I'm "Watch the Grass Grow" Old

I am unhappy to report that I have found the surest sign of my aging, to date.

I mean, don’t get me wrong – there have been plenty of signs along this road. For instance, it’s been a long time since I could get on or off the couch without making some sort of groan, grunt, sigh, or popping sound.

I can’t tell the shampoo from the conditioner in a new shower, and I never think to inspect everything with my glasses on before I get in. If there is a third option for body wash, it’s all over. The Lord only knows what I washed and “shampooed” with that morning.

I keep Advil in most every room of the house and all the cars, I really can’t watch TV without the subtitles, and don’t even get me started on strange cars parking in front of my house!

Obviously, I’m getting old, but I wasn’t aware just how old until we got rid of our backyard play structure. A few months ago, a young couple with two little girls became the next caretakers of the behemoth wooden tower-o’-fun, and we were left with a large open area at one end of our backyard.

Many ideas about what to do with the space were brought up by my wife, all of which sounded either prohibitively expensive or prohibitively difficult. She finally agreed to my relatively simple suggestion of “lawn,” and so began my latest project.

Simple does not always mean easy, and I am not going to lie to you – digging trenches for the sprinklers to service the mere 540 square feet of new lawn almost did me in. Normally, digging sprinkler pipe trenches is not a big deal, if you live in a place that uses dirt for the ground.

Our neighborhood doesn’t use dirt. We use round, river rock cobblestones to hold up our houses here. You can’t dig in our neighborhood with a shovel. The shovel just makes a ping noise and stops dead on a rock the size of softball, two inches underground. That rock is surrounded by other rocks, ranging in size from golf ball to volleyball, which continue no matter how far you dig down with your pickaxe and digging bar.

The small spaces between the rocks are usually filled in with dirt, but in this case, they were mostly filled in with tree roots, since the whole 540 square feet of would-be lawn is under a massive tree of unknown species. (I have never known what any of our trees or bushes actually are, and I don’t care, as long as they don’t fall onto the house. So far, so good. I think the rocks hold them in place.)

I only needed to put in nine sprinkler heads, but the trenching ran me out of Advil in every room in the house and two of the cars. When I had recovered enough to stand up almost straight, and the new pipes were in the ground and buried, we brought in some beautiful new rock-free topsoil and leveled it all out.

I spread the new grass seed and raked it into the amazing new dirt ten days ago, and in those ten days I have found out how old I really am. I have probably inspected the new lawn area between 50 and 75 times since the seed went on. I have told people I don’t even know about my new grass sprouts that started to happen five days ago. The people I do know are now avoiding me, but I don’t care, because I’m in my backyard staring at my “lawn.”

When I was able to, I even got down on my hands and knees to inspect the little shoots and look across all of them at eye-level.

I had no idea the amount of joy I would get from seeing that one bare patch over there start to show some green yesterday.

I mean, what the hell?

This kind of thing sneaks up on you. One minute you’re skateboarding through life without a care in the world, and the next you’re mad that they rearranged the grocery store. It was fine the way it was.

But it wasn’t until this week that I realized I was “watch the grass grow” old.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go check and see if that middle section has filled in any since this morning. It’s warm today!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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When Life Gives You Lemons, File a Class Action

I am happy to report that I have once again been included in the American Dream. Yes, I’m eligible to be part of another class action lawsuit!

Unbeknownst to me until I received the letters, I have had beef over the years with Toyota, Verizon, Master Card, Visa, Wells Fargo, and many, many others.

I never joined any of those class actions, but as far as I know, I at least did actual business with them all. This latest one is extra special.

“Smidge’s Little Lemonade Stand” has been invited to join a class action against Visa and Mastercard for those SOB’s misleading and possibly unconstitutional interchange fees. We’ve got them on the hook for $5.5 billion!

“What the hell is ‘Smidge’s Little Lemonade Stand?’” you might be asking yourself, just as I was when I received the letter last week. I puzzled over it for a minute or two until I remembered Juan the illegal hot dog vendor in Berkely, CA.

“Of course!” you’re saying to yourself. “Juan the hot dog guy!”

No?

Well, back in September of 2017, Juan set up an unlicensed hot dog cart outside a stadium, and was promptly ticketed by the police, who took his $60 as evidence. Cell Phone Guy was there to record the whole thing, berating the police for doing their jobs in the process, claiming we all have the right to distribute and/or ingest unlicensed and, most likely, unsanitary hot dogs.

Cell Phone Guy then started a GoFundMe “for” Juan, even stating in the description that he didn’t know Juan or even know how to find Juan again. The GoFundMe raised over $90,000.

In response to that ludicrously misplaced generosity, I immediately started a GoFundMe for my kids’ unlicensed and definitely unsanitary lemonade stand. I openly pleaded for the police to come to our neighborhood, confiscate their profits, and shut them down.

Sadly, we did not garner nearly as much support as Juan, and only raised $55, all of which was donated to the Roseville Police Activities League – a day I’m sure their fundraising team will never forget.

Well, as it turns out, RPAL may be in line for another sizeable donation stemming from our illicit lemonade activities, because those snakes over at the credit card companies apparently scammed our helpless GoFundMe. We only netted $55, but the Lord only knows how much people actually donated. There’s a chance we reached our original goal of a million dollars, but the excessive interchange fees left us with a fraction of that. Who knows?

That’s why we owe it to America and the kids at RPAL to join this class action and get back what is rightfully ours! After all, there’s $5.5 billion on the table.

If my class action lawsuit math is correct, a year or so from now Smidge’s Little Lemonade Stand should receive a check for $1.12. If Cell Phone Guy joins the class “on behalf of” Juan, he may be able to get as much as $67.50.

I just pray that the lawyers will be able to make ends meet for the year while they wait for their checks for $55 million to arrive!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Umchina, That Guy is Good! - Repost

I have an Amazing Facts desk calendar, and I have to tell you, a lot of the times the facts are slightly less than “Amazing.”

For instance, today I learned how many times some actor named Max Schreck blinked in the nine minutes he was on screen in a 1922 movie. It was once.

Earlier this week I learned that badgers have helped make a number of important archeological discoveries, none of which I cared about.

I even learned how much genuine yak hair the Broadway run of Cats went through making wigs in the eighteen-year span of the musical. It was 3,247 pounds. Not only did I not care at all about that statistic, but I also reacted poorly to it on a personal level since my mom made me go see an off-off-off-Broadway (Sacramento, CA) production of Cats when I was young, and I still haven’t recovered from how much I disliked it.

I’m not going to lie to you. This calendar is not great. It’s not even very good. But I stick with it each day, just hoping for that odd gem that might make learning about yak wigs at the world’s worst musical all worth it. Well, on Wednesday, September 27^th my perseverance paid off.

On that fateful day I was treated to one of the funniest things I’ve learned in a long time. And after I got done laughing, my heart immediately went out to all the young Korean men out there.

Here’s the “Amazing Fact:”

 

Umchina, a Korean term meaning “mom’s friend’s son,” is used to describe a person who’s better at everything than you are.

 

How prevalent moms shaming their kids for lack of achievement must be in Korean society to have a one-word term for it. Wow! Nice job, Korean moms. Maybe take it down a few notches, huh?

I’d be willing to bet that even if the term wasn’t invented to be spitefully humorous, that’s at least how it’s used by today’s Korean youth. At least I hope so.

 

“I’ve got no chance on this test. Mr. Umchina in the front row is going to blow the curve for all of us.”

 

“How’d the game go, honey?”

“Not great. Their starting lineup was Umchina city.”

 

When I told one of my buddies about this fabulous new word I discovered, he asked what the Korean term for “wife’s friend’s husband” was. Now that’s one we need to know!

I hear about him all the time. That guy is good!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Solar Meltdown

We got solar panels in November of 2018. It was exciting! Our power company, the universally loved PG&E here in Northern California, finally made the decision easy for us after we had a $600+ bill that summer. More on them later.

Now, when you get solar, you are excited about making electricity instead of having to buy it. You get a cool app on your phone that shows you the real-time solar production happening on your roof. You can see that the panels in the direct sunlight are pumping out 1.56 kWh each! You have no idea how much 1.56 kWh is – or even what it is – and you have no idea how each individual kWh translates to your electric bill, but you’re pretty sure it’s a really good thing!

If you think that PG&E will tell you how each kWh translates to your bill, you are wrong. They say that they are showing you on your bill, complete with numbers and charts, but what they are really showing you is Chinese algebra with no equals signs and no dollar amounts. More on them later.

Anyway, your electricity bills continue to come every month, but now they are much, much, much lower. You are happy. Eventually, you start to see a dollar figure show up in the corner of the bill labeled “Expected True-up Amount.” On your one-year anniversary of getting solar, your true-up amount is due. This is the difference between the amount of electricity you used and the amount you produced.

The true-up is the one thing on your bill expressed in dollars, and it is not negative. You owe them money. And you owe them more money than you think you should because you have a LOT of solar panels on your roof, and they were not cheap. This is when you find out that PG&E pays you about $0.0000000023 for every kWh you produce, but charges you roughly $756.00 for every kWh they send you. More on them later.

You go through another year of checking the app and getting happy about how many kWh’s you’re making when it’s sunny, cursing the clouds and rain, and watching your estimated true-up number rise and fall through the seasons, betting yourself on where it will land come solar anniversary time.

After a few years, you realize the true-up is staying fairly steady at a few hundred bucks, and you check the app less and less often. And if you got solar in 2018, by 2024 you hardly ever check the app, and basically ignore the true-up number.

You ignore it until three days ago when you were online paying your PG&E bill and you glanced over to see the Estimated True-up Amount they are showing is three times higher than your mortgage payment. Umm, what?

You initially think that something went wrong over at PG&E. Maybe your SmartMeter broke and they can’t see how much your solar panels are producing. But then you go outside and see that the SmartMeter seems to be on and working just fine.

Then you grab your phone and go to check the app that you haven’t looked at since you can’t remember when. The app is requiring you to log in and that’s when you vaguely remember looking at the app a month or so ago and seeing the same login screen and saying to yourself, “I have no idea what my login info is. I’ll check that later when I’m near my password list.”

When you finally get the app open, you see that it is not showing any production at all yesterday, or the day before. The app talks to the panels through a gateway that is located in an electrical box under the solar panel shutoff switch. You get a screwdriver and open that box to see that there is no power at all to the gateway. You check the circuit breakers, but a visual inspection shows they’re all in the ON position.

That’s when you call the solar installation company and they start walking you through the troubleshooting procedure. After a few questions, they recommend turning the whole system off and back on at the main breaker. When you go to touch the main breaker switch, it falls loosely away from the ON position to the middle “tripped” position.

Holy…

When you flip the breaker OFF and then ON, the gateway immediately comes to life, and your SmartMeter suddenly changes direction from “Receiving” to “Delivering.”

Son of a…

And on that day, September 30^th, 94 degrees at 3:00pm, you go back through the app and finally figure out that your solar panel main breaker tripped off on July 11^th and 1:26pm.

Mother…

Not only was my giant solar array just an ugly roof decoration for over two and a half months, but it was off and useless at the worst possible time – during the hottest two and a half months that California has seen in a very long time. We had multiple record-breaking heatwaves when our A/C ran all day and most of the night, without a single solar cell on my roof doing anything about it.

Now, I know that there are more than a few places I can go look whenever I want to make sure my solar panels are on and functioning, and I’m well aware of the fact that I failed to check any of them during probably the two and a half most critical solar power months in our system’s history.

But here’s my problem with you, PG&E. You know I have solar. You know I used to send you electricity every month. You know I didn’t abandon the house because I’m still paying my bills and sucking down kWh’s at a furious pace. So why in the hell is there not a note in bold at the top of my August bill saying, “HEY! YOU DIDN’T PRODUCE A SINGLE kWh LAST MONTH!!”?

Don’t bother answering – I already know how much you’re looking forward to sending me this year’s true-up bill.

Again, I know I only have myself – and possibly a crappy main breaker – to blame. So why am I complaining, you ask? I’m not complaining. I’m trying to prevent this from happening to anyone else.

If this cautionary tale saves even one of you from the same fate, then it… would be amazing if you considered sharing some of those savings with me so I can pay my horrendous true-up bill.

Thanks in advance!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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I'm Not Mad, I'm Just Old

You know the old saying, “Looking down your nose at someone?”

It means you disapprove of them or the way they’re acting, or you consider them inferior or unworthy.

I think the origins of that saying may have just been a misunderstanding, because I am starting to look down my nose at everyone.

You see, it all starts somewhere between forty and fifty years old, when your perfectly good eyes decide they have been working too hard for too long and it’s now time to relax.

You’ll be cruising right along, enjoying your carefree life, when all of a sudden, one evening in a dimly-lit room, the directions on that label or the serial number on that sticker don’t seem to be printed very clearly.

You’ll blame inferior fuzzy Chinese inkjet printing for a few days, or weeks, until you realize that holding that label a little farther away from your face brings that very clearly-printed text into focus.

Hmm… That’s odd.

You’ll just get into the habit of reading things farther away from your eyes for the next few months, or years, pretending that you’ve always done it this way, until one fateful day you discover your arms are somehow shorter than they used to be. You can no longer hold the fine print far enough away from your face.

You think about getting one of those trash grabber claws to hold things out further, but then you notice a pair of your wife’s magnifying reader glasses sitting on the counter.

You don’t need glasses, because you can still see things in the room and you can read street signs just fine. Your eyes are great, and besides, you’re not old. But you say to yourself, “I wonder what things look like with those? Probably so crazy-magnified with my strong vision that they’ll make me want to throw up. But I should try them just to see…”

And then you put them on…

Holy crap, this counter has crumbs all over it. Where were those a second ago? And my God! I can read this note sitting on the counter so CLEARLY! But then you look up out into the living room and everything out there is blurry now and giving you a headache.

And just like that, the transition has begun. You will need magnifying glasses from here on out.

You will buy yourself twenty-five cheap pairs of readers from Amazon and spread them all over your life so that you’ll always be able to read the words, and thread the needle, and see the slot for the screwdriver. But you won’t need or want them to watch TV, or drive, or talk to someone.

So now you’re carrying readers around with you everywhere you go and complaining about how dimly lit the restaurant is. And while you’re perusing the menu and discussing the entrees with your tablemates, you have a problem. You need the readers to see the menu, but not to see the people. So, what do you do…?

You put your readers out on the end of your nose. Now you can tilt your head back to read the menu with your readers, and tilt your head forward to see your friends, over the top of your glasses.

And in that moment, the transition is complete. You are old.

You now look and act like every old person you’ve ever seen in a movie or when you were younger, tilting their head back and forth and peering over their glasses at they speak to the person interrupting them from reading the newspaper.

You always thought those old people looked so disapproving of whomever they were talking to, because they were literally looking down their nose at them. But now you realize, they were just trying to see them clearly and were tired of taking their readers on and off.

You have become them.

And then it hits you – Oh, man, what are people thinking I’m thinking??

So, I just want to make it clear on behalf of myself and all my fellow reader-needers out there – we’re not looking down our noses at you just because we’re looking down our noses at you!

We’re just trying to see you as clearly as we can see our phone, our book, or our food. So please, don’t read anything into it.

Unless, of course, you’re being an idiot. Then we’re definitely looking down our noses at you – both ways.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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An Open Letter to Apple and Samsung

Dear Apple and Samsung,

You suck.

Mostly you, Apple, but Samsung, you have some work to do, too.

Let’s start with you, Apple. iMessage is stupid. What a fun and exciting messaging app that can only be used between two people who have iPhones, iPads, iWatches, and do you have something called iGlasses yet, because if not, your marketing team sucks, too.

You developed a way for people in your iCult to talk to each other and create named groups and heart each other’s cute posts and have all sorts of iCult fun. It’s actually pretty cool, but the problem is, you also try to use that same system as your texting feature. Believe it or not, over half of the people your iCult will need to text won’t have iDevices. We have Samsungs and seven of us have Google phones.

Up until Google got involved and brought the awesome, everyone except you, Apple, ran texts on SMS and MMS. Just so you know, since I’m not sure you do, SMS is single texts, MMS is pictures and group texts.

Here’s the main reason you suck: You have a built-in blocker for Samsung texts, and you don’t tell your users that they are missing things. You know damn well that a message arrived that you didn’t show them. You also know that you sent a message that didn’t get delivered, but you don’t tell them that either.

Instead, you leave it up to me, the Samsung user, to figure out that they aren’t getting my messages or I’m not getting theirs, then train them on how to go six layers deep into your menu options and turn on the little button that says “Send/Receive non iMessage communications as SMS/MMS.”

I mean, holy crap! The fact that that is not just automatically on all the time is proof that you are running a cult and want your members to think that everyone else’s phones suck except for yours. When in fact, it’s the exact opposite. As long as you let them out of the phone, we see your messages just fine without needing to change a single setting. If you think cult is too strong a word, look into how cults work to get their members to view everyone else who’s not in the cult…

Then along comes Google and gives us RCS. It’s a direct replacement for SMS/MMS as well as iMessage, and it has all the fun, cool features of iMessage. RCS stands for Really Can’tBelieve SamsungHasn’tJustDoneThisYet. Or Rich Communication Services. One of the two – I always forget which.

We have the ability to run this on our Samsungs, but we still have to use Google Messaging instead of the standard Samsung messaging app. C’mon, Samsung – just make the switch. Ditch the SMS/MMS and get with the times. RCS is just better.

And RCS solves the problem of getting separate texts about iPhone users in the group chat. No longer will you see, “Steve reacted to a photo,” or “Bob liked ‘Let’s meet at 5pm at th…’”

How hard was that to fix, Samsung? Everyone else has been able to heart someone’s text for a long time now, but Google had to show up in the phone game to get it done for you? That’s weak.

And speaking of weak, back to you Apple. You know damn well that RCS is the way to go, but you’re still not playing nice. If an iPhone user likes my text, I can see it now, but if I like theirs, still nada. You have been on a one-way street your whole life. Get with the program.

I mean, I know you’re worried that if the iCult is allowed to see what’s really out there, they might come to the startling conclusion that they’ve been overpaying for underperforming devices, but don’t you think it’s time to man up and face the iTunes?

I guess if you won’t do it on your own, the EU might be forcing your hand. I heard you pissed off all of Europe enough that they may be requiring you to be completely RCS compatible in the very near future.

Wouldn’t that be something? Sad that an overbearing government entity had to intervene, but at least they might get you to see the light and understand that locking yourself in your own room is not a great long-term business strategy.

I’d be happy to text you more about it, but it might not go through...   

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Breaking Olympic Records

It has been 24 years since Eric Moussambani broke Olympic swimming records at the 2000 Sydney games, and to celebrate the anniversary, Paris brought us a close equivalent this summer – breakdancing.

You guys remember the new Olympic breakdancing, right? The sport where the bronze women's winner from China was named “671” and the men’s competition was basically a gymnastics floor routine, but with better music and comedic stylings.

And the poor guy from Kazakhstan who tried very hard but didn't win a single judge vote in three rounds, but you had to give him credit because he is from Kazakhstan and probably doesn’t have real internet at his house, so it was possible that he hadn’t ever seen actual breakdancing before he stepped on stage.

And then there was Raygun. The viral Australian breakdancer who literally couldn’t breakdance. She also didn’t get a single point from any of the judges in any of her rounds, but the difference was she knew what it was supposed to look like and showed up anyway. We all came to the same conclusion after her performance – incredibly, she is apparently the only female breakdancer in the entire country of Australia.

Well, Rachel “Raygun” Gunn has just been ranked number one in the world by breakdancing’s governing body, the World DanceSport Federation.

If you are saying, that’s insane, I had no idea that breakdancing had a world governing body, you’re not alone. I was right there with you. But rest assured, they are not just a group of teenagers vaping ecstasy like you would suspect. They have an actual reason for ranking someone as the best dancer in the world, after that person virally proved on the world stage that she can’t dance at all.

Apparently, in order for the athletes to focus on training for the Olympics, the Federation stopped holding ranking events in January. Since the world standings are based only on your last 52 weeks of scoring, almost all of the Olympic breakdancers left the games without a current Federation ranking.

Raygun currently has the top ranking because she came in first place at the 2023 Oceania Continental Championships, which was still inside the rankings timeframe, and presumably held in Raygun’s living room.

In spite of breakdancing even worse than I do at weddings, Rachael Gunn proudly declared that she had achieved exactly what she set out to do at the Paris Olympics.

"Some Olympians spend their entire lives training to make history, to carve out a name for themselves. I trained for exactly 37 minutes, and now I'm the most famous breakdancer in the world. My sick moves shut down an entire event. How many Olympians can say that?"

One that I know of, Rachel. If you knew your Olympic history, you would know about Eric the Eel, and the fact that he actually won his heat.

Eric Moussambani was a “swimmer” from Equatorial Guinea. Swimmer is in quotes there for when you Google the video – you’ll see.

Eric got to the 2000 summer games via a wildcard system that allowed people from developing nations to represent their countries without meeting the minimum requirements for their sport. Australia is not a developing nation, so that still doesn’t explain Raygun, but here we are, nonetheless.

Eric began training – and by that I mean learned to not die in the water – only eight months before the Olympics. He started training in a lake, and later in a 12-meter-long hotel pool where he worked. He could only use the pool between 5:00 and 6:00am, and he was there every day, Raygun. Every damn, day. It didn’t help much, but still.

Eric is the only Olympic swimmer to ever make the near-completely useless Olympic pool lifeguard get out of his chair. When Eric arrived in Sydney it was his first time ever seeing a 50-meter pool. Amazingly, he had entered into the 100-meter freestyle event instead of the 50-meter. Surely he had to know 50 was less than 100, so that choice remains a mystery to this day.

Eric got up on the blocks for his first heat and proceeded to turn in the slowest time ever recorded for the 100-meter freestyle, and that includes any youth swim meets you’ve ever been to. He would have finished much faster, but he lost all forward momentum in the last 20 meters and for some reason he took about eight strokes in the last three feet of the race. I’m not making that up.

The Eel was supposed to be swimming against two other men in his heat, but they both disqualified on their starts, so after almost two full minutes in the water , Eric won his one-man heat at the 2000 Olympic games and was inked into the history books for a record that may never be broken.

Eric embodied the Olympic spirit of determination and grit. I’m not quite sure what Raygun embodied after giving it a full 37-minutes of hard work, other than an obvious lack of coordination and skill, but I want to wish her a sincere congratulations on being ranked number one in the world.

Enjoy your free large fries at Arby’s, or whatever prize comes with a World DanceSport Federation top ranking in breakdancing.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Digital Tipping Point

A long time ago I realized that I had reached what I called the digital tipping point – when I decided that if I had to choose, I would much rather lose my wallet than my phone. I think a lot of us would agree with that.

I know Son Number Two probably would. He’s off in Idaho at his first year of college and taking advantage of all the exciting activities Boise State has to offer – one of the main ones being floating the Boise River.

The river makes up the entire northern border of the campus, and it’s perfect for floating in an innertube, as long as you don’t mind sitting in freezing cold water while the rest of you fries like an egg in a high-altitude skillet.

He called me after he had finished the Labor Day float this weekend. Of course, I had no idea he was calling me, because it was some random number showing up on my phone.

“Bad news, Dad…”

Life360 is still showing us the exact spot in the middle of the Boise River where his phone finally died. It’s presumably still there on the bottom, because the second he dropped it out of his tube he went straight down after it, but it was never to be seen again.

Now, to be an eighteen-year-old off at college without a phone is one thing, but this was an iPhone, and iPhones have that magnetic ring thing on the back. And there are countless companies that sell accessories that will magnetize to the back of your phone. One of the most popular of those accessories is a wallet that holds things like your credit card and ATM card and driver’s license.

He had one of those.

He also HAD a credit card, an ATM card, and a driver’s license.

I never gave any thought to the dreaded third option of the digital tipping point – losing BOTH your wallet and your phone in one tragic river tubing accident. But then, I don’t have my wallet attached to my phone, and I also don’t take either of them with me when I get into an innertube in a river. But I also have a fully developed frontal lobe that controls risk/reward, so I have an advantage there.

When you ship your kids off to college, you are really hoping they receive an education. One of the many things you hope they’ll learn in 2024 is how to better use email. That’s been a nice side benefit of having a son without a phone. His mom and I have Samsung phones, so he can’t just text us from his iPad, because the folks who brought you the “Genius Bar” still think SMS is just a fad and won’t catch on. So, he’s having to manage this with us through email, which has been instructional for him. He hasn’t really mastered Subjects yet, but baby steps.

He's also needing to problem solve. He found out the DMV won’t send your California driver’s license to another state, so he had to find someone here in the Golden State willing to mail it to him. I might charge him for my labor AND the postage.

And he currently has absolutely no way to purchase any goods or services. Kids these days are not big on having cash, so he’s in a bit of a pickle. (Although, if he had any cash, I guess it would be at the bottom of the Boise River too.)

Sixteen-year-old Son Number Three had it all figured out the other night. “Well, he doesn’t need the actual cards! He can just use ApplePay.”

“That might just work…”

“Yep.”

“…if he had a phone.”

“Oh, right…”

He could ask his roommates to front him some cash and Venmo them. But does Venmo even have a desktop-based version? Can you Venmo from an iPad? No one knows, because everyone else’s phones are not at the bottom of the Boise River.

Well, actually, there probably are a few others down there. My wife found a retired guy who runs a Facebook page for the Boise River Float Lost and Found. Apparently, he’s spending his retired years diving below the rapids and collecting the college kids’ lost treasures and selling them back to the kids/parents for a $100 flat fee.

Not in a million years would I pay him even $1.00 to retrieve my son’s phone and wallet for him. This extracurricular college lesson is far too valuable.

I mean, I could give this guy the Life360 exact location of where my son’s phone gave up the ghost, but I wouldn’t. If he randomly found it and contacted me, I’d be tempted to pay him $100 just to keep his mouth shut.

You can’t buy this kind of education. Your college freshman can, though!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Beaver Berries

I used to love raspberries. That ended this morning.

This morning, my world was turned upside down by my “OMG Facts” daily desk calendar.

Yesterday’s fact was amusing and inspired an ironic sense of hope for our world.

Tuesday, August 27 - The Bible is the most shoplifted book.

On the one hand, stealing is wrong. It’s right there in the top ten list in the Bible. But if you didn’t have a Bible, how would you know that? After chuckling awhile about that little factoid, I decided as long as the Bibles were going to be read and the shoplifters take the message to heart, I’m sure they will eventually rectify the petty theft.

This morning’s fact didn’t make me chuckle at all. It made me shiver.

Wednesday, August 28 - Castoreum, aka beaver anal juice, is most commonly found as a flavor enhancer in raspberry products.

You can read that again. I had to.

After I was done throwing out any raspberries and raspberry-flavored products we had in the house, I had a few questions.

For starters, WHAT THE ACTUAL HELL!!??

Also, HOW??? How in the wild, wild west did that unholy marriage even get considered in the first place, let alone put into practice??

“Hey, Bob, glad you’re here. We’re having a heck of a time making this raspberry jam taste like raspberries. We need some kind of flavor enhancer.”

“Have you tried using poop?”

“Of course we did. All kinds. We also tried mold, used motor oil, obviously beef intestines, and that black stuff that collects on the Waffle House kitchen floor under the griddle.”

 “Wow, I can’t believe none of that worked. You know, it just so happens I brought my pet beaver into the lab today. Should we see if he likes it?”

“Sure, let him at it… Oh, hey, wait, BOB! Don’t let him do that to the jam… what the… well now, wait a minute. Hmm…”

Unfortunately, that insane scenario is the most sane scenario I can think of as to how this could have happened.

And let’s back up to the part where it says beaver anal juice, is most commonly found as a flavor enhancer… I would really hope that it was most commonly found inside beavers, but apparently we’re using so much of it in our raspberry flavor enhancement activities that we’re now outpacing the giant tree-gnawing rodents.

Would it be worse or better if the labs were making synthetic beaver anal juice to keep up with demand? I mean, we are big fans of all-natural products these days.

Or did they mean that raspberry flavor enhancement was the main use for it? If that’s the case, then that would imply there are other food and/or drink products being enhanced with rodent butt juice.

I’ve never been more afraid to Google something in my life.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Hit SEND Before it’s Too Late - Repost

When we sent Son Number One off to his first year of college last year, we attended a one-day parent orientation. It was an informative day on a number of levels, the most striking of which was just how bad incoming college freshman are at using email.

Apparently, the first year of college doesn’t completely fix the problem, as evidenced by Son Number One’s new sophomore year apartment complex and their insane information spamming program. I’m a co-signer of the lease, so I’m on the mailing list, and between June 1^st and today – roughly 82 days – the Greenleaf Republic apartments sent me 64 emails. I don’t even talk to my wife that much.

One email a week would have been 12, and that still would have been major overkill for the amount of actual information they conveyed to us. Why did they send me 39 of the EXACT SAME EMAILS about move-in schedules and action items? Because their student clientele obviously still sucks at email.

Well, I’m here to tell you, parents of younger kids, it might be too late for my kids, but yours might still have hope, if you act quickly. Last year after the orientation day, I was kind enough to devise a plan to help all you younger parents out there who want their kids to someday be able to hold down a real job. Best of luck!

There’s a funny thing about kids these days. They have embraced digital technology like no other generation before them. It is interwoven into their lives and they probably would not be able to function without it.

Except for email.

For whatever reason, email – once the very pinnacle of sophisticated digital communications – is like a rotary phone to them. They don’t know how to use it.

Way back when the boys were little, I set all three of them up with Gmail accounts. Best dad move ever, I thought at the time. I would have been less enthusiastic had I known how little and how poorly they would use them.

If you email them something, you have to text them to tell them that you emailed them. If you do that, you have increased the chances from 0% to 11% that they will see your email. Unfortunately, even if they do see it, the chances are still 0% that they will actually read it.

I foolishly thought that high school would get them in the habit of using email effectively. I mean, after all, they were given school email addresses in order to communicate with their teachers. Once again, I was wrong. Ask any high school teacher how well the kids use email. They will just laugh and laugh.

Once again, I foolishly thought things would change with my eighteen-year-old when it was time to register for college. And once again, I was wrong.

He is going to University of Nevada, Reno in the fall, and yesterday was his orientation day. About two weeks ago we received an email about Orientation Step One. I saw that he and I had both received it, and I even mentioned it to him at the time.

When I inquired about it Monday night – the night before orientation – he said, and I quote, “Huh?”

When I sat down with him at his computer and had him look for the email, he immediately claimed that he had no idea where it was, and probably never got it. As I stared slack-jawed at his 999 unopened emails in his inbox, I suggested that he might try a search for the word “orientation.”

Miraculously, we found the email, which contained a detailed list of lots of things he needed to take care of about a week ago. He had a busy night.

The next day at UNR, one of the presentations for the parents was from the head of the student advisory department. They are in charge of helping the kids get all the classes they need in order to stay on track. She talked with us for twenty minutes, and about nineteen of those minutes consisted of begging us to somehow make our children check their emails.

Hmm…

So, parents of young children, this is your Immature Societal Email Nonfunction Disorder (I-SEND) Public Service Announcement. It’s obviously too late for our college freshmen, but you might still be able to salvage your children.

You need to get your kids in the habit of checking (and actually reading) their emails on a daily basis. It won’t be easy, but it can be done if you focus on the things they really want and need.

For instance, kids need food. Put a lock on the refrigerator and the pantry and email them the combination. Change the combination each day.

Kids love Wi-Fi. Change the code daily and have them send you an email each day to request their chore list. When they have replied with a list of fully completed chores, they can then send a separate email formally requesting the Wi-Fi code. If their email has no subject line, delete it without reading it.

Kids enjoy getting an allowance. Each month they must email you an allowance request. They can find their money after they complete a series of back-and-forth informational emails as you lead them through a scavenger hunt. Make it complicated. If you have more than one child and they use Reply All incorrectly, no allowance that month.

If you have teenagers that drive, the location of their car keys should be available only by email. Every once in a while, send them an email from you, but with poor grammar and spelling errors, starting with, “Dearist beloved Child.” Include an attachment that is a “pdf of the locality of you keys.”

The pdf should read: “You don’t get to drive today because in the real world you just downloaded a virus. Stay home and learn which emails to flag as spam.”

Good luck out there, parents!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Universitas Interruptus

This week’s column has been interrupted by college.

I’m currently at the Boise, Idaho International Airport and Ag Equipment Emporium, waiting for my flight back to California. I spent the morning moving Son Number Two’s things into his dorm room at Boise State – home of the Smurf Turf, and now, quite a bit of our money.

I spent a harrowing eleven hours in Number Two’s 1999 Toyota 4Runner yesterday, with its questionable suspension and iffy second gear, mostly praying that Toyota and the good Lord would deliver us all the way to Boise and not just part way. Because any part of the way once you’re between Reno, NV and Boise, ID is the exact center of the middle of nowhere.

By the grace of both Manufacturers, we made it all the way, and happily with 99% of the things we were transporting. We only lost the lid off one of the storage tubs on the roof rack. Mind you, everything was secured down on top with a bungee cargo net, and the cargo net remains perfectly intact. The entire cargo net also remained perfectly in place. All the cargo remained perfectly in place. But somehow, some way, with a mighty gust of wind from a passing eighteen-wheeler on 95-North, a two-foot by three-foot plastic Rubbermaid tub lid escaped the net through one of the five-inch by four inch holes in the webbing.

Everything that was in the tub was still in the tub when we pulled over. I’ve been thinking about it for thirty hours and I still have no idea how or what happened.

Anyway, minor poltergeist, shapeshifting tub lid loss aside, we made it to the dorms. It’s when I saw his dorm that I became so overcome with feelings that I abandoned all hope of being emotionally able to produce today’s regularly scheduled column.

His dorm window is about twenty feet away from one of the entrances to the ExtraMile Arena, where the Boise State Bronco Basketball Team plays their home games. And just on the other side of that, rising majestically above campus, clearly visible from that window and hittable with a well-thrown frisbee is Albertson’s Stadium, home of Bronco Football and the legendary blue turf.

This is so unfair.

What? Did you think I became overwhelmed with sad feelings about our second child leaving the nest?

Hardly! Get out.

I was overcome with jealousy. Jealousy and nostalgia for my own college dorm experience.

But mostly jealousy that my own college dorm wasn’t smack in the middle of two powerhouse sports arenas.

I like this airport. I think I might have to see more of this place and that dorm on game days.

So unfair.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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You'd Better Self-Check Yourself

We have memberships to both Costco and Sam’s Club. When I say “we,” I mean my wife and mother-in-law share a membership to Costco, and I’m not legally allowed to go there by myself.

But I do all the grocery shopping, so my wife recently agreed to let me into Sam’s Club. I’m honestly not sure if she trusts me more now, or if she just got tired of having to make special trips when we needed toilet paper or paper towels.

Sam’s Club has the only self-checkout system I’ve seen to-date that actually works well. It’s called “Scan & Go” and you scan your own stuff into the cart with your phone as you travel around the store loading up your cart.

It’s very user friendly, and even has a running total on the screen so you know when to cry, because you’re only a third of the way down your list. When you’re done shopping and woefully over budget, you just push your cart to the exit. A clerk scans the checkout code on your phone, then beeps a few things in your cart, and you’re out the door. You never unload your cart until you get to the car.

I’m here today to urge all stores in the United States to adopt this wonderful technology, or stop having “self-checkout” at your stores. Your version of self-checkout doesn’t work. It may be “checkout,” but it’s not “self.”

Let’s start with the bagging area. Why is there always an unexpected item there? What exactly were you expecting? I don’t know what you thought was supposed to happen in the bagging area, but I do know what always does happen – the whole checkout process comes to a halt and the screen informs me that “Assistance is Needed.”

No, assistance is not needed. Not ever. I know how to scan something and then put it in a bag. I’m over the age of two, and I drove myself here. Any time assistance is needed, this just stopped being self-checkout, and turned into team-checkout, where both teammates are annoyed.

Expecting an item in the bagging area hasn’t worked from Day One, Minute One of self-checkout. Figure it out!

And no, you haven’t figured it out with your handy “Skip Bagging” button. First of all, it’s an extra button I have to push after each scan, when I shouldn’t have to be pushing any buttons at all. Secondly, it seems to only allow me to skip bagging about two to three times in a row before “Assistance is Needed.”

Again, team-checkout.

There are a few of you stores out there that have it mostly figured out. You have a hand scanner that works and you have successfully abandoned any concerns about my bagging process. But you guys seem to think you’re Costco.

Costco has a person stationed at the door to check your receipt on the way out. They always have. That’s because after checkout, on your way out of Costco, you could grab a 72” TV, a Persian rug, a refrigerator, or any number of other high-value items between the food court and the door.

The rest of you are not Costco. There’s nothing – or at least, nothing of any substantial value – between the checkout and the door, so stop acting like you’re a security guard at a bank.

If I have already unloaded and reloaded my cart when I checked out – either from one of your regular checkers, or under the watchful eye of the self-checkout assistance-giver – I am not interested in going through another line before leaving so you can glance at my receipt and tell me to have a nice day.

If you want to sit there and tell me to have a nice day, go nuts. I’ll wish you a great day right back. But I’m not standing in another line and getting the receipt back out of my wallet.

You want to check my receipt? Get Scan & Go.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Are You People In-Seine?

The Paris Olympics are in full swing, and many of us have mostly gotten over the opening ceremonies by now.

If you missed the torrential regatta, you were one of the lucky ones. Here’s a brief recap:

Paris apparently cut off all communications early with the International Olympic Committee regarding the opening ceremony plans. Then they assembled a planning and project management committee consisting of the Parks and Rec department, the maritime academy, and a homeless guy named Pierre.

“Why have the opening ceremonies where the athletes can all be together and the people of the world can clearly see them, in a comfortable environment such a giant Olympic stadium of some sort?” they asked. “That’s so sensible and traditional. We have a river.”

So, the athletes arrived to nowhere on boats. They just motored on the Seine in what can only be described as a hurricane without as much wind. I know France cannot be blamed for the rain, but somehow, it’s still their fault.

While the athletes got to mingle with no one except whomever was also on their boat, other people along a three-mile (or 67-kilometer) route got to experience live music and dancing, and people up on poles, swinging in the wind. They did not get to see the athletes, however, since the Olympic games are not about them.

Then the big finale began. A floating rock came up the river with a flaming piano and a seasick singer belting out “Imagine” and later, most of her dinner.

Then a silver, caped, Olympic antihero rode up the Seine on a weird chrome mechanical horse on top of a submarine. Her cape was the Olympic flag, and she was charged with bringing it approximately seven miles along the three-mile route.

After an hour of riding on top of a very visible invisible submarine, the rider got on a real horse and rode under the Eiffel Tower. Then she got off that horse and walked, ever so slowly, up a 2000-kilometer stage, shaped like the Eiffel Tower.

The tower shot lasers. The slowest rider/walker on Earth delivered the flag to some people who did not have the Olympic flame. Where was the flame? Was it extinguished by the rain?

No! Hats off to the Olympic torch designers, because that thing apparently can’t be put out by mere monsoons. We catch up with the flame back on a boat! Another damn boat? Yes, and it’s going the wrong way, opposite the athletes, who are still waiting to see Lady Gaga and have no idea any of this is happening.

Everyone who is not on a boat is under the Eiffel Tower wondering who the weird flag lady is and getting hyped for a Celine Dion concert. The athletes are not invited.

Neither is the flame. It goes on a boat to where no one is.

When they finally dock the flame at a city park of some kind, it gets carried approximately two and a half feet each by 600 people before it reaches a 100-year-old French cyclist, now on four wheels, in a wheelchair. He rolls it to two other people, but at this point, no one has the capacity to care who they are or why they are qualified to be there.

The unnamed duo walks the flame across a gangplank to a balloon and together hold the flame up to the cheers of tens of people.

Then they light the Olympic cauldron, and the cauldron lifts off and brings a massive flame high above the city. Any living French person over 85 years old, including our cyclist, has a PSTD-induced heart attack.

Far away from the flame or any of the athletes, whose boats were last seen entering the English Channel, Celine Dion sings in French, as if she had been speaking French her whole life. The crowd of non-athletes and non-flame-bearers goes insane.

Everyone, including the broadcasters, are confused about whether it's over, until an unfortunate gust from the storm breaks the flaming balloon’s tether. It is last seen heading toward the North Sea over Belgium.

Meanwhile, the surfing competition concludes in Tahiti, because they are thirteen days ahead of Paris time.

France publicly apologizes to Lebron James, and finally ends the opening ceremonies by formally surrendering to the athletes from the Trinidad and Tobago ski boat, the only country to make landfall on French soil from the Seine flotilla.

Thankfully, the English Navy was able to rescue a majority of the remaining athletes, and the rest of the games are under way!

Go ‘Merica!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Whole-House Fan Fan - Repost

Our air conditioner is going strong.

*sound of me knocking on every piece of wood in a six-block radius*

It has been running continuously for four weeks straight – and I mean the 24/7 kind of continuously – minus a four-day period when we were able to turn it off to go out of town. I’m not going to lie – I was a little afraid to hit the off switch. I thought about just leaving it on and eating an insanely unnecessary electric bill for fear of upsetting any delicate balance that may be going on inside the old unit.

By the grace of God it came back on and we remain cool here inside our house that seems to be located on the surface of the sun at the moment. In order to appreciate how blessed we are right now, I decided to re-read what I wrote about almost exactly ten years ago, when we weren’t so fortuitous.

I thought you might want to read it too, so here it is. And if you happen to be currently going through the same thing we were ten years ago, I sincerely hope that you

a) have a whole-house fan, and

b) don’t get murdered by your significant other.

Stay cool, and enjoy.

 

August 6, 2014

Two weeks ago I wrote about how I failed to fix our broken air conditioner, but on the plus side, managed NOT to barbeque myself with giant exposed electrical cables while doing some amateur and ill-advised work in our electrical panel. All good news aside, I am sad to report that our air conditioner is still broken.

I’m not going to lie to you. It has been rough here. Tensions are high. Nerves are frayed. Wits are at their end.

It is hot inside our house.

We have been without A/C for almost three weeks now, and unfortunately for us, those three weeks have been some of the hottest on record here in Northern California. Other places might have been hot as well, but I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t care. I am afraid to turn on the TV for fear that it will either heat up the house even more or explode.

All I can tell you is our family would not do well in an equatorial country. Last Friday it was 109 degrees outside. Through the miracle of sagging and worn R40 insulation, it was only 94 degrees in our bedroom when we went to bed. Actually, I should say when I went to bed. My wife was sleeping downstairs where it was only 89 degrees. On Saturday morning she threatened to leave me and the kids and go stay at a friend’s house. She had a crazy look in her eyes. “You guys can’t come. There’s only room for me.”

I guess information, whether good or bad, is always handy to have. I now know that our cohesive family bond snaps like a dry twig around day four or five above 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and we move into an every-man-for-himself scenario. Live and learn.

There are only two things keeping us from going to a full-scale Lord of the Flies situation at this point: Cold showers and our whole-house fan.

The whole-house fan is really the eighth wonder of the modern world. There are two main types of whole-house fans to choose from. The first is the ducted variety. These have a fan or fans mounted inside your attic, with ductwork that draws the air from the interior of the home. They are very quiet. We do not have that kind.

The second kind is the ceiling-mounted variety. These are basically a slightly smaller version of a Bell Jet Ranger helicopter mounted to the ceiling of your hallway. These are incredibly loud. This is the kind we have.

Deafening prop wash noise aside, all whole-house fans work in the same manner. “The fan creates a ‘positive pressure’ in the attic and a ‘negative pressure’ inside the house, consequently drawing the cooler outside air in through open windows.”

I have not been up in the attic to experience what “positive pressure” feels like, but in the case of our home at least, “negative pressure” can be described better as “a howling 40-knot gale.” Our fan has two speed settings, and if you turn it on high, you have to make sure the children are tethered down.

The loudness and ferocity of the unit might be attributable to its size. We have the biggest model available in the free world. We were smart when we bought it a few years ago, shopping for it in the whole-house fan off-season. Because we purchased it in November we saved at least seven dollars, and were able to parlay that savings into an upgrade. The salesman sold us on the big one, presumably to best fit the size of our house, or possibly because the conversation went something like this:

Me: “Ooh, I want the big one!”

Salesman: “OK. Sign here quick.”

The key point in the operational description of the fan is really the term “cooler outside air.” This is critical, and in the case of our current three-week-long survival experiment, “cooler outside air” didn’t usually manifest itself until around midnight. This put us into a strange schedule of going to bed around one A.M. and sleeping until nine o’clock in the morning. By the time we get moving in the sluggish torpor of our deliciously cool 84-degree house, we are eating breakfast around eleven A.M. and having lunch at four o’clock. Basically, we’re now Italian.

Still, we can’t blame the whole-house fan for the lack of cool outside air. It can only do what it can do with the air it’s provided. On the plus side, even if it is not cooling us off as much as we might want, it is still cooling us down. Also, it provides a nice white noise while we sleep. It’s a lot like sleeping up inside the mechanical housing on an industrial wind turbine.

I love our whole-house fan. Not only for its economical cooling during normal summer weather, but for the safety it has provided us recently. I can say without hesitation that we would be dead without it. It is impossible to say whether we would have perished from heat stroke or from the wrath of mom, but one of them was definitely going to happen.

Thankfully, there was a break in the weather the other day and my wife decided begrudgingly to stay at home with us, and refrain from killing anyone. The A/C is scheduled to be actually fixed today, so our fingers are all crossed. It might just be the heat, but after three weeks of disappointment, I remain skeptical.

One thing is for sure, when the A/C actually does get fixed, we are going to have to ease ourselves back into the cooler temperatures. At this point 85 degrees inside the house actually feels comfortable. We went out to dinner the other night and our teeth were chattering inside the restaurant. I took the boys to the grocery store yesterday and they almost went hypothermic in the refrigerated aisle.

Still, having A/C back is going to be safer for everyone. My wife informs me that there is another heat wave coming, and she looks ready to snap any minute.

If you don’t hear from me next week, send someone to check on us.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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I'm in a Pickle

My mother-in-law is turning 80 years young in a few months. She taught our family the game of pickleball. She also taught me that saying cheesy things like “80 years young” is far more beneficial to our relationship than saying “80 years old.”

Pickleball, as you may have noticed, is gaining popularity at a rapid rate. Play it once, and you’ll be hooked, unless you are a tennis player.

If you play tennis, and are serious about it, which every tennis player seems to be, you will not like pickleball ever, because you will refuse to try pickleball, because pickleball is loud and adds annoying extra lines to what are supposed to be TENNIS courts, and it’s loud, and the people who play it laugh and shout, and there is no place for that kind of thing on a tennis court, because tennis is a serious and quiet sport and pickleball looks and sounds fun and loud and there is absolutely no place for fun anywhere near tennis courts!

But, if you actually enjoy having fun, chances are great that you’ll like pickleball. A lot of its popularity comes from how scalable the game is. A group of very athletic twenty-somethings can have a lightning-fast game of doubles on the court next to the group of ninety-somethings with only one original hip joint between the four of them, enjoying a much slower-paced game of the exact same rules on the exact same size court.

We are currently spending the week down in beautiful Morro Bay, California, at my mother-in-law’s house. She is the treasurer for the Morro Bay Pickleball Association, which has four dedicated pickleball courts annoyingly close to two dedicated tennis courts. So close, in fact, that you can sometimes almost hear the tennis players disapproval of all the fun over the noise of all the fun.

The MBPA consists of a very large group of retired people all over the age of 70, who can all kick my ass in pickleball.

That’s the hard lesson I had to learn when I started playing. I don’t think we could name another sport that exists that my mother-in-law could beat me at. She is an incredibly active 79-year-old, but I still have every sports advantage over her, simply because of our age, size, and strength gap.

I really can’t think of another sport – even the ones I’ve never played. I mean, neither of us have ever played jai alai – neither of us even really know what it is – but I guarantee I come out on top if we played a match, or game, or set, or whatever they call it.

But then there’s pickleball - the great equalizer. It’s the one physical activity that legitimately qualifies as a sport that I’m aware of where nothing about your size, strength, or age is going to help you gain an advantage over the lady who plays for three hours a day, even though she’s 79, weighs 90 pounds, and has no cartilage in any of her joints anymore.

And I had come to terms with that fact, after playing with her and her friends enough. It was OK. Pickleball is just like that. I don’t play or practice enough to be very good, so it’s OK if I get beat by old ladies. That was fine.

But then the little kids showed up.

There we were the other day, enjoying a loud, fun time and annoying the adjacent tennis players, when a grandpa showed up to the pickleball courts. He had his two grandsons with him, and they were only six and eight years old.

To our surprise, grandpa took the court with the six-year-old as his doubles partner.

An unsuspecting couple who appeared to be in their early sixties were on the other side of the net. They got destroyed.

Grandpa was good, but his grandson was amazing. Covering the whole back court and hitting a two-handed forehand and backhand, he could place it anywhere he wanted. If the couple was playing back, he’d drop it right over the net. If they were too far forward, he’d make them pay for their foolish behavior by lobbing a beautiful shot over their heads right to the back line.

His eight-year-old brother was laying on the side of the court at the net, casually watching the action. I asked him their ages and which one of them was better. With absolutely no braggadocio in his answer, he said, “I’m a little better than he is.” Just stating the facts.

So, what that meant was, if I found the best doubles partner I could come up with from my circle, which would probably be one of my very athletic teenage sons or my mother-in-law, we still would not have stood a snowflake’s chance in hell against these two elementary-school-age brothers.

I have made my peace with taking staggering losses from my soon-to-be 80-year-old mother-in-law, but I draw a hard line at getting embarrassed by a second-grader and his kindergartner brother.

Maybe I’ll take up tennis.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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You'd Better PreCheck Yourself, TSA

When I fly out of Sacramento International Airport and Livestock Pavillion, I usually park in the daily parking lot. It’s a little cheaper than the garage, but only slightly more expensive than the long-term lot, which makes it worth it, because you can walk to the terminal instead of riding a bus.

A lot of people have figured that out, so the daily lot seems to be pretty darn full most of the time, which means the walk can be a little way. When it is hot outside, I tend to sweat a little bit on that walk, and I’m always wearing a backpack and pulling a carry-on bag.

Why am I telling you all of this? Not because you need to know this information, but because the TSA should know this information. The TSA agents that scan the incoming travelers at SMF should be familiar with the local parking and weather situations, since they are local also. None of them fly to work from somewhere else. They all live here!

You’re probably wondering what my point is. That’s fair. My point is this: Why the hell is the TSA operating multi-million-dollar scanning technology that can’t crack the confounding mystery of sweat? I have a theory…

When I arrive at the airport my back is either warm, or warm and sweaty. The TSA scans me in the “stand on the feet marks and hold your hands above your head as shown in the diagram” machine, and needs to do an extra search on my lower back every single time. Summer or winter. Every time.

When it’s extra hot outside, I’m extra warm in other places. On my last trip, one of those places was my crotch.

“Sir, I’m going to need to perform a full crotch search.”

“Go nuts.”

“You’ll need to step over here.”

“You mean on me!? Why?”

“See this big dark spot here in the screen?”

“Yes, I’m sweaty from all the heat outside. I’ve only been inside the airport for 10 minutes.”

“I’m still going to need to perform a full crotch search. Would you like a private room?”

“You’re telling me you want to inspect my crotch, and you’re asking if I want to do that with you privately? I’m thinking no, boss. We’re going to handle this out here with all these nice witnesses.”

“OK, I’ll be using the back of my hand.”

“Well, that sounds just fabulous.”

**Full crotch search commences**

The whole time I’m thinking, is this really what this guy signed up for when he decided a job at the TSA was the move? Because, if the answer is yes, then that’s disturbing, and if the answer is no, then what the hell is he still doing here?

**Full crotch search concludes**

“Well, that was great. Hey, I was going to get some pizza at the gate. Does this mean you’re buying now?”

“Have a nice day, sir.”

“I don’t even get your number?”

“Goodbye, sir.”

Like I said, the TSA has multi-million-dollar scanning equipment. Do you know what else they have? They have a program called TSA PreCheck that lets you bypass the expensive scanning equipment and the impromptu full crotch searches.

Kinda makes you wonder… wouldn’t the TSA want to get everyone on PreCheck so they didn’t have to employ so many crotch guys? You’d think they would, because that would be efficient, but then you remember that the TSA is a government organization, so efficiency is not even a consideration for them.

Do you know what is a consideration for government organizations? The main and really the only consideration? Getting more of your money.

Now, I don’t believe for a second that the multi-million-dollar scanner can’t be set to figure out body heat and sweat, and I also don’t believe they can’t get everyone signed up for PreCheck for the same amount of money they spend on salaries for the multiple layers of crotch inspectors. I mean, have you ever been to a TSA checkpoint that was understaffed?

Nope.

You can get a TSA PreCheck, but it will cost you. Kinda feels like a tax, doesn’t it?

But it’s a voluntary tax. So how in the world are we going to get people to pay a voluntary tax??

I know! Full crotch searches.

We’ll use the back of the hand though, so it’s not so weird.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

We Need More Specific Bangs

We celebrate the Fourth of July tomorrow, so I wanted to send out a quick PSA to all you Nextdoor- and Ring Neighbors-type app users.

The PSA is this: For the love of Pete, KNOW YOUR TOWN!

I live in Rocklin, CA. They’re not gunshots. It’s never gunshots.

When you hear a loud noise off in the distance, run it through a quick logic filter to come up with likely causes. Asking on Nextdoor Rocklin, “Did anyone else hear those gunshots?” is like asking on Nextdoor Compton or Nextdoor Iraq, “Did anyone else hear those fireworks?”

Nevertheless, I could go out onto my front lawn, take my sandals off and clap them together to get the dirt off the soles, and ignite a firestorm of “where’s the gunfire coming from” activity on four different apps.

All that being said, tomorrow is a slightly different story. I have to assume that tomorrow is the one day that you neighborhood app people might have a slightly larger “fireworks” option in your logic filters, but we can’t be totally fooled. There will likely be some unusual gunfire also.

We’re a funny breed, us modern Americans. Even though we’re trying our best not to actually have any of it in a lot of facets of our lives, we’re still quite exuberant about our freedom around the Fourth. So, please expect the unidentified loud noises to begin around midnight tonight.

And, in many areas that don’t usually experience nighttime gunshots, there will be the occasional beveragely-enhanced exuberance in the form of celebratory shotgun fire to the sky.

So, starting late tonight and going until late tomorrow night, we will need you to be a lot more specific about your paranoid questions. Yes, we heard the fireworks. And yes, we may have also heard the gunshots. But we don’t know which you’re asking about.

From your couch, as you peek timidly out of your living room curtains if you dare, we’ll need you to frantically ask very targeted questions over the next day.

“Did anyone hear the gunshots? I think it was the 47th through 53rd loud bang noises just now. Can anyone confirm?”

Happy Independence Day, everyone!

God bless America. And neighborhood apps.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

Major Financial Issues

Son Number Two has beaten the odds and graduated from high school without being expelled for selling knives on campus or for getting caught transporting knives internationally for school administrators. Long story, but suffice to say, we’re breathing a sigh of relief.

Had he been caught in either of those activities, we undoubtedly would have incurred heavy legal fees, but I doubt it would have added up to the bill we’re facing for his next four years, so I’m a little conflicted. All things considered, I guess higher education is a better path than incarceration, so I’ll let it go.

He is off to Boise State in the fall. Boise is in Idaho, and seems to be the capital of the state, based on the domed, capitol-shaped building we saw in the middle of town. We visited this past weekend for his orientation days, and the locals insist that the correct pronunciation of Boise is not “boy-zee” like everyone I’ve ever met says it, but rather, “boy-see.”

We heard our share of orientation speakers saying “boy-see,” but I remain convinced this is a masterful long con to make the transplanting Californians look and sound stupid. I’m sticking with the “zee” sound.

The two-day orientation program was well run overall, and informative and productive for the incoming freshmen. They ended with a great idea of what campus life will be like and fully registered for their fall semester classes. Some of the orientation content, however, was a little less than stellar. I am, of course, talking about the current Boise State junior who was tasked with speaking to all of the parents and students in one of our joint sessions about her college experience.

She was actually a fairly decent public speaker, holding her own in front of hundreds of her peers and her parents’ peers. That’s not the easiest thing to do, so I give her full credit for that, but I can’t abide her message at all.

Somehow, Boise State made the decision to put a junior up in front of us that probably has three to four more years of college to get through before she receives her bachelor’s degree in a likely yet undetermined major.

Her message was this: It’s OK to come here not having any clue what you want to major in, and it’s just fine – even great – to change your major as often and as many times as you need to to figure out your life path. I believe she was on her third major, and confessed that she was again having some doubts about whether she was going to stick with it.

I’m guessing if you were behind her in the buffet line, you’d still be there.

Now, like I said, the program was largely well-run and obviously thoroughly planned out, so I’m not sure how the orientation coordinators let the Typhoid Mary of educational planning slip past them onto the stage. But there she was.

And there we were, along with a vast majority of the parents in the room, staring down their child and telling them, NOPE. Sorry, pal. I don’t know who’s paying the bill for this young lady’s tuition, but I do know they aren’t at all like your parents.

I would rather you go get a job and take the next ten years to figure out what you want to do before starting college, than show up here thinking Mary’s Extended Idaho Vacation Plan is an option for you.

You get 120 credits and four years to complete them. That’s the deal. College, while almost assuredly being some of the best years of your life, was never meant to be a vocation. This is a problem that has evolved in two main areas – higher education and government. Neither were meant to be a career, and the folks that treat them that way are largely scared to produce results that they might be judged on.

Those aren’t the people we’re looking for out here. Don’t be them.

Don’t get me wrong. We’re not too worried about you, Son Number Two. You’ve always been focused, and that’s putting it mildly. We just needed to make it clear.

Now, all that being said, extending your college experience a few more years isn’t the end of the world, and would probably be pretty fun, especially in Boise with a “zee.” So, I guess you can feel free to change your major as often as you’d like. You’ll just need to find someone besides you or us to pay for it.

Maybe talk to Mary’s parents. They seem generous.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge

We Have Ways of Making You Squirm

I had my first pedicure on Sunday. My wonderful wife, who was completely out of ideas for what to get me for Father’s Day, decided to roll the dice and go for a fun first experience kinda thing.

She had no idea what to get me, because when she asked me what I wanted I gave her no help at all and just did the “I dunno” shrug, because I completely forgot that I need a new firepit poker. I also need a pool pump that doesn’t leak, but that’s a little out of range for Father’s Day gifts.

With no help at all from me, she got the pedicure idea and put a mystery event on the calendar for after church. When we left the house, she pretended she wanted to stop at the 7-Eleven for a Diet Coke, but when we pulled in and parked, she said, “We’re actually here.”

“I know. I just parked.”

“No,” she said, “I mean we’re here, for your surprise gift.”

I’m pretty low maintenance, so I figured she meant I was getting one of those 7-Eleven bacon-wrapped hotdogs or something, and I was momentarily pleased. Then she pointed at her nail place, which is right next to 7-Eleven.

“I’m not getting my nails done,” I told her.

“Not your nails, you idiot. We’re getting pedicures!”

“We’re doing what, now?”

I’m almost positive that stepping through the door to Lucky’s Hair and Nail was the first time I’ve ever actually been inside a nail salon. I’ve seen them in movies and TV shows, but I really had very little idea of what to expect.

The line of gigantic leather massage chairs with attached foot baths was pretty impressive. My wife and I each had our own foot technician lady. My wife had her regular nail lady, and I had an older woman, who looked pleasant enough.

We sat down in the chairs and my lady asked about my water. All I heard was “hot” and I didn’t understand the question. My wife told me she was asking how hot I wanted it. She was already filling up my tub, and even when I knew the question being asked, I had no idea how to answer. I don’t have a specific Fahrenheit that I like my foot bath water to be.

I do, however, know that I like my foot bath water to be far less Fahrenheits than what my lady chose for me. Holy wow! I guess the first step in the pedicure process is scalding. Probably makes it easier to remove all the skin off your feet.

The second step is to clip the toenails. That part was welcomed, because I have a hard time breathing while I clip my own toenails. I could breathe just fine while she did it. About that time, I noticed my chair came with a remote control panel.

There were a lot of confusing pictures on the buttons, and almost no words, so I chose the button that just said “Auto,” and immediately regretted it. The seemingly pleasant leather recliner chair was harboring a secret compartment of what I’m guessing was rebar, and it unceremoniously jammed it all into my back, right between my shoulder blades.

I scared both our ladies a little when I flinched dramatically and screamed in pain, but they are pros, so no damage came to my pinkie toe she was operating on at the time. I finally found the off button, and the rebar retracted into the devious backrest.

My lady then picked up a pair of pliers and began to be very unfriendly with my big toenails, both of which have a history of becoming ingrown. I tried to be brave and winced a smile at her, and she smiled sweetly back at me.

The next twenty minutes gave me the impression that prior to working at Lucky’s Hair and Nail – conveniently adjacent to the 7-Eleven - perhaps my lady had had another life as a master CIA interrogator.

I’ve seen those movies where the interrogator swaps back and forth between brutally torturing the captive and pretending to be their best friend. My pedicure was exactly like that.

She started by plunging my feet in boiling water.

Then she cheerily clipped my toenails.

Then she took the pliers to my big toes.

Then she rubbed pleasantly-scented oil on my feet.

Sandpaper heel torture.

Wonderful calf massage.

Stuff my foot in a plastic bag filled with molten wax.

Massage the other calf.

Molten wax the other foot.

Delightfully ticklish wax peel with toenail buffing.

I was a roller coaster of emotions. Does she love me? Does she hate me? The chair is so comfortable now, but is it plotting to kill me?

It was diabolical. I would have given her any information I had, but she never asked me a single question.

I left the building on edge, but with very clean, tingly feet. That being said, I’m almost positive I had my last pedicure on Sunday, as well as my first.

I just can’t take the psychological torture. I’m going to go start a written gift wish list.

1) New firepit poker

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

Your new favorite book is from SmidgeBooks

Your new favorite humor columnist is on Facebook Just a Smidge