Here's another New Thing from the wildlife department.
Leaving school on Friday my daughters and I ran into a flock of turkeys. (Flock? Pod? School? Murder?)
They were all over the front of the school - an unusual sight at the end of the school day.
And instead of turning around and walking out a different door of the school - we barreled through the flock.
I'm pretty sure, if you remember my terrible attempt at a first Vine, that this is the same group (pride? herd? litter?) of turkeys that I took video of in the back of the school, outside my classroom.
I've seen the turkeys on the road approaching school too - I've even watched them fly up and over a fence - but I've never walked right past them.
I'm usually either in my car or keeping my distance.
I think I've heard that turkeys can be mean. (But maybe that's just bluejays.) So it was with extreme caution that I walked with my daughters to our car. My oldest brazenly walked the sidewalk past where one of the turkeys was hanging out in the bushes. My 5-year-old is proving to be quite daddy's little girl - she walked the circuitous route around the turkey perimeter with me, holding my hand and alert to the possibility of a turkey attack. Turns out, I think these turkeys were used to being around people.
As you can probably tell by the fact that I'm writing this...we made it.
And I was as close to a turkey as I've ever been before.
I guess it's time to write about this.
It's dominated the past year-plus for me.
I've alluded to it a few other times.
It's a big project at work unlike anything I've done professionally before.
And, as the end of October fast approaches, it's coming to a head really soon.
I don't want to get into it too much...but there was going to be a day where I was going to run out of New Things and as a result of this work project I was not going to be able to go out and do something that I could write about.
So I need to write about this.
It's essentially a self-evaluation for my workplace that I helped coordinate.
It went great - the people I work with were awesome throughout the process - and personally it opened my eyes to the different aspects of being involved with a school.
That part ended at the end of the summer, and now a group of people will come to check that what we wrote about and sent them is true.
They'll come to the school for three days at the end of the month...and I'm helping get ready for that, which is dominating my time now.
I knew it would be a huge load when I took on this responsibility.
It didn't disappoint.
But I would do it again - it was a great experience professionally.
And I'll add this: I'm looking forward to when it's over in November.
It's been a while since I sat down to do a puzzle.
But when my oldest daughter received a wooden jigsaw puzzle as a birthday gift, my puzzling instincts kicked in - I thought a wooden puzzle sounded really cool.
So I sat down with a cleared table and I started putting it together.
This puzzle was neat - it's by a company called 'Little Liberty', whose catchphrase is "Classic Wooden Jigsaws For Children".
There's a nice classic feel to the puzzle too - not like the cardboard puzzles I'm used to. I've never even seen a wooden puzzle before.
I don't know if this is just a fun twist for kids, or part and parcel of a wooden puzzle, but there were pieces of all shapes and sizes in this puzzle, as you can see:
I especially liked the animal shapes - in addition to what's pictured there was also a butterfly and a couple of flowers.
For a puzzle aimed at 6-to-9-year-olds (95 pieces), I was surprised at how challenging the puzzle was. It took me about a half-hour, maybe a little more, to finish it...there was a lot of background, which made it hard, and a lot of the piece connections (as you may be able to tell from those pieces shown above) had weird angles that you're not really used to with a puzzle.
But I did it. I finished my first-ever wooden puzzle. And it was challenging enough that I might even do it again.
Maybe next time I'll even let my daughter join me.
I know this is a little late by now, but you know how I love ballparks - I have to write about this.
On Saturday night, the A's played a playoff baseball game at the stadium they share with the Raiders.
Because it requires 24 hours for the stadium to be changed from baseball into football, the Raiders game on Sunday was moved from a 4pm eastern start to 11:35 that night.
Everything went off without a hitch, with both teams picking up wins to boot.
But the stadium changeover is by far the most fascinating part of this story for me.
When I was a kid and I went to Shea Stadium to see the Mets with my dad, he would always explain to me how the stadium would be transformed for a Jets game. And I never understood it. I just could not wrap my head around it.
Because the orange seats - the lowest level - would apparently swing out, and I just never could figure out where exactly they went and how far they swung. My mind just doesn't work that way.
This video is the closest I'll come to being able to envision what that Shea Stadium football setup looked like - although I think the setup in Oakland is different, because I think the end zone at Shea went from home plate to center field. (I'm not 100% sure about that, though.)
I've seen plenty of the hockey to basketball changeovers - I've even seen baseball to hockey changeovers with the advent of the Winter Classic games - this is really the first time I've watched a baseball to football change.
There's so much to watch - I've watched it a few times. I'm shocked to see cranes involved. (And those stands they're assembling in center field don't look all that sturdy to me, if we're being honest.) I'm shocked, too, to see that they worked straight through the night. I thought a 24-hour turnaround seemed like it was too long for a changeover, but it really seems to take that long.
Now if only there was a time lapse video of a Shea Stadium changeover.
I don't love the Red Sox, but I love Fenway Park.
I love how picturesque the park is.
The Citgo sign, the red lights on the scoreboard...the Green Monster.
It's all so beautiful.
On Friday, a friend of mine went to Fenway for Game 1 of the ALDS, and she sent me the picture you see here.
I loved it so much I had to draw it.
Over the summer, in anticipation of some kind of New Thing involving drawing, I bought some colored pencils and a sketch pad.
At the time I thought I might draw PNC Park in Pittsburgh, but when I saw this picture I knew it was the one I was going to draw.
I know I'm not the best artist in the world, and I know there are some flaws with what I ended up making, but I'm pretty proud of the final result. (If you want me to break down and analyze the drawing, contact me and I'll bore you with the details.)
I'm sure you know by now, even though one of the goals for this year was to expose myself to music I haven't heard before, I've really enjoyed writing about new music experiences featuring some of my favorite artists.
And one of my favorites is Keane.
I really liked Somewhere Only We Know when it came out, and then I think I heard Everybody's Changing on Scrubs, perhaps.
I suspected I'd like Keane, but my brother cemented it when he suggested the album - it was piano-heavy, which I tend to like, and he thought I'd like them.
(Later he gave me an autographed copy of their second CD - pictured on the right above - when they came by his radio station to promote it.)
But there's also a sentimental element to Keane that will forever keep me attached to them.
Hopes and Fears - the first album featuring the two songs I mentioned above - came out in May 2004. I'm not sure when I started listening to the album, but that's exactly when my wife and I got married, and Keane was really the first band we both started liking together. (This is no small feat. My wife and I don't exactly share the same musical passions, and we were content to live in different musical worlds. But it sure was nice to have this one thing in common musically.)
We've seen Keane live twice, and besides Billy Joel, which for my wife is kind of like marrying into in-laws who you have to see whenever they're in town, I think they're about the only live show we've both shared and loved.
Thankfully Keane has had a rockier past ten years than my wife and I - there was a rehab for their lead singer, a terrible LP, but then a strong rebound. And now they're putting out a greatest hits album.
I'm past the age as a music consumer to go and get excited about a greatest hits album - I own all of the Keane albums and I really, truly love most of their songs, so I don't need a separate album with just their commercial hits.
(They are releasing live performances of all of the greatest hits, though, so I may have to buy something. And I think in the UK - maybe elsewhere internationally, where the band is huge - they are showing a live video in theaters. Or theatres, I suppose.)
But they are releasing at least one new song. It's called Higher Than The Sun, and it's typical Keane fare. Which means it's good, it's catchy...but truth be told, it doesn't seem destined to go down in history as my favorite Keane song. What it is, though, like the band itself for my wife and I, is a sentimental song.
The band lately has been big on tracking their fan's experiences. What do the songs mean to you? Where have you seen the band play? What big life events have you listened to Keane for? (I guess that question means my wife and I are not alone with our sentimental attachment to the band. When I write about having things 'just right' for the birth of our first daughter, the music involved Hopes and Fears - and maybe even Under The Iron Sea, their second album, playing in the hospital room.)
But it seems like ever since the release of Strangeland - their most recent album - a year-and-a-half ago, the band has gone ultra-reflective. And that's what I love about Higher Than The Sun, or at least the video.
It's like a three-and-a-half minute tour through the band's history, with quick homages to the artwork from each album. I put it here for you to enjoy.
The Best of Keane comes out on November 11th. If you're new to the band, that might be a great place to start. Then I'd recommend checking out all of their work. I love that band. And all of their albums are great. Except Night Train. Go ahead and skip that one.
We're still trying to be creative with the apples over here.
And my wife hit on something clever this week.
Apparently she just googled 'apple' and 'squash' because she had some squash in the farm share.
(I'm not sure I would have thought to do that - apples and squash seem like separate entities to me. I might have searched 'apple squash' to see different ways people squash apples, but that's not helpful when preparing food.)
The apple squash was a lot like applesauce, which you may or may not have expected to hear.
What gave me pause, though, was the pecans.
I'm not a huge nut guy. It's not like I hate them or like I'm allergic or anything, it's just that, given the choice, I'd rather not. I like my salad with greens and apples, but I don't like the walnuts, thank you very much. Often I feel like nuts are an unnecessary addition.
And I didn't necessarily enjoy the nuts here, but I didn't hate them. They didn't get in the way. It was a very tasty side.
I wonder if I'd like the apple squash even more without the nuts...but the nuts gave it a texture that reminded me of an apple crisp, so maybe that was a good thing.
Either way, it helped get rid of a couple of more apples.
That there in that picture is Len Solomon and his bellowphone.
Len came to the school on Friday to perform at an assembly.
It's rare that I'll include a school event as a New Thing, but I'll admit it - we're in a bit of a New Thing dry spell.
And this was a pretty good performance.
So good that it only just occurred to me that this is also the rare post about music that doesn't take place on a Monday.
I guess we're just breaking all the rules today.
Earlier in the week I told the students we were having this assembly, and I knew there was a bellowphone in the title. I assumed it was kind of like a one-mand-band, and in my mind I assumed a bellowphone was some kind of instrument that accommodated a one-man band.
When I asked if anyone knew what a bellowphone was I got a few responses about the kind of instrument it was - they all sounded like they could be pretty accurate.
Turns out...it's something this guy created.
It's made up of tubes - like pipes and vacuum hoses - and pieces of metal and horns, and to watch Len Solomon play all of the different instruments he made from items like coat hangers and straws (he's more than just a bellowphone player) was something else.
I like music, and I wish I had a better ear for music. I can play a little piano, but I have no ability to do music by ear. This guy turns anything that makes a noise into a specific note - that is unfathomable to me. I don't even know if I can learn to develop that kind of a skill.
He mixed in some humor too - he killed with the 8-and-under set.
I think what I saw was probably Venus - and there was apparently a fainter Saturn visible...though there were a lot of stars visible Thursday night and I don't know if I would have known Saturn from a star if I saw it.
Here's the rare hockey-related New Thing in 2013.
I like a good hockey game, and I love playoff and Olympics hockey.
But it doesn't occupy my mind like football and baseball - and even college basketball - do.
Which is why it was so unusual that on Tuesday night, with the one-game wild card playoff baseball game on TV (between the Pirates and the Reds, so I had a rooting interest in Pittsburgh), when I switched over to see which hockey game was on, that I stayed there for a solid ten minutes.
The Blackhawks, you see, were raising their championship banner.
And I just couldn't take my eyes off of it.
First of all, I know how horrible my TV is. Sometimes the picture gets staticky, and you can see that in the many pictures I've taken this year of my TV screen, including the one above. Sometimes it's clear as day, but that doesn't happen all that often. Never is it in high definition, because it's not a high definition TV. (We were thinking of getting a high definition TV back in 2008, and then we instead decided to have a second child.) What it is is a ten-year-old TV with a picture - and it's good enough for me. So now I'm going to stop defending my TV against your non-existent barbs.
Secondly, I think you need to understand that I love championships. I love the matchups in the championships (especially new match ups!, which I think you know), and I love the spoils of a championship.
I love trophy presentations - especially the Stanley Cup. I like hearing about off-season ring ceremonies or seeing the presentations on the field. And I love the raising of the banner.
Rarely, though, do I watch the raising of the banner. Especially in hockey, because I just rarely watch early-season hockey. But as I said, I stumbled across the one in Chicago.
The players were introduced, there was dramatic music playing, and some little kids skated out with the banner. Then it was hooked up to the ropes, and raised to the rafters. It took a while, but it was gripping TV.
It was exactly the way I would do it. I love the idea of raising banners. I'll watch a game if they're retiring someone's number just to watch that number go into the sky. Maybe it's because of how big those banners are when they're on the ground next to people as opposed to high up in the arena out of context. Maybe I just like the pomp and circumstance surrounding it. I just love it - I like collecting miniature replicas of banners. I would raise a banner if I ever had occasion to.
So that's why I watched the Blackhawks raise their Stanley Cup championship banner to open the 2013-2014 hockey season. I probably won't tune in to the beginning of another Blackhawks game all season - unless I happen to catch them playing a game against the Rangers.
And maybe next year I'll watch the banner-raising in full...because hopefully it will be happening at Madison Square Garden.
But for the first time in my life, playoff baseball took a backseat to life.
Because that October, which could have ended in agony because of the Mets, began with a bliss that has continued for seven years.
All right, maybe that's a slight exaggeration. It hasn't been seven straight years of non-stop bliss.
Being a parent is harder than that.
But it has changed my perspective on so many things.
The sadness I felt about the Mets not advancing to the 2006 World Series was quickly quelled when I looked at the newborn baby in my lap and that type of perspective-changing continues to this very day:
If I have a bad day I now have three little girls who help make things a whole lot brighter.
Today my oldest daughter turns seven. Which doesn't seem like that big a deal because in many respects she's had the maturity of a seven-year-old since she was three years old.
I'm incredibly proud of all three of my daughters, but if the younger two follow the lead of the oldest as they mature, my wife and I are going to be even more blessed than we already are.
And with that, thebirthdayseries of 365 New Things In 2013 comes to an end.
And as I compiled the links to the previous three, I realized that this might be the only year of my life where my age is the product of the ages of my oldest two daughters. (35 = 7 x 5)
Sometimes I'm not the most adventurous eater.
I've tried different ethnic dishes, but I don't exactly go seeking them out.
And for a long time I didn't even really try them - there was not much in my food rotation that came from a foreign country.
That said, it's only in the past decade - and probably less - that I've tried Indian food.
And I love it - but once I find a dish after trying something new, I'll usually get it over and over again.
Which is why last week, when we ordered some Indian food, I decided to try something new.
My wife was picking up the food on the way home from work, so I told her to surprise me with something other than chicken tikka masala, which is my go-to dish. (But I told her to maybe get a small order of the chicken just in case I didn't like the New Thing she was getting.)
She ended up bringing home something called Lamb Rogan Josh, which in the menu is described as "tender lamb pieces cooked in yogurt with almonds and a blend of exotic spices."
Now, I don't know if this is a universal Indian dish like the tikka masala or if it's a dish specific to this one restaurant named after the guy who cooks it, Josh Rogan. (And I hope that's not offensive. If it is, I didn't mean it as an offensive joke - it's just, I look at the name of that dish and it looks like some guy's name.)
It was good - it was really tasty, and also spicy. (Full disclosure - one of the reasons I was reluctant to try Indian for so long was the spiciness - I thought all curry was spicy. I didn't know that, like buffalo sauce, you could get it made more mild. I'm not a fan of spicy anything. Turns out there's not much curry I don't like. And I love love love na'an. I will dip na'an in whatever kind of sauce all day long. Even if it's a little spicy.)
It wasn't too spicy, though. I had it with the rice, and I'm glad I expanded my Indian repertoire a little bit.
And when I was done, I cleansed my palate with a little bit of chicken tikka masala.
The Major League Baseball regular season is over (well, there's a game 163 today, but it's an elimination game, so for all intents and purposes the regular season is over), and the post-season is about to begin.
It's a fun time of year for me...even if the Mets aren't in the playoffs. (I say that as though the Mets regularly appear in the playoffs. My default setting is pretty much the playoffs without the Mets in them. If the Mets are in them to say I enjoy this time of year is a ridiculous understatement.)
Anyway, it's a chance for me to take stock of my pre-season picks, and I know they were hard to follow this year, what with me picking them on Twitter and all. (Side note - I've searched my hashtag #30MLBPicks and get only two results, which is a little upsetting to me. Where are all my picks?)
But I'd like to draw your attention to my pick to win the National League East: The Atlanta Braves.
Because they won the NL East...and they are the subject of this week's Music Monday.
(Note: I did pick the Braves to lose to the wild card out of the NL East, the Washington Nationals, because I was buying in on the Nats as much as everyone else. And I was wrong on many other picks. But I had the Braves, which no one else did. I'm proud of that.)
Shifting to music, though: I heard on Buster Olney's podcast last week that there's a team song called Baselines about the Braves. It's a knock-off of Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines, and it's really well done.
It flows, none of the lyrics feel particularly forced. (Though it does violate an unwritten rule of mine about these types of songs - it twice goes after the other teams in the National League East, including my Mets. I think these songs should pump up your own team, not necessarily go after others. But I digress.)
I also have a special attachment to team songs. Olney referred to three others in his podcast - the Super Bowl Shuffle for the Chicago Bears, and two with New York connections: Go New York, Go New York, Go (1994 Knicks), and Let's Go Mets Go!, about the 1986 Mets.
I loved that Mets song. I have the "Making Of..." video. I wore that VHS tape out. (And, as my friends point out since I'm one of the last few people with a working VCR plugged in, I still could if I so wished.)
So I leave you today with Baselines - a well-done song parody in tribute to one of my least favorite teams, the Atlanta Braves.
And to get the bad taste out of your mouth after that, please enjoy Let's Go Mets Go!, featuring, among others, my hero, the late Gary Carter.
I'm not a perfect dad, I know that.
But I'm proud of my parenting these past seven years.
I read in Sports Illustrated this week how Joe Flacco - who missed the birth of his second child a couple of Sundays ago because he was quarterbacking the Baltimore Ravens - said he hadn't changed very many diapers for his two kids. That seems foreign to me. (Though perhaps signing million-dollar contracts would change the expectations around the house. But that's not in the cards.)
Anyway, I'm very involved with my kids. So I have that over Flacco.
Except in one area: My children's hair.
Saturday morning my wife left for work earlier than usual. We thought we had everything set for Saturday's dance class - I knew where the tights and leotard were, I knew where the tap and ballet shoes were - except for one thing:
I remembered shortly before it was time to leave that my daughter was supposed to wear her hair up for dance class.
Once before I had tried to do the hair of one of my daughters. My oldest asked for side ponytails - kind of like pigtails, I guess. It did not turn out well. And it was a school day, if I remember correctly. The hair was falling out of the elastics before we even got out of the car at school.
So I know my limitations. I let my wife handle the hair on a day-to-day basis.
I've never had long hair. I don't know how to handle long hair. And I'm kind of afraid of messing it up even worse by trying to ponytail it.
But on Saturday we had no choice. So, camera ready to document my success (or lack thereof), I brushed out the hair. Then I kind of grabbed the part that looked like it might become a ponytail. That's what you see in the picture above. It also kind of looked like the way my wife does it at that point, so I had a good feeling.
I got the elastic and put the hair through - that went fine. It's always the second pass through the elastic that's tricky for me.
It wasn't the most perfect hair-through-elastic performance in history, but it worked. We had hair in a ponytail. And it only had to last an hour.
Remember all my excitement about watching Modern Family from the beginning thanks to the modern wonders of syndicated repeats, DVRs, and setting said DVRs from mobile devices?
Well, imagine my disappointment when I popped onto the DVR only to find that there were just 8 episodes of Modern Family sitting there, none of which was titled "Pilot", which I knew had been sitting there just days before.
Disappointment turned to anger and then joy - all within seconds - as I realized this was an opportunity to try something I had never done before:
I undeleted a show.
Actually, I undeleted a lot of shows.
Turns out, setting a series to record from the phone app must use the default recording settings.
Among those settings: the fact that the DVR will only keep up to 5 shows at a time.
We realized the problem pretty immediately. Also pretty immediately, the instinctual reflexes that I hope will someday kick in if I ever need to help save another person's life kicked in to rescue a TV show.
I opened the trash and there sat, among the season premiere of How I Met Your Mother and a couple of repeated episodes of Louie, about 10 episodes of Modern Family...including the pilot episode, around which my whole plan revolves. (Ed. Note: "Plan" = watching every episode of a hit television show four years late.)
One last note - one time someone who shall remain nameless was babysitting our daughters and turned off the recorder in the middle of a Parks and Recreation or some such show, by accident, and then, attempting to fix said deletion, proceeded to accidentally delete a bunch of the same shows already stored in the DVR. By the time we thought about looking into the trash to try to recover episodes it was too late.
I owe that unnamed person a debt of gratitude. If it wasn't for that experience, I would never have been able to react to this situation with such speed and grace.
Here's another thing that makes my wife so wonderful:
Not only does she put up with Sundays that are dominated by me watching as much of as many different football games at the same time (side note: This is not as easy as you might think, and it is something I am really, really good at), but last week before the games started she told me, "I'm going to the store today and I thought I'd pick up a new beer for you to try. It's made in Framingham. You know, New Thing."
Sorry guys, she's all mine.
And the beer, incidentally, was delicious.
I had no idea there was a brewery in Framingham. Jack's Abby Brewing located in the southern part of town, best I can tell, and according to the box they - 3 brothers founded the brewery - do their best to use local ingredients. (They also grow hops [do you grow hops? do I have that right?] and crops on a family farm in Vermont.)
The box also says that there are seasonal brews, but the three core beers offered are Hoponius Union, Jabby Brau, and the one I had - Smoke & Dagger Black Lager.
Now, I'm not usually a dark beer kind of guy - but this beer was great. It was smooth, which is not something I can really describe about beer, but I know it when it happens, and this beer was smooth.
It was also large - the beer came in a 4-pack with half-liter bottles, larger than your average beer bottle. Or my average beer bottle, anyway.
I'm kind of thrilled to know there's such a quality beer product being produced right here in Framingham.
They offer tours on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays. Less than 100 New Things to go - that might have to happen within the next three months.
I think I've told you before that I just love American history.
My daughters have picked up on some of that here and there - like showing an interest in some of the presidents and related trivia - but for the most part they're still a little too young.
For example, my favorite part of American history - the American Revolution - is still a little too far above their heads...and maybe too violent.
But I can't wait for them to be old enough to be really interested, because we live in a place that is so connected to all of that history and we can have some fun little day trips together.
On Saturday, I got a taste of what that might be like.
There's this show called Liberty's Kids which has been around for a decade at least (that's how long I've known about it, anyway) but I've never watched consistently.
I don't even know if they still make new episodes, or if they just show the same ones over and over.
Apparently, as I discovered on Saturday, it's on the local CBS station on Saturdays at noon. (And again at 12:30pm.)
Because it was a particularly busy week, and I couldn't sleep in on Saturday on account of the ballet class, I penciled in a nap around noon on Saturday, once my youngest daughter was down for her nap.
There was no good college football on TV to which I could fall asleep, and I happened to switch by Liberty's Kids. The older two girls seemed interested, and wanted me to leave it on. So I did.
They may have been the most exciting episodes ever - featuring April 18, 1775, with the titular kids helping Paul Revere and Billy Dawes alert the countryside that "The Regulars are coming out!", and April 19, 1775 with the Battles of Lexington and Concord. Those may be my two favorite days in American history. (Followed closely by October 25 and 27, 1986, of course, when the Mets won Games 6 and 7 of the World Series.)
Anyway, I drifted in and out of sleep, but it didn't seem like the war scenes were terribly inappropriate for a 5-and-7-year old. There was a death shown, but it wasn't graphic or anything.
I definitely sensed engagement from my daughters...and they certainly made connections knowing they had been to both Concord and Lexington.
It makes me excited for the possibilities of a New Thing in 2015 or 2016 or so - when we can walk the Freedom Trail in Boston as a family.
Our farm share has left our house with a surplus of eggplants and apples.
This led my wife to put out a call on Facebook for any recipes calling for a surplus of eggplants and apples.
She received a number of creative responses, and at left you see the end result.
It's a grilled cheese sandwich with bacon and apples.
Now, I've had different variations of grilled cheese before - anytime something has avocado I jump at it, and I'm pretty sure at some point I've had a grilled cheese with avocado. I've especially had it with bacon. (Bacon and tomato is a favorite.)
The apple and bacon was a new combo, and it was fine. But when it comes to using up our surplus of apples, I'm really looking forward to my wife's apple crisp...or maybe an apple pie. Those are apple creations I just love.
You might notice, though, the griddle upon which that grilled cheese sandwich is cooking. I'd like to tell you a little bit about that. (I should mention before this tangent that my wife also cooked up some eggplant and potatoes together and sliced them up like fries. That was pretty good.)
About ten years ago or so, my wife and I were engaged, and we went to places like Macy*s to register for our wedding in anticipation of being showered with gifts.
It was surprisingly fun for five minutes or so, because they give you a scanner and you get to scan items into your registry. There are only so many plates and cups and silverware sets you can scan, though, before it gets boring. So my wife took over after a few minutes, and I think she even went back to a couple of stores by herself to complete the registry.
But one thing caused me to take notice: this griddle.
I stopped and exclaimed, "We have to have that!" She laughed. She thought it was nonsense.
But, in the first of what would become a ten-year pattern of initially poo-poohing and then not only accepting but loving my forward-thinking ideas, my wife pulled a full turnaround.
I'll admit - the griddle sat untouched for a long time. A year, maybe two.
But then she started to use it to make pancakes. Occasionally it was used for burgers. Grilled cheese. Since we've had our daughters it makes an almost once-a-weekend appearance...at the very least it's out a few times a month.
And, I don't mind telling you, that griddle may just be the most-used item of them all from our wedding gift registry.
This week, USA started airing syndicated episodes of Modern Family.
My wife and I have never seen an episode of the show, but we've certainly heard the rave reviews. (And it has not gone unnoticed that it won another 'Outstanding Comedy' Emmy this past Sunday night.)
We don't have a ton of time for new shows, but with The Office and 30 Rock ending last year, we kind of have a little more television time.
So the DVR is set (my wife can do that from her phone - how cool is that! - that's what you see in the picture above), and, as is my preference with this type of thing, we're starting from the beginning.
It seems like syndication has changed a bit - the way USA is airing Modern Family is different from what I'm used to. They're airing 2 hours of shows most nights of the week (not all, which is also weird to me - though I saw Monday night it wasn't on because of wrestling, which is a ratings machine, so I get it) - not like the old days where Seinfeld was on 5 days a week at 7pm or whatever.
But at least they're airing the episodes in order, which is the important part.
My wife and I have done this once before - with The Sopranos. Leading up to the show's final season we TiVo'ed all of the episodes HBO was airing, and ended up able to watch them all in order, and I'm pretty sure we watched most of that last season in real time.
This should be easier, because Modern Family is only a half-hour, and The Sopranos was an hour long...although when we were watching The Sopranos we didn't have three kids. (I'm not sure we had even one kid..although I seem to remember we had a baby when the show ended.) But that certainly affects our TV-watching this time around.
(I guess I should also mention we've kind done this twice - over the summer we DVR'ed the entire catalog of Arrested Development, which IFC was airing in anticipation of Netflix's release of the new season of that show. Two problems there, though: 1) We don't have Netflix, so there may be no closure to that binge-watching experiment, and 2) it turns out, whereas I thought I hadn't watched much Arrested Development, I'm realizing as we watch the shows that I have seen many of the episodes. That's why I haven't written about it yet - it's not really a New Thing.)
I read, too, that AMC will be showing all of the episodes of Breaking Bad ('Outstanding Drama', for what that's worth) leading up to that show's series finale. We just can't do that - again, it's an hour versus a half-hour, and it's just too heavy, I think, for the kind of show we're looking for right now.
Modern Family should be perfect - a good comedy which we can watch at our leisure without blowing up all of our free time.
While we're on the subject of TV shows, How I Met Your Mother began its final season this week. My wife and I have had some hits (New Girl) and some misses (Ben and Kate) with TV shows we've watched from the start. How I Met Your Mother has had some downs over its run, but for the most part it's been a solid hit. We're looking forward to a strong final season.
And we're already keeping an ear to the ground for possible shows to fill How I Met Your Mother's spot on our DVR a year from now.
This is by far the weirdest Music Monday of the year.
And I totally stumbled into it.
On a group e-mail one friend made a music joke and another friend countered that he didn't get it because he doesn't listen to any music...but he did have 'What The Fox Says' stuck in his head.
I had never heard of it - so I immediately looked into it.
Turns out I had missed quite a sensation.
It's a music video that went viral earlier this month, I think.
It went to 3 million hits on YouTube in three days - it's almost up to 45 million total right now.
Hard to believe that something can get that popular that fast and I can end up having no clue about it - but I have a clue now.
The song is sung by a duo called Ylvis, brothers who have a Norwegian variety show. (They've been compared to 'Flight of the Conchords', if that helps give you some context.)
It's a very catchy song, and it's absolutely ridiculous...but the minute I watched it I knew I had to write about it.
That's about the extent of my knowledge about this Music Monday entry - feel free to comment if you have anything else. (One late addition, thanks to promos during Fox's NFL Sunday - Fox is using it as an add campaign for its fall television season. Pretty good idea.)
Here's the video. And I'll give you the same warning I was given: It will be hard to get this song out of your head:
Here's another New Thing from the wildlife department.
Leaving school on Friday my daughters and I ran into a flock of turkeys. (Flock? Pod? School? Murder?)
