Author: Patrick O'Grady

After decades with his scabby little nose pressed to various grindstones of journalism, Patrick O'Grady came away with plenty of mental scar tissue, a good deal less hair to cover it, and an undiminished appreciation for three subsets of the craft: drawing cartoons, writing commentary, and composing headlines. All three are short, punchy attention-getters, the literary equivalent of yelling, "Hey, look at me!" before hanging a moon out the school-bus window, and thus own a natural appeal for an overgrown class clown with the attention span of a rat terrier raised on angel dust and bong water. And thanks to the Internet, the best thing to happen to journalism since the invention of movable type, he gets to do all three of them without having to go to work at a newspaper, where management has slowly devolved into a button-down mutant hybrid of the worst aspects of the Spanish Inquisition, the dental bits in "Marathon Man" and the DMV of your choice. He and his wife, the long-suffering Shannon, share an adobe hacienda in The Duck! City with their cat, Miss Mia Sopaipilla.

A crunch you can’t get with the Cap’n

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments
Not exactly green eggs and ham, Sam I am, but there is some green involved.
Not exactly green eggs and ham, Sam I am, but there is some green involved.

I don’t remember exactly when I first started liking a little salad with breakfast. It’s probably Hal’s fault — he’s more of a culinary pioneer than I am and has been known to eat all kinds of weird items first thing in the morning. Living at altitude 15 miles from a piss-poor grocery will do that to you. Planning and creativity are required.

Whatever. I like the way some lettuce and tomatoes look on the plate, drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil and a little salt and pepper, cuddled up next to the eggs, scrambled with green chile, garlic and chives.

And I like the way it tastes, too. Beats the mortal shit out of a bowl of Cap’n Crunch, a moon pie and a Co’-Cola.

• Update from on high: Hal advises from the Hardscrabble Times kitchens that breakfast today consists of a package of Stahlbush Farms frozen spinach thawed in a skillet over low heat, then sautéed with garlic and olive oil, with a half-dozen locally acquired eggs scrambled in along with some organic Parmesan. Sliced oranges are served on the side. Options for the carnivorous include diced Maverick Ranch or Larga Vista Ranch ham.

Footloose

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 13 Comments
There's no place like home ... there's no place like home.
There's no place like home ... there's no place like home.

Another sign of the times: the seasonal purchase of a new pair of running shoes. I haven’t been running that much lately for a variety of perfectly defensible reasons, chief among them sloth. But winter exercise means either the icy brown stripe up the pooper or an occasional descent into pedestrianism, and since my shoes are all pretty much blown out, I swung by Colorado Running Company to do a bit of business with John “Usuck” O’Neill, like me an O.D. (Original Dog) and Chief Cur Emeritus of Team Mad Dog Media-Dogs at Large Velo.

John sold me a rather sparkly pair of Saucony Progrid Omni 8s that look like footwear from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, but a few tromps through the goo will take a little flash out of their dance.

I got started this afternoon with a short jog through Monument Valley Park, which was still a little sticky in spots from last night’s light snow. But I still get the feeling I could click them together a few times and wind up in either Kansas or Oz.

Altitude sickness

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 5 Comments

Well, that’s officially it for summer — I pulled the cover off the pergola and stashed it in the garage. No chance of cranial sunburn on the back deck for now, the skies being gray, the temps in the mid-30s and some nasty-looking weather to the south.

Still, it could be worse. My man Hal up in Crusty County reports thusly: “It’s snowing again. I’m moving to Pewblow.”

He’s kidding, of course. We have both lived in Pewblow, and the best that can be said for the place is that it’s 10 degrees warmer than where Hal is right now, which would be stuck in a steadily swelling snowbank at 8,800 feet just east of Weirdcliffe.

Pewblow makes Bibleburg look like San Francisco on a sunny day. My hometown has its faults — many, many of them — but at least here the cops don’t tase you before they shoot you just to see that look on your face. They just ask if you’ve found Jesus and then blow a great big .40-caliber hole in your heart so they can see if he’s really in there.

Meanwhile, I’m trying to work up the ‘nads to go out for a short bike ride, maybe a little cyclo-cross over in Monument Valley Park. Try that in Pewblo sometime. The cops will see you running with the bike and figure you stole it. Then it’s zap, bang, and hasta la vista muchachos.

• Late update: OK, I did it — sucked it up, pulled on the winter kit and went out for an hour of solo ’cross. Lord, did I suck, particularly on the running bits, which used to be my strength. But about 40 minutes in, it finally started getting good to me, and for a lap or two I felt marginally competent, if awfully slow. And now my back hurts. Mine will not be a pretty old age.

Hot pussy

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 6 Comments
The Turk' loves him some sunshine.
The Turk' loves him some sunshine.

Winter laid a bit of the nasty on us yesterday, but it lasted about as long as a horny Republican with a boy toy in a cheap motel. Today the temps hit the 50s and I got out for a quick ’cross spin through Palmer Park, trying very hard not to kill myself on the deteriorating single-track.

I’ve had a number of “Wild Kingdom” moments on rides lately. On Sunday, I interrupted a long-tailed weasel’s pursuit of a rabbit just north of Criterium Bike Shop; today, I saw a couple smallish mule deer tiptoeing through the trees east of the Goose Gossage ballparks.

And when I got home there was a white tiger lounging in the backyard. Turkish was in a particularly sour mood yesterday, as his notion of a good time does not involve being outdoors in subfreezing temps and stiff winds. But today he was a new cat, taking full advantage of the late-October sunshine.

Get thee behind me, Steven

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 9 Comments

Ooo, new iMacs. Shiny objects entrance the lesser primate. Ook ook ook. Opposable thumb and forefinger grasp the credit card in quivering anticipation. Premonition of imminent demise at hands of enraged alpha-female primate postpones joy of immediate gratification via Intertube transaction. Much pointless bounding about and screeching. Chee chee chee!