Sentence of Dave

Some Hard Things Are Harder Than Other Hard Things

I often see people running on concrete and I want to yell to them: "Don't run on concrete! It's much harder than asphalt!"

While I've never actually yelled this out my car window, I'm factually in the right. Concrete is definitely exponentially harder than asphalt.

But it may not matter. Running shoes and other factors may make the difference negligible. So while I'm going to continue to run on grass or asphalt, I'm not going to chastise anyone for running on concrete (until I finish my advanced materials physics degree).

Some Bueno Advice

Head down Woodbridge Avenue to the Edison Tex-Mex Deli and get the al pastor tacos-- I promise you won't be disappointed: the pork and pineapples are on a spit!

Dave Parks the Bus

Someone (or something) has hacked my Blogger account and so Sentence of Dave keeps doing weird stuff, which is as good a reason as any to start writing sentences over here.

I might write one sentence a day, or I might write several.

I might write nothing at all.

But the best thing about the whole hacking of my blog is that I was able to import all my brilliance from Sentence of Dave over to Park the Bus. So if you need to catch up, it's all here.

Being able to migrate all my sentences (and zman's comments!) is almost as awesome as listening to my son Ian dictate quotations from Catcher in the Rye into the journal entry he is writing on the kitchen desktop computer (he is doing this as I write).

Dave's Not Here, Man, He's Over at PARK THE BUS

There's something weird going on with my Blogger account, so I'm closing up shop at Sentence of Dave and posting all my sentences, paragraphs, and other random garbage at Park the Bus . . . and-- in case you have some catching up to do-- I've imported all my fabulous sentences from here over to there.

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!

Double Technological Miracle Sunday!

Freedom!

In The Meantime . . . a Bout of Namenesia

Blogger has been acting weird since Friday, and so I wasn't able to post yesterday or this morning . . . here's what went on:

Soccer practice was cold, wet, and rainy Friday afternoon and I wore my stupid blue jacket that looks like a rain-jacket but is actually just a windbreaker and I froze my balls off.

Saturday I did some rollerblading while listening to 90's instrumental guitar rock (Steve Vai and Joey Satriani) and this was the right music choice;

then, in preparation for the Grant Ave block party, Cat and I went to Cypress Brewery to drink a beer and purchase a growler's worth of 17 Mile IPA and the waitress in the little tasting room greeted us warmly and hugged us and I thought it was Rachel, a teacher from my wife's school and then the waitress left to get our beers and my wife informed that she was NOT Rachel, the teacher from her school-- though she admitted that this person looked just like Rachel-- and so we racked our brains, trying to figure out who had just hugged us, and while we were under a serious time constraint, we were able to discuss our namenesia aloud because our waitress had gone next door to check on a large party that was drinking in the brewing area and she literally had to leave the tasting room and walk outside the building and then enter by the large bay door-- so we discussed and used process of elimination and then I took a stab when she returned with our beers and said, "Are you doing girl's soccer again?" and she said, "No that's Rebecca, we always get mistaken for each other" and that's when I remembered who she was-- she had taught both our kids English in middle school-- but she was wearing a baseball hat and a Cypress Brewery tank-top and jeans, so it was tough to identify her-- normally we would see her in back-to-school-night clothes-- but I got it in time, no harm no foul, and my wife was duly impressed;

today I went to the gym early and lifted, then played 90 minutes of soccer, but I erased all that fitness at lunch-- my son has had a Taco Bell gift card since Christmas (a grab bag gift) and we finally used it, he ate some large hexagonal shaped item with several meats and a giant tortilla chip inside, and Ian and I had quesadillas and tacos-- this is the first time I've had Taco Bell since college and I'll admit it was edible and it hasn't done anything awful to my stomach . . . yet.

In The Meantime . . . a Bout of Namenesia

Blogger has been acting weird since Friday, and so I wasn't able to post yesterday or this morning . . . here's what went on:

1) soccer practice was cold, wet, and rainy Friday afternoon and I wore my stupid blue jacket that looks like a rain-jacket but is actually just a windbreaker and I froze my balls off;

2) Saturday I did some rollerblading while listening to 90's instrumental guitar rock (Steve Vai and Joey Satriani) and this was the right music choice;

3) then, in preparation for the Grant Ave block party, Cat and I went to Cypress Brewery to drink a beer and purchase a growler's worth of 17 Mile IPA and the waitress in the little tasting room greeted us warmly and hugged us and I thought it was Rachel, a teacher from my wife's school and then the waitress left to get our beers and my wife informed that she was NOT Rachel, the teacher from her school-- though she admitted that this person looked just like Rachel-- and so we racked our brains, trying to figure out who had just hugged us, and while we were under a serious time constraint, we were able to discuss our namenesia aloud because our waitress had gone next door to check on a large party that was drinking in the brewing area and she literally had to leave the tasting room and walk outside the building and then enter by the large bay door-- so we discussed and used process of elimination and then I took a stab when she returned with our beers and said, "Are you doing girl's soccer again?" and she said, "No that's Rebecca, we always get mistaken for each other" and that's when I remembered who she was-- she had taught both our kids English in middle school-- but she was wearing a baseball hat and a Cypress Brewery tank-top and jeans, so it was tough to identify her-- normally we would see her in back-to-school-night clothes-- but I got it in time, no harm no foul, and my wife was duly impressed;

4) today I went to the gym early and lifted, then played 90 minutes of soccer, but I erased all that fitness at lunch-- my son has had a Taco Bell gift card since Christmas (a grab bag gift) and we finally used it, he ate some large hexagonal shaped item with several meats and a giant tortilla chip inside, and Ian and I had quesadillas and tacos-- this is the first time I've had Taco Bell since college and I'll admit it was edible and it hasn't done anything awful to my stomach . . . yet.

They Might Actually Be Nice

I told my colleagues in the English Office that my students seem really nice this year, and Chantal said, "They always seem nice for the first two days, you idiot."

They Might Actually Be Nice

I told my colleagues in the English Office that my students seem really nice this year, and Chantal said, "They always seem nice for the first two days, you idiot."

Barking Up the Right Tree

I couldn't figure out why my dog Lola was barking like mad, trying to scale a thick oak tree, so I took some time and looked through the branches very carefully and realized Lola's instincts were dead on, as there was a squirrel napping on a branch (something I've never seen before, the squirrel's eyes were slits, and it looked way more groggy than the squirrel in this picture . . . it was hugging the limb and must have been out cold-- until Lola rudely woke him).

Barking Up the Right Tree

Technology Marches On, Sweeping Dave Along With It

We've got new devices and new LMS (Learning Management Software) this year at my school and it's all making me feel very old: the screens keep getting smaller (now we're all on tablets) and they're threatening to take our desktop computers away (even though I can actually read stuff on that screen and my computer has the only DVD player in the room) and we've replaced the simplicity of Google Classroom-- which is free and seamless with Google docs, Google slides, and YouTube-- with an expensive program (Canvas) where everything is very small and every task requires a lot of clicks . . . I'm hoping I retire before this happens again.

Technology Marches On, Sweeping Dave Along With It

It's Over (Except for the Crying)

Nothing coherent to report: I'm in a befuddled haze from endless first-day-of-school meetings, room preparation, running soccer practice, my older son's botched summer assignments, Taco Tuesday, and an endless argument about how much my kids tipped the barber today for their back-to-school-haircut . . . it looks like the summer is coming to an abrupt close.

It's Over (Except for the Crying)

Mrs. Bridge, Dave, and Socrates Walk into a Bar

I don't know how I missed this one, but Evan S. Connell's 1959 novel Mrs. Bridge is a weird and understated modern classic, funny and sharp, and a good book for me to read as I approach 50 years . . . Mrs. Bridge is a Kansas City country-club-wife and the book details her life and times in 117 vignettes during the years before and after WWII . . . and while the nation is changing, in regards to race, etiquette, social class, and the labor market, Mrs. Bridge remains the same-- and while she has moments where she almost introspects, she always avoids it, and lives the opposite of Socrates' most famous dictum . . . "the unexamined life is not worth living," and while I certainly get why she likes to remain ignorant and blissful, I'm trying to examine my life as I hit the big 50 . . . and I'm making some hard decisions-- fitness-wise, I'm switching from basketball to running (less injuries and I need to get fit, not beat up) and I'm playing a lot more tennis with my kids-- I won't be able to do that forever-- and health-wise, I'm trying to drink less beer (except on holiday weekends) and replace it with tequila and seltzer, which has less calories and doesn't make me gassy: I think these epiphanies would make Socrates proud.

Mrs. Bridge, Dave, and Socrates Walk into a Bar

Summer is Over (Time to Wash Off the Vaseline)

As usual, the greased-watermelon-rugby-polo-challenge signified another summer in the books-- and this was an especially epic summer (a trip to Costa Rica, a lot of soccer and tennis, a couple trips to the beach, and my kids had gainful employment) and an especially epic greased-watermelon-match (which my friend John decided to document, so perhaps this one is coming to a theater near you . . . hopefully his daughter/camerawoman caught the magical moment when I kicked my son Alex in the head) and now it's time to shower off all the petroleum jelly and get ready to enter the work week.