Archive for Uncategorized

Intoxicated phone calls

I had always intended this blog to include some negative things about Peter as well as positive ones, but the time never seemed right, and then I mostly abandoned this blog. But I was recently going through a bunch of old files, and found a letter that I wrote to Peter in 2001. I’m nearly […]

Beer with meals

Peter used to say that drinking water with meals diluted the food while it was in your stomach, making it harder to digest. When I pointed out that he often drank beer with meals, he said that was different—he said that beer contains yeast and is sort of like bread in a way, so it […]

Pie-eyed emu

Peter once told me that when he was a kid, he left a note on a slip of paper in a library book for a future reader to find. The note said, “I’ll be a pie-eyed emu,” and added something like “If you understand this, contact me” and his address or possibly phone number. He […]

Tense yourself skinny

Peter used to say that the way he stayed thin was to “tense myself skinny”—I think it had something to do with tensing his stomach muscles. Then again, he had the pot belly that most Hartman males end up with, so I don’t know that his approach actually worked. I’m a little unclear on where […]

Checking in

Yo, Jed~ Your detailed sign-in instructions are perfect. They remind me, however, that my kids have often observed that I take “logical sequential” to an anal-retentive extreme. A couple of years ago I tired of the charge and wrote them an eleven-page memo refuting it, including bullet-points, footnotes, and an index. But back to the […]

Hobby is doing dishes

Sorry I haven’t posted here in a while. A recent discussion of cleaning and chores brought this to mind: Peter was not, in my memory, the cleanest/neatest person ever, but he was certainly less messy/cluttered than I am. Most of the time, when I was a kid, he didn’t seem to notice the clutter. But […]

Joints

Whenever someone complained about being sore or having aching arms or legs, Peter would say: You know what they say: “If you get stiff in the joints, don’t go in the joints!” I was always amused, but found that when I repeated this to friends, they just looked puzzled, or thought I was making some […]

Peter’s 21st birthday

On a more entertaining note than my last entry: When Peter was 20, he was a regular at a local bar–presumably he had a fake ID, or else he looked old enough that the bartender didn’t check. On his 21st birthday, he went to the bar and told the bartender, “Buy me a drink–it’s my […]

Peter’s last birthday

Sometime in 2004, Jay and I noticed that Peter’s 65th birthday was coming up. We decided to have some kind of party for him, and then set the idea aside and forgot to come back to it. Shortly before his birthday, we realized that we hadn’t put together a party for him. I was embarrassed […]