One Year In…

So it’s been one full year since the wedding, and for our anniversary I could write up a long post about how wonderful married life is and how awesome my wife is, but since me sitting at the computer rather than spending time with her isn’t the most effective way of showing her how much I appreciate and love her, I’ll just say: married life is wonderful, and my wife is awesome. Year one was fantastic, and here’s looking forward to many, many more that will be even better. Happy first anniversary…

Cats, Dogs, Mass Hysteria

Last Friday evening, I had mentioned on Twitter that we were preparing to dogsit for two rowdy dogs for a week — joking that I wasn’t worried how our dog would handle it (seeing as she’s incredibly lazy and prone to ignoring other dogs), but more about how the cat would handle it. Little did we know what was to come. Our cat has learned to live with strange and rowdy dogs in the past when we’ve done dog-sitting for friends, but we know that Max is a bit more rowdy than most rambunctious dogs. We’ve dog sat for him in the past, but always at his own home. This time, he was going to stay at our place, with another dog, Daisy, as well. Daisy is a nervous dog, but she pretty much follows whatever Max does.

We decided not to clip our cat’s nails for a little while, so that they’d be extra sharp in case she needed to teach Max or Daisy who was boss. This was a bit of a pain, because for the past few days leading up to Max and Daisy’s arrival, any time our cat would walk on us (often) she might poke us with her claws as well.

Anyway, Friday evening showed up, as did Max and Daisy. Our cat was in my home office at the time, and decided that was probably a good place to stay, hanging out on my desk behind my monitor. We took Max and Daisy around the house, and they didn’t even notice Kitty sitting up there on the desk. All good, we thought.

Then, we go out to take the dogs for a walk. I took Max for an extra long walk, hoping to tire him out so he’d go to sleep without causing too much trouble. He was actually fine on the walk, and I was thinking that maybe it wouldn’t be so difficult to take care of Max this time around. I got home, and the wife was already back with Daisy and Sugar (our dog). Apparently, she’d even introduced Daisy to our cat, and, while they were keeping their distance, they seemed to tolerate each other.

That all was about to change.

I brought Max into the house, and undid the leash. Hearing everyone else upstairs, he raced up the stairs at full throttle, and encountered our cat in one of the bedrooms immediately. There was a lot of noise — barking, thrashing, hissing, scurrying — and I raced up the steps yelling. And then, in flash, I saw a dark object fly by me at super sonic speeds. Our cat, apparently, though, at that speed I honestly wasn’t sure. Half a beat later, there was Max in rapid pursuit. Right back down the stairs past me.

And like that, the cat was gone.

We had just installed a cat door a few weeks ago, and our cat loves the free reign to go inside and out — and obviously was thrilled to be able to quickly make her escape. Of course, what we didn’t figure was that she would then never be interested in returning.

Since she’s an indoor-outdoor cat, we don’t get too worried if she’s gone for a little while. She knows the neighborhood, and likes to hang out outside quite a bit, but usually in a few key spots where we know we can find her. And, when it’s time for us to sleep, she’s always back, and always curled up with us in bed, so we figured it wouldn’t be much of a problem. We blocked off Max and Daisy so they couldn’t get to the cat door if Kitty decided to come home and figured that she’d come back during the night.

But, come morning, still no cat. I spent parts of the day, wandering around to all her hiding spots and calling her, to no avail. Then, we start worrying. What if she got injured by Max on the way out? What if she was so scared she ran outside her comfort “zone” and didn’t know how to get back? What if she was just too scared to come back? What if she hated us for bringing Max into the house?

It wasn’t much fun.

We figured if she still wasn’t around by Sunday morning, we’d alert the neighbors and maybe put up some signs. In the meantime, we decided to follow through on our Saturday evening plans.

We’ve been living in this house for about nine months now, and I’ve already mentioned how nice the neighbors all are. We share a driveway with our neighbor across the way, a woman named Frances, who’s lived there for about thirty years. About a month ago, while both of us were taking out the garbage, she’d invited us over for dinner, which we thought would be nice. While we’ve been living across the driveway from her for nine months, we hadn’t socialized at all, beyond brief chats across the driveway. Last night was the night that we’d planned to get dinner.

So, across the driveway we walked, and we had a nice time chatting with Frances. Almost as soon as we got there, Frances mentioned how beautiful our cat is. Frances also has a cat, Gracie, but she’s exclusively an indoor cat. We told Frances the saga of the missing cat, and she said that we shouldn’t worry — she was sure that our cat would return. Anyway, we had a very nice dinner that Frances made. We were sitting in her dining room around her table. I was seated at the head of the table, looking towards her sliding back door onto Frances’ backyard.

Just as we were finishing up dinner, telling random stories, I saw Kitty crawl out from under one of the bushes in the backyard and start to walk across. It honestly took me two beats to realize what was happening. One to notice something was moving — and the second to realize it was our “missing” cat. We ran to the door, opened it, and the cat immediately ran back away. My wife went out and called to the cat — who responded — but wouldn’t come near us. She crawled under a fence and into the drainage chute that runs along the far side of Frances’ house. I ran around and tried to come up from the other side. It’s a narrow cement drainage area, with the house on the left and a fence on the right — so no easy place for the cat to go, other than back into the back yard.

Instead, the cat came running right for me. At first, I thought maybe she was happy to see me — but it was more that she was hoping to dart by me. She faked left, then right, and then dove under a set of wooden steps leading to Frances’ garage. I was right there, blocking her exit, and went to pick her up.

Remember how we decided not to trim her claws?

Yeah, so my loving cat, who likes nothing more than to cuddle with me every night, decided to show me what her claws can do. I got two nice gashes across the back of my hand, another on my upper arm, and (for good measure) a little slash across the neck… and off ran Kitty.

Still, it was good to know she was still alive (and moving quite well). Frances gave us some salmon that we put on a little plate to try to attract the cat (assuming, correctly, that she would be hungry). After one failed attempt to bring her back into our house, we actually lured her into Frances’ house. I ran back to our house and got her crate. With a little effort we got her into the crate (briefly introduced her to Gracie, as well) and then took her home.

Since then, we’ve been living in a bit of a warzone. The pet door is now shut. The dogs are living downstairs. The cat is hiding upstairs, in a state of constant alert — sort of the kitty equivalent of Anne Frank (sans diary) — moving from one hiding spot to another. The stairs are a sort of demilitarized zone. The dogs have made it up a few times, with a few minor flares, but for the most part, we’ve avoided a return to all out cat/dog warfare. We’ve tried a few times to “introduce” Max to Kitty, but so far, all that’s done is get me a few more scratches.

Such is life in our household these days…

Post script: Having now written this up, I’m realizing that back in the early days of blogging, the mocking phrase that the mainstream press used to put down the concept of “bloggers” was that it was a bunch of people writing about their cats — and I vaguely recall promising myself that I’d never become one of “those” bloggers. Oops.

To My Grandma Rose, On Her 90th Birthday

On my mother’s side, I have 5 cousins, making a total of six of us. From oldest (my sister) to youngest (my cousin Steven), there’s only 7 years difference. We all grew up in and around New York City, and we spent plenty of time together. We’re extremely close to this day (even though I’ve been 3,000 miles away for the past 10 years). The six of us all come from three sisters who were born to my grandparents in the 1940s: my mom, my aunt Carol (my mom’s identical twin sister) and my aunt Betty. And, of course, at the top of the pyramid are my grandparents, Rose & Sid, who really have kept this entire extended family so close together all these years:

In about a month, my grandmother will turn 90. Three years ago, when my grandfather turned 90, the whole extended family got together for a big birthday party. The six of us cousins all wrote up stories about Grandpa Sid and what he meant to us. Now it’s Grandma Rose’s turn. Even though her birthday isn’t until the end of July, the only time all of us could get together was in the middle of June. We had a wonderful brunch, with the entire extended family — and the six of us cousins all wrote up our stories and read them outloud… Of course, that was just to our extended family listening to it. I figured why not share my thoughts with the rest of the world as well. I’ll email my cousins as well, to see if they want to add their thoughts in the comments. Anyway, here’s what I wrote (and read) for my Grandma Rose at her 90th birthday party:

---

Three years ago, when we all got together to celebrate Grandpa’s 90th birthday, I told Grandma she had to wait for her turn to hear stories about herself. I needed to do so, because I realized how difficult it was to think of Grandpa stories that didn’t have Grandma as a central figure – oftentimes speaking *for* Grandpa, before he was allowed to get out the words.

And, now, in thinking about what stories to tell about Grandma, I realize, again, how much Grandpa figures into every one of those stories – but also just how much a central figure Grandma has been in this entire family’s lives (again, oftentimes speaking for all of us, before we can get out the words!). When we look back on this family, it really is amazing how close we’ve all been for so many years, no matter where our paths have taken us (both literally and figuratively). And, while it may have seemed easy or natural for this to happen, I think we all have to admit that it’s been Grandma’s ever-steady hand (occasionally mixed with a good-natured scolding or question about when we’re getting married/having kids/etc.) that hasn’t just kept this extended family so close-knit, but also instilled all of us with our moral compass, our passion for life and our ability to have fun and laugh so frequently.

I tried to think of a story about Grandma that not everyone would know – and while I came up with a few, one of my favorites was the time I called a few years back, and Grandma answered the phone out-of-breath. She apologized, and explained: “I turned on the TV, and there’s a special on about Elvis Presley, so I started dancing.”

Yes, Grandma is a closet Elvis fan.

“Ah, what can I say?” She’ll say. “Let everyone just stay well. That’s all I want. That’s all.”

We’ve all heard her say that phrase, perhaps a thousand times – and it’s become Grandma’s mantra. But, that’s really not all. Grandma doesn’t just want us all to be well. She wants us all to be happy and find meaning in life. She knows how to make all of us laugh — and she takes a keen interest in what each of us is interested in, even if it’s beyond her scope of knowledge and experience.

For years, every single time I called to speak to her, she would let me know that her and Grandpa sat down at the WebTV every evening, after the 11 o’clock news, and before going to bed, to log onto Techdirt, and read what I’d written about that day.

“I don’t understand half of it — or sometimes all of it — but I read it.”

Sometimes she’d engage me: “So what you’re really saying is…” and it would always be exactly right, sometimes giving me new ways of thinking about things.

I got to see this nightly ritual first hand a few years back, when I was in Florida for a conference. As bedtime rolled around, Grandma and Grandpa came out to the terrace, turned on the TV. Grandma sat towards the back, in her comfy recliner, with the TV tray table and the wireless WebTV keyboard. Grandpa in the front, with the remote control. The two of them, working as a team, would log in, check their email, and then call up Techdirt from a list of bookmarks. Grandma would read each post outloud, and when she reached the bottom, command Grandpa to “Scroll!” with the remote.

Even with me sitting there, Grandma made sure to read every last post, and comment on about half of them

A few years later, the first time I brought (a very nervous) Sunnia to meet Grandma and Grandpa, Grandma immediately made her feel not just at ease, but as if she were already one of the family. The two of them bonded instantly – sometimes to my own detriment. Early on, she heard Sunnia gently scold me for something I had done (or, more likely, not done), and immediately took her side – and later passed on a list of her most important lessons from 60+ years of marriage. There were two that stood out:

• Always kiss each other before going to sleep
• The woman is always right

Sunnia reminds me of this constantly. Any time I disagree with her, she chides: “Remember what your grandmother said!”

And, so we do, always, remember what Grandma says. Grandma. Happy 90th birthday, to the glue that holds this family together and gives us all so much joy and life. And, let us all remember: Grandma is always right.

High School Nostalgia… (Part I)

“True terror is to wake up one morning and discover that your high school class is running the country.”

— Kurt Vonnegut

I went to a fun gathering last weekend, put on for Jonathan Zittrain, the founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard. The occasion was Zittrain’s new book The Future of the Internet… And How To Stop It. I’ve known Zittrain’s work for a while, but never met him, so jumped when I got an invite (thank you, Kara Swisher) to the come to a party for the book. The party itself was put on by Arianna Huffington and Melanie Ellison, who I guess you need to refer to as “Larry Ellison’s wife.” That meant the party was at one of Larry Ellison’s homes, on Billionaire’s Row in San Francisco, where pretty much all of the neighbors are billionaires, and the view is magnificent.

Meeting Zittrain for the first time was cool. He seems like a nice guy and I look forward to reading the book (of which I picked up a copy). The Ellisons’ house was incredible (well, what I could see of it — there were security guards guarding every door), and there were plenty of rich, famous and beautiful people in attendance. Beyond both of the Ellisons, Zittrain and Huffington, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was in attendance as was former governor (and former presidential candidate) Jerry Brown. I also got to talk with Craig of Craigslist fame for a while, which is always nice. He explained to me why he doesn’t want to sell Craigslist (not that I asked). Kara has a nice writeup and short video that includes me failing to come up with something interesting to say:

They also handed everyone a cookie with the book cover from Zittrain’s book on the cookie. I had no idea you could do such things, but apparently you can (I ate half the cookie after dinner — not bad). It’s too bad my wife is out of town, considering that Larry Ellison is her boss’s boss’s boss’s boss… I’m sure she would have enjoyed seeing the house.

However, I’m actually not writing this post about all of that — but about high school and nostalgia. When I got to the event, I actually ran into Zittrain right after I walked in, standing in the entry hallway, before the big living room where most of the people were. He was talking to Dan Farber, who I know and who introduced me. We asked Jonathan how it ended up that the Ellisons were throwing the party for him, and he told us that he actually went to high school with Melanie, and they were friends back then. So, now that the book came out, she agreed to hold the book party.

Arianna told a slightly different story, saying she was having dinner with the Ellisons, and brought along an early version of the book, saying she thought it was something the Ellisons should read, and Melanie surprised her by telling her that she had gone to high school with Zittrain. In introducing Zittrain, Melanie mentioned how she had known him since 1984, and she knew right away that he was “cool” to which Jonathan replied that it was certainly “a very well kept secret” that he was ever cool.

It got me thinking, because I’ve been going through a bit of high school nostalgia myself lately. It’s been 15 years since graduation, which seems like a long time — especially since it still doesn’t really feel all that long ago. But, suddenly I’ve found myself in touch with a few folks from high school that I lost touch with long ago, partly due to Facebook and partly due to randomness.

“Everybody in high school feels like the geek. If you are ten years out of high school and you say ‘damn, those were the best years of my life,” then I don’t want anything to do with you. You scare me.”
— Stephen King on “Wait, Wait… Don’t Tell Me!” May 4, 2008

I lost touch with almost everyone I knew in high school. This was just as the internet was catching on, so only the super geeks had email addresses prior to going off to school, there was no instant messaging or social networks, so it wasn’t as easy to stay in touch. Sometimes I wonder if that’s still the case today. With email, social networking and instant messaging, it seems like it’s much more difficult to “lose” touch with people. But, without those, I lost touch with most folks within about a year.

Even the kids who I thought I was close friends with pretty much disappeared once I got to college. Perhaps this wasn’t that surprising. I don’t think I was ever really that close with people from my high school anyway. I don’t remember my high school being particularly cliqueish, though, in retrospect that may have just been me being oblivious. I knew lots of different people, and while I did have a group of regular friends, I also was pretty friendly with a pretty diverse selection of kids. So, based on that, I don’t think I really ever spent too much time with any one set of friends — and I always had this thought in the back of my head (which I’m thinking may be quite common among high schoolers) that maybe my friends didn’t actually like me very much. So I always made sure that I was friends with a bunch of different groups, just in case one group woke up and realized that they didn’t like me, I could just spend my time with a different group.

Every so often I would do Google searches online to see if I could dig up info on what happened to this or that friend from high school. Most of them weren’t findable, which was weird for me since I’m… rather findable on Google these days. It’s because of that findability that I occasionally get emails from folks.

Just a few months ago, I got an email from Rusty. This goes back beyond high school. Rusty went to elementary school with me, and I remember that he was the first kid that the bus picked up (the furthest from school) and I was the third stop, so he always got the best seat on the bus. I also remember him teaming up with Pedro to beat me up when I broke Pedro’s gold chain in a fight on the junior high bus (that was fun). Rusty still lives in Huntington and is a DJ (he DJ’d our high school “ska & rave” — yes, we had a “ska & rave” in high school). He’s married with a kid. And here’s the best part: he totally didn’t remember that I went to high school with him (apparently, the speech I gave at graduation wasn’t that memorable). He only remembers me from elementary school (I didn’t ask him about the fight in junior high). He sent me the photo of our second grade class, and I actually remember the names of most of the kids, including Joe Anchundia, who was working in the World Trade Center and died on September 11.

“Hey Michael, it’s me, Job….”

That was the message I got when Ryan added me as a “friend” on Facebook earlier this year. Ryan was a cool kid, but for some reason, I don’t remember being all that friendly with him. I remember that he was friends with most of my friends… and I remember thinking that he was really nice… but I just can’t remember hanging out with him that much. I also absolutely did not initially get the reference to Job, until he reminded me that he played the role of “Job” in a play I had written in high school called “A Day in the Life of God.” I actually co-wrote it with Brendan Gray (who sorta appears later in this story).

Huntington High School held a competition between the grades each year called “Playfest” where each grade put on a play. Some classes license a real play, some have a student write a play. Brendan and I teamed up freshman year to write a play, but we handed it in a day late, and so they licensed some play instead. I think Brendan was the funniest guy I knew in high school. Don’t ask me why I remember this, but I remember meeting him the first day of junior high school as we were both walking to shop class, and he just saw me in the hallway and started talking to me like we were old friends (we had actually met a year earlier on a field trip between elementary schools, but I don’t think that’s why he spoke to me). I used to like hanging out with Brendan because he was so funny that by the time I walked away, my brain was racing faster and even I was funnier (not for very long, though).

Anyway, for sophomore year, the two of us teamed up again and wrote the play “A Day in the Life of God” and handed it in on time. Our class advisors loved it and brought us on to direct, though Brendan rarely showed up, leaving the directing to me. There was a bit of controversy over the subject matter. The (not very original) “joke” of the play was that it was God as if he were a corporation CEO with Satan trying to run a hostile takeover of heaven. The jokes came pretty easily with that (though, our class advisors wanted us to add more characters so we didn’t have to cut anyone who wanted a part, so I went scouring through the bible to find bit players… like Job). The best actress in the school was a girl named Jillian, and we gave her the role of Satan… until her mom read the play, freaked out, called us blasphemers and demanded that Jillian quit the play. She moved to a new school soon afterwards.

That was fun.

We also got into some trouble for a line that I didn’t write. Ari played the role of Abraham, and at one point God (played by Dan Brenner — who recently connected with me via LinkedIn) got mad at Abraham, and Ari ad libbed a line to explain why he was having trouble paying attention: “But… but… but… I can’t find my foreskin.” It got the biggest laugh of the night and a stern warning from the principal that if we used that line on night 2 we would be disqualified from winning the “best play” award. Figuring the laughs were more rewarding than some dumb award, Ari and I agreed that he would still do the line.

I did Playfest (sans Brendan, unfortunately) the next two years as well, and in looking through my high school yearbook (which I just pulled out after having written all of the above), I’m realizing that a lot of folks connected me with those plays, as some of the signatures I got all refer to various plays. I guess that’s not the worst thing to be remembered for — though I’m not sure it’s going to get any multi-billionaires to throw a party for me any time soon.

Anyway, this post is getting long enough, so I’m going to stop it here and post it as “Part I,” soon (hopefully) to be followed by Part II — which includes recently meeting up with some long lost high school friends, and random other bits of nostalgia and thoughts on high school.

Go Ahead And Compare Atari Desks

Ok, so remember that last post about the old photo of an Atari 800 on a desk from 1983? The one that I said reminded me so much of the old Atari 800 I grew up with? The one that I said that I was pretty sure my parents had walled off as a disaster area? Yeah, well, my memory was correct, and my parents are awesome. They just sent me a photo of the desk, taken today.

Here’s, again, is the photo from 1983 that Pesco’s friend sent him:

And here’s the photo taken today, April 14, 2008, of the Atari 800 I grew up with that’s still sitting in my parent’s basement:


See why I saw some similarities? Gotta love the wood paneling, right? Ok. So mine’s a bit messier… but I can blame that on 25 years of usage… right? Er… probably not. Next step will be turning on the Atari 800 and seeing if I can coax it to do something next time I’m at my parents’ place.