Spring Cleaning 2.0

WE BEGAN A BLOG on Spring Cleaning back on the ninth, but somehow got sidetracked. With the unusually warm weather were experiencing (and thanks to Exxon/Mobil), and some outdoor space to temporarily move "stuff", today The Lounge cleans house of excess baggage, useless trinkets and assorted "ordures" form the land of the never-again-needed.

THE NO CAR GARAGE: As lamented earlier, more than seventy cardboard boxes remain setlled into that area of our home designed for automotive cover. From Fisher Price toys lovingly put through their paces by youthful trolls a decade ago to hurricane lamps I couldn't dump on eBay to three-wide car seats that have no car, our garage makes your community Goodwill store look like a well stocked Neiman~Marcus. Among the first items to go will be bikes; none of them in working condition, mind you. However, if you're in SE Idaho and need a bike part; frame, wheel, handlebars, chain, or sprocket, chances are you'll find it tossed, without thought, throughout this erfuge for rubbish. Then, with some floor space cleared, we'll go after the boxes. If you don't hear from me in three days, send in the Screaming Eagles of the 101st Airborne, will ya? Anything to get Chris a little closer to home...

OFFICE WITHIN AN OFFICE: When Caits moved out, Caroline took her room and Liney's room then became my office. Was a good little office too, until it began doubling as a storage area for event supplies. And painting supplies. And ornament supplies. And out of season clothing. And old computers. And old financial records. And...wouldn't this all look wonderful in the garage?

TECHNO SHUFFLE: With the advent of the MP3 and the external hard drive, I am thinking I can free up a lot of space in my office by transferring all my cd's (studio recordings and boots I've collected over the past 30 years) to digital format. So be looking for info here here in a few days about how you can pick up some wonderful, rare, and otherwise impossible to find pop, rock, hard rock, folk, blues, jazz, and country shows recorded during the last 50 years. A true-blue triple play this; You get some amazing live musical peformances, I get to move through my office without having to navigate an obstacle course, and together we'll all raise some much needed funds for the local students and classrooms here in I.F. that there just isn't enough of. Uh, classrooms and money that is. We always have plenty of students...

MRS GUMP WAS RIGHT: Stupid is as stupid does. A couple of years ago, I heard the tale about how my mother-in-law used to roll newspaper into logs, soak them in water, and when they dried out, would serve as long-lasting logs for the fireplace. At the time we had three paper routes eminating from our home so it seemed like a natural. 100 or so tightly wrapped, bound and soaked paper logs were soon neatly stacked alongside our house awaiting the coming winter, only to realize as large as we'd made them and tightly as they were wrapped, they wouldn't burn more than a few of the outside pages. So I am thinking this Saturday, the homeade logs will find their way to a nearby recycle bin and Huck will need to find something else to chew and spew forth over my slowly greening backyard. "Rits about rime, Raggy! Arf!"...

NEVER, NEVER, NEVER: Lots of talk about the Kindle, the iPad and other technologically superior replacements for the endless number of books that fill the shelves throughout our home. To borrow from the late and formerly great Charleton Heston..."From my cold, dead, hands!" I am all for efficient development and progress, but with the all-too-rapid life-style advancements of the past 20 years, books are one of our last connections to a civilized and elegant society. Call me a Norman Rockwellesque neo-realist if you must, but there are still few things I enjoy more, when I have the opportunity, than sitting in my great-grandmother's 100 year old birch-wood rocker with a large cup of cocoa on the hearth, and by the light of a well-stoked fire, burning an evening immersed in a well-penned novel. I apologize to those of you who recently ran out and bought the latest, over-priced version of "faster, sleeker, but not necessarily better", but the excitement of young Jim Hawkins eavesdropping from inside an apple barrel or the plaintive thoughts of Tom Joad as he meanders along a lonely country road just can't be fully appreciated from an LED screen, while you're sitting on your chrome-plated Crate & Barrel bar stool, waiting for your turn at Wii Bowling. What's next...reading our grandkids Winnie the Pooh via video conference? Here's hoping that out there in one of those boxes, somewhere, is the old Royal typewriter my grandfather had refurbished for me when I took up journalism in high school. I can't think of anything I'd rather recover from the carboard depths. I think Mr. Caen, who a week from Friday would have been 94, would doff his chappeau to it as well.

So...what's on YOUR mind?

Spring Cleaning

MORE IS LESS: Is it just me or has the constant need for bigger, better, larger, louder, more flashy and too trashy brought us to a point where we have a lot less really good entertainment and a lot more...CRAP? The music of Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Buffett has been replaced by the incessant noise of Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga. Instead of movies like The Godfather and On Golden Pond , cineplexes now offer us The Wrestler and Hannah Montana: The Movie. Where we once had M*A*S*H* and The West Wing, the networks give us The Bachelor and American Idol. Classic tales in novels like Exodus and To Kill a Mockingbird have been replaced by Going Rogue and yet another tome of soft porn by Danielle Steele. Perhaps another blog may be in order...yeah...Quality.com...reviewing retreads which even 20 or 30 or 40 years later are far superior to the dung heep we're presented with today...

STICK A FORK IN HER: Until she does something else incredibly stupid (read: about a week or two), comedy is really the only value Sarah Palin has left to offer. Following last week's 'Snatch and Dash' in the pre-Oscar party Swag Suites, Ms. Foot-In-Her-Mouth spoke before a partisan crowd in Indiana where she defended using crib notes on her hand so that when asked, she could remember what her priorities were, by comparing herself to God. Then the next day, before a group of conservative Canadian legislators, Granny Sarah changed the facts of a story she told during her infamous "Wink and Strut" speech at the 'Pub Nat. Convention. Did she think no one was going to remember that convention speech or notice the changes? Persoanlly, I am thinking Lettermen has her on his payroll. She's just giving him too much material to be doing it for free. Ands since you're on the way out Sarah, could you please take Nancy and Harry with ya?...

IF MEMORY SERVES...just following the first year of the Reagan presidency, Ronnie was bottoming out in the polls and needed something to get himself back on track and more importantly, get the American people with him. He wallopped the Air Traffic Controllers Union and then stood up before the tv cams and said, "THIS is how it's going to be, end of story". Right or wrong, the people loved him for having a plan, sticking to it, and not letting congress push him around. It's time Pres. Obama followed suit. Lay out the "original" ideas you had for healthcare reform, tell Pelosi and Reid they either get in line and play nice with the other side of the aisle or you're going to take a couple of visits out west this summer...on behalf of their opponents...and kick those two to the curb. And yes, I know that's two items in a row where I suggest the political demise of the Dumbnamic Duo, but this is that important and they are that bad...

THEY DID WHAT?: My sports-fix guru Dennis Miller, editor of ACES: Northern California's Premiere Golf Lifestyle Magazine ( www.acesgolfmagazine.com due to hit news stands with the debut issue this summer!) tells me that San Francisco 49ers team owners Denise and John York have gone and signed yet another FORMER #1 NFL draft pick, this time Houston Texans' reject David Carr, at the QB spot. Two thoughts here: 1. These people must have inherited their wealth, because no one can be successful and still be this stupid, and 2. Football intelligence is NOT hereditary. Denise, do the world a favor and on his next brithday (or better yet, for St. Patty's Day!), give your brother Eddie back his team. Trust me, after what you and your hubby have done to this onc storied franchise, the NFL will not only welcome EddieD (owner of the epic Niner teams of the 80's and 90's) back to the fold, but if you play it smart (meaning have someone else lead the negotiations), you can probably get the league to pony up for the new stadium...

WALKING THE DOG this morning, I was thinking about the 72 cardboard boxes that remain, untouched, in my garage, where they have resided since we bought the Brandon Drive house more than two years ago. Lisa and a friend are going on a three-state Temple-hopping tour in late June and I was thinking this may be the perfect time to move the stuff we'll never use from the garage out to the storage unit. But then I figured, this WILL be the summer we'll decide to pull out the peuce and fuscia fondue pot...

TOMORROW THE LOUNGE will offer up it's Hump Day pot of Solution Stew. But for today, here's a quick and easy fix to stop the spitefull bickering and useless arguing between the people who are supposed to be representing us and doing our work in the nation's capitol: FIRE 'EM ALL! The ULTIMATE Spring Cleaning Job. If every voter commits to select the challenger, and all the incumbants from BOTH parties in BOTH houses of Congress are shown the door, then the new kids in town can start over, doing what we want them to do, instead of appeasing the lobbyists and their election donations. Stop and think for just a second...how totally cool, and American, that would be.