Where do I live?

I put in that cute little widget on the left to see if anyone else is reading the blog. Now I discover that I live in Warsaw, Indiana—at least that is the city that registers every time I log in. Makes me wonder just how accurate the thing is.

Warsaw doesn't look like such a bad place to be from. After all, Wikipedia calls it "Orthopedic Capital of the World." They are also home to CoCo Wheats and a company that makes projection screens. By contrast, what does Mansfield have? Well, there is the Carrousel, Kingwood Center, and (always) the state prison. Now that I think of it, we do have quite an assortment of odd little local benefits. I think I'll stay here instead of moving to Warsaw.

Laundry Ethics

Saturday is laundry day for me.

Though I live alone, I begin with gathering and sorting, just like everyone else. This brings up the first problem: has that garment "aged" enough? Yes, I wore that turtleneck all day yesterday, but I didn't get too sweaty, and it doesn't smell that bad. Is it OK to wash it? Then there are the sheets and towels. When I was a boy, my mom had a very strict sheet routine: every week she changed the top sheet and moved the top sheet to the bottom. I've got fitted sheets now, so I guess two weeks on the whole set is OK. Or is it? When did I change them last? Sniff test?

We move forward: pollution. A year ago, I went to the Great Falls of the Potomac with my sister. It's a wonderful place, more impressive, actually, than Niagara (though not such a tourist venue). It was a wonderful early summer day, and as we stood there, she asked me what that smell was. It wasn't foul or dead or anything like that—sort of pleasant in fact. Laundry detergent! The whole place smelled Springtime Fresh; I assume the chemicals in laundry detergent make it through the sewage treatment process. (I've noticed the same phenomenon while bicycling past the Lexington sewage lagoon.) After that, I vowed to buy only the fragrance-free variety, but I capitulated. Target had a sale and I bought some Floral Medley All. Am I a bad person? I guess I'll use it anyhow.

One more ethical hurdle: the shared washing machines. My machines are just downstairs from my apartment, and two serve twelve units. I don't mind that very much, but I do get troubled when someone leaves stuff in a machine forever. I've got to watch it, though. If I get properly irritated when someone else does that, I need to keep a timer and run down when mine is done, lest I cause someone else to fall into the sin of anger. There's also the danger that my damp clothes will be piled on the shelf if I leave them too long.

Tears in my eyes

Happy tears.

I often have students who seem like they are in the wrong place: instead of college, they should be working in a gas station or something. H is one such student, and when he turned in his last paper, I seriously wondered if he was sober when he did it. Terrible. Illiterate. Incomprehensible.

Anyhow, I'm suffering from a lot of burnout right now, and decided that today's lecture would be about MY interests (and English composition as a way of expressing them), so I did a major thing with environmentalism. I showed them pictures of hellbenders. (Look THAT up!) Figured it was my own ego trip.

H went to the writing lab and said the lecture was really interesting—caught his attention and gave him something to think about.

Amazing!

Mom's Hamburgers

A Mansfield landmark has changed, and for the worse.

Mom's Hamburgers on Ashland Road was always my favorite burger place. The actual menu didn't sound like much—sounded like a clone of Wendy's, with quarter-pound burgers and "Frosted Malts" (sort of a super-thick chocolate shake). The big difference was that the ingredients were fresh and the cooking was done right. Wendy's tasted stale by comparison.

Alas, Mom's is no more, at least in its former shape. Now they are a sports bar. The new billboard says "Like nothing else" and the new sign out front advertises prime rib, longneck beers and full bar service. Maybe the area needed another bar. At least the parking lot was full when I drove by at 6:00.

I'll miss Mom's. They were like nothing else.

Coffee

Time for some.

I've been going pretty much non-stop since 8 a.m. yesterday, and a late lunch at Chipotle's plus a cuppa at Angel Falls sounds wonderful. I may even buy a pound of whole beans there.

My feelings are very mixed about that pound, though. Yes, it's a nice little local business and yes, it's all Fair Trade, but the owner (and roaster) is Venezuelan. Now I have no quarrel with Venezuela and Chavez, but Venezuelan coffee is about the lightest roast available. It's like green plants.

Somehow, I got to talking with a student about tea and coffee today and that reminded me of my own background. When I was in college, I had an old Sunbeam coffee maker in my dorm room. The one in the movie is glass, but mine was metal. Made an amazing amount of noise, heat and steam, was difficult to clean out, and made terrible coffee. I stepped up to a cheap aluminum dripolator from a dime store. It was similar to these. What an improvement! Mr. Coffee was far in our future, but I fell in love with drip coffee.

This must be an addiction. In addition to a LARGE variety of coffee cups, saucers, spoons, etc., I now own:

• 4-cup Mr. Coffee
• 8-cup Mr. Coffee
• Smallish Bialetti espresso maker
• Incredible hand-blown Chemex which I got at Goodwill for about $2
• and the cutest little Melitta plastic cone, which makes wonderful coffee.

I had a chance at a cheap French press a while back (Barnes & Noble closeout), but I passed on that, remembering the nightmare of getting Sunbeam cleaned after using it.

Time to go. My stomach clock has gone off.

My economic prescription

Yesterday I had to exchange a small part for the church's Mac Mini. Because I was already in Akron, I decided to go to the Apple store in Legacy Village, only about 20 minutes north of me, rather than all the way back to the one near Columbus.

Mistake.

Not counting the intense road construction, things got really insane when I was within two miles of the store. I'd never been to Legacy Village before, so I was depending on a Google map, which told me to exit the highway and drive "into" Cedar Lane. At the exit was a tight exit ramp, a crossroad, and a sign pointing to the right with the words "Cedar Lane." I thought things were going well. I didn't realize that the sign meant I should have taken the exit (which the sign didn't point to) rather than the street (which it did point to). Adding to the confusion was the Cleveland habit of putting road signs on only the minor roads—after all, you KNOW what the major roads are, right?

After I had wandered around on various roads for about half an hour, I began to think that the Apple store was located in someone's house and that this "Legacy Village" must be a subdivision.

Which brings me to my main point, and my proposal for some of the government stimulus money: use it for road signs pointing people to shopping malls.

There's nothing to alert a wanderer to the location of Legacy Village until you drive by the entrance. (I did have a Cedar Lane address for the Apple store, and that helped a lot.) Similarly, if you want to go to Eastland Town Center in Columbus, there's a freeway sign that tells you to take an exit that's totally wrong. Finding the right one is mainly a matter of experience. The Apple website lists the address as "4070 The Strand East," which is zero help to someone trying to drive there. Even humble Mansfield lists addresses as if you already knew: Macy's is at 715 Richland Mall. And where is Richland Mall? Their website has the answer: 2209 Richland Mall.

Woodies

Saturday laundry time.

One of the few things I rescued from mom's house was sheets. She's got a double bed at her new place, so all the twin sheets were redundant. I grabbed a couple of sets of wedgewood blue that were still in their packages. When I opened them to make the bed, I realized that the price tags were from Woodward & Lothrop. ("Woodies" to long-time Washington residents).

It was a great store in its time, one of the true old-fashioned department stores along with Landsburgh's and the Hecht Company (all gone now). Times have changed. If I want cheap Chinese-made shoes or jeans, I've got Wal-Mart, but a good sweater? Macy's (if I like this season's colors). Men's suit? I think I know of a place in Cleveland that might have them, or perhaps just drive to Washington. Until I discovered Crowe's Shoes in downtown Mansfield yesterday, I didn't know of any place where a shoe clerk would actually measure my foot. (Again, I don't think White Flint Mall in suburban Maryland is exactly local shopping.)

But Woodie's had it all. It was perfectly reasonable to buy a suit there, arrange for alterations, come back a few days later, and buy a belt and shoes to go with it.

When they finally went out of business in 1995, they were still profitable, but had been the victim of a leveraged buy-out. Yet another time when the genius financial wizards used their own greed to screw up something the rest of us really wanted. I think the Wall-E movie may have it right: the future of retailing really is sort of a super Wal-Mart vision where we all buy the same things, look the same way, and it all comes from China. And nobody will measure my foot, find a shoe that looks good, and wish me a nice day.

By the way, that Woodies tag tells me that Mom had these sheets on her shelf, unopened, for at least 14 years. That deserves a post of its own.