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!

Yankee Stadium

This was my 21st major league stadium. Here's the list, in no particular order:

1. New York (NL) - Shea Stadium*^!

2. New York (NL) - Citi Field!

3. New York (AL) - Yankee Stadium^!

4. Boston - Fenway Park!

5. Montreal - Jarry Park^

6. Montreal - Olympic Stadium

7. Philadelphia - Citizens Bank Park

8. Baltimore - Camden Yards!

9. Atlanta - Turner Field*+

10. Chicago - Wrigley Field*#!<

11. Houston - Astrodome#^!

12. St. Louis - Busch Stadium (old)#^

13. St. Louis - Busch Stadium (new)*$

14. Seattle - Kingdome^!

15. Seattle - Safeco Park!

16. Oakland - Oakland-Alameda County Stadium*@

17. San Francisco - AT & T Park%!

18. Los Angeles - Dodger Stadium

19. Anaheim - Anaheim Stadium%&

20. San Diego - Jack Murphy Stadium#^!

21. New York (AL) - Yankee Stadium (new)*

* = stadiums where I have attended games alone.

# = stadiums where people who would never have gone to a game otherwise came with me because they didn't want me to go alone.

@= stadiums where Rickey Henderson came to bat 4 times, walked 4 times, stole 5 bases, scored 4 runs. A's lost 14-6. This is kind of like seeing Babe Ruth hit 4 home runs.

%= stadiums where I attended All-Star games.

+ = stadiums where I had a long layover at the airport, so I took the train to the game, got there really early, watched batting practice and the top half of the first inning, then had to take the train back to the airport.

^ = stadiums that no longer exist.

$ = stadiums that were so new, that when I got there they determined that my seat hadn't been actually built, so they moved me 10 rows behind third base.

! = stadiums where I have attended games with relatives.

< = stadiums where Jonah saw his first major league baseball game.

> = stadiums where Emma was 5, Jonah was 7, the game was delayed two hours by rain, Mike Mussina pitched a 1-hit, 15 strikeout complete game, my family had a great time, and I confirmed that I'd chosen a good family (and David Ortiz and Johan Santana played before anyone cared who they were.)

& = stadiums where, after the game, with my car unmoving in the parking lot, a woman hit the corner of my bumper, continued to move forward as my car scratched the entire side of her car, finally disengaged, stopped, got out of her car and said to me, "Don't you know how to drive???"

Hudson River, Riparius

Every summer location has an ice cream place. Ours is along the Hudson River, a short walk from our house. It's located at one end of a scenic railroad that travels from North Creek to Riparius, and the ice cream store itself is located in an old caboose.

People are loyal to their local ice cream brand. Ours is called "Hershey's." I think they make it in the back. My favorite flavor is Denali ^TM Moose Tracks. Denali^TM must be the owner of the place.

We sat eating ice cream, me and the wife and the Dog, when the train arrived at the station. The Dog has taken a liking to chasing cars; however, the train with its enormous size and very loud horn and whatnot made the Dog scurry away, the big chicken, nearly knocking my ice cream over with his leash. Or perhaps that was the Dog's master plan. Don't sell him short.

Failed, though.

Bolton Landing

When watching fireworks, I like to chant "Blue one! Blue one! Blue one!" and then when it's a blue one, I jump all around, high-fiving everyone around me.

Because sound travels slower than light, you always see the lights of the firework before you hear its bang. If I were a fireworker, I would set off a bang with no fire at the beginning of the show, and then follow it with normal fireworks. That way, it would look like the bang was coming before the light, and that my fireworks defied physics.

At first, people wouldn't think much about this. As time went on, however, the implications of my physics-defying fireworks would begin to sink in. What if it wasn't just the fireworks? What if the fireworks were a prelude to the unraveling of all the rules of physics? They'd begin to look around and notice things. Wasn't Mars supposed to be in the eastern sky during this time of year? Why isn't that helium balloon floating anymore? Was that child's head growing? Is the fabric of the universe literally coming apart at the seams? Slowly, people would consider the implications of atoms flying off of molecules, and a sense of unease would begin to spread, growing and expanding until there was full blown panic, people running and screaming, clinging to earth as if gravity might fail them at any moment, afraid to get into their cars because they might transmogrify into giant spiders or living room furniture or whatever. Total panic.

That'd be fun.

As it is, you can use the fact that light travels faster than sound to figure out how far away the fireworks are. I've taught my children how to do this. So last night, Emma saw a flash, counted 3.5 seconds until she heard a boom, multiplied by the speed of sound, 744.29 cubits per second (meters are for chumps), and said, "Dad, the fireworks are 2605 cubits away!"

Which is obviously wrong. She always forgets to subtract out the speed of light, which, while negligible, is NOT zero.

Idiot.

Driving South, then North

As we've plodded ahead in time, cars have begun to cater to our desire to always be sitting on the couch in our living rooms. I'm not talking about high-end luxury cars, which have always offered any option if you are willing to pay the price. I'm talking about regular normal-people cars.

The seats are cushier, the radio has steering wheel remote-control, there are jacks for the iPod, seat warmers, individual air-conditioning, DVD players in the back, and so on. In my opinion, though, one thing they haven't been able to get right is the cup holders.

It's clear that we want cup holders -- there are about fifty in every new car now. There was an ad a few years ago for some car that had an animation that showed the cupholders first, and then the car being built around them. What the car companies haven't been able to do, however, is get together with the bottle and mug makers to figure out what size they should be. The first cup holders were made for the standard 12-ounce can. But then our coffee obesession started, and even the smallest of the grande latte cups and mugs didn't come close to fitting. So the car manufacturers made larger cupholders. Meanwhile, the mug manufacturers started making odd-shaped tapered mugs that fit the 12-ounce can holders, sort-of. But now they're too small, and too top-heavy for the current holders. Our cars have a variety of variable-sized cup holders, but except for a few specific bottles, it doesn't really fit anything right.

The truth is, thinking about this as I drive is just a distraction from kids who have learned their reasoning skills from Jon Stewart ("Really, Emma? Really?") arguing about inane song lyrics in the back seat.

Are we there yet?

Hockey Bench

More mens' league hockey. This time, a win for a change.

We had 8 players, which is at least one short. With 9, you can play 2 full lines and the 3 defensemen can rotate. With 8, you only have 5 forwards, so there's no organized rotation -- you just come off when you're tired.

Which brings me to a story that illustrates the phenomenon:

Men Can't Speak to Each Other Without Irony

When you have 5 or fewer forwards, there's a temptation to think that you have to take longer shifts on the ice. This isn't the best approach, however. You still need to work at taking short shifts -- it makes no sense to have over-rested players on the bench.

During a game a few years ago, when we had only 4 forwards (so just one on the bench), our teammate Gary felt it was his duty to take 6 minute shifts. Another teammate, Jimmy, tried to explain to him that he still needed to make quick changes.

Jim: Gary, shorter shifts.

Gary: Laughs. (Translation: I get your joke. We don't have many players, so we can't have shorter shifts, so by telling me to take shorter shifts, you're making a reference to how few players we have in a humorous way.)

Jim: No, seriously. Shorter shifts.

Gary: Laughs harder. (Translation: It's funny how you said it again, because it was funny the first time, and now you're repeating yourself, which is even funnier.)

Jim: You don't need to be out on the ice for 6 minutes.

Gary: Doubled over laughing. (Translation: It's so funny when guys keep repeating the same funny thing in a different way. And that's what you're doing. So it's funny.)

This went on for a while, and Jimmy was totally unable to get Gary to listen to what he was saying without hearing sarcasm. I have noticed this phenomenon throughout my life, both as a male myself and as an observer of high school boys.

We are a difficult breed. No, seriously, we are.

Shakespeare in the Park Line

This is the chair I sat in while waiting for Shakespeare in the Park tickets. For 5 hours.

It reminded me of going to the beach. Okay, that's my beach chair, so that's kind of obvious. There was also a little sand in the chair, left over from the beach. But when I go to the beach, I pretty much sit in that chair. I don't mind. I like sitting in the chair.

Behind me in line was a woman with two girls, maybe 2- and 4-year-olds. She had Twister, puzzles, snacks, crayons, and so on. Each girl had two five-minute total meltdowns over the course of the morning, so overall that was pretty good. I asked the woman to let me know if I could help her out in any way, aside from making sure she got an award when the wait was over.

People kept asking me, many in foreign accents, what the line was for. I never summoned the nerve to lie. I'm pretty sure I would have made an inappropriate reference to Michael Jackson. I did consider, "Line? What line?" Couldn't do it. Character flaw.

At one point, a toddler in a stroller dropped an apple she was eating. Her mother didn't notice, but I saw the girl's hand reach plaintively out of the stroller, longing for the return of the apple. No luck, though, as the mother pushed her along. The apple sat there for about 20 minutes. I watched runners glance down to see what it was; I watched bikers swerve slightly to avoid it; I watched a tiny terrier on a leash use all his strength to pull his owner three feet to the right so the dog could grab a taste, to no avail. Finally, a 200 pound bulldog came within striking distance, grabbed the apple, bit off half of it, and left the other half rolling away. It came to rest in the road, and it remained uncrushed when the line finally started to move.

Forty-five minutes later, "Sorry, no more tickets. Thanks for coming."

Next time, I'm sitting 7 hours in that chair.