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Ellen’s first report card for the new, big, scary 6th grade school. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Tonight marks the end of a long time era. My parents are moving away from the east coast, a place that has been their home for their entire lives (apart from when they were at school). Never before have they taken residence outside of the NYC area, and I know they’re nervous about what they’ll find and how they make out.

Despite the smart-assed comments i’ve made about their returning within a few weeks, I think they can make a go of it anywhere, so long as they have family (they’re moving near Rachel, Jon, Sarah and Henry), a Starbucks and a Barnes and Noble. In Columbus, they’ll have all this, but they’ll have something much more valuable that they need to make their lives work–each other.

Good luck, Mom and Dad. We love you and will miss you, but we’ll see you often, I’m sure.

Today would have been Gregory Blake’s 40th birthday. I celebrated it with a chocolate crackle and a donation to the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation.

Happy Birthday, my friend. We miss you.

Friday night, my long-time friend David Stern emailed me that his father, Jack, had passed away after a long battle with Alzheimer’s. I hadn’t seen him in ages, but he was a fun guy when I was 14 and he was making goofy jokes about salt air.

A few months ago, my good friend Linda’s mom also passed away (unfortunately, also of Alzheimer’s).

A few years ago, my friend Mitch lost his mom, one of the sweetest ladies I’ve ever met (she literally baked us a cake when she knew we were coming over one day, many years ago.)

This has gotten me thinking, of course, that it’s starting to be the time when my friend’s parents are getting to the age where we will start losing them. Fortunately, my folks are comparatively young (and Kim’s are kids, by comparison), and they’re all healthy, but I have a feeling that over the next 5 years, this is going to become commonplace. Getting old sucks, but I guess it’s better than the alternative.

*sigh*

What comes around, goes around, so if you’d like to drop some cash into the hands of the Alzheimer’s foundation click the icon below:

This evening found me in Baltimore with a friend getting to see a live performance by David Sedaris, one of the funniest writers I know. I was afraid that seeing him would be one of those exercises where the author just reads the stuff everyone knows, trying to promote his new book (it IS a book tour, after all), and very little of it would be fresh. However, I was very happily mistaken and had heard nothing previously of the material that he read tonight.

One of the highlights was an excerpt from a story where he is talking how he and his long-time companion Hugh split the household tasks:

“Hugh will plaster up a wall that needs fixing, and I will make armor for dead, dried up bees out of tin foil.”

Another was where he discussed the present election, saying that those who are undecided reminded him of airline meal choices:

‘I don’t know that it was always this way, but, for as long as I can remember, just as we move into the final weeks of the Presidential campaign the focus shifts to the undecided voters. “Who are they?” the news anchors ask. “And how might they determine the outcome of this election?”

Then you’ll see this man or woman — someone, I always think, who looks very happy to be on TV. “Well, Charlie,” they say, “I’ve gone back and forth on the issues and whatnot, but I just can’t seem to make up my mind!” Some insist that there’s very little difference between candidate A and candidate B. Others claim that they’re with A on defense and health care but are leaning toward B when it comes to the economy.

I look at these people and can’t quite believe that they exist. Are they professional actors? I wonder. Or are they simply laymen who want a lot of attention?

To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with broken glass in it?”

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.’

The readings were great, and afterwards we waited on line for about an hour to get a few books signed. The line wasn’t really that long, but when we got up to the front it became obvious why the line moved so slowly–Sedaris takes his time talking to each person, asking odd questions (he asked me casually “so, what’s the last animal you killed with your bare hands?” to which I replied, “well, there was this kodiak bear in the living room the other day I had to dispatch…” That earned me a laugh.)

He also takes his time writing in people’s books. Mine says “To Paul, Diabetes is for lovers”, which, really, does say it all, doesn’t it?

I asked him for some advice at this point on the whole bee-armor thing, saying that when I make my bee armies, and have them fight with the wasp armies, the legs get brittle and tend to fall off. He sagely suggested that I just accept this as part of the battle and instead of worrying about it, I use that as the measuring stick to determine the winner.

See? Helpful, as well as insightful and funny. What more could one ask for?

This story comes from Kim, talking to my mom earlier at my house:

Mom: You know, if you had half & half, I’d have tea.
Kim: We have half & half.
Mom: Oh. Well, if you had Equal, I’d have tea.
Kim: We have Equal.
Mom (thinking about it): I don’t think I really want tea.

Maybe it’s the tea…

Ellen came down tonight with the following list of “Things to do before I die.” Where she got this from, I’ve no idea–we asked and all she could say was that she just thought of it. Usually, this stuff comes from something she’s read or heard about, but this one–no idea.

Anyway, here’s her list, in her order (and spelling):

Win a Nobel Prize
solve a rubix cube
watch all the batman, spiderman and superman movies
watch all 3 monty python movies
get 99 in one skill on runescape
go to a caucuss
go to hawaii
go to japan
learn to play sax like Lisa
sue someone
be part of a jury
Read “Coraline”
be part of a public riot

So, some things to envy, some things to puzzle over. That’s my girl.

See, I KNOW I shouldn’t be surprised when my kids are smart asses, since I’m one for the ages, but it always makes me laugh when they do it in a clever way. Then, and only then, do I beat them savagely.

Yesterday, Kim and I were heating up some dinner, and Kim put a Chinese-food-container full of corn in the microwave to heat it up. She left it in a little too long and the plastic top got all wobbly and rippled from the heat. So, Ellen comes in and sees it:

E: what happened here?
K: it wasn’t my fault! the microwave did it!
E: (walking out) Suuuure…blame the inanimate object.

Happy 10th birthday, kiddo. May you never change.

Yesterday was the start of our annual Hajj to Iowa for the celebration that is Christmas. It is rarely pleasant, but it occasionally bearable. This year’s quest, however, might have taken the cake for sheer orneriness.

During the football season, there is a 3 hour window during which all I want to do is watch the Giants. Now, if you think about it, there are 168 hours in the week, and I want to spend 3 of them watching this one game. Not a huge amount to ask, right? Well, the Giants played their (up to this point) most important game of the year yesterday from 1-4 PM. Our flight was at 1. Of course.

However, that is to say that our flight was “slated for 1” or “estimated for 1” or even “theoretically, there is a plane that might leave around 1.” Actually, it left at 4:30, but who’s counting?

Thus, the first leg of our journey actually went quite well. I had my laptop, an internet connection, power for the laptop (I had to sit near a column to grab hold of one of the few wall outlets available to the public–what’s up with that?), and the wonderful Slingbox sitting at home. I tuned into my home TV and got to watch the entire Giants’ game, finishing with me sitting on the plane with my internet connected modem card and my laptop on the little tray table and the guy next to me watching along with me. Definitely not a bad start, even if we were delayed 3.5 hours.

Moving onto the plane, I ended up sitting next to someone who went to U of Cin the same class as we did and spend a fairly pleasant trip chatting with him on and off, ultimately exchanging email addresses with a promise to keep in touch.

This is where the semblance of pleasant died. The dreaded “connecting flight.”

I’m a firm believer that if you want to fly somewhere, NEVER take a connecting flight if you can avoid it. If you’re headed somewhere like Chicago, at least you take your flight and you eventually get there. My new friend, for example, was late, but was home and done. 3 hours late, but whatever. We, however, had missed our connecting flight, and were doomed. DOOMED, I say!

Upon alighting onto the Chicagoland area (always makes it sound like a theme park to me, but what do I know…), we were met with a hard working O’Hare gate attendant who was efficient, helpful, and, ultimately, someone whose death I planned in painful ways later on that night. We had just barely (by 3 hours) missed the 3:40 flight to Dubuque on which we were scheduled, and he informed us that the 9:05 flight to Dubuque that day was cancelled. However, he was able to get us on the next “flight”, a “ferry flight” leaving at 8 PM. As it was already 6:30, we decided we’d better move it, grabbing some food in a bag along the way for the kids after we got near the gate.

Ah, yes. What gate was that flight out of? Looking at the “big board”, we see…nothing. It’s not listed. So, we look around for our helpful, hard working gate agent and he’s nowhere to be seen. Of course. Walking around to 3 other people who, theoretically work for American Airlines, we were told “Oh, the other flights for Dubuque all leave out of G17, so I’d go there”, and “it’s not up on the board because they don’t have a gate for it yet”, and “I don’t really know much about the American Eagle flights, so go over there.” SO helpful, right? Grabbing the kids, we haul ass across the entire airport until we get to the infamous American Eagle “G gates”, which are downstairs from the regular G gates, and seemingly in the disused basement of a back door off a side stairwell. It is also packed with people, some of whom might have been mooing–I can’t be sure. I make a beeline for a gate agent, kids and wife in tow, kids panting for breath, and ask her where our flight is. She doesn’t know either.

Now, at this point, I’m getting a bit disconcerted. Is this a Magical Mystery Flight? Does it come from Neverland? Is it invisible?

Ultimately, none of those significantly more exciting answers turn out to be the truth. In fact, the “flight” to Dubuque turns out to be a bus. A bus that is “boarding in 20 minutes”. And, of course, a bus that is boarding on the other side of the airport.

Once again, we move, this time to the food court area where we load up on things “to go”, and, almost literally running, we make our way to the “bus/ground transportation” wing. No one there knows anything and the one person in the whole area that might is behind the desk of a line 20 people long. Finally, exasperated beyond belief I spot a septuagenarian pilot-type sitting on a bench and ask him. He tells me that it’s back the way I came, make a right, and straight on ’till morning. Unsurprised, I head off that way, running again, with kids in tow until we actually DO find the “gate”, which, in this case, is a door. For the first time in a while, we’re actually with other people who have the intension of making it to Dubuque this evening if possible. Hope springs eternal.

It’s now 7:30 or so, and we’ve made it where we need to be for the bus-plane-thing. We’re in the right place. We’re ready. Problem? No bus-plane-thing. No information. No clue. No one knows where it is, when it’s coming, or even, for sure, what gate-door-thing it’s coming to. So, we all wait, bitch, and hope that we’re in the right place. Finally, at around 9:30, we get on a big ‘ole bus which leaves around 10 for Dubuque. Along the way we find out that the roads are too bad in Dubuque to get to Kim’s parents’ house that evening, so we’re staying with Paul & Anne. Finally, at about 2:00 AM we stumble out of the bus, get picked up by Paul & Anne, and are in bed, warm and snug, by about 3:00 AM. On a day that started with us leaving at 10:30 AM for the airport, we’ve been traveling for a solid 16-17 hours.

Just for comparisons sake, it’s about 18 hours BY CAR to Dubuque from our house in NJ. Yay for air travel.

At least the Giants won.

So the kids were discussing the logistics of Santa today in the car as they headed for MSU. Last night, Kim took them to the mall to visit with Santa, and they were trying to determine if that was the “real” Santa or not. Ellen suggested that there are “replacement” Santas that supplement the real Santa in malls. She added also that there must be at least one from each country because otherwise they wouldn’t be able to speak the language. Finally, she worked out the basis for an Elf pay scale, based on cookies and the relative values of one to the other. Ginger snaps, were, apparently, the pennies of the cookie world, with 3 of them to one sugar cookie, and then cascading upwards to the fig newton, which if the math works out, would be worth about 10,000 ginger snaps.

Katie decided that the mall Santa in whose lap she perched last night must have been the real one for two reasons: 1, his beard felt real, and 2, he knew how Rudolph was doing when she asked about him!

How can one argue with logic like that?