New Thing #325: Using A Die Cut Machine

When I first started 365 New Things In 2013 I had a list of ideas of New Things I was intending to try but hadn't done yet and was kind of waiting for a challenge like this to make me finally just go and do them. Some of them - like trying stand-up - are not looking very likely to happen in the next 40 days. (Though hardly a day has gone by where I haven't thought about doing it, believe it or not.)

Others, well, I've done pretty well at making them happen.

Including today's. Although on my list it's not worded as "Use A Die Cut Machine".

Instead it reads, "Cut out word machine thing".

The 'cut out word machine thing' is indeed called a die cut. And, well, as far as modern-day machines go, it's a blast from the past.

The one we have at school runs by hand crank, and I've watched a bunch of people use it, but I never had myself. (For those not in the know, it's something where you put paper over a block stencil and it cuts out letters for you to put up on bulletin boards and such, rather than you having to cut out letters yourself. At right is an example. Don't feel bad if you've never heard of this: It's the type of thing that I only know exists because I'm a teacher.)

I came close to using it myself in September, but someone else was running their letters through the thing and they offered to take mine so I let them. I almost passed that off as a New Thing, but you know me - it didn't feel legit, so I waited until I did it myself.

That time came this week. Although, if we're being honest, I didn't 100% need to do it. I have some of the pre-cut letters that you buy at Staples that I could have used on my bulletin board. But I needed to try out the die cut machine, so I took my black construction paper and made my way to the faculty room.

I think you know this about me, but I'm not the most artsy-and-craftsy guy. I can take on something like a craft if I work myself up for it, but it's hard for me to initiate something like an art project.

Part of my reluctance is a fear I will mess something up and do irreversible damage. Like breaking a die cut machine.

Well, I didn't break it. I actually quickly became quite adept at it, re-using one piece of construction paper by running it through multiple times for a bunch of different letters.

I was kind of proud of myself for that - it seemed like a pretty pro die cut move on my part.

I've come a long way from a guy who just about a year ago was still calling it a 'cut out word machine thing.'

New Thing #324: Jabby Brau

Remember when I told you about Jack's Abby, the Framingham beer makers? Well, my wife found another type of their beer on sale at the store recently.

So I gave it a try the other night.

If nothing else, 365 New Things In 2013 has expanded my tastes in beer.

And this is another one that's nice to know I'd enjoy if I ever found it at a restaurant somewhere.

It's true - there are some Boston bars that every so often Jack's Abby retweets who sell the brewery's beers. I would be thrilled to walk into some place and see it on tap.

But I digress.

This particular beer is called Jabby Brau - a name that I imagine has something to do with the flavoring or origin of the beer or something, but I don't really get.

I will tell you this - it's a tasty beer, with a little kick.

I think I still prefer the Smoke & Dagger, but this one is a little more like a casual drink I can have with a meal - the Smoke & Dagger feels more heavy, like a socializing beer.

They call it a "Session Lager". Maybe they mean the same thing.

I don't know. I'm no beer expert.

I just know it tastes pretty good.

New Thing #323: Asking Students Why

It's been a while since I taught math regularly. I taught it in my student teaching year and I taught it in my first year in a self-contained classroom.

Then I got my current job teaching language arts and social studies and haven't done much in terms of math.

But I still think a lot about how I taught math, and one of the things I liked to stress with students was where they might apply what they were learning about math in school to their lives.

(An easier task with 5th and 6th grade-level math than the higher grades.)

And it's that thinking that inspired me to try this New Thing this year.

This is something I had done in September but hadn't written about yet - and there are really a bunch of New Things that I've been trying out and working on at work this year. I won't tell you about all of them.

Thinking about math, and why we learn about math, I realized that it's not something I do with the subjects I teach as much. I certainly think about the importance of writing and studying history, and I do touch on it occasionally with the students I teach, but it's not like we come back to it every day.

So I decided this year to spend a class period each asking the students what they think are the reasons we learn to write, and the reasons why we study history.

Their answers were what I hoped for…but they also didn't hit on everything. So I'm leaving these posters we created on the wall all year, in the hopes that as the year moves along we'll think of other reasons that we can add to the list.

I got the idea over the summer, and I'm glad I followed through on it. It may seem like an obvious question to address with kids, but sometimes in the hectic day-to-day of the school year you lose sight of things like this.

I'm going to keep these up on the wall so that we never lose sight of what we're doing.

New Thing #322: The Figgs

Once again we have one of my podcasts to thank for an idea for Music Monday. And an Astoria connection certainly helped its chances.

Marc Maron had The Figgs on his show last week.

Needless to say, since it's the case with many of the music guests on WTF, I had never before heard of The Figgs.

I gave the podcast a chance though. (Not that it's a stretch for me - a podcast would have to be the worst thing in the world for me to turn it off before listening to it from beginning to end.)

And not only did I find the members of the band likable, but there were two connections that really piqued my interest.

The first of the connections is that one of the band members (there are three of them, I didn't really do much research on them besides listening to a bunch of their songs online. I figure if you're interested enough you can look up the info as easily as I could have.) spent a lot of time in Astoria, my hometown.

Maron spent some time in the early 2000s living in Astoria. (He gave the exact location - also last week - when Ileana Douglas was on the show. I think he said 37th Street and 30th Avenue. Douglas, by the way, also has an Astoria connection - she spent a lot of time there as a kid with her grandparents. She was on the Ditmars end, very near to where I grew up, but she was talking about the late '70s as when she was there. A lot of Astoria talk on my podcasts last week.) Maron told the story last week of how he kept running into one of The Figgs at the grocery store in Astoria, because he was living in the area too. Maron was a fan of The Figgs…the band didn't know who he was other than some stalky fan.

Anyway, I like that there's an Astoria connection. (For what it's worth, one of the band members also currently lives just outside of Boston. They're like me!)

But then they talked about how they had hit it big in the last year or so because a song one of them had written was used in a popular Lexus commercial. I couldn't for the life of me think of what that was - as far as I knew I had never heard of The Figgs before in my life. Then they played the song, Je T'ador , and it sounded vaguely familiar, but I still couldn't place it. I looked it up and I remember the commercial, but the song didn't really stand out to me. I included that video at the end of this post for you to remember, and to get a taste of The Figgs. (Pun not intended. I swear.)

I listened to a lot of The Figgs' music last week. (Though I'm sure not anywhere close to all of it - by a long shot, I think.) I liked most of what I heard. I don't quite know how to describe it - a little rock, a little punk, a little grunge? There was a Foo Fighters feel to some of the songs…but that's not quite a good description. They also talked about Elvis Costello as an influence, if I remember correctly, on the podcast. I can see that too.

I liked, too, that many of the places they've been captured on video on YouTube are some of the same places my brother has played in recent years. It gives me hope that another little-known act with roots in Astoria will catch fire and get greater exposure.

New Thing #321: Caramel Brûlée Latte

I'm not much of a fan of peppermint or gingerbread, so when places like Starbucks come out with their holiday flavors it doesn't do a whole lot for me. But I have to admit, the caramel brûlée latte at Starbucks definitely caught my interest.

As did the fact that between 2 and 5 p.m. all weekend they were selling this drink or the peppermint mocha or the gingerbread latte 2-for-1.

And I definitely didn't want one of the other two flavors.

The caramel brûlée latte was very sweet. But it wasn't bad - and it provided me with the caffeine kick I needed for some Friday afternoon report writing.

It's not the healthiest drink, calorie-wise. Click here for that information.

Now, you may remember that I am in love with the hazelnut macchiato. It's the only Starbucks drink I've had in the past year.

And, truth be told, this caramel brûlée latte has not unseated the hazelnut macchiato as my beverage of choice.

But until they start offering the hazelnut macchiato in a 2-for-1 deal, if my wife's picking up one of her flavored Starbucks drinks, well, I'll be getting a free caramel brûlée latte.

And I'll be OK with that.

New Thing #320: Contributing To A Kickstarter Campaign

Every so often, if I can, I try to contribute to the fundraising campaigns for my favorite podcasts. I paid for an app subscription to WTF a while ago and caught up on all of the episodes using it.

I plan on doing one of those texting donations to This American Life the next time one of those rolls around.

The winner of my most recent philanthropy is 99% Invisible, which is running a Kickstarter campaign to increase the number of episodes it puts out as well as its staff…as well as to provide benefits for its staff.

It was a cause I really wanted to contribute to.

I really like 99% Invisible. You should listen to it. It gets me to look at everyday things in a different way. And it's a short podcast, relatively speaking. There's no reason not to listen to it, really.

But this isn't really an advertisement for the podcast. It's about how I was able to contribute to something I really enjoy.

The deal was, if the podcast got 10,000 backers on Kickstarter (at any denomination), one of its sponsors, Mail Chimp, would kick in an extra $20,000.

I figured, I have some money in a Pay Pal account that I don't have designated for much, and I would love to give it to this cause.

So I created my Kickstarter account, popped onto the 99% Invisible page, and saw that Pay Pal was not an option. It actually all runs through Amazon.

But I still gave my money. (I'm even going to get a gift - a little notebook - thrown in, which is totally unexpected.)

I was donor number 9,028 or so - somewhere between 9,028 and 9,040, best I could tell.

I gave on Wednesday night - by Thursday night, less than 24 hours later, they had hit 10,000 backers.

I'm really glad to be a part of that.

New Thing #319: FOX Sports Live

Ever since it debuted in August I was interested in checking out the new FOX Sports channel, FOX Sports One, and its flagship show, FOX Sports Live. (I always write the network FOX with all capitals, and I'm sure I could get away with doing it as upper-and-lowercase. Also, I think it's a flagship show. Not sure if that's the proper term. I'm just throwing that out there now before you all bombard me with mail critiquing me on those points.)

Anyway, the channel itself is never in my rotation when I'm switching around, and the show is on too late for me to stay up and watch.

So this week I made an effort to check it out - I DVR'ed a week's worth of shows to see what FOX Sports Live was all about.

I'll be honest - the big draw for me with this show is the duo of Jay Onrait and Dan O'Toole, who anchor the highlight desk (again, I'm going with my best guess on what to use for a title here). Onrait and O'Toole are Canadians who have reportedly been a huge success north of the border and were brought to this show to generate interest.

I thought they were the show's anchors, but I was surprised to see that it started on Monday with Charissa Thompson (a FOX personality who I feel like has been with the network in some form or another for a while) reading the intro and then the camera comes to Thompson's panel, consisting of Donovan McNabb, Andy Roddick, Gary Payton, and Kirk Morrison.

(That's a huge turnoff for me - I've found I enjoy sports a lot more without all of the talking head panels - I never watch NFL pre-game shows on Sundays anymore and I'm much happier. But I guess there are people out there who love them, since that's all they put on these days. So maybe I'm in the minority.)

I guess as a male somewhere near the demographic FOX is shooting for (OK. I'm too old for their demographic these days probably), I should be a fan of them using the attractive woman to start the show…but I'm really watching to see Onrait and O'Toole.

Maybe it's a carryover from my early SportsCenter days (when I was smack dab in the demographic ESPN was shooting for with the Dan Patrick-Keith Olbermann SporsCenter), but I wanted to see the personalities I had heard so much about to see if they measured up to what I remembered enjoying so much.

And I really enjoyed Onrait and O'Toole.

I liked the fun they had - on Monday they played 'NFL Quarterback or Character on FOX's Almost Human' in a segment called 'Case of the Mondays'. But I thought a little bit of the fun crossed a line.

When they reported about Steven Stamkos breaking his leg in a game against the Bruins on Monday, they gave a glowing lead-in about Stamkos' great start to the season, and the whole time the words "Unfortunate Foreshadowing" flashed on the screen.  I'm not sure that was entirely appropriate.

It's been a while since I watched a SportsCenter-type show in its entirety, so I'm not sure what the going rate is for an A-Block (that's the first segment of the show before you see a commercial), but I liked how the first segment of each show was almost 20 minutes. That seemed long. (Unnecessarily long on Wednesday, where the show came on aftter Ultimate Fighting and most of the first section was devoted to that sport.)

What I liked the best was the way they end the show - The 'Best Person In Sports', a not-so-veiled take on Keith Olbermann's 'Worst Person…' ending. It's a really positive ending, always highlighting something good in sports. Onrait and O'Toole themselves deserve a 'Best Person' nod - they're growing out mustaches on the air to raise 'Movember' awareness.

Tuesday and Wednesday they analyzed each other's mustache progress and took good-natured shots at one another in the process. Wednesday they spent 15-20 seconds of a story just admiring Andy Reid's mustache. (Or 'Lip Sweater', as they called it.)

A positive social statement, having fun all the while? That's the kind of sports I like.

I don't like all things FOX, but I like Jay Onrait and Dan O'Toole.

I think I'm a fan of FOX Sports Live.

New Thing #318: Throwback Thursday

It kind of came out of nowhere, but then it had staying power. I feel like it popped up on my Twitter feed one day, then the next week there were a bunch more, and then later it spread to Facebook, and now almost everyone is doing it.

Except I hadn't done it.

Until today.

I'm talking about Throwback Thursday, or #TBT, as it appears so often.

So today, we're taking a trip back in time.

I think one of the things that makes me such a good teacher (yeah, I said it. What? I am.) is the fact that I was a…um…weird child.

There was a lot going on in that head of mine.

So when I deal with children who seem to have a lot going on, I think back to little Johnny and it helps me tap into my reserve of patience.

 These pictures don't necessarily reflect that kid - because I was always at my most normal around my family. (Entire cookie shoved up into my cheek in that top picture notwithstanding.)

With my family I was funny, I was fun…I was myself.

At school I had friends and I think I got along fine - but…I don't know…I think I was  belligerent sometimes with kids. I'm not sure I was ever all that comfortable in social settings, school or otherwise.

I think I might have been on edge a lot.

But that might be overselling it.

Because I did OK - I attended high school with no one who knew me from grades 1-8. That gave me a chance to figure out how to handle people (and present myself to them) and then by the time I got to college I was pretty socially well-adjusted. It's there that I met life-long friends and of course afterwards when I met my wife and kind of hit my social stride.

I was probably around 8 in this picture above, because we moved out of that house by 1986. That dude would never believe he'd be pushing 10 years of marriage to a great woman with 3 wonderful children.

I wonder what I was writing on that paper there. Probably something weird, like license plate numbers - I liked copying down license plate numbers.

But who knows - maybe there were shades of future John in there somewhere….

Nah. I never use yellow legal pad paper these days.

New Thing #317: Chasing Daylight

Weekends in November are almost exclusively reserved for raking leaves. And, not quite redundantly, raking leaves is exclusively reserved for weekends in November.

It's rare that I take part in that activity at other times. (Until I killed the big tree out front. Since its leaves start falling in May now I get a jump on those leaves and I don't wait until November for them. But that's not what I'm talking about here.)

This year, though, due to a number of reasons, I'm needing to squeeze in the raking at other times.

Which is how I found myself racing home on Monday afternoon to take advantage of what little daylight was left so that I could do some outside work.

Here's the confluence of events: I'm down a November weekend of yard work because we have to go to New York this weekend, it seems like the leaf collection stops a weekend earlier this year (or it could be because Thanksgiving is so late and the next week is December my internal leaf calendar is off), and my wife's busy work weekends have all forced me to accelerate my leaf-picking-up and take advantage of gathering leaves when I can.

So on Monday I had the rare (these days) opportunity to leave (no pun intended - leaf! Ha!) work at 3:45 and try to get home before it got dark (roughly 5pm) and do some weekday afternoon leaf pickup.

It helped that it was Veterans' Day - I realized when I left work that traffic was not going to be an issue. (Vegetable pickup was a slight issue - I had to swing by the farm for our Monday veggie pickup, but that's directly on the way home so it was only a minor - if any - detour.)

The picture above gives you a good idea of the amount of daylight when I got home - not quite dusk yet.

I was able to run inside, get into some sweats (yes, I'm at that stage where I don't care if I'm picking up leaves on my lawn in sweat pants. Who do I have to impress?), and pack two of those big bags with leaves. (That's in addition to what you see above, bringing this week's total to six bags, in addition to the 10 from a week ago. If history is any indication, there's still 10-15 more bags worth of leaves to be gathered.)

It was a productive afternoon - I felt like I snuck in some extra time, which was the whole point.

And, you might not think this way, but here's how I think:

When I'm finishing up my leaf pick-up for the season the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd (although I'd love to have Thanksgiving weekend to finish up every year if you're listening, Town of Framingham), I'll remember this extra bag and a half that I snuck in on Monday and I'll thank myself. (Ha! Thanksgiving. Pun not intended.)

New Thing #316: All The Buildings In New York

Remember when I told you about 99% Invisible way back in February? Well, I still can't recommend that podcast enough - or its accompanying website, which gives some visuals to go along with the audio.

But what I'm here to tell you about today is a website one of the most recent editions of the podcast opened my eyes up to.

It's called "All The Buildings In New York", and it's one man's attempt to draw the more than one million buildings in New York City.

There are a couple of reasons, I think, that this project speaks to me.

One is that it has that element of counting things off, which is such a part of my personality and I don't quite know how to explain what that means to me other than you can see by this year's project of mine that anything that allows me to number as I go is satisfying to me. (Although the lack of numbering on this New York project makes it a little hard for me to follow…unless they're numbered somewhere that I'm just not seeing.)

The second is that it features New York City, which I love. I heard on the podcast that the drawings span all five boroughs, and I wondered exactly what "all the buildings in New York City" meant - would the artist be drawing the private houses in places like Astoria?

Well, as that picture at the top of the page indicates, it looks like he is. I was thrilled when I clicked on the "Queens" tag to see that among the very few Queens buildings he drew was this one, which, though it doesn't show up on the map he has on the site (I'm not sure he has them all recorded there, because I'm sure of what I'm about to say), is roughly five blocks from where I grew up.

There were some sentiments that the artist, James Gulliver Hancock, expressed in the podcast that hit home with me too. He referred to his project as a diary, and there have been times that's how I've felt about what I'm doing - this 365 New Things In 2013 has been kind of like a daily journal. And as he says, while mine is in words, his is in pictures.

He also said that sometimes he looks at the skyline and different buildings as he goes through the city and feels anxious, because the task is so overwhelming. He wants to spend time, he says, drawing all of the different buildings. He doesn't realistically think he'll finish, but he knows what's before him - and joked that he would pass the project down to his son so it could be completed. (I've thought that about my World Series and Super Bowl matchups chart.)

I totally know how that feels.

But I also know how it feels to get positive feedback on what you've already done - and it helps make that hopeless chase of doing everything feel that much better.

Which is why I so appreciate all of the positive feedback I've received these past 315 days on this march to 365...

..and why I'll keep checking back on 'All The Buildings In New York' to check in on the progress and to see what other buildings I recognize.

And to simply appreciate a good, fun project.

New Thing #315: Booker T. And The MGs

In recent months, I've heard Booker T. Jones on a couple of my favorite podcasts. Not too long ago he was on Bullseye with Jesse Thorn, and then late last week he was on WTF with Marc Maron.

In both cases I came away awed by his immense talent at such a young age, his story, and his career.

And I realized that besides Green Onions, I knew very little of his work.

So this weekend I set out to fix that.

I downloaded 'The Very Best of Booker T. and the MGs', because I figured that was as good a place to start as any.

I should tell you that when I was growing up, we listened to the oldies station almost exclusively, so a lot of the songs from the era when Green Onions came out is very familiar to me.

And a lot of the songs on which the band probably played backup or which Booker T. Jones contributed to in any number of ways was probably stuff I knew. But I was less aware of him other than having heard the name "Booker T."

The only song I recognized at all from this 'Best Of' album besides Green Onions was Soul Limbo. I'm pretty sure that got some radio play too.

Besides the fact that I've come to like Booker T. Jones a lot through a couple of extensive interviews, I'm glad to now know more of his music.

As I discovered listening this weekend, it's great Sunday morning, getting-ready-for-the-day music.

And Jones isn't done - he's 68 years old, but is still putting out music, or collaborating - there's a lot he still wants to do.

Which means I might have some more Booker T. Jones interviews to look forward to.

New Thing #314: Following Everyone With My Last Name On Twitter

Growing up, I think everyone in my family thought that our last name was pretty unique. At least, we knew it wasn't as popular as other names we saw.

In those days, when everyone wasn't on the internet all the time, you'd come across people's names in a bunch of different places - sports rosters, news broadcasts, magazines, books, and more specifically, phone books.

And we never saw another Sucich - especially in the phone book, where so many other last names showed multiple entries.

But I'm discovering that Sucich isn't as rare as I once thought.

What I've found recently is that there are a few other people named John Sucich, besides my dad of course, that every so often I catch wind of.

There's a pilot named John Sucich in Michigan. There's a politically active Hawaiian named John Sucich - I think I received e-mails intended for him once.

There's also a bunch of obituaries for people named John Sucich that I've come across when I Google myself every once in a while.

I did that this weekend, just to see what came up. It brought up this nice article about my brother, which was a pleasant surprise. Sometimes there are links to the results of road races I ran more than a decade ago.

But I was reminded this weekend when I did it that I wanted to engage in a social experiment - because another place where I find a lot of 'Sucich' is Twitter.

And I've often thought about those other Suciches - do they wonder who we New York ones are as much as I wonder about them?

So I'm following them all - well, 7 of them, since I'm careful not to hit any that look like spam accounts - and we'll see what happens.

Maybe they're inactive and I won't follow them for long. Maybe they'll be great people that I become friends with. Maybe they're boring and I won't pay any attention after a day or two.

But we'll never know unless we give it a shot.

Update: Within 10 minutes of following the Suciches on Saturday, I heard from a Chelsea Sucich, who is in Tampa, and from Chicago. I had come across an article about yet another John Sucich who moved from Europe to Chicago in 1919 or so…I wonder if there's a connection there.

New Thing #313: The Schedule Makers

I was sitting at my daughter's dance class Saturday morning, trying to entertain my 2-and-a-half-year old, hoping to come across a New Thing. She started to tie and untie my shoes, leaving me with the perfect 15-minute window to check Twitter on my phone.

Lo and behold, Buster Olney tweeted out a link to a 30-For-30 Short called The Schedule Makers.

I had today's New Thing.

I haven't watched very many of the ESPN '30 For 30' series…but obviously, they've been critically acclaimed, and the ones I've seen have been good. (The one that stands out the most is the one about Reggie Miller and the Knicks, but I think I've seen a couple of others.)

This one is about Henry and Holly Stephenson, the couple from Martha's Vineyard who created the Major League Baseball schedule from 1982-2004.

A couple of things about this story enticed me:

• It was a short - it runs 12 minutes, 25 seconds, so I was able to watch it sitting there on the floor of Dancer's Workshop, while my daughter untied my shoes. (I said before 'tie and untie', but that's wrong - she didn't tie my shoes at all.) (Also parenthetically, this was also a New Thing - rarely do I open up videos if I'm not on wireless, but this thing came across the network pretty well - no stops and starts.)
• Because of the local aspect of the Stephensons, I had heard about them before. It always boggled my mind that the entire Major League Baseball schedule was created from a home on Martha's Vineyard, at least as far as the annual brief mentions in the baseball column in the Boston Globe went. I think, if I remember correctly, after they stopped making the schedules, there was some kind of profile in the Globe, but that was at least 8 years ago. I'm not even sure if I read it or I just knew it happened. Or maybe I'm completely wrong.
• It's not exactly in my wheelhouse as far as how my brain works, but I always was intrigued by the idea that the schedule had to be created. Given a week or something like that where I could singularly focus on it, I would love the challenge of scheduling 162 games for 30 teams.

The short doesn't get into the process a ton, but I liked hearing about the quirks that need to be considered when making the schedule: Baltimore likes to open at home, Seattle likes to be on the road for Seafarers' Week, other teams like to be home for certain events, Boston has to be home for Patriots' Day, and the Stephensons kind of laughed at all of the events scheduled in New York that needed to be taken into consideration.

I liked this picture they showed of the schedule sketch:

The teams are listed across the top, and the dates are down the side, and the numbers correspond to the opponent. That seems like something I could do.

One thing I know I would do differently - Holly Stephenson uses those pencils that are kind of mechanical but aren't really - they're yellow, they have the adjustable lead that comes out of the tip - but I've never loved those pencils. I've tried them - whenever I used them they had terrible erasers, and they broke easily. She also uses them when she does her New York Times crosswords, which they showed - she's a big puzzler. I always use a pen. I couldn't imagine using one of those pencils on the magazine paper.

I don't know that I would care enough to watch a documentary - no matter how short - on how schedules were made for other sports.

But there's something about the Major League Baseball schedule and Henry and Holly's long involvement in its creation that really piques my interest.

Clearly, based on this short, I'm not alone.

And, if anyone cares, I'd give it more than 12:25 if a longer documentary was ever made.

New Thing #312: Vitamin C

I used to be a big orange juice drinker. Well, not a huge orange juice drinker…but every morning with breakfast I would have a juice glass-sized glass of OJ.

My dad always did it and it seemed like a healthy thing to do, so I did it.

Then as part of my dental scare visit, I was told that orange juice was terrible for your teeth because of the sugar and acid.

Because at the time they thought there was a lot wrong with my teeth (it later turned out there wasn't…man, I think I need a new dentist), I pretty much stopped drinking orange juice cold turkey.

But every time I think I'm getting sick I think of the lack of Vitamin C in my diet because I no longer drink orange juice.

And now I think I have a solution to that problem.

My co-teacher recently introduced me to these Vitamin C supplements you see at right - they're gummies and they're shaped like little orange slices and I love them.

I can feel the health spread through my body whenever I have them.

Then this week, I got sick. Again, I decided it wasn't directly as a result of not having enough Vitamin C, but I figured it certainly wasn't helping that I wasn't having Vitamin C on a daily basis.

So I asked my wife to pick me up some because she was hitting CVS on Wednesday afternoon.

She got the chewable tablets in that first picture above.

They're not as tasty as the gummies, and I don't exactly feel that wave of healthfulness…but I don't like being sick.

And if it takes chewing these pretty ordinary tablets, well, that's what I'm going to do.

One problem I need to figure out a solution to: the tablets say I should take them with food. That's also what my Vitamin D pills say. And the Vitamin D are what I take with breakfast. So I'm not sure how to work in the Vitamin C - do I just pop both of them in at breakfast? What am I - an octogenarian?

I'm toying with the idea of leaving the Vitamin C at school and taking them at lunchtime - but of course what would I do on weekends? Dinner time seems too late in the day.

So there's some figuring left to do.

One positive - just like with the Vitamin D - I get to play my "before you know it" game.

There are 60 tablets in the Vitamin C bottle. That means I'll finish the bottle in 60 days, give or take a forget day or two.

In 60 days we'll be about a week into the new year. So before you know it, 365 New Things In 2013 will be over, we'll be past all of the holidays, and my winter break will be over and I'll be back at school.

But I bet I'll be healthy.

Because I'll have taken two straight months of Vitamin C.

New Thing #311: No Shave November

OK. You caught me. I shaved last Friday, November 1st.

And I cleaned up around the beard this week.

But I'm growing my (now annual) beard a little earlier this year.

And technically I'm not fully participating in "No Shave November".

But a pre-Thanksgiving beard is kind of a New Thing.

First of all, there are a lot of wonderful people doing great things by growing facial hair to raise money and awareness to battle cancer.

I toyed with the idea of a fundraiser for my facial hair…but "No Shave" November is also a little bit of a "Too Many Things Going On In" November in these parts.

So I'm hoping that I can be a participant in the sense that someone sees my facial hair and it makes them think of donating or something.

I wanted to grow my beard in super-early this year, but I was worried it would be mistaken for support for the Red Sox in their playoff chase. So I waited until the World Series was over. Friday, November 1st was the last day I shaved. I grew in what I had over the weekend, and then cleaned it up for school on Monday.

And away we go.

(I am consciously going with no picture to accompany this post - I'm having trouble taking a picture of my face to show the facial hair without looking creepy.)

The only tricky thing is that I have parent conferences this week and I was worried about looking sloppy for them. But I think it's coming in neat…and people are kind of used to seeing me with a beard each year. I think. No one's complained yet, anyway.

In the past I've grown the beard over winter break, or Thanksgiving break, and its impact on my school persona has been minimal. This year, it's happening during the school day - no one has seemed to mind yet.

So the time frame is a little different. But otherwise, it's the same old beard - a few more white hairs than last year, but everything's the same.

Even the fact that my wife doesn't really like it.

New Thing #310: Starting From Scratch

For the past year-plus - I'm not even sure how long this extends back to - my friend Kevin and I have had the best 'Draw Something' streak in the world. We were at 287 straight drawings guessed.

I'm pretty sure it was from the very beginning of the game - we just started playing and never got any of our drawings wrong.

Until Saturday.

And you're looking at the problem.

I'm not going to tell you what that drawing is yet. See if you can guess it. I bet you can't.

It's Kevin's drawing. I'm not telling you because I blame him. It's not a great drawing of what it's supposed to be, that's for sure.

But I've had a few of those myself during our streak and he's been able to figure out what I had drawn. So there's no excuse on my part.

I don't know if you play the game at all, but for me at least, sometimes it's hard to get psyched up for your turn. It feels more like a burden when you get the notification that you're up. And you slap something together and hope that the streak continues. I know I've done that on more than one occasion.

But that's what I like about the game too. Because even the most abstract drawing, with just one key characteristic, can give itself away to your playing partner. It's a great sociological experiment, really.

OK. Back to the drawing at hand.

It looks evil. So automatically I went with something devil-like. And I could not for the life of me figure it out. My mind was on evil, and then I worked in the S.S. and I was trying to think of anything that would work. I came up with nothing.

Turns out it was supposed to be Elmo.

A couple of important pieces were missing from this Elmo - first of all, his eyes were in the wrong place. And there was no nose. Even a "Hi, Hi!" would have helped. (The green and yellow "S.S." is a better clue than I realized…but it wasn't enough. Kevin says he regrets not putting "Tickle Me" in there. That certainly would have helped.)

I've drawn Elmo for many a Draw Something game. I have to say that I could have done better. I have done better. I know I've drawn Elmo in games with my wife…maybe even in one of the 287 previous drawings for Kevin. I put an image of how I might have drawn Elmo below. I know it's not perfect, but it captures what separates Elmo from a devil image.

But, in fairness…I have three children. I've seen a lot of Elmo. Kevin hasn't.

New Thing #309: Skipping A Week

If I get my Sports Illustrated on Saturday, that means it's late.  Usually it'll come on Thursday, and if it doesn't come until Saturday, well, that means I have a lot of reading to do in fewer days to make sure I'm done with it before the next issue comes.

And this week, I got the Sports Illustrated NBA Preview on Saturday.

Which is a problem, because it's a thick edition of the magazine. That's too short of a turnaround for me.

The other problem?

I was supposed to get this edition of the magazine a week ago.

Now, I don't particularly love the NBA Preview magazine. It's been a while since I cared a whole lot about the NBA, and this edition of Sports Illustrated is a whole lot of  information about something for which I do not care all that much anymore.

But, here's a little quirk of mine: I must read every word in every Sports Illustrated.

Not just Sports Illustrated - any magazine to which I subscribe. (I used to get TIME. The combination of needing to read every word in that and SI got to me. SI won. I unsubscribed from TIME.)

The magazines that come with the Sunday newspapers are exempt from this rule…but the articles which I do read regularly in those magazines need to be read through before I recycle them….in case you were wondering.

Anyway, this SI situation (SItuation?) presents my quirkiness with a big problem. Do I read through the NBA Preview magazine and possibly upset my Sports Illustrated reading pattern for weeks? Or do I break one of my unwritten rules? (You're surprised my rules aren't written down, aren't you?)

Silver Lining! The best part about this situation is that I have a use now for my friend Justin's Sports Illustrated Review. Every week (well, most every week. I am on top of it, and he's missed a couple in the past couple of months.) Justin writes about that week's edition of Sports Illustrated - what's worth reading, his reaction to the articles, and what's not worth your time.

I love these reviews. Absolutely love them. But I've never had any use for them as reviews - I just read them for entertainment.

Except for this week. I'll go through what Justin wrote and see if there's anything worth checking out before I give up on the NBA Preview. I think his opinions gel very closely with mine…so this should work just fine.

For your information - you should check out Justin's reviews each week - he's a funny writer. They're at Sports Crackle Pop!

As for me - let's just say I hope I don't have to rely on another one of his reviews anytime soon.

I'll need a while to recover mentally from not reading the whole NBA Preview.

New Thing #308: 365 Days of New Music

Here's a website I can relate to: It's called The Ruckus, and they have a feature going right now called '365 Days of New Music.'

It came to my attention because of their October 16th entry - none other than Matt Sucich. (Hey! He's got some new music/videos to check out - head over to his website to listen/watch.)

But that got me to check out the site a little.

I'm down to about 7 or so more Music Mondays, and coming up with these 52 New Music experiences has been hard enough.

I can't even imagine what it was like to do a whole year's worth.

So to that I say, nice work, Ruckus.

Because I assume this gets to a point where you really have to work your way through it.

If you're going to try 365 new musical acts - songs or bands - you're bound to hit a few clunkers.

I hit a couple of bands I enjoyed when I clicked around their site - most notably Noble Hunter - but hitting one I didn't like was enough to turn me off the entire project.

So I definitely applaud the effort.

And who knows - I might rely on the site once or twice more in these last few weeks as I try to expose myself to a few more new music experiences.

I just hope I click on something I end up liking.

New Thing #307: Yard Work, Times Two

I'm not the biggest fan of yard work. Actually, once I'm immersed in it, it's not too bad.

The bigger problem is - I have no idea what I'm doing out there.

I can mow the lawn and I can do some weeding…but I'm mostly just faking it.

I'm doing what I think I'm supposed to be doing…and I'm probably not doing it well.

Which is probably why, for the first time ever, I ended up having to do some stuff over again this weekend.

It's November, and in my front and back yard that means it's time to pick up the zillions upon zillions of leaves that have accumulated.

In the front it's especially tedious - our driveway is like a wind tunnel that attracts all of the neighbors' leaves. (Though - bright spot! - due to what I believe is my negligence but could be due to a blight of some kind, the big tree in our front yard that used to produce even more leaves has pretty much died. So each year it loses its leaves in April or May, and by October/November it doesn't factor in to what I have to pick up.)

This summer, though, when I wasn't at school working, I took advantage of the girls being at camp to work in the yard. I did significant work back there that I had neglected for a couple of summers. So I had a bunch of bags sitting in my yard, under an overhang, filled with yard waste, waiting for the fall for when my town does leaf pickup. (Framingham sets certain weeks where, along with the trash pickup, they come to get our leaves and sometimes brush. These were all things I didn't have to worry about growing up in Queens and living in Boston before becoming a homeowner.)

Anyway, what you see in the picture above is  one of those bags filled with yard waste. As you can see, it's ripped. And what was in it is falling out of it. And that happened with all ten or fifteen bags I worked on this summer.

Apparently, the bags are very biodegradable. Unfortunately, that means the rain and other conditions since July have worn the bags away to almost nothing.

I discovered this circumstance when I lifted one of the bags to bring it from the back to the front for the garbage pickup. The bottom fell right out.

So not only did I spend Saturday picking up some of the leaves in the front, but I also had to buy some new bags to move the contents of each of the old bags into in order to get them to the front of the house.

There's only one thing worse than doing yard work once…and that's doing it twice.

Or, actually, just as bad is finally getting all of the leaves off the ground, and then watching the last leaves fall onto the pristine driveway.

It'll be a while before I'm facing that situation though.

I still have a lot of cleaning up to do.

New Thing #306: Caffe Americano

I'm no coffee expert. I think I've written before about my go-to coffee drinks:

There's dark roast or french vanilla (or the classic old regular) at Dunkin' Donuts, hazelnut macchiato or mocha at Starbucks, and regular coffees almost everywhere else.

But Karma Coffee isn't really like everywhere else.

Here's the thing about Karma Coffee - it's one of those independent coffee shops which sells complicated beverages that I don't really understand.

It's like Starbucks in that way....except with Karma I like their regular coffee and don't feel the need to find something flavored.

Actually, I've liked everything I've had at Karma so far. (Karma, you'll remember, is where I get my coffee most Saturday mornings now that I'm taking my daughter to dance class in the same parking lot as this coffee shop.)

I've tried their cappuccino and their regular coffee...but that regular coffee is where the problems start. They ask me hard questions when I just say "coffee", like "Ecuadorian?" Or maybe it was "Guatemalan?" I'm not sure I remember. But either way, it's the kind of question I'm not prepared to answer when I just want a cup of coffee.

Same with the rest of the coffee menu there. But as I work my way through the different beverages on the menu, I'm trying something new almost every week...and I'm doing my best to learn about them.

My most recent try was a Caffe Americano, and what I learned about it was, according to Wikipedia, it's espresso with hot water added to it. The site says that gives it a similar strength as (though different flavor from) regular drip coffee.

Which is good for me to know - because I'm very afraid that one of these things I ordered will end up not having enough caffeine...or any caffeine at all.

(All coffee places - independent or no - call non-caffeinated coffee decaf...right?)