May 2003 Archives

When I finally got elder daughter tucked in to her ballet class and got off the phone with my press office for my daily beating, I was able to get in a quick ride on the preserve bike path, and was going to be happy with a fast average speed even if I didn't get to go far. But about 1000 feet past the boat launch, I started hitting the swarms of gnats. Swarms. Listen, I've been around rivers most of my life, and I have never seen a hatch like this. Riding through it was like being pelted by hail -- since it was dark and gloomy, I didn't have my wrap-around shades on, so they got in behind my glasses and into my eyes, in my ears, into my hair through the helmet. This went on for three miles out, and three miles back, with periodic stops so that I could see again. Never anything like it. Mercifully, a downpour began, which felt much better, knocked the bugs out of the sky, and let me look up a little as I sailed along. When I got back to pick up my daughter, I was covered in bugs and mud. Very pleasant. So, all in all, not the best bike ride ever. Today, it's beautiful and I'm stuck in here. Tomorrow and Sunday? Rain. Of course. Hannah runs in the Freihofer's tomorrow -- very exciting, but I'm hoping she won't have to wear a raincoat.

Huge jones to see "The Wonder Boys" again -- tried to rent it last weekend, and the store I use didn't even have a copy. Well, they had a VHS, but I'm not watching worn-out pan-and-scan when I know damn well I've rented it from them before. Their DVD library is very shallow, since the new business model seems to be to get 200 copies of every crappy movie that comes out, and then sell off all the copies as soon as possible, leaving them with no old movies to rent. So, I'm hoping the library has it.

-- Mr. Johnson has had his bug protein for the weekend, thank you very much.

(Just a quick plug for intergalactic shuffle mode, currently bringing me the Bloodhound Gang's "Lift your Head Up High (and blow your brains out)", with a great line that always tickles me: "life is short but hard like a body-building elf")

Anyway, turned out to be just beautiful in NYC, warm and sunny and delightful. Walked crosstown to the 6 in the morning, but when the meeting was over I traipsed across the park in the upper 90s, along the bridle path and just north of the reservoir, where I've never walked before. Just beautiful. And the drinking fountains work! Only in New York, kids.. (sorry, had to say it)

Been reading Richard Ford's A Multitude of Sins. No one better captures the utter ordinariness of making wrong, hurtful decisions - how easy, how non-malicious it can be. His characters make wrong moves in weak relationships, and generally the consequences are ordinary, too. Though, in "Abyss," there is tragedy, the remaining character chooses to face his fate with resignation and perhaps relief. His men make their mistakes (usually involving a woman) and accept them, his women are strong and know what they want and what they don't want. And most of them seem to be in real estate.

-- Mr. Johnson knows nothing about real estate.

On the train. Since I brought my umbrella and couldn't find my good sunglasses (in my Camelbak, I realized too late), of course it's brilliant out. Can't trust the weather, I guess. Listening to a little worldbeat group I hadn't heard in a long time (oh, the iPod!), discovered years back on a Cole Porter tribute. Next up? Yma Sumac! No idea what they're singing, except perhaps "the barber wants a Pez," a perfectly reasonable request, I believe. If I recall correctly, "The Barber Wants A Pez" was the somewhat less successful followup to the Broadway smash "The Turban Is Not For Sale," less successful because it was precisely the same musical, seen from the point of view of Giuseppe, the west side barber with a dockside view of the antics of Fleet Week.

That reverie was thoroughiy disturbed by a mom two seats back on the train who had to call home and make sure the kids were up for their field day. Didn't need the cell phone, they heard her without it.

Now I DO know what they're singing--"easy girls and fresh food." Now there's a happy combination. Yum.

There used to be a place called Yum's in Syracuse. I think its business plan was to serve huge portions of hot, delicious food to drunken college students in the middle of the night. They had a way-cool mural by a local drunken artist, too. At the time, they were singing my song, but the market for massive omelets at 4 a.m. must not have been what they anticipated, and I don't think it lasted more than a year. (The space is currently a Starbucks.) But man could they make an omelet.

There were too other food places back then that produced food like nothing else I've ever tasted. One was a little Greek sandwich shop that also catered to the closing-time crowd (closing time in Onondaga County was a seemingly Puritan 2 a.m.). They baked their sandwiches in the pizza oven, producing an incredible flavor. The other was The Taco Lady, a place I avoided for years as my introduction to tacos, at the unlamented Jack in the Box in Schenectady, had put me off Mexican food for some time. I finally reopened my mind, and it turned out The Taco Lady made the most perfect burritos I've ever tasted. But she couldn't take the Syracuse winters and went back to the Southwest. Places like those are virtually lost now because no one cares if all their food comes from the same Sysco can. Every time I visit Montreal I lament how little we settle for in food here in the states. Their grocery stores have better croissants than most of us will ever taste. They care what their food tastes like; all we seem to care about is whether we can supersize it. Jayzus.

Enough ranting! Manhattan calls!

Mr. Johnson has no idea whether his Metrocard works anymore, but could actually call the top lawyer at MTA to find out.

I know from talking to other people that I'm somewhat unusual in not turning on all the bedroom lights (or, in my case, any bedroom lights) and waking the whole house when I have to get up and dressed at some ridiculous hour to catch a morning train or plane. I feel like I should get some props for that, but on the other hand, I don't get where I have the right to ruin someone else's sleep just because I can't tell what color my socks are. But for the record, I'm told that most husbands turn on the lights. Quick down and back, and I'm getting way too old for this up-at-5:30-to-catch-a-train shit. It used to be fun/thrilling/cute. Now it's just a colossal pain in the ass. And it's supposed to be raining in the Big Apple, and I'm tight for time, so it's not like I'll get to take in coffee in Bryant Park.

Didn't get out early last night, but snuck in a bike ride anyway. Out for an hour, did 14.8 miles including some rainy ones; nice practice in case it DOES rain during the Tour de Cure. I haven't ridden in the rain in years, and it wasn't as bad or as slippery as I'd expected, and these newfangled brakes work really well. (Not discs, but much better than old brakes.) My thighs ballooned from lack of use in the past week and a half, I had to lug them into the house separately. Got some confidence back, since my mind was telling me earlier in the day that there was just no way I was going to make 50 miles, that I'd be lucky to do 5. Just felt that way when I left in the morning, apprehensive because it's close and I haven't trained enough. Maybe I'll get back early enough to sneak in another 15 or 20 tonight. If it isn't raining. Which it will be. NOTHING but rain in the forecast. Suckiest spring ever.

I'm a little sick of rain, which is too bad for me, because that's what's on the menu for the foreseeable future. May is gone and I've hardly been outside. It's like living in Syracuse again. Intellicast is predicting rain through Saturday, probably followed by periods of wetness falling from the sky. Hey! I've got some training to do here! Guess I'm gonna have to get my bike wet.

My body is rebelling at what I've been putting it through, and telling me to cut it out. But I know better . . . never listen to your body. It wants you to eat cheeseburgers. Not even good ones.

-- Has Mr. Johnson mentioned he's sick of the rain?

Spent the weekend throwing nearly 20 yards of junk out of my house -- doors, windows, desks, major spider habitat -- things that should have been thrown out, in many cases, before we ever moved in. A "work bench" in the basement nailed together from old doors and barn wood, which never served any purpose other than to cut me off from using about 15% of my basement. A giant metal desk that seemed like a good idea at the time. Scrap wood. Screens for windows that no longer exist. Two, count 'em, two old water heaters (bastids are heavy, and our town doesn't have a bulky pickup). (With one of them, I was able to solve the shuttle disaster puzzle -- the foam was WET. The insulating foam on this thing had become saturated by the leak in the tank, and weighed about six times what it normally would weigh. Had to completely dismantle the heater to even move it.) As a result, I should have about 20 yards more room in my small house, and in fact, I probably do. The garage is practically empty (though I immediately filled it with wood for the next project), and there's finally room in the basement for me to set up my fabulously expensive and virtually unused table saw where I can actually use it!

Even embarked on the completely ridiculous and overwhelming task of replacing the basement windows, something that has truly needed to be done since the day we moved in, and the condition of which hit critical when one of the water heaters, on the way out the window, took a chunk of window with it. No surprise. The surprise was that THIS time, when I went to the Home Depot, I was able to find a space on the shelf where a nearly correct-sized window was supposed to be. Scouted another HD not far away, and found precisely the windows I needed. Patched some masonry issues in one of them during a break in the rain on Sunday (a very short break, followed by a continuous downpour), framed the window and popped it in last night with a minimum of issues, and voila! -- it looks amazing. The stunning newness of the white vinyl window is so overwhelming that you hardly even notice the crumbling masonry! And, the masonry is next on the list. Going to ring the house with belgian pavers to cut down the water infiltration to the basement, and apply some sand mix to reface the block, and things should be like new, or at least like less than 74 years old.

No athletic activity of any kind all weekend, owing to the rain. Hannah had wanted to scout the Freihofer's course, but we didn't get to to do that. She'll be fine. Maybe we can do that at the packet pickup on Friday. I trained for my bike ride in no way whatsoever, unless lifting things beyond my physical capacity can be considered training.

-- Mr. Johnson is bone-tired

Nice night for the Corporate Challenge, breezy and fairly cool and no sun whatsoever. There were way too many runners (around 3000), and squeezing all those people onto Madison Avenue meant that for a while I was running on the sidewalk and leaping over tulips. The race wasn't well-supported with cheering throngs, which meant that mostly it was oddly quiet, with a lot of huffing and puffing and the beating of feet, but not much else. The highlight of the race was near the beginning, when a couple of old drunks stepped out of the Bottoms Up tavern, cigarettes and beer bottles in hand, and called out, "Y'all gonna kill yaselves!" Well, that may be true, but better I do it myself than pay Philip Morris (excuse me, Altria) to do it for me. Anyway, hit my first split half a minute behind my pace, which surprised me because I thought I was kicking ass. The distance between the first and second mile markers was, by my body's count, 3 miles. I kept an even pace on the hills instead of backing off, and that worked for a while, but then I started to hit the Heave Fault Line, and I knew that if I pressed any harder, I would hurl. So I'd back off, feel okay, speed up, feel like hurling, back off, feel okay, rinse, repeat. If I had known for sure that hurling would have let me go faster, I'd have just crossed the line and gotten it over with, but I haven't had this happen before, so I didn't know. My second mile was just under 18 (17:50) and I thought if I could keep pace I'd at least end with a decent time, but I really had to back off in the last mile and a half and people started passing me. Bastids! So I ended up with 29:13, not the worst time in the world but nine minutes behind our leading racer. Still, a couple of more athletic types finished behind me, so I felt okay. Several times during the race I decided that this was my last race, that there was no reason on this earth that I had to run in races. When I was done, I was figuring out how to improve my time next time. Perhaps I should accept that my asthmatic lungs have limited capacity.

Mr. Johnson says, "Yeah, that'll happen.

This was posted on the door on a little post-it tonight, and the pool was, in fact, closed: Fragrance Not full diaper Fouled the pool Foot fungus is our fault Sorry!

I will always give Joss Whedon credit for not going where you expect he's going to go, and even though you know that, you can't predict it. The "Connor in a happy home" ending to Angel was completely out of nowhere. The finale of Buffy, for which we had no indications (other than that all of a sudden old, spritely Buffy was back) whether the good guys would win or lose, was a nice, not-over-the-top, these-kids-are-some-wicked-cool-demon-slayers killfest. We thought Dawn would turn out to be the key to it all; she wasn't. Angel shows up, and then goes away -- they always tell us he has a role to play in the apocalypse, but they never say which apocalypse. He's played in a few already. Andrew, the wormboy that you keep expecting to turn out to be an evil mole planted amidst the slayers in training, turns out to be nothing more dangerous than . . . well, than Andrew. And Anya, whom I had certainly hoped to see in a spin-off along the lines of Anyanka, Demon Housewife, is the only one who dies. Which means that Xander, who never had anything to go on but guts and faith in Buffy, lost more than anyone else in all this. (Oh,yeah, well, Spike died, but maybe not, since he's supposed to be on Angel next season.) Excellent ending to The Best TV Show Ever.

Mr. Johnson notes that when "Buffy" kills someone, it doesn't take an hour of malingering and heavy looks. He's still bitter about "Dawson's"

I know, you can hardly imagine such a thing, eh? If you pick up a DVD from the bargain cart at the Wal-Mart, and it features some incarnation of the Dead End Kids / East End Kids / Bowery Boys -- in other words, at the least, Leo Gorcey and Huntz Hall -- and if said DVD is in fact a boxin' pitcher, and the boxin' pitcher's box promises "Additional Dialogue by Morey Amsterdam," you've gotta figure you're in for a treat. Even if Leo Gorcey doesn't sing (sorry, that one was obscure). But, in fact, I can report that "Kid Dynamite" is less than the finest in DEK/EEK/BB entertainment, and midway through the pitcher it devolves into a recruiting poster. Oh, the Morey Amsterdam dialogue is there, all right -- give Huntz a squeeze and he'll throw out a line. There are one or two gems, but this lacked the cleverness of "Dead End" or "They Made Me A Criminal," two of the finest in the pantheon.

Mr. Johnson actually doubts they show Dead End Kids movies in the Pantheon. Or the Parthenon.

• Some of the back roads of Schodack and Castleton are just beautiful.
• When cars and trucks are passing, wait to cut back in until you're sure they don't have a trailer behind them. They generally do.
• Drivers aren't all jerks, and they'll generally do what they can to accommodate a bike. Except for slowing down. They must never slow down, because that would indicate submission to the bicycle, which must never happen.
• Two packets of Gu and a Clifbar aren't quite enough fuel to pull this thing off.
• That's poison ivy. Don't park there.
• That's poison ivy, too.
• Why, yes, that is a coyote's head in that ditch. Just the head.
• You're never going to disembed that putty knife from the asphalt, so just leave it there.
• Top speed: 34.5 mph. Scary fast on skinny tires. I have maybe three square inches in contact with the ground at any moment, and them inches are rolling fast, baby.
• If the car in front of you hits a snake and it gets tossed back toward you, the snake will probably be displeased. Evasive maneuvers, Mr. Sulu!
• Wildlife count: Several buffalo (I passed the buffalo farm) (okay, they're domestic, but unusual), many cows, horses and sheep, the aforementioned snake, three turkeys, two eagles, any number of hawks, two rabbits, a heron, the last of the spring peepers and the head of Alfredo Coyote.

Mr. Johnson is wondering if that's just a warning to the other coyotes, and, if so, a warning from whom?

Songs can just fly under the radar, just out of my field of vision, for years and years, and then suddenly hit me right between the eyes. Often, I'll buy an album and think, "That's a good album, but not right now." Elvis Costello's collaboration with Burt Bacharach would be a case in point -- beautiful, poignant, daring in its own way, and yet not where I was when it came out. Now it can make me cry. Caught the performance on a Trio rerun of Sessions at W. 54th the other night, and it honestly moved me.

But the song I'm actually writing about now is "Tangled Up in Blue." I've long liked Dylan's songs, but not Dylan singing them. A generality, but a fairly accurate one. And I've always had this one in the back of my head from late nights in bars with Dylan-oriented jukeboxes (they tended to have a lot of Clapton, too, and the only thing I could ever find to play on them was Dire Straits' "Sultans of Swing," on which the George Harrison-like restraint of the lead guitar always killed me). But not too long ago I found a copy of the Indigo Girls' live cover of "Tangled Up In Blue," and it blew me away. They OWN that song, like Johnny Cash owns "Hurt," and this is coming from someone who really couldn't be called an Indigo Girls fan. They're there, they're fine, I get bored with musicians who have to make a point, but man, their cover of that song just kills. Headphones-on-full-blast-screaming-along-while-doing-the-dishes-rock-'n'-roll.

Trio does a nice little public service after it plays Letterman reruns: it plays a single music video, every night just before 11. A couple of nights ago it was Aimee Mann's "Pavlov's Bell," very enjoyable. Last night it was someone I'd never heard of, Lizzie West, singing "Sometime." Loved it. Wrote it down. Checked the Apple Music Store, and guess what? Lizzie West EP, with the song I want. $3.96. Or, ONLY the song I want, $0.99. So, I ask FYE and the other music distributors -- is that so fucking hard?

Mr. Johnson may not be off this singles rant for some time

Coincidence? You decide. God, no, I haven't watched Dawson's Creek since the second season, but in those early days, it was something very different on television and quite enjoyable -- overeducated and hyperarticulate high-schoolers living in a bayside paradise with virtually no parental supervision, bizarre immature relationships and no winter coats. What's not to like? So, yes, in my total slugdom of exhaustion (third night in a row I've fallen asleep between supper and bedtime), I sprawled on the couch last night and watched the finale of Dawson's Creek. Okay, they promised someone was going to die. They didn't say it was going to take up the entire two hours. Jeez. When Buffy kills off a character, they get in, they get out, they get it over with. This was unbelievable very special episode shit. Truly sucked. I care more than I should, I know.

And then this afternoon I got out for a run after work, my first since phys. therapy, and it was like pushing logs up a hill. I had nothing. Not to worry, the race is only in another week. I can always walk it, right? I heard that one of my new employees (meaning I acquired him, not that he's new) was scoping out my time from last fall's race. Bastards have got to beat the boss, right? That's okay - - I'll admit I took childish pleasure in beating the time of a guy who works for me who has all his racing numbers plastered all over his cube. Kicked his 30-year-old ass! Take that, Grade 18!

I'm pathetic, I know. Besides, it's all about the Tour de Cure. Had to adjust my fundraising goals vertically already . . people have responded fantastically. The link is still below, so click and support the American Diabetes Association.

Mr. Johnson is thinking up a dramatic excuse for next week's poor showing already. Perhaps something fungus-based.

If I beat my measly $100 fundraising goal, I'm going to do the 50-miler. So, go to the site and click on the donations button to cause me pain. Go ahead. (It's on June 8. You've still got time.)

New coffee girl is much more pleasant, on average, than previous coffee girl, who on some days could be pleasant as pie and on other days could rip the heads from customers with badger-like ferocity and a burning glare from behind her smart-girl glasses. If I were still in the comic book years, I'd think of making her into an ironic superheroine, perhaps something along the lines of the legendary "Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman" (his catchline? "I thought I told you to shut up?!"). So, old coffee girl is gone now. However, old coffee girl must have taken all the gravity with her, because coffee pours slower for new coffee girl. Still. . .

The penultimate "Buffy" was a nice and very much needed break in the action - - there was even some of the old Buffy levity. And I didn't wake up too unsettled to work. Joss Whedon never goes where you think he's going to go, and even knowing that, you can't figure out where it's going to go. Who saw that finale in "Angel" coming? Not me, kids.

Nothing like going to the massage therapist thinking you have a little tiny sore spot on your achilles tendon and finding out that, in fact, the entire thing is a wall of fire under her fingers. Once she was done with me yesterday, there was going to be no running last night. So I'll make up for it tonight. Need to do some speed work. And then ice, ice ice....

No Terence Trent D'Arby in sight, either.

"X-Men 2" rocked. At least 60% more Famke Janssen!

I'm committed to two races, one on foot and one on wheels. The latter is a benefit for diabetes, and I'll post the information for any who may want to contribute. Had a great hour run last night, but my heel came up sore. One of the guys on the running team just finished his final chemo, so I don't think I can bag because my foot hurts or my allergies are bugging me.

Weekend was good, but, as always, extremely short. In the sense that one can give a gift which the recipient must actually go to the store and pick out, the girls "gave" their mom a new bicycle, a nice Specialized hybrid that she seems very comfortable on. On Sunday we logged a slow five miles on the bike path, but had a great time. Bekah's really coming along, considering she just had to learn hand brakes last week. Already got her shifting. Another couple of weeks and she'll forget there was any other way.

Have I mentioned the superior qualities of the iPod? No? Well, then, let me . . . Oh, you say I have? Well, okay.

Finishing "Holes," working on a book of Richard Ford stories.

Rebekah yesterday morning approached the sink, water bottle in hand, in slo-mo, panting, "Must ! . . . Have! . . . Water!" I'm rearing two very funny girls.

Oh, just go read Mimi Smartypants. Number 9. And know that I have done virtually this same thing, and come up with the same answer. But I wasn't brave enough to tell the world.

Mr. Johnson may also have dropped his cellphone in a toilet once.

I swear I heard this on an NPR report last night, regarding the devastation of the tornadoes in the midwest last weekend -- one of the towns was home to a Pringles potato chip factory, which was heavily damaged or destroyed and may not open again for months: "Already, the closing of the Pringles factory is having a ripple effect."

Whoever wrote that, you should be ashamed. Potato chip humor is just not appropriate at this time. (The ripple effect, by the way, was layoffs at the factory that makes the cans for Pringles. I guess we're lucky the reporter didn't say the workers were canned. Very lucky.)

Mr. Johnson is pleased to report the name of the town is not "Ruffles, Missouri."

It's shocking how the media can manipulate us. All it takes is nearly non-stop publicity for the new Fleetwood Mac album -- commercials, web pop-ups, reviews in every single magazine, a couple of stories in the Times -- and the next thing you know, I'm in a Fleetwood Mac mood. Okay, I have always loved the late '70s version of The Mac (said with an ironic twist that lets you know I don't actually refer to them in that way, except with a wink, and yet with a tone that also informs you that back in my day, back when they were new, yes, we did call them "The Mac"). And it's not like Britney and Christina and god only knows what else don't get the same treatment, and that treatment doesn't make me think: You know, I need to hear some relentlessly stupid, overly glossy, utterly forgettable teen pop. Or, if it does, I go old-school and put on The Partridge Family. (I guess that'd be old-school-bus.) (If you don't get that one, don't read this blog. It's not for you.) (The point isn't whether it was a bad joke, the point is . . . oh, forget it.)

And so, I've been in this Fleetwood Mac mode for a few days. I've had "Rumours" on CD for years, but never got "Fleetwood Mac", partly because half of it bored me. The other half, however, is hot summer nights with the AM radio blaring in the '72 Pontiac Ventura, out past curfew and drinking Boone's Farm along the riverbank, and the songs are pretty good, too. So: Apple Music Store to the rescue! I bought only the songs I wanted, popped them in the iPod, and now I'm a happy man who's been missing Christine McVie's voice for far too long. (She's sitting this reunion out, so I will be, too.)

So now I'm just another pathetic grown-up heading toward his 25th high school reunion playing exactly the same music he was playing when he flipped the tassel. I SWEAR I listen to new music! I've got The Hives! I love The Donnas! "Don't Worry Kyoko" was the best fucking rock 'n' roll record ever made! (Oops, sorry. My rants appear to have switched wires.)

Many races coming up, not sure which ones I'm going to do. I'm under extreme subordinate pressure to finally do the Corporate Challenge 5K, and despite my extremely lax training regimen this spring (such as, I haven't run OUTSIDE yet), I think I can do well enough not to embarass myself. Then there's a 25/50/100 mile bike race on June 8 that I'd really like to do, and Hannah's got the Freihofer's coming up. Summer's too damn short around here.

Mr. Johnson has never actually listened to all of "Tusk," but he is thinking of doing so.

The tears just never stopped. Hannah went to bed angry at 5 o'clock, refused to come down for supper, and was asleep when I went up to get Bekah ready for bed. Think she stayed up too late at her slumber party? All efforts prior to that to talk to her were fruitless. She woke up around 9:30, hungry and a little chastened, but still crying. She said she was only crying because she was so hungry.

This, of course, can only get worse as she gets older. By coincidence, I ran across a couple of my old high school journals today, and browsed through them tonight. The last time I looked at these was 20 years ago (when I had the forethought to annotate them so some of the more obscure references might still be understandable lo these many years hence). At the time, I think I was embarassed to have been such a manic, dramatic dweeb. Now I just look at it and think, "Well, that's what 15 was like." Endless speculation about girls, about whether one might like me, whether I would ever get up the nerve to talk to her or, god forbid, ask her out. Assessments about whether I was in or out with a particular clique -- hugely important. People and places and events I'd completely forgotten, and even now can't really find in my memory. Crushes I'd forgotten I even had. And dreams, hundreds of dreams, all laid out in the kind of detail you can afford when you're a teenager and have all the time in the world to write. 13 different kinds of experimental handwriting.

The songs that I liked -- now, those are embarassing.

-- Mr. Johnson denies ever having been thrilled that "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" was playing on the radio

Only because I found this, written maybe 7 years ago, did my elder daughter survive the ride home. And even still, its power to keep me from wringing her neck is wearing thin. But here it is: Here's how I put my little girl to bed. Mommy mostly gives her scrubby-dubs and toothbrush, changes her diaper and gets her into a onesie to sleep in. Then out go the lights and Mommy sings her "lullabye and goodnight." Then Daddy holds her and she pats Humpty Dumpty, hanging from her ceiling light, and she recites "Humpty Dumpty" (which she's been doing since she was about 2 and 2 months). Then I make Humpty wave "Night night, Hannah." Then I lay her down for "one-mores," which used to be one more time I'd hold her in my arms, but she's too big. I sing the "Wheels on the Bus" in this order: driver, babies, mommies, doors, wipers, lights, wheels, horn. And then, "ABC one time" and then I tuck her in, saying "tuck tuck tuck" as I do it, ignoring any stalling she's trying to do, and then I say "night night" and she asks, "Wake up morning eat breakfast go to school?" and I say, "Yes."

-- Mr. Johnson is still singing "The Wheels on the Bus," night after night after night...

Name three things that, in combination, I am unprepared to deal with. Pretty much everything I've done or said in the past few hours has brought tears. It's like pushing the button on a soda machine, expecting Coke, and out pops a Fresca -- how the fuck could pushing that button have possibly delivered a Fresca? Who even knew there still was Fresca. Well, same with little girls. What should have been a simple discussion about the future of bicycling among the sub-teen members of our household went to tears at the very start of the conversation. Those tears have continued for the past half hour, ostensibly from stress over the upcoming ballet academy auditions. The fact that I can't stand tears over nothing is my problem, not theirs, and I understand that, but understanding it doesn't change it. I'm pissed at myself that I'm not having a great day with them and that I'm not more patient, and being pissed makes me less patient.

But really, no one could have expected a Fresca....

-- Mr. Johnson enjoys a nice beverage. There isn't a man, woman or child alive who doesn't enjoy a nice beverage.

For those of us who really just don't have the time to make a poem that works, there's the easy route: Rob's Amazing Poem Generator

Here's the poem it made from my blog:

My motto: let being I want to scream into a while, it I learned that authentic Salt City on the Great Northeastern Novel mind you speaks a certain antsiness that was a little, rattle, either . . . this game: may not previously available for him. And how much to the Varsity some conversation 4/26/2003 Best thing works. So, going to do with the workload, a bit And listen to imagine.If blogged by: Cell phones were rarely worth hearing, so we stopped and so I jumped on perhaps Stickzit brand.

So, where have I been, you ask? Busy. Extremely busy. Busy-ness of the one-armed paperhanger variety. One-armed paperhanger working New Orleans in the dead of summer, using a particularly cheap variety of paste. Perhaps "Stickzit" brand. Or perhaps "Mono-Arm and Hammer".

Busy, in other words. Work has been insane. Too much to do, 300 fewer people to do it. Plus, a whole political thing going on that is the ugliest thing I've seen, and I've been doing this for a bunch of years now. They're giving backbiting, spiteful politics a bad name. And then yesterday it looked like a momentary lull in the workload, a day when hardly anyone would need me, and so after a meeting in the morning up north, I jumped on my bike. I can now report that the entire length of the bike path from the Ft. Edward feeder canal to Lake George has excellent cell phone reception. Of course it's inconceivable that I could take a ride without the cell phone, I've given up on that idea -- I'm lucky I get to take a shower after I come back from a run without getting called. But I'm not going to be such a dork, such a complete asshole as to take a headset with me on a bike ride. Which meant, yesterday, that I was such a complete asshole as to have to stop and answer the phone on a regular basis. 2-1/2 hours of riding, 45 minutes on the phone. But I made it to Lake George, and did a stretch of the trail along the old Feeder Canal that I'd never been able to do because it's a soft surface unsuitable for skates. So, in all, 32 miles in 2.5 hours of actual riding time, average speed of 13 mph (LOTS of grade crossings). My thighs both weighed a hundred pounds last night, but all in all I'm faring very well and my recent thoughts of entering a 25 or 50 mile race may not be as stupid as they may have appeared. Well, we'll see.

On my own with the kids this weekend, except that one is away for an overnight, so I've just got one. The house feels weird, but she stepped up her jabbering to fill any potential voids. Never sure what to do with time at home all by myself. Could work on the house, could write the Great Northeastern Novel (not trying to overreach by going for the Great American Novel, mind you), could take up the hash pipe.

Rebekah needed a new bike. The girl won't stop growing. The hand-me-down from last year looks like a clown bike under her. So, off we went to the Steiner's tonight. The best thing they had was a Specialized Hot Rock, exactly the same bike as I bought Hannah last spring, but this one is a 21-speed, Hannah's was a 7. They didn't have one with only 7. Can't buy younger daughter better bike. I'm not insane. I know how the seniority thing works. So, solution is that this new 21-speed is for Hannah, and Bek will get her barely used 7-speed. If Hannah buys the solution. We'll see. Saw a nice bike for The Mommy too, will have to see if she's up for it. Got myself some new gloves (really could have used them yesterday) and a bike shirt, too.

Well, mere weeks after I splurged on my iPod, Apple came out with newer, smaller, bigger iPod, of course. And they upgraded iTunes and added their much-heralded music service, which DOES rock. I will pay $1 for a song. In fact, that's what I paid for a song back in the '70s, in the day of singles, so I think that's fair. When I was first deemed old enough to bike into the wilds of Schenectady for purposes of visiting the Apex Music Corner, I believe the magical 45 was 79 cents. Ah, the time lost to Apex . . . also known as Armpit or Apeshit, since it's not possible for a 12-year-old boy to eschew satiric renaming. Somewhere recently I read among all the laments about the downfall of the music business that there's simply no real connection to the product anymore, and a number of people laid it squarely at the feet of the death of the single. Certainly it's true that no one cares any more what label something is on (perhaps that's different in the hip hop world), whereas back then, the label was part of the whole package, and people who bought records from dorky labels like Bell (think Tony Orlando & Dawn) were deserving of certain levels of ridicule. And, a la Diner, you HAD to know the names of the flip sides, even if they were rarely worth playing. Granted, albums then tended to suck; there was rarely anything beyond the singles worth hearing, so singles were the dominant form. To this day, I remember the names of flip sides to records that I hated, to records that I never even owned, to records that I haven't seen in 20 years. It's a curse, but it's also a culture. Browsing a record store was, for many many years, just the best thing I could ever think of doing. And it started at Armpit, where the top singles of the week were available for listening through a single, monaural speaker you pressed to your ear (taking care to keep its wires aligned just so. They had albums, too, and I bought a number there. The first single I ever bought was "Daniel" by Elton John, and the first album was "Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player." My taste got progressively worse from there, for a while, and then in college I constantly scoured the dusty used record stores to fill my collection with '60s British Invasion stuff and horrible pop vaguely remembered from the years before I had a radio of my own. Some of the stuff stands up. I still own it all.

Oh yeah, the iPod. Well, anyway, the new iTunes and the music service use AAC, superior to MP3 but not previously available as an encoding regime, and so I am, as we speak, re-ripping many of the CDs I had already ripped just a few weeks ago, now into the superior format. Suffering for my music once again.

Flip side of "Daniel?" "Skyline Pigeon." It sucked so bad. On MCA records, with the rainbow label.