Deliberate excitement

For some reason I've had a lot of difficulty writing about this particular experience. I flew out to Seattle and spent a couple days in the company of some really rich people want to make the world a better place. In ways I like this, because I do have some things in common with them in that everyone there has parents who accumulated a tremendous amount of wealth and have pledged to give a huge portion of it away to charities. On the other hand, it's foreign to me for personal reasons.

So not only am I in with this group, which sets me apart just by being there, but I also feel apart from that group while I'm there. So where do you go with that? Just being in the group is alienating in some way and I feel alienated from the group as well. I guess that happens to everybody in one sense or another unless they're one of those rare people feels completely integrated and engaged in their own life. I don't know many people like that.

I guess my difficulty in writing about this is that it's hard to be lighthearted about it, when the main theme was alienation. But it wasn't without its moments. First of all, it was in Seattle, which is a nice city. You've probably heard of it. I spent as much time as I could walking around, as I tend to do anyway.  It's hillier than I'd imagined. To get to downtown from our hotel, which is rightfully called the Edgewater, you had to not only walk away from the water's edge (they have fences to keep you from going in the wrong direction) but up a steep hill.

I really noticed that when I decided to take public transportation to the airport when coming home. They said it was only a 15 minutes walk, which it is, but they neglected to say that the entire walk was uphill, which is no fun with a rolling bag. And it seemed very inefficient because when I got to the train station, I had to go down several flights of stairs to get to the platform. Why did I have to climb all that way just to go down all those stairs?

I went to the famous Pike Place Market, which I think was nice but it was hard to tell with so many people in it. Call someplace paradise, kiss it goodbye. It's also a little hard to walk around because, first of all, there are some very busy train tracks that at one point had me waiting for over 10 minutes to cross. Second, there are elevated highways and on/off ramps interrupting streets with some frequency (supposedly they are doing a big dig like in Boston to put all of that underground- that would be an improvement). Nice stores though, and a good place to buy (legal) weed called Herban Legend. No, I did not buy any weed, but I certainly smelled it with some frequency.

As for the meeting that I was there to attend, it was interesting at times. People do very creative things with their money, and many are very passionate about what they're doing. It may be a little hard for me to related to a 25 year-old woman who spends most of her time in Africa combatting slavery, but it's admirable and cool to hear about.

We also did an exercise that divided the group into 4 different learning styles that was eerily accurate. There are 4 styles (though the program is called 5 Dynamics- I guess everyone has the 5th dynamic).

I do not know what it means to excite deliberately

So I'm an extreme Explorer. There are a bunch of characteristics implied by this. The clearest example is when they divided us by style and asked each group to write common themes on a pad, the Explorers were the only group that didn't write anything. My people.

Here I am mapped by style with some family members. Yes, I'm the purple one. This did not come as a surprise to anyone in my family.

The highlight was definitely a late afternoon boat ride on Lake Union, where Tom Hanks supposedly lived with his son in Sleepless in Seattle. I will tell you that if you go to this lake you'll see what an implausible and even stupid idea this is. All of the houses on the lake are party houses and what single man would have a house where his 10 year-old could wander off into the lake, especially a kid capable of flying to New York by himself? His character is suddenly much less attractive to me and that Meg Ryan should have known better. Also, it seemed very peaceful in the movie, which it is not. There are big and little boats and sea planes everywhere.

We were riding in a 10 passenger electric boat. I was selected to be the driver and was given a captain's hat as a way of establishing my authority.

That's Cap'n Frank to you

Dinner after the boat ride was fun. The next day there seemed to be plenty of substantive discussions going on that I was not an active party to. I listened a lot and tried to feel a part of things, but ultimately I couldn't sustain it. I'll have to see if I want to do it again next year.

Snapshots of Seattle

On my way back after 48 hours in Seattle. So here's what I know about Seattle. There's a lot of water around. They have an interesting way of doing no parking signs. They like neon.

Lake Union

Do not park in Seattle if you do not have a good sense of direction

Of course they like coffee too. Many many many coffee shops, mostly promising that they have the strongest coffee. The Starbucks stores, of which there are many of course, are modest by comparison.

Frank E

While I ponder the deeper truths (deeper than what? I have no idea), I try to remain present, the better to appreciate the little things that happen each day.

I'm scanning slides that my father took when we lived in Africa in the late 1950's. A lot of them are of things (trees, buildings, you know, things as opposed to people) and look like any other vaycay photos. But some of them are much better because they have me in them.

I was interested in seeing these because I have very few photos from that time. Color photography wasn't really a thing yet until the mid 1960's, but you could take photos that could be turned into what were called positive images [Note: as opposed to negative images, and I can't really explain this without a thorough review of how traditional (as opposed to digital) photography works, but the general idea is that light reflecting off an image reacts with chemicals on a piece of plastic film and darkens it. The more light reflected, the darker the film gets, so it's a negative image because light things are dark and dark light. When you then shine a light through this image onto a light-sensitive piece of paper, the darker parts of the negative block the most light, so the paper stays lighter, the process is reversed and the result is a positive print, which are all the things your parents have in albums]. These were small transparencies that were viewed by projecting them onto a screen and called "slides."

Note that the slide says Kodachrome. Kodak had a monopoly, not on the film but on the processing.

I am not aware of ever having seen these things actually slide anywhere, but I'm sure the name means something.

Long story shortened only slightly, I knew that most of the pictures my dad took when we were in Africa were like this because I remember seeing them when I was a kid, so I slidenapped them from my father's house and am scanning the interesting ones.

Aside from noticing how cute I was, one thing that is clear is that I was not Frank when I was little, I was Frankie. Every picture of me says Frankie. I've always wondered about having a single syllable for first and last names (and no middle name to add an initial, hence the titular E). If my parents wanted me to have a two syllable first name they could have just given me one. Maybe it was some kind of buyer's regret because they clearly did not call me Frank. Frankie seemed to have liked climbing and drinking, based on the slide labels.

These days, my father mostly calls me Frankie when he's going to scold or lecture me. Okay, that's most of the times he talks to me, but he does call me Frank from time to time as well.

There's all kinds of other interesting stuff in the 2 boxes I took. I will share it as the summer goes on.

Aside from scanning, I've been riding my bike, even in the heat, and am enjoying it as much as ever. I love the breeze and it's meditative for me. Because you're doing this repetitive motion and yet at the same time have to pay really close attention to everything going on around you if you're trying to avoid that death thing. There really are a lot of ways to kill or maim yourself riding a bicycle, from hitting a pothole and flying off the bike to getting pancaked by a car either ignoring/not seeing you or deciding to do something to get around you. My favorite move was the guy who passed me on the left in order to make a right turn in front of me when I was going straight. How did that idea even occur to them, much less get acted upon?

Today a woman just blew through a stop sign. I could have hit her, but I was watching her and I could see she hadn't even looked in my direction. She was totally focused on where she was going and what she wanted to do. But that's the kind of thing you have to do on a bicycle. You have to see everything. At least I do, and I think that's why I've been riding regularly for nearly 20 years and never even came close to getting in an accident.

One last question. Why are there signs on traffic lights that say "Wait For Green?" When is that not the case? Are there times I can just go because I feel like it. I don't like this kind of confusion.

And now the way home

While our trip to Martha's Vineyard was not without its hiccups, the way home has been far more challenging. First my older daughter and her boyfriend had their flight canceled because of fog. That wasn't the worst thing, because they got to stay an extra day. We, on the other hand, were not quite as lucky.

There are a bunch of ways to get from Martha's Vineyard to Philadelphia and they're all lousy, involving either 2 flights or multimodal transport. There are no direct flights at all, ever. The closest we ever got to that was the late Continental Airlines used to fly out of Newark, 90 minutes away, but they stopped that years ago. Now the closest place is JFK airport, which is more like 2 hours and far more prone to being subject to traffic.

We also are limited to some extent by the fact that peak airfares to the Vineyard, as people who are either in the know or too impatient to say or write the whole name call it, are typically over $500 each way (to go about 265 miles all told). So we've tried everything. They're cheaper but it's hard to say they're better. They all take significantly longer.

We decided to make this trip at the last moment because we were in Boston for my daughter's birthday and decided while we were there to go. So for the way back, we were scheduled to do a ferry to Rhode Island and then a train back to Philly. We've done this before. It's long, but if you train first class it's reasonably comfortable, and half the price. So we were standing in the line to get on the ferry. We saw it go by, and I thought it was just going to turn around and back in. But we never saw it.

Eventually, the guy managing the line told us that they'd lost their steering and were trying to fix it and that they would update us shortly. About 15 minutes later there came a new announcement, that rather than steering loss the boat had suffered what they called "catastrophic engine failure" and would not be making the trip. I don't even want to know what's become of the people who were on that boat, if they ever got to the Vineyard or if they had to get towed back to Rhode Island or what.

What they offered us was transport on a ferry to Cape Cod and then a bus to Rhode Island (from which point we would take another shuttle bus and then a train. We wanted no part of that, so instead we're on our way, still by bus, to Boston Airport, from which point we can fly home.

Once we made the decision to do this, there really weren't any problems, aside from the passage of time. The whole trip, door to door, is going to end up taking over 11 hours. To give you an idea of how slow that progress is, in 11 hours I could have bicycled more than halfway back. Assuming that I could ride a bicycle on water that is.

Now our plane is getting ready to land and hopefully we can get our luggage reasonably quickly and get home to our normal house and our very cute dog and our non-working upstairs air conditioner. It hasn't been an awful day, just a wasted one.

The summer place

For some people, the idea of having a summer house somewhere conjures up bucolic if hazy recollections and a warm glow.  I can't count myself among them.  Some of you may know I have this kind of weird double life with 98% of it lived in a typical upper middle class way, but the other 2% is kind of over the top.

My father has a house on Martha's Vineyard. It's a very beautiful spot and the house is spectacular. There have been some easy, relaxing times, but those are just part of my cumulative memory. I like coming here, but there's a lot of baggage involved. I really enjoyed my time here last year and am mostly enjoying it this time as well, but my guess is that if you dig deep enough, you will find that many people with family summer homes have similar feelings, if for no other reason then because of family dynamics.

For the sake of privacy, I'll avoid that aspect of it and focus on how the design of this place contributes to my memories. Part of it is the design of the house. My parents, my father in particular I think, went through a stage where they resisted the idea of walls. I mean, there are walls around the outside, but the main part of the house is open-plan.

The room is a combination living room-den-dining room flowing into a large open kitchen. There is no cozy spot to curl up and read quietly if there are other people around. Or to have any privacy unless you want to retreat to your bedroom, which is down a very long hallway. They're nice-sized rooms, but not a place you want to just hang out. The outside is beautiful.

As you can see, it's huge. More like a resort than a cottage. The size worked very well when we used to have immense parties here, back in the late 80's and early 90's. Now it just feels kind of big. That's nobody's fault and it's not like there's anything bad about it. Just not a cozy cottage.

The thing I love doing here most is riding a bike. My sister, who lives closer and spends much more time here than I do, is an avid bike rider as well and keeps a good bike up here just to have something available for people to accompany her on her rides. I went out once before she arrived and then for a 25 mile ride together yesterday. She and I are well matched in speed and endurance, and a decent portion of that ride is on quiet roads where we can ride side-by-side and talk. Those rides are always a highlight.

Both of our kids and their boyfriends were here. That was nice. The days follow a general pattern where everyone does their own thing for a large portion of the day. I go out for a ride before others are up. We hang around the house, go to the pool, maybe the beach. If the weather is lousy we often will go to one of the cute towns and walk around. Sometimes we go to the local fish market (shout out to Larsens!) and do shellfish for lunch. In any event, by late afternoon there is always a trip to buy some fish for dinner. We eat a lot of fish here. I've heard that's good for you.

So now we're on our way home (which unfortunately gets its own entry). Even lacking a warm glow, it was a nice trip.

Boston for the 4th

My daughter's birthday is July 4th, so we always find a way to have a holidayish get together. This year we came up here this morning and are spending the evening. Tomorrow we will go to Martha's Vineyard for a few days.

July 4th is one of those holidays that make cities kind of unbalanced. Depending on where you are, it's either really crowded or completely deserted. The area where we are hanging out, near Fenway Park, is mostly deserted with a decent-sized group of people clearly going someplace in a hurry. We're not too far from the river, where they are currently having a patriotic type concert leading up to a fireworks show. The hotel has a rooftop terrace, where we were eventually able to go up and watch the fireworks.

One thing with a fireworks show compared to any other kind of show is that nobody ever shushes anyone at a fireworks show. You can talk or comment, and the goings on are noisy enough that nobody really cares. The Boston fireworks were good. They were fireworks. You shoot stuff into the air and it explodes. Sometimes accompanied by a loud bang. I don't mean to sound blasé. It's cool, but there's a certain sameness about it.

One fun thing about watching from where we were was that you could see reflections on a nearby building.

That was cool. And I could record that while looking at the actual fireworks.

We had a nice dinner tonight at a restaurant called Row 34. It was a seafood place that had a great beer selection. I had something called the Cat's Meow, an unfiltered IPA that went very well with my extremely unkosher cold seafood plate.

I did not take a picture of the oysters that preceded this. Nothing I ate was even kosher style this evening. Perhaps that will cause God to smote me. I like shrimp, but I'm always on guard for the watery shrimp cocktail. I guessed that this place would have a good one and I was correct.

We're staying at a Marriott Residence Inn. It's an extended stay type hotel, meaning it has a kitchenette with a stove and dishwasher and full sized refrigerator. And more than one place to sit, unlike most hotel rooms. This room, while not huge, has 3 different places to sit. For someone who does not like sitting in bed, this is extremely important so I will give this hotel a very nice review. There's nothing fancy about it, which is fine because I don't care about that. Clean and functional works for me, and this is a very well designed place.

I'd include a picture, but in my usual fashion I've trashed the place. I guess Ronnie participated but I am a highly skilled trasher of hotel rooms. When I used to travel for business a lot, I couldn't help but marvel at how I could explode into a room within 15 minutes of arriving. Lord help me if there was a second bed in the room because that would be covered with stuff strewn about instantly. This isn't like that because I have someone else here with me.

It's been a good day overall. My daughter was grateful because we came and cleaned her apartment as a birthday present. I got to clean the refrigerator, which was without a doubt the worst I've ever smelled. It didn't look that bad, but I'm surprised the neighbors hadn't complained. I've changed diapers so I'm never too concerned about what I get on my hands, but this contained a number of former vegetables that time had melted, plus something so moldy that the mold had gotten moldy, if you can imagine that. It therefore required rubber gloves and a cleaner with bleach, but it's bright and shiny and clean inside now.

Off to Martha's Vineyard tomorrow. Will have both girls and boyfriends there as well, and hopefully my sister too. I'll check in from there tomorrow.

Non-surgical connotations

There's a specific reason I haven't written much lately and it's not laziness (for once). I've just been having trouble figuring out how to talk about what's been going on with me this year. It all stems from a decision at the end of last school year, when I felt a need to be more connected with people, that I would be more open-hearted in my life.

Someone asked me what I mean by open-hearted and I was going to say I meant it literally but that has surgical connotations. The best way to describe it was to open myself up emotionally to other people, to make my inner self more accessible and to look for emotional connections and not just intellectual ones. That sounds very touchy-feely pop psychology, but it was a big deal for me. On a practical level, I think if you asked my students if I was emotionally open to them this year they would pretty much all say that I was. I really shared myself. Sometimes things got a little raw (I'd never had a student casually describe me as being a mess before) because I'm still figuring out how my brain is wired, and it was hard to anticipate what the consequences of that decision would be.

My lack of foresight isn't the problem; the difficulty is that if you're going to open your heart, it's not just about letting things out. It creates the possibility that other people are going to enter in some fashion. As far as I know, that's the whole idea. And that's in fact what happened, in many ways and on many levels. It's been fascinating and frustrating, exciting and infuriating, disheartening at times and fulfilling at many others. My life has been more multifaceted, and the thing is, if you look at the facets closely enough you notice that most if not all of them are multifaceted as well.

This was an unusually opportune period for thinking and writing. The problem is that this blog is about me and my experiences, and one of the guiding principles of my writing this thing is that I not invade anyone's privacy, so I never write about anyone else, except perhaps casual mentions of my family. You can't have deep relationships with people who don't trust you, and the only way to earn someone's trust is to be trustworthy. If you write about someone else's feelings and experiences in your blog you are definitely not being trustworthy. This is locked down for me. I don't keep a lot about myself hidden, but other people's thoughts and lives are off limits in a public setting. When I write about other people I've always focused entirely on my reactions.

So the upshot is that on one hand I haven't had a lot of solitary experiences to write about, even though I remain in many ways the same kind of solitary creature that I've always been. I know that doesn't make sense, but take my word for it. More pop-psych here, but the cognitive dissonance (fancy term referring to dealing with inner contradictions) is in whiplash territory. But not in a bad way. See? Did it again.

That's all I have to say about this at the moment, but I needed to get it out of the way before I could move on.

Noun you tell me. Or, my first time ever being called "Bitch." To my face, anyway.

I used the word "chicane" today. Correctly. It doesn't mean the same as chicanery, which means fooling or cheating someone. Most of you have experienced a chicane when you wait on the security line at the airport. It's that place where you go back and forth and slowly approach where you're trying to get. My first time hearing the word was on ABC's Wide World of Sports, where from time to time they would show bobsledding for the famous Cresta Run in St. Moritz, where are all of the turns had names. Chicane was a rapid back and forth, leading up to the feared Shuttlecock curve, which was always the most exciting part of the run, just because a racer's chance of getting through it without flying off the track  and into a big pile of hay bales were about 50-50.

That has little to do with riding a bike in Florida, which is what I did today. I've been doing this every day. The roadside bike trails here are as nice as any you'll see- smooth and uninterrupted all 10 miles from Key Biscayne to the mainland. It's an absolute pleasure to ride on, even on a crappy hybrid rental bike (my bike this time isn't nearly as crappy as last time- at least all the gears work). The only problem is the other riders, who are almost universally rude. I'm not sure why the code about announcing yourself when you're passing someone is ignored here. I guess it's not exactly a code- it's more like guidelines. But anywhere you ride in the east, if someone is going to pass you they say "on your left" so you know to hold your line and not take that moment to get a drink.

Maybe it's because the bike lanes are too nice, but 99% of riders here see no need to do this, and some of them cut close enough that even a slight change of direction would cause us both to crash. I mean, how hard is it to be considerate? Okay, I'm a human being in 2017. It seems it's generally a lot of effort to be considerate, but it's no excuse.

I put up with it because the flat, smooth ride takes you through mangroves and then on a causeway connecting Key Biscayne to Virginia Key to the mainland. There are spots on the causeway with pretty spectacular views of Miami and Miami Beach and, today at least, a half dozen massive cruise ships parked in between.

Ever since I've been doing this I wondered why so many cyclists turned off onto this road on Virginia Key. What could be out there, I wondered? (Not sure if that's correct punctuation) The sign only says "Water Treatment Plant."  So I decided to follow a group and passed a mile of parking lots, ending with one large one full of cars with bike racks. People weren't actually going there, they were just coming back to their cars. Plus to add to the enjoyment, a car passed me and someone yelled out the window "Keep peddling bitch." I'm not sure what he meant by that. Of course I was going to keep peddling. I was on a bicycle. That's the way they move. But with that encouragement, I reached the end of the access road.

If it wasn't the destination I had in mind, at least I saw there was a mountain biking area next to the parking lot. Now this is absurd on its face. There isn't even a hill within 200 miles of here, much less a mountain. But I decided to enter anyway just to see. One of the advantages of the crappy rental bike is that it's able to do things that your own beloved bike could never do, like ride in the sand. Kind of like the way rental cars are able to handle speed bumps without your having to slow down. I entered someplace labeled "Novice Trail."

I've never mountain biked. They have a lot of it in Lake Placid. I've heard that biking down a novice ski slope is absolutely terrifying. It sounds like fun but I'm too cautious a rider to really enjoy it. Here, lacking a mountain, they make do with trees and, I'm sure you were wondering when it I'd get to it, a chicane. The trail is in a 100 foot square of pine trees with a narrow path roped off where you make one 180 degree turn after another. The only challenge is that the path is only about a foot wider than the handlebars, so if you don't hit the turn right, your handlebars hit a tree and you either fall or put your feet down, which I what I did the couple of times it happened. After about 5 minutes of that silliness I escaped. Getting buzzed by other cyclists again was a relative pleasure.

You must remember this

Like many things I sound very sure about, I have no proof for the following statement, but my guess is that people in general don't like to see themselves as memories. We tend to think of ourselves as corporeal and the center of our own particular universe. Having had more than one opportunity recently to ponder the ending and ultimate meaning of things, however, I've tempered my own view of this sort of thing.

I've been thinking about what constitutes happy endings. I think that in most scenarios, a happy ending can be made up of mostly if not entirely memories. For any individual life, for example, that's what there is in the end. My uncle now consists for me and everyone else entirely of memories, and I am more than okay with that thought. It's like a line from The Phantom Tollbooth (of course) "if something is there, you can only see it with your eyes open, but if it isn't there, you can see it just as well with your eyes closed. That's why imaginary things are often easier to see than real ones."

This may sound morbid when you're talking about people who've passed away, but that's just because we choose to view death as morbid, which is something that's cultural. Death is just death. My uncle lived across the continent from me, and even when I was spending the most time with him, it was only 2-3 weeks out of a year. He remains just as real to me as he was for almost my entire waking life, and not just because I was holding his hand a week ago.

As a teacher, I should point out, memories are what I peddle in. If I do my job really well, in the end I will have a lasting relationship with my students based (almost always) entirely on memories. I (we) spend much of our time trying to explain things in a way that will stick, because what is learning really but a meaningful set of memories?

Of course there are experiences involved in learning as well, but even those will ultimately be all in the past. And that's a good thing. You can't add your presence to everything you've ever taught or everything you've ever done or everyone you've ever known, all at the same time. I'm as good at spreading myself around as anyone, but much as I hate to, sometimes I have to put limits on myself or risk exhaustion. Anyone who's been around me recently can understand why this is on my mind these days.

We try to peddle meaningful memories as parents and friends and mentors and any kind of nurturing relationship. Whether you're talking about death or life, ultimately there's a time to let go and let that relationship become a memory. Hopefully it's one of the meaningful kind. So lately when I think of loss and ending, I try to keep this in mind and not get sad or upset about it. It's just the way things go, and go they will.

Oh, and I apologize for the cheesy title.

Why does it always have to be you?

I managed to coax myself into sleeping for 7 1/2 hours last night. I always fall asleep easily, but have a tendency to wake up and stay up. But at least for the duration of this trip I'm managing to get 6 1/2 or more hours a night. Because of the long sleep, I had a somewhat shortened bike ride, but I made it through the day nonetheless. We don't do much here.

We sit on lounge chairs by the pool and read is most of it. We arrange an umbrella so I'm in the sun and Ronnie is in the shade. I turn my chair facing in the opposite direction from everyone else, enduring the good-natured ridicule. Aside: One of my favorite moments for adolescence, and face it, how many of us have any favorite moments from adolescence, was when I did something, I don't remember what but something, that amused and stirred up a large group of people and I muttered, "There's one in every crowd" and my friend replied "Yeah, but why does it always have to be you."

Honestly, being on the beach is nicer. The view out into the ocean is more pleasant than the pool and (very nice) hotel grounds, but the beach requires a relatively low level of wind to prevent umbrellas flying around and it's been very windy the whole time. Nonetheless I am getting very tan. I kind of can't help it- my skin just does that. I'm a careful tanner though- annoyingly thorough with sunscreen.

I'm reading a book called You Gotta Have Wa, about Japanese baseball. Very entertaining and interesting. A good vacation read. In the evening we went to the movies and had a mixed bag kind of dinner at the Ice Box, noted mostly for their desserts and specifically Key Lime Pie. The dinner was okay- one dish way better than the other, the service pretty uneven, but the pie? Heavenly.

Inyjoy

I would say that it's just the training at this hotel, but I've heard it almost everywhere we've gone- some sort of Spanish accented version of enjoy. I don't know why they pick this particular word- there's no 'j' sound in Spanish, so depending on the speaker's English skill, it comes out anywhere between "enjoy" and "enyoy" inclusive. And the people here say it in response to almost anything (like in response to my saying "thank you" to someone for holding the door- yes, I enjoyed walking through the door). And this is just a transliteration thing, not any sort of commentary. I'm in the minority here not speaking Spanish. Miami is definitely an ESL kind of place. I guess at some point it was mostly Cuban influence, but it's very international at this point.

I took my mandatory walk up to the the lighthouse in the morning. That's a great walk, although today it was a little difficult because the wind has pushed a lot of seaweed onto the shore. The beach is pretty narrow in the first place, and the only place to walk was in the water. That was fine, the ocean temperature is lovely. It's just wet and slow going, and anytime anyone was coming in the other direction it was a challenge to avoid getting either soaked or tangle in the weeds.

Our day was spent by the pool, where we stayed until an incredibly, inconsiderately loud group of 6 or so people sat by us and then went in the pool and got louder and louder and louder until it was unbearable. We went up to the room and I went for a short bike ride before we headed out for our evening activity, a Miami Marlins-New York Mets baseball game.

This was my first indoor baseball game in a while (the last one has a long story surrounding it which I should write up some time). It was beautiful out, with a couple of showers around I suppose. But for whatever reason they chose to have the retractable roof closed. Not sure for what sort of evening they would have it open.

Marlins Park looks and feels like a Structure. It's what architecture critics might call "muscular." You can see the big strong stuff holding the whole thing together. It's not the most inviting place I've ever seen. The air inside was okay, though not as nice as outside. My problem with the closed roof was the reverberation of the sound of the crowd, music and announcer. I found the noise kind of weird and echoey and off-putting. I suppose I could get used to it but I'm glad I don't have to.

Note the trapezoidal scoreboard

It seemed oddly uncrowded outside, but there were plenty of people inside, about half rooting for each team, which made for a pretty constant din. The seats were decent but the whole place was kind of distracting in a way that made it difficult to focus on the game. They also seemed unprepared for the possibility that people might want to buy food once at the game.

When I say that, I mean that there were the normal number of food stands, but every single one had huge lines, from the moment we got there until out hunt for food an hour into the game. They have all kinds of specialty stuff but you couldn't get at it. The ceviché line looked like it would take about a half hour to clear, as did the Cubano line. The celebrate grilled cheese stand ran out of grilled cheese in the 4th inning. I presume these people know that baseball games usually go for longer than 4 innings, but they sure didn't show it.

Eventually we found a sushi place that only took 10 minutes of so to clear the line. The game was very long, including a crucial video review, which was worth it just for the scoreboard graphic.

It ended with a big finish for the home team, so half the crowd went home happy.

Miami stuff

I don't like sitcoms. Anybody who spent any time with me in front of the TV knows that; I'm pretty vocal about. For those who haven't thought about it, sitcom is short for situational comedy. Literally, there is a situation and you may comedy out of it. The situation, if you can call it that, is always that somebody says or does something that is misunderstood, misinterpreted, misconstrued or simply missed.

In real life, most of the situation resolved by simple means. People ask for clarification, we apologize, we figure out what's really going on, or we never notice and nothing ever happens. In the sitcom, however, even the smallest misunderstanding gets blown out of proportion for a period ranging from 4 to 19 minutes. Sometimes, there are multiple misunderstandings on the same topic which gives the episode, and sitcoms exist as a series of episodes, a theme. The humor comes from the viewer understanding Sometimes all the misunderstandings have resolved at once and sometimes they resolve in stages.

Are used to be fine with this until I realized how repetitive they were. Now I just find them vaguely irritating.

I mention this only because it relates to my current state of mind, so I suppose this has a theme as well. As some of you know, I've been struggling with entanglements, or at least things I viewed as entanglements. It struck me this morning that the problem is not the entanglements themselves but how I deal with them. This may seem obvious to some people but not me,

Last night we saw a movie called Personal Shopper. It stars Kristen Stewart, who you may remember from one of those vampire kinds of things that was around a few years ago. She plays basically the same part here except she's a personal shopper. Or is she? She's also a medium, trying to make contact with her dead twin brother. Or is she?

It's one of those movies where you don't know at the end if anything actually happened or if it was all in the character's head. We saw it at this little place called Cinematheque, which is the closest thing Miami Beach has to an art house. It's just a pretty big room with a large projection screen and 100 seats or so. We were the only ones there when the movie started though someone else straggled in around 5 minutes in.

The whole thing has a pretty spooky feel and Stewart, as is her wont, spends a lot of time biting her lip and pushing her hair around. After it ends with a "did this really happen?" my wife and I strolled out and said to the guy working the ticket stand, "weird to watch that movie with only one other person." To which he replied without hesitation "What other person?"

Yet more noodles

Actually I mean yet more travel, but the title is a favorite phrase from our lasagna recipe.

A word to the wise- the Sacramento airport is an absolute mob scene at 5 AM. The gate agent told me that every airline has multiple 6AM departures, probably because everyone is heading for a connection somewhere else. The line to check a bag was beyond anything I've ever seen, and the security line went halfway across the bridge to the parking lot, which I heard was relatively "short." PreChek probably saved me 20 minutes and having only carry-on luggage another 10 or 15.

The hotel where I spent my last few hours in Sacramento was very nice. I got upgraded to a suite, into which you could have fit 4 of my rooms at the Best Western Plus. I sat at the desk and had a beer and wrote and then I went to bed. I only traversed the space to close the shades, which was ridiculous anyway because I was getting up before sunrise.

I know I keep coming back to this, but there’s been a surreality to this whole thing, from the timing to grocery shopping with my sister and everything in between. But I’ll never forget the warmth and unrestrained love that permeated the whole time.

The flight was pretty uneventful. I had to change planes in Phoenix, which is a huge airport where it can be daunting to change planes if you have to go from one terminal to the next (leave plenty of time if you ever connect there). But my flights were next door to each other, so I just went for a little walk to stretch my legs.

Got into Philly on time and completely disoriented. It wasn’t much better when I got home- nice as it was to be home. I (hopefully) managed to pack properly for the next trip and basically stumbled around. Ate dinner, watched some TV and went to bed.

This morning I got up and prepared to get out of town. Went to the airport and are now on our way to Miami for a few relaxing days in Key Biscayne. It seemed extremely odd to be going back to the airport less than 24 hours after getting home, but I'm happy with where we’re going. It’s a relaxing place and it’s familiar and so will not take any adjustment. We can just settle in quickly.

Eventually got through Miami's awful awful awful airport and waiting to get into our room here. I can’t help but feel a part of me still with my cousins, and my uncle’s passing is taking its time seeping through me. I’m sure that will gradually fade off, though I don’t want it entirely gone. Now I’m left to contemplate what my own next steps are. One of the reasons I wanted to go away to this place at this time was to try to disengage myself. I’m pretty sure I can at least mostly do that. It's nice to be here.

The consequences of caring

Note: If you're reading this expecting entertainment, you will be disappointed. If you're in the mood for reflective thought and, for better or worse, a dose of my own personal self-awareness you're in the right place.

So now my part of this is over. I'm heading home in the morning and then off to Florida with Ronnie the next day for a well-earned vacation. I've moved over to a hotel near the airport because I have a 6AM departure tomorrow. Whatever. I am completely disoriented as to what time or day it is at this point. Going into a situation this intense while completely exhausted has made the whole experience surreal.

Today was actually very low key. I went for a walk with my sister this morning. She's an excellent walking companion. Keeps a good pace, happy to talk or not talk. From basically nothing we've fashioned a pretty nice relationship over the past few years. It's a nice part of my life. We're pretty different but still have a lot in common, as one might expect from siblings 10 years apart in age and different genders but from the same family. There's a lot of my mom in both of us. We spent the afternoon just hanging out, we bought groceries, my sister made dinner, we all ate dinner. And it was great. She'll be here for a couple of more days, which will be great for everyone.

If nothing else, this trip has reminded me of the value of knowing what to hold onto and what to let go of. This is a struggle for me as a general rule, and the reminder doesn't necessarily make it easier but it does make it easier to see the necessity. Cute sentence structure aside, this is an important thing for me, because I've realized just over the past year or so that one of the results of being the person I am is that I can't not notice and I can't not understand and I can't not care. I have longed for the ability to transform myself into the clueless sitcom dad/guy who remains oblivious to whatever is going on around him. But it's not happening. I'm oblivious to almost nothing, and that's a problem if you can't let things go.

This was a goal for me during this break. I've gotten myself way too deep into too many things and needed some space to see my way out. I don't regret anything I've done, but I'm not really big on setting limits for myself (okay, maybe I should just say I'm not good at it) and I've always had confidence that I could take anything on and handle it. And I kind of can do that, but I'm now more aware of the emotional toll it takes. I'm a relative newcomer to emotional intelligence, so I'm always learning.

None of this has anything to do with today in particular. It's more that I've either hopped or tumbled off the treadmill, depending on whether or not you believe that the getting off was intentional. I think I knew it was necessary, and if coming into a end of life event doesn't shake you up a bit, there's something wrong with you. But more than that there is my relationship with my still living and breathing family, and these are the kinds of events that either pull you together or drive you apart. Fortunately, this was full of thankfulness and caring and genuine love. And let that be a lesson to me about what's really important. My cousins will struggle with the loss of their father but they will move on, in ways more positive than not.

The consequences of caring can affect you in all kinds of ways. I'll be the first to admit that I let them get the better of me from time to time, but I'd rather be out there and learn to deal with it than avoid the engagement in the first place. Most of my caring about people has been rewarding and soulful and in some cases really important to the people I care about. And I'll take the fallout any day, and in most cases not only don't I regret it but I'd probably do the same thing the next time around. I'll know how to handle things better but I don't think I'd change what I did.

I tell my students that one of the key questions you need to ask yourself are "Where am I and what am I doing?" And add in "how am I doing?" Well I'm here, and I'm being me, and I'm doing okay. And I'm heading home in a few hours. Things are good.

Not the end, but the next chapter

I woke up this morning to the not unexpected news that my uncle Mike had passed away not long after I'd left. He was at peace. I'll write more about him later; he was a remarkable man by any measure. The main immediate thing is that he died on his 103rd birthday, on Palm Sunday (he was a devout Catholic- more on that later), with his family at his side, hours after his friends had gathered to celebrate him, surrounded by love. It was a blessing and nobody deserved that kind of conclusion more than he.

I'm always reticent to talk about other people in my blog, because it's none of my business, so I will just riff a bit on how I feel.

I think I made it clear in my last post how strange the juxtaposition (how many of you knew how that word was spelled?) of celebration of and impending end of life was. Looking back on it less than 24 hours later it's clear to me just how totally fitting it was.

It's hard for me to isolate my feelings without going into too many details about Mike, (he was my mother's sister's husband) which is a whole 'nother essay. But I'll focus on a couple of particularly striking things. The first is that Mike had one arm. He had a hunting accident when he was a young man and had it amputated. The only thing I ever saw him need help with as a result of this deficit was cutting his food- he needed things like steak cut for him. He remained an avid sportsman for many many years and I remember watching him tying fishing lures onto his tine with hand and teeth. I also remember playing baseball with him on the front lawn and marveling at how he could hit the ball farther than me with one arm.

Baseball was a real connection for us. He was born in 1914 and grew up idolizing Babe Ruth, wanting to be Babe Ruth, and he remained a lifelong Yankee fan. He was nothing if not loyal to those he loved. One of the best things I ever did for him was alert him to the existence of the MLB cable TV packages that allowed him to watch the Yankees on a daily basis. I wouldn't say we were close- we were polar opposites in many ways. Back in the day when I was spending a lot of time with his family, he clearly disapproved of my long hair and foul mouth and affection for certain only-now-legal-in-California substances. But he never let that stand in the way of being a loving, caring uncle who was always up for thrashing me at cribbage.

I remember camping with him and his family in northern California and on the Santa Cruz beach. I love his children as dearly as anyone in my life. He had an mostly indirect yet profound effect on me.

Once I grew up, or whatever it is that I've done, I saw him far less frequently. But he was always in my heart and always welcoming when I would venture out to his home. And I'll have him with me from now until it's my turn to go.

24 or so unusual hours

If you have a particular outlook on the world and on life, you can divide days roughly into the categories of mundane, peculiar, quite peculiar, and most peculiar. If it seems to you like I'm reaching for unusual words to describe things you would be correct. I've just tired of using words like "weird" and "bizarre." Yesterday was most peculiar.

My original spring break plan was to go to D.C. to do Washington things and then to North Carolina to visit friends. But I realized a few weeks ago that I was too wiped out to do that and needed to lie on a beach. So that was the plan, and I kind of coasted through my last day of school. And during my last class I got an email saying that my not quite 103 year-old uncle Mike, who resides in Sacramento, was in his final days. I wasn't sure what to do, but by the time evening rolled around (how do times of day 'roll around?' and what does that even mean?) I decided I had to be there.

Keep in mind that I was in no shape to be doing this, but somehow I was doing this. So I first endured this very long flight.  It's very hard to get to Sacramento, considering it's the capital of a very large state. I'm not sure if it's hard to get to because there's no particular reason to go of if people rarely go there because it's hard to do, but I got in at 10:30 Pacific (1:30 Eastern) having not had dinner. The rental car agent pointed me to a nearby In-and-Out Burger so I had a burger and fries at the equivalent of 2 AM.

I got to the motel and saw a note that they were doing roof work, so I respectfully requested to not be on the top floor. This lead me to be placed in what they call an "accessible room." Everything is set up for handicapped people, so the good part is that there's a bench in the shower (always a bonus) and the bad part is that the bathroom has to be huge to accommodate a wheelchair, so the rest of the room is tiny. But I slept.

And in the morning I had the lovely breakfast that they offer at a Best Western Plus (by the way, the math teachers among us know that "plus" implies something more. Ain't seeing it here- I suppose one could be adding a negative...) and then went for a walk by the American River. That was all quite lovely. I had lots of thoughts that I believed I had recorded, but they seem to have been disappeared by my phone. Anyway, here's what happened.

After my walk I went to the house and was filled with memories of joy and love and all sorts of emotional complications over the years. I don't see my cousins nearly as often as I'd like because it's far (I had written a lot about this yesterday but my phone seems to have dropped it somehow) but they are my only really close extended family. We saw each other regularly as kids and less regularly as adults, but we've always been bonded in a way that's rare in my family.

I came in and sat with my cousins and uncle (I'm going to limit this to my own experiences as a matter of privacy for others). It felt really good to be there. I held my uncle's hand and spoke to him, and though he was mostly unresponsive, I'll believe that he knew I was there. I then was informed that because this was his 103rd birthday, that there was a party planned and that most of the people coming did not know his status. So I, along with my once-removed younger cousins, dealt with the caterer and ran to the store to get supplies and such.

I knew this was going to be strange and possibly quite awkward, but I did what I could. It was nice to spend the time with family. My uncle had a very large circle of friends and over the course of the afternoon, many of them came by to celebrate him. They were disappointed that he couldn't participate, but after the difficult part of "where's Mike?" they were still glad to be part of things. I'll write more about my uncle later, but if you live 103 years and genuinely care about people you make many unbreakable connections.

People stayed for a while. I was kind of floating in time and wasn't completely aware of everything going on, but it was a happy occasion. There was singing and story-telling and just the nice dynamic of people who have no connection with each other besides their knowing the same person getting to hear other sides of someone they cared about. My uncle was both very private and very public, so many people knew him in many different ways- neighbors, colleagues, friends from all aspects of his life.

I wish I could say that I was able to fully engage with all of this and I tried, but I didn't know any of these people nor they me and it was ultimately beyond my capacity. So eventually I had to step away for a little while. Fortunately, I had the good fortune to have the company of my brother and the husband of one of my cousins and a couple of the younger cousins. It was a separate but equally warm and caring time that I will always cherish.

Eventually the party dissipated and I went back to his room and spend some time with my close cousins and my uncle. Everyone seemed very happy about the way things had gone, even if they weren't a part of the actual goings on. We talked quietly and I held my uncle's hand for a while and talked about the past and the future. He seemed very at peace as I left, and I left thinking he was in a good place.

I went back to my crappy motel and promptly fell asleep.

More to come...

Final day, much too soon

So I mentioned yesterday how I felt like I was coming down with a cold? My nose was running all day from morning until bedtime. And now how many times have I had to do that today? Try zero. Bodies can be weird things, but I'm certainly not unhappy about it.

Right now I'm on the plane heading home. I went out to the beach for a while and picked up some pretty shells and then saw my daughter off to the airport. Then I wrote report cards (yes, I did work there. In fact, I carried large piles of tests down in my carry-on bag, which stayed in the bag untouched for the duration of the trip) until it was time for us to head to our final game, where we saw the Phillies play the Pittsburgh Pirates.

This game was fun-filled and action packed, and the first 2 innings took as long as 6 innings the night before. We left after 2 hours and 4 innings, to give you an idea. But we were sitting in the shade and perfectly comfortable, and there was lots going on.

Spring training games are funny in that they're not really games, they're practice, so it always seems weird when they try to pump up the crowd by playing the charge theme or worse yet, that grating artificial clapping sound that is more like some kind of grinding metal than anything else. During actual games, people clap along with that stuff, but most people don't care who wins spring training games. They cheer for good plays and when their team scores runs, but beyond that they are just hanging out, drinking something cool and having a snack. It's very relaxed compared to a game that "counts."

So off we went to the airport and headed home. I continued my work and tried to think about how to get through the next two weeks before spring break.

Second day in Clearwater (Sorry, thought I'd posted this yesterday)

This morning I went into Starbucks to get a cup of coffee before heading out for my long walk. It was busy, and they had people at 2 registers and a 3rd just taking orders. The third guy took the person in front of me, who ordered one of those silly sugary things they make, and he asked what her name was. "Stephanie," she replied, to which he replied, "With an f or a ph?" She said it was ph, and I was thinking why are you bothering to ask that question when a cashier asked for my order and when I told him my name was Frank, he said, with a totally straight face, "Is that with an f or a ph?" And then he cracked up and said "I couldn't help it."

So on that note, I set off toward Sand Key, a small island just south of Clearwater Beach. I've done this walk before and there's not much there, but the bridge over the bay has great views of St. Petersburg on one side and Clearwater Beach on the other. I don't have any pictures to share because I've done that before on previous walks.

Sand Key is sort of an odd name for a place that has no more or less sand than anything else around here. Everything here is made of sand. They wouldn't call the bay Water Bay. Or would they? The state beach is beautiful though, with bright white sand and an open view of the water. What it does not have, which I couldn't help noticing because of some personal connection to the matter, is any place to go to the bathroom. There's a vast beach with a huge parking lot and the one bathhouse is closed and there's nothing else in sight. So I hereby recommend this beach for short visits when you are slightly dehydrated.

The walk is very nice and takes me by everything on the south end of the island. There's a lot of hotel construction going on. Someone was wondering if that meant there were casinos coming, but there was no particular sign of that. There certainly has been a lack of upscale properties, and I think that niche is at the edge of getting much more populated. Maybe that means next year there will be more choice and better prices.

I've not been able to completely let go of everything, but a long walk and quiet contemplation was good for me. I'm okay all things considered, aside from feeling like I'm getting a cold. My body pretty consistently does this- manages to stay healthy throughout any kind of difficulty and then as soon as things get better it rebels. That's how I ended up with shingles, but this is just a cold.

Once back at the hotel I had breakfast and we went to the beach. It's a very nice beach, as I've mentioned before. We got some chairs and an umbrella and did the beach thing. I sat in the sun and the ladies were under the umbrella. We all read books and were ably assisted by Jimmy from Englewood, NJ, who told us all about his family and how he came to be in Clearwater and also helped with the umbrella. You can't enjoy an adult beverage on most of the beach, but on this one spot by our hotel you can, and they take advantage of it with a mobile bar called Tommy's Tiki Ranger. I had a nice cold beer and my daughter had a combo margarita/piña colada, which is as good as it sounds. After a few hours it was time to get cleaned up and head down to the jauntily named Ed Smith Stadium in Sarasota to see the Baltimore Orioles play the Minnesota Twins.

The drive down, which normally takes around an hour and a half at most, took almost two hours and was pretty unpleasant, but eventually we made it and got a parking space right across the street from the stadium. I'd been there before and the one thing I remembered was how friendly everyone was there. And I remembered correctly. Every single person working there was incredibly pleasant and friendly, and the vendors were attentive and funny ("Get your water here, straight from the bottom of the well to your lips.") and the whole atmosphere could not have been nicer. The game went quickly and had patches of action, ranging from home runs to someone walking and eventually scoring without another hit by virtue of 2 wild pitches and a fly ball.

He hit a home run, but it's disappointing that his name is pronounced "scope" and not "shoop."

Fortunately, the trip home was much shorter, and back in the hotel room I learned that, while it is not ideal or easy to cut up and de-seed a pepper with a teaspoon, it is possible. Sort of wish I'd done a video in retrospect; I was pretty impressed with myself if you must know.

So that's a day. Nothing incredible, just a mostly pleasant, uneventful day. Home tomorrow, but that's another story.

A day away

Anybody who has spent any time with me recently would know that these past few weeks have not been the easiest, which means here that within my sphere of people there have been some huge swings of emotion. Lots of good things, but also some pretty difficult stuff to deal with. Most of it didn't happen to me, but to people I care about, which for me is usually worse. Too much drama, lots of work, a good-sized portion of stress, and not enough sleep. So saying I needed a break was a pretty dramatic understatement.

As it turned out, this was a long-planned weekend in Clearwater Beach with my wife and one daughter, which could not have been more right place at the right time. The day of departure completely crazy. Honestly, I can't believe that I managed to get everything done that I did, from making up and giving tests to meetings to teaching a class while eating a Wawa tuna wrap to pretty much every other thing I ever do during a school day all packed in from about 6 AM until 1:30 when I headed home. And at least it seems that I didn't seriously screw anything up in the process.

So we got to the airport just at the right time for our flight, and got into Tampa airport and over to Clearwater earlier than expected. We're staying at the Hilton here, which is a first time for me. It's the 6th different hotel I've used on these trips and I'm pretty happy with the choice.

I usually use Tripadvisor as a primary source for hotel searches, and had always avoided this place, in spite of its almost perfect location, because everyone said it felt old and a little run down. But this year all the reviews said things about "newly renovated," so I decided to give it a try. It's definitely had a going over, and more of it is good than not. The room is good-sized and nicely furnished, if you're into hotel furniture. Hotels are strange things, if you think about it, and how they put rooms together often makes me think about the meetings involved in the planning. Why did they make this or that particular choice? Why is there something like this out here rather than behind the desk where it wouldn't be seen?

The bed is comfortable and there's a refrigerator rather than a minibar, which is always a plus. They have a small fitness center, though the hotel guide says it's on the 3rd floor, which it is not. I ended up finding it by accident looking for the lobby. The only really confounding thing is the bathroom. It's clear that the designers found the space problematic, because there are some quirks. The sink is very stylish and looks good when you are standing over it, but the faucet is on the side rather than in back, which requires more thought from the user than would be ideal to figure out how to get hot or cold water. And as nice as it looks up above you can see the entire plumbing system down below, which is just odd.

In the hundred or so hotel reviews I've written, I've never had occasion to mention the view from the toilet, because that just seems icky for some reason, even though I suspect that most if not all of the people reading this have sat on a toilet at one time or another. Anyway, the underside of the sink is what you see when you're sitting there. It's nice and new and shiny. but not exactly slick. And what you do not see is the toilet paper, or bath tissue as the labels read but nobody, and I mean nobody, ever says or even thinks. That's because it's behind you and hidden in a kind of cubby.

It's also facing away from you, so if you can find it you have to reach back to get at it. Hopefully I won't tear a rotator cuff trying to get at it. And I can't not mention the fact that the toilet itself is several inches lower than normal, which is far more disconcerting than one would think. Any why doesn't anyone understand that people in hotels want to be able to find and use the bathroom during the night without having to leave the bright fluorescent light on? Dimmer switch? Night light? Too difficult apparently.

But at least they designed crown moulding to accommodate the sprinkler...

But enough about that. We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant because it was easy. I got 8 hours of sleep, which is about the total I'd had the previous two nights combined. And by the time I had walked on the beach for a little while I felt so much better that I couldn't believe it. The beach here is spectacular- a wide swath of powdery white sand (Ronnie described it as feeling like walking on flour) with a hard packed part down by the water that's ideal for walking. 

It was so nice that I ended up walking 5 miles all told, and it was rejuvenating. Got back to the hotel and ate something and then we went to a ballgame at the jauntily named Florida Auto Exchange Stadium. Saw some nice practice baseball and I had a blueberry wheat beer with floated frozen blueberries, a first for me.

Back at the hotel I napped for a bit and then worked out. After a shower we walked up to Frenchy's Rockaway Grill, one of my favorite spots here. Right on the beach and totally casual, no reservations, so we got on the list knowing we'd have to wait an hour and then walked onto the beach to watch the sunset. Sunsets are a thing in Clearwater. Seeing the sun disappear into the Gulf of Mexico can be a real highlight if you catch a good one, which we did tonight.

Don't have more pictures because I was too busy watching it to be dealing with a camera. It looked like the sun was getting squashed down into the water- it almost seemed oval by the time it was halfway over the horizon. When it finally slipped below the edge the hundreds of people on the beach applauded. And hopefully it will rise and set again tomorrow as well. We walked back to the restaurant and waited a few minutes before our table came up.

The food at Frenchy's is good, but what really struck me was how happy everyone there was. Lots of laughing and friendly conversation. The whole day was like that. At one point we were going down to the ground floor and the elevator stopped at the lobby level, which is one flight up. The other people in the elevator apologized for having pushed the wrong button, and I said that considering that was probably the worst thing that had happened to me all day, that it must have been a pretty good day.

Tomorrow is a beach day- baseball at night. It's supposed to be 81 degrees and sunny, so hopefully we can keep the winning streak going. I've had a few occasions in my life where I really really needed a break and this was one of them. I feel blessed, whatever that means, that it's worked out as well as it has so far.

Leaving a part of me behind

This is a wistful title for a post about dentistry. I am having a tooth removed and replaced with an bionic tooth next week. I don't think that's what they're really called, but I prefer to think of it that way. I believe the correct term is an implant, which has an overly intrusive feeling about it.

I am fortunate in that the dentist doing this work for me is at the absolute pinnacle of the field. He's been teaching reconstructive dentistry at Penn for years and writes textbooks on it, and has developed a lot of the techniques that other dentists use. He was a lucky find for me, because I have terrible teeth, and the only reason this is my first implant is the work that he did for me nearly 30 years ago when I first started seeing him.

Before getting to see him, I was in a lot of pain in the toothal area, to adapt Woody Allen's parlance. Because it started of course on a Friday afternoon, I couldn't go see my regular guy, so I was left with a Doc-In-The-Box. This is the phrase used by doctors with regular practices to describe strip mall Urgent Care centers and their doctors. I don't think it's meant as a compliment.

I'd never been to one of these before, except when I was in Lake Placid once and came down with bronchitis. A nurse practitioner there prescribed the antibiotics one prescribes for bronchitis and that was it. This place near me has a sign saying it has dental services, so Saturday morning there I was.

I came in and the place was all but deserted. There was a dentist there, but nobody to help him, so I needed to wait until someone, who I never saw and sounded like he knew nothing, came to assist by bringing him instruments. As far as I could tell, everything he put in my mouth was coming from a sealed, sanitized package (or they were tearing paper behind me to fool me). He cleaned around it and said there might be some infection, so he prescribed me antibiotics (which ultimately helped reduce the pain). He also suggested that they take an x-ray, which I considered but rejected when I saw this sign on the wall in front of me (and I am absolutely not making this up).

Reads kind of like a ransom note, doesn't it? So I expressed my preference to have my own dentist take the x-ray, and as it turned out, the tooth needed to go. Bye-bye tooth. The weird thing is that my dentist said it didn't look like the kind of tooth that belonged in that spot in my mouth, and that I might have my wisdom teeth instead of regular molars. I seem to remember having my wisdom teeth removed, so this is mysterious, but it's a story for another day.