Category: Life

  • Contemplations of a Brook

    We got out of the City for a few days. Where we found ourselves was in the country, on one of our planned vacations, and next to where we are staying is a brook. Where I’m from, we would have called it a creek. Or maybe it’s a stream. Either way, its water rushing over rocks. Nature’s white noise machine. And it is a rushing, turning, moving brook. I dare not wade into it, as I think it would carry me away. The water is clear, and I can only imagine very cold.

    As I have looked at this brook for the past couple of days, I want to know where the source of the water is. I want to know where it is going. The water passes through the property, but I have no gage on the role this water plays in the countryside. Is it spring feed? Does it come from the mountains? Is it created by the rainfall? I know all water makes it to the sea, but does the brook stop off at a pond or a lake?

    At night, when I go to sleep, I hear the rushing of the water, and it is the first thing I hear in the morning. The birds calls around here have to fight to be heard. The movement of water, passing and going. The continuous, calming sound.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Summer Day Camp’s Last Day, Vacations, Tottenham Anxiety

    “Odds and Ends” is my continuing series of random thoughts and follow ups…

    Today is the final day of the kid’s Summer Day Camp, and it went wonderfully well. I think the wife and I over did it asking the kid if she wants to go back next year. The answer is yes, and hopefully, we can give her a month there, instead of two weeks. The other thing that made me happy about the camp is that our daughter had no qualms about being away from us for 6 hours, and in fact, wanted it to be longer. To me that says she is in a healthy place with being away from her parents; She wants to separate and have her own experiences, like a normal kid.

    Now we start the stretch of vacations. Yes, that is means more than one this Summer. We were lucky if we got away for one vacation a year in the past. And most of the time a “vacation” was just leaving home for a few days, and could also mean visiting family, which sometimes can be the opposite of relaxing. For us to go someplace and actually relax and not doing anything has been rare. This summer, we’re getting two trips. I feel very spoiled in saying that, even a little self-conscious. I know this is due to Covid and being trapped home for the past 15 months, but wow! I really want to get the hell out of this apartment for a couple of days.

    So… Tottenham is a bit of a shit show right now. Have they even picked a manager yet? Is it Nuno? And Harry Kane rumors are all over the place, but Tottenham has him on contract for one more year, and I still hold that Kane made that, “I want to be on a teams that wins championships” statement to get management to do something, like build a team, or keep the talent they have (like Son) and solve that defense issue they have in the last ten minutes of every match! Friendly matches start up next week, so I hope to see some changes myself.

  • The Jobs I’ve Had

    Over the past couple of mornings, I have been thinking about all the jobs that I have had. From my first job sacking groceries at 16, to the last one, at the start of the pandemic, running a kids dance studio. And I will define “job” as paid employment. Not work, because I have worked on a lot of things, and never got paid.

    The first job was at a grocery store. Then I worked as a telemarketer, and at a Blockbuster Video. I worked at a Barnes and Noble, and delivered pizzas, then made pizzas, and then managed a pizza shop. I managed a costume shop at my university, and then did marketing for an outdoor theatre. I also did marketing for a small publisher, and a little copy editing, too. I was a background investigation specialist, and theatre director. Then I was a temp around NYC, doing a lot of emailing for different companies. Then I was an office manager for a rehearsal studio. I was a working actor, puppeteer, director, and even did a short stint as a producer. Then I managed another rehearsal studio, then ran all of their operations, and finally I was the managing director of the whole joint. Then I was the managing director of a different joint. I got paid to write a review of a B movie for an online magazine. Then I was the operations director for an art center, thus ending on running the kids dance studio.

    I think that’s all the job’s I’ve had. I might have missed one or two.

    And I can say with 100% Honesty, I worked the hardest for the jobs that paid me the least.

  • ODDS and ENDS – Euro Final: England v Italy, Now What… Olympics?, The Emotion of Summer Vacation

    “Odds and Ends” is my continuing series of random thoughts and follow ups…

    Shock beyond shock, I’m going to talk about the Euro 2020/21 Final on Sunday between England and Italy. Looks like I am only about 50% correct when it comes to picking finals, so I am pretty happy about that. It’s not a done deal for England, who I thought didn’t look great against Denmark, and now they have a real competitor, Italy, who is playing at the top of their game. It should be a good match, and no matter what the outcome, this is the best an English team has done is 50 years, so hats off to this squad.

    And then after Sunday… no real big sporting events to look forward to. Some of you might point out the Olympics, but man, should that even be happening? Shit is bad in Japan with Covid, and there won’t be any spectators, and as we have learned in the past year, sports without fans is kind’a dull. I’m not knocking any of the athletes in Tokyo, but this sure must be a little of a letdown for them as well.

    We are two weeks into Summer Vacation, one week in on the Summer Day camp, which leaves nine weeks until school starts up again, and according to my kid, Summer goes on forever. I remember that feeling of optimistic listlessness. Nothing to do, not wanting to do anything, needing to do something, and it felt like this wonderful inertia would go on forever. I thought I remember what Summer Vacation felt like, but I had forgotten. It’s like I knew the right words to say when an adult talks about it, but having the weight of the correct emotion behind it was lacking in me. Now I see it again, living through the excitement of my daughter’s vacation.

  • Again, Parking in New York City

    I have a love/hate relationship with parking the car in the City, and also a strange affinity for waiting in the car for the street sweeper to go by.

    I have issues when it comes to parallel parking, so I have to find a very specific type of spot for me to put our car in. Mainly, it has to be a spot I can just pull into, and not have to parallel park. As you can imagine, it is difficult to find these pull in spots, thus I am resigned to spending 10+ minutes badly parallel parking, blocking traffic, going up on the curb, and doing this “front and back” rocking of the car until I can settle into the spot. It’s an awful spectacle to behold.

    As for waiting for the sweeper to go by, that’s more like a coordinated dance of cars. If things go right, I said “if”, then everybody pulls out and then pulls back in, following a nice orderly fashion. Some people are even willing to help guide your car back into your spot. If we work together, we all win.

    And then there are days like today, when I sit in the car, waiting for the traffic cop and sweeper to go by… but they never show up. I got to our car early, and sat, and waited. Normally, you can see the traffic cop coming down the street checking to see if people are on their cars, if not, the car gets a ticket. Then, usually five to fifteen minutes later, the sweeper truck comes by. This fanfare usually happens within the first thirty minutes.

    Not today.

    A whole hour went by, and nothing. That left the final thirty minutes, which only made me edgier. Was this their plan, to catch people off guard? I checked 311 on parking rules, and they were in effect. What was happening? What would cause both the cops and the sweeper to be delayed?

    When we reached the end of time, 10am, I and everyone else on the block emerged from their cars, with a look of confusion. What is going on? Is this a trick? Do we have the day wrong?

    I mean, good things don’t happen when it comes to parking in New York.