Rummaging through the past

In cleaning out a box of stuff -- exactly that, "stuff" -- that had been stored somewhere damp and musty in my parents' house for what I can guess was about 10 years, I came across a varied cross-section of papers, documents, clippings and souvenirs from college.

Packed in a Compaq computer box -- from my first laptop, you see -- old folders (from Trapper Keeper colors to Notre Dame-issued Bookstore filers) contained items from freshman year all the way to senior year. Following are some of the "treasures" that were quickly shifted to a recycling or trash pile, on account of being one of or a combination of the following: moldy, dated, rusted (from staples), superfulous or clearly the possessions of a male college student. I've got a few more things that seemed keepable that are now in a bag in the office, but I just went back to them, and they still seem a bit musty, so I might not hold onto them indefinitely. But I do want to go through them further before discarding, so I'll catalog them later, similar to Heather's ongoing My Little Pony process.

*A picture of a then-sexy (at least I thought) Helen Hunt in jeans and a white button-down, with only about two buttons in the middle fastened, leaving her belly button exposed.

*An application, printed out from the web site, to join the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR).

*A guide for the huge, groundbreaking Monet exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago in the fall of 1994 or 95.

*A book of Walt Whitman poetry that I would've kept (and probably never read), had it not been disgusting.

*A series of New Hampshire postcards, one of which was written out to Pat and Bill as a thank-you note, but clearly never sent. Whoops.

*Various e-mail printouts, usually of jokes and other such forwards. I wish I could've looked through them, just to see what I thought funny then and to see who I corresponded with and when. I did catch Becky Robbins' e-mail address. Wonder where she is these days.

*A letter and poem -- well, song lyrics -- from an old girlfriend, sent after I'd dumped her. Somehow, these two pieces of paper (the lyrics were written on tracing paper) were among the most pristine and well-preserved pieces in the entire box. And they are now among the most pristine and well-preserved pieces of paper in the dumpster at the Clifton recycling center.

*All kinds of newspaper and magazine clippings, including Notre Dame sports stories, baseball pieces, Newsweek pages and Dave Barry columns.

*Flight stubs and receipts for trips home for various breaks during and between semesters. Clearly those were from freshman and sophomore years, because I had a car for junior and senior years.

And, finally, a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Desk Diary (free with subscription, natch; it's not like I'd buy such a thing) from 1997. It was in pretty decent shape, though it did have that musty smell to it, so I brought it inside only long enough to flip through the pages and see what I felt important enough to write down that spring semester (my junior year, when Bryan was abroad in London). It was the semester I came into my own, I suppose, when I was on my own to make plans and find parties and decide what to do on the weekends. I learned that some of Bryan's friends were indeed my friends, too, and that some of my best and lasting friendships were building at The Observer, and I'd still be close with some of them 11 years later.

Everything is quoted as I wrote it on that day(s).

Friday, Jan. 24 to Saturday, Jan. 25: "ND Student Film Festival." This may have been the year I went, probably with Mia, who as a Film, Television and Theater major was way into the student productions.

Monday, Jan. 27: "Ready to Wear." Must've been a showing of Robert Altman's film somewhere on campus (I didn't note the building). Because it was a Monday, it would've been in some Arts & Letters lecture hall. The more mainstream, popular campus-wide movies were Friday and Saturday nights in Cushing Hall.

Friday, Jan. 31 to Saturday, Feb. 1: "Romeo & Juliet." Campus production, I presume.

Tuesday, Feb. 4: "Suzanne." The birthday of a friend of a friend, Greg. A year behind me, Greg lived in my section his freshman/my sophomore year, and following the lead of the sophomores in my section my freshman year, my roommates and I took them under our wing. I still hear from one of them, Marc, every now and then, and I'm sure Greg would return an e-mail if I wrote him. He's is now a priest -- full-on Catholic brother or father, I presume. We should've known during his freshman year when, for Lent, he announced he was giving up, um, gratifying himself, and then continued it well beyond Easter Sunday -- and probably to this day.

Tuesday, Feb. 18: "The Maltese Falcon." As with Ready to Wear, I know I've seen it, but I can't be sure I went to this showing. Now that I think of it, this may have been the viewing schedule for a class Mia was taking, and I probably attended a handful of these with her.

Thursday, Feb. 27: "The Challenge (play)." No clue.

Friday, Feb. 28: "Inside Column." It was my day to write the page 2, open-topic opinion piece in The Observer. Somewhere, either in a box here or in one stowed away somewhere (probably damp) in my parents' house, lies a stack of Observers, nearly all of them there because I have a byline in them. Someday I want to find all the Inside Columns I wrote just to have them in one place. They were often the most enjoyable pieces to write and represented some of my best (and most "popular," in the sense that I got feedback) work.

Feb. 28-Saturday, March 1: "The English Patient." This would've been the bigger showing, at Cushing Hall. I believe I saw this at home over a break, possibly Christmas, in New Jersey. I was a big fan of it back then. I bought a copy of the double-VHS from Blockbuster, but I don't think I ever opened it. The love of the film died quickly, I think. I probably haven't seen it since one of these showings.

Monday, March 3: "Citizen Kane." I'm sure I went, because of what it is. So iconic. Loved it, too.

Thursday, March 6: "West paper." This was written in upper/lowercase, which wasn't (and still isn't) my prefered form of writing. I'm a SMALL CAPS guy; in fact, all of the entries I'm quoting from this calendar were written as such. I may have carried this desk diary in my bag and scribbled this due date in a class. Can't recall which one, or what I ultimately wrote for the paper.

Friday, March 7: "Spring Break. O'Hare 7:15 --> 4:00 bus." This was an evening flight, to San Antonio, and not an absurd morning flight that would've required me to take a 4 a.m. bus to Chicago. I remember packing in my dorm room that afternoon. A group of us flew to San Antonio, where Jen K. lived, then drove down to South Padre Island for a week. It was fun at times, particularly when we were able to get into clubs and drink (only three of the five or six of us were 21, and I wasn't one of them). At one, which may have been Charlie's (and from which I may still have a plastic cup somewhere in this house, though it's now used for cleaning chemicals), we went back several times and saw, on one night, Vanilla Ice in concert and, on another, a bikini contest. I also recall this being the Spring Break of "Wannabe," and to this day, the Spice Girls still make me think of South Padre.

Sunday, March 16: "Pop." Dad's birthday. I never call him "Pop," though.

Monday, March 17: "Vertigo." Hmm ... St. Patrick's Day. At Notre Dame. Not during Spring Break (which it was my first two years at school). I don't think I went to this showing.

Thursday, March 20: "Meet with Haugh, 2:00" and "Read Billy the Kid." The first was an appointment with an instructor/sports columnist, then for the South Bend Tribune, now for the Chicago Tribune. Good guy. Definitely helped with my development as a sportswriter. Not quite sure which class Billy the Kid was for, but it was a fun read. I wonder if I still have it somewhere. It would've come in handy during the summer of '98, when I spent some time during my road trip in Silver City, N.M., where he spent a lot of time.

Friday, March 21: "Column for Haugh - 5 p.m." and "My Antonia." Not sure what topic I chose for that column. I don't know why I would've written down "My Antonia" for a Saturday. Maybe it was a showing of the TV movie from two years earlier, which starred Doogie -- er, Neil Patrick Harris.

Monday, March 24: "I.C. - ND baseball." This is the beginning of a busy week in the planner. This must've been Notre Dame's home opener for baseball, and I'm sure I wrote a column saying, "Go out and watch!" I wonder if I was able to do that myself. And I wonder if I froze my toes.

Tuesday, March 25: "American West Midterm"; "2:00 Schmuhl"; "Meet w/ Tomasula 2:30"; "Call Larry Benjamin w/ start for internship (tell Powers)." Woah, busy day. That midterm may have involved both the aforementioned Billy the Kid and My Antonia. I don't remember Tomasula. Larry Benjamin was the internship coordinator at the Asbury Park Press. Jack Powers was a journalism professor and retired former editor-in-chief of the South Bend Tribune. He taught a great class, and I was among those he loved having, because I was really into the craft, not just into a relatively easy class (if you knew what you were doing). He passed away several years ago, sadly, though not after a long and fruitful life that included military service (I believe he was actually a parachuter, but I may be totally making that up) and about 10 kids.

Thursday, March 27: "My Antonia paper due." OK, so clearly I had a paper due on this, and the note on the 22nd may have been to make sure I finished reading it by then to give myself a few days to organize my plan of attack for the paper -- and to give me at least one weekend day to write it.

Friday, March 28 to Monday, March 31: "Easter Break." I drove home for this one, leaving sometime on Thursday afternoon and getting into Little Silver way late at night. I only told my mother about it and surprised my dad and sister. I'd wanted to surprise everyone, but I was bringing Colleen along with me (shudder) and figured I should announce that, in part because we were having dinner at Grandma's condo. It was the last time I saw my grandmother; she died in early May, during finals week. I think I moved up my last one a day so that I could fly home for the funeral, then fly back to spend Senior Week working on the final edition of The Observer before driving home for the summer.

Tuesday, April 1: "Nature in America - 'Country' - 8:30" and "Natural Born Killers." I remember reading Bill McKibbin's Nature in America (I think I even took it and a blanket out to the hills beside one of the lakes to read it out in nature, because I was in college, and you do stuff like that in college -- especially when you just spent an entire locked in dorms and class buildings and freezing your ass off on the wind-swept quads in South Bend), but I don't remember what "Country" was about. Maybe a movie. And Natural Born Killers was, I'm pretty sure now, a showing for Mia's class. I do remember watching it in some basement lecture hall.

Wednesday, April 2: "AMST Internship Due" and "2 films 7:30 Snite." This day was the deadline to submit paperwork for a fall internship with the South Bend Tribune for course credit. I got it, in the sports department, and covered mostly Notre Dame soccer, plus a swim meet or two and a fencing tournament downtown one Saturday. I don't remember what the two films were, though they started at 7:30 at the Snite Museum of Art on campus.

Thursday, April 3: "Lecture 1:30" and "Movie Lecture 5:00 126 DBRT." No idea what these were about, and it would take me a while to find room 126 in DeBartolo Hall now. I'm sure at the time, I could find it with my eyes closed.

Friday, April 4: "Dickinson Lecture 3:00 DBRT 126"; "Budget Due"; "Oil Change ICPA 3:30." I think this was the week of the Notre Dame Literary Festival, hence the Emily Dickinson lecture. The budget was for The Observer's Viewpoint department, for which I was the editor this semester. (But not come the fall, as would normally be the case, because the assistant managing editor didn't return from her summer internship in Washington -- nothing tawdry or salacious; she just got an opportunity she didn't want to pass up -- and I got that job, which is what I'd wanted all along. I still tease Brad about giving it to Maureen, even though we kind of knew there was the possibility she wouldn't be there in the fall.) I don't know what "ICPA" was, but it might've been the dealership where I took the Volvo for its oil change once or twice, until I realized that the cost of a dealership oil change wasn't worth the free car wash.

Saturday, April 5: "Poetry Reading 7:30 Hesburgh" and "Watch A League ... Death ..." The poetry reading may have been Galway Kinnel, who I remember seeing in a room at the Hesburgh Library. I think I saw Sharon Olds, too, so it could've been her. The movies may have been A League of Their Own and Death of a Salesman.

Friday, April 4 to Saturday, April 6: "The People vs. Larry Flint." I think I went.

Also, beneath the dates on this page, I wrote "Change Tires," a reminder to finally take the snow tires off the Volvo and put the summer ones back on. Or, more specifically, take it to the Sears Auto Department at the mall in Mishawaka and spend two hours wandering the stores while the car is in their care.

Sunday, April 6: "Inside Column."

Monday, April 7: "Powers Story Due" and "Career & Placement." I'm sure I got the story in on time, but I don't know what I did at Career & Placement. Lord knows they never did anything for me.

Tuesday, April 8: "Holtz Roast"; "Death of a Salesman essay due" and "Call Kate." I'm sure I got the essay in before going to cover the roast of Lou Holtz at the Joyce Center on campus. Heather and I joined forces on that one -- our first, and I think only, joint byline -- and were in The Observer offices until about 4 a.m. writing the story (and bullshitting). I just brought this up to her parents at her book release party a few weeks ago. I don't think I ever called my cousin on her birthday.

Wednesday, April 9: "DART 11 a.m."; "Davie lecture"; "Finish Antonia, read other stuff." Ah, DART. That was our automated course selection process. We had a guide with course code numbers and our assigned times, and we had to call in to select our classes. I'm sure it's all done online now. This would've been to sign up for the fall semester of my senior year, when I took only four classes because of the South Bend Trib internship. If I recall correctly, I had one class on Mondays and Wednesdays for 80 minutes (or however long two-days-a-week courses were) and three on Tuesdays and Thursdays for the same length, leaving my Fridays free and clear. I spent many a Friday both fall and spring semester senior year sleeping off hangovers while Bryan had to go to class or work in the university's public relations department.

The Bob Davie lecture was a "get to know the coach" sort of deal for the new football coach. Ironically, it came the day after the Holtz roast, which had been planned even before he "resigned" as coach.

Thursday, April 10: "Capital Expenditures Meeting 8:00"; "Fiction: Paragraph from last story." The capital expenditures meeting must've had something to do with being Viewpoint editor. The fiction paragraph was an assignment for my fiction writing class.

Friday, April 11: "Payroll due"; "Bookstore 4:00"; "Braves/Cubs; Matt's 10:30/11." Payroll was for the Viewpoint staff. Bookstore might've been the first game of the annual basketball tournament for my team, though I don't know if that was really the case, because I had tickets for a Braves/Cubs game at Wrigley Field that afternoon. We were all excited to go because Greg Maddux was schedule to pitch for Atlanta ... and the game got snowed out -- after we'd driven the two hours to Chicago. So we went to some wings place in Evanston and then drove home.

Friday, April 11 to Saturday, April 12: "Shine." I guess this was on campus, but I do remember seeing it in the theater in South Bend.

In the margin next to the previous dates I wrote, "Call Bryan." His birthday is the 18th, so I don't know why I didn't wait until the next week to call him, unless he was on a break and traveling then. I would call him from The Observer offices, because I was often there at varying hours (when he might be at his flat) -- and because I could call London for free.

Monday, April 14: "Powers editing due"; "Monk lunch 12:15." Monk was the president of the university, Edward A. Malloy. He hosted a lunch every spring for the new editorial staff at The Observer. It was the only time I met him, I believe.

Tuesday, April 15: "Fiction story due"; "Lonely Are the Brave 8:45 a.m." Who shows a movie at 8:45 a.m.?

Wednesday, April 16: "4 2-paragraph ledes for Haugh"; "Grapes of Wrath (play)." I don't recall seeing a stage production of Grapes, so maybe I just had to read one? A mystery 11 years after the fact.

Thursday, April 17: "My Antonia paper due." That was crossed out, though. "Make up columnists' [illegible]"; "Call Chicago Cubs." Even though I can't read it, I probably had to make a schedule for the Viewpoint columnists for the fall semester. And maybe I was in charge of calling the Cubs to find out about our refund for the snow-out.

Friday, April 18: "Yanks/Sox 7:05 - Leave 4 p.m." Brad, Jamie, Colleen and I went to the game at Comiskey Park (the new one, and still called Comiskey then). It was cold.

Saturday, April 19: "Chicago." Went to the Art Institute and had lunch somewhere, I think. I remember driving back that afternoon.

Friday, April 18 to Saturday, April 19: "Mars Attacks!" I didn't go.

Sunday, April 20: "Write Antonia paper"; "Read Desert Solitaire." Wow, I loved Desert Solitaire. I haven't re-read it in about eight years, so I'm overdue. Though it always makes me long for the Southwest. That last reading came when I was going out to Arizona for the Fiesta Bowl in 2001.

Monday, April 21: "Powers rewrite due"; "Some Like It Hot"; "Sign lease 1:00." With Bryan in London, I was in charge of securing our apartment for the fall.

Tuesday, April 22: "Desert Solitaire essay."

Wednesday, April 23: "SB Trib 10 a.m." I think there was an interview before getting any kind of internship. It was with a woman who'd graduated from Notre Dame, Margaret Fosmoe. I ate at Taco Bell in downtown South Bend afterwards.

Saturday, April 26: "Elizabeth Dole." On-campus lecture. Maybe I was covering it? Or had to assign someone to cover it? (In addition to being Viewpoint editor, I seem to recall now that I was an assistant News editor as well.) I wouldn't have wanted to go on my own time.

Wednesday, April 30: "Payroll due."

Thursday, May 1: "Volvo 9 a.m." Oil change or tuneup in preparation for the drive home, I'm sure.

Friday, May 2: "Haugh profile story due"; "Dole story." OK, so I guess I had to go to the lecture. For a class? Was this my profile? I certainly didn't interview Elizabeth Dole personally, and any coverage of her lecture would've run the following Monday, not nearly a week later on Friday.

Sunday, May 4: "Powers' house 4:00." Professor Powers always had his classes over for an afternoon dinner at the end of the semester. It was a good time.

Monday, May 5: "Nature final 10:30 same room." I think I took a nature in literature course. In any case, the final was in the same room in which the class met, which wasn't always the case with final exams.

Wednesday, May 7: "11:20 a.m. - Tomasula - 350 DBRT." That must've been the final for his/her class.

Friday, May 9: "West final 10:30." This is the one I had to move up a day in order to fly home for Grandma's funeral.

Saturday, May 10: "Last day of finals." I didn't have one this day regardless.

Friday, May 16: "Senior Issue Out." And with that, so were we. This put a cap on junior year. After picking up a few copies of the senior issue on campus, my car was packed and I was on the road home. I did the drive by myself, stopping, I think, in DuBois, Pa. I'd thought of trying to get to Pittsburgh for the Pirates game that night, but I didn't leave early enough and listened to the first few innings on the radio. This might've been the night of that famous fight in the Knicks playoff game that got Patrick Ewing and other players suspended for the next game, which the Knicks lost on their way to losing the series. I remember watching the game -- or at least the highlights and the aftermath -- on ESPN in a hotel room.

Sunday, May 18: "Graduation." Not mine.

Wednesday, May 21: "Victor/Victoria." Jess and I had tickets for a matinee to see Julie Andrews, but she wasn't in the matinee, so we were able to exchange the tickets for the evening performance. It was her last week in the show, so they were understanding, realizing that people were coming to see her. We killed the afternoon by getting lunch and going to a movie (I think it was Murder at 1600, the political/presidential murder thriller ... starring Dennis Miller). When we returned for the evening performance, we were told Julie Andrews was out of this one, too, and got a cash refund for our tickets. On the way back to Port Authority (we'd driven and parked there, rather than taking the train), we passed the Nederlander Theater on 40th St. -- where Rent had opened earlier in the year. We'd read all about it and knew it was next-to-impossible to get tickets. But the standby line was pretty short, so we waited, figuring it couldn't hurt. It was about 7:45. In five minutes, someone came down the line looking for a pair of standby customers. The two groups in front of us were three or four people, so we got the two tickets -- fifth row center. And they cost exactly as much as our Victor/Victoria tickets did, so it was no skin off our backs (or money out of our pockets). I still haven't seen Julie Andrews in person (not that she has returned to Broadway).

And that's where it ends. I obviously didn't use a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Desk Diary to keep track of assignments and appointments during my summer internship at the Asbury Park Press, and I may not have even brought it back with me for the fall. But now I know why I keep all my old calendars. Too bad I hardly ever use them religiously.

Hudson Moon

At the end of 15th St., the Moon hangs low over New Jersey and the Hudson. Picturesque, a perfect backdrop to the small park and the old piers.

Drunk hipsters hailing cabs

Riding in Car 158 -- the same number as the bus route we used to take home to Edgewater.

It's the warmest night of the year -- or the warmest Saturday night. The crowds were out on 10th and 17th by Red Rocks and The Park next door and up at Marquee, the drunk hipsters hailing cabs in the middle of the avenue.

On Route 3 in New Jersey, the Moon became visible, hanging just over the horizon like a torch, so low in the sky it looked like a brilliant flame burning over the modest ridgeline. I'm not sure I've ever seen a horizon Moon so low and large or so deeply orange.

All-time, top five hangover foods

1.) McDonald's french fries
2.) Nachos
3.) Annie's mac & cheese
4.) Pizza
5.) Advil LiquiGels

So the last one's not a food, per se, but you ingest it and it makes you feel better on the Day After.

I had three of the five today. My friend Dave got married on Friday in the biggest wedding I've ever attended -- 250 people, held in a large church with a runway for an aisle, with a reception at a hanger of a banquet hall. Dave's the closest thing to a brother to me, and he's the kind of guy who gets along with everyone. Nearly everyone he meets becomes a close friend. It's no wonder there were so many people at the wedding, with five tables -- so 40 people worth -- near mine filled with friends and family members of those friends stretching all the way back to grade school.

Here's all you need to know about Dave and his friendships: two guys I went to college with were invited simply because we've all been in the same fantasy baseball league for nine years now. He invited the parents and siblings of most of the groomsmen, including a few he's only known for the last six or eight years or so.

The wedding was a three-day celebration, beginning Thursday when we began convening in South Jersey and held the rehearsal and dinner. The church ceremony was Friday afternoon -- confusing many of us up through tonight about what day it actually is -- with the reception lasting until 11 and the afterparty until 2 a.m. Saturday, several dozen of us -- Dave might've even said it was up to 100 -- were back together at his parents' house for a Vietnamese gathering. This last ceremony also provided us with a chance to decorate his car, which we couldn't do on Friday night with the rain. So while he and his wife ate from the enormous Vietnamese buffet, a dozen of us gooped up our hands with finger paint and put our own artistic visions onto his recently washed-and-waxed BMW M5. But with Dave, it's ALWAYS a recently washed-and-waxed car.

The friends checklist is filling up, with just a few single souls remaining. These celebrations are becoming more rare and less frequent. It's an easier pace to maintain, though it makes for more carefree celebrating, as indicated by our necessity to stop beneath the golden arches on our way from the South Jersey hotel to Dave's parents' this morning. Those fries did wonders for Casey and me, as I'm sure they will again someday after another long, enjoyable night.

The final descent into irrelevance

I just saw a cell phone commercial -- Cingular, maybe? I think there was orange involved -- in which Meatloaf plays a father working in a garage and sings the tune to "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," but with new lyrics about wireless plans. Come ON. That's ridonkulous.

Bike guy is back

The bike guy -- Passaic to Hoboken -- is back (well, his bike is back; he's been here, mostly, through the winter) and I picked up a tip from (watching) him -- he carries his iPod Nano and earbuds in a metal tin to protect them. Useful.

Not useful: The train's jostling as I try to write.

Out past Kingsland, just beyond the tunnel on the edge of the landfills that transition into the Meadowlands (the ecosystem, not the sports complex), work has resumed on a group of ballfields. It used to be open space of graded dirt, with a few fences and small, bunker-like concrete fortifications. I could see the baseball diamonds in the future, but Casey once asked me what that space was. That's when it occurred to me that it wasn't so obvious to everyone -- or the non-obsessed.

Now the machinery has returned, lights are installed, scoreboards are up and boxes have been built to hold the dirt around home plate and the bases -- either these fields will have grass infields or artificial turf of some kind. Fancy.

Smooth jazz for your drive home

Car 63 tonight is the bald guy with a deep voice who's always got music on. It's usually a fast-paced instrumental jazz or Joe Satriani-type of rock. He drives fast and has a Yankee cap on the back shelf, but I can overlook that because he's nice, clean, courteous, easy to hear and a fast driver. Likes to talk baseball, too. He'll keep quiet if I'm not into talking, but I don't mind chatting with him the more I ride with him. He even noticed as I jotted these words in my Moleskin and told me to "help myself" to the light above my door. I told him there was no need, however, because the Lincoln Tunnel provides enough light and, aside from idling at traffic lights, the only smooth portion of the ride home during which writing is conducive.

Ridin

Car 10 for the second night in a row, and he has some rap/hip-hop on. "Ridin" by Chamillionaire followed by "Hips Don't Lie" by Shakira. (Which, incidentally, absolutely must be played at Natalie's wedding, because she's all I can think about when I hear that song -- all because of one trip to Shea Stadium when she kept singing it in the subway.)

Coupled with the driver's cologne, I feel like I'm at Bliss tonight instead of about to drive by just after it closed. He's a good driver, though -- had the address in the GPS before I got in the car and drives pretty fast. Now I can chill.

Lights on @ Cookshop

Lights on at Cookshop -- a new sight as we head up 10th Avenue. Either a freak occurrence, or
it's damn late (which is to say, early) to be heading home from work.

Rainy night, low clouds over the city reflect Times Square's glow. One of my favorite sights.

Exeunt!

I'm not sure what he's talking about, but Peter O'Toole is on Leno and just mentioned the words "5-year-old boy" and "foam."

He's promoting a movie in which he plays the pope.

That can't be good. I must've heard it wrong.

But it doesn't take away from the fact that I'd listen to Peter O'Toole talk about anything. He makes it all sound so distinguished. Leno should've had him come out earlier to do the "Headlines" segment.

Al Roker doesn't ride the subway (as far as I know)

Had a discussion with tonight's driver -- Car 137 -- about the recession hurting his business with all the media and financial companies laying off workers and cutting back on expenses -- like private car services to take employees to and from the office in the wee hours. Or not-so-wee, as the case may be. I'm sure Al Roker gets a car no matter what time of day it is. That guy probably hasn't been in a subway since he guested on Seinfeld.

Car 498 isn't a car

Car 498 isn't a car but an SUV, the one I had previously without expecting it. That night, he sat parked along the curb at the end of our 9th Avenue block as Rick and I stood waiting for our respective cars. Every time I glanced north up the avenue to look into the approaching traffic on what was a busy Saturday night/Sunday morning, the SUV on the corner would flash its lights. Finally, he drove up and stopped in the crowded, yet slow-moving right lane and held his placard up in the window. I got in and said, "I wasn't expecting an SUV. All the others have been Town Cars." "Yeah, some of us have nice cars," he said.

He plays good music. On this night, he had a 70s station on XM Radio playing Skynrd and other classic rock.

I'd have him again the next night, but no music. He still had his fresh cup of coffee, though, clearly from a stop on the way to get me. (I saw the fullness of the cup backlit at a traffic light as we made our way up 10th Avenue.) But the music was off, a disappointment. That might've been because the screen in the dash was in DVD mode -- though with a message saying playback was turned off while the vehicle was in Drive.

Nights like these

I enjoy nights like these when the Empire State Building stays lit. (Green, in this case.) It makes the 2 o'clock hour feel more inviting and doesn't seem like I'm heading home at as late an hour as I am.

A go for launch

My Spring Training trip to Florida begins at 5:55 a.m. on a Monday, March 10, as I stand beside the train tracks at Clifton awaiting the 6 a.m. eastbound to Secaucus Junction. Ben Harper's cover of "Strawberry Fields" plays on my iPod and my hands grow numb in the cold as I scribble in my Moleskin notebook.


It's a different group, a different breed out waiting for the 6 o'clock train from what I'm used to at 7:53 or 8:16. It's a smaller collection of commuters, a more close-knit group of strangers who have become acquaintances by virtue of their respective workdays, which have them watching dawn break from beside the tracks.


Venus hangs above the eastbound track like a marker, a point summoning you out this way, inviting you to explore.


I switch to the 6:26 Jersey Avenue train at Secaucus, but soon we're stopped along the Passaic River to the south and I-280 to the north. For half an hour, I watch the light grow in the east, gradually illuminating the factory along the river that I'd first seen as a black mass, no definition to separate the smokestack from the various buildings, no angles with which to gauge perspective, to tell which way the building is situated. Amtrak keeps us here as one of several trains stuck in a crawl through the yards of East Newark because of signal problems. To the left of the factory, the sun shines orange beneath the elevated Turnpike.


Again we move, a few hundred feet at a time, signal to signal, where the trains have to wait for oral instructions from the dispatcher before continuing. There's no telling how long this will take. By 7:25 -- about 45 minutes late -- I figure I have another 20 before I have to wonder when the next flight to Orlando is.


Not long after writing those thoughts, we're moving again, pulling into Newark Penn Station and soon reaching the Newark Airport station. I hustle onto the monorail and, in the end, I make the flight with time to spare. Check-in takes minutes, security is a breeze and my gate sits just two away from the top of the concourse. I'm in my seat by 8:10 (for the 8:30 departure), and the couple next to me arrives a few minutes after I buckle my seat belt. Their son is seated behind me, and after the father jokes, "Who do you want to sit with -- Mom or me?" I sarcastically offer to switch seats with the sullen teen, knowing he won't want to move. He chooses to stick with the window and open center seat as his traveling companions.


I sleep through most of the flight, wait ages for my bag (then have to fix the busted zipper, which somehow came undone so that I nearly dumped everything on the floor next to the carousel), pick up my silver Prius and make it to Disney's Wide World of Sports complex right at 1:05, game time.


After the Braves hold off the Cardinals, 3-1 -- or at least until they get to the ninth -- I beat the traffic out of the complex and cruise (despite the ripoff of $4 in tolls) to Titusville, where I discover that I've left my computer power cord at home. Hence the lack of a more immediate recap of my travels; I save the computer's battery for uploading photos and little else.


After another nap -- having gotten just three hours' sleep at home before heading to the airport -- I grab dinner (taco, two enchiladas, rice, chips and salsa, two Dos Equis for $17, including tip) at the Mexican restaurant next to the hotel. I cruise into towntown Titusville to scout out the space shuttle viewing area, I settle in for some TV at the hotel before returning to the park at 12:30 to await the scheduled 2:28 a.m. launch.


Predictably, people have made a night of it, setting up lawn chairs, their cameras on tripods and picnic dinners (and drinks) throughout Veterans Memorial Park. (The map I have says Space View Park, as does Google Maps, but the images there look to be from before a refurbishing, so perhaps with the upgrade came the name change.) I manage to secure a decent spot, though it requires me to set up my tripod with one leg on a stone retaining wall and the other two nestled into the plants. To take pictures, I have to balance myself on the wall and look through the viewfinder without toppling over. A veteran of shuttle launches from West Lafayette, Indiana, has taken up a spot next to me with his younger daughter (the older one, who was apparently sleeping in the car, joins us for the last 20 minutes) and we make small talk on and off for the next two hours.


Somewhere off to our left, someone has a radio that's picking up the communications from Mission Control, so we're kept abreast of the countdown and the various checks that have to be approved before the launch. At the critical junctures -- T-minus 9 minutes and 4 minutes are two, I believe -- the remaining time and the status filter through the crowd to those around us. At T-minus 31 seconds (the moment when the shuttle's on-board computers take over), the murmur becomes louder, the anticipation peaks and a palpable sense of excitement, eagerness and awe overcomes the crowd. Soon, the engines are lit beneath the shuttle, the rockets emit their exhaust, "the candle is lit" as they say, and the whole launch pad complex shines brightly across the 11 miles of water and wetlands between the launch pad and our viewpoint in Titusville. The sky is afire. In less than half a minute, the shuttle lifts off and disappears into the low cloud bank. It's all silent for us, a brilliant display of light and smoke, and it's another minute or 90 seconds before we finally hear the launch, the rumbling of the rockets finally reaching us across the channel.


Despite the brevity -- two hours of waiting for 30 seconds of liftoff -- I find it's worth it. There are only a finite number of launches remaining before NASA retires the shuttles in 2010, and not only did I get to see one, I got to see one at night at a time when the agency tries to limit liftoffs to daylight in order to have a better view of any potential damage caused by ice or other factors.


Exhausted, I pack up my gear and trudge back to the car with the crowd. The Burger King where I parked is closed, two of the employees standing on the curb outside having watched the launch themselves. Not that I'm hungry, I'm surprised the manager doesn't keep the restaurant open until 3 on a night like this, when he can get an extra hour or so of business from all the hungry space nuts.


On the 10-minute drive back to the hotel, my iPod -- clever as it is -- plays "Across the Universe" (albeit the Rufus Wainwright cover), which sticks in my head as I quickly fall asleep in my hotel room along I-95.

On the 309

SECAUCUS

As I wait for the Main Line 3:09 home, my iPod plays Johnny Cash's "Like the 309," off American V. His is a number and mine's a time, but still ... that's freaky. The only thing that would've been more eerie is if it played while I was on the 3:09, with its "On the 309" refrain.

OK, so maybe it's pretty fair

Updating yesterday's mild ranting, the outlook has changed.

Casey says I should go for it. My heart says I should go for it. My younger, eager-to-travel self says I should go for it.

I think I'm going for it.

If I leave the Braves game in Orlando by 4 p.m. -- and I'd probably leave earlier than that -- I can be checked into my hotel in Fort Pierce by 6 p.m. I can have dinner and crawl into bed by 7 to try to get some sleep -- shouldn't be a problem, since I think my flight out of Newark leaves at 8 a.m. or so. Four hours should do it, then I can be on the road to Cocoa Beach or some other free, slightly-south-of-Kennedy viewpoint.

If liftoff occurs before 2:30, as it should -- rocket scientists are pretty on-time and accurate when it comes to numbers -- I can be back in my hotel bed by 5 a.m. Sleep until 10, make it to Dodgertown by 11. And since I'm staying in the same hotel that night, there's no need to rush out after the game, so I can take in the atmosphere afterwards, too. (New bonus wrinkle: Dodgers legend Tommy Lasorda will be managing that day.)

The only major issue would be if the launch is scrubbed -- and scrubbed late. Like, within the final three hours, when I'll already be on my way. If it's going to be an overcast night or if rain is forecast, I'd like that to be known by the time I get to Fort Pierce, so I can just stay there.

OK -- hang on. New plan just came to me. Why the heck would I drive from Orlando to Fort Pierce, only to head back up 95 to Kennedy? Orlando to the Space Center is an hour. I think I'm better off looking for a hotel in that area for the first night, then checking into my Fort Pierce hotel after the Dodgers game. I can get more sleep before the launch -- and much more after it -- and can cut down on the night driving. Then I can get up earlier to drive down to Vero Beach for the game.

NOW I'm getting back into the traveling groove. Instead of two nights in Fort Pierce, roughly equidistant from the Dodgers' and Mets' camps (two nights in one place for simplicity's sake, and to avoid having to bring everything with me in the car to the games each day), I can deal with the hassle of moving each night in order to cut down on the driving. So, then, this: Braves game to hotel near Kennedy for launch. Down to Dodgertown for game, then to new St. Lucie hotel for the night. Mets game, then to Orlando to Donna's. Much simpler.

See how easy that became just by talking it out?

Oh, that's SO not fair

In my years at the paper, I made two trips to Clearwater, Fla., to do some advance work on the Phillies' minor leaguers, but I'd never experienced the Major League side of it. From stories I'd heard, people love it. I was eager to see for myself.

So with the Dodgers' likely move to Arizona next year -- leaving Dodgertown in Vero Beach, where they've been since their Brooklyn days -- I decided I had to go this year. I can't miss Dodgertown, and I couldn't let myself see Dodgertown with the Orioles (the presumed replacement) as the tenants. Vero Beach is sort of isolated on the eastern coast of Florida, with only a couple of other teams training in the area -- the Nationals in Viera and the Mets in Port St. Lucie. So, naturally, I had to see the Mets, too, and planned the trip to allow for exhibition games at both sites.

I fly to Orlando on March 10 to see the Braves at their Disney World complex. The Mets play the Red Sox that day, and tickets sold out before I could get them. But because Port St. Lucie is a two-hour drive from Orlando, I would've been cutting it close, especially if I had any flight delays. After the game, I'll head down to Fort Pierce -- between Vero and St. Lucie -- to check into my hotel. On the 11th, I'm at Dodgertown and on the 12th, I see the Mets. I'll head up to the Orlando area to stay with my cousin before flying home on the 13th.

But the other thing I've always dreamed of doing is seeing a live space shuttle launch. My previous trips to Florida have never coincided with a launch, and we've never planned a trip around one.

So, of course, the next launch is currently scheduled for March 11. Right now, they say the launch target is 2:31 a.m. EDT, with only a 10-minute launch window. I didn't think that was likely, because I'd thought they were trying to keep all launches to daylight hours to observe any debris hitting the shuttle on its way up. Maybe they've managed to work around that.

What this all means, then, is that I could fit the launch into my plans, but it means a 90-minute drive to Cape Canaveral during my first night there. And it could take away time at Dodgertown if I have to catch up on sleep in the morning.

It could also mean major jealousy from Casey.

So it's an unlikely side trip. But one I can't stop thinking about.

Valentine's Day scenes, New York City

• A man -- out-of-work, struggling actor? -- dressed up in a white jumpsuit and Elvis wig, with wings on his back, handing out free red carnations to women entering Chelsea Market on 9th Avenue.
• A woman crossing 9th Avenue with a bouquet of flowers and a "Happy Valentine's Day" balloon dropping her receipt in the crosswalk. No love for the environment, I guess.
• A man causing a scene at the corner of 8th Avenue and 15th Street with a profanity-laced tirade aimed at a woman. It was physical, too. If she tried to walk away, he grabbed her and pushed her up against the wall of the building. Anyone who passed the corner on either side of 15th turned to look, and as I was passing on the opposite side of the street, I had to step around a woman who was calling the police on her cell phone. As I waited for my lunch at Swich, I saw the couple turn the corner and enter the apartment building together at the corner of 8th and 15th.
• A man with an actual heart-shaped box of candy.
• A co-worker writing out a valentine to his wife on the computer.
• Various men and women carrying bouquets or single flowers on the subways and trains.
• A woman at the Secaucus station writing out a card.
  

Leather and laces at The Pru

Finally made it out to the Prudential Center, the gleaming new home for the Devils in Newark. Only I'm not seeing the primary tenant. It's college basketball -- Notre Dame and Seton Hall playing on Ash Wednesday. There must be a priest giving out ashes around here somewhere.

I walk around the concourse to find my seat and stop in at the Ice Bar, the blue-tinted lounge with actual ice for surface of the bar (helps keep drinks cold as well as promoting the hockey theme). The beer is a bit expensive, natch, and doesn't include too many inviting selections, but I like the setup -- the long end of the space opens up to center court/ice behind a section of seats, so if you want to spend the entire game (or concert) in there, you can do so without having to watch on TV screens.

Kyle McAlarney has a big contingent here, including his mom behind the bench. But I haven't seen Richard Codey yet.

The Pru is a good venue for Seton Hall. More intimate, especially with the top level blocked off. It's bright and clean and inviting, and the walk from Penn Station wasn't bad at all. The worst part of it would be the winter winds, but that's not all that worse than the stroll from the parking lot at the Meadowlands.

The best part, though, is the final score: Notre Dame 95, Seton Hall 69

If you ain't first, you're last

Corvair headlight

They say that NASCAR has overtaken the NHL as America's fourth "major league," though up here in the north we just don't see it. Stock-car racing just isn't an enjoyable spectator sport on the television, though each week during the season, the site of the race is overflowing with fans setting aside a weekend to watch cars go fast.

After spending a weekend at Daytona International Speedway for Dave's bachelor party, we started to see what all the excitement was about. Don't get me wrong -- I'm not planning any Daytona 500 trips this year or any year, but having now been to a professional race, I can see the allure, if you're into that sort of thing. It's probably very similar to a golf tournament. Standing for hours on end in the sweltering sun of a July day just to watch Tiger Woods and a bunch of other millionaires walk by and send a ball off into the distance where I can't see it doesn't draw me in, but there are plenty of people who attend the big events each year.

The allure of a race is that it's an event. The one we went to -- the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona -- certainly gives you more bang for your buck. On Friday -- the 25th -- we saw practice runs and then a three-hour race called the Koni Challenge. On Saturday, the 24-hour race began at 1:30 p.m., and $85 got you inside the gates in the morning and all the way through Sunday afternoon when the race ended. Add on the garage access upgrade (which brought the tickets to $85), and you're allowed to walk through the garage area, where the teams prepare -- and repair -- the cars. Fans walk right up to their driving heroes; it's like having access -- as a fan -- to a Major League clubhouse or NFL locker room before the game. And on race day, we walked onto the track, leaning into the banked front stretch and walking across the start/finish line. There aren't too many fans who get to cross home plate at Yankee Stadium the day of a game.

One particular cool story: I heard of one fan who spent his first day at Daytona taking pictures of his favorite drivers. That night, he took his memory card to CVS and had prints made. The next day, he had the drivers autograph the photos he took the day before.

Both races we saw made use of the infield course at Daytona. Instead of 24 hours of left turns and driving in circles, the cars made a left turn at the end of pit road and drove onto the infield course, where two sharp horseshoes made things interesting, before coming back onto the main track only a few hundred feet from where they left it, just before Turn 1. So there's a lot more technical skill, strategy and braking involved in the races we saw than your standard NASCAR race.

But the biggest thing you don't get a feel for watching on TV as opposed to being there is the sound of racing. Daytona is huge, but no matter where you go -- the stands, the infield, the lake, the turns -- the drone of engines is always in the background, and when you get close to the track, the roar is intense. It's the difference between attending a rock concert and watching the summer concert series on the Today show.

Unfortunately, I didn't get to go back to the track at midnight Sunday with the rest of the group. Felled by an illness, I chose to sleep in preparation for my early departure the next morning to drive back to Orlando for my flight home. I'm told the night scene was even more thrilling -- the brake discs glowed orange with the heat and the atmosphere took on a different tone under the cover of darkness (and the klieg lights illuminating the track).

The weekend drained me, but I still managed to enjoy the foray into a new world, a car geek's world, a race fan's world. While there are similarities to a college football Saturday, there is no three-hour window where you're inside the stadium, focused on the action. When you're in the infield, the action continues around you, and the tailgating is part of the spectating. It's like attending a football game, a car show, a carnival and a picnic all at once.

But I think it will forever remain a Southern obsession, with only the die-hard niche fans giving it any attention up in the Northern reaches of America.

Random notes from the first night in Florida

At dinner:

Dave: Sometimes, Laura calls Tony "Tom."

Dan: She has said it was the best three minutes of her life ...

Tom: I always say, why go 30 when three minutes is enough.

---

Approximately five beers between the hotel bar and Lollipops, which would account for the handwriting in my notebook.

[This attempt at logging my intake for the weekend was not fruitful. The fact that I came down with a bug and cut back on my drinking also made it a pointless endeavor.]

---

God, so much I could've written, but it would've been weird to have a notebook in a strip gentleman's club. Because I'm not Kerouac.

---

It's 3 fucking 15, and we plan to be at the track by 10/10:30. (Also, on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air on Nick @ Nite, Tyra Banks was the guest hooch [Jackie] who Will and a guy had a drinking/arm wrestling competition over. It's hilarious to see Will Smith go from this -- a bad sitcom I used to love -- to a box office gold mine and Oscar nominee.

---

I purposely brought my "Rudy Sucks" T-shirt because of Florida's primary on Tuesday, but my illness forces me to wear multiple layers to bed, and I don't venture out of the room in the T-shirt all weekend.

En route to Orlando

36,000 feet over Tennessee. Or a Carolina. Somewhere that still leaves us an hour from our initial descent into Orlando. I write on the tray table in 28A as the iPod cleverly shuffles to "Seatbacks and Traytables" by Fountains of Wayne. The combination of cloud haze and hte time of day -- it's dusk on the ground, but still rather bright up here -- makes it tough to see off into the distance on the ground, so these rivers and developments and fields -- farms? -- below mean little, at least as a guide to determining our position.

Dave still has no idea where we're going, beyond Orlando. I don't know that he's versed enough in the Florida party scene to realize that Tampa (or, of course, Miami) would be more traditional sites for debauchery, but maybe he'll catch on when we head east and the signs start saying Daytona.

He and Tom just walked back down the aisle to chat -- Dave's antsy without a computer or iPod -- and it look slike they took Tony back with them to an empty seat. But he checked his bag, while mine sits above me, so moving would've been pointless for me.

The clouds below have taken on the look of river rocks, or even cobblestones laid out flat and haphazardly, stretching into the distance with dark veins running through them. Kind of like the cracked desert in that Dali painting.

I ran into Tom at the airport train station, having boarded his train in Secaucus. We breezed through security (hardly a line) and bought a couple of beers ($16.22, with tip) to wait. "Is it wrong to start drinking on a bachelor party trip before the bachelor?" Tom asked. "Only if he'd be mad that we didn't wait for him," I said. "And I don't think Dave will car." But now that the pint of Bass (1) has given me a headache. Unless that's from reading all of Sports Illustrated or a couple games of Tetris on the iPod.

6:25 - Just felt the deceleration and initial drop for our approach. Headache's gone and hte first stars shine in the darkening eastern sky. A peek out the other side of the plane shows a burning orange horizon. The "selection of comedies" is ending with an episode of The Simpsons I watched eight days ago, the Barnacle Bay episode. Earlier, I noticed According to Jim and the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Weird mix. Oh -- now they're just "teasing" everyone with The New Adventures of Old Christine only minutes before it will have to be shut off.

Upon landing, the background music piped in to the cabin is the same that played while we awaited takeoff -- and it begins with someone's cover of James Taylor's "Shower the People." That song then gets stuck in my head.

In the land of idiots

On the way to the airport last week, I remarked to Casey how we were courteous, conscientious commuters, moving quickly with our suitcases and not blocking aisles or exits as we got on and off the trains or moved along the platforms. I have a heightened sense for self-absorbed travelers, on whom I'm quick to affix an asshole label, whether they might deserve it or not if I were to study them or get to know them beyond an anonymous observation on the train or the plane. But you know what they say about first impressions.

Those who get the quick-draw label of asshole include:

• Commuters who put their bags on the adjoining seat during rush hour, knowing someone will ask them to move it. There's no way you're getting the whole double seat during the rush, so why force someone to ask you to move your shit?
• Subway riders who make no effort to move from the door while others enter or exit the train, as well as those on the platform who stand in the way -- or try to get on -- while people are still getting off.
• The two young bitches who made no effort to hold the elevator at the Newark Airport train station even though they could see us coming through glass wall and heard our calls to wait.
• Pretty much everyone else who flies, but particularly those who rush over and crowd the gate area as soon as the announcement is made that preboarding will begin momentarily. If you fly often enough to know that the preboarding announcement means boarding will begin soon, you fly often enough to know that first it's first class and old people, children and families, and sometimes Continental OnePass Elite members. Then they'll start boarding rows. But you people just have to stand in the way, don't you?
• And, of course, those who ignore carry-on rules, particularly when they place their suitcases in the overhead bins incorrectly -- wheels to one side when I believe wheels out is preferred.

I suppose this extends from the anxiety of driving -- sidewalk rage, I guess. Driving in northern New Jersey can bring out the worst in the best drivers. Sometimes, I have to remind myself to chill. But every clueless or aggressive driver on his or her cellphone gets to me a little. And I count each car that passes me as I wait in the crosswalk on my way to the train each day, glaring at the drivers who ignore New Jersey's yield to pedestrians law. I plan to make a sign to hold up as I stand there -- just as soon as it's light out so they can see it at 5 p.m.

Palm Beach look-back

January 17, 10:50 a.m.

On our approach to West Palm Beach for Lisa's wedding, we look down on neat rows of houses with terra-cotta roofs in developments that are golf courses first, communities second. "It looks like hell," I say.

~ ~ ~

2:40 p.m.

We head to Burger Heaven in Palm Beach for lunch, sitting at the rectangular, three-sided counter, where Casey admires the giant lemon cakes in the middle and I idly scan the restaurant, still a little dazed from the morning flight. We're in New York five days a week, sometimes six or seven if we go in on day soff, but we come to Palm Beach and not three hours after landing, I spot Michael Kors sitting at a table on the other side of the room. His back was to me and a good-looking boy-toy sat across from him, facing our way. We might've been the only people in the place who would've recognized him, and I probably wouldn't have if he wasn't wearing a black T-shirt and jeans.


"Does Michael Kors hang out in Palm Beach?" I asked Casey.


"He might," she said. "Why?"


"Because that guy over there looks just like him." Just after I said that, he turned his head and I had the best look at him yet and Casey said, "Yep that's him."


It turned out later that she had a picture of the back of his head, from when she took a picture of the cakes.

~ ~ ~

9 p.m.

Drinks at The Breakers -- early 20th Century Palm Beach oppulence, where a room for four nights costs as much as our monthly mortgage. One in our group said the valet scoffed at the $4 tip. On top of the $13 specialty drinks and $6.75 bottles -- bottles! -- of imported beer .. and the automatic 20% gratuity. I would've preferred to give two bucks for our two drinks, but $7 it is. But what do you expect from a place that offers, for $2 a drink, ice cubes made from Fiji water in place of the normal ones made from the swill that is tap water drunk by savages.

~ ~ ~

January 18, 2:15 p.m.

How I know I'm getting old, from "Guide to the Photo Process," a sign explaining the various types of prints at a photography exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art:

Color print ... Prior to the advent of digital printing, it was the most common type of color photograph.

~ ~ ~

8:37 p.m.

After the crabs are gone at Riggins Crab House, Brooke considers whether she wants to go to the restroom. Her decision is made when she looks at her hand and says, "I think I was bleeding from the crabs."

Boarded up on Willow

That little restaurant on the corner of Willow & 19th St. in Weehawken has finally closed. I passed it each night on the ride home to Edgewater and I'd wonder how it stayed open in such an undesirable location. I felt sorry for it, which of course was a feeling of sadness for its owners. I never drove by during dinner hours, though, so maybe I just missed the magical rush each night. Maybe it was a thriving little eatery, though I couldn't tell you what the cuisine was -- other than that it was exotic and, therefore, probably not of interest to me. But its neighbor is boarded up as well, so maybe the forces that closed the little restaurant and its kitchen design neighbor weren't those of the straightforward supply/demand/consumer interest ilk, but rather a landlord who chose to sell and a new owner bringing grander plans to his corner property on the northern end of Willow Ave. near the Lincoln Tunnel entrance.

Mark lives in IKEA; I just help out

When I read about comedian Mark Malkoff's plan to live in IKEA in Paramus last week, I decided that I had to go see this spectacle for myself. So on Wednesday, I drove up to the store with no real plans to shop; I was just going to wander the displays until I came across his "apartment."

I didn't get far. At the top of the escalator I noticed a small film crew and figured another news team was there for a lighthearted feature. But before I barely had a foot on the tiled floor, I was stopped.

"Hey! Can you help me out?" a voice behind me said. "Go grab that chair over there -- My name's Mark, by the way. I'm living here for a week. I can't move from this spot, so I need you to grab that chair over there and push me back to my home."

I didn't really think twice about it. I walked over to the desk setup, grabbed the rolling office chair and went back to the escalator. Mark sat down and directed me through the store.

"So what brings you to IKEA today?" he asked.

Had I told him the truth -- that I was there to see him, curious about this weird endeavor -- I might've ruined the moment for him. He thought he'd stopped a regular customer at the top of the escalator and convinced him to push him through the store. So I took a truth out of context.

"We just bought a house in the area, so I'm looking for a few things," I answered, noticing that the cameraman was focusing on me, rather than a wide shot of both of us. That I had no intention of actually buying anything wasn't something I felt he needed to know.

After a few minutes, I got Mark back "home" -- we re-shot the ending so that the cameraman could get the angle from inside the bedroom -- and jumped on the bed, then toasted with sparkling apple juice. As I signed the release form to be in the video, Mark and the crew thanked me several times for helping them out, and Mark added, "I feel bad about that one couple. I think they were offended."

"They'll get over it," I said. "This is New Jersey."

"Anyway, thanks again," he said. "If there's any way I can help you out, you know, just let me know."

"I will," I said, "if I ever find myself living in a department store."

So you'll see me in the following video short. I'm at the end, bringing him "home."

Day 137

For those who are into numerology, this probably means something:

On the day Jaime and Dan's son was baptised and we all visited their new house -- #137 -- my ride home for the night was ... yep, car 137.

Pretty big small talk

Usually the small talk from the drivers on my way home at night sticks to innocuous topics like who's left in the office at that hour or how drunk the pretty people are outside Marquee. This morning, it was basically the topic you'd least expect from idle chit-chat on the way to New Jersey.

"So," he said, "what do you think of Obama vs. Hillary?"

I laughed. I didn't have a chance to watch the debate at work and I dislike the political process in general, at least the way it's evolved in this day and age. During this primary process, the candidates on "the same side" have to spend months (or, it seems to be this time around, more than a year) bad-mouthing the same people who, in the end -- by November -- will be once again friends and allies.

Since maybe one out of every 20 drivers feels the need to talk beyond asking where I live and which exit to take, I'm not expecting a repeat of last night's brief -- and one-sided -- political discourse. Unless I have the same driver tonight.

It turned out to be an uneventful and quiet ride home after that. In 22 months at this job, I've had more than my share of weirdness on the relatively short drives home. A couple months into the job, the car I was in was hit head-on by a drunk driver who had crossed the line. The car was banged up pretty well, but we all walked away from the accident OK.

I've had a driver who alternated between going too slow and too fast and weaving between the lanes on four-lane River Road in Edgewater, even stopping at a traffic light at one point straddling the white line. That prompted a car that was behind us to call the police, who pulled us over about a block from my apartment. Another driver got a speeding ticket on River Road.

Recently, one driver was rear-ended by a semi as we were stuck in stop-and-go traffic in Weehawken because the outbound helix from the Lincoln Tunnel was closed and all cars were diverted to the local streets. Amazingly, there was no damage. Another driver ran over something on the helix -- he heard the thump and I felt it beneath my feet -- and then insisted on pulling over near the top of the helix (in the right travel lane) to inspect his car.

Also a few months into the job, I left work at 5 a.m. one day after a 16-inning Mets-Phillies marathon and had to be up by 7 for a ride to the airport. In checking my destination, my driver asked, "Lincoln Tunnel to Boulevard East?" which is accurate, if a little slower and not my preferred choice when going to Edgewater. But I didn't want to have to be too alert and give constant directions, so since he seemed to know the way enough, I said OK. Only as we approach the Boulevard East exit, he makes no move to take it, and by the time I alert him, it's too late, so we have to continue until two more exits to make the u-turn.

Then there was the guy who asked, as I settled in and buckled my seat belt, if we were to take the Lincoln Tunnel. I said that was correct, and he proceeded to head south on 9th Ave. and turn left on 14th St., instead of making the immediate right onto 15th, as every driver does to get to the Lincoln Tunnel. I figure that maybe he's new and is more comfortable taking 8th Ave. up to the tunnel. But after we continue east on 14th past 8th, I speak up. "Oh!" he said. "I thought you said the Holland Tunnel." Um, no dude, I didn't say anything. You said Lincoln and I confirmed it.

One Saturday night before the writers' strike, when Saturday Night Live was still live, I got out of work right at 2 a.m. and went down to the street to wait for my ride. We use the same car service as SNL, so sometimes on Saturdays we have a longer wait from 1-2 a.m. because of the high demand at 30 Rock. It was a busy night on 9th Ave., and while I waited with a co-worker, an SUV on the corner kept flashing its lights. Having never seen anything but a Town Car driven by the drivers at the company, we didn't think anything of it. Only after five or 10 minutes did the SUV pull away from the curb and pull up to us, a placard from the car service in the window with the number I was told was my ride. I got in and explained that I'd only ever seen Town Cars and had no reason to expect anything else. "Some of us have nicer cars," he said in a pissy tone.

At least he didn't talk on the drive; his iPod was blasting some Indian rock (or some other catchy far-away music) and when he asked me, somewhere on Route 3 in New Jersey, what exit was mine, he had to repeat himself until he turned down the volume.

Not sure if Santa did this much traveling

Man, I'm a bad blogger. Or just a liar. After intending to keep a log of our holiday travels, I couldn't even deliver one post from the road. I guess after that first day in Pennsylvania -- our night at grandma's -- I just settled into the routine. We'd arrive someplace, say hello, chat, eat, drink, go to bed, wake up and do it all over again. When I did find myself on the computer, it was either to get photos off my camera, look up something online, or for work. Not once did I find myself in a quiet, bored moment alone with my laptop with an urge to write.

So here's the outline of our odyssey from Dec. 22, 2007, to Jan. 1, 2008:

• Dec. 22: Left home, drove one hour to my parents'.
• Dec. 23: Left my parents', drove three hours to grandma's house -- over the (Delaware) River and through the (eastern Pennsylvania) woods -- in Mechanicsburg.
• Dec. 24: Left grandma's and drove three hours to Casey's mom's in Greensburg
• Dec. 25: Left Greensburg and drove an hour to Casey's dad's in Johnstown.
• Dec. 26: Toured Frank Lloyd Wright-built homes Kentuck Knob and Fallingwater in the Laurel Highlands/Ohiopyle region of southwestern PA. Casey's dad did all the driving, which was nice.
• Dec. 27: Worked. Took an hour break mid-day to head back to Greensburg.
• Dec. 28: Left Greensburg, drove an hour to Casey's sister's in Pittsburgh.
  
• Dec. 29: Left Pittsburgh, drove the six-and-a-half hours home, with an hour for lunch in Lewisburg, Pa.
• Dec. 30: Left home, drove four hours to Bryan's in Boston.
• Dec. 31: No driving. Cleaned Bryan's place, partied out '07 and into '08. Closely monitored intake to ensure good night's sleep and painless drive home.
• Jan. 1: Left Bryan's and drove four hours home.

Insane, no? It was a bit crazy, but it didn't really drag on me too much. The consecutive nights in Johnstown and Boston provided a noticeable break from the day-to-day packing, loading-the-car, unpacking grind. The fact that only one day in the Pennsylvania leg involved more than three hours in the car (and only one day overall was more than four hours) helped keep it from feeling like 10 days on the road, with shorter stints of visiting.

The main thing, of course, is that we were able to see everyone in both families for a good amount of time and we made it through the whole stretch without any injuries or accidents or speeding tickets. The car came through fine as the miles piled up past 124,000 and other than some mild rain on the 23rd and a morning of wet, non-sticking snow and then driving rain until we reached New Haven on New Year's Day, the weather was great.

So that's how 2007 ended and 2008 began. A year ago, we were preparing to begin our house hunting. This year, I'm preparing to finish what amount to the last two or three major renovations we have planned. Before long, I hope to have replaced all the floor mouldings so that we can insulate the walls, finished the basement by replacing the paneling and furnishing it, and finishing off the closet in the office so that it can be organized and will no longer look like a storage locker.

Some resolutions, if you will.

Yule Blog: Day 1 of the Odyssey

Ninety, if not 99, percent of my phone calls these days are made from my cell phone. This action usually requires nothing more than pressing the Send button, scrolling through the list of recent callers, and selecting one of them. Occasionally, I will have to actually scroll through the phone book on my phone to find the friend I want to call.

The other 1 percent -- or 10 percent -- of my calls are made at work, where I use the same kind of office phone used in every other office in America. But today, at my parents' house, I picked up the cordless phone from its base, pressed the "talk" button to wake it up, and dialed the number for Dave's house. Then, either out of habit from all the cell phone use, or because it seemed like it had to be done, I pressed the "talk" button again. You know, to "send" it. When I put the phone up to my ear, I heard nothing.

So I tried again. Same thing. I decided maybe I should check with Mom.

"You just press 'talk' and dial the number," she said.

"Oh. So I don't have to press 'talk' again after that?"

Um, no.

As I press "redial" and then raise the phone to my ear, I realize that Dave must've heard his phone ring twice now, but when he picked it up -- nothing. No one there. Dial tone.

He answers on the first ring. I explain what had been happening. He cracked up for at least half a minute.

I feel a bit old now. There was once a time when calling Dave meant pressing just seven digits -- no area code required. I even remember being at my aunt and uncle's in Maine and needing to press only five to call the neighbor down the road. It was like the KL5 exchange from old movies or TV shows -- or maybe just from The Simpsons.

It's not as old as I felt several years ago at my barber shop. As I sat in the chair, a boy who was waiting came up to the barber and asked if he could use the phone. When told it was no problem, he reached for the receiver and was about to dial, but then couldn't figure out where the buttons were. The barber had a rotary phone. The kid had never seen such a thing. This had to be early -- no later than the middle -- in the 90s.

* *

/\ /\

(Those are Christmas trees. Maybe sorta. I wish I had time -- or the inclination -- to create a holiday section break.)

Today, Casey and I began our 11-day, seven-houses-in-seven-cities holiday road trip. Seriously, we should have MapQuest (or Google Maps) or Hess or someone sponsor us. I'll slap a magnetic Hess or BP logo (not Exxon -- no way) on my car now through New Year's Day.

We left the house this morning, packing up the car and the cats and driving an hour to my parents'. An afternoon of holiday cheer with family friends while I "work" from the house, monitoring the site and watching for any news. I've got another shift on Thursday, but other than that, I'm free and clear this week.

Tomorrow, we head three hours west to Harrisburg for about 24 hours with Casey's grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins. Or whoever we see. From there, it's on to her mom's on Christmas eve, then her dad's on Christmas. On the 27th, it's back to mom's for a night before spending Friday in Pittsburgh and staying over at her sister's house. On the 29th, we'll make the long drive back home.

But not back to my parents, where the cats are spending this break. It'll be just a one-night stopover at home to make sure it's still standing, and then it's up to Boston on the 30th. New Year's, for I think the fourth straight year, will be at Bryan's. But because we both have to be at work at 10 a.m. on January 2, this will be the first time we leave on New Year's Day. If past trends hold up this year, that could be a difficult task. We'll see.

And we'll see how much I get to log this trip with updates. There won't be one tomorrow, that's for sure. No internet -- wireless or otherwise -- at Grandma's.

Cold as ice

Talk about a half-assed job. What good does it do to plow out the handicapped parking space at the train station -- actually, plow out room for one car over two parking spaces -- when it does not leave enough room for the occupants of the car to get out after parking?

The snow has turned to ice, thanks to a coating of rain yesterday afternoon and evening. Anyone needing to park in those spaces at the Clifton train station presumably has a reason to, but it can't help them much if, once they park, they exit the car onto a sheet of ice. The camera-phone photo gives you the gist of the situation.

Seriously -- how hard would it have been to back up the pickup truck and move forward once more to clear our a space twice as big? A third pass would've cleared the entire two spaces. In about 42 seconds. Nice work, guys.

I get more annoyed at seeing cops driving while talking on their cell phones or the dozens of cars that pass me as I stand in the crosswalk on my way to the train each evening. Yielding to pedestrians is a law in New Jersey. If a cop stood with my on the corner, he could stop each car and cite the drivers for failing to yield. He'd also get half of them on the cell phone charge, too.

I've always been sensitive to the pedestrian law. I'm not sure why, but I'm drawn to it. I find it courteous and helpful. I enjoy walking to the train everyday, a six-minute walk (briskly; eight to 10 minutes at a more leisurely pace) and I enjoyed walking from the house I grew up in to the pharmacy or the ballfield or the church down the street. Princeton had the law on its books before the state adopted it -- or at least before the state forced the rest of the towns to enforce it. And it worked well in Maine, where on the busiest tourist days in Wiscasset or Camden, you could be sure that anyone with a Vacationland license plate would quickly apply the brakes once you set one foot off the curb in between the white lines. I considered those towns to be more sophisticated than most others for that reason. (I suppose one of the nation's pre-eminent universities helped Princeton's case, as well.)

The summer after I graduated from college, I was in the car with my mom when she stopped to let a woman pushing a baby carriage cross the street in my hometown. We were downtown in our small town, not 100 yards from the police station at a rather busy intersection with no traffic light (one has since been installed). An impatient prick in a pickup truck decided we were waiting to turn without using our turn signal and began to pass us (I don't recall whether it was on the right or left). The pickup driver slammed on his brakes just as he was about to pull past us when he saw the woman, who he very nearly hit.

Inspired, I wrote a letter to our mayor and police chief. Sometime before this, I had also received a ticket because I'd parked at our hometown train station at 9:20 a.m., 10 minutes before I was allowed to without a pass. I paid the $20 fine, but also pointed out that if the town put a police officer at either of the two intersections downtown, he could cite four or five cars per pedestrian in a very small time frame. And the failing to yield penalty was something like $75. But maybe our town was just filled with antisocial cops who didn't like confrontation and preferred to ticket empty cars than rack up revenues from oblivious drivers.

The mayor called the house to ask me to come in to meet with her, I believe, but I sent the letter just before departing on my cross-country trip and her call came while I was somewhere south and west of the Smoky Mountains.

Eight years later, I did sit down in her office, but that was with Casey when we met with her to discuss our wedding. I should've took that time to discuss the pedestrian issue.

Gauging the snow by the sounds on the street

There's no such thing as a snow day when you're an adult. At least not when you work for a national media company, in a department that requires staffing 24/7, and the terms "weekends" and "holidays" aren't so much as guaranteed days off as much as guaranteed days of a quieter office and -- hopefully -- less news.

Yet despite this, and despite my duties as a homeowner, particularly shoveling, I still find myself rooting for snow. And not just a light dusting or a brief afternoon snowshower that covers the neighborhood with a couple of inches but then melts away when the sun comes out later in the day. I watch the weather and hear the forecast for New England and hope that a little of it comes our way. I'm jealous of Boston, where the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore has decamped -- a sure sign of impending doom, weather style.

On the one hand, I hope it passes us by, or at least makes the afternoon amenable to heading out early for the city so Casey and I can meet my sister for lunch at Ditch Plains. I could go for a burger and a beer before work. But on the other, an inclement afternoon would keep us housebound, and give me a chance to watch the Jets and Patriots, where a nor'easter could even the playing field a little and at least give my fantasy football team a chance against a team that owns both Tom Brady and Randy Moss.

For the past two years, as we've lived in a second-floor apartment, winter storms meant little more than a treacherous walk to the bus stop and perhaps a little extra time to get to the city to account for slow going on River Road. Plus, my car was parked in the garage beneath the building, meaning the snow brush and scraper were kept in the trunk in the event that snow came while I was at a movie or somewhere else where the car might be parked outside. And I certainly got the car washed much more often, knowing that even if the five-day called for rain or snow that the Grand Am had a chance to remain dry and covered if I had no apparent plans to head out. I enjoyed the snowstorms guilt-free then, with no sidewalks to shovel, no driveways to clear, no car to clean.

Two days ago, we had an afternoon of freezing rain, snow and sleet, creating a firm, heavy much that felt like shoveling a sidewalk's worth of snowcone filling. If I added some flavoring, I'm sure I had about a dozen square feet of marketable slush. And that day's snowfall also revealed to us how low on the city's list our street is for plowing, since it seemed like we got no attention on our block. But that may have been the result of the guidelines -- many municipalities won't plow until there are at least three or four inches on the ground, because anything less will damage the roads and the plow blades more than they'll effectively clear the snow. Thursday brought no more than two inches, I think.

So we head to bed tonight not sure of what the low-hanging clouds outside will bring, other than a brighter night as they reflect the lights and cast an artificial glow over Clifton. The sky has a pink hue above the rooftops and the treelines, a low ceiling as an indication that precipitation is afoot. I'll wake up tomorrow, no duties or commitments until the afternoon, and be able to lie in bed listening for a passing car on the street. If the sound of an engine comes with the rain-soaked swish of a wet road, I'll know the night stayed above 30 degrees and the storm system brought only rain or slush. But if those motors are muffled, if an engine seems otherwise alone, a silent gliding or faint hint of crunching evident beneath the tires, then I'll know an hour bundled up out in the cold awaits. It's how I used to gauge a snowfall in high school, wondering if I had to bolt out of bed to get in the shower before school, or if I could hold off a bit and sleep in a little while, knowing that Mom would come alert me if school was indeed on and I was falling behind. In the end, I got pretty good at making the right call.

It's starting now as rain, though perhaps freezing rain, the sound of tiny water pellets drumming on the air conditioner in the dining room window. Hazardous conditions surely await with the daylight.

Another day, another surprise

The weekend provided another not-so-joyous discovery to add to the pros and cons of home ownership.

It goes back to Memorial Day, when we discovered after an hour of particularly high water use that we had a backup in our main sewer line. Roto Rooter cleared it out, but diagnosed the problem as roots in the pipe. Our 1920s-built house comes with older sewer lines made, most likely, of clay tile piping, as was common back in The Day. Sections of pipe were laid end-to-end and sealed, but over the decades, the mortar of that seal -- and the pipes themselves -- can crumble or crack as the land settles and other changes occur in the surrounding areas. Any roots in the vicinity, in their search for moisture and nutrients, tend to find the sewer lines -- and the cracks, no matter how small, in them.

Can you tell I've been reading up on this today?

So they Rootered the roots out of the pipe and told me to buy their Root Destroyer -- copper sulfate -- which you flush down the nearest toilet to the main line and it kills the roots from the inside. (I'm particularly intrigued by the more direct method, but the extra details involved -- namely, the checks and permits needed before digging where there could be electrical and gas lines -- make me wary.) Stupidly, I didn't act right away on the Root Destroyer, and the little buggers found their way back in.

I finally flushed the sulfate down the toilet at the beginning of November, but a few weeks ago, when we discovered our utility sink in the bathroom filling up after we'd run the washing machine and I followed that with a shower. (Our initial discovery, on Memorial Day, came after we showered back-to-back -- instead of Casey showering and off to work long before I'm even out of bed -- and the sink overflowed and the water made its way across the bare basement floor.) I sent some chemicals meant to unclog the drain down the utility sink, hoping that we had a more simple backup and not more roots. But I knew. So when the sink started filling up as I was rinsing off some things over the weekend, I knew I had to call the plumber again.

He cleared it out this afternoon, but not before cracking, "That's why I own a condo!" And he laid out our future. Tonight, when I get home, I'll send another dose of the copper sulfate down the toilet, giving it several hours to work while we sleep and aren't sending water through the system. At the end of March, when the growing season begins, I'll do it again. And then again in mid-April. If we run into more problems after that -- or after more home remedies -- our options become pretty clear: sign up for regular maintenance with a plumber (Roto Rooter knocks 10 percent off the service call when it comes every six months), purchase my own snake (no, more powerful), or look into having the line replaced. That's the expensive, Mr. Moneybags option -- but it's also the one that will most effectively ensure a final solution to the problem. If we ever feel we have the money for that level of improvement, it'll go into the records as a home improvement and get marked down in the ledger for when, years down the road, we have to determine what to set for our asking price.

Next we get to see how capable I am when it comes to more manual labor -- as in replacing our faux-bricked-and-shingled basement walls with more traditional (and smoother) paneling -- and whether I can get it done before the end of next week, so that we can open the new year by finally setting up the basement, my Man Cave.

If only I had a blog back in the day

Had an urge to go back and look at my previous only diary/journal/blog and was reminded that not only did I discover Martin Sexton at Red Bank's Count Basie Theater, where he opened for Cowboy Junkies in June 2001, but Sarah Harmer was also on the bill. That was a pretty good, laid-back show I saw back then.

We went to see Martin on Friday night at Roseland. Not the best venue, but a swell show nonetheless. He opened with five or six songs done solo -- how I saw him in Red Bank six (SIX!) years ago, and how I believe he did much (if not all) of his touring and performing back in the day. He opened with "Freedom of the Road" and while I don't remember all that was done and whether it was solo or with the band that came out after five or six songs, but we got our favorites: "Diner," "Circles," "Happy," "Hallelujah," etc. For the "quiet portion" of the set, the four of them went unplugged, huddling around a single microphone that picked up the upright bass, Martin's acoustic guitar, a melodica (I believe) and, in lieu of drums, a barstool that the drummer played with brushes. They finished that set with a resounding cover of "Folsom Prison Blues."

Martin was just as good as that first time I saw him, when I wrote:

Sexton followed and it was just him and his guitar. And he was amazing. His voice range was indescribable, particularly for one as tone-deaf as myself. And he managed to make one electic guitar sound like a lead, rhythm and bass guitar, with some percussion thrown in. His songs were quite bluesy and epic, with astounding lyrics. He was also the first opening act I've seen come out for an encore. I shall purchase his work soon.

But on top of that, he looked like he was seriously enjoying himself. He smiled, he bounced, he chatted -- briefly, but pleasantly -- with the audience at times. Syracuse is his home, so maybe New York City felt like it.

I went back to the blog because I started wondering tonight what college would've been like if I had a blog. I've always liked to write, but now that I've gotten away from it and have taken on so many more tasks and responsibilities -- from work to home ownership -- I don't do it nearly as much for fun and (mental) exercise. I looked over a post describing a walk around campus after my sister graduated, a last look at Notre Dame as a student/brother of a student -- as someone with a direct connection to the place. Reading it now, six and a half years after writing it, I am stunned at the imagery, the emotion, the pictures I conveyed. I'm even more shocked at how some memories still seem so recent, so clear in my mind, while others I'd completely forgotten until reading them now. And I can't believe it was 13 years ago that I started college, or that May will be 10 since I graduated.

I want to write like that again.

Earlier this year, a story in The New Yorker profiled a man who is trying to catalog every piece of physical evidence of his life -- e-mails, letters, bills, photographs. Everything. (I couldn't dig up the story online, because I don't remember anything specific enough to successfully search for it.) I've often thought about things like that from my own life, wondering what such an archive would look like. How many words have I written in my life, taking into account every letter, term paper, e-mail, exam, blog entry, article and free-time creative writing like poems, parodies and attempts at short stories? How many millions? Have I reached a billion? Probably.

I have a lot of things from my past, from the fantasy baseball newsletters I created in high school to stories and essays I wrote for class or for nothing in particular. But I wish I had some of the e-mails I wrote in college, some of the journals I kept in previous versions of Microsoft Word and saved on my desktop's hard drive in 1994, '95, '96, '97.

There are a lot of things I'd like to preserve and catalog. I have dozens of articles written for the campus paper boxed away, hard copies that provide a record of what I wrote, what interested me, what the editors assigned when I was a freshman and sophomore and had less say in what I covered. I wouldn't mind going digital with those, having them on a disk to pull up one day in some random search to find out what I may have been doing in February 1996. I don't know why I would ever need -- or want -- to know that, but I've always thought it would be cool to have that kind of information available at my fingertips.

"In my old age," Kerouac once wrote, "I intend to collect all my work and reinsert my pantheon of uniform names, leave the long shelf full of books there, and die happy." Sometimes I think about what that would entail from my life -- what it would be like to read my second-grade autobiography (which still exists somewhere on a bookshelf at my parents') and then be able to turn to a seventh-grade English paper, a high school project, a college application essay.

My professional clips survive mostly in the same format -- smudgy newspaper segments slotted away in a divided folder, stored in a cabinet in our office. The Asbury Park Press' website doesn't exactly maintain an archive going back five years. If only they did, and if we'd had the internet when I was in high school. I'm curious about my athletic career, my cross country times from those junior and senior falls. Only one stands out: My personal best. I once ran 3.1 miles -- 5 kilometers -- in 18 minutes, 28 seconds, on the course around the school's campus. My fast time was due in part to my girlfriend's birthday that night and a desire to finish up quickly so I could get home, shower, and meet up with my friends. I believe I won that race for the school, too, sprinting to the finish ahead of a runner on the other team, reaching for that place-holding popsicle stick a step ahead of him. The final score, if I remember cross-country scoring correctly (which is a 50-50 shot, at best) was 27-28, with the lower score the goal.

Having a blog in college would have been interesting, I'm sure. In some ways, I know I would've treated it like I did when I first started online journaling as a professional reporter working off hours and spending quiet alone time in my bedroom until 3 or 4 in the morning. I would've written a bit those first three years, but really picked it up senior year, after taking the Kerouac seminar. I still have the notebooks we were asked to keep for that class, and I took the time to transcribe their entries into that previous blog -- there it is, my weird desire to catalog it all. I wonder how things would've played out, how my writing would have developed and whether I would've shared it -- and with whom -- had I been doing it in the mid-90s instead of the early 2000s.

The fact that I didn't isn't really a loss. It's not something I really could have foreseen back then, this wish for a more tangible record of my inner musings. I'm just letting my mind wander, my fingers tap out streaming thoughts as I sit here alone in an empty office, minding the site for work until I head home in two hours.

Lenny Potatoes: Tannenbaum Assassin

Keifer Sutherland once famously sacrificed his body to protect the world from the terrorist Tannenbaum.



One of our cats has chosen to do the same.

We set up the Christmas tree yesterday and just left it bare for a day to give the cats time to assimilate to it. Did they ever, as in they:

• Used it as an obstacle to obscure themselves from one another and chased each other around it. ("Tearing around the Christmas tree/Have a happy holiday ...")
• Batted the branches.
• Ate the needles.
• Played with any boughs that fell off.
• Lounged on the skirt as if it were a cat bed.
• Stuck their heads in the water cup for a drink as I tried to water the thing.
• Sprinted the length of the couch and leapt into the tree before falling to the floor.

That last one was Lenny, doing his best Keifer Sutherland. He did it yesterday, then repeated the stunt today after we'd hung the first round of ornaments, three kinds of plastic orbs we bought at IKEA a few years ago. They're simple, cheap and won't cause us any sadness should we lose any to a feline-related attack.

Sadly, not only do we have no visual or video evidence, but I have not seen either attack directly. Each time, I've been across the room with my head down, only catching a glimpse out of the corner of my eye. I have a feeling, though, that if I sit there and stare at the tree for a few hours, Lenny will deliver. All this from a kitten who's been afraid to go outside when we've strapped the harness on him and held the door wide open. (And then today, while Casey was talking to me as I stood on the porch having shoveled the walkway, he made a break for it, getting his front paws onto the concrete before she corralled him.)

All of this is causing problems, of course. Do we forgo our favorite ornaments this year and simply go with basic decorations that we're willing to sacrifice to the felines? Do we try to put some of our nicer ones on the top half, hoping that the tree remains standing at the least? Do we drastically rearrange the living room, moving the corner section of the couch from next to the tree to the other end, completely ruining the layout for a month but at least removing the closest and most obvious launch pad from within range of the tree? I haven't talked with Casey in a while to see how they've behaved since I left, but this may be a very IKEA -- and Target -- Christmas this year.

Fast-forward on the calendar

Where do the days go? How has it been 15 days since my past post? How did I not think it worthy to share some thoughts on the radical change at work, the Mike Doughty show at Joe's Pub, our plans for Thanksgiving, the look back at Thanksgiving, Black Friday in the City, Christmas decorations and house progress? How do the weeks pass so quickly with the basement remaining so unfinished? How did we think we could tile that floor ourselves? How are we going to pay for having someone do it for us? (Actually, that one's easy: continue to not buy things with credit cards, which I've done a pretty good job of the past few weeks.)

Here's how Thanksgiving ended for me. Well, not ended, but at some point between dinner and dessert, I let myself relax a bit while I monitored the site for work. I may try to put in for more of the actual holidays in the future. I think there tends to be a greater chance that less will happen on those days, making for a relatively easy day "on call" than on other days during the holiday breaks.

Ambitious plans for tomorrow. Hopefully I can get my ass out of bed early enough to accomplish them all. No details yet, because then it will look worse if I don't get out of the house.

iCan't

I don't have an iPhone, but I can tell you what it can't do. It will NOT get your flight from Chicago to Newark off the ground any sooner. I'm calling bullshit on that one. Newark is my home airport and Chicago is probably the destination to which I fly most often, and when you involve two of the 10 busiest airports in the country, you're not going to be able to go online and look at a Weather.com satellite image and convince anyone that it's OK to release your plane. Since it's a rather short flight -- not even two hours when you're flying east -- it's also an easy one to hold on the ground when air traffic gets backed up or a weather system moves through either area.

Sorry, Apple, you'll have to do better than that one.

Times may vary

If there's one thing I cannot gauge -- and I'm usually pretty good at gauging things, particularly driving times based on distance and traffic -- it is how much time and effort will be needed to complete a home-improvement project.

This whole homeowning thing remains new, as it will until May. In recent years, I've taken to considering things like jobs and residences new for the first 365 days, until I've spent every part of the year in the new spot. So while we're now learning the nuances of colder weather and keeping heating bills down -- which we never had to do in our seemingly self-heated, second-floor apartments of the previous five years -- we're also learning that things aren't getting done quite as fast as we thought they might.

OK, so maybe the "we" is mostly "me." More than a month after I ripped up the carpet from the stairs leading down to the basement, I finally found the drive to prime the bare wooden steps and install the self-adhesive vinyl tiles. Knowing that another delay could threaten the entire project, we decided to forgo a plywood layer over the wood-stripped steps (essentially rendering any warranty on the tiles invalid). So far, I've only done the steps themselves, not the risers (the vertical part of a step, you know), so they only look good from the top heading down. Coming back up, we're still forced to look at the old, unpainted (or poorly painted) wood. But I'll get to that soon. The tiling still took me two afternoons to accomplish, when I expected to be able to do the entire stairway -- risers included -- in a day.

But this weekend, we accomplished more overall than we had in months, yet still fell short because of one estimate that was way off. On Saturday, we cleared out the finished part of the basement, leaving me with no obstacles as I attempt to try my hand at interior decorating when I install paneling over the faux brick and shingled sections. Plus, the floor is clear for the tiling -- for which we may bite the bullet and hire a contractor, if his estimate is reasonable enough, just so that it will be done by Thanksgiving. We've already bought the bulk of the supplies, so hopefully the bulk of the expenditures are behind us. We shall see.

Today, however, the big outdoor project of clearing away the ivy that surrounds the house on three sides knocked us down a few pegs. Our house, as you can see, essentially sits inside a retaining wall because of its location on a mild slope. With such little space between the foundation and the wall, the previous owners went with ivy instead of grass or another landscaping option. But we're sick of the ivy (and its tendency to cling to the house) and want to mulch the area and put in shrubbery of our own choosing. (So long, rhododendrons; hello, lilac.)

I thought the ivy would come up with some determined pulling, but I forgot those seventh-grade science lessons about how strong roots are. Instead, it took us several hours of straining, cutting, dirt-inhaling work to roll back the ivy like a carpet, Casey doing the pulling and me the cutting -- at some times through some very thick roots -- until we'd rolled everything from the front of the house onto the sidewalk. With the afternoon getting late -- and our muscles aching -- we cleared only the front, and only the above-ground roots and leaves at that. In its place now is a series of bare, leafless roots tangled like strands of Christmas lights out of the box at the start of the season. We still have to clear the front section and pull up the two smaller -- and hopefully more manageable -- areas on either side of the house. What we -- at least I -- naively thought might be a one-day, or at most, one-weekend project will now certainly be a three- or four-day effort.

And we've still got to call the city and find out how to discard the tangled mounds of ivy, because we're not sure if they must be placed in bags (a difficult, if not impossible task) or if placing them at the curb and scheduling pickup will suffice. I'll have to get out tomorrow to take pictures of the front and the piles of ivy for the full effect. Hopefully, once the new landscaping is in place, we'll appreciate our effort.

Nice voice-over work, if you can get it

Movies will often have flashbacks or scene-setting narratives from the past to set up the main plot, but I've never seen one as hokey as what was used for the opening sequence in Space Cowboys: the old scenes featured young, obscure actors portraying the characters that are played by Tommy Lee Jones, Clint Eastwood and James Cromwell -- only they have Jones, Eastwood and Cromwell providing the voices for the young characters. So, in a live-action movie, three iconic, veteran actors are doing voice-over work. It's particularly jarring because all three have such distinctive voices; without looking up from my computer, I knew each of them immediately.

It makes for a strange scene. The look-back is in black-and-white, with young anonymous actors moving their lips to the lines, while the voices of three Oscar-nominated legends are coming out of their mouths. It's like watching some over-dub of a foreign-language film.

And Clint directed this? Jeez.

Pumpkin carvations 2007

"Home Movies" principle players

This year's Halloween pumpkin theme was characters from the Adult Swim cartoon Home Movies. Coach McGuirk, Jason, Melissa and Brendon.

I carved the two on the ends and Casey did those in the middle. I think McGuirk and Melissa are the best ones. Jason lost his eyeballs in the process and Brendon could use a little clearing out of his hair so it shows up a little better, but I'm not going back now.

Here's hoping they survive two nights to make it to our front steps on Wednesday. Then the kids can kick them all they want.

Well, not really, because that'll just make a mess on the walkway.

Another new autumn

The first 17 autumns of my life were spent in one spot, the central suburbs of New Jersey, where we watched the beach clubs close up for the winter and Saturday afternoons became full with football -- whether we were playing ourselves, watching our peers from the high school stands or sitting on the couch in front of a college game on TV.

The next four falls, I lived in South Bend, where the season really took hold of me. After a week or two of sweltering summer heat, someone flipped a switch and the Indiana nights grew cooler, the days more pleasant. I came to realize in the Midwest how the season really assaults the senses. The crisper air and lower light of the sun makes the colors pop, similar to capping a camera lense with an enhancing filter. The washed-out brightness of July and August is gone. As leaves crunch beneath your feet, every walk makes you more aware of where you are and where you're going. And while summer has its own sweet smells, the baking heat rarely benefits those with overactive sweat glands or does anything to help preserve things left out in the sun -- from milk to beer to garbage. But in fall, the scent of decay -- in the form of those damp leaves underfoot -- is a symbol of the season, and in South Bend, the neighborhood around campus often held the smell of leaf piles on fire every weekend into November.

The Saturdays, of course, meant bagels and beer in the morning, a trek to the stadium in the afternoon, and a night of parties. Sunday, as the Lord decreed, was a day of rest and recovery, usually in track pants -- not to mention NFL football and, usually, some sort of course work to catch up on.

After college, I returned to what I knew, in a sense. In covering high school sports for my hometown paper, I once again spent my autumn Saturdays as I had in my youth, at one football field or another -- this time roaming the sidelines enjoying my priviledged view and enjoying the scent of the cleat-torn grass from end zone to end zone.

But since 2002, I've averaged a new dwelling every two years, twice moving in the fall, which is not known as the season of rebirth and new beginnings. I've always thought the opposite, however. My birthday comes in early September, just before the start of every new school year, so to me, autumn marked the next year after the last. Each new home has meant learning the new and wonderful quirks of our new neighborhood. In Edgewater, it was watching the late-afternoon light bathe Manhattan in an amber glow across the Hudson. In Cliffside Park, it was the smell of fireplaces on Inwood Terrace and the scraping of leaf raking up and down the block. Back in Edgewater, at the conglomerate-run apartment complex, it was catching the last glimpse of the groundhogs in the cemetery below and watching the ivy on the abandoned factory turn red, yellow and orange before dying off for the winter.

Now, we're homeowners, and fall brings with it a whole new set of responsibilities. The screens will soon be replaced with storm windows -- a more intensive task downstairs, where the screens come out and some of the storm windows are more easily maneuvered from the outside. The lawn could use one last trim before winter, and eventually we expect to pull up all the ivy and take out the rhodedendrons on the side of the house. Casey wants to plant bulbs for the spring, too. Finishing certain work indoors -- particularly the strip moulding where the walls meet the floors -- takes on new urgency, because we can't schedule insulation installation until those gaps are sealed so that the insulation doesn't blow out into the house.

I woke up this morning colder than I've been in a long time. Our two previous homes were second-floor apartments, drawing heat from below. In the Cliffside apartment on the second floor of a two-family house, we didn't control the heat -- the downstairs residents did. So while we were overheated much of the winter, at least we didn't have to pay for it. In the Edgewater complex, our only windows faced south, keeping the apartment so warm that our preset thermostat rarely kicked in because it fell below even 70 degrees so infrequently. This morning, the reading at the house was 60 degrees, where I'd set the thermostat back in May, and the heat hadn't clicked on yet. I pushed it up to 65 while I ate breakfast, just to give it a run while I was home. I'm sure we'll long for the days it read 60 on its own before long.

The other day, as I sat in the living room with the front windows open, the cats and I were both intrigued by a pop-pop-popping coming from the street. Confused at first, I realized what was up without leaving the couch. As cars pulled up along the curb in front of a neighbor's house, they slowly cracked the acorns that have fallen to the street. Clearly, the squirrels must be grateful for the assist. Perhaps it's an annual rite for them -- a little help in gathering their stores for the winter. For me, it's another subtle change, another new discovery in another autumn beginning.