80 Blog

Our daughter strove mightily against the trio of 2nd grade girls fielded against her awesome and fearless powers. They simply had no chance. While she rolled the ball down the field with a regularity that you could set your watch to, I kept an eye on Alex as he plowed through his homework.

Tonight it was selecting the challenging bits for Social Studies and reading two chapters out of a book that he’s almost finished. He seems to have overcome the urge to read the book without comprehension simply to be done with it, and is now in the phase where he’s consuming children’s literature at a ferocious rate, comparable to D’s approach to soccer. Every paragraph or two, a word would stump him, and rather than forging on without knowing what was really going on, he made the effort of popping out of the printed word, and asking what words like “embankment”, “merriment”, and “rein” really meant in the context of the story.

The weather has gone from excessively warm for the season to below average temperatures. We’re all suffering from the fall syndrome better known as the inability to accept the world for the chilly place it can be. Consequently, all soccer parents arrived in what they deemed to be “just enough”, and found quite quickly that this was truly insufficient covering for our chilling hides. A few of the older and more experienced among us were bundled deep in down jackets, and I eyed them all with envy. Damn fashion - I want to stay warm. D’ of course stayed warm the easiest way possible - in her jersey and shorts, she kept running, scoring, running, scoring, rinse lather repeat.

Towards the end of the game, the sun was setting on our endevors, and I gazed east over the hundreds of children garbed in the many hued soccer uniforms. Over the action, motion, repetition, and endless running shot the golden rays of the setting sun. The sunlight ran head on into the bank of trees on the far side of the park, and as we’re nearing sunset already, the trunks and lower branches were already sinking into shadow while the upper branches blazed with fading greens and the occasional sparkle of red and gold of the over eager fall leaves.

As always, there’s a moment, and then it’s gone. If I’d had a camera, I probably never would have seen it, and I highly doubt that anyone else on the field ever tipped their heads up just a few degrees to see the glory a few feet above their heads…for those that did, I join you in silent appreciation of the wonders of our world.

In a brief conversation (gmail) with Tim recently, I realized that I haven’t written on my blog in quite a while.  It’s no surprise that readership is way, way down.  I’m not even sure that family reads it, because, quite honestly, there’s much more to be had out of a turnip than this particular blog.

The corporate gods smiled and I was blessed with a new laptop for the simple reason that the administrators couldn’t remote into the old one anymore.  I’m not really sure what the reason was, but quite honestly, I’m not asking too many questions.  The new one feels better, runs faster, and has a bigger screen.  It has this much deeper pad to the keyboard that makes it a joy to type.  I actually gave up on the ergonomic board just to use this thing. It is, as the man said, the bomb-diggity.

Our summer is nearly over, a state of mind that nearly makes me weep.  On the other hand, all of the horrible hot weather seems to have passed through, and we’re sleeping with the windows open.  Oh joy, oh rapture!  A cool breeze, and thou!

Fourth of July, 2006 - Ryberg style was as all-american as possible.  After our regulation Starbucks mocha, we headed out to Lake Elmo Regional Park, and started holding a picnic spot - a good thing considering the hundreds of people in the park that day.  Next, Alex, Delaney and I trouped to Grandpa and Grandmas for the ritual decoration of the bike and mower trailer for the parade.

After appropriate doody-ing up, we march, rolled and mowed our ways up to the formation grounds for the Annual Lake Elmo Kid’s Parade.  This parade is truly a thing of beauty.  It’s precessed by the required police car and fire trucks.  A few antique cars and tractors make their appearance.  And then, about 500 kids (maybe a few less) roll out in whatever they can lay hands on to motivate.  This includes, but is not limited to bikes, ATV’s (driven by waving Grandpas and Grandmas), electric go carts, gas go carts, riding mowers (driven by same staff as ATV’s) pulling either generic wagons or in the most improbable case - a dragon fly, and all escorted by the same number of walking, anxious, cajoling, nudging, pushing, pulling, and photographing parents.

Cameras?  You name the model, it was out there.  There was the gentleman with the lens longer than his arm.  There were the “prosumer” class of shutterbugs (myself included) driving their relatively expensive Canon Rebels, an entire host of snapshot cameras, a few video cameras, and of course the phone wielidng, fist waving cell phone snappers.

“When the prairie sun climbs out of the hay”

I’m typing to the words of the weekly Monday morning 7:00 AM song on MPR.  This is such a tradition, that I can’t imagine not hearing it.  Some day, this too shall change, but for the moment, it’s a really nice tradition.

In other areas, tradition is going by the way of simple cleanliness.  I’m dumping junk.  At work, the boat anchors of computers are going by the wayside.  Not only do I not use them, but they use up my time and attention.

At home, I’m dumping the trash, old books, CD’s, furniture, fans - a veritable garage sale of stuff - that have been silently crowding up my life, and sucking the few extra moments of mental capacity that dribbles through my clenched fingers.  How can something so inert actively take my life away?  I don’t know, but I do know that when it leaves me, I feel a lot better.  While there’s the initial sadness of loss over objects that once held great meaning, that’s soon enough replaced by a wash of gratitude over being able to simply walk across the basement floor without making a parody of the Monty Python silly walking skit.

God bless freedom from cruft.