Tag: Water

  • Magic of a Pool

    I don’t know if you heard but the public pools are open in New York City! My kid is over the moon at this development.

    For my kid, when it comes to ranking the best Summer Events; First is always the last day of school, and second is when the pools open!

    And I get it, pools are great, especially when you are a kid. Pools are magical! They are indulgent, and refreshing, and an aquatic playground! When you were a kid, and you had to stay at a hotel, weren’t you more excited to do it if it had a pool? Of course, you were! Pools, even crappy motel pools, are the best thing on a vacation. Again, for a kid.

    I remember when I was a kid, and asking a friend that when he’s gone on vacation, would be okay if I hopped the fence and swam in their pool while they were away. As an eleven-year-old boy living in stupidly hot Texas, this seemed like a reasonable request. My friend ratted me out to his patents and I had to promise that I would swim in their pool while they were away. AND his parents made me tell my parents to ensure I wouldn’t do it. (Now that I am a parent, I can see why they were concerned about a strange kid swimming in their pool while they were away, but at the same time – C’mon man!) For the record, I didn’t swim at their place while they were gone.

    Swimming Pool!

    A magical words.

    Sounds like freedom, and endless days of adventure and excitement.

  • The Heat

    I hate hot weather, in general. Sure, on vacation, down near a beach, warm weather is pleasant and fun to be in. Having a little sweat near a pool or the ocean is always acceptable. But what I am talking about is my despisement for hot weather.

    Though I was born in Illinois, I spent most of my childhood, and the early part of my twenties in Texas, which is a place known for hot weather, in case you having been living under a rock, which is a nice place to cool down in Texas. Summer does last from May to, sometimes, the start of October. When I was a kid, it didn’t bother me, it just was what it was – Summer is the hot time of the year. As I got up to high school, the heat really started to bother me, and when I got to my twenties, I hated the heat. The odd thing was that in my twenties, I was doing outdoor theatre in the Texas Summer. Somehow I was okay with that, but I think that had to do with the amount of beer I was drinking.

    Living in New York has been an improvement, though not an escape from the heat. Oh, it’s not as hot here, but living on the water means we get the added bonus of humidity. That is what makes July and August awful up here. Everything is sticky, and the City smells worse for some reason. The silver lining is that by September, things do begin to cool down.

    I say all of this because we have just started the Summer of 2023. The kid’s off of school, and we still have a few weeks to kill before camp and vacations start. Right now, we are all squatting in front of air conditioners, trying not to move, like splooting squirrels.

    I don’t think there is any hope for a person like me on this planet. Things keep getting warmer, and I don’t know how far north I want to move. I think about Vermont and New Hampshire, but the locals there keep telling me that most people can’t handle the winters. Sure, I know they are out to scare the New Yorkers from moving to their state, and mission accomplished. I don’t want to shovel your feet of snow, New England. I just would like a cool place to stay for the Summer.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Taking Water, Princeton, and Distraction

    (Smokin’ and Drinkin’ on a Tuesday night…)

    The wife and I have been taking tours of other schools around NYC. The kid is in a good school, but we just wanted to see what else is out there – weighing options. On all of these tours, they offer the parents free water, which is normal. But having done a couple of these now, I noticed that there are two different types of people when it comes to free water; either you take the water because you are thirsty, or you take the water only because it’s free.

    Princeton is the only team left in the Men’s NCAA Basketball tournament that is a double digit ranked team. And as such, I have to keep rooting for them. And I am supporting FAU as they are #9. Also, I am really going out of my way to hope and pray that Alabama and Houston lose tonight. Even though I have a funny feeling Alabama could take the whole thing.

    I get distracted very easily. For the past half hour, I went down a rabbit hole of looking at information on the death of Horatio Nelson. Why? No real reason. I know that he was shot and killed at the Battle of Trafalgar, but I didn’t know much more that that. After he died, his body was placed in a cask of brandy mixed with camphor and myrrh. I am assuming that this was a normal way to preserve a body for a long voyage back home, but did that mean that the Royal Navy had casks of brandy on ships for this reason? Or was it that a cask of brandy was the only thing around that could be used? I couldn’t find any information to answer that question. See… I got distracted.