Scott McLean
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May 16, 2024

Umami

For some strange reason we’ve watched some cooking shows lately. Maybe because our boxer, Harley seems to enjoy them.

They throw around a lot of terms like umami. The only thing like that in my culinary education was my Mommy.

There were only two or three things I saw her use a recipe for. Her cooking was down home country with a couple of fancier dishes thrown in.

It was years before we had tacos at home and besides the hardshell tortilla, had burger, lettuce, tomato, and maybe some onion. No hot sauce other than tobasco and no peppers.

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May 16, 2024

Mothers Day

Today’s ramblings are focusing on tomorrow and the people it honors.

Remember folks, tomorrow is Mother’s Day. What is a Mom?

Someone can be a biological mother but somehow doesn’t have the loving and protecting instincts. I truly feel for anyone who has had this kind of relationship.

My mother was a top notch Mom and I think my wife is as well. These are people who will butt heads with anyone to protect you even if you’re in the wrong.

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May 6, 2024

A Particular Set of Skills

Today I’m going to discuss skills we acquire. Actually some of them are more like Letterman’s stupid pet tricks.

I have the arthritis driven weather prediction skill. Mom and Steve also had this and all of ours started with knee surgeries. There is a different ache for snow and Mom and I would often compare notes on our predictions.

When I was coaching grid kids we had a Saturday playoff game in Grandview in November. It was almost 70 and beautiful. One of my assistant coaches saw me rubbing my knee and asked about it. I told him we had snow coming within 24 hours. He just laughed at me. I was working until 3 am that night and got woken up by a call from him at 7 am. He told me thanks a lot and asked if I had looked outside. It must have started snowing right after I went to bed and there was already 6 inches on the ground.

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May 5, 2024

Safer Pets

Okay.

Back to the more lighthearted stories. Today I’m concentrating on pets that were not rattlesnakes. Our rear ends learned that lesson!

I kind of adopted a black kitten that had been dumped and had the fur around it’s neck chewed off. It was pretty pitiful. Steve would taunt it and it grew into a large Persian looking cat. The cat would actually go up to Steve and growl. Oddly enough he backed off.

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May 4, 2024

Respect

Here is my latest in a series of random brain farts.

I was talking to two of my classmates in the therapy pool at the Y. For those of you that don’t know, the Y on 40th is a general HHS reunion where we can catch up on the latest gab and gossip.

Also, sadly, news of who is no longer around. The subject went to people who were made fun of or bullied and how nice some of them were, definitely undeserving of the rough treatment. The things that made them targets could be physical differences, awkwardness, or just being very intelligent.

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May 4, 2024

Pain

I’ve been thinking this week about the hide the pain mentality a lot of us were raised with.

Anyone remember slap or punch contests?

I had a crutch slip on something the other day and did a two bank shot from the wall to the floor. It says something when hitting a wall is a good thing. It slows the impact with the floor. I low crawled to my chair and pulled myself up.

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April 22, 2024

The 1903

This story is about an object and how it became part of me.

It might not be understood by those whose family was not immersed in hunting and shooting. The object of my affection is a 1903 Springfield 03-A4 made by Remington during WW2.

My Mom bought it for Dad for 15 or 20 dollars. No one saw the value in these back then. This model was meant as a sniper rifle and was very accurate.

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April 21, 2024

Crass or Painful

Nerves are not happy with me the last few days so here goes.

As I saw kids at the Y indulging in horse play, (Where did that phrase come from anyway?) I started thinking of the mean or crude things we do to each other in our youth.

On the crude side, you have the gas chamber or Dutch oven. This is where someone passes gas in bed and holds the covers over the other person’s head. This is unfortunately done a lot by adult kids. Quite often this results in one person sleeping on the couch.

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