My Miracle Is More Miraculous Than Your Miracle

At our first department meeting, Liz told a story about a "miracle" where she was stranded at an airport with her baby, and she was stressed out and lonely, and for some reason she was thinking about a certain wonderful person named Audrey and-- miraculously-- there Audrey was, sent by God to relieve her loneliness and to give her a much needed break from caring for her baby . . . but this sounds more like a coincidence than a miracle, unlike what happened in my class on Monday: I was making the kids think analogously about how having romantic relationship with a human is similar to having a relationship with a book . . . the students had written down questions they might ask themselves before they decided to "get busy with" a romantic interest and we were assessing the continuum of queries, which started light  (do they make me laugh?) and ranged to the profound (would I die for him?) and it was easy enough to wax metaphorically about liking a book that had some humor, or being monogamous with a book, or liking a book with a cute cover, relatable subject matter, an attractive font, and that new book smell . . . but when it came to speaking of art you would die for, I hit a brick wall-- my only example was if one was a complete fanatic for the author or piece of art, and then I made the natural leap to Mr. C., my friend who loves the TV show Battlestar Galactica, loves it so much that he has purchased many, many props from the show-- including a chair from the military conference room, several uniforms, and loads of other bric-a-brac that appeared on camera in the various starships and planets of the Galactica universe-- and moments after I explained this (and my classroom door was closed) and remember, I wasn't thinking about Mr. C., I was talking about him in front of many other witnesses-- so moments after this analogous example, Mr. C. himself walked through my classroom door, and if that wasn't coincidence enough, he was holding a funky microphone covered in blood . . . and he immediately explained that he had made a "new acquisition" and that he had just purchased the microphone that was used just before the "slaughter in the Quorum" in the episode "Blood on the Scales" and so I was able to point to this man and say, "Here is the man that might die for a work of art" and Mr. C. acknowledged that he would take a "heavy wound" for Battlestar Galactica and if Liz is going to call meeting up with Audrey in a strange airport a miracle, when she was only thinking about her, then I am calling this a bona fide super-miracle, because I was actually talking about Mr. C. just before he walked in, and he was holding just the prop necessary to complete my analogy.

Holy Triple Miracle Thursday!

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I am involved in miraculous incidents on a frequent basis. Whether or not I cause these miracles is something the hagiographers will certainly debate for many years after I shuffle off this mortal coil. But for now, I'm sure that we can all agree that I am blessed, sacred, and luminous.

Today was especially magical. I bore witness to three miracles in a matter of three hours. And the miracles ascended in magnitude and beatific brightness.

Miracle #1

A lovely young lady was presenting a lovely Rupi Kaur poem in Creative Writing class for our daily "Show and Tell."

I asked her how she had stumbled upon this and she told a quick story about how her friend recommended it to her, while they were writing a song for Biology class.

"A song for Biology class?" I said. "Like about the Golgi apparatus or something?"

"Yes," she said.

"Yes, you were writing a song about the Golgi apparatus?"

"Yes, about the Golgi apparatus."

Weird. A minor miracle. I could have said flagella. But I was just getting started.

Miracle #2

Moments later, after the class commended me on my miraculous clairvoyance, I lost my shit. I was looking down at my computer monitor, and I noticed something. I started yelling.  I was joyous and shocked and angry all at once.

One of my students said it looked like I had seen a ghost. In essence, I had. The ghost of a long-dead lock.

A red and silver lock that had inexplicably disappeared months ago. A lock that was so lost I had given up looking for it. A lock that eluded a search party of twenty philosophy students. A lock that denied the laws of existence and perception.

The lock was in front of my face the entire time! Like the purloined letter. Just sitting there, under my computer monitor, looking like something vaguely electronic. It was too obvious too notice.

I ranted and raved to my class about mental blind spots and schema and schotoma and how hard it is to find the mustard in the fridge, even though it's right in front of your face. And most of these were new students, who did not have me when I lost the lock (there were a few kids remaining from that semester class-- and they really understood the context of my insanity . . . the rest of the kids must have thought I was delirious).

Once I had fully processed the miraculous recovery of the lock-- and my cognition-- then I went forth and spread the good word throughout the school. I told teachers and I told students. The event was blessed.

But I spaketh to soon.

Miracle #3

Two periods after I found the lock, a girl from the previous semester ran up to me in the hall. A girl who had witnessed the loss of the lock, and took part in the search for the lock.

"Did you see the lock!"

"Yes!" I said, but just as I was about to explain the miracle, Tyra confounded it.

"I found it down the hall by the stairs. I found it!"

"YOU put it on my computer?"

"Yup."

"Tyra! Why didn't you leave a note? I almost lost my mind. I thought I had gone crazy-- that the lock was sitting there in front of my face for two months. My class thinks I'm insane! I thought I was insane! When you find a lost lock, you leave a note!"

Tyra apologized for neglecting to leave a note (she didn't have time) and once I recovered my wits, I thanked her profusely for finding the lock.

This is where she found it:

At the bottom of the stairs, a good fifteen yards from my classroom door. What kind of crazy miraculous adventures did that lock have for the past two months? More importantly: why have I been chosen to witness and testify to so many myriad miracles?

This event has also provided tomorrow's Creative Writing lesson: describe the epic journey of this lock. Alexander Pope would dig the pun. As would the deepwater monster of Scotland.

Double Technological Miracle Sunday!

Freedom!

Yesterday, with the help of my wife-- who claims she is an expert in Velcro-- we installed a magnetic screen door behind our sliding glass porch door, and this is the best 15 dollars I've ever spent; it's an absolute miracle, and while it took a little while to train our dog Lola to walk through it-- at first she thought it was weird voodoo and didn't want anything to do with it, but the kids got down on all fours and showed her the ropes, and now she's got it down now and can enter and leave as she pleases . . . and then-- miracle number two-- I wanted to watch the US Open Finals but we don't have cable and it was on ESPN, but I was able to set up a free trial of Hulu Live TV-- which I will cancel today-- and I was able to watch the match with having to constantly get up and down to let our fickle dog in and out of the house . . . double technological miracle Sunday!

Miracle at the Wawa

Yet another sentence set at the Wawa-- and NOT at the Starbucks, I might add . . . there are ZERO sentences on this blog set at Starbucks because I've never been inside a Starbucks . . . I refuse to spend that much money for coffee and-- if I followed Cunningham's orders-- this Miracle at the Wawa might not have happened at all because she wanted me to pick her up some kind of crazy sugary barely caffeinated drink at Starbucks (she's pregnant and not drinking coffee) but I told her I wasn't going to Starbucks and I would pick her up anything she wanted as long as it was at the Wawa and we had an interesting debate/discussion  in front of her AP Lang. class and then I drove to the Wawa to get a sandwich and to pick up a very complicated coffee order for Stacey; I ordered my sandwich on the little touchscreen and then I built Stacey's drink, which consisted of half a 20 oz. cup of some frothy extreme caffeine Mocha Wake Up out of a big multi-multi-nozzled machine, then 1/3 cup of dark roast from the regular coffee urn, and then a dollop of Irish Creme coffee creamer . . . and then I got in line and while I was standing there, holding her giant complex coffee drink, the little cardboard band that keeps you from burning your hand broke and her 20 oz. coffee slid through the broken band and fell and-- without even thinking-- I dropped my hand two feet down, lightning fast, fucking lightning fast and I caught the cup-- and did not spill a drop-- I caught the cup with exactly the right amount of force so that it fell no farther but I didn't crush it-- it was a fucking miracle-- and-- Testify!-- the guy behind me in line saw the whole thing and he was like, "That was amazing" and I said, "Yeah, that would have been a big mess" and I was very glad that someone Witnessed this Miracle and I am certainly a Blessed Figure on this Earth.

Double Technological Miracle Sunday!

Freedom!

Yesterday, with the help of my wife-- who claims she is an expert in Velcro-- we installed a magnetic screen door behind our sliding glass porch door, and this is the best 15 dollars I've ever spent; it's an absolute miracle, and while it took a little while to train our dog Lola to walk through it-- at first she thought it was weird voodoo and didn't want anything to do with it, but the kids got down on all fours and showed her the ropes, and now she's got it down now and can enter and leave as she pleases . . . and then-- miracle number two-- I wanted to watch the US Open Finals but we don't have cable and it was on ESPN, but I was able to set up a free trial of Hulu Live TV-- which I will cancel today-- and I was able to watch the match with having to constantly get up and down to let our fickle dog in and out of the house . . . double technological miracle Sunday!

Reunited (or Anthropomorphizing a Coffee Mug)

Once again, I am at the heart of another miracle . . . several weeks ago I misplaced my favorite ceramic coffee mug (green, 20 ounces, embossed with coffee beans) and after angrily searching the school for it, I determined that it was either lost or stolen . . . but then, miracle of miracle, my friend and colleague Liz returned it to me Tuesday morning-- she showed me the mug and she asked "Is this yours? We all think it must be yours," and the reason she thought it was mine was because it had been sitting by the staff sign-in sheet for several weeks with a post-it on it that sad "Lost Cup, Please help me find my way back home" and not only that, but an e-mail was sent out with a picture of the cup, explaining that it was left in the Counseling Department, and the picture was printed and put on the announcement board in the main office-- so every day I was signing a sheet inches from my cup and staring at a photo of it . . . but because I don't really see things (or look very carefully at my e-mail) I never noticed my cup . . . and Liz and the other teachers decided that the only person in the school that would NOT notice their cup when it was on such prominent display was me, and so they brought the cup directly to me, correctly assuming it was mine (and while I was mildly disturbed by the inadequacy of my observational skills, there was a silver lining-- this was an excellent opportunity for me to allude to the classic Edgar Allan Poe story "The Purloined Letter" and thus, I am categorizing this happening as a genuinely wonderful and miraculous event, one step below Moses parting the Red Sea, but several steps above seeing an image of Jesus on a tortilla).

What Balls May Come?

Some miracles bite you in the ass-- such as Moses parting the Red Sea or the Bills starting the season at 4 and 2 -- but others require a moment of reflection in order to appreciate their glory . . . and the  miracle I am about to describe falls into the latter category (although some people, even upon reflection, did not appreciate the miraculous nature of the following events, leading them-- for my benefit-- to post a definition of the word "miracle" on the office cork-board); Sunday, at my weekly pick-up soccer game, my friend Mario returned a soccer ball that I had left behind several weeks ago-- a ball that I figured was as good as gone (I'm not very vigilant about keeping tabs on soccer balls, as I have so many floating around in my car) and then on Wednesday of the very same week-- at my weekly pick-up basketball game-- my friend Gene (who I hadn't seen since the summer) said, "Hey, I have the basketball you forgot in trunk of my car, the one you left in the summer" and I was pleased and surprised, pleased because I refused to buy a new basketball-- which makes no sense, since I didn't think I'd ever see the one I lost again . . . it was more as a punishment for being so stupid that I felt I should go without a ball-- and surprised that he'd kept the ball that long, and that he remembered to put it in his trunk for the game, just in case he saw me . . . and then it took me a day to realize the miraculous magnitude of the conjunction of these two events: that two balls-- both of which I had given up for lost-- were returned to me in the span of four days . . . certainly a minor miracle if there ever was one-- and now I am excited to see what other balls will be returned to me in the near future . . . because things like this usually happen in threes (although with balls, it might be more appropriate if they happened in twos).

A Blogging Miracle!

Yesterday, my editor over at Gheorghe: The Blog commanded me to write something -- and I suppose he had a right to do this, since my school was closed for the ninth day in a row and I was home all alone . . . and so I prepared by taking a two hour nap and then I sat down and wrote a post about The Three Types of People You Meet During Hurricane Sandy . . . and then I checked in here at Sentence of Dave and I found this comment from the prodigious commenting machine known as Zman . . . a bona fide blogging miracle! . . . while I was categorizing all humans into three classifications, Zman had done me one better and divided humanity into a mere TWO groups . . . and he did it on my home turf -- and beat me to the punch by several hours -- while I was completely unaware, obliviously posting my thesis over at Gheorghe: The Blog . . . and if this doesn't qualify as a genuine blogging miracle, then I will live on a pillar for the rest of my life . . . like this guy.

A Drone Miracle

My son Alex was determined to fix his broken quadcopter drone, so he ordered a tiny two dollar motor from China, waited a month for it to arrive, then unscrewed a million tiny screws to get the drone body apart, replaced the broken motor-- with some help from his father-- and finally, had a complete meltdown when he attempted to get it airborne and found out that in order for it to fly, two of the drone propellers have to spin clockwise and two of them have to spin counterclockwise-- but, because of the way he hooked up the wires, he had three motors spinning clockwise . . . which pushed one side of the drone back into the ground, but-- I'll give him credit-- he opened the thing up again and switched the wires (which I thought might work) and it reversed the direction of the propeller and the drone lifted off for a moment, and then the battery died and then the wire connected to the battery ripped out and we tried to unsuccessfully fix that and then I told him to go outside and play with a ball because I couldn't take anymore . . . but then mom found the spare battery ( a minor miracle) and Alex charged it and hooked it up and -- miraculously-- it worked . . . and he got two days of enjoyment out of it before he crashed it and broke another motor, and now he has decided to give up on drones (a miracle in itself).

Holy Mother of Miracles!

Fanatics of Dave know that miracles abundantly manifest themselves when I am present, but this newest miracle is different, it is in fact more miraculous than all other previous miracles combined-- even more miraculous than the miracle of the balls; last Sunday (which many religions consider the holiest of days) I was driving a bunch of kids and parents to a travel soccer game (and I am certain that this blessed event was a reward for my good deed of carpooling) and when we got home, my friend's canvas chair got stuck in my minivan's back hatch, between the latch and the locking mechanism, and-- after much violent yanking and pulling-- the the chair finally came out, but the yanking and pulling must have broken something, as the locking mechanism now wouldn't catch, and so the hatch couldn't be closed; I drove home with the hatch open, and then tried the laying of screwdrivers and pliers to the crippled area, but to no avail, and while I was finally able to pry the little piece inside the mechanism into place so it would catch, but you still couldn't lock an dunlock the mechanism: if you opened the hatch, then you had to go through the whole process with the screwdriver again to get it to catch, which is no way to live your life, so I closed the latch and decided I would let it recuperate for a few days-- mainly because I didn't want to deal with it or bring it to one of those places where you pay some money and they fix your car, but after several days of dragging soccer equipment over the seats and out the sliding doors, I prayed to all of the higher powers in existence and then I lay my hand upon the handle and pushed the button, and-- miraculously!-- the hatch opened with ease and grace, and then I closed the hatch and it locked with ease and grace-- Jesus healed the cripples and the lepers-- but we all know that religious belief can kickstart your immune system-- but I healed an inanimate object, I healed a car!-- my latch was dead and entombed in darkness for three days, and then rose again, full of strength and latchiness, absolving me of having to pay a mechanic money to fix the problem . . . if this isn't a miracle, what is?

These Just Might Be The Best Sentences of 2015

If you didn't keep up with Sentence of Dave this year, then shame on you, but you can redeem yourself before the New Year by reading these fifteen sentences that the panel has chosen as Dave's Best of 2015:


1) The Miracle of the Latch

2) The Miracle of the Mug

3) The Miracle on Winter Solstice

4) Best List of Things to Say to Your Kids

5) Best "How To" Sentence

6) Poem of the Year

7) Best Sentence About Cake

8) Of Laziness and Raccoons

9) Weirdest Hobby

10) Euphemism of the Year

11) The Most Idiotic Epic of the Year

12) The Most Ironic Moment of the Year

13) Cutest Sentence of the Year

14) Best Sentence About Frank Sinatra and Mean Girls

15) Symbolic Gesture of the Year.

Irony vs. Coincidence: The Definitive (and Miraculous) Explanation

On Christmas Eve, my wife was preparing some spicy nuts for the big party when the doorbell rang; it was our neighbor Ira with a present for the kids and a treat for us-- some sweet and spicy walnuts!-- and my wife claimed this was "ironic," the fact that Ira brought over some spiced nuts while she was in the midst of prepping her own spiced nuts, but, after some discussion, we concluded that this was actually a coincidence-- an interesting juxtaposition of similar events-- and that irony requires a surprising reversal of expectations . . . and while sorting out irony and coincidence has always been a bit tricky, I was blessed today with a miracle beyond miracles-- in a very short span of time, the universe provided me with perfect examples of BOTH irony and coincidence . . . and I am assuming the universe did this so that I could share these examples with you:

1) I will begin with the coincidence . . . the kids slept at my parents' place last night and I went to pick them up this morning-- my parents now live in an over-55 community in Monroe, and so before we left, we took a swim in the indoor pool, which was wonderful: the pool was warm and the glass-encased atrium that houses the pool was warmer . . . then we got into the van to drive back to Highland Park and I started playing Big Fish Theory and we were talking hip-hop and I realized that they had never heard the greatest hip-hop album of all time: Paul's Boutique . . . so I pulled over and put it on and drove for a bit, enjoying the Dust Brothers magical samples and the Beastie Boys clever rhymes-- I hadn't listened to the album in years and it sounded better than ever-- and when I asked Alex how he liked it, I received no answer, so I turned to look at him and he was sleeping-- and then I looked over to the passenger seat and Ian was passed out as well, they must have been tired out from all the Christmas fun, the pool, and the pull-ups (Catherine got us a pull-up bar for Christmas-- the gift that keeps giving . . . you hernias) and then a bit later in the day, I got a call from my podiatrist-- my orthotic inserts were ready-- but I had to come to the office and see Doctor Kates briefly, to make sure they fit, so I got in the van-- my sneakers untied because I knew I would have to remove them soon-- and headed to Milltown and I was in a rush so I didn't bother to hook my phone up, instead I did something I rarely do-- I listened to the radio-- and the story on NPR was crap so I turned to the Princeton station, 103.3, and -- miracle beyond miracles-- I heard:

Now here we go dropping science, dropping it all over
Like bumping around the town like when you're driving a Range Rover

which are the opening lyrics to "Sounds of Science," one of the best tracks on Paul's Boutique . . . and this is not something that you don't hear on the radio very often (in fact, I've never heard this track on the radio) and so I celebrated this wonderful coincidence-- an odd juxtaposition of similar events-- with much glee and gaiety . . . I hadn't heard "Sounds of Science" in years and then I heard it twice in one day;

2) and now for the irony . . . the podiatrist's office is a sharp turn off Main Street in Milltown and the claustrophobic little parking lot was full, so I had to jam the minivan along the fence; I got out of the car, sneakers untied because I knew I would have to remove them immediately to try out the orthotics, opened the door to enter the waiting room, and walked into an old man; I couldn't get in, not only was there was an old guy blocking the door, there was also an older guy with a walker in the tiny vestibule, making his way out, so I waited patiently out in the cold until this crew egressed and then made my way in . . . and the waiting room was just packed, full of old people (and one attractive blonde woman) and I had to stand next to the counter, with my back to the office door-- the door they open to call people in to see the doctor-- and every time they opened the door it hit me in the back-- and I would trip on my untied laces (but it was too tight for me to bend over and tie them) and the main irony here is that it was standing room only in the podiatrist's office . . . my foot hurt and I was coming to get my new inserts and but I didn't wear my old inserts because I was going to get new inserts and I never imagined I'd be standing for a long period of time in the podiatrist's office . . . and even when a seat opened up, I couldn't take it-- despite the pain in my left heel-- because the average age in the waiting room was 70+ and they just kept coming in-- at one point there were four more people than there were chairs-- and these old people were complaining constantly and loudly, they were complaining about the long wait and they were complaining about the small parking lot and they were especially angry about lack of spaces in the parking lot and the gray minivan parked along the fence-- my gray minivan-- that was making it just impossible to pull out . . . but I kept my mouth shut because it was possible to get out, it was just a little tight, and there were actually faint lines painted on the blacktop, the barest suggestion of a parking spot, but enough that I knew this was a legitimate place to park (and what choice did I have?) and there was no way I was going to admit that it was my van because this was a tough crowd (and many of the geezers were sporting weapons, canes and such) but while I stood there in the waiting room-- for thirty-five minutes, balancing on my good foot-- I realized why fate had presented me with a miraculous Paul's Boutique coincidence and this bitter and painful podiatry irony: so that I could offer the definitive explanation of these two terms . . . a Boxing Day miracle!

Dave Summons a Hackerlike Miracle

My wife just told me fantastic news: the school computer system erased all the teacher conferences she scheduled for our son Ian and now the time slots are all filled up by other people . . . this rectifies an impending marital conflict, as the Highland Park boys varsity team is playing in the State semi-finals on Monday night-- which is when the conferences were scheduled-- and I told my wife that i was not going t attend the conferences because of this conflict and she told me that I was "a slacker parent" and if I stuck to my guns and skipped out then I was certainly going to be in the doghouse-- but now there aren't any conferences to attend . . . I'd love to say I hacked into the school computer system and erased the conferences myself but I couldn't code my way out of a paper bag, so we'll just have to call this a November miracle.

Winter Solstice Miracle!

Let's try to remember that the lesson of this post is that Dave is a Super-Genius (not an idiot) and that The Subconscious of Dave is constantly working to make brilliant connections, however they might manifest themselves; so it was very dark yesterday morning, as we are very close to the Winter Solstice, the moment when the sun is at its most southern declination, resulting in the day with the least amount of sunlight (technically, I think it happened last night, but who cares-- dark is dark, and Monday morning was very dark) and so I was barely able to crawl out of bed when my alarm went off at 5:30 AM . . . and I turned on the light on in the bathroom, cracked the door, and got dressed in that faint sliver of light (so as not to wake my wife) and drove to school in the dark, and then began teaching first period in the dark because first period starts at 7:26; I was teaching Season 2 of Serial-- which is investigating the Bowe Bergdahl desertion and captivity case-- and we were reviewing how a good story promises you certain things, and then hopefully makes good on those promises . . . and one of the main things this season of Serial promises us is a glimpse into Bergdahl's brain, the reason why he ran away from his post into Taliban territory . . . but before I brought up Serial, I talked about the Pixar film Inside Out, which many of the students had seen-- and asked what this film promised . . . which is something very similar to Serial Season 2 . . . Inside Out is very, very ambitious-- as it promises to explain to us how the brain works and why we do certain things, from the inside out (and the film succeeds-- it made me cry . . . poor Bing Bong) and it wasn't until fourth period that I realized what a brilliant connection this was, because not only do Serial Season 2 and Inside Out promise the same thing, they promise it about the exact same kind of decision, as the little girl -- Riley Andersen-- also runs away from where she is supposed to be, and the film illustrates the development and emotional underpinnings of the exact same kind of radical, angry idea, AND HERE'S THE MIRACLE . . . when I thought of this, during first period, I was wearing my gray golf shirt INSIDE OUT . . . it was so dark when I got dressed, and I was so logy, that I put it on with the tag sticking out on the back collar, the buttons on the inside, another tag sticking off the side seam, and I didn't notice, and while no one said anything to me until the period was over-- they said they were too embarrassed to tell me during class, someone must have muttered the words "inside out," as in "our teacher is an idiot, he's wearing his shirt inside out" and that must have led to the wild firing of neurons that me think of the movie and then the astoundingly brilliant Subconscious of Dave went to work, and now I've got this awesome hook to get kids into the new season (and I wore the shirt inside-out for two periods of teaching . . . best Winter Solstice ever!)

Diwali Miracle

My wife had off yesterday for Diwali-- her district has a high percentage of Indian students and "the festival of lights" is a very popular Hindu and Jain holiday-- and she originally planned to use her free time to take a trip to DSW and buy yet another pair of shoes, but then thought better of it (she has over a hundred pairs of shoes) and she did some fall cleaning instead, and while she was rummaging through a drawer full of art supplies in Ian's room, she found Ian's pet lizard-- alive and well!-- the lizard that has been missing since October 1st when Ian and Alex negligently left him on a toy truck in Alex's room and-- surprise?-- when they returned he was gone . . . so we assumed that he disappeared into the storage space between the walls or was eaten by the dog, but he somehow made it across the hall back to Ian's room and slipped into a dresser drawer-- Umberto Eco calls these moments in movies and books when you have to fill in the time between scenes or chapters "transitional walks" . . . no one knows exactly what happened to Hamlet on that pirate ship, you just have to imagine it, and we'll never now what Bossk did for those 19 days out in "the wild" of our house, but I like to imagine that he had many nocturnal adventures, journeying to the sink to lick water droplets from the cool porcelain, evading the dog (who sleeps in Ian's room and loves to eat small critters) and hunting bugs under Ian's bed . . . anyway, if Catherine didn't have off for Diwali, the lizard would have never been found, so I'm thinking of converting to Hinduism . . . and making Ian do so as well-- he was really sad about the purported death of his lizard, I caught him crying in the shower a week after Bossk had gone missing, and so yesterday Catherine took him out of school an hour early so he could see the miracle of the lizard before going to the middle school soccer game (and so she could bask in her heroic mother-of-the year Diwali light) and also, I should point out that we've got a new mystery to solve, a mouse was eating food on the shelves in the study so Catherine put a glue trap out last night on the table and now the glue trap is gone, which means a mouse is dragging it around somewhere (or the dog ate it) and so while we've got the lizard back in his tank, there's another creature loose in our house, having wacky adventures-- I'll keep you posted.

Karen Thompson Walker Uses The Word "Miracle" In a Different Manner Than I Use The Word "Miracle"

Karen Thompson Walker's new novel The Age of Miracles portrays an unusually delicate and precise apocalypse, and her narrator is equally delicate and precise in her explanation of this odd and slow way for all things familiar to end; to explain: the earth's rotation begins to decay, and the days and nights gradually grow longer-- wreaking havoc with both the middle school bell schedule and the earth's magnetic field . . . hierarchies change at the bus stop and people revise their circadian rhythms . . . or some people do (they keep clock time) while a minority refuse and try to adjust to the much longer days and nights-- and I read this book to take a break from George R.R. Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire," a series which spans thousands and thousands of pages and claims that "winter is coming"-- but if you want winter to actually come-- and summer too-- all in the same day, then read this book: ten beached whales out of ten.

Miracle on 51st Street

After running on the beach yesterday, I took an outdoor shower and then-- standing in the driveway, wearing only a towel-- I decided to throw my wet spandex and shorts onto our porch (rather than carry them through the house, where they would drip seawater everywhere) but my shoulder has been hurting and I can't throw wet clothing overhand, so I pitched them underhand and-- miracle of miracles-- they BOTH landed on the railing (and I've got a photo to prove it . . . although I guess you could photoshop something like this if you were that sort of person).

Yet Another Miracle

In preparation for summer, Catherine depilated my back and shoulder hair with Veet hair removal cream and then I used my beard trimmer to tame my chest and leg hair, and now-- miracle of all miracles-- I can dry myself off with just one towel (instead of the usual three towel routine that I used to practice).

A (Photographic) Xmas Miracle

Christmas morning, I remembered that months ago I had bought one of those mini-phone-tripods and never opened the box . . . so I gave myself a Christmas present that was entirely symbolic of the holiday-- I opened some random shit I ordered online in the summer and literally forgot about because we live in the land of plenty (I bought the tripod because I had an idea for a series of TikTok videos but I never really got started on them because . . . well, that's an insane thing to get started on) and when I opened the mini-tripod box, I found that not only did I get the mini-tripod, but I also got a mini-remote . . . so that we didn't have to do the phone-timer photo thing-- which is a random nightmare and rarely produces a good picture-- but instead I could trigger the phone-camera by Bluetooth-- a fucking Xmas miracle if there ever was one-- and so I was able to take these pictures and also be in the picture-- and I'm going to declare that these photos are probably my greatest photographic accomplishments in a lifetime of not really accomplishing very much photographically.

My Dog Is Like A Dog But I Am Like A Cat

Let me preface this by saying that my dog Sirius is a good dog, but sometimes good dogs do bad things . . . especially if there is a bunny involved . . . I was biking in the park with Sirius at my side, using a product called the Walky Dog Hands Free Bicycle Leash, which is an innocuous enough sounding name for what is essentially a metal stick with a bungee cord running through it that clips under your bike seat and juts out perpendicular to your frame, but a better name for the Walky Dog Hands Free Bicycle Leash would be The Sling-Shot Canine Powered Kiss Your Ass And Your Family Good-bye Because You’re Never Going to See Either of Them Again Unless There Is An Afterlife Rocket Bike Attachment, and as we were biking along using this inaptly named product, a bunny rabbit scampered across the bike path and Sirius-- who is a good dog, but still, when all is said and done, a dog-- jetted sideways after the rabbit, putting him on the right side of two garbage pails and my bike and me on the left side of the two garbage pails . . . and so the stretched bungee cord and the metal rod hit the cans, abruptly stopping the bike and propelling my dog's head right out of his collar; the two garbage pails flipped over and I shot over the handlebars of my new mountain bike (and as this happened, I thought to myself: why aren't I wearing that nice new helmet that I just bought?) and I flew through the air and landed on all fours, just like a cat-- completely uninjured, with eight lives to spare . . . a minor miracle if there ever was one-- but despite the miracle, I still had the awkward job of brushing myself off, righting the garbage cans, putting all the bottles and cans back into the garbage cans, getting my dog's collar back around his neck, getting my dog reattached to the Walky Dog Hands-Free Bicycle Leash, and all the while three women at a picnic table watched me do this, and I felt like Kitty Genovese because they never offered to help me-- nor did they applaud my agility or passionately swoon at my feet in celebration of my feline landing-- instead they simply chuckled at me once I got rolling again (which I needed to do quickly, because my six-year-old son was ahead of me and never saw the crash, so he just kept on biking).