Atlanta - There & Back (Part 1)

So this past Friday (the 8th) was J's birthday and I ran out of ideas on what to get her after recent perfume purchases. I remembered that it was "Opium" for Mother's Day after forgetting that five letter word at Christmas when I bought her "Chloe".

It had been over a year since I last had bought her some so I kind of forgot or one could say I completely forgot that "Opium" is her favorite. Okay my memory sucks for certain things. Actually I have a great memory it's just that sometimes I recall things a few days or weeks later. Not too handy of a skill. I knew when I had gotten the bottle of "Chloe" that it didn't feel right but rather than walk out of that store empty-handed I thought maybe I was just losing my mind.

Recent purchases had been books that she really wanted or music CDs I thought that she would like or that cool Keurig single cup coffee thingee. Little did I know that the single cup coffee things are ridiculously expensive even for a spendthrift like me.

Even bought her a power tool last year. Some sort of cordless drill that she ooh-ed and aah-ed about on one of her Lowe's trips. It surely wasn't my Lowe's trip. My walking in there is like sitting through one of H's engineering classes. I don't have an effing clue what's going on or what the eff I am looking at. I am like a doe, a deer, a female deer in headlights. LOL. I was truly laughing when I wrote that.

Anyways here I was June 7th; one day before her big day and all I could think of was getting her some Lady Antebellum tickets for their concert here in a couple of weeks with Darius Rucker and Thompson Square. Sadly they didn't have any pairs of tickets left. They had singles but nothing next to each other. Even went down to the BiLo Center box office and got that same answer live in person. I guess the younger lady behind the glass was not duly impressed by this Canadian's predicament because she kept on showing me a map of where the single seats were as if that would work. LOL.

So J and made our Friday evening (her b-day) plans and then Shazam I got an idea! Ouch that hurt by the way! My having an original thought. I knew that J's beloved Yankees were coming into Atlanta for a 3-day set starting on Monday. I figured that would be a good b-day present for her. Getting her tickets for one of the games.

Given that they were coming in on a weekday and Atlanta being 150 miles or so away I figured I would give her the option on which game we'd go see. We talked about it a bit on Friday and it was decided that Monday's game would be the best bet around our work schedules and parental responsibilities. Well hers anyways. H is happy any night that he has free rein at the house. LOL.

So when we got back to J's house I went a-searching for some tickets on MLB.com but then I got completely effing annoyed with Ticketmaster scamming a$$ prices for crap a$$ seats. I hate paying $12 to $20 in fees for each ticket to Ticketmaster or LiveNation. It is a total "cochonerie" paying this monopolistic fee. They aren't doing me $12 to $20 of favors per ticket by my purchasing seats on their site. Not helping my serenity either was the fact that the available seats weren't eggsactly primo deluxe either.



So off I went onto StubHub's website. Imagine my surprise by my finding two seats 12 rows up down the left field line (Yankees side) where the relief pitchers would be warming up at the Big O for a quite reasonable price. Okay the Big O reference probably doesn't mean much to those reading this blog. Let's put it this way. Raul Ibanez who starts in left field for the Yankees against righties plays deeper down the line when the opposing pitcher is at bat than where our seats were located. The seats were darn good! I didn't mind the fee either which was cheaper than the Ticketmaster fee. I may have paid above face value for the seats. It didn't matter as the Ticketmaster seats were more expensive and their location wasn't very good. Go figure!

Darn this is going to be a long blog. Thank Gawd that I have YouTube on play all mode.

So picked up J at her place at around 330 after filling up my tank for the 150 mile drive to Turner Field. Easy drive from Simpsonville/Mauldin. Take interstate 85 south until the Turner Field exit. Easy as pie. Whatever that means. LOL.

We did great time until about a few miles after "Spaghetti Junction" near Atlanta. I think that is about where Marietta is or the Druid Hills exit is on 85. What a effing adventure it is driving on 85 in the Atlanta area! 7 lanes I think. I am doing 70-75 in a 55 mph zone and I am in the way in the 5th or 6th lane. People drive on this everyday. Holy Eff Batman. That's insane!

To be continued...

Sunday Musings

So it's cloudy, somewhat rainy June summer day here and all of a sudden the urge to hunt and peck on my keyboard came upon me. I've noticed that it's been a while since I last typed on here.

It takes some discipline for me to type regularly on here. It isn't that I am at shortage for words because those that really know me; they would say that I can be rather chatty. I think that many of ramblings on here occur in the middle of the night when I am not able to sleep. Lately I have been trying to avoid using electronics like computers or TVs in the middle of the night because I read somewhere that these devices act as waker- uppers for the brain at night. In other words if you avoid 'em your brain is calmer and you can sleep better. Ha! Not bloody likely. I wake up every night at 2 or 3 am it seems. Just like to point out that I read that waker-upper thing on the internet so therefore it must be true. LOL.

Anyways I guess we are three weeks into summer here in the Upstate. A sure sign of it being here is when the younger kids got out of school ten days ago I guess. Sure helps cutting down on morning traffic. Now if I can only calm down somewhat on these drives into work. "Cris de calis" comes into my vocabulary way too often on these drives.

Summer has started off busy so far. I will likely delve into the following events in some blogs to come in which J and I have partaken in since the Memorial Day weekend. There's been lots of grilling (her place and my place). There have been a couple of forays downtown for Main Street Fridays. There have been dining experiences at Greek Fest, TakoSushi, Chicora Alley, Wasabi and Tequilas. We've seen the hot air balloons fly over my house and decide to land in fields and streets right nearby. There was the Eddie Money concert from a couple of weeks ago as well as the 3 Doors Down / ZZ Top concert this past week. Tomorrow will be fun as we are heading down to Atlanta to catch the Yankees and Braves play. Hopefully the rain will hold off. H is off to Pictou County, NS in a week or so to visit his grandfather. I am off to Niagara Falls, On soon for some meetings. I think that this is my 3rd stay at the Falls in the last five years. Weird lived in Canada for 37+ years and never saw the Falls. Been down here and I have been there at least 3 times in the last little while.

Mixed into all of this good stuff was reading that a dear friend of mine from Montreal passed away a couple of weeks ago at the young age of 57. I know that I will devote a blog to the memory of my friend Ted Lukasiewicz real soon. He played a key part in a big turnaround that occurred in my life when I was 27 years old. It's still too hard for me to type about the passing of Ted without losing focus and starting to cry. I'm sure that writing about Ted will help though.

Okay on that note I've lost my train of thought. I'm going to prep supper. Grilling some more steaks tonight. Be back soon.

Drift Away...

So I was sitting in front of my computer looking up recipes for spagetti carbonara which I decided I am going to make tomorrow and then "Drift Away" by Dobie Gray came on the 70s station. More on that later.

I was actually going to make the carbonara for a late snack tonight but I don't have any bacon or panchetta in the house. I don't think I have had any in the house for a year or so. I didn't feel like making a food store run given that it's almost 11pm. I was looking at some family pictures earlier today in my neverending quest to bring some order to my life. Why do I say that? Well I've been in this house for two and half years and I still have boxes that I haven't unpacked. Anyhow one of the pictures triggered the spaghetti carbonara inkling in me. My Mom used to make huge batches of it every once in a while and I wanted to live that memory once again. Kind of sentimental these days. Hmmm. Hopefully it turns out okay. It doesn't seem very complicated to make.

Back to Dobie Gray. As I said the 70s station was playing in the background and all of a sudden one of those all-time classics came on the station. That being the Dobie Gray version of "Drift Away" released back in 1973. If you don't like this song, you don't like music. Simple as that. An absolute northern soul classic. I first heard this song back in the day on CKGM and from the get go this was one of the songs of my youth.

Back then I would head up to the shopping center at the corner of Notre Dame and Labelle and browse the 45s in the music departments that were in the stores at this mall. I would usually end up buying some at Miracle Mart. Now that's a blast from the past. LOL.

One of those 45s that I bought was "Drift Away". I used to play this on this box record player. It was a must-have for a kid back then to have a record player of our own because our parents would surely not let our music pollute their stereo players. It would play 45s, 78s and 33s with the crappiest sound ever. I think these box record players shared the same speaker technology as transistor radios. I would play the 45s over and over until I knew the lyrics backwards and forwards.

The songs that got this treatment were what I consider classics like The Jackson 5's "Rockin Robin", Eddie Kendricks "Keep On Truckin", The Stylistics "Make Me Feel Brand New", William Devaughn's "Be Thankful For What You Got". I wonder if you see the pattern here. All classic soul songs. Man they could sing. I don't think it's possible to compare the stuff from these days next to these songs. I know I am showing my age. Whatever this was, is and will always be the music of my life.

To quote the late great Dobie Gray: "Give me the beat boys that frees my soul I want to get lost in your rock'n'roll and drift away."

This And That and Creole Catfish...

Okay I'm back at the ready at the keyboard here on a Saturday evening with YouTube playing some of my favorites I think randomly. First up on the player is a live version of Asia's "Heat Of The Moment" from the Live in Japan DVD. This version actually has the the four original members of the band so it's pretty darn authentic. While this band was touring back in 2008, there was an offshoot band touring at the same time called Asia Featuring John Payne. LOL. John Payne joined the band after some original band members left back in the late 80s and somehow he got the rights to the name Asia and is allowed to tour with the Asia Featuring JP name. Okay my theory is that Asia is Steve Howe of Yes on electric, Geoff Downes of the Buggles on keyboards, Carl Palmer of ELP on drums and John Wetton of whatever band he was in on bass and vocals. That's the band. They're the ones that had the hits.

It kind of makes me think of the version of the Little River Band (LRB) that is doing tours now and then in this area. Recently LRB was at Harrah's Cherokee and I wanted to go up there and see them. So I googled the showtime, the location, the travel time etc. etc. only to discover that this version of the Little River Band didn't have a single original member from their heyday back in the late 70s. It would be weird paying top dollar to see a cover band playing LRB songs claiming to LRB. Sorry not biting at that lure.

LOL. I used the lure line to segue effortlessly into the success of one my recent supper dishes. A year or two ago when at J's old house her mother was in town and prepared this creole catfish dish that I found to be excellent and quite low maintenance to make.

From start to finish including prep time it took less than an hour to make and that's only because the brown rice I prefer to use takes 50 minutes to be properly prepared. It got a good review from H as I was rather liberal (imagine that me being liberal rather than conservative) with the cayenne and fresh ground black pepper.

Instead of using the native catfish found here which I found to be overpriced considering I wasn't sure if I was going to be successful with this dish I used swai which is like catfish' fraternal twin as opposed to indentical twin. Swai is cultivated in southeast Asia as a food fish and it's cost here is half of the native catfish.

Usually I mess up fish dishes either by overcooking them or making something that I really don't like eating. I didn't even know that swai was similar to catfish until I googled it when I got home after buying it. My thought process was that it's a white fish; it can't be all that bad. LOL. I know a rather scientific approach employed by me. LOL.

Anyways the end result was that it was great dish and I will add it to my cooking arsenal. I really like cooking it turns out.

Okay that's it for now. I actually started this blog a couple of weeks ago and it had been sitting in draft form and I finally said that I would finish it up before starting on some other topics or blogs.

Fathers...

So early this morning in the semi-nocturnal world that I inhabit I had all these ideas buzzing around my head about my next blog. I had these ideas flowing about this and that and the creole catfish that I made for supper last night.

Then around lunchtime today my world flipped upside down for reasons that I am still trying to grasp eight or nine hours later. At about 130 this afternoon I was shaking like a palm tree in a class 5 hurricane. If James Bond wanted a martini, it would be have been shaken to the nth degree and not stirred. LOL.

Anyways let's back this up somewhat and give a little bit of history to help explain things. Maybe it will, maybe it won't.

A week or so ago my sister forwarded an email to me from friends of my Dad that had some pictures of him taken way back in 1960 maybe 1961. I've used some of them for this blog. It triggered memories for me. Some pleasant. Some not so pleasant. Lots of hazy stuff.

Let's face it these pictures were taken a year or two before I was born. So these wouldn't be my memories but at the same time this triggered these faint rememberances that I had of my Dad that was only part of my life for 7 years.

As some may know and some may not know, my Dad had some personal issues and in late September 1969, two weeks or so before he would turn 33 he took his life. I was 7 and 1/2 years old at which point a journey began for me where I was looking, seeking, searching for something to complete me. To help me understand my "Schlewingness". LOL. New word there.

My Mom did her best to raise and bring me and my siblings up at first on her own and then afterwards with the help of a decent man. When you lose a parent regardless of the age you are in your life; challenges arise. I lost my Mom in 2002 and that was different and in many ways incredibly hard to deal with as she was an integral part of my life for 40 years. The impact of her passing was huge on me. For months little things would conjure up sadness. Eventually we heal and in my case happy thoughts and memories were the first things that came to mind instead of sadness.

As I said I lost my Dad young and in many ways I am his spitting image except that I am on the heavier side than he was. I have his height. His bad vision. His skinny legs. His way of carrying himself. I have his first name as my middle name which I passed on to my son as well because it's as if it continues the paternal line so to speak.

My loss helped me become the father that I have tried to find or replace all of my life. Sometimes, most times I think I did or am doing a phenomenal job and other times I've no clue.

Anyways fast forward to today April 19th, 2012 when I thought I made an innocuous and precise observation to my son which led us to have a huge blow-up which I am still trying to understand.

What gets me wondering is that regardless of the big thing that occurred today is that from the day that I cut his umbilical cord over 20 odd years ago, I have been there for the young man. I have made some mistakes and have admitted to them and will continue to make mistakes but damn it I've been there.

I make mistakes. Good things happen. Bad things happen. Sometimes I deal with things correctly. Sometimes wisdom that I have accumulated over the years comes to the forefront. Sometimes irrational anger and emotions take over.

I never said I was perfect. I know I am not perfect. You don't become a parent for the glory. You take pride in your child or in your children. You try to do the right thing. At least I try to do the right thing. You try to set a good example. You want your child not to make the mistakes that you made. They make mistakes it's a part of life. That's how we learn. You don't learn from success. You learn when you eff things up on a grand scale. You learn from pain. Well you're supposed to. LOL. Some people would rather be miserable and not learn at all. That is not me. Someone wise once said that repeating the same behaviour and expecting different results is insanity. Well I try to be sane. LOL. I find that amusing for some reason.

Where am I going here with all this typing? All I have ever wanted is respect. You want to be, I want to be recognized in a certain manner that "hey Marc you did the right thing". You want to hear that you're a good person. You don't want to be treated like the last 20 years have been some effing illusion and all for naught. Damn. I don't sleep most nights because I hurt or I fear yet I get up every day and I try to do good and I try to be better. For all that I don't do well I want learn to do better but at the same time for all that I do well, I in a small way want to be respected even if it is in silence.

LOL. I think that this one of those blogs that is not going on be here for very long. It helped though I typed it. I thought it out. It brings some clarity. I can try to get some sleep now.

Almost There

Well it's about 11pm or as us Canadians say "it's a boot 11." People say I sometimes pronounce it a boot. Honestly I don't think I so. I know there are words that I pronounce differently but that isn't one of them. Now if you said the word garage that I would buy hook line and sinker. I pronounce it as gaa-raj as opposed to gaw-rodge like they do here. I'm 50 I am way too old to change the way I speak. It's bad enough that people have caught me saying y'all. That is so effing wrong coming out of my mouth. Smack me down if you catch me saying that.

Okay I didn't park myself in front of my desktop to wax philosophically on how I pronounce words. It's just what I typed. I babble and I babble well. Sadly I haven't figured out a way how to make money babbling yet. There's hope yet.

I was up way early this morning all stressed about work. I slept in fits and starts and was at work before 730am which is not effing normal for me. H was over at his buddy's place last night so I didn't have GTech chauffeur duties this morning so "I hopped on the bus Gus, Made a new plan Stan" and headed into work early to try to get a step up on my many,many tasks that I am behind on. I actually felt like I made headway today. I may be delusional though. Ha!

By mid-day I was yawning away. My body clock is an effing mess. I picked H up at GTech after work. Came home. Turned on the ballgame at 7pm and promptly napped for an hour. The cat woke me up. She's normally not too vocal but H had the door closed to what I call his game room where her food and litter is and she wanted in so she started meowing. It was annoying and it woke me up! Just as well because I had stuff to do. I had the chance to catch up on some work emails. I had fallen behind after spending a couple of hours in meetings earlier today.

Good thing strike that great thing is that tomorrow is Friday.Yay for Friday. Hopefully it will warm up a bit for Main Street Friday. There's a good band playing tomorrow night. I think I saw them last year. Then again I don't remember what shirt I wore to work on Wednesday so I could be wrong. LOL. I'm laughing as I am probably wrong.

That's it for now. As the Austrian Oak has said in the past, "I'll be back."

Ah Baseball

Ah the beginning of a new MLB season where hope springs eternal that my team (the Washington Nationals) will do all of the little things correctly and make September a month for me to think that they have a chance. With some of the changes they made over the off-season, I will paraphrase the Godfather of Soul and state that "I feel good." So good, so good. LOL. I'm actually singing the words.

Anyways here are some of my quick thoughts on the season so far in no particular order except to note that this is how it is coming to my keyboard as I hunt and peck.

Firstly I am super impressed with Jamie Moyer's return to the major leagues after being away for over 600 days. This after Tommy John surgery and after turning 49 years old this past November. Most guys his age are practicing right arm curls with a bottle of beer rather than figuring out ways to get players out on the Astros that weren't even born when he started pitching in the majors.I read that he has 8 children. Maybe that's why he still needs to pitch. Can you imagine in this age having 8 kids? Wow. The patience of Job is required no doubt. Remarkable story.

One thing I have noticed in our instant gratification society that we live in today is how quickly we turn nasty. Most teams have played two or three games and if you read some of the comments on different websites about team play or certain individual's play, it's a sad commentary on how we quickly the knives come out.

If you're a Braves fan or Red Sox fan, a lot of them are already losing coherent thought and respect for others. I mean it's only game three of the season. Geez Louise. Someone has to lose a game. You lose 1-0 to 10-0, it's a loss either way. They're already calling for the heads of Gonzales and Valentine. Ridiculous fairweather fans that have no idea what they are talking about.

The Tigers with Cabrera and Fielder in the 3rd and 4th spots look scary. I saw the game yesterday afternoon and they both hit a couple of jacks. You don't have to be slim jims when you hit 'em as far as they do. They make hitting look easy. Josh Beckett looked he had batting practice stuff against those guys yesterday.

Have to feel bad for the Cleveland Indians. They've played a 16-inning game and a 12-inning game and came up short both times agaisnt the Blue Jays. Tough way to start a season. At least they had a day-off between games. It's weird starting the season on a Thursday and then having a Friday off.

Back to my Nationals now. Big difference with the team this year is they seem to have an abundance of major league players. Be it in the starting rotation. The bullpen. The bench. They are a lot more solid this year than last year. Good to see Chad Tracy come up big in the first two games. Davey Johnson is going to have some tough decisions to make when Ankiel and Morse are ready to come off the DL. Lidge and Rodriguez are making us forget that Storen will be back real soon. Clippard and his funky glasses has started right where he left off last year.

I think it will be a fun year for my Nationals.

Sunday Morning Coffee Thoughts...

Is there anything better than the smell of fresh brewed coffee? I just came back from dropping H at work and came back into the house just as the coffee I prepared a few minutes ago had just finished brewing. It was a welcoming aroma as I walked in the door and had to avoid Jynx/Jinx who parked herself next to the door leading to the garage. I think she thinks of herself as a guard cat. The thing is that the only way that she will scare people away is when she embarks on one her sneezing jags when she sneezes twenty or thirty times in a row. It's something to see.

Wow coffee number one is gone already. I needed it to warm me up I guess. It is colder out there than I expected especially when my skinny legs met up with cooler temps out there than I thought would be.

Last night I grilled some chicken and veggies using a real simple recipe. A little bit of sea salt, cracked black pepper and vegetable oil to season the chicken along with a couple of green peppers sliced up along with a red onion. I finally bought one of those grill things for veggies. Hmmmm. I know it isn't called a grill thing. It isn't called a basket though that would be a good descriptor for it. Nevertheless you chop veggies in strips, add a little oil drop in the grill thingee and the put on grill and presto fresh veggies. LOL.

I went to Walmart yesterday. Gawd I hate that store but I needed several things for the house and I didn't feel like going to different stores to get them. This is what basket looked like when I was at the register. I had the grill thingee, gas can for the lawn mower, a package of swai fillets, coffee and a mixed case of Mexican beer. The young lady at the register asked me for identication for the beer purchase. It's like oh goodness gracious nevermind. I've been down that road before. Suffice to say that I am 50 yrs. old and I don't look under 21. They have sign there reserving the right to question those up to 40 if they may look under 21. I'm sorry that policy is effing insane. Okay I guess vented. LOL. I can't help it.

Last thing on the grocery order. Those swai fillets. I have no idea what swai is but it was attractively priced so I figured I can try it and if I don't like I will toss the rest out. I just googled it. It is a form of catfish. Typically the cheaper variety comes from Southeast Asia. I guess that's what I bought. Going to look for a recipe for it this week and see what happens.

Okay that's it for now. Typing about food has made me hungry for breakfast. Time to eat a bit.

Middle Of The Week Day Off

So I had the day off today to make up for switching a day last week that really didn't go well with it being a month-end. I can't say that I was very productive at all today. Basically I read a bit. I watched some MLB.TV. I had a bunch of naps. I have had a sleep deficit going for the last year or so. I just can't get through full nights of sleep. Way too many stressful things. Self-inflicted I may add.

Anyways I am about to broil some bone-in chicken breasts with a recipe I found on AllRecipes.com. My neighborhood Food Lion had a great dealing going on this type of chicken breast and it was too good to pass up. This recipe seems a little simple with only the ingredients to season the chicken being a little olive oil, kosher salt and black pepper. I'll have to let you know how it turns out.

Next on the agenda is doing some laundry and hopefully if it stops raining I am heading outside to pull some weeds.

I know this is a short blog. Just getting back into the swing of things here.

Spring Cleaning Of Sorts

Since getting up early this morning to bring H to work, I figured that I should start cleaning up around the house. Kind of a spring cleaning of sorts. Now in Schlewing's World there tends to be some dilly-dallying as I go about cleaning. The number one rule is that I have to music on while I am doing this. So I got the 70s station on Music Choice going since about 8am or so. Brewed some fresh coffee and then quickly wrote some thoughts on that phenomenal Dire Straits song.

Since then I've sorted through the piles of newspapers in the dining room and did triage to get the crosswords out before scrapping the rest. I then emptied and refilled the dishwasher and will need to empty it out in a little bit. I did the pots and pans in the sink using some dollar store dishwashing liquid. I should really test out the quality of the cheap liquid vis-a-vis the national brands. It seems to me that the soap suds last 5 minutes at best with the cheap stuff and then I feel that I am washing in grease water. Ugh that is a disturbing vision. Not quite as bad of a vision as one of a naked Republican male though. Ha!

Okay back to the topic at hand Schliv. I then started on a load of laundry. Whites needed to be done. I then headed outside to my deck to sweep it off good. In the last week my deck has been attacked by green fluffy polleny stuff. I am not even sure where it comes from. All I know is that there is lots floating around. This is the stuff that ends up on cars in the Upstate in the month of April. That's when pretty much any vehicle that is outside for part of the day gets this lovely green film of pollen all over it. So I finished that and then decide to start pulling more weeds that are on what passes for my lawn on the left side of the house. I have this patch of what used to be mostly grass about 6-8 feet wide to 20 feet long that has been taken over by weeds. I just filled about 3/4 of a 13 gallon garbage bag with this stuff. Yuck. This is the 3rd bag I have done since a couple weekends ago. I can actually see the end of this task. I just decided to take a break as my glasses were getting fogged up from the sweat dripping off the top of my head. I need to lose weight. It's getting critical. I decided to take a break and reward my hard work with a Samuel Adams "Mighty Oak Ale". Good tasting beer. Okay I think my break is up. I still have lots to do around the house. No more dilly dallying and typing. LOL. Well for now.