Greetings! I thought I’d update our blog to share some exciting news. As of today, your friends and neighbors at Groovice have a new name: Blueberry! Why change our name, you ask? Well, who doesn’t love blueberries? Our real reasons actually run much deeper. We are on a mission to build a network for neighbors […]
Parenting Tips
Go to Hell
Reblog: It’s that time of year. Go Duke! (Oh, and #GTHCGTH!) Source: Go to Hell
A Vacancy at Google’s Bates Motel?
Google wants to give me nightmares. I’m sure of it. Perhaps it’s just my admittedly overactive imagination. But I can’t be the only one.
It’s these now omnipresent little numbers or silly words that must be copied and typed precisely in the course of some online registration or other. You know the numbers and words of which I write. Always seemed a bit over the top to me, like having to place one’s belt in the gray bins at airport security checkpoints. Suffering the ignominy of clutching your drooping jeans’ wasteband with one hand while shuffling through the metal detector in sock feet. Then trying to reassemble your life with just that single free hand on the line’s other end. Flashing your fellow travelers with information identifying from where you purchased your undergarments. You are wearing undergarments, by the way, aren’t you? It’s about as far from a fancy Marky Mark or Beckham underwear shoot as you can get.
And now we’re being subjected to similar indignities if we dare attempt to download a video conferencing iPhone app from the App Store. I understand the rationale for stripping off my belt and boots, and for the distended stomach resulting from pounding a quart of forgotten water in my favorite Nalgene bottle. But is Candy Crush in the App Store really a high value Al Quaeda security risk?
Before things get too far out of hand, a bit of adultspeak background may be in order: According to TechCrunch, “reCAPTCHA, for those unfamiliar, is the system originally developed at Carnegie Mellon University to improve upon the use of CAPTCHAs (aka, the “Completely Automated Public Turing Test To Tell Computers and Humans Apart”) – it’s the distorted text meant to stop bots from signing up for online accounts. The reCAPTCHA technology was acquired by Google in 2009, and if you use the web, you’ve definitely used it before. It’s what puts those security questions on websites that ask you to identify the words and numbers in the pictures displayed to verify you’re human.”
Ahh, so that’s why Santa Clause has a beard!
OK, so I suppose I can accept this having to play my small role in saving the Web from invasion by non-humans. Although that does leave me with the unsettling image of, well, relentless, invading non-humans….
So thank you, Carnegie Mellon. Thank you, Google, for saving us from this unimaginably awful fate. All of us, the entire human race. On behalf of all humans, I would like to thank you for saving us with this reCAPTCHA system.
May I ask one small, teeny, tiny favor though, Google, of you, while you’re saving the planet? Would you consider using more cheerful, less insidiously terrifying reCAPTCHA images? Ones whose off kilter street address numbers aren’t so creepily reminiscent of every single hotel and/or motel door featured in every single horror film I’ve ever seen? I’m not making this up —
Mmkay? See what I mean? Enough is enough. I’m going to take a stand. A movement fighting against images that have me bolting upright in a cold sweat at 2am. A revolution for G-rated reCAPTCHA images. Happy shit only, like this —
Who’s with me?
Thanks for reading.
Tahoe Boys Weekend: T-Minus 8 Days
The last trip broke my arse, so what might the next bring? Anything short of befriending a Truckee-based bail bondsman is likely acceptable.
The boys are back in town. Well, not exactly back in town yet. Eight more earthly rotations with respect to the sun. Then the boys are back in town.
And that’s a good thing.
It’s an annual tradition, more or less. Winnowed down from big, multi-family trips 15 or so years ago. Now distilled down to a thinly-attended cage match, for the most part. Three of my closest college friends and I come together for a long weekend throwdown in Tahoe.
Originally, as I say, the tradition also involved our wives, and shortly thereafter, our own toddlers. Those early years contributed to the Ski Trip Lore, for sure. Ever come nose to cabbie ID card with a taxi driver who legally changed his name to “Succesful Excellent”? Been there, done that. Ever been vocally accused of smashing a sliding deck door’s glass to smithereens and turning a bedroom into a snowdrift in order to get a laugh? Falsely accused, in this case. For once. Not that guilt or innocence mattered. The fact that I seemed the most logical explanation for this particular incident meant that our family-friendly trip days were likely numbered.
Sans wives and children, these Tahoe pilgrimages brought our baser instincts to the surface. Well, at least my baser instincts. Exhibit A: A giggling, real-time video interview of a winded buddy scrambling to pull himself out of deep snow using only whisper-thin sapling tree branches. Some of my finest journalistic work. You really want to watch the video in the last link, by the way. Particularly since my Edward R. Murrow impression therein was likely the proximate, karmic cause of the aforementioned broken arse 6 years later, with which I opened this post. And which inspired me to contemplate a coccygectomy.
Moral of the story? Turn the video camera off. Help your buddy up. Or get pushed down the stairs with a well-deserved foot in your chest some 6 or 7 years down the line. Talk about a dish best served cold. The foot-in-chest constitutes Exhibit B, for those counting.
But I’m older, wiser and more mature now. So if I could do it over again? Well, the stuck in a tree well video is awfully good. So I probably would do it again and just live with my eventual comeuppance. Maybe insist on rental cabins with carpeted stairs, or better yet, no stairs at all. I have 8 days to ensure our hotel room at Squaw is karma-proof. That should be more than sufficient, right?
Thanks for reading.
The Sky Is Cryin’.
It’s not exactly “Snowzilla,” “Snowpocalypse,” “Jonas,” or whatever monikered meteorological phenomenon bulldozed our East Coast brethren these past few days. But El Niño to-date has proven a persistent pain in the ass. It’s great for the drought, in theory. Though I’m mindful of Paul Giamatti’s thirsty gulp from the Sideways spit bucket.
Yeah, it’s a bit like that. Only instead of a shawl of spitty Cabernet, we end up with puddles in the garage from an unfortunately sloped driveway. Actually, we don’t. My wife had the forethought to pick up a half-dozen super attractive sandbags awhile back. These we’ve configured to capture and hold Lake Beadling from the rain runoff, restraining the beast from washing our flat into the Bay. They are also a fine addition to our homestead, surely sending up the value of our home on Zillow considerably.
The sandbags have been in place for so long now, I forget they are there. So each time I back the Prius out of the driveway, hyper focused imagining getting t-boned by a speeding SUV, the sandbag speed bump spikes my adrenaline, as I assume for a split-second that I have run over our dog. I have fallen for this trick at least a dozen times. Probably will happen again today, too.
I’m saying I’m weary of the incessant rain. It keeps me out of the Bay, since swimming amidst the King Tides, storm “runoff,” and random tree-sized pier pilings holds little appeal. It keeps me off the bike, since one ride across an unexpectedly deep puddle up to one’s ankles is one ride too many. And the dog is unhappy, too. Her normal weekly walks are cut short. When they do happen, she’s force-marched through pelting rain. The result is that Wailea seeks thrills by eating things in the house that are not meant to be eaten. This results in X-Rays, ultrasounds, and meaty vet bills.
Thank you, El Niño. The kids are fairly stir crazy as well. All of the screens in our house are hot to the touch, streaming non-stop mind-numbing content into the boys’ (now slowly) developing dorsal anterior cingulate cortices. At least whatever area of the brain is responsible for feelings of guilt and contrition still functions in our 10 year-old —
We’ll apply this $6.75 towards–you guessed it–our “Rainy Day Fund.” In other words, we already spent it. Gone. Depleted.
Alright, time to run. On a squeaky treadmill. In the garage. Huffing on dangling and exposed puffs of fiberglass insulation. Waiting for the dog to inadvertently clip my ankles, sending me to the human hospital as payback for the aforementioned unscheduled vet visit and belly shaving.
No rain, no rainbows? Thanks for reading.
Reposting in Honor of the 2nd Anniversary: Grandma’s Lemonade
Source: Grandma’s Lemonade
Big League Dreams
I’m up. The still chilly morning air delivers the distinctive scent of slaughterhouses in the vicinity. Hourly freight trains rumbling under my motel bed springs punctuated a typically sleepless night. Waze initially predicted a relatively painless 90-minute trip from San Francisco yesterday, but mercilessly stretched us out towards the business end of a four-hour slog. “Rick,” our broad-smiling server at last night’s chain restaurant steakhouse, evidently has never actually tasted the uncooperative “signature steak.” Nor recognized a flat beer with the telltale, physics-defying meniscus.
I’m sacrificing another weekend to the Gods of travel baseball. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.
I’m under no illusion that the ironically and iconically-named “Big League Dreams Park” will make any such dreams come true. Perhaps that hasn’t always been the case, but now five or so years into this, I’ve come to realize why I’m here and what’s important. In the early days of my kids’ travel ball journey, I would eagerly press my ass into a green plastic seat for hours, cheering madly, clapping ’til my hands stung, and occasionally groaning about this umpire’s call or that opposing team coach’s strategem. I would text my wife between pitches, updating her when one of my sons inhaled. Then exhaled. Then inhaled again. And oh, look, another inhale! And I admit to letting my mind wander to high school, college and even beyond. It all hangs on this next pitch, this next ground ball, this next secondary lead.
Now I pull my collapsible canvas chair aside the outfield fence. And I watch as if I were home watching TV. Clapping occasionally, but in a way that springs from some pleasure I am experiencing in the moment. Not really as a way of communicating with my son out there or with the other players.
I’ve realized it’s not about “big league dreams.” It’s about my little guys and I listening to a long book on tape during an otherwise weary drive (“The Martian” last night). It’s about seeing a genuine, shit-eating grin from the other side of the table (pictured above). No matter that given the cuisine at-hand, that smile has never been more literally descriptive. It’s about the new James Bond movie we’ll catch this afternoon, taking pleasure in sharing fistfuls of butter-greased movie popcorn. There might be some baseball along the way, but I’m here to soak in the little joys of being a dad to a boy enjoying the last couple weeks before double digits.
Though I may still send a text or two when he inhales. Or exhales.
Thanks for reading.
In the Land of Giants.
Too good a memory not to reblog today. Source: In the Land of Giants.
Is It Too Soon for Fog Machines?
It’s heeeere. Halloween Month. Round about mid-September, I start mentally zeroing in on the location of last year’s Halloween decorations cache. The previous November, it’s just “get this shit boxed up and downstairs ASAP before ours is the sole remaining cobwebbed front door on the block.” Thanksgiving and Christmas involves a similar routine; layers of holiday decorations boxed and rotated. Easter doesn’t really figure into the equation.
Come late Summer, after the Cape’s Great Whites, memories of apple cider, orange fallen leaves, and scaring the bejesus out of my childhood buddies move to the fore of my consciousness. The group texting banter picks up in earnest, each of us reminding the other of the time this one soiled his pants, the other one fell out of a tree, two of us locked eyes in a “this is it” moment while a haunted house actor gave chase with a buzzing chainsaw. The chainsaw had no chain. I think we knew that. But it didn’t matter.
These odd traditions slowly jog my recollection as to where in the dusty garage I might find the Halloween paraphernalia. The accumulated boxes grow each year. Of course we need those hanging ghouls with the blinking red eyeballs. Might as well grab a half-dozen styrofoam tomb stones. Strobe light? Is it green? Hell yes, throw that into the cart as well. Damn right we need a couple more bags of cobwebs. If the postman is able to penetrate the front gate to leave our junk mail, we just haven’t done our job. I half expect to find our man spun into a faux-silk cocoon, helpless, mouth open and pepper spray canister unsheathed and useless. That’s the goal at least.
I know this may sound completely over-the-top. My long-suffering wife would likely agree with that sentiment. Particularly in that awkward era between marriage and having kids old enough to appreciate Dad’s Madness this time of year every year. Sort of hard to justify setting up a terrifying porch with Jack O’Lantern heads balanced on scarecrow bodies, all triggered for jump scares, while my little ones sit idly by puckering on their pacifiers. Too young to appreciate my artistry. Possibly a little freaked out, even, that Daddy is wearing a short skirt, dangly earrings, and deep red lipstick. Isn’t that Mommy’s dress? Nothing that can’t be worked out down the line on a therapist’s couch, I tell myself.
One day, I hope, they will catch up with me.
Fast forward several years and a couple fistfuls of baby teeth. Earlier this week, I walked my 4th grader to the morning bus stop, passing by our tiny plot of bushes and bark chips that serves as a makeshift graveyard once a year. My little man paused and said, “Dad, isn’t it about time to get the fog machine out?” Indeed it is, Evie. Indeed it is.
Thanks for reading.
Procyon Lotor Is a Friend of Mine.
Or at least I thought he was. Now I am not so sure.
Look, this is city living, I get it. We have them in our backyard, though I’ve never actually seen them there with mine own eyes. Our dog goes wild, on occasion, and bolts out to chase after something. Or somethings. I would like to think Wailea’s rabid dog routine keeps the critters at bay. I also see them slinking around the neighborhood, hopping from curb to street, typically when all of our plastic Recology bins are lined up ready for their contents to be composted, recycled or land-filled. I’m OK with this, too. Hey, they’ve got to eat, right? They’ve got to feed their little critter families. That’s almost cute, if you think about it. Like a gaggle of Disney characters.
But I’m far less OK with what I experienced this morning. I was shuffling across the Marina Green with my neighborhood buddies to hop in the Bay for a swim. As we approached the water’s edge in the pre-dawn light, I spied an arch-backed lemur poised and staring. He or she stood right at the top of the steps we use to slip into the Bay, unmoving. He or she looked, well, pissed. They’re supposed to run, right? I heard myself say aloud, “So, what are we supposed to do now? Run serpentine? Play dead? Stand up straight, puff out our chests and look big?”
One of my friends stopped short and cut a comically wide line around the piqued raccoon (not a lemur at all). He reminded me that a woman and her dog had been “mauled” a few months ago in a local park a couple blocks from where we live. This seemed silly to me, but then I looked back at the raccoon and saw that he or she hadn’t blinked or budged. And I think he might even have bared his teeth. My friend maintained eye contact with the beast as he continued his cautious tiptoed routine. Alas, we are on a tight timeline here, things to do today. We did not budget time for a Mexican standoff with the local fauna.
If our wetsuits were better made, I’d feel good about our chances in an attempted mauling. But given the number of times I’ve inadvertently pushed my own fingernail through the cheaply-made neoprene, I doubt very much that these suits are raccoon-proof. Not even racoon-resistant, really. And while I could fault the manufacturer for poor workmanship when it comes to degraded necklines and armpits, I don’t think my complaints about being ripped to shreds by a raccoon would be well-received.
In the midst of the parade of horribles twisting in my mind, fortunately for us, several other racoons join our nemesis at the top step. The happy little family scampers off, suddenly Disney-like again. We follow their movements until we know for sure they are gone. It would be very awkward to find ourselves pinned down on the slick cobblestone staircase at the water’s edge by these little bastards. Too shallow to dive in. And too expensive to call in a Coast Guard chopper rescue. Plus the chopper rescue would likely be captured by a local news crew. And I don’t think we could stand the embarrassment. Still, it would be better than being gnawed to death by a family of cuddly raccoons. While I’m calculating the math involved with a helicopter rescue bill split three ways, we descend the steps and slide into the Bay.
I float on my back, nervously sculling with my hands pulling away from the staircase on shore, my neck craned back towards land, eyes darting around to confirm the coast is, literally, clear. Trying to remember, too, whether raccoons hate the water or love the water. And if the latter, how fast can they swim? And do I even know how to swim “serpentine,” assuming that is what is called for?
We manage to get off a great swim, though admittedly I swung wide, well away from hugging the shore. Willing to be subject to the current’s vagaries rather than feed a family of rodents. Ultimately, we survived the encounter. Until we meet again this Friday….
Thanks for reading.
The Lemonade Chronicles 