My latest parenting essay is up on GNMParents - click here to go there now - I hope you enjoy it - I worked extra hard to craft the funny, and yes, I used an extra egg to make the funny even lighter and fluffier.
Through a friend, I discovered this wonderfully captivating and inspiring show on YouTube - Depression Cooking With Clara. Clara is 91 years young and, documentary-style, she walks through a recipe for a dish that they ate while she was a little girl, surviving during the Great Depression. The show combines a food recipe and stories about her childhood. Fascinating stuff.
I, just this morning, discovered for myself a wonderful rock ballad - "Alright", by the band Pilate (now called Pilot Speed) - check out this video and see if it moves you. I find it moving and soulful:
Boy, howdy, let me tell you, not having internet is not overly-pleasant. It's certainly not terrible, but I'm a net-head or geek or whatever label is appropriate for someone who uses the internet as their primary communication method *and* their primary news and entertainment source.
So when my router went kablooey, there was definitely no joy in Mudville.
When last we left our readers, the router was an ex-router and I had called Verizon's tech support, figuring that I'd have to buy a new router and I'd need to know which of their recommended routers I could afford. Instead, they said they'd replace it free and that it would arrive Wednesday. Ok, so two full days without 'net, no problem.
Well, let me tell ya, not an easy thing to pull me off the grid. I tried getting by with just my iPhone, but that wouldn't do it, wouldn't scratch the itch. So I took my laptop to nearby hotspots at regular intervals and got my net on.
A fine solution, so I was completely relaxed when my son came in the door from soccer practice last night and said, Stu, you got a package. - Wh00t!1!! - Router arrived a day early!
I plugged the router in, attached the appropriate 8P8C connectors into the appropriate 8P8C sockets, and, without needing to proceed a micron further, had internet restored at our house. The macs looked for the router on their own (they all do that) and found the fresh stream of TCP/IP packets and socko! boffo! the internet was restored. Mighty Casey had, in this case, hit a home run!
Now that I have my 'net back, I shall try to blog more often, so feel free to tell your friends and accomplices that I'm back in business.
And for those who gutted it out this far, but are really baffled, 8P8C is the notation that signifies the ends of the ethernet cables you all use for connecting to the network in your home or office. See, you thought this was gonna be fluff, but you ended up learning something. ... Yeah, I know, my kids hate it too... But I'm a geek and proud of it.
We now return you to your previously scheduled irrelevancies. These are not the 'droids you're looking for.
I am stealing this from Christopher Walken's Twitter feed (not sure if
he wrote this gag or not, but he gets credit for delivering the laugh)
-- "This neighbor kid comes by from time to time, dressed like
Superman. At least I think it's him. Hard to tell without the glasses."
We were in the living room, playing Cranium Turbo when it happened.
Well, let me start again: It was late afternoon and while Nich was doing homework, Leslie, Noelle, and I were playing Cranium Turbo. As it was just the three of us available for the game, I was on both teams. It was great fun and we were all hard at play, when suddenly...
...the power went out.
Interesting for us, as it had an unusual cause - 34 mile-per-hour gusts of wind, being blown in from the ocean.
The power came on a few minutes later, but as we were still in mid-game, we barely paused to acknowledge the announcement of new power by our microwave, which beeped when it came back on.
Then, about five minutes later, we lost power again. We continued to play, barely noticing the loss of electricity. And after about ten minutes, it came back on.
About five minutes later, power went out a third time. This time it stayed off for about an hour. Fortunately, there was still plenty of light, so we played out the rest of the game, then fetched some flashlights, just in case.
After about an hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half, power came back on, for good.
So we had dinner and hung out and talked and enjoyed the time... until I noticed that we didn't have internet.
Hmmm...
I looked at our router, a D-Link product that had served us in good stead from the moment it was installed by the Verizon FIOS team. The router was dark - no lights. So I unplugged it and paused and plugged it back in. No lights. So I took it to another outlet in another room, plugged it in, no lights. Bummer - dead router, an ex-router, a router that has ceased to be.
I called Verizon tech support and, despite it being early evening on a Sunday, they not only were available, but were polite, friendly, caring, knowledgeable, and, after I explained the situation, surprisingly generous. I was just calling to ask what router would be best for me to buy, but they insisted on replacing it, free-of-charge. Amazing.
So now I sit in the food court of our local mall, eating a chicken burrito, sipping on some water, and trying to catch up on email via the courtesy of the mall's free wireless internet. I'll have to do this for the next few days, as I'm not sure exactly when the new router arrives (probably Wednesday, but no promises). And as these seats are made of metal, with no cushioning, I shan't be doing this that often.
To those of you who have working routers, hug them tight and tell them you love them.
I've posted vids of guitarists before, guitarists who don't get the press that they deserve. Today's unsung performer: Laurence Juber, fingerstylist extraordinaire.
With his 552nd career win, Martin Brodeur inches closer to becoming, unquestionably, the greatest goaltender in the history of the 92 year-old National Hockey League.
There are others who can be argued as Best - certainly one can suggest names such as Terry Sawchuk, Grant Fuhr, Patrick Roy, but allow me to make a quick case for Marty Brodeur as Best Goalie Ever. Think about these facts: Most Shutouts (Combined), Most 40-Win Seasons, Most Single Season Wins, Most Minutes Played, and 30 Franchise Records.
Can any other goalie match Mr. Brodeur with regard to what is important, nay, essential to supporting an NHL team? Do we not see the NJ Devils as a dominant force in hockey because, in no small part, of Brodeur's skills?
And let's not forget that Martin Brodeur has at least five more seasons ahead of him, easy. So we'll probably see, upon Brodeur's eventual retirement, some impossible-to-beat numbers.
This isn't just about 552 wins. My feeling is that Brodeur is unassuming and polite and flies under the radar of a lot of sportswriters - he's no Wayne Gretzky, and if you're not Wayne Gretzky, most sportswriters don't really care, 'cause, y'know, it's just hockey. Hockey doesn't draw the Americans the way football and baseball and basketball do. But that doesn't make hockey any less of a game, it doesn't make it an easier game. It's relatively easy to argue that it's harder to stop a goal on major league ice than it is to score a basket in NBA basketball. No knock on basketball, but it's a slower game, easier to follow, and playable by more kids and adults. So it gets the better press. And even if the audience sizes were the same for both, hockey is just too fast for most Americans. We like slower games, with a slower object to follow. The basketball moves slower, the football moves slower, and other than the pitch, the baseball moves slower than an average hockey puck.
So this is about we hockey fans, doing our best to wake up the sports fans who don't really watch hockey. This is our chance to raise the flag of the NHL and say "Hey, we're just as great as the rest of you."
Leslie is on her flight back to Los Angeles, to our home, to my arms.
Can. Not. Wait.
The kids are in Vegas for a cousin's wedding, so tonight it's just me and my better half. Maybe we'll order in some camarones con crema de chipotle from La Cocina and listen to some Bread on the stereo in the library.
I really miss her. Absence does not make the heart grow fonder. Absence makes the heart colder and in need of an extra blanket. Absence makes the heart cry teardrops that soak through to the eyes. Absence is a right bastard.
Thank The Lord, absence is, sometimes, not forever.
As the NJ Devils are having a fabulous season, I've started a good luck tradition for myself: I now don my Devils sweater every day, game day or not. Sometimes it's just for a few minutes, sometimes it's my shirt for the day. Not sure if this is going to work or not, but I'm going to give it a try - I want to do my part to see that the Devils drink from Lord Stanley's Mug.
It's Tuesday morning, a little after 6:30 in the morning, and I've just made sure the kids are awake and functioning. Now it's time to wait for their demands (lunch money, a new car, depends on the weather)
Leslie is out of town for the week - in Dallas, for work - The days are pretty easy, but the nights are a tough piece of somethin' - as the song goes, bed's too big without her.
I was getting into my regular cycle, and I guess I still am, to some degree, but with Leslie gone, I sleep less, so it's harder to truly find that slot in the universe in which I belong. Carlos Castaneda wrote about finding your place - my place is here, with my family, no doubt - but when Leslie is on a business trip, I find myself as Castaneda claims he found himself, in The Teachings Of Don Juan, having a hard time finding his spot.
Other than that, things are just fine. The days are pleasant, the kids are in some kind of academic zone, not to mention polite, so I'm in some sort of bizarro teenager world.
I've got some other stuff going on - nothing oppressive, but nothing that would make you smile, and this has already been a mostly-down post, so I'll leave off, but before I do, how about a dance number:
As my birthday has passed, it is time for me to spend a tiny bit of my day paying attention to the NHL standings. If I have more than a bit of time, I'll try to catch a game, or at least check the headlines. I'm not a huge sports guy, but I'll admit to a weakness for baseball and hockey. So I give in to this weakness when my birthday roles around, as it signals the last month and a half of the season. So I stop just glancing at the standings and I start to read more news and watch more full games.
So it's nice to hit my birthday and see two wonderful things - one, the New Jersey Devils had a recent run of home game wins that put them in serious contention for the playoffs. And two, Marty Brodeur is within a week or so of breaking the NHL record for career wins, and possibly the career shutout wins. So, y'know, he's got that goin' for him.
Anyway, go Devils and go Devil Fans and anyone who was ever a member of the Uli Heimer Fan Club!
I. Am. Home.
Delicious feeling, like a warm bath after a tough day in the coal mine.
Getting home was interesting, though not a bad experience, just interesting.
It started with getting to the airport, which went very smoothly. Then I registered at the front counter, where the ticket and I agreed that the initial delay we saw would put my connection out of reach. So she booked me on the next flight from Chicago, my connection, and I was set.
I then participated in the security theatre, complete with my first experience with the air-blowing machine. Not only was it surreal to step into the gates into an open-ended machine that belonged on Dr. Who or The Prisoner, but the mechanical voice that notified of the upcoming air blast clearly said, "Firing Guns!" - Awesome, I can't mention any of seventy-odd phrases, like bomb or blow up or explode or whatever, but our great and magnificent Homeland Security authorizes the use of a scientifically questionable device that says "Firing Guns." - ok, whatever, I'll address security theatre in another post.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, so I get through security and I walk to my gate. That's when I realize that I still haven't gotten a souvenir for my son (I picked up a NJ mug at the drugstore for my daughter). So I pop by my gate, confirm that there's a two-hour delay before my plane *might* be prepared for departure, and I start walking around the gate area, souvenir hunting. Except it's a tiny area with one food/restaurant choice and one bookstore/souvenir place. And the souvenirs they sold were just ok and the selection was sparse. So I ask the kiosk (I wouldn't call it a store) manager where else I might find souvenirs. She says, "Just keep circling this area and you'll see more." - Off I walk, circling the large kiosk, only to realize that she either doesn't care about the answer she gave or she is remarkably dim, as the only other products sold in the rest of her kiosk (which had a relative circumference of about 100 square feet or so) were toothbrushes and candy (lovely irony there). So I round the final corner, see her, inform her that there were no other souvenirs in her shop, whereupon she replied, "Oh."
Ok.
So then I take a long walk around the entire gate area, only to discover that if I am to head back to the good shops at Newark means a new trip through the security area. Well, obviously, forget that. So I settle for sweatshirt for my son and settle back down in a seat and wait for the first leg of my journey to commence. I people watch for a while, embracing the lack of responsibility with which I am suddenly laden. A lovely feeling, really luxurious after the past few weeks.
I also read some of the Thoreau that I received for my birthday. Enchanting and entrancing words - life-affirming.
Finally my flight departs and I sleep (it's about 8 o'clock and I am chockablock full of Dramamine. When I awake, we are landing in Chicago.
If you've never been to O'Hare International, I recommend a visit. It's a beautiful building with a variety of modern art displays, including a wonderful neon piece overhead as you use the moving walkway to get from concourse to concourse. Also, my other favorite part, near Concourse B is a 72-foot long model of the skeleton of a Brachiosaurus. It is visually daunting and yet sublime and peaceful.
Eventually I reach my gate, where I discover that the person who booked me on my backup connection, which I have missed due to the enormously late takeoff of my first flight, shouldn't have done that (don't know why) and they want to put me on standby. Um, yeah, thanks for the very kind offer, but I shall politely decline. So they call over another gate attendant who, magically, finds me a seat on the next flight to Los Angeles International. Ecstasy!
Four hours later, at about 2:30am PST, I am at baggage claim. 'Cept no bag. So I find my baggage receipt and use the available "Where's My Bag" computer terminal to discover that my bag hasn't made it to California yet. Ok, no bigs, I just give the machine my address and the machine politely informs me that I'll get my bag delivered the next day or so. Cool.
I cab it home, am embraced by my better half, who has lit candles and put on one of my favorite albums on the stereo. We hug, talk, etc. I get to relieve the dog of his worry that I was never coming home, ever. Then bed calls to me like a muse and I drift off.
Now it's morning and I'm writing this, wondering what I'll have for brunch.
As my friend Ferris Bueller says, "Life moves pretty fast. You don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
