Category: Life

  • Summer is Almost Over

    We have eighteen days until the kid starts school, which means that we have eighteen days left of Summer. It was a busy summer with day camps, visiting friends, and a vacation to boot. This made those first nine weeks fly by. Looking at the final two weeks, I have this feeling that we don’t have enough time to get ready for school, and the new routine that will follow.

    We’ll have to do some school shopping. We were able to get a rain coat for the kid while up in Maine, but she needs a new winter coat and winter shoes. Let’s not forget that out kid shot up a whole inch this Summer, so we need to do another round of clothes shopping. And school supplies. Always needing school supplies.

    Then there is the anxiety of the Fall. We were told, and our planning, on having the kid attend in person class, but with everything going on, I don’t feel like that is a guarantee. I have this nagging thought in the back of my head that if things get worse with Delta, then we might have to do remote school again. This is one of the reasons why I haven’t taken the kids “school corner” down in the living room. The other is that I am lazy.

    I fear if we do remote school again, that it will just crush all of us. The kid has told me that she wants to be back at school to see her friends, learn, and have fun. She’s excited about being there, and I want her to have that. For the wife and I, school means a return to normal. It means the chance for me to go get a part time job, and help us dig out of the financial hole we are in. And also, school means that I get a little time to write as well.

    So much still feels up in the air, but everything has been up in the air for like two years now. I wouldn’t say we are getting used to it, but we would like a break from this ride. Just eighteen days till the next chapter.

  • Vacationing in Maine

    Our family vacation last week was in Maine, and this was the second time that we have stayed up there. The first time was three years ago, and that was along the coast, south of Portland. This time around we stayed up north in Newry, not too far from the Sunday River Ski Resort. We were sort of counter programming our vacation, as most people want to be near the water in the summer, and we did get a better deal being near the mountains.

    I’m not sure when Maine showed up on our vacation radar. We had visited Vermont before, and loved it. The wife’s extended family is from Connecticut, so we have spent time there with them, as well as in New Hampshire. A few years ago, I almost got a job in Rhode Island, and we went up there to check it out, and did really fall in love with that state. (Funny how two Texans fell for the smallest state.) Yet, Maine never crossed our minds as a place to visit.

    Then three years ago, my parents were taking a full East Coast road tour in their RV, and as they came through New England, we rented a car and joined them. This was over Memorial Day and the start of June 2018, and where we all ended up going was Rhode Island, which we all had a good time at.

    But when we got up to our vacation place at Camp Ellis, Maine, just four blocks from the beach, the trip took on a different dynamic for all of us. At night, you would go to sleep listening to the sound of the waves coming in on the ocean. The kid played in the sand at the beach, I had martinis with my folks, and the house we stayed in had a lobster pot, crackers and picks, so the wife tried her hand steaming lobsters for us. It was a good time, and a great vacation.

    It was also the last time I got to spend time with my mother before she died. I know you can never recreate past experiences or memories, but it was fun being up there again – with the cool evenings, and beach days, and even going to the L.L. Bean store in Freeport.

  • I Met Tourists Today

    Normally, I grocery shop for the family on Wednesday, but this week, I thought I would move it up a day. For me to grocery shop is an event that takes up a couple of hours. I hit up the grocery store in our neighborhood, but there are some staples that are just cheaper at Trader Joe’s. The nearest one is at 93rd Street, which means a subway ride. Having been vaccinated since May, I have returned to using mass transit to run errands, so I have been venturing out of our neighborhood all Summer.

    Today went normal. I took the local train down to 96th Street, walked along Central Park West to 93rd, and then cut over to Columbus Ave. It wasn’t busy in the Trader Joe’s, so I was in and out in about thirty minutes. Totally normal. I walked back to the 96th subway station listening to music while carrying my bags.

    I go down into the station, swipe my card through the turnstile, and then I hear loudly, “Good Morning!” shouted at me by a middle-aged woman in a mask. Then she shouted it at me two more times; “Good Morning!”

    Now, as any New Yorker would do, when someone shouts at me, I ignore them. The second shout, I will look at you to make sure you aren’t about to attack me. The third shout will be the closer look, to check to see if you are crazy or maybe a normal person.

    When I checked to see if this woman was crazy, I saw that she was flanked by a middle-aged man, and two teenagers – a guy and a gal – all in masks. When I stopped to look at them, that’s when the teenagers said in a very thick Italian accent, “We are looking for Brooklyn Bridge.”

    And it hit me – They were tourists!

    I mean, I didn’t think foreign tourists were allowed in the country, but that notwithstanding, I fell into the old role of “New Yorker Giving Directions.” Not that there was much I could do. There isn’t a straight shot to the Brooklyn Bridge. My thought was to go to City Hall on the N R W line, but that meant a transfer at 34th, if you took the B from 96th. See, not easy, and not easy to explain to people who aren’t that familiar with English. Anyway, I got them on a downtown B, and I guess they will figure it out from there.

    New York is Back, Baby!

  • ODDS and Ends: Tottenham and Kane, Dallas Cowboys, Project Management for the Home

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

    And… Have I mentioned that I know nothing about the Premiere League? Looks like everything I thought about the Harry Kane saga was wrong. Was my theory based on anything that I had read by professional sports writers? Oh, golly no. It was a gut feeling, and it was clearly wrong. I still don’t understand what Tottenham is doing, nor do I understand what Kane will do if he doesn’t get his trade, which he clearly wants as he hasn’t shown up for training, and the season starts on the 15th.

    Also in sports, the Dallas Cowboys played a preseason game, and I could not have given two craps about it. It was pre-season after all. In all honesty, I’m not very excited about the team this year. Sure, it will be nice to see Dak back on the field, but other than that, not much going on there. The Cowboys play the Bucs on the first game of the season in about a month, and not looking forward to it.

    I’m a stay at home parent, I think most of you know that, and I have been thinking that there really isn’t a project management app for people like us. I was in operations in the not-for-profit world, and in that line of work, there were apps and programs to help you manage multiple projects. I can’t seem to find anything for a household. I don’t need something with SLACK integration or any of that crap. Just basic project management.

  • Who Visits Gettysburg, and Why?

    This weekend, we went down to VA to pick up our kid who had been visiting friends for a week. The drive back to NYC would take us through the hellscape that is the I-95 corridor from DC to NYC. It can take anywhere from 5to 8 hours just to get home. So, we thought we’d go a new route; Virginia to Maryland, to Pennsylvania, to New Jersey and then NYC. Waze said it would take seven hours, which was then same amount of time if we took the direct I-95 path.

    Anyway, the halfway point was sort of close to Gettysburg. As I am a pretty huge Civil War buff, and a big Lincoln Fan, we decided that a stop at the National Military Park and Battlefield would be a good idea.

    But this isn’t going to be about the battlefield or the park. This is about the people who come and visit Gettysburg, and why.

    When I encountered people, it was at the Visitor Center, which had a good introduction to the park, and the bathrooms. The first observation I made was that the people visiting are overwhelmingly white, myself included. The other thing I noticed was a lot of former and current military, and I knew this by the veteran caps and t-shirts that they were wearing. And then there were lots of conservative people, and I mean lots of them. I can say this with confidence due to the t-shirts, and bumper stickers that said, “Don’t Tread on Me,” “Blue Lives Matter,” and “Trump.”  And also, lots of guys sporting AR-15 buttons and pins. That’s not to say that there weren’t other people out there, because there were. I would describe this group as people who weren’t in other two groups, but still white.

    The people I did talk to were all nice, and very friendly. We brought the dog with us, and throw in a kid, and I came across as pretty non-threating. What I got from people is that they wanted to see Gettysburg to honor and respect the history. Also, the thought that “things were simpler then,” came up often, which I found fascinating as a civil war seems to me to be a very complicated thing.

    For me, I’m just happy that Americans want to experience our history. The reasoning behind it is never the same for each person, and that’s okay. Some are there for the fighting and the war, others are there to see where our new birth of freedom began.