When Mrs. Blog goes out of town

This is the spot on the couch where Terry would normally be as I write this post.

Every once in a while, my wife takes a well-deserved overnight trip. Like, for instance, a couple of weeks ago she drove to Cincinnati to see her friend Marianne and take in a Maroon 5 concert with Marianne and Marianne's sister and sister-in-law.

This is the part when you may expect me to say the house turns into a disaster when Terry is gone, but that's not the case at all. Honestly, everything looks pretty much the same when she comes home as when she left. We are not so dependent on her that life comes to some screeching halt.

But here's what does happen:

(1) We do not eat as well. I often bring up Terry's skill in the kitchen, in part so that I always remember how spoiled we are by it and never take it for granted. When she isn't here, we get by on leftovers and maybe one night of takeout.

(2) The house doesn't feel the same. I don't mean to sound too dramatic about this, but she brings an energy that just isn't there. I'm typing this on the Saturday morning after she left for Cincy, and everything is way too quiet. She should be in the living room right now sitting on the couch, watching TV, and drinking her coffee.

To that last point, I have obviously never experienced it, but I can somewhat understand how incredibly difficult it must be to lose your spouse, for whatever reason. Their presence creates a certain vibe to which you become accustomed, and even when they're gone on just a short weekend trip, there's something missing.

Yet I'm always happy when she leaves because I know she's going to have a fun time, and like I say, it's very much deserved. I hope she has an awesome concert experience tonight.

Let it be known, though, that when she makes one of her delicious meals, it's for me and not for Adam Levine. It's important to me that Adam knows this.

The top 5 things I do on my 42-minute morning commute

(1) Listen to audiobooks
I recently finished "A Short History of World War I" and "A Short History of World War II," which are a combined 27 CDs long. They make me wonder how exactly Professor James L. Stokesbury, the author, defined "short." Clearly it has never bothered me, though, as by my estimate it was (and this is no exaggeration) somewhere between the 25th and 30th time I've listened through these books in their entirety since I first started getting them out of the library in the mid-90s. Back then I would get them on cassette, so that gives you an idea of how ancient my tie to these works is.

(2) Chew gum
Wrigley's Peppermint Cobalt 5. I go through 2-3 sticks a day, which as bad habits go is probably pretty low on the scale of badness.

(3) Dodge the insane drivers of Interstate 271 and Ohio Route 8.
We have covered this before. The good thing is that I now know exactly how I'll die. I will inevitably be rear-ended by someone who feels I should be doing 85 MPH in the far right lane. It's just a matter of when.

(4) Think about my meeting schedule for the day
I am not the biggest fan of corporate meetings. My former colleague Debbie Thornsberry said I always had The Meeting Face during meetings, which shows that even with great effort we sometimes cannot hide our true feelings. I understand the necessity of getting together with co-workers, but I quickly found out there's a good reason employees have dubbed it The Goodyear Tire and Meeting Company.

(5) Constantly make sure I have my ID badge, my phone, and my lunch
I have been known to forget one or more of these things on a given work day, and it always creates a big hassle when I do. So I look around, feel my pockets, and just generally do everything to make sure I have these essential items with me. It causes way more stress than it should.

Kudos to you, Mr./Ms. Engineer Who First Thought of Cell Phone Flashlights

I get my money's worth from my smart phone, putting it to varied use throughout each and every day. It's an integral part of my existence.

But of all the apps loaded onto that phone, there is perhaps none more handy and none that I activate more often than the flashlight.

It's such a simple idea, really. Once phones started integrating cameras, they needed flashes for photographic lighting purposes. Why not allow users to turn that flash on for extended periods any time they needed to illuminate, say, a dark room?

There's nothing complex about the concept, but like so many things in life, its genius is in its simplicity.

I use that flashlight every morning when I'm up early and making my way around our bedroom as I get ready to exercise, dress for work, and generally just get my life in order. Since I'm always up before Terry, It helps me see what I'm doing without having to turn on the bedroom light.

A seemingly obvious feature, yet brilliant in its effectiveness and ease of use.

I don't know if it was the first phone to include it, but Apple started offering flashlight functionality with the iPhone 4 back in 2010. Somewhere there is an Apple engineer to whom I hope the company gave a large wad of cash for suggesting the feature.

You, sir or ma'am, are almost literally the light of my life.

Even 20 years later, most of us have a 9/11 story

NOTE: The following post ran six years ago today. I was going to write something comparing the relative societal impacts of COVID and September 11th, but then I realized I have no idea what I'm talking about. So instead I hope you don't mind if I recycle this little missive. I do wonder, though, how we'll all look back on both events (if you want to call COVID an "event") 30 years from now. Time and memory do funny things...

Fourteen years ago today was one of the strangest 24-hour periods I've ever experienced (ANOTHER NOTE: Again, remember this post first appeared in 2015 when it had been only 14 years since 9/11.)

It was the day of the September 11th terrorist attacks, of course, and it was one of the few times in life when virtually nothing that happened would have surprised me.

I was working at the Cleveland Clinic Children's Hospital for Rehabilitation, and the first inkling my office-mate Heidi and I had that something might be wrong was when a nurse came running down the hall saying, "They bombed the Pentagon!"

That wasn't quite true, but close enough. First came news of the World Trade Center being hit, then being hit again, then a tower collapsing, then the other tower following suit. Then reports of a plane crashing into the Pentagon, which I recall it took a while to confirm.

Then came rumors that a plane may be headed for Cleveland. In truth, the plane flew over Cleveland and eventually crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.

If you didn't experience it, you have to understand how all of these events happened one on top of the other. Bad news followed by bad news.

After a short time, we would have believed almost anything.

Offices in Downtown Cleveland closed in case the city really was being targeted (no one knew for sure), and I think they eventually shut down our hospital, too.

Rumors were that the price of gas might triple or worse, so my family and I waited in a long line at a local Shell station that evening to get gas in our minivan before the jump, which never actually occurred.

The entire U.S. air traffic system was shut down. No one could fly in and out of anywhere for a few days.

That night we attended a prayer service at our church. There was a lot of emotion but also a stoic courage in the eyes of fellow believers that I'll never forget. Jesus could have returned to earth and I wouldn't have been shocked.

Eventually life returned to something resembling normal, though it seemed to take weeks and weeks, and the world hasn't been quite the same to me since.

It was, I suppose, my generation's "Where Were You When JFK Was Shot?" moment.

I still say cross country is a delightfully crazy activity

It's Friday and it's September, which means Terry and I will be at a high school football game tonight. It's just what we do (and have done for years) on late-summer/early-fall Fridays, given our involvement with the Wickliffe Swing Band.

We also have a routine on Saturday mornings this time of year, and it involves driving to random schools and watching large groups of thin young people run 3.1 miles so quickly you're sure some of them are going to collapse.

Welcome to the insane world of cross country!

Four years ago when my son Jack first got into this sport, I immediately recognized that cross country runners are some of the toughest people on Earth. I still say this is true as Jack, a high school junior, participates in his fifth season as a "cross" runner.

Because that's what the cool kids call it: "cross." Not "cross country," just "cross."

These athletes run in all conditions: dry or wet, hot or cold, light or dark. They have been training all summer and continue to train throughout the season, so there's very little that deters them. They are machines.

And they take pride in their toughness, by the way, just as they should. You hear all the time how tough football players are, but few of them could endure a season of cross country training (and I say that as a former footballer).

The cross country family – which includes not only the runners themselves but also their parents and siblings – is a close-knit one. We cheer for our own kids and for each others' kids. We stand outside in those changing fall weather conditions and yell for everyone wearing our school colors.

Actually, we show support for any kid willing to subject himself or herself to the trials of long-distance running, regardless of which uniform they're wearing. They all deserve our encouragement.

For years we were a soccer household, as all of our kids played it and I coached it, but I'm so proud to have joined the cross community. Everyone there, kids and families alike, is lovably insane.

I tried (and failed) to make the transition to black coffee

I have been a regular coffee drinker for only about a decade. This surprises some people, who assume that those who work in newspaper newsrooms (as I did in the 80s and 90s) are caffeine addicts from their very early 20s.

For whatever reason, the coffee switch didn't flip for Terry and me until we turned 40. Prior to that, neither of us drank coffee or wine. But from then on, we became fans of both...she likes wine more than me, but the fact is that I'll drink it now, which wasn't the case when I was a young adult.

From the very first days when I developed my coffee habit, I have always drunk it with cream. More specifically, plain half and half. No flavoring or anything, just good old, solid-white, milkfat-laden half and half.

This routine has worked for years, though it has its drawbacks:

• It involves taking a small container of half and half to my Goodyear office every day, since the company does not currently offer complimentary creamer to associates.
• It doesn't always work when purchasing coffee from, say, gas stations, many of which only provide that nasty powdered creamer, the existence of which I don't even acknowledge.
• Over the course of a day in which I drink 4-5 cups of coffee, the calories and saturated fat in half and half add up.

That third point is crucial. As a Weight Watchers lifetimer, I have to count one point for every cup of coffee in which I pour my half and half (which is to say, every cup of coffee I drink). Black coffee is zero points.

It doesn't seem like much, but those 4-5 points are valuable. If I could find a way to eliminate them from my daily food budget, it would make room for an additional healthy snack or two in my lunchbox.

So I tried. One day a couple of weeks ago, I went cold turkey on half and half. I started drinking all of my coffee black.

And when I say "all of my coffee," I mean exactly one cup of it.

During my drive to work that morning, Terry texted me promising to buy a container of half and half that day, as we had run out of it.

"Actually, don't bother," I responded to her once I got into the office. "I'm going to experiment with black coffee."

Two hours later, I texted her the following: "Screw this. Get me the half and half!"

I just don't like the taste of black coffee. I want to. It smells great. But when it comes to actually drinking it, I have to add the creamer.

Let it be known, though, that for those two hours, I was a brave soldier. I jumped right into the world of black coffee, and then I jumped right back out again.

And honestly, my life is better for it.

The spousal good night kiss

Every night just after we turn out the lights, I kiss my wife. We have, as far as I can remember, always done this.

It's a nice thing to do, but there are at least three obstacles that make it more difficult than it should be:

(1) Because it's dark, I can't see exactly where Terry is. So more often than not, as I'm trying to get my bearings, my groping hand slides along her face in a way that must be less than comfortable for her.

(2) It's not like I have to travel half a mile to get to her, but we have a king-size bed, so there is some effort required to move over to her side. And, you know, I'm pretty tired by that point in the day.

(3) In those times when we execute the good night kiss with the lights still on, she makes this puckering face that causes me to burst out laughing every time. She does it because she knows I think it's funny, but it does tend to suck out whatever minute element of romance may have been in the air when two extremely tired people in their early 50s are getting ready to settle down for the night.

Still, we manage to pull it off every night. Assuming I don't injure her (or myself from laughing at The Pucker), we intend to keep the streak going.