I TEACH-A YOU DE ENGLISH!!!

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 20:37:26 GMT

Every day, on the way to work, I pass two or three billboards for Sherlock Holmes, and every day I wonder: what is the likelihood that some witty screenwriter has put in a scene where another character says, "No shit, Sherlock"?

And every day I get a little more convinced that this probably happened (or is gonna happen, depending on how you look at it). And lately, I've started thinking that I have to watch this movie, just to find out for myself. No, not find out, since at this point I'm totally convinced, but to feel vindicated. Then I'll stand up and say, "I knew it!" and I'll walk out mid-film.

But then I started to think that this is all part of their marketing strategy. That's how they get you: make you curious about which catch-phrase they'll include in their movie so that you buy a ticket to find out. Well not me, man. They're not gonna get my eight bucks with this tactic. Ah, but then again, as a wise man once told Clint Eastwood, I gots ta know.

Also, what's with the underground bare-knuckle fight scene that takes up so much time in the trailer. Is that part of the Holmes canon? Anyway, I feel less confident, but still somewhat so, that at some point the huge dude is gonna say, "Get off me, Holmes!"

ROAR!

Wed, 25 Nov 2009 18:12:57 GMT

THIS IS FREE!

Corri and I are debating the best thing you could do with it. I suggested standing it up in the middle of the Ben Franklin Bridge, or maybe in the fountain at Love Park. Corri is against getting it and putting it in our living room for Lily to climb on and hug.

Any suggestions?

Sounds from the walls

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:47:33 GMT

Corri and I had the ballgame on for a little bit last night. When there was a boring, nothing-happening moment, our neighbor with whom we share a wall started shouting and freaking out. He's a huge Phillies fan who even works for the organization in some capacity, so I knew he had to be watching it. I had just enough time to wonder if he had some premium satellite channel that got its signal about fifteen seconds before our regular old network feed, when BAM...home run. It would seem he either had such a service or was strangely prescient regarding big plays.

The set-up was pretty amusing, always getting advance notice of exciting moments. In fact, I switched channels and watched M*A*S*H while the Yankees were at bat, but heard him freaking out again. I turned the channel just in time to watch the behind-the-back catch actually happen (to me anyway), not in replay. Super convenient.

Unrelatedly, save in theme, there's a cricket at school living in the walls of the first classroom of my morning. The students are generally not awake and chatty at that hour, so that means I get this type of exchange every day:

"So what do you think the author meant here?"
...
*CHIRP CHIRP*

"Can anyone explain restrictive adjective clauses?"
...
*CHIRP CHIRP*

Literal chirping here!

Happy birthday Lily!

Wed, 07 Oct 2009 20:26:38 GMT

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LILY!

Remember this?

That was a year ago!

Now this...

That's today!

And so is this:

I hope you have many more happy, upside-down years!

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:09:36 GMT

My neighbor said, "I just don't understand how you do it."

This is how you do it:
1) Get on the bike.
2) Right leg up, left leg down.
3) Left leg up, right leg down.
4) Look around. Are you at the beach? If not, repeat steps 2 & 3.

It's so easy, you should all join me next time.

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 18:55:36 GMT

GOOOOOOAAAALLLL!

Thank you everyone.

You can still donate: bensmsride.com

The start-line is fast approaching

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 20:35:30 GMT

Thanks to everyone's generous support so far, I'm at about 2/3 of my goal. I know times are tough in a lot of places right now, so I truly appreciate the fact that you have been able to find a way of donating.

As you know, the ride is less than one week away. If you have been waiting until the last minute, we are almost upon it. To anyone who intended to donate but hasn't yet, now is the time – bensmsride.com!

Thanks again to all.

Hey buddy, you got a quarter?

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:55:13 GMT

My pocket change tells me there's a state quarter for Guam. Does this surprise anyone else? Puerto Rico, sure, but Guam? And that made me realize - for as well represented as Puerto Rican culture is in mainstream America, why is it not the same for Guam? Do you personally know any Guamanians? Ever eaten at a Guamanian restaurant or driven through a Guamanian neighborhood? Where are all the Guamanian celebrities? Is Guamanian even the correct adjective? LiveJournal's spellcheck seems to think so, even though it doesn't like the words "Puerto" or "Rican".

Speaking of pocket change, you know where you can send yours? That's right:
BENSMSRIDE.COM

I'm at about 1/3 of my goal, and I'll be honest; I need donors! You can even go to Jon's journal and buy some fine art to hang on your wall. It's just like donating, but you get something! I've even bought some of his stuff in years past. Yes, I donated to my own ride just to get a picture of a bunny on a rooftop watching a sunrise/sunset with a cold one. My daughter sleeps under that picture every night. See, your daughter could sleep under some art and MS gets money! Win-win here!

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:08:21 GMT

I rode fifty miles alone on Saturday, then yesterday I did a bunch of gardening. Guess which one left me sore enough that I sound like an old person moving around today?

Anyway, a fifty mile solo ride is pretty good indication that I am much better prepared for the upcoming ride than I usually am. The donations, on the other hand, have somewhat slowed (stopped dead) after a great flurry early last week. In case some of you have been waiting, there are now less than two weeks left until this year's City to Shore.

Donate here: BENSMSRIDE.COM!

It's amazing what even a slight feeling of confidence can do for you. Usually at this time of year I feel anxiety and dread mixed in with more positive aspects of anticipation. This time, though, I am 100% looking forward to two days spent on my bike, working toward a cure.

Thanks for all the donations so far, and if you can, help me put the word out there. Bensmsride.com is easy to remember.

Mon, 14 Sep 2009 18:48:38 GMT

I rode forty miles yesterday! I feel ... not bad!

About ten years ago, when I got on this LiveJournal dealie, my first two "friends" were Manning and Jon (here the quotes denote a specific non-standard use, not irony). Back when friends-list color-coding meant something to me, Jon was orange in diametric opposition to Manning's blue. In fact, you've always been orange to me Jon. Not in a hippie, aura-reading way, either; when I see you, I see orange.

Now in the mid-to-late months of 2009, Jon and Manning are the first two out of a hoped-for many again: they have donated to my City to Shore MS ride. Jon asked everyone else not to donate so that he could have the honor scroll all to himself, but I'm pretty sure he was just kidding. Regardless, Manning has crashed the party so everyone else might as well join.

BENSMSRIDE.COM

Any amount you can donate will make a difference, and whether you can donate or not, please help by spreading the word. Post the link wherever you think is appropriate: your own journal, Facebook, the bulletin board at work, taped to the jacket of a random passer-by. In the past few years, more and more of the money I raise has been directly attributable to people helping me get the word out.

Thanks in advance to everyone for all the help.

The saga of the avocado

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 20:20:23 GMT

If you've been to my house recently, no doubt I've shown you, with some pride, my compost heap. Now, I can't say exactly why I'm proud of it, but I can say why I'm so fascinated with it: the speed and efficiency with which it reduces trash to something useful. When it's really cooking (and it does cook - with temperatures up about 150 in the center, the heat a result of the aerobic bacteria at work, putting your hand in it is a little like touching a light bulb you turned off thirty seconds ago), a banana peel will be completely gone in a week. Giant piles of dead leaves and grass trimmings are a third of their size three weeks later. Something about that makes me feel very satisfied.

As a household, we put in yard waste, kitchen waste (surprisingly, there's a lot of it), and anything else organic. You know you can even put dryer lint in there? It's all cotton; synthetic fibers don't shed. Lately we've even been tearing up the Sunday paper and putting it in.

A good pile needs a good turning to let in fresh air, mix up the components, and let the wet inside dry and the dry outside moisten. If I haven't turned it in a while, it's not uncommon to find a few blades of tough grass or a stray weed growing directly out of the pile. If there's enough finished product in there, it's really not too different from dirt. It can at least hold water, which is enough for many seeds to get started.

But the other day I went out there and found what seemed to be a miniature tree, about three inches tall with a four leaf canopy, standing right in the center of the pile. I casually uprooted it, prepared to throw it right back in, but what came out as part of the young root system was a newly split open avocado pit. Now, I don't particularly like avocado, but what the hell, I thought, the hard part is already done; I'll just plant it in the yard and maybe I'll get an avocado tree out of it. I'll be like a Californian or something. Unfortunately, what I had within an hour was a planted pit and lower stalk, with the upper stalk mysteriously broken off and lying beside it. Seriously, I have no idea how that happened.

I thought I'd still water it and give it a little time. If my high-school knowledge of botany is accurately remembered, there may be enough energy stored as sugar in the seed to grow more leaves and get the factory up and running. It seemed that's exactly what was happening for the past few days, until...

Today it was gone. Just completely gone, uprooted, with a big old hole where my lofty dreams of an avocado tree once stood proudly. Ok, a four-inch deep hole. Squirrels, I assume, had their way with it. And if that's true, then I learned two things about squirrels today: they are much smarter than I'd thought, and they are unfailingly polite.

They left the pit squarely on top of my compost pile.

Here's what I learned today:

Wed, 09 Sep 2009 17:00:01 GMT

If the local hard rock/classic rock station is ever doing another "A to Z" week, I need to make sure I pay attention right around the early P's. They played "Paint it Black" followed by Van Halen's "Panama" and then "Panic in Detroit" by David Bowie. I...I don't think there's any rock left in me; I believe they done exorcised it all right out. I'm a little surprised it only took three songs, but my god, look at those songs!

...and I ride and I ride

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:01:37 GMT

Most or all of you know that twice a year I do these MS rides, right? And that the end-of-summer one is, for various reasons, the one more important to me? And that every year I swear up and down that next year, next year I really will start training earlier. And start fundraising earlier.

Well, it's not exactly July, but it is a little earlier than in recent years, and I have been out on my bike a fair bit. Enough, that is, that I've already had to replace one tire and buy three tubes and a patch kit, and I'm probably looking at a replaced rim tomorrow. See, this is why I don't train: it's expensive.

But of course, training is only half of this project; I also have to convince you to donate your hard-earned (some of you, I suppose, actually work hard) money to this cause. Well here it is:

This will be my ninth City to Shore, a two-day bicycle ride (don't call it a race) all the way from Cherry Hill, New Jersey to Ocean City. I'll ride one hundred miles the first day and seventy-five on the second. This ride is a fundraiser to benefit the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, a wonderful organization that about evenly splits its efforts between research toward eradicating the disease and support for those affected, including families of those with MS.

This ride has grown with me over the years, from being merely a physical challenge, to being something I could pride myself in doing as a good deed, to now feeling like I am part of a movement, cliche as it sounds, a gathering of people for a positive activity. There are two groups of people who make me feel this way these days: the people I ride with (over 7000 of them) and the people who donate to the ride.

Your donations mean a lot to me, but they also mean a lot to the people who have MS. I wish you donors could see what I see - people coming up to me in stores or restaurants because I'm wearing a ride T-shirt, having lost a brother or aunt, thanking me for my help; people sitting in the grass outside their house on the ride route with cardboard-and-marker signs saying "THANK YOU! I HAVE MS" The thanks they are giving me are not mine alone; they are to be shared with anyone who has ever given me even a dollar toward my rides.

Go to BENSMSRIDE.COM. The site is easy to remember so you can donate anywhere, any time. It will redirect you to my official donation page where you can read more about the disease and the organization. Anything you can donate is helpful and truly appreciated.

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:44:13 GMT

It's funny how we go from walking up the outside of the staircase in order to avoid waking up our parents in the middle of the night to walking up a staircase in the same way in order to avoid waking our children in the middle of the afternoon.

Irony

Tue, 25 Aug 2009 18:42:45 GMT

I've kind of lost track of what "ironic" means lately. If I left a few tabletop citronella candles outside and they filled up with water, which in turn became a breeding ground for mosquitoes, is that ironic?

Or is it simply ironic for a writing teacher to claim not to know a term of basic literary analysis?

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 18:14:55 GMT

We taught Lily to throw her hands over her head when we yell, "BANZAI!" but she always puts one hand on the back of her head and looks like she's about to do the sprinkler dance instead. I'll see if we can get a picture.

Here's something there is footage of, though: Did you know Lou Reed once did a version of "Perfect Day" with a guy in a Burger King mask?

Coincidence? Mass superstition? Something else?

Mon, 13 Jul 2009 21:34:52 GMT

For the next few weeks, I'm in charge of setting up a few site visits for a visiting group of international students. One of the places we'll be going is, of course, the Statue of Liberty.

Now, if you've been following the news lately, you know the crown of the statue has recently been reopened, but that tickets are reserved for months ahead. On a lark, I decided to see what was available; it turns out nothing is available until mid-October except for one day: September 11th. Furthermore, on that day, all of the tickets are gone for every time except one: 9:00 am. The 8:00, 10:00, 11:00, etc. tickets are all gone, but September 11th at nine in the morning is still available if you want to go up in the crown. Otherwise, you'll be waiting for over a month.

Are people really avoiding this time? They must be, because it's not an issue of the statue being locked down, closed for memorial ceremony or VIP or something - the tickets were available. Are people avoiding this time out of respect? Superstition? Are people afraid that that precise time on that specific day is the most likely time for something bad to happen if you're up in the crown? And if so, what's up with all the people booking for 10:00? If you think there'll be an attack at nine, you're not going up at ten! That's like some kind of conflict of optimism.

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:20:46 GMT

Patrick Warburton was on Sesame Street this morning (yes, I sometimes watch Sesame Street at 6 am) with a chicken stuck in his shirt, and it got me to wondering something. I looked for a clue on his Wikipedia page, but got nothing, so I'm left with the unanswered question: Why is Patrick Warburton so awesome?

Hey, we took Lily to the beach last week. She'd been to Ocean City for New Year's but never made it out of the sling. She also visited Wildwood with us after my Coast the Coast ride in May, but we never left the boardwalk. As such, Island Beach State Park was her first true going-on-the-sand-and-in-the-water experience. Here she is:

You'd Think Rain Would Feel Good on Sunburn: More Notes from the Ride

Fri, 22 May 2009 19:59:08 GMT

The ride is nearly a week behind me now; my sunburn is fading, and I'm starting to walk normally again.

I want to take this time to sincerely thank all of you who donated or even spread the word. It's cliche, and I say it every time, but without your part in my rides, mine has no importance.

I took some pictures this time! With a real camera! Except the obvious self-portrait, which is a camera phone.

The first day was nothing but fog for a very long time, and that heavy kind of fog where you occasionally run a hand over your beard (or what have you) and find that it's as wet as if it were raining. So I didn't take pictures of nothing but this here moisture-laden spider web to illustrate.

That's during this one part of the ride in the northern shore suburban towns when we actually have to get off and walk over a little foot bridge. The ride planners have gotten better about this since I started doing the CtC - there's less of it - but getting off and walking still sucks.

Crossing the (much larger) bridge into Toms (sic) River, which is fairly well placed between North Jersey shores and South Jersey ones. If people talked about there being a Mid-Jersey, this would be it.

Lunch - halfway through the first day, and when the sun finally came out. Foreground: foreheads of my family, who were good enough to meet me there.

Toward the end of the first day, these two pictures show a different kind of Jersey, in fact a different kind of Pine Barrens, than many people think of. Low trees, even more sand - it barely looks like my state even to me.

Now as I mentioned, the ride length of one day was more than all of the training rides I had done to prepare combined. As a result, I was pretty wiped out after day one. In fact, when I heard showers were moving in for the next day, I all but gave up on doing the second leg. Corri and I started thinking about all the things we could do with the unexpected day off. I did, though, have to go to the start line to pick up my bike from the night before, so...

I talked myself into it at the last minute. It's hard to explain why; part of it would have been missing the camaraderie of the ride, part of it missing going through Wildwood, and part of it was an unwillingness to pass up ten to twenty mile-an-hour north winds. You see, the second half of the second day is the hardest ride I do every year, partly from fatigue, partly because of the killer winds at the southern shore points coming in from any direction but at our backs. I was not going to miss those stretches finally cut down to something manageable. And you know what? They sure were. They were the easiest last 40 miles I've ever done on the Coast the Coast. It did rain all day, though. Wet biking isn't too bad, but wet biking socks are the worst.

You can see me wearing the stylish bicycling poncho. What's sad is that I could have sworn I was smiling when I took this.

I pull into the Coast Guard station in Cape May where Corri takes the requisite finish line picture as well as one to prove that I really did ride 170 miles. Um...I guess I did some of them in reverse. For the curious, six to six and a half hours on the bike each day, eight to eight and a half start to finish.

Thanks again for helping me with another successful fund-raiser, which in turn always makes for a successful ride, no matter how difficult.

I Can't Feel My Feet: Notes from the Ride

Mon, 18 May 2009 22:35:42 GMT

In the past seven months, people have occasionally asked me what it's like to be a new father. My answer usually involves such ideas as responsibility, love and fatigue. There's something else, though.

Lately, I'm fairly emotional and given to tears easily. As I started off on this ride, I saw a man pedaling solo on a tandem bike with nobody riding in back. I had just enough time to think how out of character this was for the Coast the Coast, whose riders tend to be fairly traditional (none of the mountain bikes, BMXs or fixed-gears that I sometimes see on the City to Shore), before I noticed a laminated piece of paper, tented and attached where that rider would be: "FOR [man's name] / 19**-2000 / HE HAD MS, BUT MS NEVER HAD HIM"

And it just started me thinking. I've been working against this disease for most of a decade, and I know it sucks, but what disease doesn't, right? People die. We work against it, but they die anyway. Or: they die, but we work against it anyway. I guess I'm saying that until I saw that sign (one of similar dozens, maybe hundreds, I've seen over the years), my opposition to MS had always been hypothetical, but something about my mindset as I reread that little piece of paper, starting to feel that emotion that I suspect most men fight if only out of reflex, hit me on a personal level. So far, I've been one of the fortunate few on these rides; I've never directly known anyone with multiple sclerosis. But this person's death was so important to this guy that he was affected enough even years later to pay tribute to him by making this already dedicated ride that much more difficult.

I thought back to one rider that Corri and I saw at the Woodcrest PATCO station at last year's City to Shore start line. Many people write "In memoriam _______" somewhere on their gear or even pin photos to their jersey. This man, though, seemingly in his early twenties, had simply written in grease pencil or makeup across the back of one calf, "I MISS MY MOM." Not, "In loving memory...", not "In tribute to...", or something else so euphemistically distancing, but something so powerful and intimate that it came back to me this past Saturday, about ten miles into a foggy morning ride, and combined with the empty seat on the tandem bike just made me glad that that an MS ride is a good place to cry because tears are indistinguishable from the sweat every rider has on his or her face. I realized it doesn't matter what other diseases are out there. It doesn't matter whether MS is the top killer or even in the top ten; it is the reason these two people who were so loved by others are not walking around on this earth anymore.

And that was enough to make me hate the disease in a way I never have. It made me want to keep biking until it was gone. That kid was way too young to lose his mother. And maybe that's why I've made more of an emotional connection than ever before; this heightened empathy is something I only occasionally see mentioned by other new fathers. Maybe it's not a universal phenomenon, but maybe it is and men just don't talk about it.

Ride insecurity

Tue, 12 May 2009 18:52:55 GMT

Guys, we've known each other for a while now, right? I feel I can confide in you, show my weaker side, my vulnerabilities.

I am really worried about this upcoming ride.

I know I always say I'm underprepared, but this time it's so much worse. The longest ride I've done so far is about an hour. Each day of this weekend will be about seven hours of riding. It's hard not to focus on the "each day" part.

But I committed to do it when I signed up, and I committed again when I posted asking for money, which is probably why I did it. I think somewhere along the way I decided it's better to try and fail, all while raising money for MS, than not to try at all. It's a noble sentiment, but it will feel like nothing but bullshit around mile 35. That's over twice as far as any ride I've done yet, but it's less than halfway through one day.

The ride itself, however, is not bad; I've done it before, four times or so. In the end, I suppose this is an opportunity to see just how much of my training holds over from the previous season. I hope a lot, though I'm not holding my breath. Mostly because that would make it even harder to ride.

Anyway, many people have been posting about my ride, and I want to thank each and every one of them. Every time my donations start getting active again, I can tell someone has spread the word - it really is effective and really is helpful.

If you can donate:

BensMSRide.com

And even if you can't (or already have), please pass along the info in any way you see fit. I'm glad you are all part of this life-long project with me, and I thank you for helping me.

Tue, 05 May 2009 20:49:00 GMT

You know how evey year I do two MS rides, and every year I come on here and ask all of you to donate to them, and every year I mention how little training I've done.

This year is no different. Or maybe it is...

You see, this year there has been a horrible combination of bad luck. I say this not to complain, but to illustrate. The fantastic timing of a surprisingly broken bicycle, delays at the shop, and damn near a week of rain have all combined to leave me about a week and a half from a two-day 170-mile ride having not ridden my bike since last fall.

Honestly, I've been thinking of skipping this one.

Compounding matters is the fact that one of my part-time jobs (they're both part-time) has informed me that they are (allegedly temporarily) suspending their ESL program. This would seem to indicate that I'm joining the statistics of the recession, though there seems to be some hope of reduced hours in a different position. Nothing is certain at this point. Anyone need some English taught?

I know this seems unrelated, but there's a certain low level of background depression coloring my decisions. As a father, a husband, a "breadwinner" I kind of feel like I should be spending this time looking for jobs, or at least polishing my resume - maybe even working on a cv or, at the very least, learning what a cv is.

Anyway, after a bit of internal debate, I have decided to do the ride after all. I think doing some good for someone in the world will make me feel better about my situation. Unfortunately, this puts me in a position of trying to fundraise in the eleven days remaining. So here we go:

www.bensmsride.com

That's where you go to support horribly cramped legs and medically threatening levels of fatigue and sunburn. Oh, and multiple sclerosis research and support programs. Those are very important.

Seriously, if I ever again start to wonder if I should do the ride, just remind me of the one or two times someone in public has seen my MS ride T-shirt and approached me just to thank me for what I've done for them or their family. Total strangers. I feel like I could ride two hundred miles on just that feeling. I hope my poor legs agree.

Please donate!

www.bensmsride.com

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 19:53:40 GMT

Mon, 09 Mar 2009 17:39:12 GMT

I think we really dropped the ball on the placement of Christmas.

It's difficult to think of now that the weather has turned, but last week, and maybe later this week if it gets cold enough again, all I could think of was Lewis Black's description of winter: "It just gets greyer and greyer and greyer, and then one day you wake up and it's the greyest day you've ever seen. And then the next day is even greyer." You know what would help that? Christmas! Just toward the end of winter.

To me, Christmas should be the payoff of the season, the reward for suffering through weeks of bitterness, dreariness, shoveling, scraping, skidding, slipping, and no daylight. As it is now, we all celebrate the biggest winter event right at the beginning, and then slog through the rest of it with nothing to look forward to soon but more of the same. The White Queen damned Narnia to eternal winter without Christmas, but that's what winter really is here with the holiday frontloaded the way it is.

Also, as it is now, the Christmas monster has pretty much eaten up all of fall, a season that deserves its own attention. Let that build-up happen when there's snow on the ground, not when the leaves are changing and people are drinking cider. After the big snow last week, I saw a house with all its lights up, the perfect Christmas picture, and all I could think of was how long it had been since winter seemed charming. Everybody gets all excited for Christmas, cuts out paper snowflakes, goes to see the Nutcracker, hangs lights and decorations, artificially frosts their windows, and then the first serious snow falls about a month after the big day. They've done all this in merely a slight chill with bone dry streets. Push it back about two months, and let them do it in the snow.

But for God's sake, don't push it back too far; give people a week or two to take their stuff down. Ben's rule still applies: If you have Christmas decorations up after the first day of spring, I get to drive my car through your front door.

Thu, 05 Mar 2009 20:39:38 GMT

"Don't piss on my foot and tell me it's raining."

I used to think that was pretty clever until I realized you could end that sentence much earlier and be closer to my actual philosophy.