Waiting to Get There. Usually on the A/C/E in Chelsea, New York City.

It’s always a dilemma of epic proportions: whether to go to Free Day at a museum or to pay to get in some other day.  On the one hand, *Free Day,* emphasis on the Free.  On the other hand, when you go to Free Day, you’re packed in the museum with the kind of people who go to non-profit institutions on the day they don’t have to pay. We went to see the Leonard Cohen exhibit at the Jewish Museum on Free Day. It was the only day we could go. I don't know where the summer went, but Leonard will be headed out next week or something so the clock was ticking to get our asses up there. Leonard Cohen at the Jewish Museum, UES The exhibit was more like a video installation than an exhibit in the way you'd probably picture an exhibit. The rooms were dark. Beanbags and benches took up most of the floor space. And the place was jammed. Like Free Day jammed. Like the standing room only in the back spilled out into the hallway. In the middle of one of the video...

The house we rented for the week was right on a lake. This was the view sitting on the deck drinking coffee in the morning. My father has a new hobby - picking locks. While the rest of us all lounged around on the deck, pop spread out his lock picking tools on the kitchen table. He went down in the garage and rummaged up an assortment of Masterlocks. He picked them. On Wednesday we opened up birthday presents. Pretty much everybody except me and Mary had birthday presents. Tom received a gift from my dad - a lock picking kit of his very own. Tom is a quick study. He opened up the practice lock that came with the kit in record time and then moved on to the Masterlocks from the garage.  Now he's graduated to door locks. I have mixed feelings about this. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, Ella and Jack played a little game they called "William Tell." With an avocado and a rubber-band shooter. My brother decided that eye protection was a must-have so so...

Let’s say you lay out a jigsaw puzzle in a vacation rental. You wonder how hard it is to get a family to go into full OCD puzzle mode for 24 solid hours until the last piece is snuggled into place. You decide to study my family unit. I’d say your odds are good, but the goods are odd. No one ever accused any of my immediate relations of being within shouting distance of normal. Thank God, that would be boring. My father, for example, spent the entire first day of our vacation in an outfit comprised entirely of green spandex. Green socks, green bike shorts, green bike shirt, green hat. All green, but varying in their shade of fluorescence. He had an outfit change for dinner and emerged in full-on red, white and blue. No one commented on any of these style choices, however. Pop's fashion sensibilities haven't altered much in the past forty years. At this point, we'd all get worried if he showed up anywhere in a navy blue polo and khakis.  Pop was odd man out, howeve...