Glen

This one's for you.



-Ed

ps. For everyone else, no -- that is not a picture of me.

A Tale of Two Lobster

Linda and I spend Christmas Day at my mother's house, enjoying her incredible Christmas decor, gift bonanza, and fine dining. This year, in celebration of getting through another difficult year healthwise, mom wanted to do a few special things for Christmas dinner.

So here is a brief tribute to the dinner mom prepared for us on Christmas Day, with a good story about some financial miracle that made it all possible.

The first course were ravioli -- in Italy it is often the case that pasta is an appetizer, not the meal itself. So, we started with the ravioli.



But these were not just any ravioli. Not for this meal! No, these ravioli were hand made. My sister and mother stayed up late into the night on Christmas Eve hand-making the dough and "stuffing". As a courtesy, the traditional ravioli stuffing of calf's brains was passed up in lieu of more palatable beef.



This course was followed by "surf and turf". A beef tenderloin and lobster tails. My sister, while shopping at the local Weigmans, noticed that some of the lobster tails had been mis-marked. Instead of reading $22.50 per lobstar tail, they read $2.50 per lobster tail. Well.. there was really only 1 thing to do in a situation like that: Buy a bunch of lobster tails! Weigmans honored the price as their mistake, which is another great reason to shop there. So we had lots of lobster that night!



Linda and I were in charge of preparing the lobster, which meant almost 45 minutes of shell cutting, tail pulling, fileting, and seasoning. The end result, however, was quite good!



The end result? A good, Italian Christmas! Thank you, mom. Thank you.

A Miracle on My Street

Linda and I have started our own Christmas Eve tradition: her family gets together at our house and does the gift exchange. This works out logistically for a number of reasons: most of her brothers are married and spend Christmas Day with their own families.

Since I've already waxed poetic about Christmas Eve, let me just jump to the pictures...


Our tree, Franklin.


Linda's dad takes on a new small woodworking project each holiday. Last year, the project was light-up holiday houses. I think he does good work!


Inflatagonadon was VERY excited about Christmas this year.


Linda's snowman "village" was pruned down from last year. Some snowmen were... put out to pasture. On a more terrifying note, hours before the party the entire villiage was laid to waste by an unseen force. Linda is betting it was one of the cats. My money is on Mothra.


I noticed that the animatronic movement of santa looked, startingly, like the jolly old elf had been drinking. So I marked up a bottle of vanilla extract to say "rum" and hot glued it to his hand. The cute black wooden lamppost? That was Linda's dad's holiday project this year.


Yay! My PVR. You can see it next to my television, under the potted plant. Yes, big computer cases are ugly. But big computer cases are also cool and cheap.


Our house was full, but I don't necessarily like posting pictures of people on this blog without their permission. So, lest the house look empty, here is a picture of me next to the kitchen snowman and egg beating brigade. I think I had a mouth full of cheesecake.


Linda, at the same photo spot.

Christmas Eve Reflections

When I was younger, the night before Christmas was all about tortuous anticipation.

"When can I open a present?"
"It's past midnight. Can I open one now?"
"I don't think Santa's here yet, I want to stay up longer."


One year, I was so wound up by the promise of toys that my uncle Ralph had to go outside and fling rocks onto the rooftop to urge my hyperactive self into bed. Wasn't there an old addage: a watched santa delivers no presents? As I child I often wondered what kind of terrible self-image Santa must have had to not want anyone to look at him while he did his work.

At some point -- a point I cannot pinpoint -- we started a tradition of visiting my aunt and uncle's apartment on Christmas Eve. They would cook a marvelous dinner (most often seafood), give out their gifts that evening, sing Christmas carols, drink spiced apple cider, and generally soak in some ambiance for the season.

The first few years of this new tradition were heavenly: I got to open presents on Christmas Eve!

But while those presents were always generous, they did not match the cacophany of the following day. My family was a bit compulsive with the Christmas shopping. Coming downstairs on Christmas morning my siblings and I would find piles of gifts.. 30...40...50 for each of us, sitting in mounds sometimes taller than we were.

After a while, then, this Christmas Eve became a good distraction, something to whittle away the time as Christmas morning crept closer. I remember, as an early teenager, sipping seafood bisque one Christmas Eve like a junkie staving off the shakes that next morning's hit.

Over time, lots of time, it gradually dawned on me that Christmas Eve was a gift in and of itself -- not a way to open gifts early -- not a distraction from waiting for other gifts. To be surrounded by loved ones, holiday scents, spiced warm drinks, music, and easy conversation is the gift of relaxation and reconnection.

The ritual of food and family predates almost every other human experience. As much as I hate to admit it I do recognize that a hearty conversation with someone you enjoy yields a far more lasting memory and benefit than receiving a new XBOX.

Such traditions, though they span decades, are not immortal. First my sister was married, then I was married. Soon the juggling of families became too much and my aunt and uncle stopped their Christmas Eve. I had not attended their Christmas Eve party for the past three years.

This past year they did not have it.

It is sad to see such a streak end. The two years when it "went on without me" were, truly, bittersweet. A part of me was glad that their event did not happen this year as, then, I would not feel the burden of missing it. A larger part of me mourns the end of an era.

A sincere thank you, then, to my dear aunt and uncle. Their decades of calm and easy memories a trove more valuable than any gift they have wrapped for me.

Another Loss in the Family

I have some sad news to report to my blogging readership: The death of something quite close to me: my Epson Stylus 900.





I've not yet been able, in my shock and sadness, to conjure an appropriate eulogy. No matter -- were I able to muster long enough to remember my old friend I'd have no mechanism for commiting such musing to paper.

I think I bought my Epson in 1999. It has printed thousands of photographs and documents. For each murder mystery weekend I threw this individual machine went through no less than 2 reams of paper. We carted it up to Deep Creek, MD countless times. I still remember Saturday nights on those weekends, cramped in some off-limits closet with my Epson 900 printing out certificates, awards, and prizes for our murder mystery guests.

I got a nice laser printer for Christmas, and Linda and I will go out and buy a photo printer next week -- we have pictures to print. At first, the prospect of a new, *modern* printer was quite attractive to me. I wasn't quite sure *why* it was more attractive to me, though. My ol' Epson printed everything I needed it to, with the quality I needed -- no more, no less. It was perfect as is, and yet I was giddy to upgrade.

So many things in our lives have been made so easily replacable that I think we are being sold the idea that the act of replacement is, in and of itself, the act of evolution. It is a disturbing pattern we see in electronics, in relationships, and in our images of ourselves.

I reject that. I'm proud of my Epson 900 (Epsy, for those familiar with her). She gave me 5 years of excellent work and the act of replacing her is, in no uncertain terms, bittersweet.

Why? The tools we use to build our lives become, as we advance, like talismans that help us remember early times. They are the amulets of retrospection and reflection -- firm proof in the psychological law that our memories are state dependent.

Opening the printer's lid, mucking with the insides, my fumbling surgery brought back a flood of creative energy, stories, and times which are far past me now. My memory fading as it is, I see no joy in losing another connection with what has become a previous life. Yet, alas, Linda has nixed my attempts to have my Epson 900 stuffed and placed on the mantle.

So, I suppose this has become a eulogy of sorts. Fair winds, Epson Stylus 900 -- you served your purpose to the end. Lucky are any of us who receive similar acknowledgement.

Twas the Night Before The Night before Christmas

It is now, officially, 2:41am on Christmas Eve. Linda and I just finished wrapping presents. Family is coming over in 16 hours. The stairway runner arrived in the mail today, and we will be finishing the painting, staining, and runner installation in the stairwell tomorrow. Maybe, if we are lucky, we will get some wood floring down as well.

Merry Christmas to all, and to me a good night!

-Ed

Hobbes

I loved Calvin and Hobbes. Fact is, I still do. While alot of people enjoy the script because of the absurdity of Calvin's reflections (mismatched, as they are, to his age) they actually remind me of what was going through my head when I was that age. Or at least some reasonable approximation. Hence the Hobbes.

In my martial arts class I earned the nick-name "tigger" because I kept bouncing during sparring. Bouncing is much different than being light on your feet. Bouncing opens you up to a painful thing called a take-down. 8) Hence the tiger.

Also, I was born in the "year of the tiger" (1974), which adds to my affinity for the animal.

What am I talking about? I'm an internet-fad dork and I adopted a virtual pet. Scroll down, it's on the right.

-Ed

Paint it Black

Linda and I had a wonderful dinner tonight with 5 other black belts from our dojo. We went to a nearby sushi restaurant and ate, drank, and talked for three hours. We reminisced about how long we have been doing the art (7 years for me, some more than 20), when we all first met, and, in general, what is so special (or wrong?) with people like us that we enjoy it.

I've never seen a more diverse group sitting around a table, but we all had one thing in common: JuJitsu. Our dojo has seens its fair share of broken bones, cracked ribs, bruises, cuts, dislocations, sprains... you name it, we've probably had it. Unfortunately, some of us have also taken some permanent damage. Some people, after just a little bit of "rough" turn the other way, and quick -- just not the others at the table tonight.

We were able to soak in that brotherhood and enjoy a long, satisfying, relaxing meal. I in no way try to hide that I've not been myself for some months. Graduate school was stressful to me in many different dimensions. My mother's continued illness and the peaks and valleys of my family's ability to absorb it are constant in my heart.

But not tonight.

Tonight was sushi, sashimi, dojo stories, tea, and -- for a little while -- the good, old me. What a wonderful Christmas present.





-Ed

ps. under some small peer pressure, I was also coaxed into eating a small, whole, baby octopus...



Wow...

First semester done

A in both classes. yay. The teacher of the hard one told me I wa sin the top of the class, which is important to me because in addition to being my teacher he is also a coworker.

-Ed

A Fond Farewell to a Friend

No, this post has nothing to do with the wonderful, heart-tugging song by Elliott Smith.

The long Thanksgiving weekend (yes, I'm plowing through that back-blog) was mostly spent at my mom's house helping her do a little "spring cleaning". It was the first time, in several decades, that the house was given such focused maintenance-attention. Why so long? It's difficult to find a time when all three of her children were in a "throw-it-all-away" mood at once. What is certain is that we are all pack-rats. I'm a little surprised that I didn't find belly-button lint from when I was four tucked away in some dresser drawer.

My sentimentality is usually centered on small things: essays written in high school, or drawings from an art class. I have even kept a few favorite textbooks from gradeschool. I rarely feel a particular connection to something larger, like furniture. But, there was one thing in the house that I had a connection to: the red-felt pool table in the "bar room" in the basement.

My dad purchased the pool table from a pool hall and I played on it since before I could remember (longer, even, given the sad state of my memory). There was a time when I was frighteningly good at pool -- virtually unbeatable on an 8ft table. When I was too small to play for real I would roll the balls with my hand. In high school I could play pool for hours. My uncle Ralph, a pool shark in his own right, would teach me quite a bit, too. Often, and most happily, I played by myself on that pool table for hours at a time.

Some might remember, in college, I started up a pool club. I loved billiards and my "first love" was that pool table.

And this large thing was "slated" (no pun intended) for destruction this past Thanksgiving weekend. Now, it is easy to romanticize this past. The present reality was the pool table was a mess. It had also become my favorite workbench and had its share of battle scars from countless projects. Running my hand over the felt I could feel every wax stain, nick, felt-cut, and glue dollop. The table leaned slightly to the left. The ball return stuck on occaision and, at times, the ball collection bin would fall off the table entirely. It wasn't a bad decision to get rid of the pool table -- the thing was garbage. It was, however, a surprisingly sad one.

My sister had hired some haulers to come over and take away several large items from the basement... the pool table, a broken refridgerator, a broken freezer, and several old and not-sentimentally-valuable pieces of furniture. They had agreed that they could disassemble the pool table. For some odd reason, I wasn't comfortable with that thought. Under the guise of "saving money" I offered to break down the table myself (with the help of my sisters). If anyone was going to tear apart my table, it should be me.

After about 20 minutes the pool table was transformed into a mess of slate, MDF, and felt. When the haulers got there, I helped them carry it upstairs. The basement room seems much larger without the hulking mass in its center. I am sure, many years hence, the house will fetch a prettier penny because of the work we did on those days.

While everyone, not the least of which my mom, was very excited by the modernization and clean-up of her basement there was a part of me that recognized the effort as something else, something additional. It was a partial purging of my emotional investment in the house. The basement I grew up in, the basement where I had spent so much of my childhood, is no more.

Clearly this new basement will give to others a similar joy - but that is what it is now, a thing for others.

My sisters and I had a quick picture taken of the three of us with the pool table before it was destroyed. I'd post it here but we were all looking pretty ratty that day and I was told to publicly publish it only under pain of immediate death.

-Ed

Preparations

There is a dread some people have, upon leaving their house for a long period of time, that something in the house has been left on. Was the water running? Was the oven on? Do the cats have food? Do the ants? Was a light left on? Were too many lights left on? And dear God where are the children?

It is a fact that preparation is often a priority-based activity. We handle the big things first: tickets, money, hotel reservations. Then we handle the medium-sized things: clothes, electronics, luggage. We slowly whiddle down the priority train until we're left wondering, as our plane takes off, if we left the hair dryer on in the bathroom.

Now, I've not gotten on a plane -- my last few trips have dealt more with a separation of myself from sanity than anything else. However, the above iterations have less to do with travel and more to do with general preparations. And this past week I had been preparing for finals.

I read hundreds of pages of textbook.
I redid dozens of practice problems.
I studied on my own for hours.
I studied in a group for hours.
The day before one particular final I studied from 2pm until 4am.





In short, I felt prepared. I had handled the large things. The medium things. Even many of the small things. Fearing that I would doze off in the middle of the final, I drank a can of coke for lunch. I drank a can of coke a few hours before the exam while studying. I had a can of coke with me while I took the test. Everything was going according to plan -- I was prepared.

The final exam started at approximately 4:30pm. My mind racing, I plowed into the problems... my initial fear of the exam replaced by cautious optimism as I recognized some of the early questions. Have no doubt -- this was a hard exam covering an incredibly (irresponsibly) large set of material.

Then, fifteen minutes into the exam -- into the three hour exam -- it happened. I realized what I had not prepared for. I found my proverbial "left the water running".

All of the coke I had drunk in preparation for the test was now quite anxious to vacate my body. Fifteen minutes into the exam I really had to pee.

Now, trust in a graduate school final is a tricky thing and asking to be excused to use the facilities just isn't going to fly. WHat is a test taker to do? First you try and push it out of your mind -- mind over liquid, if you will. Failing that, the legs begin to shake, as do the arms. Generally, you are overcome with a sense of urgency.

90 minutes into the exame I had put an answer down to every question. Normally, this is the time where one goes over the problems, makes sure everything makes sense, and tries one last time to reason through some of the more difficult essay questions. My body would have none of that.

Before the ink dried on the last question the exam had been flung on the teacher's desk and I raced out of the room.





The relief was temporary, of course, as I sat back and wondered just what on earth I had answered during the latter half of the exam.

Clearly people often talk of finals being painful, but this one was physically so. And next time I will remember just one more way in which to be prepared.

-Ed

My New Christmas Carol

Sung to the tune of "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth"





Every body asks a favor of me,
The hours fly by as you can see.
My project deadlines become catastrophe,
So my one wish on Christmas Eve is as plain as it can be.

All I want for Christmas
is 30 hours in the day
30 hours in the day
30 hours in the day.

Gee, if I could only have
30 hours in the day
I'd have time to wish you "Merry Christmas."

It seems so long since I could say,
"I just found in my schedule a large gap"
Gosh oh gee, how happy I'd be,
If I could only nap.

All I want for Christmas
is 30 hours in the day
30 hours in the day
30 hours in the day.

Gee, if I could only have
30 hours in the day
I'd have time to wish you "Merry Christmas."

Glory Days

I've often thought of sacrificing my personal lore on the altar of literature. I've always wanted to wait until I became a better wordsmith but, lacking any real apprenticeships in that direction, this may be as good as it gets for me. So I have alot of funny stories and I want to write them down.

Now, I'm not entirely certain whether people like to hear these stories because they are truly funny or because they show a usually overly serious Ed with his pants down (that's mostly figurative very few -- but not zero -- of these stories involve my pants). Regardless, we'll toss all of it on the altar and see what is and is not pleasing. It's better to bore than to have something worthwhile lost in the finicky haze of oral history.

Oral history in a modern age is, by itself, absurd. Each retelling alters things slightly. Were I left with nothing but oral history, in 600 years I'll be hailed as a major religious figure having sported such miracles as office furniture re-arrangement, limo voyerism, and feeding an entire birthday group with nothing more than a box of entamin cookies and a small bag of potato chips. Clearly our distant descendents must be saved from such mis-worship.

So I've decided to start cataloguing (and blogging) some of my favorite funny stories. And the "thank you bitch" and "gift re-givings" are a small start. I hope they are entertaining enough to provide a chuckle to passersby. I'll do my best to polish them up, one last time, so that they really shine in print.

So, why the sudden desire to move these things out of my head and into the cyber-ether?

I've become a broken record. If you are reading this and you know me, you know that. Several times in the last month I've started telling a story... an old favorite... and the poor person receiving this story knew it already. Beat me to the punch line, in fact. The most recent time that happened I rolled with it, changed subjects, kept talking, but in the back of my head was good ol' Bruce:


Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing mister but boring stories of... glory days




Yes... in my head my life has a sound track and, often, the lyrics are included.

Have I, at 31, had my fill of boring stories? I sincerely hope not. With luck there is still much farce ahead of me, and while I've tried my best to grow and accept responsibilities I challenge anyone to tell me that I've grown up.

So, if you are with me and I go into an "old favorite" kindly interrupt me, tell me to note it for blogging, and then goad my into doing something that will be a new story for some other time.

My thanks in advance.

-Ed

The End of the Beginning

I've never been very good at endings -- perhaps that is the reason why I always make sure that I have a new project lined up before I finish a current one. Tonight, I ended my first semester of graduate school. Two classes down. Hopefully, two A's tucked under my belt.

The end of classes has left me just a tad depressed. The classes were alot more fun than I had originally thought and there were some people in the classes that I will miss.

-Ed

New Posts Friday

Finals are this week, and coming off of a 103 hour pay period, I have had absolutely no emotional energy with which to blog. Thank you to all who have expressed some concern over whether I am alive or not. Hopefully you all have been so caught up in the Christmas sprinting that you've also not had time to come back and see just how lax I've gotten in my posting.

Last final is tomorrow and, after some wine-drinking and hot tubbing on Thursday night, I should be ready to tackle my back-blog of events on Friday.

8)

-ed

Ack

I've been in a different tar pit since thanksgiving.

Lots of work on my mom's house.
Lot's of work on my house.
Graduate school finals are approaching.
I will have put in an almost 70 hour work week due to some emergencies at work.

All in all, very little time for luxuries like sleep and blogging. Which is a shame, because I've much that I would like to record about this week and I hope it all stays in my head long enough to make it on here.

-Ed