Day one as a post-Powerball non-billionaire

Well, I didn't win Powerball.

Of course I didn't. But it would have been nice to get at least one of the numbers, especially the first one ...  you know, to build the suspense for at least one or two seconds.

I'm normally not one to gamble, since I don't see mucn entertainment value in it, and I'm probably going to lose my money, anyway. However, the incredibly slight possibility of turning $2 into nearly $1 billion (after taxes) was worth a WTF trip to the local Rite-Aid on my way home from work.

If nothing else, it made for some fun, harmless fantasies about what my wife and I would do if we won. Quit work, for sure, and pay off the house, but also get a little flat in London and be able to ride in the bed seats on the plane across the Atlantic.

I'm sure there would have been some charitable contributions, and maybe a building at one of our colleges or scholarships named after our families would have been in order.

And about 90 percent of our Facebook friends would have been history ... nothing personal, just trying to make the circle of people who may ask for money smaller. (Of course, I'm not talking about you. You, I would have kept.)

That was about as far as we got. No sports teams, or newspaper companies, or islands somewhere. Neither of us is extravagant, and I may be one of the few people who actually worries about blowing nearly $1 billion.

But the idea that really made me think was the concept of (assuming we didn't take complete leave of our senses) never having to worry about money ever again. We both do fairly well, no complaints there, but there's a difference between the nice lives my wife and I lead and being insanely, filthy rich.

However, it was not to be, and it never was. Oh well.

Snow in London

My wife told me it snowed today in London, so that for a change, where we live outside of Boston may be more desirable than the city we've visited twice and still fantasize about going to again.

And then we both said, "Naaaahhhh."

Of course, we were talking about Tourist London, where we envision snow as a lovely cover on all our favorite London places, and all the absurdly attractive people would break out their ultra-stylish winter gear. It is the London of Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Big Ben, West End shows and soccer at every turn.

Reality London (and the rest of the country) is obviously much different. Snow means icy roads, bundling up to sweep off the car and turning up the heat. It's not a never-ending adventure, but a place where people live, not everything is fabulous and there might actually be a few people who say, "Enough with all the football!" (Kind of like how I am with the NFL.)

Who knows? Maybe they'd find Boston to be some kind of great adventure.

Transitions

I broke off a relationship recently.

Actually, "relationship" isn't really the best word for it. For the longest time, although the young woman involved knew it was me every time I called, I didn't know her name for months. I just called her up on Monday nights to let her know I was coming, she did what I needed her to do and I left.

My wife knew about the whole thing, and as many of these things do, the whole thing started because of being wronged by another woman ... in this case, the one who gave me pizza order to someone else.

What ... you thought I was talking about something other than the girl at the local pizza parlor? When her partner messed up my order, she kind of gave my wife and me a "Yeah, I'm with stupid" look, and we got a good laugh out of it eventually.

I ended things at the pizza place because my wife and I moved out of the area. When you live somewhere for eight years, like we did before moving, you develop habits and routines that you don't realize you have to change until the time comes.

Not only do we need to find a new pizza place (we tried our first one in our new home the other night; it's a solid contender), we need to find other local restaurants, figure out where to go grocery shopping, find a new dentist (which stinks in this case, because the dentist we were going to is one of the few I've ever liked), get a new vet for the cat and a whole bunch of other things.

We got the cable and Internet set up, and I made the arrangements for garbage pickup. I can also report that junk mail has already found us.

And, oh yeah, we need to figure out where everything is.

* * * * *

I spent most of my moving day ... at my old house.

We were closing on our old house and closing on our new one the same day, shuttling between offices while dealing with the moving crew our agent helped us pull together at the last minute when our orignal mover no-showed. Our new mover had to make two trips, and I got the duty of waiting back at the old house for the mover to come back.

I walked around the neighborhood a lot, charged my phone in the car and waited ... and waited. Finally, I knocked on the door and asked, "Do you mind if I come in for a while?"

He was OK with it, so I spent more than an hour in a living room that less than 24 hours earlier, had been my living room, watching movies on his DVD player and playing with his adorable dog. (Seriously, I'm not a big dog person, but I fell in love with his dog. He was so sweet.)

And it was weird as hell. Our buyer got his stuff moved in pretty quickly, so it didn't take long for him to make it his house, even before I hadn't gotten all my stuff moved off the lawn and out of the garage yet. At one point, I was stumbling around looking for a light switch or something, and actually had to remind myself, "This was just your house! This shouldn't be that hard to find!"

It wound up being a very long day, and the movers and I didn't get back to our new house until after midnight, meaning I didn't spend a second in my new house on my moving day.

* * * * *

We aren't done moving in yet, but we're getting there. Lots of stuff is in, and we're not far from the point where we'll be working on decorations.

It should be nice, and it'll be nice when all these transitions are done.

The years ... they go so quickly

When I was a kid, we used to get a newsletter from my school district every month. It had the standard things you might expect: lunch menus, news about the district, announcements and lots of other stuff you can probably find on a school website now.

One month, and I don't remember how old I was, I read an announcement that my high school was starting a hall of fame. In later years, they put plaques of the enshrinees on the walls at the entrance to the high school, although I don't know if it still exists and I haven't done nearly enough to gain admission even if it does.

But what I remember in particular was that to be eligible, you had to have graduated 25 years earlier. As I read that, I did some quick math, knowing that I would be 18 when I graduated, so even if I went on to a fabulous career doing something or other, I wouldn't even be eligible until I was 43.

At that point, I remember thinking two things:

1. 43 was old.

2. 43 was a long way away.

Today is my birthday. I'm 43. Next month, my high school's graduation will mark 25 years since I graduated.

Since then, I've gone to college and graduate school, gotten married, moved to Massachusetts and spent 17 years in my field.

And I'm not entirely sure where the time went.

Looking into Paul Blart's future

My wife and I were leaving the mall last night when we came across a sign promoting "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2," which, if this plot summary on Wikipedia is true, may be just about the most-convoluted story I've ever seen.

But I'm still a little worried about our man Blart, because malls aren't what they used to be. You hardly ever hear of any new ones, and while plenty of them are plugging along, others are struggling to stay relevant.

So that got me to thinking, "What kinds of things could Paul Blart do if the mall security thing didn't work out, and how can they be turned into movies?" After all, Kevin James seems like a decent fellow, and why not let him have his own meal ticket?

I came up with a few ideas.

"Paul Blart: Strip Mall Cop" -- This one's the most obvious, since the strip mall has basically replaced the mall in a lot of places. And after all, someone has to keep order at Michaels, right?

"Paul Blart: Mixed-Use Development Cop" -- When business is slow, he can ride his Segway to where the housing was supposed to be built, but never was. Or, if he's at the development near where I live, once he makes sure all the kids are safely home, he can gaze upon the business that never showed up, at least until he runs out of space on the road that never got finished.

"Paul Blart: Campus Security" -- If the college is anything like where I went to grad school, that Segway will come in handy for seemingly doing nothing but handing out parking tickets all day.

"Paul Blart: Boston" -- The "Blart" franchise delves into the psychological thriller genre, as Paul has an interview for a new job in Boston after the mall closes, but is confronted by an potentially unbeatable foe ... bumper-to-bumper traffic for miles around with no apparent reason or end in sight.

"Paul Blart: Transit Police" -- In this sequel to "Paul Blart: Boston," the good news is that he got a job with the MBTA. The bad news is that he's in danger of being fired for not shepherding a train through seven feet of snow by himself, forcing him to find redemption.

"Paul Blart: London" -- After a half-hour of driving-on-the-wrong-side-of-the-road gags, the entire United Kingdom holds its breath as Blart tries to foil a plot to kidnap the beautiful princess and her Manchester United and English team star husband known to his legions of fans as "Q," whose story dating back to his birth in United States to a rakish English father and glamorous American mother is known nearly as well as the princess'.

"Paul Blart: London 2" -- A Norwegian stalker is targeting an English actor of stage and screen, and Blart partners with an American superfan to foil her nefarious efforts. Featuring a cameo by Benedict Cumberbatch because ... Cumberbatch.

I was planning a Blart/"Ocean's 14" combo reboot, but "Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2" was set in Vegas and looks like a worse movie than "Ocean's 12" was. (Seriously, how could so many talented people make a sequel to a movie as good as "Ocean's 11" and screw it up that badly?)

However, my suggestions should be enough to make "Blart" the "Hunger Games" franchise for the food-court set. Now as long as we never see any photos of Kevin James wearing nothing but a snake, everything will be fine.

I'm fine, but I really don't want to hear that word

I had a dentist appointment today, just a routine cleaning, although my dentist likes for me to come every three to four months because calcium builds quickly on my teeth.

Unlike my previous dentist, who not only inflicted a lot of pain, but seemed to like it, trips to my current dentist are usually pleasant. Everyone is very friendly, and they do their best to make it as painless as possible. Plus, when I've had problems, they've taken me right away and solved it quickly.

I even had a wisdom tooth removed without pain!

Today, the usual hygienist cleaned my teeth; I've gotten used to her calling me "my friend" (which she did on my first visit), or "honey," since I think she calls everyone one or both of those. We talked about her recent skiing-related injury, and how the main thing she was worried about when someone came to her aid at the bottom of the mountain was that he'd call her "ma'am."

After the X-rays and the cleaning, she said she wanted to look at my tongue, my lips and my cheeks. I  was pretty sure why, and sure enough, when she was done, she informed me that I was clear of oral cancer.

That's not a surprise, since I've never used tobacco in my life, but still ... she said cancer during my exam.

Cancer

Cancer killed my best friend. Cancer killed at least two of my cats. And now someone was checking me for cancer.

To be honest, I'm at the age where today shouldn't have been the first time I talked with someone about cancer, but I haven't been to a doctor for a few years. (I know, I know ...)

And even though I was fine, talking about it was a little unnerving.

Let's all celebrate the Golden Globes, shall we?

Tonight, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association will hand out its awards for excellence in television and movies during a little shindig called the Golden Globes.

Also, from what I understand, there will be drinking. And with drinking comes tomfoolery.

Sounds like a perfectly good excuse to have a little party of our own on this here blog, although it's a strictly BYOB affair, and as always, if you come to my metaphorical house, don't pee in my metaphorical pool. (Also, if you come to my real house without permission, I will call the cops.)

There are a few things I'm hoping for this year. Of course, I want things I've seen and people I like to win awards and those I don't to not win. But I also would love, just once, for one of the hosts during the exercise in killing brain cells known as the red carpet show to ask an interviewee, "Did you dress yourself in the dark?" or "Were you on crack when you picked that out?" or "Where is that slow boat I assume you put your stylist on headed?"

I also hope, that in this year of all years, especially in this week of all weeks, the rich and famous who generally spend their lives being told by everyone they meet how wonderful they are will understand that it's not the end of the world if they're the butt of a few jokes.

I'll probably open the chat sometime between 6 and 6:30 EST, and although familial obligations will probably take me away between 7 and 8, feel free to sign in with any social media account and get the party going in my stead.

So tell your friends. The party is open to all who want to share some awards-show laughs.

Farewell to the Big Dude

Silly, in one of his favorite spots, on his futon.

My wife and I both knew it was going to end this way, ever since we met with the oncologist.

He told us that treating cancer in cats isn't the same as in humans, explaining that one of the reasons why people get so sick during chemo is that the treatment is intended to kill the cancer. It's milder for cats, but that's because the intent is only to hold the tumor back as much as possible. 

In the most-aggressive treatment, which is surgery and chemo -- which Silly couldn't have because the doctor also thought he saw cancer in his lung along with his pancreas, so it was only going to be chemo -- he said maybe you get a year.

We got 11 months ... 11 mostly great months.

* * * * *

Between the two of us, my wife and I had three cats when we moved in together 13 years ago. She had Silly and Skippy, and I had Scrapper. (Even though it was unintentional, we kept the naming tradition going with our little one, Sasha.)

Of the three, Silly was by far the most laid-back, which came in handy when he was diagnosed with diabetes more than 10 years ago. It meant he required two shots daily, and he never gave us a problem. When it was time for a shot, he'd let us grab the skin on the back of his neck, lift it up and give him his insulin. Then he would go back to whatever he was doing. We're not sure it would have been nearly as easy with Skippy or Scrapper.

Silly was just relaxed about everything. He was never in a hurry, and just liked to hang out in his favorite spots: the futon in our TV room (pictured above, and behind me as I type this), one of the beds upstairs, the cat bed in the window is Sasha wasn't too pesky, out on the deck in the nice weather and the middle cushion of our couch.

But in the last months of his life, Silly added one more spot ... my lap.

Silly always liked people once he got used to them (he would hide if strangers or my brother's dog would come), but he was never big on being held for very long, and while he spent hours sitting next to me on the couch on his middle cushion, he never liked to sit with me until a few months ago. All of a sudden, he couldn't get enough of my lap, to the point where sometimes he'd stand with his paws on my stomach and climb my chest to get face-to-face.

Maybe he was trying to tell me something, trying to get as close a possible before he was gone.

* * * * *

Like the diabetes, not to mention the growth on his liver that caused us to get him checked for cancer in the first place, Silly handled cancer like a champ. Because of the diabetes, we and our oncologist (who was fantastic, by the way) had to be very careful about making sure he ate, and at one point he did go into shock so badly that they kept him overnight in the hospital as a precaution. 

But other than that, he did great, so much so that after a couple months, his treatments were cut from once every three weeks to once every four. The cancer wasn't spreading, his weight was fairly stable, he was eating reasonably well (although he would have stretches where he decided he didn't like his food anymore and we had to change) and while he was a bit slower, he got around well enough to where he wanted to go.

I generally get up in the morning before my wife, especially during the week, and each day, the first thing I would do was look for Silly. I'd usually find him downstairs in one of his favorite spots, and he'd start coming around when he knew it was time to be fed. After mostly alternating before, Sasha took on more of the nagging us to wake us up on the weekend duty, but every now and then he'd wander upstairs to get in one of our faces.

* * * * *

The beginning of the end for Skippy came in January 2013 (Scrapper had died a few years before), when he fell down the stairs. I saw him tumble down the steps, and it was terrifying. He didn't last much longer after that, dying a couple days later.

I heard Silly land awkwardly after he jumped off our bed on one of his rare forays upstairs a few weeks ago, but he got away before I could grab him, and the next thing I heard was the frightening sound of him bouncing down the stairs.

When I got to the bottom of the steps, he was crying, his legs were splayed out underneath him and he had trouble standing up. He eventually settled down, and then it happened again -- the same tumble down the stairs, the same crying.

We brought one of our litter boxes up from the basement and shut the basement door -- one of the things that slowed his fall down the stairs was the wall and rail on one side, which didn't exist going to the basement, and the drop was to a concrete floor -- and I slept downstairs with him for a couple nights just to keep tabs on him.

The first night, he slept with me all night. The second, he kept trying to get away from me and walk around.

Because, you see, Silly was going to give us one last rally.

* * * * *

One thing I hope to never have to do is have a pet put to sleep. So far, it hasn't happened. Scrapper died on our deck after my wife discovered her cowering in the basement, and Skippy died while I held him to my chest in bed.

My brother had to do it with his dog, and my in-laws with one of their cats earlier, and I know it happens all the time, but I would feel incredibly guilty, like I had given up. 

Instead, I hope for the miracle, and after Silly fell down the stairs, it looked like he was going to give us one. He was slower than ever, but legs that had been unsteady were firmly back underneath him. He wasn't eating a lot, to the point where we stopped giving him shots, but he would eat. He was even back to sitting on my lap.

We knew better than to get our hopes up too much, but maybe the falling was a temporary problem and that he wasn't anywhere near done yet.

Then, a few Sunday mornings ago, my wife and I were in the living room, reading the paper, when we heard a thump, followed by a cry. We went into the TV room, and there was Silly on the floor. He had tried to get down from the futon and landed badly. We tried to put him on his feet, but he couldn't stay upright.

We brought him out to the living room, and eventually after we laid him down on the ottoman, the crying got so bad that we wondered how long we should wait before we took him to the hospital to ... you know ...

But whatever pain he was in, it only last for about another hour. My wife and I sat with him, and I repeated what I told him when we first heard his diagnosis, "Fight as hard as you can't, but when you can't fight any more, it's OK to stop."

And so, at age 17, he finally stopped.

He's with his brother and sister now, under a tree in our yard.

RIP, Silly. We miss you tons.

When did I enter 2014?

A co-worker made a request yesterday that left me so flummoxed, I actually inquired why she would do such a thing.

She asked for my phone number.

I don't mind using the phone -- unlike my wife, who prefers to do just about anything else -- but I don't actually do it all that often. Most of my phone calls consist of these four activities:

1. Talking to my parents and grandmother Sunday nights.

2. Calling for pizza Tuesday nights.

3. Yelling at customer service reps.

4. Taking calls from the guys who work for me when I work at home.

And ever since my wife and I ditched our land lines last year in favor of iPhones (I previously had a flip-phone that I pretty much only used for emergencies, but the phone number is the same), not that many people even have my number, which is awesome since I rarely get interrupted at dinner.

However, that's not the reason her request threw me off, to the point where I was worried she was asking because she had some horrible news about work that she could only share on the phone.

It was because there are so many other ways she could reach me. We're friends on Facebook and follow each other on Twitter; in fact, she follows me on personal and work accounts. Why did she need my phone? It seemed so, dare I say ... retro.

As it turned out, she was on a Facebook group message I sent out about work to some of my co-workers earlier in the day, but she doesn't like those, so she wanted, not to talk to me, but to text me about it ... another relatively modern contrivance (at least by my standards) that I never did until I got the new phone and my wife showed me how easy it was.

Instead, she sent me an individual message on Facebook ...

... and I did eventually give her my number.

Giving in on the burger battle

I'm not Sally of "When Harry Met Sally" fame, but rare is the meal that I order without some kind of deletion, addition or change.

I don't like vegetables or mashed potatoes with skins in them, and one of the guys who worked for me used to hear me order turkey subs enough that he developed a frighteningly good impression ("plain turkey, on white ... no, I don't want lettuce or tomato ... just meat and bread").

When I used to get soft drinks with my meal, I always ordered them without ice. Once, to the astonishment of my companions, I sent back a soda not because it had ice in it, but because the waiter brought it without ice and clearly only the amount of soda they'd put in if the drink had ice in it.

Now, I mostly drink water with my meals, so I don't care if there's ice (you can't water down water, after all), but I used to have a problem with servers disregarding my request to not have lemon in my drink until my wife suggested asking for it "without lemon" instead of "no lemon." I have no idea why -- maybe "without" registers because of the extra syllable -- but I can probably count the lemons in my water since then on one hand.

Which brings me to Wendy's.

I've written before about how it baffles me that Wendy's refuses to recognize hamburgers to the point of serving cheeseburgers even when I specifically say the word "hamburger." Much like Niagara Mohawk and mlb.tv, among others, I'm sure one of my rants is on a training video somewhere. (I've also gotten the "do you want lettuce, tomato and onion" line when I've asked for my triple hamburger plain, but far less often.)

But I do love their burgers, so when my wife and I went out for some errands today near a Wendy's, that's where we went for lunch. This time, however, I made a fateful decision.

I surrendered ... threw in the towel ... tapped out ... gave up. When it came time to order, I requested a plain ... triple ... hamburger ...

... without cheese.

I still think it's stupid that Wendy's defaults to cheeseburgers, and just as stupid that their employees either don't realize or are trained not to realize when someone wants a hamburger. But I just didn't feel like fighting it, and I did get exactly what I asked for.

And it was tasty.

Problem that is completely inconsequential in light of the many troubles in our world ... solved.

Oh yeah ... he's still got it

Not a bad way to spend an evening.

There once was a young singer, and his voice was a revelation. My wife and I saw him in concert for our anniversary not long after we were married, and it was terrific.

The young singer is now 33, and the album that first made people take notice is now nearly 13 years old.

Last night, my wife and I went to Tanglewood to see Josh Groban in concert for a second time. Our anniversary was more than a month ago, but my wife bought the lawn tickets as an anniversary gift. Fortunately, we got great weather.

As years go by, artists come and go and various songs catch your attention at any particular time, to the point where if you're flipping through the songs you've downloaded, you skip through a lot of songs in order to hear whatever's at the forefront of your mind at the time.

In recent months, Josh Groban's songs (among others) were among the ones I skipped a lot. It's not like he stopped being good. It's not like I stopped liking his music. But it had reached the point were it was just ... there ... and there was usually something else I wanted to hear.

Then he came out on stage last night, joined by the Boston Pops Esplanade Orchestra (think Boston July 4 celebration) ... and the reasons for his appeal came back all at once.

The voice is still amazing (dumbest review I ever read, and one I wish I could find, was the one that said he had a "generically pleasant voice). The stage patter is much improved, I assume the byproduct of being older and having spent a lot more time in front of audiences.

The songs, particularly the older ones, are the same as I remember them. As the nearly two-hour concert appeared to be winding down, it was like the audience was waiting to hear "You Raise Me Up," and he complied.

Yeah, he's still good. He's still real good.




   

Come one, come all to our Silly Emmys party

It's Emmy time again night, which means it's time for everyone to get together and take part in the most-enjoyable aspect of any awards show ... snarky remarks, wondering how they could have worn THAT, celebrating or bemoaning who won what and generally having a laugh at the proceedings. (The Robin Williams tribute will, of course, be a notable exception. I'm expecting lots of people wondering how the room got so dusty all of a sudden, or who's cutting the onions.)

The festivities here will start around 7ish, or whenever I get the chat fired up, so we can cover the exercise in vapidness that is the pre-show. So make sure you put on your best red-carpet-if-the-red-carpet-is-in-your-house attire and join in the fun! All it takes is a valid social media account -- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.

As always, there are only a few rules:

1. Do not actually come to my house unless you ask first. Otherwise, I will tell you to leave and probably call the cops.

2. Bring your own food and beverage.

3. If you're going to come to my metaphorical house, do not pee in my metaphorical pool.

Hey Facebook, why stop at satire?

In an effort to aid those whose BS detectors aren't up to snuff, Facebook is apparently going to test a "satire" tag for people's news feeds. That way, people who can't tell the difference between what's real and what's fake can save themselves the potential embarrassment.

Although at least one friend of mine considers it a sign of the impending apocalypse, maybe Facebook should do even more.

For example, we've all seen posts/sent posts/seen or sent the email that can't possibly be true, right? That's because it's usually not. (Confirmation bias can play some serious tricks on the mind.) Therefore, perhaps Facebook could hook up with Snopes.

If someone can't wait to inform his or her friends that Barack Obama is the only president not to go to the D-Day Monument on the D-Day anniversary, or that Sarah Palin wanted to invade the Czech Republic after the Boston Marathon bombings (speaking of satire), a little message could pop up saying, "Before you do this, there's something you should know. What you're posting isn't true, and while your like-minded friends will probably say 'See, I knew all along!' when they see it, to everyone else you'll look kind of silly."

And while Facebook is at it, is there any way to build an algorithm that tries to keep people from posting racist, sexist or otherwise bigoted stuff? While I would never say that people shouldn't be allowed to post what they like, maybe a note stating, "This may not be a good idea. You may think that no one outside your circle will ever notice, or that you'll just take it down, but screengrabs are not your friend" would be enough to cause second thoughts. (This wouldn't be a bad idea for Twitter, either.)

I'm no expert at writing computer code, so I don't know if either of these are even possible, but if they are, surely someone at Facebook would know how.

So get on it, Zuckerberg.

(Now, the question is, "Am I being satirical?" Maybe a little, or more than a little ...)

Thoughts from the left side

So today is International Left-Handers Day. I didn't get any cards.

In fact, I didn't even know there was such a thing until a friend of mine (whose husband is left-handed), posted a funny pie chart in which the vast majority of people, when they notice someone writing left-handed, say, "Are you left-handed?"

Being left-handed means using those little scissors with the green handles and wiping ink smudges off your hands. It means always eating with your elbows close to your sides to protect yourself from chicken-winging right-handers and hearing people shout "LEFTY!" when you walk into the batter's box.

"Sinister" and "gauche" have their roots in left-ness, and I'm sure most of us have heard and said "If the left side of the brain controls the right side of the body and the right side of the brain controls the left side, then left-handers are the only people in their right minds" more often than we can count.

But in a world that finds us odd, being left-handed is just ... what I am. And it's not weird at all.

I've made some allowances for a right-handed world. I've known how to cut with right-handed scissors for years, and I was so used to right-handed desks in school that I usually refused on the rare occasions there was a left-handed desk available and someone offered. (To the righties reading this who may ask, "What's the difference?" a right-handed desk has the little area for your books and notebooks attached to the right side of the chair, while it's obviously the reverse for a left-handed desk. The intent is to not have to read or write across your body, but I got used to it.)

If I'm casually driving with one hand on the steering wheel, it's usually my right hand, and for whatever reason, I cannot type on a smartphone with my left hand at all.

Strangely enough, I've come to believe that one of the benefits of being left-handed is that lefties are aware that most of us have two hands. No matter how left-dominant a person is, it is a physical impossibility to be purely left-handed. The world isn't set up that way. However, I know right-handed people who can't do much with their left hand because they've never had to.

Yet using my left hand (or foot) to write, eat, throw, kick, roll a bowling ball, shoot a basketball (badly) or swing a bat or golf club (also badly) is as natural to me as breathing. There was no point where I realized I was left-handed, at least not that I remember, and I didn't have to be taught to do things with my left hand. I just did them, and fortunately, I'm young enough to have missed the era where left-handed kids were encouraged if not forced to change.

Sadly, the one thing I never learned how to do with my left hand was throw a curveball. Otherwise, I might still be pitching in the big leagues in my early 40s and be millions of dollars richer. (Jesse Orosco and Tony Fossas are our patron saints.)

So to all my fellow southpaws out there, Happy International Left-Handers Day. To the right-handers in my life, I like presents, but money and gift cards are nice, too.

Remember when the world was going to end because the computers were messed up?

Today, my wife and I went to Boston to meet up with an old friend of hers who's in town on vacation with his 13-year-old niece.

He's a funny guy, and she seemed like a really great kid. At one point, we were talking about various things she wouldn't know about by virtue of being only 13 -- after all, she was a newborn around the time of 9/11 -- when I brought up Y2K.

Remember Y2K, the worry that because computers used "00" for the year, they would pretty much all stop working at the stroke of midnight Jan. 1, 2000, and therefore cause the entire world to descend into chaos?

I spent New Year's Eve 1999 watching the amazing coverage on CNN, and that night I went to First Night in Albany with my brother and a bunch of his friends, still the only one I've ever been to. We watched a couple performers, walked around a bit in the cold and then watched a countdown on a giant screen set up on the outside of what was Pepsi Arena and is now the Times Union Center.

At midnight, I looked around to see if anything horrible had happened. It didn't appear there were any issues, but then I heard a loud bang. Just when I started to wonder what it was, I turned around to see the fireworks going on behind me.

That was the noise. We all ran down the street to see the fireworks, called our ride to come get us and went back to one of my brother's friends' houses. I then went home and watched some more CNN.

So as I was explaining the Y2K hysteria to the 13-year-old sitting across the table from me, she looked at me a little like I was crazy.

And I have to admit, as I was telling her about it, it seemed pretty silly.

I do seriously wonder about people sometimes

My wife and I went to the local McDonald's drive-through last night after I picked her up from the train. We normally get pizza Tuesday nights (the staff is not just familiar with my regular order of a large pizza with half cheese and half sausage, they know it's us regardless of who calls) and go out Thursday nights, but there was nothing to make for dinner in our house, so to the Golden Arches it was.

The drive-through was a little backed up, so it was a few minutes before we could order, but while I was talking to the disembodied voice on the other side of the speaker, a few people must have gotten their orders in pretty quick succession, because some of the cars in front of me pulled ahead, leaving a gap between me and the corner people pulled around to get to the pay window.

And as soon as I started to pull away, a minivan dive-bombed that very gap. First of all, yes, you can dive-bomb with a minivan (who knew?), and secondly, if I had pulled away a couple seconds earlier, his little power move (again, it's a minivan, so the term "power move" is perhaps more an approximation) would have resulted in a collision, which would have made what followed that much more interesting.

I think we can pretty much all agree that cutting in line is generally not cool, although if you're going to just stare at the cab pulling into the taxi stand during an epic New York City rainstorm, I will do it again. However, there's cutting in line, and then there's cutting in line at a restaurant drive-through after the place you give your order.

This, combined with what I could clearly see was the distinct bright yellow wrapping of a McDonald's cheeseburger, meant a complaint was in the offing.

I will not be such a hypocrite as to denounce complaining, since I have been known to toss off epic rants both in the restaurant and on Facebook about Wendy's staff insisting on giving me a cheeseburger when I ask for a hamburger because hamburgers aren't on the menu, even though anyone with even moderate intelligence above the age of 7 knows that a "hamburger" is a specific thing, and that thing does not have cheese on it.

However, there is at least a tiny bit of protocol to complaining, and nowhere in that protocol is there anything about going back through the drive-through if the problem happened at the drive-through. You park your vehicle, walk inside, flag down an employee and calmly (or not-so-calmly ... see "me at Wendy's") describe the error and seek correction.

So what this guy was doing, which from what I could hear was over requesting two plain cheeseburgers but only getting one, was bad enough. What's worse was that it clearly threw the entire staff off their game.

I do not know the mechanics of a drive-through, since the McDonald's I worked at in college was in a mall and therefore didn't have one. However, there must be a system where the staff knows to take the money and give out the food from the first order on the list to the first car in line, the second to the second and so on.

But when someone cuts that line, clearly no one knows what to do. At the pay window, the kid didn't know how much I was supposed to pay him. Out of sympathy for him due to the jerkwad I just saw him deal with, I calmly repeated my order multiple times, and eventually they got it right.

Then, when I pulled up to the window for my food, they gave me a salad. We did not order a salad. I don't eat salads, and my wife does not get them from McDonald's. I, calmly again, repeated my order, and we eventually did get it.

So all of that was bad enough, and a master class on being an a-hole. Yet as I thought about it more, I realized it was actually worse than I thought.

You see, confronted with an incorrect order, he went through whatever thought process he went through, and decided the best course of action was to go back through the drive-through to address it, even if it meant cutting off a whole line of cars and/or taking the chance that there would either be no breaks in the line or that he would cause an accident.

May I never be driving in the opposite direction from him should he be turning left.

Ten years

Afterglow

I'd like the memory of me to be a happy 

one,

I'd like to leave an afterglow of smiles when

day is gone.

I'd like to leave an echo whispering softly

down the ways,

Of happy times, and laughing times, and 

bright and sunny days.

I'd like the tears of those who grieve to

dry before the sun,

Of happy memories that I leave when life is

done.

That poem is framed on top of my dresser, my wife having given it to me, I'm guessing for a wedding anniversary. It was on the cards handed to mourners at the funeral of my best friend Chuck, who died 10 years ago.

Chuck was 31. It was cancer. The last time I saw him alive was the previous October. He was undergoing treatment in Boston, and so my wife and I went to visit. We watched the Yankees-Red Sox playoff game (the one where Pedro threw Zimmer on the ground) with his mother and sister. He was like he always was ... jovial, upbeat, ready with a wisecrack at any moment.

When I started this here place to share musings about life, I borrowed a phrase from another one of my high school friends, "life's rich pageant." Chuck's life was not only a rich pageant, but it was one where everyone was invited, and everyone was treated like the guest of honor.

When you grow up in a small town, not only does everyone know everyone else, but the kids are likely to have gone to school together pretty much from the first day of school to graduation. At least that's how it was where I grew up; the members of my senior class who had gone to our school since the beginning posed for a picture in one of the kindergarten classrooms, and it was just about half of us.

Because he went to kindergarten in the morning and I went in the afternoon, I don't think I actually met Chuck until first grade, but the next 25 years were full of classroom cutups, baseball games, football on the playground, volleyball in the park, 10-cent wing nights, tennis until they turned the lights off, a New Year's Eve party in an ice storm, my wedding day and so much more than I can possibly remember.

He was my closest friend, my favorite teammate and my best opponent. Yet even as I saw him work his magic for all those years, I never quite got what made him special. Sure, he was kind and funny and warm and a lot of fun to be around, but the secret to his charisma escaped me until recently.

The mother of his two oldest boys asked me to write something about him last year for a project she was putting together so the boys (the older of whom is now in college) could know more about their father. I don't know whatever became of the project, but it gave me a chance to think about the kind of person Chuck was.

And that's when it hit me.

Like most people, Chuck had a crew of regulars that he ran with, but whether it was us, the kids from down the street who would show up to volleyball, my grandfather at the restaurant after my ballgame/bachelor party (without details, when Chuck showed up for the wedding, Grandpa greeted him with, "Hey, Radar"), the customers at the various Friendly's restaurants where he worked or whomever ... not only did he draw people in, he made all of them feel important.

As I said, everyone was the guest of honor.

I get angry sometimes when I think about Chuck. It's not anger over anything he ever did, as I'm not sure we ever had so much as a quarrel, and if we did it never lasted long, but anger as to why he, of all people, had to come down with cancer and die when he was 31 years old.

I get angry that his parents lost a son, that his siblings lost their brother, that his children lost their father ... and yes, although I'm way down the list, that I lost my best friend. And so did a lot of other people.

The organizers of my high school class reunion asked us to bring any pictures we had of Chuck. I brought one from my wedding (where, by the way, he drove the priest batty while leaving the rest of us in hysterics) and gave it to our friend Renee afterward. But he should have been there, at our table, the center of everything. 

We're all in our 40s now, and Chuck should be here with us. When we all talk about times gone by, it should be kicking back somewhere, exaggerating every little thing and laughing our fool heads off, but also creating new memories as we go. 

Those times gone by shouldn't be all we have left of him, but they are, and as angry as him being gone can make me, I know those times gone by and the memories created are mine, and whatever it is that decided to take him away 10 years ago can't take those away.

And while I miss him every single day, Chuck left enough happy memories for the last 10 years, the next 10 years and all the 10 years after that.  

  

  

"Seventeen People," "Two Cathedrals" and one "Newsroom"

Yesterday, I read about "Seventeen People," a website developed by Jon White to analyze his favorite hour of television ever ... the episode of the same name from "The West Wing."

It has actually been a while since I watched "The West Wing," the DVDs long since completed and Bravo no longer showing marathons on pretty much every national holiday. But after I told my wife about it, we cracked open the second season DVD to compare "17 People" to what I believe is considered the show's finest episode, the season-ending "Two Cathedrals."

Without a doubt, "17 People" is astonishing television. Among all the things going on (and one thing White points out is that there were five different stories), to me the standouts are being able to watch Toby think on his way to the realizing that Bartlet wasn't going to run for re-election (the always-brilliant Richard Schiff truly at his best) and the exchange between Donna and Josh where she tells him that, contrary to popular belief, she broke up with her boyfriend and not the other way around.


"If you were in an accident, I wouldn't stop for red lights" ... what a line, what a way to express unyielding devotion. Speaking of lines ... "You get Hoynes."   Once, I thought that meant Bartlet was telling God that he was done with Him, but I have since read that was Bartlet's way of saying he wasn't going to run again. Either way, this is a man who, between publicly acknowledging his MS in the context of deciding on a re-election bid all while dealing with the death of his beloved Mrs. Landingham, is at the end of his rope. And he's at the end of his rope to the point where he would stand in the National Cathedral and curse out God ... in Latin. I didn't know what he was saying at the time, and didn't until I read a translation, but you don't need to be a scholar of Latin to know this devout Catholic, a lifelong follower of the faith, could get so angry that he would question God's motivation and could do so in the church's own language. Then he goes to the press conference, ignores the medical reporter who C.J. had told him would start with a relatively friendly question about his health, gets a question instead about his plans for a second term and proceeds to stuff his hands in his pockets, turn away and smile slightly ... which thanks to a flashback with Mrs. Landingham means we know, without Bartlet saying a word, that he's going to run again. End scene. End "Two Cathedrals." End season. So which way do I fall? As great as "17 People" was, I've always been a "Two Cathedrals" guy, and a "Two Cathedrals" guy I remain. But if you go the other way, I'm not going to fight you. Yet as I was watching, I started thinking about another show, "The Newsroom." I am a huge fan of "The Newsroom." I am aware that many people hold the opposite opinion. There are people I know who like the show and have problems with it. I have heard the Aaron Sorkin misogyny arguments; I don't necessarily notice, but then again, I'm a guy. I freely admit to perhaps needing to check my male privilege at the door.  (The best argument on this front is one I heard from a female co-worker, which was basically that the women in our office don't run off screaming or crying whenever anything bad happens to them. She one of the ones who likes the show, but with reservations.)  So why do I like it? I like that, particularly in the first season, and yes, with the benefit of hindsight, they do cover how journalists often do their job terribly. And you'll never convince me that at least some of the vitriol wasn't because journalists, especially Washington political journalists, really don't like to be told their doing a bad job. (Stephen Colbert's White House Correspondents Dinner routine says hi.) Even in a limited amount of time, far less than he had for "The West Wing," Sorkin, the actors and the actresses have created characters I care about. If you watched it, tell me you didn't love when Sloan absolutely planted one on Don (by the way, "The Newsroom" earns kudos if only for giving me a reason to be a fan of Olivia Munn), and then when Don says, "What I have, can't be taught" ... priceless.
However, right about in the middle of "17 People," the thought hit me ...
... "The Newsroom," as much as I like it, is Sorkin's junior varsity stuff. Not only can he do better, but he has done better, a lot better, and it was on my television that very moment.

A small-town boy in the big city

Hey look ... over there ... the Empire State Building

I live just outside of Boston. I've been to London, Vancouver, Miami, San Diego, Los Angeles, Montreal, New Orleans and a whole bunch of other places.

But New York City is different, especially if you're from a small town in upstate New York like I am. Granted, to some of the people where I grew up, "New York City" is synonymous with all the things they don't like: too big, too liberal, too dirty, too mean, gets all the attention while the rest of the state is ignored, gets all the money while the rest of the state is ignored.

And while I do find it humorous that what passes for "upstate" in some people's minds is basically "all the stuff that's not New York City" -- I once had co-workers excitedly tell me about the intern we were going to have from upstate ... as in Plattsburgh, near the Canadian border (I'm from the Albany area; we weren't neighbors) -- I've always thought of New York as kind of a mythical place.

I actually hadn't noticed the Victoria's Secret ad until just now.

Times Square, Broadway, the United Nations, Central Park, Carnegie Hall, Radio City Music Hall, the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade (even though I've never liked it ) ... with the exception of Central Park, which I rode through a few years ago, these were all just things I've heard of or seen on TV, since aside from Yankee games and a trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art with my wife that included the aforementioned Central Park cab ride, I had made it to my 40s without actually ever having really gone to New York City.

So I was excited when we went to New York for a few days earlier this week, and I'll admit it was in a "Wow ... look at that" sort of way.

Just your ordinary, average one of the most-famous venues in the world.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, and walking around the scaffolding.

I actually asked my wife if there was a sign that said you were in Times Square, or if you just knew. She told me that I would just know, and she was right. From seeing it on TV, the size and the color of the signs have always been what caught my eye, so that was what I noticed most (including one for a rather unfortunate show on Fox) when we got there.

It wasn't until after the show that it hit me ... I saw "Les Miserables" ... on Broadway.

After Times Square, lunch, Central Park and dinner of a hot turkey sandwich that could be spoken of favorably against the ones from the diners in my hometown (as a bit of a small-town diner snob, I can give no higher praise), we went to see "Les Miserables" on Broadway. I actually liked London's West End better, but still, it's "Les Miserables" and it's on Broadway.

By the way, the show was terrific, although I got confused when Eponine didn't sing "On My Own" when I thought she would. Fortunately, the "Les Mis" expert I'm married to reminded me that the order of the songs was different in the movie.

We didn't get to see the U.N. General Assembly chamber, but we did get to see the Security Council chamber.

We didn't expect to be part of history when we went to New York, but we were.

The rain started Tuesday afternoon, and basically didn't stop until Thursday morning. And it was cold, to boot. By the time it was done, New York City had experienced its 10th-rainiest day on record, and the city has a lot of records.

It'll do a lot to ruin your day, and not just because the Yankee game we were supposed to go to Wednesday night got rained out. It was a rain that soaked through your clothes, and it never relented. For another whole day, when I went outside, I braced myself for rain, even after the rain stopped and I was back home.

There actually wasn't a ton to see at the United Nations, especially since the General Assembly chamber was closed for renovations, but we got to walk through a couple committee meetings where everyone looked really, really bored, and we were able to see the Security Council chamber.

So that was cool, but I'll have to get back to New York sometime when it's dry and warmer than 45 degrees.

"Harry" could be the end of the world as we know it

Some people will apparently do anything if they think it will get them here.

Tuesday was my first time in Times Square (more on this in a future blog post), and as I was taking in the lights and the colors and the overall energy of the place, I saw something highly disturbing.

Off to my left, on a huge video board, was an ad for Fox's new show "I Wanna Marry 'Harry.'"

As in Prince Harry ... of Great Britain ... son of Prince Charles and the late Princess Diana ... grandson of Queen Elizabeth II ... brother of Prince William ... brother-in-law of Princess Catherine ... uncle of Prince George ... fourth in line to the British throne ...

... but not really. The producers have found some guy who looks enough like Prince Harry if you squint hard enough and a dozen American women looking for their Prince Charming.

The most-charitable thing I can say is that maybe the whole thing is staged, not just the faux-Harry, but the women vowing for his hand. Maybe the women aren't being fooled, but are actually playing being fooled for the benefit of the television audience.

The reason I say that's the most-charitable thing is because of the alternative ... that there are 12 women (plus however many more were rejected during the casting process) who honestly believe that  Prince Harry, who can probably have just about any woman in the world he wants, would choose his wife on a reality television show ... and that his family would begin to allow such a thing.

Yet I fear this is the case.

And I die a little more inside.