Urgh ~ Blog 42

Ideally, this would be an experiential blog. We'd talk about the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, complete with photos. There would be a review of the Science Museum. Pictures from the top of the Prudential Building. A breakdown of what an "esplanade" is and a discussion of the Red Sox pitching staff for next year (overpaid and underwhelming).

But it's rainy. Perhaps you heard there would be a snow storm on the East Coast. The thing about being on the coast is the ocean keeps our air warmer than the inland areas. That's why it's pouring rain right now.

An ordinary 2.5-year-old chocolate lab would be dying right now. Dukakis, Daisy Duke's predecessor, would be clinging to the ceiling with his toenails. Throw a damn tennis ball! Throw a sock, I'll chase it! Daisy Duke spent the last two hours on her back, paws in the air, head cuddled into my side on the couch.

Netflix has The West Wing on instant streaming. This was discovered yesterday; we're currently watching the seventh episode of Season 1.

There is a vague sense of underachievement in the air. This is the voice that has helped me keep excess weight off my frame for the last 10 years. It says we should be exercising. We should be cleaning. We should be *doing* something.

It isn't easy to take a day off. Maybe I spent 25 years striving to do nothing more than watch my favorite TV and movie shows and maybe that's why there is this sense of guilt. You should be moving or you'll be fat again.

But it's cold and it's raining and Toby Ziegler's got a thing going on right now, so we're going to stay right here. Happy early New Year.

SnowMyGod ~ Blog 41

This is what it looked like in NH almost a dozen years ago. Man, when
you say it like that ....

I can be a little cocky from time to time. It was one of my very few personal failings.

So it was in the winter of 2001, my first in New England and my first in a snowy climate other than Minnesota, that I spent the better part of four months scoffing at Northern New England. You think this is cold? My car froze to a parking lot once when it hit -25 (the wind chill was -60) in Minnesota. You people know nothing about winter.

In early March of 2001, my first true Nor'easter was coming. My boss called me and told me to stay home from work. They were canceling all the basketball games for that night, so I wouldn't be missing anything.

"But it hasn't even snowed yet," I protested.

My boss, a long-haired New York hippy who named his daughter after John Lennon, was known for playing the cynic about New Englanders. Not this time.

"Schorty, just stay home," he said.

Candy ass. It's March. This can't be that bad.

That turned out to be good advice. At the age of 23 in Newport, N.H., I didn't have any friends in town, but I did have a satellite dish and every movie channel Dish Network offered. I checked the TV schedule, made some evening plans, and cuddled into the couch. It started to snow late in the day, so I couldn't really see much happening. A few times, the satellite dish cut out because the wet March snow was sticking to the satellite dish. Fortunately, the dish was mounted just outside my dining room. A few brushes with a rag and I was back to HBO.

From the third floor, you could tell it had snowed a bit. People were trudging up and down the sidewalks. But it couldn't be that bad. It was March. This was New England.

I went to bed around 1 a.m., then logged into CNN at 10 a.m. to get my morning update. There was an article about the storm on CNN. I clicked on it.

About three-quarters of the way through the story, which was all about the gigantic snow totals, there was a line about my little town of 6,000 people:

"Newport, NH got 38 inches of snow," the article claimed.

Poppycock. This is New England. I know snow. I grew up in Minnesota. Still, better go clean off the car a bit early, just in case it's kinda bad down there.

I'd never seen anything like it. It was sunny out, which meant it hadn't snowed for more than 16 hours. But you couldn't see any of our front stairs. There was just a pile of snow that started above the top step. It was hip deep. I waded out back, to the small parking lot where my car was.

There was no deviation in the snow pack in the back to suggest there were any cars underneath. When your car is a Toyota Corrolla and about 36 inches tall, 38 inches of snow will do a number on it. I'm not even sure how I dug the car out. I had to find it, which was tough. Then it took at least an hour to shovel around it. The guy paid to plow our driveway took a solid hour to drive around with his plow, clearing it off.

Whoa.

Coming home that night, the road was lit by the moon. It was like driving in a bobsled track, with snow piled up on each side of the road to form a thick wall of road salt and ice. A deer was on the road. I slowed down. The deer turned to run, but couldn't get over the ice wall. So, I turned on my emergency blinkers and followed the deer for about a half mile, 'til the deer got to a driveway that had been plowed out. He exited the highway and I continued home.

I'd say I've never seen anything like it, before or since, but that would be a lie. It snowed another 30-something inches a few weeks later, just after all the snow from the first storm had finally melted.

In New England, a Nor'easter is a name for a particular kind of winter storm. The wind swoops off the Atlantic Ocean, blowing back onto land. The wind comes hard from the northeast and, if the storm stalls, it will snow for 36 hours and inches.

I treat Noreasters differently now. Two years ago, in Maine, I brought a ski helmet, goggles and snow shoes to work because a storm was predicted to drop 20 inches of snow. If it did, I was going to be walking home.

There's a Noreaster in the forecast for tonight and I have to commute 52 miles in it to get home from work. I'm bringing my winter jacket, gloves and hat; I'm also bringing a blanket and pillow, in case I decide to sleep in the parking lot at work.

The newspaper's still gotta come out and there's nobody better to do it than me. I guess I still have some work to do on the cocky thing.

Have a Holly, Jolly ... What The Hell Is That? ~ Blog 40

I was coming back from grocery shopping when
I spotted Santa and his seven reindeer atop a giant
pile of road salt next to the Mystic River. Tis the season?

You hear a lot of things about New England. It's not religious. The people are rude. People are too busy. What you don't hear is how evidently and obviously they love Christmas here.

Oh, people love it everywhere, to be sure. This isn't a Boston-is-better-than-you blog (We are, after all, the 10th-most expensive state in the nation and the home to Mitt Romney. Seriously, that's all I've got.). Maybe I was naive to think Christmas wouldn't be a big deal here. Whatever the case, I was certainly wrong.

You see it everywhere. People drive around with reindeer antlers hanging out their windows like people in Florida drive around with Florida Gators flags. I saw one car owner go the extra step and put a red reindeer nose on the front of his car.

And then there's this guy.

This cannot be legal. I mean texting and driving, of course.

Driving home from work last night on Interstate 93, I passed the most-well-lit vehicle I have ever seen. The back bed of the pickup truck was filled with lit candy canes. The rear gate had a lit version of Santa and his reindeer. On the driver's side window, there was a sign to check out the truck's Facebook page.

Seriously. Santa Truck has a Facebook page. The most recent comments are, "Hey, I just passed you on Interstate 93."

This is what our living room looks like.

Dubious legality aside, the spirit is laudable. You can feel it when you go downtown, as we will tonight. Molly Lu Who and Nacho Man are coming to Boston tonight to spend the night and Christmas morning with The Wife, Daisy Duke and myself.

What are we doing? Making nachos, of course. I have seven different kinds of cheese (most, admittedly, not for the nachos) in our refrigerator and three kinds of chips. Nacho Man is bringing meats and cheeses of his own. There are myriad alcoholic beverages in the fridge and Smart Water for the morning after.

TW has to work until about 5, but that's OK. Nacho Man, Molly Lu and I will take the Blue Line down to Quincy Market. There will likely be carolers. There will be a holiday lights show called Blink. We might even bring Daisy Duke (pets aren't allowed on the subway, but you see it all the time).

This is Christmas in the big city. I kind of like it. I'm still not wild about buying or receiving presents, but it's about more than that. I could get into the religious notes and get really into the weeds. There is an argument among some Christians that Easter is the more important holiday, but let's not get into it.

At the least, people are having fun, and fun is a good thing. Here's hoping you're having fun at some point today, tonight or tomorrow. God bless you for putting up with me and/or my blog and merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas, TW ~ Blog 39

A few years ago, I made a misguided attempt to write The Wife 25 Christmas love notes in the month of December. It was misguided for obvious reasons (25 is a lot) and not (work used to keep me absurdly busy).

Inspiration comes in strange forms. So it was this morning while watching a music channel. It was a summer festival in Glastonbury, England and Coldplay was playing. There's a lyric at the start of one of their songs that hits home: When you try your best but you don't succeed; When you get what you want but not what you need; When you feel so tired but you can't sleep; Stuck in reverse.

The last three years have been tough. People tell you not to define your life by what you do for work, but most people don't feel passionate about what they do. Three years ago, we thought there might be something other than journalism I could do for work. According to my records, I've applied for at least 75 jobs in the past three years. I've interviewed for exactly two non-journalism jobs; one was a three-month temporary job. Stuck in reverse.

A journalism degree isn't a license to print money; it also isn't a license to do anything much other than journalism, which isn't exactly a growth industry.

Through all the false hopes and layoffs, TW has been solid as a rock. They tell you a lot of things about marriage when you're getting married. It's about loving unconditionally and giving yourself to the other person. What it's really about is having the other person's back.

We're at an age when a "normal" 30-something wife would have certain expectations about what her life would look like. There would be a house and normal 9-to-5 jobs. There would be a retirement fund being contributed to on a regular basis. We'd like all of those things, but it hasn't worked out that way. Yet.

We fight. Oh, we fight. If a coffee filter is left in the coffee pot or someone leaves food that the dog destroys, we get annoyed at each other. It's easy to get carried away with day-to-day pettiness.

Then Something Big rolls into the scene and I am reminded how incredible TW is. The bigger and more stressful an issue is, the easier it is for her to handle. You could say she's got my back. Big time.

We've known each other for 10 years, minus a year or so we didn't talk to each other. More on that here. We have mundane days, and nights we sit on the couch watching TV, cuddling with the dog and not talking.

Hopefully, Big Things will stop rolling onto the scene. We're ready for stability. We're ready for mundane. But if a Big issue comes along, I know it's not really a Big deal. She's got my back.

That's not a sexy image of marriage. They don't tell you about that in pre-marital counseling, but it's exactly what the vows talk about: Through thick and thin, richer and poorer, health and sickness, I'll be there.

The last three years have been dramatic. We quit our jobs and moved from Utah to Maine. I didn't have a career. I got laid off. I spent months on the couch, losing my sanity. PA school happened. We moved to Boston. I got laid off a second time. You wonder when it's all going to stop.

There is one constant: We can handle it all. It's been 10 years and we still like each other. Usually. A few years ago, I never figured out how to express that in 25 different love letters. That's a lot of letters. Coldplay has my current mood explanation. I know it's cool to hate Coldplay, but they've captured how TW takes care of me in this song. Lights will guide you home; And ignite your bones; And I will try to fix you.

In Lieu of Killing My Dog ~ Blog 37

The dog was suspiciously absent when I came in the door early from the track. She is usually right there, on the couch.

Instead, there was the thump of a dog jumping off the guest bed and a kind of slinking approach from Daisy Duke. This approach invariably means trouble is afoot.

Is that ... A packing peanut in her mouth?

Yes, these are the joys of pet ownership. Daisy Doofus mistook packing peanuts for actual peanuts. She was flat on her back, in the submissive pose, within seconds of my arriving. She is sitting beneath my chair as I write this. It is a pensive silence.

These are the joys of pet ownership. I was going to blog about Christmas in the big city or weight loss or the 1987 Minnesota Twins, but when life hands you blog fodder and you are blogging almost every day for 90 days, you take it.

Thank God I own a dog.

Who'll Stop The Darn Rain ~ Blog 37



It's warm enough for baseball, at least.


This is supposed to be longer. But it's work time and time is pressed to get a blog done while people are still reading the Internet. It's not like there's anything else to do.

It's raining throughout the Northeast and it has been for about 48 hours. Schools were delayed in New Hampshire and parts of Massachusetts because rain froze into ice, then was rained on, which is a tricky surface to navigate on the way to classes.

We could complain about the weather, as many Midwest friends often do in the winter. But how about some perspective instead: It's 47 and raining in Boston right now. It's also Dec. 18 and I was able to go for a run with Daisy Duke today wearing running shorts and a long-sleeved running shirt. If it wasn't for the soggy tennis shoes, I would have thrown in an extra half hour of running.

Yes, there is a gigantic blob of moisture floating over and around New England and the forecast calls for days' more of rain. At least it's rain and not snow.

The Wife would prefer snow, as to go sledding on in Boston Common and to promote holly, jolly Christmastime fun. If it could snow Dec. 24 and melt Dec. 26, most of America could probably get on board with that. Skiers and snowboarders and snowplow operators might have some reservations.

In Utah, it doesn't rain from the end of April until the middle of October. This gloomy stretch known as, "spring, summer and fall," tests how much melatonin your body can handle, especially if you are involved in outdoor activities. When we moved to Maine in May of 2010, The Wife squealed with glee when we had to go to the car during a torrential downpour. It had been five years since she'd seen a good thuderstorm.

Growing up in the Midwest prepares you for everything. It will never be colder anywhere in the United States, at least not for an extended stretch. And it will never have more mosquitos in summer. Days on end of rain flooding us throughout December? We can handle that. At least it's rain and not snow.

Going to School ~ Blog 36

The Wife and I made a quick trip to Minnesota this weekend to be with her family for a weekend before Christmas. Her Dad gets into the Christmas decorations to the point he strings a lit Santa and reindeer above his driveway. He has five Christmas trees. Christmas is a big deal in The Wife's family.

We made the short drive to The Wife's Brother's house on Saturday to visit with our niece and nephew and to enjoy a holiday meal together. TWB's wife, Mrs. Krabappel, and I have a long history of annoying our spouses. She is a Simpsons devotee, and I can quote the 'Clown College' episode at extensive length.

You can almost hear TW and TWB rolling their eyes at us.

But Mrs. Krabappel is more subdued than normal right now. She is in school studying to be a physical therapy assistant and has finals all this week. She is practicing for a skills test this afternoon as I type this and she is stressed about whether she will pass.

It is all so familiar. The Wife spent 23 months in graduate school studying to be a physician assistant. We are still recovering and rebuilding our lives and careers.

Mrs. Krabappel is hilarious when she is not in school. She is a devoted mother of two great kids when she isn't physically at school. And she is a great baker of sugary confections . . . When she has time for such things.

It is hard to see someone you care about struggling. Mrs. Krabappel's life will take off when she gets out of school. She knows that. But it does not make the reality of school any easier for her or her family.

For now, it is stressful. Mrs. Krabappel has 17 months of school left. We will have a big party or a big present, or both, waiting for her when she graduates. We can wait 17 months for a good party. It is too soon for her to plan that far ahead. After all, we have to visit her on another Christmas before that happens.

Second Amendment Thoughts ~ Blog 35

I am typing this on an ipad from my in-laws' house, so this will have to be short. The Wife and I stopped at the Newtown, CT exit off Interstate 84 about a year and a half to go. We were coming back from New York City, we were hungry and TW was annoyed with me. That rarely happens.

According to Google Maps, we were a couple of hundred yards from the site of the shootings today. I can't say anything about that horror show to indicate how terrible it truly was.

What I can say is the shootings show a little something about the ridiculousness of a small number of guns' rights advocates who, after the movie theatre killings in Colorado, argued that if patrons had been armed, the event would not have been that bad.

They are not going to suggest we start arming second-graders, right? Armed guards at the doors? Metal detectors outside kindergarten?

I have no answers for you, though I know you would not see the headlines blaring "30 stabbed to death" if guns were illegal. Admittedly, I do not get guns. They mostly seem like toys to me. It is an Olympic sport. You can go clay shooting or to a range. You can hunt with them. But a gun in your home is 10 to 20 times more likely to shoot a friend or family member than an intruder. Tell me again about personal safety being protected by guns.

And yet, I think people should have the right to hunt with guns and, in some cases, be carried for personal protection. I do not have any great ideas. I would simply prefer to never see a place I have visited on the news next to the word, "tragedy."

Back to Nature ~ Blog 34

The payoff for an hour and a half of work.

My shoulders hurt.

Ordinarily, the cause could be a workout in Piers Park, lifting weights in the gym or fallout from one of my many, many moves. Since yesterday I did nothing other than climb a 3,166-foot mountain, I have to assume it's related to that.

Mt. Monadnock rises in southwestern New Hampshire near the cute and kinda-grungy college town of Keene. I was visiting Four Eyes, who lives in Brattleboro, Vt., the town The Wife and I considered moving to this past spring.

This is what we moved to New England for. There was a little country deli down the street form Four Eyes that makes some of the best soups, brisket and fudge brownies I've ever consumed. We ate fantastic burgers. We saw cute little art shops. TW, in a visit last spring, fell in love with a furniture shop for some reason. The trees are tapped with rubber tubing, already prepared for the flow of maple syrup in the spring.

And then there are the mountains. Boston's great, but the biggest hill I've hiked in the last six months is maybe 200 feet tall. Monadnock, Four Eyes claims, is the most hiked mountain in the nation. But this was no Disney-fied tourist hike.

The Monadnock trail rises 1,850 feet from the state park in 2.1 miles. It's an average grade of 17 percent, with the steepest section at about 30 percent.

With that kind of vertical, I was often using my hands to steady myself on the descent. In many places, I dropped both hands to rocks and lowered myself using my arms. That's why my shoulders are sore. It's a good sore, the kind of dull ache that lets you know you did something yesterday.

Three years ago, as we considered where The Wife would go to PA school, she asked what I would do without the mountains. Oh, I'll figure something out.

There's no substitute for mountains. Monadnock reminded me of that. Vermont and New Hampshire are a special place, with mountains and hiking difficult enough that you can spend hours hiking and leave you weak in the knees. Or, in my case, the shoulders.

Mr. Cleaning ~ Blog 33

I think this is an actual photograph. Not of me, though.

We aren't big on gender-assigned roles in our household. That is at least partially due to the fact that I have no interest in fixing stuff around the house, partially due to the fact that we don't own our condominium, and partially due to the fact that I enjoy doing other things.

Yesterday was a good example. Ferried The Wife to work with Daisy Duke riding in the back seat. Daisy Duke moved up to shotgun as we went to Trader Joe's, then back home, then back out to Stop & Shop and Walgreen's.

Then it was on to unloading the dishwasher, cleaning out the sink, making lentil vegetable soup and making a breakfast omelette thing that TW seems to enjoy. On the side, I did laundry. I threw a bunch of dishes back in the sink, wrapped up the trash and ... my God, it's 7 p.m. already. Daisy Duke went back in the car and we shuttled back to Sommerville to pick up TW. She's a precious and dainty thing and needs a chauffeur.

Could be talking about Daisy Duke; could be talking about TW. Let's just leave that up in the air.

The moms out there, like Sarah32Flavors, know what this is like. How is it possible for grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning (and blogging and running at the track) to take eight hours? It just doesn't seem possible.

It's not fulfilling, but it's not NOT fulfilling, to paraphrase TW. It's a Catch-22, this life. You want to get all this *stuff* taken care of because you have the time to do it and, well, somebody's gotta do it. You almost, kind of enjoy it. Then, you feel kind of bad. You should want more for yourself. What do other people think?

I can't tirelessly defend these kinds of days, nor do I think I have to. There's no imminent attack on people kind of enjoying doing chores. The attack is from within our own heads, like it's not OK to have a humdrum-but-productive day.

I have days like yesterday and think, "I could get used to this." I work part-time at a job I enjoy and that pays reasonably well. I like doing chores and really enjoy cooking. Full disclosure: I also do oil changes and some work on our car (replacing spark plugs and headlights, recharging the air conditioning system), so I'm not totally off the Man Wagon.

It's possible I will get to a place in my head where I'm completely OK with this kind of life. It's possible that I will be frustrated by not winning some sort of blog of the year award for the rest of my life. This I know for sure: I make a mean lentil soup.

ADDENDUM TO BLOG 32
I forgot to mention in yesterday's blog about the purse-snatching that I made a horribly illegal left turn out of the parking lot. If there were police officers watching, I hope they died a little on the inside.

The Purse Snatcher ~ Blog 32

If you had one of these straps, wouldn't you be just
as likely to forget your purse is around? I would.

Fridays are salad days. Literally. It's the day I stop at Shaw's for about 1.5 pounds of salad. Such was the case a few days ago, when I loaded my plastic carton with veggies and topped it with a little blue cheese dressing. Why ruin a good load of veggies with blue cheese? Because too much of a good thing is bland and tasteless. I also add bacon. Deal with it.

As I opened my car door, I noticed a purse-like bag was sitting in the top of the empty grocery cart I had parked next to. Curious, I closed the driver's door and picked up the black, foot-long bag. It was zipped shut but I wasn't sure exactly what it was. I unzipped and looked -- cash, a wallet and other lady-like items were inside. I zipped it back up and started walking toward the front door.

As I passed the Salvation Army bell-ringer, I asked her to keep an eye out for frantic women in the parking lot. "Let them know I found their purse and brought it to guest services," I told her.

On my way back out of the store, the lady stopped me.

"That was very nice of you," she said. "But it might have been a police thing."

"A police thing?"

"No, a police STING. They've been running sting operations around here."

For serious? (Sorry, the Minnesota in me comes out from time to time.)

That sounded far-fetched. I mentioned my story to Pablo when I got to work. Pablo is the local government watchdog. He likes to yell about the government and, frankly, his rants are often the most enjoyable part of my evening. I like my job; his rants are just that good.

Pablo informed me that we had, indeed, written some stories about Manchester, N.H., police doing stings in the area. About half a mile from Shaw's, they'd left a purse and a DVD player outside a GameStop. They'd also left a purse in a cart outside Walmart.

I'm not saying the purse I found was part of a sting. There is no follow-up when you do something nice like return a purse to a store. It's not even nice, really. That's just what you do. As Pablo spread my story around the newsroom (it took the place of one of his evening rants, though we still heard him complain loudly that gays should be seeking gay marriage, not marriage), a similar reaction took place:

Seriously?

Apparently, there is no hardened crime in Manchester and it is a place with few problems. There are no meth addicts; no children at local schools need to be told not to use drugs; nobody gets in drunken bar fights. There is no crime in Manchester, so they're down to doing purse stings.

You can argue that taking a purse or taking money from a purse isn't really a crime, it's entrapment. And the very fact that you can make that argument tells me it's not a serious crime. Still, a pair of men face felony charges in Manchester over the stings.

I like to think that, as I picked up the purse, there were videotapes whirring. Police officers — a half dozen of them, at least — felt their pulses quicken as I looked in the bag and saw the money. "He's taking the bait!!!" they all heard ringing through their heads. And I like to think that it ruined their day when I zipped the purse shut and walked back into the store. Because, for them, it was back to eating donuts and sipping their coffee. I was rewarded with the virtuous taste of blue cheese salad with bacon. I hope they saw me eating my victory salad and questioned what they were doing with their lives and maybe, just maybe, they cut the sting short that day and went out to catch a drug dealer. In another town, of course. Manchester doesn't have any crime.

Presented Without Comment ~ Blog 31

It's possible my dog is too calm. Does this count as a comment?

How To Meet People and Meet People ~ Blog 30

Go Twins!

When we were considering moving from Maine to Massachusetts, The Wife raised a valid concern: How are we going to meet people?

In the past, we became friends with people we lived with and with my co-workers. In Boston, we wouldn't know anybody and I wasn't going to be working with anybody who lived near us. It was a valid question. How are we going to meet people?

The answer, it turns out, was to turn me loose in a public park. The truth is way less creepy than that sounds.

We live near a park where people commonly allow their dogs to be off-leash. As I have a dog that I commonly allow to be off-leash, Daisy Duke and I are there often. But, as of the end of August, the only person I'd met was Ray, an 85-year-old former jazz musician and, he says, World War II veteran.

In early September, there was a skinny guy sitting on a park bench with a Minnesota Twins cap on. This is odd, in part because we're Red Sox territory and in part because nobody outside of Minnesota and the Dakotas likes the Twins. Even as I type this, I'm wearing a Red Sox sweatshirt. It was cheap. Stop judging me.

I walked over to the guy.

"Are you a Twins fan?" I asked.

"No."

"Oh, well, you have a Twins cap on, and that made me wonder."

"Yeah, I used to live there," he told me.

"Oh? Where?"

"Stillwater."

"Uh, that's funny because I graduated from Stillwater High School," I told him.

"Oh, my wife graduated from there."

"When?"

"1999," he told me.

"My brother graduated in 1999."

Not only does Nutmeg's Mom know my brother, she actually likes him. They were in theater people together and you know how theater people are. (Disclosure: I lettered in theater).

These coincidences are the foundation of our relationship with our new BFFs. In truth, Stillwater High is one of the biggest in Minnesota and everybody in their right mind should want to live there. Still, it was absurdly coincidental that we had connections to people in East Boston.

A few dinner dates and an ill-fated candlepin bowling trip later, we have new BFFs. It's unusual, as a couple, that we both like both components of the other couple. Sometimes, the guys like each other but don't care for the ladies, or vice-versa. This time, it's all mutual and consensual. That also sounds way creepier than I meant.

Nutmeg's Dad and I hang out often because he works at home, which means we can go on long walks out to the Airport Hyatt at 2-ish. We get along famously, in part because he brought good scotch over to our house for the first dinner date and, in part, because I had good gluten-free beer in my refrigerator to offer him.

It's improbable, to be sure. But, sometimes, that's how things work out.

Smell The Roses ~ Blog 29

It's Dec. 5 and we have this.

I wouldn't have noticed if it wasn't for Nutmeg's Dad. We were finishing up a walk on the harbor.

"Stop and smell the roses," he called after me as I walked away toward home.

What? Oh, the rose bushes up ahead. My God, there's flowering rose bushes in December. Global warming is a marvelous thing. That was my first thought. Then I remembered my morning exploration of The Weather Channel. It was 18 degrees in my hometown of Lakeland, MN, this morning. Coastal living has its advantages.

My Attempt To Like Christmas ~ Blog 28

This is an actual tree. It's at least 50 feet tall. 

No post yesterday? No post yesterday. Tomcat, my uncle, is in town and we were too busy doing Boston things for me to sit down and blog.

Standing entirely too close to the tree.

It's holiday time in the big city, which means Christmas lights. The Boston Harbor Hotel, which hangs the largest American flag you've ever seen for the Fourth of July, currently has a giant light display hanging in its rotunda.

Just down the street from the Harbor Hotel, Tomcat and I went to Quincy Market to check out the light show synchronized to music from the Boston Pops orchestra.

Christmas hasn't been my thing. Perhaps you've noticed that. But I can get into this kind of Christmas tradition. Tomcat and I had to wait at Quincy for 15 minutes for the show to begin with maybe 10 or so people. The Salvation Army ringer was sitting 15 feet from his kettle, shaking his bell once every minute or so. It was not a happening place.

All the lights on the trees around the market shut off. Tomcat broke out his iPhone to take video. Here's one from opening night (skip the first minute).

I'm not a cultured man ("No!" you say) so I can't tell you what song the speakers played. Hallelujah was repeated, over and over again. Tomcat doesn't impress easily but called it, "somewhat amazing. Just wow." That's high praise.

Christmas can be fun. This isn't breaking news to most people but it's somewhat revelatory to me. The season is actually kind of nice. What's to dislike about having a hot toddy and watching skaters on Boston Common?

Like any 7-year-old, I've been guilty of focusing on the presents. Dreaming up a Christmas list isn't easy when you don't really want anything. Opening presents isn't particularly awesome when you don't know what you asked for.

But Christmas trees with light shows synchronized to classical music? I can get used to this.