Church Wine

There was a time in my life when I was Catholic.  As a kid in a Catholic family, we sometimes got to sit up on the altar with the priest during mass.  All the families rotated through. It was a great time for mom to practice pinching four children simultaneously to keep us from wiggling, nudging, squirming and what boiled down to dicking around up there in plain view of 200 or so judgmental people.  The view from the altar is much better than from the pews.  More people to look at. You can see the nails in Jesus up close. See the priest from the backside. (Insert your own Catholic priest joke here.)

It was the job of the family on the altar to present the gifts to the priest during mass. The gifts are the sacramental bread and wine that represent Jesus after he died, quit drinking and went gluten free. Before mass, the priest would prepare the wine and wafers in the priest green room and the family would sneak them out to the altar before mass started.

In the secret lair of the priest, the wine was stored in a locked cabinet.  The key to the cabinet was on a woven purple string.  It was probably just a piece of string or something simple, but it seemed special.  The priest would need to get the wine and pour it in a golden chalice for transportation to the stage…  err, altar.  Church wine was special. I knew it was special because it came in a small, odd shaped bottle with letters and numbers on it.  There was also a picture of grapes on it in case anyone needed to be reminded that it was wine. When he opened the locked cabinet, I saw that bottle and it was burned into my memory. I could see the priests that worked in the wine fields, picking those same illustrated grapes, stomping on them, putting the liquid in barrels with God smiling from above.  In time, the holy liquid would be bottled in those very special bottles and shipped to churches across the world.

It was poured, recapped and locked back in the cabinet.

When you are 12 and Catholic, you get a sip of wine during communion. My brother would dare me to take a gulp, but God would get pissed, and I was already in trouble with him for the constant masturbation.

At the end of communion, the priest would drink any leftover wine. I remember thinking that being a priest has its perks!

Everyone would leave the church. The family would help to clean up. The priest would say thanks and be thankful that our family wouldn't be back for another 18 months.

It’s now years later. I’m no longer 12, but I am not yet 21.  I am in a car that is going through a drive-thru to illegally buy beer.  Doob is in the front seat, questioning the guy about the different beers.  We are all silently yelling at him to shut up, order a 24 pack of Old Milwaukee and move on. Trying to look busy not looking at the beer guy, I pretend to take interest in the other beers in the coolers.

Church wine. Church wine! They had church wine at the beer drive-thru!

I turned to Russ. “Hey, they have church wine here.”

Russ didn’t know what I was talking about. “What are you talking about?”

I pointed. That wine. “The one with the numbers and letters. And the grapes!! It’s church wine. It's a special Catholic Church wine.”

“You mean the Mad Dog?”

I had heard of Mad Dog. It was like a liquor or something. “No. The one with MD and 20/20. That’s church wine.”

The car was now pulling away. Doob was somehow able to buy the beer and not get busted.

Russ said, “The one with the MD is Mad Dog. MD. Mad Dog. It’s fortified wine. It’s what bums drink because it’s cheap.”

My whole life was a sham. The special wine. The locked cabinet. The priests in the field. God smiling down as the bottles were shipped around the world.  It was all one big lie. One oddly shaped bottle with screw top cap, numbers and letter and a picture of grapes lie.

It’s been a long time since I have had church wine. I remember the taste. The dare to take a chug. The special bottle with the M and D. Numbers. And a picture of beautiful, plump grapes.

DB Used Christmas Trees

Every once in a great while, someone comes up with that one in a million idea. The “Why didn’t I think of that?” idea. The idea that will shake a generation to its collective knees.

Well my friend Dave (DB) thought of one and he’s going to make millions. I’m glad I am getting in on the front end!

Presenting:

DB’s Used Christmas Trees


Here's how the business came together:
Trees harvested from local curbs are gently dumped in yard


Wire and banners hung (special thanks to the flag pole!)


Trees arranged alphabetically according to genus, needle count and amount of tinsel left on branches.


$5,400 spent on logo design


And here is the final product


So here's to you Dave! And here's the team of folks that helped you get there. We hope you enjoy your profits once you return home from vacation.


BONUS MATERIAL

Deer head on door


Someone actually had this tree in their home


This tree came complete with lights and pre-attached stand

Memorable Work Phrases

It’s difficult to suggest that we have “legends” where I work. We've had legendary people work with us (Ray Morrow) but I really don't recall any great feats of impossible accomplishments that are remembered and passed on to new workers to inspire them. Instead, we memorable stories that have titles that become work phrases that we bring up in meetings or laughingly mention in an email. These summaries usually have an implied moral or warning to those who would forget the past.

One Man, One Hour

In 2003, I was on a project at a science museum in Charleston, WV.  We would drive down from Columbus on Monday, stay the week and drive back on Fridays. We managed our client, their GC, our vendors, and ourselves. Towards the end of the project, we planned for the client to bring in a few school groups to test the activities to see what was working, what was not working, and what was breaking, both physically breaking and breaking our hearts.

My last piece of work was to install some painted, metal trim around a small platform. I had previously dry-fit the metal to the platform before sending it out for paint. That morning, we got to the site at 7:00 am and gathered for our daily meeting. Everyone knew the school groups would be showing up at 10:00 am and that we should be finished with our work by 9:00 am so that we could absolutely be cleaned up and ready. We went around the circle with everyone sharing what they were working on. When it came to me, I said that I had to install the trim and then I would be available to help others with their work. Allen asked, “What is it going to take to get done?”

I said, “One man, one hour.”  The group broke up and I got to work.

I opened the box my trim pieces were in and immediately found out the marks I labeled them with were covered in paint. My first task was figuring out what was what. In normal Doug fashion, I did figure it out, but did not re-mark them knowing that I would easily remember which was which and the two minutes it would take to mark them was way too long.

While dry fitting them worked out great, I had never added the fasteners to hold them on to the platform. As the fasteners cinched down, the metal would bend slightly, which kept it from laying flat on all sides. Because the front and top were visible, I couldn’t add fasteners on those sides to make them lay flat. On top of this issue, tightening the screws caused the metal to deflect and when the screws were removed, the metal did not go back to its original shape. I had to bend every deflection back by hand.

When I looked at the time, it was almost 8:00 am and I should have been done. Co-workers were peeking in at me, but not saying anything.

Once I did get one piece in and fitting correctly, the next interlocking piece would reveal where things were not flat or where they were still bent. There was a cascading waterfall of failure that kept requiring me to remove all the pieces and starting from scratch.

At 8:30 am, Jim walked over and said, “Do you need some help?”

I said, “No, I’ll get it.”

Jim hunched down and watched for a few moments. He immediately noticed that the holes I was pre-drilling for the hardware were too small. Many of them were large enough at this point because I had run screws through them four or five times, but with Jim making the holes larger, the newer pieces were behaving better.

Ouch! Did I mention the edges were sharp and the holes that the screws had expanded had skin slicing blades coming out?

We got to the last piece and discovered that it needed to be the first piece. The way the metal bent around required it to be the first piece. We took them all off. Jim said, “Which is the next piece? Are these labeled?”

It was now 9:45 am and the groups had already shown up.  Would we be able to let them in early? I think AJ showed up at this point to jump in to help.

At about 10:04 am, Jim, AJ and I were finishing up with others helping to hide my tools as the school kids started running around the space.  

I was able to hang back and watch the kids interact with the exhibits. I was soaked with sweat and sadness, but the kids’ excitement and glee took my edge off.

If you are ever in a meeting and someone brings up a hesitation about the labor and time it will take to do something, a few folks will smile and say, “One man, one hour.” I, too, like to say it, because I dabble in self-deprecation.

Here is that platform with the metal trim. It’s beautiful. Yes, that is astro-turf.

Ham

We build interactive exhibits, mainly for children's and science museums, but many other venues, like zoos and retail environments, are very interested in how we can communicate a message through physical interaction and software. Some of these exhibits are new, untested ideas that we put a lot of effort into making them work or re-working them. Some of these exhibits are tried and true, industry-wide, standard hands-on activities that really don’t change from one installation to the next.  Something like a gyroscope or a zoetrope. You can’t really bend the science to make these phenomenon work in a different way.  But every project is different, and sometimes these standard exhibits are changed slightly based on that project’s needs for different cabinetry or themeing. We find ourselves looking at a previous drawing of an interactive and thinking, “This is what worked before, it must be what will work now for this simple activity.” But something was changed from one project to the next and that modification isn’t needed or could be a challenge if it isn’t caught for the new project. AJ and I were discussing this one day and lamenting about how poor documentation of changes can be an issue when everyone just does what the person before them did. That reminded me of a story my ECON 101 teacher, Mr. Ault, told us about his wife’s ham. When she would prepare a ham, would cut a generous portion off either end. When Mr. Ault asked why she did this, she explained, “It was how my mom did it.”

This stuck with him and at the next family gathering, he asked the mom why she cut the ends of her ham off. The mom replied, “I’m not sure, it’s how my mom did it.”

And to the matriarch he presented himself and asked. “Why did you cut the ends of your ham off?”

And she explained, “My pan was too small to fit the whole ham.”

Sometimes we do things because it’s just how they were done before. And while that seems to save time and money, you can end up doing things for the wrong reason.

For our team, when something is a replication, we take that extra step of making sure that what we did before was the correct way and that we do not keep mirroring unnecessary modifications from the past. When something should be carved in granite, we make sure we document any project specific changes, so that future creators know what they are getting into. But when one does sneak by and the question is asked why it was done that way, we know it’s a Ham.

Voodoo Budgeting

In about 2001, I told my boss that numbers he was moving around in the project budget were either incorrect or wrong or unnecessary. I forget the circumstances, except that I probably should have shared my opinion in some other way then by telling him it was “Voodoo Budgeting.”

Join me in the way back machine to 1986 when actor Ben Stein teaches that George H. W. Bush called Reaganomics, “Voodoo Economics.”

I don’t know very much about Economics (except about the professor’s wife’s ham,) but I did remember that line from the movie. It seemed a fitting way to describe what I was feeling at that moment. My boss did not like that phrase very much.

His displeasure with it was so memorable that this Work Phrase isn’t about budgets or accounting or economics or the phrase Voodoo Budgeting. It’s about when you say something to someone and it sticks with them FOREVER.  

When my boss brings up Voodoo Budgeting, I know that he’s reminding me of that special day and that he’ll never forget the time I doubted him and did so using a clever movie reference. Sometimes I will bring it up in a meeting, just so that I can say it before he does so that I can still have some power over those words.

www.usedbrassmoviestanchionsthatarenolongerneeded.com

A few years ago, we hired someone at the management level who had production experience and seems to know “a guy” in every trade possible. I’ll call him KF for Kung-Fu. He was experienced and seem to be able to give us contacts throughout the industry. The one thing he did not have a command over was searching the internet.

In a project meeting, we discussed resourcing brass stanchions with the velvet ropes. Hugh had been doing some research and shared what the costs were. The new guy thought that the costs for the stanchions were too high and asked if Hugh had done research on used stanchions.  KF said, “You see, the internet, it’s made standing in line at the theater obsolete. Theaters everywhere don’t need those stanchions anymore, so they are in a backroom getting dusty. The movie managers want to make a quick buck so they sell them on line. We just need to find them.”

(I don’t want to get in to how many theaters DON’T have brass stanchions with velvet ropes and that some manager would be creating a website to sell them.)

KF grabs the meeting room keyboard and pulls up the internet. He then starts to speak aloud and type, “ www dot used brass stanchions dot com.” That web address came up empty. Again, “www dot movie theater brass stanchions not being used for sale dot com.” Nothing. He tried several variations on this, each time coming up with a longer, more complicated string of words that he would try to turn into a website address. Of course, nothing came up. Hugh stopped him and said, “I will continue the search at my desk.”

In the end, we bought a bunch of new stanchions and aged them so that they would look old. Not old like they were in a movie theater closet for years, but you get my point.

Now at work, when someone asks how to locate an odd material or obscure product, like a pair of 6’ tall fuzzy dice, we will follow that up with, “Have you tried www.GiantSixFootFuzzyDice.com or www.StoreThatSellsFuzzyDiceThatArentSmallButSixFootCube.com?”

Below is an image of stanchion that were not bought used and use in a themed structure.

Aunt Barbara's Wagon

Back in the late 80s, my Aunt Barbara gave me her behemoth of a station wagon and my friends and I had an awesome time driving it around and causing all sorts of distress and that's the end of the story.

Except that the station wagon never made it to me. I never got to opportunity to create shenanigans in it.

Steve intercepted the wagon and I never got to drive it.

I think the station wagon was about 60 feet long and the back end of it could hold 23 people and 12 kegs. I assume that if it ran into a telephone pole, the driver would feel a slight bump and only notice later that the station wagon was covered in a telephone pole quantity of toothpicks. Its gas tank held 500 gallons of gasoline that would get it to go 45 miles. Aunt Barbara had multiple sclerosis so her station wagon was outfitted with an aftermarket accelerator and brake control on the steering column which made for interesting feet-out-the-window driving opportunities. I could be wrong about these descriptors, but I choose to ignore the truth,

I know for sure that some of you reading this are aware of the station wagon and probably ended up passing out in or under it. You have your own story. I know of two.

Brakes
Steve had the station wagon for a while when the brakes started to go out. Like any good Powhida, he ignored the problem and hoped it would go away. It did not go away and, again, instead of fixing the problem, he created a work-around. As he was driving the station wagon through Toledo, he would watch the crosswalk signs in the distance. If he saw one of them start to flash, he knew that the light would soon be changing. To come to a stop, Steve would do the following:
1. shift from Drive into 2
2. shift from 2 into 1
3. press the brake pedal to the floor just for show in the hopes the brakes would kick in
4. engage the parking brake
5. shift from 1 into Park
6. swear
7. steer the wagon into the curb for a frictional slow down
8. shift from  park into reverse
9. drive up the curb and on to the grass
10. let the final momentum take the wagon off the curb and to the stop bar

Steve did this until he did get the brakes fixed or the wagon died

The Wagon Died
The wagon died. Steve knew it was going to die, it was just a negotiation with fate as to when. For Steve, it was on a road trip from Toledo to Ohio State. The wagon let the ghost go along the side of 23 South. Fortunately, it was a caravan of cars headed to Ohio State, so they were not stranded. Steve gave the wagon last rites and his buddies stripped or obscured every single VIN code from the wagon along with any paperwork that might point back at him or poor Aunt Barbara. They left the smoking husk next on the side of the road where nature would take its course. There are some that say that rusting bits of the wagon are still on the side of the road or that an auto mechanic from Detroit found the wagon and brought it back to life as a bus to take kids to school. Me? I think that the highway patrol had a semi tow truck haul the beast to Lake Erie where it was used to shore up part of the coast and keep erosion from pulling Cleveland into the lake. The wagon couldn't stop itself, but it can keep Cleveland from floating away.

(Please come back in a few days for photos of the wagon. I have reached out to Cousin Andy for photos. If you have photos, please contact me at holyjuan@gmail.com.)

The Between

My brother's 50th birthday was celebrated on August 21st, 2017. His birthday is actually on August 12th, but birthdays are never convenient, so they are celebrated whenever it makes sense and when you can fit in an awesome pool party! Miss Sally and I took the kids to Toledo and we drank and swam and had a great time until we had to leave, because we are responsible adults and knew that the party was only going to get more outrageous. So we went home.

Steve died 27 days later on September 17th, 2017.

No one wants to remember the day someone died. You celebrate the birthday. And you lie to yourself that the anniversary of their death doesn't mean anything and that you'll almost forget.

But I've got this weird thing where I cannot stop thinking about the time between when I last saw him and when he died. The Between. I feel like this is an episode of Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone and I am watching his last 27 days and unable to change the outcome. I only know what he did those 27 days through what people are now posting on Facebook and saying, "I can't believe this concert we went to with Steve was just last year," and the inevitable, "This was Steve's last Rocket's game." I'd like like to think I could slip in between one of those moments and do something that would change the future. But I can't. And I find myself dwelling here in The Between.

I'm sure that many people have Betweens with their loved ones' deaths. Like if it was flipped, with his passing first and his birthday second, we'd be thinking about the time leading up to the birthday he wasn't able to celebrate. Or if someone dies around a major holiday. Those days Between are much shorter than waiting a whole year to celebrate the birthday or trying not remember the death.

I'm not counting down the days. It is possible I will wake up on the 17th and not immediately remember. But at some point, The Between will end, and I will remember it is the day I didn't want to make special by remembering. And I will put on my brave face. And I will graciously thank the people that remember, because I am thankful that they do. And I'll look back on those 27 days and realize that there was nothing I could do then and nothing I can do now.

Personally, I don't think Steve would be at all happy that I'm feeling like a miserable lump of sadness pudding. I guess I am in my own Between. And I look back and see my own 27 days ago when I was blissfully happy and look ahead to when I can deal with Steve's passing and be at peace. I've been up and down. I think I've got a handle on it... I think that it is all behind me... and then I am a mess. I look up and I am still in my own Between. And I'm waiting to be on the other side of that Between.

Weed Tea

Many years ago, when I was about 10, my brother and I decided to smoke the dried, tubular, hollowed out weeds that grew near the creek in our back yard. We’d pluck a nice fat one and break it down to a cigar sized length. Then we would light blue tip matches off of the dry rocks and attempt to fire up the hollow weeds. The weed really didn’t light and we would end up inhaling more blue tip match sulfur than smoke.

My brother got the completely logical idea that we should use the hollow weeds as a medium to smoke something else out of. Sort of a hard cased cigarette. Since we did not have any tobacco in the house or in the seven miles radius of desolation and country farms that we called home, we opted for the next best thing: tea.

We went in the house, opened up four Lipton tea bags and dumped the contents into a plastic sandwich bag. We disposed of the external tea bag material, string and paper by stuffing it way in the bottom of the trash can because we were sure mom or dad would figure out what we were up to if they found the remnants.

In the back yard we stuffed the hollow reeds with some of the tea. We used smaller weeds to pack the tea in cannon ball style. We fired them up. He coughed. I choked. He wheezed. My eyes dripped tears. It was smooth.

When we finished (fifteen seconds after we started) we went back inside and most likely played Atari. He probably won and punched me in the arm because that's how it always was.

Three years later I was in the living room (probably playing Atari) when my mother called to me from the kitchen. I entered. Dad was sitting at the kitchen table. Mom was standing. Between them at the table was a plastic sandwich bag filled with three year old tea.

Mom did the talking. “Is this yours?”

My mind raced back. I ended up tossing that plastic bag of tea in my underwear drawer, way in the back. I’d see it every so often, but didn’t think much of it as it was only tea. I never threw it away. Mom had been going through my drawers, diligently looking for weed, and low and behold she hit the mother lode.

I answered her question, “Yes. It’s tea.”

“Is this marijuana?”

“No! It’s tea!”

My parents wouldn’t know tea from weed so I was in for a bit of trouble.

“You have one more chance… is this marijuana?”

“No! It’s tea! Steve and I tried to smoke it years ago!”

Dad finally spoke up, “You smoked tea?”

“Yes. Out of the weeds by the creek.”

“The hollow ones?” Dad didn’t drop his apples very far from the tree.

Mom couldn’t believe that her snooping was proving fruitless. “There’s only one way we can tell that this is tea.”

Dad put a pan of water on the stove. I was made to sit at the table and wait forever watching for the water to boil. He dumped in the contents of the bag. We all waited more. I distinctly remember Dad wafting the steam to his face and saying, “Well, it smells like tea.”

That was all the proof they needed. The weed tea was disposed of. I was given some sort of punishment that involved not being allowed to play Atari.

My recollection of this story sounds brave, but I’m sure I was whimpering and high pitched stammering and I bet I ratted out my brother in the first ten seconds of the interrogation. When he came home that night, he got three years of backlogged reprimands. His punishment was probably worse because it always was.

What is a Story?

This is how is starts. This is how it begins. A story begins at the start and then once the start recognizes what it’s done, then it’s the middle. The middle wanders around a bit until it gets bored and then the end comes along. The end usually shows up right about at the right time, which is always the wrong time when the story is good. When the story is bad, well, the end is like a smothering pillow and we all look away as business is taken care of.

Sometimes there are characters and they really screw up the middle and the end. The characters are either people or they are not or they are both. Characters tend to change during the story, so try not to fall in love with them. If you are disappointed in how a character turns out, you can go back and read the story, but stop before they change.

The thing the characters always seem to muck about with is the plot. While the middle of the story wanders around, it is usually holding hands with the plot. The middle and the plot are happy just passing the time, but characters usually end up kicking the plot and the plot drags the middle around or vice versa and then the pillow comes in and smothers them both.

But before you can start, you have to know when to start. And even that gets confusing when the start isn’t really the beginning and later in the story they go back before the start and the start starts to get a complex. The start is now the middle and the middle is all over the place.  The plot’s arm is sore and the characters start to doubt that this was ever a good idea and the pillow looms above. But luckily, many stories play it straight and their "when" is somewhere reasonable like the 1800s or the 80s or now or in the near future or future future.

Don’t get me started on where stories take place. All stories take place by a lake. Lakes are nice and provide everything a story needs. Any story that doesn’t take place near a lake isn’t a story and is not long for the pillow.

Fortunately, I’m not a writer and I don’t get caught up in all of this. I'm just the guy with the pillow.

Forgetting the Unforgettable

(Author's note: I'm not ruining this article by telling you that I am now at peace with myself and Steve's death. It still hurts. And his family is still hurting. But I'm not kicking myself anymore about it. I think Steve would say that I've sucked it up. I won't forget, but I'm over the forgetting.)

I need to write this and you will be the surprised and unprepared reader of my sadness. HolyJuan usually makes you forget about all the horrible things that life has to offer, and HolyJuan usually does so through such self-referential methods as making fun of people who speak in the 3rd person, even when the 3rd person isn't even a person. But I would appreciate if you would stick through this and then we can all go back to irreverent, relevant nonsense.

I keep forgetting that my brother is dead. I will forget, time passes, and then I remember. And while those instances of remembering are not as shocking as the initial revelation, it's just as debilitating in a numb sort of way. I am endlessly forgetting. Then I remember. Then I feel sad. And then I move on with forgetting again.

And here, outside of him being dead, is the worst part about it: I feel guilty that I keep forgetting. If I would have been closer to Steve, I think that I wouldn't forget as often. That there would be a constant Steve haze of sadness that wouldn't leave that would cause a constant ache. Instead, I keep remembering that I forgot and I feel terrible about it.

I would like to get to the stage where I feel guilty about beginning to not think about him, except that I immediately know he's gone. Right now, those few milliseconds of remembering never start with him being dead. They are filled with the next time I see him. Then I remember, I realize I've forgotten, and then the guilt. I know it's a horrible analogy, but when I think about Santa Claus, I don't think about him as someone who is real and then I remember that he isn't. He's not real right from the get-go of thinking about him, even though a younger HolyJuan believed differently. I want to remember Steve, knowing that he is dead. And I can't. Not yet and seemingly not ever.

Did I ever tell you that I absolutely hate wind chimes? Their only purpose is to piss off the neighbors and possibly to keep the Local #45 Less Than 16" Long Pipe Union in business. My favorite noise a wind chime makes is a tie between when it isn't making noise or the clattering thud it makes as it falls in the bottom of a trash can. I do not like wind chimes.

After Steve died, Susie and Larry bought us a set of memorial wind chimes. They are silver tubes with black lettered poetry about how you are going to have a difficult time forgetting the deceased with these things clamoring all day and night. We sent a nice thank you card and I never thought they would leave the box. But they did make it into the sunlight and I hung them on the deck. "Sunlight" and "on the deck" being merely suggestive as they are tucked off the side in a low-to-the-ground corner where neither sunlight or wind make their presence known and they would remain silent.

But somehow the wind does swirl up and give the dangling weight enough momentum that it creates a few notes. Quiet and gentle notes that creep into the house when I am having my morning coffee. For just a brief second, they will tinkle. And I will be reminded of Steve. While my sadness at the beginning of all this was about remembering Steve, this wind chime reminds me of Steve. A subtle difference. I'm OK with being reminded of Steve by wind chimes or by friends or by Steve's family or Facebook posts. I love being reminded of Steve. I fucking hate wind chimes and the set that Susie and Larry gave us will always be hanging from somewhere near my home because they now remind me of him.

That is where I want to get with my own internal struggle: I want to be reminded. A gentle nudge that makes me smile or that makes me sad he is gone. Like on a chilly spring day, when the sun is forgotten behind the clouds, but then it secrets through, and nonchalantly hits the peripheral. Eyes closed you can turn into the light, welcome it, and take in the warmth. Then it moves on and so do you. The chimes warm me. The stories keep his memory alive. All these reminders I appreciate, welcome, and love.

I just want to stop forgetting.

Downspout is Feeling Down

What No One Tells You About Moving

Moving is highly underrated. Both in time and treasure. I’ve helped several friends to move and here’s what I’ve noticed that you should consider before moving.

0.5 The PLAN
(It’s best to have the PLAN in the #0.5 spot so that you can sneak up on the #1 item.)
Create a PLAN for the move. Write it down. Stick to it. Even if you are wrong, because once people begin to doubt you, they’ll start to argue and that is a time suck. Be willing to take advice, but don’t let anyone tell you what to do. This is why you do not invite your dad to the move.

1. Packing takes 20% longer than expected
OK, you’ve heard this before, but no matter how you plan, packing will take 20% longer. Even after you read this, you might think, “I’ll just increase the time by 20%.” Wrong. Because it will take 20% longer than that. It’s a losing proposition. It is in your best interest to schedule five hours to pack so that it will only take six. (And don’t think you can plan on five minutes of moving so that it will take six. Fate is not stupid.)

2. Pack Everything
Put as much as you can in boxes. It makes packing the truck so much easier. Leave stuff in drawers if you want, but make sure you cover with cardboard and tape. Take this opportunity to throw out all your lamps. They are hard to pack and just not worth your time. DO NOT PACK THINGS IN SUITCASES. It is a well know fact that suitcases are the number one item that get lost both at the airport and in a move.

3. Don’t Pack Everything
Screw that last bit. Take the time to get rid of stuff. Have your friends take stuff. Call the local charity that will haul it away. Put it on the curb so the local junk-truck-guy can come by and take the good stuff. Especially those lamps.

4. Color Code
In the end, you will be much happier will all your crap in well marked, color coded boxes You can write the details of the box in small letters, but use large words or color to help guide the unpackers to the room they need to go. The night before the move, go to the new house and make signs with arrows. Color code rooms and doors. This will alleviate you standing at the front door of the new house, blocking the door deciding what the hell you were thinking last night when you wrote KT BT 9 FR on the box.

5. Rent the bigger truck
Rent the biggest truck you can get your hands on. Find a friend with a Commercial Driver’s License if you have to. Two trips SUCKS. Spend the extra money because you will save it in the end with mileage and time.

6. You can have too many people to help
It’s easy to understand that if you are the only one moving your furniture, you are screwed. But is it possible to have too many people? YES. One of my favorite economics terms is “diminishing returns.” It basically means that the more people you throw at a job, at some point, the amount of work that can get done is reduced. When you have too many people standing around, they will have the time to stop and criticize your PLAN. If you invite too many people to help, divide them up into smaller teams for continued packing, labeling, cleaning, lifting or send some over to the new place to get rid of them. Have them buy the beer and put it into the new refrigerator. Part of your PLAN should be a list of things for the ne'er-do-wells to do while the real help is doing their job.

7. Inside help / outside help
Your job during the move is to coordinate. Try not to get stuck moving anything. You should be able to freely move in and out of the house. If you have the personpower, have someone in the house, who is familiar with the PLAN, that can guide the movers or get you in a hurry if there is a question. You can then be near the truck to help with loading, unless you suck at Tetris.

8. Tight Pack
If you are crappy at Tetris, I would suggest getting a friend who has move experience to pack the truck. You want a tight pack as this means less damage and more stuff on the truck. Have room outside the truck for staging items that should go on later or when you have a futon shaped hole to fill.

9. MOVE EVERYTHING NOW
Damnit! I’ve seen it a hundred times. Towards the end of the move, little stuff is still lying around the house and the owner will say, “I’ll get that stuff later.” Don’t do it. MOVE IT NOW. You’ve got the people and the truck. For fragile stuff also have a fleet of cars that will be going to the new house. Just do it now. If you are moving across the country, you might want to keep personal items or papers with you, just don’t overthink it, champ. Move it now.

10. Don’t Feed in the Middle of a Move
Hungry people work harder. Full people nap. Don’t schedule your move around a meal time. Wait until the move is over to order the pizza. Even if it is late. By then, people will be sick of you and they will leave so you can order less pizza. Only keep cold water at the house you are moving out of. Make sure that beer is only at the new place so they have a goal. Drunk people drop shit and argue with you.

11. Don’t get fancy
Provide water. Provide Pizza. Provide Beer. Don’t try and cater. Don’t even think about cooking out. Your friends knew this when they volunteered to help. They will move someday and you will get the same crap from them.

12. Unpack Now
If you do not unpack a box, it will remain packed until you move again. This falls in line with Move Everything Now. People are there. Unpack.

13. Thanks
You need to thank your friends for helping. If someone loaned you a truck, fill it with gas or leave a $20 in the glove compartment. A real friend will not take money if you hand it to them, so if you really need the $20, try to hand it to your friend instead of putting it in the glove compartment. Thank your friends that night and the next day for their help and apologize for being a dick and not listening to them and not having beer at the house and for making them work so late.

BONUS HINTS
14. Take the next day off work
You will definitely want to take then next day off from work. All the stuff that you are too tired to take care of at midnight will be there for years unless you take care of it immediately. If you go to work, you are going to come home, exhausted, to unpacked boxes and no cable. If you take the next day off, you can sit around and unpack boxes while you wait for the cable guy to show up three hours late.

Condolences

(Author’s note: Any condolence you give is a good condolence. Don’t let my irreverent explanations seem glib; I cherish everyone letting me know that they care, no matter what form it comes in. Writing is how I cope.)

Steve’s death this year made for a real shitty 2017. The five stages of grief have been less of a path and more of a game of Twister where I spin the dial and deal with a new emotion every day (Left Hand denial!) Acceptance is there one day and fleeting the next. I still cannot imagine what it is like for Kelly, the kids, and Steve’s close friends.

I can’t speak for anyone else in Steve’s circle, but I do appreciate everyone who offers their condolences today, through the holidays, and moving forward. Steve pops into my head several times a day and someone mentioning him isn’t unwelcome.

There are five types of condolences I’ve encountered: the pursed lips, the standard condolence, the friend condolence, the meandering condolence, and the smile.

Pursed lips
This is the condolence the consolee receives when the consoler isn’t sure if they should say anything or doesn’t know what to say. He will greet me and then pause with his lips pressed firmly together, either because he doesn’t know what to say or he does know what to say, but wants to keep from saying it. I see this and I thank all of you who desire to say something, but don’t or can't. 

Standard condolence
This is the standard expression of sympathy. The person gets in, says the thing, and gets out. All business. Similar to how the people at the funeral home do it: Eye contact. Hand shake. Say it. Move on.

Friend condolence
It’s good to be surrounded by people who know you. They can quickly judge if you need a distraction or an opportunity to vent or a hug. These people know how to say sorry without saying sorry. They also know how to jump in when a meandering condolence has been initiated. 

Meandering condolence
This is what happens when a pursed lips condolence giver starts talking, but doesn’t know how to stop. I feel sorry for these folks who say one thing out loud and another thing in his or her head. Then the silent thought becomes a spoken thing and a new thought spills out in reaction to the last one and then it’s a line of dominoes until the person stops when their pursed lips take over again or when a friend jumps in to stop the next domino from falling. I really appreciate this condolence because it gives me a chance to console them, which is helpful when maintaining denial.

The smile
Smile is the best condolence. This person will start out with a standard condolence, but they can’t help smiling a bit as they continue with a story or a memory. I’m still hearing new stories and value each and every one of them.  Even better is when someone overhears this conversation and then is drawn in, adding what they know or jumping into the conversation by saying, “No way!” or “I didn’t realize that is what caused the Detroit power outage!” Smiles, followed by stories, help the most.

When you see me, if you feel like you need to say something, say it. I won’t mind. Even if it is the eighth time or you keep saying the same thing over again. I appreciate it. And when you don’t say anything and you stand there with pursed lips, I’ll know that means that the most, because words cannot express how you feel.

The REAL 13 Things Your Pizza Guy Won’t Tell You

I read an article on the 13 27 Things Your Pizza Guy Won't Tell You. They were pretty much bullshit. Here's a list of the REAL 13 things the pizza guy wont tell you:

1. The sauce really stings the open sore on his finger.

2. The cheese that misses the pizza and lands all over the place will make it back on top a pizza at some point in the night.

3. Pizza ain’t all he’s delivering.

4. The soap is still out in the employee bathroom.

5. If you do not tip him well, your next delivered three topping pizza will have four toppings.

6. He does wish you would come to the door topless.

7. The delivery guy is not en route and you are going to get the next thing that pops out of the oven.

8. It is hard to wipe a runny nose with the plastic gloves on, but he'll keep trying!

9. 30 minutes or less is a suggestion and not a goal

10. Long, scraggly hair is in. Hair nets are out.

11. Its hard to catch the flying disc of dough, but luckily the floor has enough flour on it to keep most of it from sticking.

12. Pizza guy is always very happy and he always seems to have red, bloodshot eyes.

13. You won’t believe some of the shit that will fit in the dough presser machine.

Two Days

My friend shared some terrible news about a person in their life that might have a very poor diagnosis and a limited time to live. For the next few days, their family and friends are in limbo while the outcomes of the tests are determined. How much time to live. What possible medical actions to take. What to do. What they don’t have time to do. Helpless. That maybe hoping upon hoping that just maybe it’s nothing. Hopeless. Heartbreakingly sad.

And while we were talking, I thought about recent events in my life and how it would be interesting if friends or relatives could appear to you and explain that they would be dying in 48 hours. That you could have two whole days to spend with them and prepare. The deal would be that you cannot change the future events; that they are given those two days on the promise that they could spend them with loved ones, but that after 48 hours they would die.

Then I thought about what I would do with that time. What would I do with those two days? What would I do and who would I try to see before those 48 hours were over? I have a bad feeling that I would completely waste them. I have poor time management skills and near alcohol addiction and I can see myself getting people together for a party that I get completely drunk at and wake up, hungover with just enough time to say something cryptic before I die.

So here’s my 48 hours.

0:00 The 48 hour Death Courier appears and lets me know that I have 48 hours left to live.

1:30 I get done having the Death Courier explain for the 48^th time that no, it’s not a joke and that I’ve wasted 90 minutes.

1:31 Post of Facebook that I have less than 48 hours to live and I want to say as many goodbyes as possible.

1:32 Unfriend all the people that I really never liked in the first place, but felt obligated to follow.
(Not you.)

3:57 Realize that I just wasted two and a half hours watching YouTube videos.

5:00 Gather my immediate family close and let them know how much I love them and that I will miss them horribly.

5:01 Break up the kids from fighting about who gets to hold the kitty at the funeral and who even said that the cat could come to the funeral!

6:00 Friends begin to arrive. Many of them to collect debts. (Redhead Jen still wants that $100.)

6:01 We start to drink.

7:00 I make some poor decisions.

7:30 More poor decisions. Damn you Sailor Jerry’s!

8:00 Additional poor decisions, but I’ll be dead in just a few hours, so what the hell!

28:00 Oh shit. I wake up in my car trunk. I pull the emergency latch and crawl out and into the house. Into bed.

32:00 I’m finally not hungover anymore and crawl out of bed.

32:01 I remember that I haven’t watched Season 2 of Stranger Things.

32:02 I do the math and realize I can watch Season 2.

40:00 Holy crap… completely worth it.

40:01 I eat a whole bag of Swedish Fish

40:02 Shower

40:03 Sex

40:03:30 Nap

42:00 Sign my will. Buy a $1,000,000,000 Life Insurance policy.

42:05 Delete my internet history.

42:06 I make a final blog post, listing my grievances against my enemies and thanking my friends.

42:15 I forgive my enemies. They had their reasons for disliking me. I have to honor that.

43:00 We go out to dinner. I’ll probably get steak.

44:45 Damn, it took a long time for the bill to come.

45:00 Two large Frosty’s. That F*cking no carb diet is out the door.

45:10 I gather my wife and kids and my arms and hold them until the end comes.

45:25 My arms get tired and we take a break.

46:00 We decide to put on “The Princess Bride” and watch it until my time comes.

47:50 There’s just enough time to watch the prologue of “The Royal Tenenbaums.”

47:55 A quick debate about what was actually in the ball shaped present that Royal gave Margot. (It was a ball!)

47:58 My regrets! So many. And now at the end, they stand like an army before me, shouting taunts and curses. In my last despair I look up, and there is my wife, her brilliance destroys those countless demons and all that is left is pure light.

47:59 And then with one minute left, my wife suffocates me with a pillow. “No one is taking this away from me.”

Second Hand Cigar Smoke

Several years ago, Sally and I were driving to a Christmas family event. On the way, we passed a car with a man driving and a woman in the passenger seat. They both looked like they were in their sixties and, we assumed, had been married for forty years. It was cold out and their windows were rolled up. As we passed, we both couldn’t help by notice that the man was smoking a big ‘ole cigar and that the car was filled with thick smoke.

Both Sally and I both felt sorry for that poor woman. Who knows how many years she had to live with that cigar smoke? How many times had she pleaded with him to at least crack the window, Harold? Is that abuse? On the day of his funeral, will she throw all his cigars in the grave and yell, “Take these with you to hell and smoke them!”

A few minutes later, we were stopped at a traffic light. The same car pulled up next to us. It was still filled with smoke and we got a good look at the poor woman and the swirling fog of obnoxious cigar…

…the woman lifted her hand to her mouth. She also held a cigar.

How to Leave a Party Early

As soon as you are invited to one party and you accept the initiation, inevitably, a better offer comes around. There is an art to leaving a party early without offending your host. Here’s how you do it.

1. The BEST way to leave is just to leave. Don’t say good-bye. Don’t tell anyone. Just leave. You will not be missed. The next day, if the host asks you why you left, claim that you got into an intense discussion with a person whose name you cannot remember and that you left about ten minutes after X person puked. If the host says that X person didn’t puke, laugh and say, “Oh crap, they told me to promise that I wouldn’t tell.”

2. Ask the host for Imodium AD. 10 minutes later excuse yourself. No questions asked.

3. Ask the host if you can lie down in a spare bedroom. Use the jackets on the bed to make a fake you under the covers. If the host looks in, they’ll see a fake you. When guests leave, they’ll take their jackets and you will have disappeared without having to make an excuse.

4. Ask the host if they have a really, really expensive brand of wine. (I don’t know any myself, but ask for a late 90’s six syllable French sounding something and it will pass. Start with château and you’ll be fine.) When your host says no, say you are going to run out and grab a bottle. Call from wherever you are at later and say you are still searching for it. Next day, leave a bottle of wine on their porch with a note saying, “Found it!”

5. Browse the snacks. Get a dip or white sauce that might have milk in it. Walk up to the host with the bowl and say, “This soy dip is awesome!” When they correct you and say that the item is milk based, get all wide eyed, cover your mouth and run for the door.

6. If all else fails, be honest and truthful with your host. Walk right up to them, take a deep breath and tell them your mother just called and that your father has had a massive heart attack and you must leave. If this is your second party you are bailing on, make sure mom is having the heart attack this time.

Cha-Ching

Just before the summer of 1993, my brother Steve called me and asked if I wanted a job for the summer. It was at the Hunt-Wesson plant in Toledo where he worked as an engineer and I would help with tracking labor and doing product tests around the plant. Back then, during the summer, the plant went through a period called “The Fresh Pack” where fresh tomatoes were brought in from the surrounding farms for three months straight so they could make ketchup. The plant stayed open 24/7 and only closed down during Labor Day for cleaning. I said, “Hell, yes,” packed my toothbrush, acid washed jean shorts, two-year-old condom, and drove to Toledo, Ohio to go live with my brother for the summer.

The first thing I learned upon showing up at his house was that he was living in sin with a pudding girl.

The second thing I learned walking in the door was my brother’s relationship with Kelly, the previously aforementioned pudding girl, was to remain quiet and that I was not to spill the tapioca about the secret relationship between the big tomato and the pudding girl.

The Hunt-Wesson plant in Toledo made ketchup and it made pudding. The people on the ketchup side did not interact with the people on the pudding side and vice-versa. Well, they spoke with one another, but there was not to be any cross ketchup/pudding interactions if you get my meaning. (I’m currently raising my eyebrows up and down in a suggestive manner.)

I kept it a secret. But it was difficult. Kelly is very pretty. In a pudding plant, there wasn’t much to look at, but Kelly’s beauty reflected off the giant stainless-steel tanks, created flickering illusions between the fast-moving foil sealed containers flying down the conveyor belt, and made the railroad tankers of modified corn starch derail and dump their contents all over the tracks in a cute, but embarrassing fashion. Rumors of a ketchup guy like Steve dating a pudding girl like Kelly would be quickly dismissed and swept away like a spilled tanker of modified corn starch. I mean, come on… pudding and ketchup don’t go together.

But they did go together. And that is a story for another day. For now, let’s go to Doug and Steve negotiating rent at the dinner table.

I was sitting at the dinner table with Steve in preparations to negotiate rent. He brought out a piece of paper, two pens, and suggested that we figure out what I was going to pay for room and board at his house per month for the summer. This “rent” part of the deal was not mentioned when he said, “Come to Toledo for a job.” He tore the paper in half and invited me to write down what I thought was a fair dollar amount for a room and board. I wrote down a number that was not generous, but reasonable. He wrote down his number. We placed our numbers face down on the table and pushed them at each other. I looked at his number. He looked at mine. He said, “Nice try. We’ll go with mine.” I agreed because Steve was not someone you could disagree with unless you were willing to spend a few hours failing at it.

At the ketchup plant, my job was pretty simple: catch people trying to sneak in late, test the tomato pulp moisture, and check to see if the temporary summer employees were throwing out the wrong kinds of tomatoes OR trying to save ripe tomatoes from ketchup death via a Disneyesque escape. The people coming in late is pretty easy to visualize. Checking the moisture was a multi-step process, but I got to learn some Spanish. The tomato escape requires a bit of explanation and ties in to part of the end of this story, so lean in and listen closely to the tale of the ripe tomato…

The farmer surveys his tomato field. He is pleased. The tomatoes are growing. Ripening. Alive! Their sickly green begins to transform into a rosy pink that will someday become a brilliant, glowing red, like a hot coal in a fire. But the farmer knows that he just can’t magically transport ripe tomatoes to the ketchup factory. He’s got to time it perfectly: pick the tomatoes as they ripen. Send them to the plant and time it so they are bright red as they enter the factory gates; the bright red tomatoes ready to sacrifice themselves to be made into ketchup so that a 7-year-old kid will eat his pork chop once it is covered in that thick salty, sweet, acidic, red goodness. The farmer knows that he will be paid based on how many tomatoes he brings, but also on how many of them are peaking on ripeness. Green tomatoes are acidic and evil. Overripe tomatoes have an abundance of sugar, which might sound like a blessing, but no one wants an overripe tomato, just like no one wants an overripe banana. The farmer does his best to time it perfectly: start the harvest so that he can gather the tomatoes as they are ripening, but before they get too ripe. And because you want to go to the ketchup plant with the tomatoes you have and not the tomatoes you might want or wish to have at a later time, he will pick the tomatoes a little too soon and a little too late and ship them to the plant with the highest chance of bring him home the most money. He sends off a truck filled with tomatoes, their ripeness changing like the odometer on the truck, speeding off to Perrysburg, Ohio.

The truck arrives at the ketchup factory and immediately the plant representative is suspicious of the truckload of tomatoes, because that is his job. He takes a sample of the tomatoes from the truck and frowns, his brow furrowing, reminding the tomatoes of their earthen home of dirt rows. He and the driver get into a disagreement about if there are 80% ripe tomatoes or only 8 out of 10 ripe tomatoes. In the end, they agree upon a price that neither agrees with and the driver dumps the load of tomatoes from the truck into a hopper. The tomatoes fall because gravity calls them, but they also know they have a higher purpose. Slightly green, perfect red, and too red tip earthward and follow the siren call of the center of the earth. Into darkness. Conveyors take them forward through the darkness.

Inside the plant, the temporary workers, who think they have a chance of getting into the union, sift through the never-ending parade of multicolored tomatoes. Their job is to get rid of the green and really red with black spots tomatoes. Green tomatoes might be great for lesbian movies, but in a ketchup plant they are bitter with acids. The over-ripe tomatoes might seem perfect, but they are bursting with sugar. Both ends of the spectrum are bad. They grab the green, squish the really red, and drop them into chutes which lead to a water filled trough that is a quick rafting trip to a dumpster which will take those inedible fruits to the fertilizer or dog food plant. In the Toy Story version of this tale, a green tomato and really red tomato would make their getaway, instead of being turned into dog food, holding stems as they float down the concrete trough.

The end product of this sorting is supposed to be a sea of equally ripened tomatoes with an assumed pH level that can be divided by mass and fill the recipe that my brother has spinning in his head. But the workers miss some of the green and some of the really red. Odds would suggest they would cancel themselves out, but reality doesn’t believe in odds and the pH tends to lean one way or the twain. This can throw off any carefully prepared recipe and make the pH wander.

In the ketchup kitchen, (really, it’s a cooking deck with several giant stainless-steel tanks where huge volumes of tomatoes, high fructose corn syrup, vinegar, spices and “natural flavors” are brought together, mixed, heated and persuaded to turn into ketchup,) Steve is the conductor to an orchestra of chemistry. Really, he’s a chef accountant, as Steve’s job is to make ketchup, but he wants to do it using the smallest amount of resources possible, saving the company money. OK, really, this was all about Steve and how far he could walk the thin line between making ketchup and getting fired.

There is a recipe to making ketchup. You put in the right amount of everything in a certain order, cooking it at a certain temperature, and then ketchup comes out the other end. But it can’t be ketchup until it passes Quality Control. Quality Control says that ketchup must be in a within a certain pH range. Quality Control knows the pH of the ketchup because Steve will take samples during the cooking process, put them in the pneumatic delivery system, and the QC Ladies on the low-pressure end of the system will test the samples to see what that pH level is. And when Steve is sending down the samples, they are wary and their language starts to trend to the inappropriate. And they have good reason to be inappropriate.

Ketchup is acidic. Hunt-Wesson pays the Quality Control people to make sure that rogue engineers, like Steve, wouldn’t make ketchup that didn’t have that pH level that lived between (I’m guessing here) 3.48 and 3.98. They would get his samples, grit their teeth, and measure the pH…

(pause to build excitement)

…and most of the time, the pH would be right in the middle and all was good.

But sometimes, it was right on the edge or over. Those part time tomato sorters wouldn’t be doing their job and the pH average would teeter-totter from one side to the other. The QC team would get on the phone and punch in the maestro’s number in the kitchen, “You are running high, Powhida!”

“I’ve got it.”

Steve would then consider his options. To lower or raise the pH, Steve could add sugar or vinegar or any number of bulk ingredients. But those bulk ingredients cost money. And money is money. So Steve would run that fine line and try not to add any additional commodities, knowing that he could cook down the acidity or add more tomatoes to raise it. But you couldn’t cook the ketchup forever and you can only add so many addition tomatoes of unknown pH. If the pH was out of tolerance, they might have to dump the whole batch. That is that fine line.

At the tail end of the cooking process, Steve would send down the last sample to be tested. He would then race behind it to the QC lab. I was in the lab several times a day, doing moisture tests, so I could hear the QC woman complain about Steve running the pH edge. Steve would come exploding through the QC doors and quickly scan the area for his sample being tested.

Steve, “What is it?”

QC woman, “…. 3.92!” Just within tolerance.

Steve would then take both his hands, raise them up above his head, and pull down dual, imaginary slot machine handles and yell, “Cha-ching!”

He would then release a roar that was part laugh, half yell and a bit of something I would later remember is called a “barbaric yawp.”

And then back to make the next batch.

On one occasion, I saw a QC lady making the “Cha-ching” gesture when she was pissed off at Steve for running the pH too high. “… that Steve coming down here with his cha-ching, cha-ching.”

Minutes later he raced in.

Steve, “What is it?”

QC woman, “…. 4.08!”

Steve, “What!” He ran to the phone and called up to the cooking deck and told them to add X amount of Y to bring the pH into check to the lamentations of the money people.

And then back to make the next batch.

I lived with Steve and Kelly for the rest of the summer. Steve and I worked every day, he a 12 hour shift and me an 8.  We compared paychecks one day and my gross pay was what he was paying in taxes. (Note to self: in next life, become an engineer.) I almost cooked their cat in the broiler. I drank a lot with my friend Jeff and his law student buddies. Skinny and I got together once at the Blind Pig. I learned a Spanish phrase that I will never forget from one of the pulping machines, “No meta las manos en la máquina por la operación.” I learned that the real union workers did not like to have their time cards pulled. And lastly I learned that one of the hardest tasks in the world was to throw out bad tomatoes.

I’d like to think that there was some kind of magical end to that summer. That my tomato had turned from green to red. My pH on the edge, brought back into check with subtle acts of chemistry. But in the end, I think I packed up my acid washed, cutoff jeans and left town, still green.

The big tomato and the pudding girl got married one year later. Cha-Ching.

Stephen J. Powhida Obituary

In the past, I've written about how people should write their own obituaries. You can never leave that up to someone else, or they will probably get it wrong. A few years ago, I came up with the idea of people writing their obituaries every five years as a way to track goals and see if they were happy with how their life was going. Through this, I've thought about my own obituary and the last words for my parents.

I never, ever thought about writing my brother's obituary. He was invincible. Invincible people don't die. They just don't.

He suddenly and tragically died in a motorcycle accident on September 17th.

This is my tribute to my brother, Steve. I hope I got it right.

Stephen J. Powhida

Steve Powhida was a living legend and irrevocably touched the lives of his family, friends, and anyone who was fortunate enough to encounter him. His death on September 17, 2017 was sudden, unexpected and has greatly saddened us all.

He received his Bachelor and Master Degrees from the University of Toledo and currently owned a consulting firm.

Steve was a father, a husband, a son, a brother, and a friend.

Steve was a father to Sydney, Lexi, and Zachary. As a role model to his children, he taught them to never give up and to fight for the important things. Steve was very supportive of their athletic events and very vocal in his communication with referees when they made, in his opinion, unfavorable calls.

Steve was a husband to Kelly. A great team that raised three wonderful kids. Kelly managed that inevitable chaos that followed Steve wherever he went.

Steve was a son who made his parents, Jane and Greg Powhida, extremely proud. They both gave him the intelligence, personality, and bullheadedness we all knew and loved.

Steve was a brother and was the leader of the siblings: Amy, Doug, and Karen. Their lives were made easier due to the path he carved. Steve got blamed for 75% of the trouble the siblings got into, which is not saying much as he was the cause of 95% of it.

Steve was a friend. There are many who can claim that Steve was a powerful force in their lives. His friends will say the best moments and the most memorable times of their lives were spent with Steve at a game, a tailgate, on a motorcycle trip, in a bar, at a kid's sporting event, at a party, at a graduation, during a family event, in a golf club, during a game of cornhole, poolside, inside/outside/on top of an RV, during a road trip, or off on an adventure. Steve was a terrific host, a great cook and if he wasn't telling you a story, he was probably in the middle of making one.

Steve was a huge fan and supporter of the University of Toledo and their sports program. You couldn't miss him tailgating with his friends and family in the RV at the stadium. The decibel level at the Saturday football games will surely be diminished with his passing.

Steve is a legend and we ask that you carry on his memory. Tell his stories. Cheer louder at the Rockets’ games. Be a great friend. Scream "Detroit, baby" at the top of your lungs. Live life to the fullest.

Friends may visit at the Coyle Funeral Home, 1770 S. Reynolds Rd., on Wednesday September 20, 2017 from 2-8 p.m. Funeral services will be held on Thursday beginning at 10 a.m. in the funeral home followed by the Funeral Mass in St. Joan of Arc Church at 10:30 a.m. Interment Resurrection Cemetery. Memorials may take the form of contributions to UT Foundation-Football Rocket Fuel:

Rocket Fuel account at the University of Toledo Foundation
2801 W. Bancroft St., MS# 319
Toledo, OH 43606

Please view and sign the guest registry at coylefuneralhome.com.

Photos from the Visitation and Funeral:

A few Steve photos:

Detroit, baby!