Here's a video done by Advertising Age, the main trade magazine of the industry, where they visit interesting agency offices. Here they visit Red Tettemer, which is located in the PNB building in Center City. The whole thing is pretty cool, and there's a mention of me around 1:50.
http://adage.com/article/agency-digs/agency-digs-pops-red-tettemer-partners/228357/
I should note that calling me a client doesn't really capture it. I worked both with Steve Red and co-founder Ed Tettemer for years first as co-workers and then hiring them to assist the agency I ran in developing major ad campaigns. They developed their initial expertise working in the cable television industry working with me. I'm really pleased to see the agency is still thriving and hasn't lost the spirit that made them such fun to work with. They're really good.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Luxury Hotel Review, including stuff that won't be on TripAdvisor
Having gone to see the Royal Shakespeare Company production of The Winter's Tale on the upper east side of Manhattan, we decided to spend the night at a hotel in the area. This being a special occasion, I selected a hotel called The Mark, right off a lovely part of Madison Avenue and around the corner from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Mark is a place to stay if you are fabulous. You can be fabulously gorgeous, you can be fabulously well dressed, you can be fabulously wealthy. The Mark is a place for all of you. Why? Because everything about this hotel is fabulous. And even for people like me whose fabulousness is not easy to spot with the naked eye, it was a terrific experience.
It was about 10:30 PM when we arrived and we were met streetside by the doorman who took our bag and our car. The lobby, like everything else in the hotel is Designed. The chairs are plush and unusual in shape and shade. The reception desk is small, check-in took seconds and then the desk clerk stepped around the counter to show us to our room. I thought this was a marvelously personal touch.
Our room, which is of the kind called a Seventy-Seven King, is a step above the mere Deluxe King and below what they call a suite. It was what most people would call a suite. A large suite with 2 full rooms with a pocket door separating them and a small kitchen and 2 bathrooms.
Let's go through this in the order in which things struck me. First of all, there are enough closets that you could live there. We don't have nearly enough clothes to fill these closets. There are so many of them that the desk clerk couldn't find the safe. He checked in 3 places and then gave up and told us it was in the room somewhere. There are 4 full depth double wall closets and a walk-in with cubbies enough to fit about 100 pairs of shoes. I'm guessing all told you could hang about 1000 full wardrobes in these closets. There was also a dresser. We had one small rolling bag and felt like we'd packed far too little.
Second, to say the room is designed is an understatement. Let's just note that on the beautiful coffee table in front of the gorgeous, ultra-comfortable velvet couch in the living room is a book of all the designers who participated and all of the things they designed for the hotel. Everything has been thought about and as far as I can tell, created specifically for the hotel.
Next, we're high tech here. There is a universal remote control for all of the lights and shades in both the living room and bedroom. I didn't take the time to really get how it worked, but there were individual controls for everything anyway. There are flat screen TVs in both rooms, though the one in the living room seems significantly too small for the space. The TV has a nice preview page where you can scroll down the channels and get a small picture of what's on at the time as you go along. There's a retractable cord to attach an iPod and a Blu-Ray player for each TV. The climate control is electronic, quiet, accurate, and easy to use. Maybe the best I've ever seen.
The bed is big and comfy and the pillows are numerous and nice. There are flexible reading lights on either side. The chair and ottoman in the bedroom are the same wonderful velvet as the living room couch.
The master bathroom is gorgeous- marble walls, separate tub and stall shower with gleaming chrome fixtures and a heated towel rack. The beautiful double sink is glazed with a kind of porcelain that we've never seen before. It's creamy looking and appears as if it would almost be soft. It's wonderfully smooth to touch. There's a full medicine cabinet (full-size, not full of medicine) behind one side of the mirror, the other side of the mirror has a TV in it with a remote control on the counter. The toilets in both bathrooms are set about an inch too high, and the master seems like it should have a bidet.
The small kitchen has a full-size refrigerator with ice maker, 4 burner cooktop and a microwave. No coffee maker for some reason, and the many cabinets have almost nothing in them, just an small and odd collection of dishes, so bring your own.
So after exploring the room I decided I wanted to go out and get a snack. I called the desk and the guy spent the entire time trying to convince me not to go out. I love the attitude of these luxury hotel employees. Noting that the only thing open nearby was a place called "Hot and Crusty," his voice dripped with scorn, but then he mentioned casually that "we go there," but that I really shouldn't. So adopted scorn from the guest perspective and perfectly acceptable from his own.
Breakfast is served until 11, even on a weekday. We both had omelettes, which are the French rolled style, tender and creamy and great fillings. Good toast too, though the butter was too cold to spread on it. Good strong coffee too. The restaurant has a kind of busy decor but a beautiful huge skylight makes it very pleasant. The lobby bar is very cool-looking and was busy at 11PM.
Checkout was quick and easy. Every single person on the staff seems genuinely pleasant and helpful. This is one of the best hotels I've ever stayed in and would certainly come back if the occasion called for it.
The Mark is a place to stay if you are fabulous. You can be fabulously gorgeous, you can be fabulously well dressed, you can be fabulously wealthy. The Mark is a place for all of you. Why? Because everything about this hotel is fabulous. And even for people like me whose fabulousness is not easy to spot with the naked eye, it was a terrific experience.
It was about 10:30 PM when we arrived and we were met streetside by the doorman who took our bag and our car. The lobby, like everything else in the hotel is Designed. The chairs are plush and unusual in shape and shade. The reception desk is small, check-in took seconds and then the desk clerk stepped around the counter to show us to our room. I thought this was a marvelously personal touch.
Our room, which is of the kind called a Seventy-Seven King, is a step above the mere Deluxe King and below what they call a suite. It was what most people would call a suite. A large suite with 2 full rooms with a pocket door separating them and a small kitchen and 2 bathrooms.
Let's go through this in the order in which things struck me. First of all, there are enough closets that you could live there. We don't have nearly enough clothes to fill these closets. There are so many of them that the desk clerk couldn't find the safe. He checked in 3 places and then gave up and told us it was in the room somewhere. There are 4 full depth double wall closets and a walk-in with cubbies enough to fit about 100 pairs of shoes. I'm guessing all told you could hang about 1000 full wardrobes in these closets. There was also a dresser. We had one small rolling bag and felt like we'd packed far too little.
Second, to say the room is designed is an understatement. Let's just note that on the beautiful coffee table in front of the gorgeous, ultra-comfortable velvet couch in the living room is a book of all the designers who participated and all of the things they designed for the hotel. Everything has been thought about and as far as I can tell, created specifically for the hotel.
Next, we're high tech here. There is a universal remote control for all of the lights and shades in both the living room and bedroom. I didn't take the time to really get how it worked, but there were individual controls for everything anyway. There are flat screen TVs in both rooms, though the one in the living room seems significantly too small for the space. The TV has a nice preview page where you can scroll down the channels and get a small picture of what's on at the time as you go along. There's a retractable cord to attach an iPod and a Blu-Ray player for each TV. The climate control is electronic, quiet, accurate, and easy to use. Maybe the best I've ever seen.
The bed is big and comfy and the pillows are numerous and nice. There are flexible reading lights on either side. The chair and ottoman in the bedroom are the same wonderful velvet as the living room couch.
The master bathroom is gorgeous- marble walls, separate tub and stall shower with gleaming chrome fixtures and a heated towel rack. The beautiful double sink is glazed with a kind of porcelain that we've never seen before. It's creamy looking and appears as if it would almost be soft. It's wonderfully smooth to touch. There's a full medicine cabinet (full-size, not full of medicine) behind one side of the mirror, the other side of the mirror has a TV in it with a remote control on the counter. The toilets in both bathrooms are set about an inch too high, and the master seems like it should have a bidet.
The small kitchen has a full-size refrigerator with ice maker, 4 burner cooktop and a microwave. No coffee maker for some reason, and the many cabinets have almost nothing in them, just an small and odd collection of dishes, so bring your own.
So after exploring the room I decided I wanted to go out and get a snack. I called the desk and the guy spent the entire time trying to convince me not to go out. I love the attitude of these luxury hotel employees. Noting that the only thing open nearby was a place called "Hot and Crusty," his voice dripped with scorn, but then he mentioned casually that "we go there," but that I really shouldn't. So adopted scorn from the guest perspective and perfectly acceptable from his own.
Breakfast is served until 11, even on a weekday. We both had omelettes, which are the French rolled style, tender and creamy and great fillings. Good toast too, though the butter was too cold to spread on it. Good strong coffee too. The restaurant has a kind of busy decor but a beautiful huge skylight makes it very pleasant. The lobby bar is very cool-looking and was busy at 11PM.
Checkout was quick and easy. Every single person on the staff seems genuinely pleasant and helpful. This is one of the best hotels I've ever stayed in and would certainly come back if the occasion called for it.
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
My home town
Well, kind of. Though I'm from New York, I'm really from Brooklyn and Manhattan is what we called "The City." But I found myself awake early in a hotel on 77th and Madison and decided to go for a walk uptown.
Madison in the 60's and 70's is almost exclusively an upscale shopping street, with no aspect of real life intruding. You can shop or you can eat and if you are there you are most likely a foreign tourist. As you head uptown, though, you get more of a sense that people live there. Not people that you would normally hang out with necessarily, but people nonetheless.
The first thing you really notice is that there are no chain stores. One of the aspects of New York that has been most troubling to me over the past bunch of years is the influx of mall stores. Why would you go to New York to shop at the Gap? Nothing against the Gap, but why? But on upper Madison, unless you count the New York outposts of places like Hermes or places with flagship stores in New York that have spread elsewhere, you face a series of stores with unfamiliar names and small bakeries and cafes. This is incredibly refreshing and feels like you could be in a European city.
Starting from 77th Street, I didn't notice the first chain store until 85th street, where there was a Bath and Body Works. In the meantime, I stopped at E.A.T. by Eli Zabar to get a cup of coffee. A 10 oz cup was $2.50 ounce per ounce, about double Starbucks prices. The woman in front of me in line had taken a plastic cup of berries off the shelf, but when the cashier told her it was $14 she put it back. To put it in perspective, we ate dinner last night at JoJo, one of the finer restaurants in New York and their berries for dessert were $10.
As you move further north, the restaurants tend to be of the urban diner variety. I didn't see my first Starbucks until 95th St. It's hard to walk 20 blocks in New York without seeing one of those. After 96th, the streetscape began to change, as if someone with a blender had begun to mix in some of the rest of the world. At 99th I reached Mt. Sinai Hospital and turned around.
Walking in New York has always taken a certain amount of concentration, but it's now even more difficult because so many people are looking at their phones and not where they are walking. It's not fair for those of us paying attention to have to do all of the avoidance. But one of the things that I like about walking in New York is that, compared to less intense places, it's hard to get too inwardly focused. There's too much to see, hear and smell.
My favorite vignette along the way happened at an intersection. I noticed that as soon as I got to New York that I ceased to pay attention to traffic lights when crossing the street. It's all based solely on what's going on at street level. As I approached one corner, I saw and heard an ambulance streaking up Madison. But the light turned green on the side street and cars started across the avenue as if nothing was happening. Even a school bus. A school bus! Halfway out into the intersection before stopping to let the ambulance by. As the bus sat there, a little girl with big glasses stared out the window at me, smiled and waved. I smiled in reply and kept smiling all the way back to the hotel.
Madison in the 60's and 70's is almost exclusively an upscale shopping street, with no aspect of real life intruding. You can shop or you can eat and if you are there you are most likely a foreign tourist. As you head uptown, though, you get more of a sense that people live there. Not people that you would normally hang out with necessarily, but people nonetheless.
The first thing you really notice is that there are no chain stores. One of the aspects of New York that has been most troubling to me over the past bunch of years is the influx of mall stores. Why would you go to New York to shop at the Gap? Nothing against the Gap, but why? But on upper Madison, unless you count the New York outposts of places like Hermes or places with flagship stores in New York that have spread elsewhere, you face a series of stores with unfamiliar names and small bakeries and cafes. This is incredibly refreshing and feels like you could be in a European city.
Starting from 77th Street, I didn't notice the first chain store until 85th street, where there was a Bath and Body Works. In the meantime, I stopped at E.A.T. by Eli Zabar to get a cup of coffee. A 10 oz cup was $2.50 ounce per ounce, about double Starbucks prices. The woman in front of me in line had taken a plastic cup of berries off the shelf, but when the cashier told her it was $14 she put it back. To put it in perspective, we ate dinner last night at JoJo, one of the finer restaurants in New York and their berries for dessert were $10.
As you move further north, the restaurants tend to be of the urban diner variety. I didn't see my first Starbucks until 95th St. It's hard to walk 20 blocks in New York without seeing one of those. After 96th, the streetscape began to change, as if someone with a blender had begun to mix in some of the rest of the world. At 99th I reached Mt. Sinai Hospital and turned around.
Walking in New York has always taken a certain amount of concentration, but it's now even more difficult because so many people are looking at their phones and not where they are walking. It's not fair for those of us paying attention to have to do all of the avoidance. But one of the things that I like about walking in New York is that, compared to less intense places, it's hard to get too inwardly focused. There's too much to see, hear and smell.
My favorite vignette along the way happened at an intersection. I noticed that as soon as I got to New York that I ceased to pay attention to traffic lights when crossing the street. It's all based solely on what's going on at street level. As I approached one corner, I saw and heard an ambulance streaking up Madison. But the light turned green on the side street and cars started across the avenue as if nothing was happening. Even a school bus. A school bus! Halfway out into the intersection before stopping to let the ambulance by. As the bus sat there, a little girl with big glasses stared out the window at me, smiled and waved. I smiled in reply and kept smiling all the way back to the hotel.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Finally catching up on pop culture
Just by chance, as in when I walked back in from the ballgame, I had the opportunity to watch a part of one of the Twilight movies, something I had been studiously avoiding because I'm not a teenage girl. I'm not sure which one. It had vampires in it but they can go outside during the day and act pretty much like everyone else. And big dogs that appeared to be vaguely 2-dimensional. And dialogue that was absolutely spectacular in its dullness. Even having low expectations because I'd heard the books were terribly written, I couldn't believe how lifeless (and I don't mean like the undead) and boring everyone was.
There's a heavily moussed guy, Edward, who is earnest and introspective and never says anything interesting. There's another guy, Jacob, who doesn't wear a shirt and is in lots of scenes where he does nothing but talk to the girl, Bella, about how she ought to be with him instead of Edward. I keep waiting her for her to say, "You never talk about anything else, so I have no choice but to assume that if I decide to be with you that you will have nothing whatsoever to say." But she loves him too, of course.
I gather that dullness is part of the atmosphere in which the story takes place. Bella lives in a dull town with dull people and dull things that are not exactly people. So first you create a boring place and populate it with creatures who say nothing but boring things. There was a battle where one group of vampires defeats another with the help of the dogs, who of course can't be attacked because they're only two dimensional. The battle consists entirely of people running toward each other and throwing each other around.
I know that I'm being kind of disingenuous here and making fun of an easy target. I just couldn't believe how easy a target it was. Wow, I can hardly wait for the next sequel.
There's a heavily moussed guy, Edward, who is earnest and introspective and never says anything interesting. There's another guy, Jacob, who doesn't wear a shirt and is in lots of scenes where he does nothing but talk to the girl, Bella, about how she ought to be with him instead of Edward. I keep waiting her for her to say, "You never talk about anything else, so I have no choice but to assume that if I decide to be with you that you will have nothing whatsoever to say." But she loves him too, of course.
I gather that dullness is part of the atmosphere in which the story takes place. Bella lives in a dull town with dull people and dull things that are not exactly people. So first you create a boring place and populate it with creatures who say nothing but boring things. There was a battle where one group of vampires defeats another with the help of the dogs, who of course can't be attacked because they're only two dimensional. The battle consists entirely of people running toward each other and throwing each other around.
I know that I'm being kind of disingenuous here and making fun of an easy target. I just couldn't believe how easy a target it was. Wow, I can hardly wait for the next sequel.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
FInal Day of AP Camp (Final update)
So it's our last day here. Time for campfires and hugs and promises of a reunion.
No, not really. We've all gotten semi-friendly but it would take an accident of fate for any of us to see each other again. And I don't think Penn State would look kindly at our setting fires somewhere. though you never know. Last time I did one of these everyone exchanged e-mail addresses but I don't think anyone ever used them for anything. Maybe with Facebook, who knows, but it doesn't really make any difference.
Meanwhile, I cannot believe how much my body hurts from doing this. I could have played a couple of hours of rugby and I doubt I would have been noticeably more uncomfortable afterwards.
The difficulty of the material is increasing at about the same pace as my ability to process new information is decreasing and I think we've now moved into negative territory.
Lunch today was awful. I decided to stay here this time, which was nice because I got to talk to a couple of people, but bad because of the food. Today we had no choice. It was a box with a two half-wraps, turkey with cranberry sauce and Italian. I like turkey/cranberry wraps and get them at Wawa, but this one had a strange salty taste, beyond the processed turkey saltiness. But of course if you're looking for salt, you need look no further than an Italian wrap. I managed to swallow the first bite but could get no further.
We scurried through the final bits of material, filled out evaluation reports, gave out door prizes (more textbooks! Tote bags!) said a few goodbyes to the people we'd had a moment or two to talk with socially, and off we went.
Two days of this would have been just fine. Four is just too much. Glad to be able to sleep in tomorrow.
No, not really. We've all gotten semi-friendly but it would take an accident of fate for any of us to see each other again. And I don't think Penn State would look kindly at our setting fires somewhere. though you never know. Last time I did one of these everyone exchanged e-mail addresses but I don't think anyone ever used them for anything. Maybe with Facebook, who knows, but it doesn't really make any difference.
Meanwhile, I cannot believe how much my body hurts from doing this. I could have played a couple of hours of rugby and I doubt I would have been noticeably more uncomfortable afterwards.
The difficulty of the material is increasing at about the same pace as my ability to process new information is decreasing and I think we've now moved into negative territory.
Lunch today was awful. I decided to stay here this time, which was nice because I got to talk to a couple of people, but bad because of the food. Today we had no choice. It was a box with a two half-wraps, turkey with cranberry sauce and Italian. I like turkey/cranberry wraps and get them at Wawa, but this one had a strange salty taste, beyond the processed turkey saltiness. But of course if you're looking for salt, you need look no further than an Italian wrap. I managed to swallow the first bite but could get no further.
We scurried through the final bits of material, filled out evaluation reports, gave out door prizes (more textbooks! Tote bags!) said a few goodbyes to the people we'd had a moment or two to talk with socially, and off we went.
Two days of this would have been just fine. Four is just too much. Glad to be able to sleep in tomorrow.
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
AP Camp Day 3
Okay, I've about had it. I simply cannot sit for that long and be productive in any way. There's nothing wrong with the class, but as much as I like Calculus (really), I can't just sit in one place and work on it for days on end.
So in my usual way, I rebel around the edges. Today I came about 10 minutes late. I got up several times during each session to use the rest room and stretch my legs. I went out for lunch instead of having a 3rd identical bag lunch catered by the college board. I don't know what I'll do tomorrow, though being late is pretty much a must. It's nice that I'm not taking it for credit.
Not that that would be a problem anyway. I seem to be in the middle of every discussion and I feel like I'm talking way too much. Some of the other teachers ask me questions and the instructor says things like, "Frank, you've been doing this a while (really?) how have you done this?" I feel bad for some of the others. They're kind of freaking out.
Today a sales rep for a publishing company came in to shill one of the textbooks we're getting (yes, one of the perks of going to these things is free textbooks. Booyah!). She is not only over the top perky, but she's talking at a volume more appropriate to an auditorium than a classroom. She leaves and we're all wondering if she's like that all the time.
Tomorrow we wrap it up. Thinking through how the school year went I guess we're on a topic I was covering in March or so, so I guess that makes sense. Last time I did one of these things the instructor told us a lot more about the test itself and spent a lot of time trying to convince us to be test readers. This is where you go to an undisclosed location and spend 10 days grading the free response section of the AP test. You are assigned one question to grade, you're trained on it and then you sit at a table with 9 other teachers and grade batches of question 5 Form B, with everything you do checked and double checked. Sounds like probably not the best plan for me. The one thing I learned about the test is that you don't need to do arithmetic. As in you can leave an answer as a series of things multiplied and added together.
So I guess I'll check in tomorrow after I'm done if there's anything new to say. In the meantime, hope that my butt recovers feeling before the morning.
So in my usual way, I rebel around the edges. Today I came about 10 minutes late. I got up several times during each session to use the rest room and stretch my legs. I went out for lunch instead of having a 3rd identical bag lunch catered by the college board. I don't know what I'll do tomorrow, though being late is pretty much a must. It's nice that I'm not taking it for credit.
Not that that would be a problem anyway. I seem to be in the middle of every discussion and I feel like I'm talking way too much. Some of the other teachers ask me questions and the instructor says things like, "Frank, you've been doing this a while (really?) how have you done this?" I feel bad for some of the others. They're kind of freaking out.
Today a sales rep for a publishing company came in to shill one of the textbooks we're getting (yes, one of the perks of going to these things is free textbooks. Booyah!). She is not only over the top perky, but she's talking at a volume more appropriate to an auditorium than a classroom. She leaves and we're all wondering if she's like that all the time.
Tomorrow we wrap it up. Thinking through how the school year went I guess we're on a topic I was covering in March or so, so I guess that makes sense. Last time I did one of these things the instructor told us a lot more about the test itself and spent a lot of time trying to convince us to be test readers. This is where you go to an undisclosed location and spend 10 days grading the free response section of the AP test. You are assigned one question to grade, you're trained on it and then you sit at a table with 9 other teachers and grade batches of question 5 Form B, with everything you do checked and double checked. Sounds like probably not the best plan for me. The one thing I learned about the test is that you don't need to do arithmetic. As in you can leave an answer as a series of things multiplied and added together.
So I guess I'll check in tomorrow after I'm done if there's anything new to say. In the meantime, hope that my butt recovers feeling before the morning.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
AP Camp Day 2 (Final update)
Back in Great Valley at 8AM. I find that about 4 hours of sleep is the perfect preparation for this kind of thing, because a certain amount of loopiness is necessary to endure a full day of it. I like taking classes, but this is simply too long. I can't sit still that long and I don't care how nice the chairs here are, it hurts to drive 45 minutes somewhere, sit in a chair for 8 hours, then back in the car for 45 minutes. I had to go home and lie down on my stomach.
The problem with these things is that not only do you have a range of intelligence but you have a huge range of skills and experience. So the questions are far more varied than they would be in a regular class, and let's not get started on the 3 different kinds of calculators.
OK. We're now onto handout number 6. It's an excellent handout as far as its content is concerned. I just need to say, I don't care how many cute little pictures you put on the Calculus homework, it's not going to make the kids like their Calculus homework any better. And using emoticons as graphic devices is neither original nor helpful.
I walked back into the room after break and the teacher was distributing textbook #2 and I offered to help and she said she was almost done. Made me realize that offering help just as someone is finishing a task is a well-developed skill from years of living with someone.
Final Update of the day:
Lunch today was exactly he same as yesterday except that the sandwiches were on different bread than yesterday. Not exactly the variety I'd prefer. Think I may be off to Wegmans tomorrow.
Okay, it's official. The main casualty of this week is my butt. I simply cannot sit this much. At lunchtime today, everyone was making fun of me because I was standing across the lounge from where everyone else was sitting and eating, so I finally dragged a tall table over. I had never gotten the sense that my butt had gotten less resilient as I've gotten older, but I'm wondering if that's one of those signs of aging that goes largely unrecognized and is cloaked in shame.
(So what did I do this evening? Go to a Phillies game and sit for another couple of hours.)
But back to AP. The class moved very fast today and there was a clear break between the people who get it and those who don't. There are a decent number of people who are genuinely having difficulty keeping up. They're not suffering in silence, but it's clear that they're finding this an upsetting experience and are not looking forward to the task of actually teaching this class.
The people who are fine with the pace are pretty much the under-35 crew and me. This stuff comes pretty naturally to me and even if I miss a problem it's because I've spaced out and not because I don't understand what's going on. I like the teacher okay, but I doubt she'll be getting great ratings, even given that it's hard to cover all of AP Calculus in 4 days.
The problem with these things is that not only do you have a range of intelligence but you have a huge range of skills and experience. So the questions are far more varied than they would be in a regular class, and let's not get started on the 3 different kinds of calculators.
OK. We're now onto handout number 6. It's an excellent handout as far as its content is concerned. I just need to say, I don't care how many cute little pictures you put on the Calculus homework, it's not going to make the kids like their Calculus homework any better. And using emoticons as graphic devices is neither original nor helpful.
I walked back into the room after break and the teacher was distributing textbook #2 and I offered to help and she said she was almost done. Made me realize that offering help just as someone is finishing a task is a well-developed skill from years of living with someone.
Final Update of the day:
Lunch today was exactly he same as yesterday except that the sandwiches were on different bread than yesterday. Not exactly the variety I'd prefer. Think I may be off to Wegmans tomorrow.
Okay, it's official. The main casualty of this week is my butt. I simply cannot sit this much. At lunchtime today, everyone was making fun of me because I was standing across the lounge from where everyone else was sitting and eating, so I finally dragged a tall table over. I had never gotten the sense that my butt had gotten less resilient as I've gotten older, but I'm wondering if that's one of those signs of aging that goes largely unrecognized and is cloaked in shame.
(So what did I do this evening? Go to a Phillies game and sit for another couple of hours.)
But back to AP. The class moved very fast today and there was a clear break between the people who get it and those who don't. There are a decent number of people who are genuinely having difficulty keeping up. They're not suffering in silence, but it's clear that they're finding this an upsetting experience and are not looking forward to the task of actually teaching this class.
The people who are fine with the pace are pretty much the under-35 crew and me. This stuff comes pretty naturally to me and even if I miss a problem it's because I've spaced out and not because I don't understand what's going on. I like the teacher okay, but I doubt she'll be getting great ratings, even given that it's hard to cover all of AP Calculus in 4 days.
Monday, July 25, 2011
My First Day at AP Camp
My butt hurts. Last time I took one of these 4-day things, by the end I was bringing stadium seat cushions to sit on the hard plastic classroom seats. This facility is much nicer. More like a conference center, so there are padded swivel chairs. Still, I really can't sit in a chair for 7 hours out of 8. I stood all the way through our two allotted 15-minute breaks and out 30-minute lunch.
I wasn't sure how to dress. These things are always completely informal. Today I opted for lightweight long pants. Most of the building was quite cool but our classroom was warm so I'm wearing shorts tomorrow.
The class itself is fine. The people are a wide range of ages, with a couple of people in their mid 20's and a couple of people in their 60's and the rest in between, evenly divided by sex. The teacher is very good. Not the most entertaining person I've ever met, but clearly in command of her material and very knowledgeable about AP Calculus.
For the first part of the day we just go some general information dumpage, including a comprehensive presentation on the College Board's commitment to diversity. Since the percentage of minorities taking the test at our school is somewhat less than the average (unless you count Jews as a minority, which we certainly are, even if we do control everything), we have some work to do in that regard.
After that, we started through the curriculum. This looks like it might turn out to be the entire AP Calculus course crammed into 3 1/2 days. We have a textbook (with 3 more yet to be distributed) and 4 handouts that have been distributed so far (I know there are more to come but I can't tell how many).
I haven't really learned any math techniques or anything so far, but the value in doing this is to get ideas of how to introduce and present material, and get an idea from the AP people just what it is they are trying to test. There was some decent stuff in this regard, including a unit on something that has always been difficult for me to present.
Lunch was the classic box (bag) lunch. Choice of chicken salad, roast beef, turkey and grilled vegetable sandwiches with chips, an apple and a chocolate chip cookie. The chicken salad was decent except that it was done hoagie style with provolone cheese. Cheese on chicken salad will never make sense to me. Sorry. The apple was good. The cookie was so sweet I couldn't discern the cookie part from the chocolate part so I didn't eat it. Things have to be pretty bad for me to pass on a chocolate chip cookie.
There was no coffee available after lunch. BIG downgrade in my program ratings for that. I went out to get a thermal cup of iced coffee that I'd brought for just this type of emergency and in the process got to close the windows in my car before it poured. Good planning triumphs, and it was nice to have the coffee because the afternoon got pretty draggy after a while. This wasn't anyone's fault and maybe nobody else thought it was draggy.
Walking through the hallways during breaks you could see the other AP classes going on. The AP Spanish people looked highly engaged and finished early. The US History people looked kind of bored.
At about 3:45 we were given a homework assignment and sent on our way.
I wasn't sure how to dress. These things are always completely informal. Today I opted for lightweight long pants. Most of the building was quite cool but our classroom was warm so I'm wearing shorts tomorrow.
The class itself is fine. The people are a wide range of ages, with a couple of people in their mid 20's and a couple of people in their 60's and the rest in between, evenly divided by sex. The teacher is very good. Not the most entertaining person I've ever met, but clearly in command of her material and very knowledgeable about AP Calculus.
For the first part of the day we just go some general information dumpage, including a comprehensive presentation on the College Board's commitment to diversity. Since the percentage of minorities taking the test at our school is somewhat less than the average (unless you count Jews as a minority, which we certainly are, even if we do control everything), we have some work to do in that regard.
After that, we started through the curriculum. This looks like it might turn out to be the entire AP Calculus course crammed into 3 1/2 days. We have a textbook (with 3 more yet to be distributed) and 4 handouts that have been distributed so far (I know there are more to come but I can't tell how many).
I haven't really learned any math techniques or anything so far, but the value in doing this is to get ideas of how to introduce and present material, and get an idea from the AP people just what it is they are trying to test. There was some decent stuff in this regard, including a unit on something that has always been difficult for me to present.
Lunch was the classic box (bag) lunch. Choice of chicken salad, roast beef, turkey and grilled vegetable sandwiches with chips, an apple and a chocolate chip cookie. The chicken salad was decent except that it was done hoagie style with provolone cheese. Cheese on chicken salad will never make sense to me. Sorry. The apple was good. The cookie was so sweet I couldn't discern the cookie part from the chocolate part so I didn't eat it. Things have to be pretty bad for me to pass on a chocolate chip cookie.
There was no coffee available after lunch. BIG downgrade in my program ratings for that. I went out to get a thermal cup of iced coffee that I'd brought for just this type of emergency and in the process got to close the windows in my car before it poured. Good planning triumphs, and it was nice to have the coffee because the afternoon got pretty draggy after a while. This wasn't anyone's fault and maybe nobody else thought it was draggy.
Walking through the hallways during breaks you could see the other AP classes going on. The AP Spanish people looked highly engaged and finished early. The US History people looked kind of bored.
At about 3:45 we were given a homework assignment and sent on our way.
AP Summer Institute 3
A lot of Calculus books have the phrase "Early Transcendentals." I know that this refers to a class of functions and I guess I always assumed it meant that it dealt with the first kinds of transcendentals, the easy ones. But today I learned that what it means is "Transcendentals Early," as in they are included in the book in the early chapters.
I haven't been fussed at yet but I've noticed that I am calling out answers without raising my hand. Oops.
I haven't been fussed at yet but I've noticed that I am calling out answers without raising my hand. Oops.
AP Summer Institute 2
My favorite people in these classes are the people who found out like a week ago that they're teaching AP Calculus in the fall. In at least one case they'd never even taught pre-calc. Such is the world of budget .
We just had a break (we are allotted 15 minutes morning and afternoon as permitted by the College Board). I guess we're falling behind since now as we begin the post-break session the teacher is now talking VERY fast.
We just had a break (we are allotted 15 minutes morning and afternoon as permitted by the College Board). I guess we're falling behind since now as we begin the post-break session the teacher is now talking VERY fast.
AP Summer Institute 2
My favorite people in these classes are the people who found out like a week ago that they're teaching AP Calculus in the fall. In at least one case they'd never even taught pre-calc. Such is the world of budget .
We just had a break (we are allotted 15 minutes morning and afternoon as permitted by the College Board). I guess we're falling behind since now as we begin the post-break session the teacher is now talking VERY fast.
We just had a break (we are allotted 15 minutes morning and afternoon as permitted by the College Board). I guess we're falling behind since now as we begin the post-break session the teacher is now talking VERY fast.
AP Summer Institute
I know that some of you like when I do "behind the scenes" teacher stuff. So today I'm on the first day of a four day intensive class in teaching AP Calculus. I'm now in the orientation session at Penn State in Great Valley where we are being told that we must do 8 hours a day, no exceptions, because they "take their partnership with the College Board very seriously." They said there would be a representative of the College Board here on Thursday so that should know if we see any "strange faces." This leads me to wonder what kind of faces the people at College Board have.
We're on a nice little campus that might be mistaken for an office park, right off 202.
To say I'm not in the mood for this would be an understatement. This hasn't been a particularly restful vacation and the prospect of getting up at 6:30 to drive out to the western suburbs doesn't thrill me. On the other hand, I've not been able to get much of anything done around the house so maybe I'll be more successful if I'm assigned to do something. And maybe it'll be nice to use another part of my brain for a little while.
We're on a nice little campus that might be mistaken for an office park, right off 202.
To say I'm not in the mood for this would be an understatement. This hasn't been a particularly restful vacation and the prospect of getting up at 6:30 to drive out to the western suburbs doesn't thrill me. On the other hand, I've not been able to get much of anything done around the house so maybe I'll be more successful if I'm assigned to do something. And maybe it'll be nice to use another part of my brain for a little while.
Friday, July 15, 2011
The end
I was riding my bike today and as I was about to make a left turn, a spectacularly beautiful woman jogged by, wearing just a very small sports bra and very short shorts. And I thought, this is how I'm going to die. I'll be riding my bike one day, someone who looks like that will come by and distract me and I'll get pancaked by a car. Didn't happen today though.
Monday, July 11, 2011
And let's not forget the place itself
It's kind of arrogant to actually review a place. If I write what I think about Ithaca, NY, why would they care? Why would anyone care? But I've traveled enough and paid close enough attention that I can at least try to put things in perspective.
The first thing I ask myself about a place is, could I live here? This is probably not the most selective screening, since I can enjoy myself pretty much anywhere, but it's an important framework within which to evaluate a place. In the case of Ithaca, I could absolutely live there. It's a nicely sized little city, with two colleges dominating the culture, on the southern shore of a big lake surrounded by rolling hills, assorted natural beauty, and a lot of farms and vineyards. So you got food, you got wine, you got culture, you got scenery. Not the best weather maybe, but not too shabby.
I found most of the people I talked with to be pleasant and helpful. The downtown "Commons" area is that most economically precarious of urban designs, the pedestrian mall, but it seems to work with a nice mix of shops and restaurants. Downtown is ringed by parking lots, a surprising number of parking lots in fact. It's hard for me to imagine enough people being there to come close to filling them. I'm not a huge fan of parking lots and I never entered one, but I'm guessing that their existence helps free up street parking. There is also a reasonably robust public bus system.
Urban design-wise, it's kind of a mess. It kind of can't help it though, with half of it ringed by hills and the other half next to a lake, you're kind of stuck with whatever flat space you can find. Downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods, both on flatland and hillside (which I can tell you from biking experience is 4 miles of fairly steep uphill with no letup whatsoever), seem pleasant and reasonably safe.
All of the suburban type development is crammed into one small area on the southwest side of town. This a good balance of convenience and inconvenience. Traffic on that end of town is hellish (what do you expect from a half mile of shopping center entrances every 50 yards, each with a traffic light?), and the shopping centers run into each other at odd angles making it hard to know whether you're in the Kmart center or the Walmart center (they're right next to each other because...well, there's no place else) or the Lowes center.
Fortunately, the first thing in the strip is a Wegmans and so it isn't ever necessary to go anywhere else (any place with a Wegmans has to be livable, even Cherry Hill). And the rest of the stuff is so difficult to navigate that I think it keeps all those big box stores and chain restaurants from decimating downtown. Plus I'm guessing that the college students either don't have cars or wouldn't get caught dead in a Walmart.
There's a nice old theater that houses good concerts and other theater type shows. There's a 5 screen art movie house a block from the Commons. Lots of decent restaurants and pubs with live music on weekend nights. And of course there's ample natural beauty and good air. Maybe not that much sunshine between September and June, but at least the air is clean and the water tastes good.
Ithaca also boasts one of the best farmers markets I've seen. There seem to be markets somewhere in town most days, but they have a big wooden pavilion full of booths that gets filled with over 100 vendors on Saturday and Sunday (some vendors both days, some only one and replaced by something else the other day). Aside from the usual array of fresh organic stuff, there are specialty growers (one guy who, and I'm not making this up, sold nothing but currants, currants of all different colors and flavors, all of which the guy could describe in great detail).
The market features a huge variety of fresh prepared foods of all nationalities. Would you expect that in Ithaca you could choose between Cuban, Cambodian and Sri Lankan food? Apple cider slushies? Flatbread pizzas from a portable wood-burning pizza oven? Plus wine, cheese, chutney, kefir, and hard cider tasting, crafts and baked goods. Yum.
There's also at least two microbreweries (nothing exceptional but all reasonably tasty) and a good local coffee roaster in town. Their coffee shop also has a massive stock of craft beers (as does Wegmans). I decided to buy a few half liter bottles on the way out of town. The girl at the register said she really liked the Ommegang Abbey Ale (from Cooperstown) but hadn't tried the other Ommegang offering I'd selected. I looked at her for a moment and asked, "are you old enough to drink?" She turned pink and kind of stumbled to answer. I said, don't worry, I've got a 19 year-old daughter so I understand.
And with that we were on our way home.
The first thing I ask myself about a place is, could I live here? This is probably not the most selective screening, since I can enjoy myself pretty much anywhere, but it's an important framework within which to evaluate a place. In the case of Ithaca, I could absolutely live there. It's a nicely sized little city, with two colleges dominating the culture, on the southern shore of a big lake surrounded by rolling hills, assorted natural beauty, and a lot of farms and vineyards. So you got food, you got wine, you got culture, you got scenery. Not the best weather maybe, but not too shabby.
I found most of the people I talked with to be pleasant and helpful. The downtown "Commons" area is that most economically precarious of urban designs, the pedestrian mall, but it seems to work with a nice mix of shops and restaurants. Downtown is ringed by parking lots, a surprising number of parking lots in fact. It's hard for me to imagine enough people being there to come close to filling them. I'm not a huge fan of parking lots and I never entered one, but I'm guessing that their existence helps free up street parking. There is also a reasonably robust public bus system.
Urban design-wise, it's kind of a mess. It kind of can't help it though, with half of it ringed by hills and the other half next to a lake, you're kind of stuck with whatever flat space you can find. Downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods, both on flatland and hillside (which I can tell you from biking experience is 4 miles of fairly steep uphill with no letup whatsoever), seem pleasant and reasonably safe.
All of the suburban type development is crammed into one small area on the southwest side of town. This a good balance of convenience and inconvenience. Traffic on that end of town is hellish (what do you expect from a half mile of shopping center entrances every 50 yards, each with a traffic light?), and the shopping centers run into each other at odd angles making it hard to know whether you're in the Kmart center or the Walmart center (they're right next to each other because...well, there's no place else) or the Lowes center.
Fortunately, the first thing in the strip is a Wegmans and so it isn't ever necessary to go anywhere else (any place with a Wegmans has to be livable, even Cherry Hill). And the rest of the stuff is so difficult to navigate that I think it keeps all those big box stores and chain restaurants from decimating downtown. Plus I'm guessing that the college students either don't have cars or wouldn't get caught dead in a Walmart.
There's a nice old theater that houses good concerts and other theater type shows. There's a 5 screen art movie house a block from the Commons. Lots of decent restaurants and pubs with live music on weekend nights. And of course there's ample natural beauty and good air. Maybe not that much sunshine between September and June, but at least the air is clean and the water tastes good.
Ithaca also boasts one of the best farmers markets I've seen. There seem to be markets somewhere in town most days, but they have a big wooden pavilion full of booths that gets filled with over 100 vendors on Saturday and Sunday (some vendors both days, some only one and replaced by something else the other day). Aside from the usual array of fresh organic stuff, there are specialty growers (one guy who, and I'm not making this up, sold nothing but currants, currants of all different colors and flavors, all of which the guy could describe in great detail).
The market features a huge variety of fresh prepared foods of all nationalities. Would you expect that in Ithaca you could choose between Cuban, Cambodian and Sri Lankan food? Apple cider slushies? Flatbread pizzas from a portable wood-burning pizza oven? Plus wine, cheese, chutney, kefir, and hard cider tasting, crafts and baked goods. Yum.
There's also at least two microbreweries (nothing exceptional but all reasonably tasty) and a good local coffee roaster in town. Their coffee shop also has a massive stock of craft beers (as does Wegmans). I decided to buy a few half liter bottles on the way out of town. The girl at the register said she really liked the Ommegang Abbey Ale (from Cooperstown) but hadn't tried the other Ommegang offering I'd selected. I looked at her for a moment and asked, "are you old enough to drink?" She turned pink and kind of stumbled to answer. I said, don't worry, I've got a 19 year-old daughter so I understand.
And with that we were on our way home.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Sleeping
Of course, no trip report would be complete without a review of the hotel. We're staying at a place called La Tourelle Resort and Spa on top of the hill near Ithaca College. It's a nice place in a beautiful spot. And although it's not quite what it aspires to be, I think it's a pretty nice place.
When you come up to a place with a Frenchy sounding name in a pretty spot, you're expecting something like a luxurious country inn. And it isn't quite that, as I had assumed based on the price, which was quite reasonable. It's not an old place, and so has the feel of something where they wanted to build something special and luxurious, but didn't quite have enough money or vision to pull it off. But despite that I'm reasonably high on the place.
The lobby is a mix between and inn and a hotel, which captures things in a nutshell. There are some comfortable leather couches, one of which I'm currently sitting on, around a fireplace and a baby grand piano. Just off that area is a table with a computer and a shelf with some board games and a stereo that plays pleasant music all the time. On the other side is a small bar area with a few tables and nice chairs. The bar has a Finger Lakes wine happy hour and the rest of the time is an honor bar, which although I haven't availed myself of it is one of the nicer touches I've seen. You take a glass of wine or beer or soda and leave some dollar bills in a basket. That just makes me feel good for some reason. There's also a breakfront with free coffee available all the time and excellent coffee from Ithaca Coffee Company to boot. There are coffeemakers in the rooms but this is much better coffee.
The people who work here are without exception pleasant and completely helpful. I brought my bicycle along and when I asked about a place to store it, since the place doesn't have a luggage room, they put it in a very nice hotel room, right off the lobby, that happens to have a non-functional air conditioner. So not only is my bike safe and comfortable, but the staff and I get to make constant jokes about how the bike is doing and how it's enjoying it's stay.
There is a vaguely South Pacific theme going on, with wooden primitive sculptures in the lobby and masks on all the room doors. It's not really carried through though, not that I'd want it to be. The rooms are good sized (we had a queen room- the king rooms, like the one my bike is staying in, are larger) with with plenty of dresser space, a small table and chairs near the window, and a small refrigerator (for our convenience! Not a mini bar!). The bed is very comfortable. Some of the rooms have flat screen TVs. Ours has a reasonably nice older TV with a DVD player. The bathroom is small and modest but functional. The wifi is free (thank you!) and works better than in most hotels, but there is no outlet anywhere near the table (the king room next door does have outlets near the table).
The real problem with the room is climate control. Here's where the lack of upfront money comes in. There's no central heating or AC. This leaves each unit with one of those accursed floor consoles where you punch buttons and turn knobs to adjust the temperature. This is hardly a unique problem. Mirror Lake Inn, one of my favorite places, has the same setup.
The big problem with these units is that they suck. I know that sounds vague, but it can be applied to any specific aspect of their operation with equal accuracy. The thing is noisy, difficult to adjust, and ineffective in dealing with extremes. It was very hot and humid the first couple of days we were here, and though the room would get cool it never got dehumidified so we had a choice of freezing or clammy or, most typically, both. So sleeping was less than great, and fairly or not, this significantly downgrades the whole experience.
There's a bistro for breakfast and lunch (and a curiously poor brunch menu). The food is fine. The servers say "Enjoy!" when they leave you something on the table. There's a steak restaurant on the property which we did not try. There's a decent spa on the property. We all had massages which were good but not special in any way. There are some nice sitting areas outside, though no pool, and trails in the backyard lead into Buttermilk Falls State Park.
So overall I would give La Tourelle a positive but not rave review. I'm guessing for this area it's as good as it gets, and the price/value relationship is good. If you stay here I think you'll be satisfied but not blown away.
When you come up to a place with a Frenchy sounding name in a pretty spot, you're expecting something like a luxurious country inn. And it isn't quite that, as I had assumed based on the price, which was quite reasonable. It's not an old place, and so has the feel of something where they wanted to build something special and luxurious, but didn't quite have enough money or vision to pull it off. But despite that I'm reasonably high on the place.
The lobby is a mix between and inn and a hotel, which captures things in a nutshell. There are some comfortable leather couches, one of which I'm currently sitting on, around a fireplace and a baby grand piano. Just off that area is a table with a computer and a shelf with some board games and a stereo that plays pleasant music all the time. On the other side is a small bar area with a few tables and nice chairs. The bar has a Finger Lakes wine happy hour and the rest of the time is an honor bar, which although I haven't availed myself of it is one of the nicer touches I've seen. You take a glass of wine or beer or soda and leave some dollar bills in a basket. That just makes me feel good for some reason. There's also a breakfront with free coffee available all the time and excellent coffee from Ithaca Coffee Company to boot. There are coffeemakers in the rooms but this is much better coffee.
The people who work here are without exception pleasant and completely helpful. I brought my bicycle along and when I asked about a place to store it, since the place doesn't have a luggage room, they put it in a very nice hotel room, right off the lobby, that happens to have a non-functional air conditioner. So not only is my bike safe and comfortable, but the staff and I get to make constant jokes about how the bike is doing and how it's enjoying it's stay.
There is a vaguely South Pacific theme going on, with wooden primitive sculptures in the lobby and masks on all the room doors. It's not really carried through though, not that I'd want it to be. The rooms are good sized (we had a queen room- the king rooms, like the one my bike is staying in, are larger) with with plenty of dresser space, a small table and chairs near the window, and a small refrigerator (for our convenience! Not a mini bar!). The bed is very comfortable. Some of the rooms have flat screen TVs. Ours has a reasonably nice older TV with a DVD player. The bathroom is small and modest but functional. The wifi is free (thank you!) and works better than in most hotels, but there is no outlet anywhere near the table (the king room next door does have outlets near the table).
The real problem with the room is climate control. Here's where the lack of upfront money comes in. There's no central heating or AC. This leaves each unit with one of those accursed floor consoles where you punch buttons and turn knobs to adjust the temperature. This is hardly a unique problem. Mirror Lake Inn, one of my favorite places, has the same setup.
The big problem with these units is that they suck. I know that sounds vague, but it can be applied to any specific aspect of their operation with equal accuracy. The thing is noisy, difficult to adjust, and ineffective in dealing with extremes. It was very hot and humid the first couple of days we were here, and though the room would get cool it never got dehumidified so we had a choice of freezing or clammy or, most typically, both. So sleeping was less than great, and fairly or not, this significantly downgrades the whole experience.
There's a bistro for breakfast and lunch (and a curiously poor brunch menu). The food is fine. The servers say "Enjoy!" when they leave you something on the table. There's a steak restaurant on the property which we did not try. There's a decent spa on the property. We all had massages which were good but not special in any way. There are some nice sitting areas outside, though no pool, and trails in the backyard lead into Buttermilk Falls State Park.
So overall I would give La Tourelle a positive but not rave review. I'm guessing for this area it's as good as it gets, and the price/value relationship is good. If you stay here I think you'll be satisfied but not blown away.
Saturday, July 09, 2011
Washing
I'm sitting outside the Fall Creek Laundromat in Ithaca. It's nice out so I've dragged a chair outside and I've got my feet propped up on a railroad tie that I presume is there to stop cars. I'm using someone in the neighborhood's wifi. Thanks!
It's a nice, clean laundromat with classic rock playing not too loud from a radio somewhere. There are a number of top and front load washers and reasonably new looking dryers with digital displays. At the moment there are two other people, one young woman and one woman closer to my age. It's 10:00 on Saturday night and the few people who've walked by have been very friendly, including the loudly singing mid-teens girls and the drunk guys looking for a water fountain. They may have even told me to "Enjoy!" as everyone else around here seems to say constantly.
So why am I doing this? Easy. I volunteered. My daughter finished her music program (the concert where the kids played and sang was remarkably good- way beyond even the best high school orchestra, band or chorus I've seen) and is off to camp in the morning. Since camp is sort of on the way home from Ithaca, it seemed silly to drive all the way home and then all the way back, so we're staying here an extra night and the laundry must be done. Since the ladies are busy repacking and whatever else, I volunteered to come out and spend an hour doing the wash.
Don't get me wrong. This is serious business. My wife consideres herself something of a laundry expert and I have no reason to disbelieve her. In fact, I'm honored that she trusted me to do this without giving me extremely detailed instructions. So hopefully I don't screw anything up- oversuds the machine, burn the delicates to a crisp- that kind of thing. So far so good. And it's a beautiful night and I'm content sitting right here.
It's a nice, clean laundromat with classic rock playing not too loud from a radio somewhere. There are a number of top and front load washers and reasonably new looking dryers with digital displays. At the moment there are two other people, one young woman and one woman closer to my age. It's 10:00 on Saturday night and the few people who've walked by have been very friendly, including the loudly singing mid-teens girls and the drunk guys looking for a water fountain. They may have even told me to "Enjoy!" as everyone else around here seems to say constantly.
So why am I doing this? Easy. I volunteered. My daughter finished her music program (the concert where the kids played and sang was remarkably good- way beyond even the best high school orchestra, band or chorus I've seen) and is off to camp in the morning. Since camp is sort of on the way home from Ithaca, it seemed silly to drive all the way home and then all the way back, so we're staying here an extra night and the laundry must be done. Since the ladies are busy repacking and whatever else, I volunteered to come out and spend an hour doing the wash.
Don't get me wrong. This is serious business. My wife consideres herself something of a laundry expert and I have no reason to disbelieve her. In fact, I'm honored that she trusted me to do this without giving me extremely detailed instructions. So hopefully I don't screw anything up- oversuds the machine, burn the delicates to a crisp- that kind of thing. So far so good. And it's a beautiful night and I'm content sitting right here.
Dining
As I mentioned previously, we ate last night at Suzanne's Regional Cuisine. It's a very good restaurant up on a hill on the eastern shore of Seneca Lake.
We arrived at 6:30 after an afternoon of wine tasting. The restaurant is in an old farm house- there's a couple of barns on the property and a field, of which a small part is used to grow things for the restaurant. There's a wrap-around porch with a couple of tables on it, and once we came inside we were led through a surprisingly large number of dining rooms into what looks like the newest and largest one. It still kind of resembles a living room and even has a couch and some easy chairs. I don't think it's an inn, but that part sure looked like it.
The menu is small, but there wasn't anything on it I wouldn't have eaten. The waiter came around and recited a couple of specials, one of which, a cremini mushroom stuffed with lobster (Maine is in the Finger Lakes region?) with a citrus vinaigrette. This sounded delicious, but when the waiter returned to take our order he said they were sold out. "Sold out at 6:45?" I asked incredulously. There was hardly anyone in the restaurant. Sorry, he said, sometimes when there's a large party a bunch of people order the same appetizer and the specials can go really fast.
I'd say bummer, but the potato leek soup I had instead was wonderful. It was not thick or heavy, but just slightly creamy with a few shreds of bacon and a dollop of blue cheese in the middle. Ronnie, in honor of seeing so many wonderful scallop preparations in The Trip, had scallops, which were perfectly cooked on a bed of sauteed shallots. In general, this restaurant keeps the sauces mostly on the side and lightly on the food itself. Delicious appetizers.
In the meantime, I was trying a couple of Finger Lakes Pinot Noirs. They were recognizably pinot noirs, but not made in any way that was familiar- either from France or the West Coast. Like everything else I'd had, drinkable, but not memorable. We also realized that we were hearing a kitchen timer go off repeatedly. I guess I assumed that even great chefs use timers, but I'm not used to hearing in the restaurant.
Entrees were duck for Ronnie and roast pork loin for me. Ronnie said her duck was unexceptional, that the skin wasn't crisp and the meat not as tender as expected. My roast pork, while not in a league with Tony Luke's roast pork, was very good. I'd ordered it because I'd never make it at home and was not disappointed. It was wrapped with a paper-thin slice of pancetta and lightly sauced with cremini mushrooms. Haricots verts on the side were fresh and delicious and there was some kind of fried grainy thing, maybe cheese grits, that made a nice complement.
For dessert, Ronnie had fantastic berries while I had something called profiteroles. The waiter told me what that meant (kind of like rigamaroles, but more profittable) but it's clear that this is a made up word that they thought would sound good for a dessert and I'm sure they give everyone a different answer when asked. In my case it was three little puff pastries with strawberry ice cream inside, sitting aside a pool of Belgian chocolate sauce. Wonderful way to end it.
By the end of the meal we'd heard "enjoy" enough times that it was all we could do to restrain ourselves from laughing out loud (this seems to be a regional tick- they say it at every restaurant around here every time they leave something on the table and walk away) but overall it was a fine dining experience.
We arrived at 6:30 after an afternoon of wine tasting. The restaurant is in an old farm house- there's a couple of barns on the property and a field, of which a small part is used to grow things for the restaurant. There's a wrap-around porch with a couple of tables on it, and once we came inside we were led through a surprisingly large number of dining rooms into what looks like the newest and largest one. It still kind of resembles a living room and even has a couch and some easy chairs. I don't think it's an inn, but that part sure looked like it.
The menu is small, but there wasn't anything on it I wouldn't have eaten. The waiter came around and recited a couple of specials, one of which, a cremini mushroom stuffed with lobster (Maine is in the Finger Lakes region?) with a citrus vinaigrette. This sounded delicious, but when the waiter returned to take our order he said they were sold out. "Sold out at 6:45?" I asked incredulously. There was hardly anyone in the restaurant. Sorry, he said, sometimes when there's a large party a bunch of people order the same appetizer and the specials can go really fast.
I'd say bummer, but the potato leek soup I had instead was wonderful. It was not thick or heavy, but just slightly creamy with a few shreds of bacon and a dollop of blue cheese in the middle. Ronnie, in honor of seeing so many wonderful scallop preparations in The Trip, had scallops, which were perfectly cooked on a bed of sauteed shallots. In general, this restaurant keeps the sauces mostly on the side and lightly on the food itself. Delicious appetizers.
In the meantime, I was trying a couple of Finger Lakes Pinot Noirs. They were recognizably pinot noirs, but not made in any way that was familiar- either from France or the West Coast. Like everything else I'd had, drinkable, but not memorable. We also realized that we were hearing a kitchen timer go off repeatedly. I guess I assumed that even great chefs use timers, but I'm not used to hearing in the restaurant.
Entrees were duck for Ronnie and roast pork loin for me. Ronnie said her duck was unexceptional, that the skin wasn't crisp and the meat not as tender as expected. My roast pork, while not in a league with Tony Luke's roast pork, was very good. I'd ordered it because I'd never make it at home and was not disappointed. It was wrapped with a paper-thin slice of pancetta and lightly sauced with cremini mushrooms. Haricots verts on the side were fresh and delicious and there was some kind of fried grainy thing, maybe cheese grits, that made a nice complement.
For dessert, Ronnie had fantastic berries while I had something called profiteroles. The waiter told me what that meant (kind of like rigamaroles, but more profittable) but it's clear that this is a made up word that they thought would sound good for a dessert and I'm sure they give everyone a different answer when asked. In my case it was three little puff pastries with strawberry ice cream inside, sitting aside a pool of Belgian chocolate sauce. Wonderful way to end it.
By the end of the meal we'd heard "enjoy" enough times that it was all we could do to restrain ourselves from laughing out loud (this seems to be a regional tick- they say it at every restaurant around here every time they leave something on the table and walk away) but overall it was a fine dining experience.
Thursday, July 07, 2011
Enjoy!
When we're on vacation, one thing is no different from when we're home. I get up way before everyone else. In this case, it's just the two of us, but the dynamic is the same, though the limitations of when you can get breakfast at a hotel limit how late things can go. So today we had breakfast at around 10. This unusually early wakeup led eventually to Ronnie going back to sleep while I went for a bike ride.
I went in the direction away from town because going toward town is straight downhill, a terrible way to begin a bike ride. The problem with going away from town, of course, is that there is virtually nothing between one town and the next. Not that convenience stores are the be all and end all or anything, but I'm not used to riding for 10 miles and seeing not one single business open anywhere and a mini market with cold drinks would have been appreciated. Did see a nice fishing pond though.
After I got back we headed out to taste the famous Finger Lakes wines. They were about what I expected. Everything was very drinkable, nothing was great. We didn't buy anything to take home. Many of them are in absolutely beautiful spots overlooking the lakes. There's almost no public access to either Cayuga or Seneca lake, the two biggest ones. I'm not sure why, aside from budget cuts that have forced NY to close the swimming areas in the state parks. It's a shame though.
Eventually we ended up at a very nice restaurant called Suzanne's Regional Cuisine. Oddly, that's how everyone there always refers to it, by that entire name. I had sort of assumed that Suzanne's was the name of the restaurant and Regional Cuisine was merely a descriptor, but apparently I was mistaken. Aside from repeating their entire name, the other verbal tick was that, no matter what the waiter or busboy or hostess did at the table, they always left saying "Enjoy!" By mid-entree´ we realized that this was just a thing that they did and were tempted to goad them into saying it even more often. But we didn't because we're nice people.
When we got back to the hotel I panicked because I couldn't find the new bottle opener I'd bought because I couldn't get the beer that I'd bought open with any of the 4 openers that we had at our disposal. After frantically searching through the car (you'd think after all the wine tasting that this would be unnecessary but I was driving so I'd been spitting a lot) for 10 minutes I finally gave up and went to the local mini mart and got something with a twist-off cap. Thank goodness for technology.
I went in the direction away from town because going toward town is straight downhill, a terrible way to begin a bike ride. The problem with going away from town, of course, is that there is virtually nothing between one town and the next. Not that convenience stores are the be all and end all or anything, but I'm not used to riding for 10 miles and seeing not one single business open anywhere and a mini market with cold drinks would have been appreciated. Did see a nice fishing pond though.
After I got back we headed out to taste the famous Finger Lakes wines. They were about what I expected. Everything was very drinkable, nothing was great. We didn't buy anything to take home. Many of them are in absolutely beautiful spots overlooking the lakes. There's almost no public access to either Cayuga or Seneca lake, the two biggest ones. I'm not sure why, aside from budget cuts that have forced NY to close the swimming areas in the state parks. It's a shame though.
Eventually we ended up at a very nice restaurant called Suzanne's Regional Cuisine. Oddly, that's how everyone there always refers to it, by that entire name. I had sort of assumed that Suzanne's was the name of the restaurant and Regional Cuisine was merely a descriptor, but apparently I was mistaken. Aside from repeating their entire name, the other verbal tick was that, no matter what the waiter or busboy or hostess did at the table, they always left saying "Enjoy!" By mid-entree´ we realized that this was just a thing that they did and were tempted to goad them into saying it even more often. But we didn't because we're nice people.
When we got back to the hotel I panicked because I couldn't find the new bottle opener I'd bought because I couldn't get the beer that I'd bought open with any of the 4 openers that we had at our disposal. After frantically searching through the car (you'd think after all the wine tasting that this would be unnecessary but I was driving so I'd been spitting a lot) for 10 minutes I finally gave up and went to the local mini mart and got something with a twist-off cap. Thank goodness for technology.
Away
I've had this uncomfortable feeling that the summer hasn't yet started and somehow is already over. I know that neither is true, it's just a feeling.
So right now we are in Ithaca. One of my kids is doing a music program for two weeks here, and as long as we had to come up here to pick her up, we figured we could leave a few days early and hang out in the Finger Lakes region.
So let me talk about the Finger Lakes. They do kind of look like fingers on a map, but the name is just kind of sketchy sounding. What the Finger Lakes are known for, aside from their shape, is their wineries. Over the years, wines made in New York have acquired an improving reputation, but they're still nothing special in the wine galaxy.
But I figured out why the wineries here are such a big deal. Because there's absolutely nothing else here. I'm looking at the "wine trail" map and in between the wineries there's...well, corn fields and towns you'd never visit unless you needed corn.
So tomorrow we'll tour around. From what I've heard a lot of the wineries are in really beautiful spots with great views. That's the other thing people say about places where there's nothing, that the scenery is beautiful. And in fact it's very pretty around here. But I never forget a satirical article we had in my college newspaper (my college was not terribly far from here) on the pros and cons of being at the college.
I'll be back with a report on our touring and a bit about the hotel later.
So right now we are in Ithaca. One of my kids is doing a music program for two weeks here, and as long as we had to come up here to pick her up, we figured we could leave a few days early and hang out in the Finger Lakes region.
So let me talk about the Finger Lakes. They do kind of look like fingers on a map, but the name is just kind of sketchy sounding. What the Finger Lakes are known for, aside from their shape, is their wineries. Over the years, wines made in New York have acquired an improving reputation, but they're still nothing special in the wine galaxy.
But I figured out why the wineries here are such a big deal. Because there's absolutely nothing else here. I'm looking at the "wine trail" map and in between the wineries there's...well, corn fields and towns you'd never visit unless you needed corn.
So tomorrow we'll tour around. From what I've heard a lot of the wineries are in really beautiful spots with great views. That's the other thing people say about places where there's nothing, that the scenery is beautiful. And in fact it's very pretty around here. But I never forget a satirical article we had in my college newspaper (my college was not terribly far from here) on the pros and cons of being at the college.
Pro: A view of the Mohawk ValleyI'm not saying it's equivalent exactly. This seems like a nicer area than around Utica (population when I was in school: 90,000, population now: 60,000, which tells you all you need to know). And of course I can find things to enjoy anywhere. I was just in advertising too long to not be wary of the overpromise.
Con: Living in the Mohawk Valley
I'll be back with a report on our touring and a bit about the hotel later.
Sunday, July 03, 2011
I guess its just one of those ex-felon, pro-acid kind of non-smoking homes
Saw "The Trip" last night. Not for everyone, but if you like that dry British insulty kind of humor it's really fun. Worth it just for the dueling Michael Caine and Sean Connery impressions.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
A few assorted thoughts
Nothing random here.
Since my closest friend since college is named Steve Brown, my life has suddenly gotten less confusing.
Is it just me, or is Pinnacle a strange name for a flooring company?
One of the nice things about having an outspoken young adult daughter at home (and yes, there are nice things about that) is that she feels completely free to tell me if she thinks the way I am dressing is inappropriate. Most recently, she told me that the slightly tight t-shirt and corduroy shorts made me look gay. And the way she said it was, "I know you're secure in your sexuality, but..."
Now I'm not sure exactly what the problem with that is. aside from the fact that I'm not gay. I don't think that the way I dress has ever disturbed or confused anyone. And by extension, how should I dress? Like a normal person? If you asked me for the top 10 adjectives I would use to describe myself, normal would not appear among them. Any similarity between me and a normal person are purely intentional, so I guess I could and do dress that way sometimes, but I don't want to be stuck with it.
Since my closest friend since college is named Steve Brown, my life has suddenly gotten less confusing.
Is it just me, or is Pinnacle a strange name for a flooring company?
One of the nice things about having an outspoken young adult daughter at home (and yes, there are nice things about that) is that she feels completely free to tell me if she thinks the way I am dressing is inappropriate. Most recently, she told me that the slightly tight t-shirt and corduroy shorts made me look gay. And the way she said it was, "I know you're secure in your sexuality, but..."
Now I'm not sure exactly what the problem with that is. aside from the fact that I'm not gay. I don't think that the way I dress has ever disturbed or confused anyone. And by extension, how should I dress? Like a normal person? If you asked me for the top 10 adjectives I would use to describe myself, normal would not appear among them. Any similarity between me and a normal person are purely intentional, so I guess I could and do dress that way sometimes, but I don't want to be stuck with it.
Monday, June 27, 2011
School without students
This year is finally over. It somehow felt both endless and as if it was flying by.
Spent a couple of days in school doing so-called in-service. For anyone who's curious, and who wouldn't be, this involves a combination of planned activities like large group meetings, small group meetings, writing report cards, and cleaning up. Kind of like summer camp, just without the fun.
I don't really mind most of this stuff, aside from the large meetings, but I find it kind of depressing being around a school with no kids here. On the occasion that a student pops in to drop off a book or something, it brightens my day.
Without breaking any of the major teacher secrets, here's what goes on during our in-service. On the first day, we arrive at school around 8 and are provided with enough coffee and sweet breakfast pastries to keep a 3 year-old awake and running in circles for several months. Then we go into the largest classroom to sit still and meet for abut 3 hours straight.
What do we talk about? Well, I'm genuinely trying to remember but I can't. Kudos for something to someone. Thanks for years of service. More comfortable places to sit somewhere. I don't know! I have a mental block with meetings.
At one point I was recruited to take notes, and did what was probably the worst job ever because I lack the span of either attention or interest (or both) to follow a whole discussion where 10 or more people participate about any topic, worthy or not, that doesn't directly involve me. And since part of my general code of behavior requires me to avoid involvement in everything other than my own business, that describes the vast majority or meeting topics.
I can't say that I'm proud of myself for behaving this way, but I'm not ashamed of myself either.
I think part of the discussion was how to make students like the school more. It makes me think of an old interview with the writer Fran Lebowitz, where she was asked if she thought we should be making school more entertaining. No, she replied, what we should be doing is making it more educational.
Spent a couple of days in school doing so-called in-service. For anyone who's curious, and who wouldn't be, this involves a combination of planned activities like large group meetings, small group meetings, writing report cards, and cleaning up. Kind of like summer camp, just without the fun.
I don't really mind most of this stuff, aside from the large meetings, but I find it kind of depressing being around a school with no kids here. On the occasion that a student pops in to drop off a book or something, it brightens my day.
Without breaking any of the major teacher secrets, here's what goes on during our in-service. On the first day, we arrive at school around 8 and are provided with enough coffee and sweet breakfast pastries to keep a 3 year-old awake and running in circles for several months. Then we go into the largest classroom to sit still and meet for abut 3 hours straight.
What do we talk about? Well, I'm genuinely trying to remember but I can't. Kudos for something to someone. Thanks for years of service. More comfortable places to sit somewhere. I don't know! I have a mental block with meetings.
At one point I was recruited to take notes, and did what was probably the worst job ever because I lack the span of either attention or interest (or both) to follow a whole discussion where 10 or more people participate about any topic, worthy or not, that doesn't directly involve me. And since part of my general code of behavior requires me to avoid involvement in everything other than my own business, that describes the vast majority or meeting topics.
I can't say that I'm proud of myself for behaving this way, but I'm not ashamed of myself either.
I think part of the discussion was how to make students like the school more. It makes me think of an old interview with the writer Fran Lebowitz, where she was asked if she thought we should be making school more entertaining. No, she replied, what we should be doing is making it more educational.
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Not just another graduation
I guess because I'm a class advisor I felt a special closeness with this bunch of seniors, and there are many of them that I know pretty well and am genuinely fond of. So watching everyone get ready was really fun.
I got asked to hold stuff- gowns, purses, umbrellas, "spit that out now" gum- whatever they needed. Getting them ready for their class picture had a herding cats-like feel to it, but they were all so happy that it never got annoying. It was raining and one girl was late because she was trapped in her car with no umbrella to protect her hair. Then, when the rain let up, her heels were so high she had to walk verrrrrry slooooowly into the auditorium.
My favorite picture comment was someone who was the youngest child in a family celebrating that they would finally have a picture on the mantle along with all of their older siblings' graduation photos.
Then I went upstairs to the sanctuary and chatted with parents, graduates, other teachers for quite a while until it was time to start, at which time it was just my job to make sure all the teachers had places to sit. Here are my stray observations from the inner periphery.
The students had been given sheets of paper with their names in order to reserve seats. It was interesting to try to create a psychological profile of someone based on where they chose to have their family sit. It would have been funny if someone had put their families scattered about instead of all together.
One of my favorite moments was when a speaker asked the students to stand unexpectedly (and unreahearsedly). Since all the girls in the front row we instructed to sit with their ankles crossed, the boys stood right up while I watched the girls all uncross their ankles and then stand. When they were seated they all re-crossed them.
I guess since I was sitting with my head around the stage level, I had a good view of footwear. Some of the smaller girls were more comfortable with their stature than others, and so wore relatively flat shoes. Others wore big platforms. And maybe it's just me, but those big chunky espadrilles with all the ties wrapped around the ankles end up looking kind of like shredded Chucks.
The student speakers were all excellent. A couple of them really made me well up a bit.
The keynote speech was the only one that really sounded like a regular kind of speech. I'm more of a fan of the kinds of speech given by the late David Foster Wallace (now a book called This Is Water). I can never sit through one of these without writing a keynote speech in my head. I actually came up with enough stuff that I wrote it down when I got home.
From a teacher's perspective, it's always kind of strange to see people that you spent a lot of time with and got, if not close, then at least extremely comfortable with over 4 or 5 years just exiting your life. It's sad and exciting at the same time. It does drive home how unusual the teacher/student relationships that grow at this school are. There's no real relationship box to put them in. It's not a friendship exactly but it's far more than just teacher/mentor. It's kind of like parenting except without its inherent overwhelming always and forever responsibility. The awkwardness of it shows up, for me at least, in whether to hug someone. I like to hug as a matter of course, but my general rule with students is that I don't touch the kid unless the kid touches me first or comes at me with open arms. This occasionally yields a funny unsure little dance.
After the ceremony there's a dessert reception. As I always do, I come in, do a couple of laps around the room to see whoever and then exit. The desserts were good this year, I thought. My favorite touch was the little freezer with ice cream sandwiches and chocolate eclairs.
I'd love to try to sum up here, but as usual, it takes a while for me to really understand how I feel about something. I guess I hope I can keep in good enough touch with enough of these kids that I don't miss them too much.
I got asked to hold stuff- gowns, purses, umbrellas, "spit that out now" gum- whatever they needed. Getting them ready for their class picture had a herding cats-like feel to it, but they were all so happy that it never got annoying. It was raining and one girl was late because she was trapped in her car with no umbrella to protect her hair. Then, when the rain let up, her heels were so high she had to walk verrrrrry slooooowly into the auditorium.
My favorite picture comment was someone who was the youngest child in a family celebrating that they would finally have a picture on the mantle along with all of their older siblings' graduation photos.
Then I went upstairs to the sanctuary and chatted with parents, graduates, other teachers for quite a while until it was time to start, at which time it was just my job to make sure all the teachers had places to sit. Here are my stray observations from the inner periphery.
The students had been given sheets of paper with their names in order to reserve seats. It was interesting to try to create a psychological profile of someone based on where they chose to have their family sit. It would have been funny if someone had put their families scattered about instead of all together.
One of my favorite moments was when a speaker asked the students to stand unexpectedly (and unreahearsedly). Since all the girls in the front row we instructed to sit with their ankles crossed, the boys stood right up while I watched the girls all uncross their ankles and then stand. When they were seated they all re-crossed them.
I guess since I was sitting with my head around the stage level, I had a good view of footwear. Some of the smaller girls were more comfortable with their stature than others, and so wore relatively flat shoes. Others wore big platforms. And maybe it's just me, but those big chunky espadrilles with all the ties wrapped around the ankles end up looking kind of like shredded Chucks.
The student speakers were all excellent. A couple of them really made me well up a bit.
The keynote speech was the only one that really sounded like a regular kind of speech. I'm more of a fan of the kinds of speech given by the late David Foster Wallace (now a book called This Is Water). I can never sit through one of these without writing a keynote speech in my head. I actually came up with enough stuff that I wrote it down when I got home.
From a teacher's perspective, it's always kind of strange to see people that you spent a lot of time with and got, if not close, then at least extremely comfortable with over 4 or 5 years just exiting your life. It's sad and exciting at the same time. It does drive home how unusual the teacher/student relationships that grow at this school are. There's no real relationship box to put them in. It's not a friendship exactly but it's far more than just teacher/mentor. It's kind of like parenting except without its inherent overwhelming always and forever responsibility. The awkwardness of it shows up, for me at least, in whether to hug someone. I like to hug as a matter of course, but my general rule with students is that I don't touch the kid unless the kid touches me first or comes at me with open arms. This occasionally yields a funny unsure little dance.
After the ceremony there's a dessert reception. As I always do, I come in, do a couple of laps around the room to see whoever and then exit. The desserts were good this year, I thought. My favorite touch was the little freezer with ice cream sandwiches and chocolate eclairs.
I'd love to try to sum up here, but as usual, it takes a while for me to really understand how I feel about something. I guess I hope I can keep in good enough touch with enough of these kids that I don't miss them too much.
Thursday, June 09, 2011
It's not the humidity
This morning I put the leash on my dog, opened the door, and as we took our first step outside she stopped and looked up at me and I could only imagine her thinking
"Really? Are you seriously taking me out into this? Don't you realize I'm completely covered with fur? What sort of sadist are you?"
Monday, June 06, 2011
The parental perspective
As I was going through all the receipts from the senior trip, I suddenly remembered that several students had forgotten to bring in their permission slips, and in those cases I asked them to call their parents so I could get verbal approval. Unanimously, the parents both agreed that their kids could go and without prompting gave permission for us to keep them even longer if we wanted to.
Thursday, June 02, 2011
Lacks maturity
If there's one thing I learned this week is thata piece of me remains fundamentally uncomfortable being a grown-up. And I think I'm okay with that.
On the way home
So after the game the kids went to get balls and autographs, and a couple of the girls got one (or more) of the player's phone number and spent the bus ride home from the ballpark texting with him. And wouldn't you know it, when curfew hit, where are they? Out on the beach with a few of the ballplayers, of course, having driven the 30 miles over from Salisbury to Ocean City.
After a bit if a flurry, we shooed the girls up to their rooms and left the disappointed-looking boys downstairs. About 45 minutes later I came out of my room to check in with the security guard, who told me that a couple of guys had come up to the floor looking for the girls and that he'd shooed them away. Fabulous.
As a result of all this, I ended up in bed much too late, but was still able to get up in time to get packed up in the morning. I then had to go retrieve the food from the refrigerator in the basement of the hotel. I kind of wish I'd had a video camera with me to follow the maze of hallways and stairs I had to get through to reach it. I will say that everything was very clean and the people very helpful. Got the cooler, which fully loaded weighs about 100 pounds and a cart from a walk-in fridge, and went up one elevator to fetch some ice and then through abut 100 yards of hallways and ramps to get outside to the parking lot.
The kids made it out in a reasonable amount of time (I must say I had fretted that one or more of the rooms would still be asleep when it was time to leave) and we went to the local water park. I should mention that we had absolutely spectacular weather throughout- sunny and warm every day. The park was small and maybe a bit too little-kid oriented, but there was enough fun stuff to do for everyone (and minigolf next door for those who didn't want the water rides).
So we hung out there for a few hours and now we're on our way home. I'll be back with reflections and pictures later, but for now I'm signing off.
After a bit if a flurry, we shooed the girls up to their rooms and left the disappointed-looking boys downstairs. About 45 minutes later I came out of my room to check in with the security guard, who told me that a couple of guys had come up to the floor looking for the girls and that he'd shooed them away. Fabulous.
As a result of all this, I ended up in bed much too late, but was still able to get up in time to get packed up in the morning. I then had to go retrieve the food from the refrigerator in the basement of the hotel. I kind of wish I'd had a video camera with me to follow the maze of hallways and stairs I had to get through to reach it. I will say that everything was very clean and the people very helpful. Got the cooler, which fully loaded weighs about 100 pounds and a cart from a walk-in fridge, and went up one elevator to fetch some ice and then through abut 100 yards of hallways and ramps to get outside to the parking lot.
The kids made it out in a reasonable amount of time (I must say I had fretted that one or more of the rooms would still be asleep when it was time to leave) and we went to the local water park. I should mention that we had absolutely spectacular weather throughout- sunny and warm every day. The park was small and maybe a bit too little-kid oriented, but there was enough fun stuff to do for everyone (and minigolf next door for those who didn't want the water rides).
So we hung out there for a few hours and now we're on our way home. I'll be back with reflections and pictures later, but for now I'm signing off.
The JBHA Game (Pictures to follow)
Oh. My. God.
We are on our way back from the Delmarva Shorebirds game. To say that we were enthusiastic spectators would dramatically understate the proceedings. We actually kind of dominated the non-baseball action.
Our group struck up conversation with the MC and the mascot (the mascot conversed by means of a kind of charades) early, then one of our guys was given a t-shirt, interviewed on the PA ("I live and die Shorebirds"), and told that if anyone hit the Robertson's Jewelers sign in left field that he'd win a $1500 gold coin (they didn't).
After several more let's call them very friendly conversations with the MC and mascot (bird costume), a group of our girls talked their way into singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame," then dancing to "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" on the dugout.
During this time they, let's just say they caught the attention of some of the players and spent the rest of the game calling out to them and they'd look up from the dugout and wave to the girls. I'm just going to leave it at that though that wasn't the end of the story.
We are on our way back from the Delmarva Shorebirds game. To say that we were enthusiastic spectators would dramatically understate the proceedings. We actually kind of dominated the non-baseball action.
Our group struck up conversation with the MC and the mascot (the mascot conversed by means of a kind of charades) early, then one of our guys was given a t-shirt, interviewed on the PA ("I live and die Shorebirds"), and told that if anyone hit the Robertson's Jewelers sign in left field that he'd win a $1500 gold coin (they didn't).
After several more let's call them very friendly conversations with the MC and mascot (bird costume), a group of our girls talked their way into singing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame," then dancing to "Thank God I'm A Country Boy" on the dugout.
During this time they, let's just say they caught the attention of some of the players and spent the rest of the game calling out to them and they'd look up from the dugout and wave to the girls. I'm just going to leave it at that though that wasn't the end of the story.
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
Day 2, Part 1
Woke up at a reasonable hour and made coffee. The security guard, who had been plied with treats by some of the girls before bedtime, had gone. Had some breakfast and then went down to wrangle a group headed for paintball. Once they'd left, I asked who wanted to join me for the secondary activity of bike riding. As it turned out, only one girl and I were up for going.
We were going to ride on the bus with the paintball group, but the bus driver had apparently been subjected to some sort of operant conditioning that caused him to twitch uncontrollably if I asked him to stop the bus anywhere other than the appointed place. Rather than have a twitchy bus driver, we elected to take a city bus, which took approximately 45 seconds longer, since the charter bus passed us right before our stop.
We rented mountain bikes, which is peculiar in that there's nothing around Ocean City that would remotely qualify as a hill, much less a mountain, but off we went. My idea was to ride at least far enough north that we got into Delaware.
Ocean City has an unusual kind of arrangement where there is one lane that is a combination bus and bike lane. It sound kind of scary, at least from the bike perspective, but since there's only one bus every 10 minutes or so, it was fine.
After we'd ridden for a while, my companion asked if I knew how far it was to Delaware, at which point we spotted a "Welcome To Delaware" sign. It was an interesting shift, because once we passed the initial commercial area (I guess for people seeking non sales tax) it turned into a state park and there was nothing on either side but sand dunes. And bikes got their own lane. Absolutely lovely. Eventually we decided it was time to turn around.
I'm a pretty experienced cyclist, and you'd think by now I'd have internalized one important fact- if there's no breeze in your face while you're riding, it means the wind is at your back. And will therefore be in your face when you turn around, and that's what it was. But we fought our way and were very ready for lunch when we returned.
The afternoon was spent at the beach. It wasn't as hot today, but very sunny and nice. The kids built and smashed sand castles and and threw a football around when the beach patrol wasn't watching and fought the rough surf. Then back inside to shower and ice skate a bit before dinner.
We're now on our way to see the Delmarva Shorebirds face off against the Hickory Crawdads in a South Atlantic League (affectionately known as the Sally League) contest. It's low class A ball, mostly 19 and 20 year-old kids. Should be fun and I'll report back later.
We were going to ride on the bus with the paintball group, but the bus driver had apparently been subjected to some sort of operant conditioning that caused him to twitch uncontrollably if I asked him to stop the bus anywhere other than the appointed place. Rather than have a twitchy bus driver, we elected to take a city bus, which took approximately 45 seconds longer, since the charter bus passed us right before our stop.
We rented mountain bikes, which is peculiar in that there's nothing around Ocean City that would remotely qualify as a hill, much less a mountain, but off we went. My idea was to ride at least far enough north that we got into Delaware.
Ocean City has an unusual kind of arrangement where there is one lane that is a combination bus and bike lane. It sound kind of scary, at least from the bike perspective, but since there's only one bus every 10 minutes or so, it was fine.
After we'd ridden for a while, my companion asked if I knew how far it was to Delaware, at which point we spotted a "Welcome To Delaware" sign. It was an interesting shift, because once we passed the initial commercial area (I guess for people seeking non sales tax) it turned into a state park and there was nothing on either side but sand dunes. And bikes got their own lane. Absolutely lovely. Eventually we decided it was time to turn around.
I'm a pretty experienced cyclist, and you'd think by now I'd have internalized one important fact- if there's no breeze in your face while you're riding, it means the wind is at your back. And will therefore be in your face when you turn around, and that's what it was. But we fought our way and were very ready for lunch when we returned.
The afternoon was spent at the beach. It wasn't as hot today, but very sunny and nice. The kids built and smashed sand castles and and threw a football around when the beach patrol wasn't watching and fought the rough surf. Then back inside to shower and ice skate a bit before dinner.
We're now on our way to see the Delmarva Shorebirds face off against the Hickory Crawdads in a South Atlantic League (affectionately known as the Sally League) contest. It's low class A ball, mostly 19 and 20 year-old kids. Should be fun and I'll report back later.
Day 1
I can't really tell you what a senior trip is like from the perspective of a student. I went to a public high school of the sort that did not indulge in that sort of thing. I can only tell you from the perspective of the chaperone, and in this case the so-called lead chaperone.
Being a lead chaperone is kind of like getting promoted to a job with harder work and more responsibility but you still get paid the same. If you've read my travel blogs in the past, you know that I can get overly caught up in the logistical details of a trip and this can make it hard to relax.
Nonetheless, today was actually pretty relaxing once we got here. The hotel is the kind of place that would not fare well in a TripAdvisor review. The decor is a mix between unattractive and nonexistent (you would not believe the furniture that's in use in my writing this), there's paint and wallpaper peeling here and there, and a hint of antiseptic smell in the air. But it's cheap, right on the beach, and the rooms are large, with refrigerator, microwave and coffeemaker. There's a small ice skating rink in the lobby atrium and a 24 hour supermarket across the street. The rooms like this overlooking the atrium have little balconies with a plush chair and chaise lounge. And the people are nice. I wouldn't recommend it to everyone, but for a school group it's great. Oh, and they also have a "No Party Tolerance Policy," which I gather is a policy that does not tolerate parties. Except, of course, when the parties are held in a room where the hotel can charge for your parties
First we had lunch, then I made some announcements. This is hard for me because I'm not a linear enough speaker to be sufficiently succinct. People tend to listen to me, I think because they never know what's going to come out of my mouth, but I just can't do announcements straight. Then everyone went to their rooms, got in bathing suits and headed for the beach.
It took me longer than most to get to the beach because I wanted to "organize" some stuff, but once I got out there it was very nice. I often feel slightly uncomfortable dealing with students in this kind of setting because they're here to be with each other, not to hang out with their teachers. Ultimately I ended up sitting with the other chaperones a few hundred feet down the beach.
I went in the ocean, body-surfed a bit, and then went back inside. I was in my room for a bit and then I heard people talking ion the hallway. I poked my head out and asked if they wanted to go ice skating. They said no but that some other people did. This turned out to be true and a few of us went down to skate, a group that eventually grew to around 20 people, ranging from people who were pretty good to people who hadn't skated in years. I've always dissed ice hockey because it's played on a surface that most people would prefer to walk around rather than on if given the choice, but this was actually good fun.
After dinner we went to the boardwalk. One of the big attractions of this place is that it has an actual classic-style boardwalk, with all the sights, sounds and smells that that implies. The kids, who mind you had just finished eating dinner, hit the stands as if it had been months rather than minutes since they'd eaten. I heard reports of deepfried cheesecake and oreos being consumed and I was told it tasted exactly the way you'd think such a "food" would taste. I think my favorite thing, though was just how gleeful they were. It was as if they'd never been anywhere before. "Look t-shirts!" These are kids who, for rthe most part, have traveled pretty extensively, but I guess this is part of what makes a senior trip special.
I held myself to the largest small ice cream cone I've ever eaten. Eventually, the kids gathered near where the bus was supposed to meet us. The main thing going on there was one guy, celebrating his birthday, had a t-shirt that read "FREE HUGS." and a happy half hour was spent trying to convince any an all passers by to indulge. A surprising number, male and female, obliged.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
Senior tripping
So it's time to blog the senior trip. We're currently on the bus on our way to Ocean City, MD. I've never been to this place and am very much looking forward to it.
Ocean City was not our original destination, and our path to that location twisted and turned through bedbug reports, careening between no options and too many options, and finally landing in the OC, thanks in part to an offpeak travel time and a lousy economy.
My job here was to plan and organize the trip. I think most people know that me and the word 'organize' have a relationship that's uneasy at best. Planning is fine, and I can keep a lot of things going simultaneously, but not in a way that anyone would call precise and organized.
As the trip goes on I can pass along some more of the backstory, but today we arrived at school to find that we had 3 few kids than anticipated, due to illness and mysterious doings. Most of the kids were here on time, as was the bus, so everything proceeded and we were ready to go when I realized we were lacking our lunch. This is the perfect example of why I hate being in charge. If we ended up in Maryland with no food, it was all on me.
The caterer had said that we were going to have sandwiches for lunch today because he couldn't get to the hotel in time to prepare a meal. Beyond that, I had no information. I didn't know if he was bringing them or if we needed to load it on the bus. Once I found out that we were bringing it, I had to go down to the school kitchen, bang on the door until an extremely put out (though totally helpful) young woman let me in.
Upon entering, I could see that our food was in a state of semi-readiness. This was not what I'd anticipated, but we were able to fill a cooler with ice, add sandwiches, and then...stare at this big heavy thing and wonder how we were going to get it to the bus. There was no handtruck or proper dolly anywhere, so we lifted the cooler onto one of those wheeley (wheelie?) things you use to pile up a bunch of folding chairs. This was okay as long as we didn't hit any kind of irregularity on the ground, which worked better inside than out. Any time we hit even a small bump, the wheelie stopped and the cooler kept going (that's physics, folks). Eventually, we gave up and started carrying things.
The end result of this was my getting completely soaked and more than a little irritated, but ultimately we made it onto the bus with everything and we're off! More to come.
Ocean City was not our original destination, and our path to that location twisted and turned through bedbug reports, careening between no options and too many options, and finally landing in the OC, thanks in part to an offpeak travel time and a lousy economy.
My job here was to plan and organize the trip. I think most people know that me and the word 'organize' have a relationship that's uneasy at best. Planning is fine, and I can keep a lot of things going simultaneously, but not in a way that anyone would call precise and organized.
As the trip goes on I can pass along some more of the backstory, but today we arrived at school to find that we had 3 few kids than anticipated, due to illness and mysterious doings. Most of the kids were here on time, as was the bus, so everything proceeded and we were ready to go when I realized we were lacking our lunch. This is the perfect example of why I hate being in charge. If we ended up in Maryland with no food, it was all on me.
The caterer had said that we were going to have sandwiches for lunch today because he couldn't get to the hotel in time to prepare a meal. Beyond that, I had no information. I didn't know if he was bringing them or if we needed to load it on the bus. Once I found out that we were bringing it, I had to go down to the school kitchen, bang on the door until an extremely put out (though totally helpful) young woman let me in.
Upon entering, I could see that our food was in a state of semi-readiness. This was not what I'd anticipated, but we were able to fill a cooler with ice, add sandwiches, and then...stare at this big heavy thing and wonder how we were going to get it to the bus. There was no handtruck or proper dolly anywhere, so we lifted the cooler onto one of those wheeley (wheelie?) things you use to pile up a bunch of folding chairs. This was okay as long as we didn't hit any kind of irregularity on the ground, which worked better inside than out. Any time we hit even a small bump, the wheelie stopped and the cooler kept going (that's physics, folks). Eventually, we gave up and started carrying things.
The end result of this was my getting completely soaked and more than a little irritated, but ultimately we made it onto the bus with everything and we're off! More to come.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
Life gets in the way
Isn't that a song lyric or something? Life gets in the way of living? If it's not it should be because it's catchy and it's true.
My case in particular has me dealing with a houseful of people who aren't feeling well. I've often lamented the pain of being the least sick person in a house full of sick people. You always have to do all the stuff because you're the least incapacitated. I'll tell you, walking the dog on a winter night with a fever is no fun at all, but someone's gotta do it.
I'm not actually sick at the moment, but I sprained my right thumb a few weeks ago and it has refused to get better, leading me to try to keep it immobilized. All I have to say about this is, try getting through a day without using the thumb on your dominant hand and see how that works. Try buttoning something or even putting that thing on in the first place. Try holding a glass. Try preparing, eating or ridding your body of food. Try washing your hair. Try typing. Or writing. And remember that I essentially write for a living.
And you know how when you hurt one leg the other starts to hurt because you're favoring it? Guess what? Some thing with hands!
My case in particular has me dealing with a houseful of people who aren't feeling well. I've often lamented the pain of being the least sick person in a house full of sick people. You always have to do all the stuff because you're the least incapacitated. I'll tell you, walking the dog on a winter night with a fever is no fun at all, but someone's gotta do it.
I'm not actually sick at the moment, but I sprained my right thumb a few weeks ago and it has refused to get better, leading me to try to keep it immobilized. All I have to say about this is, try getting through a day without using the thumb on your dominant hand and see how that works. Try buttoning something or even putting that thing on in the first place. Try holding a glass. Try preparing, eating or ridding your body of food. Try washing your hair. Try typing. Or writing. And remember that I essentially write for a living.
And you know how when you hurt one leg the other starts to hurt because you're favoring it? Guess what? Some thing with hands!
Monday, May 16, 2011
I went to Hamilton College in upstate New York. Snows a lot there. Snows so much that there that the idea of a snow day was just silly. Every day was a snow day.
I had a Shakespeare professor who was, shockingly, a theatrical sort. He spoke with a pseudo continental accent (I have no idea where he was from, probably Nebraska or something). I am now going to use dramatic license and relate and perhaps embellish a story that my friend told me as if it actually happened to me.
One day I come to class on a bright clear morning through a couple of feet of freshly fallen snow that had stuck to absolutely everything, turning the campus overwhelmingly white. The professor walks in and grumpily says, "So I get up this morning, go to the kitchen to get coffee, and I look out the window and what do I see? A g-damned winter wonderland."
I kind of feel the same way about spring. Spring is wonderful if you like green and if you like mud, bugs and itchy eyes. Yes, it's nice that the temperatures are warmer, but lousy weather comes in all sorts, and I personally prefer winter.
Adding to the fun is our temporary houseguest. Well, a houseguest in that she resides at the house, but not in that she's inside. We have a light fixture outside of our back door that has a gracefully curved brass tube leading up to the light itself. A few years ago, a robin decided that that would be an ideal place to build a nest, and the nest has remained ever since, occupied each year by some robin or another (they're so darned difficult to tell apart!). In general, this is fine. It's up too high to see into the nest, but once the babies are born you can see their beaks sticking up when they're waiting for food. The only downside is the neighborhood cat camping out down below, hoping for a snack.
This years robin, however, is an overly nervous sort who bolts the nest every time someone walks near it. I know this is normal bird behavior, but this particular robin has acute insomnia and I can tell you that there are few things more alarming than coming home late and tired in the dark, and having something suddenly fly right past your face. I've already told my wife that if she finds me sprawled out in the back yard dead that I've suffered a heart attack at this bird's hands (wings?).
I had a Shakespeare professor who was, shockingly, a theatrical sort. He spoke with a pseudo continental accent (I have no idea where he was from, probably Nebraska or something). I am now going to use dramatic license and relate and perhaps embellish a story that my friend told me as if it actually happened to me.
One day I come to class on a bright clear morning through a couple of feet of freshly fallen snow that had stuck to absolutely everything, turning the campus overwhelmingly white. The professor walks in and grumpily says, "So I get up this morning, go to the kitchen to get coffee, and I look out the window and what do I see? A g-damned winter wonderland."
I kind of feel the same way about spring. Spring is wonderful if you like green and if you like mud, bugs and itchy eyes. Yes, it's nice that the temperatures are warmer, but lousy weather comes in all sorts, and I personally prefer winter.
Adding to the fun is our temporary houseguest. Well, a houseguest in that she resides at the house, but not in that she's inside. We have a light fixture outside of our back door that has a gracefully curved brass tube leading up to the light itself. A few years ago, a robin decided that that would be an ideal place to build a nest, and the nest has remained ever since, occupied each year by some robin or another (they're so darned difficult to tell apart!). In general, this is fine. It's up too high to see into the nest, but once the babies are born you can see their beaks sticking up when they're waiting for food. The only downside is the neighborhood cat camping out down below, hoping for a snack.
This years robin, however, is an overly nervous sort who bolts the nest every time someone walks near it. I know this is normal bird behavior, but this particular robin has acute insomnia and I can tell you that there are few things more alarming than coming home late and tired in the dark, and having something suddenly fly right past your face. I've already told my wife that if she finds me sprawled out in the back yard dead that I've suffered a heart attack at this bird's hands (wings?).
Wednesday, May 04, 2011
Complete freak out
I was about to go to the Phillies game last night and as I always do, I checked to see which of my tickets I had sold on Stubhub, because those tickets won't work. I saw that I'd sold seats 15 and 16 so I went to my file to get 13 and 14 and saw that those were the only 2 tickets there. 15 and 16 were gone. I suddenly thought, "Holy S--t!" I had accidentally sold two of the tickets that I'd given to the school on Stubhub. I had given them two pairs, one for 5/3 and one for 5/5, one for a senior class silent auction and the other for an athletic department raffle. I had no idea which was which and did not know who had won either the raffle or the auction.
I completely freaked out. This meant that these people would show up and their tickets would not work. And I didn't even know who they were but knew I'd find out eventually and it wouldn't be pretty. The only thing I could think to do was run down to the ballpark and try to find two unidentified people wandering among the 45,000 showing up for the game.
So I rushed out the door (it was about 6:15 at this point with a 7:05 game time) and flew down to the ballpark (20 minutes!), went to the third base ticket window and then the first base window (as in all the way on the other side of the park) looking for a couple of pissed-off people. Then I asked one of the attendants if there had been anyone show up and have their tickets not work. He said that if that happened they'd be sent to the Stubhub booth which was back at the 3rd base window.
.
I ran back over there and the Stubhub people said that yes, someone who had bought tickets at a silent auction had been there and they'd sent them over to the season ticket office where they were going to try to contact me. This office was next to the first base ticket window back on the other side of the park.
So over there I run and I go in the office and there's nobody there except Phillies employees. I say, "Oh no, I'm too late" so they ask me what I mean and when I explain a woman behind the counter said, "You're not too late. They're standing at my ticket window, number 21." So I go out to window 21 and there are my school's principal and her husband, shocked as all hell to see me there. It was just game time. So after a short explanation they took the two valid tickets and in they went.
I was able to get a ticket for myself, I drank 2 beers as quickly as I could to calm myself, and then sat and enjoyed the game.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Thank goodness for research!
Otherwise we would not have conclusively known this:
Facebook photos
I could wax eloquent (or at least write lots and lots of words) about how societal trends have left us with a generation of exhibitionists, but I wouldn't want to call attention to myself.
Facebook photos
I could wax eloquent (or at least write lots and lots of words) about how societal trends have left us with a generation of exhibitionists, but I wouldn't want to call attention to myself.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
Just WIlliam and Kate
So far, at least, the best thing about this whole royal wedding thing is that when I see"Kate" in a headline it no longer means that awful woman from the reality show with all the kids.
Oh, and when you see William singing "God Save The Queen," do you think he's thinking about his mother?
Oh, and when you see William singing "God Save The Queen," do you think he's thinking about his mother?
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Owning up
I guess in my old age (I got my first ever Senior Discount today!) I am more secure in my abilities and therefore am less afraid to admit when I did something stupid. Fortunately, as I've gotten older I have gotten smarter and so don't make nearly as many mistakes as I used to. This fits together nicely and so, with the exception of the usual set of mea culpas that are an essential part of a marriage (on the man's side of it anyway) I am perfectly content acknowledging my occasional boneheadedness.
Today I came back home from dropping my daughter off at school and saw that our electric gate had remained open. I know, that sounds all snobby, electric gate and all, but really it's just so we don't have to have a fence around our pool. I guess that doesn't sound much better, but the gate behaves in a somewhat mysterious fashion and glitches on what seems like a monthly basis. When this happens, the only thing to do is to go in the basement and flip the circuit breaker to turn off the power. After a while, if I turn the power back on the gate will operate normally.
So I go to the basement and do this and then come back upstairs for breakfast. After breakfast, I notice that the Internet is out. This is, of course, a total disaster and cannot be tolerated, so I call Comcast and just ream them (politely, of course). We've been having intermittent problems for months and they refuse to change the outside cable and the TV's out too and I'm sick of it and what, you can't come until tomorrow? I'm inconvenienced and fuming, but I have stuff to do that I go out and do, finishing with a stop at a coffee shop so I can get on the internet for a little while.
When I get home I notice that the gate is still open, so I go down to the basement and notice that instead of one circuit breaker being off, there are two circuit breakers off. I flip them both back on and sure enough, the internet and TV are working again. Oops. Fortunately, I don't even need to apologize to anyone. Just cancel the service call and fire up the laptop. Life is good.
Today I came back home from dropping my daughter off at school and saw that our electric gate had remained open. I know, that sounds all snobby, electric gate and all, but really it's just so we don't have to have a fence around our pool. I guess that doesn't sound much better, but the gate behaves in a somewhat mysterious fashion and glitches on what seems like a monthly basis. When this happens, the only thing to do is to go in the basement and flip the circuit breaker to turn off the power. After a while, if I turn the power back on the gate will operate normally.
So I go to the basement and do this and then come back upstairs for breakfast. After breakfast, I notice that the Internet is out. This is, of course, a total disaster and cannot be tolerated, so I call Comcast and just ream them (politely, of course). We've been having intermittent problems for months and they refuse to change the outside cable and the TV's out too and I'm sick of it and what, you can't come until tomorrow? I'm inconvenienced and fuming, but I have stuff to do that I go out and do, finishing with a stop at a coffee shop so I can get on the internet for a little while.
When I get home I notice that the gate is still open, so I go down to the basement and notice that instead of one circuit breaker being off, there are two circuit breakers off. I flip them both back on and sure enough, the internet and TV are working again. Oops. Fortunately, I don't even need to apologize to anyone. Just cancel the service call and fire up the laptop. Life is good.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Just one more reason why being an adult is way more awesome than being a kid
You get to have serious conversations about whether you prefer the new dishwasher to the old one and why. For example,
Another great thing is that because you've lived so much longer, you can have a mess that you've left in a place for 5 years or more, almost waiting for someone to say something about it.
"I really like the arrangement of the new dishwasher racks."
"I like the way the bottom rack works, but there's only room for 15 glasses on the top rack and that's not enough."
"Yeah, but I like the silverware holder being along the side instead of being in the middle."
"And it does get the dishes really clean."Powerful stuff, yes?
Another great thing is that because you've lived so much longer, you can have a mess that you've left in a place for 5 years or more, almost waiting for someone to say something about it.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
When a math teacher thinks about numbers
One of the real challenges in teaching math has nothing to do with teaching methods of calculation or analysis. I happen to feel an overwhelming responsibility to try to help students understand math in context. What do these numbers mean? What are they good for? Why would you need or want to solve a problem?
The problem is that while people have some intuitive understanding that numbers are an abstract concept, they still invest them with a level of precision and accuracy which they do not necessarily deserve. Numbers may be very good for measuring things, but that doesn't magically imbue those measurements with meaning or value. There's an interesting column in the New York Times today that made me more aware of how our vastly increased access to data has the potential to warp our behavior. The article is here. It also points to and interesting blog post called "Online Status Anxiety" about how online measurements (numbers of Facebook friends or Twitter followers, for example) affect our behavior.
I need to give this more thought and will share what I come up with if I do in fact come up with anything.
The problem is that while people have some intuitive understanding that numbers are an abstract concept, they still invest them with a level of precision and accuracy which they do not necessarily deserve. Numbers may be very good for measuring things, but that doesn't magically imbue those measurements with meaning or value. There's an interesting column in the New York Times today that made me more aware of how our vastly increased access to data has the potential to warp our behavior. The article is here. It also points to and interesting blog post called "Online Status Anxiety" about how online measurements (numbers of Facebook friends or Twitter followers, for example) affect our behavior.
I need to give this more thought and will share what I come up with if I do in fact come up with anything.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
Deep Thought
I just walked past a sign store. In the window was a sign that said SALE in big letters. So I was wondering if that meant there was a sale on signs or if they were just selling a SALE sign.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
As much theater as baseball
Went to the game today, my first game this year not wearing a coat. I didn't sit in my usual seats this time. I was up by the foul pole in right field in the second row of the second deck. In the first row was a fellow who came in a few minutes after my friend and me. He unfurled a banner with the 4 recent championship flags attached to a curtain rod, suspended it over the front of the deck, and tied it to the railing with string.
This all seemed completely routine until the fifth inning, when one of the strings broke, causing one end of the banner to swing down. Somebody somewhere must have seen this because while the guy was retying it, a security guard shows up and tells him to take the banner down. They guy explains what happened and that he was a season ticket holder and had been hanging that banner every day for 3 years. The security guard said "they" said he couldn't have the banner up. The guy says something to the effect that it was f---ing ridiculous and that he always had the banner up but he would take it down now and bring it again to the next game. He never raised his voice, sounded annoyed but was never abusive and when the guy told him to stop cursing he did.
Then the guard, Matt, I think was his name, said that the guy was being ejected from the stadium for cursing at him. I'm amazed the guy didn't just explode then. He had done absolutely nothing to warrant getting ejected. He used a curse word once but he directly didn't curse the guy out and he stopped when asked. It was a power tripping security guy. As they left I calmly and quietly told the security guard that he was out of line and that ejecting the guy was uncalled for and that I didn't appreciate his standing right in front of me and making me miss 5 minutes of a close game. He looked at me and I could tell he was trying to decide between 3 options: (1) Ignore me, (2) eject me as well, and (3) taser me. Fortunately for everyone he chose option 1 and led the guy out.
For me, anyway, this reflects very badly on the Phillies. It's one thing to hire big strong guys to be security guards. To hire big strong guys with authority issues is another thing altogether. I came away thinking they need to hire less insecure security guys. I would have said that to Matt too, but I really didn't want to be tased. But I am going to write a letter to the Phillies.
This all seemed completely routine until the fifth inning, when one of the strings broke, causing one end of the banner to swing down. Somebody somewhere must have seen this because while the guy was retying it, a security guard shows up and tells him to take the banner down. They guy explains what happened and that he was a season ticket holder and had been hanging that banner every day for 3 years. The security guard said "they" said he couldn't have the banner up. The guy says something to the effect that it was f---ing ridiculous and that he always had the banner up but he would take it down now and bring it again to the next game. He never raised his voice, sounded annoyed but was never abusive and when the guy told him to stop cursing he did.
Then the guard, Matt, I think was his name, said that the guy was being ejected from the stadium for cursing at him. I'm amazed the guy didn't just explode then. He had done absolutely nothing to warrant getting ejected. He used a curse word once but he directly didn't curse the guy out and he stopped when asked. It was a power tripping security guy. As they left I calmly and quietly told the security guard that he was out of line and that ejecting the guy was uncalled for and that I didn't appreciate his standing right in front of me and making me miss 5 minutes of a close game. He looked at me and I could tell he was trying to decide between 3 options: (1) Ignore me, (2) eject me as well, and (3) taser me. Fortunately for everyone he chose option 1 and led the guy out.
For me, anyway, this reflects very badly on the Phillies. It's one thing to hire big strong guys to be security guards. To hire big strong guys with authority issues is another thing altogether. I came away thinking they need to hire less insecure security guys. I would have said that to Matt too, but I really didn't want to be tased. But I am going to write a letter to the Phillies.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
New Blog
I've started co-writing a baseball blog with my daughter. You can see it at http://paintcorners.blogspot.com/. You can only link one blog to a Facebook page so it won't show up there, but there will be a prominent link on this site.
Friday, April 15, 2011
Kobe Bryant said something bad
I really don't understand people's outrage about this. Is it not well established that Kobe Bryant, while a marvelous basketbal player, is an awful human being? You mean aside from being a misogynist he's also a homophobe? I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you.
Monday, April 11, 2011
The think method
I just got back from New York, where my daughter performed with a group of around 200 high school singers in a presentation of choral music, written and conducted by a guy named Eric Whitacre. He has one album of his music out, which apparently has been a strong seller, and is probably best known for something called Virtual Choir, where he "conducts" a group of 2000 individual singers whose video auditions were accepted singing one of his compositions. It's actually pretty cool.
Once my daughter was accepted to Virtual Choir, she noticed on the web site that he was accepting audition videos for a live performance at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. So she auditioned for that and was accepted. At this point, alarm bells are going off in my head, as they should when one is "accepted" to something which they then tell you will cost hundreds of dollars to participate in. It absolutely smelled like a scam to me, but we went along with it because in this day and age we do these kinds of things for our kids..
When you see pictures of this guy and hear him speak, it's hard not to be convinced that he is some sort of shyster salesman, like Harold Hill selling instruments for a nonexistent band. Yeah, they were booked to play at Avery Fisher, but anyone can rent the hall and try to sell enough tickets to cover their cost. But this guy is model gorgeous with perfect, and I mean really perfect, hair. He is also glib, articulate, solicitous, funny, charismatic and full of big ideas, just as you would expect a scam artist to be.
But much like Harold Hill's band, this thing ended up being a great experience for pretty much everyone, including my daughter. She was blown away by the scale of the thing and by having the chance to meet and practice with Whitacre. She was also afforded some special attention because she was in Virtual Choir as well and because she was participating as an individual, not as part of a singing ensemble like majority of participants.
By the end, when we accidentally ended up walking to the post-concert reception with him and his manager, Eric had completely won me over. He does every single thing that makes me distrust someone- remembers your name instantly, asks meaningful questions and really listens to your response, makes unfailingly positive and sympathetic comments, and says "thank you" way too much. But after a while it was hard to not believe that the guy is actually like that, and though the NY concert may have just been a fundraiser for Eric and his sponsor, in the end it way okay by me.
Once my daughter was accepted to Virtual Choir, she noticed on the web site that he was accepting audition videos for a live performance at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. So she auditioned for that and was accepted. At this point, alarm bells are going off in my head, as they should when one is "accepted" to something which they then tell you will cost hundreds of dollars to participate in. It absolutely smelled like a scam to me, but we went along with it because in this day and age we do these kinds of things for our kids..
When you see pictures of this guy and hear him speak, it's hard not to be convinced that he is some sort of shyster salesman, like Harold Hill selling instruments for a nonexistent band. Yeah, they were booked to play at Avery Fisher, but anyone can rent the hall and try to sell enough tickets to cover their cost. But this guy is model gorgeous with perfect, and I mean really perfect, hair. He is also glib, articulate, solicitous, funny, charismatic and full of big ideas, just as you would expect a scam artist to be.
But much like Harold Hill's band, this thing ended up being a great experience for pretty much everyone, including my daughter. She was blown away by the scale of the thing and by having the chance to meet and practice with Whitacre. She was also afforded some special attention because she was in Virtual Choir as well and because she was participating as an individual, not as part of a singing ensemble like majority of participants.
By the end, when we accidentally ended up walking to the post-concert reception with him and his manager, Eric had completely won me over. He does every single thing that makes me distrust someone- remembers your name instantly, asks meaningful questions and really listens to your response, makes unfailingly positive and sympathetic comments, and says "thank you" way too much. But after a while it was hard to not believe that the guy is actually like that, and though the NY concert may have just been a fundraiser for Eric and his sponsor, in the end it way okay by me.
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Out on a pleasant Saturday
While walking my dog I noticed that several of the power poles are grounded. That means that they have a cable from the top of the pole down to where it attaches to a metal stake driven into the ground. This is similar to what we always called a lightning rod, where you have a met pole on top of your house connected to a grounding stake to conduct the electricity away from the house and into the ground.
I had a fun idea today. I will take a couple of those grounding wires, disconnect them from the grounding rods and attache them to each other. That way, if one of the poles get struck by lightning, I'm hoping that the current will get conducted down one wire and back up the other and the lightning will shoot back out of the top of the other pole. Wouldn't that be cool?
I had a fun idea today. I will take a couple of those grounding wires, disconnect them from the grounding rods and attache them to each other. That way, if one of the poles get struck by lightning, I'm hoping that the current will get conducted down one wire and back up the other and the lightning will shoot back out of the top of the other pole. Wouldn't that be cool?
Sunday, April 03, 2011
Thanks for that
Taking a break from the Cliff Lee extravaganza at the ballpark yesterday, I strolled by Guest Services, which for most people is where you go if you need some Advil or an ice pack, but for partial season ticket holders like myself, it's where we go to get our bonus prize for paying for our tickets in full early. Since I had lots of money in my Phillies account left over from their not going to the World Series last year, I was able to do that and so got a letter telling me to bring the letter in to get an exclusive Phillies aluminum water bottle, pictured so:
It came with but a single instruction, on a sticker on on the box, which read, PLEASE REMOVE PAPER INSERT FROM THE BOTTLE BEFORE USE.
Pretty obvious advice, don't you think, and curious that they would feel the need to include it. Then I opened the bottle and found that the piece of paper was about 3 inches square. This would be no problem except for one minor detail. Look at the size of the bottle top:
Note that it's about big enough to get exactly one finger inside, defeating our primate-specific advantage of opposable thumbs. It took me a good 5 minutes to get the stupid thing out with my pinkie, and all that it said was "We hope you enjoy this BPA-free aluminum bottle." Some reason that piece of paper couldn't go inside the box and yet outside of the bottle itself? Hmmm?
So I realized that they probably put that warning on the outside to discourage people who got frustrated trying to get the paper out and thought about just leaving it in from doing so. I guess there is a certain logic to it.
Saturday, April 02, 2011
Opening Day Baseball
There are zillions of articles (like my precise, math way of expressing that?) on the Phillies opening day win, so I’m going to try to approach it from an non-sportswriter perspective.
I went to the game with my older daughter, a fan with an ‘f’ in the true sense of the word. This is good for me in a way, because I’ve seen a lot of baseball in my life and have gotten philosophical about it in the annoying way older baseball fans do after seeing thousands of wins and losses (yes, thousands- I estimate that I’ve attended around 1000 ballgames- 20 or so a year for 50 years- and have watched many more on TV). She lives and dies with every pitch.
It was snowing when I woke up and was still drizzling when we got to the ballpark, in spite of a promise via text message from the Phillies that the rain would have stopped by 11:45. We then had a choice- watch the misty festivities and get wet, or shop. We opted for shopping in the heated store. The temperature in the park was curiously inconsistent. In the seats, it was chilly but not unbearable, but in the concourse it was frigid because it was much windier, so the only time I got cold was when I went to get food.
It was crowded at the park, but not not overwhelming. I’ve been to enough sold out games there that I’m pretty used to it and so are the vendors. I never stood on line for more than a couple of minutes. Our three favorite vendors were still working our section, Marcus, who looks like a schlubby, bespectacled version of the Yankees’ Mark Teixeira, the “PISTACHIOS!” girl with the neon-dyed hair and extreme Philadelphia accent, and the program guy, who’s outside the park when we arrive and then ubiquitous inside, selling every non-food item he can carry. My two favorite beer stand ladies were there too, but in a nod to the temperature I limited myself to one from a closer, but still familiar man.
Like many Phillies fans, I’ve approach this season with a mix of anticipation of success and dread of what could go wrong. The spring injuries have not helped alleviate the dread part of the equation, but I could not put my finger on what was bothering me. Once the game was halfway through, it hit me.
For the first 6 innings, the Phillies played in a fashion that could best be described as lifeless. They did all the baseball stuff one normally does when playing, but without any noticeable spirit or verve (which do you mean Frank? Spirit or verve? Make up your mind). I suddenly recognized what they were experiencing- the crushing weight of expectations. Baseball is a game best played with joy. If you are not loving every minute of it, if you’re grinding your way through, you are not at your best. And that was the first 6 innings of Phillies. They looked grim. Baseball is not grim and cannot be played well by grim people.
By the way, I’m only talking about the players other than Roy Halladay, whose focus is keen enough that I don’t think the mood surrounding him really matters.
In the bottom of the seventh inning, the Phillies started with two hits. This caused much excitement in the stands and much woe with my game companion, because we were getting food at the time and had as a result missed all of the positive action there had been up to that point. We got back to our seats just in time to see two runs score, first on a long fly ball and the second on a groundout. This was not very exciting, but it was productive and exactly the kinds of runs that the Phillies struggled to score last year. A hopeful sign perhaps?
We got to the bottom of the ninth still behind 4-2, with the Phillies having gathered a paltry 4 hits over the first 8 innings. About a third of the crowd had left. The weather had not improved and it had even drizzled a bit more, enough to get you damp though not enough to get you wet. Everyone left in the park was hanging on every pitch. I mentioned to my daughter that the Astros closer was not exactly an elite pitcher, but one who had done a good job the previous years in spite of no more than passable skills.
The first two batters hit singles. The pitcher seemed to be struggling both to throw the ball exactly where he wanted and to avoid contact. There were several foul balls but no swings and misses that I can recall. The next batter, fan favorite Raul Ibanez (he became Rauuuuuul two seasons ago after hitting a game-winning home run in the bottom of the 9th in a game I attended. They now play the “Ah-ooooooo” part of Warren Zevon’s classic “Werewolves of London” when he comes to the plate and the crowd howls along), hit a popup, invoking the enigmatic infield fly rule that only umpires seem to actually know.
This looked distressingly familiar, and it wasn’t improved by a mystifying play where Jimmy Rollins stole 3rd base and Ryan Howard, the runner on first dd not advance. Since we needed two runs, not one, this seemed pointless, but the next batter, Ben Francisco, known mostly as Jason Werth’s temporary replacement until top prospect Domonic Brown is ready, hit a single to score Rollins and send Howard to second.
This brought up another fan favorite, Carlos Ruiz, known as Chooch. It’s clear to me that fans simply like yelling things with OOOOO sounds. It used to be an occasional thing, dating back to Boog Powell, the former Oriole great and it was fun to say, “THey’re not booing, they’re saying Boog.” It’s kind of routine (pronounced ROOOOOOtine) now, thanks mostly to Broooooce Springsteen I think, but people still love Chooch. He sent a screaming line drive down the third base line, out of our line of sight. It landed foul, to everyone’s disappointment. He then hit a single to load the bases.
This brought up Wilson Valdez, who has done an admirable job filling in for injured players, but who last year was the player most likely to hit onto a double play in all of baseball. That was the big fear in all 30,000 of our minds, but he allayed our fears by hitting a game-tying line drive single that had every stranger within 10 feet of each other throwing semi-futile high-fives at each other.
We were all screaming at the top of our lungs at this point. My daughter had her arms outstretched, pleading to the heavens for one more hit. The Phillies now had more hits in the ninth inning than they had in the prior 8. Up came John Mayberry Jr. and I was in a quandary. What do I yell for him? John? Mayberry? John Junior? Then it struck me- JOOOOOOONIOR! And he obliged me and all the rest of us with a game-winning line drive single to center. More high ones and twos and palms and fists raised and celebration. And then just a bit of gloating over those fools who left early missed it, and then off to the parking lot we happily went.
I went to the game with my older daughter, a fan with an ‘f’ in the true sense of the word. This is good for me in a way, because I’ve seen a lot of baseball in my life and have gotten philosophical about it in the annoying way older baseball fans do after seeing thousands of wins and losses (yes, thousands- I estimate that I’ve attended around 1000 ballgames- 20 or so a year for 50 years- and have watched many more on TV). She lives and dies with every pitch.
It was snowing when I woke up and was still drizzling when we got to the ballpark, in spite of a promise via text message from the Phillies that the rain would have stopped by 11:45. We then had a choice- watch the misty festivities and get wet, or shop. We opted for shopping in the heated store. The temperature in the park was curiously inconsistent. In the seats, it was chilly but not unbearable, but in the concourse it was frigid because it was much windier, so the only time I got cold was when I went to get food.
It was crowded at the park, but not not overwhelming. I’ve been to enough sold out games there that I’m pretty used to it and so are the vendors. I never stood on line for more than a couple of minutes. Our three favorite vendors were still working our section, Marcus, who looks like a schlubby, bespectacled version of the Yankees’ Mark Teixeira, the “PISTACHIOS!” girl with the neon-dyed hair and extreme Philadelphia accent, and the program guy, who’s outside the park when we arrive and then ubiquitous inside, selling every non-food item he can carry. My two favorite beer stand ladies were there too, but in a nod to the temperature I limited myself to one from a closer, but still familiar man.
Like many Phillies fans, I’ve approach this season with a mix of anticipation of success and dread of what could go wrong. The spring injuries have not helped alleviate the dread part of the equation, but I could not put my finger on what was bothering me. Once the game was halfway through, it hit me.
For the first 6 innings, the Phillies played in a fashion that could best be described as lifeless. They did all the baseball stuff one normally does when playing, but without any noticeable spirit or verve (which do you mean Frank? Spirit or verve? Make up your mind). I suddenly recognized what they were experiencing- the crushing weight of expectations. Baseball is a game best played with joy. If you are not loving every minute of it, if you’re grinding your way through, you are not at your best. And that was the first 6 innings of Phillies. They looked grim. Baseball is not grim and cannot be played well by grim people.
By the way, I’m only talking about the players other than Roy Halladay, whose focus is keen enough that I don’t think the mood surrounding him really matters.
In the bottom of the seventh inning, the Phillies started with two hits. This caused much excitement in the stands and much woe with my game companion, because we were getting food at the time and had as a result missed all of the positive action there had been up to that point. We got back to our seats just in time to see two runs score, first on a long fly ball and the second on a groundout. This was not very exciting, but it was productive and exactly the kinds of runs that the Phillies struggled to score last year. A hopeful sign perhaps?
We got to the bottom of the ninth still behind 4-2, with the Phillies having gathered a paltry 4 hits over the first 8 innings. About a third of the crowd had left. The weather had not improved and it had even drizzled a bit more, enough to get you damp though not enough to get you wet. Everyone left in the park was hanging on every pitch. I mentioned to my daughter that the Astros closer was not exactly an elite pitcher, but one who had done a good job the previous years in spite of no more than passable skills.
The first two batters hit singles. The pitcher seemed to be struggling both to throw the ball exactly where he wanted and to avoid contact. There were several foul balls but no swings and misses that I can recall. The next batter, fan favorite Raul Ibanez (he became Rauuuuuul two seasons ago after hitting a game-winning home run in the bottom of the 9th in a game I attended. They now play the “Ah-ooooooo” part of Warren Zevon’s classic “Werewolves of London” when he comes to the plate and the crowd howls along), hit a popup, invoking the enigmatic infield fly rule that only umpires seem to actually know.
This looked distressingly familiar, and it wasn’t improved by a mystifying play where Jimmy Rollins stole 3rd base and Ryan Howard, the runner on first dd not advance. Since we needed two runs, not one, this seemed pointless, but the next batter, Ben Francisco, known mostly as Jason Werth’s temporary replacement until top prospect Domonic Brown is ready, hit a single to score Rollins and send Howard to second.
This brought up another fan favorite, Carlos Ruiz, known as Chooch. It’s clear to me that fans simply like yelling things with OOOOO sounds. It used to be an occasional thing, dating back to Boog Powell, the former Oriole great and it was fun to say, “THey’re not booing, they’re saying Boog.” It’s kind of routine (pronounced ROOOOOOtine) now, thanks mostly to Broooooce Springsteen I think, but people still love Chooch. He sent a screaming line drive down the third base line, out of our line of sight. It landed foul, to everyone’s disappointment. He then hit a single to load the bases.
This brought up Wilson Valdez, who has done an admirable job filling in for injured players, but who last year was the player most likely to hit onto a double play in all of baseball. That was the big fear in all 30,000 of our minds, but he allayed our fears by hitting a game-tying line drive single that had every stranger within 10 feet of each other throwing semi-futile high-fives at each other.
We were all screaming at the top of our lungs at this point. My daughter had her arms outstretched, pleading to the heavens for one more hit. The Phillies now had more hits in the ninth inning than they had in the prior 8. Up came John Mayberry Jr. and I was in a quandary. What do I yell for him? John? Mayberry? John Junior? Then it struck me- JOOOOOOONIOR! And he obliged me and all the rest of us with a game-winning line drive single to center. More high ones and twos and palms and fists raised and celebration. And then just a bit of gloating over those fools who left early missed it, and then off to the parking lot we happily went.
Opening Day (not really about baseball)
I've noticed that I haven't written much recently and nothing at all in the past week. Then I was watching a terrific little documentary on Fran Lebowitz directed by Martin Scorcese (called Public Speaking). Lebowitz is a humorist who has a famously chronic case of writer's block (she says it's more of a writer's blockade in her case). And I was wondering if I was blocked in some way. But I don't think so.
I think the main thing is that March was just an awful month for me, any way you want to figure it, and I didn't write for the same reason I didn't do lots of things- I just didn't feel like it. This is a predictable consequence of being someone with a juvenile sensibility and an adult life. Also, because many of the people who read this blog know me, I don't really want to say anything that could be hurtful to anyone else.
Anyone who's ever been in a bad mood knows that you've got plenty of things and people to complain about when you're feeling lousy. But even at my worst and most selfish, I try not to consider myself the ultimate arbiter of who's right and and wrong. Maybe, at least for this particular time period, I just suck. So if I've got nothing positive to say and don't want to either be a whiner or hurtful, there's not much to blog about.
But forget all that, it's Opening Day. Actually, Thursday was baseball's actual opening day, but because I was so desperate for April to begin, I'm picking Friday as my opening day, and it helped that the Phillies opened that day as well. But the more important point is that it's a new beginning. It reminds me of something I read about baseball back when I was a kid.
There was a baseball player that I only knew about because I had his baseball card, named Hank Aguirre (pronounced "ah-GEAR-ee" with a hard g). No relation to the excellent basketball player Mark Aguirre, he was a moderately successful pitcher (633rd best pitcher in baseball history, whatever that means, according to one source) whose debut was a month before I was born and who played mostly Detroit, famous mostly for being an atrocious hitter.
When I was around 12, I bought something called Baseball Digest, which had a few articles and all the prior year's statistics. One of the articles contained a bunch of tongue-in-cheek predictions, and one caught my fancy:
I think the main thing is that March was just an awful month for me, any way you want to figure it, and I didn't write for the same reason I didn't do lots of things- I just didn't feel like it. This is a predictable consequence of being someone with a juvenile sensibility and an adult life. Also, because many of the people who read this blog know me, I don't really want to say anything that could be hurtful to anyone else.
Anyone who's ever been in a bad mood knows that you've got plenty of things and people to complain about when you're feeling lousy. But even at my worst and most selfish, I try not to consider myself the ultimate arbiter of who's right and and wrong. Maybe, at least for this particular time period, I just suck. So if I've got nothing positive to say and don't want to either be a whiner or hurtful, there's not much to blog about.
But forget all that, it's Opening Day. Actually, Thursday was baseball's actual opening day, but because I was so desperate for April to begin, I'm picking Friday as my opening day, and it helped that the Phillies opened that day as well. But the more important point is that it's a new beginning. It reminds me of something I read about baseball back when I was a kid.
There was a baseball player that I only knew about because I had his baseball card, named Hank Aguirre (pronounced "ah-GEAR-ee" with a hard g). No relation to the excellent basketball player Mark Aguirre, he was a moderately successful pitcher (633rd best pitcher in baseball history, whatever that means, according to one source) whose debut was a month before I was born and who played mostly Detroit, famous mostly for being an atrocious hitter.
When I was around 12, I bought something called Baseball Digest, which had a few articles and all the prior year's statistics. One of the articles contained a bunch of tongue-in-cheek predictions, and one caught my fancy:
Hank Aguirre reports to training camp and declares that he has a "new attitude," setting a major league record of 12 consecutive years with a new attitude by a pitcher. Aguirre said that his attitude this year would be surly.So when I see you next week and you think I'm being surly, don't worry, I'm just approaching life with a new attitude.
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