Author: Paul

Democrat & Chronicle contributor, Missy Rosenberry, had an interesting article in today’s paper about visiting 100 parks on the east side of Rochester in the last calendar year, many parks that we had never heard of. She’s posted a photo of a sign from every park on her blog so it isn’t the most interesting thing to look at but she has a brief description of each. We choose 1000 Acre Swamp in Penfield, a gorgeous place even in the middle of January. We walked every trail, most on boardwalks, a total of four miles and I froze my hands taking photos. We stopped at Schutt’s Cider Mill on the way back and picked up a bag of apples for applesauce, another for eating and a gallon of cider.

Our power went out this morning, a quick outage due to the wind. Peggi’s computer restarted on its own, mine needed to be rebooted. I was in the middle of editing songs for our new cd. Guitar tracks have been coming in fast and furiously, delivered by Dropbox. We took a walk after the blackout but stayed out of the woods because of the wind. There were some good sized branches in the street and the barricade on Zoo Road had been blown over. Peggi and I uprighted that. This snowman had a head that fell off a few days ago. It has completely melted body is in good form.

“Fifty Years of Frank” fans filled the parking behind Sticky Lips on Culver Road. It was a celebration for Frank’s fiftieth birthday and his girlfriend, Deb, made sure all his friends were there. Jack Allen’s Big Band was on the bandstand when we arrived and Frank and Deb were out on the dance floor. They set the perfect party mood. Because this was a Frank affair a dancer, above, did her thing when the big band finished while Bob Henrie and the Goners set up behind the curtain, a surprise appearance by Rochester’s best band. It was a swell party.

Peggi and I waited until the end of the season last year to look for new cross-country boots. Thought we could get something on sale. Our old boots were cracked and had a generous amount of duct tape on them but they still leaked. We learned the binding mechanism had changed and new boots would not fit our old skis so looked at skis and they were all so ugly we gave up. This year we bought boots and skis, ordinary, nice looking things, although Peggi did try on some white Space Oddity boots that looked like something Abba would have worn in the day. We’re still using our old poles. I don’t imagine they’ve made any breakthroughs in pole technology.

The ski package was our Christmas gift to each other but there was another we received, a red and yellow jar of Vegemite. Our friends, Matthew and Louise, gave it to us with instructions to spread a very thin layer onto of your toast in the morning. I looked at the jar every morning and then went ahead and poured olive oil on my toast. When we saw Louise again the first thing she asked was, “How did you like the Vegemite?”

She showed us a set of wooden plates that her family used when she was growing up. Small, rectangular plates that had two recessed areas in them, one for the bottom of your the cup and the other for a piece of bread with Vegemite spread on it. She was going to send the plates out to her brother as a house-warming gift. We promised to give it a try.

This morning Peggi spread it on some toasted Italian bread that we had left over from my family Christmas dinner. It is most unusual. We plan to report back but I am still trying to figure out what to say about it.

We’re happy little Vegemites
As bright as bright can be.
We all enjoy our Vegemite
For breakfast, lunch, and tea.
Our mummies say we’re growing stronger
Every single week,
Because we love our Vegemite
We all adore our Vegemite
It puts a rose in every cheek.

My father had some money in an Oppenheimer account that was involved in some sort of class-action suit so he got a check in the mail a year after his death so we took it to our bank. We signed in electronically and were called into a cubicle by a young woman with ruby red painted nails. In fact her nail shade matched exactly the stone on her ring and her lipstick. We spent about a half hour with her filling out forms that would allow us to deposit the money, about forty-five dollars, in my mom’s account. It was the day before Christmas and the calendar on her wall, one with a big white block for each day of the month, had only a magic-marker diagonal line drawn exactly in the same manner through 23 blocks. The 24th had not yet been killed.

She called a screen that had a picture of my father smiling and I asked, “You have that in you files?” She said, “No, I just called up his obituary from the funeral home.” She took the paperwork that I had up to the front office for approval and left us us in her cubicle for about ten minutes. We studied the two pictures of her son and daughter. Both were were wearing a Lancer sports uniform. There were two middle-aged guys outside her office waiting to meet with her and one of them was talking loudly about a woman he had “the hots for.” We had just come from Wegmans and we talked about how we had forgotten to buy Brussels sprouts. The bank employee finally came back with the approval and wished us a Merry Christmas.

We took a chance and decided to stop at Aman’s Farm Market for the Brussels sprouts. They had them and I filled up a big bag wile Peggi waited in the car. The guy in front of me had a cart full of craft beer. He let me go ahead of him and told the cashier, “I only let him go ahead because I can’t stand looking at those things. We roasted them for our family Christmas party and every last one went.