I (still) don't like the 31st of almost any month

(NOTE: This post originally ran on July 31, 2015. I still feel this way, so I bring it back six years later)

This is going to sound strange (because it is), but I don't like the fact that today is July 31st.

Nor do I like January 31st, March 31st, May 31st or August 31st. (October 31st is exempt from my contempt because it's Halloween, and December 31st gets a pass because it's New Year's Eve.)

All of those 31s are superfluous, as far as I'm concerned, because they unnecessarily extend months that don't need extending.

Like January, for instance. I live in Cleveland. We don't need an extra day in January, a month filled with wind, snow, ice and general gloominess. January can end after 30 days.

And March? Same thing. The weather is getting better, but it's still cold and March tends to tease us with thoughts of spring, only to turn around and blast us with an unexpected blizzard. So it doesn't need to go the full 31, either.

May? I'm so anxious for June that May 31st is little more than annoying. Get rid of it.

As for August 31st, school has already started back up and yet we're still enjoying hot, summer-like temperatures. That mixture always throws me off. I'm already sufficiently confused in my life, so one less day of potential perplexity is gratefully received. August 31st has to go.

I realize we can't just arbitrarily lop days off the calendar, so I propose adding four make-up days to compensate:

June 31st: I love June. It needs to last a day longer.

September 31st: Northeast Ohio is awesome in late September, what with the leaves turning, high school football, and those increasingly cool mornings. Let's add to that (which I realize makes no sense at all, but please, work with me here).

October 32nd: I need a little buffer between Halloween and the start of November. Thus this.

December 32nd: Why not? Most people take vacation days between Christmas and New Year's anyway, so we'll just make this a mandatory day off and, voila, everyone wins.

You're welcome.

Dear Family: Please close the cupboard doors

Really, that's all I'm asking. If you open a kitchen cupboard, please close it afterward. That's it.

Oh, and also clean up any crumbs you leave on the counter. Please do that, too.

And don't put a butter knife covered in peanut butter in the sink. Wipe off the peanut butter and put it in the dishwasher.

Just those three things: Close cupboards, clean crumbs, wipe off peanut butter.

And wash the pot when you make noodles. Don't leave it for someone else to do.

While I'm thinking about it, you'll also want to turn off all lights when you leave a room. Don't leave the laundry room light on, don't leave the basement light on, don't leave the mudroom light(s) on, and don't leave the upstairs hall light on. I'm constantly turning those off.

So cupboards, crumbs, peanut butter, pot, and lights. Those are my requests.

And those of you who cannot open and close doors quietly while others are sleeping (you know who you are), please learn to do so. And practice walking quietly on your tiptoes and not stomping around the house and up and down stairs late at night.

Maybe also make sure all doors are locked if I'm already asleep.

And make sure the TV is turned off when you turn off the cable box. Sometimes the TV itself is left on all night.

So, yeah...cupboards, crumbs, peanut butter, pot, lights, quiet movement, locked doors, and turn off the TV.

On second thought, you'll never remember all of that. Just stick to the cupboard doors. I can be content with just that.

Getting back into the habit of packing your lunch

Technically, those of us working at Goodyear are supposed to be in the office two days a week, though most of the leaders I've spoken with are coming in more often.

The vast majority of my work days thus far have been onsite, mostly because I much prefer to conduct onboarding meetings and other coworker interactions in person. Plus, it's just easier to learn the layout of the complex if I'm, you know, actually at the complex.

This is all well and good, except it also means I have to worry about packing lunch and snacks the previous evening. It's not like this is a huge burden, but what with COVID and everything, it's something I've fallen out of the habit of doing over the past 16 months.

I probably take more time getting my workday food together than most people. For one thing, I always take about 10 separate items, since I like to graze throughout the day rather than have a big lunch.

For another, I have to log my food choices into the Weight Watchers app. I'm pretty quick with the app, having used it for a number of years now, but it still takes a few minutes to enter it all.

By the time I get everything packed away into my new lunch box and stored in the fridge in the garage, it has become an actual chore.

Of course, the word "chore" implies I don't like doing it. But it's difficult to complain about a task that's dependent upon having an obscene amount of food in my house from which to choose. This is a "problem" millions of people worldwide would love to have.

So I hope you'll excuse my whining.

Seriously, though, do I take two apples or three? Three. I'd better go with three.

Flying used to be such a part of my life (and maybe yours)

We're driving my daughter down to Florida so she can participate in the Disney College Program starting next week. I'll then fly back alone in order to minimize the time I miss at my new job. It will be the first time I've been on an airplane since November 2019.

This 20-month hiatus marks the longest I've gone without flying in probably 25 years. There was a time when the airport felt like my second home.

I spent the summer of 2005, for example, crisscrossing the continent, jetting from place to place to do work on behalf of various clients as a public relations agency professional. There was one nine-day stretch when I flew to Minneapolis to work alongside the Northwest Airlines PR team for two days, then flew to London to meet with various journalists over a five-day period, then flew directly back to Minneapolis once again to work with Northwest.

Terry was pregnant with Jack at the time and was having to take care of four young children by herself while I was gone. She was less than happy with my travel schedule.

It will be strange going through the airport security process again and, you know, actually streaking into the sky. I never used to pay much attention to takeoffs and landings, but I'm going to soak up every minute of my 2 1/2-hour jaunt from Orlando to Cleveland.

There is some business travel in store for me at Goodyear, but nothing on the scale of what I used to do 15-20 years ago.

And this, I assure you, is a very good thing.

I have the hardest time drinking water

You're supposed to drink water. The exact amount seems a bit of a mystery, as you hear different formulas and/or guidelines to figure out how much is right for you. But whatever the actual number, you should be drinking water.

I am not, it must be said, a natural water drinker. I drink water, but I have to be deliberate about it. Some people gravitate toward H2O as their beverage of choice without giving it a second thought. I do it only because I know it's good for me, and even then I'm a little inconsistent in how much I drink each day.

My daughter Chloe bought me the water bottle pictured above as a Father's Day present, and it was a good choice. Being the goal-oriented person I am, the time markings printed on the side of the bottle give me water intake targets to shoot for throughout the day.

Still, if given a choice of something to drink, my inclination is to choose coffee or a green smoothie ahead of water. I generally go with the water, but I don't like it.

People have suggested I add some flavor to the water, whether it's fresh fruit or those flavoring drops you can buy, but neither does anything to increase my enjoyment of it.

Ultimately, I think it's mental. I've convinced myself that drinking water is a chore, and therefore I always see it that way. If I can just get my brain thinking that water will make me into a suave, sophisticated James Bond type, I would be downing gallons of it every day.

I wonder how much water Daniel Craig drinks.

We made beautiful(?) music on these flutophones back in elementary school

 

Everyone's school experience is different, but one thing many of us share is having learned to play the flutophone back in elementary school.

"Flutophone" is what we called it, anyway. Officially it's a "recorder."

Either way, it's a simple plastic instrument with tone holes. You blow into it and use various fingerings to produce different notes.

In theory, that is. In practice, whenever we all played our recorders at the same time during music class, it was more of a cacophonous free-for-all than a coordinated wind ensemble.

I don't remember what grade it was in (maybe 5th?), but I recall Ms. Gifford being the one to teach us the basics of the recorder. And what a valiant effort she made.

I had an advantage in that I had been playing the saxophone for a year or two, and recorder fingerings are very much like saxophone fingerings. This experience allowed me to start banging out tunes pretty quickly.

But others, whose talents clearly lay elsewhere, did not. Which is why I think elementary school music teachers who choose to incorporate the recorder/flutophone into their curricula are true heroes.

We learned something simple at first. Probably "Hot Cross Buns" or "Mary Had a Little Lamb." But our big project was mastering a rendition of John Denver's "Fly Away" in which a small section of us who were a bit more skilled on the instrument played a countermelody, over top of which the rest of the class played the main melody.

I don't have a recording of it, but I'm sure it was first rate.

In any case, I think this was a good experience for everyone involved, with the very possible exception of Ms. Gifford. Learning the basics of reading and producing music engages both sides of the brain and is beneficial for anyone.

Interestingly, I met up with Ms. Gifford just a few years ago at a Weight Watchers meeting. It was fun talking to her, and I'm pleased to report that she seems to have overcome any traces of flutophone-induced PTSD.

God bless her.

In an era when CDs have already died a painful death, I keep adding to my collection

About 10 years ago, I started getting into classical music. Like, really getting into classical music. To the point that I listen to something from the classical repertoire every day almost without fail.

If you don't grow up with it and/or don't play an orchestral instrument, classical is a genre that takes some getting used to. You don't just wake up one day with a full appreciation for its beauty, emotional depth, and technical genius.

I still don't fully have this appreciation myself, though my knowledge of the music has grown by leaps and bounds over a decade of constant listening.

I'm a Cleveland Orchestra subscriber and a frequent listener of our local classical station (the wonderful WCLV 104.9 FM), but most of my engagement has come through the music I have stored on my phone.

Virtually all of it is taken from CDs I've bought over the years. "So then," you might say, "can't you just as easily access all of these symphonies, concertos, and sonatas via Spotify or Apple Music? Why keep buying CDs from which you're just going to rip the music anyway?"

The answer is that, yes, you can access any given classical piece on a streaming service, but interpretation of these works varies widely. You would be shocked to hear how different something as familiar as Beethoven's 5th Symphony sounds from one orchestra to the next, depending on the conductor's choice of tempo, dynamics, phrasing, etc.

Accordingly, there are particular recordings of popular classical works that are considered to be "the best," and a great many of them are only available on older CDs and not on any streaming service.

I don't yet know enough to figure out what's "best," what's "good," and what's just plain "mediocre." So I rely on a book I purchased several years ago titled "The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection" by Ted Libbey.

The book was first published during the heart of the CD era (1994), and it provides a list of what Libbey refers to as "the 350 essential works."

My goal is to obtain all 350 of these CDs. Right now I have a little more than 200 of them. I order them one at a time, usually from Amazon. When the disc arrives, I use iTunes to export it into my music library. Then the CD itself gets put away in a plastic storage bin in our basement.

At this rate, I have at least five more years before I get my hands on the full 350 discs, particularly as some of Libbey's recommended recordings are hard to find or wildly expensive. But I do plan to get there.

Still, if you're interested in getting a huge head start on building your own classical library and can fit a couple of large storage bins full of CDs into your house, boy do I have a deal for you...

My favorite thing about our appliances? The songs they sing, of course

When it comes to home appliances, we have become very brand-loyal to LG in recent years. I don't know if this was planned on our part, but the company's products are generally sound, reliable, and long-lasting.

Which is what you want in an appliance, of course. But for me, the key selling point was that our LG refrigerator, dishwasher, microwave, stove, washer, and dryer all play fun little electronic songs.

Like, for instance, this is what you hear when the microwave finishes heating your dinner (if you're reading this on your phone and the video window doesn't appear below, click on this link, which will open in a separate tab/window - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phyjMwNm-Rw):

Isn't that great? I made up lyrics to it, by the way. They go like this: "I am so happy that my food is done!"

Play the tune again and you'll see they fit perfectly.

This is the song our washer and dryer play when they finish a cycle (again, here's the link if a video window doesn't show up for you - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y7rj98trow):

I don't yet have any lyrics for that one, but this enterprising young man did me one better. He took what was already a fun little ditty and played it in 10 different musical styles, including my favorite, thrash metal. Take a listen (the link if you need it - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=myZYsICWwNI):

I like to believe that video right there is the sole reason the Internet was created.

No one can teach you how to motivate yourself personally and professionally

One of the things I've been trying to learn in my weekly saxophone lessons and subsequent practice sessions is how to play in what's called the altissimo range.

Without getting too technical, altissimo notes are the really, really high ones that go beyond the normal range of the horn. Professional sax players use them all the time.

As an example, have you ever listened to the opening theme of "Saturday Night Live?" The musical director of SNL, saxophonist Lenny Pickett, plays these insanely high notes, especially near the end of the song while the audience is applauding the week's host. Those are altissimo notes

One thing I've noticed from both my sax teacher Ed and the authors of books and articles on the subject is that it's very difficult to tell someone precisely what to do in order to play altissimo. They can give you little tips when it comes to your airstream, jaw position, arching your tongue, etc. But ultimately, the ability to play up there comes from within.

You have to "feel" it.

And there (finally) is the connection to today's topic. In my experience, the same is true when it comes to getting yourself to do the things you have to do in order to accomplish your personal and professional goals. There are thousands of books on self-motivation, but ultimately, none of them is going to get you where you want to go.

Only you can do that.

I don't know how to describe to my kids, my co-workers, or anyone else exactly how to create that inner spark that gets you out of bed, particularly on the mornings you simply don't want to.

Because, as you know, there are always going to be days when you simply don't want to do "it," whatever "it" is in your life: take care of the kids, clean the house, do your job, exercise, etc. Those are all important things requiring a level of physical, mental, and emotional effort that sometimes you don't want to expend.

How do you make yourself do them anyway? I can give you a couple of tips, but you have to figure out what creates that feeling of inner motivation, become intimately familiar with it (whatever it feels like for you), and learn how to recreate it when you need it.

Going back to the altissimo thing, once you learn how to do it, you just "know." You may or may not be able to describe to others how you did it, but much like riding a bike, you're not going to forget the feeling. You've got it and will probably always have it.

That's where I'm trying to get when it comes to self-motivation. Hopefully, someday before I die, I'll truly understand what the feeling really is for me and how to make myself get there.

Oh, and I would also like to be able to play an octave and a half above the staff before I go, please, if that's not too much to ask.

The pressure we put on young people to make definitive career choices

 

When I graduated from college in 1992, I had what I thought was a pretty clear career path.

I had been working full time as a sports writer for The News-Herald in Willoughby, Ohio, since the previous November. I started four years earlier as a sports clerk at the paper (and subsequently spent a year at the Cleveland Plain Dealer's Lake-Geauga Bureau), and figured journalism was what I would do for the next 40+ years.

As a sports guy, my thought was that eventually I would take over a professional beat at a local paper (Browns, Indians, or Cavs), travel with the team I covered, and maybe someday even become a columnist. I loved what I was doing, and that was the obvious way forward.

Except, as is almost always the case, the path had some unforeseen twists and turns.

For one thing, Terry and I started having kids. Covering sports is, as you might imagine, a night job. Games take place in the evening. The paper is put together then, as well. It was clear that, if I remained a sports writer, I was going to miss out on a whole lot of kids activities.

There's also the little matter of salary. Well, the matter itself was not little, but the salary certainly was. I needed to make more money.

Those were the two factors that drove me to leave the newspaper biz in 1996 and get into technical writing and editing, and eventually move into corporate communications, where I enjoyed better hours and better pay.

It all worked out for the best.

The point is, I could not have known what was going to happen when I was in my early 20s. No one can.

That's why I never understand why kids are forced to make potentially life-changing career decisions at the ages of 18, 19, 20, etc. Through no fault of their own, they can't begin to imagine what life will be like when they're in their 30s, 40s, and 50s, let alone how they're going to make their living then.

People change. The job market changes. Technology changes. Sometimes in ways we can predict, most often not.

So if you're 20 years old and worried about the fact that you don't seem to have a life plan like some of your friends, may I offer you some advice?

Take a deep breath and relax. You're just fine. I understand the need to gain some sort of focus so that you begin to prepare yourself for the world of work appropriately, but as you do it, take it all with a grain of salt.

Your life is going to evolve. There are certain skills and work habits that will help you no matter what vocation you choose, but when it comes to specialized knowledge, understand that you'll never stop learning.

Nor should you.

What you choose to do now may not be what you choose to do in 10 years. Or 20. Or 30. Or maybe it will be.

The point is, your life will not be ruined if you eventually deviate from whatever career path you select here at the outset.

That's OK.

And so are you.

Good or bad, the list of people in your life constantly changes

A couple of weeks ago I dropped off my son Jack for the first summer practice of the upcoming high school cross country season.

As I looked around at the assembled team members, the first thing I noticed wasn't so much who was there, but who wasn't there.

Last year's seniors were, of course, conspicuously absent. These kids whose names and faces I had come to see as inextricably linked to the program had moved on, as they prepare to go to college or whatever it is that post-high school life holds for them.

That is the nature of scholastic sports. It is a constantly changing cast of characters. At most, a kid is going to be a member of a particular team for four quick years.

The same is true of work life. If you've been at your job for any length of time, you've seen various people come and go. There are veterans who have been with the organization longer than you and newbies who consider you to be one of the vets.

Thankfully, we all have people who are enduring parts of our circle. These can be relatives, friends, longtime co-workers, teammates, etc. Whoever they are, they represent some semblance of permanence in what is otherwise a chaotically shifting landscape of personalities.

I used to be sad when, for example, I left a job and lost touch with the people I had gotten to know well. But now I'm inclined to see change more as an opportunity than a sad reality. New people = new connections = new ideas and perspectives = new growth for each of us.

Jack is going into his junior year of high school. I've always thought of him as one of the younglings of the cross country team, because he was. But now he is an upperclassman, and there are incoming freshman who will get to know him, like him, and maybe even look up to him.

And in two years, those ninth-graders will show up for a summer practice and Jack won't be there. And the constancy of change will begin to dawn on them.

May they (and we) always make the best of it.

Having (considerably) older siblings

This week my brother Mark and sister Debbie have birthdays (Deb's is actually today). They are two years apart, but they have always shared a birthday week.

I will not tell you how old they are, though I will say the age difference between us can be measured in double-digit years.

I will also add that, when I was born in November 1969, my oldest sister Judi was in her junior year of high school and was only 3 1/2 months from turning 17.

While not exactly rare, it is uncommon nowadays for a 17-year-old to have a newborn baby brother. Trust me when I say it was even more uncommon in 1969.

As the story goes, my siblings found out my mom was pregnant not from Mom herself, but from our Aunt Peg. I don't know if Mom was unsure how they would react or what, but I'm told they were all pretty thrilled by the idea of having a little brother or sister.

There was a time when all six of us lived in a 900-square-foot house with no upstairs, no basement, and only one bathroom. I don't remember that time because it all happened during the first two years of my life, but having spent 22 years in that same house myself, I can imagine how chaotic it must have been.

By the time I was in kindergarten, Judi and Mark were both married (he would later join the Air Force and spend several years overseas). And while Debbie technically lived with us, I don't remember seeing her all that much.

I always say I was essentially raised an only child, even though I'm the youngest of four.

As often happens as we age, I'm much closer to Debbie and Mark now than I ever was as a kid (and I was close to Judi before she passed away). We don't see each other as often as I might like, though Debbie cuts my hair every two weeks and, as of this writing, Mark and I were planning to take in a baseball game together this week.

All the same, I hope this is the happiest of birthday weeks for my brother and sister. My much, much older brother and sister.

Here are four things I've learned from 26 on-and-off years of Weight Watchers

My apologies to the marketing folks at Weight Watchers, who have worked hard to rebrand the organization as "WW," presumably to take the emphasis away from weight and present a more holistic approach to health.

It's just that I had to say "Weight Watchers" in the headline because only people who are members know what "WW" means.

I am one of those members. I started "doing Weight Watchers," as people say, way back in 1995 after Terry had been following the plan for a while. She was shedding some post-Elissa baby weight. I was simply trying to get back to some semblance of the slim sprinter I had been less than a decade earlier.

And it worked. It always works, or at least it does for me whenever I make up my mind to be more conscientious about my diet and overall health.

It's just that, for long periods in the intervening quarter-century, I've thrown caution to the wind, eaten whatever I wanted, and gained weight accordingly. And then I've gone back to Weight Watchers and lost it. It's the classic yo-yo cycle.

As my sister Debbie and I have often discussed, our genes are such that we will always have to be mindful of our weight. We're not naturally skinny people, but that doesn't mean we can't be healthy people.

Nowadays I attend the 8 a.m. WW meeting in Mentor every Saturday, and not surprisingly, I'm steadily creeping back toward my goal weight. I dropped 15 pounds in the first two months and am already feeling much better, thank you.

For what it's worth, here are four lessons that WW has taught me, at least one of which might benefit you:

(1) Chill out: This has been the hardest thing for me to learn over the years. I used to live and die by that Saturday morning weigh-in. And now, for whatever reason (the wisdom of years?), I simply don't. Some weeks I lose, some weeks I gain, and some weeks I stay the same. If I do the right things, my weight will eventually take care of itself. I enjoy "calm Scott" much more than "scale-obsessed Scott."

(2) Control what you can control: You hear athletes say this all the time. You can only concern yourself with the things you can influence. There are many things you can't influence. You simply can't control them, but you can control how you plan for and react to them. For example, this is graduation party season. We are invited to several of them. Grad parties aren't traditionally havens of healthy eating, but if I budget a certain amount of WW points before we go, make good choices while I'm there, and eat slowly while enjoying my food, it's really no problem. I can control that outcome.

(3) There is value in community and accountability: I tried doing WW online during the pandemic and the results weren't great. I need that Saturday morning meeting not only to be accountable for my choices over the past week, but also to hear from others who have similar struggles. Putting the time in to go to meetings, even when I would rather stay home, always pays off.

(4) You are more than your health, but that health is still pretty darn important: There are people in your life who want you to be around a long, long time. Even if you don't do it for yourself, consider making healthy choices in gratitude to those who care for you. We all have an expiration date, but we also have within us the power to live a vibrant, energetic, full (and fulfilling) life in the days we've been allotted. Exercise that power.

Is it strange that I don't care in the least about what car I drive?

I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn these days because I'm always interested in what's going on in my industry, what former co-workers are up to, and what's generally trending in the business world. One of my favorite things is when LinkedIn users conduct polls on particular questions or issues.

I almost always participate in these polls, not so much because I want to share my own opinion as I want to see what others think.

Recently, though, I came across a LinkedIn poll I had to skip over. The person asked, "If money was no object, what car would you buy?" The choices were Cadillac, Porsche, or Other.

I was looking for the fourth option, which would have been "I don't even begin to care."

It is common for people to talk about their "dream car." Do you know what my dream car is? One that will reliably get me where I want to go. The make and model, the color, the styling, the bells and whistles, etc. are of virtually no consequence to me.

I just don't care.

This becomes readily apparent when you look at the cars I've driven over the last 3 1/2 decades. They have ranged from a Chevy Chevette and a Dodge Omni early on to a couple of minivans and, in recent years, Honda sedans.

My last two cars have been a black Honda Accord and a black Honda Civic.

And I couldn't have been happier with them, though I honestly don't give them that much thought because...well, there are a lot of things that are way more important to me, I guess.

As a Father's Day present, Terry arranged to have my Civic detailed by Nathan's Automotive Detailing. We've used them before and they do an outstanding job.

My car was so clean inside and out that it made the huge dent in the right rear quarter panel and the various scratches on the exterior really stand out (Virtually all of these blemishes, by the way, have been caused by some combination of my kids, but we won't get into that.)

I feel like I should care about dents and scratches, but I just can't work up the energy to make any of it matter.

Now, the fact that it's mid-July and there won't be any hockey for another few months? That matters to me, and it's depressing.

We each have our priorities.

The sheer pleasure of reading

This has nothing to do with the topic of today's post, but first I have to wish my big brother Mark a happy 64th birthday. It's almost like there's a Beatles song for this occasion...

Less importantly, I recently started reading books again. If you're a reader, you're nodding your head and wondering why I ever stopped in the first place. If you're not a reader, you're scratching your head trying to figure out why this ancient practice of reading words on a printed page has any attraction to anyone.

Because the world is essentially divided into readers and non-readers, right? That's my experience, at least, and rarely do those two camps intersect.

And by "readers," I guess I mostly mean readers of books. We all read something throughout the day, but I'm talking about good old-fashioned hardbound (or paperback...I'm not picky) books.

During my 2 1/2-month job transition period, I got back into books. I read a massive history of sea power in the First World War called "Castles of Steel" and also consumed the Lord of the Rings series, including "The Hobbit" and all three books of the trilogy proper.

I enjoyed it all, but I found that when you've been out of the reading game a while, it takes a little work to get back into shape. And by that I mean it takes a book or two before you're used to reading and comprehending several pages at one go.

For all of their benefits, smart phones seem to have collectively shortened our attention spans by several degrees. Reading books requires more prolonged, concentrated effort.

On a related note, I also rediscovered the pleasure of browsing bookstores. A few weeks ago before I started my new job, I drove down to Goodyear one morning just to see what the commute would be like, then on the way back stopped in the town of Hudson, Ohio.

There I experienced The Learned Owl, a bookstore located in Hudson's quaint, Hallmark-movie-like strip of downtown shops. I could have stayed there all day. It has two floors and is permeated by that "book smell" I love but can't describe.

It was awesome. I hope to get back there soon.

In the meantime, being fully employed again has cut down on my reading time, but I'm working through "All Quiet on the Western Front" in small chunks.

I'm so glad to have reentered the Kingdom of Reading. My self-imposed exile was far too long.

I know more about prostates and blender design than any one person really should

I was talking to a friend of mine recently who, like me, makes her living in corporate communications. She started as a newspaper reporter (also like me) and has spent the better part of two decades communicating about power management products.

That's likely not what she was envisioning when she went to journalism school.

Likewise, when I was earning my degree in English and History at John Carroll University 30 years ago, I did not see myself spending all day thinking about cars, tires, and the future of mobility.

Such is the world of work nowadays. Things change, and we have to change right along with them.

Over the course of my career, I have had to build a working knowledge of a lot of really strange and different things, including (but certainly not limited to):

• Insurance plan documents
• The spectrum of human urologic disease
• Intellectual property law
• Airline labor disputes
• Pediatric physical rehabilitation
• Nonprofit organization management
• Municipal broadband
• The physics of blending
• And now...tires

The bottom line, kids, is that as much as you plan, there's a good chance you have no idea what you'll be doing for a living 20 years from now. So learn everything you can about everything. Be curious. Read, ask questions, step outside your little world.

Because one day you, too, may be called upon to write 500 words on the latest advances in adrenal cancer. And trust me, when that day comes, you don't want to be caught flat footed.

You need to find joy in the little things in life...like your monthly $10 CVS CarePass reward

I make no secret of my love for CVS, the greatest retail pharmacy in the history of retail pharmacies. It's also quite possibly the greatest store in the history of stores, but that's another debate for another time (though, spoiler alert, it's also that).

I visit CVS a lot. It is, as they say, one of my happy places.

As a member of the CarePass program, I receive $10 in ExtraBucks each month to spend as I please at my local CVS. This reward gets loaded into my account on the 15th of the month (today!)

Since I am writing this post on June 15th, I just had the immense pleasure of receiving the email reminding me that my $10 Promo Reward is here.

The subject line of that email tells me to "Get Excited!" (it really does). There is no need for this instruction, however, as I am already plenty excited about it all on my own.

I expend more mental energy plotting out how I'm going to use my monthly CarePass reward than I do, say, figuring out my retirement. It is one of the highlights of every month.

Which makes me realize that, in this world, you have to find happiness where you can get it. You will not have a major positive life event every day, so in between those times when you get married or win the lottery, you have to seek joy in other places.

For me it happens in aisle 15 at CVS, which is where they keep the vitamins. I get giddy just standing there.

For you, I'm guessing it's someplace different.

Celebrating all things French today (except French fries, which aren't French anyway)

Today is Bastille Day. I'm always reminded that, on this day in 1989, my friend Kevin and I went to our high school French teacher's house unannounced and drank wine with her in celebration of the holiday.

I give Madame Whitehorn credit for being so gracious to us. She was under no obligation to invite two former students (who showed up unexpectedly on her doorstep) into her home on a mid-summer Friday morning.

Yet she did, and she remains one of my favorite teachers ever.

As I've mentioned, I took 14 years of French classes between the Wickliffe City Schools and John Carroll University, so I have a deep interest in French language and culture. It also doesn't hurt that, as a First World War buff, I have a relatively detailed knowledge of the geography of Northeastern France, where so many battles were fought.

By the way, contrary to what you may think you know about France's military history, the French army was a tough out in WW1. The Germans had deep respect for their tenacity and fighting capacity.

I've visited France twice, and both times I was in Paris. I've only scratched the surface of things to see and do there, but I do also someday hope to make it "en province," as they say, and experience some of the non-Parisian parts of the country.

The closest most Ohioans get to all things French is visiting some part of Francophone Canada. I have been to Montreal four times, and while it's lovely, it's not the real thing.

Nor should it be. It is a wonderful city with a mystique and culture all its own.

French people have a reputation for being rude and snooty, and I'm sure many are (just as many Americans are). But in the combined four days I've spent in France, the people I met were nothing but kind and gracious.

That includes the French woman whose job it apparently was to stand in the men's room while I peed at the Gare de Nord train station in 1999. I don't know if she kept any notes on customer behavior, but if she did, I'm sure she noted my exceptional cleanliness and respect for French urinals.

The strange language of business professionals: Let's "globally architect cross-media metrics!"

 

A couple of years ago I posted this Dilbert carton on Facebook to illustrate one of my favorite things about office life: The proliferation of semi-meaningless business jargon.

I started my career at a newspaper, and while journalism has its own special buzzwords, someone with no experience at all could walk into a newsroom and mostly understand what the reporters and editors were talking about.

But when my career shifted into the corporate communications realm, I found myself confronted by phrases that carried no meaning for me, or at best were unnecessary substitutes for plainer English.

I would be in meetings in which someone would urge us to "leverage brand synergies" or "cross-pollinate ideas," and I would look around the room expecting that it was some sort of Punk'd-style hazing for me as the new guy, and that any second everyone would burst out laughing and then go back to speaking understandably.

But it never happened. People just went right on doing it. There was never "talking" or "discussing" an idea. You would instead "dialog" about it. You couldn't simply be "aware" of something. It had to be "on your radar." And never would you discuss something later. You would "take it offline."

We didn't talk like that when I was growing up on Harding Drive. Not even the learned Jesuits at my alma mater, John Carroll University, ever used this type of language. It's all very business-specific.

By the way, the phrase in today's headline is a product of the hilarious Corporate BS Generator, which I urge you to visit to create your own semi-coherent bits of jargon. Kudos to my buddy Kyle Tucker for first making me aware of it.

I just went to that site and clicked the "Generate" button again. This time I got "fungibly syndicate excellent content," which is something I hope I just did in the past 10 minutes.

Being the new guy in the office...again

(NOTE: This post originally appeared here on May 13, 2013, my first day at Vitamix. I bring it back today, my first day at Goodyear, because it all still holds true.)

Today is my first day of work in months. I am, as you may have noticed, extremely excited about this fact.

Part of the reason is that I am very good at being The New Guy.

Having worked at eight different places over the last 20+ years, I'm well acquainted with finding my way through a new office, from figuring out the internal culture to exactly where they keep the coffee.

It's a process of constant adaptation, deference and friend-making.

It's also mentally exhausting, because it takes months to really get everything down. But it's worth the initial effort.

For example, I make a point of being proactively friendly when I start a new job. I'll aggressively seek people out and introduce myself.

Even if, as is the case about 20 percent of time, that person is just a visitor who doesn't even work there. In those situations, they're more frightened of me than anything else.

Mostly, though, you're able to make a good first impression by doing this.

Good first impressions are useful, because your co-workers are more likely to help you if they think you're a pleasant person. It also helps to project an aura of competence, especially if the way you do your job affects the way they do theirs.

I'm pretty good at projecting competence. That doesn't mean I have competence, only that I'm excellent at seeming as if I know what I'm doing.

I also go after what the professional self-help books like to call "low-hanging fruit." I find some relatively easy project to tackle early on, and when I complete it successfully, I make it seem as if it was a great problem I have solved to the long-lasting benefit of the organization.

People always seem to be impressed by this. Or maybe they're just taking pity on me and want me to feel good.

Another great New Guy trick is the come-early-leave-late approach. Everyone knows you're going to be gung-ho when you first get there. And they'll expect the long-hours routine to fade out quickly.

But if you keep it up, people will start to think, "OK, this guy isn't going to bail on us. He's dedicated. I like that."

Or at least that's what I assume they're thinking. They may actually be thinking, "What a total suck-up. This guy will flame out in less than a year."

I choose to believe the former.

Everything is about to change. And that's a good thing.

I hope you didn't look at that headline and expect me to talk today about some sweeping trend or societal shift that's going to affect your life. I was talking about my own life. As far as I know, yours is likely to continue on its orderly (or not so orderly) way.

It's just that tomorrow is my first official day working at Goodyear, and I couldn't be happier about it. I'm going to resurrect a blog post from 2013 in which I talked about how I good I am at being the new guy in the office. I expect nothing different from this gig.

But the return of full-time employment also means a departure from the relatively leisurely schedule I've been enjoying for the past 3+ months. I get a lot done most days because I like being productive, but I've been able to do it all on my own time and at my own pace.

That changes tomorrow. Suddenly, I'm going to have meetings to attend again, some in person and some virtual. I'll have deadlines to hit and obligations to co-workers. I'm good with all of that, but when you've been away from it for a while, it takes some readjusting.

There's also the matter of a few leisure-time activities and how they're going to fit into the life of Working Scott vs. that of Unemployed Scott. Just to name three:

• The saxophone: I play my horn almost every day, and since January I've been doing online lessons with my teacher Ed every Monday at 5:30pm. Practice time will now have to be fit into a much smaller window during the evenings. And if I'm in the office on Mondays, I don't think I can get home in time for a 5:30 lesson. So something's going to have to change.
  
  
• Writing blog posts: Since April, I've been doing my blog writing every morning right after breakfast. That doesn't work on weekdays anymore, so again, we're looking at evening time for writing. My goal is to maintain an every-day blog, but I'll admit new jobs have gotten in the way of that in the past, so I don't know what's coming.
  
  
• P.A. announcing: I've made this work with full-time employment before, so it's not like this is new territory. But my office is now 44 miles from home, and there will undoubtedly be days I have to be there late. Again, like everything else, it's going to be a balancing act in which I'll occasionally be going directly from Akron to the Wickliffe High School press box without a stop at home to change or eat. I'll live.

It goes without saying that I would rather have a job than not have a job, but getting a taste of a semi-retired life when you're not yet in a position (age-wise or financially) to maintain it can be dangerous. The dose of discipline that comes with reentering the workforce is probably coming at just the right time.

We once took a (failed) excursion through the woods to meet Cleveland Indians second basemen Duane Kuiper

I recently had coffee with my buddy Ann Marie. She was the one who forwarded the initial email that led to me interviewing for and accepting my new position at Goodyear. I start there in two short days and will be forever grateful to her for sending me the opportunity (the coffee I bought her doesn't even begin to repay her adequately).

Ann Marie lives in the Big Turtle condominium complex in Willoughby. When many of those condos were being built in the late 70s, my friends and I used to play in and around the semi-constructed buildings all the time.

As I related to Ann Marie, the most famous Big Turtle resident back then was a man by the name of Duane Kuiper, who played second base for my beloved Cleveland Indians. For decades, most pro athletes in Cleveland have lived on the west side of town, so it was exciting that at least one of them chose to live out in our area.

Kuiper played for the Tribe through the 1981 season, so I'm guessing it was probably 1979 or 1980 when my friends and I got it in our heads that we were going to walk to the Big Turtle condos and meet him.

To get there, you had to go through Douglas Woods, a several-acre plot of trees and trails where we hung out quite a bit, and which sadly no longer exists. At some point when you walked through the woods, you crossed the border from Wickliffe into Willoughby.

I remember emerging from the woods on the Willoughby side next to the western-most Big Turtle condos, and only then did it occur to us that:

(a) We had no idea exactly where Duane Kuiper lived. There were/are two large Big Turtle complexes, and we lacked even the first clue where his condo was located.

(b) We also had no idea what we were going to do once we got there. Knock on the door? Throw stones at his window until he came out? And would he even be home?

We simply hadn't considered any of this in our feeble 10-year-old minds until we actually got to our destination.

Our solution was simply to give up, play in the woods, and throw rocks at each other, which we used to do all the time.

We never did meet Duane Kuiper, but I'm guessing we had more fun in the woods that day anyway.

You marry a great cook, you reap the benefits (and sometimes endure the consequences)

My wife is an outstanding cook. She cranks out these amazing dinners day after day, year after year, and I have to remind myself never to take it for granted (yet, being human, I still do).

I've often said that having a spouse with this talent is a supremely mixed blessing. On one hand, good food, and the only thing I have to do to get it is the dishes. On the other hand, good food, which if you're not careful can mean high calorie intake, which in turn has you playing Santa Claus at the mall within a couple of years.

I do not blame Terry for the fact that my weight has yo-yo'ed somewhat over time. That's a product of my own habits and, frankly, laziness.

But sometimes I do think, if her food was consistently bad, I would probably be the size of an Olympic marathoner by now, which I realize is looking a gift horse square in the mouth.

She and I often laugh over the fact that she has made exactly one meal in our 29-year marriage that I didn't like. And as I'm always quick to point out, she didn't like it, either. It was an eggplant thing, and it probably wasn't that terrible, but it was such an anomaly that over time it has unjustly taken on the mantle of Worst Meal Ever.

When you're the one relatively bad apple in a huge orchard full of good apples, that's a bad rap you have to live with.

Don't worry, though. If God forbid something should happen to Terry, you'll be pleased to know that I make the meanest bowl of cereal you'll ever encounter. I distribute the cereal with extreme precision, I cover every bit of it through a refined milk-pouring technique, and I have an uncanny ability to hit the exact cereal-to-milk ratio every time.

So I'll be fine.

I am fascinated by two new characters in my neighborhood

I have previously brought up the fact that, on my morning walks/runs, there is a relatively fixed list of people I encounter. From the stars of the past (Cologne Guy, Relentlessly Waddling Lady) to the current lineup of characters (Hound Dog Guy, Nightgown Woman), I feel like I know these folks intimately, even though we've never done more than nod politely to one another as we pass.

There are two recent additions to the list about whom I've been thinking a lot.

One is a lady I've dubbed Mushmouth. It has nothing to do with how she speaks – I've never actually talked to her – but rather derives from the fact that she always wears a large floppy hat pulled down very low, to the point that you can't see her face.

The name comes from this character on the old Fat Albert cartoon:

It may be 95 degrees outside, but Mushmouth can be seen walking up and down Rockefeller Road with that hat. And regardless of the weather conditions, she is always bundled up and appears to be leaving on some sort of Arctic expedition.

I am brimming with questions about her, but mainly I admire her toughness and ability to log so many miles while undoubtedly working up quite a sweat underneath all of those clothes.

Oh, and she also carries a purple umbrella (again in all weather conditions) which she occasionally uses as a parasol.

I'm stumped.

I'm also amazed at the abilities of Orange Sweatshirt Man. He's not really new to the list, but he has made so many appearances this year that I only just got around to officially adding him.

OSM is an older gentleman who rides his bike all over Wickliffe, Willoughby, and Willoughby Hills. I've seen him in many different places as I drive, but most sightings have occurred near my house, again on Rockefeller Road.

One time I saw he and Mushmouth pass each other. Neither one acknowledged the other, but you could feel that something special had just happened.

OSM is a beast on that bike, and I'm not kidding. He rides up the very steep Rockefeller Road hill and barely breaks a sweat doing it. And much like Mushmouth, he wears the same clothes (sweatshirt, hat, long pants) no matter the conditions. He has to be well into his 60s if not his 70s.

I get the impression he is tougher than you and me combined.

When the zombie apocalypse comes, I want both of these people on my side.

With gainful employment on the horizon, I need to get back to my 5am wake-up time

It is rare that anyone in the house is awake before me. Even over these last couple of months of not having a job, "sleeping in" for me is when I don't roll out of bed until after 6am

I have always been an early riser, and presumably I will always be an early riser.

Still, my current schedule, while not exactly what you would call "decadent," won't do once I start work at Goodyear next week. I need to get back to setting that tried-and-true 5am alarm.

I could get up later than that, but I'm not willing to sacrifice any part of my morning routine, which will generally look like this on days I'm in the office:

5am-5:30am: Get up, get dressed for exercise, get the cats fresh food and water, scoop their litter boxes, sweep around those litter boxes

5:30am-6:10am: Exercise, cool down

6:10am-6:30am: Shower, get dressed (only 20 minutes...this is the advantage of being a 51-year-old man)

6:30am-6:50am: Eat breakfast, scan the papers

6:50am-7:00am: Brush teeth, get ready, get out the door

7:00am-7:45am: Drive to work

7:45am-8:00am: Get in, get to my desk, get coffee, and get going

Right now Goodyear staff are only in the office two days a week, and that arrangement is likely to last several months while they figure out what their workplace model is really going to look like. I could potentially sleep in a bit on work-from-home days, though I'm still likely to be up at 5:00 and maybe exercise a while longer, or take some extra time to empty the dishwasher, start laundry, etc.

I know many of you get up much earlier than 5am, and many are up, shall we say, significantly later in the morning. Either way, I'm looking forward to getting back into more of a rigid schedule.

These are the conversations we had before GPS was a thing

ME: "OK, so you're going to want to take 271 South to Chagrin Boulevard."

FRIEND: "I don't want to go north?"

ME: "If you went north, you would drive directly into Lake Erie."

FRIEND: "OK, OK, got it. South. Is that the ramp near Burger King? Or the one down by the car dealership?"

ME: "It's the one that says '271 South.' There will be a sign."

FRIEND: Are you sure?

ME: "Positive. The Ohio Department of Transportation is not trying to confuse you. Anyway, take 271 to Chagrin Boulevard."

FRIEND: "How many exits away is Chagrin Boulevard?"

ME: "How many exits? I don't know, I don't count them."

FRIEND: "I need to know how many exits it is so I don't miss it."

ME: "Just look for the signs that say 'Chagrin Boulevard.'"

FRIEND: "I don't want to miss it."

ME: "Trust me, you won't miss it if you look for the series of big green signs that say 'Chagrin Boulevard.'"

FRIEND (doubtfully): "I don't know..."

ME: "You have my word. You can do this. Once you get off at Chagrin Boulevard, go east."

FRIEND: "Wait, east? Is that left or right?"

ME: "Well, considering you were just going south, I'm going to say that east will be a left turn."

FRIEND (jotting this down on a scrap of lined notebook paper): "Got it. OK, then what?"

ME: "You'll go a mile down Chagrin, maybe two. You'll get to a roundabout."

FRIEND: "I don't know what that is."

ME: "It's a big circle. Just stay to the right, and where there's a sign saying 'Lander Road North,' go that way. The street is called Bryce Road. It will be on your left."

FRIEND: "How far down Lander?"

ME: "I don't know, maybe half a mile? If you get to the big willow tree in front of the horse farm, you've gone  too far. And don't be fooled by Bryn Road, which is before Bryce. You don't want that one. You want Bryce Road."

FRIEND: "How do you spell that?"

ME: "B-R-Y-C-E. The address is 4725. I think it's on the left side of the street, but I'm not sure. All I know is you'll pass a school with a playground and a big statue of a dog."

FRIEND: "Why a dog?"

ME: "I don't know. That's not important. The main thing to remember here is 4725 Bryce Road. Got that?"

FRIEND: "Yeah, I think so. I wish someone would invent a technology that would just tell us how to get anywhere we're going without having to think about it."

ME: "It will never happen." 

I used to have an attention span before smartphones came along

I recently took my son Jack to get his second COVID vaccine. Afterward, as we were sitting in the observation area, I looked at the people around us.

At one point, every single person in that room except me was looking at their cell phone. And it's not like this was a room of relatively young people. The two nurse volunteers sitting up front both had to be well into their 60s, possibly their 70s, and their gazes were trained squarely on iPhones.

I don't say this to claim any sort of moral superiority, by the way. The only reason I wasn't on my phone at that moment was because I recently became aware of how addicted to this device I was, and I've been making a concerted effort to just sit and "be" during quiet moments, rather than checking Facebook or playing my Yahtzee app.

Because, you see, there used to be a time when we as a society were all pretty good at just sitting still and waiting. Before smartphones, you were often in situations when there was absolutely nothing to do for a period of time, for whatever reason, whether it was because you were sitting in a doctor's waiting room or were finished taking a test in school.

Somewhere along the way, though, I lost the ability to just patiently wait. All spare moments were spent on the phone.

Even now when I get a quiet moment, there's a real itch to grab my phone. So very often, I purposely resist the itch and just sit there.

I've found some benefit to this. Our brains tend to go go go all the time these days, and they're not necessarily wired for that. They need time for reflection, contemplation, and inward thought. Collectively, we're starving them of this sort of lower-level activity.

So I'm trying. Really, I'm trying.

The urge is still there to go on Twitter whenever I manage to free up a spare 37 seconds. And while I'm not sure if and when it will go away, I'll admit I'm really enjoying returning to the 1990s for short bursts of time.

You know, back when I possessed some modicum of patience.

Remembering Dave Sasek on the Fourth of July

This is Dave.

Earlier this year a childhood friend of mine named Dave Sasek passed away in a car accident. I hadn't spoken to Dave in a number of years, but like many who graduated from Wickliffe in the late 80s/early 90s, the tragedy of it really knocked me for a loop.

The years in which I hung around with Dave were relatively short, starting maybe in sixth grade and lasting into the early part of high school. He lived on the next street over from me and we played football together.

I'm thinking of Dave today in particular because of an episode that happened on this day in (I want to say) 1984 or so. Dave and I, along with our friends Matt and Kevin, attended the Wickliffe fireworks and were walking home afterward, since none of us could yet drive.

We passed a yard in which some little kids were playing with sparklers. Dave paused, looked at them, and said very matter of factly, "You'd better stop that, or the police are going to come and set you on fire."

It was stupid, obnoxious, and utterly perplexing. And I couldn't stop laughing. When you're a 14-year-old boy, trust me when I say you laugh at dumb things like this constantly.

Yet it was right in line with Dave's twisted-but-intelligent sense of humor. He did stuff like that all the time, and he was one of the few people who could make me laugh on cue.

Dave also turned me on to the music of The Doors, and we played quite a few hours of Atari in his basement together. That was where we found the secret dot in the Atari game "Adventure" and discovered the message hidden in the game by the designer...quite the find at the time.

Anyway, as  I said, we lost track of each other post-graduation, but I was incredibly sorry to hear what happened to him. I just may light a sparkler in his memory tonight (and believe me when I say I'll be giggling in his honor the whole time).

This seems as good a time as any to once again mention that my mom once hit me with a bag of Fazio's Italian bread

My mom passed away one year ago today, so my choice here was either to write about how much we miss her and how wonderful she was, or to bring up the time she smacked me with a baked good.

I'm going with the latter.

For the record, though, we do miss her and she was wonderful. One of the best human beings I ever knew. You can't say enough about her.

But even Kathryn Tennant had her breaking point.

This is a story I relayed at her memorial service, but I love it so much I'll recap it here, too.

I'm guessing it was maybe 1978 or '79. That would have made me about 9 or 10, and my nephew Mark maybe 3 or 4.

My mom would often watch Mark while his mom, Mary, went off to work, so he was around a lot and, as I've often said, was more like a little brother to me than a nephew.

It was late afternoon and Mom was busying herself getting dinner ready, probably nearing the end of an exhausting day taking care of the two of us and trying to keep the house in some order.

I was doing something to irritate Mark. I don't know what, but it was enough that he kept crying and whining. We were in the living room, and Mom repeatedly yelled from the kitchen for me to stop it.

But apparently I didn't stop it. I kept right on doing whatever it was that was upsetting Mark, and he was making no secret of his displeasure.

Then, suddenly, seemingly from out of nowhere, Mom came storming out of the kitchen yelling at me to STOP IT. I looked up at her, and the next thing I knew, she had taken a full swing at me with a bag of Fazio's Italian bread. I don't know where it hit me, but the bag made solid contact and burst open, sending slices of bread flying around the living room.

I was stunned. Mom never hit me. It didn't hurt, but it was so out of the ordinary and so scary that I started crying. That, in turn, started Mark crying.

So there we were crying, and there was Mom, flustered and tired and on her hands and knees, crawling around the living room picking up pieces of far-flung bread.

In retrospect, it's one of the funniest things I have ever seen, though I obviously couldn't appreciate it at the time.

What I wouldn't give for some video evidence of that moment.

Boy, do I miss her.

Your local city government is probably way more complex than you think it is

A typical city records commission meeting looks like this. The woman on the left appears to be enjoying herself, but note the glazed expressions of the other three commission members.

The only time most of us give much thought to the people and systems that govern the individual towns and cities in which we live is when something goes wrong.

Garbage didn't get picked up? Call your councilperson.

City pools not opening on time or to your satisfaction? Rail against the mayor.

Fail the sewer dye test when you're trying to move? The local ordinances are too restrictive.

I'm not saying this is good or bad, it just is. Much like offensive linemen in football, city officials only get noticed when something isn't running smoothly.

I recently got a small glimpse into a tiny corner of our local government when I agreed to serve as the resident representative on the Wickliffe Records Commission. This small body is so obscure that even one of our local councilpersons had to ask me exactly what it does (and I don't blame them...trust me, it's pretty low-profile).

The Records Commission deals with public information requests. City governments have to make a reasonable effort to comply when someone asks to see copies of public documents. This could include everything from city employee records to lists of vacant properties to copies of various permits.

The Records Commission meets twice a year and is charged with ensuring these public records requests are properly responded to, filed with the State of Ohio, and then shredded/destroyed after an established period of time. In addition to the resident rep, the Commission also includes our mayor, law director, finance director, and clerk of council.

The Commission isn't even the body that actually makes copies and fulfills these requests. We just review the most recent requests and ensure the process is functioning as it's supposed to. My first in-person meeting lasted all of about 20 minutes (and could have finished in about five).

Some may see this as a waste of time, but it's a required part of the process, and in my mind it helps to ensure the city is being as transparent as possible with its business.

So if you've ever wondered what your city officials are doing in exchange for the (meager) salary or stipend they receive for their service, the answer is quite often sitting in meetings trying to understand why someone has requested a list of every licensed dog in town and the names and addresses of their owners.

In a month, my daughter will be off to experience the Disney College Program

Melanie has grown a bit since this picture was taken, but this is how she'll always look in my mind.

Before the pandemic, my daughter Melanie applied for and was accepted into the Disney College Program (DCP), which I suppose you could describe as a massive college internship program, Mickey Mouse style.

She was supposed to have spent six months living and working at Disney World in Orlando, Florida, finishing up this past January.

Then of course everything changed, the virus hit, DCP was postponed, and she had to stay home.

Now, with the world shaking off its rust and resuming something resembling its normal course, Disney has not only restarted the program, but also graciously given preference to 2020 applicants who, like Melanie, were impacted by The Great Shutdown.

So starting August 2nd, Mel will join scores of other college kids from around the country to experience a life of servitude to The Mouse.

Interestingly, they don't tell you what your exact job is going to be until a week or so before the program begins. Melanie could end up in foodservice, custodial, retail, lifeguarding, or whatever the Disney powers-that-be decide she should do.

There are also courses to take while she's there, including the very ponderous "Traditions," a 4- to 5-hour orientation session conducted through Disney University. This is where you are indoctrinated into Disney values, "The Disney Look," and also, I'm guessing, a long list of rules that, should you break any of them, will have you on a bus back to Cleveland within the hour.

I kid, of course, when I compare being a Disney Cast Member with indentured servitude, but this is only because I want to be able to enter Disney parks in the future without being pulled aside for reeducation and interrogation.

It is, in all seriousness, a wonderful opportunity for my daughter, who will turn 21 while she's in Florida and be away from home for the longest period of her life. Terry and/or I will undoubtedly fly down to see her a few times over these next 5-6 months, but for the most part, she'll be navigating it on her own.

And she will do wonderfully.

Thanks, Mickey!