The Virtues of Thrift

I had hoped to get something else up before the end of the work week, but deadlines took precedence. And it wasn't exactly a hectic weekend, so there wasn't any good reason for me not to post then. Mea culpa.

With all sorts of horrible financial news assaulting us pretty much daily, I thought I would share a few tips on how I lead what I consider a comfortable lifestyle without overspending. I decided to break up the post into daily (sort of) bite-size pieces, and I'll post one every day this week.

Sell some stuff. I recently sold a couple of items on eBay, one of which was a vintage watch that brought in nearly $200. I then used that money, in the form of a PayPal balance, to buy other things. Some of it was stuff I needed, some was stuff I just wanted. Among other things, I got the DVD set of the first season of Mad Men, and a couple of new cashmere sweaters for $20 each.

One caveat about buying sweaters on eBay: a lot of people seem to have a tendency to put their sweaters on hangers, which is terrible, because it causes a sweater to stretch out of shape. A sweater should never be stored on a hanger. Sometimes they do this just to take the pictures, but you can bet sometimes it gets left on the hanger for weeks or months. If it's an extreme case, you may be able to tell just by looking at the photos, but if you think you might want to wear something to work or on any occasion when you want to look good, it might be worth your time to ask the seller how the sweater has been treated. Now, some people might say, "If you're only spending $20 what's the difference?" but it's your money, and a bargain isn't really a bargain if it's all stretched out and fits poorly and you end up not wearing it or having to give it away.

If you use PayPal to make a purchase there is no fee or service charge, but if you are the seller then PayPal does take a cut. Some people bristle at this, but it's a cost of doing business, just like stores and catalogs and online retailers have to pay a credit card processing fee. But the nice thing about having a PayPal balance is that you don't have to use it only on eBay. Many sites now accept PayPal as a form of payment, so if you've been a lucky seller you have some flexibility. I was able to use part of my PayPal balance to add an auxiliary hard drive to my TiVo, which roughly quadrupled its recording capacity. Just what he needs, you're thinking, and you're probably right, but it's too late.

One other thing about selling on eBay: be very specific about who can, or cannot, make a purchase from you. I learned this the hard way during my most recent couple of auction sales. The high bidder for the watch I sold had a perfect feedback rating, but after the auction ended and I didn't receive payment for a couple of days, I went and checked the buyer information and found that the person had shut down his/her eBay account and disappeared. Nice.

I was able to make a second-chance offer to the next-highest bidder, who happened to be in Spain. I had specified in the auction listing that I would only ship the item to a US address, but now, thanks to an unsavory bidder, I was no longer in control of the outcome. I could deal with sending the watch overseas, or start over with a relisted item. Fortunately, the second-chance bidder was very conscientious about answering my emails, and agreed to pay a higher shipping fee to cover the added costs and the extra time I would need to invest in completing the transaction.

It happened to be during my holiday break, so I had the time to go to the post office and wade through the confusing forms required to send a package overseas. If you're attempting to make a living selling stuff on eBay, you kind of have to be willing to deal with stuff like this, but if you're just trying to sell one or two items, it can be a hassle. You can always specify in your auction listing that potential buyers from outside the US have to contact you first to discuss whether or not you are willing to sell to them, and any additional shipping costs required to do so. Of course this is no guarantee, but chances are if someone is willing to take the time to email you, he or she is serious about purchasing your item.

This is something I found out during my next auction, which was for a pair of insulated boots that didn't bring in nearly as much as I expected. On the last day of the auction, I was contacted by a guy from Canada who was interested in bidding on them, but this time I had set up the auction so that people from outside the US could not even place a bid. I told him to go ahead and bid and we would work out the additional fees afterward if he won, but I forgot about the restriction I had set, plus the auction ended while I was on my way home from work that day, so I couldn't have changed it in time even if I had remembered.

Would he have been the winner? No way to know, but he almost certainly would have outbid the eventual winner at least once. Then, the person who did place the winning bid contacted me a week or so after I sent off the package to inform me that the postal service mishandled the package after I sent it, and it was at a dead mail recovery center (which was eerily similar to my own experience a few months back with a package sent to me that was mislabeled by the postal service with a zip code that was off by one digit, and spent the better part of two weeks ping-ponging between Albany and Springfield before finally making its way to me). I just checked the status of the package I sent, and it did finally reach its destination, a mere FOUR WEEKS after I sent it. Crap, I could have walked it there faster. I may have to think about getting a FedEx account or something...

Productivity Is Overrated

Say what you will about Saturday Night Live--that it's inconsistent, that it should be funnier, that it should have been yanked off the air ten years ago--one of the best and most consistently funny parts of the show these days is the Digital Shorts.

The site TV Squad (you may have noticed the link to them over on the right) has compiled a list of the top ten Digital Shorts. It's only one person's opinion, but I think it's a decent list, and I present it in the interest of wasting time. Besides, even if you've seen "Dick In A Box" or "Lazy Sunday" a hundred times, they're still worth watching again, and I'll bet there's at least one clip here you haven't seen before.

Most of these are the brainchild of Andy Samberg and his partners in the band The Lonely Island, and if you weren't paying close attention you might mistake them for genuine songs. But in fact they're generally parodies, and sharp ones at that. They have a definite ear for mimicking popular music styles, and the accompanying visuals are pretty spot-on too. Who didn't know a guy or two in college like "Ras Trent"? Think of any random hip-hop video, then compare it to "I'm On A Boat."

As Joel McHale says on The Soup, please to enjoy... Oh, some of these are probably NSFW, so put on your headphones.

Lazy Monday

It's been a pleasant long weekend. The weather has been decent for February, though being a lifelong New Englander, I'm not foolish enough to think there isn't going to be any more snow, but at least the bits that are still on the ground have half a chance to finish melting before we get any more.

Anyway, Friday was the 15th anniversary of our first date (in case anyone's wondering, we saw Six Degrees of Separation at the West Newton Cinema, and went for ice cream afterward). Over the years we have treated this as a sort of half-anniversary, so with that in mind I wanted to make it fun and a little more elaborate than usual.

We decided a couple of weeks ago that we would have dinner at Turner's Seafood Grill in Melrose. We've been there one or two times before, and have found the food excellent. I would say it's as good as any seafood place in Boston, and the prices, while not cheap, are comparatively lower. And by going out on the 13th, we avoid the Valentine's Day madness.

I thought that after dinner, it would be nice to spend the night in a hotel. My first thought was to go to Hotwire and find the best deal I could on the fanciest hotel, and I did find a very good rate at what I suspect was the Langham in Post Office Square (when you book on Hotwire, you don't find out the exact property you're staying at until after you pay for the booking, which is part of how they can offer the rates they do).

Now, I have a fascination with hotels that the Mrs. doesn't particularly share. While I didn't think she would not enjoy the place, I know her well enough by now to know she cares more about overall comfort than putative luxury, and I figured her response to a night downtown would be something along the lines of "so where are we going to park?" So I decided to change my approach. I remembered reading last summer about the Aloft hotel opening in Lexington. Aloft is being marketed as a sub-brand of W Hotels, with the intent of providing a boutique hotel atmosphere at a lower rate. I had a look at the site and thought it would be just right. (We'll do the luxe hotel thing another time.)

We stayed in a W once several years ago, so we could see some definite similarities in the room design. The materials and colors are more distinctive than what you find in a typical hotel room. The Aloft rooms have platform beds with down comforters, and the beds face the windows rather than one of the side walls. There's a nice big flat TV on the wall between the windows, and a frosted glass panel next to the bed that lets natural light into the shower stall, which, along with the rest of the bathroom, is on the other side of the wall behind the bed. Cute, a little funky, and comfortable.

We had a friend look after the dog so we could take our time getting home on Saturday morning. I had also ordered Valentine's Day candy from See's, a California company whose stuff the Mrs. grew up with and loves. When the package arrived on Thursday it seemed a little light, and indeed when I opened it one of the items was missing. They sent out a replacement and it arrived today (apparently, UPS doesn't care that it's a holiday).

As for the rest of the weekend, we did a couple of errands, saw Slumdog Millionaire last night, and had a very late breakfast today. The movie was excellent; as the Mrs. put it, "some fascinating storytelling, but also depressing enough that I don't want to see it again."

Brace Yourselves

On Tuesday I took the first step on a journey that is going to have a profound impact on my life. This is something I have wanted to do for many years, and I finally decided it was time to act.

I got braces. Yes, at age 45, I'm a metal mouth.

When I was a child, braces were not financially feasible for my parents. When I was a teenager I went to a parochial high school, and it was made clear that tuition took precedence over elective cosmetic dentistry, which was perfectly understandable, and at that age I didn't much care how my teeth looked anyway. But as I got older, even as I grew less self-conscious and more comfortable with my overall appearance, I was bothered more and more by the state of my mouth.

I'm very fortunate to have healthy teeth, but they have always been terribly crooked. The bottom teeth are extremely crowded in front, my canines protrude something awful, making me look a little like Spike, and my upper molars are angled inboard of the lower ones, which is called a cross bite. My dentist made molds of my uppers and lowers a couple of weeks ago, and it was kind of shocking to see just how badly messed up my mouth is.

I've been going to the same dentist for more than 15 years, and I think he and all his staff are fantastic. My comfort with and confidence in them is a big part of why I chose to do this. My dentist has spent most of his career learning how to do new stuff, and when he showed me the Damon System braces, which were designed specifically for adult mouths, I could see how excited he was about them. They achieve results faster than other types of braces, and they are not painful.

The upper bracess went on first, because my cross bite needs to be opened up somewhat before the bottoms can be fitted. Little metal brackets were glued to each of my upper teeth, a wire was fed through them, and the brackets were then snapped shut to hold the wire taut and in place. In six weeks I'll go back to get the wire changed to one that is slightly thicker and will thus put a little more tension on the teeth. Six weeks after that, the dentist should be able to put on the lower braces. After that, I only have to go in about every three months to get the wires changed.

It took me only about four hours to dislodge two of the brackets, so I had to go back to the office yesterday to have them reglued. The doc said he didn't do a good enough job attaching one of them, and the other was knocked loose by one of my lower teeth while I was eating, due to my cross bite. To prevent that from happening again, he had to glue pegs onto a lower molar on each side to create some space between the upper and lower teeth. (Fortunately, if a bracket comes loose, it's still on the wire so it can't go anywhere, i.e. you don't need to worry about accidentally swallowing it.)

Eating is now profoundly strange, and awkward, and a little gross. Food feels completely different in my mouth. Chewing is almost an alien activity. Even taking bites has been affected, because the pegs mean my teeth don't quite come together in front the way they used to, and they are a little tingly from having brackets glued to them. As a result, I have to take smaller bites and chew much more slowly and carefully. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I've always eaten too fast and knew that I needed to slow down. Between that and the various snacky things (nuts, caramels, chips) that are now either off-limits or suddenly much more difficult to eat, I have a feeling I'm going to end up losing a few pounds, which again is okay.

Another ancillary benefit is that, as my upper bite is widened, my palate will also be opened, which will help me breathe better when I'm asleep, which may cut down on my snoring. Obviously there's no guarantee, but any gain achieved in this area will make the Mrs. happier.

All of this is going to cost about one-eighth of my gross yearly salary. Crazy, right? Maybe. But people pay far more for nose jobs, breast implants, liposuction, and any number of other cosmetic procedures. Everyone who chooses to do so has a reason, and most of them probably come down to self-esteem. I've never thought of myself as having low self-esteem, but I won't deny that a straighter smile will nonetheless make me feel better about myself. I could live the rest of my life with crooked teeth, but I have the opportunity and the means to correct them, so I'm doing it. Wouldn't you?

Cheesecake and Slots

It was a fairly busy weekend for us. "Busy" for us normally means we leave the house some time before dark. But Saturday was filled with errands like dropping off piles of clothing at the Salvation Army and shopping (unsuccessfully, this time around) for a new living room rug at Building 19.

On Sunday we had a little adventure of sorts. For a couple of weeks, the Mrs. has been jonesing for some cheesecake. Not just any cheesecake, but Junior's cheesecake. Junior's is in Brooklyn, but last year they opened a location at the MGM Grand casino at Foxwoods, which is somewhat closer. So she decided that we needed to drive there. Since we would be passing through Rhode Island on our way, she suggested I ask my mother if she wanted to come along with us.

On Sunday we drove down to RI and picked up my mother, and made the 45-minute drive to Ledyard, CT. The complex is about eight miles off route 95 and is very easy to get to, if you're considering a visit. We arrived a litle before 1 PM, and since we hadn't eaten breakfast we headed straight for Junior's, which is just off the main hotel lobby. By this point I was ready for lunch, so I ordered a pastrami sandwich. The Mrs. wanted Junior's famous french toast, but unfortunately they stop serving breakfast at noon on Sundays. She settled for matzo ball soup.

Then she ordered cheesecake, and as soon as she put the fork in her mouth, I knew from the look on her face that something wasn't right. "It's too sweet." While I myself could not taste any difference, that doesn't mean much; her palate is generally more sensitive to differences in sweetness and saltiness. Disappointed, she lost interest in getting a whole cheesecake to bring home, and worried aloud that they had irrevocably changed the recipe. I suspect it's more likely that the difference is due to it being a distant outpost, far from the mother ship. At least I hope so, for her sake.

After lunch we headed to the casino. After a minute or two, I learned that the Mrs., who is also very sensitive to smoke, did not know that people are allowed to smoke in casinos. She offered to wait in the lobby area, which had fresh, cool air circulating, while my mother and I visited some slot machines. That was a bust as well, because we could not figure out how to work the change machines. You're supposed to put in money and get a ticket with stored value, which you then take to the machine of your choice. But between the two of us, we could not understand the process. It was also kind of dark and very noisy, as every single one of those hundreds of machines has a soundtrack of chirps and blips. So we went home. At least it was a nice day for a drive.

I'm not much of a gambler, which I guess is pretty obvious. I've been to Suffolk Downs, Churchill Downs, and Hialeah Park; I used to go to jai alai in Newport a long, long time ago, and I was in Atlantic City for an afternoon once, a quarter century ago. That's the extent of my gambling experience. I learned later that the casino at Foxwoods proper has a non-smoking area, but I don't see us going back. I do imagine a trip to New York is in our near future, to get a definitive answer to the cheesecake question. And some french toast.

Oops

I was just watching New England Cable News, and Mike Nikitas was reading a story about a lawsuit against Ticketmaster related to their scalping reselling service, TicketsNow. But he read the name as "ticket snow" twice. Oh well, probably only a few dozen people watching besides me...

Caution: Hacked Signage Ahead

One of the web sites I read regularly is a car site called Jalopnik. Last week they posted a story about how to hack roadside information signs, and even linked to a site that had posted the complete instructions.

Naturally, it didn't take long for the mayhem to ensue, and for the photographic evidence of said mayhem to make its way back to Jalopnik. They've kindly created a gallery of the images; interestingly, warnings of zombies seem to be the most popular hack, which strikes me as just a bit uninspired. One also says "Harvard sucks dick" which leads me to think it's probably around here somewhere. Has anyone seen it? If so, where was it? Has it been fixed yet?

(Please note: while I am in no way condoning this behavior, or suggesting that anyone should go out and find their own sign to hack, I think you'll agree that the results are pretty damn funny.)

Gripe of the Moment

Why do MBTA buses seem to have only two settings for the heat: full-on sauna or full-on walk-in freezer?

Move Along

Today at lunch I took a walk to a supermarket near the office to get a box of Quaker oatmeal breakfast bars. (I try to keep something breakfasty in my desk at work, in case I don't have time to eat breakfast at home.) I'd wanted to get them on the way into work, but I have a 9:30 meeting every Monday morning so I didn't have extra time today.

I got in line behind a senior citizen, who bought a couple bags' worth of groceries. Since I was buying just the one thing, I had my change in one hand and the bag in the other before she was quite ready to go on her way. I stood behind her, waiting for her to move out of the checkout lane. And I continued standing for 20 or 30 seconds while she fiddled with her bags.

Eventually she realized I was there, kind of half-looked at me over one shoulder and said, "Do you want to get by?" My brain cycled through possible responses: "No, I'd like to stand here looking at the back of your head all afternoon." "What do you think?" "Yes, you fucking idiot." I settled on "Please." Even though I kept my real thoughts to myself, she still acted like I was somehow inconveniencing her.

I'm an impatient person in general, and I get that most people don't move as quickly as I do, but the real annoyance is how people just get lost inside their own heads and give up any semblance of paying attention to the outside world, like people who climb to the top of a flight of stairs or an escalator and come to a dead stop because they aren't quite sure which way to go. As Stephen Colbert so aptly put it to Steve Carell on an old Daily Show segment, "What's the weather like up your own ass?"

Snark Time

It's cold outside, so how about a couple of chuckles?

You've probably seen that crazy commercial for the crazy Snuggie blanket-jacket thing by now. Here's a version with an alternate audio track.

And then there's this clip for a somewhat specialized dating service. It's a few months old, but it just came to my attention recently. Be sure to scroll down and read the comments to get the full impact on this one.

Potty Break

It used to be that when one needed to pay an, um, extended visit to the restroom, one might bring along some reading material. In fact, in a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother, Marshall visited his old apartment to "read a magazine" because he wasn't comfortable doing so at work.

But these days, of course, we have many more options available to us. Recently, on a couple of visits to the restroom at work I have detected the telltale sound (click-click-click...click-click...click-click...click-click-click) of texting coming from inside the stall. Now, I've come to appreciate the value of text messaging in certain situations, but that is not what I would consider one of those.

Then just this morning, I detected a different but equally unmistakable sound, the scritchety one that the little pebble-trackball thing on a BlackBerry makes when you scroll it. So someone was surfing, or emailing, or doing some other BlackBerryish thing while on the throne. That's swell, I guess. Personally, I don't like to even bring my phone into the restroom, mainly because I'm afraid of dropping it into the bowl.

What Month Is It?

Over the weekend, hearing that another storm was headed our way this week, I decided I wanted to get a snow blower. I actually don't mind shoveling all that much, and the landlord pays me to take care of the sidewalk and driveway, but given the number of times it's already snowed this winter, and the total amount of snow we've received thus far, and that each time it's taken me an average of two hours to complete the task, I thought it was time to enlist mechanical aid. (Also, the neighbors on either side have blowers, so I have a bit of power equipment envy.)

But it was not to be. As far as the stores are concerned, it's already spring. In fact, it's already summer. I saw gardening supplies, patio furniture, lawn mowers, even grills. I have a hard time imagining people thinking about buying this stuff right now, let alone actually buying it. One guy at Lowe's was apologetic. "The merchandise is at least three months ahead of the actual calendar," he said. At least I was able to still buy a snow shovel. With the blowers, the stores get one shipment in the fall, and when they're gone, that's it. They don't want to get stuck with unsold inventory come spring.

In fact, Sears in the Burlington Mall still had two models of snow blowers on display, but it's Sears, so good luck trying to find a human to ask if they still have any in stock. And at 8:50 PM, just as I'd located these two machines, the PA told me that the store would be closing in ten minutes. I'm sure this mall used to be open til 10, especially on Friday nights. Sure enough, I checked the mall web site and they have cut back; the whole mall now closes at 9. Tough times.

Sluuuuurp...

Has anyone else seen the ridiculous Legal Sea Foods commercial that's been running this week? Playing off the inauguration, the ad shows a backdrop of the White House while bragging that Legal's chowder has been served at every inauguration since 1981. Fine, but then we're treated to the disgusting sounds of what are supposed to be various presidents slurping the chowder as their names are displayed on the screen.

Ecch. I thought last year's tempest in a chowder bowl over the Legal ads on the T was a hoot, because the ads were fairly tongue-in-gill and the response to them was (in my opinion) so disproportionate, but I find this ad tasteless. Slurping shouldn't be encouraged, because our culture has enough trouble maintaining its dignity as it is, and this cheapens the great dignity we all witnessed at the inauguration.

I thought we wouldn't have to be subjected to the ad after the inauguration, but it keeps popping up. Hopefully it will run its course in a few more days.

Cuz I Kan't Do Math So Gud...

In yesterday's Boston Globe, in the arts and lifestyle section (which is now called "g" or, as I refer to it, "the section with the comics in it"), there was an article about how it's so difficult for people to figure out how much stuff in stores costs, because there are so many discounts on top of discounts, and coupons, and some stuff is on clearance but other stuff isn't, and so on.

Wow, I thought my life was hard. Woe to the helpless shoppers who are struggling so mightily to figure out how much money they're saving. Those poor souls! Apparently none of them ever received any sort of formal education in arithmetic. At least, that's what this retail analyst seems to think:

"You almost need to be a math major to figure it out," said Ken Perkins, president of Retail Metrics Inc., a market research firm. He provided an example of the kind of calculations confusing some consumers. "You take 40 percent off the original price, then you take 20 percent off that price, which works out to be [a discount of] roughly 52 percent, but the consumer thinks it's going to be 60 percent."

But you know, maybe he's right. Our society has certainly gotten dumber in lots of other ways. Ignorance and selfishness rule, so why should we waste our minds on crap like math? There's plenty of other stuff with which to occupy them, like keeping up with the latest antics of those heinous excuses for human beings on The Hills, updating mySpace pages, and playing video games. Math? Please. Math is for dorks and overachievers.

One enterprising young lady mentioned in the story was using the calculator in her cell phone to determine a sale item's final price. Good for her for figuring out how to avoid using her brain for that pesky math stuff. And let's not forget to give credit to the Globe for aiming high with this story. That's some hard-hitting lifestyle journalism.

I am wondering why no mention was made of the price scanners that now proliferate in most large stores, which are more likely to have multiple levels of discounts and markdowns and additional promotions. The scanners can be wrong, but most of the time they're right. I usually estimate the final sale price in my head, then find a scanner to see if there's the pleasant surprise of any additional amount off.

But seriously, have people really lost the ability to do basic arithmetic? That's just pathetic. If you can't figure out how to take an additional 40% off the price of something that's already been marked down 30%, you deserve to pay full price.

Battle of the Blades

In the interest of public service, I've been conducting a little experiment over the past couple of months. In my ongoing, never-ending quest for a better, more comfortable shave, I have invested a great deal of time, and a not insignificant amount of money, in trying out products. Along the way I've learned that many places (Sephora, Kiehl's) will happily give you a sample, so you can find out whether or not something is any good without shelling out $15 or $20 only to discover that it doesn't work for you. I've also developed a core group of products that I almost always return to because they work best for me.

But I haven't tried a different razor in many years. For a really long time I have avoided using Gillette razors, partly because they tend to be more expensive than competing products, and partly because I felt they did not give me a good enough shave. (I got sucked into the whole "Power" thing when they introduced the battery-operated M3Power a few years back. It didn't give me a better shave, and in fact it irritated the hell out of my neck. I had a similarly unpleasant experience with an electric razor that dispensed an allegedly soothing goo.)

If you have spent any time looking at the razor aisle of your local drugstore, you've probably noticed that it's difficult to buy a razor that isn't a Gillette. Pretty much the only option is a Schick razor, and having always been something of a contrarian, that's what I've been buying for years. But I have to admit that since the Fusion razor was introduced in 2006, I have been very curious about what sort of shave it would give, though I was reluctant to shell out money to try it. A couple of months ago I found a promotional display in my local Target with Fusion razors for $5. At that price point (instead of the usual $8 or $9 for a razor handle and two cartridges) I was willing to give it a try.

At the time I purchased the Fusion razor, I was out of my usual shaving cream, and I was trying to use up some other, lesser stuff in an effort to be a bit more fiscally responsible. The first time using it, I got a pretty good shave, but by the next shave it seemed like the blades had already become dull. I think I managed one more shave before I had to get rid of the first cartridge. Fortunately, I only have to shave a couple of times a week. I went back to my Schick for a few shaves, then when I bought more shaving cream, I got the Fusion back out with the second cartridge. This time things went a little better, though I still managed only four shaves before I had to discard the second cartridge. (I usually get five or six shaves out of one Schick cartridge.)

One thing I didn't like about the Mach3 that has not changed with the Fusion is the way the blade pivots on the handle. Because of the way it's mounted, you have to hold it in your hand in such a way that it's like shaving with a paint brush. This gives you less control, plus it feels really weird. Also, five blades means the head is awkwardly large, making it more difficult to shave certain tricky areas (under the nose, around the ears) closely.

On the positive side, the Fusion did give a nice, close shave when the blades were new, and the head rinsed more cleanly and easily than any other razor I've encountered. But these things were not enough to offset the negatives, especially how quickly the blades got dull. In fact, every time I have used Gillette blades, they have dulled more quickly than comparable Schick products. Even buying in bulk at a warehouse club or on the web, the premium that Gillette charges for Fusion cartridges is a deal-breaker for me. Of course, your mileage may vary. Happy shaving.

Overheard

Overheard on the Orange Line this morning: "We're packed in here so tightly, I don't have to hold onto anything!"

Personal (Celtic) Jesus

Yeah, it's been a few days. My monthly work deadline was moved from the 20th of the month to the 15th, so it was a fairly busy week, plus we've put in place some new systems for how the work gets done, so there was some stuff to be learned along the way this time. But everything went pretty smoothly, and the editors are happy, which is usually the most important thing (after the customers, I guess). Knowing I have the extra day off tomorrow is nice.

Not at all related to that, lately we've noticed a vehicle around our neighborhood with an unusual accessory. It's a typical Honda CR-V from a few years back, and it has what at first looked to be a Celtics tire cover on the back, with the cartoon leprechaun logo design. Then a week or so ago, we were behind the car at a light, and the Mrs. noticed that there was something different about the design. Instead of saying "Boston Celtics" around the cartoon, it said "Jesus Saves."

We saw the car again yesterday, and I was able to snap a hasty phone cam picture, but even if I bothered to upload it, I don't think it would be able to show enough detail. But we did learn what street the car lives on, so at some point it may be possible to get a picture with the digital camera. But in the meantime, we have plenty to speculate about.

Is this product an officially licensed Celtics accessory? My gut says no. It seems much more likely that it's a homegrown expression of appreciation for both the Celtics and the Lord. Someone probably went to a fair bit of effort to create this item, and the owner is obviously proud of it, or s/he wouldn't be displaying it on the back of a car. I think that's great; that kind of freedom of expression is what our country is about.

But I'm fascinated by the incongruous nature of the combination. Let's face it, you don't see a lot of sports-faith crossovers in this part of the country. And I suspect there are people who would find this sort of thing blasphemous. But you know, the Celtics won the championship last year, and they're having another great season; who can say whether one fan's expression of faith may have anything to do with that? I'm just saying, there may be something to it. Believe in Boston, indeed.

Nausea

I've just learned that the grinning food goddess Rachael Ray (a k a "The Joker") has lent her name to a line of pet food called Nutrish. Now, please excuse me while I run to the WC and vomish.

Baggravation

A few days ago I stopped into Staples to pick up a 2009 blotter calendar. It's not for my desk; rather, it hangs on a door in our kitchen, and we use it to keep track of things like the recycling schedule, when the dog needs her heartworm and flea/tick meds, our haircut appointments, and other general household stuff. I like using one of these because it's cheap (less than $5), easy to read, and has lots of space.

In order to make it an easy errand on my way home from work, I went to the store on Winter Street in Downtown Crossing. The in-town Staples stores tend to be small and sort of lame (the one on Park Drive is much bigger, but it's somewhat out of the way), but this is a pretty basic item so I figured they'd have it, and they did.

I took it to the counter to pay. The cashier rang me up, gave me my change, and walked away. She didn't ask me if I wanted a bag, but the calendar is 17" x 22" so I figured she'd gone to get one in a larger size. But she didn't come back at all; instead she busied herself with some other task at the far end of the counter.

There was another cashier down the counter a bit who was momentarily free, so I stepped down to him and held up the calendar. "Do you have a bag for this, please?" He looked at me and, with a completely straight face, said, "No. If you want me to fold it in half, I could fit it in a bag."

I was at a loss for words. I completely didn't know how to respond. First, I couldn't believe he was serious. Second, I couldn't believe that Staples didn't have any bags large enough to hold the calendar. There are plenty of other items in the store that are larger than a standard-size plastic shopping bag, and when I'd bought a calendar last year I was given a large bag. It crossed my mind that maybe they're trying to get by without larger bags in order to save a few bucks.

This experience wouldn't have bothered me so much, but since this store is downtown, I suspect that the majority of people shopping there are either on foot or taking the T. I had to go get on the T at rush hour and make it the rest of the way home with this large, awkward thing under my arm, trying not to hit other passengers with it and hoping it wouldn't get bent.

Well, Staples can get bent. I sent an email to customer service about it, but I've heard nothing in return. Consequently, this reiterates and reaffirms my hatred of Staples, which I mentioned last February. From now on, I'm going to avoid shopping there if at all possible.

Orange Crush

So, did everyone have a fun time on the Orange Line this morning? Yeah, this one was special. I almost want to suggest that we should be thanking the MBTA for providing us with so much entertainment value, except that, as a transit agency, it's their job to get us where we need to go, not make us laugh (or, for that matter, cry, which I'm sure plenty of people wanted to to today).

I signed up for the T-Alerts program when it was first offered as a pilot test program in late 2007. I think it's one of the smartest moves the T has ever made, and generally it works as it's supposed to. Every weekday morning I check my email right around 7 AM, just as I'm having my first sip of coffee, to see if there's any weirdness going on with either the Orange Line or the bus route I take into Wellington. There have been one or two occasions when the Orange Line was either running with a delay or not at all, and I was able to make an end run around the problem by taking an express bus that runs into downtown via 93. But this involves a ten-minute walk in the opposite direction, so it's best decided upon before leaving the house.

This morning I learned that due to that old wintertime favorite, a "switch problem at Wellington," the Orange Line was "experiencing 20-25 min delays between Oak Grove and Forest Hills." Wait a sec, that's the whole line! Eesh. The alert also noted that this situation had been going on for over an hour (as of the time I was reading it) and that I should "seek alternate transportation to avoid delay." Hmm, that didn't sound good.

Usually I try to check again just before I'm ready to leave the house, to see if problems have been resolved, or if anything new has popped up. The alert was still on and hadn't been updated, but I naively thought, it's been two hours, they must have fixed it by now and just haven't gotten around to posting the update yet. Considering it was again very icy out this morning, I opted not to take the alternate route into work, and blithely headed to the bus stop hoping everything would be fine. I had to meet with a coworker at 9:30 to go over some changes to our content management system, so I was trying diligently to get to work on time. Silly me.

In retrospect, I got to Wellington at just the right time, because I got to witness some T-foolery the likes of which I've never seen, and hopefully won't see again any time soon. As I came down onto the platform and tried to make my way through a crowd I would conservatively estimate at about 500 fellow commuters, the PA told us that a train would soon be coming in on the northbound platform, but from the opposite direction, and that it would be reversing direction and going back up to Oak Grove, and that the next train after that would be going inbound.

As the train came into the station, everyone noticed that it was pretty full, which didn't make a ton of sense if it had come from Malden and was to head back that way. The doors opened, a few people got on, and the train sat for a couple of minutes. The PA announcer came on and said that he had been mistaken, and this train was in fact heading into Boston. The people who had boarded got off the train, looking disappointed, and everyone else surged across the platform to try to cram onto it; I stood where I was, not wanting to be crammed.

The train sat for a minute, and people were starting to wonder why it didn't go on its way. Then the PA announced that this train WAS going back to Oak Grove after all. Everyone oozed grumpily back out of the train and onto the platform, including all those who had been on the train to begin with, and shortly after a second, empty train came in on the opposite platform, again from the "wrong" direction. The PA announced that THIS train was the one going into Boston, and everyone oozed onto that one. I continued to wait and observe, and both trains continued to sit.

After a minute or two the PA guy, who by this point was probably starting to really hate his day, informed us that BOTH trains would be going into Boston (which, to the T's credit, probably made the most sense in terms of serving the riders' needs at that moment). At this point, the original train had only those few poor folks on it who were just trying to get to Malden or Oak Grove. For the second time in less than ten minutes, they had to exit the train and wait for the rest of us to get on our way. But this was actually better for me, because I happened to be standing a bit closer to the first train, so I scooted inside and grabbed a seat.

We were then told that this train would be leaving first, which was another small victory, so to speak. Miraculously, we were underway soon after. The rest of my commute passed without incident, and I was able to send an email to my coworker letting him know that I would be late.

Wow. As an observer, this was a glorious, marvelous little piece of human theater. I can't imagine being provided with a better dose of free entertainment before 9 AM. But as a user of the system, this was a pretty epic fail, as the kids say on the intertubes these days. And this sort of thing happens at least once every winter at Wellington, usually when things get cold and icy. Surely there must be some sort of de-icing compound that can be applied to the switches? Or maybe it's worth it to pay someone to stay at the station and operate the switches continuously all night to ensure that they keep working?

The other question that comes to mind is: given the duration of this episode, why didn't the T start running shuttle buses? I know it takes time to round up a bunch of buses and drivers and get them all to where they're needed, but the first alert email I received was time-stamped 5:40 AM, and the situation still hadn't been resolved nearly three hours later. You'd think someone would have decided that enough time had elapsed to call in the substitute service. It's a good thing it wasn't 15 or 20 degrees colder today.

The T is such a paradox. When it works, it actually works pretty well. But when it breaks, oh boy, watch out. I wonder what the ride home will be like...

Update, 5:10 PM: Just got this email: "Orange Line service experiencing 10-15 minute delays due to a disabled train." You can't make this stuff up...

Two Weeks Off

So, today it was back to work after a two-week holiday break. Getting up this morning wasn't that bad, but the lovely film of ice on every horizontal surface made walking the dog and getting to the bus stop more, um, interesting than usual. (Last night's weather report downplayed the potential for iciness, suggesting it would only be an inconvenience for those located beyond 128.)

For the record, I fell only once, and the dog helped mitigate it somewhat by pulling away from me on her leash, thus providing a sort of counterweight to my descending mass. I don't know how the poor thing remained upright; lower center of gravity, I guess. Needless to say, it was a short walk.

This morning's other bit of fun was getting the Christmas tree outside for pickup. I had finished undecorating it last night, but by then the Mrs. had gone to sleep, and I didn't want to risk disturbing her or stepping on the dog, who has a tendency to get underfoot at the wrong times and is quite adept at sneaking up on us undetected. As it turned out, doing it this morning was the better idea, in spite of the ice. I left the dog to contemplate her breakfast in her crate, so she was out of harm's way, and it took only about 90 seconds to carry the tree outside, dislodge it from its stand, and drop it by the curb.

Two weeks isn't really that much time to be away from work, but it's long enough to pull you out of the rhythm of your typical daily routine, and definitely long enough to get comfortable with the idea of not having a daily routine. Having had a few periods of extended unemployment in my life, I can assure any of you that haven't had the pleasure that not working is just about the best thing ever, except for that pesky little issue of not making any money.

Many times I've heard people say things like, "I couldn't stand not working. I'd get so bored I wouldn't know what to do with myself." This never happened to me, not even once. It seemed like I always had something that needed to be done, whether it was household chores or an errand. And in the absence of either of those, there are the decades worth of books I've never gotten around to reading and movies I've never seen.

No, the worst thing about not working is going back to work. It's like rebooting a computer, only it takes a while longer to get back to a state of readiness. Consequently, today hasn't been terribly productive, though I did manage to attend my one required weekly status meeting, answer a few emails, and produce some actual work content. I imagine I'll be more or less back up to speed in another day or two. Now, when's our next holiday?

Once Upon a Job

I'm not going to recap the year, because everyone else is going to, or has already done so. We all know what happened: a lot of it sucked, some of it was pretty good. For me personally, it was actually a pretty good year in most respects, and for that I feel very fortunate. Instead, I thought I'd rummage back in the dusty archives of my mind and tell a vaguely holiday-related story.

For about a decade, I worked in the retail division of a fairly large local cultural institution. I'm not going to name it, but I'll make it obvious enough: it's on the waterfront, and it's not the ICA. Retail was never my chosen career path, but we all have to make a living somehow. In 1994 there was a change in management, and the person who took over as retail director made me the book buyer, which was a decent step up and about as far as I would be able to go. I had no interest in being a manager, fearing it would seal my fate to a career in retail that I didn't want.

For three years I made the most of the job, getting a fair number of free books courtesy of my sales reps, going to the occasional trade show, and enjoying the fact that I had a back-office job that rarely required me to work on the sales floor. In the spring of '97 the retail director announced that she was leaving. I was sorry to see her go, because I liked her as a person and we got on well as colleagues (fortunately, we are still acquainted), and because, as my grandfather used to say (in Italian), "you know what you've got, but you don't know what you're getting." How accurate that would prove to be.

The search for a replacement did not yield any particularly outstanding candidates, certainly not of the caliber of the person being replaced. In fact, those of us working in the store (who were, of course, not involved in the search) were under the impression that only one applicant had qualifications that were even remotely relevant, but even so were less than ideal. As is often the case, that person was the one hired, mostly because someone had to run the place.

In addition to dealing with the general learning curve of the job, when the new director started at the beginning of July she was handed a big-ass project: the institution's management had decided to open a satellite store at the airport. It had to be designed, built, staffed, and stocked by Thanksgiving. Some of this activity was already underway, but much of it still needed to be done. We started placing separate orders for the other store, which were stored in a trailer parked outside. The plan was for the merchandise to be trucked to the new store when it was ready, and for all the staff to be there to unload the truck. Over the next several days the stock would be unpacked, entered into inventory, and arranged on the sales floor.

This meant that most of us would have to work our regular hours at the store, then head over to the airport for several more hours of work for several nights in succession, for about a week. The problem was with how this situation was presented. We weren't asked to help, we were told we were going to help. We would be paid overtime, sure, but the way the whole thing was handled was indicative of the new boss's management style, which didn't sit well with many of us.

Shortly before the big move was to take place, the boss came into the stock room, where I had a desk tucked into an alcove. I shared the space with the inventory manager, who had been bearing the brunt of the work on this project, and the bulk of the unpleasantness as well. With no preamble, she announced to us, "The airport store is going to be open 365 days a year. All of us are going to have to work a holiday shift managing there. You can pick one from Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year's Day."

I had to ask, "What happened to that store having a completely separate staff? The whole idea was that the people who got hired for there understood that they would be required to work holidays, so we wouldn't have to."

"Yeah, well, that was the plan, but we haven't been able to find enough people willing to do it."

"Well, that's not our fault, and anyway, why should we have to do it? We're not even managers."

"Look, I don't like it, but we all have to pitch in on this. I'll have to do it too."

We sat in silence for a few moments. I looked at my coworker, who gave me the most priceless what the hell has she been smoking? look imaginable. I knew in my gut that a line had to be drawn, so I looked at her and said, "I'm sorry, but I'm not going to do it." My coworker, perhaps emboldened by my declaration, shook his head and slowly said, "That's... not happening."

I don't exactly recall the boss's response. I think it was along the lines of, "Well, we'll see about that." She left the room, and we tried to keep ourselves from laughing too loudly. The store opened when it was supposed to, and someone got stuck working there on Thanksgiving and Christmas, but I don't remember who it was. I wouldn't have given a crap about having to work on New Year's Day, but there was no way I was extending myself for someone who had so little respect for her employees.

Once I made it clear I wouldn't play her games her way, my fate was sealed. It took her almost another year to find a way to get rid of me, and when it happened I was on the verge of quitting anyway. She did me a huge favor because, in eliminating my position, it cost the institution more money (in severance) than it would have if I had left on my own. I had also, through work, established connections with a fledgling e-commerce company that offered me a full-time job a couple of months later. I have no idea what became of the boss, except that a couple of years later, the institution turned over the operation of the store to an outside company, and her services were no longer required. With luck, our paths won't cross again.

Happy New Year, everybody. I hope 2009 is a great year for all of us.

A Synthetic Holiday

We had a very pleasant Christmas visit, and while it's always nice to get away, it's always nicer to come back home. Getting to Rhode Island was a bit of a challenge, though. At 4:30 PM on Christmas Eve, 93 south approaching the Zakim Bridge was barely crawling. Not exactly a surprise, but not what we wanted to see. (I'd spent a good hour that afternoon breaking up and clearing the ice at the bottom of the driveway, which delayed our departure.)

We noticed that hardly any cars were taking the Leverett connector ramp. A quick check with SmarTraveler confirmed that we were in for a long, slow creep through the tunnel and beyond, but Storrow Drive westbound was moving well, so we did some ad hoc rerouting (without benefit of GPS). We cut through the Fens and over to the Jamaicaway, then connected with route 1 south, which got us to 95 in Dedham. It had taken us nearly an hour to get that far, and about another hour to reach our destination, but at least we weren't sitting in miles of traffic.

We got some nice gifts, including restaurant gift cards that we'll enjoy. But curiously, my mother seemingly decided this was the year of polyester. I got a fleece scarf, some odd gray and brown fuzzy socks (which John Irving book had the prep school whose colors were gray and brown?), and polyester lounge pants. She kept saying things like, "Those are just to wear around the house," even though she's fully aware I rebelled against all forms of polyester 30 years ago.

I'm not really complaining, I just think it's somewhat strange. Polyester is generally unpleasant. It makes you sweaty and causes lots of static electricity. I guess it brings in lots of revenue for companies like L.L. Bean, but I don't even own a fleece jacket. I did get a nice Patriots jacket from my mother, but it's made of a sweatshirt-like material that's 80% cotton, and it's something I specifically asked for. Next year I may need to impose a "no polyester" clause on my mother.

Traditions Old and New

Traditionally, my family has gone out to dinner on Christmas Eve. Well, that's not completely accurate. The original tradition was that we'd go to my grandmother's for a big dinner, a sort of scaled-down version of the Italian feast of the seven fishes.

When the prep work and cooking involved became too much work for her to manage on her own, she suggested going out to dinner. We went to the same restaurant every year, because it was one of the few that was open past 5 or 6 on Christmas Eve. Along the way, my brother started working there as a bartender.

After my grandmother passed away a little over a decade ago, we continued our tradition. Unfortunately, circumstances sometimes change, and a rift developed in our family that persists to this day. We no longer see our relatives at holidays, or any other time. But it doesn't mean holidays are gloomy. My immediate family gathers as it always has.

For the past two years we went to a different restaurant, after the other one suffered from a noticeable drop in quality. This year the new place is closed for renovations, so after some research my mother decided she'd rather stay home. We assembled a worthy Christmas Eve feast, starting with salad, stuffed mushrooms, and scallops wrapped in bacon. For the main course we had stuffed shrimp, crumb-crusted cod, and sole stuffed with lobster. For dessert, an assortment of holiday cookies and a peanut butter pie (that one was my choice).

However you choose to celebrate your holidays, I want to say thanks for visiting, and I wish all of you joy and love.

Snowy

With the double punch of snowstorms our area received, we didn't stray too far from home this weekend. The Friday-Saturday one was more typical, dropping about ten inches in our area. Yesterday there was more of a variation in temperature, giving us more of a snow-sleet-snow combo that then froze. We had heeded the Universal Hub French Toast Alert (that colored box over on the right) and gotten our grocery provisions pre-storm. I was sent home from work early on Friday, and we happily settled in for a Friday night of eating and TV watching.

We had haircuts scheduled for early Saturday afternoon, so I started on the shoveling while the Mrs. called to make sure our hair person, who lives in southern New Hampshire, had made it down to the salon. I spent about an hour and a half getting everything dug out nicely, including the back-breaking area at the bottom of the driveway, which had been packed by numerous plow passes. (Unlike in Somerville, where we lived on a dead end and were lucky if we even saw a plow, here we live on a fairly busy street that is always diligently plowed.)

After our appointments, we did a few errands and headed back home. I was exhausted from the shoveling, and that proved to be a problem yesterday, because while we got only about four more inches, it was much heavier, and I didn't have enough energy to clear everything as thoroughly a second time. I made a half-hearted pass at the bottom of the driveway, which was a mistake because it solidified overnight, and this morning the Mrs. couldn't get out of the driveway. She's dutifully working from home, while I'm starting my two-week holiday break. I think we might need to walk to the hardware store and see about getting a metal shovel, if they have any left.

Slim Fit

During my shopping trip last weekend, I discovered that there is now a Ruehl store in the Burlington Mall. Ruehl is another branch of the hydra-like Abercrombie & Fitch family of brands that starts with (lower-case) abercrombie for the youngsters, then moves on through Hollister for the teens and the original A&F for college kids. Ruehl seems to be for the post-college years; does this means that eventually they'll have a brand aimed at hipster senior citizens? And what does "Ruehl" mean, anyway?

(Does anyone besides me remember when A&F was just a store for outdoorsy adults, kind of splitting the difference between L.L. Bean and Orvis? Those were the days... their marketing people have spun this whole mythos around the various brands; the Ruehl storefront is supposed to look like a Greenwich Village brownstone, but honestly, when you're walking down the mall past stores with plain, ordinary plate-glass fronts, and you come upon what looks like a really fake soundstage backdrop from a 1940s movie set back several feet from the corridor, it just looks weird and out of place. Same for Hollister, which is meant to look like a beach cantina, which I'm sure is exactly where parents would want their teens to be.)

I first encountered Ruehl over a year ago, when I went to check out the Natick Mall's then-new addition with all the high-end stores. At the time I wasn't terribly impressed; the clothes seemed pretty similar to the merchandise available in A&F stores, only made with nicer fabrics and priced higher. At the time the Ruehl web site was not selling anything (it was nothing more than an online window display) and I never made it back out to Natick, so I kind of forgot about the store until maybe four months ago, when I happened to hit the site to see how many more stores they had opened. At that point I found that they were open for business online.

I still didn't necessarily think I wanted to buy anything from them, but I like to know what my options are. I saw a couple of things that were interesting, and thought I'd like to check them out in person. Okay, when I say "things," I mean shirts. I admit, I have something of an obsession with shirts. I have dozens of them. The Mrs. likes to periodically count them, just to know the number; I don't keep count myself. I just like shirts.

So, finding the store in the mall last weekend gave me the chance to get another look at the merchandise. I discovered, to my surprise, that they had a clearance section in a corner of a back room. I was surprised because, unlike most web sites, there was no sale section on the Ruehl site (A&F is notoriously averse to marking down merchandise, so I just assumed they hauled the slow-selling inventory out behind their warehouses and burned it), so I wasn't expecting to find any markdowns in the store.

Some of the shirts had been marked down more than once (a good sign for someone like me who's always on the lookout for a good deal) and were only $19.90 after starting at $78. Jackpot, I thought. But as I've discussed before, size creep has become pretty rampant, so I was wary. I pulled a size large shirt out of a pile to use as a sort of baseline gauge. I held it up: it looked like it might fit a 14-year-old boy, or one of the anemic-looking MassArt dudes I see on the E line.

I moved on to extra large, which has sort of become my default size even though my neck size still corresponds to a large. This one looked like it might actually fit, so I held it up against my torso. I could tell that it was barely wide enough to make it around me; I'd estimate that if I had about a 32 inch waist, it would have fit me okay.

But what was much more strange and surprising was that the sleeves came down to about the knuckles of my fingers. I wear a 34 sleeve in a dress shirt, so I'm not short of arm, which made this all the more ridiculous. I'm guessing that the thin dudes who wear Ruehl shirts are required to keep their sleeves stylishly rolled up at all times (the shirts on the site are all shown with their sleeves rolled), but it's pretty much winter now, and regardless of the season, sometimes I simply want the look I present to the world to be one that has its sleeves rolled down and buttoned.

I didn't bother checking out the XXL shirt, figuring the sleeve cuffs would probably touch the floor. But now I've gone and looked at the size charts on the Ruehl site, and looks like I may have been wrong. While the chest measurement on the XXL is slightly bigger than on the XL, the sleeves are actually a little bit shorter. Maybe this means I could wear an XXL after all. I also noticed that they now have a sale section on the site, but I'm not sure I care anymore.

I hated walking away from something that was 75% off the original price, but I think I'm just too old, too thick in the middle, and too unhip for this place. Upstairs at Martin + Osa, which is quickly becoming my favorite clothing store, I got a V-neck cashmere sweater and a great pair of gray jeans. Both fit me really well, they were at least 50% off their original prices, and I had a coupon for an additional 30% off. Also, one of the clerks said he recognized me from a previous visit, which was sort of nice. And their XL shirts fit me just fine.

Tree Time

Yikes, more roller-coaster weather. A week ago, I was talking about (and wearing) flannel-lined pants and shearling-lined boots. Today it's already hit 60 degrees, and I didn't even need a coat when I walked the dog this morning. What fun...

Well, things have certainly been busy around the SAR household, as is typical of this time of year. We spent the weekend running around, shopping and doing other holiday-related stuff. I still have a fairly lengthy list of things that need to be done, and one important thing that I was supposed to take care of over the weekend was to get a gift for my office holiday party's Yankee swap, which is tomorrow. I tend to put off these things until the last minute, but maybe that's not so bad, because one of my coworkers said she bought her swap gift a month ago, and now she can't find it.

But I blew it. We went to the Burlington Mall on Saturday, which was kind of a psycho scene. Recession? Maybe so, but people were still out in hordes, and they still seemed to be buying things. Anyway, I'd been saying for weeks that I wanted to go to Crate & Barrel because they have lots of nice gifty things, many of which are attractive and also inexpensive enough to be swap-worthy. C&B has a large, lovely store that opened up at Burlington a while back, but it's a free-standing store outside the mall proper, tucked in a corner of the parking lot, so of course, by the time I was done in the mall I completely forgot about it. Bad brain.

Yesterday was tree-getting day, and we fared much better. We also needed dog food, and in the interest of combining trips we went to Wilson Farm in Lexington (yeah, they sell pet food there). A Proper Bostonian had gotten her tree there, though she ended up not liking it and, in a move worthy of awe and admiration, returned it.

I'm not as fussy about Christmas trees as she is; that's partly because she's been obsessing over them her whole life, but more because I'm not as good at choosing them. (We had an artificial tree when I was growing up.) The only real rule I have is that the tree must be taller than me, so the short, squat ones are out. Beyond that I'm fairly clueless, and the Mrs. grew up in a household that did not celebrate Christmas, so she isn't particularly invested in the decision-making process; she mainly likes having a tree because it makes the house smell good. So over the years I have made some unfortunate tree choices.

I spent about ten minutes wandering around among the trees at Wilson Farm until I found the ones that were at the more agreeable price points of $40 and under. I looked at some trees on one side of a row, then went around to check the ones on the other side. Not liking those much, I went back around to where I had been and saw a woman assessing a tall, beautiful tree. I thought, how did I miss that one? But when they're leaned over against the support racks, you can't always get a good idea of how it's really going to look, so she was doing the smart thing.

I edged over to her and said slyly, "If you don't take that one, I will." I was being facetious, but I meant it. She smiled and said, "I don't know how much it is." I could see the tag attached to the tree, about a foot above her head, so I stretched up on my toes and checked it for her. Only $30 for one of the nicest trees on the lot! She got the attention of one of the staff, who took it off to be bagged.

At that point the Mrs. appeared, having taken care of the dog food. A hunch told me we should look at some of the other trees in the immediate vicinity of the one the woman had just bought. We found two more good prospects in the same row, and eventually settled on the one that was right next to where hers had been. Perhaps some good tree karma rubbed off from that other one?

Once you have chosen a tree, a staff person tears off part of the tag, which you take to the cash register. There's a register outside in the nursery area, so you don't have to wait in line with the folks inside buying groceries. Your tree gets bagged and taken to a waiting area. You bring your car around and show your tag to the waiting staff, they find the tree with the matching number on the tag, bring it to your car, and tie it on for you. They then direct traffic so you can safely back out of your space and be on your way. Great service all around, and this may be the nicest tree I've ever chosen.

This Year's Model

On Friday night I went to the auto show. I go almost every year, usually with an old college friend who likes cars as much as I do. I made the Mrs. go one year, but she really wasn't into it. She likes her own car, likes that it gets pretty good gas mileage and handles well, but that's about as deep a relationship as she wants with a vehicle.

I, on the other hand, have been into cars for my entire life (which is pretty ironic, since I can't drive). I can remember trips to get Matchbox cars from the drugstore, where they were displayed in a big display case with little compartments for each of the 75 different styles they offered. I built Lego houses to match the scale of the Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars I collected, then moved on to plastic models of classic cars from the 1950s and 1960s.

Growing up, I used to hang around and make something of a nuisance of myself at both a Chevrolet dealership near where I lived and at a hot-rod shop on the corner of our street that was run by a neighbor. I can still look at a car and tell you the make and model, and probably the model year (or at least a range of years, since the details of grilles and tail lights no longer change every year the way they did in Detroit's glory years).

So even though the auto industry's sales recently plummeted to lows not seen in decades, my friend and I and a bunch of other people still paid to get into the convention center last week to look over and climb inside all the 2009 models. (Well, almost all of them: Bentley, Maserati, and Aston Martin all had their offerings behind railings, and the Porsches were locked. Last year the Maseratis were uncorraled and unlocked, so maybe that didn't work out so well for them.)

That's part of the reason why people go to these shows: it's not too often that the average person gets the chance to sit in a brand new Jaguar, BMW, or Mercedes-Benz. I like doing that, but I also enjoy getting a look at the more ordinary cars. A Honda Fit goes for around $15,000, and it's a tiny bit of a thing; when you first look at it, it looks like clowns should be jumping out of it, but then you get inside and realize the outside is something of a deception because it's amazingly roomy inside.

I'm six feet tall, so I like to do sit tests. I get in the front passenger seat and slide it back as far as it will go, to evaluate the legroom. Then I get in the back seat behind where I was just sitting to see how painful it would be to ride back there. I also note things like how low I have to duck in order to get into that back seat, and how close my head comes to the roof when I'm sitting inside.

Some SUVs and crossover wagons now come with rear seats that adjust forward and backward as well, which is pretty clever. The fact is, even though the American auto makers are suffering for their years of bad choices and putting profits ahead of innovation, they are now turning out cars that are genuinely competitive for the first time in probably two decades. Not all of them, mind you--the Dodge Caliber, for example, is a junky, miserable penalty box--but many are the legitimate equals of their foreign competition.

If you are in the market for a car, the auto show is a convenient way to get a close-up look at many different models all in one place. If you're not in the market for a new car, it's a way to spend a couple of hours on a Friday night with a friend. Or maybe you're like me, and you just like knowing that the charcoal perforated leather seats on the new Nissan Maxima have contrast stitching in bubble-gum pink (though on the web it looks closer to red).

Insulated

It was brutal out there this morning. 15 degrees on its own might not be so awful, but when you add in the wind it was pretty vicious. Supposedly it's going to hit 60 on Wednesday, with a nice dousing of wind-driven rain, and we may see snow on Friday. Welcome to the New England weather roller coaster...

I've said before that I hope to never do a post that is solely about the weather (though my own exception to my own rule is that talking about blizzard, hurricane, or other similar severe weather experiences doesn't count), so allow me to veer off and offer some weather-related advice.

When our civilization is finally assessed in hindsight, one of its highest achievements will undoubtedly be flannel-lined pants. You may scoff at this notion, but if you stood outside waiting for a bus this morning, you are probably one of the people who isn't scoffing. It's easy enough to layer up the torso, but not so easy for the lower extremities. I have long underwear, and it does the job, but it makes me feel like I was drugged and someone dressed me while I was knocked out. Wearing another layer of warmth built into your pants feels more right to me. I'm sure there are people who disagree with me, so just go right on wearing your long johns.

I've had flannel-lined jeans for several years, but I recently got a pair of flannel-lined khakis on sale at J. Crew. (These look a little nicer at the office.) J. Crew hopes you'll buy them long and roll the cuffs so the flannel shows, but that isn't my style.

Depending on where you live, you might be able to find these in a store with an additional percentage off the sale price, though some stores are offering higher percentages off than others. I first saw these pants a couple of weeks ago at the Northshore Mall in Peabody, MA. At the time they were offering an extra 50% off markdowns, but they didn't have them (or anything else good) in my size. Last week I went to the Copley Place store to return something else, and they had an extra 30% off markdowns, which wasn't quite as good, but they did have my size so I grabbed a pair, and I'm very glad I did. I still paid only about half of the original price.

(FYI, I find the description I linked to above a bit misleading. At least in the case of the pants I bought, they do not have the grinding and fraying that is common to J. Crew's broken-in pants. The fabric is definitely broken in, but not beaten up. YMMV, though.)

I also have on a pair of shealing-lined boots that I picked up super-cheap last winter from Banana Republic. They're a dark brown leather with a slightly distressed look and side zippers for easier on and off, made in Italy. I found these on their web site right after Christmas, and a couple of days after I got them, the price dropped again. Not everyone knows this, and they certainly don't go out of their way to advertise it, but BR has a price adjustment policy: if you buy something and the price drops within a certain amount of time (14 days, according to their site), they will refund you the difference, if you ask. So I ended up getting the boots for about one-third of their original price, and again it's money well spent.

Stay warm, everybody.

Cramming

Wait, it's already Sunday? How did that happen? I guess I've been a little deeper in my work than usual lately, and now that I have the better, stronger, faster computer at work, I have my substantial amount of mp3's on it, so I tend to spend a good portion of the day under my headphones, which seems to make the time go by even faster, so... Anyway, I had a few thoughts along the way that I obviously didn't sit down and write about at the time, so I guess there's no time like now.

There was a lot of hubbub in the Boston media this week about the T's plan to create additional room during rush hour by running trains on the Red Line with seats removed from two of the six cars. I don't ride the Red Line these days, but I rarely get a seat on the Orange Line, particularly in the morning, so I don't think the change is going to make much of a difference in the daily commute for most Red Line riders either, other than packing a few more of them onto each train.

During my Friday morning ride, I looked around the car (while standing) and noticed some examples of how a bit more awareness of personal behavior could make life easier for everyone. First are people who insist on crossing their legs. I was attempting to stand next to a doorway, but the guy in the end seat had his left foot hanging off his right knee, making it impossible for me to move out of the way of other people. (I don't even see how it would be comfortable to sit that way on a train, but that's just me.) I didn't bother trying to get his attention, because he was busily engaged in some obviously important activity with his iPhone. At the next stop I was able to switch to the other side of the car, where I was able to observe the guy continue his ride in oblivion.

Then there are the people who find it necessary to read their newspapers while hunched forward. This is a peculiar affliction, but one I see more often than you might think. I have on occasion been seated between two people of larger size, making it somewhat difficult to sit up straight and hold up the paper or a book in front of my face. I may have had to sit slightly forward in my seat until someone got off the train, but I see people who have the paper on their knees and are leaned all the way over to read it, thus putting their heads and torsos in the space where bodies could be standing.

And then there's my favorite, the torso-sized backpacks and body-sized duffel bags. What do people carry that is so huge? I know that some of those guys with the giant duffels are hockey players, but they can't all be. And do people still lug giant textbooks around? It seems like we would be at a point where there's an electronic solution to that. If you are wearing a monster backpack, it seems reasonable to expect that when you get on a subway train you take off the bag and keep it at your feet.

But that's probably expecting too much. Bottom line, most people are selfish and clueless and don't pay attention to what's going on around them. For the record, I am very conscious of how much space I am occupying relative to other riders. I carry a messenger-style bag that I wear across the body, because it doesn't stick out as much that way. There was another thread on Universal Hub yesterday about a T rider getting bumped by another rider's messenger bag. The fact is, the type of bag matters less than how much you have crammed into it, and whether or not you are considerate enough of others to keep it out of the way.

Feedback Loop

So let me see if I understand this correctly: the Grammy Awards is having a live nominating concert that's on TV right now. So it's a live prime-time show to announce the nominees for awards that will eventually be presented in a live prime-time show two months from now?

Who's performing, you ask? Let's see... Celine Dion, Foo Fighters, Mariah Carey, B.B. King, John Mayer, Taylor Swift (who?), and Christina Aguilera. Kind of says it all, right there. Poor B.B., how'd you get roped into this disaster? Maybe you'll class up the joint a little.

If you somehow felt that the Grammys still had any relevance and hadn't already jumped the shark (which, in case it wasn't clear, I believe they have), this eliminates any confusion about it.

Where Men Fear to Tread

Not long ago I found myself in alien territory. But I didn't leave the country; I went to a craft store.

Seriously, this is a realm where men rarely venture. Why was I there, then? I was following the advice of the Mrs. I recently acquired a Mad Men poster on eBay, and it's a slightly unusual size, 11" by 17". I wanted to get a frame so I could display it at work, but I didn't want to spend a fortune on professional framing for something so small and mundane.

We were at the Gateway Plaza in Everett, home of our local Target, as well as Costco, Home Depot, and about two dozen or so other stores and a couple of "casual dining" restaurants. She suggested I check Bed Bath & Beyond or the craft store, which I think is called Michael's (I know it's a chain of some sort).

At the time, we happened to be closer to the end of the strip with the craft store, so I decided to check it out. Naturally the place was in full-on holiday mode; it was as though Christmas had thrown up, but it sure smelled nice. Lots of potpourri and candles, lots of holiday cheer-in-waiting, ready for an artistic touch to bring them to life.

I didn't know exactly where to start looking, and there was no floor plan or directory that I could see, so I began walking a clockwise loop. The Mrs. sews and does some other crafty stuff, so it's not like I've never seen a glue gun or a package of Fimo clay, but some of the stuff in there, I couldn't even tell you what it is or what it's used for. There are some things that men just aren't supposed to know.

I found the frames at the back of the store. Along the way, I noticed that I was the only male in the place who was not with a wife or significant other. (The Mrs. didn't need anything craftish and was in another store down the way.) And the men I did see, whether they were keeping an eye on the kids or just following dutifully behind the wife, all had the same blank, dazed expression on their faces: what am I doing in here? There must be a game on that I could be watching instead of this.

Anyway, they had just what I had in mind. The frame consists of a piece of clear plastic and a backing made of something like particle board. The actual "frame" is four pieces of U-shaped black plastic that clamp tightly onto the sides of the clear plastic and backing board. You take it apart, put in your poster, and put it back together, giving you instant framed art for only $9.99 (for the size I wanted).

Then I had to negotiate the gauntlet of the checkout. It was like one of those really busy lunch hours at CVS, only stupider. Everyone has a coupon, everyone argues with the cashier about what the coupon can or can't be used on, everyone leaves sulking. The person just ahead of me had some difficulty with English, so that slowed things down a little more. The bottom line was that her coupon was usable only on the items she was buying that were not already on sale (which is admittedly a fine distinction, and one that you'd think maybe the company's management might consider temporarily waiving at a time when every customer counts).

Just as that person went on her way, the only other open cashier called to the cashier whose line I was in, and she abruptly left her register to go assist hr colleague. I waited around while they puzled over how to fix a mistake made while ringing, wondering why such a situation wouldn't be the responsibility of a manager. (The mind tends to wander in these moments.) Eventually the cashier made her way back to her station and rang me up.

I don't think I'll be in any hurry to go back. Men don't do crafts, but they also don't have the patience for such retail nonsense.

Technical Difficulties

So, you thought today would be a good day to do some online holiday shopping on your lunch hour, huh? Eh, think again. The entire Gap family of sites, including Old Navy and Banana Republic, was down for about two hours, though it appears that they are now back online. Hilariously, they all posted pages claiming the sites were down for "scheduled maintenance." Maybe it really was scheduled, but somehow I doubt it.

The J. Crew site is still showing a "stay tuned" page after about three hours, with a pseudo-apology that says "even the best sites aren't perfect." Um, is that supposed to be some sort of excuse? Because it's only one of the busiest online shopping days of the year (which companies like you have helped create and promote), and it's not like you can say you didn't know your site was going to see a lot of traffic today.

But I'm not exactly surprised; J. Crew made some changes to their site several months ago, and it's been kinda verkakte (to borrow a Yiddish colloquialism) ever since. Just this weekend, I was still coming across products on their site with images that were not displaying properly. (I actually used to get paid to find and fix such errors for a much smaller company, so I know they gotta have at least a couple of people on the payroll somewhere who are supposed to be doing the same thing.)

If any of you come across other sites that are down, let me know and I'll post it here, as a public service.

Inertia

Well, that Black Friday shopping excursion didn't happen. The Mrs. wasn't feeling well, so she didn't go to work, and while she wasn't so ill that she needed me to look after her, it was just too easy to stay home with her and watch TV. We did venture out in the evening to the grocery store and to get burritos, but that was it.

And yesterday? We cleaned. Both of us tend to be lazy about this, but the apartment needed some serious cleaning, so we buckled down and it's much improved. Later we went out to do a couple of errands, and met up with Sunny and son for dinner at Christopher's. Today, I'm not sure. The Mrs. wants to try to do some work to make up for the day she missed, so maybe I should do what I'd planned on doing Friday. But T service is lousy on Sundays, so that might hinder me.

Holiday Time, Plus A Shopping Tip

What's that? No new posts since last Saturday? Well, yeah, I know. But it's a busy time. Stuff needs to be done, and errands don't do themselves. Kids have birthdays. The Mrs. is participating in a holiday craft market, so she's been cranking out baby quilts for the past several weekends and is dropping them off today. Then this evening we're off to Rhode Island, but only for about 24 hours, because she unfortunately has to work Friday.

I do have Friday off, and it's possible I've sustained a blow to the head because I'm considering going into Boston that day. I seriously dislike crowds and I can't remember the last time I actually ventured out to shop on Black Friday, but I've been wanting to get to Newbury Comics for a while and haven't had the opportunity. I used to be able to pop into the downtown store fairly easily on my way home from work, but since they moved over to Qunicy Market a couple of months ago, it's somewhat less convenient to do that. So I'm thinking I'll head into the city for a few hours on Friday to take the pulse of the shopping public, so to speak, and report back about any especially juicy bargains I find.

For now I can pass along a web shopping tip for one of my new favorite stores, Martin + Osa. Through December 1st, all cashmere sweaters, men's and women's, are $79. That's almost an end-of-season price. The brand is from the same parent company as American Eagle but is positioned as an older sibling. The clothes I've bought from them thus far are of above-average quality, in my fairly knowledgeable opinion, certainly better than what AE sells. The style is more grown-up too, more or less splitting the difference between Banana Republic and J. Crew. And who doesn't love cashmere?

Update, 10 PM: Psst, this deal just got sweeter. I got a little holiday mailer from M+O today, and if you use the code 52216266 on the site, you'll get 30% off your order through December 24th. So that would make a cashmere sweater $56, which is a stupidly good deal.

Not-So-Speedy Delivery

I've been doing a fair bit of shopping lately. Not for the holidays, but for myself, though when I do set out to shop for others, I usually end up buying stuff for myself as well. There are just so many good deals to be found these days, and I've needed some fall and winter clothing.

Over the years I think I've gotten pickier about quality, and I've learned a lot from my attorney friend DC, who has seemingly been aware of this stuff since he was in grade school. So one day a few weeks ago I was roaming around the dusty back halls of eBay and I came across a guy selling new Allen Edmonds belts. I remembered that my friend likes their shoes and belts partly because they are made in the USA (although he says they seem to have slipped a little since the company was sold a couple of years ago). To my surprise, the seller had eight or ten belts in my size. (I'm not a weird size, and that's often a problem--too common.)

The belt I bought ended up costing me $40. That might seem like a lot for a belt, but it's really only slightly more than you would pay for a lesser-quality belt from your local department store, and half of its retail price, plus it happens to match a couple of pairs of my shoes nicely. The seller shipped it on Monday, November 3rd, and that's where the story gets a little more interesting, because it's not really about the belt, but about what happened to it on its way to me.

Not all sellers bother to tell you that they have shipped your item (I always do, so remember that when I start auctioning things), so I've learned to be patient. I have never not received an item I bought on eBay, which I guess makes me pretty lucky. Typically I wait least a week before I send an email to the seller asking about the status of the package. In this case, I waited a little more than a week, until the day after Veterans' Day, since holidays can screw with delivery times.

He responded and gave me the tracking number, and said he had checked the tracking and it said the package had arrived in Boston that day. I went and had a look for myself. What he'd neglected to say was that it was the third time it had arrived in Boston. At this point, I think it would be slightly more entertaining if l just post the whole tracking sequence here:

• Acceptance, November 03, 2008, 3:44 pm, PALM DESERT, CA 92260
• Processed, November 03, 2008, 6:54 pm, SAN BERNARDINO, CA 92403
• Processed, November 05, 2008, 4:31 am, ALBANY, NY 12288
• Arrival at Unit, November 05, 2008, 7:44 am, SCHENEVUS, NY 12155
• Missent, November 05, 2008, 8:51 am
• Processed, November 06, 2008, 12:18 am, SPRINGFIELD, MA 01152
• Processed, November 06, 2008, 4:30 am, BOSTON, MA 02205
• Processed, November 08, 2008, 2:34 am, ALBANY, NY 12288
• Processed, November 08, 2008, 11:45 pm, SPRINGFIELD, MA 01152
• Processed, November 09, 2008, 8:43 pm, BOSTON, MA 02205
• Processed, November 11, 2008, 12:38 am, SPRINGFIELD, MA 01152
• Processed, November 12, 2008, 12:46 am, BOSTON, MA 02205
• Processed, November 13, 2008, 5:06 pm, ALBANY, NY 12288
• Processed, November 16, 2008, 11:18 pm, BOSTON, MA 02205
• Delivered, November 17, 2008, 11:03 am, MEDFORD, MA 02155

So, a priority mail package that typically takes three days to cross the country took two weeks to get to me. That's what happened, but why? If you look at the sequence, you can kind of figure it out. Where it says "arrival at unit," you see that it's some place in New York state that I've never heard of. I went over to Google Maps and found that Schenevus is about 35 miles southwest of Schenectady, on the way to Binghamton. Its zip code is the same as mine, except for the first digit, and that's the key to the whole fiasco. That's why it says "missent" right under that entry. From there, it seems like it would be a relatively simple fix to get the package back on the right track, but it bounces back and forth between Boston and Albany for another week and a half before finally making it to its destination.

In hindsight, everything becomes clear. When I got the package, I expected the seller to have botched my address, but he didn't. It was correct and perfectly legible. But the person who processed the package at the seller's post office entered the wrong zip code when they printed the little postage label with the bar code. Right under the bar code, a little "12155" was plainly visible, and that was the problem. The automated scanners kept putting the package back into the system, and the system kept trying to send it to zip code 12155, which I guess is what it's supposed to do. Eventually a human must have figured it out and intervened, because there was a thick black magic marker slash through the bar code and the zip code on the little label.

After all that, I was expecting that there would be something wrong with the belt, but it was fine. But I guess we're going to have to keep a closer eye on those postal workers.

Ad Alta Voce

A couple of decades ago, I lived in Allston, and then for a while in Jamaica Plain, before crossing the river to Somerville. One thing all these places had in common is that I've always lived on a bus line, and one thing all the various bus lines--the 57, the 39, the 87, 88, and 89--had in common is that I could always count on seeing an assortment of colorful characters. There was a craggy old guy who shared his CIA conspiracy theories, the socially awkward guy who always tried to befriend me, and the older woman who was always sticking her nose into everyone else's business, just to name a few.

Of course, there are plenty of colorful folks on the subways too, but when you ride a bus route regularly, sometimes even at the same time of day each day, you often see the same people over and over. Since I moved a couple of years ago and started riding the 100 bus along the Fellsway daily, I've seen a lot of the same people, but no one has really stood out. Until now, that is.

For the past month or so, I have been noticing a young guy while waiting for the bus at Wellington on the way home at night, and sometimes on the platform waiting for the train in the morning. Really, he would be pretty hard not to notice, because he sings along with his iPod (or whatever is connected to his earphones). And when I say he sings, I mean he SINGS. He is always in full-voice, full-on belt-it-out mode. And he's pretty good.

I don't recognize any of the songs he sings, but I've listened to parts of some of them and I think they are from Broadway shows. Musicals aren't really my thing, which is probably why I don't know them, but they just have that feel to them. I get the sense that he's practicing for a show he's in, or possibly getting ready to audition for one.

Some of the other riders snicker to themselves and each other about the singing guy. It's true that his behavior is a little unusual, but I admire the guy, because he's got talent and because he's confident enough to stand there and sing in front of the other riders. That's how you build confidence, right? If you want to be a performer, you have to have poise and presence, and you get those by getting used to being in front of an audience. So we're kind of like his homework.

Also, he's respectful enough to stop singing when the bus or train arrives. Singing at the bus stop is one thing, but singing on the bus is another thing entirely. Then you're just another weirdo.

Update, 7:55 PM: After some discussion with A Proper Bostonian, I've changed my mind. I now think he's probably just some dude who's gearing up to audition for a reality show.

Quantum Quibbles

So, Quantum of Solace was a decent Bond movie, but didn't quite live up to Casino Royale. For me it came down to a couple of things. First, the action scenes are really overedited, in such a way as to potentially induce dizziness. If you or someone you know is prone to seizures, it might be advisable to avoid seeing this movie. This was clearly an intentional choice by the filmmakers, but at times it's almost impossible to discern what is actually happening, which detracts from the overall moviegoing experience.

Second, the movie was devoid of any bit of humor. I'm not suggesting that it's necessary or desirable to return to the corny, campy, lecherous tone of the Roger Moore era, and I realize that this was primarily a revenge story so it's somewhat excusable, but I missed the element of wit. I'm hoping that next time out, Bond will feel like he can lighten up a bit.

Friday Afternoon

Deadline time looms once again, but on this dreary Friday afternoon my brain has decided it's pretty much done for the week. I may attempt to do a little work over the weekend, something I've done on occasion in the past.

Meanwhile, we're going to see Quantum of Solace tonight. Some of the early reviews don't seem too favorable, but we enjoyed Casino Royale so much that reviews probably don't matter. I'll post my two cents over the weekend.

Since I expect the theater is going to be quite busy, I went to the trouble to purchase tickets ahead of time. This is a silly modern frivolity, but at the same time it's nice to know the seats will be waiting for us.

Checked Off

People still write checks at the grocery store? I saw someone do it yesterday, but I'm still kind of in denial about it. It just seems so... antiquated. Do they still save S&H Green Stamps too? (Go ahead, read the Wikipedia entry, I'll wait...)

I Can't Hear You...

On Friday night we went to check out Roadhouse, the new barbecue place in Brookline. It's on Beacon St. out past Washington Square, in the building where the original Vinny Testa's used to be a long time ago, and it's run by the folks behind The Publick House a short distance up the street.

The wait was between 45 minutes and an hour, which we expected on a Friday. Once we were seated, I got a look at the beer list, which is extensive and well chosen, as I'd expected. We enjoyed our food and beers, but it was too noisy to maintain a conversation. I expect busy places to be loud, but there's loud and there's loud. I hate to sound like a curmudgeon because I know that's what people are going to think, but really, it's nice to be able to hear what the person sitting right next to you is saying.

A couple of weeks ago the Mrs. and I went to Tavern in the Square in the Porter Exchange building, and experienced the same thing, only worse. We really couldn't hear each other across the table. I managed to discern that the waitress was asking if we wanted dessert. I said, "I would like dessert, but we can't stand the noise so we're just going to go." The odd thing about this is that, a couple of weeks prior, I had been to the other Tavern location in Central Square, on a Saturday night, and it wasn't nearly as noisy.

I've always worn earplugs at concerts. I guess I need to start wearing them when we go out to eat too.

The Great Divide

I've intentionally stayed away from the overtly political and ideological, but after last night I want to make just a brief observation. I watched the candidates' speeches, and I noticed that when McCain mentioned Obama, the ignorants in the crowd booed (to his credit, he hushed them), but when Obama mentioned McCain, the audience applauded politely. I think those two little moments encapsulated the ideological divide between the two sides quite accurately. I still think Democrats are frequently too soft and too nice, but I'd rather be on the side of the bigger person.

Noggin'

While grocery shopping last night, I discovered that the egg nog has arrived. If you hate Christmas creep then this news will probably make you unhappy, but if, like me, you're a nog lover, it's great news. I highly recommend the vanilla flavored kind; it tastes pretty much exactly like a vanilla milkshake.

But in some parts of the country, the nog has been available for a while now. Over at Consumerist, there was a post about a grocery store in Missouri that was selling Halloween egg nog. Frankly, I think this is brilliant marketing, but it's also ominous. Before you know it, we're going to end up with one continuous holiday season stretching through the last three months of the year.

Treats

When we lived in Somerville, we never had a single trick-or-treater on Halloween in eleven years. I think it was mostly because we lived in a little dead-end street, even though there were some kids who lived in adjacent buildings. We always bought candy, just in case.

After we moved, it was nice to be part of the neighborhood Halloween experience. Two years ago, one of our upstairs neighbors came down and we pooled our candy. We all sat in the vestibule with the outer door open, so people could see that this was a house they should visit. The dog greeted each group of kids, thinking they were there to see her.

Last year we went to California to visit the Mrs.' sister, so we missed Halloween. (We had a dog-sitter staying here who did give out candy.) So this year we were ready for the festivities again: the Mrs. came home at the beginning of the week with six bags of candy, and she even got a costume for the dog, a queen's cape and crown, highly appropriate for a dog we refer to as "her highness."

The first group of kids arrived, and one of them, perhaps around ten, sized up the Mrs. and said, "You're tiny." (She's 4' 11", which is tiny by adult standards.) Nobody likes a Halloween smartass, but he got candy anyway. It was such a nice night that we decided to sit out on the porch. We kitted out the dog in her costume, though she didn't much care for the crown.

By now we know quite a few of our neighbors, and some of them stopped by. One family is kind of the charter members of London's neighborhood fan club, and as they came around the corner, we could hear the mother saying, "Oh, there's London!" It seemed it was as important for them to say hello to her highness as it was for the kids to get their candy.

At one point all the kids were standing on the porch and London was giving them the sniff-over. One boy, around five, suddenly exclaimed, "She's trying to sniff my penis!" Well yes, I suppose she was. Oops, sorry about that. The grownups had a laugh, the kids got their candy, and they went on their way. See you next year.