The office dad joke calendar plays an important role in my life

 

Creature of habit that I am, I follow essentially the same routine every day when I arrive at my office.

Once I put down my stuff and fire up the laptop, I take the salad and anything else from my lunch that needs to be kept cold and haul them to the refrigerator in the nearby kitchen. There I also grab myself a cup of coffee (always black, always my second cup of the day).

Then I walk back to my office, open up OneNote and Outlook, and glance to the right at the bookcase where I keep a combination of knickknacks and business books. Resting on top is my 2023 Dad Joke Desk Calendar.

It is with no small degree of anticipation that I tear off the previous day's joke to see the hilarity awaiting me. Invariably I will read the latest quip, chuckle to myself, and say something like, "Well that's dumb...and funny."

And then I go about my business a little happier and, importantly, armed with yet another horrible joke to tell.

I don't have many bad days at work, so I usually arrive in a pretty good mood. Still, the Dad Joke Calendar always manages to lift that mood a notch or two, if only because they try so hard. As my former News-Herald colleague and longtime Facebook friend Darrell Dawson points out, they sometimes bold a key part of the punchline to make sure you get it.

This is either insulting or hilarious. I'm not sure which.

I've had many different types of desk calendars over the years. Once I had a Jeopardy calendar filled with daily trivia questions I always enjoyed. But I'm not sure I've derived more satisfaction from a time-keeping tool than I have from the Dad Joke Calendar.

I desperately hope they're planning a 2024 version.

I am whatever level of nerd it is that would buy and wear this shirt

About a month ago, I was seated on the lawn of Blossom Music Center alongside Terry, Elissa and Mark waiting for the start of a concert by the amazing Cleveland Orchestra.

If you don't know much about classical music, you might wonder how it is that Cleveland has (and has had for many decades) one of the world's great symphony orchestras. It's a long story, but this ensemble is in many ways as good as it gets, and we in Northeast Ohio have them right in our backyard.

I am a Cleveland Orchestra subscriber, though I've had to scale back the number of concerts I attend for the upcoming classical season, given the number of conflicts there are with my sports PA announcing duties.

This particular concert wasn't part of my subscription, but we had just seen the Orchestra perform along to a showing of the movie "Jurassic Park" at Blossom a couple of weeks earlier and wanted to return for a "proper" classical presentation. So we bought these tickets separately.

The program that evening consisted of a short work by the relatively unknown Japanese composer Yasushi Akutagawa, the Shostakovich Cello Concerto No. 1 (performed by the remarkably talented Zlatomir Fung), and the main event for me and many others in the crowd: Debussy's "La Mer."

Clause Debussy is my favorite composer, or at least I think he is. Maurice Ravel is a pretty close second, and sometimes I can't say for sure whose music I really prefer.

For Christmas, Terry bought me a 33-CD set of Debussy's complete works that took more than a month of constant listening to get through. I loved all of it.

Anyway, we were sitting in lawn/beach chairs enjoying a nice pre-concert picnic spread when it occurred to me that the only bit of classical music "merch" I owned was a pair of socks imprinted with J.S. Bach's face. "Are there classical music t-shirts?" I wondered to myself.

I took out my phone and Googled "classical music shirts," and of course there was a wide selection.

I searched specifically for a Debussy shirt, and when I came across the one pictured above, I knew instantly it was the one I wanted and ordered it on the spot.

I just love this shirt. Nothing complex about it. No photo of the great man himself, just his name in college football-style letters plastered across the front.

And yes, I chose that heather purple color. For whatever reason, I really felt it took the shirt from good to great.

"Who would wear something like that?" you might ask. And the answer is me. I am wearing it at this very moment, as I type these words.

If you're going to own a t-shirt like this, you have to embrace it. There can be zero hesitation to be branded for what you really are: a Grade A, first-class nerd.

I wear them (the shirt and the label) proudly.

The kids are grown, the swing set remains

I'm trying to remember when we bought our backyard playset from the good folks at Playground World. It was probably 15 years ago, and the set is showing its age.

The plastic slide is disconnected, the canvas awning is worn, the climbing rope is frayed, and everywhere there is stripped paint and general wear and tear.

You can count on one hand the number of times each year the playset gets used, which is only when someone with little kids visits and we happen to be outside. At this point, it's serves more as an annoying obstacle for our lawn mowing guy than anything else.

For a while we figured we should keep it for when grandkids come along, but (a) I don't know that that's happening any time soon, and (b) Even when it does, there's no guarantee they'll live near us or that the swing set itself will survive that long.

There is of course also an emotional component to tearing it down. It would be an admission that the years when it was the focal point of our backyard and was used several times a week are gone.

The playset is in some ways the last vestige of a time when ours was a home to multiple small children, all of whom are now grown up and most of whom have flown the coop.

There's a practical part of me that wants to get rid of it, and another part of me that still enjoys looking out the back window and seeing it standing there.

Maybe we'll keep it just a while longer.

Judging by the numbers, people only want to read about me being an idiot

I've been doing this blog thing on and off for nearly 12 years, and for a long time I couldn't figure out what made some posts more popular than others.

The headline is a key difference-maker, of course. Much like the subject line of an email, the headline is the first thing people see when I put up a new post. It goes a long way toward ultimately deciding whether someone clicks through, so I always try to be thoughtful about it.

As I looked over some blog metrics recently, it dawned on me the posts that get the highest number of page views are the ones in which I am portrayed as either:

(a) stupid

or

(b) strange

Whenever I find a way to combine "dumb Scott" and "weird Scott" into one post, I hit the reader engagement jackpot.

Actually, I also do OK with "sweet and endearing," like when I point out how awesome Terry is and how much I love her. But in the long run, the heartfelt posts – and the ones where I offer practical advice like how to get rid of bad habits – don't hold a candle, in terms of page views, to the ones in which I am the object of my own ridicule.

Speaking of Terry, I mentioned this insight to her the other day. I told her, "I guess I need to find more examples of me being dumb or ridiculous, because that's what people most want to see on the blog."

Without looking up from the book she was reading, she dryly remarked, "Well, you have a long list of stories to choose from."

I may need to revisit the part where I mentioned how much I love her.

I would die if I tried reading while walking

A couple of years ago, I posted here about the neighborhood characters I regularly encounter on my morning walks. The lineup included Hound Dog Guy, Nightgown Woman and Relentlessly Waddling Lady.

I still see Hound Dog Guy with some frequency, but I'm not sure if the latter two are on a different schedule or what. I don't run across them anymore.

Recently I added a fascinating new character to the list. I call her Reading While Walking Woman, and while that's not her in the photo (she's not that well dressed, though who is at 6 in the morning?), the image pretty well illustrates her M.O.

Whenever I see her, RWW Woman is holding a book in one hand while swinging her other arm and moving along at a pretty fast clip. She sticks to the sidewalk, from what I can tell, and I assume she pauses from reading whenever she comes to an intersection.

Still, that doesn't account for uneven pavement or small-but-potentially-dangerous objects in her path she might easily miss. It also assumes a level of coordination I'm not sure I possess.

I like books and I like walking, so I combine the two by listening to audiobooks while I'm out and about. This frees my eyes to watch out for cars, skunks, skittish deer and other hazards of the early morning walking trade.

If I were to hold a book in front of my face while walking at a 13-minute mile pace, I would have about a 50% chance of falling every time out. I would either trip over something or simply lose my sense of balance while trying to concentrate on Sydney Carton's thoughts as he goes bravely to the guillotine at the end of A Tale of Two Cities.

If I was lucky, it would happen in a relatively flat area of my walking route and I wouldn't be too much the worse for wear. In reality, it would probably happen near the bottom of Miller Avenue and I would tumble over the small guardrail into the ravine far below, likely never to be heard from again.

I am at once amazed and baffled by Reading While Walking Woman. She never seems to have any external injuries, so it appears she has somewhat mastered her craft.

Or maybe she is just one slip and fall away from becoming a gruesome front-page headline in the next day's News-Herald.

My definition of a "nice car" probably does not match yours

This is my current set of wheels

The standards I have for personal vehicles are low, having been shaped by the fact that I am Bob Tennant's son.

When I was growing up, my dad owned a succession of cars that could generously be described as "economical." All of them could get you from Point A to Point B, more or less, but there was no guarantee you would get there in one piece.

I remember one car with a passenger door that would randomly open when you made a right turn. More than once my dad had to reach over and grab my arm so I wouldn't tumble out into the intersection at 25 MPH.

There were floorboards so rusted through you could see the pavement passing by underneath your feet, and a van with a gas tank that once broke off and dragged along the ground for two miles as we drove home. I remember thinking the sparks it created as it scraped along the road were probably more than enough to ignite whatever gas was in there.

You shouldn't have to worry about your vehicle going up in flames when you're 8 years old.

I remember the old man owning one or maybe two decent cars total when I was growing up. The rest were already on their last legs the day he brought them home.

Thus it was no surprise that my own first car was a semi-dependable 1979 yellow Chevy Chevette, or that my subsequent upgrade was a seemingly rubber band-powered Dodge Omni. Back then, I figured nice cars were reserved exclusively for the super rich.

All of this is to explain why, to this day, my idea of a luxury car isn't an Audi, a BMW or a Mercedes-Benz. It's any car with working turn signals and a monochrome center-console display screen.

You will understand, then, why the car I currently drive, a 2021 Honda Civic hatchback, is easily the sportiest and nicest vehicle I have ever owned.

I love that car, and I love driving it. I've never had a car about which I could say that. It has what I consider to be all the best "modern" features, many of which have probably been standard on new vehicles for a decade but few of which I've ever personally had.

Speaking of new cars, I should mention that I've never owned one. And my wife has owned exactly one: her beloved 1988 Beretta, which was eventually passed down to me before I drove it into the ground. We not only are not "nice car" people, we're not even "new car" people.

Terry drove a series of minivans in the 90s and 2000s largely because she often had four or five passengers (i.e., our kids) in tow. Now she drives a 2015 Honda CRV, which while enjoyable isn't on the level of my Civic.

That's why I'm looking forward to her getting her own "bells-and-whistles" car sometime in the next year or so. And by bells and whistles, I'm talking about things that excite us but probably not you: heated seats and/or steering wheel, touchscreen console display, sideview cameras, etc.

If I could afford to buy her a Rolls, I would. But her standards are about as low as mine, and having a dependable, top-of-the-line Honda or Toyota is pretty much the pinnacle for both of us.

On the plus side, we are exceedingly easy to please.

The magic of having your first (and second) child

This is Chloe and Elissa when they traveled to Paris together in 2018.

I mentioned recently that I'm compiling a book of my favorite posts from this blog that I hope to publish later this summer or sometime in the fall.

It's going well, but I noticed something that hadn't occurred to me before. As I look over the 51 posts in the book, there seems to be more material focused on our younger three kids than there is around our oldest two, Elissa and Chloe.

I don't know why this is, but it certainly wasn't intentional. Chloe, for example, is one of the more impressive people you'll ever meet. She is (fingers crossed) less than a year away from obtaining a hard-earned PhD and excels in everything she does. She is funny, smart, talented, and oh by the way, also beautiful.

Maybe the problem with her is that, when you're so accomplished, people start to expect it and take you somewhat for granted. I hope that's not the case with me when it comes to Chloe, but she really should appear here (and in the book) more than she does.

It's much the same way with Elissa. When you combine the natural force that is Elissa Tennant with her brains, beauty and status as a first child, you would expect to see her prominently featured in almost every post.

In fact, had blogs been a thing when she was born back in 1994, this one would probably have been called AllThingsElissa.com.

Like most new parents, we were smitten with our little one from the moment she was born. I often refer to that time of our lives as having been "magical," and I stand by that assessment. Everything Elissa – and later Chloe – did was, as far as Terry and I were concerned, the most amazing thing any toddler had ever done in the history of the universe.

This is one of the things about rookie parents I love, and in no way do I mean that condescendingly. The obsession you have with your first child or two is both natural and healthy. Your whole life has been irrevocably turned upside down by these new arrivals to your family, and you just can't get enough of them.

It's such a powerful feeling with the first kid that many parents are reluctant to have a second. They can't imagine how they could ever love another child like they love their first one. (You already know this, but as I've also mentioned here before, you don't have to worry about it. Your capacity for love grows proportionately with every child.)

If, when the book comes out, you read it and find yourself wanting to hear more about Elissa and Chloe, please know that they have been loved beyond measure their entire lives, and we're immensely proud of both of them.

Even if only in spirit, their presence can be felt in every post – and, it goes without saying, in our hearts.