The Thrilling Travels of Normal Guy and Girl

"The stars at night..."

2007-06-07T14:04:00.000-07:00

Above: That’s me, sporting my ten-gallon hat, of course!

"Are big and bright, (clap, clap, clap), Deep in the heart of Texas!" I remember hearing this song for the first time while watching Pee Wee’s Big Adventure. I always wanted to sing it, preferably with a bunch of Texans. My dream came true last weekend at Minute Maid Park in Houston.

Jason and I just returned from a long weekend trip to Houston. I have to be honest, I was not super thrilled to return to the city where I had my wisdom teeth taken out, but I was excited to meet his family members from his dad’s side. Having lived a big chunk of my life in the south, I was looking forward to sweet tea, southern food, and friendly people. I was not disappointed.

After getting settled in the first of two hotel rooms (the first one’s A/C wasn’t working, so we relocated after our first night), we decided to check out the local Waffle House. I don’t believe there are any Waffle Houses north of the Mason-Dixon Line, so Jason and I believed we were in for a treat.. Or at least, I did, and Jason gave me the benefit of the doubt. We walked in at 11:30 PM and saw only one clean table. The remaining tables were covered in dirty dishes left by previous patrons. We were so focused on our hunger that we ignored the mess as best as we could, especially since I reassured Jason that it’d be okay. The other Waffle Houses I had frequented were clean and had friendly people and decent food. I knew we were in trouble when we had to clear ants off of the table. The sad thing is that we stayed to eat! Jason’s brother-in-law, Paul, claims that it was worth it for the funny story this experience provides. I am still debating this theory.

Above: With Jason’s family, wearing 3D glasses at the IMAX.

I met Jason’s family, including his grandpa (who reminded me a lot of my 81-year-old grandpa from Tennessee who still works full time!), his aunts and uncles, and a few cousins. We had a great time! You can definitely say we ate wonderful food, and we managed to go to an Astros game (thank you, Carlos and Vicky!), and even broke them out of an 11-game losing streak. (The Red Sox lost that night, but you can’t win ‘em all!)

The best part for me was feeling welcomed into Jason’s family by people who had met me for the first time that weekend. Hugs were plentiful and I felt the southern hospitality throughout my visit, a feeling that I sometimes miss in Boston. Of course, since his dad grew up in Houston, I am marrying a half-southern gentleman, but I digress.

One of my favorite moments was at the end of the trip. Jason and I, along with his sister and Paul, were following his mom and dad back to the hotel. Stopped at a red light, Jason decided to honk the horn as soon as the light changed. Laughter shook the Trail Blazer as his dad flipped us off.

For me, Jason helped me wipe away the bad memories from my summer in Houston during college. They have been replaced with Carlos’ stories, Jason’s grandpa’s laugh, and all of the smiles shared during our visit.

Non-Stop Prom

2007-05-24T12:46:00.000-07:00

[From the clutter-free desk of Normal Girl, comes this evaluation of the Boston Prom. Check out a mini photo gallery over at Jason’s blog]

For me, last weekend was devoted to Prom.

Friday, my youngest sister attended her senior prom. She got all dolled up, and then I squatted at her feet to buckle her black heels. I mentioned that she’d be returning the favor in a little over a year when I wear my wedding dress, but she was too excited to sense my hint of sarcasm. You have to understand that she is a bit of a drama queen, being the baby of the family and all. The following words came out of her mouth in a huff as she paced, waiting on her boyfriend who ALMOST prevented them from riding in the limo: “It’s my senior prom; it’s supposed to be perfect!” Lyra (my other sister) and I looked at each other and rolled our eyes. I guess after you experience your senior prom, it doesn’t seem like such a thrilling experience anymore. For Lyss, it was a big deal and looking back, I feel bad that I wasn’t more supportive. At the same time, her boyfriend slept until 2 and then ran around getting an undershirt and borrowing my dad’s dress shoes, while Lyra frantically searched on the internet for instructions on folding a handkerchief. Are you getting a glimpse into the chaos of my family’s house?! After surviving the tornado that was Lyss and her date, Chris, running down the stairs to catch a limo with Lyss’ friends, I took a deep breath and remembered my senior prom..

Cast your memory back to 1995… Although big hair was beginning to fade into history, it was alive and well in Circleville, Ohio. Prom was a huge event. We decorated for two days straight to make the gym into a Paris café. The sidewalk was lined with parents and siblings, who blinded us with flashes like we were celebrities on the red carpet. My date and I had a blast, dancing the night away with friends and smiling as the Prom Queen and King were announced. I have a few distinct memories from that night, but what stands out more than anything is how I sat in the salon chair for two hours on a hairstyle that barely survived through pictures. This time around, I’d do it myself!

Back to last weekend and Boston Prom. Normal Guy and I always joke about “what ifs”—what if I had stayed in Maine? Would we have dated? Would we have gone to prom? Well, this was our chance to experience prom together. I have to be honest, it took a little of the fanfare away considering that we got ready in the same apartment! Nevertheless, we got all dolled up, just like Lyss, and headed out to catch a cab to prom.

Dinner was good, although we shared our table with an “interesting” pair. We had fun taking pictures and tried to think of cheesy poses, just like we did in 1995. I was excited about sharing a slow dance at prom, but it wasn’t meant to be. Spinderella had only fast songs on her play list and didn’t touch any of my favorites from the 80’s: Bon Jovi, Boyz II Men, and Guns ‘n Roses. We sat there, watching the other prom-goers dancing. We danced for a few songs, but the music was the end for me—just not what I was looking for! When Normal Guy asked me what I was thinking about, my response was “comfy pants.” I wanted to go home.

Reliving prom was fun, but I realized what made it different this time around. After watching Lyss get ready, I remembered that, to me, high school prom was about creating a perfect romantic moment. Normal Guy and I don’t need to create a perfect time and place for perfect moments; we experience them at random moments that we share, whether it’s sharing a laugh in my car driving to Maine or playing travel cribbage on our hotel bed in NYC. Prom was not necessary for us to have a perfect moment, but it was still fun to get dressed up! Next time, we’ll call it an early night and share a slow dance barefoot in our living room!

Senior Prom – 12 Years Later

2007-05-21T21:17:00.000-07:00

Above: That’s us, captured mid-laugh at The Boston Prom

Better late than never, isn’t that right? On Saturday night, Keryn and I got dressed up in our best formal-ware and headed to the prom. I think we were both expecting it to be a more relaxed event, but 90% of the people there were taking it very seriously. I had been hoping to see some puffy sleeves and mall hair—standard fare for my own actual senior prom back in mid-coast Maine. Keryn was hoping for some cheesy 80’s music; perhaps some Whitesnake, Poison, and Bon Jovi. Alas, we were both sorely out of luck. And they reserved the lone slow dance for the waning minutes (by which point we had already fought the drizzle to snag a taxicab). All in all, we had a great time. How could I not, seeing as my date was the hottest girl at the prom!

Dining at the Automat

2007-05-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

After brunch in the East Village, we wandered in search of cheap sunglasses and knock-off handbags. Suddenly I perceived a pink storefront… No, not a storefront, but a vending machine the size of a hotel room. What kind of crazy contraption might it be?

Imagine my glee at realizing it was none other than the very Automat I read about in The New Yorker a few months ago. I couldn’t have been more excited. I think Keryn had a tough time understanding my fascination, but I was not the only man drawn to the stainless steel machine. In the fifteen minutes we stood in the vicinity, ten people snapped photographs. None bought food.

The Automat offers a diverse set of snacks and meals. PB&J sandwiches. Chicken nuggets. “Roast pork bun”--whatever the hell that is. Or how about the mac ‘n’ cheese kroket (or the dubious-sounding chicken pot pie kroket). Corndogs. Hot dogs. Cheeseburgers. Donuts. Name something unhealthy, and they’ve got it.

How does this nifty contraption work? Well some guy in the back prepares the snacks and loads them onto shelves. The hungry shopper feeds six or eight quarters through the change slot, opens one of the glass doors, and takes the treat of his liking. No lines, no menus, no language barriers. Like buying a soda except with meat.

I’m not going to lie--the food did not look especially appetizing. And I’ll eat almost anything. The cheeseburger repelled me with estimable enthusiasm. Yet I nearly bought a portion of chicken nuggets just to be able to say that I sampled the wares.

I’m not sure whether the Automat will ever catch on (it certainly didn’t the first time around, decades ago), but the next time I pass one by, I might have to roll the dice. I think I'll stay away from the cheeseburgers...

Greyhound Observations

2007-05-16T05:12:00.000-07:00

My birthday present for Keryn’s 30th: two nights in a nice Times Square hotel, orchestra seats to The Lion King, and an afternoon with her future maid-of-honor. We took the bus because it’s really the only way to travel when you’re saving up for a wedding. The Acela would have cost nearly as much as the airplane ticket she bought for an upcoming trip to Hawaii, and once you factor in security lines and the commute from LGA into the city, the shuttle hardly seems worth the extra dough. So we headed to South Station last Saturday for the bus to New York’s Port Authority Bus Terminal.

Scattered observations from our trip:

Apparently the economics of the matter are widely apparent. There was so much demand for the Saturday 9am bus that they added a second bus for the overflow – and filled it. On our return trip Monday afternoon at 3pm (hardly what one would call a popular travel time), half the potential passengers in line were stuck waiting for the next bus. Turns out that you really do have to be at the bus station an hour before departure…

The passengers on a typical Greyhound coach represent an incredible socioeconomic spectrum. Almost shocking, in fact. Like a great eighty-passenger melting pot with one sloshing toilet and squirt-on hand sanitizer.

Would it really be so bad if they put pockets on the seats? Or cup holders?

How is it possible that so many people traveling the Boston-New York corridor are unfamiliar with the basic concept of “carry-on bags go under the seat in front of you?” The lady in front of me on Monday kept shoving my bag into my feet while she enjoyed ample legroom. I have just resisted the urge to type a flurry of unkind names.

I’m still not clear on the rules regarding tips to the driver or curbside luggage guys. Is there a standard practice?

R.N. Morris’s The Gentle Axe is a splendid mystery novel, though it makes me think a re-read of Crime and Punishment may be in order.

I shudder at the thought of an eventual permission for in-flight cellular phone calls.

How does anyone undertake a 4.5 hour journey without a scrap of reading material? I’ve wondered this on flights, too… But at least they show a movie there. And there’s always the SkyMall catalogue (and the hot dog toaster I’ve long claimed to covet). If you’re going to sleep part of the way, great. But sooner or later you’re going to wake up. The idea of staring straight ahead for so many hours makes me queasy.

The view of Manhattan on the voyage home is absolutely priceless… And I can’t wait to go back again in a few months.

Planning the Honeymoon (13 Months Early)

2007-05-09T17:01:00.000-07:00

Assuming that we get our desired date and stick around for Sunday brunch / farewell with our guests, Keryn and I will leave for our honeymoon exactly 13 months from today. By this point in the day we would be somewhere over the Atlantic, our scheduled arrival in Paris - Charles de Gaulle a mere five hours away…

So far we are implementing a divide-and-conquer approach to wedding planning. Keryn has minimal interest in menu/bar, and she has somehow arrived at the conclusion that I should plan the honeymoon. Meanwhile, she is in charge of the music (including a string trio/quartet for the wedding march) and flowers. Some subjects (cake, stationary, centerpieces) remain in a netherworld of shared responsibility.

I’m so excited about honeymoon planning that I have already sketched out an itinerary. Paris for four days. Normandy (D-Day beaches, Mont St. Michel) for two. Overnight train to Monaco. One day suntanning on the Riviera. Onward to Florence for four days. Day-trips into the heart of Tuscany and Cinque Terre (on the coast). Venice for two nights. Fly home from whichever Italian airport we can get a convenient itinerary from.

Not bad, huh? Of course there are a few problems with the plan… Namely, it’s way too early to book flights, hotels, train tickets, restaurant reservations--pretty much everything. Prices will change between now and then. Airlines don’t let you book more than a year in advance (if you’re lucky). Restaurants may close. Besides, Keryn needs to look at the fancy travel guides (they have lots of pictures!) to figure out if there’s anything she’s dying to see but I unknowingly excluded from the plan.

We are planning to set up a honeymoon registry for all this… If anybody happening by this blog has suggestions on that increasingly-popular-but-still-quasi-taboo practice, I’d love to hear them!

[It’s important to note here how I typically plan travel. A recent scenario: woke up on Thursday morning realizing I had not yet booked airfare for my business trip scheduled for Monday-Tuesday. Got the very last seat on the very last flight that would get me into the city prior to my meeting. So planning something this far in advance is definitely out of the norm. See what the love of a good woman does to a perfectly normal procrastinator like me!?!]

Wedding Planning: The Launch

2007-05-02T12:54:00.000-07:00

So what if it’s not about our random travel adventures. Normal Guy and Girl are planning our wedding--tentatively scheduled for June 2008. I say “tentatively” because we have to settle the pesky matter of picking a venue and paying a deposit before we prepare Save the Date cards for our epic guest list of A-list celebrities and potentates.

To kickstart our wedding planning, we attended a bridal show at The Dunegrass, which is one of our top choices (we think). Last Saturday (April 28), we drove two hours from Boston to Old Orchard Beach so we could start debating the finer points of fondant vs. butter cream, bow ties vs. cravats, digital photo albums vs. old school prints.

The setting was quite handsome, despite the fact that the trees don’t yet have their leaves. Check out the photograph Keryn took to document our trip:

Yup, that’s a chipmunk on a concrete wall. Seals the decision for me! :)

Overall we loved the venue. Easy to find, with a minimum of Route 1 driving (a critical issue for my mother). An attractive indoor space, plus usage of the deck and patio areas. Decent prices for dinner (and a reasonable minimum total food/beverage requirement). And they throw in a free round of golf for the groom and three buddies! Only one trifling little problem... No indoor ceremony option.

Sure, the little gazebo on the lawn looks classy, and hopefully it stands well out of the range of errant tee shots. But from the very beginning of our planning, that was one subject on which Keryn and I steadfastly agreed. NO OUTDOOR CEREMONIES. Unfortunately, we are apparently among the only people who feel so strongly on the matter. But I think of swarming black flies in Connecticut, hurricane-force torrents in Southern Mass. (my sister’s wedding), and getting a migraine from squinting against the sunlight in Colorado. NO OUTDOOR CEREMONIES. Yet for a solid hour, as I stuffed my face with wedding cake samples (point of fact: wedding cake just doesn’t taste all that good), I worked on convincing myself otherwise.

We returned home with eighty pounds of promotional material, most of which Keryn has already analyzed. In three weeks we’re scouting other venues and some potential indoor ceremony sites. Man, no wonder people hire wedding planners!

Normal Girl on Miss America

2007-05-01T19:05:00.000-07:00

Today, in response to Normal Guy’s comments on the Miss America pageant in Las Vegas, Normal Girl gives her own perspective on the pageant, her personal connection to it, and some thoughts on the 2007 outcome…

“There she is…. Miss America…” These were words I heard for the first time in 1987 (I was 10 at the time), when Kaye Lani Rae Rafko was crowned Miss America by outgoing queen Kellye Cash. I watched Miss USA the year before, but I fell in love with the queens walking and waving down the long runway of Atlantic City’s Convention Hall. The beautiful crown and scepter given to the new Miss America were the clinchers.

What a thrill it was to attend Miss America while Normal Guy and I were in Las Vegas! But I’ll get back to that shortly…

I competed in my first pageant at 7, after my dance teacher encouraged my mom to sign me up. I finished as first runner-up…and quickly became hooked on performing and being in the limelight. Nearly twenty years later, I retired from pageants when I discovered that I had developed stage fright! It sounds ridiculous…but it is definitely accurate. My own stage fright gives me an even greater appreciation for the young women who are brave enough to continue to compete, despite the scrutiny and disapproval that sometimes surrounds pageantry.

I have videos of Miss America dating back to the late 1950’s and I am mesmerized by the grandeur of each year’s pageant. My mother was 7 years old when Marilyn Van Derbur was crowned Miss America 1958 and I am amazed that nearly 50 years later, the ideals have remained even though there have been many changes to the system. Miss America remains a class act.

I could write for days about all the memories that are attached to watching the pageant through the years, but I will share only two before commenting on this year’s event.

I watched Miss America live and in-person in Atlantic City in September 2000. I knew Miss Maine and Miss Mississippi personally and had even competed with both of them! Watching the pageant unfold before my eyes was a memory that I will never forget. My mom and I secured “backstage passes” to attend the after-pageant party to greet the state queens. I have pictures from those parties and loved every minute. I did not know whether I would ever attend Miss America again, and I am so thankful that I went that last year before it moved from Atlantic City to Las Vegas.
My mom and I have always “judged” the pageant, even down to creating sheets with the queens’ information and a rating system to determine our winners. I sometimes chose my favorite just by looking at their profiles on the Miss America website. In 2001, I saw Katie Harman’s preliminary talent picture: she had it, and I knew she was going to win. Throughout the telecast, every time I saw her on screen, I said, “Oregon’s got it. There’s the winner.” Sure enough, she won! (Years later, I purchased a book autographed by the one and only Katie Harman).

Back to Miss America 2007--As Normal Guy and I entered the Aladdin, the energy was contagious. Families had big banners naming their “favorite” queen; others waved small fans with their queens’ pictures. As we sat waiting for the pageant to begin, I couldn’t believe we were there!

Overall, the pageant was great. Mario Lopez, aka A.C. Slater, did an impressive job hosting the pageant. I really felt like this year marked the return to the classic feel that had been evident in the 50’s and 60’s era of the pageant (as opposed to the over-processed productions of the 80s and 90s).

I was surprised that Miss Oklahoma produced a winner for its second year, but Lauren Nelson was deserving of the title. My only issue was that I had chosen my “favorite” just like I did in 2001. Shilah Phillips was the first African-American to win Miss Texas, and her talent gave me goose bumps. I really believed the crowd was rooting for her when it got down to the final two. I feel that she represented all the girls who entered the pageant truly desiring scholarship money to pursue their education. Hearing her name as first runner-up was a let down for me, but that quickly changed when I realized that her dream had come true—she will be able to finish her college education. In my mind, that is what Miss America is all about.

Normal Guy did a great job of describing the pageant details. For me, it is all about choosing my favorite and rooting her on. Okay, it might also be about the judging and the exciting atmosphere, too! Miss Texas, my favorite queen and first runner-up, called Miss America the “Super Bowl of Pageants” and I couldn’t agree more.

-- Normal Girl (a.k.a. Keryn)

Mamma Mia in Vegas

2007-04-24T20:38:00.000-07:00

It has been nearly three months now since we returned from our Las Vegas vacation, and I’m still catching up on stories… Pathetic, I know. But hey, I’ve been busy. Trying to snag a literary agent for my novel. Designing tuition calculation algorithms for my employer. Shopping for diamond engagement rings…

But the real truth is that I have been slow to write this review because I’m afraid I’ll catch hell from old friends who already nave noticed some chinks in my masculinity. In the last six months I’ve reviewed “women’s literature” and critiqued Miss America and talked about my new obsession with hot tea…and the list goes on.

Today I’m here to rave about Mamma Mia!, the musical featuring the songs of ABBA. You can read its history here. How we ended up there is pretty simple: it’s the show playing at the Mandalay Bay, where the Maine State Lottery sent us in January. Included in our package were two tickets. Third row from the front, as it turned out… Spoiled me forever for show tickets. How I’ll go back to sitting in the nosebleeds, I can’t say.

My beef with musical theatre has typically been that showtunes don’t cut it for me. As readers who have read my other blog or my columns at Being There Magazine will know, I love music from many genres. But traditional musical theatre fare will never make it onto my iPod.

My opinions on the subjects oftened last summer, when Keryn took me to see Rent for my birthday. I thought it was great—in large part because the music was so good. Turns out that maybe what blocks me from enjoying musical theatre is that I wouldn’t like most of those songs if I heard them on the radio.

Mamma Mia! is an interesting phenomenon because the songs came first, and the story was built around a clever arrangement of those songs. That the story proves cogent given this approach is a testament to the writers. (Last week I read a review of the new musical based on the music of Queen; apparently they didn’t mange to do quite such a bang-up job there).

That isn’t to say that it isn’t a rather fantastic story. Young Sophie lives on a Greek island, and she’s set to marry her boyfriend. She doesn’t know her father, but she stumbled upon her mother’s old diary, where she learned that it might be one of three men. Remarkably enough, she has their contact information, thus enabling her to fire off three invites (unbeknownst to her mother, a former pop star, now hotel matron). Imagine the chaos when all three men show up… and one of them has never fallen out of love with Sophie’s mother!

The show is funnier than hell from beginning to end, and the songs stand up remarkably well. Going into the show, I knew only two ABBA songs: “Dancing Queen” and “Take A Chance On Me.” But by the end I had to grudgingly admit that “S.O.S.,” “Knowing Me Knowing You,” and “Voulez Vous” are pretty remarkable pop songs.

The performances were exceptional across the board, and Keryn and I spent a long time raving about the show… I give a solid gold recommendation to everyone, whether you think you enjoy musicals or not. Give Mamma Mia! a chance.

If you're in Vegas, check here for the Mandalay Bay box office. Even though we went for free, I'd hazard that it's more than worth the price of admission.

Normal Girl Explains Her Slacker-Ness

2007-04-12T12:29:00.001-07:00

I’m a slacker, I know.

Normal Guy has been nagging me to contribute to our site, even providing me with potential topics. The problem is that I need to be inspired to write.

Well, maybe not inspired so much as motivated and in the right mindset. The past three months have been a whirlwind (to say the least), so in the hopes of being forgiven for my absence, here are my excuses (each punctuated with “a shining moment”).

#1: My Cat Ate My Homework
Just kidding! I wanted to make sure you were paying attention. By the way…my cat, Corky, COULD eat paper if she was inclined to do so. (Yes, she was named after Corky from the late-eighties show “Life Goes On.” I have the DVDs…)

#2: Work
Work has been insane. I knew it was bad when I started dreaming about reading admissions files! Then again, I have been reviewing them day-in and day-out. We received nearly 6600 applications at my office and I feel like I personally looked at each and every one over the course of the last three months… I even started remembering students by name!

The shining moment during “reading season” was my “heart file.” Each year, each of us fights for one student who doesn’t quite meet our admission requirements 100%, but deserves consideration. We present their information and the committee votes. I wrote a poem about my student from New York and he was unanimously accepted! (The caveat is that he now has to enroll and succeed or I will receive flak from my co-workers). When my reading partner said I might have changed the student’s life, it made those three months of reading files (almost) worthwhile. I am super-psyched for my heart file!

#3: Travel (which is the subject of this website, but that’s beside the point!)
Let me start by saying, I do not know how Normal Guy traveled for work as long as he did. We do a little bit of spring travel for work, and as I write this blog I am sitting at a college fair in Syracuse. I left Boston on Sunday and it is now Wednesday morning [though this update to the website is a few days later than I wrote it!]. I started the week in Rochester and immediately realized how spoiled I was for having Normal Guy travel with me last fall. You see, it was raining when I arrived in Rochester and I had to do everything on my own. I consider myself an independent woman, but it is helpful to have a set of muscle-bound arms to carry my luggage, work bag, or sometimes (gasp!) even my purse.

I jest, but what I miss most is Normal Guy’s company. Sightseeing is not quite as fulfilling when you don’t have someone to share it with.

Yesterday I did two cool tourist-y things on my own. First, I visited the Harriet Tubman House in Auburn (NY). Seeing a sewing machine used by Tubman was interesting, but it would have been more exciting if Normal Guy had been there.

I also learned that a Syracuse mall housed a fully-restored carousel built in 1909. Being a kid at heart (see our trip to the Strong Museum of Play for proof), I had to ride it. The sweet (yet amusing) fact is that Normal Guy would have ridden it with me, standing beside me in line to purchase a token while adults carrying toddlers gave us sideways glances. It was a fun two minutes, feeling the breeze on my face and seeing the breathtaking view of the lake behind the mall. I just wish Normal Guy had been beside me…

We both admit to being utterly pathetic, to the point where we can’t stand being apart for more than a day. Five days is preposterous.

Central New York Shining Moment: After dinner at a restaurant near my hotel. I turned down dessert, but my waiter returned to the table, check in one hand and a plate piled high with (drum roll, please) blue cotton candy in the other! I kid you not. It was AWESOME!

#4: Normal Guy
I probably shouldn’t use him as an excuse for not writing, but he’s been keeping me busy. As some readers have noticed, Normal Guy proposed about a month ago (one month and seven days, to be EXACT) and I have been distracted by my bling and the attention it garners.

While at a college fair in Buffalo, I stood under the fluorescent lights. I inherited my mother’s habit of talking with her hands, prompting a lady to approach me: “Girl, that ring is doing its thing!”

Of course, the proposal led to phone calls and emails, along with a visit to Portland to tell Normal Guy’s family our life-changing news. Needless to say, the shining moment was seeing Normal Guy’s thrilled, yet nervous expression as he got down on one knee.

How can you expect me to find time to blog with all that going on??

#5: Sisters
I have two younger sisters who have both recently gone through the college application process. Working in admissions seems to make me the expert, so they’ve been eager for my help.

My younger sister is 20 and was recently accepted to her dream college in Pennsylvania--her best friend goes there and she has been trying to transfer since last fall. Congratulations are in order to her! She has been calling me with questions about transfer credits, housing, and everything else she needs to know.

My youngest sister is a high school senior, and she isn’t sure what she wants to do. I have tried to guide her along the way, too. It makes me proud to know that I can help my sisters figure out their future plans. Two recent shining moments: a phone call from my youngest sister announcing her SAT scores had gone up 50 points in each section (!!!), and being at the house when my sister opened her acceptance packet from her first (and only!) choice. I am so proud of both of them!

It has been a jam-packed three months, but I wouldn’t change a thing. Forgive me for not writing now that you have read my excuses?

Next blog—my take on Vegas and Miss America. (A couple months late).

One Year Ago

2007-03-25T21:04:00.001-07:00

365 days ago, I took the Green Line to Park Street station. It’s a popular meeting place, and I was one of a dozen people milling about on the sidewalk, waiting for someone to emerge from the station. The problem was that I hadn’t seen this person since 1990. Okay, that’s not entirely true: I had seen a few low resolution photographs on MySpace.

The woman had once been a little girl on whom I had an enormous childhood crush. She moved into my hometown early in fifth grade, and I was smitten to the day she left, midway through seventh grade. Out of the blue, in February 2006, I received an email from an atypically-spelled woman. “MySpace message from Keryn.” Nah, can’t be the same girl? And do I have a MySpace account?

A few weeks later we decided to meet--on March 25. I suggested Park Street station, but neglected to specify which exit she should take. So, as I milled about the plaza, thinking I had been stood up, she was acting out the same sad scene about two hundred meters down the Common.

Fortunately, she called, I ascertained her position (“Tell me what is across the street. McDonald’s? Okay, I’ll be there in a sec.”), and we met face-to-face for the first time in sixteen years... It wasn't supposed to be a date, but become one somewhere between appetizer and dessert.

What a year it has been since that evening!

On March 5th, following something of a whirlwind year (to say the least), Keryn agreed to hitch her cart to this crazy wagon forever. (Bless her heart!)

--The Luckiest Guy In The World

Miss America 2007: Part Two

2007-03-15T12:57:00.000-07:00

Above: Here we are, about to head inside for the Greatest Show on Earth.
We settle into our balcony seats one row behind the parents of the entrant from South Dakota, whom we already feel we know thanks to the significant air time she garnered during the CMT special. Callee is nominated for Miss Congeniality, which this year was voted on by the general public. I have learned that the Miss Congeniality honor—while undoubtedly a significant one—is pretty much the kiss of death when it comes to winning the contest. In any event, you can’t help but root for the girl with her family sitting in front of you… Seeing them there has one other effect on me—I feel as if I should whisper (or keep to myself) any criticism of the contestants, lest some member of their immediate family hear me and take offense.

The emcee of this year’s show is Mario Lopez, who remains A.C. Slater, his Saved by the Bell character, to me and a host of other Gen Xers. He was also a finalist for Dancing With the Stars last year, through which he introduced himself to an entirely new audience; my grandmother thinks he’s quite the catch.

At the beginning of the show, Lopez makes a point of mentioning that he will not be dancing tonight. Although I’m initially skeptical, it’s a promise he keeps. On the whole, he proves a capable-enough host, though he engages in precisely 0 minutes of casual banter. This was the first live television event I have ever attended that was not a sporting event, and I guess I always expected there was some kind of entertaining filler during commercials. Instead, those periodic breaks were little more than an opportunity to run to the bathroom or grab a drink, same as they’d be at home.

I don’t think I have ever seen a more diverse crowd than at Miss America. I kept looking around and trying to figure out the motivations of different groups…

Some fans’ interest was worn around their torsos in the form of pageant sashes. I think some of the women might have earned their sashes before my birth, some of them manufactured their sashes on their at-home Singers, and still others earned their stripes at what Normal Girl described to me as “mall pageants.” I don’t really know what that means, but I can conjure an image. To be fair, quite a few younger girls wore sashes from their regional pageants, which I think is totally fine.

To understand the pageant horde outside of a.) current, past, and future pageant contestants and their relatives and b.) hubbies and boyfriends of those girls and women, I would need more time near the entrance. The idea of performing such an ethnographic study intrigues me, so if you see a top-heavy guy hastily jotting notes the next time you attend a major pageant, that guy just might be me. For now, let me just say that it’s a diverse crowd…

The flow of the competition is roughly as follows:

Introduce all fifty-one women.
Immediately pare the group down to ten semi-finalists.
Swimsuit (need I say more?)
Evening gown.
…and then there were five…
Talent
Down to three…
One more interview question
Crowning and Bert Parks (on tape)

The range of talents can be pretty broad. Keryn has told me about past competitions where women brought their horses on stage, swallowed swords, etc., but they have fine-tuned the rules to limit much of the digression from singing, dancing, and playing an instrument, which are the predominant talents. This year’s Top 5 comprises 1 pianist, 3 singers, and 1 tap dancer. Too bad, because we were really hoping to see some of the edgier talents, such as the one contestant who had aerial something-or-other listed as hers… But we would have had to attend a preliminary to see the others.

Most of the crowd believes, by the conclusion of talent, that Miss Texas has sown up the title. Her powerful vocals stand out against rather mundane vocal performances from the others, and she seems to have everything going for her.

The final question doesn’t go well for any of them—at least to this viewer. It must be difficult to stand in front of such a crowd and come up with the perfect answer to an odd question, and the go-to strategy seems to be to dodge the question if you’re the least bit unsure. Texas loses some points for returning to her oft-repeated line about the importance of education. If anything, at least she seems genuinely excited about the scholarships…

Minutes later, a former Miss Oklahoma crowns the current Miss Oklahoma, who steps onto the hastily assembled temporary runway for her inaugural walk under the weight of the title.

(Don’t tell anyone, but I have to admit that I had a great time… Shh… Especially don’t tell Keryn, or we’ll be making hotel reservations for next January, too.  )

The spectacle over precisely two hours from its start, Keryn and I join the mass pouring into the Planet Hollywood Casino, which remains halfway converted from the Aladdin, and seek 25-cent slot machines.

Miss America 2007: Part One

2007-03-14T07:05:00.000-07:00

Above: That’s right, we’re headed to see Miss America...

I realize this article is so late as to be absurd, but I feel compelled to post it...

When Normal Girl and I first met back in 1988, she was the reigning Miss Maine National Pre-Teen. She continued to compete in pageants in Maine, and in each subsequent state she lived in thereafter. Her video collection includes many editions of the grandmammy of all scholarship competitions: Miss America.

After we won our Vegas vacation on that lucky scratch ticket (thanks again to the South China mini-mart who sold it to us), we had to figure out when to go. Ideally we wanted to escape the dreary New England winter, but undergraduate admissions offices go into crisis mode between December and April, so Keryn’s work schedule presented some challenges. Her bosses informed her that exactly one week--the last week in January--would fit neatly in the lull between Early Action and Regular Admissions, and would therefore permit two days of vacation.

In a great stroke of serendipity, that weekend happened to correspond with the 2007 Miss America, which relocated from Atlantic City to Las Vegas a few years ago.

Keryn couldn’t have been more excited...

I fired off our preferred dates to the “grand prize fulfillment” people (a friendly and helpful bunch in Alpharetta, GA). A week later, “Lisa” left me a voicemail: “Mandalay Bay is booked on your other suggested weekends, so we’re doing everything we can to make it happen for the last weekend in January.” A day later, she confirmed our travel, and Keryn rushed to the Internet where two balcony seats for the Miss American main event were ours for the taking.

Before the trip, Keryn made sure I was well versed in how the pageant works, because it was imperative that we place a casual bet on the proceedings. She built a spreadsheet listing each contestant, her talent, and other salient characteristics, and encouraged me to go through the website, reviewing each profile. And so, under duress from my beautiful girlfriend, I pored over the photographs, career aspirations, and college majors of fifty-one rather pretty women. There are worse ways to spend a Tuesday night.

To continue our preparation, we watched a CMT special, “Pageant School,” which showed the future contestants in the “Super Bowl of Women” (Miss Texas’s words, not mine) doing each other’s makeup, learning to line dance, and racing obstacle courses. (Dead serious on all three activities). Although I felt somewhat-to-very emasculated upon seeing one of the women in a subsequent advertisement and recalling her name, it was good for me to get an inside look at the pageant, and into what Keryn did for those many years. It’s kind of frightening, actually.

What amazes me is that the women manage to be so nice to each other, when they surely pray for the others to screw up… It’s a competition where the combatants are not allowed to outwardly exhibit their competitiveness. That aspect might impress me more than anything. To smile and compliment your enemy takes guts. If, years ago, Mike Tyson had said “I admire my opponent and think he is a wonderful person” in lieu of “I want to eat his children,” wouldn’t it have been ten times more frightening?

Tomorrow… The epic saga continues…

The Titanic @ The Trop

2007-02-18T19:21:00.000-08:00

Above: Since there’s no photography allowed inside, the above will have to suffice...

When you think of Las Vegas, what do you think of first? Some may envision the flashy Strip and its multicolored splendor. Others may imagine that forty-minute roll on the craps table at The Bellagio. Perhaps for you it’s the Pharaoh’s Pfeast at Luxor. Even if you think about Celine Dion’s spectacular at Caesar’s, I’m willing to bet that you don’t immediately think of the Titanic.

The Tropicana is an anachronism in the context of Las Vegas Boulevard. Walking across the casino floor, looking up at the mirrored false ceiling that feel impossibly low (it’s probably 15 feet, but compared to the new places, I for one feel claustrophobic there), it impossible to avoid the keen awareness that the casino is outdated and decidedly unstylish.

At most casinos, I would not feel out of place or overdressed in a suit. But I felt as odd walking the Tropicana floor in my new suit as I would feel in a honky-tonk bar back home.

So why were we spending any time there, when we could have been taking in the scene at one of the swankier venues in town? Well, we were there to see the Titanic Exhibit, and like every other thing in Vegas, you can’t get there without walking the casino floor.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am one of ten living persons who have managed to avoid watching the movie. Impressive, no?

We arrived just before ten p.m., and I have to tell you--that’s a kick-ass time to visit an exhibit in Vegas, because there wasn’t a soul there to push us along, get in our way, or prevent us from taking the time to read each and every detailed information card flanking the artifacts. We opted against the audio wands (unlike the Shark Reef, they were not included in the exorbitant entry fees), and considering how much time we spent reading the information cards, the play-by-play voiceover might have pushed me over the edge...

Above: Visit the Trop to see a full-scale reproduction of this stairwell.

At the start of the exhibit, the ticket-taker handed us cards describing a single passenger on the ill-fated vessel. As we came to learn in the final room of the exhibit, both our passengers died. Although this failed to resonate in the way that a similar device might at, say, the Holocaust Museum, the exhibit itself struck a chord. The video coverage of the shipyard impressed me; other than a World Series celebration, what other single event could prompt such a massive gathering today? But I especially enjoyed the sections of the exhibit where we were transported from generic exhibit-hall spaces into reconstructions of the ship. A third-class sleeping cabin, cramped and uncomfortable, with low ceilings and the dull roar of engines and machines. The grand staircase complete with gilded cherubs. And most ooh-inspiring of all, the open-air deck with a faux view of the stars and crashing waves.

Other artifacts of interest:
- A giant hunk of ice you’re encouraged to touch (as if I’ve never touched a block of ice before...)
- Reproductions of first- and second-class cabins -- the former were nearly as grand as our Mandalay Bay accommodations
- As a Harvard alumnus who spent many hours in Widener Library, named after a young man who died on the ship, some related artifacts drew my attention. (While we're here, check out this page on the popular theory that Harry's death is the reason every Harvard dining hall serves ice cream...)

In any other context, the artifacts would be interesting for period-study and in critiquing the grand span between upper and middle classes. That they were harvested from the sea floor is challenging to fathom. A cache of dinner plates earns your interest when you learn that the wood cabinet around them decayed during eighty years at the ocean’s bottom, leaving the plates to settle in the sand in the same ordered stacks a Titanic crewperson had arranged them in.

All in all, I came away with a whole new appreciation for the incredible engineering feat, the tragedy, and the impressive effort made to salvage the wreck site.

Doesn’t mean I’m going to stop dodging the movie...

- Normal Guy (aka Jason Shaffner)

Oxygen Bar

2007-02-13T18:29:00.000-08:00

Above: Normal Guy breathes “pure” oxygen in The Venetian.

We saw our first Oxygen Bar in the entry vestibule of New York New York around ten a.m. At the time, neither of us knew what the kiosk was selling. Bright-colored tubes of water gurgled, but the bar was empty of patrons, and the marquee was hardly comprehensive.

I nodded toward the kiosk. “What’s that?”

Before Keryn could reply, the salesman was upon us. “Fifteen bucks for fifteen minutes. Give it a try?”

We shook our heads. “Off to see the lions,” I said. We wandered past Coyote Ugly and Nathan’s before following the bridge to MGM.

A few hours later, while wandering alongside The Grand Canal in The Venetian, I spotted another bar. It was the fourth or fifth I’d seen that day. At every turn we found a Starbucks, and at every other turn we saw another oxygen stand. They were stalking us. My curiosity could weather the ignorance no longer.

“Excuse me,” I said. “Can you explain how this works?”

“It’s basically pure oxygen,” the girl told me. “It provides energy for up to eight hours.”

“Does it work?” I asked, flooding my cheeks with skepticism.

“I think so,” she said.

Hardly a ripping sales presentation, but I was too intrigued to say no. Besides, I was on a temporary high from a temporary bout of luck on the slot machines. Keryn opted out. The procedure was a little too hospital-like for this hospital-phobic gent, but a minute later I had an orange tube jammed into each nostril.

(It’s important to stop here for a clarification. The tubes are one-time use, and you can keep them as souvenirs, though I can’t imagine why… There is no boogie-sharing going on. That seems to be everyone’s first question on seeing the above picture.)

The Oxygen-girl offered me a Vitamin Water—I chose a bottle of the red. She asked me to hold out my palms and emptied a dropper onto my right hand.

“Rub them together and do this,” she said, cupping her hands over her mouth and inhaling. “Only don’t breathe too hard at first; it’s strong stuff.”

No joke. That eucalyptus oil will clear the cobwebs out of your head in a hurry. It hurts a little even in recollection…

A few minutes later, the girl came around with two of those $6.99 three-legged massagers you can pick up just about everywhere these days. For sale, of course. The vibrating head massager could be yours, too, for the low, low price of $25. (Those things may look like instruments of torture, but they work awful well).

Peppermint oil on my fingertips was to rub on the back of my neck. The soothing chill felt nice, but for the rest of the night, I paid for it by suffering the odd mix of peppermint and eucalyptus like cough drops hanging around my neck.

And how about that Oxygen? I really can’t say whether it was that or Starbucks that sustained me through the night. But I’d advise everybody to give it a shot, if only for the pictures…

- Normal Guy (aka Jason Shaffner)

Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay

2007-02-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

Above: Up close and personal with an alligator (or is it a crocodile?)

Beyond the obvious gambling machines, tables, and rooms, every resort casino in Vegas has the following common elements:
- Overpriced boutiques
- A dozen or so restaurants
- Exactly one eatery open all night
- Starbucks (perhaps one at each end of the casino foor)
- One or more nightclubs or lounges
- One big show (Broadway, Cirque de Soleil, etc.)
- And… a special non-gambling, non-dining, non-musical activity

From amusement park rides (Stratosphere, New York New York, Circus Circus), to water shows (Bellagio), to gondolas, a wax museum, and a Guggenheim outpost at the Venetian, to the lions behind glass at MGM, etc., every resort has at least one attraction of the kind you might find in another city. I wonder at the motivations behind these exhibits, most of which, even if they charge a fee, can’t possibly be profitable.

Mandalay Bay offers The Shark Reef, which “will put you face to face with some of the most dangerous and exotic animals in the world.” In other collateral, they describe it as the only predator-focused aquarium in the world. Since Keryn and I were staying in the hotel, we decided that we might as well give it a shot. Not that there’s a discount for Mandalay key-holders, or anything... But it was a five minute walk from the casino.

The tickets cost us $15.95 apiece, but the audio tour wands were included in the price. I didn’t pay much attention to the fake story behind the motif, but it had something to do with a sunken Mayan temple (or was it Aztec?), but there was also a shipwreck??? In any case, the alligator shown above greeted us straightaway. Not the liveliest critters until they attack, it’s remains eerie, and more than a touch disturbing, to stand so close that you can see into their beady green eyes.

Above: The nifty-keen aquarium tunnel in the Shark Reef at Mandalay Bay.

Past the alligator, we visited with “Ed” the water monitor, who may not be much of a threat to humans, but enjoys consuming small mammals whole. His face appears all over Vegas in advertisements for The Shark Reef.

The piranhas looked harmless until we saw their teeth. Yikes. After a brief interlude looking at colorful reef fish, we encountered the sharks. The above photograph does not do justice to the tunnel that sits at the deepest point inside The Shark Reef. It is an impressive sight. Railings lining each side served as perches to support us while we sat watching the always-swimming sharks and the graceful flying rays. Hundreds of thousands of gallons of water above and beside us, teeming with captive life.

I have a vague recollection of an aquarium “petting zoo” back home in Maine: hermit crabs, spiny urchins, perhaps a sea cucumber. At Mandalay Bay, we jammed our arms into a shallow pool to stroke the topside of non-stinging rays. Slimy. Kind of gross. Before then, one of my favorite dishes at McCormick and Schmick’s was the skate wing; now I may have to rethink my position on that menu item.

Above: Jellyfish freak us out. How about you?

We spent ten minutes mesmerized by the jellyfish, listening to the magic audio wand explaining that the creatures before us lack brains and hearts (but what about souls? do they possess souls?). They totally freak me out, yet I couldn't take my eyes off them...

After visiting the National Aquarium in Baltimore last autumn (a blog that has been on my to-do list for three months now), I walked into The Shark Reef expecting to be disappointed. Instead, I left feeling that it was well worth the time. Sharks are cool. If you find yourself with a spare hour and you're in the Mandalay Bay at the time, definitely check it out.

Have a great weekend,
- Normal Guy (aka Jason Shaffner)

Vegas in a Nutshell

2007-01-31T11:54:00.000-08:00

Tempted as I was to bring my computer along and post a new blog every few hours, I decided to allow myself a vacation without Internet access. Sure, I could check my GMail on my cell phone (in case an agent got back to me), but we were practically cut off from email, MySpace, ESPN.com, and our employers for the last four days. It was liberating…

Vegas trips can easily seem too short or run on too long; the sweet spot is leaving when you feel ready for your comfy bed at home but have already started making a list of the things you want to do next time you’re there… Fortunately, that’s exactly how it happened for us. We already have a list of five or six things for our next trip.

Sadly, we did not hit 100% of our Trip Goals for this year. Let’s run back through them again quickly…

1. Mamma Mia!
Yup, this one we managed. And as my forthcoming review should indicate, we were both shocked by how much we liked this show…

2.) Miss America Pageant
Slater proved a good host, and the show was very entertaining. The results surprised us—you should have been there to hear Miss Texas sing…

3.) Bellagio Water Show
Check. Saturday night, Shania Twain over the p.a. Love the water show.

4.) Walk away from a gaming table with more money than I arrived with
Technically, this happened a few times in the slot pits. Didn’t have such stellar luck with Craps, though…

5.) Take a dip in the Mandalay Bay pool
This isn’t our fault…but the pool was closed for the season, and under construction to boot…

6.) Visit the Wynn
Next time…

7.) Stroll Piazza San Marco inside the Venetian
And while I was there, I hung out at an Oxygen Bar – more on that later this week!

8.) Go to bed at a reasonable hour at least once...
After sitting at Logan for 5.5 hours before finally departing Saturday, we were hardly fit to stay out late on Saturday night… Hardly something to brag about!

Seven out of Eight is a pretty good finish, I’d have to say, and that doesn’t include other unexpected pleasures such as: Titanic Exhibit at the Tropicana, Shark Reef (Aquarium) at Mandalay Bay, basking in the sun at Margaritaville, gambling in eight different casinos…

We have a lot of fun stories to post over the next few days!

- Normal Guy (Jason Shaffner)

Two Days To Vegas

2007-01-25T20:18:00.000-08:00

From the desk of Normal Girl…

Okay, it’s two days before our trip to Vegas begins and I still can’t believe that we are getting on the plane this Saturday. Jason keeps bugging me to search for fun things that I want to experience while we are there, but I finally broke it to him—I know nothing about Vegas.

It’s true, I don’t. I know of “the strip,” I know Jennifer McFly gets married in the “Chapel o’ Love” there, and I know I will be super excited when the lights go down at the start of Miss America. Beyond that, I can’t be much help with tourist-type expeditions. I even asked Jason where Vegas is located in the state; one of my lifetime goals is to stand on the site where you are in the four states at once. (My other two lifetime goals are to ride on a Zamboni and play Plinko on The Price is Right, but that’s another story for another day.)

So, off we go to Vegas. Although I am unsure what I want to see, I know I want sunshine and warmer weather than the predicted 13 degrees for Boston. I want to be blinded by the lights of The Strip. I want to be surrounded by Elvis impersonators. (I went to college in Mississippi, so becoming an Elvis fan was inevitable!) I want to walk around, see some random event, and decide to join in.

Planning has never been a forte of mine, especially when it’s a new destination. Sure, I can tell you where you should go in various cities across the nation, but it’s only because my family has either lived there or we have visited many times. Take New Orleans, for example. The city was my family’s home while I was in college and I made many treks to the Crescent City for fun—yes, Mardi Gras included. I can tell you that Maspero’s has the best fried shrimp and Camellia Grill, where the cooks sing, has amazing apple pie. Ask me to plan a vacation to an unfamiliar place and I look like a deer in headlights. Tell me to take you to Oxford, Mississippi and there will be no hesitation when I direct you to the gas station with the best chicken-on-a-stick known to man.

Vegas overwhelms me. Part of me remains the small-town girl, intimidated by big city lights. I am sure that the skylines of Philadelphia, NYC, and New Orleans are nothing compared to the strip after sunset.

I can’t wait to go and enjoy this time with Normal Guy, not only because he can be my official tour guide, but because any guy that will go to Miss America with me is one I plan to keep around…

Gearing Up for Vegas

2007-01-25T08:22:00.000-08:00

Above: They're holding our room...

In 45 hours, we will depart from Logan. In 51 hours, or thereabouts, we will arrive at Mandalay Bay (pictured above). In 51.5 hours, I will have blown my first $20 in a slot machine.

Of course it just figures that I’d wake up this morning fending off sniffles. I get one cold each year, and I hope this isn’t it…

The strange thing about this trip is that we won it more than six months ago, and spent most of our excitement and glee in the two weeks that followed. On top of that, Normal Girl has never been there, so she doesn’t even know what to expect. I was nagging her yesterday to blog about her expectations, but she informed me, plainly, that she wouldn’t even know where to begin.

Vegas does not lend itself easily to planning. Let’s say you decide you’re going to visit the Forum Shops at Caesar’s and then stroll down to watch the ship sink in front of Treasure Island. Not a bad plan, but next thing you know, you’ve been playing video poker for an hour.

We have to find some discipline, though, since we have two pre-planned evenings. Sunday night brings us to Mamma Mia, which describes itself as follows: “Timeless songs such as Dancing Queen, I Have a Dream, Voulez-Vous, and Take a Chance on Me, are ingeniously woven into an enchanting tale of love, laughter and friendship.” I have to tell you that the website sucked a bit of the life out of me. Not the best promo I’ve ever seen. In any event, the tickets are free, the show is in our hotel, and I’m sure we’ll have a good time. I just hope that I escape without getting any of ABBA’s songs stuck in my head…

Monday night we’re going to get all dressed up for the Miss America Pageant. Yup.

That leaves us plenty of time to plan. Since I’ve been to Vegas seven or eight times and Normal Girl is a Vegas Virgin, defining our Trip Goals falls to me… Remember the formula: for any given trip, no matter the destination, you must define a set of goals that do not exceed twice the number of days you’ll be in the place (as defined here…) Eight goals…

Mamma Mia!
Watch A.C. Slater (Dancing with the Stars loser Mario Lopez) crown Miss America
Bellagio Water Show, like in that Ocean’s Eleven movie
Walk away from a gaming table with more money than I arrived with (I’m praying to the Craps Gods the whole flight)
Take a dip in the Mandalay Bay pool. I don’t care if it’s only going to be in the high 50s, it’s the principle of the thing.
Visit the Wynn
Stroll Piazza San Marco inside the Venetian
Go to bed at a reasonable hour at least once...

This trip marks the first I’ve made in YEARS where I will not have my laptop. Or at least that’s the plan. I reserve the right to change my mind at the last minute… Don’t know that I can make it that long without checking my email!

- Normal Guy (aka Jason Shaffner)

You’ve Won A Trip…

2007-01-22T22:39:00.000-08:00

...to the magnificent Mandalay Bay Casino and Resort in beautiful Las Vegas, Nevada! Yup, those are pretty much the words I heard in my head when Keryn uncovered that magical palm tree on that lucky scratch ticket.

Full disclosure: I never win anything. Ever.

Okay, that’s not entirely true. I won Red Sox tickets in a raffle two years ago. And I have had pretty decent luck at the poker table over the years. But other than that, I don’t win. In my clutches, winning tickets mysteriously transform themselves into losers. Good thing I was driving and Keryn had the penny between her fingers…

You might be wondering, as I wondered for the long two days between when we won and when we were able to get through to the Maine State Lottery folks -- how does winning a trip work, exactly?

The answer is that there’s some company in Georgia, and apparently this is what they do.

Let’s say you run a company and you want to give away a vacation as the grand prize in your annual sweepstakes. You name your price and these guys will tell you what it gets you. A trip to Vegas, the Virgin Islands, Paris, Alaska, Delaware -- you name it, and they'll assemble a voyage.

In this case, here’s what we’re getting:

Roundtrip tix (on America Worst, which happens to be one of the only direct flights from Boston, so we scored there)
Three nights “deluxe” accommodations at Mandalay Bay (I’m eagerly looking forward to learning what exactly “deluxe” means—I’m guessing it doesn’t mean squat).
Tickets to Mamma Mia (featuring the music of ABBA, which is all I have to say about that)
Cab vouchers to/from McCarran
Enough gambling money to last me a solid five minutes at the craps tables… (shh… don’t tell Keryn)
And, of course, a liability on my taxes...

All in all, a pretty sweet package (excepting that last part).

I can’t wait until we arrive in Vegas and slide a crisp one dollar bill into the very first slot machine that greets us as we deplane.

Back tomorrow with more details on our planning…

- Normal Guy (aka Jason Shaffner)

Things I’ve Lost: Hotel Rooms

2007-01-17T14:41:00.001-08:00

I promise this is the last (and the shortest) in this ill-advised series.

Of all the places I’ve misplaced items, none have frustrated me more than hotel rooms. Why? Because they make it next to impossible to recover items. You can never get a person on the telephone, that’s for sure, and they never want to let you into the area where they supposedly keep the items classified neatly by room number. Riffing on that last point—they always seem to want to know your room number. Do they seriously think that we can keep track of that kind of thing?

Not even the Sheraton Old San Juan, where I stayed more than 300 nights in two years and where the valets, bell men, and desk staff greeted me by name, they couldn’t help me. I even left my voicemails in Spanish! All to no avail…

I wonder about the housekeeping headquarters. There are two possibilities:

An palatial room filled with wondrous wonders. Watches, umbrellas, sneakers, pens, books, toiletries…
There is no such room. Perhaps they hold things a day or two, but then everything of value is posted on eBay and the rest dropped in the dumpster out back.

The most frustrating thing for me is that on two occasions the valuable thing I lost was my prescription eyeglasses. It isn’t as if they would be immediately useful to someone in housekeeping. I mean, they’re my prescription (which happens to be pretty potent). Of all the things to mysteriously vanish from the trove of goodies hidden in the underbelly of hotels, why my glasses?

Vegas details are coming together nicely. More on that in the next couple of days!

- Normal Guy (Jason Shaffner)

Vegas, Baby, Vegas!

2007-01-16T13:57:00.000-08:00

Above: Yup, that there sign is referring to Normal Guy and Girl. Does winning the lottery make us less “normal”?

It’s summer. We are on our way to spend a long weekend at the “Lemieux Compound,” as Jason has affectionately named what I call our camps on China Lake in Maine. On the four-hour drive from Boston, we decided to purchase a few lottery tickets, one of which was a Mandalay Bay $5 scratch ticket, Jason’s choice. We won $5 in Kennebunk, which we crammed immediately back into the lottery machine. I won back $7, which we decided to save for the return ride home.

A great time was had by all at the Lemieux compound…s’mores, sea-doo riding, and watching fireworks from our boat. It was Jason’s second trip to our camps and we spent time listening to old 45’s, playing old-school Atari, and reading in our porch swing.

Sunday afternoon, we began the trip back home to Boston, with an additional passenger in my back seat: my sister’s ex-boyfriend, John (they’re “still friends”). He slept off and on throughout the trip, but he was wide awake whenever we stopped for snacks and lottery tickets. John is 19, 6’1”, and a bottomless pit. He also developed a gambling habit after his first trip to the Windsor Fair.

(Windsor Fair is held over Labor Day Weekend, and John attended during the Lemieux annual trip two years ago. Having turned 18 right before the fair, he discovered midway gambling and became addicted to the various games scattered throughout the fair. Anyway, I digress…)

We stopped in Augusta for the two Cokes Jason needs for the trip (it’s a fact) and to exchange our $7 for more tickets; Jason gave me three more dollars and told me to “have at it.”

I seriously debated… should I go for the Mandalay Bay again or choose something new? Jason had won twice on that brand, so why not? I walked out with one more Mandalay Bay ticket, a bingo ticket (my personal fave that I have won exactly once with, even though I have bought one every month for the past year!), and another random $2 ticket.

We hopped in my Camry and started talking about John’s Windsor Fair gambling addiction, which led to a conversation about Vegas, where Jason has been several times, including a relatively recent work conference. I was half-listening to the discussion, focused intently on the scratching of the tickets. I had already lost on my bingo (BIG surprise) and feeling rejected, I half-heartedly began scratching the Mandalay Bay ticket.

I scratched off three random numbers that did not match the winning numbers, and thought I had another loser on my hands. Then I saw something that did not resemble a number.

I continued with my nickel and finished unveiling a tiny palm tree.

Me: “Huh…”
Jason: “What’s wrong?”
I read the bottom of the ticket aloud.
Me: “See a palm tree, win a trip to Vegas.”
Jason: “And…?” (He must’ve thought I was reading the rules for no good reason!)
Me: “I think I just won a trip to Vegas!!”

Above: Normal Girl re-enacts scratching the winning lottery ticket that will bring us to Vegas...

John stared at the ticket in disbelief and Jason swerved between lanes as he sneaked peeks at the winning ticket. Can you imagine winning a trip to Vegas on a $5 scratch ticket?!? Me neither.

Apparently, we are one of 50 winners of a Mandalay Bay stay from the Maine State Lottery. We alternated between laughing and being in shock the remainder of the trip after calling both sets of parents to share our exciting news. (We might still be in shock!)

Upon further research, we learned that we won roundtrip tickets, a 4-day, 3-night trip with deluxe accommodations at Mandalay Bay, some spending money, a wheelie suitcase, and two tickets to see “Mamma Mia!”

Since I work (unlike a certain Normal Guy I know), I had to determine when would be the best time for me to take vacation from work. Ironically enough, it was the end of January.

Well… it just so happens that Miss America moved last year from Atlantic City to Las Vegas after 80-odd years, and guess what? This year, it is being held the weekend that we will be staying in Mandalay Bay! (Have I mentioned that I love Miss America and have had friends who competed in the pageant?)

Yes, I purchased tickets immediately and plan to drag Jason to the spectacle that Mario Lopez, a.k.a. A.C. Slater, will be emceeing. Vegas, Baby, VEGAS!!!

- Normal Girl (a.k.a. Keryn Lemieux)

Things I’ve Lost: Taxis and Rental Cars

2007-01-15T19:55:00.000-08:00

Advance Warning: today’s post is boring… Four hours of 24, four playoff games, and too many hours honing the last chapter of my novel have sucked the life out of me! But I promised a posting, and here it is. Tomorrow, Normal Girl will be back with the story of how we came by our upcoming flight to Las Vegas!!!

My Wallet
Here’s a story of mixed Samaritanism.

Cab driver finds a wallet in the backseat of his car. Inside he reads the phone number from a pinch of business cards and leaves an incomprehensible voicemail. (Note: cab ride was in Chicago, he took me from the airport to the office, left a voicemail in Boston on the same day; I received the message two weeks later).

When he doesn’t hear back, he packages up the IDs (including a Social Security Card), credit cards, assorted business cards, movie rental cards, receipts, and postage stamps, and mails the bundle to the business address on the card. He keeps the neatly folded Liar’s Poker dollars from the inside pockets (you know, the ones with six or seven of a kind -- I guarantee I’m the only person who knows what I’m talking about), 80 Euros, about $100, and the wallet.

It was tough for me to be angry, because the lost cash was not going to cause me to live on Top Ramen, and the miscellaneous IDs would have been much harder to replace. Still, I couldn’t help but think it was an odd gesture of partial good will on his part… Sure hope he got something nice for himself with those euros!

(Btw: you might ask how I got home. Well, I had to have my building superintendent enter my apartment, locate my passport, and Express Mail it to my hotel in Chicago, which was paid for by one of my colleagues.)

Cell Phone
I will make no excuses. The driver called the three most recent numbers, but the battery went dead an hour later. Here is another case where I may have been more careless with something because I unconsciously wanted it lost. That phone sucked.

Frankly, I’m surprised it’s only happened to me once…

Countless CDs
Note to self: take the CDs out of the rental car’s CD player before you get to the airport. Now was that so hard?

Countless Cheap Umbrellas
For umbrellas I shop exclusively at my corner convenience store. The beauty of $5 umbrellas is that you can through them away if you’re tired of carrying them (as I did on my second date with Normal Girl!), lose no tears when they inevitably break, and stash one in each piece of luggage so you’re always prepared on the road. On the flipside, you tend to get a little careless with them. Here’s the typical chronology:

Learn it’s raining before leaving for the office.
Remove cheap umbrella from carry-on suitcase.
Carry said umbrella to the office.
After work, carry umbrella to car (if it’s raining) or forget in the office if it’s not.
Drop umbrella in trunk or backseat.
Record mental note: “don’t forget to pack the umbrella at the hotel.”
Pack suitcase on last morning of stay, carry to car, stash in trunk.
Jot down mental reminder of earlier note: “don’t forget to pack the umbrella before leaving for the airport.”
Leave for airport fifteen minutes later than you wanted to (an inevitable event).
Arrive at airport, huffing and puffing from cursing at traffic to get out of your way so you can make your flight.
Grab suitcase, forget umbrella.

I can predict with reasonable certainty the next big ticket item I’ll leave in the center console… Let me give you a hint. Starts with an “i” and ends with a “pod.”

Until later, safe travels…

-- Normal Guy (a.k.a. Jason Shaffner)

Things I’ve Lost… Or Not

2007-01-13T08:30:00.001-08:00

I cannot count the times I’ve proclaimed aloud to myself, to friends, to family that I’m going to draft a nasty letter of complaint. It happens at least twice per year.

This fall my pet gripes were held against Delta (spilling something fishy on our luggage, mishandling delayed baggage, mismanaging cancellations) and Target (lousy service, rude personnel). I went so far as to add a task into my task list, but I never got around to it…

Perhaps I would have been more on top of the task if I had a PDA to remind me of my duties. But, as you may recall from my last journal, I left my PocketPC PDA in Seat 4D during a flight from San Juan to Boston. Although I never wrote a letter of complaint on the subject, I mentioned it in an online survey. Somebody from American called me to chat about my complaint. He apologized and gave me 1,000 bonus miles.

Frequent fliers are prima donnas. We think that the world stops to admire as we pass and that airline personnel should literally fall to the feet and kiss our feet. We feel entitled to express lines through security and getting our luggage first in the claim area. We expect that policies such as “we will only call if we find your lost item” do not apply to us. That’s what had me riled up, much more than the actual loss of the device…

Last weekend, Normal Girl was conducting some January-cleaning.

“That’s disgusting,” she said.

“What?”

“Dust bunnies under the couch.”

“Um, okay,” I said. “Then don’t look under there.”

She retrieved a hand-held vacuum from the closet. “Can we push the couch back?” We did, exposing a gray bail of aggregated dust. And one black neoprene case containing a genuine Dell PDA.

“Hey, look what I found,” she said.

Whoops! At least I didn’t write a scathing letter….

Things I’ve Lost: Airplanes

2007-01-11T16:45:00.000-08:00

This is a story about things that I've lost over the course of about a thousand flights in the last seven years. Luggage doesn’t count, because I’ve never had luggage permanently lost. In fact, my bags have eluded me only once, at home in Boston. The next morning, I walked downstairs and took my suitcase from the delivery man. No problem. We had a less splendid time dealing with Normal Girl’s luggage back in October, but that’s another story for another day.

There isn’t a whole lot of space on commercial aircraft these days, not even in the front. So you might be wondering how I could manage to lose anything. But you also probably raised your eyebrows yesterday when I mentioned leaving my keys in the refrigerator (and once in the freezer, too, for good measure). IN any event, here’s the inventory of things I’ve left behind…

My Favorite Coat
This wasn’t my favorite coat at the time, but my favorite coat of all time. Manufactured by Brooks Brothers, but one of my rare lucky finds at the outlets in Wrentham, it was a black cashmere pea coat. My build isn’t easy—most everything runs way too small or the sleeves hang past my fingers—but that coat fit like it had been tailored to my precise dimensions. (Imagine the wistful expression on my face as I wax on about this damn coat).

I flew from Tucson to Denver, before catching the last flight to Boston. Those short hauls came with automatic upgrades for the highest status level on United Airlines back then (before the Ted experiment, before bankruptcy). I didn’t need the coat in Tucson, and it was too bulky for my roller bag, so I cradled it in my arms like an infant when I boarded.

“May I take your coat?” the flight attendant asked.

Here’s the thing. When they take your coat in first class, it’s kind of a pain in the ass. Sure, the jacket doesn’t wrinkle, and it’s not going to end up with a stain from somebody’s luggage. And yes, I realize I’m complaining about first class… However, the routine is for them to present your coat while preparing the cabin for landing. It makes perfect logical sense – once the wheels touch the ground, there’s too much going on for them to distribute the laundry. But it means you have to hug your coat for the last twenty minutes of the flight. Somehow this bothered me. (Like many things that bother me, I realize I may be alone in my irritation).

For whatever reason, I handed it over rather than fold it inside out (travel tip: the liner protects against other luggage in the bin) and tuck it overhead.

They did not hand out the coats that afternoon.

An hour later, moments before boarding my flight to Boston, I realized I was missing something. My coat! My favorite coat! I called down to the gate. Left a message for DEN lost and found. Learned where that plane traveled to on its subsequent two flights. Left messages at those airports. Nothing.

I’m still looking for a coat like that one… *Sniffle* *Sniffle*

The Mayor of Casterbridge
All together, I’ve probably left a dozen books or notebooks in seat pockets. How hard is it to check that pocket before deplaning? Depends how many drinks you’ve had… But seriously, the odds are that in 500 flights you’re going to forget something, and books are easy. They slip down, and when you peer inside you see SkyMall, the Safety Information Card, a prior passenger’s garbage, and a barf bag. The good news is that by leaving The Mayor of Casterbridge for United Airlines to find, I escaped reading it.

A Very Expensive Gift
I’m not going to say what it was exactly, but I’ll tell you that it was smaller than a book and larger than a nickel. Before I brought it aboard, I told myself it was a very bad idea. “You’re going to lose it,” mumbled a voice I tend to ignore. If I’m not mistaken, the passenger beside me commented on how nice it was. Straight to the bottom of the seat pocket. Some lucky maintenance worker might even be using it today.

My Mind
Well, not quite. But close. So very close.

Leather Wallet o’ Business Cards
My parting gift from a prior employer was a leather wallet to hold my business cards. It was from Longchamps, which I surmise to be an expensive accessories boutique merely from their location on the ritzy end of Newbury Street in Boston. Of course I decided to carry it, because my pockets were not overflowing already with my regular wallet, cell phone (they weren’t quite so slim seven years ago), keys, etc.

Got home and realized: Oops, left my business cards on the plane. Bummer.

Lo and behold, the item whose loss concerned me the least was the one that turned up in my mailbox. A flight attendant (bless her heart) saw the address on the fifty business cards inside and voilà, I had a fancy carrying case for my useless business cards again.

Not so fast. One week later, I transferred my laundry from the washing machine to the dryer. What’s that at the bottom? Uh oh, my mangled business card wallet.

Do you see what Normal Girl puts up with???

Last, but not least: my top-of-the-line, über-fancy, high-definition, Bluetooth-capable, WiFi-enabled, but completely useless Dell Axim x50 Personal Digital Assistant
I was thrilled about this gadget. Loaded it with contacts, tasks, and a flashcard program to teach me Spanish. Learned how to write quickly in their special shorthand. Carried that thing everywhere. And then after a while I realized it was spending a lot of time in my work bag and not as much time in use.

I elected to give it one more try. Of course, the memory had vanished by then, so I had to reload, re-associate, and re-sync. “This thing works great!” I proclaimed.

At the apex of this last-ditch attempt to use my costly toy for something other than solitaire, I took it out before one of my last flights from San Juan to Boston in early July. Checked off some tasks, added some tasks, checked my calendar, surfed the Internet on the free WiFi. Started talking to Mark (the guy beside me). Set the PDA in the seat beside me. Chit-chatted some more. Drinks came. Dinner was served. We broke to do some “real work” on our laptops. Landed. Deplaned. Took a taxicab home.

The next morning, I realized my PDA was not in the front pouch of my messenger bag. Where could it be? In the seat, that’s where. I called Logan and San Fran (where the plane went in the morning) and left messages at lost and found. They did not return my call. I know the policy is they’ll call only if they find your missing item, but I’m an Executive Platinum! (Insert indignant rant here).

Guess what Normal Girl found under the couch last weekend…

Things I’ve Lost: Prelude

2007-01-10T21:53:00.000-08:00

Yessir, I’ve spent most of my adult life on the road. Seven years as a roving consultant equals hundreds of thousands of flight miles (100k+ in five of those years) and hundreds of hotel nights (more than 240 in 2005). Combine that with a tendency to lose things, and you can imagine travel has not always been a good thing when it comes to my personal property…

Around the apartment, as Normal Girl can attest, I’m always misplacing things. “Where are my keys?” I ask, even though we put a hook by the door for them just to avoid this problem. If only I could remember to use it!

A few weeks ago, I flipped the place upside down searching for a recent paycheck, only to find it inside my wallet, where it was supposed to be.

At home, things usually turn up eventually. My keys aren’t really lost; somehow I managed to put them on the top shelf of the refrigerator (true story). The luxury of oh-it’ll-turn-up isn’t there in the San Juan Sheraton or American Airlines Flight 1425.

I thought it would be fun to spend the next few postings reviewing the laundry list of things I’ve lost on planes, in rental cars, and in hotel rooms through the years. Please everyone, I welcome you to chuckle at my pain and suffering, all of which is, ultimately, my own damn fault.

Because I’m trying to be all organized in the new year, I am attempting a very risky experiment here -- setting a schedule of forthcoming postings:
11-Jan-2007: Airplanes
13-Jan-2007: Whoops… Look What I Found!
15-Jan-2007: Taxicabs and Rental Cars
17-Jan-2007: Hotel Rooms

And then we’ll move on to our preparations for VEGAS! Oh, have I failed to mention that we’re going to Vegas at the end of the month? It’s going to be legendary.

Until tomorrow,
- Jason

Too Many Christmases?

2007-01-06T23:03:00.000-08:00

I remember a simpler time, when my life contained a single, solitary Christmas. Until I was eleven or twelve, the Shaffner Family’s modus operandi was pretty straight-forward. The entire annual celebration took place on December 25th, in the living room of our home. Grandma and Papa Cushing arrived at our house after we had finished the nuclear family exchange, ready to watch us open the pretty boxes they’d brought. The whole affair started when I woke (typically before dawn), and concluded before noon.

By my teens, we bifurcated the celebration. Christmas Eve we traveled over the river and through the woods to Grandma’s house. She made the tastiest teriyaki chicken wings (perhaps not the most stereotypical New England Christmas rite, but among my favorites). My cousin and I, though we couldn’t have weighed more than a hundred pounds each, could eat our weight in chicken wings. Sometimes our eating even interfered with the opening of gifts.

After wrapping up (pun intended) at Grandma’s house, my family returned home for a challenging evening of staring at the presents underneath our glowing fake tree, anticipating the following morning.

Seems a lot more complicated than that these days.

Not that I’m complaining -- the holidays were amazing this year. But two ornaments on our five-foot tree proclaimed this as our First Christmas Together, and that included our respective families, so we had a little traveling to do...

Grandma told me that she’d never heard (in her eighty-three years) of one person having as many Christmases as Keryn did this year (SIX!). Here’s a rough recounting, with a touch of humor thrown in for good measure.

December 23
10:30am Depart Boston two hours late, driving north to Maine. The traffic on I-95 is slow on the autumn holidays because there aren’t any tourists. (Good to know, in case any whackos out there are planning a winter sightseeting voyage).
1:00pm Arrive in Winslow at Gram’s (her paternal grandmother) house and feast on a bucket of KFC before tearing into presents. The highlight is a rechargeable plastic four-wheeler for Keryn’s cousin. It supports 180lbs, so I was disappointed I couldn’t ride it… If only I’d shed twenty pounds leading into the holidays! I remember circling the CHiPs motorcycle in the Sears Catalog back in 1984. Probably cost a thousand bucks back then. These days you can get one for a hundred. Alas…
6:00pm Say our farewells, exchange hugs, pack our booty into the trunk, and take off for Bucksport.
8:00pm Arrive at my childhood home, exhausted.
10:00pm Crash and burn…

Above: Christmas Puppy Ripley goes crazy watching us open presents at Celebration #3.

December 24
7:00am Because my mother has not changed the clocks since Daylight Savings ended, I force myself out of bed an hour earlier than the already too-early-for-my-taste time I’d planned.
10:30am My sister and brother-in-law arrive from Portland. They’re running on borrowed time, since they have a diabetic cat to medicate (not their own, they have a business doing that kind of thing). We waste no time filling a Hefty bag with paper, ribbon, bows, and boxes.
12:30pm We’re late to the second party of the day--the one at my aunt’s house. Oh, and did I mention my sister has an eight-week-old puppy? I’m feeling good about the fact that two days in a row, I am not the primary cause of tardiness.
1:00pm Christmas with my aunt, uncle, cousins, and grandmother. There’s pot roast and potatoes, my father’s gift-to-mankind gravy, lobster stew, and Crown Royal on the rocks. The puppy demands our attention. I sip my Manhattan and try to channel Cesar Millan. Calm assertive state. Rules, boundaries, limitations. More pot roast.
4:00pm The party ends. Keryn has to be back in Boston for Christmas with her family and my brother-in-law has to deliver insulin to a housecat.
9:00pm My bad directions put Keryn in Roxbury (where she does not want to be). Fortunately, she gets back on the Central Artery and finds Storrow Drive.

December 25
Keryn has Christmas with her family (that’s #4 for her, if you’re counting). Then her clan dashes off to Logan for their flight to Columbus.

December 28
3:00am: Normal Girl and her family rise so they can make their 5:30am flight. (Yikes!!!)
5:30am: I’m packing my bags for an exciting bus ride home. Keryn boards an airplane.
7:15am: Nothing like a packed-solid bus! Ooh baby.
12:00pm: I arrive in Boston.
12:10pm: Our final celebration (#4 for me, #6 for her) begins as Keryn unwraps a genuine lump of coal and I don a new tee-shirt proclaiming, “Careful or you’ll end up in my novel!” How true it is…

So back to the original question: is there any such thing as too many Christmases?

I’m going to answer with a resounding no. Bring it on!

Phew… We survived!

2006-12-13T21:58:00.000-08:00

After eight weeks on the road this fall, it’s Keryn’s turn to talk about our adventures through all those places Jason has been failing to describe...

I survived eight weeks of travel.

This simple sentence does not even begin to explain all that my traveling has entailed. Imagine visiting 92 (!) high schools over two months, during the school day or as evening college fairs. These visits span six states and four months this fall. Thankfully, Normal Guy (Jason) was able to travel with me for half of my travel season, providing the always-needed foot rub, hug, or quiet time reading our own books in the hot tub in Buffalo. Admittedly, there were days when I felt like being alone and mute for hours after doing two one-hour student interviews, four high school visits and a college fair. Compound this with the fact that Jason often spent eight hours holed up in a small hotel room, writing or reading, both activities done alone. I’d get home and want to be quiet; I’d get home and he wanted to talk. It’s a good thing we are able to communicate with each other, oftentimes about how we don’t want to talk.

It was unbelievable when I learned (months ago) that Jason likes to talk (almost) as much as me!! How is that possible? Rewind nine years to a conversation I had with my college boyfriend:

Me: How’s life?
Him: Fine.
Me: How was your day?
Him: Good.
Me: What did you do?
Him: The usual.
Me: Do you have a lot of work to do?
Him: Enough. (with a hint of sarcasm and a slight narrowing of his eyes)
Me: What are you thinking about? (Apparently, questions that girls under 25 should under NO circumstances ask their significant others.)
Him: Nothing.

You get the picture. Fast forward nine years to listen to a conversation with Jason, and you would hear both of us sharing every detail about everything and anything that we observed in a 15 minute time frame, disregarding the many tangents we go off on while talking. While recently watching an episode of “How I Met Your Mother,” we faced a reflection of our details-sharing relationship in Marshall and Lily. [NOTE: Tried to find the clip on YouTube, but the closest I could get was this clip from the same episode]

Okay, back to the topic of travel.

To recap: I survived. He survived. Our relationship survived.

Being stranded at the Baltimore airport on our last trip of the travel season was infuriating, but as we lay on the floor at gate A8, we learned that we shape the opportunities in our lives. We could spend another night in Baltimore, anxious to get home, or we could rent a car and venture on an eight hour cruise home.

We bought munchies, several Cokes (to keep Jason caffeinated and awake to drive), and stopped at eight toll booths along the way. I have proof, receipts marking our journey through Maryland, New York, and New Jersey, and along the Mass Pike. We cheered the first time we saw Boston on a sign with mileage attached.

“Home Sweet Home” is a phrase I will never take for granted again after traveling to Buffalo, Syracuse, Baltimore, and Woodstock, CT, along with countless other small towns during the past two months.

Thank you, “Normal Guy,” for being my navigator, cheerleader, and stress-reducer while traveling. We survived.

- Keryn Lemieux (a.k.a. "Normal Girl")

Where Have We Been?

2006-12-13T05:46:00.000-08:00

That’s an excellent question. This fall, Keryn and I ventured to many places selected by her employer for recruiting potential undergraduate students. Among our destinations (a partial listing):

Newark, Delaware
Baltimore, MD
Syracuse, NY
North Adams, MA
Wallingford, CT
Greenfield, MA
Rochester, NY
Timonium, MD
Dover, Delaware
Pittsfield, MA

Reads like a title scan of the travel section in your local independent bookseller, no? I especially recommend the Lonely Planet Guide to Northern Delaware. It doesn't help trying to get to the elusive Chili's on Stanton Road in Newark, though... Damn marginal roads...

This period proved quite a thorough test of our relationship. In fact, if you are seeking to analyze how you and your honey stand up against stress, confined quarters, and all that, I strongly suggest you spend four weeks in a series of generic cramped hotel rooms, that one of you spend the day on the road, working, while the other sits in the hotel room developing cabin fever and trying to write his Great American Novel, that you dine nightly at one of three chain restaurants, and that you spend lots of hours together in the car struggling to find obscure side roads, navigate bustling rotaries, and follow bewildering signage. If you make it through all that, as we did this fall, and you still enjoy each other’s company, then you should look forward to a happy future.

Normal Girl provides her take on the subject later today...

Although we made it through the trip intact, we fell behind in our blogging. I spent a few posts recounting our visits to Niagara Falls, the Boxing Hall of Fame, and Rochester. But many sights remain items on my task list. I’m hoping to make up for lost time in coming weeks, recounting such adventures as:

National Aquarium (Baltimore)
Our “Favorite” Airport (BWI)
Delaware, Land of Enchantment
A LONG Drive Home (Baltimore to Boston)
Bob Evans Across America

Stay tuned for these and other adventures in coming weeks!

Also, you should pay close attention for some other enhancements to the site:
- Migration from Blogspot to http:///www.normalguynormalgirl.com
- Weekly PodCast posted to iTunes
- Complete sitemap with multiple cross-references (location, subject)

Glad to be back after a month’s hiatus!

- Jason Shaffner (a.k.a. “Normal Guy”

Reading Aloud: An Unexpected Road Trip Pleasure

2006-11-06T20:39:00.000-08:00

(This post also appears at http://www.jasonshaffner.com/blog.)

The drive from Syracuse (NY) to Greenfield (MA) lasts 255 agonizing miles. By the time we start forth, we have already been in the car five hours, having visited five Syracuse high schools between 8:30am and 1:00pm. After a week on the road, we have wearied of the ten CDs we trucked along with us. Hold off on calling us Luddites; few rental cars come equipped with satellite radio, and we left our iPod attachments at home.

Keryn comes up with an unusual solution: “Maybe you should read aloud.”

My first impulse is to take this opportunity to read her the newest chapters of my novel-in-progress. But that might seem a little selfish on my part…

I have always been a proponent of reading my drafts aloud. There’s no better way to find pet phrases or clumsy structures than to recite them. Whenever I complete a draft, I carry the printout through my apartment and pace from bedroom to kitchen and back. In an online workshop I’ve been a member of for several years, I was appalled to see a fellow writer proclaim his belief that reading aloud was a waste of time, since that’s not how readers read. His lunacy was confirmed a paragraph later, when he went on to say that rhythm and language were immaterial to story.

I don’t know that this joker is alone in his assessment, though, which is a tragic thing indeed. In my years of workshopping, I have run across many people who claim to have a great story to tell and believe that the power of plot can compensate for lacking technical proficiency with the language. I’m not sure where they came upon this silly notion. Granted, on the opposite extreme, story sometimes disappears into a fog of figurative construct and purple prose. Literary writing is a balancing act of all the core elements. The craft is about using the sounds and shapes of words to tell a story. If your tongue trips on itself trying to read a sentence, flaws remain in need of smoothing.

But I’ve led us off topic.

Cut to an East Syracuse Kmart. Keryn and I are looking for a DVD to watch on my laptop back in the hotel room. We find a winner and head toward the front of the store. The fiction section holds us hostage for ten minutes. Both of us are bookstore addicts; it is a blessing and a curse.

Smack dab in the center of the display stands the maroon cover and mauve script of Toni Morrison’s Beloved. That famous novel was one of two unread books on the syllabus of a literature class I took my junior year at Harvard, and I have always felt a distinct measure of regret for not going back later and reading it. (The other unread book was Herzog by Saul Bellow). I impart this story to Keryn and she suggests we read it on the road. We agree that the jacket text is intriguing and drop the book in our cart.

Ten minutes outside Syracuse, with three hours of daylight remaining, on our way to Greenfield, Mass., I crack the binding.

“124 was spiteful. Full of a baby’s venom. The women in the house knew it and so did the children. For years each put up with the spite in his own way, but by 1873 Sethe and her daughter Denver were its only victims.”

When I reach the bottom of the page, I stop.

“Now that’s writing,” I say. “Damn.”

Keryn nods. “Keep reading.”

There are awkward moments, words distasteful to my tongue, words that raise the fuzz on my neck. Some images haunt us. Vicious beatings and rapes. The murder of a daughter for reasons unknown. Scars, spirits, and sexual intercourse. Butter churns and pink granite tombstones. As the words roll from my tongue, Keryn asks: “Can you read that again?” And sometimes I finish a sentence and pause to mutter “Wow” before I can proceed. That is the power of great writing.

The first time I read Lolita, I stopped and stared at the first page, then permitted my eyes’ return to the top. I recited that famous opening in the quiet of my sophomore dorm room. “Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” In that moment, the power of language overwhelmed me.

But back to Beloved. This is a book built for oral recitation. The vernacular in the voices of Sethe, Denver, and Paul D. comes alive, and you realize how perfectly the author has crafted the dialogue. Tight, evocative, and real. It’s a hard life few readers can truly imagine, yet it comes alive through the words. Speak through the characters and feel their anguish and sorrow, the fleeting moments of elation, the doubt and worry and hope. And in the long passages of exposition, you find sentences so powerful that sometimes you have to stop and say them again.

That afternoon in the car, I complete only fifty pages. But we decide that the entire book should be read this way, and through the weekend we take turns reading difficult and powerful words. I have never experienced a book this way. Beloved is truly a masterpiece.

Meanwhile, Keryn and I have decided this whole reading aloud thing, experiencing a great book in lockstep, is a tradition henceforth. Beloved will be a tough act to follow…

Worth a Visit: The International Boxing Hall of Fame

2006-11-03T18:36:00.000-08:00

We had been on the road too long when Keryn spotted the billboard from the New York State Thruway. Her finger shot toward the right shoulder.

“The International Boxing Hall of Fame. Sounds fun. Maybe we should stop on the way back.”

Fifteen minutes before, we passed signs for Cooperstown and part of me wanted to suggest we stop. But a challenging week lay ahead, and a museum to a sport she finds boring (except from the stands) would probably not make the grade. Truth was that I would not want to stop there any more than she. By Thursday, when we would pass Cooperstown on our return drive from Central New York, a familiar bed would sit highest on our individual lists. Two hours of admiring busts and plaques? Not so much.

But boxing had promise. Last weekend we watched When We Were Kings, the feature-length documentary about the Ali-Foreman “Rumble in the Jungle,” and loved it.

Once settled into our Syracuse hotel, we found the Boxing Hall of Fame website. Admittedly, I lost some enthusiasm on finding that the site does not enumerate the museum’s operating hours (suggesting potential visitors call instead) and that more than half of the pages do not work.

Fortunately, Google returned an article from The Washington Post that described the HOF’s exhibits in some detail. Bronze casts of champions’ fists sounded particularly unusual, even as I contemplated the possibility (later proven true) that my own fists would produce casts smaller than Christy Martin, former female boxing champion…

Besides, when I typed the address into our trusty GPS, I learned that it was so close to the highway that we could not afford to skip it. Add that to your trusty bundle of travel rules: if a potential destination is less than half a mile off your path, that should erase most or all hesitation… (Exceptions to be made for exorbitant entry fees – at $7 per person, the IBHOF was more than reasonable).

To say that the International Boxing Hall of Fame is unassuming is to make a gross understatement. Without the signage, one might guess it little more than a modest two bedroom house with cedar clapboards. In fact, if the museum underwent a residential conversion, it would barely accommodate two bedrooms. The IBHOF is not spacious.

Yet its simplicity is majestic in a way that echoes the crude potency of the sport. We were the only two visitors for the hour we spent there, about which I have very mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was wonderful to tour at our own speed, never needing to hurry along or jockey for position with pushy strangers. We moved freely, watched the video displays as long as we wished, lingered to read the single paragraph biographies beneath the small photographs of each of the IBHOF’s 300+ inductees. But the museum merits more visitors, and I would have gladly sacrificed some of my personal space for the museum to be more widely seen.

I’m sure the most frequently asked question at the International Boxing Hall of Fame is “Why Canastota?” I already knew the answer, but the greeter took two minutes to explain nonetheless. As the website notes: “In 1982, residents of Canastota, N.Y., decided to honor former welterweight and middleweight champion of the late-1950s, Carmen Basilio, and his nephew, Billy Backus, who won the world welterweight title in 1970.” This nothing hamlet twenty minutes outside Syracuse had produced two world boxing champions; why not launch the hall of fame there. Halls of fame belong off the beaten path, or so it seems. Baseball in Cooperstown, Basketball in Springfield, Football in Canton…Boxing in Canastota.

Robes, gloves, and boots from assorted champions were fun to see, but what astonished me throughout the exhibit were the photographs. I read somewhere that few sports lend themselves to photography as well as boxing. How true. Only in a still photograph can you really see the awesome power of what one man’s fist can do to another man’s face. The sweat sprays, the flesh buckles, the eyes can tell no lies. At real-speed, a boxer can seem unharmed and can use this seeming to his advantage. Look, your punches don’t hurt. But in the moment of impact the truth stands unblemished by artifice. We stared at pictures a long time.

Cinderella Man (James Braddock) in the flesh, his grainy visage echoing Russell Crowe more than we realized, helping Joe Louis, the man who would take his title not long thereafter, cut his birthday cake. Mike Tyson on his way down against Buster Douglas. Muhammad Ali on the canvas, silenced by Joe Frazier…

If you’re a fan of boxing and you drive through Central New York without stopping at the IBHOF, shame on you. We give it our Unqualified Recommendation.

Leaf Peeping Through Ohio and Maryland

2006-11-02T09:14:00.000-08:00

Above: Normal Girl swings from a very red tree on the road to Pumpkin Show 2006.

Every fall, leaves wither, die, and fall to the ground. The crinkled droppings drift across lawns and streets, while the task of raking them into huge piles and stuffing them into garbage bags falls on somebody’s shoulders (another chore I tried to dodge as a teen). When I was young, those piles were modestly appealing, fit for a belly flop and six minutes of hysterics. Yet those heaps were often soggy and always emanated the peculiar scent of decay, two factors that curtailed my interest. Besides, autumn has never been my favorite season, signaling as it does the slide toward flurries and blizzards. To me, red and yellow leaves were things to be mourned rather than celebrated. I have never understood the appeal of leaf peeping.

When we headed to Circleville in late October, the last thing on my mind was the transformation of oak and maple leaves into compost. For one, my attention remained transfixed on the task of gaining approval from Keryn’s grandparents. And, as voracious readers of this blog know too well, my mind was also whirring with the possibility of seeing the 5 Best Hungarian Wax Peppers in all their waxy glory…

But seriously, it never crossed my mind that the foliage would be vibrant and prompt moments of wonder. I heard reports that the colors this season in New England were spectacular, fueled by the summer’s ample rainfall, and Keryn reported the same during her drives through Vermont and Connecticut over the last few weeks. Boston, however, remained vibrant and green until late last week, so I claim no first-hand knowledge.

While I may have missed the peak colors back home, we arrived in the nick of time to Southern Ohio. Driving across the flat expanse of Columbus, Circleville, and Chillicothe, I was struck by the colorful landscape. Shock of shocks, I found myself snapping photographs of trees… Of trees! That’s so not me.

A few days later, thirty minutes north of Baltimore, the situation grew more dire. As we drove from high school to high school through Hunt Valley and surrounding towns, I kept saying “this is beautiful” and immediately wondering what had happened to me. But you hate foliage, I reminded myself. Those leaves are the harbinger of winter, and you HATE winter.

One moment sticks most strongly in my mind: after passing two miles of rolling fields dotted with thoroughbreds and jumpers, we entered a tight two-lane stretch where the trees ran to the shoulder and intersected fifteen feet above us. Brilliant yellow leaves swirled across the asphalt and arched above, brightened by sunshine. As we emerged from the golden tunnel to shoot past more horse farms, I looked at the mottled hills, cherry and raspberry reds, safety orange, marigold and lemon yellows, with agape eyes, as if watching autumn for the first time.

Judging Hungarian Wax Peppers

2006-10-27T05:35:00.000-07:00

Above: We found the 5 Best Hungarian Wax Peppers!

A few days ago, I rambled on about the various competitions at the Circleville Pumpkin Show. Now that I’ve returned from a pleasant weekend in Ohio, I may not know the criteria by which Hungarian Wax Peppers are judged, but I can tell you that the blue ribbon went to the best. Look at them (above): the waxy, blemish-free skin, equal size, proportion, and symmetry, and perfect color. Don’t you almost want to pick them from the Styrofoam plate and chomp their ends off? Maybe that’s just me (and Chairman Kaga from the original Iron Chef).

I’ll admit that the laundry list of potential entrants for the fruit, vegetable, and baked goods competitions brought a few chuckles. That wasn’t fair; I have all the respect in the world for farmers, but I couldn’t help it – thirty-three pages???

Above: Normal Girl VannaWhites the prize-winning vegetables.

When we walked into the fruits and vegetables exhibition (also home to the photography and artwork), I was overwhelmed by the display. Look at the table behind Keryn (above). That’s one-third of one aisle.

The cakes and other baked goods were especially difficult to walk past without sneaking a sample. My grandmother once presented a cake to a friend that was actually a round block of wood that had been meticulously decorated. (What a surprise the recipient got when trying to make the first incision!) To guard against such chicanery (and presumably to conduct the taste test), two slices had been removed from each cake and pie, one cookie from each plate. On that note, I remain unconvinced about the Best Plate Tollhouse Cookies. On aesthetics alone they deserved no higher than third place.

Above: Guess which won the prize for Most Unusual Freak...

It’s a good thing Keryn is observant, or we might have missed the freaks. I’m sad to report I failed to photograph the potato who had assumed the shape of a duck, but as you can see above, I managed to sneak a shot of the amazing double pumpkin. I wonder what kind of jack o’lantern it became.

I wonder, too, what happens to prizewinning fruits. Do the winners hold ritual feasts? I know that if the 5 Best Hungarian Wax Peppers had grown in my backyard soil, I would have a grand party replete with streamers and confetti.

Pumpkin Show 2006: The Food

2006-10-24T21:27:00.000-07:00

Above: One of the many things you would not have guessed could be made with pumpkin...

During my youth, our next door neighbor always brought us two tins of pumpkin cookies with chocolate chips at Christmastime—long one of my favorites. Throughout the year, I enjoyed pumpkin bread, pumpkin doughnuts and fritters, and, of course, pumpkin pie. Then, when I lived in Puerto Rico, I learned to savor the hearty chunks of calabasa (Caribbean pumpkin) in the beans and rice. Given my past experience, I felt duly prepared for the menu at the 100th Annual Circleville Pumpkin Show.

I eased into things on Thursday night with a single piece of pumpkin cream fudge. The fudge was spicy with nutmeg and cinnamon. I didn’t need a quarter-pound, but they wouldn’t sell me less. Unfortunately, the fudge did not weather the rain, soaking through the paper bag and becoming an inedible mass of pumpkin goop. It was good while it lasted… Smelled just like the Yankee candles, too.

Friday I was determined to sample zanier treats.

I started my afternoon with an oversized pumpkin creampuff. The puff pastry was exceptional, and the pumpkin taste was not overwhelming. I inhaled the half-pound of fat in five minutes. The day was off to a stellar start.

For five months Keryn told me about the superior kettle korn at the Windsor Fair in Maine, before we learned they didn’t sell it there anymore. Pumpkin Show 2006 to the rescue. Fresh from the giant wok, into a paper bag, the salty-sweet treat. It brought a smile to her face, important because…next, I wanted to try the pumpkin burger. I’d seen the booth on Thursday night and couldn’t believe my eyes. Keryn shook her head at me when I said I was going to go for it. I marched up and stated my order, only to learn that they were sold out and wouldn’t have more for at least forty minutes.

Disoriented by disappointment, I scanned the nearest stands. And there it was, singing its siren song: pumpkin chili. My four dollars were in the woman’s hand before I had time to reconsider. The chili had a rich flavor and proved a welcome source of comfort in the brisk air. The problem with the chili was that if you had given me a cup without telling me the secret ingredient, I don’t think I would have guessed it. The pumpkin may have added something to the mix, but it was so subtle I couldn’t find it.

Above: Fried Twinkies!

An hour later, I gave in to the little boy inside who sees “deep-fried Twinkies” and cannot resist the urge. Yeah, I know it’s not pumpkin-flavored. I should have made a return trip to the pumpkin burgers stand or tried something more exotic: pumpkin crepes, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin pizza, pumpkin waffles… Instead, I saw someone eating a deep-fried Snickers bar and stopped dead in my tracks. It was one of the more difficult decisions of the weekend – deep-fried candy bar, cookie dough, or Twinkie… I went for the Twinkie and was not disappointed. Genius, I tell you. Albert Einstein, Tom Edison, and Copernicus with a warm cream filling.

For our final treat of the weekend, we went for the salt-and-vinegar French fries. I’ve had a lot of French fries in my life, and have devised four ranked categories:

Real Parisian brasserie or café (esp. good with rare steak)
State fair / In-N-Out Burger
McDonald’s
All others

The Pumpkin Show fries were solidly Category 2. Fresh potato, starchy and limp, the kind you can’t quit eating. Spritzed generously with cider vinegar and sprinkled with salt, we went through a large serving in seven minutes. Mmm…getting hungry just thinking about them. Next year we’re going to start with the fries.

Next stop… the fruits and vegetables building…

- Normal Guy (reporting from somewhere in Maryland...)

Pumpkin Show: Parade of Bands (feat. OSU)

2006-10-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

Above: Normal Guy and Girl at Pumpkin Show 2006.

We arrived in Ohio after a painless afternoon flight from Boston. As soon as we stepped onto the tarmac, I realized we had not packed for the weather. A tick above fifty, air saturated, I wished for my pea coat and gloves. We’ll cross that bridge, I thought, and headed for the rental cars.

Our hotel was in Chillicothe, twenty-five minutes south of Circleville. Keryn’s grandparents live in the next town over, which made this an exceptionally convenient resting spot. It was a nice hotel, too, well kept and clean, and under $100 per night. We would have stayed closer to the festival, but all the hotels were sold out. Turns out that if you want to stay in downtown Circleville for Pumpkin Show 2007, you had better dash to Expedia this week or next.

The rain started in earnest one minute after we finished dinner with Ma-Ma and Pa-Pa. I suggested the rain might control the crowd some, seeking the silver lining in the black cloud. They informed us that it rains every year at Pumpkin Show, so we had best stifle such hopes…

After narrowly missing out on the last spot in a pay lot two blocks from the Pumpkin Show main stage, we followed orange detour signs down several blocks, fought through a few minutes of frustration, and found a free parking space on one of the side streets. The neon lights of the midway flickered four blocks up Court Street. We bundled ourselves in every sweatshirt and sweater in our suitcases and fought our way into oversized CVS-brand ponchos.

It was that kind of wet autumn cold that cuts through the thickest layers of cotton. Our sweaters and sweatshirts proved ineffective against the mid-forties temps and thick mist. At least we weren’t wearing skirts and tank tops like the cheerleaders or holding our numb hands against cold brass like the players in those marching bands.

We arrived fifteen minutes into the Parade of Bands, which featured representation from area high schools, junior high schools, and youth groups. The parade route was lined four deep on both sides. According to the official formula on the Pumpkin Show website, we calculate that at least 30,000 people endured the elements to watch the bands march past. However, I quickly realized they weren’t there to watch the various festival pageant queens or teenaged trumpeters. No, rumors spread like wild-fire about the assembling band from The Ohio State University. Circleville is solidly pro-OSU, something I learned in fewer than five minutes after arriving on the streets of Pumpkin Show. Everywhere I looked, someone was wearing the colors. Red Starter jackets, baseball caps, umbrellas, raincoats, sweatshirts, ponchos, you name it. I could feel the buzz trembling through the concrete. The OSU band is coming, it’s really coming! They’re here, here for us! Here for the 100th Annual Circleville Pumpkin Show. Not only were they marching the one-mile circuit through town, they were going to present a concert afterwards. This was huge.

According to plan, the OSU concert would start at 9:30pm, but it was already 9:00pm. The rain had caused some delays getting started, and frankly I was impressed they had gone ahead with the festivities at all. Considering the circumstances, I have to give Southern Ohio high school marching bands some credit; they sounded pretty good, and any misplayed notes (there were more than a few) can easily be attributed to the elements.

At 9:30pm, the show stopped, and the onlookers gasped – they stood us up, they’re not going to play. Folks milled in the street, squinting to see whether the band was assembling at an intersection ahead.

“The parade is not over,” the PA announcer said, “please stay out of the streets. The Ohio State University marching band is getting ready to play.”

The crowd’s fears become anticipation once again.

More than two hundred musicians marched past in rows five-to-eight abreast (depending on the instrument), an efficient military machine playing the OSU fight song. I captured most of it on film with my small digital camera. All together, we watched them for one hundred seconds. They marched onward, across Court Street, toward Scioto Street, where they would turn right and continue around the other side of downtown, past thousands more families and children up an hour past their bedtime.

Ten thousand people spilled from the sidewalks onto Franklin Street, whose asphalt reverberated with the steady pounding of marching feet two blocks ahead. Time to go home.

Pumpkin Show 2006: 7 Highlights

2006-10-22T12:53:00.000-07:00

Above: School’s out for the week—Pumpkin Show is ON!

Our adventures in Circleville concluded yesterday (Saturday) when we flew from Columbus (CMH) to Baltimore (BWI). Over the next 3-4 days, we will be submitting various detailed reports. (I say “we” to put Normal Girl on the spot; what, just because she has a full-time job means she can slack off on her postings? I don’t think so.)

For now, here’s a high-level summary in seven bullets.

1. Ohio was freezing. We were prepared for drizzles, but not for thirty-five degrees. Winter has come far too early for my taste…

2. Folks in Circleville love The Ohio State University. As if the sheer quantum of apparel didn’t make this point clearly enough…tens of thousands shivered in the drizzle until 10pm on Thursday night to see two minutes of the OSU marching band.

3. One can use pumpkin as a special ingredient in almost any baked good. That doesn’t mean the results are worthy of eating… More on this to come.

4. There is always a trick to finding a good place to park and avoiding traffic. Always. Yesterday, we ducked into Pumpkin Show for an hour and sneaked back out to the airport without any difficulty; meanwhile, cars were backed up three miles going in the “front-door”.

5. The prize-winning fruits and vegetables were every bit as impressive as I made them sound in last week’s blog…

6. The Circleville Pumpkin Show is undoubtedly worth a visit. If you’re in the area in late October and you don’t make the trip, you’re making a BIG mistake.

7. Deep-fried Twinkies are seriously awesome.

We’ll be back with much more detail later tonight and over the next few days!

En Route to Pumpkins…

2006-10-19T07:53:00.000-07:00

The day has finally arrived. After months of speculation and planning, Normal Girl and I are boarding a Delta Airlines flight from BOS to CMH (Boston to Columbus) at 1:55pm today. We arrive at 4pm and hit the Hertz #1 Club Gold counter for our midsized rental car (redeeming accumulated Hertz points – total cost for three days, ~$15). No more than two hours later, we will be standing on the corner of Main and Franklin Streets, seeking the 5 Best Hungarian Wax Peppers...

According to Weather.com, we can expect “Showers and thunderstorms this evening will give way to steady rain overnight.” Two days ago, the forecast said “showers possible.” Grr…

Good thing Normal Girl advised me to pick up some cheesy ponchos at CVS. I told her that we could probably get some nifty jack o’lantern ponchos on the parade route, but grabbed some $5.99 ponchos nonetheless. Looks like we’re going to need them.

Will be reporting all the fantastic details starting tomorrow...

- Normal Guy

Hungarian Peppers Vie For Pumpkin Show Crown

2006-10-18T14:03:00.000-07:00

Slowly but surely, I have been perusing every document available on the Circleville Pumpkin Show website. Yesterday I saw the link for “Rules & Regulations.” I was expecting to find a list of typical festival rules. No alcohol or drugs, proper attire to be worn at all times, that kind of thing. I was wrong -- this PDF defines the rules for the hundreds of varied competitions.

I knew about the giant pumpkins, but had no idea that you can compete with almost any vegetable, fruit, gourd, or pie you can think of. Ten of my favorite grudge matches:

Best Plate Limas – Hulled
Best Head Cabbage - Trim For Market
5 Best Hungarian Wax Peppers
Most Unusual Freak (this apparently refers to vegetables)
Best Plate Any Kind Fruit
Best Bundt Cake
Best Plate Toll House (isn’t this the recipe from the chocolate chips bag?)
Best Plate Pumpkin Whoopee Pies
Best Can Catsup (can any of them beat Heinz?)
Treasure from Trash

The Pumpkin Show judges hundreds of categories in arts/crafts, vegetables, pies/desserts, window treatments, floats, artwork, children (babies ARE judged). Most prizes are $3-4, but I get the impression it’s more about pride. I picture blue ribbons tacked to barn walls.

I’ll admit a non-trivial ignorance when it comes to agriculture, and I do not mean any of my comments to be insulting. But when I looked through the list of competitions and found it stretched on for thirty-three pages… Wow! The vegetable displays had been at the bottom of my list. (That’s a lie. they weren’t on my list at all.) Now that I’ve glimpsed the full list, though, Keryn and I must spend an hour or two learning what makes Carla’s 5 Best Hungarian Wax Peppers superior to Wilson’s. (I haven’t broken the news to her yet.)

One thing I found odd: the rules and regulations never list the criteria. To what extent can the outcome vary by the judge? Perhaps I prize color over size, and my colleague values shape and texture most. Does an exhibitor select his 5 Best depending on his knowledge of the judging biases? Hmm.

We arrive at Pumpkin Show in 24 hours. More updates later today.

- Normal Guy

[Incidentally, I notice that the size of the winning pumpkins has increased dramatically over the last five or six years… around 1,000 pounds these days, compared to 500-600 a decade ago. I’m concerned there may be some performance enhancing drugs in play here. I suggest someone launch an investigation.]

Are You Ready For Some Pumpkins?

2006-10-13T10:38:00.000-07:00

I’m getting there, psyching myself up for the 100th Annual Circleville Pumpkin Show in Circleville, Ohio. Normal Girl is a 1995 graduate of Logan Elm High School there, where we’ll be taking in a football game and probably running into many people she hasn’t seen in a dozen years.

“What is a Pumpkin Show?” you might ask. According to the website, it’s the sixth largest festival in the United States, with 300,000 annual attendees. Other than the expected pumpkin pies and prizes for the largest pumpkin grown this year, the festival features two pageants (the queens preside over the festivities), a dozen parades, varied musical acts, midway rides, and loads of unhealthy concessions.

I couldn’t be more excited.

When Normal Girl moved to Circleville in 1992, one of the first things her new classmates asked her was: “Have you heard of Pumpkin Show?” Apparently the community has the impression that the festival is a bit more world-famous than it is. As I have scoured the website, I’m starting to think it should be more world-famous. And that’s where this blog comes in, spreading news of this show to at least twenty or thirty new people...

According to the calendar of events, the opening ceremony starts at 11am on Wednesday. This is no weekend festival, folks, but a Wednesday through Saturday affair. Kids don’t to school, presumably most downtown business have to curtail their operations, etc. They are not messing around.

Sadly, we do not arrive until late Thursday afternoon. As a result, we’re missing four parades, two pageants, one karaoke session, and the important “Egg Toss” (hopefully we can at least hear an anecdote from Normal Girl on this marquee event). Fortunately, we arrive in plenty of time for the marching band from The Ohio State University and a performance from Time Machine, a classic rock band from Circleville.

Friday, I absolutely can't miss Ukulele Man and His Prodigal Sons, for their band name alone. The Pet Parade might make the itinerary, too… We might have to debate that. I’m most looking forward to the football game that night.

Saturday, we should be around for the Pie Eating Contest, but we will be on an airplane to Baltimore by the time the Hog Calling Contest begins, rendering moot the hours of practice we’ve crammed into our weeknights.

In all seriousness, I am sincerely looking forward to next week's adventure. My hometown had no such grand festivals, and I think it's kind of cool. In six days, we’ll see if Circleville can deliver on the promise of its packed event calendar!

- Normal Guy

The Strong Museum of Play, Rochester (NY)

2006-10-10T07:43:00.000-07:00

Above, left: Normal Guy and Girl on Sesame Street; above, right: Normal Guy in Big Bird’s crib.

What does it say about the two of us that we don’t yet have any children, but enjoy strolling Toys ‘R’ Us? Or that we have a hard time resisting an empty swing set without stopping in for two quiet minutes sailing through the air?

When Normal Girl and I last visited Manhattan, we pushed each other on the swings of Central Park. Mid-summer in Bucksport, we chased each other around the Miles Lane playground like schoolchildren. And not long ago, we spent an afternoon in Henry Bear’s Park, a few blocks down the road from Normal Girl’s family in Arlington (MA). For whatever reason, we get a kick out of looking through toys, children’s books and games, etc. I can’t explain it, and I’m not going to try.

In any event, when I was researching Rochester-area attractions, the Strong - National Museum of Play caught my eye. As you may recall from an earlier blog entry, I wasn’t sure whether we would have time for the Museum of Play, and it certainly wasn’t the kind of place I would visit alone.

Fortunately, we ended up with a spare two hours between Normal Girl’s last school visit of the day and our flight home (the one that went so well). So I plugged in the address and let our Australian Guide (“Cat”) show us the way.

The museum, founded by Margaret Woodbury Strong in 1968, is a wonderfully spacious children’s museum that also includes several exhibits better fit for adults. We were there on a September weekday, so the crowd was thin.

For Normal Girl and me, the main draw was the Sesame Street set, which is probably much more familiar to us than to the toddlers running around the day we were there. It was rather surreal, in truth, to sit on a replica of the front-steps on Sesame Street, to climb into Big Bird’s nest, and to walk past Mr. Hooper’s store. But it was a wonderful exhibit, including interactive displays for each of the major players (human and Muppet), various games, and a fun green screen set-up that would allow parents to take home a video depicting their child on-screen with Elmo, the Cookie Monster, or another favorite Muppet.

Throughout the building were tables stocked with arts and crafts supplies. I saw several kids wearing hats of their own creation, though Normal Girl and I managed to remain under control. I thought this was a great touch, though I cannot imagine the chaos on a rainy summer day…

We skipped “Super Kids Market,” a large grocery store replica (Western New York, so it was a Wegman’s branch) where the kids could fill their shopping carts and run the items across the scanner. It looked like the kids were having fun, but grocery shopping long since stopped being a source of fun.

In the interactive “Field of Play” we learned all about the various reasons for “play” and played where we could. The perspective room (where you could look really tall or really short simply by walking from one end of the room to the other) was a hit with Normal Girl, while I got a kick out of the sideways room that appeared level to the eye, but stood at a forty-five degree angle, making it quite a challenge to walk across without tumbling over (and taking out a crew of four year-olds in the process!).

My one complaint, especially prominent in this section, but pervasive in other exhibits, was that many displays were broken. I can imagine it must be hard to keep up, but it seemed that half the displays failed.

Upstairs, we spent half an hour perusing cabinets of toys. Many were recognizable from our own youth: He-Man, Transformers, GI Joe for me; Care Bears, My Little Pony, and Cabbage Patch for her. (Also, Normal Girl’s love for Atari is well documented.) We skipped the aisles of dolls because all those eyes freak me out, like some scene in a horror movie where the dolls come to life. But, the doll houses were truly impressive. Some from the mid-1800s had a dozen or more rooms, each decorated with unique wall paper, china, furniture, etc. I enjoyed the Barbie / GI Joe section, where I learned, for the first time, that the two dated in the seventies after Joe had returned from his tour of duty in Vietnam… (Seriously!) Learn something new every day!

We didn’t have time to see the remaining exhibits of the museum or the various nature exhibits (butterfly garden, aquarium, etc.), but we saw enough to provide an Unqualified Recommendation. If you’re in Rochester and have children or, like us, remain young at heart, the Museum of Play should make your Trip Goals for sure.

The Strong – National Museum of Play is located in Downtown Rochester and provides ample parking. For directions, click here.

Normal Girl on Her Trip Goal: Shopping at Marshall’s

2006-10-09T12:23:00.000-07:00

We interrupt the almost-finished Buffalo/Rochester recap for an interlude from Normal Girl, who is on the road this fall visiting high schools and college fairs in her capacity as an Assistant Director of Admissions at a Boston-area college. She's been finding some time for "marshallando" (as they say in PR), or shopping at Marshall's... - N.G.

Above, Normal Girl wearing lots of orange…

Here I sit at the Courtyard Marriott in Wallingford, CT, having almost completed my first three weeks of travel for work. In that time, I have learned several simple truths:

The thought of a maid cleaning up after me is liberating…and creepy.
Hot tub after standing in heels for 3 hours: Good….
Eating out every night is not as exciting as one might think (especially if you are a picky eater).
It is easy to become spoiled after living in a hotel for a week… (Just ask Normal Guy, as spoiled as they get).

I have taken it upon myself to accomplish several missions while I travel for the next month and a half. One is to finish two cross stitches, Christmas gifts for my two sisters. Another is to read as many books as I can; it makes eating solo every night a little less lonely. The third, and by far the most important, is….drum roll, please…shopping at every Marshall’s/TJ Maxx I come across in the various cities and towns that I will visit during my trek to thrilling places like Meriden, CT, and Wilmington, DE.

This goal developed during my first week of travel in Williston, VT. I had some free time between my college fair and eating dinner with a friend from grad school who moved to VT after graduation. I entered Marshall’s with the excitement of a child flying a kite for the first time. Fortunately, I don’t run through the clothes like a maniac (like that kid with his kite!), although that is tempting. I am very methodical in my shopping—aisle to aisle, seeking my sizes.

Sometimes I pull out hideous items for fun. Normal Guy has two minutes of proof of his on his camera (blackmail material). I start from the front, moving my way back until I lose steam around the housewares. I often get discouraged if the shoes are in the front, since they never have my size.

[With small feet (size 5 ½), I have been known to wear shoes from Stride Rite, a fact my friends cannot relate to. Ironically enough, I shook my head in disbelief after learning Normal Guy had been a Stride Rite Scholar during his studies at Harvard!]

Anyway, I began my search, and lo and behold, I found a pair of light blue UGG boots, size...5!!! A perfect fit. Only $60 compared to $145 in the 25 Victoria’s Secret catalogs that clog our mail slot every week. Jackpot! I also found a cotton sweater that I love. Needless to say, I felt a sincere sense of a mission accomplished on that sunny mid-September day.

Last week in Buffalo, we spent a fun-filled hour or so in Marshall’s. He filmed me perusing and made me model a wool blazer only meant for a blind 80 year-old. Although I only purchased sunglasses, he bought several items, but kept asking me if he should with his face covered with doubt. I guess being unemployed for the time being ***by choice*** has made him a little more of a bargain shopper…

This week has been less than fruitful (in terms of shopping). Yesterday, with an afternoon free, I learned that there were two, count ‘em two, Marshall’s within 10 minutes of my hotel! I will spare you the gruesome details, but leave you with a few simple facts:

When I entered the fitting room with my cart piled shoulder-level, the attendant narrowed her eyes to slits and growled, I swear...
You can’t find a suit there if you are a 2/4. It just ain’t happenin’.
I bought one sweater for $29.99 (reluctantly… I could have left without it).

Still motivated to visit the second Marshall’s, I hopped in my rental car, turned on some Cowboy Mouth, and drove the six miles to the Cheshire location. Actually, it was more out of obligation than motivation. See, Normal Guy had requested that I visit both and give him a detailed comparison. So be it. I entered the second store with less spring in my step. Again, I will spare you every boring detail:

It sucked.
I left.

I called Normal Guy to share all about my shopping extravaganza and realized bargain shopping can be exhausting. I needed a nap.

I will be in staying in the same hotel next week, so I may have to belittle myself by visiting the local outlets, since I’ve already exhausted the area Marshall’s. I will keep you posted...

'Til Next Time - Normal Girl

A Visit to the George Eastman House

2006-10-05T21:09:00.000-07:00

Overview

I became a photography nut rather recently, with my purchase of a Canon ELPH. My previous digital camera was rather bulky for such a basic device (no extra lenses or anything), which meant it came out only for special occasions: traipsing through foreign cities, touring Disney World, weddings. Day-to-day sights I marveled at remained only in my memory. Nowadays, I keep my tiny camera in my messenger bag or tuck it in my pants pocket. Slowly I have been replacing cheap purchased prints with framed 8x10s of my own photographs. They may be far from professional, but they’re real.

When considering the museum/gallery options in Rochester, New York, the George Eastman House was a no-brainer. Fortunately, I know my industrial history well enough to recognize his name... But I wonder how many high school seniors outside Western New York have any idea who founded Kodak.

Getting There

Thursday (Sept 28) was a miserable day in Rochester. The rain started around eight and continued throughout the day, teasing us with interludes of calm between torrents. Normal Girl had the rental car and was making her rounds at area high schools. The front desk at the Marriott ordered me a taxi.

My driver was jovial. He told me all about how his wife (she’s 62) wouldn’t get to take her walk (she walks three miles every day, you know) on account of the rain. He noted that he would be lucky to walk one mile. He has been driving a cab twenty years (he’s about to turn 65). Though born and raised in Rochester, he has never visited the George Eastman House. He figures it must be good, though, since he takes a lot of people there.

East Avenue is one of the more scenic roads in the city, presumably once the wealthy part of town. Several other museums, including the Rochester Museum and Science Center are on this road, and had it been sunny, I would surely have wandered it sidewalks. Oh well.

I arranged for Butch (real name) to pick me up after two hours. It made me nervous to have a deadline like that, but it was better than standing in the rain. I’ve learned that calling a cab in a city that doesn’t have many of them can be a nasty ordeal, characterized by many elongated minutes of frustrated pacing.

Upon arriving, I learned the museum comprises two parts: a photography museum and the actual mansion George Eastman called home. I started with the museum.

Photography Museum

The front room of the museum hosted an exhibition of Pete Turner’s color photography, Pete Turner: Empowered by Color. It blew me away.

For examples of his work, you should check out his website. The colors are more vivid than anything you can imagine, and the Internet does not do them justice. My favorite piece, “Push,” depicts a yellow trash barrel on a white sand beach. It derives its title from the word embossed on the red door of the barrel’s cap.

”Giraffe” (1967), his most famous piece, features the eponymous beast in motion on what appears to be the shore, the sky beyond him fiercely red. It raised quite a stir when displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York... I can see why.

Across the hall, a dozen glass cases held 19th century wet plate cameras, ornate teakwood cameras, the actual Speed Graphic used by Joe Rosenthal at Iwo Jima, a Technicolor motion picture camera, and dozens of varying models of the “Brownie” (the model Kodak built its reputation around).

[The cynical part of me expected to find the display limited to the Kodak brand, but I was pleasantly surprised.]

Some of the more elaborate cameras were most intriguing:

A decorative box lined with pink felt, mirror on the inside of the lid, lipstick and a compact in their places, and mounted on a hinge, a small camera. (Why?)
A revolver holding film in place of bullets. That this was described as a “spy” camera rather flummoxed me. Nobody would be suspicious if, instead of pulling a box camera from your coat, you tugged a revolver from your belt, pointed it across the room, and pulled the trigger. Ingenious idea.
A reconnaissance camera to be mounted on the underbelly of a plane had a propeller on its butt, which I dismissed as silly until reading the placard, which explained that it was there to power the camera, like a miniature windmill.

In the next gallery, “Why Look at Animals?” runs until January. It takes that simple question and answers it several different ways: because they’re part of our family, because they’re funny, because they’re beautiful, etc. Each answer is flanked by examples, many of them dated before 1900. It turns out that some of the people who could afford photography in the 1860s held their puppies in high regard.

The second half of this special exhibit took the question and provided various avant-garde responses.

Harri Kallio’s unusual dodo series features “life-sized” models of the extinct bird placed, as if living, in its original habitat (Mauritius). Dodos gather on the beach, in the jungle... Interesting, if creepy.

I was, admittedly, freaked out by Chip Simons’ series of people wearing bunny heads and carrying giant carrots.

Rebecca Norris Webb’s “The Glass Between Us” was especially powerful. These photos feature animals in captivity, but the glass reflects the gawking masses. For example: a young girl super-imposed on a captive chimpanzee. One photo stopped me in my tracks: a giraffe pressing his lips to two-dimensional leaves painted on a two-dimensional tree painted in a two-dimensional savannah. Wow.

In the hall outside the exhibit room, the staff assembled a community response exhibit, where real people had photographed their real pets. An interesting idea, but I opted to proceed into the mansion.

The George Eastman House (the mansion part)

Once you have visited Newport, Rhode Island, your definition of mansion sharpens. Visit the Hearst Castle in California, the Biltmore Estate in Asheville (NC), Versailles in France, and you really start to expect a lot from your mansions. Compared to those palaces, I see why they call it the George Eastman House. This isn’t to say that it isn’t a little “m” mansion; it is a lovely home, with many lavish touches. The hidden player organ in the conservatory was worth a glance, and the stuffed elephant head, harvested from one of Eastman’s African safaris is impressive.

Fortunately, the purpose of the house is not is to observe opulence (unlike those other big “m” Mansions), but to learn about how Eastman came into his business. In this effort, the house succeeds.

Did you know there was a major effort by leading businessmen (spearheaded by Mr. Eastman) to change the calendar into 13 28-day months? Or that Kodak actually operated according to this calendar until 1989? Yup, it’s true.

Did you know that rumors of Eastman’s possible homosexuality are so rampant that there is almost an entire room devoted to the matter? It’s even part of the Frequently Asked Questions on the website.

The strangest single piece in the entire house, however, has to be the suicide note. Yes, the actual suicide note, scrawled in nearly illegible blue ink on a piece of standard wide-ruled notebook paper:

To my friends, My work is done, why wait? GESomehow it struck me as odd that the actual note was there before our eyes. It didn’t seem right.

Gift Shop and Café

I will say this about the café: when I pulled a bag of potato chips from the wicker basket, there was a dust bunny attached to the plastic. Seriously.

The hot food looked okay, but after seeing that dust bunny, I opted for hunger.

The gift shop, on the other hand, is exceptional. The various novelty cameras were especially fun to look at. You can buy disposable cameras that will take eight simultaneous images, or place four consecutive shots onto a single negative, produce three-dimensional images... Very cool.

In Summary

When it’s all said and done, I bestow a Qualified Recommendation on the George Eastman House: it’s worth a visit if you find yourself in Rochester with a spare 90 minutes, but I would not go out of my way for it.

I would keep my eye on the forthcoming travel calendar for Pete Turner: Empowered by Color. If it rolls into your town and you don’t see it, shame on you.

Over Niagara Falls In a Barrel

2006-10-04T19:50:00.000-07:00

Above, left: Normal Girl framed by a rainbow; above, right: Normal Guy wondering if there’s a barrel vendor nearby.

Say the word “Buffalo” and I think: losing the Super Bowl, chicken wings, and snow (in that order). But Buffalo, NY is also the gateway to Niagara Falls. Normal Girl and I were not going to spend four days in Buffalo without making a voyage across the border.

Normal Girl’s hectic work schedule made it challenging to schedule the trip, but we settled on Wednesday (Sept 27). Somehow, in a rather shocking development, that day turned out to be the magical crystal-clear eighty-degree day Buffalo is so famous for... Honestly, our luck was impeccable; Thursday it rained from eight to eight and topped out at 55F.

We parked on the U.S. side because we weren’t sure about the rental car rules and because the front desk suggested we might save a few bucks.

“How far is it to the falls?” I asked.

“American Falls are two minutes that way,” the parking attendant replied.

“And Canada?”

“Follow the signs to the bridge,” she said. “It’s a five-minute walk.”

Memories from my youth suggested we should go ahead and walk to Canada. We followed the signs and one minute later stood on the Rainbow Bridge. Traffic was light, but the wind swirled, making our casual stroll something of a workout.

Above, left: view of the Rainbow Bridge from Horseshoe Falls; above, right: Normal Guy and Girl atop the Rainbow Bridge.

As we approached, the first signs of the tourist kitsch I recall from childhood came into view: a massive Hershey’s Kiss atop one building and a flashing neon electric guitar announced the Hard Rock Café. Several tall hotels boasted their brand, and those hosting casinos made sure everyone knew.

As we waited in line for the cursory glance through our passports, I noticed everyone was speaking French.

“We’re in Canada,” Normal Girl replied to my observation.

“But this is Ontario,” I said.

Judging by the bilingual placards in the gift shops and duty free boutiques, I guessed French to be lot more prevalent across the nation than I knew. It is kind of amazing, actually, how ignorant most Americans are about Canada. I’m from Maine, for goodness’ sake, you’d think we would have learned a lot more in school about these things. I embarked on a rant about this as we stepped through the back door of passport control, but then the first clean view of the falls came into vision, and I cut myself off.

Above, left: American Falls; above, right: at the edge of Horseshoe (Canadian) Falls.

Instead of an outdoor shopping mall, we stepped into a handsome garden, and descended spotless stone stairs to a manicured cliff-top path.

There were blessedly few tourists; this mid-week-outside-tourist-season thing is pretty sweet.

A visit to Niagara Falls offers a profound lesson in perspective.

Part I: For a solid thirty minutes, we marveled at the beauty of the American Falls; an hour later, hypnotized by the raw power of the Canadian Falls, the former seemed little more than a trickle.

Part II: As we neared the Canadian Falls, thick mist coating our sunglasses and soaking us to the flesh, we finally found our rainbow. Until then, mere fragments of color lingered in the mist.

Keryn’s finger traced a fluid arc through the sky. “Look at the rainbow! Do you see it?” Sure enough, a grand rainbow stretched through the sky. The more I looked at it, the more complete it seemed. We took a picture (the one leading off this blog), and I was shocked at the clarity with which the rainbow was captured. When we visited in my youth, the rainbows didn’t make it onto the film.

My eyes followed the arc into the water, where I saw its terminus, a cluster of rocks two yards from the shore. Though the rocks shone yellow and orange, there was no pot of gold.

The creative side of me whirred: what a photo it would make if Keryn held the camera while I scrambled down the embankment, stood on those rocks, threw back my head, and spread my arms wide.

As we walked the shore, the rainbow’s end moved with us. Further from the shore, deeper into the white-capped swirl. Relativity in action. What would it have been like had I scurried down the hill and stood in the light? Would I have been bathed in red, orange, yellow, green...? From that vantage point, I would not have seen the colors at all. It all comes down to perspective.

We stood at the railing a long time, listening to the water. The other tourists dispersed, until we were almost alone. It was perfect.

Three tid-bits I have to share:

Did you know that it costs $0.50 (quarters only) to get back into the United States? They don’t charge a penny on your way into Canada, but you have to pay to come home. We were kind of shocked by this, to tell you the truth.

Do you realize how easy it would be to tumble over Niagara Falls? I guess that I assumed from the legends of daredevils who lived to tell the tale, that it would be rather more difficult to pull off. But the water is right there, ten feet away, rushing furiously over the precipice. There’s a fence, but it isn’t much, and up and down the rail, idiots with video cameras climb up to get a preferred shot. If you want to dive over the falls, no one is going to stop you. It is kind of scary, actually...

Canadians maintain very clean public bathrooms.

Prelude to Niagara Falls ‘06

2006-10-03T20:45:00.000-07:00

Every alternate year from age three to age eighteen, my family trekked from Bucksport, Maine to Houston, Texas to visit my father’s parents and siblings. This was before the advent of discount carriers (or, at least, before discount carriers served the Bangor market), so all but two of those trips began and ended with four or five days packed into the car.

Rather than drive straight through on the fastest route possible, my parents opted for a more meandering path. Every trip included at least one historical monument each way. I think it was as much for them as it was designed to enlighten my sister and me and enhance the journals we were assigned by our teachers in lieu of the normal homework. Sadly, those journals are long gone, buried deep in the Bucksport landfill, so I can’t quote them today.

We saw many sights on those trips. I vaguely recall civil war battlefields, the beaches of Biloxi, Lookout Mountain in Chattanooga, caverns in Tennessee, the steep, brake-burning hills of the Shenandoah Valley, and the Smithsonian Museum (Air & Space, as I recall).

One trip took us along the Mississippi, through St. Louis, across Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana, and into Western New York. Once there, we spent an afternoon at Niagara Falls. This was the marquee sight of the road home.

If pushed a month ago to describe the visit, here is what I would have said.

I remember lots of kitschy tourist-trap shit. Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, a Guinness Book of World Records museum, crappy souvenir shops, chain restaurants. Sure, I thought the Ripley’s place was pretty awesome. For some reason, I think of a car assembled from pennies, but I’m not overflowing with confidence on that point. I remember the crowds. Crowds did not intimidate me at that age, though they probably should have. I remember rainbows in the mist. The “Canadian Falls” were huge, and the “American Falls” down the river were pathetic by comparison. I remember taking that to heart, and not liking it. I was a Reagan ten-year-old. I knew Niagara Falls was famous as a romantic destination. I probably got that from World Book, since I always flipped through the AAA TripTik as soon as it arrived in the mail, looking for each boldfaced city in the encyclopedia. In that regard, I haven’t changed---only now I start with Wikipedia. As we leaned around other gawking tourists, I remember thinking that I didn’t see what was so romantic about falling water. Then again, I was only ten years old, and chock full of misconceptions.

Last week, I returned to view the Falls again, through adult eyes, girlfriend’s hand in mine. I was excited for the opportunity, but nervous. What if my childhood memories held up?

Sharing Our Pain: A Travel Ordeal

2006-10-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

We made it back home from Western New York in one piece (well, two pieces), but it wasn’t easy. Friday’s ordeal only further justifies my decision to stop traveling for a while. It was everything I hate about air travel: ground stops, check-in problems, waiting on the tarmac, lost luggage, spotty customer service.

It is always rough when the voyage home leaves a bitter taste. Too many vacations end that way, with a week of fun soured by one rough afternoon. But hey, that’s travel! You have to weather the bad to enjoy the good.

I started to write today’s entry as a full chronology of our afternoon and evening, but halfway through, I realized this would be the most boring ten-page blog ever. Let’s boil it down to the highlights:

- Beware trusting your GPS too completely. Passing an exit that clearly says "Airport" because your Australian tour guide has you taking a different exit further up the highway might not be the best call. (Also, file this under "Normal Girl is always right" – words to live by).

- If you’re behind schedule, pay-at-the-pump will suffer communications errors. You can count on it.

- Don’t brag if you have a direct flight while your colleague / friend / lover has a connection on the way home. You might land at the same time.

- Two hours of high winds at Logan create quite the mess.

- Shame on Delta baggage services. In this case, an ENTIRE FLIGHT DID NOT RECEIVE ITS LUGGAGE. After initially turning away all those passengers at the baggage claim office with a snide "your baggage hasn’t been unloaded yet" they made the announcement the luggage was coming on a later flight. This announcement came ninety-seven minutes after the flight landed--I’m pretty sure they could have figured this out much more quickly. Delta Airlines, you’ll be hearing from me! (In their defense, the lost luggage was delivered to the apartment eight hours later).

- The shuttles connecting the terminals at Logan are great...if you can find one. It took me thirty-five minutes to get from Terminal C to Terminal A. Apparently if you have a map of Central Parking, it is possible to walk, but I don’t keep one handy. Maybe after Friday, I will.

- $35 to upgrade my $59 one-way fare on AirTran was totally worth it.

- Few things are more annoying than sitting on the tarmac waiting for your gate to open up...

- ...especially when you’re sitting behind a jerk who spends the full forty-five minutes on his Nextel cell phone (you know, where you can hear the person on the other side?) complaining to his mother, then his girlfriend, then his mother, then his girlfriend. Drunken Bleached Hair Dude Wearing Sunglasses and Cowboy Boots, you are lucky to be alive.

- Always bring playing cards; you never know when you’ll need them.

It was a great trip, and I’m glad I tagged along. Come back soon for postings on Niagara Falls, the George Eastman House, and the Museum of Play (!). They’ll be a lot more cheerful, I promise! Here's a fun picture of us on Sesame Street.

Chowing Authentic Buffalo Wings

2006-09-28T14:02:00.000-07:00

Hooray for another Trip Goal accomplished: I have sucked the meat from a pile of chicken bones drenched in vinegar-rich hot sauce, served to me by the same kitchen that gave birth to the institution today known as the Buffalo Wing.

Frank and Teressa’s Anchor Bar claims to be the home of the original buffalo wing. According to their story, one night Teressa invented the wings for her son’s pals, and before they knew what hit them a phenomenon had swept the nation.

We go at mid-afternoon, after the downtown lunch crowd has finished up and well before the after-work crowd files in for happy hour pints. Our table is adjacent to the stage, which sits shrouded in drop-cloths protecting the instruments. The backdrop, a glimmering curtain that probably looks great at night under targeted colored lights, is delightfully tacky.

The wooden walls of the foyer and bar are plastered with license plates, some of which evoke the name of the venue (ANCRBR from Texas, BUFWNGS from PA). I have never been disappointed by a place that came fairly by its license plates, street signs, road signs, business cards, brassieres, and other miscellany tacked to its walls. Forget about the big chain restaurants, though: they have professionals dig up their swag, and sometimes, like a Hollywood production, they manufacture imitations. I’m talking about real places with real stories. Anchor Bar reeks of authenticity and spilled beer.

Our singular purpose for going is so I can down a plate or two of chicken wings. I have a soft spot for wings, despite my distaste for finger foods. When I was a child, Grandma’s teriyaki chicken feast was a Christmas Eve tradition. My cousin and I could pack those suckers away like nobody’s business. Just imagine two kids, twelve and ten years old, faces gooey with Grandma’s magical sodium-rich sauce, fibers of cheap napkins stuck to our fingertips, dozens of clean bones heaped on plates before us... Ah, the good old days.

The menu arrives in the form of a newspaper. Normal Girl unfolds it, looking for something that isn’t spicy. For me, the only question is temperature: Mild, Medium, Hot, or Suicidal. I’m kind of a wimp, truth be told, and I opt for Medium. To be extra safe, I also order a plate of BBQ wings. It’s too many wings, but when else will I be in Buffalo? (The answer to that question, boys and girls, is never).

More unique wall art: signed photographs of celebrities (mostly B-list, which I respect---you know they’re real) and letters of commendation from the governor, the City of Buffalo, the Chamber of Commerce, the Mayor, etc., declaring various days as Anchor Bar Day, Buffalo Wing Day, etc.

Lunch arrives quickly. Wooden salad bowls, presumably for the bones, rest like lids atop the steaming plates. As expected, celery stalks and blue cheese dressing accompany.

I dive in with both hands. The wings are cooked perfectly: skin crisp and meat tender. The sauce is milder than I expected; I could have easily gone for the Hot and been okay. Some might complain that the wings are tossed in the orange-red sauce rather than saturated, but to me, that's another factor that makes Anchor Bar's wings better than the competition: the sauce does not overpower.

Having expected to be disappointed, instead I lick the sauce from my fingers, somewhat to Normal Girl's dismay. She shakes her head and unfurls a napkin.

I have two minor complaints:

The barbecue sauce is too sweet.
Wetnaps, please!

When the wings are gone, I eschew the ketchup and sop up the extra sauce from the plate with steak fries (aka Anchor Chips); the sauce is that good.

Overall, I have to give an Unqualified Recommendation to Frank and Teressa’s Anchor Bar. If you find yourself in Buffalo, don’t skip your chance at the original wings. While you're there, buy the sauce; it’s available in gallon jugs from the gift shop if you have space in your suitcase.

Frank and Teressa’s Anchor Bar
1047 Main Street
Buffalo, NY 14209
Click here for the map from Yahoo! (Beta Version)

Some related links I enjoyed:

According to this link, Anchor Bar is opening franchises; the first will be in Charlotte (NY).
Check out this testimonial from someone who went to Buffalo for the sole purpose of eating at the Anchor Bar. Complete with pics of the table scraps.

A Critique of Downtown Buffalo (NY)

2006-09-26T08:36:00.001-07:00

I have this to say about Downtown Buffalo: City Hall (pictured above, left) is very impressive, and I might even say it’s beautiful.

Although the top is shrouded in scaffolding, the building is remarkable. Standing tall alongside a handsome rotary / roundabout, its grandeur impresses. On the façade above the grand stairs, friezes depict industry and agriculture. At the base stand statues of political luminaries, including Grover Cleveland, one-time Buffalo mayor, two-time President. Buffalo City Hall is bigger than I imagined city halls would be in medium-sized cities such as Buffalo, but perhaps that’s because I’m accustomed to governmental sprawl, the municipal offices of other towns and cities spread as they are across multiple sites.

A few blocks away, the Erie County Hall (pictured above, right) is worthy of attention.

On Main Street, the mirrors of the M&T Center and the reflecting pool across the street were together a welcome foil to the non-gameday bleakness of the HSBC Center. There was a certain utilitarian beauty in the above-ground commuter rail line running the length of Main Street, powerlines overhead like Boston's Green Line (below, right). The gilded dome of the old Buffalo Savings Bank (below, left) is a non-sequitur on this decaying avenue.

Beyond the few glimmers, Downtown Buffalo is one of the most depressing urban centers in my memory.

On more than one occasion, I had to double-check: "Today is Monday, right? It’s not a bank holiday, is it? Where the hell is everybody?"

I was struck by the volume of boarded up stores, sometimes entire city blocks. The streets were peopled with smokers puffing away beside the entrance to their offices, and few others. Now, I wasn’t looking for touristy venues—I realize Buffalo is not a popular tourist destination, except for the Falls, which rush twenty-odd miles away—but I would have been content with a few shops, maybe a local restaurant offering wings and a beer. I saw one café, in the corner of the first floor of the Liberty Building, which has replicas of the Statue of Liberty atop its two towers, but it failed to lure me in, partly because I expected to find another establishment a block down the way. No such luck. When the sign of life is a fan-powered inflatable stick figure outside the Nextel store, you know you're in trouble.

In my weak attempt at “becoming local” here in Buffalo, I tried one a hot dog (they’re white here) and a can of “pop” from a street vendor. It was the highlight of downtown. Finally, I found myself a Starbucks, ordered a cup of Earl Grey, and lost track of where I was.

On Location in Buffalo (NY): Strolling Delaware Ave

2006-09-25T12:42:00.000-07:00

Last night, I inquired at the front desk about traffic.

"About how bad will the traffic be if we’re heading downtown around eight."

This is a pretty typical question; I’ve asked it before.

"Well, it’s a fifteen minute drive, but that time of day…" The kid's face twisted into a knot. Damn, I wasn’t expecting traffic to be a problem. The first appointment of the day (Normal Girl’s, not mine) was 8:30am, and I did not much care for leaving the hotel before 8:00am. But from the look on his face, it seemed I was looking at an early departure. "…it might take twenty."

Wow, an extra five minutes to account for traffic. That’s pretty rough.

I’m sure there’s rush hour traffic in Buffalo, but apparently it doesn’t have too much of an effect when you’re going from our hotel to downtown. Once we saw downtown, this factoid was less surprising.

On a side note, we set our GPS to Australian English, which adds a unique twang to driving. I am thinking of trying Canadian French this afternoon.

Our first stop was a high school on Cleveland Avenue, two blocks off Delaware Avenue. We arrived at 8:20am, and as Normal Girl started her busy day of meetings with high school students and guidance counselors, I hooked my headphones onto my ears and pressed play.

Naturally, my digital camera jumped from its case. Have you ever wandered a residential neighborhood and treated it like a tourist destination? People look at you funny. They wonder what on earth you’re taking pictures of, even when the neighborhood is gorgeous. Gardeners, cable guys, and housewives cast suspicious sidelong glances, wondering your secret. If their narrowed eyes are any indication, dark conclusions spring immediately to their minds.

You’re casing the joint for an upcoming robbery with your gang, the Wet Bandits.

You work for some development company who plans to sweep in, buy all the properties, raze them, and built a Target.

You’re a weirdo, moments from losing your shit.

Or, you’re a writer-in-progress, collecting photos for the low-readership blog you run.

[FWIW, I’ve been meaning to print business cards with the URL for just this situation, to hold up when some pool guy comes after me with a net, reminding me I’m on private property.]

Strolling forth undeterred by their suspicion, I turned right onto Delaware. For about a mile and a half, I continued my merry photo-snapping ways. Grand mansions sat on both sides of the road, most re-purposed as commercial enterprises or government affiliates (e.g., children’s services). Whatever the buildings are today, I found myself gawking.

That’s right, gawking at random office buildings in Buffalo, New York.

If you want to make someone nervous, take a picture of something they probably deem unfit for photography, tug a notebook from your pocket, and start scribbling.

I passed two historical landmarks, so far as I know: the site of Theodore Roosevelt’s inauguration, and "The Buffalo Club," of which three presidents were members. I took photos of the explanatory placards in case, you know, somebody challenges my claims.

This pleasant stroll down Delaware Ave filled me tremendous hope for the self-guided downtown tour that lay ahead…

More on that tomorrow... Right now I have to get my dancing shoes on...

Finding Puerto Rico in Buffalo, NY

2006-09-25T08:38:00.000-07:00

Check out what I found in Buffalo, New York. It’s not nearly as grand as the huge banners mounted on the Puente Moscoso, but one particular route to the Peace Bridge (which connects Buffalo to Ontario) is dotted with the star and stripes. Having lived in Puerto Rico for the better part of the last two years, I must have passed four or five flags before realizing, wait a second, I’m not in Puerto Rico anymore!

Sure, I’ve traversed Luis Muñoz Marin Way in Spanish Harlem, driven slowly around the pride festival in Jamaica Plain (Boston), and photographed the aluminum flag stretched across four lanes in Chicago, but somehow I manage to forget the singular national pride of the isle of enchantment. It reaches even to Western New York.

This has nothing to do with Buffalo, but there will be plenty of Buffalo to go around over the next few days, trust me…

Two days ago, Normal Girl and I were in Brookstone, messing around with the gadgets. One item we tested was a blindfold with integrated speakers. I assume this was designed for the airplane… Anyway, the built-in soundtracks were the typical rest-and-relaxation variety: bubbling brook, crashing waves, rainforest. In the last, I heard the distinctive song of the tree frog. “Co-quí, co-quí, co-quí.” The familiar sound, one I heard every night on the walk through the Jardín Botánico (Botanical Gardens) from the office to my rental car, brought a bittersweet rush.

This is going to sound incredibly strange, especially if you’ve seen my bio photo, but Puerto Rico is one the very few places I’ve ever visited that will stick with me forever. Living there changed me.

How’s that for a random observation / admission?

Buffalo and Rochester: You're On Notice!

2006-09-22T18:56:00.000-07:00

48 hours from now, Normal Girl and I will be settling into our Marriott-branded property on the outskirts of Buffalo, New York.

Western New York, I've been told, and a trip to Wikipedia proved the point.

I have to digress to say that I LOVE this key differentiator between Upstate and Western: "the use of the word 'pop' instead of 'soda' to refer to soft drinks, and the presence of Wegmans grocery stores." What a sense of identity!

It's a story for another time and place, but I would love to have maps defining what parts of the country use which term. Soda/pop is a good one. The pronounciation of "aunt" another.

Back to business...

You know, Normal Girl and I could drive out the parking garage, hang three rights, and ride the dream highway (that's I-90, fwiw) straight into Downtown Buffalo. It would take nine hours, but it can be done. No turns, just straight-up driving, six rest area breaks, three tanks of gas, two knotted backs, eleven bottles of Coca-Cola Classic...

Fortunately, we can afford airfare. Hers is provided for, mine's a write-off against potential profits from the string of articles on Buffalo and Rochester that all the glossy magazines are jonesing for... That, or a small price to pay for 100 digital pictures of Downtown Buffalo.

I'm planning to post my Rochester research/links over the weekend, but it would be fair to say that Buffalo either has a lot more to offer, or its websites have better designers. We'll find out soon enough for ourselves, and have the pictures and anecdotes to prove it.

So let's lay them out for you, our Trip Goals for this week.
Photo in front of Niagara Falls.

Dance Lessons with Jackie (no photos allowed my orders).
Self-Guided Tour of Downtown Buffalo.
Devour authentic Buffalo wings, no matter the consequences (only me, since Normal Girl doesn't care for spicy foods... but she may suffer from the consequences).
As much as I want to go to the Museum of Play in Rochester, I'm afraid I'll be profiled as a weirdo, so the George Eastman House wins the Golden Ticket.
I'm planning to get through my reading list while Normal Girl brings home the bacon.
Oh, and we'll be visiting 20 high schools, as Normal Girl stumps for Bentley College.

I'll be posting from the road with updates on our exciting adventures. Wish us luck!

- Normal Guy, reporting from Boston

Exploring Buffalo, NY Online

2006-09-21T12:25:00.000-07:00

I began planning for Buffalo the way I always begin vacation planning: by looking at the website for the local newspaper. In this case, you have The Buffalo News.

From there I learned that the September Buffalo News Book club section is Dear Senator: A Memoir by the Daughter of Strom Thurmond and that we narrowly missed the Dalai Lama's visit to the University of Buffalo. There wasn't much else of interest today. Perhaps closer to the weekend things will heat up.

Buffalo.Com - Everything Buffalo is an excellent starting point and provides the all important Event Calendar, where you might find the unexpected. There I found the first random event of our unusual trip: Dance Lessons by Jackie. So Monday night we'll be learning the Fox Trot and Cha Cha. Why not take a dance class in a faraway city? At least you know you'll never see those people again...

The best site I found (so far) for general travel information is Go Buffalo Niagra or "Wright Now in Buffalo" (playing off the presence of several Frank Lloyd Wright homes in the region). It's a very professional site that makes it easy to find information on historical walks, tours, etc. Many of the tours actually sound interesting. It seems there are quite a few museums in Greater Buffalo. Who knew?

One of the days, rather than tag along from school to school on Normal Girl's road show, I think I'm going to hop a cab downtown. Since many of the tours appear to have shut down in preparation for 250 inches of snow, I may be taking a self-guided tour of the city.

It never hurts to check out the nightlife (though since Normal Girl is there for work, we can't stay out late). Fortunately, I stumbled across Buffalo Bar Fly, which seems to have all the details I would ever need. For example, Sunday night we can "party with the hotties" after the "Bills kick the hell out of the NY Jets." Somehow I don't think that's quite what we had in mind. Merlin's Bar, though, has live music every night we're there, and an Open Mic on Tuesday. Maybe I'll hop on stage to sing "Free Bird."

That's as far as I've gotten so far... I need to start finding what Rochester has to offer and begin planning for the second half of next week. Is that feeling in my gut anticipation for a trip to Buffalo? I think it might be...

On Our Way Upstate...

2006-09-18T13:33:00.000-07:00

Exciting news this afternoon: The planning is underway for our more thrilling travels, including a visit to the twin jewels of Upstate New York: Buffalo and Rochester. (We will complete the trifecta in October, with a drive to Syracuse).

I am only a few hours into my research of these fine cities, so you can look for more detailed articles on our Trip Goals and other planning topics in the next few days. For now, here is the general plan:

Sunday, September 24th
We fly from Boston to Buffalo in the late afternoon.

Wednesday, September 27th
After Keryn's visits are over for the day, we'll make the long drive to Rochester.

Friday, September 29th
Return to Boston from Rochester.

That's right, we're looking at 4d/3n in Buffalo, and 3d/2n in Rochester...

A logical question might be: "why are you going on vacation to Upstate New York?" I don't mean to offend any Upstate natives, but even you probably agree this is a fair question. Well, the answer is that it isn't exactly a vacation. Keryn is on the road for work and since I'm gainfully unemployed, I figured I might as well tag along. While I'm there, I figure to gain a lot of blog fodder, and maybe a few short stories that aren't set in Boston or Maine...

As I began my search for information, I noticed that the area does have a certain lack of confidence in itself:
"Buffalo, Who Knew?"

My first hour of research generated an unexpected level of anticipation... Seriously. I mean, when else will I "vacation" in Upstate New York? I can say with some certainty that any future trip that way will be for business rather than pleasure, so you can expect I'll make the most of this opportunity.

Look for more in the next few days: Normal Girl and I only have a few days to plan this trip!

- Normal Guy

DISCLAIMER SURE TO OFFEND: I have heard that there is a distinction between "Upstate" and "Western" New York. Unfortunately, I'm kind of a New York idiot (a fact that is soon to change), so to me New York exists in three parts: The City, Long Island, and Upstate. I beg your forgiveness for my ignorance.

Normal Girl On Ole Miss Football and the Upcoming Harvard-Yale Game

2006-09-13T05:52:00.000-07:00

As Normal Guy has mentioned in his other blog, I have lived in many places and was fortunate to attend Ole Miss, an SEC school filled with pretty sorority girls (myself included-Go Theta!) and what I remember as the "khaki cloud"—fraternity boys in their requisite khaki pants, shirts and ties, and U of M baseball caps. It has been seven years (wow!) since I received my diploma from the University of Mississippi, but as they say, "One never graduates from Ole Miss."

Boy, do I love my Rebels!

I think my love of football began in high school. Having attended ninth grade in Vicksburg, MS (WCHS), I was spoiled cheering for an undefeated football team and dancing to an amazing high school band, “Big Blue.” I may not know every position in football or the difference between Division I and II, but I LOVE the sport. There is something about the crashing of pads and the blowing of referee whistles that really excites me. You have to understand that I am not athletically inclined. Sure, I can play Horse with the best of them, but I have never participated in organized sports. Ever. Cheerleading is as close as I came to being an athlete in high school. Still, I loved every minute of cheering my freshman year for a team that went on to win the state championship in my senior year.

It was a sad day when I learned that my family was moving from Vicksburg to Circleville, Ohio, at the beginning of my sophomore year; I never had the chance to cheer at that championship game. The first question I was asked upon entering homeroom at Logan Elm High School on my first day was, "Have you heard of the Pumpkin Show?" In all seriousness, I almost laughed in their faces. Sadly, that laughter was short lived when I learned how terrible LEHS’s football team played. During the two years that I cheered, the Braves were 3-7 and 2-8... yes, you read correctly, 2-8. I could not handle it. How do you cheer for a team that awful?! Nevertheless, I learned a lot about football in those two years and still get a rush in my chest when I hear the national anthem at a football game. It takes me back to a small football field in Circleville where the cheerleaders raised the stars and stripes while the band played on.

I will never forget entering Vaught-Hemingway Stadium for the first time. I don’t remember who they played or the outcome of the game, but I got goose bumps (which is next-to-impossible in Mississippi in September) when I saw "HOME OF THE OLE MISS REBELS" painted on the press box. I followed the Rebels through five years of wins and losses. I visited Memphis in 1997 when Peyton and the Vols crushed us. "Peyton Who?" buttons were on nearly every Ole Miss student as a revolt against Peyton choosing Tennessee over his father’s alma mater. It was a proud moment in northern Mississippi when we learned Eli was going to be a Rebel. In fact, I cheered for him in the stands during a game in 2001 when I returned to Oxford.
When I talked to a co-worker at Bentley about going to the football game last weekend, he chuckled and said, "Didn’t you go to Ole Miss?" When you attend an SEC school, it’s hard not to have high expectations for tailgating and school spirit.

Sure, we lost to Mizzou last weekend, but I will always be a Rebel, regardless of wins and losses.

Normal Guy should have no fear. I am excited to attend the Harvard-Yale game in November. He might even get me into a Crimson sweatshirt.

Are you ready?
Hell yeah! Damn right!
Hotty Toddy,
Gosh almighty,
Who the hell are we? Hey!
Flim-flam, bim-bam,
Ole Miss, by damn!

- Normal Girl

"Becoming Local"

2006-09-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

Think back to the last vacation you took. Now, can you recall the rough itinerary? Of all the things you did and places you saw, how many of them did you share with a host of tourists following itineraries similar to yours?

If your answer is "all of them," which it probably is, then you may not be quite ready for becoming local…

Before I continue, I should clarify one possible mis-interpretation: I am not dissing tourist traps. Not completely, anyway. The Eiffel Tower, Fenway Park, Golden Gate Bridge, Washington Monument: these are “must-see” sights, no two ways about it. However, the cities those landmarks call home are far more interesting once you get away from the Midwestern family wearing socks with their Tevas, the Japanese tourists taking pictures of every concrete square in the sidewalk, and the college students weighed down by oversized backpacks.

In mid-August, Normal Girl and I embarked on a road trip to New York. As the pictures above may imply, we ascended the Empire State Building along with scores of tourists clad in I (heart) NY tee-shirts bought for $50 in Times Square. The wait wasn’t fun, but we found, somewhat to our surprise, that the view from the top justified every painful minute. Beyond the view, we learned a thing or two about the neighborhoods below us, knowledge that would serve us well the rest of the weekend. I highly recommend the audio tour, even if it is a little corny…

So, there: before I begin to advise you to look past the guide books, you have my admission of guilt. I am not immune to the traditional landmark. Hell, there is a photograph of the Eiffel Tower from Trocadero in my bathroom.

However, one of the true joys of trip-making is to do things the residents do. After all, who the hell wants to hang out with other tourists? You take a long flight / cruise / drive someplace and go to a club where you become giddy to learn that all the other people there are from your hometown? Seems kind of silly when you think about it.

(For more on this, expect a future column about the Señor Frog’s phenomenon…)

Two years ago, I came upon this realization. I had already visited Paris and had gotten most of the major tourist traps out of my system. Although I planned to revisit a few carefully selected places—I am incapable of resisting the Musée d’Orsay—the trip seemed to me an opportunity to explore a strange city that was also somewhat familiar.

With my laminated subway map tucked in the back pocket of my jeans, I navigated to Métro stops I had not heard of, took the long way to choice landmarks, and sat in cafés asking for “what s/he is drinking.” (From this experiment I learned that Pernod is kind of yucky and French people drink a lot more American beer than I had expected).

I explored residential neighborhoods and took magazines to remote parks. I perused neighborhood pastry shops and bookstores where I laughed at the translations for popular "airport" novels. It was a great time, even if it created some tension when folks back home asked what I’d seen…and I had to hem-and-haw more than they were expecting.

For most of the last two years, I was on a project in Puerto Rico. There I really embraced this notion of becoming local. Admittedly, this tactic was not wholly rooted in free will; since we worked all day and flew to our stateside homes for the weekends, the typical attractions were rather out of bounds. By the end of my sojourn there, I was an expert in the nightlife and shopping, even if I couldn’t tell friends of mine visiting the island what beach to go to…

So the next time you land at your destination, take some time to hang out with the locals. Ask at the front desk where local people eat. Find out where your cab driver shops for his mother’s birthday. Open the local newspaper and find out if the nearby college is playing at home. See which way the tour bus goes, and turn one-eighty.

- Normal Guy

Forfeiting Frequent Guest Points… UGH!

2006-09-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

During the last ten years, I have joined pretty much every airline and hotel rewards program you can name. Despite my membership in those programs, however, I have to admit I have not always earned as many frequent traveler points as I should have. In some cases the fault for this truth lies entirely with me, in other cases I have to point some of the blame toward hotel staff, computer glitches, etc.

The truly astounding thing (and something I had not realized until just this very minute) is that I have at least one horror story about each and every one of them…

To be completely fair, I have had the good fortune to reap formidable benefits, too. Some of my gripes certainly would portray me as the prototypical prima donna business traveler. I hate those guys…even though I’ve been one.

I will try not to whine too much. But I have to report the news from my morning, because it makes me feel incredibly stupid.

This morning I rose with a simple goal: to book a room for the trip Normal Girl and I are making to see the Circleville Pumpkin Show. (Much more on that in the coming days…) We don’t have many lodging choices, especially since folks apparently book rooms for this event a year in advance. No rooms within Circleville city limits. Fortunately, a Hampton Inn stands twenty minutes away, in Chillicothe…a small town that Normal Girl’s maternal grandparents call home.

As with all my frequent guest accounts, I have my number memorized. Upon confirming rooms were available at the Hampton, I proceeded to enter my nine digits and my best guess at my password.

Password Incorrect.

Tried another of my go-to passwords.

Password Incorrect.

Clicked on Forgot My Password, entered my account number, only to learn…

Account number has been deactivated.

I jammed the customer service number into my cell phone keypad.

After a minute or two of indignance, I calmed down and let the very friendly operator (let’s call her Diane) explain that after a year without activity, they purged the points and the account. The points I understood, the account, not so much.

“But I have this number memorized,” I whined.

“Let’s see what we can do,” Diane said, and upon keying my number into the system she was able to retrieve the shell of my old account.

“Oh my,” she said. “You forfeited quite a few points.”

“Yes,” I said. “I know.”

“I mean, a LOT of points,” she said.

“I know.”

“Shoot, you had enough points for a whole week someplace.”

“Thank you, I got it.”

“Mr. Shaffner, you do know that all you need to keep your points active is any kind of activity on your account?” she asked.

“Yes, but I have been staying in a Sheraton the last eighteen months.”

“But you can buy points online. For $12 you can buy 100 points, and that gives you another year,” she said. “You could have kept all those points for $12.”

“Really?” I asked. These are the kind of things I like to think I know. “$12?”

“Yessir,” Diane replied. “Now, I can’t reinstate those points, but I can give you silver status. Would that help?”

What is the point of this story? To capitalize on my own stupidity to remind the rest of you to keep track of the policies each program has for maintaining continuity (activity within one year is pretty common), and tricks for generating activity even if you aren’t planning travel. Many of the programs have options similar to the $12 HHonors offers, or you may be able to transfer points from one of your more active accounts into one that is about to close down.

This advice is especially crucial for those of you who travel less frequently, so you don’t find yourself starting over again and again, never accumulating enough points to surprise your sweetie with a free night of romance and luxury at the Chillicothe Hampton Inn…

- Normal Guy

Labor Day 2006: The Aftermath

2006-09-05T07:21:00.000-07:00

Despite the drama of today's posting, in general there isn't much to report. After every trip I take, it is my earnest intention to reflect, not only on how we did relative to our goals, but also how the trip affected our lives... Nah, nothing quite so dramatic as all that.

I have to admit, first off, that we failed to meet all of our goals. Specifically, it was too cold for the Jet Ski... The idea didn't even cross my mind from the moment we arrived at camp on Saturday afternoon (after our successful errand in Bar Harbor).

The other goal we only partly met was outside our control. For weeks and weeks, Normal Girl has been telling me about the kettle corn at the Windsor Fair. As we were set to leave the fairgrounds, we began a frantic search for a kettle corn vender. At each turn we were greeted with doughboys, french fries (served in a dog bowl and spritzed with vinegar, of course), ice cream, jerk-marinated chicken and ribs (!?!), sausages (available in many ethnicities), etc... But no kettle corn.

When I was growing up in Bucksport, Labor Day was always time for the Blue Hill Fair, which I remember as being quite an event. As I walked across the Windsor fairgrounds, I had to wonder whether my recollection of Blue Hill's grandeur was flawed or whether the Windsor Fair was simply smaller in scale. All the Midway rides were there, but since Normal Girl isn't much for rides, the only one we rode was the "big slide" (you know, burlap sack, plastic slope). I'm not complaining; I was far too full with fried food to consider such stomach-flippers as The Zipper or Round-Up. Games of chance and skill I could do, and Normal Girl has a Curious George toy to show for my skill popping balloons with darts.

If you're into forestry or livestock, Windsor has you covered. Hulking machines such as the Wood Beaver 3000 (or something like that) were available for demonstration and sale, and if you wanted to survey the hind quarters of beef cattle, empty bleacher seats awaited.

One section of the fairgrounds was quite interesting, something I do not remember from other state fairs I've frequented. At the opposite end of the grounds from the funhouse and wheel-of-fortune stood several buildings from the original settlement at Windsor. In several of them you could watch craftsmen at work: a wood carver (solid wooden fedora on his head) whittling maple into antlers, a copper smith building ladles without solder, a blacksmith pounding ball-peen hammer against anvil, stoking his fire, puffing his pipe, lumberjacks squaring off trunks into beams suitable for building (and using only an axe to do it)... I was most mesmerized by the blacksmith. I wasn't alone---in his shop sat a full audience of middle-aged men interested in the lost craftsmanship and young children awed by the gleam of red-hot iron pulled from the fire.

Most of the weekend we spent sitting quietly on the porch swing. That may not make for an exciting story, but it was exactly what the doctor ordered. I worked on an essay about fate while Normal Girl threaded a cross-stitch I swear she is never going to finish. We went fishing on Sunday afternoon, but the fish were as scared away by the threat of Ernesto's leavings as the tourists seemed to be; I've never seen such light traffic through the Hampton Tolls, holiday weekend or not. I caught one small perch, which positively thrilled me--I was terrified to come home having left TWO of my goals unmet... That might lose me the faith of my readers.

On the way home, I saw something I was unprepared for: a red-leafed tree. Labor Day weekend not even over and already the foliage has turned along Route 202. Almost time to plan a winter getaway to warmer climes...

Labor Day in China (ME), Part I: Planning

2006-08-31T12:38:00.000-07:00

We plan to spend the long weekend at China Lake at Keryn’s family's compound.

South China area is not exactly ripe with activity, located as it is on Route 3 between Augusta and Belfast. The nearest “city” is Waterville, home of Colby College, an outlet of Keryn’s favorite haberdasher, Maurice’s, and pretty much nothing else. There aren’t any “sites” in the conventional sense of the word, no vistas of the ocean, no famous or partly famous lobster eateries. It is a working class place with a very pretty lake.

(Digression Alert: I was surprised to learn this summer that Winslow, about fifteen minutes’ drive from Keryn’s camp, puts on a very impressive July 4th fireworks show. Not merely impressive by Maine standards, but impressive even compared to those I’ve seen in July Fourths past. If you happen to be in Maine next summer, check it out.)

It is unfortunate that our already-too-brief New England summer has dissolved into autumn before August is out. This reality pains me for many reasons, including the fact we probably won’t want to take the Jet Ski on the chilly lake.

Thank God camp has plenty to offer in the way of indoor pleasures…

Playing Atari – Yes, a real ATARI. For more on that, please check out Breaking Out The Atari.

Spinning LPs – Through a combination of chance and targeted acquisition, the house has what one could call an “eclectic” set of records. I’ll be posting some details (probably tomorrow) over at my personal blog.

Cribbage and Gin – We traded old-school games a few weeks back: I taught Keryn to play cribbage and she taught me to play Gin. This descent into games typically played in senior citizen centers began when I found an old cribbage board tucked beneath the staircase, how-to libretto dated 1934.

Despite the potential weather issues (the Weather.com 10-day Forecast for South China says 67 and rain on Sunday), we are looking to have an exciting trip. But as for any travel we undertake, first we have to define our Trip Goals.

Three days = six goals.

Admittedly, this voyage is a tad fuzzier than most. I want to short-cut this and say our goal is “to have fun,” but that’s way too gray for me. So here goes:

Catch at least one fish (or die tryin’)
Procure pre-ordered aquamarine ring from shop in Bar Harbor (long story!)
Eat kettle corn and doughboys at the Windsor Fair (Also: an excellent people-watching opportunity. Many mullets-in-the-wild sightings.)
Buy scratch tickets in South China mini-mart (another long story for another time)
Play the new Atari games Keryn ordered from eBay (MouseTrap, Othello, Pinball)
Fight through the cold, ride the Jet Ski one last time because we’re not willing to let summer go until at least September 10th...

I hope everyone out there is planning their own exciting long weekend. Come back again next week to hear how we did with our ambitious goals…

- Jason

Have You Written Your "Trip Goals"?

2006-08-27T16:44:00.000-07:00

Let me ask you a question: when you go on vacation, do you plan out each day, hour-by-hour? Or do you fly by the seat of your pants, letting chance and emotion guide you?

Surely those are the ends of the spectrum, but their gravity is strong; the middle of the spectrum is largely unpopulated. People tend toward regimented planning or they tend toward the complete absence of forethought. It needn’t be that way.

Out of great fear for offending (or enraging) someone I know, I will resist the urge to dive into a deeply amateur psychoanalytical exploration of the two camps. You know who you are, and you probably also know why.

When I travel, I try to establish myself in that elusive middle ground.

For those of you wed to one extreme or the other, you might be more apt to call my method “controlled chaos.”

The cornerstone of my approach is a clear set of Trip Goals. Sounds banal enough, but it’s more powerful than you might think.

Goals might consist of
a.) places to see
b.) things to do
c.) people to meet
d.) food to eat
e.) photographs to take
f.) paths to walk.

One can surely devise additional categories, but you get my idea plainly enough without the exhaustive list.

Now here’s the tricky part: for any given trip, no matter the destination, you must define a set of goals that do not exceed twice the number of days you’ll be in the place (round up: partial days count as full days—there’s no need to get into fractions). For a three-day trip you cannot have more than six goals. Emphasis on CANNOT.

Let’s say that you’re going to visit Boston for three days. Your goals might look something like:

1.) Chant Yankees Suck at the Red Sox – Orioles game
2.) Scout obese squirrels during a tour of Harvard Yard
3.) Throw back a beer at “Cheers”
4.) Chow cannoli from Mike’s Pastry in the North End
5.) Dine on the tasting menu (with caviar add-on) at L’Espalier
6.) Watch as Normal Guy and Girl kick the hell out of you and your significant other at Jillian’s on Lansdowne

Not a bad set of goals, really. Does it mean that you can’t stop in for a cup of chowder at Legal’s or walk the Freedom Trail or go shopping around Faneuil Hall? Of course not.

But it does mean—and this is important—you can’t get upset (at anyone, including yourself) because you didn’t have that cup of chowder. It wasn’t on your list, and anything you do above and beyond the list is whipped cream on your three-day sundae.

For many years, I created such lists in my head and executed this approach without formalizing it. I found that my days were freer, and I accomplished more. I felt less pressure to wake to an alarm, except where I wanted to. On more structured trips earlier in my life, the rigor of schedule dictated rising at the buzzing of an alarm, showering and dressing in a hurried flash, and arriving someplace super early…only to find I was completely useless before three o’clock.

And then I found myself in the throes of the vacation death spiral: the exhaustion of day one spilling over into day two, the exhaustion of day two carrying into day three, and so on, until the last day you actually look forward to getting on the plane home. What kind of vacation is that? None I want to take.

Now I put those goals on paper and enjoy myself… The anal retentive part of me smiles each time I can cross an item off my list, while my Bohemian side revels at sometimes sitting an extra hour in a random café that I had never heard of before bumbling onto it.

In coming weeks, I will be logging my Trip Goals for each trip Normal Girl and I take…

Maybe it’s a crazy idea. Or maybe you think it’s lame and obvious. Let me know…

- Normal Guy

Big Apple, July 2006: By Bus, Train, Car, or Airplane???

2006-08-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

Back in mid-July, Normal Girl and I decided to make a trip down to New York City, and we defined a handful of Trip Goals:

1.) Visit her best friend from childhood
2.) See a “real Broadway show”
3.) Glimpse the Statue of Liberty (since Normal Guy hadn’t seen it)
4.) Introduce Normal Girl to Normal Guy’s college roommate

With the trip defined and the requisite vacation days reserved, we tackled the next important task: Choosing the Means of Transport.

This can be a complicated issue.

On the one hand, the fastest way is to take the shuttle. US Airways and Delta run hourly flights connecting Logan and LaGuardia, while JetBlue has been giving away flights into JFK. Hop a cab at LGA and you’re in the city a half hour later (if you’ve made your requisite virgin sacrifices to the traffic gods, of course).

But how fast is it, really? Door-to-door you’re looking at close to three hours. As a frequent flier, more comfortable in a coach airplane seat than in the front seat of a car, I’m pretty much obsessed with convenience. Flying seems pretty darned convenient on the face of things, yet there’s something about the BOS-LGA shuttle that doesn’t work for me; it sure seems a lot of extra price and headache to get someplace an hour faster, and I haven’t even gotten to the fact that Normal Girl would definitely have to check a bag…

[CAVEAT: I’m talking leisure travel here -- if you’ve got a meeting in the city, there’s simply no other way to do it. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation.]

Then you have the train… Man, don’t get me started. Every time I make a trip to New York, I forget how unreasonable the train is. I swear I’ll never waste my time on the Amtrack website again. Normal Girl asked about it, though, so I went online and found that we could fly for about the same price. Sure, the train is comfortable, and if you have to get some work done on the way, it is probably an option worth considering. The train is not for us.

Technically, we could drive Normal Car (a ’97 Camry). The drive would take about five hours, including bathroom-and-soda stops. Gas prices are pretty steep, though, and there’s the wear and tear to consider, then parking fees in the city, plus the fact that neither of us knows the tricks of driving in Manhattan. Our hotel is in Times Square, which is central enough that we ought to be able to find it, even with Normal Girl’s less-than-stellar navigational skills. Still, what really makes me dread this option is the idea of having to sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic in the Bronx. [FLASHBACK ALERT: I remember all too well three adolescent hours in my family’s 1985 Oldsmobile, windows down, a poor substitute for air conditioning, when there was an accident on the George Washington Bridge and we ended up detoured through Bruckner Ave. Not my fondest travel memory…] No, I am not ready to relive that hell.

We agree the bus is the best option. There is even a high-class vendor, LimoLiner, that has Internet access, waitress service, and air freshener. I check out their website and although it looks like somebody has definitely come up with a brilliant idea, we decide that if we’re going to go bus, we’re going lowbrow.

When it comes to New York by bus, there are two ways to go:
- Chinatown Bus
- Not Chinatown Bus

A few years ago, my buddies and I took the Fung Wah bus from Chinatown, Boston, to Mohegan Sun to satisfy a gambling fix. The trip was dirt cheap: $20 round-trip, with a $10 meal voucher and a $10 bet coupon (which makes it basically free, for those of you scoring at home). There was a movie to keep us entertained, with only one minor catch: it was in Cantonese. To help those who do not speak that dialect, Mandarin subtitles were provided. Headphones were blissfully unnecessary, since the sound played through the overhead speakers for all to enjoy. And, since the overhead lights would make it hard for some people to see the small screens, they disabled the overhead lights. So my grand plans for reading The New Yorker fell apart, and I was forced to learn Chinese the way so many of the men and women surrounding me had learned their English; sadly, I didn’t learn too much…

The final verdict: Greyhound, baby… South Station to Port Authority. A hop, skip, and a jump from Times Square. Door to door in just a shade over five hours. Not too bad, and it only cost us $40 each. And sure enough, we spent about an hour stuck in traffic. We played a few hands of Gin, read our magazines, listened to our iPods, and visited the bathroom whenever we damn well pleased.

Check back soon for tales of our adventures in the Big Apple.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:
Greyhound – http://www.greyhound.com
Fung Wah – http://www.fungwahbus.com

How Normal Guy Became A Travel Pro

2006-08-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

When I tell people I travel every week for my job, the reaction is pretty consistent: wow, lucky you. I wish that I got to travel for my job.

When I start to complain, folks look at me kind of sideways: cry me a river, their faces say. But when I let the complaints spill out, those sideways glances turn upright. "Gee," they say, "I don't know how you do it..." Okay, so they might not say "gee," but you catch my meaning...

Since April 2000 I estimate I have boarded an airplane more than 1000 times. I have flown more than 1,000,000 miles (but not on any one airline). I have held the most elite status on at least one airline in all but one of those years. There have been exactly three international round-trip voyages in all that time (all of them to Paris), and all those ticket were purchased with frequent flier miles, which means that in each year I gained 100,000 miles it was without the luxury of international distance. In other words, I've flown a hell of a lot.

Although I eventually tired of business travel, I have to say that I appreciate having had the opportunity to work for extended spells in several places I might never have otherwise come to know so intimately:
- San Francisco
- Tucson
- Costa Mesa, California
- Chicago
- Iowa City
- Baltimore
- San Juan, Puerto Rico

Although I found myself in each of the above places under the auspices of work, I have always felt that if I go someplace, I should explore. That must be a by-product of the bi-annual trips my family took from Maine to Texas, when the AAA TripTik would take us past various middle-American landmarks and historical sites. My parents would stop the car and make us look around, whether they knew anything about the place or not. Unfortunately, many of my memories of such places as Carlsbad Caverns, Lookout Mountain, and Antietam are little more than wisps, but the idea of exploring the things in your path has stuck with me. So it is that I can still tell someone how to get from Point A to Point B in Tucson, or which gallery to visit on Noches de Galería the first Tuesday of each month in San Juan...

My love for travel is deep and true, but it is not absolute. I recently left my job because I was weary of being away from home. At no point in the last seven years have I spent 50% of the nights in a year within the four walls of my bedroom in Boston.

But Normal Girl, love of my life, will be on the road for most of October and November for her job, and I will be tagging along. These will be some of the more random travel stories you'll read on the Internet... But if there's one thing I've learned in my years traversing the United States, it's that almost every place has something new to offer. I lift my glass of Basil Hayden's to hoping you agree.

What's This All About?

2006-08-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

I'm just a Normal Guy. Normal Girl, in my opinion, is far from just normal, but she's convinced of it somehow. Sure, we have idiosyncracies that make us a bit unusual. For instance, we both hate mayonnaise and have become convinced there is a correlated global conspiracy to exclude us from group luncheons and family picnics. Sure, that sounds silly until you stop and think about it.

So what brings us here? It was an idea I've been rolling around in for the last few weeks. For the last seven years, I've been on a plane almost every week. Weariness of the weekly grind recently led me to quit my job and take a few months to figure out what I want to do with my life. I know you're supposed to figure that out when you're a teenager, but I'm hoping to use my 29th year for it. In any event, I know a lot about travel, more than anyone who hasn't been a road warrior for 25% of their natural lives.

Normal Girl, meanwhile, has lived in 11 states (nine of which sit on her "cannot live in" list). So she knows a thing or two about moving around.

For years I've been a subscriber to the glossy travel magazines: Conde Nast Traveler and Travel + Leisure. They're fun to read, but it always seems to me they're targeted toward a very different demographic than Normal Guy and Normal Girl. The $1000 / night hotel room in Monte Carlo looks lovely, but it doesn't fit into Normal Guy's budget (especially now that he gave up that consulting gig).

This blog (web page soon to follow) tracks our adventures from planning through execution. From time to time you might find something worth reading...

In coming weeks, you can expect reports from such exotic locales as Circleville (OH), Colchester (VT), Bayamón (PR), and China (ME).

- Normal Guy