Small Detours

Tuesday night. The hot spell has broken a bit. We just got back from River Falls, Wisconsin, where the St. Paul Midway 13-year-olds beat the hometown team 15 to 2. It wasn't all misery for the Wisconsin team. One of the River Falls pitchers had a killer curveball, which is quite amazing, considering he's only in middle school. Then one of their batters hit a nice line drive over our shortstop's head. He jumped up to catch it, Jeter style, but just missed. All the guys on our bench guffawed and one yelled out, "My mom could have caught that." And we moms all yelled out in false indignation, "Heeyy!" Then the kid said, "Okay, my grandma!" And an older woman in the crowd sat up straight and yelled out in real indignation, "Heeyy!"

On the way back, we stopped in at the packed Dairy Queen on Wisc 35 in Hudson. That's what you should do if you're looking for an easy night out. Go to this teen-filled DQ and get your favorite treat, then walk down to the St. Croix and watch all the pretty sailboats in the sunset. Inside the small Brazier shop, there were just as many teens working the counter as there were teens standing in line or lurking around the freezers. Whenever an order came up one of the young workers would hold it up for display and call out its name, and the kids hanging out would nod and praise the effort. It went like this: "Reese's Blizzard, small." "Dude, that is so good." "Kiddie butterscotch cone." "Ahh pysche, I love butterscotch."

It reminded me of the hotel restaurant I used to work at in Grand Forks. One of the other waitresses was as dizzy-headed as that one on the sitcom "Alice." When she had a four-top, we'd help her stack the hot breakfast plates on her skinny arms and she'd bring the food out to the table. She'd ask, "Eggs and Bacon?" and one person would claim it. Then "Pancakes and Sausage?" and another would claim it, then "Oatmeal and Toast?" and the third person would raise his hand. Finally she came to the last plate and she'd look at the plate and look at the last person and look at the plate and ask, "French Toast and Ham?" Killed us every time.

I got right to the tipping point today, trying to handle over 100 large image files from over 20 different sources. My computer kept freezing up and then my mouse broke, too. This is what I wrote my boss, with the subject line "My computer sucks": "My computer sucks so much that I can't manage all the files for this book, an ongoing problem for me and my big photo-heavy books. I'm thinking of taking up cigarette smoking again just so I have something to do for those 3-7 minutes it takes me to open each of these big scans."

I'm pretty sure living with two teenagers is having a small effect on me.

But then I was uplifted by some great book art at the Georgia Review, offered up by the smart new blog "Paper Cuts." You should really take a small detour from your reading right now and go see Thomas Allen's 3-D wonders!




Here's to slaying down Wednesday, the hardest day of the week. . . .




Image by Thomas Allen