Hindsight Bias

Some things never change, like sibling quibbling, for example. Take this conversation between a 62-year-old and her little 60-year-old brother.

"Harris picked Walz as her running mate," the brother told his sister yesterday morning.

"I knew it!" she said.

"No, you didn't," he replied.

"You heard me say it last night," she argued.

"But you didn't know it," he pointed out, "you only predicted it. Thinking you knew it is a logical fallacy."

"Like confirmation bias?" she asked.

"Yeah, but not that one," he said. "It's one where people think things were much more predictable in retrospect once they know the outcome."

"Hmm," she grumbled. "Maybe."

"We should go to the beach," he said. "It's not raining, even though they predicted it would be."

"I knew it!" she said.

"No, you didn't," he laughed.

"But I knew you were going to say that," she told him. "I really did."

Debby Does, or Does She?

We knew she was coming, but we decided to take our chances. Tropical Storm Debby has been pumping clouds and moisture our way since yesterday. There have been dry moments and even some sunshine, though, and that's when being 600 feet from the beach comes in handy. We spent an hour there with the dogs this morning; Bill, Emily, and Riley went back for some beach time a little later, and Heidi and I took advantage of the house pool before the rains came. And the weather cleared again at six, just in time for another dog walk on the beach. A misty marine layer obscured the beach, but we were far from the only ones there.

Sure, the prediction is rain all day tomorrow as Debby regroups off shore and then hammers South Carolina, but so what? Maybe it won't, and if it doesn't? 

We'll be ready.

As Always

 "When was the last time you were at the beach in summer?" I asked Heidi as we stepped into the warm sand.

"Last year, when I went to Rehoboth," she reminded me. "What about you?"

"I was just trying to figure that out," I told her. "I think it's been over ten years!" 

In fact, it has been 11. The last time I visited a beach in the summer was in August 2013, when Heidi and I took Isabel down to Point Lookout for the day. The last time I was at an ocean beach in the summer was three years earlier than that, when most of the family met for a week in August in Edisto, SC.

Since then, I've visited the beach at Thanksgiving, in February or March for the Oscars, in October when Heidi had a conference there, and in November for Heidi's birthday. I've been to the beach at least 20 times, just never in summer.

There was a cool ocean breeze blowing this afternoon when I made my return to summer at the beach, and overcast skies kept the temperatures below blazing. Still, there was a crowd of folks on blankets and chairs under umbrellas and the inescapable smell of sunscreen as kids ran back and forth to the surf. Super tan people clad only in bathing suits and sunglasses walked the waterline, expertly avoiding the boogie boarders that came crashing in on the waves.

It was as if nothing had changed in the last decade, and there was honestly something kind of nice about that.

DIng Dong, Tibby Calling

Over the last few months, Heidi taught our cat Tibby to ring a bell when she wants to out on the deck for a little fresh air and cat grass nibbling. Now that she's got it, Tibby rings the bell an aggravating number of times. Recently we've noticed that she doesn't even go outside every time we open the door, and so it has occurred to us that ringing the bell is a much broader form of communication. 

Perhaps when she dashes downstairs first thing after the alarm goes off, she is ringing it to say "Good Morning." And when she jingles the bell right when we're about to leave the house, she could be saying, "Don't go!" or "Come back soon!" When she rings it at mealtime, the message is definitely, "Yay! Hurry up with that!"

We laughed about her insistent ringing with our friend when she stayed with us this weekend. "Maybe you should have bells all over the house," she suggested. "It might clarify her intentions!"

Common Casting

"It says here that the actor who played Doc was in Glee," I reported to Delaney as I reread the Playbill for Back to the Future at breakfast the morning after seeing the musical.

"What??" she shook her head in a moment of cognitive dissonance. She loved Back to the Future, she is a huge fan of Glee, and she was also excited to hear Heidi and I have been re-watching that show since May. She whipped out her phone and rapidly tapped the screen. "It says here he played a hotel clerk in 2012."

"Oh my God," I laughed. "I know just who he was." I stood up and went over to the TV. In short order, I had the final episode of season 2 on the screen. "Remember when they have the pillow fight at the hotel in New York City at nationals?" I scanned quickly through the episode, and there he was. Despite being over a decade younger and minus the mad scientist wig, we recognized him immediately.

"That's hilarious," Delaney laughed as we sat back down.

I picked up the Playbill. "Oh my gosh!" I said a minute later. "It says here that the actor who played Lorraine played Anne Boleyn in the national tour of Six!" It was a show we had seen together two summers ago at the National Theater.

"What??" Delaney said and shook her head again.

Stating the Obvious

"Do you guys have season tickets, or do you just buy seats for the shows you want to see?" Heidi's friend Betty asked. We were standing on the Kennedy Center terrace at the golden hour. A jet streaked through the bright blue sky over our heads, and the last warm light of full-day shone on us, our fellow patrons, the river, and the city.

"We rarely come at all," I confessed, appreciating the scene through the eyes of a visitor. It had taken us less than 20 minutes to get there, parking was easy, and we were set to see the national tour of the Tony-nominated musical Back to the Future.

Her eyes widened a bit, perhaps in disbelief.

"But we really should," I finished.

The Plumber

I was in the middle of shaping sourdough loaves, canning blueberry preserves, and chopping vegetables from the garden for dinner yesterday evening when a gush of water came from beneath the drawer by the sink. 

"Uh oh," I said to the empty kitchen and stooped to investigate. The drain pipe behind the drawers had come loose, and all the warm sudsy water from the bread bowl was now running onto the floor. "I need some towels!" I called to Heidi.

Once the mess was cleaned up, it took a minute to figure out what I could and could not do, given the current situation. I looked around at all my projects in progress and made a few mental calculations as to how to complete them with the least amount of water. 

Heidi put out a call to her water aerobics group for a plumber recommendation, and within minutes she had someone on the phone who agreed to come in the morning. "He's a little odd," our neighbor had said, "but reliable and reasonably priced."

When he arrived at nine, we found Brahim to be a brusque man who had some trouble fitting into the tiny space where the drawer usually goes. Within five minutes, he had given up and informed us that his colleague Roberto would be there later in the day to make the repair. Once he had gone, we tried to figure out what Roberto could do that Brahim could not. "Is he smaller?" we wondered. "Smarter? Better equipped?"

It was then that the phone rang, and Brahim told us he was on his way back to fix the problem himself. And he did! Within another five minutes of his return, the pipe was patched, and water was running again. "I figured it out, and I came back!" he told us excitedly, and I imagined him driving his van down the road with a scowl until inspiration struck.

"Thank you so much!" I told him. "I know it was harder than you thought."

"Yes," he agreed, "it was."

And as promised? His fee was quite reasonable.