Blog

  • A Small Home

    We live in a very small apartment in New York City, as do most people around here. I’m not complaining, as there is space for everyone to work, relax, and have some “alone time” in their respective rooms. We are very good and packing things away, and not letting space go unused. Our apartment is full, but in no way feels cluttered. Part of the reason for that is that we do have a storage space. But half of that unit is full of books.

    About once or twice a week, we start talking about buying a place Upstate. Not sure if we will ever really do it, or afford it, but in these conversations we dream of owning a weekend/vacation place. Maybe we rent it out for extra money, maybe we keep it all to ourselves. What we do know is that we can’t leave NYC for the foreseeable future, so we can’t buy a home too far away.

    Lately, I’ve had this crazy idea, which is that we buy some land, and have a small house built on the property – like a small two bedroom/one bath. Something very modest, quaint, and a basement would be cool, but it would be a house that is as far and away from a McMansion. (My brother’s house is so big; our apartment could fit in his livingroom. Not kidding on that.) I would be fine with a two-story, but all said and done under 1,000 square feet. Hell, it could be less that 800. The point here would be that with a decent piece of land, we could also add small out dwellings; like a studio for me, and an office for the wife. A guest house even. Maybe something for the kid. Who knows; I’m spending money I don’t have?

    I guess what I am describing here is wanting to build a complex; a compound. But one that doesn’t involve a cult. In one sense, I want to keep living in a small dwelling. But in another sense, I want to have several small dwellings so we can all go and disperse to them from time to time.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Slipping on Ice, How’s Your Colon?, and Call Your Mom

    (Look for the silver lining)

    I had to do the Alt Side Parking dance this morning. You know, move the car out of the way for the street sweeper. Also, if you didn’t hear, we had a real snow storm on Tuesday. Though most of it’s gone, what’s left is the snow that melted and then refroze. So there are patches of ice everywhere. And as I was walking to my car this morning, I stepped on a patch. I lost my balance for a second but was able to catch myself and stop from falling. To do this, I had the yelp in a frightened manner and wave my arms around. The point here is that I didn’t fall though I might have looked silly. And I know this because a guy driving by rolled down his window to yell, “We all saw you almost bite it!” New Yorkers will never miss an opportunity to bust someone’s balls. Ahh.. it was funny. I laughed it off and the guy wishes me a good morning.

    I have now reached the age where friends are not only starting to post pictures about their pets and kids, but also on how they have to go get colonoscopies. I mean, when you reach a certain age, you should get it checked out, so I don’t view this as oversharing. More like Gen-X is ready to take on cancer.

    She’d like to hear from you.

  • Haircuts

    I am a balding, middle aged man. I look like my father, who is a very spry senior man, who has been bald since the first time I remember seeing him. My brothers are bald, and my paternal grandfather was way bald! To be in this family is to be a bald man. I knew this when I was a child, and my uncle, my dad’s brother who was also bald, told me that I needed to grow my hair long before it’s too late. We all knew it was coming. And I did grow my hair very long for a period of time in the late 90’s.

    Around the age of thirty, I started to notice that things were beginning to thin out on top. I wasn’t too worried about it. But the year that I was engaged and leading up to our wedding, I did use minoxidil to keep what hair I had. It was an act of vanity as I wanted to look as youthful in the ceremony and pictures as possible. Somewhere around forty, my hair just took off for the hills. I started wearing a ballcap, not because I was ashamed of my head, but because one Summer I got an awful sunburn on the top of my head, and now I can really feel how cold winter winds can be.

    I say all of this because haircuts are an odd conundrum for the balding man. What hair I have left still grown and needs to be cut and shaped. Yet the quantity of hair I have is significantly less than the average head. I had a barber. He was a good man. But I began to notice that what used to take him thirty minutes to do, was now taking ten minutes to accomplish. And I could tell he was trying to stretch it out.

    That is why I started cutting my own hair with a shaver. Sure, I save money, but now is a chore I need to do every three months. The shaving part is easy; cleaning up all the little hairs is a pain in the butt. (My father still sees a barber, but I know he goes for the social aspect.) I have gotten pretty good at it. Start to finish, including cleanup, about thirty minutes.

    I have thought about growing out my hair, my kid wants me to do it, but I don’t think I’m the type of guy who can pull off bald on top, long in back. Besides, I already had long hair.

  • Nothing in Particular

    It would be easy to write something about Valentine’s Day. I could put something down about my amazing and wonderful wife. I could write a quick whim about my daughter and her excitement this year of buying cards for us, and her school party. That would clearly be the easy choice.

    I could also talk about the anniversary of the Pale Blue Dot photograph, but honestly, there is no way to top let alone approach what Carl Sagan already wrote about it.

    I even thought about working on something about a couple of new bands that I have started listening to of late: The Hails, Sure Sure, and Kid Bloom. But I have never felt very confident in writing about music.

    What I am is wishy-washy today.

    I spent a good hour at a local coffee shop this morning after dropping off the kid at school, just writing in my journal, and that kind’a zapped me. Which sucks, because I have a good bit of free time today, and there are several things I want to work on. So, I need to push through this block. I’m at 186 words before I started this sentence, and I aim for at least 250 for a post, which means I’m closing in on my goal.

    And I have a storage unit project that I need to start on. That’s just finding a new, cheaper unit that’s closer to our apartment. But I have to look, and make phone calls… That feels like a Thursday thing.

    Anyway, this post is clearly going to be a part of my Greatest Hits Blog book.

  • SNOW DAY!

    For real! No Fooling! An honest to God snow day has befallen the City!

    Sadly, most kids have to “remote in” to school today, so they aren’t off.

    But not my kid!

    Nope, her school closed, and she gets the joy of having a bonus day! She got to sleep in, and when she did wake up, she got a super sugary cereal for breakfast. There was an art project of making her own trading cards. Then we went out in the snow and walked the dog. That took it out of us, so we had hot chocolate and she curled up in her bed to read the first book in A Series of Unfortunate Events. Then she finished her homework, and is watching TV next to me on the couch as I work.

    Looking out the window, huge fat and chunky wet snowflakes are blowing sideways. For me, a kid who grew up in Texas, snow has never stopped being amazing and magical. I also remember that on those completely rare occasions when it would snow in North Texas, as we’re talking a total of 2 inches was like a blizzard there, there was this running clock in my head that I had to get out there and play in it before it went away, because it would go away. My parents grew up in Illinois, so snow was nothing new to them, and I know there were highly amused at my excitement for that least amount of snow.

    My kid has a much more chill attitude toward snow, clearly due to being born in a blizzard and having grown up in NYC. Though we haven’t had a major snow event in almost two years, we do get one good storm a season. The kid owns her own sled after all.

    But the day feels lazy and relaxing. The running clock in my head doesn’t tick anymore, and we’ll hit up the local sledding hill after lunch.