Not the Merriest of Xmases

Chrismas started off ok, but it quickly went downhill. We gave the kids a few presents, smiles all around, and cleaned up. At about 1, I got a call over my pager for a fire in a bedroom, and I raced to the scene in time to see some black smoke issuing from an apartment window. Luckily no one was hurt and there was relatively little property damage; still, I felt bad for the man who owned the place.

I got home to discover that Emmett's stomach was achier than usual. He's been having headaches and abdominal cramps, but these were worse than anything he'd had up till now. Shirra called the doctor and we kept giving him fluids, but a few hours later, as he was brushing his teeth, he suddenly felt like he was going to throw up. I rubbed his back and told him to let loose if he had to, and sure enough, he puked twice into the sink. His evening only got worse, really, as he woke up several times for more of the same, and by morning he was exhausted from dehydration and lack of sleep. Shirra was exhausted, too, but I wasn't too tired because I'd gone to bed early in order to help Emmett thruout the night. He spent today recovering from the previous 12 hours, and by keeping him on ginger ale and crackers, we kept the vomiting at bay.

It wasn't the happiest Christmas, but at least it was memorable.

Beware the $2 Mouse

Back a year ago, Fiona requested a mouse. It seemed like a nice idea -- they're so small and cute -- and it wasn't like she was asking for a $200 chinchilla. At $2, Ralph seemed like a bargain. Well, there was the cage and other rodent accoutrements, but the over all cost was under $50, and if I recall correctly, Fiona picked up most of that tab. Since we already had 5 guinea pigs, we were buying tons of bedding, so the small amount he needed was about as negligible as his size.

Then Fiona decided she wanted a 2nd mouse. At first, this seemed like aninvestment of just $2 more. But Algernon didn't get along with Ralph, so we had to get a 2nd set of accoutrements, which also meant that Shirra, who was cleaning the cages of all the animals, had one more job each week. Sadly, Ralph died shortly after we got the new mouse. It seemed like Algernon wouldn't last much longer, too, when he started losing fur.

We took him to our wonderful vet, Dr Malamud, and she suggested treating him for mites. This required $22 shots once a week as well as a few tests. We tried some antibiotics, too (we're now on the second round of them). We've also had to change his bedding a bit more often.

Not including the 'human' cost of the time we've spent cleaning his cage and waiting at the vet's office, the actual cost of this $2 mouse is verging on $300, and that's only because the vet has been kind to us in her charges.

Beware, dear reader, the $2 mouse!

Now, I've spent more than that on purebred cats, and Shirra's hedgehog was $200 for a pet you can't hold without gloves or small blisters, so I'm not begrudging the cost. It's just that Fiona rarely plays with Algernon these days. For the most part, it's more like she's the adoptive but neglectful mother of a mouse and 2 guinea pigs who serve the function of unused Christmas presents. Parents enjoy giving them, and children enjoy receiving them, and telling their friends that they have them. But that's pretty much where the joy ends.

Bah, humbug.

Oh, the Weather Outside is...

Well, 'frightful' would be a bit strong. That might have described the forecast, but it certainly didn't describe the actual weather that followed it. Winter storm advisories were calling for a major nor'easter to dump 6-12 inches on New Paltz and the environs. We barely got two inches.

Still, that was enough to trap my family for many hours today. We made the most of it, tho. Shirra trekked down to Route 32, where her employee picked her up. She got to spend the day in her store, knitting, chatting, and watching bootleg tv shows on Cricket's laptop. The kids made it outside for an hour's worth of tramping in the snow and sledding. I got in some quality time with the computer, playing an hour of online Scrabble (isc.ro) before joining the kids for a bit. I got some nice snaps of the kids, including one of Maeve standing next to the snowwoman she made on Thursday with her babysitter (featuring ample snow-boobs). After lunch, it was naptime for Maeve.

STUCK in the SNOW
While she was a-nap, I decided to see if the road was passable. The car got stuck a few times, but clearly it wouldn't be impossible to get to 32 if I could make it up the small incline past our neighbor's house. The only problem is that this same incline begins at a small bridge between two ponds, and the bridge doesn't have guard rails. For me to make it over the incline, I'd have to build up speed, but to do that, I had to back over the bridge (yes, BACK, as in backwards) four or five times; it got less terrify each round. Eventually, I made it to 32 and thence to the fire house.

FIRE CALLS
A call had come in to my pager just before I went outside, and another came in a few minutes later. I figured I'd get to the station as quickly as I could, but the trip that normally takes 6 minutes took more like 30. Still, I made it there in time to answer a third call (a false alarm), clean up the firetrucks and the station, and head to Starbucks, all by 4pm. I got some surprises for the wife and kids and then picked Shirra up at her store.

It was a quiet and relaxing snowy day in the Paltz.

Naming New Paltzers

Cat the Cheese, Ben the Plow, Steve the Fire. These are a few of our favorite names around New Paltz.

When we first moved to the Noop, we knew that we'd be meeting a lot of new people in all areas of our lives. We decided to borrow from one of our favorite movies in order to simplify things. In an early Hugh Grant movie called "The Englishman Who Went up a Hill and Came down a Mountain," some Welsh townsfolk refer to each other as [Name] the [Job]. We decided to adopt that strategy as well. It seems to make the most sense to use this technique under two circumstances:

1. The person has a common name, so we're trying to avoid confusion, or
2. The person doesn't come up in conversation too often, so we're reminding each other about the person in a shorthand way.

[Name] the [Job] has two benefits. It conveys a sentence-worth of information in just three words, and it's fun.

Our favorite names so far:

Cat the Cheese: the lovely young woman who owns the cheese shop in Water Street Market
Dave the Toy: owns Enchanted Toys.
Ben the Plow: the man who saves us from being completely snowed in,
Joe the Plow: the man who saved us when Ben the Plow didn't make it one time last year,
Joe the Phone: a fireman who happens to work for Verizon,
Steve the Fire: another fireman (who happens to be a musician),
Steve the Mail: our usual mailman,

Cars that Go Bump in the Day

SNOW
The snow hit hard this morning, starting just as I was leaving the firehouse following a false alarm. I decided to run a few errands, ending up at Shirra's store. After grabbing some needles that she needed, I put up a sign to announce that the store was closed due to snow, and then I headed home. Since the car was parked on Church, I drove over to Manheim and then made a left. This was a mistake -- that road is fairly steep and rarely plowed.

BOOM
There were two cars ahead of me, and both of them were sliding around a bit; apparently both drivers were turning into a driveway just after my left turn from Church. One of the cars made it, but the other slipped a bit just as I began driving down that road. And then I slipped. My car kept sliding, picking up speed as it headed towards the other car, so I honked to alert the driver to our impending boom. It felt like I hit her pretty hard, but luckily there was no damage to either car. Since I had some sand in my car, I spread some under her car (and another that had shown up a minute later), rescuing both drivers before heading home.

Although the weather in Manhattan wasn't too bad, the roads TO Manhattan were probably slick, so there was a chance I'd get stuck. I decided to cancel my students for the day just to be on the safe side. We made hot chocolate, the kids went sledding and exploring in the snow, and late in the day, our plow guy showed up. At least we won't be stuck home tomorrow.

Think Fast

My First Day of Fasting

The day I turned 40, I decided to limit my caloric intake drastically. I went from about 3000 calories a day (including lots of Starbucks treats) to a diet of less than the recommended daily allowance of 2000 (and no *$$). In two months, I went from 193 lbs to about 168, a loss of 25 pounds. I still ate chocolate and had some ice cream, but I was really careful about avoiding unnecessary (empty) calories, like soda, and I severely cut down on my inveterate late-night snacking tendencies. Then came Martha's Vineyard.

I'd kept my weight at about 168, give or take a few pounds, for the months leading up to the summer, but that Murdick's fudge gets me every time. I found myself eating at least a half pound a day, in addition to frequent trips to Mad Martha's ice cream, and in two weeks, my weight was over 180. I was pretty annoyed.

In the months since that trip, I've managed to stay at around 177, which feels like a comfortable weight, but I've been snacking more, and eating more ice cream, than I should. I decided it was time to do something about this once again, and a few days ago I decided that today I would start a once-a-week abstinence from food. "Wednesdays Without," I guess you could call it. If I'd waited a couple more days, I could have had "Foodless Fridays," but Wednesdays just happened to work out better for my schedule.

It's funny how unconscious we can be around food. While helping Maeve with her lunch today, I opened a container of stringbeans that her mom had packed and found myself munching two of them. Oops. So my fast wasn't totally perfect. I also let Maeve feed me a blueberry, but that was conscious; you have to allow for cutenesses like that. I had also read that many people simply avoid 'food' but don't eschew fruit juices, so I had a few ounces of blueberry juice this morning, a quarter-lemon's worth of juice in my green tea, and later, some sparkling apple cider.

It's also confusing when people talk about fasting for a 'day.' Does that mean you can start eating again 24 hours after your last late-night snack? I don't think so. I decided to interpret 'day' to mean the 30- to 36-hour period from previous meal to next meal. So I have to wait until tomorrow morning before I can eat again.

Fasting is supposed to extend lifespan and generally improve health, which is why I've chosen to do it. It certainly wasn't as hard as I'd expected. It's also said to help reduce sugar cravings, so I'm looking forward to that aspect as well. I'm also really looking forward to breakfast, which in this case is a well-named meal. I'll stick with my honey yogurt (<200 cal), but I'm going to switch from my usual black tea with milk and a whopping tablespoon of sugar to green tea with a bit of lemon.

Slip Slidin' Away

This morning my 11-year-old woke me up with the news that her mom's car was stuck in ice near the lake on our road. Ah, blissful sleep.

20 minutes later (I was slow to awaken) I was pushing our minivan uphill as Shirra gunned the engine. The problem with Honda's Odyssey models is that you really _can't_ gun their engines. They're programmed so that when you put the pedal to the medal, the wheels only turn slowly, never reaching even as fast as 50 mph. Apparently this is some kind of safety measure for when you're driving on icy roads, but when you're stuck on one, it's a real disadvantage. After about 40 minutes of pushing the car after applying sand on the road, we were back home.

Not surprisingly, school had been delayed for two hours due to icy conditions. My wife found this out a bit too late, and by that time, she was stuck half-way down our long hill. Since it took so long to get the car back home, I basically had to get back into my car just a half-hour later so that I could make a second attempt down the road. It was scary going, but we eventually got to Route 32 safely, and after that the trip was a cinch.

The rest of the day was just as eventful. I managed to get both of the other kids to their schools, but Maeve's preschool was only 90 minutes, and with the errands I had to run, it felt like I had to pick her up as soon as I'd dropped her off, and then I had to turn around and head into Manhattan. I saw two students, then rushed back into New Paltz for a mandatory but fairly useless fire fighter class. Shirra, meanwhile, had a great day at the store, where business has been brisk -- in some part due to the upcoming holidays. We were both able to get our cars back home safely, with some difficulty and trepidation. We'll definitely have to call that School Closing Hotline before leaving tomorrow!

Gas Problem

When it comes to my car, I have a gas problem: I'm not gassy enough.

Today marked the 4th time in my life that I hv run out of gas, 3 of them in the past few months. I'd like to say that this time wasn't totally my fault, but of course it was.

TIME the FIRST
The first time happened when I was in college. I drovew a gas guzzler that my parents had insisted I buy, rather than a snazzier model, because it was so large that it might protect me in an accident. I'm not sure that this theory still makes sense. Nowadays, the only people who drive really long cars adorn the dashboards of their vehicles with photos of their grandkids. As for my car, a Ford Granada that I called "The Boat," I do know that the thing sucked down gasoline like a baby
takes to milk. Fortunately, when I did run out of gas, it was while I was on my way to the local 7-11...to get gas. I came up about a mile short and got a push the rest of the way from a nice man who was driving an even larger car. His dashboard was festooned with photos of his grandkids.

EPISODE #2
I was really good about keeping my car filled up for the next 20 years, but then we moved to New Paltz. I began making regular drives into Manhattan, and I realized that I could save about $6 a tankful if I fueled up in New Jersey, which happens to be part of the fastest route. This played right into my intense drive to save money (or to avoid wasting it, to be precise). Rather than filling up in New Paltz, I'd figure out if I could make it into Joisey; if not, I'd load up with no more than a few dollars' gas, just to avoid wasting that extra $4 or $5. Saving money brings me peace of mind, I guess.

But back in September, I was heading out of The City when the car seized up. I had just enough time to pull over before the engine stopped working. Amazingly, I ended up in an actual parking spot. The chance of this happening in Manhattan is right up there with the chance of Reese Witherspoon's character winning her lawsuit in Legally Blonde. If it hadn't happened to me, I might not have believed it. After pinching myself and then apologizing to the kids for the delay, I was able to unicycle to a nearby gas station and get the car back on the road in under 20 minutes.

THIRD TIME'S a CHARM
Last week, I started to feel that seizing sensation as the car ran out of gas just as I pulled into the first gas station in New Jersey. Based on what happened today, I now know that I had less than 1000 feet of 'wiggle room' before the car was totally immobile. I knew I was running low (correction: on fumes), but I kept my speed down to maximize gas milage and just hoped that I had enough to get to the station. Well, I pulled it off by .2 miles that time, but my calculations were off today!

FOURTH TIME'S NOT SO CHARMING
I forgot to fill up in New Paltz, and in fact, I passed the only gas station for the next 30 miles way back on Route 87 before finally remembering that I was really low on gas. I checked the gauge -- not the gas gauge, since that's broken, but the readout that tells me how much gas I've consumed since the last time I hit a certain button that my Aztek is equipped with -- and it told me that I had used 17.3 gallons since refueling. That suggested that I had about a gallon left. My calculations suggested that I could make it to the filling station about 20 miles away, and I slowed down more than usual in order to save gas. This was especially important because the car was struggling into a fierce headwind that cut my gas milage by about 20%. At mile marker 38 or so, I started to feel that sticky feeling as the car seized up, and even tho I 'should' have had enough gas to make it to the filling station, I knew that I had somehow run out. I pulled into the slow lane and then onto the shoulder and let the car glide until gravity and friction slowed it to a stop. It would not restart, but I thought I was close enough that I could run to the gas station and back rather than having to call Triple-A.

A half-mile of running in a fierce, chill wind, I finally came to the turn in the road where I expected to see the pumps not too far ahead. I saw nothing more than road, and that's when it became obvious that the gas station was close to where I had run out of gas only if one is moving 70 miles per hour at the time. I called Triple-A and began to deal with this debacle a second way.

AAA is great if you have car troubles and know exactly where you are, but they seem to lack even the most basic computerized navigation system like the GPS that my wife and I share. I told the operator that I was at mile marker 37.5 on the southbound side of Route 87 in New Jersey and expected her to say that she could see me on a satellite image like on the Show '24.' Instead she asked me what city I was in. City? In? I wasn't in a city. Aren't highways exempt from being IN cities? I thought that they were like the rivers of old, separating and skirting cities but never truly part of them. Apparently this is not the case, and a mere ten minutes later, she had located me on a map (I could hear the folding and unfolding). Another half-hour later a state trooper arrived, and I thought I was thru with my hiccup, but instead, he merely informed me that a gas truck (actually a tow truck) was on its way in about ten more minutes. I'm not sure why a trooper had to ascertain that I was out of gas before calling for the tow truck, and I'm also not sure why troopers don't just carry a gallon of gas.

Amazingly I made it to Manhattan in time for my first student. I even found an ideal parking spot and did some last-minute Hanukkah shopping before our session. So, did I learn my lesson? I'm not so sure.

Happy Turkey Day!

Tho I live in New Paltz, I still have a foot Manhattan, thanks to my mom's apartment, and we spent a wonderful Thanksgiving there.

We drove down Wednesday morning after meeting with Emmett's teacher for a great report on our son. We'd planned a busy day, managing to squeeze in two grandmothers, two haircuts (for the girls), a mile-long unicycle ride for me and Emmett, and three tutoring students -- and that was just the first four hours. By 5 pm, the crowds around 81st St. were beginning to get pretty thick, and by that point, the police had begun keeping out people who couldn't claim to live (or be visiting someone) on my mom's block. This basically means that the police are there to keep out the tourists, since New Yorkers know that a simple lie will get them that much closer to a giant Kermit the Frog.

We learned two years ago to avoid Columbus Avenue like the plague. For about 7 hours, crowds mill about there in density matched only by the people who swarm off tourist buses to stand outside of the Today Show with their signs promoting their high school basketball team back in Idaho. I didn't realize at the time, but what happened is that the police department decided to turn Columbus Avenue from 77th to 82nd Streets into a huge cattle drive. Once you're in the slow-moving stampede, you really can't get out until you get to the other side. I accidentally got caught up in this back in 2005 while riding (and eventually pushing) my 36" unicycle and carrying some groceries that Shirra had asked me to pick up on the way home; the 10-block trip took me about a half-hour. This year, we knew enough to take Amsterdam Avenue when we were walking down to a friend's party, and the experience was much more pleasant.

The kids had fun watching the balloons being inflated. I learned recently that Macy*s has had to stockpile helium because of a worldwide shortage of the stuff (driving prices higher and higher, as tho they, too, were filled with helium). The kids didn't care too much about this lesson in economics but were more interested in which characters were on display and how big they were. Because I was working, Shirra took the kids outside for some cute snaps as they watched the balloons being inflated. On Thanksgiving morning, she and my mom took them outside to watch the inflatable cavalcade disappear around the corner as the parade began.

By noon, the remnants of the balloons had all but vanished, and order -- and parking -- were restored to my mom's block. Emmet and I fetched the car from a mile away, again necessitating a fun ride on our unicycles, and then rode over to Zabar's and back for some humidifiers. Four hours later, we sat down to our Thanksgiving meal with our parents, my brother and his wife, and my mom's best friend. Maeve was the only member of my little family who still eats meat, and apparently she enjoyed the turkey, and the rest of us enjoyed all of the fixings. The meal had been delivered by Fresh Direct, an outfit that has brought meals (or groceries) to New Yorkers for the past few years and is one of the few things that Shirra genuinely misses about Manhattan.

Shirra left for New Paltz on a bus that evening in order to be at her store for a huge shopping day on Friday, and the kids and I arrived home by 3pm. It was a fun and easy holiday for everyone. Phew. Now we have Hanukah to look forward to -- I hope it comes off as well.

The Knitting Store is Open!

Knit and Be Happy has officially opened for business! The grand opening is slated for December 1, but the petit opening this past Saturday went off without a hitch or a dropped stitch.

Shirra has hired two (now three) helpers for the store, and I got to meet all of them. Nancy, a brilliant scientist who is waiting for her masters program in design to begin, is one of those funky women who reminds me of a younger Shirra. She's a knitting wiz, and she's also into climbing and sci-fi. She has a great eye for setting up shop and helped create the initial look of the store. Susie is Shirra's mom away from mom, a lovely woman who made sure that Shirra was getting enough to eat when she was setting up the store a few days ago. Cricket is a young woman with unbridled enthusiasm and a knack for reading 'Help Wanted' signs before they're even posted. She's another inveterate knitter with lots of cool ideas for the store.

Speaking of which, Shirra and I had already brainstormed just before the store was open for business, and we came up with some good ideas:

1. Frequent buyer program: Shirra will keep track of purchases and will award a $15 store credit when someone spends a total of $150.
2. Gift certificates! With the holidays coming, these are a great idea that neither of us came up with (as obvious as it seems now). Luckily a man came in asking to buy a GC for his wife, thereby launching the program by himself.
3. Wall of Extreme Knitting: Shirra will put up people's photos of themselves engaged in acts of extreme knitting. Cricket has already volunteered to get a shot of herself knitting while rock-climbing, and Shirra has a great photo of herself knitting while riding a unicycle.
4. Movie nights. Keep checking back here, and keep checking her blog!
5. Men's Night. There is a book called "Knitting with Balls" for men. Now I just need to learn to knit....
6. After-school programs.

So far the response to her store has been excellent, and it looks like she's actually going to have to be open six days a week rather than five. The petit opening was a great idea because it's letting her see what's working ... and what's not. She learned today that she has to fix some problems with her Verizon hookup so that she can process credit cards, and there are a few other minor glitches that she's busy correcting. She also needs to get a sign to hang up so that her store is more visible from Main Street.

Emmett has been really sweet, handing out flyers to passers-by. He takes after me, always wanting to work retail. So does Fiona, for that matter: She made an announcement at her school about her mom's new shop. And I put up a notice about the shop at Maeve's preschool, so she's doing her share, too.

Once again, here are the pertinents:
Knit and Be Happy
8 N. Front St
New Paltz, NY 12561
845.255.5333
11-6 everyday except Tuesday; hours subject to be extended!

Parking Ticket!

I got my first parking ticket in the Noop this week. I had parked outside my wife's store, helping her paint before the 'soft opening' this Saturday, and I got carried away with all the fun of putting on primer. When I finally went back to the car, more time had elapsed than I'd expected. The meter time was flashing 00:00 and, I gamely peeked at the windshield, not expecting to find anything orange other than some fall leaves. But there, under the windshield wiper, was a small rectangle that I'd only seen on other people's cars -- a ticket!

One of the lovely things about New Paltz and most of the neighboring towns is the 'cute' cost of the tickets. Whereas tickets in Manhattan can be as high as $110 for a similar expense, in our new hometown, they're only ten smackers. I can handle that.

Still, I felt like a bit of a dope considering how plentiful parking is in the area near her store. I could easily have found a spot on Church St. To make matters (ok, me) stupider, I could also have run outside 15 minutes earlier with a quarter that would have stood me in good stead for an hour. Yes, city mice, a quarter in New Paltz gets you a whole hour. In Manhattan, it usually only gets you 10 minutes!

Peaceful Drivers

I've often used this forum to discuss the differences between New Paltz and New York. Now I've discovered a difference between New Paltz and some local towns. It has to do with waving at drivers.

One Finger
We all know that when drivers let you into drive in front of them, you're supposed to wave to show that you appreciate their courtesy. Since there is little such kindness in NYC, it often happens that you have to be aggressive, edging in front of the next car so that they're forced to let you in. In that case, I still give a friendly (ok, sarcastic) wave, but I often get a one-finger wave in return.

Five Fingers
In up-city New York, drivers are much more courteous. I'm usually let into the queue after only a short wait, and I usually let people into the queue whenever I see them waiting. Invariably I get the full-hand wave and a smile. That's like a visual thank-you. But New Paltz is taking that one step farther.

Two Fingers
In the Noop this morning, I was on my way back from casting my vote when I spotted a car waiting to turn into my lane. I let him enter, and he smiled and gave me the peace sign. I like that. It's even cooler than the wave. It's a visual way of saying thank you and go in peace. I'm going to start doing that.

Peace out.

Knitting Store in Knew Paltz

OK, New Paltz. Get ready for your knitting store!

Shirra is hoping to have a 'soft' opening this Thursday. Everyone's invited. The 'grand' opening is a few weeks off. Everyone is invited to that, too (we'll keep you posted).

To check if she's open, call (845) 255-5333. Her tentative sked is: Everyday but Tues and Weds, 11-6.

I think that's correct. She also has a website for her store, Knit and Be Happy. Check out my links.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: She is open for business! And she's added a day: She's now open everyday but Tuesdays, 11-6 (and she often opens before 11). Come on by!

Awards Night at Pine Ridge Dude Ranch

Fiona had an equestrian awards night at the Pine Ridge Dude Ranch on Sunday, sponsored by her stable, Lucky C. It was a fun affair, with good food, fun things for the kids and parents to do, and a lovely dinner following the fast presentation of the awards. Fiona was 'reserve champion' for her division, so she got a huge ribbon and chose a Lucky C bag as a prize. After the grub, we headed down the stairs to their disco, where the kids danced to "Cotton-Eye Joe" and other fun tunes, and everyone had a ball. I definitely recommend this place for a fun evening, and I understand that people have a nice time staying there for weekends and longer.

Hike-a to the Ike-a

Shirra's store came with a few included items, like a counter for her cash register, but we've had to provide for pretty much everything else. So today we took a that long but necessary trip to Ikea.

To make matters worse, the nearer of the two Ikeas (both in New Jersey) was out of some of the shelving units that she wanted. Ikea Paramus also didn't have a bunk bed that we'd planned to get for our house, but Ikea Elizabeth did. Luckily Maeve fell asleep for the entire ride there, so we got to listen to a funny podcast of "This American Life." That was pretty much our only entertainment for the next six hours. It didn't help that we had to drive there thru pouring rain.

Once there, we knew exactly what we wanted, but because Ikea Elizabeth is smaller than its Paramus counterpart, we were slowed down by nearly an hour. At this Ikea, you have to place orders for their warehouse for certain items, and then those items are summoned forth from the unknown depths of the store. We were further delayed because we'd promised to take Maeve to the Ball Pit, but at least she got to have some fun at the store, and she was quite relaxed for the trip home, having gotten some exercise at the store.

The next step was to pack up the car, which was made more challenging by the fact that we'd forgotten to empty the car of certain items, like Emmett's unnecessary car seat and a boxful of books that Shirra was planning to take to the library at some point. In the end, it just made for a better photo. Had any of the boxes been an inch longer, it's doubtful we'd have been able to fit them into the minivan; we'd have had to place them on top of the car instead, something I was really glad we avoided. Back in New Paltz, we unloaded the boxes and pretty much had to go right into get-ready-for-bed mode. It doesn't feel like I've had a Saturday. Someone owes me a Saturday!

Opening a Store in New Paltz

Shirra is opening a knitting store in a week!

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION
First there was getting a store. Initially Shirra looked at the place next to the bookstore on Chuch Street. That's a great location, but the shop is literally twice as large (and about twice the price) as what she needed, so she decided to look into the former antique store just down the block. It's a great spot that just needed a little touching up. The kids made signs to announce the impending opening.

MOLD, MOLD, MOLD
One of the touch-ups involved dealing with mold in the store. We still don't know the source of the water, but her landlord was great about trying to deal with the situation, volunteering to rip out the old (and stained) ceiling tiles and to take other measures. At this point, it appears that the mold has been taken care of, tho there may still be moisture. We'll see how it goes in the next few days.

YARN, YARN, YARN
Shirra had to place a few orders, naturally, and our house is now crammed with about 6 cubic yards of wool and a few wicker chairs that she found locally. When the moisture problem is under control, we'll move those things in, but for the last few days we've been living the old joke about the man who tells the rabbi that his house is too cramped and noisy and the rabbi tells him to bring in the chickens. Right now we're past the chickens and goats and are about to invite in the horse. Still, the kids and I don't mind -- we've lived like this before.

PINS and NEEDLES
Well, she really doesn't need pins (this isn't a quilting store), but she is about to order needles as well as some tchotchkes. Let's hope those don't have to stay in our house, too. Those might be the horse. I have a feeling that when we can finally move everything out of our house, it'll be just as the good rabbi said: really spacious.

The name of her store: Knit and Be Happy

Diversity Day in the Noop

Today was Diversity Day in New Paltz, so naturally Emmett and Maeve were wearing hula skirts and cut-out cardboard stars while shouting lines from a Doctor Seuss book.

The hula skirts were a close approximation of the Sneetch fur, but the director/costumer/stage manager Rachel had correctly surmised that the audience would not pick nits about any aspect of the production. The actors ranged in age from 3 (Maeve) to 11 (one of Fiona's classmates from last year), and amazingly, some of the kids had actually studied their lines ahead of time. More impressive still was that the cast actually listened to me when I suggested during our 'dress rehearsal' that they speak loudly and slowly.

The audience seemed miniscule until just moments till the proverbial curtain went up, but all of a sudden there were a hundred spectators. The narrator, older brother of one of Maeve's classmates, did a superb job, enunciating loud and clear and, for a reason I have yet to learn, using a mid-Atlantic accent he does not normally speak with.

Still, my two had their most fun at the Bouncy Castle, the inflatable tent that, if positioned correctly in Manhattan, would be a $2 million studio in today's market. The three of us -- Fiona and Shirra were at a sheep & wool show, not buying some rabbits -- watched the inflation and Maeve and Emmett, always courageous in the face of strangers if those strangers have stuff they want, asked if they could start bouncing even tho the tent wasn't officially (who are these officials?) supposed to be open for over an hour. Instead, they were greenlighted for the castle, moments later a few other kids joined in the fun. All together I'd estimate that they bounced for over 40 minutes, explaining why Maeve fell asleep so easily when it was nap time an hour later.

I should point out that there was more to Diversity Day than Sneetches and an inflated rubber room. All around the 'stage' were tables featuring local groups who represented many aspects of faith and philosophy. I spoke with a representative from the Ulster County Humanists who was seated between a gang of Pagans and a coterie of bible thumpers. Not far away was an ROTC table situated near a group asking for Bush's impeachment. It was lovely to see everyone getting along so well, tho not surprising for New Paltz. We did have our reasons for moving here, after all, and diversity was one of them.

New Post "Up"

Check out my most recent NPFD blog to read all about fire prevention week and how to scare large numbers of toddlers.

Nose Updates

I have some updates that you might enjoy at my other blog. Click here if you'd like to find out more (disgusting) information about my nose.

Deviated Septum

"How to Move to New Paltz" will not be seen tonight because I'm recovering from surgery. It wasn't truly New Paltz-related, but I did write about it on my unicycle blog as well as on my Voice of Society Man blog.

One Nice Thing about Manhattan

Ok, I can live without the smog and noise, but I do enjoy seeing celebreties.

On Saturday, I was waiting for Shirra to bring the kids down the block to where I had parked when I spotted Laurie Berkner. Laurie is perhaps the most popular singer of children's music these days, judged by her connection with cable TV's Noggin, where she's seen in various capacities thruout the day. As it happens, we knew her when: Back in 2000, she performed at Fiona's 4th birthday, and in the next two years, she played at two more parties; the final one she did as a favor, coming out to Brooklyn for what would be her last private gig of the sort. We've been big Laurie fans, so Maeve has gotten to enjoy her music even without getting to see her live... until Saturday. While I reintroduced myself to Laurie and her bandmate Susie, Shirra and the kids appeared. Maeve's reaction was to hold her hands in front of her huge grin, much as Shirra did years ago when she met her favorite baseball player, Dave Winfield, on our 1990 trip to see the Chicago White Sox at old Comiskey Park. Winfield chatted with us for a bit and then posed for a picture with his arm around Shirra. Her only word for about 90 minutes was 'Omigod.' Maeve managed to say hello and chat amiably despite her obvious glee.


Yesterday I was shopping for some cycling stuff in advance of the unicycle race I'm participating next summer. While in the store, I noticed Matthew Broderick enter with a very nice bike that he needed to drop off for a friend. We got to chatting -- about my geared unicycle and other unicycle-related things -- and ended up talking for about 20-30 minutes. It was nice to see what a down-to-earth guy he is, and I'm sure he appreciated my relative normalcy; that is, I didn't ask for an autograph or any other nod to his fame. I'm like that, in part, because of growing up in a city inhabited and visited by so many superluminaries. It's still fun to spot -- or chat with -- a famous person, but after awhile, you get the feeling that it's an everyday occurrence.


I've always joked about the fact that people stare at me when I unicycle down the street, and that goes for celebs. So when I've crossed paths with someone famous, I have always joked not that I saw so-and-so but that so-and-so saw ME. The list of stars who have seen me unicycle includes David Bowie and Iman, Mick Jagger, the late Tony Randal (who used to live on my mom's block), Billy Baldwin and Chyna Phillips (who used to live in my mom's building), and a few others. Oh, and Bill Clinton (in Martha's Vineyard). I like to think that they go home to their significant others and say, "You'll never guess ...."

Voice of Society Man

I have never admitted this to anyone but my wife, my children, and some of my closest friends, but it's time I went public with it: I have an alter ego. His name is Voice of Society Man. This alter ego can't fly or stop speeding bullets, but he does have the ability to butt into other people's business in a single bound. Voice of Society Man is everyone's nagging grandmother, pesky uncle, and nosy neighbor who is always right. People say that it takes a village to raise a child, but people no longer live near their relatives and that 'village' has nearly disappeared. Voice of Society Man is a traveling village.

Superman originated on Krypton, sent to Earth before the fiery explosion of his home planet. Voice of Society Man's origins are murkier and not as exciting. He was born during a crowded subway ride in Manhattan when I got tired of staring at the inseams of young men whose testicles apparently needed their own seat. His first words were "Excuse me" as he indicated one of the spots beside the young man. This clever ploy worked, and soon I had a seat next to a dude who had to squeeze his entire crotch into only two seats. It was a small victory, but it propelled me to bolder moves. I realized that simply by speaking up where no one else dared, I could perhaps effect a small change in my surroundings. Voice of Society Man was born.

In truth, VoS Man has to do more than ask for a seat or be the first to clap after the lousy piano playing of a cousin. He has to speak up for what is right (or at least against what is wrong). In fact, his main goal is to Teach Someone a Lesson so that the offender won't repeat the offense. But my alter ego's actions require powers beyond speech. Let's say that someone is smoking in a playground. VoS Man must first use his keen sense of smell to detect the offending smoke. Next, he has to be aware of local laws; if unsure, he will consult the sign at the entrance to the playground. Finally, VoS Man has to be aware of potential disasters that could arise from informing members of the general public of their shortcomings, so in the case of the playground smoker, he uses his keen sense of tact to deftly announce the regulations regarding smoking in playgrounds.

When confronting members of the public, there are two approaches that Voice of Society Man can use:

1. TACT
VoS Man can use disarming tactics, such as saying, "It's so annoying that Big Brother has made all these rules about smoking, isn't it? Gosh, it must be hard knowing where you can smoke. Anyhoo, my children all have lung cancer, so could you, um, kindly put out that cigaret after taking one more puff for good luck? Thank you so much for your sacrifice."

2. SNARK
When VoS Man senses a need for sarcasm, he first disarms his foe with a confusing opening statement: "Ya know, when I first joined the Scouts, my Scoutmaster told me that I'd have to stop farting in other people's faces. I bet it's like that with smoking. But every once in awhile I slip up. I won't mind if you smoke if you'll let me fart in your face."

It is perhaps clear that Voice of Society Man must also rely from time to time on one other skill: his highly developed sense of running away fast

Without further ado, I present

The Numerous and Varied Adventures of....

Voice of Society Man!

Larry David at the Carousel

If you do only one historic thing when in Martha's Vineyard, ride the carousel in Oak Bluffs. If you do only one histrionic thing in Martha's Vineyard, get into a fight about it.

One week ago, I spotted Larry David walking past the carousel. Undoubtedly he was there not for the ride but for the annual Fireworks night. Larry David, creator of Seinfeld, is now the star of his own HBO show about his own curmugeonly self. This afternoon, while biding time before our ferry home, I got involved in the type of kerfuffle that Larry David apparently experiences on a daily basis.

The line at the carousel wasn't long, but the teenagers who run it are not interested in expediency. They don't try to fill empty seats on the ride, so the line sometimes clogs up with large groups who want to ride together. The result was that we were the second group of four to enter the carousel when our turn came. The first group all took seats on the far end, leaving a nice collection of four horses right in front of us. The big kids grabbed adjacent mares, and Shirra and I went about getting seated behind them. First, however, Shirra had to fasten the strap on Maeve's inside horse, so I held the outside horse to indicate that it was 'taken.' Suddenly a large blond girl of about 9 began to mount this horse, so I explained that I was saving it, indicating with a gesture that my family was all sitting together. She persisted a moment before I asked her again to find a different horse. The next thing I knew, she was sobbing like a 4-year-old and pointing at me.

Her father and mother came over, asking why I'd made her get off the horse. I tried to explain my side of the matter, but clearly it was no use; Blondie kept bawling until I told her that she was far to old for whingeing, at which point she suddenly stopped. Her parents, however, continued to speak forcefully about my rude behaviour (they were British). I repeated my sweeping hand gesture to no avail, and father (or 'fahthuh') told me that he was going to report me to the pimply staff, which had the same effect on me as when Philip told me that he had chosen a new best friend in fifth grade. After the useless teenagers conferred with each other and then with me, the five-minute-long ride finally started, approximately five minutes after it should have. The reformed blubberer was put at the head of the line for the following ride, and her parents continued to glare.

Just as the ride began, a second woman standing nearby chastised me, saying that she'd seen the whole thing. I didn't mind that she had stated her opinion, but I was peeved when the ride ended to discover that she may have been biased: She was Blondie's aunt. We would have had nothing more to do with her had it not been for the fact that Fiona had managed to grab the bronze ring -- the prominent feature of this carousel ride -- entitling her a free ride. The rest of us filed off the carousel, Blondie ran to her favourite horse, and we stood by, waiting for Fiona while Aunt Snaggletooth spoke in a stage whisper to Mum about white trash, people these days, and Fiona's ring-grabbing technique. It was at this point that I decided to have a chat with her, but before we had said much to each other, Uncle Halitosis came between us and told me to get out of his wife's face. I pointed out that she and I were having a conversation and that he was the one who was, in actual fact, in his wife's face. With strong hints of sarcasm, he acknowledged how clever I was (a point that Brits always make when confronted with logic), but Aunt Snaggletooth decided that this was looking like an affair for the police and asked a bored teenager selling popcorn to make the call (which he promptly ignored). I am sure the cops would have gotten involved had I phrased my next few arguments to Uncle Hal correctly, but I decided to avoid having to withstand a punch from him just to have him arrested. It would have been a wonderful bout of irony: How often is it that a wife calls the police to have her husband arrested for hitting a stranger, I wondered.

Ironically, despite the Aunt's conviction that we were exhibiting incivility, it was Blubbering Blondie's papa who verged past blue into somewhat violet prose when he dropped an F bomb on Shirra. She only told me about this later, which was lucky because I have a feeling that if I'd known about this during my conversation with Uncle Hal, I would have definitely gotten myself punched in order to get him arrested. I would only have had to ask myself, "What would Larry do?"

This may sound like grandstanding, but there is precedent. On a long train train ride in Australia 18 years ago, I took a drunk, older man to task for smoking in our non-smoking car. After he flicked his lit cigaret at me and then lunged at me when I continued to chastise him, I got him kicked off the train. We made an unscheduled stop, dropped off the old coot, and continued. I found out later that the train only goes thru that town once a week. So don't mess with me! Grrr.

Online Help with the Move

Some of my friends have asked me whether it was hard to move from New York to New Paltz. I must admit: It wasn't. Going from the Big Apple to a place surrounded by big apple orchards was made much easier by the Internet.

Even without the Web, we could still cheer ourselves with the fact that we're just 80 miles away from Gotham, and part of our decision to move to the NP was predicated by proximity to NY; after all, with our kids' 6 [sic] grandparents on the Upper West Side and my biweekly unicycle club get-togethers, we wanted to stay fairly close to The City (capital T, capital C). Of course, those visits are only a few weekends each month and wouldn't be enough to sate a city mouse who felt trapped by all of the open space of a rural community. What makes a move to the country so easy is that we can still connect to our interests and our friends via the computer.

In my case, I was thrilled to learn about the International Scrabble Community (or "ISC"), where people from around the globe (mainly the US) can challenge eachother to a highly competitive round of their favorite game. Thanks to the 'chat' feature, Scrabblers like me can also keep in touch with distant buddies even when dozens or hundreds of miles apart. I discovered the ISC a year before we moved, and I knew that it would make the transition easier. I can't make it to the weekly meeting of the NY Scrabble club, but I can play a dozen fast games online everyday, and in some ways, that's even better. I've kept up with people I knew from before and have made new pals. Can you spot one of the 6-letter words using these letters: DEFINR? *

I've also used the Internet to connect with people via my blogs (especially this one), and that's been quite rewarding. If you'd like to get in touch, just drop me a comment!

EBay and other online purchasing sites have helped, too, since we're not completely dependent on local shops for all of our purchases. iTunes has taken the place of an actual music store (for better and worse), and NetFlix has kept us fairly current with movies and tv series.

So what's been the hardest part about moving out of the big City? Was it getting used to the smogless air? The quiet nights with nary a car alarm to disturb our slumber? The endless search for a parking spot? No way. The hardest thing about our move is when a storm disrupts our satellite Internet connection. Oh, the horror!

_________________________________________

* Answer: There are several words in the letters DEFINR: 'redfin' (a type of fish), 'finder,' and 'friend.'

Fortnight in the Vineyard

This blog is mainly about (my) life in New Paltz, but occasionally I have to leave the Noop. Two weeks in Martha's Vineyard tends to make me miss New Paltz and to be grateful for what we have in our new home.

Our annual pilgramage to Martha's Vineyard, sponsored by my mom, is actually what got us to move to New Paltz in the first place. Shirra, and later Fiona, and later Emmett, kept asking to move to somewhere with more of an 'outdoors' than New York City. Initially I thought our move from Manhattan to Brooklyn would be enough -- after all, we had a backyard with an entire sixth of an acre to ourselves -- but two years ago, we started to look outside of the City in search of a much more rustic life. I discovered early on that I didn't want to move to Martha's Vineyard, so our search concentrated on towns not too far from NYC, and eventually we ended up in NP. My very early blog entries here will explain this in much more detail, if you're interested.

Martha's Vineyard and New Paltz are both small-town areas dependent on tourism, but that's about all they have in common. Here are some ways to tell them apart:

RADIO
* NP: A lot of country music on the FM dial with a good dose of rock from 90s to present.
* MV: Mostly a mix of soft rock and oldies, plus some religious stuff on weekends.

TOURISM
* NP: Most obvious on summer weekends, when cars from NYC clog up Main St. Since SUNY NP is out of session, the population actually decreases during the summer except on weekends, when it increases by a few thousand.
* MV: This island lives, financially, for the 3 months of summer, when folks from all over clog up all of the parking in any of its 5 towns. Island driving is affected mainly in and around the towns, and this is the case everyday of the week. MV's population swells from 20,000 to about 200,000 each summer.

SIZE
* NP: Pretty small, geographically. You can drive from north to south or east to west in a matter of minutes.
* MV: Quite spread-out. It could take an hour to cross the island.

FIRE!
* NP: Two fire stations, tho activities are almost exclusively carried out from the big building off Main St. Large fires require mutual aid from neighboring towns, like Gardiner, Plattekill, and Highland.
*MV: Each of the 5 towns has its own station. Like NP, the fire fighters are all volunteers. Large fires receive 'mutual aid' from the other stations on the island.

HOUSING PRICES
* NP: Housing is reasonable, tho there is a large range. Apartments can be rented for $800 a month or purchased for the low $100ks. Larger apartments and small houses would run in the mid-200ks to low 400ks. The most expensive houses would be in the range of $1 million to $2 million, tho these are mainly for weekenders.
* MV: There is no longer a middle class in Martha's Vineyard, a fact lamented in all of the island's newspapers on a regular basis. Some can find (and deal with) cramped quarters in some basement dwelling for $100-200k, but most offerings are in the low 400s to the high 600s. Throw in a 4th bedroom or a hint of sand ("just steps from the beach!") and the price will easily breech the seventh digit, and there are a few mansions in the $5-10 million range and plenty for just a bit less. Of course, all of these places are exclusively for weekenders and those who 'summer' on the island. Only a handful of natives can afford a hint of beachfront, and they're the ones who own the few large businesses on the island.

OTHER PRICES
* NP: Fairly normal. Some things are a lot cheaper than NYC (movie tickets: $4, Ben and Jerry's: $3/pint), some are about average (milk: $3/half gallon), and some are a bit pricier (like stationery, since the local store is more expensive than a big chain like Staples). For the most part, prices in our necka are reasonable, and we feel lucky to be living there.
* MV: Ridiculous for the most part, tho some tourist items are quite cheap. But a pint of B&Js is usually $5.60, milk is nearly that, and groceries in general are exhorbitant. Ice cream at a local parlor (Mad Martha's) is $3 for a single scoop in a cone and $4.50 for a double. A tee-shirt exhorting our favorite new coffee place is $24. I think that natives have a way of buying goods at a discount thru the use of some card, but I'm not sure.

SWIMMING
* NP has a few pools and a couple of others nearby. The Moriello Pool is great, and it costs only $130 for the summer season for the whole family. Still, it's not the beach. Of course, I'm not a huge fan of sand-in-the-pants, so I'm not complaining.
* MV: There are some amazing beaches, tho storms and general erosion have nearly destroyed them. We love the Lucy Vincent (huge waves at times) and Squibnocket, but both need passes only available to people who have houses in a specific area. Our hotel provides walk-on passes, so we occasionally drive to the beach or come up with other strategies. My favorite technique is to drop the family off at Lucy Vincent, drive back to the nearby library, and unicycle five minnutes back to the beach.

LOCALS
* NP: I really like the locals in the NP area. For the most part, they are a very down-to-earth group. We have farmers, hippies, blue-collar guys with trucks, teachers, and so on. I'm hoping our minority presence continues to grow, but the place seems pretty open towards everyone for the most part.
* MV: Because of the high prices of everything, only the middle-class and rich find themselves visiting the island during the summer. Therefore, the only poor people are some of the locals, tho we rarely encounter them except when shopping. They really stand out sometimes, showing apparent signs of inbreeding including bad teeth, poor eyesight, obesity, and a distinct lack of fashion. We don't meet too many farmers or hippies (tho they do exist) because most of the folks we run into are the wealthy people here on holiday.

NIGHTLIFE
I'm off to bed. Nightlife in Martha's Vineyard is about the same as in New Paltz: There isn't much of it. In fact, MV is even quieter than NP because 3 of its 5 towns are dry, including the one we're in (not that I care).

Emmett's Baseball Camp (and Barry Bonds's Broken Record)

On the day when Barry Bonds broke the career homerun record, my son made it to third in his second-ever baseball game at camp. Woo hoo! That's quite an accomplishment (Emmett's, that is).

Bonds is known to have used performance-enhancing drugs, ranging from steroids to growth hormone. He doesn't even deserve the asterisk that Roger Maris's record was supposed to get in 1961 when he needed 8 extra games to break Babe Ruth's single-season record. Asterisks would be too good for Barry. I don't even give his record an ampersand... maybe a question mark instead. Luckily his record will be eclipsed in 7 or 8 years by the great Alex Rodriguez, who last week, at age 32, became the youngest 500-homerun-hitter of all time.

My son, Emmett, on the other hand is known to have used water, pretzels, and sun screen in his baseball career. It started auspiciously when he hit an infield single in his first at-bat yesterday, but unfortunately, he was erased when he ran to 2nd on the ensuing kid's popup and was tagged out for failing to tag up. He knows the rule now, but unfortunately, he had to learn it the hard way. I had a little chat with the coach this morning, and I was happy that he appreciated my suggestion to improve the way he handles things when working with kids unfamiliar with the rules.

Baseball is a weird sport. I should call it a "game" since "sports" involve fit people breaking a sweat while doing something that requires skill, and baseball is only batting 1-for-3 according to that definition. In any case, what's odd about baseball is that you cannot sum up in just a sentence or two the basics of the game. Let's try to define a few sports and games to see how easy they are to learn:

HOCKEY: For one hour, players carrying curved sticks skate on ice while trying to shoot a flat, rubber, 'puck' into the opponent's goal.

SOCCER: Like hockey, only with a head-sized ball, grass instead of ice, 30 extra minutes, and a larger playing area.

ULTIMATE: Like soccer, only with a frisbee instead of a ball and marijuana instead of grass. The time of the game is limited by how long each team can stave off the munchies.

BASKETBALL: For 48 minutes, two teams try to put a large, bouncy ball into the other team's small basket ten feet off the ground. In order to move the ball, players either pass it or they bounce it while walking or running. Baskets are worth between 1 and 3 points.

FOOTBALL: For one hour, each team tries to move an elongated spheroid across the opponent's back line. They can kick it thru the opponent's "goalposts" for 3 points or run it across the back line for 6 points. If a team doesn't advance 30 feet every 4 tries (or less), the ball is given to the other team.

BASEBALL: Over nine "innings" each team has three 'outs' during which they... wait, no. OK, in this game, the defense has the ball. The team on offense sends batters up to a five-sided plate situated 60.5 feet from a mound where the defense's "pitcher" stands. Using a bat, each hitter tries to put the ball into play inside of a 90-degree angle defined by two lines that run from the plate out towards the field. There is a 'fair' territory inside that 90 degrees and a 'foul' territory outside of that. Hitters have 3 "strikes" before they're called out, but if they see 4 bad pitches, called "balls," then they can advance safely to the first of four "bases," the last of which is the same plate where they started. The defense has 9 players in different places who... oh, never mind!

It's easy to see why Emmett was a bit lost in his first day of this new sport. He and I have only recently begun to play catch, and we almost never watch baseball on tv (he's only seen parts of a few games). He'd never hit a ball with a bat until last month. But the kid can throw a mean frisbee and is the youngest unicycle-rider on the east coast, as I reminded him several times recently. If those other kids give him a hard time, he can just ride his uni for them and they'll be quite impressed. Which gives me an idea about tomorrow's drop-off....

Hydrant!

I got an old fire hydrant today! I'm so psyched.

We take our trash and recycling to the town dump. A few weeks ago, I decided to see what was lurking near the big pile of metal objects off to the side of the dump. Usually it's just old, rusty bikes and some refrigerators in the "grizzy attitudes of death." * In the past, I've gotten some cool stuff there, including a stop sign, but when I noticed the hydrants, I decided that I had to have one. There was only one problem. They're heavy as hell.

Hydrants are made of cast iron. I guess that's a safety issue; perhaps it's so that they don't break when someone backs into them with a car, or maybe it's becuase they have to be really solid to handle the high water pressure coursing thru them at times (or both), but I kid you not: That thing weighs at least 200 pounds.

When I first spotted the discarded hydrants, I figured I'd just take the nicest-looking one, which also happened to be the smallest. I gave it a push with my foot, and the thing didn't budge. I pushed harder, and it tipped back about a centimeter. That's when I realized that I might not be able to get the thing home on my own. I spent a few minutes at it before resigning. I was sad: I knew I couldn't make it back for at least two weeks and guessed that it would be gone by then. I didn't even check back a few days ago when we returned from our trip, and I wasn't going to check today, either, but I decided to take a peek just in case.

Again I was faced with the prospect of getting the damn thing into the back of my car. Luckily mine's a hatch-back with a fold-down door, so I knew I only had to raise the hydrant about 2.5 feet, but still, I hadn't had any luck two weeks ago, how could I possibly.... And then I spotted some metal poles in the rummage pile. I propped them from the ground to the car, positioned the hydrant, and rolled. It wasn't easy (and it kept threatening to roll back onto me or worse, to fall suddenly onto my foot!) but I finally managed to get the thing into the trunk. Then, knowing I'd have the same struggle to get it back out of the car, I took the metal poles with me. Back at home, I used the poles to help roll the thing out of the car (jumping to the side to avoid a broken foot when it finally slipped) and placed it in the garden.

The hydrant is in sad shape. The many layers of paint are peeling and some of the metal has rusted a bit. Worse yet, the peeling paint might be lead-based. I'll have to remove the paint (carefully!) and give it a fresh coat. Then I have to dig a small trench for it so that I can bury it a foot deep in the garden so that it won't tip over onto a foot (or a kid!). It'll make an excellent garden gnome.
_____________________________

* Dom DeLillo, in White Noise

Technicolor Tute

A first in my 14 years of tutoring: a student threw up during a session.

Poor kid, it was our first session, and his mom had warned me that he had been complaining of a mild stomach ache. He asked if we could ltake a small break, then asked for some ginger ale, and the next thing I know, there are bowtie noodles coming out of his nose. Good thing I'm a dad of three; nothing fazes me. I made sure he got everything out, cleaned everything up, and a few minutes later we were back to our lesson. He did quite well despite his wooziness, too.

I've thrown up during a session, too. It was nearly a decade ago, and I guess I was a bit dehydrated. I excused myself, walked to the bathroom, and barfed into the toilet (quietly, so as not to disturb my young charge). Then I brushed my teeth and headed back to the office, where I explained that she should probably call her mom for an early pickup so that I could rest and recover. I was feeling pretty faint, but the next day, I was fine. I hope today's student will be fine by tomorrow, too.

Runover Bunny

Bunnies are far cuter in books for children than when they've been accidentally run over on your road. In both cases, they're 2-dimensional, but in children's books, they always have bushy tails and seem to be thinking something clever. On your road, they have tire tracks and seem to be getting devoured by flies. To me, this type of bunny is far less cute.

I was driving back from the Village when I noticed a flat lump on the side of the road in the shape of a bunny in motion. Slowing down, I verified in my rear-view mirror that my first suspicion was correct. Maeve was in the car at the time, so I couldn't just run out and check. We were on our way to the playground and pool, so I packed the car carefully: bathing suits, towels, sunscreen, and a big shovel. Then we headed back to the car.

I couldn't recall exactly where the dead bunny was, but I knew it was between our neighbor and us (meaning that it had been run over by either my wife or me). It didn't take me long to locate it; at the point where the flies were most thickly congregated, I slowed down. I quickly hopped out of the car -- Maeve is too young to require an excuse for such behavior -- and opened the trunk. In one motion, the bunny was swept into the foliage, taking his buzzing entourage with him.

The joys of country life.

Exploding Peaches

I was just thinking back to 2007, when that whole Moriello Pool debacle started. I pass the location all the time -- it's on my way to the Village -- but what triggered my memory was seeing a woman sunbathing on the lawn of the Hasbrouck playground today.

My family had just moved to New Paltz the fall before, so 2007 was our first (and only) summer of the pool. We bought a family membership just a few days before the whole breast-feeding incident that brought about the end of the pool and thrust New Paltz into the national spotlight for the first time since the gay weddings of 2003.

I was at the pool the day the fiasco started, and in fact, I overheard most of the conversation that started it. A camp counselor from the Y rather loudly "asked" a friend of mine -- let's call her Cherry -- to stop breast-feeding in plain view of the camp kids. Stunned, Cherry walked over to her friends at the pool to describe what had just taken place. People were always running into friends at the pool, which was one of the reasons my family joined up; even though we'd been in New Paltz for less than a year, we always ran into at least three families we knew.

At the time, it struck me as ironic that this particular councelor was accosting Cherry about public breastfeeding. Cherry's breasts, at their largest, would be completely obstructed by the head of a child. One would have to use a good deal of imagination to be offended by Cherry's public display. I should also point out that Cherry's infant isn't translucent. Since I wasn't standing on a rooftop at just the right angle, I didn't happen to catch a peek that day, but as Cherry pointed out a moment later, her breasts are only about the size of small peaches. The councelor, on the other hand, had what my high school friends had called bazooms. Nowadays I use the more PC term "melons." And what made this encounter between the women so unexpected was that the peaches were almost invisible beneath a child and a few layers of shirt while the melons were almost completely visible beneath one of those criss-cross bathing suit tops that expose several square feet of melon.

This is not to say that the councelor was wearing anything inappropriate. Her bathing suit was of the current fashion, and no one but a lunatic would have complained about seeing too much of her ample offerings. Had I been a woman with her endowment, I might have chosen something slightly less revealing when my job was to look after gobs of middle-school kids, but she clearly felt that she was within normal standards.

The encounter ended as so many of these do, with the breast-feeder walking away stunned while the offended party huddled among her like-minded friends. Since I had happened to have my towel right in between both groups, I overheard the councelor's friends making comments like "That's disgusting" and "In public?" Meanwhile, Cherry had quickly regained the power of speech, and from her camp I overheard "2007 -- that's crazy" and something about how women are allowed to go topless in New York state. It was as I was walking over to make this last point that I also heard one of the women mention how the La Leche League would not take lightly to this whole situation.

The name of this group has always sounded a bit odd to those of us with any appreciation of a foreign language, since it would translate to "The The Milk League," but I suppose it's no more annoying to most than the redundancy of an "ATM machine." The La Leches are not redundant, however. They're the only group in this country working to protect the rights of babies who want breast milk instead of formula. Doctors worldwide have agreed with these babies about the benefits of breast milk, and even formula-makers have made it clear on their packaging that their products aren't as healthy as the real thing. The only problem the La Leches face is how to deliver their product without offending camp councelors and others who are put off by the sight of the back of a baby's head next to a woman's armpit.

We all know what happened next. I think the La Leches went a bit far this time, but I can understand their point of view. The Sierra Club protects endangered species, and the La Leches protect endangered breasts. They quickly mobilized their troops -- breastfeeding women who needed a vacation -- and brought four nursing mothers to New Paltz for two days of fun, and milk, in the sun. The nursing moms positioned themselves around the Moriello Pool just as several groups from the Y were arriving. Cherry wasn't present -- she'd been warned away from the scene until the nursers had done their work -- but Melons was. Within minutes, the kids were back on the bus and the pool was virtually empty.

Word of mouth travels almost as fast as the speed of sound, so by the next day, most people were talking about the pool. With each set of passers-by, one would pick up talk about breasts and milk, pools and Leches. The impression I got was that most people understood the law and the health issues, so that even if they disagreed on the notion of public breastfeeding, they didn't take sides. That's what I like about New Paltz: It's a live-and-let-live environment.

Of course, even a barrel like New Paltz can be spoiled by a bad apple or two. I'm not sure how this proceess of spoilage works with fruit, but with towns, it mostly comes down to finances, and that was certainly the case here. Another problem, in retrospect, was a lack of communication. I think that the whole mess would have been avoided if the Mayor hadn't been vacationing in India. He probably would have calmed things down enough that the police wouldn't have been called. And those arrests made frontpage news everywhere and didn't help matters at all, especially since the women were protected by several laws. I also appreciated the motivation of the SUNY women who went topless at the pool in support of their sister (their much older sister), but that only served to divide Noopers even further. It was almost as though people who would rather have ignored the whole thing were forced to decide between sides of an issue that, legally speaking, had already been decided.

The eventual bankruptcy and closing of the pool made the news eighteen months later. By then, the incident only rated mention on page 20 of a Wednesday copy of the Times. No one was surprised that the Post, which had dubbed Cherry the Boob Queen, did not even offer a follow-up, though this may have been a result of Cherry's lawsuit against them.

So when I saw the topless sunbather outside the Hasbrouck playground today, my first though was for Cherry and her explosive peaches. My second thought was that I'd better head to the playground with the kids before it gets closed down, too.

Fire Camp, First-Half Report

Montour Falls Fire Academy

Week One of my intensive Fire Camp (Firefighter 1 course) is over. It was definitely intense. The 78-hour course, normally offered over many weeks of Mondays as well as some full-day classes on Saturdays, usually takes 6 to 9 months to complete. We do it in 12 days.

The first day was relatively light, but even that set the tone. We met some of our classmates as everyone arrived and unpacked, and by 1 we were in a large classroom. There were 36 students, and we were divided up into 8 units by virtue of where we sat, so each 'company' had 4 or 5 cadets. I ended up in a group with Roger, the other New Paltzer taking the course, as well as three boys who were all 16 or 17. One of them ended up quitting after the first day due, I guess, to exhaustion.

After class, which featured a video presentation about avoidable firefighter deaths, we headed to a large room that had once been a chapel. The room had a few obstacles for us to walk over or crawl thru during what is called the 'air consumption' test. In this exercise, all of us don our full gear (boots, pants, coats, hoods, and helmets) as well as our face pieces and air packs, which weigh an additional 20-30 pounds. The point of the exercise is to determine how long we can get our air tanks to last during strenuous exercise. Altho rated for 30 minutes, most packs will last between 15 and 20 minutes under heavy exercise or stress; I got about 20 minutes out of my tank. I just wish I'd thought to wear my knee pads because my fire pants ('bunkers') aren't padded, so my knees got bruised and cut, which affected all of my exercises for the rest of the week. Some people managed to bruise up their elbows. I think people must have pretty different ways to crawl.

The second day was really stenuous, featuring a maze that we had to crawl thru, fully geared and with our air tanks on, in the dark. The maze had stairs, a slide (not sure what house feature that was meant to represent), and some small crawl spaces that we had to squeeze thru. In order to make things really tricky, we had put tin foil in our face pieces so that we couldn't see anything; it turns out that when the smoke gets really hot, it fills up most of the room so that fire fighters have to crawl around with little or no visibility.

The maze took most of us over ten minutes, and it was near the end of his tour of it that our firefighting brother, Brian, realized he wasn't going to make it. He took off his face piece, announced "I'm going down," and passed out. A couple liters of IV fluids later, he was ok, and by dinner time, he was back with his company. He managed to finish the week in great shape both physically and academically. He's an EMT and nurse, so he knew what was happening with his body. Later he told me that he'd had to sit on the side, waiting for his turn, for nearly 25 minutes before going into the maze. On a hot day, that was more than enough to knock out anyone. So when it was my turn to wait for the maze, I kept cool and didn't don my face piece or gloves till the last second.

Academics claimed two students, tho they have a chance to redeem themselves in the next few days. At the end of the week was a 50-question test with a passing grade of 70. Two of the teens, one of whom was in my company, scored in the 60s, but luckily they'll get a 2nd chance to pass the test before the class resumes on Sunday. At the end of the 2nd week is a 100-question test with the same passing score of 70. Of course, that test covers more material, but I imagine it will actually be easier because I'm so used to the type of questions asked and because my test-prep book for the test seems to focus more on the work we covered during week 1.

My favorite hands-on activities were ladders and search-and-rescue. I wasn't especially good at the searching, and crawling around in full gear and on air is fairly tough all around, but it was pretty cool and was definitely excellent practice. The ladder exercise was fun. We had to hoist and erect ladders, one of which could extend to 35 feet, and climb up and down the side of a building; we even learned to carry someone sideways down a ladder, a great trust exercise. Operating various hoselines was fun, too, and it was also neat to learn how to break into different kinds of doors. We worked on our ropes all the time. Opening hydrants was fun, too. I also liked learning how to use a monster chain saw in order to cut into a metal door.

The hardest thing for me was the 2-minute donning. According to some regulations, we have to get fully geared up (with our air on) within 2 minutes. Because I'd never even put on a regulator before, this was harder for me than for those with more experience. Compounding things was the fact that my coat has both snaps and these latchy knobby things that I just couldn't get done quickly. I should have been able to don in about 90 seconds, but I also tended to panic, so I'd forget basic things like pulling my hood over the outside of my facepiece. I think that when we return in a week, I'll have no trouble with donning. It also helps that my lieutenant (in NP) lent me a coat with a zipper and Velcro, just in case.

The instructors are fantastic, averaging about 25 years of fire fighting a piece. Their styles varied -- some were avuncular, others militaristic, Most of them could get quite blue, but I never heard any of them yell at someone in a mean way, and in fact they were generally quite enthusiastic and encouraging. I look forward to returning there in a week, but I still have a lot of reading and studying to do before the big final exam.

Running on Empty...and then NOT Running

Driving to Manhattan from New Paltz affords us the opportunity to benefit from the cheaper (no wait -- "less expensive") gasoline in New Jersey. Even tho Joisey is one of only two states that doesn't allow customers to pump their own gas (which amounts to about 6 extra cents per gallon), it's still about 20-30 cents cheaper per gallon than anything in NY State. So on our trips back from the City, I always fill up the tank, saving about $4 or $5 each time.

Apparently my thrift has boundaries. And these boundaries seem to be located just short of 88th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. That's where our car suddenly came to a stop as I was driving Emmett and Fiona to the unicycle club. And I'd forgotten since the last time my car ran out of gas (college, 1986), that when a car runs out of gas, the power steering stops working. With Fiona pushing the brake when necessary, I steered and pushed the car into a parking space that happened to be right next to us. A passing Samaritan helped out, too, and within minutes, the car was safely parked in a legal spot. [Chances of having a car run out of gas exactly next to a legal spot in NYC: one in a thousand].

Counting my atheist blessings -- this could have happened on the highway, this could have happened on the George Washington Bridge -- I quickly realized that I had two options. The obvious one was to call Triple-A. They would send a towtruck operator with a gallon of gas, but it was already 12:45, and I didn't want to be late for the 1 pm unicycle club. Triple-A usually arrives within an hour, but Single-U is much faster. Single-U is me on a unicycle, riding to the nearby garage. I figured they'd have a gas can, and I was right. It cost more than I expected ($11), and the gas was $3.50 a gallon rather than the $2.80 it would have been in New Jersey, so that one gallon ended up costing about $12 more than it should have and nearly caused an accident.

I put another gallon in the tank before we headed home, just in case we got stuck in some traffic jelly, but it was smooth sailing the rest of the way.

Top Co-Op Shop...Entering the SPENDOSPHERE!

We still belong to the Park Slope Food Co-Op. A monthly work shift there entitles a person to shop for awesome food at amazing prices. Because the Co-Op only raises prices by 22% above wholesale (compared with 100% for most retail outlets), customers save nearly 40% on most items. So how did we end up spending $560 this past Saturday?

Well, for one thing, we were shopping for three months because of our upcoming leave-of-absense. We can't make our next two work-shift dates, so we told the office folks to put our memberships on hold till September. The other thing to consider was that Shirra is planning to bake up a pasta dish for the monthly meeting of the New Paltz Fire Department tomorrow night. So a small portion of that huge bill is going to be reimbursed.

No one at the Co-Op had ever seen a shopping spree of this magnitude. We'd all seen some in the $300 range and even a few over $400, but this was a whole new spendosphere. I made the suggestion that every time someone spends over $500, a bell go should go off -- sort of like a bit of Las Vegas -- but everyone knew I was kidding.

So what does $560 get you? Well, according to my math, about $1000 worth of groceries. We got 61 fruit strips. The rest is a blur. Peanuts, pumpkin seeds, pistachios. Some laundry items.

Side Car, aka Diddle-Diddle-Dumpling

I wish I had a photo for this one, but it's not cool when a responding firefighter snaps a photo of the accident he's supposed to be assisting with.

My pager went off just before midnight last night, right as Shirra and I were finishing up "Groundhog Day," one of our favorite movies. There was a one-car accident on Highway 87, just outside of New Paltz. There hadn't been any calls for days, it seemed, and I'm always (morbidly) fascinated by car wrecks, so I raced out of the house in hopes of catching up with the fire truck at the highway entrance.

Because we live so far from the fire house, it's rare for me to make it onto a fire truck except for these sorts of calls, and then only if I get to the highway really fast. Fellow firefighter Steve, who also lives a few miles from the center of the Village, had arrived just seconds before me. He was already in his gear, but I didn't have time to change so I simply grabbed my things. We could hear the fire truck heading towards us, but as it got close, it didn't slow down; we heard someone yell, "Full" as it headed thru the toll plaza. Luckily for us, the Ass't Chief's car was close behind and he picked us up. I changed in the backseat as we sped nearly 6 miles to the scene, getting there in just under 4 minutes. We passed our fire truck on the way.

There were already a lot of firemen at the scene of the accident. This was odd, since there was no fire truck on hand. It turns out that by coincidence, the accident happened just as a group of Plattekill firemen were driving home after a parade in Albany. They helped out for awhile before continuing on their way. NP Rescue was already there, too, as were lots of police. They told us that the driver was mostly fine (his lacerated wrist was wrapped up, and he was ambulatory), but his passenger probably had a broken hip. The car had slid off the road (reason unknown), driven along the grass, and then gone up the embankment before smashing into a big tree and falling onto its side. The passenger was still being tended to when we got there, and there were plenty of people to help him, so Steve and I worked on the car. It was on its side, but the keys were in the ignition and it was still running. I held back the hood and Steve cut the battery cables so that the car couldn't suddenly burst into flame. Later we put out the roadside flares that were no longer necessary. That was the extent of our work at the scene.

That's not to say that this wasn't an interesting call. It's always fun to hang out with state troopers and watch tow-truck operators in action. And there was a strange moment involving the driver's sneaker. It was found in the car, and then the trooper remembered that he'd been walking around with one shoe after the accident. We used this other sneaker to collect some belongings that didn't make it onto the ambulance with him: a Blackberry, both wallets, and a few knickknacks. The trooper was hoping to hand this sneaker to the EMTs, but the ambulance had already left. He would have to transport the sneaker to the hospital himself, making his night even longer. As we drove away, we saw the trooper changing direction by crossing to the other side of the highway. Perhaps he forgot about the shoe or decided to mail the items from the police station.

Garbage Fires and Hidden Ponds

I reluctantly responded to a fire call today. It's not that I didn't want to attend, but I afraid that I'd run out of time since I had to drive to Manhattan by 10:30, less than 90 minutes later, and I didn't want to take the risk that this fire would be a lengthy job. But when the 2nd call came in, requesting more manpower, I decided I had to risk it. And when I listened to the address, I realized that this garbage fire was at the Clearwater Recycling Center, less than a quarter mile from me. I was there before the firetrucks.

The fire had apparently started in a large building that houses some huge Dumpsters filled with refuse. Some of this garbage comes off of private trucks, the detritus of farms, construction jobs, and businesses. It seems that something had been smoldering, and when it got dumped into this partially open building, it must have had a chance to ignite and to spread. Luckily it didn't spread far by our arrival.

Putting out a trash fire is dangerous because of fumes. You never know what's going to turn up in the mix. Firefighters need to wear protective masks connected to oxygen tanks; they're called SCBAs. [SCBA is like SCUBA, except it's not Underwater.] I discovered a few months ago that while most men need a medium or large mask, I need a small one because I lost 25 pounds recently, which affects the way a mask fits. There aren't any small-size masks handy on the trucks that responded, so I wasn't going to be allowed to hose down this fire. Instead, I went with another fireman to the tanker truck, and we drove to a nearby pond.

Clearwater has a pond that everyone sees as they drive to the dump, but that pond is a bit hard for us to reach with our hard suction tubes. The driver of the tanker, an expert on everything New Paltz, explained that we were instead driving to a little-known pond behind near the baseball fields. We hung out for awhile, trying to decide the best way to orient the truck, and eventually we dropped the suction tools into the pond. Later we filled up another truck using the pond water, and within a surprisingly short time, we were done.

I attended a garbage fire and learned how to help out with the tanker truck, and I wasn't even late for my drive to Manhattan.

1 Fire Department, 2 Cat Stories

I joined the NPFD in December but hadn't heard about a cat story till this week, when we had two. One was about a cat that had gone up in tree. The other was about a cat going up, near a bunch of trees.

During our meeting this past Monday, I learned that one of the chiefs and one of the firemen had been out on a call to rescue a cat. It's nice to know that fire departments still handle those kinds of calls, but really, who else could a person rely on in that situation? I didn't hear many details other than the fact that the presence of the owner at the rescue meant that certain proven techniques could not be employed (something about a hose, a jet-stream of water, and the whole thing being finished in minutes), but eventually the tree was defelinated.

A day before, I'd responded to my pager at 11:30 at night. There was a fire of unknown origin burning outside of a residence in the Village. I made it in time to hop onto a truck, and minutes later was hosing down a fire in a sloped backyard. It appeared that the owner of the nearby house had had a bonfire that went awry. It turns out that he was cremating his cat when things got out of hand. Apparently he'd used too much gasoline to ignite the material under the cat, which included roofing tiles, railroad ties, and copper plumbing (which may have been part of the cat-holding contraption; we never did find out). I got to experience some of what it's like to put out a fire. My gloves still smell like smoke.

As for my advice: Don't let your cats out in the backyard, alive or dead.

Graduation

Shirra and I attended a graduation this morning. Aware of the circumstance but not of the pomp, we were just about the only parents in shorts and tee shirts. Siblings missed school to attend. Well-dressed parents and grandparents leafed thru glossy programs. The affair began with a rendition of Pomp and Circumstance played by a professional violinist. Then the 5-year-olds marched to the stage. The Huguenot Preschool Graduation ceremony had begun.

Teachers and Board members spoke briefly and movingly about how much the class meant to them. A class mom played guitar and sang an original song about love. My old best friend Ben, whose son was graduating, showed a snazzy slide montage to the tune of a slightly inappropriate Johnny Cash song about a love more carnal than anything these kids have experienced since their own births. Suddenly it was time for cake. Like the graduates, the ceremony was short and sweet. There was even a local reporter on hand, tho I suspect that this had to do more with the fact that her son was graduating than with the newsworthiness of the event.

Unfortunately the valedictorian's talk was garbled and altogether lost due to her inability to hold cookies in one hand and the microphone in the other. The class president more than made up for it with a rousing speech entitled, "From Diapers to Depends: Let's Make a Difference Now that We Can Wear Spiderman Underpants."

I was kicked out of preschool at age 3 and then changed schools two more times by 2nd Grade, so I didn't have anything to graduate from until I was 13. By that age, my little one will be wearing a cap and gown for the fourth time. And yes, the kids wore little caps today as they marched in. Then they flipped them over and used them as bowls for their grapes and pretzels at the party. If anything the school teaches about love,kindness, and recycling.

Check Out My New Blog: Unicycling Anthropologist

It's all about funny observations I've made as a unicyclist for the past 27 years.

It's the unicyclinganthropologist.blogspot.com, but you can just click on my top link on the right.

Enjoy!

The High Cost of Guinea Pigs

Anyone contemplating the purchase of guinea pigs, hamsters, mice, rats, or (in our case) a hedgehog should consider the surprising costs associated with keeping a happy and healthy caged rodent in a house or apartment that does not smell like the monkey cage in a bad zoo.

We first caved in to our daughter's request for a guinea pig. But guinea pigs are communal, so we agreed to buy two. Later, our son wanted one, but guinea pigs are communal, so we had to buy two more, only he really wanted a female one, so we ended up with five. During this period, we also found ourselves with a hamster and two mice, but because of their small size, they don't account for too much of the expense except for a few vet visits and the initial costs of their cages. No, the main
expense associated with guinea pigs is their bedding.

Because they are not easily litter trained, they basically pee and poop where they eat, only with some discretion. That is, they usually leave one corner of the cage as their designated toilet, but they're not perfect, so turds end up pretty much all over. This is especially true of younger guinea pigs on account of their skittishness. As Johnny Cochrane might have said, if you say boo, they will poo.

Cage-lining material comes in a variety of colors and styles. Why anyone would want green-dyed fluff in a guinea pig cage is beyond me. It's not only ugly but is also dangerous for the pets on account of the chemicals. So we stick with the untreated stuff. Purchased at the local Agway, it's about $25 for a large bag. Thankfully, they only had the dyed versions, so I drove to a PetSmart in Kingston, and it was well worth the trip. They charge less than $20 for a large bag and also have a discount card. Nonetheless, it turns out that we're spending about $100 a month to keep the piggies in fresh cages, which comes to about
$240 per guinea pig per year.

Food is less pricy by far. I'd guess we spend no more than $200 a year for our brood, or about $40 a year per pig. And they love your leftover carrots and celery, so that healthy part of their diet is practically free.

Vet visits are not essential, and even when they are, some owners will neglect their responsibilities. We try to do right by our pets, and I'd guess $20 a year would seem a good guess, on average.

Here is the breakdown:

Startup costs: $75 (piggy, cage, toys)
Food, annual: $40-80
Vet: $20
Bedding: $240
Total = $300-340 per year. PER GUINEA PIG!

What to Be When You Grow Up

We have a wonderful pediatrician who is part of our wonderful family practice here in New Paltz. Our little Maeve recently went in for a visit due to her stuffy nose. Dr Saied took time to get to know her, asking her questions not only about her ailments but also about her family and herself. I loved Maeve's response to one of his questions:

Dr S: What are you going to be when you grow up?
Maeve: Bigger!

Cel Phone Jammer

People talk unnecessarily on their mobiles. Usually they only need to speak for 15-30 seconds but end up talking for a minute or two. I'm going to be a cel phone jammer.

I just need to select the ideal flavor. I think that orange marmalade will work best because so few people like it.

Smearing a bit of marmalade on somebody's cel phone would probably keep them from talking on it for at least a few minutes.

I must put orange marmalade jam on the shopping list.

Why I was Running Late

The bus driver announced that we'd be delayed in our trip to Manhattan today. I figured this was on account of Memorial Day traffic, but nope: Rubbernecking. The south side of 87 was moving slowly, but at least we were moving. I noticed that the other side of the road seemed pretty smooth sailing; in fact, there was almost no northbound traffic. Then we found out why: There had been a truck crash, and the firemen and other rescuers had closed off all three lanes of the highway. South of that, the highway was at a virtual standstill. My bus was only 30 minutes late, but the people heading north might have been there for a bit longer.

I Moved a Turtle

As I drove up the road home today, I came across a turtle. Luckily for him I wasn't looking at him in my rearview mirror.

I had a hunch that he was a bit lost; he was walking parallel to the bank of the pond rather than towards it. Worse yet, of course, was that he was heading across a dirt road under the noontime sun.

I stopped the car and got out. I had to decide whether to place him ten feet forward or to move him three feet back, where he was coming from. I decided to move him forward, so I picked him up and moved him into the woods. This was the first time I'd ever held a turtle. But then I reconsidered. My guess is that he would eventually want to come back, and that would double his risk. So I put him back where he'd come from, but as I did so, some water tipped out of his shell. My lack of turtle-holding was showing. Happily for both of us, there was a large puddle nearby, so I poured a bit over the turtle and his new (old) surroundings and sent him on his way. Slowly.