My Life

“Kids, this-piece-of-paper’s-got-47-words-37-sentences-58-words-we-wanna-know- details-of-the-crime-time-of-the-crime-and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-
say-pertaining-to-and-about-the-crime-I-want-to-know-arresting-officer’s-name-
and-any-other-kind-of-thing-you-gotta-say,” and talked for
forty-five minutes and nobody understood a word that he said, but we had
fun filling out the forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there,
and I filled out the massacre with the four part harmony, and wrote it
down there, just like it was, and everything was fine and I put down the
pencil, and I turned over the piece of paper, and there, there on the
other side, in the middle of the other side, away from everything else on
the other side, in parentheses, capital letters, quotated, read the
following words:

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Back when We Were A Family, it was Thanksgiving tradition to go to Longuyland to visit my cousins and aunt and uncle. They were a bit poor, I think maybe even bankrupt, but my cousins always seemed to get the latest, hottest and most expensive toys. So did my uncle come to think of it; every year my uncle had a bigger television and a louder stereo system. Neither he nor my aunt had a steady job. (He booked musicians for performances at weddings and such, she was a musician who performed at weddings and such.)

In any case, we always went to their house for the day which included the turkey meal and football on the huge television. One year we had Chinese food instead of turkey.

That’s it. That’s my story. Chinese food. On Thanksgiving.

The Weather Channel has upgraded tonight’s snow forecast from less than one inch of accumulation to one to three inches. Not nearly as much as I would like. It will also be too warm for any of the snow to stay around the entire day. For some reason I’m in the mood for a storm along the lines of the “Blizzard of ’96.”

Back in the winter of early 1996, I was home from college and I found my self stuck at a high school friend’s house during the blizzard. She wasn’t a particularly good friend, but she was a friend nonetheless. A bunch of people were stuck there and with nothing else to do (Xbox Live had not yet been invented) we started doing things like confiding in each other and being honest.

Question. What do you get when you mix a “family” of four roommates with weird personalities, a married couple, and a (dead) chicken? Answer. Hilarity ensuing.

While the references to Duraflame^® have finally died down to an ember, last night’s Early Thanksgiving meal was still far from being what one could call a “family show.” Note to myself: Just stop eating stuff containing melted cheddar cheese—especially that cheesy macaroni stuff.

A year ago I was thinking about war, on my way out of a job, getting myself into all sorts of trouble, and apparently generating lots of comments on this site.

Two years ago I was in the midst of working hard, partying just as hard, and missing They Might Be Giants concerts.

Three years ago I was getting over hang-ups I had growing up in New Jersey and loving my job.

Four years ago I was finishing up my student teaching, not quite ready to head out into the world. It was a rough semester. I was living alone in Delaware, working hard, and hardly talking with my girlfriend. We had a few months that fall we didn’t talk at all, except for what was necessary for her position as the University of Delaware Marching Band manager and mine as the band’s woodwinds music coordinator. It’s amazing for me to think about now. Four years ago I was student-teaching in a middle school, being an assitant band director at a high school, teaching a little at the University, running several websites, and volunteering with a drum and bugle corps.

I missed the Leonids last night. Sleep came to me at about 10:00 pm and I just didn’t want to fight with it. I was tired from a long, three-day weekend of funeral wakes and a burial. Denise‘s grandmother passed away last week, so Denise and I, along with tons of her family, headed up to Paramus. I met countless family members for the first time this weekend, as well as many others for the second or third time. I guess you could say I had a fun weekend—as much fun as one could have at a funeral.

Unfortunately, I did miss the Leonids meteor shower last night. I was just too exhausted to go out after getting home.

Who: You. Yes, you. All readers and their friends. Don’t be shy.

What: Halloween Party. Prizes for your costumes. Games. Movies. Candy. Wiccan rituals. Piñatas.

When: Saturday, November 2 at 7:30pm (aka All Souls’ Day for all you goyim).

Where: My residence in central New Jersey—email me for directions. There’s room if you need or want to crash. By “crash” I mean “stay overnight,” not “fly an airplane into the apartment complex.”

I took the time to scan in some older photographs my father gave me. At six weeks old, I was pretty cute, but I don’t know so much about my dad. On my fifth birthday, I went to Ground Round and the clowns tried to steal my presents.