On cat napping

     I used to use the expression that "Naps were only for kittens and babies", but admittedly as I've aged, I've grown to appreciate the benefits of short snoozes.

     I'll admit it now, I like a good, short, cat nap.  I've mocked those before who needed them or thought it represented a weakness of character, but now I've come around on the topic and think I am much better on those days that I get to incorporate a short snooze mid-day.  Although humans are

currently monophasic sleepers, meaning that we divide our day into two distinct parts, one of wakefulness and one for sleep, it's interesting to note that 85% of mammals are polyphasic sleepers who have periods of rest throughout the day.  Scientists aren't even sure that we are meant to be monphasic sleepers as we have portions of the population, for example children and the elderly, who practice polyphasic sleeping and in fact have whole cultures that incorporate a mid-day rest into their days.  I can only speak for myself but I know I am better able to focus, concentrate and execute in the afternoon after I have had a short relaxation period.

     It wasn't always the case, and as mentioned above, I used to think it was silly to need a nap.  My Dad napped when he wanted and where he wanted.  When Dad konked out in his Lazy Boy in the middle of the living room, it was your job to keep the noise down while he slept.  I'm not given that same courtesy when I nap on the weekends, doors slam, people yell, and if I complain, I'm told the

How my Dad slept

right place for napping is my bed, but that's not correct, I was taught better.  The right place for napping is a couch or a chair that is not your normal bed, because you want to differentiate where you get your actual evening sleep and where you take your naps.  One is meant to be less restful and short in duration and the other, if you are lucky, is longer and uninterrupted.  My Mom used to nap right before bed, and my wife does this too.  We'd be watching TV just before 10 at night and soon Mom's head would be tipped back and soft snoring sounds would be emanating from it.   This is actually the bad kind of napping as it could inhibit your ability to sleep when you do go to bed.  The good kind is more often done in the early afternoons or opposite the time when you would normally sleep.    

     On my travel days, it's tough to incorporate a nap into my schedule.  I get up early for flights, like this am, often prior to 3:00 am and then I run all day frequently getting back to my hotel in the late afternoon or early evening.  Those days are tough and I'm wiped out physically and mentally at the end of

This is how I sleep on planes

them.  The work I do those evenings tends to be sub-par, so I'll try to not do spreadsheets and things that require a lot of focus.  I can do repetitive tasks well but my creativity is low and my concentration suffers.  Alternatively, on my home office days, I get to incorporate a short nap into my lunch break.  I've recently read that one of the most productive way to nap is the "caffeine nap".  It works by downing a cup of coffee or other caffeinated beverage and then immediately hunkering down for a 15-20 minute nap.  The caffeine takes some time to work through your system, so at the same time you would awaken from your sleep inertia, the caffeine is clearing your body of adenosine, the chemical that makes you sleepy, so you wake up refreshed in two different ways.  That's my new favorite way to incorporate a nap and when I go back to my office, I feel the same as I do when I go out to my office in the early morning.  I'm glad I don't 

How I feel if I don't nap some days

work in a corporate or office setting because despite all the scientific evidence there is that shows napping makes you a better employee, there is still a stigma attached to napping that you are "lazy" or "old" if you use naps.  What benefits do you gain,  you may ask?

      Studies have shown that naps can restore alertness, enhance performance and reduce mistakes and accidents.  Naps improve your working memory, they prevent work burnout and reverse information overload.   They improve your mood and health and they heighten your sensitivity and creativeness.  They may be good for heart health too as a recent study in Greece showed a 64% reduction in deaths due to cardiac disease among those who napped 3 times a week for 30 minutes.  A NASA study on pilots showed a 34% improvement in performance and a 100% improvement in alertness for those pilots that napped 

How Nibbler sleeps

for 40 minutes.  Now I called this blog cat napping, because in my house it's difficult to lay down in a common area without our cat, Nibbler seeking to join you.  There is no stigma attached to Nibble napping wherever or whenever she wants, we all think it's cute when she does it.  I'll close this short blog, defending the practice of non-nocturnal sleeping by mentioning that if you nap, you are in good company (aside from my cat's).  Napoleon, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, John F Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Edison and George W Bush were all ardent nappers.   I don't claim to be a world leader or famous inventor, but I do claim that I have this one habit in common with them all, and with that I say "to sleep, perchance to dream"  Good night, I've got a plane to catch and hopefully some zzzz's too.  

The day I lifted 600 lbs.....

     It's a common story where a child is trapped under something heavy and a parent (usually the mother) finds the strength to lift a seemingly impossible weight to free the child.  That is not the story I'm about to relate, no children were involved, just a grown man who acts like one. 

     There's a lot of back story necessary for this blog, and you have the right to get the picture painted with the widest brush.  I'm choosing to keep the location anonymous for this blog and you'll see why as you read through it.  I'll preface the story to say that I had been working out for over a year straight before this happened.  My girlfriend had invited me to join her at the gym in the early mornings and I had accepted her offer.  Initially I used only the elliptical which was the equipment that I used most

while traveling, but over time I started incorporating the Nautilus weight machines into my workout too.  Over the course of that year, I gradually kept adding more weight to my workouts and as I did I discovered that my legs were far more fit than my arms were.  I could "lift" a lot more weight with my legs than my arms and it was true for every machine there.  Just prior to the events in this story. I had even maxed out one of the leg machines at this gym for the weights that it had on it, the leg curl machine.  It's pictured above to give you an idea.  That machine, like a lot of them at this gym, uses preloaded weights and you move a pin up and down to the desired level. The other type machines use free weights that you load yourself onto bars.  This gym has two of those types for leg

How I pictured the weights

presses, one that pushed the weight straight out and away from you and the other where you lie inclined with the press plate above you and the weight suspended above your body.

     I'd used both machines multiple times each week and I had kept on adding weights to them as I did so.  Mind you, the goal wasn't to set a weight record or anything, I just added weight as the previous weight got easier to do.  With the inclined press I soon was pushing more than 400 lbs up and pretty happy with that level.  On almost all the days that I went, as I approached the machine, I would have to add weights

What the inclined leg press looks like 

to it prior to starting my workout, which as a highly competitive person, told me that no one else at the gym was lifting more than me on that particular piece of equipment.  It was a good feeling to have considering I really had only been at it about a year.  So every day, as I did my workout, I'd get a little ego boost as I approached some of the machines and have to add weights manually or move the pins down a few places before I started, and for those of you that know me well, you know how important ego boosts are to me, which should now set you up well for the day that this story takes place.

     The morning of the "incident" started like any other, except for the fact that I awoke with virtually no pain, stiffness or swelling.  I have a mild form of arthritis that almost daily presents itself with one of these conditions and affects primarily my feet and hands.  I'm able to manage it with ibuprofen, so normally within an hour of rising, I can go about my day in a fairly normal fashion.  On this morning, however, no symptoms presented and I was feeling my oats like at no other time and it

My view from the bottom of the inclined press

was a workout day, bonus !  I went to the gym and started attacking the weights with vigor.  Soon the regular crowd came in and I was joined by my girlfriend, a neighbor, a local, and a couple of high school students getting an early workout in.  I moved from machine to machine adding more weights to each one than I had ever done and successfully pushed them up, thereby gradually increasing my confidence.  As I rotated on to the inclined press, I stopped and stared at the machine and the weight on it.  There were about 6 - 45 lb weights on each side of the machine, which put the added weight around 540 lbs plus the weight of the press plate.  This was a lot more weight than I had ever attempted but I was feeling really, really, good and I just couldn't bring myself to take any of the weights off.  I'd never had to before, I said to myself, so why couldn't I do this much?  The person before me presumably had done it, right? If you've ever doubted previously that I was good at sales, that morning I was the master of selling myself on the idea that I could actually lift that much weight. 

     As I inserted myself under the pile of weight, I called the neighbor over to spot me.  He asked me

What the pressure felt like on my legs

thrice if I was sure of my decision, which should have been enough of a red flag for me to not attempt it, but I tested the weight with my feet and was able to lift it up a few inches and set it back down with my legs fully extended so I assured him that I knew what I was doing.  I asked if he was ready and I threw back the safety catches that held the weight and then took the 600 lbs onto my feet.  I slowly started letting the weight come down and by my measure I had lowered it 5-6 inches successfully before my legs would not cooperate the the weight started falling faster than I intended and simultaneously I experienced a severe pain in my groin.  I called to my neighbor to assist me, and he wrapped his arms around the 
weight, but my legs weren't really working at all to hold the weight anymore, and he could only slow the descent of the weights.  The press came down and slowly squished my 5'6" body into a more compact position, and then the high school students came and helped lift the weight back off from my body.  As I lied there broken and contemplating the extent of my injuries, I looked over at my girlfriend and she was as white as white could be.  The other local walked by and I'm not sure what I expected him to say, but what he said was, "Good, you just stay there and think about what you just did"  Only then did the feeling of foolishness overwhelm me, and it lasted well after  I crawled out from under the machine and limped out to my car to head to the doctors. 

     The diagnosis, after the expected lecture, was a torn sartorius muscle and it would heal on it's own given enough time.  The ego would take longer.  I know how foolish it was to attempt.  I know I

The sartorius muscles in the thighs

shouldn't have even tried it, and that I put my friends through an awful thing, however, you've got to know my nature by now, I can't walk by that machine to this day without me thinking I should start to try to do it again.  Even the pain of having my groin split like a wishbone doesn't stop the thought from coming.  I even named this blog, "The day I lifted 600 lbs" not "the day I failed to lift 600 lbs".  Rest assured, to this day, I haven't even been able to get back under there at all, much less start to load the weight on.  The moral is, that if some morning you see me, headed to the gym, feeling my oats with a skip in my step, do us all a favor and pull a Tonya Harding move and whack me in my knee.  Trust me, it will hurt me less than the alternative. 
    

Where the heck did this weekend go?

     It was a 4 day weekend and you'd never have known it looking at my house.  I had the best of plans on what we were going to do, but then life got in the way.  Does this ever happen to you?

     It started like any other weekend, except I was still traveling on Friday.  When possible, although I do travel almost weekly, I like to keep it to Tuesday-Thursday so I don't endanger my home time with late planes and such.  Last Friday, however, I was still traveling home from a trip to Ontario Canada.  I had ambitious plans for Friday afternoon but on the way home I stopped by Molly's house in Buffalo to check out her car (she had a small fender bender) and then over to see her new workplace.

The bar inside of Nektar

She has started work as a waitress again at a bar/restaurant called Nektar that is located right around the corner from her.  She'll actually make more money in this job and the quality of life is definitely better, but for the life of me, I don't understand how in the health care field you can go from being worth $9.00 an hour to $35.00 an hour after you get your RN, but with no steps up in pay in-between?  I blame President Obama, can't say why, but he seems like an easy target.  I met the owner of Nektar, Stavros who complimented Molly's work ethic, which I liked, and then took a Gyro home with me to eat at my desk, which I liked even better.  I finished work late on Friday afternoon and then went down and opened the kitchen in the Garaj-Mahal to start prepping for a wedding rehearsal next week.

     I had to make a quick trip down to Penn Yan for a few things prior to starting, so being the hunter-gatherer that I am I also offered to grab a pizza.  I stopped at a local farm store for some Hungarian Peppers (shout out to Tomion's), and then at the grocery store for some cream cheese and Italian

Making Armadillo Eggs

 sausage, I then gassed up and headed home.  Char and Nolan offered to help me with making the appetizer, which was Armadillo Eggs ( How to Make Nolan's and Bill's Armadillo Eggs ) but even with the help, it took a couple of hours to do the 150 of them.  I actually kept track of what they cost to make this time and surprisingly it was only $.25 apiece but then if you add the labor, they cost $.85.   One of the things that makes it easier to work in the kitchen out there is the music.  I bring my Ipad out and use the free Spotify app, but I use my Bose Soundlink speaker that I set away from me to listen to it.  Char got this for me for Christmas, and it is probably one of the best gifts that I have ever received.  It was even more impressive considering that I mentioned it just one time at a Super Bowl party the year prior, and she remembered and bought it for me (I had 

My Bose Soundlink

long ago forgotten it and was a little stumped when I opened the box).  Anyway, it's great sound and you can control the volume from the Ipad that is nearby but still have the music coming from across the room.  Come to the Garag-Mahal sometime and you can check it out.  We finished the work, cleaned up the kitchen and then headed into the house.  We had just enough time to watch a taped episode of Castle, then we all headed to bed.

     We picked up watching Castle this summer during the rerun season, so we've been taping them and trying to watch them in order.  We like the show, but I'll agree with some other people that it is kind of like Bones but with the roles reversed.  I skipped breakfast with my brother Saturday am, but Nolan and I had an early work gig for Scouts.  We cleaned out the Troop room where we kept our things for the last few decades.  The building was sold and the church that purchased it needed the space.  We'll be buying a Troop trailer shortly, but a kind parent is letting us store the stuff in her barn in the meantime.  We had a quick lunch and then Char and I headed off to BJ's to do the shopping for

 the wedding rehearsal.  They had a great deal on 0X1 Strip loins so I bought one of those too, to cut into steaks later.  Char put some time in at work on the computer, while I set up equipment that I would need. I layered a crockpot with chicken to make some Mexican stewed chicken for use in another appetizer.   In the late afternoon we set up an old army tent that we found in amongst the old stuff in the Troop room.  We got an invitation to my girlfriend's ( My girlfriend Stretch) house to hang out at her fire pit, so we threw a quick entree together and headed out around 6:30.  Our friends built a beautiful big fire pit at their house with an inset pit and a stone patio surrounding it. We've got to enjoy it several times this summer.  We headed to bed as soon as we got home, no time for Castle that night.

     We made it to church the next morning and heard the new pastor, Father Stan.  We liked him.  We ran into close friends that we hadn't seen all year and managed to catch up before mass started.  Back at home Char had laundry to do and Nolan and I were checking on some drainage work on the property and fixing a split hose.  I got to wear a tool belt and everything.  We cleaned up by mid-day and we headed off to different parties.  Nolan's was in Cdga and ours was local.   That killed almost the rest of the day, but we did squeeze in a quick couple of Castle episodes (We are on season 2 now). 

     I got up early next morning to pull the chicken (stop it already, I was shredding stewed chicken).  I spent the am running around to my brother Ace's house to get some catering equipment and stopped in to see my sister Wilson too.  Wilson's son hit me up for some Boy Scout popcorn, he saw me

It's Boy Scout popcorn time

pulling in and ran and put his uniform on.  He knows that I have a standing rule about not saying no to a Scout in uniform.  I made some salsa after I got home and Char and Nolan walked the block to sell some popcorn too.  I packed for a trip but tried to stay out of the office.  I snuggled up with Nibbler and took a quick cat-nap and then went back to the Garaj to cut up the strip loin.  I got 16 thick cut steaks out of it and I set 3 aside for dinner.  The strip was 
$4.99 a lb and the per steak cost was $4.00, so I was pretty happy with both the price and the quality.  I roasted some corn to go with dinner and Char made a fruit salad and we ate on the deck to finish off our Holiday weekend.  There was enough time to watch a couple more Castle's before we headed to bed and so we did.  That's the long and the short of it, it doesn't seem like a lot, and no big projects got finished even with the 4 days, but that's how it goes some weekends, just slip-sliding away.



    

   

Lock the car Dear, it's squash season out there.....

     Living in the country has it share of trials and tribulations, dust storms, driving 10 miles to the grocery store, power outages, but at this time of the year all of those take a back seat to the sudden appearance of your neighbor's excess garden produce, on your property, of which, the worst has to be squash.

     It was an uneventful day a week ago, a day seemingly like any other, right up until that changed.  I approached the back door of my house and there, set innocently in front of it, was a bulging plastic shopping bag.  My face went white, my spine tensed, and I peered over to peek at the contents whilst

Squash

all the while not actually touching it (if you do, it automatically becomes yours, kind of like tag (You're it !)).  It was full of cucumbers and tomatoes.  I quickly glanced around but in a scene reminiscent of every B Dracula movie, the streets were quickly emptying, the shutters on houses were banging shut, and heavy curtains were drawn together with just enough space for an eye to peer through.  Damn, they got me.   I leaned over, picked up the bag, but before I did, I fished my remote from my pocket, turned back to the driveway and locked my car, because I knew that where there were cucumbers, there were bound to be squashes. 

     How does it start?  You move to the country and someone suggests that having a garden with would be a good idea (which it is).  You plow and make rows and then plant and inevitably you over-plant, for instance, 6 zucchini plants doesn't sound like a lot, does it?  (It is).  The thing about

More Squash

 planting things at the same time is, that they tend to come up at the same time, so after weeks of watching things grow in your garden there are suddenly a couple of weeks full of bountiful harvests.  You try and consume the excess produce, then you slice and freeze and then pickle and can, but inevitably you run out of time, shelf and freezer space and energy, while you still have buckets of produce to deal with, and more coming at you each day.  You've put a lot of time and energy into this, so you don't want to see it go to waste, so as you scan the horizon over your tomato plants, what is the first thing that you see in the distance?  That's right, your neighbors houses and that's when the idea forms. Didn't the Pilgrims do it after all, or was it the Indians?  So with the best of intentions, history on your side and a 5 gallon bucket of produce banging against your shin, you start making the rounds, to share your bounty.  Your neighbors, however,  know this drill as they've seen it before.  They've watched your garden as closely as you have and know when your peak production 

Hidden Squash

time will be.  They've scheduled their family vacations around it, or locked themselves in, like housebound agoraphobics just to avoid you.  They are in there, sitting amongst their stockpiled water jugs, car parked 2 streets away to give the appearance of not being home, and they sure as hell, are not going to answer the door during squash season.  After 2 hours of lugging the bucket around, you return home, discouraged, but not giving up.

     Over the next couple of weeks you look for every opportunity to give some vegetables away.  You buy decorative baskets, assort them with varied vegetables and try and deliver them.  It's like a macabre reverse ding, dong, ditch, where you run up to a house, ring the bell, drop your basket and try to make it back to the car before the neighbors can make it to the door.  FYI. a basket full of squash with a bow tied to it, is still a basket full of squash.  Woe is the child with the late summer

They started with 3 that day

birthday, as you will not be above sending zucchini home as a party favor.   FYI, a zucchini, painted with a face or made into a Mr. Potato Head,  is still a zucchini.   This only works once and you have to think carefully about how popular your child is before you use this nuclear option.  Trust me, the conversation goes like this....."Mom, why can't I go to Tommy's birthday party?  "Because, they are (gasp) gardeners, now go play in your room with the curtains pulled".   Rookie harvesters will make a classic squash collector's error and try and put a table out in front of their house with a free squash sign on it and a half a dozen or do squashes.   At the end of the day, when they check the table, the number of squash will have doubled or tripled while they weren't watching.  Another method is to go out in teams with one person distracting "the mark" while you slip a basket close to

them, only to be discovered after you've departed.   Even with all these tactics, it's inevitable that eventually you find yourself looking at unlocked cars (you considered the collection basket at church but the guy wielding it seems pretty frail).  Once you've done your first break and enter, squash leave, you never go back, which is exactly why I lock my car during squash season.

     I want to end on a positive note and my sister (Wilson, who I just named in this blog) gave me just the story.  I swear, what you are about to read is true.  Wilson's Mother in Law, now passed, used to stay with them in their country home, which was at a stop sign on the Stanley Cabbage trail.  Trucks overflowing with cabbage would drive by their home all day and because cabbages are round, the trucks are overfull and they have to stop, the momentum regularly causes cabbage to roll from the trucks and fall to the ground.  Farmers call this acceptable loss, my sister's family calls it dinner.  The story goes that Wilson's MIL would run for the door each time a cabbage truck would pass and search the ground for dropped

Wait for it.......

produce.  One week, while she stayed, the pickings were slim and to bolster her spirits, her son bought a cabbage at a stand, scuffed in on the asphalt before he returned home and rolled in onto his front lawn, awaiting the next truck.  A short time later, his mother heard the brakes of a cabbage truck, ran out again and returned with her scuffed cabbage proudly in hand and a smile stretched across her face.  I'm positive that, that smile of hers, was repeated last week as a particularly overloaded truck turned the corner near Wilson's house and lost 30 or so cabbages.  My sister Wilson's kids all ran out, collected them, and then channeling their deceased grandmother, handed them out to passing cars with a sign proclaiming "Free Road Cabbage".   I didn't pass by there that day, but if I had, you can be sure, my car doors would have been locked.



    
    

It's time to put my ass in a pew again.

     This morning I try to motivate myself to get to church more often than I have been going.  I need church, but my record has been spotty of late.

     I've already shared with you that this was the busiest summer my family has ever seen (The Summer that never was ), but what I haven't shared with you is what has suffered, due in part, to this busy schedule, and it was our weekly attendance at mass (Hey Sister Wilson, should Mass be

capitalized in that sentence?).  It's a weak excuse, I'll say that right up front, so we've had some discussions of late on what we were going to do to correct it.  I'll start with why we think we need to, and work to our solution at the end.

     The beauty of marrying someone who wasn't raised with religion, is that you get an opportunity to see a faith through their eyes too.  Admittedly, although my parents raised me with a strict adherence to weekly mass attendance, in my college years, my record for attending was abysmal.  I suspect that our adult children are thus far following that model. My wife, however, was not raised in a church going household or with any organized religion.   As my wife and I considered getting married though, she agreed to go through the Catachumenate program and to become Catholic, like I professed to be.  It was odd, how

This resembles me in church as a kid

with virtually no interaction with religion, she as an aspiring wife and eventual mother, had an instinct telling her that this was of value both for her marriage and for child-rearing.  I took years more to come to this conclusion, and it started with her taking the classes.  She'd attend each week but inevitably come home with more questions that could be answered in an hour class, so she'd ask me.   This was the start in our relationship of my wife vastly overestimating my listening skills and my acumen on a variety of topics.  The result was that I had to study right along with her.   Then one day on my way to work, I ran across a particularly disrespectful neighborhood kid and I 

Dear God, please don't let me raise a kid like this

pondered on how people would raise a kid like that, but I had no experience with that, I did, however know how my parents raised us and being a fan of myself and my siblings, I decided to copy this model.  It started with weekly mass attendance. I think it's fair to say that with our two older children and prior to this year, our mass attendance was a solid B.  We'd miss one here or there, but those kids gained the benefit of weekly mass attendance, just like my siblings and I did.  Then came this summer. 

     Our favorite mass at our favorite church is the 9 am mass at St. Mary's in Canandaigua.  We live about a half an hour away, so A.I.S time for church is 8:30 am.    That comes pretty early when you come in or stay up past midnight on Saturday 

on a regular basis.  This weekend, for example, we went to bed at 3 am on Sunday morning, and slept well beyond our A.I.S. time.  When we do get up we talk about going to other masses, but don't know when they are, where they are etc.  A very lame excuse.  We missed so many this summer that we ended up creating a habit of not going.  Incidentally they say that it takes 21 days to either create or break a habit.  I'd roughly estimate that we've got about a 33% attendance rate for the summer to date, not an impressive score.  So knowing that we find value in it, and knowing our excuses for not attending, how are we making this course correction?

     We'll start with a firm commitment to attend mass on at least a weekly basis.  I say at least because I ran into a peer a few weeks ago who had downloaded an app for his Iphone that showed him where the nearest Catholic church was and the times of their masses.  He had been making some daily masses early in the am, and I was impressed with his commitment to improve himself in that manner.  I'd like to do the same, so I'll download the app too.  For home, we are going to make a chart of mass

My Mother's original archdiocese, what a shock to see.

times.  I'd guess that in my area the masses for Sunday obligation start somewhere around 4:00 pm on Saturday and finish around 7 pm on Sunday.  That's over a 24 hour period that it gives us to make sure that we attend.  We'll chart out each one, and with a quick glance at it, we can insure that we can plan to make mass.  Our youngest child, Nolan starts high school this year, and my wife and I have discussed making our goal not to miss mass during his high school years.  We think that making that firm commitment will not only help us, but help Nolan too with what promises to be some challenging years.  My mother used to say that God only asked for a single hour each week from us, as it related to mass, and looking around at all our blessings, that seems like so little to give back.  The rest of the plan is simply executing it until we habitually are going to mass each week again and then to repeat the process.  It truly is that simple, and to finish this missive on mass, I'll just say...... see you in church.


    

    

Run, Run, Run, Run, Runaway

It's in our nature to seek out that which is better, even as adolescents, but at that time we lack relativity, so the grass looks greener over the fence a lot more often, so we sometimes vault over to check it out.  

     I know a good deal when I've got one, so to my knowledge, I never ran away from home.  Sure, I had days where the chore I was asked to do seemed so patently unfair that I was very unhappy, and I recall one time spending 20 minutes writing a letter to my father outlining how unfair giving me a particular chore was (The chore only took 5 minutes), but I never bolted from home.  You see three

A typical note left when running away

squares a day, a roof over my head and a bed to sleep in always looked better than the alternative life that I could imagine on the road, at any age that I might have considered leaving.  I blame Star Trek.  I never aspired to be captain Kirk, the impetuous leader of the crew, I identified more with Mr. Spock, the reasoned, logical, sidekick, who thought through his actions prior to taking them, chess, not checkers.  So I stayed with my parents, right up until the day that they kicked me out, but that wasn't the case with a particular sibling and my own children though.

     My brother Redface had the family record for running away.  His attempts rivaled those of Steve McQueen in the Great Escape, and if I had to put a number to them, I'd say he tried about 7 times.  Two of these attempts stick in my memory a little more than the others.  The first was one evening when a police car pulled up to the curb in front of my house, and an officer got out to talk to

my mother.  He questioned whether she was missing a child, and she replied while looking around, "I don't think so".  He then opened the back door of the squad car, and there sat my brother Redface.  In the trunk was his bike, and he had made it a few miles before the chain on his bike came off and when an officer checked on him, his fabricated story of going to visit his cousins didn't hold water.  The funny thing was that he was missing all day and we had never noticed.  It was pretty common for us all to head to the playground in the summer and stay there the better part of the day, so we would all catch up at dinnertime and this allowed him a long time to hit the open road before his absence was noticed.  It was pretty quiet at the dinner table that particular evening where Redface sat with his head down and tried to avoid eye contact with my father.  It was repeated a few years later when he tried to run away in the middle of practicing for the high school track team.  This was probably the latest (oldest) anyone in
the family had tried to run away, and I'm not sure how serious the attempt was, but in the midst of running around the town with the track team, he came upon a Volkswagen Beetle (Punchbug!) idling at a curb and he jumped in and tried to drive it.  He barely could see over the steering wheel and he put it into a ditch not too far from where he took it.  He was a slave to his impulses often and this was a perfect example of how he would act first and then regret his actions later.  He never really lost this wanderlust or idea of somewhere else being better that where he currently was.   As adults we worked together at a pizza place and when I asked him what he did on the weekend before, he'd often reply, " I drove to Connecticut" or a place like that.  He'd jump in his car, with no plan, no itinerary and just drive in a certain direction.  He'd sleep in his car most times, but would return for his Monday shift.  I'm not sure what my brother Redface was looking for out there, but I'm pretty sure he never found it.  It's highly probable that I never ran way because of his examples, he never made it out, and it was never better when he came back from one of his escape attempts either.

     My children's examples are far more tame than my brothers.  Our daughter Molly attempted to run away one day.  I'm sure it was in response to something egregiously done to her by her horrific

parents, but there she was one afternoon packing a backpack and heading out.  She was our first and if I knew anything about running away, it was that you had to call the bluff.  We wished her well and off she went around the block.  We were certain that she'd turn around and head back at any moment, right up until the moment that she didn't.  My wife had to chase her down with our van and negotiate with her as she ran parallel to her.  Her feet, however, were pointed away from home and she showed no sign of losing her nerve.  That's when we learned that Molly doesn't bluff, she does exactly what she says she will do.  Eventually my wife found the right combination of words that got her to come home.  We helped her to unpack her backpack and this was classic Molly too, there wasn't a damned thing in there to help her on the open road, it was just full of her favorite stuffed animals.  She's had her moments of leaping before she looks after then too that Mr. Spock would not approve of, and I suspect she's tied closer to her impulses than some others.

     Dan's attempt, that I remember, went a little differently.  We called his bluff too, but had the car keys ready, just in case.  He had packed and was headed out.  I remember a small rolling case of some sort that he took (did it have a bear on it?), but he never made it as far as Molly did.  We

watched from a concealed window as he made it to the end of the driveway and then slowly started walking in circles as he reconsidered his actions.  It took a few minutes and a few rotations before he headed back and informed us he had decided to stay.  Overjoyed. we killed the fatted calf and welcomed him back with open arms.  He at least had packed some food for the journey so he wouldn't have starved immediately on the road.  If those two kids had ever put their heads together, between the two of them, they probably had the nerve and the packing sense to successfully run away, but I'm kind of glad that they never did.  Our last child, Nolan insists that he attempted to run away too, but neither of us remember it happening.  I suspect that it never got beyond the planning stages because he's a lot like his father.  Thus ends this blog on bolting, but I'd love to hear some stories from my older siblings and from my readers.   I promise I'll stay around to read them. 

    

A whole blog on roast corn? Sure, why not?

The terms roast and corn may seem incongruous to some readers, as we've become a steamed corn society, or so it seems, but if you've ever had it the way my Dad used to make it, you'd look forward to it every summer, just like I do.

     Round about knee high at the 4th of July time, I start to get my cravings for freshly roasted corn.  My Dad spoiled me by teaching me how to roast corn and since I've tasted it that way I've become a 

sort of roasted corn snob.  I'll admit to picking some up at the local store, because they get the southern corn first and I can start practicing cooking it, but truly there is nothing better than Western NY corn from a local corn stand if you are going to take the time to roast it.

     I'm sure that my first taste of roast corn was the day before one of our family reunions.  You can read about that awesome tradition here (The Yarger Family reunion), but my Dad had another tradition attached to it and that was to hold a small party for his family the day before and to roast some corn at it.  You have to be a special kind of crazy to hold a family party the day before a 100-150 person family reunion, but that was just my

Brother Ace on the grill

Dad.  He couldn't get enough time with his siblings and his progeny, so he'd tailgate a day early for the reunion by hosting a smaller 25-40 person gathering at his house and I never knew it to not include a corn roast.  My Dad's long passed now, but thankfully my brother Ace and his wife have kept up this crazy tradition.

     So how do you roast corn?   It starts with selecting the right corn.  It must be fresh picked that day and larger ears have enough husks to keep them from burning.  You'll want to soak them in water for an hour or so before throwing them on the grill.  A charcoal fire will give you the best corn but if you have a gas grill, you can use that too.  You lay the corn directly on the grill, it's best if you alternate head to tail to fit more on there.  Open a beer.   What? It's going to take a while to do this, it's a hour long job if you do it right.  

Is a job done right until your wife inspects it?

As the corn starts to steam and then cook in the husks, you'll give it a quarter turn about every 10 minutes to make sure they are cooking evenly.  Eventually the heat will start to caramelize some of the kernels right through the husks and that is what you are waiting for.  My wife likes hers to be taken off the grill right before this happens, but to me, it's like eating steamed corn, so what's the point of roasting it?  I need some char on it in order to be happy.  You'll take them off and rest them for a minute, just because they are too hot to handle, and then you'll peel them back and finishing preparing the corn.

     My dad used paper plates and 2 quarter sticks of butter to finish the job and I'm a traditionalist so I do the same.  By the end of the job you've have corn shaped ridges in the butter, and butter smeared evenly over the corn ears.  Sure, they'll be some random bits of black burnt husks stuck in the butter, but that's to be expected.  A few years ago someone figured out that you could melt butter and float it on

At Ace's house roasting corn while he was away

top of a gallon of water and you could dip your corn in it and supposedly evenly coat your corn that way.  I've tried but, but I'll still go with the paper plate method.  That same person probably invented the "Cooler Corn" thing you've seen going around where you shuck the ears, put a dozen in a plastic cooler and then put a gallon of boiling water in it to steam them.  That may be a lot quicker, but you'll never convince me that corn out of a plastic cooler is going to taste as good as hot from a charcoal fire.  Quicker is rarely better kids.  After the corn is buttered, for me a few shakes of salt and pepper finish it and then you can decide how to eat it.  I like it eaten right off the cob, I prefer to do a typewriter motion for my first line, going left to right all along the ear, and then I start at the small end and spin the ear to remove the corn. 

     There is a popular notion that you don't actually eat corn, that you just "borrow" it, but that's about 1/3 correct.  Your body, if you are human, cannot digest the outer hull of the corn, it's cellulose and

Perfection

we lack the correct enzymes or specific proteins to break it down.  If you chew it well though, you'll digest all the inner parts of the corn which are the complex carbohydrates, sugars, proteins and some vitamins and minerals.  The hull is insoluble fiber, so you'll have the benefit of that passing through your system to help flush things out.  Thus ends today's science lesson.  You can decide on how many ears to eat, but remember that the "flushing out" effective is cumulative.  Pair anything you want with the corn, as long as the grill is on, I like to cook a steak along with it normally, but beware, with a belly full of corn and steak on a warm summer afternoon, spontaneous naps are known to happen.  This blog should have given you enough information to try this on your own, so what are you waiting for?  Start grilling. 

That was good, now time for a nap.