Wine List

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

It happened again. We were invited to someone’s house and it was left to me to buy a bottle of wine to give the hosts; partly in appreciation for being asked and mostly as a peace offering for anything I might say while we are in their home.

I’m not good at wine. People who really like wine, and those who pretend to, make a big fuss over the stuff.  It’s as though their opinion of the wine is more important than their enjoyment of it.  We know people like that. They will declare that something is a “really bad wine” when what I think they really mean is that they don’t like it.  But it is declared with a certainty that can only lead to the conclusion that the grapes should be plowed under and all existing bottles used only for target practice.

Swanson wine bottleAnd that’s my problem with choosing wine. I can’t remember what we were served last time and whether the wine snobs liked it or not so I often decide what to buy based on the graphics and the colors on the label.  I like a clean label, uncluttered and definitely devoid of cute names.  Maybe I’m biased but I think my namesake vineyard does a rather nice job with labels.

Not that I have anything to do with this wine, though I did once get a letter offering me a discount on a case because of my last name.  But even at discount prices it’s too much for me to spend on wine.  And since I choose by the label I have no opinion whatever on the content of the bottle, though I’m told by those who pretend to know that it is definitely wine.

So there I am at the store, trying to buy a bottle of wine. I’ve long ago given up on trying to find something that our host, whoever it is, will appreciate, and I’m just hoping they won’t pour it down the drain in front of me.  And I’m completely lost. It’s not as though I haven’t bought a bottle or two of wine before, but who remembers names and even if you do apparently there’s a big difference in the vintages of stuff. I am in fear of having noses turned up as I present my purchase. All the bottles are disturbingly the same size and shape. And while I appreciate a good label, I’m not sure everyone does.  Some people actually open the bottle.  So I am reduced to reading the descriptions and that makes matters even worse.  This one is crisp, clean with overtones of berry and chocolate, so that sounds good.  But there’s another one that’s oaken and complex with depth so maybe that’s more sophisticated. 

I gather that all these descriptions are arrived upon at wine tastings by people with taste buds that can tell the difference between depth and opulent.  I’ve been to a few wine tastings and it is just the wrong place for me to be.  Inviting a scotch drinker to a wine tasting is like bringing an atheist to church; I enjoy the ritual but I just don’t get the point.

Apparently the first thing you are supposed to do is stick your nose as far into the glass as possible and breathe deeply.  I did this and snorted half a glass of wine up my nose.  Coughing, spitting and sneezing I knew immediately I would not be invited back. Then there’s the swirling, always while grasping the base of the glass so as not to sully the temperature of the wine with my sweaty palm.  One is then supposed to hold the glass up to eye level; I presumed this was to determine if I was shorted when they poured the samples but apparently it has something to do with the way the wine drips down the glass.

Finally, we actually got to taste the wine.  I watched to be sure I was doing it right.  Slurp in, almost inhaling it (without another episode of coughing and sneezing) and then swish it around in your mouth almost gargling.  Then spit it out. Excuse me, is that one that bad? But everyone is spitting it out. I’m thoroughly confused.

Two things come of this process; the description and the rating. At the store where I went to buy this bottle almost every wine had a rating from the Wine Spectator. I picked up one copy of that magazine and flipped it open. It happened to be an article titled “The Great Whites.”  Thinking it was either about sharks or racism I put the magazine back on the shelf. 

The Wine Spectator is apparently the industry standard but its rating seemed suspicious to me.  After all, I’d been to a wine tasting.  No one seemed to learn anything by spectating.  Now, if there was a magazine called the Wine Expectorator I’d give it some credence.

So I was left adrift without a lifeboat. I called my wife and asked if we could just give them money instead. Or stay home.

Resolved

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

I’ve made the promise before and even have taken a stab or two at keeping it, but this is going to be the year. I committed to lose that extra weight.  It’s not healthy to be overweight and if I keep going down this path I won’t be able to do many of the things that I want and need to do.

Friends have encouraged me and said they will do what they can to help. Family members said I needed to do more; not just lose weight, but exercise and get in shape, improve my strength and flexibility. That all sounds good, but I know it is going to be hard enough to just lose weight. I have to keep my eye on the prize.

I had a plan. People said I didn’t have a plan. But I had a plan. I Googled “songs for aerobics,” downloaded them to my iPod and played them really loud. I watched exercise videos. There’s nothing quite like an evening on the couch in front of the TV watching Power 90 workout videos with a bowl of hot buttered popcorn or a big dish of ice cream.

And now, here we are. The end of the year is coming up and it’s time to try another tack. My plan hasn’t worked.  Truth is, along about February I forgot I’d made a plan – except for the popcorn and ice cream part.

So first thing tomorrow morning I’m going to go into the spare room where we keep the elliptical machine thing and get serious. I’ll put on my sweatpants and a sweatshirt and turn up the thermostat as high as it will go. Sure that will jack up the gas bill, but desperate times call for desperate measures. As soon as I figure out how to turn it on, I’m going to get on the elliptical thing and go as fast as I can, non-stop, day and night until New Year’s Eve. No food, no water, no rest.

It’s a commitment I made and I’m going to keep it.

This is what I have to do. I’ve reached the physical cliff.

Then New Year’s Day, it’s back to the couch.  Let’s be real. 

The Ground Beneath Their Feet

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

As we come upon the time of year when people in movies reward themselves for being people in movies, I question the ground they walk on.

Some may worship it, I wonder about it.

Newspapers, television stations, blogs and websites all say these folks walk into the celebrations of themselves on the red carpet.  Which I think begs the question, is it all the same carpet?  Do they haul it from the Golden Globes to the Oscars, from the Emmys to the Tonys, from the MTV awards to the ESPYs?

They all are on “the” red carpet.  It must be one and the same or surely by now someone would say they are standing on “a” red carpet.

It seems as though it is not only the grammatical thing to do, but the ecological thing as well.  Vacuum the damn thing and move on to the next venue.   It’s better to use it again than to roll it up and wait another year while someone else makes an identical red carpet for an almost identical award show.  How many olefin gave their lives to make yet another red carpet? 

And once we’ve pondered that, consider this:  why red?

Nobody Listens

~ Lee Swanson ~ 3 Comments

Odds are I spend more time in doctors’ offices and clinics than you do. Not that it’s how I really want to spend my day, but they keep inviting me back. Since I have this vast experience it seems only right that I share some of what I’ve learned about medicine.

The first thing to understand is nobody is paying any attention.

Here’s what happens every time I’m in a doctor’s office.

The receptionist hands me a questionnaire which must have something to do with a research project, since everyone gets the same questionnaire and none of the questions pertain to me or the reason I’m there.

It calls for yes-no answers, but I’ve decided not to let that deter me. The first question is, “do you want a chaperone in the room with you?” I check “no” and write “I’d prefer a doctor.” Does anyone want a chaperone, ever? I haven’t even heard the word chaperone since junior high school dances and we didn’t want them then either.

Next question: do you have trouble standing or walking? “Not if sober, which isn’t often, so that’s a Yes.”

Have you fallen in the last six weeks? “See question two”

Are you often confused? This is the only question I answer by just checking the box, and without fail I always check both yes and no.

I turn in the questionnaire when the nurse calls me to go from the big waiting room to the little waiting room, the one with the paper-covered table.  No one has ever asked anything about my answers, because quite obviously no one has ever looked at them.

The nurse opens the door to the inner sanctum and always smiles and says “hi, how are you?” That would be a logical question for a nurse to ask a patient, except that the nurse doesn’t care what the answer is. You can answer anything you want and she will nod and ask you to step on the scale. “I died out there in the waiting room.” “Mmm-hmm, let’s get your weight.” “I’m fine, why else would I come in for chemotherapy.” “Right you are, step up on the scale please.” I know it’s a throwaway greeting, but if anyone ever asked “how are you” and genuinely wanted to know, you would think it would be in a doctor’s office. If you don’t want an honest answer maybe you should ask about the weather.

So the next step is to get my weight and then ask my height. No one has ever actually measured my height. They just take my word for it. Big mistake. First I ask “how tall do I have to be for that weight?” and while the nurse fumbles for an answer I say I’m six foot two, or six foot three or six three and a half. I never give the same answer twice. They write it down on a scrap of paper but obviously never record it anywhere or someone would have noticed by now. “This is odd; you’ve grown an inch and a half since you were here a month ago.” But no one ever says that.  And isn’t it kind of a dumb question anyway?   Has your height really changed much since back in the days when you had a chaperone?   Mine only changes because I’m lying about it.  So I’m going to start really lying and see if anyone even blinks. “I’m five-four, do you think this shirt makes me look taller?”

An hour or two later the doctor finally walks into the room and does listen, some, now and then.  Most of the time he’s staring at the computer screen.  I think he’s playing Angry Birds.

Cure for the Common Cold Remedy

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

TO: Kimberly Clark

DATE:   June 9, 2012

RE:   Kleenex

Dear Kim,

It occurs to me every time I catch a cold that someone needs to work on the design for a better  Kleenex box.  Now, before we get too far along this road, let’s settle one thing.  No one this side of Nottingham calls it facial tissue.  Perhaps we are cowed by our inability to say “tis-s-s-yoo” without giggling but refuse to say “tish-oo,” and the campaign to call it a “paper handkerchief” failed for obvious reasons.  So the real point is that it’s Kleenex because no one has ever asked “do you have a Puffs?” Honestly, you can’t ask for “a Puffs.”  How many would you get?

There’s only one thing wrong with the Kleenex box.  It comes in a variety of lovely designer colors and an assortment of convenient sizes.  But no matter what color or size, there comes a point where you can no longer get the Kleenex out of the box.

If you’re honest about it, Kim, you’ll admit it’s even happened to you.  You pull one Kleenex out, and the next one pops up behind it.  You pull that one out – because one Kleenex is not enough, no matter what you plan to use it for – and the next one falls back into the box. And there it hides, shielded by the cellophane that is supposed to make it possible for the Kleenex to pop up.  Instead, that thin sheet of clear plastic now makes it impossible to get a Kleenex at all.  You stick your finger into the box and try to snag the next one, and you fail.  You put two fingers into the slot and end up pulling up forty five or fifty Kleenexes and the fifty-first one falls back into the box again.

You turn the box upside down and try to grab hold of the top Kleenex but it won’t budge.  I’ll admit to not having the patience of Job, unless Job had a nose full of snot, a headache, sore throat and more than a few anger management issues, but come on, there must be some good way to get the damned tis-s-s-yoo out of the box.  Something has to be done.

Allow me to propose two alternatives.  First, the box should be patterned after the napkin dispensers at fast food restaurants.  Simply put, the bottom of the box should be spring-loaded so that the Kleenex is always accessible at the mouth of the box.  Granted this will make the box much more expensive than the Kleenex, and not the least bit recyclable but it will solve the problem.

The second possibility is to include with each Kleenex box a long, slender sliver of wood with a small piece of Velcro attached to it.  (The nubby side of Velcro, not the furry side).  This will enable the user to slip the sliver into the cellophane slit and snag the offending fallen Kleenex.

Glad to help,

Lee

Masters

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

Don’t judge me, but I spent a fair amount of the weekend watching the Masters.  I can be entertained watching golf on television partly because I can still do the Sunday Times crossword and not miss a shot.

But I’m left with a few questions.  First, the visor.  Can anyone explain the visor?  It’s not for sun protection; a visor has an SPF of 0.1.  It looks ridiculous. Spend the extra four dollars and buy the whole cap.

Then there’s Jim Nantz, the CBS announcer.  He treats it like the eighth wonder of the world, starting with his continuous network tagline:  “The Masters, a tradition unlike any other.”  What the hell does that mean?  Aren’t all traditions unlike other traditions?  “The Fourth of July, a tradition unlike Columbus Day.” 

Granted, the Masters thinks it’s got the corner on pomposity, but why feed that beast?  Sure, Gary McCord was kicked off the broadcast team a few years ago for saying a green was so fast it seemed to be bikini waxed.  Announcers aren’t allowed to refer to the fans as fans, or a crowd.  They are “patrons.”  The holes are marked by flagsticks, not pins and you better not make that mistake.  And no one can ever say anything about the prize money.  The prize is the cheap green sports coat.  They’re playing for the green jacket that looks like it’s off the rack at Walmart, not the $1.44 million check.  Yeah, I believe that.

But back to ever-so reverential Jim Nantz.  He does a painful little interview after the tournament in Butler Cabin where the jacket is handed out.  And he says to the winner (Bubba Watson for those who weren’t watching) that he knows how much it means to him to win the Masters on Easter Sunday.  Really?  Because there’s such a close tie between golf and Christianity?  I do know a lot of guys who play golf religiously every Sunday and invoke Jesus’ name while they’re doing it, but I don’t think that’s what Nantz was talking about. 

The U.S. Open always ends on Father’s Day and those announcers spend half the broadcast talking about how important it would have been to the winner’s father if he had been alive to see his multi-millionaire golf pro son win.  That makes some sense, though it’s also pretty cheesy, but why does winning a million and a half dollars on Easter have a psychic significance?

Later in the evening I checked on the Golf Channel long enough to hear one of their brilliant broadcasters say “who would have thought that a guy named Bubba would ever win the Masters.”  Augusta National didn’t admit a black member until 1990 and still doesn’t have a woman member.  Its current president is a 64 year old man named “Billy” and for the ten years before him, the place was run by a guy named “Hootie.”  My question is, why did it take so long for a guy named Bubba to win the Masters?

Jack

~ Lee Swanson ~ Leave a comment

Friends and co-workers from a career full of memories got together today.  We were together because one of us wasn’t there.  He died two weeks ago.

And it’s made me think about how much of life is happenstance and coincidence.  If I hadn’t answered the phone I probably would never have had the chance to come to San Diego and work with these folks. If I’d stayed home one night instead of going out, I never would have met my wife.  Some people will say “it’s meant to be.”  I think I careen through life and things happen by coincidence and happenstance that control the place I live, the people I know, the friends I have, even my family and the people who matter to me.

If I hadn’t gotten the job in San Diego I never would have had the chance to get to know Jack Moorhead.  I knew him mostly at work – and a few parties here and there.  But along the way I learned about the care, feeding and rearing of tortoises – though I never saw his tortoises.  I learned about his chocolate Labradors and later his pug.  I got several recipes – most with sautéed garlic.  I learned about boat building, though I never saw his boats.  I heard about his bartending days.  I learned about the Pacific Crest Trail without ever setting foot on it.  And I got to know his family through his eyes.

I can’t imagine that Jack learned anything from me.

And there were a few things I learned from him that turned out to be just Jack keeping a straight face.  I believed some of them, but he usually would smile and shake his head and say “no of course not” and we’d laugh.  We laughed a lot as I recall.

Jack had a very quick, sharp sense of humor.  It probably says more about me than it does Jack that most of the stories I remember weren’t entirely fit for polite company.  I was up on the desk one morning looking at his story list when he reached into his lunch and started to slice a fresh pear just as the morning tape editor walked by.  She looked over and said “oh nice pear Jack” and just under his breath he said “yours too.”

One day he told the morning meeting that a crew was going to go to arraignment court because a dentist had been arrested, accused of molesting his female patients when they were under anesthetic.  Jack said he had cautioned Lorraine to be aware if the dentist ever said “now you’re going to feel a little prick.”

I saw Jack for the last time a few months ago.  Cheryl and I were going to a yogurt shop in the neighborhood and Jack and Lorraine happened to be at the restaurant next door for dinner and he looked out the window just as we walked past.  He got up from the table and followed us to the yogurt shop, bumped into me a couple times and told me to watch where he was going.  We talked for not long enough before he had to get back to his dinner.

A week ago we took our granddaughters to the yogurt shop.  I looked carefully through the windows of the restaurant, and thought about the coincidences that turn out to mean so much.

There’s Not an App for That

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

This week Microsoft said it’s working on Windows 8 and Apple says it will have the iPad 3 ready by May.

They are both doing the wrong thing.  Windows 7 hasn’t been out long enough to be universally hated yet and no one needs an iPad 3 until everyone has an iPad 2.  There are more pressing needs.

I was one of four hundred people who got an e-mail today saying an event had been canceled.  268 of those people sent reply e-mails saying essentially “thanks for letting me know.”  And all 268 of them replied all.  The remaining 131 (I did not participate) wrote back and said “please don’t reply all.”  And when they did, they replied all. To which the first 268 wrote “sorry, but you don’t have to get all huffy about it.”  And of course they replied all.  That brought back “I haven’t even started getting huffy, you keep replying all and you’ll see huffy,” replied to all.

So what the world really needs is an app that puts up a warning every time someone clicks on “reply all.”  Something like “are you sure you want to reply all?” When the sender clicks “yes” another screen will appear. “Not everyone needs to see this; do you really, really want to reply all?”  If the sender clicks “yes” again the screen would say “no, you don’t.  Don’t be an idiot.”  At that point the e-mail program would close.

That’s what the world needs.  Somebody should e-mail everyone at Microsoft and everyone at Apple and tell them about it.

And when they’ve got that done, they can start on an app that blocks every e-mail that starts “I never forward these, but this is just too good to pass up….”  Because, actually, no it’s not.

Treatment

~ Lee Swanson ~ 3 Comments

I woke up this morning pain free for the first time in about a month.  My ears were ringing from the ibuprofen and there was a dull ache behind my left eye from the scotch that washed the ibuprofen down.  But the back pain that had kept me awake the last two nights was gone.  And more than that, my swollen hands and wrists were close to normal size and able to open wide and close tight.

Maybe I’d turned the corner.

It was a far cry from just two days ago when the cry was of pain and misery and just plain sorrow.  Sitting in a recliner at the infusion center in the hospital, still wrapped in blankets though the uncontrollable chills had passed, an IV attached to the back of my hand, I was not a happy camper.   “He seems a bit depressed.”

Depressed?  Me?  Why would I be depressed?  I have incurable leukemia, am four years out from chemotherapy for a disease with a five year survival rate of seventy percent.  My bone marrow never really recovered from the chemo and my immune system hovers just slightly above bubble boy.  When my granddaughter came home with an innocent little childhood virus it appears to have picked me as its next victim and threw me on my ass.

My hands swelled up like the Michelin man.  I squeezed the rings off my fingers the first night just before my knuckles disappeared.  My watch that usually hung fashionably from my wrist now clung to it like it was painted on, until I could not wear it any more.  I didn’t sleep much because every time I moved in bed my hands got in the way of something and woke me up.  Throwing the covers back to get up was painful.  My ankles and knees started to ache.  I swore that if this ever cleared up I would go back to doing crunches and exercises so I could stand up without pushing myself off the chair with my hands; hands that aren’t capable of pushing anything anymore.

I went to see my primary care doctor who mostly puzzled over it and ordered some blood tests.  He’s careful about doing much of anything for much of anything without consulting my cancer doctor because I don’t react to normal treatments in normal ways.  (The last time I took an anti-viral pill for a little canker sore on my tongue I was in the hospital with pneumonia for a week.  Seems the pill reduced my white cell count even further and in walked the pneumonia.  Who knew?)

Anyway, the blood test didn’t say anything about the swollen hands but my cancer doctor saw the numbers and called to say he wanted to do a bone marrow biopsy.  Again.  This will help my swollen hands and pain exactly how?  It won’t, but my red cell count and platelets were way down and he wanted to know why.  The Internet says that’s one thing that happens when adults get this virus from kids so it made sense to me, but he was looking for other answers.  He’s all about blood cancer.  And when you’re a hammer the whole world’s a nail.

So we do the biopsy.  Actually the nurse practitioner did the biopsy.  My part is to lie on my side with my legs curled up toward my chest.  I’m used to it, but they always seem to forget they have a hell of a time getting this done on me.  Something about a strong pelvic bone.  The first time she tried to drive the spike into my hip, it bent.  I suggested that maybe she had hit a knot but she didn’t understand.  I guess she didn’t take wood shop.

The results come back and I’m told I have red cell aplasia.  Which means something is preventing my blood from making red cells.  The treatment is intravenous immunoglobulin.  They think.  They’ve hardly ever encountered this before in a leukemia patient.  From what I hear they’re all atwitter over it.  I just want to use my hands again one day.

That gets us back to the infusion center and the IV and the blankets.  See, I got a reaction to the immunoglobulin and it gave me a headache and the worst chills you can imagine. Tears ran down my cheeks.   So here’s a fucking news flash for you—I’m depressed.

I’d be suicidal but it’s redundant.

But then I got up Friday and the swelling was gone.  Today the backache is gone.  I’m going to mow the lawn, clean the pool and after my nap, because I’m still anemic as all get out, I might hit a bucket of balls.

It’s a beautiful day. Let’s go outside and play.

Mailbag

~ Lee Swanson ~ 1 Comment

A couple of interesting things popped up in the mail this week.

Stuffed in along with the gas bill was a flyer titled “Five Ways to Heat Your Home for Less.”  None of them will work of course, because if people actually did use less gas to heat their homes the gas company would raise the rates because in the utility world less is more.  More is more too, and they like that better, but they have to at least pretend they are being good citizens by encouraging savings and conservation.

Anyway, the number one tip for how to heat your home for less is this:  Set your furnace thermostat to 68 degrees or lower when you’re at home. You can save 5% for every two degrees you turn the thermostat down.

In other words, the best way to heat your home for less is to heat your home less.

This same advice can be followed in other endeavors.  To save on doctor bills, stay well. To save money at a restaurant, don’t order food.  To save money driving, park.

I knew there was a reason I never look at the junk attached to the gas bill.

The other thing I found intriguing was an e-mail from the Pew Research Center.  The Pew Internet and American Life Project did a study titled Why Most Facebook Users Get More Than They Give.

Here’s what they found:

  • 40% of Facebook users in our sample made a friend request, but 63% received at least one request
  • Users in our sample pressed the like button next to friends’ content an average of 14 times, but had their content “liked” an average of 20 times
  • Users sent 9 personal messages, but received 12
  • 12% of users tagged a friend in a photo, but 35% were themselves tagged in a photo

Yet more evidence the average person is sub-normal.