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

Here's to you, Grammy. 1920-2018 You always think you have more time. Time to listen to the stories once more, time to record them. Time to relax into the moment and not yada yada yada, get on with it we've heard this one a thousand times already. Here's what I had the great privilege to say at Grammy R's funeral last week: Grammy is the stuff of legends. Every one of you is thinking of ten things or a hundred things she said to you that no one else would have ever said to you. Every day of her life she was full-on, unfiltered Grammy. But if someone's last name wasn’t the same as hers... Watch out. They'd need to go through her to get to one of us. She was our staunchest ally. There are 3 pillars of Grammy. Three overriding themes that she could weave into every statement, story or conversation. Grammy was a master at staying on message. #1 - Ample kvelling - She might get up in your business one-on-one, but out of doors, if Grammy had any...

I knew I wasn’t in the city anymore. Not only because it’s -14 up here in VT where we’re skiing, but because I saw a dog jogging up a snow-covered road. Just nonchalantly headed wherever he was going. WITHOUT BOOTIES.  Skiing in -14 requires some wardrobe tricks which I haven’t quite figured out yet.  I get the part where you open up 7 sets of hand-warmers and strategically line your long underwear with them.  Then there's the part where you smear of this greasy stuff on your nose that’s allegedly supposed to prevent frostbite. Last comes the real battle: how to not lose your nose to frostbite while not fogging up your glasses. If you cover your nose, your glasses fog up. If you don’t cover your nose, you can’t feel your face after about 8 minutes but at least you can see where you’re going. It’s a tough choice. You can avoid this dilemma by remembering to pack contact lenses. Pop forewent the glasses. We were standing at the bottom of a hill waiting f...

I probably should find a gif of someone high-fiving herself. Or maybe a real quality dab or a Heisman maneuver. Meanwhile I'll crank up Ode to Joy super loud and the air shall erupt with sparkles. A smoke machine would be cool. Because this is -- drum roll please -- NaBlaPoMo #30. Count 'em kids. 30 posts, 30 days. *drops laptop and twerks twice*

Tom came home from work looking a little bewildered. I asked why. "Remember that guy, the one I kept seeing at a bunch of triathlons? He's a real Ironman muscle guy. Very fast." said Tom. I nodded and had no idea where this was going. "We were swapping messages on facebook about a workout plan. He wrote that he'd coach me and it would only cost $5. I wasn't sure if he was kidding." I uh huh'ed. Tom goes on, "I didn't know what to write back. Seriously, what if he's only kidding? But then again, what if he's not kidding? I thought about my response for a really long time." This had to be going somewhere. You'd expect there'd be a story arc of some kind. "Finally I decided to write back 'I'm In!' with a smiley face. Then I'd wait to see what he replied. At that point, I should know if he's kidding." Right, right, I said. You'd expect you'd know at that point. Is ...

It is true. We do play a lot of peggle on the big TV. Mostly when there's family and friends around because: When you achieve great Peggle success, it's better when people you love are all around throwing pillows at your head. I considered getting a game of some kind on my phone - not peggle because once you go big screen you don't go back - but like Tetris or something. I heard a podcast where an expert said that Tetris is great to play in 5 minute increments during the day as sort of mini-yogic retreat. Let me restate - as a don't-have-to-move-your -lazy-ass kind of mini-yogic retreat. Sounds fine. But I never did pull the trigger on the download because I was appalled by the privacy policy or lack of privacy policy on every single game I looked at. No, I will not give you access to my camera and microphone at all times, thank you very much game-maker person. And so, that is the end of this story.

A few years ago, my niece Ella gave me this necklace as a gift. A couple months ago, just after her tenth birthday, she walked by my dresser, saw the necklace and said, "I can't believe I gave you a necklace with my own name on it, Aunt Stacey." I said it's one of my favorite gifts because I smile every time I look at it.

Last week, we were at that comedy show-- the one with the twenty comics stumbling around in the zone called "not ready for an audience." The host of the show opened with a bit about how she is wildly annoyed by people sipping their coffee from mason jars on the subway. Not #1: Coffee in Mason Jars I am not annoyed by people sipping their coffee from mason jars. It's a little hipster twee... like I wouldn't be surprised if I saw a unicorn sticker on the mason jar or some homage to beardsmanship. Even then, I wouldn't care. Also Not #1: Slow Walkers You can't have a list like this without the chestnut of all annoyances to kick shit off: Slow walkers in the city. I could say I'm annoyed by people walking slowly on the sidewalk, but the target of my annoyance has shifted. I'm now less annoyed relative to the individual persons engaged in the slow walking and more annoyed by the entire scenario of being trapped in the middle of a short-legged horde ...

I get in the elevator with a guy and his dog. I've seen him before. The elevator doors close. I wait, because I know something's coming. It doesn't take long. He says, "That's a gangsta handbag. Gangsta." I nod my head. My handbag is kind of gangsta. It has silver studs. I smile. The dog inches a little closer to me. The guy goes, "She likes the ladies." I pat the dog on the head. I get out on my floor. I just started reading Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Letham which is great. The hero has Tourettes. So on that day I figure out the guy in the elevator also has Tourettes.

I think we have every set of Cards Against Humanity. Someone gave us the first few sets as a gift and then we bought a couple and then we got a few more as gifts. We have boxes and boxes. It's important that this be fully realized, because it's my main excuse. We have a pile of loosely child-friendly cards haphazardly jammed in a box lid. We break them out when we play with the niece, nephews, grandma and grandpa. These games are hilarious. The kids go giddy with laughter. One time Jack laughed so hard he went airborne. When he came back down, his little tushy crashed right through the bottom of a plastic lawn chair and he still has a scar. In other words, this is the perfect game for Thanksgiving family fun. However. As most know, neither Tom or I are known for our spectacular attention to detail. For example, today I inadvertently picked up the wrong box of cards for our game. Instead of the box of cards censored for the kids, I picked up a different one. It could have ...

Last week, Tom says he wishes his jeans were shorter in the legs, but he can't figure out where to get them hemmed.  I say go to the dry cleaner we always go to for pant hemming.  He says he does not want his jeans to look like they're hemmed. If the bottom seam isn't there, his jeans will look like denim slacks. That would be horrifying. Jeans should not look like denim slacks.  I say she has a trick, that old lady in the dry cleaner. She cuts off the bottom seam, clips a couple inches off the pant leg and then sews the bottom seam right back on. She’s fucking ingenious. I show him my jeans she hemmed and they definitively do not look like denim slacks.   Ten minutes later, Tom comes out of the bedroom wearing his too-long jeans, with another pair of jeans slung over his shoulder.  He says, “see how efficient I am? I’m going to wear these long jeans down to the dry cleaner. Then after the old lady does her measurements, I’m going to ta...

I got these svelte new blacksmithing gloves the other day. Cool design, lots of black. Most of the blacksmithing gloves I've burned to a crisp during my tenure have been really industrially radioactive shades of blue, green and orange. These are certainly a step up. In the top photo above, you will notice my new gloves artfully displayed on my anvil. My anvil is a 150lb English Anvil. Tom got it for me for Christmas years ago and she's a beaut.  Photo credit: http://www.blackiron.us/anvil-types.html I was glad Tom found me the anvil that he did because before that, I had made a terrible and super embarrassing error. I ordered an anvil online. There were problems right out of the box. Literally. Shipping tip: It's really hard to send an anvil in a cardboard box. I received an anvil, and then kind of separately, a beat up box with an anvil-sized hole in the bottom. Anyway, I was up at the Pig Iron Pig Roast and I happened to mention to one of the smith...

We were out to dinner with Wanda and Derek and I mentioned probably my favorite TV show ever. The entire show was one camera angle. Just a video camera sitting there. In a pen with a whole bunch of puppies. And in the back of the pen was an old school TV playing music videos. So you'd watch the music videos, but mostly you were watching the puppies doing puppy things and climbing around on the TV. It was great. It was on from maybe 3:30AM to 5. I watched it all the time. Wanda and Derek both agreed it sounded like terrific television. Tom calls 2000-2002 'the adrenal years.' I had two adrenal glands back then, one of them going full throttle 24/7. Basically this amounted to not sleeping much. I got a lot done, but the neighbors didn't like me. There's only so many nights they'll stand for someone being up at 4am drilling holes in boards and hanging up shelves or something. So I started watching a lot of Fuse TV. They had this "Up All Night" progr...

Some big news today and I'm not talking about how it snowed some in New Jersey this morning. And I'm also not talking about the bottle of Heinz 57 I found jammed in the back of the fridge which expired in 2007. I'm talking about the t-shirts that me and Derek made which are now on sale at your friendly local webstore:  https://teespring.com/stores/scandinavian-social-club-of-ny These t-shirts have been in the works a super long time. It all began when I was in Gothenburg in  Sweden in 2014. I wanted to buy a t-shirt with the city emblem on it-- a really cool lion. Except I did not want a "Gothenburg" shirt. I wanted a "Göteborg" shirt. Gothenburg is the tourist name. I wanted a Swedish t-shirt. Not an American tourist t-shirt. No. Where. To. Be. Found. So then I poked around in Stockholm for something cool. The only t-shirts I could find in Stockholm had New York City on them. Then, back home, I saw the "Keep Calm and Carry On" shirts...

We have a modest collection of laundry detergent. Tom says we're set through 2019. Such are the dangers of Amazon Subscribe & Save. If you plan ahead and order on a schedule, you save like 15% off normal Amazon prices. You pick whether you want something delivered once a month or once every two months. In theory it's really quite terrific especially if you're somewhat of a serial obsessive. Think about it: * You save 15% * Good for environment, lots of stuff comes in one box * Like magic, things you need show up * Save time, you only have to click to buy once instead of repeatedly Let me offer some advice: you don't want to be all hasty and slapdash when contemplating your household needs. I was feeling all Frau Badass nailing that submit button and now we have a closet full of moisturizer and nineteen bars of soap. Also, we're out of tea and vitamins and I staunchly refuse to pay full price mid-month. I can wait two weeks. It's the principle of...

One guy totally forgot his set. Another dude had a red hat at the ready for his lengthy "Donald Trump On The Campaign Trail in 2016" impression. An ophthalmologist rattled off a series of retina-based puns. There was an excess of rhyming spoken word poetry that was possibly supposed to be accapella rapping. I'd estimate 12-20 people took the stage. Three had potential. Another one dropped the mic, but it was an accident. Under no circumstances am I implying that we witnessed a mic drop. I said the whole thing felt like a non-gentle anthropological probe that I needed far more whiskey to understand. Tom described it as "A talent show with a two drink minimum and really expensive drinks." If you put these facts together, your conclusion should be that two drinks was not sufficient but we were not going to belly up for more, given the outrageous price point. Thus the ensuing consternation. Dangerfield Comedy Club Takeaways Dangerfield Comedy Club does not ...

This is the NaBloPoMo rough patch, these middle-of-the-month days. My entire stockpile of ideas is tapped, but I'm not yet at the place where it's ok to post whatever the hell, like I'm totally fine with at the ass end of the month. But let's fast forward shall we, because it's 11:47PM and we just got back from dinner at Kubeh and drinks at Analogue with Helen and Matt.

The facts are, it's pretty impossible to win the lottery to get into the NYC Marathon if you live in NYC. Or anywhere else that is not exotic, at least in the eyes of race officials. The workaround is to do a "9+1." Meaning if you join the New York Road Runners club and, within one calendar year, run nine of their races and volunteer at one more, you auto-qualify for the marathon the following year. Tom decided he wants to run the marathon next year, so he signed on for the 9+1 plan. Last Saturday was Tom's "+1". He volunteered to help out at a pretty massive 5k in the park. This 5k is kind of a tradition. It happens the day before the marathon, so finishers cross the same finish line as the marathoners and run through the stands and all the hoopla set up for the marathon. Except they only have to run 5k instead of 26 miles so by all accounts this is a very clever maneuver. Tom got down to the race area at some ungodly hour. They gave him a fluor...

Photo of poop I texted out to the family I knew exactly what would happen as soon as I took this photo. Poop is subject matter certain people find mesmerizing. Everyone in my family, you see, fancies themselves an amateur scatologist . Moments after I hit send, my sister-in-law is on the scene: "Fox or a large cat." Pop steps up: "3:1 - Fox, Raccoon." Mom elbows in: "It’s not pointy enough to be fox poop." Dad, with the rebuttal: "But it’s divided and rounded. Could easily be fox poop." Mom comes back: "Coyote poop is a pretty good size." PS: In case you didn't know, the scatologists have a theme song. Here's my pop with a rendition:

photo credit: https://www.123rf.com/ photo_45691404_credit-card-phishing-attack.html Someone ripped off our credit card and had a fun day in Manhattan. First, they picked up a terrific new pair of expensive sneakers. No sense slumming around in crappy treads when you have big plans the afternoon. After that, it was off to Shake Shack for lunch. While enjoying a $50 mound of burgers and fries, it apparently seemed like a great idea to book an AirBnB out of town and hook the fambo up with some Amtrak tickets. Godspeed, sticky fingers.

I was running on the Hudson River path. Turning in respectable sub-10s, jamming with my tunes, feeling pretty good. It was 2012,  right after they canceled the New York Marathon in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. Suddenly, I felt a whoosh. Two ladies blew past my ass like I was standing still. And not only that, they were chatting, in normal voices, while they did so. I know one of them was Kara Goucher and I think the other one was Shalane Flanagan. I guess the two were out for a little jog. They had some time on their hands, being in town with no marathon and all. Photocredit: http://www.zimbio.com/ Kara+Goucher+Shalane+Flanagan/pictures/pro My only point is that I ahead of Shalane Flanagan. Briefly.