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

And here we are, at the final post of National Blog Posting Month, 2021. Here's me finishing with a flourish. I leave you with this clip from the musical Hadestown. I saw Hadestown in March 2020 with Mary and Ella. I think we saw it the day before Broadway closed down for the pandemic. So it is entirely possible that I saw the last show of that year. Last show, last post. So very tidy. I need to make a little bit of a disclaimer before you click play on this video. It's a f*ing earworm this one. I've been humming it under my breath for a solid week. And this isn't the first time this has happened. If I'm being entirely honest, one of the reasons I'm posting it here is so I can find it easily. Anyway, beware. Or enjoy. Probably both. Also thanks to Tom who read every post this month. If you did too, thank you very much and send me a text because I probably know you. 

 I have my very first (since COVID) in-person work meeting tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn. It's in Connecticut, this meeting, so I'm writing this from the hotel where I'm staying tonight. I drove up here earlier with a colleague. Our plan was to meet in a parking lot at 3:30 this afternoon in Jersey, and then carpool. When I pulled up to the parking lot, there was one car in the lot. It was a blue minivan and there was a guy in it.  Similar to this photo, there was one car in the parking lot where I was supposed to meet Drew. Must be Drew, I thought. At least by the process of elimination. For a brief moment, it crossed my mind that the guy in the minivan looked kind of African American and Drew is ... not. But then my mind rationalized that the minivan must have tinted windows or something. Anyway, I pull up and get out of the car. And the guy is with great certainty a Black man who is not Drew. He rolls down the window and says very kindly, "Can I help you?...

We bought our sofa on November 27, 2009. I know this because I found the receipt last week. It would have been stellar to have written this blog post yesterday, on the twelfth anniversary of its purchase. But alas, I did not. We'll all just have to make do with a twelve year + 1 day commemoration. The couch is holding up pretty well, I'd say. We got it from Crate & Barrel, although it's a color that doesn't seem to be available anymore. This is concerning because we may be in the market to replace a couple of the cushions in one very specific location: Dead center. Le center of le couch Dead center is where Tom plops his heiney.  He says it's the only spot worth watching television from. It is inconceivable to watch television off-center, apparently. One must sit squarely on the crack between two couch cushions. It is imperative. Apparently.  I am going to restrain myself from making a little pun about other cracks besides the crack between the sofa cushions rig...

This whole entire long weekend, I kept thinking it was Sunday night. Every evening since Wednesday, I'd have a moment where I'd be all like, oh damn, back to work tomorrow!  And then this glorious revelation of, ha ha ha! No work tomorrow! More days off! Today is the last day that I can gleefully know that I'll be sleeping in tomorrow. Ugh.

 Probably the day after Thanksgiving and four days before the end of NaBloPoMo is as good a day as I'll ever get to relate my personal solve for acid reflux.  Devising my own solution was pretty much my only option since I seem to be one of those people who can't take PPIs (like Zantac, etc). They make me feel horrible . You'd think that more doctors would advise patients about waves of just feeling miserable as a possible side effect, since, at least in my experience, it was pretty nasty and I only connected the dots back to the PPI because I was randomly on drugs.com looking into something. Anyway, here's what worked for me. It took maybe 4-6 weeks, but I no longer have acid reflux. It's been maybe five months now of feeling symptom free. This is something since acid reflux runs in my family and I had it pretty bad.  Occasionally, I've felt the start of acid reflux again, but when it does, I snap into action and redouble doing all my things (ie Steps 1-5 below...

Got this cat gif today While a little cheesy and filthy with bitmojis, I really do kinda like all the texts from friends and family wishing me a Happy Thanksgiving. It's like the 2021 version of a holiday card, except instantaneous and bi-directional. What is Thanksgiving without Baby Yoda? Claudia was at the parade this morning.

So apparently yesterday, mom, pop and one of the neighbors were standing out front the garages in their retirement community. They see Margaret, who lives upstairs, driving over yonder in her Mercedes. She's on the other side of a traffic island, headed their way.  She goes up a curb, through some grass, mows down a small tree, comes down off the curb and rolls to a stop nearby. My parents and the other neighbor stand there with their eyeballs popping out of their heads and their mouths hanging open. Mom says Margaret told them she was just taking a shortcut. I say maybe Margaret shouldn't be driving anymore. Pop says Margaret keeps running into the wall of her garage. Her car is all banged up and she gets flat tires all the time. Tom says maybe Margaret shouldn't be driving any more.

https://rubinmuseum.org/page/the-tibetan-buddhist-shrine-room I was telling Greg that when I originally decided to become a member at the Rubin Museum a couple years ago, I had this vision of myself looking up from my laptop around like 3pm on some work-from-home workday.  Your average Thursday, say.  I would look up and make the decision to walk over to the Rubin Museum and head to the shrine room on the fourth floor. I would sit on one of the benches in there and take deep breaths and think deep thoughts. It would be incredibly serene and definitely living my best life and all. This has happened exactly zero times.

Remember this scene from the Holy Grail movie?  We were walking home along 17th Street at midnight minding our own business and get a load of this:  It's a full-size replica of the wooden rabbit from the movie! That black car there had a parking ticket on the windshield. The rabbit did not. The ears fell off at some point, I guess. Tom and I both stopped in our tracks and stared at the rabbit. We knew it looked familiar. It didn't take long to solve the mystery. We've both seen the Holy Grail movie forty times. In fact, we even saw the Holy Grail Broadway play featuring whatshisface Niles from Frazier. The next day, I was walking down 17th, this time with Greg. We came upon a middle-aged gentleman circling the rabbit. A not-so-happy middle-aged gentleman, I might add.  The gentleman said he lives in the building right here (he points behind him) and then snaps into a whole big rant about how there is a homeless man living in the rabbit.  Just that morning, says the g...

 First, Greg and I went to the Sullivan Street Tea and Spice Company and we bought tea. Of course, as you do in a tea shoppe.  Then we went to the Rubin Museum on 17th Street. Oh, neat a fancy tea pot: A fancy tea pot at the Rubin Museum of Art! So apropos because we both just bought tea!  Then we read the sign: Ewer Made from Human skulls Long pause as we both absorbed this new and vital information. They probably won't be selling these in the gift shop.

  Text from Tom. Wait a second. Matt has an evening to himself and he's going, where, to Madison Square Garden to see ... Some ice miracles? I'm guessing Dorothy Hamil's granddaughter doing some on-ice triple spins and leaping? By himself, he's going?  Me picturing the Miracle on Ice show in my head OK, fine. Someone just told me that the Miracle on Ice was a hockey game and there's a movie now or something. Honestly I'm not happy to hear this. I was looking forward to deeply and seriously hearing Matt talk about ice trapezes or ice Tinkerbell or whatever else the non-show may have included. I'm sure the ice routines would have been true spectacles. And now I'm not going to hear about it. That the Miracle on Ice is actually a hockey game does make a lot more sense in context of Matt, however.

We kicked off the evening over at the Norwegian Seamen's Church. Right now, it's their holiday fair . In case you are wondering what's on offer at the jule marknad, it's mainly knit goods, candy and Christmas trolls made out of organic materials such as reeds and sheep pelts. We bought dish cloths because I love this kind of dish cloth. They're Swedish of course but none of the Norwegians seemed perturbed by this thematic inconsistency. Or cultural approbation if you want to go over the top. Bente pointed out a sweater similar to one that her mother had knitted her. It had trim that was red with some designs woven into it. It's not a Christmas sweater. It's a regular old sweater in Norway. I don't tell Bente, but it does have a little bit of Christmas flair. And it's being sold at a Christmas market, so there's also that. Bente wore this sweater to work one time mid-February and someone from Long Island told her it was a nice Christmas sweater.  ...

The operating theater Bruce had an operation yesterday. Minor thing, but they had to knock him out. The anesthesiologist said, "We are giving you ketoralac. It is a COX-2 inhibitor." Bruce, on the table, interjects. "I don't think ketoralac is a COX-2 Inhibitor." The anesthesiologist got all tight lipped and stopped explaining drug mechanisms after that. I mean Bruce is a doctor who specializes in these kinds of things but still. Not a good way to make friends before surgery. I'm confident Bruce and I will discuss this incident at length when I see him on Saturday.

Eric the Vampire speaking his native tongue Color me surprised that one time watching True Blood when Eric the Vampire and Godric the Vampire launched into a conversation speaking their native Vampire language. As I read the subtitles, it occurred to me that I didn't need to read the subtitles. Because I could understand them. Eric the Vampire was speaking Swedish, which in that moment I understood to be the Language of the Vampires. Godric, a super old vampire, said his lines with a godawful American accent, but sure. We can overlook this minor detail.  I was convinced that Swedish was the secret language of Vampires until the scene where come to find out Eric was once a Viking and Godric originally met him while doing something that involved sprinting about shirtless in Scandinavia in the winter. So apparently they speak Swedish with each other during heartfelt moments and/or when Godric is about ready to engulf himself in flames. So anyway, then I had to change my LinkedIn profi...

 I read the first book of this series a very long time ago...the Discovery of Witches book I mean. Now Tom and I are watching the TV series. It's about a witch and a sexy vampire.  The thing with this vampire is that he doesn't have big canine teeth, at least that I've seen, and he can be out during the day without any noteworthy considerations and/or special equipment.  Yes, this is actually a vampire and not just your average English chap out in the sun. I mean, I thought it was a little controversial when the Twilight vampires didn't bake like fritters during the day, but at least there was a slight issue for them. They were all glittery as you may recall and therefore could not attend school when it was sunny out. Sparkly Edward Cullen the Vampire Or take the Vampire Diaries vampires, they had to wear those fancy magic rings to be out in the sun.  Vampire Diaries Vampires currently hawk bourbon on Instagram and I get their ads. These Discovery of Witches vampires...

We subscribe to Who Gives a Crap toilet paper. Every six weeks or something, we get a big box of TP delivered right to our door. Highly recommend the product, plus 50% of their profits go to build toilets in places that don't have toilets. Need toilet paper? You too can subscribe here:  https://us.whogivesacrap.org/ Who Gives a Crap donates 50% of their profits to charity. Here's the vital detail: We signed up for Who Gives a Crap pre-pandemic, maybe like the middle of 2019 or something. However many months later, BAM, pandemic hits and the shelves are empty of toilet paper.  Remember when everybody was all stressed out they'd have no TP and would have to make do with ... some other non-optimal paper product? Frankly, I never considered what everybody else was thinking for their TP Plan B, I was blissfully unconcerned. You know why? Because Who Gives A Crap sent an email to all their subscribers saying that anyone who had subscribed pre-pandemic would be guaranteed their sh...

 Today was definitely a day of recovery. We were up until the wee hours last night. It's hard to leave when you can't find the door, as they say. And also because we were at our own house. For the first time since pre-pandemic, we hosted band night. We had two basses (because no band is complete without two basses) a drummer, a guitar/piano player and a singer. The beautiful thing about playing bass with another bass player who is way better than me is that there was more than one moment last night when I surprised myself by how great I was playing. I turned down the volume on my bass and my playing got even better. Nothing is more gratifying than when it all clicks and the music sounds great. Hot tip: This "sounding great" isn't really all that hard (for me) when there are a critical mass of former pro-musicians in your band. I cannot fathom how they do it... learning a song in like T-minus 2 minutes and then just... playing it.  Frankly, it wasn't rocket sci...

 We have guests staying tonight so I have to clear out my home office. Otherwise known as the guest bedroom. I'm hopeful that when I take my computer off my desk here, that it looks like a luggage stand.  Objectively, this is never going to happen. There is a giant ass desk at the foot of the bed.

Over the pandemic, I engineered a new workout routine. I basically phone it in. I've been walking around the neighborhood. I'd call my route a loop except it's probably more like a chicken foot. Or a lopsided rake. There's a few out-and-backs.  I'm saying all this to say if you live along my route and you are looking out your window, you will see me a minimum of twice. Sometimes, I go around more than once. So maybe you'll see me four times or six times a day. I also wave at everyone who drives by in their car. And when I say I wave, I mean I wave aggressively with a giant fake smile. I do this because it's an experiment. My hypothesis is that if you make eye contact and wave at people who are driving like maniacs through your cul de sac, they slow down. At the beginning of the pandemic, no one waved back. Also no one else was walking in the neighborhood. Also everybody drove 55 miles and hour and practically laid rubber getting into their driveways. Fast fo...

Here's looking at you 11|11 - the date that looks the most like corduroy. Today is a high holiday for corduroyists for sure. It's been ten years since 11|11|11 (which should *never* be written 11/11/11. That would be as grating as coloring outside the lines or not capitalizing Thanksgiving). But I digress.  On November 11, 2011, trust me, we celebrated. We celebrated like it would be 100 years before the next time the digits would align so corduroy perfectly. It was a convention hall full of more corduroy than had ever been seen in one place before. I really don't quite understand why I didn't write a blog post commemorating 11|11|11. I mean, it was once-in-lifetime level shit. My whole body hurt for like four days after that party. I think there were bagpipers and someone got married in a corduroy dress.  Here's a video on CBS from the year before, 2010. It was the lead up to the pinnacle extravaganza exactly twelve months later. Indeed, Tom and I make an appearanc...

 A couple weeks ago we were up at the Bronx Botanical Garden with Bruce and Nardo. We went up there to see the Yayoi Kusama Cosmic Nature  ... show? But is it really a Show? Maybe it's better called an Exhibit? Or possibly Sculptures and Other Things in the Garden? I'm not exactly sure what you call a bouquet of installations that includes the likes of this: It's one of many trees wrapped up in polka dots. And also these flower guys in a pond: Eye catching flowers that do not grow in nature. Furthermore, there's a giant red and white spider and starfish and a tiny house filled up with stickers. Consider these lily pads though. The were not part of Cosmic Nature, we're done with that section of this blog post and we're now moving on: These lily pads actually grow this way in the real world. Not in some Avatar world where all the people are blue and ride flying bugs. On this planet, there is flora of this magnitude.

 It is possible that a one-legged thief stole my sneaker off the porch last night. I know I immediately jumped to the conclusion that the perpetrator was a member of the animal kingdom, but perhaps that was hasty. I am discretely spying on the neighbors looked for anyone missing a peg. If I see anybody, they will be my prime suspect. From the Fugitive Movie in case you live in a hole. Also, I will need to print my own T-Shirts. These are close but obviously an edit is needed.

  One sneaker in the trash can You might be wondering why there's but one (1) sneaker in the trash can. I mean this in the context of like why isn't there two (2) sneakers in the trashcan. I am not soliciting any comments on why I am throwing away a sneaker from circa 2005. All you people who didn't grow up in Pennsylvania Dutch Country probably don't realize that sneakers have a half life of at least a couple decades.  But I digress. The reason that there is half a pair of sneakers in the trash can is because the other half is gone. Vanished. Poof, Missing. Both sneakers were out on the porch one evening (because I was wearing them for gardening purposes. We have turned our front yard into a farm just in case there is an apocalypse.) In the morning, only one sneaker remained. I looked all around the yard and did a half ass survey of the street. Nothing. A creature of the night stole one of my sneakers. Whoever he/she was, they now have a foam cushion insole warming the...

After dinner a few weeks ago, we decided to walk home on the path by the Hudson River. It was a beautiful evening so we strolled out to the end of one of the piers. Three kayakers were about twenty feet away in the water. They had headlamps clamped to their foreheads and seemed to be headed out into open water. Three kayakers having an evening paddle in the Hudson River with New Jersey in the background. Awww, so cute. A little twilight paddling around. They will certainly turn around soon! It's almost dark. Ships, sizable ships, are cruising up and down in the channel going at whatever knots per hour is fast enough to run right over three little kayakers you can barely see with their tiny little headlamps. Ummm, they are almost in the channel and still haven't turned around. I don't think they are turning around. By the way, it's way darker than it looks in these photos. It's a mile-ish to Jersey from Manhattan. They must be close right? It was nail biter all the w...

Back to the paint colors because today is Saturday and mainly what I did today was sit around congratulating myself. I picked out some good colors. The achievement is even more sweet because, on the whole, my paint color selection track record has not been stellar. By any stretch. I learned something new this time. I learned about the LRV. Every paint has an LRV, a Light Reflective Value. If you pick a paint with a super low LRV, it's gonna go on thick. It'll be dark and velvety, even if the color itself looks sort of light. This is a REVELATION, I tell you. Never trust a swatch is the bottom line.  Image credit:  https://thelandofcolor.com/lrv-light-reflectance-value-of-paint-colors/ So anyway, if you want colors that sort of go together so your house doesn't feel like every room is it's own little carnival ride, pick colors with approximately the same LRV. At least then they'll have that in common. The one thing I didn't count on is how much the light washes o...

I started writing this sentence like 9 times because... what is there to say when you open up a giant box Imperfect Foods shipped to your house, and in it is one (1) lemon? I mean what is there to say beyond feeling personally responsible for a metric ass ton of carbon emissions? BTW, I sent this picture to Imperfect Foods customer service who replied simply that there was no shipping charge.  Missing the entire point apparently.  Imperfect Foods delivers one lemon in a box

Look, my inspiration right now is on the low side for a couple reasons mainly involving a) paint fumes and b) my new understanding that if you want to lose weight, get someone to wrap up your kitchen cabinets in protective plastic.  So hangry is my mood ring read out this week. I told a colleague I was going to show up on a client Zoom call wearing my welding ventilator. No one, including myself, was 100% sure I was kidding. Paint is stinky. There's only so many hours you can sit with your windows wide open when it's 29 degrees outside. But I was also pretty woozy because my entire diet yesterday consisted of a couple bananas a bag of mixed nuts. It's all I could scavenge that wasn't hermetically sealed. I'm just like my father and my grandmother: hypoglycemia sets in on the quick. Then we go on weird tangents full of bad ideas, bloodletting and night time attacks. We can be a real kick in the teeth. Existentially speaking only, of course. I think I'm pleased wi...

I had an out of body experience this week. It did not involve astral travel as you may have suspected, but came courtesy of some VIP who couldn't manage her schedule for shit.  I was supposed to interview this VIP at a virtual conference for an 11:30AM time slot on Friday. Except the VIP realized she had a previous commitment 11:30AM on Friday.  Cue conference organizers having a fit T-minus 3 days before the virtual conference. Attending Virtual Conferences like Michael Whatshisface  in the movie Multiplicity Photo credit Anyway, at some point someone very clever suggested that we record the interview in advance, and then they'd just play it at 11:30AM on Friday. It would be as if we were live -- but we wouldn't be live. There'd be a Q&A after the fake live conversation handled by someone else on the VIP's team. So anyway, Friday at 11:30AM, I'm attending the virtual conference having an out of body experience as I watch myself walk onto the virtual stage s...

You can tell my NaBloPoMo game is strong because I didn't double up on topics yesterday. National Blog Post Month, ie one post per day for one month, requires a strategic approach. It's a marathon, not a sprint.  First rule of NaBloPoMo: don't get overcocky. Even if you think you are diligent or creative enough to mastermind 30 topics easy enough... just don't. The wise do not squander more than one topic a day just like they do not open up more than one of those little cubbyholes a day during a nativity calendar countdown undertaking. Christmas doesn't come early just because you can't control yourself. Neither does the end of November.  It's also possible you can go to hell  if you open up more than one cubbyhole a day in a nativity calendar. I've struggled through my fair share of NaBloPoMo Thanksgiving weekends caught in acute writers block desperate to get back a few of the stray sentences I had so cavalierly tacked on in afterthought earlier in the...

  Have you seen Dune yet? We were smart(er) this year and showed up at Wanda and Derek's at precisely 6pm. If you show up any later, good luck with all the barricades set up like a labyrinth. To walk 2 blocks it's like walking 8 blocks by the time you make it around all the zigs and zags. Or... maybe an evil wizard stopped time.  Either way, the sidewalk is packed with all sizes and shapes and colors. It takes concentrated effort to make it through without getting impaled by someone's first day with their new light saber or smeared with a glob of wet body paint. Wanda and Derek's place is right on 6th Avenue and they have a huge window. We sat in it and threw candy at children. Luckily most of our targets were wearing bulky costumes that included horns or a fireman helmet or dragon scales or some other kind of headgear. No one was concussed by a flying fun-sized snicker bar is my point. As far as we know. The costumes are always inspiring:  https://gothamist.com/arts-en...