Nine Degrees and Dropping.

At some point, it can’t look any colder outside.  My guess is that this registers somewhere on the thermometer between 20 and zero. Take this morning, for instance. An azure sky, the kind only a cold winter seems to create. A week-old dusting of snow which, while lightly covering the grass in our backyard, resembles nature’s best attempt at a Jackson Pollock painting (if the artist had stuck to just white and green). And a pair of grey and black sentinels, whose shining fall leaves are now a ruddy drab that lie underneath the piles of white ice. 

It’s basically the same image I’ve been seeing from my window for the last week, but with one key difference. 

It’s really cold. 

Right now - which is about 8:24 a.m. Central time on December 9 - the Indian food in my freezer is enjoying about the same level of thermal comfort as I am standing on my back stoop. 

I know this because, in a poorly conducted attempt at a third-grade science experiment, I recorded both the temperature outside and the temperature in my freezer with my extra delicate thermometer/whistle/compass/keychain. 

Here is what I got: 

Freezer (yes, those are crinkle cut fries). 

And outside. 

It's not easy to see, but it's about 9 degrees outside. It's just a bit more than that in the freezer. Did I mention the winter solstice is still two weeks away?

Ten Thousand Lakes and I Didn't See One of Them

In honor of Black Friday, here are a few things that make the Mall of America better (weirder?) than your mall.

Morgan and I visited this monument to American consumerism last weekend.

 Beer store.

Bubble tea.

Buddhist monks.

Violent Lego saber-toothed cat death fights.

A Dora ferris wheel.

Fighting stuff.

Horrible looking slipper/clown shoe things.

A history.


One area where the mall didn't differ from any other shopping experience was this . . .

Until they somehow make it entertaining for men to wait on their wives while they try on clothes, I'm not impressed.



So we tried to leave the mall after one day but a snowstorm blocked our way.

No worries. Some folks brought out an old standby for transportation.

Smashing Pavement With 311 Cranberries in Marcy Playground

Out on tour with the Smashing Pumpkins/Nature kids, they don’t have no function/I don’t understand what they mean/ and I could really give a fuck. 

- “Range Life” by Pavement

Who says big name bands don't come to central Wisconsin? I've been seeing their names all over the place . . . 

Smashing Pumpkins

The Cranberries

311

Marcy Playground. Do they count as a big name band? Probably not. 

Just as I was spotting this stuff last week, Side Line Music Magazine reported last week that major record labels might (and I’d wager it’s a BIG might) stop making CD’s as early as next year. 

Whether or not you’ve made the transition to downloads, most of us still use CD’s. We may not buy them at a brick and mortar store anymore, but that doesn’t mean they don’t slide out of our Mac’s disc drive with a ding - hot to the touch like homemade bread.

Blank CD’s, I assume, will still be around. But the story suggests that only special releases will be pressed and packed into those iconic CD jewel cases. I can’t blame them for wanting to save the money, but that doesn’t mean I won’t miss the diminutive discs. Having worked at a now-defunct Sam Goody store in high school, the act of unpacking and blocking (Goody-slang for alphabetizing and organizing the separate CD sections by genre) brings back some good memories. 

I made friends because of the compact disc. On slow days, we’d sit and talk about our favorite tracks. On busy one’s, we’d try to hold back the tide of capitalism by playing the one song we each thought would be the most effective at getting people to leave. Typically this meant either Johnny Cash, some form of death metal, the rap song of-the-moment with the highest rate of profanities per second, or a South Park Christmas song called “Swiss Colony Beef Log.”

And in truth, CD's won’t really go away. In ten or twenty years, hipsters will be collecting CD’s like they do with vinyl today. 

And by hipsters, I mean me.

I'd also like to tag a couple of interesting stories about some other dead or dying formats making a comeback. 

Check out this one on cassette tapes  and this one about the return of VHS. 

Note: 

If you happen to spot band names like those above, send them to my email at afolk81@gmail.com. I’ll throw them up on the blog. They don’t have to be 90’s bands, any era will do. 

Bored? Unemployed? Lazy?

You're welcome.

www.retronaut.co/

I particularly like this one.

Moving Day

I haven't really decided what this blog will be. For now, it will be about whatever I want, and hopefully something more specific in the future. 

But like my earlier post suggested, I'm really interested in everything about our new home state and what this latest moves means. 

I've been through four big moves in my life. 

I was born Beaufort, S.C. 

Moved right near here when I was about three years old. 

Then we packed up and headed farther north around the time I started kindergarten. We lived in Williamsport, Pa. until I was about 12 years old. This is a photo of Howard J. Lamade Stadium in South Williamsport, where the Little League World Series is played each August. 

Back south. 

Back north to Wisconsin. 

These were the major relocations. In between, I had some shorter jaunts for both work and school, but most only lasted a few months. The one’s I listed are the one’s that had a role in shaping me. 

In June, I left my family, friends and career behind in Augusta and set out with my new wife and “doghter” for a place I had visited only once. I now live in a town which contains about 170,000 fewer people, and not a single Moe’s or Barberitos restaurant. 

The cold climate is foreign to me - at times both refreshing and intimidating. The people - warm, genuine, and so very strange. The traffic - nonexistent. The food - fried and full of cholesterol (okay, so maybe the food hasn’t changed very much).

It may sound like I’m pining for my old life, but I’m not. While I gave up a huge degree of comfort and familiarity, I’ve gained so much more. 

Moving always feels like a reinvention to me. Like somehow, when I would arrive in my new home, I'd be different. A new start. A better Adam.

But that only worked for Ahhhnold in "Total Recall." And in truth, it didn’t work out to well for him at all. 

Like the old saying goes: “No matter where you go, there you are.”

You don’t show up in a place and become someone new. 

Being a better person, or friend, or husband, all takes work. This would be true if I’d stayed and captained a shrimp boat in Beaufort or if I now ran a factory outside Beiijing - the place doesn’t matter, you do. 

So as I dig in for this long Wisconsin winter, don’t worry about me keeping busy. I’ll be working hard to make sure this move means something. And when the snows thaw this spring and I emerge from my long winter’s nap, that man - while maybe a bit paler and heavier about the waist - will be better than the one who went in. 

White Signs or the Top Six Clues That Winter Has Come to Wisconsin

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been obsessed with snow. Since my memory kind of sucks, that means my obsession began last January, when Morgan and I first visited our new home in Wisconsin Rapids. At the time, there was probably about two feet of snow on the ground. 

Excellent , I thought. 

When we moved into our new home this August - with temperatures topping 85 degrees - my thoughts were on the impending snowfall, still three months away. 

In conversation with the locals, I would politely suffer through the typical, getting-to-know you banter so that I might pepper them with questions about the winter. These conversations usually went something like this: 

Wisconsinite: “So, how do you like it in ‘Rapids?’”

Me: “It’s cool.”

Wisconsinite: “Find a house to buy yet?”

Me: “Nope.” 

Wisconsinite: "I hope you like beer."

Me: "Oh, I do." (yawn)

Wisconsinite: “I hear you’re from Georgia. Are you ready for the winter.”

Me: “I’m glad you asked. What do I need to do to winterize our cars? Do you know a good mechanic to do it? While we are on the subject, when do the lakes freeze over? How do you know when to drive on them? How do you know when to walk on them? Are there places people swim in them? What do the fish do down there when the water’s frozen? Are they alive? Dead? How will I know if my hand is frozen? What about my toes? Speaking of meat, can I make room in my freezer by putting stuff outside all winter? Which color snow is the best to eat?

Like some bizarre combination of the anxious, childhood joy of a Christmas Advent calendar and the primal fear of a Doomsday clock, each morning I would unconsciously mark the day’s weather with one simple description - “not yet.” 

Until today. 

Today, I awoke to this. 

Now in my short time living in this cheese-eating, Packers-loving, binge drinking, welcoming, sylvan, politically purple-state, I've come to learn there are six great harbingers of winter. 

For your benefit, I've ranked them below in ascending order of importance. 

#6 - It's actually snowing. This is by far the weakest because in Wisconsin, no matter the season, you are only ever a few degrees away from a spontaneous snowfall. 

#5 - The winter solstice. A clear indication that nature is full of crap. It's been snowing for months by this point. 

#4 - Snowplows. Now, although this might be a strong indication of, well, snow, it's not. People are lazy and getting a snowplow off the front of your car isn't the simplest of tasks. I saw a couple of these things driving around in August. 

#3 - Now we're talking. Once these babies are rolled out, the white stuff isn't far behind. Incidentally, I spotted this yesterday, just a few hours before the rain began to freeze. 

#2 - Your house is buried. Your roof has fallen in. Your family has frozen to death. If your local brewery released it's winter ale and you haven't realized autumn ended, you're most likely hypothermic and are probably trapped under a 30 feet of snow. Make an air pocket near your mouth and conserve your strength. A St. Bernard named Lambeau will come to dig you out shortly.  

#1 - Two words: dog boots.