School Envy

Edward is very interested in this idea of school.  He does not seem to realize that he is only two, and that this precludes him from going to kindergarten with his older sister.  All morning he has been asking me, "Where's Ruby?" and when I tell him she's at school, he wanders around the house sadly, repeating the words "at school," over and over again, as if they were a part of a magic spell that might take him there.

Of course being at school comes with all sorts of perks, so it's no wonder that he wants to participate.  For instance, Ruby got a new backpack and a new lunchbox, while Edward did not.  Not only that, but this morning we put delicious food into Ruby's lunchbox, and Edward did not get any of it.  Even when I explained to him that, in just a few short hours, we would be eating the same things, he stole the lunchbox and ran off with it to hide in the closet.  Now cue the upset sister who's lunch has just been snatched, but it is a Dora lunchbox after all, and Edward loves Dora the Explorer.

We managed to get the lunchbox back, and the backpack too, which he stole after we put the lunchbox in it, and Ruby got safely off to school.  That's when the "Where's Ruby"s started.  Even when we went outside to play, he seemed to think that she would be waiting just outside our door.  This was a little sad, but very cute.  He has been to her school before, surely he knows that it is not in our courtyard.  That does not stop him from looking for her, apparently.

I am assuming that this is as much of an adjustment for him as it is for everyone else, and that after a short time he will, well, adjust.  At least I hope so.  It's only natural to want to do what the big kids are doing, but I am personally enjoying him being two and home with me.  School will be here soon enough, Buddy.  No need to rush anything.

First Day of Kindergarten

Well, it finally happened.  Ruby is off to public school and we'll never get her back again.  I suppose that sounds a little melodramatic, but it's true.  She was so excited about starting school, and the instant we walked out the door, she abandoned us to hold hands with her friend.  It was very cute, of course, but why didn't she want to hold my hand?!  Because we have lost her to the world, that's why.

When we got to the school, all of the teachers were outside holding up signs with their names on them and the students were gathering by class, ready to parade into the building.  Ruby went right on over into the school with her new classmates, but I was not ready to let her go.  There had to be some reason for me to go in with her, right?  Oh yeah!  She had some papers to hand in to the teacher in her backpack, but had we told her that's where they were?  Maybe not.  I had better go follow her into her classroom, just in case.

Well, I found her walking into her classroom and quickly retrieved the papers from her new princess backpack.  I walked her over to her cubby, and finally had to say goodbye for real, which was very sad.  In fact, as I left and stopped by the PTO breakfast meet-up, someone asked me how I was doing, and I said I was sad.  They said, "Oh, you must have a kindergartener."  It seems that the majority of parents were quite happy to send their children off to school again.

And when I got home, I realized why.  I had totally forgotten how much easier one kid is than two.  Edward and I had a delightful morning playing and reading books.  As he wandered around the house, I was able to follow him and clean up all the destruction, which is impossible with two destructobots roaming the premises.  There was no bickering, no fighting over toys, no whining that so-and-so had touched so-and-so.  In short, it was very peaceful and relaxing.  I think I could get used to this school thing.

We picked her up when school was over and she was still overflowing with excitement.  I asked her what she had done on her first day of school, and she said "I don't remember," but hopefully as the year progresses she will indeed remember some things and then I will be able to tell you all about them.  Until then, she will be happy at her new school, and I will be missing her at home, but maybe I will be a little happy too.

How to Spend a Day at the Fair With Your Kids For Only $12

Do you know why I don't like going to the fair?  It's not because it isn't fun; it's just not hundreds of dollars worth of fun.  But somehow I managed to take the kids to the fair for 3-4 hours, ride rides, eat treats, and get out the gate for only $12, and I am going to tell you how I did it.  Just don't start calling me "Stingy Dad!"

To start with (and I know it is too late for you now), have your child participate in the summer reading program at the local library.  This will give them a ribbon to wear that gets them free admission to the fair, and since my other child is under five, he got in free too.  I did have to pay for myself though, which cost me $12.

So having spent twelve entire dollars and feeling it in my wallet, I decided to take the kids over to all the fun free stuff, by which I mean, obviously, pig racing.  Kids love pigs, and everyone loves racing, so it was a perfect start-of-the-day activity, and it was totally free.  After all of the pigs we were routing for lost horribly (don't even get me started on that three-pork pile-up!), we headed over to see all of the other animals that were at the fair to compete.

Here is a fun tip for you: walk past all of the animals on your way in and head straight to Old McDonald's Barn, because there they have an animal scavenger hunt, and if you go to all of the animal tents (which you were going to go to anyway, because they are free and cute), you get a ticket for a free ice cream cone!  We saw the cows.  We saw the horses.  We saw pigs, rabbits, oxen, chickens, ducks, swans, sheep, llamas, alpacas, and a turkey.  And when we were done, we got to go play in the corn box, which is like a sandbox but with, you know, corn!

Corn!

 

Having completed our scavenger hunt, Ruby really wanted to go on the Wild Mouse ride, which was possibly her favorite thing that she did during all of last year.  Supposedly her ribbon qualified her for a free ride, so I went to the ticket booth and demanded one!  They told me that they didn't know anything about that, and I would have to go to the main fair office.  But the main fair office was not on my map, so I grabbed a couple of emergency medical workers, who I'm sure had nothing better to do, and asked them about it.  They had no idea, so they radioed in to the boss and we finally got a location on that main fair office.

When we arrived, walking through a door that said quite clearly that fair customers should not be there, I asked the woman at the desk about the free ride.  She asked if I had attended the big summer reading presentation at the grandstand, because that's where they had been handed out.  Now, look, I was too busy looking at animals to go to that old thing, and by the time we got to the grandstand, it was over and kids were streaming out the doors to pick up their free books.  Since we were right there at the exit anyway, and since Ruby had her ribbon on, they gave her a free book and we didn't even have to wait in the line!  They even gave Edward a free book too!  So I told the lady at the desk that, clearly we had been there (see our free books?) but somehow we had missed the free ride tickets.  So, because she is nice and didn't want us to have to wait around, she gave us two booklets with 3 free ride tickets each.  Score!

Our first stop was the Wild Mouse, which Edward could not ride on, even with an adult.  Luckily, Ruby is 48.1" tall and was able to ride alone.  She stood in line by herself, rode it by herself, and had a great time!  I was very proud of her, and very sad in a way too.  She shouldn't be old enough to do that yet, right? 

After that, she and Edward wanted to go on the obstacle thingy with the big slide at the end, and Edward was big enough to do that one, but only with an adult, so up the rope net I went.  I almost got stuck in the slide, but we all made it through without incident, and that left us with two tickets.

We had to choose a ride that Edward could go on with just Ruby, since there were not 3 tickets, and they choose the choo-choo train.  Hooray!  Everyone had gotten to go on some rides, and that meant it was time for our free ice creams, since we were getting pretty hungry.  And wouldn't you know it, Ruby's ribbon got her a free ice cream!  So with our two scavenger hunt tickets and her ribbon, we got 3 free ice creams!  I got one too!

Charlie says: "Love my Good & Plenty!"

Now it was definitely way past time for lunch.  We had been at the fair for almost four hours and we were starving, even after covering our clothes and ourselves with ice cream.  But fair food is super expensive, so we left to go to Moe's, because it was Monday and kids eat free on Mondays.  And so, after four hours of fun, some rides, and some ice cream, we walked out of the gates of the fair with our free books, messy faces, and having spent only $12.  Ka-chow!

A Day in Quebec City

For our ninth anniversary, my wife husbandnapped me and took me to Quebec City, the only walled city north of the Mexican border.  Clearly we were not going to leave without checking out the walls themselves, but first we took a little side trip to La Chute Montmorency.

Montmorency Falls is a waterfall just a few minutes drive outside of the city, and it is 50% taller than Niagara Falls!  Now, Niagara is a lot wider, and has a lot more water going over it, but still, height counts for something, right?  When we arrived we had the option of either taking the cable car up to the top, or hiking up almost 500 stairs that looked like they were about to slide off of a giant sand pile.  As we stepped off of the cable car, we found ourselves in front of a large and beautiful building that looked like it was hosting a wedding, which we reluctantly decided not to crash.

As we wandered over to the falls we discovered a suspension bridge hung over the falls themselves, which was a really cool way to view them, and on the other side we found ourselves standing at the top of all those stairs that we had avoided earlier.  You only live once, right?  After a quick conference, my wife and I decided to walk down the treacherous staircase, which turned out to be stuck to a mountain of shale, or perhaps slate, and not sand.  It was still a bit worrying though.

Kind of reminds me of Ewok Village

When we got to the bottom of the stairs we wandered over to a little lookout just beneath the falls themselves, which was by far our favorite viewing place.  From the top, you could look down and see that you were really high up and all, but from the bottom, feeling the spray on your face and hearing the roar of the water, you really got a sense of the power and majesty of the waterfall.  But enough of all that; time for lunch!

We parked back at the B&B and started walking along the main drag toward the walled part of the city, and as we walked we noticed that a lot of local people were setting up chairs alongside the road.  People were sitting on curbs and spreading out blankets, almost as if they were going to watch a parade.  We tried eavesdropping on people's conversations, to figure out what was going on, but sadly we did not speak French.  We did hear some words that sounded like "military parade," and so we decided to find some place with outdoor seating so that we could get a good view ourselves.

We were totally right about the parade, although we had to eat very slowly to ensure that we would still be there when it started.  Marching down the streets we saw giant papier-mâché officers and loads of marching bands, playing all sorts of Canadian military classics, such as Y.M.C.A.  I think the parade would have been more interesting if we had known who any of the people were, or what any of the non-Village People songs were, but it was fun anyway.  Simone and I finished eating and decided to rewind the parade by walking quickly towards the walls again.  After a few minutes of hearing military marches, we suddenly heard a marching band arrangement of "Starships" by Nicki Minaj, and it was so exciting that we decided to stalk that band for the rest of the parade.  We heard "Don't Stop Believing," "Hello Dolly," and "Y.M.C.A." again, among many others, as we danced our way along the sidewalk, singing and doing all of the arm motions.

I don't know who that is

The Canadian National Anthem?

We finally broke off from our new favorite band when we got to the part of the old city walls that you can climb inside of.  For the remarkable price of $4 each, we got to go underground and explore the ruins of the old chateau that was built into the wall, and we got to see a little presentation in period costumes that dealt partially with life hundreds of years ago, but mostly with making audience members dress up in embarrassing costumes.  When we emerged from our underground bunker, we decided to walk along the tops of the walls themselves, and I guess we picked an eventful weekend to visit, because as we stood over the gates of the city looking down into the streets, we saw the finish line of some sort of race (probably a 5K) with cheering and shouting and general merriment.

At this point we decided to go back to our room where there was internet and research some restaurants that did not cost one billion dollars to eat at.  We got a list of places and walked once more into the city, all the way to edge of the back wall, where we took the funicular down to the bottom of the wall where there were even more cute shops and hopefully cheap eats.  What we sadly discovered was that all of the places we had found were bars and only served appetizers.  Yes, all of the dishes were around $10, as promised by UrbanSpoon, but all of their dishes were also french fries and onion rings.  Undeterred, we spent a great deal of time wandering around looking for a place that we felt we could afford to eat.  Then, finally, deterred, we ate at Subway.  I had a $10 footlong.

Our other reason for being in that part of the city was to see the Image Mill, another awesome free show that the city provided.  Billed as the largest projection screen in the world (bigger than 25 IMAX screens!), the images are projected onto the buildings and grain silos along the harbor.  Again, because the show was based on the history of Quebec, and I know nothing about the history of Quebec, I might not have gotten the most out of it, but the images were amazing.  I particularly enjoyed when they transformed each individual silo into something, like organ pipes, chalk, test tubes, bullets, piano keys, and many other things.  The show was about an hour, and it was free!  What a great city!

That is a restaurant over in the bottom left corner

The walk back was hardest part, as we had already hiked a waterfall, chased a parade, wandered the city walls, and trekked back and forth to our room several times that day.  All in all we walked 8-10 miles, which is way more than we usually walk, a fact of which our feet and legs were quite happy to remind us.  Once again we collapsed into bed, very tired but very happy.  We drove home the next morning, and I think I can confidently say that it was the best anniversary present ever!

Surprise Vacation to Quebec City

I knew that my wife was planning something for our anniversary, but I had no idea what it was.  All I knew was that she told me to take Friday night off from Burger Night, but other than that I had no clues.  As the mysterious Friday approached, I did start to get a few hints from her.  She told me that wherever we were going, we were going to drive there.  Europe was definitely out.  She later told me it was within a 5 hour driving radius, so New York City was out (unless my brother was driving) too.

Now, I like surprises, so I wasn't really trying that hard to guess, but I was getting very excited.  She told me that we were going away for the weekend, to someplace with a fairly unique feature, and finally, before we left, that I would need my passport.  My first guess was Montreal, but no, we were headed to Quebec City, the only walled city in North America above the Mexican border!  This old city is also on the UNESCO World Heritage Site list, and is apparently as close to Europe as you can get around here, without actually going overseas of course.

It took us about four and a half hours to drive there, and when we arrived at the Bed & Breakfast that Simone had booked, we were very excited to find a much more pleasant room than anything I would have found in the U.S.  We were somewhat less excited about the very tall, very steep flights of stairs that we had to walk up and down to get to it, but we told ourselves that it only added to the charm.

Our B&B was situated only about a mile from the walls of the old city, so it was an easy walk to the gates and into another world.  Quebec City is actually a very large and modern city, with many skyscrapers and highways, but once you hit the walls of the old city everything changes.  It really does feel like an entirely different place, with the old buildings, cobblestone streets, and horses pulling people around in wagons.  We popped in and out of tourist shops for a while until it was time for dinner, and that is when the adventure truly began.

One of the thrilling(?) things about being in Canada was that we did not have the use of our phones.  We certainly could have used our phones, at a rate of something like $15/MB for data and who knows what for calling and texting, but we could not afford to spend $100 uploading a picture to Facebook, or searching for local restaurants as we normally would have done.  No, we were on our own, and so we found a place to eat the old fashioned way.  We wandered the streets looking at menus posted outside of restaurants that were written in a language that neither of us spoke.

We did finally find some food, although it seemed very expensive to us, and when we were finished we decided to go find the free Cirque du Soleil show that happens every night in the city.  That's right, you read me correctly.  A free Cirque du Soleil show.  I don't know who is sponsoring this, or how it all shakes out financially, but they have set up a big stage underneath the highway overpass in an empty space that looks like it probably once held nothing but broken glass and illegal activity.  This is urban development at its best.  Whoever had this idea is a genius.

The show was about an hour long and was full of everything you might expect from them, including the most amazing trapeze act I have ever seen.  I all can say is, two girls: one trapeze.  They also had trampolines, bicycles, ropes, poles, and a man in a tutu with a giant bear head (or was it a cat head?) on rollerskates.  In short, it was fabulous.

We walked back to our room the long way, through dark side streets and up a lot of hills.  This is what happens when you do not have Google Maps at your beck and call.  Exhausted but happy, we passed out almost immediately, which was good, because we needed our sleep for the next day.  I didn't know it at the time, but I was going to be walking 8-10 miles the next day, which may not be a lot for some of you walking fanatics or NYC residents, but for someone who normally walks 8-10 yards each day, it was a lot.  But I think I will tell you about that part tomorrow.

Letting Go: Further Confessions of a Former Collector

As many of you will know from a previous post, I am in the process of cleaning out my life.  I am trying to get over my attachment to stuff, and as I have recently learned, it is not so much a decision as it is a slow, painful journey.

As part of my rehabilitation, I have decided to give Ruby my old superhero toys.  Now, just so we are clear here, and so that you understand the full extent of my problems, I have many different superhero toys from many different times in my life.  There are the "Secret Wars" toys that I got when I was a little kid.  Then there are the Marvel toys that started coming out when I was in middle school, and which I have almost every one of.  Finally, and most embarrassingly of all, there are the "Marvel Legends" toys which I started collecting (ahem) post-college.  I have a lot of superhero toys.

For a while I was keeping them in a set of display cases in cool action poses, and I managed to cram them all into two large bookcase sized displays, but just barely.  Sometimes it was hard to tell if Thor was fighting Loki, or snuggling him.  But for the past several years they have been sitting in boxes in my sister's basement.  It occurred to me that I will probably never set them all up and display them again, and I never really played with most of them, I just liked collecting them.  Therefore, there was no rational reason for me to keep them.

So I had two choices.  I could sell them on eBay, where even out-of-package Marvel Legends toys like mine are going for anywhere from $20-$40, or I could give them to my kids.  Now, at those prices, my collection of easily over 200 toys is not a value to be scoffed at, but then I thought back to when I was about Ruby's age, perhaps a year or two older, and my father gave me all of his old comic books.  Yes, I destroyed them, but they gave me a lifelong love of comics and superheroes that I still treasure.  I may not have played with their toys, but man did I love The Avengers this summer!

So my decision was made.  Ruby will get the superhero toys.  I know she will love them; she loves all things superhero these days.  But how to do it?  Simply dumping 200 toys on her would be overwhelming, and she doesn't know who half of those people are anyway.  No, I decided to give her one toy every Saturday with her allowance, thus spreading out the joy for about 2 years and allowing me further leverage over her to ensure that chores are done and her room is clean.

I am going to do the choosing as to which superhero she receives, so it will always be a surprise, but last Saturday, for the first week, I decided to let her choose.  She picked Ms. Marvel, and I dug through my boxes until I found her, wrapped in paper towels and carefully stored with her other teammates, in perfect mint condition.  I gave Ruby the toy, and she was ecstatic.  She flew Ms. Marvel all over the house, and within an hour or two, she broke it.

This was my first big clue that I was not totally rehabilitated.  I sat there with a calm look on my face as I told Ruby that it was fine that she had broken off part of Ms. Marvel's costume, but inside I was furious yellow.  Forcing myself to keep control, I gave Ruby back her new toy and she ran off to play some more.  And then I questioned whether or not this was a good idea at all.  But of course, even though I was seething inside, rationally, what did it matter?  I was going to get rid of them anyway, right?  And I destroyed all of my Dad's old stuff as I read and played hard as a kid, so what did I expect was going to happen when I gave a five-year-old a collectible toy pretty much made for adult collectors?  But it still hurt.

This morning I gave Ruby her second toy, Thor.  As I write this she has had him for about an hour, and a few moments ago, in the middle of writing the last paragraph, she came over and asked if we could glue his hammer back together, because she had broken the handle off.  So maybe this is like anything else in life; I will just get used to it.  Every week I will give Ruby one of my prized collectibles, and she will immediately break it and show it to me.  Perhaps this is how I will finally and truly get over my attachment to my stuff.  I hope so.  In the meantime I am going to go punch a wall real quick.

Happy Birthday to My Marriage!

Nine years ago today, I started the adventure that makes Tenor Dad possible.  Well, at least the Dad part.  And actually, the Tenor part too.  My wife is more supportive of my career than I am, so I feel quite confident in saying that I would not be where I am today, or enjoying any of my current successes without her.  My current failures would definitely still be here though.  They generally come into being when I do not listen to my wife, who somehow knows just what to do in any situation, whereas I am more likely to flap my arms wildly and run in a circle screaming until I can find a hole to hide in.

This is all just to say that I love my wife, and am so happy to have been married to her for the past nine years.  Provided I don't do anything to mess it up, I feel confident in saying that you will be reading about our adventures here for many, many years to come.  Happy Anniversary Simone!

Early Morning Photo Shoot

When I started Tenor Dad around two years ago, I needed to choose a picture for my avatar, and I didn't know what to choose.  A picture of myself?  A picture of my kids?  A picture of me singing on stage?  What felt right?  What could possibly capture everything that I wanted these pages to be about?  In the end, I settled on what was one of my favorite recent-at-the-time pictures of my family.  I decided that this was Tenor Dad, not Dad Tenor.  This was going to be about a dad who sang, not a singer who dadded.  In the photo I chose, the whole family was standing in a line in front of our house, hands held, with perfect dusky lighting, and I thought it said what I wanted to say.

After a year or so, I decided that the picture was a little outdated, since everyone was a year older, and people coming here to read about my toddler would see a picture of a baby on all of the links.  As luck would have it, my wife's whole extended family was getting together to have a friend take pictures, and they were going to do it at our new house in Vermont.  I suggested that we try to recreate the pose from the original picture, which we did, and I have been using it ever since.

Now another year has gone by, and I have been planning to redo the picture for months, but have never gotten around to it.  Suddenly, time has run out.  This is the last week of summer vacation.  Ruby starts kindergarten next week, a few leaves have already turned brown, and if I want a lush and green background for my photo, it has to be done asap.  This is why, when my sister-in-law was over last night, I asked her to come over super early this morning before my wife went to work to take new pictures of us.

The problem with this idea is was that, what with it being early in the morning, everyone was tired.  The kids did not want to get dressed, nobody could find their shoes, and this photo shoot quickly starting becoming one of those things that sounds great late at night, but when you wake up in the harsh light of morning seems completely insane.  Undeterred, we pressed on, forcing the children into their clothes and outside into the courtyard for the big shoot.

The trick to taking these pictures was clearly trying to make sure that both children were looking at the camera at the same time.  This happened slightly less than 1% of the time.  Luckily my sister-in-law took over 200 pictures, so we got two great shots!  I was quite satisfied with this result, but our photographer, being a consummate professional, decided that we ought to do more shots in different poses in different places.  She is actually a good photographer, and her ideas were quite good, but by this time the children had lost interest and my wife had to go to work, so we didn't get to do everything that my sister-in-law wanted.  I fear that she was not fulfilled creatively by this particular shoot, but in the end I got what I wanted, so she did a great job by the client's standards.  100% satisfaction!

And so I now have a new photo to use for this space, and a new found knowledge that early morning photo shoots only seem like a good idea late at night.  Next year I'm thinking mid-afternoon.

What I Think About Before I Leave the House

Everyone has their own habits and routines that they use to help them get ready for the day, and I am no different.  Every morning I get up, stumble around angrily, give the children whatever they need, take a shower, jump out of the shower to stop my son from splashing in the toilet, get back in the shower, etc.  I am a well oiled machine.  I do all that stuff without even thinking about it.

Once we are all up and dressed and fed and out of the toilet, it is probably time to leave the house and go do something.  Perhaps we need to run errands or go grocery shopping, or maybe we are just going to the playground or the park.  Either way, there is always one thing that I am thinking about as we get ready to head out the door.  That thing is: how much do I smell like a diaper?

It is very important to know exactly how much you smell like a nasty diaper before you go out into the world to interact with society.  My personal sense of smell is very bad, but even so I always try to give myself a sniff to determine the precise percentage of my smell that is diaperesque.  If the answer is 100%, leaving the house is probably a bad idea.

When the percentage of diaper smell on your body exceeds 50%, you probably need to stop and take stock of the situation.  Why do you smell so much like a diaper?  Have you been peed on recently?  Is there a diaper in your hand that you have forgotten to throw away?  Are you sitting on a diaper?  This is also a good time to check if the smell really is coming from you, or if perhaps your child just needs a new diaper before you go anywhere.

When the percentage of diaper smell on your body is less than 50%, you need to take a closer look at the situation and decide if action needs to be taken.  Obviously you are still going to go out, but do you need to expand your personal space bubble so as not to get too close to other people?  Or are you going somewhere where there won't be other people, or where you hate those other people and want them to think you are stinky?  And just how bad is the smell anyway?  Every parent smells at least 10% like a diaper at all times, but when it starts hitting 40 or 45%, it might call for having a mint in your mouth or spraying yourself with Febreze as you walk out the door.

The important thing is that you attempt to feel like a human being when you are out amongst the others of your kind, and knowing how much you smell like a diaper is a great first step.  There may not be anything you can do about it, but at least you will be armed with the information that you need to minimize your impending social faux pas.

My Battle With Costco

Let me preface this story by saying that I love Costco.  From the moment I stepped inside their giant warehouse for the first time I have been dumbfounded by the amazing deals and the unbelievable sizes of their items.  To me, it is exciting because you never know what they are going to have there, even if you have been there only a day or two prior, and it is always full of people, whether you are there at 2 pm on a Sunday or 10 am on a Tuesday.

I loved it so much that I allowed them to convince me to upgrade my membership to the "Executive" level.  How exhilarating!  An Executive Member!  And I am not even an executive!  I am a stay-at-home dad slash opera singer!  How they sold me on this membership was that for an extra $50 a year, I would receive 2% back on all my purchases in the form of a Costco gift certificate at the end of said year.  As I was there to buy a television, that seemed like a good deal to me.  It had half paid for itself in just one visit!

A year later, my reward check came and I happily spent the over $50 that I had suddenly come into.  But then the next year, during which I did not buy a TV, I only accrued enough 2%s for a $38 reward check.  Suddenly it looked to me like I had just lost $12!  So I walked in and asked the customer service folks to downgrade my membership.  "Oh, no, no, no!" they told me.  "Don't do that!  It is our policy that if you don't get up to the $50 in your reward check, we will refund you the difference."  They handed me $12 and I walked out happy.

Well, last year I more than spent enough money to make it worthwhile, but last week I got my check for this year (even though I am not due to renew until October) and it was for only $41.  "Ha ha!" I said to myself, "I will just go back to Costco and get my $9 back and use it to buy more things at Costco!"  And so that's what I did.  The going to Costco part anyway.

When I got to the counter and asked for my policy-guaranteed $9, I was informed that this was certainly not their policy, but they would be happy to downgrade my membership and give me the $9 if I wanted.  I said no, I want my $9, but I would like to keep the Executive membership, you know, in case I spend a lot of money next year.  The woman I was speaking to decided to get someone who knew more stuff than her, and so I was bumped up to level 2 in the membership food chain, where I got help from a very friendly woman who told me that, since I was not renewing until October, I should wait the two more months, see if I spend any more money, and perhaps I would cross that threshold of $50 by that time.  She said if I waited and spent more money, they would give me that extra bonus money I had earned in October, and so maybe I could come back and get ten dollars back!  Or even fifteen!

This made sense to me, so I walked away from the counter satisfied and got into the hot dog line.  By this time my kids were wondering where I had gone off to and so was my mother-in-law who was waiting with them.  As I stood in that line, my stupid math brain began to do some of it's dumb old thinking, and suddenly I was upset again.  After I had gotten food for everyone, I dropped it off at the table and went back to customer service to argue some more, and here's why.

The check I received in August was for $41.  It was for my current yearly purchases, running from October to October.  However, because they mail invoices out two months early, I still had two months of rewards earning to go, which is why the woman had cautioned me to wait and collect all my bonuses in two months.  Which meant that the $41 I received was only for a 10 month period, right?  Wrong, because they always send invoices and checks out two months early, which meant that last year I had gotten a check two months early, and also the year before.  Which meant that the $41 check I had received was NOT my rewards from this year of shopping, but included two months of last year's shopping.  What I am trying to say here is that when I spent my $50 to upgrade, I didn't make $41 of it back in rewards.  I made less than $41 of it back in rewards.  I don't know how much was from August and September of last year, maybe $1, maybe $10, but the point is, they were more than happy to give me $9 back, when in fact $9 is not the amount that I had lost by upgrading.  In fact, I had no idea how much I had lost, and I wanted to find out.

When I went back to the counter, I tried to explain all of this to the nice woman who had helped me before.  Sadly, it was hard to explain.  I asked her how much of my $41 was from the past ten months, and how much was from the previous paid year of membership, and she said her computers did not have that data.  She went up one more level in the chain and got her boss to come over, and let me tell you, I am glad that they promoted this woman to supervisor, because she had no business dealing with customers.

She glared and sighed a lot and spoke very sharply to me.  I tried to apologize and said that I just wanted to understand the program that I was a part of, and she kind of grimaced and said it was fine, while not making eye contact.  I told her that it all seemed like shady math to me, and she took great offense at that statement.  She dug deeper into my records and informed me that actually I hadn't been to Costco during those last two months of last year's membership (plausible...I lived nowhere near Costco at that time) and in fact they had cancelled my membership and sent me a check for $6, which was my remaining rewards balance from those last two months, in October 2011, which I spent when I came back in to renew my membership at that time.

So okay, that made sense to me.  I got a nice check last whenever, spent it but didn't go back to Costco for a few months at which time my membership lapsed.  They sent me those extra $6 in rewards (exactly what the other lady had mentioned would happen this year if I came back in October) and when I did renew, it all started over again.  But the thing is, she hadn't known that when we started the conversation.  They were going to give me my $9, having no idea that I had lapsed previously and had not spent any money in August or September of 2011.  To me, that is shady math that does not benefit me, the consumer, and is a policy that puts a couple of extra dollars in Costco's pockets.  And what are we arguing about?  A couple of dollars?  It hardly seems important at all, but it truly was the principle of the thing.  I don't want to be a part of any program that A) I don't understand fully, and B) Employs sketchy math that does not benefit me, even if it is only for a couple of bucks.

It was at this point that they told me that the real value of an Executive membership was in the services it provides, such as auto insurance and whatnot.  They said that many people do not make back the $50 in rewards, but they save so much money when they, for instance, buy a boat, that it more than makes up the difference.  And that's fine, but I do not want to take part in those programs.  And besides, the last time I came in here with my same argument, I was handed $12 and told that it was policy!  I'm not trying to start a fight, I just want to know what the real policies are, and what sort of program I am involved in!  And why are they using weird math!?

So I told this to woman #3, and she came back with this: "Sir, because you received that extra $6 check last October, you have really received $47 back in rewards this membership year, so your current refund will be $2.05"  Are you kidding me?  You just told me I was getting back $8 and change.  And to top it all off, as you yourself mentioned, that $6 check was for last membership year rewards.  When I renewed in October 2011, I paid $50.  That was after the $6 check was mailed.  Since then, I have accrued $41 and change in bonuses, so you owe me $8!  "Well, sir, that's our policy.  Both the $41 check and the $6 were mailed in the same membership year."

Now THAT is some bullshit right there.  So I battled on.  And eventually I got to membership lady #4, the head boss of bosses, the one with the key around her neck that can open any lock and the codes to launch the missiles.  She walked over, signed a paper, opened the drawer, and I was given my $8.  Then they made me pose for a new card photo and they took away my fancy Executive membership card that was all black and shiny and important looking.  I got one of those ugly white ones that all the normal common people have.  My status was revoked, at my request of course, and I walked away with my $8 and sat down to eat my cold hot dog.  I had been at that desk for over an hour.

I don't know what the moral of this story is.  I can't tell if I really won or not.  In the dream world in my mind, they ought to have all come over to me and said, "You know what, you're right.  Nothing we do makes sense.  We will immediately change all of our policies."  But for some reason that did not happen.  I don't think my explanations moved any hearts or minds, and even if they had, I'm pretty sure that nobody in the Vermont Costco warehouse has any power to change anything anyway.  In the end, I am just one person who decided that he didn't like what he saw when the curtain was pulled back, and I guess that all we can do in a scenario like that is just to refuse to participate.  Maybe I can't change how they do business, but I don't have to be a part of it.

A Two Year Old at the Dentist

Ah, the dentist.  Traditionally feared and hated by children of all ages, this poor misunderstood creature only wants to bring smiles to the faces of all humankind.  It's just unfortunate that they often try to do so via loud, scary sounding instruments and needles stabbed into your face.  Yes, one bad experience at the dentist can leave you scarred for life, at least where oral hygiene is concerned.  For this reason, it is very important to make sure that your childrens' first dental appointments are happy and exciting experiences.

6 months ago, when Edward was not quite two, he had his first dental visit.  It went something like this: he sat in the chair, we told him to open his mouth, he refused, the dentist got kind of a sideways look into his mouth, and we went home.  He clearly didn't want to participate and we were not going to push it.  We only want happy memories of the dentist's office.

Fast forward to yesterday and once again it was time for the whole family to head over for our check-ups.  On the way over we practiced saying "Ahhhh" with Edward, which he really enjoyed, so all signs were pointing to a more successful visit this time.  When we got there the kids played with toys while we waited for our turn, and when they called us in, I went first.

Edward was very interested in everything that was going on, climbing up onto me while the hygienist was scraping around in my mouth.  I tried to tell him to get down, but that was difficult with my mouth wide open and someone's hand in there.  Edward started pushing buttons and was quite pleased to discover that he could make water spray into the little sink.  At this point I decided that he ought to get down off of my chest and back onto the floor, which he was not happy about until he found the buttons that moved my chair up and down.

Ruby, the five year old big sister, went before Edward to show him that it was fine and fun to be at the dentist.  We discovered two slightly loose teeth in her mouth, which was very exciting, and when the polishing started Ruby laughed and said it tickled her teeth.  This proved to be the key to the whole thing, because now Edward really wanted to get his teeth tickled.  As soon as Ruby was done he climbed right up into the chair and said "Ahhhhh."

He kept his mouth open the whole time, and everyone was very impressed.  I even taught him how to spit into the little sink, which he loved a little too much.  I am slightly concerned that we are going to start seeing some spitting action at inappropriate times in the future, but so far so good.  He got his teeth "tickled" (we even tested it out on his finger first!) and poked and counted, and he sat through it all.  In fact, when he got out of the chair he said "My turn!" and tried to get back into it again.

I couldn't be happier with how everything went.  Nobody has any cavities, everything looks great, Ruby got good tooth fairy news, and Edward fell in love with dental appointments.  And at the end they got tooth-related prizes!  It's just too bad we have to wait six months to do it again.

Dr. Seuss Bubbles

Every now and then I like to devote this space to helping out poor internet users who have somehow stumbled here and then clearly find nothing that they were looking for.  As I scrolled down the list of search terms that people have used to find Tenor Dad this week, one item caught my eye: Dr. Seuss Bubbles.  Now, I have no idea what that is, or why someone would be looking for it, but I think it's safe to say that, whatever they were looking for, it was not found here.  And I hate to provide bad service to my readers, even accidental ones.  Therefore, I will now try to answer their unasked question today, in hopes that they will fare better than U2, who still haven't found what they were looking for.

My first thought is that perhaps they were looking for licensed Dr. Seuss brand bubbles.  You know, like the kind you blow.  I did a quick internet search for such a thing, but alas, I fear it is not a real thing.  If they don't sell it here or there, they must not sell it anywhere.  You can't find them on Amazon, or even on ebay.com.  You will not find them in the stores, you will not find them on sales floors.  If it's not there on Google's list, it probably does not exist.  However, do not despair!  I have a great idea for you!  Simply buy some generic bubbles and then put these Dr. Seuss stickers on the outside of the bottles!  Ta da!  Dr. Seuss Bubbles!

On the other hand, maybe Dr. Seuss Bubbles are some sort of stylistic calling card of Mr. Geisel, kind of like the "Kirby Dots" (or "Kirby Krackle") attributed to the late, great comic book artist Jack Kirby.  Maybe Dr. Seuss was always putting bubbles into his books!  And yes, there did seem to be some bubbles in the books I flipped through, but not enough to really call it a "thing."  I don't think this is the answer to the mystery.

Finally, my internet search on Dr. Seuss Bubbles led me to various pages selling an item called, of course, "Dr. Seuss Bubbles," but what that product is is a bulletin board border that features different Seuss characters' head in bubbles as a repeating pattern.  If that is what you are looking for, you can order it here, here, or here, although you can get a far better price for it here.

If you have come here searching for Dr. Seuss Bubbles and you are not looking for bubbles to blow, artwork that is stylistically characteristic of Dr. Seuss, or that wall border thingy, then I am sorry, but I have no idea what you want.  If you would please be so kind as to leave your actual quest objective in the comments, I would be happy to assist you further.

Homemade Ice Cream

When I was growing up, my family had one of those ice cream makers with the salt and the cranking and the hours of exhausting fun for the small amount of homemade ice cream that we would all then enjoy.  And as exciting as that was, it was not an experience that stood out in my mind as one of the "must-replicate" moments of my childhood.  But now that we live in the twenty-first century, technology has progressed to the point where I no longer need to crank anything, and so making homemade ice cream has become an option for fun once again.

My wife and I received an ice cream maker for our wedding, which was nine years ago next Thursday, and we had never used it.  It's not that we didn't want to use it, it's just that we never did.  We also got a quesadilla maker that we didn't use for years, but then one day we did use it, and now we love pulling it out once in a while for yummy quesadillas, and so it seemed that perhaps the same would hold true for the ice cream maker, which we got out and used for the first time this past weekend.

Full disclosure: we finally used the ice cream maker mostly because our co-op was having an ice cream social and asked to use it for the event, and we thought we should test it out first before we let our neighbors take a crack at it.  That being said, we were very excited to make our own ice cream.

The hardest part of making home made ice cream is finding the instructions for the machine after nine years.  We initially gave up on that part and tried to find recipes and instructions online, but there seemed to be so many different ways to make ice cream at home that we weren't sure which one would work best in our personal machine.  Luckily, we eventually did find the instructions which contained the proper recipes and tips.

We decided to make the ice cream first and then read all the tips and tricks second, which turned out to be the wrong order in which to do things.  We didn't chill our bowl long enough.  We didn't chill our ingredients at all.  We should have waited to add the vanilla until the ice cream was almost done churning.  When we were done with the whole project we had a bowl of ice cream soup.  Even after 2-3 hours in the freezer our confection was nowhere near solid.

We went to bed feeling less like Ben and Jerry and more like, well, who are two people that are terrible at making ice cream?  We had been so excited about the possibilities of our chocolate ice cream with the pieces of Milky Way bars that I had crumbled into it, but clearly we were failures at ice cream making.  But then, a miracle.  When we got up in the morning, sitting in our freezer was perhaps the richest, most delicious ice cream we had ever tasted!  I'm serious; it was ridiculously good.  So good that, now that we know what not to do and that success is possible, we are going to be making a lot more ice cream around here, starting this weekend.  Send us your flavor requests and we'll try it out!

Confessions of a Former Collector

There comes a point in every relationship when it just has to change.  A tipping point.  The point when things just absolutely cannot go on any longer in the same way that they had gone on before.  You finally tell them that you are in love with them, because you just can't hold it in any more.  You finally tell them that you are leaving them, because you just can't take it anymore.  You quit your job.  You move out of your parents' house.  You tell that person what you have really been thinking.  A tipping point.  Things change and you can't go back.  And I am at that place with my stuff.

Stuff and I have had a long and unhealthy relationship, and I now realize that we need to break up.  This thing that we've had going has been very one sided.  I go out of my way for stuff all the time, and all it does it sit around the house, staring at me like I'm an idiot.  And as I look back at it, I realize that it was sort of an addiction, fueled and encouraged by my lowlife friends, television and society.  I'm not too happy with either of those guys right now, although I do have hope in the long term for society.  Each new item I added to my collection gave me a quick thrill.  I was checking it off of my list.  I would own the DVD of every movie that I had ever enjoyed.  I would buy every book that I had ever loved.  I would give my children everything, at least materially.  And it felt good for that one moment of purchase.  And what I ended up with was shelves full of stuff that I had no time to enjoy, and mountains of debt, with snow capped peaks and treacherous passes ensuring that I could never climb them.

The first step on my road to recovery was realizing that my domicile was overflowing with stuff to the point of catastrophe.  My wife was miserable, my children were learning to step around piles of junk, and I couldn't find anything when I needed it.  Part of what a stuff addiction does to you is it gives you withdrawal symptoms when you try to purge any of this suffocating mass that you have acquired, but I have been able to fight through it and am happy to report that bags and boxes of emotional baggage and hidden pain made manifest have been regularly leaving my house over the past few years.  Some goes to the Goodwill, some to the dumpster, and some to friends and family who might actually want or use some of this stuff that I was never able to.

But getting rid of the stuff you have is only a small step in dealing with this problematic relationship.  The far harder thing to accomplish is to not want any more stuff to come in.  And I am finally there.  I would love to go through my life without buying anything else.  That would make me happy.  There is nothing on my Christmas list.  I have everything I need.  And even if there are a few things that ought to be replaced (I think our couch is on its last legs), the key word is replaced.  I don't want anything coming in without something similar going out.  And the less I buy, the happier I am.

I won't say I am not tempted, because I clearly am.  I can't walk through a store without seeing ten things that my old, weak self would have loved.  But the trick, like with any addict, is to avoid temptation and remove myself from those old familiar situations that might lure me back in.  I try not to go to stores now, unless I actually need something.  I used to go to Target or the mall, just for fun.  Those days are mostly behind me now.  But the funny thing is, even when I do go to the stores, I don't feel the desire to buy everything anymore.  Whereas I used to see the $1 bins at Target as hidden treasure troves, I now look at them and see cheaply made crap that I am going to have to pick up off of my floor later.  I know, I know, if we all stop buying stuff the economy will tank, but honestly, having a thriving economy has never made me particularly happy. 

But what will I do with all of my money if I don't buy stuff with it?  Well, first of all I am a musician, which means that I do not have any money, so that solves that problem.  But of course I still have to buy things.  I still need to eat and wear clothes.  My kids need new shoes, even though I am totally done with buying new shoes.  But with my actual, very small amount of, disposable income, I have decided to remain a collector.  I can't change that part of my personality just because I have broken up with stuff.  Instead, I have started a new relationship with experiences.  It is still in its early stages, so I don't know how it will all end, but from now on, instead of collecting stuff, I will be collecting good times and memories.  I will spend time with my children, riding bikes and going to the playground.  I will travel.  I will take them to baseball games.  We will go bowling.  I will go on vacations with my wife, and the souvenirs that I bring back will be digitally stored on my camera.  I will collect states that I have visited, and countries that I have been to.  I will collect time with my friends.  And in the end, I hope I will collect the actual happiness that I have been looking for and never finding in my relationship with stuff.

A Well Rounded Child

Sometimes I worry that my children are going to be too much like me.  I mean, of course they are going to be somewhat like me, but really what I hope is that they can take all the best parts of me, plus the best parts of everyone else on the planet, and become some sort of new breed of super people that are completely awesome at everything with no flaws.  As far as I can tell so far, this has not happened.

One of my biggest fears was that my daughter would not be girly enough (second only to my fear that she would be too girly), because she spends her days at home with a man (me) and does manly things like, well, actually I don't do a lot of manly things, but you get my point.  I have no idea why this is a concern for me, since many women throughout history have raised perfectly normal young men, but for some reason I feel that me being home with my daughter might deprive her of some womanly knowledge that she might need later in life.

I suppose what it mainly comes down to is her recent interest in superheroes.  As a personal superhero geek with a comic book collection of over 10,000 individual issues, I suppose I should not be surprised when my children show some interest as well.  After all, most of the things in life that I love were loved first by my own parents.  And lately, Ruby has been all about the superheroes.

My comic book collection is currently in my sister's basement, but even with that out of the picture Ruby has watched every episode of the Superhero Squad Show on Netflix.  She plays the Superhero Squad Online game on the computer with me.  She has the customizable Super Hero Squad collectible card game that she beat me at yesterday.  She asks me to read old collections of Avengers and Fantastic Four comics to her that I have on the bookshelf in trade paperback form.  We are all required to dress as superheroes for Halloween this year, and her birthday party (7 1/2 months from now) will be superhero themed, she recently informed me.  And this weekend she broke open her piggy bank because what she wanted more than anything in the world was some superhero toys that she saw at K-Mart.

So she took her $7.50 down to K-Mart and bought a two-pack of superhero toys.  Iron Man and the Silver Surfer.  Her mother expressed a preference for the Hulk and Thor two-pack, but it was Ruby's allowance money, so she got to pick.  And the whole time I am thinking to myself, "What have I done!?  She is going to be a weird tomboy nerd-girl outcast and it's all my fault!"

But then my wife pointed out something funny to me.  As she watched Ruby and I sitting on the floor playing the superhero card game, she observed that Ruby was sitting there playing a nerdy card game with me, in her pretty dress with the flowers on it, with Super Mario socks on her feet, and wearing the necklace of beads that she had just made herself.  What a merging of stereotypes.

Why I worry about Ruby is beyond me.  I suppose it is just in my parenty nature.  But she is definitely influenced by things from both ends of the gender spectrum.  No matter how many superhero shows she watched with me, or games of Super Mario that we play together on the Wii, some of her favorite things to do still remain making jewelry and getting her toenails painted.  I think she just loves everything about life, whether it is aimed at boys, girls, or whoever.  So I can take comfort in that fact that when she does grow up, she will not be a weird tomboy nerd-girl outcast, but rather a weird, well-rounded person that everyone loves.  At least that's how it seems to be going so far.

The Speedometer or the GPS?

While driving back and forth to the Yellow Barn Music Festival rehearsals last week, I noticed something strange about my speed.  Since it was an almost 3 hour trip, 95% of which was on the highway, I had set the cruise control to somewhere just over the speed limit and was not really thinking about whether or not the speedometer was correct.  After a while, I noticed that a lot of cars were passing me, which was fine, but it seemed to be more cars than usual.  I glanced down at my GPS, which gives a readout of my speed, and saw that it was reading significantly lower than my car's speedometer.

So if my car is telling me that I am going 72, and my GPS is telling me that I am going 63, which is correct?  I tried speeding up until my GPS said 72, but then my speedometer hit 80 and I got very nervous.  I do not want to be driving 80 down the highway, not because it is not safe, because it totally is, but because I do not want a giant speeding ticket.  But it was a really long drive and I really didn't want to make it any longer by driving under the speed limit either.  What to do?

Well, I decided that, since I was driving and couldn't really do any online research on the subject, I would check the speedometer app on my phone.  I opened it up, and it also read 72 mph.  Now there were two votes for 72 and one vote for 80, and yet somehow my bias was still to trust my car, or at least to trust the higher number just to be on the safe side.  After all, cars have been around a lot longer than GPS devices.  A few years ago this wouldn't even have been a debate!

Finally, I decided to employ some good old fashioned math to find the answer.  I waited until I hit a mile marker and then looked at my watch.  When I hit the next mile marker I looked at the time again.  50 seconds.  It took me 50 second to drive one mile, which means that it would take me 50 minutes to drive 60 miles, which means I was driving at exactly...72  miles per hour!  The GPS was precisely correct.

So even though I was still nervous, I drove the rest of the way with my speedometer telling me I was going 80, mathematically confident that I was indeed driving at 72 mph.  But why was my car so far off the mark?  Well, when I got home I looked up everything I could find about such matters, and it turns out that cars are generally not at all accurate when it comes to speed.

Your car measures your speed based on how fast the wheels are spinning, but the wheels can have fairy different diameters depending on the tires.  Many people have tires that are not the exact size recommended for the car, and even when they are the same size, loss of air pressure and normal wearing away of the tire over time will cause the tire to become slightly smaller.  Even tiny differences in tire size can affect the speedometer reading fairly significantly.

A few millimeters of difference in tire diameter make a few centimeters of difference in the circumference, and if your circumference is off by 5 or 6 cm, and an average tire is maybe 180 cm, well that's over 3%.  And the law requires car speedometers to be accurate within 4%, so if your car is legally off by 4% and your tires are under-inflated or worn down, your speedometer could easily be off by 7%, and 7% of 72 mph is just over 5 mph!  And don't even talk to me if you have differently sized tires on your car.  Your speedometer could be 10 mph wrong and you might have no idea!

So when it comes to your speed on the highway, you may have no idea how fast you are actually going.  But the police do.  And so does your GPS.  Just thought you might like to know that.

A Few Thoughts About Kickstarter

For those of you who may not know, kickstarter.com is a website that allows you to independently fund projects.  The basic conceit is that you put up a video explaining why you need money, and then hope that enough individuals will donate that money so that you can bring your idea to life.  It is the very definition of grassroots campaigning, favoring smaller contributions from actual people over large corporate donations.  In this new internet era that we live in, it is easier than ever for a small and scattered bunch of people to unite over a common interest, and now they can fund it as well.

In a lot of ways though, it reminds me of what someone once told me about finding an agent for my singing.  They said, "You don't need management until you have something to manage."  In other words, it was no use trying to get an agent for the purposes of building my resume and career.  Rather, once I had something going, I could then get someone to manage it for me and build on the momentum that I already had.

One of the most successful kickstarter projects in their short history was for a web comic that I enjoy called "The Order of the Stick."  The guy who writes and draws the thing had already printed collections of his work and had a huge online fanbase, but was not mainstream popular enough to get his limited-run books reprinted, so he started a kickstarter project.  He was asking for about $50,000 to reprint the collections, and he ended up with over $1.2 million pledged.  And how did he do this?  Well, for one thing, as I mentioned, he had pre-existing fan base that were excited to help out.  And the other thing was, he was offering some cool rewards.

Part of how kickstarter works is that you set up different pledge levels, and you can associate rewards with them.  So if I wanted to set up a Tenor Dad kickstarter, I might offer anyone who pledged over $100 a chance to choose a blog topic for me to write about.  And if you pledged over $250, maybe I would let you guest write a blog.  Stuff like that.  If you have people who love what you do, and you are offering them exclusive rewards that they can't get anywhere else, you may have a very successfull kickstarter on your hands.

Another great way to use it, for those of us in the music business, is to use it almost as a sort of pre-ordering system for your albums.  An a cappella group that I used to sing with way way way back in the day, currently called Vox Pop DC, is in the middle of a kickstarter project of their own.  They want to record an album, but don't have the funds to do it, so they are looking for public funding.  You can check out their page here, but what they are offering is, for anyone who pledges $15, a free digital copy of the album once it is finished.  And for $25 you can get the digital version plus a physical copy.  Basically, if there is enough interest in the project, they will have pre-sold hundreds of copies of their album before it is even released.

The other twist to kickstarter, however, is that if you don't reach your fundraising goal, you get nothing.  There is a time limit that you have to set, and a monetary goal that you choose very carefully, and if at the end of the time period you have not received that many pledges, the kickstarter ends and your project is not funded.  Vox Pop DC, as of this morning, has about 2 days left to raise an additional $1200, or else they will not be able to produce their album.

This is very different from back when I used to be running a cappella groups and making CDs.  We used to gig and gig and gig, saving up all of our money, and then spending it all on a CD that we hoped would be of good quality, but honestly would be only as good as we could afford, and then two years later half of the CDs would still be sitting in my basement.  I think this kickstarter thing is a better model in this day and age, but be careful that you are being honest with yourself before you start one.  Do you have a realistic view of what your project will cost, and do you seriously have enough support from people other than your Mom, so that you are not sad or embarrassed when nobody backs you?

It's too late to fund the Order of the Stick project, so you are out of luck if you want signed copies of those books, or original sketches from Rich Burlew, but if you want to pre-order a possibly awesome a cappella album, there are still two days left to get in on the ground floor over at Vox Pop DC.  And check out some other projects while you're over there.  It's not all art and music.  There are projects for food and theater and technology and all sorts of fun stuff to discover.  So make somebody's dream come true, or bring your own dreams to life.  Either way, it's pretty amazing system for us starving artists.  When it works.

Tenor Dad's Sure-Fire Vacation Tips

As a seasoned traveler with young children, and once in a while without them, I have come to learn a great number of things that I think might be of use to the rest of the world.  And since I am so generous and giving, I have decided to share them with you now.  You're welcome, world.

1) When you get out of the car after a long drive and your children start fighting, simply choose the lightest child and move them somewhere else.  You might be tempted to grab the heaviest child based on "they should know better," but this could lead to back problems in the future.

2) To find out where, and exactly how severe, your sunburns are, simply step into a hot shower.

3) Always let your children pick which bed they want in the motel room.  The beds are exactly the same level of crappiness, but it makes your kids feel like they have a say in things, even when you and I both know that they have to do whatever we say.

4) If you are going to buy your kids souvenirs, make sure they are cheap and terrible.  With any luck, they will be broken before the vacation is over and you will not have to bring them home with you.

5) Speaking of not bringing things home with you, a great trick is to only pack clothes that are old and full of holes that you are wanting to get rid of.  After you wear each item for the last time, you can just toss it in the trash!  And nobody cares how you dress anyway, because you are on vacation!

6) Pizza is cheaper than McDonald's.  If you are going to be eating out every meal (and you probably are), get a lot of pizza.  Remember when you could eat fast food for under $5?  Well, those days are gone.  Not only is the stuff terrible for you, but it is super expensive.  For four of us, it costs about $30 to go through a drive through these days, but we can get a large pepperoni pizza and a 2-liter soda for $20, sometimes less.  And they will deliver it to your hotel room!

7) Do not bring any books.  You will not read them.  You will mean to read them, but you won't actually do it.  All they are doing is weighing down your bag.  And Kindles count as books.  Leave them safely at home where they will not get filled with salt water, sand, and ketchup.

8) After six hours in the car with your kids, you will be tempted to do anything they ask in order to keep them happy.  Do not give in to this.

9) The later you can keep the kids up, the later they will sleep.  This is a good rule of thumb, except when it backfires.  Sometimes you let the kids stay up 3 hours late, and then they get up at 5am.  On those occasions, the whole rest of the day is a wash.  Just stay in your room, order pizza, and watch free HBO.  Your toddlers will love "Game of Thrones."

10) For a meal that is even cheaper than pizza, try candy.

Beaches and Pools

Yesterday, after our exciting day at Fenway, the family and I decided to spend the day in Cape Cod, since we were almost there already.  My wife had been there many times before, but although I spent many summers as a child along the Massachusetts coast, I had never really been to the Cape proper.  This seemed like a great opportunity for me to expand my vacationly horizons, and for the kids to be hopefully amused enough to stop tormenting their parents and each other.

We started the day at the beach.  Now, I have to tell you right now, I am not really a beach person.  I don't like being covered with sand.  I don't like baking in the hot sun.  I don't like stepping on rocks and shells that hurt my feet.  I don't like touching icky seaweed.  The only thing I really do like about the beach is swimming, but only when the water does not instantly transport you into a state of hypothermic shock.  In other words, not in New England.

The water was very cold yesterday, and so I did not go in.  I mean, I tried.  I put my feet in.  I ran in up to my knees.  I got the bottom of my bathing suit wet, but then I saw those waves crashing nearby, and, well, let's just say there were certain places that I was not willing to plunge into the icy deep just yet.  Instead, I hung out on the beach and tried to help Ruby and Edward build and destroy a sand castle, respectively.

By the end of our time there, I was hot, sandy, sweaty, sticky, and grumpy.  I could probably be quite happy never going to another beach, and I was sooooo ready to get out of there.  Of course the kids didn't want to leave, because they all had a great time.  When we got back to our motel after lunch, it was decided that we would continue our swimming adventures in the pool.

I love pools.  I am a pool person.  Pools are warmer than oceans, there is no sand, and the depths are well marked.  You can get right into the appropriate amount of water for swimming without wading out half a mile.  You can play with toys and not worry that they are going to be lost at sea, or carried away by the tides.  I had a fantastic time in the pool.

Edward and Ruby both loved jumping in from the sides, and we played with a beach ball and various other pool toys for almost 2 hours.  If anyone ever got tired while they were swimming, the shallow end was only a few feet away.  Pools are the bomb.  Why anyone would go to the ocean when they can be in a pool is beyond me.

Now, let me clarify before I get yelled at here (even though I know that it's too late for that).  The ocean is very beautiful.  Listening to the sounds of the waves and the birds is very relaxing.  Agreed.  Pools do not win the gold medals for beauty and serenity.  But for swimming and having fun, pools are where it is at.  At least for me.

But either way you want to look at it, we had a great day.  My wife and I had a great day off with the kids, playing in the water and getting a break from life.  Ruby got to build a great sand castle and practice her floating in the pool.  Edward got to eat ice cream and french fries for lunch and knock down a great sand castle.  The day was a win-win-win-win.  But I'm just saying, the pool part was way better than the beach part.

Singing The National Anthem at Fenway Park

Well, I finally did it.  I sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" on the field at Fenway Park.  It's been a long time since I won that contest back in January, and now it's hard to believe that it's all over.

We started the day by taking the "T" in for my 9:30 am sound check.  I know that some of you reading this are not singers, so you may not know this, but no singer wants to do any singing at 9:30 in the morning.  But I was excited anyway.  We met the guy we were supposed to meet and he took us right onto the field.  I sang the anthem into the microphone, and right away I noticed that there was a huge echoing delay between what was coming out of my mouth and what I was hearing blasted back at my ears through the gigantic sound system.  It was a little distracting and disconcerting, but fortunately for all involved, I am a professional.  I kept on plugging away and managed to get through the whole thing, after which I was startled and surprised by the large amount of applause coming from the groups of people touring Fenway that I had not noticed were watching me.

That was pretty much it for the sound check, and with a few hours left before I had to be back, the family and I headed over to Boston Common and the gardens next to it for some splashing in Frog Pond and a ride on the swan boats.  I also needed to buy a Red Sox shirt.  I really had no idea what to wear for this event.  A tuxedo?  A suit?  Business casual?  So I searched on you tube for people singing the anthem at Fenway, and almost all of them were wearing a Red Sox shirt.  So I bought one.

We didn't have that much time after all of that.  The game started at 1:35, but they wanted me there at 12:30.  I made it back to the park with my wife and kids in tow, plus my mother who we had picked up along the way, and who swore to me that she had called Fenway Park and told them she was my mother and could she please go on the field too.  The Fenway ambassador that met us there seemed to think that there were too many of us to all go on the field, but we ignored her and all went down anyway, my mother included.

Once on the field, my thoughts turned naturally to the task at hand, and the many possible ways in which I might screw it up.  The most important thing was, of course, to remember all of the words.  I mean, I know all of the words, but people mess it up all the time!  Even famous celebrities forget the words.  Especially famous celebrities actually, and they are paid professionals.  Honestly, Fenway can hold almost 39,000 people, and it was pretty darn full.  It was clearly the biggest audience I have ever sung in front of, with a two-second time delay echo blasting at me and one five minute rehearsal to perform a song that, while I have heard it a million times, is not really on my usual rep list.  So yeah, I wanted to make sure I remembered the words.

The other terrifying thought that kept recurring was the fear that I would start it in a bad key.  I was doing this thing a cappella, with no accompaniment and no starting note.  The only pitches that I would be getting were from the mound. (ha ha ha)  Normally I could just get a pitch from the piano app on my iPhone, but my mother had taken my phone and was apparently using it to take pictures of Wally the Green Monster with other people's kids.

 Not My Kids

This left me to just my own instincts.  The problem with this particular song, however, is that is starts pretty low and ends pretty high, so there is always the danger of starting it a little higher than you should at the beginning, and then squeaking out some desperate failure at the end.  I did not wish for this to happen.  But I also wanted to show off an awesome high note at the end and thus didn't want to start too low.  So this is what was going through my mind as I stepped up to the microphone just behind home plate.

Once I started singing, I just forgot everything else.  I saw only the camera in front of me and the people around it.  I ignored the echo and just sang the thing as best as I could, and I think that it went well.  The only thing that threw me was was the huge thunder of applause on "land of the free," which I was not expecting, and I think it made me rush the last phrase, "and the home of the brave," just a little bit.  But other than that, I was very happy with my performance.  I walked off the field to an amazing outpouring of applause and support.  I honestly felt as though I was being hoisted up on everyone's shoulders and carried away, sports-hero style.  People were standing up as I walked by, thanking me, shaking my hand, high fiving me, and just generally being awesome.  The woman that showed me off the field told me that she'd never heard so much applause for the anthem before.  People came up to me and asked to take their picture with me.  In short, it was incredible.

For the rest of the game, everywhere I went people would come up to me and shake my hand and tell me how moved they were by my singing.  And that's why we all do it, isn't it?  I mean, we singers go up on stage to try and make someone else feel something, and I think I did that.  Plus my whole family came out and was very supportive, which is the other reason we do stuff: to show our families that we are not total screw-ups.  My mother came out; my sister was there; I had uncles and cousins and friends and friends' uncles too.  My father even made a sign and held it up while I was singing.  So thank you to my family, my friends, and everyone that I didn't know who was at the game yesterday, watching the Red Sox beat the Twins 6-4.  You all helped to make that day truly euphoric.  Certainly one of the best I've had so far.

To see the video of me singing, click here!

"Indian Style" and Other Things I Can Never Say to My Kids

I don't think of myself as particularly racist.  Sure, I'm a little bit racist, just like everybody else, but I roll up my windows and lock my doors when I drive through poor black neighborhoods, poor white neighborhoods, and poor Hispanic neighborhoods.  There is no one race that I feel scared of, or badly about.  Just poor people!  And hey, I'm no Daddy Warbucks myself.  If you drive past my house and lock your car doors, I'm cool with that.  I do promise not to rob you though.

Anyway, my point is, the kind of racism that I participate in is that insidious kind that has been so ingrained into my subconscious that I don't even know it's there.  I remember when I was a kid, and my parents would tell me stories about when they were kids, and I would be shocked and appalled at the kinds of things that they were taught.  In schools!  Their own grade school teachers would use horribly racist phrases that no one in my generation would ever think about using.  I smugly told myself how superior and non-racist I was, just for having lived in a later time and having been thus enlightened.  Nothing I was learning would ever make my future children sick with disgust!

But the thing is, you don't even notice it when you are doing it yourself.  The other day Ruby was trying to get Edward to sit down and he was having a hard time for some reason, and Ruby told him to sit "Criss-Cross Applesauce."  Now, I had no idea what on Earth criss cross applesauce was, but I finally figured out she was trying to get him to sit with his ankles crossed and his knees akimbo on the floor.  You know!  Indian Style!

Wait, what?  Indian style?  To me that is not a racist term, because it doesn't mean anything to me in regards to race.  "Indian Style" just means that you sit with your ankles crossed.  I'm not thinking about a race of people when I say it.  But when I heard Ruby say criss cross applesauce, I realized that they must have changed it for a reason.  And I thought back to my youth, playing "Cowboys and Indians," and I realized that, of course, they had to stop calling it that.  For one thing, Native Americans are not called Indians anymore.  They never really should have been, except for the fact that Columbus was an idiot.  And Native American style doesn't sound right at all!  When I really thought about it, saying "Indian Style" for sitting like a stereotypical Native American seemed kind of racist.

Someday I will probably have to tell my children that we used to call criss cross applesauce "Indian Style," and they will probably be shocked and appalled at how racist my schools were.  I will have to tell them though, because I doubt that I can ever say criss cross applesauce without at least thinking "Indian Style," and I'm sure it will slip out at some point, and they will stare at me and judge me and feel smugly superior.  And that's fine.  They can think that, and I will try to remove this suddenly offensive term from my vocabulary.  But that makes me think: what other things do I say that may be outdated and offensive?

It's hard to think of things you say or do that you don't know are offensive, because you honestly don't know they are offensive and so where do you even begin?  The biggest recent example I can think of is the word "retard," which everybody knows now is offensive and hurtful, but which we used to use all the time.  But I don't know if that counts, because I never really used that word to begin with, and it certainly wasn't a word our teachers taught us to use in school.  The same goes for saying 'That's so gay."

I know when we used to cut people in line, but stand in back of them instead of in front of them, it was called "Chinese Cuts," but I can't for the life of me think why.  "Chinese Fire Drill" is another seemingly offensive term that I can't figure out.  What is Chinese about everybody switching seats in the car at a red light?  And we used to give each other "Indian Burns" by rubbing each other's arms until they turned red.  I do get why that makes racist sense.  But again, these things were not taught to us by teachers they way "Indian Style" was.  I'm having a hard time thinking of other things, but I know there must be some.  Can any of you think of some term your teachers in school used that you later figured out was maybe not okay to say anymore?  I just want to make sure I stop using them all before my kids figure out all of my accidental racism.