New Thing #65: The Ear Inn

The other New Thing from my weekend in New York came when we visited the neighborhood where my friend Justin (he of the many music suggestions) works. We waited for him at a bar not too far away from where he works, as I understand it.

It's called "The Ear Inn" - and the story behind it is pretty great.

I wish I had known all of this when we stopped by Saturday - I treated it only as a place to pass some time - but there's quite a bit of history to The Ear Inn.

The building is a Landmark of the City of New York, and how it got its name is the one thing I was aware of this weekend: When part of the 'B' from the neon "BAR" sign went out, rather than wait through a lengthy review for a new sign by the Landmark Commission, the establishment just became the "EAR". I'm not sure how long the "R" has been completely out, but the Ear name seems pretty well-established at this point. (Apparently there was also an Ear Magazine, about music, printed upstairs.)

That all happened in 1977 - before that, the bar had no official name. It was known as 'The Green Door'.

There's a tremendous history of the building dating back to the 1700s - I read about it at the website for the bar, which you can click over to and read yourself. A couple of my big takeaways - apparently the location of the house (Spring Street) was originally just feet from the original coast of the Hudson River, and it's one of the few Federal-style houses left in the city.

This is all very exciting to me.

I'm in love with the colonial history of Boston. But I think I slight New York on some of its colonial history. I think one of my New Things this summer will be to further explore some of the history of New York in that downtown area.

Thanks to the Ear Inn for inspiring me to do that.

New Thing #64: A Morning In Jersey City

This weekend's get-together with my college pals wasn't quite the "New Things Fest" I was hoping it might be. But I did squeeze in a couple of New Things.

Among them - we spent part of Saturday morning in Jersey City, or part of Jersey City anyway.

And I'm pretty sure I've never been there before - at least, not where we were.

I think I have a cousin who lived in Jersey City for a year or two. I may or may not have visited him there. But if I did, I drove. And if he did, it wasn't in this area.

The area is off the Grove Street PATH station. And the PATH is how I got there.

It wasn't a bad trip, especially for a Saturday when there were limited PATH lines running. And my friend's apartment was a quick walk from the train. (And it's an awesome apartment.)

There are a ton of places to eat in the area, just on the route from train to apartment - and then after we met up we headed off in a slightly different direction that revealed even more places to eat. (We went to a place called Beechwood Cafe, a block away from City Hall. I had ham, egg, and cheese on a croissant, which was delicious. Also new...but I may or may not have been talked out of its eligibility as a New Thing. So we'll throw it in here on the off chance that I've visited Jersey City before and the restaurant pictured below is the absolute surefire New Thing.)

The best thing about Jersey City was something I didn't even experience on Saturday. It was cold and overcast, so we didn't head down to the water. We talked about the water, and the view, but I didn't even think to suggest we take the 10 minute or so walk to check it out.

But I have been to Hoboken before, and I was way impressed by the view across the water of New York City. My friend told me Jersey City offers a similar view.

I'm looking forward to a return trip to Jersey City when the weather is warmer. Having a drink on my friend's deck. And when we do, I'm going to take a bit of a walk and check out the view of New York City from Jersey City.

No one will deny the legitimacy of that New Thing.

New Thing #63: Billy Joel Sings With A Student

It's been a while since Billy Joel has released a new (non-classical) album. 1993's 'River of Dreams' (20 years!) was the last one.

So I didn't really think at any point in 2013 I'd be featuring a New Thing from Billy Joel.

But I do have something.

Allow me first, though, to give you a little history on the subject.

I love Billy Joel. With the death last year of Gary Carter, Billy Joel is my last living childhood hero. Truth be told, I loved Gary Carter for a lot longer than I loved Billy Joel, but once I gained a musical sense I went all in on Billy Joel and held him in the same esteem.

It pained me that shortly after I discovered Billy Joel's full catalog, he was essentially done releasing music. Every so often I would find a bootleg concert recording or a collection of studio demos, but most of my Billy Joel fanhood has been spent seeing him live furthering the legend of Billy Joel, but not necessarily promoting new music.

(One of those live performances was probably the best concert I'll ever see, thanks to the surrounding circumstances - The Last Play At Shea. I wrote about it on one of my previous blogs five years ago.)

One of the live performances I saw came in 1996, at an event that as far as I can tell Billy Joel has been doing since the 1970s. It was called "An Evening of Questions and Answers, and Perhaps A Few Songs", where Joel tours colleges (he still does this, as evidenced by this Music Monday entry), takes questions from the audience, and performs a few songs.

Seeing him in this intimate setting was one of the best Billy Joel performances I've seen (and it's probably one of the more embarrassing things I've done personally). First, the embarrassing story: I worked at a sporting goods store in the late 90s. A girl I worked with attended Queens College, knew how much I liked Billy Joel, and told me when she heard he was doing a Q&A at the school. She offered to get me tickets. I was thrilled. She got them, I paid her for them, and  I went with a friend. It was only in retrospect years later, when I thought about how things soured with that girl at work later on, that I realized that she might have been hinting that I take her to see Billy Joel on a date. But I was a pretty naive 17-year-old...that really didn't cross my mind at the time. My dad might have hinted at it, saying something like, "Are you sure she wasn't expecting to go with you?" But I was convinced that since I had paid her for the tickets her role was solely as middleman. Yikes. What a dope.

Anyway, the event was great for two reasons: 1) often Billy Joel played songs that he didn't normally perform live (he played a good chunk of 'The Nylon Curtain' album at this show. I know because at the time I kept a journal of events I attended, and I wrote about this show. That's also how I could so easily still find the ticket stub you see below.). He also played songs like 'Vienna' and 'Summer, Highland Falls'. 2) It allowed Billy Joel's personality to show through. He always comes across like a genuinely down-to-earth performer, and he is quite funny. The Q&A performances, to mostly young audiences, allow this side of him to shine through more than stadium concerts, I think.

And they also allow for situations like this: I was checking out his website recently, as I do every so often in hopes that there might be an announcement about new music, and came across a video from a Q&A he did at Vanderbilt at the end of January. In it, a student asks if he can accompany Billy Joel on "New York State of Mind"...and he says yes. So I'm going to stretch 'new' a bit and call this new music. (If you think that's a stretch for a New Thing, go with this instead - I think the old me would have been insanely jealous of this kid who got to play the piano with Billy Joel...but I'm going to be big and give you this link to check it out...and I'll admit that he's a really good piano player.)

I don't think I can embed this video, so I'll just send you over to the site with this link. Enjoy.

New Thing #62: Living Earth App

Starbucks had another good app 'Pick of the Week' last week. It's called 'Living Earth - Clock & Weather'.

The clock feature involves an alarm, gives you the time of day...in other words, it's not anything different than what your phone already offers.

But the weather part - that's kind of cool.

I'm not going to lie - I won't use this app all that much. But it's got a good 'wow' factor to break out every so often.

As you can see in the image above it gives you a satellite view of the earth, and you can get an idea of cloud cover around the world, as well as temperature, wind, and humidity. You can get an idea of the locations of big storms too.

I'm no weather geek (although the amount of weather apps on my phone is disproportionate to that statement), but I sense this app will help give me a more global understanding of weather. Or just a more global view of everything, really - if you rotate the globe you can get an idea of where it's night, morning, etc.

Like I said - this is more of an occasional app rather than an everyday app...but that's OK. Most of them are, really.

But in this year of New Things, it's something where in the past I never would have stopped to take the card at Starbucks, enter the code, and get the normally $1.99 app for free. And I never would have known how sunny it usually is in South America.

New Thing #61: Fantasy Baseball Draft In New York

One of the highlights of my year is the fantasy baseball draft. Quick background: It's a 4-team league. Me and three of my closest friends. Because of the small number of players, we stick to only the teams in the American League East and National League East. This is great because the 4 of us are Mets, Yankees, and Red Sox fans, so we can pick players we like to root for, avoid players we hate rooting for, and it allows us to use a clever league name: East Coast Bias.

Usually this draft takes place in the Boston area - we all went to Boston University, so it serves as the centerpiece of a sort-of annual reunion.

Now, as it turns out, I'm the only one of the 4 remaining in the Boston area.

This year, as it turns out, our get-together will take place in New York.

And so will the draft.

Truth be told, I've proposed a New York get-together on more than one occasion. I look for any extra opportunity to get a weekend in there. But I understand the draw of Boston, and I enjoy hosting when able. (Read: when my wife is not about to give birth. This happened in 2011. It was crazy.)

And though this year is going to be a short weekend for me, for a variety of reasons, it's going to be great.

Especially because my parents were generous enough to host the draft.

Not that it involves a ton of effort - they'll just be providing us with food and beverage, most likely, in addition to the space for our draft. But it means a ton to me. It means my friends can visit with my wife and daughters without us having to pack everyone up and head into the city...not to mention taking time away from time they could be spending with their grandparents.

I don't know what else the weekend holds. I hope it results in a couple of more New Things. All I know is that as you read this sometime on Saturday, I'll be participating in a fantasy baseball draft in my parents' living room in Queens.

I couldn't be happier.

Unless I also get to draft David Wright.

New Thing #60: 30 Tweets In 30 Days

For the past few years, I've made my pre-season baseball predictions on my sports blog, 200 Miles From The Citi. You may or may not know that when I started this project, I put that site on hiatus.

So now I have a whole lot of thoughts about the 2013 MLB season for which I don't realy have a forum for expression.

So...time to try a New Thing.

I'm calling it '30 Tweets In 30 Days'.

It's simple: I have predicted records and finishes for all 30 MLB teams. What I'll do for the month of March, beginning today, is publish a tweet-sized summary of their season, and my prediction for each team's record.

If you're reading this, chances are you're already following me on Twitter. If not, go ahead and do it now: @jsucich.

I'm going to use the hashtag #30MLBtweets. It doesn't make total sense, but I don't want to use up a ton of characters on the hashtag (like #30tweetsin30days, for example), and even this one feels a little long. But I figure I should have a hashtag to organize it somewhat. I fear one tweet a day will get buried and result in a lot of missed tweets, and at least if you're interested you can use the hashtag to find what you missed. (The title itself is a play on the MLB previews that tout '30 Teams in 30 Days', if you didn't get that.)

And it won't be perfect - I am going to resist the urge to write too much baseball here this year. But occasionally I'll have a thought that I would have otherwise put on my sports blog - like the fact that I don't think the artificial turf in Toronto will play nice with the oft-injured legs of Jose Reyes - that I guess I could tweet, but won't fit in one of my season previews, so I may slip and put it in an entry like this.

Back to this New Thing: I think I'll go in reverse order of finish...so I'll start with the worst teams and by the end of the month I'll give you my World Series champ, etc. (You may notice, and I'm aware, that I think my picks are generous...and mathematically impossible. I think I have too many teams at .500 or better....but the point is more the order of finish and improvement from last year or not. Don't spoil my fun.)

Maybe I'll do a separate tweet with playoff results and award winners...we'll see. But this little exercise will bring us to the season opener on March 31st.

And that's now just 30 tweets - I mean, days -  away.

(Note: Sorry for all the sports-related New Things lately. Didn't mean for this to turn into an unofficial 'Sports Week'. One more [kind of sports one] tomorrow, then we're back to non-sports apps and music and stuff.)

New Thing #59: My Long Winning Streak

I'm a sucker for the ESPN 'Streak for the Cash' game. So that's nothing new.

Today's New Thing is how exciting last night was - because I was number three in the world.

For current winning streak, that is.

Unfortunately, my streak ended unceremoniously Wednesday night, and I'm back to 0.

But let me tell you about my longest streak ever.

Here's a quick rundown - The game features a bunch of matchups a day. Tennis, soccer, whatever major sport is in season, and not just wins/losses - there are props in there too, like over/unders for halves of basketball games, which player will score more points - things like that.

I know the game is just a way of making people like me - who otherwise would not be interested in UConn-Georgetown on a Wednesday night - tune in to ESPN2 to watch the game with a heavy rooting interest.

But I'll happily play the role of sucker...because I love the game.

I'm not even heartbroken I lost. It was getting pressure-packed anyway. See, there's a new game every month - so I was running out of February days to get to the longest streak for the month. As you can see in that screen capture above, I was at 17 in a row (third-longest streak out of thousands of players!), which is by far the best I've ever done, but I still needed to get to 24 before the end of the day on Thursday. I think it would have been possible, but very unlikely.

My losing pick was Shabazz Napier of UConn to outscore (or tie in points) Otto Porter, Junior of Georgetown in the first half. Porter had just 1 point. All Napier had to do was score a bucket. He didn't.

Some months I go all out for the total wins number. Some months I try to build a long streak. I had a hard time all this month getting anything going (I was trying for the streak) and then in the last week or so I began hitting everything.

I sometimes think that all I have to do (since most 'longest streaks' are in the 20's) is pick one correct game a day and build a 30-game winning streak one month to win everything. When I lose 6 or 7 in a row it gets disheartening.

But now, after winning 17 straight? You'd better believe I'm back to believing I can pick one correct game a day. Especially with March Madness on the horizon.

A new game begins on Friday. I can't wait.

New Thing #58: Baseball Tonight Podcast

The trouble with school vacation weeks is I start getting into a different routine than my school routine. Meaning, I have a lot more time on my hands.

And this February break, I spent a bunch of that time listening to podcasts.

In addition to my usual rotation, I've now added a couple more.

One of them is the 'Baseball Tonight Podcast with Buster Olney.'

And, to be honest, I don't know that I'm going to be able to keep up with it.

Actually, I don't know what its official schedule will be. All I know right now is that during spring training they're popping out a podcast a day, and of course I feel like I have to listen to all of them. (I'm proud of myself for picking up on the day I decided to start listening, and I didn't do my usual thing where I go through all the archived episodes. I figured I had enough work moving forward.)

So maybe they'll tail off to a couple of times a week during the regular season...or who knows? They'll go at a breakneck pace all season long.

If there's any possible podcast I could listen to all day every day, though, it's one about baseball. And I really like Buster Olney - whereas most writers who get the chance to go on-air in some fashion eventually wear on me, that hasn't happened (yet?) with Olney. I used to love when he filled in for Mike & Mike in the Morning when I listened to that show. (Aside: I need to find out how Olney does everything he does. I know he grew up on a farm, so maybe he keeps farmer's hours and is up at 4am reading papers and writing...but I don't know how you do that and watch baseball games at night. Either he has a team of interns posing as him writing on-line while he catches up on some z's, or he never sleeps.)

So it remains to be seen how much of this podcast I can keep up with. But I do enjoy it - I've been looking for a couple of years now for a good baseball podcast and hadn't been able to settle on one I liked. I don't know if I missed this last year or if it was in a different form and not with Olney.

Most of my ability to listen depends on when the podcast is published - If I can consistently get them downloaded before I leave school (they're not available before I leave for school), I can then listen to them on my way home. That's worked for me so far the first Monday and Tuesday back.

And then once summer hits I can get back into a more leisurely schedule. But by then, as with every vacation, my problem won't be being able to listen...it will be trying to avoid listening to too many new podcasts.

New Thing #57: Appreciating and Sharing The Beauty of Snow

Mondays are tough. It's the first day of week - there's the ol' Garfield "I hate Mondays" feel to it in the first place.

On top of that, for me it's the longest day of my work week schedule-wise - it's non-stop once I get in the door.

And when I leave my house, it's garbage day - so there's a lot of work to get out of the house between putting the last of the garbage together and taking that out to the curb (can't do it the night before because of the raccoons) and getting my daughter in the car and hitting the road.

One other element - this year is super-busy.

So Monday, February 25, 2013, was one of those busy mornings - especially because it was returning to school after a week off - but unlike most mornings, I took a second to appreciate the beauty of the scene around me.

And now I'm sharing that with you.

Let me set the scene: Here in Framingham, Massachusetts it snowed pretty much non-stop all day Sunday. It started late Saturday, and there was a changeover for a bit to rain, then a heavy, large-flaked snow fell for 20-plus hours.

The picture above is the view I caught when I put the garbage at the curb. I was so struck I took the picture at left...because look at that sky. There's a nice contrast between those snowy branches and the sun-streaked sky as the sun rose on a beautiful, non-snowy day. At least, I thought so. (I think you can click on the pictures so you can appreciate the full images. I hope.)

Whenever I see the trees looking that snow-covered (and sometimes ice-coated) I think of two things: One is that I never saw a scene like that growing up. There were never enough trees in my part of Queens to give that kind of a snowscape. (There were other snowy scenes, just not like the ones I'm talking about.)

The second thing I think of is a storm that hit in late 2005 or early 2006. At the time I worked at a school in Sudbury - a commute of 10 or 15 minutes from home. I had lived in the area only about a year, and I was still very unfamiliar with what to me were very country roads. I did not know my way around very well.

We were either let out of school early or it was right at the end of the school day that I started making my way home...and I encountered some downed branches one way, and then there was a stuck school bus another way, so instead of waiting I went a way I had never gone before. Bottom line, it took me more than an hour to get home that day. But I ended up on a road (if I remember correctly I ended up going north when I had to go south, and I eventually did find my way home) that was lined with snow-covered branches overhead.

It was the most beautiful and scary thing I'd experienced to that point - scary because I was legitimately lost. But beautiful because I think that was the first time I experienced that kind of snowy scene.

But Monday morning I went down a road that had a similar look to the one from seven or eight years ago. So I snuck this picture to share that with you:

Next Monday I promise I'll go back to being a grump.

New Thing #56: New York Girl

Todd Kramer is not a new artist to me. For me, this week's New Thing is his new music : He just released two songs - "New York Girl" and "We're Not Communicating".

I'm hoping this week's music entry introduces you to Todd Kramer.

Actually, I'm hoping to use this space to every so often support musician friends of my brother.

I think my brother is extremely talented - you probably know that already. Perhaps, if he does something new this year, I'll feature him on a Music Monday.

What impresses me as much - maybe even more -  is the collegiality shown by my brother and the people he has met in the music world.

I expected it would be cutthroat - everyone out for themselves. But I'm blown away by how supportive they all are of each other.

So in that spirit, I present to you the music of Todd Kramer.

I can't remember the first time I saw Kramer perform. He plays the New York scene, so it could have been that he played before my brother one time that I saw Matt play. But the more I think about it, the more I think I saw Todd Kramer at a show he and Matt did together in Boston.

It was upbeat - always a plus for me - and I remember immediately liking his music.

Then I saw him perform at an open mic in Queens - he's good. (Actually, I can't believe the talent level of all the musicians my brother hangs out with.)

This week Todd released the two new songs I mentioned above - you can check out all of his music, including the new ones, on his website.

If you like what you hear - and I'm betting that you will - name your price and buy it here.

Todd's on Twitter @tlkramer. And if it matters to you - he's a heck of a nice guy. He has a bunch of shows coming up...get out and support him if you can. And my brother too.

New Thing #55: Argo

I've failed to meet one of my New Thing goals for 2013. See, I'm bad with movies - I think I've written before that if I'm investing more than 2 hours in something on TV, chances are it's going to be a sporting event and not a movie.

But one of my New Things was to watch more movies.

And I was hoping to see a bunch (at least 5) of the 10 'Best Picture'-nominated movies before the Oscars ceremony.

I didn't come close.

But I have now seen 2, which is 2 more than most years.

Friday night my wife and I watched 'Argo'.

How we watched it was interesting too - it became available on FIOS On Demand on Monday. So we ordered it and watched it that way, which I thought was pretty neat. Because I'm willing to bet it's still in some theaters in some places. I imagine this is the wave (way? wave.) of the future - movies available through all media pretty soon after theater release. (I realize this coincides with the DVD release...but still, I'm sure it's still in theaters somewhere.)

Anyway, we watched the movie in our living room. I'm sure it loses something on our TV rather than on the big screen...but that doesn't change the fact that the movie was great.

I realize some of those details were Hollywood-ized, but just the general gist of the story being true - amazing. And I sure am glad that type at the end of the movie cleared up some of the questions that were burning me up, like "if it was classified, how do we know the details to make a movie about it?"

I'm not going to get into specifics of the movie, in case someone is planning on seeing  the movie and isn't looking for a spoiler. And if you're on the fence - see it.

There was some strong language (which was mostly amusing), but overall I was impressed too at how relatively clean the movie was. It wasn't overly violent, there was nothing gratuitous - it was just a solid, solid movie.

And I don't know about Oscar slights or snubs for direction...but I do know that when you as a viewer already have a general sense of what the ending of the movie is going to be, and you still feel all the drama and tension, well, that means the people making the movie did something very right.

I had hoped to see 'Silver Linings Playbook' before tonight's Oscars...I don't know which other two would have been on my list of 5. But it seems like the 2 I did see - 'Lincoln' and 'Argo' - are the favorites to win 'Best Picture'.

And if I didn't see the 'Best Picture'...well, I still saw 2 pretty good pictures.

New Thing #54: 99% Invisible

I stumbled into something interesting the other day. One of the guests on 'Bullseye' was Roman Mars, a radio producer who does a show called '99% Invisible'.

It was an interesting enough interview that I subscribed to that podcast and, since they're relatively short, started tearing through a few of them.

Who would have thought 'design' could be so interesting?

Yes, design. Architecture. It's a show, according to its website, that's about "the 99% invisible activity that shapes our world." It's sponsored by architectural institutes and centers.

And actually, I'll start with the website - it's a great companion to the podcast. I'm not the type of person who always checks out the accompanying website (I don't know that I've ever checked out the 'This American Life' website, for example), but when I went to 99% Invisible's site the other day I realized I'd need to check back every time I listen.

The audio of the podcast is fine, but since the show is about such visual pieces, the website provides visuals to help illustrate the little stories.

That's the next point - they're little stories. The first few are less than 5 minutes, then they range from 10-to-20 minutes, which for me are very manageable chunks.

And they're interesting - one of the earliest got me hooked - it's about the subtle line between 'sound' and 'noise', and how even the softest sound can come across as too loud if there's no background noise. (I heard this the day after my wife woke me up simply by clicking her computer mousepad - a noise that if not for the absence of every other sound I never would have noticed.) That's why, the podcast said, parks sometimes have fountains - not just because they look nice, but because they provide a little background noise so other annoyances - like traffic or machinery - aren't punctuating total silence.

That story about my wife is one of two coincidences about how I stumbled into this show at an interesting time. The other day I think someone re-tweeted something from Roman Mars across my Twitter timeline. I have no idea what the tweet was or who re-tweeted it, but the '99% Invisible' logo in his avatar stuck with me.

Then I heard the 'Bullseye' interview.

Mars himself sounded interesting - I liked the interview. '99% Invisible' is a good show, but I get the impression this is just scratching the surface of Mars' talents. (How's this for accessible - Mars mentioned on one of his podcasts that sometimes he gets too much mail to respond to everyone looking for advice about podcasting/producing, etc., so he is setting up "office hours" - a couple of hours a  month at a Kensington, California coffee shop. He feels badly he can't give everyone a response, but he's offering this to try to make up for it if people can get out there. I like it.)

I'm glad I discovered the podcast (and the website) on vacation, when I had the time to explore it a little more deeply. I hope once school starts up again I can keep up with it all.

New Thing #53: Framingham Timeline Exhibit

I'm good with American history, and I really like Boston history. My town, Framingham, dates back to 1700, so I know it has a lot of history, but I don't know as much about it.

For a long time I've thought about exploring that history, starting with some of the exhibits hosted by the Framingham History Center.

That was one of the big goals of '365 New Things In 2013' - to take some of those things I've been meaning to do and just do them.

So on Thursday, I did.

The building above is an old schoolhouse that has been converted into a research center/exhibit hall. Its hours are very spotty - you can set up individual appointments, but it is open for a few hours Wednesdays through Saturdays.

One time I walked up to it, it was all locked up, so I went home to look up more information. It's been a couple of years, and I hadn't been back.

Thursday my oldest daughter and I walked up to it....and it was locked. This time (New Things!) I rang the bell. It took a couple of minutes, and we were on our way back to the car, before the door opened.

The woman who opened the door looked surprised to see anyone. She went to check whether they were available for tours. It turned out the scheduled tour guide was not there. Would we want her to give a tour? My instinct was to say we'd come back another time. But I went against my instinct (New Things!) and took her up on her offer.

I'm glad I finally got the chance to check it out. I didn't learn anything earth-shatteringly new, but I did get an idea of how Framingham fits into the larger history of Massachusetts. (It was an overnight stop for cannons being transported between Fort Ticonderoga and Cambridge in 1776!)

Best fact I learned: Thomas Danforth, Framingham's founder, came from Framlingham, England. The 'l' was dropped, and there you have it - Framingham.

The 'Framingham Timeline' is the permanent exhibit at this location - it takes you from the earliest days of the town (actually, pre-1700 with some information about Native Americans in the area) through the 19th century (Civil War artifacts and the rise of the railroad in Framingham), and 20th century (one of Christa McAuliffe's NASA uniforms - she was raised in Framingham - the famous Framingham Heart Study, businesses like Bose and Staples).

The original public library in town is another site that hosts exhibits. Right now the big attraction is a display about the original Shopper's World - an outdoor shopping area, dating back to when those were not exactly common. I'll be checking that out too sometime before that exhibit closes out in September...maybe as soon as this week.

New Thing #52: An Orange-and-White Striped Shirt

My brother gave me this shirt for Christmas. As we all know by now, he thinks highly of his fashion sense.

I wore the shirt for the first time on Wednesday.

I'll be honest - I had my doubts I could pull off the orange-and-white striped shirt.

But I can't argue with that picture - I have to admit it's a nice-looking shirt.

He says he wanted to give it to me because he wanted me to have a nice shirt - it's J. Crew - I don't have much in the way of J. Crew. So he's right - I don't have much that's all that nice...and much of what I have is very monotonous. Literally. A lot of single-color shirts.

I'm not the only one who likes the look of the shirt - my wife complimented it and I texted a picture to my brother - he seemed to like it as well.

My daughters had some interesting reactions. My oldest (age 6) recognized it as a new shirt as soon as I put it on. "That's a nice shirt!" she said. Then, in one of those loud stage whispers she added, "That reminds me of 'Where's Waldo'?"

My middle daughter (age 4) noticed at the frozen yogurt place (you may have recognized the T-wisted wall in the background of the picture above) that the shirt looked just like her creamsicle frozen yogurt:

As for me and my wife - the funniest thing happened on our way home from that Christmas get-together back in December. We saw the following cement mixer, and I asked her to take a picture to send to my brother when I finally wore the shirt. It seems like I'm not the only one wearing orange-and-white these days.

New Thing #51: T-wisted Frozen Yogurt

A new frozen yogurt place opened up nearby recently. Three weeks ago, to be precise.

We knew that we'd be checking it out on February vacation, and that's where we went late Wednesday morning.

It's called "Twisted", I think, though the branding has that little hyphen in between the "T" and the "wisted".

I may not know exactly what they're called - but I know I liked the frozen yogurt.

I know what you're thinking. "After all that health-conscious stuff you've been writing about the past few days, now you're having frozen yogurt before lunch?!"

Well, first of all, I have three kids, so before lunch is prime time for certain things. Secondly, according to the Lose It! app, 5 ounces of frozen yogurt (you weigh when you pay - and if that's not their slogan, it should be) is not all that high in calories.

So here's how it works: You walk in, grab a cup (there were cones available too, though I didn't see them until later), and then face a wall with about 20 frozen yogurt dispensers:

It's self-serve, then you walk over to the toppings and go to town. Everything is available, from chocolate chips and sprinkles to blueberries and other fruits that I didn't stop to look at very much.

Then you go to the register, there's a scale there, and "you weigh when you pay." (I'm telling you. I hope they thought of that.) It's something like $0.49/ounce. It's actually probably the cheapest thing in Sudbury, Massachusetts.

Sudbury is where it's located, right on Route 20 - as you can tell by that top picture, it's kind of tucked away in the back of a little shopping center. It's not going to get much foot traffic, but once word-of-mouth catches on, I think this place will do all right. We were there right when it opened on Wednesday (I told you - three kids), and it's February break. I think, come summertime, or even the spring, the place is going to be packed. Actually, for some reason I got a little anxious thinking about how packed it might get, being not all that far from the high school. I want to go on a hot summer evening, but I'm nervous about how busy it might be. I'll have to get over that.

As for the frozen yogurt itself - it was great. I had cookies and cream - figured I'd keep it simple and go more exotic on future visits. Because there will be future visits. As long as  it doesn't get too crowded.

New Thing #50: Lose It! App

I'm counting calories these days. No kidding.

As I mentioned the other day when I wrote about keeping close track of my weight - I'm not terribly worried that I'm going to become fat.

At least, very soon.

But I know there's a chance that if I keep eating the way I've eaten my whole life, my metabolism won't keep up.

So I've been doing a number of 'New Things' related to my health.

As I've mentioned, I'll roll them out periodically.

Most recently, though, I stumbled upon this app.

And now thanks to its help, I'm counting calories.

It's called 'Lose It!', and I'm sure, like '4Square' and other apps I used to use multiple times a day before I quit them, it may not last long. But it's given me some information that is bound to stick with me for a lifetime.

I've always heard the term 'empty calories', but had never really thought about what it meant. Now I have a better idea.

I've been surprised at how few calories some foods can be (like chicken) and how many others can be (like, oh, I don't know - Brownie Batter Donuts).

What I like about the app is that you enter your meals each day, and then it gives you an idea of how you're doing by week. And my wife tells me it's all about calorie intake per week, not daily.

I get a little frustrated when I can't find a comparable food to enter for what I ate (this most often happens after lunch at school), but generally I've been successful matching foods I've eaten to what's in the app's database. (Including restaurants. Much of the restaurant food I've eaten in the past three weeks or so has been on the Lose It! app, and once you find the restaurant in their choices, the whole menu is on there.)

The best thing, though, is that I can also subtract calories. There are all kinds of exercises loaded in to negate the intake. I've been taking walks, and it calculates time walked into calories burned. Snow shoveling was amazing exercise, and it was in the app. Playing the piano is in there! (As you might imagine, though, it doesn't burn all that many calories.)

I was losing weight before I downloaded the app - that generally happens from January into February since late December into January is my peak weight due to the holidays. But I'm sure counting calories has helped me avoid adding more winter pounds.

I hope to keep up keeping track into the summer, when I tend to go a little crazy on the ice cream desserts...but it's also a time I do a lot more exercising when I can run outside.

If you're looking for some motivation to count calories, too - let me know. There's also a "friend" opportunity on Lose It! I haven't used that yet, and it might take a new wrinkle to keep me invested for another 4-5 months.

New Thing #49: NPR Music

One of the things my brother suggested to me when I first mentioned I was going to try to listen to something new musically each week was that I should follow NPR's All Songs Considered on Twitter for some ideas. (Well, that was a long sentence.)

This week, Monday kind of snuck up on me without much new music exposure.

So, remembering his advice, I clicked over to NPR's web site and clicked the 'Music' tab to see if there might be something there to help me out.

There was.

There's an occasional entry there called 'Heavy Rotation', with 5 suggestions from public radio music experts.

This week featured 2 slow-paced songs, 1 rap, a faster-paced pop song, and another song that I think featured a Zimbabwean thumb piano. All from artists I had never heard before.

So instead of just one new music experience this week, I had five. The rap was nothing special, the slow songs were OK (though Miranda Dodson, who sang one of the slower ones, definitely reminded me of someone that I can't immediately place and it was probably my favorite of the five songs), the thumb piano one was unique and it was fine, and I wanted to like the pop-py song but it was just OK.

So none of the songs will stick beyond the couple of listens I gave them over the weekend.

But I gained a new source for some new music.

A couple of things about that: Do you ever get overwhelmed by the internet? I do. It's just so massive, and sometimes I feel like I lose direction and freeze wondering where to go to next, so I just get in the habit of visiting two or three sites and that's it.  But now I can maybe mix the NPR Music site into that rotation, so I can look at their Heavy Rotation suggestions.

And then this on NPR - I should probably listen to it more. Sometimes I think I'm the only one who doesn't. I got into a groove for a little while when one of my good friends worked there, and I figured I owed it to him to know what he was doing for a living. And while I did I felt like I belonged to an exclusive little club. But then he left there, and I stopped listening, and my only relationship to NPR is listening to affiliated podcasts. But there's a lot of good listening happening on NPR, isn't there? At least for current events? I guess maybe I should get back into it. Maybe it would make me smarter.

***UPDATE*** - So this is kind of coincidental. Remember back when Music Monday debuted with New Thing #7 - The Modern Lovers? Well, Sunday in the Boston Globe there was an article about how a couple of Massachusetts lawmakers are moving to make 'Roadrunner' an official state song. I told Justin and he suspected they read my post, which spurred the action. Well, obviously.

New Thing #48: Weighing Myself Every Day

I'm trying to take care of myself these days. In the coming days, weeks, and months I'll feature New Things dealing with fitness, diet, and overall health.

As a starting point for all of that, though, I decided to try a little experiment in 2013, and here we are almost 50 days in and I've kept it up:

I'm keeping track of my weight every day of the year.

I'm sure there are hundreds of people who do this all the time, but it's very new for me.

Actually, the concept of paying any attention to my weight whatsoever is pretty new to me. I always had a general idea of how much I weighed, but I didn't give it much thought.

There were times I'd feel like I was putting on weight, but I kind of expected it - the holidays, the dead of winter...times when I knew I was going a little overboard with the dessert.

My hope, I guess, is that I'll catch myself before I go too overboard. I kind of have a range of weights that I want to stay within...but I'm not really going to panic if I go over. I'm not actually sure what my target weight should be.

I can already anticipate some problems here - when I'm away from home I might not have access at all to a scale...and the times I will, it might be a scale that calibrates my weight differently.

But I'll try - even if I'm weighing myself more than 300 times this year, that's a good 290+ times more than most years.

New Thing #47: Drawing A Cartoon

Driving home from work Friday, we heard Taylor Swift's "I Knew You Were Trouble" on the radio. It gave me an idea.

When I got home, that idea became New Thing #47:

Who knew drawing a bass clef was more difficult than drawing a treble clef?

New Thing #46: My All Star Game Hat

When the calendar turned to February, my thoughts started to turn to baseball a bit. And I started thinking about another Christmas gift I received that I had yet to wear.

I mentioned the pink shirt last week...today, I'm talking about my '2013 All Star Game' hat.

If you don't already know, this year's MLB All Star Game will be held at Citi Field.

(I hope to make "Attending the All Star Game" New Thing #200 or so...let me know if you can help make that happen.)

I like a good, unique hat. My Mets hat of choice these days is this orange number - I haven't seen it on too many people.

For this season, though, I'm looking forward to getting a good number of wearings out of the above All Star Game hat - I'm sure it's pretty popular in the New York City area, but here in Massachusetts it'll top the charts in originality.

I also have a t-shirt...I'll certainly be wearing that over the summer, but it probably won't merit its own New Thing entry. (And while we're on the subject - it's got a big All Star Game logo on the front, the kind that if you get sweaty and sticky in the summer might stick to your chest. We'll have to see how my clothes sensitivity holds up against that.)

We've had one day of baseball cap weather, and since then February's been all about snow. But pitchers and catchers have reported, we're on the verge of full-on spring training...I'll be getting in plenty of wearing of my new hat, and soon.