Good Old-fashioned

The bottom drawer on my teacher desk seemed a little sticky today when I opened it to retrieve a bag of Jolly Ranchers. I thought perhaps something had fallen behind it and was preventing a smooth glide when I pushed it closed, but the design of the drawer prevented me from seeing or even reaching into the space without removing the whole thing. So I pushed my desk forward to clear the bookshelf behind it and lifted the draw free of its rollers and out. 

I was disappointed to find nothing there, and I stooped to replace the drawer but I couldn't make it go in. I was banging it all around when my colleagues came in for lunch. One of my handier friends tried to assist me while the others poked fun at our ineptitude. "Maybe it's time for a new desk," quipped one.

"I've had this desk for 30 years," I replied. "I'm not getting a new one now!"

"That could be the problem," she laughed.

"I think you're going to have to call the custodian," suggested another, and the friend who was helping me agreed.

I don't call the custodian to fix anything! I have a drawer full of tools and pride myself on maintaining the vintage furniture and equipment I have spent so many years with. In fact, I'm sure I can count on one hand the number of times I've asked for help. Once when I barfed, once when a kid peed on the chair, once after at least 10 years of fixing a cabinet latch that finally fell apart, and that's pretty much it, so I really did not want to call for someone to help me put a drawer back in.

But that's what I did. Our friendly custodian appeared within five minutes, and after another round of jokes about the age of my desk, he pulled out the roller assembly and fit it on the drawer outside the desk then slid the whole thing back in. I watched him carefully in case I ever need to repeat his repair, but since I only pull the drawer all the way out every thirty years, I think I'm safe.

Plus? How can a desk look old? It has a laminate top, steel body, and three drawers which lock, AND it's inaccessible to any of the creatures I share my room with. What improvements could a new desk possibly have?

Fresh Eyes

Years ago, when I first started teaching I would often take advantage of our free access to the gym and workout equipment that is part of the rec center connected to our school. Back then, my friend Wes and I would do the stairmaster, lift weights, and then play a little pick up basketball with some of our students who might be hanging around after school. It was fun, and I was in great shape.

But times change: Wes moved away to teach overseas, first in Iceland and the in England, where he is today, married with three kids and still teaching in a DOD school. My afternoons got busier as I took on more responsibility as a team leader and a basketball coach. I joined a "real" gym where I had to drive to work out, and I did so, sporadically. COVID hit, and I didn't go to the gym for a couple of years, then every time I went back it was somehow unsatisfying. Then my gym was sold to another company, and that might be the last straw in our relationship.

Before I quit sending my money to that gym, though, I wanted another option. This year, my nephew started working at our school, and often after the last bell he goes down to work out in the rec center. Last week, I invited myself along, and today was the day when I brought my gym clothes and headed down for my first workout there in at least 20 years. 

What fun I had! The pickleball court was open so we volleyed for a while, then there was a home basketball game I could watch from the treadmill. We each did a couple of weight circuits and we met again by the bosu ball and pilates drum which we spotted each other on. I had a pretty good workout, and we are going to go again soon. 

Coincidentally, Treat is just a little younger than I and a little older Wes was all those years ago. I'm glad that he reminded me what a great perc we have right downstairs.

Kitty Bowl

I was exchanging messages with my cousin during the NFL playoff game yesterday. 

"Sorry about the Giants," I texted.

She is an inveterate football fan, and after a lifetime of rooting for Washington, their recent name change on top of their chronic poor management has driven her to the Giants. "My parents were from New York," she reminded us this summer, "and all my uncles were Giants fans when I was growing up." She even pronounced the name of the team Gintz (with a long i) just like they did.

"Go Bills!" she wrote back, knowing Heidi is from Buffalo.

I sent her this picture of our cat, Tibby "watching" the game.

After Buffalo's disastrous defeat, my cousin texted, "Tell Tib I'm sorry her team didn't win."

"I think she might have been for the Bengals 🐅" I replied.

"Good point," she wrote back. "She is a tough cookie cat."

Our Daily

I was distracted as I mixed up the ingredients for my sourdough bread today. We had just gotten home from meeting an old friend for coffee, I was making a couple of different kinds of bread, another friend was here talking out a wedding dress crisis with Heidi. Even so, I feeling pretty accomplished as I finished the dishes and wet my hands to do the first stretch and fold. 

Something seemed a little off with the dough, and I paused a moment before putting the cover back on and allowing it to rest for another 15 minutes. What was it that jogged my memory? I can't say, but it occurred to me that I had never even gotten my starter out of the fridge. What was in the bowl in front of me was a pound of flour, some water, and salt-- basically a brick waiting to be baked. With nothing to lose, I kneaded the leavening in to the dough, covered it, and hoped for the best. 

Bread has earned its reputation as the staff of life over many millenium. In 2018, scientists found evidence of bread-making at a 15,000 year old dig site in Jordan. Fortunately, something so old must also be forgiving, and my bread was. Even as I write, my bread is rising in the kitchen, and so there will be loaves tomorrow.

Time Passages

I was out and about running errands today, and so I took the opportunity to tune into AT40 on the 70s station. They were airing the show from this week in 1979, which was oddly coincidental since earlier in the day I had listened to an album by Dan Fogelberg which one of my roommates played over and over again when we were doing our winter term in St. Moritz in January of 1979. 

I confess that I think of that idyllic resort town more often than you might expect. Despite the fact that I never learned to ski, and avoiding that requirement was rather fraught each of the three Januaries I spent there, I have St. Moritz as one of the places on my weather app, and I check in every few months. 

I hadn't heard the Fogelberg album in at least 40 years, but I put it on when Apple music played "Run for the Roses" as part of a Linda Ronstadt station it was generating. When he sang, "It's the chance of a lifetime in a lifetime of chance," I was hooked by the antimetabole and was curious to revisit the Nether Land album that Amy played so faithfully those two weeks.

Not three days ago, another friend from high school texted me with a question about that January term, and last Sunday when I was getting a massage, all I could think about was St. Moritz: the snow packed streets, the hot chocolate, the ski bahn, the hotel, the classes, the gerstensuppe, the cross country ski instructor (Ooplah! she said when we fell, Come, ve go, she said at the beginning of every lesson; it was weird. 

After my massage, I checked the snowpack and the webcams to see how the season was unfolding there. The main mountain, Piz Nair, is some 5,000 feet above sea level, and so this year at least, Corviglia and Corvatsch have avoided the green pistes that other lower altitude alpine resorts have suffered.

And now, here I was this afternoon hearing the 40 most popular songs of the last week I ever spent there. And there was one last nutty coincidence. The last time I listened to the Top 40 was on the way home from the beach at Thanksgiving. My sister and Heidi and I rode together through the fields of the eastern shore nd sang along to the hits from that week in 1978. Well, some of those songs were still on the countdown today, because that was the same timeline, just eight weeks earlier.

And the number one song today? "Le Freak".

Fitting, I suppose.

Highly Irregular

A friend with a sick child asked Heidi to come by and stay with the baby while she went out to get some medicine and groceries, so I dropped Heidi over there on our way home from work. When I got home, Lucy was happy to see me, but stunned when Heidi did not come into the house right behind me. I leashed her up for a quick potty break, and she headed directly over to the car and gave it a sound sniffing, seemingly convinced that Heidi would emerge at any moment. 

We took a quick spin around the neighborhood and got the mail, but when we arrived back at the house, Lucy bolted up the stairs to see if Heidi had appeared, yet. Just then a neighbor came by and offered to take Lucy for a walk with her dog. We leashed her up again, and as she headed out the door with her friends both human and canine, she took a moment and looked back, head atilt, wondering what else in the world this day could possibly bring!

Virtual Fail

As a follow up to my snow day prediction question the other day, the warm-up today was to make an argument for or against virtual learning on snow days. 

Oh my! I could have predicted that the students would be unanimously in favor of keeping snow days, but I wasn't really prepared for how violently they are opposed to virtual learning. 

Student after student told tales of shutting off the camera and walking away, and watching TV or playing games during class. They described kicking their teachers off the call and randomly muting their classmates. Worst of all, they are convinced that they didn't learn nearly enough in the time that they were away from the school building. "I'd rather go to school in July than learn virtually," one student announced passionately, and there were nods of agreement.

"It was just a boring waste of time," another added.

"You could always turn your camera on and do your best to participate and learn," I suggested.

"No way!" replied the first student. "We're kids!"