You're not fooling me into false hope, April

 

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"

We have entered the month of April, which you know.

What you may not know is that April's only purpose in this world (at least for those of us living in decidedly temperate climates) is to trick us into thinking spring has arrived.

Sure, technically, spring has arrived on the calendar, but no self-respecting Northeast Ohioan really believes that.

I'm writing this post on February 24. I have no idea what the weather will be like on April 2, and it almost doesn't matter. Even if it's sunny and warm, it won't last. It will be 70 degrees one day and 35 the next.

That is far worse than a week of mid-January temperatures in the mid-teens. At least in January you know what you're getting and don't expect anything better.

But in April? The crocuses and other signs of emerging life make you think everything is going to be OK very soon. And it is going to be OK.

Just not now. Not this month.

You have to wait for May for "OK." In the meantime, winter's long death rattles continue for the next few weeks. You think you see the finish line, and suddenly it moves 100 yards farther away.

You have hope, then April blithely crushes the part of you that believes summer is right around the corner.

We're not finished yet. Not by a long shot.

It was the character Red from "The Shawshank Redemption" who said it best: "Let me tell you something, my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane."

Indeed it can, Red, indeed it can.

At some point in your life, 30 years in the future becomes a very different concept from what it used to be

For much of your life, when you look far into the future, it's almost always to a time when you're still likely to be relatively healthy and active.

Like, for example, when you're 20 years old and set goals 30 years down the line, you're thinking of the 50-year-old version of yourself. That may seem pretty old to you as a young adult, but those of us who have passed that age know that 50 is still a time when you have lots of energy to do the things you want to do.

Now, however, when I undertake that same mental exercise as a 55-year-old, it's a little different. In 30 years, if I'm still blessed to be around, I'll be 85.

Suddenly that 30-year projection takes on a whole different character. While it's true that age is just a number and you're only as old as you allow yourself to feel, 85 is still 85, no matter how you slice and dice it.

Unless you were around in early Bible times when people apparently lived well into the triple digits, 85 has always been a ripe old age for human beings.

Emphasis on "old."

Advances in medicine and the understanding of genetics are pushing the boundaries of our collective lifespans, but if you read the death notices in the newspaper, you can't help but notice that most people who pass away are still mostly in their 70s and 80s.

And so, as I undertake any sort of long-term planning, I do it now for the first time with the idea that I can only look so far ahead.

Barring acute illness or accident, I'm nowhere near the point of shuffling off this mortal coil, of course. But you do start to realize that we all have an expiration date. And it's coming sooner or later, no matter how hard we try and stave it off.

It's not like I'm constantly thinking about death. It's just occasional, though I imagine it gets a little more frequent as you get into your 60s, 70s and beyond.

I could very well still be kicking until I'm 100 or more. Can't say for sure. But any longer-range goals I set for myself these days tend to be within a shorter time window than they used to be.

Say, for example, "I want to still be living next Thursday."

That feels pretty manageable.

My daughters beat me so badly in The Mini crossword puzzle that I have to believe I'm deteriorating mentally

A few months ago I wrote about the fact that I do four New York Times puzzles every morning (Wordle, Connections, Strands, and The Mini.)

My performance varies from day to day, but generally speaking, I'm OK at Wordle, pretty good with Connections, very good at Strands, and not so good with The Mini.

The Mini is a small crossword puzzle that can usually be completed in about a minute. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower.

I thought I was pretty decent at The Mini until I accepted my daughter Chloe's invitation to create a leaderboard for the game whereby you can compare your performance with other people. We have since added Elissa and Jack to that daily leaderboard.

I quickly realized that either Chloe and Elissa are geniuses at this puzzle, or I'm slow to the point of potential brain dysfunction.

As an example, here was a typical five-day stretch in mid-February comparing how quickly Chloe and I completed The Mini each day:

February 11: Chloe 33 seconds, me 1:07

February 12: Chloe 27 seconds, me 54 seconds

February 13: Chloe 1:05, me 1:29

February 14: Chloe 59 seconds, me 2:29

February 15: Chloe 1:12, me 2:12

In the several weeks since we created our leaderboard, I think I have been faster than my daughters maybe twice each, and those involved lucky guesses on my part.

I know Chloe and Elissa, at 28 and 31, respectively, are in their mental prime, while I (at 55) clearly am not. But still...when you think of yourself as a "Word Guy" and your kids – along with probably nearly everyone else who regularly completes The Mini – leave you in the dust, it's time to question whether you're losing it for good this time.

My only recourse is to assume my kids are somehow cheating. They're highly intelligent, sure, but I can't accept this level of defeat at face value.

Every month, the good folks at Facebook send me 10 bucks for no good reason

Right from the start of today's post, it's important to mention two things, at least one of which you already know:

(1) This blog is an exceedingly small part of the Internet and is read by only a handful of exceedingly smart individuals (that's the part you already knew).

(2) I am fully aware of this fact and harbor no illusions of the blog's reach and influence.

Having established that, I will also tell you that every month, without fail, the Facebook people send me $10 or so for being a "digital creator." And since 90% of my Facebook posts are blog links, they're basically paying me for driving traffic here to 5kids1wife.com

This is funny to me for several reasons, not the least of which is that I would be doing the same thing even if they didn't pay me. It's also funny because I'm sure there are powerful cyber-influencer types to whom Facebook (actually its parent company Meta) pays hundreds and probably thousands of dollars.

What I get is chump change, and deservedly so.

Still, the fact is I get it, which means the engagement I create on Facebook must be worth something to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

I don't know why Mark finds my traffic to be of value, but he is, if nothing else, pretty savvy when it comes to making money.

The actual amount I receive depends on how many Facebook likes, comments, clicks, etc. I generate in a certain month. It varies from as low as $8 to $12 or more. I just say $10 because it's an even number and it sounds good.

Until I started receiving these payments from Meta, I didn't know this is how the Internet works. The more traffic the better for these giant digital platforms for whom more eyeballs on advertisements means more revenue.

You will be glad to know I invest these monthly stipends back into the blog to make it better, which is to say I usually buy coffee with them. Coffee motivates me to write, which keeps all of you graciously coming back, which keeps 5kids1wife.com going.

So every time you click on one of my blog links, or like or comment on one of my Facebook posts, you are stimulating the economy, which feels like a very patriotic and admirable thing to do.

In the end, your engagement doesn't really benefit me so much as it benefits you and our whole economic infrastructure.

So keep being a virtuous person and click/like/comment to your heart's content. You are an upstanding and high-minded citizen.

Yeah...that's it. 

Our oldest kid consistently brings the funny

One of the funniest people I know was born on this day in 1994. She also happens to be my daughter Elissa.

Elissa's humor is perhaps best described as "dry," "biting," and I'll go so far as to say "dark."

Whatever you want to call it, she makes me laugh all the time.

She is, for example, a master of using capital letters to humorous effect in texts. A funny word is somehow 10 times funnier when Elissa types it in all caps for emphasis.

Each of our kids has the funny gene, but Elissa started at a particularly early age. I remember one time when she was very young – maybe 18 months old – riding in her car seat while Terry and I sat in the front. A song I liked came on the radio, so I started singing along.

Suddenly from the backseat came a little voice urging me, "Sing it, Scotto."

Terry and I died. Elissa knew she was funny, and she has never wavered in her comedic confidence since.

Elissa's hobbies include crocheting clothes for her plastic goose Fernando, who sits in her front window and entertains the whole neighborhood with his fashionable 'fits. Only someone with a deep sense of the absurd would spend so much time making a plastic goose look good.

I am inordinately proud of her.

Happy birthday to our first child and the headliner of our family comedy festival. And thanks for the laughs, kid.

Three aspects of modern life that would have amazed my 8-year-old self

This isn't me in the late 70s, but given the tube socks and the somewhat confused expression, it could have been.
 

I was born in 1969, making me a relatively early Gen Xer. The world in which I grew up in the 1970s and 80s was a very analog one. Everything was bigger and clunkier. It was just a different time.

If you took 1978 Scott and transported him into the world of 2025, here are three things he would immediately notice:

(1) Cars are quieter and less smelly

When I was little, cars ran on regular leaded gasoline. That gas produced a certain kind of exhaust, the smell of which was different from the smell most cars emit today. It was heavier, more industrial, and more (I guess) "gas-like." Cars were also generally louder, even the ones with good mufflers. You could hear a car coming from a greater distance than you can today. Right away, 8-year-old Scott would be impressed by your low-noise, low-exhaust cars of the future.

(2) There aren't as many cords and wires everywhere

The first place I ever remember seeing a wireless television remote was, I believe, my Uncle Still and Aunt Jean's house in North Carolina. We visited there in 1976, and they had this space-age clicker that changed the channel with no physical connection to the TV. I couldn't understand how it worked, though I'm sure it was primitive compared with the remotes of today. We didn't have a remote of any kind in our house at the time, and even the ones we got when cable TV came along four years later had these long, gray cords that cluttered up living rooms and basements across America. The wireless revolution has made us forget how most things needed cords to operate back then.

(3) Smoking? Not nearly the thing it once was

I've written about this before. Many (even most) adults you knew were smokers back when I was a kid. Both of my parents smoked. So did Terry's parents. Heck, we made our moms and dads ashtrays in art class as presents. People smoked in most public places, including malls and grocery stores. You just kind of got used to the smell, though I certainly never liked it...and to this day I've never even tried it. 1978 Scott would wonder where all the clouds of cigarette smoke and  the cig vending machines had gone in 2025. And as someone who was anti-smoking from a very early age, he would love it.

Five first names I wouldn't mind having

(NOTE: This post originally ran here on the blog 12 years ago today on March 19, 2013. It's our monthly Blog Rerun and a list of names I still wouldn't mind having.)

I like my first name. Always have. But if I had to change it, here are five alternatives I wouldn't mind:

(1) BRUCE: Seems like a solid, manly name. Maybe because it reminds me of Brut aftershave, a bottle of which could often be found in our house when I was growing up in the 70s. The bottle was green plastic, which probably spoke to the quality of the product inside, but I thought it smelled nice. And some bottles of Brut came with a cool silver medallion. I would wear the Brut medallion today, if given the chance.

(2) TIM: Tims are good people. You don't run across a lot of annoying Tims. And if you do, they're most likely a "Timothy." Big difference. (NOTE: In no way am I implying that guys named "Timothy" are necessarily annoying. Just some of them. If you're named Timothy and you're reading this blog, you're probably not annoying.)

(3) DAVE: The Tim Rule applies here, too. I have good associations with the name Dave. Like Dave Matthews, for instance. Seems like a good guy. Someone you'd want to hang out with. Or my brother-in-law Dave. He's a good guy. Or former Cleveland Indians manager Dave Garcia, who according to Wikipedia is 92 years old and still going strong. Apparently Daves live a long time, which is a plus. (NOTE: Dave Garcia passed away in 2018, five years after this post was published. He was 97 years old, so the point stands.)

(4) HANK: A dark horse candidate. I used to associate Hanks with people missing most of their teeth. But then the TV show "Royal Pains" came along, and now I think Hank is kind of hip. Still, it's hard to separate "Hank" from Hank Williams, and it remains my go-to generic hick name. But it's still an up-and-comer. (By the way, have you noticed so far that all of these are short, one-syllable names? So is "Scott." I'm just lazy enough to want a first name that doesn't require a great deal of effort when writing it out. Let's see if #5 bucks the trend...)

(5) KAI: Not only did we stick with the one-syllable pattern, we actually went back to the three-letter first name. "Kai" is a cool name. It's actually a relatively common name in several different cultures, most notably in Finland. I associate "Kai" with Kai Haaskivi, a Finn who played professional indoor soccer here in Cleveland back in the 80s and early 90s. "Kai" also means "probably" in Finnish, which is fitting because I would "probably" be the coolest person on the planet if my name was Kai.

HONORABLE MENTION - DJ: My dad wanted to name me DJ. As he explained it, it wouldn't have stood for anything. Just the letters "D" and "J." I think I would have liked that, but he was overruled by my mom. And as we've mentioned before, the pregnant woman always gets veto power over name suggestions. It's OK, Mom. I really do like Scott...

I experienced the luck of the Irish 39 years ago

One time Terry and I went to Australia and we took this photo that is for some reason tilted. The only explanation I can think of is that, if you look at a globe, you will clearly see that Australia is upside down, so it makes sense that we would be a bit off kilter, too.

I write these blog posts about five weeks in advance. Sometimes I'll adjust if a topic is more time-sensitive, but for the most part, I like to stay well ahead of the game.

When I'm trying to think of a subject about which to write, I'll first consider the date on which a particular post will publish. In this case, of course, it's St. Patrick's Day. But it's also the day before my wife's birthday.

So which do I choose? Considering it's a family-oriented blog, the logical choice is to write about Terry, which I've done many, many, many times in the last 13 years. And for good reason. Without the 1 Wife, there obviously wouldn't be the 5 Kids.

But there's also the fact that she is the reason and the foundation for so much of what I do every day. When there are life choices to be made, I make them together with her. If I'm stuck on a particular problem, I will usually pray first and then go right to her.

If I have no idea where we keep the small red cooler with the white lid (and I don't), I will ask her.

I've known the woman since 1986, and in that time I have used essentially the same list of adjectives to describe her over and over. She is smart, funny, pretty, generous, honest and kind, and she has a smile and a laugh that make life worth living.

You do not have to tell me I hit The Wife Jackpot. I'm well aware.

It's a day early, but if you want to wish her a well-deserved happy birthday now, I think it's entirely appropriate. In fact, I'll do it myself:

Happy birthday to my four-leaf clover.

A Room of One's Own

 

When Terry and I were first married in 1992, one of the upstairs rooms in our house was designated "the computer room," but it was in most respects really "Scott's room."

Oh, we both used it, but I was the one who "decorated" it, if you want to call it that. It had hockey and music posters on the wall. It featured stuffed Bill the Cat and Opus dolls from my favorite comic strip of the time, "Bloom County." It had a little nook in which I placed the Yamaha keyboard on which I would doodle from time to time.

As I was just 22 years old at the time, it was in some ways the college dorm room I never had.

It was the only room in the house over which I had (or wanted) any real say when it came to what we put there and how it looked.

Fast forward 33 years to our current house and this tradition of giving me one room to play with has continued. Terry uses our upstairs office all the time, but most of the stuff there is mine.

There are, for example, three bookshelves to hold my personal library, including this one devoted largely to my military history books:

And on top of that is a little shrine to our dearly departed cats Fred, George and Charlie:

The music theme continues in this little corner with the inclusion of two instruments (a keyboard and guitar) that I technically cannot play, though that never stops me from trying. Note that the room also contains my alto saxophone, which for the record I can play.

On the walls are various photos reflecting my interests, from a large autographed image of Sting to an autographed Lake Erie Monsters (our local hockey team, now called the Cleveland Monsters) layout. I also have a map of the Appalachian Trail and these two pictures of my mom and dad presumably taken on Parents Night when I played high school football:

Above those are my undergraduate and graduate school diplomas from John Carroll and West Virginia universities, respectively:

There's also a closet containing music and sound equipment and a large bin of sheet music I won't even bother showing you.

The point is that, while this room will never win any interior decorating awards, it's my room, and I love it. Terry does a wonderful job putting together the other rooms in our house, but I'm very grateful to have one to myself.

After all, I have helped us make a lot of mortgage payments over the years. It feels like I've earned a few square feet of my own.

I didn't think I was especially old at 55, but then...

Even when I was very young, I never thought 55 was particularly old. And I still don't, given that I turned that age myself a few months ago.

Then three things happened that gave me pause:

• I drove past the site of a new development here in Wickliffe where 55-and-over housing is being built. A sign out front referred to the soon-to-be-constructed houses as "senior living" units. Senior living.
  
  
• I was flipping through the Wickliffe Connection, our town's quarterly newspaper, when I came across an article about the Wickliffe Senior Center, which I've always thought of as a nice gathering place for the very elderly in our community. Then I noticed this line: "Anyone 55 and over may become a member" of the Senior Center. I'm sorry, what??
  
  
• Every year, my company generously makes a lump-sum contribution to each employee's 401(k) account. This contribution is a certain percentage of your eligible earnings, with that percentage rising as you get older. The age group receiving the highest-percentage contribution – the old fogies of the company who presumably need the money the most – is 55 and over. Yes, I'm now considered essentially the same as a 70-year-old. I appreciate the infusion of cash, but that one hurt.

I guess I always thought stuff like this didn't happen until you turned at least 65. But even as lifespans increase and people generally maintain their youthful vigor for longer periods, we're suddenly associating age 55 with "senior citizen," and I'm admittedly shaken.

On the other hand...

I'm thinking Terry and I should consider moving into one of the new 55-and-over houses and joining the Senior Center. It may be disconcerting to find ourselves in the old person demographic, but compared with our prospective neighbors and fellow Senior Center members, we'll be the young, rowdy kids! Like the slightly overweight person who hangs out only with very fat friends, by comparison, we'll be the life of the party.

Shuffleboard at our house. 3pm tomorrow. BYOE (Bring Your Own Ensure).

5 Kids, 1 Wife..and 1 Grandchild

To avoid "burying the lede," as they say in the journalism trade, let's begin with the big news in our family these days: My daughter Chloe and her husband Michael are expecting their first baby and our first grandchild in mid-September.

Which means Terry is going to be a grandma, something at which she will be exceedingly good.

It also means I'm going to be a grandpa, a prospect that's certainly welcomed, but one to which I had given little thought to this point.

Chloe gave us the news several weeks ago, but until now we've had to keep quiet about it. It happened on a Thursday evening in early January when she and I were scheduled to attend a Cleveland Orchestra performance together. She came to our house an hour or so early to have dinner with us before the concert.

When she walked into the house, Terry jokingly said to her, "Do you have a present for me?" Chloe replied that, yes, actually she did.

The conversation turned in a different direction for a minute before the idea of Chloe's present came up again, and she told Terry, "It's actually for you and Dad both."

That was the moment I knew what was going on. Amazingly, though, Terry didn't. She almost always picks up on the sorts of cues I don't, but in this case, she didn't see what I was seeing.

Chloe then handed her a plastic test stick with a little digital screen that displayed one word.

"Pregnant."

The expected cheers and hugs followed, after which Chloe told us it was still very early and that only a couple of other people knew at that point. So we had to keep it under wraps until now, which we did.

Mom-to-be Chloe and grandpa-to-be (yikes) me

With Chloe having posted the news on Facebook a few days ago, and Terry having informed her extensive personal network, I guess the knowledge is as public as it's going to get.

Last fall I wrote a post here in which I said that while I was looking forward to having grandkids someday, I wasn't in any particular hurry. And that was true.

But now that the reality is here and Chloe seems to be progressing with no issues. I'm all in.

She isn't due until September 14, so we obviously have a way to go, but already I'm wondering what this little one will call Terry and me.

For my part, I have no real preference. "Grandpa" is fine, as is "Grampy.” As is just about anything, really.

We know many people our age who have multiple grandchildren, but we're only just now for the first time confronting the reality of what it means to be grandparents. It's exciting, humbling and a little scary, all at the same time.

Kind of like it was back in 1993 when we found out Terry was pregnant with Elissa.

So...here comes another life milestone, ready or not. Whatever lies ahead, I can't wait.

An escalator tried to kill my wife

Today's headline is admittedly a bit melodramatic, but it's true that Terry was almost eaten by an escalator not long ago.

We were returning to our car after taking in a Cleveland Cavaliers basketball game. It was bitter cold that day, so we parked at the Tower City complex in Downtown Cleveland and took the 1,000-foot underground pedestrian tunnel to and from the arena, rather than walking outside.

When we got back to Tower City, there was a line of people waiting to use the elevator to get down to the lower parking levels. Rather than waiting with them, we decided to go around the line and look for stairs or another way to reach the area where our car was parked.

We weren't sure where we were going (in retrospect, we should have just waited in the elevator line), and at one point I had us mistakenly go down an escalator I thought would get us where we needed to go. 

Turns out it was an escalator to an RTA Rapid train station. Even before we got to the bottom, we knew we were going the wrong way and would have to find our way back up to where we started and search elsewhere.

Just as we got to the bottom of the escalator, though, Terry pitched forward and fell. I thought she had just tripped, and I reached down to help her up.

But she wouldn't (couldn't) get up and instead just kept saying, "It's got me! It's got me!"

I didn't understand what she meant. What had her? Why wasn't she standing up?

Fortunately, a guy behind us saw instantly what had happened. Terry's shoelace had gotten caught in the escalator and her foot was being pulled down. He grabbed her leg and yanked her foot free, and immediately apologized that he had to break her shoelace to save her.

No apologies necessary, Mr. Good Samaritan. Once I understood what had happened, I was just grateful he had helped her. We both thanked him and eventually made our way to the parking garage and our car.

Terry came away mostly unscathed, though she was a little sore the next day.

And I'm not sure I'm getting her back on an escalator any time soon.

It's admittedly not very good, but this piano song I taught myself is the definition of, "Well, I did my best"

Terry bought me a Yamaha keyboard for Christmas, and I just love it.

Well, technically, I bought it for myself and we said it would be from her, but the result is the same.

Here's the thing, though: I can't play the piano. I mean, I can figure out simple tunes with my right hand. But actual two-handed songs with chords and such? It's not happening.

I lack the talent, the patience, and the finger length to do it. Plus, bass clef and I simply don't get along.

I have several Facebook friends who are wonderfully talented piano players. I admire (and envy) them. I will never be able to match them.

I mention all of this as context for the personal triumph that is teaching myself to play Beethoven's "Für Elise," a song that requires the use of both the left and right hands.

Now, when I say "teaching myself to play," you have to understand that my definition of that is getting from the beginning of the song to the end without crashing and burning. It does not imply that I'm going to get everything right, nor indeed that the melody I play will really match the original.

The video above of me playing "Für Elise" is full of issues that would make a piano teacher cringe.

For one thing, I know my finger positioning is incorrect. And several times I hit the left hand keys too hard, giving the bass notes far more oomph than Herr Beethoven would have intended.

Then there's the unfortunate pause in the middle of the song as I temporarily lose my bearings and try to get my fingers on the correct keys.

And of course the left-hand note I completely miss near the end of the song.

I also freely admit that the little right-hand-only breaks in the middle of the tune do not match the original. Those for sure don't align with what Beethoven wrote. I'm pretty much just making those parts up.

In short, it's a mess.

But it's my mess, and I learned to do it all on my own.

I know I sound like an 8-year-old who just figured out how to multiply two-digit numbers, but I'm inordinately proud of this recording for two reasons:

(1) The tune is somewhat recognizable. There was no guarantee I was ever going to get to that point...again, especially when you consider my inability to play the left-hand part of almost any other piano song.

(2) I was satisfied with doing my personal best. Normally I can't stand being anything but perfect with any task to which I set my mind, but in this case I learned to be happy with my wonky version of an iconic classical melody (one that any semi-competent pianist can play with ease). I tried, and this is the result...mistakes and all.

I've been informed that I need to stop biting so deeply into my apples that I strew seeds around the house

I love apples. Gala apples. I've mentioned this fact before.

I love them so much that I often eat right into (and sometimes through) the core.

This is potentially hazardous for a number of reasons, not least of which is that it exposes the seeds and allows them to fall out of the apple and onto our floor.

You can tell I've recently been in any given part of the house simply by counting the number of apple seeds on the floor.

I don't leave them there intentionally, but sometimes (many times) they escape my notice.

They do not, however, escape Terry's notice.

She has told me that (a) I can leave a little apple on the core and throw it away when I'm finished, rather than biting into the very middle, and (b) In any case, I need to stop leaving seeds all over the place.

The latter instruction is perfectly reasonable. I'm trying my best to comply.

But leaving even a few molecules of sweet, tasty, Gala apple goodness on the core and tossing it away? That's blasphemy. I will do no such thing.

Marriage is about compromise. But I will not compromise my adoration for the greatest fruit God put on earth for our collective enjoyment.

At some point you have to draw the line.

Having the Atari 2600 back in my life has been a game changer

 

It felt like they were several years late to the party, but in 2023, Atari released an updated version of the 2600 system that revolutionized home video gaming back in the late 70s and early 80s.

The Atari 2600+ looks just like the original console that occupied so many living rooms, dens and basements 40+ years ago. And that is of course by design. Nostalgia is a big part of the way they market products like this.

I, like many others my age, purchased the 2600+ based solely on fond memories of playing the original when I was a kid. I didn't have to test it out to know whether it would be worth it.

I just knew I had to have one.

The new 2600+ makes a few necessary concessions to the modern world of home entertainment. Rather than having the old-fashioned "Game/TV" switcher box on the back of your television, for example, you just connect it to your flatscreen with a standard HDMI cable.

As you might suspect, it looks beautiful on a 65-inch high-def TV.

In terms of power, it doesn't come with anything you can plug into the wall. Instead you're given a USB cable, and it's assumed you have a wall plate or something similar into which you can plug the cable to draw electricity.

But the rest of it is essentially the same as it was when I got my first Atari 2600 for Christmas 1980. It has the same switches on the console, the same joystick and paddle controllers (the paddles had to be purchased separately), and the same cartridge slot, though this one accepts both 2600 and Atari 7800 games.

Actually, the cartridge experience itself is a bit different from what it used to be. The system comes with 10 original Atari 2600 games, but rather than giving you 10 different cartridges, they put everything onto one cartridge. You then access the different games by setting a series of DIP switches on the cartridge case.

It's a little clumsy, but it works. (Original cartridges from the early 80s still work on it, as well. I just bought a set of eight old-school Activision games like Freeway and Kaboom off of eBay and have been having a ball with those.)

One of the first things I did when I set up the system was to engage my son Jack in various games of Combat. Combat was the cartridge that came with most Atari 2600s back in the day, and it is extremely primitive by any modern video gaming standard.

Still, while the graphics and sound are sometimes awkward, there's no denying that Combat (like so many Atari games) is fun. Jack and I engaged in a few tank-to-tank battles, then we switched to controlling little airplanes that flew in and out of blocky, pixelated onscreen "clouds" while we tried to shoot each other out of the sky.

We had a blast. It was especially great playing with Jack, a typical 19-year-old XBox gamer for whom advanced gameplay and design are just expected. If he can enjoy Atari games that are nearly half a century old, anyone can.

Among the games I've been playing a lot myself are Adventure, Missile Command, Yar's Revenge, RealSports Baseball, and Breakout. All are testaments to the talents of old school Atari programmers who were challenged with making fun cartridges within the rigid confines of a low-power system like the 2600.

My skills aren't what they used to be, given how long it has been since I first played these games and the fact that maybe my reflexes aren't (and never can be) what they once were.

But that doesn't matter. Having an Atari again, so many years later, is a wonderful experience. Win or lose, I'm loving everything about it.

Some things are universally fun, regardless of the era in which they originated.

I'm thinking of taking up a new hobby: Napping

From early December through mid-February, I worked five days a week from home while my company's headquarters building underwent some long-overdue renovations.

I wrote here about the ups and downs of that experience. For me, someone who normally goes into the office every day regardless of company policy, it was mostly about the downs. I generally found myself too distracted to be as productive as I am when in the office.

But there was one thing I did enjoy about working from my upstairs office every day, and that was the opportunity to take 10- or 15 minute power naps.

I haven't been much of a napper since I was 3 years old, but I've come to appreciate the value of an occasional mid-afternoon snooze.

More than once during my extended work-from-home experience, I would walk away from my laptop and go straight into our spare room, where I would lay down on the bed and catch a little shuteye.

Invariably I would wake up refreshed and go right back to working, feeling much better for having grabbed those 40 winks.

I don't generally get enough sleep in the first place, especially on days when I go to the gym. If I get more than 7 hours in a given night, that's a rare treat.

The result is occasional mid-day fatigue that is best remedied with a nap.

The problem is that I don't usually want to nap, even when my body needs it. Being a task-driven, goal-oriented individual, I'm more about getting things done than I am about sleeping. Given the choice, I would rather knock something off my to-do list than nap.

But sometimes the temptation is too great, and like I said, I now understand the pleasures of a quick 2pm doze to energize myself for the rest of the work day.

Now that I'm back in the office full time, though, it simply doesn't happen like it did before. At least not on weekdays.

Thus, I'm going to make playing the saxophone and napping my official weekend hobbies.

Eventually I hope to get good enough to do both at the same time.

Yes, Ring camera, I know there's a person at my back door because it's me...again

Do you have one of those Ring doorbell camera thingies? The ones that show you who's at your door or walking up your driveway?

Or, depending on how you have it set and the direction it's pointing, when a squirrel runs by or a bee lands on a flower 100 yards away?

We just got a Ring last month. Actually we've had it for quite a while, but it was only recently that my daughter Elissa and her boyfriend Mark came over and installed it for us.

It's not that the Ring is especially difficult to set up, but there was some mechanical work involved, and well...as we've established, it's better if you don't give me tools of any kind.

It helps, too, that Mark is very mechanically inclined. I wasn't there when he got the Ring doorbells mounted outside our front and back doors, but he probably did it in less time than it would have taken me to pull everything out of the package.

He also cooks well and is generous with his time when it comes to helping others. It's disgusting.

Anyway, the Ring has worked out fine, but at first it was more of an annoyance than anything else. It's designed to detect motion and to tell you when a person is approaching your home or a package has been dropped on your porch.

Which sounds great except for the fact that, 99% of the time, the people approaching (or leaving) our house are us.

For days after the Rings went up, this sequence repeated itself:

I would walk out the door, my Apple Watch would vibrate, and I would immediately look at it, only to find a small photo of myself with a notification reading, "There is a Person at your Back Door."

YES, I KNOW, THAT PERSON IS ME.

If I was headed to, say, our mailbox, my watch would again vibrate seconds later. And I would again check it, forgetting that it was going to be another Ring notification, this one telling me, "There is a Person at your Front Door" as I came into range of the front camera.

This has happened over and over, and I have yet to try and figure out how to change the motion sensitivity of the cameras. Eventually I might just turn off the notifications altogether.

Which largely defeats the purpose of having a Ring camera.

But at least I will maintain my sanity.

ATTENTION POTENTIAL INTRUDERS: Yes, there's a Ring camera there, but trust me: I'm not checking it. You're free to enter our home as you please. And don't hesitate to rip the Ring camera off the door frame and take it with you.

Having the "mean" teacher can sometimes be the best thing

 

The woman pictured above is Ruth Schwarzenberg, my teacher for both 2nd and 6th grades at Mapledale Elementary School.

Having a teacher twice in the elementary grades is probably not uncommon. But having the same teacher four years apart (especially after those highly transformative years between 2nd and 6th grade) likely is.

The first time I had Mrs. Schwarzenberg in 2nd grade was, quite frankly, a jarring experience. To that point, my school teachers had been easygoing women, both of whom were commonly described as "nice." Mrs. Janes (kindergarten) and Mrs. Lucci (1st grade) were big reasons why I had really grown to love school.

But then I got to 2nd grade with Mrs. Schwarzenberg, and let me tell you, the days of sunshine and roses ended in a hurry. Most kids described her as "mean," though in retrospect, she was really just strict.

And by that point (again, in retrospect), I needed a good dose of strict. I was used to getting top grades and being a high achiever, but somewhere along the way, you have to realize that you're not going to get rewarded and praised for absolutely everything.

And you have to be pushed to be even better.

Mrs. Schwarzenberg did that for me, but I didn't know how to deal with her at the time. I was honestly afraid of her, and it was a relief when I got sick and could stay home from school from time to time.

It was only later that I came to realize how much I learned in 2nd grade, and how much I gained in maturity that year. I would never have credited Mrs. Schwarzenberg with any of that, though now I do.

When I had her again in 6th grade, our relationship had changed. It felt like she wasn't as strict with us that year, but now I realize she probably was (maybe even more so). The difference was that I was older, at least a tad wiser, and much better positioned to engage with and learn from her.

For years I would tell people that Mrs. Schwarzenberg was better suited teaching older kids than younger ones, but now I think she was probably equally effective with both. I just hadn't encountered anything like her as a 7- and 8-year-old second-grader, and it took time to adjust.

You can only be the A+, never-get-in-trouble Golden Child for so long. Like I said, at some point, you need someone to push you to the next level.

And boy, did Mrs. Schwarzenberg push.

She passed away in 2012. The last time I talked with her was probably in 1988, my senior year of high school, when I performed with our jazz band for Wickliffe Elementary School students and she was still there teaching. I can't remember what I said to her, but I hope I thanked her for everything she had done for me.

Even at age 18 I realized the positive influence the "mean" teacher can have.

My family refers to me as the Noo Noo...and I'm not sure it's a compliment

(NOTE: This post originally appeared here on the blog nine years ago on February 12, 2016. I remain the family Noo Noo.)

I know a lot of people are weirded out by the Teletubbies, the British kids TV show starring Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa and Po. And rightly so. They're creepy, no doubt about that. They're meant to be innocent and fun, but whoever created them was clearly under the influence of a substance of questionable legality.

One of the minor characters on the Teletubbies is a little thing called Noo Noo. Or "The" Noo Noo. I'm not sure which. And I do mean "thing," by the way, because that's what Noo Noo is. It's a little living vacuum cleaner that goes around cleaning up messes. The Teletubbies at least speak, even though it's gibberish. Noo Noo just rolls around making sucking and slurping noises.

Noo Noo's sole purpose in life is to clean, but he/she/it sometimes takes things too far, as in this video:

This, I freely admit, is me. I am Noo Noo, and Noo Noo is me. When I am home, I take it on myself to clean up anything and everything: Stuff on the floor, the dishes, various messes, etc.

I will also freely admit that sometimes I clean up stuff that is not at all intended to be cleaned up.

Like, for example, there will be a glass of water on the kitchen table, and my instinct is to remove it before one of the cats knocks it over. But the person who owns the glass of water has just stepped out of the room and their cold beverage has been dumped in the sink and the glass deposited in the dishwasher. All in the space of 17 seconds while they were gone.

My bad.

On Christmas morning, I have one primary job: I walk around with a garbage bag and collect all wrapping paper, discarded bows, tissue, packaging, etc. If you don't proactively give me the paper you tear off a gift, I will come over to you and snatch it. THERE WILL BE NO MESSES ON CHRISTMAS MORNING, DO YOU HEAR ME? NO MESSES!

I don't mean to annoy anyone, but I really, really prefer having a clean house whenever I can. It makes me happier. And if you're someone whose mess-making detracts from the cleanliness of the house, I will rectify the situation post-haste.

Compare me to a Teletubbies character if you must. I proudly wear the Noo Noo badge.`

For someone who grew up in a family of card players, I don't play a lot of card games

Image downloaded from Wikipedia. By J Wynia from Minneapolis, United States - Afternoon cribbage on the patio., CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=102255562

When I was a kid, any time we held a Tennant family reunion, my dad would inevitably end up at a table with some combination of his brothers (he had a bunch of them) playing a game called Oh Hell.

Oh Hell was/is one of the large genre of trick-taking card games in which you look at your hand and decide how many "tricks" you can take based on the strength of your cards. In that sense, I think it's a lot like Euchre or Whist.

I never understand the game when I was little, but even I could see how much fun the brothers would have playing, talking, making fun of one another, and generally enjoying each other's company.

When he wasn't playing Oh Hell, my dad would sit in our kitchen for hours on end playing solitaire. As I've mentioned before, the sound of Dad shuffling the cards on a Saturday morning was in some ways the soundtrack of my youth.

It's not that I dislike card games – far from it – but I don't think I got the card playing gene. I'm not a poker guy, and I've never once played any sort of card-based table game in a casino.

We do play cribbage in our family, though, which I like a lot. I don't win all that often, but it's fun. If you don't know cribbage, it's the game pictured in the image at the top of today's post.

When my kids were little, I also played a lot of War and Go Fish with them.

And that's about it. I never learned Gin Rummy, Pinochle, Bridge, Hearts, Spades or any of the countless other games of which Americans (particularly of my generation and before) seem to be so fond. Or if I did learn any of them, I don't remember.

I have a feeling card games may eventually go the way of the horse and buggy, or at least "manual" card games will. Digital versions are likely to live on on our phones and other devices.

But even I (a playing card dabbler at best) know there's no cyber equivalent of a freshly opened pack of cards dealt around a table of friends and family intent on beating one another...and loving one another just the same.

Here's what I will tell you about my wife after 39 years of being together

For the record, those are shadows behind my head. I did not in fact have a mullet for our wedding. Or any time before or since.

Some years ago, I remember being in our kitchen with Terry and an older woman who was at our house for some sort of business reason. Maybe something to do with insurance? Or a mortgage refinance? I can't recall, but I know she was there because we had to sign some papers.

Anyway, at one point, this woman said to me, "Your wife has left the room twice, and both times when she came back, your eyes lit up. When she talks, you look right at her. I thought that was lovely."

I didn't realize I did either of those things, but I suppose she was right. The fact is, I really, really like being around Mrs. Terry Tennant. I always have.

Well, since 1986, anyway. That's when we first started dating.

When you're in a relationship that's pushing four decades (or five, six, seven or more), you don't spend every day telling the other person how wonderful they are. It's just kind of understood.

Truth be told, our days are spent laughing and making fun of each other more than anything else. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

And that's all you need to know. I could go on and on here telling you all of the great things about Terry, but that's enough right there. I love that she's there when I wake up in the morning and there when I go to bed at night.

And all of the in between, of course.

It's a bonus that she tolerates me.

Happy Valentine's Day to Terry T., and to everyone out there who is blessed to have a Someone in their lives.

Whether or not we feel we deserve it.

Who else has had a terrifying dream about Abraham Lincoln? Just me?

 

President Lincoln didn't look like this in my dream,
but he might as well have.

Today is the 216th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, which reminds me of the time I thought he was going to kill me.

Well, to be clear, I was dreaming when this happened, which makes sense considering President Lincoln died 104 years before I was even born. Nonetheless, I was pretty sure the 16th president of the United States was out to get me.

I must have been 8 or 9 years old when I had this dream. And I seem to remember it being one of those vivid, right-before-you-wake-up dreams.

The only thing I remember from it is that I was lying in my bed and Abraham Lincoln opened my bedroom door and peeked in.

That was it. Just Honest Abe cracking open up the door, leaning in, and staring at me for a few seconds before closing the door and leaving. Presumably to go back to his full-time job of winning the Civil War or whatever.

It was not an especially terrifying sequence, other than the whole thing of Lincoln being dead, but I was paralyzed with fear.

I immediately woke up and found myself with a fast-beating heart and taking very deep breaths.

Understand, this was not some demon version of Abraham Lincoln like the image at the top of today's post. This was normal, bearded Abraham Lincoln in his black frock coat wearing his trademark stovepipe hat.

Unless you lived in the Confederate States of America in the 1860s and were fed a stream of propaganda about Lincoln being Satan in the flesh, you are not inclined to be afraid of be-hatted President Lincoln.

But I was. And, if I'm being honest, I still am, somewhat.

For what it's worth, around that same time of my life, I also remember laying in my bed in fright one early morning because of a repeated sound coming from the hallway outside my bedroom door. Over and over again I heard this strange metallic sound, like a thin wire being plucked.

Once I had worked up sufficient courage, I sprinted from my bed and into the safety of my parents' room to tell them about the ghostly sound in the hallway.

Mom got out of bed, went out to the hallway, and informed me the sound was just our smoke alarm signaling that its battery was low.

It was not, in fact, President Lincoln or one of his hell minions coming to kill me.

I was admittedly neither the bravest nor the smartest child you'll ever meet.

The shock of nice weather in the middle of a Great Lakes winter

Terry and I have made a habit of traveling to Florida in February and March to visit our son Jared and his girlfriend Lyndsey. We just did it last week (Terry is still down there, as a matter of fact).

This is usually a pretty good time to get out of Northeast Ohio with its wind, snow and ice and spend some time in St. Petersburg with its sunshine, blue skies and...more sunshine. And this trip was no different, as temperatures reached about 80 degrees every day I was there.

When we arrived at the Tampa/St. Pete airport on Thursday and went outside to wait for Jared to pick us up, I immediately felt like I always feel when I fly to a warm place in the middle of winter: Pale, haggard, bloated, and more than a little disconcerted.

It always takes me a day or so to adjust to wearing shorts and a t-shirt outdoors.

On Saturday, Terry and I took a short morning walk with Jared around a nearby lake. (Also on the walk was Jared and Lyndsey's cat Salem, whom Jared carried in a little kitty container hung around his neck.) The conditions were perfect, with low humidity and temperatures right around 70 degrees.

It was so nice that I started wondering – as I have before – what it would be like to live in a place like Florida. A place where it rarely snows. A place where the sun doesn't disappear for weeks at a time. A place where outdoor activities are in play year-round.

From time to time, Terry and I have mused over the idea of someday moving south, or at least spending significant time there. It wouldn't happen for another decade, if at all, but the thought never quite leaves our minds.

Then I begin to consider the drawbacks. And there are several.

For one thing, it may hardly ever snow down there, but hurricanes and tropical storms are a thing. While Tampa/St. Pete doesn't get hit as often as other areas of Florida do, Hurricane Milton did force Jared and Lyndsey to evacuate south to Miami last fall.

Then there's the day-to-day weather. Not the winter weather, the summer weather. It gets hot in June, July, August and September. Really hot. Hot and humid. To the point that you don't really want to be outside.

There's also the simple fact that it isn't home. Having lived in one city and one city only, I have deep roots in my hometown. I know where things are located. I know lots of people. I understand how things work around here.

Would it be worth turning our whole world upside down in exchange for more pleasant winter and spring days? I don't know. I really don't.

Right now, it all depends on when you ask me. At the moment, having just spent time outside with Jack shoveling heavy, icy snow off our driveway, I'm feeling very pro-Florida. In a couple of months when it starts to warm up around here? Maybe not.

To be continued...

Zillow is great for stalking houses in which you used to live

I grew up here.

Including the house Terry and I currently own, I've only lived in three places my entire life.

And all three of those places are in the same city.

I grew up at good old 1807 Harding Drive, living there from birth through age 22. Then I moved into 1913 East 300th Street, our first house after we got married. We lived there for 11 years before moving up here to Miller Avenue in beautiful Wickliffe Heights.

For my local friends, it should be noted that while "Wickliffe Heights" is not a true political entity, it is the real name of the subdivision on and around Rockefeller Road in the southern part of the city. It even says "Wickliffe Heights" on our house deed.

Anyway, the point is, there was a time not long ago when, once you moved out of a house, your chances of ever seeing the inside of it again were pretty slim. You would have had to sell it to someone you know, or at least someone who was willing to let you back in if you would randomly swing by years later.

Nowadays, however, real estate listings are easily accessible online, and they often include copious photos of the inside of the house.

Take the Zillow.com listing for 1807 Harding, for instance. While it doesn't contain a "copious" number of photos, there are still five shots of the interior of the house that bring back a flood of memories.

There's the living room with the big front window looking out onto the porch. The one and only bathroom in a house that at one time contained six of us. The small but peaceful fenced-in backyard.

I love being able to look at these images whenever I want. My parents moved into that house 62 years ago this month, and it still holds considerable sentimental value.

The Zillow listing for 1913 East 300th offers much more in the way of photos, many of which reveal significant upgrades to the house since we moved out in 2003.

The enclosed front porch is familiar enough, but that deck in the backyard? Yeah, we didn't put that in.

Nor did we rip out the island in the kitchen or make the dining room look so fancy.

(In our defense, we spent most of our 300th Street years having and raising babies. We were a bit preoccupied.)

This shot of the kitchen?

You could have shown me that photo and asked if it looked familiar, and I would have said no. I spent more than a decade eating breakfasts and washing dishes in that room, but it's almost unrecognizable to me 20+ years later.

They say you can't go home again, and that's usually true. But you can at least see what home looks like now, which I think is pretty cool.

I forego a comfortable sleeping position so that our cat Molly can slumber peacefully on our bed

 

Having grown up a dog owner, I find cats to be very quirky. Or at least the ones we have are.

Take our kitty Molly, also known as "Fat Molly," "Floofy Molly," "Fat Floofy," or any number of other names that describe her two defining physical characteristics:

• She is somewhat obese.
• She is also a longhaired feline, with an emphasis on "long."

Molly is, like the cat in the stock photo above, colored black and white. But she's much larger than the cat pictured there, which means she tends to take up a considerable amount of room wherever she decides to park herself.

This is a significant fact for me, because as it turns out, Molly often likes to sleep near me.

What happens is that Terry and I will get into bed and spend a few minutes scrolling on our phones before turning out the light (which I realize you're not supposed to do, but I never seem to have much trouble falling asleep). Molly will often jump onto the bed and plop herself right on top of me as we do this.

She will then proceed to knead my belly with her front paws while suckling the bedspread, as if she were a kitten nursing from her mother.

We got Molly when she was very small, and the assumption has always been that she was separated from her mom much too early and has thus carried mommy issues with her to this day.

Anyway, getting to one of Molly's quirks, once we turn out the light, she will immediately jump from the bed and leave the room. I don't know why she does this, but at some point during the night she usually returns and jumps back onto my side of the bed.

Terry says she often wakes up in the middle of the night and sees me with my legs hanging off the side of the bed so as not to disturb Molly, who is sleeping where my feet would normally be.

I don't do this consciously, but apparently it's important to me that any cat who wants to sleep on or next to me not be disturbed.

Which is fine except for the fact that it diminishes the quality of my own sleep somewhat. I would very likely sleep better if I kept my legs under the covers with my body straight, rather than curled almost in an "L" shape because God forbid I nudge Molly and she leaves.

That cat really should appreciate everything I do for her, which includes not only accommodating her preferred sleeping spot but also giving her fresh food and water every day and cleaning up the litter boxes after her. Then there are the pets I give her throughout the day along with occasional tasty food scraps from the dinner table.

She loves me, I know, but I'll be honest and say I still don't think Ms. Chonks is being sufficiently grateful for all of this.