From the Archives - Bits & Bobs Volume XIV

Introduction

This is the fourteenth installment in the “From the Archives – Bits & Bobs” series. Volume I is here, Volume II is here, Volume III is here, Volume IV is here, Volume V is here, Volume VI is here, Volume VII is here, Volume XIII is here, Volume IX is here, Volume X is here, Volume XI is here, Volume XII is here, and Volume XIII is here. (The different volumes have nothing to do with one another and can be read in any order, in a house, with a mouse, in a box, with a fox, and/or not at all.)

What are bits and bobs? In the context of albertnet, they’re mostly excerpts from emails, letters, etc. that I wrote to friends and family before blogs were a thing. Read on if you’re too tired to watch TV. Better yet, read this aloud to your pet or your plants.

February 2, 1990

I spontaneously decided I was through wearing old bike race t-shirts etc. Among these were the polo shirts I got from being a media liaison at the Coors Classic, and some other polo shirts (the bright red ones) that Mom got from somebody who’d marshaled at the Coors Classic. It’s a ton of shirts. Simultaneously, my art studio roommate, C—, whom I call Dithers (for reasons I don’t myself understand), and who calls me Dithers as well (ditto), decided he was tired of wearing nothing but grey and black (which was, and probably still is, the unofficial uniform of the starving artist). So I offered him virtually my entire wardrobe, and that is all he wears now. Buzzard to peacock literally overnight. Naturally, the fact that every single garment promotes cycling, in which he has zero interest, has not escaped him; I guess you could say he wears the shirts ironically. Every so often he complains to me about some nerdy cyclist type who quizzed him eagerly about his involvement in the Coors Classic, and who was disappointed when C— replied, “I was never a marshal for anything and I don’t even know what the Coors Classic is.”

January 19, 1991

[Reminiscing to my brother.] And so, a job at a factory. Underwear. Cans. Crates. Cardboard. Time clock, big bell that rings for break, picnic tables and vending machines. The factory like a giant hive, hundreds of sewing machines going at once, turning out underwear. You and I sticking endless size/color labels on the cans, crating them, stapling wooden lids, packing boxes, filling out shipping forms, noting on invoices where an order—seemingly every order—is short because the factory cannot sew underwear fast enough.

You speak fondly of the experience. Fighting together against the oppression of our (rightfully disgruntled) factory floor colleagues, underpaid immigrant laborers. After-hours hijinks. You and I singing “G— W—” [the factory owner’s name] to the tune of “Richard Corey.” Disabling the safety mechanism and firing the high-powered compressed-air staple gun out over the factory floor. You grin, laugh, reminisce, and what do I do? I sit back, real cool like, maybe mumble a little bit. Do you know why? It isn’t because I don’t cherish those memories. It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy it. It’s that my ambitious preoccupations are censoring me from admitting to having enjoyed a factory job. Yeah, god damn it, it paid the rent. No it wasn’t a stepping stone. Yeah I did it but only because I’d been unemployed. No brass plaque from that one to hang on the wall. It wasn’t a part of my plan. But these are all only delusions of dissatisfaction. I was afraid to admit that I enjoyed it. Afraid I might never transcend it. Gotta getta outta here. Gotta move on. Drive, man, drive.

I have this vision of driving that ‘52 Ford, the closest thing the factory had to a work vehicle, down to the warehouse, unloading all P’s and G’s personal shit because they were too cheap to rent a storage locker. This is not important company business. This is something others are too lazy to do. No talent here. But we were talented in a way, weren’t we? We taught ourselves how to enjoy it. I took half an hour rolling down the screwed-up window so I could coolly hang my arm out and try with one hand to steer that horribly misaligned truck in a straight path down the driveway of the factory, all the time checking out the tits ‘n’ ass of the girlies in little round pictures mounted on the dash. You’d have a book of human sexuality on your lap (found among P—’s stuff), reading aloud with fascination at all this scholastic explanation of the carnal. Written by experts.

But at the factory, we were the experts, making it all a big joke, stumbling through our work recklessly, giddy like little kids left with a babysitter who lets us cuss. Fuck, shit, god damn. Look at my crazed smirk when I say that. Hey G—: fuckin’ shit bitch hell. Laughing so hard we’re dribbling spit down our chins which we wipe away with the back of an arm. After a while the babysitter says, “Hey, quit cussin’, it sounds like shit,” and we are back on the floor, rolling with laughter. Laughing so hard we can’t even make our lips shape the next obscenity. That was our factory life, in all its true glory. It was like a science fiction role-playing vacation, not Westworld or Futureworld, but Factory World. We knew it wasn’t our life, it wasn’t our destiny, but a few months of living paycheck to paycheck, no lofty ambitions, standing in line to punch the clock behind a fat ‘n’ sassy waistband technician. It was like a vacation. But now I’m in dangerous territory. I better shut my trap before I say something stupid like “I’d like to go back.”

April 3, 2000

Next week we’ll be putting an offer on another house, also in Berkeley, that’s ugly on the outside but really groovy on the inside. We should have a bit better chance on it, I reckon, due to its ugliness. (How far we’ve fallen since we started this seemingly doomed house hunt!) It’s on kind of a sketchy street—generally nice, but with a couple of totally derelict houses. One of the houses is abandoned, and the other ought to be condemned whether it’s occupied or not. It looks like it would collapse if you blew hard on it. There’s this big old truck out front that looks like it was driven through the fires of hell. It has a really bizarre mural painted on the sides and back, that looks kind of cult-y. We asked a neighbor what was going on, and he said, “Oh, that’s Mike The Mover. He’s been here since the dawn of time and always will be. He runs an illegal moving operation out of that house.” Fingers crossed … Mike The Mover could become my new neighbor!

January 16, 2001

Oh yeah, I’ve heard of the Stinking Rose, and in fact I ate there once. It’s somewhat famous, probably because of its name and its gimmick (which is, of course, gobs of garlic). It was written up in a “Smithsonian” article on garlic (and is probably mentioned in every other article on garlic as well). It has a prominent location on Columbus Ave, not far from House of Nanking. E— and I took a couple of friends from out of town because they specifically wanted to go there. It was a bit overpriced, and they didn’t really do anything fascinating or brilliant with garlic other than, well, using too much of it. They also had these order-placing devices that looked like phasers, so they could shoot your order into the kitchen rather than walking there. Neat idea, and fun for the diners, but it seemed to actually slow things down. The most memorable part of the evening was when our gay, bald waiter said to me, sternly, “What’s your name?” I told him and he said, “Dana, let’s get one thing straight. I would kill for your hair. Kill!” (My hair was shoulder-length at the time.) Anyway, if they had a Stinking Rose in Phoenix I might go there during a business trip, but you can certainly do better in the Bay Area.

April 26, 2001

Quick question for you. Any tips on child care? E— is due in September and we’re having a hard time finding good day care. Some of these places fill up a year in advance (I guess the couple gets on the list before even trying to conceive) and we don’t want to end up having to settle for one of those places where a chain-smoking ex-hippie sits forty-five kids down in front of the TV, puts her pit bull in charge, and then heads into her bedroom to work a psychic hotline.

I think you guys said you had a nanny back when C— was a toddler? Gosh, that brings me back to a nanny my brothers and I had. I didn’t learn her name until years later but the whole time she watched us, we called her “Darlin’” for reasons we ourselves probably didn’t understand. Probably she called us “darlin’s” and we got confused. We actually thought that was her name. Not that we thought it was her first name—we would never call an adult by her first name—but more like she was a Cher or Madonna type who had only one name. Darlin’ was a very old lady, and very cool because she would let us watch “Adam 12,” and would occasionally give us Trident gum. The only downside was, she absolutely forbade us to suck our thumbs and would always threaten to cut them off if we persisted. In fact, once she chased me under the bed with the kitchen scissors. I remember peeking out from under there, terrified, watching her stick her head down under the bed and say, “Stick out your thumb! I’m going to cut it off!” Such an exciting lady. We always looked forward to having her over. Reading over what I’ve just described, it doesn’t appear that this was top notch child care, but in fact it really was.

Is having a nanny way expensive? Day care places are running about a grand a month and that’s what we’re expecting to spend. It seems impossible anything could be more expensive than that but then you’re probably already laughing at my naivety.  I’m thinking I could just drive down to Fourth Street and find one of the nameless workers that gather down there to get picked up for day labor. For $5 I’m sure a laborer would find childcare easier than digging trenches or putting up sheetrock. Of course, if I suggested this to E— our daughter would end up being raised in a single-parent home (assuming E— beat the murder rap). So I’d appreciate any advice you could give.

September 4, 2001

Thanks for the advice about strollers, particularly the bit about how newborns can’t ride in them because their heads will flop around, frightening Mommy. Someone advised I start with a pram. Near as I can tell, a pram isn’t a terribly useful device, as it only gives the baby a view of the sky. There’s probably a lot to see up there, but not as much as if the kid is facing forward. We’re borrowing a “Baby Bjorn,” which is some kind of frontal baby seat that you wear. Our birthing and bondage coach insists that they’re terrible for the baby’s back, and we should use a sling, but with a sling the kid can’t see much of anything. What do you think? I’ve always had a terrible slouch, giving me a “vertebrae be damned” attitude, so I’m not completely sold on the Baby Bjorn prohibition. I’m tempted to ignore the birthing teacher’s advice simply on the grounds that she’s a radical post-hippie alternative type, but I’m anxious to get the birds-eye low-down from people who know such as yourself.

I was trying to remember what model of Maclaren stroller youse guys had there in the Netherlands. If you’re still using the original one I saw when we were out there, and that you brought out when visiting us, that alone speaks volumes for its durability, as does the fact that you can get replacement parts for it. I also like the British in the web-page descriptions, particularly “colourway.” Some of these look incredibly fancy. Needless to say I won’t be getting the titanium one; if I don’t have a titanium bike, my daughter’s not getting a titanium stroller.

January 21, 2005

E— and I took the youngsters to House of Nanking on Sunday, and in the midst of L— detonating and doing her best impersonation of a fish out of water—in fact, an alcoholic fish out of water having the DTs—no, make that a fish out of water having the DTs combined with a generalized spaz attack—a guy at the next table noticed my Gaastra pullover and got all excited. (Only once before did somebody recognize the Gaastra brand on this garment; it was my friend D— who does a lot of windsurfing, and he asked, “Why do you have that?” to which I replied, “Why, whose is it?”) Our dining neighbor was a kind of nerdy, kind of . . . well, European-looking guy, and he asked, “Hey, are you into kites?!” It was all I could do to keep L— in my grasp—she was on the verge of launching herself out of my hands, and as I was standing up, she could have landed right on the guy—and so instead of having him on, which I might have been tempted to do (“What makes you think of kites?” / “Your Gaastra pullover. They make kites.” / “Is that what they make? I thought they made that heartburn medication!”), I only stammered that I don’t have a Gaastra kite, but rather a brother in Holland. The guy was crestfallen.

January 23, 2009

You asked about the wounds on my finger. They’re from a farming accident—my arm got caught in this big threshing machine we call the Mangle. Oh, wait, that’s how I lost my arm. The finger cuts were from a freak dishwashing accident.

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Ageing Focus - Make Balance a Habit!

Introduction

Last week’s post, though perhaps an amusing romp, wasn’t very responsible. I mean, why showcase my bad habits? Whose idea was that, anyway? I hope I didn’t come across as condoning any of those behaviors (though honestly, as odd as they are, you’d have to be some kind of kook to adopt them). This week I hope to provide a whole-grain, high-fiber, wholesome corrective. I’m offering up sincere and helpful advice here and I will try my best to make it amusing somehow.

Some background

My younger daughter is home for the summer and perhaps being around her vivacious youthfulness emphasizes how fricking old I’ve gotten. I guess I’ve reached the age where I worry more about my advancing decrepitude than reveling in whatever vigor I still have left. Sure, I can still make my bike go pretty fast when I dig deep, but I also dread the prospect of, say, my back going out for no good reason. (A buddy of mine, though he still athletic and does all kinds of yoga, threw out his back putting on a sock.) I contemplate how to preserve my physical faculties over the last few decades of my life.

Strength and heart health are all well and good, but I lately I’m putting more focus on balance. Seventeen years ago I read a fascinating New Yorker article about the role balance plays in graceful ageing, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. The article, by the doctor/professor/writer Atul Gawande, is called “The Way We Age Now.” (My friend P— and I have a running joke about Atul Gawande. P— is a doctor, and I fancy myself a writer, and we complain to each other how Gawande is a better doctor and writer than both of us, and is also better looking; we naturally assume he’s even seduced our wives at some point.) In the article Gawande describes how he tagged along with a Dr. Bludau, a geriatrician, during a routine physical exam of an 85-year-old woman:

It seemed to me that, with just a forty-minute visit, Bludau needed to triage by zeroing in on either the most potentially life-threatening problem (the possible metastasis) or the problem that bothered her the most (the back pain). But this was evidently not what he thought… The danger for her was losing what she had. The single most serious threat she faced was not the lung nodule or the back pain. It was falling. Each year, about three hundred and fifty thousand Americans fall and break a hip. Of those, forty per cent end up in a nursing home, and twenty per cent are never able to walk again. The three primary risk factors for falling are poor balance, taking more than four prescription medications, and muscle weakness. Elderly people without these risk factors have a twelve-per-cent chance of falling in a year. Those with all three risk factors have almost a hundred-per-cent chance.

What is to be done?

How do I address these three risk factors?

1. Being an athlete is a non-negotiable part of my lifestyle, because cycling is a) fun, b) something I have enough experience in that it’d be a shame not to do it, and c) my number-one way to burn off stress. Cycling addresses the strength part of my ageing, to a point. (I know that ideally I should do core exercises, join a gym, do yoga, etc. and I’m trying to muster the resolve to take those things up.)
2. In terms of prescription medications, I’m not sure how feasible it is for any of us to avoid needing them when we’re old. It’s not like we can just resolve to go without. I’m lucky enough to be blessed with low cholesterol, and my blood pressure is decent, and so far I have no risk factors for diabetes, but you just never know what I may need for this or that ailment in my codger years.
3. Balance: this is the area where I think I can make the biggest difference.

How can we improve our balance?

I’d like to think that being a cyclist automatically gives me great balance, and of course it can’t hurt, but I don’t think it’s actually enough. I learned this when I was doing physical therapy after breaking my femur. As we began my regimen, my physical therapist asked me what my goal was for the therapy. As I’ve explained in these pages, I’m not actually that into goals, but this time I had one. “I want to come out of this better than I was before,” I declared. After all, I had a gym to work in and an expert to guide me … why not dream of shoring up some of the classic deficiencies of the pure cyclist?

To start with I had to learn to walk all over again, and realized in the process just how complicated walking is. With every step, the back leg has to swing forward, the knee bent so your foot doesn’t hit the floor, and then you have to plant that foot and swing the other leg forward, and that swinging is more rhythmic when we realize. But because I didn’t trust my bad leg to bend properly, I was kind of swinging it around sideways so I could keep it straight, and thought I was doing pretty well until my physical therapist, laughing, told me to walk toward a mirror and watch myself. I looked like a drunken zombie.

After relearning how to walk, one of the toughest things I did in that gym was a toe-tapping exercise on a fairly unstable platform. It was basically a square plank of wood with a half-cylinder under it (i.e., a hemispherical cross section), kind of like a teeter-totter that you stand on. I would start by standing on the plank, balancing so it wouldn’t tip forward or back. Then I’d tip the plank forward until its front edge tapped the floor, and then rock back until the plank was level again, the slower the better. I’d do this ten times, and then I’d switch to rocking back, to tap the back edge of the plank on the floor, return to level, and do that ten times. Once I mastered that with both feet, I learned how to do it standing on just one foot. Oddly, I was no better at this with my good leg than my recently healed one, but in time I went from incompetent to totally proficient, even after adding in a barbell in one hand to put me slightly off balance. I cannot tell you how stoked I was to have learned a new trick that I couldn’t have done before my accident. I actually was better than before.

So now, with Gawande’s article in mind, I want to continue that trajectory of actually improving my balance. The fun way is to ride indoors with my bike on rollers, when it’s too dark and/or wet to ride outdoors. The less fun, but logistically easier, way—and, more importantly, the way I can recommend to you, albertnet reader—is to do the PT balancing trick on a balance saucer. You can buy one of these (one manufacturer’s product name is “Wobble Balance Board”) for about $20. This is even harder that what I did in physical therapy.

The regimen

The great thing about the balance saucer is that you can do your whole routine in 5-10 minutes. (I suppose this duration will vary as you become more proficient, and based on how much you want to do.) My current regimen consists of the following exercises, in sets of 10 repetitions each:

• Standing on both feet, tap the front edge of the saucer on the floor
• Standing on both feet, tap the rear edge
• Standing on one foot, tap the front edge
• Standing on one foot, tap the rear edge
• Standing on both feet, tap the right edge
• Standing on both feet, tap the left edge

I hold a barbell in one hand, and after the first five reps I pass it to the other hand. If I feel like it, I pump the barbell in the air for extra exercise and instability. (I plan to figure out other cool things to do on this saucer, maybe even incorporating my upper body.)

Since a picture is worth a thousand words, and five movies totaling two minutes at 60 frames per second is therefore worth about 7.5 million words, here are videos showing the exercises:

(Video credit to my daughter, expertly wielding her superfly non-phone camera.)

Don’t be surprised if it takes a while to get good at this. When I started up again (over a decade after my physical therapy days), I was pretty wobbly and struggled for a while.

Make it a habit

Did you notice in that video that I wasn’t in a fancy studio with mirrors and mats, wearing PrAna yoga pants and fancy workout shoes and headphones and a fitness tracker? All you need for this is the saucer and a pair of shoes with good, grippy soles. With worn-out or loose-fitting shoes, I have a lot of trouble, and if I try to do this barefoot my feet slide off. But other than that, no special gear or preparation is required, not even a warm-up. That said, this activity is oddly strenuous given how low-impact (actually, zero-impact) it is. During winter, when I’m working from home and stuck at my desk with my blood congealing, almost like suspended animation, I like to take a break and do my balance regimen to get my blood flowing. It really warms me up.

Making this a habit is key. Initially you’ll need plenty of repetition to develop the balance needed for these exercises, and then you’ll want to maintain that consistency so that five, ten, and twenty years from now you won’t have lost the ability. It’s kind of interesting to ponder how well we could maintain this, if we do it daily … can you imagine having this kind of balance at 80? Assuming we don’t, at least we’d be declining from a pretty decent height of capability. I think that’s well worth pursuing.

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My Bad Habits

Introduction

My daughter A— read one of my old posts recently (this one) and drew my attention to a passage from it:

Even less promising [in a list of 101 blog post ideas] was prompt #51, “Create a blog post about your bad habits,” which said, “Smoking, alcohol, drugs, yes they could be blog ideas too! Tell them something shocking!” In general, not just with my blog but in life, I try to avoid incriminating myself in writing. Meanwhile, my bad habits are not exactly shocking. Sometimes I go to bed without flossing, or get crazy and have a second beer.

My daughter said that this actually could be a good blog post. I reminded her how harmless my habits are. She said no, they don’t have to be bad bad, just outlandish, and cited my “neuroticism about loading the dishwasher” and “compulsion about bike gear,” along with “rapping Eminem lines randomly” which is “peculiar for an old(ish) white dude.” Well, Eminem himself is an old(ish) white dude, but point taken … he’s the poet, he gets the poetic license. My family doesn’t actually need (or deserve) my drastically inferior cover versions.

And so, I’ve taken the bait and compiled a list of my “bad” habits. How many of these do you share? And how many inspire you to think, “That’s nothing, compared to the way I…”? Post your comments below, or email me them, and if I get enough I’ll do a follow-up post! And now, with no further ado, here they are.

Neuroticism about loading the dishwasher

My daughter hasn’t elaborated on this point, and my wife seems reticent to do so. I will say I am a meticulous sort, and have been known to remove and reload recently placed mugs, saucers, and plates even while my wife is still loading. There is historical basis for my corrections; a  mug that’s not properly inverted can fill with sudsy water and turn the dishwasher into a steam room instead of a sauna during the dry cycle. But the fact is, the dishwasher actually stopped working months ago and is now only a dish dryer, so my fastidiousness is arguably overdone. Meanwhile, reading over this paragraph I realize even just the description of this could be more than any sane wife could take. Clearly this is a good habit gone bad.

Compulsion about bike gear

I ride bikes a lot, and will not go out unprepared. The amount of gear in my pack for mountain biking is arguably excessive (details here). And (as my wife just reminded me), when something is missing or I’m packing the car for a race, I can get pretty agitated. This is surely based on “my favorite failure” which you can read about here. But gosh, I sound like a pain in the ass, don’t I? Don’t worry, not all my habits are this tedious.

Rapping Eminem lines randomly

Is it ever not random to rap Eminem lines? Some of them are very apropos and deserve to be cited; for example, there are many scenarios where one could sagely point out, “I don’t go around fire expecting not to sweat.” But I don’t rap that line; I’m more likely to just say it, with the preface, “In the words of the famous philosopher Marshall Mathers…” The random rapping really is more of a spontaneous outburst. On some level I think I’m training myself for when I become senile one day … if my utterances are going to be random anyway, they might as well be interesting. I can picture myself in a long bleak hallway of the old folks’ home, picking my way along with my walker, and suddenly yelling, “PISTOL-WHIPPIN’ MOTHAFUCKIN’ BOUNCER SIX-TWO!” to the shock and mystification of fellow codgers and staff alike.

Pondering unimportant grammatical matters

Words and grammar take up far too much of my brain activity. Whenever I see a sign saying “Entrance,” as in “enter here,” I automatically think that it might as well be saying the word we pronounce “en-TRANCE,” meaning “to put into a trance.” This gets me thinking about heteronyms in general, which really nobody needs to ever do. I’m also picking apart sentences all the time. For example, the recorded message that plays on the subway at every stop, saying, “The doors are closing … please stand clear of the doors” gets me thinking about how “the doors” got to be the subject of the first half of the sentence, and then became a mere object in the second half, like it got demoted. What a pointless realm of thought. Think of how much good I could do in the world if I used this brain power for good!

Apologizing for belching

I don’t belch on purpose—a belch will just suddenly overtake me—so I can’t call that a habit. Apparently there’s a way to muffle them, but I haven’t really mastered that, much less made it a habit. (Lack of a good habit isn’t the same thing as a bad one.) But without fail, I’ll say, “Sorry!” afterward. I guess this is faster and more efficient than saying “excuse me.” I think I got this from my brother G— because I seem to say it with a bit of a Dutch accent, like the one he’s acquired after over thirty years of living there. Or who knows, maybe he’s unconsciously modeled this behavior on some Dutchman’s. Anyway, it’s weird, I’ll admit it, and the strangest thing, is I’ll apologize even if I’m completely alone. Someday there’ll be an intruder in my house, sneaking up behind me, and suddenly I’ll burp and apologize and scare the crap out of him, since he’ll think I knew he was there all along. Until that day, this is a pretty pointless behavior.

Gesticulating broadly while belching

Sometimes I realize I’m about to belch and it’s gonna be a good one: loud and long. So I’ll make it as big and proud as possible, and part of that is making a grandiose gesture such as a master orator would make when delivering a speech in front of a vast audience. I totally got this from my brother G— and amazingly I was barely aware that I do it, until my wife pointed it out as one of the habits to list on this blog. I was like, oh yeah, I guess I do do that! I’m not sure if she was complaining or what, but she’s never, like, applauded or anything.

Buying boxers online

There are spam emails from J. Crew that I actually open … on purpose. Are they still spam? Decidedly yes, as for the most part they’re a waste of my time. I’m talking about the emails with titles like, “Time’s running out: extra 60% off sale.” The “extra” means it’s 60% off the already discounted price, so it’s actually a good deal. I can get a pair of boxers for like $4.50 instead of $24.50. The trick is that they’re usually the seasonal ones, so I get boxers with hearts all over them in late February, or Santas in January, or raccoons on skis in spring.

You see, there’s apparently a romantic tradition of a woman buying thematic boxers for her boyfriend as a gift. I actually received a couple pairs of these when I was younger. The first pair was way, way too big and my girlfriend was super embarrassed, so much so that when she bought me another pair, they were way, way too small. Maybe I’m trying to made amends for all the money she wasted … naw, I’m just a cheap bastard. The upshot is that I now own more pairs of boxers than I could possibly go through, with themes like Halloween, Valentine’s Day, Christmas, even Easter. And yet, like all guys, I don’t retire a pair until it’s like twenty years old and literally falling apart at the seams.

Is there anything wrong with this habit? Sure! At $4.50/pop, for something I already have plenty of, this is still a waste. If I bought three-packs of manufacturer’s seconds at Ross Dress for Less (never mind that they’d fit wrong, like they’re on backwards), and donated the money I saved to UNICEF or Oxfam, I could make a big difference in the world. Instead I have boxers featuring St. Bernards with Christmas wreaths for collars.

Edgy humor

I think some of the best humor is edgy. For example, when my late father was in a nursing facility after a cancer surgery that hadn’t gone so well, he decided he should revise his will and get fresh signatures on it. We were in his room helping orchestrate this, and while trying to explain something to us he suddenly suffered a massive coughing fit, that, given his gravely ill state, made it look like he could actually expire. This inspired my brother M—to thrust a pen at him and yell, “Sign it, quick!” This was obviously totally inappropriate and our dad sure didn’t appreciate it, but man … it was just so damn funny! Another time, my brother G— was in the ICU after a terrible car accident, and though he wasn’t technically supposed to have visitors, my other two brothers and I were in there hanging out. We were supposed to be really quiet but just couldn’t manage it. Finally G— motioned to us to come closer so he could whisper something to us—you know, the kind of thing a guy does before delivering his last words —and as we craned to hear him he croaked, “Could you guys try and keep it down? There’s people trying to die in here.” It killed me. And so, a lot of the time I just can’t resist dark humor. For example, when this charity solicitation arrived in my mail, addressed to my father  (who passed away almost seven years ago and had never lived at this address), I couldn’t help but to annotate it a bit:

(No, I did not send that to the good folks over at the Ocean Conservancy ... just to a couple of appreciative family members.)

Workplace humor

At my workplace we all had to take this harassment training—a guy in our Legal department did a road show and gave the training in person to everyone—and one of the things he advised was just to never make jokes in the workplace. He says that’s what gets people in more trouble than anything, and most of the time they’re not trying to make anyone feel bad, but humor is just too subtle and it’s not worth the risk. And yet, I often just can’t help myself. A workplace with zero humor just doesn’t seem like anything anyone should have to put up with for an entire career. Of course I try to be careful and so far, so good. I go for the goofy stuff which seems like safer ground. For example, I cracked wise during a team All-Hands online meeting with like 70 people. Normally people are muted by default with this big a group, but in this case we actually weren’t, and I could hear some background chatter as people joined. And then we all heard, clear as a bell, some guy say in a singsong voice, “Do you need to go potty outside?” I came off mute and said, “Nah, I’m good.” That got huge laughs but I know I’m messing with fire. Somebody I’m gonna, like, offend a sensitive pet owner, and my career will be over.

The Wordle

As explained here I wasn’t initially inclined to do the New York Times Wordle puzzle, but was won over because it’s a fun way to have an ongoing (but low-stakes) dialogue with my daughter. I can now say I’ve done 654 games, and it’s a good thing they usually take under a minute. Actually, just to amuse my daughter, I spend as much time adding fun stickers to my completed game card as I do on the puzzle itself:

My daughter has gotten into the decorating too, though her picture editing tools are perhaps not as sophisticated:

I guess this is harmless, but man … 654 games. Seems like in that amount of time I could have created a critical vaccine or something.

Trying to interest my wife in sports

As much as I enjoy pro cycling coverage, such as of the Tour de France, I cannot interest my wife in it. And yet I still try. I showed her the breathtaking final kilometers of the recent women’s Olympic road race, but she was somehow unmoved, even with Kristen Faulkner claiming the first American victory in that event since 1984. And still, I keep trying. I mentioned how I had to school my brother after he suggested it was Alexi Grewal who last won the gold … he was tied with Connie Carpenter, who won the women’s event that same year. My wife couldn’t even be bothered to yawn. So I said, “And Connie’s was arguably the more impressive win because she didn’t deliberately screw over her teammate, as I have it on good authority Alexi did.” Absolutely no response, but that’s okay, because a had an ace up my sleeve. “You know what I mean by ‘good authority’?” I asked. “I don’t mean I read it somewhere or somebody told me. I got the entire story from Alexi Grewal himself, in the flesh!” She looked at me like I was some kind of idiot, as if to say, “So what! I don’t care!” I said, “How many people do you know who got to hang out with an Olympic gold medalist?” Another blank look. She has been steadfastly uninterested in sports in the entire time I’ve known her … so why do I still try? Force of habit, I guess.

(In case you’re interested in the story of how Alexi screwed over his teammate, Davis Phinney, you can read it here. Alexi had told it to me so I could turn it into freelance article, but then revoked the permission when he found out it would be in an online-only magazine, dailypeloton.com. He eventually wrote it up himself for his now-defunct blog; fortunately for those among us who do care about sports, Velo Veritas picked it up.)

Yanking out white sideburn hairs

I get these really weird, wiry, long white hairs growing in my sideburns. They aren’t that noticeable against the blonde ones around them, and I’m not exactly vain, but they annoy me. So I frequently take a moment to try to grasp a hair and yank it out. It’s easier said than done … in the mirror it’s hard to focus on a tiny hair because I have to be close up and the depth perception is tricky. Plus, it’s hard to get a good enough grip. Why do I bother? It’s not like I’m a model or anyone is paying that much attention. The time I spend doing this must add up … time I could be spending doing something more useful, like emptying the cat box more often.

albertnet

As of this past February, as detailed in my 15th Anniversary post, I have spent something like 3,500 hours—that is, 1.9 years if this were a full-time job—writing this blog. I guess that counts as a habit. Is it a good one? Well, I just compared it to the 7 habits of highly successful people, and even the 8th habit I came up with myself, and it’s not looking so good. Blogging doesn’t really match any of the effective habits. But hey, better than drinking, smoking, and gambling. If you are hungry for the salacious details of a blogger’s bad habits, you’ll have to look elsewhere.

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