Last week I was pestering my buddy Mike, one of my oldest and dearest friends in the world (and possibly the only person crazy enough to voluntarily put up with my insanity for 30 years), about his lack of readership when it comes to my blog. I have posted an entry every week for almost two years now (and some of them are even remotely entertaining). Although I would certainly like to have a lot more readers, each week my page usually gets anywhere from 10 to 40 anonymous hits but apparently Mike is not often one of them.
My oldest friend in the world had not even glanced at my page in over a year. Humph and for shame. Just because Mike is about the best Dad to his two kids that I have ever seen in terms of the amount of quality time he spends with them. Plus he owns/runs a restaurant and works out daily. Oh yeah and he also makes time each week to spend just with his wife, his friends and get in a few rounds of golf. Yeah, so just because of all that he thinks that is an excuse.
Well actually it is a pretty good excuse now that I just typed all that, but screw it. Hey, coming up with 52 solid blog topics a year is tough so if I want to fluff through this one whining about Mike, well just like Bobby Brown, it’s my prerogative. (My wife just finished watching some sadistic movie [Hard Candy…oooch, if you are a guy DO NOT WATCH IT… I am not keen on any movie with a castration scene] and asked me what my blog topic is about. I just read her the previous sentence to which she yawned and said, “well I guess you know my feelings on that one”. I will have to work a bit harder on my topics the next 51 weeks. Oh well… back to the whining)
Well I say that the fact that Mike is not a weekly reader is a slap in the face. This from the man that almost got suspended with me for proudly displaying signs at one of our high school football games that featured motivating slogans like ‘Ear Wax’, ‘Nose Hair’, ‘Circumcise The Band’ and ‘Eat Me’. This from the man who had a casual lunch with me at the only open Italian restaurant in Boston’s Little Italy during the gale force winds and rain of Hurricane Bob. This from the man that let me cut his hair in his backyard after a late night bar-b-q. This from the man that took most of my male and female family and friends to a sleazy strip joint the night before my wedding.
Aw shucks, I guess I can’t be mad at Mike. In his defense, he had read some of the entries last year and he did offer me constructive criticism that unfortunately has put me in a bit of a quandary. He mentioned that my blog tends to be a little sappy with cutesy endings and stuff. He is right. When I am around Mike I am very relaxed and I tend not to use as much decorum as I might when I am talking to my family or business associates. Should I hold back in my writing here? The people very close to me know I will say just about anything and often the more taboo the subject the harder I will try to incorporate it into an over the top joke. They also know what I actually feel in my heart and know that I truly am just kidding.
Should I not worry about who I might offend with my writing? You always hear about someone not getting a job or promotion because of the nonsense they posted on their own website. Not to mention am I really comfortable with my mother reading a joke that starts with the line ‘how do you know if someone is a narcoleptic necrophilia pedophile?’ (I’ll e-mail anyone that wants to know the punch line… it’s not a pretty image.)
Some people are the exact same no matter what company they keep. I kind of wish I was a little more like that but I definitely do adjust how I speak and what I say based on whom I am around. Not quite talk like a homeboy around my friends and talk like an English Prince at work, night and day different, but defiantly different. The somewhat bible-belt semi religious folks I work with have repeatedly said that ‘they expect me to be hit by lightning’ for the stuff I say. My wife just says that ‘it’s amazing I do not get hit more.” Yet my blogs have all avoided hot topics like politics, religion and sex.
Maybe Mike would read this damn thing more if I talked a bit more salty. I mean back in High school he and I drove around in my car listening to songs like ‘Dead Puppies Aren’t Much Fun’, ‘Kinko The Kid Loving Clown’ and ‘Something’s In The Bag’. Well then I guess I should rap this crammed colon bloated bowel of an entry up.
(Since I brought this up to Mike he has gone back to read more of my blog and has even left some comments on the LIVEJOURNAL version. Thanks bubba, love you man. eeeeeeeee)
CLICK TO SEE DAN AND MIKE IN THIER FSU DORM ROOM
CLICK TO SEE MIKE AND DAN IN VEGAS
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
FLY
Both my brother and sister have written blogs about flying so last week while I scrambled to get to my destination, after American Airlines cancelled my flight along with 3300 other ones, I thought maybe it was time for me to chime in on the subject. I used to enjoy flying but lately it feels more like a Greyhound in the sky. I half expect to see Ratso Rizzo in the seat in front of me having 'a little rest stop that wasn't on the schedule'.
I was a little kid the first time I ever rode in a plane; it was a National Airlines flight from New York to Atlanta. Although my brother Neil teased me for years about my death grip on the armrests as we took off, what I recall the most is playing with the barf bags and the seat occupant card (man I'm old National Airlines shut down in 1980 and I have not seen a seat occupant card in about as long). The flight did not scare me near as much as David (the family friend's kid I had to share a room with while we visited Atlanta) talking in his sleep. He creeped the daylights out of me with his all night muttering.
My Dad got his pilots license when I was in High School. He used to love flying littlefour-seater Cessnas. He was always amused that in some states you have to be 18 to get a driver's license but you can get a license to fly at 16. He once asked me if I wanted to get one but I think I was a bit too intimidated by it all. Especially at 15 when my main goal in life was to overcome my mega dorkdom in order to meet girls (insert your own obvious 'still trying' joke).
Like everyone else I have had my share of great flights and miserable ones. Years ago when the rules of flying were a bit more lax, I ended up sitting near a guy that had 2 shopping bags at his feet filled with clothes, scuba gear, a boom box, dozens of music tapes and several bottles of Appleton Estates rum. Needless to say if you are sitting next to someone for three hours with a 'party to go' bag there is a good chance it will be a fun flight. An example of a miserable trip would be the time my wife and I ended up across the aisle from a grossly unprepared and overwhelmed Dad and his 4 year old daughter. For almost an hour, as he figured out when and how to set up a DVD on his computer, the girl loudly repeatedly yelled non stop "I wanna watch a movie, I wanna watch a movie, I wanna watch a movie noooooowwwwwww!". Trapped in a middle seat amongst a large Filipino family full of small unruly children for 7 hours on a flight from Guam was definitely not a party. The plane was a packed with people that looked like they had never flown before. You almost expected to see an old man lead a goat tied to a rope with livestock milling around his feet as he wandered up the aisle. Of course if you want to learn about a really bad flight, read my hijacked blogs from 4/15/2007 & 4/21/2007.
My sister wrote about her stressful anxiety about flying being tied to the 'lack of control' you have on a plane. My brother wrote about the pleasure of surrendering control and compared flying to a mini vacation because of it. As for me, I do not stress over the time in the air; I stress over missing a flight because my schedule rarely has any room for flexibility if I miss the plane. I do not fear a plane crash but I fear what condition my back will be in when I unfold myself out of the ill designed oft broken chairs that I have uncomfortably been crammed into for hours.
Last week when I learned that my flight had been cancelled I scrambled to find a different flight on Southwest Airlines. Southwest is more relaxed then American. It's like hanging out with your Uncle verses your Dad; you still have to follow some rules but everything is a lot more laid back. The Southwest flight attendant kept serving me free beers (like a good uncle would). I think she appreciated that I kept the cantankerous old man next to me occupied. He was pestering her a bit until I sat next to him and let him regale me with stories about 'cutting a man from appetite to asshole' for not paying his $12 space rental fee at the farmer's market he manages or about bribing cops when he owned a bar by offering them a cigar and slipping them a $20 bill folded in the accompanying match pack.
I do not mind all the extra time getting through security especially now that I have a new driver's license. I used to look quite a bit like a shady terrorist on my old Florida license and often got pulled aside for some extra interrogation to make sure I was not Osama Dan Laden. I do not miss the bad airline food or the little extras that have slowly been phased out. I do miss customer service, clean updated planes, leg room, courtesy and the feeling that I am not on a city bus with wings. Of course with fuel prices going up and industry competition going down I guess I will soon not be able to afford to fly anyway.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
THE LAWN
Well it’s been a quiet week here in Lake Wobegon…sorry… almost every time I sit down to write my weekly blog that line runs through my head. So no I do not live nor was I born in a fictitious Minnesotan town. I grew up in Queens, New York. So did a few million other people so that might not be that special, but this is my blog and it’s my warped prospective of the universe that counts here, so deal with it.
My wife and I have had a bit of company the past couple of weeks so there has been lots of chatting. Inevitably I end up digging up some old stories from my childhood. Just today I was talking about the lawn at the new house and comparing it to what I grew up with. As a little kid my four older siblings got to mow while I always had to rake or sweep. There is no fun in raking. As a matter of fact, compared to the glory and splendor of mowing I might as well have been sweeping up the poop in a circus parade while they rode the exotic animals through the big top. To this day I despise raking.
With each year that passed I thought maybe it would be my time to advance up the family grunt-chore ladder and get to shine as the man behind the mower but alas once enough older siblings had left the nest, my folks and I moved to a condo in Florida and I never got my chance to be the mow-master. This story gets me a lot more pity until people see how small the lawns are in Queens New York. The kitchen in my new house is bigger then the lawn that I bemoan having to tragically rake. I recall some friends from high school in Florida traveling to New York with me years later and upon seeing the miniscule front lawn and tinier concrete backyard they blurted “is this postage stamp of green what you complained about for all these years?”
The deep childhood scaring caused by the whole raking calamity and the fact that I am a city boy at heart have made me less then excited about spring in the new house. The lawn here feels as big as the Ponderosa compared to where I grew up. Every other house I have lived in has either had a lawn service or was someone else’s responsibility. Before we moved in my wife and I discussed getting a lawn service but after we moved in she suggested we give it a shot ourselves. I hope by August our neighbors are not referring to us as ‘the jungle house’. I agreed to try but only if I got to be the official mower and she take care of the detail stuff (like raking, sweeping and edging) that remind me too much of my childhood hardship.
Once the new sod started to turn green, we purchased a fancy new somewhat eco-friendly grossly overpriced Cordless Electric Mower (I still have to make some modifications to it like adding the cocktail glass sized cup holder). I did some reading about what height the grass should be before it’s virgin mowing. Sunday I announced that I was going out to ‘measure the lawn’ but the only parts long enough to mow were the increasingly dense weeds that seem intent on overpowering our stubbly green grass nubs.
My wife and her visiting sister decided to do their best to eradicate our back yard of the pesky weeds. After ripping out several zillion in just a small area of what must have felt like the ‘back forty’, they shifted to a technique called ‘Zen gardening’ which I believe consisted of sitting in the only shady patch and plucking whatever happens to be in arms reach.
My wife seemed to be a bit frustrated with our weed to grass ratio so I told her a story about my friend Allyson’s battle with squirrels. She spent hundreds of dollars on various complex designed bird feeders and baffles in an unsuccessful effort to keep the persistent squirrels out of the birdseed. I suggested the simpler less expensive solution of just calling it a ‘squirrel and bird feeder’. My wife quickly connected the dots and told me we were not going to have a ‘weed garden’. “But you don’t have to rake weeds” I replied.
So I am the mowing and my wife is in charge of the detail stuff. I feel good about my mowing position but I think she got the easy end of the deal. Sometime since I was a kid it was decided that grass clippings are no longer called ‘trash’ and are now called ‘mulch’. I assume some other kid came up with this idea in an effort to get out of raking up the mess and it somehow stuck. Now it is recommended to just leave the mess all over the lawn. No more raking up the clippings and junk; all the mowers now have an attachable clippings bag. Pretty soon I will have to make the first pass with the mower and a new era of my life will begin.
My wife and I have had a bit of company the past couple of weeks so there has been lots of chatting. Inevitably I end up digging up some old stories from my childhood. Just today I was talking about the lawn at the new house and comparing it to what I grew up with. As a little kid my four older siblings got to mow while I always had to rake or sweep. There is no fun in raking. As a matter of fact, compared to the glory and splendor of mowing I might as well have been sweeping up the poop in a circus parade while they rode the exotic animals through the big top. To this day I despise raking.
With each year that passed I thought maybe it would be my time to advance up the family grunt-chore ladder and get to shine as the man behind the mower but alas once enough older siblings had left the nest, my folks and I moved to a condo in Florida and I never got my chance to be the mow-master. This story gets me a lot more pity until people see how small the lawns are in Queens New York. The kitchen in my new house is bigger then the lawn that I bemoan having to tragically rake. I recall some friends from high school in Florida traveling to New York with me years later and upon seeing the miniscule front lawn and tinier concrete backyard they blurted “is this postage stamp of green what you complained about for all these years?”
The deep childhood scaring caused by the whole raking calamity and the fact that I am a city boy at heart have made me less then excited about spring in the new house. The lawn here feels as big as the Ponderosa compared to where I grew up. Every other house I have lived in has either had a lawn service or was someone else’s responsibility. Before we moved in my wife and I discussed getting a lawn service but after we moved in she suggested we give it a shot ourselves. I hope by August our neighbors are not referring to us as ‘the jungle house’. I agreed to try but only if I got to be the official mower and she take care of the detail stuff (like raking, sweeping and edging) that remind me too much of my childhood hardship.
Once the new sod started to turn green, we purchased a fancy new somewhat eco-friendly grossly overpriced Cordless Electric Mower (I still have to make some modifications to it like adding the cocktail glass sized cup holder). I did some reading about what height the grass should be before it’s virgin mowing. Sunday I announced that I was going out to ‘measure the lawn’ but the only parts long enough to mow were the increasingly dense weeds that seem intent on overpowering our stubbly green grass nubs.
My wife and her visiting sister decided to do their best to eradicate our back yard of the pesky weeds. After ripping out several zillion in just a small area of what must have felt like the ‘back forty’, they shifted to a technique called ‘Zen gardening’ which I believe consisted of sitting in the only shady patch and plucking whatever happens to be in arms reach.
My wife seemed to be a bit frustrated with our weed to grass ratio so I told her a story about my friend Allyson’s battle with squirrels. She spent hundreds of dollars on various complex designed bird feeders and baffles in an unsuccessful effort to keep the persistent squirrels out of the birdseed. I suggested the simpler less expensive solution of just calling it a ‘squirrel and bird feeder’. My wife quickly connected the dots and told me we were not going to have a ‘weed garden’. “But you don’t have to rake weeds” I replied.
So I am the mowing and my wife is in charge of the detail stuff. I feel good about my mowing position but I think she got the easy end of the deal. Sometime since I was a kid it was decided that grass clippings are no longer called ‘trash’ and are now called ‘mulch’. I assume some other kid came up with this idea in an effort to get out of raking up the mess and it somehow stuck. Now it is recommended to just leave the mess all over the lawn. No more raking up the clippings and junk; all the mowers now have an attachable clippings bag. Pretty soon I will have to make the first pass with the mower and a new era of my life will begin.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
LETS GET PHYSICAL
It has been a while since I tore a couple of tendons in my calf. I am recovering well from my ‘sports injury’. That’s what I call it because I was running when it happened and running can at times be a sport. Besides just saying ‘sports injury’ is a lot easier then telling the whole long story. After the doctor said I could stop wearing the boot she told me I needed to go to a physical therapist for a about a month.
I have never had to get physical therapy before so I really did not know what to expect. I will say that I was not very impressed on my first visit. I am not sure what I expected but when I entered the bland strip center storefront next to Package Shipping joint and an Army recruitment center, my first thought was it looked quite akin to a small rinky dinky gym. It reminded me of the sparsely equipped work out rooms they shove off the side of an apartment complex clubhouse so they can put ‘recreation center, full service gym and spa’ on their list of free amenities.
I know they come in all shapes and sizes but my preconceived notion of a physical therapist was someone that is half body builder and half doctor. Mine seemed like a nice enough healthy somewhat fit sort of guy but it was not his appearance that put me off; I could not get over the fact that his last name was the same as a barnyard animal. One that rhymes with ‘fig’. I kept thinking that he must have gone into a career that allowed him to hang around a gym so he could bulk up to fend off all the jokes about being named after a barnyard animal that rhymes with fig. The other thing that stood out when I first got there was that the other therapist working that morning looked identical to a young Jimmy Kimmel.
The first day’s consultation was simplistic and uneventful. Lots of obvious questions like ‘where does hurt’, ‘what do you want to get out of the sessions’ and ‘what do you want to do afterwards’. I was polite but I really wanted to answer “it hurts in that spot where my leg is swollen up like watermelon’, ‘duh, I want to be like I was before my tendons popped like an overplayed guitar string’ and ‘when I’m done I do not want to feel like I got reamed for my $100 bucks a session’. The fact is, I really did not want to be there and was not giving it a fair chance at all.
We finished the $150 cursory chat and he taught me a few exercises to do at home with a giant rubber band-like thingy that looked like a sling shot for basketballs. Two days later I was still very skeptical when I headed in for my second appointment. I kept fairly quiet and spent most of my time listening to the other people. One woman said she had been to two different physical therapists before and neither worked but now that she was self-medicating herself off pain meds she wanted to try again. She sounded like she was daring Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig to make her feel better. He said the right things to her and I started to respect him a little more. Another woman with her teenaged daughter wanted the kid’s ankle to heal faster so she could try out for the cheerleader squad although the girl did not seem like she really wanted to and might have been playing up the injury. Again Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig handled both of them in a way that made them both comfortable.
Although I bitched and moaned to anyone that would listen about not wanting to go, I really have to admit that eventually I started to enjoy it. With each passing appointment Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig pushed me harder and I really felt like I was making progress. It seemed like it was making a difference and it was not that my leg was getting better by itself. The problem was everybody in the place seemed so somber. No one ever seemed to talk to each other so I started cracking jokes with everyone else making fun of whatever odd looking balance or stretching exercise they or I happened to be doing. It was kind of like a ‘Breakfast Club’ experience that we all shared. None of us wanted to be there but laughing a little bit together helped us all make the best of it.
I started getting friendly with Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig and Jimmy Kimmel Clone. We shared wacky stories from our lives and made jokes about the other patients. Jimmy Kimmel Clone warned me to stay on the front side of the old man that passed gas whenever he was asked to do something he didn’t like. Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig told me how he was up all night dealing with a dumb neighbor that got arrested in the street out front of their house. I made bad jokes like how uncomfortable I was when I saw the pens at my doctor’s office were supplied by a funeral home; “I don’t mind the drug companies giving them all sorts of freebies but I do not want my doctor in the pocket of some funeral home drumming up business for some mortician.” Eventually Jimmy Kimmel Clone asked if I could hurt myself again so they could keep me around everyday. .
So this past week I finished with physical therapy. I have to continue my exercises and take it very slow for several weeks but with any luck my Boot-Boy days are behind me for good. . I should be back to my normal routines at some point in May. Of course on the last day of my therapy the bright side to this whole mess emerged. Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig offset all the time and money spent by giving me a free white T-Shirt with their logo on it. I might have to move into a bubble to make sure nothing like this ever happens to me again.
I have never had to get physical therapy before so I really did not know what to expect. I will say that I was not very impressed on my first visit. I am not sure what I expected but when I entered the bland strip center storefront next to Package Shipping joint and an Army recruitment center, my first thought was it looked quite akin to a small rinky dinky gym. It reminded me of the sparsely equipped work out rooms they shove off the side of an apartment complex clubhouse so they can put ‘recreation center, full service gym and spa’ on their list of free amenities.
I know they come in all shapes and sizes but my preconceived notion of a physical therapist was someone that is half body builder and half doctor. Mine seemed like a nice enough healthy somewhat fit sort of guy but it was not his appearance that put me off; I could not get over the fact that his last name was the same as a barnyard animal. One that rhymes with ‘fig’. I kept thinking that he must have gone into a career that allowed him to hang around a gym so he could bulk up to fend off all the jokes about being named after a barnyard animal that rhymes with fig. The other thing that stood out when I first got there was that the other therapist working that morning looked identical to a young Jimmy Kimmel.
The first day’s consultation was simplistic and uneventful. Lots of obvious questions like ‘where does hurt’, ‘what do you want to get out of the sessions’ and ‘what do you want to do afterwards’. I was polite but I really wanted to answer “it hurts in that spot where my leg is swollen up like watermelon’, ‘duh, I want to be like I was before my tendons popped like an overplayed guitar string’ and ‘when I’m done I do not want to feel like I got reamed for my $100 bucks a session’. The fact is, I really did not want to be there and was not giving it a fair chance at all.
We finished the $150 cursory chat and he taught me a few exercises to do at home with a giant rubber band-like thingy that looked like a sling shot for basketballs. Two days later I was still very skeptical when I headed in for my second appointment. I kept fairly quiet and spent most of my time listening to the other people. One woman said she had been to two different physical therapists before and neither worked but now that she was self-medicating herself off pain meds she wanted to try again. She sounded like she was daring Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig to make her feel better. He said the right things to her and I started to respect him a little more. Another woman with her teenaged daughter wanted the kid’s ankle to heal faster so she could try out for the cheerleader squad although the girl did not seem like she really wanted to and might have been playing up the injury. Again Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig handled both of them in a way that made them both comfortable.
Although I bitched and moaned to anyone that would listen about not wanting to go, I really have to admit that eventually I started to enjoy it. With each passing appointment Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig pushed me harder and I really felt like I was making progress. It seemed like it was making a difference and it was not that my leg was getting better by itself. The problem was everybody in the place seemed so somber. No one ever seemed to talk to each other so I started cracking jokes with everyone else making fun of whatever odd looking balance or stretching exercise they or I happened to be doing. It was kind of like a ‘Breakfast Club’ experience that we all shared. None of us wanted to be there but laughing a little bit together helped us all make the best of it.
I started getting friendly with Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig and Jimmy Kimmel Clone. We shared wacky stories from our lives and made jokes about the other patients. Jimmy Kimmel Clone warned me to stay on the front side of the old man that passed gas whenever he was asked to do something he didn’t like. Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig told me how he was up all night dealing with a dumb neighbor that got arrested in the street out front of their house. I made bad jokes like how uncomfortable I was when I saw the pens at my doctor’s office were supplied by a funeral home; “I don’t mind the drug companies giving them all sorts of freebies but I do not want my doctor in the pocket of some funeral home drumming up business for some mortician.” Eventually Jimmy Kimmel Clone asked if I could hurt myself again so they could keep me around everyday. .
So this past week I finished with physical therapy. I have to continue my exercises and take it very slow for several weeks but with any luck my Boot-Boy days are behind me for good. . I should be back to my normal routines at some point in May. Of course on the last day of my therapy the bright side to this whole mess emerged. Barnyard Animal That Rhymes With Fig offset all the time and money spent by giving me a free white T-Shirt with their logo on it. I might have to move into a bubble to make sure nothing like this ever happens to me again.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
