MoLewis57

Occupy Wall Street, the 1%, and the Lucky Coin.

2011-12-28T23:42:00.000-05:00

Income equality has been getting a lot of attention these last few months - so much so that's it's certainly going to play a big role in 2012 Presidential election. Most people you run across have an instinctively emotional reaction to the issue ( "Wall Street Pigs!" / "Dirty Hippies!" ) which is often shaped in large part by their political leanings and personal history. However, I don't think you can really get to the bottom of this issue, or decide what actions ( if any ) need to be taken unless you consider the roll luck plays in all of this.

Personally, I don't have a problem with income inequality per se. I like living a relatively free society ( "relatively" is an important qualifier here, because I'm certainly not an anarchist or a Ron Paul-esque uber-Libertarian ), and in any free society you are going to have winners are losers. Left completely to their own devices, some people will succeed and some people will fail, and ultimately that leads to "haves" and "have nots".

However, while I certainly recognize that life is inherently unfair ( and never can be made completely fair ), I do believe in fairness. While I know that the playing field of life will never be completely level, I feel like society should take steps to make the playing field more level, which in turn would lower the degree of income inequality. #

( #: I could probably write an entire book about the steps I think society should take to make the playing field more level, but because I don't want to distract from the main point of this post, I'll just list two examples below:

1) The estate tax ( Or as conservatives like to call it, "The Death Tax" ) needs to stay, and if anything, needs to be at a higher rate. While I do believe well-off parents should have the right to give their kids the benefit of their wealth, I feel this needs to be tempered a bit for the sake of fairness. If a person becomes wealthy simply because of accident of birth rather than his/her own efforts, I don't think it's too much for society to ask that person to give at least half of his/her inheritance back to society so the money can be used to help the less fortunate. Bill Gates kids are always going to have an unfair advantage over kids who grow up in poor families. We certainly shouldn't be changing the tax code to give the Gates kids an even larger advantage ( and for whatever it's worth, Bill Gates agrees ( See the 2:30 mark of this video ) ).

2) Public school funding should be made more equitable. In the USA, public school funding comes largely from local property taxes. This means that kids who are already lucky enough to grow up in wealthy suburbs with high property taxes, also get the benefit of very well-funded public schools. It's just not right that kids with well-off parents get to go to public schools with the best teachers ( If you were a talented and in-demand teacher, and suburban schools were paying $20,000 more a year than schools in poor inner-city areas, where would you choose to teach? ) and the latest high-tech equipment, while kids in poor areas go to schools with 40 year-old textbooks. I know that it's unlikely that public school funding will ever change in my lifetime, but I really believe that funding for public education should come entirely from federal taxes and the money should be distributed such that every child in an American public school gets roughly the same quality of teachers, textbooks, and equipment. I should also note that I'm saying this as a parent of two school-aged kids who lives in an area with extremely high property taxes. I know a more equitable public school funding system would result in less public school funding going to my own kids, but I really think the USA needs more fairness in public education. My kids don't need a fancy video board in their classrooms if that means poor kids need to use obsolete textbooks. Heck, I don't even think half of these fancy new educational tools are needed for a better education. We just had a basic blackboard and #2 pencils in our classrooms when I was a kid, and I turned out fine. )

Of course, conservatives will argue that any attempt to "redistribute wealth" via more equitable taxes or public funding reeks of "Socialism" ( See "Plumber, Joe" ). Conservatives will make passionate arguments based on fairness ( but they'll make a very different kind of fairness argument than the one I'm making ). They'll argue that any system that distributes money from people who work hard to people who don't work hard is inherently unfair.

Of course, therein lies the crux of the issue. Therein lies the argument that often begins ... "Why should I give my hard-earned money to ...".

The truth is, a lot of conservative folks believe that there is a nearly linear relationship between hard work and success. They feel that the rich have earned every cent they've made, and that it is unfair to distribute money from the hard-working rich to the lazy poor.

OK, to be fair, most conservative don't hold views quite that extreme, but there is certainly an undercurrent of that feeling behind all conservative ideas about tax policy. There is certainly a belief that rich people have earned their wealth and deserve to keep their wealth. I'm certainly not going to try and refute that the vast majority of rich people have worked extremely hard to accumulate their wealth. Most rich people do work really hard. However, I think a lot of conservatives make the following incorrect logical inference:

Most people who are wealthy have worked very hard.
Therefore ...
Most people who are not wealthy, did not work hard.

The conclusion above simply isn't true, because it fails to take basic probability ( what some might call "luck" ) into account.

Let's say you had 1024 coins, and decided to play the following game with them:

1) You start by flipping all 1024 coins and discarding all coins that do not land on heads.
2) In each subsequent round of the game, you flip all of the coins that are left, and discard all coins that do not land on heads.
3) You play until just one coin is left ( if all coins are eliminated in a round, you should play the round over ), and the coin that is left is declared the winner.

On average, you'll be left with one coin after playing 10 rounds of this game. I think most people would recognize that there was nothing special about the winning coin that made it come up heads 10 times in a row. I think most people would recognize that if you played the same game again, the "lucky" coin that won the last game would have a 50% chance of being eliminated in the first round of the next game. The lucky coin didn't win the game because it had some special ability to come up heads. The lucky coin didn't win because it somehow deserved to win. The lucky coin won because in a probabilistic sense, one of those 1024 coins had to win.

However, as much as people are willing to accept the influence of random chance when it comes to coins, we tend not to consider the influence of randomness in the lives of people. I'm sure we've all watched those CNBC biographies of successful people from time, and the narrative is almost always the same. The subject of these biographies is always ambitious, persistent, and hard-working, and we are presented with a series of events in the person's life which lead to the person's success. Along the way, the subjects of these biographies need to make some critical decisions, and the subject becomes successful because he or she almost always makes the right decision. After watching these biographies, you left are with the impression that successful people are successful because they are smart enough to make the right choices in their lives. However, from a pure probability standpoint, it is more accurate to say that successful people made they right choices because they are the people that ultimately became successful.

In other words, exceptionally successful people are not successful because they have some extraordinary ability to always make the right decision. In any group of exceptionally successful people, you'll find that all the people in that group made the right choices necessary to become successful, because if they had not made the right choices, they wouldn't be in that group of successful people. The exceptionally successful people in the world are essentially lucky coins.

Now, don't get me wrong - I'm not trying to say that hard work and talent don't matter at all. I actually think they matter a lot. Not everybody can become a self-made billionaire, and the people who achieve that level of successful are almost all extremely hard-working and talented. I firmly believe that there is a positive correlation between hard work and success, as well as a positive correlation between talent and success. I'm quite sure that the average person who makes $200,000 a year is more hard-working and talented than the average person who makes $50,000. I'm sure that the average billionaire who makes $200,000,000 a year is more hard-working and talented than the average person who makes $200,000 a year. However, the person who makes $200,000 a year isn't 4 times as hard-working and talented as the person who makes $50,000. The billionaire who makes $200,000,000 a year certainly isn't 1000 times as hard-working and talented as the person making $200,000 a year. Even the most extraordinarily talented people need some degree of luck to achieve extraordinary success. Somebody like Steve Jobs was almost certainly a one in million talent and visionary, and he probably would have been a success even if he had been relatively unlucky in business.

However ...

What if Steve Jobs had been raised by his biological parents rather than the adoptive parents who helped mold him into the person he would become?

What if he had not been adopted by parents who lived in area full of high-tech companies ( Including
Hewlett-Packard, where Steve attended after school lectures and took a summer job. )?

What if Steve adoptive father hadn't work on electronics with him in the family garage?

What is Steve's adoptive family didn't have a garage?

What if Steve Jobs had never met Steve Wozniak?

What if Xerox had realized how valuable their mouse/GUI system was before sharing it with Jobs?

What if Ross Perot had not decided to invest in NeXT when the company was running out of money?

What if Apple hadn't decided to invite Jobs back to the company in 1997?

There may have been 100 people out there with the talent and vision equal to Steve Jobs, and I would bet that almost all of them achieved a large measure of success in their lives. However, a few them were probably ruined by a few unlucky breaks early in life, and most of the 100 probably "only" become millionaires rather than billionaires.

I firmly believe that I live in the greatest country in the world, and I love that my country affords each person the opportunity to be a great success. However, that opportunity clearly isn't distributed equally, and random chance can certainly play a role in who fails and who succeeds. I believe in the American Dream, and I certainly don't want to take that dream away from those who have achieved it.
However, it makes me angry when people suggest that the wealthy pay too much in taxes already. The wealthy are generally very talented and hard working, but they are also generally quite fortunate, and I certainly don't think it's unfair to ask them to share more of that wealth with those who are less fortunate ( Oh, and don't get me stared on all that Laffer curve nonsense, or we'll be here all day! ). The bottom line is that the wealthy have attained wealth that is far out of proportion with their level of hard work and talent. It's time that those "lucky coins" share a few coins of their own.

Rich

How the Jets Stole Christmas

2011-12-25T12:04:00.001-05:00

My immediate reaction to yesterday's Jets debacle was the "The Jets stole Christmas", which led me to fire off the tweet below:

And what happened then...? Well ... in Jets-ville they say, that Mark Sanchez fumbled the football away.#JetsStoleChristmas

There was a time in my life when I would have spent hours fleshing this Grinch/Jets idea into a full-fledged parody poem. However, those days are gone - my two little guys keep me far too busy. However, that doesn't mean I can't write a stanza or two ...

Every Jets fans in Jets-ville liked winning a lot ...
But it seems like the Jets,
Who played games in Jets-ville,
Did NOT!

The Jets played like crap! The whole football season!
Why did they suck? No one quite knows the reason.
It could be because their O-line wasn't right.
It could be be because their OC wasn't bright.
But I think the most likely reason of all
may have been their QB turning over the ball.

Merry Christmas all!

Rich

P.S. Go Knicks!!!!

Best ... Santa Photo .. Ever!

2011-11-30T22:04:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I know it's a bit of a cheat to post a photo on November 30th, just to make sure I don't go a month without a blog post - but hey, that's one great photo.

Scary Snow

2011-10-29T16:22:00.000-04:00

It started to snow this morning. It started to snow REALLY HARD, with flakes the size of quarters. It 's just above freezing outside, so the snow is an extremely wet and heavy snow.

Heavy snow has its good points ( It packs well for snowballs and snowmen! ) and bad points ( It breaks your back when you shovel it. ), but today it's simply dangerous. Well, I don't know if the snow itself is dangerous, but the trees being covered with it certainly are.

Most snowstorms arrive when the trees are already bare of leaves. However, today is only October 29th. While some leaves have certainly fallen already this Fall, the vast majority of leaves are still on the trees, and about half of those leaves are still green. These leaves are collecting a huge amount of wet snow, so the branches are bearing far more weigh than they normally would in a snow storm. You can imagine what that might lead to, but seeing it for yourself can be really scaring, especially if you happen to the close to the trees.

As soon as it started to snow this morning, the boys were itching to get outside. However, the last thing I wanted was for them to get soaked in all that wet snow and slush, so I convinced them to stay inside for a while. However, as it became clear that the snow was sticking and there wasn't much slush, I decided to cede to Peter's request to go outside. I let him go out in our backyard, while I watched from the glass sliding door that connects our kitchen to our deck ( Michael was still inside, and I wasn't actually looking forward to going outside in this weather ). As I watched Peter play outside, I began to notice all the snow on the branches. I also noticed a fairly large branch on the ground in our neighbor's backyard. I called out to Peter and asked him to come back to the deck. When he got to the deck, I told him that he was only allowed to play in the part of the yard that was not under the trees.

A minute or so after that, the first branch came down in our yard. There was a large cracking sound, and it looked like there was a small avalanche happening in the trees in the back our yard and a relatively small branch hit the ground. A few minutes later, I head another large crack but I didn't see a branch ( I later noticed a second branch on the ground in our neighbor's yard. ). While Peter was safe in the treeless part of the yard, I was still relieved when he came in a few minutes later.

However, as soon as Peter got inside, Michael decided that he wanted to play in the snow. I decide to let Michael out, but before I sent him outside, I sat him down and set very script parameters for where he could go in the yard. He would need to stay in one small treeless corner of the yard, and he would have to stay in my sight at all times.

While Michael was having fun, the branches continued to crack.

Crack! A branch fell in the back left corner of the backyard.
Crack! A branch fell in the right side of the backyard.

Crack! Crack! Crack! I could hear branches falling all over the neighborhood.

CRACK! This last crack sounded like a gunshot. I watched as a HUGE branch fell to the ground in middle of the backyard ( The thing is about 12 feet long and 10 feet wide. Perhaps I'll post a photo later, but Ruth is out and has our camera with her ). About a split second after that thing hit the ground, I called out "Michael! Inside Now!"

Anyway, the boys are now both safe inside, as I sit here thinking about how I'm going to manage to dispose of these 4 ( and counting! ) branches in the backyard.

Rich

Sports just saved me $177

2011-09-24T14:44:00.000-04:00

Being a sports fan just saved my family $177 bucks, and possibly a lot more.

This morning, our credit card company called to ask us if we had just made a $177 dollar purchase for a World of Warcraft subscription. We certainly hadn't, so we got our $177 refunded and our credit card number changed.

While we were happy to get the call, I was a bit surprised that a credit card company would even check up on a purchase of only $177. After all, that's not a huge amount of money, so the purchase was clearly flagged because it was considered to be an usual purchase for our family.

That got me thinking about how lucky we were that I don't play games like World of Warcraft. After all, I kinda fit the profile. I'm a male computer programmer, and I played Dungeons and Dragons in high school. I'm good at Math and Physics, studied engineering in college, and didn't even kiss a girl until I was 21. Heck, I bet 90% of guys with that background have made credit card purchases for various types of sword-n-sorcery type games, books, and movies. If I had been making those kind of purchases regularly, I don't think a $177 credit card charge for World of Warcraft would have raised any eyebrows.

However, I don't purchase that type of stuff, because I'm a huge sports fan, and most of my leisure time is dominated by sports. If it wasn't for my love of the Mets, Jets, and Knicks, I'd probably be a World of Warcraft player, and I'd be at least $177 poorer right now.

I guess, I also have my kids to thank. I used to buy lots of video games ( mostly sports video games, but still video games nonetheless ), and if I was still buying video games I guess the World of Warcraft purchase wouldn't have seemed too unusual. However, I pretty much stopped playing video games after my kids were born.

Anyway, it a scary world out there, and it tends to bite you on the ass more often than not. It's just nice when you are lucky enough to dodge a bullet every once in a while.

Rich

The Evidence

2011-09-06T21:34:00.000-04:00

So, as promised, I did it. I went to the the most evil place on earth. As you can see, I wasn't happy about it.

Well, at least the boys seemed happy ( even Michael the Mets fan. He hasn't learned to really hate the Yankees yet - the little guy doesn't have a mean bone in his body ).

As you can see below, Peter was especially happy.

If you zoom in on the picture below, you'll see that I was actually smiling ( That's because we were leaving. ).

Rich

Mommy protects her baby

2011-08-16T23:30:00.000-04:00

Me ( to my wife ): I went downstairs earlier tonight and found Michael doing bench presses on the weight set. He was bench pressing 5 plates! I don't think you could lift 5 plates. I think your little baby has already gotten stronger than you.

My Wife: We are NOT going to let him play football!

Bad Tiger

2011-08-08T22:18:00.003-04:00

Tiger Woods used to be the most famous athlete in the world, but since then, he's committed the biggest crime a public figure can commit.

He's become boring.

Let's face it, all these 37th place finishes and all these petulant, defiant, and yet somehow bland press conferences have been really boring.

I guess he could get exciting again if he actually started to win, but since that's probably not going to happen anytime soon, I suggest the following ....

Tiger needs to turn into Bad Tiger.

- Bad Tiger would wear a sinister looking beard at all times. I see he's actually started to grow one, so he's well on his way. However, the beard has got to get a lot more sinister. I'm talking about the "evil twin" style beard they used on Knight Rider and the original Star Trek series.

- Bad Tiger would wear black at all times.

- Bad Tiger would never smile, except for the few seconds before erupting into a sinister laugh.

- Bad Tiger would be rude to all golf fans. He would insult them during tournaments, revel in their boos, and would never sign autographs ( Except at events where fans were forced to cough up lots of cash ).

- Bad Tiger would never been seen off the golf course without at least two bimbos on his arms.

- Bad Tiger would neglect to pay his child support.

- Bad Tiger would refer to his ex-wife as a gold-digger and a ho.

- To make up for all the endorsement contracts he's lost lately, Bad Tiger would endorse products like porn sites, condoms, and AshleyMasidon.com.

- Bad Tiger would relentlessly hit on his fellow golfers' wifes and girlfriends, and whenever possible, their daughters. He would also brag continually about his conquests.

- To finally push things over the top, Bad Tiger would go all Clubber Lang in a press conference with Phil Michelson. Bad Tiger would leer at Phil's cancer striken wife Amy and say "Hey woman! Bring your pretty little self over to my mansion tonight, and I'll show you a real man!.".

C'mon, who wouldn't love that? What golf really needs to get its mojo back is a pure unadulterated villain ( Actually, considering how much he's cheated on his wife, maybe we should refer to Tiger as "adulterated" ). C'mon Bad Tiger, fill that void!

Rich

The Flag Man

2011-08-07T19:19:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago ( June 24, 2011 ), I was in Saratoga Springs, NY with my family for my cousin's wedding. There were a few hours between the wedding at the church and the reception, so we headed back to our hotel room to relax for a bit. While I was in the hotel room, I decided to use Google Street View to see what the reception location would look like as I drove up to it. Peter was watching me do this, and he surprised me by asking "Why does the man have a flag". I had no idea what he was talking about, but he asked again and pointed to the Google Street View man in the bottom right corner of the screen, and sure enough, he was holding a little flag ( Well, as best as he could "hold" something without arms ). I took a closer look and noticed that he was holding a rainbow flag. Actually, I was pretty sure it was a Gay Pride flag. I guess it was all well and fine that the Google Street View man was showing gay pride, but why was he doing it that day of all days?

I did a little googling, and this link answered my question.

Apparently, the Google Street View man was celebrating the first day of legal gay marriage in New York State. Pretty cool easter egg. I guess I was lucky to be checking Google Street view in New York that day, because the street view guy only had the flag in locations in New York State.

Rich

It had to happen

2011-07-31T22:41:00.000-04:00

Hey, a video!

Not much to say here, I'll let the vid speak for itself.

Rich

110 degrees Fahrenheit

2011-07-23T23:51:00.001-04:00

Yesterday, the official high temperature was 110 degrees Fahrenheit in Edison New Jersey. It got up to 108 in Newark New Jersey ( the closest relatively large city to our home in Edison ) and 104 in New York City ( where I work ). I never recalled being in weather hotter than 103 degrees before ( It turns out NYC did hit 104 degrees when I was 7, so I guess I had been in weather that hot, and it might have been hotter than 104 when I was hiking down the Grand Canyon in the Summer of 1985 with my Dad and brother ( We had to turn back less than halfway down because my brother ( who was 12 at the time ) started to turn purple from the heat. ) ), so I actually stepped out of my office building for a few minutes when I noticed that the NYC temperature had hit 104. I also occurred to me that NYC had hit the 40 Celsius mark, which is probably a lot more significant that 100 Fahrenheit in the rest of the world.

That got me thinking a bit about the relative merits of Fahrenheit and Celsius, and I've decided that when it comes to describing weather here on planet Earth, Fahrenheit is the far superior unit of temperature.

Now, before you pigeon-hole as an "ignorant American who won't accept the metric systems", give me a few moments to explain myself.

I've got nothing against the metric system. I spent my entire academic career studying science and engineering, and I wouldn't think of using anything other than metric units to do science. In fact, if I could snap my fingers right now and force the USA accept meters, liters, and grams, I'd do it in an instant ( Also, as long as I had those magical finger snapping powers, I'd also force the English-speaking world outside the USA to spell "liter" and "meter" the way they are pronounced. I mean really, "metre"? C'mon UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand - you should know better than that. ). However, when it comes to describing weather, I think the USA may be the only nation that still does things the right way.

Let's face it, unlike meters, liters, and grams ( I just misspelled "grams" as "grahams" for the second time in this post. I must be getting hungry. ), scientist don't really use Celsius. No scientist or engineer would ever use Celsius when working with an equation like "PV = nRT" ( unless that scientist really got a kick out of adding 273.15 ). Kelvin is the temperature scale used for science, not Celsius. Sure, Celsius units are the same size as Kelvin units, and it's easier to convert from Celsius to Kelvin than from Fahrenheit to Kelvin, but in the end, neither Celsius or Fahrenheit work for science unless you do some conversions.

So, with that in mind, why is Celsius any better than Fahrenheit when it comes to describing weather? Gee, I guess it's nice that the freezing point of water in Celsius is 0, and the boiling point of water in Celsius is 100. But guess what ...

I'm not a fuckin' glass of water.

When it comes to describing the weather that any person might experience, 100 degrees Celsius is pretty much irrelevant. 100 degrees Fahrenheit, on the other hand, is pretty damned special, and I like it when special values are nice round numbers like 100. I also like it when things are scaled from 0 to 100. I guess that's why the inventor of Celsius used a scale from 0 to 100 to describe the freezing and boiling of water.
However, as I mentioned above, people are not water, and using the freezing and boiling point of water to scale your temperature systems seems rather arbitrary anyway. Why water? Why not use the freezing and boiling point of iron? Why not create a scale where the burning point of paper is set at 100 degrees and call those units Bradburys? Heck, this 0 to 100 thing doesn't even really work for water if you are not at sea level.

On the other hand, when it comes to describing the weather in a good portion of the world, the 0 to 100 scale in Fahrenheit almost perfectly describes the expected range of temperatures you might experience over your lifetime. At the latitude I live at ( and lots of major cities in the world are close to that latitude ), the temperature rarely gets above 100 Fahrenheit or below 0 Fahrenheit. The temperature only goes out of that range about once a decade, and when it does, it barely goes out of that range. I kinda like living in a 0-100 weather world, and I kinda feel bad for those who live in a world where the weather "ceiling" is only 40 and the weather "floor" is way below zero.

In any case, I guess it all depends on where you live and what you are used to, but for my little corner of the world, Fahrenheit is just right.

Rich

"It used to hurt til Tuesday. Now it hurts til Friday."

2011-07-20T23:59:00.001-04:00

Eventually, I will write a "Why I Run ( Part 2 )" followup up to my "Why I Run ( Part 1 )" blog entry, but for now, you can consider this short post to kinda be a "Why I Run ( Part 1.5 )".

Sometime in the late 1980's there was a television commercial for Sports Illustrated which featured aging future-Hall-of-Fame wide receiver Steve Largent. The commercial shows a worn-down Largent going through a tough practice. In a voice-over, we hear Largent say ...

"It used to hurt til Tuesday. Now it hurts til Friday"

While I though this was a pretty cool commercial as a teenager ( Note for non-football fans: The NFL plays its games once a week on Sundays. Largent was talking about how long it took his body to recover from the pounding he would take in the game each Sunday. ), it resonates even more with me now that I'm far older than Largent was when he shot that ad.

Now, I'm certainly not being hit by 240 pound linebackers and 220 pound safeties each Sunday, but I did have a rather intense run on the treadmill on Sunday, and I find that I'm still a bit sore today. Thankfully, I'm nowhere near as sore as I was on Monday morning, when I experienced a good deal of pain in the underside of my right heal when I took my first first few steps of the morning ( which basically means I've got a bit of plantar fasciitis in my right foot. ). Things have gotten a little better each day, and I should be just about recovered for my next intense run on Thursday night.

Still, as much as I'd like to be able to deny it, I'm forced to admit that Father Time is catching up with me. There are a lot of reason why I run, but the biggest reason why I run these days is probably DENIAL.

If I can run miles at a time far faster than I possibly could as a 21-year-old ( which I can ), I can fool myself into believing that I'm in better shape now at 41 than I was at 21. However, that's just a big lie I like to tell myself to stave off my fear of the reaper. Sure, I'm in much better cardio-vascular shape now than I was as an asthma-afflicted younger man, but if my heart and lungs had allowed me to run several miles at a rapid clip back when I was 21, I'm sure I would have woken up the next morning without any muscle pain at all. Heck, when I first started running on a treadmill at 31, I never felt any pain after a run. As much as my brain might like to deny it, my muscles don't lie - I'm getting old.

However, I guess that's not the worst thing in the world. Age has brought me a wonderful wife and two wonderful kids, and I certainly wouldn't trade them for a chance to be 21 again. I guess we all get old, but even if your whole body is sore, every day you get to spend with your loved ones on this earth is a gift. I might complain a bit, but I'm certainly appreciate that gift every day.

Rich

4th of July

2011-07-04T21:49:00.013-04:00

I miss the good old days.

And by "good old days", I mean the good old days of 4th of July celebrations. Sure, I guess it's a good thing that most places have cracked down on illegal fireworks. Sure, it's certainly a good thing that people aren't blowing off their fingers anymore.

... but still ....

I can't help but miss what Independence Days were like back when I was growing up on 96th Place in the Ozone Park neighborhood of New York City. That scene has to be seen ( and smelt and heard ) to be believed. Of course, I've never been on an 18th Century battlefield, but I've got to image that those battlefields sounded and smelt a lot like the way 96th place smelt and sounded every July 4th in the 1970's.

All day long from about 11 AM to 1 AM you'd hear a plethora of illegal fireworks blowing up. Smoke would hang in the air like a thick fog, and there was a distinct smell of sulfur in the air. Most people on the block didn't travel on that day, because they were afraid they might come home and find their house burnt down due to an errant firework. So, of course, since we were all going to be there all day anyway, it didn't make much sense to sit around and gripe about the sound and the smoke. Instead, we all joined in on the fun.

It seems like every Dad on the block ( including mine ) got his hands on every kind of illegal firework imaginable. They would set them off all day in the street as the kids watched, and there's really nothing that makes a young boy happier than watching stuff blow up. I still remember the year my dad got his hands on some blockbusters (a blockbuster is a quarter stick of dynamite ). He lit one and placed it under a metal garbage can, and I swear that the garbage can ( which was made of steel and was about 3 feet deep ) must have launched about 20 feet into the air after that blockbuster went off. As stupid as this may sound, I still consider that moment to be one of the highlights of my childhood.

Now, my parents where wise enough to keep fireworks out of my hands, but plenty of parents on the block were more than willing to let their kids join in on the "fun". I don't remember any kids handling the big stuff, but kids can still do a lot of damage with fire-crackers and bottle rockets. Especially those kids who thought it was fun to throw lit firecrackers. Especially those kids who thought it was a blast ( pun intended ) to shoot bottle rockets horizontally along the ground. Bottle rockers were designed to be launched into the air, and then explode in the air. When they are launched along the ground, you can only imagine the mayhem that ensues. I was never unlucky enough to be hit by one of these low-flying missiles, but I distinctly remember a few whizzing right past my feet ( The same kids who though it was fun to launch those things horizontally thought it was hilarious to aim them at people. ).

As crazy all that all was, I think it just might pale in comparison to the insanity of roman candles. If you don't know what a roman candle is, you can click on this link, but it's basically a small mortar you can hold in your hand. Now, it's not really a good ideal to hold a lit firework with enough explosive power to launch 10 fireballs into the air, but people certainly did. My Dad use to hold a roman candle up like he was the Statue of Liberty. I still remember those green and red fiireballs launching out of that roman candle in his hand.

Certainly not wise ....

Certainly not safe ...

... but it was freakin' cool!

Yeah, not wise, not safe, but COOL!

Happy July 4th folks! I have no choice but to live the safe and secure life of a suburban Dad these days, but if you have an opportunity to, please blow something up for me today!

Rich

A different kind of happiness

2011-06-29T23:49:00.002-04:00

And so it begins ...

We finally broke down and got our kids a Wii on Monday. They've played with it all night for the past three nights. We'll still not sure if we've made the right decisions.

( Note I wrote most of this post on June 15th ( a few days after Peter's birthday on June 12th), so "Monday" in the paragraph above refers to June 13th. However, I've been too busy to work on this post since then, so this entry is being posted about 2 weeks after that. )

Considering all the time I spent playing video games as a kid, I'm probably the last person who should claim to have the moral authority to forbid his kids from playing videos games. I barely have a leg to stand on with the "playing video games will lead to bad grades" argument. After all, I did fine in school despite all the video games. However, I also happened to be blessed ( cursed? ) with a natural self-discipline which led me to do things like rip up pictures I drew for kindergarten homework when I thought I hadn't done a good enough job.

My kids don't quite have the same level of focus on their schoolwork. Sure, Michael is blessed with a brain that has made school really easy for him, and Peter has a natural curiosity that will serve him very well ( He asks questions that his older brother would never think to ask. ). However, they both get distracted very easily, and they still have a lot of trouble doing their homework unless you sit with them and make sure they stay at the table.

So, I'm worried that this Wii will be a big distraction, but ...

1) Summer vacation is about to start ( June 15 was the last day of school before vacation ).

2) I've rationalized that we can use the Wii as a motivating tool ( "You've can't play with the Wii until you finish your homework"; "You can't play with the Wii until you practice Piano ( they start lessons this week )"; "You can't play with the Wii until you read for a while"; etc. )

3) It was Peter's birthday, and Peter asked for the Wii in the sweetest way.

Peter turned 6 on June 12th. He had a really happy day, but at the end of the day he asked if we could get him the game "Just Dance 2". "Just Dance 2" is a Wii game, and for the last few months, Peter has been dancing to "Just Dance 2" videos on YouTube. A few months ago, we was introduced to the game when he spent the evening at a "Parent's night out" event at his day-care center ( Peter was in half-day kindergarten this year ( Because our big prick of a Governor Chris Christie cut public education funding so much ( while giving big tax breaks to rich folks ) that public schools had to lay-off lots of teachers. ( Michael had full day kindergarten last year before a bunch of brain-dead New Jersey swing voters elected a right wing Republican governor in a state that usually elects Democrats ( Christie's approval rating is now polling at under 50% percent, because apparently a lot of the bozos who voted for him are now shocked and dismayed that a right-wing Republican governor is actually implement right-wing Republican policies in the state. ).). So, because there was no full-day kindergarten, Peter had to go to a day care center for half the school-day. About 3 times a year, the day care center has a "Parent's Night Out" promotion, when they'll take care of the kids so the parents can actually go out on a date. ). As you may already know, Peter loves to dance, and from that point on, all he's wanted to do is play "Just Dance 2". However, I still wasn't sure if we should get the kids a non-educational video game system ( They've had a few educational systems, but they've kinda outgrown those ), and for the last few months he's seemed content enough to dance along to YouTube videos.

However, on the night of his birthday, he asked the following question is a very sweet and gentle way.

"Could I play "Just Dance 2" for real someday?". When I asked him if he could "play" "Just Dance 2" on YouTube, he got a really sad look on his face, and asked again if he could play it "for real". He didn't pout, he didn't scream, he didn't make demands of us - he just kinda sat there on the couch in silence looking rather sad. My wife and I huddled up for a moment, and decided the time has come to get our kids a Wii.

OK, I now what some of you folks are thinking ....

"Man, Peter played you guys like a fiddle. He must have known you guys couldn't resist his little sad face on his birthday."

I know I'm obviously biased about this, but you've got to believe me that it wasn't like that as all. I know things will inevitably change when they get older, but right now I don't think my kids have a devious bone in their bodies. Peter was genuinely sad on what to that point has been a really happy day. I don't think I'd every seen Peter as happy as he'd been at his Chuck E' Cheese birthday party that day ( see photo below ) , and it filled me with as much joy as I'd ever felt.

( Click to enlarge to see full-screen happiness )

And that brings us to the title of this blog post. The joy a parent gets from his kid's happiness is truly "a different kind of happiness."

Now, I'm going to try my best not to annoy of you folks out there who don't have kids. I'm sure you've all gotten sick to your stomach at times when you've heard gushing parents says things like "Until you've had kids, you'll never understand what love is" and "There's nothing like the love a parent feels for a child". I really don't want to sound like one of *those* parents who are so full of themselves and the parenting experience, but ...

... there really is something different about the happiness you feel as a parent when your child is happy. I'm not even going to try to explain it, because words just can't describe it. It's just different - wonderful and different.

In addition to that "different" kind of happiness, most parents are lucky enough to also experience feelings of pride on occasion. I was really proud of Michael recently, but perhaps not for a reason you might have guessed. Sure, parents always feels some pride when their kids accomplish something great, but the pride I felt can best be understood by reading the paragraphs below from this fine article:

Here’s the thing. I want my kids to be successful, sure. But more than anything I want them to be soulful and moral. Yes, I would like to see them prosper, afford nice things, and earn the admiration of their peers. But damn it, if money and status become more important to them than being ethical, altruistic, and giving then I have utterly failed as a parent.

My friend Dennis Prager, the radio host and author, tells a story of a woman who bragged to him that her children were top doctors and lawyers. He asked her, “Are they good people?” “Why of course,” she responded. And then his clincher. “Then why didn’t you tell me that first?”

I am proud when my kids show me a good report card. But I receive real joy when people who have met them tell me how respectful and warm they are.

For the first 6 years of his life, Peter slept in the same room as his Mom. He was too scared too sleep alone, , and he's been sleeping right next to his Mom for years. Of course, as sweet as it was that Peter wanted to sleep next to his Mommy each night ( it always warmed my heart to see him cuddled up next to her ), we knew this couldn't last forever. Ruth and I convinced him that he should try sleeping in his own room "like a big boy" when he turned 6 years old. We knew it might be hard for him, but we let him know about a month ahead of time that June 12th would be his first night sleeping in his room by himself.

Well, the big night came, and when we took Peter to his room, we found that two of Michael's favorite stuffed animals were in Peter's room. Michael told us that the stuffed animals had "retired" from his room and that Peter could now have them for his room. He also told Peter that he could rename the stuffed animals if he'd like.

Michael's done some pretty amazing thing so far when it comes to math and science, but I don't think I was ever as proud of Michael as I was on that night.

They make me proud and they make me happy. I feel so blessed to be a father. There's really nothing else like that "different kind of happiness".

Rich

Michael's Mother's Day Essay

2011-05-08T12:13:00.000-04:00

The boys had lots of gifts for Mom today, including the following essay Michael wrote in school:

My Mom
by Michael

My Mom's name is Ruth. She is special because she loves me. She has pretty eyes. I like when my Mom tells me jokes. I think she's the best at reading. My Mom is super smart! She even knows how to bake. I love when my Mom and I read. I'd like to tell my Mom that I want her to start allowance.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!

Oh really, Ralph?

2011-04-28T23:35:00.001-04:00

In an article titled "Why Obama Gets Four More Years in White House", Ralph Nader wrote the following:

"Nor does a third party or independent candidacy pose a threat, given the winner-take-all, two-party system."

Oh really, Ralph?

So, you're telling me that it was just my imagination when a certain liberal icon ran for President as a third party candidate in 2000, cost Al Gore Florida, and gave us 8 years of George W. Bush?

So, you're telling me that wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were just my imagination?

I guess I was just imagining things when George W. Bush's completely irresponsible tax cuts and his wars created so much government debt that my great grandkids will still be paying it off.

I guess I was just imagining things when the anti-regulation policies of Bush led to the the United States greatest economic collapse since the Great Depression.

I guess I was just imagining things when the huge national debt created by the George W. Bush's policies gave the Republican right-wing the idea to create the anti-debt Tea Party movement ( which has somehow convinced half the nation that the national debt is the fault of the Democrats ).

I guess I was just imagining things when Tea Party endorsed politicians responded to the debt by cutting social programs that liberals spent their lives fighting for ( While refusing the raise taxes or our cut Defense spending, despite that fact that the low taxes and Defense spending led to most of the national debt ) and stripping public unions of their collective bargaining rights.

I guess I was just imagining imagine things when New Jersey governor ( and Tea Party favorite ) Chris Christie used the anti-debt issue as an excuse to cut public school funding so much ( while giving tax breaks to millionaires ) that my youngest son Peter was denied full-day Kindergarten.

I guess I was just imagining things when George W. Bush added John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court - a pair of relatively young ultra-conservatives who will influence the Court for at least the next 30 years.

I guess I just imagined the Roberts and Alito were part of the majority in the 5-4 "Citizens United v Federal Election Commission" decision, which gave corporations the power spend as much money as they wanted to influence elections.

I guess I was just imagining the large number of 5-4 pro-business decisions made by the Supreme Court over the last few years ( There was another 5-4 decision of this sort today. ). I guess was just imagining that these Supreme Courts decisions are destroying all the consumer protections you've fought so hard for over the years.

I guess I was just imagining how the Bush Deficits led to budgets cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency, undermining lots of the environmental protections you've spent your career fighting for.

I guess I was just imagining how a certain liberal icon tarnished his legacy so much that the Simpsons made fun of him ( Wish I could find the clip ) by having him attend a meeting of the Springfield Republicans ( When this liberal icon offer a suggestion to help the Republicans, Mr. Burns tell him "Haven't you done enough already?" ).

I guess I was just imagining that a certain liberal icon screwed the country for the next 50 years by running for President as a third party candidate in 2000, and then had the balls to suggest 11 years later that third party candidates have no impact on Presidential elections.

Oh really, Ralph?!?

Rich

P.S. Yes, I'm still a little bit bitter.

Obama must be jizzing in his pants

2011-04-22T17:16:00.001-04:00

Obama must be jizzing in his pants about Donald Trump.

( If you've been living under a rock, or are not from the USA, or are reading this years later when Obama will be remembered as the 44th President of the United States and Trump won't be remembered at all, let me give a brief summary of what is going on: Billionaire and shameless self-promoter Donald Trump has decided that he wants to run for President in 2012 ( or least wants to make people think he's running for President in order to get more attention for his TV show ). In order to attract Republican voters, he is now publicly taking positions that are 180 degrees removed from positions he publicly took just a few years ago. In the past he'd voiced his support for gay rights, abortion rights, and advocated a 14.25% wealth tax on all Americans with a net worth of more than 10 million dollars. He now claims to be against raising any taxes, against gay rights, against abortion rights, and most significantly, has taken up the widely discredited "birther" cause which maintains that President Obama was not born in the United States. As crazy as this all might sound, this strategy has been working for Trump. He is now leading all other potential Republican candidates in polls of likely Republican voters. )

Even before Trump emerged on the scene, things were looking pretty good for Obama in 2012. Sure, the economy is still rather stagnant ( Though it is doing MUCH better than it was when Obama took over in January of 2009. Back then, the US economy was in a deep recession and on the brink of a depression. Now the economy is on a streak of 13 months of positive growth. ) and the Republicans gave the Democrats a "shellacking" ( as Obama called it ) in the 2010 midterm elections, but the 2012 Republican Presidential field was full of candidates who stood no chance of winning a national election. The Tea Party movement was forcing otherwise semi-reasonable Republicans ( None of the Republicans seem reasonable to me, but at least some of them could seem reasonable to most Americans ) to take positions so far to the right that they were all ruining their chances to gain the support of the moderate "swing voters" that often decide Presidential elections. To make matters worse, the only well-known semi-moderate Republican ( Mitt Romney ) has zero chance of winning the Republican primaries, because he signed a health care bill as governor of Massachusetts that could virtually be the twin brother of the Obama health care bill that all Republican primary voters hate.

Yeah, so things were looking pretty good for Obama, but Donald Trumps takes things to a whole other level.

For as long as I can remember, Republican Presidential candidates have had to play a game in which they speak in a kind of code in order placate the far-Right base of Republican voters ( in other words, the voters they would have to win over to win the Republican primaries ), while not offending moderate voters ( The voters needed to win the general election for President ). For example, when asked in a 2004 Presidential debate about what kind of Supreme Court Justice he would pick, George W. Bush said he wouldn't pick a justice who would agree with decision in the Dred Scott case. This baffled many people ( including me ), because the Dred Scott case was an 1857 decision which affirmed that slaves remained the property of their owners, even if they were taken to places where slavery was illegal. Most people couldn't imagine how a potential justice's view of an 1857 pro-slavery Supreme Court decision ( Obviously, any justice today would be against the decision ) would have any relevance today. However, I later found out that in Christian Right circles, "Dred Scott" is code for "Roe vs. Wade" ( the 1973 decision that made abortion legal in the USA ). So, Bush was using the "Dred Scott" code word to make it clear to the Christian Right that he would appoint a Supreme Court justice that was strongly anti-abortion ( which he did twice during his second term ), while trying not offend pro-abortion moderates.

These Republican secret codes have become even more prevalent during the Obama administration. Republican politicians are acutely aware that a significant percentage of white Repblican voters have racist views about President Obama. Republicans candidates want to motivate these racists voters to go out and vote for them, but they clearly need to be very careful about how they appeal to these voters. Not only do they have to be careful not to offend moderates, but they also have to be careful not to offend the racist voters themselves. Let's face it, most people don't want to think of themselves as being racist, so most people with racially motivated negative views about President Obama have found ways to rationalize that their negative views are not racially motivated. For example, I know somebody ( We'll call him "Joe" ), who voted for Bill Clinton over Bob Dole in 1996, but voted for John McCain over Barack Obama in 2008. Anyone who understand politics at all ( and Joe does ) can see that John McCain has basically the same political philosophy as Bob Dole ( Both are Center Right, though I would say that John McCain campaigned far further to the right than Bob Dole. Bob Dole never called the progressive tax system "socialist" as John McCain did during the 2008 campaign ), and Barack Obama has basically the same political philosophy as Bill Clinton ( Center Left. I think both their campaigns were equally positioned to the Left, and as a frustrated liberal I can state definitively that Bill Clinton governed further to the Left than Barack Obama has so far. ). So, with all that in mind, you would expect a supporter of Bill Clinton in 1996 to be a supporter of Barack Obama in 2008. Instead, Joe voted for McCain, and now trashes President Obama every chance he gets. Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say that every white person who opposes President Obama does so for racial reasons, but there are a lot of "Joes" out there, and Republican politicians know this.

So, because even the most right-wing Republicans can't get away with saying they don't like President Obama because he's black, they find other ways to imply that he's not a Real American ( in other words, not a white Christian ). This is where we get all this "birther" ( The claim that Obama was actually born in Kenya, and back in 1961, his mother, the State of Hawaii ( Which has the official documents that prove he was born in Hawaii ) two different Hawaii newspapers ( which printed birth announcements of Obama's birth back in 1961 ) conspired to fake that he was born in the USA so that he could one day become President. ) and "Obama is a Muslim" nonsense from. However, most mainstream Republican can't even get away with talking about the birther stuff or the Muslim stuff directly. Instead, they need to speak in code again. When asked if they believe if Obama was born in the USA or if he is a Muslim, just about all the potential Republican Presidential candidates say stuff like "I take President's Obama's word for it that he was born in the USA" or "I take Presidents Obama's word for it that he's a Christian". In other words, they are telling the far-Right base of the Republican party "Look, for the sake of keeping the liberal mainstream media from tearing me apart, I've got to pretend I believe that President Obama is a Christian who was born in the USA - but you and I both know that he's really a foreign Muslim socialist who wants to turn the good old USA into a Muslim caliphate.".

Trump however, isn't playing that secret code game. He's come right out and said he doesn't believe the Obama was born in the USA. He's even claimed that his investigators in Hawaii have uncovered evidence ( none of which he's released to the public ) that Obama wasn't born there. Instead of hiding the crazy aspects of the Republican party that could scare away moderate voters, he's letting it all hang out. Sorry to use a second crude analogy in this post, but the emergence of Trump really does makes it seem like the Republicans are walking around with their dick hanging out.

,,, and Obama has got to be loving this.

What's worse for Republicans is that because Trump's now leading in the polls, lots of the other Republican candidates might decide to follow Trumps lead. It things keep going the way they're going, it will eventually get to the point that where the Republican's will nominate a Presidential candidate who is completely unelectable in the general election.

Of course, I don't think the Republican's will really nominate Trump. In fact, fact I don't even think Trump really intends to run for President. I think this is all just a big publicity stunt to feed his ego and put more money in his pocket.

However, a guy can dream, can't he?

Rich

Frosty the Snowman is Jesus.

2011-04-13T22:53:00.002-04:00

Maybe I'm being a wee bit sacrilegious, and I'm probably not the first person to notice this, but I've come to the conclusion that the story of Frosty the Snowman is basically the story of Jesus Christ. How so? Well, consider the following parallels between the biblical account of Jesus Christ, and the story of Frosty the Snowman from the song and the classic TV special.

Jesus: Was born on Christmas.

Frosty: Was made with "Christmas snow" ( snow that fell on Christmas Day - so Frosty was also essentially born on Christmas. ).

Jesus: Sacrificed himself to pay for man's sins by letting the his enemies capture him in a garden ( Gethsemane ). His enemies ultimately condemned him to death and killed him.

Frosty: Selflessly put his own life in danger by carrying a freezing little girl into a warm indoor garden ( a greenhouse ). His enemy ( the magician ) was able to trap him in the greenhouse and Frosty died via melting.

Jesus: Was raised from the dead by God, who is a powerful, fatherly ( "God the Father ), eternal, omniscient figure, who judges people on whether they've been bad or good.

Frosty: Was raised from the dead by Santa,who is a powerful, fatherly ( "Father Christmas" ), eternal ( never seems to age ), omniscient ( "He sees you when you're sleeping. He knows when you're awake" ), and judges people on whether they've been bad or good ( "He's making a list and checking it twice - gonna find out who's naughty or nice."; "He knows if you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake" ).

Jesus: Shortly after rising from the dead, he ascended up into Heaven ( where the powerful, omniscient figure ( God ) lives ).

Frosty: Shortly after being raised from the dead, he headed back "up" to the North Pole ( where the powerful, omniscient figure ( Santa ) lives).

Jesus: Predicted he would come again someday ( The Second Coming ).

Frosty: "He waved goodbye saying 'Don't you cry. I'll be back again someday'."

Well, it looks like I've set my personal record for "Most Random Post Ever".

Rich

I'd rather be hated than misunderstood

2011-03-31T21:45:00.005-04:00

I'd rather be hated than misunderstood.

I was reflecting a bit while reading the book "Being Wrong", and I decided that the statement above defines me.

That's it. I'm tempted to give a bunch of examples ( because I very much do want to be understood ), but I'm pressed for time, so that will have to do.

Rich

P.S. "Pressed for time" really means "It's about 9:45 PM on March 31st, and I don't want to have my first empty month in my blog archives".

P.P.S Sorry to keep anyone hanging regarding Part 2 of "Why I Run". I've been quite busy lately, but I'll get to Part 2 eventually.

Why I Run ( Part 1 )

2011-02-27T22:46:00.003-05:00

I sit on the edge of my bed with a weight wrapped around my right ankle. I slowly extend the lower portion of my right leg until it is completely parallel to the floor, and then slowly lower this part of the leg back down until my right heel is about an inch from the side of of the bed. I do this over and over again, and as I do this, my right knee makes a sound very much like the sound of crinkling bubble-wrap. Eventually pressure starts to build up in the knee. The bubble-wrap sound slowly fades away, and after a few silent extensions of the leg, the knee makes a huge CRACK sound when I extend the leg.

However, as bad as this all might sound, this really isn't a problem.

The problem is ...

... my right knee is my good knee!

So yeah, my knees give me trouble sometimes. While some of these problems are the unavoidable consequence of being 41, a good deal of the problems I have with my knees can be directly attributed to my running regimen. Of course. most people who hear about my cracking knees ( or literally hear my cracking knees ) don't give me much sympathy. They'll look at me in a bemused sort of way, and say things to me that often include words like "swimming", "biking", and "elliptical machine". Let's face it - there are certainly lots of ways to do cardio that don't involve the wear and tear that running put on my knees. So, considering all this, I guess the natural question I should be asking myself is ...

Why do I run?

Well, it might take a while to give a comprehensive answer to that question, so let me start by explaining why I even started to run in the first place. My current love of running can all be traced back to one thing, and that thing is ...

Basketball

If you've known for me a while or have read most of my previous posts, you probably already know that I had rather severe asthma as a child. Back then, running long distances was the furthest thing from my mind. Back then, I would have had an asthma attack if I tried to run the length of a city block.

All that started to change when my Dad built a basketball hoop in my backyard when I was about 12 ( BTW, when I wrote "built", I really did mean "built" rather than "installed". I installed a basketball hoop for my kids last spring; my dad actually built a hoop for my brother and me. One day, when walking home from the train station after work, he noticed an old basketball hoop ( just the metal part the ball goes through - there wasn't any backboard ) that had been left out in somebody's trash. He decided to take the discarded hoop home and mount it on the garage in our backyard. He took some leftover pieces from a metallic shelving system ( he had installed metalic shelves in our basement years earlier ) and basically built what looked like a 4 foot high by 3 foot wide metallic bookcase ( 1 foot deep ) with shelves 1 foot, 2 feet, and 3 feet off the ground. He then attached a piece of plywood ( a piece about the sized of an NBA backboard - he painted the piece white ) to the front of this "bookshelf". He attached the hoop to the backboard/bookshelf structure, and then attached the entire thing to the garage ( Actually, he may have attached the "bookshelf" to the garage first, and then attached the plywood/hoop, but you get the idea. The entire hoop/backboard combo was completely homemade from discarded/spare parts. ). I'll have to remind myself to thank my Dad the next time I talk to him. That hoop gave me lots of enjoyment over the years, and the skills I eventually gained gave me an athletic confidence that will endure for the rest of my life.). At the time my upper body was so weak that I couldn't reach the basket on a 15-foot shot unless I produced momentum by starting the shot between my legs and moving the ball rapidly from between my legs to a foot above my shoulders before releasing the ball ( kinda like the classic underhanded shot a little kid might shoot, except that I would release the ball like a regular shot with one hand behind the ball ( rather than one hand on each side of the ball )). However I quickly gained both strength and accuracy, and soon I found myself spending most of my free daylight hours shooting hoops.

As I entered my teen years I really didn't have the endurance ( or the confidence ) to start playing basketball games against other teens ( and young adults ) in the local parks, but I had already started a training regimen that would build the foundation of my game. I would take various mid-range shots from all over my backyard ( The deepest shots I could take from my backyard were from about 15 feet away. There was a fence 7 feet to the right of the basket, so I really couldn't take any deep shots from the right side of the basket. There was more room on the left side of the yard, but I had to contend with a garden that started at the left boarder of the garage and extended about 6 feet into the "court" ( There was a raised 2-inch concrete boarder around the entire garden, and a similar boarder about 3 feet from the right fence that extended about 3 feet into the "court". I can't tell you how many ankles I twisted landing on those concrete boarders. Those things are one of the reasons why I have a comically limited side-to-side range of motion in my ankles these days. ), as well as a peach tree in the garden and a clothesline on the far left side of our yard. If I wanted to take a shot deeper than 15 feet, I needed to step into a narrow driveway between our house and our neighbor's house ( My aunts lived next door, which was a good thing for me. I don't think that most people not related to me would have put up with the basketball noise all day ( not to mention the thousands of times I needed to go into their yard when the ball would go over the fence ))), and sprint toward the basket as soon as I released those mid-range shots. Whether the shot went in or not I would jump in the air to catch ball as it came off ( or through ) the rim and put up a layup before I landed. Doing this over and over again did 4 things for me:

1) It improved my mid-range shot.
2) It improved my leaping ability .
3) It gave me the ability to make off-balance layups with either hand from any spot near the basket.
4) It improved my endurance.

Yes "endurance". That 9-letter word is really the whole point of all the rambling tangent-laden paragraphs above. Basketball gave me endurance and help me overcome my childhood asthma. Basketball is the reason why I ultimately had the ability to run regularly.

However, having the ability and the inclination to do something are two different things. Despite that fact that I had mostly overcame my asthma ( pet allergies can still give me asthma attacks ) and had better-than average endurance, I never really had much of a desire to get my cardio exercise by running. I figured jogging would be bad for my knees, and I was quite wary about my knees, especially considering they started making all sorts of weird cracking sounds by the time I was 16.

So, I really didn't do any kind of distance running until I was 31 ( I started my running regimen 10 years ago in February of 2001 ), when basketball had an impact on my fitness again. At the time, I was playing on the company basketball team. I'd been playing on the team for 5 years ( I was actually one of the founding members of the company team. If the company team had existed a few years earlier,I certainly would have joined the team at the age of 23 rather than 26. I can't really take much credit for founding the team - the idea came from a guy I was supervising. He was fresh out of college and asked me if our company had a basketball team. When I told him we didn't have a team, he actually had the gumption to ask HR if the company could sponsor a team ( pay for league entry fees, uniforms, etc. ). The next thing you know, management said "yes" to the request and we had a company basketball team. ), and while I was still enjoying the games ( we played 30 - 40 games a year ), I was starting to feel my age for the first time.

You see, jumping had always been a big part of my game. Of course jumping is a big part of basketball in general, but I relied on my jumping ability a lot more than the average player. The biggest weakness in my basketball game is my dribbling ability. I'm not a bad dribbler these days ( I knew enough about the finer points of dribbling to teach Michael how to do it well ), but I've never really had quick hands, and dribbling wasn't a big part of the foundation of my game. As I mentioned above, I taught myself to play the game with a regimen that involved a lot of shooting and jumping, but not much dribbling. So, when I eventually gained the confidence to play games at the park, I found that I didn't have much of an ability to dribble around people to get close enough to the basket to make all those off-balance layups I had practiced. However, I found that I could jump around people. I know that "jump around people" might seem like an odd term, so I'll offer the following example:

Often when I was driving towards the basket and found a defender between me and the basket, I would leap directory towards the left or right shoulder of the defender. I would then twist my body 90 degrees in the air ( so that my back was facing the defender ( so the defender couldn't really get his hands on the ball without reaching around me and fouling me ) and arch my back to avoid contact with the defender. Once I got past the defender, I would twist my body 90 degrees back to its original orientation, and then put up a layup before I landed.

A basketball move like the one above ( plus many others where I would just jump into traffic and contort my body until I found space to put up a shot ) works fine if you can stay in the air long enough to pull it off. I could easily stay in the air long enough when I was 21, but by the time I was 31, it was getting a little bit tougher. I wasn't as if I was out of shape or anything, but very few people have as springy legs in their early 30's as they did in their early 20's. So yeah, losing leaping ability as you age is a fact of life, but it was a fact I was having a hard time dealing with. I constantly found my basketball brain writing checks that my body couldn't cash. I would leap into the air with a plan of action, and found that I was landing before I could execute that plan. I was only landing a split second earlier than I was in the past. Most people probably wouldn't have even noticed, but I noticed, and knew I was going to have to adjust my game to adjust to this new reality.

So, I decided I needed to improve my endurance. I knew I wasn't as quick and as fast as I was in my younger days. I knew I could no longer outrun a lot of the younger guys at the beginning of games. However, if I had better endurance than those younger guys, I might be able to outrun them at the end of games - when lots of games are won and lost. Thus, I resolved to dramatically improve my endurance. There were two treadmills in the fitness room of the apartment complex my wife and I were living in at the time. I tried the treadmills out, set a few goals for myself, and the rest as they say, is history.

Still, why treadmills rather than exercise bikes, stair-masters, rowing machines, or elliptical machines? Well, to lean that, you'll need to read Part 2.

Rich

It's that time of year again

2011-01-15T11:14:00.002-05:00

Another birthday, another big Jets playoff game.

Last night I wrote an email to EZ to respond to some of his Jets-related replies to my "My Excuse" blog post. The email got pretty long, and considering the time I spent on it, I figured that I might as well save all those thoughts in a blog post. I know that at least one other football fan ( a Jets Fan ) reads this blog, so I might as well take a few minutes to cut-n-paste my Jets thoughts into this post. Anyway, what follows between the two lines of "#############################################" is the Jets section of my email to EZ.

#############################################

Now, on to the Jets ...

You wrote ...

"P.S.: Last year, nobody thought they had any business being in the playoffs... this year they are closer to belonging there. Maybe they will pick things up in the postseason, again...?"

Actually, I had more confidence going into the playoffs last year than this year. While the Jets were a 9-7 team last year ( with 2 gift wins in their last 2 games ) and a 11-5 team this year, I actually thought the 9-7 teams was a stronger team. It will take a while to explain this, but here's why ...

Yes, everybody said the Jets were a 7-7 team that got handed 2 wins by the Colts and Bengals at the end of the year, but consider ...

1) While the Jets would have lost to the Colts if the Colts had been trying, there was no doubt in my mind that the 2009 Jets could beat the 2009 Bengals 100% of the time in the Meadowlands whether the Bengals were trying or not ( The Jets pretty much proved that 1 week after their final regular season game by beating the Bengals by 10 in the playoff game at Cincinnati.). So, that makes the 9-7 2009 Jets, a theoretical 8-8 team.

2) However, the Jets also played 4 games that year that could have easily gone one way or the other based on a lucky break or two ( 2 really close games against Miami in which the games came down to a 1st and goal situation at the end; a game against Atlanta that came down to a 4th and goal play at the end of the game; an overtime game against Buffalo in which a Jets run in OT that would have put them in easy field goal range was negated by a questionable holding penalty that had no impact on the play ). The Jets lost all 4 of those games. If the Jets played games like that 400 times they would have gone about 200 - 200 in those games. So, if you take the luck factor out of the equation, the Jets should have won 2 of those 4 games. When the 2009 season ended, I was convinced the Jets had the ability of a solid 10-6 team rather than a team that would have been 7-9 if they had faced real competition the last two weeks of the season

On the other hand, consider these 4 games played by the 2010 Jets:

Oct 17th at Denver:

The Jets are losing by 3 with a little more than a minute left in the game and are facing 4th and 6 from the Broncos 48. Sanchez drops back, and uncorks a bomb more than 50 years in the air towards Santonio Holmes near the goal line. Let me tell you, when that ball got airborne, every Jets fan had the same reaction Jets fans had last week when Sanchez threw a bomb to Braylon Edwards on a 3rd and 5 when the Jets were trying to run out the clock against the Colts

WFT are they doing!!!

That's such a low percentage pass!!!

JUST GET THE FUCKIN' FIRST DOWN!!!!!

GOD, I HATE BEING A JETS FAN!

GOD, I HATE MY LIFE!

( Well, Maybe not everybody had those exact thought, but you get the idea. )

So, this game was pretty much lost, until the Jets got a ridiculous amount of luck. Specifically ...

1) Sanchez underthrows the ball.

2) Santonio Holmes see the ball has been underthrown, stops short, turns around, and subsequently loses his balance and falls on his butt.

3) The defender stops short, turns around, loses his balance, and instinctively flails one of his arms backward to try to keep from falling down.

4) That hand on the flailing arm hits Santonio Holmes on his facemask and gets caught in it. The defender is called for pass interference. The only reason the Jets get the call from the official ( and it was the right call ) is that the hand caught the facemask. The only reason the hand caught the facemask was that Santonio had already fallen on his butt!

The Jets were RIDICULOUSLY lucky here. On the next play they score the touchdown that wims the game.

November 7th at Detroit:

With about 4 minutes left in the game the Jets get the ball down by 10 points. I'm pretty sure they had already blown at least 1 timeout earlier in half. Somehow, they manage to score 10 points in the last 4 minutes without having to attempt an onside kick. This was only achieved due to some incredibly poor clock management by the Lions when they had the ball. The game goes to OT and the Jets win.

November 14th at Cleveland:

About 5 minutes into OT, a Cleveland receiver catches a pass an runs into field goal range. Just as I'm about to scream about what an awful loss this would be ( Cleveland scored a TD late in regulation to tie the game ), the receiver fumbles. He's really close to the sideline, but somehow the ball stays in bounds and the Jets recover the ball.

Later Sanchez throws and interception with about 90 seconds left in the same. I'm just hoping for a tie at this point, but somehow the Jets get the ball back ( AWFUL playcalling by the Browns ) and score a touchdown with seconds left to win the game.

November 21st vs. Houston

The Texan's kick a field goal to go up 27-23. This happens one play after they fail on a 3rd down conversion that would have clinched the game. There are 55 seconds left in the game and the Jets have NO timeouts. This was shaping up the be the worst loss of the year, becasue the Jets were ahead 23-7 going into the 4th quarter. Somehow Sanchez drives them down the field to win the game on a touchdown pass to Santonio Holmes. I scream so load at this point that I literally make a few kids cry ( A bunch of Ruth's college friends and their kids were at the house that day ).

If the Jets had played 400 games like the ones above, I think they'd be real fortunate to win 100 of them. However, I'll be real generous and give the Jets credit for 1 out of those 4 wins. Thus, I think the 11-5 Jets are really more like an 8-8 team.

If you are still not convinced that the 2009 Jets were a better team than the 2010 Jets consider the following stat. In 2009, the Jets defense gave up only 8 touchdown passed all year. Think about how incredible that is for a moment. If a quarterback throws only 8 TD passed over 16 games he'd be out of a job. The 2009 Jets made QBs look like guys who did not even belong in the league. In 2009, they played against Tom Brady twice, Drew Brees once, as well Peyton Manning for about 2.5 quarters.

The 2010 Jets gave up 24 touchdown passes. That's not awful, but it can't compare to the defense of the 2009 Jets.

Anyway, before I seem too much like a Gloomy Gus, here are a few more stats.

Career records on the road in the playoffs ( I'm not counting the Superbowl as a road game )

Peyton Manning: 2-5

Tom Brady: 3-2

Mark Sanchez: 3-1

Now, I'm not trying to suggest the Sanchez is better than Brady or Manning. I'm simply pointing out ( as Drew Brees learned last week ) that winning on the road in the playoffs is a hard thing to do, and Sanchez has been able to do it. That bodes well for the future.

Also, I think it's kinda interesting that Eli Manning had more road playoff victories in one season ( 3 in 2007 ) than his big brother has had in his whole career. As a big brother, I'm a little bit insulted. Time to step it up, Peyton!

It's also worth nothing the Jets victory over the Colts last week marked the first time the Jets franchise has ever won playoff games in consecutive years. It also made Mark Sanchez and Rex Ryan the Jets all time leaders in playoff wins with 3 ( Yes, even counting Superbowl III, Namath only won 2 playoff games in his career.). I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that stat.

In any case, it should be Sunday, though as usual, I'm not really expecting much.

However, for the first time in my life, I do believe the the Jets have a coach/QB combo that WILL ( evenatually ) take us to the Promised Land.

#############################################

BTW, as I gear up for the big game tomorrow, I find myself playing the following video quite a bit ( I was playing it throughout last week's win against the Colts ):

Also, just for the sake of balance ( and humor ) I've decided to also include the following Tom Brady video in this post. I think I've mentioned it before, but the video below inspired me to get my MoLewis57 YouTube account.

Rich

Peter's Christmas Pageant

2010-12-31T22:17:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year folks!

I don't have anything to write about the the New Year, but I would like to share some Christmas songs from Peter and his classmates ( Peter is in the grey sweater and plaid tie ).

Note: The video below is actually too wide to fit on my blog page, so just double-click on the video if you want to see it full-sized on he YouTube page.

Rich

These Boots Are Made for Walkin' ( for more than 22 years )

2010-12-29T00:25:00.003-05:00

A few days ago a major blizzard hit the east coast of the USA. We got at least two feet of snow ( The town right next to us got 30 inches of snow, so we were probably within a few inches of that ), so it was time to get out my old boots and get to work with my snowblower and shovel ( I needed to use the shovel a lot more than I would have liked . There were still very strong winds the day after the storm. A lot of the snow you would try to blow away would just blow right back at you. ). The snow was quite impressive, but I'm not going to include pictures of the snow-scape in this blog post. I've already posted enough snow pictures in his blog over the last few years.

Instead, I posted a picture of my boots. My late mother took me to a shoe store to buy these books back in August of 1988. I was about to head off to Cornell University, and my Mom wanted to make sure my feet were properly protected against the harsh Ithaca winters.

Well, more than 22 years later these books are still protecting my feet. They're still 100% waterproof and my feet have never felt the least bit cold in these boots ( BTW, in case you are wondering were you can get such great boots, I just discovered that this brand of boots ( Northland ) was discontinued in 1998 ). Now, I certainly don't wear these boot every day ( I only put them on when the weather is really bad ), but regardless of how often I've worn them, it's still rather impressive that these boots have lasted for more than 22 years.

So, their durability makes these boots rather special, but what makes them even more special is that they were a gift from my Mom. Whenever I put these boots on, it kinda feels like my Mom is still looking out for me all these years later. I hope these boots can last at least another 22 years, cause it will kind of be a sad day when I finally need to replace them.

Rich

My Excuse

2010-12-12T22:33:00.001-05:00

I'm going to try to keep this post relatively short, because at this point I don't think too many people are actually reading this blog regularly. I wouldn't really blame anyone if they stopped reading my blog, because to be completely honest, I really haven't been bringing a lot to the table lately. There was a time when I was regularly writing about 10 blog posts a month. There was a time when I making several YouTube videos a week. There was even a time when I used to post photos to facebook every once in a while. Times have certainly changed since back then.

Why is that?

Well, there are a whole bunch of reason, but for now I'll just off one excuse.

As some of you know, I'm a HUGE sports fan. Prior to September of 2007, the only real "hobbies" I had ever had were watching sports, reading about sports, talking about sports, thinking about sports, playing sports, and listening to sports talk radio.

Starting around mid-September 2007, my favorite baseball team ( The Mets ) began a collapse of historic proportions that cost them 1st place and made them the laughing-stock of the baseball world. My favorite football team ( The Jets ) was in the midst of a 4-12 season, and my favorite basketball team ( The Knicks ) had completely sucked for about 7 years.

Around that same time, I started making YouTube videos, and I really don't think the timing was a coincidence. My traditional "hobby" was becoming far too depressing, so I was open to finding a new one.

Well my online hobby has been a lot of fun, and I expect it will bring me a lot of joy in the future, but over the last year, I'm found myself focusing back on sports. Last January, the Jets made a surprise run to the AFC championship game. There were playing well enough this year, that I found myself going on a desperate quest to buy an antenna. They were playing so well, that less than a week ago, they were tied for the best record in football, and they had me dreaming about finally getting to see my football team win the championship.

Well, in the last week, I've watched the Jets lose 45-3 ( !!!!!!! ) and 10-6, and all my dreams of a Jets championship have been dashed for another year ( I've been rooting for my 3 favorite teams for more than 100 combined seasons, and only in one of those seasons did my team win the championship ( and that happened way back in 1986 ). ).

So, I guess it's not surprising that less than 3 hours after the Jets last loss, I found myself writing this blog post. Does the Jets recent ineptitude mean that I'll be online a lot more in the near future?

Who knows? After all, after 10 years of sucking to high heaven, the Knicks are now on an 8-game winning streak.

Rich

P.S. So much for making this post short. I'm not sure if anyone is going to read this, but it was fun to to write again.

Fall Fun

2010-11-02T01:44:00.000-04:00

This was a lot easier when I was a little kid.

I expected to hear the sounds of leaves crackling and crunching when I did this. Instead I heard a faint rustling followed by a thump.

Rich

Everything I never wanted to know about antennas, but I was afraid I would have to ask.

2010-10-30T23:41:00.007-04:00

Just a mundane slice of my life ...

On October 16th, my cable system ( Cablevision, a cable company with more than 3 million subscribers in the Northeast USA ) stopped broadcasting the FOX network ( which is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corp ). News Corp's last contract with Fox ended on October 16th, and there was a big dispute about how much Cablevision would have to pay to carry the FOX network.

This initially wasn't that big a deal to me. These disputes usually only last a few days, and I don't really watch any FOX show regularly these days ( Well, I do love The Simpsons and Family Guy, but they are not really what you might call "appointment viewing" anymore. Considering how many stations show reruns of those shows, if I miss any new episode of The Simpsons or Family Guy, it's only a matter of time before I see it as a rerun on another station ( Plus, there is always Hulu. ). ).

However, I was concerned about one thing; My beloved New York Jets would be playing against the Green Bay Packers on October 31st, and they only network with broadcast rights to that game is FOX. I probably wrote enough about my devotion to the Jets in this post, but I'd just like to reiterate that the Jets have not won a championship in my lifetime ( The last time they even played in the NFL Championship game was when they won the Super Bowl back in January of 1969 ), and watching the Jets win the championship is one of the items on my bucket list of things I want to see before they put me in the ground.

Well, the Jets are still a long way from the Super Bowl, but they are 5-1 this year ( in a 16 game season ) and are among the 3 or 4 teams in the league with the best chance of winning the championship this year. I'm as excited about this team as I've been in many years ( though as a long-suffering Jets fan, I'm still very worried that this team will far apart like all the promising Jets teams have in my lifetime. ), so I'd really hate to miss a game this year.

Anyway, I wasn't too concerned, because Jets games usually are not even broadcasts on the FOX network. The Jets usually only have one game broadcast on the FOX network a year, and I figured things would probably get resolved by October 31th. However, as we started to get closer to October 31st, and the FOX/Cablevision dispute became more contentious, I started to research contingency plans.

I looked into any and all options for watching the game online via a live feed, but I really couldn't find any non-sketchy websites that could guarantee access to the Jets-Packers game. The best option was probably this site, but this company has only existed for a month or so, and is being sued by every major broadcast network. While their 30-day free-trial sounds like a tempting offer, I didn't feel comfortable about giving my credit card number to a new company that might be sued into financial ruin soon. So, I started to research antennas.

FOX is actually a broadcast network, so by law all their programming has to be broadcast for free over the air. However, getting reception via an indoor antenna can be sketchy at times, and as much as I love the Jets, I wasn't going to buy a big outdoor antenna and install it on my roof to watch just one Jets game.

Still, an antenna was really my only option other than unreliable online feeds, so I started to do research. I started to do LOTS of research. This blog post has gotten long enough, so I won't bore you by writing about any technical details, but lets just say I now know a shitload about antennas, far more than I even wanted to know about antennas.

So, after lots of research, I bought a $15 indoor antenna today ( well worth the price, if the thing actually worked ), brought it home, hooked it up to the TV, pointed the antenna in precisely the correct direction ( Google Maps was involved here ), crossed my fingers, and tuned the TV to the correct channel.

Voila!!!! At 6:30 PM on October 30th, FOX was back on my TV! About a year ago, all over the air TV broadcasts in the USA switched from an analog signal to a digital signal. The nice thing about a digital signal, is that you never get the "snow" or "ghosts" you would often get using an indoor antenna to get analog signals. With digital, you either get a perfect picture or no picture at all, and my little $15 dollar precisely-aimed indoor antenna was getting a perfect picture.

I was actually stunned by this. Despite all my preparation and research, I really didn't think the antenna would actually work.

Anyway, the amusing postscript of this story is the following: After watching the baseball World Series on FOX via my antenna all night ( much better than watching it on crappy online feeds), I switched my TV back to my Cablevision cable box input and started channel surfing a bit. After about an hour of surfing ( just before I decided to start working on this blog post ), I discovered that FOX was available on Cablevision again. Apparently, as I was hooking up my antenna, Cablevision and News Corp were resolving their dispute. As far as I can tell from news articles, FOX became available on Cablevision just minutes after I hooked up my antenna.

Well, I guess I've now got 2 ways to watch the Jets tomorrow, though I must say I'm a little disappointed with Cablevision. It seems like they caved a bit in the negotiations with News Corp, which of course will mean higher cable bills soon ( Switching cable providers is a bigger pain in the butt than you might think, because we get our cable TV, internet access, and phone service all though Cablevision. I'm not fan of Cablevision, but I must admit that their internet service is ultra fast. All non-biased reviews indicate that all other internet service providers in our area offer much slower upload/download speeds than Cablevision. I could cancel the Cablevision TV and keep the Internet and phone service, but the price of the Internet and phone service goes WAY up if you do that. ).

Oh well, at least I got a good antenna for situations like this in the future, and I have all this antenna knowledge that I could use if I ever find myself on one of those oh-so-popular antenna-based quiz shows.

Rich

Guest Blogger: My Mom

2010-10-24T23:03:00.005-04:00

A few days ago, Michael was going through some of my old books on a bookshelf in our basement. He was fascinated by some of the bigger books ( particularly one that had about 3000 pages ), so I decided to show him my copy of the complete works of Shakespeare ( a book I bought more than 20 years ago ). When I opened this book, I made two discoveries:

1) I found an old ornate envelope which contained a wedding invitation to my parent's wedding, along with a Mass book for their wedding Mass.

While that was certainly cool, I thought the second discovery was cooler.

2) I found the letter below:

This is a letter my mother wrote to her friend Kathy when Kathy was diagnosed with breast cancer. I'm not sure how this letter got in the Shakespeare book. My guess is that Kathy gave the letter to my Dad after my Mom died ( August 1996 ) and before my Dad moved out of our family home in Queens. I was already married and out of the house by this time, but a lot of my stuff, including my Shakespeare book, was still there. I'm not sure if my Dad put the letter in the book or if I did when I was clearing my stuff out of the old house ( when my Dad sold the Queens house about about 10 years ago ), but I never recalled seeing the letter before, and it was nice to find.

It was nice to see my Mom's handwriting again.

It was nice to "hear" her words again via a letter.

Most of all, it was inspiring to be reminded of what a good person my Mom was. Here she was, suffering from the ovarian cancer that would ultimately kill her, and she took the time to comfort a friend. I think I've accomplished a lot in my life up to this point, but I really hope I can live up to my Mom's example some day. So, without further ado, I'm going to turn the rest of this blog post over to my Mom:

Dear Kathy,

I'm so sorry to hear of your illness. I guess you know I have ovarian cancer. I just want you to know I have met so many women who have breast cancer and are doing great. One woman had the cancer invade her lymph system; that was 14 years ago and I'm glad to say she's happy and very healthy.

Barbara waited two years before she had her breast checked. The tumor was as big as a baseball; it invaded the muscle of her chest. After her operation she was given chemo, then radiation, and then more chemo by pills. This March it will be 13 years and thank God she's doing great. So please don't give up; cancer can be beaten. Keep thinking of all the people who are getting well. I know you must be scared about your treatment. But remember everyone is different; some people don't get sick on chemo. Barbara was expected to get sick and she didn't. She just got a little tired.

I just want you to know we are all praying for you. Let your family's love and your friends help you through this difficult time.

Love,

June

Secret Hugs

2010-10-21T22:31:00.001-04:00

My baby doesn't want to hug me anymore.

"My baby" is my youngest son Peter ( 5 years old ). I know it's generally mothers who think of their kids as babies, but I'm a lot more affectionate than a typical Dad, and I think part of me will always feel like my kids are my babies, no matter how old they get.

That's why it kinda hurts a little bit that Peter has decided that he doesn't want to hug and kiss me anymore. His older brother Michael still gives me a goodnight kiss without fail each night, but Peter tells me in no uncertain terms that he only want to hug and kiss Mommy.

Actually, he's made it really clear that he only wants to hug and kiss girls and never wants to hug and kiss boys. Those of you who have seen my YouTube videos know that I'm the last Dad in the world who would teach his kids strict gender rolls or display any attitude that would even hint at homophobia, so I really have no idea where he is getting this attitude from. However, things are what they are. It's really hard to change Peter's mind about anything. He's decided that he won't hug boys, and that mean no hugs for me.

Well, actually, it means no hugs for me as far as Peter can tell.

While Peter doesn't want to hug me, he still likes to do "boy" things like wrestle. So, I'll ask him to wrestle, and the next thing you know we'll have our arms wrapped around each other.

He thinks we're wrestling, ...

... but I know we're hugging. :)

Rich

I wanna be famous

2010-09-28T21:32:00.002-04:00

No, I actually don't wanna be famous. I don't exactly want to be a hermit either, but I certainly enjoy my privacy too much to want to be famous. I gave this blog post the title I did because it represents something that really makes me smile. It represents Monday nights with my boys.

Each Monday night, the boys and I sit down to watch their favorite cartoon "Total Drama World Tour", the theme song of which is "I wanna be famous".

"Total Drama World Tour" is the third season of the "Total Drama Island" series, which is basically a satirical cartoon version of "Survivor". I had watched parts of a few episodes during the first two seasons, and while I found the show to be quite clever and entertaining, I never could find the time to commit myself to following an entire season-long story-arch. However, this year I'm fully on board with this show because my kids are fully on board. I can't tell you how much fun it is to sit down with my kids each week to watch something we all truly enjoy ( Of course, we all kind of enjoy it on different levels. Michael loves the fact that it's a competition ( He can't wait to see who gets eliminated each week ), Peter loves the cartoon slapstick, and I love the cartoony stuff, the satirical aspect of the show, and hearing my boys laugh. ). It's not that I don't spend a lot of time with the boys otherwise, but it's just nice that three of us have this special "Daddy and the boys" time each week. I guess we'll eventually have a lot of "guys" time together when they start watching sports with me ( Micheal does sometimes, but he doesn't quite have the attention span for a full game yet ), but for now, watching cartoons together is as good as it gets.

As long as I'm on the subject of TV, I think it's about time that I say a few words about the "LOST" phenomenon. Well, not actually "LOSTt" itself ( which I never actually watched ), but just TV shows in general that have complex plot lines that extend over several seasons. You've got to be a little bit careful with shows like these. It's great when the show plays out to a conclusion ( like "The Fugitive" or "LOST" ), but it REALLY REALLY sucks if you get sucked into a show that winds up getting canceled before there is any resolution. I can't emphasize how much that SUCKS. For those of us who read and loved the Harry Potter series, just think about much it would have sucked if J.K. Rowling had died right before she wrote book 7. That's how much it sucks when a show you love gets canceled before there is any resolution.

You've got to be kind of savvy about which show you choose to follow, plus a little bit lucky. I've been kind of unlucky at times when it come to picking shows. I passed on shows like "LOST" and the new "BattleStar Galactica", but at about this time last year, I got sucked into a show called "FlashForward". "FlashForward" was based on an intriguing concept, but unfortunately, it got canceled after one season. Worse yet, the final episode ended on a cliff-hanger, so it looks like all fans of the show will be left hanging indefinitely.

( Why did it get canceled? Well, it was officially canceled for poor-ratings, but every problem has a root cause, and the root cause of FlashForward's bad ratings can be summed up in 2 words:

Joseph Fiennes

My God, is that man an AWFUL actor. Every time I watch him act, I'm stunned that he could have emerged from the same womb as Ralph Fiennes. As intriguing as the concept of "FlashForward" was, I should have stayed away from that show as soon as I realized that Joseph Fiennes was playing the lead role. That show was doomed from the start. Then again, he did play the title role in a film that won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Or course, I still maintain that "Shakespeare in Love" was by far the wost movie ever to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. I'm still stunned that it was even nominated for an Academy Award.

BTW, I have a theory about why "Shakespeare in Love" won the Academy Award. The movie is full of supposedly clever allusions to many of Shakespeare's works. The American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences ( the people who vote for the awards ) is probably full of a lot of poorly educated shallow types who like to think of themselves as great thespians who might someday perform Shakespeare , but who actually are not smart enough to comprehend most of his works. When those people watch "Shakespeare in Love" and are spoon-fed simple allusions to Shakespeare's works, they have the following type of reaction:

"Hey, that's a reference to 'Romeo and Juliet'! I bet most people wouldn't have gotten that reference, but I got it because I'm smart.
. . .
Hey, I think that line is from one of Shakespeare's sonnets! Boy, I am smart! It's great that they made such a smart movie for smart people like me. This is one of the smartest movies I've ever seen. This movie definitely deserves to win the Best Picture award."

Anyway, getting back to be original point this tangent, the people who watched "Shakespeare in Love" were probably also thinking "I can't believe that hack Joseph Fiennes is related to that guy who was in "Schindler's List" and "Quiz Show" ( BTW, I mentioned "Quiz Show" rather than the "The English Patient" because I loved "Quiz Show" and hated "The English Patient" almost as much as "Shakespeare in Love". ). )

Anyway, thus concludes my bashing of all things Joseph Fienness. I think I'm just bitter that he got one of my favorite shows cancels.

However, as upset as I was about the "FlashForward" cancellation, it's not the most disappointing premature-cancellation in my life. Even 14 years after the fact, I'm still upset that "Nowhere Man" was canceled.

To give you an idea of what the premise of "Nowhere Man" was, each episode started with the following monologue from the lead character:

"My name is Thomas Veil, or at least it was. I'm a photographer, I had it all: a wife, Alyson, friends, a career. And in one moment, it was all taken away, all because of a single photograph. I have it; they want it; and they will do anything to get the negative. I'm keeping this diary as proof that these events are real. I know they are... They... have to be."

Sound intriguing? It was to me, and from August 1995 to May 1996 I found myself watching this show religiously. Of course, the show wound up getting canceled after one season. I'll admit that the show had its problems ( It helps if a shows about mysterious conspiracies has at least some level of plausibility and has some logical consistency between episodes. A few episodes of "Nowhere Man" failed on both those counts. ), but the concept of erasing somebody's identity was so interesting that I couldn't help but tune in each week to see how things would turn out.

While it sucked that "Nowhere Man" was canceled fans were not left as badly hanging as the fans of some other canceled shows, because the writer/creator of the show was told that the show was going to be canceled before the final two episodes were produced. Two episodes certainly were not enough time to resolve all the plot elements, but I think the writers did a great job with the final two episodes. I don't want to give too much away ( The complete series is available on DVD, and I highly recommend watching it if you ever get a chance ), but the last scene of the final episode reveals something the makes you see the entire series in an entirely different light ( and fixes some ( but not all ) of the plausibility/consistency issues ). It was a great way to end the series, but it was a bit disappointing.

Anyway, I started writing this post on September 17th, and now I find it's the 28th. I'd better post this baby so I at least have one post for September.

Rich

P.S. Since I started this post, I dipped my toe in The Event. Two episodes so far, both very mediocre. Sure, the show has a lot of mysteries to reveal, but I'm not even sure if I care to know.

P.P.S However, Boardwalk Empire has been awesome so far.

P.P.P.S Just for laughs ...

Visiting my Dad ( a preview )

2010-08-27T23:57:00.000-04:00

I've been visiting my Dad in upstate New York for the past few days. I'll definitely be posting a bunch of photos from the trip, but the Internet is REALLY slow up here, so I can only post a few for now. The two photos below are ...

1) Michael milking a cow ( He actually got some milk out! ).

2) A sample of the natural beauty of Letchworth State Park in upstate New York.

Rich

Better late than never

2010-08-21T00:44:00.000-04:00

Well, most of the people reading this probably already know this ( or have seen the photos a long time ago via one of the Shutterfly links Ruth occasionally send out ), but as promised in this blog post, I finally posted my 2009 California photos to facebook.

Also, considering that the Summer is almost over, I thought I should probably follow through on my promise to finish telling you about what I did on my Spring vacation. For for those who have already forgotten, the "What I did on my Spring vacation" blog posts consisted of this post, this post ( This one has got LOTS of Cornell photos that I probably won't bother to post on facebook - I refuse to show the natural beauty of Cornell in facebook-photo resolution ) , and this post.

What happened next? Well, the story of the rest of that week, the rest of the Spring, and most of the Summer can be summed up in two words: Six Flags

This year, we decided to graduate from Sesame Place, and get a season pass to Six Flags. So far, we've already made 13 trips to the Six Flags complex near our New Jersey home. Clearly, there are a lot of potential photos to post, and you'll probably see those photos on facebook if I ever find the time and energy ( Which could potentially mean that I'll get around to posting these photos next Summer ).

Anyway, it's getting rather late tonight, but don't be surprised if I post some more stuff soon.

Rich

Are You There Rich? It's Me, Mortality.

2010-07-23T00:02:00.000-04:00

I try not to think about death too much.

I particularly try not to think about my own death. The idea of my own death frightens me. I'm not really afraid of the process of death itself, or any pain that might be associated with my death. I'm just afraid of what will happen after I die, or more accurately, what won't happen.

There was a time when I could comfort myself with the thought of an afterlife, but I think that time has passed. I still consider myself to be religious, and I very much want there to be a God and an afterlife, but I'm also a pessimist. I hope there's a God, and I hope's there a place for me in Heaven some day, but I'd be less than honest if I told you I was counting on it. I've discussed my faith in this space before, so if you've been reading this blog you kinda already know that my faith has been on shaky ground for a while now. I think one of the main reasons I've held on to my faith as long as I have ( and still have lots of HOPE that there is an afterlife ), is that I just can't imagine not existing. The idea of not existing really frightens me, so I spend most of my life just pretending that I'll always be around. However, every once in a while something happens that reminds me that I'm not immortal.

This time I was reminded by my glasses, or rather my need to get stronger glasses. I'm getting more far-sighted each year. I'm writing this blog post without my glasses on, but I don't think I'll be able to use a computer without glasses for much longer. I pretty much do all my newspaper and magazine reading with glasses on these days ( I got new reading glasses a week ago, and they make a HUGE difference ), and I'm probably going to start using glasses to write code at work ( I use a relatively large font at work, but I'm beginning to notice some eye strain. ).

So, my new glasses are great and all ( It's really nice to be able to see stuff without straining my eyes ), but they are also a reminder that there are some parts of the aging process I really can't control.

I think I've been fooling myself regarding the aging process for a while now. I've been blessed with a naturally youthful appearance, and I've been luck enough to avoid most of the typical aches and pains of middle age. I've got all my hair, barely any wrinkles, and I work out enough that I'm in far better shape than most 18-year-olds ( Yes, I have balky knees, but my knees have been giving me trouble since I've been 16. Thus, while my occasional knee problems are annoying, they don't really make me feel old ). However, there's really nothing I can do about they fact that my eyeballs are elongating. There's nothing I can do about the fact that whatever tissues were holding my eyes in their original shape are now slowly breaking down. Whether I like it or not, and whether I choose to accept it or not, my body is aging. I've definitely aging, and aging only leads to one thing. The Reaper may be pretty far down the road, but he's definitely coming for me.

OK, I'm not even going to try and gracefully segue from the topic above to a new topic. I'm just going to stop. If I keep writing about *that* topic, I'm going to drive myself nuts. I'll just finish by saying that I love life, and I love my life.

Carpe diem, folks. Carpe diem.

Rich

The Sequence

2010-07-20T23:52:00.003-04:00

I gave my 6-old son Michael a sequence problem today. I asked him to give me the next number in the sequence ...

1, 4, 9, 16, 25, ...

He didn't have any problem coming up with the solution to that one. Before I could ask him a more challenging question, he decided to give me a sequence problem of his own. Michael asked me to give him the next number in the sequence below:

8, 7, 9, 5, 13, -3, 29, ...

I didn't find the question above too hard, but I challenge anyone else to find a 6-year old who can solve the puzzle above, much less design a puzzle like the one above.

Rich

Hoop it up

2010-07-11T20:06:00.002-04:00

A few happy basketball thoughts while I try to get over the fact that LeBron isn't coming to the New York Knicks ...

About a month ago, we decided to get the boys a basketball hoop. Michael had already taken two basketball classes at the local YMCA, and we figured he'd enjoy a hoop of his own ( Of course, Peter's going to enjoy it too, but he'll probably needs about another year of maturity before he'll be ready to learn how to dribble and shoot. At this point, he gets a little frustrated when he tries to play, and doesn't really take instruction well. ).

Of course, getting the hoop, and getting the hoop ready were two different things. I'll be the first to admit that I'm not the most mechanical person in the world ( Well, I do understand all the mechanical principals ( After all, I do have a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering ), but I'm really all thumbs when it comes to working with tools. ), so putting this thing together took the bulk of a Saturday ( It also didn't help that the parts in the box didn't match the list of parts in the instructions. I eventually figured out that a 5/16 inch nylock nut was missing from the set of nuts in the box ( There was some completely random nut of a different size in its place. ) After doing some research into what a nylock nut actually was and figuring out where I could get one, I went out and bought the nylock nut the same day.). However, getting that hoop together was definitely worth the effort. Michael was SOOOOO excited when he saw the hoop. He immediately wanted to head outside to play. He stayed outside until he hit 100 shots ( He kept a running count as he hit each shot. ).

Here's Michael with the hoop on the day I put it together ( Note: I set it up at the minimum height of 7.5 feet. It's important to keep the height of the hoop low when kids are first learning. Not only does it help their confidence, but it gets them into the habit of shooting with proper form rather than heaving the ball a basket that's way too high for them to reach easily. Speaking of proper form, take a look at the photo below. ).

I know it's a little bit blurry, but just take a look at that perfect form. Gee, it looks like the guy who taught that kid how to shoot really knew what he was doing.

( Pausing to pat myself on the back repeatedly. )

You can't imagine how gratifying it is to watch your kid enjoy a hoop, a bike, or any other kind of "some assembly required" toy, knowing that your own sweat and effort went into putting the toy together.

It all felt even more gratifying at 6 AM the next morning. Michael crawled into bed next to me and asked when we could go outside to shoot baskets. He's been shooting hoops at every opportunity ever since.

About a week ago, I thought it would be good for his basketball development to play a game with me. Of course, we wouldn't play a real competitive game, but I though it might be good practice for him took take shots and play defense with a least a tiny bit of pressure. So, I had to set up the rules of the game in such a way that we could "compete" to the extent that it wouldn't be completely obvious to him that I was throwing the game ( BTW, whenever either of my sons gets good enough to legitimately beat me at something, it will be one of the proudest days of my life. ). So, I set up the games with the following rules:

1) I couldn't steal the ball from him.

2) I couldn't raise my hands above my shoulders to block any of his shots.

3) I had to make all my baskets on the bounce. Any "shot" of mine wouldn't count unless it hit

the ground first - thus Micheal had ample opportunity to block all my shots.

4) All my shots would be worth 2 points, but Michael could get 3 points for a shot if he was shooting from more than about 5 feet away.

Making baskets on one bounce was actually a little harder than I thought it would be ( It's been more than 20 years since I used to win games of HORSE shooting shots like that. ), so we actually played to a legitimate 0-0 tie for a while. However, I eventually got the hang of hitting bounce shots again, and I found that he really couldn't get his shots off quick enough to keep me from blocking them or severely altering them, even if I didn't raise my hands above my shoulders. So, at that point, I had to engage in the subtle art of throwing a game to your kid without letting your kid know you are throwing the game.

It's not quite as easy as you might think. I imagine the techniques I used were similar to the techniques used by crooked college basketball players involved in the point shaving scandals of the 1950's. You need to miss shots by just a *little* bit, and be just a half-step slow on defense. You need to do just enough to lose the game.

I tried to make the game as close and dramatic as I could. We were playing to 15, and I got the game to the point where I had a 14-12 lead and the ball. I dribbled the ball a few times and then directed a bounce shot directly into Michael chest as he stood just outside the 3 point line. As he turned to take his shoot, I moved towards him and swiped my hand towards his shooting hand a split second after he let his shot go. I then looked up a prayed the shot would go in ...

SWISH! ( Well actually, more like THUNK, BOUNCE, THUNK, BOUNCE, SWISH, but the important thing is that the shot did go in. ).

Michael 15, Daddy 14. Game over, smiles all around. I gave him a high-five and a hug and we headed inside to have some ice cream.

It's nice to be a Dad! :)

Rich

Coming Attractions

2010-06-27T00:16:00.001-04:00

Do I really need to write a blog post in June?

I guess so - I'd hate to have the first blank month in my blog archives.

It's just that thing have been really busy at work. I have't had nearly the time I'd like to have with my kids on the weekdays, and I even found myself working about 20 hours from home on a recent weekend. So yeah - free time has been short, and when I decide how to allocate the free time I have, I'm sorry to say that my wonderful blog readers lose out to my wife and kids.

Anyway, things should be better at work in a few weeks or so, and when that time comes, I intend to start writing again. Heck, I've even mused about YouTube videos, though I'm not even sure I remember exactly how to work iMovie anymore.

BTW, YouTube came to mind, because a month or so ago a long-time YouTube subscriber of mine sent me a message asking for some advice about life. I don't know if that person is reading this, but I just can't tell you how nice that made me feel. To think that somebody from YouTube land actually thought enough of me to seek out my advice ( after I pretty much abandoned YouTube ) - well it really made me feel like my videos made a little bit of a difference. It made me feel like I wasn't completely wasting my time by making all those videos. I honestly don't know when I'll find the time and energy again to made videos, but the message that subscriber sent certainly makes it more likely that I'll make videos again.

Anyway, enough with the YouTube tangent, I really started this post to talk about my blog a bit ( You know what? I just went back and changed the word "talk" in the previous sentence to "write", but then I changed it back to "talk", because I really do feel like I'm talking to you folks out there when I write these things. ). I just wanted to give you an idea of the things I might be writing about when I find time to write. In no particular order, I hope to write the following posts soon:

1) It's about time I finished up with my story about "What I did on my Spring Vacation". After all, it's already Summer now, and while nobody probably even cares at this point, I probably should finish off that series of posts.

2) Speaking of things that are overdue, I'd really like to post the photos from my California vacation last year. I actually picked out the photos I wanted to post several months ago and put them in a special folder, but I haven't found the time to post them to facebook will all the appropriate annotations. When I do find time, I'll let you know on this blog.

3) Neil's post on LOST got me thinking about TV shows I really liked that never reached a satisfying conclusion. BTW, I never watched LOST. I tend to have bad luck with TV shows. When I get interested in TV shows with interesting plots that promise to reveal lots of mysteries over a series of years, those shows tend to get canceled in one year.

( Editor's ( that would be me ) Note: I had to stop writing for a moment because a HUGE beetle just tried to crawl up my shorts as I wrote this post. I smashed it rather quickly because I though it my might be a roach ( and I wouldn't want a roach to get away and reproduce ), but when I took a good look at it ( I checked Google images for something that matched its shape ), I came to the conclusion that it was probably a violet ground beetle - that is until I read that violet ground beetles are primarily found in the UK. In any case, it wasn't a roach or a termite, so at least I've got that going for me. BTW, I ate a few bugs today at my company Summer party ( They served bugs as a special delicacy - I'm wearing an official "Eat a Bug Club" sticker on my T-shirt right now ). I wonder if my little beetle friend was trying to get revenge for his brethren. )

4) A Different Kind of Shallow - I'm just going to give you the title of this post, and let you guess about what it might ultimately be about.

Rich

What you talkin' 'bout?

2010-05-28T22:50:00.003-04:00

R.I.P. :(

It aint easy

2010-05-22T00:08:00.001-04:00

Last Sunday, in the course of a few hours, I experienced the highs and lows of dealing with my son Michael's unique brain.

I've mentioned this before, but in case you didn't know, Michael has been diagnosed with being on the Autism spectrum. It's not a severe case of Autism. He's very high functioning, so a lot of people might not even notice, but as a parent, you can't help but notice - and worry about it.

As a parent, you can't help but notice how different his brain works. Yes, different - definitely different. A few months ago, I watched an HBO movie about an Autistic woman named Temple Grandin. Throughout the movie, Temple's mother would remind her that she was "different - not less". That's certainly true of Michael - his brain is "different" in many wonderful ways, but I also know that we live in a world where people who are "different" are not always accepted. There are times when Michael really amazes me, but there are also times when I'm terrified about the prospect of him getting by in the world. He's going to have trouble adjusting to certain situations. He's inevitably going to be teased. There are inevitably going to be moments when he winds up crying. As a parent, thinking about those moments hurts me to the core.

Anyway, back to Sunday and Michael "unique" brain.

I don't want to perpetuate the "Rain Man"/savant stereotype about Autistic people too much, but those of you who have heard me talk ( brag ) about Michael already know that he has a remarkable analytic mind. All modesty aside, I always considered myself to be really good at Math/Physics, but Michael has natural ability way beyond anything I've ever possessed. While we were playing in the backyard on Sunday, I noticed he was picking up balls of different sizes and dropping them side-by-side ( basically, doing the Galileo Leaning Tower of Pisa Experiment ). I walked over, and Michael asked me a question about potential energy. Given his curiosity, I decided that the time was right to introduce Michael to the concepts of kinetic energy and conservation of energy.

So, I go ahead and explain potential energy, kinetic energy, and conservation of energy ( I tell him all about mgh and one-half m v-squared ), and I illustrate the concept with an example.

I tell Michael that a roller coaster with a 100 foot drop reaches a speed of 50 miles-per-hour ( mph ) at the bottom of the hill ( BTW, the way, I'm ignoring all friction and air resistance in these examples. You may think think that this is over-simplifying things a bit, - but hey - he's only 6 years old! ). I tell him that in order for the roller coaster to go 100 mph at the bottom of the hill, the hill would need to be 400 feet high. I explain that this is because a roller coaster car going 100 mph has 4 times the kinetic energy as a roller coaster car going 50 mph ( because of the velocity-squared relationship ), and that because all the kinetic energy would have been converted from the potential energy at the top of the hill ( remember - no friction ), the hill would need to be 4 times as high to produce the speed of 100 mph ( because potential energy is directly proportional to height ).

Of course, you would think this would be an awful lot to digest for a 6-year old. To be honest, I really didn't think he would understand all of this on the first try, so I gave him a problem to gauge how well he understood the concept. I asked Michael how fast the roller coaster would go at the bottom of the hill if the hill was 900 feet high.

About 5 seconds later Michael told me the roller coaster would be going 150 mph at the bottom of the hill.

I was stunned, and asked him to explain how he arrived at the answer, just to make sure it wasn't just a lucky guess.

Michael quickly explained that 900 is 9 times as great at 100, the square root of 9 is 3, and that 3 times 50 is 150.

Wow, you can't imagine how proud I was at that moment.

It's nice to have those proud moments, because it makes some of the other moments a little bit easier to take.

A few hours later, we were in the house, and Michael was playing a video game on the laptop. At some point the game crashed, and a few seconds later, so did Michael's brain.

I don't think "tantrum" is a strong enough word for what happened. I know tantrums. I threw my share of tantrums as a child ( like the BATMAN tantrum - see item 4 in this post ), and watched my younger brother throw lots of tantrums. What happened with Michael on Sunday, was not simply a tantrum - it was a scary example of what can sometimes be so "unique" about his brain.

The best word I can think of to describe it is "irrational". Of course, 6-year olds can be irrational in general, but Michael's behavior would have been considered irrational for a 3-year-old.

...

I've been sitting here for a few minutes trying to decide how to describe this, but in all honesty, words escape me right now. It kinda reminded me of one of the night terrors Michael used to have when he was younger. There was a lot of physical thrashing involved, there was really nothing we could do or say to console him, and he most definitely did not want to be touched. It's rather heartbreaking when you want to hug your crying child, and he responds by kicking at you and swinging his arm at you. When he has tantrums like this, we actually get quite afraid that he might hurt himself. Once when he was 3, he had a tantrum like this, and intentionally ran headfirst into a wall. I know it was intentional, because about 30 seconds after he did it the first time, he wrenched himself out of my arms and ran headfirst into the wall again before I could stop him ( After that, I just laid my whole body down on top of him to keep him in one spot. He spent the next 30 minutes struggling to get out from under me, until he finally exhausted himself and fell asleep. ).

Thankfully, his tantrum on Sunday wasn't that bad ( he's come a long way in the last 3 years ), but it still scared me a lot nonetheless. Not only did he not want to be touched, but he wanted to get "far far away" ( his words ) from us. The next thing we knew, he was running out of the front door of our house. I ran out after him, terrified about what he might do to himself. He had stopped about 10 feet from our front steps. I walked towards him slowly, hoping to grab him before he started to run away again, He backpedaled into driveway, and next thing I knew, he started sprinting down the driveway towards the street. I sprinted as fast as my balky knee would take me ( the knee is still all "spongy" from my personal-best run ) and screamed out "STOP! DON'T YOU DARE RUN INTO THE STREET!" so loud that I think the entire neighborhood heard me. Michael did stop, and before he could move again, I grabbed him. Of course, he didn't want to go down without a fight, but despite his kicking and screaming, I soon had him back in the house. He still insisted on being "far way" from us, but we convinced him that his room far enough away. Thankfully, he managed to calm himself down, and 30 minutes later he was back to being the happy boy that he usually is.

So, yeah - it an't easy. I love my boys, but it's never easy

Rich

Bad, Bad Leroy Brown

2010-05-09T23:50:00.002-04:00

Last Friday, while checking news articles during lunch, I noticed a story about Wrigley Field. The content of that article really isn't relevant to this post, but what is relevant is that the article got me thinking about the North Side of Chicago ( where Wrigley Field is located - I took a road trip there 11 years ago ). Thinking about the North Side of Chicago got me thinking about the South Side of Chicago, which immediately made the song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" start playing in my head ( The song starts with the lines "The South Side of Chicago / is the baddest part of town. / And if you go there / you better just beware / of a man named Leroy Brown. " ).

"Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" is one of those songs the will always be ingrained in my memory, because I probably listened to it about 100 times in the backseat of the family car when I was a young child. My parents were both born in the 40's ( Dad in 1943 and Mom in 1947 ), and as such, they were among the first generation of parents to really pass Rock n' Roll music down to their kids. My parents pretty much always had the radio on when they drove, and it was always playing the most popular music of the day ( Actually, whether my Mom or Dad was driving, I think my Mom pretty much controlled the radio. Back in the 60's my Mom was one of these screaming teenage girls you would see at Beatles concerts ( She was at one of the Beatles groundbreaking Shea Stadium concerts ) ).

I think there's something special about the memories we develop as a young child. We see the world differently as children, so reflecting on those memories gives us a perspective other memories can't. I think that music makes special memories too. I think almost all of us have our own personal "soundtrack of our lives". We all have memories of special songs which we associate with key moments in our lives. So, with that in mind, I think there's something extra special about the music we associate with our childhood. After thinking a bit about "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown", I started to reflect upon the songs that really caught my attention when I would listen to music in the back seat of my parents' car in the early to mid 70's. I quickly jotted down the first 10 songs that came to my mind. Those 10 songs ( in no particular order ) are ...

American Pie

I said this list would be in no particular order, but I decided to list Don McLean's "America Pie" first, because when I was three years old, I considered this to be my favorite song. I think there's something about the lyrical richness of this song that would enchant just about any small child. Listening to this song was almost like listening to a bedtime story. It was a story I really enjoyed, despite that fact that I had no idea what a levee was, and the song always made me wonder how somebody could possibly drink rye bread.

Saturday in the Park

This may be the best feel-good song of all time. The lyrics by themselves are really feel-good, the music puts you in a good mood as soon as your hear the first few piano notes, and I dare anyone not to crack a smile when the first brass notes play at the 18 second mark. This song ( understandably enough ) seems to be a staple these days at Saturday afternoon baseball games.

Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head

This is just a great song by one of the greatest American songwriters ( Burt Bacharach ), though I must admit that it was the lyrics ( by Hal David, Bacharach's long-time collaborator - Burt did the music and Hal did the lyrics ) that enchanted me as a child, despite that fact that a some of them don't make a lot of sense when you really think about it. I mean - I've always loved the image of the "guy whose feet are too big for his bed", but considering that I've never heard that expression in any other context ( Has anyone actually ever complained that his/her feet were too big for a bed? ), I don't think it makes any sense to say "Raindrops keep fallin' on my head. And just like the guy whose feet are too big for his bed". That being said, those lines still stick in my head all these years later, so I guess it's a great lyric.

Let Em In

I no longer consider this to be my favorite post-Beatles McCartney tune, ( I think I like both "Band on the Run" and "Maybe I'm Amazed", better than this one ), but back when I was a kid it was my favorite. There's something really kid-friendly about the repetitive lyrics, especially the parts where Paul calls out the names of all the relatives.

Cats in the Cradle

This is another one I loved as a kid because of the way it tells a story. Of course, now that I'm an adult with sons of my own, I find this song especially poignant today. This one can still choke me up a bit. This song really is to music what "Field of Dreams" is to movies. Perhaps only men can really "get" this song ( My wife still doesn't understand why "Field of Dreams" makes me cry. I, for my part, have no idea why she cries at the end of "Ghost'. ), but all men pretty much "get" it.

Love Will Keep Us Together

Did "Captain and Tennille" epitomize the the cheesiness of the 70s?
Undeniable.

Is this song incredibly catchy?
Undeniable.

Superstition

If this song doesn't make you move, you just might be dead.

Rich Girl

As a kid, I just loved the line "You can rely on the old man's money". Of course, as a little kid, I had no idea that "old man" meant "father". So every time I heard this song, I envisioned an elderly guy with huge bags of cash.

Paradise by the Dashboard Light

Considering the subject matter of this song, perhaps it's a bit inappropriate that I liked this song so much as a child. Of course, I really had no idea what they were singing about. I just knew a loved the back and forth during the "Will you love me forever / Let me sleep on it" part.

Squeeze Box

OK, so this song is really inappropriate for a child - but I swear when I heard the lines "Mama's got a squeeze box, Daddy never sleeps at night", I thought they were singing about an accordion!

Rich

P.S. I don't know how many responses I'll get to this post, but if you do respond, I'd love to hear your own lists of childhood songs.

40 strikes back.

2010-05-08T10:16:00.002-04:00

Just a quick follow-up to my last post. In response to that post, EZ commented ...

"He's just trying to lull you into a false sense of security, so you'll injure something else!!!".

Well, EZ was on to something there. I had to skip my next scheduled run because my left knee felt all "sponge"-y. In fact, it's now been six days since my personal-best-matching run, and my left knee still feel "funny" ( and that's "funny - uh oh", not "funny, ha ha" ). I'm sure it's nothing a few more days of rest won't fix, but I've got to be careful, because the last time I tried to run when my knee felt like this, I hurt my knee so bad that I had to stop running for 2 months, and my knee didn't really feel completely normal until about 18 months after that.

On top of that, my left ankle is aching again, after feeling perfectly fine for more than a month.

Hmm, I guess the speed I need to run to match my personal best time is right at the limit of what my joints can handle. What's odd about this is that for about month prior to running at my personal best speed last Sunday, I had been running at a speed just 0.1 mph slower with no ill effects.

Oh well, at least I reached the goal I had been working towards for 3 years. At least I can say that I was at my best at 40 ( at least for a day ). I'll start running again soon. I'll just need to tread lightly ( both literally and figuratively ) when I do, to make sure I don't get any kind of serious injury.

Rich

I just kicked 40 in the nuts!

2010-05-03T21:32:00.009-04:00

Nice try, 40.

You tried your best to keep me down.

You even got your buddies 37, 38, and 39 to gang up on me. Those guys hit hard. They went right for my knees. They put me out of commission for 2 months. It took me about 18 months just to get back to 90% of my old self. As soon as it looked like I had them beat, 39 snuck up on me and whacked me in my left ankle. I was out of commission for another month. I was down, but not out. I wasn't going to let your thugs keep me down for long.

Then, staring on January 15, 2010, you decided to take matters into your own hands. You came at me hard, but I was ready. I backed you into a corner, and started to wear you down. I thought I was going to take you down easy, but you still had a few tricks up your sleeve. I've got to give you credit, those night cramps in my calves were a nice touch. I didn't see those coming. You never really expect to be wake up in the middle of the night with excruciating pain in one of your calves, as your calf muscles contract so hard that they practically tear themselves apart. Sure, I'm no stranger to those night cramps. 15, 16, 17, and 18 used to get me with night cramps a lot back in the day, but these days those cramps usually only show up about once or twice a year. I had never gotten those cramps on consecutive nights - until a about a month ago. Left calf one night, and right calf the next. Sure, you had me limping for a while, but that wasn't going to keep me off that treadmill.

Just when I thought I had you beat, you brought on that stomach virus two weeks ago. It's tough to have enough energy to run, when you go a full day without eating any food. It's took all my strength just to drag my ass to the train station the rest of that week ( to get to work ) when I could only get down about one small meal a day. Crap, I lost a lot a weight that week. You were literally wearing me down. When I finally got my appetite back and tried to run on Sunday, April 25th, I found I could only run at my desired pace for about half as long as I wanted to. Still, I knew I was close. If I could just get my strength back, I could take you out. Hell, I promised myself I would take you down one week later. I ran every day over the next week - knees and ankles and calves be damned. I asked my knees/ankles/calves to hold up for me this past week, and they did their part. They got me to Sunday, May 2nd, and at that point it was up to me. At 4 PM that day, it was High Noon on that treadmill. It was me versus you, nose to nose, mano a mano. I looked you in the eye, and didn't blink. You were going down.

Well, you know very well what happened on that treadmill. I matched my personal best time for 2 miles - a time I hadn't run since I just turned 37 - a time I hadn't run since you and your buddies went after my knees, ankles, and calves. You're toast 40. You're dead, and when I set a new personal best time in about a month or so, you are going to be buried.

I hope you've learned your lesson, 40. Don't underestimate me again. You better warn your friends. Tell 41 I'm coming for him. If you run into 50 let him know I've got him in my sights too. Let him know I'll be spending the next 10 years training for our battle. He'd better watch his back.

Rich

P.S. OK. I admit it. Everything above was rather silly and self-centered. If I don't stop patting myself on the back soon, I'm going to wind up pulling a muscle. Buy hey, I'm pretty psyched. There were times when my knees and ankles felt so bad, that I had serious doubts about whether I would ever reach my goal. Perhaps, my knees will give out tomorrow, but at least I got all the way back for one day.

Tooth Fairy

2010-05-01T22:44:00.003-04:00

Meet the Mets

2010-04-26T23:38:00.002-04:00

I'd like to take a little break from posting about my Spring vacation to share a few photos from last weekend.

Last Thursday, I was watching a Mets game at home, when a commercial announced that there would be a "Mr. Met Dash" after Saturday's game. All kids 12 and under would be allowed to run the bases ( On the same field that the Mets play on! ) after the game. The Mets have been having these promotions a few times a year for the last 15 years or so, but I hadn't taken the kids to a "Mr. Met Dash" yet.

When Michael saw the ad for the "Mr. Mets Dash", he immediately exclaimed "I'm under 12! I could do that!".

It was at that moment that I decided what our family outing would be that Saturday.

The day really turned out to be PERFECT. I imagine it's the kinda thing almost every baseball-loving Dad starts to dream about when he first finds out that his wife is pregnant. It wasn't the first baseball game I've taken the kids to ( It was Michael 5th game and Peter 4th game - BTW, the Mets are now 5-0 in games Michael gone to and 4-0 in games Peter has gone to ( Michael has been at every game Peter has gone to ). Michael's been to 1 game in 2007, 2 games in 2008, 1 game in 2009, and 1 game this year ), but I think it was the nicest ballpark trip we've had as a family. The weather was beautiful, we got there early enough to do all sorts of fun stuff before the game ( Like photos with Mr. Met - see the photo at the top of the post ), the Mets won, Peter is old enough to understand the game at least a little bit now, and the kids got to run the bases after the game! The boys even enjoyed getting to the game. We decided to take commuter trains to the game to avoid traffic and the hassle of getting into and out of the parking lot. One of the boys' favorite TV shows these days is called Dinosaur Train ( Click the link to the left to hear the cool Johnny Cash style theme song! ). The whole time we were on the train, the boys pretended they were on the Dinosaur Train ( Michael kept asking the conductor to say stuff the conductor says on the Dinosour Train show ).

Check the photos below to see how happy Peter and Michael were during the game.

Eventually, the game ended, and we got to go on the field. Of course, I didn't get to run the bases, but as you might be able to tell from the photo below, I may have been more excited than the boys to be on a real major league field. I felt like a little kid. I found myself touching the outfield fences and the warning track dirt, and gawking as we passed the bullpen and the dugouts.

After Michael finished his run, he would up milking his time on the field just a little bit more. There was a reporter interviewing some of the kids that had run the bases. Michael noticed the microphone and the camera, and instead of running back to Ruth and me after he finished, the little ham decided to edge in on the interview. He lingered around as the reporter interviewed some other kids, and as soon as those kids left, he grabbed the mic and started chatting away.

It's kinda amazing when you consider that just 3 years ago, we were still wondering if Michael was ever going to be able to speak well enough to converse with people. He's such a little chatterbox now. :)

Anyway, I posted a few photos of Michael's interview below.

Rich

Part 2 of "What I did on my Spring vacation"

2010-04-18T23:32:00.003-04:00

After getting back from Cornell on Tuesday, we went to Medieval Times on Wednesday. In case you're not familiar with Medieval Times ( or it isn't obvious from the name and the photos above ), it's a dinner show ( lunch in our case ) that features Medieval nights, with stuff like jousting and sword fights. To be honest, I can't hear the words "Medieval Times", without thinking of the movie "The Cable Guy". Specifically, I wind up thinking about two Janeane Garofalo scenes:
This scene ( starting at the 20 second point ) ...

... and this scene ( starting at the 2:03 point ) ...

Of course, this is probably due to the fact that I've always been a big fan of Janeane Garofalo ( OK, I've actually always had a bit on a crush on her, as I've mentioned in this blog post and this video ), but I've had a hard time taking Medieval Times times seriously since that movie came out. Well, to be honest, even before that movie came out, I was never a big fan of all that sword and sorcery stuff ( Perhaps this is why I didn't like LOTR that much ). This may come as a shock to some of those I played Dungeons and Dragons with in high school, but I primarily played D&D for the sake of being social ( For some this reason this reminds me of a line from Judd Nelson's character in "The Breakfast Club" ( try to guess which one ) ). I also went to a few Renaissance Fairs with friends, but once again, I was going for the friendship, rather than for all the sword and sorcery stuff.

So, as you might have guessed, the trip to Medieval Times wasn't actually my idea. My aunt had gotten the boys ( and Ruth and me ) tickets to Medieval Times as a Christmas present, and we figured my week off would be a good time to go. In any case, even if I was really into the Medieval Times stuff, I knew I would enjoy it if the kids enjoyed it - and the kids certainly did enjoy it.

Before the show, we got the boys some toys swords. Look how happy Peter was to have a sword ...

Michael also was excited ....

.... which meant it was inevitable that they would have a little sword fight of their own before the show:

I won't bother to post a bunch of generic pictures of the show ( you could find that easily enough on your own if you are interested ), but I will post the picture below just to give you an idea of what the show looked like ( We had front-row seats! ).

As you can see, horses were involved. That was a bit of a problem for me and my allergies. Despite the fact that I took a lot of Claritin before the show, I was having a real hard time breathing by the time it ended. If I hadn't been having so much fun watching the boys react, I probably would have left the show about halfway through.

So, I did watch the show to the end, and all in all I was impressed by the show they put on. It wasn't exactly my cup of tea, but it was impressive to watch the "knights" clang they swords together so hard in "battle" that sparks came of the swords. Interestingly enough, that was the one part of the show that Michael didn't like. It scared him so much that he hid under the table while many of the sword fights took place.

He's a very non-violent kid. :)

However, he got a little bit braver towards the ends, and watched the entire final battle. As a coincidental bonus, the knight that represented our section ( The Black and White Knight ), was the winner that night, so the boys went home really happy.

So, while I don't think I'll be going again ( unless I can bring SCUBA gear, so I can breathe air that doesn't have horse hair in it ), I was glad the boys had a lot of fun.

I know my Aunt occasionally reads this blog, so big thumbs up on the gift, Aunt Barbara!

Rich

The Best Feeling in the World

2010-04-17T00:48:00.001-04:00

I've been wanting to blog about something for about a week, but I've been too busy to blog. I'll get back to writing about my Spring vacation in my next post, but first I wanted to write about a specific moment in my day on Friday, April 9th.

I was walking from the train station to my home on Friday evening on particularly dreary day. The weather was cold and windy, I was feeling a little bit under the weather, and things had been really stressful at work. In additional to all that, I was worrying ( perhaps irrationally ) about my mortality. Without going into to details, let's just say I was worrying about "tumors" that had been developing. They turned out not to be "tumors" at all ( I was actually having a pretty bad allergic reaction to something unexpected. The allergic reaction was making my lymph nodes go nuts which led to painful "tumors", some of which were probably abscesses ( according to Ruth ( It's good to have a doctor in the house! ) ). After a week of avoiding the "something" and taking antibiotics and prednisone for a few days, everything cleared up ), but for a while I was worried about the possibility of dying of Cancer ( I'm 40 now, and my Mom was only 42 when she got the cancer that killed her at the age of 49 ).

So, in any case, I was feeling about as down as I could be at that point. However, that all changed when I got my front door.

I could hear them even before I opened the door ....

Michael: Daddy! Daddy's home!

Peter ( from the second floor of the house ): It's Daddy! It's Daddy!

Peter ( running down the steps ): Daddy, Daddy - you're home!

Michael and Peter ( crashing into the other side of the door ): Daddy! Daddy! Daddy's home!

Then, I opened the door, and the hugs started.

The next few seconds were a blur of hugs, but eventually Peter asked me to pick him up. I picked him up, gave him a big hug, and said "I love you Peter!". Peter responded with "I love you too Daddy!".

That, my friends, is the best feeling in the world. All my troubles evaporated when I walked through that door. My troubles evaporate at the end of every workday when I walk through that door. Walking though that door is almost always the best part of my day.

I feel so lucky to be a parent. I wish everyone could experience what it feels like. I don't think I'll every tire of it.

Of course, these moments are a little bit bittersweet at times, because I know my kids won't be so sweet and affectionate forever. However, I'll enjoy it while it lasts, and being around them will always make my heart happy. :)

Rich

P.S. I really hope I get to be a grandparent someday. While some people dream of playing golf or fishing during their retirement, I dream of spending my retirement caring for my grankids. My kids will never have to worry about paying for daycare or a nanny as long as I'm around.

Photos for Part 1 of my spring vacation

2010-04-08T09:44:00.006-04:00

You want more photos? I got more photos! However, I should note that we were at Cornell at the least pretty time of year ( The best time is the Fall! ). None of the trees have leaves yet, and there isn't any pretty snow on the ground.

Corn Nuggets!!!

Peter and me at the burger joint in Collegetown.

Example of the prison-style anti-suicide fences that were placed on all the bridges.

The fence obscures nice views like this one ( We stuck the camera lens through a gap in the fence to get this shot ).

Ho Plaza

They didn't bother to put a fence on this little bridge.

The boys outside the A.D. White Library.

The inside of the A.D. White Library.

"The Fishbowl" at Uris Library. I did a lot of studying in this room back in the day. The room was pretty much empty on this day because it was the Sunday at the end of Spring Break.

Ezra Cornell

Andrew Dickson White.
See those red and white footprints? They lead from the Ezra Cornell statue to the Andrew Dickson White statue. The statues sit about 200 feet from each other on the Arts Quad ( Where most of the original academic buildings sit on campus ). There is a legend that if a virgin every walks between the statues when the clock strikes midnight, the statues will get up and switch places. Of course, this has never happened. ;)

The boys had all sorts of fun running from one statue to the other along the footprints. I think they did this about 7 or 8 times.

Our hotel room.

Peter looking out the window of our hotel room.

Michael having fun with science!

Another prison fence on a bridge.

The view from the bridge. There's no fence on the little bridge in this photo, but by the next day, they had closed that bridge down for the rest of the semester.

Michael and me walking towards Ruth's old dorm ( Balch Hall ).

Waterfall at dusk. This was taken from the little bridge I mentioned two photos earlier.

Obligatory shot of McGraw Tower.

Peter going to town on some ice cream at Okenshields.

Michael was really full after eating a MASSIVE amount of food, but ...

... there's always room for ice cream!

Prison fences on the suspension bridge.

View from the suspension bridge.

Ho Plaza at night ( Actually this was taken at about 5 in the morning. Ruth woke up early on Tuesday, couldn't get back to sleep, and decided to go outside and take some photos ).

Ho Plaza early in the morning on Tuesday.

McGraw Tower on Tuesday morning.

Another McGraw Tower shot.

Michael and me in a Physics lecture hall, just after class ended. The lecture notes ( about inducing currents ) were still projected on the screen. I was answering Michael's questions about magnetism.

OK, now I'm going to cheat a little bit. The photos below were not taken on our recent Cornell trip. They were taken in June of 2004, when we visited Cornell for Ruth's 10th reunion. I just wanted to post a few shots to show what Cornell looks like when the trees have leaves and the sky isn't always overcast.

Michael and me at Ho Plaza.

McGraw Tower in nice light.

View of the Arts Quad from the top of McGraw Tower ( The big white tents and the vans were there for reunion events ).

Baby Michael having fun at Cornell.

A Cornell gorge with green trees.

Sunset on North Campus.

Rich

What I did on my Spring vacation ( part 1 )

2010-04-06T23:30:00.002-04:00

I've got a lot to say about my vacation. I think I'll break the stories down into several blog posts, partly because there is so much to tell, and partly because my laptop keeps shutting down because of an issue with the heat sink ( Perhaps I'll write about that later - I really need to get myself a soddening iron. ).

I'm going to start by telling you about the Cornell part of the trip, because I really want to talk about something Cornell-related today. Today's a bit of an anniversary for me. 19 years ago today ( April 6th, 1991 ), the following happened at Cornell ...

So yeah, it's been 19 years since Ruth and I started dating. When we visited Conrell last week ( We got there at about 11:30 AM on March 28th, and left at about 1 PM on March 30th ), we came across a lot of places that gave me fond memories of our time together at Cornell.

Sage Hall: Neither Ruth nor I every took a class in this building, but back when we were at Cornell, there was a nice dining hall in the basement of the building. Ruth and I met at that dining hall for lunch about twice a week during the month leading up to April 6th, 1991. At the time, Ruth had made it clear that we could only be friends. However, something that happened during those lunches must have won her over. I'll always look upon the building fondly as the place where I won Ruth's heart. Unfortunately, the dining hall no longer exists, but just seeing that building gave me a warm feeling inside.

Cafe Decadence ( Cafe Pacifica ): On April 5th, 1991, Ruth called me up and invited me to have dessert/coffee with her at a little dessert place called Cafe Decadence. I'm not sure if it officially counts as our first date, because she brought her friend Amy along. It may have been more of a tryout than a date, but considering what happened the next day, I guess you could say the tryout went pretty well. In any case, I was hoping Cafe Decadence was still there, and it almost was. The place has been renamed "Cafe Pacifica", and it seems to focus more on bubble tea ( those drinks with all the tapioca "bubbles" in them ) than coffee. However, the layout is roughly the same, and they still have an assortment of desserts. We didn't really have time to re-enact our first date ( impossible with the kids anyway ), but it was nice to see that the place was still there.

Large random rock near the Low Rise dorms: Ruth and I sat on this rock when she told me she wanted to go out with me. The rock was just a natural-looking rock back in the day, but now it's painted all red, white, and blue ( It looks like it was painted to celebrate Obama's victory ).

Balch Hall Archway:

Balch Hall is an all woman's dorm at Cornell. Ruth lived at Balch Hall during her Freshmen and Sophomore year ( we started dating her Freshmen year ). If a guy wanted to visit his girlfriend at Balch Hall, he needed to call her on the outdoor phone above ( pre-cellphone days! :O ) , and wait for her to come and open the door. I can't tell you how many times I happily waited under that archway for Ruth. Just seeing that phone keypad again brought back so many good memories.

Balch Hall is also significant because it's where Ruth and I had our first kiss. :)

Random path in the woods on North Campus: This path led to a little bench near a foot bridge. Kinda secluded - nice place to smooch. :)

2nd floor landing on stairwell at Robert Purcell Union: I can't really say what happened here, but it was nice. ;)

In other Cornell news not related to my 19th date-versary ...

1) We left our house at the crack of dawn on Sunday, March 28th, because we wanted to have Sunday brunch at a dining hall called Okenshields. We used to love to eat the made-to-order omelets, and I especially loved to eat tremendous quantities of chilled shrimp. Unfortunately, Okenshields in no longer open on Sundays. :(

Instead, we headed to Collegetown ( area immediately south of campus where most upperclassmen live ), to see if any of the restaurants we used to like were still there. Unfortunately, none of them were in business anymore ( the restaurant business is tough ), but we did find a burger place that served Corn Nuggets ( remember those, EZ! ). Corn Nuggets are little globs of creamed corn, dipped in batter and fried. YUMMY!!!!!!!!

2) We ate the rest of our meals on campus. The layouts of most of the dining halls have changed quite a bit ( Though Okenshields has basically the same seating arrangement ), but the food was still great and plentiful. The food was also a really great deal. At every place we went, they let our kids eat for free. Each meal was all-you-could-eat, and Michael took full advantage of this. He's a little under 60 pounds, but at each meal he ate about twice as much as an average 100-pound college girl would.

3) I sat in the back during a Physics lecture for about 10 minutes. That was pretty cool. There's still a part of me that wishes I had followed my heart and tried to do a Physics PhD, rather than being practical and doing Engineering ( Especially since my software development job has nothing to do with Mechanical Engineering ).

4) The area in front of Willard Straight Hall was renovated about 10 years ago with money donated by a family with the last name "Ho". The area is beautiful and is now called "Ho Plaza". It's nice that they honored the family that gave the money, but "Ho Plaza" sounds like the name of a red-light district. Can't you just picture a bunch of sailors on shore leave saying, "Let's head down to Ho Plaza to get some action!".

5) Cornell is known for it's beautiful gorges. It was always inspiring to look down at the gorges when crossing the many bridges at Cornell. Unfortunately, a large number of Cornell students have committed suicide ( 6 during the academic year, and 3 in month before Spring break (Ruth and I arrived at Cornell on the same weekend students were returning from Spring Break ) ) by jumping off the bridges. During Spring Break, the Cornell administration responded by erecting ugly "temporary" fences ( they look like the fences that you would put around a prison ) along all of the bridges. It really looks awful, and most of the students are not happy about it. Not only are the students reminded of the suicides each time they walk over a bridge, but now there view of the beautiful inspiring landscape is obscured. I know the Cornell administration means well, but I hope they come to their senses soon and take the fences down.

Well, I've got a lot more to say, but it's getting late ( 11:30 PM ). Stayed tuned for Part 2 of "What I did on my spring vacation".

Rich

Enjoy this

2010-04-03T21:20:00.007-04:00

Wow. I'm just finishing off a week of vacation. I had a lot of adventures this week. I have a lot of photos I may or may not post, and a lot of stories to tell. However, I'm still too busy enjoying my vacation with my family to write a blog post yet. Until then, enjoy this video I just found on YouTube.

Edit: As long as I'm going to waste a post by being lazy and just posting YouTube links, I might as well post this enjoyable video as well:

Rich

Time to dig up another old story

2010-03-21T01:40:00.003-04:00

I'm kinda psyched.

In about a week, Ruth and I ( along with the kids, of course! ) will be taking a trip to our Alma Mater, Cornell University. It's been a while since I've been back, and I kinda miss the place.

Well, actually, it hasn't been *that* long. We did visit Cornell back in June of 2004 for Ruth's 10-year reunion. However, while it was a fun trip ( It was probably the first road trip we took Michael on ), we didn't get much of the college experience. Classes were no longer in session at that point and most of the dining halls were closed when we were there. This meant that we didn't get to relive the experience of eating dining hall food ( Unlike most universities, eating the dining hall food at Cornell was a good experience. Cornell was consistently rated as having some of the best dining hall food in the USA. I think this is mostly due to the fact that Cornell has a top-ranked school of hotel administration ( Managing dining facilities for a hotel is a big part of hotel administration, and I believe there is some connection between the Hotel School and Cornell Dining ) as well as a School of Agriculture, which I believe supplies some of the fresh ingredients used in the dining halls ( For example, there was one dining hall that served ice cream made from milk from on-campus dairy farms ). ), and we didn't get to peek in on classes in session. We also spent a lot of time going to pre-planned reunion events. The events were nice enough, but they didn't really bring back memories ( good or bad ) of our time at Cornell. Plus, the food at these reunion events was consistently awful. We spent quite a bit a money to be official participants at reunion weekend, so needless to say, we were a little disappointed. I'm not saying we weren't glad we went, but we left wishing we could have experienced more.

Well, we'll finally get our chance to do more in about a week. We'll be at Cornell while classes are in session. I think Michael is going to be excited to see all the big lecture halls ( I'd love to sneak him into a Math, Physics, Astronomy, or Chemistry class, but I have a feeling somebody would notice that a really old guy and a really young guy were in the lecture hall. ). We are definitely going to eat most ( if not all ) of our meals at the campus dining halls. We'll only be at our hotel for two nights, but that should give us plenty of time to tour the campus because our hotel is right in the middle of the campus. I'm kinda excited that we'll be staying at The Statler Hotel. The hotel ( and the Cornell School of Hotel Administration ) is one of the things that make Cornell unique. It was pretty common for science and engineering majors like myself to make fun of "Hotelies" back in our Cornell days ( After all, while we Engineers were toting around Math and Physics textbooks, we would see Hotel students toting around books with titles like "Meat" and "Poultry" on the front cover. ), but Cornell's Hotel school is ranked #4 in the world and #1 in the USA. Cornell does have a very strong Engineering School, but it's certainly not ranked as high as #4 in the world, so in a way, I guess the Hotel students went to a more prestigious school than me. In any case, if you've ever been to a nice hotel in the USA, I bet there's a pretty good chance that the manager of that hotel was a Cornell grad ( and carried around a book with "MEAT" written in 3 inch letters on the cover. I swear, this textbook didn't say something like "Introduction to the Culinary Arts" or "Introduction to Restaurants Management" or even "The Science of Meat". It just said "MEAT". This still cracks me up more than 20 years later. I know the person who I saw carrying that book is probably managing a big Hilton hotel today and is making huge buckets of money, but I still can't help making fun of this. ).

So, it will be good to go back again - for real. I guess the last time Ruth and I went back and actually visited a bunch of our old haunts was October of 1994. That was Homecoming weekend - the first homecoming after Ruth graduated. It was also notable in a way that could lead to an amusing story. It was notable because Homecoming 1994 was the last time in my life I actually got drunk.

Now, I'm not trying to claim that I've never touched alcohol since then, but if somebody forced me to give them a yes or no answer to the question "Do you drink?", I think I'd have to answer "No". I think that for all practical purposes, "No" would be the most accurate answer. Why do I believe that? Well, let me put it this way: In my adult life, I've been to about 30 different weddings that have an open ( free ) bar, and I've ordered about 3 alcoholic drinks combined from all those 30 open bars ( All 3 of which were a single glass of white wine, because I was curious about how the wine tasted. ). If I can turn down free alcohol in a world were lots of people seem to view open bars as a license to get smashed, I think I'm allowed to say "I don't drink.".

However, back in 1994. I still didn't mind having a few beers with the guys. Well, I wasn't the type of guy who would go out with the guys often, but every few months I would get together with my college buddies after work, and we would have a few beers - not too many beers ( I was still living at home, after all ), but I certainly didn't shy away from alcohol back then.

So, all that being said, it wasn't that surprising that my college buddies and I ( a whole bunch of us decided to attend Homecoming Weekend together that year ) found ourselves in a local Cornell bar one night that weekend. Ruth was either with her friends or with her cousin ( who was a grad student at Cornell at the time ), but I don't think she ( or any of my buddy's girlfriends ) were in the bar that night. I think my buddies and I wanted to reserve that night for male-bonding. Male-bonding is an underrated thing, and for better or worse, a lot of guys can't do the whole male-bonding thing without alcohol.

So yeah, there was quite a bit of bonding going on that night. So much so that we got a little bit silly. Well, I guess I can't speak for everyone, but I got a little bit silly. The bar was only a few blocks from the apartment where a bunch of us lived our last two years at Cornell . After we left the bar, I got this crazy idea that we should all visit our old apartment right then and there. Never mind that it was past midnight and that other people were certainly living in "our" apartment by then. I thought we needed to visit our old apartment, and all the other guys agreed.

Plus, I needed to pee.

I needed to pee really bad.

I needed to pee, and for some reason I thought the best place to pee would be my old apartment.

So, we all stumbled over to our old apartment building, and I got on the intercom with the current residents of our old place. It turned out that there were women living in the apartment ( The apartments had usually held about 6 people ( almost always college students ) with a bunch of bedrooms and a common bathroom, kitchen and living room. ), and I somehow convinced these women to let us come upstairs.

I didn't really give it a lot of thought at the time, but looking back I've got to say ....

What the hell were these women thinking?

Now, I'm not a college girl, I've never been a college girl, and I'll never be a college girl. However, if I was college girl, and some random drunk dude buzzed our intercom and asked if he and his friends could come up to our apartment, I would tell that guy to go to hell.

I mean, wouldn't any sensible college girl tell the guy to go to hell? Why on earth would you want to let some random drunk guys come up to your apartment after midnight?

I dunno - it just boggles my mind.

OK, putting aside the fact that these girls shouldn't have even considered letting us into their apartment, they did let us in, and we got to see the old place. Let me make it clear that we were completely harmless. As far as I knew, none of us had any ulterior motives - well except for me - I still needed to pee. I fact, I don't think I was in the old apartment for more than 5 seconds when asked if I could use the bathroom. In retrospect, this was an extremely RUDE thing for me to be asking. These people had just let my drunk ass into their apartment, and now I'm asking them if I could use their bathroom? I'm a bit embarrassed when I think about it now, but in my defense, I did ask nicely. I believe I told them that using their bathroom would be a "nostalgic journey" for me. Yes, "nostalgic journey". Well, I guess they didn't want to deny me my nostalgia ( Either that, or they decided to just let the crazy drunk dude do whatever he wanted, as long as that meant he would be leaving soon ), because they did let me use their bathroom.

After my little bathroom excursion, we all headed out of the apartment ( but not before I profusely thanked the girls for letting my take my "nostalgic journey" ). That was pretty much the end of the "excitement" for the night.

After that, we all called it a night and headed to wherever each of us was going to spend the night ( Note: We were all staying someplace within walking distance. No cars were involved, so we were all safe in that regard. ). I was staying with Ruth in her cousin's apartment. We had a futon to sleep on, but I didn't really sleep well that night. By the time I got back to the apartment, my body was rebelling against all the poison I had put in it. I felt rather nauseous, and spent the next 2 hours just sitting awake trying to fight the feeling of nausea. The last thing I wanted to do was make a mess of any sort in Ruth's cousin's apartment. Unfortunately, it was only a matter if time before I was holding my head over a toilet bowl. I didn't wind up making a mess ( by the time I gave in to my nausea , I had sobered up quite a bit, and I actually scrubbed the inside of the toilet bowl so it looked as good as new after my little mishap ), but I was rather embarrassed by the whole experience. It was at that moment that I decided that I never wanted to get drunk again. Sure, it was sometimes fun to drink with your buddies, but I decided that it wasn't enough fun to make the potential aftermath worth it. To be honest, I was kinda bored with drinking by then. Drinking was certainly a novelty the first few times I tried it in college, but by the time I got to the age of 24, the novelty had worn off.

So anyway, I don't have much to say other than that. It's 1:31 AM, and I really should get to bed. I'll just close by saying GO BIG RED! Cornell won its first ever NCAA basketball tournament game on Friday, and later today ( Sunday ) they'll be playing in the 2nd round of the tournament. I'm not expecting them to go far in the tournament, but it will be fun to watch while it lasts.

Rich

Edit: March 21st: Cornell 87, Wisconsin 69

WooooHooooo!!!!!

Cornell becomes the first Ivy League team since 1979 to advance to the the Sweet 16!

Grandpa Easside

2010-03-17T19:04:00.006-04:00

I almost forgot it was St. Patrick's Day today - that is until I got on the train on the way home from work and found it was full of loaded Irish people wearing green. Yeah, ya gotta love the Irish, and as Homer Simpson once said about St. Patrick's Day "It's the most important drinking day of the year!".

Once I realized that it was indeed March 17th, it got me thinking about my Irish American Great Grandfather. He was born on St. Patrick's Day in 1894. That's him in the photo below. The little guy next to him is me.

He died in 1973, not long after this photo was taken. I only knew him until I was three, but I still have vivid memories of him. Well, maybe I don't remember every detail about him, but I certainly remember the the song he used to sing to me. I actually used to call him "Grandpa Easside", because he always sang the following song to me ....

East Side, West Side, all around the town
The tots sang "ring-around-rosie," "London Bridge is falling down"
Boys and girls together, me and Mamie O'Rourke
Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York

So, Happy St. Patrick's Day, Grandpa Easside! I may only be 1/8 Irish, but I'm an Irishman today.

... and considering I'm Irish today, I'm going to take the liberty of telling an old Irish joke.

What's the difference between an Irish wedding and an Irish funeral?

One less drunk.

Don't worry, Grandpa Easside wouldn't be offended by the joke above. His son used to tell jokes like that all the time. If there's one thing you can say about Irish folks, it's that they don't take themselves too seriously ( maybe it's all the pints of Guinness, but it's true ).

Rich

World's Greatest Invention!

2010-03-08T23:38:00.004-05:00

The Wright Brothers.

Samuel Morse

Alexander Graham Bell

Guglielmo Marconi

James Watt

Nicola Tesla

Thomas Edison

Amateurs!

The World Greatest Inventor is the guy who invented this ...

It's called a Bag-a-Nut. If you click on the link to the left, you can watch a video made by the guy who invented it ( James Dudley ( May he rest in peace. ) ). It was original designed to pick up nuts, but the website said it could also be used to pick up sugargum balls ( "spikey balls" ). These "spikey balls" are the things I complained about in this post and in the "C" section of this post. Each late Winter and early Spring, I break my back using a rake and a large dustbin to get all these sticky balls off my backyard lawn and into collection bags. This, year I finally decided to try something different. I did a little research online and ordered the Bag-a-Nut. I put the Bag-a-Nut together on Sunday, and then took it out for a test drive.

To my surprise, it actually worked! It worked much better than I could have ever imagined. You can see how happy I was by looking at the photos below.

The photo below will give you an idea of what I'm up against each year. These little spikey balls tend to stick to the ground, so I used to have to rake the same spot about 10 times to even get half of the spikey balls to move. Now, I can pick up almost all the spikey balls in a given spot, just by rolling the Bag-a-Nut over the area once. If click on the photo below and look closely, you'll see a whole bunch little brown things ( the spikey balls ) on the ground. You'll notice that that there is a much higher density of the balls on the right side of the photo ( there are a lot of trees on that side of the yard ), but you'll also notice a section of turf ( running from the foreground of the photo to the background ) just to the right of center where you can barely see any spikey balls at all. That piece of turf without the spikey balls is the result of the Bag-a-Nut machine. I rolled the Bag-a-Nut over the area just once, and it picked up almost all the spikey balls along the path. This is going to make my life SOOOOOO much easier each March.

Yeah, I know this is an odd thing to get excited about, but we suburban Dads are serious about our yard work. WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Rich

Xenon tetrafluoride

2010-03-02T00:02:00.002-05:00

OK, let me start by apologizing in advance for not be modest.

I'm about to brag about my son ( again ).

But hey, I like to document my kids accomplishments, and if you can't be proud of your kids, what can you be proud about?

On Sunday, my six year old son Michael started to talk to me about the element Xexon. This didn't really surprise me at all. He was introduced to Chemistry via YouTube almost 2 years ago ( via the Tom Lehrer Elements Song, which I think he found via links on the Silent E Tom Lehrer Song which Michael and I once sang together. ), and he has since memorized most of the Periodic Table ( Perhaps all of it - every time I give him an atomic number he seems to be able to name the associated element ).

He told me that Xexon was a noble gas. I asked him what a noble gas was, and he gave me the appropriate definition. He then told me he was going to make a compound using a Xenon atom and 4 Fluorine atoms. It was at this point that I thought to myself "Gee - I guess he really doesn't understand noble gases. After all, everybody knows you can't make compounds with noble gases. That's why those elements are considered 'noble' - they don't mix with other elements.". So, I look at Michael and say "Are you sure you can make a compound with Xexon and Flourine?". At this point, my wife ( who was a Chemistry major in college ) chimes in and says "Actually, you can make a compound with Xexon and 4 Fluorines - it's called Xexon tetrafluoride." *

So, the bottom line is this:

My 6-year old son now knows more about Chemisrty than me. :)

( * I should also note that Michael did not learn about Xexon tetrafluoride from my wife. He said he learned it from some chemistry web site he found on his own. Let me tell you, Google is a really wonderful thing. It's going to revolutionize the way our kids get educated. )

Rich

Snowboarders, Canadians, Kangaroos, and the Dutch

2010-02-27T00:13:00.007-05:00

Just a few random Olympics thoughts as I wait for the epic USA-Canada hockey rematch on Sunday...

1) I noticed that pretty much every snowboarder had a uniform that included a hood. None of them actually wore the hood - they just had it hanging loosely behind their neck. Each time they would do one of those crazy stunts with multiple twists and flips in the halfpipe I would see their hood catching air behind them. The thing was like a little parachute. That thing had to slow them down a bit in the air. If you were competing in a sport where winning ( and your safety ) depended on you completing flips or twists before you landed, why would you want to wear something that would make you a lot less aerodynamic? If I were a snowboarded competing in the halfpipe I would want to wear a skintight uniform like a skier or a speedskater. Of course, snowboarded is supposed to be a "cool" sport, and I guess the snowboarders care more about form than function. Heck, a bunch of them were listening to music on their iPods as they competed. I guess some of them need that music to get amped up, but if I was going to do flips 20 feet in the air, I would want to carry as little excess weight as possible.

2) Speaking of snowboarding, I couldn't help but be a little embarrassed when Australian Torah Bright beat out American Hannah Teter for the gold medal in the halfpipe. As I sit here in a town covered with snow, I can't help but think "How they heck does somebody from the USA lose to an Australian in a sport that involves snow?". That's kind like an Australian losing to an American in a sport that involves kangaroos.

3) I know it's a stereotype that all Canadians are nice, friendly, and polite, but I've got to give credit where credit is due. The Canadian crowd really impressed me during the medal ceremony for women's hockey. Canada has just defeated the USA 2-0 to win the gold. Winning the silver for the American women was pretty much a complete failure. The USA and Canada are far and away the two best women's hockey teams in the world. The American woman's hockey team knew they would only play one competitive game the entire tournament, and they lost that game. So as you might expect, Team USA was quite devastated. There were a lot of tears ( and not tears of joy ) when they received their silver medals. All of a sudden, during this somber scene, you started to hear a chant of "USA! USA! USA!" from the crowd. Now I'm pretty sure supporters of Team USA started the chant, but it looked like the crowd was 90% Canadian ( based on all the red shirts and Canadian flags ), and the chant was loud enough that I've got to imagine that a good number of the Canadian fans joined in. It was almost as if the Canadian fans recognized how upset the American women were, and they were trying to cheer them up.

Now, let me tell you, this would NEVER happen if the roles wear reversed. If Team USA had beaten Team Canada in the the USA, the Canadian team would have been serenaded by a chorus of chants like "Looooooooo-zerrrrrrrs! Loooooooo-zerrrrrrrrrs! Loooooooo-zerrrrrrrrs!" and "Canada sucks! Canada sucks! Canada sucks!" during the entire medal ceremony. You can say a lot of good things about the USA, but you can never say that we are gracious winners. I've got to give the Canadian crowd a lot of credit for showing lots of class.

4) The overwhelming favorite to win the gold medal in the men's 10000 meter speed-skating race was a Dutch guy named Sven Kramer. He was way ahead and on pace to set a new Olympic record when his coach directed him to change lanes on the speedskating track. As it turned out, his coach had told him skate in the wrong lane, and Sven was immediately disqualified from the race.

Let me tell you, Sven seemed REALLY pissed! I mean REALLY REALLY pissed! He took off his goggles and flung them across the ice and he ripped into his coach in the interview after the race. I know I probably shouldn't be surprised by this, but I'm just not used to seeing this from a Dutch guy. I mean, I don't think I've ever heard the expression "that fiery Dutch guy". I mean, people from that part of Europe have a reputation for being rather reserved, and with all the pot they must smoke in that country, I always pictured the Dutch as being a really mellow people. However, I now know that a Dutch guy can loose his cool if you make a stupid mistake to cost him a gold medal in the Olympics and crush his dream. Who knew?

5) About a week ago I commented on this blog post from Neil and told him the following regarding the Canadian men's hockey team:

"I really hope you guys pull it off, even if it comes at the expense of the USA hockey team"

Well Neil, I've given it a bit more thought, and I guess I've got to say that I lied. I found myself jumping in the air when Team USA scored the empty-net goal to clinch the first game against Canada. Sure, I wouldn't really be upset if Canada won on Sunday, and I'd be happy for all the Canadian fans, but I just can't look at a team in those red, white, and blue USA uniforms and root against them.

So, on Sunday, IT'S ON.

IT IS SOOOOO ON!

Rich

Snow Day

2010-02-20T12:30:00.011-05:00

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, we had a BIG snowfall on February 10th. The bad knew was that I needed to shovel it that night. The good news was that the boys got the day off from school and got to play in the snow all day. Ruth took a bunch of photos of the boys frolicking in the snow. The pictures came out so nice ( I love how the snowflakes show up as big white circles in the photos! ) that I decided to post of few of them here. I also posted a bunch more on facebook.

Real Love

2010-02-15T00:24:00.004-05:00

Today's was Valentine's Day. We'll it's 12:25 AM on Feb 15th right now, but the day I just lived through was Valentine's Day. I'm on vacation with my family this holiday weekend ( Monday is a holiday - President's Day in the USA ). We ran into a really rude kid today and some really inconsiderate people tonight. I was going to tell you all about this and call this post "Rude People", but I decided that writing about that kind of stuff really wouldn't be in the spirit of Valentine's Day. It wouldn't really be in the spirit of love. When I say "love", I mean REAL LOVE, not the sappy kind of romantic love that dominates Valentine's Day. How do I define "Real Love"? Well, to explain this, I'm going to do something I've never done in a blog post before - I'm going to quote from the Bible. I'm not trying to be preachy or anything - I just think the words below describe love ( in a rather universal non-denominational way ) better than anything that was every written.
Anyway, the words in red below are from the 1st letter of Paul to the Corinthians:

If I speak in human and angelic tongues but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.

: And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have all faith so as to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.


: If I give away everything I own, and if I hand my body over so that I may boast but do not have love, I gain nothing.

: Love is patient, love is kind. It is not jealous, (love) is not pompous, it is not inflated,

: it is not rude, it does not seek its own interests, it is not quick-tempered, it does not brood over injury, it does not rejoice over wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails. If there are prophecies, they will be brought to nothing; if tongues, they will cease; if knowledge, it will be brought to nothing.

: For we know partially and we prophesy partially,
: but when the perfect comes, the partial will pass away.

: When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things.

: At present we see indistinctly, as in a mirror, but then face to face. At present I know partially; then I shall know fully, as I am fully known.

: So faith, hope, love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Ouch

2010-02-10T22:59:00.002-05:00

This hasn't been a good week to live on the east coast of the USA. Two blizzards have hit since Friday night. Of course, I guess I shouldn't complain too much. My town got off pretty easy on Friday night. We only got 3 inches of snow while Philadelphia ( just a 67.8 mile drive from us according to Google Maps ) got 28 inches. Washington DC also got more that 2 feet of snow on Friday and one town in Maryland got 39 inches. Today's storm dropped 15-20 inches on a whole bunch of places from Washington D.C. to Boston, and my town was no exception this time. I don't know the official number, but I think we got between 15 and 18 inches. You know that really fluffy light snow that doesn't pack and is easy to shovel? Well, we didn't get that kind of snow. This snow was real HEAVY. I know this because I just finished clearing out our driveway, steps, and the path that leads from the driveway to the steps. The worst part of the job was dealing with the place were the driveway meets the street. When the snowplow goes down the street it pushes all the snow to the side. By the time the snowplow was done, it had left about 4 feet of densely packed snow in from of everybody's driveway. Anyway, I've been dealing with this snow since I got home from work today. It's actually still snowing now, but hopefully the rest of the snow that falls overnight won't stick too much. I put an OBSCENE amount of salt down on the driveway/steps/walkway after I cleared the snow, so hopefully it will all be relatively clear of snow in the morning ( Note: I walk to the train station each day, so I didn't have to worry about driving in this stuff today. However, I wanted to make sure Ruth and the kids could get the car out of the driveway and on to the road if they needed to drive anywhere tomorrow. Ruth is staying home with the boys tomorrow because school is canceled for tomorrow ( It was also canceled today )).
Anyway, I feel extremely sore right now and I'm sure it will feel worse tomorrow. It will sure be nice in about 10 years or so when I'll have 2 strapping teenage sons to help out with snow cleanup. I don't think I'm the type of Dad who would actually force his kids to do that kind of work, but hey, I'll be 50 by then. Assuming I raise my kids to be good people, I would hope they would want to help out their 50-year old Dad. Actually, Michael actually did try to help with the snow shoveling on Saturday morning ( after the 3 inches that fell on Friday ). It was sooooo cute. He had this little shovel, and as I worked on the driveway, he worked on the walkway and steps. Of course, he didn't really get much accomplished ( he is 6, after all ), and he kinda wound up walking on most of the snow and packing it down, which ultimately made it harder for me to get the walkway and the steps completely cleared. But hey, it's the thought that counts, and it was so sweet of him to try and help me out.

OK, enough complaining. I think it's bedtime now.

Rich

We're number 25!

2010-02-01T22:51:00.003-05:00

Click on this link and BEHOLD!!!

Cornell University's basketball team is ranked in the top 25.

For the first time in my life I can say that my alma mater has a nationally ranked basketball team.

Did I go to any Cornell basketball games when I was a student there? Well one, but that was only because they were playing against the school one of my friends was going to.

Have I followed any Cornell games on radio or TV this year? Well no, they are never on TV, but I did listen to about 15 minutes of their last game on the internet.

Could I pick any of their players out of a line-up? Nope.

Do I even know any of the player's names? Not Really. I vaguely recall a guy with the last name "Dale"mentioned on the internet broadcast ( or was that the name of the coach in the basketball movie Hoosiers? ).

So, am I being a bandwagon fan of the basketball team? Yes, I am quite shamelessly jumping on the Cornell basketball bandwagon.

Go Big Red! ( Whoever the hell you guys are! )

Hey, it's probably only going to last a week, so I might as well enjoy it while it lasts. :)

Rich

Gameday with Michael

2010-01-27T23:13:00.001-05:00

Yeah, the Jets lost AFC Championship Game to the Colts on Sunday, but is wasn't as bad a day for me as you might think. One thing that made the day really nice was that Michael watched most of the first half of the game with me. He's not really ready to start following a game yet, but he is starting to ask some questions about the game, and it's fun to have him around.

He lost interest by the second half ( which is a way was good, because the Jets were winning 17-13 at halftime, but lost 30-17 ), but he was really fired up for the game earlier in the day. As I noted on my facebook page, he asked me to get him a Mark Sanchez football when we were at the mall the day before the game ( He's holding the football in the photo above. BTW, The bear's name is Boozer, after the Jets' Super Bowl III hero Emerson Boozer. ). On the morning of the game, he crawled into my bed to wake me up at about 6:30 AM. When I asked him why he was up so early, he told me "We have to watch the Jets game today, Daddy!". I told him we didn't have to rush, because the game wasn't until 3 PM.
Later that day, he was playing with Peter in the basement at about 2:45. I reminded him the game was starting at 3:00, and I headed upstairs to watch the game. At 2:59, I heard his little feet sprinting up the stairs in order to make sure he didn't miss the game

So yeah, parenthood is hard at times, but it's times like Sunday afternoon that make me really happy to be a Dad? :)

BTW, I decided to post the photo below just to give you an idea of what I look like from behind when I watch football with my "lucky" football on my head. Unfortunately, the football hat didn't work as well as it had last week.

Oh, one more story about Michael and the football game. When I was putting Michael to bed, he asked me why the Jets had lost. I told him the Jets had lost because a lot of their players had gotten hurt. Michael looked at me with a face full of concern as said ...

"Who hurt them?"

He's such a sweet boy. :)

BTW, the photos below are a good representation of how he falls asleep each night. He tends to read in bed until he falls asleep. Click on the photo at the bottom to see what he was reading that night.

Superstitious Sunday

2010-01-18T23:59:00.001-05:00

I don't really intend to make this into a sports blog, and considering that one of my most loyal readers is from Australia, and another is from Canada ( Plus another from New Zealand who used to comment a lot, but seemed to stop following this blog after my YouTube presence started to fade away. :( ), if I was going to blog about a sport regularly, it certainly wouldn't American football.

However, I'm going to have to touch on American football a least a little bit here, because otherwise, I wouldn't be able to tell you the odd story of superstitions and my birthday party.

As you probably already know, I turned 40 just a few days ago. On Sunday a few friends and family members gathered for my birthday party ( And I do mean "a few". I really didn't want to make a big deal out of my birthday. However, Ruth insisted on throwing a party, so we invited a few family members a few friends from the "old neighborhood" ). However, the focus ( at least on my part ) wasn't on my birthday, but rather on the football game that would be played at 4:40 that afternoon.

As I mentioned in my last post, a really BIG Jets games was being played that weekend. Well, at least it was big from a JETS fan perspective. The New York Jets won the Super Bowl ( the championship game of American football ) on January 12th 1969. From that point on, it's been almost been nothing but misery and frustration for Jets fans ( I was born January 15, 1970, and I started following the Jets in 1977 ). The Jets have not even advanced to the Super Bowl ( let alone won it ) since that day in 1969. They've made it to the AFC championship game ( the game they would have to win to make it to the Super Bowl ) twice since then, but they suffered crushing defeats each time ( In January of 1983 and 1999 ). On the day of my 40th birthday party, they were playing for the right to go to the AFC championship game. So, from a Jets fan perspective, this was a HUGE game. Nobody really expected the Jets to win this game, but we were all hopeful ( The Jets went 9-7 in the regular season. They advanced to the playoffs by winning their final two games against teams that were not really trying ( In the Jets 15th game Jets they beat a 14-0 Colts team which rested all their starting players in the 2nd half of the game because they had already wrapped up the best record in the conference ( Which means the Colts would automatically advance to the 2nd round of the playoffs, and would get to play all their playoff games at their home stadium ( except for the Super Bowl, which is always played at a neutral site ). In the Jets' 16th game, they beat a 10-5 Bengals team which had already wrapped up a playoff spot, and could not really improve their playoff position by winning. ). So, it the opinion of most people in the sports media, the Jets were gift-wrapped their playoff spot by the Colts and Bengals, and didn't even deserve to be in the playoffs. The Jets surprised those "experts" by beating the Bengals in the first round of the playoffs ( I bet the Bengals now regret helping the Jets get into the playoffs by not really trying to beat the Jets in the last game of the regular season! ), but they now had to travel to San Diego to play a Chargers team which had finished 13-3 by winning their last 11 games in a row. ).

So, we were all hoping that the Jets could get the Promised Land of the AFC Championship Game, but we also all ready to have the Jets rips out our hearts again. We could all see the Jets playing a great game, getting our hopes up, being on the verge of victory, and then crushing our spirit by losing in heartbreaking fashion. This kind of thing had happened far too many times in the past for us not to expect it. It happened the last time the Jets were in this position 5 years ago, and it happened in an extremely excruciating fashion back in January of 1987 ( more on the later ).

So despite being an extremely rational and scientific person, I decided that Sunday would be a great day pull out all the weapons in arsenal of sports superstitions. Perhaps we couldn't really do anything to impact the outcome of the game ( OK, I KNEW we couldn't ), but goddammit, as long as we were all watching the game together, I thought it would be fun to make ourselves feel like we could affect the outcome of the game.

So, the first item to considering in my bag of superstitious tricks was my Mo Lewis # 57 jersey. I has worn it for many big Jets games, but it didn't really have a great track record ( After all, the Jets don't have a great track record ). However, I like that jersey ( this should be obvious to all you MoLewis57 followers out there ), so I was trying to think of a way to mix it up to make the Jersey more effective.

I decided that because Mo Lewis was a defensive player, I would wear my Mo Lewis jersey when the Jets were on defense, and I would take off the jersey when the Jets had the ball. I also decided that when the ball was punted (Possession of the ball changes when one team punts ( kicks ) the ball to the other team ), I would need to put the jersey on or take the jersey off while the ball was in the air. Eventually, my brother Craig showed up to the game wearing a Wayne Chrebet #80 jersey. Chrebet was an offensive player, so I immediately told Craig that he needed to keep the #80 jersey on when the Jets had the ball, and take the #80 jersey off when the Jets were on Defense. Of course, he was also required to put the jersey on or take the jersey off during punts.

So, picture the following:
Two grown men ( 40 years old and 36.5 years old ) with wives, kids, and Engineering degrees, frantically pulling football jerseys on an off ( each time I was putting my jersey on, Craig was taking his off, and vice versa ) each time the ball was punted in the game, in some delusional attempt to help the Jets win. Ruth actually took a video of this, so you might see it on YouTube someday, but for now, just try to picture how ridiculous that must have looked.

While the jersey changing was fun, it didn't turn out to be the focus of our superstitious attempt to change the Jets' luck. The focus turned out to be a little football - or rather, what was left of it. For years I've had this little mini Jets football. It's about the size of a Nerf football ( about 9.5 inches ( 24 cm ) from tip to tip ), but it's actually inflatable ( like a real football ) with a synthetic leather surface and laces. Three quarters of the surface is a fake-leather brown color, while one quarter of the surface is green and white with the Jets logo. I've never really seen the football as superstitious object, but I like to nervously fiddle with the ball ( spinning the ball in my hands; flipping the ball in the air and catching it; lofting passes to myself across the room during commercials ) while I'm watching a football game.

About a week before the Jets/Chargers game, I noticed that the mini football was getting a little bit flat. So a took the football over to a little hand-held air pump I keep in the garage and pumped it full of air until it felt rather firm. Actually, it felt a little bit too firm after I pumped it, but I figured it would lose a little air pressure in the week before the game.

So, I think you know where this is heading. We are about one minute into the Jets/Chargers game on Sunday when the mini football explodes open in my hands. Well, it didn't really explode - it just kinda burst at one of the seems. All inflatable footballs have 4 panels of leather ( or in this case, synthetic leather ) running lengthwise along the axis of the ball. The 4 panels surround a rubber air bladder, and the panels are stitched together at 4 seams that run the length of the ball. Well, the stitches at one of the 4 seams spontaneously gave out, and the air bladder popped out of the opening and became twice as big as it had been when it was being held in place by the 4 panels. You can see what I mean in the photo below.

It wasn't as if I was doing anything unusual with the ball at the time. There had been another game on earlier in the day, and I had been fiddling around with the football for at least 4 hours.

Then, all of a sudden, just a minute into the Jets game, it pops open like that in my hands.

Well, we all figured that this had to be some kind of an omen. We weren't sure if it was a good omen or a bad omen, but it was definitely some kind of a sign. I didn't really didn't ponder the meaning of the exploding ball for more than a about a minute, because I was too busy focusing on the game. All I was feeling then was a little disappointment that my little toy ball was broken. It just wasn't as much fun to fiddle around with the thing now that it was roughly the shape of a basketball. Eventually, I handed the ball off to my brother-in-law Orion ( Debby and Orion had flown in from California to spend the long holiday weekend ( Monday was MLK day ) at our home. Ruth's Dad was staying over too, so we had a little family reunion that weekend. ). Orion told me he wanted to see if he could peel the rest of the synthetic leather shell of the football off the air-bladder. I figured "Why not?", the ball wasn't going to do me much good anyway.

In the meantime, the experiment with taking the jersey's on an off was having mixed results. The Jets were playing great defense ( The Chargers would only wind up scoring 7 points in the first half ), but they were not doing anything on offense ( Which just goes to show the power of Mo Lewis, and why it was wise of me to name all my websites MoLewis57 rather than WayneChrebet80 ). By about the middle of the second quarter, the Jets still hadn't gotten a first down ( Non-football fans: Believe me, zero first downs in a quarter and a half of football is very bad ), and I was trying to think of what superstitious adjustments we could make at halftime to help the Jets out ( OK, I know that sounds insane, but 33 seasons of suffering as a Jets fan will do that to you ). Just about that time, Orion announced that he had finished peeling off the outer shell of the mini football. He handed me the shell, and suggesting that I could try wearing it as a hat.

GENIUS!!!

It's no surprise that the guy is an MIT grad.

Orion's idea was pure genius . Of course, why not wear the shell of the football at a hat? Nothing else had worked yet, so why not try that? You can look at the first photo in this blog post for a close-up look of how the "hat" looked on my head. I decided to wear the Mo Lewis jersey without the football hat when the Jets were on defense, and wear the football hat without the jersey when the Jets were on offense ( It just made a stupid kind of sense to wear the football hat on my head only when the Jets had the football ). After I did that, the Jets started to move the ball a bit ( they actually got a few firsts downs ), but they still were not able to score in the first half. They Jets were losing 7-0 at halftime. When the first half ended, everybody rushed to grab some dinner at halftime ( Ruth got a bunch of hero ( submarine ) rolls and roasted all sorts of meats. She made some pulled pork ( the pork cooked in a crock pot all day ) that was OMFG-level good ).

I actually didn't get to make my sandwich until the first commercial after the second half started. Trying to be a good host, I let everyone else get their food first. I had just cut open my hero roll and was eying the pulled-pork when I noticed that the second half was about to start. The Jets were going to receive the 2nd half kickoff, which meant the Jets were essentially going to be on offense to start the second half. So, I rushed back to my seat, and quickly threw on my football hat AND my Mo Lewis jersey. Of course, the Mo Lewis jersey was for defense, so I should not have put it on, but in my haste to get back to my seat before the 2nd half kickoff I got a little bit confused.

In any case, before I realized what I had done wrong, the Jets received the 2nd half opening kickoff an ran it back about 40 yards. This was the best the Jets had looked moving the ball all day. About a second after that, Craig asked me why I was wearing my Mo Lewis jersey when the Jets had the ball. I told him it was an accident, but considering the results that accident "produced", I decided on new strategy for the 2nd half. I would wear my Mo Lewis jersey for the rest of the game, and wear the football hat when the Jets had the ball. Craig would immediately stop wearing the Wayne Chrebet jersey that had failed to produce results in the first half. Our strategy was set for the rest of the game. The photo below shows roughly what the room looked like for the rest of the game ( Well, kinda. Ruth and my Great Aunt Loretta ( standing in the back ) didn't care about the game, and were just posing for a photo Ruth insisted we all take ( she set up a camera with an automatic timer next to the TV ( from the camera's perspective, the TV is to the right )) during one of the more crucial moments of the game. As you might notice, my eyes are focused on the TV rather than the camera. )

While you may certainly be justified in doubting the power of the football hat, the game certainly turned around in the second half. The air was pierced with the high-pitched sound of my scream when the Jets took the lead 10 - 7 with a touchdown early in the 4th quarter ( Note to non football fans: American football consists of 4 quarters of 15 minutes each. A touchdown plus an extra point is worth 7 points, so the Jets touchdown early in the 4th quarter turned a 7-3 Jets deficit to a 10-7 Jets lead ). The touchdown happened about 10 seconds after the picture above was taken.

With 9:27 left in the game, the air was pierced with my scream again when the Jets scored a touchdown that would give them ( after the extra point ) a 17 - 7 lead.

Now, the Jets were really in the driver's seat. Their defense had dominated the Chargers all day. The Jets defense has been so good that a 10 point lead might as well have been a 20-point lead. Almost nobody watching the game though the Jets had a chance to lose the game.

... but I could stop thinking about January of 1987.

In January of 1987, the Jets were playing for a chance to go to the AFC Championship game. If the Jets mad it to the AFC championship game, they would have played the Denver Broncos, a team that had beat handily earlier in the year. With 4 minutes to go in the game, the Jets were leading the Cleveland Browns 20-10. I thought the game was all but wrapped up. I though we were going to win the next week and go to the Super Bowl.

But hey, I was still 12 days shy of my 17th birthday. Despite the 14-0 disaster of the AFC championship game 4 years earlier, I was still to young to really understand what it meant to be a Jets fan.

4 minutes of game time later, I understood.

Somehow, against all odds, the Jets manages to give up 10 points in those last 4 minutes. The key play in the those last 4 minutes was a stupid roughing-the-passer call against Mark Gastineau ( stupid, not because it was a bad call - stupid because I'll believe to my dying day that Mark Gastineau is an idiot who cost us a chance to go to the Super Bowl ) which extended a drive which led to Cleveland tying the game. The game went to overtime ( Note to non-football fans: Overtime in the NFL is sudden death - the first team that scores wins ). The Browns wound up setting up for an easy field goal to win the game and MISSED. Were things finally going the Jets way? No. It just the the football gods wanted to give us on final glimmer of hope so they could rip out our hearts and show it to us ( like those villians in Indian Jones and the Temple of Doom ). A few minutes later the Brown made a field goal to win the game 23-20, and I finally understood what it meant to be a Jets fan.

So, let's turn the clock forward to January 17, 2010. The Jets have a 10-point lead late in the 4th quarter, but I can't help thinking about what happened 23 years earlier. With 3 minutes and 36 seconds left, the Chargers get the ball trailing 17-7 and start driving the ball the field.

They start driving the ball REALLY quickly and easily down the field.

Oh God! Not again!

Not again!

PLEASE! PLEASE! PLEASE! NOT AGAIN!

This can't be happening! This can't be happening!

Chargers score a touchdown with 2 minutes and 14 seconds left.

Jets 17, Chargers 14.

The Jets get the ball back.

The Chargers have 1 time out left and the two minute warning will stop the clock.

The Jets need to get one first down to wrap up this game. If they can get one first down, they can run the clock out. If they don't get a first down, the Chargers will get the call back with about 70 seconds left and a legit shot to tie the game.

Heck, if Chargers get that ball back, they WILL tie this game with a field goal. There's no doubt in my mind. Heck they might even score a touchdown to win the game, and if the don't win in in regulation, they'll certainly win the game in overtime. This is gonna be January of 1987 all over again, unless the Jets can get that first down. This is going to be January of 1987 all over again, unless the Jets can gain 10 yards in the next 4 plays. Did I think they could do it? Well, take a look at the picture below ...

The Jets gain 9.5 yards on the next 3 plays.

There are 69 seconds left in the game.

It's 4th down and half a yard to go. The Jets need to get this much ...

... on the next play to win the game.

Did they get it?

Well, take a look at the picture below.

WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jets 17, Chargers 14.

GAME OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!

( Apparently, I screamed so loud, that I scared some of the little kids. Ruth had the camera on me while this was going on. I won't make any promises regarding YouTube clips, but don't be surprised if you see something on the YouTube site ).

A few more pictures to wrap this up ...

( Left to Right: Craig, Me, and my buddy Tom enjoying the win. BTW, Tom's superstition is to not wear Jets stuff during Jets game. He'll be wearing that Ranger's shirt next Sunday and I'll have that football on my head again. )

( Posing by my birthday cake after the win ).

Just one final note. I like making lists, and after letting this win sink in, I've decided that Sunday's game was the greatest Jets win I've every experienced, and the 5th greatest win I've every experienced as a sports fan.

The top 5:

1) Mets: Game 6, 1986 World Series
2) Mets: Game 7, 1986 World Series
3) Mets: Game 6, 1986 National Leauge Championship Series.
4) Knicks: Game 7: Eastern Conference Finals
5) Jets: January 17, 2010, Jets 17, Chargers 14.

I know I don't have a lot of sports fans who read this blog, but if you are a sports fans, please leave your top 5 list in the comments. C'mon Neil, considering that Canada immediately makes me think of Hockey, I'd be really curious to see if you'd list 5 Hockey games.

BTW, if the Jets beat the Colts next week, that victory would take the number 3 slot on the list above.

Yes, they are playing the Colts next week.

They are playing the team that pretty much lost on purpose ( and ruined the integrity of the game while up the change to have a perfect undefeated season ) to let the Jets get into the playoffs.

Can anyone say "Frankenstein's Monster"?

Can anyone say "poetic justice"?

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!!!!!

Rich

40

2010-01-14T22:37:00.002-05:00

I'll turn 40 in a little over an hour from now.
Happy freakin' birthday to me.

I know I don't sound excited ( and I'm not ) but let me assure you that I have no negative feelings about turning 40. It's honestly just another day to me, and in this case, it just might turn out to be a crappy day for reasons that have nothing to do with how long ago I was born. You see, I got called at home from work tonight, and just looked into a lot of work issues from home. Tomorrow is gonna be a REALLY crappy day at work. Sucks, but what can you do.

I was actually going to write a post about the significant moments in each of the 4 decades of my life, but now I'd would just like to veg-out a bit before going to bed.

The really big day for me in Sunday when the Jets play. Hopefully they can give me a delayed birthday present. But if they don't, that's okay. The best three gifts I've had in my life are all sleeping upstairs. Life is good. :)

Rich

P.S. EZ, your gift arrived today. Thanks

The Drought

2010-01-08T23:49:00.006-05:00

Over the last year or so, my online activity has decreased dramatically. At first, my YouTube time was just being replaced with blogging time, but now I find that my blogging time is being replaced by IRL. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but I would like to take some steps to keep my online life from slipping away completely. However, the very process of scaling back the time I spend in the online world is kinda self-perpetuating. The less I blog and make videos, the less people pay attention to my blogs and videos, and when I find that I'm not getting any comments on my posts/videos, I kinda lose the motivation to make them. I guess I could turn this all around my really putting a lot of energy and enthusiasm into my online life, but frankly, I don't feel any strong compulsion to do that. I really don't feel drawn to the online life the way I used to be. Why is that? Well, the answer might surprise you. In fact, for those of you who only know me online, the answer might seem a little silly. However, if you've known me IRL for years, the answer might just make perfect sense.

Perhaps this won't seem shocking coming from a guy who wears a football helmet in his online icon ( God! I've been away from the online world so long that I've completely forgotten the two-letter abbreviation for the photo people use to represents themselves on social networking sites - can somebody help me out here? ), but I'm a HUGE sports fan. I won't bore you with any details, but those who know me really well can tell you that HUGE doesn't begin to describe how big fan I am.

This may seem silly to you, but I think the fate of my favorite sports teams ( The New York Mets ( baseball ), the New York Knicks ( basketball ), and the New York Jets ( football ) ) has had a big impact on the way I've conducted my life. I didn't start taking serious steps to court the opposite sex until after my favorite team ( The Mets ) won the world championship in October of 1986 ( Note: This is the only time any of my 3 teams have won the championship since I started following them in about 1976 ). It wasn't as if I wasn't attracted to girls prior to October of 1986, but until Mets won that title, I was far more focused on the Mets than girls each Spring and Summer. If the Mets had failed to win that title in 1986 ( It was miraculous victory - see the video below ), I seriously think I'd be an unmarried obsessed Mets fan today. I think that the Mets victory in 1986 really allowed me to go on with my life and stop being a social outcast.

Anyway, how does this possibly all relate to my online life? Well, as I type these words I find myself in the middle of a drought. Not a drought in my online life, but a drought in my sports life. One January 7, 2007, the New York Jets played ( and lost ) a playoff game against the New England Patriots. None of my three favorite sports teams have played a playoff game since then. It's been more than 3 years. I think I became aware of the concept of "the playoffs" in about 1976, and since then, this current 3-year span has been the longest I've ever gone without one of my 3 favorite teams playing in a playoff game. It's been quite a drought, and it's left a bit of a void in my leisure life. Unlike years past, there have been times when I've really wanted to find ways to keep from thinking about the fate of my sports teams ( Especially when the Mets collapsed at the end of the season to fail to make the playoffs in September of 2007 and 2008, and the Jets did the same in December of 2008 ), and YouTube and Blogger were a great outlet for me.

However, I've had a hard time thinking about YouTube and Blogger lately, because in a little more than 15 hours from now, the drought ends. The Jets will be playing a playoff game at 4:30 PM Eastern time on Saturday, and I am STOKED! I'm REALLY REALLY STOKED! More stoked than a nearly 40-year old guy with two kids really should be - but hey - I'm been waiting for this for a long time.

I can't wait. :)

I've been thinking about this game at work all week.

Yeah, they might lose, but that playoff excitement is really going to be great. :)

Yeah, I know this is silly and immature, but that's the way I roll.

J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS!!!!!!!!!!!

Rich

P.S. And hey, if they lose in heartbreaking fashion you can all probably look forward to a prodigious amount of blog posts and videos from me over the next few months.

Edit: JETS 24, Bengals 14. WOOOOHOOOOO!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas!

2009-12-28T14:09:00.003-05:00

I'm having a great week home from work. If you're curious, I've posted my Christmas photos to my facebook page.

Sugar-plums

2009-12-25T01:34:00.006-05:00

9:30 PM on Christmas Eve 2009

It's a man's job

2009-12-20T23:36:00.001-05:00

Hey there!

Before I get to this post, I wanted to say that I started a post about a week ago. The post was going to be about how busy I was and list all the things that had been keeping me busy. However, I soon found myself too busy to finish the post, and at this point I don't see much point in posting about why I was so busy a week ago.

Anyway, the thing they kept me busy this weekend was digging out from the first big snowstorm of the season ( Admittedly, there was also a snow blower involved, but there are a lot of places where you need to use a shovel, especially if you are as anal as me about making sure your driveway, sidewalk, steps, and area in front of the driveway and mailbox ( The city snowplows always seem to block your driveway by pushing huge amounts of snow from the street in front of your house ) are 100% clear of all of even the tiniest bit of snow and ice. Also, my snow blower is not self-propelled or anything ( so there is a lot of pushing involved ), and it is not powerful enough to throw snow from the middle of my double-wide driveway to the snow banks on either side of the driveway, so I've got to go over lots of areas more than once . Plus, to get a head start on all the snow ( The storm started slowly at about noon on Saturday, got heavier as the day went on, and continued until dawn on Sunday ), I did a lot of work at about midnight before I went to bed and did a lot of it by hand so I wouldn't piss of the neighbors too much. ). As I was doing all this work, I got to thinking about what still passes as "a man's job" these days.

Modern western society has certainly come a long way in the last 50 years when it comes to how couples share the responsibilities for domestic chores. While it's true that most women still wind up doing most of the domestic chores, ...

( Full disclosure: I'm a bit more of a Felix Unger than my wife ( if you don't know who Felix Unger and Oscar Madison are, check this link for The Odd Couple ), so I'm pretty much the only person who ever cleans the bathrooms or does any kind of floor-cleaning or vacuuming. I also do most of the dish washing and I love caring for my kids ( Well, I didn't love the changing poopy diapers part, but I did this as much as my wife did. We had rule that whoever first smelt the poop had to clean it. Of course this system relied on the honor system quite a bit, but I can report that I never shirked my responsibility after detecting the poopy odor. ). However, I HATE shopping of any kind, and I'm pretty useless in the kitchen, so Ruth basically does all the grocery shopping and has cooked thousands of more meals than me over the last 13.5 years )

... there are certain jobs that are still reserved for men. mostly because most men don't want to give them up. I think shoveling snow is a good example of this. I guess it would be easier to have our wives chip in with the snow shoveling, but most men would feel a bit emasculated to have their wives help them with hard physical labor. I can't tell you how many pieces of furniture I've moved by myself while telling my wife to "stand back - I don't want you to get hurt". Perhaps this is silly, immature and sexist, but that's the way it is - at least for me. Sometime a man just wants to feel like his "manliness" is useful. I dunno - my nearly 40-year-old bones certainly are sore today, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

Oh, I don't tell me "Why don't you just hire some teenage kid to do the work?". You don't want me to get started about how middle-aged guys feel about being usurped by younger guys when it comes to physical labor.

Rich

Back To School

2009-12-01T23:16:00.003-05:00

Well, it's been a trying week ( see this post if you don't know what I'm talking about ), but after much effort and help from some great people, we finally managed to get Peter back into full-day pre-school. Well, it's not exactly full day - he's going to school from 9:00 to 2:30 each instead of 9:00 - 3:30, but it's a lot better than 9:00 - 11:30. Now we won't have to worry about finding a new daycare center for Peter ( Ruth works until 1 PM each day ), and he'll get the type of specialized instruction he needs all day.

Technically, Peter is only in class for the first half of the day, and he is been designated as a temporary "visitor" to the class in the afternoon. Basically, the teachers at Peter's school found a loophole for us to get around the Superintendent's rules. Things are going to need to be re-evaluated in January, but the teacher's seem committed to doing everything they can to help us out. Kim also gave a bunch of great advice on Friday and offered to meet with the teachers/administrator's at Peter's school if we needed more help pleading our case.

So, perhaps Peter getting kicked out of his daycare center will turn out to be a blessing. He'll definitely get better instruction in school than he would have in daycare.

Anyway, I decided to include another nice happy photo of Peter in this post. The photo above really shows the two sides of Peter. He really likes the piano and he's already shown a talent for making up little simple little melodies on his own :) . However, the marks on the walk behind him are the result of Peter using a magic marker on the wall the previous day. :0

Expelled!

2009-11-27T01:17:00.002-05:00

I've included the two photos above just as a reminder of what a sweet little boy my youngest son Peter can be. Peter's behavior has cause us a lot a grief lately, so I just wanted to post some photos that would make me think about all the joy he brings me. I especially like his smile in the Batman photo above. He was so happy that day. I really can't emphasize enough that NOTHING make a parent happier than seeing his/her child smile. When I think back on all the fun I've had in my life prior to having kids, I can honestly say that none of that fun compares to the feeling that I get watching my kids having fun. Nothing I accomplished in my life before having kids gave me anywhere near the feeling of accomplishment I get when I make my boys giggle. My kids bring me so much joy, and I've needed to keep think of that joy to get through the last few days.

On Monday morning Ruth called me at work. She was sobbing into to phone. She called me to let me know that Peter had been kicked of of his daycare center for bad behavior. She wasn't really crying because he was kicked out ( Peter getting kicked out of daycare certainly doesn't qualify as a tragedy. It's been inconvenient for us, because we've had to scramble to find new daycare options, but there is certainly much worse news you can get about your child. ) - she was crying because of what his recent behavior might imply about his development and future.

As you may already know from this post and this post, Peter can be a real handful at times. He's not really good at taking "no" for an answer. Actually, he gets insanely angry when you tell him no, and he'll physically fight you off if you try to get him to do something that he doesn't want to do. He is EXTREMELY strong-willed. He is more strong-willed than anyone I've ever met in my life. I keep telling myself that his strong will is going to serve him well in life someday, but that doesn't make things easier now.

I think his speech-delay is still a big part of the problem. His speaking has improved by leaps and bounds lately, but I still don't think he grasps the concept of cause and effect. You can scold him and punish him over and over again when he acts out inappropriately, but I don't think he has any comprehension of what he is being punished for. If you ask him why he is being punished, he won't be able to tell you ( even if you told him why 5 seconds earlier ), and he'll go right back to the inappropriate behavior at the next opportunity.

Actually, "opportunity" is the wrong word. It makes it sound like he's always looking for the opportunity to behave badly, and that really isn't the case. Most of the time, he wants to be good, and acts like a little angel. Few kids are bigger mama's boys than Peter. We put him in his own bed each night, but he still winds up being right next to Ruth in bed almost every morning. He's really attached to his Mom, and I don't think that any Mama's boy with a loving Mom could turn out that bad. The Paul Simon song below kind of sums up my feeling about that ...

Peter doesn't want to be bad, but he tends to react to conflict badly. I can't tell you how many times he's hit his brother Michael for inappropriate reasons. Once again, I think the speech delay has a lot to do with it, and recent events have made things worse in that regard. During the previous school year ( September 2008 to June 2009 ), Peter was getting full-day pre-school instruction for kids with special needs like Autism and speech delay. He made tremendous progress over that year. I really don't think we could have gotten him to accept potty training without the extensive help we got from the school.

This September, he started again in the full day pre-school classes ( He went to daycare at our local YMCA over the Summer. He had gone there prior to September of 2008, and all the caregivers there knew him well, so he was pretty happy there. ). However, in late September we were told that Peter needed to be re-evaluated because the school thought he had made good progress and didn't really qualify for one of the classes he was taking ( He's always had two different teachers in school, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. Actually, in the first few months at school ( starting in September 2008 ), he actually only went to pre-school for a half-day session in the morning ( then a bus would take him to YMCA daycare in the afternoon ). His morning teacher decided that he wasn't making enough progress, and the school decided to enroll him in an afternoon class as well. He didn't really start making great progress until he started to go to class all day ). We protested when were told Peter no longer qualified for his afternoon class, but as we found out later, there really wasn't much we could do. The public school system in our town had gotten a new Superintendent in September, and apparently that superintendent was trying to make budget cuts anywhere he could ( Considering the MASSIVE property taxes we pay to support the public school system in our town, it REALLY pisses me off that this new Superintendent is trying to nickle-and-dime us. ). This bozo decided to save money by skimping on the special needs kids. He decided that kids in Peter's situation were not going to be allowed to be in more than one program at a time ( The before lunch and after lunch classes are each considered to be a separate program ). So, I think Peter's recent problems really started when he was denied full-day pre-school classes in the public school system.

So, it was back to the YMCA daycare for Peter in early October ( Pre-school classes at the public school in the morning, and YMCA daycare in the afternoon ). We didn't really expect too many problems ( Peter has always loved the YMCA ), but a few weeks after he got back to the YMCA, we started to get reports that Peter was acting up really badly.

We got reports that he had hit other kids.
We got reports that he had hit his CAREGIVERS.
We got reports that he had BIT his caregivers.

( He didn't bite his caregivers in anger in an attempt to hurt them. He was giving them gentle little nibbles to get their attention ( Peter craves attention, especially from people he likes. ), Still - biting of any kind is very much inappropriate. )

So, while we were upset with the news we got on Monday, the writing had been on the wall for a few weeks. We've spent the last few weeks trying hard to correct his behavior, but he's actually been pretty good at home lately, and when we punished him at home for stuff he did at daycare, you could tell that he wasn't coming close to making the cause-and-effect relationship between the behavior at school and the punishment at home. It was also clear that the "punishment" he received at the YMCA wasn't helping much. Apparently, they would isolate him from the rest of the class when he acted up and send him to the office of the Director of daycare. The Director used to be one of Peter's caregivers. Peter REALLY likes her, so sending an attention-craving kid to the Director's office every time he acted up was probably just re-enforcing the bad behavior. Anyway, I'm sure the Director didn't really have time for Peter's frequent visits, and after enough hitting and biting ( especially hinting of other kids ), I guess she really had no choice to expel him.

So, that's where we are. The YMCA has given us a grace period of a few days, but we've got to decide on a new daycare center REAL soon. I'm sure we can get him into another daycare center, but Ruth and I are really worried that workers at any daycare center won't be able to handle Peter if he keeps acting up like this. We are really worried that he won't be getting the instruction he needs to get ready for Kindergarten next September.

The good news is that a lot of people REALLY love Peter and have offered to help. We are actually meeting with a very special person's in Peter's life tomorrow afternoon at our home. From the time he turned 2 up until he turned 3, Peter got speech therapy twice a week at home from speech/autism therapist named Kim. Kim also worked with Michael for a year when he was two years old, and she was eager to take on Peter's case when it was discovered that Peter would need speech therapy. Kim has really been a godsend to our family. We were really starting to lose hope with Michael until she started to figure out how to get Michael to come out of his shell. We invite her to all the birthday parties for the boys and she's really like a member of the family now. It will really be great to see her tomorrow, and hopefully she'll have some good ideas regarding Peter's situation.

Peter and Kim in a therapy session, March 2008:

Rich

The bane of my existence

2009-11-21T18:48:00.009-05:00

As I noted in this post, I hate picking up all the "spikey balls" that fall from sugargum trees in my backyard each Winter. I just thought I'd give you an idea of how bad it gets. Please click on the pictures below to see them in maximum detail. The leaves have pretty much all fallen off the trees by now, so every little thing you see hanging from the trees is a "spikey ball". Eventually, I'm going to have to pick every one of those things up. I've got 5 trees like this in my backyard, as well as 5 more from another yard that have a significant amount of branches hanging over my yard.

And so it's come to this ...

2009-11-18T23:43:00.001-05:00

I have an appointment with an orthopedic doctor on December 9th. Yeah, things aint going too well with the foot/ankle ( See this post if you don't know what I'm talking about ).

A week ago ( on Nov. 11th ), I felt more than the usual pain in the ankle when I started to run on the treadmill. I probably should have stopped right then and there. I really probably should have. But ... but I was getting SO close. So close to running at the same speeds I was running 18 months ago before I injured my knee. I was so close to getting back my personal best time for my regular 2-mile run before I turned 40. All it would have taken was about two more months of intense training. Just two more months. I could do that that. Sure, my ankle hurt a little more each day and I was limping around a lot the morning after each run, but I was almost there. I could make it. Just two more more months. I would rest the ankle for a while after that, but I still had two months to go. So, I gritted my teeth, finished my 2 mile run, and didn't give it second thought ...

Until the next morning ...

CRAP

My ankle looked pretty f*cking big on the morning of Nov. 12th. I could walk on it and all, but pretty f*cking big. Even then, I was still holding out a little hope. I only run twice a week anyway ( 2 intense runs a week - my knees get really spongey if I run more than that ), and my next scheduled run was set for Sunday, November 15th. I was still planning to run again until the morning of the 15th, but my ankle was still really swollen on the 15th, so finally some common sense kicked in. Sure, it might give me great feeling of accomplishment to get back to my personal best running times before I turned 40, but would it really be worth the risk of potentially spending the rest of my life with a limp ( or God forbid, a CANE! ). So yeah, common sense kicked in. It was time to hang up my running shoes for a while and finally call a Doc.

Oh well, no personal bests by the time I reach 40. I guess if the Docs can fix what is wrong and I heal up okay, I could still try to reach my personal best at 41. Heck, that would be more impressive anyway. Of course, I might be told I need to give up running altogether - but I'm going to think positive for now.

Aging REALLY REALLY blows!

Rich

Swoon swoon

2009-11-15T23:12:00.002-05:00

Keep working those glasses, Ms. Terkel!

Alphabet List

2009-11-09T00:06:00.003-05:00

I got the idea for this post from Shweta, who got it from Jackie, who named her post "I Like This Thing Rachel Copied From Sami..". So, I'm not really sure who came up with this idea ( though, I guess if I'm going to give props to anyone, it should be Sami ( whoever she is ) ), but it seemed like it would be fun, so here goes ...

A-age: 39

B-bed size: king

C-chore you hate: I have a rather large backyard with a good number of trees. This is nice ( and quite beautiful in the fall - see this post ), but the trees happen to be sugargum trees. These trees drop MANY MANY thousand spikey balls ( about an inch in diameter on average - see photo below ) each winter, and I've got to pick them up put them in bags each spring. This really breaks my back every year. The basic tool I've been using to gather these things is a rake, but they don't respond that well to rakes. Because of the spikes they tend to stick to the ground, so I often need to rake over the same spot about ten times before I even get have of these spikey little balls to move. I often need to get down on my hands and knees to pick them up. As much as I hate this chore, I really have no choice. The spikes on these things can be rather sharp, and it seems like these things never rot ( When they have been there a few years, the spikes wear away a bit. You would think that would be a good thing, but having your yard full of really old sugargum balls is like having a yard full of marbles. It's really not safe to walk on those things. ). Worse yet, I need to stick them in brown paper bags that are 4 feet high and have an opening that is only about 1 foot square ( The county requires that you put them in these bags, or else they won't collect them ). Once I manage to get a bunch of these spikey balls in a pile, it's a real pain in the ass to transfer to contents of the file into to tiny openings on these bags ( especially when the wind is blowing ). I swear - I love trees, but if it was legal to cut these trees down, I'd be outside with a chainsaw in about an hour ( and the only reason it would take an hour is that I would have to go out and buy the chainsaw first ).

Hey, I just found this website when searching for the image above on Google. I'm seriously considering buying one of these things.

D-don't eat: I wouldn't want to eat whale, dolphin, or one of the great apes, but aside from that, I'll willing to put pretty much anything into my mouth. Not that I'd want to eat just anything on a regular basis - I do try to eat rather healthy. I'm still progressing towards being 99% vegetarian ( I don't have any moral problem with meat, but I think eating lots of meat is really bad for the planet, so I'm trying to reduce my meat consumption each year. I've gotten to the point where more than 70% of my lunches are vegetarian, and I plan to increase that percentage each year. ), and when I do it meat, it's usually something relatively healthy like chicken or fish. Still, I make exceptions, because I really have 3 modes of eating:

Everyday eating mode: This mode is for the meals I have on a regular basis, like the meals I have at home or the lunches I eat at work. I don't want to get into any bad eating habits ( For example, as much as I might love super greasy deep fried foods and rich desserts, eating that stuff every day would certainly lead me to an early grave. ), so I trying to keep the vast majority of really unhealthy foods out of my regular eating rotation.

Going out to eat with my family mode: I don't go out to eat every day, so when I do I like to expand my horizons a bit. These "out to eat" meals are where I eat most of my burgers and fries. Still, I don't always eat that kind of stuff when I'm out to eat. Last Saturday I was out to eat with Ruth and the kids ( at a place that had plenty of fried and greasy choices ), and I had a meal that consisted of crab cakes and broccoli.

Vacation mode: If I was on vacation 365 days a year ....
1) I'd weigh about 400 pounds.
2) The world's supply of sugar would be in danger.
3) The milk producing cows of the work would be bone dry ( CHEESE, ICE CREAM, PUDDING, ICE CREAM FLOATING IN A BOWL OF PUDDING COVERED IN CHEESE!!!! MMMMMMMMMM!!!!!! ).
4) I would cause so much global warming from my meat eating that we'd all be about 10 feet under water.
Yes, anything goes when I'm on vacation. F*ck it! I'm on vacation!

E-essential start-your-day item: I'm not emotionally attached to any of these things, but I certainly would start a day without soap, toothpaste and mouthwash. Oh, and if this question was supposed to be about coffee ...
1) I've been caffeine-free since 1998.
2) I'm wide awake within milliseconds after my alarm goes off.

F-favorite board game: Depends on the crowd. I've probably spent more time playing Strat-o-matic baseball than any other game, but that's really only an option if you are in a group of male baseball nerds. I've always thought that Trivial Pursuit was a fun co-ed game. You can really learn a lot about a couple by how they resolves disputes when they are on the same Trivial Pursuit team.

G-gold or silver: Not sure how to answer this question. I'm not a bling guy. The only piece of gold or silver I have ever worn ( or every will wear ) is my wedding ring. I'm going to have to go with gold, because is is worth way-more per once than silver ( Also, it's a damn good conductor! ).

H-height: 6 Feet, 1 inch.

I-instruments you've played: I can't really play any musical instrument. Yes I did play "the recorder" in school, because they kind of force you to do that, and I have enjoyed making up little melodies on keyboards/pianos from time to time, but both my attempts to learn how to play a musical instrument in a formal way ( guitar / piano ) ending with me quitting before I learned too much. It would have never worked. I have a good ear for music and all, but I have ZERO dexterity/flexibility in my fingers. I've never been able to to move my pinky finger at all with also moving my ring finger. Hell, I can't even touch type. All the fine blogging you've ever see on this site has been done using the hunt-and-peck method

J-job title: Software Developer

K-kids: Michael is 6 and Peter is 4.

L-living arrangements: House in Edison, New Jersey.

M-mom's name: My Mom passed away in 1996. Her name was June.

N-nicknames: Never had a nickname.

O-overnight hospital stay, other than birth: I was hospitalized for a bad asthma attack when I was four years old. I wrote about this experience at the beginning of this post.

P-pet peeve: I'm a pretty affable and agreeable fellow. There really isn't lot that makes me angry on any kind of consistent basis. It's not that I never get peeved about anything - it's just that I don't get peeved about anything consistently enough that I would call in a "pet peeve". There are a few things I could mention ( and I think I might have already answered one of these "pet peeve" type questions in another one of these multiple question blog posts ), but I'm in a good mood right now and I don't want to spoil it by dwelling on the negative.

Q-famous movie quote: "Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try" - Yoda, from "The Empire Srikes Back".

R-rightie or leftie: Right-handed.

S-sibling(s): My brother Craig is 3.5 years younger than me.

T-time you wake up: 6:07 AM on work days. On weekends, I'll try to sleep past 8 AM, but my kids usually wake me up before then. Before I had kids, I used to sleep until at least 11 AM each weekend. Kids really change you.

U-underwear: This may be TMI, but I wear briefs. I'd give these reason why I go for briefs over boxer, but that would be REALLY TMI.

V-vegetable favorite: I eats LOTS of Chinese food, and my favorite vegetable with Chinese food is broccoli. However, broccoli can actually be quite boring if you find yourself eating it all by itself. My favorite vegetable as a stand-alone food would be corn-on-the-cob.

W-ways you run late: I don't do late. I'm the kinda guy who gets to places an hour early all the time because I build in a one-hour train-delay ( or a one hour traffic jam ) to my estimate of long it will take to get somewhere. Of course, 2 little kids can occasionally ruin your best laid-out plans. I'm still rarely late, but if I am, the answer to "way you run late" would be "kids".

X-x-rays you've had: Aside from the dental ones? Well, I'll save this story for another time ( Heck, I might have already told this story - I really don't remember ), but I was once in a cast for two months due to a basketball injury, and X-rays of my left foot were involved.

Y-yummy food you make: I'm no chef, but I can make a mean omelet when I want to.

Z-zoo favorite: I've always liked the monkeys, but the sea-lions are always really cool too.

Old Body

2009-11-06T00:10:00.001-05:00

My left foot is killing me today.

Not that I'm surprised by that - it's something that I'm starting to get used to. My foot's been that way for about 4 or 5 months now. When it first started, it felt like a twisted ankle, but I couldn't actually remember twisting my ankle. Anyway, it didn't really bother me too much. Back in my teen years, when I was playing pickup basketball just about every day, I used to sprain my ankles rather frequently. I've dealt with severely sprained ankles in the past, and this just felt like a minor strain. The ankle pain I was feeling was the kind of thing that would usually go away in just a day or two.

But it didn't go away. It hasn't gone away. In fact, it seems like it's getting progressively worse over time. Not a lot worse - it's not like I'm in severe pain or anything - but it has started to get annoying.

As I said before, I don't really remember a single event that led to the pain. The pain just came out of nowhere one day, and it has just kinda lingered since then. With that in mind, it has occurred to me that this is some kind of repetitive stress injury. In other words, I'm getting old.

( Actually, I'm not even sure if "repetitive stress" is the right term. I think "repetitive stress" usually means something like Carpel Tunnel Syndrome. What I'm talking about is an injury you get from overuse, like Tennis Elbow, or knee injuries from running too much. I'm too tired to look up the proper term for that right now, so I'm just going to use the term "repetitive stress" in this post. )

I probably have some kind of slightly torn tendon/ligament , or some kind of small stress fracture in one of the bones in my foot ( The pain seems to be concentrated on the left side of my left foot, where the top of the foot meets the ankle ). Ruth ( my wife, who in case you forgot, is a doctor ) initially thought it was a stress fracture, but we are now both leaning towards the theory that it is a ligament/tendon thing. The pain is actually worst when I first wake up in the morning, or when I've been sitting for a long time without moving. The first step each morning was starting to get REALLY painful until Ruth told me to try moving my left foot/ankle around for about 15 seconds each morning before taking my fist step. This seems to cut down on the pain A LOT, so Ruth thinks it's probably some kind of tendon/ligament issue. She says the tendon/ligament probably contracts at night when I'm sleeping and becomes less flexible. This lack of flexibility leads to micro-tears in the tendon/ligament when I take those first steps, and probably does more damage to whatever happens to be damaged.

So yeah, I've got low flexibility in the foot, and probably some kind of tears in the tendons/ligaments related to the lack of flexibility. It would probably take an MRI to be absolutely sure ( and I doubt any doctor would recommend an expensive MRI for minor pain - and frankly I would feel like a real wuss if I demanded an MRI because of some minor ankle pain ), but the bottom line is ... I'M OLD.

But as I said, the pain's not that bad. Once I get the foot/ankle all warmed up, I don't really notice any pain at. In fact, I can run long distances on my treadmill without feeling pain. Yes, I can run to my heart's content - and that's probably at the root of the problem.

( Lots of running ) + OLD = Repetitive Stress Injury

Repetitive Stress Injury + Running = Worse Injury

However, it hard for me to stop running, because I believe ...

Body - Running = Out of Shape Body

Life + Running = Longer Life

Lungs + Asthma = Weak Lungs

Weak Lungs + Running = Strong Lungs

Weak Lungs + Swine Flu = Death

You get the idea. As a person born with asthma, having a strong lungs and a strong cardio-vascular system is very important to me. Running is a great way to keep my heart/lungs in tip-top shape. I really don't want to stop running, but it's becoming clear that all the running I'm doing is starting to contribute to my joints breaking down.

It's not just my ankle. I've had issues with my knees for as long as I can remember. Even in high school, they would occasionally swell up on me. It's not that I really get knee pain, but if I do too much running my knees get all spongey. I'm pretty sure "spongey" isn't a word, but what I mean is that if I run too frequently, my knees feel like they are made out a sponge-type material rather than something solid. It doesn't really hurt, but it can be rather disconcerting - you kinda feel like your knee might give way any second. Well, I'm probably overtstating things, it's not really that bad ( yet ) but I've always worried about how my knees would hold up as I got progressively older.

We'll about 17 months ago or so, my left knee almost did give out on the treadmill. Actually, it didn't come close to giving out, but it did start to feel rather funny. I probably should have stopped running immediately, but I stupidly tied to "suck it up", and ran at full speed for about 10 more minutes. As soon as I got off the treadmill, I knew I had made a mistake. My knee just wasn't working right, and I realized that I was going to have to quit my running routine for a while. About 2 months past before I decided to to try running again. My knee still didn't feel quite right by then, so I started running significantly slower than I had before, vowing to eventually work my way back to my pre-injury speed. I'm almost all the way back to peak form ( I'm hoping to match my personal best time for 2 miles by the time I turn 40 on January 15th ), and my knee feels reasonably fine ( though who knows how it will respond when I start running at full speed again ), but now I've got this issue with my ankle. About 6 weeks ago, I took 3 weeks off from running to see if my ankle would heal, but if anything, it felt worse after those 3 weeks. So eventually I said "Screw it! I'm just going to deal with the pain and start running again. January 15th is right around the corner, and I'll be damned if I'm not going to meet my fitness goal!".

The point of all this blabbering of mine is to try and express how conflicted I feel. I've figured out by now that running is both very good for me ( My heart, lungs, general fitness, etc. ) and very bad for me ( my OLD joints ), and I'm not sure where I should go from here. I know there are non-impact ways to get good cardio-vsacular workouts, but I don't really enjoy doing the non-impact stuff, and if I don't enjoy doing something, I'm not going to be motivated enough to do it. I really can't see myself quiting running anytime soon. If that means my joints break down, so be it, but I really can't see myself quiting now.

What I worry about is that I'll someday be a 70-year old man who has the heart and lungs of a 30-year old, but has the joints of a 100-year old. That would be rather ironic. There I would be limping around all the time after a life of working out hard, while some 70-year old dude who spent his life eating chips while watching TV would be able to walk around without a problem.

Things are kinda like that for me now, to a certain extent. Thanks to my intense workouts, I can do athletics things that most guys pushing 40 couldn't dream of doing. However, I'll occassionaly walk around with a slight limp, and my knees tend to make cracking noises whenever I move them. However, if I need to ( for example if I'm several locks from the train station and my train is going to leave in a few minutes ), I can break into a sprint that would put most 20-year-olds to shame. However, after that, I'll go right back to being an almost 40-year-old limping guy.

Yeah, so all this exercise make me feel both young and OLD. Actually more OLD. Each ache and pain reminds me of my mortality. I'll probably never lose the desire to work out hard, but ultimately, my body WILL betray me. Eventually, my joints WILL break down. Still, I'd rather go out fighting than slowly let my body go soft while eating chips and watching TV. I'm just going to keep on running and enjoy the ride for as log as I can.

Rich

Election Day self-promotion

2009-11-02T21:43:00.003-05:00

Tomorrow ( November 3rd ) is Election Day in the USA, so I'll be getting up at about 5:30 AM tomorrow so I can be one of the first people to vote ( The polls open at 6:00, and I've got to get back to my house with the minivan by about 6:24 in order to get to catch the 6:40 train to work. I walk to the train station each day and leave the minivan at home with Ruth and the kids. If the polling place was on the way to work, I'd just walk the the polling place and then to work, but the polling place is in the opposite direction from the train station. The only way I can vote in the morning and still make it to the train station on time is if I avoid all lines by being one of the first people to vote ( Actually, last year I made it back to the house by 6:17 AM after voting, so I guess I do have a little time to spare, but for all I know there could be a 10 minute line at the polling place if I get there at 6:05 rather than at 5:55 ). I need to vote in the mornings because the polls close at 8 PM. I get home 6:45 PM on my best days ( if I catch the 5:54 train home and there is no train delay ) and usually not much after 7 PM on most days ( I seem to be getting the 6:11 train home a lot these days ), but if there are a lot of issues at work, I could easily get home past 8 PM. I'm very big on making sure I do my civic duty, so I always try to vote early on Election Day. Every vote really matters this year. There are no national elections in the USA in odd-numbered years ( Except for an occasion special election when somebody vacates his/her office before his/her term is over. There is one congressional election like that this year, but it's in upstate New York ), but the Governor's seat in New Jersey is up for grabs this year, and it's supposed to be a really close race.

Anyway, considering that voting is the theme of the day, I figured I'd post the clip of my "Vote" Madonna parody below. Most of you have probably already seen it, but a little self-promotion never hurt. ;)