Here are three good things that came out of 2020...at least for me

Tonight we say goodbye to 2020, and I don't know a single person who feels the least bit sad about that.

A global pandemic, social and political unrest, economic uncertainty, and those Australian wildfires that feel like they happened five years ago will do that.

On top of it all, my family endured the loss of both my mom and my mother-in-law within 18 days of one another this past summer.

I'm with you if you think 2020 can go suck eggs.

As always, though, there is both good and bad. These past 365 days haven't been all gloom and doom.

Here are three good things about 2020 from my life. I'm almost certain you can come up with three (or more) of your own.

(1) I got to work from home and (mostly) loved it

The circumstances necessitating that millions of us suddenly become telecommuters in March were obviously not great, but I quickly fell in love with the routine. True, I miss seeing my co-workers. I mean, I really miss seeing them. Occasional visits to a mostly empty office don't cut it. On the other hand, I've saved a whole lot of money on gas and car maintenance, so there's that. And I enjoy being around my family so much. I wouldn't mind if, even after we got back to normal, my company maintained a schedule where those who are able to alternate days between working from home and working in the office can do so.

(2) I finished my master's degree program

It was a good 25 or so years later than I had intended, but I finally got that elusive graduate degree. I used space in this blog to whine about the workload on several occasions, but I finished in July. I'm proud of that.

(3) I end the year with the same incredible family with which I started it

Never, ever take the people in your life for granted. Life is too amazingly short and fragile for that. No list of good things in my life would be complete if my wife and five kids weren't part of it. They are the best things about my existence. Thankfully, 2020 didn't change that.

I don't carry cash. I probably should.

I've carried a wallet since the age of 14. My first wallet was a Velcro job featuring a large logo of the 80s Australian band Men at Work.

As you might imagine, you couldn't keep the chicks off me.

If I had to guess the percentage of time over nearly four decades when there has been cash in my wallet, it would probably be something like 15% to 20%. Seriously, I seldom have actual currency in there.

Even in the mid-80s before I had a credit card, I rarely had cash on me. When I worked at Wendy's in 1986 and would get paid, I would almost immediately spend that money on Terry. It never lasted long.

(This was a great investment, by the way, seeing as how we've been together for nearly 35 years now. Rarely does a bet pay off so well.)

According to at least one website, however, my cash-less approach is not a good one.

The boys at ArtofManliness.com suggest five reasons why a guy should still carry cash in the 2020s. The reasons are pretty much what you would expect:

• To handle emergency situations that require cash
• To tip more generously (since credit card tips are subject to card company fees)
• To tip service providers who aren't directly involved in customer transactions
• To discipline your spending habits
• To protect your privacy

Still, I'm not running to the bank to grab cash any time soon.

For one thing, every time I have cash, my wife--the chief financial officer of our family--wants to know why I have it. I have to file a report whenever I want to get at my own money. (I'm kidding...sort of.)

Also, I find myself using Apple Pay and other electronic methods of payment more and more frequently.

So I'm good where I am. I should carry at least a little cash, admittedly, even if just for emergencies.

I'm definitely going to ask Terry if it's OK.

I still don't know which switches control which lights in my house

Nearly six years ago, I wrote a blog post lamenting the fact that I can't figure out the light switches in my house. You can either click that link to read it, or keep scrolling and I'll paste it below.

I am sad to report that there has been no change on this front since that 2015 post.

The other night my wife tested me on it. It was a two-question quiz and I got one right.

We were in the kitchen, so she asked me which switch turned on the light under the ceiling fan there. I had to think about it for a second, but I got it right.

Then she told me to turn off the light near the stairs in our living room. I knew this would be trouble.

Actually, I had a 50-50 shot at it and guessed wrong. I knew roughly where the correct switch was, I just happened to select the one next to it.

It shouldn't be that tough.

Anyway, here's what I wrote back in 2015:

*   *   *

I've been living in the same house for almost 12 years, but in some ways it still seems new to me (MODERN-DAY EDITOR'S NOTE: We've now been here 17 years.)

Like the smell of the basement bathroom, for instance. It's not used that often, and the door is generally closed, so it maintains a certain "new" smell.

And almost the entire upstairs area is relatively unfamiliar to me. All four bedrooms belong to various kids, so the only time I generally go up there is to put Jack to sleep for the night. It's like it's part of my house, but at the same time it isn't.

Then there are the light switches. Altogether, I would estimate we have 300 light switches in our house. Not really, of course, but it seems that way to me. And my wife knows exactly what all of them do.

You probably would, too, if you lived here, because you are at least of average intelligence. I, on the other hand, am quite clearly brain damaged. For more than a decade I've been using the light switches, yet I can't quite tell you which light is controlled by any given switch.

Is that bad? It is, isn't it? I'm thinking it's indicative of some sort of brain defect. I should know, after an entire decade-plus, what each light switch does. But I don't.

The consequence of this is that when it's time to turn out the lights in, say, the living room, I flip a dozen different switches up and down until I hit the right combination. I might manage to darken the room, but at the same time I've turned on every external light we have.

My wife is amused by this, and she understandably can't fathom why this confuses me so much.

Even the three switches in our master bedroom puzzle me sometimes. Terry will ask me to turn on the ceiling fan, and I flip the left-most of the three switches, which does not appear to do anything and could – for all I know – have turned on the neighbors' bathroom light.

(NOTE: I just walked over to the light switches here in our room and flipped that left switch. Turns out it controls a light in the ceiling just outside our bedroom door. Who knew?)

Someday, when I've lost my faculties and I spend my days talking to house plants, you'll all be saying to one another, "Yeah, it all started with the light switches..."

How intensely will we appreciate the most mundane things once "normal" returns?

Back in 2012, Hurricane Sandy blew far enough inland to affect Northeast Ohio, where I live.

It is the only time I ever remember a hurricane reaching us, even if it had significantly weakened by the time it got here. Trees were blown over, rain came down in buckets, and we lost power for something like five days.

We had never before (and haven't since) experienced a power outage anywhere near that long. It spanned Halloween and lasted until Nov. 2, the day Terry and I were scheduled to leave our kids at home and fly to San Francisco. Fortunately, the lights came on not long before we were supposed to leave for the airport.

At the time, I said I would never take electricity for granted again.

Within two weeks, I would say, I started taking electricity for granted again.

Which is understandable, right? We should always be grateful for the many blessings in our lives, but it's difficult to consciously think about everything on the list all of the time.

Which brings us to the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is the most disruptive event of our collective lives, right? Individuals undergo all sorts of trials and tribulations that are worse every day, but as a people, this has changed our lives as much as any other event since maybe World War II?

At some point we'll be able to go to stores without wearing a mask, visit our loved ones in nursing homes, and eat at restaurants like we used to.

When that day comes, I really want to make sure I appreciate every bit of it. The most inconsequential errands will be a joy...at least for a time.

The reality is, it won't be long before we all proceed with our lives as they were and actively try and forget about coronavirus. Again, this may not be that bad a thing. It's very human.

But can we at least make a point of thinking more often about how fortunate we are? I don't know that we need a "COVID Remembrance Day" every year, but rather just a small change in mindset.

It's that "attitude of gratitude" you sometimes hear about.

In the meantime, man, what I wouldn't give to be on the P.A. mic for a basketball game where the stands are packed with maskless people.

It's coming.

Getting emotional over a phone number

I have had the same cell phone number (as has my wife) since 2000. Number portability is a huge advantage that saves you the hassle of updating your entire network every time you switch wireless carriers.

Still, I can't say I have much of an emotional attachment to my cell number.

The same, however, cannot be said of our home phone number.

Yes, we still have a home phone number because we still have a land line. That is going to change soon, however, as we'll finally be dropping traditional cable and phone service. I realize we're a few years behind the times there, but this is probably a better-late-than-never type of situation.

We hardly ever receive any important calls on the home phone anymore, so it's kind of pointless to have it.

The only thing I'll regret is losing the number. Terry and I got married in 1992 and have had it as our home number ever since. But I actually owned the number for six years prior to that.

As I've mentioned before, I got online via my Commodore 64 in 1985. This involved tying up our home phone line every time I would call a local bulletin board system (BBS) and use my stolen 300 baud modem so that my computer could "talk" to a computer on the other end of the line.

That meant no one could call our house as long as I was online. You quickly learned how to disable your call waiting so that, if someone did call while you were surfing the pre-Internet digital world, you wouldn't have your connection broken.

After several months of this, I talked to my dad and he agreed we could get a separate phone line just for me that I could use for computer purposes. I paid the bill for the line myself, to the tune of $18 per month. It was money well spent, and for a time I even ran my own BBS on it.

Once Terry and I married and moved into our own house, the easiest thing to do was just to bring that existing line with me, so that it became "our" number instead of "my" number.

And now, once we cut the cord, it will be going away after 35 years in my/our possession. It's a silly thing to be sad over, but I associate a lot of great conversations and important memories with that phone number.

It also comes at a time when we're adjusting to having sold my mom's house recently, and for the first time in my life not being able to drive over there and just walk in.

These things happen to everybody, and they happen every day.

Time goes on, whether we like it or not.

But I guarantee that, no matter how old and senile I become, those seven digits will be absolutely seared into my brain forever.

Today is Boxing Day and you may have no idea what that means

If you're a reader of this blog who lives in (or originates from) a country within the British Commonwealth, you almost certainly know that today is Boxing Day, and you know specifically what that means. You may even celebrate it.

If, like me, you are an American, there's some chance you have heard the term "Boxing Day," but a much smaller chance you have any idea what it signifies.

I am an Anglophile, springing largely as I do from English, Welsh, and Scotch-Irish stock. There's German in me (my paternal grandmother's maiden name was Spitznogel, for crying out loud), but I consider myself to be of British descent.

So I have made a point of at least knowing what Boxing Day is, even if I have never technically celebrated it.

Actually, it's easier to start with what it isn't: It isn't about punching someone, and it isn't about throwing away the boxes from all of the gifts my Christian friends and I opened yesterday. 

I will rely on the good people at History.com to tell us what it is about:

One idea is that December 26 was the day centuries ago when lords of the manor and aristocrats typically distributed “Christmas boxes” often filled with small gifts, money and leftovers from Christmas dinner to their household servants and employees, who were required to work on December 25, in recognition of good service throughout the year. These boxes were, in essence, holiday bonuses. Another popular theory is that the Boxing Day moniker arose from the alms boxes that were placed in churches during the Advent season for the collection of monetary donations from parishioners. Clergy members distributed the contents of the boxes to the poor on December 26, which is also the feast of St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr and a figure known for acts of charity. (Ireland celebrates December 26 as St. Stephen’s Day.)

Either way, it's a holiday that seems to have good intentions.

Since it falls on a Saturday this year, apparently the countries that observe Boxing Day as federal holidays will officially observe it this Monday the 28th.

In Ireland and many other countries, they also consider today to be a holiday, but they refer to it as St. Stephen's Day.

I don't expect any of this to affect your life. At least not right now. But one day, when you find yourself on Jeopardy and the question comes up, you will answer correctly and have me to thank for it. A little tip of $5 or $10 for the assist would be appreciated.

This blog's shortest post ever

 Have a merry Christmas. You deserve it.

It is a small sacrifice my son makes in the face of COVID-19, but I still feel for him

Once or twice a week, I see my son Jared meticulously going through his meal prep routine in our kitchen. This involves cooking copious amounts of chicken, rice, and vegetables, measuring out precise portions of each, and placing those portions in plastic containers for storage in our garage refrigerator.

He does this for two reasons that I know of:

(1) He is in ridiculously good shape and he wants to prolong this state of affairs through proper nutrition.

(2) To a very real extent, thanks to COVID-19, he doesn't have that much on his to-do list these days, so he can spend an hour or more on this ritual as needed.

Pre-pandemic, Jared was a crazy busy person. As a sports management major, he was picking up internships and professional experiences any place he could. He served as communications manager for the Mentor Ice Breakers pro hockey team at the ripe old age of 20. He was supposed to have spent this past summer in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, as the PR intern for the Eau Claire Express baseball team. He was also looking to catch on as an intern with one of the big three pro sports teams here in Cleveland.

But COVID scrapped those plans thoroughly. The Ice Breakers franchise has folded, the Express didn't have a season, and right now it's pretty difficult for Jared or anyone else to get internships with pro teams experiencing delayed, reduced, or even non-existent seasons.

Jared has maintained a job with a moving company throughout the pandemic, and he does have online college classes. For the most part, though, he is a man who has been stripped of his purpose.

As I've noted before, this is of course a very first-world problem. Some people are fighting for their lives, or in the case of our health care workers, trying to help others save theirs. Some are without an income and struggling just to get by.

Jared's sacrifice is very minimal in comparison, but he was on such a roll that I hate to see it come to a crashing halt like this.

It will all eventually fade away, I know, and Jared will be free again to work toward his goal of becoming a college/university sports information director. This is a job that requires lots of hours and crazy hard work sometimes, but I don't worry when it comes to Jared. He'll do whatever is required.

In the meantime, he makes his meals. He works out. He does his school work. He occasionally goes out and helps rich people move. And he waits.

Like all of us, he waits.

I am not a beard or mustache guy

 

There are three very good reasons why you will never see me with a real beard or mustache:

1. See that picture above? That's me in 2014 when our family went to Disney World and I didn't shave for 10 days. You will notice that the wisp of a mustache there does not connect with the beard area. And as far as I can tell, it never would, no matter how long I let it grow. That's a big facial hair defect right there.
2. Speaking of facial hair in general, my wife doesn't like it. So I'm incentivized not to grow it.
3. I'm not sure I could do it anyway. What you see in the photo isn't really a lot of growth for 10 days, and I have no reason to believe it would ever really fill in. Maybe it would? I don't know, because I've never gone that long without shaving since I started shaving in the late 80s.

My son Jared has a nice full beard. He did not inherit my limited-growth gene, which is good. He wears a beard well.

I, on the other hand, look homeless.

For what it's worth, though, if I COULD grow a beard, I would look OK. I base that on this photo created some years ago by my friend Darryl Panchyson, in which my face replaces that of Luke Skywalker. Judge for yourself.

Now we can all become experts in things no one else cares about

I was kind of late to the podcast game.

I have friends and co-workers who have been regular podcast listeners for years, but my indulgence in the medium really only started about 12 months ago.

For whatever reason, I had always ignored that little Podcasts app on my iPhone. But then I started messing around with it and discovered "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend," a hilarious podcast in which Conan interviews famous people and makes jokes. I loved it, and for a time I listened to every episode.

Later I added "Literally with Rob Lowe," which I also enjoyed, largely because Rob is a fascinating 80s figure to me.

But I didn't fall in love with a podcast until I discovered–and you're going to laugh at this if you don't know me well–the "Battles of the First World War Podcast."

This podcast, which is nearly five years old and still regularly cranking out new material, was conceived and is hosted by a guy named Mike, a social studies teacher in Massachusetts. Like me, Mike has a fascination with World War I (I've written about my intense interest in this conflict several times, including this post and this post, both from 2012).

The BFWWP, as Mike himself calls it, is exactly what you think it is. It's an in-depth look at the battles of the Great War. Like, really in-depth in some cases. I'm 26 episodes in and we still have yet to wrap up the Battle of the Somme. Next is Verdun.

Mike has a dry sense of humor and takes an intensely passionate approach to his narration, which I think is why I love listening to him describe this battalion's attack on a German redoubt or the intricacies of trench warfare or the technological details of the earliest tanks (Mike himself was a tanker when he served in the military).

I have no use at all for this knowledge, you understand, nor will I ever, unless I manage to weasel my way onto a third game show. I listen because I'm enthralled by the war and the men who fought it. I listen because I care about the tactical details that determined its outcome.

I listen because I'm a 51-year-old white male, and that's what many of us do.

That is one of the quirks of the Internet: You can become an authority on almost anything, even if it won't benefit you in any way. Maybe because it won't benefit you in any way.

It is the ultimate proving ground for the idea that a thing worth learning is worth learning well, whether you're talking about beer, crocheting, medieval cooking techniques, or World War I.

I like that.

The best Christmas gift I got as a kid? That's easy.

I spent 1982 longing after a Commodore 64 computer.

I tried to find ways of saving up for one, but for most of that year I was 12 years old and in no position to earn the hundreds of dollars it would take to buy a C-64 and a floppy disk drive.

I put it at the top of my Christmas wish list with no real expectation it was going to show up under the tree.

Until it did.

I was pretty sure my premiere gift was going to be The Generals, an admittedly cool electronic board game that had come out a couple of years earlier. And I would have been fine with it.

My mom and dad, tricky as they were, had me believing that was what I was getting while going out and secretly finding a Commodore 64 for me. I'm not even sure where they got it. I'm guessing Sears.

Anyway, that little computer (laughably slow and weak compared even to today's low-end smart phones) became a huge part of my life over the next few years. I played games with friends. I learned to program in BASIC. I procured a modem and got online for the first time ever in 1985.

Back then, going "online" meant calling local bulletin board systems (BBSs) and exchanging messages with other people. The Internet existed, but I sure had never heard of it.

I should note that saying I "procured" a modem for my Commodore is a little misleading. That 300-baud device was stolen from the local BEST store by a group of kids with whom I went to school who were known simply as "The Vandals." They weren't sure what to do with it, so one of them gave it to me.

I chose to remain officially ignorant of the modem's origins, but I had a sneaking suspicion where it had come from. The guy who gave it to me confirmed its status as stolen merchandise only years later.

My obsession with the Commodore faded once the late 80s arrived and I had bought an IBM XT. From there it was one step after another up the technology ladder...more processing power, more storage, more features. The Commodore was put back into its box and relegated to the attic.

I was reunited with it earlier this year when we were cleaning out my mom's house. It was fun to see it, and I could have taken it home, but I chose not to. For one thing, I have a full-fledged Commodore emulator on our home desktop computer that completely simulates the original C-64 experience. For another, I hadn't kept any software for it, so its features would be limited.

And then there's simply the fact that you can't ever really go home again. The Commodore and I had had our thing, and we had both moved on.

Or at least I did. I have a feeling it wouldn't have minded playing one more game of Jumpman or Law of the West with me.

I received a lot of great gifts as a spoiled youngest child growing up. But nothing ever beat the surprise and delight of that little computer.

I generally don't cook because I end up bleeding into the food

As I type this, I have a batch of Moroccan Lentils bubbling in the slow cooker on the kitchen counter.

This is an extraordinary sentence in that I very rarely have anything bubbling, cooking, roasting or otherwise being turned into something edible through the application of heat. I don't cook. Or at least, I hardly ever cook.

There are reasons for this, the chief one being that I married an incredible cook and she feeds me and my family delicious food every day. Terry and I laugh over the fact that in 28 1/2 years of marriage, she has made exactly one dish I didn't like. And for the record, she didn't like it, either. It was an eggplant thing, though I generally like eggplant.

That means she's batting something like .99998, which is a championship-level culinary performance by any measure.

To be fair, I am also the least picky eater you may ever run across. I like everything. I really do. You would be hard-pressed to name a food I haven't eaten and enjoyed, or at least wouldn't be willing to try. So that helps.

Still, she's a great home chef.

So I don't really have a need to cook. Plus (and maybe this is just because I haven't done much of it and therefore haven't developed the knack) I don't really have the talent or inclination for cooking. It doesn't interest me. Only the eating part does.

One of the last times I tried cooking a full meal for my family, I think the main dish was fennel chicken. As I was chopping ingredients, I sliced my finger and, despite my best efforts to staunch the flow, managed to bleed directly into the pot.

I look at it as added protein.

Anyway, these Moroccan Lentils caught my eye when I saw the recipe in one of Terry's cookbooks, so I bought the ingredients and am making them. And really, there's no "making" involved. It's a slow cooker recipe, so you measure everything out, dump it in, mix it, set the slow cooker going, and that's pretty much it, other than occasionally wandering over to smell your creation and stir it.

If that was all there really was to cooking, I would be the Gordon Ramsay of our house.

Kids, there's nothing more I can do to increase the bandwidth in the house

My family has not been especially affected by the coronavirus pandemic.

None of us has (yet?) contracted the virus. I have been blessed to hold onto my job and continue earning an income. And the kids have had the opportunity to keep up with school online.

The worst things we have had to deal with are inconveniences that can only be described as first-world problems.

One of those is WiFi bandwidth.

On any given weekday, we have in our house two college kids and a high schooler in remote learning situations spending time in Zoom meetings.

Or maybe they're using Microsoft Teams. Or WebEx. Or Blue Jean. Or Google Meet. Or any of the 100 other virtual meeting platforms with which we're all becoming quite familiar these days.

The point is, there's a lot of video conferencing going on in our house, especially when you throw me into the mix. My job involves, on average, 6 to 8 WebEx meetings every day.

Three students + one Director of Communications = a strain on our WiFi capacity. Sometimes our home network runs a little slow or has hiccups.

I must say, though, that all things considered, our 1GB Internet service from WOW has held up fairly well under the strain. It's the highest level the company offers, and I'm sure it's the very least on which our family could function.

I sometimes have problems with WebEx crashing, though I'm not sure if that's a software/MacBook issue or a true bandwidth issue.

Either way, since our upgrade to WOW a couple of years ago, I can truly say I'm doing everything I can to provide the best Internet access (nowadays a basic commodity) for my family. WOW provided us with good routers and signal boosters, and the service itself is pretty reliable.

So stop bugging me, kids. Until someone lays ultra-fast fiber lines outside of our house, this is what you get.

Of course, back in my day, all I had was a 300-baud Commodore 64 modem. You could write faster than text could transmit over that piece of mid-80s technology.

And we were fascinated by it.

So stop complaining.

I don't miss driving to and from work

I'm all about finding the good things that come out of this pandemic, and one that I share with many is not having to deal with my work commute.

As commutes go in Northeast Ohio, mine is on the long-ish side at about 40 minutes each way. I know many people who go longer/farther than that, and many more whose drives to work aren't even half that long.

My office is just shy of 35 miles from my house. That means, in an average week pre-pandemic, I would put 350 miles on my car just to earn a living. Take away six weeks or so each year for vacation and being out of town for my job, and that meant 16,000 miles a year on my car in commutes. I was regularly putting 24K+ total on the odometer annually.

Again, I know people who log more miles, but for me, relative to my past commutes, that was a lot of miles.

Now I end up in the office for one reason or another only about once every 2 or 3 weeks. And when I do drive, there is less traffic on the road than there used to be, as many others are working from home like me.

The downside is that I used to use that drive time to listen to my classical music. Symphonies, in particular, can take 40 minutes to an hour or longer, and now I have to deliberately make time for listening to them. I also haven't listened to an audiobook in more than nine months.

But given the savings in gas and wear and tear on the car, that's a really small price to pay.

Once this thing is over, if I can continue working from my kitchen table a few times a week regularly, I'll feel like something good has come from it.

This is the 500th post in the history of this blog, and I'm going to make it about my daughter Melanie

I have three daughters. Three smart, talented, beautiful daughters.

(NOTE: I would say this about them even if it weren't true, because that's my job as Dad. But it just so happens that it's a 100% accurate assessment.)

The oldest two, Elissa and Chloe, are also the first two in overall birth order. Then we had a boy (Jared), followed in 2000 by another girl, Melanie.

It was 5+ years before Jack, our last kid, came along. So for a long time, Melanie was the baby. When she was very little, we started calling her Melanie Moo (for reasons lost to time). Then she became Melanie Schmoo, and later just plain old "Schmoo."

Melanie's boyfriend Jason recently expressed disbelief that we ever called her this, and I can't blame him. It has been a long time since she has been "Schmoo."

She is now, after all, 20 years old. Amazingly, inexplicably 20 years old.

Time always go quickly when it comes to your children, but I feel like it has gone the fastest with Melanie.

It seems like a month ago she was six years old and starting soccer.

Then she was suddenly 11 and the goalie for the team I coached.

And then, maybe 10 minutes later, she was a high school senior playing forward...and getting herself involved in student government and all of the other extracurriculars in which The Smart Kids get involved.

And now she is a college sophomore. She is doing all of the things you do to set yourself up for a successful life, and I love to talk about her because I'm always so proud of her.

Of course, we all have areas of improvement. Melanie tends to be lazy. And not just regular old lazy, but Grade A, major league, highly impressive lazy.

Not all the time, mind you. She has a job in addition to attending school, and she was recently named Employee of the Month. She works hard when she wants to.

But when she doesn't want to, the lengths to which she'll go to avoid any sort of exertion are stunning.

Like, she'll be sitting on the couch and want a glass of water. She will always ask me to get it for her, because she knows I'm the only one who will do it.

I am her father. She is my daughter. If she asked for the moon, I would call NASA and see what it would take to bring it home.

So I always say yes. Or at least I want to say yes. Sometimes other family members are in the living room when she makes these requests, and they demand that I make her get up and get the glass of water for herself.

This makes me sad because I want to get it for her, but I know the best thing is for her to learn to do things even when she doesn't want to. That's how life works.

Anyway, if that's the worst thing anyone can say about her, then I think she's doing pretty well. I love her.

Also, she asked me when I was going to write a blog post about her, so this is it.

It's also post #500 since this blog began under a different name nine years ago. Thanks to everyone who has taken this journey of fits and starts with me since 2011!

Alexa, what's the Question of the Day?

If, like me, you own an Amazon smart speaker like an Echo or a Dot, you may have, at one time or another, played "Question of the Day."

Actually, you probably haven't. It seems like one of the more obscure little trivia games buried within the Alexa virtual assistant software.

I happen to play it almost every day, usually in the morning when I'm emptying the dishwasher.

Unlike the headline to this post, though, I never call it the Question of the Day. I always say, "Alexa, what's my Question of the Day," as if the people at Amazon spend countless hours coming up with trivia questions to ask me specifically.

I choose to believe this is true.

Anyway, as you might imagine, the Question of the Day can pertain to just about anything, from Disney movies to obscure African countries. The questions range in difficulty based on the number of points they're worth, from 1 to 8.

If you get the initial Question of the Day right, Alexa congratulates you and tells you you've earned a bonus question. Very politely, she asks, "Would you like to answer it now?"

I cannot imagine a scenario where the answer is "no, I'm good." Of course I want to answer the bonus question now, Alexa. And I also want to know how many days in a row I've played the game, and how many points I've accumulated all time (she will tell you both).

Whether or not you earn a bonus question, you're then treated to a little two-minute Question of the Day podcast in which hosts Murray Horowitz and Tamika Smith give you more detail around that day's main question. It's always interesting, and their corny jokes and awkwardly forced banter make it even better.

Why do I bring this all up? Well, for one thing, when you're blogging every day, you're liable to touch on just about anything about which you may know a little something. But it's also to point out that I take an illogical amount of pride in answering these little questions.

Because I do answer most of them correctly. And when I get one wrong, I don't even want to hear Murray and Tamika's podcast. "Alexa, stop!" I'm snap at her when I answer incorrectly and grumpily finish the task of putting silverware back into the drawer.

I hate, hate, hate getting the Question of the Day wrong.

This is dumb, I know, but it is my personality. I am competitive, and the person with whom I am most competitive is myself.

I can't stand losing to me.

All of which suggests that maybe the Question of the Day is not the healthiest activity for me. But I will continue playing, and I will continue taking unwarranted joy when I nail an answer.

It's the little things in life, folks.

Are you, like me, a formerly tall person?

 

This is my sixth-grade class picture. That's me in the top row, right side. I circled myself, but I probably didn't need to.

I could have just told you to look for the tall kid.

You see, for a time in early 1980s, I was a Tall Kid. I was one of those who shot up early. I went on to play center on my middle school basketball teams.

If you know me now, you will find that funny. 

In this photo I was something like 5 feet, 9 inches tall. Now, nearly 40 years later, I am 5-9 1/2. I was listed at 5-10 on our high school football roster, but I'm not sure I ever quite got there.

Yes, I just about peaked height-wise by middle school.

I reached my adult height in my very early teens, then that was it. I was done growing. Or at least I was done growing vertically. It just wasn't in the biological cards for me to ever hit 6 feet.

I passed this "get tall early and then stop" gene on to my children, all of whom have been tall for their ages. My sons are both about 6-1, which confuses me. If they didn't look like me, I would start to be suspicious as to their true lineage.

There are worse things in life, I suppose, but it took me a long time to stop thinking of myself as "tall."

Maybe I'll hit another growth spurt when I turn 52.

It could happen.

Here's the scouting report on our cats

We have five cats. I grew up with dogs, but I immediately became a cat person when I got married because...well, that's just what happens. One person's pet preferences end up dominating.

Anyway, if I were a scout looking to draft some cats, here's how I think the five in our house would grade out (in descending age order):

NAME: Fred (aka, Fat Fred)

AGE: 13 1/2

ALLY: His brother George (see below)

STRENGTHS: Very loving to a small group of people he likes, chiefly me

WEAKNESSES: Obese, slow-moving, mostly skittish; lacks courage, intelligence, and self-confidence

OUTLOOK: Fred ruled the roost in our house for his first 2 1/2 years here, then Charlie came along. He has been slowly moving down the pecking order ever since. His heft and occasional urinary tract problems do not bode well for a healthy future, though he has lost some weight the last few years and eats special food for the pee problems. Classic beta male.

NAME: George

AGE: 13 1/2

ALLY: His brother Fred

STRENGTHS: Loyal and affectionate

WEAKNESSES: Possible brain defect; that thing under his right eye that never goes away.

OUTLOOK: As Fred goes, so does George. Which means he will live out his years in subordination to the other cats.

NAME: Charlie

AGE: 10

ALLY: None, nor does he need any

STRENGTHS: Dominant personality, purebred Lynx Point Siamese (we're told)

WEAKNESSES: Seldom affectionate, largely aloof; he'll beg for food, but he doesn't need you and he knows it

OUTLOOK: Charlie showed up in our backyard one September evening as a 7-week-old kitten. We have no idea where he came from, especially given the fact that he's such an attractive purebred. Charlie will rule this house every second until he takes his last breath.

NAME: Ginny

AGE: 5 1/2

ALLY: None, though she used to be best friends with the now-deceased Bert. We have encouraged an alliance with Molly, the other female cat, but neither is especially interested.

STRENGTHS: Beautiful tabby cat; very affectionate, though she reserves that affection almost exclusively for the men in the house.

WEAKNESSES: Unidentified anxiety disorder that causes her to pick up socks in her mouth and move them randomly around the house, all while making a strange noise. Repeatedly betrays Terry, the person who loves her most in the world.

OUTLOOK: She spends a lot of time in Jared's room and he spoils her, but once he moves out, well...things may turn grim.

NAME: Molly

AGE: About 3 1/2

ALLY: Occasionally teams with Charlie to wreak havoc, but she mostly annoys him.

STRENGTHS: Wicked front claw game; increasingly affectionate as she realizes the pleasures of having her butt scratched.

WEAKNESSES: Kind of fat and getting bigger (you can't tell in this picture), cannot stand being held, dealing with anger issues.

OUTLOOK: One day in the next decade or so, Molly and Ginny will be the only cats left. She needs to chill out and make friends with her sister if she wants to enjoy her later years.

The magic of a newborn baby

Last week I mentioned how I couldn't imagine having another baby in the house at our age (Terry and I are both 51).

Not only is it a scary thought, right now it's also pretty much physically impossible. My urologist made sure of that nearly 15 years ago, and while I don't exactly know at which stage of the process Terry currently is, it's clear her reproductive organs are also hanging up the "closed" sign.

But I will say this: The experience of finding out my wife was pregnant, waiting for the birth, picking out names, watching the kids come into the world, and bringing brand new babies home is one I'll always cherish. The word I've always used for it is "magical."

Magical is how it felt when Elissa, our oldest, was a baby. We hadn't even been married two years when she was born, so everything was new and fresh and exciting. Those months when I watched her all day before going to work at night were some of the best of my life. I loved it.

I loved when all of my kids were newborns (and I love them just as much now, it should be noted).

Newborns are miracles. It's cliche, but it's true. I used to stare at our kids and think about what they would sound like when they started talking, what kind of personality they would develop, what kind of students they would be in school, who they might choose to marry, what they wanted to be and do in life, etc.

Still, two things should be acknowledged here:

1. Those newborn years also are exhausting years. Even if they sleep through the night, babies take up most of the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy you can muster.
2. I can only speak to this whole thing from the father's point of view. I am not the one, it must be said, who ever had to be pregnant, actually give birth, and nurse these children. I imagine all that might cause one to be a little more jaded about the experience.

Regardless, babies are cool. I don't want another one, but I like remembering the times when they were around.

If you're younger than 50, you can't imagine what a revelation cable TV was in the early 80s

 

In 1980, cable television came to my hometown of Wickliffe, Ohio.

As I recall, the technicians from Continental Cablevision began stringing wire and performing home installations on the far east side of the city where we lived, so we were among the very earliest adopters (which was so like my dad).

If you never lived with only the channels a rooftop antenna can get you, it's difficult to understand what a stunning advancement cable TV was.

Before, we had channels 3, 5, 8, 43, and 61. Now we had 36 channels. Thirty-six!!

Before, reception was often spotty, especially in bad weather and especially on the UHF channels (i.e., Channel 43, which had all of the good weekday afternoon cartoons and evening reruns). Now every channel came in crystal clear...or at least what passed for "crystal clear" before HDTV.

There was even a channel devoted just to showing the current weather stats: Temperature, humidity, precipitation, etc. I have an old photo I took of the TV screen showing that channel the first time it hit 100 degrees in Wickliffe during the sweltering summer of 1988.

And if your parents would spring for it (mine did), you also had HBO, Showtime, and Cinemax. The latter is often referred to as "Skinemax," and there was good reason for that. But we won't get into it here.

Suffice it to say, cable TV changed our lives to a very real degree.

For one thing, when we got cable, we also got our first TV remote. It looked like this:

Yes, it was wired to the cable box, but the wire was really long and you could sit in your chair and change channels without ever getting up. Do you understand the significance of that? Not that we had much selection prior to the advent of cable, but we did occasionally want to flip around the channels and see what was on, and to do that we had to stand next to the TV and turn a dial. Those days were gone forever!

We also had the channel switcher box shown at the top of this post, which was cool and all, but not chunky-remote cool.

Nowadays, of course, cable is fast becoming a relic. It has given way to streaming services, satellite TV, etc. But in 1980, cable TV was the wave of the future.

And it was a future where I would never have to manually change a channel again. It was stunning.

In June I'm going to walk from Western New York to Cleveland, and I need to get in shape for it

It must be "250 Week" here on the blog. Yesterday I told you how I was duped out of $250. Today I'll fill you in on my plan to walk 250 miles.

So my company, Vitamix, will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2021. This surprises a lot of people, many of whom assume we couldn't have been around before 1980 or so. But it's true. Vitamix (which wasn't actually called Vitamix until the mid-60s) was founded in 1921 by William G. "Papa" Barnard, the great-grandfather of our current president and CEO Dr. Jodi Berg.

Since 2017, I have been planning the various elements of our 100th anniversary celebration in my role as Director of Communications. We'll be doing all kinds of things, both internally and externally, to mark this milestone, which only a very small percentage of businesses reach.

One of those activities is my little walk. Back in 1938, members of the Barnard family joined a man named Bernarr Macfadden on a 265-mile walk from Cleveland's Public Square to Macfadden's "Physical Culture Hotel" in the village of Dansville in western New York.

Macfadden was the Jack LaLanne of his day (if you're old enough to get that reference). He was preaching the benefits of exercise long before it was cool. He hosted these long-distance walks every year for a period of time in the 1930s, starting from a different city each time. 1938 marked Cleveland's turn.

Anyway, I plan to recreate the walk by myself this coming June. The thing is, the Physical Culture Hotel no longer exists, nor is Vitamix (then known as "The Natural Food Institute") based any longer in downtown Cleveland. So my plan is to start in Dansville and make my way westward to Vitamix HQ in Olmsted Township, Ohio. We'll promote my walk through our employee and public-facing social media and communication channels to try and bring some attention to the Vitamix 100th anniversary.

(By the way, the distance is slightly shorter than the 1938 walk because of the existence today of certain walkable roads that are more direct and weren't around 80 years ago.)

The trip should take me 15 days, assuming I can walk an average of 17 miles a day. This, it turns out, is no easy feat. Walking or not, that's a long distance to cover in one day when you have to get up again and do it the next day. And again the next day. And again the next day. And so on.

So I've been walking almost every day an average of 30 miles a week to build up my stamina. My training walks are almost always right around 15 minutes a mile. I would imagine we'll have to back that off to 16 minutes or more when the time comes in order to prevent injury, which is a real concern when you're 51 years old.

I also have to drop some weight. I have been steadily gaining since I was down to a very skinny (for me) 166 pounds back in 2016. I'm off to a good start there, but there are still pounds to shed so that I can minimize the impact on my joints from so much walking.

There are perhaps two morals to this story:

(1) You should always try crazy things. It will keep you young, at least in your head.

(2) Don't allow yourself to get out of shape because getting back into it when you're no longer in your 20s is tougher than you would think.

My only concerns? Getting enough coffee every day and figuring out where to pee while I'm walking (these two things obviously go hand in hand).

I recently got swindled out of $250

I have a core belief that the vast majority of people are honest and decent.

I believe that despite the fact that someone online recently bilked me out of $250.

(NOTE: Synonyms for "bilked" that I like include bamboozled, flimflammed, diddled, and gulled.)

Here's what happened:

I'm in the market for an alto saxophone. Like, a really good alto saxophone. One I can keep and play for the rest of my life. One that mostly plays in tune (a lot of that rests on me as the player, I admit). Basically a nicer horn than I've ever had before.

I came across a Facebook Marketplace listing for an Yamaha YAS-62 alto purported to belong to someone in Rochester, New York. The price was $1,000, which is good for a YAS-62 (they usually go for $1,500+).

This perhaps should have been a clue that something was up. You know, the whole thing about situations that are too good to be true.

I got in contact with the seller, who told me he had another buyer lined up but would get back to me if the deal fell through. And he did in fact get back to me the very next day saying the sax was available if I was interested.

He told me he was offering a 7-day trial period for anyone not local to Rochester. He told me a lot of things, actually, about how he works to keep his deals on the up and up. He only wanted a 25% deposit and he would send me the sax to try out.

Sounded good to me (mistake). I sent him the money through PayPal (big mistake).

When he saw my shipping address, he told me it would actually be cheaper for him to deliver the sax to me than to send it via UPS. I told him that was fine if he was willing to make the drive (I know, I know...)

He even gave me a cell phone number and we texted back and forth. He texted me the day he was scheduled to deliver the sax, saying he planned to leave home around 9am and should get to my place around 1pm. I told him that sounded good.

1 o'clock came.

2 o'clock came.

At 2:30 I texted him asking how it was going and when he thought he might arrive. No reply.

By 4 o'clock, my suspicion that I had been rooked (another good one) had been confirmed. No answer at the cell number, which judging by the generic voice mail message was likely a burner. The Facebook profile he had used in our Marketplace conversations was gone.

I tried to work with PayPal to get my money back, but I was denied. It had something to do with how I had originally categorized the transaction. Whatever the right way to do it was, I had selected the wrong way.

You don't have to tell me how stupid I was. It was like the time I picked up Maurice, gave him $80, and bought him chicken (that really happened...click on the link for the gory details). I'm aware that I'm too trusting. And I hold no ill will toward the person who suckered me. That doesn't solve much of anything.

I'll be more careful in the future, but in case you happen to be as gullible as me, I thought you might appreciate this cautionary tale.

I still think most people are well-intentioned, though. I'll always believe that.

I don't know who some of these famous people are

I try not to be one of those old fogies who complains about today's music, today's movies, today's kids, whatever. That's stupid.

But I will say this: Somewhere along the way (I want to say it was 1996), I lost track of which people were considered celebrities and what was popular in music.

It had nothing to do with disliking those people or those songs. I just had other, more important things going on, not the least of which were a growing family and an increasingly hectic career.

And now there are people who are known by many, but not by me, and probably not by the majority of people my age and older.

A good illustration of this is found in the list of today's celebrity birthdays, courtesy of famousbirthdays.com. Here are apparently famous people who were born on this day:

• Kirk Douglas: Mr. Douglas died last February at the impressive age of 103. He was the movie star's movie star. I of course know who he was.
• Donnie Osmond: Donnie is 63 years old today. Terry and I saw him perform once in Las Vegas. He was very good despite having some sort of cold/flu thing. Who doesn't know Donnie?
• Dame Judi Dench: She turns 86 today. I had to look up why she is called "Dame." It turns out she was named a "Dame Commander" of the British Empire. Sounds made up, but we'll accept it. In any case, I'm aware of her.
• Dick Butkus: I may not have known who he is if I wasn't a sports fan (he played football). He also did some acting. And his name is funny. Fun fact: Dick Butkus was 13 pounds, 6 ounces at birth.
• Booba: This is a real person. He's a rapper. We have reached the point where I cannot identify a person from today's celebrity birthday list. Maybe he's not really famous, I don't know. Either way, it's his birthday.
• Mooptopia: You think I am making this person up. I am not. She is a "TikTok Star." Really. That's something from which you can make money. We won't possibly run across someone else with a similar vocation, will we?
• Nau: This is the third person in a row with just one name. And guess what? He's a "YouTube Star." This is presumably more respectable than "TikTok Star," but I can't say for sure.
• Tristan Jass: OK, we're back to a person with both a first and a last name. But it's not helping. I don't know who he is. If you don't either, I can reveal that Tristan is an "Instagram Star." (Just to get this out of the way, I will also say that today is the birthday of social media stars "Anomaly," "Krazyrayray," "Famke Louise," and "Wuant." Again, I did not make up any of those people.)
• Kendall Vertes: No.
• PnB Rock: Nope.
• Tre Cool: Nay.
• Shin Yuna: I lack a clue.

You get the point. I am so unfamiliar with famous people that I'm not sure any of the last eight people above can truly be called "famous."

But happy birthday to them anyway.

If you force me to give you relationship advice, here are three things I'll tell you

By no one's definition of the word am I an expert when to comes marriage and relationships. Yes, I've been married for 28 1/2 years, but I almost want to say I lucked into that.

(Actually, there was no luck involved at all. "Blessing" is a much better word for it. The point is that I never purposely planned this out. It all just sort of happened.)

My four oldest kids each have significant others, and those relationships have all lasted for some time. I wish I could say they chose their partners well because I taught them what to look for. But this isn't true. They either asked their mother for advice in this area or, like their father, they just sort of fell into stable, loving relationships.

But I suppose if you held that proverbial gun to my head, or much better yet, if you offered me $1 million, I could come up with some tips that may or may not improve your love life. Here's what I have:

(1) Aim high: I married up and I highly recommend it. My wife is the best person I know. She has too many great qualities to enumerate, but "beautiful," "smart," "funny," "honest," and "talented" probably top the list. I like to joke that I always know what she's going to say or do next, but truth be told, she almost always has me guessing. That's a good thing. If you can be with a person you aspire to emulate, things will always be interesting. (NOTE: The corollary to this, of course, is that the good person ends up with a not-as-good person, which could get boring for them after a while. The trick is to get someone who's better than you AND who is OK spending their life dragging you in their wake. A tall order, sure, but I'm proof it can be done.)

(2) It's not about you. It can't be: You have to be willing to put the other person's interests ahead of your own. That doesn't mean you should quash your own desires 100% of the time, but it seems impossible to be both a selfish person and someone who has a successful long-term relationship. The funny thing about this, in my experience, is that the more you tend to the other person's needs, the more your own will be fulfilled (and vice-versa).

(3) You're gonna want someone you can laugh with. And at. A lot: This is such a cliche, but I'm telling you, this may be the single most important thing. You're going to go through a whole bunch of stuff together. Some of it will be good, some of it will be bad. If you can laugh equally at both, and do it together, that's gold, Jerry. Life is mostly funny. Treat it that way.

I cannot imagine having another baby in the house

There are, on record, men who have become fathers at insanely advanced ages.

A guy from India named Ramjit Raghav was reportedly 96 years old when his second son was born in 2012 (he died earlier this year at the age of 104).

In the Bible, it says that "after Noah was 500 years old, he became the father of Shem, Ham and Japheth."

500 years old.

I'm 51. And trust me when I say I'm done.

Not done being a father, you understand. That job never goes away. I just mean I'm not looking to be the father of a newborn ever again. I have been blessed to have that experience five times over, and I will be forever grateful. It is magical and amazing.

It is also a young man's game. God made it that way, and it's fine by me.

You have to have a lot of energy to parent a baby that's fresh out of the package. They require a whole lot of attention. And even the best sleepers among them still tend to be pretty needy around the clock.

There's also this: You expend a great deal of spiritual, emotional and mental energy on those little ones. You worry about them, you teach them things, you try to keep them safe. It's never-ending, and it's the greatest job in the world.

Still, it's a job probably best performed in your 20s and 30s. You have a little more energy then.

So am I ready for grandchildren, then? Eh, I suppose, but I'm in no hurry. I'm not opposed to the idea, and I do have a daughter who is married and would be in immediate contention for world's best mother. But let's take that as it comes.

Seriously, though, 500 years old? Even 96 years old? More power to you, brothers. This dad is content with his teenager and four 20-somethings.

When your youngest child is really your YOUNGEST child

This happens a lot: Our family will be reminiscing about some vacation we took or an activity we used to enjoy when the kids were little, and six of us will laugh together as we fondly remember our shared experience.

The trouble is, there are seven of us.

Often, that memory happened before Little Jack, our youngest, was born.

I call him "Little Jack" because I've always called him Little Jack. Or Jackie.

He's the baby of the family, though he may also be the tallest. He and Jared are neck and neck. They're both essentially 6-foot-1, though according to Terry's Pencil Mark on the Kitchen Wall Measuring System, Jack wins the race by a hair. Jared denies it.

Whatever the reality, the fact is that "Little Jack" is now nearly 15 years old and a decidedly tall kid.

Our oldest four were all born about two years apart. The gap between Melanie (#4) and Jack (#5), on the other hand, is a full 5 years, 4 months.

It's not as long an interval as exists between my brother Mark and me (nearly 12 1/2 years), but I know what it's like to be the youngest.

I missed out on an entirely different existence my parents and siblings had. In the years before I was born (basically the late 1950s and most of the 60s), they lived together as a family of five. Once I came along, my oldest sister Judi was nearly 17 and a junior in high school.

There is no denying I was what is impolitely called "a mistake" and somewhat more sensitively referred to as "a pleasant surprise." Jack, it should be noted, was entirely planned.

It never hurt my feelings when my family would talk about things that happened before I existed. I was more intrigued by it than anything else. I wanted to learn more about this family that predated me.

But I'm afraid sometimes that Jack feels left out when we watch really old home videos or talk about a Disney trip that happened years before his birth.

Don't get me wrong: We've created plenty of great memories with him, too. He has also enjoyed the advantages of being spoiled as only a youngest sibling can be spoiled.

Jack is a smart, talented kid and an all-around good guy. I'm proud of him. He proves that just because you arrive a little later to the party doesn't mean you can't still be the life of it.

This is video of me jumping out of an airplane and being scared

 

I have skydived (skydove?) exactly one time.

There isn't likely to be a second time.

I wrote about the experience some years ago. If you're interested in the details, you can read that post from 2012.

The value-add here is that I'm providing video of the experience.

A few quick notes on what you'll see in that clip:

• I am jumping by myself. None of this pansy tandem skydiving stuff many of you have done. I went alone. This was 1991. BACK WHEN MEN WERE MEN. (Note that Canton Air Sports did not actually offer a tandem skydiving experience then, or else you can bet your bottom dollar I would have gone that route.)
• I didn't jump out of the plane or anything like that. I had to very gingerly crawl out, hang from the wing strut, and then wait for the instructor to tell me it was OK to let go. This is perhaps not the ideal introduction to an activity such as skydiving.
• Actually, for me, it wasn't "skydiving" so much as "falling terrified from 3500 feet in the sky."

I made it safely to the ground, where my dad tried to capture footage of me touching down just short of the gravel circle that was our landing target and then dropping and rolling as I was taught. But his clunky old Curtis Mathis camcorder was a little too unwieldly for him to get me in frame, so what resulted is just a confused sweeping of the sky, followed by a 2-second shot of me gathering up my parachute. He tried.

Anyway, in sum when it comes to skydiving: Did it, glad I did it, won't plan on doing it again.

It must be winter time - my fingertips are splitting open

I have a problem that is eminently solvable, yet I choose not to solve it.

It is this: Every year, as the weather turns colder here in Northeast Ohio, the skin on and around my fingertips gets very dry.

So dry, in fact, that it often just splits right open and leaves me a little cut. These cuts are located in an area with many nerve endings, so they're always a little painful and a lot annoying.

Depending on their exact coordinates, these cuts sometimes also make typing difficult, as each keystroke causes a small stab of pain. I type a lot in the course of a given day. A lot.

You will nod approvingly when I tell you that I apply lotion to my hands (concentrating on the fingertips) every morning from October through March after I shower. This helps.

But it's not enough.

In order to remain effective, the lotion probably needs to be refreshed at least 2-3 times every day.

Rarely, however, do I go beyond that morning application.

Thus the dry skin, thus the cuts, thus the painful typing.

Don't bother asking why I don't just put on more lotion as the day goes by. I simply forget to do it, effectively choosing to have a red, nasty cut on at least one fingertip all winter long.

There is, in fact, one of these cuts on my right index figure as I type this sentence...as I painfully, painfully type this sentence and try desperately to remember to pump out another dollop of CVS Complete Moisture Lotion sometime around lunch today.

Bananas are probably the biggest source of stress in my life

I eat a lot of fruit. We have covered this subject before.

In particular, not a day goes by when I don't eat multiple apples and bananas.

The apples are relatively easy to keep on hand. They last a long time, and you can buy large quantities of them.

Bananas, on the other hand, are a tricky business.

Bananas can go from green and inedible to brown and mushy in, like, hours. You have to constantly monitor them.

When you're at the grocery store and want to buy bananas, there are three important questions you must ask yourself:

(1) How many bananas do we have at home right now?

(2) How many bananas can we have and still be relatively sure they'll all get eaten before they go bad?

(3) What is the overall ripeness of this store's bananas, and in what stages of development should the bananas I buy be?

That last one is the toughest to navigate. If you're fortunate enough to live near a store that stocks bananas in a range of different ripenesses (as opposed to all very yellow and ready to eat or all green and days away from consumption), you have to work out a plan.

Ideally, you'll come home with, say, one very green bunch, one semi-green bunch, and one virtually-ready-to-eat bunch.

At least that's what I do. We are down to just five people living in our house these days, but they eat a lot of bananas. Much of my daily mental energy is spent reviewing the state of our banana cache, plotting from where and when I'll buy new bananas, and trying to decide whether the current bananas are OK to eat.

It's all enough to drive you...well, I'll let you say it.

No regrets (except for 8th-grade algebra)

People talk all the time about wanting to go back and relive certain parts of their lives.

Not me. I'm good where I am, thanks.

I've had very few real challenges in my 51 years on this planet. I'm blessed beyond measure and certainly beyond anything I deserve.

You would think, then, that I would have a whole menu of wonderful memories I want to experience again. And I guess I do. The first time I kissed Terry was pretty cool. Watching my kids be born was mind-blowing. Even the first song I managed to play on a saxophone ("Hot Cross Buns," for the record) was a thrill.

But I don't look backward much, other than all of those World War 1 podcasts I listen to. I'm much more about the now and the what's-to-come.

With one exception: Mr. Mazer's algebra class at Wickliffe Middle School. It's the only class I ever failed in my life. To this day, I can't explain what happened. I had something like six A's, one B, and an F on my report card. Who does that?

The fault, by the way, was entirely my own. I was too immature to ask for help when I needed it, and too irresponsible to do anything once I had fallen hopelessly behind.

The next year I re-took algebra as a freshman with a different teacher and got A's across the board. Mr. Mazer had done everything right, I had done everything wrong. I wish I could go back and retake the class as an eighth-grader and pass it like I should have.

But that's it. Everything else can stay as it is...or was.

If it helps, I hate myself for liking "Wonderful Christmastime"

December 1st is traditionally the first day I allow myself to listen to Christmas music. I know a lot of people start earlier, and that's OK. I just like to wait until the first of December.

Nearly every year, the first holiday tune that comes up on my phone is Paul McCartney's "Wonderful Christmastime." This is purposeful, because I put it there.

I am in a hated minority, I realize.

Which do you think is more highly despised: "Wonderful Christmastime" or Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas Is You?" It's close.

In the case of the latter, I think it has more to do with people disliking Mariah herself. But who hates Paul McCartney? No one. No one hates Paul McCartney.

The loathing for "Wonderful Christmastime" actually stems from the fact people love Sir Paul so much. How, they wonder, could a musical legend produce something so annoying, so sappy, so grating?

I get it...I think. But I really like that song. It makes me happy. It's at the top of my most-listened-to Christmas playlist.

You are probably appalled at me.

Which is fine, because I'm appalled at me, too. I can't help it.

"Ding dong, ding dong, ding dong, ding!"