Encroachment, Both Avian and Feminine

Tuesday morning, I got to the East Brunswick Library at 9:40 AM and it wasn't open yet, though the website claimed they opened at 9 AM, but the sign on the door said 10 AM -- summer hours?-- and so I grabbed my book and walked across the parking lot to a bench by the little pond and sat down and started reading; two minutes later a heavyset woman with crazy hair pushing a stroller with a toddler in it sat down on the same bench as me . . . there were other benches available but this was the closest one to the library and, I quickly surmised that she too thought the library opened at 9 AM and I surmised this not because I possess a highly attuned sixth sense that enables me to read people's thoughts-- in fact, I was trying my best to ignore this woman (and her thoughts) but not only was she encroaching on my physical space, she was also encroaching on my auditory space: divulging all her innermost thoughts via a running monologue . . . or I suppose it was a one-sided dialogue with the non-verbal toddler, an apostrophic vomit of words: we thought the library was open, but it wasn't open was it? so we just have to wait here a few minutes . . . maybe awe can have a snack? okay but we're going to stay in the stroller, we'll stay put and eat a snack . . . not that, here you go, and look . . . there are the ducks, those are ducks, and those are the geese, no we're not going to go by the geese, we're going to stay in the stroller and have a snack while we wait for the library to open, we thought it was open but it's not open yet . . . and this prompted me to get up and move, but then I decided that not only would that look rude, but this was my bench and I was obviously trying to quietly read and I was in the right-- she should have taken a look at the context and found another bench-- so I wasn't going to move and i wasn't going to chat with her about how the website claimed the library opened at 9 AM but it actually didn't open until 10 AM, so I buried my head into my book, which was not easy reading (Authority by Jeff VanderMeer, book two in the Southern Reach trilogy) and tried my best to concentrate and then a dozen geese starting walking out of the pond, up the bank towards our bench, and she said, "We're out of here" and got up and pushed the stroller away and I celebrated (internally) because I wasn't afraid of a bunch of geese, in fact, these geese were my saviors . . . and so I settled back into my reading, certain that I would be able to focus now that the woman and the toddler were gone, but the geese kept coming, closer and closer, and eventually the geese got so close to me-- people must feed them-- that I couldn't concentrate on my book and so I had to get up and let the universe have it's way . . . because (ironically) the universe obviously didn't want me to kill the time waiting for the library to open reading a book, though that would have made perfect sense . . . and the universe told me this with three uniquely annoying and encroaching entities-- harbingers always come in sets of three: a rambling mom, a hungry toddler, and a rather aggressive flock of geese.

When in Rome, You Run Over the Geese

I was absolutely appalled by the behavior of a man in a construction pick-up vehicle last Friday evening; Catherine, the boys, and I were on our way to my brother-in-law's wedding in Hazlet, cruising down Route 516, when we came to a line of stopped vehicles -- and at the front was this white pick-up with an orange light on top of the cab . . . and in front of the pick-up was a small flock of Canada geese, taking their time crossing the road . . . and I should have mentioned earlier that the pick-up had New York plates, so I beeped at him, to indicate that he was now in New Jersey, and here in New Jersey we hate our plague of constantly defecating Canuck fowl, and we certainly don't stop traffic to let them wander in the road (and this guy stopped a good fifty yards from the geese, really giving them a wide berth, like they were some kind of endangered hummingbirds) and after I beeped, I tried to sneak past him in the shoulder, because I am familiar with the behavior of the Canada goose, and know that if you drive your car (or bike) straight at them, they get out of the way, but this guy in the pick-up -- this friend of all creatures great and small, turned and blocked the shoulder as well, so that I couldn't get by, and then, before things got really ugly, the geese vamoosed, and I'm thankful that they did because I was working myself into a righteous indignant rage that may have ended in fisticuffs, and I'm not sure my defense would have held water, that the reason I assaulted this guy was because he wouldn't run over some geese, and then he had the audacity to stop me from running over the aforementioned geese.

Trump Causes More Shit

Last week, after visiting the dog park, I tried to walk home along the river. It was damn near impassable. The grass and the path were strewn with goose poop. Disgusting for me, and a health hazard for my dog. She loves to eat the stuff, and it's laden with bacteria and parasites. The last time she chowed down on it, she threw up all over my van. Yuck.

This was the last straw for me. The geese never shit on the river path. There are a few areas in Donaldson Park that are consistently covered in fecal matter (and they are easy enough to avoid) but this winter-- perhaps because we never got solid snow cover-- the entire park was littered with the stuff. Every sporting field, every paved path . . . from the grassy meadows to the muddy banks. Poop poop poop poop. The only spot in the park not covered with goose poop was the dog park. But I couldn't walk through the other sections of the park to get to the dog park. There was too much shit. So I had to take the street along the park and cut into the park on the trail just past the public works building and the diesel fuel tank. This route is not scenic at all. It's damn near tragic. I live next to Donaldson Park so I can walk around in Donaldson Park.

My New "Scenic Route" to the Dog Park

I generally managed to keep Lola from eating goose poop on my way back from the river, but it was not pleasant or relaxing. So I was pretty irate when I got home. I had been through a scatological minefield, and I was certainly suffering from PTSD: Post Traumatic Shit Disorder. I was fired up. But instead of my usual complaining into the void, I decided to do something: I would write an email to the powers that be. I cranked out a couple paragraphs of crackpot commentary to the county parks director. I was vivid. I was livid. I was graphic. I was gross. I mentioned bacteria and parasites. I recalled that there used to be a guy that would come in and scare the geese away. He would set off fireworks and place silhouettes of dogs in the fields. What happened to that guy? Donaldson Park needed that guy! My tone was polite but frustrated. What other tone is there when you're dealing with goose-shit?

Here's what I got back. I was very pleased with the prompt reply (and properly indignant about the causes of the excessive poop).

A Prompt Clarification on the Shit Storm

Mr. Pellicane,

Thank you for your message regarding Canada goose numbers at Donaldson Park.  The County currently contracts with the Wildlife Services Division of the USDA, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services for Canada goose management on all County properties.  This include harassment and egg treatments.  They cover over two dozen sites throughout the County.  With our proximity to water, open space and mild winters, controlling geese is always a challenge.

The biggest problem we are having this year is with the somewhat milder winter.  Many geese that pushed southward last year, simply did not this year.  Additionally, with the federal government shutdown for 35 days in December and January, all contracts were suspended.  Harassment during this time was minimal – only what our staff could get to.

We are certainly behind on behavior modification and it is apparent in many of our parks.  Our USDA tech is back on the job (for now, anyway) however, we are playing catch up across the County.  I have asked for increased visits to Donaldson Park over the next week and if there is not another shutdown, continued aggressive harassment for the next few.  This should hopefully help alleviate some of the pressure on Donaldson Park from the geese.

Thank you,

Rick Lear

Director

Office of Parks and Recreation

Department of Infrastructure Management

Let's Assign Some Blame!

Trump! This was Trump poop. Caused by his government shutdown. And even better, Rick Lear alluded to Trump's arch-nemesis. He didn't call it by name (perhaps, like the EPA, he's forbidden). But when he refers to the "mild winter," we all know what he's talking about. Climate change! So I had stepped in Donald Trump's shit, caused by something he refuses to believe in, the Chinese hoax. I couldn't have been happier. English teachers love irony.

The biggest problem we are having this year is with the somewhat milder winter.  Many geese that pushed southward last year, simply did not this year.  Additionally, with the federal government shutdown for 35 days in December and January, all contracts were suspended. 

Rick Lear

I was also happy because getting upset about Trump shit is fun. This is because Trump is temporary. His ideas are outdated. He's a throwback, a dinosaur, soon to be extinct. A last gasp. In fact, despite the bipartisan quagmire and the incorrigible stupidity and corruption of the Trump administration, I'm feeling pretty good about the world, goose poop and all. This is mainly because I'm nearly done with Steven Pinker's book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. It's also because my wife is doing a lot of Zumba and looking great (but that's besides the point).

Pinker uses an avalanche of charts and statistics to remind us that we are living in the best of times. And this is because of th enlightenment values mentioned in the title: science, reason, secular humanism, liberal democratic ideas. The world has never been less violent, more healthy, more prosperous, safer, and more liberal. Despite what the naysayers prophesy, more people have rights than ever before, less people are at war than ever before, knowledge is more accessible, and democracy is on the rise. While there are challenges, we keep coming up with solutions. And the two existential threats-- the things that worry Pinker the most-- the environment (including global warming) and nuclear war . . . both of these things are improving. Slowly, but they are definitely improving. As countries grow richer, they do a better job preserving the environment; they reforest and recycle and use less fossil fuels and look for alternate energy sources. And we are slowly whittling down the number of nuclear weapons on earth. That number may never reach zero, but it doesn't have to. As long as we accept and understand the challenges, there are solutions on the horizon.

The Robots Are NOT Coming

Pinker also dispels some of the ridiculous notions that cause folks unnecessary anxiety: artificial intelligence experts don't fear the singularity. AI is not going to rebel and replace us. It's too hard to make a semi-conductor. It's too hard to make anything. It takes teams and teams of people and many highly technical factories and lots of resources. And we humans control all that. We are the kings of meat-space. And most of this perceived conflict is online. This is also the reason we probably don't have to fear technological nightmare scenarios caused by lone wolf lunatics. It takes too many smart people to create technology that advanced. Your computer may get a virus (but nothing as serious as Y2K) but you need a team of specialists to make a nuclear bomb or a super-virus, and it's hard to assemble that many people down with destroying the human race.

This is why rational people don't fear Donald Trump. He's not the face of the 21st century, he's a wart that will soon dry up. And fall off. He's an old wart.

Pinker does acknowledge that Trump will have an effect-- especially if we let him-- on some of these precious enlightenment ideals that have served us so well. He's an impediment to "life and health" because of his anti-vaxxer rhetoric and his role in dismantling our healthcare system. He's a threat to worldwide wealth because of his idiotic zero-sum notions about trade. Countries that are tied together economically cooperate. They don't go to war. He's certainly not helping economic inequality, nor is he a boon to safety, on the job or otherwise. He hates regulations, which often spur progress and make business seek solutions to problems (such as car crashes, plane crashes, poisoning, tanker leaks, lead levels, mileage restrictions, etc). He's not particularly keen on democracy and seems to have a penchant for dictatorial strongmen. He's no fan of equal rights, and his speeches and Tweets often have an undercurrent of xenophobia and racism. And he's a liar liar pants on fire. So he's not an ambassador or advocate to the wonders of available and accurate knowledge.

The Glass Is Half Full? So Lame . . .

Optimism is not cool. Pinker is an utter nerd. It's more fun to obsess over Trump and predict the end of civility, the end of civilization. Trump is certainly a shitshow, and Michael Lewis does a nice job illustrating some of the consequences of his incomptetence. And he's an environmental disaster. But we are progressing despite him. You need proof? Listen to Adam Ruins Everything Episode 1, where Adam talks at length with the Los Angeles DOT Seleta Reynolds. Streetcars, bike lanes, public transport, walkable neighborhoods and plazas . . . in the car capital of the country. In LA? Sounds like a hippie's dream and a conservative's nightmare. But this progressive vision is happening, despite Trump, and with federal funding. There are difficulties, of course, but when you hear this dedicated and intelligent government employee explaining that the market won't solve these problems of morals and values, it's really heartening. She's also really funny.

Pinker is an atheistic utilitarian who may not have enough feelings about anything to move the stalwarts on the left or the right. He glosses over some pretty bad shit. But that's because he's looking at the numbers, not at the emotions. Not at identity politics or anything particularly political. He's in the same corner as President Obama, who wrote a miniature version of the Pinker book for Wired Magazine. It's an essay called "Now Is the Greatest Time to Be Alive." It's not nearly as fun as visions of rusted out towns full of drug-addled opiate addicts (not the whole story) and porous unwalled borders which allow terrorists, criminals and rapists to pour into our nation. Statistically supported optimism can't match Chinese bandits stealing our intellectual property, black people who don't know their proper place (let's make America Great Again! And Institutionally Racist!) and liberal socialists who want to empower the government so that it controls every aspect of our lives. The end of times. That's what gets the clicks.

But I'm siding with Rick Lear. He's going to be around long after Trump is gone, directing county parks and rec infrastructure, fighting the good fight against the geese. He'll suffer mild winters and government shutdowns, deal with cranky emails, and continue to make this country greater than it's ever been. I have faith that he's going to make my local park greater. He's going to get rid of those geese (and their shit).

I believe.

Pinker's incremental pragmaticism does have it's problems. Robert Gordon, in his comprehensive work The Rise and Fall of American Growth claims that we've captured all the technological "low hanging fruit" and that advances will be tiny and slow for a long time. And Charles C. Mann provides a much more balanced picture in his new book, The Wizard and Prophet. Pinker is a fan of Norman Borlaug, the agricultural engineer who founded the Green Revolution‌, but there are those scientists who don't believe technology will bail us out of every dilemma. We might need old-fashioned conservation to preserve our way of life. Mann uses ecologist William Vogt to represent this perspective. It's one worth noting.

Pinker is also not very romantic. There's no room for honor and zealotry and fanaticism and mysticism and martyrdom and certain types of selfless ascetic heroism in his philosophy. He's no Hamlet, who says to his buddy Horatio: "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." But Hamlet has seen a spirit, his father's spirit. The time is out of joint. Something is rotten. That's not so in Pinker's secular, statistical view of progress. Society will be less varied, but I have to admit, I don't really care. I won't miss the zealous fanatical whirling mystical martyrs one bit.

I'd much rather have a river blindness vaccine. And people are working on it.

Dogs vs. Geese

I hate the park by my house right now -- it's muddy and full of goose-shit -- and the only way to solve the problem (without resorting to violence . . . and I will admit that violent thoughts about these geese cross my mind all the time) is to allow dogs free roam of the park, as the only thing that these geese are afraid of are dogs . . . but this might lead to a park full of dog-shit, or even worse, a headline like this: Wild Dogs Kill Four in Mexico City Park . . . so maybe I should stop complaining and just deal with the goose-shit.

Shouldn't Canadian Geese Live in Canada?

I thought I was going for a relaxing bike ride on the towpath, and in some respects it was-- I saw lots of wildlife: a muskrat, a scarlet tanager, several goldfinches, a heron, and some turtles-- but also had a run in with several Canadian geese, their chicks have just hatched and their nests are right on the side of the path, so the adults-- in order to protect their young-- would block the path when I approached, and so I had to whip stones at them and shove my bike at them and hit them with sticks in order to get them out of the way . . . I saw one jogger do an about face and head back the way she came, her pleasant run truncated by an ornery bird.

Yuck

I was excited to take Lola down to the park yesterday afternoon-- she loves to run around in the snow and it was unseasonably warm, but-- unfortunately-- the warmth brought the fucking geese back and they had managed to dig up some grass at the base of the sled hill, so they were camped out there, nibbling and shitting-- so that portion of the walk annoyed me: Lola ate some goose crap and I had to steer her around the poop field, around the bend and closer to the river . . . and then she was off leash and running around in the snow, having a blast (while I was walking backward in the deep snow, bulletproofing my knees) but then I noticed she had found something interesting in a plastic bag . . . and it was a rotisserie chicken and she was able to eat a wing before I got it out of her mouth . . . which made me wonder: who leaves a fucking rotisserie chicken in a bag by a bench in the snow in the park?

Creeping Death Phlegm: Coronavirus Notes #2

Since my last Coronavirus update, some things have changed. And some haven't.

I still haven't been able to purchase toilet paper. Or eggs or chicken. But ground beef is back!

New Jersey has 269 cases of Covid-19 now. We may be headed for a situation like in Italy; if you're not sure what that means, listen to this episode of The Daily.

It's grim.

Adult get-togethers have petered out, but my kids are still going out into the world some. They've gotten together with other kids to play Magic, and Alex has been over to Rutgers a few times with his rocket-club. The leader of the club has a key card, and they've been getting into some building they call "The Cage" in order to use the 3-D printer, aeronautic software, and other technology to build their rockets. But, sadly, this seems to be coming to an end. And the big launch has been canceled.

We've started virtual school, and our district is really on top of things. Some teachers -- including my wife-- are using live-streaming video to do lessons. The students seem happy to do the work, as many of them are locked down in the house. I had my Creative Writing kids just write down some observations of the new normal. One girl saw kids playing basketball while wearing masks and gloves.

I've gone on a few adventures with the kids. We went to the liquor store and stocked up on wine, beer, and good tequila. No problem there. Then we went to Costco in North Brunswick. Supposed to be less crowded than Edison. The parking lot was full but not overwhelming, and when we entered the store, we thought we might be okay. But the kids scouted out the lines and they were endless. They stretched to the back of the store. And there were a lot of old people there, waiting in close quarters. We beat a hasty retreat.

A random upside to this crisis: more people in Donaldson Park than ever before: running, biking, walking, playing tennis. Everyone keeping a six-foot distance. All this hanging around, not going to bars and restaurants and malls, may spark a fitness revolution. People are so bored they are taking walks. More importantly, I think this influx of active people has scared the damned geese away.

The virus is starting to get politicized, and rightly so. Trump did an absolutely horrible job preparing the country for this. He's trying to revise things now, as he does, but read over his timeline of tweets and comments. It's absurd. In February, Trump said "it's fine" and "it's a hoax" and the stock market is great and the virus is going to disappear. He was worried about numbers and optics, he didn't get ahead of the curve on tests, his payroll tax cut proposal targets the wrong people (and is more of a stimulus measure for AFTER the crisis, not during it) and countries like South Korea and Vietnam are doing a far better job testing and tracking possible cases.

Trump: you make America suck.

But that's what the people wanted. So be it. I hope he gets it together and devises some kind of package specific for people who have been hurt financially. Frankly, I don't need a payroll tax cut, but there are people out there who are really hurting because of this.

Last week, I sold all my stocks and ETFs. Just in time. This week, I've been day trading some stocks on terrible, uneducated hunches. I bought Merck because they might have something to do with reagents. I bought Skechers because I've seen a lot of people walking and running. I've got some other dumb ideas I might try-- contact me privately and I'll let you know . . . but I charge Warren Buffet-like financial advisor fees.

I'm trying to exercise as much as possible, but I'm also eating out of boredom. I'm trying to limit drinking to a few days a week, but that's hard as well. We've been killing time with tennis, ping-pong,  Bananagrams, Better Call Saul, Letterkenny, and Kim's Convenience.

And RISK. We bought RISK for ten dollars on the Nintendo Switch. Ian crushed us. I had some trouble navigating the controls but got better as the game went on. I had a bit of a headache from all the 3-D map graphics, but the game is much faster than the board version.

Spring Issue of Lifewild

Spring is here, and with it a new issue of Lifewild Quarterly . . . an online magazine that my friend Adam puts together . . . I have written a carefully researched article about Canadian geese and their feces, and there is a piece by my friend Eric as well, along with some cool art: check it out if you can (there's also a Winter Issue).

Dave Reads Fifty Before Cat Turns Fifty

My wife is turning fifty tomorrow-- quite a milestone-- but more significantly, I just finished my fiftieth book of the year  The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-centered Planet by John Green. . . and judging by the number of passages I highlighted on my Kindle, it's a good one-- here are the highlights, with some fragmented commentary:

there's a lot of stuff on understanding the vastness of time . . .

Complex organisms tend to have shorter temporal ranges than simple ones . . .

When you measure time in Halleys rather than years, history starts to look different. As the comet visited us in 1986, my dad brought home a personal computer—the first in our neighborhood. One Halley earlier, the first movie adaptation of Frankenstein was released. The Halley before that, Charles Darwin was aboard the HMS Beagle. The Halley before that, the United States wasn’t a country. 

Put another way: In 2021, we are five human lifetimes removed from the building of the Taj Mahal, and two lifetimes removed from the abolition of slavery in the United States. History, like human life, is at once incredibly fast and agonizingly slow.

John Green, who is very literary, actually missed an easy allusion here-- see if you know what I'm talking about:

Eventually, in what may have been the most entitled moment of my life, I called and requested a room change because the ceaseless tinkling of the Gatsby Suite’s massive crystal chandelier was disturbing my sleep. As I made that call, I could feel the eyes of Fitzgerald staring down at me.

he should have referred to the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg on the billboard over the valley of ashes-- as they were the eyes of God, staring at the corrupt and immoral wasteland of America . . .

on imagery

We’ve long known that images are unreliable—Kafka wrote that “nothing is as deceptive as a photograph"

on the stupid geese in the park . . .

Like us, the success of their species has affected their habitats: A single Canada goose can produce up to one hundred pounds of excrement per year, which has led to unsafe E. coli levels in lakes and ponds where they gather.

on the lawns which we mow, water, fertilize and manicure:

In the daily grind of a human life, there’s a lawn to mow, soccer practices to drive to, a mortgage to pay. And so I go on living the way I feel like people always have, the way that seems like the right way, or even the only way. I mow the lawn of Poa pratensis as if lawns are natural, when in fact we didn’t invent the suburban American lawn until one hundred and sixty years ago. And I drive to soccer practice, even though that was impossible one hundred and sixty years ago—not only because there were no cars, but also because soccer hadn’t been invented. And I pay the mortgage, even though mortgages as we understand them today weren’t widely available until the 1930s. So much of what feels inevitably, inescapably human to me is in fact very, very new, including the everywhereness of the Canada goose.

on the past and the future

And I suspect that our choices will seem unforgivable and even unfathomable to the people reading those history books. “It is fortunate,” Charles Dudley Warner wrote more than a century ago, “that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.”

something that might be true (but would make me uncomfortable)

Taylor Lorenz tweeted that office air-conditioning systems are sexist, a blog in the Atlantic wrote, “To think the temperature in a building is sexist is absurd.” But it’s not absurd. What’s absurd is reducing workplace productivity by using precious fossil fuels to excessively cool an office building so that men wearing ornamental jackets will feel more comfortable.

a sports essay that made me cry

Dudek’s spaghetti legs, and this will end, and the light-soaked days are coming. I give Jerzy Dudek’sperformance on May 25, 2005 five stars.

and another sporting essay that made me cry-- this one on the yips-- I am a sucker for sports . . .

And then one day in 2007—six years removed from the wild pitch that took away his control forever—the St.Louis Cardinals called Rick Ankiel back to the major leagues as an outfielder. When Ankiel went to bat for the first time, the game had to be paused because the crowd’s standing ovation was so long and so loud. Rick Ankiel hit a home run in that game.

Two days later, he hit two more home runs. His throws from the outfield were phenomenally accurate—among the best in baseball. He would go on to play as a center fielder in the major leagues for six more years. Today, the most recent player to have won over ten games as a pitcher and hit over fifty home runs as a hitter is Rick Ankiel. I give the yips one and a half stars.

more on lawns . . .

more land and more water are devoted to the cultivation of lawn grass in the United States than to corn and wheat combined. There are around 163,000 square kilometers of lawn in the U.S., greater than the size of Ohio,or the entire nation of Italy. Almost one-third of all residential water use in the U.S.—clean, drinkable water—is dedicated to lawns. To thrive, Kentucky bluegrass often requires fertilizer an pesticides and complex irrigation systems, all of which we offer up to the plant in abundance, even though it cannot be eaten by humans or used for anything except walking and playing on. The U.S.’s most abundant and labor-intensive crop is pure, unadulterated ornamentation.

Green writes about my favorite literary term, the pathetic fallacy!

There’s a phrase in literary analysis for our habit of ascribing human emotions to the nonhuman: the pathetic fallacy, which is often used to reflect the inner life of characters through the outer world, as when Keats in “Ode on Melancholy” writes of a “weeping cloud,” or Shakespeare in Julius Caesar refers to “threatening clouds.”

and he writes about my favorite poem . . .

There’s an Emily Dickinson poem that begins, “I felt a Funeral, in my Brain.” It’s one of the only poems I’ve managed to commit to memory. It ends like this:

And then a Plank in Reason, broke, 

And I dropped down, and down - 

And hit a World, at every plunge, And

Finished knowing - then -

and he writes about America's proclivity for large balls of stuff, like the largest ball of paint, which started as a baseball:

“My intention was to paint maybe a thousand coats on it and then maybe cut it in half and see what it looked like. But then it got to the size where it looked kinda neat, and all my family said keep painting it.” Carmichael also invited friends and family over to paint the ball, and eventually strangers started showing up, and Mike would have them paint it, too. Now, over forty years later, there are more than twenty-six thousand layers of paint on that baseball. It weighs two and a half tons. 

and he describes a photo I'd like to know more about and a novel based on the photo . . .

Richard Powers’s novel Three Farmers on Their Way to a Dance

I gave John Green's new book five stars!

Fecal Paradox

Due to lack of snow, the Canadian geese never left the park by my house this winter, and so the fields and paths are a shit-stained mess, except-- ironically-- the dog park, which has the only clean grass in the vicinity.

Back to Jersey . . . Blech

We had a phenomenal family vacation in Westminster, Vermont:

1) the storm that beat us back and made us postpone snowboarding became a cloud with a silver lining, as the crowds at Bromley emptied out on New Year's Eve and New Year's Day and there was plenty of powder . . . if you stayed on the right side of the trail, where the wind piled the snow, it was almost like being out west-- my kids had a blast, after six years of snowboarding, it was the first time they ever got to experience decent conditions-- and they are getting brave, going into the woods, trying out jumps, and getting quite comfortable on the mountain;

2) I kicked ass at the board games-- we were in what was essentially a one-room cabin (with two bedrooms) so we had a lot of together time and played many rounds of Carcassonne-- and I won them all!-- and I also won at Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride, games which I do not usually win . . . and that's the real purpose of this blog, to note these great victories, so I can refer to them many years hence when my kids try to revise history;

2.5) I learned that my snowboarding boots are a size and a half too big and that's why my heels were lifting and I felt out of control on my board the past two seasons . . . when I told the Bromley boot tech that I bought my boots in Jersey at my local ski shop, he said, "Would you buy a surfboard in the mountains?"

3) I brought back lots of great beer . . . local brews like Switchback and Conehead and Rock Art and Goodwater, and some Sixpoint Global Warmer, which I can never seem to find in Jersey, even though it's from Brooklyn;

4) we ate several times at the Moon Dog Cafe in Chester, and my wife and I wondered why we don't have any places like this around here;

5) there was loads of snow, and my kids and I built a fantastically dangerous sled run through the woods-- I rode the orange plastic toboggan down it and got airborne-- and it was just nice to hike around the property, which was hilly and heavily wooded;

6) my wife enjoyed watching the fireworks from our bedroom window, a farm across the way shot them off and they looked quite spectacular through the trees and arcing over the snow fields;

7) the cabin had Netflix, and aside from Saving Private Ryan, all we watched was episode after episode of 30 Rock . . . I love that show, and my kids love it too;

and then we hit Massachusetts, and the snow was gone, and then it started to rain, and when we finally pulled onto our road, I looked down into Donaldson Park and there was a huge flock of geese, in the mud, shitting everywhere . . . and unless it snows soon, that's going to be the scenery for the next two months-- mud, goose shit, and damp, cloudy weather.