Slush Fun

Rise up all you lactose intolerant!  Shake off the shackles those who worry about fat content!  There is hope for all of us……and it is yummy.

Slush.  Even the word is fun. 

The problem in the past with slush is that you would get a couple good sips and then be left with a cup full of unflavored crushed ice.  But no longer.  There are more and more places making slush like a soft italian ice.  You use a spoon not a straw to get cold flavor in every bite.  And, as a bonus, you don’t have to worry about the devastating headache freeze (which I’m sure could kill you) that seems to go hand in straw with the overly liquid  version.

Also, slush is branching out.  The flavors at our favorite slush place include root beer, tangerine, and our favorite, sour apple.

So, while ice cream is still a great treat, slush is now my choice for overindulgence (as in at least once a day).  Now all we need is more consistently warm weather so I can eat it without freezing.

“A Comma Full of Love” for Papi

The narrative of Big Papi’s 2009 season has been a constant negative stream of consciousness.  Diminished skills, steroids, indirect (and delayed) responses.  But Wednesday night gave us a very welcome pause in that narrative.

75 degree weather, a crisply played game, a 2-2 score in the 9th inning…..and then something I never thought I’d see again: a Big Papi walkoff homerun.  No one does the walkoff as well.  As the ball flew out to right field, 38,000 held their breath and hoped the ball would not go foul.  And then when we all looked back to watch Papi circle the bases, he was right where we left him at home plate (if he had been even walking he would have been past first) allowing us all more time to cheer and enjoy the moment as much as he must have.  He lumbered around the bases as his teammates coordinated at home plate, and then 30 feet from the plate did his trademark (but not seen lately) flip of the batting helmet up into the air, break into a huge smile, and then jump on the plate, leading his team into the ryhytmic mosh pit back to the dugout.

http://soxanddawgs.com/2009/08/26/video-david-ortiz-walk-off-home-run-8-26-2009/

I’ve seen other Sox walkoffs, and they generally try to channel the Big Papi celebration in some way, but never get it down right.  The original is still the best.  And while I try to figure out how much damage the Ortiz news has done to his career and how I consider him, I have to say that I really enjoyed the ninth inning’s “comma full of love” (as the Dropkick Murphy’s would say of Tessie’s sigh).  One minute we were bracing for extra innings and an unknown amount of time before we left the ballpark, and the next minute Dirty Water was playing while we watched a sight I thought I would never get to see again.

Wake Me When the Season Starts

Two weeks.  That’s all it’s taken for me to be completely exhausted with preseason football.

The main point of exhibition games is for the NFL to prove how starved for football America really is.  The preseason games are pulling monster ratings numbers in New England.  It’s the equivalent of Picasso scribbling on a napkin to pay his dinner bill:  Hey, I’m Picasso,  look how I can make people value even my scribbles.

There are two more games left until the season starts.  Julian Edelman made the first game arguably worthwhile (if only to hear my brother shout with glee and hang up on me so he could watch the replay….he would be framing the dish of Picasso’s crumbs if he were the waiter).  The second game was unwatchable.  And we have two more left.

The most interesting analysis I heard from the second game came from Lee Ann:

“Hey, Bellichick got man boobs over the summer.”

Yes, it’s time for the regular season to start…..the sooner the better.

Flagging Interest

I picked up Molly and Emma from a birthday party last weekend.  On my way up to the door I noticed a large American flag hanging straight  out above the doorway over the path.  I braced myself.

It’s a strange reaction to the American flag.  Especially since for the vast majority of my life the sight of the flag made me think of July 4th, patriotic songs, fireworks and the like.  The same types of things that Molly and Emma (thankfully) think of when they see the flag now.

But somewhere along the way, especially when I see the flag in every day contexts, I think of it as a way for the flag wavers to make a statement.  And that statement often isn’t limited to patriotism, but covers an “in-your-face, America love it or leave it, no country for pansies” type of ideology.  That’s what I braced for on my way in to pick up the girls.

It’s my fault for letting the flag take on this other meaning at the expense of the meaning I like.  But I also think it could be helpful to have another American emblem that does not have the acquired connotations that, after so many years of Democrat v. Republican, now dominates my thought when I see the flag.  Something that celebrates the choice, flexibility, and opportunity of living in the USA.  Maybe the universal remote.

Kriticizing Kars for Kids

1 877 Kars for Kids

K-A-R-S Kars for kids

1 877 Kars for Kids

Donate your car today

Those are the lyrics to the most maddeningly catchy jingle on the radio today.  I looked for an audio link to embed in this blog, but couldn’t find one.  That’s probably a good thing, because trust me you’d end up with the melody kicking around the inside of your head for at least the next two hours.

So that got me to thinking.  The song itself is evil genius — a marketer using all the unfair advantages of auditory cocaine to the company’s benefit.  But that’s balanced out by the positive dividend, right?  I mean after all the song is a means (a vehicle?) for raising money for some worthy causes.

But what are the worthy causes?  They don’t really say in the ad.  All we know is that it benefits Kids, or maybe Kidz since they don’t spell that part out in the lyrics.

Well, after a search on the web, it turns out that Kars for Kids is affiliated directly with “Oorah” a camp in upstate New York.  Kars for Kids gives its donations exclusively to Oorah.  And Oorah is a camp to bring the teachings of Orthodox Judaism to children of non observant Jews. 

So, it seems like Kars for Kids has a great business model: they provide a service to people who get a tax write off of $500 (no expense for Kars for Kids) for donating their car; Kars for Kids then sells the parts or auctions the car for likely considerably more than $500, and provides the proceeds to help run the camp and spread the gospel….well not the gospel, but the talmudic equivalent.  The money definitely goes to Oorah, but Kars for Kids is not really a 3rd party but a subsidiary of Oorah.  I wonder how much the counselors are paid. 

Nothing they are doing is illegal.  But the whole thing seems very unethical…clearly the extra K is not for Kosher.  Especially when the song is looped through about five times in the 30 second ad, but the details of the exclusivity (in both number and mission) of the charity involved is never mentioned.  Maybe “Kars for teaching Orthodox Judaism in upstate New York to Kidz” would throw off the meter.  But I’m guessing it was a purposeful decision to appeal to a wider audience who might think their donations are going to help kids combat a more life threatening condition than secularism.

Gym Etiquette

I don’t care if you sit on the equipment I want to use and catch your breath for minutes on end.

I don’t care (that much) if you don’t wipe up the flop sweat when you’re done with the machine.

I don’t care if you preen around checking your muscles in the mirror.

I don’t care if you don’t put the barbells back in the rack, as long as I can find them.

BUT……

Do not change the channel from the Red Sox replay when Youkilis is about to charge the mound and I haven’t seen it yet!!!!!!  At least ask if anyone is watching!  What kind of neanderthal are you?!?!  The market hasn’t even opened yet and you have a need to switch to Financial News??

I apologize for all the negative waves I telepathically sent your way.  I’m sure your day will be disrupted in small ways that will make you wonder what is going on.

Run to Daylight

Warmth gets all the publicity.  Florida, Arizona, and the south dominate travel magazines with ads trumpeting the benefits of warm weather and the related easy living.  And, yes, I much prefer summer to winter as many burnt out (frozen out) New Englanders do.

But there is another geographic characteristic that is overlooked and vastly underrated: daylight.  Every summer we pack up the kids and head to northern Michigan.  We look forward to getting together with extended family and being on the coastline of Lake Michigan.  But I always forget about another benefit: the dramatic extension of sunlight that region has over New England. 

Glen Arbor, MI has the dual good luck of pulling a good lattitude (or maybe longitude, I’m not sure) and being on the border of a time zone.  The result?….today’s sunset for Ashland, MA is listed at 7:52; in Glen Arbor, MI it is 8:56.  And I think it may be even more disparate earlier in the summer. This difference in daylight allows us to maximize our lake time, hiking time, and all around good times when we are visiting on vacation.

So while year round warmth is definitely a selling point, for those of us who appreciate a change of seasons (though wish it would be skewed more toward spring/summer) the difference in daylight is a potentially even more valuable asset, and it is much less publicized.  One of these daylight-strong areas should adopt a slogan that calls attention to this advantage.   Or maybe not….there’s already growing grumblings about “damn tourists” in Glen Arbor.

Mixed Message

Last night I asked the girls whether I should shave my goatee.  Molly said “no”; Emma pondered for a while and eventually said “no”.

As I walked away I said “The no’s have it”……which if you just change a space turns into “The no shave it”.  Which I think is really interesting.  Which Molly and Emma looked at me funny when I told them upon returning to their room.  Which is why I keep a blog.

Waking up on the Right Side of the Bed

A couple months ago Bob was incredulous when I told him Lee Ann and I do not have definitive “sides” of the bed.  There is no plan, I told him, we just sleep where we happen to be.  Some nights that’s the right side, some nights that’s the left.

Bob looked at me the same way I imagine my Nixon supporting Uncle looked at my Berkeley hippie cousin when he came home for December vacation in 1970.  He hit me with a litany of questions that I thought were trivial but he thought were substantial: Whose alarm clock do you use? What if your books are far away? How about your cup of water?  I explained to him the concepts of leaning, speaking, and sharing. 

But here’s the strange thing.  Following this conversation I mentioned the topic to a number of people, all under the expectation that they would join me in mocking Bob’s rigidity.  And all of them have been equally shocked that Lee Ann and I are side of bed agnostics.  Often they are so disbelieving that they think we are lying (or as Liz suggested, that it was a phase we were going through…..a 12 year and counting phase).

The reactions have been enough for me to question our routine.  And once doubt creeps in it’s very difficult to get back to the carefree days of plopping down unburdened and going to sleep.  I started wondering if a recent streak of several nights in a row on the left side was the beginning of Liz’s predicted side preference.  And then when I changed, I wondered if it was really my change or just trying to fight the doomsayers. 

I finally decided that Lee Ann and I are not randomly choosing sides.  We sleep based on the specific conditions of the night.  If one of us is getting up particularly early we choose the side closest to the shower to let the other one sleep. If we think Molly or Emma might wake up in the middle of the night and one of us is extremely sleepy (read me), then that person (again me) will sneakily choose the side furthest from the door.  So maybe it’s not as random as I first indicated, but it still changes and feels completely unplanned.  Whatever the case I do not plan to lose sleep over it.

“Summer of” Summary

We are well into August.  By this time usually a theme for summer has developed for me, but this year it seems more inconclusive.  Here are a few nominees for my Summer of  _____:

Summer of Fruit - I have never eaten as much fruit as I have the past few months.  It all started with Jaclyn and Teddy telling me cherries were on sale.  That started me toward  realizing how much I like fruit and rediscovering plums, peaches, apricots as well as the standard apples and bananas.  Fruit is the comfort food of the recession….expensive but once you start eating healthy it dissuades you from spending money on all the other bad food.

Summer of No Summer – I demand a refund.  It rains all the time.  We had cold snaps well into July.  Where are the dog days?  From a weather standpoint it feels like Summer started yesterday.

Summer of Dunkin’ Donuts – seems contradictory to Summer of Fruit, but not really.  Supplementing fruit with an egg white flatbread and indulging in an iced coffee makes me actually look forward to my morning commute.  I’ve become addicted. 

Summer of Plasma – no, not blood donations, the TV.  Prices have come down so much that we retired the bulky box set that was like watching through sunglasses.

Summer of Steroids – nothing really new here….just a series of events that made it even more clear that anyone who thinks of baseball the way they did even five years ago is seriously disillusioned.  I can still enjoy baseball but the reasons have to be different.  We knew everything was a mess back in 2005, but it turns out since we did not know the specific truths those were the good ol’ days.

Summer of Monkey Bar Golf – I had no idea what this was a few months ago.  Then the girls came home from camp one day talking about Monkey Golf, which turned out to be the more sensical Monkey Bar Golf when we saw the equipment.  It is now our favorite game.