Generic Suburban Dad

[GenericDad]

Commentary on life in suburbia, raising kids, fighting crabgrass and trying to keep entropy at bay

Sometimes late at night, after the wife and kids (boy age 4 and girl age 6) are asleep and the dog (a cross between a something and a who knows what, that looks like a 50lb Benjie) is snuffling around the yard (fenced in) finding just the right place to do his business, I find myself standing on my pouch (screened in) looking at the other houses in my neighborhood. Every house here was built by a “custom” builder, which means that you can have almost anything you want for enough money. As it turns out there are at least three houses with the same floor plan as ours but a different roof line or something else changed to make it “custom.” Almost every driveway has a mini-van or an SUV parked out front and a trampoline or play structure (expensive swing set) in the back yard. And so do I.

I have become the Generic Suburban Dad. My wife drives a mini-van, I dove a Volvo (it got totaled in a snow storm by a Ford Explorer last winter) and now I am diving my “mid life crisis” Miata. We have cell phones, cable TV, high speed internet, a “bonus room” and a self propelled lawn mower. Stuff I never had growing up. Ok so some of it didn’t exist but that is not the point, we own stuff, lots of it and I live a life that seems to be a copy of all the lives around me, what the TV says I should be. I live a primetime sit-com without any writers providing the snappy dialog for me.

 

[GenericDad]

Father’s Day Dilemma

What does the “Generic Suburban Dad” do for Father’s Day? Well it is kind of ironic, but he spends the day AWAY from his kids. Yes the thing that makes it so he can celebrate the day is the thing he avoids on that day and doing one of the things that makes him “un-generic” or somewhat unique. I race my “mid-life crisis Miata.” Now of course being who I am (the “Generic Suburban Dad” and only “somewhat” unique) this is NOT like NASCAR in a Miata. This is autocross (aka: Solo II -http://www.scca.org/amateur/solo2/index.html).

Picture an old airport runway, weeds and cracks in the pavement, what at first glance looks like a sea of orange safety cones, and around 130 cars, everything from brand new Porsche’s and Corvettes to a really beat up Civic or old RX-7. You race around the cones as fast as you can (and trust me even fast drives are not hitting more than about 50mph if that) it is you against the clock. So it is a pretty safe way to get out and drive your car in a way that would get your license revoked if you tried it on the street, and you get to spend the day with similarly inclined people.

[arrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggg I am trying to write this and my wife is sitting on the couch near me munching popcorn and the dog is whining for his share…..the noise, the smell makes this nearly impossible – good night]

 

[GenericDad]

Back to Dad-dom

A new week and the Generic Suburban Dad (GSD for short) is back to “Dad-dom” with pick up and drop off of daughter at camp and dance lessons (once your kids get to kindergarten you think “Yes, no more day care!” but no one tells you that you still need something for the summer. Oops, and the state frowns on you as a parent if you just leave them home alone all day with a bowl of water and cereal to eat. Or on nice days leaving them tied up in the back yard, well I guess “Kids as Pets” should be a whole another entry), cooking dinner, cleaning house, and reading night-time stories.

 

[GenericDad]

Plumber, Handyman, Hanky

Home repair is a major part of being a GSD and any project requires at least three trips the hardware store and a cool new tool. Unless you are doing the work for someone else, then you get a bottle of wine and lunch.

Today was a unique experience. A friend that I work with had (important note: notice the use the past tense!) a leaking faucet in his tub and asked if I would take a look at it (being the GSD I of course know all about home repair, while he is a Single-Never-Married-No-Kids guy). So yesterday I went and took a look and seemed a pretty easy repair (warning, warning – if it looks easy, beware!). Pull out the two knobs replace the washers and put the whole thing back together.

So went back today, pulled off the knobs and off to the hardware store. Once there we were faced with an amazing array of bits and pieces of brass and rubber but we actually came away with the right part (much to his and my amazement, one trip to the store is just unheard of and I didn’t get to buy a new cool tool!). Back at his house all the new parts went right in like they were made for it, water back on and it all just worked! That almost never happens. I guess good home repair karma is saved up for when you do jobs for friends and not for your own home. I will just see what happens I have a ceiling fan I need to install tonight, electricity, ladders and small children, anything can happen, my son might blow his nose on me again.

 

[GenericDad]

“It took me two years before I didn’t suck”

That was a quote by the driving instructor I had a couple of months ago at a one day autocross school. I think that was supposed to be encouragement what it did was make me question his credentials as an instructor. Those credentials took another blow as I had him drive my car through the course (because every time I drove I got lost, that whole “sea of cones thing”) and damn if he didn’t also get lost and miss part of the course. Ok at the time it did make me feel better, “hey if the instructor can screw it up, it must be hard!” But now thinking back on it I do wonder at my reaction.

The reason I bring this up is not to really talk about my instructor but to contrast this with a young guy I met at the last race I went to. He was about half my age and drove a nearly new Chevy Cavalier, not what comes to mind when you think “sports car.” I on the other hand am driving a supercharged Miata, a nice combination. It could use lots of other add-ons to make it handle better but all in all it should beat the pants off a Cavalier. Nope. Nadda. Nil. He and I have been to about the same number of races so it is not that he is more experienced than I am. He is just better than I am. A lot better.

He takes a car that has is not nearly as fast as mine, does not handle nearly as well as mine and yet he drives the same course about 4 seconds faster than me. I am sure some of you (if there really is anyone reading this) must be thinking “4 seconds that is not much faster.” The fastest drivers drove the course in about 45 seconds, some of the slowest were clocking about 60 seconds, and so you see with only about 15 seconds difference, 4 seconds is a long time.

The point of this ramble is, why am I doing this? Do I have to wait another year before I don’t suck at this? Should I even bother comparing myself to some guy half my age? I don’t know. I drive autocross because it is fun, it is an escape, it is something that not everyone else does, it makes me just a little different, but I am competitive and if I am going to invest time and money (yes it does cost, but probably less each year than skiing) into this I don’t want to suck. I guess I will at least give it till the end of the current season (November) that will be my 2nd year. I don’t expect to be winning trophies, but I would like to see that I am improving.

There are lots of things I know I suck at, I am looking for something that I can point to and say “see I can do that, I don’t suck.”

Self reflection sucks, maybe I should give that up first.

 

[GenericDad]

Shouting in the Wind

As I have posed I have been watching the numbers, numbers of posts and number of views. This is not a contest, there are no awards to be won, but it does make me wonder what makes a “successful” (I know this can be defined in many ways for many people) journal. But for now I am just looking at the numbers. I was curious is it really just a matter of the people who post the most get the most readers? I noticed that after my first post I had about 30 views, was that a lot or not? So without any judgment of what is “good” I thought I would just see what happens when you take the Journals that have the most Views and divide that buy the number of Posts and then sort by that new number Views/Posts and see how I compare. Is this useful or meaningful? Don’t know, doubt it, but I found it interesting and since I went to the trouble of doing it figured I should post the results, so here they are….

<table> <tr><td>Title<td>Author<td>Posts<td>Views<td>Views/Posts</tr> <tr><td>True Porn Clerk Stories<td>Ali Davis<td>42<td>861,131<td>20,503</tr> <tr><td>Read This First <td>mullaney<td>2<td>4,263<td>2,132</tr> <tr><td>How to start a journal <td>mullaney<td>1<td>1,143<td>1,143</tr> <tr><td>Bargain of the Day <td>Ace$Thugg<td>29<td>9,033<td>311</tr> <tr><td>Private! Do Not Read!! <td>Mr. Caustic<td>68<td>9,687<td>142</tr> <tr><td>The Absolutely True Stories of the Phoenix Swinging Couple<td>Chastain86<td>72<td>9,915<td>138</tr> <tr><td>Trials of Chastity <td>Yonphi<td>157<td>19,118<td>122</tr> <tr><td>Ramblings of a Single Mom <td>Gypsy<td>271<td>24,063<td>89</tr> <tr><td>Funky Fence-Sitting Librarian Rant <td>Sugar-Snit<td>391<td>30,489<td>78</tr> <tr><td>The thoughts of a lonely girl <td>punkydolz<td>75<td>5,041<td>67</tr> <tr><td>Fish Tank Death-Match <td>kevhines<td>48<td>3,124<td>65</tr> <tr><td>Experimental A Dirty Word <td>Randilicious<td>163<td>10,089<td>62</tr> <tr><td>Rants of the flabbergasted <td>Bob Biter<td>54<td>2,763<td>51</tr> <tr><td>Everything is discombobulated <td>minou<td>375<td>19,055<td>51</tr> <tr><td>I'd Better Write It Down Before I Forget <td>oldlady<td>71<td>3,258<td>46</tr> <tr><td>Bunched Panties: "You're Not Gonna Read It, So I Might As Well Say It" <td>benorbeen<td>104<td>4,362<td>42</tr> <tr><td>Strippers, Booze, Weightlifting academia: From NY <td>clubfootedmijet<td>85<td>3,524<td>41</tr> <tr><td>Complete F**king idiots <td>Rich<td>76<td>3,020<td>40</tr> <tr><td>This is not the life I ordered, but it smells good. <td>stanley<td>70<td>2,665<td>38</tr> <tr><td>Hostage in My own Head <td>deb_u_taunt2003<td>86<td>3,163<td>37</tr> <tr><td>A losers diary <td>burns1<td>459<td>16,729<td>36</tr><tr><td><font color=yellow>Generic Suburban Dad<td><font color=yellow>GenericDad<td><font color=yellow>4<td><font color=yellow>140<td><font color=yellow>35</tr></font> <tr><td>strawberry popsicles and cookie crumbs <td>Lady A<td>106<td>3,167<td>30</tr> <tr><td>ramblings of a something <td>brown_eyed_girl<td>325<td>9,221<td>28</tr> <tr><td>dead puppies arn't much fun <td>raven<td>108<td>2,950<td>27</tr> <tr><td>The Fine Print <td>Nomdeplume<td>123<td>3,316<td>27</tr> <tr><td>Meaningless Meanderings <td>*Dizzy*<td>156<td>3,734<td>24</tr> <tr><td>NYC Propaganda <td>Todd Simmons<td>200<td>4,676<td>23</tr> <tr><td>Add it up <td>Aimeethepoet<td>494<td>10,765<td>22</tr> </table>

So am I doing well or not? I have about 35 people for each entry I post. Not great not bad so it looks as if I am either holding someone’s interest or perhaps I am just attracting 35 new readers with each post. I would like to know, but don’t know how I could really find out, and perhaps I am better of writing to myself and not to some imagined audience.

 

[GenericDad]

Bad Parent Award

This is sort of a running joke between my wife and me. One of us will yell at the kids or forget to pack lunch for my daughter, etc. Anyway we own up to our failings and get the “Bad Parent Award” until someone else does something worse and you get to pass it on. We have told some of our friends about the award and it seems to be getting passed around (I have even considered printing up certificates).

All this is just background to telling you about why I currently am the holder of the “Bad Parent Award.” During my daughter’s last week of school I was packing her lunch and she came over looked up at me and said (she is 6 years old, has big brown eyes), “Daddy, some of the kids at school get notes in with their lunch can I have one too?” (Thank you Sir for playing and here is your certificate) So I packed her a note and have done so almost everyday since, but does that make up for the fact that my daughter had to ask for a very simple sign of affection from me, one that costs me nothing but a very little amount of time and consideration? Nope.

So I am the current holder of the award, but it is only a matter of time, we are parents, human and far from perfect.

 

[GenericDad]

Vacuuming Vegetables

I am not sure if this is really a good idea or not, but the management at my local grocery store seem to think so, because as I was trying to decide between red and green grapes this evening (got some of both), there was one of the workers vacuuming the vidalia onions. The worker was working and shoppers were shopping, did it strike anyone else as odd and were they just acting like they see this sort of thing all the time. Ok I guess it was not so odd that I expected people to stop, stare, point and cover the eyes of small children. But really is vacuuming vidalias (I do admit that “vacuuming vidalias” was fun to type…see I did it again!) normal and I have just missed it up to this point? I will have to keep looking; maybe next time I am there I will see someone polishing the peaches or dusting the dog food.

 

[GenericDad]

Picov Andropov

I don’t know exactly how it happens, but it seems that around 11am every Saturday morning I am driving in the car, sometimes with the wife and kids and sometimes not. What is the importance of 11am Saturdays, well that is when the NPR (National Public Radio) show “Car Talk” (http://cartalk.cars.com/) is on. Now if you have never heard the show heard the show it is two brothers, one who still runs and the other who used to run an auto repair shop in Boston. People call in with questions about their cars and Tom and Ray tell them what is broken and how to fix it. Mixed in with car advice is a lot of general silliness.

At the end of each show they list all of the people who made the show possible (http://cartalk.cars.com/About/credits.html) like their “Chief Legal Counsel Hugh Louis Dewey of Dewey, Cheetham & Howe.” They have been doing this show for so long that the list of credits has grown quite long. Each week you listen to the end of the show to find out who all the new people are.

Ok, end of long into to sort of funny thing.

A few months ago my wife and I heard the show and one of the credits was for their “Russian Chauffeur Picov Andropov.” I didn’t give it much thought at the time, but this week we were trying to figure out exactly who was going to pick my daughter up from camp and who was going to drop her off each day. What should have been a simple thing turned in to a typical GSD complication, I had morning meetings so I could not drop off, my wife wanted my son to have a swim lesson at the pool where my daughter is at camp, so she should pick up, and one day I was going to have to do both…somehow one of us said something like, “ok, I will do pick up Monday and Tuesday and you do drop off those days and Wednesday I will do both pick up and drop off and Thursday….” We were saying “pick up and drop off” so often and all of the sudden we were both talking in funny Russian accents and saying “me Picov and you Dropov.”

Now the week is almost over we have a it has almost become habit of calling each other by these names although they change depending on the day and the role.

Well it was funny to us. Have a couple of drinks or have two kids and a dog and maybe this will strike you funny as well. I don’t get out much have to take my humor where I can find it.

 

[GenericDad]

GSD Hung Over

Last Friday night I had too much to drink, tequila shots. It was not the drinking that was the problem, but the waking up the next morning, and even that would not have been so bad if I could have just slept in. Well that was just not going to happen, kids and dog. Dog had an appointment to go to the vet and the kids were awake.

One of the first lessons you learn as a parent is that when the kids are awake, you are awake, if not to protect them from hurting themselves then to protect the house from them hurting it. I discovered one more very important thing about kids being awake, the things kids like best first thing in the morning are the exact opposites of what you want when you are hung over.

Kids like bright lights (kid pulling shades open and letting bright morning sunshine in, “look daddy its wake up time!”)

Hung over people like dark.

Kids like loud noises (“daddy, Daddy, DADDY, DADDY!!!!!”)

Hung over people like silence.

Kids like fast motion (while jumping up and down on my bed, with me still in it, “daddy, I can almost touch the fan!” this is just bad for a number of reasons, yes the ceiling fan is on)

Hung over people like to be very, very still. The only time a hung over person moves fast is maybe from the bed to the toilet (and if I have to spell that one out for you, go get drunk and you will learn soon enough).

So is there a lesson here, sure, you can drink in the safety of your own home, but if you wake up hung over and you have kids, make sure they know how to turn the TV on themselves and get their own breakfast.

 

[GenericDad]

Old Songs, Old Audience, Old Memories, New Audience, New Experiences, New Technology

For the past week or so I have been driving my daughter to camp every morning. When I am in the car alone I tend to listen to the news on NPR, but with her in the car I don’t feel that death and destruction is good drive time listening. As a solution for this I have pulled out my old CDs and play them in the car, some of them I have not listened to in years. One of the first I tried out was James Taylor’s Greatest Hits, she loved it. I remember vividly listening to and singing most of these songs when I was at camp and here I was listening to them driving my 6 year old daughter to camp. It was a very odd moment for me, my past and future converging (seems like there ought to be some kind of warning sign for that kind of thing, “Danger! Future merging, past must yield”).

At the same time that I have dusted off some of my old music, I also recently heard a radio report about peer-to-peer music sharing, but since the death of Napster I have not been in to downloading music much. Most of my old music is on LPs so downloading some of it seemed easier then trying to hook up my old record player in the car (as noted before, I drive a Miata and there really is just not room, not to mention the vibrations and road noise). Most of the report I heard was about the record companies suing people for downloading music, but what if I already own the music, but not in digital form? I think I should be within my rights to have electronic copies of music I own.

I will admit to one copy of one song that I did download that I do not own a licensed copy of, “Lean on Me” sung by Al Green. My daughter was in a little play at camp and her group danced and sang “Lean on Me” (way to cute and only a parent would have enjoyed it, and only if it was your kid singing). So that night when we got home, I downloaded the song and burned it to a CD so she could play it on the boom box in her room. She watched as I did all of this, when I was done and she heard the music she looked up at me with wonder and joy and said, “Computers are cool!” I have to agree, but what is really cool is doing something so simple and being rewarded with such a smile. Kids are cool. Making someone happy is cool.

 

[GenericDad]

Death by a 1000 Responsibilities

Leave work, pick daughter up at camp, mail package (ok, it didn’t get mailed, but I did stop at the post office, yes after hours, but you used to be able to weigh a package, buy stamps from the machine and push the box through a slot and be done with it. Not any more. No more stamped packages over 1lb, welcome to the new millennium), call wife on cell phone (and tell her the, no I have still not mailed the package), drive home, make dinner (just daughter and I, son and wife at son's swimming lesson), clean up from dinner, sweep floor, help bath kids, brush daughters hair, brush son’s hair, read stories, move laundry around (from washer to dryer) make son’s bed (he had a bit of an, um, "accident" last night), listen to “I’m hungry/thirsty/have boo boos” and other procrastinations, feed dog, clean frog (fired bellied toads, to be exact) water bowl, let dog out, let dog in, get more drink for son, work on bills, fold cloths, pack towels in daughter’s back pack for camp tomorrow, obsess about what I need to get done at work tomorrow, obsess about the people I have to work with tomorrow, obsess about all the things that I am not getting done at home or at work.

All those wasted hours between midnight and 6am, just think how I could be getting my life in order, who really needs sleep anyway? Me. Good night.

 

[GenericDad]

Ants

I hate ants. Once when I was little I saw a science fiction movie where some scientist were out in the desert studying ants and for some reason, somehow, at the end of the movie the ants came in the night and took the scientist down in to the ground and turned them in to giant ants. That image has stuck with me and creeped me out ever since.

Today I was working on installing some new software with someone in their office, and it was infested with ants, no fault of his. It was not like there was old coke cans or food crumbs all over the place, just the ants. They crawled on us, the crawled over the manual I was reading from, they crawled over the keyboard, they crawled over the mouse and all the cables running to and from the computer. Ick. We spent most of the day working on the new server and every now and then reaching over and smashing little brown ants with our finger tips, followed by trips to the bathroom to wash our hands. Major ick.

Now for the weird part, I had to run an errand at lunch and when I got into my car, the radio came on (to NPR of course) and there was an interview with an entomologist who wrote a book about….ants.

Now for the funny part, the errand I had to run was to mail a package to my (have you guessed it yet?) my aunt!

 

[GenericDad]

Go play in the street! Really, take chalk.

Every year my family spends a week with my parents at their condo (all 600 sq ft of it, we are a close family) at Chautauqua (http://www.chautauqua-inst.org/). I won’t go into all the details about the place, but it is on a lake (Chautauqua Lake, this is in upstate NY, south of Buffalo, North or Erie Pa. and not too far from Jamestown NY) and the best fast description is camp for adults. It is a tiny little town unto itself with a post office and ice cream shop. They have a 9 week season and each week has a theme (Exploration: Land, Sea, Air, Space (July 13-19) last week when we where there) and lecturers from all over the world to speak each morning and concerts every night. There are also camps for kids so the adults can take classes, go to the lectures and play tennis or golf.

Yes, it is not an inexpensive place to be (thus the 600 sq ft condo). My parents are retied and they spend the whole summer there. They own their condo so they don’t have to pay weekly rentals but do have to pay for their “gate pass” that gets them on the grounds during the season and into the concerts at night.

(Again long intro too mildly funny thing) The really nice thing (well one of many, we were there for a week and I never turned on a computer or TV, that is also nice oh and did not miss them at all) is the interaction of generations you see there, children, parents and grandparents and even great grandparents. You see more extended families there then anywhere else I spend time. Just like our family there are many retirees who spend time there and invite their children to come (mostly to bring the grand children I am convinced) and spend time.

Because the “Institution” is gated (and I am sure also because of the cost) kids get to do things that I would never allow them to do at home. Oh yes also because they don’t allow cars on the grounds, only for pickup, drop off or handicapped, everyone walks, bikes or takes the little golf cart trams or little busses around. My 4 and 6 year old get to ride their bikes in the streets to the library, ALONE. Ok so I can see form the porch almost all the way to there but that is not the point. It is like a whole town of grand parents, for example a kid playing around the fountain in the central plaza falls and bangs her knee, and about 10 adults go over to help. One picks her up another gets her a drink of water, and another happens to have band aids and wipes with them, the child is cared for and none of them are related to her.

This now finally brings me to my point. I found myself last week yelling at my daughter last week, “get off the sidewalk and ride your bike in the street!” Also we were waiting at the tram stop to go for a ride and an older gentleman asked my daughter her name and how she was enjoying her stay. She hid her face and he commented to me something about how we teach children not to talk to strangers, except at Chautauqua, where you talk to everyone, you wave to people as you walk by and they are sitting on their front porch.

It is a different place sort of lost in time. One that makes me long for a time and place that most likely never did exist to begin with. But we get to go there for one week every year, maybe next year we will go for two.

 

[GenericDad]

Bathroom humor?

For the past two days I have been in a training session in a very nice facility. A good computer lab, good projector, the a/c works and very clean bathrooms. One the first day on our first break I escaped to the bathroom and as I was standing at the urinal there was this little sticker right near the handle (which I of course read, not much else to do as you are standing there and no where else to really look either) that said “Conserver Water, Flush only when necessary. Every drop counts.” That got me thinking; I understand the concept of water conservation but now is this really where you want to cut back? What exactly is an “un-necessary” flush? It seems pretty straightforward to me, you pee you flush, and how often do you flush without peeing? If I had no intention of peeing I would not choose to spend time reading the stickers over the urinal, but maybe that is just me. Personally I find it just a tad (this is sarcastic for a whole lot) disgusting to walk into a bathroom and see and smell someone else’s bodily waste floating in the toilet. I am a parent and I have to deal with lots of bodily functions, my kids, my dog, and mine, I don’t need to deal with anyone else’s (ok, I have been known to change the diaper of a very close friends baby, but they are very very close friends). So I flush when I am done and no more often then I need to. Ok I will try to do my part for the environment, I won’t wash my hands after…

 

[GenericDad]

Musical Beds

“Round and round we go and where you wake up nobody knows.” This seems to be a game we play some nights at my house, you go to sleep in one bed and wake up in another. Last night it went something like this:

9pm
Master bedroom (King sized bed) – me, wife, dog (sometimes on the bed and sometimes off)
Daughter’s bedroom (Full sized bed) – daughter (age 6)
Son’s bedroom (Twin sized) - son (age 4)

Later that same night (3am ish?):
My daughter wakes me up trying to get into our (me and wife, ok and dog) bed says she had an “accident” and her bed is wet. I try to move over to make room for her, but bump into wife. I nudge her to move over but she can’t because I now see that my son is asleep on the other side of her, I have no idea when that happened. My wife gets up and strips wet sheets off daughter’s bed. Daughter is now asleep in our bed. Wife goes into son’s room to sleep. I take my pillow and follow a little later when I notice she has not come back. So now:

Master bedroom – son & daughter
Son’s room – me and wife
Top of stairs – dog

Even later that night:
It is hard for two adults to fit into a single (well double, whatever) bed if all they really want to do is sleep also the dog starts barking at shadows outside and my wife now nudges me and tells me to go make him stop. I get up and go to the bonus room and threaten my dogs life, he stops barking and i lay down on the couch and go to sleep.

Master bedroom: son & daughter
Son’s room – wife
Bonus room (large sectional couch)– me and dog (on the floor next to me)

Still later that night:
My wife wakes me up, she has had a nightmare, it happens even to adults sometimes, and she doesn’t want to be alone, will I please get up and go into the guestroom with her?

Master bedroom - son & daughter
Guest room (Queen sized bed)– me and wife
Top of stairs – dog

This morning:
I wake up alone in the guest room, turns out wife still could not sleep, nightmare had something to do with the kids so she moved back in to the master bedroom at some point.

So in the end
Master bedroom – wife, son and daughter
Guest room – me and dog (now on the bed)

We joke about this as our version of “bed hopping” or “sleeping around” perhaps not as exciting as other meanings for those terms, but then again I don’t get into trouble if I get caught.

 

[GenericDad]

Wine Whine

Last Thanksgiving we went to visit my sister and her husband in Seattle and the first night we were there he opened a bottle of wine for us to sip on. I drank half of it learned what a GOOD bottle of wine tasted like. He being the generous person he is about four months latter shipped me six bottles of that very same wine that I fell in love with.

In the mean time back at home I tasted and dumped out at least a dozen bottle of wine that I had laying (well standing) around that were not great to begin with and since they had not been stored correctly (in part that standing thing, and a temperature thing and a moving thing) had all “turned” (turned in to something between water and vinegar, yeech!).

Also during that time I had started on my own to try to find some decent wine that I could enjoy and afford. My wife and I found a new favorite restaurant and they had a wine we have also come to love. I took one of the bottles home with me and then to a local wine shop to see if I could buy some directly and not have to go to the restaurant every time I wanted some. I expected that it would be a whole lot less expensive from the store than the restaurant (you see where this is going yet?).

At the store I asked if they could get me some, the looked at the bottle and said it would not be a problem so I told them I wanted six bottles. I waited and waited and waited for the phone call and about two weeks later my wine arrives. I had also found one other wine that I liked a lot so at the wine shop I grabbed six bottles of my new find and they had the six of the one I ordered, that made up one “case” so I got 10% off the price, nice. Well I was in for a bit of a surprise, because it turns out the restaurant was not marking their wine up nearly as much as I had thought (or as it turns out I happened to pick a very expensive wine shop, to shop in) and even with my 10% off I now had about $200 worth or wine. Well if I have to have $200 worth or something this was not so bad, but not what I was expecting, besides wine doesn’t go bad. Remember what I said before about all the wine I dumped?

I bring it all home and realize that, yes wine does go bad and now I had spend my wine budget for the year and if I didn’t store this wine properly a year from now I would have $200 worth of glass and cork.

Now some of you may not know this but living down south, it can get hot and we don’t have basements and to store wine you need cool, but not too cool, and some humidity so the corks don’t try out. There is no such place in my house, unless I want to run the air conditioner and keep the house at about 50 degrees and leave a damp towel over my bottles of wine (well my dog would like it, he likes the cold).

The solution, a small wine refrigerator, they even sell them at most large hardware stores now. Now I am looking at spending $80-$400 for a fridge to protect my $200 investment. This is starting to get out of hand, I can not seem to pick one, and there are too many choices. The only measurable comparison I have been able to do so far to look at the storage price per bottle. For example the least expensive one I have found stores 16 bottles for $80, that comes out to $5 per bottle. I have also kept my eye on one that stores 30 bottles for $200 and that ends up costing $6.66 a bottle.

I can’t decide, so for right now I am just drinking them, it may just turn out that I finish them before I buy the fridge and then I won’t need it, unless my brother-in-law sends me more.

 

[GenericDad]

Re-Wine-d

I did it. I bought a wine fridge. One of the overly large hardware store chains was having a sale and mislabeled one of the wine fridges so I managed to walk away (well roll away with it on one of those little flat carts, thing weighs a whole lot more than I thought it would) with one that holds 30 bottles for $179 which cools my wine for $5.97 a bottle not including tax.

Once I got it home, my wife and I had a long conversation about where to put it, we have a couple of ideas, but the best is going to take some construction. In our kitchen is a small built in desk where the phone, telephone books, cookbooks, pens and note pads live (along with generations of discarded scraps of papers and bits of old bills), ideally we will move the desk part up to counter height, put the fridge under that and build in some drawers next to it. Some of this work I can do myself, some of it we may have to have done to insure that the new cabinet doors match the rest of the kitchen.

In the mean time the wine fridge is sharing space in the kitchen where the dog’s water and food bowls sit (I don’t think he minds sharing as long as they still get filled on a fairly regular schedule). After the wife and kids went to sleep I unboxed it, put it in it’s spot, cut some felt feet for it (so I can slide it around on the hardwood floors with out gouging them too badly) and plugged it in. I love the moment when you buy something new, you plug it in and it actually works, no fuses blew, no smoke come out, all it did was give that reassuring “hmmmmmmm” and it started to get cold inside, nice. I read the directions, set the temperature and went to get my stash of wine. I opened each box of wine, pulled out the bottles and racked them in the fridge, five bottles of one on one rack, three of another on the next rack and four on the rack below that.

This was not a great achievement, like bringing peace to the world, or writing a great work or literature, nor was it even great personal achievement (like getting the garage cleaned); all it took was a relatively short amount of time and some money. But for one moment I sat on the kitchen floor with the light on in the fridge, the glass door closed and I looked in on my little hoard of tasteful potential inebriation and felt content and satisfied, without even drinking any of it first.

 

[GenericDad]

“Don’t Bother” and “Never Mind” The two things I do best!

I love it when someone at works stops me in the hallway and starts to tell me some long complicated thing that they need fixed right away and then about halfway through they stop and say “You know what, never mind” or “Don’t bother, I will just do….” I always reply “that is what I do best!” I am thinking about printing some bumper stickers that say:

“Don’t Bother” and “Never Mind” The two things I do best!

And I seem to be doing a lot of both lately. I seem to have a hard time being focused on anything that is not an immediate task to be completed. Which in some ways is working out well, since the past week at work has just been one crisis after another so I don’t really have time to sit and work on anyone thing, and when dealing with the kids at home it works out too. They have the attention span of well a 6 and 4 year old (read as very short in case you didn’t know) so I am fitting right in with their schedule.

But if things quiet down here at work and the kids grow up I am not sure what I will do, I might just have to learn to focus and change my motto to:

“Sure, happy to take care of it”

And I might ever be able to say it with a straight face and not be lying.

 

[GenericDad]

GSD Getting Old?

I think I am getting old. How do I know, well the wife, 2 kids, 2 dogs (yes 2, we have a new friend, maybe I will tell you how that happened later) and a mortgage payment should have clued me in, but I just don’t feel old. So if I missed all the clues and I don’t feel old what was it, co-eds. Yes I said Co-eds. You see I work at a University and classes started this week and all of the sudden there are Co-eds everywhere, but it seems they are mostly crossing the street in front of my car. Now I bet you are thinking that I noticed that the Co-eds seemed so much younger than me, some even half my age and that is what made me feel old, well that is true but that was not it. So enough already, what was it?

There I was stuck at a crosswalk watching hundreds (and this is not much of an exaggeration) of Co-eds in shorts, skirts or skin tight pants and short or skin tight tops and my first thought was “Damn I am going to be late for work!” (Yes, there was a 2nd and 3rd thought, hey I am old but I am still a guy) What was I thinking, what was happening to me? In my younger days I would have been happy to sit there all day and watch the parade, therefore I must be getting old (or already there).

What happens now? What goes next? When I am at the beach I spend more time watching my kids play than looking for the skimpiest bikini? I can live with that, I am getting older, I am not dead.