On This Date in 1998

Wisconsin’s great expectations are being dashed. At halftime, the Badgers are trailing Michigan 21-7, a touchdown in the last minute of the first half seeming to seal our doom. Tomorrow the TV-sports talking heads will gleefully point to the Badgers’ allegedly weak schedule and say,” I told you so.” Wisconsin should be able to reclaim their top ten status with a convincing victory against Penn State next week.

I turned the TV off at halftime, so it’s a quiet afternoon in this part of the house. Andy and Matt went bowling. Matt will be sleeping over tonight, which cancels out the movie date that JoAnna and I had planned for this evening. Eddie is over at Derek’s house for the first time this schoolyear. Last year, Derek called him practically every weekend, but something happened to cool their friendship last spring. Eddie must have been in one of his solitary moods. According to Andy, sometimes not the most reliable of source in these situations, Eddie abruptly, almost rudely, told Derek he didn’t want to play and hung up the phone without further comment, not even a goodbye. Until today, that was the last time Derek called, and no amount of prodding would convince Eddie to call Derek, or anybody else, for that matter.

Andy brought home a respectable report card yesterday, but one that leaves plenty of room for improvement. Here’s a list of his grades:

• Reading B- 
• Math B- 
• Spelling B 
• Language B 
• Social Studies A- 
• Science A- 

The only area where he received check marks (i.e., areas where improvement is needed) is in Spelling. “Completes work on time.” “Completes assigned work carefully.” Which is odd, since Spelling has always been one of his best subjects. The Reading grade is a bit disappointing, since here he is obviously capable of doing much better. Actually, now that I think about it, I’m not clear on the difference between Reading and Language Arts. Andy has made great improvement in the area of Individual Development, the part of his report card that evaluates his school and classroom behavior, a problem area for much of his elementary school “career”. He earned “satisfactory” marks in 8 or 9 areas, including “shows consideration for peers”, which had previously been an area where improvement was always needed. He received a “P” (progress shown) in “shows self control”. After listening to our encouragements to do better, he said, “Our teacher told us that the first quarter is the hardest.” He may not have realized it, but this remark automatically boosted Mom and Dad’s expectations for the second quarter.

Eddie brought his report card home last week. Although he doesn’t receive letter grades, he received a very positive evaluation from his teachers. The special education classes have resulted in a very noticeable improvement in his reading skills. We are very pleased with the progress he has made so far this year.

Just minutes ago, I quickly tuned in and out of the football game. Wisconsin is down 27-10 in the 4th quarter. The possibility of an undefeated season seems highly unlikely right now. I don’t think Barry Alvarez has a miracle in his playbook. I haven’t checked the other scores, but maybe this will be a weekend of upsets, which might help the Badgers in the standings.

Today’s weather can be described as sunny and breezy, unseasonably warm. I started to do some raking and mulching before the Badger game and will continue this task once I decide to take a pause from writing this letter. We had two days of intense winds – Tuesday and Wednesday – that stripped the trees of the few leaves still stubbornly clinging to the branches. Gusts of up to 60 mph were reported. I feared for our cedars trees along the edge of the driveway. The wind was bending the tops at almost a right angle. While I was home for lunch on Tuesday, the lights flickered a number of times, causing our new carbon monoxide detector in the utility room to emit a series of staccato beeps for 30 seconds, but, unlike other areas of Dane County, we didn’t experience a power outage. The power surge was so brief that I didn’t even have to reset the digital clocks.

On This Date in 1998

On Friday, we got an early start to the weekend. JoAnna planned to work the morning and then get her hair done at noon, but her appointment was canceled. I went to the library at my usual time and planned to work until midafternoon. The boys spent the morning at home, watching TV and behaving themselves. JoAnna took the boys to the mall to eat lunch and go shopping. She gave Andy $100 to spend on clothes, which he managed very cautiously, she later told me. He bought two sweat outfits, one black and one gray. (The gray one he immediately soiled with quesadilla “juice” when he interrupted the last of my late lunch.) He also bought another pair of “breakaway” pants. Eddie wasn’t ignored. He picked out a New York Yankees t-shirt. (As a result of the just-completed baseball season, the Yankees are now his favorite team. Eddie goes with the winner!) He also got a new hat and a pair of gloves, and a submarine toy, one that opens up to create a cross-section effect. He played with it all afternoon.



Andy had a sleepover at his friend Tim’s house Friday night. After we dropped him off, JoAnna and Eddie and I went to the movies. We saw Pleasantville, a Back to the Future inspired fantasy about a brother and sister who are zapped back to a Father Knows Best/Leave it to Beaver black-and-white world, which, through their influence, slowly takes on the full spectrum of the rainbow. The story is a clever variation of a well-worn premise, although the second half of the movie did meander a little bit too much for my overall comfort level. Eddie behaved like a little adult. The movie is two hours long, with no dinosaurs or guns, but he stayed with it from start to finish. He didn’t even request a bathroom break!

Saturday morning, both JoAnna and I spent a couple hours tidying and organizing our desk areas, stuffing to their maximum capacity two grocery bags of recyclable paper in the process. Now the writing surface of my rolltop desk is completely bare and dust-free. We spent the late morning and early afternoon watching the Badger game on TV. During halftime, I raked the leaves on the front lawn that Andy missed yesterday. As soon as Andy returned home, right at the beginning of the third quarter, he asked us if he and Eddie could go bowling. We gave them permission. It gave me pause to watch our two no-longer-little boys walk off together. Later in the afternoon, the family went on a shopping spree. JoAnna spent $150 on books at Barnes & Noble. Since I already have enough to read at home, I was the only one who left the store empty-handed. At Best Buy, an electronics store, one of many in Madison’s highly competitive retail marketplace, we bought a new VCR to replace the aging and defective model in the family room. The picture quality of the older one is so bad as to be unviewable. It’s like trying to watch a movie through venetian blinds. Our final stop was Office Max, a “big-box” office supply store, where JoAnna bought a notebook and pocket dividers to store our 1998 personal financial information. I bought Andy a zippered notebook for school. He coveted the one I keep next to my desks. He had to have one just like it. We also bought a cordless phone for the bedroom.



After fixing tacos and burritos for supper, the family settled into an evening of watching movies. JoAnna and I christened our new VCR with Hope Floats, a fluffy romance starring Sandra Bullock and Harry Connick Jr. (The boys watched one of their choices in our bedroom.) What a difference in picture clarity. Watching a video at home is now an enjoyable experience, no longer a chore. Right now the boys and I are watching Godzilla, one of the past summer’s special effects blockbusters. It’s not the type of movie I have to give my full attention. Strictly formula stuff. Best line inspired from the movie. A scene shows a cache of automatic weapons being unpacked. Eddie’s reaction: “Now they’re talking my language.”

The ground was covered with a slight dusting of snow this morning, most of it melted off by now, at 9:39. Andy thought his chore of raking leaves in the back yard could be postponed. Wrong answer! he quickly learned. I plan to do some mulching, so most of the leave won’t have to be transported to the front curb. For the first weekend in November, it actually felt mild outside.



What a change in the political landscape since Tuesday. JoAnna’s hard work resulted in the Democrats regaining the state senate. Tommy Thompson was elected to a fourth term as governor . bit not with the 70% of the vote he was arrogantly predicting earlier in the year. All of the other major statewide offices were won by Dems. And on the national level, who would have guessed that Newt Gingrich would no longer be in Congress by the end of the year? This year, the political pundits were as off the mark and out of touch as they could be. I usually read the op-ed pages for comic relief anyway.

Badger Football Saturday

Camp Randall Stadium: the View from Section BB

Saturday, October 31, 2009.

Too early for most of the students to show up. It's nowhere near the 2nd quarter.


ThePurdue Boilermakers come to town to play the Wisconsin Badgers. At least, that's what we had been told. Once the game got underway, it quickly become obvious that Purdue had not come to play.

For Purdue's sake, it would have been better to let the UW Marching Band play for 3 hours. I've never seen such an embarassingly inept college football team.

The student section is starting to fill up during the pregame festivities.

The Badgers take the field.

The team heads for the sidelines. (Hey, this was actually more exciting than most of the game.)

Badgers had a 31-0 lead at the half at went on to win 37-0. Oh, and the student sections started to empty out immediately after "Jump Around".