Tales of Being TJ

I am here to tell you how to make a decent peanut butter and...

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:00:00 -0500

I am here to tell you how to make a decent peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

What makes me an expert? Growing up, our school didn’t have a cafeteria. I brought PB&J to school every day for 12 years. Except one day in 4th grade my mother made me a tuna-fish sandwich. I flushed it down the toilet at school. It clogged. Principalities were called in. I think she learned her lesson.

Although this is a basic staple of growing-up life, many people don’t know how to make one properly. It’s a simple process, but like anything else, screwing up any one of the steps can screw up the whole process.

Ingredients to make a Proper Peanut Butter & Jelly Sandwich

1) White bread. Do not serve PB&J on anything else. Does it have to be Wonder Bread? No, you go ahead and get some earthy, crunchy, free-range, whole grain bread.

2) JIF. Choosy moms choose JIF. What else do you need to know?

In answer to the “Creamy or Crunchy?” question, PB&J should be made with creamy peanut butter for the same reasons that you don’t put eggshells in an omelet.

3) Grape Jelly. Not Jam. Not Strawberry. Smucker’s will do in a pinch if you can’t find Welch’s.

4) Milk. I leave the kind up to you. I actually prefer skim-milk, with a few exceptions I’ve never found it to taste like white-colored water (although I did have some recently that was like that).

How to make a proper Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich

I’m surprised how many people do this wrong.

I’m here to help.

1) Take out two pieces of bread. Feel free to reach past the first few slices which may be getting a little stale. You can always make toast with those. You need soft, fresh bread for this.

2) Open the pieces of bread like you would open a book. Not even Wonder Bread is perfectly symmetrical, so this will make sure that the bread lines up when you put it back together in sandwich form. It’s attention to details like these that are the difference between living life and enjoying life.

3) Put peanut butter on both pieces of bread. This is essential, especially if you are making a sandwich that won’t be eaten for several hours (i.e. packing lunch for a school-aged child). The peanut butter serves as a seal to keep the jelly from seeping through the bread. Do you really want your child to eat a sandwich that looks like yesterday’s band-aid? I would hope not.

4) Put the jelly on one-side. Otherwise it will slide off when you go to put the two pieces together. Obviously. However, don’t just take a spoonful and slop it onto the middle of the sandwich expecting to squish it down into place with the other piece of bread. Take some {expletive deleted} pride in your work. Spread the jelly evenly, allowing for some room for the peanut butter to make a seal. You do not want to have the jelly slide out and end up on your child’s crotch while s/he is at the lunch table at school.

Note: Squeezable jelly does work well; however, we can never find it in our stores.

5) Put both pieces of bread together, lining them up properly.

6) Do not cut off the crust. Why would you cut off the crust? When did this start? And why? Leave the bleepin’ crust alone.

7) Serve will cold milk. Repeat as necessary.

Goes well with Oreos.

The Something I Wait For

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 00:58:48 -0500

I’ve spent a great amount of time thinking that something is out there, just around the corner, just a few steps away. Sometimes I wonder if it isn’t looming right behind me, so close and yet completely invisible and unknown.

Part of me wonders if this is what everyone goes though before they hit whatever they define as mid-life, expecting/believing in some greater potential yet to be realized. When it doesn’t arrive, is that what throws people into a downward spiral?

Good God, am I going to be driving a sportscar and wearing a baseball hat to cover up male-pattern baldness?

I’ve never lived anyone else’s life, I’ve been through this before, but this seems unusual. This isn’t a set idea of what I want to do or what I want to be. This is an amorphous shape just beyond the corner of my eye. I fully expect that, like much of my life thus far, it will appear unexpected and unimagined. When I see it I will be both surprised because I didn’t see it coming, and at the same point realize that much of my life up up to this point has been in preparation for something I didn’t expect or understand.

It feels like it is getting closer. Looming larger. But no matter how hard I squint, I can’t make it out. Since I don’t know what it is, I can’t prepare for it.

So I wait.

I was going to talk about where we live this week, but since...

Sat, 09 Jan 2010 17:01:31 -0500

I was going to talk about where we live this week, but since we’re buried under snow at the moment, I decided to go back a little further.

This is the first picture I ever took of The Boy, just moments after he was born. They had cleaned him up and put him on the little warming table.

I don’t know that I have anything to say about his birth that isn’t an absolute cliché.

Whatever clarity I’d had in life before then had always been fleeting. But from the first day I have had a single consistent thought:

“Try not to fuck this up.”

I don’t know what else I was put on earth to do, but I’ve never doubted that he (and his mother) are a main part of it.

We’ve lived a bunch of places, but my sense of “place” includes people as much as anything else.

Momentum

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:26:00 -0500

For as long as I can remember, I’ve always loved to read. My father read a lot, my brother read a lot (still does), and my mom read to me every night for years. I don’t remember how old I was when my mother stopped reading to me, but remember thinking I was glad none of my friends knew she was still doing it.

I went through a phase in elementary school when I would come home from school and read a Hardy Boys book. Every day. Until I had read them all. When I was older, I filled my summers with as many Stephen King books as I could get through the magic of inter-library loan.

What eventually dampened my zeal for reading was… college.

As an English & Religious Studies double major, I was reading so many books … all the time. I’m not sure how many years it takes a professor to lose all sense of reality regarding how much a student can read while taking 3-4 other classes, but (almost) all of my professors either had no clue or didn’t care. They would assign far more reading than could ever been completed, and then tack on some “optional” or “suggested” reading as well.

There are two reasons for this.

The first is that many professors want to help you “build your library” meaning that they want you to have certain books at your disposal on your bookshelf. I heard this numerous times by the professors themselves. As much as I can understand the logic behind it, I wish more professors assigned a reasonable amount of material and delved more deeply into it.

The second reason is a guess, but I think it is an educated one (if you’ll pardon the expression): many professors think that if they set the bar very high then you will try harder and accomplish more. So if they assign 100 pages a week, maybe you’ll read 80, but if they assign 80, they’re afraid you’ll only read 60. They want to help get people into the habit of reading, and reading a lot.

If that was their theory, it completely backfired on me.

When I realized that there was no way I could read everything they assigned, I stopped reading altogether. I was never very good at “skimming” a book. If I read it, I wanted to really “get into it” but if I couldn’t do that, I wouldn’t bother at all.

(Aside: I accomplished this by picking one of the earliest readings of the semester and be sure to contribute a lot to the class discussions. That left a lasting impression on a professor. Then I sat in the front of the class, attended every class, learned how to pay attention to what was discussed, and took a lot of notes.)

Graduate school made it worse.

By the time I finally graduated at age 25, I had stopped reading almost entirely. I read a few novels that summer, but never really regained my real passion for reading.

Not long after that I made a conscious decision to stop reading a book I had decided to read for pleasure. I remember putting a bookmark into it and thinking, “Yeah, I get it.” The bookmark was a lie. I knew I wasn’t going to open the book again.

Unfortunately, once I started throwing in the towel, it became easier and easier to quit a book, harder and harder to finish one. It was only a few years ago that I discovered Audible and “read” more books in one year than I had read in the previous five. It reminded me what I had once loved about reading: getting pulled into a story, picturing the scenes, or simply learning about completely new things.

Sometimes A Book is More than Just a Book

In the past year or two I realized what happened with books is symptomatic of a larger issue in my life: not finishing what I start.

I find it remarkably easy to begin projects, and find it hellishly difficult to complete them. As I wrote almost a year ago:

The first 80% of a project takes 100% of my energy and interest.
The last 20% of a project gets thrown into a box and pushed in the corner.

When I start something, I throw myself into it entirely, focusing on it to the exclusion of everything else… but once I stop, I might never start it again.

There are two pieces of this puzzle to figure out:

Figure out what I really want to do, and do them.
Figure out what I don’t really want to do, and don’t allow it to take time or energy that I should be spending on things in the first category.

Someone (I think it was Michele) asked if we had a word or motto for the new year. Mine was “Purposeful.” To me it goes directly towards the two points above, as well as our theme this week of “momentum”: if I make a purposeful decision about what I want to do—and, equally importantly, what not to do—it will help gain and not lose momentum.

Hopefully 2010 will be the year I switch back from being someone who starts many things to someone who completes many things.

This entry is part of the 52 Weeks Thing. Not sure what that is? Read more here.

This one is fairly easy since I’m at my mom’s house,...

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 14:15:24 -0500

This one is fairly easy since I’m at my mom’s house, which is the house where I grew up.

Actually it’s the address where I grew up, since the house has changed significantly. Growing up, that tree would have been fresh-cut instead of fake. The town has changed too. The restaurant where I had my first real job is now an insurance company. The grocery store where I worked is a different store and looks completely different inside. The high school I (and my brother and sister) attended has closed. My old bedroom is now adorned with Winnie-the-Pooh for when The Boy comes to visit.

But there has always been change here. I suppose the first that I remember was when my parents divorced and my mother remarried. Then they changed the garage into a den. The dining room became my bedroom (I had been sharing a room with my brother, who is eight years older.) The porch became a dining room.

Despite the changes, my mom’s house is “home” and probably always will be. In 2006 when my Dad died I decided I didn’t want to be home in Ohio where his absence would be all around, so we started driving to Massachusetts overnight so The Boy would wake up at Grammy’s for Christmas.

That trip led to this Flickr picture which is my favorite picture ever:

So this is probably as obvious as can be, but it’s hard to think of anywhere I have more of a sense of place than Home, especially now that I get to share it with The Wife and The Boy.

TJ Gets A Ticket…

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:06:01 -0500

I’m going to assume you listen to Live, from a Shoebox and more specifically that you’ve listened to Episode 14 where Alison talked about getting pulled over and Episode 20 where she talked about getting pulled over again. As in, a second time. By the same cop.

Her courage and determination to fight The Man has inspired me to share my story where I, too, fought against The Man.

The year was 1989, or maybe early 1990. I’m about 16 years old, driving with my Dad in his fully tricked out 1988 Chevy Cavalier, by which I mean it had power windows, seats, and a cassette deck with auto-reverse.

We were driving the 8+ hours to my sister’s house in Erie, PA, which mean about 7.5 hours on I-90, which is referred to as The Mass Turnpike in Massachusetts. We were driving along in “fairly busy but moving along” traffic, and I was keeping up with the flow of traffic. All of a sudden we came around a bend, and there is a State Trooper standing on the side of the road, and he pointed at me, then pointed at the side of the road. No radar gun, standing outside of his car in his big Trooper hat and sunglasses, standing at the side of the road.

So I pull over, my heart pounding like the wings of a hummingbird-on-crack, and my Dad is telling me to relax and be polite. I’ve been driving for less than a year, and I’ve never in my life talked with a police officer who hadn’t come to my school to give some sort of a safety demonstration.

He comes to the window and asks me if I know why he pulled me over, and I said no. I mean, I knew I wasn’t going 55MPH, but no one was going 55, so… why me? He says, “I clocked you doing 79 in a 55. License and registration please.”

79MPH.

My Dad opened the glove compartment and started looking for the paperwork. I tried to get my wallet out of my back pocket, but it was stuck and wouldn’t come out. All the time I’m thinking to myself, “What? 79? There’s no way…” I hear my Dad say something to him that I wasn’t going anywhere near that fast, and the cop says that he has my on radar, which is of course absurd because he was already standing outside of the car when we came around the corner. He was waiting for me.

He went back to his car to do whatever it is that they do, and I hoped that he would seem my clean record and tell me to just slow down. No such luck. He comes back with a ticket for $190. Now think back to when you were 16 years old, and what would $190 sound like? It sounded like $1,000. He asks me to sign the receipt, indicating that I’ve received the ticket, not indicating guilt, and shows me where to send it in.

We resumed our trip and I was beyond livid. I was driving exactly 55MPH for as long as my Dad could put up with it before he said “It’s going to take up 12 hours if you keep driving like this, you’re not going to get another ticket, just stay with the traffic.” I said something calm like “I WAS JUST STAYING WITH THE TRAFFIC WHEN HE GAVE ME THAT TICKET AND HE SAID I WAS GOING 79 THERE’S NO WAY IN HELL I WAS GOING THAT FAST AND I CAN’T BELIEVE HE GAVE ME A TICKET OH MY GOD MOM IS GOING TO KILL ME AND I’M NEVER GOING TO BE ABLE TO DRIVE AGAIN EVER.”

Finally I did pick up my pace a little bit, but I drove the rest of the way (the final 90% of the trip) in a foul mood. At one point my Dad said, “I want you to try to get the car up to 79 MPH.” WHAT? “I want to see how it would feel to drive that fast.” After assuring me that he would pay the ticket if I got another one, I started accelerating. At 72 MPH we both started to get nervous. At 75 MPH, the car felt like it was going to careen out of control. I let my foot off the gas and slowed back down to about 62 MPH (which is the official speed of “the speed limit is 55 but you probably won’t get a ticket if you’re going this fast.”)

“And he thinks we were going faster than that and didn’t notice?” my Dad asked rhetorically. Then we remembered that another white car had sped past us just before we got pulled over. We theorized that there had been a hidden cop car with a radar gun which caught that car, and then radioed ahead to the guy who pulled us over, and he got the wrong car. My Dad told me to request a hearing for the ticket.

I was still afraid of telling my mom about it, but he said it would be fine and we went about the rest of our visit. I got home a few days later and quite honestly had forgotten about it. A lot of other stuff had happened and I had thought about it so much it was no longer shocking or even news… I was sure that they had just spotted the wrong car.

Only problem was that I completely forgot that I had put the ticket in the pocket of my jeans. Which my mom then washed. And dried.

The ticket looked like I had balled it up. You have never seen anything more crumpled and faded, torn, etc. I was sure I was going to go to jail for contempt of court or something — and I still had to mail it back and request a court date. My mother literally ironed it, trying to make it look less wrinkled. It didn’t help.

So we mailed it off.

And heard nothing.

For several years. (Not a typo.)

I was sure that it had just been thrown away, but something like three years later I got a court date. Except that I was now in college and couldn’t go. I asked for a rescheduled date over Christmas vacation, and they sent a date back for the following summer.

Now I had always heard that if the cop who wrote the ticket didn’t show up, they had to throw out the ticket. That is apparently not true. The guy who was at the court that day made no bones about the fact that he wasn’t the guy who had originally written the ticket. I explained about the other car and that I was sure that it was the wrong car. The judge asked me if I had been speeding.

Here’s the thing: in the meantime, the speed limit for that area had been increased from 55MPH to 65MPH. I had planned to argue that aspect of the case as well. But I didn’t know what to answer. So I went with the truth.

“I was probably going more than 55, but there’s no way that I was going 79—” and I was just about to mention about the speed limit change when he said.

“How about a reduction? $50?”

Wait, did he mean $50 off the $190 or a reduction to $50? Either one was better, but the way he said it, I wasn’t sure.

“What do you mean?” I asked, obviously confused.

“I mean you write a check to this court for $50, and that’s the end of it. Does that sound like a good deal to you?”

“YESABSOLUTELYIHAVEACHECKWRITEHEREWHODOIMAKEITOUTTO?”

My Dad had sent me with a literal blank check, with his name already signed, and told me to make sure that whatever I did, I didn’t lose the check.

That was the first time I got a ticket… with my Dad in the car. Maybe someday I’ll tell you about the other time…s…

Mixed Emotions

Sun, 13 Sep 2009 13:55:57 -0400

We were in a staff meeting for the so-called “professional” staff.

The secretary knocked on the door and told my boss and my co-worker that their wives were on the phone, asking to talk with them right away. This had never happened before. I had met their wives, and they were not ones to get overly excited about something without reason. For them to call and insist on talking to their husbands immediately was strange…

They took the messages seriously, excused themselves from the meeting, and left the rest of us there wondering what to do with ourselves. We talked for a moment about how odd it was. Then it dawned on us: both of their wives were teachers. While the echoes of Columbine and other school shootings may have faded, but they had not fully disappeared.

Across town, Tracey was waking up. Her part-time work schedule was flexible, and she didn’t have to be in the office for anything in particular that day, so she had slept in. When she awoke, she felt… strange. Was she coming down with something? No, she had felt this way before… She poured herself a bowl of cereal and milk, hoping it would calm her stomach. By the time she sat down, she was pretty sure it was morning sickness. Last time, the “morning sickness” (which, despite its name, lasted all day) had been intense, nearly violent. She had lost weight during her first trimester.

She sat down on the couch and turned on the television, hoping to distract herself with whatever morning show she could find.

Instead, she turned the TV on just in time to see the second plane hit the Twin Towers.

Back at my office, we were trying to get whatever news we could. Neither my boss nor coworker had come out of their offices. Our initial concerns about a school shooting were fading away, and we were hearing vague reports about a terrorist attack in New York, and a possible explosion in the White House. Airplanes were said to be involved. My boss’ daughter lived in Manhatten, and was scheduled to be on a plane that morning. I had met her several times. She was my age. His wife had called to ask if he had heard from her. He hadn’t. My co-worker’s brother worked at the White House. I didn’t even know he had a brother. His wife had called to ask if he had heard from him. He hadn’t.

There we were, 900 miles away from New York city, 700 miles from D.C., yet not feeling very far away at all. Wanting to do something, but there was nothing we could do. Nothing but watch.

The boss’ daughter called later that day, to say that she was O.K. It think it was a day or more before my coworker heard from his brother, but he too was OK. “Knowing” two people who were briefly “missing” is nothing like having a friend or loved one there. No one I know or even tangentially related to me was injured or killed on 9/11. My mother’s flight back from Scotland (where she had been visiting my sister) to Boston was delayed several days.

Tracey decided not to tell me that she was pregnant until Friday. I’m not entirely sure why; I suspect because of all the disruption and upheaval of that week. But I knew. When I say I knew, I don’t mean it in any of that Hallmark, soft-focus, “I saw her and she was just aglow” nonsense. I just knew. And I knew that she wasn’t telling me, either because she wasn’t ready to talk about it or she thought I wasn’t ready to talk about it.

It was a dramatically different experience than the first time, when she had come out of the bathroom with the home pregnancy test and literally jumped for absolute, 100% joy (I also feel I should note that she was also 100% naked). That had been about a year beforehand, but that story did not have a happy ending. Instead it ended, 20-something weeks later after 3 days in the hospital, with a death certificate which had no corresponding birth certificate. That’s another long story for perhaps another day, but suffice it to say that I live my life now with the belief (and hope) that the worst day and worst experience of my life are behind me.

I mention that only because it was another dimension to the story of finding out on September 11th, 2001 that she was pregnant. It was an odd day to find out such good news, making the day one of extremely mixed emotions, especially considering our own personal history and tragedy.

Perhaps—and this occurs to me only now, 8 years after the fact and after I have already written the above words—she did not want to tell me because the news of the day was filled with tragedy and sadness and fear and anxiety about the future. Her news would stir up memories and fears and anxiety too. So she waited. On Friday at lunchtime we attended a prayer service together. After the service ended we went to lunch. I remember her telling me, and I remember telling her “I know.” (I think I was fairly glib about it…you know, like when Han said it to Leia?)

We talked. The excitement of the first time was displaced by the awareness of all that could go wrong. Now it was just a matter of waiting.

I’m not big on stories with morals or the idea that God or the universe or whatever sends us “messages”. Nevertheless, I have, from the beginning until now, always believed that if there was such a message it was this:

There will always be reasons to fear, to give up, or to give in; but there will also be reasons to hope and to work for a better future.

Go live.

Pointer: "Something I never want to hear again"

Thu, 10 Sep 2009 13:00:00 -0400

Pointer: "Something I never want to hear again":

I tried to get the linked post to publish Tuesday at 1 p.m. but it never appeared in my Dashboard, and so I’m thinking it may not have appeared in anyone else’s either.

If it did, sorry for the duplication.

Something I never want to hear again…

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 13:00:00 -0400

[originally intended to be published 2009-09-08 at 1pm]

By the time you read this it will be at least 1:00 p.m. (eastern time, USA).

I will be at a funeral for a friend of ours who died of cancer. She was diagnosed in February. She was, perhaps, more an “acquaintance” than a friend. She was someone I knew, a little. Occasionally we’d see her at a church, or at the local theater where she helped with the children’s plays. We’d see her at this or that event, or picking up a few things at the grocery store. Here or there.

I had heard second- or third-hand that she had cancer. Whenever our paths crossed I’d ask her how she was doing, and she always said she was doing well, and seemed to be. It seemed like our paths crossed fairly regularly for awhile, and so I never thought much about keeping in touch with her. After all, cancer is no longer the death sentence it once was. Or so we’ve been told.

A week ago Sunday I saw her name and thought, “I haven’t talked to her for awhile, I should call her.” That’s never really the way things had worked between us, we had always counted on life to bring us back together. Or at least I had.

Saturday morning I got the call that she had died. Almost a week had passed since I thought about calling her. If I hadn’t gotten the call, I probably would have seen her name again on Sunday and thought the same thing. Would I have done it? I wish I could say I would have, but probably not.

I went to the “calling hours” tonight. I met her sister, who lives in town but I’d never met. Hard to imagine not knowing people in a town this small, but it happens. We exchanged pleasantries. She told me her sister had been in the hospital for two weeks, but things had gotten bad pretty quickly. She seemed to be handling it pretty well. I guess she had time to see it coming.

The hardest part, by far, was talking to her daughter. I knew her about as well as I knew her mother: a sweet girl with a light laugh and a pretty face, just starting her junior year of high school. She seems to be taking everything in stride. To everyone who said “I’m so sorry for your loss,” she shrugged, looked down, and said “That’s cool.” In print it looks cold or rude. It was neither. It was just all she seemed to be able to say. It’s as close as she could get to “thank you.” I have no psychology degree, but I’d guess she’s in some stage of denial, operating on some version of auto-pilot. Waves of well-meaning adults and friends keep coming to say the same things to her. They didn’t know what to say and she didn’t know what to say.

She sat at the end of a row of the folding chairs with thick cushions, meant to comfort the grieving when preachers go too long during the eulogy. Another girl I assumed to be her best friend sat two seats away with an empty seat between them. Her aunt sat on one of the large upholstered chairs against the side wall, surrounded by the same well-meaning adults and friends saying the same things to her they had said to her niece.

Eventually I sat down in the row behind the daughter, and a few seats to the side. I had said my clichés and offered my sympathies as best I could. Others who came in threw their arms around her and hugged her, and she accepted their gestures, but as I watched her body language, I was glad I had resisted the urge. She seemed to be doing it to comfort them, despite wishing that they would just say their words and move along… not because she didn’t care or didn’t appreciate them, but that she just didn’t seem capable of accepting them.

At first it seemed strange that her friend had left an empty seat between them. Eventually I wondered if it wasn’t a subtle indication of how well her friend knew her. “I’m here, but I’m giving you the space that you need,” she said without words.

So they sat together. Her friend seemed neither anxious nor chatty. She just sat by her side; neither out of reach, nor too close at hand.

I wanted to have words of comfort for her. I wanted to ask where she would live now. I wanted to try to break down some of the walls that she has so quickly built up around herself. I wanted to do something. I’ve been told that this is an especially common (but not uniquely) male response: the urge to “fix it”… even when there’s nothing to be fixed. I found myself wondering about her father. I had never heard about him. I had never been close enough to her mother to ask, nor she close enough to me to tell the story.

So I sat there, hoping that perhaps my presence alone might offer some comfort like I imagined her friend’s presence was. It seemed unlikely, but maybe it was something—

I didn’t hear the question, or see who asked it… all I heard was the answer:

“Oh, she’s going to be buried next to my dad.”

There was the answer to the question that I had resisted asking.

“How long has he been gone?” I asked, betraying even more the lack of real knowledge or friendship between us. “I don’t know…” she began, and then corrected herself, “…I never knew him…”

Her aunt spoke up, “He died when she was 9 months old…”

She is 16. Her mother died at age 46. Which means that her mother, at around age 30, had a newborn baby and a dead husband.

Rationally, I know that there are thousands of cases like this, if not more. Single parents with even younger children, whose spouses die and leave them alone to tend to their young child. I know that it is not unique. I know there are tens of thousands, if not more, children who never know their fathers, for a myriad of reasons. I know all these things. I am educated about all these facts.

But until you’ve heard a 16 year-old say that her mom will be buried next to the father she never knew because he died when she was an infant, you can’t really understand how much you will hope to never hear that ever again.

Driving in Pittsburgh

Fri, 15 May 2009 17:12:39 -0400

So I was driving through Pittsburgh today, and while stopped at a red light, I wrote:

Pittsburgh: “Even our pedestrians drive like assholes.”

Because they do.

Now, I currently live in a small town, but I’ve driven in Boston, New York, New Jersey, California, and Atlanta.

I have never in my life seen as many people pull the “I’m stepping out into the road, and I’m gonna glance down and see where you are, and oh you’re far enough away you’ll probably stop before running me over, so now I’m going to saunter my lazy ass across the street like I’m a finalist in the Slowest Turtle Competition.”

That bullshit would get your ass run over in Boston.

Pittsburghers, please know that I really love your city, but your traffic patterns are more confused than trying to learn Chinese arithmetic from Ozzy Osbourne.

“Hey, this lane is now Right Turn only!”

“Hey, it’s not Left Turn only!”

“Hey, you need to go straight, but straight is a 98° turn, and we decided to make the road narrower on the curve.”

“This road is wide enough for 3 cars, so we decided to allow for parking on both sides of the street. What’s that? No, it’s not one-way! It is, however, cobblestone and has more bumps than a measles colony.”

“This street is 2 lanes in each direction— SURPRISE! — after this traffic light we allow parking in the outside lanes. I KNOW! ISN’T IT GREAT?!?”

“Oh, and one last thing: we only hire bus drivers who have no peripheral vision and who are incapable of turning their necks to check for oncoming traffic. Just didn’t want to throw you any curve balls.”

Anyway, I posted the above message to Twitter, and not even 30 seconds later, my phone rang, a number I didn’t recognize but it was a 412 area code (Pittsburgh, for those who don’t know).

Now, you have to understand that my phone hooks to my GPS, which is great except that I had all of the windows down, and I knew that if I was trying to talk through the GPS speakerphone, whoever was calling would have no way to hear me.

So I have to unlock my iPhone and tell it to not use the GPS speakerphone while I’m trying to roll up my windows and turn on the A/C (it is hot as Thor’s balls today).

Finally I answered the phone:

Me: “Hello?”

Voice: “Our pedestrians do not drive like assholes!”

I was like, “Holy fuck, someone from the city is monitoring Twitter for people defaming the city?!”

May I remind you it has been like 45 seconds since I posted the message, but I had also sent Jason my cell phone number so we could try to meet up, and he had apparently gotten my DM and seen the message at the same time.

Meanwhile the light has turned green, but I haven’t noticed because, well, see above, and the guy behind me starts blowing his horn.

I’m going to take a nap now.

Like Father, Like Son

Tue, 12 May 2009 22:45:43 -0400

Ever since Empire Strikes Back I have been aware of the psychological damage that a father can do to his son, and have sought to minimize the damage that I do to mine.

Generally speaking, I spend a lot of time worrying what unintentional lessons he is learning from me—you know, those things that you never realize that you do until you see your kid do them?

Well today I learned that he apparently absorbed one lesson with particular clarity.

Background:

Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote about the problem of irresponsible parenting when we went to see Speed Racer.

The entire post is brilliant and I recommend it highly, but for the sake of our discussion today I will assume that you have already read it, and therefore will only quote part of it

(The post is addressed to two adult women I assume to be the mothers of the children we sat in front of.)

We arrived at the movie theater about 12:50 p.m. for a 12:45 p.m. movie. We didn’t worry too much about it, because we knew there would be previews. When we arrived, we quickly spotted some open seats in the middle of the theater. There were not a whole lot of other people in the theater, but those who were had sat in the same general area, because those are the best seats. Clearly you knew this, because you had sat there yourself.

It wasn’t until we were sitting down that I realized that we were seated in front of several children, but I didn’t think much about it. We could have gone down two rows closer, but that would have been too close. We could have gone two rows back, but that was further than we wanted to go. We sat in open seats at a public theater.

The problem started almost immediately. The children were chattering during the previews, not about the previews, just in general. I let this go, because they are just previews, but I was already concerned. I heard you say “Shut up!” to them at one point. They ignored you, and you dropped it.

They continued to talk during the opening credits. You said nothing.

They continued to talk during the opening scene of the movie. I turned around, put my finger to my lips and said “Shhh” to them. They shushed. I smiled and said “Thank you.”

A few minutes later, another one of them started kicking my son’s seat. One of you stopped him, which I heard and appreciated.

A few minutes later, he started again. You ignored it, or just didn’t realize it. I turned around and said, “Please stop kicking the seat.”

At this point I saw that he was stretched full out on the seat and stretching his legs as far as he could in order to reach the seats in front (this theater provides plenty of leg room). It would have been very hard not to see him. You turned to him and said “Quit it.”

Less than 5 minutes later, one of the other children, the one sitting furthest from you, started to kick the seat next to me, and the one next to her started kicking mine.

This marked the end of my patience. I turned around and said, in a calm but firm voice: “Stop kicking the seats.”

Her eyes grew wide and she pulled back her legs.

(The post goes on to talk about the parent who got defensive that I had corrected her children, and attempted—with absolutely no success—to shift the blame to us for having sat in front of her obnoxious children. But for our purposes today, the above quoted section is sufficient.)

Foreground:

Last week when I was in Indianapolis, The Wife took The Boy to see Wolverine. There were some kids sitting behind The Boy who were kicking his seat. The Wife told me tonight that he turned around and said:

“Please stop kicking the seat.”

That would be awesome enough, but she said he did it in the exact same tone that I had said it, which would be roughly translated as “I ain’t playing and I do not intend to have to repeat myself, and what you have heard is the last bit of polite conversation that I intend to offer.”

Which is pretty good for a not-quite-7 year-old who probably weighs 50 pounds soaking wet if wrapped in a heavy towel.

She said they didn’t make another peep for the entire movie.

(Coda: at the end of the movie, they started to leave and The Wife said to one of them “You don’t want to leave yet, there’s another scene in the credits” and they all sat down. She heard one of them say to the other one “We aren’t allowed to leave yet.”)

I live with awesome people.

A Piece of My Journey, for @jamield

Mon, 11 May 2009 23:28:00 -0400

I didn’t know @jamield other than the occasional overlap on Tumblr.

I’ve spent some time looking over her Tumblr especially, and thought that perhaps she would have enjoyed this story.

The story starts nine years ago, early spring of 2000. I can’t tell you exactly when but it was after February 1st and before April 15th. My sister and her family were living in Scotland, and my wife and I were trying to decide if we were going to go for a visit.

We couldn’t afford it. There was no way we could afford it. But we had tickets on 48-hour hold with a travel agent. The final hours were running out and we had to call her back to say either yay or nay.

“We have to go. It will never be less expensive than it will be now. If we pay for airline tickets, we’ll have a place to stay.”

There was another reason as well.

I know it was after February 1st because that was the day that our first pregnancy ended, prematurely, at 22 weeks. The dates of travel that we had tentatively scheduled would have us out of the country for what had been the due date in the early days of summer.

“Avoidance” gets a bad rap, but you know, some days it really is the best available option.

We both wanted to be gone, and we both knew it was, financially, a horrible decision. I can’t remember which one of us finally said it:

“We’re going.”

I called the travel agent and left a message telling her that we wanted the tickets. No sooner had I hung up the phone than I felt a pit in my stomach, and yet relief. My only real concern was that the travel agent would get the message before the tickets expired.

The phone rang. “That must be her!” I thought.

It wasn’t.

It was our accountant.

Now before you get your undergarments in a bunch, “Ooooooh, Mr. Fancy Pants has an accountant?” I won’t explain, but trust me, it’s a requirement. My dad was an accountant for 33 years and even he declined to try to tackle our taxes.

He said, “I have good news and bad news.”

(Aside: if you are a doctor, a mechanic, or an accountant, never start a conversation with that sentence. Ever.)

Perhaps he heard me begin to hyperventilate, because he continued: “The bad news is that you are having way too much withheld from your paycheck. The good news is that you’re getting [dollar amount almost identical to the cost of the airline tickets] back from your tax return. I’ll send you the paperwork, you ought to have the money in a few weeks.”

It was the first time in days? weeks? month? that I remember feeling anything might resemble “joy”… or maybe “hope”… or maybe it wasn’t even that much—maybe it was just a deeper and truer smile in my soul.

The trip was everything we could have hoped for. With the “extra” money we hadn’t expected, we took a few more trips while we where there to London and Dublin (short flights from Glasgow). We ate wonderful food and took in all the sights our eyes and feet could manage.

The Journey Isn’t Just About Where You Go, But How You Get There

Not that there isn’t plenty to see in the USA, of course. A few years later we took our son to the west coast. We went to California, Oregan, and Washington. We stayed with friends we had never met in real life before, but who we had known via email. They opened their houses and their lives to us. It was a trip we’ll never forget.

Jamie clearly “got” this. She obviously loved to travel, but more than that you can sense the adventure in her words, it was how she approached life. I daresay she lived a lot more life than some people who get twice as many years.

Today was a good day to grieve for her. For her close friends and especially family, I know that grief will only grow in the days to come before the eventual ebb and flow returns. But eventually everyone who was touched by her life will honor her memory more by how they choose to life.

If you can get on a plane, go for it. If the trip requires a passport, all the better. If you have a car, find a new place to take it. If you have a bike, find some new hills or a different path.

If all you have is where you live and your own two feet, take the spirit of adventure and let it show you things that your eyes have taken for granted.

Add some life to your life. She’d love that.

Finally, just let me add a word of thanks for everyone who has shared a bit of themselves after this loss. I didn’t know her, I wish I had, but it’s been remarkable to see and hear what her circle of friends have had to say about her. I wish you all peace and comfort in the midst of your grief.

Mother's Day, 2009

Sun, 10 May 2009 22:53:00 -0400

She was awoken much too early by the almost 7 year old boy she let sleep in her bed last night because he wanted to have a “sleep-over,” which meant that the too early morning came after a night of being kicked by a child who moves so frequently and violently in his sleep that his parents often joke about padding the walls and floor of his bedroom, and doubt that they will ever let him sleep on a bed more than six inches off the floor.

That same boy sang with other children during the church service. His was the voice which sang at twice the volume of all the others; not because of a special gift for musicality, but because of the natural volume he has acquired through the genetic pairing of his two boisterous parents. Still, the sound of his song as he loudly proclaimed “I love you, Mom” left her eyes a little glassy. In a mother’s eyes, enthusiasm trumps skill every time.

Her fancy Mother’s Day lunch was eaten at Wendy’s, because that’s where he wanted to go. When she arrived and found her husband’s “meal” had been prepared incorrectly, she ordered the same thing, but ordered the way he wanted it, and she took his instead. Was it what she wanted? She never said, but she implied that it was, in all likelihood for his benefit.

They arrived home and the child sent her on a hunt for her Mother’s Day card, a single sheet of paper he had colored at school and folded in half. That, along with a plant in a vase he had decorated at school, was her gift.

Dinner, at least, was a nicer fare: a well-cooked steak at her favorite place. She offered to drive because she gets a headache if she tries to read in the car and she knew her husband would enjoy some time playing with his phone during the thirty minute drive. She listened with patience and interest as her son described—in far more detail than anyone cared to hear—his latest toy collection: which figures he had acquired and each of their strange names (which she valiantly tries to remember), which he still needed, what “powers” they possessed, how they worked together, who was good, who was evil. If, by some chance, she and her husband managed a few sentences about grown-up matters, the boy simply put himself on hold until they paused again, and then started up right where he had left off.

They ended the evening watching a few shows they had recorded on the TiVo. She worked a crossword puzzle on the computer. Since it was a special day, she decided to let the boy stay up late, even on a school night. When it was time for bed, she brushed his teeth and turned on his night-light.

Which caused him to cry, because he had wanted to turn on his nightlight.

He had not, of course, told her this before she flicked the dreadful switch, which she does nearly every night as she prepares him for bed. His father weakly suggested that the boy turn the light off and then turn it back on again, but even he knew this would not sooth the boy’s overtired feelings, which were hurt as only a small and sometimes unreasonable child’s feelings can be, and no amount of logic, reason, or discussion of any kind would help.

His father tried to console him, stroked his head and kissed it, even rubbed his back, which he normally loved. But to no avail.

No, the only comfort for him would be that his mother would lie down next to him in his blue race-car bed, as she has on so many other nights. She would stay with him until he fell asleep. While his father wished that the boy would learn to fall asleep on his own, she knew that sometimes a boy simply needs his mother.

So ends another fifteen hour day as a mother. In many ways it is not unlike countless other days she has spent in the nearly seven years since his birth. She would understand if you thought this was a terrible day, perhaps even an unfair day, where she gave so much of herself, especially on a day which was supposed to honor her. But she knows who she is, her identity has not been lost. If she spends her day thinking more about them than herself it is not because she “has” to, but because she wants to, she has chosen to. If these expectations were laid upon one who was unwilling, they would rightly be called a burden. She does not think of them that way. She knows that these two men would not deny her anything; that they would, without hesitation, offer their full strength and ability to any request she made of them. She knows she is loved.

In a way that perhaps only makes sense to herself and others in situations like hers, she will consider this to have been a good day, maybe even a great day. She kissed her husband goodnight and thanked him for a wonderful day.

When he eventually drifts off to sleep, his last thought will be that the true “wonder” of this day, and every other day, is her.

“Life Begins” Not just his, but mine…...

Sun, 10 May 2009 14:18:00 -0400

“Life Begins”

Not just his, but mine… ours.

Perhaps the best picture ever.

(Picture taken in 2002. Happy Mother’s Day to the best wife and mom anyone could hope for.)

Louis CK talking about his previous video which I assume...

Wed, 06 May 2009 13:45:29 -0400

Louis CK talking about his previous video which I assume everyone saw where he talked about “everything is amazing and no one is happy.”

First of all, Time claims that the video has over a million YouTube hits.

It has now been taken down due to a copyright claim by NBC.

Way to go, Corporate American Fucktwits! You’ve got amazing buzz about something that happened on Conan O’Brien’s show — the show that is taking over Jay Leno’s current timeslot this June. Be sure to shut that down!

Idiots.

But the reason I link this video here is that he also talks about how a lot of his comedy is based on him saying that someone else said something to him, but really it was just him.

Which maybe some people on Twitter can relate to. Or, so say it in 140:

“OH: did you see the video Louis CK totally says stuff as if someone else said it, but really it was him?”

Anyway, interesting interview.

Places Where It Is Acceptable To Trim Your Nails

Tue, 05 May 2009 10:00:00 -0400

1.) Your bathroom, with the door closed.

My Most Awkward Conversation Ever

Mon, 04 May 2009 13:00:00 -0400

I have a friend, who we will call “A”.

“A” switched to a Mac after hearing me love mine, and loved it. I would routinely get text messages or emails talking about how much easier it was, etc.

“A” came over when I first purchased my iPhone and couldn’t wait to see it, and had talked about wanting to get one.

When the iPhone 3G was scheduled to come out, I was thinking of selling my original iPhone to replace it with a new one, and I wondered if “A” would be interested in buying it.

Here’s how the conversation went:

Me: “Hey, if I upgrade my iPhone I may be looking to sell mine. Would you be interested?”

A: “Sure, probably. Let me know.”

Me: “OK, will do.”

A: “I have a question for you.”

Me: “OK”

A: “If I get killed over in Iraq, will you be the one to tell my parents? I don’t want them getting the news from some Army representative.”

Did I mention that “A” is in the army? That’s probably an important thing to know.

Also important to know: I’ve never met A’s parents, and they live in Texas and I live up north.

But I don’t know if anyone has ever asked you that particular question before, but if they do, there’s no way to say “no” (not that I wanted to, except for a) the discomfort in the idea and b) did I mention I’d never met them before?)

If that isn’t the most awkward conversation I’ve ever had, it’s pretty close.

So. What’s yours?

Rubber Stamp

Fri, 01 May 2009 13:21:25 -0400

My request:

VistaPrint would like to offer me a free rubber stamp. Which is to say, I am now talking suggestions on what my rubber stamp should say. source

gathered a number of responses (shown in order they were received)

smartgoat: STAMPED

mikemorrow: Folks in my office are big fans of a big “WTF” stamp…

Notactuallyme: I have one that says “Fuck it - I don’t have time to read this shit”

AminoSC: Wheresgeorge.com ? :)

secretsquirrel: “LOL” or, if there’s enough type, “boneriffic”. Or “HAM”. Or “NUDE”. Or “NUTSACK”.

jamietie: I’ve always wanted one that said “REJECTED”

mikemorrow: Perhaps: “I HOPE YOUR NOT MAD”

teribits: Your productivity still greatly exceeds that of the pole.

mayjah: TLDR

thestoryofb: NSFW

tbridge: How about, “Thanks, Bitches!”

SmartAsshat: THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY STAMPED

SmartAsshat: AS USALLY

secretsquirrel: “PWNED”

LidMo: Douche. (Not you. The Stamp.)

eoporto: STAMPED.

lisarahmat: I AM IRON MAN

squibble: My other stamp is a mushroom.

biorhythmist: TRAMP

luckyshirt: This is my stamp. There are many like it, but this one just stamped this. or YO DAWG WE HEARD THIS STAMP IS TOO SMALL TO DO THIS JOKE.

awryone: My other stamp is a ballpoint.

texburgher: UNMARKED

kariedwards: “If this stamp is found, please return to: (your address here)”

Yayaa: I LOVE HOBOS

Wallaceh: “Tramp”

MikeTRose: “God is my Facebook friend”

ohmyseven: I have one that says “WTF?”

steelopus: I think your rubber stamp should say “RUBBER STAMP.”

toldorknown: DO NOT STAMP

Tony_D: It’s just a formality.

liabo: confidential’d

itsbynnereel: I HOPE YOUR NOT MAD.

ungraceful: This is my stamp. There are many like it, but this one’s mine. My stamp, without me, is useless. Without my stamp, I am useless.

HemiRT5pt7: I think a rubberstamp that said ‘Fuck It’ would be put to good use

benjibot: How about “RUBBER STAMP!”

kyleridolfo: I prefer this one: http://tinyurl.com/cjujrs

fraserspeirs : Surely “FIND HIM AND KILL HIM”? http://www.flickr.com/photos/deane_crilley/2296453868/

biorhythmist : “★”

BrilliantOrange: THE BIRD IS THE WORD

I have to say, I’m surprised no one made a rubber=condom joke.

I know which one gave me the biggest laugh, but what’s your favorite?

Button Fly

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 15:00:00 -0400

The button-fly was invented by someone clearly not on either the producer or consumer sides of the blowjay industry. — @biorhythmist

I haven’t worn button-fly jeans in a long time, but back in college, they were pretty much all I owned. I hadn’t thought about them in years until I saw the above message.

Scene: dorm room, freshman year. Me and new lady-friend are, fully clothed, on the bed, “getting acquainted”. Things are going along OK until she starts asking questions.

Her: “Are you OK?”

Me: “Yeah” (translation: “Actually no, but I’d rather not tell you what’s wrong for fear it will break the mood, which I would really rather not do.”)

Her: “Ok.”

(few minutes later)

Her: “Seriously, what’s wrong?”

Me: “It’s nothing.” (translation: “Ow ow ow ow ow don’t care don’t care don’t care”)

Her: “Tell me, or I’m leaving”

Me: “It’s not a big deal, it’s just… you’re… kind of… grinding my buttons into me…. there”

Her: “…”

Me: “It’s not a big deal…” (please don’t leave) “I just need to…” (less talking, more kissing… oh crap, what was I saying? Did I just say something? I think I started to say something, she’s looking at me like she’s waiting for me to say something. SAY SOMETHING!)

Me: “I, um…”

Her: “Well why don’t you just take them off?”

If you had given me 1,000 sheets of paper and asked to write my guesses for what she would say, I never would have come up with that one. I won’t finish telling the rest of the story, just trust me that it had a happy ending.

What’s much funnier is that several years later I saw this video of Kevin Smith talking about the first time he had sex with his wife, which went much worse and ended much better. Sort of.

It’s in 2 parts (YouTube), both parts are about 9 minutes long, although the first clip starts about 1m35s into it. There’s some “strong language” (the so-called “F word”) so avoid this at work if that’s a problem.

Kevin Smith, Part 1

Kevin Smith, Part 2

Wherein I Tell You About My Day and You Pretend to Care

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 17:54:42 -0400

Background

We’ve had a major renovation that we’ve needed to do at work for years.

Here’s enough detail to understand the situation:

Things have gotten so bad that we’re really risking turning people away unless we do something.
What had been done 20 years ago by a couple of college kids (and never really worked well, adequately, but not well) needed to be replaced.
We got a bid from a company that specializes in the type of work we need to have done, a company we’ve worked with before, and a company which has done extensive work for another organization in our area. All their work has been first class. (The first job they did came in early and under the estimate.)
This bid was approximately $22,000 including installation.

Some on the board wanted to do it right away, others wanted to see if we could get some kind of a grant, some didn’t see why it needed to be done (i.e. they didn’t see the need, even if they knew some others might seen the need).

With roughly $400,000 in the bank, we decided to go ahead and make the purchase.

Then the chair of the budget committee refused to sign the contract until we had talked about the contract at another board meeting, since all we had done was vote to accept the bid and he wanted us to vote to accept the contract even though there was no substantial difference between the bid and the contract.

So we wasted another 30 minutes rehashing the entire thing which amounted to nothing more than a few more opportunities to restate the “I don’t think we ought to spend the money” position with the rest of us sitting there thinking “I don’t want to spend it either, but it needs to be done and we’ve deferred it so long that pieces of the old system are completely defunct.”

Today

So the work actually began today, and is supposed to be done Friday.

A delivery man from the local rental center arrived this morning around 9:30 with a one-man lift (cherrypicker) which had been ordered by the contracting company.

They weren’t yet on-site (no big deal, they’re coming from a distance).

The secretary signed for the delivery, and I showed him where I thought would be a good spot to leave it.

No big deal, right?

Except that this afternoon our treasurer arrived with the invoice for the delivery/rental of the lift and shoved in my face.

“Who’s going to invoice this? Who signed for it? Is anyone have oversight of this?”

He continued to rant (not quite yelling but talking very loudly) while I tried to read it.

“This was a sucker contract, it’s open ended, we never should have signed that thing!”

One might assume that he was in the “We don’t need to spend the money” camp.

Finally I said, “I don’t think there’s any need to get aggressive about this, I’ve only had it for 30 seconds, and I’m trying to figure out who should sign for it.” (Meaning “who should sign the voucher for it” not “who should have signed for delivery”.)

Secretary: “Well, I signed for it. Should I not have done that?”

(Note: both the treasurer and I were in the secretary’s office when the delivery man came, and no one made any objection at the time.)

Him, to her: “I wouldn’t go around signing for things without knowing who is going to pay for them!”

Because really, it was only vital to all of the work they did on site all day, we should have turned the delivery man away.

Him, to me: “I’ve spent all day on this! I’ve had it for longer than 30 seconds!”

Me: “I said that I have only had it for 30 seconds. I don’t know if this is our responsibility to pay or if it was part of the contract.”

Him: “Well, I don’t know either.” [went on to rant more about the contract]

Me: “Let me call David [who has worked with this company before, coordinated the bid, and knows more about the job than all of the rest of us combined times two] and see if he has a copy of the contract.”

Him: “I have that. I have a copy of the contract.”

At which point he went to his desk, pulled out a file folder, looked at the contract, and announced, still in an angry tone of voice: “Lift rental…. it’s in the contract. This contract is too vague, it’s all specifications.”

Me: “It’s in the contract that they will pay for the lift rental?”

Him: “Yes.”

Me: “…” (I had plenty to say, but I was holding my tongue.)

Me: “OK, so that settles that, right?”

I don’t think he said anything else. He was flipping through the contract and not making eye contact.

I put the invoice down on the secretary’s desk and went back to my office.

The Kicker

Remember the total bill for the project? $22,000?

Would you like to know how much the lift delivery/rental fee was?

$150.

A hundred and fifty fucking dollars.

Otherwise known as 0.68% of the bill.

And for this you are getting in my face?

For 0.68%?

Not only that, but 0.68% which was already included in the contract that you claim is “too vague” but a) had the specific answer to the question that you asked and b) you hadn’t bothered to look at?

Note: A sign of emotional maturity would have been apologizing for overreacting and being wrong and kind of a jerk about it. However, no apology was forthcoming.