I was working late again and I missed my buddy’s basketball game.  They were missing a travel kid, and the kid who always gets hurt broke his collar bone recently.  I called him after the game and he said that they lost 16-10.

I asked him how many points he scored (it’s usually one or two baskets that he gets on 3 or 4 shots) and he said “ten”, in a very matter-of-fact tone that is his way.

Amazed, I said, “TEN!?…did I hear that right?”  And so on.

He only missed 2 or 3 shots and said it was the best game he ever played.  One shot was from really far out and the coach was yelling  his name in disgust about the shot selection when it went “swish”.  He was animated about that.

Better than that, he is finally stealing balls and tipping passes.  He says he got 4 or 5 turnovers himself and tipped about 8 balls, some of which were turnovers.  He also had 4 or 5 rebounds.  So I really, really wish I could have been there to see this but it was still nice to hear.

In other news, I finally wore the Jeter cologne.  Long story, but the project was going full blast and I decided later in the day that I needed to stay to the night shift to get with the night nurses who work 11pm to 7am.  So I got the suite that we have for the families and worked a 7am to 7pm day and then went to dinner and came back and worked 10 to 3am or so.  By the time I wound down and slept, I really only had about 2 hours of sleep and I didn’t have a change of clothes.  I washed up but after a long day, you begin to ferment a bit.  So I remembered that I had this sample vial of Jeter’s cologne that someone had given me to annoy me last year.  I figured it would cover any “issues” and I think it did–I just smelled like a grapefruit.  Seriously, have you smelled this stuff?  To really be like Jeter, you need to have ALL your co-workers be paid the most in their profession, thus insuring your success.  That way, when everyone catches a whiff of the grapefruit, they can start gushing about how great you are.  And that joke probably went pastadivingjeter…

Helping Keith Hernandez Move

Last Summer, while Mrs. Pinetar and I were in Europe, we did a little day thing in Amsterdam to see the Anne Frank Museum and see what all the fuss was about. When we got there, I was shot so I went into a little coffee bar for a double espresso and nearly got knocked over by the weed fumes coming out of the joint. I had the coffee. I needed it. They kind of looked at me funny as if to say, “…no one gets COFFEE in here!”. The espress was lousy, which led me to formulate Foggy’s axiom of coffee in Amsterdam: “The more dope they sell, the lousier the doppio (that’s coffee)”.

Seeing the Ann Frank house and going inside what is basically an in-tact specimen of Amsterdamian architecture, made me realize that moving someone’s furniture up and down the sharply rising staircases would really not be fun. To save valuable space, the staircases are all rise, and no run. They are veritable ladders. So how the heck are you moving a bed or sofa up that pitch?

Well, the old time guys had the same problem. Their solution was to build all the houses slightly out-of-level over the street in the front. And this is something I noticed too, but didn’t understand until the canal-boat tour guide said it. It felt to me like the whole town was sinking slowly, because you just had this sense that NOTHING was level and everything was leaning this way and that. I have a good eye for level and nothing is level and it’s to the point where you feel creepy because it is just EVERYWHERE!

And then the tour guide solved the mystery and told us that ALL buildings in Amsterdam are built to overhang the street (and yes, there is also some random settling to add to the confusion). That means, that you could put your back to the building fronts and if rain was falling straight down (it almost never is but work with me here), you would not get wet!

Also each building has a huge beam on top right on-center. That beam has a heavy duty pulley in it and that is how they hauled furniture and other large items up and down without dragging the stuff up the side of the building and breaking the stuff and/or, the windows! Pretty ingenious. Also pretty odd when you look around and feel like the streets are closing in on you!

I tried very hard to photograph it but that is no easy task. This shot is about the best I did. The camera is as near to straight (vertical) as I can get it and the buildings on the left show nicely, this pronounced pitch, in, to the street. Notice the beams with the pulleys that come out of each roof gable crown.

How is this done in modern times? Well, a few days later in Brussels, Belgium, we saw the same problem tackled thusly:

There’s a pretty big sofa sideways on a lifter. They zipped it up the lift and in the next photo, you see it at the top:

Here is that same hopeless sofa going into the window, easy-as-pie. I don’t want to know what these guys charge but I think for most of us who have done this for friends, it’s worth it. –fog