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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From the Archives - A New Jacket for Fall!

Introduction

Maybe you like to shop. Maybe you enjoy retail environments. Well, other than bike shops, I really don’t. When I’m in a clothing store I have this (only somewhat irrational) fear that I’ve drifted into the women’s section without realizing it. At The Gap once I was surveying a dizzying array of jeans, folded on endless shelves, and a salesman came up and said brightly, “Hi there! Would you like to buy some women’s jeans?”

So, when I have a positive retail experience, it’s kind of a big deal. What follows is the story of how, almost eighteen years ago, I bought my beloved “barn jacket,” which I still wear to this day. Of course this post isn’t just about that. I also discuss wool shirts that I wore before anybody else wanted them; the warping of the factory-outlet concept; a wormhole; and the extinction of quality control.

A New Jacket for Fall! – October 29, 1995

Fall is upon us, and you may be considering a new jacket. So, in the event that you’re interested, you can peruse this spellbinding account of my new jacket purchase.

I really needed a new jacket. My old one, the J Crew Barn Jacket, had served me well but was a bit too small, and was really better suited to Berkeley than to San Francisco. It was just a bit too light for the winters here, and a bit too baggy for cycling in (the wind shoots right up the sleeves). So on a cold, blustery day Erin and I went to the San Francisco Center and poked around.  

One of the things I looked at was a large wool Woolrich shirt, just like the ones my brothers and I wore back in high school. I haven’t seen wool shirts like those in a long time.   The only difference between our old wool shirts and these ones was the price. We’d bought them at a Woolrich Factory Outlet in Broomfield, Colorado back when Factory Outlet meant slightly irregular and overstocked stuff stuffed into bins in a giant warehouse, and at really cheap prices (I think we paid like $10 or $12; these were $100 [and now, in 2013, are $295]).  These days, of course, “factory outlet” means nothing more than a company-run store that sells lesser versions of their brand of product, for a price that is supposedly cheaper, but usually not my much. The modern factory outlet store doesn’t seem to have the “seconds” that I like to buy. I could never tell the difference anyway; I’m sure there was something wrong with those Woolrich shirts, but I never could figure out what. I have to wonder: now that factory outlet stores generally sell all first-quality stuff, what do companies do with their seconds? Surely they must have seconds.

After seeing the Woolrich stuff, we went upstairs to J. Crew. For years, J. Crew has considered me a loyal customer. They have faithfully sent me catalogs ever since I moved to the Bay Area (up until our bike tour, when they finally lost my scent). For a time, their catalogs featured extremely attractive models, which I considered an excellent selling point. (Un)fortunately, the women weren’t for sale. The strange thing was, up until very recently, I’d never purchased a J. Crew garment in my life, for reasons of cost. (The aforementioned barn jacket was a gift from my mom.) How I came to start getting their catalog is a mystery to me. I suppose I had walked into their stores a few times; somehow, they must have figured out my address. Maybe they had me followed. I’d been in there a few times with my roommate at the time, Brett, who was in fact a loyal customer. Maybe they heard him say my name, and something in our behavior suggested that we were roommates, and they’ve used postal records to track me from there. Either that, or they bought my name from Banana Republic.

Anyway, during a business trip to Pasadena a few months back, I discovered an amazing J. Crew store. The amazing thing about the store was its wrinkle in the space-time continuum. Or maybe it was a wormhole ... I’m no physicist.  The store, which is quite large to begin with, is in the shape of a giant L, and has the amazing property of instantly transporting you from one part of Pasadena to the other. One moment I’d be out on Colorado Avenue, seemingly miles from the engineering firm where I was doing consulting work, and then I’d walk past the men’s section, through the women’s, and the next thing I knew, I’d be in a little plaza near Il Fornaio, the Italian cafe right across the street from the office. It was like the wardrobe that led to Narnia. Not only was this a handy shortcut, but for weeks I didn’t really know how else to get from one point to the other. (You know: my usual spatial relations problems.) When I did finally figure it out, I still went through J. Crew because it was about 100 degrees outside, and the store was nice and cool.

Well, on one trip through, I happened to notice a pair of cool pants which were on sale. They were about $30, marked down from something like $400 (well, maybe not that much, but something atrocious). From a fiscal standpoint, it would have been folly indeed not to buy them, so I did. Then I looked at the receipt to find out exactly what these pants were: “khaki pant relaxed plain zip.” (The only way to find out the name of a garment is to buy it.) A few days later, again on the way through, I found a really great shirt on sale. This one is called the “tonal plaid shirt.” I don’t know what the name means, but it’s such a subtle plaid, it almost looks like a solid. The color is so dark that the shirt is almost black. The whole effect, in fact, is so low-key that when I wear the shirt, you almost can’t tell who I am. It’s a great shirt for an introvert, and may in fact be the grooviest shirt I own.

Well, my boss was down in Pasadena with me, and when he noticed that I’d made two J. Crew purchases during the course of a week, he made the same mistake that J. Crew had: he assumed that this must be my favorite store. So, one day at lunch, he suggested we go over there. Once there, he presented me with a $100 gift certificate. “Well, I know you love this store,” he said, “so I thought I’d take this opportunity to show my appreciation for your extra work here.” So, to return to my original story (if you haven’t forgotten it by now), I naturally hit upon J. Crew as the obvious place to buy my new jacket: I could buy something overpriced, save $100, and not sweat it.

I found a great jacket right away. It’s huge, and dark, and has a removable wool lining that is fastened to the shell by about 100 buttons, so the jacket doubles as a hobby. It doesn’t have any zippers, just buttons, which is great for me since I have a tendency to jam zippers. What’s more, the shell is a complete garment even without the lining (but not the other way around). It’s the kind of jacket that you don’t put on; you climb into it. Once inside, you can relax your entire upper body and it will support you. You could fall asleep in it without tipping over; it’s the kind of garment you could live in. But the main reason I bought it, besides that I had the $100 gift certificate, is that Erin liked it, and she had been the chief proponent of the new jacket all along.

[In the photo at the top of this post, the jacket’s liner has been removed and is draped over the arm of the couch. And yes, that’s the khaki pant relaxed plain zip, much faded but still in great shape though it’s shrunk less over the years than my butt, mainly due to lack of business travel so they don’t fit so well anymore.  In the photo I’m even wearing the tonal plaid shirt, which is starting to fall apart after hundreds of wearings but is still among my favorite shirts.]

Upon getting home and reviewing the jacket documentation, I finally found out a couple of things that I’d been wondering about for a long time. First of all, I found out the name of my new jacket: the Mule Jacket. So what does that mean? It’s the queerest, most nonsensical name since . . . Barn Jacket. I guess my old jacket made reference to me being a “barn dweller,” while this new one attests to my stubbornness.

The other thing I learned was why factory outlets don’t sell “seconds” anymore. (J. Crew certainly does have factory outlet stores; in fact, upon returning from Pasadena, my boss got on the phone to find out the locations of all of the J. Crew factory outlets in northern California, and prepared a listing for me.) The reason for there being no seconds anymore became obvious when I read the little tagboard card that came with the jacket (and, as I now recall, that came with my khaki pant relaxed plain zip, and even with the tonal plaid shirt):

THIS GARMENT IS PREWASHED.

We’ve put this J. Crew product through a washing process to create a softer, “lived-in” feel and look. This prewashing replicates natural aging without repeated wearings and washings. So this garment is a bit faded, a bit shrunk, and its seams are looser and less uniform (as shrinking is never completely even in all dimensions). There will also be some variations of shading and texture. In fact, some garments will have large bleached patches. Almost invariably, one sleeve will be longer than the other, and the collar may choke you, or else gape wide open and let cold air in. You may find that there are more buttonholes than buttons, and that the fabric may have large runs or tears in it. Some garments will give you years of service, but you shouldn’t be surprised if your garment completely falls apart after just a few short weeks. These factors combine to give this garment its individual look and comfort. Please keep this in mind as you examine your new J. Crew garment: because we don’t want to hear any complaints. Such variations are assets that contribute to the uniqueness and personality of all our prewashed apparel. 

Once I’d read this disclaimer, I finally understood that there’s no such thing as a “second” anymore simply because there’s no such thing as quality control anymore. We’re expected to love and accept our garments, regardless of their idiosyncrasies and faults. It’s a beautiful thing.  And the sooner we can give this same consideration to our fellow human beings, the sooner we’ll achieve a gentler, more humane society.