Yes, and...

"They say 41 is the new 27..."

2007-05-16T09:14:00.000-04:00

Long time, no blog.

Some pretty serious events have taken place in my life recently, and my focus has been elsewhere. I just haven't been able to come up with the right words to post or comment during the past few months.

But, since today is my birthday--I thought it might be a good time to try to start. Plus, I was kinda getting tired of seeing that same old post from Christmas everytime I signed on...

I've checked the math several times to see if I made some mistake carrying the '1', but it would appear that today I officially turn 41.

At least, chronologically. In my mind, I still feel like I'm in my late 20's.

Last year, a few people asked if I was bothered by the fact that I was turning 40. I pointed out that by the time I was 29, I had already graduated law school, gotten married, had a child, was widowed, and became a single parent.

So, no-turning 40 wasn't such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. At this point, I figure my next big milestone is retirement at 65, and then it's a lifetime of discounted movie tickets...

Age is a state of mind--it might be a cliche but I really do believe that you're as young as you feel. And these days, I don't feel a day over 27.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's time for my arthritis pill. My fingers are aching from all the typing on this new-fangled computer thing.

Actually, now that I think about it--it felt pretty good getting behind a keyboard again...

Musical Monday #4-Holy Darkness

2006-12-25T05:00:00.000-05:00

I wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a happy holiday, and hope that you may each find peace in your lives.

This song was one of my favorites to sing during the Christmas season when I was in the student choir at Villanova.

The words have come to resonate on a somewhat deeper level when I sing it now...

(This recording was just supposed to be my warm-up practice run, but audioblogger started acting up and I couldn't re-record another version. Sorry if the sound is a little off in spots.)

Merry Christmas,

Tom

"Holy Darkness"

Holy darkness, blessed night,
heaven's answer hidden from our sight.
As we await you, O God of silence,
we embrace your holy night.

I have tried you in fires of affliction;
I have taught your soul to grieve.
In the barren soil of your loneliness,
there I will plant my seed.

(refrain)

In your deepest hour of darkness
I will give you wealth untold.
When the silence stills your spirit,
will my riches fill your soul.

a new chapter...

2006-11-13T16:43:00.000-05:00

When this blog started a year ago, it was meant to be place where I could write about humor & improvisation as a fun diversion. In the beginning I just enjoyed the chance to be creative again. But over time, writing also became a cathartic way to come to terms with some of the things that had happened in my life so far.

As the one-year anniversary approached, it felt like the right point to bring closure this blog. I'm going to take some time to work on some of these posts and bring them together into a single collection to send to an online self-publishing service. In about six weeks, I hope to have a professionally-bound book that I'll be able to hold in my hands and give to friends and family, or even make available for people to get online.

At some point, I’ll probably start another blog with a different name, but I will keep these archives and this email address still up and running. In the meantime, I want to spend more time visiting and commenting on the blogs of people who have commented here. I sincerely regret not making more of an effort to acknowledge the many encouraging and heartfelt things that have been written after these posts. It's something that I have already begun to try to correct.

Thanks to everyone who came by and spent some time here. It truly has meant more to me than words can possibly express.

sunset

2006-11-05T15:37:00.000-05:00

The dream would always be the same.

I never discover the purpose for the trip, but some random event brings me back to my hometown late one night in the middle of the week. For some reason I take a detour from the usual route and come upon my mother's car parked all by itself along the edge of the road, her winter coat left behind on the front seat. I follow a trail of footprints to find her lying there alone in the darkness.

I kneel down and wrap her in my arms, catching her in time before she slips away. I lift her from the snow and hold her close, bringing warmth back to her frail body. She begins to stir and I tell her that everything will be okay--I am there now and she is not alone anymore.

Then I would wake up and slowly realize that I was in my bed and she was already gone. I'd close my eyes again, and within the next fleeting seconds, try to hold onto the image of her face.

* * * * * * * *

As the oldest child, I took it upon myself to be the strong one for everyone else in my family. Instead of letting my grief out, I kept things buried safe beneath the surface. I had done the same thing after my wife Elizabeth had died, feeling like I had to pull myself together and quickly learn how to raise our three-year old son on my own.

Several years later, in the unlikliest of places, I finally began to come to terms with my feelings of loss. I was on a business trip to Tucson, and had a few hours of free time before my flight home. Arizona had been the furthest west that I had traveled at that point in my life, and I got directions to a national park outside of town to take a closer look at some of the incredible scenery.

I pulled my rental car into an observation parking lot at the base of a small mountain. The desert floor spread out for hundreds of miles before me, with another mountain range rising up in the distance at the horizon's edge. Several people were walking on a path that led to a ridge a few hundred yards above the parking lot. It looked like there would be even better viewing from that spot, so despite the fact that I was still in suit pants and dress shoes, I began to make my way up the gently sloping trail.

The view was definitely improved once I reached the outcrop, but then I noticed that the path continued to rise along the mountainside. I became determined to see what things looked like from an even higher point, and kept following the trail in several hundred-yard stages as it took a steeper route along the ridgeline. Soon it turned into a personal challenge, as I continued to push myself further after each plateau was reached. Every time I would rationalize that since I had come that far, I might as well keep going to the top.

During the last fifteen feet I had to climb hand-over-hand. As I finally reached the top, I was greeted by a young couple sitting upon a large, flat rock. At first I was a little disappointed to have to share the setting after finally reaching my private goal, but I'm sure they couldn't have been too thrilled either with the sudden intrusion of a dust-covered, out-of-breath guy in a business suit. After about ten minutes, they began to make their way back down and I had the summit all to myself.

I sat in solitude, taking in the magnificent scene. The sky above was a clear, deep blue that gradually shifted into vivid shades of orange, red and purple as it stretched into the distance. Everything was quiet and still as the sun lowered itself slowly towards the horizon. I closed my eyes and drew in a deep breath.

The desert wind caressed my face, and the tension released from my back and shoulders. Without any warning, tears began falling. I'm not a believer in the paranormal or in ghosts, but at that moment I felt that my mother and Elizabeth were there with me on top of that mountain. I didn't have a vision or hear their voices, but I did feel surrounded by their presence and their love. It only lasted for several seconds, but when it was over I was left with the certain feeling that they were both all right, and that they were not suffering any more.

Instead of pushing my emotions down like I had always done in the past, I just let my feelings run through me without holding anything back. The tears continued to fall for some time, both in sorrow as I thought about how much I missed them and in joy as I recalled how wonderful it had felt to be with them once again, if only for a moment.

A sense of calm began to come over me as things kept working their way to the surface. The tears eventually stopped and were replaced with a smile. As I sat there in the warmth of the sun, I felt that everything was going to be okay. I felt that I was not alone anymore. I closed my eyes again, and was able to hold onto a feeling beyond those next fleeting seconds which has remained within me to this day.

I felt, once more, at peace.

angels in the snow

2006-10-28T19:15:00.000-04:00

“Your office has been trying to reach you all morning,” the court clerk said as she waved a note from her desk alongside the judge’s bench. I had just finished cross-examining a criminal defendant on trial for assault, and the judge had excused the jury for a one-hour recess before closing arguments would begin. I unfolded the piece of paper and considered its message for a moment. I had become friendly with the staff over several months during my assignment to that courtroom, and asked the clerk if I could use the judge’s phone to make a personal call as a favor.

Normally that area was strictly off-limits to attorneys, but the look on my face must have let her know that this wasn’t a casual request. She escorted me back to the judge’s chambers and then left me by myself in the empty room. I dialed the number and glanced down again at the words that had appeared in the note:

'Call your father ASAP'

I was grateful for the privacy as the phone began to ring on the other end of the line. I was pretty sure he was calling to tell me that my mother had finally succeeded in ending her life.

* * * * * * * *

Mom had been suffering for several years from a condition called gastroparesis, a nervous disorder that paralyzes a person’s stomach and causes them to feel nauseous and hungry at the same time. There is no known cause or cure for the disease. She had been in perfect health before being struck with a sudden onset of its symptoms at the age of 48.

At first, her mood had been positive and optimistic as she and Dad went around to a number of specialists to try one experimental treatment after another. Some of them gave her temporary relief, but she began to lose weight at a rapid pace. Her diet consisted of bland baby food and Ensure nutritional shakes. She had been tall and thin to begin with, and soon all of her clothes were hanging from her gaunt frame.

The constant feeling of nausea and hunger during every waking moment gradually took a mental toll on her as well. She had always been an upbeat person, but as she continued to struggle with her condition for months and years on end she became more and more despondent. I could hear the growing desperation in her voice when I would call during the week to check in with her and share a funny story about one of Brendan’s latest 5-year old antics.

Her spirit was finally broken in 1998 on New Year’s Eve, when she attempted an overdose by taking all of her medications at once. After my father had fallen asleep watching television in the living room, she went up to their bedroom and swallowed all of her pills. Dad woke up a short time later to find her lying in bed surrounded by empty prescription bottles and a note. She was rushed to the hospital, and was admitted to the psychiatric crisis unit for several days until her mental condition had stabilized.

* * * * * * * *

Three months after that first attempt, I received the message in the courtroom to call my father. Dad didn’t have many details, but apparently Mom had told him that she was heading out to the store for a quick errand at around 8 o’clock on the previous evening. When she didn’t return home after several hours, he contacted the police. They called him early that morning to report that her body had been found in a snow-covered field at the edge of town. Based on the single set of footprints leading from her car nearby, it appeared that she just stretched out and lay back in the snow, finally succumbing at some point during the night to hypothermia.

Dad had already called my brother Michael in Mexico City and was on his way to pick up my sister from college. He sounded completely drained and asked if I could be the one to tell my youngest brother Chris, who lived near me outside Philadelphia. I reached my brother at work and broke the news to him, and after he got over the initial shock we made plans to meet at my house to follow each other for the trip to our hometown.

I took a few moments to pull my thoughts together and then returned to the courtroom to give my closing argument. There was no doubt that the judge would have adjourned the case under the circumstances, but that would have meant declaring a mistrial and retrying everything all over again in several months. I didn’t want to put the victim through another 4-day trial when this one was so close to being finished. After the jury was sent out to deliberate, I contacted my office to have them send someone over to the courtroom to be present in my place when the verdict was eventually announced.

I was preoccupied with questions during the three-hour drive to Williamsport, as Brendan slept peacefully in the backseat. I would have to wait until the following morning to speak with the State Trooper in charge of the investigation to begin to get some answers. I kept imagining my mother laying down in that field all by herself and wondered what more I could have done to prevent her from reaching that point.

I became lost in my thoughts during the rest of my journey home. The world outside seemed frozen in quiet stillness. Within me, my emotions had become very much the same. My focus had been put towards other tasks, such as closing arguments and consoling others, so that I would not have to face my own grief. I had not shed a single tear yet, although that time would soon come. For now, my mind wandered aimlessly seeking numbness from the pain, as I traveled further into a landscape in which everything was covered with snow.

Taking the lead

2006-10-25T11:55:00.000-04:00

"Gentlemen, it doesn't matter whether the music is cha-cha, rumba, meringue or salsa. There are two things you must learn for any Latin dance: how to get you and your partner IN IT, and how to get the two of you back OUT." Our instructor Jeanne spent the next section of class teaching us the proper way to 'introduce' our female partner to a new change in direction and how to begin an entirely different dance altogether.

I had been on the run all day, and had arrived at class still in my suit that I had put on twelve hours earlier. Even after the jacket and tie had come off, work was still very much on my mind for the first part of the lesson, along with a list of a half-dozen other things that would need my attention once I eventually got home. I had to force myself to concentrate on each of the particular steps that we were being taught and tried to push the other thoughts off to the side.

Before long I settled down and just focused on the music. Soon my legs, hips, and shoulders began to follow right along with the driving tempo. Without really being aware of it, I was no longer thinking about each individual step and had stopped counting out the beats in my head. Sandi, the assistant instructor who was my partner, flashed an encouraging smile as we started to move naturally through each of the dances that we had learned up to that point.

Her smile was soon replaced by a frown as she caught a glimpse of a husband and wife struggling to keep up with the rest of the class. Sandi assured me that I already had all of the steps down, and cocked her head over in the direction of the floundering couple. "I'm needed over there," she said with a wink. She cut in and started dancing with the husband to try to fix the problem at the source. His wife was sent over to become my new partner.

Her name was Marie and she was a very friendly woman in her mid-fifties. Things started off fine, but it turned out that there was one slight problem: Marie was a little too friendly. She meant well, but she was more concerned about making small talk than paying attention to the actual music. She chatted about everything from her children’s hobbies to their recent family vacation to a quick recap of the latest episode of ‘Dancing with the Stars.’ Her body kept trying to move in the opposite direction from where we needed to go for each step. That, in turn, was throwing me off of the rhythm, and I had to quickly shuffle my feet to get back in step with the music. It wasn’t long before I was counting off the beats to myself again.

I didn’t want to be rude to this woman who was a complete stranger, so at first I just smiled back at her and tried to listen with one ear. As she continued to talk I could feel my frustration growing, the easy movements from my dancing with Sandi all but forgotten. Marie and I became locked in a subtle tug of war, each of us trying to pull the other in opposing directions. She and I were definitely IN it. I recalled our instructor’s comments at the top of class, and realized that it was my job to get us both back out.

I took over with a sudden surge and changed my entire posture, locking my arms into place and tightening my grip on her hand and rear shoulder. The next time that the two of us needed to move forward for a particular step, I pushed off with my legs and drove Marie back on her heels while holding her firmly around the upper body. When it was time for us to go backwards, I pulled her in towards me with steady direction. When we needed to turn, I dropped one arm and placed my hand on her hip, spinning her off to the left with a firm push. Then I quickly twirled her back into position to start the next step.

Marie was naturally startled by the abrupt change in tone, and she quickly stopped talking as her eyes searched my face to gauge my mood. I smiled and gave her a look letting her know that everything was in control. I could see her shoulders relax slightly, and she stopped resisting whenever I began to lead her in a particular direction. Soon she was smiling as well as we moved easily along with the music from one dance into another.

Our teacher walked into the center of the floor as class came to an end. "Latin dancing is not for the feint of heart," she told us. American ballroom was about grace and poise, with the dancers gliding across the dance floor up on the balls of their feet. Latin dance was rhythmic and down low, with the body’s weight centered back over the heels. ”Stick with me and come to every class ready to work, and I promise you that by the end of ten weeks, you WILL know how to dance to any kind of Latin music."

I headed out of the high school gym towards my car, feeling completely refreshed and already looking foward to next week's class. I was going to enjoy moving to another rhythm for a change.

HNT(29) fit to be tied

2006-10-12T23:45:00.000-04:00

A couple of very busy weeks at work had my daily schedule tangled up in knots. I was staying later and later at the office and playing catch-up with everything else. By the end of the day I couldn't wait to yank off my jacket and tie and just unwind. Blogging was one of the first things that got pushed to the sidelines.

It's time to take control of my routine again.

hhnt

-----------------------------------------

(oh, Lord) of the Dance

2006-09-24T23:11:00.000-04:00

"Before we begin let me make one thing clear right at the top," the instructor declared as class got underway. She began to pace the floor in front of myself and 50 other beginning students with her hands clasped behind her back, in a manner that called to mind General George S. Patton addressing a company of raw recruits.

"This is NOT ballroom dancing--if you are here to learn the waltz or foxtrot, you are in the wrong room..." Of course her similarity to the 4-star general pretty much ended with the tone of voice and body language. I've seen the movie 'Patton' over a dozen times, and this woman in her late sixties with bright orange hair standing before us in a flared skirt and 2" rhinestone heels looked practically nothing like actor George C. Scott.

"In this class you will learn Latin Dancing. We have a lot of ground to cover in ten weeks and we'll be working hard over the next hour without a break. Many of you will wake up tomorrow morning with sore muscles that you never even knew you had." Around this time I began to wonder what in the hell I was doing in a high school gymnasium at 8:30 on a weeknight, and what had ever possessed me to enlist for salsa boot camp in the first place. I tried to remember if desertion was still punishable by firing squad these days...

* * * * * * * *

Actually, I had reported for these lessons voluntarily. They were offered though a non-profit group that provides dozens of evening courses in language, cooking, fitness, and the arts to adults at several suburban high schools. Our class was being held in the gym, and the men and women had been told to form up in two seperate lines facing each other twenty feet apart.

Jeanne, our instructor, slowly turned and fixed her gaze intently on us guys. "Gentlemen, in Latin dancing there is ONE rule that you must never, ever forget. While you are out there on the dance floor, YOU are the one in complete command--the lord of the dance. It is your job to lead your partner at all times--the woman should never have control over what the two of you are doing." She paused, and qualified that last statement with a raised finger. "ONLY while you are out there on the dance floor..."

She got right to work teaching the male half of the class the basic steps of the Cha-Cha. Our weight would need to start over on the right side of the body as the move began with the left foot. We were instructed to just watch her first as she demonstrated it for us. "And its Forward...Step--Cha, Cha, Cha." Okay, that seemed easy enough. We ran through it a half-dozen times as a group. Our line lumbered forward rather stiffly, with many of the men (myself included) looking straight down at our feet as we shuffled along the floor.

Then she added the second part of the move. "Now its Backwards...Step--Cha, Cha, Cha." Uh-oh, suddenly this took some more thought. But after another six or more run-throughs, the majority of us pretty much had it down. After she had us combine the two moves together for another dozen repetitions, Jeanne was satisfied that most of us were safely on board with the program. She turned to the teach the same steps (in reverse) to the ladies.

During this entire period the women had been forced to stand still and just watch the men, their bodies poised in anticipation. A few had been swaying in place the whole time. Judging from the keyed-up looks on all of their faces, they probably would have broken into dance at the first notes of a Cingular ringtone. They put the men to shame by getting both moves down cold on the second try, with a touch of hip action thrown in as they gracefully cha-cha'd backwards and forwards. I'm sure in another turn or two they could have completely rubbed it in and finished up with a synchronized can-can routine.

Now that the men and woman had learned the basic Cha-Cha step separately, it was time to bring both groups together. Jeanne called out, "All right, everyone grab a partner and we're going to try that to some music." She turned to walk over towards a CD player that she had set up on a folding card table.

A distinct feeling of deja vu came over me as I found myself standing in a high school gym watching members of the opposite sex move right past me to pair up with each other to dance. My premonition became fully realized after everyone had reunited with their spouse, fiance, or significant other and exchanged nervous laughter. I was the only one left all by myself out there in the middle of the floor. Jeanne was still flipping through her CD collection when her assistant Sandi hurried over to the table and whispered in her ear.

"What? We have an extra BOY?? This the first time that's ever happened in all my years....!!" I forgot to mention previously that Jeanne was wearing a wireless microphone to amplify her voice, and her cries of disbelief echoed throughout the gym. Several heads over in the Mommy & Me Bellydancing class turned in our direction to see what all of the commotion was about. I wouldn't have been surprised if the Conversational French instructor had later poked his head into the room to ask, "Excusez-moi. Permettez -nous arriver a regarder le solitaire garcon sans une fille?" ("Pardon me. May my students come to look at the lonely boy without a girl?")

Sandi hurried over to be my partner as the music began to play. She shook her head and commented that there had always been a greater number of women than men showing up for these classes. She nodded over in the direction of several nicely dressed, white-haired gentlemen that were patiently sitting around the card table--male stand-ins that Jeanne had obviously pressed into service to pair up with an expected female overflow. She patted me on the shoulder and said with a wink, "That's okay--a single guy who knows how to dance? There's a whole new world waiting ahead for you..."

At least I think that's what she said. At the time I was too busy concentrating: And its Forward...Step--Cha, Cha, Cha. There was still another thirty minutes left in class with more moves yet to come.

HNT(28) Overdrive

2006-09-21T00:45:00.000-04:00

I was out on the road pretty often this summer. On one occasion I needed to rent a car to get around for the day and then later drive through the night to the closest airport for an early morning flight back to Philadelphia. I was walking out of the rental office towards my reserved mid-size economy car when I suddenly came upon a brand new, fire-engine red Ford Mustang GT convertible. I wheeled around and went back to ask the agent how much an upgrade would cost. When she said it would only be $10 more I jumped at the chance.

During the day I had been driving in stop-and-go city traffic. The 400+ horsepower V-8 engine growled under the hood as it was forced to practically idle at speeds around 40 mph. The motor finally came to life once it had the chance to fully open up on the long, straight drive to the airport. I was a little shocked when I looked down at the dashboard and realized that my speed had already shot up to around 90 in less than a minute.

I eased back on the gas and then experienced one of my most enjoyable car rides ever. The top was down and a bright, full moon and countless stars formed the roof overhead. The warm summer air swept over the top of the windshield past my face and filled the night with a constant, low hum.

After almost thirty minutes without any other traffic on the road, I wanted to see how the Mustang handled at higher speeds. I gripped the wheel tighter and my foot steadily sank down lower on the accelerator. The pitch of the engine climbed to a full roar as the needle climbed higher and higher on the speedometer. I kept my foot pushed down on the pedal as my speed crept up past 90, and then I pushed even harder in order to see what 100 felt like. My body became pressed into my seat as the lights along the road began to flash by in a neon blur. The sense of unbridled speed was totally exhilarating.

I reluctantly handed back over the keys once I arrived at the airport for the flight back home. I had planned on driving my 8-year old car for several more years, but now I think I just might have to speed up that process. The open road is calling.

table for three--(2nd course).

2006-09-15T14:11:00.001-04:00

I was hoping for the best but preparing for the worst as I entered the restaurant with Brendan trailing behind me holding my hand. During the entire drive downtown I had tried to think of the best way to lessen the initial shock to Gretchen as I arrived for our date with my 3-year old son along as a 'plus 1'. I decided that the direct approach was probably best and that events from that point would either go pretty well or horribly wrong.

As it turned out, I had nothing to be concerned about. Gretchen was already inside waiting at the bar and her eyes certainly widened when she first saw the two of us enter. But then they became slightly misty as I began to explain the whole situation. After a quiet moment or two had passed, she told me that she completely understood and bent down to say hello to Brendan with a warm smile.

The waiter had been a little more non-plussed, but his reaction was understandable. The Astral Plane was a pretty intimate restaurant. The silk fabric draped across the ceiling and soft candlelight illuminating the room were designed to provide a single, unmistakable mood: romance. It is not the sort of place where either chicken fingers or mac-n-cheese had ever been featured among the day's specials...

In fact, it was not the sort of place that had envisioned booster chairs as part of its seating plan either. Two Philadelphia phone books stacked on top of each other and placed on Brendan’s chair did the trick. Gretchen took everything completely in stride, and made a point to say how handsome Brendan looked in his fancy suit. I appreciated her effort and graciously refrained from pointing out that there really had not been much choice for a suitable alternative, as all of the remaining items in my son’s wardrobe at the time prominently displayed either Barney, Elmo, or permanent juice stains.

I have to say Brendan really was on his best behavior that night. He could be a pretty finicky eater back at that age, so while I may have been pointing to the 'Linguine with Grape Tomatoes' in the menu as I placed his order with the waiter, I made sure that I referred to it out loud as just plain old "spaghetti". His table manners were even better than I could have hoped for. While he did begin to build a little fort out of the sugar cubes he discovered inside the sterling bowl at the center of the table, I decided to let it slide because at least that activity held zero danger of anything breaking, spilling, or staining—which in my book was a trifecta. The fact that I had to drink my coffee black that night was a small price to pay for keeping him quietly occupied.

Actually, there was one minor incident before the night was over. Midway through eating our entrees, a waiter approached the table next to ours with a four-tiered dessert cart. Brendan was transfixed as he watched each diner go around the table and pick out the dessert of his or her choosing. After everyone had made their selection, the waiter began to head off towards another group sitting over in the opposite direction from us. Brendan placed his hands on the table, stood upright on top of the phone books, pointed towards the retreating cart, and declared “I WANT CAKE” in a voice that rang throughout the dining room.

Gretchen burst out laughing and it was all I could do not to join in. I quickly shushed Brendan and sat him back down, and told him that he could have some cake as long as he behaved and finished up the rest of his lingui…err, spaghetti. Fortunately the rest of the meal went by without incident, and Brendan definitely earned every bite of his cake as a reward, even if the sleeves of his jacket wound up sporting brand new dark chocolate stains. At least they both matched on each arm...

We walked Gretchen to her car and she smiled broadly as she thanked us both for a wonderful evening. She gave us each a kiss on the cheek and then Brendan and I headed back to our house for a long-overdue bedtime story. All in all, I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect night for my initial return to the dating scene.

It’s been eleven years since that dinner--Brendan is now 14 and has just entered high school as a freshman. He doesn’t have a girlfriend yet, but I can see that it won't be long before one will be in the picture. I’ve been thinking that maybe a little karma might be in order when he finally goes on his first date. I could tag along in a spiffy new seersucker suit, prop myself up at the table with some phonebooks, and build something fun with the condiments. The only difference would be that since I’d still be the dad, I could get dessert even if I didn’t finish all of my dinner. Come to think of it…
I WANT CAKE, TOO.

table for three.

2006-09-13T03:45:00.000-04:00

I quietly swore under my breath as I placed the phone back down onto its receiver. I had to be careful because my three-year old son Brendan was nearby in his room, but after receiving the same bad news repeatedly after several phone calls, my situation had started to become seriously desperate. I wracked my brain trying to come up with some option that I hadn't considered yet, but with a growing feeling of resignation I knew there was only one choice remaining to be made.

Brendan was sitting quietly at his desk drawing in a coloring book when I walked in. I went over to his closet and tried to pick out his nicest outfit. My eyes fell upon the light blue seersucker suit jacket and short pants that his grandmother had recently bought for him to wear at Easter. That would have to do. I reached into his closet to grab the new saddleshoes that went with his ensemble and called to him over my shoulder:

Hey, buddy--how about you run into the bathroom and brush your teeth extra quick.

You and Daddy need to be downtown for a date in an hour...

* * * * * * * *

Eight hours earlier that day I had been in the Criminal Justice Center prosecuting cases as an assistant district attorney. A witness who had flown up from Nashville was in my courtroom to testify against a person who robbed her before she had relocated for her job over a year ago. Another colleague of mine had been specially assigned to try her case.

Her name was Gretchen and throughout the morning we talked during the brief breaks between trials. She was naturally beautiful and had a very down-to-earth way about her. I found myself more and more attracted to her the longer we spoke. On an impulse I asked her to get something to eat with me when the judge announced a one-hour lunch recess.

The fact that I was feeling attracted towards anyone at that point was a new thing for me. In the year since my wife had passed away, my focus had been fixed squarely forward as I tried to balance the demands of a full-time job with my new role as a single parent. I hadn't even been remotely thinking about meeting someone during that time, but I had definitely begun to feel the beginning of an interest again that morning.

At lunch the conversation continued to flow easily back and forth between us. I hadn't mentioned anything yet about being a widower with a young son because in my experience, a lot of people's initial reaction to hearing about that was usually very emotional. I didn't think it was fair to drop something like that on Gretchen right before she was about to take the stand to testify about the night she had been robbed at gunpoint.

After the trial ended with a guilty verdict, we made plans to meet for dinner later that evening at a restaurant in Center City. She headed back to her parents' home in New Jersey, where she was staying until her flight back to Tennessee the next morning. We exchanged phone numbers and I spent the rest of the day in the courtroom trying the remaining cases on the list.

I hadn't been concerned about a babysitter because Brendan's grandmother was always glad to watch him anytime, even on a moment's notice. Except on this night she had tickets to go to the theater with a friend. It turned out that all of the babysitters I had called around our neighborhood had plans of one form or another as well. I ran through every conceivable person I could think of, and then reluctantly tried to reach Gretchen at her parents' house to explain why I needed to cancel our dinner for the evening.

Her mother answered the phone and explained that Gretchen had already left for the restaurant a little early just in case there was heavy traffic. She didn't have a cell phone, so I had no way to reach her enroute. I tried calling the restaurant to leave a message for her, but the hostess had too much trouble hearing me over all of the noise and activity during the dinner rush.

So at that point I was faced with two equally unpleasant options. Either I remained home with Brendan while Gretchen waited all alone in the restaurant, thinking I had simply blown her off after she drove for over an hour and paid money for tolls and parking to get there. Or I could just show up for our date at this intimate restaurant with a previously unmentioned three-year boy dressed like Richie Rich in tow.

This was not exactly how I had pictured my very first return to the dating scene. But I was the one who had set these events in motion, so there really was only one choice to be made. I buckled Brendan into his carseat and we headed off for the 8 pm reservation at The Astral Plane as 'The Farmer in the Dell' began to play on the car stereo. The thought occurred to me that while it was somewhat comforting to have a wingman along for my first date with anyone in over six years, ideally it would have preferable to have one along that didn't require the use of a booster seat...

"Offensive Waste of Time: 10-Yard Penalty"

2006-09-07T10:15:00.000-04:00

I was finishing up a legal motion that I had been writing all afternoon and had lost track of the time. Just before 6 o'clock, the Managing Partner of the law firm stopped in my doorway and told me come to the large conference room. As I followed him down the hallway I quickly ran through some worst-case scenarios in my head. All of the partners and senior associates were present, sitting around the main table with sober, intense looks on their faces. I went over to the last open seat at the far end of the room, and waited expectedly. The Managing Partner stood up and signaled for everyone's attention.

"All right. Before we begin, let's keep in mind that all decisions made tonight are final...and that any formal challenges will be resolved by the League Commissioner. We will now begin with Round One."

And with that, our firm's 2006 Fantasy Football Draft officially got underway.

* * * * * * * *

I had completely forgotten about that night's draft. To be honest, fantasy football was one of those things that I had always heard about but held zero interest for me. I love to play a number of sports, but if given the choice between spending a Sunday afternoon outdoors or parked in front of a TV watching overpaid athletes run around for a couple of hours--well, I'll chose the former everytime.

It became pretty clear that all of the attorneys were expected to join the firm's league, and I figured that it would be a good way to meet some of the other people around the office. Everyone was divided into teams of two, and together you took turns picking any current player in the NFL to make up your own 'fantasy' team. Then you tracked your players each weekend throughout the season using some complex scoring system.

A controversy quickly arose right at the outset. It apparently involved a new rule change about a player being placed on something called "waivers". I'd like to fill you in on what that means exactly, but right around then the pizza and beer arrived in the next room, and the only wavering I became aware of at that point was deciding on whether I wanted a Corona or a Miller Lite.

When I returned to my seat everyone had begun to focus intently among the piles of scouting reports that covered the conference table. From the looks of it, most of them had spent weeks of research trying to craft their winning selection strategy. It occurred to me that these middle-aged sports fanatics were the former jocks who had mocked my friends and I for playing Dungeons & Dragons back in junior high school. Now these same grown-up men were spending countless hours obsessing over make-believe football rosters. I felt the sudden urge to unsheathe my +2 Middle Finger of Scorn and wield it upon the room, but I wisely chose to tightly clutch the 10-sided dice in my pocket until the moment passed.

The whole process began to drag on as each team spent their full two minutes during each round huddled closely together, whispering furiously and pouring over their computer printouts before announcing their final decision. There was a decidedly different process when it came time for my partner and me to make our first pick:

HIM: (handing me his scouting chart)

Here's my top three choices for quarterback. What are your thoughts?

ME: (in mid-bite of pizza)

Is Roger Staubach still playing...??

HIM:

Not since 1979.

ME: (nodding decisively)

Then, yeah-let's go with Donovan McNabb...

I was pretty much relegated to crossing off the players on our master list as each team made their choice, and making the occasional beer run. The entire draft apparently went on for hours, but I had to leave halfway through to get ready for my son's first day of high school the following morning. My partner later filled me in on the final roster for our team, but I'm kind of clueless when it comes to the names of most pro athletes. I don't recall exactly, but I'm pretty sure we wound up with Dale Earnhardt, Jr. as our wide receiver and Michele Kwan at running back.

So, we'll see how the season goes. I suppose now I'll have to find out what channel ESPN is listed on DirectTV. Who knows, maybe I'll get hooked and join up for Fantasy Baseball, Fantasy Basketball, or Fantasy Bass Fishing. On second thought, maybe I'll start with Fantasy Women's Beach Volleyball. Now that is a sport that I could definitely imagine myself getting obsessed with for a few hours...

burning love...(Part II)

2006-08-30T21:38:00.000-04:00

Casting aside my grade-school training to 'Stop...Drop...and Roll', I made my way through the thick black smoke pouring out of the breakroom and started mashing the buttons on the microwave until it finally sputtered to a stop. All right, yes--in 20/20 hindsight perhaps 5 minutes on full power was a bit much to warm up one pound of gourmet popcorn. But in my defense, a microwave oven was relatively new technology to me as a 20-year old male college student in 1987. I had only just recently got the hang (more or less) of cooking frozen pizza in the toaster oven.

After the sizzling, crackling, and hissing finally died down, I tried to break through the hardened, pitch-black shell of what had moments (well, 4:48 minutes) ago been the centerpiece of my gourmet anniversary treat. I was able to pry a few pieces of semi-scorched popcorn from the innermost molten core, but they turned out to bear a striking resemblence in both texture and flavor to a Kingsford charcoal briquet. The entire mess was unsalvageable. The irony was that had the whole carbonized mass continued to break down through its molecular structure for just another minute or two, I probably would have ended up with a nice diamond to give her for an anniversary gift.

I'm pretty sure I went out and bought chocolates or some other non-combustible substitute for the gourmet popcorn, and hoped that the other gifts would still make the occasion special for her. I know that a 3-month anniversary might not seem like a such a big deal to most people, but Karen and I had been in unique situation. We had both arrived from different parts of the country to take part in the same semester-long internship program that ran from February through May. We knew that any potential relationship was predestined to end on a specific date, but the attraction was so strong between us that we decided to go ahead in spite of that and make the most of each day we had together.

So this single anniversary would be the only one we would share before we both headed off across two time zones back to our homes in less than a month. It was actually my first anniversary with anyone, ever. Karen had been the first girl I had ever dated. Not for a lack of effort on my part, but up to that point all through high school and college the girls had considered me the funny, smart-aleck boy in the nice sweaters and courdoroys (...thanks, Mom.) They had all been vying to become the next girlfriend of the star quarterback or all-star point guard. Apparently, dating the sixth man on the golf team didn't hold quite the same social cache...

But Karen told me that it was my sense of humor that had attracted me to her in the first place. For me, it was the way her eyes would light up whenever she smiled. She was the first girl that I fell in love with. And one night as we stood beneath a brilliant moon on the end of a pier overlooking the dark ocean, she was the first girl to tell me, "I love you." The cold February wind that swept up from the waves at that moment didn't stand a chance.

Our anniversary turned out just fine in spite of my little mishap earlier in the day. In fact, it wound up making the day even better. As soon as I met up with Karen at lunch to celebrate, the tell-tale wisps of smoke still lingering about my body were a dead-giveaway that something had been up. By the time I finished describing the calamity in the employee break room, there were tears of laughter streaming down her face in delight. She let me know that as far as she was concerned, that little fossilized lump of charred popcorn meant more to her than a dozen boxes of chocolate from anyone else.

* * * * * * * *

We both knew that a long-distance relationship wouldn't be practical. I saved up and flew out to Chicago once towards the end of the summer. For two more days I was able to experience that feeling of sheer happiness just from being with her. We kept in touch less and less over time, calling each other up once every couple of years around a major event. She is now a very successful attorney with her own firm in Chicago, and is married with two boys.

Once, sometime after her wedding, she shared something very special. She said that until she had met her husband, none of the other guys she had dated had come close when she compared them to her memories of me, because she had known that my love for her had been heartfelt and sincere. That meant more than anything else she could have said, because I had felt the same way. My first time in love may have lasted for only a few, brief months, but somewhere deep in the quiet of my heart, the memories still remain like a warm ember--forever glowing and never to be extinguished.

HNT(27) Driven to distraction.

2006-08-24T01:11:00.000-04:00

Not that I'm complaining, but work has really kicked up a notch in the last month or so and has kept me constantly on the go.

I haven't had alot of time to come up with anything very creative for HNT recently, so here's a pic I took on my cellphone just as I pulled up to a courthouse for an all-day deposition on Monday.

Yeah, I know that under the letter of the law it's not technically a valid HNT shot,
but hey--
sue me.

:)
hhnt

-----------------------------------------

burning love...

2006-08-23T01:25:00.000-04:00

Everything was just about in place. I was in Washington, D.C. during the spring semester of my junior year working as an intern at the Securities and Exchange Commission. On this particular day in April I was hard at work putting the finishing touches on a very important project: the celebration of the third-month anniversary of my first date with Karen, another intern who I met on my first night in the city and had quickly fallen head over heels for.

Karen was from Chicago and had introduced me to the wonders of gourmet popcorn. Her favorite kind was caramel and cheese popcorn mixed together in a microwave until both melted together into a sweet, warm chewy mass. Earlier that morning I had hopped on a bus over to a shop in Georgetown to pick up a half-pound bag of each flavor, and later went down to the employee kitchen/lounge at the S.E.C. to put the mixture into the microwave. I punched the numbers into the timer and then went up two floors to my cubicle to gather up the other gifts: a white, plush Gund teddybear (also her favorite), a Boynton coffee mug (coffee + Boynton=double favorite), and flowers.

As I stepped off of the elevator on my way back down to the lounge, a strange premonition slowly came over me that something was amiss. A smell almost identically similar to that of burning carbon hit my nostrils and immediately confirmed it. As the heavy black clouds began to roil along the top of the ceiling out from the kitchen and spread into the main research library, I had a vision of the popcorn, the anniversary, and potentially my entire college semester, going up in smoke before my very eyes.

* * * * * * * *

coda

2006-08-15T19:35:00.000-04:00

Val had come down with a fever and had gone straight home after her last appointment for the day. She asked if I could stop by her office to pick up her laptop. I had just begun to shut down the open programs when a new email in her inbox from an exboyfriend entitled "re: Last weekend" caught my eye. My curiosity won out, and as the message unfolded before my eyes, the world as I thought I had known it suddenly flew apart.

* * * * * * * *

She had apologized over and over and swore that it had been a reckless act that was never meant to hurt me. I knew in my heart that she was sincere in her regret and anguish. She moved out that weekend and over the course of several emotional and difficult months of separation we agreed to attend counseling together while still living apart. After a number of months we both reached an honest understanding of how things had come to that point.

The truth is that our marriage had been in the process of unraveling long before things came to light that day in October. In addition to the love that we genuinely felt for each other, we both shared an equally powerful shortcoming: a desire to avoid conflict. I knew it had been a huge change in lifestyle for her to move into my house and try to adapt to living with a young child. On top of that, almost immediately after the wedding she had been promoted to a challenging new position with enormous added responsibility.

I would look for every opportunity I could to do things to ease her stress and make our home a place of comfort to return to at the end of the day. I know that she appreciated all that I did and she was just as determined to make sure that Brendan and I felt just as cared for.

But over time, one thing after another began to pile up. I have attention deficit disorder, and late bills, forgotten appointments, and never-reached items on the to-do list are just a few of the things that can come with that condition.Too late, we saw the importance of confronting those situations head-on as they occurred, but back then we were each privately worried that raising them with the other person would only amplify the stress around the house.

I know that none of those things are a justification for what happened, but I realize that they were the major factors that led up to Valerie taking an irrational action. Its possible to forgive something without making an excuse for it. And with the act of forgiveness, it is our self that we are truly setting free in the first place.

* * * * * * * *

Valerie and I met in October 2001, were engaged in February 2002, married in December 2002, separated permanently in October 2004, and officially divorced in March 2006. She's since moved to a new job in another state several hours away and now we keep in touch only through sporadic emails. It's not the outcome either one of us ever pictured up on the altar as we exchanged our vows, but we've both come to realize that it was for the best.

I certainly never imagined that I would be widowed and divorced before I even turned 40. But I try to take away at least one positive thing from each event as it occurs, and now I see how vital it is to be willing to address conflict head on with open communication. Romantic gestures, both big and small, are important throughout a successful relationship. But in the end, even a Valentine serenade can turn into a terrible cacophany if just the smallest dissonance is allowed to remain ignored.

I have no idea what the future may hold in terms of other relationships, or what form may be best suited for me. I'm still pretty much a work in progress. But I'm getting there. For now, I'm just going to focus on trying to make the right choices for myself in each situation, so that I can continue to grow into a better person.

Come what may.

Come what may (verse two)

2006-08-12T19:19:00.000-04:00

I was down on one knee, holding the ring out before me. I had just asked Valerie to marry me, and she was sitting there in stunned silence, her hand covering her mouth and her eyes brimming with tears. She nodded her head until she could catch her breath, and then finally said out loud: 'Yes.' The lobby burst into applause as I slipped the ring onto her finger, and I can remember the people on the second and third level balconies leaning over and looking down on us with smiles.

After the concert, we had dinner at a fancy french restaurant, and then went over to a hotel to check into a suite that I had reserved just for the occasion. I had arranged for roses, chocolate-covered strawberries, and champagne to be already in the room waiting for us. Valerie was beside herself, still trying to take it all in. I jokingly said that Plan B had involved me popping the question on the Jumbotron between innings at a Phillies game.

We set a date and got started on all of the details of the wedding planning. We were married at the main chapel at Villanova just after Christmas in 2002. Brendan was the ringbearer and after we had exchanged our vows, the priest gathered the three of us together for a special blessing. The day was filled with joy and promise.

Valerie moved in and we began to redecorate the house room by room so that it would start to become ours together. We quickly came up with a good way to split up the routine chores, based on each of our strengths and weaknesses. We made it a point to travel to someplace new each year to get some time away for just the two of us. We were very much in love and committed to growing together with each passing day. It was the most content that I had felt in a very long time.

* * * * * * * *

I was sitting alone in Valerie's office, her laptop open before me. It was almost three years to the day after we had first met. I had just discovered an email and was sitting there in stunned silence, my hand covering my mouth and my eyes brimming with tears. I shook my head until I could catch my breath, and then finally said out loud: 'No...'

Come what may

2006-08-10T14:22:00.000-04:00

The lobby began to fill with people at the start of intermission for the Philadelphia Orchestra's Valentine Concert. I was there with someone that I had been seeing for several months, and that night also happened to be my date's birthday. The crowd continued to fan out beneath the sprawling glass and chrome ceiling of the newly built Kimmel Center. We made our way over towards an enormous grand piano placed off to the side, where two young women in formal dresses were running through some scales and leafing through pages of sheet music. I sat the birthday girl down on a nearby chair and received an inquistive look as I walked over towards the front of the piano. I nodded over at the two women and stepped up to a microphone as the first notes began to play.

* * * * * * * *

Valerie and I met at a Halloween Party in October 2001--she was in a bridesmaid’s gown for her costume (“Always a bridesmaid, never a bride”) and I was wearing an authentic WWII paratrooper uniform. We went on our first date the following week and we both agreed early on to skip the usual dating games and just let things develop naturally at their own pace. Things took off pretty fast from there and we soon realized that there was a genuine connection between us.

Since Valerie’s birthday was on Valentine’s Day, I wanted to do something to make it truly special. We had recently watched ‘Moulin Rouge’ together and the song “Come What May” had been stuck in my head for days afterwards. The lyrics seemed perfect and thankfully it was within my vocal range. I contacted the manager of Kimmel Center to get permission to perform the song in the lobby during intermission, and made arrangements with some local musicians to rehearse together a few times before the night of the concert. When the actual performance began, the first half of the program was a total blur. I spent the majority of it sitting in my seat constantly repeating the lyrics over and over in my head.

* * * * * * * *

The grand piano gave the notes a rich, clear sound that soon rose above the ambient noise of the lobby. One by one, several heads throughout the crowd started to turn in the direction of the music. I began to pat the outside of my pant leg in time with the rhythm as the introduction reached its final measures. I was doing it partly out of nervousness and also to help count off the beats until the cue for the first vocal entrance. But mainly I wanted to reassure myself that the box holding the engagement ring was still right there in my pocket.

past the need of words

2006-07-31T20:11:00.000-04:00

"What he knew, what he had discovered tonight, was that his recaptured love of existence had not been given back to him by the return of his desire for her-but that the desire had returned after he had regained his world, the love, the value and the sense of his world-and that the desire was not an answer to her body, but a celebration of himself and of his will to live.

He did not know it, he did not think of it, he was past the need of words, but in the moment when he felt the response of her body to his, he also felt the unadmitted knowledge that that which he had called her depravity was her highest virtue--this capacity of hers to feel the joy of being, as he felt it."

Dualities

2006-07-25T02:18:00.000-04:00

I saw this on Delirium's blog and thought it was a pretty clever idea. Feel free to make a guess. I'll highlight my own answers later in the week.

Pick one word from each pair that you think describes me the best from what you may have read so far on this blog and leave it in the comments...
____________________

*dominant or submissive
*logical or intuitive
*vanilla or rocky road (ice cream)
*social or loner
*vanilla or kinky (sex)
*cute or sophisticated
*glass half-full or glass half-empty
*kitten or puppy
*warm flannel sheets or sleek satin
*leader or follower
*quiet or talkative
*spontaneous or planned
*teddy bear or porcelain doll
*early-riser or night-owl
*hiking or window shopping
*Wall Street Journal or Entertainment Weekly
*tequila or vodka
*steak or sushi
*top or bottom
*bare foot or shoes
*jeans or slacks
*boxers or briefs (boxer briefs)
*tender or rough (can be either-depending on the situation)
*aware or dreamy
*small-town or big city (at heart--but I enjoy living in a big city)
*well-groomed or sexy
*nerd or jock
*Total or Cocoa Krispies (I have quite a sweet-tooth)
*brains or brawn
*common sense or book smarts
*Tory or Whig
*Atkins Diet or Pie-of-the-Month Club
*O-Negative or A/B-Positive
*tomato or tomato

Musical Monday#3--The Diary of Jane

2006-07-24T01:23:00.000-04:00

THE DIARY OF JANE (Breaking Benjamin)

I was surfing around the radio this weekend when I caught this song by Breaking Benjamin just as it began to play. Right away, I was drawn in by the underlying melody and rhythm. By the third time I heard the refrain, the actual words started to sink in:

Something's getting in the way,

something's just about to break.

I will try to find my place

in the diary of Jane.

As I burn another page,

as I look the other way.

I still try to find my place

in the diary of Jane.

So tell me how it should be.

This is the first song from their new album, Phobia, which will be released on August 8.

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

HNT(26) Adult Swim

2006-07-20T00:01:00.000-04:00

During the summer days when I was growing up, there was a certain 15-minute window every hour where time would seem to slow down and actually stand still.

I am referring, of course, to the discriminatory, age-biased practice known as the "adult swim"--where the lifeguards would clear the pool of all of us noisy kids to give the grown-ups some scheduled time for relaxation.

We would reluctantly drag ourselves out of the water and sit forlornly on the concrete along the edge of the pool, where we huddled like sunburned refugees, waiting for the shrill blast of the whistle that would signal the reprieve of our temporary exile.

All summer long my friends and I would wage a battle of wits with the lifeguards. We would begin by creeping closer and dipping just one foot into the water. If that didn't arouse an alarm, we would nonchalantly hang our legs over the side up to our knee.

The next move required stealth and coordination, and had to be timed perfectly when the lifeguard's attention was drawn to the opposite end of the pool. Using the thin ladder as cover, we would try to slip all the way into the water and make our way down to the bottom of the deep end.

The payoff was a few more minutes out of the sun in the icy cold water, with the added thrill of risking a 3o-minute suspension if you got caught.

Of course, now that I'm a member of the grown-up club (at least chronologically), I would support a constitutional amendment creating a mandatory 45-minute adult swim every hour, with limited exemptions for the remaining quarter hour to be issued to the quietest and most docile children who qualified.

* * * * * * * * *

On the one hand, I long for that feeling of aimless, carefree summer days spent swimming, riding my bike, and exploring the banks of the creek that ran through the woods near our house.
On the other hand, I certainly appreciate the means and ability to enjoy select weekends in scenic locations that honor the phrase "charge it to my room..."

* * * * * * * * *

So, for all of you other kids-at-heart out there,
everybody in the pool.
We won't worry about keeping track of the time. We'll just plunge in feet first, and remember what it feels like to steal a few minutes for ourselves once again...

hhnt.

-----------------------------------------

one hundred percent.

2006-07-12T13:19:00.000-04:00

"Knowing what you know now, would you change the past?"

Someone that I had been briefly involved with asked me that question recently. We had met when I was dealing with an ongoing personal setback and not looking to meet anyone new. But I had thought it was worth taking the chance to spend time with someone who captured my imagination.

It had also felt good to reach towards something positive again amid all the other uncertainty going on. I didn't realize until too late that she had felt (understandably) overwhelmed by my intensity.

Later I got in contact to let her know that I regretted making her feel uncomfortable. Towards the end of the discussion she raised the question at the top of this post.

I've thought about the broader nature of that question a lot since then.

Last weekend I received an email from an online personals service. They had ranked the profiles of twelve women with whom I shared a number of mutual interests. I had signed up for an ongoing subscription back in the fall, shortly before becoming laid off. I had exchanged some emails with a few people initially, but soon put my time and energy towards finding a new job and pretty much forgot about my account there.

Usually I would just delete the scheduled weekly emails as soon as they came in, but this time my eye was drawn towards a single photograph right away. It took a second or two before I even realized whose picture it actually was.

It seemed that the computer had calculated that we were a 78% match. I read her profile and recognized again the things that had attracted me towards her in the first place.

I spent a moment thinking if things might have gone another way if we had met now, under better circumstances. I know that back then I was much further away from 22% of the person who appears in my profile today.

I've come to understand that ultimately it wasn't just the timing of when we met that affected the course that things took. My response towards her was based on something deeper as well.

I don't mean to be overly analytical, and I know that there are many people who have faced much greater hardships than myself, but the fact is that I've experienced a number of losses in my life so far with the death of a spouse and both parents.

In the past when I would see a situation that might potentially lead to something really worthwhile, my first impulse was to immediately pursue it sooner rather than later. Most likely because I had experienced first-hand how quickly time can be cut short.

I get it now that while I can't change the fact that those events have already occurred, I can control how I let them shape my behavior in the present. It's my responsibility to keep things in the proper perspective, with more open communication with the other person to avoid a possible misunderstanding.

The percentage of how two people might potentially match up with each other is arbitrary. The only figure that really counts is how close I can come towards matching my own fullest potential, and to make a continued effort to always keep that number in sight.

I realized that I would not have reached that understanding today if I had not gone through that experience with that person back when I did.

So, knowing what I know now,

I wouldn't change the past.

But, knowing what I know now,

I can change the future.

Musical Monday#2: Galileo

2006-07-03T23:57:00.000-04:00

This week's song is "Galileo" by the Indigo Girls.

How long till my soul

gets it right?

Can any human being

ever reach that kind of light?

I call on the resting soul

of Galileo

King of night vision,

king of insight.

HNT(25) Beneath the surface...

2006-06-29T08:11:00.000-04:00

Last week I got a tattoo.

(***click on the photo to see where***)

I chose the Chinese symbol for 'destiny.'

I do believe that things happen for a reason sometimes.

Not that there's someone up there pulling the strings...

But every now and then particular events can come along and have a big impact on a person's life.

And the way that they respond during those moments can make a real difference in where they go from there.

I decided to get a tattoo now because I wanted to express on the outside the things I've been feeling within, particularly when it comes to relationships.

I've felt myself being drawn to a different type than I've usually been in, away from the traditional & conventional kind, and towards something with more intensity and less inhibition.

I've made some missteps along the way as I've tried to find the right balance.

But I look at it as part of a journey.

And make sure that I take something positive from each situation, and use it to become the best person that I can be going forward.

So when the next opportunity comes along, I'll be aware in the moment of the places that I have been, while I look ahead to the place where I'd like to be.

No one is pulling the strings.

It's up to each of us to make our own destiny.

hhnt.

-----------------------------------------

Philadelphia freedom

2006-06-26T09:25:00.000-04:00

I didn’t have time to upload a song for Musical Monday today, but if I did, ‘Philadelphia Freedom’ would have been my pick for this week.

On Saturday morning I dropped Brendan off at summer camp. It’s a four-week overnight program, so for the next month I will have the luxury of unstructured time every single day. I plan to take full advantage of it—staying downtown after work to see more of the city at night, trying new restaurants in the area, heading up to NY for an improv show, and just leaving myself open to whatever else the day might bring.

I also want to get away somewhere for a few days. I don’t have any particular destination in mind—right now my idea is to play Travelocity roulette and keep my options open. My plan is just to head off to whichever place sounds the most intriguing with the best deal at the moment. I'll keep an overnight suitcase packed and ready to go--anything I forgot to throw in will be picked up when I eventually arrive at wherever it is that I’m going.

I figure the important thing is just getting there in the first place.

Stop me before I sing again...

2006-06-21T18:53:00.000-04:00

Last night I karaoked.

Three times, to be exact.

A friend of mine had called earlier in the day and said she was getting a group together to go out for a night of karaoke next week. It had been awhile since I had grabbed a microphone and channeled my inner rock star, so I figured that a solo practice run might be a good idea. Of course, “good idea” turned out to be a relative term.

Here’s a helpful tip from Karaoke 101: Before you begin to project your electronically amplified voice across a bar filled with a crowd of strangers, you should probably be somewhat familiar with the notes and actual words of the song that you will be performing ahead of time.

I had heard “Hands Down” by Dashboard Confessional during the morning commute into work, and it had been in my head all day. Once I got home I downloaded the song and ran through it a couple of times while I made dinner. I thought it sounded okay in my kitchen (the best acoustic spot in my house), but apparently they must have used a different kind of tile or something to cover the walls of the place that I’d be singing in later that night...

My name got called by the DJ within 5 minutes after arriving at the bar and telling him my selection. Things got off to a decent start, but as the notes began to climb higher towards the end of the song, my vocal cords showed a sudden stubborn reluctance to follow along in spots. Helpful Karaoke hint #2: Allow at least 10 minutes after your first drink of Southern Comfort to fully take effect before operating heavy karaoke machinery.

I returned to my seat and seriously considered wiping my prints from the bar and making a quick getaway from the scene, but when the two whitest girls on the planet got up to sing Kanye West’s “Gold Digger,” I decided to hang around for a little bit longer. In hindsight, I had sounded fine, but it’s always strange to hear how your voice sounds from outside of yourself.

I redeemed myself somewhat about an hour later when I sang Simple Plan’s “Welcome to My Life.” Actually, my redemption came courtesy of ‘Billy’, the guy who immediately preceded me. He looked like Michael Douglas’ older, seedier cousin, with his slicked-back hair, too tight muscle shirt, pleather pants, and a weird orange complexion from some fake tanning product. I thought that the DJ might have cued up the wrong track when the first few measures of U2’s “Pride (In the Name of Love)" began to play, but Billy dove right in.

He certainly had an interesting delivery to his performance, turning his back almost completely to the audience and hunching forward to read the words as they appeared on the 10-inch monitor next to the DJ’s table. Unfortunately the speakers projected every tortured note back towards us in perfect surround sound. I know that U2 is a very socially-conscious group advocating world-wide peace and charity, but they are also Irish after all. I have no doubt that had they been present in the bar, the Edge would have thrown Billy into a headlock while Bono rained blows down upon him until the desecration ended. I’m sure that the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. would have looked down in approval as well.

There were actually several very talented singers who took the stage throughout the evening. The best song of the night belonged to two women who brought the house down with “Take Me or Leave Me” from ‘Rent.’ And two college kids got plenty of intentional laughs with their full-throttle performance of Bon Jovi’s “Shot Through the Heart.” Another girl did a beautiful job singing Eva Cassidy’s version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Mindful of the saying that bad things tend to happen in 3’s, I decided to press my luck and go for one more song before last call. By that point I had completely wound down from my day and was just caught up in the fun of singing again after such a long time away. “Black” by Pearl Jam was my third choice, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed several heads around the bar begin to nod along as I sang. Even Billy got back up again later on to sing a not completely cringe-inducing version of Frank Sinatra’s “Fly Me to the Moon.”

All in all, it was definitely a worthwhile night, for no other reason than to have a vocal tune-up before going out with my friends next week. And in the end I realized that no one goes there to hear pitch-perfect singing, but just to let loose for a couple of hours and have fun. It felt good to get up and sing before a crowd again. I’m thinking that it might not be so long next time until I do it again.

“Ladies and gentlemen, TJ has left the building...”

Thank you very much.

Musical Monday#1--Let Go

2006-06-19T12:07:00.000-04:00

My debut for Musical Monday is the song 'Let Go', from the movie "Garden State."

Whenever I hear it I think back to a rainy Sunday afternoon, listening to this soundtrack while stretched out on a couch, with my arms wrapped around a beautiful girl as she slept with her head resting on my chest.

Earlier that morning in that same spot, things had gone unexpectedly from friendship to another level. It was the only time the two of us were together in that way, but that was due more to our circumstances, and not out of regret or second thoughts.

So let go,
let go.
Jump in.
Oh, well what you waiting for?
It's all right.
'Cause there's beauty in the breakdown...

For my part, I'm glad that we both found ourselves letting go that rainswept morning. We wound up sharing something that could be held onto long after the skies began to clear.

HNT(24) inward looking out.

2006-06-15T00:45:00.000-04:00

On this blog I've shown glimpses of myself through both words and pictures.

What I didn't expect was that in the process, I'd reveal some things that were new to me as well.

The past couple of posts have focused inward, using written words to expose feelings that had remained undeveloped for years.

I felt it was time to begin reflecting outward again. I thought this photo would be a good way to start.

And there are still plenty of images yet to be captured...

hhnt.

~vistas~

2006-06-13T07:01:00.000-04:00

A steady wind blew forcefully across the top of the dunes. Thin trails of white sand swept along the surface of the empty beach as they twisted their way down to the sea. I walked along the shoreline in an attempt to quiet an unsettling feeling that had remained within me for days since the 11th anniversary of my wife's death at the end of May. The open view and constant sound of crashing waves in the background helped bring focus to my thoughts.

The beach was practically deserted except for a few families determined to brave the overcast skies and cold wind that had been blowing all day. Three little girls played in the surf up ahead, looking like tiny sandpipers as they skittered down to the water's edge on tiptoe and then raced back up the beach just ahead of the advancing tide. Off in the distance a young boy was flying a kite. Actually from the looks of things, the kite appeared to be flying him. The bottoms of his feet hardly seemed to touch the sand as he ran on and on with the wind.

My thoughts went back to an earlier summer spent just a little bit further up the coast on Brigantine beach. Brendan had been about two and a half years old and spent every moment possible playing in the ocean. Liz and I would stand on either side of him in the knee-deep water, holding his hands and shouting in mock suspense as a wave would begin to roll in steadily towards us. Each time he would burst into fits of laughter as his body was lifted into the air at the very last moment while the wave rolled beneath him, and then would grip our fingers in eager anticipation with his small hands as we waited for the next one to approach. Within five minutes after Liz dried him off with a towel upon our return to the beach chairs, he would take off running across the sand down to the water's edge once again. That went on all throughout the day until he eventually wore himself out, finally coming to rest as he slept in his mother's arms while they sat under the cool shade of a beach umbrella.

* * * * * *

Last night I looked through some photographs from that summer. In the past, I had always felt a strong sense of sadness whenever I got to this picture and saw the look of contentment on Brendan's face.
It would tear me up inside thinking that no matter how many hugs and kisses I would give Brendan for both Elizabeth and myself in the years to come, he would never again get to feel the comfort that can only be found in a mother's embrace.

This time I considered things from a different perspective. I realized that the one person who had experienced even more joy than Brendan on the beach that day was Elizabeth. All she had ever truly wanted out of life was to become a mother, and she cherished every day spent with her little boy more than the one before it. A series of random coincidences had brought us together on the first night we met, which led to us getting married and eventually starting a family. Another equally arbitrary chain of events fell into place which led up to the night that she was taken away so suddenly.

The expression on Liz's face in that photo left no doubt in my mind that had she been given the choice, she wouldn't have traded those three brief years loving our son for the chance to live one hundred years without him if we had never met. And as I continued to gaze at that moment captured so many years ago I had a glimpse of another moment yet to come. Through her eyes I could picture the day when the three of us will be together again, finding ourselves in each other’s arms as we meet upon a distant shore.

encore

2006-06-08T19:49:00.001-04:00

The final notes of the overture lingered for a moment and then quietly faded into the darkness. I was sitting among the audience at the Academy of Music as The Savoy Company’s final performance of ‘The Mikado’ got underway. The curtain rose and the set came alive as the men’s chorus began the show’s opening number. Several scenes later the women’s chorus made their entrance, gliding in from offstage beneath flowing kimonos. I watched as they arranged themselves into smaller groups all across the set, moving their silk fans through the air in perfect unison while they sang. After a few moments the director of the show leaned over in his seat and said in a low whisper, “She was standing over there, downstage right.” I was his guest at the show that evening and appreciated the gesture, but his words were not necessary. I had already known for certain where she had been the moment my eyes came to the empty space onstage.

* * * * * * * *

Twenty-four hours earlier, my wife Elizabeth had been in this theater performing with the cast on the opening night of the show. Eight hours later a doctor stood before me telling me that she was gone. Both of our families had rushed to our apartment that morning as soon as I gave them the terrible news. The day was spent consoling each other and repeating the same details over and over in endless phone calls.

At one point I called the director of the show to let him know what happened. After he got over the initial shock he began to talk about a dedication that evening in her honor. I understood his intentions but made him promise me that he would not say anything to anyone before the show. The news of her death would be a huge blow to the cast, and I knew that its devastating impact mere hours before the opening curtain was the last thing Liz would have wanted. The director said he would make up some excuse for her absence and would only tell the choreographer beforehand. They would wait until the following morning before spreading the word among the rest of company.

As we spoke, I decided to make one other request of him. The world had become completely surreal since I had gone to sleep the previous evening, and I was trying to come to grips with what had happened. The guilt that I felt when I pictured her sitting alone in the dark during her final moments was unbearable. I wanted to see where she had spent her last hours doing what she loved most, singing and dancing alongside some of her closest friends. I hoped that it might begin to replace the images and sounds that had flooded my mind constantly over the past several hours.

Little by little, I began to get drawn into the show. The vivid costumes, elaborate sets, intricate choreography, and beautiful music all unfolded in splendor before my eyes. The sense of joy pouring out from the stage gave me a moment’s peace, as I imagined the expression of delight that would have been on Liz’s face the night before. As the finale built to its finish and the chorus members sang with all of their hearts to fill the entire theater with sound, it was Elizabeth’s voice that I heard.

* * * * * * *

Three years later I found myself once again in the Academy of Music, listening as the orchestra began to play another overture. Except this time I was standing in the wings offstage, a member of the chorus in that year’s production of ‘The Pirates of Penzance.’ It was opening night and the cast had been buzzing with energy in the moments beforehand, but I was nervous for a different reason. Earlier in the season the same director had approached me to see if our son could be a part of the show. He had an idea for a flashback scene that would take place onstage while the orchestra played during the overture. There was a role for a young boy and the first person that he had thought of was Brendan.

I watched with anticipation and pride as Brendan followed his mother’s footsteps onto the same stage that she had performed on during a night like this just a few years ago. He hit every one of his marks perfectly and acted with remarkable grace and presence for a six-year old standing before two thousand people in a gilt-covered opera house. I know that Elizabeth was there watching over him as well.

The rest of the show went smoothly and after the set was cleared everyone began to head off to the official cast party down the street. The crew turned down all of the lights in the theater except for a single bulb atop a stand at the front of the stage. There is an old tradition that one light should be left on in a theater at all times. The ‘ghost light’ is set out to welcome the souls of all those who have passed on to return to the stage and perform with each other once again.

I walked with Brendan out into the small circle of light that illuminated center stage. Together we tied a bouquet of flowers to the stand, eleven red roses from me and one pink rose from him. We said a quiet prayer and told Elizabeth that we loved her and missed her. After a moment we heard some of the cast offstage laughing and dueling in a mock sword fight. Brendan looked up at me in anticipation and I nodded my head in permission. I watched as our son ran off from the stage with pure delight, filled inside with his mother’s spirit and spreading her light out into the world before him.

nightmare

2006-06-04T22:50:00.000-04:00

Wake up...
I slowly became aware of hands shaking my shoulders as I began to come out of a heavy sleep.
The shaking grew more urgent.
Please, Tommy...wake up.
I opened my eyes to see my wife sitting at the edge of the bed, leaning over me with a worried look on her face. I had been home babysitting our 3-year old son while she had left several hours earlier to perform with a local theater group downtown. "What's the matter?" I asked, still a little groggy. "How was the show?"
Something's wrong...I can't breathe.

* * * * * * * *

I quickly sat up in bed and got the full story. Liz had skipped dinner before heading to the theater and ate some food that had been placed offstage for the cast just before the show began. She felt her lips, mouth, and throat begin to swell up, and had immediately recognized the symptoms of an allergic reaction. During intermission she repeatedly used her asthma inhaler and took some Benadryl that another cast member had offered. She felt a little better but decided to skip the cast party and instead began to head straight home. While driving on the expressway to our house, her condition took a sudden turn for the worse.

I tried to calm her down and set up a nebulizer machine with a mask that fit over her mouth to force the asthma medicine down into her lungs with compressed air. After several minutes her condition didn't seem to improve, so we began to get ready to go to the nearby hospital. She went downstairs to get her purse and search for a stronger inhaler with steroids, while I pulled on some jeans and carried Brendan from his bedroom. I had just reached the front door when I heard the engine of our car begin to roar furiously at full throttle from the parking lot outside.

I hurried past the other apartments and approached the open driver's side door. "Jesus, Liz. You're going to wake the whole neighbor--"
My words cut off as I looked down to see Elizabeth unconcious behind the steering wheel, her foot locked into position as it continued to push the gas pedal all the way to the floor. Brendan's hands pressed against his ears as I set him down beside the car. I reached in to turn off the engine and lifted Liz out of the seat so I could place her flat on the ground. I tried doing mouth-to-mouth but could see that my breaths were not reaching her lungs at all.

We lived about two miles from Chestnut Hill Hospital, which lay on the other side of Fairmount Park and could be reached by a single road that wound down to the bottom of the Wissahickon Gorge and climbed back up to Germantown Avenue on the other side. I quickly decided that driving her there would be much faster than waiting for an ambulance to reach us at this time of night. I strapped Brendan into his car seat and laid Liz out across the rear wheel wells of the compact 2-door car that we owned at the time. I took off through the park, steering with one hand and reaching behind me with the other to shake her as I called out her name. Brendan looked down and asked "Mommy, are you sleeping?" I told him that mommy was sick and that we were going to the doctor's to make her all better.

Right about that time I took a curve too fast and our car drifted off of the road. The driver's side front wheel slammed against a large rock and blew out. We were near the top of the hill on the other side of the park and just about a mile from the hospital. I threw the car in reverse and drove back onto the road. As we turned onto the main street leading to the hospital, the rubber tire came completely off of the axle. I continued to drive forward and could see sparks flying up past my windshield as the steel rim cut into the asphalt. The steering wheel kept pulling hard over to the left but I pressed down even harder on the accelerator, not caring if the car flew apart so long as it got her to the hospital in time.

* * * * * * * *

We pulled up to the ER less than a minute later. I ran inside and shouted for help. I went back to the car to lift Liz out and was met halfway by an orderly with a stretcher, which was immediately surrounded by several nurses and a doctor. They quickly pushed her through a set of security doors separating the treatment area from the waiting room, and from that point on she was out of my sight. A nurse explained that no one was permitted back there while the doctors treated her, and she led us to a private family waiting room with several chairs and a small bed. She promised to give me updates as soon as they knew anything. I dimmed the lights and tucked Brendan under the covers, climbing into bed next to him to wait until he fell asleep. I looked up at a clock to get my bearings and saw that it was just past one o'clock in the morning. The room became still as I lay beside my son, but no matter how hard I shut my eyes, I couldn't block out the sound of a screaming engine from piercing the silence.

HNT(23) ~undertow~

2006-06-01T00:05:00.000-04:00

At the water's edge,
as the day begins to draw to an end.
Secure on the shore...
but feeling the steady pull of the waves
towards a horizon without limits.

hhnt

-----------------------------------------

Down the shore (day 2)

2006-05-31T16:01:00.000-04:00

We made our way back down to the beach Sunday afternoon, and I introduced the group to my most important purchase from the day before. Over many summers of trial and error at Brigantine, my cousins and I developed our own version of beach paddleball. It combines the action of tennis with the simplicity of ping-pong, with a little beach volleyball mixed in. Basically you draw a court 30 feet wide by 60 feet deep with a line right down the middle representing the net. It has to be done during low-tide so that there's enough hard sand to play on. The ball is hit into the other player's court, who then has to return it after one bounce. It's more a game about placing shots with precision than simply going for power slams, because otherwise you just wind up chasing the ball down the beach all day.

Most of the group was still dragging from the night before, except for Tim who was off swimming to Atlantic City or something. Mira took me up on my challenge and after a very short learning curve was placing shots all over my side of the court like a pro. We weren't keeping official score but she was definitely ahead on points when we were through. Actually, winning games isn't the big attraction for me. I'll play all day just for that one shot where the ball is hit deep over towards the far side of the court and I have to take off sprinting to chase down the ball from behind and hit a blind shot over my shoulder back towards my opponent's court. Then you have to dig in your heels to stop your momentum and spin around to race back to cover your side of the court which is now completely wide open. It was during a desperate dive to return a backhand shot that I picked up this little souvenir from our match that afternoon.

By midday I had to head back to Philly to pick up Brendan from his grandmother's to take him and one of his friends to a Pearl Jam concert later that night. The last day of the holiday weekend was spent going to see X-men 3 at the movies with him and catching up on some household chores. I was pretty tired by Monday evening, but also very glad for the change of scenery and the chance to spend time with new friends. I have a feeling that there will be plenty of great weekends ahead this summer.

But for now I've got to head off to bed and set my alarm early to hit the gym tomorrow morning before work. With a fitness instructor and an apparent tennis pro for roomates, I'm going to need to step things up a notch. As a matter of fact I've been jogging in place and doing bench presses the entire time that I've been writing this post. And I think I just heard the timer go off in the kitchen telling me that my all-natural soy energy shake has finished blending. Okay--I may have added an ingredient or two of my own to the recipe. I'm pretty sure that Twizzlers are low-carb anyways...

Down the shore...

2006-05-29T23:56:00.000-04:00

(Edited version--part 2 tomorrow)

Early last week, I met with the headhunter who had placed me at my new firm and we got around to talking about our plans for the Memorial Day weekend. She mentioned that she would be going "down the shore" to a house in Avalon, NJ. That particular phrase seems to be unique to Philly and South Jersey. It's not "going down to the shore" or "heading out to the beach", but simply down the shore. It's as if the people here decided that its more important to just get out of town for the weekend as quickly as possible than waste time on frivolous things like prepositions.

She had heard of some people who were still looking to fill an open spot or two in their house and I thought that the time felt right to join one this summer. Last Tuesday at happy hour I met the woman who was the organizing everything, and she showed me some photos of the place and talked about the people who had already signed up. One hour turned into two and one pint turned into three and by the end of the evening I just had a feeling that this would be a good fit. I put down my deposit and became the 9th official member of their house.

Here's a pic of our place--we have the unit on the left-hand side. It has three bedrooms and baths, a full kitchen, and a big living room with vaulted ceilings. As soon as I opened the kitchen cabinet and was greeted by the familiar sight of a 1 lb. bag of Twizzlers and a box of Crunch-n-Munch, I began to feel right at home.

By the time I finally arrived on Friday night, most of the people had already been there for awhile and were hanging out on the 2nd-floor deck. I made my way up the stairs to find that they already had a chair and an open beer waiting for me. Little by little I started getting the hang of everyone's name and background. Kate was the organizer of the house and the one I had met for happy hour. Brian and Michelle had met in college (where they knew Kate) and had been married for three years. Brian was a doctor and Michelle turned out to be from my hometown in northcentral PA. Mollie was a consultant and Amy was a 6th grade teacher. Tim was a personal trainer, and Kate mentioned offhand that he and I would be sharing one of the bedrooms for the season.

I smiled enthusiastically and replied "great!", while I subtly returned my third slice of pizza back to the box and replaced my Yuengling Lager with a Coors Lite. Tim is actually a very down-to-earth, laid-back guy, but it had been a couple of weeks since I had been able to get to the gym and I had visions of waking up to 5 a.m. tae bo workouts and discussions about the benefits of creatine-enhanced tofu-flavored protein bars. I made a mental note to renew my subscription to Men's Health.

Saturday morning was spent driving around to pick up all of the stuff that I needed/forgot to pack for the total beach experience.
The first item on the list was buying a decent beach chair. When I saw the name on this model I knew that it was the one. It's called "The Big Kahuna", which was the nickname that my father gave himself as the self-annointed bodysurfing champion of Brigantine, NJ. Each summer growing up he taught all four of us about the proper body form and the mystical art of launching yourself at the perfect time to catch a wave just before it broke. For years he continued to be able to ride the waves farther in towards the beach than any of us.

This was my first view of the beach as I made my way down past the dunes in the early afternoon. A couple of people in the house had already been out enjoying the sun for a couple of hours, but I knew that I should pace myself in the quest for a savage tan this summer. I have a stubbornly fair complexion, the result of centuries of pale-skinned Scottish and Irish ancestors having contributed to my overall genetic make-up. Our family coat-of-arms features a can of Solarcaine and a beach umbrella.

I set my new chair up at the water's edge and soon lost myself in the pages of a great book with the constant roar of the ocean drowning out any distractions. I went swimming for a little bit and caught a few waves that would have made the Big Kahuna proud. I finally made my way back up to the house around 5 o'clock and met the final arrival for the weekend. Mira was the other attorney in the group and had also joined up at the last minute through the referral of a friend.

Saturday night we all walked together five blocks down the street to a bar called Jack's Place to hear an excellent band named Love Seed Momma Jump. The details are a little hazy but I think I bought the first round of shots and then everybody followed suit one after the other. We capped the night off by ordering a Fishbowl, which is simply a bowl filled with ice and multiple straws and some ungodly mixture of alcohol. We took turns finishing it off in groups of two and three, and fortunately the bar was within perfect stumbling distance back to our house after they finally announced last call.

Sunday morning I woke up with a wee bit of a hangover. I carefully stepped over Tim doing his 100th ab crunch in between our twin beds on my way to search for some Tylenol and a diet Coke. Some of the group began to tease me for passing out on the big sectional couch upstairs after we had returned from the bar. I had no memory of this but began to point out that after 2 a.m., the term 'fell asleep' would also seem to equally apply. I did have to concede that the photo on Mira's cell phone of me sprawled out fully-clothed still clutching a half-eaten piece of pizza in my hand did give some extra weight to their side of the argument. Somewhere beneath the Scottish Highlands one of my pasty ancestors rolled over in his grave. But there was no time to waste on hangovers because another perfect beach day lay ahead...

HNT(22) Taming the river wild

2006-05-25T01:30:00.000-04:00

Here's another pic from the whitewater rafting trip I went on last weekend.

I wondered how well the raft would respond on a swollen river with surging rapids, but in time I was able to take control with a firm grip, a deep stroke, and a hard, driving rhythm.

Even though I felt spent by the end of the fourth hour, I enjoyed the feeling of taking myself right up to the edge and then pushing just a little beyond.

I'm looking forward to my next ride soon...

Happy HNT!

-----------------------------------------

Going with the flow...

2006-05-22T01:30:00.000-04:00

Last week was a steady blur of activity at my new job making sure that everything was ready to go for a big trial scheduled to start this coming Monday up in Newark, NJ. The days just flew by, and before I knew it the weekend was here. First thing Saturday morning, I packed up my tent and sleeping bag and headed up to northeastern Pennsylvania with my son and his Scout troop for an overnight campout, with whitewater rafting scheduled as the main highlight of the day.

Our guide took us on a 10-mile trip through the upper gorge of the Lehigh River. With all of the rain that had fallen earlier in the week, the section of river that we would be going down consisted of mainly Class II & III rapids. The classification system ranges from Class I through VI--the former apparently being the equivalent of a baby pool and the latter commonly referred to as 'the afterlife.'

The whole trip would last 4 hours, with a break for lunch. Each raft held 5 scouts and 1 adult. It was pretty comical seeing the boys shouting commands at each other and spinning in circles shortly after we began, but soon they learned to work together and were able to thread their way through the very large rocks that were present along much of the river. Once we felt comfortable that they could navigate on their own, the three adults regrouped on our own raft so that the kids could enjoy marathon water battles between their patrols while we kept a close eye at a dry distance.

Of course, before I relinquished command of the raft that I had been supervising, I took the opportunity to live to out my own little "Master & Commander" moment. I organized the boys into launching a sneak attack upon the Head Scoutmaster's boat and explained each of their roles in the overall battle plan. We overtook them from the stern and then hit them with a full broadside of buckets and water guns that had been kept hidden in our raft up to that point. Russell Crowe would have been proud.

The trip downstream was a nice mix of scenic stretches of river (like the photo at the top of this post) and very intense sections of churning rapids. The rafts were big and not very responsive to quick maneuvering, so whenever we came upon rapids it required everyone's complete focus and concentration. If you were not paying attention you could suddenly find yourself being propelled towards a large rock that just kept growing bigger by the second, as the raft continued to be swept along caught in the momentum of the unrelenting current. When we finally pulled our rafts out of the river at the end of the 4 hours, we were all pretty exhausted.

Our campsite was actually on the grounds of the company that had organized the tour, and there were a bunch of other Scout troops up there for the weekend as well. A good number of Girl Scouts also happened to be mingled throughout the campground, which probably explained why we didn't have to hound the boys to wash up with actual soap and water like was usually the case. I think one of the older Scouts who actually had packed mouthwash and cologne might have earned his Personal Hygiene merit badge on the spot...

After the kids were all in their tents for the night, I pulled up a seat next to the campfire and got to enjoy an hour or so of uninterrupted reading, surrounded by tall trees and bright stars overhead as a backdrop. Ever since work had started two weeks ago, my reading had been limited to about 30 minutes during my daily commute on the train and a handful of moments over several nights before I fell fast asleep in bed. So it was pure bliss to get lost for awhile and find myself completely drawn into a book again. When the last of the firewood burned down, I discovered that I had covered more than one hundred pages. I was at such a good part of the story that I continued to read for a little bit more by flashlight after I had settled into my sleeping bag.

We woke up early and got our gear packed away after breakfast. Brendan and I actually had another highlight in store for the weekend on Sunday afternoon. My firm is constantly entertaining clients at professional sporting events, and when one had to back out at the last minute, the main partner of the firm stopped by my office to congratulate me on the work that I had been doing so far and to offer me two tickets to see the Phillies play the Boston Red Sox.

Our seats were right along the first base line, and I brought my camera along to snap a pic of our view.
And to top it off, the Phillies won 10-5.

After the game, Brendan went to go see one of his friends play in a student concert, and I stopped back into the office to tie up some last-minute loose ends for the trial. A few hours ago it dawned on me that I hadn't been to the grocery store in over a week, so it looks like Brendan might have to rough it with trail mix and s'mores for lunch tomorrow. In just a few hours, I'll have to drop him off early at his school and then head downtown to catch the 8 a.m. Amtrak train to Newark.

The truth is, I actually kind of enjoy this pace. Whether its steering my way down through the challenging rapids of a river or speeding along a track towards the constantly changing dynamic of a courtroom, I'm just glad to be moving forward in the first place.

namesake

2006-05-16T23:55:00.000-04:00

"I can still remember that day like it was yesterday..."

At some point each year before my birthday was officially over, my father would recite the same speech which began with the above sentence. "It was __ years ago this day that I drove your mother to the Rancocas Valley Hospital and waited for the nurse to come out and tell me that I had a son. I looked down to see you in your mother's arms, and as soon as I saw your face I knew for certain that I wanted to give you my name..."

Dad was a salesman for a living so he had a tendency to lay it on a little thick at times.

But he was absolutely thrilled to have a first-born son that could carry on the family tradition. I would eventually wind up sharing his exact initials right down to my confirmation name. He was the first one to start calling me TJ, which is short for 'Thomas James.' When my wife was pregnant with our son, we didn't want to know the sex of the baby beforehand. Dad would coyly ask if we had thought of any names if it was a boy, and eventually would make a comment about how proud he had been to pass on his name to me, and how nice it would be for that tradition to continue.

Tradition is a wonderful thing, but I was determined for my son to begin his life with his own unique identity free from anyone else's expectations. From my driver's license to my bank account to my Blockbuster card, there was always the constant reminder that I was a "Jr." Worse, just by adding the letter 'y' to the end of my name, a person could instantly make me feel like a little kid no matter what my actual age happened to be at the time. After law school, I held the title of Assistant District Attorney Thomas __________ to the violent criminals that I prosecuted and sent to state prison for multiple years with consecutive sentences. But as soon as I crossed back over the city limits of Williamsport on my way home for a holiday, I immediately reverted back to being Tommy to my parents' friends all over town. That always had a way of making me feel like a 9-year old right on the spot. If Neil Armstrong had been named 'Timothy', I am sure that people in his hometown would be turning to one another still to proudly remark, "Look, there goes Timmy--the first man to walk on the moon."

Hence, my son's name: Brendan.

Being a "Jr." had other expectations as well. Dad had gone to Villanova on a football scholarship in the fifties, and he had an immense feeling of pride when I chose to go to his alma mater after high school. The fact that I primarily based my decision to apply there on the thousands of very cute Catholic girls that I saw during my campus tour would have only slightly diminished his sense of legacy. A quick look at the photo at the top of this post gives you a little hint about his hope that his firstborn son might follow completely in his collegiate footsteps, but Dad would have to wait until my younger brother Chris was born to realize his ultimate wish of having a college football player in the family huddle. Hey, if Villanova had given scholarships for high scores on Atari, I would have been an All-American.

But along with being a namesake came other responsibilities. After my mom passed away nine years ago, Dad began a slow spiral downward in spirit and in health. His inner demons overtook him, and his drinking became more frequent and more severe. The salesman in him helped convince everyone that he was doing fine for awhile, but three years ago his physical condition got so worse that I had to force him to go to the hospital in the middle of the night and insisted that he move into my house when his doctor told us that he only had about six months to live.

Almost to the week after receiving that news, I came home from work one day to find that he had slipped into a coma while lying in his bed. As the oldest, I was the one with power of attorney, and I was at the hospital constantly to get the latest results from his doctors. But all of the tests indicated that his liver had completely failed, and the lack of oxygen in his blood had permanently affected his brain function. The other parts of his body were all working, but he would need to be kept on a ventilator and feeding tube until the rest of his organs finally gave out. My siblings began to scour the medical journals and online databases for information about a miracle cure, but every single doctor that I spoke with gave the same prognosis.

After a week of seeing him lying in that hospital bed without any brain activity or motor response, I felt that he wouldn't want to continue on that way. I knew that my younger brothers and sister could never live with the guilt, so late one night I drove over to the hospital on my own and asked the doctors one final time if there was a remote chance of him coming out of the coma with any type of awareness or ability to experience sensation. They explained once again that the damage was just too severe. I told them to go ahead and remove the ventilator, after they had assured me that he would not suffer.

I sat beside him in the darkness, thinking back on different moments from my childhood. Memories came flooding back of lazy summer vacations at the beach, laughter around the dinner table, and playing catch in the backyard. As the hours passed and his heart continued to beat steadily on, I began to wonder if I had made the right decision. Maybe his body was trying to tell me not to give up on him, and to give him another chance to fight to come back. But the doctors explained that the heart was one of the strongest muscles in the body, and could continue to beat on its own for awhile regardless of the complete lack of higher brain function.

It was dawn before his heart rate began its slow descent. His breathing became more shallow and the nurses kept coming in to check on his condition and make sure that he was comfortable. After awhile his heart rate dropped significantly, and the nurse said that it would only be a matter of minutes. The complexion of his skin was pale and thin, and his body resembled nothing of the robust man he had been only a year before. I brushed his hair away from his forehead and leaned down to give him a kiss. "It's okay to let go, Dad. You can go be with Mom now." A few moments later, the line on the monitor went flat. The alarms had long been disconnected and it was eerily silent as the nurse came into the room to begin unplugging the machines. I hugged him one last time and silently prayed that he would now be at rest. I asked the staff at the hospital to tell anyone who was curious that his pneumonia had taken a turn for the worse. To this day no one in my family knows about my decision.

So today on my birthday, I found my thoughts going back to that afternoon in the delivery room when my father was there to welcome me into this world, and that morning many years later when I was there at his bedside to say goodbye to him as he went off to join the next one.

I can still remember that day like it was yesterday. I think back to the moment when I looked down to see my father's face finally at peace. I may have had some doubts about whether I ultimately made the right decision, but one thing that I knew for certain was how proud I felt to have been given his name.

HNT(21) Riddle me this...

2006-05-11T22:36:00.001-04:00

Q. Where in the world was my pic for HNT this week?

...?

(Hint: The Answer is out there somewhere in the shadows...)

And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

Happy HNT!

-----------------------------------------

Run, TJ. Run.

2006-05-07T23:55:00.000-04:00

A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.
--Confucious

A journey of 10 miles ends with many aching muscles.
--TJ

Earlier today I completed the 2006 Broad Street Run, a 10-mile race through the middle of Philadelphia that I had decided to sign up for at the last minute on a whim. Below is a timeline of how the day unfolded:

* * * * * * * * * *

6:15 am: My alarm goes off for the 3rd time as I lay in bed and re-think the wisdom of running 10 miles this morning without the benefit of any real training over the past three weeks. Between a trip to Chicago and the unexpected start of a new job, I hadn't been able to get out and run at all. My 14-year old son Brendan pokes his head into my room and asks "Don't you have your race this morning??" I mumble something from under the comforter and he turns on the overhead light and says, "C'mon, Dad, you need to get up..." He continues to stand there in the doorway. "Yeah, yeah..." I say under my breath as I roll out of bed and begin to change into my running outfit. I pause to grab some scrap paper and jot down 'no driver's license until 17th birthday' as a little reminder for later...

* * * * * * * * * *

8:00 am: I am packed like a sardine into a SEPTA subway car, one of more than 15,000 runners being ferried up Broad Street to the starting line at Central High School. I feel bad for the regular patrons who had probably set out from their homes in North Philadelphia this beautiful Sunday morning never dreaming that they would wind up being crammed nose-to-armpit alongside thousands of overeager, underdressed fitness fanatics. A single voice rises from somewhere far in the rear of the subway car, floating above the sea of bodies and expressing the thought that is surely running through each of their minds: "You white people are all crazy..."

* * * * * * * * * *

8:29 am: One minute to go until the official start of the race. I stretch and warm-up as much as I can while surrounded by the crowd of people, and do a final check to make sure that my watch and mp3 player are set up properly. I consider that maybe I should have eaten more than a banana and a glass of orange juice this morning, but it's too late to do anything about it now. I make my way into the middle of the section designated for people running at an 8-minute per mile pace, and then suddenly it is...

* * * * * * * * * *

8:30 am: The race begins. I shuffle along with everyone else a few hundred yards up to the official starting line, and then the mob of people begins to slowly spread out across the width of Broad Street. Straight ahead and five miles off in the distance, the central tower of City Hall appears as thin as a pencil. I start the chronometer to keep track of my pace along the 10 mile course, and hit the random shuffle button on my iRiver for some fast music to set the tempo. I get underway to 'Gasoline' by Seether.

* * * * * * * * * *

1-Mile Marker: The first mile goes by pretty smoothly. The weather this morning is perfect for running--clear, blue skies and a brisk 56 degrees. I check my watch and see that I am actually going at a 7:45 minute pace. "Jukebox Hero" by Foreigner starts to play and I am feeling like a rock star...

* * * * * * * * * *

2-Mile Marker: My mouth and throat are starting to get a little dry and it's getting tricky to maneuver through the narrow gaps between the other runners. I see that I've slowed down to an 8-minute pace, but I'd rather hold things back in the beginning and save my energy for the later miles. "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" by Pat Benetar comes on, and I begin an internal monologue as I head into Mile 3: 'That's right, Broad Street--fire away...'

* * * * * * * * * *

Mile 2.4 : My mouth is really dry now and I am very relieved to come upon the first water station. Dozens of cheery volunteers line both sides of the street, holding out little white paper cups filled with water. I smile at the young kid who hands me my cup, and I conscientiously toss it into one of the nearby trash cans as I pass by. The water break comes at just the right spot, and I am feeling immediately refreshed. 'Thank you, Broad Street', I think appreciatively, somewhat chagrined. 'My bad about the trash talk earlier...'

* * * * * * * * * *

3-Mile Marker: I begin to feel a slight twinge in my right calf, but it is just coming and going at this point. The water definitely helped, because I see that I am back to a 7:45 minute pace. "Don't Fear the Reaper" by Blue Oyster Cult comes on. 'Nothing to fear at all, boys. I'm feeling pretty good...'

* * * * * * * * * *

4-Mile Marker: I'm still holding at a 7:45 minute pace, but my breathing is getting quicker and my mouth is completely dry again. "Turn It On Again" by Genesis begins to play, and I find that I start to push ahead strongly thanks to the encouragement of Phil Collins.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mile 4.5 : Thankfully another water station appears in front of me not a moment too soon. My mouth and throat are on fire, and the sun has been beating down without a cloud in the sky since the race began. Another group of cheery volunteers is handing out water again, but the primal need of thirst has begun to break down the social graces of the runners. People are now indiscriminantly grabbing cups from the volunteers' hands without even breaking stride and just chucking them at their feet when they're finished. I gulp down three cups of water in a row as I pass by, and I don't even hestitate for a second as I toss them each onto the ground to join the thousands of others that now litter the street. I have a sudden vision of a Native American Indian in full headress watching from afar, a single teardrop slowly rolling down his cheek.

* * * * * * * * * *

5-Mile Marker: Once again the water has done the trick, and I am surprised to see that I have picked things up to a 7:30 minute pace. City Hall suddenly looms above overhead as I pass right next to the office building where I started my new job last week. It dawns on me that my car is only parked about a block away, and for a second I am tempted to hop into my Pathfinder for a quick shortcut to claim first place at the finish line. But I feel quite certain that clocking in with a time of 33 minutes for a 10-mile race might raise a couple of eyebrows in the press and would require a battery of steroid testing involving very large needles, so I decide to keep things legit. "Gallileo" by the Indigo Girls comes on. 'How long until I reach Mile 10...??'

* * * * * * * * * *

6-Mile Marker: I'm still on my 7:45 minute pace, but my right calf is twinging pretty regularly now. I begin to pass along a section of Broad Street named 'The Avenue of the Arts' for all of the theaters that are located there. As if on cue, 'La Vie Boheme' from the soundtrack of Rent begins to play just as I approach the Merriam theater where that show will be opening next week. I take that as an encouraging sign that I am on the right pace, and I am suddenly grateful that I decided not to download the soundtrack from "Cats" instead...

* * * * * * * * * *

7-Mile Marker: Wait a minute, can that be right? Seven miles already?? I'm still on the same pace and it seemed like I had just passed the 5 mile halfway point a few minutes ago. "My Immortal" by Evanescence is playing and I start to slip into a kind of zen-like rhythm, with the asphalt rolling on and on beneath me as one foot continues to fall in front of the other.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mile 7.8 : I am snapped out of my little trance as I approach another water station. Runners are jostling into each other without apology as they desparately grab for water. I reach out gratefully to take a cup from one woman's hands, and am momentarily thrown when she pulls the equivalent of a "psyche!!!" move by drawing the cup, filled to the brim with cool, life-sustaining water, back away from my outstretched hand. I keep running but begin to suspect that maybe these people are getting a little sick and tired of serving as human water dispensers and disposable paper cup targets. Their sense of humor was starting to seem down-right twisted. I picture them all lined up in a gauntlet along the next water station, waiting with their arms half-cocked for the signal to unload coconut cream pies at our faces.

* * * * * * * * * *

8- Mile Marker: I'm running a 7:45 pace but the cramps and the sun are starting to get to me. "Vertigo" by U2 comes on. As my tongue begins to stick to the roof of my mouth, I decide that I would gladly deal with "Vertigo" anyday over "Dehydration"...

* * * * * * * * * *

Mile 8.5 : I feel a moment of great relief as I see a spray of water cascading onto the street up ahead. The Philadelphia Fire Department had opened up several fire hydrants along Broad Street to help cool down the runners. I angle over to the far side of the street and then watch in disbelief from 20 yards out as a really strong gust of wind suddenly blows in from the east and pushes the stream of water back over across the sidewalk to the right and into an adjacent empty field, completely off of the race course. I ask the crying Indian to pass me a Kleenex...

* * * * * * * * * *

Mile 9: I really don't care about my time at this point--with one mile to go I just want to finish. There is another water station right beyond the mile marker, and again I make a few unsuccessful grabs at some water cups as I continue to run at a full pace. A man up ahead makes eye contact with me and says, "I got you. I got you." He plants the cup directly into my hand and I make sure that I say "Thanks" before I bring the cup to my lips. Both the water and the tone in his voice give me a much needed boost. "Fly from the Inside" by Shinedown kicks in, and I dig down to finish this last mile with everything I've got left.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mile 10: I see a sign that says 'Finish line 1/2 mile ahead.' Very soon I spot an archway of orange girders up the road that appears to be rather close. A quick glance at my watch indicates that I seem to be making incredible time in this last mile. I break into an all-out sprint, my arms and legs pumping away without holding anything back. I cross beneath the girders euphoric, but the feeling is short-lived. None of the other runners are slowing down or stopping. I wonder for a moment if they had all signed up for a special "11-Mile Broad Street Run" option that I didn't know about, but then it dawns on me that the orange structure wasn't the finish line--it was set up to record a color photo of each and every runner to be purchased after the race. It also dawns on me that I had made the exact same mistake when I ran this race six years ago. Finally, it dawns on me that I am an idiot. The finish line is still a quarter of a mile away.

* * * * * * * * * *

Mile 10 (for real): The true finish line is up ahead. For a second time I reach down and make a final sprint for the finish. A small brunette in her early-20's pulls up even with me, and suddenly it is on for a head-to head race to the end. We alternate back and forth slightly pulling ahead of each other, and as we cross beneath the finish line we are actually completely even. We both nod at each other to say 'thanks' for the motivation, and then I go turn in my computer timing chip and make my way over to the refreshment tent. I chug a cup of Gatorade, and then follow it down with another. I decide to take a pass on the rest of the free food donated by the sponsors of the race, especially the cups of 'lite' yogurt sent in by a local dairy. Considering that we had just burned off about a bajillion calories in our little jaunt down Broad Street, you'd think that if there was ever a time to splurge on a little caloric indulgence, this would be it. I quickly make my way back up Broad Street to the nearest subway stop and soon I am back at my car and on my way home.

* * * * * * * * * *

Later that evening: I go online to check my official time in the race. I notice that the results from when I ran it back in 2000 are still available as well:

2000: 1:17:45

2006: 1:17:16

I had improved my time by just about 30 seconds the second time around. Of course, six years ago I had trained for about two months straight leading up to the race, and this year I didn't even sign up until three weeks ago. And once I registered I quickly wound up with my butt parked inside a classroom learning improv or working in a law office all day.

But the most significant thing for me was that I ran this particular race in the last remaining days of my thirties. My 40th birthday is a little over one week away, and even though I think that age is pretty relative, I was a little curious to see how I might match up physically with my younger self. Six years later, and I still managed to improve my time in spite of the fact that I had no training or conditioning.

I guess maybe it's true what they say about 40 being the new 30 after all...

HNT(20) Rolling up my sleeves

2006-05-04T00:09:00.000-04:00

MEMO

TO: Blog

FROM: TJ

RE: Billable Hours for May 4 HNT pic

Brainstormed about different HNT ideas during commuter train ride into Center City: 0.40 hours;
Rearranged desk and blockaded office door to set appropriate mise en scène for photo: 0.30 hours;
Researched phrase "mise en scène" on dictionary.com to verify its correct use in the above sentence: 0.20 hours;
Feeling that I have from getting dressed in a suit and tie, walking around downtown, and heading back into a courtroom again:

Priceless.

Happy HNT!

-----------------------------------------

If it's Monday this must be Philadelphia...

2006-05-01T21:28:00.000-04:00

It's a little after 9 pm on Monday night and I just sat down to the computer to take a quick tour around my blogroll and get a few thoughts down to recap the whirlwind of activity that has been going on over these past couple of days.

Chicago was amazing--I had been out there before on several occasions but this trip was by far the best. It was perfect spring weather the first three days, and since I would be spending most of my time indoors on the weekend, I didn't even mind when the storms blew in. And sometimes even a little rain on a Sunday morning can be the perfect thing.

The food was fantastic--although I think I'm going to pay the price for all of the deep-dish pizza that I ate when I have to drag along a couple of extra pounds for 10 miles during the Broad Street Run on Sunday morning.

It was so great to jump back into improv again. I had very experienced, talented teachers for all of my workshops and each one brought a different perspective to all of the possibilities that can come from the beginning of a scene. And the same students were scheduled for every class, so over the course of five days we all got to know and trust each other completely. I met some very cool people from New Orleans, Minneapolis, Atlanta, Toronto, London, and an entire group from Norway that had been invited to come perform at the festival. Just one of the many highlights from the trip was kicking ass in pool in the Lincoln Tap Room at 1 a.m. with a 6'3" Norwegian named Gunner as my partner...

Sunday may have started off slow but the pace picked up quickly as the day went along. When I finally got to O'Hare for my flight that evening, the rain had caused delays and cancelled flights all over the country. Luckily my flight only got pushed back an hour, and I pulled into my driveway a little before midnight. I just dumped my suitcase on the kitchen floor and when I finally crawled into bed a short time later it was lights out about 10 seconds after my head hit the pillow.

I woke up bright and early and was rarin' to go this morning. I would always look forward to the excitement surrounding any kind of first day situation, so there was an extra spring in my step as I tucked my new Trapper Keeper into my bookbag and grabbed my Harry Potter lunch box to head off towards my office in Center City. The day went very smooth and everyone made me feel welcome right away. There will be a pretty steep learning curve at this new place, but I'm used to hitting the ground running and handling things on the fly.

Well I think I better wrap this post up soon. I still have some work that I brought home from the office that I want to have done by tomorrow morning and I have a fully-packed suitcase to step over several times on my way to the kitchen to fix a late dinner. Mmmm--I wonder how much Geno's would charge me to deliver some deep-dish from Chicago...

HNT(19) Half-Nekkid in the Windy City

2006-04-27T19:15:00.000-04:00

I was trying to set up a close-up photo of me wearing my Chicago Improv Festival hat for this week's HNT when I hit the button without setting the self-timer first. One of the things that we had covered in our improv workshops yesterday was to turn mistakes onstage into opportunities to create something new, and I thought that the lighting looked cool in this pic from the reflection of the flash in the mirror.

I'm just glad that the camera wasn't set up for a wide-angle shot...

Happy HNT!

-----------------------------------------

Take this job and...

2006-04-25T22:22:00.000-04:00

work it.

Late this afternoon I received a call regarding the interview that I mentioned here. It turns out that the firm had been swamped with trials and it had just taken them longer than they anticipated to review all of the candidates and make their final decision. They made me an offer and want me to start immediately at the beginning of next week. The job will involve a lot of trial work and I'll be spending most of my time in the courtroom, which is where I tend to find the most challenge and personal fulfillment.

I have to hurry up and finish getting everything ready before I fly out to Chicago tomorrow to attend the 9th Annual Improv Festival. I'm scheduled to return to Philadelphia late on Sunday night, and then bright and early Monday morning I'll be throwing on a suit and tie and heading downtown to get right to work.

Oh, and to commemorate this special occasion I would like to take a moment to convey a heartfelt message to one individual in particular as a follow-up to this post:

Kiss off, Donald...

I'm hired.

HNT(18) Momentum

2006-04-19T15:29:00.000-04:00

I'd been coasting along for the past couple of Thursdays, but this week I decided to kick things back into gear.

And there is only open road ahead...

Happy HNT!

-----------------------------------------

breaking through...

2006-04-17T08:30:00.000-04:00

On Saturday I watched the display on my clock roll over to "8:00" and waited for the shrill alarm that would pierce the morning silence. I took a breath and slowly rolled out of bed, shuffling across the room to hit the snooze button for the third time. I had set my alarm with the intention going to a spinning class at my gym that was scheduled at 8:30, in an effort to kick-start my exercise routine. My workouts had become sporadic lately, and had dropped off completely in the past week. I climbed back into bed and wrapped myself in the warmth of my comforter again. I began to come up with excuses and rationalizations for skipping class that morning and doing something on Sunday instead. But just before inertia completely set in, I kicked off the covers and swung my legs onto the floor. I quickly changed into my workout clothes and got to the gym just as class was about to begin.

Last week had started off with promise. I had an interview on Monday for a job that I really wanted. The firm had everything I required and I seemed to have the exact experience they were looking for to fill the position. I met with several people in the firm and felt that things went really well with all of them. I knew that I was the first of three people that they were interviewing, and I had been told that I would hear something by the end of the week. My former supervisor had called me on Tuesday to say that she had been contacted as a reference and that she had given me a glowing recommendation. I had always tried to keep my expectations low following my previous interviews, but everything had seemed to be looking good so far with this one. When no word came by Friday afternoon, I began to prepare for the likelihood that an offer had already been made to someone else.

Up to that point, an odd feeling of limbo had hung over me all week. I had put several job leads on temporary hold--partly out of superstition but mainly because I didn't want to start the process rolling for something that would hopefully be moot in just a few days. I put my writing for this blog on hold as well, finding it hard to fully concentrate and put the interview out of my mind. I kind of pulled back on some chores around the house, getting a little distracted sometimes in the middle of a task. I don't recall making a concious decision to launch myself out of bed and turn off the snooze alarm before it went off for the fourth time that morning, but as I strapped my feet into the pedals while the spinning instructor lowered the lights in the room, I was glad that I did.

Either because of the early start time on a Saturday or because of the amazing spring weather outside, there were only 2 other people in class with me. The room was 20 by 30 feet, with floor to ceiling mirrors along the walls and flourescent purple lighting to set the mood. Our instructor was a fitness dynamo--imagine Louis Gossett Jr. from "An Officer and a Gentleman" as a 5'2" blonde with a ponytail wearing spandex and you get the general idea. I needed a little push to help kick my butt back into gear, and before we finished our 5-minute warmup I was already reaching for the water bottle.

The class consisted of 45-minutes of non-stop pedaling that simulated sprinting, jumping, and climbing on road bikes with music blasting throughout the room to help set the tempo. The main component of a spinning workout comes from the resistance set by a dial located beneath the handlebars. The instructor would shout out a number from 1 to 10 as the target resistance during a song, but it was up to each rider to increase the tension up to their own personal limit to represent a particular number. So a Level 5 might be a quarter-turn to the right for a beginner, or a complete revolution around the dial for an experienced rider.

As we went from the warm-up into the first series of sprints, my mind was still focused on the job I had applied for and the things that I had been putting off all week. I was just going through the motions but not really pushing myself during the first part of the class. As the instructor took us through a section of jumps that involved sitting, crouching, and standing up out of the seat, I felt my heart rate begin to go up and noticed that I was breaking into a small sweat. I tried to push aside all of the distractions in my mind by just focusing on my breathing and my form.

Thirty minutes into the class we began to make a long climb up a steep hill. The instructor started us at a Level 6, and over the course of several songs had us turn our dial further and further to the right to simulate the ever increasing grade. She had us stand up out of our saddles and hover over the handle bars as we pedaled. When each song ended, she let us sit back down for a few seconds to grab a quick drink of water, and then it was back up out of the seat as soon as the music started again.

As our climb continued and we passed by Level 8, I felt the need to push myself further. "Burning Down the House" by The Talking Heads came over the speakers, and I began to fall into a rhythm with the heavy drum beat. The instructor called out for Level 9, and I reached down between my legs and cranked the dial hard over to the right. The muscles in my thighs began to burn almost immediately from the increased resistance, while my breathing became much quicker. My feet continued to crank the pedals around and around as the song played on, and I had to fight the urge to ease back on the dial. I focused on pumping my knees up and down towards the front of the bike and rocking my hips forward and back with each revolution. I wrapped my fingers tightly around the far end of the handlebars and pulled my body up with my arms to try to take some of the strain off of my aching legs. My forearms began to tremble and I felt the sweat pouring from my face down my neck and back. My mouth and throat were completely dry and my breath was exploding from my chest in short, rapid bursts.

And then I felt a sudden change wash over me. The urge to quit faded away, and I felt the onset of a sense of calm. I allowed the drumbeat to carry me forward, and I pictured myself from above and slightly behind the bike, imagining that I was on a road coasting down a long hill, while actually I was still climbing towards the summit there in the workout room. I was able to gain focus as my breathing became controlled again, and all of the concerns and worries of the week were now far from my thoughts. I felt a renewed sense of strength and energy.

The end of the song signaled our goal of reaching the top of the hill, and I was snapped out of my little moment of reverie when "Kharma Chameleon" by the Culture Club came on to begin the final 5-minute warm down period of class. We finished up with some stretches and then I was outside walking to my car, feeling both fatigued and refreshed with the warm April sun on my face. I got home and ran straight through all the chores on my to-do list, and then spent the rest of the afternoon outdoors with Brendan enjoying a perfect spring day. Later that night I sat down at the computer and laid out the beginning draft of this post.

As I was finishing up my stretches in the spinning room back at the gym, I had noticed a flyer on the wall for the upcoming 2006 Philadelphia Broad Street Run. It's a 10-mile race that begins up by Central High School and finishes at the Navy Yard in South Philly, running in a straight line down Broad Street for the entire course. I had completed the race back in 2000, but had been thinking about running it again to see if I could improve on my results. It was scheduled early this year on May 7, so I would have to quickly step up my training to get in shape for it. But after my little spin on the bike that morning, I was in the mood to start setting another challenge for myself again. So later that night I logged onto to the official website for the race and paid my registration fee.

Three weeks should still be plenty of time to build up my conditioning, and I decided that I will really push this year to finish way under my old time. I also decided that no matter what the outcome of this latest interview, I would continue to search for the right job that provided personal fulfillment and challenge. As I settled into my bed later that night, it felt good to be moving forward once more, with new goals to reach waiting ahead in the morning.

--spoil the rod.

2006-04-07T08:24:00.000-04:00

The Public Defender tried to call Dante’s credibility into question during cross examination by searching for any inconsistencies in his initial reports of the assault. But the scope of cross is very limited at the preliminary hearing stage, and it is not the time or place to mount a full-blown defense. The P.D. and I entered into a sort of verbal thrust-and-parry, with him probing for damaging details and me trying to deflect each question with an objection. Whether or not Dante would have to give an answer depended on Judge Clark's particular ruling.

Dante, what did you tell the doctor about how this happened when you first got to the hospital?

Objection, Your Honor.

"Sustained."

Did you ever tell the doctors that you didn't know who hit you?

Objection.

"Sustained."

Isn’t it true that you are mad at Jerry because your Mom was spending so much time with him and not with you?

Objection.

“Sustained.”

And so on.

He was only doing his job as an advocate on behalf of his client, and certainly there were other judges on the bench who frequently allowed the preliminary hearings to become a free-for-all, but Judge Clark wasn’t one of them.

I had the emergency room records and the photographs taken by the assigned detective at the hospital marked as exhibits. The tipstaff handed the pictures of Dante’s bruised and bloody body up to Judge Clark. She had been hearing these types of cases for years, and always maintained an objective appearance while she was sitting on the bench, but I noticed her mouth harden by the slightest degree as she flipped through the photos.

I moved the medical records and photographs into evidence, and rested my case. The P.D. waived the chance to present any evidence on behalf of his client, which was done 99% of the time at this stage to prevent the defendant or any alibi witness from getting locked into their testimony several months before trial. Judge Clark ruled that all of the charges in the criminal complaint had been made out, and directed that the case be held over for trial. I took note of the defendant’s history of bench warrants in his criminal record, and the fact that he was currently being held on just $50,000 bail for this case. A person being held on bail only needed to post 10% of the total amount to be released, so if Jerry (or someone on his behalf) could scrape together $5000, he would wind up back on the street and be gone in a heartbeat.

I made a motion to increase the Defendant's bail based upon the severity of the charges, the likelihood of a substantial jail sentence, and the repeated failures to appear for court during his prior convictions. The Public Defender objected, and pointed out correctly that these charges were still allegations at this stage and that nothing had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. But with the color photos still spread across the top of the bench before her, Judge Clark wasn’t hearing any of it.

“Bail is hereby raised to $500,000--effective forthwith.”

The Defendant's shoulders slumped down and Dante’s mother became all agitated in the front row. The sheriff snapped a pair of handcuffs around Jerry's wrists behind his back, and led him out of the courtroom down to the holding cells in the basement. Later that night a bus would be taking him back up to the main prison in Northeast Philly, where now he would sit tight until his case was eventually called to trial.

It was obvious that Dante needed someone looking after his rights full-time on his behalf, since his mother had a clear conflict of interest. As an Assistant District Attorney, I technically represented all of the people in the city—Dante was a victim of crime, but not my individual 'client' to advise or supervise. I made another motion and the Court appointed the Support Center for Child Advocates to step in and become Dante’s legal advocate. They had a lawyer assigned to B Court full-time for just such a situation, and she came over and introduced herself to Dante. I dropped down to one knee again and shook his hand, telling him that he was very brave and that he had done a great job. He gave a faint smile and walked out of the courtroom with his new attorney.

I gathered all of the photographs and medical records back into the file and placed it on top of the disposed pile on the far side of the table. There was a temporary lull within the courtroom as the clerks processed the paperwork from the hearing we had just concluded. Judge Clark sat back in her chair and glanced over in my direction from behind the bench.

"Counselor, is that a purple tie that you're wearing?"

I already had the chance to see her go through this routine with new attorneys on both sides of the aisle, and recognized it as an invitation to play right along.

Why, yes it is Your Honor.

"Are you aware that purple just happens to be my favorite color??"

I held the tie out from my body and looked down as if noticing it for the very first time.

I had no idea, Your Honor.

She flashed me a knowing smile and then returned to a formal tone as the crier called the next ready hearing up to the bar of the court. I appreciated the effort to lighten the mood, if only for a brief moment. A long list of the day's scheduled cases still remained to be heard. And upstairs alongside the desk in my office, a box filled with tomorrow's files already sat waiting on the floor.

spare the child--(continued)

2006-04-05T08:30:00.000-04:00

Dante was frozen in place. With the man accused of severely beating him standing just 15 feet off to the side, most people would feel intimidated in that position, let alone a slender 9-year old child whose wounds were still healing. Our office had already been granted one continuance by the court at a prior listing of the case. If this hearing did not go forward today, the charges against the Defendant would have to be dismissed and he would be released from custody. There was always the possibility of refiling the charges against him at some point if a new arrest warrant could be obtained, but with Jerry’s history of failing to appear for prior cases in the past, he would most likely vanish as soon as he hit the street. At that point, the case might not be brought to trial for years, if ever.

Unfortunately, Dante’s reaction was not an uncommon one. In the week prior to being assigned to B Court, I had the chance to tag along with some of the senior prosecutors to observe how they handled these situations. Naturally, each child is unique and no two cases have exactly the same facts, but the A.D.A. whose files I would be assuming had explained the general theory to me at one point: take the focus away from the perpetrator in the courtroom and the shocking nature of the overall assault, and break the witness’ testimony down into separate, less traumatic pieces. If you were lucky, you could establish a simple chain of facts one link at a time and still make out all of the charges against the defendant in the end.

First, I needed to change the dynamic of things in the courtroom. I shifted over to Dante’s far left side so that he would have to turn completely in my direction, thereby putting the Defendant's looming presence behind his back and totally outside of his field of vision. I placed the casefile on top of the table and knelt down on one knee so that my face would be at Dante's eye level. The courtroom was immense with 30 foot granite walls and there were no microphones, so normally you had to really project loudly for the judge and the court reporter to hear everything. I softened the tone of my voice and was grateful to see the stenographer and the judge lean in closer towards us in response.

The rules of court prevent a lawyer from asking his own witness a leading question, so I couldn't just cut to the chase and ask, So did the Defendant hit you with a belt and cause all of these injuries??? Dante had become mute at the thought of identifying Jerry in the courtroom, so I tried shifting the focus to someone less threatening.

Okay, Dante…I want you to relax and just listen to my voice while I ask a couple more questions. Do you think you can you do that?

(nodding)

Great. Do you see that person sitting behind me in the front row? (I was referring to the assigned detective who had first interviewed Dante shortly after he arrived at the hospital.)

He nodded again.

Terrific. Have you ever seen her before?

He nodded a third time. Judge Clark was giving me a lot of leeway but I still had to establish his verbal testimony on the record.

Okay. I see that you nodded your head but the court reporter over there needs to take down your words, so could you make sure that you say all of your answers out loud?

He nodded again.

Yes.

Just like that. Where did you see that person before?

At the hospital.

Okay. Is she a doctor or a nurse?

Nope. She’s with the police.

All right. Did you get the chance to talk to her at the hospital?

Yes.

Were you there visiting somebody who was sick?

Nope.

Why were you at the hospital?

I was hurt.

How did you get to the hospital?

The ambulance drove me.

Where did the ambulance pick you up?

My house.

What part of you hurt?

It was on the outside.

Where on the outside?

All over.

I see you have a mark there on your arm. (I gestured towards the spot where his stitches had recently been removed.) Did they look at that when you went to the hospital?

Yep.

Did you have marks like that anyplace else?

Yep.

Could you point to any other spots where you had marks like that?

He slowly pointed to his other arm, both shoulders, his stomach, his back, his buttocks, his thighs, and the backs of his legs.

Did you wake up that morning with those marks?

No.

Did something happen on the day that you went to the hospital to make those marks?

Dante paused and was silent for a moment. Eventually, he answered.

Yes.

You're doing just great. Did you get those marks from falling down?

No.

Did something touch your skin when you got those marks?

Yes.

What touched your skin to make those marks?

He got quiet again and looked down at the floor before he gave his response.

A buckle.

What did the buckle look like?

Dante held his hands in the shape of a rectangle about the size of a deck of playing cards.

It was gold.

So far, so good. Without pausing or changing the inflection in my voice, I asked the next question.

When the buckle made those marks, was it connected to anything?

A belt.

Did the belt fall down off of something all by itself to make those marks?

No.

If there was a buckle at one end of the belt, what was over on the other end?

A hand.

Almost there. I had been gradually building to a quicker cadence with my questions, so that Dante wouldn't hesitiate and dwell on his prior answers.

Whose hand was holding the belt?

Jerry’s.

Do you see Jerry in the courtroom?

He still held his gaze down towards the floor, but this time he lifted his right arm slightly and pointed a finger over in the general direction of the Defendant.

That was good enough.

I stood up and brought my voice back up to full level as I turned to face the court reporter.

Let the record reflect that the witness has identified the defendant at the bar of the court.

I gently put my hand on Dante's shoulder and felt the knot that had been in my stomach this whole time slowly begin to unravel.

No further questions, Your Honor.

I couldn't relax completely. The hearing wasn't over just yet.

Spare the child--

2006-04-02T19:53:00.000-04:00

April is 'Child Abuse Awareness' Month. According to the U.S. Department of Health, there are over 3,ooo,ooo cases of child abuse reported each year.

Right after I graduated from law school, I was hired as an Assistant District Attorney in Philadelphia. At the end of my first year there I was rotated along with the rest of the rookie prosecutors into the Juvenile Court Unit, where for six months I handled child abuse hearings on a daily basis. All of the custody, dependency, and juvenile crime cases in the city were exclusively heard in a separate courthouse, appropriately named Family Court. The courtrooms were all designated by letters, and Courtroom B was set aside for the preliminary hearings of adult defendants accused of crimes against minor children.

The "prelim" is a bare bones hearing where the Commonwealth (i.e. the prosecutor) has to prove that enough facts exist to support the crimes that have been charged and to send the case on to trial. The other crucial requirement is that a victim or eyewitness must make an in-court identification of the defendant. The full-length trials would be handled months later over at the Criminal Justice Center by the senior prosecutors from the Special Assault Unit in the main office. Since the Juvenile Unit was located right inside the Family Court building, a few of the newer prosecutors were assigned to handle Courtroom B.

A single judge presided over B Court when I was assigned there. Judge Tama Myers Clark was a former prosecutor herself, and she ran a very formal courtroom. Judge Clark did not put up with the usual defense attorney antics when children were involved. Her appearance resembled a cross between Patti LaBelle and Phylicia Rashad Allen, and she absolutely loved the color purple. By their second week, most of the prosecutors and public defenders who were assigned to her courtroom had already gone out and scoured the local department stores for purple ties and scarves--the thinking being: every little bit helps.

Within one week of being assigned to B Court, I was faced with the first of many challenging cases. The crime involved a man who had severely beat his girlfriend's young son using a leather belt with a large metal buckle. The Defendant was about 6-feet tall, in his late-30's, and easily weighed over 225 pounds. The victim was a thin 9-year old boy named Dante who had been taken to the hospital with lacerations and deep tissue contusions over 80 percent of his body. As bad as his physical injuries were, it turned out that his own mother was supporting the boyfriend. Unfortunately, that situation occurred in case after case during the six months while I was there. The Defendant had not been able to post bail, and had been in custody since his arrest a few weeks before. He had been charged with aggravated assault, child endangerment, and a host of related crimes.

Dante and I were standing over on the left-hand side of the courtroom up at the bar of the court. The Defendant and the Public Defender were standing about 15 feet away over to our right. A sheriff in charge of the defendant's custody was over on the far right side of the courtroom next to the single door leading out into the main hallway. The rest of the room was filled with dozens of defendants, witnesses, other attorneys, and police officers all waiting for their case to be called as soon this hearing was finished. Judge Clark sat up high above it all behind a rich mahoghany bench; a 30-foot Art Deco mural of a father, mother, and two small children walking hand-in-hand down a road towards a distant city served as a backdrop behind the judge.

At the time, Pennsylvania did not allow video cameras or closed-circuit testimony in the courtroom, so the victim would have to appear in the same room as the defendant and visually identify them as the perpetrator of the crime. Whenever a minor was being called as a witness, their competency to testify also had to be established. I had already run through a colliquy with the victim to show Judge Clark that Dante understood the importance of telling the truth and knew the consequences of telling a lie. I started to ask him about the facts of the crime itself.

Hi, Dante. See that person sitting up there in the black robe? That's Judge Clark. I'm going to ask you a couple of questions and she needs to be able to hear all of your answers. Do you think you can speak up loud enough so she can hear you?

(nodding)

Okay. You need to say the words out loud so that nice lady typing on that machine can write everything down, all right?

Yes.

Great. Why don't we start with your full name.

Dante ______.

Okay. And how old are you?

Nine.

Wow, you're pretty tall for nine. So you must be in, what, fourth grade?

Yep.

What school do you go to?

Overbrook.

Where do you live?

_______ Ogontz Avenue.

Who do you live there with?

My mom, my sister, and....Jerry.

You're doing just great. What's your sister's name?

Kim. She's six.

So you're the big brother.

(nodding)

Do you see your mom in the courtroom?

Yeah.

(pointing over at his mom sitting in the first row, right behind the defense table.)

And do you see your sister?

Nope. She's at school.

Okay. Do you see Jerry in the courtroom?

(staring at the floor)

Take your time and look around the room. You can just point if you see him.

About a minute passed by, with Dante still staring at the floor.

Do you see that big sherriff standing over there in the blue uniform? He's here to make sure that nothing bad can happen to you so you are completely safe. Just take your time and look around and let me know if you see Jerry.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the Defendant turn and look over his shoulder at Dante's mom and give a little smirk. A loud crack rang out as Judge Clark slammed her gavel down onto the top of her bench.

"Counselor (addressing the public defender), you had better advise your client that if I see his eyes move so much as one inch over towards the direction of the witness I will revoke his bail and find him in contempt of court on the spot. Do I make myself perfectly clear???"

The P.D. leaned over and furiously whispered into the Defendant's ear. His head snapped forward and the smirk was now wiped from his face.

Dante was standing with his hands buried in his pockets and his chin practically on his chest. I tried to ask the question a third time and got the same silent response.

The public defender cleared his throat and finally piped up after a moment.

"Your honor, I make a motion to dismiss all charges for failure to establish an in-court identification."

Judge Clark raised an eyebrow and looked over at me for a response.

"Commonwealth...?"

Now it was my turn to bury my chin in my chest as I looked down at the casefile in my hands and shuffled through some papers to stall for time. Not even my purple tie was going to be much help in this situation.

They had never covered anything like this in law school.

My Breakfast with Donald

2006-03-28T16:15:00.000-05:00

As I mentioned at the end of the post below, I've got myself back on track these days, and recently I took the opportunity to put my newly returned mojo to the test. I've been a fan of "The Apprentice" since it debuted a couple of years ago, and at least once each season I would find myself sitting in my living room and thinking to myself: 'some of these people are idiots...I could be on this show.' And then I would recline back in my Lay-Z-Boy and return to just passively viewing the television. Daydreams were one thing, but the logistics of taking a leave of absence from work and heading up to Manhattan for several weeks always brought a cold dose of reality.

But my free time is a tad bit more flexible these days, so when Donald Trump came on at the conclusion of last week's episode and announced that they were currently casting for next season's show, I decided that I would go for it. I downloaded the application from NBC's website and noticed that they were having an open casting call in NY on Friday. The audtions were going to be held at Trump Tower beginning at 9 a.m.--apparently wrist bands would be distributed to people about one hour before, and they asked that no one appear in line until after 6 a.m. I recalled seeing news reports from the first few seasons of thousands of people lined up around several blocks, so I figured that arriving there early was my only shot.

To get there, I would have to leave my house at three o'clock in the morning to drive to Trenton, take a 3:45 a.m. NJ Transit train to Penn Station, and then take 2 subway lines to make it to Trump Tower in time. I am definitely not a morning person, so rather than risk snoozing right through my alarm, I decided to stay up and chat online until about 2 a.m., and then hopped into the shower and put on my best interview suit. A minor mishap while attempting to walk my dog while drinking a cup of coffee required a quick change into my second-best interview suit, but I still made my train with plenty of time to spare.

The final subway stop put me just about one block away from Trump Tower around 5:45 a.m., and as I walked down Fifth Avenue, I was shocked to see only about 50 people in line ahead of me. I guess that by Season Six, the bloom is off of the rose a little. Either that, or more people just decided to submit their entries by mail, with a 10-minute video of themselves explaining why they should be the next Apprentice. It was apparent that the first ten people in line were die-hard fanatics who had camped out and slept right outside the front entrance overnight. I settled in and started talking with the people in line around me, and pretty soon a steady stream of people started appearing. By 7 a.m., the line stretched around the corner and almost all the way down 56th street.

There was definitely an odd mix of people in line that morning. A good majority were dressed like me, in sober business suits and little portfolios tucked under their arms. But there were also a couple of people eccentrically dressed, hoping to stand out like Danny, that odd guy with the guitar from a couple of seasons ago. Right in front of me was a woman in her late 40's who looked and sounded a little like Bette Midler, and who was holding court in our little section of the line. Apparently she was a veteran of this process, and claimed to have made it to the second round last time, sitting down at a table with Caroline and George. There was a lot of nervous energy in the crowd, and a few people were talking out loud to no one in particular, as if rehearsing their own little stand-up routines. I just passed the minutes in line by leafing through the NY Times and shivering in the cold.

Actually things heated up a little when Yes, and... Corp. faced its first challenge before even getting through the revolving doors. It was about 7:30 a.m., and I was looking over my application one more time to make sure that everything was in order. Completed questionaire...check. Signed release form...check. Current copy of resume...check. Valid U.S. Passport...che--what the f*#&??. I patted down the pockets in my suit jacket and pants several times, and then a cold realization hit me as I pictured my passport nestled safely in the breast pocket of the coffee-stained suit now lying on my bed at home. I confirmed with the Divine Miss M ahead of me in line that you definitely needed proof of citizenship to apply. I could just imagine myself sitting at the boardroom table watching the disapproval fall across George's face while Caroline crossed her arms and shot a question at me through that clenched jaw of hers: "If you can't even submit a properly completed application, how can you possibly hope to become the next Apprentice??"

I cleared my head and focused on the application guidelines again. They stated that a copy of a passport could also be submitted, and I quickly came up with a Plan B. I called home on my cell phone and, miracle of miracles, my son actually woke up and got to the phone before the answering machine clicked on. I directed him to the passport in my bedroom, and then gave him a one-minute tutorial on how to scan an picture using the copy machine in my home office. I explained to him the way to save the image onto the computer, and had him attach the photo to an email which he addressed to my Yahoo account. Once he received confirmation that the message had been sent, I told him to wait by the phone. I asked the people in line to save my spot, and dashed into the lobby to get directions from the security guard. I flagged down a cab and headed several blocks over to a Kinko's on Columbus Circle, where I ran inside and jumped online to access my email. I opened and printed out the attachment, and then hopped back into another cab and was back in line about 15 minutes from when I started, with a fresh black and white copy of my passport now tucked away at the end of my application.

Not ten minutes later, one of the production assistants came outside and escorted the first 50 of us through the lobby. We were taken downstairs to the ground floor of the atrium of Trump Tower, which is set off by a huge indoor waterfall several stories high. It was also right next to an elaborate a la carte breakfast restaurant, which was featured at the beginning of one of the shows from a few weeks ago when the teams were given the task of coming up with a commercial for a new brand of Grape Nuts cereal. Most of the people in line kept focusing on their portfolios, but with my hunger kicked into high gear from my little jaunt across midtown Manhattan, I grabbed a little something to eat. (FYI--I give the chocolate chip muffins 3 out of 4 stars.)

Pretty soon a buzz came over the crowd as the first sightings were made of The Donald. He was being trailed by about a half-dozen camera crews and several minions. He turned out to be dressed in the exact same suit and tie that he is wearing in the opening credits of the show, and he is actually much taller than he appears on the screen. His hair is frequently mocked by Letterman and Leno, but honestly it looked perfectly fine that morning. All in all, he really did look like a billion bucks.

Another P.A. from the show came over and grouped everyone into clumps of 8 people. Eventually, each group would be sent over to one of four tables that was presided over by a moderator. Our group's turn came after about 45 minutes, and as we arranged ourselves around the table and handed in our applications, the moderator explained the process. First everyone was to go around the table and state their name, their occupation, and where they went to school. Next, we would be given a topic to debate amongst ourselves. We weren't supposed to try to persuade the person from the show, but rather get our point across to each other.

Trump sauntered over to our table within a few minutes, and then the introductions began. Our table was located right at the base of the large waterfall, so everyone had to shout a little to be heard. People started going around the table, and things were pretty run of the mill until it came to the woman sitting to my right. She was a physician, and had gone to Harvard Medical School. She was also currently getting a Master's degree from Columbia. Trump raised his eyebrows and asked her what she was doing applying for a position like this. She smiled and said with sincerity that she wanted to branch out from just medicine and that she wanted to work for him. He nodded his head and complimented her on her impressive resume. Then came my turn.

I cleared my throat and gave my name and said that I was a trial attorney from Philadelphia who had graduated cum laude in economics from Villanova and received my J.D. from the law school there. Following right on the heels of Dr. Quinn, Ivy-League Medicine Woman, I might as well have said that I was a parking valet with a mail-order high school equivalency diploma. Trump nodded at me as if I had just recited today's specials from the menu, and then shifted his gaze to the person over on my left. I took a little consolation in the fact that he did not follow-up with more questions to anyone else in our group.

The Donald moved off to the next table, and then the moderator gave us our topic for debate: 'Should dating be allowed at the workplace?' Right off the bat, two people piped up. The first was an Indian guy in his early-thirties who started sounding off about how people had to be allowed to express themselves and pursue their desires. An African-American woman in her early twenties chimed in from across the table with a similar point of view. Even though the two of them were pretty much saying the same thing, they began to loudly volley back and forth while the rest of the group attempted to get a word in edgewise. I sat back and took in their main points while the verbal ping-pong match continued.

Personally I think the situation can get complicated at work, but I have no problem with the idea in general. But since most of the people in the group seemed to be advocating that position, I thought it might be a good tactic to weigh in with the opposing point of view just to stand out. I was able to break into the discussion and pointed out that first and foremost, the company had to be concerned with the safety of its employees and its own liability, and that clear workplace guidelines and employee training had to first be established. A couple of people agreed with my points, and I later followed up with the dangers of superiors getting involved with their subordinates. The Indian gentleman picked up steam once again, and started warning about companies limiting personal freedom and becoming Big Brother. I cut him off and said that at the end of the day it was an office not a singles happy hour, and if he wanted to use work to find dates then he should get a job at Match.com. The moderator had been quietly taking all of our comments in, but at that line he broke out laughing and continued to chuckle even when the next person started speaking. I hoped that I had scored points with that one.

After about ten minutes he cut off the discussion, and then he explained that we had to choose a project manager from our group based on their performance during the debate. We began to go counter-clockwise around the table and announce our individual vote and the reasoning behind it. He made it clear that no one could vote for themselves. Most of the people started voting for Mr. Loudmouth, giving the vague explanation that he seemed to be the most vocal. When it came to my turn I voted for the doctor, because she had made a number of valid points in a direct and focused manner. It turned out that she cast her vote for me based on the same reasons. The moderator thanked us all, and then we were done. He explained that they would make their decisions about who to bring back for the second round that day, and that those chosen would receive a call by the end of the afternoon.

I walked back onto Fifth Avenue just before ten o'clock, and then took a stroll down to Times Square. I tried to score some discounted tickets to 'Spamalot' on Broadway, but $300 for a single orchestra seat isn't quite my idea of a bargain. Needing a little energy boost, I went to a Starbucks and got a caramel frappucino, and then still feeling a little fatigued I crossed the street and ordered an expresso at the Starbucks on the opposite corner. I walked through Central Park in my overly caffeinated state for an hour or so, and then made my way back down to Penn Station to begin the return trip to Philadelphia. I forced myself to stay awake once I got home just in case the phone rang, but I'm pretty sure that if they brought back just one person from each table, the physician was the one who would have received the call. After about 36 hours of no sleep, I finally crashed during the most exciting moments of Villanova's come from behind win in the semi-final round of the NCAA tournament.

I'm definitely glad that I took my chance and went up there for the day, if only to say that I actually did it. And I got to meet Trump himself in person. At least now I won't be sitting there wondering 'what if' when I watch the show next season. Who knows, I might even find myself heading up to New York again for another open call someday. Except maybe next time I'll try to pad my resume with an impressive occupation to stand out a little from the rest of the group. Maybe something like: 'Chief Justice.'

And if that doesn't work out, there's always "Survivor"...

"You do not have the right..."

2006-03-23T16:53:00.000-05:00

"...to use this art form to feel inferior."

Martin de Maat (1949-2001)

I haven't been myself recently. For the past several weeks, I had allowed my ongoing job search to affect other things like my daily responsibilities, personal relationships, and yes, even blogging. As I started to search around for a little inspiration to snap out of it, I thought back to the final day of my Level 1 improv class at The Second City NY Training Center, where I was lucky to have been taught by a wonderful teacher just several weeks before he passed away.

Martin de Maat literally grew up around the original Second City theater in Chicago. He began when he was 9 years old, studying with his aunt Josephine Forsberg, one of the founding instructors in improvisation for the theater. As a teenager, he worked there as a dishwasher, and eventually went on to become the Artistic Director for all of the Training Centers. In many ways he was the heart of The Second City, influencing thousands of young improvisors including Chris Farley, Tina Fey, John Favreau, and Sean Hayes (from "Will & Grace"). He later moved to NY and joined the faculty at Columbia University.

I had enrolled in the Level 1 improv class more or less on a whim. I had seen a show at The Second City's main stage on a business trip to Chicago, and was caught up in the creativity and sense of fun the performers seemed to be having onstage. The training program was divided into six levels, each level consisting of a series of three-hour classes every Saturday for 8 weeks. For me, it involved getting up at 7 a.m., driving 45 minutes to Trenton, taking the NJ Transit train into Manhattan, and hopping onto the subway to reach my class in Greenwich Village--all in all it was a three-hour commute that would have to be repeated later in the day for the return trip to Philadelphia.

All of the other fifteen or so students in my Level 1 class were actors trying to scratch out a living as waiters, hostesses, and office temps while they went around the city to one endless audition after another, hoping to catch their big break. Our instructor was Chris, who had graduated from the main Training Center in Chicago and who was getting his Masters degree in theater. Technically, the entire Level 1 coursework was designed to have the students focus on non-verbal techniques to establish a scene, the idea being that many first-time improvisors tend to fall back on jokes and punch lines as a crutch to fill the silence, ignoring their partners just to go for a cheap laugh. Chris noted the progress that our group had made early on, and after swearing us to secrecy that we wouldn't blab to the other Level 1 classes, he began to have us improvise full scenes with dialogue.

Our classroom was a small rehearsal space in an old building with bare wood floors, dingy white walls with no windows, and a long mirror that stretched across the entire front wall. The only furniture was about twenty plain wooden chairs scattered around the room. In improv, there are no props or set pieces or costumes to hide behind. It is just you and your scene partner out there on stage, establishing whatever reality the two of you eventually discover by working together. The bare nature of the space allowed us to feel free to begin our scene anywhere from a corporate boardroom or a London pub to a brothel in the Old West. Chris would explain one of the advanced techniques for establishing and building an improv scene, and then he'd ask for volunteers to come up in groups of two and three to try them out. We would all be lined up along the back wall as he explained a particular idea, then he would call out "Give me two people up front." It was up to each individual to step out from the wall and put themselves out there in front of the rest of the class. The first two people to reach the center of the room would be the ones to begin the scene.

At the beginning of an improvised scene, neither person should have any pre-conceived idea about where the scene will be set or what the nature of the relationship is between the two characters. No dialogue, no plot--just two people working together to come up with a scene in the moment. I was always eager to step out quickly from the line whenever Chris would ask for volunteers, but especially in that first semester those moments as I moved towards the front of the room were often intense. To me it felt like standing at the edge of a high dive platform, willing yourself to take a leap out towards an empty pool below. You just had to have faith that you and your scene partner would be able create something together to fill the up pool before you hit the bottom.

I enjoyed my time spent in class, and loved being around my other classmates. As I got to know them all better, I really admired their willlingness to sacrifice and do whatever it took to pursue acting as a profession. I felt a little like an imposter sometimes, having a steady, good-paying job and just taking these classes as a fun hobby. As the end of the first level drew to a close, I began to question whether I should enroll in the upcoming Level 2 class, or just chalk the experience up to a one-time thing. My attitude changed on the last day of the semester, when Chris asked his former teacher Martin de Maat to sit in on our final class.

Martin just radiated genuine warmth and acceptance. He had us run through some improv exercises, and gave nothing but support and encouragement throughout the day. He took the time to make at least one positive comment to each of us individually after we would finish a particular scene. He was like a motivational speaker, coach, and favorite uncle all rolled up into one. The room was filled with an incredible spirit of trust and positive energy for the entire three hours.

He pulled a chair into the center of the room and sat down facing us during the last 10 minutes of class. He was battling the final stages of pneumonia at this point, and it had taken great effort for him to come out in the harsh winter weather to be with us that day. He began to speak in a quiet voice barely above a whisper, and you could see the physical difficulty he was having as he paused to draw each breath. I found myself leaning forward in my seat to be able to catch every word. We had expected him to end on a happy note, with more laughter and warm advice. Instead, a serious expression came over his face, and he looked straight at each of us as he said the quote that forms the title of this post:

"You do not have the right to use this art form to feel inferior."

We were all taken aback a little at first by the change in tone, wondering where this was coming from. He went on to tell us that we were each unique, and that it was important for us to accept ourselves and trust in the moment and the people around us. We needed to find the courage to say that we were each worthy to be here and to get behind our own dreams. We should take joy in our failures, and not waste time being judgmental of ourselves and others. If we put ourselves in a place of support and unconditional acceptance and love of who we were, we could only grow. It started to become clear that he was talking not just about improvisation, but how we should strive to live every single day as well. He said that ultimately, it was up to us to get behind our own goals and take action for them. His voice took on a heartfelt tone as he ended with his final words:

"I do not give you permission to fail--

I'm giving you permission to follow your dreams."

I imagine that as words on a screen, that all might sound contrived and a little like New Age doubletalk, but coming from Martin as he struggled to find the breath to say those words with complete sincerity, we couldn't help but feel empowered. He got up and wrapped each one of us in a hug, and thanked us for allowing him to be a part of our class. We should have been the ones thanking him. His words had been exactly what I needed to hear at that moment, and on the train ride home I decided that on Monday I would pick up the phone and enroll in the Level 2 classes. Which eventually lead to my signing up for the rest of the levels and culminated in a final class performance that turned out to be one of my most enjoyable nights ever onstage. My enthusiasm was soon matched by sorrow just a few weeks after the end of that first semester when the Training Center sent out an email that said Martin had passed away from complications from pneumonia, with his sister by his side at the hospital for his final moments. I took the day off of work and went up to NY for his memorial service, so grateful that I had the chance to learn from him just before he was gone.

I thought back to that day in the classroom as I took a moment to look at things recently. I had allowed outside events to get in the way of what was truly important. I realized that I needed to start taking action on my own again. I've already changed my approach to this job search and obviously I've begun to blog again. And earlier this week I went and booked a flight to Chicago and enrolled in some workshops during the 9th Annual Chicago Improv Festival at the end of April. I'm going out there not because I'm planning on rejoining a local improv group or because it might translate into skills that I could use in the courtroom, but because I wanted to experience that feeling of freedom and fulfillment from challenging myself to look within and create something out of nothing.

I just decided that it was about time for me to move away from the back wall and take a step forward again.

harmony

2006-03-17T21:44:00.000-05:00

More than just being St. Patrick's Day, March 17th is important because it happens to be the birthday of someone who has meant alot to me. Someone who I met back in the late 90's and had an off-and-on relationship with over several years. Someone who I came to feel closer to in some ways than anyone before, or since. Yet someone who I also kept distant time and again when I foolishly placed misguided expectations above genuine emotion. Someone who I came to love, yet never told in person when I had the chance.

Heather and I met online when she sent a blind response to my profile on Love@AOL. She had sent a short note with a brief description of herself, and had attached a large group photo of her alongside of twenty other volunteers for Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. She was the one with red hair and a blue suit over on the right hand side of the picture--except that there were actually a few women who fit that description. I remember moving closer to the computer screen and scanning the photo for other details, hoping that she was the girl that my eyes kept getting drawn towards. When I saw her in person a week or so later, that was exactly who she turned out to be.

We met for the first time at a restaurant in Manayunk, and later moved to another bar with music. As the place became more crowded we began to naturally move closer to one another while we talked. The attraction was immediate and powerful, and before long we were kissing just off of the dance floor, pressed up against one of the large speakers that was pumping the room full of music. We later wound up in my car in a secluded area of the parking lot, and took things a little, but not all the way, further.

We saw each other again the next week, and it was at the end of that second date where we went back to her place and had sex for the first time. From the start there was an intense sexual chemistry between us, and it only grew over time. I had never had such an intimate relationship with anyone else--I felt completely free to share my deepest desires with her, and she knew that she could trust me to do the same. At the time I didn't realize how unique that kind of bond truly was.

I've been stuck on this next paragraph for awhile trying to describe the nature that our relationship eventually took--it wasn't a traditional boyfriend/girlfriend thing, but it was much more than just physical desire. We would have a few weeks of intense nights together, followed by months of silence and separation. But sooner or later one of the two of us would not be able to resist the urge to reach out to the other, and then the pattern would repeat itself.

The truth is that the main reason why we never moved closer together as a couple is because I kept holding back emotionally. I was clinging to some idealized image of a perfect relationship--and while I was definitely feeling drawn to Heather I never let her know that while we were together. One night, while we were in the middle of having sex, she looked up at me and said "I love you." I knew in my heart that I loved her too, but before I could tell her the words caught in my throat. My mind was holding my feelings back, not willing to risk the consequence of where that next step might lead. I think I said something lame like I loved how it felt when I was inside of her. The moment passed and neither one of us mentioned it again that night. Looking back on it now, I know how open and vulnerable she must have felt to share that with me in that moment, and I am ashamed at myself for holding back my true feelings from her.

Once during our time together Heather had arranged for us to go see the musical "Rent". The show was incredible-- the songs filled with energy, passion, heartbreak, and hope; the voices moving against each other in counterpoint and then coming together in harmony.

For me, one song in particular now resonates a little more deeply than the others:

There's only now,

there's only here.

Give in to love

or live in fear.

We had a series of on-again/off-again moments, but eventually I got involved with someone else in a relationship that was closer to the image that I had formed in my head. It turns out that I need more than the house with the white picket fence and the 'Father Knows Best' relationship like I had seen growing up with my parents. With the perspective of time, I realize that they needed more than that themselves. I haven't written much about this side of my personality yet on this blog, but I am a very sexual person and I've come to find that I need to be with someone who is open and comfortable with their body and able to express what they want to be completely fulfilled in a relationship. I had learned too late that finding someone who you can share your most intimate self with, and who is willing to risk sharing themselves fully with you, is truly a rare thing and should never be taken for granted.

There's only us,

there's only this.

Forgret regret

or life is yours to miss.

Heather eventually moved out west, and there was a time when it seemed like we might never speak again. Even though we had become separated by time and distance, she was never too far from my thoughts. About a year ago I felt that I should try to get in touch because I didn't want her to go on never knowing how I had truly felt. I looked up her number and left a message. She called back a day or so later, surprised to hear from me and a little curious as to why I was contacting her now. I explained what had been running through my head, and I let her know that I had cared for her more deeply than I had let on, and that I regretted not telling her that while we were together. I told her how much I appreciated everything she had done for me and apologized for not being there more for her when I had the chance. She was understandably at a loss for words at first, but by the end of the conversation she said how much it meant for her to hear that from me, and that she was glad that I had called.

We've kept in touch over the phone since then--calling each other up across two time zones every couple of months to catch up on our lives. She was the first person that I told about this blog, and a few weeks ago she called with a question that I hoped she might ask. Back in my first few weeks of blogging, I had filled out a meme to provide some insight into parts of my background. One of the questions was "Ever fallen in love with someone that you met online?" She asked who I was thinking of when I wrote my answer: "once."
I told her that it was her.

We may not have found the right melody until after it was too late, but I am glad she knows that within me, my heart was keeping time all along.

No other life,

no other way.

No day

but today.

HNT(17) If it looks like a duck...

2006-03-08T15:54:00.000-05:00

____________________________________

I was out for a hike in Fairmount Park this week and made a stop at the concession stand at the Valley Green Inn. Since it's located right along the banks of the Wissahickon Creek, it has become home to a fairly large group of ducks and geese.

Apparently one of them took a look at Mapquest and they decided that the prospect of free handouts beat the hell out of flying all the way from Philly down to Florida for the winter.

I know in my heart that rewarding their lack of effort is only enabling their negative behavior and contributing to the cycle of dependency, but a part of me admires their laissez-faire attitude towards the rigid concept of migration, and besides...I was hungry for popcorn.

The underlying moral lesson is best summed up in a very wise, old proverb:

"Feed a duck some popcorn, and it will eat for a day.

Teach a duck how to microwave popcorn,

and you will void your warranty"

Oh, and one more thing. If you ever happen to stop by Valley Green, don't be fooled by the cute white ones. They can get downright surly...

Happy HNT!

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HNT(16) My new toy

2006-03-02T17:34:00.000-05:00

After getting some good advice from a friend who helped narrow down the search, I bought an iriver mp3 player to help the minutes fly by while I'm at the gym. Now, just have to finish uploading all of my Kelly Clarkson and 2Pac albums into it, and I'll be good to go...

Rock on, bloggers.

Happy HNT!

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HNT(15) On your marks...get set...

2006-02-16T15:39:00.000-05:00

I got a late start from the blocks for HNT today, but I thought I'd make a last minute sprint for the finish. Maybe I should get a jump on the gun while I'm running and start thinking of ideas for next week's pic...

Happy HNT!

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Let the good times roll...

2006-02-12T04:04:00.000-05:00

With Valentine's Day right around the corner, the notion of romance is on display everywhere you look, so it was only natural this weekend that my thoughts would turn to rollerskating.

Actually, the subject of rollerskating came up in a recent conversation, and as I thought back to what was a regular event on Friday nights in junior high school, I began to reminisce about its role in my earliest attempts at courtship.

As hard as it may be to believe, the social outlets for pre-teen adolescents in north-central Pennsylvania around the early 80's were somewhat limited. In the fall, it was the football game on Friday nights, with a post-game gathering at either McDonald's or Pizza Hut. During the summer it was miniature golf, followed by ice cream at either Dairy Queen or Carvel. Throughout the rest of the year, most Friday nights were spent at the indoor rollerskating rink. With its pulsating music, array of the latest pinball and video arcade machines, and the requisite disco ball, it was like our own Studio 54. Many minutes were spent early Friday evening standing before my closet, trying to decide which 100% polyester shirt from Chess King would be the one to finally get the 8th grade girls to take notice. That time was later doubled when the choice of thin leather tie was added to the ensemble...

For me, a night at the rollerskating rink held the hope of unrequited romance finally becoming requited, and possibly even some form of physical contact with the opposite sex taking place. For most of the night, I (along with most of my other male classmates) tried to appear nonchalant as we hung together in quiet desperation, occupying ourselves with endless games of Pac Man and ordering our 3rd, 4th, and 5th slice of pizza. But what we were really waiting for was the fleeting opportunity to make our move: the slow skate. Back then, some of the telltale songs that signaled the beginning of the slow skate were "Open Arms" by Journey and "Babe" by REO Speedwagon.

Spaced throughout the evening in small groups of two or three songs, the slow skate provided legitimate cover to approach a girl and ask if she would like to spend some time with you. The timing of the approach to ask the question was crucial: ask too soon in the night and she may have forgotten and wandered off by the time the music started to play; wait too late and she may be off in the girls' restroom with her friends or have already said yes to someone else. A more formalized method of bringing us together face to face was the official "Snowball Skate", where the boys would line up along one wall and the girls would line up along the opposite side of the rink. It was up to each person to plunge forward in front of hundreds of their peers and skate across the no-man's land in the middle of the rink to go up to their intended partner and ask for a skate. Minus the concentrated machine gun fire and pre-sighted artillery bursts, I can imagine that was it was similar to the fear that the young G.I.'s must have felt as they headed across the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

Of course, once the person accepted your invitation to skate, the risk of public humiliation wasn't finished. There were basically two forms of the slow skate: the cool way and the lame way. The cool way involved the boy skating the entire song backwards, enabling him to face his partner as in an actual dance. Naturally this required coordination and poise, and the ability to make those constant turns around the oval rink while looking in the other direction. An added bonus was that it gave a legitimate reason to place both hands on the girl's hips, which in pre-pubescent terms was practically the equivalent of third base. The lame way was to skate alongside your partner while holding their hand, which resulted in the two of you looking not so much like an actual couple but more like a brother and sister crossing a busy street. Eye contact was practically impossible, as your focus was kept on avoiding a collision with one of the other pairs of skaters, while occasionally looking with veiled contempt and envy at the popular boys who knew how to skate backwards. Conversation was limited due to the high decibel level and the fact that you could only turn your head slightly in the direction of your partner as you held your gaze forward.

The other form of social interaction between the sexes at the skating rink was the make-out session in the moodily lit corner over by the lockers among the piles of coats. This was reserved primarily for the established couples and those lucky enough to have successfully navigated the physical and verbal pitfalls of the slow skate with a new partner. I was only able to pull that move off once, as I recall. The shirt from Chess King must have worked its magic that night--that, or her judgment was temporarily impaired from the several gallons of Drakkar Noir that I had applied earlier that evening. She was from one of the nearby rival schools, and therefore unaware of my designated spot as just the likeable funny guy on our school's social totem pole. I remember sitting next to her on one of those large, round plastic benches surrounded by other couples who were already in the process of making out. After a moment or two I just leaned my head in and went for it, and before long everything was bubble gum lip gloss and wet tongues and heavy breathing. That, and an instant erection that I prayed wasn't noticeable beneath my new Jordache jeans.

I think we met up at the skating rink the following week or two, but as I recall she began to date one of the boys from her own school. Once we were old enough to get our driver's licenses, my friends and I moved on to other things to do on Friday nights--most of which involved aimlessly driving around town while listening to "Jack and Diane" by John Cougar Mellencamp and "Detroit Rock City" by Kiss. Oddly, this provided very few opportunities to engage in make-out sessions with the opposite sex, or even hold a girl's hand for that matter. I'd like to think that these days I have the dating ritual pretty much in hand, but I suppose that deep down the sense of excitement and uncertainty from putting yourself out there before someone that you're interested in has never gone away. Fortunately, the measure of a successful date does not require rollerskates anymore. But if I ever do happen to find myself at a rink with someone when Journey begins to play, at least I know how to skate backwards now...

HNT(14) Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

2006-02-09T01:38:00.000-05:00

Last Thursday several people contributed some very inspiring bathtub shots, and after I received a suggestion to show a little more skin for this week's pic, I thought that this shower pic might be a good way to make a clean start.

Hey, would someone mind handing me a towel?

Happy HNT!

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What's happening, hot stuff??

2006-02-05T22:36:00.000-05:00

A kind of milestone event in the life of "Yes, and..." occurred last week and I thought that I should write something to note the occasion. According to my Statcounter, this blog offcially received its 10,000th visit since it first began in October. Normally this type of acheivement would be cause for a celebration involving confetti, balloons, and party hats... but I cancelled the order for the sheet cake as soon as I took a closer look behind the numbers.

At first I had felt a tiny little bit of creative validation when the magic 10,000 mark had been passed. I thought that some people might actually enjoy stopping by for the occasional funny story, or to take a glimpse at the latest HNT pic. But to be perfectly honest, the majority of the credit for all of those visits belongs to somone else. Someone whose inspiring words and radiant smile bring people literally from all over the globe to stop by this blog every single day.
I am speaking, of course, of none other than The Donger:

Or to be accurate--the actor Gedde Watanabe, who played the character of Long Duk Dong- in the movie "Sixteen Candles". Perhaps a little backstory is in order.

Towards the end of October, I had written a post about a martini singles' night that I attended ("Martinis for two, with a twist"). At one point, I mentioned that the only two other men who had turned out for the event both resembled famous actors--one looked like Joe Mantegna and one looked like Long Duk Dong. I had done a Google search to come up with images for each of them, and then linked those pictures to their names as they appeared in the original text.

Not long after that post, I noticed a steady and noticeable bump up in my daily Statcounter numbers. As the weeks went by, one unusual http address kept popping up numerous times on a daily basis. At first I thought it might just be some spammer or phony address, but my curiosity finally won out and I went to the site to see who my #1 fan truly was. It turns out that by linking the actor's picture within that post, anytime one of the many devotees of Gedde Watanabe does a similar Google search--within a click or two they are brought directly over to little old "Yes, and..."

I can only imagine what must go through their minds when they land smack dab on my blog. I can't deny that I haven't felt a slight sense of disappointment from the fact that not one of them has taken a moment away from their adoration to write so much as a word for a comment in any of the posts since then. But then I put my desire for validation in perspective and reflect upon the fact that my situation could be worse--at least I'm getting more hits than Joe Mantegna these days. Apparently nobody is clicking on his Google images--not a single blip on my Statcounter has been from anyone following the link from his picure.

So, while it might be cause for a somewhat muted celebration, I am still really glad that some people, for whatever reason, have taken a moment out of their day to stop by here from time to time. Recently, outside events have caused me to cut back on the number and frequency of my posts--but I have a feeling that a corner has been turned and that things will be back on track in no time. As I close this commemorative post, I leave you with some words of inspiration that help me begin each and every day with meaning and purpose:

"No more yanky my wanky--the Donger need food!"

(Look out, 20,000--here I come...)

HNT(13) It's all downhill from here...

2006-02-02T03:33:00.000-05:00

On Saturday I had the chance to go skiing for the first time this season. It was such a rush to feel the wind whip past my face and see the snow blur beneath my skis--and that was only the chair lift.

The actual runs down the slopes were just as exhilerating. Of course, it's even more intense when you can share a double lift with someone on the ride to the peak...

Happy HNT!

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Catching up on the backlog

2006-01-23T13:19:00.000-05:00

Well yesterday was the first day since my return from Mexico that did not involve a cough, sneeze, sniffle, mentho-lyptus lozenge, or tissue... so I am cutting back to just one carton of orange juice a day and will return to eating chicken soup with a spoon, instead of a funnel.

It also means that I should start blogging again, so since I'm a little rusty with the whole noun-verb-sentence-paragraph structure, I thought I would start off by catching up on some of belated posts that have been sitting atop my 'Past Due' blog pile. I was tagged by Ladylongfellow a couple of weeks ago, so pull up to your monitors and read on...

1.) Hum a jingle of which you know all the words.
"She can bring home the bacon...fry it up in a pan. And never ever ever let you forget you're a man. 'Cuz she's a wooooman...Enjolie"

2.) As a kid, you played a board game over and over. And you cheated you little bastard! What was the game?
Risk. "A game of total world domination played by two guys who can barely run their own lives"--Jerry Seinfeld

3.) What is the name of the song that you have been singing the incorrect words all these years? What were you singing? What should you have been singing?
"Blinded by the Light" by Manfred Mann. I was singing "Blinded by the light, wrapped up like a Dooshun, other roller in the night" (don't ask me what the hell a 'Dooshun' is...lol) What I should have been singing is "Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night"

4.) What is the most embarrassing childhood story that your parents drag out just to fuck with you for their own private amusement?
I would always get really wound up on Christmas Eve, anticipating all of the toys the next morning, but since Santa doesn't stop by until all of the kids are nestled in bed dreaming of sugarplums, etc...I would get even more wound up over the fact that I couldn't fall asleep and would ruin Christmas for my younger brothers and sisters...lol.

4 THINGS YOU DIDN'T KNOW ABOUT ME B-4!

4 Jobs I've Had:
1-Assistant District Attorney
2-Environmental Attorney
3-Waiter
4-Domino's Delivery Driver

4 Places I Have Lived:
1-Philadelphia, PA
2-Washington, D.C.
3-Villanova, PA
4-Williamsport, PA

4 TV shows I heart:
1-Scrubs
2-My Name is Earl
3-The Office
4-Lost
*Honorable Mention goes to Arrested Development (R.I.P.)

4 (favorite)Places I Have Been On Vacation:
1-St. Lucia
2-Bahamas
3-Napa Valley
4-Mexico

4 Web Sites I visit daily:
1. Google
2. Blogs that I read
3. IMDB
4. Philly Online

4 Favorite Foods:
1-Deep Dish Pizza (from Gino's East in Chicago)
2-Spicy Tuna Sushi
3-Cheesesteak (from Pat's Steaks in South Philly)
4-Angel Food Cake

4 Places I Would Rather Be Right Now:
1-London
2-Aspen
3-Italy
4-Maui

Names of 4 People I DO NOT like:
1- my former boss
2- Ashton Kutchner
3- Terrell Owens
4-Michael Moore

HNT(12) Raiders of the Lost Blog

2006-01-19T13:10:00.000-05:00

Here is our intrepid blogger, searching the Mexican pyramid of Xochicalco for an ancient antibiotic to help remove the Curse of the Eternal Sinus Infection...

Happy HNT!

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Grounded

2006-01-16T22:36:00.000-05:00

The trip to Mexico City was fantastic. It was great to spend time with my brother and each day was filled with amazing sights and wonderful hospitality. I had planned to write a detailed post about the whole trip when I got back, but I must have caught something on the return flight, because for the past week I've been trying to get over a pretty bad head cold that just won't seem to go away.

I'm feeling pretty better now, but for a short time I feel like my main focus should be on my job search. I'll still be checking in on everyone's blog until things get settled again. See you soon.

HNT(11) hasta la vista, baby

2005-12-29T06:01:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow I fly down to Mexico City with Brendan to spend a rockin' New Year's Eve with my brother, his wife, and her loco family. I don't really habla much espanol, but I do have my passport, my sunblock, and my Pepto Bismol all packed up, so I think I'm good to go. Until my return to blogging next Friday, adios amigos!

Happy New Year's, and Happy HNT!!

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epiphany

2005-12-25T04:00:00.000-05:00

Shortly after 3 a.m. on December 25th, I finished wrapping the last of the presents for my thirteen-year old son, Brendan. As I mentioned in yesterday's post, I have raised him on my own since his mom passed away when he was three. After the final present was wrapped and put in place, I sat in the room in silence with the lights from the tree providing the only illumination. I looked up at some of the sentimental ornaments and thought back on some of the Christmas mornings that had come before. In particular, my thoughts went to the first Christmas that Brendan and I had spent on our own.

Growing up, my parents always strove to make each Christmas special and filled with wonderful traditions. Elizabeth's childhood had been similar, and when we started our own family we had both looked forward to making the same type of memories for Brendan. The picture at the top of the page is from the last Christmas that he and Liz shared together. The delight in Brendan's expression from playing with his new talking Elmo book is topped only by the joy on his mother's face as she takes in her son's smile.

As the first holiday after her death approached, I desperately wanted to do what I could to make up for her absence as Brendan awoke that Christmas morning. I was 29 at the time , and in hindsight, I was projecting my own feelings of loss somewhat onto my young son. Not that there is ever a good age to lose a parent, but a three-year old doesn't experience the same grief and comprehension of permanant loss as that of an older child. It still would be a little time before he would realize from talking with his new friends at preschool that he was the only one in class whose mommy lived in heaven.

I tried to compensate for our situation by going overboard with presents that year. When he walked down those steps on Christmas morning to see if Santa had come, I wanted him to be overwhelmed at the sight before him, in the misplaced hope that a room full of toys might make up for his mother not being there. To put the icing on the cake, I picked up one of those electric-powered cars that kids can sit in and drive with a working steering wheel and gas pedal (at a breakneck top speed of 2 mph.) As a kid, I had always wanted a go-cart for Christmas, and it was one of the few items in my annual letter to Santa that never was fulfilled. It was a little expensive, but I rationalized the purchase as a one-time indulgence to make up for this unusual holiday.

I woke Brendan up and went through the same routine that my father had gone through on Christmas morning when I was a child: "I think I heard hooves on the roof last night--do you think Santa really came?" Brendan smiled broadly in anticipation and I told him to wait at the top of the stairs while I went down to turn on the lights for the Christmas tree. "Oh my gosh," I exclaimed after the tree was plugged in, "he really did come--I don't believe all of this stuff! Come on down and see!!" Brendan bounded down the steps and was stopped short by the sight of all of the presents that awaited him. His eyes grew wide as he looked from wall to wall, and then got even wider when they settled on the electric car in the middle of the room. In a few moments however, I would be the one finding myself overwhelmed.

Brendan first ran up to sit in the car and turn the wheel from side to side. He then hopped out and began to go from present to present, some of them without any wrapping paper (as I had run out) but all of them with Christmas tags on them. He paused after taking a quick look at them all, and the excited smile was soon replaced by the beginnings of a frown. He checked a few more presents, and then walked over towards me with a look of concern on his face. I began to worry that my efforts to distract him with the sheer quantity of presents had failed, and asked, "What's the matter, buddy?" He reached up to hold my hand, and with his eyes brimming with tears said, "Daddy, Santa didn't bring you any presents..."

I was speechless for a moment and had to blink back tears myself. I knelt down to hug him, and assured him that Santa had brought my presents to Nana & Pop-Pop's house, which was my parents' house that we would be traveling to later in the day. I told him that Santa knew what an extra good boy he had been that year, and that he had wanted him to enjoy these special presents all for himself. The smile quickly returned to his face, and soon he dove back into the ocean of gifts and started tearing off wrapping paper to discover one new toy after another.

I sat back and was blown away by what had just happened. A lot of people feel that Christmas has become too commercialized, and that the true meaning of the holiday has been replaced by excess. I had played right into that stereotype, thinking that a room full of gifts might make up for a missing parent. But it took a child able to ignore all of the material things that surrounded him to focus on what was most important, putting compassion for another person ahead of his own feelings. Looking back on it now, I realize one other thing--Brendan and I were not alone that morning. Elizabeth was there as well, our angel watching over us from on top of the tree. She had already filled our hearts with a gift that we would be able to open in year after year: love.

tag, you're it...

2005-12-23T16:29:00.000-05:00

I had been tagged by LadyLongfellow to list 5 weird habits about myself, so not wanting to incur a horrible blog curse by breaking the chain, I set to work...

Here are the rules;

“The first player of this game starts with the topic. “five weird habits of yourself,” and people who get tagged need to write an entry about their five weird habits as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose the next five people to be tagged. "

1.) I need caffeine in the morning to get going, but generally don't like coffee. So I will drink about six cans of diet soda before lunch, but I have to alternate between diet Coke and diet Pepsi each time.

2.) Whenever I climb into a bed with the sheets all tucked in, I have to kick and push them loose. I can't fall asleep if my feet and legs are all scrunched in...

3.) Ever since a really bad case of food poisoning several years ago, I won't eat any leftovers beyond the first night in the fridge. It wouldn't matter if the food was inspected and certified by the Food & Drug Administration and the Homeland Security Biohazard Unit--it's still going in the trash at the end of day two.

4.) I love to read but have found that I just can't read two books at the same time. It doesn't matter if it's the suckiest book ever written--I have to slog through to the end before I can begin reading the next book.

5.) This last one isn't weird, except in the sense that I haven't written about it before in over three months of blogging. I have a thirteen-year old son, Brendan, whom I've raised on my own since he was three when his mom passed away ten years ago.

Well, those are the top five...and I'm sure that I could continue to go on listing things for awhile.

Since it took me some time to get around to posting this, it looks like alot of people have already been tagged and went on to tag others. So I won't tag anybody at this point, but feel free to copy and paste the rules at the top and start tagging on your own...

HNT(10) Climbing the walls

2005-12-22T22:29:00.000-05:00

I was getting a little stir crazy after my second straight week spent indoors sending out resumes and cover letters from home. So this past Saturday morning, I went to a rock climbing gym and just let it all hang out.

Happy HNT!

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a.f.a. (a friend always)

2005-12-21T13:26:00.000-05:00

On Saturday afternoon I drove up to Connecticut for a holiday party being thrown by a high school classmate and her husband. Actually, Patty and I first met in kindergarten at St. Ann's grade school, and she is probably one of my oldest and closest friends that I have. She and Scott have thrown a big Christmas party in each of the eight years that they've been married, but due to family or relationship commitments I had never been able to attend before. In light of the fact that I had recently been laid off, I thought that a change of scenery with a close friend would be a great way to spend the weekend.

Thankfully the traffic was light, so I made the drive up from Philadelphia in just about three and a half hours. I had offered to show up a little early to help with the set-up, and after catching up for a few minutes, Patty asked if I wouldn't mind downloading songs onto their I-Pod while she and Scott finished getting ready, as apparently her previous parties always seemed to break out into dancing as the night (and drinks) continued to flow. I spent the next hour putting together my own DJ "TJ" dance mix, and only gave a moment's notice to an email notification that popped up briefly with the words "re: Bad News..." in the subject line.

They live in a fantastic home overlooking a small lake, and Patty had done a wonderful job decorating the various rooms with a number of distinctive touches. My favorite part was walking around looking at the pictures of their daughter Anna, who was now eight months old. I didn't know it at the time, but Patty and Scott went through an extremely difficult period of about three years before Anna was conceived, with repeated attempts of hormone pills, fertility shots, artificial insemination, and finally in-vitro fertilization. She had only shared their experience with her family and her two closest friends from college while she was going through everything. It turned out that all three women were experiencing various types of fertility issues, and from the emails that flowed back and forth they ultimately wrote a book, The Conception Chronicles, that was just recently published this year. The majority of the writing had been done by Patty, since her experience had been the most challenging and had covered the entire gamut of fertility procedures. I was blown away by the depth of the book, full of honest humor and heartbreaking loss, as she and her husband struggled to cope with the pain that followed from each unsucessful procedure for month after month on end. Happily, all of the physical and emotional setbacks were finally rewarded with the birth of their beautiful daughter Anna in April.

The party soon rose to full-swing as the house filled up with about forty guests, most of them neighbors, coworkers, and other couples that they had met in their birth class. I have spent the past month conducting my job search primarily on my own from home, and I soon relished the chance to once again engage in a face to face conversation with another person that did not simply end with the phrase, "Here's your receipt...have a nice day!" I was like a roving talk-show host: moving from one small circle of partygoers to the next, asking several follow up questions about jobs, children, and most interestingly, about how each couple met. The responses provided all sorts of encouraging stories --from coworkers finally confessing a mutual attraction to each other, to a successful love connection through a response to a profile on J-Date. From time to time Patty would come over and join in the group, telling various funny stories about our growing up together, and laughing at how she had put me to work for the party with the I-Pod assignment as soon as I had walked through the door. She laughed each time that I assured each group that the choice of music had been placed into good hands, and that the dance floor would soon come alive with my featured selections from the Oak Ridge Boys and Weird Al Yankovic.

Several hours into the evening, Patty motioned for me to join her over in a small family room off of the kitchen, away from the main party. We each sat down on the corner of an adjoining couch, and I congratulated her on a great party and thanked her again for inviting me. She thanked me in return, and said that it had meant a lot to her that I was there this year especially. Her smile faded and she looked down at her hands as she shared some bad news that she and her husband had just received. About two months ago they found out that she had gotten pregnant again, and they had been estastic that this pregnancy had happened relatively quickly after the extreme efforts that they had gone through to conceive Anna. But just several days before the holiday party, Patty had gone in for a scheduled check-up and found out that the pregnancy had failed. Her face clouded over and she burst into tears. Through her crying she explained that her doctor had advised her to wait until she miscarried naturally in a few days, so she was still carrying her baby inside of her. They had only told a few people, and I realized that this was the bad news referred to in the email that had popped up while I was downloading songs at the computer to their I-Pod.

I quickly moved over to her couch and put my arms around her, and she buried her head against my shoulder while her body began to wrack with sobs as her sorrow poured out. She wondered aloud why something like this would happen, when she and Scott had already been through so much with Anna's conception. She asked how I had dealt with everything after Elizabeth's death, and then the death of my mother and later, my father. She wondered at how I had been able to keep such a positive outlook following such painful losses. I told her that I believed that sometimes things do happen for a reason, and that sometimes one loss might, in the end, prevent a bigger loss down the road. The way I look at it, my wife's accidental death from a food allergy could have happened at any point in her life--whether we were married or not. Since we had met through a somewhat random sequence of events that brought us both to the same rehearsal on the first night of that particular season, I considered myself lucky to have had the chance to spend even just three years with someone whom I loved so much. I told Patty that maybe this miscarriage might have prevented a greater loss later on, like a complication in childbirth that may have taken both of their lives, or a random fatal accident one day in the future as she drove that child and Anna on some baby-related errand, an errand that she would not be taking as a result of this pregnancy ending now. And I pointed out that my mother had miscarried once before I was born, and if that baby had been carried to term, then I would not be here today.

Her tears began to subside as she considered what I had said. She kept repeating that she knew that my being there at the party this year must have also been for a reason, to help her come to terms with this sudden heartbreak by sharing my own experience in dealing with loss. Her husband Scott wandered into the kitchen, and after doing a slight double take upon seeing his wife sitting there with her head on my shoulder and my arms around her, I quickly motioned for him to come over and explained as he got near that Patty had just shared their bad news. I stood up and Scott took his place beside her, and after a few more moments to catch her breath, she agreed that it was probably best if she called it a night. She thanked me again for being there, and then Scott led her to their bedroom to put her into bed for the evening.

After taking a few minutes, I made my way back downstairs to where the main party had begun to move. I spent the next hour mingling with more of the guests, and then noticed a slight commotion as people started to turn their attention to something behind me. I followed their gazes as the room began to fill with applause, and soon saw Patty standing at the top of the stairs, a smile on her face as she modeled her latest wardrobe change. In place of her sleek black holiday dress and new black boots, she was now wearing her pink flannel pajamas and fluffy white socks. The cheers grew louder as she began to descend the stairs, and Scott went over to their main stereo system to plug in the I-Pod. While most of the credit goes to Will Smith for helping everyone at the party to start "getting jiggy wit' it"--as I watched Patty begin to whirl around the dance floor with a care-free smile on her face, I was glad that I had been there this year to do my part, in some small way, to help a friend get back on her feet. High school yearbooks are filled with empty promises to stay close and keep in touch, but with Patty, I am fortunate to have known one person in my life who can truly be called a friend. Always.

_______________________________

That's our kindergarten class picture at the top of this post, which I recently found while going through some old papers. That's me in the bottom row on the left in the white turtleneck and blue vest, and Patty is in the top row on the right in the white shirt and red dress.

HNT(9) You better watch out...

2005-12-15T02:09:00.000-05:00

"He's making a blogroll, checking it twice. Gonna find out who's naughty and--"

(um, actually--I'm really more interested in the naughty ones...)

Happy Holidays and Happy HNT!

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Like a virgin (part 2)

2005-12-13T23:33:00.000-05:00

I drove around Brigantine looking for a quiet spot, and finally parked in a secluded parking lot at the far north end of the island. I suppose I was hoping against hope at this point, but still not sure how far Jackie wanted to take things. I turned the engine off but left the radio on, and within minutes we were kissing. She seemed just as into it as I was, if not more, so after awhile my hands began their normal wandering, stopping first at her chest, and meeting no hesitation, eventually moving further south. After several more minutes of mutual fumbling with buttons and zippers with a stick shift and middle console between us, Jackie suggested that we move to the back seat. It dawned on me that I had finally received the signal waving me in from third base that I had been waiting for all of those years.

We moved to the rear of my two-door Ford Tempo, and after she slid over into the corner of the backseat, the rest of our clothes were off within seconds. I knelt before her in the wheelwell, and I still remember my exact thought at that moment: "This is actually going to happen." I also became distinctly aware of a song that began to play on the radio, "Hell is for Children" by Pat Benetar. Having been raised in a strict Catholic upbringing to that point, I had a momentary thought that this might be some ham-handed sign from above to pause and stop things before committing a mortal sin. But as twenty years of pent-up desire were about to be unleashed with this beautiful, naked girl before me, a choir of angels could have appeared overhead singing "Ave Maria" and I still would have gone for it.

Any other concious thought totally left my mind from that point, as I moved closer and positioned myself just above her. Jackie reached down and guided me the rest of the way, and I was overcome by the warm sensation that surrounded me. My body began to act on its own as we moved together, and Jackie closed her eyes and kept saying my name over and over. While male pride might tempt me to embellish the story at this point, I'm sure that things reached their climax for me shortly after the song reached its final refrain. (For the record, the playing time is listed at 4:55.) We both sat back, flushed and breathing heavily, and after a while made nervous jokes about being sure that we weren't related and wondering what her uncle and my dad might say if they saw us right then. While my youthful exuberance had resulted in an abrupt finish to our first time together, on a positive note it also allowed for me to be ready to go again in about fifteen minutes. We picked up again where we left off, and this time things lasted for several songs.

I drove Jackie back to her apartment, and we shared a knowing smile the next morning as everyone said their goodbyes before making the journey back to their homes. I remained in Pennsylvania while she lived in Florida, and we kept in touch briefly over the phone and through letters but soon lost touch. After finally experiencing sex after so many years of anticipation, I soon began to make up for lost time, with my confidence growing with each new partner. Looking back on it now, that first time will always have its own unique spot in my memory, and I could not have been more lucky to have shared it with someone like Jackie, who made the experience completely natural and exhilarating.

About 10 years later, Jackie got back in touch to let me know that she would be in New Jersey to visit another family member that was living there temporarily. I picked her up at her relative's house and took her out to a restaurant in Philadelphia. There was a bit of nervous small talk as we first began to catch up on our lives up to that point, and it just so happened that neither of us was in a relationship at the moment. Dinner lasted for several hours, and then I suggested that we go out dancing at a nearby club. Now I was the one leading her onto the dance floor, and fortuntately I had developed a couple of new moves over the years to add to my routine. There was that same energy between us as we began to slow dance, and eventually we wound up going back to my house. Even though we hadn't seen in other in ten years, there was a familiarity there as we started to kiss, and then later headed up to the bedroom. I have no idea what song was playing in the background as we moved towards the bed, but this time the two of us soon found a rythym of our own.

Like a virgin (Part 1)

2005-12-12T13:53:00.000-05:00

Recently I was reminiscing with a friend about that seminal moment in my younger days when I finally took that first step towards becoming a man. No, I am not referring to the day when I passed my driver's test and became a fully licensed driver, no longer dependent on my parents to drive me around on Saturday nights. I am speaking, of course, of the first time that I had sex. I suppose in the grand scheme of things, my experience is no more noteworthy than anyone else's, but it remains pretty high up there in the top 10 highlights of my life so far. Oh, and it just so happens to involve Pat Benetar and Madonna.

I had just turned 20, and while the topic of sex had occupied most of my thoughts since junior high school, I had never really had the opportunity up to that point to act upon them. I had been more of the funny guy in my teen years, and most of the girls were only interested in dating the stars of the football and basketball teams. Going out with a junior varsity member of the golf team didn't quite have the same cache for the cheerleader crowd. And my freshman and sophmore years at college were spent pining after girls who were focused on the popular fraternity guys. I did wind up making out and doing some heavy petting with girls along the way, but I had a knack for finding the ones who were saving themselves for marriage, so while I was eager to make that final move towards home plate, I seemed to be always held up at third base.

Things finally changed the summer after my sophomore year in college. I was on vacation with my family in Brigantine, a small island along the coast of New Jersey directly north of Atlantic City. For over thirty years, my father's side of the family would travel from all over the country to vacation there at the beginning of each August. I became very close with my cousins, all of whom were older than me and who always included me in their plans, even helping me sneak past the bouncers to get into the local bars while I was still under 21. I was related to my cousins from Chicago through their dad, who was my father's older brother. That summer, they were also visited by relatives on their mom's side. (It is important to note at this point for legal purposes that I was in no way related by blood to the person to whom I eventually lost my virginity. We were in New Jersey, not West Virginia for pete's sake...)

Their mom's sister flew up from Florida to stay with them that week, and she brought along her 21 year-old daughter. Jackie was absolutely beautiful--long blond hair, striking blue eyes, and let's just say that she had a figure that would have allowed her to land a job at Hooters on the spot, without the formality of the mandatory aptitude test and necessary references. She also had a very sweet personality, and was completely down to earth. I spent the entire week developing a bigger and bigger crush on Jackie, but never even dreaming of acting upon it because

a.) she was completely out of my league, and
b.) she was my cousins' cousin and I couldn't imagine even trying to put any moves on her in front of them.

So I just spent the week talking with her about everything and nothing, and making her laugh with whatever dumb joke that I would come up with on the spot.

On the last night of our vacation that week, my cousins decided to go out dancing at one of the nicer bars on the island. Since I was still underage and trying to look the part of a suave, man-about-town, I got dressed in my finest polyester shirt and thin leather tie from the Chess King. (Keep in mind that this was the late eighties...). Jackie, who all week long had been pushing the fashion envelope with what only could have been described as punk/chic, was the last to emerge from the summer apartment as we all waited by our cars. She walked out in an outfit that would have made Madonna blush. She was wearing a white pleather jacket with fringe hanging from the sleeves, over several layered lace belly shirts, with a short white denim miniskirt and white knee-high boots, also with fringe around the tops. Her hair was piled high and tied with lace ribbons, and she had what I would estimate as about 27 rubber bracelets adorning each wrist.

Don't get me wrong--to my 20 year-old eyes she was still smoking hot, but to my oldest cousin Donald, who was just shy of his 30th birthday, it was open season for mockery. Don is a great guy and when it comes to family he be can fiercely loyal and protective. But he is also extremely blunt, and won't pull any punches with his other brothers or sisters, or in this case even his cousin. He began to tease Jackie and was soon joined in by my other cousin Michael, who was just several months older than me. Jackie soon ran back into the apartment in tears, and it took my cousin Marguerite a good 30 minutes to console her and reitereate what a complete asshole her brother had been before she re-emerged.

We all went the bar in separate cars, and Jackie was clearly still feeling uncomfortable about what had happened. I spent most of the night talking with her near the edge of the dance floor, repeating what a jerk Donald had been and sincerely telling her that I thought she looked very pretty that night. And I was saying that simply to console her, because as mentioned above, I felt that she was totally out of my league and out-of-bounds as far as I was concerned, and I wouldn't have tried to put any moves on her--not that I had even developed any moves at that point in my twenty years of unintended bachelorhood anyways. So I was pleasantly surprised when she smiled and kissed my cheek, telling me how sweet I was for trying to make her feel better. And I was completely caught off-guard when she grabbed my hand and pulled me onto the dance floor. To say that I was an awkward dancer at that point is being kind, but she was a trooper and acted like I was the only guy out on the dance floor.

Mercifully, a slow song finally came on and I began to make a break for the bar, but she took my hands again and put them on her hips. She wrapped her arms around my neck and put her head on my shoulders. It was all I could do at that point to not trip over my own feet, and after awhile I began to imagine that this is what it must have felt like to be the high school sports star dancing with the prettiest cheerleader. The slow songs finally came to an end and we all went out to our cars after last call. I had followed my cousins there in my own car, and was surprised when Jackie asked if she could get a ride with me, hopping into my car before I could answer. Again, she was my cousins' cousin, so in spite of the instant erection that I had developed as soon as her body had pressed against mine during the slow dancing, I was still not imagining that things could possibly go any further. I drove her back to my uncle's apartment, and after my cousins all filed inside, she turned to me and said "Let's go somewhere private."

(to be continued tomorrow with Part 2)

HNT(8): I ♥ Blogging

2005-12-08T03:49:00.000-05:00

Sometimes it's hard to come up with the right words from day to day,
but underneath it all...I love blogging.

*****UPDATE******

A lot of you have asked where I bought this. I ordered it online from www.Cafepress.com. Here is the link to get the boxers in this pic, and here is a link to get a thong with the same logo. I just hope that I've inspired some of our female bloggers to pick some up and model their own for next week's pic...

Happy HNT!

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Isn't it ironic...

2005-12-06T22:47:00.000-05:00

I think it was Alanis Morrisette, or perhaps Lil' Bow Wow, who sang about life being ironic--you know, something about it raining on your wedding day while a fly landed in your chardonnay while your new girlfriend goes down on you in a theater. No, wait--I think I'm mixing up the songs. After awhile, the indignant anger and manic rage in all of her lyrics start to run together...

Anyways, considering the underlying themes of my last two posts, irony came up and gave me a swift kick in the ass recently. It seems after blogging about 'things happening for a reason' and posting a picture of me complaining about having to wear a tie for work, I was called into my boss' office on the Monday after Thanksgiving and was let go. There had been an uneasy feeling hanging over the whole office for several months, following a series of layoffs that began with the secretaries, then moved onto the paralegals, and now, apparently, to the attorneys.

I just went back and deleted a paragraph laying out the background of what led up to this, so let me just say that the focus of the office changed with the arrival of my current boss about a year ago. Timely memos and emails apparently took a higher priority than actually going into court and winning trials for the company. And you have to love the timing of her doing this right before Christmas, especially when her main complaints focused around a timeframe back in May.

This caught me completely off guard, and it took a little time before I could get my feet back under me and begin to focus on getting a new job ASAP. Another small irony is that while I had been able to sit for hours and compose detailed entries for my blog while at work, I immediately developed a serious case of writer's block once my free time became (unintentionally) unlimited.

But...now things are looking up again. I've shaken off the cobwebs, hit the ground running, put my ear to the grindstone, and performed some other tortured metaphors that I can't think of at the moment to indicate that I am once more moving forward with a positive outlook. I view this as an opportunity--an unexpected push towards a more fulfilling career that would have never happened unless these events had unfolded just as they did.

And I have begun to lapse into a recurring fantasy where I have taken a job as a plaintiff's attorney and face off one day against my old company in court. The jury will be enraptured as I serenade them during my closing argument, and the various photos from HNT that I "accidently" introduce as a trial exhibit will have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the seven-figure award that the jury gives to my client. As my old boss stares out from behind the defense table in abject bewilderment after the verdict is announced, I'll lean over to her and quietly assure her that my mandatory trial memo will be on her desk first thing the next morning. The underlying sarcastic tone in my voice will suggest precisely just where I think that memo should be filed...

And guess which tune I'll be whistling while I walk on past her out of the courtroom, as I begin to compose the next verse in my life...

HNT(7): Hot under the collar

2005-11-24T14:50:00.000-05:00

My favorite part of the day...

And since it's a 4-day holiday, I'm most thankful for the fact that I won't have to wear a tie again until Monday.

Happy Thanksgiving and Happy HNT!!

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Epilogue

2005-11-23T11:15:00.000-05:00

I received an unexpected call at work from Terri several months later that winter. She had found my full name in the accident report, and tracked me down through my company. It turned out that she was flown to Atlantic City Medical Center and had surgery to repair the artery in her leg. She had been admitted to the hospital for several days, but had a fairly quick recovery, with only a nasty scar as a permanent reminder. She mentioned how the surgeon had told her that she was lucky that she hadn't bled to death, and she repeatedly thanked me for stopping and coming to her aid. She said that she wanted to take me to dinner at a fancy restaurant in Avalon when I returned the next summer. I took Terry's number and told her that I was relieved to hear that she had pulled through without any complications, and we exchanged goodbyes with a promise to get together down at the shore in few months.

As it turned out, for a number of unrelated reasons I decided not to sign on again with the Avalon house that year. I thought I had detected a slight interest in Terri's voice during that phone call when she had asked if I was still single, but as it turned out I had just begun seeing someone several weeks before she called. I would have definitely been interested in seeing her if I had been unattached at the time. I've only made it down to Avalon on occasional weekends over the past couple of summers, and I've never had any contact with Terri since. Thinking back on it now, I suppose that is just the way things were meant to happen. Timing plays a role in everything, especially in how and when we come into people's lives. Sometimes it can force us to take an unexpected detour, and then there are times when we may find ourselves simply passing each other by.

Crash (Part 2)

2005-11-22T01:30:00.000-05:00

As part of my job, I knew that airbags deploy after their internal sensors record that the car has been in an accident at at certain speed, usually over 45 miles per hour. Her car had to have been doing around 60 mph at impact, and I began to wonder just how touchy the airbag sensors actually were, and if some movement in the car might trigger a kind of delayed reaction. I had read that an airbag explodes at about 150 mph, reaching full inflation within fractions of a second. With my head necessarily in the position that it was in, my neck would've been broken in an instant if the airbag did go off. I had no choice but to remain right where I was until the medics arrived, but I do remember thinking that somebody should patent some device, like the Club, that could be slipped over a steering wheel to prevent delayed airbag deployments. I had thought that I might really be on to something with that idea, and to take my mind off of the explosive power located just inches from my head, I began to imagine the many beach houses up and down the Jersey shore that could be bought with all of the royalties from my new invention.

After about twenty minutes, a state police officer finally arrived on the scene. He ducked his head inside the passenger window and I shot a knowing glance at the blood-filled towel when I asked how soon the paramedics would be there. He hurried back to his radio, and after about 10 more minutes an ambulance and fire truck finally arrived. The head paramedic assessed the situation immediately, and ordered me to remain still. My dreams of financial wealth were dashed when he slipped a steel device just like the one I had imagined over the steering wheel, and then they began to use the jaws of life to pry open the passenger side door. Once they were able to gain access to her, they took over and I could finally relax my grip on her leg and pull my upper body out of the car, standing up straight for the first time in half an hour.

I moved several yards away and began to give my information to the police officer who was writing up his accident report. The paramedics had removed the passenger door completely and began lifting Terri out on a stretcher, after having put a cervical collar around her neck and properly bandaging her leg wound. Suddenly there was a heightened flurry of activity, and they began to call out orders in urgent voices. I could see now that Terri had lost consciousness, and I noticed that all of the color had drained from her face, and her skin appeared pale and waxy. They quickly lowered the stretcher directly onto the grass, and checked her vital signs. She must have gone into cardiac arrest, because they slipped a ventilator bag over her mouth and began to shock her with two paddles directly over her chest.

The events of the past thirty minutes finally caught up to me. I had been so focused on stopping the arterial bleeding and keeping Terri calm that I hadn't had time to react to the situation emotionally myself. Once the paramedics had arrived, I could step back and become more of an observer. I finally noticed my bloodstained shirt and hands, and then watched as the life seemed to drain out of Terry's body on the stretcher. Suddenly it all began to overwhelm me, and I could feel the tell-tale signs that I was about to black out. My vision was clouded by thousands of tiny black and white dots, like the UHF channel on our old TV set at home growing up. A loud buzzing filled my ears, and I remember just trying to lower myself down under my own power until the moment passed. I was able to drop down quickly into a sitting position on the grass, and remained upright until my vision and hearing returned a few seconds later. The medics had apparently stablized Terri again, and they were placing her into the ambulance. I heard someone speaking into the radio requesting an immediate medivac helicopter pick-up at a rest stop a few miles down the highway.

The firefighters had already doused her car with chemicals to prevent any fire, and one of them noticed me sitting there sporting what I'm sure was my own pretty pale complexion. He came over to check on me, and to make sure that none of the blood on my clothing was coming from any wound on my body. I was pretty embarrassed at the attention, in light of the real injured person that needed to be focused on, and quickly got back to my feet and assured him that I was okay. He remained with me for another minute, and after the color returned to my face, I convinced him that I would be able to safely drive the remaining couple of miles to my house on my own. He looked into my eyes one more time to make sure that my pupils were no longer dilated, and then paused and said, "You know,
you saved that woman's life." I told him that the paramedics were
the ones who had saved her, and that I had just been in the right place at the right time.

I walked back to my car, sat there for a little bit until I felt completely okay to drive, and then headed on to Avalon. Thankfully I was the first one to arrive at the shore house that weekend. I really didn't want to relive the whole experience all over again by talking about it so soon, and I'm sure the sight of me walking into the living room covered in blood would have only caused even more unneccesary excitement for the day. As it was, I threw my shirt in the trash, took a long hot shower, and made myself a strong drink.
I always thought that it seemed a bit cliche whenever some movie character would pour a drink in solitude after a particularly stressful situation, but right then it felt like just the thing to do at the time. Due to the resulting traffic jam that had backed up along the highway for miles behind the accident, my housemates already en route from Philadelphia wouldn't begin to show up at the house for a few hours. I went up to the third floor and settled into a chair out on the deck, which provided a perfect view of a spectacular sunset that was just beginning to appear out over the ocean. I sat back and put my feet up on the deckrail, and as I tried to come to terms with the events of that day, I thought about my reply to the firefighter for a moment.

The right place at the right time. It struck me that if the day had gone as I originally had planned, I would have already arrived at the house in Avalon a good hour or two before the accident had actually occurred. And if even one seemingly meaningless event had unfolded differently, I never would have been at that particular spot to witness the accident in the first place. If the court reporter had shown up on time, or if I had decided to ask one more question before concluding the deposition, or if I had stopped to change my clothes or get a quick bite to eat--I would have been miles further away on the highway when the accident took place. And going back even farther, I wondered about the likelihood of a different outcome if I had decided to choose some other activity years ago instead of learning first aid. The amount of coincidence and probability involved in bringing two people together at a particular time and at a particular place can be staggering sometimes. I really do believe that things happen for a reason, even though it's not always entirely clear why at the time. I realize that my belief could just be my way of rationalizing otherwise random occurences, but it's what works for me.

It was that sense of comfort that enabled me to set my empty drink aside without the need to pour another for the evening. Instead, I continued to watch the blazing orange sun fade slowly beneath the deepening blue horizon for the next hour or so, as I sat out on the deck by myself in silence. Where, for the second time that day, I found myself again in just the right place at exactly the right time.

Crash (Part 1)

2005-11-21T01:50:00.000-05:00

I rented a very good movie, Crash, over the weekend. It focuses on the interactions between several people in Los Angeles over a two-day period, and its main theme is the stereotypes and racism that exist in all cultures and at all levels of society. Again and again in the movie, minor actions turn out to have major consequences for most of the characters, connecting them in ways that make random chance seem like destined fate.

One of the key scenes in the movie involves a car crash, and as I thought about the movie's theme of fate, it brought to mind an experience that I had several summers ago. From Labor Day to Memorial Day, almost all of the single population in the city of Philadelphia virtually empties out on Fridays as people head to the Jersey shore for the weekend. Shortly after being hired at my current job, I finally was able to arrange to join a shore house myself. I wound up going in with some very cool people in a great house in Avalon, New Jersey, about a 90-minute ride from Philly, and soon I couldn't wait for the end of work each Friday afternoon to begin my weekly migration down the shore on the Garden State Parkway.

One Friday in particular, I had purposely scheduled a deposition early in the day for 1 p.m. Our office had a way of becoming a ghost town on Friday afternoons, so the plan was for me to run through the usual one-hour of routine questions and then head right from the office to the beach, getting an early start on the weekend and beating the horrendous rush hour traffic. It began to feel like the planets were aligned against me that day, because nothing seemed to go as planned. The court stenographer was late, and the witness being deposed would not give a straight answer to my questions to save her life. I would have to ask three or four questions just to pin her down to the simplest details, and her attorney kept objecting and placing meaningless, time-wasting statements on the record. By the time we finally finished, it was past 4 o'clock. Still in my suit and tie, I jumped into my car and headed for Avalon, figuring that I would change into more casual clothes once I got to the shore house.

At least I had been able to get on the road before rush hour really hit, so traffic was moderate but moving fairly steadily. I had been driving for over an hour and was just 15 minutes from my exit when I noticed a commotion in my rear view mirror. I saw a white compact car spinning wildly, and watched as it veered across three lanes of traffic, slide down a slight embankment, and slam into a row of trees that lined the highway. I continued driving for a second as my mind took in what it had just witnessed, and then I pulled my car over to the side. I ran a hundred yards or so back towards the car, which was now wrapped around a tree at point just behind the driver's door. All of the windshields were blown out, and white smoke was coming from the engine. A woman in her mid-forties was behind the steering wheel, and as I leaned in through the driver's window, she slowly started to come around.

She began to cry, and kept repeating that her neck hurt. The impact had broken her driver's seat, and she was leaning back at an awkward angle. I brushed the shattered windshield glass off of her and told her not to move. There wasn't any obvious sign of injury to her neck, but I had learned in first-aid training that the head should be kept still to prevent further injury just in case. The other point that had been emphasized was that if the victim is conscious, you need to keep them alert and talking to prevent them from slipping into shock. She was worried about the smoke coming from her engine, and began to panic that her car was going to catch on fire. I reached in and turned off the ignition, and assured her that the white smoke was just steam escaping from the broken radiator. Optimistic that her neck and back didn't appear to be broken, I asked her if she hurt anywhere else. She got silent for a moment, and then said that her leg did feel a little warm. I leaned further into the car for a better look and soon saw the reason why.

About halfway between the knee and ankle on her right leg, a steady stream of bright red blood was pumping from a 1-inch gash, and had already formed into a small pool on the floormat beneath the gas pedal. I knew from my earlier training that this meant that an artery had been severed in her leg, and that if left unchecked a person can bleed out in minutes, well before death from a lack of oxygen due to stopped breathing. I also knew how important it was not to alarm her any further, as shock would only complicate things even more. I quickly scanned the inside of the car, and grabbed a beach towel from the backseat. She asked what was wrong and I casually said that she had a little cut on her leg, and that I wanted to keep it covered to prevent infection. I slipped my tie off and tied a makeshift tourniquet around her leg, and put pressure directly over the wound with my left hand, while using my right hand to squeeze a pressure point in her upper thigh above the knee, hoping to slow down the blood loss until help could arrive.

With all of the hundreds of cars whizzing past on the highway, only one other person had pulled over and come up to the car. An older man appeared by the passenger door to offer help, and when I found out that he had a cell phone I told him to call 911. I didn't want to alarm the injured driver any further, so I kept my voice level and calm. But I caught the man's eyes and glared for emphasis when I mentioned that it would be a good idea if the ambulance got here soon. He ran down the road to get his cell phone and I went back to engaging the driver in conversation.

Her name was Terri, and she lived year-round in Wildwood Crest, a few towns further down the coast from Avalon. A good way to keep someone from slipping into shock is to take their mind off of the immediate situation, so I began to ask her all sorts of mundane questions about her job and her background. She was single and had recently moved up here from Florida, and was working in real estate sales. When she asked what I did for a living, I told her that I worked as an attorney for an insurance company defending people in auto accidents. It turned out that her car was insured by my company, and I joked that I would personally see to it about getting her a refund on her $100 deductible. As the minutes continued to pass, I had to stretch to come up with more innocuous small talk, and began to slip into a sort of first-date mentality by asking more questions about her background to keep her mind off of the present circumstances. I complimented her on her tan and asked about her favorite musicians that were represented by the CD cases now scattered all around her car. She began to ask the same types of questions of me, and at one point asked me directly why I was still single. I teased her about being a big flirt, and jokingly accused her of staging this whole thing as a novel way to meet guys.

All the while that I was talking with her, I remained bent over through the driver's side windshield with both hands clamped down on her leg. The towel had become soaked with blood, but the puddle on the floor had stopped growing larger. I couldn't move at this point, as I didn't want to release the pressure and risk more blood loss, and the car had been twisted so badly from the impact that neither door could be opened anyways. After about 10 minutes or so into our light-hearted conversation, a thought suddenly occurred to me. Because the cut on her leg had been so low, I had been forced to lean most of my upper body through the windshield to reach the necessary pressure points. As a result, my head was directly next to the steering wheel. I asked matter-of-factly if her car had airbags, and she said that it did and joked that I should represent her in a lawsuit against the manufacturer because they never went off. I said sure, but privately was more concerned about the fact that the airbags might still go off after all.

(Part 2 to follow tomorrow)

(belated) thanks

2005-11-17T14:34:00.000-05:00

I just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to comment about my post on Sunday ("perennial"). Since I've started this blog, I've been debating just how much of my private life I should write about. But it was pointed out to me that in the end, writing about that experience would be a positive thing, and that it would give everyone a better understanding of where I was coming from.

A couple of times this week I wanted to respond to each person individually, but either couldn't find the right words at the moment or was interrupted by one thing or the other.

So Ruthie, wdky, sky, velma, sara, check, mara, nwc, sherri, annalis, nym, jill, mystickat, and ladylongfellow--thank you for your comforting words and making me feel good about posting it in the first place.

HNT(6): Behind the 8-ball

2005-11-17T08:14:00.000-05:00

Since I've been really busy at work and home this week, I didn't have a whole lot of time for much else, so today's HNT is both figurative and literal.

Happy HNT!

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Friends, bloggers, countrymen--lend me your ears...

2005-11-16T15:52:00.000-05:00

When I heard that Nukie310 from Miniscule Thoughts was looking for more submissions for his audio blog project, I got it touch. He asked me to record my entry about the speed dating event, "Hurry up & date" from last month.

(God, did you ever notice how strange your voice sounds when you actually hear it...??)

perennial

2005-11-13T17:25:00.000-05:00

Towards the middle of last week, I couldn't shake the feeling that something important was approaching. The week had begun with a flurry of activity at work, which had occupied most of my attention. But I still had the sense that there was something else that I should be remembering. It wasn't until I was heading home from the office on Wednesday night while listening to a news report that I suddenly realized that the date was November 9th, my wedding anniversary.

I had met Elizabeth in my third year of law school, on the very first night of rehearsals for a theater group that I had just joined, the Savoy Company. It's the oldest group in the country that performs Gilbert & Sullivan musicals, and it has the added distinction of being a very social group. Its members often refer to it as a 'drinking club with a singing problem.' Over its 104 years, it has been the basis for dozens of marriages, which themselves have produced second and even third generation members. I saw Liz sitting in the soprano section-- petite, blonde, with striking green eyes and the most beautiful smile. After rehearsal, a bunch of us went to a nearby bar, and as the night went on, she seemed to laugh more and more as I began telling jokes and quoting scenes from my favorite movies. I walked her to her car and we wound up kissing for over an hour. We dated all through that season and were married the next year. Several members from Savoy were there to serenade us at the reception.

I have always had trouble remembering particular details like dates and appointments. I can quote entire scenes from movies that I saw in high school, but I can't remember something as simple as my mother's actual birthday. That used to bother her to no end. I remember trying to explain to Mom that there was no question that I loved her and appreciated her and that my actions throughout the year should be a sign of that instead of a $2 card from Hallmark. Her equally valid response was that, considering that she had to push an eight-pound baby out of her body in the course of ten hours of difficult labor, a $2 card from Hallmark once a year was really not asking a whole lot in return. Point to Mom...

It was too late to get flowers or do anything significant for my anniversary on Wednesday night. Rather than try to cobble together some half-hearted gesture that evening, I thought I would try to come up with something more meaningful for another day. I dug out our wedding album and found a picture of her bridal flowers, and went to a florist to order a similar bouquet for Friday. As she had arranged the white and pink roses, the florist explained that they were a type of perennial flower--one that can survive the harsh winter and continue to grow year after year. She handed the flowers to me, along with the original photograph that I had provided for reference. Looking through the pictures from the wedding had brought up alot of memories, and the photo of the bouquet had called one moment in particular to mind.

We had wanted to say our vows to each other during the ceremony on our own, without the prompting of the priest saying 'repeat after me.' We had practiced and practiced, but Liz would always get hung up on a word here or there. Her maid of honor wrote out all of the lines on a small piece of paper for her and tucked it into the bouquet as a sort of cue card just in case she needed it when the moment came. She looked absolutely beautiful that morning, and everything had moved along without a hitch. But when it came time for her to recite her vows, she faltered. The excitement and stress and nerves of the morning were finally taking their toll. She looked down at her bouquet, her eyes searching for the words, but her hands were shaking so much that she couldn't read the writing on the paper.

I reached out and closed both of my hands around hers and held them gently until they became still. She looked up at me and her eyes met mine. A smile that I can't describe spread across her face and her whole body relaxed. She took a breath, and without even looking down once, recited her vows in a voice that grew stronger with every word. I repeated my part of the vows back to her, and the sacrament of marriage was complete. The rest of the day is a blur but it was filled with happiness and joy.

On Friday the situation was reversed, and now I was the one standing there with those same flowers in my hands, searching to come up with the correct words to say. Sometimes I've found that it's better to just go with exactly how you feel right at the moment. "I'm sorry that I forgot the date, Liz. I hope you know how much that day truly means to me." There was no response. I hadn't been expecting one. Elizabeth had died three years after we were married, from a sudden reaction to a food allergy.

The day was cold and the November sky was covered beneath a blanket of grey clouds. The wind was blowing the pale leaves from the trees, which just a short time ago had been alive with color. I stood there beside her grave at the cemetery, thinking back on our lives together. She had been the first person who I knew had truly loved me for just being myself, and I loved her with all of my heart.

I thought back to that moment again on the altar, and tried to remember the words that I had said when it was my turn to recite them to her:

"I, Tom, take you Elizabeth, to be my wife, to have and to hold from this day forward... "

Standing there, holding her hands in mine, I couldn't believe how lucky I was to have finally found someone who loved me so deeply.

"...in good times and in bad, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health."

We were both young and starting out from scratch, but we were filled with excitement about the good times that we knew lay before us, together. Neither one of us could have imagined just how short that time would actually be.

"I will love you, honor you, and cherish you--all the days of my life."

I knelt down and brushed away the dead leaves to clear a spot, and laid the bouquet against the tombstone. My finger traced her name along the cold marble. I stood up and said a few more things to her in private. In exchanging those words to each other on the altar that morning, we had been doing more than just expressing the love we had felt right at that moment. We were also making a promise to each other to keep that love alive within us every day going forward. I may not be able to remember a particular date from time to time, but that is one commitment that I will never forget.

Saying thanks

2005-11-11T18:55:00.000-05:00

I was already running late to a deposition in the suburbs this morning, and was still about ten minutes away when traffic slowly began to grind to a halt. Up ahead, I could see half a dozen police cars parked around one of the main intersections in town, and began to hear the unmistakable sound of a marching band approaching in the distance. Soon, an endless row of high school students began to march past, playing their instruments and tossing their batons into the air. The sidewalks were filled with people and it became clear that traffic would not be moving anytime soon.

"This is just god...damn...great," I muttered to myself, thinking that there was no way I would be able to make it to my opponent's office before he just went ahead and cancelled the whole thing. And all just so East Bumble High could get psyched for tonight's football game against their crosstown rivals, or some equally pointless reason. As I sat there brooding, I noticed a change in the make-up of the participants in the parade. Instead of young students in bright yellow band costumes, the street began to fill with men in their seventies and eighties, slowly marching past in all types of military dress uniform. Then I sheepishly remembered that today was Veteran's Day, and quickly pulled my car over and walked up to join the crowd. I could see that the parade stretched on for over one mile, and all along the procession were dozens of various high school bands and veteran's groups lined up, representing all of the major actions from World War II through the current Iraq war.

The parade came to a momentary stop while the traffic was cleared at an intersection further ahead along the route. Right in front of me was a 1940's-style jeep, with a sign indicating that the occupants were veterans of the Battle of the Bulge. Just before Christmas in 1944, the German army had launched a desperate, surprise attack at the Allies, and the individual soldiers suddenly found themselves overwhelmed by about 600,000 crack German troops, completely cut off from reinforcements or supplies. Try to recall the coldest day you ever experienced, and then imagine living in a frozen hole in the ground without winter clothing while artillery shells exploded in the treetops all around you on a daily basis. The soldiers in the Bulge endured that, and more, and eventually turned the tables on the Germans and chased them back over the Rhine then straight on through to Berlin. Between both sides, over 1 million men were either captured or became casualties during that battle.

Those 18 year-old kids who held their ground while surrounded and outnumbered were now 80 year-old men who had endured, triumphed, and returned home to build their lives in peace. You could see the humble pride in their faces as they waited before the thankful crowd. I caught the eye of two gentlemen sitting in the backseat of the jeep and just waved my hand and said "Thank you." I didn't know how to even begin to properly acknowledge their sacrifice. They smiled and waved back, and soon the parade was off and moving again.

Every year there are fewer and fewer veterans from that era still living. Time succeeds where the Axis armies failed, and they go off to join the friends that they lost in the forests of France, or on the islands of the Pacific, or in the deserts of North Africa. It's a shame that their service is officially honored only once a year. They should be thanked in some small way every single day that we are lucky enough to still have them here with us.

HNT(5): Turning the other cheek...

2005-11-10T05:49:00.000-05:00

Following in the fine-- er, footsteps--of my fellow blog mates KOW and WDKY, I present the (apparently mandatory) HNT shot of my bare arse. ***

Happy HNT!

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***Taken at the special request of last week's Fit Bit Friday winner, her royal highness LadyLongfellow .

Two quickies...

2005-11-09T11:33:00.000-05:00

I'm trying to cut down on my online blogging during the day at work, so I thought I would start by posting something that didn't require too much time on my part. I found these two quizzes on blogthings.com, after seeing them on ladylongfellow's site.

Of course, they have endless quizzes and polls at blogthings, so it was hard to just pick two and not spend all day there. Willpower is a struggle sometimes, and I've found that when the topic turns to sex, I usually have a hard time saying 'no'....

Your Seduction Style: Au Natural

You rank up there with your seduction skills, though you might not know it.That's because you're a natural at seduction. You don't realize your power!The root of your natural seduction power: your innocence and optimism.
You're the type of person who happily plays around and creates a unique little world.Little do you know that your personal paradise is so appealing that it sucks people in.You find joy in everything - so is it any surprise that people find joy in you?
You bring back the inner child in everyone you meet with your sincere and spontaneous ways.Your childlike (but not childish) behavior also inspires others to care for you.As a result, those who you befriend and date tend to be incredibly loyal to you.

What Kind of Seducer Are You?

__________________________________________________

You're an Expert Kisser

You're a kissing pro, but it's all about quality and not quantityYou've perfected your kissing technique and can knock anyone's socks offAnd you're adaptable, giving each partner what they craveWhen it comes down to it, your kisses are truly unforgettable

What Kind of Kisser Are You?

zero to sixty, and back again.

2005-11-07T17:30:00.000-05:00

Sorry for the extended absence--it seems that all of the excessive hours spent writing and editing this blog at my desk during the workday had caused quite the backlog of overdue reports and unanswered emails, and I really needed to spend all of Friday and most of the weekend in the office playing catch up.

And then on Monday afternoon I got a call from the court saying that one of my cases in the November trial pool was being called for jury selection first thing on Tuesday morning. That set off several hours of scrambling trying to get things lined up--notifying my client, arranging for my expert, and getting coverage for all of the commitments on my schedule for Tuesday and Wednesday. As it turned out, my client had recently moved and never gave us any of her new contact information, my expert was unavailable due to a personal matter, and there was only the bare minimum of insurance coverage available for protection. I've gone to trial with less before, and won, but since there was a risk of a runaway verdict, my company felt it was safer to settle. So after all of that, things wound back down to a normal pace and I had to go back and reconfirm everything on this week's schedule again.

I had mixed feelings about the outcome. Settling the case in that situation was the safest thing to do, and my ultimate responsibility is to do what's best for my client. It was a little stressful trying to get everything done under the wire before trial, but I actually look forward to that type of stimulation and work well under pressure. It's been some time since one of my cases has actually gone to trial and reached a verdict, so I kind of miss the energy of being in a courtroom. Ever since my recent discovery of blogging, I've been using it as a way to get my creative fix during the day, because I would climb the walls if I just had to churn out legal opinions in an office all week. But I think I might have to pull back a little and balance things out, or maybe do most of my blogging at home early in the morning or late at night. I can see that it's going to be hard to quit cold turkey during the day and that I'll need a distraction to help cope with the withdrawal.

Maybe I'll just have to take up smoking or something. Do they sell a patch for blog withdrawal?

HNT(4): Below the belt...

2005-11-03T07:48:00.000-05:00

Last week, I had received a few requests from some people who were curious about what my lower half looked like, so here's a glimpse for today's HNT entry. And since I'm always in the market for a new position, I thought I would submit a sample of one of my legal briefs.

Happy HNT...!!!

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Mischief Night

2005-10-31T11:47:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago I went to a play at one of the smaller, local theaters in the city. I didn't know anything about the show or cast beforehand, so I was pleasantly surprised to see a former classmate of mine from law school listed in the program as one of the performers. She was excellent that night, and while we didn't get the chance to talk in person after the show, I finally got a hold of her by phone this weekend and told her how good she was and how much I enjoyed her performance. We also talked about our days together onstage as leads in a musical during our third year in law school, and we reminisced about the night of our final performance in particular.

The Court Jesters was a student organization made up entirely of law students and faculty who were looking for a creative outlet to help balance the monotony of pouring through legal textbooks all day. They put on one show a year, and always chose from among the many Gilbert & Sullivan operas for their selection. Gilbert (who wrote the dialogue) had been an attorney early in life, so a lot of his scripts featured lawyers, judges, and other legal characters. The plots often hinged on some farcical legal twist that helped lead to the required happy ending. So it was kind of a natural fit for a bunch of legal extroverts looking for any excuse to avoid studying to perform a Gilbert & Sullivan musical--as opposed to, say, a production of "Cats".

In my second year of law school I had gone to the Court Jesters' performance of "The Pirates of Penzance" and was amazed by their talent, and was attracted to the genuine fun they seemed to be experiencing onstage. I was also attracted to several very cute women in the female chorus and thought that evenings spent at rehearsal with them would beat the hell out of toiling away in the solitude of the law library. So in my third year I showed up for the auditions, and much to my surprise was cast as the male lead. Lest you get too impressed, keep in mind that this was an amateur theater group at a regional law school, so I harbored no illusions that the only reason that I got the part was because I was a not-so-big fish in a very small pond.

The show we would be performing that year was "Ruddigore", one of Gilbert & Sullivan's lesser known shows. The plot was somewhat convoluted but basically was about Robin, a shy young man (my character) who was pining away for Rose, the most beautiful girl in his village. She had been raised as an orphan with only a book of etiquette as a strict guide, which tended to interfere with any of the local boys being able to properly court her. The men put off asking any of the other girls in the village to marry them until someone was successful with Rose, so the women formed a band of professional bridesmaids to help Rose pick a groom.

It turned out that there was more to Robin than met the eye. His family had been living under a curse placed by a witch condemned by one of his ancestors (a judge, naturally). Every oldest male in his family had to commit one crime per day, or else perish in unspeakable agony. Robin had been leading a double life--committing one small, trivial crime each morning to get it out of the way, and then leading an exemplary life for the rest of the day to make up for it. Just before Robin and Rose were to be married at the end of the first act, his jealous best friend spills the beans, Rose rejects him, and he goes off to live in the family's deserted cursed castle.

The second act begins with him, in his grief, failing miserably in his attempts to be a "bad baron". One of the coolest scenes in the show was a musical number where the portraits of some of his more infamous ancestors come to life and the ghosts step down out of their frames, warning him that he's not being bad enough. Eventually someone finds a legal loophole to the curse, so Robin becomes good full-time again, Rose accepts his proposal, and it all ends with everyone pairing up and getting married (even some of the ghosts.)

It was a fun show, and was impressive to see how so much of Gilbert's dialogue still held up now despite having been written over a hundred years ago. The show had originally been meant as a satire about the over-the-top melodramas which were popular at that time in the late 1800's, but the scenes have a kind of universal theme about how taking on a false personality can get in the way of finding happiness with another person. The duties of directing the show were split between two people: David was the musical director and primarily focused on making sure we sounded okay, even for law students. Mark was the stage director, and all along insisted on a slavish devotion to the original text and scene blocking that had been outlined in the script. The two of them often clashed over details large and small, and as we got closer to the performance, the cast got together and worked out many of the issues ourselves.

The first two performances went pretty well. There had been a dropped line here or there, and a bit of a technical snafu when the portraits were supposed to come to life, but overall the audience laughed where they were supposed to laugh and the music sounded on key and in tune. But I had gotten the feeling that the show could have been even better. A couple of the lines of original dialogue were very specific to English society, and while very clever in that context, went right over the heads of an unfamiliar American audience. A couple of times over the months of rehearsals, I had off-handedly tried to suggest updating the show with some modern day references and more comical blocking, but was shot down emphatically by the director each time. Since we only had one more show remaining, I decided to take matters into my own hands. At the cast party on the evening before our last show, I quietly approached my castmates and carefully felt them out to see if they would be up for a little onstage coup during our final performance. Everybody was up for it, so we got together on our own the next day several hours before the show and rehearsed all of the new changes in secret.

One of my favorite Marx Brothers comedies is "A Night at the Opera", which is about Groucho, Chico, and Harpo trying to con their way into high society, and it ends with them completely disrupting an opera with their antics both onstage and out in the theater itself. I used that finale as my inspiration for ramping up things in the second act of our show. We rechoreographed one of the musical numbers by lifting some of Groucho's trademark moves right out of the movie. I rewrote some of the more obscure English references to become a little more culturally relevent-- I'm pretty sure I worked the line "I've fallen and I can't get up" from that MedAlert commercial with the old lady into one of my scenes. At another point, I was supposed to get into a sword fight with the female leader of the professional bridesmaids, who was pissed that I had ruined her efforts to marry off Rose, which would have cleared the way for the rest of the women in the town to get married. Instead of handing me one of the two full-sized broad swords that we had dueled with the previous nights, she pulled out a tiny little pocketknife from under her dress, and tossed it to me. I held it in a way that blatantly implied my suddenly diminished manhood, and instead of just circling around onstage, we had worked it out so that she would chase me in and out of the wings and down through the audience. Stealing another scene from the Marx Brothers, I ran into the orchestra pit at one point and tried to impersonate one of the musicians, frantically banging out 'Chopsticks' on the piano trying to throw off my pursuer. Shortly after that I was supposed to run up to the portrait of my uncle and beg for help. Normally that had just involved drawing back a curtain so that he could step out onstage, but since his dialogue had implied that he had been a bit of a player in his day, we came up with the idea of having one of the young bridesmaids sitting in his lap apparently making out with him when I threw back the curtain that night. I think that one sight gag got the biggest laugh of the evening.

I know that it was alot of fun for us onstage, and as things continued to spiral more and more out of control, the show took on a kinetic energy that hadn't been present the previous two nights. The audience ate it up, and the laughs kept coming in waves with each new farcical twist. I was more than a little concerned about the reaction from the directors who had watched their show get hijacked out from under them right before their eyes, and I went up to them at the final wrap party and let them know that it had been my idea and not to hold the rest of the cast responsible. The musical director was fine with it, once he had gotten over the shock of me pushing him aside on the piano bench for my impromptu concerto. The artistic director was a different story on the other hand, and wouldn't even look at me at all that night. He softened up somewhat from all of the positive feedback that he later received about Saturday night's show, and since most of the audience had never seen the other two performances, they credited him for all of the comic touches that we had added.

A few months later we all graduated and went off to our separate legal careers. As fun as that experience was, we all realized that there were woefully few job postings that sought "experience drafting legal motions and pleadings; top 10% academic standing; tenor or soprano vocal range." We exchanged our capes and Victorian dresses for sober ties and severe, dark pantsuits. Now that I think about it, every single one of the leads in that cast is out working in some area of trial litigation, with the main responsibility involving some work in a courtroom. In a way, we're still performing in front of an audience before the judge and jury. For me, I just have to remind myself every now and then that sometimes going off of the script can be a risk, but can lead to some pretty spectacular results. Maybe I'll try to work a little song and dance number into my next closing argument...

Martinis for two, with a twist...

2005-10-28T15:48:00.000-04:00

This past Wednesday I received an invitation to a Singles Martini Tasting event from the same people who put together the speed dating night that I wrote about here. Since the events from that night provided plenty of material for an entire blog entry, I thought that I should give this one a shot too.

The event was held at McFadden's, a popular nightspot in the currently trendy Northern Liberties section of Philadelphia. The bar itself is your typical faux-Irish pub, with the latest imported beers on tap and dark walnut chairs and tables spread about the main room. The martini tasting was held in a smaller, private room towards the back, with its own bar and leather couches and ottomans. The night involved a new flavor of martini being served every half-hour, for a total of five (in 3 oz. glasses). The target age range of the singles was listed as 27-45. I went there straight from the office after a hectic day and didn't arrive until almost 7:30. My plan was just to unwind with a couple of cocktails, have some light-hearted conversation, and hopefully come away with some interesting blog material. By the time I eventually walked in, the event was in full swing.

As I entered the room, two things struck me right away. I did a quick count of about 12 women all around the room, all of various ages and all of them fashionably dressed. The more remarkable fact was that, with my belated arrival, the total male population of the room rose to three. In addition to me, there was Ed, a sales rep in his early forties who resembled a slightly stockier version of the actor Joe Mantegna. The other Y-chromosome in the room was supplied by Peter, a tall, thin asian male also in his early forties who resembled an older, matured version of Long Duc Dong, the foreign exchange student from "Sixteen Candles".

[hey, folks--I just call 'em like I see 'em...]

The other thing that quickly became apparent was that as one of only three males in a room full of women at a singles event, my plan about laying low and making mental notes for my blog went right out the window. Hanging up my suitcoat, walking over to the bar to order a drink, catching up with the hostess who I knew through mutual friends--I had the unmistakable feeling of at least a dozen pairs of eyes following me about the room at one point or another. I started to make brief small talk with the people standing around me, but I wanted to take some time to try to speak with everyone before I jumped into a prolonged conversation with anyone in particular.

I noticed a woman with dark hair in her early thirties sitting on one of the leather couches along the wall. I would be lying if I didn't admit that the very flattering top that she was wearing was also one of the first things that had caught my eye. Sometimes a low-cut shirt can be a blessing and a curse, because there is always the danger of becoming too self-aware of the very area where you in fact are not supposed to focus your attention. So the more you begin to engage in an internal monologue to remind yourself that you should be looking the woman in the eyes and not glancing down at her chest, the more you feel the growing compulsion that you CAN'T HELP BUT LOOK DOWN and your eyes start to water from the strain of fighting to keep themselves level...

Right about then some appetizers were set out on the small table right in front of her couch, so I had the perfect opening to walk over and begin a conversation. Her name was Nancy and she was sitting beside her friend Carol, who had curly blond hair and was also in her early thirties. They had come to the bar together, and neither had been to one of these singles events before. They had actually become friends about a year ago after attending a seminar entitled "101 Places to Meet Single People". When I asked about some of the ones in the top ten, the suggestions like #5--"Join a co-ed sports league", or #10--"Volunteer for a charity" seemed to make good sense. But I kind of got the sense that the creators of the seminar had gotten desperate towards the end of the list and had to stretch to come up with some fillers. For example, I was fairly certain that
#98--"Hang around the Greyhound bus terminal" wasn't going to turn up any viable suitors.

We spoke for awhile about our individual backgrounds and careers. She worked for a non-profit organization and provided training and education to employers with mentally and physically disabled employees in the workplace. The conversation flowed easily from one topic to the next, and was balanced pretty much fifty/fifty between us. Ed sat down across from Carol, and the hostess brought around a different style of martini every half-hour. I'd like to fill you in on the rest of the attendees from that evening, but to be honest I pretty much stayed put and continued to talk with Nancy. I did notice a slight commotion about thirty minutes later, when five of the women got up and left. They were complaining that there weren't an equal number of men there and that they thought this was going to be a speed dating event. I found out later from the hostess that there actually had been a total of ten men confirmed for the evening. I can only assume that the other seven must have bailed that night to watch Game Four of the World Series in some crowded sports bar surrounded by other men. Good call, guys...

Pretty soon the martini tasting officially ended, and a group of six of us headed over into the main bar itself. Nancy had picked up my martini glass along with hers when we got up to move, and sat them down next to each other on the big round table where our group had settled. I pulled my chair up close to hers and pretty soon the tone of the conversation made a complete transition from polite small talk to full-on flirting. In addition to Carol and Ed, two other women from the event had joined us at the table. Mary, who was in her late 20's and had just moved here from the West Coast, worked for a national pharmaceutical company headquartered in Philadelphia. After subjecting her to the 1000th joke she heard that day about getting free samples of Viagra, we found out that she apparently worked in the company's research and development division. We good-naturedly began to tease her about being single-handedly responsible for everything from the world-wide outbreak of the SARS virus, to her inventing the condition of lactose intolerance just because she was bored one day at work. Mary and Ed began to really hit it off, and they spent the rest of the night talking to each other.

At one point I had gone up to the bar to buy the next round for the group. As I returned to the table, Carol was mockingly claiming that every guy that she had ever met was too afraid to dance in public. Acting on impulse, as I tend to do after my third martini, I put down the drinks and said "Let's go." The bar was about 3/4 full of people and there was still enough room to find an open spot for some basic swing moves (picked up at the same time that I took ballroom lessons several years ago with a former girlfriend). I had only intended on twirling her around a couple of times to call her bluff, but she got so into it that I couldn't just stop in the middle of the song. My moment of spontaneity began to backfire, as the song continued to play for several minutes, and I caught just the briefest glimpse of something flash across Nancy's face. Finally the song came to an end and I went back over to the table. Nancy was smiling and gave us a round of applause, but laughingly demurred when I said that I wanted the next dance with her.

The moment passed and the flirting resumed its intensity. I asked about a gemstone that was set in her necklace, which was positioned at just the perfect length to further enhance the whole effect she had going on up top. I reached out to look at the stone more closely, and then kept my hand there just inches above her chest while I continued the conversation, making serious eye contact the whole time. A short time later, the right song started to play over the speakers, so I stood up without saying a word and took her by both hands. She put up a moment's playful resistance, and then smiled as I lead her out to an open space. Soon her entire face lit up as I spun her around and twisted her back into my arms over and over. That song came to an end and a slower song began to play. I took her left hand in my hand and slipped my other arm around her back. My hand pressed against the small of her back and I pulled her body up tight against mine. I shifted my hips slightly so that I could move my knee in between her legs, so that one of her legs was on either side of mine, and she gently began to press against my upper thigh. Our faces were just inches apart and we slowly rocked and swayed standing in place for the rest of the song.

They announced last call right after that, and I settled up the bar tab and we all headed outside. I walked the two of them over to the parking lot, and Carol helpfully announced that she was going to try to find a decent channel on the radio while Nancy and I stood by the rear of her car. It had gotten a lot colder during the night, and I had put my suit jacket around Nancy's shoulders as we walked along. I slipped a hand under each lapel and pulled her to me. Our faces moved towards each other and I began to kiss her. We stood there for several minutes, and the kisses ranged between just a gentle brushing of our lips together, to a little flicker of our tongues, to a deeper, harder kiss, and finished with me giving just the slightest pull on her bottom lip. I brushed her hair back from her face and thanked her for the dance. She smiled again and said yes when I asked if she wanted to go out again sometime next week. We exchanged numbers and made plans to talk over the weekend. I leaned over and said goodnight to Carol, helped Nancy into the car, and watched as they pulled out of the lot and into traffic.

I went over the events of the past few hours as I headed back to my car. I had to laugh at how the evening had taken a completely different turn from what I had expected. I had planned on just unwinding with a few drinks and making some small talk in the hopes of finding something to write about for the next installment on my blog. Instead I found myself kissing a beautiful girl after several hours of laughter and intriguing conversation. I wondered if the night would have ended the same way if I had gone out actively looking to meet someone, instead letting things develop naturally the way that they did. With blind dates, the singles scene, and internet dating, too often the focus becomes placed just on the process of searching for someone, instead of getting out of the way and giving chemistry the chance to develop on its own. Sometimes it pays to simply go out there, put everything else out of your mind, and just let yourself move with the night's rhythm.

HNT(3): Half-Nekkid on the Deep Blue Sea

2005-10-27T08:01:00.000-04:00

Until I bite the bullet and buy a digital camera, I've been looking through recent photos for possible entries for HNT. Here is this week's pic, taken while sailing on the Chesapeake Bay this summer.

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The Longest Night

2005-10-25T19:54:00.000-04:00

In splitting up the events from Saturday's Halloween party into two parts, I hope I haven't oversold the second half. In hindsight, it was a simple misunderstanding without any serious consequences. It just created an uncomfortable few hours that kind of stuck with me for an extra day or so. I had been invited to the party on short notice by the woman from the night of my speed dating adventure. I hadn't planned on needing an outfit for Halloween this year, so without enough time to come up with a new idea, I had to grab an old costume out of mothballs. As I came to find out later on that night at this particular party, it might have been better in the long run if I had left it there.

A little backstory--since high school, I've been fascinated about military history, particularly World War II. I was particularly drawn to the book 'Band of Brothers', which followed a single company of paratroopers from their training through the end of the war. They jumped into France on D-day, were surrounded in Belgium during the Battle of the Bulge, liberated a concentration camp in Germany, and helped capture Hitler's Eagle Nest in Austria. What struck me the most was that these were 17-19 year old kids from all walks of life who had volunteered to be part of this experimental unit. When I was that age, I thought getting through high school and working part-time delivering pizzas for Domino's was a big burden. These kids stepped out of airplanes into darkness over Normandy with anti-aircraft shells bursting all around them and thousands of German troops waiting below. I was and remain in awe by what courage that must have taken, and wondered what I would have done in that situation if I had lived in those times.

Back in the 90's, I decided one year that I was going to recreate one of their uniforms as authentically as possible for Halloween. Historical re-enactments are apparently a big business, so finding the bits and pieces of the clothing and equipment was pretty easy (and a little expensive...). But in the end, I had the original uniform, leather jump boots, specific patches, and other little touches to try to make it as authentic as possible. The uniform even had a cloth patch of the U.S. flag with only 48 stars sewn on, because Hawaii and Alaska didn't become states until after the war. I had received a lot of compliments at the time when I first wore the costume--of course the guys thought it was cool and wanted to know if the hand grenades were real. And I got more than a little attention from some of the single women--the uniform definitely gave me a leg up over the guys who had come to the party dressed as Mr. Spock.

I hadn't worn the costume in years, but since I had to come up with something quickly, and this didn't sound like a party where you could get away with wearing something half-assed, I dug the unform out of storage. My date had also been unable to come up with a good idea up to that point, so we decided that she would go as my French Underground contact (inspired by a scene in the Hollywood movie, 'The Longest Day', which is all about the events of D-day.) The main attraction for her was that the costume simply required her to wear all black. She went out and bought a french beret, and the finishing touch was a red scarf tied around her neck, which was one of the secret signals that the resistance used to identify each other.

It was raining heavily on the night of the party, and parking is a nightmare around South Street, so I dropped her off at the front door and had to circle around the block for 10 minutes until I could find a spot. As I mentioned in the previous post, I didn't know the hosts or any of the other guests at the party, but I've never had a problem meeting people and finding something in common to talk about with complete strangers for a few hours. I opened up the door, shook off the rain, and stepped into the entrance.

The first people that I encountered were dressed as 60's counter-culture hippies, which I see now was an obvious omen. They both had psychedelic bell-bottom pants, mohair vests, and 4-inch peace symbols dangling from their ears. As soon as I walked in through the doorway, the rest of the people in the room turned their heads to see who the latest arrival was.

In the movie version of that moment, a record needle would scratch along the entire length of some Joan Baez protest album as the conversation stopped on a dime. I smiled at everyone generally, and started to scan the room for my date. I was puzzled by the couple of glares that some people started giving me, followed by others purposefully avoiding eye contact. I checked to make sure that my fly wasn't open, or that I hadn't tracked mud into the room, and then made my way towards the back of the house where I eventually met up with my 'contact'. It became very clear that something was going on, from the looks of disdain that I continued to notice. There were long, uncomfortable silences as I offered to pour a drink for someone standing next to the bar, or while I was waiting in line outside of the bathroom. Slowly it began to dawn on me the reason for their reaction. A couple of the younger, drunker guys at the party began to point at my costume and go "Hey--Desert Storm," or "Look out, he's on the hunt for Bin Laden!" Everyone was assuming (understandably, in hindsight) that my uniform was supposed to represent a modern soldier, and the reaction that I was experiencing from the majority of the guests (none of whom knew me) was because they assumed that I was advocating some blatant, in-your-face support of our policy in Iraq. There is hardly any resemblance between the army uniforms of 1944 and 2005, but I can see now that it's a distinction without a difference for someone who isn't familiar with the historical context.

The whole situation grew more uncomfortable over time. If this had been a bunch of my friends, or even casual acquaintances, I would have gotten everyone's attention and cleared up the misunderstanding at once. But since no one was actually confronting me or giving me a verbal opportunity to respond to the group as a whole, I would've only made a bigger ass out of myself if I had interrupted the party to make an announcement to a room full of strangers explaining the meaning behind my costume. So I decided to hang out in the kitchen where the food and drinks were located while I thought about the best way to clear things up.

I did begin to establish a small beachhead with two of the members of the crowd. Paul, and his partner David, were neighbors of the hosts and were dressed as the Phantom of the Opera and some other theatrical character that I wasn't familiar with. The matching black capes seemed to be the unifying theme between the two outfits. Paul made an effort to compliment me in a friendly tone on the detail that went into my costume, and I explained to him the meaning behind it. It turns out that his father had been a glider pilot in World War II. I had read several books about their part in the war, and knew that they had an extremely high casualty rate. He seemed pleasantly surprised when I showed a genuine interest in hearing more, and you could tell that he enjoyed recalling and sharing the stories that his father had told him about his experience in the war.

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, one of the guests started playing music on her guitar at the front of the house. I was grateful for the shift of attention in the party towards someone other than me for a change. I made my way into the living room and hung back towards the edge of the crowd. At one point during a short break between songs, I saw the woman dressed in the hippie outfit walk up to Paul and start talking to him. Her back was to me, and I couldn't hear what she was saying, but at one point she looked back over her shoulder and shot a derisive look in my direction. Since Paul was facing me, I could see him lean in and say, "Oh no, he's a World War II paratrooper, and that's his French resistance partner." She turned more fully around as she looked back in my direction, and I could see her eyes deliberately scan up and down my costume. The effect on her was immediate. Her face softened, her shoulders relaxed, and I could see her say, "Oh, I get it now." She shifted her gaze over to my date and smiled as she took in her outfit. "That's pretty clever."

Unfortunately, there wasn't time for Paul to become my peace envoy and help bring about an armistice with the remainder of the guests. As soon as the impromptu performance ended in the living room, the party started to wind down. We quickly thanked the hosts and I walked back to get the car. I had never been the focus of such a negative reaction from so many people, and I was a more than a little put off by it. I explained all this to my date, and decided to just drop her off at her home. That strange feeling stayed with me throughout the next day.

I don't go around intentionally trying to offend people, and when that does happen, I try to make up for it right away. So it was such a strange feeling to suddenly find myself the focus of practically an entire house full of people looking at me with antipathy-a kind of walking party pariah whose very appearance was a constant faux-pas. Of course that's an exaggeration, but at the time it definitely felt a little weird. One of things that I had discovered from performing improv is that it is a huge thrill for me to stand before a room full of strangers and hear laughter because of something that I've said. And one of the things that makes creating this blog worth it for me is that it gives me the opportunity to (hopefully) make somebody smile or crack up over something I've written. The reaction that I inadvertently created from the people at the party was the complete opposite of the thing that I make an effort to bring about.

Over the course of yesterday and today, I had a chance to think about all of this and work through the weird feeling that had hung around. I realized that, in the scheme of things, it was a pretty minor event, and one that is kind of funny once I removed myself from the situation a little bit. I didn't post this topic to make any kind of statement about individual politics or open a broader debate about Iraq, and I'm not trying to blame the people at the party for overreacting or excuse myself from being a little culturally tone-deaf in light of what's going on today in the world. It was a simple misunderstanding on both parts, and I hesitated about even writing about it at all. But I decided that this blog should include some of the things that affect me in even the smaller, more subtle ways. I thought that some people might be able to relate to finding themselves in a situation where they've created a negative reaction in another person (or a house full of people) through no intent of their own.

Beautiful on the inside

2005-10-24T16:39:00.000-04:00

I went to a Halloween party on Saturday night, and the evening turned out to be full of highs and lows. I thought that I'd focus today on the positive things from that night, and I'll get into the negative ones later after I've had a little more time to put them in perspective...

The party was just off of South Street, a very funky section of Philadelphia with a lot of hip bars, goth clothing stores, tattoo parlors, and the occasional fetish boutique. I was invited by someone kind of last minute, and I didn't know the couple that was hosting it or anyone else who would be at the party. Everyone had been encouraged to dress up, and it was clear that most of the people had put alot of thought and work into their costumes. There were a good number of geishas and samurai milling about in ornate silk robes, powdered faces, and black wigs. There was one couple who went as individual halves of the 'American Gothic' portrait, which involved cutting out an oval for their faces and wearing the exact same clothing as the man and woman in the painting. Another woman wore all black and had round black balloons taped in a cluster all around her midsection. That one kind of eluded me until I saw that she was handing out little post-it notes saying 'you have a message', and then I realized that she was a Blackberry.

But hands down, two costumes stood out above the rest in terms of the most unique ones that night. In the female category, a woman came dressed as the Chicken Lady from the sketch comedy show "The Kids in the Hall". She had all of the details down, including the white wig, the pointed nose, the orange tights with chicken feet, and the white feathered boa. In the male category, a man came as Mugatu, which was Will Ferrell's character in the movie 'Zoolander.' The fact that the guy was about 6'6" (actually, 6'8" with that wild hair) only added to the weirdness factor.

One of the more surreal moments of the night came when these two people were off talking in a part of the house right next to the bar. As it so happened, that's where I was located for most of the evening, but that is a separate story for an upcoming entry. It became clear after awhile that Chicken Lady and Mugatu apparently had a history together, and as they continued to talk, I couldn't help overhear (due to the fact that I was actively eavesdropping) the two of them start to admit that they really had feelings for each other beyond just being friends, and that maybe they should give themselves another chance to see where things might lead. It was like a scene right out of "When Harry Met Sally", if you can picture a six-foot-six Billy Crytal with a white goatee finally admitting his feelings to Meg Ryan in a chicken nose.

But the most surreal moment came towards the end of the night--and as it so happened, it also involved the Chicken Lady. A small crowd had gathered in the living room, and the host of the party brought out an acoustic guitar. Chicken Lady, whose real name was Emma, or Emily, or something with an 'E', began to play and little by little, the conversations dropped off all around the house, and more people began to gather around. She was an excellent guitar player, and had a strong, clear voice. Apparently she plays regularly around the city, and has put out her own local CD. She played all of her own songs, and her style was a cross between Sarah McLachlan and Jewel. I can't remember the particular words, but the overall theme was of the highs and lows of relationships.

The longer she played, I found my focus being drawn closely in towards her face--particularly her eyes. She sang with such passion that her emotions shone through despite the make-up and costume that she was wearing. As ridiculous as that picture sounds, this woman in a white wig, fake nose, feather boa, and orange tights held that entire room spellbound with her intensity. I wasn't looking at a funny person in a silly outfit anymore--I was looking at a very gifted artist opening up and pouring out her heart through music.

After about 30 minutes, she set the guitar aside to loud applause, and the illusion was broken. She was back to being the Chicken Lady, receiving compliments from a guy in a Superman costume (with an excessively enhanced 'package' beneath his tights) and a woman dressed as a hippie. The stereo was turned back on and the house began to fill up again with the sound of dozens of overlapping conversations. Later it occurred to me that if by chance we passed by each other on the street someday, I'd have no idea who she was outside of her costume. But if I were to ever hear that voice again filling up an entire room from some random stage one night, I would recognize her in an instant.