YEAR'S END

The end of the year is here. Again we are done with the ‘gather the family together for a big meal’ holidays (except for my brother’s end of the year Festivus* get together). All the cards have been sent (sorry about my letter this year), all the gifts have been opened (I am not sure when I will use the blinking strobe light that attach to the brim of a hat given to me by a co-worker), and getting around town seems to have finally leveled back down to a tolerable pace (my daily drive by a local shopping mall exit does not resemble a demolition derby anymore). All that is left is the throbbing hangovers of New Year’s Day and we can call the season officially over.

Before everyone starts calling me Dananeezer Scrooge, I want to make it clear that I enjoy the holidays. I am just glad when they are over. As the year winds down I tend to get very reflective. I am not one for making resolutions for the upcoming year but come late December I usually do find myself looking backwards. I assume it is natural to use the closure of a year to look back at the good and bad of the past 12 months.

I spent over 15 years traveling for a living. Many of those years included a few holidays alone at a hotel in the middle of nowhere. I got very good at not letting things like that depress me. Sometimes I was lucky enough to be working somewhat near a relative or friends. I loved those years! Thanksgiving mimosas in Chicago, Christmas with The Doors in Columbus and the New Year’s holiday hot tub in Hartford are all memories I treasure (again another year’s blog talking about past New Years Eves and I did not mention standing naked in the snow on a city street at the stroke of midnight doing a Baby New Year imitation… maybe it is wise not to get into that)

The more I traveled the more friends I made all over the country. Now that I am settled in one spot it is hard for me to visit everyone and I fear I am growing apart from these wonderful people that have meant so much to me over the years. Instead of bringing me warmth, the holidays always seem to remind what (and who) I am missing. (Of course the plus side is maybe eventually there will be no one left that remembers the naked Baby New Year stunt)

It is always worse for me right around Christmas Day because my wife usually heads up to Iowa for the holiday to spend a few days with her family. Because of work I can never go along. So as much as I enjoy a little quiet time to myself, it’s hard not to become a little lonely when everyone and everything around you is focused on being with loved ones that day. (Hopefully I squeezed enough pity out of everyone on that last part and you all will forget I mentioned that whole ‘naked’ thing.)

Even with my usual brief wave of sad holiday malaise, I cannot complain about the past year. As a matter of fact back on January 9th I wrote about trying to be Zen Man Dan this year. Now I understand that this sounds a lot like a New Year’s resolution but you recall I mentioned earlier that I do not make those. I have opted to look at it as more of a minor personality tune-up that just so happens to have been decided upon around New Years with the intent of it lasting throughout the year. Now come on, that is not a resolution (DAMMIT, IT’S NOT… sorry).

I made the be more Zen-like proclamation when I found myself internally overreacting to things that were either far out of my control or that deep down I truly did not want to control. I have most certainly had moments when I was less then Zen but overall I did an excellent job in keeping things at a bit more even keel and not getting myself all worked up over nonsense. Of course I still reserve the right to get all worked up over something real.

So friends let me again use this opportunity to say that I love and miss you all and I wish each of you a Zen-ny New Year.

* http://www.whatisfestivus.com/* http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/19/fashion/19FEST.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

FEELING GOOD OR AM I

I’m ‘Feeling Good’! O.K. maybe not that good but I did take a quiz from the self-help book titled ‘Feeling Good – The New Mood Therapy’ the other day. Someone at work had a copy and we all took turns taking a few of the books many quizzes about anger and depression. I think most of my co-workers lied on the tests because, although anger-wise I fell into what the book called the ‘average’ range, my score was higher then everyone else’s. Now I might not be working with a group of hair-trigger crazy hot heads, but I certainly do not have the worst temper of the bunch.

Am I an angry guy? I do not lose my temper much anymore but I guess I still have the potential to become a blood boiling raving loony (there is an AC guy and an American Airlines ticket agent that can vouch for that but that’s for another blog). Age and maturity have mellowed me. Of course the fact that I am pretty darn happy with my life helps too. It’s hard to blow your stack when there is nothing much to get mad at.

I learned how to blow my top from my Dad. When I was a kid my father rarely yelled and screamed, but on the few occasions that he did blow a fuse it was very intense. About the most angry he ever got at me was when I was being over the top obnoxious at a local Chinese Restaurant. He had enough of my whining and complaining and rhetorically said ‘if you do not like it, leave’. So I did. He was not to pleased that his annoying son was taking him so literally.

I was a few blocks into my brooding teenager long stroll home when the family car swerved up next to the curb along side of me. My Dad tossed me into the car yelling stuff like ‘no one walks out on me’. We picked up the rest of the family who were cautiously waiting in front of the restaurant and we all silently sped home. At the house my Dad dragged me into the bathroom and as punishment for my behavior he proceeded to cut off several inches of my groovy long 1970s hair. Such trauma, maybe I should borrow that copy of the ‘Feeling Good’ book.

‘Feeling Good’ claims to teach you how to ‘combat feelings of depression so you can develop greater self-esteem.’ Maybe the book works, maybe it does not. I have never been a huge fan of self-help books. It seems to me that often the folks that are avid readers of this stuff are not willing to do the hard work that is required to truly change and better ones self. Instead they are searching for the miracle one-step quick fix. In other words simply buying a dozen Deepak Chopra books will not magically connect my mind and body in the same way dedicating my entire life to the intense study of the relationship between quantum mechanics and the healing process might.
If my Dad had read a bunch of self help books would he still have responded to my butt-head behavior by cutting off my hair? I hope so. Occasionally letting go and being angry is healthy. I love my Father and now that I am an adult I could not conceive of him being any different. He is the man that during a heated debate over dinner once said “what you know about it (the topic of debate) you could put in a thimble, stick it in your eye and it would not blind you.” Now there are no self-help books out there that can teach you lines like that.

SLEEP

OK folks, its quiz time. Any of you that have ever visited my parent’s house should be able to ace this one question test. (Sorry to everyone that has never been there; I will offer a quiz that is a bit fairer to all a little later)

1) My Dad sits down in front of a television. What happens next?
A) He carefully finds the perfect program to enjoy for several hours.
B) He spends the evening surfing through all the stations.
C) He shoots spitballs at the screen trying to hit the actors between the eyes.
D) He immediately falls asleep within seconds of turning on the set.
E) All of the above (freightingly at the same time)

Dang, I could practically hear a bunch of you yelling “D!!!” in unison right through my DSL line. The television is like a shutdown valve to my Father’s conscious mind. He falls asleep so fast after turning on the set that the remote control is often still tightly in his grasp with his finger poised above it ready to change to the next channel. Sometimes he literally nods off in less then a minute’s time after turning the TV on. It is a truly amazing sight to behold.

I do not think the television has quite the same effect on anyone else in my family but I do sometimes worry that early signs of this sleep-effect might be starting to happen to me. All too often these days I find myself being roused by my wife, as she makes sure I have not drifted off to La La land during some program that I really wanted to watch. I assume she knows when I am nodding off (I tend to snore a bit) but I am not positive since she does not always mention it. There have been times that later in the evening, or the next morning, I have had to sheepishly ask ‘who done it?’ because I slept though some show’s big finish. Sometimes I wonder if she knows I missed some key part and she is just waiting to see if I will fess up to my napping and ask what I missed.

I guess I should be happy that I am a good sleeper. So many people around me have issues falling asleep. I’ve had my fair share of tough nights when the wheels are spinning a bit to much to allow me to crash, but overall I would say 95% of the time I fall asleep very quickly after laying my head down (hmmmm, I think I just heard some of my insomniac readers cursing me through that damn DSL line). I seem to do best when I get about five to six hours of sleep a night although I can usually function just fine the next day with as little as two (is that more cursing I hear?).

Now there is a blurry line between falling asleep and passing out for the night. This might not be the appropriate forum for discussing the latter but I will say that I am familiar with both. Whatever the case, there are times when watching a TV or not that my body has demanded that I sleep even though I might not be in a traditional sleeping location i.e.: a beach chair in someone’s backyard, a friend’s living room floor, the landing between flights of stairs, atop the trunk of a car… Within the context of the story that includes the background leading up to going to sleep in each of the afore mentioned places, none might seem that odd. Taken as a whole though, it seems like a scary trend that might soon lead to my Dad’s television issue.

So lets try another one question quiz based on my sleeping habits:

1) Dan sits in front of a computer screen proof reading this blog. What happens next?
A) He cuts out the part about sleeping on the trunk of a car.
B) He adds the really embarrassing story about Chinese food and… and …
umm , aaaaaa.. urg…. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzz

WATER

The water from my tap smells. Not everyday but quite often it has a nasty funk to it. It is sort of a cross between swamp mud and an older heavyset moist football player’s two-day-old sweat sock. Years ago I would drink the infamously bad water of cities like Los Angeles, Las Vegas and Phoenix and not think twice about it. Eventually I started getting a little more picky and started using one of those Britta filtering pitchers. Now that I have gotten used to drinking purified or bottled water, I think I have become a spoiled water snob.

A few months ago I purchased a PUR water filter that attaches to my kitchen sink faucet. The thing worked great. I told my wife “Al Gore would be happy that we are refilling our water bottles instead of constantly buying new plastic bottles of water.” I have started using the ‘Al Gore would be happy’ line every time I do something that is even slightly beneficial to the environment. I think it is starting to annoy the people around me. That said, I bet Al Gore would be happy you are reading this on a computer screen and not on a wasteful printed piece of paper.

Well I guess I should correct things and say that Al Gore would have been happy with me until last week. The connection from the PUR filter to the faucet cracked and started spewing water all over the place. Of course this waited to happen just when my busy season started and I have no time to fix it. After getting myself and the kitchen soaking wet while trying to do the dishes, I decided to just take the thing off and deal with it after I am done with this month’s 80 hours work weeks.

It took a little while to get the filter off. In the short time it had been on, the creepy stuff in the local Texas water had caused it to bond to spigot as if there were some galvanizing agent mixed into the tap water. I had to use several tools and a decent amount of elbow grease (would Al Gore be ok with the unnecessary release of elbow grease into the environment?) to get the thing off.

I ended up annoyed and grumbley like a little kid when I was taking the filter off (Al Gore would definitely have been pissed at the verbal pollution I released into the environment while disconnecting it). I always feel silly when I catch myself getting aggravated at such a minor inconvenience. What do I really have to complain about?
What do I really really have to complain about? I fill my blog with stories of little things in my world that drive me so crazy that you likely could see little tiny puffs of smoke shoot out of my ears (I hope Al Gore does not think I am contributing to the greenhouse effect) but I really have it good. I have friends with all types of very serious problems. Someone close to me is in great pain everyday with an incurable degenerative disease; I think about their miserable situation everyday. They have a right to complain. As for me, if my worst problems are funky water and Al Gore on my case, well, I just can’t complain

LOCKHEART

This time of year I feel like I am running a marathon. While most folks are all caught up in gift shopping, holiday prep and various other related activities, I am in work mode. This is when I get busy at work. Really busy. Long hours and no days off throughout the month of December have been a part of my life since I got out of college. Like a runner, I put my head down and focus on the distant finish line, which right now in my case is so far out of sight I can not even see it.



When life gets like this I do better knowing there is a prize waiting for me. I like having a couple of weekend trips or a major vacation planned. It makes it easier to get through the workday when I know I am slowly counting down to some fun escape from the norm. Unfortunately between my insane December work schedule and a planned late January move to a new house, it might be a long time before I have a vacation or a quickie weekend get-a-way.



Before my friend Tammy moved out of Dallas a few years ago she gave me a book that she and her husband made great use of called ‘Romantic Days And Nights In Dallas/Fort Worth’. No it is not some twisted longhorn rodeo sex manual but it is filled with great ideas for weekend getaways with detailed descriptions of local hotels, Inns, as well as Bed and Breakfasts. I wish we had gotten the book sooner. My wife and I have been a bit gun shy about staying at local B and Bs ever since our last in-town weekend trip to a place in Fort Worth called the Lockheart Gables Inn.



We knew something was obviously not right when we pulled up in front of the place at the time we prearranged to check in and found the front door locked. After 20 minutes of trying different ways to get in or at least get someone inside’s attention, I called the Inn’s phone number. Marilyn the innkeeper answered and eventually wandered over, portable phone in hand, from a garage across the street where she said she had been ‘busy restoring antiques’.



We were tired and wanted to quickly check-in and get to our room but Marilyn insisted we take a tour of the place. The tour of the 4 downstairs rooms, not including the under-the-stairs closet that had been turned into the chapel “for whenever we want to pray”, should have taken about 3 minutes but instead took well over half an hour.



The tiny pink and gold colored living room had four uncomfortable rickety chairs with a floral print. The adjacent ‘music room’ had a piano that no one played and not much else. The nook near their private kitchen was filled with crummy Salvation Army quality crappy antiques lying on the floor that she repeatedly tried to sell us all weekend. In an effort to speed things up I oooed and ahhed at the monstrosity on the tearoom wall as she explained how she makes and sells these giant 5-foot wreaths that are filled with plastic flowers and mismatched broken teacups.



We finally were led upstairs to the guest rooms. On the way we passed a tiny 3’x 3’ bookshelf that she referred to as the library and a 20+-year-old refrigerator with a loud squeaky door and even louder humming motor that was stocked with soda and water. Eventually we were shown to our home for the next two days, the room described on their web-site as “presidential suite and hopelessly romantic” Melody Of Love room.



The room featured an antique pink sofa so beat up that your butt almost hit the floor when you sat on it, a tiny table with 2 chairs, a boom box with Christian music cds, and the room’s one of a kind focal point piece a queen sized bed that stood three feet off the floor on a home constructed bed frame made out of a sawed in half upright piano with sloppily nailed together wood planks. The bathroom walls were papered with peely and moldy pages of sheet music. The one thing we did thing think was hilarious was the towel rack and toilet paper holder made out of a rusty old trombone.



We were afraid to make too much noise because the walls were paper-thin and the floors loudly squeaked and creaked whenever you walked around. The next morning started with our Twilight Zoneishly creepy hosts Marilyn and her husband David bringing breakfast to our room (there is no dining room) an hour late and then forcing my wife and I to stand up and hug for several awkward minutes as they sang the entire song Melody Of Love to us. My wife and I were then instructed to kiss each other as they kissed each other. Afterwards we ate our coldish cutesy heart shaped pancakes, heart shaped toast and heart shaped fruit as I wondered allowed if they had a heart shaped trash can for me to vomit in.



My wife had wanted to watch a particular television show that afternoon so we asked about the TV they said they could supply us when we made the reservation. David grumbled at us and said he would try to find one. An hour or so later Marilyn came by to tell us they were going to church but they will look for a TV when they get back.



Several hours after that David rolled a small black and white model on a little stand into the room and then spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out how to attach it to the cable outlet. We were getting creeped out by his intense persistence and eventually told him it was just not that important and not to worry about it, but he just continued to loudly grumble and would not give up. He kept leaving and then coming back with different cords, wires and tools. Eventually he attached rabbit ears to the top and gave up.



The next morning’s breakfast was even later and colder but we were quite relived to learn there was no required hugging and singing. I guess for the right person this place would be fabulous but for my wife and I it was so over the top hideous that we never stopped laughing. With each crazier thing that happened we laughed even harder. Now that I think about it maybe spending my weekends at work this month is not that bad after all.

CLICK BELOW TO GO THIER WEBSITE (FILLED WITH PICTURES)http://lockheartgables.com/melody_of_love.html

CLICK BELOW TO READ A GREAT REVIEW:http://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowUserReviews-g55857-d226485-r8102090-Lockheart_Gables_Bed_Breakfast-Fort_Worth_Texas.html

FOOTBALL FAN

Damn Dallas Cowboys! They are making my life difficult this week. I might not be the biggest sports fanatic in the world but I do read the sport pages and watch ESPN. I tend to closely follow the teams I like but I definitely do not like the Cowboys. Living in a town where the local team happens to be the biggest most popular, most successful, sports team in football history and also personally happens to be your least favorite football team is not easy.

To locals the Cowboys are not just a team, they are a deity and Tom Landry is the prophet that led them through the desert and into the promised land of Texas. More often then not when talking sports I omit the fact that I am not a fan. It’s bad enough admitting to the Texans around me that I was born in New York. When I mention that fact I always expect to get a reaction akin to that old Salsa commercial when the grizzled cowboys sitting around the fire discover that the poor quality jarred crap they are eating was made, to their disgust, in “Newwwww York Ciiiteee?!?!”

Tomorrow night the Dallas Cowboys are playing the Green Bay Packers in an important game. Both teams have a 10-1 record and the winner of the match will likely have home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Personally I could care less who wins since I have about as much love for the Packers as I do for the Cowboys. Of course when I worked in Wisconsin I was pretty damn quiet about that fact too. I am really afraid of Green Bay fans; they are like Cowboy fans except more intense with their devotion (the team has been around 40 years longer), and significantly larger physically (the vast quantities of readily available beer and cheese help to make you burley enough to withstand the brutally frigid winters up there).

Most of my family does not really follow sports. My oldest brother is the athlete of the family and since he liked the Giants and Yankees, those became my favorite teams too. You never really outgrow your boyhood favorites (should I annoy my wife and mention Bernadette Peters here again). My Dad pays absolutely no attention to any sport although he did take me to my first baseball game in the mid 1970s. Some friends of his had first baseline box seats to a Mets game. I’m sure he had no idea what was happening on the field but he enjoyed a bunch of beers with his buddies and after the game in the clubhouse bar while they chugged a few more, I got to meet home run slugger Dave Kingman.

I started following the Miami Dolphins when I moved to Florida. Adopting a new sports team is not always easy but Junior High School Dan found a convoluted road to Dolphins fandom. The New York Giants and the New York Jets play in different divisions. Giants fans hate the Jets. One of the Jets biggest rivals is the Dolphins. I usually pulled for whatever team was playing the Jets so it was not a big leap to start rooting for Miami all the time instead of just when they play the Jets. Now if you are not a sports fan this logic might not make any sense but it worked just fine for me.
Over time I have become less of a Giants fan and more of a Dolphins fan but football has not been kind to me this year. The Dallas media has been full of hype for tomorrow’s big battle between 10-1 teams. Meanwhile my lowly Miami Dolphins have yet to win a game this year and have a record of 0-11. I am sure now that my brother in Boston has just learned that I am a Dolphins fan I will hear from him about his team, Miami nemesis, the New England Patriots being 11-0. At least I do not hate the Pats as much as I hate the Cowboys.

TURKEY DAY FROM FAR AWAY

I do not remember Thanksgiving. OK, I remember when Thanksgiving is; I just do not remember the Thanksgivings of my past. Well there are the really fun ones I spent in Chicago that started with mimosas for breakfast, moved to gin and tonics while cooking and ended with a bottle or two of Beaujolais Nouveau with dinner but those Thanksgivings I do not expect to recall too clearly. I am talking about when I was a little kid. I really do not remember any Thanksgivings.

Maybe it’s my bad memory or possibly they were so traumatic I’ve blocked them out. I clearly recall the prep that went into fancy meals in my New York house when I was a little kid. Mom’s good dishes (i.e. the ugly china with the funky pattern that my Parents got as a wedding gift) were kept in the basement. To prevent major en-masse damage, my four siblings and I had to carry the dozen place settings up the two flights of stairs one piece at a time each. I might not recall any Thanksgiving meals but I sure as hell remember the slow parade of carrying the dishes up the stairs and then after the clean up carrying them back down the stairs one at a time to be stored for the next occasion.

Years later my Mom admitted to always hating those dishes that she treated so preciously for decades. After finally getting a beautiful set of gold trimmed Royal Daulton for everyday use, she invited some friends over for dinner, served a meal on what for years had been the good dishes (the ugly china with the funky pattern that my Parents got as a wedding gift), then brought out a trash can and made us throw the dirty dishes into the garbage. Many of us objected but she demanded we toss them out fulfilling a dream of hers that grew stronger with each passing meal served on the wedding gift ugly china with the funky pattern.

My parents are old fashioned and from an era that I would expect them to have served a very traditional Thanksgiving meal but as much as I strain my brain I cannot come up with a memory of any of them. I will have to ask my siblings about what we did every year, I bet they can get some of those cob-webbed memory cells in brain to start firing up again. I do remember one Thanksgiving my oldest brother worked half a day making salads at a restaurant and we had to pick him up after he got off but I do not recall the ensuing large meal.

The earliest Thanksgiving that I remember clearly from beginning to end was during my first year of college. Just prior to the holiday a group of old friends got together for a pre-Thanksgiving weekend long party a few hours away at a mutual friend’s place. Unfortunately it turned into a weekend long miserable fight about infidelity between my girlfriend and I. This threw me deeper into the life-questioning funk I had already been in. My parents were traveling during that time and my siblings were all spread out around the country so rather then sit alone for the holiday; I flew to Memphis Tenn. to see folks.

Nothing brings more cheer to a young depressed teenage college student more then sharing a dumpy hotel room with his parents at the Admiral Benbow Inn for an isolated impersonal Thanksgiving Day meal in the middle of nowhere. My Folks really tried hard to make sure I enjoyed myself that weekend but I was too busy brooding in own little self-inflicted angst-ridden crisis world trying to figure out what to do with my life (I’ll let you know if I ever do). The first night was fun; we took a small tour that culminated with a dinner at a little blues club on Beale Street. Things went downhill from there.

Thanksgiving day we had a nice meal at some nondescript restaurant but we mostly just sat around the hotel watching TV because everything in town was closed. For Friday my Mom had made a long list of fun things we could do. Unfortunately as we criss crossed town from one tourist attraction to another, we learned that in Memphis in the early 1980s everything is closed the day after Thanksgiving as well. Riverboats, museums, aquariums, zoos, breweries, state parks, trolleys… everything was shut down.

My Mother was (and still is) not a fan of Rock in Roll music. She was born and raised in a very different era and she already had four kids of her own before Elvis came along. She referred to Rock music as ‘Yeah Yeah’ music. My Mother has traditional values and views. Yes, she was the type of woman who kept ugly china with a funky pattern that she got as a wedding gift for decades longer then she really wanted to because that was what you were supposed to do.

This trip to Memphis was only a few years after Elvis died and Graceland had not yet become the carnival-esque freakshow mega-tourist stop that it is today. That Friday morning as we drove away from each closed attraction on my Mom’s long list I kept saying in jest that we could always go to Graceland. By noon we had exhausted every possibility on the list and now my Mom was faced with the reality, it was Graceland or nothing. I think the memory of that Thanksgiving has not slipped away because never before could I have conceived of the image of my Mom and I standing in the cold November wind looking at Elvis’ grave together.

Happy Thanksgiving, I hope it is a memorable one.



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A few extra words about the Admiral Benbow Inn. After writing my blog I did some research and found out that this local motel chain has quite a sorted history. Most of them do not exist anymore but 25 years ago, the one we stayed at in the Memphis suburbs was no palace but it was certainly not the cesspool that apparently they later became. If you are at all interested, the reviews in the first 2 links are short hilarious ‘must read’ reviews and the next link has an extremely long but great history of this dubious faded Memphis icon.
http://reviews.metroguide.com/d.asp?pi=29999
http://reviews.metroguide.com/d.asp?pi=29966

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.memphisflyer.com/backissues/issue574/images/cvr574b.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.memphisflyer.com/backissues/issue574/cvr574.htm&h=205&w=300&sz=11&hl=en&start=73&um=1&tbnid=71nCLjCBy0DXtM:&tbnh=79&tbnw=116&prev=/images%3Fq%3DAdmiral%2BBenbow%2Binn%2B%2B%26start%3D60%26gbv%3D2%26ndsp%3D20%26svnum%3D10%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DN

COMPANY

My wife and I just said goodbye. Calm down, not to each other!!! We said goodbye to company. We had a houseguest for the past week. I love how having someone different in your home, even for a short time, causes a domino effect with normal day-to-day routines. It is healthy to mess up your schedules once in a while. It stops life from getting boring and causes you to look up from the rut that you sometimes do not even recognize that you are in.

The obvious problem I have had the past few days is that we have been so busy going out and entertaining that I have not had time to sit down and work on this week’s blog. Now that I finally have the time to write I am quickly approaching my self -imposed deadline and I find myself without anything to write about. My mind is all over the place. I keep bouncing from topic to topic without focusing long enough on anything.

Originally I started writing about our houseguest, an old college friend of my wife’s that flew in from Taipei. There were some very minor cultural differences to deal with but I think we all seemed to have a very nice time. My wife and I tried to be good hosts and attempted to pack the days and nights with lots of activities. Well at least we certainly ate a lot.

Things went very well. Too well. Boringly well. Before the week began I assumed I would get at least a couple of blogs worth of stories out of the visit but in reality there is not much to say. You would think taking a Taiwanese woman fresh off the plane to a southern style gospel music Sunday morning brunch would have generated at least one minor anecdote to write about. The situations were there but the wackiness never ensued. Maybe I should write about my childhood dog named Pussycat instead.

The only thing that struck me as odd about our guest was her habit of taking a photograph of every meal she was served. I guess I should have asked her if this was something common where she was from or is this just something that she does. Maybe it is some long-term art project. I can imagine walking into a gallery and seeing an instillation consisting of five year’s worth of dated photos of every meal consumed by the artist. Hmmm, maybe I should start doing that. Nah, it would just depress me to look at the massive quantities of bad food I choose to eat. Then again it might work as a good diet plan. Feeling hungry? Go sit in the photographic massive food quantities room.
Years ago when I was on the road for work I visited friends all the time. I tried my best to be an excellent houseguest but sometimes my visits lasted a long time. My friends would always assure me that it was ok to stay longer but I often felt like I was intruding into their lives or overstaying my welcome. I do not really know if I was one of those guests that you love seeing come as much as you like seeing leave. Now that I am the one that has settled down I find that it’s fun to be the host. So when are you coming over?

DENTON

Have you ever been to Denton Texas? Denton does not look and feel like the rest of Texas. Unfortunately I do not mean that in a cool and funky Austin way or a San Antonio historic way or even a cosmopolitan Dallas way. It is different in a run-down college campus student ghetto in a northern Mid-western rustbelt university dominated town way but with a slightly Texas rednecky edge. To get to Denton from Dallas you have to drive north up the Stemmons Freeway, an overcrowded outdated torn up Texas highway that is tightly sandwiched between a service road lined with car dealerships, warehouses, factory outlets, chain restaurants… It is the appropriate gateway to the city.

I am sorry if I am insulting some reader that is oozing with intense Denton pride but the city just does not impress me. Of course I have a family history of insulting entire towns. My Dad took a short-term job running a business in Brockton Mass. A few days after he arrived there the local newspaper ran a story on the front page that included a quote from my father that, unbeknownst to him, he gave to a local reporter calling Brockton ‘a little crap town half shot down’. Needless to say he did not make friends fast.

For the record, I should say that at different times in my life I have had a blast hanging out in towns like Madison WI, Columbus OH and Bloomington IN, all of which have sections that seem very Dentonesque. I am sure if I were with a group of fun friends that knew the right places to go, I would eventually end up liking Denton. The city is even famous for it’s great music scene but I have not experienced any of that. That did not happen. Today I spent the day alone in Denton for a very special reason; I had been called for jury duty.

To comfortably make my 8:20 a.m. jury duty call, I had to leave the house at 7ish. After sitting 45 minutes with 200 or so other potential jurors in a large room within the Denton County Courthouse building, a judge came out and swore us in. They outlined the rules and quickly weeded out the folks that could not serve due to a legitimate excuse, insanity, past criminal behavior or really creative bullshiting abilities.

They next assigned 40 of us to a potential jury pool that would not be picked until after 1:30 pm. They told us to report back in close to four hours and suggested to kill time while waiting ‘we should get a jump on our Christmas shopping at the local (and only) nearby shopping mall’. I figure this is Denton’s way of stimulating their obviously moribund economy. Legally require an ever-changing large group of people to come to your town daily and give them a forced four hours block of time to fend for themselves. I’m sure countless dollars are dropped into their local economy with this simple trick. You would think they would use some of this newfound tax revenue to fix up the damn place.

Denton may only be 30 miles north of Dallas but it is a different world. People look far less cosmopolitan. Even the slick lawyers walking around the courthouse looked a bit like a bigger city department store shoe salesperson with slightly ill fitting suits that looked a bit ruffled. The secretaries and aides looked mostly lumpy and dressed pretty frumpy. My wife recalls seeing a lot of very big belt buckles when she was called there.

To kill time I drove around town from one crappy neighborhood to another. I found a place to eat a slow breakfast and sip a few dozen cups of coffee. I looked at my watch and realized I still had over two hours left and I had already run out of stuff to do. Out of boredom, I next took a walk around the sickly looking Golden Triangle Mall (so I’m good at following instructions) and noticed the music playing throughout the mall was Christian rock.

At the appropriate time I headed back to the courthouse (not before I put my two new shirts into the trunk… dammit their plan worked!). My group waited in the same large room for some time until our bailiff (who looked nothing like Rusty from the Peoples Court) marched us upstairs to the courtrooms. We all stood around the hallway for a couple of hours until they informed us that case had been settled and we were all dismissed. I high tailed it out of Denton before I spent any more money there.


http://www.dentonmainstreet.org/Default.aspx

http://www.discoverdenton.com/see_and_do.shtml

HERE'S LOOKING AT ME

I went to the eye doctor today. This is the same optometrist that last year gave me the backhanded compliment that my 'eyes are good for someone my age but now that I am older I should expect them to steadily get worse’. Older? Older!?! Having worn glasses since second grade, I have never associated bad vision with age. Older… humph. Well I guess I am older then the doctor.

I brought up her comment from my last appointment when she was telling me that my eyes had not changed at all in the past year and a half. She mentioned something about seeing what happens next year but I was already in taunt mode. “I will bet you double or nothing on the price of my contacts that I will be in my 50s before we have to worry about my eyes changing again.” Of course 50 is just not that far away.

The Doctor’s assistant that performed the first few preliminary tests looked to be in her early 20s and certainly could not even remotely conceive of what goes through the head of someone in the long shadows of turning 50. She gave me the typical forced pity smile that I have seen many times before from significantly younger people in the service industry that are paid to be nice to you as I tossed out an array of bad jokes like I hope I ace the glaucoma test, I studied all night with a container of canned air. She sloppily raced through my tests, sometimes forgetting to tell me to only use one eye or the other, at a pace that made it obvious she wanted to get done with me and return to more important things in her life like text messaging a friend (** PITA OM SSINF TMOT UV L8R ).

The same ‘straining to smile’ expressions that the assistant gave to me I saw earlier in the waiting room when an extremely elderly woman came in with her caretaker while I was waiting for my appointment. Watching this very confused older woman try to remember and explain why she was there depressed me. The woman had obviously never had progressive bifocal lens (no line) before and just had not gotten used to them yet. Her caretaker spoke in mixture of stressed pleasantness and frustrated tones as she repeatedly said “ all I know is her son e-mailed me that we needed to come in because her new glasses made her see blurry.” All eyes and questions kept returning to the older woman as she tried to grasp for the answers to the simple questions being lobbed at her.
I found myself empathizing with the elderly woman. My mind was racing. How horrible to deal with your own eroding wits, skills and abilities while modern technology races past you and mortality repeatedly slaps you in the face. Older. The doctor said I’m getting older and things will only get worse. Soon I will be that dithering confused old person trying to answer that snippy twenty-something secret code text messaging brat’s confusing trick questions about the blurry spot in my trifocals. Jumping jehosephats, what I’m paying here she should have at least given me a pity laugh at that canned air joke. I’m old dammit and any minute I will be late for the shuttle from this spectacle doctor to the apothecary for my Depends. ** Pain in the ass(PITA) old man (OM) so stupid it’s not funny (SSINF) trust me on this(TMOT) unpleasant visual (UV) later (L8R)

SICK

I do not get sick very often. I have friends that must go to the doctor at least 10 times a year for one ailment or another. I am not saying that they do not have real issues nor am I tossing the hypochondriac word out there. I think that I must be pretty lucky. I get the same 4-day cold about three times a year. I also get some nasty flu bug (despite getting the shot) once every few years and that really is about it.

I have never had to stay overnight in a hospital and I have not broken too many bones. When I was three years old my brother Arthur and I were making ‘Bubble Land’ by blowing as many bubbles as fast as we could. I stumbled and rather risk spilling my bottle of bubble juice or losing the little intrinsically important to bubble production plastic stick, I held tightly onto both items leaving no hands available to break my fall. I landed on my face and broke my nose. My brother and sister laughed at me at the time and continue to tease me about not putting my arms out so as to prevent several months of walking around with a crooked schnozola.

When I was 13 I fell up a staircase and cracked two ribs. No one was there when I got home from school and discovered our new dog Smokey had gotten out of his create/cage and tore up the kitchen garbage. I ran after him to scold him but I slipped while chasing him up the stairs. With my feet in the air above the stairs, inertia kept my body flying forward as I flew up over the staircase until my lower chest landed on the corner of one of the top steps. With the wind knocked out of me, I rolled down the staircase.

I must have had a concussion because when I woke up on the floor I was dizzy and could not stand up with falling right back down. I crawled into my folk’s bedroom and got to the phone to call for help. The problem was the only phone number I could remember was (212) 936-3838. I kept dialing it over and over and over but since the number was for Dial-A-Joke, it did not really help me much. I laid on the floor with the phone listening to Henny Youngman repeat the same set of jokes over and over and over until my Mom got home.

A couple of days later I was horsing around during lunch at school when one of the science teachers caught me playing a joke on him. Not knowing that under my shirt I was taped up with two cracked ribs, he punched me in the chest to get me to shut up. It did but it also got me fall on the floor with a shooting pain. He was about to yell at me for over acting when someone told him what was up. I assume because he thought I might sue him and the school, he did not say a word to me for a week. Then he caught me after classes off school property and apologized. I told him it was my fault. I’m not sure if that made him feel any better but at the end of the year I had a great grade in Science.

During all the years I traveled I had some other various and sundry odd illnesses. One time I caught some freaky lung infection in Phoenix that was apparently common to the region. I thought I was having a heart attack but it was my swollen lung rubbing against my rib cage that made it hard to catch my breath. A nasty case of food poisoning made an incredibly stressful and busy day in Hartford really miserable. Another time in New York I got a stomach virus that forever changed my digestive system. Prior to being sick I could eat anything in any quantity and never have a problem. From the day I got over it, certain foods no longer agreed with me and I started occasionally having heartburn and acid reflux. I mangled my knee playing a midnight game of basketball in Los Angeles. It might have healed a lot quicker if I stupidly did not try to play on it again four days later. My little knee brace looked very nice under a suit.

I did have one bad spell about four years ago. The year started with a nasty case of the flu. Later some type of spider, that I must have an allergy to, thought there was an ‘all you can eat buffet’ sign on my arm. I had a really weird reaction to the bites and my elbow swelled up till I could not move it. The doctor told me there is not much to do except wait and see if a round of the usual antibiotics and a steroid shot would do the trick. The giant lump shrunk dramatically but for weeks afterwards there was a freaky little bump at the corner of my elbow that felt like it was filled with a stiff gelatinous glob of Silly Putty.

That same year I fell asleep on the floor one night and woke up with a shooting lower back pain. Most of my siblings have had back issues and my oldest brother attributed it to my turning 40. After a few days of waddling around like the Hunchback of North Dallas, my coworkers and wife talked me into going to a chiropractor. Aside from my sister’s ex practicing on my spine when he was in Chiropractic College 25 years earlier, I had never gone to a ‘back cracker’.

Going every week for a few months was not cheap and I honestly cannot say for sure if the treatments or time passage helped my back get better. Luckily I always had fun during my appointments; he was a very entertaining doctor with a sense of humor similar to mine. I started calling him Spine-Boy and his office was filled with all sorts of body part models and tools for me to play with. My back has been pain-free for over three years so I guess I should not complain.

I just told my wife what the topic of this blog was. She said that she might as well start using Airborn and Zycam right now. According to her there is no way I can write about not getting sick without a nasty case of ‘irony’ hitting and causing me to catch some horrible illness. Just to be careful, maybe I will wash down a couple of zinc pills with a half-gallon of orange juice. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial-A-Joke

LOOKS THE SAME TO ME

Where does the time go? It feels like just a few years ago I was an annoying obnoxious bratty kid and now I look at myself in the mirror and I see an annoying bratty middle-aged adult. Time does seem to fly by but I really do not have much in my life that I truly can complain about. I like my world right now; it has taken decades but I am finally very comfortable living in my skin (maybe I’m more comfortable because between the extra weight and the sagging I now have more skin to live in). I still get excited about the future, but sometimes I can’t help but wish I could climb into the past and spend just a little more time within a certain time or place from long ago.

I remember talking to my Mom back when she was approaching 50 years old and I was still in Junior High. She mentioned that as a kid ‘50 always seemed very old’ to her and since she was almost there, she was having a hard time adjusting to her body being that old yet her mind still looking at the universe as a young woman. I have never forgotten that conversation. I not only understand it more as time passes, I have also braced myself over the years for the feeling. Now that I am not far from the same age she was when we had that talk, I see that my own views and reactions might have modified with maturity and age but I still see the world through the same eyes I always have.

My opinions on many different issues have changed and grown over the years but my core belief system is really the same since I was young. Who I am has not changed with age. I might be a bit mischievous but I think I am good person. I find comfort in the fact that I believe I have always been and will always be essentially the same person I am today.

What I found funny as a kid, I still laugh at now. Like the fact that I still find humor in the lyrics I wrote, printed and handed out to my 6th grade classmates before a school-wide assembly performance. It still makes me laugh that I got a bunch of 11 year old kids to sing my rewritten words of “Country Roads take me home to the place I belong West Virginia…” that included two references to the lower female genitalia and one to homosexuality. I still find a twisted humor in the fact that 15 years ago my buddy Mike and I taunted people playing nickel slot machines in Vegas by rolling dimes at them and that I got a table of 20 Asians to on my cue stand up in unison in a restaurant and announce to my startled table that ‘Dan L is Number One”.

Much to the chagrin of the people around me, I think my sense of humor will be unaffected by my age. I have always pictured myself as a feeble old man walking around the mall in mismatched clothing pulling my false teeth out in front of young kids and gumming the words “this is your future’. When you are very old you can get away with all kinds of stuff that no one would tolerate when your young. There are of course the aches and pains that come with old age but that is the price you pay for living to an age that you do not have to worry about impressing anyone anymore. I’m sure I will find great pleasure as a 90 year old man going through the express lane at the grocery store at 6pm with 40 items and making the growing crowd behind me wait as I have the cashier read me back the price of each item already in the cart as I decide what I can actually afford to write a check out for.

The type of woman I was attracted to as a teenager discovering my sexuality is still what I like now. I assume that will not change, as I get older. I guess that explains why very old men lust after young woman; they still desire that same ‘type’ that they first fell for as a kid. Since they see the world with the same eyes as they did as a kid, the ‘look’ they lust for does not age along with them. For the record I am not sure if this is true for me. (Here is where a smart man would say something very nice about his wife but proving I am as foolish as I was as a kid…) I thought Bernadette Peters was way hot when I was 12 years old and I still think she is hot today.

Here I am. Older and maybe even a tiny little bit wiser but I cannot control how fast time just keeps rushing by. Friends who I want to see every few weeks drift farther away as the space between visits roll from week to month to year. I do not mind personally growing older but I hate that the space and time between myself and the people I love, grows with the passing time as well. I again would like to take this moment to tell the people in my life how much I treasure their love and friendship. I am a better person because of the influences you have all been on my life.

COFFEE MAKES ME PEE

I was in a synagogue last Friday night (since I am not religious that probably seems a bit odd) although I did not attend any religious services (well that makes some things seem a bit less odd but does open the door to a whole lot of other oddness) I was helping my friend Bethany serve espresso and cappuccino coffee drinks to folks after a special holiday dinner (I guess that does not really help explain any of the oddness, but it will make sense later). I have never helped serve fancy coffee drinks to a hundred or so Jews before but I guess it is not very different then serving fancy coffee drinks to a large group of Catholics or Islamists* except maybe for the occasional kvetching**.

Bethany, a member of that synagogue’s congregation who happens to be a rep for the Nespresso*** espresso company (I told you things would start making sense), had asked a few of us to help her serve drinks that night. Since I have two Nespresso machines I must have seemed like a logical choice despite the event’s location (see, it all fell into place). Several people operated the cool machines, I took drink orders, my wife corrected my numerous mistakes (no different then every other day, it’s one of the many reasons I need to keep her around) while Bethany ran around like a crazy person talking up the machines and solving problems like our running out of decaf and the electricity to the machines going out.

I have not been in a church or synagogue for a while. I have strong feelings on the subject of religion and I would like to think of myself as smart enough not to push my personal beliefs on anyone else. The bottom line is that even though I am not active in any organized religion, I strongly follow the main tenets that most are founded on. Of course the folks I work with tell me on an almost a daily basis that I am ‘going to hell’ but I expect that response to my somewhat blasphemous jokes since I live in the buckle of the Bible belt.

I had never been to this particular synagogue before that night although I was aware of it since it had been in the news lately. A few weeks ago an 81-year-old retired police officer was standing up for a prayer during services when his gun fell out of his pocket and discharged when it hit the floor. The accident might be funnier if the bullet had not shot his daughter in the leg as well as injuring two other people. To make matters worse there turned out to be another member of the congregation with the exact same name as the ex-police officer so when the story made the local news, the 84 year old retired furniture store owner with the same name kept getting phone calls from concerned and confused friends. ****

It was a chaotic event but it went by very fast. I got to hang around with some nice people and not only did I help but I also had fun. Afterwards I am not sure who kidnapped whom but Bethany and David (her ultra-swell gentleman pal) joined my wife and I for a cramped short drive in my Mini Cooper to a very non-kosher sushi restaurant for drinks and a late dinner.

We were sitting around chatting over the odd combination of onion rings and albacore sashimi when it came up that half of the table uses the restroom a lot more frequently then the other half. Yes, I was one of two frequent bathroom users. I am not embarrassed by this fact and I am very used to it.

For years as I excused myself to go use the facilities I have announced to drinking buddies in bars that ‘beer goes through me like an arrow through cotton’ and that ‘I have TB – tiny bladder’. A frequent bathroom goer like myself tends to have a whole repertoire of bad bathroom jokes to use while getting up for the umpteenth time to use the bathroom. I do not think there is anything physically wrong with me. I just go a lot. I think it is most likely due to all the beer and fancy coffee drinks I consume.

For years I have introduced my friend T-Bone to people as the ‘man that changed the way I go to the bathroom’. The line always gets looks, but it is true. Years ago he told me of an article he read about men having 50% less bladder and prostate problems if they follow the simple rules of not ‘pushing’ when you urinate and not ‘holding it’ for prolonged periods of time. I have followed those rules ever since. About the only time I ‘hold it’ in is when there is one of those creepy annoying bathroom attendants. I would rather have prostate and bladder problems then deal with them.

How or why the bathroom conversation came up that night I do not recall. My wife finds it very strange that since she has been with me the topic of restroom habits seems to frequently rear its ugly head when we are hanging out with friends. She claims to have never been a party to conversations like that before I came along. She feels her life has not improved by now knowing that there is an unwritten urinal rule amongst men that you never ever look down to the left or right, the fact that some bars have newspapers mounted on the wall above the urinals, that some men sit down in public restroom stalls to pee and that some men feel the need to spit when they pee.

I have never really understood the spit when you pee thing. I think a lot of guys do it because there is nothing else to do or just simply out of habit. I figure when some men were very little boys trying to feel macho while embarrassingly peeing in a public exposed place, they took up spitting as a seemingly manly man activity to do. The habit develops and suddenly as grown men, the loogies start to fly whenever they pee.

It is not only our male friends that discuss bathroom topics when we are out. We have learned from our female friends about all sorts of equally scary feminine bathroom rituals that I am sure no one really wants me to get into. Some people might say that there is no appropriate time to publicly discuss stuff like this but the truth is, like it or not, we all go to the bathroom (some more then others). Like the weather, it is a common point of context that we all can relate to. Well I better wrap this up; I have to go pee.* http://www.superluminal.com/cookbook/essay_coffee.html** http://www.thefreedictionary.com/kvetch*** http://www.nespresso.com/precom/home_us_en.html**** http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/091907dnmettemplegun.2d374ee.html

BIKE (part 2)

Last week I described how when I was a kid in Queens New York my brand new orange Schwinn Varsity 10-speed bicycle, was stolen from me at knifepoint. In shock I watched a stranger ride off on my week old bike as I stood there holding the lock and chain that the robbers let me have after I requested that I could at least keep the stuff I paid for myself.

After the thugs disappeared I walked around the park till I found someone that could direct me to a police officer. My experience with the police was less like an action TV cop show and more like a slow paced episode of Dragnet. There were no Starsky and Hutch chase scenes in a groovy 1970’s pseudo-sports car racing down the merry-go-round steps in order to cut in front of the street thugs and run them off the road without putting a scratch on my bike. Instead I sat and gave the police descriptions of the guys that stole my bike as we slowly drove around the main park roads in their squad car looking for the robbers. After a short while the cops must have assumed the thieves were long gone and the search quickly ended.

I slowly walked home clutching my lock and chain. When I got there I told my brother Neil, the only person home at the time, what happened and he insisted we go back to the park to search of my bike. We wandered around for a couple of hours looking for the guys but I am not sure what we would have done if we actually found them. Neil was not armed nor was he particularly athletic or intimidating. In lieu of doing anything useful but feeling that he had to have us do something, Neil had us two geeks wander aimlessly around the park on the hopeless quest of somehow getting my bike back.

My Dad was great. Even though money was a bit tight, the next day he took me back to the Schwinn Store and he purchased me an identical Varsity including the leatherette pouch with the two metal snaps to keep my chain and lock in. Again, deep down I wished I were getting the slightly bigger and fancier red Continental that I originally eyed at the store but at this point I was just overjoyed to have anything.

Even though I ended up soon outgrowing it, I happily kept that bike for close to 20 years. When I moved to Florida, the bicycle moved from my family’s New York garage to our new condo’s small porch. The Miami sun was not kind to it; the orange faded badly and the tires started melting creating a bumpy leopard-skin pattern. The bike later followed me to college and then to the next five places I lived getting plenty of use along the way.

Years later I started making decent money and began to entertain thoughts of getting a new bicycle. I was hanging out in Brooklyn New York with my friends Maddie and Lori. Lori worked with a bunch of Russian immigrants at a stained glass restoration company and one of these guys casually mentioned that he had a couple of unique bicycles to sell. He said that before his new roommate defected he kept requisitioning bikes from the government. When he had 12 of them he fled the Soviet Union selling the bikes one at a time along the way to pay for his trip to the U.S.

One evening we drove to the apartment the Russian guy shared with three other immigrants in Queens to look at the last two bicycles he had left. They seemed in mint shape and since we both kind of needed new bikes, we thought it would be great to have these totally different, funky bikes with Russian names plastered on the side of them. The guy told us some sad story and made us a pretty good deal of $250 for both bikes. We agreed and crammed them into our little Toyota and drove back to Brooklyn.

The next day Lori and I started to realize that maybe we had been taken advantage of. The Soviet Union was not known for its quality workmanship and these bikes were no exception. I was loosening the bolt to raise the seat and it snapped in half. This was a bad sign especially when I went to a hardware store to replace the bolt and they could not find anything in stock that was the same odd millimeter. The Russian bike might not have ever been stolen but I think I was ripped off just the same.

The next few years I kept striping parts off my old faithful Schwinn Varsity to make repairs on the Russian bike. Eventually the Soviet bike had the seat, brakes, handle bars, chain and casing from the Varsity. None of the numerous repairs was easy because none of the nuts, bolts and screws on the bike were standard American sizes. Eventually the bike frame cracked and I was done with it. I ended up the completely frustrated owner of two non-functional bicycles. At that point I could not bring myself to rebuild the Schwinn and I eventually sold the two bikes to some guy in the neighborhood for $45 bucks. That was more then a decade ago and I have not owned a bicycle since then. I wonder if I should look around on E-bay for an early 70’s red Schwinn Continental. http://www.nycgovparks.org/sub_your_park/park_photos/popup.php?propID=Q015&image=photos/Queens/Q015_1078859372.jpg

BIKE (part 1)

In last week’s blog I mentioned the lack of petty crime in the New York City neighborhood I grew up in. After giving it a little more thought I seem to recall some less then rosy incidents like my brother getting mugged. Well there also is the bike story.

I am the youngest of five kids. People love to say how the baby of the family gets spoiled but what I remember getting is ‘hand me downs’. Not just clothing; my first three bicycles had all been used and abused by my older siblings. My rickety tricycle, my first two-wheeler and even my first real bike had all been someone else’s firsts before they were mine. They all worked but had seen much better days. Heck they had seen better decades.

Unfortunately for my parents I kept growing and by the time I hit 11 years old I was taller then one of my siblings and well on the way to outgrowing them all. I was already too big for any of the remaining ‘crap-cycles’ left in the garage after one of my brothers moved out to college with the larger black bicycle. One day I was riding the green smaller bike when the front wheel went flying off and I almost flew over the handlebars into a busy street. Of course the wheel might have become weakened when a few hours earlier I had been riding on a muddy shit-laden horse trail, jumping benches and riding down the long flight of stairs that led to a merry go round in a nearby park. No matter the cause, my Mom now deemed the bicycle ‘dangerous’.

My parents told me if I behaved I might get a brand new bicycle for my birthday. Despite my unchanged usual obnoxious behavior and it being a couple of months away from my birthday, since the only bike left in the garage that I could almost fit on was deemed ‘dangerous’, my Dad took me to the Schwinn Bicycle store that his friend owned.

Like thousands of Baby Boomer children before me, my Dad and I walked around the rows of glimmering new Schwinn bikes. I had my eye on a big fancy red 10-speed model called the Continental. Unfortunately my Dad and his friend had other ideas for me and picked out an orange version of the slightly more generic 10-speed Varsity model. Although not my first choice it was leaps and bounds above any of the old bikes back at the house. Hell, I had never even been on a bike that had ‘speeds’ to change before that day.

The deal my Dad made with me was that he would pay for the bike but I would have to pay for all the accessories with my own savings. This being New York, I picked out a chain and lock. I also purchased a little leatherette pouch with two metal snaps that hung under the seat to keep the chain and lock in. I loved my bike and was extremely proud to ride around the neighborhood on it. It was by far my most extravagant possession, for the week I owned it.

I hated Junior High school and had very few friends there. My brand new bike was sitting home in the garage and I was stuck in class. It was calling out to me. I really wanted to show it off to everybody in the neighborhood. I could not take it any more and I snuck out before my last class started. I raced home to my new bright shiny orange Schwinn Varsity. I rode over to the park, which was pretty quiet because most of the neighborhood kids were still in school. I was practicing changing speeds trying to get the hang of doing it without jerking the bike and making the nasty embarrassing clunking slipping metal sound.

As I rode down the wide path near the merry-go-round three young men ran up to me. One of them stepped right in front of the bike and as I stopped he stepped over the front tire and put his hands on the handlebars. Another stood next to me and the third stayed a few steps behind us. The Latino guy in front said that this bike looked like his brother’s that had been stolen. I told him that it was definitely mine. He made several more comments about checking the serial numbers and that he was sure it was not mine. Eventually the guy standing next to us got tired of waiting for me to get the hint and he pulled a knife out of his pocket and pushed it against me. He simply said ‘just get off the bike”.

As I climbed off I told the guys that my Dad just bought the bike and he would kill me if I lost it. The first guy hopped on anyway but before he could ride away I asked him if I could at least have the chain and lock. Surprising, he said yes and as he sat on the bike I reached behind the seat, unlocked the two metal snaps on the leatherette pouch and took out my chain and lock. I stood there in the park, holding my chain and lock, quietly crying as I watched two of them run into the woods and the other riding off down the street on my shiny new bright orange Schwinn Varsity.
Strangely enough, that is not the only story I have involving a bicycle and getting ripped off in New York but you will have to wait till next week for that one.

http://www.cyclesportandfitness.com/the_varsity.htm

HOME

born in a quaint little town called New York City. OK, maybe quaint it ain’t, but it will forever be my hometown. Back when I was growing up there, the ‘City’ was financially bankrupt. Social services were cut, unemployment rates were sky high, inflation was rampant, there were constant strikes so one week there would be no garbage pick-up, the next week no public transportation and so on. It was mess. Times Square was full of porno theatres, the bridges were collapsing, crime was up, the streets were filthy, and the subway trains were covered with graffiti and unsafe to ride. (With glowing images like that I really should start writing travel brochures.)

Luckily the part of New York City I lived in was not that bad. It was an old German neighborhood that was starting to become a little more Italian. We had very little petty crime in our area although there was the occasional mafia hit like in 1979 when the City’s big crime boss Carmine Galante** was gunned down in a restaurant two miles from my house. As New Yorkers you take that it all in stride and still find a way to be proud of your town.

In the late 1980’s the ‘City’ went through an amazing renaissance and truly became a wonderful place to live but by that time I was long gone. As a kid, the concept of me living in Texas seemed about as likely as the Twin Towers being knocked out of the skyline. As you get older you realize you just never know what might happen. When I visit New York I still feel a comfortable sense of familiarity but it does not feel like home anymore.

When I was in the middle of those ever so fun Junior High School years, my folks moved me down to sleepy serene Miami Florida. Calm by New York standards, I lived in Miami during the riots of the 1980, the Mariel Boatlift and the Cocaine Wars. It was tough adjusting to such a different lifestyle but in hindsite it has become obvious that spending my formative years in Florida had a profoundly positive effect in creating the person I have grown up to be. It took awhile but I grew to love Miami and eventually felt like it was as much my hometown as New York was.

While I was attending college in Tallahassee Florida my folks moved out of Miami so when I graduated, even though they offered me a room in their new Orlando house, I felt I did not have a town to call home anymore. Over the years that followed I bounced around several different Florida cities and even briefly moved back up to New York but I never really put down any deep roots. Everywhere I lived felt like a place I was staying until I found a real home.

I’m sure it was this lack of feeling like I belonged anywhere that kept me on the road during the 15 years I traveled for work. A comfortable routine developed, a few months of hard work in some city, then a few weeks of visiting friends all over the country, a quick trip to whereever I called homebase at the time for a few weeks, a little more traveling to hang with friends and then back to work. Over and over this cycle repeated. As issolating as it was, I loved that I spent long enough in a city to really get the real feel of the town and it’s people.

I was away from home so much that it led to some odd events. Three different times friends moved all my belongings to a new house that I never saw until I got home. They would tell me about the place I was going to live and sent me the address with a map so I would know where to come home to. Friends in various cities all over the country had rooms in their houses that they refered to as Dan’s room because I frequently visited for several weeks at a time. My last house in St Pete Florida was in a cool funky neighborhood only nine blocks from the beach yet I knew I would not be there for a long time because the city never really felt like home to me.

Sometimes I think back to those days and I miss the adventures. I really miss seeing my friends and family. I do not miss the lonliness and I really do not miss that feeling of knowing I could fit in anywhere but that I belonged nowhere. It was on one of these many trips that I met my wife. I always said when I met the right person I would stop traveling and I did. I met her while working just outside of Dallas and I have pretty much been here ever since.

That was over seven years ago and I have to admit that until recently it still felt like this was just another stop on the highway and that I really did not belong here. That changed a few weeks ago when my wife and I bought a house. A neat house that I think we will be really comfortable in. A cool place that I can really call home and mean it. I’m not saying this is the last house I will ever buy and I am not saying that I will live in Texas until I drop dead but maybe now I might finally feel a little less like a nomad and a little more like I have a city to call home. **http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carmine_Galante

FO-TEE-FO

I do not remember when I stopped acting my age. As a teenager I spent a lot of time around people older then me. I learned how to interact with folks significantly older then myself. I grew my first mustache when I was in Junior High and since I hit six foot tall soon after I could pass as visually older as well. By high school I not only could make small talk with anyone regardless of age, I could find a point of context to truly relate to them. Of course more importantly, I could buy beer or order a drink in most bars without raising an eyebrow.

After college when I started my consulting career I was over 20 years younger then anyone else working for the company. Early on I started lying about my age; I knew I would get little or no respect from my clients if they knew how young I really was. I got very good at vaguely answering questions about how old I was without ever really giving out my actual age. Once I hit 30 it became easier because I could just say I was pushing 40. I was, it just might have been a very long push.

Now my personal life is a different story. I have often said that I act like a 12 year old so if you take the average of 12 and my real age I must be somewhere in my 20s. I do not think anyone that knows me would argue that point. I have never really had a desire to grow up. I might be insanely responsible but I sure as hell can be goofy while doing it. For the record I am 44, which also happens to be my lucky number. If you need proof that I do not act my age ask any of the folks around me that have had to endure me constantly announcing my age this year by holding 8 fingers up in a mock pseudo-homeboy style while saying ‘fo-tee-fo’.

Growing older has really never bothered me. Yeah my body does not do all the things it used to do but it is fun to watch the slow changes like a very very long science experiment. Lately I have been thinking of my body as being a bit like an older car. It does not look as good as it did when it was new. Yeah it’s got a few dings, dents and rusty spots. It takes a little bit of time to warm up but with a little extra maintenance it will still get me wherever I want whenever I want. That maintenance, of course, includes occasionally going to the doctor.

Years ago when I lived in Orlando I had a great doctor. I paid the $100 bucks or so for my visits out of my pocket and always got great service. When I later moved to Saint Petersburg, I changed my medical insurance to one that covered doctor visits except for a $15 co-pay. I found a physician on the plan and went for a physical. This witch doctor was hideous. He obviously wanted to bilk my insurance provider for every procedure that he could so he had me doing things like getting an ultrasound. I never went back although I ended up having many phone calls with the grossly unprofessional, under-trained office manager over the next two years when I started receiving bills from them for a $600 blood test that they originally insisted would be covered by my insurance.

A year or so after I moved to Texas I thought it might be time for another physical. One of my wife’s coworkers highly recommended their doctor. I called and confirmed that they took my new insurance and made the soonest appointment they had available. Three months later when I showed up, they informed that they in fact did not take my insurance and the visit would cost over $500. I was ready to walk out when the office manager with large dangly Playboy bunny earrings recognized me. She was a customer of mine at my store. She told me if I paid $300 the doctor would see me for a physical as long as I did not require a blood test and did not ask any specific direct medical questions. I agreed but imagine my dismay when the doctor turned out to be a grumbly rude 300lb plus heavy breathing short man in a Harley Davidson shirt. By the end of the visit I felt extremely unimpressed with his abilities and again found myself leaving a doctor’s office feeling taken advantage of. That was well over three years ago.

A man that is ‘fo-te-fo’ should not go ‘fo’ years between physicals especially a man that treats bacon as one of the major food groups. Since Harley-boy was out of the question, I started asking around about doctors. My wife’s is more of a gynecologist then general practitioner so she was out. The people I work with each rave about their own doctor and they each feel they have the best one in the area. I knew if I picked one of theirs I would run the risk of offending everyone whose doctor I did not choose. I did end up going to one that was recommended by a co-worker but when asked who I went to I have been using my old ‘talk around the subject without giving a straight answer’ skills I honed back when I was lying about my age.

The visit seemed to go great. This is the first female doctor I have ever had so the more intimate parts of the physical were a bit more awkward then usual. I never had to have a nurse in the room when I turned and coughed before. A woman has smaller fingers then a man, which made my life a lot easier. I have to admit to being almost embarrassed by how easy the prostate exam, went. I kind of wish I would have grimaced or reacted a little more if only just for show.

I think I like this doctor. Everything went smooth and she seemed very professional. Even though I mentioned that there might still be a White Castle burger wedged in my colon from the 1990s, I was relieved when she told me that since my family history is good I did not need a colonoscopy for another few years. Maybe my cholesterol levels would have been a bit better if I had not had large quantities of beer and brats at the Octoberfest the day before my appointment. All things considered, apparently I am pretty healthy for a man who is ‘fo-tee-fo’.

HASH

Back in 1991 my friend T-Bone introduced me to The Hash House Harriers. No, it is not a diner. It is a loosely organized non-competitive international group that describes themselves as a ‘drinking club with a running problem’. You see why I would be attracted to such an organization. I dropped in to visit T-bone in Atlanta and he told me how this club ran races most Saturday afternoons (and late night during full moons as well as Friday the 13th and a few other other odd times) and asked if I might want to run that weekend. Always up for an adventure, I agreed.

We got to the announced starting point of the race early enough to mingle with a few of the group’s seasoned veterans, Harriers and Harriettes with sophisticated nicknames like Cunning Runt, Wanna Pecker and Panty Waste. They told me that each race is unique and went over a few of the basics with me. The previous race’s winner becomes the next race’s Hare. Their task is to announce where the next race starts and to set up the secret route. The trail can start and go anywhere; the more creative the better. Some of the best courses run through parks, streets, parking lots, back yards, streams, etc. I even heard of one that went through the lobby of an office building. The course has traditionally been marked by an occasional splotch of flour dropped on the ground although more recently paper, chalk and other pre-designated materials have been used as clues to show the runners which direction the trail might go.

After several dozen other Harriers arrived (some with horns, whistles, paddles, wacky hats…), the race started. The splats of flour on the ground marked that you were on course but did not indicate what direction the trail went next. Since no one but the Hare knew where the actual trail went, the speedier runners sprinted off into different directions until someone found the next marker. That person would then blow their whistle, honk their horn or simply yell out that they were ‘on’ and everyone else would head towards them often asking other runners ‘are you’ to make sure they are going in the right direction. This organized chaos would repeat itself as we ran through the streets of a residential neighborhood, into a few backyards, over a low fence, around a small kiddie park, near some office buildings, next to a small pond and finally finishing in a thick wooded area.

Other ‘Kennels’ (chapters) of the Hash House Harriers run their races differently. Some are ‘live’ where the Hare gets a short head start and marks the trail as he tries to elude the rest of the group. Race courses that are laid out by the Hare in advance are called ‘dead’. Either way, a good Hare will set up lots of twists, turns and several false trails. Faster runners will ‘check’ or make off false trails as they go, to help the slower walkers that follow to stay on course. There is a cachet to winning but there is definitely a ‘getting there is half the fun’ attitude. There are over a thousand Hash groups with at least one in almost every major city around the world.

The Hare’s other important duty is to meet the runners at the finish line with a large quantity of beer ( & wine coolers…) for the post race celebration. Although sometimes there are beer stops along the trail, the real drinking starts right after the race during the circle ceremony. At this mock-religious event songs are sung, ‘down-downs’(emptying one’s beer immediately while standing in the center of the circle) are handed out to those that did anything good, bad or indifferent, virgins that have run three to five races are given nick-names, and any other extremely silly group business is addressed in as serious a manner as possible.

I have omitted a lot of other details about the races I have run but they are hard to recall because not only is there a lot of beer consumed during the Circle but afterwards everyone heads to a nearby bar for the ‘On After’ or ‘On-On’ celebration that typically features consuming a few more beers. If that is not enough, after the ‘On-After’ everyone heads home to clean up and those still wanting more meet for the ‘On On On’ at a different bar for still more beer consumption.

As might be expected, I created a bit of a stir during my first race and ended up with the very rare honor of being awarded a nickname my first time out. I think it was my antics with the fish shapped canteen that I carried that caused them to name me Blowfish. Over the years since then, I have run with a few different Kennels in various cities and always had fun. Twice since I have lived in Dallas I have tried to find a local group, but the nearest active Kennel is over an hour away.

I thought of The Hash House Harriers when I picked up the newspaper the other day and read that in New Haven Conneticut Dr. Daniel Salchow, a 36 year old ophthamologist known for his volunteer work with needy children and his sister visiting from Germany, were arrested on felony bio-terrorism charges for leaving spotches of flour in an Ikea parking lot. Yes, they were Hares and while they were patiently waiting at the finish line, beer at hand, for the runners to arrive, the local police were evacuating the Ikea store. He bicycled to the store to tell the police it was flour but that did not go over well. Welcome to post-911 America, where we can all sleep better at night knowing we are safely protected from imbibing joggers.


http://www.gthhh.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/25/nyregion/25beer.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_House_Harriers