Kalamazoo

We made our annual spring trip to Kalamazoo today. A little later than usual, but it was still a successful trip. You see, living down here in northern Indiana, you can walk into a store and have your choice of just a few sports team options when it comes to licensed merchandise. Typically, for spring stuff, you get to choose from the Cubs, the White Sox, or Notre Dame. You'll get an occasional Purdue or IU item, but for the most part, it's those three. But I'm a Detroit Tigers fan, so despite the fact that I live in their local broadcast market, our cable system doesn't carry their games, and I can't find Tigers merchandise for anything. Oh, sure, I could order it, but where's the fun in that?

Kalamazoo has a special place in my heart. It's the first real city that I ever lived in. It's where I lived when the Tigers won the World Series in 1984. I went to college there. I started my teaching career there. It's essentially where I made the transition from being a teenager fresh from high school to being a man. Every time we make this trip, my mind wanders back to those days. Today, as we were driving along a detoured route, I played Huey Lewis and the News's "Sports," an album I used to play quite a bit back in those days. It's funny how memories can be triggered by music, and those memories were certainly strong.

We were headed to Fanfare first, which meant we had to travel north up Westnedge Avenue. It was closed, and it was funny to think that I didn't even need to see the detour signs to know where I had to go. North on Oakland, east on Kilgore, and there we were, like it was yesterday. Fanfare was the first comic book store I had ever seen, or even heard of. As I wrote about here, I discovered it when I was a college freshman, and it's still there, 28 years later. We stopped in and picked up a Power Pack book that Sera will love to read, a short comic book drawer box that I can use in my classroom, as well as a used art portfolio and a couple of cheap trade paperbacks, also for my classroom. Then, we were off to find Tigers stuff.

Our first stop for Tigers stuff was a flop. While Magi went to Old Navy to find clothes for Sera, Sera and I went to Office Max. I was looking for note cubes and folder. Struck out looking. Bed, Bath, and Beyond, on the other hand, had just the item I was looking for. If you've never used a Tervis Tumbler, you've missed out. They keep stuff cold, and they keep stuff hot. Down here, of course, there were a million tumblers with teams I didn't want, but in Kalamazoo, I found one with my Tigers logo on it. I added a handle and a lid, and now I have the perfect cup from which to drink coffee and iced tea.

We were also successful at finding stuff at Meijer. The Meijer on Westnedge Avenue is where I worked in the summer of 1985. It was a good job. I worked my way up from bagger to cashier, over a summer, and the only reason I left the job was that I couldn't work my schedule around classes at Western. I had a budget for food that summer, and it consisted of a very simple formula: Every day, I would eat four hamburgers and drink a Coke from Hot 'N Now Hamburgers. Back then, (imagine an old man's voice here) they charged $0.39 for everything. $0.39 for a hamburger, $0.39 for a Coke, $0.39 for fries. So, basically for $2.03 (4% sales tax back then), I would eat each day, and that was typically my only meal. Anyway, Meijer had the Tigers stuff I was looking for. I got a pair of sleeping shorts and a new lanyard for work. We passed by the old Hot 'N Now on the way out of town, and it's still closed and not occupied.

On the way home, we stopped in Three Rivers, and the Meijer there had some pens and a luggage tag that will come in handy. So, all in all the trip was successful. It wasn't really about shopping for Tigers stuff. It was about something like baseball, though. It's always good touching base, and for me, Kalamazoo was my second base.

So Far, So Good...

Well, it's a new year and nothing catastrophic has happened to us yet.

That sounds a bit on the negative side, but if you had been in our position for the past 18 months, you would be a bit more understanding. It's been nothing but one disaster after another, financially, healthwise, and otherwise. The one saving grace for Magi and me has been our wonderful daughter, Sera.

It's almost been like having a fever for a year and a half, and just before winter recess (Christmas break to us old folks) the fever broke. I finally sold off the inventory of my comic book business, as well as the bulk of my personal comic book collection.

I worked all summer long, like I usually do, and then with 12 days off between summer school and the beginning of the normal school year, I used the time to prepare to sell comics at Wizard World Chicago, the large comic book convention that used to be the Chicago Comicon. I had part of a large booth, and I brought every box of comics that I have had in my garage for the past five years. Unfortunately, for the first time in over 20 years, the convention was going to start after my school year began. I had to take two personal days during the first week of school, something I never wanted to do, but I had no choice. It was either that, or be out all of the money I had put down for the booth space. So, on the day in question, I loaded a rented U-Haul with 60 boxes of comics weighing about 50 pounds each, and drove to Chicago. I unloaded all 60 boxes of comics and then re-stacked them all like a fortress of boxes at the booth. So, basically I moved 9,000 pounds of comics in about three hours.

After I settled in and the show opened, I was selling comics for $1.00 each, but I soon discovered why business wasn't more brisk. Another dealer was selling at 5 for $1.00 on the very first day. It was pretty much the same stuff I had, so I was forced to lower my prices far sooner than I planned to. I hadn't seen so much as a quarter box at that show for about five years, so this came as quite a shock. I planned to economize as much as possible. I had a discount hotel room that I shared with a couple of friends that cost me $120 total for all three nights. It even included a free continental breakfast, which I took advantage of. I brought canned and boxed food and my own bottled water to eat and drink at the convention so that I wouldn't have to pay $7.00 or something for a sandwich and $3.50 for a bottle of water. The only thing I splurged on was $20 on both Friday and Saturday nights for a nice dinner out with new friends that I made at the show.

It was a long four days, as the dealer across the way from me was like a carnival barker. He kept shouting about how they were going out of business after 30 years. It's an old trick, and it was not the truth. He ended up going home with virtually the same number of boxes that he arrived with. He bought stuff left and right from people.

I ended up lowering my prices again and again, until on Sunday, I was literally giving away the unbagged bulk comics that no one wanted. I had rented the U-Haul truck for a one-way trip and Magi and Sera came to pick me up on Sunday. At the end of those four days, I was so happy to see them that I teared up. And the bottom line at the end of the show? I lost $100.

The good news was that on my way out, I met a convention organizer who took an interest in Sera, who was dressed up as Wonder Woman. He was now working to acquire comics for another venture. We struck up a conversation while Magi took her to the restroom, and when I told him I had sold 60 boxes but had at least that much better stuff at home, his eyes lit up. He was interested in buying it all! He told me he'd be there at the end of the week, and I worked nights to get the stuff ready. I went through it in detail, so I'd know what I had and what to ask for. I organized comics all week, and at the end of that week...he didn't show. He had even called and said that he was out of small bills and asked me to go get $40 in twenties for his tolls and he'd bump the check up by $50. Now this guy is well known in the comics world. I'm not a sucker. I knew he was good for it. I stayed up until midnight waiting for him to show up on Friday night, and then he called. His truck was full and he didn't have enough room for it. But he promised he'd be by in a few weeks to get it. Meanwhile, our air conditioner had stopped working and we didn't have the money to fix it. We'd used our mortgage money to get the car fixed and we were in a bind. Medical bills were starting to pile up too and then I had a scare with what doctors thought might be an aneurysm. One $3700 test later, we knew it wasn't, and the doctor suggested that it might be stress related. I said, "Hmm, I think it's possible."

We were getting promises from the guy to come and buy all the comics, but he kept reneging. These promises came and went every week. He said he'd be there, and then he'd have a reason why he couldn't come. A trip to China. A sudden illness. Then the promises were once a month. He'd make an appointment and cancel. I'd return his call because he'd always call when I was in class and couldn't answer. And when I'd return his call, his voice mail would pick up and the mailbox was full. It started getting ugly. So we scrimped and started paying off stuff as fast as we could. Waiting for this guy was looking dimmer and dimmer. Well, he finally showed up in mid-December. He paid far less than what I would have liked for the rest of the comics and tried to pull the "Well, these will sell for only a dollar" stuff on me, but I knew better and said so. I finally got him up to a fair price, almost double what he had intially offered, and breathed a sigh of relief. We were able to at least catch everything up, pay our medical bills, get reimbursed for our flex spending accounts and buy a few Christmas presents for Sera and the rest of our families. I had my first vacation since spring break during the first week of April, and did it feel great! The stress was gone, thank goodness. I still owe Magi's dad and stepmother for the inital outlay for the comic collection, but I can make progress on that during summer school.

Just after we went back to work, Magi got some great news. She got the Culinary Arts instruction job at the career center that she had applied for in October! This is her dream job. I am so happy for her, I can't begin to say. It was a struggle to get the people who interviewed her to see that she was the best candidate that they were likely to see, but after meeting her at the school, they have already learned things that they didn't know about her that show them just how perfect she is for this job.

When I returned to work, I found a fresh perspective on things. I'm not using the nightmare of a textbook that our corporation adopted for math. We are teaching the Indiana standards, like we should have been doing the whole time, and have been released from the cookie cutter recipes of the Connected Math Project. We can use whatever materials we'd like to get the job done, just like we should have been able to do the whole year. Some damage has been done to the kids by forcing that text on them early on, but I'm confident we can target their weaknesses now and vary our instructional strategies beyond fake context that they can't relate to.

I'd really been down on the teacher bashing that's become part of the national conversation for some time. Reviewing some of my blog posts from last year, it was getting ugly. My solution was to stop reading it. I made the mistake today of reading a presentation by state superintendent Tony Bennett, and I slid backward. I only read it because it was embedded in an email. I won't make that mistake again. Instead, I'm working on my comic book project, which will be published shortly. I will at least have an ashcan printed by C2E2 in March, with a full-color, actual comic book done by Wizard World Chicago in August. The next time I go to the convention center in Rosemont, I won't be carrying thousands of pounds of boxes. I will be sitting in a whole different section of the convention floor, carrying the hope for a brighter future for my family and me.

This is going to be fun!

Almost There...

Wow, am I tired.

Whenever my will to blog disappears, I know I'm at a point where I need a break. Between teaching summer school, working on my book project, and writing curriculum for next year, I've been too busy to really consider this vacation. I really felt it the past two days. Now, I'm looking ahead. A final exam tomorrow, a quick portfolio review of student work, and off we go.

I'm going to try to pack the car tonight in the hopes of leaving as soon as I can get home on Thursday for Mesick and five days of luxuriating at a nice campsite on the Manistee River. Today, I'm getting my hair cut, picking up some reading material to supplement the Doc Savage books I didn't finish on spring break, and packing up. I have made my list, checked it twice, and I think I have planned pretty well. I already picked up dry foods this past weekend, along with new batteries for the ceiling fan and the air pump. All that's left to do is put it in the minivan. We also have to pay a few bills today, pick up our computers from the repair shop, and book Theresa's plane ticket for her visit in August, but that shouldn't take very long.

If that doesn't all get done tomorrow, that's no big deal. We can make our trip more leisurely on Friday morning. I can stop at G&D Party Store in Cadillac for a sandwich for lunch and set up the tent in broad daylight instead.

All I know is that I want to sit by water and relax.

Transportation Upgrade

Wow. Look how she's grown.

Vacation!

We got off to a rocky start last week, but I sure am glad it happened. On the Thursday before vacation was to begin, it was unseasonably warm. I turned on the air conditioning in the minivan, and all I got in return was hot air. We took the van in, and it turned out to be a disconnected hose, which apparently was a common problem with our model. Fortunately, the dealership was able to locate a part for it, but unfortunately they couldn't get the part or fix the van until Friday. We just couldn't go to Alabama without air conditioning. We've been stuck in hot traffic there too many times.

After we finally got the minivan packed and hit the road, we made a quick side stop at Trader Joe's in Indianapolis. Let me just take this opportunity to say that I love Trader Joe's. They have a lot of food that is considerably lower in sodium than the norm. I can get beef jerky there that I can actually eat, as well as no salt corn chips that are quite tasty. Their microwave popcorn is unbeatable and even good for you. But probably the best thing they make is their organic version of Spaghettio's, called Joe's O's. I eat them for lunch with a chopped up hamburger, or a hot dog, sometimes chicken. Whatever I add, they are great! I also got several boxes of Vanilla Almond granola to add to my breakfast yogurt. That's some good stuff, too.

As we made our way south, we took advantage of McDonald's dollar drinks, because we knew that for speed and ease, Happy Meals were going to be the easiest thing for Sera to eat in the car. But because of something that happened later, we may have to revisit this strategy next time.

We hit some stop and start traffic near Nashville, and drove about 30 miles in one hour. This is not bad compared to what we got on the way back. We finally rolled into Gulf Shores, Alabama at about 6:45 AM local time. We decided to go to our favorite breakfast place, Hazel's Nook. Hazel's has been in Gulf Shores since there has been a Gulf Shores. They have a breakfast buffet that simply is the best breakfast on the planet. They have the usual scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, etc. The main feature of their breakfast, thought, is their scratch-made biscuits. Because sausage gravy is bad for me, I smother mine with strawberries, which are always in season when we get there for spring break. When you can finish your breakfast with a suitable dessert, you have a good breakfast! Refueled, we made our way down Fort Morgan Road and got to the Plantation resort at around 8:30, unpacked, and then crashed.

We got up after a few hours and drove back up to the bay. Magi's sister and her father and stepmother both have bay houses on Mobile Bay, right next to each other. Magi's youngest sister, Jessica, and her two children were already there, and we got to meet our newest nephew, Julian. Here, you see Granddaddy Pedro employing his infamous sleeper hold on the boy. The kids played happily and Sera and Josie really enjoyed the inflatable pool. When we finally got to bed, we did one of our favorite things. No, not that. We opened the sliding glass door so we could hear the waves crashing. There is no more relaxing sound.

The next day, Easter Sunday, we went back out to the bay, and enjoyed a nice ham dinner and some barefoot volleyball. It was very relaxed, but I was starting to get itchy. When I get to the Gulf, I need shrimp!

But first, Magi developed one of her patented cysts. They appear at the most inopportune times and in the most uncomfortable places. We made a trip into town to the local urgent care center to get it looked at, and while Magi waited in the long line, I went out to Billy's Seafood to get some shrimp. Billy's is in Bon Secour, right on the river, and in the picture you can even see the boats. The shrimp you get at Billy's literally comes in off the boats and into their store. It's fresh. They will even steam and season them for you for $1.00 extra per pound. For the price of one decent dinner in town, I got four pounds of jumbo shrimp and a quart of seafood gumbo. I got back to pick Magi up, picked up her antibiotic prescription, and since we were out already we decided to go get some lunch.

Mikee's is usually our first stop in Gulf Shores. No one, and I mean no one makes fried shrimp as well as Mikee's. It is the BEST! Magi had simply a shrimp lunch. I had the all you can eat shrimp, and I did some damage. Then, we got some oysters to go and headed back to the Plantation. By that time, Magi's other sister, Marcia and her kids were there.

We had a pretty good week, but repeated daily trips to the urgent care clinic kind of put a damper on each day. Magi spent a lot of time in pain after having the cyst lanced. At the end of the week, we had a huge family dinner at Villaggio Grille, a restaurant at The Wharf in Orange Beach. We celebrated the birthdays of nephew Ben, and Jessica, and Sera, whose birthday is next Saturday. The cake was called Death By Chocolate Cake, and it was quite tasty. But Sera liked the strawberry accompaniment best!

Our last dinner in Gulf Shores was another family affair at Tacky Jack's 2, which is at the marina near the end of the peninsula near Fort Morgan. I got this nice sunset picture while waiting for our table. We finished the week with shrimp and crab claws and grilled mahi mahi. Thanks to Pedro and Nora for their generosity in not only letting us stay in their condo, but also for some very fine dinners.

Our day yesterday was pretty long. Because Magi is on painkillers, I got to drive the whole way home. And because of the Nashville construction, and the Alabama construction, and the other construction, it took 20 hours to get home. We were sure glad we had the air conditioning fixed before we left! 920 miles in 20 hours, let's see, is an average speed of 46 miles per hour.

I do love our spring breaks in Gulf Shores. Even when adversity strikes, we still find it peaceful and relaxing!

10

Today marks my wife's and my 10-year wedding anniversary. Each year, I try to come up with something better than I said the last year. This year, it's about perspective.


My wife is my guide. Whenever I'm not sure of what I should do in a given situation, I try to think about what she would do. Sometimes I don't do what she would do, but I have come to believe that I almost always know what she would do. We've had health scares in the past ten years, the worst being when she developed a pulmonary embolism. Pulmonary embolisms have killed a lot of people, more than you're probably aware of. They usually get diagnosed post-mortem, so we know we were lucky. And thinking on how I would raise Sera without her, I know that I would be a better father to her because I know how Magi thinks. Even now, my reactions to things that Sera does are tempered because my first thought, as is natural, is how I was treated as a child. And I almost always override my initial instinct before my mouth opens. It would be the same even if she wasn't there. Her presence is that powerful.

She's with me at work, even though we work in separate buildings, a few miles apart. We always exchange emails during the day, and it's a comfort knowing that she's going to be able to answer any question within an hour, at any time. She teaches business at the high school that my middle school feeds, and I know that if I don't do my job correctly, it will make her job harder.


Even when I go out with my friends, we often hang out at Border's in Mishawaka, where Magi worked when she first moved here so long ago. It's impossible to even look at the cafe without thinking of her there, and all the time I spent just hanging out at the bookstore because she was at work while I was not.



Books that I read and music that I listen to will remind me of her, as well. I will always think of my favorite author, Pat Conroy, as her influence. I read Gone with the Wind while shuttling her back and forth to Goshen College while she finished up her teaching requirements. I would listen to a Journey CD that she brought while waiting outside her classroom. One of the songs from that CD became the song that we would dance to at our wedding reception.

It's funny how morbid these thoughts sound when I read them back. It's almost like a eulogy or something. But it's better, I think, to measure the effect that someone has had on your life while they're alive. The problem is that there's no adequate measure for how my wife has changed my life. She makes me a better teacher, a better father, and a better man. I can only hope that someday, I'm good enough to deserve her.

Sugar Camp Days

Each year at Bendix Woods Park in western St. Joseph County, Indiana we have Sugar Camp Days. It's a weekend where there are tours of the sugarbush, complete with lectures and lessons on how European settlers learned from Native Americans how they tapped sugar maples and made maple sugar and syrup. There's a pancake breakfast with all-you-can-eat pancakes and sausages. And the best part of the whole thing is that they use real maple syrup made on site. There are also demonstrations of ice sculpture, as well as making kettle corn in a real cast iron kettle. Guess who liked that?

Attention, Joss Whedon!

I have someone who would like to audtion for the Dr. Horrible sequel:

The Gift that Keeps on Giving

I was going to do a long post today about my Grandpa McClain, who would have been 100 years old today. I was going to post pictures of Grandpa, but whenever I start going through the family photographs I got from my late father, I end up seeing pictures of myself as a child, and it's a child I don't know. There are hundreds of pictures of me in these boxes, and 99% of them are from before my parents divorced and the abuse began.

One of the least pleasant things about suffering abuse as a child is that it features lingering effects. My brother and I call it the gift that keeps on giving. There are times when I still hear the voice of my stepfather calling me worthless, stupid, and lazy. The bad part is when I hear it coming out of my own mouth when I do something wrong. I know it's bad when my own daughter chastises me for calling myself "Stupid," when I didn't even realize that I had said it out loud. You want to know how lazy I am? I've worked 23 years in a profession where working in the summer is optional and I've taken exactly two summers off without working summer school; the first year I worked full time, and the fifth. So when I hear the word "lazy" in my head, I know it isn't coming from me. This is one of the reasons I was hesitant to even consider becoming a parent. I had serious second, third, fourth, and fifth thoughts about adoption when my wife suggested it. The thought that I might terrorize a child in any way like what had been done to me frightened me to my core.

Today is one of those rare bad days when I really do feel worthless, lazy, and stupid. It's an almost paralyzing feeling that I can't get anything done. Ordinarily, I am confident to the point of severe arrogance. Just ask any of my friends--the few who can stand to be around me for any length of time. I know I am intelligent, artistically talented, and I was physically gifted at sports, at least at an earlier time in my life. But there are days like today when I can look at all the award certificates I won in school for math competitions (and I didn't even like math), all-conference sports awards, competitive scholarships, etc. and still think of myself as a complete loser. It seems like all the stuff I have accomplished was just part of fighting a losing battle for self-esteem. Things will likely look up for me tomorrow, because this feeling never lasts for long, fortunately. But I can say definitively that I know firsthand what depression is, and I have to say that I could really live without it.

I'm not sure how long it will take for me to sort through these family photos, but at this point, I'm not sure how much that really needs to be done. They reminded my dad of better days, but for the most part they just remind me of what could have been, and innocence lost.

Twist My Arm

Rock Band 2 has to be the greatest game in the world. When we picked up Sera from daycare on Friday, she said, "Daddy, when we get home you should play Rock Band."

You Know it's Love...

...When your daughter leans over to give you a hug and say, "I love you, Daddy" while she's sitting on the toilet going #2 while you get her bath ready.

I See You

My 20-year old niece, Theresa, is an amazing artist. She is living a life I can only enjoy vicariously, but it sure is fun watching her work and grow. We saw "Avatar" a few weeks ago, and I think it had an impact on her. The picture to the left is done from a photograph of her, modified with Photoshop. Just to show you what she worked with, I am including the side-by-side picture from her deviantart site.

All I can say is, wow. And go to her site to see more!

"What"

That was the first word my little girl sounded out for herself. We were working on sounding out words from Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear and she worked out "what" when I made the "wh" sound. I could hear her whispering the "a" and the "t." And then it happened. She may have had help from the context of a book she's heard 10,000 times, but I heard the letters one at a time. Not bad for three years, eight months old!

Wonderfulness

“Daddy, what’s that?” my daughter asked, as I held the round, black vinyl disc by the edges.

“A record,” I replied.

“What’s it for?”

I laughed first, then reminiscing about my own childhood with records, I said in my best Bill Cosby voice: “Riiiiight.”

My friends Rob and Eric bought me a USB turntable for Christmas. This is a wonderful gift, because I have a number of records on vinyl that will likely never see the light of day on CD or even as downloadable files on iTunes. I have some commonly known comedians like the aforementioned Bill Cosby, who has CD’s of his classic comedy, but I also have Homer & Jethro. I have Steve Martin, but I also have Jonathan Winters. Among the otherwise unreleased records I have are the soundtrack for “Song of the South,” several PowerRecords, including one from the Six Million Dollar Man, as well as one of famous monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman (with Neal Adams art, no less). But my favorite old record is probably Buckingham Nicks, the album that Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham did before they joined Fleetwood Mac.

I think, though, that digging through that treasure trove of comedy is going to be a blast. It’s easily what influenced my own sense of humor more than anything else. Bill Cosby was a heck of a lot funnier as a standup comic than he ever was on television. My brother and I used to listen for hours at our grandparents’ house to his recollections of growing up in Philadelphia. That’s where I first heard of Fat Albert and Bill’s brother Russell. It wasn’t from any kind of cartoon.

The Smothers Brothers were well ahead of their time when they recorded “The Golden Hits of the Smothers Brothers, Volume 2 (there is no Volume 1, reads the blurb on the record cover).” Combining their brand of folk music with constant interruptions of fraternal bickering was always good for a laugh. I still remember my grandfather saying, “I’d like them a lot better if they just kept playing their damn music!”

It’s going to be fun listening to records I haven’t heard since about 1995, which was the last time I owned a working record player!

2009 Year in Review

On January 1, I set goals instead of making resolutions, and although my goal of blogging every day didn't pan out, it's understandable why. This year has been painful, one of the most painful I've experienced. The death of my father is something I never quite overcame. It hit me far harder than I would have ever thought possible.

But through it all, I've had my family. My wife and my daughter are always there for me. They are the ones I rely on, the ones for whom I live and work. Watching my daughter grow daily is a thrill for me beyond anything else I can imagine. Seeing her change before my very eyes is more than I could ever have hoped for in becoming a father. My wife is fulfilling her life's dream of being a mother and it is a role for which she is perfectly suited. Every day that I am with them is a day of joy and a reason to celebrate.

Happy New Year!

PlayStation 3

"You bought a PS3?"

Those were the words that my niece said to me when I told her what I thought of my birthday purchase. My in-laws sent me money as they always generously do, and I thought the best use of it would be something for our family. Now, don't be snide. When I say that it's for the family, know that it resides in the living room where we can all enjoy it. That said, I can honestly say that I want another one!

The PlayStation 3 is a complete entertainment machine. Those who think of it as simply a videogame console are seriously underestimating its value. The PlayStation 3 is a Blu-Ray player and an upconverting DVD player. That means that it not only plays high definition Blu-Ray discs, but also takes normal DVD's and converts them into a format more easily viewable on high definition televisions, making them look even better than they do on normal TV's. I didn't buy a hard copy of "Watchmen" until we had the PS3, and I was right to wait. The Blu-Ray is as close to watching it at the IMAX theater as one can get and still get up to go to the bathroom whenever one needs to. We've rented a number of Blu-Ray movies from Netflix and wow, does it ever make a difference. When we are able to get a bigger HDTV, I doubt we'll ever go to the movies again. You can't beat the seats of our living room sofa, and when you add the open-flame oil popcorn popper that my wife bought me for Christmas, we won't be missing a thing by staying home. Plus, no one talks during the movie! Heck, we'll be saving a load of money even if we buy the Blu-Ray of every movie that we would normally go out to see.

The PS3 also connects wirelessly to your home computer network and herein lay one of its greatest values to us: As Netflix subscribers we can use our existing Netflix account at no additional charge to instantly view several thousand Netflix programs, some in high definition. They have movies, and best yet, episodes of many of our favorite television shows in HD, like "Lost" and "Star Trek." We can watch any episode of those shows in seconds on our television in HD just by clicking a few times. We've been using that to watch the fifth season of "Lost" on Tuesday nights and we have it timed so that if we now watch two episodes every Tuesday night, we'll be ready for the new season on February 2.

We also use the PS3 as a videogame system, though not to play the typical fare that most people would expect. As a family Christmas gift, we bought Rock Band 2 and for the past two days, we have been playing the heck out of it. Sera sings into the microphone (though we don't plug it in) while Magi plays bass, my niece Theresa plays drums, and I play guitar. We're not great, but it sure is fun!

I don't know what the future holds for home entertainment, but I bet it looks a lot like Sony's PlayStation 3.

Catching Up

Things have not exactly been looking up since this post. So, here I am sick at home. First, my wife Magi had minor surgery, then Sera caught H1N1, then Magi caught H1N1. Somewhere in there, I probably had it too, but with lessened symptoms. After, let's see, two trips to urgent care, one surgeon's visit, and three other trips to the doctor and pediatrician, we can look forward to all of us being healthy for the first time since the beginning of October--maybe by this weekend. I guess it's a good thing I had a lot of sick days saved up, because I've taken at least two per week for four straight weeks. And health insurance? Yeah, it's paid for itself in the past month. I can't imagine what we would have paid out for our all-too-frequent visits these past weeks, between urgent care, ordinary doctor's visits and the subsequent prescriptions. It would have been quite the kick while we were already down.

The bright side of it is that I get to drink Mountain Dew mixed with orange juice and not feel guilty about calories. I've been catching up on TV watching and DVDs that I've been saving, including the DVD set for the 1973 Star Trek cartoon, which I dearly loved as a kid but seldom got to watch. Twenty-two episodes were made, and I bet I haven't seen half of them! It was a big hit with Mrs. Burkholder's third graders in the fall of that year, and when we went out for recess I always got to play Captain Kirk. Why? For the same reason Bruce Hartman always got to be Batman when we were the Super Friends. For a reason that only third graders could invent. Because my name is Jim.

The Sponge

Sera sings. She sings a lot. From "Twinkle, Twinkle" to "Old McDonald" she has a repertoire of standards that is unmatched. But more and more often she rewrites the lyrics to suit her. Improvisation is the name of the game with my daughter on the morning drive.

But the cutest thing ever happened this morning on our way to daycare, when in the midst of a classical rendition of "Old McDonald," out came this gem, from the musical stylings of Nathan Fillion:

"Stand back, everyone! Nothing here to see..."

Magi looked at me and asked, "Did you hear that?"

I admitted that I was lost in thought and my inner filter had been turned on. "No, what?"

"Sera, sing that again."

From the back comes the tiny, sweet voice: "Stand back, everyone! Nothing here to see..." I laughed. Magi laughed. Sera, not knowing what was funny, laughed with us.

My daughter loves her "Captain Hammer Song," as she calls it. We play the soundtrack to "Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog" whenever we're on a trip that's longer than an hour and I admit, I enjoy belting out Captain Hammer's signature piece. I didn't realize she had been listening that carefully, but now I'll have to make sure I'm leaving out the juicier parts of the soundtrack. I really don't need my three-year old going to daycare finishing her cute little song with the exclamation, "Balls!"

The Other Side of the Mirror

If I haven't mentioned this before, I am a huge Stevie Nicks fan. My fandom dates back to an Elias Bros. Big Boy restaurant in January, 1977 when my dad and I were having dinner after seeing King Kong, which was a weird thrill all on its own, and worthy of a later blog post. No one else in his third wife's family wanted to see it, so he and I went by ourselves. Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" was on the jukebox next to the booth. Big Boy used to have little jukebox selection boxes in each booth in their restaurants. It was really fun when you were a kid. Anyway, I loved the song and when my aunt bought "Rumours" on cassette later that year, I listened to it over and over and over again. Some of my fondest memories are of sitting in my grandma's living room with headphones on, reading comics and listening to "Rumours." Stevie Nicks had written and sung lead on three songson the album (remember when we called them albums?): "Dreams" (my favorite), "I Don't Want to Know," and "Gold Dust Woman."

When Stevie Nicks' first solo album, "Bella Donna," came out in 1981 I was a junior in high school, having the greatest year of my young life, and some of my friends had it on 8-track and played it in their cars. I recognized her voice immediately, but it was hard to reconcile her light, dolce vocals on "Dreams" with the hard-driving "Edge of Seventeen," which remains one of my two favorite songs (I hover back and forth between that and the Eagles' "Hotel California.")

When "The Wild Heart," her second solo effort was released in 1983, I listened to it for the first time on Christmas break from my freshman year in college. I had just gotten a strong message in the form of my grades that I actually had to work in college and couldn't coast through schoolwork like I had in high school, when my focus was more on sports. I sat in the dark, listening, waiting for a friend to come pick me up so we could go out to a bar in search of college girls who would be on break like us. I had become enough of a fan of Stevie Nicks that I had sought out hers and Lindsey Buckingham's "Buckingham Nicks" on vinyl at a local discount record store. I still have it, and it has still never officially been released on CD. One of these days I will have to get one of those USB turntables and transfer it to my computer so I can have it on my iPod.

By the time "Rock a Little", Stevie's third album came out in the winter of 1985, my then-fiancee bought it for me for my 21st birthday. I was a college junior, well on my way through my math program, and looking forward to graduating in just a year and a half. I didn't really care for the synthesized drums that pervaded the album, but I still loved her songwriting.

1987 brought "Tango in the Night" from Fleetwood Mac, which was the first CD I ever bought. My mother and stepfather had bought me a Sylvania CD player for a college graduation present for the princely sum of $300. It had a remote control and everything! I still have that wonderful old machine, and I think I will hook it up today to our surround sound receiver because our last DVD player pooped out and I don't think I'll replace it until we buy a PlayStation3 for Christmas. I remember reading about the album in Rolling Stone magazine while tanning on Bronco Beach (the south bank of Goldsworth Valley Pond) at Western Michigan University, and anxiously awaiting its release. Do you remember caring about music that much? It seems strange now.

The title of this post is a long time in being addressed, I know, but the stuff I just wrote goes to put it in perspective. I was listening to my iPod the other day while riding my bike in the neighborhood after watching some TV specials on the 40th anniversary of the moon landing, and I decided to listen to "The Other Side of the Mirror." I probably hadn't listened to that album since the early 1990s. Like the previous Stevie Nicks and Fleetwood Mac albums I mentioned, I remember well the first time I heard it. It's funny how memory works. Anyway, the first time I listened to "Mirror" was July, 1989. I had been substitute teaching for two years, while working at Pizza Hut and a local ice cream place called The High Wheeler, working 60-70 hours per week and making less than $11,000 a year. My fiancee and I had waited to get married until one of us had a job in our field, but didn't want to wait any longer. We set a date and were about to have the wedding when I got my first full-time teaching job! My first contract was for $19,900 a year and I thought I was going to be rich! My two roommates and good friends had just moved out of the apartment we had shared for two years and my fiancee had moved in new furniture that she had saved for while living with her parents. I had cleaned the place up and I was relaxing on July 20th while watching anniversary specials about the first moon landing. I was feeling on top of the world, finally starting my career in earnest, preparing for a new life in a new town in a new state with a new wife.

So as I was riding my bike, listening to this album and reflecting on the first time I heard it, I thought to myself what a weird coincidence it was (or was it?) that I was listening to the same album almost 20 years to the day of the first time I listened to it, and that it had been on the 20th anniversary of the moon landing, which was one of my first memories. The day I listened to that album for the first time serves as a nearly perfect line of symmetry between the parts of my journey into adulthood that I actually remember and the rest of my life as I've lived it since then. I guess the last 20 years have truly been the other side of the mirror.

A Great Day

How do you define a great day? I had one this weekend, and it was one of the greatest days I’ve ever had. What made it great? A little background first:

Every year my teacher friends and I plan a trip to Comerica Park to see the Tigers play. This began in 2000 when my good friend Dana suggested that we go visit the Tigers’ new park. I had lost most of my interest in baseball following the 1994 strike and hadn’t been to a game since the 1993 ALCS. We saw the Tigers beat the St. Louis Cardinals 10-1 on June 10, 2000, and saw a very rare feat: Mark McGwire stole second base! I loved Comerica Park. Compared to the new Comiskey Park (now U.S. Cellular Field), which was a bland, grey bandbox of a stadium, Comerica was an amusement park for baseball fans. We returned in 2001 to see the Tigers and Cubs (Cubs won 10-6), in 2002, 2003 (Bonderman’s second career victory during the worst season in Tigers history), 2004 against the Yankees (Tigers lost 5-3, but Pudge Rodriguez went 3-for-4 at the plate), and then in 2005 we started expanding our operation.

Magi and I had taken our friends’ kids to a game on Father’s Day 2005 to see newly-acquired Placido Polanco hit a walkoff home run against the San Francisco Giants, and while I was at the stadium I asked about group ticket sales. I was able to get 15 tickets to a Yankees game on July 2, and we made a weekend of it. I saw Bonderman beat Randy Johnson on Friday night, backed by home runs by Chris Shelton, Polanco, and Magglio Ordonez (in his first game back after hernia surgery). Bonderman went the distance, scattering eight hits and two runs over nine innings. The Tigers lost the next two games, but we all had fun sitting down by the Tigers’ dugout. I went back for Sunday’s game, too, seeing the whole series against the Yankees that season. The best game, though, was on September 11, when my teacher friends and I went by ourselves and sat right behind the first base dugout against the Royals. I was able to get this picture of John McDonald from on top of the first base dugout:

There were only 20,559 fans in the stands if you believe the official attendance. I think there were really only about 10,000 to be honest. The Tigers won 14-4 and made me very happy.

In 2006, it was literally a whole new ballgame. I went to nine regular-season games that year, seeing the Tigers play the Yankees (another group outing), Red Sox, White Sox, Twins, Orioles, and the Royals, including the last game of the season, when the Tigers lost the division title. But when I did get to see all four home games in the ALDS and ALCS AND the first game of the World Series because of the schedule change brought about because of that last regular-season loss, all was forgiven.

Once Sera came into our lives, our excursions to baseball games dwindled somewhat, but now we still make it to at least one game every year. I went to a Tigers-White Sox makeup game with my friend Doug on April 25, 2007, and Sera’s first Tigers game was in August, just four short months after we brought her home. I honestly remember nothing about the game except that the Tigers lost, but I do remember taking her to the gift shop because she was restless and I remember not caring as much about the game as I did her enjoyment of the experience…as it should be.

We took Sera to another game the following year, on June 28, and that was my only Tigers game for the year. It was memorable because of Miguel Cabrera’s theatrical walkoff double in the bottom of the ninth, but what really sticks in my mind is Sera’s enjoyment of the postgame fireworks.

So what made Saturday such a great day?

First, we had our annual teacher outing to Detroit planned and two people backed out. That freed up two tickets, so Magi and Sera could go. After I got the first night of at least eight hours of sleep since my dad got really sick, I was rested and ready to go. We loaded up the car and headed to my friend Dana’s house. First, though, we stopped at Charlie’s Butcher Block in Elkhart for some food, since we hadn’t yet eaten breakfast. Their full sandwich menu was available, so I got us a couple of their subs, as well as some lobster bisque pasta for Magi and fruit salad for Sera. The lobster bisque pasta may have been an unusual choice at 9:00 AM, but it was delicious, as were the subs.

Dave was already there when we got to Dana’s house and I gave them a walkie-talkie so we could chat on the road if we wanted to. We got on the toll road and took off. About two hours later, we stopped at a rest area, used the rest room, got cinnamon rolls, and got back on the road. About a half hour later, we arrived at the Dundee, Michigan Cabela’s. This was my fifth Cabela’s store visit in ten days, and the Dundee store is tops. First, it’s huge, and the selection is far better than the other ones, especially for the clothes I need. I’ll remember that next time. Since all of my clothes shopping is done for the year, I pretty much just looked around happily, planning for next year when I’ve (hopefully) gone down another size.

Then we arrived at Dana’s friend Steve’s house in Ann Arbor. Steve is a great guy and always goes on our outings with us. Sera had, of course, fallen asleep in the car about two miles before we got to his house, so we planned a late lunch in Ann Arbor before we planned to make the last leg of our trip to Detroit. Ann Arbor has lots of great restaurants, but it really has a wonderful attraction in Zingerman’s. Zingerman’s is a world-famous deli with high-quality meats, cheeses, and breads. Magi knew about the place even when she lived in New Orleans. Well, Zingerman’s also has a restaurant along the highway called Zingerman’s Roadhouse and we’ve talked about going there for some time. We were not sorry we did. We were seated outdoors in their covered section, within sight of their HUGE barbeque grill and smoker. We could see that they were taking slabs of meat off the grill that were at least two feet long. Our mouths collectively started watering. Our waitress carefully described the menu and the chef in great detail, and even brought us some pulled pork to sample with each of the three sauces they use. We had a sumptuous, fantastic meal. I had the pulled pork sandwich with their zesty tomato BBQ sauce, with fried sweet potatoes. Wow! Steve surprised us by very generously picking up the check. Dana surprised us even more by paying for the baseball tickets. It’s nice to have good friends like this!

We arrived in Detroit right on time, finding our usual parking lot and making our way to the mosaic tile Tigers logo on the third base side of the stadium. We had our annual picture taken, and went right inside, hardly even waiting in line. We received complimentary Detroit Stars Negro League caps, as the Negro Leagues were being honored that night. We quickly found our seats in section 122, and settled in.

I got to the gift shop just before the game started, picking up a new Tigers T-shirt for Sera and a new insulated lunch bag for myself. My old one literally fell apart this summer. I really wanted to pick up a Brandon Inge All-Star jersey and some other shirts, but the largest size they had available was XXL. It just gave me more motivation to keep losing weight. I got out of the gift shop for less than $40 (a record) and got back to my seat before the National Anthem was even played.

It was a good game. Brandon Inge came up with a clutch RBI single and made a spectacular diving play at third base, and Miguel Cabrera hit a majestic opposite field home run in the 9th to pull the Tigers to within a run, but they ended up losing 5-4.
During the game Sera had seen a vendor with cotton candy and had asked for some, and we promised to get her some the next time he came around, but he never did. We even asked the other vendors to send him our way for a guaranteed sale, but after four innings of waiting she began to get impatient. I finally got up and found a kiosk that was selling it, and wouldn’t you know it, just as I arrived back at our seats before the top of the fifth inning, the vendor was just getting to our section! The fireworks show was not quite as impressive as last year’s, but Sera enjoyed it nonetheless.

After we dropped Dana and Dave back at Steve’s place in Ann Arbor, where they spent the night, Sera dropped off to sleep. Magi and I got to spend a very quiet three hours together, chatting the night away in the car, which is an amount of time we never get to spend together (awake) without Sera being the focus of our attention. I think this was my favorite part of the night. We had time to relax, listen to music on our iPod, and to reflect on our lives together and our wonderful, wonderful daughter. We got home at around 2:30 in the morning, exhausted, but very happy for having each other, our generous friends, and a great, great day.