MeSoFun Blog

What better way to round out what was basically car week ? Fog scares me. The reason for that was an eery drive to school in my 1991 Dodge Sundance. It was March of 1995 and I was taking the back way to school. Well, one of the back ways. I had about 10 different routes to take. The Lake Elmo Airport, the train tracks bottom right, the road top right. It was my second most complicated trip to school possible. Take 10th St. North to Nolan Avenue. Take a right and speed. A lot. Do 50 MPH in a 35 MPH zone until you're out by the farms. Then do 60. You end up on Neal Avenue. Then hang a left on 30th and whiz past the Lake Elmo Airport, pictured right. I remember three things about that drive. 1. I turned off the radio because it was surreal driving in the thick fog. 2. I saw one car go past me in 5 minutes of back-road driving. 3. This is the thickest fog I, to this date, have ever seen. My ill-fated Sundance ended up on Manning Avenue. I proceeded toward school carefully and noticed...

Boo, sir. Boo. History lesson time. Lee Iacocca made his fame pitching Buy American in the 1980s for Dodge. Our family did it before it was cool. My Dad traded in his Oldsmobile Cutlass 442 in 1982 or so for a Dodge Colt. A few years later, we added a Dodge Caravan to the family and a Dodge cargo minivan came later. Yes, this is Car Week here at GMFM. Of course, when my great grandmother died, it was me who inherited her 1991 Dodge Sundance (with a moonroof!). That went well enough until my car was destroyed in a car accident in 1995. It wasn't my fault. There was a thick fog and I was rear-ended by a car doing about 40 MPH. I don't love Milwaukee. Dad and I spent two glorious weeks looking for a replacement. We quite literally visited every car dealer in the Twin Cities. Then, we went on vacation to glamorous Milwaukee FOR SPRING BREAK — your options are kind of limited for drivable vacations from Minnesota. We stopped in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, and Dad fell in love with a 1994...

You've probably read the line a few times by now: My name is Jim and I'm a male blogger. Yes, it's meant to be goofy. But it's also me trying to wrap my mind around a role reversal that's taken place. Thank God I'm not alone. The Census released figures Tuesday that show women have more undergraduate and advanced degrees than men do. At first blush, I read that and thought, "Geez, guys are lazy." And then I thought about it for a minute. Uh, that's me. Sort of. Mmmmmmm ... Western lack of civilization. While I have a bachelor's degree, I do not work full time. And in a year, TW will have her master's degree and be able to perform surgeries and prescribe drugs. I plan to finish playing Red Dead Redemption and Just Cause 2 on my PlayStation by the time she graduates. So there's that to look forward to. Have I mentioned I don't have many friends here? My PlayStation is my friend. As much as we love to be iconoclasts — you'll hear s...

I still remember the time schedule, though it was nearly a year ago. Pick Matt up at the Salt Lake airport at 9:45 a.m. Arrive at storage unit in Stansbury Park and leave by 11 a.m. Arrive at the apartment in downtown Salt Lake by 11:45. Load the truck and be on the road, driving away in a moving truck with the Corrolla in tow and the SUV riding in front or behind by 2 p.m. Duke, saying goodbye to Utah's powder outside Park City. Monday's post about roadtripping to Tennessee got me thinking about the Best Roadtrip Ever. I could tell roadtripping stories all week, but we know how that kind of storytelling turns out. What made it the Best Ever wasn't the planning, though the move was mentally rehearsed ad nauseum. TW was working her final day at The Apple while I loaded up the moving truck. She would fly to Minneapolis and spend the night with her mother at an airport hotel, then fly to Boston the next day. TW and TMIL would look for housing in Maine while I drove across the ...

Don't be that guy. I try to live my life my that motto. Don't be the guy on his phone in the grocery store checkout line or at Starbucks. Don't be the guy who orders a hamburger in a high-end restaurant. Don't be the guy that blogs about his dog. Nobody likes that guy. I am that guy. It's a minor miracle you're not reading something dog-centric every week. That it's been limited to two posts is commendable. Or something. Here comes No. 3. This is Duke, the reason I find it funny Daisy won't go in the water. We had a chocolate lab named Duke (or Dukakis, or Olympia) who died in January. The day after he went to the big dog park in the sky, I was on petfinder.com looking at what was available for chocolate lab females in New England. "I found one that's perfect for us," I told my Mom. "It gives me hope that, when we are ready for a new dog, it will be easy to find one." In the greatest listening error of our lives, TW overheard the ...

Why would I drive 2,000 miles roundtrip to pick up a dog? A dog I had never met? These are valid questions, which will be answered ... shortly. It's currently 1:39 a.m. and I can't sleep. Didn't have time to blog during Easter. So contain your excitement just a little while and you'll see a longish, I think, post shortly. About a dog.

It's too easy to bash Bud Selig. And, honestly, I want to give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Mocking him is too easy. We could note his rumpled appearance. He doesn't look right in a suit, but I can't picture him wearing anything else. As long as he has clothes on, it's safely a win for society. I want to tell you he's gotten a bad rap. That tied All-Star Game? Could have happened to anybody in the big chair. It was an impossible situation. I'm not going to second guess the guy by suggesting a home run derby could have ended the game or that any bit of foresight at all would have led somebody to realize that an All-Star game, eventually, would end in a tie. Hindsight is 20/20, they tell me. Let's not pin the blame for at least a decade's worth of rampant steroid use in MLB on The Commish. He's not a king, he was fond of telling us at the time, and he can't simply decree drug testing to be the law of the land. God forbid he make it...

What would a week be if I didn't write about food? This would be the second time, if you include Sunday's cookie tips . (Sidenote: I tried the dark chocolate peanut butter + milk chocolate chip version today. Spec. TACULAR.) Swiss Gruyere. Didn't even have to spell check it. I think of myself as a blue-collar foodie, which might be why I dislike the snobbery of the foodie movement. Buy local, sure. But deep fry something once in a while, too. It doesn't have to bacon crusted (though that's nice) or served with a cheese sauce made from 15 kinds of Swiss Gruyere. This is for the unspoken masses; the millions of us who like to buy local but like greasy food from dive bars and diners. Stop it. Websites often give their highest marks to restaurants with a gimmick. They don't call them gimmicks, of course, but they are. There are high-priced restaurants that will serve you food in plastic baskets. There's a local restaurant or two that gets all its ingredients fr...

My Dad is a little obsessed. This is normal. He's an engineer and I've noticed that engineer of a certain age tend to be idiosyncratic. Ted Huntley hid gummy bears in beer steins and surfed the Internet, though it's unclear if he actually does anything on the Internet. It's possible you could see my house from the top. Then there's my Dad. He likes lighthouses. More than a little. He likes to visit them, and when the opportunity arises, he likes to buy a small keepsake model of the lighthouse. I'm not sure why, as I've never seen them on display in my parents' house in Florida, but I'm also not on the lookout for the trinkets. You can guess where we went last spring when my parents came to visit for the first time in late May. There are about a dozen lighthouses within a half-hour drive of our house, but we went to the touristy spot, the one with bus parking, a donations box and fancy displays explaining how the park around the lighthouse used to be ...

You will get a second blog today. This isn't good enough. Normally, I find time to pre-blog when I know I'm going to have a busy night at work. Not that I blog at work. That would be a misuse of time. I usually do a quick spell check. If by "spell check" you mean "all of it." And so, with 17.5 seconds left in an NBA game that none of you and possibly none of our tens of thousands of readers care about, I'm coming to you live. As it were. It's around this time you begin to question your career. Yes, sports journalism sounds awesome. You get to go to games and stuff. They don't tell you about the late nights, pretty much every night. There was no warning about working every Friday and Saturday night for the fist five years of your marriage. Not that TW minded all that much. But nobody wants to hear complaints about work. It's a lot like everybody else's jobs, except the widgets we're working with are box scores and terribly worded stori...

I hate walking through Monument Square on Mondays. Monument Square sits right in front of my work. There's a giant statue — a monument, if you will — to Maine's Civil War soldiers and our beautiful city library across the street. That's the square, behind the lighthouse. Monument Square sits directly between my workplace and Kamasouptra, the site of the best damn soup in Maine. And every Monday, there is a street preacher standing there holding a sign. Street yeller might be a better term. He's a skinny guy, around 50 years old with dark hair and at least a couple of days of stubble. Not shabby enough to be homeless but not clean-cut enough to not make you wonder. "Repent unto Him, for you are all sinners and must be saved," he yells, some days, at nobody in particular. Some days, I would like to go up to him. I imagine the conversation in my mind. "You're making us Christians look bad, you know," I'd tell him. Sometimes, I imagine he'd j...

It's raining and cool here in Maine today. Good thing I stocked up on groceries for cooking. It will be a thai peanut pasta (with rice noodles), a seven-layer casserole and a sweet potato casserole that doesn't contain marshmallows. Speaking of sugar, here are two additions to the Ex-Girlfriend Cookies : 1. Peanut butter. Add a cup of peanut butter to the mix and subtract half the butter to the original recipe. One suggestion: Peanut Butter and Co. dark chocolate peanut butter . It's usually available at any Target Greatland. The cinnamon raisin kind is even better. Maybe that would be good, too. If you've made it this far, you probably eat right anyway, but for the record: Use any peanut butter that doesn't have hydrodgenated oil, which is horrible for you. 2. Purchase some double-stuff'd Oreos. Wrap the cookie dough around the Oreo. Thank me later. Then go for a 5-mile run. Oh, I'm sorry. You don't like sugar. Here is a simple ... thing ... salad? .......

You can tell I'm trying to eat right. All I can think about is food. Not in a bad, "I want to eat 7,000 caloriesrightnowfeeeeeeeeedme" way. But I've been known to obsess from time to time. A friend of mine joked last night that he wanted to hear about my $4,000 Easter ham . I refuse to let that happen, but the dirty hippy in me won't let it die. Sidenote: Is there a term for people who think they are kind of hippies but wear polyester polo shirts and pants from the Gap? I despise the Gap, by the way. End self-loathing rant. I thought I'd take another stab at this buy-local thing. TW and I joined the Portland Co-Op recently in an effort to: A. Buy local goods at cheaper prices than I could normally get B. Meet some people C. Purchase bulk items Co-Ops, and shopping local, are tricky business. You'll get sticker shock if you walk into the co-op in Duluth, MN., just looking for dinner ingredients. TW used to spend $40 on ingredients for dinner. For herself. ...

The girl behind the counter at Smiling Hill Dairy had to be all of 19 years old. "Do you want any jimmies on your ice cream?" she smiled as she asked me. "Um. Huh? What are .. did you say jimmies? Because that's kind of my name ..." "Yeah, you know, jimmies,"  her cheerfulness never wavering. She walked back a few steps and picked up a container, shaking it for me. I watched the colored, tiny crystals of conglomerated sugar as it dawned on me. Oh, she means "sprinkles." By many accounts, I am an idiot. This has been openly acknowledged and this is not the last time I will acknowledge this fact. However. Please stop confusing me with your regional dialects. Or at least smile, be cheerful and a 19-year-old female when I am confused by your strange words. Utah has Jimmer. Or Teh Jimmer , if you prefer. The South has JimBob. Please, always call me JimBob. Of course, we also have grinders here. Actually, I have yet to see a sign here in Maine for ...

This is exactly the same car I had. It was 4 a.m. on a Monday in early July. That's about all I remember. Cruising east on Interstate 94 with my Dad in my Dodge Duster. Yes, I'm embarrassed to admit that I owned a Duster. Have I mentioned that I hate Dodges? I hate Dodges. But we'll get to that. Dad wanted to beat the traffic for our long run to Nashville. Because there's a lot of traffic headed through central Wisconsin on a Monday. Or something. It was somewhere on that roadtrip, amid multiple listenings of " Kashmir ," that I stopped being a high school student. There were no more graduation parties to go to and, rather suddenly, I stopped being a social butterfly. Outside of Chattanooga, Dad told me I should visit a strip club sometime in my lifetime. "It's fun for about 10 minutes," he told me. I have yet to fulfill his vision for me. It was two 50-gallon drums full of this stuff. Plus more. So much more. That long, two-plus day trip brought...

I have always hated running. But part of me always wondered how fast I could run if my life was in danger. You know, being chased by a bear through the woods, could I make it to my car before being eaten? I don't know that answer. But I learned in high school that, when called upon, anybody can run like the wind. That's me getting my letter in theater, I think. Notice the chub? With a couple of months left in our senior year, I decided it would be a great idea to mess with our student teacher in Russian class. She was dating Dave Offord's older brother — or someone's older brother, I really don't remember — and it was her last day of school. Maybe it was somebody's sister. Move along people. It was decided that the student-teacher needed her car done up right. In this context, "right" meant an application of honey, followed by an application of popcorn. Harmless fun . The thing is, Stillwater High School has parking lot attendants. Two of them, back in...

People like to visit TW and I. TW and me? I'm not sure. She'll mock me for getting it wrong. I like to give her a reason to find me imperfect. Not that she needs the help. In our first year of marriage, we had 17 groups of visitors with approximately 30 different people come to see us. That's too many. We have since agreed to run potential visits by each other, to make sure there are no scheduling conflicts. Like I said, 17 is a lot. Aunt Florence and Co. As a result of frequent visitors, I've developed a kind of routine when we have guests. Go to the Portland Headlight. Stop at Willard Beach. Visit downtown Portland. Go to The Great Lost Bear. It's kind of a favorite place of mine. Such was the path this weekend with my parents and my Aunt Florence in town for a few nights. She requested I use her full name . Go figure . I don't give my family enough credit. I doubt anybody does. But they always come to see me. I lived in a one-bedroom apartment, above a pair ...

I hate that song. But it's Friday and I'm looking to provide a little lighter fare for the weekend. I mean, who wants to read about slaves in Maine and cookie monsters on Friday? Thus begins the weekly "Friday, Friday!" feature in which we here at Schort Co. will be even more frivolous than normal. As per usual, I owe my many Facebook friends and blog followers an apology. Yesterday, in my usual fit of laughter at my hilarity, I posted a PhotoShopped picture of Derek Jeter with my face on it. For the record, I didn't perform the fabulously conceived image. I'm confident that just five people get the Jeter references. They occur on nearly every status update on Facebook. You deserve an explanation. Teh Cap-e-tan. We'll start with the absolute basics. Derek Jeter is a baseball player. He plays for the New York Yankees and is one of the all-time best at his position. He's in the top 25, anyway. He is the team captain, a designation reserved for a revered...

I can't do it. That's me on the pavement. You might remember my Quixotic plan to quit drinking coffee. It hasn't gone so well . I went cold turkey for the first week and I was, by all accounts, a lump of crap. That's a technical, medical term. With the dog waking up at 5:30 a.m., Fresh as a Daisy, I needed to be awake. It was a struggle. A couple of weeks ago I started drinking 50/50 coffee first thing in the morning. Two cups. Nothing crazy. My God. Half-caff coffee. Now that I type it out I see how depraved I've been. I need a priest and some holy water. That brings me to this morning. I'm sitting here with my family. I'm drinking a cup of fully caffeinated Green Mountain coffee. Southern pecan flavor. This brings me to a critical question: Is it wimpy or manly to drink flavored coffee? I'll argue both sides here. Does it get any more manly? A friend of mine, Josh, got me into dark coffees in Duluth. Mud. French roast, dark roast, grainy and thick. Go...

So, here's the deal. My Aunt Flo is visiting. No, really. I have an aunt. Her name is Florence Emma. She's sitting on my couch. You're all enthralled, I can tell. As a result, I'm taking a slight, slight, miniscule break from blogging. In that I will put up a post later Thursday. We're being sociable at the moment and it's hard to blog. Plus I spent a few hours cleaning the house Wednesday. That's how I prepare for a visit from Aunt Flo: Nesting.

Have something you don't want the world to know? Don't tell me. My chosen profession is a good one. I don't keep secrets. I tell them. This is how I justify my latest failure. Or celebrate openly an upcoming vacation! First off, let me tell you how much I appreciate your vacation photos. Fabulous. Especially when we get 19 inches of snow in one day and I haven't left the house in 48 hours. I will be at the floating bar (not pictured). So. Here's where we're going in May! In the midst of a conversation with Amy – about tacos and Styx's 1983 Kilroy Was Here — I blurted out a potential destination for our super-secret, hush-hush May vacation. I'm not sure if the picture at right is a photo or a painting. But that's where we're going. Rooms have swim-out canals, so you can enter the pool without showing off your non-summer-ready body. As if that would ever be the case . This tradition goes back a long way. Just ask my Mom. She's coming to Portla...

You shouldn't be reading this right now. Not because you have better things to do — which you surely should. No, this is supposed to be a cute little non-sequitur about taking The Dog to the beach for the first time. She's a lab. She'll like to swim, right? And they can be off-leash on the beach until Memorial Day. Perfect blog fodder! Especially for a weekend. First, a scene setter. Exciting, right? And then our first action shot! Well, not really. She didn't do much of anything. I have a tennis ball. About 3 minutes into the experience, all was more or less well. She wouldn't play in the water, but she's young. She'll learn. I would much rather look at you, glorious owner. See that rock behind her? That would be the rock I dropped the camera on, cracking the protective lens. Smooth, right? That's the kind of year 2011 has been. I buy a fancy anti-barking device, leave it atop the dog's crate and the dog breaks it. The Wife makes a big deal out of w...

UPDATE: Spouses need a little love, too . For those that don't know, my wife is studying here to be a physician assistant. Many of the students will wake up, get out of bed, and go to school 39 more times this semester, including Saturdays and Sundays. A lot can happen in 39 days. It's about half the length of an NHL or NBA playoff season. Then there's a year of rotations before graduation in May of 2012. They haven't asked me to speak at commencement yet, but we all know that's coming shortly. Here, I offer my hypothetical words of questionable wisdom. Tell people to wear sunscreen. You will have more theoretically important roles in your careers. Some of you will slice and dice in neuro surgery. Others will happily work with underserved populations or with children. Whatever the case and whatever the job, wearing sunscreen is just good advice . It's cheap and we know the benefits are numerous. Tell people to wear sunscreen. Beyond that, I don't have much t...