Top Microwaver

As summertime wanes, I find that on occasion there are evenings that pass without the TV ever being turned on -- an act (or non-act, I guess) which, if committed in my Home of Origin, would have been grounds for an immediate call to the Primary Care Physician (actually, we didn't have a PCP in those days, just a "doctor". Who was a guy wearing a white coat who had been to medical school, and who on occasion could actually be persuaded to come to your house. But, seemingly inevitably, I digress).

A high percentage of the time it is on, you will find it tuned to SNY, the television home of the Mets -- with the sound down, so as not to assault the ears of the more baseball-averse among us. But on Wednesdays, even in the late innings of a close game, when the digital clock reaches 4 digits, the channel is always changed to Bravo for this week's installment of Top Chef.

This despite the fact that my program choice elicits scarcely more enthusiasm from the rest of the family than baseball. No, it's all about me; I'm not even entirely sure why, but I do love me some Top Chef.

It's not an enormous surprise; I have a documented fondness for what might be described as the higher class of reality shows -- that is, the ones where people must demonstrate some sort of ability. Still, my predilection for TC is a bit peculiar in light of the fact there's no way I'd ever eat anything they make.

Top Chef dishes are always filled with (to me, at least) esoteric ingredients from all over the world in unpredictable combinations. Any one of them would violate my First Law of Food: I never eat anything that has to be explained.

This belief is also tested spectacularly by our yearly purchase of the Entertainment Book. Since I love to eat, and avoid cooking, and practice frugality, the E-Book is a perennial in our household. I always more than get back the yearly fee in savings -- although left unasked is the question of how many of those outings would have been eschewed entirely in the absence of an opportunity to "save money".

There's a section of the book that's printed on heavier paper, with fancier fonts and so on down the line. It's called the "fine dining" section, and it's filled with all the places that serve Top Chef-ish fare. There's a printed Menu Sampler for each venue, including prices calculated to give someone of my philosophy more than a moment's pause (or even worse: "Market Price", which I suspect is menu-ese for "How much have you got on you?").

Mind you, I can be induced to crack open the billfold for good value. I can pay the price when it's warranted... but it never comes to that, because it's the menus themselves that frighten me away. There are just some words I never want to see on a menu:

• reduction
• demiglace
• fennel
• balsamic
• confit
• chutney

and other words I really, really like to see:

• fried
• pan-fried
• deep-fried
• cheese (or even better, "cheeses")
• Alfredo

I'm just not bred for the gourmet experience; I'm more at home with Friday's or Applebee's (or for that matter Pizza Hut or KFC (mmmm, fried chicken)). We went out to dinner recently for our 20th anniversary. She got dressed up in the Little Black Dress and heels -- "expensive restaurant" written all over her. We ended up at a BBQ place called Everglades. The food was delicious... although we were seated at a picnic table, under a tent (no candlelight!). She didn't sprain an ankle walking across the grass, fortunately, but she was a little taken aback at the ambience, approximately 1.5 steps up from the snack bar at the Little League field.

It's no different at home. I am the Top Chef around here, more or less by default; I enjoy cooking but I'm never going to be trolling through gourmet markets or devouring (so to speak) the latest cookbooks. I've always believed that the four basic food groups are meat, pasta, cheese/cream/butter, and frozen food.

OK, so my repertoire is somewhat circumscribed. Truthfully, if it were up to me, I'd probably rotate somewhere around 15-20 dishes, none of which require poaching or mincing, or fresh mint, or cilantro, or shiitake mushrooms. And if I were cooking solely for myself, I could probably alternate my favorites (chicken BBQ; Tortellini Alfredo with Chicken) every other day, mix in the occasional dinner out for a steak or a pizza, and be completely content.

At least for 6 weeks or so ... as I understand it, none of those menu items is available in the CCU (nor, for that matter, the CTU).

I'm probably fortunate that I'm not cooking for one; my kids prevent me from doing meat 7 days a week, and my wife prompts me to mix in some fruit or vegetables once in awhile. I think I've brought my menus a little closer to balanced... at heart, though, I'm still deeply suspicious of anything that contains ingredients.

Theology for Dummies: Sin-cerely Yours

So I've been thinking a lot about sin lately.

It's just vaguely possible that came out wrong, so let me come at it from a different angle. A lot of different inputs, including some reading and a Casting Crowns concert, have me meditating a bit on the nature of sin.

I'll mention first, as I have before, that Mark Hall of Casting Crowns has an amazing gift for boiling down the Christian life -- whether in a song or in his remarks from the stage -- to a phrase that goes straight to your heart. Well, OK, mine. Tell me if this is the way it is for you: when someone says something that's true (not just "factual", but a truth about God, about life, about something that matters), I can almost hear a little "ding" in my head. My belief, or at least my prayer, is that that represents God's gift of discernment in me. I don't think it's just me grooving on something I already agree with, because it's not always a message that makes me happy. Anyway, I find that almost everything Mark Hall says or sings sets off that little bell.

At the concert he was talking about sin -- which in itself is pretty remarkable; not the usual concert fodder, or for that matter talked about much anywhere in the Christian community. A lot of us would much rather hear how much God loves us (a lot of times with the sort of hidden implication that therefore what we do doesn't matter all that much).

But even that thought may lead us off in the wrong direction. Because although I understood this in my heart and I've probably even expressed it as some sort of significant insight of my own in the past, at the concert it struck me again and as if for the first time: sin has very little to do with what you "do" or the "rules" you might break, whether consciously or unconsciously (although one of my basic principles contends that we rarely do wrong unconsciously -- we usually look the wrongness right in the eye and choose to do it anyway, often with the help of a rationalization process that puts our "everyday" imaginations to shame. No, wait; that's just me... nobody else does that).

No (if you remember the original point before the parentheses started sprouting), the real definition of sin is anything that interferes with your relationship with God. Anything that takes your attention away from Him, anything that makes you less likely to listen to His voice, anything that takes priority.

So that can be a rule-breaking kind of behavior; anything we do that we know God explicitly doesn't want us to do -- and again, we usually do know... right? -- does move us a little farther away. Listening to that other voice not only makes the Original Voice seem less important, it also (I think) makes us a lot less eager to spend time with the Speaker. Again, probably just me... but I'd just as soon not be in the presence of Absolute Goodness when I haven't been very good.

But there's a mess of other things that are plenty wonderful that can take me away from focusing on God: jobs, family activities, blogging, church.... Yup, even church activities can make you so busy, and make you emphasize the wrong things. People who are "pillars of the church" are often so invested in making the church "work" as an organization -- and believe me, somebody has to think about those things -- that it can be easy to lose sight of the fact that it's actually one part of the Body of Christ and has higher expectations, literally, for how it behaves.

For me, I'm very involved in the "production" of worship: I have several roles in the music ministry and I help produce the worship PowerPoints. Even more than that, though, I've been occupied for so long with thoughts about How Worship Works that my first thought in any service is, how is this service going? Any glitches? What do we need to talk about fixing? How does that font/color scheme look on the screen? Is everyone singing? Maybe we need to not use this one again....

Matt Redman is a worship leader and top Christian musician who ran into a similar conundrum: he was so concerned with making the music performance perfect that he was forgetting the purpose of worship -- to meet God in person, to experience and enjoy Him, to ... um... worship. He found he needed to stop doing music for awhile in order to meet God afresh, and out of that came his classic song, Heart of Worship.

So I guess my point is that a lot of things get piled up between me and the view of God from here. Some of them are obvious, although no easier to eradicate; others are seemingly benign but can sneak into the way. I want to make sure I'm on the alert for both kinds of obstacles and concentrate on my first task: keep that pathway clear so I can see him and hear Him.

Party Affiliation

When our daughter turned 5 this summer, we let her choose three little friends to invite and we put on a "Pirate Party" here at the house; she's fascinated by pirates, for some reason. I'll freely admit that the whole affair was designed by my wife: we had bandannas and eye patches for the kids, a treasure hunt and some other pirate-y games, plus of course the fully-licensed Pirates of the Caribbean cake. I thought it was a pretty slick affair, all the way around, and the kids seemed to have a good time.

Although the spouse was definitely the producer, director and scriptwriter, I didn't get off totally scot-free. In fact, it followed the pattern of a lot of our projects around here:

1. wife hatches Clever Scheme in her head; it percolates for days or even weeks
2. she spends lots of time running around buying and otherwise assembling the necessary elements
3. at the last moment, I suddenly receive a list of tasks (OK, usually scut) that must be carried out in the last X hours before the event happens
4. then and only then do I find out, more or less piecewise, the true scope of The Grand Plan....

Oh well, I'm comfortable with the fact that I'm never going to be the visionary half of this partnership (can you sense it's hard enough for me to come up with a blog idea weekly?). And while it can be a bit stressful to be just part of the staff, in the end we did manage to execute a decent party for a handful of 5-year-olds.

This week one of the guests returned the favor and she got to attend his party... at a local family fun center. Think Chuck E. Cheese except backwards: instead of a pizza place with a game room attached, a recreation facility with a snack bar. The group of kids -- and I didn't get a count, but clearly way more than three! -- were treated to a big climbing/sliding facility with ball cannons, a laser tag arena, an arcade (with tokens supplied by the host), and a party room with pizza and cake. I picked up a flyer: the basic party starts at $179.

I can tell you that we didn't spend $179 on our Pirate Party... but I thought our treasure map drawn with markers on a piece of paper bag was pretty cool.

It seems to me that the ante's been raised these days. When the kids were in preschool, the parents whose kids had a birthday in a given month would provide the monthly birthday party. I'm thinking cupcakes, juice, maybe those little ice cream cups. I was not prepared for the other parents coming up with individual goodie bags for each child. I realize that's not quite along the scale of My Super Sweet Sixteen, but sometimes I get the feeling we as parents go a bit over the top... and why? Are we trying to please the kid, or beat the other parents?

I can be as guilty as the next one in occasionally trying to do something needlessly elaborate to make my kids happy (and often end up re-re-re-learning the "kids would rather play with the box" lesson), but I'm not going to keep up with the Joneses, and I certainly have no interest in trying to keep up with their kids.

A Funny Thing Happened at the Library

I am making every effort to prevent my writing from getting even more elaborate, florid, and generally baroque than it already is, and all because of one trip to the library.

For better or worse, it seems to me that my writing style (is it pretentious even to claim to have a style?) was inexorably shaped – or perhaps bent out of shape – in my teens. My reading habit at that point had worsened to the point where, had it been drugs I was consuming, I would’ve been a corpse within a week. In a desperate search for something/anything to keep my jones at bay, I stumbled in quick succession upon Twain, Thurber, and Woody Allen. A bit later there was P.J. O’Rourke, while at the same time I was marinating myself in Monty Python and David Letterman via TV.

That might seem like a disparate assortment, but to me the unifying thread is not just “funny” but a certain twisted sense of language – a sort of mining of the depths of the thesaurus that produces a little jolt to the synapses – as well as an unwillingness to say in four words what can be said in 12 words with a lot more syllables. In that sense, I can’t quite understand why I never became a true fanatic about S.J. Perelman, who fits comfortably on the same shelf.

In the late 70s, Woody Allen published three collections of short pieces which I eagerly snapped up, read and reread. And even though it’s been awhile since the last repetition, phrases still surface in my consciousness from time to time, and still make me laugh (inwardly, that is – I’m trying to stay out of the Rubber Room).

What I didn’t realize, as Woody seems to have shrunk somewhat from public view, and his movies are rarely anticipated Events (or all that funny), is that he is still writing pieces for the New Yorker. Unfortunately, the New Yorker always reminds me of a guy I knew in college. He was from Jersey, and when he found out that I was from Upstate New York, he remarked that he knew someone from upstate. When I asked where, he replied, “White Plains”.

The map of the world as drawn by the New Yorker would have Manhattan at the center, the other four boroughs arranged like petals of the flower, maybe Long Island along the edge, and then blank space (or as the medieval maps read, “Here be dragons.”). I’ve always felt like they’d rather go out of business than be patronized by the likes of me. I don’t read it much, is what I’m saying.

It was indeed a pleasant shock, then, to visit my local library and find not only a new book by the aforementioned O’Rourke, but also a new collection of pieces (some from the New Yorker) by Woody Allen. I dove into the Allen volume posthaste and was heartened to learn (and made to laugh aloud repeatedly) that his writing hasn’t changed a bit. Is that good, to sound the same 30 years later? Not sure, but mark me down in favor.

Some friends you don’t see for a while, and when you reunite, you're not sure why you liked them to begin with. With others, you forget how much you liked them until you see them. As it turned out, it was like a cool drink of water quenching a thirst I didn’t quite even know I had to open the book and be greeted:

Gasping for air, my life passing before my eyes in a series of wistful vignettes, I found myself suffocating some months ago under the tsunami of junk mail that cascades through the slot in my door each morning after kippers. It was only our Wagnerian cleaning woman, Grendel, hearing a muffled falsetto from beneath myriad art-show invitations, charity squeezes, and pyrite contest jackpots I’d hit that extricated me with the help of our Bugsucker.

As I was carefully filing the new postal arrivals alphabetically in the paper shredder, I noticed, amongst the profusion of catalogues that hawked everything from bird feeders to monthly deliveries of sundry drupe and hesperidium, there was an unsolicited little journal, banner-lined Magical Blend. Clearly aimed at the New Age market, its articles ranged in topic from crystal power to holistic healing and psychic vibrations, with tips on achieving spiritual energy, love versus stress, and exactly where to go and what forms to fill out to be reincarnated. The ads, which seemed scrupulously articulated to insulate against the unreasonableness of Bunco Squad malcontents, presented Therapeutic Ironisers, Vortex Water Energizers, and a product called Herbal Grobust designed to implement volumewise madam’s Cavaillons. There was no shortage of psychic advice either, from sources such as the "spiritual intuitive" who double-checks her insights with "a consortium of angels named Consortium Seven," or a babe ecdysiastically christened Saleena, who offers to "balance your energy, awaken your DNA and attract abundance." Naturally, at the end of all these field trips to the center of the soul, a small emolument to cover stamps and any other expenses the guru may have incurred in another life is in order.

It’s quite possible that the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of any Allen 10-page story would be two or three paragraphs long, but that’s what I love about him.

If nothing else, he makes my writing look like a txt msg....

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted...

There are certain phrases that just seem to strike terror in the heart. Tax return always makes my blood run cold; anything including remodel or redecorate makes me queasy; and we need to talk is a perennial leader in this category. All of these pale, however, beside the pure existential dread associated with... family vacation trip.

I know -- a surprisingly negative approach to fun, family togetherness, relaxation. And really, I enjoyed being with my family and all of our various activities.

What makes me crazy is the vacation as an entity. I've been frank in the past about my difficulty adjusting (even at age 45) to the idea of being The Adult: the competent, authoritative one. The one with all the answers. However, when you talk about "going on a trip", all I can think about is the hundreds of logistical details: the non-stop responsibility.

See, I'm the one mainly responsible for finding where we're going, how to get there, where to stay, what to do. And I do the majority of the driving. Really, there are so many ways that I personally can screw it up that I can't help but think of "vacation" as synonymous with "disaster" -- or "series of disasters" -- waiting to happen.

As I warned in my previous post, we were away for two weeks of that very entity. And in the end, plenty went wrong, including getting very lost 3 times in 2 days, and a motel that was about a step-and-a-half above a homeless shelter... and you know what? We made it home in one piece. All-in-all, we had a great time; the kids will be talking about some of their fun experiences for months. Maybe the "point" of the trip for me (besides fun & relaxation) was to let go just a little and realize that the earth will keep turning even if we take the wrong exit now and then.

Since I've missed almost 3 weeks, I'm going to include a little "bonus" -- our vacation in numbers:

• 13 days, 2029.4 miles -- 919.1 down, 918.6 back, even though we took completely different routes.
• 7 states plus the District of Columbia; 9 pages of directions printed from Yahoo Maps, 11 different interstates.
• 92.417 gallons of gas (21.96 mpg, with a LOT of A/C) for a total of $265.93.
• 4 nights with 4 people in one motel room, followed by 4 continental breakfasts -- 2 of which made me glad I didn't live on that continent.
• 2 nights the kids "went to bed" in the van before we arrived at our destination; 2 nights my daughter woke up screaming that her legs hurt.
• 5 different fast-food chains (in order): McDonald's, Wendy's, Subway, Burger King, Roy Rogers; 2 lunches packed in the van. Actually I would be reluctant to repeat any of our "road meals", although the ribs were tasty at the Texas Steakhouse.
• 1.5 oz. in the package of Kissables they give you for completing the tour at Hershey's Chocolate World. OK, it's free... still, I think maybe they did it differently in the old days.
• Several hundred gallons of water dumped on us in The Boardwalk waterpark at Hersheypark -- who knew you could get wetter than "drenched"?
• $2000 estimated retail value of a week at the beach cottage we stayed in at Sunset Beach, NC... proving that it quite literally pays to have family connections.
• 77 years' difference in ages of youngest and oldest family members at the beach house.
• 7 consecutive days at the beach, bookended by 4 motel pools, and The Boardwalk: 12 in a row, if you're scoring along at home... leaving my body at a much higher percentage of water than normally (the remaining % is fast-food fries).
• 5 other people in the theater with my wife and me for the 9:40 pm showing of Ratatouille.
• 7 and 5 -- ages of children you probably shouldn't take to any of the Smithsonian museums.
• 2 hours spent circling DC after the museum in the vain hope of a parking space, or even figuring out exactly where we are. My congressman (OK, person) will be hearing about this!
• 4 train rides to get in & out of Manhattan in the quest for the Central Park Zoo. I'm grateful to my niece for tipping me off to the PATH train from NJ... otherwise we'd still be circling Manhattan looking for a place to park.

Maybe this positive mention will make up for my inexcusable failure to write a blog about my trip to her high school graduation, how I remember her as a baby, graduations as rites of passage, and how ancient I must be to have an 18-year-old niece, blah blah blah. :-Q

The Opposite of A

First, a little housekeeping... as of Sunday we will be taking off on The Annual Family Vacation. Though I'm sure there will be something sidesplitting about spending a significant portion of the summer shuttling from van to rest area to motel room to fast-food place with two small children, I may very well be out of touch for a couple of weeks and unable to share with you my usual assemblage of wry observations. However, I promise I won't come home till I find something worthy to write about.

Anyway, before I go, I just wanted to point out what People Have Been Saying lately: it turns out I'm cool after all.

I have mentioned in the past (and if I hadn't, anyone who's paying attention would have figured it out anyway) that in high school I was voted Least Likely to Ever Be Described As Cool. And in the classic beat 'em/join 'em dichotomy, I basically decided to embrace my noncool (after all, it was good enough for Huey Lewis). But I may have to upend my worldview -- again -- as a result of a recent Newsweek article.

I have fun putting in the links, but I know you don't follow them, so let me summarize: recent movies/TV have made heroes, or at least leading men, out of guys the article calls Beta Males -- otherwise described as decidedly not Type-A.

I still remember many years back when the original round of articles came out in Newsweek and elsewhere about the "Type-A" personality: driven, perfectionist, success-oriented, workaholic. It didn't take me very many paragraphs to conclude they weren't talking about me.
I don't want to come off like a total goober; I'm certainly not the perpetually stoned, terminally lazy Slacker character favored in so many movies and TV shows in recent years. I was pretty successful in school and I've had a job of some sort for my entire adult life. I even do really have a few odd, almost random pockets of perfectionism that surface when even I least expect it. But under oath, I would be hard-pressed to declare myself a go-getter.

I have to admit that I ended up as a math major, and subsequently a math teacher, in large part because no more compelling idea came along. Then I spent a lot of years working part-time and filling in around the edges of my alleged career with a number of rather unglamorous "professions": meter reader, waiter, janitor, tax processing clerk. I understood intellectually that I probably had the ability to do something beyond stamping numbers on tax forms (hey, it's plenty complex: you do have to get the same number on the check as the form) but at the end of the day, we had money enough to live on and I didn't really know how to assemble a "career" out of the puzzle pieces I had in hand.

And I continued to muddle along -- for about eleven years -- until I decided to make a break for a new profession. And now I'm semi-established as a software engineer (OK, a programmer) but I'm still a little fuzzy on this whole career thing.

I work with people who are driven & focused, who can't wait for the next big assignment and opportunity to prove themselves. Many of them are smart and capable in ways that make me feel like I'm back in junior high, but that may be a subject for another day. They are concerned with Career Development and what they can do to snag that next promotion.

Me, on the other hand, I'm just happy to have a job. Some of that comes from all the years of not really having a job, or at least a consistent one... but for most of my life when the question came up, "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" my answer has been, "Doing what I'm doing now." Is that a virtue -- the ability to be comfortable wherever I am? Or is it a fault -- a complete lack of vision/ambition?

I have ended up getting some promotions and even raises, more or less in spite of myself, but I still find myself somewhat amazed that I'm actually getting paid a respectable amount, and that people ask me questions expecting me to be an authority. I like to be able to answer (at least some of) the questions, and although I never asked for it I'm certainly not going to say no to the increasing dollars, but the money definitely doesn't drive me. Of course, being a... um... "Not-Type-A", I'm not sure "drive" is the right word anyway.

My hyPod

I'm a pretty unlikely candidate to be a technophobe. After all, I do make my living using a computer. And there are those near and dear to me who have been heard to say, "Will you please turn off that laptop??" If you heard the implied phrase "for once" in there, you are indeed listening with that Third Ear.

I would definitely cop to being a slow adopter, however. While I embrace technology in general, as a rule I also tend to shun change... which I suppose seems a bit contradictory. When I sense any tension, though, I break the tie by recalling that The Latest Thing usually costs The Most Money, and my thrifty nature casts the deciding vote. You know, frugal. Financially conservative. Don't say the "ch"-word, or I'll hit you with another paragraph of euphemisms.

As I result, I'm always trailing the crowd. I was extremely late in moving to DVDs -- or at least dipping my toe in, since I'm hedging my bets with a combo VHS/DVD player. I wouldn't even have this laptop if I hadn't wheedled it out of my manager when my employer declared it officially obsolete. And I really, really wish music would slow down and let me catch up.

I was, surely needless to say, the one still buying vinyl when All The Kids were buying cassettes; I even had a handful of 8-tracks, but I promise I didn't buy them myself. Finally, when LPs went the way of the Edsel (even Columbia House stopped selling them), I gave in and moved to cassettes -- and about a week later, CDs were the next big thing.

Now, finally, I've surrendered to the tyranny of CDs... only to find once more that the parade has gone off and left me. I'm sure the day is not distant when some young punk pulls out the earbuds long enough to ask, "What's a CD?"

Predictably, I have not joined the iPod crowd, for reasons even beyond the obviou$. Not only does a fairly steep tab look doubly so when evaluated as an undisputed luxury, but my life at present does not encourage me to spend much time cocooned in my own little world (as an iPod encourages).

Perhaps more to the point, I just don't need something else that needs to be "managed". I'm sure it's supposed to be a selling point when they say how many zillion songs an iPod will hold, but all I can think is, "When will I have time to find the sites and find the songs and download them all?" And oh by the way, continue paying and paying. It used to be that if I wanted a collection of cool tunes, I'd go to Caldor or Ames and slap down $4.98 for the latest K-Tel album. A zillion songs times 99 cents is a daunting prospect.

I will confess that I've detoured past the iPod display a couple times recently. And further, that I've started to assemble a playlist for my hypothetical iPod -- or hyPod, if you will. I already own a lot of songs that I enjoy and would love to hear more often... but they're trapped on vinyl. And since I have even less chance to hang out in front of my turntable, I'm also researching ways to transfer music from LP to CD (it can be done, although it's pretty expensive and/or requires a degree in Electrical Engineering).

I find that the songs I want that I don't already have fall mostly into the period right before I started collecting: late 60s/early 70s pop. Further, although I can't quite put my finger on it, they feel to me somehow similar. See if you can intuit the common thread among these:

• Anything by the Stylistics -- let's start with Betcha By Golly, Wow
• The Worst That Could Happen - Brooklyn Bridge
• You Make Me So Very Happy; And When I Die - Blood, Sweat & Tears
• Black And White- Three Dog Night
• Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye - Steam
• Vehicle- Ides of March
• Don't Pull Your Love- Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds
• Treat Her Like a Lady - Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose

For some reason, when I think about this I keep hearing the first few bars of Ooh Child by the Five Stairsteps.... I guess it kind of fits stylistically (if not Stylistics-ly), but I really don't think it's a good song.

Once I get started thinking about such things, it's only a matter of a couple of years till I carry it through. But I have a feeling that by that time, the Cool Kids will have moved on to direct chip implantation.

Dressed for Stress

The Scripture says that the Sabbath -- Sunday for us, of course -- is to be a day of rest. In our house we are careful about not lifting our ox out of the well... but in total, Sunday morning is almost unquestionably the most stressful day of our week.

My wife has to be at church for the 8:30 service, and then I'm responsible for getting the rest of us breakfasted and dressed and out the door well before the 10:30 service. That probably doesn't sound so bad, although it's complicated somewhat by my daughter's lengthy list of, ah, guidelines regarding what she will consent to wear. In recent weeks the degree of difficulty has been further ratcheted up by my need to attend both our services -- something which not only shortens the timetable significantly but also puts both kids in a foul mood.

My presence at the early service usually means I'm sharing in the music leadership, which adds to the tension. Then there's our weekly worship PowerPoint presentation, which I produce once a month, but which for whatever reason I feel responsible for even if I haven't touched it; I can never quite relax till that's all over.

I thought I had seen it all in terms of the stress Sunday morning could bring, until this past week: the annual picnic Sunday. You see, on picnic Sunday we are encouraged to dress picnic-appropriate, and that may be harder for me than all the other facets of Sunday put together.

I was born a preacher's kid and I've been in church all my life, which means that I was raised in the era when everyone was expected to dress for church. Gentlemen wore dark suits and ties (and hats, and topcoats); ladies quite often wore hats and gloves. While I can't say I have upheld that kind of standard -- I rarely wear suits at all, usually opting for a sports coat and slacks, and in the summer I go really wild and leave off the jacket -- it is a supreme act of the will for me to leave the house without a tie.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a snob about other people. Suits, t-shirts, shorts, whatever. I like it when people dress a little better than they would to go grocery shopping or fix the car, but mainly clean and covered. But hey, if you have to pull something out of the laundry hamper to make it to church... welcome (please sit over there)! For me, though, you might just as well try to get me to write lefthanded or converse in German as to feel comfortable dressed down for church.

I was already mulling my sartorial plan when my wife arrived downstairs in a (dressy) t-shirt and slacks, which for her on a Sunday morning is like showing up in her bedroom slippers... so I knew I was going to have to go below and beyond my usual. I struggled, but finally selected a nice pair of shorts and a short-sleeve sports shirt; this is, to the extent I have one, my personal style these days (summer version), albeit not my summer church style.

I was beginning to come to terms with this new version of me when I found, on the bathroom floor, a pair of slacks and a t-shirt. Then I was faced with the possibility that she had changed to something nicer; then I'd really feel like a goober.

So now I'm feeling uncomfortable on two counts. I wavered... and gave in. I ran upstairs and changed into real pants -- what my wife would call golf pants, but still, legitimate slacks -- and a sports shirt. Still no tie, still feeling a little like I'm wearing a skirt or a swimsuit or something.

In the end, naturally:

• my wife did dress down -- the clothes I found were from yesterday
• we had people in shorts AND people in jackets & ties
• the picnic was "rained in", so I would scarcely have been noticed had I been wearing a 3-piece pinstriped suit

I'm just glad it's an annual picnic.

Party Favors: Peanuts & Cracker Jack

It was somewhere between the ages of seven and eight that I first discovered baseball. Of course, what began as a discovery quickly grew to an interest and then to a … I don’t want to say “obsession”; I’d like to think I’m not completely unbalanced. I guess it suffices to say that I have a lobe of my brain dedicated to baseball.

So with my son past 7 and most of the way to 8, I harbored a secret hope that soon I would have someone in the house with whom to share this common interest, someone to educate (not to say indoctrinate, exactly) in the ancient tribal wisdom….

Little did I know it would be my daughter.

As she reaches her fifth birthday today, my girl shows a keen interest in all things baseball. Much to her mom’s consternation, I have only to murmur to her, “Guess what’s on TV tonight?” and she shouts, “Baseball!” I promise, I’m only trying to give her access to something she likes –it’s not for me! Well, OK, maybe a little.

When we have some free time together, her brother is liable to ask me to play cars with him or read a book; she usually asks either to play baseball (by which she mostly means pitch to her) or play catch with her. She has her own glove, which I bought at a garage sale, but would much rather use brother’s glove, which is in fact a bit nicer. I have gotten pretty accomplished at both tossing and pitching to her right where she can reach it, but frankly I think her skills are developing to the point that she may not need the crutch much longer. We may still have to discuss the concept of running the bases; when she hits, she often takes off running in whatever direction is handy, as long as she can circle back around before I can tag her.

It has actually come to the point where frequently one of the first things she says to me each morning is, “Dad, who won the Mets game last night? How many did the Mets have? How many did the other team have?” If the Mets lose, she gets quite disappointed, but has taken to compensating for that by declaring that she actually likes all the teams. I have been telling her that she is free to like any team she likes (but Dad really does not like the Yankees).

When the time came to buy birthday presents, we put our heads together, and the answer that kept coming up was Baseball Stuff. I feel like one of those horrible obsessed parents trying to push my kid into a sport, but the more we thought about what she would really want, the more we came back to baseball.

So she got a set of bases, and a pitch-back (so she can play catch with herself!), and some T-balls, which are a bit heavier than she’s used to – easier to catch, actually, but still a bit squishy. My mom was given a final idea, which she couldn't find herself and asked me to purchase on her behalf – but since I rarely get out of the house solo, I had to take my daughter with me last week. When she saw it, she wanted it instantly, so I couldn’t really misdirect her and buy it behind her back. She didn’t even want to let go of it.

So quickly shifting gears, I told her that this was really a birthday present from Grammy & Pop-Pop, but I would give it to her right then; this prompted every parent’s most cherished reward: sparkling eyes and crushing hug. And since that moment a week ago, she puts it in her bedroom every night so she can have it first thing in the morning… but other than that, it’s been next to impossible to pry her brand new Mets baseball cap from her head.

Captive Audience

I spent my entire teaching "career" (in quotes, and deservedly so) working part-time, or short-term full-time, stints as a math instructor at a number of colleges -- seven, if you're curious about the actual number. And that was great, as long as my wife was also working... but then she quit her job and we moved to Ohio so she could go to seminary. Suddenly the part-time dollars were not providing a comfort zone.

So it was decided that I would need yet another part-time job (making 3, on my way to an eventual 4); the choices: waiting tables or reading meters for the power company. My wife's advice: go for the meters, so you won't have to talk to anyone. She was influenced, no doubt, by my less-than-inspiring efforts to support us as a waiter in the early months of our marriage -- but was also fully aware of my disdain for small talk and those false pleasantries that rake in the tips. Doubtless I was not destined, and certainly not particularly equipped, for a career in the food service industry; now imagine me as a practitioner of the cosmetological arts.

Yes, I got my hair cut yesterday, and my stylist (not that I can really be said to have a "style", before or after) had clearly gotten the directive that prohibits a licensed hair professional from leaving even a moment of silence. OK, I expect the usual topics:

• the weather
• where I live
• what I do for a living (in fact, they often seem affronted that I'm there in the middle of the day and not out being gainfully employed)

In this case, I was pleasantly surprised -- I got to talk baseball a little as well. Then that moment was over and off we went again: where my daughter went to preschool. Her frustration with hearing popular songs too often on the radio (I think she was hoping I could fix that, actually; it seems previous complaints to her boyfriend had proved ineffective).

The conversation, if you could call it that, hit a definite roadblock when she illustrated a Point About Hair by wordlessly gesturing to her own coif. Since I have to take off my glasses during a haircut, and since she wasn't sitting on my lap, her point was unfortunately lost on me.

Despite my distaste for the niceties of compulsory, meaningless byplay, I'm still able to be cordial and even appear to be participating... but I have my limits. When we suddenly veered to, "You know what we had last night? Pizza Hut!" I riffled through the available index cards for an appropriate response, but all I could come up with was (what I thought was a very thoughtful) "Huh."

On second thought, maybe I do have a future in cosmetology. I'd like to open a salon where the stylist asks you how you want it, and then is prohibited from speaking until "How's that look?" I can't be the only one who'd cheerfully pay extra for a few blissful moments of silence.

National Lampoon's "Trip to the Store"

When it comes to my rare opportunities for a solo road trip, I have a hard time taking my own advice. After all, I have often been heard to say that the secret of success is Low Expectations... although with my manager, I am always careful to say that the secret of success is managing expectations. See, I changed that one word -- I'm saying essentially the same thing, but now I sound like a Business Sage.

So you'd think I could maintain that cautious optimism (emphasis on the cautious) when it comes to making a break for it -- excuse me, I meant to say "going out alone"-- but you have only to click here and here for examples to the contrary. Regardless, even my trip last week to buy a grill seemed fraught with possibilities.

OK, maybe not like free tickets to the ballgame. But at least hassle-free: zip about 20 minutes down the interstate, grab the grill I'd already found, zip home, Bob's your uncle. What could possibly go wrong?

I don't know about you, but I'm a sucker for a story involving the words "What could go wrong?"

In this case, I think the solo nature of the trip was in part a smokescreen to get me to ignore the fact I'd have to pony up the bucks... but to be honest, the incumbent appliance is in such disrepair that grilling has been akin to cooking with an acetylene torch, so I had already mentally conceded the point.

All was carefree, until halfway into the outbound trip, when I encountered a sign with the Pennsylvania State Motto: "Roadwork ahead" (Memo to the Commonwealth: You might get away with it if you translate it into Latin). In a trice, we were at full stop.

I was approaching, sadly, the granddaddy of all delay-causers, the dreaded "Left 2 Lanes Closed". Now, here's something I've never understood: mathematically speaking, if you go from three lanes to one, shouldn't it take 3 times as long to put the same traffic through 1/3 the original roadway? Why do I end up at complete halt, and three miles from the actual closure? It took me over a half-hour just to get to the construction area!

As a saving grace, it was a pleasant evening; I was able to enjoy the spring weather with windows open... for about 5 minutes, till dusk began to descend. Another math equation: what do you get when you add dusk, spring, a tree-lined highway, and (100*(a warm vehicle+ a driver emitting CO2))? You get an A if you said "a cluster of vehicles filling up with mosquitoes". Actually, I can only speak for myself; I suppose it's possible the others were all listening to a lively symphony on public radio and conducting along vigorously.

Of course, when I finally made it to the Choke Point, I was faced with another mystery of road construction: what are all those people doing, anyway? A road crew makes all those "How many [fill in the blank] does it take to screw in a light bulb?" jokes look like understatement.

At long last, as it were, I arrived at my destination, with my "20-minute trip" having taken just over an hour. Of course, the purchase itself was no speed marvel, since the retail community is getting paid by the hour, but it was routine enough, I suppose. Then I was confronted with another of my negative qualities.

I have this thing about large objects and small spaces, particularly vehicles. I always figure it'll fit "somehow". I had purchased a pre-assembled grill (I don't really want to build anything that essentially produces a controlled explosion) but I really didn't pre-measure it, or my minivan ("featuring 3rd-row seating!").

The good news was that one of the store employees had come out to help; the bad news was that he was expecting me to have a plan. I was kinda hoping he had a plan. And I could tell he was a little contemptuous that I clearly had not thought this through.

No big deal: just take out the third seat. And then stuff the third seat into the second seat. Wait, my daughter's car seat is in the way. No, I can't put it there -- that's where my son's car seat is, from when I folded down the rear seat, earlier. Yes, I would appreciate a hand with this van seat since it weighs more than I do (at least till I started in on the Cheez-Its again).

OK, wait, the grill would fit right in the back if not for the shelf. Got a screwdriver? Sure, I'll wait. Back so... soon!? Let me grab all these little screws & nuts. Now heave! Oops, too tall -- try to lay it down. That crash is just the grill grates "shifting", right? Whew, finally... oh, I guess the propane tank goes up front with me, then.

I suppose it could've been worse; for several hundred bucks more, I could've bought a grill that I would have had to carry the van inside. And... I get home a mere 2 1/4 hours from the time I left. But for a good cause!

Except it's 5 days later and the new grill, and tank, and shelf, are still sitting in the garage. Haven't put them back together yet! Haven't used them yet! Haven't gotten rid of the old one yet! But: at least something's crossed off The List.

The Human Comedy

One of my most obvious qualities is that I always try to find the humor in everything. While I tend to think this is an excellent quality, particularly for a blogger, it must be said that it's not universally admired. Some would say, for example, that there's a fine line between "finding the humor in everything" and "refusing to take anything seriously."

At minimum, I think I have become a little more savvy about it than when I was in third grade. I still remember that one day, something struck me as funny (no idea what, at this late date), and I actually stood up to share this comic gem with the rest of the class. Alas, Miss Hunt was not amused, and I was summarily dispatched toward the principal's office. I say "toward" because I was so terrified of Getting In Trouble that I merely lingered in the hallway till I thought a sufficient interval had passed for the punishment I was sure to receive -- 39 lashes with a metal-studded whip, I suppose -- and slunk back into the room. Miss Hunt, it seemed to me even then, was not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and I suspect she never figured it out. Gee... I sure hope she's not reading this!

All these years later, I'm hoping to become an adult any day now; I confess I succumb more often than not to the temptation to slip a joke into an e-mail memo at work. And I still get sent to the principal's office from time to time. One day we were inundated with "leaving early" memos, so finally I sent one that said, "I've thought it over and I've decided to stay till 5:00." One of my closest colleagues got in my face about that one, and it was only later that I found out he was headed to a doctor's appointment because he was facing a serious health issue.

As my son would say, "Is that funny? No." It's not a rhetorical question for him; he's just really working to master the twisted internal logic of the Knock-Knock Joke. So he tries to make one up, then he looks at me quizzically: "Is that funny? No."

My daughter has no such torments of self-doubt. She will initiate a knock-knock joke, then end it with a string of words that would be several sentences, if they were sentences. Or (sometimes) even words. But she always laughs uproariously, as if being tickled by the feathers of a thousand geese.

When they get a little older, perhaps I can make them understand that there's no need to "make up jokes" -- there's plenty of comedy lying in the road.

Or driving on the road: every time I see the IBS Septic Service truck go by, I wonder if the guy who named it knows what else IBS stands for.

Or beside the road: when the local florist puts up a sign that says "Everyday Sympathy Weddings", I imagine she really meant to make that one descriptive phrase, rather than a bulleted list of 3 distinct occasions.

Or beside another road: I recently saw a highway historical marker put up by the state Highway Superintendents. It was commemorating the first meeting of the State Highway Superintendents. Glad they didn't have to convene a blue-ribbon panel, or even do much research, to come up with that one.

And finally (oh, who are we kidding? More like, "enough for now"), I'm not even sure if this is funny in the Three Stooges pie-in-the-face sense, but the irony is so abundant that I just had to share:

Away back in the early sixties -- in that benighted era we now know as "before I was born" -- there was a famous incident in which Jack Paar, then-host of the Tonight Show, walked off the program and basically went on strike. The previous evening, the NBC censor had removed a joke he told as being too offensive for even sophisticated late-night viewers, and Jack took it personally.

I recently heard that same joke told on the air... by a radio preacher who was using it as a sermon illustration. The joke itself, that is, not the controversy. I can't remember what the point of the joke was to be; all I could think about was the irony. And I'm not sure what, if anything, all of this proves... except, maybe, once and for all, that God has a sense of humor.

You Must Remember This

With as much talk as you hear about etiquette, you'd think we'd be a lot better-behaved society. Not only has Peggy Post taken over from mom Emily as the Manners Maven -- and what is it about passing down these crowns, anyway? What qualifies "Dear Abby's" daughter to be an advice columnist? Does Martha Stewart have kids? Rachel Ray better get at it!

Sorry. Tune in in about 30 years when my (3)7-year old takes over for me. Anyway, in addition to Peggy Post getting quoted in every news story about impolite behavior, we have a column in our paper called "Ex-Etiquette", written by two women -- one of whom is married to the other's ex-husband. I guess instead of "in-laws", they're "ex-laws". Or maybe "out-laws".

Update: Martha Stewart has a daughter, described as a "radio personality" -- for Martha Stewart Living Radio on Sirius. Be afraid... be very afraid.

With two youngsters around, we are of course pretty obsessed with manners ourselves. It's a little unfortunate, actually, since my 4-year-old has decided it's amusing and much less taxing to pronounce her L's as W's. I say "decided"; she's perfectwy... I mean perfectly ... capable of enunciation. Goodness knows she gets all kinds of practice. In any case, I spend a lot of time reminding her to say please, and then reminding her again that "please" has an "L" in it.

It's all part of teaching your kids to make you look good. No, what I meant to say is "teaching your kids to grow up to be people you'd want in your home if you weren't forced to let them live there." All right, what I'm trying to get at here is that if you want your kids to stand out from the crowd -- in the good way, not the "spiked purple hair & nose ring" way -- teach them some manners.

Clearly manners are like the weather. From the cashier who won't even look up to the guy who cuts you off in traffic to everybody and his brother talking on their cell phones through dinner, conversations with others, and funerals, etiquette is no doubt easier to spell than it is to observe in the wild.

As you might guess, like any truly good and heartfelt rant, this one is based in experience. A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of visiting the church where I was born (not literally, of course... but only because it was a Wednesday). As a preacher's kid, I spent a lot of time there in my first 3 years of life. Later, when I was in grad school and living nearby, it pleased me to the depths of my tradition-obsessed soul to attend there for 2 more years and be part of the same choir in which my parents had sung.

So I was equally tickled to be there again, and moreso because my wife had been invited to be guest preacher for the day. Over the course of the day I met, once more, some people who had been part of the church 20+ years ago during my last stint, and even some who were there my first time around. And when I spoke with them, what do you suppose is the first thing almost all of them said?

"You don't remember me, do you?"

Can we agree that the purpose of conversation is to foster goodwill and a sense of community between two people? Why, then, would you begin a conversation with the verbal equivalent of the duelist's glove slap?

Now this is by no means an isolated occurrence. Naturally, it's a staple of high school reunions; my 25th featured several instances of this gambit (ironically, most of the time by people who wouldn't have been caught dead speaking to me the first time around).

Last week my wife was also accosted in just such a manner at a funeral home by someone who followed up by saying, "I came to church on Christmas... I wore a purple dress." This was, as you can imagine, the very key that unlocked a virtual flood of memories. She always takes pains to memorize everyone who attends once, cross-referenced by occasion and color.

Look, rest assured that once you have jogged my memory a little, I will regale you with the many fascinating things I recall about you from That Special Time In Our Lives.... Till then, please remember that in my adult life, I've lived in 5 towns in 3 states, attended 7 churches, and had (gulp) 10 different jobs. So a little context, at least, wouldn't hurt -- have some pity on a guy.

Talk: Not So Cheap After All

It pains me deeply that I haven't posted in a couple of weeks... but I'm actually somewhat comforted to think that anyone who might read me regularly is probably just finishing the last mega-post anyway. The truth is, the hiatus was kind of unavoidable; the epic 3-part Orlando entry used up all my words and I had to wait for the new shipment to come in.

Unfortunately, I suspect someone screwed up the order -- it seems to be all words like "malfeasance" and "egregious", so it might have been intended for one of those political bloggers. At least it's clearly a blog-related batch: many of the words are misspelled and all the plural words seem to have sprouted apostrophes.

Anyway, even in my absence I have been thinking bloggy thoughts, and by a coincidence one of the major topics of discussion in the world as a whole was, in fact, words. How they can be used, who can use them, and what the consequences might be for using them.

Of course, I refer to the incident in which a certain radio Personality decided to use some, shall we say, "racially loaded" language, causing a prolonged bout of Analysis by all concerned, as well as a lot of people that really had nothing to do with it. I mentioned in my Orlando saga that I was at least blessed with 4 ESPNs in the hotel; what I didn't mention was that in thumbing through those channels, and the adjacent news channels, I was greeted by the face of the aforementioned Personality at seemingly every turn. Well, either him or a certain rotund (and orotund) fellow -- whom I also decline to name -- who I believe has been designated by the UN as Special Representative for Minorities and Oppressed Persons Everywhere. How else to explain why he turns up on my TV whenever Injustice is afoot?

OK, I'm being a bit arch just because I enjoy it, so let me be clear: what the Personality said was stupid and offensive and wrong (in perhaps more senses than one -- they look like any other basketball team to me), and he deserved to be punished. The furor, however, really stems from more than just the act itself.

First, this was an excellent opportunity for white America to leap up as one and proclaim, "We're not racists, oh no, not us." It's not like anyone is seriously going to try to defend the guy, so it's an absolute free shot for everyone who can claw their way in front of a microphone.

Second, since it was a sports-related story, it provided a chance for the sports networks to assert their journalistic chops, to prove they're not just the Toy Department of the television universe. So we saw wall-to-wall coverage (at least for the whole time I was in that hotel room).

Third, he was really living in the wrong time; this is an era where one of the most prized virtues is Political Correctness, so any comment that's stupid and cruel and offensive is always going to be raised to the level of a felony.

Interestingly, as a white middle class male -- not the "majority", exactly, but fairly privileged at least -- I have found that it's "my kind" that is the last acceptable target for ridicule. Last year Hefty advertised their One-Zip bags as being so simple, even a husband could use them. I actually sent them a protest e-mail; I said, I get the joke but I notice you don't advertise them as simple enough for Polacks or blondes. They did respond promptly, but basically said lighten up, it's a joke.

But of course, we've all gotten used to the Bumbling Dad/Husband from TV sitcoms and commercials. And I suppose it won't kill me... it would just be nice if we all stopped trying to look good at the expense of others. It would be egregious malfeasance not to.

No Kingdom, No Magic (Part III)

I’ve never, ever had to break one post into three pieces. I’m only grateful that this is not in Word so you can’t see how many words it actually is. And at this point, I’m only about 12 hours into a 2-day business trip, so I’m sure it looks like it’s going to end up like the Encyclopedia Britannica.

After a few hours of semi-fitful sleep, in the morning I meet a couple of my co-workers and we head off in a rental car to breakfast. We are a few blocks along before we realize that none of us really has a clue where we’re going, and we’re each mostly waiting for the other to take charge. We wander aimlessly enough that we have to call the hotel to ask them how to get back; by chance, we run into a 7-11 and decide to give up and stop for donuts etc.

Let’s recap how well we are meeting our objectives so far, shall we?

• Comfy hotel room: not so much
• Housekeeping picking up after me: don’t hold your breath
• Ample expense-account meals: I did have a second donut. Um, and later, an apple fritter, and a couple pieces of chocolate, and 3 of those cookies the size of hubcaps... but I digress. Fortunately, any food eaten in a conference room doesn't count -- more on that in a moment.
  

And although we didn’t mention “balmy Florida climate” as a primary objective, I’m compelled to point out that it rained almost all that day as well… or perhaps the skies were merely weeping in sympathy. Of course, it could be worse: the second day was lovely weather, but since it was experienced almost entirely through the conference room window, I didn’t get much benefit.

As for the meals, the meeting hosts had sandwiches brought in for lunch both days, which fell well short of deluxe but was at least catered by Panera and quite tasty. And the one dinner the team went out for was mind-blowingly delicious. Pursuant to my standard Road Policy, I ate until I was full and then continued for about 1000 calories more (causing me to wake up sick in the middle of the night…and I would do it all again in a heartbeat, assuming it continues beating).

The meetings themselves were pleasant and productive enough and not very interesting in this context. There’s probably something funny to be said about PowerPoint presentations and project plans, but I’m trying not to turn into a complete Dilbert here.

With regard to the trip home, perhaps the less said the better (although as a general principle it’s certainly too late for that). I will say this: US Airways is the Kmart of airlines. They’d like you to think they’re “thrifty” and “no-frills”, but mostly they’re shabby and dirty and just putting in time. Have you ever heard of that old illustration about monkeys and typewriters – if you have enough monkeys, eventually by random chance you get all the works of Shakespeare? That’s USAir’s business plan: take a bunch of planes and some people wearing uniforms, then find people with a wad of cash and the need to get somewhere; eventually, just by random chance, somebody’s gotta make it home, right? The generally haphazard air is accented by the cattle car ambiance – except I’m pretty sure cattle would take one look and say, “No thanks, we’ll walk.”

Every stewarde… oops, flight attendant… can do the whole spiel in her sleep, and often does. In this case, the “welcome to your destination” message included an apology for being late – and it didn’t sound like she had to reach back too far into her memory to recall the correct phrasing. It turns out that the departure/arrival times on the tickets and schedules are mere placeholders because they can’t fit “your guess is as good as ours” in the little boxes.

The upside is, since all the flights are equally screwed up, you seldom miss your connection.

I got home just about an hour later than originally planned, and since I do these trips perhaps twice a year, I’d say I have about a 50/50 chance of recovering from this one in time for the next one. With any luck Southwest will fit my schedule best and be cheapest... or maybe it'll be a location served by Amtrak.

No Kingdom, No Magic (Part II)

In Part I, we managed to travel 1500 miles or so in the space of about 700 words; I’ll warn you ahead of time that our mileage is going to vary from here on out (and not in the direction of economy).

When I left off, I was traversing the entirety of Central Florida in a taxi…

Finally, about 45 minutes out from the airport and with the meter showing $55.75, we pull up to the hotel. I get my luggage first, then hand the driver $61 – knowing this falls well short of a 15% tip, but also mindful that I have to keep something in my wallet for the rest of the trip. I say thanks and walk away quickly, thus forfeiting the opportunity to learn a few interesting words in some obscure dialect. I head into the hotel…

…Or at least “toward” the hotel. The front door is locked and although I can see the front desk there’s no one in sight. I have to pick up the intercom phone and get buzzed in. I go to the desk to check in, slide my credit card under the security barrier that’s drawn across the counter and get myself checked in (making certain to request the $4.99 “unlimited Internet access for the length of your stay”), then head wearily down the hall.

The growing unsettled feeling I’ve been experiencing suddenly snaps into place as the realization dawns: other places that could be described as Extended Stay are hospitals, nursing homes, and minimum-security prisons, which is in fact the vibe I’ve been trying to put my finger on.

Inside the door I discover that what makes this a “suite” is that the foyer has been replaced by a sink, refrigerator and 2 burners. Oh, and the cupboards contain a few pots & pans, dishes, and silverware obviously salvaged from the nearest yard sale. Other than that, you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference from your basic Motel 6 or TraveLodge.

OK, I admit I’m disappointed at the absence of “deluxe”, but it’s late, I’m tired, and the TV works fine (not one but 4 ESPNs!), so I make a quick call to my wife and then head off to the shower.

The hotel industry for many years scammed us, or at least me, into feeling pampered to find toiletries and perhaps even a little package of coffee in our rooms. Some even had (gasp!) blow dryers, and you could call the front desk to get a toothbrush if Homeland Security stole yours during baggage screening. Then I, at least, stopped to consider that even if you’re paying as little as $60 a night (our frugal, corporate-bean-counter-appeasing rate on this trip) that’s the equivalent of $1800 a month for basically staying in a stranger’s guest room – and hoping he really washed his sheets since the last guest left. So when you get down to it, we probably shouldn’t be excessively grateful that they provide 49 cents’ worth of shampoo, even if it is laden with fruits and botanicals.

So I leave my glasses on the desk and head for the bathroom. At first I’m having difficulty locating the shampoo, so I assume it’s just my eyesight. Frankly I’m not a sure bet to locate the shower without my glasses unless there’s a pretty strong light… so I retrieve them and conduct a more thorough search of the premises.

Though I don’t find any shampoo, I do find a card that says toiletries may be obtained at the front desk – but my fully-corrected vision (well, almost) allows me to read the fine print which reads: “At selected locations”. I’m getting the feeling this is a location that isn’t selected for anything save perhaps the Witness Protection Program.

I note further on the card, incidentally, that since this is an Extended Stay Hotel, I will also have an Extended Wait for housekeeping; they don’t show up till day 7... unless you pay extra.

Well, it’s close to midnight and I have to be presentable for a meeting first thing in the morning, so there’s no alternative but to “shampoo” with a deodorant soap bar about the size of a credit card. At least I don’t have to worry about my scents clashing – and I suppose almonds and honey can stand in for fruits and botanicals.

Out of the shower and at least fresher than my post-air-travel/interminable-cab-ride self, I decide to pop on the Internet just for a sec. Note: this has everything in the world to do with the desire to catch up on important e-mails, and to maximize the value of my $4.99 expenditure, and is not related in any way to my fantasy baseball team. Or… my other fantasy baseball team.

I’m met with a login screen that requests a password and I realize that the desk clerk didn’t say anything about a password; there will be no Internet tonight. Nothing left to do but go to bed.

At home, I’m generally pretty good about getting to sleep – many nights it’s a race to hit the pillow while still conscious – however, I am susceptible to random background noise and stray beams of light. And since the word “hotel” is actually taken from the Old French meaning “random background noise and stray beams of light”, I lie awake and restless (I believe this is where I’m supposed to use the word “enervated”) for some while. Finally I give up and shove in my earplugs, which I’ve left out in an effort to ensure hearing the alarm, and drift into fitful slumber. But not before realizing the gibberish the desk clerk scribbled on the keycard sleeve must be the Internet access password; I briefly consider getting up but I’m exhausted and I don’t want to be The Guy Who Gets Out of Bed in the Middle of the Night to Surf the Web, so I finally surrender to my weariness.

I wouldn’t be surprised if a reader had roughly the same reaction (enervated, anyone?), so let’s all take a break here and marshal our strength for the big finish… next time, I promise.

No Kingdom, No Magic (Part I)

As a part-time employee working from home and a full-time dad, one of the big events in the year’s calendar is when Dad Goes on a Business Trip. Schedules are juggled – in particular, I have to be very careful how the week’s menu is set up, on behalf of one who is not an enthusiastic practitioner of the culinary arts – and there is a general buzz of anticipation.

OK, that’s mostly me (although my wife’s principal reaction was that she’d be able to keep the house clean, with a barely-unspoken “for a change”); as recounted previously, I just don’t get out of the house among adults too often. In this case the anticipation redoubles when the destination is revealed to be Orlando.

Orlando, while not quite Vegas, certainly evokes a certain mental picture: sunshine, warm weather, a giant frolicking rodent. Everyone I meet is jealous of my great fortune, especially with the last vestiges of snow on the ground and daily “high” temps in the low 40s. I protest in vain that I’m unlikely to have much recreation time on a two-day business trip, much less an opportunity to visit theme parks.

I am forced, however, to acknowledge that I am looking forward to a comfy hotel room, housekeeping picking up after me, and ample expense account meals. And it’s an Extended Stay Hotel, which means a suite! Living large, no doubt.

Of course, a trip to Orlando plus school-vacation week equals a plane full of families of all descriptions. Yet the flight down, a Southwest non-stop, is completely uneventful. Board on time, leave on time, arrive on time; everyone from 1 to 100 is placid and well-behaved. Even though it’s much more fun to be scornful and dismissive, I have to admit that Southwest rocks.

While I’m no road warrior, I’ve traveled now and then for the past 25 years, and it seems to me that all airports are more or less indistinguishable. The exception is probably Orlando: the airport is basically standard-issue, but you can always identify Orlando by the herds of families wandering around with dazed looks on their faces – either on their way, trying to reach the hotel “not far from the Magic Kingdom” before the kids explode; or headed home, fishing grimly in their Mickey-logo fanny packs for the last remaining 20 bucks needed to obtain the somewhat-edibles they’re not going to get on the plane. A novice traveler would do well to remember that, while the Food Network has programs on nearly every conceivable topic, there are no shows celebrating the joys of America’s Airport Food.

I get my luggage quickly and head for Ground Transportation. I’ve decided not to rent a car, since I have other teammates flying in who will be, but my hotel reservation says “Orlando”, so surely I can take a cab quicker and cheaper anyway. I neglected to visit Yahoo Maps ahead of time, but what’s the worst that could happen? Ten or fifteen minutes? $10-15 plus tip?

As I said, I’m no road warrior. The fare is close to 2 bucks before I even get out of the airport – not counting the mandatory 50-cent “airport surcharge”. As we travel, I’m mentally keeping a running tab of a 15% tip so I’ll be ready when we get there in a couple minutes. It gets harder to keep up as we pass from street to highway to toll road to interstate and the meter continues to click (well, digitally) like the gas pump when I fill up the minivan.

I do, of course, want to appear a road warrior and not Cletus just off the hay wagon – since I basically am just off the hay wagon, I’m always wary of being fleeced by cabbies – so I keep silent as if this is just what I expected. Finally, more than a half-hour and 40-some-odd dollars into the trip, I can’t help but ask: “Are we getting anywhere close?” The driver, whom you’ll be absolutely stunned to learn is a foreign gentleman, tells me it’s 3 more exits.

A reader would be forgiven for asking the same question… let’s just say I have a restraining order against me prohibiting me from using the phrase “to make a long story short”. And since I don’t want a single post to be longer than the cab ride, I’m going to resume next time.

April 1-7, 33

Seems like archeology is continually bringing us updates from the past. Witness the furor over the supposed burial place of Jesus and the wife & kids. And after all, what are the odds that a man named Jesus and a woman named Mary would be buried in the same tomb? Um... pretty good, actually.

OK, never mind that one. However, in the spirit of the Dead Sea Scrolls comes the news of the very recent discovery of Jesus' Day-Timer. It was so recent that scholars have not had an opportunity to translate it; but by an amazing coincidence, I actually majored in Aramaic in college. In fact, I was the treasurer of the Aramaic Club -- what a wacky bunch we were!

I wondered what the entries would look like for this same week back then. Here's my best translation:

Sunday, April 1: Parade -- Grand Marshal (note: the card below was attached)

Monday, April 2: Help apostles study for final exam

Tuesday, April 3: Temple -- help clean up; Exercise (upper-body workout)

Wednesday, April 4: Appear on "Pharisee Jeopardy!" Remember to answer in the form of a question.

Thursday, April 5: Dinner with the guys -- I bring the bread & wine

Friday, April 6: Full workout. *Out late -- stay over at Joseph of A's?*

Saturday, April 7: Don't forget to leave early wakeup call for tomorrow.

Wanted: Tiny Pretend Donuts

I didn't really need convincing, but I recently got yet another illustration of the importance of spouses having different strengths. I will forever be happy to handle "Electronic Devices" and "Food Shopping & Preparation", as long as my wife is designated for "Dioramas".

All the way into April, I'm still having trouble adjusting to how much homework we have now that we're in first grade. I beg your pardon; as it turns out, only one of us is in first grade... yet somehow the homework turns out to be a family affair.

We have muddled our way through the various math worksheets and spelling lists and flashcards and phonics readers -- it's been no bed of roses, of course, but anything in the service of education. Plus we have to initial the homework sheet every night and I'm afraid if I fib it'll go on my Permanent Record.

Just when we could almost see the light at the end of the tunnel, came the dreaded Diorama Project. The first graders were assigned to make a model of our community, and we got to be Dunkin' Donuts.

Not to worry -- the seven-year-old springs into action. He finds a shoebox, assembles crayons and scissors and tape and construction paper, and before we know it he's busily sketching, cutting, and assembling.

No, of course he doesn't! Who in their right mind expects a seven-year-old to even make a tangible contribution to a project like that? Let’s not be coy, folks; we all know that even for the older kids, the parents are doing the lion’s share of the work here. And in the case of a first-grader, probably the best you can hope for is that the kid stays at the dining room table long enough to watch his parents (OK, his mom) build the silly thing. As far as I can tell, the only educational objective being served here is that the kid learns that the parents can be made to do almost anything when a teacher writes it on an assignment sheet.

The saving grace for me is that we all agree that my arts & crafts abilities are confined to coloring inside the lines. Even then I’m better off from an esthetic standpoint if someone else selects the colors for me. So my wife naturally took the lead without my even having to whine. I mean, suggest it. She took a big batch of digital photos, found all the materials, sat him down to do what little cutting and coloring he could contribute, and put it together. Well, almost.

You would no doubt be stunned to hear that, before we knew it, it was the night before D-Day and we had a shoebox resplendent in orange and pink, but not “branded”. So I (as the “Electronic Devices” supervisor; see above) got to spend the evening surfing for logos and resizing them and printing them – and, as it turns out, creating a few of my own signs from scratch.

I felt kind of vaguely icky about how much work we parents did until I saw the rest of the projects. As it turns out, there’s a high percentage of photographers, artists, architects and graphic designers in first grade these days. What are the odds?

Notable Notes

I have noted (and whined, and made excuses) many times in this space about the stress of squeezing 10 pounds of tasks into a 5-pound sack of time, but last week I decided to raise the degree of difficulty. My wife was out of town at a 2-day meeting, I was supposed to be at choir rehearsal, and one of my favorite bands was appearing live less than an hour away. And so the usual dilemma, with some extra monkey wrenches: Fulfill my family obligations by staying with the kids? Honor my church commitment by attending choir rehearsal?

Nah.

I booked a sitter, boiled up some hot dogs for the kids, and took off to the MercyMe/Audio Adrenaline/Aaron Shust show in Albany. MercyMe is one of the leading bands in Christian music these days (at least in the more "mainstream", "radio-friendly" category) and one of the select few to receive my coveted "buy every CD when it comes out" status.

The show had its ups and downs -- more about that in a moment -- but all the way around was well-worth the time, expense, effort & overall disruption. Although I didn't actually quiz the kids about that last item. Eh, let them get their own blog.

I've been attending concerts for something like 28 years now, and whether Christian or.... what? pagan? I guess "secular" is the word I'm looking for -- there are always commonalities.

For example: I've still never quite come to terms with the custom of the encore. It always feels like the band is trying to squeeze an extra ovation out of me (and there's nothing that resonates more with me than compulsory enthusiasm): if you don't clap loud enough, we're not coming back out.... I understand the need for "dramatic tension" -- although it seems kind of self-dramatizing, especially for a Christian band -- but it really feels like it's become almost entirely a cliche.

One unique element: I was struck by the irony of attending the farewell tour of a band that's breaking up because the lead singer can't sing any more. Over the course of 16 years recording and touring (and largely screaming), Mark Stuart of Audio Adrenaline has systematically shredded his vocal cords. It was painful to hear him try to sing; as someone who only sings when I'm awake (I think), I can't imagine not being able to do it any more. And this guy had a serious pipe back in the day. Now he's croaking, or letting the other guys sing lead, or pointing the mike to the audience for them to do the singing.

And what is up with the audience singing?? Why would you pay $25 to go to a show and spend the whole night trying to drown out the lead singer? Why, there were so many inconsiderate people singing around me that I could hardly hear myself sing.

One more commonality, at least for a Christian concert: the Compassion International commercial (I won't say anything snarky about them; we've been supporters for a long time and they do great work) and a sprinkling of sermonizing from the guys on stage. Actually, I was pleased with the way these guys approached it; I've been at other shows where I wanted to leap up on the stage, grab a guitar and say, "Here -- remember this?"

Bart Millard, the lead singer of MercyMe, did leave us with a couple of cool thoughts:

• the reason some people in churches are so hard to be around is that they've seen others find a relationship with God and have their lives changed. Meanwhile, they've "hung around" God but haven't really experienced him -- who wouldn't be bitter?
• we need to soak in, absorb, live in the knowledge that the Big, Big God of the universe... all-powerful and knowing you better than you know yourself... is "madly in love with" you, and me, and each one of us.

I don't need to pay 25 bucks to know that... but it's good to be reminded just the same.