Study

iPhoto has a new feature -- face recognition. It will scan your photos, identify faces, and let you put in the names of the people. Even better, once you start putting names in, it will search the photos for that face and suggest that it's that person.

This has become obsessive for me. We just got a new computer, and I've finally put all of our digital photos in one place -- over 12,000 of them it turns out -- and I've spent a bunch of hours already obsessively naming faces.

This is entertaining for several reasons. When you attach some faces to a name, iPhoto will show you zoomed in views of all the photos of that person in one window in order of date taken. For our children, this is cool because you see them get older as the pictures go on. As you put in more names, the program gets better at identifying a particular person.

There are still some issues, though. I have a bunch of photos of my friend Kevin over the years, but since many are taken at the beach, he's wearing his sunglasses. So iPhoto identifies all people with sunglasses as Kevin. If a photo is of a person with a hat, it returns photos of people in hats.

The biggest decision I've had to make is who warrants a name? Certainly immediate family. Second cousins who we have about five pictures of? Jonah's hockey teammates? It's a tough call.

The most entertaining thing, though, is who the computer thinks people are. My nephew Zev is eight, but it will sometimes ask about my 70-ish uncle, "Is this Zev?" Stupid computer.

Guest Room

Online banking is like a video game.

That's dangerous.

Study

Like many iPhone owners, I'm addicted, even though we have no cell service at our house. We do have wifi, and that's all I need.

The application I use the most is called "Crosswords." Each day, it downloads 5-7 crossword puzzles to help me waste time. The king of the puzzles is, of course, ,The New York Times. I had done these sporadically in my life, but over the last year or so I've been a daily doer. Mostly.

See, the Times puzzles increase in difficulty through the week.

Monday's puzzle is often so easy, it seems like it should be from TV Guide. Sample clue: Loser to a tortoise, in a fable (4 letters). Not very satisfying.

Tuesday is pretty easy, too. Simpson and Kudrow (5 letters).

Wednesday and Thursday are the weekday ones I enjoy most, and I imagine I'm not alone. They're doable, but they take some time. The clues are such that you can make steady progress, knocking off an answer here and there.

Friday and Saturday are a whole different beast. Often, the answers are multiple words, so they're tough to get without some cross-letters; but cross-letters are hard to get, too. So I end up staring at a corner of the puzzle, until (if I'm lucky) the whole section comes to me at once. I'll admit that this feels pretty good when it happens, but I find I don't have the patience to work at this very often. Maybe summertime can change this.

The Sunday puzzle is the best, of course. I don't know if it's the electronic version that helps me, but I've been far more successful on the iPhone than I ever remember being on paper.

There's a feature on the iPhone that times how long you take to solve a puzzle, then submits it to a site and compares you with all other solvers. The puzzles are online at 10 PM the day before. I like to get them then and solve them, so that for a brief few hours I'm on the leaderboard.

Whatever builds your self-esteem, right?

Neighbor's Backyard

Another pot luck, this time without the rain.

People are always saying to me, "Todd, I always feel awkward at cocktail parties or pot lucks or whatever. Do you have any advice you can offer?"

In fact, I do. See, I too once felt awkward at informal social events. Who would I talk to? Who would want to talk to me? What would we talk about? Often, I have to make a mental crib list of topics to discuss with the woman who cuts my hair, so parties have been a source of anxiety for me.

Until I discovered the beauty of the Circle of Chairs. Many parties I have been to, in particular summer parties, have had this feature: there are a small number of chairs on the lawn formed in a circle.

My fool-proof advice: sit in one of those chairs, and don't leave it for any reason. There is one key to being able to do this. You have to be willing to ask someone to get your food for you. This can work if you do so in a funny way. Last night, I asked/demanded that the host's daughter get me food -- I'll be teaching her calculus next year, so we could joke as if she was kissing up to me. Even though she really was. It would be inappropriate for her to get me a beer, so I relied on the kindness of others. No problem there, the world has been trained to say, "Can I get you a beer?"

There are many advantages to approaching a party in this manner. Most critically, you avoid the cocktail-party-liar's-poker dynamic. This happens when you are in a conversation with one other person for a while, and then a third person comes along. There's a certain amount of time that must pass before either of the original two people can make an excuse to leave, and both people know this. So it becomes a game of chicken -- the first one to recognize that a polite amount of time has passed gets to move on, while the other person is then part of yet another one-on-one conversation.

When you're sitting among the Circle of Chairs, however, you're all set. There are always enough people who want to sit, and you're never trapped in a one-on-one conversation. Plus, you get to sit.

Please note: My fear of one-on-one conversations has nothing to do with my affection for the people involved. I am unable to simply have a conversation at a party. I'm always in meta-land, thinking about what questions I need to ask, what expression I should have on my face, what dramatic twists I need to add to my own stories, and so on. It's very stressful.

Whereas, in the chair circle, I can sit and listen to other people's conversation, and occasionally insert the random wisecrack. I am more comfortable doing this because I am shallow and awkward. It's not my fault, though. I blame television.

Backyard

Okay, I didn't actually sit on this.  I had every intention of doing so -- I drove 40 miles to my uncle's house to get this bench, another like it, and a picnic table to go in between them, loaded it on the borrowed school truck, just me and Archimedes, and drove 40 miles back.  Max and Jonah were there to help unloading.

All of this for the graduation picnic / pot luck.  Then -- rain.  Which raised the question, can you have a picnic indoors?  It seems that you can have a picnic outdoors that's just burgers and such, but served with informal seating, maybe a picnic table.  If you have a picnic inside, however, you need a blanket on the floor.  Overcompensation, I suppose.

Big turnout, despite the weather.  Kids, parents, siblings, could have been 30 people, could have been 50.  Several stayed overnight -- I'm not exactly sure which ones, because some were gone when I woke up.

At some point in our kids' lives, play-dates switched from being parent-planned to being kid-planned.  At this point, Emma regularly has sleepovers (both home and away) where we never communicate with the other parents.  This is either (a) trusting or (b) foolish.  In the television comedies, this is how each parent thinks the kids are at the other's house, and instead they're at a concert in Philadelphia or Cleveland or somewhere.  I think this was the plot of about 7 Cosby shows, one for each kid.

We're okay for now, I think, because they're too young to drive.  Or perhaps she's been to many concerts without getting caught.  Sometimes, life doesn't imitate art.

Emma's 8th Grade Graduation

I'd like to say that this brought back memories of my own 8th grade moving up ceremony, but it didn't -- those memories have been present since then.

In 8th grade, we had an English teacher named Mr. Freeze at the beginning of the year.  He was a strange dude -- if you were getting answers right, he'd call on you for the next one and say, "Go ahead, Todd, you're batting a hundred."  He also told us once about a dream he'd had about going into a bakery to get a loaf of bread, and instead of bread in the display, there was his worst enemy, bread size.  He ordered him from the baker, who put him in the slicer and then into a bag.  As was Mr. Freeze's custom with a fresh loaf of bread, he told us, he then ate the end piece / scalp, nice and warm.  

He left in the middle of the year for a reason I don't remember, and he was replaced by the woman who was quickly everyone's favorite teacher -- Ms. Rabinowitz.  She was young and cool and smart and a great teacher, and we all wanted her to like us.  At my 8th grade prize night, every section of every class gave two awards for excellence.  On the day of the ceremony, Ms. Rabinowitz took me and my friend Larry aside, and said, "I just want you two to know that you've done really wonderful work this year."  To me, this meant we were a shoe-in for the awards for that class.

Of course, that night the awards went to Steve M. and Monica G.  Her talk to us, I understood, was the consolation prize.  I appreciated that, but the fact that this is the only specific memory I have from her wonderful 8th grade English class has been the subject of my own speech to the student body when I have presented our student prize in math.  Prizes can distract from what's important, and it's questionable to me whether they have value at all in an educational setting.

For me, this all fit nicely into a box until I reconnected with Larry lately through Facebook.  I asked Larry what he remembered from 8th grade English.  He told me that he remembered Ms. Rabinowitz giving Larry and me some dialogue from a play, but without the stage directions.  It was our task to go out into the hall and work out a presentation of the text that would make it make sense to our classmates.  Larry said he remembered thinking that there was no way we'd be able to do that, but we worked at it and we pulled it off.  

So, to recap:  Larry remembers a teacher giving him a challenging task that he didn't think he could do, but then did successfully, and felt the pride earned from a job well done.  I remember not getting a prize.

There's something here that a therapist can unravel that explains why I've chosen a career in teaching.

In Emma's school district, the 8th grade ceremony is sort of anti-climactic.  There's only one high school, and it's down the hall from the middle school.  In fact, some of the resources are shared.  So while it is a milestone to enter high school, it's not very dramatic.

For Emma, that isn't the case.  This is her last year at Webutuck, as she'll be attending Millbrook in the fall.  We all have mixed feelings about that.  We've liked the schooling she's gotten, and we really like her friends.  When the chorus sang the obligatory graduation song with the cliched but oh-so-true lyrics, it was actually very hard to listen.  This is a moment of change in Emma's life, and although we're not moving and I'm sure her friends will remain an important part of her life, it is very different not to go to school with them every day.  It was a pretty emotional moment for Emma, and thus for her parents.  Sometimes, even cliches are true.

Noon Mark Diner, Keene Valley

On my way to pick up Jonah and friend in Lake Placid, I stopped and had breakfast at the Noon Mark Diner -- three blueberry whole wheat pancakes. Tasty.

This diner has a cushy location. It's right in the middle of hiking country, so everyone who eats there (it seems) is either on their way out or on their way back. Either way, food is much appreciated, and it doesn't even matter how good it is. 

It's also a place that has some indirect meaning to me; that is, it has meaning to people who are important to me, specifically my friend Helen and my wife. For both, it is a special place where they've had good moments in their lives.

I think. See, I could be remembering this incorrectly. Maybe one or both of them said to me one time, "That place has good pancakes." I extrapolated, and in my mind the Noon Mark Diner is, for Helen, as important in her life as the chapel she was married in.

I call this the "Cream Cheese and Jelly Dynamic." Or at least, that's what I'm calling it right now. When I was in about third grade, I must have asked for a cream cheese and jelly sandwich for lunch. Being a typical boy, anything other than a grunt and a shrug is very, very meaningful. Thus, I received a cream cheese and jelly sandwich in my lunch each day for the next nine years. It occurred to me a few years ago that at any point, I could have asked my mom to pack something else, and she would certainly have obliged. I think I didn't because it would have required more than a grunt and a shrug and I couldn't be bothered.

More awkward than this is the same dynamic with new in-laws. Whatever is offered from them to me, I do my best to accept with effusive appreciation and joy, no matter what I really think. My in-laws, on the other hand, want me to be happy, so anything that makes me happy will become part of our routine. Thus, I consumed far more tuna sandwiches and grapefruit juice than I really cared for.

The bright side is that we're past that now, and can speak honestly about all things.  Plus, they never offered me cream cheese and jelly.

Field Day

This was Emma's last field day.

In the days leading up to her second grade field day, Emma spent hours bouncing around the house and yard in a pillowcase, practicing for the sack race. When the day of the race came, she won a fifty yard race by about 20 yards.

By the next year, her win had become legendary among her classmates, and they all but conceded the race to her before it started. Of course, on race day, Emma finished about tenth out of twelve. If life were a TV show, the music would have come up, and she would have had a teary conversation with her sensitive yet firm Dad about competition and overconfidence, as she hugged a favorite stuffed animal (Mr. something) and the Dog sat at her feet.  A very important lesson would have been learned. Truthfully, though, I think that she thought it was just kind of funny.

It helped, too, that she won other events. She's always been very fast, as has her friend Lena, another Millbrook faculty child. Between them, they pretty much clean up on the sprint races. The 100 and 200 have been Emma's over the years, and the 400 has belonged to Lena.

A few years ago, they had a classic duel in the 400 where Emma fell behind early, then lost both her shoes, then closed the gap in her socks, only to come up a little short. Today, they ran against each other in the 400 for the last time, and they crossed the finish line holding hands.

Music UP

Pot Luck

I snuck a seat here during the Pot Luck, but for the most part, I and everyone else stood.  Is this normal?  I think it probably is in a house like ours -- family room / dining area / kitchen, all one big room.  Where do you go?  Mostly, you stand around the kitchen counter.  Probably 25 people or so, eating standing up.

How much food should you bring to a Pot Luck?  My answer is mathematical.  Suppose there are four in your family.  You should bring enough food to fill all of your plates with what you'd eat.  For example, if you're going to bring boneless chicken breasts, you do some addition:

What I'll eat	Chicken Equivalent
1 Chicken Breast	1 Chicken Breast
Maybe some rice	1/3 Chicken Breast
How about a vegetable?	1/4 Chicken Breast
Like, Cheese and Crackers, Chips and Salsa, etc.	1/4 Chicken Breast
Probably a drink or something	1/3 Chicken Breast
Maybe a little dessert?	1/4 Chicken Breast
No coffee for me	0 Chicken Breasts

In effect, it's a fancy barter system.  We bring chicken and trade it for other foods.  According to my calculations, we needed to bring 2 5/12 chicken breasts per person.  Tonight we had three of us going, so we needed to bring 7 1/4 chicken breasts.  And that's without the host discount.

I know you're wondering -- how much chicken did we bring?  I have no idea -- ask Kathy.

The Car

Got in the car to go out with the family (minus Jonah -- off hiking) to meet my parents for dinner.  Opened the door and realized that Kathy had left the sunroof  open.

Wait -- I forgot to mention that it was raining.  Pouring, actually.  So for the second time this week, my butt got wet.

It was worth it, though, because it allowed me once again to show my true character.  I could have said things like, "Dammit!  Close the sunroof!" or other obvious admonishments that would accomplish nothing but to make me feel smug and self-righteous.  Instead, I smiled calmly and said nothing.  That way, I'm rising above it all.  I have a great perspective.  I am unflappable.  I know what's important and what's trivial.  I know that telling your spouse something she already knows is not the best way to build a healthy relationship.  I am forgiving, I am optimistic, I am continually upbeat and positive.  I don't see flaws; I see charming quirks.  I am patient and understanding, and I see the big picture.  I am great and I feel great.

This is why I am so wonderful / irritating.

Manhattan

Jonah had a camp orientation day near White Plains from 8:15 to 4:15.  So I dropped him off, drove into Manhattan, parked around 90th street and put "blintzes" into the iPhone map search.

Result: Barney Greengrass.  Apparently, this is one of those New York landmarks that people who live in the neighborhood know all about.  If I went there for breakfast, I could be on the "inside."  My dream.

I didn't order the blintzes, though.  They weren't prominently featured on the menu, so I figured I'd stay away.  Instead, I took revenge on a waitress at the Stage Door Deli.

Last year, Kathy was in NY for a conference, and I went with her.  I went into the Stage Door Deli to get breakfast, planning to order lox and a bagel.  I was greeted by this surly waitress ("Yeah, fine, sit anywhere.") who irritated me immediately.

Me:  "I'll have a poppy bagel and lox, please."

Waitress:  "Are you sure?  The lox is very salty, you know.  Maybe you want the Nova."

Me (internally):  "How dare you question my knowledge of lox.  Look at me, look at my face, my features.  Don't I look like I know my way around lox??"

Me (super-internally): "Hmm.  I didn't know that.  Do I want the salty lox?  Probably not -- I should probably get the Nova."

Me (out loud, with a somewhat incredulous scowl):  "No, I want the lox!"

So the lox came, and it was really, really, really, salty.  But I ate it, every last bit.  That showed her.

Today, I just ordered a poppy bagel and Nova.  Confidently.  Take that!

Home

What, I have to be fascinating every day? 

Just home tonight -- Jonah was out babysitting, Emma was at a friend's house, Kathy is up at a Breadloaf reunion.  So just me and the Dog.  Which meant I had total control over both the television and the couch.  (The Dog has his own couch.) Cool.

Mets beat Tampa Bay on the television.  The Dog pops out of his nap when he hears some interesting sound from the stereo television.  Barks, then does nothing.  Returns to his nap.  Fascinating.

That's my Friday.

Daily Show taping

Pretty fun, but kind of a long day for a short show. Worth it, though. Got there 3:15, left at about 7.

That Jon Stewart is a smart guy, and I admire how he manages to be satirical and somewhat immature, but does try to make intelligent peace about issues of importance, even if he is totally childish about things that are not important. Tonight, intelligent piece about abortion with Mike Huckabee.

After the show, Stewart said, "Yup, a 16-minute discussion about abortion. That's what we call comedy."

I was not the guy chided by Stewart for giggling. I don't laugh out loud, as my children will tell you. There's a very good reason: everything is funny, and if I laughed, I'd never do anything else. So I'm a bad audience member.

This is the first illegally photographed chair, by the way. No pictures! No pictures! No pictures!

I took one anyway. Sue me.

Mens' League Hockey

I believe that there's no team sport like hockey. Before and after the game, it's all about the locker room -- a cramped space shared by 15 or so boys/men/manboys. Parents of youth hockey players who didn't play themselves can't understand why it takes so long for their kids to change after a game. They don't get it.

During the game, there's nothing like a hockey bench. Either you're on the ice, or you just came off the ice, or you're about to go on the ice. There's not really a moment for your mind to rest.

I've been playing with the same team for a long time -- some of the guys for 20 years or so. The team is getting younger. Tonight we had a couple of former Millbrook students, and father/son pairs. We tied a pretty good team (no thanks to me, unfortunately.)

I choose to sit on a chair instead of a bench.

Backyard

So if you sit down to dinner on one of these chairs -- the kind with the outdoor cushion -- what do you do when you realize the cushion is wet?

This is not a hypothetical question -- this actually happened to me! (I know, incredible, right?) I decided that once my butt was wet, there was no going back, so I just sat it out.

None of the three other people on cushions mentioned wet butts. I think they would have confessed, so I've go to think that I was just unlucky. Or maybe I'm hanging out with a bunch of liars.

I'd say it's about 50-50.

Sports Awards Banquet

I came in late, so there weren't open cafeteria seats. So, floor for me. Padded back, not too bad.

This is probably my 100th sports banquet of one kind or another. Sports banquets have played an important role in human history. I believe the Last Supper was a sports banquet. Or a Seder, but really that's the same.

We were there because Emma ran track on the high school varsity team. As an eighth grader, she did pretty well -- she missed going to the sectionals or states or something by two-hundredths of a second. That's okay, because it took place on the same day as the eighth grade class trip, and she wouldn't have gone anyway.

They did misspell her name on the certificate. They offered to fix it, but she declined -- I think she's like me (See: Honors Dinner.)

One thing that was kind of fun was that the baseball team won their sectional tournament this year. Most of the kids on that team played on the Little League team that I helped coach six or seven years ago. That was Jonah's first year on Little League, and we won the league. Those kids have all grown much taller. I have not.

Lake George

The family went kayaking; I went to finish some work so I can officially start my summer.

They went five miles down the Hudson; I went to Johnny Rockets.

I'd never been there before, but I can now add it to a growing list of places that look like they serve a purpose on the outside, but in reality serve terrible food on the inside. (My list: TGIFridays, Chile's, and the big-time leader/loser: Ruby Tuesday's.)

They did play Rave On on the stereo, and they had the Mets / Yankees game on TV, and they had these cool little boxes that you could get the audio from any of the 10 TV sports events they had going. But the chicken tasted like it was boiled and then tossed on white bread.

Truthfully, I should have gone kayaking.

(Seriously, this is what people use the internet for??)

Castle Rock

One of nature's many seats.

This is not Castle Rock itself. I waited here with the Dog while Kathy ascended the last quarter-mile on slippery rocks. Pretty sure the Dog wouldn't have survived. He'd nearly sprinted off a 12-foot drop moments earlier.

It was raining, but thankfully this rock was in a cave. But not one of those mildewy, moist caves. A dry cave. Yeah.

I like to listen to my iPod when hiking. This is okay with my wife, because she walks faster than I do in the woods. I walk faster than she does in the city. People frown on the use of headphones in the woods. That's because people like to frown on people. I, for example, enjoy frowning on people who frown on people. See how it works?

On the iPod, I listened to This American Life, an episode called Classifieds. Is that okay to listen to in the woods? I would have been listening to the baseball game, but no cell service.

I think next time I'll try to find some "woodland sounds" to listen to.

Saratoga Performing Arts Center

Number nine again. How odd. And square, too.

This time in the balcony for The Hold Steady. (Dave Matthews closed for them.)

I actually only sat in this seat for about 5 Dave Matthews songs - Jonah had it the rest of the time. eBay came up with four lawn seats and this one pavilion seat for the four of us and Emma's friend. Mostly, I'm guessing, from teenagers who thought they could miss school to get there. Boo-hoo.

Anyway, the rest of the show was spent on the lawn in the throngs of teenage misbehavior -- the type of things that the students spend tons of energy hiding from us during the year. Didn't see anyone we knew, though, which was a relief.

Emma was repulsed by the whole scene. Jonah liked the music. Kathy had fun. The dog stayed in the car. Luis Castillo should have had a better Little League coach.

Citi Field

I was in seat 9.  Jonah in 8.  Although the tickets we held were reversed.  

Which might not seem like a big deal, except that one time before we were married, I went to a Mets game with Kathy and her brothers Tom and Jim.  Kathy and Jim had sat in each other's seats, when the Mets announced the winner of a $500 gift certificate from a jewelry store in Staten Island was sitting in seat......Kathy's seat!  But Jim's ticket!  They squabbled like siblings for a bit, then agreed to split it.

Later, Jim bought his then-girlfriend (and future ex-girlfriend) a necklace or something.  Kathy bought her then-boyfriend (and future husband), um, nothing.  And bought herself a watch.  That she later lost.  Hah.

Mets lost, too.  (Tonight, that is.  Don't remember much about 1987.)

Back Porch

Emma built this for Kathy for Mother's Day, although it just came home today. That's pretty impressive, but I'm in total awe because my memory from shop in high school was that I spent six weeks trying to plane a board to make a right angle. And failed. (Side comment: I did eventually learn how to board a plane, so I've got that.)

Emma, on the other hand, took a pile of wood and made a chair.

Plus, now I can't wait for Father's Day. (I'm pretty sure she's making me a 54" LCD 1080p HDTV. She's soldering something in there at night, anyway.)

Honors Dinner

Stick around long enough, you get a chair.

It has my name engraved on it, too. They spelled it correctly, which of course wasn't a surprise, although I must admit that I was sort of hoping for an error. I don't know why it is, but I sort of enjoy errors that are totally unimportant. Maybe because I can feel good about not throwing a hissy fit about something that really doesn't deserve a hissy fit, but maybe someone wouldn't blame you if you threw one anyway.

Red Rooster

If you haven't had a cheeseburger at the Red Rooster on Route 22 in Brewster, NY, get in your car now.

I just had ice cream this time.

I read once that the companies that make chairs like this design them so that they're only comfortable for a short period of time, so people won't linger. That's good thinking, but not as good as the irritating high-pitched sound that only teenagers can hear (which the teenagers, of course, then co-opted for their own purposes -- curse them!)

I only sat for about 8 minutes. I was pretty comfortable. Jonah had the chicken nuggets. I tried to make the high-pitched sound myself, but he didn't notice.