The Ricker is a boxing fan.

This post is a little dated now, but in May, the Ricker was excited to watch the big fight between Floyd Mayweather and Oscar de la Hoya, only he kept referring to Oscar de la Hoya as "Oscar de la Renta."

For those who don't follow boxing: here's a picture of Oscar de la Hoya.


And for those who don't follow fashion, here's a picture of Oscar de la Renta.

I think the fashion designer could have made it half a round against Floyd "Pretty Boy" Mayweather.

The Ricker is branching out.

He just updated part of his wardrobe. By my calculation, he brought it into the mid-to-late '90s, so I'm expecting him to start wearing Dave Matthews Band shirts and hemp necklaces any day (the Ricker does live 45 minutes from Red Rocks, after all).

His recent purchases replace his older shorts, on which he had both the hem and the pockets brought in (I'm not sure replace is the correct word; maybe "augment" since I know he'll keep his old shorts for a decade or two). The Ricker is now sporting some pre-wrinkled, knee-length cargo shorts that he purchased on sale. He also bought a pair of baggy cargo pants. Ever Ricker-like, he found these on sale, "15% off of 50% off of 50% off," or as he said, "nearly free."

He called me at work to tell me of his conquest. I have been working long hours this summer (hence the lack of new Ricker stories--it hasn't been for lack of material). Late last night, he called my cell phone. I answered (since no one was in the office), he asked what I was doing, to which I replied, "Working."

He talked for 10 minutes or so, telling me about his shorts, his pictures in Mexico and his plans for the evening before asking me what I was doing. To which I replied, again, "Working."

Answered the Ricker: "Oh, well, you should have told me you were at work. I'll let you go, then."

And sure enough, true to his word, he let me go--about eight minutes later.

The Ricker is a tree hugger.

Which is why he was devestated last night. Colorado was pounded by a late spring snow storm, with more than 20 inches falling at Casa Ricker yesterday.

In typical form, the Ricker wasn't concerned that his attorney had been stuck on the roads for hours, or that the weather had made the roads impassable. What concerned the Ricker was the trees. And the snow. And how the snow was snapping--yes, snapping--the trees in half.

The Ricker was nearly in tears describing these poor trees: "In 30 years, I've never lost a tree." "Such a pity." "Been fertilizing that one for years." He should be used to it by now. He loses a few major branches each winter, and a whole tree every three or four years (I remember a few occurrences myself). Yet there he was last night, weeping in my ear, about, "... the trees, the trees!"

The Ricker nearly stole a guitar for me.

I tried to learn to play the guitar when I was younger (I never made it much past Nirvana's "Nevermind" and some crappy chord progressions). I started with an old guitar from the 60s, with nylon strings, that my Mom found in a closet. Once I committed to lessons, I moved up to a nicer acoustic guitar (which was one of the most popular items at my "I'm Moving to Manhattan, Let's Sell Everything" garage sale).

I still have one guitar left, though. My cherry red Fender Stratocaster. It's in my parent's storage unit (at least I hope it is). It should be sitting in a case that we bought from a pawn shop. However, the guitar sitting inside could be worth much, much more.

When we went to the pawn shop, we forgot to bring my guitar, so the Ricker grabbed one--a much nicer one--off the wall to check the size on a few cases. We found a case that fit and headed up the the register to pay. Then we walked out onto Nevada Avenue in the Springs and got in the car, with the guitar case in the trunk and the much nicer guitar in the case.

Abruptly, the Ricker jumped out of the car and went to "check out" something back in the store. He grabbed the case and disappeared through the door, reemerging a few seconds later.

He decided to turn this into a life lesson: sort of the, "Son, I almost stole something for you, but then I decided not to because I didn't want to set a bad example."

I still can't believe the reason he returned the guitar was to set an example, not because, you know, STEALING IS WRONG. To each his own, I guess.

The Ricker's gift ideas.

The Ricker cares, at least sometimes. And he likes to share products he likes with those he loves. That's why my sister has a Magic Bullet. I would have a closet full of old coats, including one we call "The Shearling," but I declined.

That's why, yesterday, I was able to maintain a straight face when I declined the Ricker's latest gift offering. The Ricker knows I walk everywhere in Manhattan, which is why he offered to bring me his extra pedometer when he comes next month. Oh, won't I be the envy of all the business school students and interns when I show up with this on my hip.

The Ricker fancies himself an athlete.

Not now, of course, or during my childhood (we never really played catch, but he was good for an occasional game of HORSE -- his specialty was the one-handed shot, holding his drink in his other hand). He still plays golf, a game he picked up when he was 10 or so. But back in high school and college, he played sports.

Of course, like everything with the Ricker, the sports he chose weren't exactly normal. I've never seen any firm evidence--say, like a letter jacket or team picture--but to the best of my recollection, he swam, wrestled and tumbled.

Yes, tumbled. The Ricker was a gymnast. Apparently, his specialty was the rings, but he was pretty good on the pommel horse as well.

There's a game a play with my wife, called "How much would you pay . . ." where I tell her, much to her chagrin, how much I would pay to see certain things. Like, this summer, I would have paid $500 to see Radiohead. Or, I would have paid $40 to actually see Joe Namath kiss Suzy Kolber during that Monday Night Football game a few years back. I think I would pay $700 to stop the couple nicknaming trend (Brangelina, etc). I would pay $1000 to see Stacey Keibler and Jessica Alba in a whipped cream fight. And I would pay $15 to see someone punch out Barbera Walters on the air on "The View."

But seeing the Ricker dismounting the pommel or running through a floor routine, all in tights? I don't think I have enough money yet. Anyone care to chip in?

The Ricker mustache picture of the day.

Despite the oft-told tale that Mrs. Ricker had never seen the Ricker sans 'stache, I now have photographic evidence that he didn't sport any lip hair when they were dating, or during their wedding. However, the Ricker's nostril filter started shortly thereafter.



By that fourth picture, the Ricker we know and love comes into view (I think he still has those jeans). I have no clue why he has a crow on his hand, but it reminds me of another story he used to tell. Apparently, when he was a child, he had a pet crow that lived in the back yard and would follow him to and from school. The crow would even follow the car down the street when the family left. The Ricker even went away for a summer, but the crow stuck around for him. Maybe he was the original Crow, before Brandon Lee.

The Ricker might watch our children someday.

Which is why my wife and I came up with some (initial) ground rules for this occasion.

The Ricker must remain fully clothed at all times. This includes sleeping, walking around the house and taking a hot tub. I'd like the Ricker to keep his shirt on, too, but that may be too much to ask.

The kids can eat what they want. No limits on cheese, no soy milk, three meals a day, plus snacks if they want. The Ricker can keep to his one meal a day schedule if he wants.

No kid pilates, or kid aerobics, or mandated kid exercise.

Chores will be limited. One of my favorite Ricker quotes: "I had kids because I couldn't have slaves."

Let the kids talk. It's not like the Ricker has rules against this, but he has a technique where he manages to fill all the open air with his talking. I'm sure my kids won't want to hear about what he ate for dinner, or how he saved $2 on his car wash.

The kids aren't allowed to mix drinks. Besides, it's tough to mix a good "Ricker."

More to come . . .

The Ricker story of the day.

Yesterday, I talked with the Ricker. He brought up all the usual topics - progress on the house in Cabo (none), progress on the development in the Springs (next to none), what he had for dinner last night (appetizers, since he's anorexic and cheap), and the weather. Then he slipped in this nugget: "So, did you hear about Kubla and the deer?"

Kubla, remember, is one of his cats, the quiet one. The cats are also indoor cats. Yet somehow, in the middle of winter, one of the cats slipped outside and had a run-in with a deer.

Since I'm usually on autopilot for Ricker conversations - "yeah," "uh huh," "wow" - I only caught part of the story, and there were so many details that I didn't want to ask questions. Below, I attempt to recreate the story based on the tidbits I heard:

Did you hear about Kubla and the deer? . . . out in the yard . . . face to face . . . under 20 feet . . . stalking like a panther . . . started to run . . . Kubla jumped on the deer's back . . . 20 or 30 feet . . . into the meadow . . . finally jumped off . . .

Wait, did the Ricker just tell me that his cat (okay, Tibetan mountain cat, but still, a cat) jumped on the back of a deer and rode it for 20 or 30 feet? Seriously? The Ricker sent photographic evidence of the meeting, but unfortunately he wasn't quick enough to snap a picture of the cat riding the deer (or maybe he was too concerned about his cat so he ran after the deer). Now that's something I want a picture of: The Ricker chasing his cat on a deer.

The Ricker is skilled with a hair dryer.

He's probably spent more time working with a hair dryer than the average stylist. I know I've already written about the Ricker's hair habits (though more could be written on the topic, that's for sure). What I haven't written about is how the Ricker occasionally styles Mrs. Ricker's hair. He even calls himself "Mr. Ricker." Yes, for big nights out on the town, the Ricker does both their hair.

You see, the Ricker still wants a blond trophy wife, which is why, at nearly 60, Mrs. Ricker's hair is still big and blond. When she does it herself, it looks sort of layered, sort of retro-70s. When he does her hair, it is 1980s all the way: Dynasty and Dallas, Loni Anderson and Joan Collins. Combined with her three-inch wedge heels, her hair makes her look nearly six inches taller--and like she was cryogenically frozen more than 20 years ago, only to be thawed out and revived in our modern age.

Yes, the Ricker is a control freak, and yes, the Ricker doesn't let anyone mess with his hair, but his fascination with hair is weird. As my brother once observed, nearly all issues with the Ricker and his family can be traced back to the Ricker's obsession with and loss of his hair. I'm beginning to agree with my brother more and more every day.

The Ricker quote of the day (from an IM conversation):

Diabolical says: what are you up to today
Ricker says: i think i might take kahn to a movie
Diabolical says: movie? I think that's kind of weird
Ricker says: why?
Diabolical says: who takes cats to movies?
Ricker says: me, he loves to go for rides and i'll bet he'll sit thru a movie. i'll take the leash and let him roam around. I'm usually the only one there during the day.

The Ricker used to be a repo man.

The Ricker seems like your usual, crazy sales manager, and basically, that's what he's been his entire life. However, he has told me some interesting stories about a few of his odd college jobs. One that stands out is his experience as a repo man. Yes, according to the Ricker, he spent some time repossessing cars.

I cannot imagine the Ricker doing anything physical, with the exception of gardening and shoveling snow. Yet for a period of time, he repossessed cars. He carried around a bunch of keys and stole cars at night. Apparently, there were only a limited number of keys for each make of car: Ford had 10 or so; GM had more than 30.

He waited until people fell asleep and started their car in the driveway. He broke into garages through back doors or windows. He didn't carry a gun, but I think he carried a baseball bat a few times. He had to drive through someone's garage door to escape.

Of course, none of this has been verified by any independent witnesses. But I like to think about the Ricker actually getting paid to steal, since he has a history of "sticky fingers."

The Ricker keeps inventing things.

Just this week, when I was telling him about snowboarding in Vermont, the Ricker informed me that he, the "inventor of the skateboard," also invented the snowboard.

Thanks, Ricker.

(at least I think he was joking about this one)

The Ricker gives interesting advice.

Yes, he definitely has a view point on everything. Below are a few of the nuggets of knowledge he has shared over the years (some were learned by observation).

--Watch out for cardboard boxes in the road, and never, ever, hit them with a car, because there could be puppies or kids on the inside.

--Get an education, or you will marry a loser and live in a trailer park.

--If something isn't bolted down, it is included in the hotel's rate.

--Boise, Idaho is the flashlight capital of the world.

--When you buy a suit, there's a reason why the pockets are sewn shut. No, it's not so the pockets lay flat (like your tailor would have you believe). They are sewn shut so that when the clothes are imported from whatever third-world country where they are made, you don't have to worry about spiders or other bugs hiding in the pockets.

--Don't worry about breakfast and lunch (anorexia is okay). Likewise, if you enjoy a meal, make sure you are running a calorie deficit somewhere else.

--Fake tanning lotion isn't just for women, and it isn't just for the summer.

--Make a to-do list. In fact, make eight or nine.


--There's not much that can't be fixed with Elmers, velcro or spray paint.

--Vans slip-ons are "fag booties." In fact, we should all just wear sandals.

--Fix your hair and put cologne on before you go to bed (you know, in case you have good dreams).

--A 15-minute job always takes at least 30 minutes (this was learned by observing).

--Complain whenever possible. You'll get better service (and freebies).

--Don't put your blinkers all the way on when changing lanes. Just depress the lever enough to get a few blinks. This way, you can decrease wear and tear on the blinker and blinker lever (which are always the most important parts of any car).

--UPDATE: Here's a nugget I remembered this morning. Always know how to make breakfast for a woman in the morning. He told me this when I was about 8, when I had no clue why a woman would be sleeping over.

--It's never too dark for tinted glasses. It's never too cold for shorts. And it's never too early for a tequilla, half-OJ, half-soda (plastic cup mandatory).

The Ricker loves his mother.

We call her Nana. She's definitely the matriarch of the family. The Ricker talks to her daily -- it's part of his routine. A few weeks ago, I talked to Nana and then told the Ricker something that he hadn't heard yet. I think he was genuinely upset. As the Ricker ages, he looks and acts more and more like his mother. Sometimes it freaks me out. The Ricker always looks out for Nana. It's too bad he lives so far away, though.

Once Nana visited us for my high school graduation. I was pretty excited, and because I was speaking, I was able to reserve some seats so that my family wouldn't have to wait in line. Everything went well on the public-speaking front and on the hat-throwing front but not on the picture-taking front. At the end of the ceremony, when I found my family, my dad was missing. Nana needed to use the restroom, so the Ricker left the ceremony early and drove home to accommodate Nana (how dare she use a public restroom!). We had to call the Ricker and ask him to return to school for a picture. We waited for a good amount of time, since the Ricker now had to fight exiting traffic to get back to school. Luckily, someone we knew was still around with a camera, because when the Ricker went home he left the camera at home with Nana.

Every time I see this picture, I laugh and think about Nana's five-mile bathroom break, when there were a number of empty restrooms within a few hundred feet.

The Ricker invented the skateboard.

I'll type that again so it has impact. The Ricker invented the skateboard.

This is another one of those great Ricker stories. He claims he forgot to patent it. When he was in school in Seattle (again during his college odyssey. To get around in the hills, he took the wheels off a pair of roller skates and bolted them onto a 2-by-4 or some other piece of wood. The Ricker and his buddies rode all over town on these things (including through a grocery store for a little bit of shoplifting, but that's a whole other story in itself).

The Ricker invented the skateboard.

The Ricker lived in Hawaii.

He went to college there for a semester (one of the five or six colleges he attended during his seven-year undergraduate odyssey). His experiences in Hawaii are the source for many classic Ricker stories, including the time he nearly went bald by bleaching his hair with straight peroxide and the fact that he failed every class he took at the University of Hawaii except golf. By far, the best Ricker story from this year is the story about how he was nearly attacked by hammerhead sharks.

The Ricker lived in Honolulu on the island of Oahu. He had a girlfriend on the island, and after a big fight with her, he decided that the island was too small for both of them. Upset, he grabbed his surfboard and decided to paddle to the next island (I had always assumed this was a little fishy, but having never been to Hawaii, I didn't know better. After visiting in May, I now know that the islands are pretty far apart, and there's a reason why people fly between the islands).

As he paddled out of the bay by Honolulu, he reached the edge of the reef. This reef supposedly protects Waikiki Beach from sharks and other large fish. Logically, I would think this reef would also limit the waves at Waikiki, and this part of the Ricker's story doesn't make much sense. At the edge of the reef, he looked down into blackness, as the sea floor dropped off dramatically. At that point, he noticed three or four large fish--later identified as hammerhead sharks--circling him. At this point, he panicked, screaming for help, but ultimately he was alone a mile off shore (and I think it was nighttime as well). Amazingly, someone heard or saw the Ricker, and a helicopter came to his rescue. He grabbed the ladder and was lifted out of the situation right as one of sharks bit his board.

Like any good Ricker yarn, this one has a few holes. First, he still has the surfboard on which he sat that fateful night. I wonder how he remembered to pull that 11-foot piece of fiberglass out of the water as he faced his imminent demise. Second, according to Wikipedia, though the hammerhead shark may form schools during the day, it is generally a solo hunter at night. Finally, despite their size, hammerhead sharks have extremely small mouths and are mostly bottom feeders.

I still think the most amazing part of this story was the fact that the Ricker thought it was a good idea to paddle to another Hawaiian island in the middle of the night. He's not usually that emotional.

The Ricker used to write poetry.

And he's always been into music. Still, I have to take one of the Ricker's "claims to fame" with a HUGE grain of salt. Maybe a salt planet, even.

The Ricker claims he wrote the second verse to the song "Louie, Louie." You know, "Louie, Louie/oh yeah/Louie, Louie/me gotta go"

According to his story, he went to college with a few of the guys from the Kingsmen, who recorded the famous version of "Louie, Louie" in 1963 (never mind that the song traces its roots back to 1957). The Ricker's fraternity house window was directly across from the window of one of the band's members, probably founder Mike Mitchell or singer Jack Ely, and they would shout through the window at each other. During one of the band's practice sessions, the Ricker suggested alternate words for a verse, since the band only played one verse over and over again (maybe this is the rumored 90-minute "Louie, Louie" jam session mentioned on Snopes). The band like the alternate verse, started using it during its live shows and then recorded the version that survives to this day.

Let's see what we can verify about this.

The year in question was 1963, so the Ricker was in college. Check.

The Ricker is from Portland. Check

The Kingsmen are from Portland. Check.

The Ricker is delusional. Check.

But he still claims he is owed millions in royalties. Or that he sold the rights for a few bucks. I've heard both versions. For an interesting read, head over to Snopes.com and read about the lyrics to "Louie, Louie." Note: there's no mention of the Ricker.

The Ricker walks his cats.

Yessir, I've mentioned it before, but he walks his cats. After losing two cats to "foxes," the current cats are indoor-only (except when he takes them outside and ties them to a tree with 30 feet of string). I don't think he walks them at home much, but now that he's taking the cats travelling, watch out.

To prep the cats for the drive from Colorado to Arizona over Thanksgiving, he started taking them on errands with him. I can just picture the Ricker, at the carwash, walking two cats through the cashier line and then out onto the drive to get into the car. On the unintentional comedy scale, this rates pretty high.

What happened in Arizona during Thanksgiving, however, may have been funnier. The cats were so freaked out by their new surroundings at the hotel that they started acting differently. One, Kubla, never left her confines under the bed. That left Khan, the curious cat, open to the Ricker's advances. He attached the leash, opened the door, and took Khan out for a nice walk around the hotel lobby--only Khan didn't want to walk. When I walked through the hotel door, I saw the Ricker across the lobby, taking his cat for a drag across the tile. I didn't get a picture, but that's a mental shot for the ages.

The Ricker likes James Bond.

We saw the new Bond over Thanksgiving weekend and both enjoyed it tremendously. Afterwards, when we were discussing Daniel Craig's performance, I mentioned that Hugh Jackman was in the running but I'm not sure the world is ready for a gay James Bond.

That's when the Ricker let this little nugget fly: "How would you like your martini? Shaken, stirred or stroked?"

The Ricker's traveling again.

I mean, after his trip to La Paz and after a trip to Las Vegas and after a trip to New York and after another trip to Phoenix. He's already got another trip booked: he's going to Croatia. In September 2007.

Even though he's not arriving for 330 days, he's been emailing back and forth with some guy that owns a hotel, letting him know when he's arriving and when to pick him up at the airport. I'm sure this guy can't wait for the Ricker to arrive. You know, next September. Maybe its a good thing the Ricker doesn't speak Croatian, because he would have the hotel owner on the phone for hours over the next year.

The Ricker gave me a pea coat.

It's a nice, old pea coat, black, with anchors on the buttons (those that are left anyway). I started wearing this coat in high school. I thought it was pretty cool--it was my grandfather's old coat and apparently the Ricker was wearing this coat when he met Mrs. Ricker (that is, if I can believe anything the Ricker says). Still, it's a nice thought to have when I wear this coat (even though I try to forget about the first time I wore the coat, when I reached into the pocket and found a really old condom wrapper).

The coat used to be the Ricker's dad's coat (I guess we could call his father the Dicker). He passed away before I was born, so this is the only sentimental item I have that reminds me of him. When he gave me the coat, the Ricker told me a story about the Dicker and how he acquired the coat.

Like many men in the Greatest Generation, the Dicker fought in World War II. The Dicker was in the Air Force, fighting in Italy, when his plane was shot down over the Mediterranean. A naval ship picked up the Dicker and issued him a Navy uniform, including a pea coat. When the Dicker returned to the U.S., he kept the coat, eventually giving it to the Ricker.

Because of this story, I wore this coat with pride.

Until I wore the coat to visit my Nana in Portland one morning. She recognized the coat, instantly, because she had seen it so many times. But when I asked her about the Ricker's story, she laughed at me. "That coat? From the Navy? Your grandpa never saw any action like that! In fact, I was with him when he bought that coat--at the old Meier & Frank store!"

The Ricker improvises repairs.

Jury rigged. Ricker rigged. Same thing. He makes his own repairs--from the cardboard on the dishwasher to electrical wiring to garden repairs. Also, remember that the Ricker has two nearly identical cars - a 1992 and 1999 Cadillac STS, both in black with cloth tops and a gold package.

Unfortunately, the Ricker has taken the 1992 through the carwash a few too many times and trim is constantly falling off the car. Sometimes he uses masking tape to hold it on. Recently, one of the gold keyhole rings fell off. He's not sure how, and he's not sure where, but the Cadillac dealer could probably order one (for a nice fee, I'm sure). He wouldn't pay for that (though I wouldn't pay $30 for a little gold ring either, unless I was proposing. Yes, my wife is a lucky gal.)

The Ricker goes to his third favorite place (first being his garden and second the carwash): the hardware store. They don't sell gold rings either. What they do sell are brass washers, for plumbing and other services. That's the reason why the passenger side of the Ricker's car has a brass washer glued around the keyhole. It sticks out like a, well, brass washer. I probably would have just taken the one on the other side off, but that's just me.

The Ricker has a mustache.

He loves it; he's had it 40 years now. I'm beyond hoping for him to shave it, though I still would like to see him trim it back and groom it a little.

Well, I played golf with the Ricker over Thanksgiving. I haven't seen him in a number of months, and he arrived at the golf course before me. Since I was riding on the cart with him, I wanted to tell the cart guy to put my clubs with his. Before I could even describe the Ricker, the cart guy says, "You riding with the guy with the mustache?"

Yes, yes I am.

That's the Ricker for you. His mustache gets around.

The Ricker loves a good deal - I don't think I can write that enough.

He hardly goes anywhere--a restaurant, a hotel, someone's house--without some sort of angle. Most recently, he was in Arizona for Thanksgiving, enjoying the sun and some time with his kids. He always stays in weird, old school hotels, the ones that have been open since he started visiting Scottsdale in the 1980s.

Surprisingly, other than a smokin' low rate (I think he received the 1997 rate), the Ricker did not have another apparent angle this trip. Well, not until he checked out, that is. Right before checking out, he looked at the hotel's in-room magazine and saw a coupon advertising a $200 per day hotel credit (good on food, drinks, gifts) for hotel stays during the first three weeks of December. The Ricker was checking out on November 26, but that didn't stop him from trying to squeeze out a deal.

Sure enough, when I talked to him later that week, he told me he convinced them to accept the coupon, even though he was clearly checking out five days before it was valid. The hotel comped all of his lunches and drinks at the hotel, taking about 50% off the bill. He even made another reservation for his next trip--I'm sure the front desk is looking forward to his check-in.

The Ricker likes black cars.

I know I've mentioned this before, but all his cars have been black. Two black Cadillacs, two black Mercedes, and one black Isuzu Amigo in between (for his second midlife crisis). What's important is that the Ricker's cars are always sleek. Yeah, he has all sorts of other crap--gold package, cloth top, cell phone antennas--on the cars, but they are sleek. They have no badges. He hates dealership badges. (Note: who doesn't? Even my wife's father takes the badges off, and he used to own a dealership.)

His current car (the 1999 Cadillac, not the 1992) does not have a badge on it. He took it off when he bought the car. However, he couldn't get all the glue off. Instead of reaching for a mild solvent, or slowly picking off the gunk, he reached for the "next" best thing: paint thinner. Yup, he rubbed paint thinner on the back of his car.

Needless to say, it was not a good idea. Even though it took all the glue residue off, it took quite a bit of the clear coat off as well. Smart move, Ricker. Whenever he drives, he has this nice reminder--a matte spot on the trunk of the car--of the time he took paint thinner to the paint of his car. I know I would have been in trouble if I had done the same thing.

The Ricker finally retired.

Retired for the second time, that is. He tried to retire about four years ago but got bored very quickly, so he went back to work (or in his case, "work"), doing basically the same thing for a much smaller company. Quite a few days (not to mention a ton of errands, a few movies and a lawsuit) later, he retired again.

For all intents and purposes, he retired in March or April, when he stopped working. But due to some extenuating (and unfortunate and ultimately lucky) circumstances, he's been on short-term disability for the last six months. And that disability insurance just expired. He's been living the dream: no job but a steady income.

The Ricker is in a different place this time. I think this retirement will stick, though he will undoubtedly pick up an assortment of odd jobs and investments. The difference is, I think he's ready for it this time. I don't hear him freaking out about income, freaking out about insurance or freaking out about too much free time. Instead, he's traveling. Chile last year and La Paz this year. September in Oregon and October in Arizona. Finally a trip to New York (hopefully) in April or May. And a number of trips to Cabo. You see, he is all about Cabo right now. He loves it. It's like Cabo was just discovered, and he bought the first timeshare.

I'm glad he's getting out of Mo-Town. I'm glad the Ricker and Mrs. Ricker are foot loose and fancy free again. I just hope they watch out for Montezuma's Revenge.

Oh, and I just found out the Ricker meant La Paz, Mexico, not La Paz, Bolivia. I bet people get that mixed up all the time.

The Ricker protects his property.

Whether it involves a huge dungeon-esque lock on the front door or hooking his Mercedes hood ornament up to his car battery, the Ricker looks out for his stuff. Not surpassingly, he's really protective of the lawn. I've already mentioned the "not walking on the grass rule" but I'll mention it again, because I have probably wasted 0.775% of my life walking around grass instead of walking directly across. However, if you trespass on the lawn, you get fucked with, especially if you are a dog.

The Ricker hated dogs on the lawn. He lives in an area without fences and busy streets, so dogs often wander from house to house, marking their territory. The Ricker hates that, because marking territory often involves killing grass. Besides yelling, stomping and pushing, the Ricker kept a small BB gun on the deck and would "pop" the dogs in the ass if they didn't learn to avoid the lawn. He abstained from shooting at my friends, but I'm sure the thought crossed his mind.

The Ricker thinks of creative punishments.

The normal ones are there too, though. I've been grounded, fined, forced to apologize, lost phone/car/TV privileges, spanked, and sent to my room. Based on experience, the Ricker's favorite punishment was forced labor, which really wasn't that bad, because it wasn't much different than my chores.

One particular punishment stands out in my mind as being especially cruel--and especially effective. One night in high school, there had been a party next door. I attended and I drank. And drank. And drank some more. With the exception of a few shots, I finished off a 750 ml bottle of Absolut Citron, drinking most of it straight from the bottle. Somehow, I managed to stumble outside and pass out on the trampoline, facing down so I could vomit. My friends called my parents, and Mrs. Ricker showed up to walk me up the hill at 2 AM, still vomiting. She was very sympathetic, at least until the next morning, when she offered me some beer as a joke.

The Ricker was less sympathetic. He had woken me up early and sent me outside. It was summer, and it was a going to be a hot day, at least by Colorado standards. The Ricker asked me to dig some holes, each about two feet deep. I thought I was digging holes for planting. This wasn't the case however. He had me dig holes, and then switch the dirt. Digging holes for no reason! Except that every time the shovel hit the dirt, my brain felt like it was going to explode in my skull. Dig two holes, swap the dirt, repeat. All morning. In the sun. As I was sweating off the alcohol. It was the most diabolical thing he's ever done to me.

And I'm definitely going to do it to my kids if they every get out of line.

The Ricker likes his spa.

He takes one nearly every night, and he owned a spa well before they were fashionable. In one form or another, he's owned a hot tub for more than 20 years. The first one was nothing special--cramped and without any premolded seats, so he used old plastic milk crates, which were great on the old back side. The original hot tub didn't have a foam cover, so he only kept it full in the summer, holding out until the world series to drain it (draining it was another process in itself, with him connecting a myriad of hoses together and then standing at the end, sucking with all his might, trying to start a siphon).

His current hot tub is much nicer, but still behind the times. At least this one has a light in the water, although he glued a blue lens over the light to enhance the atmosphere a little. I think this tub is on its last legs, as the jets no longer jet with much force. He'll probably wait until the current models go on sale in 2012 to replace this one, though.

Like I said, the Ricker takes a spa almost every night. He uses the same towel every night, which he hangs outside next to the spa. I'm not sure if it's every been washed. He also only sits on the step on the inside, instead of the seats, so he is really only halfway in. He likes the blue spa light on, but the outside light and the kitchen light must be off, otherwise he bangs on the window and has Mrs. Ricker shut off the lights. The most awkward part about taking a spa with the Ricker is that he enjoys what I call a "European spa," in which bathing suits are discouraged. If it's family in the spa, the Ricker doesn't bother with a suit, or a robe, or any other cover. And now, if the Ricker doesn't bother with a suit, I don't bother with a spa. That suits him, I guess. I think he likes to be alone.

The Ricker works hard.

Hard at making people think he works hard. He had no problem lying or misdirecting his boss to get a little free time, which in retrospect may be why he was pushed into "retirement" instead of retained when his company changed ownership. Of course, he did actually get all of his work done. Somehow, he ran a very successful sales department. He was even one of the first people in the country to price copy machines per page, instead of per machine (it was much easier to write a contract selling a machine for $0.01 per copy than an entire machine for $25,000, and his firm ended up making more in the long run anyway).

The Ricker was the king of the 4-to-6 hour workday. He lived 45 miles from the office, so he always left just late enough to miss rush hour, getting into the office at 9:30 (except for those Monday morning 8 AM sales meetings). And he always slipped out, Office Space style, at about 4:15, to miss the rush on the way home. Like Peter in Office Space, he probably only did 15 minutes of work per day.

His best move to get out of work was the "lunch call," in which he told people he was heading to a client's office for lunch, when instead he'd really drive down the street to see a movie. Plus, he was so cheap, he kept empty cups and popcorn bags in his car, so he could get a free "refill" every visit. He probably saw 5 movies per month, watching whatever just because the timing worked out.

I could never take him seriously when he told me he had a rough day at the office. It probably meant he had to work or something.

The Ricker likes routine.

In fact, he thrives in it. He loves control, and he exercises extreme control over his routine, especially on vacations. Even though he's retired, he still follows his old work routine religiously. Since he used to have a sales meeting first thing Monday mornings, he goes to bed early on Sunday night. Early, as in 7 pm. He retreats to the bedroom, lays down with dinner on his chest, and watches TV. He's out by 8, often with his plate still in the room.

He does the same thing on vacation. When the Ricker and Mrs. Ricker visited me in Arizona a few years ago, I tried to get him to go out to dinner on Sunday, to no avail. He stayed in, fixed himself some leftovers and went to bed. That's okay, because my wife and I had a smashing time with Mrs. Ricker that night . . .

His weekly routine remains similar, also. He waters and does yard work from 5 pm to about 7 pm, with a drink in hand. He comes in to read the paper and then eats dinner. On Friday and Saturday nights, he really lives it up. Every Friday, the Ricker heads up to the Country Club for a drink and light dinner, almost always eating in the bar instead of the dining room. On Saturday, they head to the Boiler Room, which used to be the Mug, which used to be the Mug on the Hill, which used to be . . . Well anyway, it's been there forever and the Ricker goes there weekly, mainly for prime rib on Saturday nights.

However, what's REALLY weird is what happens to the Ricker when you get him out of his routine: he meets people. He's on a road trip right now, and besides stopping for prime rib last night, he met some old man and played gin rummy. He has mojitos at a lodge near Yellowstone. He drives to weird castles and meets weird people. He listens to redneck comedy on satellite radio. Basically, he lives a normal life. It's just too bad he's so tied into his routine the other 340 days.

The Ricker's garden has a technically advanced watering system.

I know this, because I installed it. Beneath the dirt, rocks, plants and grass, thousands of feet of drip hose and spaghetti hose lay burred, exactly three inches below the surface, while hundreds of drip heads and micro sprinklers are spread throughout the yard.

At the back of the house, he has two timers, each set to water the plants along one side of the house. You see, the Ricker's garden is so large that it requires two separate drip systems, either of which would rival the public works plumbing of a small town. In addition to the timers, each of the drip heads and micro sprinklers are perfectly calibrated to use the perfect amount of water. The sprinklers don't overspray. I know this, because I also calibrated all of this.

I spent an entire summer installing these drip lines, running them underground and underneath the decks, perfectly placing the hose so that only a few inches, if that, is visible. Every pot--more than 100--has at least one drip head; some have two or three. I even made dozens of wire "clips," or bent coat hangers that hold the drip head in the exact center of the pot.

The Ricker's goal was to replace his manual watering system, which involved hauling buckets of water around the entire house. The system worked (and still works) perfectly, though after just one summer, the Ricker decided that he preferred his old manual method to his advanced hydrological delivery system. So there I was, the very next summer, hauling buckets of water, two by two, to every pot around the house, watering plants despite the drip head in the center of each pot.

The Ricker likes the sandwich meat.

Thanksgiving at the Ricker's house comes with a few traditions of its own. First, it is understood that the majority of Christmas lights go up on Thursday and Friday. Second, the Ricker makes gravy from the giblets and feeds the turkey's organs to the cats. Third, dinner is served late, at his regular dinner time (the Ricker doesn't like to get off schedule). And finally, no one eats the sandwich meat.

What is the sandwich meat? It is those perfect, large slices of breast meat. The sandwich meat is all white and juicy. If anyone tries to eat the sandwich meat (even guests), the Ricker explains that he likes to save all the sandwich meat. Everyone eats the small, scrappy breast pieces and the dark meat. The sandwich meat stays on the plate, taunting you, until the Ricker puts it in a ziplock in the fridge.

What I've never understood is why the Ricker saves the sandwich meat, even though I've never seen him make a turkey sandwich. Why can't we enjoy the sandwich meat when it is fresh and hot, instead of reheating it the next day? And why does he insist on calling it "sandwich meat" even though he never makes sandwiches out of it?

The Ricker likes to save money while redecorating.

Usually he accomplishes this by adopting a style as it is on its way out, so he can get discounts. He held on to his 70s hippy/macrame look well into the early 1990s, when he adopted the Southwestern motif. His recent update to the black and purple spaceship look came well after the sleek lines of the 1980s popularized this look, but he tried to modernize the look by upgrading to stainless steel appliances (again, well after the start and peak of the trend, though he was closer on this one).

I'm sure the Ricker realized that stainless steel appliances are expensive. Besides, why replace a perfectly good refrigerator, dishwasher and oven (even though the oven is going on its fourth decade). Therefore, the Ricker fell back to his old tried-and-true renovation tools: velcro, spray paint and super glue. From a scrap yard, he bought cheap sheets of raw metal. I don't think he bought steel; it has to be something cheaper than that. He cut the metal into shape and velcroed it to the refrigerator. He did the same with the dishwasher and oven, although he used super glue on the oven.

Despite his careful planning, there was one problem: the black control pad on the dishwasher didn't match his new, sleek look. However, he simply spray painted a piece of cardboard silver and taped it into place on the top, using velcro on the bottom to keep the flap closed. He's very proud of his "remodel," but I know for a fact that Mrs. Ricker hates it. I think she wanted new appliances.

The Ricker likes a good scam.

Whether it's free car washes, free meals or free hotel rooms, the Ricker likes free things. He once told me he landscaped his first house in Denver using the "Midnight Nursery," which meant he dug up other people's landscaping in the middle of the night.

He stays at a certain hotel chain two or three times per year. I think he paid for a room once back in 1998, but he has been accruing free rooms for nearly 10 years by finding something wrong every trip.

However, I think he just pulled off his ultimate travel scam. He convinced a hotel/casino in New Mexico to put him and Mrs. Ricker up for three nights, including meals, a round of golf, a spa treatment and tickets to a B.B. King concert by telling the resort that he was planning on writing a travel article on his experience. Never mind that he has no professional writing experience, or that he has no contacts at newspapers or magazines, or that reputable magazines don't accept freelance articles where the writer was comped. I have no clue how he pulled this off, but he even pulled the state's office of tourism into his article on leaving the country in the land of enchantment (i.e., the shithole known as New Mexico).

(Side note: The whole plot was a surprise for Mrs. Ricker's birthday in May. She HATES surprises for her birthday, especially those that involve travel that she doesn't know about. Why the Ricker continues to surprise her every year, I don't know. And why she doesn't just expect to be surprised every year, I don't know. He really only has two or three tricks.)

The Ricker and Mrs. Ricker drove to New Mexico, with the Ricker telling her that they were leaving the country. Of course, not until they had arrived at the resort did he tell her what he meant: they were on an Indian reservation! It's not in the country! But it is in the country! Get it? The Ricker met with the resort's tourism director and communications director, and explained that while he didn't have any actual leads on publishing his article, he was confident he could sell it to a newspaper travel section. They liked his pitch so much that the resort even threw in some gambling money so my parents could pull some slots. If that's not buying a favorable story, I don't know what is. He even told them that some of his early poetry had been published in the New Yorker. When he told me that, I laughed. I mean, he showed me all of his old poetry, and some of it was pretty good, but don't you think he would have told me about this New Yorker thing earlier?

The Ricker enjoyed the property for three days, playing golf, going to the casino and visiting the pool (he needs his nightly hot tub, after all). Mrs. Ricker received a spa treatment, and they ate at all the resort's restaurants. On the last night of their stay, they saw B.B. King in the resort's auditorium.

This trip was three months ago, and I haven't heard the Ricker mention his article since. Let's say it together: S-C-A-M.

The Ricker has poor eyesight.

Maybe it's because he's old. Or maybe it's because he walks around in a dim house. Or maybe it's because he spent too much time staring at bright light bulbs as a kid (which would explain his aversion to light in his later years). Maybe it's because he wore rose-colored prescription sunglasses in the 1980s and 1990s, long before the harmful effects of rose-colored prescription glasses were known.

Because of his sight, the Ricker has developed some peculiar habits. Though he has a TV in nearly every room, he watches television mainly in two rooms: the living room and the bedroom. In the living room, he watches sports and other shows where he doesn't need to "see" the content, as he can barely see the TV, glasses or not.

When he wants to watch a movie or the news, he watches in the bedroom, where the TV is about three feet away. Once, he had some friends over for dinner and a movie; he made them watch the movie in the bedroom (which has no chairs) while he was laying in bed, because he was too lazy (or maybe just too inconsiderate) to go into the living room and wear his glasses, so everyone could sit.

The Ricker likes his house (and other's houses) dark.

Behind velcro, I think the Ricker's favorite invention is the dimmer switch, which he has installed on every possible light in the house. He even splices dimmers into lamps that have switches on the plugs. He dims the kitchen lights and the bathroom lights, which may explain his preference for raw steaks and mustache grooming. He calls this dimness "atmosphere."

No room can ever have enough atmosphere for the Ricker. He is infamous for unscrewing light bulbs in restaurants, or asking the waiter or manager to dim the lights to accommodate him. He complains that if they keep the restaurant bright, he'll leave and go elsewhere--and he has. This is one of the reasons I'm sure that waiters or chefs took some "creative liberties" in serving or preparing my food. He's also dimmed lights at friend's houses and cocktail parties. And don't leave him alone in a house with no dimmers. The Ricker just runs to the hardware store to buy dimmers and install them for you (as he did in my condo in Arizona).

The Ricker uses other lights to create this atmosphere at his house. In addition to the volume of Christmas lights (which are up from mid-November until early January), he keeps some permanent decorative lights up all year. The Ricker was an early adopter of the chili pepper lights, which stayed up all year all over the house, hung around doorways, on his fake cacti and on a 17-foot dead, dried century plant shoot. He also held on to his beloved chili pepper lights too long, though he finally replaced the old strands (which were probably a fire hazard anyway) with new strings of purple twinkle lights. When the purple lights started burning out due to constant (nightly) usage, he joined the 21st century with some small, round globe lights.

In fact, just the other day, the Ricker emailed me pictures of the globe lights reflecting on the window, as the sun was setting. Notice the light is also dimmed. This is a perfect Ricker trifecta of ambiance, and I received six different pictures showing the exact same thing from different angles.

The Ricker liked to give "life lectures."

He could also be surprised, as well. Once, in 1999, I borrowed his car (the '92; he didn't have the '99 yet because he never buys new cars) to pick up my then girlfriend (and current wife) from the airport. We had dated for about two months, but I had been home for the summer for one of those months, and she was flying up to visit. As I pulled out of Mo-town, I remembered that I needed to make an important purchase: condoms. Being from such a small town, there was no way I would buy condoms at a local store, so I stopped at a gas station on the way to the airport. I was a few minutes late to pick up my girlfriend, but I think she understood. We went to dinner and went home, and she slept in the guest suite upstairs, with its stair case right next to the Ricker's room.

Early the next morning, the Ricker backed out his car and I hopped in, as I was working for his company that summer (and he wouldn't even give me the day off). He reached down to readjust the seat, and found a foil-like strip. Pulling it up to examine, he asked what it was, and I immediately grabbed it and hid it in my room. When I got back in the car, he asked me, "was that a prophylactic?" Before I could answer, the Ricker launched into a 45 minute lecture. He wasn't angry at all. Instead, he offered a "life lecture" on his experience in the 1960s, when he was young and got his younger girlfriend pregnant, then decided to marry her. They were incompatible and the marriage ended shortly after it began--though the Ricker raised my brother. For 45 minutes, I did not say a word; I just listened to the Ricker and his life lesson.

I didn't tell my girlfriend about that incident right away (at least not while she was staying at the house). She would have been mortified. Oh well, Mrs. Ricker heard me sneak up to the guest room that first night, anyway.

The Ricker keeps his nails short.

But he clips them all over the house. A very frequent Sunday image was the Ricker walking through the living room, cutting his nails as he walked to the door. Once outside, he would sit on the front deck and go after his toenails (well, the eight nails that actually grew). He would also give his heals a good rub-down with some sandpaper and a foot paddle.

Unfortunately, his grooming patterns also extended to other places; namely, my bedroom. When the Ricker would say goodnight, he would come downstairs in his boxers (always shirtless) and sit on the edge of my bed to talk to me. While he was talking, the Ricker would pick and pull pieces of dead skin off his heals and feet . . . and drop them on my floor, into my blue shag carpeting. To this day, there is nothing grosser than someone picking skin off his feet and dropping right beside my bed, where I might step in it in the morning.

The Ricker hates fat people.

I was reminded of this when I watched Little Miss Sunshine last week. In the movie, which I highly recommend, the father explains to his 8-year-old daughter that ice cream is fattening and that beauty queens probably didn't eat ice cream. The daughter is devastated, but through some careful manipulation by the rest of the family, she regains her appetite and finishes off the scoop.

I've received the same lecture from the Ricker, only he was meaner than Greg Kinnear's character. When walking around malls, the Ricker would actually point out fat people--usually loudly enough that the person heard him. It was embarrassing, but the Ricker didn't care. He didn't want a fat family. I'm actually surprised that my sister doesn't have some sort of eating disorder.

However, that's not to say that we emerged completely normal. I'm still nervous about eating sweets, which has been very difficult to overcome considering we live a few blocks from Magnolia Bakery, which has all the bomb frostings and the best cupcakes I've ever had. I count how many cookies I eat and stay under the suggested serving size. I can't eat a full scoop of ice cream without feeling guilty. I'm even scared of doughnuts, which is funny considering my brother owns a doughnut shop (is this his form of rebellion?). I calculate total fat grams and percentage of calories from fat based on nutritional labels. In fact, the Ricker used to set up quizzes for me by laying out boxes and cans of food. If the percentage of calories from fat was greater than 30%, I wasn't allowed to eat it. I grew up with low-fat or fat-free everything: soda, butter, sour cream, chips, ice cream. Now, I can't even eat a full-fat item (like a latte with whole milk) because the flavor is off. Maybe I'm the one with an eating disorder.

Thanks, Ricker, for my disorder: obesophobia.

The Ricker loves velcro.

Really, he LOVES velcro. It's everywhere in his house. He uses it to keep cabinets shut and keys where they belong. He also uses it to fix clothing. The inside of his cars have plenty of velcro--velcro notepads, velcro on the sun visors and even velcro in the car's cubbys (just the soft side).

I also learned (the hard way) that the Ricker used velcro to hang paintings. I made the mistake of leaving him home alone at my old condo, right after I had painted the walls. The circuit breaker in the condo was in the kitchen, and I had hung a framed black board over it to hide it. However, because of the handle on the breaker door, the board didn't hang flush--which is one of the Ricker's pet peeves.

He found some velcro in my tool box, in a bag full of nails and random stuff that he had given me when I moved out. He then velcroed the bottom of the frame to the freshly painted wall. The next time I removed the black board, the velcro held and proceeded to peel layers of paint off the wall.

That was the last time I left him alone in my house without a project.

The Ricker keeps a memory box.

It's an old leather box filled with old Boy Scout badges, rings, key chains, bottle openers and other odds and ends that held sentimental value at some point. It also holds some very weird things as well.

There are two little "peep show viewers"--small plastic viewfinders with naked pin-up girls inside. The box also holds a small, brass ring about an inch and a half in diameter.

About two years ago, the Ricker pulled out the box to give me an old watch of his, a very cool watch with a wide leather band from about 30 years ago. I was wearing something similar, and the Ricker was amazed that his old style was back en vogue. While I was messing around with the watch (winding it), my wife picked up the brass ring. Without a trace of irony or humor, the Ricker tells her that she was holding his old cock ring.

I've never seen my wife move so fast as she did after that announcement. She dropped the ring and ran to the sink to wash her hands. Once again, good times with the Ricker.

The Ricker makes up facts.

When the Ricker explains history or geography or anything like that, there are bound to be a few "Ricker facts" that can't be verified. He says the baby animals are cute so that their mothers don't eat them. He says don't hit cardboard boxes in the street, because one time a kid was playing in a box and was struck by a car and killed.

My all-time favorite Ricker fact involved Idaho. When I was younger, we were driving through Utah and Idaho on our way to Oregon. I was fairly sick, and the Ricker wanted to give me some hope, so he told me that Boise was the Flashlight Capital of the World (if you read the post on bad Christmas presents, you may remember that the Ricker had somewhat of a thing for flashlights). I believed that Boise was in fact the Flashlight Capital of the World for years, even passing that on as my own fact. It wasn't until college that someone (possibly my future wife) pointed out the absurdity of that fact that I began to doubt the Ricker.

The Ricker keeps a clean car.

He washes often, going through Water Works or some other full-service wash. The Ricker then steals a towel, drives a few miles and re-dries his car (to make sure he catches all the drips).

However, there's one spot on the back of one of his cars (the '99), there's a matte spot in the paint. The Ricker decided to remove the dealership badge after buying the car. The badge came off easily, but the glue did not. After trying to get the glue off using gasoline (which is probably not good for the clear coat), the Ricker grabbed some paint thinner (which removed the glue but also took off some paint with it). Yes, he used paint thinner to remove something from paint, not thinking that the paint thinner might also remove some of the paint.

The Ricker likes to golf.

In fact, some of his golfing exploits are famous among my friends. The Ricker's uniform remains consistent with his wardrobe--short shorts and, most importantly, sandals. Really, he loved to golf in sandals. The Ricker was convinced that there golf shoes were invented by lazy greenskeepers for aeration purposes and that they serve no other purpose. Yeah, that's why everyone wears golf shoes.

For years, he teed off with his three iron, placing him about 50 yards behind the action, until I finally convinced him to upgrade to some modern Taylor Made woods (he still carried some ancient, actual wood Persimmon woods). The Ricker was also one of the first--and now last--people to carry a "chipper," a hybrid club that is half putter/half wedge.

The Ricker also carries his own beverages onto the course--usually a few cans of beer in his golf bag and a quart of margarita into two bike waterbottles. Of course, the beer stays in the bag until eventually he has a case of stale, warm beer that he passes out to friends. I've seen him sacrifice the welfare of passengers in order to save the margarita. Once, as he was driving along 16, by the old Forrester place, with Garrett and me in the cart, the Ricker was refilling his margarita while driving, to limited success. Garrett and I had a mix of cheap tequila and lime juice over our shorts and shins. I'm sure Garrett, a big follower of WWJD, appreciated this.

The Ricker's golf score has been coming down in recent years, which he attributes to playing more. I attribute it to more cheating. The Ricker is king of "improving the lie," kicking balls out from behind trees into the fairway. He plays multiple balls, playing his best shot. His round is a lot like a one-person scramble. And, I think he's started forgetting strokes as well. Realistically, the Ricker's 41 (on nine holes) is probably a 48 or 50.

Of course, with him playing the best golf of his life, he wants to share it with me, even though I no longer live in the same state. When I was in college, he would call me and leave messages on my answering machine. At the time, I used my computer as an answering machine, and it wouldn't play any message longer than five minutes. Very frequently, I would come home to see an unplayable seven minute, seventeen second message from my dad, followed by another shorter message. On the second message, which I could listen to, he would explain that he was telling me about his greatest round ever and only had one hole to go but was cut off. Other times, he would leave a message detailing EVERY SINGLE SHOT of his 18-hole round (he shot a 78 according to the Ricker scoring system). The Ricker frequently calls me to tell me about his rounds, but with the onset of technology (and his improved understanding of how stuff works), he has taken to a new form of communication: scanning and emailing his actual scorecard.

The Ricker got in a car accident.

It was years ago, probably in the early 1990s. He was driving to work (in his old rust-colored AMC Eagle; I hope someone else remembers this car) when a cement truck stopped on the interstate to back into a construction site. A few cars back, a trucker fell asleep behind the wheel and pushed four cars--one of them the Ricker's--under the cement truck.

He was okay, a few dislocated disks and some bruises. The car was totaled, but amazingly, the Ricker's huge aviator glasses were saved. They were knocked from his face and ended up on the rear package shelf in the car. The insurance company paid for an all-in-one home gym and a few other knick knacks around the house for rehabilitation. Eventually, the Ricker got the body back in shape, but there were definitely some mental side effects.

At Thanksgiving that year, about one month after the accident, the Ricker was weird--weirder than normal, that is. He kept forgetting simple things: people's names at the table, when to take the turkey out, et cetera. Eventually, during the meal, he slipped into a new personality. The Ricker wasn't the Ricker anymore; he was a money-changer in Ancient Syria. Biblical Syria. I'm not really sure what was happening. The Ricker has been known to pull some pranks occasionally, but I think even Mrs. Ricker was concerned.

To this day, I don't know if the Ricker really had some issues, or if he was just messing with everyone at the table--but I wouldn't put the latter past him.

The Ricker received his birthday call today.

It was a pretty normal conversation with the Ricker in that I repeated everything three times, because he never actually listens to what I (or anyone else has to say). Still, it was a pretty good talk, because some of the stuff I said seemed to sink in after multiple repititions.

Then the Ricker had to go, because he was busy spraying the trees around the house with concentrated spoiled egg spray to keep the deer away from the sumacs.

The Ricker likes holidays, especially Christmas.

He's not one to buy himself things during the year, so he uses Christmas as an opportunity to do this, using one of two methods.

Usually, the Ricker would actually buy presents for himself--shirts, slippers, tools--and have us wrap them up for him. Then, he would act surprised when he opened up his flannel boxers, or plaid shirt (that he never ended up wearing), or his drill bits.

The Ricker would also give the family presents that he really wanted. One year, I got glass lids for pans that "magically" fit the new Scan-Pan skillets and pans that we already had. Another time, he gave me flashlights. On separate occasions, my sister received snow shovels and a can crusher. I think she should have taken the can crusher when she moved out.

The Ricker likes Red Robin seasoning salt.

We used to go to Red Robin a few times per month when I was a kid. They had an arcade, so I was fine with it, and they had a bar, so my parents were okay with it. They also had this really good seasoning salt, which they sold for $5 or something like that.

The Ricker liked it so much, he got some for the house, by sliding it Mrs. Ricker's purse. After a while, the restaurant smartened up and stopped putting lids on the salt containers. However, this wasn't much of a problem, because the Ricker started bringing tape with him, so he could tape over the holes and take the salt home.

Yes, I'm serious.

The Ricker used to take me to work.

Usually, it was an excuse for him to go in late, take a long lunch, and cut out early. We would stop by his office for a few hours in the morning, and then after lunch he would drop me off somewhere to kill some time while he went back to the office. I've been dropped off at Circuit City, Nevada Bob's Ski and Golf, Celebrity Fun Center (a bowling alley, rec center and water park), a pizza place, a Black Eyed Pea restaurant, and an arcade called the Boardwalk. Never did he drop me off at a location where I could actually kill a few hours (like a golf course or a mall); I was usually bored within minutes. Seriously, how long could I hang out in a golf store with no money? The clerks kicked me off the putting green after about 15 minutes.

The Ricker would usually say he'd pick me up in about an hour or so, even though I knew it would be much longer. The Ricker follows his own clock, where he expects everything to take less time than it actually does. Maybe that's why he only worked five hours a day.

The worst were the times he dropped me off at Celebrity Fun Center or the Boardwalk, because he'd only give me enough money for an hour or so. At Celebrity, at least I could make my money last a little longer, mostly because I won some money off other kids by playing foosball (until the time I hustled some city kids a little older than me and spent two hours hiding behind the waterslide while they looked for me). The Boardwalk was a different story. It was one of those early-90s arcades where you loaded up time on a card, instead of putting quarters in a machine. The Ricker would give me enough money to get an hour of gaming and a drink (unfortunately, the second hour of play was more expensive, so I couldn't skip the drink and get more play time). He'd go back to the office, or run some other errand, and return to pick me up about three hours later, well after my video game time had expired.

The Ricker likes plants indoors.

His house was like a jungle inside--complete with a large ficus tree on the middle of a coffee table in the living room. He's got a collection of trees indoors: in addition to the ficus, there were cacti, jade plants, dracaena, spider plants, and palms. He brings a number of flower pots in for the winter, putting them upstairs in the billiards room so it is impossible to play pool.

After time, some of the cactuses, which he had cultivated for years, died out, and the Ricker replaced a few of them with plastic cacti. He'd swear he couldn't tell the difference, and the truth is, with how dim he kept the house at night, you usually couldn't. Except during the day, that is. Anyway, as more plants died out, and as the Ricker decided to redecorate the house, he had to figure out a way to keep his beloved fake cacti.

The house used to be southwestern, very southwestern, until a few years ago. Now, it looks like a purple-and-black time machine to an alternate 1970s. Clearly, the cacti didn't match--until he spray painted them black or silver. This picture shows one of the silver cacti next to one of the Ricker's other sculptures. He even went so far as to spray a fake foam cactus black, with silver and purple rings around the top! He also saved my old, dead bonsai tree and painted that black, displaying it in front of the black, silver and purple cactus. It's really almost too much.

The Ricker overreacts to small problems.

However, he usually knows how to handle big problems. Because of this, The Ricker was always there to bail me out of trouble. I usually had to find my own way out, or fix my own problems, but the Ricker provided some intelligent guidance. Growing up in a small town, I found my way in and out of a variety of situations of varying severity.

During high school, the parents of at least one of my friends were out of town about three weekends per month, which meant we always had a place to party. It was the fourth weekend that was tricky. We had mountain parties, field parties, park-and-ride parties and Cheyenne Mountain parties. We even tried an empty house party, after Ryan found a house near his that was under construction . . . and that had a very long driveway. If you know the details of the story, great; if you don't, this isn't the place to rehash them. Let's just say that the police arrived to find three cars (one mine) and a certain someone still in the house hiding behind an insulation pile, after his Jackie Chan-esque attempt at hiding in the ceiling failed.

Naturally, parents were called. Ry lived close, and his dad was so mad, he drove IN REVERSE the entire way down the street to pick him up. Nicki's dad didn't talk to her for a month, and we didn't talk to her either--because he figured we were the wrong kind of crowd. Then the Ricker shows up, in all his glory. It was late when the police called, but the Ricker was still up, sitting by the fireplace, listening to music and enjoying a cocktail. The Ricker and Mrs. Ricker arrived non-challantly, with Mrs. Ricker driving. The Ricker exits the car, weaves over to the cop car and tries to look through the tinted window. Not seeing me, he leans closer and then closer still, until he smacks his forehead and glasses on the window. Now, even the cop busted up at this, and he probably would have given the Ricker a roadside sobriety test had Mrs. Ricker not been driving.

Surprisingly, everything worked out okay. Nicki's father eventually allowed her to speak to us, and no charges (treaspassing) were pressed. However, indirectly because of my father's suggestion to call the house's owner the next morning to plead our case, my friends and I grew much closer that summer, as we were enlisted as slave labor to help this asshole landscape most of his two-acre lot.

The Ricker's birthday is coming up.

Make sure you call him. Because with the Ricker, every significant day--birthdays, Christmas, mother's day, grandmother's day--is a competition. His side of the family versus the other side. The Ricker keeps track of these calls, because his side is winning.

Remember to call Nana on Easter. Did you call? Good, none of the other cousins called. Remember to call Nana on Mother's Day, and Grandmother's Day. Perfect, the Ricker's kids were the only ones who called. Might as well call Nana on D-Day as well, since both of her husbands fought in World War II.

Even better, the Ricker remembers to call you, to remind you that you should be calling. Even if you've never missed a holiday, and even if you call Nana on other random days of the year, you will be reminded about how important it is to call Nana on President's Day, because only the Ricker's kids will be calling. On Nana's birthday, the Ricker called me three times--and even had my sister call me once--to give me my aunt's cell phone number so I could call Nana during her birthday lunch. Of course, I didn't call then--I called later, when my grandmother complained to me about the Ricker calling multiple times during lunch. I haven't missed a holiday in years, and I still get reminders.


But make sure you call the Ricker on his birthday, because I'm keeping score now.

The Ricker likes his hairspray.

He is very particular about his hair, spending more time than anyone I've ever known getting ready--at least an hour a day. Every night, he spends another 15 minutes on it, respraying it so that it survives the night. I always wondered why he did his hair at night; maybe he was expecting a hot date in his dreams.

His hair is actually long on the sides so that he can mold it all the way around his head to hide his baldness. He cuts his hair himself, daily, though at least twice in the last 10 years, the Ricker's old secretary, Juice, has come to the house to cut it. She cuts a little, then he gets in the shower, washes it, and shows her where else to cut. She trims a little more, and the cycle repeats. And when he's "doing" his hair, he sprays the hell out of it, dries it, sprays it again, then uses his baby brush, which he has had since he was little, that has maybe 15 bristles left on it, so he can get those few little stubborn hairs.

The Ricker needs some industrial hairspray to keep everything in place. He used to be a big fan of AquaNet, but eventually, he switched over to The Dry Look. The Dry Look is normally found on the bottom shelf at stores, collecting dust. Afraid that they might go out of business (understandably so), he bought CASES AND CASES of the stuff, keeping them stocked in the "pantry" in the utility room. Great place to keep highly flammable hairspray . . . in the room with the furnace.

Though I was teased about it my entire life, the Ricker did not have a hairpiece. Until recently, that is. Last year, the Ricker purchased himself a brand new head of hair. He looks exactly the same. If anything, the Ricker is consistent.

The Ricker has two cars.

Two of the exact same car. A Cadillac STS. Black, with gold accents and a cloth top. One is a 1992 with about 240,000 miles on it. The other is a 1999 that must be pushing 100,000. Years of commuting 110 miles per day will do that.

He rotates them with the seasons. In the winter, the '92 comes out. The car is a few hundred pounds heavier, and the Ricker swears it is better in the snow. He thinks the ride is also smoother. The '99 gets better gas mileage. Other than that, I don't know why he drives it. He clearly prefers the '92.

I guess rotating cars is easier than rotating tires.

The Ricker is very particular about his driveway.

It's a fairly steep driveway on the top of a hill, with a curve at the top to get in the garage. The top portion is red cement, molded into a honeycomb pattern. For years, the bottom portion was red dirt that he had hauled to the house in the 1970s to cover the natural, grey dirt. When it rained, all the red dirt would wash down into the street, resulting in deep ruts and exposed grey dirt. For years, my brother and me (and, after my brother moved out but I was too young to help, some of the neighborhood kids) used buckets and wheelbarrows to haul the dirt back up the driveway after every rainstorm. The only problem was, in Colorado, there are thunderstorms every afternoon in the summer--meaning that this was done a near-daily basis for months during the year. My father finally broke down and paved the rest of the driveway, using red cement again. I used to use kerosene and gasoline to clean oil spots and tire marks off of the driveway to keep it clean (The Ricker is not what you'd call an environmentalist). More cement = more driveway to clean.

No one drives on the driveway. Everyone must park at the bottom and walk up, either right up the steep driveway or along a dimly lit, twisting path through the woods. Garrett would always drive up the driveway to pick me up, and the Ricker never got over that. The UPS guy can come up, but only because he has been the same driver for 25 years and because my dad taught him how to come up and turn around.

The Ricker built a wooden road block to keep cars from coming up, which was replaced by a chain that he could pull across the driveway, hanging a little reflector from the chain. The chain immediately rusted, as the Ricker didn't use a galvanized chain. Still, it serves its purpose--keeping people off the driveway and, more importantly, away from the Ricker.

The Ricker needs help.

Well, not that kind of help (although I think he should talk to someone about his control issues). He needs help with his projects. Growing up, I was the classic gopher. You know, "Son, go for this . . . go get that . . ." I've helped paint the house. I've spread pine needles on top of grey dirt, because the Ricker hates grey dirt--he much prefers red dirt, which is not so common where we lived . I've dug holes, planted flowers, built decks, weeded endless rock gardens, hung from trees to pick mistletoe (the parasitic tree-killing kind, not the merry, kiss-inducing kind), swept the street, hauled buckets of water, cleaned gutters, cut down trees, shoveled decks that are never even used.

I finally moved out and moved on when I was 18. However, the Ricker still needed help. Shortly after I moved out, the Ricker decided to re-shingle the roof, using his faithful handyman, Manny Ramirez (his motto "good enough for government," which meant it was close to level). The shingles had been dropped off at the bottom of the driveway, because God forbid someone actually drive on the driveway, and I think Manny was pushing 70 at this point. The Ricker enlisted my friends -- Ryan, Eric and Matt -- to carry the shingles up the driveway and onto the roof. Thanks guys, for doing that, although I'm sure you didn't get paid.

The Ricker likes to garden.

The Ricker's house is on the top of a hill on the edge of the mountains, on about an acre lot. The house is surrounded on all sides by pine trees, sumacs (which, as Ryan says, are weeds anyway), flowers and grass, intermixed with old railroad ties and terracotta pots. While the Ricker has had some success with his flowers and trees, he has never been able to grow a decent lawn. He's tried everything--overseeding, re-sodding; well, I guess that's all he's tried. He spends hours watering the lawn, and he even shovels the lawn to fertilize in the middle of winter. Yet, despite all his hard work, his lawn has always been a little less than satisfactory to him. Maybe this is why, as a kid (and really to this day), NO ONE IS ALLOWED TO WALK ON THE LAWN.

There are stepping stones everywhere on the lawn. The Ricker even trained the dog to walk around the lawn, crossing at just one point. I still can't walk on grass without thinking I'm doing something wrong. Just once, I would have liked to play catch or football on the lawn with the Ricker. Nope, never happened--we used the driveway, which is far less inspiring.

The Ricker is not rational, and the Ricker didn't always pick on me.

My sister had her fair share of chores (maybe just share of chores, because I had VASTLY more to do on a regular basis). Once, the Ricker sent my sister out into the forest around our house to pick up sticks. We lived on an acre in the middle of a pine forest, and my sister had to pick up a bunch of sticks and twigs to throw away so the forest looked up to the Ricker's standards. The Ricker made her clean the forest. He also got mad at her for eating too much cheese on one occasion . . . I don't think she's gotten over this yet.

The Ricker gave me the birds and bees talk when I was young.

I mean young. I was probably eight when the Ricker asked me if I knew what intercourse was. I remember, he told me it was a big responsibility, but it felt really good, otherwise no one would keep doing it.

The Ricker also gave the bird and the bees speech to a few of my friends. Thanks, Ricker. Nothing battles elementary and middle school embarrassment like having your dad explain the ins and outs of sex to the neighbor kids.

The Ricker kept a gym bag in the trunk of his car.

The only thing is, he never worked out at a gym (at least not to my knowledge). It was a leather duffel, with shorts, a shirt and shoes inside. White Reeboks that I never saw him wear.

I think the Ricker used the gym bag as an excuse to get out of work early.

The Ricker has an interesting wardrobe.

He is often seen shirtless, displaying his hairy chest in all its glory. His shorts are short--so short, in fact, that when his original 1980s shorts finally wore out, he purchased the shortest shorts he could find at a department store and had them taken in a few inches. He then had to have the pockets taken in, as they hung lower than the shorts' hemline. He wears sandals, full sandals with a toe strap and ankle strap. They aren't Tevas, that would be too normal. Instead, they are these overly velcroed leather sport sandals that he wears a size too small so his toes hang over. He has two pairs, black and brown, that are identical, because he purchased two brown pairs and spray-painted one pair black. In the winter, which to him means February, he wears old Levis, old cowboy boots (and an original pair of moonboots when it snows) and a denim shirt. The rest of the year, even when the temperature is in the 40s, he runs around in his shorts, shirtless, with sandals displaying his grotesque toes.

He is often seen carrying a large, purple plastic cup, though the contents of the cup have varied over the years. A while ago, it was a tequila half-soda half-OJ. Then, it became the Ricker--a cocktail of vodka, zima and cranberry juice. Now he drinks jug white wine and diet tonic. He doesn't eat breakfast or lunch, and he has a weird predilection for leftovers, even combining a variety of leftovers into a new meal.

He wears sunglasses constantly, even indoors and sometimes at night. They are prescription sunglasses, aviators, with rose-tinted lenses. When driving, he likes to hand you his sunglasses so you can see the sunset as he sees it, despite the fact that he can't see the road without his glasses. He has a large nose, which is anchored by a large mustache, which he curls using toothpaste. His hair is shell-like, one of the greatest combovers I have ever seen. The Ricker looked the same in 1972, 1982 and even 2002.

The Ricker likes his meat rare.

Growing up, I had friends over for dinner quite frequently, as my family ate together five nights per week. We also ate later than most of my friend's families ate, so my friends were often waiting on me to finish dinner before we could start our night out.

One night in particular, I remember, both Ryan and Eric came over for dinner on a Friday. The Ricker was cooking up one of his favorite dishes, a nice chateaubriand on the grill. He had picked out this cut very particularly, as it was on sale and about four inches thick. It was always dim in my house, especially during dinner, as the Ricker likes "atmosphere." The Ricker pulled the meat off the grill and sliced it thinly, across the grain, and served himself first--serving himself before he served my mother or our guests.

Chateaubriand is an artform to the Ricker, as the cuts were always perfectly spaced and perfectly seasoned with garlic salt and dried parsley (for visual impact). Hungry, Ryan began cutting into his steak, working unusually hard. I was talking with the Ricker when Ryan and Eric began laughing quietly, to some sort of inside joke. I looked over and saw Ryan, joking, pretending he was cutting into his arm with his steak knife and pulling out a bite. The steak was completely rare; no, raw on the inside, as the meat was still cold and red. A two-pound steak four inches thick, and the Ricker cooked it for about three minutes per side.

The dead cow on the plate was just the beginning of an interesting night. You see, my dad had just had his annual physical and blood test. After telling us about his blood pressure and cholesterol ("Like a 28-year old athlete"), the Ricker proceeded to explain to Ryan, Eric and me how important prostate exams are--and how we could easily check our own prostates by sticking our thumbs up our asses. I think Ryan lost it right there, and I think Eric got up and left the room--shocked, disgusted yet laughing at the sheer randomness of this conversation. For me, it was just another day growing up with the Ricker.