick back with your feet up on your desk and suddenly you are right back at the show 20 years earlier with a rush of memories flooding your brain.  Again, I do not condone any of the stuff we did, but it happened.

With the death of Bill Graham in 1991, the Grateful Dead's extravagant annual New Year’s Eve shows in California had come to an end.  Needing a new outlet to satisfy our NYE craving for music and good times we turned our attention to the Radiators.  We had made the journey down to New Orleans in 1992 and 1993 seeing the Rads there at Tipitinas both years, but in 1994 the band decided to mix it up and do their NYE run of shows in Colorado.  They were in Vail on the 28^th, Aspen the 29^th and 30^th and then Denver for the grand finale on the 31^st.

Well I guess we were going to Colorado then, so I asked my mom for a snowboard for Christmas.  I had always wanted to learn how and what better place than Colorado?  Lona and I put out feelers to see who wanted to come with.  Our friend Debbie who lived nearby us in Madison agreed to come, and all it took was a quick phone call to carefree Sean up in Minneapolis for him to say:  “Of course, when are you picking me up?”  With family Christmas obligations and a long road-trip between us and Colorado in uncertain weather, we decided we would just go to the 12/30 and 12/31 shows.

Debbie was on probation for a DWI and was not supposed to be driving but she had the best car.  So on Thursday morning 12/29/94, Lona and I piled into Debbie’s car with my snowboard strapped to the side and we made the 4-hour trip to Minneapolis to pick up Sean.  After dinking around in Minneapolis for awhile we finally began the 1100 mile trek to Aspen with Sean's snowboard strapped to the car as well.  Taking turns driving we arrived in Denver around 11am on the morning of the 30^th where we stopped for lunch and a beer.  We still had another 200 miles up to Aspen and after getting into the mountains it began snowing heavily.  Night fell quickly and we had a ways to go as the travel was extremely slow in the mountains.  We were worried about missing the show and we got lost, but eventually we made it to Aspen an hour before show time.

We were sitting in Debbie’s car, parked in downtown Aspen chilling out and thinking about getting something to eat.  Deb was in the driver’s seat, Sean riding shotgun, and Lona and I in the back.  Sean cracked his window and lit up a joint.  The area was well lit with people walking by on the sidewalk right past the front of the car.  It made me nervous but Sean did not seem to care and was just happily puffing away when two cops with cowboy hats suddenly walked up and asked Sean to step out of the car.  Oh no...Sean had a long history with cops, and Debbie was sitting in the driver’s seat with no license.  Thankfully the cops were totally cool.  They told Sean to put it out and be more discreet in the future.  We happily ran across the street into the Double Diamond bar and had a great time dancing to the Radiators and bouncing around on the super-bouncy floor.  Was it really a trampoline-like floor or did I just imagine that?  I still do not know.

The concert ran into the wee hours of the morning, so instead of paying for a hotel that we would barely use we decided to drive the 200 miles back down to Denver after the concert.  The sun was up as we approached the signs off of I-70 for the famous Red Rocks Amphitheatre just 10 miles west of Denver.  None of us had ever been there, but we had all heard of it of course as the place had been hallowed grounds for the Grateful Dead for many years.  We decided to check it out and in the middle of winter on a Saturday morning the place was completely devoid of people.  We figured out how to get in and wandered around in awe at the beauty and history of the place.  Eventually we made it to the stage where on the new-fallen fresh snow that carpeted everything we proceeded to jam out on our air-guitars, playing for 9,000 imaginary fans who were going wild.  It was great thinking about how we were standing and ‘jamming’ on the same stage that the Beatles and the Grateful Dead and Jimi Hendrix and countless other heroes had also played on.

After a bit we got back on the road to Denver, although we were actually heading to the awesome house of the awesome parents of my long-time awesome friend Cire Wonhsak.  I have known Cire since I was 3 years old when our dad’s first met at their jobs at General Electric in Schenectady, NY.  Even though we have not lived in the same city since I was 10 years old we have remained in contact ever since, drifting in and out of each other’s lives around the country at opportune moments.  This was one of those moments.  His parents lived in a huge house in a very nice suburb of Denver, and they were out of town for the weekend.

We managed to find Cire’s house later that morning on 12/31/94.  It was large and amazing and Cire made us feel welcome.  After getting some much needed sleep we were ready for the Radiators that night at the Ogden Theater in Denver.  Spoiled by our spacious surrounding which sure beat sleeping in the car as we had done the past two nights, we were in for even a bigger surprise as Cire told us he got us a limo to the show that night!  His new girlfriend Amy Yamasaki arrived early that evening and the night began.  It would be Cire and Amy's first and last date.

Cire had one more surprise for us.  After the six of us piled into the limo he pulled out a small glass vile of liquid LSD.  Clean...pure...the real deal.  It was a full vial which is about 100 drops, or hits, of acid.  We all had plastic cups of beer, so Cire handed the precious vial to me first to carefully pour a drop into my beer and pass it on.  In the dim light and shaky ride however we hit a bump and I accidentally dumped the whole vial into my beer.  ‘Holy f*cking sh*t’ pretty much summed up the mood as I confessed to Cire that most of the expensive contents now resided in my beer glass.  We held the vial up to a dome light and sure enough, it was almost empty.  What now?  It is not like we could save what had now become the world’s most expensive beer for another time.  We all stared at the mysterious liquid for awhile and then made a solemn decision.  We did not know what else to do so the six of us split the whole beer.

After taking turns passing the beer around and nervously taking sips until it was gone, we arrived at the Ogden Theater.  It was an extremely cold night and supposed to get much colder and snowy.  The limo driver assured us though that he would be waiting right outside after the concert so we left our jackets in the limo.  It was a fantastic show and of course very trippy with the massive amounts of acid running through our brains.  I do not remember seeing much of Cire, Amy, Sean, Debbie or Lona during the show though as I wandered around the beautiful theater taking in the whole scene while riding the musical wave of the Radiators.

After the show the limo was nowhere to be found.  It was insanely cold and we were wearing nothing but jeans and tee-shirts.  We waited in the lobby of the theater for the limo as long as possible, but eventually we got kicked out.  The cold was weird in that I knew it was incredibly cold, but I just willed my body to not be bothered by it.  I was 28 years old and was beginning to figure 'life-stuff' out, including the fact that everything seems to work out if you let it.  So I just decided to relax, and...let everything work out.  This was before cell-phones were standard, so we went across the street to a gas station and waited inside while Cire started making phone calls.  It took awhile but eventually he got through, just in time as the store-clerk was getting sick of us and was trying to kick us out.  When the driver showed up Cire gave him a piece of his mind, but we finally made it back to the house.

We spent the rest of that night/morning hanging out in the large downstairs basement/rec-room with the trippy green carpet and the big TV with the video games.  Unfortunately Amy started losing it after awhile and was not happy with the whole scene.  It was her first time tripping and not only was the acid strong, but I guess with the large amount that we all took it shook her that it was seemingly never-ending.  I felt bad for Eric having to deal with that while he himself was tripping, but eventually we all went to sleep for awhile.  The acid was strong but it was so clean (not cut with speed or any other crap) that we could go to sleep, get some rest and wake up still tripping.

A couple hours later that morning on New Year's Day Sean woke me up and said he wanted to go snowboarding.  He said he felt fine and that he would drive.  I was nervous as I had never boarded before and we were in the Rocky f*cking Mountains.  I was still feeling the acid and at first resisted but Sean is hard to so say no to.  Plus now that we had been tripping so long, that state of mind was now the norm so I decided to just go with the flow.  After a bit of convincing Lona and Debbie agreed to come as well and we all piled into the car and headed for the Arapahoe Basin about 60 miles west of Denver.  The girls decided they would just stay in the lodge and have a few drinks by the roaring fireplace, but Sean and I boarded all day.

I do not know if it was the acid that made it possible, but snowboarding for the first time ever in the Rockies while trying to come down from 15-20 hits of liquid acid seemed fairly easy.  I just stood on the board and let gravity do the work.  Sean tried to teach me a few things but the words he was saying did not seem to transfer into actual advice that I could follow so I just nodded and let nature and instinct take its course.  It was simply awesome and we had a blast.  I had no major crashes and was feeling pretty good about myself until we decided to head back down for good and meet up with the girls in the lodge.  While boarding on a snow-covered wooden walkway from one section of the hill to another I cracked my knee hard on a wooden railing and it ballooned up like a bowling ball.  Sean had to help me to the lodge and when we got inside he carried me around on his back.  We had a drink with the girls and then headed back to Cire's place.

That night we headed to a local bar to watch the Minnesota Vikings take on the Chicago Bears in the Wildcard round of the playoffs.  Amy was long gone and was never coming back, so it was just the five of us.  I felt bad that I'd had a hand in ending Cire/Amy, but he was cool and we had a great time that night eating bar food, drinking pitchers of beer and playing pool.  The only downer was the fact that the Vikings were 6-point favorites and ended up losing to the Bears 35-18.  Dammit.  Seemingly every year of my 48 years of life the Vikings have invented some new cruel way to break my heart.

We went back to Eric's place, got a good night's sleep and the next morning on 1/2/95 we loaded up the car for the trip back to Minneapolis and Madison.  We still felt the acid a little bit that third day after taking it, but we could tell that it was finally wearing off and we were feeling somewhat normal.  We made it back to Minneapolis, dropped off Sean and then headed home for Madison.

Just seconds ago I got off the phone with Sean who still lives in Minneapolis but I have not seen in a couple of years.  We had many laughs over the memories of that trip and vowed to get together soon.  I hope that we do, but with my young kids and his young grandkids time is precious and limited.  I love Sean and that crazy carefree time of my life.  Thank you to the Radiators and my friends for making those times possible. 

Bathtub Mishap #1

A few nights ago I was giving my 4-year old daughter Autumn and my 2-year old son Jack a bath.  No problem.  I have done this at least two nights a week for the last four years.  It is a little more challenging with two kids involved, but no big deal.  The biggest challenge is getting the little nudists into the tub.  They love running around the house naked at top speed yelling and laughing and making us chase them around.  Once we get them in the tub things can get pretty wet and sometimes they fight over the same toys but mostly bath-time is fun time.  This night was a little different though.

We were about half-way through bath-time.  I was just getting ready to end play-time and start wash-time.  Autumn was on the left half of the tub and Jack on the right.  Suddenly Jack stands up, leans back, and with hands on hips he makes the perfect little-boy fountain you see in rich people’s fancy yards and gardens.  He was pointed in the direction of his sister, landing a few inches short of where she was sitting.  Jack was looking down admiring the nice stream but Autumn was not so appreciative.  Her jaw hung open and for a few moments she just stared while the steady stream did not quite hit her but was splashing her the nonetheless.

And then:  “Daddy!  Daddy!!” she yelled as she looked up pleading for help.  She obviously did not care for the unsolicited golden shower/bath she was receiving from her brother.  I sprang into action and grabbed Jack’s little weiner with my left hand, not hard but pinching off the stream while I picked him up with my right arm.  I did a quick 180 and plopped his naked butt on his own ‘big-boy pottie’ and released his weiner.  I hoped he would continue peeing into his fancy little pottie which sings to him when the two metal contacts in the bottom of it are connected by liquid.  As per the rules I would then reward him with a chocolate chip and I would be hero-daddy for my quick-thinking and lightning-fast reflexes.

No.  That is not what happened.  I have not had to clip off my own stream for probably a year or two and I guess I forgot what it was like.  Usually it happens when you are peeing somewhere that you are not supposed to be like on a tree at the golf course, or on a dumpster in the alley out behind the bar.  As you know guys, when someone comes along and you have to instantly cut it off it is very disconcerting, slightly painful, and not a fun experience.  Well that is what Jack was going through and he was extremely pissed off, no pun intended.

One minute he was happily relieving himself and showing off his penile prowess to his sister, and the next minute his father is pinching said penis, ending his relief.  When I plopped him on the pottie he had a furious look on his face as he eyes went from his weiner, up to me, back down to his weiner, back up to me.  He simply could not believe what I had done to him and he burst out crying in anger, pain and frustration.  I implored him to keep on peeing and I would give him a chocolate chip.  He just screamed all the louder because nothing more would come out.  I had pinched it off and that was that.  I had ruined it for him.

Just then Autumn of course stood up and started dancing up and down in the pee-water, lifting one foot up and then the other in an effort to get away from the water while screaming “Ewww, Daddy, Daddy!!”  This was all going horribly wrong.  My wife Nadia appeared in the hallway staring at the situation that I had quickly turned into mayhem.  Both kids were screaming as she sprung into action, picking up Jack to calm him down while I pulled the plug on the bathtub.  We drained out all the pee-water and started the bath over.  Lesson learned…next time I will remove Autumn from the bathtub, not Jack.  And more importantly:  never grab another person’s weiner unless they really want it to be grabbed.

Tummy Tuck?

Tummy tuck?  No.  Did I finally got that prosthetic cotton belly-button that I have always been craving?  No.  A double C-section?  No.  Triple hernia surgery?  Yes.  The surgeon went in and found two more than he was expecting.  They knew that I had an umbilical/belly-button hernia, but when they got in there they found two more hernias.  After an 'Air Mishap' that occurred six weeks ago on a flight from Minneapolis to New Orleans as well as countless flare-ups over the years, I knew I had hernias that eventually needed to be fixed.  I have complained about it at every routine check-up for the last 30 years.  After years of turning my head and coughing while he/she plays with my balls though, they still always told me that I did not have a hernia other than in my belly-button.

It all started in about 8th or 9th grade.  I was participating in the Presidential Fitness Challenge at school where you had to do a series of events in gym class like push ups and pull ups and running and stuff.  When you reach certain goals you get points, with the eventual goal of getting the Presidential Physical Fitness Award patch.  One day in gym class I was doing the sit-ups test when suddenly I felt a weird pain down in my gut.  I lifted my shirt up and there was a golf-ball sized lump sticking up out of my stomach!  What the hell?!  I took a quick look around to see if anybody noticed, and then pushed it back in.  I was embarrassed and thought I was some sort of a freak.  I had no idea what had happened and did not tell anybody about it.

The last straw (we'll call it 'Air Mishap #7') was Friday, 1/17/14 while on board a flight from Minneapolis to New Orleans to see my favorite band the Radiator's now-annual anniversary gigs at Tipitinas.  As a private pilot I am of course fascinated by flying and always have to have the window seat.  So we were rolling down the runway on take-off and I was the third seat in sitting next to two strangers.  I was leaning forward looking out the window when suddenly it happened...a hernia on my left side popped out.

Normally when that happens I just stand up, arch my back as much as I can, push the thing back in my stomach and I'm good.  But this was not normal.  I was in an airliner lifting off the ground at 160 mph, my seat in the forward-upright position and the overhead bin directly above my head.  I could not stand up or arch my back, so I just pressed on the bulge and hung on for dear life.  The pain was immense.  It felt like someone's fist was in my stomach grabbing and twisting my intestines.  I could feel the muscles moving around and when I lifted my shirt to look I could see my skin rippling and undulating.  It looked like there was an alien in me trying to claw it's way out.

For about 5 minutes I fought with the hernia and stared at the red flight-attendant call button overhead.  Was my hernia strangulating?  Was I going to have to make the plane turn around and land back in Minneapolis?  Would I be on the news?  Could I do that?  There was no way I could endure this for 2 hours.  Sweating and gritting my teeth and wondering what I should do, it finally stopped all of a sudden.  Phew!  No more leaning forward to look out the window for the rest of the trip...and I knew I had to get this thing fixed soon.

The surgery was set for Friday morning, 2/21/14, and I had to be at the hospital at 6:10am.  Due to the blizzard that Minneapolis got hammered with the previous 16 hours, I got up at 4:30am to blow the 12" of fresh snow out of my driveway so I could get to the hospital.  It was actually several feet deep over much of the driveway due to the high winds and drifting snow.  I threw out my back in the process but managed to finish by 5:30am, leaving just enough time for a quick shower and off to the hospital.  I was not supposed to eat or drink anything before the surgery, but I drank some shower water without thinking.  Habit.  On the third big gulp though I remembered and spat it out.

I could barely walk due to my bad back, but I shuffled into the hospital and began the process.  I got naked, donned the blue paper dress, had meetings with nurses, vital signs taken, belly shaved, met the anesthesiologist, IV installed in my hand, doctor came in and drew circles on my stomach, and then they finally led me to the operating room.  I was actually looking forward to the surgery so that my back could get some relief from the follow-up pain meds.  They strapped me down on what resembled a cross and the next thing I knew it was a couple hours later and they were waking me up.  Very strange losing time instantly like that.  I thought about my anesthesiologist friend Cire Wonhsak.

That was a week ago.  The pain pills helped for the three days that I stayed on them, but the back pain is still there and my front side feels like the Minnesota Vikings have relocated their new stadium site to my stomach and have started construction on it.  Also, after a couple of days the bruising and blood in my abdomen began migrating south to my nether regions.  Yes, my penis and balls are purple and swollen.  Normally I wear boxers, but I needed more support so I had to send my wife Nadia out to the store to buy me some Fruit Of The Loom briefs.

I went to lunch with Mitch Marshall and Ted Booker yesterday at Joey “mother*cking” D's.  It is a greasy Chicago-style hot dog/pizza joint on the south-side of Minneapolis.  With the abdominal bloating and constipation I figured their food would clear me right out.  I have seen better men than me taken down hard by Joey D’s though, so when it came time to order I chickened out and just went with a bland burger and fries.  It was great seeing my best buds, except hanging with those two always means a lot of laughs which kills a guy with stomach stitches.  Love hurts.

All in all though surgery is not so bad.  No more hernias I hope, and now I need to decide what to fix next.  The nerve damage in my left elbow from a drinking accident that leaves my fingers numb whenever I bend my arm for very long...or the torn rotator cuff and labrum in my right shoulder I got from playing softball...or the torn lateral meniscus in my right knee that I got from playing kickball.  It's hell being 47 years old and falling apart.  But maybe if I hold out long enough I can get some bionic parts!  I loved The Six Million Dollar Man when I was kid...so awesome...I always wanted to be that man, going on OSI missions with Jaime Sommers and hanging with our bionic dog Max.

Air Mishap #6

As some of you may remember from my earlier blog entries (‘Air Mishap #’s 1 through 5’, dated 8/16/11 through 2/17/12) for better or for worse I have my pilots license and have had a few ‘incidents’ in the air.  Although all of those incidents that I wrote about happened while I was piloting the plane, a recent incident I had while flying with the good people of AirTran got me thinking about other incidents in the air while flying commercial.  I will tell you about a couple of them…mishap #6 in this blog entry and #7 in a future entry.

Air Mishap #6 occurred on a Monday morning, May 4^th, 1998.  My girlfriend at the time Mugsy and I had just seen our favorite band the Radiators five nights in a row in New Orleans, as we were down there for the great annual New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.  We saw the Radiators three nights at Tipitinas, then Saturday night at the House Of Blues, and then finally in their traditional Sunday evening spot closing out Jazzfest on the Polaroid Stage.  As I learned over the years, Jazzfest is a marathon not a sprint.  The tendency when you get down there all excited for the festivities is to hit it hard right out of the gate, but you have to pace yourself.  After years of practice I had settled into the following routine:  Wake up at 11am and head to the Jazzfest fairgrounds for a day’s worth of incredible local and national musical acts on the dozen or so stages scattered around the racetrack while drinking tons of water and stuffing myself silly with local fare from the hundreds of awesome food booths.  Deep breath.  Head back to the hotel at 7pm.  Sleep till 10pm.  Then head out for the nighttime activities which consists of more incredible music at all of the clubs around town.  Get back to the hotel at 6am.  Sleep till 11am.  Repeat.

So Mugsy and I had run the musical gauntlet and survived a week in New Orleans.  It was time to drag our wearing bones on to our Northwest Airlines flight and head back home to Minneapolis on the other end of the Mississippi River.  We got up Monday morning, took a cab from our hotel to the airport, and we were running late so we pulled an O.J running through the airport.  Remember when “pulling an O.J.” meant running through the airport jumping over people’s luggage trying to make your plane?  “Go O.J. go!”  Now it means to viciously murder someone.  Ahh how times change.  Anyways, we had not had time for anything to eat so on the way to our gate we quickly stepped in to a magazine store and grabbed a Nestle Crunch candy bar.  Our flight was already boarding when we got there so we jumped in line and made our way to our seats.

We were on the left side of the plane, halfway back, in seats A & B with the aisle next to us.  I had the window seat and Mugsy the aisle seat.  Mugsy peeled open the wrapper on the Nestle Crunch bar and placed it on the armrest between us.  It was already broken into a bunch of small pieces.  As the plane taxied to the runway we watched the flight attendant explain to us where the exits were and how our seat belts worked while we took turns reaching down and grabbing chunks of the candy bar.  Eventually we were cleared for takeoff and started to accelerate down the runway.  I was intently watching out the window and munching on a bite of the candy when suddenly I felt Mugsy violently jabbing my arm.

“What the hell?!” I said, and turned around to see her muffling a scream with one hand and pointing down to the Nestle bar with the other.  I looked down at the chocolate and wrapper.  The two of us had eaten most of the candy bar, but what was left was writhing with half-inch long white maggots.  My stomach flipped in revulsion, first at the sight of the maggots and then at the realization that we had probably eaten a bunch of them along with the chocolate.  Come to think of it, it did taste a little funny but neither of us had noticed at the time as our attention was elsewhere while we were eating the chunks.

The plane was just lifting off and Mugsy quickly unbuckled her belt with no problems, thanks no doubt to the thorough instructions she had just received from the stewardess.  With one hand still over her mouth trying to hold back the puke, she began running down the aisle heading for the bathroom in the back of the plane.  She got about halfway there when a stewardess stood up and loudly yelled:  “Miss!  You have to take your seat!!”  Everyone in the back half of the plane was staring at her but Mugsy kept on running for the bathroom.  She almost got there when the stewardess intercepted her, blocking the aisle and demanding she go back to her seat.  Mugsy shouted:  “You have a choice!  I’m either going to puke on you or in the bathroom!”  The stewardess quickly stepped aside and Mugsy made it just in time, puking her guts out in the toilet.

While this bit of drama was going on I grabbed the pile of wrapper, chocolate and maggots and rolled it all up into a ball and stuffed it into a barf bag.  I too felt a bit queasy but managed to keep everything down.  The stewardess ran to my seat asking what the hell was going on and I thrust the barf bag at her and told her to throw it out.  She grabbed it and I explained that it was full of maggots, and then she looked like she was going to puke.  Mugsy came back after a bit, pale and shaken and we sat there trying not to think about the maggots.  The rest of the flight though I kept picturing myself reaching down, grabbing a maggoty chunk of chocolate, placing it in my mouth, slowly chewing the chocolate and maggots into mush, and then with a swallow introducing them to their grave that was my stomach.

If any of you know Mugsy, you know that she was not one to take things quietly and rationally.  When we got home she wanted to call the newspapers, the TV stations, the President of the United States if need be and demand justice.  She wanted to sue Nestle for hundreds of millions of dollars for emotional damage.  Irreparable pain and suffering.  I thought it was kind of cool that we had eaten maggots and lived, but Mugsy was out for blood.  So I called Nestle and tried to explain what it was like living with an angered Mugsy.  Living with a happy Mugsy was hard enough but the alternative was a very hard cross to bear.

After many phone calls and hours of being on hold and days of negotiating with them, we finally came to an agreement whereby they would refund us the cost of our airplane tickets.  It was not hundreds of millions of dollars, but I got Mugsy to agree to the $250 that we would each get.  Even though I had paid for both tickets, I gave her $250 out of the $500 that we received from Nestle so she could have some semblance of satisfaction.  I was amazed that we received even a dime, so I was more than happy to get $250 out of the deal.  I would eat a pile of maggots for $250 any day.   On that note, lesson learned:  always look before you eat.

Fireside Chat

Hi ya’ll, I just thought I would check in as it has been awhile since my last blog posted back on 12/6/13.  I still have plenty of stories and thoughts roaming around in my head, but I have been so busy with the holidays and work that I have not had much time to sit down and write one.  So instead of a story I will take my lunch hour here to update you on what has been going on the last month.

After recovering from the fiasco that was Thanksgiving (a blog-worthy story that is better left un-written), the next day my wife Nadia, my 4-year old daughter Autumn and my 2-year old son Jack set our sights on Christmas.  We dragged the fake tree out of the garage, decorated that and the house, hung stockings, and bought a blow-up family of snowmen for the front yard...but the highlight was when I carefully strung a large but old set of lights on the back deck, carefully weaving the 50 feet of lights around and through the posts while only shattering 2 bulbs in the process.  Our entire neighborhood is absolutely nuts with outdoor lights and decorations, the next house more lavishly decorated and lit up then the last, so I thought with my house on the corner lot I should participate as well this year.  So when I finally finished I triumphantly plugged the lights in and voila!  All of seven bulbs on the entire string came to life!  Three in a bunch right in the first 2 feet, and then the other four bulbs lit up sporadically along the remaining 48 feet.  It was quite an unspectacular sight next to all my neighbors whose lighting displays can be seen from outer space, but I was cold and fed up and left the lights as is.  They are still plugged in to this day as I have not had the heart to unwind them or even unplug them, but we are down to about 3 or 4 working bulbs now.

Next up for the Sneaky Sweets household was Autumn’s very first Christmas program at church.  At the age of 4 she was the youngest there, but she practiced hard and seriously knew the words better than anybody there.  At the end the pastor gave her a shout out, saying he would especially like to thank Autumn for taking the lead on vocals.  From the front row I was filming her during the program, and dressed as an angel she was right up front smiling and waving to me and singing loudly and doing little impromptu dances with the songs.  She was so insanely cute, and thinking back to how fast the 4 years have gone by I had tears running down my cheeks while trying to film her.

The following weekend had our family going to an old-fashioned Christmas party at a snowmobile clubhouse, complete with food, cookies, a hayride...and a visit from Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus.  The photo above is a picture of my two kids just as the Claus’s are making their entrance into the building.  For the first year ever Autumn worked up the nerve to go sit with Santa (and asked for a Barbie-playhouse) but Jack would not go near him.  He stood a safe distance away tucked in between my legs, but he kept peering out in awe and wonder at the big hairy dude and his wife.

After posting the above picture on Facebook with the bit about the Barbie-playhouse, my friend Kara Marshall let me know that her and Mitch had bought their daughter Savannah a playhouse and she almost never played with it and it was just collecting dust in the basement.  Hurray!  Nadia and I were already done with our Christmas shopping except for the playhouse, so the day before Christmas I went over to Mitch and Kara’s to pick it up.  Holy moly, the thing was a huge 3-story mansion complete with an elevator and tons of working gadgets.  In addition to that they gave us a car-load of other little-girl stuff including a trunk full of princess clothes.  It was awesome, but as we loaded item after item into my SUV I noted with a bemused smile how disappointing next Christmas will be compared to this year.  How is Santa going to top this?  Needless to say, Autumn was overjoyed with all of the incredible loot and she still plays with the Barbie house and dresses up as a different princess every day.  Thanks Marshalls for helping to make it “The best Christmas ever!” as Autumn put it.

The following weekend it was time to say goodbye to the H.H.H Metrodome, the home of the Minnesota Vikings since 1982, to make way for our new billion dollar stadium being built on the same spot.  On that Saturday the Vikings invited season ticket holders to an open house from 4-7pm.  So I drove Autumn and I to the Cabooze Bar, parked for free and then we took the train to the Dome.  Autumn was beside herself with excitement from both her first train ride and first (and last) trip to the Dome.  We ran down to the field, chased each other around, took turns tackling each other in the endzone, went to the locker room, talked to ex-player Rickey Young, got pictures of Autumn on the Vikings bench and by the goalposts and endzone, saw ourselves on the jumbotron, and I also found my name on a hallway wall listing all of the season ticket holders.

While rolling around in the endzone I filled my pockets with astro-turf, some glitter that Autumn found, and a very well-manicured fingernail.  I brought it all home and have it in a baggie.  In 20 or 30 years when they finally get this DNA cloning thing down I am going to have them make a person from the fingernail so we can see just which Viking it is, or I suppose it could be from an opposing team.  Either way I will have my very own NFL player to hang out with!

After we had enough of the Dome we took the train back to the Cabooze and then she picked Applebees to go to dinner.  It was a great daddy/daughter date.  It was 44 degrees out.  Then the next morning I went to the final Vikings game at the Dome and it was suddenly -9 degrees (-30 with the wind-chill).  The Vikings won which was rare but nice.  There were TONS of security there to prevent the riot that took place when the old Met Stadium hosted it’s last Vikings game in 1981 and the fans tore the entire building to shreds.  On my way out of the Dome though I grabbed a large purple sign that said:  “This Way To Gate G” and I will hang it on the door to my bar in the basement.

Next up was New Year’s Eve, which was a non-event.  Nadia and I had some champagne, she went to bed and I stayed up watching the awesome movie ‘Dazed And Confused’.  I paused at 11pm to watch the ball drop on Times Square, then back to the movie and then to bed at 12:01am.  One weird thing happened earlier that day though and I am not sure what to make of it.  I was in the locker room at work on my lunch break getting ready to work out.  I was undressing when a plastic knife that I was using earlier to eat with flew out of my shirt pocket and landed on the floor...on its edge.  This was a flat plastic dinner-ware knife that flew out from a height of 5 feet and landed on a hard tiled floor and stuck the landing right on its edge.  I just stood and stared at it for about 10 seconds, not believing what I had just seen.  Then I tried to recreate what had just happened.  I dropped the knife over and over and after about 50 tries from a height of maybe 2 inches I finally got it to land and stick on its side.  Is this a good omen?

A week later I went to the awesome ‘PINK’ concert at the Target Center, and this Friday I am heading to New Orleans to see a couple reunion shows of my favorite band ‘The Radiators’.  Me and a few hundred of my best friends are flying in from all over the country to see the Radiators play 3 nights at Tipitinas.  Yeah baby!

Last night I also had a lifelong dream of mine realized.  I got to work at home, with a beer in hand!  We have been so swamped at work for the last 2 months that they finally agreed to let me work overtime from my home computer.  My friend Dave Malone the guitar/singer from the Radiators always says that he only drinks when he works and I have always been jealous of him.  Finally, I got to have what he has! (Minus the throngs of adoring and screaming fans).  I only had 1 beer just to say that I did it, but I think tonight I am going to bump it up to a new level and a new dream:  working naked with a beer in hand!  Top that Dave.

Well that is it for now.  I have plenty of more stories and I will get them on here one by one as time permits.  Hopefully work will eventually die down a bit and I will get a chance to write some more.  In the meantime have a great day, and remember that everything will work out if you let it.  Oh, also, I just had the juiciest pear I have ever had in my life.  It was so ridiculously sweet and wet that I had to run from my desk to the kitchen here at work to eat it over the sink.  When I was done I was out of breath and covered with juice.  I felt like I’d just had sex with it.  It was orgasmically good.  Anyways back to work, and in the words of one of my new favorite performers:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 years from now
I hope I'm still getting down
I hope I'm still around

But 6, 7, 8, 10 beers ago
I had a revelation all is well right now
It's all good right now
It's all good right now
It's all good right now

These are the good old days
These are the good old days
These are the good old days...

Tom Petty - Now And Then

This past summer on 6/29/13 my wife Nadia and I went to see the timeless Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers at the Target Center in Minneapolis, MN.  We had amazing front-row lower-deck seats right off the front-left corner of the stage.  At the age of 62 Tom’s hair was a little thinner and he looked a tad road-weary but not much.  Our show was the last on the tour but he still had plenty of energy to put on a kick-ass show full of deep cuts, covers and of course the hits from his vast repertoire of material from the Heartbreakers and the Traveling Wilburys.  There was not a lot of back-and-forth chatter with the audience and not much moving around.  There was no real light show or stage show to speak of and he was not even promoting a new album.  He was just out to play music and it was two hours of no-BS straight-ahead rock-and-roll.  He always comes off as a cool, laid-back dude who is having fun and knows his sh*t.

 

Further proof that he ‘knows his sh*t’ is his SiriusXM satellite radio show he has called ‘Tom Petty’s Buried Treasure’ on the ‘Deep Tracks’ channel.  I listen to it in my car on the way home from work where Tom plays tunes from the 50’s and 60’s that he grew up with and influenced him.  Not only do the deep cuts bring you back, but half the fun of the show is listening to Tom’s easy southern drawl between songs when he talks about the history of the song or the band with little known facts and stories and how they may relate to his life.  It is fascinating and educational and makes you wish Tom was your uncle.

 

During the concert I happened to look down at the folks on the floor and directly below us was my buddy B-Dog with his new girlfriend Beth, aka Li’l Treefrog.  He came over and said hi and then after the show he talked us into coming out for drinks.  B-Dog was extremely buzzed but in a fantastic mood as he told jokes and showed off his incredibly hot and extremely nice new girlfriend.  He had a surprise for us all as he led us to a fancy downtown hotel suite a couple blocks from the arena.  Despite a spilled bottle of vodka and some B-Dog wardrobe changes we had a good time chatting, drinking, eating Cherry Garcia ice cream and checking out the pictures I took from the concert.

 

As I said it was a great show and it got me thinking back to the other two times I saw Tom Petty.  The first time was 6/26/86 when Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers were the backing band for Bob Dylan.  It was at the H.H.H. Metrodome in downtown Minneapolis with the Grateful Dead playing two opening sets.  As a budding 20 year old college hippie I had liked Tom Petty as a kid and of course I liked Bob Dylan, but I was really there to see the Grateful Dead.  It was only my 3^rd Dead show but I got bit by the bug a year earlier and was really getting into them as I was phasing out of my Black Sabbath/Judas Priest/Iron Maiden high-school metal music and into the Grateful Dead.

 

The Dead played two sets including a strange but cool ‘Terrapin Station’ into ‘Estimated Prophet’ to open the 2^nd set but I could barely hear a word of anything that was said or sung from the stage because of the atrocious acoustics in the 60,000 seat inflatable Metrodome.  It was seriously unbelievable how bad it was.  I had seats up in the stands so I jumped over the wall down onto the wood planking covering the fake grass but it was just as bad.  We stuck out both sets of the Dead but left a few songs into the Dylan/Petty set because the sound was somehow even worse.  On a good day Bob Dylan is hard to understand, but in that huge inflatable bubble of white noise it was just sad so we left.

 

My girlfriend Lona, my buddy Mark and I went home and we packed for the road trip down to Alpine Valley, WI for two more Dead shows in the coming nights.  I had a pet Ball Python named Damien back at my parent’s home near Alpine Valley and for some reason I brought a rat with us for the road trip to bring to the snake.  Just outside of Minneapolis we picked up a hitchhiker who was heading to the Alpine Valley shows.  The guy thought we should name the rat so he picked a name like ‘Julius’ I believe.  We gave the guy a ride to Madison, WI before we parted ways…him heading on to Alpine Valley and us going to Waukesha to crash at our parents’ house and rest up for the next two nights.  In the morning we got up and drove the 20 miles to Alpine and set up our tents.  Eventually we found my buddy Rinehart Simpson, who had driven 18 hours straight overnight in his pickup truck from New Mexico to meet us at the show.  We enjoyed two great nights with the Dead which made up for the acoustically horrendous show in Minneapolis.

 

Okay, back to Tom Petty.  The next time I saw Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was 9 years later at the same Alpine Valley Music Theatre on 9/16/95.  I was living in Madison then and working for WPS Insurance Company.  A horrible place to work but the birthplace of at least a dozen strong friendships including my best friend Mitch.  Another friend from there was my buddy Glenn Kampson, one of the funniest men in the United States.  He was a Tom Petty fan and when the concert was announced he asked if I wanted to go.  A full day/night with just me and Glenn?  I wondered if I could handle it.  I decided LSD would be required to get through all that so I located some good clean paper acid mailed in from California.  It came in block sheets of 100 hits, and when 9 sheets were placed together it made up a picture of Jesus.  Communion.  Lord help me.  We filled a cooler with beers and began the hour-plus drive to Alpine Valley.

Glenn drove his truck and we drank beers and laughed as we took a back roads short-cut that Glenn thought he knew about.  We promptly got lost so Glenn decided to pull over at some out-of-the-way roadhouse strip-joint.  I have never been a fan of strip clubs as I think it is very weird for a bunch of guys to sit around with boners staring at hot, bored-looking girls that they will never have a chance to touch or know.  Weird, creepy and ultimately frustrating.  But Glenn wanted some food so we strapped ourselves in and ordered burgers and beers and watched the show.  I finally managed to pull Glen out of there by reminding him of the concert tickets we had and we hit the road with directions to Alpine.  We got lost again but eventually found the lines of cars leading to the beautiful outdoor amphitheatre that I had seen 14 Grateful Dead shows and countless other concerts at.

It was a fantastic show and Glen and I had a blast out on the lawn.  With him drinking and me tripping our two personalities were perfectly tuned to each other and that band at that venue on that night.  We laughed uncontrollably for hours until my face seriously hurt and I thought my perma-grin cheeks were going to stay that way forever.  I remember at one point trying to climb up on Glen’s shoulders but he shook me off.  Besides our spirits in tune, so was Tom and his band as they tore up the Wisconsin night with all of our favorites.  This was Tom’s ‘Dogs With Wings’ tour and it’s interesting to note that 12 of the 22 songs he played that night were also on the setlist 18 years later when I next saw him with Nadia.  It just goes to show how great both shows were.

After the concert we hopped in Glenn’s truck and started the trek back to Madison.  Of course we got lost within minutes as we bounced from small town to small town trying to find Madison.  Glenn obviously should not have been driving and it was stupid of us, but I remember one particular quiet little town with actual cobblestone streets that was not ready for Glenn.  It was a quaint little place and ‘downtown’ was nothing but a crossroads with houses lining the streets between the closed corner-store and several churches.  When we pulled into the main square Glenn rolled down his window, leaned out and started yelling indecipherable gibberish at the few pedestrians who happened to be walking while his truck slowly rolled through town.  I think he was frustrated and trying get directions but nobody including myself could understand a word he was saying and all I could do was cringe at the helplessness of the situation.

After getting no help there we rolled on and eventually found a main highway that brought us safely back to Madison.  It was a fantastic night.  One of three and hopefully more to come with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.   As my musical heroes (and I) get older I am more and more of the feeling that I need to see them every chance I get when they come around in concert, as it may be the last time.  Here are setlists for the shows:

6/26/86 – H.H.H Metrodome – Minneapolis, MN

Bob Dylan’s backing band.


9/16/95 – Alpine Valley Music Theatre – E. Troy, WI

1)      Love Is A Long Road

2)      You Don’t Know How It Feels

3)      Listen To Her Heart

4)      I Won’t Back Down

5)      Free Fallin’

6)      You Wreck Me

7)      Diamond Head

8)      Mary Jane’s Last Dance

9)      Don’t Come Around Here No More

10)   A Higher Place

11)   It’ll All Work Out

12)   Learning To Fly

13)   Lonely Weekends

14)   Breakdown

15)   Cabin Down Below

16)   It’s Good To Be King

17)   Drivin’ Down To Georgia

18)   Refugee

19)   Runnin’ Down A Dream

Encore

20)   Honey Bee

21)   Gloria

22)   American Girl 

6/29/13 – Target Center – Minneapolis, MN 

1)      So You Want To Be A Rock ‘n’ Roll Star

2)      Love Is A Long Road

3)      I Won’t Back Down

4)      Baby, Please Don’t go

5)      Here Comes My Girl

6)      Mary Jane’s Last Dance

7)      Free Fallin’

8)      A Woman In Love (It’s Not Me)

9)      Cabin Down Below

10)   Tweeter And the Monkey Man

11)   Rebels

12)   It’s Good To Be King

13)   Learning To Fly

14)   Yer So Bad

15)   I Should Have Known It

16)   Refugee

17)   Runnin’ Down A Dream

Encore

18)   Don’t Come Around Here No More

19)   You Wreck Me

20)   American Girl