Energy Vent

The bowling center was hopping when we arrived at 2:15 this afternoon. Upon reflection, though, we decided that we shouldn't have been surprised. It was, after all, a cold and rainy Sunday on Thanksgiving weekend, and most of the kids all around us were bowling like maniacs, wildly flinging their balls down the lanes. 

"Who's the kid?" one guy a couple lanes over shouted as he waved his arms. "It's me! I'm the kid!"

"It's a turkey for Thanksgiving!" another shrieked as his ball careened off the bumpers for an impressive third strike in a row.

And in the next lane over, a little girl named Lucy bowled three games against herself, precisely angling the ramp between each roll of her six-pound ball. She never achieved a score above 58, but she probably walked 2000 steps in the process.

I'm sure their parents were happy they were out of the house.

The Obvious

As nice as it is to be home? I sure would have enjoyed a few more days at the beach with my family.

Fending

Going to the beach for Thanksgiving is wonderful, but the slightest of downsides might be that there is only one day to eat leftovers before packing up to return home on Saturday. Historically, we have given it a valiant go, even consuming enough turkey and fixin's during the day to order pizza or go out for dinner on Friday night. 

But with the enormous turkey and all the other fabulous meals we've eaten this week, it made the most sense to stay in and eat leftovers for dinner. Even so, the foodies in us are tempted to do more than simply reheat. For example, this afternoon I made a pizza with a sourdough crust made from leftover cheese grits, topped with the rest of the ham we had for sandwiches, and strewn with roasted butternut squash, rosemary, and sage. 

Later, when I was reading an article called 53 Ways to Use Your Thanksgiving Leftovers, I proposed a competition where everyone prepares a new dish using only our leftovers and the limited vacation pantry we have cobbled together. "I'll be the judge," I graciously volunteered. 

And man! Did our group step up! We had turkey potato hash, homemade gnocchi with puttanesca, handmade wontons with butternut squash filling and chili oil, turkey cabbage salad with peanut dressing, spinach salad with black rice and warm bacon dressing, along with some good old-fashioned pepperoni pizza to round out the meal. 

As we planned and prepared our meal, I could tell that judging was more than a one-person job, so Treat and I put our teacher skills to use and created a Google form. After a ranked-choice voting ballot, the dumplings, a fusion of Julie and Victor's family recipes, won the evening decisively.

Now that's what I call leftovers!

Topsail Island, NC

I always like Thanksgiving
best--
you can eat leftover tart tatin
for breakfast
and drink coffee
and watch the parade
and the dog show
and walk on the beach
and solve puzzles
and quizzes
and ride bikes
and eat
turkey
and stuffing
and potatoes
and turnips
and gravy
sitting shoulder to shoulder
around a long table
with eleven chairs
filled with your family
and have pies
and pudding
for dessert
even though you're full
and go to bed
grateful
for the stars on the beach
and everything else.

Process of Elimination

"Wanna do the Slate history quiz with me?" I asked Treat, knowing his knowledge would boost my usual result on the six-question game.

We both knew the first one, that Japanese-Americans were interred in Manzanar, but I was lost on the second question about the late 19th-century split in the Republican party between the Stalwarts and the Half-breeds. Of course, the first and second Continental Congresses met in Philadelphia, but we weren't sure which of our four choices had been Secretary of State for a record eleven years. 

"Seward was in the Lincoln administration," I said, "could Andrew Johnson have kept him on?"

"Were any of them in the FDR administration?" Treat asked, "That would make sense with the number of years."

"Seward was Lincoln, Weinberger was Reagan, and Rusk was JFK," I said.

"Then it's probably Cordell Hull," Treat guessed, and of course, he was right.

In the end, we did miss one question about a former president of Mexico, but I didn't feel bad, and neither did Treat. "It wasn't really that hard," he shrugged, "except for that Secretary of State question."

"Yeah, but we really used our test-taking strategies, didn't we?" I laughed.

Feast, Not Famine

I checked the box for 16+ pounds when I ordered our locally-raised heritage black turkey for Thanksgiving down here on Topsail Island. Honestly, I briefly considered attaching a note requesting one closer to 18-20, but in the end, I decided to leave it up to the butcher, since I knew 16 pounds would be enough if we got one on the smaller side. And the turkey I picked up today in Wilmington seemed plenty large for our group of eleven. 

"How much does it weigh?" my brother and chief turkey cooker asked as I wrestled it into the fridge. 

"I don't know," I confessed. "Let me look at the receipt."

Um, we have a 24-pound turkey this year. At least there will plenty of leftovers!

❤️ the Beach

On a Monday in November, the beach here on Topsail Island is sparsely populated, and Heidi and I met only a few people as we walked the dog around noon. Most were fishing; they had their surfcasting rigs, cleaning tables, and roller coolers with knobby wheels all set up, but there were a few families and a couple of other walkers, too.

Earlier in the day, Bill and Emily had seen both an eel slipping in and out of its sandy hole as well as what seemed to be an injured loon, and so when I spotted four men on their hands and knees up the beach, I wondered if they were involved with either of those. As we drew nearer, we saw that the four were Latinx guys in workmen's clothing and that we were in front of a hotel that was either undergoing a major renovation or demolition. 

It made sense that they were enjoying the beach on their lunch break, but we were charmed to see that they were also drawing hearts in the sand with messages inside, and one was now on his knees constructing a heart-shaped fortress. 

"Nice!" I said, with a thumbs-up, as we walked by.

"Thank you!" he laughed. 

And when we passed again on our way home, they were gone, but their hearts remained.

Ptooey

"I don't think I know that card game you and Bill were playing," Heidi said as we walked along the beach this morning.

"You've never played Spit before?" I asked with some amazement, because in my mind, every child of a certain age spent hours on hot summer days slapping cards on piles in numerical order as fast as they could. 

"No," she shook her head. "I might have heard of it, though. Do you actually spit?"

I laughed. "There's no spitting," I told her, "except when you get spitting mad!"

Nothing to Do and All Day to Do It

"There's the edge of the front," I pointed as we were driving south on I-95 to our Thanksgiving beach house rental. 

We were south of Richmond, and the driving had been cold and damp, a light drizzly mist under leaden skies. But there ahead of us we could clearly see where the clouds ended and blue skies began. The outside temperature was 57 as we barreled toward the front, but just a few minutes later, huge cumulo nimbus clouds filled the rearview as we continued south under blue skies. It was sunny and 73, and even the traffic congestion was gone.

Vacation mode activated!

Rounding Up Those Pennies

One of the errands I ran today was taking our big jar of coins to a machine that would count and cash them. I have avoided this task until now, mainly because the 12 percent surcharge seems so onerous. But then I figured that, whatever the cost, the time it would take me to sort and roll the coins (mostly pennies, nickels, and dimes) was probably more valuable. 

I was right. The machine did in five minutes what would have taken me several hours, and the charge was about six bucks. At the end of the process, the contraption spat out a ticket for me to take to customer service. My total was 44.13, and it made me laugh to think I would get thirteen cents back after just ridding myself of 5000-some cents.

When the cashier scanned the barcode on my ticket and tapped her screen, the readout on my side showed 44.15, and there was a line item above the total that said +.02 [penny round-up]. She handed me 2 twenties, four singles, a nickel, and a dime, which I tucked into my pocket, sure I had seen our penniless future.

Like Riding a Virtual Bicycle

In a throwback to 2020, I worked from home today. 

On my first full day as a consultant, I spent several hours on Zoom calls, stretching my unused virtual communication muscles. By the end of the last call, I felt more limber, even though I had four browser windows with 10 tabs each open. Even so, I was able to turn my camera on and off, mute and unmute, admit people from the waiting room, and share my screen. 

One of my biggest challenges was leaving my morning meeting; it was a bit awkward to make the consulting company executives wait while I fumbled to find the exit button on my toolbar. A little while later, I had trouble finding the end-meeting button when my own call was over. 

To be honest? That one didn't matter much, because the teacher I was talking to was already gone-- I know from experience she had better things to do.

A Little Progress

I spent several hours cleaning and decluttering today, and although the place looks clean, there's still a good bit of clutter left to clear. In my defense, I worked on some junk drawers and cupboards, and you would see a big difference if, for some reason, you opened them. I did toss quite a bit of stuff, and I have plans for more, so, with a small sigh, I'll take all that as a W. 

Goldilocks Zone

"She's just a great big Mama Bear!" someone said of Heidi this morning in a meeting, which had the two of us in stitches when she told me about it this afternoon.

"Was she serious?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," Heidi answered.

That has been one of the unexpected challenges of Heidi's new job. After 30 years at the same school, now she's an unknown quantity to many of her colleagues. But she's a big personality, too, and it's hard to gauge how people are really reacting to her. 

Even so, while mama bear might not be the metaphor I would choose? The more I think about it, the more I can see the analogy (setting aside the mama in the Three Bears, that is). Heidi's professional persona is at times gruff, always strict, but also nurturing, which is just right for the job she has.

Just Literally

"How are your bowel movements?" the nurse practitioner asked me during my annual wellness visit.

"Fine," I reported, then added, "I do have to go right now, though!" 

She laughed at my candor. 

"I'm sorry if that's too much information," I said, "but once when Dr. C was examining me, she said, 'Oh! You're constipated!'" I explained. "But, really? I just had to go. And ever since then, I've felt a little self-conscious."

"Well," she said, continuing her examination, "you are full, though I wouldn't say constipated. I can also feel how tense you are! I know talking about this topic can be a difficult conversation, and no one wants to hear they're full of, well, you know--" she paused. "Poop."

"Even if they are," I agreed.

Go Bills

It's a thing at Heidi's school that the staff sports their team spirit wear the day after a game. Although she's never been into football, Heidi has taken to the tradition. She has a few Bills t-shirts, a couple of hoodies, and she even got some flashy Bills sneakers for her birthday. 

The tricky part is that you can only show your spirit if the team wins, and so Heidi, who likes to plan and prepare her outfits in advance, is left at the mercy of her hometown football team. So much so that on game days (or, worse, evenings), she's either asking me to check the score or checking it herself. Today at the bowling center, she left our lane several times to check the TV at the bar that had the game on. 

Now, after a close win, she has her Bills regalia ready to wear in the morning, and who knows? This intersection of football and fashion may just turn her into a fan!

Cold and Hard

I get it. 

It seems unsustainable to continue making the penny when it costs nearly four cents to manufacture one. Even so, the expected annual saving is only around $56 million a year, or about 16 cents per capita. I guess in the future, we'd have to round that to 15 cents, or three nickels, which by the way cost nearly a dime to make.

Facts.

My Sandwich Era

"How does it feel to be one of the young 'uns again?" one of the bowling ladies asked me. 

I had just overheard her talking to one of the best bowlers in the league, who had revealed that she was 74, which was less than half her average. I looked around at several of the other people outbowling me and imagined that they had at least a decade on me, too. 

Then I considered how being one of the oldest people in school whenever I substitute makes me feel. As an emeritus, I'm generally treated with respect for my experience, but I sometimes get the sense that I am considered irrelevant and out of touch. 

"It sure puts things in perspective," I laughed.

Good to Know

My sub job today was co-teaching seventh-grade English. During the first period, I got to push in and see a teacher I had worked with for years actually teach, which was interesting and enjoyable. 

The other two periods were handled by the co-teacher, a young woman in her second year.  She was a little too soft-hearted for the assistant who worked with us, but I thought she did really well, and I could see a lot of potential in her. 

Of course, the kids tried to take advantage of the situation, and in the last class of the day, three boys were horsing around on their five-minute break. Despite repeated directions to avoid physical contact, two of them tried a leaping chest bump as the final seconds ticked off the clock. It was not successful, and one of them claimed he was too injured to do any more work. 

The teacher made eye contact with me, and I suggested he sit quietly and check back in with us in five minutes. A few seconds later, I saw him laughing with one of his friends. "It looks like you're feeling better!" I said, but quickly he reapplied his grimace and assured me he was still in a lot of pain. I could tell the teacher was wavering on the clinic pass, but after a little while, he was absorbed in his online vocabulary tutorial and did not ask to leave again. 

The teacher promised to give the class the last five minutes as free time if they worked well enough to earn it, and when they were close, I quietly suggested that she offer the injured kid the chance to go to the clinic during break. "That way, he can't say we wouldn't let him go," I said. And as soon as it was break time, she did just that. 

"Nah, I'm fine," he told her, as we suspected he would. 

"I'm so glad you recovered!" she told him.

"I'm always a quick healer," he shrugged.

"Good to know," she nodded, and then looked at me. 

"Good to know," I agreed.

Dear John

I read all of John Irving's novels before I was out of high school. At the time, there were only four: Setting Free the Bears, The Water Method Man, the 158 Pound Marriage, and The World According to Garp. They all made a huge impression on me, and I still remember many details from them all these decades later, especially Bears and Garp.

Later, I would eagerly read The Hotel New Hampshire, The Cider House Rules, and A Prayer for Owen Meany when they were released. The ending of Owen Meany may have put me off Irving; it was possibly just too tragic, but it might have also been the nine years that passed between the publication of that book and the next. In any case, I haven't finished a John Irving novel since 1989. 

Even so, I was excited to see that at the age of 83, John Irving has a new novel, his fifteenth. Published just last week, Queen Esther is a prequel of sorts for The Cider House Rules, and although I am only about two-thirds of the way through, I'm struck by how many themes and plot points there are in the story that I recognize from his earliest works. 

For example, the main character, a wrestler, spends a year in Austria as an exchange student. There is also a boys' boarding school in New Hampshire, characters who are early supporters of abortion rights, children raised by parents other than their birth parents, as well as a cast of wacky, idiosyncratic characters (including one named Siegfried), not to mention one who is planning to injure another so that he is exempt from the draft. 

Obviously, I'm not the same reader I was back in the 70s and 80s, but experiencing this novel is like a combination of a window on the past and a funhouse mirror: nostalgic, oddly familiar, yet not. Some parts are humorous and edgy, while others are cringey and uncomfortable, and I find myself going back and forth between wanting to read the entire Irving canon and wishing this book were over. 

Maybe it's just a case of what John Irving said himself in The Cider House Rules. “What is hardest to accept about the passage of time is that the people who once mattered the most to us wind up in parentheses.”

Business Model

Heidi wanted to go shopping at a nearby outlet mall, and since today was a holiday from school, we headed south. It had been a minute since we last visited this particular shopping center, and although most things were the same, there were a few additions and subtractions. Perhaps the biggest new thing was an establishment offering bowling and other entertainment.

"What 'other entertainment' do you think they have?" Heidi wondered, so when she was busy in a store I don't care for, I volunteered to check the place out. Plus? Bowling!

I was met with loud, clamorous noise and bright strobing lights the second I crossed the threshold. It was an arcade on steroids, occupying at least two full storefronts and running from the main walkway to the outside wall. There were enormous versions of every game imaginable: basketball, skeeball, football, baseball, dance challenges, and wallsized screens of classics like Centipede and Space Invaders. They had two dozen claw machines, Pachinko, Wheel of Fortune, and The Price is Right. They even had Pong, the original table video game. And, of course, bowling, with ten full-sized lanes featuring giant video screens and balls striped like basketballs.

And yet, rather than be overwhelmed by the sensory flash and bang of it all, I found myself strangely energized. I even considered buying a token card and staying to play a while, exactly the opposite reaction I would have predicted for myself.

 Later, I wondered if it was like the effects of a weighted blanket for anxiety, or a stimulant for ADHD. Whatever the cause of my response, the place knew what they were doing. It was packed with customers, and not just kids. 

Retail Therapy

I like cold weather, but the sudden drop in temperature from yesterday, along with the blustery wind, made being outside today a little jarring. It didn't help that I didn't bundle up as I should have when I took Luck for her afternoon walk, and we weren't far from the house when I had to fight the urge to turn around and head home. 

I didn't, but I did amend the route I had planned, and we walked instead through the small shopping area close to our home. Seeing the holiday decoration in progress was a good distraction. When Lucy put on the brakes to visit the drugstore, an establishment she frequents with Heidi, I shrugged, enjoying the warm blast of air when the automatic doors opened. 

We trolled the aisles for a few minutes until Lucy stopped short at a display of dog toys, nosing one that had little squeaky stuffed pieces of fried chicken in a bucket. I shrugged again, and off we went to the register. 

Back outside, the cold didn't seem quite as onerous as it had before, and I detached the toys from their cardboard, gave each one a squeak, and handed them to Lucy, who carried them all the way home.

Bowling Parties

We went bowling with some neighbors this afternoon to celebrate Heidi's birthday. The center was pretty deserted as our group of six settled into our two lanes, but the quiet didn't last long. A party of twenty or so started bowling down the way, and their cheers for each other rang through the center. Then a group of ten kids under ten took the lanes to our left, but they were more interested in us than we were in them. 

"Is that the lady who just bowled a strike?" a little boy of about eight asked me as Heidi walked away.

"Yes!" I answered. "But have you seen this guy bowl?" I pointed at AJ. "It's crazy!"

He had a style of hurling the ball two-handed from his hip, spinning down the lane with speeds of over 16 mph, and there was a satisfying clap and a lot of pin action when it made contact. It was also very effective: his high game was a 185.

The kid was only minimally impressed. "I bowled two spares already," he told me before trotting off to take his next turn.

A little while later, one of the moms was bowling alone, using the bumpers and cleaning up most of the pins on her second ball. "Nice!" I congratulated her as she picked up a tricky split.

"Thanks," she laughed. "All the kids are in the arcade, and I figured somebody should actually bowl!"

Hi Calypso

A sweet, earthy smell rose from the leaves crunching beneath our feet as we walked the trail around Royal Lake, and the golden light of the November sun turned the lake into a mirror reflecting doubles of the bare trees, geese, and blue heron. 

About a third of the way around this familiar trek, we noticed something new. One of the homes that backed to the trail had installed a horse fence, and a wee little Shetland pony craned her neck to watch us pass. 

"Are you allowed to have a pony here?" I wondered aloud. "It's awfully residential."

"Let's introduce Lucy," Heidi suggested, and so we made our way up the short spur to the enclosure. An informational sign was posted by the gate. "Her name is Calypso," Heidi read. "You can feed her apples and carrots," she continued, "but not from your hand, because that may encourage her to develop a nipping habit."

"I have some apple slices in my bag!" I said.

"You do?" Heidi was surprised.

"Of course! I packed snacks!"

Oh, But It's Cold Outside

"Sometimes it would snow on my birthday!" my Buffalo-born and bred wife is fond of saying. Over the years, I have tried to plan celebrations that might provide that burst of early winter cheer. In addition to actually returning to Buffalo, we have also spent some of her birthday weekends in Pittsburgh and other points north. 

But the snowiest birthday of all was the year we went to Santa Fe, New Mexico. There was a dusting of fine powder on the old plaza, and our breath blew icy plumes in the cold desert air as we walked to breakfast. The huevos rancheros, Christmas-style, warmed us almost as much as the suede Western jackets and scarves we had purchased the night before. When our plates were cleared, we drank one more cup of hot coffee, looking out on the snowy peaks of the Sangre de Cristo mountains.

According to the weather forecast, we don't even have to travel this year to experience an arctic blast. In the coming days, cold records dating back two centuries may fall. Will there be snow? Doubtful. But it will be cold! And there will be a fire in our hearth and warmth in our hearts. Happy Birthday, Heidi!

My Calendar is Clear

My sub job went to the end of the day, so I decided to accept a former student's invitation to the basketball game. As usual, the game was late to start, and I was one of the few adults standing on the sideline by the bleachers for quite some time. 

Eventually, a new teacher I knew joined me, and we chatted as we waited for the clock on pregame warm-ups to tick down. As we got closer to the jumpball, she looked around to see who else of her colleagues was there. "Wow!" she shook her head. "Not a lot of staff here."

"More people will probably come when the game gets going," I predicted.

"There's only like four of us here," she said with a little dismay. "And you don't even work here full time."

"That's right!" I laughed. "Which is why I actually have time to come to the game!"

Courtesy of the Supermoon

The supermoon in Taurus this morning, the full Beaver Moon of November and the brightest of the year, is said to bring abundance and connection, and I found that there was something to that today as I shopped for a few things for Heidi's birthday on Friday. 

When I brought my selection to the register in the first store, I had a question about another item I wanted to purchase. Their website stated that it was available, but I hadn't been able to find it. Lucky for me, the guy working the register was the manager. He looked up the thing on his phone after I showed it to him on mine and then radioed back to the storeroom. When they didn't retrieve it after a few minutes, he excused himself to go help. A little while later, another employee returned with the manager's apology: they couldn't locate the item, but, for my patience and inconvenience, they wanted to give me half off the thing I was buying.

Good deal! 

I went to another store for the second thing, and found it there right away. In line, I pulled up the app and my shopper barcode. Again, I was checked out by a manager, and when I confessed to not being able to find my coupon, he found it for me and then gave me another ten bucks that I was close to earning. He also offered a special treatment to help maintain my purchase; it cost 8.99, but he gave me five dollars off my next purchase to offset it if I was willing to try it. 

I sure was! 

In the end, I spent two-thirds of what I might have, and I came away with an abundance of appreciation for my fellow humans and the random acts of kindness to which I had been fortunate to receive.

Zowie!

The young lady sitting at the table, talking to my bowling teammate, looked familiar. Still, out of context, it was hard to tell if I actually knew her or if she just resembled one of the kajillion young people I've known in my career. I listened to their conversation as I changed into my bowling shoes, and she sounded a lot like the sister of a girl I taught a couple of years ago. "Are you out of school for the election?" I asked her.

She nodded.

"Where do you go?" I said, and when she mentioned our neighborhood high school, I knew it had to be her. "I think I know you!" 

"I thought I knew you, too!" she laughed, "but I couldn't figure out what you would be doing here!"

"Me?" I responded. "What are you doing here?"

"That's my great-grandma," she pointed to one of the bowlers, "and those are my great-great aunts." She gestured to my teammate and her sister.

"That's nuts!" I replied, and I meant it on at least two levels-- not just being reminded of the community connections that people so often unknowingly share, but also the impressive improbability of having a great-granddaughter in high school and still bowling on a league.

Does It, Though?

"Uhhhh," I cocked my head at the eight grade boy eating breakfast at his desk a few feet from me, "what are you doing?"

"I'm cleaning up," he informed me.

"But you're wiping the desk with your pancake," I continued.

"There was syrup on it," he shrugged. "It works!"

My Natural Solar Day

"Enjoy your favorite day of the year!" my friend said as we wrapped up lunch on Friday and headed out to teach the last class of the week. She was referring to the end of Daylight Saving Time and the twenty-five-hour day that marks the annual return to realigning our clocks with the sun and our natural circadian rhythm.

"Oh, I will!" I assured her with a laugh, embracing the decades of razzing I have received from my colleagues for my passionate, outspoken preference for light in the morning over light in the afternoon.

And I did!

Fright Night

The carnage was not intentional. 

When we took our annual Halloween lights and decoration crawl with our neighbors last night, we were all looking forward to seeing the traditionally over-the-top display put on in a neighborhood just over the bridge. We chatted as we approached about where the folks who live in those condos might possibly keep all the decorations they put out. "I saw a trailer parked across the street last week," I reported, "and it looked like it was surrounded by pallets and boxes with Halloween imprints."

"That would explain it," my neighbor agreed, "I always thought--"

But before he could finish, we all stopped dead. The ground before us was littered with the remains of toppled ten-foot demons and ghouls. Everywhere we looked, we saw scattered skulls, bones and body parts, tattered robes, broken scythes, and other twisted wreckage left by the windstorm that had struck earlier in the day. We stood in stunned silence for a moment before continuing on toward the lights down the street.

Considering our dismay, I couldn't imagine how devastated the people who planned the display must have been, but later, when we told another neighbor about the disappointing turn of events, she saw an opportunity. "Too bad they didn't pivot and add spooky ground lights," she said. "It could have been even creepier than the original!"