So this morning I went into my usual Holiday Station Store on Spenard Road. I have been going there for years – the people that work there are very pleasant and efficient. I am always greeted, and there’s usually some good-natured joking or a smart-assed comment, though I dish it as well as take it. When I come in the mornings, there is often a line at the register, and because I am both considerate and observant, when I see the coffee cup dispenser empty, I’ll grab a sleeve of cups and restock for them. There’s no sense in interrupting a busy person to restock cups, when I can do it just as easily, and it is faster.

What can I say – I like to help.

Recently there has been some turnover and rearrangement of shifts. The people that I have known there for years seem to have disappeared, so I have been “training” the new folks to make sure that they get everything just right – at least, just right for me. This morning – Monday morning – I went in, and there was no sugar. One of the employees happened to be standing there at the coffee bar, and I asked her if there was any sugar. She looked around in the usual places, and couldn’t find any. She looked at the shelves, and there were several boxes of sugar there, but she made it clear that she couldn’t just take a box of sugarthat was meant for retail sale off the shelf and open it for a customer. I would have to ask at the counter.

So I did.

Justin was at the cash register. I asked him, “Excuse me, do you have any sugar?”

(blank stare) “Um, no, we’re out.”

“There is some on the shelf over there…”

“We can’t use those…”

 Monday morning. No coffee. Stupid employee. Wrong answer.

The whole time I had been holding an empty styrofoam cup, expecting to fill it with exactly the right proportions of sugar, coffee, then cream, then top it off with coffee… but those plans were now shot, since THERE WAS NO SUGAR. I walked back to the coffee bar.  I firmly placed my cup back on the bar. I was disgusted with the service and the situation, and angry that I was going to have to go find my coffee elsewhere. The first employee, who had directed me  to the counter in the first place, was still there, and she could tell I was miffed.

As I turned to walk out the door, I looked at the shelf again, and saw the boxes of sugar. It is amazing that on a Monday morning, without coffee, I was able to be inspired, but I was. I decided to pick up the box of sugar, take it to the register, and offer to purchase it… and at that point, Justin would recognize the error of his ways, open the sugar and let me have some.

(blank stare) “Would you like a receipt?”

(loudly) “Why yes, I would like a receipt.” I would need the receipt when they graciously offered to refund my money.

I took my newly-purchased two-pound box of sugar back to the coffee bar, and prepared my coffee just-so. After I was done taking my small amount of sugar, I set the box down, where it was immediately snatched up by another customer.

Clearly there was a need for sugar.

I went back to the counter with my coffee, and without my box of sugar, which I had just donated to the store. Here’s where I thought that Justin would get a clue. How hard could this be, the store manager was standing right behind him, and had heard the whole exchange? All he had to do was turn around and explain the situation to his manager, the manager would take  three bucks out of his pocket, pay for the sugar and instruct Justin to refund me. I was about to get my coffee, a refund, and an apology.

Boy was I wrong.

(blank stare) “Would you like a receipt?”

“Yes, I would.” I was indignant. “… and let me give you a little lesson in marketing. You don’t ever… EVER… let a customer walk out of your store when they come in to buy something, just because you’re out of sugar. You had the sugar right there on the shelf.

“That’s stupid.”

Justin didn’t say a word. Either did his manager.

A great start to a Monday morning.

This is strange because it was uttered by a friend I had known all my life. There was just the matter of the intervening nineteen years since I last saw her.

The nexus of the Facebook era and a trip to my family home brought about this strange interaction. Making it all the stranger was that our appointed meeting place was a subway platform. Oh, and one other thing. I was confronting one of my greatest personal shortcomings.

This past spring I rediscovered Facebook. I had been a member for quite a while, but my contact list remained very short. Someone cajoled me into poking around with it again, and in one short week, I had rediscovered dozens of childhood friends. My plans for a spring trip were certain to include a number of reunions. I arrived in town with a fistful of email addresses and phone numbers of people I hadn’t seen in ten or twenty or even thirty years.

And so it was with my friend with whom I would be reunited for the first time in nineteen years. When I arrived in town, I dialed my friend’s phone number. As I was dialing, my mind was flooded with thoughts of my friend’s mother. Her name was repeated over and over in my head. When my friend answered the phone, we exchanged the usual pleasantries, but immediately following that, my friend gave me the news: her mother had passed away a few weeks before. That I had been thinking of her mother as I dialed the phone was a very strange feeling. I would have called it coincidence, except that a very similar thing happened to me once before in my life; the first time even more spectacularly than this one.

We made plans to get together for lunch, but we changed them. We decided to go to the baseball game together. I would take the Metro down to her stop, and wait for her on the platform. As much as I was looking forward to our reunion, I was dreading it, too. I have no idea what to say to someone who has lost her mother. There are some things I don’t do particularly well. There are some things that I don’t do at all. This was one of them.

Back when I lived in the Washington, DC area, I played hockey on a men’s team. One of my teammates was a good friend – not only did we play hockey together, but I also hunted and fished with him and his father, and his mother was one of the people in my season ticket group for the Washington Capitals.

Shortly after I moved to Alaska, my hockey buddy’s father passed away. As I remember it now, it was very sudden and unexpected, and it happened during the holidays. I happened to return to Washington to visit my family for Christmas, and my parents told me of my friend’s loss. My mother suggested I call.

I was paralyzed. I had no idea what to say. I thought about what I would say. I thought about how awkward it would be. I wasn’t ready. I put it off for a day… and then two. Maybe tomorrow I will have some inspiration. Or courage.

Inspiration and courage never came, and I returned back to Alaska having abdicated my responsibility. I never called my hockey buddy. It wasn’t that I couldn’t have called from Alaska, either.  I let weeks become months, and months become years.

Essentially, I lost a friend because I was… a coward.

There was no turning back here. Not that I would want to; the benefit of twenty years of life experience is that you gain some maturity and coping skills. I knew I wasn’t going to be the utter idiot I had been with my hockey buddy… but the skill set hadn’t been tested in quite a while.

The day of the game, there was a bit of phone tag played. My insecurities about the situation played games with me as we traded voice mails. I imagined my friend finding the idea of going out so soon after her mother’s passing to be too much, and that I would get a message telling me that she was going to cancel. If she had, I would have totally understood. If I had been thinking, I would have known that this was the last thing she would do. Once she made a commitment to do something, there was little that one could do to distract her from that commitment.

She’s just weird that way.

Having a reunion and hugging someone that you haven’t seen in nineteen years – on a subway platform – isn’t nearly as strange as I imagined it to be. I think there are some friends that you just know so well and have such an affinity for that allows the years to melt away as if it had been nineteen days or even nineteen hours. We were so caught up in catching up that we actually got on the wrong train. We were going the right direction, but took the scenic route. It hardly mattered, and in fact, I had to make a concerted effort to pay attention to exactly where we were so we didn’t miss our stop.

We talked about everyone and everything we’d ever done. We laughed a lot. I was amazed at the details I remembered from way back. One Fourth of July she and I went to the National Mall to watch the fireworks. It was a pretty spectacular evening – there had been thunderstorms earlier, and we were soaked to the skin. As it started to get dark, the skies were filled with spectacular lightning, which brought cheers from the crowd as if it were part of the fireworks show. Finally the skies cleared and the fireworks started. They were spectacular, as they always are, and of course, the backdrop of our national monuments makes the celebration all the more amazing.

After the fireworks, we wandered back to the Metro, where thousands of us boarded the trains to head home. Every free inch of space on those cars was packed with people. Everyone was nose-to-nose with their friends and butt-to-butt with strangers. Nobody cared, it was just a part of the annual July Fourth ritual.

At the baseball game we talked about everything. As the night wore on, my friend’s voice got squeakier and more hoarse. As difficult as it was to hear her it was strangely familiar. I hadn’t remembered it at first, but it seems that whenever she and I did one of these outings, whether to a ballgame, or the fireworks, or the Preakness, she would lose her voice. I hadn’t remembered that detail until we were walking back to the Metro after the game.

As we walked down Half street there were some awkward pauses. I told her, we should get together again when I come to town in September. She said she’s really like that, and she’d like to get together with my parents, too. I told her they’d really like that.

We filed into the subway station, only to find ourselves on the wrong side of a temporary barrier. Our college-years sensibilities came to us as swimming comes to fish: we moved them and walked to the side of the platform we were supposed to be on. Moments after we did that, I heard one of the station police chastising others for doing the same thing.

Our train came, and the crowd poured onto the car. Every inch was occupied. Friends were nose-to-nose, and strangers were butt-to-butt. I said to her, “I’ve seen this movie before.” She laughed. We only had two stops on the train before she’d change trains and head off towards her home, and I would head back to Maryland and my parent’s place.

We didn’t say much during those few minutes on the train. She was looking off at nothing in particular. I looked at her face, and she had that look that you see right before someone starts to cry.

The train pulled into the station. She hugged me and kissed me on the cheek. She said, “I’ll see you soon, sweetie” and walked off the train.

I said nothing.

What do you say?

I was diagnosed with sleep apnea about ten years ago, and the treatment is one of these machines. Many people have trouble adjusting to them – when you first get one, you are often confronted with the sensation of suffocating, even though you’re getting plenty of air. Add to that the discomfort of wearing a mask on your nose, the hose that attaches to the CPAP, and the general unattractiveness of it all, and you can see why most people who are diagnosed just skip the treatment altogether, preferring the disturbed sleep and other symptoms to the adjustment period.

As for me, I adjusted quite readily, and for people like me who are able to use the CPAP device, it makes a dramatic improvement in the quality of your life. For me, the symptoms that lead the doctors to look for it were my chronic sleepiness in the daytime, and some acid reflux while I slept. Adding the CPAP stopped both of those problems dead in their tracks.

So every night for the last ten years, I’ve put on my mask, turned on the machine and drifted off to sleep. The white noise generated by the machine is soothing, and you get conditioned to the pressure… it is almost as if it is a sleeping pill – putting the mask on puts you to sleep very quickly.

I have had this particular CPAP machine for quite a while, and because the machines are quite expensive and I no longer have health insurance, I have nursed this one along for about seven years. The only real problem it has is that the on/off switch has gotten increasingly tricky over time, and I (correctly) guessed that it was just a matter of time before it failed altogether. Instead, I have taken to unplugging the machine in the morning and plugging it in at night – the machine is designed to come back on if the power is interrupted.

The other night, as I was getting ready for bed, I plugged the machine in, and rather than starting up as it usually does, the lights blinked on and off, indicating that something was wrong. I have taken the CPAP apart in the past, trying to repair the faulty switch… and I did it again the other night, hoping that I would be able to clean some contacts or work some magic, and somehow get the old machine to start.

No luck.

I dreaded the idea of trying to sleep without the CPAP, but I really had no choice. I would doze off… only to be awakened by my own snoring. After a while, I would settle  into sleep, only to wake up again, gasping for breath. After three or four hours of fitful sleep – and by fitful, I mean being awakened once  a minute by any one of the three or four symptoms that come with sleep apnea, I felt like crap, and wondered why I even bothered trying to  go to sleep in the first place.

Since I had decided that the old machine was beyond repair, I searched the Internet and found a site where you can buy machines relatively inexpensively… So I purchased a new machine, but not before having to spend yet another night without my CPAP.

If you know anything about sleep apnea, you know that whatever sleep you get is very inefficient, because while you may only be aware of waking up a few times in a night, your body actually wakes up (at least partially) as often as two times a minute. You never get that deep, restful sleep without the assistance of the machine. So four hours of half-sleep, followed by another night of half-sleep, and I was quickly falling into a hole.

I realized that I had come to depend on this machine just to have a semblance of a normal life during my waking hours. Sleeping without a CPAP has now become a virtual impossibility, because even if you can get to bed early, the sleep quality is poor, and the other symptoms, such as acid reflux are particularly uncomfortable. Add to that the fact that people with untreated sleep apnea tend to be more susceptible to a number of ailments, mostly relating to the heart, and there is very little that is good about the condition.

Fortunately, the occurrence of sleep apnea is correlated to obesity, so to the extent that one can control his or her weight, you have some control over the apnea. I have been good in the past about keeping my weight under control,  but I have been slacking as of late. The failure of the CPAP pointed out my dependence on the machine… and that I had created a lot of that dependence myself by letting the weight get out of control. By experiencing the sleep apnea symptoms, I was in essence giving myself a wake-up call… every thirty seconds, as I stopped breathing while I slept.

With all of my paperwork in hand and a freshly-refilled credit card, I ordered a new CPAP today, and as of a few hours ago, it was safely in some UPS cargo container, on its way to my increasingly sleep-deprived hands.

Once I had the order placed, I decided to take one last crack at getting the old CPAP working again. I had researched the idea of renting one for a few days, and the cost was $155, whether I kept it a day or a week. I thought that was a bit high, and if someone suggested that they’d give me $155 to sleep for a night without a CPAP, I figured I could do that… for $155. It would suck… and I would complain about it. But I would have $155.

I opened the old machine up once again, and took all of the business parts off the machine… and with a simple shorting of the switch, I was able to make it come back on. So, for tonight, I have the old CPAP, and I know the new one is on the way. My nights of terrible sleep are over… but not before I resolved to do something about it and get myself back into shape.

So while my day started with the idea of dreading the idea of retiring to sleep, I know that I now have not only a working machine, but what has (up until now) been a reliable backup.

So tonight when I go to bed, I am sure when I feel that familiar puff of gently compressed air against my flippy-floppy soft palate, I will drift right off into a mechanically-assisted slumber…

… like the Borg.

I have created some interesting Easter traditions over the years, mostly having to do with some non-traditional Easter baskets that we’ve created for the kids in the past. This year, I find myself visiting my parents in Washington, DC, and I will spend Easter with them, and my brother and sister and their families.

One of their traditions is to have an Easter Egg hunt for the nieces. When I was a kid, such an event required considerable effort and planning. A couple dozen eggs, hard-boiling, dyeing, cooling… and all of that on the days before Easter… followed by wandering the yard and hiding the eggs here and there in the yard. Today, a trip to Costco (in January, because that is when the retailers put out the Easter stuff) scores you a plastic bucket of three dozen plastic eggs, stuffed with candy. Twenty minutes in the yard, and voila… Easter Egg Hunt.

I’ll admit, some of the artistry that comes with hand-dyed eggs is lost when you substitute candy-filled orbs of plastic. But this is about the kids, and if you think back to your youth, if given the choice between a hard boiled egg that was going to be blue on the inside when you peeled it, and a plastic egg full of jelly beans, which would you choose?

So this morning, I took my little plastic bucket of eggs and wandered the back yard, putting eggs here and there. About half of them are lying in the open on the lawn, but the remaining half are actually pretty well hidden. My parents have a hedge of forsythia bushes, which still sport a fairly full load of yellow flowers. This was the perfect place to hide the yellow eggs. In fact, some of the yellow eggs have a brown-striped pattern to them – it was almost as if they made forsythia-specific camo for them. They’re hidden at eye-level for a six year old, but they’ll never find them unless they’re right on top of them.

Egg in Forsythia

I always hide a few for the adults, too. Not that the adults will search for them, necessarily… but they are so far out of reach for the kids that only daddy can grab them. One is in the crook of a maple tree, about nine feet off the ground.

Egg in a tree

Another is in the branches of a sprawling peach tree.

Egg in peach tree

This will be fun… watching the kids search the yard in their Easter dresses looking for candy eggs.

I have only one regret – I didn’t notice the extension ladder in the yard until after I had hidden all the eggs.

Next year…

UPDATE: I got the extension ladder out after all!

And since I am watching television, I must tell you, I am confused.

There’s a drug out there that men can take that men take to help them urinate. There is a drug out there that women take that prevents them from urinating.

Now I am not making light of the fact that there are real medical reasons why one might need one of those or the other… and that for those that suffer those conditions, those are real problems. But you have to admit, it is rather strange that there are two drugs whose primary purpose is to prevent what the other one does.

This is not a new area of interest for me. About twenty years ago I worked in radio, where I was the studio engineer – and this meant listening to a lot of late night talk radio programs, and inserting the commercials into the broadcasts. I always thought it was interesting that you would get ads for ozone generators and antioxidants in the same program. And when I was in grad school, my thesis advisor would regularly direct me to the dietary supplement aisle at the grocery store, where I might find just the right mood enhancer (guarana) that one might need to complete your thesis as quickly and effectively as possible. In my search for her supplement du jour, I came across two products, made by different manufacturers: Undo and Redo. I have no idea what they did, but I imagined that one was the antidote for the other.

As for those drugs that assist with urinary symptoms, I think we’re left with our imagination as to whether they would duke it out in a biochemical battle. First, women aren’t even supposed to handle the drug for men, much less take it. And honestly, I think most men are a bit too squeamish about how things function ‘down there’ to entertain themselves by taking them both and seeing which one wins.

What an ugly battle that would be.

Since I don’t shop much, the latest trends in retail are lost on me. On the other hand, I did work in television for a while, so I am fairly tolerant of advertising, particularly television advertising… so while I might not be inclined to go into a store to buy something, I have a reasonably good idea of what might be out there on the market. I like to watch ads to see if the advertiser did a good job of getting his or her point across.

So the other day, we received a print ad for Bed, Bath and Beyond, and one of the family members pointed out that on the back page of the ad, it showed that they had “Pedi-Paws”, which is basically a manicure device for your pets. This is one of those cases where advertising meets need – we have a neurotic dog that hates to have his feet touched, much less have his nails clipped… So we have been contemplating this purchase for a while. The impediment was ordering it by mail, and the wait. So when we found out that you could walk into a store and buy it, we were sold (that and the $10 off coupon sealed the deal).

So yesterday evening, off we went to Bed, Bath and Beyond. When you combine my disdain for shopping with the kind of merchandise that one might find at Bed, Bath and Beyond, it is no surprise that last night’s trip was my first visit there… ever.

It wasn’t what I expected.

It was as if Crate and Barrel, JC Penney, TJ Maxx and Costco had a four-way love child. Every endcap had an “As Seen On TV” item. “Pedi-Paws” was right by the front door, which for the Anti-Shopper, was incredibly convenient. They had those bowl-sealing things – those were on clearance for $5. They even had that item that looks like a bluetooth headset, but is really a hearing aid.

It was like walking into the Infomercial Store.

There were ten thousand of every kitchen gadget ever. The “Mandolin Slicer?” . . . Had it.

Strangely, I had a certain curiousity about the things I saw in there. It wasn’t a consumer curiousity, but more of a people-watching or car crash curiousity… except for retail items.

Living in Alaska, you live a relatively sheltered life when it comes to the retail world. If a big retailer comes to Alaska, it is probably the end of their growth cycle: Target. Kohls. Bed, Bath and Beyond. They arrive here with a bit of fanfare. Ultimately, they’re just another store. And I feel a little bit of culture shock when I go into these places. Every square inch of usable merchandising space is occupied, managed, and designed to put these consumer items within easy reach of you as you walk through the store… and as a result, puts your hard-earned dollars within easy reach of their cash register.

But I have to hand it to Bed, Bath and Beyond. Were it not for the “As Seen on TV” items, there would be virtually no reason for me to ever go back there. I doubt I would make a special trip back… but if I was in the neighborhood, I might stop in… Which is what I do when I go to the local mall, where they have a “Hotdog on a Stick.”. If you’ve never been, it is worth the visit.

I bring this up because I am out of town this weekend, and I am staying at a friend’s place. I have a hobby (ham radio contesting) that calls me away for a weekend at a time, and a number of us get together at our friend’s place pursue this particular hobby.

My friend is married, and his wife is occasionally there when we do these weekends, so being a respectful guest isn’t just about respecting the sensibilities of my host, but also his partner, who is a very sweet woman, but has no interest in the hobby herself.

Invariably, after a number of hours doing this, it comes time to freshen up. This means rummaging through linen closets to find a towel, and then going to take a shower.

I feel uncomfortable about just helping myself – I imagine the situation where someone is visiting my home, and I suddenly discover them in my shower. On one hand I imagine that my guests should just make themselves feel at home… but then I imagine the situation where my expectation was not that they would be in my shower at all.

So the first time this opportunity presented itself at my friend’s new place, I fought through all my petty insecurities, grabbed a towel, and headed in to take a shower. I got undressed and turned the water on, and got it just to the right temperature. I pulled the handle on the valve, and the water cascades out of the shower head. So I get in, and I am just getting settled under the warm water, and I realize that the water pressure seems to be dropping ever so slightly. I start to pay attention to this, and I can actually hear the sound of the water moving through the pipes change slowly.

All of the sudden, the showerhead starts making a sound that is just like a teakettle. It is this loud screeching sound that water makes when it is somehow restricted as it flows. I am imagining that sound as it reverberates through the house… like an alarm: Wigi is in the shower! Wigi is in the shower!

I am thinking to myself, my host is going to start banging on the bathroom door and start screaming, “Hey! what are you doing in there? Are you trashing my bathroom?” Of course, that never happens… but as time goes on, the pitch of the water-siren gets higher and higher… like it is saying, “Hey, if you didn’t notice, Wigi is in your shower! Aren’t you going to do something about it?”

It is almost like my host saying, “Hmmm… taking the last piece of chicken, huh? I see how you are.”

The screaming shower gets higher and higher (and I am imagining, louder), and then all of the sudden it stops screaming. The water pressure jumps up… and now the only sound is water coming from the shower head.

Now I can relax.

So I go through my usual shower ritual, and I am forgetting my insecurities. I start rinsing off, and all of the sudden, that infernal racket starts again!

“Hello! Wigi is in the shower, you idiots! You installed this alarm for a reason!”

I was on the phone with someone I’ve been seeing. She asked me how I was feeling, and I started to complain about how the dry winter weather was affecting me. I told her:

My nose is all crusty. It is like I have boulders shoved up my nose.

If that doesn’t say “Love”, I don’t know what does…

So yesterday, I decided that I needed to go through the two places that I store pharmaceuticals and see what I had.

What I had was a lot of empty bottles.

When you own your own business, you can’t really afford sick days. So I have made it a point to have a pretty significant supply of over-the-counter remedies for most of the common maladies that could strike – especially those that would happen during the work day. I am all about prevention, too… I get a flu shot every year, and I am really good about washing my hands and other hygiene issues during the cold season. I think I avoid a lot of colds and other bugs that way.

Number one on the list: Advil Liquigels. I had at least three empty Costco-sized bottles. Admittedly, I don’t throw those out, so that was probably half a year’s supply represented by those empties. But still, that’s a lot of headaches that were snuffed out by the liquid ibuprofen.

I also have a large bottle of Calcium-Magnesium-Zinc supplements – great for after workouts, and the zinc is great for cold prevention. I also have Zicam and zinc lozenges. That is the 1-2-3 punch I use when I get that first hint of a cold. My partner won’t touch the Zicam, though. She doesn’t see much point of jamming something that is already so much like snot back up your nose. I am convinced that I have stopped colds dead in their tracks with the zinc attack.

I have a few other things, too… Cough and congestion things… and for those days when a cup of coffee just isn’t enough, guarana. My advisor in grad school got me started on those. Of course, she was also a regular consumer of “Happy Camper”, and when things got really tough, Paxil. I don’t have any of those.

But the real eye-opener was the Advil. I wonder if it is the stress of work or my Internet activities that lead me to take so much.

We’ll never know.

Those junior high years are crappy years anyway… We’re all trying to figure out the whole boy-girl thing… we’re awkward and silly. We’re shy, and often cruel. In other words, things are pretty much as they are now as middle-aged adults, but we’ve got more style now.

Anyway, this young lady that I heard from today… she and I had an interesting friendship that went absolutely nowhere. I think back on it now, and I think she probably liked me in that way that thirteen year-olds do. And I think I liked her, too. There was definitely a bit of tension between us – in a good way. I remember her coming up to me one day after school, and asking me if I knew what French kissing was.

We had almost nothing in common. While we lived in a part of the country that was both northern and southern – the Washington, DC area – my family was decidedly northern, and hers southern. I remember calling her home and speaking to her parents, and hearing that exotic southern drawl that wasn’t particularly common where we lived. She was also quite the movie fanatic, as was the rest of her family. This was the mid 1970’s, before the time of the VCR. Her parents had a home theatre, with video and film equipment, and they would watch first-run movies in their home. She could quote lines from the classics, had favorite actors – none of this would be all that unusual today, but it was spectacularly strange then.

She was an attractive gal back then. She wasn’t the beauty queen of the class, but she had very classic good looks, but she also had that southern belle aire about her. When I got her friend request today, I got to see a picture of her, and she’s become a stunningly beautiful woman.

In my last year of junior high, we would do the usual teenage thing and talk on the phone for an hour or so every few days… and of course, we would see each other in school. There was that painfully awkward flirting… but I could never get to the point where I could actually find enough in common with her for it to go from that clumsy friendship to that clumsy boyfriend-girlfriend thing.

When I wandered a little bit through her Facebook pages, it turns out we have a bit more in common now than we did when we were young… she’s a writer and that’s very cool. She does some work in the media, and that’s cool, too. She’s married, has some kids, and a grandkid, too.

The thing about Facebook is that it is smashing those time-and-distance barriers that we’ve put between us. As familiar as they seem, we’re different people today than we were way back then.

Still not much in common.

I got up early to watch the inauguration. My partner needed to be to work at 8… so I took her a little early, so I could get back in time to watch the swearing in and Obama’s speech.

I was driving back home, and I was listening to the goings-on on the radio, and Aretha Franklin sang, “My Country Tis of Thee”.

Tears started streaming down my face. I had to pull over and wait until it was over.

I am a wus when it comes to things like that… but it was probably one of the most moving things I had ever heard.

You can find the video on Youtube. Go watch it. You won’t be disappointed.

I have coached hockey at a number of levels – mostly for adult recreational leagues – and I really like coaching. At that level, if you can develop a rapport with your team, you can make it worthwhile. If they don’t respect you as a coach, it can be frustrating.

I realized that coaching men was, for the most part, a waste of time, because all the guys thought they knew as much as I did. Turned out they didn’t, but what mattered was whether they respected me, and usually they didn’t.

When I first moved to Alaska, I found out that there was a very large women’s hockey group in Fairbanks, and some of my college friends played. They needed a coach, so I decided to volunteer.

I did this for several years, and I really enjoyed it. I had one team that was particularly fun, because while they weren’t terribly talented as individuals, they were willing to go to regular practices, and we were able to put together some disciplined play. Add to it that I was a grad student at the time and was a TA in a class where I had six NCAA hockey players as students, I was able to put together some very interesting practices.

My routine for the games was to get everyone dressed with about ten minutes before the game, and then go into the locker room and go over the game plan with them. Invariably someone would be late, so I would be talking about the upcoming game, and someone would come in and would be getting dressed while I was in there talking. I was always as respectful as I could be – if I had been asked to leave, I certainly would have… but there were some alcoves and nooks in the locker room, so a woman player could get dressed without exposing herself to me.

After the games I would follow the team into the locker room and talk for a minute or two, and then leave them to change… But some of the women would just start peeling jerseys and pads off with me standing right there. More than once I went to excuse myself as someone got a little more undressed than I thought they would be comfortable with, and I was immediately reassured that it was fine for me to stay.

I became very good friends with our goalie, and she was the glue of the team. She was a rather butch lesbian woman, but she knew me well enough to know that I got along very well in the women’s community. Our team exceeded expectations by quite a bit that season, and while we didn’t do too well in the post-season tournament, my team and I had developed quite a bond.

At the end of the season, my team decided to get me a gift, and I was touched. My friend, the goalie, got up before the entire team and handed me plaque with a team picture, and a certificate that made me an “Honorary Lesbian.” It got quite the chuckle from everyone.

My goalie friend ended up renting a room from me, and lived in my house for several years. I coached some other teams of hers, including one that won a statewide tournament.

When I moved to Anchorage, she ended up moving to Georgia, and we lost touch, though occasionally I would get an email or two from her.

Recently I started getting more active on Facebook, and my friend found me, and we started a bit of a correspondence. She is doing very well in Georgia. This evening, when I got home, I checked into Facebook, and my friend had sent me a request that I be included in her “My Girls” list.

So now I am “One of her Girls.”

It is actually kinda flattering.

“Meow.”

“Hey, Mousie! You’re right, it is a nice day.”

“Meow.”

“Yeah, me too. I was going to go to the convenience store and get coffee and one of those terrible breakfast sandwiches.” I noticed that there was a spot on one of the shirts I was stuffing in the washing machine, so I grabbed the pre-wash and started spraying like there was no tomorrow.

“Meow.”

“Wow, that’s really sweet Mousie, but you know I prefer coffee and that sausage-egg-fat pill they sell at Holiday”

“Meow.”

“No, I am not too good to eat with you… but there’s a reason they call it “cat food” and not “cat and people food.” Plus, there’s something about eating something that is nothing more than fish-flavored Lucky Charms.” I dumped the soap in and started the washing machine.

“Meow.”

“Because you’re a cat, that’s why. I am not making salmon for breakfast, and if I did, I wouldn’t be feeding you any of it. Anyway, you’re supposed to like that stuff. You always eat it.”

“Meow.”

“That’s cute. ‘Screw you then, just feed me.’” I mocked his tone. “Meow meow meow, my ass. Whatever happened to ‘please’?”

I grabbed a handful of cat food and threw it in the bowl. “There. You happy?”

What a whiner. I started up the stairs, but then I turned back.

“You know, Mouse, that bowl you’re eating out of? It is a puppy bowl. Notice the little puppy paws on it?” I slammed the basement door.

Let’s see how he enjoys his food now.

Volcanoes are just a fact of life here in Alaska (as are earthquakes – we had a magnitude 5.7 earthquake Saturday morning, and it was quite enjoyable). The chances of a reasonable person being injured by an Alaskan volcano is relatively small. But when they do erupt, the are rather inconvenient.

This particular volcano (and its sibling to the north, Mt. Spurr) are particularly well-suited to screw things up for Alaskans, because of their proximity to Anchorage, and the chances of putting a significant cloud of volcanic ash into the air. While the ash fall would simply be noteworthy in most places, it would cripple air traffic in and out of Alaska, and also across the Pacific, because most North America to Asia air routes travel along the Alaskan coast and across the Aleutians.

If you go to the Alaska Volcano Observatory website, you can find what is known as a “trajectory forecast” which displays where the leading edge of the ash would be in one hour intervals for a given eruption time. If Redoubt were to erupt today, most of the ash would be carried over the Kenai Peninsula.

So what to do?

The practical Alaskans will go to the auto parts store and buy a spare air filter for their cars, because if there is significant ash, it will be cars that suffer first (airplanes will sit on the ground until the hazard has passed). So… air filter. Maybe a package of dust masks, in case it gets really bad. So after that ten minutes of shopping, what next?

For that advice, I turn to the great American philosopher, Jimmy Buffet, who has this to say about volcanoes:

Now my girl quickly said to me
Man, you’d better watch your feet
That lava comes out soft and hot
You better lova me now or lova me not

Of course, his advice is cryptic… so please allow me to interpret for you: You’ll be needing tequila, salt, ice and a partner… and you need them right now!

This blog was about how a group of people decided to get their DNA tested, to see the degree to which they were related… and in the process discovered that some people who thought they were related turned out not to be related at all. And my post was about how when we record our family histories, that in a thousand years, most of it will be essentially unrecognizable anyway – trying to make sense of who is related to whom, etc.

But think about it this way – our DNA keeps those records for us. It isn’t confused with all of the family politics and dirty little secrets that we keep… How cousin John looks a bit like the neighbor down the street. How Uncle Elmer took a lot of weekend business trips.

There are two problems with all of this. First is, our family trees are really social constructions. We may have known that Cousin John has the same distinctive birthmark as Mr. Johnson, down the street… but he’s still our cousin John, no matter what the DNA might show… and that goes back as far as we can know. We’re going to always rely on church and court birth records to reconstruct our family, regardless of how a particular member happened to become a member of the clan. Second, the further we go back into history, the less integrity these records have. By the time you’re back five or six generations, the family tree is, for most people, nothing more than a collection of names. We don’t know who they are, or what they did, whether they saved their town from famine or stole sheep from neighboring farmers. They’re just names.

We have the same problem looking forward. Even though our ability to store personal information has taken dramatic leaps in our lifetime, by the time a half dozen generations pass, just wading through the vast amounts of data will make assembling a meaningful picture of who we are difficult. So again, we become just a set of names in some sentimental display of family.

So, if out ancestors are just names to us… and we are just names to our offspring, how is that designation any different (or any more accurate) than following our genes forwards and backwards through time? The answer is, it isn’t… and short of becoming a genetic dead end, our mark on future generations will be carried forward, essentially error-free… forever.

That leaves us feeling a little empty, though.

As we learned from George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life, our existence in the social realm touches everyone we meet. We make someone’s life a little easier. We help create an opportunity for someone. We guide our kids (and sometimes, other people’s kids) on a path that makes them more successful and happier people… and they in tern do the same for others. In that respect, our influence on the world passes through the boundaries of family as if they weren’t there.

Our DNA is the science of our legacy. How we treat the world is the art.

The parka was navy blue, and had an orange liner. It had a hood with a drawstring, and a fur ruff. When you put the hood up and tied the string, the hood and ruff made a short tube in front of your face – hence the name, “snorkel parka”.

We always exchanged gifts on Christmas eve, and on Christmas day, it was dress-up, go to church, come home for Christmas dinner, but not too much playing with the new toys. The first day where us kids had the day to plan as we liked was December 26.

This particular December 26th was a typical winter day in Washington, DC – It was cold and the wind was howling at about 30 miles per hour. It was perfect “Snorkel Parka” weather. I loved cold weather, and I loved the idea of bundling up and going outside, for no other reason than to brave the elements. The only thing that might have made it more perfect would have been to have some snow.

I bundled myself up. I put on long “thermal” underwear. I put on two pairs of socks. I had some hiking boots that offered a bit of insulation. I had a nice warm sweater, and then bundled myself up with my parka and a ski cap, and some gloves. I pulled the hood over my head and tied the strings. It was as if I had put on a space suit. I was wrapped in a 98.6 degree cocoon.

My mother was not so keen on me going out in such weather. I don’t remember specifically, but I am sure that there were warnings on the news about going out in the “bitter cold”. It might also have been that she didn’t want me going in and out and letting the cold air in the house.

I stepped outside. The front door and storm door shut behind me. I was left with the sound of the wind howling through the branches of the crabapple tree in the front yard, though it was muffled as I heard it through the ski cap and insulated hood that covered my ears. November’s leaves blew here and there across the brown grass. I could feel the cold on my face, but it seemed tempered by my attempts at insulating myself from the elements.

I stepped down the concrete steps of my parent’s front porch, and surveyed the frozen landscape. It certainly wasn’t still, but it was also not filled with life. There was movement, but it was the sterile, lifeless motions of a blustery winter day. If there were birds around, they were certainly perched safely in some evergreen tree, avoiding the winds and cold.

And then I noticed it. The sun was shining. It seemed brighter and cleaner than I had ever seen before. Of course, the sky was cloudless and blue, but that wasn’t what left the impression on me. It was the brilliant, heatless white of the sun. The day seemed brighter. It seemed fresh and new.

I don’t think that a ten year old can really appreciate all of the implications of this perception, but I am sure I was aware of them, and they seem crystal clear to me today – This day was different than the days that came before. Left behind were the obligations and expectations of Christmas. For a ten year old kid, the obligations had to do with participating in the Family stuff and going to church. Not that these things were terrible, but my brothers and I would have been much happier with a football and a couple of friends. And that was another thing… being a family day, you were left without your friends – they were off doing family things with their families. So here it was, December 26th, and we could return to ‘normal time’. And it wasn’t just that the sun was shining, but that the sun was shining, and everything was starting new. Our lives as kids had been restored to its best possible state – a week off from school, days to do with as we liked, new toys and Christmas gifts to play with.

I was walking into work this morning, and I caught a whiff of that experience again. There was new snow on the ground, most people had the day off. The weight of obligation and commitment that burdens the Scrooges of this world – myself included – had been lifted from my shoulders.

Perhaps others feel this way too, and it was this feeling of newness that caused them to choose this time of year to move from one calendar year to the next. Thinking back about previous December 26ths, I think I always feel this way in some form. It isn’t always as vivid as that winter day back in Washington, DC when I was ten, but it is a real and visceral feeling. And of course, the feelings are much more complex when you’re an adult – it isn’t just about pursuing an afternoon football game with friends, but about bills and going to work and new projects and paying the rent. But now, those things that we consider ‘End of the Year’ things are behind us, and what lies ahead are ‘Beginning of the Year’ things.

It didn’t matter that there was eight inches of new snow in my driveway this morning. In fact, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

It was fresh and new.

And so it was this evening, as the family headed to a friend’s place for the annual Christmas Eve get-together. Were the decision left solely to me, we would have stayed home. But my partner likes these things, and they’re tradition for her… So I took some time this afternoon and made a lasagne, and then off we went to our friend’s place.

In addition to my lasagne, there were some awesome chicken wings, shumai and egg rolls… cheeses and sausages (moose and caribou – very tasty), some bread pudding, baclava, wine and other drinks… all in all a very nice spread.

Three generations were represented, all the way from an expectant mother, a toddler, some pre-teens and late teens, the 20, 30 and 40-somethings, and the expectant mother’s father. There was good conversation, lots of laughing, and a few gifts exchanged. Unlike past years, there was no Christmas music, no board games… just good friends and good conversation.

The highlight of the evening, however, is something that couldn’t have happened just a few years ago. Someone’s phone rang, and someone else decided they liked that ringtone. Suddenly a crowd gathered, bluetooth phones whipped out and turned on, and everyone was swapping and demonstrating their ringtones.

21st Century Christmas: Spreading joy through grey-market copyright infringement.

I received a text message from a friend last night. I responded, and went to bed. This morning I got dressed, slapped my phone to the belt holster and went out to start the car. After I started the car, I came inside and was getting my breakfast together, when I received a text message:

“Good morning u done 3 butt calls this morning”

I had to respond:

“Sorry about that… At least you know that part of me is thinking about you!”

Part of the problem is the crappy design of my phone – a Motorola Q. All of the business buttons are raised and exposed to whatever I happen to bump into.

But here’s the thing… a couple months ago, my butt-dialing escapades were much more infrequent.

I’m becoming a wide-body.

Now for those of you who have met me, I will concede that I was already a bit of a wide-body… but I had made some progress and lost quite a bit of weight.

(confession follows)

I’ve been slacking lately.

(there, I said it)

I need to get back to the gym… and not just to stop my rampant butt-dialing.

But on the other hand… isn’t it nice to know that you’re number one in my phone? You’re the last number dialed? Your text message was the last one I received? And when strapped on the seatbelt this morning, and the phone pressed against the buckle, it redialed your number.

See? I was thinking of you… or at least, you were foremost in the mind of my PDA.

Hope I didn’t wake you up!

We pretended not to be able to hear the kid, but in fact, we could hear everything he said. He started off trying to get our attention, but finally he settled down and just listened. We would discuss different gift ideas, and he would offer commentary. Sweaters and underwear? “NO!” After a bit, he got his brother to pick up the extension. They were having a running commentary on our faux discussion. The star of the show was the room-sized chess set, with the carpet board, and blow-up pieces. This elicited comments of “Cool!”

There were two problems. First was, we never intended to get any of these things. Second, even if we had, where were we going to get such a chess set? I’d created the idea out of whole cloth.

Then I was reminded of my youth. One Christmas my parents bought my younger brother a bicycle, and my dad assembled it and slipped it into his room on Christmas morning. My brother’s dog slept on his bed with him… and in the morning, when my brother got up, he was so groggy that he didn’t notice the bicycle, and knocked it over at 7 AM. The sound scared the dog, who ran into the kitchen and pee’d all over the floor.

The following spring, the same brother (probably ten or eleven years old at the time) asked for a lawnmower for his birthday. My parents thought that he was joking, and got him something else. On the morning of his birthday, he woke up, fully expecting a new lawnmower to be square in the middle of his room, right where the bicycle had been at Christmas.

Wails came from my brother’s room, and he walked into my parent’s bedroom with tears streaming down his face, wanting to know where his lawnmower was.

Expectation is a bitch. My dad got dressed and took my brother to Sears, where they picked out a red Craftsman “Eager 1″ lawnmower. Turns out my brother was a budding entrepreneur. All of our neighbor’s lawns looked great.

So now, the kid was expecting a room-sized chess set. I didn’t get him a room-sized chess set. I think the trauma scarred him for life.

Gosh that was fun!

It will start with yelling in the middle of the night. Middle-aged men cursing and throwing things. Bar owners and patrons disgusted, and choosing to go home early. People that otherwise sleep soundly will lie awake, staring at the ceiling.

For a while, things will calm down, but by sunrise the unsettled feeling will spread again. Children will cry. No amount of Lucky Charms will console them. People will be late for work, unable to gauge their morning routines. Business people will feel uninformed. Chaos will reign across America.

Two things are for sure: This day WILL come… and for most of us, it is avoidable.

I can’t wait for it to come. The sooner the better. In fact, every time I am reminded of it, I want to scream. I want the waiting to be over. One more reminder and it will be me screaming and throwing things.

The date: February 17, 2009.

That is the day that analog broadcast television ends, and all television will be digital. Conan O’Brien will be replaced with snow. No more Barney. No more Wiggles. No more Today Show. No more Regis and Kelly.

(OK, so ‘No More Barney’ is a good thing…)

Unless you get the box.

This doesn’t really affect me… at least not after February 17. I have digital cable, and yes, I have crappy analog televisions, but who cares? The cable box works the digital magic for me. But it affects me today, dammit!

What gets me about this is that about once an hour that infernal crawl comes on the screen reminding people about the conversion. It screws up the video quality of what I am watching, the audio often gets louder… it is very annoying.

I know.

I get it.

Get the damn digital box before February 17.

But here’s the thing. I am already watching cable. I don’t NEED the box.

Why are you reminding ME?

I am old enough to remember a world where there were still a few people that didn’t have televisions… they hadn’t taken that technological leap from radio – and in fact, more than a few radios still had tubes instead of transistors. My guess is, these are the same people that today do not have cable. I am not worried about them… considering the fact that most of the television-less people in 1965 were already 50 years old… so today they’re pushing 95. They already have cable. Or they have a guy that comes over and fixes things.

If you don’t have cable (or some sort of digital converter) today, and you’re reading this… Go out and get the damn box, call your television station, tell them thanks for the reminder, and they can now turn that damn crawl off.

I expect it to be gone by the time I get home from work.

I agreed with her. I mentioned that I longed for the good old days, when the day had twenty-four hours. But now…

Wait…

The day still has twenty-four hours.

The problem is, an hour only has 22 minutes.

(the rest are commercials…)

One way to interpret this is that the people who created Daylight Savings Time didn’t think much of the 2 AM hour on a Sunday morning.

What an inspired thought!

If you could do that with an hour, couldn’t you also do it with a day, or even a week? What about a whole ’season’?

I don’t think too much of Christmas, or Christmas shopping, or for that matter, shopping – but Christmas shopping is just the nexus of two really bad ideas – two bad tastes that go bad together [sic]. Retailers have been encroaching on my sensibilities for months, but all hell is going to break loose very shortly. So I have a plan.

At 2 AM this Sunday, I am setting my calendar ahead to January 2, 2009.

Problem solved!

(I know what your thinking… the answer is, “A Charlie Brown Christmas” and “It’s a Wonderful Life” are available on DVD. You can watch them anytime.)

I didn’t notice anything unusual about my childhood. The Smithsonian was where you went on a class field trip a couple times a year, and the Kennedy Center is where your high school graduation was. It never occurred to me that kids in other places didn’t go to school with the sons and daughters of senators and congressmen (and women, though less so back then), or regularly share a church with the vice president.

Looking back now, what was notable was that the parents of my friends were patriotic Americans first, senators or congressmen or vice presidents second, and Democrats or Republicans third. The partisan distinctions were important, to be sure, but they really only mattered for a few months every two years.

I was a huge baseball fan as a child, and my team, the Washington Senators, moved to Texas in 1971. The following year (1972, an election year), the annual congressional charity baseball game took place at RFK stadium, before an exhibition game between the Mets and the Red Sox. I was just eleven years old at the time, and I was the guest of one of my neighbors, who happened to work on presidential campaigns. We arrived early, and spent time walking through the VIP dining room. Seated at every table were congressmen and senators from almost every state, and from both parties. I met a congressman from Michigan, and had my picture taken with him. Two years later, this congressman, Gerald Ford, became President of the United States. I met the Speaker of the House. I met George McGovern, the Democratic nominee for president. I dozens others.

In an election year, on this particular evening, these men got together to play baseball and watch baseball… They had cocktails and food. They respected each other… but they had day jobs, and their jobs were to debate and craft the direction of the country. They disagreed about how to achieve their goals, but ultimately, they knew that their jobs, first and foremost, were to debate… and that the first ground rule of these political debates were that intelligent people could disagree.

Here we are today, on the eve of an election, thirty-six years later. What has changed is that today, intelligent people can’t disagree. The nature of the debate has become such that to disagree is to make you defective. Perhaps it makes you a racist. Perhaps it makes you a radical. Perhaps it makes you a terrorist. Perhaps it makes you a pagan. Perhaps it makes you intolerant. Perhaps it makes you stupid.

Most importantly, it makes you shut up.

I am tired of being made to feel like there is something wrong with me because I disagree with you.

Tomorrow morning, I am going to do something about it. You should, too.

I have decided, I will go and vote, and then I will love you.

I was at the local burrito place, and after lunch I felt the need to return some of the iced tea I had for lunch. I had my sunglasses on… and the restaurant was crowded. I walked into the bathroom, and as I was walking in, a woman behind me says, “Um, excuse me…”

I looked at her, and she smiled… and I looked into the bathroom, and on the door… and there was the sign that said, “Women” on it.

Oops.

Later, I was at the bank, and I was waiting in line, and the floor manager was working one of the windows… I know her rather well… we’re on a first name basis… and I noticed from a distance that she had a pendant on that was right down in her cleavage. From a distance, the pendant looked like some sort of halloween ornament… it was orange and black. I am not sure whether the pendant or the cleavage was more compelling to me… but no matter… because when I got to her window, I noticed it wasn’t a halloween thing at all. Autumnal, yes. But not a pumpkin. So I blurted out, while staring at her cleavage, “Oh, that’s not a pumpkin!”

Oops.

No sugar shortage here.

But I got distracted.

What kind of a name is ‘godwit’?

Definitely not a ‘Merican name. If an American had named it, it would have been a “Curved-nosed asskicker” or something like that.

Obviously, there have been some sane, normal ornithologists. Blackbird. Red-winged blackbird. Bluebird. Raven. Stellar’s jay. Here’s a name that was obviously inspired in Arkansas: red-necked grebe.

And then there’s “Yellow-bellied sapsucker”

Here’s the test: get a bird book. Go to a manly bar, and dare someone to open to any page, and read the names of the birds aloud.

See if you don’t get your nose curved and ass kicked!

My partner and I have made it a habit to take off on most Saturday mornings to get breakfast somewhere. For a long time, we went to a place in midtown, where we found good food and a very friendly server, who was the inspiration for a blog I wrote way back when entitled Sunny Side Up. When we went, we would always try to sit in her section, but even when we didn’t (or couldn’t), she would always come by and say hello.

Since that time, our favorite server has departed for greener pastures. We hadn’t heard that she left… we went a few times and noticed that she was missing… but for all we knew, she was on vacation or something. The strange thing was, the quality of the food seemed to drop, too. The eggs weren’t cooked correctly, things would be cold… Nothing else had changed… same owners, same crowd.

After three or four visits, we concluded that our friend had left… but more importantly, we weren’t enjoying the food, and we were not enjoying our visits to this particular restaurant. I don’t know how or why, but the departure of one server had made a profound difference in the quality of the entire experience… not just the service, but the food, too.

I must say that I am a creature of habit, and that might be a part of it. There is a convenience store that I go to on weekday mornings for coffee… and there is a rather pleasant guy there that I joke around with… and while I don’t go out of my way to go there to see HIM, if he didn’t make the visit a pleasant experience, I might get my coffee elsewhere.

There’s something to be said for being seen as a ‘regular’. You don’t really get any better service… or at least, you shouldn’t. But it is nice to be recognized, and it is nice that you get some value out of your visit that goes beyond just the item you pay for.

Back about fifteen years ago my job took me to Pearl River, LA for an extended work trip. At the time I was living in California, so there was a slight amount of culture shock that I experienced in the five weeks there… but it showed up most interestingly when I would go out to eat. Pearl River isn’t very big, so when you stopped in at a place, it only took one or two visits before people started to know who you were.

The most striking thing I noticed was when you left a restaurant (or any other place, for that matter), the server would say, “Y’all come back and see us…” Of course, this is just the bayou way of saying ‘please come again’, but it was so different from what I was used to that it made an impression on me… and I would suggest that it was subtly but substantively different, though I wasn’t sure of that at first. I became sure when I went to a diner in downtown Pearl River. A co-worker and I walked in and sat down. We immediately attracted withering stares from a woman standing behind the counter. The interesting thing was, this woman looked and sounded exactly like one of the women who worked in our Pearl River office…

The woman came to our table, and started quizzing us about who we were – apparently Pearl River doesn’t get too many visitors… especially visitors with a distinctive non-bayou accent. When we told her where we worked, her entire countenance changed. It turned out that she was the twin sister of the woman at our office. We went from suspicious carpetbaggers to long-lost relatives in the span of a sentence. And when we left and she said, “Y’all come back and see us…” you could tell that she would have been disappointed if we hadn’t.

I think a lot of owners and managers don’t look at the intangibles when it comes to marketing their products and services. I hate going to Costco or Sam’s Club, because I feel like the relationship part of the experience is stripped out so that customers can save fifty cents on a twenty pound tub of grated cheese. But, at least for me, the whole experience is important. When I go out to eat, I want to enjoy the entire experience. When I go to a store, I’d like to know that there’s someone there that wants to help me, if I need it.

After my partner and I realized that our favorite server had bolted from our breakfast haunt, we started looking for a new place to go. We found a place, and immediately liked it… but our second visit was troubling – when there were errors in our order, the server had excuses rather than solutions. The third visit was worse than the second… the food was room temperature, and the service was slow. So today, we’re without a breakfast haunt.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking out of the grocery store, and I ran across my wayward server friend. She immediately saw me and ran over and hugged me. I told her how much we missed her, and that we don’t go there anymore, since she’s not there. She could barely hide her contempt for her former employer… and she thought we were sweet for changing our habits when she left. She told me that she had a new job, and she was working at a different restaurant. Unfortunately, she’d taken a job with a one of the chain restaurants… and as much as I like her, it isn’t enough to get me to go eat there. I am glad she’s landed on her feet… but finding her didn’t solve my problem.

So now I am getting hungry, and it looks like it will be me cooking… which is fine… I like to cook. But in the meantime, my Saturday morning quest continues, for je ne sais pas…

It is Sunday afternoon. Too late for lunch, too early for dinner. You’ve just finished watching your favorite football team win. The weather outside is terrible.

It is the middle of the night. You wake up. You go to the bathroom. You lie back down, but you can’t get to sleep.

You’re getting ready for a date. Your date calls, and he/she has to cancel, because they have a nasty case of food poisoning.

You’re sitting in front of your television. You’re not paying attention. Suddenly you hear the sound coming from the TV: “WHEEL… OF… FORTUNE!!!”

What do these scenarios have in common? In all of these cases, you reach for your remote, and start looking for “Law and Order” reruns. The problem is, you can’t find them. You search them all – NBC, TNT, TBS, Bravo, USA, who-knows-where-else. But it isn’t not on NOW… but in an hour… there it is. No, I wouldn’t rather watch “Larry King Live.” Or C-Span (or C-Span 2).

I think it is time for a “Law and Order” channel. No Muss. No Fuss. One click, and it’s All Lennie Briscoe, All The Time.

We’d all sleep better.

“Nostalgia is just a stop on the road to disappointment.”

I know some very capable people. I also know some pretty broken people – addicts and alcoholics… In a lot of respects, those two groups are almost completely mutually exclusive.

Among my group of capable people – and by capable, I mean people who are totally able to take care of themselves and family, face adversity and ultimately thrive – there are some that are facing challenges. These aren’t challenges that are catastrophes, but they’re important, potentially life-changing events.

I worry about them.

Among my broken friends, the very nature of being broken makes them likely be close to losing jobs, losing life partners, losing their health, and even the possibility of becoming homeless.

I don’t worry about them so much.

There are certain realities about both groups. The first, and perhaps most relevant to me is that my intervention isn’t going to change anything for members of either group. Even if I wanted to, the most that I could do is stand by and watch… I can’t carry their burden for them, no matter how much I love them, and how much I might want to.

The broken ones don’t realize this. They’ve reached a point in their lives where the dialog starts and ends with their pleas for help. Of course, they aren’t looking for help with their burdens, but with the trappings of their burdens – money for gas (because they drank or smoked their cash), a couch to sleep on for a couple days, help selling some possession at bargain-basement prices to get a deposit for a new apartment… that sort of thing.

For my broken friends, there is an inevitable course that you must follow, and my twenty dollars isn’t getting them down that road any faster. For them, it is a matter of getting to the end of the road and discovering it is a dead end. I will know things have changed for them when they start asking for help getting off that road, rather than further down it.

My capable friends, on the other hand, more or less suffer in silence. They smile and laugh, go to work, take care of their family, have fun… but deep down, you know they’re hurt. You also know that they’re among the most talented and capable people you know, and that they’ll get through the pain, and come out on the other side even stronger.

Why is it that I worry about the ones that can take care of themselves, and don’t lose sleep over the broken ones?

There are a lot of reasons, but ultimately, it is about feeling empathy and sympathy about a situation that is cause by something external to them. I love them. The fact that they hurt is not their fault. I would do whatever I could do to ease their suffering.

About the best I can do is stand by and watch.