New refrigerator = new life

You don't realize how much your major kitchen appliances shape your existence until you buy a new one.

We recently purchased a new refrigerator and I'm still getting used to it. I interact with the refrigerator several times a day, and when the contents get rearranged, it throws me off.

"Wait, where do we keep the cheese now? And why are my apples way over here? This shelf moves? And this one doesn't? Why would they design it like that? How do you make it spit out ice cubes instead of water?"

And so on. My list of questions and sundry annoyances grows daily, but there's no denying it's a beautiful refrigerator. It's black. Very black. None more black.

My wife has decided that that's the direction in which all of our kitchen appliances are going: black. Which is fine by me. I just need to keep track of where she puts the yogurt now. And the fact that our freezer is now on the bottom rather on the side. That's world-changing, by the way. I won't get used to that for at least three years (you think I'm kidding).

A few years ago we bought a dishwasher from a guy named Flint Parker. That's an absolutely true story. "Flint Parker" should be rasslin' dogies out west, not selling overpriced appliances to suburban white people.

But sell appliances is what Flint Parker does, and he sold us an expensive one. I still love it, but it causes Terry no end of grief because she's constantly having to pull bits of food out of the spray arm nozzles so that our expensive dishwasher will actually, you know, wash dishes.

I've finally gotten used to the space-age, touch-sensitive buttons on the door of our dishwasher, which means it's about time for Terry to buy a new one. A cardinal rule in this house is that Daddy is never to be comfortable with any of the living arrangements. Once I grow accustomed to something, the family switches it on me. I can't keep up, and I think this amuses them. I'm like a walking psychology experiment to these people.

Anyway, apart from the refrigerator and the dishwasher, the only other really "major" kitchen appliance is the stove, and I almost never use it. I'll boil water occasionally, and once a decade I'll bake something, but really, Terry is free to swap that out whenever she likes. It's the one thing that won't alter my existence much at all.

But the Keurig? And the Vitamix? Those are staples. Don't mess with those. I need some consistency in my life. And besides, I'm still too busy trying to figure out where we keep the salad dressing now.

The Keurig vs. the iPod - Which is the greatest invention of the last 30 years?

As the son of a Gadget Guy, I gravitate naturally toward technology. I can rarely afford to buy it, you understand, but I do gravitate toward it.

Growing up, we were among the first people in our neighborhood to have cable TV, a VCR, and a home video game system.

Actually, I should have put "home video game system" in quotes, because what it was was a cheap, black-and-white Pong-based game from Radio Shack that my dad brought home one night in 1978. He hooked it up to our living room TV, and suddenly I was playing video games. At home. In my living room.

A stunning innovation at the time.

Two years later, he bought us an Atari 2600, and thus began a long love affair with video games and computers that peaked in the mid-1980s when I got really good at the arcade game "Track and Field." This was a game where you had to mash two buttons really, really fast in order to make your little pixellated video game athlete run and jump through a variety of events.

A lot of guys (and it was really only guys who played it) would cheat by putting a comb between their fingers, which allowed them to develop a lightning-fast rhythm that would propel their video runners to sub-8-second 100-meter dash times.

But I played it straight. In large part because I couldn't figure out the comb thing. The point is, I was really good.

Well no, actually, the point is I like technology and gadgets and stuff like that. And for my money, the two best gadgets of the past 30 years are the Keurig coffee maker and Apple's wonderful iPod.

My kids bought me a Keurig for Father's Day a few years ago. I was just getting into coffee then, and getting the Keurig pushed me over the top into full-on addiction. I'm proud to say I remain physically and mentally dependent on the hot brown liquid until this day!

OK, not something to be proud of, but also not something to be denied. Coffee snobs will tell you the Keurig makes a low-quality drink, but I ignore them. What it does is make coffee as fast and convenient as it can be. It's ingenious, really, and it spawned an entire industry of companies that do nothing but make those little K-Cups.

All of which is cool. But the iPod? Well...the iPod is mythical. When I was a teenager, I was really into music. And the accepted medium for popular music in the 80s was the cassette. I had lots of cassettes. Like hundreds of them, all stored in cheap plastic holders that my dad undoubtedly bought at a discount store and screwed into my bedroom wall.

Cassettes were an extremely portable form of music, if by "portable" you mean "assuming you're willing to lug around a 13-pound boom box on your shoulder." But then came the Walkman, which allowed you to listen to your favorite cassettes in a little metal box that weighed less than a pound.

I figured that was the pinnacle of technological achievement. You had to carry multiple cassettes if you wanted musical variety, but that seemed a small price to pay.

But then – I don't even know how to describe how stunning and revolutionary this was – Apple came out with the iPod in the early 2000s. There were no tapes involved. Everything was digital. And the darn thing fit in the palm of your hand.

I just...I mean...if you're old enough to remember it, you know what I'm talking about. Suddenly, the future was here. You could carry around hundreds of songs. And nowadays it's well into the thousands.

Amazing.

So while the Keurig and the iPod are both life-changing inventions for me, if you ask which one is better, I'm going with the iPod. Every time.

Seriously, I can listen to Iron Maiden AND Air Supply back to back with just a couple of screen swipes? Yeah, I'm buying into that.

Jobs I do around the house because I'm the man

My inability to fix things and/or do anything remotely mechanical is well documented. And I freely own up to it. But there are still certain jobs I do within our household simply because I have testicles.

I don't know why these are Man Jobs, but they are. My list includes the following:

(1) KILLING BUGS
This is pretty stereotypical, and it's also true. My wife and daughters - strong, confident women all - will force me to fly in from the other side of the continent, if necessary, if a spider is found in our kitchen. They could easily squash it themselves, but for whatever reason, insect and arachnid killing falls to me or my son Jared.

(2) CLEANING THE CAT LITTER BOXES
As I've mentioned  before, I got roped into this one years ago when Terry was pregnant with Elissa. Terry and her doctor conspired to make up a fake disease called toxoplasmosis, which they claimed pregnant women could contract if they come into contact with cat waste. I stupidly believed them, and 20 years later the first thing I do every single day is still cleaning the litter boxes. I can't believe I fell for it.

(3) MAINTAINING THE CARS
This may seem surprising, given my aforementioned lack of mechanical aptitude, but all it really means is that every few weeks I pop the hoods on our cars to check that they have the proper levels of windshield washer, transmission and power steering fluids, coolant, oil, etc. I also make sure the tires are inflated to the correct pressure. This not only extends the life of our vehicles, it also makes me feel semi-manly. Everybody wins.

(4) CLEANING UP PEE, BOTH ANIMAL AND HUMAN
If one of our cats pees on the carpet and I'm home, I clean it up. I'm not sure why this is, but I'm fine with it. The problem is that, from time to time when the kids were little, they would also pee on the carpet, and again...the clean-up was assigned to me. Like this one time, one of my daughters who shall remain nameless was sleepwalking at our old house. Wearing her little Barbie nightgown, she stood at the top of the stairs and announced, "I can't take it anymore." And then she just started peeing. Terry cleaned her up and got her back to bed, while I soaked up the pee and broke out the stain remover. The unwritten rule is that Scott is to clean up any and all urine-related incidents within the confines of the house.

(5) MAKING SURE THE KEURIG RESERVOIR IS FULL
Our Keurig coffee maker gets used a lot. Which means the water level in the little plastic reservoir attached to the machine tends to drop quickly. In almost all cases, I'm the one who fills it back up. Again, I don't know why, but it bothers me to see that "Add Water" indicator on the little Keurig screen, so I'm quick to take it over to the sink and fill it up. It's my job. It's what I do.

I'm The Man.

Oh, pay day, how I love you so

I just found an online calculator that, when you input your annual income, can tell you where you rank globally in terms of wealth.

If you've ever wanted to feel really, really rich, you should try this calculator (GlobalRichList.com).

Actually, tools like that are mixed blessings. Sure, they make you feel like Bill Gates (which most of us are, compared with a stunning proportion of the rest of the world's population). But they also make you feel a bit guilty. Or at least that's what they do to me.

Being born in the United States means there's an excellent chance you rank among the richest 1% of people in the world (I'm thinking they include children in their formula, but still...) And I don't doubt you've worked very hard to get there.

But Americans strutting around because they're among the richest people in the world is a lot like the guy who claims to have hit a home run after he was born on third base.

Now I'm not trying to start class warfare here. Nor am I a bleeding heart liberal who thinks all wealth is bad. I'm just stating the undeniable fact that, no matter what problems you may have, you're still a lot better off than most people on the planet, and it's largely because of the circumstances into which you were born.

Nothing wrong with that. It just is.

Anyway, I bring this up because today is pay day at my place of employment. We get paid every two weeks, which is a schedule I like.

So does my wife. Getting paid every other Friday means that, two or three times a year, there will be a month in which I get an extra check. And she uses those extra checks to get ahead on bills, pay for emergency repairs, buy me Gala apples, etc.

When I worked at the Cleveland Clinic, we used to get paid once a month...on the 15th, if I remember correctly. Talk about having to manage your money.

On one hand, sure, it's nice to get a huge lump of cash deposited into your checking account all at once. But by the time you got to, say, the 7th or 8th of the following month, unless you were really disciplined, you were running a little short of funds.

But it's not the money I love so much on pay days as what the money buys. Specifically, pay day often means it's Terry Goes Grocery Shopping Day in our house. And that woman can shop. Well.

By the time I come home from work on pay day, she has usually returned from an epic shopping trip that has taken her to three or four different stores, where she has purchased all of the food, toiletries and other staples needed to support a family of seven.

She goes to three or four different stores because she has a system down, you see. She knows where to find the best prices and the best products. She knows how to use coupons to maximum effect. And she knows how to stretch that food budget of ours to its outer limits.

Anyway, by the time I walk in the door every other Friday, the kitchen is filled to overflowing with fruits, vegetables, meats, snacks, and new Keurig coffee cups. I love the fruit, as I've mentioned, but those Keurig coffee cups make me tingly.

I get so excited to see all the newly purchased food that I don't mind the fact that three-quarters of it will be gone by the end of the weekend, thanks largely to the voracious appetite of my 15-year-old son, Jared.

Jared regularly consumes seven meals in a day. I'm not kidding. It's sometimes even more. And he's as thin as a pencil.

I resent him for this, but it never lasts long. I get so distracted by the new crop of juicy apples and the K-Cups that there's no room in my brain for resentment.

Yes, pay day, I love you. You make everything OK.

The glory and comfort of the king-sized bed

When we moved into our house 10 years ago, my wife and I bought a king-sized bed.

Along with our gigantic sectional couch, our Keurig coffee maker, and our flat-screen TV, this was easily among our top purchases of all time.

If you own a king-sized bed, or even if you've simply slept in one before, you know what I'm talking about here.

When we were first married, Terry and I slept in a queen bed. And it seemed to be just fine for our needs.

But then you try a king-size and your total personal sleeping acreage rises dramatically and exponentially, and that's it, man. You simply cannot go back.

Even a decade into owning this behemoth, I sometimes crawl into bed at night and marvel at how much space I have. Terry has her side and I have mine, and we're both 100% fine with this set-up.

At any given time of the night, unless one of us has rolled toward the middle of the bed in our sleep, there are 2 to 3 solid feet of empty, stretched-out comfort between us.

Nowadays when we travel somewhere and are forced back into a queen, it's like sleeping in a matchbox.

NOTE TO THOSE WHO DID NOT GROW UP AT A TIME WHEN 145% OF THE AMERICAN POPULATION SMOKED AND THEREFORE MATCHES WERE EVERYWHERE: A matchbox is a small container in which matches are kept. The only thing you need to understand here is that a matchbox is, generally speaking, a tiny space.

But really, having to revert to a queen is torture for us.

It's not that we dislike being near each other or anything. It's just that we're eminently spoiled by our big boy bed, and anything else seems cramped and uncomfortable.

Plus, we have four cats in our house. On any given night, two or three or them will climb up into bed with us. This isn't so bad in January when the extra heat is welcomed. But in July, for example, you would rather not have their fuzzy, furnace-like bodies snuggled right up against you. The king bed gives them room to stake out their own few square feet of space.

If there's a downside to the king, it's when Terry washes the sheets and the whole thing has to be made again from scratch.

King-sized sheets are huge and unwieldy. They're tough to position and tuck in so that everything is just right.

Or at least they are for me. Terry prefers it when I help her make the bed, but she can get along just fine without me.

I, on the other hand, never know exactly which way the sheets should be positioned. Does the tag go down at the bottom? And if so, on which side? I can never figure it out.

If it were left to me, I would just throw a comforter onto the bare mattress and sleep on top of that.

Fortunately, Terry has enough brain power to figure it all out for me. Must be all of that uber-comfortable sleep she gets every night.