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.

Back to Normal

 My wife is home, and the house smells like cooking.

Go Knicks!

My wife returns from Florida tomorrow morning, and then life will regain its usual rhythm-- not that I did anything wild while she was gone, it was mainly business as usual-- but I tried to do a bit of socializing even though my instinct when I am left to my own devices is to hole up and read and get high and strum my guitar: I went to Happy Hour yesterday at B2 Bistro, but I only had one beer (and then a Coke, which Cunningham roundly insulted for drinking) because I had pickleball practice at 7 PM and needed my wits about me (Terry also only had one beer because he was reffing a soccer match at 7 PM but he had a Diet Coke after his beer) and pickleball practice was fun-- my calf is healed and my new paddle seems to be functional (Vatic Pro V-sol Power) but because my friend Ann wasn't there-- her knee hurt-- there was only one other non-Mandarin speaker at practice and so I really did not understand exactly what was happening-- and then this morning I substituted for Catherine and had coffee at her friend Johanna's house (Connell and Adrian were there too, so I wasn't the only guy crashing) and I talked to my neighbor Pernille quite a bit about the state of education and AI (she's a Rutgers professor) and tonight I'm hanging out with Ian and his friend (and possibly Alex) for the Knicks game-- I'm buying sandwiches so that the youngsters will socialize with me-- but I will be very glad when Cat is back in Jersey.

Dave as a Bachelor is No Gourmand

My mom had heart surgery yesterday, and she is already checked out of the hospital-- the miracles of modern medicine . . . and she didn't even need Donald Trump to lay hands on her!-- meanwhile, back at the ranch, I miss my wife-- she went down to Naples with my brother to help my mom out . . . Ian and I have been eating the baked ziti she made before she left, but we're nearly at the end of it, so we got some sandwiches from Park Deli for dinner tonight-- and I did cut up some peppers and lettuce and cucumbers and eat a salad with the ziti last night, to get some roughage-- but it seems that if my wife leaves town, the menu mainly consists of pasta and beer (and takeout) and so I will be glad when she returns.

Summer in April . . .

I took off work today to monitor my mom's progress during surgery-- she's getting a cow valve to replace a valve in her heart?-- and things are looking good-- she's through the surgery and in recovery now, and my brother and my wife are down in Naples, Florida to help her out-- although the recovery is supposed to be very fast . . . and, oddly, it's hotter here in central Jersey than it is in Florida-- I was just soaking my wife's garden so that the spring flowers don't shrivel up and die-- school is going to be very, very hot tomorrow (they had the heat on over the weekend).

Fan Fistfight in My First Game . . .

I refereed my first  soccer match today-- a U-15 game in North Brunswick-- and I was certainly nervous before I left the house-- checking my equipment, reviewing all the rules, making a cheat sheet of various fouls, but my wife said not to worry, that the assignor wouldn't "throw me to the wolves" for my first game, he'd put me with some experienced refs . . . and then I arrived and met one of the other refs and he was technically experienced—but not very-- he had done five games so far-- and then we waited for the third ref to show up, hoping it was someone with more experience than us-- and luckily the third ref, though only 21 years old, was more experienced than us-- he had been reffing for six years-- and then we ran into a hitch checking players and coaches in-- the coach for one team didn't have a game card and the coach and all the players need to have a game card-- but, after some doing, he was able to produce one electronically-- and then the game was fairly slow-paced for the most part, the players weren't that big and it was very windy and the field was kind of bumpy and lousy, so there weren't that many fast-paced attacks or brutal contact-- but with about ten minutes left, something happened in the far corner, so I couldn't see or hear it but I guess a mom claimed that a player grabbed his crotch or something similar, and then parents started chirping at each other and before we knew it, there was a fistfight on the sideline and other altercations were brewing and so the young center ref crossed his arms and ended the game-- and he was really out of sorts and upset-- he said nothing quite like this had ever happened to him before and he'd never had to end the game early-- so it was quite a mess and hopefully not indicative of future games (tomorrow I do a U-9 game, so it should be chillaxed).

If a Toilet Gets Cleaned, But My Wife Doesn't See It-- Did It Happen?

I did a bunch of chores around the house this afternoon: vacuumed, cleaned a bathroom, did some laundry, put the mattress cover and sheets on the bed, did the dishes . . . but accomplishing these tasks doesn't really make me happy-- I won't feel any satisfaction until my wife gets home from my cousin's baby shower and acknowledges my industry.

The Winds are Dark

My wife and I just finished the third season of Dark Winds, the AMC show based on the Tony Hillerman novels, and the show lives up to the title.

I Thought Last Year Was Well Organized?

 

My cousin Kim pronounced last year's Easter Pizza resurrection as "total chaos" with no "quality control," and so this year things were much more organized, and generally the experts did the delicate work of folding dough and making the "toes"-- so my wife had to work all afternoon (and so did some small children) while I only had to cut some sausage and then got to watch basketball and drink beer-- and this year's pizzagaina were notably more uniform and delicious than last year's batch-- and I am certainly better at eating them than making them.

We Used to Hang Out in There!

The Corner Tavern—the bar in New Brunswick where I met my wife (actually, I met her just outside the bar, when I exited—because she was only 20 at the time—this was 1992, and I was with my best buddy Rob, and she was with her best buddy Tammy—and we married the two of them eight years later) and now this bar seems to be some kind of Superfund site, in a perpetual state of industrial decontamination.

Look Before You Drink

You should look before you leap, and you should also look before you drink out of a cup in the bathroom in the middle of the night-- which I did not do last night (because I was being considerate and didn't want to wake my sleeping wife . . . but she was NOT considerate, and so I ended up drinking from a cup containing her floss pick . . . yuck).

Pretty Good Day (Post Blizzard)

Most excellent snow day: did all the shoveling yesterday, and the roads were clear this morning, so I played pickleball and then met my wife and son Alex for lunch-- and tomorrow is already Wednesday!

Spring Break!

Judging by the table on my deck, we got more snow during this storm than we did during the last storm (the top photo is the last storm; the bottom is this one) but shoveling out of this one is more pleasant because it's not as frigid as it was during the last storm-- and we have another day off tomorrow, so I'm trying to enjoy myself . . . since we didn't budget any snow days, this is ostensibly our spring break . . . and I'd be able to enjoy myself more if my wife had told me she was going to the beer store on Sunday-- she bought herself some Asbury Park Blonde, but she did not buy me any Asbury Park Stout (we only drink beer that represents our physical characteristics, thus I can't have any of her Blonde and she does not drink my Stout).

I Can't Explain What I'm Doing, But I Know I'm the Best

If there's one thing I know how to do better than my wife-- and perhaps everyone else in the world-- it's loading the dishwasher —there's an art to it . . . all the dirty plates, bowls, containers, and cutlery need to get maximum exposure to the streaming jets of water.

Almost on the Button

My wife-- who loves to distort idioms into new phrases that often make better sense than the original-- read the weather forecast and noticed that high winds were predicted, and so she remarked "button down the hatches," and I said "it's batten, not button . . . batten down the hatches," and then we had to check exactly what a batten is: 

a batten is a long, flat strip of wood or metal, used to secure something in place . . . such as the hatch on a sailboat.

Schrödinger's Swordfish

Today, in preparation for a Valentine's Day dinner with my wife, I went to Archar Seafood in Somerset and bought some very expensive swordfish (the last time we got swordfish from there, it was exceptional) and placed it on the back driver-side seat and drove home, and then when I pulled into the driveway, I grabbed my gym bag and went into the house-- and I should point out that it was warm today, a balmy 46 degrees-- and then, when I was in the kitchen-- miracle of all miracles-- I remembered that I left the fish in the car, that I put it onto the back seat, and so I went out and retrieved it, no harm, no foul . . . but I came very close to turning that pricey swordfish steak into a warm, bacteria-laden, rotten mess, which would have ruined both dinner and the smell of my (relatively) odor-free car . . . but who knows how the mind works-- it's truly a black box, sometimes remembering things at the right time, sometimes minutes later, sometimes the next morning, and sometimes not at all.

But How Do You Run a Hotel?

My wife and I finished the first season of The Night Manager-- and while the show certainly delivers John le Carré-style espionage, corruption, and intrigue, it is also a bit of a bait-and-switch: Jonathan Pine spends a surprisingly short amount of time as a hotel night manager, and we learn very little of the inner workings of room booking, room service, room rotation, the effects of working the night shift, how to deal with unruly guests, noise complaints, soused folks at the bar, etcetera-- because it doesn't take long before Pine switches from late-night hotelier to undercover spy, infiltrating the inner circle of a ruthless arms dealer . . . so if you're looking for a show that actually teaches you how to run a hotel, my loyal fans have suggested Fawlty Towers and Schitt's Creek.

Not the Best Place to Be a Regular

My son Alex, who lives with his girlfriend in a studio apartment in New Brunswick, burned his hands with cooking oil while cleaning up last night, so my wife drove him and Ava to the ER-- once again-- Alex forgot his wallet, but because he is a "regular" there, they had all his information-- and while the burns aren't too bad, and they wrapped both his hands in gauze and told him he should be better in a day or two, there were some weird happenings . . . the ER doctor used the cream that Alex brought with him from his last cooking burn, which seems odd: sort of like a BYOB restaurant, this was BYOM hospital? and then, once Alex had been treated, my wife had to drive the two of them fifteen minutes to the 24-hour Walgreens in East Brunswick to get medicine because the pharmacy in the hospital was closed? this makes no sense-- what if you didn't have a car?-- and shouldn't you be able to get the medicine you need at the hospital in the city and not have to drive out to the suburbs? our health care system is byzantine.

Dave Gets It Done in the (Relatively) Balmy Weather

I didn't have to proctor any midterms today-- which is a wonderful day to take off from school because you don't have to leave any plans-- and I am proud to say that I've had a fairly productive day, here are the things I've ALREADY accomplished . . . and it's only 3:30 PM:

1) I went to TWO, count them, TWO grocery stores— SuperFresh for cheap produce and ShopRite for everything else, including some weird shit that my wife requested: protein pancake mix? coconut water coffee creamer?

2) I got some audio recorded for my top secret audio project;

3) I took Lola, who was going stir crazy, for a hike in the Ecological Preserve-- I now realize the key is to drive her to wherever we want to walk; she can't walk on the salt-covered roads-- the salt, or whatever chemical is used to melt the ice-- lowers the temperature of water below freezing and then it gets into her paws, even if they are waxed, and makes them hurt (plus I heard from a couple people that when your dog licks this stuff off their paws, it can give them the liquid squirting shits)

4) I shoveled off our back porch and liberated our grill from a snowbank;

5) I went to FedEx and shipped my son's broken laptop somewhere for reapirs;

6) I took a nap;

7) I made lunch instead of going out for food because . . .

8) I've started Vasily Grossman's epic masterpiece, Stalingrad, and I was trying to read the paperback, but the font is too small, so instead of getting a massage today or going out to lunch, I treated myself and bought the Kindle version of the book so I can enlarge the font . . . this is a good book to read in the cold weather, but not the paperback version (which is all the library had).

 

Crokinole , Primetime

My wife and I were watching the wonderful Australian show Colin from Accounts, and Gordon and Gene were having some incomprehensible, awkward conversation that we couldn't quite parse because of the Aussie accent, but then we realized that they were saying "crokinole," the fantastic Canadian game that I bought our household for Christmas-- apparently, the game is growing more popular by the minute!