Just checking in to say that the movers will be arriving in the morning, and less than 24 hours later I’ll be on a plane for Chicago and “Wait Wait.” So barring a visit from Chris or Sienna, you’ll all be on your own here for a couple of days.
I expect everyone to be on their best behavior. I sweartagod if I come back to find that one of you has thrown a party here without permission, there will be consequences.
Moving is stressful, yes, but we Felbers have had worse. For my family, any move that doesn’t involve angry, torch-bearing villagers is a high-class move. In fact, that’s made us less likely to move on our own. Throughout history, Felbers have reasoned, “Why move now, in such a seller’s market? If we wait for the pogrom we might get a deal…” Keen observers will note a great deal of backfire potential in that strategy, and admittedly it hasn’t always worked out so great for us. On the bright side, though, it does make me easy to find in the phone book…
Family history aside, though, this looks like a promising move. See you on the other side, folks…





61 comments
dee
June 5, 2007 at 4:41 pm
1The other side of WHAT? The block? The city? The country? Cuz it would be nice to know just when you’ll be back. Not that you couldn’t come back at any time and find the place just as you left it. It’s just that…um…we might like to uh…uh…have a nice dinner waiting for you when you get back.
Ann
June 5, 2007 at 4:58 pm
2I’m with you, Dee—I’ve started knitting a little something, just in case.
Chris Regan
June 5, 2007 at 5:13 pm
3I’ll write something soon!
I swear it!
I can’t vouch for Sienna, however.
Rebecca
June 5, 2007 at 5:34 pm
4We’ll take reeeeeal good care of this place, I promise…
*crash!*
cooper
June 5, 2007 at 6:26 pm
5Adam, I certainly hope you’re moving out of Earthquake Central, for God’s sake. Utah, maybe? Don’t hurt your back, pal; lift with your legs.
Fran
June 5, 2007 at 6:31 pm
6Adam’s gone now, right?
So…who’s bringin’ the beer? I got queso and chips!
gillian
June 5, 2007 at 6:50 pm
7Queso, Fran? You must still be young, ten feet tall and bulletproof. Queso pegs out my cholesterol meter; buries the needle into the freekin’ red zone. As we mature, we learn to pace ourselves, dear. Oh, and we get boring as hell, too.
So anyways, since we’re partying here, let the laughs begin! Okay, so who brought the O’Douls and the tofurkey?
Harold
June 5, 2007 at 6:55 pm
8I got the pastries from Sanitary Bakery. Anybody bring the Maker’s Mark?
Ann
June 5, 2007 at 7:25 pm
9“He’s such a nuisance–and the worst president in history!” I love it!
No queso for me, please. I’ll bring the guacamole and margaritas, though.
SeattleTammy
June 5, 2007 at 8:26 pm
10Ok, counting on fingers on both hands, I’m guessing January. We can get some pretty good knitting done by then, ladies!
Dammit, I’m a woman of a Certain Age, and I have conflicting desires. I do want grandchildren, but not SeattleTony’s just yet. So, please, please Adam, give your female fans what we really really want.
I’ll bring the booties patterns and some Bridgeport Ale!
becca (and brian)
June 5, 2007 at 8:34 pm
11Actually reminds me of a poster I saw in a window earlier today.
Big picture of GW’s face looking resolute with the words underneath “Like a Rock.”
And then under that: “…..only dumber”
As far as party treats go, I’m bringing Tim-Tams and Baileys and/or Port to dunk them in. (Folks who have spent time down-under will hopefully appreciate that culinary contribution)
Dale
June 5, 2007 at 9:02 pm
12Harold, I´m assuming you picked up some napkins there too?
Tammy, I´d say November. We´re always the last to know. How about we think of some good name options?
becca (and brian)
June 5, 2007 at 9:41 pm
13and actually, it might have been.
“…..only not as smart”
I think that has a better ring to it
Carmel
June 6, 2007 at 3:35 am
14Tim-Tams are goood…
dee
June 6, 2007 at 4:06 am
15Mmmmm… Sanitary Bakery. Based on my being transported to Nirvana when I tasted some of their donuts at Felberpalooza, I ordered the traditional Polish paczki from them for Fat Tuesday this year. They travel well.
And come to think of it, “Nirvana Felber” has a certain cachet to it, n’est-ce pas?
David
June 6, 2007 at 4:38 am
16“As we mature, we learn to pace ourselves, dear.” Oh, dear. We do?
IF I could be there, I’d bring some of the Green Swamp’s finest lightning in a jug. It goes with anything, but gator tail, cooter, frog legs, and swamp cabbage are best. Alternatively, a seven course meal in southwestern Lake County is a possum and a six-pack, but don’t tell Pogo.
It's Pat!
June 6, 2007 at 8:46 am
17I can bring some dynamite salsa that I make - all veggies are grown in my own weedpatch, or by local folks. Yummy!
I would have said I just saw Adam fly over me, which would make sense, seeing how I live on the north side of Flyover land, but I can’t see him cause it has been raining Seattle style here for the last few weeks. Blub, blub, gurgle…..
Mike
June 6, 2007 at 11:11 am
18I’ll bring my recently shattered marriage and a half-gallon of cheap whiskey. I won’t share though, I’ll drink it all and end up on someone’s rooftop in my underwear, covered in mud, howling at the moon.
Oh, that wasn’t completely in-a-fucking-propriate.
Disregard this message. Well, I guess I could just not send this thing, then you could all pre-disregard the message without any effort. Meh…
Lauren
June 6, 2007 at 11:13 am
19Good luck, hon! If you leave the state, we’ll miss you.
LeRoy Mambeaux
June 6, 2007 at 11:30 am
20Sure is good to be state-side and see all this ale and whiskey. I just flew Air America in from Kabul and I got a backpack of Afghanistan’s best (”If there’s anything better, God’s keeping it for himself!”) and a couple of kilos of hash. Anybody got some clean needles?
Ann
June 6, 2007 at 1:06 pm
21Mike, Mike, Mike, what doesn’t kill you makes you weaker and more vulnerable to the next attack.
Best to just curl up underneath our park bench. There’s plenty of room.
Murray
June 6, 2007 at 1:13 pm
22Hey David, bring that fine drinking liquid up north July 7th.
Rook
June 6, 2007 at 3:47 pm
23Now just hold on one damn minute! The CEO of the conglomerate that bid to take over my blog back on June 2, 2003 is moving and no conglomerate corporate memo was mailed out? Oh, that just plain sucks.
Well, anyway, enjoy the move.
cooper
June 6, 2007 at 6:32 pm
24I’ve always thought “Pookie” is a good baby name. BTW, is yellow still the safe unisex color? It’s so hard to keep up with fashion trends.
cooper
June 6, 2007 at 6:49 pm
25Everyone who feels Angela Merkel owes W a merciless and protracted dutch rub, say “Aye”.
In case you missed it - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/opinions/cartoonsandvideos/toles_ main.html?name=Toles&date=06062007
Zee Man
June 6, 2007 at 7:11 pm
26I prefer to have profanity, irreverent banter, and blasphemy with my clip art, how about you?
http://www.mnftiu.cc/mnftiu.cc/war65.html
Dale
June 6, 2007 at 8:21 pm
27I vote Phil. Phil Phelber. Kid´ll grow up nice and tough.
Fran
June 6, 2007 at 9:09 pm
28“Young”, Gillian? How sweet you are! I haven’t been called young since…well…hmm. Yeah, ’bout that long. And at 50+, I’m not bulletproof, just not worth shooting any more!
Wait! Rebecca? What broke over there?
Pookie Phelber. Yeah, it’s got a nice ring, don’t you think? Hey, what about twins? Phillip and Phelicia Phelber?
Dale
June 6, 2007 at 9:29 pm
29Twin boys: Cain and Abel. (Don´t worry, you´ll only have to pay for one to go through college).
David
June 7, 2007 at 5:12 am
30“I’ll write something soon!”
“I swear it!”
Promises, promises, Chris. And does anyone know the cyber-whereabouts of Sienna?
Ouch, Dale!
It's Pat!
June 7, 2007 at 8:23 am
31You could name the babe after Adam:
A Damn Felber
yuk yuk.
cooper
June 7, 2007 at 3:01 pm
32My lovely and talented daughter’s loser, asshole, shit for brains boyfriend, the one who’s been lying around and not working and spounging off her and not paying his part of the rent or food - that boyfriend - his parents won $1,000,000 in the NC Lottery 2 days ago. They took an immediate payoff and are out buying a Lincoln Navigator SUC right now. Maybe Alyson will get a few of the thousands of dollars he owes her. Maybe. Anyway, she moved back home last week and I was hoping that chapter was behind us. Perhaps not. Such is life.
hedera
June 7, 2007 at 3:40 pm
33cooper, it just goes to prove, as Louis Wu repeatedly observed: There Ain’t No Justice…
Dale
June 7, 2007 at 5:13 pm
346 Neological stars to Cooper. Spounging is a great new word–perfectly captures that combination of lounging and sponging.
cooper
June 7, 2007 at 6:28 pm
35Thank you, Dale, for cleaning up my mess when I tripped over the word “sponging”. Neological is a good word and new to me. Of course, I’ll probably spell that wrong the first time I try to work it into a sentence. I tell you, my spelling has fallen off a cliff since I turned 50.
hedera, didn’t Louis Wu also say “Growing old ain’t for sissies”. Maybe that was someone else.
It's Pat!
June 7, 2007 at 7:17 pm
36And of course Cooper, they go out and buy the biggest dumbest vehicle they can find. Trust me, they’ll blow through that money quick. Keep your daughter home until that storm blows over. Money ain’t everything (it’s close, but I’m pretty sure there are other important things too).
Get her a loofsa sponge, if for no other reason than it is a fun word to say.
It's Pat!
June 7, 2007 at 7:20 pm
37Geez, now I have the 50’s disease. I meant loofah. Uffda!!
(Minnesotan for “fercrissakes”).
Kjell Mikkelson
June 7, 2007 at 7:26 pm
38Pat, JEG elske den når du si “uffda”!
Jack in Iraq
June 7, 2007 at 7:38 pm
39Geez, Pat. I don’t know Norwegian (or whatever that is), but it seems Kjell is kinda sweet on you. I hope hubby isn’t the jealous type. And now, back down into my spider hole. HOO-WAH!!!
cooper
June 8, 2007 at 3:51 am
40Pat, the phrase we’ve been using is “burn through it with a blow torch”. But you’re right, they’ll be picked clean in short order. Since they took immediate payout, they received only $625,000. They bought the SUC and have very large medical bills (the wife is a bit of a hypochondriac, with a chronic and wicked case of the vapors), so they’ll be down about $130 grand by the end of the first week.
Ann
June 8, 2007 at 12:51 pm
41Gee, Cooper—that sounds like just the sum needed for a right purty wedding!
Murray
June 8, 2007 at 3:14 pm
42Coop, you can give them money but you can’t give them class.
Many lottery winners go bankrupt soon enough after winning, because they think that 1 or 2 million will last for ever and they can buy anything they want. On the other hand a million is only $20,000 for 50 years and if you take go for the “give it to me now” route it is $20,000 for about 35 years, pull out taxes and it’s a lot less. It can ease things up but it won’t make you a millionaire. Well,… you know.
cooper
June 8, 2007 at 3:35 pm
43Now hush yo’ mouth, young’un!
dee
June 8, 2007 at 4:01 pm
44This weekend I am catsitting for friends who live in backyard bird heaven (The cat stays indoors, and even if she went out the birds would just laugh at her lack of hunting abilities). So I’ve been treated to a show of blue jays, cardinals and mourning doves all fighting with the grackles over the feeders. Damn grackles. I also fill the bluebird feeder with mealy worms three times a day, because it’s another struggle between the bluebirds and the robins. I guess everybody has to eat and I don’t know why I expect the birds to share any better than we do.
David
June 8, 2007 at 5:41 pm
45Birds are feathered tyrranosaurs, so they don’t share shit, except on statues and Bush’s jacket, or food, except with their young. Hummingbirds are downright attack-prone with other hummingbirds (or are they aggressively playful, siobhan?) Damn, I wish that had been a diarrhetic t rex flying (catapulted?) over our befuddled president that day (I do, however, think his is more reasonable regarding immigrants than his party is).
David
June 8, 2007 at 5:44 pm
46“he is,” “not his is,” dammit. I always spot those errors after I’ve hit “Submit Comment.”
Dirk's Diary
June 8, 2007 at 6:28 pm
476-08-07
Dear Dairy,
Sometimes your initial gut instincts prove to be amazingly sound. Patricia likes to call it Cowboy Logic (an oxymoron if there ever was one). I’ve always felt that Italia Federici was just too much of a schmoozer, and not enough of a worker. Believe me I’m glad she was gone from Interior before I came to town. Well, today she pled guilty to tax evasion and obstructing Congress in the influence-peddling scandal centered around Jack Abramoff. I tell you that boy has been pure Kryptonite to the Greed Head Wing of the Republican Party and now they’re dropping like so many blow flies. I’d bet my left nut that Gale Norton is the next to go. The bitch. She really left this Dept. in a mess. You wouldn’t believe the things I’ve found in desk drawers while looking for the correct Arctic wilderness drilling rights forms. Trust me - you don’t want to know what an soiled, size 46 gold lame thong looks and smells like. Not even birthing calves or cleaning elk carcasses prepared me for that nasal insult.
Time for some shut-eye. Goodnight, diary .
Dirk
Joe from Chicago
June 8, 2007 at 6:58 pm
48Hey, did you guys see where Dick Cheney’s one-off DARPA constructed pacemaker needs a new battery? He’ll have to go under the knife this summer to fix the problem. You know, I have been feeling that his usually giddy enthusiasm for acts of heinous treachery has been missing these last few weeks.
siobhan
June 8, 2007 at 7:18 pm
49re: Hummingbirds and their aggressive nature - a favorite quote from Smithsonian a few years back: it’s a good thing hummingbirds aren’t the size of ravens, otherwise it wouldn’t be safe to walk in the woods.
Some birds do share, or at least cooperate. Corvids and parrots both seem to communicate information about food resources at their roost sites. (”Ravens in Winter” by Bernd Heinrich describes it beautifully and is an excellent read, even for civilians.)
SeattleTammy
June 8, 2007 at 7:35 pm
50siobhan! I’m so glad you’re here! I tried to post this, but Fanny was effing with me!
Siobhan: could you advise on this recent turn of events? http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/318967_bird08.html
The feeder is almost empty, and while we can pretend to the flock of quarrelsome sparrows that we don’t know where the food is…
Hate to stop feeding when they start bringing around this year’s babies, but it may be best.
luckily, I c-n-p!
hedera
June 8, 2007 at 9:05 pm
51cooper, it wasn’t Louis Wu who said, “growing old ain’t for sissies” - it was Dr. Seuss. Well, I thought that was what he said, but when I checked Amazon, the book is actually called You’re Only Old Once! - with the wonderful subtitle, A Book for Obsolete Children.
I think the phrase really came from Growing Old Is Not For Sissies, by Etta Clark (1986), with wonderful stories and photos of serious senior athletes:
Plus a sequel, Growing Old Is Not For Sissies II, in case you didn’t already feel sufficiently inferior…
zeke
June 9, 2007 at 7:16 am
52Hey Adam,
Good job today on “Wait, Wait…” Whether we agree with the war or not, the simple “thank you” you gave to Jason was great and I imagine much appreciated by him. I do the same when I see people in uniform having been there myself at one point many years ago and I know it’s appreciated.
Zeke
Harold
June 9, 2007 at 9:31 am
53cooper, you have a lovely and talented daughter? Why was I not informed of this? Besides the fact that you’ve met me in person…
Adam, when was that show taped? Or were the comments about about yesterday’s events edited in later?
dee
June 9, 2007 at 10:51 am
54It was an almost seamless insert re:new developments in the Paris Hilton case, but those of us with discerning ears could tell the difference.
And I love the way Adam sandbags everyone for the lightning round. Last year it was “I’ve been on a book tour”; this week it’s “I’m moving and haven’t had access to the internet.” He reminds me of the golden days of Dean Smith “I don’t know how we’re going to do this year. You know we lost a lot of seniors blah blah blah…” and then he’d go on to demolish the rest of the ACC.
cooper
June 9, 2007 at 6:35 pm
55We survived the High School graduation party for Adam. Tomorrow he will have the actual ceremony. Susie invited about 30 people - 3/4 of them teenagers - to the house for some real Lexington style homemade BBQ, pasta salad, etc. Fortunately the weather today was great and also fortunately they came in 2 waves; one group for lunch and one for supper.
Waterfowler, and any other reader out there with young children, the years will fly by and the kids will grow up and be gone. Treasure your moments with them.
cooper
June 9, 2007 at 6:55 pm
56I’ve given this baby naming exercise a fair amount of thought today and I’m going with Filbert. Yes sir, Filbert Felber - now there’s a name of distinction. The middle name is never used and could be anything you want. Penn Jillette gave his daughter the middle name of “Crimefighter!” - true. I think he foresaw run-ins with the constabulary early in her driving career and figured, since the middle name is a throwaway, why not give her something that would be helpful at such times.
So there you are, Filbert Felber; my contribution to the next generation and to our pal, Adam. Remember to clear all names with your dear wife before you order the monogrammed onesies.
It's Pat!
June 10, 2007 at 10:39 am
57I like Filberts in my Gimlet. Name this purported baby Filbert Gimlet Felber, and I will send a baby gift. It’s really fun to say out loud. And difficult. As children are.
And it’s true, as soon as they are born, they are gone. So take lots of pictures.
David
June 10, 2007 at 11:13 am
58I love it, It’s Pat! Also love the hummingbird quote, siobhan. Thanks.
Meanwhile, I’ve got to brag somewhere. This is an article about my daughter-in-law’s younger brother (note the gpa - we’re talking brawn and brains):
http://www.news-journalonline.com/NewsJournalOnline/Sports/Headlines/s ptFBH01061007.htm
hedera
June 10, 2007 at 8:58 pm
59Well you might brag, David - good looking too, and really nice pecs. How much is he curling there?? (Hey, the guys do this to women all the time…)
The family connection took me a minute to figure out - I think your daughter-in-law’s younger brother counts as an in-law but I’m not sure what the relationship noun is; step-nephew?? Anyway, congratulations to Cody, especially for the GPA. Try to persuade him to stay out of professional football.
Landis
June 11, 2007 at 10:32 am
60I don’t believe I’ve ever wondered how much a woman was curling (unless it was toes).
David
June 12, 2007 at 6:51 am
61Landis, Landis, have you never known a female body builder?
hedera, the NFL is his goal - has been since junior high school. He apparently is quick enough, both mentally and physically, that it is a possibility. I’m hoping that he’ll get into the international relations program at FIU, which is one of their stronger programs. Meanwhile, Gator though I be, for the next four years, “Go, Golden Panthers!”