One Size Fits All

Hello World, Happy Spring! It certainly seems as if we are finally throwing off the shackles of Old Man Winter at long last in these parts, crawling out from under his steely grip of snow and ice that bedeviled us for months on end up to now. It didn't take much encouragement from the weather for all of our early crocus shoots to burst into perky purple flowers all over the yard, although admittedly, the first blossoms are much later this year than they usually are - but none the less welcome for all that, in fact, probably even more so. I was outdoors in the glorious sunshine earlier today and actually saw a bumblebee out in the flower bed, and I don't know which of us was more surprised at this turn of events. In the southern climes, Spring Training continues apace, and Opening Day will be here before we know it, on March 31st this time around. It will be a bittersweet season for the vaunted Yankees, as they bid farewell to their captain and mainstay, Derek Jeter, who has announced that this will be his final year as a player. Of course, Da Bombers always manage to carry on, over the course of their illustrious history, regardless of who stays or who goes, so there's nothing to worry about, but he's certainly leaving behind some mighty big shoes to fill, and that's not just a lot of peanuts and CrackerJacks, believe me. In other sports news, the ever-resilient New York Knicks stunned the hoops world, and gave the long-suffering hometown fans reason for hope, by luring former player and coach Phil Jackson out of retirement to take the helm as their President, and bringing with him the promise of a return to the glory days of yore that is long overdue. Jackson played with the team from 1967 to 1978, winning championships in 1970 and 1973, as well as 11 other titles over his storied coaching career in Chicago and Los Angeles, with an outstanding won-loss percentage during that period that is off the charts. The prevailing wisdom seems to be that if anybody could take an over-paid, under-performing bunch of prima donnas currently on the team, and mold them into a lean, mean winning machine, Phil Jackson is the man for the job, and might be just the kick in the pants this franchise needs to get it back on the winning track. Even in the woeful Atlantic division, the Knicks are at a paltry 28-40 record and 10 games out of first place, so there's certainly room for improvement, and lots of it, before the playoffs. So it should be interesting times ahead at the self-titled World's Most Famous Arena, and where it remains to be seen if the Rangers and Knicks will continue to outdo each other in mediocrity, or whether the long-awaited turn-around finally happens for either club. I'm having a hard time pinning this on the evil spirit of Affirmed, try as I might, but if I was Phil Jackson, I would steer clear of the racetracks for the time being. And while we're on the topic of sports, recently the Sports section of our local newspaper ran a feature story on the increase of Tommy John surgery among pitchers at all levels of the game, from the elder statesmen of the pro leagues, all the way down to the pipsqueaks still in high school, and everywhere in between. This ground-breaking procedure is more officially known as ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, but like Lou Gehrig's disease (ALS or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) is way more commonly known for the athlete it's named after, even decades after the fact. "It doesn't surprise me at all. Tommy John surgery will grow exponentially in the next 50 years," stated no less an authority than Tommy John himself, who obviously had been contacted for his comments on the phenomenon. Now, I will freely admit that I'm easily amused (and I can certainly do without all the ill-mannered snickering from our old friends the dinosaurs in The Peanut Gallery, that's for sure) but I thought it was pretty funny that even the legend who started it all, with the revolutionary treatment way back in 1974, refers to it blithely as Tommy John surgery, and apparently without a hint of irony. Usually by the time something is named after anyone - like a bridge, postage stamp or plaza - the person has long since been lost to the mists of history, and so there would be no chance of JFK tipping anyone with a Kennedy half-dollar, or The Great Emancipator telling a cab driver to take the Lincoln Tunnel. In fact, it's entirely possible that youngsters nowadays assume that the pride of Terre Haute, Indiana, was named after the historic procedure by his athletically-inclined parents, and not the other way around, I shouldn't wonder. On the local front, it was our anniversary earlier in the month, and I also had a special birthday this year (now officially older than dirt, according to the Periodic Table) so we decided to mark the occasions by indulging in a spa weekend at Foxwoods in Connecticut, where we had been the previous year for the first time, and enjoyed it enormously. Once again, we stayed at the opulent MGM Grand hotel, this time on the 27th floor, which offers a panoramic view of the Ledyard countryside that would be hard to beat, as well as all of the amenities that anyone could stand. It was easy to appreciate one of the advantages, now that we were already familiar with the resort, so we were less overwhelmed, and had a good sense of where things were and how to get around. That being said, it was still interesting to see what had stayed the same, and in contrast, all that was different since our previous visit at the same time last year. Most of the restaurants seemed unchanged, but many of the shops were gone, relocated, or replaced in the interim. We took the opportunity to meander around when we first arrived, and scope out the lay of the land. They had opened up two new food courts since our last visit, which had the advantage of being a handy place to grab a quick and easy lunch on the go. After a bit more walking around and shopping, it was time to get ready for our first spa visit, where I enjoyed another heavenly foot massage, that was just what the doctor ordered after a long hard winter stuffed into boots the whole time. From there, we splashed in the pool a bit, and had a soak in the hot tub. and then relaxed on their lounge chairs in peace and quiet, where we pretty much had the whole pool area entirely to ourselves. All this pampering and indulging builds up an appetite, so meal options were next on our agenda, and I can tell you that we tackled it with gusto. We had already found out that at 5:00, any place that serves food has huge lines of people that pour out of the doors, but by the time we left the spa, things had cleared up tremendously, and we were able to get into The California Pizza Kitchen for dinner with no trouble. They have a wide-ranging menu, in spite of their name, and last year, I found their garlic fettuccine to be simply divine. This time, I opted for their ravioli pomodoro instead, and while it didn't make me forget the fettuccine, I was glad I gave it a try. We followed that up with more shopping, but by then, things were getting pretty noisy and crowded, so we decided to head back to the hotel and call it a day. The room was quiet and comfortable, although it must be said that I was tired enough that it wouldn't have made any difference, one way or another. In the morning, we checked out and put our bags in the car, then back to the spa, and this time a facial for me, which was also heavenly. Once again back to the pool, hot tub and lounge chairs, with just ourselves and a couple of other people, so it was as quiet and relaxing as anyone could hope for, and a soothing refuge from the everyday slings and arrows of outrageous fortune that assail us on every side. We finally wrapped up with one last bit of souvenir hunting in the shops, and then hit the road, making a bee-line for the Denny's in West Haven that was calling our name. In a weekend of special treats, this was the cherry on top, and always one of the highlights of our travels, wherever we go. The trip home was uneventful, and we even arrived while it was still light out, so we weren't stuck lugging all of our belongings and 200 pounds of souvenirs from the car in the dark of night, which was a marked improvement over most of our excursions, I don't mind saying. At least we came back safe and sound, all in one piece, and didn't need to have any special celebrity procedures to put us back together. With my luck, rather than Tommy John surgery, I would have had Elton John surgery, and have to spend the rest of my life wearing enormous rhinestone glasses everywhere - and which, like the Phil Jackson half-dollar or Derek Jeter Tunnel, may well be something whose time has not yet come, I dare say. Elle

Go Green

Hello World, It's truly amazing how the month is just charging along, like a baseball player on steroids (oh, hit that easy target) and not a bit of time to stop and take a breath along the way. St. Patrick's Day will be here on Monday with its venerable parade in New York City, creaking along after hundreds of years in the same time-honored traditions of folk music and green beer - although it must be said that it's not always easy being green anymore. It seems that all of the savvy local politicians boycott the parade nowadays, in silent reproach for its exclusionary ways, and instead frequent the all-inclusive, aptly-named St. Pat's For All parade in Sunnyside, Queens, which they describe as "an annual St. Patrick’s Day-themed event organized by gay rights advocates." Actually, anyone without an ax to grind (or who can't get enough of green beer) could attend both parades, since they happen on different days, and be as inclusive or exclusionary as they please. For anyone who doesn't care for either option, there are plenty of other choices all over the map for the occasion - which in spite of the fact that his festal day is supposed to celebrate the birth of the honoree, an observant person can't help but notice that municipalities trot out their parades all the way from March 8 (White Plains) to March 23 (Mamaroneck) which would probably have surprised the heck out of the good saint, and his mother even more so, I shouldn't wonder. In fact, she's probably the one who invented green beer in the first place, and I can't say that I blame the poor woman. Speaking of the time out of joint, it was an extremely befuddled individual (who shall remain nameless, but who looks suspiciously like me) that apparently mislaid the invitation to the neighbor's annual Mardi Gras costume party, which they invariably toss on the Saturday before Shrove Tuesday, and where they not only put on the dog and go whole hog, with enough food and beverages to sink a battleship, but service staff besides (you don't dare put down a crumpled napkin or empty glass, or someone swoops right over and snatches it out from under your hand) and all the zydeco music that anyone could stand in one place, and then some. Bill complained about the noise all night, and I suddenly wondered why I hadn't been invited, since it's become a neighborhood tradition, and it wouldn't be like them to pass up a chance to throw a big blow-out bash, for whatever reason. Sure enough, the invitation did re-surface two weeks later (and no fault of the neighbors, who mailed it in January) under a messy pile of loose papers and bills on my desk, and admirably looking exactly like the party invitation that it was, and not at all like something that should be ignored or misconstrued in any way. I was sorry to miss it, as it's always a whale of a good time, and I found out later they also took the opportunity to combine the festivities with a surprise 50th birthday gala for the host, on top of everything else under the Cajun sun. So that was a very unfortunate result of a severe lack of organization around here, and I can't even blame it on an excess of green beer, try as I might. Also on the local scene, we managed to miss the brunt of the snowstorm that was lumbering in from the mid-west, and for which the National Weather Service issued a "Winter Storm Watch" on Monday afternoon (when it was beautiful and almost 60 degrees) all the way up to Thursday night, supposedly on the theory that folks would have plenty of time to batten down the hatches in preparation, and scour the supermarkets for their emergency supplies of milk, eggs and batteries, as if they were expecting to be house-bound for weeks on end in the aftermath. Actually, it wound up being a pretty nice week, all things considered, with warmer temperatures and more sun than expected, according to the forecasts. In fact, earlier in the week, I noticed that even more melting snow along our driveway uncovered one of the newspapers that we had been missing, from the worst of winter's relentless battering, which turned out to be from the Super Bowl, of all things, so that tells you something right there. It finally became warm enough for the frozen bird baths to thaw, and one day when I was outside feeding the birds, I spotted some unmistakable daffodil shoots in the flower beds and early crocus leaves along the sidewalk. If there's a more welcome sight than that, after all we've been through, I certainly don't know what it would be, by golly. And while we're on the subject of meteorological conditions in the great outdoors, my phone came with a feature that displays the current local information from Yahoo weather, and provides an hour-by-hour and day-by-day forecast of what to expect, in a series of simple tiny pictographs for inquiring minds on the go. It may show a sun, cloud, raindrops or snowflake, depending on what's happening at the time, or even one with a cloud and sun together to indicate partly cloudy - and which any reasonable person would have thought should be sufficient for whatever the weather might bring under ordinary circumstances in the civilized world. Not so fast! Last week, they tossed one out there, among the suns and clouds, that looked like nothing so much as someone throwing rocks, and as hard as I tried, I couldn't find any way to turn that into something else more recognizable that would be apropos to the situation at hand. I admit that I'm not exactly sure what sort of weather conditions that diagram was trying to convey, but I was frankly afraid to get out of bed in the morning, just in case. Personally, I think the weather has been horrendous enough around here, without the editorial comment of people throwing rocks on top of it all. We carved some time out of our busy schedules this week, and went to see the new animated film "Mr. Peabody and Sherman" in 3-D at the movies, which is based on the acclaimed "Peabody and Sherman" television cartoons from days gone by, of the intrepid dog genius Mr. Peabody, and his boy, Sherman. Traditionalists may quibble, but the film is fairly faithful to its roots, and not at all some re-imagined horror that would make Jay Ward fans bolt screaming from the theaters and run for cover. We found it very entertaining and interesting throughout, and it never lags, with enough sight gags and witty asides to keep you on your toes. For myself, I thought it was way too intense for younger children, and it also seemed to me that much of the humor would be lost on them, although there were still plenty of laugh-out-loud moments that would be perfectly understandable at any age. All of the 3-D effects were very impressive, as they are these days, and the first-rate voice cast included Patrick Warburton and Allison Janney doing a fine job all around. As usual, my favorite part was still the personal pan pizza at the concession stand, although it's true that I always say, everything goes better with 3-D. Except when it comes to the weather throwing rocks, which is where I simply have to draw the line, and that's not just the green beer talking, believe me. Elle

Street Smarts

Hello World, And so here we find ourselves once again, back on Daylight Saving Time this weekend, switching all of our clocks and electronic devices from Standard Time (or what I like to call "Temporary Winter Time" since it lasts for such a short period anymore) back over to DST, which now makes up 75% of the whole year all by its own perverse self. Actually, I have no squawk with DST, or Standard Time, I just wish they'd pick one of them and stick with it, for heaven's sake, and ditch this hare-brained nonsense with the swapping back and forth twice a year, like modern citizens have nothing better to do with their lives than chase around after that elusive hour as it comes and goes throughout the year. (It goes without saying, my sincerest apologies to hares everywhere, whose brains should not be maligned along with DST, and who no doubt never would have dreamed up a cockamamie scheme like this to start with, and would want no part of it, even less so than the rest of us, I shouldn't wonder.) So please get on with saving daylight, at least to make the whole colossal nuisance worthwhile in some way, and not just some huge practical joke foisted upon us by faceless bureaucrats to suit their own purposes. I'm sure we can count on even the hares to agree on that. Meanwhile, the weather has improved by leaps and bounds, with warmer temperatures (almost 60 degrees a few days ago) and a decided lack of snowstorms that feels like winning the lottery, after the battering we had been taking in the previous months around here. It's true that Old Man Winter might still have some tricks up his sleeve - in fact, a person couldn't help but notice that even the venerable Mardi Gras was hampered by cold and rainy conditions in New Orleans, of all places - but for the most part, it's been the welcome turn-around we had all been hoping for. It even provided some unexpected comic relief recently, when we came home from the diner one night and stumbled across one of our errant solar-powered yard lights, bravely lit up and stuck akimbo, half buried out in the plow tailings in the street, where it had apparently been carried by the truck that plowed out our driveway, and just left there hidden from view until enough snow melted to bring it back to the surface. I'm also expecting to uncover several of our newspapers that we never found during the worst of the onslaught, and who knows what else - although I did already tell the Justice Department not to hold out much hope for Judge Crater at this point. Speaking of weather, our local newspaper printed a front-page feature with Tips On Critter Control, where they addressed the troubles faced by homeowners with grazing deer, rabbits and woodchucks chewing their garden plants and yard shrubs, in many cases, right down to the ground. The Cornell Cooperative Extension weighed in on the subject, admitting that their demonstration gardens had also fallen prey to the same problem, and they had resorted to fences and repellents to help minimize the damage to some extent. They blamed the excessively awful winter for the increased landscape browsing by resident wildlife, and this is my favorite quote from them: ================================ "The lower Hudson Valley has a very large population of deer. They are pressured for food sources and are eating plants on the 'rarely eaten' list, a list that they clearly don't read!" ================================ It's all too easy to say that you've got to get up pretty early in the morning to put anything over on the folks at the Cooperative Extension, but honestly, it makes me wonder if it isn't actually the deer who are feeding them this malarkey about the "rarely eaten" list in the first place. In local sports news, the hapless Rangers were unable to come to terms with their scrappy forward, Ryan Callahan, and instead fobbed him off on the Tampa Bay Lightning at the trade deadline, in exchange for Martin St. Louis and other considerations. St. Louis is a proven performer, with over 360 goals and 600 assists in a career that spans more than 1,000 games in the NHL, plus one Stanley Cup, so his stats certainly speak for themselves and need no defense from me. While at 38, he may be considered on the down-side of his illustrious tenure as a player, he continues to play just about every game and rarely loses time to injury, compared to Callahan, who plays hard and often pays the price for it. In a popularity contest, Callahan would win hands-down, beloved by the Garden faithful right from the very beginning, and St. Louis can only hope to win them over by putting up the kind of numbers that will make this deal seem like a steal, rather than highway robbery. Right now, the Blueshirts and the Bolts have the same won-lost record, so it should be interesting to see, from this point, which player (if either) helps his team more. Of course, everyone knows that I never bet against a sure thing, so once again, my money's on Affirmed. On the even more home-town scene, we passed a major milestone last weekend, marking it as the first time for me driving to church since my cornea treatment in October of last year, and a huge step in getting back to normal automotive transit like the rest of the civilized world. Naturally the local authorities issued bulletins to warn pedestrians and other vehicles off the streets and sidewalks for the duration, in the name of public safety, and I can't say I blame them one bit, by golly. Now, it goes without saying that I'm all in favor of keeping the community safe, but frankly, I thought all of the sirens were just way too much. Say, is that Judge Crater peeking out of that melting snowbank? Elle

Food Fight

Hello World, Happy March! The last gasp of February was on Friday, and that was all she wrote, as the saying goes. But while it was here, it certainly was busy times for the shortest month of the year, and 2014 is not even a leap year, so we can't count on an extra day to help us along, no matter how much we might want to prolong the fun and frolic. There already was much that happened in the beginning of the month, then the days came by to honor our Valentines and Presidents, and the Olympics were not far behind. It all finally started to wind down as the month drew to a close, and then - ker-plop! - suddenly the new month is upon us, ready or not. In some ways, even the weather has started to improve, with some occasional warmer temperatures and a break in the snowstorms, so that we had even some snow and ice melting around town, which would have seemed unthinkable a couple of weeks ago. We may not be out of the woods yet, but perhaps enough to get people to believe in better days ahead at long last, which would be a welcome change of pace. In fact, I thought I saw a robin the other day, which at the time, I chalked up to brain freeze hallucinations, but then I saw a story in the local paper about how snow cover affects wildlife like deer, mice and birds, and it mentioned robins coming back from their winter layovers already, so I guess it must be true. No time to take a breath before Shrove Tuesday and Mardi Gras hit the heights on March 4, followed by Ash Wednesday on the 5th, ushering in Lent for millions of grouchy Christians around the world, and don't say I didn't warn you. I figure it's the least I can do, until those idiots in Congress finally come to their senses and pass a law making it mandatory for these people to wear a sign if they've given up chocolate for Lent, so the rest of us know what to watch out for. In other news, you would think that the media would have enough to occupy itself with - what with the weather, the Olympics, the economy, and political unrest around the globe - but apparently not so. The local press had a field day recently when the new Mayor of the City That Never Sleeps was espied in a local establishment eating a slice of pizza with a knife and fork, which in these environs, is a sacrilege of the highest order and a breach of cultural norms that is not to be tolerated. The locals will gladly look the other way at whatever foreigners want to call pizza, or how they prefer to enjoy it, but by golly, you better not come here and eat it with utensils and still call yourself a New Yorker, or all heck is going to break loose. This scandalous outrage played across the tabloid headlines in 6-inch letters, like the country had just declared war or something, as the 9-day wonder that it was, and this was the only news in the whole wide world worth paying attention to. Then, because these are the times that we're living in, the next chapter in the saga was when the eatery sold the blasphemed fork for $2,500.00, which is a further commentary on our society that speaks volumes all by its pointy stainless steel self. Hizzoner may as well just disband his re-election campaign right this second, because I'm not sure that his political career is ever going to recover from this catastrophe, and he should either just give up public service altogether, or move somewhere far away, where elected officials are judged on their merits and not their choice of flatware. As they say in college football, "You can stick a fork in this one, because it's done." On the even more local scene, I'm happy to report that our mechanic and his minions were a rousing success at getting the Aveo moving again at long last, with a brand new battery and a clean bill of health, to get back on the roads with the rest of mobilized humanity in the civilized world. Of course, it will come as a surprise to nobody that the car alarm went off when the new battery was installed and the electrical system had power once again, and thanks so very much not. This is old news to me and Bill, as we've already been down that road with the Chevy on several occasions, and we already know that the manufacturer makes it impossible to disable the alarm, even if you're the legitimate owner of the vehicle in question, and are fully prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences. No, you're stuck with that alarm system, like it or not, and you can just learn to live with its recalcitrant ways, or lump it. For his part, Bill said they should just cut the wires from the alarm to the battery and be done with it, but I said if this was "NCIS" and you cut the wires to the battery, the car would blow up, I shouldn't wonder. Once the car was extricated from its frozen fortress in the back yard, I took it for a spin around town with my new eyeglasses, and managed to come back safe and sound, in one piece, and with no collateral damage to the general public or community property, as impossible as that might seem to believe. So that was a big step that had been 4 months in the making, included a cast of thousands, and still required the heroic efforts and sheer determination of the elite few in order to finally turn the tide. At this point, I look forward to the day when getting in the car and driving, for me, is not noteworthy in any way, and it goes without saying, not the least bit alarming. Meanwhile, in our continuing efforts to get the annual congregational meeting out of the way at church, we finally had the rescheduled meeting in the middle of February, but once again, the joke was on us. Things seemed to be going along smoothly enough until we hit the financial reports, and suddenly people had all sorts of issues, as if this was something new and radical that we had never done before for some reason. We finally had to table the whole thing, and give up on passing the budget altogether, at least until our third try at this same darned thing in the middle of this month, which I can't ever remember happening before, even in the bad old days. Frankly I'm beginning to wonder if the name-calling and chair-throwing of yesteryear wasn't some kind of an improvement after all. Speaking of improvements, here we have the Spring 2014 course catalog of Lifelong Learning & Professional Development Division of Continuing Education from our friends at Westchester Community College, offering a glimpse into what's new and exciting in the realms of higher education these days. They provide studies in such diverse topics as: ========================================= Wine Appreciation (I'll drink to that!) Native Gardening for Bees in Crisis (they're obviously drinking too much already) The Truth About Mold (I don't want to know) How to Schmooze (awful lot of drinking going on in this place, I'm thinking) Envelope Professional (they need a course for that???!!!) (This actually turns out to be about building exteriors evaluation and repair skills, not stationery envelopes after all.) ========================================= One of my favorite courses is identified as Classroom-Based Home Inspection Training Program, which they describe as "hands-on," although how they inspect homes in a classroom is beyond me, I'm sure. They also offer a wide variety of what I would call "entertainment courses," such as walking tours of historic sites, and private cooking demonstrations and tastings at local restaurants each month, which I think is a great idea. It sounds like a lot of fun, a good way to meet new people, and also learn something along the way. There's one coming up at the Via Vanti featuring their signature ultra-thin crust gourmet pizza, and I was thinking of signing up Mayor de Blasio for it, but then it occurred to me that he might just bring his own fork and knife, and we'd be right back where we started. Elle