Today was Band Day in our town. I wouldn’t exactly call it a “Big Day,” but there have been signs posted in stores, banners on street lamps, and such for several days. High school bands from all over the state come here for a competition, and then cap off the three-day event with a parade through town. We and another family went downtown and watched the parade last year, and our boys seemed to like it, so we decided to go watch it again this year.

What is it about a parade that brings the cold weather? Last year, it was amazingly cold at parade time, and this year it was amazingly cold at parade time. The climate has cooled considerably since the summer, but today was the first day that gloves would have been useful. Fortunately my wife pays attention to the Weather Channel, and so we had blankets to keep the boys warm. I had a coat on, but I should have had more. The wind was biting.

The parade route was lined with spectators, but not really packed. The lines on both sides of the road were just one person deep, and no spot was really crowded.

The parade consisted of a few floats pulled by pick up trucks, several old cars from the local classic car club, a few modern cars with various band boosters and supporters waving to the crowd, a few advertising banners carried by two or three kids, and of course the marching bands.

Flag girls, rifle teams, banner carriers, band leaders, and all the various instrument players marched down the street. The flag girls and rifle teams were constantly waving their gear, smiling, hopping, and twirling. The banner carriers were walking and waving to the crowd. But the leaders and players kept their heads forward, their back straight, their instruments held chin high in front of them, and they marched in short, quick steps, heel, toe, heel, toe, heel, toe. The drums were the only instruments in constant play.

Occasionally a band would play a half-minute part of a song, but most of the time they just marched. The teenagers in the bands were of all shapes and sizes, from the skinny little girls maybe five feet tall, to the hulking boys carrying tubas. They all had a blank expression, and kept serious attention straight ahead. None of them looked like they were actually enjoying the march.

The flag girls, however, seemed to be having a fun time. They twirled and smiled, spun their flags and smiled, and hopped and smiled. Some of the girls looked like their actions were taking every bit of their concentration, but others looked like they were absolutely thrilled to be waving their flags. Good for them.

Their outfits, though. . . shudder. Some of those poor flag girls had not only really ugly outfits on, but they had to be cold. Some were no more than full-body, skin-tight leotards. Some had bare arms (or just one bare arm). Some had thin streamers or wide strips of cloth hanging from odd places. Some outfits just looked like they weren’t finished being made; only the fact that all the girls had the same outfit on proved that the look was intentional.

The band members could have looked really dapper with their straight uniforms, but none were really cut to fit the wearer. Some pants were too short, some shirts were too long, and their hats all fit differently. Their uniform way of marching in step just exacerbated the ill-fitting look of their outfits.

I envy these band members for their ability to play an instrument (not that I actually saw them play anything, other than the drummers), but I gotta admit that watching them march down the street would not get me, if I were a teenager, interested in joining a marching band. Honestly, they looked like a bunch of dorks. There was no life in their march, there was no coolness in their attitudes, there was just no fun in their presence.

The bands need to take note of the flag girls: get active and have fun. And they all need better uniforms.

Teenagers on the march. God bless ’em.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

We have a desktop computer physically plugged into the Internet, and we have a laptop computer connected via wireless router. I had the wireless connection working for almost a year until three months ago when I took it down because I wasn’t using the laptop. This week, I set up the laptop as a second computer in the house, and I set up the wireless Internet connection again.

The wireless set up worked fine for several days, and then one morning it just wasn’t connecting to the ‘net. We couldn’t get Web pages or check e-mail. So I did the normal (for computer tech) first steps to correct the problem: I unplugged the cable modem and wireless router, and then plugged them back in. That didn’t help. I shut down the computers and restarted them. That didn’t help. I tried various combinations of shutting down and restarting everything. That didn’t help.

I sent and e-mail through my desktop connection to my gaming buddies to see if they had any ideas (two of them are tech-heads). One told some things to try to determine the problem, and dammit if all the things worked just fine. There was no reason why I shouldn’t be getting through to the Web.

My desktop got to the Internet just fine, and when I called my ISP, they were no help because my service was fine. I called the router tech support, and spent two hours on the phone to India, with two different techs trying to figure it all out. Nothing was making a difference.

Everything about the set up seemed to be correct: the modem was working, the wireless router was working, the laptop showed connectivity with the router—everything was right. Except, I couldn’t get a Web page or e-mail on the laptop.

I went to Target and bought a new wireless router, but when I hooked it up, it was no different. Everything looked right, but I just couldn’t get to the Web. So I took the new router back for a refund.

Then I called a family friend and asked his advice. He suggested completely resetting the wireless router and reinstalling it from the beginning. I tried that twice and it changed nothing.

I’ve spent several hours over the past two days dealing with this damn situation, and I still don’t have it working. I don’t even know why it’s not working—everything still looks right. I even took the laptop out around the city to WiFi hotspots to see if I could get online somewhere else, and I found I could get online in some places but not in others.

It just makes no sense. It’s driving me crazy. I can’t stand this kind of problem. Everything about the set up is correct, but it just isn’t working. It’s so *^&%$%^& frustrating I want to scream. I don’t even know what happened to cause this problem to come up.

I’ll probably have this aggravation haunt me in my dreams.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

Our neighbors asked us if we could watch their little girls for half an hour or so, while they go to an appointment. We said, “Okay, send them on over.” My wife was out of the house at the appointment time, so I ended up the parent in charge. (That’s not a problem, for the record.) We went out into our backyard to play.

The girls are 5 years old and 2 years old (compared to my boys of 6 and 3). The kids started out playing on the play set, swinging, climbing, sliding, etc. Then my 6 year old wanted to play football. Over the next 20 minutes, six balls of various sports and sizes were being thrown, kicked, and caught. The 5 year old girl was game right in there with the 6 year old boy, and the 3 year old boy was trying to keep up. The 2 year old girl was calmly picking up and carrying balls outside the more active play.

I chased the kids, the kids chased me, and we had a grand time until I just needed to sit out the action. Soon, the kids all settled down to play with cars on the patio, in relative quiet. They played this way for about 10 minutes, and then they got up for more ball play.

They’d been running around for about five minutes when the girls’ mom came over to pick them up. She came into the backyard and we talked for a couple minutes while the kids continued playing. The kids would throw balls to us, run past us, and generally want to involve us in their “sport,” despite our trying to have a conversation.

It was pretty obvious, and ashamedly funny, that the girls’ mom was not used to such rambunctious activity. The throws and runs seemed to surprise her at times. My boys’ mom knows to at least keep heads up while boys are playing around her, so a ball thrown to her won’t startle her. I know I’m making a general, blanket statement based on one anecdote, and there are plenty of girls and moms of girls who don’t feel and look out of place in the middle of active outdoor play. But the scene played right to the stereotype; it looked like a sitcom.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com

At around 4:00 yesterday afternoon, I decided to put on a Halloween face. I pulled out my Halloween prop box from under our bed, and went through my stuff. I then spent about 45 minutes trimming, gluing on, and touching up some bone-colored horns. I added blood to make it look like the horns erupted from my flesh, and to conceal the edges of the prosthetic; I let the blood run down my face in a few places. Some dark make-up under my eyes and under my cheek bones to give me a gaunt look, completed the work. The effect was pretty good for a quick job.

My 6 year old thought it was cool, my 3 year old was unsure. I talked with him and he understood that it was all make-up and pretend. “You know who I am, right?” I asked him.

“A monster,” he answered.

“I mean, who am I really?”

“My daddy.”

He got over the my weirdness within a few minutes.

My wife called Pizza Hut to order a pizza, and our 6 year old and I went to pick it up. I wanted to get out of the house in my make-up; what fun is it to get all freaked up and then just stay home? My 6 year old warned me, “Dad, I’m not sure what people are going to think when they see you. You might scare some people.”

“It’s alright,” I said, “people know it’s Halloween, so they expect to see people dressed up scary today.”

When we walked in the restaurant, the waitress made a big deal out of my look. “Whoa! I forgot it was Halloween!” she nearly shouted. Making a big deal out of it is fine. I’m used to, and expect, and want people to notice when I put on the whole freak face, but she just was a little more excited than I expected.

It seems that everyone in town orders pizza on Halloween night. There were nearly ten people waiting for their take out orders, and a couple tables of people eating in. I was the only one showing any evidence of the evening being Halloween. A couple people waiting for take out stared at me (again, I got no problem with it), and one woman asked me how I got the horns to stick on.

Later in the evening, while out trick-or-treating, I had many people comment on how real the horns and blood looked. All in all, the comments made me feel good about my Halloween make-up skills. I usually shun the spotlight, but on Halloween, when I’ve got my freak on, it’s fun to get attention.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com