No school for me today because of Eid al-fitr-- my wife had no school as well but she's on a lady's long weekend in Savannah, so I decided to optimize all my terrible shitty chores into one day: I did some lesson planning (I'm underwater) and our taxes (we owe a shitload) and went to Costco (costly trip, but on the bright side, it wasn't particularly crowded) and cleaned up the house, then I took a break and went to the gym and shot baskets and lifted weights and played some pickleball-- but now I'm in the home stretch, cleaning the bathrooms and then, finally, I need to shave, shower and do the netipot-- allergy season has arrived . . . and THEN I'm going to lie on the couch and read my Longmire mystery.
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Showing posts sorted by date for query wife. Sort by relevance Show all posts
Pickleball Initiates the Severance Procedure?
During these troubled times, certain subjects are hard to bring up in social settings because of the controversy and awkwardness these topics engender-- for instance, I play a lot of pickleball with my friends Ann and Craig but we are NOT allowed to bring up pickleball in mixed company because everyone else gets annoyed, so Ann refers to it as "the game that shall not be named" and we do our best to keep our pickleball gossip on the DL . . . it's also hard to discuss current TV shows because of the general fragmentation of media-- no one is watching the same show at the same time and so you don't want to spoil anything, or talk about a show that no one has seen-- I truly miss Fridays at work the day after a new Seinfeld aired on Thursday night . . . there was something for everyone to discuss-- anyway, my wife is away in Savannah and so I hitched a ride to the brewery with Ann and Craig yesterday, so during the car ride, we were able to talk about pickleball and a TV show without being chastised-- we have all been watching Severance (but we had to curtail the conversation once we got to Flounder because we were meeting people) and then, at the end of the ride, Ann articulated her theory that synthesizes pickleball and Severance . . . she said that playing pickleball with all these various groups of people we've met, is like going to work in Severance . . . it's kind of wonderful, you just show up, you have these fleeting relationships with these people, but you really don't care that much about them because they're not part of you're "outie" life-- or that's not exactly true, your pickleball self cares about them quite a bit during the session and you see them quite often, yet you know nothing about their childhoods or outside lives and you don't think about them during your outie life and they don't think about you, you only know if they have a good backhand or fast hands at the net-- there's really no time or space to chat, it's not like golf-- it's a fast-paced game with lots of switching partners-- and then once the session is over, you barely remember what happened-- that's the nature of the game . . . it's not soccer or basketball where you might remember two critical plays, instead you hit the ball a zillion times, and you often felt like a hero and you also often felt like an idiot, so it all evens out and you remember nothing except it was a time-- but there are glitches in the severance, of course, because after Ann revealed her theory during the car ride, we saw a pickleball guy at the brewery!-- and we had a brief but awkward conversation about when and where we would next be playing pickleball and then he wandered away and we did not pursue further interaction, for fear of reprisal from Lumon.
Spring: Time to Shed Some Clothes (and Some Body Fat)
As usual, with the end of winter comes the annual "it's time to shed a few pounds and get in shape" portion of the year-- my wife and I are going to stop eating dessert after dinner while watching TV . . . which was perfectly acceptable behavior this winter because it was dark and cold and bleak-- but now the dark-times are over and it's time to shed the fat-- and my wife listened to some lady on a podcast (who might be an orthopedist? I would ask her, but she's in Savannah on a ladies' weekend) and this lady doctor on the podcast said it's all about various types of movement and that during the course of each week you should:
1) do four 45-minute walks-- you don't need to do crazy amounts of cardio;
2) lift weights twice a week but lift heavier than you might normally lift . . . 3-5 sets of weight you can put up 4-6 times;
3) twice a week, do four repetitions where you run "as fast as you can" for 30 seconds, then let your heart return to normal and do it again-- so four sets of these each session for a total of eight sprints a week;
and I like this routine as I can work this stuff in around pickleball, basketball, and soccer, but I did the fast running on Wednesday, at the park, and while it was fun and not all that hard while I was doing it, it was a longer sprint than I've run in a while-- full court basketball requires sprints but they are three or four second sprints-- same with indoor soccer-- and on Thursday and Friday my right quad was occasionally cramping up, maybe every eleventh step-- which made for some humorour walking around-- but my leg recovered and I felt great at pickleball this morning . . . I did the heavy lifting Thursday and my shoulder is a bit sore, but again, I survived at pickleball today, although my shoulder started to hurt when I was hitting into the wind, there was a stiff breeze today, and you had to whale the ball . . . so we will see how this new routine goes-- my guess is I will either get injured soon and be a total disaster or I won't get injured and get super-jacked and super-fit and everyone will be so impressed by my physique that they will put a statue of me next to Rocky at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
Sentence of Guy
We returned from Naples, Florida late last night on Frontier Air-- which is most definitely a seat-of-your-pants budget-type airline . . . but though we were cramped, Frontier got my family there and back on time-- unlike my brother and his wife who are still stranded in Florida-- they were supposed to leave Sunday but their flight was canceled due to wind and all the Frontier flights were full on Monday night and they don't really have reciprocity with other airlines or give vouchers, so my brother and his wife are flying out on Tuesday night-- hopefully because Frontier doesn't fly on Wednesdays to Fort Meyers-- but though the flights were sketchy, my father's Celebration of Life service was a great success: my wife did an incredible job collecting pictures of my dad and made a comprehensive slideshow of his life, which I set to Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, two of my father's favorite musicians and then several people spoke about my dad-- I led off and spoke about my dad's impressive career in corrections and what a privilege it was to work with him . . . I wrote up my dad's expert witness reports, and then I talked about how my dad, despite his incredible career as a progressive prison director and designer, always expressed how proud he was of me, despite the fact that I haven't accomplished anything near what he accomplished in his life, and then I threw in a few literary allusions because I'm a bombastic jackass, and so I mentioned Turgenev and The Great Santini and Biff from Death of a Salesman and touched upon that classic trope of the son trying to impress his father, usually to no avail, but that I never had to worry about that because my dad always sincerely expressed pride in whatever I accomplished, teaching, coaching, being a dad, playing sports, whatever-- and that gave me so much joy and confidence;
then my brother Marc talked about how my father was always there for him and so he missed his best friend and confidant;
then my older son Alex. who just turned 21, recalled a time when he was very young and thought his Poppy was the coolest old guy in the world and how he thought that his Poppy was called "guy" because he was the original "guy"-- he was THE "guy" and Alex remembered how when he was older and needed help for a Model UN event, Poppy set up a lunch with Alex and his friend who was an FBI agent and the agent explained all the things Alex needed to know;
then my younger son Ian, who is 19, described how strong-willed and stubborn my father was and then he described what his Poppy would do when he did something stupid and idiotic-- Poppy would ask Ian to "step into my office"-- and Ian remembered how annoyed he would get when he heard this, when he knew he was in for a lecture, but then he finished his speech by saying though the phrase "step into my office" annoyed him then, now all he really wanted was to hear my dad say it one more time;
then some of my father's friends spoke-- his consulting partner Tony Ventetuolo explained my father's awful sense of direction and recounted an anecdote about a bridge in Sioux City and then he had us close our eyes and imagine my father missing a two-foot putt and asked if we could hear him from above, yelling profanity from Heaven;
and Mr. Apgar donned a pair of reading glasses with the price tag still on them and told a slew of stories, from Cape Cod-- how my dad would go to the Christmas Tree shop and "borrow" a pair of reading glasses and wear them with the tag on so he could read the prices and how he was there when my dad told him how excited he was that Catherine and I were going to teach overseas and he was hoping we'd land in Italy or Switzerland or Spain and his reaction when he got the phone call and we were going to teach in Damascus and how they had to go to the Chatham bookstore the next day and look at a map to see exactly where that was and he talked about what a great golfer and competitor my dad was and some other things I can't remember--
so we crammed in my mother's condo for the long weekend and celebrated my father's incredible life and I was really proud of how well my children spoke of him and how they comported themselves all weekend, putting up with a bunch of old people reminiscing-- and amidst all the eulogizing and sadness, we also had to celebrate three recent birthdays: my mom just turned 80, I just turned 55, and Alex just turned 21.
You Can't Control Your Thoughts (About Will Ferrell)
Last night at dinner, my brother-- who lives in Hamilton, New Jersey-- told us about a terrible, horrible, awful child pornography case that happened in his town: a police officer and his wife, a Mercer County Sheriff’s Sergeant, were arrested for allegedly making videos where they had sex and their young children, drugged and naked, watched them and were also included in these videos-- disturbing, disgusting stuff-- and these two are now on house arrest, awaiting trial, because they were not safe in jail-- and while I was completely unsettled by this story, and the depravity of which humans are capable, I also could not help thinking about the fabulously surreal and hysterically funny dream that Ashley Schaeffer (Will Ferrell) recounts in Eastbound and Down, which ends with him commanding his wife to "let the boy watch."
Francis Ellis and Lil Sasquatch at the Stress Factory
Great show at the Stress Factory last night-- as always-- and we had no clue what to expect from the comics because Stacey unloaded the tickets on us and went to Seaside for a St. Patrick's Day Parade; after a forgettable opener (I even forgot his name) then Lil Sasquatch took the stage and did a great bit about being an oddly sexual suit-fitting session by a little European man that could fit in his pocket and another about dolphin rape and then he critiqued the "Stop Human Trafficking" sign he saw at the airport, he felt he needed more methodology and advice on exactly how to follow those orders, and then the opener, Francis Ellis, who seemed to good-looking and too smart to be a stand-up-comedian-- he attended Harvard-- talked his membership in the exclusive Delta Diamond Medallion Club and about terrorists having trouble collecting points for their one way flights and about his first (and only?) fight which happened to be with a guy who had a mouthguard and absolutely lived for that kind of shit; then he criticized people who abuse the "Sophie's choice" metaphor and use it for frivolous circumstances and then he discussed how he liked kids "just the right amount" and how he was recently divorced and so he bought a Costco 144 pack of toothbrushes for any ladies that slept over-- but this made him look like a serial killer and then he talked about trying to impress the workmen on his block, the real men, but how it was hard to do while walking a French bulldog and then he really got into it with the aduience-- he wanted to know if anyone had a union job and he had a discussion with a guy who worked for Dupont, making printing plates and using monomers and polymers and then he asked if there were more union workers in the crowd and my wife yelled out and so he got to discuss teachers and the teacher's union and how he loved teachers but wow they get a lot of time off and then he gathered some more audience material from a couple of guys who lost chain necklaces (and when he was "ambushed" by a high school sophomore) and he wrapped all this up on his keyboard (which we did not know was on the stage or a part of the exact) when he first sang a romantic song about jizz and then sang a song that included all the audience participation specifics-- gold chains and teachers, and polymers, and all the other odd stuff he pulled from the audience that I can't remember-- so if Francis Ellis is coming to a small comedy club in your town, check him out, he's a fun, smart, and energetic entertainer.
Champagne is Gross
We had a lovely pre-birthday celebration for Alex (and myself) last night-- we all went to Shanghai Dumpling and stuffed ourselves on noodles and various kinds of dumplings-- mainly soup-- and scallion pancakes and mochi sesame balls and then, though we didn't save room, we went back to our house and ate some birthday cheesecake and then Cat and I entertained the girlfriends with various photo albums and pictures of the boys when they were young and adorable and very silly . . . and Alex and Ian were great sports about all this, they really are getting to be actual normal people-- and Alex and I agreed that champagne is absolutely horrible (although Layla and my wife like the bubbles) and we're going to save the real drinking for our big birthday outing, we're going to see the Knicks in a couple weeks-- and then Ian drove the whole young crew back to New Brunswick and they went to a frat party or something, while the old folks collapsed on the couch to watch Mythic Quest and digest.
Hookah's There?
Presidents' Day . . . Take It Easy
My wife and I did NOT buy a mattress on our day off today, but we did go to the gym (though my wife and I were both very sore from working out too hard yesterday and walking around like very old people) and then we went out to lunch, but while I took the next reasonable step in this progression and took a nap, my wife-- who was starting on this bent at lunch, showing me Pinterest pictures and saying things like "I work hard"--appeared in our bedroom while I was mid-nap . . . with a tape measure!-- she's got some grand plans for our bedroom, which I like to keep in the style of Jay Gatsby-- "the simplest room in the house"-- and while I already talked her out of a plant wall over our heads at lunch-- although I love a plant wall-- because I don't want a plant falling on me while I'm sleeping . . . and now I think she's calmed down for the time being and found a book to read on her Kindle and is getting into the spirit of a random day off.
End of an Era
My dad passed away last night, down here in Naples, Florida-- a place he loved-- and he will be missed, by his friends, family, wife, and colleagues . . . he truly led an illustrious life-- a distinguished career in corrections and as a criminology professor . . . his progressive ideas, consultant work, jail design, prison educational implementation with football great and activist Jim Brown, and his work as an expert witness in prison logistics and best practices-- I often helped him with the writing of the expert culpability report and wow, you want to stay out of prison if you can help it, some wacky shit goes on in there-- but my dad did his best to allay those awful prison stereotypes and make prison a safe place for rehabilitation, not mayhem . . . my dad was also a great athlete-- a star-swimmer, a lifeguard, and a baseball, basketball, and football player and he taught me and my brothers to catch, throw, bat, shoot, and hit a golf ball . . . he loved family vacations at the beach, Cape Cod and Sea Isle City in particular and he was a patient and supportive father and the same as a grandfather, and always such a fan of my boys Alex and Ian, always at their tennis and soccer matches, and supporting them in all their endeavors-- he always expressed how proud he was of his family, he had a wonderful relationship with all my cousins, and he had a plethora of friends in both Naples and Monroe-- he made the best of the rare form of parkinsonism that plagued the last five years of his life, and even while suffering through all that bullshit, he was larger-than-life and his attitude and sense-of-humor were exceptional . . . we were lucky he passed the way he did, without becoming a tragic figure and truly burdening my mom beyond her cababilities, and instead he will remembered fondly as the legendary "Guy" from New Brunswick, who went a long way . . . I will truly miss you Dad and I couldn't have asked for a better father, and as my son Ian texted me: "he was the best Poppy I could have asked for."
Triumph at Triumph
Yesterday was the first Saturday in a while that my wife and I were both healthy, so we took the train to Princeton (with Connell . . . it was the first time he ever rode the Dinky!) and first we stopped for an espresso martini and some snacks at the Dinky Bar and then went to the new Triumph Brewery location in Palmer Square-- inside the old Princeton Post office, an astounding renovation of a spacious 1930s building-- and I am pleased to report that both the beer and the food are excellent-- I liked both their IPAs and their dry stout, Connell doggedly stuck to a hand-pumped amber Celtic ale, and my wife had the pilsener and a delicious pear martini; as a bonus, they have live jazz every Friday and Saturday from 5-8 PM in the lounge . . . there are two bars, one in the basement-- it has a ratskeller vibe and there are plenty of TVs tuned into sports-- and then the upper bar amidst the restaurant seating, and that's where you can see and hear the jazz . . . anyway, this is a great spot-- nothing quite like it in the area, I don't think-- and taking the train to Princeton is much faster than driving (and driving home last night would have been treacherous-- we had to walk to the train station through a bizarre icy slush that stuck to your boots, while being constantly pelted with freezing rain-- and the walk up the hill back to Highland Park was like trudging through frozen wet sand . . . really weird).
My Dog is Probably a Heathen
While it's impossible to truly delve into the mind of a dog, we can always speculate-- and it's been a long cold winter, so I've spent plenty of time on the couch observing my dog and I think she has what might be called a pagan mentality-- she's always doing ritualistic behaviors in the hope that they will have some effect on her world and the generally benevolent gods that control it-- I think she knows that to some arbitrary extent, her world is controlled by inscrutable deities, and so she tries to sit a certain way, or stare a certain way, or turn in circles so many times, in the hopes that this will produce food-- of course, at times, she attempts to take matters into her own paws and goes on the offensive, but we usually foil those attempts-- although she did get a cookie out of my wife's school bag the other day--and I think she knows that she exists in a polytheistic universe, with many strange gods, some human, some technological-- like the dishwasher, which always contains lickable items-- and while she knows she can't control technology, she will try different strategies and rituals depending on which humanoid gods are present, in the hopes of diving providence in the form of a treat, but all of this is so random, so uncontrollable, and because she can't speak (though she does try) she has to communicate through other symbolic actions, in the hopes that they produce good fortune.
Unintentionally Dry January (But Not Sand Island Dry)
I was determined NOT to do "Dry January" for two very good reasons—
1)I’m already a moderate drinker
2) January is so dark, cold, and dreary that a little alcohol helps me get through without going full Jack Torrance
but this January wasn’t fated to be a wet one for me-- two weeks ago I came down with a stomach virus, then my wife caught the flu, and just as she recovered I got a mild case of COVID, so aside from a couple of parties and our outing to see Louie C.K., I barely touched beer, wine, or spirits-- but I'm not complaining because I just read Matthew Pearl’s new book, Save Our Souls: The True Story of a Castaway Family, Treachery, and Murder, and my January—despite its lack of alcohol and abundance of sickness—was a walk in the park compared to what the Walker family endured after their sharking boat shipwrecked on a spit of sand in the North Pacific (Midway Atoll), where they survived for eighteen months on seabirds, seabird eggs, the occasional fish, a bag of moldy rice that washed ashore, and an unlucky turtle—but no beer or tobacco; Pearl’s book is a gripping account of the shipwreck and the surrounding murder and mystery, including the presence of a nutjob named Hans, who was already living in a hut on Sand Island when the Walkers and their crew washed ashore-- and the book gets quite complicated with intrigue, it's not a tale like Swiss Family Robinson or Gilligan's Island, mainly because of the sinister first mate and his past crimes and new alliances, and honestly, after reading this, I'm astounded that anyone in the 19th century would willingly board an ocean-going vessel, given the abundant threats of shipwrecks, piracy, opium smuggling, scurvy, sharks, insurance fraud, blackbirding, and mutiny-- Pearl’s book is an astounding tale of survival, persistence, and malevolent maritime machinations and if you're looking to feel better about your landlocked piece of property, read it.
You Never Know What's Going to Offend Our AI Overlords
Holy shit . . . my wife and I are passing viruses between us-- the origin of which is most likely all the stupid children in our respective schools, coughing and blowing their noses and wiping snot on every surface-- and teaching is NOT a good job when you are sick, especially when it's a double mid-term day and you're going to spend five hours in a room with students and you have no voice . . . but at least I tapped into DeepSeek, the new deep-discount made in China AI that will list "five awful things about Donald Trump"-- unlike Google's Gemini, which avoids political discussion . . . but don't ask DeepSeek about what happened in 1989 at the Tiananmen Square demonstration, or you'll get stonewalled; although I did get DeepSeek to rattle off a bunch of general problems with China's one-party, undemocratic, censorship-prone, human rights violating government-- before it rescinded all the text and said, "Sorry that's beyond my current scope . . . let's talk about something else."
Trump
Cold and Gray Thursday
I took a mental health day yesterday and it turned out to be quite productive-- I cleaned two bathrooms, went to the gym with Ian-- he was actually able to play a little basketball on his reconstructed ankle-- and then Ian and I fixed a broken light pull switch in a ceiling fan, a two-man job if there ever was one (he flipped fuses in the basement until the fan stopped and then it took four hands to take the fan case apart; hold it the bottom part; strip the wires; remove the old pull string switch; replace and reconnect the new pull string switch; and then reassemble it) and we rewarded ourselves with a sushi lunch and then I took a nap-- later my wife and I watched episode two of Get Millie Black-- highly recommended-- but then reality loomed its ugly head . . . when you take off a Wednesday, you have to go to work the next day-- and it's not even Friday!-- and this morning was frigid and dark and bleak and I am really struggling to see the dim light of Spring Break, which is many months away-- so I started my class today with the movie clip to symbolize how I was feeling: Bill Murray giving a "Groundhog Day" weather outlook, "You want a prediction about the weather . . . I'll give you a winter prediction: It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."
Go Eagles?
My wife and I logged a lot of steps in South Philly today, watching the Eagles and seeing the historical sights and the 13th Steet lights and while I was rooting for Saquon to amass as many yards as possible, I might be too old a dog to defect from the Giants to the Eagles, despite all my south Jersey relatives ( but it was fun while it lasted, I cheered along with the crowd in Mcgillins and remembered what it was like to root for a good team).
Knee Update (Breaking Knees)
My knee is working pretty well now that they drained the fluid, so I got to play some pick-up basketball with my son Alex yesterday at the Piscataway Y, which is always a blast-- my three-pointer was on and Alex can cut to the basket and use his right or his left, and I know I won't be able to do this forever-- pump fake an outside shot and then pass the ball to my son going to the cup, so I've got to enjoy it while I can-- and then my wife and I headed out to see Nosferatu-- which is fabulously grim and dark and very well conceived, but a bit long-- and since we purchased tickets ahead of time, we thought we were showing up late, after the coming attractions, but it seems no matter how late you show up to the movies, there are always many many trailers-- the 2:30 PM showing didn't actually start until 3 PM . . . so by the end of the movie, my knee was a bit stiff and I limped out of the theater and into the darkness-- when the film began the sun was out but once we left the theater, it was not safe, Nosferatu's shadow lay across the land.
Thus Endeth the Birthday
After three weeks of celebrating my wife's birthday, it's time to switch gears (and celebrate Christmas and New Year's) but we had a great turnout for Friday night for some drinking and dancing . . . and it turned out that a couple of the members of the band were Edison teachers, so Cat got a birthday shout out at the Kefi ballroom, and then despite my wife's state of inebriation at the end of the night (and Stacey and Ed's generous offer of a ride home) she wanted to walk back to Highland Park in the snow, because "it would be good for us" and so we made the trek home, slowly but surely, while I offered both moral and physical support (and at least she followed one piece of my advice and she wore sensible shoes, her Dock Martins, instead of heels).
You'd Think We've Have Teleportation By Now
You'd think it would be easy to connect your phone to two Bluetooth speakers at the same time, so they play the same music simultaneously-- or let me phrase that, I thought it would be easy to connect my phone to two Bluetooth speakers at the same time, but I'm not a computer engineer so I don't understand how Bluetooth is designed and the limitations of this technology . . . so I Googled this conundrum and here's the problem:
1. Bluetooth's Client-Server Model: Bluetooth operates on a client-server model where one device (your phone) acts as the client and the other (the speaker) as the server. This means your phone can only establish one active connection with a single speaker at a time.2. Dual Audio vs. Multipoint: While some devices support "dual audio" (sharing audio with two connected devices simultaneously), this is not the same as playing the same audio on two separate speakers. Dual audio is designed for sharing audio to two different headphones, not for playing the same audio on two different speakers.
3. Bandwidth Limitations: Bluetooth's bandwidth is limited, meaning it can only handle a certain amount of data at a time. When trying to send audio to multiple speakers, the bandwidth might not be sufficient to maintain a high-quality connection to both speakers simultaneously.
4. Latency and Synchronization: Even if you could send audio to multiple speakers simultaneously, there might be a delay in the audio reaching each speaker, leading to a noticeable lag or out-of-sync audio experience.
3. Bandwidth Limitations: Bluetooth's bandwidth is limited, meaning it can only handle a certain amount of data at a time. When trying to send audio to multiple speakers, the bandwidth might not be sufficient to maintain a high-quality connection to both speakers simultaneously.
4. Latency and Synchronization: Even if you could send audio to multiple speakers simultaneously, there might be a delay in the audio reaching each speaker, leading to a noticeable lag or out-of-sync audio experience.
to which I say: "BOO! Bluetooth, BOO!" which I hope will inspire our computer overlords to fix this issue (and yes I know there's an app-- I tried AmpMe but I couldn't get that to work either-- the only thing that kind of worked was having my wife join my Spotify "Jam" and then she could play the Jam on a different speaker but there was some latency-- the age of my phone may also be contributing to this situation).
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