Building a Rep

I finally get out of my basement, and about all I get for my trouble is a shoe full of water.

The weather in our area has been lovely and halfway summerlike, but as a Remote Employee I have been stashed away in my subterranean office, remote from spring as well. However, this week I'm in the midst of a rare business trip. Naturally, as soon as I mount the basement steps, the temp drops 20 degrees and it starts raining.

Tonight I was out shopping for breakfast -- should I go down to the dining room in the morning and wait for them to bring me 10 dollars' "worth" of breakfast, or should I go to the grocery store and buy 2 days' worth of breakfast for less than that? -- and on my way across the soggy parking lot I noted a sudden sensation of wet/cold on one foot. When I got inside, I discovered a big split in the sole of my shoe. Not to worry, I only have to wear it for 2 more days. Rainy days.

I just don't understand American workmanship these days. I've only had these shoes for 10 or 15 years (OK, it might be 20) and they're worn out already?

The good news is that this week's blog is being brought to you by the Official Hotel of Random Access. I do love me some Courtyard. King-size bed, sitting area, deluxe bathroom, and free wi-fi... can't hardly beat that. The breakfast prices are exhorbitant, but if you hit the lobby at the right time, you can find free cookies. OK, 'free' is a relative term -- I'm on record about the scam of 'complimentary' hotel amenities. By the way, this trip is relatively local to home, so this entry is not also brought to you by the Official Airline of Random Access.

I'm reminded of another trip, almost exactly a year ago, when (just like tonight) I was faced with sports-news hysteria. I am way at the back of the line for the Roger Clemens Fan Club, but is this really stop-the-presses news? I was watching the ballgame, and the ESPN crawl at the bottom of the screen -- which usually features headings like 'NL', 'AL', 'NBA' and 'Golf' -- suddenly sprouted a new category: 'CLEMENS'. There is the sense that he's made his own bed... um, perhaps not the best choice of words... but he may have reached the point where whatever he does will be construed as something horrible -- preceded by his reputation.

And that idea -- like almost everything else -- brings me back around to me. Unfortunately. See, this is actually my 2nd consecutive trip; last Friday, I had to make a flying trip (speed, not mode of transport) to the office where I used to be based. I was getting a new computer, so while the swap was in progress, I walked around to say hi to some people I hadn't seen for several years.

One of my old colleagues told me that someone had said something sarcastic the other day, and he told me, "Whenever that happens around here, I always say, 'Boy, I really miss Mark.'" Then someone else in the conversation, who barely knew me at all, recounted something I had said to bust someone else's chops.

And OK, we all know the difference between an affectionate poke at someone and truly ripping them up... but even I had to ask myself, "Is this really what I want to be known for?" I have over the years built up my Lovable Curmudgeon act; I can always make people laugh by grumbling about this and that, especially about work. The workplace is always fertile soil for complainers -- that's why we laugh at Dilbert.

A while back, I heard someone on the radio talking about being a Christian and representing Christianity to others. The hope, of course, is that others can see a difference in your behavior and demeanor (and hopefully ask, "What's that about?"). I want to be that guy, but I couldn't swear to it at this point. They say that entropy is a powerful force and it's easier to knock something down than to build it... unfortunately, it seems I saved my best workmanship for building a rep.

Kerouac Had No Kids

Recently I found myself thinking about Boston, Lexington, & Plymouth MA; Philadelphia; Washington DC; Niagara Falls (both sides) and Dearborn MI. These were the destinations for a few of our family vacations when I was a kid. In my mind's eye, I seem to see a speeded-up slide show: flashes of images like Plymouth Rock, and steelmaking in Dearborn, and the rickety elevator at the Battle Green Inn (the first elevator I ever operated myself), and driving around DC lost -- a family tradition I'm proud to say I upheld last summer. Mostly, it leaves me wanting to say something to my parents:

What were you thinking??

OK, and "thank you", of course; I had some wonderful experiences. But having just survived my own Family Vacation Trip, my initial reaction is wonderment that anyone would do it voluntarily. I don't know whether they went places they wanted to go, or whether they planned it around our Educational Benefit. But I can say from personal experience that a vacation based around Children's Museums can be pretty tough on the parents.

I'm also amazed that they could pull off such complicated itineraries in the days before Google. If I can't do a Web search for hotels -- I'm no Patrick Henry, but Give me a suite with a separate bedroom, or give me death -- and then print off a map with turn-by-turn directions, I'd be inclined to stay home. Maybe we could put a blanket over the dining room table and go "camping".

And while I'm sure the French are still grateful to Gen. Eisenhower for bailing them out of that Nazi business, I'm kinda partial to the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System. Sure, he meant it for transporting troops & missiles and the like, but I'd hate to try a 700-mile trip in 4 days without it. For that matter, while I'm thinking of it, I'm often heard to say that if Eisenhower had had to take small children along on D-Day, we'd all be speaking German now.

The silver lining to any trip is always the resulting blog... particularly if I'm already "behind schedule" (I'm flattering myself to think that someone's missed me in my absence... you did notice it's been a couple weeks, right?) due to taxes and work and church obligations (and planning & executing a vacation). Even better, a trip really lends itself to bullet points:

• Which means I don't have to worry about making it a cohesive narrative with a unified point.
• It can just be a series of observations.
• Opossums have the most teeth of any land mammal (50).
• See how I worked in a random fact there?
• Actually, I learned that at ... a Children's Museum.

So it was 5 museums in 4 days in 2 states. Two of the museums were officially designated as Children's Museums, which mainly served to illustrate that there is no central authority that delineates a Children's Museum from a cinderblock basement scattered with secondhand "educational" toys. OK, really there is; I'm not sure whether there's any qualification process or it's just sending in box tops or something.

We also did three legitimate big-time museums that also feature Interactive Hands-On Exhibits for Kids. I have to say there was some no-doubt cool & educational stuff there, but even so it ended up being more hands-on than interactive (i.e. push all the buttons, yank all the levers, spin all the dials, run as fast as you can to the next one).

I of course found all sorts of interesting tidbits along the way... so that must mean it's time for the Bullet-Point Round!

• You have to love a state like New Hampshire, with state-sponsored liquor stores located conveniently adjacent to their interstate highways. If you must drink and drive, make sure you pay directly to the government before you kill someone.
• It's pretty complicated to nourish kids intellectually AND physically at the same time. It seems like road food always degenerates into chicken nuggets, mac & cheese, pizza, and hamburgers. We also squeezed in pancakes, omelets, and French toast. I'm pretty sure the most nutritious food we saw was the strawberries and grapes they were feeding the opossum -- although I understand that mealworms are awfully good for you too.
• On a side trip to Cambridge to visit family, we ended up at a neighborhood playground dominated by an enormous slide only accessible through an elaborate rope climbing net. I wanted to set a good example for my risk-averse son, so I clambered up myself... only to find myself clinging desperately to the precipice (not quite the message I was trying to send). He did eventually try it -- and I did get down alive. When he was balanced 10' up yelping with fear, I kept telling him, "You're fine, I've got you, just keep hanging on and going upward," but I was thinking, he's going to fall and be killed and there's nothing I can do to stop it. One of my less-favorite things about parenting: I have to keep doing things that scare me, so they don't end up scared of everything.
• You can end up in some odd places killing time with kids. After lunch one day, we visited a costume store. Then my son said, "Hey dad, that one looks just like you!" Was it Superman? A weightlifter? Some other hero-type? No, it was this guy.
• I can't emphasize this enough: Suite with separate bedroom, good; "standard" room with 2 (very) adjacent queen-size beds, bad.

Stranger in Our Midst

The unmistakeable signs of spring are all around us: We've had that last, false-hope-crushing snowfall.... The drive-in up the road is open, and the locals are huddled around the picnic tables in forlorn knots of 2 and 3, eating their First Ice Cream of Spring.... Tax season is upon us, and I'm getting my laptop charged up so I can finish my return next Tuesday on the way to the post office.

My Leading Indicator is always the crack of the bat being heard all across this great land of ours. Around here, we've been observing our own forms of Spring Training, on two fronts -- first, I used the March exhibition games to get the troops a little hyped on watching the Mets again... hoping that if I can amass three votes, I might prevail against our local Superdelegate, who is definitely voting "against." And, rare is the day when the girl doesn't jam on her Mets cap and say, "Dad, will you play catch with me?"

She's even starting to recognize individual players on TV. Naturally, most sports enthusiasms and loyalties are acquired virally, from someone close to you who already has the bug (although I think mine was definitely a spontaneous genetic mutation).

I just consider it responsible parenting to do whatever I can to nurture the ardor for baseball in general, and the Mets in particular -- although last fall my son, especially, figured it might be cool to be a Red Sox fan, since they were the champs.

So I was a trifle surprised when my girl came home from a trip with her grandmother to Wal-Mart with a shirt bearing the logo of...

I can't even say it. Suffice it to say that it's rumored that there's a second major league that also has a team located in New York. The New York Yonkers, or something like that.

She saw it in the store, it was sporty, they didn't have any Mets stuff in her size; so she begged Nanny, who ended up going back to get it for her.

At first, she thought it was the coolest shirt ever... then she said she didn't want to wear it to school and have kids laugh at her (as she herself has been known to do to perfect strangers -- perfectly large, beefy strangers, whom she spots on the street wearing similarly non-Mets attire).

But then as we were snuggling later that evening, she suddenly said, "Dad, what happens if I like the Yankees?" One of those times that tests your parenting skills.

I hugged her tight and said, "Sweetie, you can like whoever you want to." She seemed pleased with that answer... and fortunately has not yet noticed that Dad, who does the laundry, has somehow not yet gotten that shirt back in her drawer...