A Year in Medford

Friday marked a year since the Mrs. and I moved. After almost eleven years in the same apartment, we crossed the Mystic River from Somerville to Medford. We liked Somerville and still do, but we couldn't find what we needed and wanted there, and then its neighbor just to the north beckoned. This has turned out to be a very good decision in terms of our overall quality of life.

First, the residence itself is nicer. Not that the old place was shabby, but the new one has many more updated elements and features, mainly because the owners lived in this apartment for five years before deciding to rent it out because they needed more room. The slight reduction in living space is not a problem for us; it's actually easier to clean and take care of this place. The setting is more pleasant: we have a small back yard here, and there are trees all around. Before there were hardly any trees, and the house was surrounded by concrete and asphalt.

The new neighborhood is quieter and friendlier; we have met a number of people we see around semi-regularly. At the old place, I had a nodding acquaintance with only one person who was not a fellow tenant of our landlord, and there was a twelve-unit apartment building adjacent to us that regularly gave us noise problems.

But the biggest difference is that the landlord isn't looking out the window at us all the time. It was definitely like living in a fishbowl, along with the owner's passive-aggressive behavior and intrusive, privacy-ignorant attitude toward repairs and maintenance. Our current landlord now lives in New Hampshire, and I communicate with him mostly by email, a much more agreeable situation.

We also got our greyhound London last summer after moving, because the old place did not allow pets. While she is the most sensitive, neurotic, and high-maintenance dog I've ever met, we still love her dearly and regularly find ourselves laughing at her behavior.

Getting to and from work does take slightly longer, and there aren't as many amenities as close by as there were before, but these are minor tradeoffs that I have no problem accepting in exchange for the advantages we have gained. I could see us eventually buying a place in this neighborhood (something I couldn't say about our old one). Who knows if that will happen, but it's nice to imagine the possibility. It sure feels like home.

Plasmatastic

A few weeks ago I made that most bourgeois of purchases, a high-definition plasma TV. Those of you who are around me with any frequency know that I've been working up to this for about a year, and you're probably sick of hearing me go on about it. But rather than just say "this is what you should buy," I'm hoping that what I learned during the process may help some of you make the right decisions, or at least avoid making the wrong ones. I apologize for the length of this post, but this is a substantial purchase, one you don't want to make impulsively.

I didn't buy a big TV to show off. My 12-year-old 32" TV was acting cranky for the first few minutes every time it was turned on, and I figured it was the beginning of the end. (In 1995 it was the cheapest set available in that size, and I've definitely gotten my money's worth from it.) Also, because of my poor eyesight, I've always had to sit closer to the TV than I would like, so I wanted a bigger set to give me a little viewing flexibility. At first I considered just getting another tube TV. The largest cathode-ray tube TVs still available are 36", but let's face it, the CRT is old technology that's on its way out; manufacturers have sharply cut their production of tube TVs and are offering few choices these days. So there wasn't any advantage there, even before I'd factored the advent of high-definition broadcasting into the consideration.

For sheer size, nothing beats a projection set (now generally referred to as DLP). They are the least expensive of the large (42" and up) HD sets on the market, and considerably slimmer than the hulking styles of a few years ago, but after viewing several models in stores, I decided against them. Except for the most expensive ones, DLP sets don't offer as sharp a picture as other formats; they have a lamp or bulb that needs to be replaced after a few years; and there are still issues with viewing angle--in one store, I had to crouch down to avoid the darkening of the picture that occurs when you look at it off-angle, and that was the deal-breaker.

So it came down to plasma vs. LCD. Both have some pluses and minuses, but the bottom line is the bottom line: LCD sets cost more than plasma sets in comparable sizes. This is supposedly going to change in a few years, but for now it is still more expensive to manufacture the larger LCD panels. I was comparing a 50" plasma to a 46" LCD, and even at the end of the model year, the LCD cost 20% more. LCD sets do weigh less than comparably-sized plasma sets, but how often do you need to pick up your TV anyway?

Plasma sets are susceptible to burn-in if you leave the set on the same channel for too long (from news crawls or "bugs," those network logos that are always in the same spot on the screen), or watch lots of standard-definition broadcasts with the black bars on the sides, but the risk declines after the first 100 hours or so of use, and if you've bought one of these things, you should be making the most of HD anyway (and thus filling the entire screen area).

I knew exactly which model I wanted four months ago, but I decided to play the waiting game because I knew the price would be dropping when the newer models appeared in the spring. I read up on the models that were being introduced this spring, but the consumer electronics industry has a tendency to remove features in order to achieve specific price points. I wanted a certain feature that had largely been eliminated on the 2007 crop of TVs in my price range, and since there weren't any significant changes to the technology, I wasn't losing anything by choosing an outgoing model, and I saved several hundred dollars by waiting and buying strategically--after prices had been reduced, but before the remaining stock sold out. The drop in price between January and April amounted to 25% of the price I ultimately paid.

Then there was the matter of where to make the purchase. I imagine there are plenty of people who would just wander on over to the nearest shiny-gadget emporium and get whatever model is on sale that week, but that's not me. The big stores' selection tends to be broad, but not deep. I found only two local stores that purported to carry the model I wanted, and both were charging full retail (which you saw if you followed that link up above), which was hundreds (eventually thousands) more than what some online stores were charging. I checked at Costco; they have a fairly liberal return policy, and I figured a good price would be worth the trouble of asking my one SUV-owning friend to help me get the thing home, but they typically carry just a few models, whichever ones they've been able to negotiate the best deals on that quarter, and the one I wanted wasn't one of them.

Beyond these factors, I've mentioned that I like to be mindful of where my money goes, and I prefer to support independent businesses when possible. There are plenty of those online, but most savvy shoppers these days know that not all online stores are created equal. This is particularly true with items like heavy, bulky TVs. Shipping them is expensive; some sites just pass that cost along to you, while others offer free (but painfully slow) delivery; the best sites offer a variety of delivery options, depending on how much you're willing to pay and how fast you want your TV to arrive. You can pay upwards of $200 and get only "curbside delivery," which means just what you think it means: the box comes off the back of the truck and gets put on the ground, and from there you're on your own. Hopefully you've called a friend or two to help you up those two flights of narrow steps.

The other crucial piece of information is that many online electronics retailers will not accept returns of big TVs for any reason, even if it doesn't work right out of the box, and even if they are an authorized dealer for the brand. This is basically because they don't want the trouble and expense of coming back to pick up that lemon set you just bought. In cases like this, you have to deal with the manufacturer directly. This can be a wildly variable experience, and there are horror stories all over the web that may put you off buying the thing completely, or may just drive you back to your local shiny-gadget emporium.

You really have to read all a site's policies carefully in order to make an informed decision. I was determined to get the "white-glove" treatment: full, indoor delivery service and setup, and I was willing to pay extra for it if necessary, but what I really wanted was to get it for free. Ultimately I found the model I'd chosen, at a substantially reduced end-of-model-year price, at Crutchfield, an independent catalog and online retailer with a superb reputation, excellent customer service, a 30-day return policy, and free delivery and setup. It took a bit of effort on my part, keeping tabs on price drops every week or so over the course of several months, but it was worth it. Deciding on a specific model first, and being familiar with the company, kind of knowing that's where I wanted to buy from, made the process a lot easier.

We've been enjoying the TV for a month now, and it's as great as I expected it to be. The cable company just added three more high-definition channels last week, and hopefully more will be added soon. And in case anyone's wondering, I didn't throw away the old TV. It still had some life in it, so I passed it along to a friend.

Call Waiting

On Thursday evening I kicked off my extra-long holiday weekend (that's right, I didn't have to work Friday either) by attending a play at the BU Theatre, courtesy of my friend Anne, who got the tickets for free through her employer. Before the show began, there was a reminder to turn off cell phones.

The performance was the Huntington Theatre Company's production of Present Laughter by Noel Coward. I confess to knowing very little about him, but the show was quite entertaining, funny and drily witty. Near the end of the first act, during a brief lull onstage, I caught the muffled but noticeable sound of a vibrating cell phone coming from a couple of rows behind me. I suppose there are people, doctors and such, who are required to be on call for emergencies and who cannot turn off their phones completely, so I decided to give whoever it was the benefit of the doubt.

During the second act, from somewhere further back came the even more distinct sound of the Nokia ringtone. (I'm sure you all know the one I mean, even if you don't realize you know it.) It wasn't at full volume, but it was loud enough to be a distraction. The phone's owner succeeded in silencing it after a few rings. To their credit, the actors either didn't hear it, or they chose to ignore it. Trying to maintain the spirit of generosity, I thought maybe someone used their phone at intermission to check in with the babysitter, and forgot to turn it off again. Fortunately there were no interruptions during the third act, but during the intermissions (there were two), I noticed several men tucked into the various corners of the theater, hunched over their BlackBerries.

I don't have access to email or the web on my cell phone. Actually, I do have access, but I've chosen not to enable it. I've been tempted by the Treo, having worked for a while for a company owned by Palm; there are times when I'd love to be able to look up directions or restaurant info on the go, but I don't think it would happen often enough to justify the additional cost each month. I have the feeling I'll give in at some point, but for now I'd like to think I can live without being connected during those times when I'm neither at home nor at work.

On Saturday afternoon, the Mrs. and I went to a movie. About half an hour in I hit the trifecta: the phone of one of the people sitting behind us rang. The woman answered it, but she immediately whispered, "I'm at the movies, I'll call you back" and hung up. A noble effort, but again I have to wonder: was this necessary? Are people really so careless, or are they just selfish? When I go into a movie, a play, or even a restaurant, I immediately silence my phone. It's become a reflex action.

I think our electronic tethers are inflating our sense of self-importance. It's one thing to call home to check on the kids, but is it possible that everyone at the theater last Thursday was such an important person that they couldn't (or wouldn't) turn off their cell phones even after being asked to, and had to check their email during the breaks in a play that had a total running time of about two hours and forty minutes? It seems excessive. Entertainment is supposed to be a respite from our everyday lives, not an interruption of them.

Shack Attack

The other day I was upgrading some of the cables and connections of my A/V setup (more on that soon) and determined that I needed to split the signal that comes in through the coaxial cable so it could go to two separate devices. This is easily done with a little doohickey called, accurately enough, a splitter. But getting one meant I had to go to an electronics store, which is one of my least favorite shopping destinations.

This might be surprising to some, considering my love for technology, but I generally find these places highly annoying and depressing, and tend to buy my gear online from privately held, customer-focused companies like J&R or Crutchfield. (I considered buying the splitter online, but it seemed silly for something so small, plus I needed/wanted it quicker.)

The sole purpose of a store like Best Buy or Circuit City is to get you to part with as much of your money as possible. I'm sure you're thinking, isn't that the purpose of all retail stores? Sure, but consumer electronics chains are more blatant and sleazy about it than, say, Nordstrom. They want your money too, but they aren't going to try to push you into an extended warranty for that pair of pants.

I decided I could either stop at a store on my way home from work, or make a special trip on a day I wasn't working. I opted to do it on the way home, making the errand slightly less painful and not wasting my free time. Then I started wondering if there might be another place I could get the part, and into my brain drifted the words "Radio Shack."

Remember them? They're still around. How that's possible is anyone's guess, since they ceased being relevant to the marketplace nearly three decades ago, around the time the CB radio craze had run its course (I'm speaking from personal experience here, but don't judge me; I was still pretty young, and pretty bored). And just last year there was the CEO who resigned after lying about his academic credentials, and a few months later the company's decision to inform several hundred employees that they had been laid off via email. A real shining star in the retail firmament there.

But they are still in business, somehow. In the scheme of things my few dollars wouldn't make much difference either way, and I wasn't planning on buying anything else there for, oh, ever. And when I considered it, stopping at a Shack was actually on my way home, not even half a block from a T station, which made it less trouble than going somewhat out of my way to Best Buy. (Maybe that's how they've managed to keep going--by being more convenient?) I was also sort of curious to see what the place was like, since I hadn't been in one for at least ten years. What were they selling? Who shopped there?

The answer to the first question was mostly cell phones and the mountains of crap that go along with them, and other miscellaneous stuff of about the same quality (poor) as the electronics you'd find at Target. The answer to the second question, at least at 5:30 on a Thursday afternoon, was nobody, or rather nobody else besides me. Three clerks were standing around, talking and looking excruciatingly bored. I found the splitter in less than a minute, paid for it, and got on my way.

Back in the day, if you bought something at Radio Shack, you could be assured of being put on their mailing list for what seemed like the rest of your life. Instead of putting their flyers in the Sunday newspapers like everyone else, they chose to mail them to millions of customers, roughly every couple of weeks. If you asked not to give your name to cut down on the junk mail, the clerk would tell you it was store policy and that you had to do it. It got to the point that, when I did have to buy something there, I always paid in cash and gave a fake name at an old address, simply out of spite. I guess they finally figured out that wasn't the most customer-friendly way of doing things.

Before I went to the store, I had checked the web site to make sure they did in fact carry what I needed, and to confirm that the store I wanted to stop at was indeed still open. The site was actually pretty okay, with decent navigation and lots of subcategories to narrow my search. As with some other clicks-and-bricks retailers, I could place an order and have it shipped to a store to pick up, and not have to pay a shipping charge.

It made me think that, while they might have missed the bus with regard to their store operations, they seemed to have grasped the basics of online retailing. Maybe that's the future of the company, after the stores wither and die. And we can all look forward to spam from them for the rest of our lives.

Monday Morning MBTA Blues

It was bad enough that I started the morning commute by missing my usual bus (which I think is coming earlier, because I'm leaving the house at the same time) and had to wait 20 minutes for the next one. When I made it to the Orange Line, the train went one stop, then the doors started closing and reopening repeatedly. Eventually we started moving again, but I could tell it wasn't going to end well.

Sure enough, when we got to State, two of the three sets of doors on the station side of the car didn't open at all, and the third opened and closed again immediately. It wasn't even open long enough for anyone to start moving, so luckily no one got caught in it. But the people who were trying to get off the train started banging on the windows and yelling, as though some sort of poison gas had just been released into the car. I mean, sure, I'd be upset too; we've all had trains and buses miss our desired stop for some reason. But it just seemed like a slight overreaction.

The train went one more stop to Downtown Crossing, and naturally the doors on the other side of the car didn't open either. The train sat there for a couple of minutes, as passengers started muttering to themselves or each other about the havoc wreaked on their commutes by the T on a regular basis. Then the door at the back of the car opened and a conductor came through. She did something to override the system and the rearmost door opened. The people who wanted that stop, and those who had been unable to get out at the previous one, exited the train. We sat for another minute or two, and then came the inevitable announcement: "All passengers please exit this train. This train is coming out of service." Somehow they managed to get all the doors to open, but only to let everyone out more easily.

As we all stood on the platform, we were assured that the next train was just back at State and would be arriving momentarily. This of course was a lie (as it is every time T personnel claim that there is another train "directly behind"), but it was only a small lie, as the train did arrive about five minutes later. But it was still rush hour, so as you'd expect, that train was already pretty full, and there was no way it was going to be able to absorb the contents of another train. I opted not to try to squish in with everyone else, and stayed on the platform.

Once again we were told there was a train at State that would be arriving right away. Once again it was a lie. This time the wait was closer to ten minutes. I thought to myself, could they be having problems with another train? Then I saw the lights in the tunnel. The train approached, and as it came into the station, I saw that the first car was dark, which meant no passengers were in that car. Yes, there had indeed been trouble with another train, and they were only two trains apart. What fun.

But there was enough room on that train for everyone, and I did eventually make it to work. It took about 30 minutes longer than usual, not counting the extra time due to the missed bus. If I do include that, then it took me two hours to get to work today. Let's see how the ride home goes...

UPDATE Tuesday 5/22: This turned out to be a slightly bigger deal than I thought. It actually made the Globe today. And I guess those doors were open a little longer than I'd realized (admittedly, I was reading the paper at the time), because a guy got his arm stuck between the doors. He was able to pull it back in, but lost his briefcase in the process. Nice. I wonder if he can file any sort of claim with the T?

UPDATE Wednesday 5/23: For those of you who may be arriving at this story from the link on Universal Hub, I want to be clear that I was in no way making fun of the man whose arm was caught in the train doors. I admittedly was not paying full attention to what was going on, since this sort of thing is unfortunately a not-that-infrequent occurrence on the T, so I didn't realize the full extent of what was happening. I'm very relieved to hear that he is okay, and that he was reunited with his briefcase due to the unselfish action of a fellow passenger. But the T still screwed up big time.

Paper or Plastic?

On Wednesday I received a letter from my bank telling me that VISA had informed them that my debit card had been "compromised," and that I should call to have it canceled and replaced. Since the card was still in my wallet, I wondered how that might have occurred.

Then I remembered the TJX data breach that was reported in January. While I'm not a particularly frequent shopper at TJ Maxx, Marshalls, or any of the company's other chains, I have bought things from them here and there, and odds are I've used my debit card in one of their stores at least once in the past several years. Since the data thefts supposedly went back as far as 2003, that would increase the likelihood that my card data was among the millions that were stolen.

This is actually the third time my personal information has been stolen or otherwise compromised, and considering that, I'm very fortunate that the outcome has not been worse. A bit over a year ago, the Boston Globe's delivery company wrapped some bundles of newspapers in printouts with customer information on them, mine included. Two years ago, I got a phone call from my credit card company because someone was attempting to make a purchase using my credit card in Japan.

Neither the card company nor I ever figured out how the crook had gotten hold of the card number, but it hardly seems to matter. It's probably going to become more prevalent, as thieves continue to try new techniques that are easier and less risky than armed robbery.

My mother refuses to shop online because she's afraid of data theft, but I bet she's used a credit or debit card at Marshalls at least once, so her personal info is therefore just as vulnerable as if she did use her card online, and in the wake of the TJX and Stop & Shop incidents, it's beginning to seem like online stores' data security may be better than that of brick-and-mortar stores.

So what's the answer? Do we return to a cash-only economy? Is that even possible? These days it's kind of difficult to live without a some sort of credit or debit card, but these episodes showed that the infrastructure--banks, credit card companies, and especially retailers--are not doing their part to make our transactions as secure as they can possibly be. To me, this is basic customer service, and should be spelled out right along with a store's return policies. The Web has entities such as VeriSign that assess and certify the security of online stores; perhaps we need something similar for their counterparts in the physical world.

Extra-Happy Meal

Oh yeah, the week needed a story like this: a kid working at a McDonald's in Illinois hid his pot stash in a Happy Meal box, then gave it to a customer at the drive-up window, along with the food. Story courtesy of Consumerist, one of my favorite sites.

Junk Drawer

I'd like to say that I haven't posted anything lately because I've been out enjoying springtime. I could say it, but it would be a lie. It's just laziness, and a general lack of ideas. Thus, a few scraps:

—I managed to drink my usual three cups of coffee between 7 and 10 AM (two at home and the third after getting to work), but when I was starting on that third cup I realized that I'd forgotten to eat breakfast. As a result I was buzzy and hungry all morning, and couldn't concentrate for more than two or three minutes at a stretch. Getting lunch early seemed like the solution, but I guess I was still out of it, because I got mustard all over the cuff of my shirt.

—May is an expensive month: sister's birthday, wife's birthday, Mother's Day gift, Mother's Day dinner, all within the space of two weeks. Consequently I should try to curb some of my usual spending urges for a while. Yeah, we'll see how that goes.

—Yesterday was the Mrs.' birthday; though we had celebrated with some friends on Saturday night, I wanted to mark the actual day by taking her to dinner or something else she would enjoy. But she wasn't feeling well, and has been so stressed out from work that she said even if she was feeling all right, she wouldn't have wanted to go out. So we'll have to hold onto that thought for a bit.

Personality Plus

I don't write about work, because there isn't really anything to say. I go to work, I do my work, I go home, I come back the next day and resume where I left off. I am left alone to do what I'm supposed to be doing. Work is, thankfully, not a source of stress in my life. Getting to and from work via public transit tends to be more stressful. When I get home, the Mrs. always asks "How was your day?" and I always say "Fine." (And yes, I do ask her about her day, which typically includes large amounts of stress.)

But there is something about work that bothers me. I've been here fifteen months, and everyone has been very welcoming and friendly from day one, except for one person. She happens to be the person who trained me when I started the job, because she did it before me. During that first week she struck me as shy and introverted, and though it was pretty obvious she wanted to get back to her own work as soon as possible, she did a good job of getting me oriented and up to speed.

But as soon as my training was finished and she went back to her other work, she stopped talking to me. Not even a "hello" if I passed her in the hall. Occasionally I would see her outside the building or on the subway, and she would avoid eye contact and ignore me. She might as well have had a guide dog. And she's completely normal in her interactions with everyone else in the office, so it's not some generalized personality disorder.

This is how it's been the whole time I've been here, with very rare exceptions. From time to time I have had to email her about something, and her responses are always prompt and polite, as though we had a normal coworker relationship. And a couple of times she has appeared at my cubicle to ask me a question, and again the exchanges were perfectly normal. But we've never had any other sort of conversation, and she still avoids eye contact. We've had roughly eight or ten elevator rides of awkward silence, the kind you have when the other occupant is a total stranger.

Naturally, this bothers me. I've been working for almost thirty years, and I have never experienced anything like this. I have worked with people that I thoroughly disliked, and who disliked me just as much, but we still said hello to each other out of simple civility. Not that I think this coworker is uncivil; I just don't get her. She's breaking the social contract of the workplace, and I don't know why. I have an overwhelming urge to break through her wall of slience and just blurt out "Hi, how's it going?" in the most obnoxiously friendly voice I can muster, just to see what sort of reaction I'd get. But I haven't done it, and I probably won't.

I can handle not being liked, but being ignored? No one likes to be ignored, whatever the reason.

Following the Money Trail

When I started this blog, I did it as a place to share my opinions, but I also had a slightly higher goal: I wanted to help people become smarter about spending their money. That means not just which brand of widget is best, and which retailer you should buy it from and why, but also about that retailer's values, including where your money goes after you spend it.

With this in mind, please take a minute to read this article on Consumerist about donations made by corporations and their executives to various political organizations and groups. While I do not consider myself an activist and I have no intention of making this into a political blog, the intersection of politics and commerce is inevitable in our society, and knowledge and awareness are powerful tools. If you believe in buying things like fair trade coffee or eggs from cage-free chickens because of the policies those items represent and uphold, then you should consider what's at work behind some of your other purchases.

It comes as no surprise to me that Steve Jobs gave money to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, but I was surprised to learn that Home Depot and its CEO gave so much money to Republican causes and political action committees. It reminds me of years ago, when the word was you shouldn't go to Domino's Pizza because the company's founder was a staunch pro-life advocate. He sold his interest in the company quite a while ago, and I don't eat at Domino's anyway because there are plenty of other pizza places around and I would prefer to support local businesses, but the point is, it's important to know where your money is going, and you can use it like a vote, by supporting companies whose values align with your own or by choosing not to support companies whose values do not.

I'll bet there are plenty of registered Democrats, and independent voters as well, who have spent big chunks of money on home improvement project materials at Home Depot who might not have done so had they known about the company's donations. Not being a homeowner, I don't spend a lot of money there, but I did buy two air conditioners there last summer, and if I had known this information at the time, I would have chosen to buy them elsewhere. For now Lowe's is looking like the better bet in the home improvement category, but I'd to want to know what causes and organizations they support as well, before spending money there.

(Another) Weekend Wrap

The Mrs. was away this weekend at a family event in Ohio. I was invited, but there was no compelling reason for me to go, and we would have had to arrange for someone to take care of the dog, so I stayed home. Still it was another fairly busy weekend for me, which has been unusual until lately; it's nice to come out of winter hibernation mode and start doing stuff.

On Friday I met my college roommate for dinner, then we went to see Robert Randolph and the Family Band at Avalon. The show was great; Randolph, in addition to being a hugely talented guitarist on both regular electric and pedal steel, is a born showman and knows just how to work a crowd to full effect. The club was nearly full, though the audience was much younger than we'd expected. We were anticipating more folks our age, and there were some, but the frat-boy contingent was larger and rowdier, and of course it was only a matter of time until someone spilled his beer on me. We couldn't tell exactly what happened, but we think the guy was simply dancing too hard and lost his balance. It was near the end of the show anyway, so I just wiped it off and resolved to find a safer place to stand next time.

Saturday was a birthday dinner for my friend Anne's 40th. Her family came in for the weekend from points west and south, and there were some other friends of hers there that I'd never met before. The food was excellent, but the waiter was just awful. Once he'd taken our orders, he basically stopped paying attention to the table. Water glasses did not get refilled, plates did not get taken away, and when the staff brought out a cake, we sat there staring at it for several minutes because he neglected to bring us plates and utensils. None of us had been to this particular restaurant before, so I'd like to think it was an aberration. I'll try it again in a few weeks and see how it goes.

I used Sunday to relax, catch up on some things around the house, and do a couple of errands. The dog was mopey, presumably missing the other half of her caretaking team. I gave her some extra biscuits this morning when I left for work, to tide her over until the Mrs. gets home.

Cup o' Guilt

Lately I've started going to a different Dunkin' Donuts on my way to work, after too many mornings dealing with the aftermath of people who are apparently incapable of understanding the meaning of requests like "extra cream" or "not too light, please," even though they are getting paid to do just that. (I keep hearing that DD is going to switch to do-it-yourself coffee fixin's as part of their overall store redesign plans; I really hope it's true, and I really hope it happens soon.) Even though it adds a few extra minutes to my morning commute, I feel like it's worth it. The people who work at this new place are also more pleasant, smiling readily, chatting with the regulars, and anticipating their orders.

Since it was on the warm side again yesterday, I ordered an iced coffee (it was perfect: freshly brewed, strong, and they got the cream proportion just right). The counter person put the cup into one of the hot coffee cups before handing it to me. This is a fairly common thing; I see people carrying them this way all the time. It keeps the drink cold, and contains the condensation. But I try not to be wasteful, so I've never asked for the extra insulating cup, and I've never been given one without being asked. Moral dilemma: I felt guilty about taking an extra cup I didn't need, but I also didn't want to be the stereotypical bitchy customer and say "I don't want the extra cup. " I settled on taking the cup and keeping it at my desk to reuse in the future.

Aural Torture

It's about 80 outside today, so the air conditioning kicked on in my office. There's a vent in the ceiling panel above my head, a few feet over from my cubicle.

Something inside the vent is making a constant chattering-squeaking sound, like a spinning fan that needs oil would sound after sitting dormant for several months.

Occasionally it stops for a moment, but it starts right back up again.

It is slowly, slowly driving me insane...

Weekend Wrap

At the risk of sounding overly mundane (I hope to never do a blog post solely about the weather), it was great to finally get some real spring this weekend. It was warm enough to open the windows and get some air flowing through the apartment.

Friday evening we went to see Grindhouse. It was insane, in lots of very good ways. Whether you revere Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino or despise them, you have to acknowledge their shared love of movies and film history that inspired and pervades this project. Everyone I've talked to about it has had different reactions, but everyone also said the same thing: when it was over, we were all exhausted. It's the kind of thing you need a while to decompress from, preferably with a couple of drinks.

Saturday night I went to see a music show with a couple of friends, the gravel-voiced country guitar slinger Junior Brown. It was the first time I'd been out to see a band since Christmas week, but that was an atypically early performance by a friend, and we were able to sit down; this was the first time I'd been out to see a club show with a typical late starting time in about six months. I think this might be as frequently as I can handle them at this point. The opening act came on at 9:45, and the headliner didn't hit the stage until almost 11:30. By midnight all three of us were tired, our feet and legs hurt from standing, and our attention was starting to wander, so we decided to call it a night.

Sunday the Mrs. and I went for a late breakfast at one of our favorite spots, the venerable SoundBites in Ball Square, Somerville. (I've been remiss in not giving the place the "Monsters of..." food post it deserves.) The place is tiny (the seating capacity is probably around 40) and on weekends there is typically a line to get in with a 15-20 minute wait. This time there were only about four people ahead of us in line, possibly because it was such a nice day and people were off doing other things. We noticed that since the last time we'd been, the Mexican place next door had closed, after being open for only about 18 months.

We were chatting with SoundBites' owner, as we usually do, and he mentioned that he is moving the restaurant over into the adjacent space, which is at least twice as large, and it should be ready in about two months. This is great news, as anyone who has been there can attest; while the food is excellent, the experience has always been slightly diminished by the cramped space and non-decor. So I'm going to delay my write-up until the new space is up and running.

MsGyver

In the midst of wind-driven rain on Sunday, as we were transferring from old car to new car the insane amount of stuff the Mrs. carts around with her (and trying unsuccessfully to keep it dry), I came across a big roll of masking tape. It reminded me of an incident last summer that (sort of) explains why she carries so much stuff:

We were going out to do some errands on a Sunday afternoon, and she needed to stop at an ATM. We pulled into a newly-built bank branch near the house with a drive-up teller machine. Now, the Mrs. is only 4' 11", so she doesn't always see things the same way or from the same angle that taller people do. Typically she has to get out of the car to use a drive-up ATM, but in this case she believed she was able to reach it from the driver's seat. Unfortunately, neither of us could see that the machine had a design flaw: there was a gap at least an inch wide between the outer housing of the machine and the card slot. Of course, her card fell into the gap (and I'll bet a lot of other people's did too).

She spent several minutes trying to reach her hand far enough down into the gap to grab the card, but it wasn't wide enough. All the while she was understandably growing more and more angry and frustrated. Another car pulled up; the driver assessed the scene and wisely chose to find another ATM, because the Mrs. wasn't leaving without her card, and she certainly wasn't going to let anyone else near that machine before getting it back.

Suddenly she ran to the trunk and pulled out a big plastic container full of craft supplies. I started to ask her what she was doing, but after more than a decade together, I know better than to try to talk to her in certain situations, and this was one of them. In a couple of minutes she had fashioned a crude sort of arm from a couple of pens held together with the masking tape, with a wad of more tape, sticky side out, on the end. She stuck it into the gap, and with a little manipulation she had her card back. Relieved, and also justifiably pleased with herself, she said, "I'm definitely keeping that tape in the car all the time." No word on whether the bank has fixed its ATM design or not; we certainly haven't been back there.

Zoom

On Sunday, to my surprise and delight, the Mrs. bought a new car. This is a big deal for a few reasons. First, she really liked her four-year-old car, bought used three years ago, and likely would have gotten several more good years out of it. Also, she's the sort who has traditionally said she didn't believe in buying new cars because of depreciation and other negative financial reasons. Finally, she does not like to part with her money in general.

(I say "her money" because the car is not a joint investment in our household. Since I cannot drive, she decided a long time ago that it would not be fair for me to contribute to a vehicle's cost and upkeep. This is a very unselfish point of view, considering that I am a passenger in the car all the time. My part of the deal is that I am responsible for all video, audio, computer, and other electronics-related expenses, which I think is entirely fair, considering I would be buying those things anyway.)

This purchase came about because she kept getting letters from the dealer where she'd bought her previous car: we need your used car, we'll give you $X over Kelley blue book value, please come see us. At first she just ignored them, but then she started to wonder what they would offer her for the trade. The car was at about 55,000 miles, and the window of opportunity for a decent trade-in typically closes at around 60,000. So we took a drive to the dealer, in the midst of a nor'easter; consequently the place was pretty dead, so we didn't feel hurried.

She knew which model she was interested in, so it was a fairly simple matter of determining trim level and desired equipment, assessing the trade value, choosing a vehicle from inventory with the required features, and plugging in the numbers. I assumed we were merely involved in an exercise in the hypothetical, and I honestly did not expect her to go through with a purchase. But there were a few arguments in favor: slightly better gas mileage and decreased emissions, due to more sophisticated engine technology (good for the planet); added safety features such as anti-lock brakes and a phalanx of airbags (six in all); the added convenience of such things as radio controls on the steering wheel (which, it can be argued, is also a safety feature, since it lessens distraction while driving); and the purely subjective, such as deeper cup holders in a more sensible location and an iPod jack.

A car salesman is a car salesman, but the one we dealt with was fairly low-key, unlike some we have encountered in the past. Our favorite was the hipster type with a backwards Kangol cap who tried to rope the Mrs. by asking the classic "What if I could put you in a new car for the same monthly payment as a used car?" but was stopped in his tracks by her response: "Does it have at least 120 horsepower?" (It did not, which we already knew, but he had to look it up.)

It's also nice that this dealership orders a good selection of cars with all the available safety features, but without loading on thousands of dollars in unnecessary options, so there are cars from which the practical can choose. The final issue was color. The Mrs.' previous car was an extremely vivid shade of blue, one of the reasons she liked it so much. The new car was available in a similar hue, but only on the more expensive trim level she had ruled out, so other choices had to be considered.

There was a sort of eggplant shade she liked, but it came only with a beige interior, which she hated. Also, the Mrs. happens to be in a somewhat sensitive line of work (one of the main reasons I do not use my real identity in this blog), and ultimately she reasoned that a somewhat less, uh, memorable color might make a certain sense, so in the end she chose a gunmetal gray, which is quite attractive. Now, if those cup holders can keep her from spilling coffee in the car, everything will be fine for years to come.

Duck!

Easter isn't a big holiday in our house. I guess it used to be when I was growing up, but we don't have kids, and somehow I don't see much point in having the dog hunt for decorated eggs, unless they were made of rawhide. But we still drive down to to my family's house in Rhode Island for dinner.

When we go there, we usually bring London with us, because my mom really loves her (I guess she figures the dog's as close as she's going to get to a grandchild) and because even though she doesn't care for most other dogs, London gets along with Connor, my mom's overweight, weirdo beagle, the most antisocial dog I have ever encountered.

Mom likes to buy London toys, though London isn't much for toys in general. She has a few stuffed animals that she'll throw around and gnaw on for a couple of minutes at a time, then she's done. This time she got her a little stuffed duck, maybe four or five inches high, with one of those chips inside that makes it quack when squeezed. Well, she went completely nuts for the thing, flailing around with it for nearly an hour and repeatedly trying to take it out in the yard. The quacking noise seems to trigger her play instinct, but she still seems not to have figured out that she's causing the thing to quack by biting down on it.

She's also still trying to take it outside with her every time we go out, and into her crate at night, but I have to take it away from her at bedtime, because we're not interested in being awakened by the quacking if she happens to roll over on it or something during the night. When I remove it from the crate, she gets this look on her face like I've just told her she has to sleep outside. I substitute a non-noisemaking stuffed pink hippo, but it doesn't seem to make her happy, although she often ends up using it as a pillow. In the morning the first thing she does is lunge for the duck.

So the dog has a new toy she really likes, which is great, up until the point she finishes the gradual, inevitable process of chewing it to pieces. I'm not sure what will happen then, but hopefully it won't involve scouring various pet stores for another one to replace it.

Orange Alert

Damn. Somebody knocked over, pulled down, or otherwise felled the big ol' orange dinosaur that marks the mini golf place on route 1 in Saugus. What a rotten thing to do. The reptile's a roadside icon that's been there for almost 50 years. I love seeing it when I pass by there. I've even played at that course a couple of times. Sounds like the owners are determined to fix it, which is good. Hopefully it will be watching over putters again soon.

Animal Style?

This morning, in an attempt to inject some enthusiasm and color into an unseasonably cold Monday, I put on a bright red sweater. Then I got to work and took off my coat, and noticed my sweater was covered with dog hair. That's me, always a class act...

Brain Freeze

One thing I love about this time of year is seeing people who have decided they are going to dress based on the calendar and not on what the weather is actually doing. Saturday night in Davis Square it was probably 35 degrees, but we passed a young lady in a Tufts hoodie and no other outer layer, visibly and audibly shivering while waiting for her friend to open the door to an ATM booth. Guess her prestigious liberal arts education hasn't taught her any common sense.

Don't Label Me

A few days ago when I wrote about my failed shopping expedition, I mentioned that I like Ralph Lauren stuff as long as it doesn't have the polo player logo on it. The catch is that only a small portion of the product comes without that logo, which brings us to the corollary to my thoughts about boring clothes and my difficulties finding things I like: too damn many logos and labels.

Men's clothing (and, to a lesser extent, women's) is a wasteland of logos: horses, reptiles, rhinoceri, birds in flight, various swooshes and stripes, numerous faux heraldic crests, sailboats, flags, mountains, trees, clovers, stars, moons (most of those are real). J. Crew started putting a guy with an oar on some of its outlet-store merchandise, in case it's unclear to anyone what "crew" they're referring to. Even the frickin' Gap, usually a refreshingly logo-less refuge (except for the sweatshirts with the giant GAP on them), has polo shirts this season with an embroidered gothic G on them. Swell. Thanks, Gap.

When I was a young lad back in the paleolithic (pre-cable TV) era, clothes didn't really have logos. The one place you would have found a label was the little leather patch on the back of my jeans: first Wrangler, later Levi's. When I was a teenager those Lacoste shirts with the little embroidered crocodile showed up (we called them "alligator shirts"), followed a little later by the Polo players on their horses. I had some of each (it's no accident my first job was at Jordan Marsh--I was a shopper even back then), mostly because I wanted to fit in at school, but by the time I was in college I was realizing that I didn't really care for clothes with logos on them, and that fitting in wasn't so important to me anymore (a crucial life lesson, courtesy of American commerce).

A while back I started removing all the external labels and tags from my clothes. Many brands of khakis come with some sort of label above the back pocket: gone. Some shirts have a tag sewn along the side seam of the pocket: gone. Even the leather patches on the backs of my jeans: gone. I used to ask the Mrs. to do it, but I've gotten pretty good at doing it myself; you just have to go slowly, do it before you wash the garment for the first time, and use very small scissors. The Mrs. was an accomplished seamstress in a previous version of her life--at her college theater she made costumes for the likes of Debra Messing and Robin Weigert--so we have every size and shape of scissors known to man on the premises.

However, she has informed me that despite her abundant skills, she has no intention of wasting her valuable time removing embroidered logos from any clothing I buy (assuming it's even possible to do so, which depends on the manufacturing process). I don't feel confident enough to take that step myself, so I haven't yet figured out how to overcome this obstacle, which has prevented me from buying some otherwise nice things, which, if I let myself think about it too much, gets a little depressing and annoying, and I end up seeming a little pathetic.

This is why I end up buying a good chunk of my clothing from places like L.L. Bean and Lands' End. Their stuff may not be exciting, but it's mercifully unadorned. Plus it tends to be made a little better than department-store stuff and has better customer service backing it up. It's sad that I've become such a boring old fud, but I have to be true to myself: my clothes should express who I am without needing the assistance of a supposedly status-conferring logo, and I should be able to get dressed in the morning without having to be a walking billboard.

(By the way, I used the Macy's gift card on their web site, on a pair of sneakers they don't carry in the stores.)

Pet Peeve Unit: Slowpoke Edition

The MBTA has had its new fare collection system in place since the beginning of the year, with the stored-value cards and such. People seem to have gotten the hang of it, and in most cases boarding a bus or trolley is actually faster than it was before.

So why do I keep getting stuck directly behind the morons who insist on holding up everyone while they attempt to feed their crinkly old dollar bills into the fare box over and over? Did you seriously not realize you were going to be riding on mass transit today? Or are you really such a technophobe that you can't manage to store a few dollars on a fare card? My wife doesn't even take the T to work, but she has one, just in case.

Attempted Shopping

Where did the week go? It's a little frightening how time can slip by. But I'm not here to get philosophical. Let's talk about shopping.

Or more accurately, attempting to shop. The nice weather on Friday put me in the mood to look for some new clothes, and I had some time I needed to kill anyway. I have a Macy's gift card I received for Christmas, so I started there. Normally gift cards are like having a hot coal in my pocket--I have to get rid of them immediately--but I've been trying to use this one for nearly three months. Every time I went to Macy's, I was sure I would find the perfect thing, and every time I came away empty-handed. One time I actually did find a shirt I liked, but it turned out to be cut too snugly for my middle-aged frame (more reverse size creep) and I couldn't find it in a larger size.

On this most recent visit, there were several clearance racks filled with Polo stuff, which I tend to like as long as it doesn't have the horse on it. So I pawed through those, elbowing aside the occasional dazed tourist, and I did find a couple of things I liked, but after wasting several minutes locating a working price-scanning machine, the discounts weren't as good as I'd hoped they'd be, or thought they should be after hanging around the store this long. (Tip: never trust the signs on the racks; always check at a scanner or cashier, because often the item has been marked down even lower than the price that's on the tag.)

This got me to thinking: why is Macy's men's department so boring? The women's departments seem to offer a range of style options, but not so the men's. I'm long past the age when anything in the "young men's" section has any appeal for me, what with all those giant logos and supersized or superslim styles. The regular men's area is just stuffed to the ceiling with the most staid, bland clothes on earth. The only real shot of color to be found is in the annual spring batch of polo shirts (as opposed to Polo shirts, which tend to be too colorful year-round), the Hawaiian-style printed shirt trend has persisted far longer than it has any right to, and how many pairs of khaki cargo shorts can one guy own?

Come to think of it, I'm not even ready to be thinking about summer clothes. I was looking for something I could wear in the spring, but that stuff seems to be gone already, not that there was really anything of interest to me in the first place. But it still leaves my question: why is Macy's so boring? And I don't mean to single them out; it's not just them, but really all big stores.

Here's what I think: the majority of guys don't really care what they wear, as long as it doesn't cause them embarrassment, which means plain and safe (think of the typical army of guys clad in the business-casual uniform of blue shirts and khaki pants, zzz...). And a lot of men's clothing choices are actually made by their wives or girlfriends, who aren't going to risk choosing something their men will reject as being "too fashiony" (except the ones who naively consider their partners a work in progress and think they can change them). So the stores continue to offer the plainest and safest choices, so sales will remain consistent.

So where does that leave me? Seeking out other options, as usual. Not that I consider myself fashion-forward. I read and enjoy GQ, but most of the casual clothing looks ridiculous (dress clothing is a different story that I'll tackle at some future point). I prefer stuff that is timeless but still looks like some thought was put into it. This is getting harder to find. It's like music; everything is so splintered into styles and subgenres that the only thing left in the mainstream is boring beyond belief (John Mayer, I'm looking at you...). If I had the means, I'd attempt to start my own clothing line, if only to give myself something to wear. But I guess I'll just keep looking. Somebody must want my money.

Beer Run

Hi there, blognoscenti. I had intended to post a couple of days ago, but the impending (well, next week) arrival of the Mrs.' dad for a visit forced us to confront some house-cleaning imperatives. We did take some time out from cleaning over the weekend to do some errands, including a run to the liquor store, which gave me the idea for this entry.

For more than a decade we lived about a mile south of Wellington Circle, which is the tangled and tricky intersection of routes 28 and 16 in Medford, MA. Now we live about a mile north of it. For pretty much all this time, I've been buying my beer from the Kappy's Liquors store that sits at the northeast edge of the Circle. I prefer to buy my beer by the case, because that way I only have to think about it every month or so.

Our friend Sandra has always referred to Kappy's as "the Liquor Palace" so I got in the habit of doing it too. It's arguably a palace of commerce, but not in the aesthetic sense: it's a plain white building with way too much fluorescent lighting inside. But when I walk through the door and see the mountains of beer cases stacked in rows, it makes me feel warm inside, the way I used to feel when I was a kid with a dollar to spend at the candy store. It usually takes me at least 20 minutes to decide what kind of beer I'm going to get, even if I walked in thinking I knew what I wanted. I just like to wander up and down the aisles, looking for something different, or something familiar.

But this weekend I decided to try another store in town. I was swayed by a radio ad I'd heard. I'd been there once or twice a while ago; it's not any more or less convenient than Kappy's. The ad claimed their prices were better, and I guess I wanted to see if they were. The store itself was somewhat dingy inside, done up in paneling straight out of Ralph Kramden's Raccoon Lodge and probably about as old. They had plenty of beer, and it was piled high like at Kappy's, but somehow it just wasn't the same.

And the prices weren't that great either: most of the brands I tend to buy were a couple of dollars more expensive per case. I did end up buying beer, but pretty much only because I'd already put my empties into the machine and gotten my deposit credit, but I don't need to go back. So, Liquor Palace, I've learned my lesson. Just because a store has a radio ad doesn't mean it's the better place for me to shop. Sometimes, the best place to shop is the place you've been shopping all along.

I'm a Member of the Stupid Club

Have you ever done something that's just so painfully stupid you can't believe you're allowed to walk around using the earth's oxygen? I'm now a member of that club.

On Sunday I noticed that my winter parka was kind of dirty down the front, along the flap that covers the zipper, probably from reading the paper every day on the way to work. I was a little embarrassed that I hadn't noticed it sooner, so when I got home I pulled the gloves out of the pockets and put the coat in the washing machine. A little while later I was wondering where I'd put my cell phone, then I remembered it was time to put the coat in the dryer.

On my way down the stairs to the basement those two thoughts converged in my head in one of those "oh, no" moments that we hope never to have. Sure enough, the phone was in the inside pocket. I'd been in such haste to wash it that I allowed that thought to override my usual logical process: come in the house, take phone out of pocket and put it in usual spot so I can find it again later, hang up coat.

The phone was toast, although the battery worked fine in the Mrs.' phone (same brand). I still had my previous phone, so a call to customer service got that one reactivated and solved the immediate problem of having one to use. The bigger question is, what now? I don't want to continue using the old phone indefinitely. If I go to Verizon Wireless to buy a replacement, they're going to charge me some ridiculous amount (probably around $300, from what I can gather without asking them directly). I've had a cell phone for over ten years and until now I've never rendered one inoperable, so I don't feel that insurance is worth it--if I'd been paying for it all this time, I would have paid more than twice the cost of a non-contract replacement phone, and there's typically still a deductible involved.

eBay is an option--my reactivated temporary phone came from there--but there is a certain amount of risk in such a purchase, and current model phones aren't exactly bargains; to replace my drowned phone with the same model would cost one-third to one-half of what Verizon would charge me. Some of the more established cell-phone sellers on eBay are now offering guarantees, which would make me feel better about choosing that route.

Another possibility is craigslist. I have both bought and sold things on the 'list, and while it can be a pain for buyer and seller to make the arrangements to meet, at least you can look over the merchandise and ensure it works before handing over your money. But the selection of phones for Verizon is a little thin at the moment, and not surprisingly tends toward older models.

So I'll have to bide my time with my old phone while checking craigslist and eBay looking for the right deal. In the meantime, when I go to do laundry you can bet I'll be checking every pocket very carefully.

Where Did My Products Go?

I realized that I haven't been keeping up with the "consumption" aspect of this blog's mission. I've still been a consumer, of course, but my recent entries have not focused on that so much. That's because I'm smart enough (thankfully) to know that not everything I buy is interesting enough to write about. I recently bought another pair of boots that were too big, but that didn't seem to merit a post of its own, especially since I was dumb enough (regrettably) to wear them for the better part of a day even though I'd already determined they were too big, thereby rendering them un-returnable. So I sold them on eBay, for less than I hoped I'd get, but they're on the way to someone who wants them, and thus no longer taking up space in the house, sitting there quietly mocking my stupidity.

However, I do have a consumer-related issue that's been on my mind for a while. I seem to have what is becoming an alarming tendency to choose personal-care and grooming products that later disappear, inevitably after I've decided that Product X is the best thing ever and I never want to use anything else. It's just happened for the third time in the past several years.

The first instance was a hair product. It wasn't anything fancy; in fact, it was one of the cheapest products in that aisle of the drugstore--after having been burned by $10, $15, even $20 products that didn't work, its low price was the reason I decided to try it. But it worked, so who cares? Then it went away with no warning, no "get it while it lasts!" signs. The rest of the product line was still there, taunting me in its gaudy aqua packaging (it seems like it was aimed at gum-snapping teenage girls, but again, who cares?). I looked in the clearance section. I looked in other drugstore chains. I looked in the supermarket's health & beauty aisle. I looked in Target, Costco, and even the dreaded Wal-Mart: nothing. I gave up and resorted to a succession of inferior products.

Fast-forward about two years to the winter of 2005. I found myself wandering the aisles of the discount paradise known as the Ocean State Job Lot (an odd sort of hybrid of a dollar store on steroids and a Big Lots, indigenous to New England, but primarily found in Rhode Island, southern Connecticut, and southeastern Massachusetts) when I spotted the unmistakable aqua containers. Could it be? It was. Had they been sitting in a warehouse somewhere this whole time? Didn't know, didn't care. I knew from previous use that each bottle lasted me at least eight months (because I don't have much hair left). I grabbed six bottles, which I think ended up costing 75 cents each. I'm on bottle three four.

The next such incident involved a product I used to use to wash my face before shaving, that did nice things to my pores and helped prevent cuts. Again I got hooked and again it disappeared, except this time the supermarket continued carrying it for a while. I should have stocked up then, but I didn't realize it was happening again. When even they no longer had it, I looked to the company's web site, which claimed it was still available. Their retail locator offered a list of stores that carried the brand, but wasn't any more specific. After another week or so spent running around, I again gave up; this time, at least, I was able to find a comparable replacement product.

Most recently, I've used and lost a clear-gel acne treatment product which I would apply before going to bed. Fortunately I'm at an age where I don't have to deal with acne on a regular basis, but we all need a little help now and then. It was remarkably effective; often the offending breakout would be gone the next morning, and without causing any irritation like some acne treatments do. I still have some left, but when it's gone I really don't know what I'm going to use in its place, as I haven't been able to find any comparable products.

Repeated disappointment has made me cynical, and these days I'm trying not to grow too attached to my products. Maybe it's time for another trip to Job Lot.

TV Wasteland

It's been a rough few weeks over here at the SAR household. The Mrs. has been struggling with a persistent cough that turned out to be bronchitis. It took two doctor visits to affirm this (even though I guessed it three weeks ago), as the doctors didn't see the need to do a chest X-ray the first time around. So helpful. The antibiotics she got on the second visit did what they were supposed to do, but when they ran out earlier this week, her cough returned. So she made a third visit to the doctor yesterday and got another round of a different antibiotic, which seems to be working and hopefully will clear the gunk out of her lungs for good. (It had better, because I'm really, really tired of hearing that cough.)

As a result, we haven't done much outside the house lately, especially with the cold blast we had this past week. Even a short amount of time in front of the TV confirms that March is the dead zone for network programming, since it immediately follows the February sweeps period. There's some college basketball tournament coming up that we don't care about, we're not interested in who is going to be the next anorexic model or slutty dancer, and we don't partake of that despicable emotional beatdown masquerading as a singing competition (and what does it say about our country and culture that this is what now passes for entertainment?), so the pickings are slim.

The networks also use this time to try out new shows, away from the clutter of new episodes of established shows, and sometimes it works out well--Grey's Anatomy started in March two years ago, and it's turned into a top-rated show. But last Sunday we did make the mistake of watching the first episode of The Winner, a mind-blowingly bad new "comedy" on Fox, mostly because it was sandwiched between new episodes of The Simpsons and Family Guy and there wasn't anything else on that we cared about at the time. Two-thirds of the way through, the Mrs. stopped coughing long enough to comment, "I hate this already. Do we have to finish watching it?" We didn't have to, but we did, because there were only ten minutes left, but we opted to skip the second episode shown later the same night.

It's not all bad news, though. Because of their networks' scheduling quirks, there are new episodes of Lost and 24 on every week. NBC is showing plenty of reruns of one of our favorites, The Office, which is always worth watching a second time, but they're sweetening the deal with some with scenes that didn't make it into the episodes the first time around. The New Adventures of Old Christine comes back tomorrow night, promising us a few more laughs. And there's always Netflix. And before we know it, April will be here, and with any luck, the Mrs. will have stopped coughing, the weather will improve, and we'll be able to go see a movie.

Up in Somke

I don't smoke. I don't know anyone who does, except my father, who's been smoking so much, for so long, that I don't think he could quit if he wanted to. I was thrilled when Massachusetts passed the law several years back banning smoking in restaurants, bars, and clubs. But with that law came the exile of the smokers to sidewalks everywhere, often in clots that need to be dodged.

I was thinking about this as I went to get lunch the other day. I work in the midst of a cluster of top-tier hospitals, without exaggeration some of the finest medical care in the world, so I don't see a lot of people standing around on the street smoking. But the law of averages says that a certain percentage of people in any workplace are going to be smokers, and the medical area is no exception.

The rear entrance to the Longwood Galleria food court is at the end of an alley; it's a natural gathering spot for smokers who have finished lunch and are grabbing a puff before going back to work. Also abutting the same alley is the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, which, according to their web site, "provides expert, compassionate care to children and adults with cancer." Is it just me, or is this the height of irony? At least the smokers will know where it is when they need to go there...

Random Acts of Weirdness (Pet Peeve Unit)

It was a week of random weirdness (and rudeness) out there in the big city. Here are some examples:

—The other day I went out to get lunch and drop off a bill at the mailbox. (Yes, I still pay one or two of my bills by check, but only because the companies in question don't offer an appropriate online payment method. In this case it's National Grid, our electric company. The only way you can pay online is to set up a recurring monthly payment, and I choose not to do this because I like to retain control over when and how much I pay.)

But I digress... as I approached the mailbox, I noticed a guy standing in front of it. I figured he was dropping off a piece of mail like me. As I got closer I saw that he was outside for a smoke break. He was standing in such a spot that there was no way I or anyone else could get to the mailbox without stepping around him and into his cloud of smoke. The mailbox is directly in front of an open area, and had he chosen to stand in any other spot nearby, his smoke bomb would have offended no one. I have to wonder if a smoker would feel marginalized enough by the laws to do something like this on purpose, but I decided against asking him.

—Even if the T never gets around to putting transmitters in the subway tunnels, cell phones still work some of the time, which is unfortunate. Wednesday morning on the Orange Line, a young woman sat down next to me in the midst of a conversation that proceeded to go something like this:

"Tell her about MY new sneakers...Did you tell her?...Did you tell her?...Tell her about MY new sneakers...Tell her about mine...Tell her about mine...Did you tell her?...Did you tell her?...Did you tell her?...Did you tell her?...What did she say?...Really?...I'm gonna lose you, I gotta go."

I'm not exaggerating: she really did say "Did you tell her?" ten or twelve times. I'm thinking it was a reception issue. If there had been actual cell service in the tunnel, would she have had to repeat herself so many times? We'll never know.

Then I noticed she was wearing headphones. I noticed because, since she was done talking, I could hear the music coming out of her ear. And I wondered, was she listening to the music while talking on the phone? Because that probably would have affected her ability to hear the other end of her conversation. But I didn't want to look too closely at her, because the music coming out of those headphones was Journey's "Faithfully," and that's just so wrong on so many levels, I don't know where to begin.

Now, she could have had a cell phone that plays mp3s, and I'm fairly certain that those are engineered in such a way that you can't listen to music while on a call, but since I have an iPod with far more capacity than any phone-sized memory card, I don't really pay attention to such things (even though my own cell phone has this capability).

This was at 8:30 AM. Sometimes when I overhear these conversations, I wonder about why people feel the need to have incredibly lengthy and involved conversations so early in the day. I think back to twenty years ago, when I was young enough that I might have felt such a need, but even if cell phones had been common then, I can't imagine myself needing to talk to even my best friend before getting to work, wspecially about something as banal as new sneakers. And anyway, I'd much rather show my new sneakers to my friends than tell them about them over the phone.

—At the end of that same morning's ride, I was preparing to get off the train to switch to a bus. There was a fairly bulky dude standing directly in front of me, so I went through the motions of folding up my newspaper and putting it away, putting my cap back on, and otherwise telegraphng to him in the universally understood (or so I thought) mass transit code that I was about to get off the train, and it would be helpful to me if he would move a couple of inches in the direction of his choice to give me some room to stand up.

The train wasn't really crowded by this point, so he had plenty of room to move, but he chose to remain in the exact spot where I needed to be when I stood up. So the train reached the station and I stood up, putting myself very much inside his personal space, hoping he'd get the message that he was impeding my passage. As I moved toward the door of the train, instinct told me to look over my shoulder, and I saw him glaring at me, as though I had somehow committed an offense against him. I felt I had no choice but to glare back because it really was his fault, even though the whole incident was ridiculous and pointless, and never should have happened. Fortunately the rest of my trip to work that day was without incident, but some days it's just such a challenge, you wish you didn't have to bother.

Can You Hear Me Now? (Crazy Gadgets Unit)

The post I was planning for today is gonna have to wait, because just when you think the world has become too boring and homogeneous and has run out of weirdness, this comes along to restore the faith...

Courtesy of Engadget, a tech blog, and those wacky Japanese and their penchant for gadgetizing their entire lives, comes today's little moment of joy: a device that lets you see inside your ear canals while cleaning them. Wow. Just...wow. This sort of thing is guaranteed to make my day, every time.

Scratching the Itch

Back in 2004, I started buying lottery scratch tickets. I had never done this before; in the early 90s I had a set of numbers I played in one of the weekly jackpot games for a while, but that was it for me as far as the lottery was concerned. But in mid-2004 I was laid off, and to my twisted way of thinking, a lottery prize would be a convincing argument for not having to get another job.

So what happens when a compulsive mind like mine decides to participate in legalized gambling? Well, I'm not analyzing percentages or anything like that, but I did quickly arrive at some conclusions regarding how best to waste spend my money. I don't have an addictive personality, but I can certainly see how easy it would be to go overboard, so I decided right away that I was going to limit myself to $10 per week, so things wouldn't get out of hand. (I figure the money falls in the same category as a daily fancy-latte-type drink, which I don't buy, so it has about the same justification.)

Then I looked at the the games themselves. I determined that the $1 tickets just aren't worth it, because the prizes are too small. Conversely, while the $5 tickets have much bigger prizes, when I did buy them I never won anything, and for the same amount of money, you don't get as many chances to win: if I buy five $2 tickets, I'm getting a total of ten chances (two per ticket), but if I buy two $5 tickets, there are only eight chances (four per ticket).

So for me the happy medium seems to be the $2 tickets. In a typical week I'll win a couple of bucks, just enough to make me feel like it's worth it and keep me coming back. On a couple of occasions I won $50, and once a few months ago $100. When that happens, I either take the Mrs. out for a nice dinner, or put it into the "fund" (also known as a savings account) I maintain for big-ticket purchases. At the moment, the fund has about 50% of the cost of the plasma TV I'm going to buy soon, which will make paying for it a good bit easier.

When I win a small amount, I practice a "reinvestment strategy" of sorts: when I go back the following week, I use the winnings to buy additional tickets beyond my weekly allotment. So this week I had $6 from last week's tickets, so I got a total of eight tickets, but still spent only $10. This makes me feel like I have more chances to win something.

Massachusetts participates in one of those multi-state jackpot games called Mega Millions, which is drawn twice a week. When the jackpot gets large, say over $100 million, I find it pretty hard to resist, so I amended my lottery rules to allow me to spend another $10 per week on Mega Millions. I don't play a specific set of numbers; rather, I embrace the randomness of the world and play "quick picks," which means I let the lottery machine randomly choose the numbers for me. (Actually, I decided that filling in the tiny circles on those cards every time would make me feel just a little too desperate.)

To my complete lack of surprise, my winnings from the jackpot game have been next to nothing. Occasionally I have a couple of the numbers, but without the "mega ball" the prizes are negligible. Last week I had the mega ball twice, but no other numbers, which got me $2 for each mega ball. Since the jackpot was still growing, I put the $4 toward the next set of quick picks. I'll probably never win anything substantial, but I tell myself I have just as much chance as anyone. I fantasize about world travel, vacation homes, helping my family, becoming a philanthropist, and not having to work ever again. Especially that last one.

In NyQuil We Trust

Being sick is just so much fun. But as soon as I figured out what was going on, I reached for the NyQuil, for two reasons: one, it was already in the house, and two, it always works. Since it was a long holiday weekend and I didn't have to worry about going anywhere or being lucid, I took the green stuff round the clock until Tuesday, when I decided to shift to the day/night combo because I wanted to try to start feeling normal again.

A lot of people will tell you they don't like the taste of NyQuil (their spelling, by the way, with the capital Q). Not me; I love it. I love it because it Tastes. Like. Medicine. One whiff and you know it's serious stuff. One swallow, and you know you're going to feel better soon. Of course, the sense of wooziness brought on by the combination of the antihistamine and alcohol is part of the fun too. It makes you relaxed, passive, receptive. Appetite? Not really. Take a shower? Nah. Five or so hours of Anthony Bourdain on the Travel Channel? Sure.

Closed Due to Illness

Well, after fighting it for a week, I finally caught whatever it is the Mrs. has been coughing out into the atmosphere. Programming will resume when I can once again think straight...

Plaid World

Sometimes I just don't have a good topic in mind. Like today. I was actually going to write a lame post about how sometimes I can't think of anything to write, but fortunately/unfortunately, on the way home from work I encountered unexpected inspiration. A young lady standing at the bus stop was wearing Burberry earmuffs. Burberry. Earmuffs. My brain just locked up; I didn't know what to make of them. And then I thought to myself, I wonder if she's wearing a Burberry thong too? Because if they make Burberry earmuffs, they must make fucking Burberry underpants. Then, a little while later, while I was in the midst of an errand at a trendy shopping mall, I saw a second young lady wearing them. At least it's clear who the target customer is.

When I got home I looked them up online, and saw that they are cashmere and cost $115. Just think about that for a minute. What's the last item of clothing you bought that cost over $100? I bet it was probably a coat, or maybe a good pair of shoes, or possibly you treated yourself to a cashmere sweater. I rooted around in my own brain, and I think for me it was a leather coat I got about a year ago. It was originally $250 but I found it on clearance for around $120. I also bought a pair of engineer boots around the same time that were about the same amount. The closest thing I have to earmuffs is those things that go around the back of your head and cover your ears, and twist up into a sort of ball when you aren't wearing them. They cost about $10.

I still can't get my mind around the fact that someone thought the world needed cashmere earmuffs with the Burberry plaid on them. It does not surprise me that people would buy them, because people will buy anything. I just think it's sad that we allow ourselves to be marketed to in this way, and that we think we need to buy expensive designer items to validate ourselves.

By the way, I couldn't find any underwear, but they do make Burberry-plaid bikinis. I'm sure it's just a matter of time, though.

City Mice, Country Mice

Over the weekend we made an overnight visit to friends who live in West Brookfield, a very pretty, very small town out in the middle of the state. Their house is on five acres at the end of a long driveway, and they regularly get coyotes, foxes, deer, and other wildlife as visitors in their yard. We ate, drank, talked, and relaxed. We took a walk in the snow, in spite of the cold, and even the dog seemed to enjoy herself--she doesn't like to walk at home because other dogs in the neighborhood make her nervous. (Yes, she is a pathetic, 60-pound sissy-dog.)

It's only a 90-minute drive from our house to theirs, but it's such a striking contrast to living in the city or just outside it, as we do. If I could drive, I wouldn't mind living somewhere less urban, though not necessarily as rural as "camp," as our friends refer to their place. And as much as the Mrs. enjoys nature, animals, and getting away from things, I could tell that even after only 24 hours, she was getting a little bored with all that peace and quiet.

Sure, we have cable and TiVo and Netflix and everything else, and we could have all that no matter where we lived (our friends can't get cable, but they have DirecTV), but sometimes you just want to go out and do something, and that's where the differences come into focus. If they want to go see a movie, they have to drive 40 minutes to Amherst or Northampton or Worcester; from our house, we can get to either the Capitol, the Somerville Theatre, or the Revere Showcase in about 15 minutes. They have one pizza place and one Chinese place; the pizza place delivers, the Chinese place doesn't. The choices for sit-down dining are bound to be limited in a town with only 1600 residents; again, satisfaction is at the other end of a lengthy car ride. Hell, it's ten miles from their house to the liquor store.

As with everything else in life, it's a tradeoff: what you get in exchange for what you are willing to give up. As we were driving home Sunday evening, slipping through the city on the Turnpike, the Mrs. gestured outside the car and said, "See, I would miss this too much." I knew exactly what she meant.

Employees Must Wash Hands

The restrooms where I work got shiny new dispensers for the toilet paper, soap, and paper towels last week. Not exactly a major news story, but I couldn't help but notice that it didn't necessarily result in an improvement in the restroom experience. The soap is the foamy kind, which is fine; it's a little nicer than the gel-like substance it replaced, and lathers more easily. The paper towel dispenser requires a combination of pulling down on the towel and pushing in on a piece of plastic that sits behind the towel, which is pretty counterintuitive, and kind of dumb. The toilet paper is wider and thicker, but quite a bit coarser than what it replaced. So that's 1 for 3. Maybe I'd better stop wishing they'll do something about how the restroom smells.

[On closer inspection, I determined that the plastic push bar is there to help the towel along if pulling off one sheet does not bring the next sheet far enough out of the dispenser to be pulled. My bad. But it's still somewhat kludgy, so 1.5 out of 3.]

Also work-related, but with broader implications as well: just how lazy do you have to be to ride the elevator down one floor? I see this about once a week. Our office is on the sixth floor, which is the top of the building, so I feel somewhat justified in riding the elevator (although, since we publish health newsletters, we are always being guilted encouraged to use the stairs, and quite a few people do). But people persist in riding from five to four, or three to two. And these are not people with crutches or walkers or wheelchairs; these are able-bodied types, generally in their twenties, and since the rest of the building is a library, most of them are medical students. If anyone should be taking the stairs, it should be them, right? Setting the example?

Button to Button

Size creep, as it has come to be known, is keeping a clothing size's physical measurements the same, but labeling it as a smaller size than it was previously known. It's aimed primarily at women, supposedly to flatter them into thinking they are thinner than they really are, or some marketing BS like that.

J. Crew is practicing reverse size creep; that is, I've had to start buying their clothing in bigger sizes. Their men's size large shirts, and at least one style of sweater, no longer fit me comfortably. They have trimmed the patterns by at least a couple of inches, so while I can button the shirts, there's enough pulling between the buttons to look unattractive. I noticed that the armholes and upper arms are cut more snugly as well. Extra large fits comfortably enough, but the sleeves are a little too long. If anything, they should be going in the opposite direction, given our country's obesity epidemic, or at least consider offering the shirts in more than one fit/cut.

Much Ado...

So yeah, here in Boston we now look like a bunch of fools in the wake of yesterday's Mooninite invasion. Clearly the mental geniuses (I attempted to link to the hairy guy's web site, but who knows if it's ever coming back) who were hired to make and place these things didn't use good judgment, and even if the city's response seems like an overreaction in hindsight, it's understandable why they reacted the way they did.

But I have to wonder: even though apparently not one policeman, firefighter, EMS worker, or other emergency response person involved had ever heard of Adult Swim, doesn't it seem like one look at the device in question would make it clear it was some kind of spoof? I mean, it doesn't exactly look threatening, plus it's giving the finger (which, incidentally, made for some amusing moments in the local media, as some TV stations reportedly blurred the digit and others did not). Do we have to be so uptight about everything?