Halloween Should Only Occur on a Dark Cold Gloomy Rainy Tuesday

My dog hates Halloween (and so do I, especially when it falls on a Saturday).

Is This Relaxing?

When I get home from school, to relax, before I go play pickleball or lift weights or walk the dog and steal rocks from the park, I play a five-minute game of speed chess . . . while drinking coffee—but perhaps I should meditate or do tai chi or something more relaxing, to relax?

Better Not To Know?

While I was chatting at the dog park, a retired Rutgers food science teacher told me that he didn't swim in the ocean much this summer because the bacteria levels were so high-- but luckily (or unluckily?) I did not know this, and so I swam in the ocean twice a day for most of August-- it would have been a sad summer if I were worried about slurping down fecal matter every time I cooled off . . . and yesterday at the doctor's office, when I was preparing to get my second gel shot in my knee, the nurse took my blood pressure, and I asked her if it was lower than last week, and she said, "Yes, it IS lower this time," and I told her I had the day off from school (for Yom Kippur) and last week I had rushed over after being in a room full of teenagers all day . . . so now I have proof that this stupid job is bad for me (which makes me NOT want to show up).

Shinebox? Shonebox?

Even English teachers have grammatical hurdles they struggle to clear on the daily—while I don't usually bother civilians about this one (unless they are training my dog) I often correct teachers in the English Office who misuse "lie" and "lay" . . . because it's the fucking ENGLISH Office and we should get it right; I also don't mind when Denise corrects me when I incorrectly swap "fewer" and "less" . . . I've even come up with a mnemonic to help me get this one right (it's alliterative: fewer fingers, less liquid) and this morning I learned a new grammatical rule (that came up because of the Wordle answer) and so apparently "shone" and "shined" are both past tenses of "shine," but you use "shone" if there is NO direct object and you use "shined" if the verb does refer to a direct object . . . so here's an example:

"Back in the day, young Tommy Devito shined Billy Batts' shoes so well, they shone like mirrors, but then years later Billy busted his balls about it, and so Tommy beat him to death."

Dave Ends Up Plus Five (Cents)

Yesterday, in a mad rush to get to the 7 AM Faculty meeting, I forgot my lunch-- and the meeting was a boring explanation of why teachers will no longer be getting "highly effective" grades because administrators are revisiting the language in the Danielson evaluation model . . . super-fascinating, especially for someone who is retiring-- and then this morning, because it's Back-To-School-Night, and I wanted to go straight to the gym before going back to school, so I brought my gym bag, which was green, but forgot my school bag, which is also green-- so I had to get a loaner computer from the school library and I couldn't leave and reenter the building because I did not have my ID; my class was a humid jungle, absolutely disgusting, but we suffered through (the principal walked by, felt the wave of heat coming out of my classroom and said, "That's awful, you should put a in work order" but I don't know what that will do-- my little portable AC, which is too loud to teach over (or hear the children, they all whisper now when they speak) and it's miserable output can't combat the body heat generated by twenty-seven teenage bodies, so there is not any foreseeable solution . .  but I did make it to the gym-- where I learned that my phone is probably dead and the Google Messaging app, which hasn't been working well for two days, completely blacked out-- and I also went to Barton's Nursery, where I bought some Creeping Jenny and Ajuga-- and then I went home, walked the dog, snacked on Bradley Beach biscotti, but I was too tired to dig holes for the plants, and I briefly saw my wife-- who has no AC at all in her classroom-- and she had an awful migraine from the heat and humidity in her class and immediately went upstairs and passed out-- and then I showered, noticed I lost three pounds (water weight) and got back in the car and headed to school, but I stopped for a large can of Coke on the way and the dude rung it up: $2.30 and I happened to have cash and a few coins, $2.35, and I thought the register guy was going to give me a nickel back, but instead he just passed me back my dime (and when I got back into the car, I realized why he may have done that, as I had a large booger in my nose and perhaps he felt bad for me) and now I am about to begin my last Back-to-School-Night ever, and that makes me very happy-- you shouldn't go to work twice in the same day (and run through the same schedule in miniature-- it's tiresome).

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once . . .

Yesterday afternoon, the dog and I were turning the corner from the park, and I saw my son Ian in the driveway, standing in the bed of his pool technician company pickup truck, wearing his pool technician collared shirt, sweeping—and when I got closer, he explained that some pool chemicals had spilled in the bed of his truck and he was cleaning up the mess . . . he was sweeping the granules of calcium hypochlorite—the stuff you use to "shock" a pool—and putting it all back into a big plastic drum; I didn't like the smell of it, so I told him to put on his ventilator mask, and he did so, and I grabbed him a trowel and a flat shovel to make the cleanup easier—and I should mention it was drizzling while he was cleaning up the spill and it had been drizzling while he was driving back from the Pennsylvania/New Jersey border, where he was working earlier in the day-- covering for someone who maintained pools in that region . . . once he got the bulk of the granules into the plastic container, he twisted the lid onto it, and we did a bit more hosing things down and cleaning up and then when he went to pick up the drum, he noticed it was HOT—there was some kind of reaction going on inside; I'm an English teacher, not a chemistry teacher, so I ran inside and googled some things and learned that because the calcium hypochlorite had gotten a bit wet and also because it was mixed with other organic matter from the back of Ian's work truck—some leaves and cardboard—that this was a highly unstable chemical situation, liable to spontaneously combust or explode . . . so I told Ian to call the fire department because there was no way I was allowing him to take the top off this plastic drum, which was getting hotter and hotter; a fire truck arrived in a matter of minutes, and the firemen got out and we explained the situation; just after the fire truck pulled up, my son Alex drove part way down our street and then had to back up, and he got out of Ian's car (which he had borrowed) and told me some very good news-- he got an engineering job in Brooklyn! with a company that takes city buildings and makes them ultra-energy efficient and green . . . awesome, amazing, incredible news!-- but there was very little time to celebrate, because the fire department had called the Middlesex County HAZMAT unit and they were on the way—and some police cars were pulling up . . . so I hugged and congratulated Alex and then got back to the task at hand—what was going to happen with this very hot drum of toxic chemicals in front of our house?-- I thought the HAZMAT crew would just take it away, but no such luck . . . they wanted Ian to call his boss and see if the company had a way to deal with and dispose of the drum—and then my wife arrived home from work, and I had to convey the GREAT NEWS! ALEX GOT A JOB! and the other, not-so-great news: YOU ARE STANDING IN A TOXIC EVENT! and then there was much consternation and many phone calls—Ian's boss had to talk to the HAZMAT crew— and there was much use of equipment—chlorine meters and heat meters and fire hoses (to wash away the pool chemicals in the street) and there were probably a dozen various town firemen and county HAZMAT guys chatting and discussing, and then another youngish guy from Ian's pool company showed up—but slightly older and much more experienced than Ian—and the HAZMAT guys put on their HAZMAT suits and tried to open the lid of the drum, but some yellow gas emerged, so they stopped—because they didn't want to release the gas into the neighborhood, so instead, the more experienced pool guy, who was a stand-up dude with an 80s mustache, a self-prossed "safety freak" who never removed his ear buds during the entire ordeal and had a wonderful, slightly jaded outlook on the scene (and he also gave Ian a nice plastic scooper) and this self-professed CPO (Certified Pool Operator) took the drum and put it in the back of HIS company pickup truck, and his job was to transport it to some county building in North Brunswick, where the HAZMAT people would meet him and figure out how to dispose of this mess—but before he took off with the drum, he shook hands with every guy there and thanked them, and then Ian and I shook hands with people and thanked them—this was quite the social event: town fire department, county HAZMAT guys, a schoolteacher and a couple of pool technicians, and the EMT guys that checked out Ian's vitals—all trying to figure out how to deal with this toxic, unstable drum of pool chemicals . . . but it seems we avoided a major explosion or a Don DeLillo-style airborne toxic event, and in the end, Alex got a job, and Ian might still have a job . . . we shall see (and I was going to abstain from alcohol this week, after a bibulous summer, but that resolution fell by the wayside—for stress-relief and celebratory reasons).

Home . . . The Place Your Kids Fuck Up

We are back from the beach—and I am home for the first time in a month (aside from a short pit stop three weeks ago, when I drove from Kill Devil Hills to the Jersey Shore—I stopped at home for a moment to pick up the dog and the bikes) and the house is a mess: the houseplants have not been watered, the lawn needs mowing, the backyard is a jungle, the bathrooms have not been cleaned, the dishwasher has not been run, the cardboard was not put out, Alex went to the city but left his AC on, the rest of the windows are open, etcetera, etcetera . . . the moral being our boys do not know how to take care of the house, BUT most importantly, the mess is superficial . . . they didn't burn the place down, so the vacation was well worth the cleanup (and my body is a mess too—a month of eating and drinking has me weighing in at 196.9 . . . not the worst number to see on the scale, but still).

The Keys That Broke the Cat's Back

My wife went home from the beach yesterday to set up her classroom and harvest produce from her garden, and she didn't arrive back to our beach house until 9 PM—and she brought back various things we forgot to originally pack or needed: a fan, boogie boards, dog food, dog shampoo, some groceries, and her weighted (12-pound) vest, which I left in the car because I didn't feel like carrying it (it's heavy!) and then this morning, I moved her car out of our narrow driveway and snagged a spot down the street so that visitors could pull in, and when she was leaving to go for a walk, she asked, "Where's my weighted vest?" and I told her I left it in the car because it was heavy and I didn't feel like carrying it in last night, and then she said, "Where'd you park the car?" and I told her I parked it down the street, and then she produced a discontented grunt, and I asked why she was annoyed,, and she said she didn't want to carry her car keys around while she took her walk, and I said, "You're putting on a twelve-pound vest but you don't want to carry car keys? Seriously?" and then I brought up the whole straw-that-broke-the-camel's-back proverb, and she said something about the size of her pockets, and I was like, "Put the keys in the vest! You won't even notice!" and she laughed and went on her walk.

It's Hot, Widespread Panic HOT

This morning I took our dog Lola to the Asbury Park dog beach, and a good time was had by all—quadrupeds and hominids alike—but it was fucking HOT, and it was only 7:30 AM . . . it was heinously, hellishly hot and humid, unprecedentedly oppressive, stoically still . . . or that's how James Ellroy's sleazoid shakedown artist Freddy Otash would describe it—I just finished Widespread Panic, which is not exactly a beach read, but while we're on vacation, I'm going to try to power through Ellroy's second L.A. Quartet—A.K.A. the Freddy Otash Quartet . . . here's how Ellroy describes Otash in an L.A.P.D. confidential memorandum in The Enchanters: "Mr. Otash . . . a freelance extortionist, scandal-rag dirt digger, strongarm goon, perpetrator of divorce shakedowns, doper of racehorses, informant for Chief William H. Parker, procurer and dope conduit for President John F. Kennedy" and in Widespread Panic Otash blackmails, digs dirt, strongarms, and leverages such stars as James Dean, Rock Hudson, Natalie Wood, and Elizabeth Taylor—I could barely follow his drunken, dexedrine-fueled machinations—but that's how it is with Ellroy, you just groove on the vibe and pick up what you can . . . anyway, I'm sure I'll get some reading done today as I'm going to remain in the AC for a while; I biked down to the beach and took a swim after my journey to the dog beach, and the water is sublime, but the beach itself is baking; my wife was down there in a beach yoga class with a bunch of other fit, good-looking women, but watching them just made me feel sad and out-of-shape . . . there's no way I could survive an hour of gyrating like that on the hot sand, especially while staring at the lovely clear blue ocean-- I'd last ten minutes and then get up and jump in the water.

The End is Nigh, The Rest is Silence

I've been working like a dog every morning, for hours at a time, and I'm damned close to finishing my Hamlet podcast . . . and bringing this thing to an end is difficult and it's freaking me out.

Nobody Wants to Hear This Shit

My wife and I spent a few days at the beach—we stayed with my cousins—and while I couldn't play pickleball with my brother because of my knee, just about everything else was lovely: an east wind blowing off the ocean; cornhole and beers on the beach; a brand new cousin, little baby Emerson; geocaching success with Kim and my wife in Strathmere; Bananagrams with my mom; good food at La Finestra and Johnny Cutlets and Phil's Famous Pizzeria (who knew they had the best cheesesteak around? my cousin Kim, that's who) and on the homefront (my wife's homemade meatballs) and our children did a good job taking care of the house and the dog (they even took out the garbage) but nobody wants to hear about this kind of shit, how great it was at the beach, how nice it was on vacation, so I'll skip to the mishaps and controversy, which were rather minor:

1) after taking a nap, my wife slipped and fell on the concrete steps walking to the beach and scraped up her knees and hands (but actually escaped without much damage, considering)

2) the house my cousin Jeff rented, which is on the beach, is quite fantastic except for one complaint . . . and this complaint was only from the ladies, who took offense—but I thought it was kind of endearing . . . the owner of the house went nuts with his label maker and labelled EVERYTHING; like I said, the women found this overbearing, but I liked it, I never know where anything goes or how anything works . . . I've provided photographic evidence to do the labeling justice . . . and I love the the owner requests on the glasses shelf "If It Breaks, Please Replace" and that he labeled a large clam shell with the address number.

It's Ugly Out There!

While I know I should be appreciative of the fact that I am alive and healthy and the little things are the big things and good friends and family and meat on the table and all that bullshit, I'd instead like to take a moment and point out some of the ugliness I ran into today:

1) while driving my dog to the vet so they could collect a clean urine sample, I saw the world's dirtiest unicorn, hanging from the back of a trailer—it was so ugly I snapped a photo of it;

2) the photo of the world's dirtiest unicorn looks even filthier and grittier because the air in New Jersey today is quite ugly and smoggyy (due to Canadian wildfires)

3) while I was at the vet, waiting to pay for Lola's urine analysis, I heard some ugly, mournful wailing behind a door, which I surmised was a woman who just put her dog down . . . brutal to hear this, haunting—and made me remember this awful day;

4) and finally, an ugly ray of hope: I purchased something that looks ugly and has an ugly moniker, but despite the ugliness, achieves its purpose: the poetically named "Bike Trailer Hitch for Wagon Camping Rolling Cart Collapsible Wagon with 360° Swivel Joint & Shock Absorber, Quick-Release Clamps for Folding Wagons, Pet Carts & Garden Trailers" was an impulse Amazon purchase, a contraption I hoped would make hauling our beach wagon the five blocks to the beach quick and easy, and I hooked the thing up to my bike and our wagon today, and it works! 

Minor Epiphanies . . . Major Stupidity?

A few minor thoughts that sprang into my head of late . . . half-baked, mishappen, and of no significance whatsoever:

1) I was in the gym locker room, struggling through the hardest part of my workout—changing from my workout clothes into a bathing suit and organizing all the gear—the goggles and earplugs and suit and towel and sandals, taking off my socks (always a struggle) and figuring out where to put everything while I changed, and then I realized a simple solution to one of the things . . . instead of placing my open lock down amidst all the other junk, where I tend to lose it, I could just hang it on the hasp of another locker—one that I wasn't using, and then pull it off and snap it shut on my locker once I was done changing . . . it's a game changer! and it only took thirty-five years for me to figure out this method;

2) lately I've noticed a lot of fat people (of all ages) riding electric bikes in Donaldson Park . . . and while part of me is thinking "maybe you should pedal a bit," there's another part of me that realizes these things are a game changer for people who couldn't (or wouldn't) have the power and stamina to propel themselves on a traditional bike, so (pun intended) more power to them;

3) this morning at 4:39 AM, when the dog's coughing fit awoke me, I realized that I had never thought about exactly how the TV Guide worked . . . the guide knew, IN ADVANCE, all the shows that would be on for the coming week—for all the various localities in the United States . . . I always took this for granted, but apparently the country was divided up into 100 regions, and these regions had to constantly communicate with TV Guide . . . by phone, fax, and mail—to make those schedules accurate . . . it kind of miraculous, and I really never thought about it . . . and this minor epiphany is going to lead to some major thoughts about the modern world . . . I grew up in a time when a little magazine knew in advance all there was to watch—for the most part—but now, no one knows what's out there because there are billions of hours of content and no guidebook, no way to navigate it all, aside from opaque algorithms and people you trust . . . anyway, feel free to take any of these ideas and run with them, I'm going to play pickleball (I had a minor epiphany about my backhand grip at the kitchen the other day-- knuckles first, knuckles first).

It Was a Good Day

I took my last personal day today, and it's been a pretty good day, pretty pretty good . . . I walked the dog-- no barkin', no smog-- and then worked on my podcast, ate some leftover pizza for breakfast, went to Ace and played several hours of indoor pickleball-- where I'm trouble-- and then drove straight from pickleball to the pool and swam a few laps, came home and took a two-hour nap, roused myself and went out to Shanghai Dumpling for Ian's birthday-- he turns twenty-one tomorrow-- and now I'm settling in to watch the USA vs. Paraguay World Cup game, and I've got the brew and the chronic, and I didn't have to use my AK-- I don't even own an AK-- so I gotta say, it was a good day.

OG!OG!OG! Hustling From the Inbound Pass!

I went out and had a couple of beers for the first half of the Knicks game last night-- 3 dollar Miller Lights at our local bar!-- then I walked home, morose and pessimistic, at halftime and fell asleep-- the Knicks were down 29 points, so I didn't think they had a chance in hell, and I was exhausted from watching all this late-night basketball-- luckily, my son woke me up when he got home from New Brunswick, and I watched the final minutes with him, his girlfriend, and his buddy Gary-- and when the Knicks completed the largest comeback in NBA playoff history, sealing the game with OG Anunoby's tip-in off a long Brunson three-point attempt, we all screamed so loudly we woke up my wife (and scared the dog) but the real issue here is this: what are we going to call this monumental, life-changing basket? . . . The Perfect Putback? The Hand of OG? The Timely Tip? . . . or just "The Tip" . . . scratch that one, that doesn't sound right . . . but it needs to be called something, I'm sure the internet will figure it out.

Sunday, Day of Running Around?

No rest for the wicked today (or the good, as my wife got a lot of shit done as well) but I went to bed early last night; awoke early; finished Act 4, scene 6, of my Hamlet podcast-- one more scene to go and then Act IV is done, hooray-- then reffed a game in Metuchen; met my wife for lunch at the Metuchen Corner Deli; reffed another game in Metuchen-- which was delayed because of thunder so our third ref took off early to Monroe, where our last game was located, and we finished the second game with just the two of us (and it got a little out of hand; one team was particularly obnoxious) and then Carlo and I drove from Metuchen to Monroe, where our third game had already started, and we took our AR positions, finished that, split the cash, and then I stopped at my mom's place in Monroe and jumped in the pool, and then I drove home and walked the dog and then loaded up my wife's car with the rest of the disassembled bed and dumped that in the park dumpster, and then I finally headed home to shower and eat-- Mexican lasagna-- and I don't even want to get into all the stuff my wife got done today, but maybe we should become Puritans and actually rest on Sunday.

Full House . . .

We spent this wet Memorial Day Weekend moving my son Alex out of his New Brunswick apartment and cleaning the place up-- and I made the requisite drive today with a box spring and mattress roped to the top of the car, and now our basement, study, and storage area is full of his crap-- but it's nice to have him home for a while (although he's doing job interviews so maybe not for long) and the dog is very very happy to have the whole family under one roof.

Wait Up!

Made a semi-triumphant return to 6:30 AM basketball this morning-- basically the reverse of the Knicks last night-- nailed my first three-point attempt in months but then missed the next three . . . most importantly, my knee and hamstring held up, although I am moving slowly now-- I couldn't keep up with my wife and the dog when we took a walk in the park-- and I certainly couldn't keep up with the old man we saw running in the park, and not only was he running at a brisk clip, into the wind, but he was also holding an umbrella to block the sun-- you don't see that everyday.

Dave: The Master

I am the master at cooking blackened salmon in a cast-iron pan: I coat the filets with melted butter and then I sprinkle a mixture of blackening spices and brown sugar onto the buttered fish (and the sugar and spices stick because of the butter) and then I cook the salmon, skin side down, in a blackening pan until the temperature is about 100°F, and then I place the salmon, still in the blackening pan, under the broiler for about three minutes, until the brown sugar/blackening mixture caramelizes with the butter . . . it's so good even my son Ian eats it, and he doesn't really like fish-- and our dog also loves when I cook this meal, because she loves to eat the charred skin.

The Mailman Bringeth the Shame

I had a generally lovely day off today . . . until this afternoon: I went and got an X-ray on my knee (including the extra-special "sunrise" view) so that I can get approved for the gel shots, and-- miraculously-- I was in and out of the radiology place in fifteen minutes; so then I went to the gym; then I picked up my son Alex in New Brunswick and we got some lunch-- he's an absurd figure because he burned himself with kitchen oil on his left hand: his hand is all bandaged up with gauze, so it's gigantic, a lollipop and he can't really wear a jacket because he can't get his hand through the sleeve and he also can't put the hand down because his fingers hurt, so he just holds it up at an angle while he's talking to you, which is disconcerting until you get used to it-- but he was still able to eat sushi with his right hand (though he's lefty) but no chopsticks-- and then I took a long nap and woke up refreshed and did some work on my top secret audio project and then I took my dog for a walk on the snowfields at the park, and you can actually walk now because the snow has softened up-- so a wonderful day-- UNTIL I opened our PSE&G bill and was properly chastised: we spent $64 more on electricity than the average household in our area and we've spent $1,119 more on electricity this year than the most energy-efficient household in our area-- so obviously, all our computer use and space heaters and Ian's massive stereo and computer and the bathroom electric baseboard heater are eating up a lot of current-- but mainly I want to punch those energy-efficient fuckers for making me feel guilty.