Provincetown

Here are some comparisons between the official policies and guidelines of the two parades I remember seeing in-person in my life:

Application Deadline for Marching:
Macy's™ Thanksgiving Day:  8 months before parade.
Provincetown Carnival:  3 days before parade.

Cost to enter:
Provincetown:    $0.
Macy's:  $1,339.

Time before the parade marchers must arrive:
Macy's™:   6 days.
Provincetown:  45 minutes.

Philosophy:
Macy's™:   "..legendary for its rigid standards and it's [sic] highly competitive selection process."  (I guess the rigid standards don't include proper punctuation. Hahahahaha.)
Provincetown:  "...festive, colorful, and tastefully outrageous..."

Parade Pace:
Macy's™:   120 steps in 1 minute.
Provincetown:  0.25 miles in 10 minutes.  (At 3 feet per step, this is 44 steps per minute.)

Theme:
Macy's™:   America's Favorite Parade
Provincetown:  Summer of Love:  Peace, Love and Go-Go Boots

Nudity:
Provincetown:  Not allowed.
Macy's™:   No stated policy.  (This kind of surprised me.)


In My Head:
Macy's™:  Weeeeee! Snoopy!
Provincetown:  Does this shirt make me look straight?

Boat to South Beach

On Cape Cod, you can choose from many beaches.  Over the years, I've learned to distinguish between them.

You have your "Lake" beaches.  These are generally adjacent to a lake.  The sand is reliable, because it is imported by truck.  Sometimes there's a dock, you must have a parking sticker, and the Blue Sky Ice Cream truck is timed to arrive just as it's too early for ice cream.

Then there are the "Bay" beaches.  These are adjacent to the part of the water where in order to get properly "lost at sea" you'd have to drift for many miles around Provincetown.  Bay beaches have crazy tides; are near cute shopping, and the Blue Sky truck is timed to arrive just as you've started lunch.

Lastly, there are the "Ocean" beaches.  These are, apparantly, wide and varied.  There are dozens, it seems, and people have their favorites.  My favorites are the ones where you don't have to pay to park.  I'm still looking for one that fits this bill.  Ocean beaches are windy, packed with hole-digging, castle-building kids, require a full carload of people to transport all your stuff to the sand, and sometimes have fried food and ice cream nearby.

The boat to South Beach is a two-for-one.  You take a boat to a bay beach (not the real bay, a different bay) and then can either stay there among the mosquitos, or walk a couple hundred yards across to the green flies at the ocean.  It's up to you.

Harwichport music

In Harwichport, on Cape Cod, they have a "music stroll" about every other week during the summer. Six or so bands play about every two blocks.  We walked by several bands, listening to parts of songs,  until we heard one band playing "The Weight." 

Family tradition requires that we stop at this song and listen.  Not really my family, but the family I married into.  There are four musical siblings in this family, and "The Weight" is to Kathy and her three brothers what "Satisfaction" is to the Rolling Stones -- they play it at every show.  The reason for this, I believe, is because "The Weight" has 73 verses, which is divisible by four with a remainder of one, thus allowing each sibling the same number of solo opportunities, with one rousing group finish at the end.

Asking me whether I like this song is akin to asking whether I liked the drawings my children used to bring home from second grade art class -- it's irrelevant, because it's going on the refrigerator for certain.

Brewster Scoop

Our Cape Cod vacations are an exercise in deliberate movement. There are 8 of us, and we take a while to get mobilized.

Except when it comes to ice cream. The Brewster Scoop closes at 10 PM, so at about 9:40, for the first and only time all day, the kids express a clear understanding of what time it is, what we need to do to get ready to leave, and how long it will take.

The Brewster Scoop is an old New England institution, and thus I'm pretty certain that they trained the Minutemen by telling them that the Brewster Scoop was closing, and they needed to hurry.

Lake

Until this year, the beach umbrella was my frenemy.

Fre because it protects me from the evil effects of the sun's rays. This ball of gas 90,000,000 miles away makes me sweat and burns my skin. I do wear sunscreen, but I don't trust it. Every second, the sun turns 5 million tons of hydrogen into energy, and I'm supposed to rely on a gooey cream with a child's butt on the label? Plus, I like to use a 30-spf, which supposedly means that 30 minutes with the cream off is the same as 1 minute with the cream on. Thus, if I arrive at the beach and wait 4 minutes before putting sunscreen on, I've wasted two hours of protection. My umbrella, on the other hand, opens in seconds.

Nemy because in places where there is sand to plant the umbrella, there is also wind to unplant the umbrella. If I turn my back, the umbrella will take off towards some unsuspecting family eating sand sandwiches, and I'll have to chase it down like a bad dog, wondering what's gotten into it today, usually it's such a good umbrella. As a result, I end up sitting next to it in a chair, with one hand always on the pole. I look pathetic.

No more, however, thanks to the 75%-off "Beach Umbrella Anchor" purchased at the Star Market -- $3.00! Brilliantly simple -- it has a bracket that goes around the pole, and three bags that you fill with sand to weigh the umbrella down. Since it was installed, I haven't had a single problem. And with zero hands on the pole instead of one, I look 50% less pathetic huddled under my umbrella.

Cape Cod House

For the past 11 years or so, we've been spending a week on Cape Cod each summer with our friends the Whalen-Browns. For the last 8 years, we've rented the same small house in Brewster from friends of theirs, for a great price.

Each year when we return, the house has gotten smaller. My evidence: there's a small window (air vent, really) that the kids all used to make a game of crawling through each year. Then, one year, Jonah wouldn't fit. Then, Alex and Emma wouldn't fit. This year, Carolina barely fit. I'm betting than in another year or two, the window will have closed up altogether.

I think often about places I'm familiar with that I don't visit frequently, and how they exist independently of me. For example, Niagara Falls. If you've every been there, you were overwhelmed with the sheer volume of water that is continuously getting dumped over that cliff. Every once in a while, I think about Niagara Falls and how that water has been rushing since the last time I saw it or thought about it, 24 hours a day, every single second.

The same is true of the Dog. Not the flowing water part, but the "he exists without me" part. If I'm teaching a class, I'll sometimes remember the Dog, sitting at home on his chair, or on his couch, or on my bed (bad dog!). Then, when I get home, I imagine that he's been thinking of me in the same way. Judging from the way he acts, though, I'm pretty sure he doesn't remember who I am. Sort of a selective dementia.

Library

Libraries are wonderful places. They'll lend you books for free, and charge you a dime a day if you're late.

I like to request things via inter-library loan. You used to have to work with the librarian to do this; now, you can do-it-yourself online. I get a lot of DVD's this way. When I go to pick them up, though, I always feel that the librarian is judging me based on what I'm getting. If it's the third season of the BBC's "Ballykissangel," for example, it's okay because it passes the public-TV-I'm-a-discriminating-viewer muster. More likely, though, it's some movie that I want to see but don't really want to pay for, probably with Jennifer Aniston in it.

So I make sure that when I request one of those movies, I also request a highbrow novel that will counteract the stigma of my lowbrow film. I like to do this in themes -- if I get "27 Dresses," I'll also get "100 Years of Solitude." If it's season 2 of "How I Met Your Mother," I'll get Vonnegut's "Mother Night." And so on. It diverts their attention, and messes with their heads.

Congressional District Office

Our democratic congressman won his election by 726 votes out of 160,940 cast. So if you think your vote doesn't matter, well, I guess it doesn't really, but if you had 727 votes, it would matter a lot.

Historically, the 20th congressional district in New York has been solidly republican. Thus, our congressman must tread lightly. The woman we spoke to about health care told us that he's a "Blue Dog" democrat and that he wants to represent all of his constituents, not just the ones who voted for him.

I don't know how this is possible. If half the people (plus 726) want ice cream, and everyone else wants cake, and you can only get one, how do you please the cake eaters? She told us that he'd voted against the second round of Cash for Clunkers as evidence, I think, of his lack of a backbone, so good job.

I went on the Blue Dog Democrat website, and Scott Murphy is not listed as a member. Has he refused to undergo the initiation rites? Has he not paid his dues? Is he lacking in Blue, or worse, Dog? If 725 other voters realize this, he may be in trouble next election.

Racquette Lake

The Dog went on the boat. He didn't mind it too much, although it freaked him out when he was left on land and Kathy went out waterskiing. He didn't care that I was with him.

Some questions come to mind:

Why do dogs enjoy the wind in their faces (out a car window, or in a boat) but if you blow on their noses, they freak out?

If people para-sail from boats, why don't they do it off of cars? Everyone has a car. You could use a skateboard to take off.

I understand why people don't "water" ski off of cars -- it's the crashing.

I don't waterski. I suppose I could get talked into sitting on one of those tubes they pull real fast. But there would have to be ice cream after.

Deck

Do you find that when you are reading a book, you start to think and behave like a character in the book? Sort of like leaving a horror movie and sleeping with the light on, although it lasts for days.

The book I'm reading is Richard Russo's Bridge of Sighs. It's a terrific and complicated novel, but in its essence, it's about a few 60-year-olds who are working to understand how the events of their childhoods have led them to the place they are. Which means I am caught in a web of introspective nostalgia and self-reflection. My favorite place.

It's fun to watch several episodes of The Sopranos and then going to teach a class. Fun for me, anyway, but I don't know about my students. Watching Seinfeld and The Simpsons create no problems, because they fit how my normal self behaves. Kurt Vonnegut novels are in the same vein, only more caustic. Thus, I amuse myself more but upset others more frequently.

Music is this way, too, although I've always been suspicious of the ability of a certain combination of chords or notes or whatever to make you happy or sad or whatever. Was there a Batman villain who was able to use this to commit crime? Regardless, I am wary whenever Jonah plays something on his guitar and then asks for something. I fear I'm prone to musical hypnosis.

Dad's Study

Like imprinting on a duck, the sports team that an adult male roots for depends on what happens when he was about 10 years old. In 1972, for example, the Miami Dolphins went undefeated and won the Super Bowl. Thus, there are many men my age who root for the Miami Dolphins. Sometimes the local culture supports the home team strongly enough to overcome their lack of success (see: Boston Red Sox, circa 1972).

My dad is a lifelong Yankee fan. In the early 70’s, the Yankees weren’t very good. There was another team in New York, though, and they had had some recent success, winning the World Series in 1969 and getting to the Series in 1973. For my dad, the Mets were a diversion while the Yankees regrouped, although I didn’t realize this at the time. Nor did he realize that when he took me to a few Mets games a year, that he was determining my long-term loyalty.

I rooted for the Yankees too, especially in the late 70’s when the Mets were terrible. Still, my heart was with the Mets, and when the Dwight Gooden appeared in a Mets uniform, and the Yankees fired and rehired Billy Martin for the eleventh time, I embraced the Mets and rejected the Yanks. Interleague play cemented my allegiance, and now I solidly root against the Yankees.
When my father I and watch baseball together, we’ll split TV time between the Mets and the Yankees. He knows that I’m rooting against the Yankees, although I do my best to hide it. I’ve caught him rooting against the Mets, which surprised both of us. He sees my becoming a Mets fan as a failure of his parenting.

Also, he feels responsible for subjecting me to the pain of being a Mets fan in 2009. I think.

Golden Wok

I don’t really understand Chinese menus. I do understand that it’s not really Chinese, but I’m not sure why. I did go to a Chinese restaurant in Chinatown (the New York one) once, and I remember an incomprehensible (to me) menu, and incomprehensible (to me) food. Is this a soup? Is it a dip? Do I wash my fingers in it? Very confusing. I won’t even talk about wondering what member of the animal kingdom I was eating. Obviously, I have difficulty stepping outside of my culture.

So there is a difference. Somewhere along the line, our culture created an Americanized Chinese cuisine. I would think then that the menu would be easier to understand. Ironically, the names of the items you order are very literal: Chicken with broccoli, Shrimp with Snow Peas, and so on. Yet, when they arrive, they look very different. Sometimes, the named items are part of a larger group of vegetables. Sometimes, it’s just those items in some sort of sauce/goo. Sometimes fried, sometimes wokked. It’s very difficult to know. Some Chinese restaurants have photos of the food (genius!). Ours does not. It’s another one of the many situations in my life where I feel like I’m expected to understand something that seems easy, but in truth is impenetrable by intuition. Maybe I should hire a tutor.

Fortunately, there are some go-to items that are mostly predictable. Sesame chicken is pretty consistent from restaurant to restaurant, as is General Tso (of frequent crossword puzzle fame) and my favorite, Moo Shoo Chicken. Sometimes spelled Mu Shu. Traditionally served with pork instead. At least in America.

Admission Office

Generally, those who haven't taught before are scared out of their wits. What they should be feeling is scared out of their wits, so this is good.

Entering teaching as a profession is like nothing else. You've spent your entire life around teachers, watching them, judging them, speculating on how you'd handle different situations. When you are in front a classroom for the first time, things flip around in more ways than one.

The most difficult reversal is often unexpected. If you've become a teacher, chances are you did okay in school, kind of liked it, and surrounded yourself with other students who felt the same way. Sure, there were kids who didn't buy into the whole game, but you could essentially ignore them and do your own thing. Now that you're in front of the classroom, however, everything is reversed. You love the students who buy into your program -- they make things go smoothly. Quickly, though, it's the other students who command your attention -- kids who don't like school, don't do their work, and generally distract from what you're trying to accomplish. They're now front and center in your world, and the non-squeaky-wheeled-goody-goodies like you were become background to the challenging students that are now front-and-center in your day.

How you deal with this challenge is a crucial test of whether you can ever be a successful teacher. My second grade teacher used to put masking tape on your mouth if you talked out of turn. Although she (and I) turned out to be okay, I can't recommend this approach.

Hair Salon

Getting a haircut is full of anxiety for me. First, when I call to make an appointment, they always ask "Who cuts your hair?" Honestly, I don’t care who cuts my hair, but when I tell them this, I wonder if it’s offensive. Am I discounting their individual talents when I say it doesn’t matter? I do resist saying, "Just anyone with scissors," but I feel like they’re offended anyway. I just want an appointment time that is convenient for me.

When you get there she asks, "So what are we doing today?" I want to say, "Um, cutting my hair shorter? Duh?" but I understand that other people are more creative than me: "I’d like the Brad Pitt on the top and front, but layer it a bit on the sides and back with highlights and French twist with some bacon." I’ve learned to say, with confidence, with a thoughtful look on my face, while running my fingers through my hair, "Hmmm. Let’s take off about half of it." That’s the best I’m gonna do.

Then comes the hard part – small talk. I’ve actually asked friends to give me suggestions as to what I can talk to my barber – sorry, hair stylist – about as she cuts my hair. Weather is a no-brainer, but that always comes up first and lasts about 40 seconds. Then, she’ll ask about my kids, whose hair she’s cut for several years. I’ll ask about her kids. That’s about two minutes gone, total. I feel guilty when the conversation is made up of her asking me something, and then me answering and then asking her the same question back.

If there’s a local news story that’s relevant, I’ll sometimes practice how to bring it up with her, and if my courage allows, I’ll actually do so. This is a major coup for me. Often, I’ll just close my eyes and pretend to doze.

When it’s all done, she asks, "How’s that?" I try to look critically at my reflection, and say with sincerity, "That looks great," when in reality, I don’t really care much because, c’mon, it’ll grow back anyway, right? I do think she’s on to me here, though, because she doesn’t use the hand mirror to show me the back anymore.

I always finish by tipping a dollar more than I think is appropriate, because in my mind this atones for all of my previous sins. It’s worked, because she’s never shaved "Kick Me" into the back of my head. (As far as I know.)

De La Vergne

I took Emma and Lena out for dinner. Could’ve gone for pizza (probably should have) but went to local steak house instead.

This place has had several reincarnations in my time living here, but the first was as a bar called "Top o’ the Stretch." This was the location of my one and only (near) bar fight, about 24 years ago.

I was playing pool with a woman who was also Young Millbrook Faculty at the time. She and I were a team, and we were playing against a pair of rough looking guys. Winner got to keep the table, so there was something on the line. At a point late in the game, my partner didn’t have a clear shot at anything productive, so she chose to make a defensive shot, just shooting the cue ball off of a few cushions, hoping to leave our opponents nothing to shoot at either. She saw this as crafty; the cowboys we were playing did not. There was some swearing, some slamming of pool sticks, a threat to "ask the bartender about the house rules," a quick concession speech by me, and a speedy getaway.

To this day, I’m pretty sure I could have taken the shorter one.

Batting Practice

One of the many disadvantages of getting older is that if you should be at a baseball game, and a ball should come your way, and you should happen to catch it, it's your responsibility to give it to the nearest person eight-years-old or younger, because, c'mon, you're an adult, and the kid brought his glove, and he/she'd be so excited to get a ball, even though you know from having parented a pair of children yourself that the ball will end up lost or under a bed or on the floor so you can trip on it in the dark, while you yourself have waited your whole sports-watching career to catch a ball yourself and have no interested in giving it up to some kid who doesn't even understand the importance of moving a runner from second to third with less than two out, and really just came to the game because he knew his parents would buy him cotton candy AND ice cream.

So, when you watch batting practice, you should find a spot with a lot of empty seats around you. This provides two advantages: One, no little kids will look at you with their pouty eyes when you snare a ball; and two, there's more area that you control, and therefore you have a better chance of catching a ball.

Daniel Murphy hit my ball into the right field seats where I'd found such a spot. It hit the cement stairs 15 feet away from me, bounced up into the steel rafters 20 feet above and 10 feet over from me, rebounded right back at me where I got a hand on it but couldn't make the catch, then rolled under my feet where I picked it up. I glanced around -- nearest kid was 8 rows away -- and determined that the ball was mine to keep.

When I told Emma that I'd gotten a ball, she said, "I want to get a ball!" Too bad for her. Maybe next time.

Stairs

Home ownership is a strange thing. When I look around our Adirondack house, I picture all of the individual pieces as things we own. Ten doorknobs – we own them. Fifty-two guard-rail pieces of wood – ours. Light switches, ceiling fans, carpeting, wood support beams, hot water heater – all ours.

I always tell my auto mechanic that I really shouldn’t be allowed to own a car. I just don’t know enough about how they work to be worthy of having my own. The same is true of a house. I do enjoy when there’s a task I can accomplish, however, like assembling furniture from IKEA or wiring a stereo correctly. I’ve gotten as far as putting shelves up, but that’s about it.

"This light doesn’t work."
"Did you try changing the bulb?"

"The heat isn’t working."
"Did you try turning up the thermostat?"

"This door won’t close."
"Is it supposed to close?"

"The water is brown."
"What color should it be?"

I’m Mr. Handy.

Race the Train

The "Race the Train" race passes right by our house in the Adirondacks. It starts at the rail station in Riparius (elevation 883 feet) and ends at the rail station in North Creek (elevation 1100 feet). That's an elevation change of 217 feet over about 8 miles. Trigonometry says that this is an average angle of elevation of about 1.1 degrees. Big deal.

Okay, there's a killer hill at the start -- maybe 2 miles long. You get some of it back going downhill, but not all.

A scenic tourist train leaves Riparius at the same time as the runners. Along the way, the train stops so that those riding can encourage/taunt the runners. The train continues on to the finish line. About a quarter of the runners beat the train there.

Kathy is the runner. She has run this race twice, and although she hasn't beaten the train, she's finished strong both times.

I am the watcher. I've tried running for recreation a couple of times in my life. I dislike it. People who run also claim to dislike it. I don't think they understand what that word means.

I remember about 20-some years ago resolving to run after practice with a friend of mine. We started around the track and got about a quarter of the way around (which is 1/16 of a mile, if you're counting) before the bugs got so bad that we couldn't possibly continue. Seriously, they were really bad.

That's the last time I've been a runner.

Bean Bag

If you explain to a child how a crossword puzzle works, you tell them something like: "You read the clue, and then you put the answer in the boxes that correspond to that clue, one letter in each box." Pretty simple.

Except when the puzzlewriters get extra clever, and put more than one letter in each box. How ridiculous is this? Isn't "one letter in each box" kind of fundamental to crossword puzzles? Otherwise, why not just write down any old answers on unlined paper?

Plus, it creates an atmosphere of mistrust. In my classes, if we discover a typo in the book, for the next week none of my students trust anything in the book -- it could be a typo! It's like this with crossword puzzles. If I come across one of those clever puzzles, I am suspicious of the next ten puzzles I do.

What if the world was all like this? The law: Stop at a red light. If you don't, you'll get a ticket.
Except when you are supposed to go through it -- then you get a ticket if you stop.

Some things are like this, though. The law says: Don't answer your spouse's rhetorical questions. They're rhetorical! It's patronizing if you answer them.
Except when you're supposed to answer them. Then you're patronizing if you don't.

That's why crossword puzzles are good training for marriage.

Car Dealer

Everything I've learned about cars, I've learned through car failure.

For example, if your voltage regulator fails, your battery can explode on the New York Thruway at 10 PM on a Sunday night. If you're lucky, it'll happen right before an exit to a service station (what are the odds?) and a nice state trooper will drive you and your friends 30 miles back to your college, which will cause a little stir when you're dropped off at your dorm in a police car.

The axle isn't simply the big piece of metal that goes across between the wheels. It's more complicated than that. If you have some parts replaced down by the wheel, almost always they will be refurbished. You'll find this out when the new axle breaks, piercing the tire and leaving your wife and three hiking children (fortunately only) 20 miles from home. They'll tow your car 30 more miles away to repair it, but your mechanic will successfully bill the people who sold him the refurbished axle for the whole cost of repair, towing included.

The oil needs to be changed (presumably to other oil) every 5,000 miles. This can be done at home if you're a friggin' car genius, but now that an oil change is cheaper than a tank of gas, it seems like a good deal to have someone else do it.

Diner

Sometimes we eat at the diner. There are many different "the diners" but they all have similar menus.

I have made two summer resolutions. They are deep and they are achievable at diners.

First, when the server comes and asks, "Can I get you anything to drink?" and I want only water, I am not going to say, "I'll just have water." This is disrespectful to water. I will ask for my water proudly, as in, "I'll have some water please." Maude Barlow would be proud. She's Canadian, so I want her to like me.

My second resolution is that I will resist, really resist, ordering the turkey club whenever I'm in a diner. I tend to look at the menu, read it all very carefully, weigh all options, and then settle on the turkey club. It means I'm boring. I have the same problem in Baskin-Robbins. I'll look at each flavor, both by name and in the tub, and then I'll order the chocolate chip because it has the little slivers of chocolate rather than the big chunks that are in favor now. I've been tempted by the Pralines 'n' Cream, which for years and years was their top selling ice cream, but I can never get myself to order it because I'm not quite sure what a praline is, and it sounds like prune and raisin, which would be a terrible ice cream.

At the diner, I've been turkey-club-free. I'm very proud.

Music Store

Jonah is very good on the guitar. I am very good on the air guitar. As long as the music is loud, and nobody's really looking at me.

My one musical experience was with the saxophone in eighth grade. I was a very literal child. When I was given an instruction by a teacher, I tried to follow it exactly. I had no idea at the time how this was killing creativity, and when I see this trait in my children, it makes me nuts.

Anyway, my music teacher gave me and the two or three others in my sax class very specific instructions about how to blow into the sax. It involved the tongue and puffing and a gentle humming noise you had to make. I practiced this carefully, and after two weeks my saxophone had yet to make a noise. How can you not make a noise with a saxophone? Meanwhile, my peers, who I saw as less able to follow instructions, were nodding at the teacher and then just blowing into their instruments, making great sounds and learning to play "Mary Had a Little Lamb" and the like. Me, I gave up.

This is why I found a musical wife. It's cool when your kids can do things you can't. And they can't flaunt it over me, because I'm still larger than both of them.

Millbrook Chapel

I don't get to many weddings these days. I'm at that awkward age -- my friends and those of my generation in my family are married, but their children are too young. An exception today, as a former student was married in our chapel.

This is very convenient. I could walk to the wedding if I wanted too. I didn't, because the half-mile walk would have generated a sweat that I wouldn't have been able to shake for several hours.

I've been to a bunch of weddings in our chapel, including my brother-in-law's wedding on the night before Emma was born, and my own. I enjoyed this wedding for a slew of reasons. I hadn't seen the bride in a while, and I didn't know anything about the groom at all. The bride's parents are musicians, and they sang and played two songs that communicated their love for their daughter and their excitement for this marriage. Also, the ceremony was brief and to the point.

The best moment reminded me of my own wedding. When the bride said, "I do," she did so with volume and assertiveness, which drew a big laugh from the crowd. My vows required a "Yes" or "No", and when I decided on "Yes," I was loud and proud, and I also got a laugh. Which in the end, it what it's all about, really.

Red Rooster Picnic Table

What makes a burger good? There are certainly different grades of meat, but really its just a grilled hunk of beef.

So what's left? The toppings. The Big Mac has the mysterious "Special Sauce." The Shake Shack has the eponymous "Shack Sauce." The Red Rooster is sneaky -- they sneak some mayonnaise on the bun. You don't necessarily notice that it's there, but when you eat the burger, you think, "That's a good flavor!"

When I'm trying to figure out what to have for lunch, I'll stare into the refrigerator, finding nothing, until I notice the jar of sandwich-sliced dill pickles. Then I'm set, because in my opinion, the pickle makes the sandwich. I'll even stand for the low-fat mayo.

Bolt Bus

Rosa Parks wouldn't change her seat on the bus. Buses in Boston carried African-American school children through rock-throwing crowds. Psychedelic buses carried long-haired hippie people to Woodstock.

If you want to make progress, you'd better get on the bus. If you miss the bus, opportunity has passed you by. Choose your colleagues well, or they may turn on you and throw you under the bus.

A woman was carrying her baby onto a bus. The bus driver looked at her and said, "My God! That's the ugliest baby I've ever seen."

The women was taken aback, and made her way to an empty seat, visibly agitated.

"What's wrong?" asked the man next to her.

"That bus driver insulted me!" replied the woman.

"Wow! Did you tell him off?"

"No," said the woman, "I was too upset."

"Well, you should go give him a piece of your mind. Stand up for yourself!"

"Really? Do you think so?"

"Absolutely," said the man. "Go ahead, I'll hold your monkey."

The Bolt Bus is $20 from DC to NY. No stones, no monkeys and you can sit anywhere you want. And hippies are okay, too, although I didn't see any.

Luxury Suite

Tickets to the CNN luxury suite via a friend I hadn't seen since high school. That's 30 years, if you're counting. And who isn't.

When 30 years pass, that's a lot of catching up to do. Larry noticed that I'd gotten my braces off (he must have forgotten they were gone in 9th grade); I asked him how the nineties had gone. He told me that he'd found himself playing the comparative how-long-ago-was-it game.

For example, when we last saw each other, it was 1979. Go back thirty years from that date, and it's 1949, which to us 1979 high school seniors seemed like forever ago. Another example: The Mets last won the world series in 1986. That was 23 years ago. Go back that far from 1986, and you're in 1963, the year I turned one.

Don't play this game going forward. It's too disturbing.

The most frustrating thing about this perspective on time is that our parents' certainly had this same insight when they were our age. And, they tried to explain it to us in their way. And, of course, it was white noise to us. Now, I'll attempt to explain it to my kids. But I'll do it in a way that they'll understand and learn from. Yes I will.

Nationals Stadium

Major League stadium number 22.

There's a long history of baseball in Washington, DC. A long and painful history. The lasting memory from the earlier incarnation of baseball in DC, the Washington Senators, was "Washington -- first in war, first in peace, last in the American League." Clever guys, those sportswriters.

Two features of the stadium. First, I've seen "Kiss Cam" and "Wave Your Hands Cam" and such on the scoreboard. Washington has "Do You Have a Clue?" They put some unsuspecting fan on the scoreboard, and start a timer to see how long it takes for the person to realize they're on camera. This night, they finished by showing a guy sitting alone with a Mr. Met doll. At first it looked like they'd nailed him, but then it became clear that he was in on the joke, and started feeding the doll licorice and such, all without looking at the camera. Good job.

Second, every stadium has some kind of strange race, usually on the video screen -- dots, construction equipment, whatever. In DC, they have four guys in cartoon costumes of Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Teddy Roosevelt run half a lap around the stadium. Teddy Roosevelt has never won the race. I believe this is revenge for Teddy being on Mount Rushmore when he really has no business being there.

Now we're even.

Rack Truck

The garden is surrounded by a fence. The fence was installed by manly men and my wife. I also helped a little.

The garden is filled with vegetables such as tomatoes, swiss chard, leeks, beets, arugula, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, scarborough fair, basil, and many other things that go in other things to make them more organic and healthy and such.

The rabbits and whatnot like to eat the vegetables, as anyone who has read Potter knows. (Beatrix, not the wizard.) So we put chicken wire even below the ground to keep rodent-types from digging under the fence. (By "we" I mean Kathy; by "chicken wire" I'm not sure what I mean. )

We can outsmart rodents. We are humans! U-S-A! U-S-A!

We need dirt to bury the below-ground fence. We need to fill the back of the truck with dirt (twice) and drive into the backyard to bury the fence. This is a lot of dirt. It is satisfying to fill a hole with dirt. It is easier than digging the hole.

I don't even like beets.

Dog Couch

Archie Bunker's chair is in the Smithsonian. When I went there as a kid and saw it (18 years old is still a kid, in retrospect), I thought it was cute that it was there.

Now that I'm far into my adulthood, I understand much more clearly what that chair represents: Territory. With kids and wives and pets all through my house, I can relate to the Archie's need to shout "Get outta the chair, meathead!"

Unfortunately, I don't have my own chair. The kids have claimed all of the good seats -- somehow, they can sit on the couch, the chair, and the beanbag all at once. Kathy decided when we got the Dog that he'd be allowed up on one piece of furniture -- the blue couch. That couch is now the Dog's couch. It opens up into a bed, but I've never seen him do that. He just lounges on the cushions all day, and sleeps there all night (on his back, oddly.)

If you do sit on the Dog's couch, he kind of walks back and forth in front of you, longingly looking up at his occupied space. If you dare get up for a moment, the Dog pounces and you're out.

Sometimes, he will share, but he doesn't like it. He keeps poking you with his paw.

Locker Room

We live in an area where the power goes out for 12 hours or more once or twice a year.

This is due to an act of god, an act of a vengeful and taunting god, who wants us to be faced head-on with our frailty and weaknesses -- in particular, why can't we remember to put the flashlight back where it belongs so we can find it in the dark. Same with the tea lights, same with the tea light holders. We fumble around and we search and search, we blame each other (okay, we blame the kids) until someone stumbles on something that can provide illumination -- a match! From there, we search slowly until we've recovered all the needed items.

We muddle through the 12 hours, showering and recharging laptops in the athletic center until the lights eventually return. We look at our home, disheveled and covered in wax, and return everything to its proper place. Until the next candlelit dinner or game of flashlight tag.

Bookstore

I decided to start something I've always wanted to do. In part because I married an English teacher, I spend a lot of time in bookstores. Kathy always lingers a bit longer than I would on my own, so I end up wandering around. What I am going to is read a book a chapter at a time whenever I'm in a bookstore.

I needed to select a book, but it had to fit a few criteria. It should be a book that I probably wouldn't buy. It should be a book that I wanted to read. It should be a pretty easy read, given that I'd have to read it in 10 minute chunks. Lastly, it needed to be a book that would be available in most book stores. Two books came to mind, both tagged as "Young Adult" -- Peter Cameron's Someday This Pain Will Be Useful To You, and Nick Hornby's Slam. I read an article last year about how publishers are more and more labeling books as Young Adult, mostly because they're not racy enough.

I went to college with Peter Cameron, so I've been a loyal reader. I suspected this book would require a bit too much thought for my project. So, I went with the Nick Hornby.

I'm through chapter one, and I'm very pleased with my choice. Hornby is funny and real and honest, and writes with a voice I can understand. I loved Fever Pitch and High Fidelity, and I was pleased when a line in Slam echoed one of the great lines in the film adaptation of High Fidelity:

I mean, I've read books like "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" and "Love in the Time of Cholera", and I think I've understood them. They're about girls, right? Just kidding. But I have to say my all-time favorite book is Johnny Cash's autobiography "Cash" by Johnny Cash.

I'm a big fan of redundancy.

Playground

I don't think of it as a playground. I think of it as a physics lab, by which I mean a festival of applied math.

The swing, one might assume, hangs in a parabolic shape. One would be wrong. It's a catenary. That's the shape formed by a hanging chain. Oddly, if you hang a cable and then use it to build a suspension bridge, the weight of the bridge causes the cable to become a parabola. There is order to the world.

None of this really matters to Nate, my 3-year-old nephew and playground companion. He loves to swing. I thought that I'd be stuck pushing him -- not my favorite thing to do, but an expectation of the uncle at the playground nevertheless. I did have to lift him up on the swing, and then I was pleased to find that he preferred that I swing next to him. We rocked gently for a while, just a few feet off the ground, sometimes in sync, sometimes not. After a while, I stood up and then realized that Nate was holding back out of courtesy to me. He swung higher and higher, until I started to get that feeling you get when you watch a 3-year-old who can swim go underwater. Logic says he knows what he's doing; emotion says "aaaaaaaaaah!" I withheld my panic, and Nate did just fine.

On the slide, he was on his own. I couldn't fit through the tube.

Shake Shack

How long does it take to become a New York landmark? No time at all if you ask the Shake Shack people. Like many who don't live in Manhattan, my first exposure to the Shake Shack was at Citi Field, in the section of food that's dedicated to local restaurants. I assumed that the Shake Shack was some old-time Coney Island place that had been there forever.

Wrong. They opened a location in Madison Square Park in 2004. Retro burgers, shakes, etc.

Which raises the question: How long to you have to be in a place until you can boast about how long you've been there? I see signs now that say "since 1994" and I think, big deal. I've been here "since 1962."

Age definitely warps perspective.

Pepe's Pizza

Do I do restaurant reviews? I do!

Run, don't walk, to Pepe's Pizza in Fairfield, Connecticut. This has nothing to do with the food -- I just like the idea of people arriving out of breath to order pizza. Plus, it's on a busy road so running could create some comic car accidents. Especially if it's icy.

It is good pizza -- every location in America has a place that's "the best pizza around." This is Fairfield's.

One odd experience, though. I got pizza to go, and they asked me if I wanted it sliced, or if I'd slice it at home. I didn't understand the question at first -- who slices their own pizza? I guess that enough people in Fairfield do to warrant the question. Then, when they sliced it, they didn't go with the traditional radial pizza slices, loved by fraction-teaching math teachers all over the country. They cut it like a six-year-old might -- willy-nilly random cuts until it seemed like they were done. As a result, when eating the pizza it was difficult to choose which slice to take to get the traditional crust-to-cheese ratio. Some slice had no crust at all.

Disturbing, but tasty.

Dinner Table

My culinary skills are stunted.

After college, I spent one year at a day school where I had to deal with my own food. I was in St. Croix, and I remember eating out often. I know I made dinners, but I have no memory of them.

Then, I came to boarding school where all meals are prepared in the dining hall. The early summers when I was here, we'd do a potluck kind of thing most nights -- I was usually the ice cream guy.

I did learn to grill, at least well enough to kill all bacteria on different kinds of meat, and some fish.

Then, I married a person who both likes to cook and does so really well. Summer cooking, she claims, is a fun thing to do, although I know that's not true every night. Still, any skills that I might have had have atrophied, and the kids are well aware when Dad is cooking, and their expectations are appropriately lowered. I suspect even the Dog is disappointed.

Backyard Beard Trim

Kathy trimmed my beard. Probably about an inch and a half. Nobody notices.

When you're a kid, and you get a haircut, you take some teasing the next day in school. Even if it's just someone saying, "Hey. You got a haircut," it feels like teasing. I don't know why that is.

I remember the first time I got a haircut and I realized that I didn't care about those comments. This was very liberating.

Now, I have a beard I'm kind of tired of. I've considered shaving, but part of the reason I haven't is that all of my current students only know me with a beard. So it'll be, "Hey! You shaved your beard!" times 250.

And if you haven't stopped reading these posts by now, please feel free to do so. I think I've reached bottom.

Movie Theater

I had a day alone in Westchester to a movie. I don't mind attending movies alone. There are two movies I saw by myself that I remember clearly.

1) In 1989, I was in a math program at the University of California at Santa Barbara. UCSB is actually located about 10 miles from Santa Barbara. One hot Sunday afternoon, I decided to bike into the city to see Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. The theater was at the top of a hill, so when I finally sat down, I was hot and drenched with sweat. Which is exactly how you should see that film -- it takes place on a very hot day, and the weather might be the main character.

2) In 2000, I arrived in Chicago one evening to attend a math conference. It was raining out, so I decided to go see High Fidelity, the adaptation of a Nick Hornby book I loved. The book took place in London, but they'd moved the film's setting to.....Chicago! Cool. They were very true to the book, and it was a great film.

Today's film (I Love You, Beth Cooper), not so much. He did save the cheerleader, though.

Citi Field

I bought a ticket package for the Mets this year off of a guy via Craigslist. He had purchased two 15-game "Opening Day" packages. He and a friend went to opening day, then he got engaged and moved to St. Louis. I bought the other 14 games from him for less than half price. Cool.

What this means is that we have the same seats for all of these games. What this really means is that so do the people all around us.

In 1972, when I was 10 years old, my family bought two seasons tickets to the New York Rangers. We kept these tickets for about 18 years. My relationship with the people around us was fun and unusual. Twenty-five to forty times a year (plus playoffs), we'd watch games together. They'd ask about my own hockey playing, school, college, jobs and so on. I was a kid, so I never asked back. In retrospect, I imagine I was learning what it was like to be a regular at a neighborhood bar. There was the friendly guy behind me who I imagined as someone's retired grandfather. There was the young, single, sort of awkward guy next to us who had found a regular place among this crowd. There was the couple down the row who ran a pool for a number of years -- for a dollar, you could pick a Ranger's name out of a bag, and if the player you picked scored the first goal, you won all the money. There was the guy two rows down who rooted against the Rangers, vocally, every single game. There were the two guys in front of us who, whenever someone was paged over the public address system, would shout in unison, "Your house burned down!" or some other horrible fate.

Lastly, there was my grandfather, who had his own place in this group as the cynical old-timer. He and I went to a lot of games together, and once we'd successfully arrived safely in New York (driving with my grandfather was always a white-knuckle affair) I always had a great time. When I went off to college, he would sometimes go down to games by himself. If he could find a space on the street, he'd give the ticket to a scalper he'd come to know and split the money with him. If he couldn't find a space, he'd pull over to the curb and give the scalper both tickets, and then drive home and watch the game on television. My grandfather didn't ever pay for parking.

I bought a ticket from that same scalper last March. I don't think he gave me a deal.

Orthodontist's Office

Emma got her braces off.

Since Emma got braces, I've been looking at our student's teeth pretty regularly. And they all have straight teeth. Every one of them. When I ask them if they've had braces, they all have. Every one of them.

There's something disturbing about this. We demand uniform teeth. Why has our society developed this way? I know that it's one way to decide if a horse is a good one -- maybe it's related. What's next, though? Nose jobs for everyone? Same haircut all around? Everyone bathes every day? What?

Emma's had more braces than any kid should endure. Round one was a few years ago. This included a palate expander, which was a steel bar that ran across the roof of her mouth. For the first week or so, we had to reach in and use a tool to tighten it each night. (I'd pretend I was Dr. Frankenstein -- that went over well.) Then, a full set of braces (colored ones, if I remember correctly.)

She got those off, and went a year or two without anything. Then, full-blown braces -- rubber bands, steely smile, the whole ball of wax (sometime literally if the metal hurt.) This was part of the plan all along, but it's been a long process.

She looks good, though.

Jonah got the Invisalign system thingie last fall. It wasn't any cheaper, but it was pretty amazing. He went through the first set the ordered for him, and he thought he might be done last week, but they've ordered a few more to fine-tune things. A little disappointed, he was. I was worried because he can be appropriately scatterbrained for his age, but he's been awesome with these things -- no reminders needed, never close to losing one. He took great care of himself.

I suppose I shouldn't complain about every kid needing straight teeth. Our society has decided that every kid should learn math -- that's worked out well for me. My new title: "Orothodontist of Quantitative Reasoning."

Shakespeare in the Park

Twelfth Night's Sir Andrew Aguecheek

and

Otto from A Fish Called Wanda:

Literary Cousins

Twelfth Night:

Sir Toby Belch: Excellent! I smell a device.

Sir Andrew Aguecheek: I have't in my nose too.

A Fish Called Wanda:

Otto: What was the middle thing?

*********************************************

Twelfth Night:

Sir Andrew Aguecheek: No, faith, I'll not stay a jot longer.

Sir Toby Belch: Thy reason, dear venom, give thy reason.

Fabian: You must needs yield your reason, Sir Andrew.

Sir Andrew Aguecheek: Marry, I saw your niece do more favours to the count's serving-man than ever she bestowed upon me; I saw't i' the orchard.

Sir Toby Belch: Did she see thee the while, old boy? tell me that.

Sir Andrew Aguecheek: As plain as I see you now.

Fabian: This was a great argument of love in her toward you.

Sir Andrew Aguecheek: 'Slight, will you make an ass o' me?

A Fish Called Wanda:

Otto: Don't call me stupid!

*********************************************

Twelfth Night:

Sir Toby Belch: [Reads a letter of challenge written by Sir Andrew Aguecheek] 'Fare thee well; and God have mercy upon one of our souls! He may have mercy upon mine; but my hope is better, and so look to thyself. Thy friend, as thou usest him, and thy sworn enemy, ANDREW AGUECHEEK.

A Fish Called Wanda:

Otto: It's a Buddhist meditation technique, focuses your aggression. The monks used to do it before they went into battle.

*********************************************

Twelfth Night:

Sir Andrew Aguecheek: Plague on't, an I thought he had been valiant and so cunning in fence, I'd have seen him damned ere I'd have challenged him. Let him let the matter slip, and I'll give him my horse, grey Capilet.

A Fish Called Wanda

Otto: It's K-K-K-Ken, coming to k-k-k-kill me!