Chris going for the shot.

Memorial Day has become one of my favorite holidays.  Our country has several holidays intended to memorialize certain important events in our nation’s history, but Memorial Day is a day set aside to remember and honor those who gave the ultimate sacrifice for the sake of our country.  After all, it is only because there have been those who have fought and died that we can enjoy our sunny barbecues and backyard volleyball with little more than our morning commutes to weigh on our mind.  We enjoy truly extraordinary comforts in America.  A crisis for us is a broken air conditioners or poor service at a restaurant.  Most of the “inconveniences” that afflict our lives certainly pale when compared to the plights of the thousands who have huddled in muddy foxholes and bled their futures away.

I fear that many who “celebrate” Memorial Day fail to pause even momentarily to remember what this day is all about. It’s a day off work. An opportunity to fire up the grill. Maybe go shopping. In a way, these are all wonderful legacies of those who have fought to make these luxuries possible, and for as long as I can remember, these are things that I’ve also done on Memorial Day.  In fact, for each of the past, oh, eight years or so, my church gets together for a big party. We enjoy fantastic food, lots of games, and remarkably, perennial sunshine.  Thankfully, though, we also incorporate a memorial service into the afternoon.  There’s special music, prayer, and a presentation on some of our nation’s heros.

The grilling, the smoothie bar, the socializing, the softball games, the camp fires… these are all a key part of what makes this day special to me.  But let’s not forget the blood-stained fields and shattered dreams that went into making all of this possible.

The Mirage, Las Vegas

There are still a few days left in this rainy month, yet it seems like events at its beginning occurred ages ago.  This is the common result of a schedule so incredibly jammed packed that the passage of time takes on strange dimensions.  Let’s see… the beginning of the month found me in California, skiing for a couple of days and chillaxing on the beach.  The next weekend I was in New Hampshire, busy with all the best man stuff for my friend’s wedding.  The following Monday I flew to Las Vegas for the NAB show.  The only money I lost in Vegas was to some overpriced meals at the hotel; it’s great not being a gambler!  Then just this past weekend, I jetted out to Colorado on a last-minute whim to try out my new freestyle skis.  Apparently, I couldn’t have timed it any better, as 24 inches of fresh snow hit the mountains the day before I got there.  My first attempt was to ski A-Basin, but the pass leading to the mountain was closed, so I ended up at Loveland.  Powder was around my knees all day, and a couple times I burst waste-deep through drifts and ridges.  Definitely a treat and a great way to end the season.  Many thanks to Sarah Ong and her family for their hospitality on this quick, very last minute trip!

Somehow in the middle of all that, I managed to work the equivalent of nearly 5 weeks of full-time work.  I think I did most of my sleeping on airplanes.

Pictures say it better than words, so I uploaded a bunch in the gallery below…

Rose leads the way with my dad & Karie following

One of my favorite holidays is Thanksgiving. Not just because I get to participate in the national pastime of overeating, but because it is perhaps the noblest of our nation’s holidays. Americans have always had much to be thankful for, and it’s wonderful that we dedicate at least one day per year to stop and ponder the many things for which we owe a debt of gratitude. Sadly, there are many who squirm away from even a hint of Providence, flippantly changing the moniker to an inelegant “Turkey Day.” For me, however, Thanksgiving is a day that reminds me that every day, really, should be Thanksgiving.

The year is not yet over, but it’s already proven to be a banner year for me. In spite of what may be the worst economic conditions of my lifetime, my business has more than doubled. And that happened in between 68 days of vacation, most of which involved trips to Russia, Greece, France, and Austria!

Somehow, though, none of this feels particularly astonishing to me. I’m amazed but not entirely surprised. My life has been rather blessed in its entirety, so a banner year even during a global slump gives me cause for marveling, but not astonishment. What I do find to be truly astonishing is the realization that God has continued to bless me in nearly every endeavor in my life. Indeed He’s blessed me far beyond anything I deserve. I am reminded of the warning in Luke 12:48. “unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required.” I pray that I use the time, the health, the abilities, the affluence, and the opportunities that God has given me to live a life that pleases Him.

Corrie, living out a childhood dream. She owes me a maple tart!

Corrie, my best friend and die-hard Yankees fan, more or less guilted me into going with her today to the Yankees ticker tape parade in New York. I’m a Boston fan myself, so naturally the situation presented a serious moral conundrum. Do I be the good friend and help make it possible for her to enjoy celebrating with her stupid Bronx Boys, but in the process commit a serious betrayal of my own team. Or do I play the part of any sensible Red Sox fan and sanction any recognition of such an abominable event, but in the process dash a childhood dream of my good friend. I mean, Romeo wouldn’t have accompanied Juliet to a Capulet house party, right? Well, I guess he did sneak into a ball, but when he got caught things started getting ugly. OK, so it’s a flawed analogy, but I suppose the bigger question is, why would I, a loyal Red Sox fan, be friends with a Yankees fan like Corrie? Someone firmly entrenched in the enemy camp. Someone who even

publicly professes admiration for the pudgy-cheeked, insolent Derek Jeter! Indeed, this is an excellent question, and particularly trenchant considering today’s traumas.

Well, after much soul-searching I arrived at the anguished decision to indeed accompany Corrie into the lion’s maw, but only while wearing my Red Sox cap, maintaining at least a semblance of loyalty to my team.

So at 8:14 this morning, I filed grimly onto the train at Southeast Station, already surrounded by dangerous numbers of pin-striped zealots. Many of them looked like they were still in their single digits, so I figured I could take a good number down with me if it came to a rumble. Inexorably, the train made its way into the heart of the city until we terminated in the bowels of Grand Central Station. As we navigated the subways through Shelob’s lair, I wondered if Corrie were playing the part of Samwise or Gollum…

We emerged on Broadway near the brass bull, and I was immediately swept up by a sea of revelers. I was definitely somewhere very close to Mount Doom, and hopelessly overwhelmed by tens of thousands of Steinbrenner’s orcs. What happened next wasn’t very pretty.

For over two hours I endured the alternating tortures of a Yankees gloat fest and incessant heckling. Never in my life have I had so many people swearing at me, taking my photo, filming me for youtube mock-clips, or throwing random objects at me (rolls of toilet paper, plastic bottles, etc). I knew I had it coming, but if I was gonna be at the enemy’s parade, I had to at least be true to my team, right?

In the end, I managed to make it out of Mordor alive. I even fared better than reports I later heard of another equally-foolhardy yet less fortunate Boston fan who got punched in the face. The worst thing that happened to me was a solid hit on the side of my head by a full roll of toilet paper. Definitely preferable to somebody’s knuckles! It was, however, quite the adventure.

So why again did I subject myself to this sort of torture? And what about that 800-pound gorilla question I referenced earlier: why exactly would I be good friends with a Yankees fan? I guess all I can say is, she makes a mean chocolate mousse cake! And opera cake. And maple berry tart… Corrie is a pastry chef, and I guess the way to a Boston fan’s compromise is through pastries.

Otherwise, friendships between feuding families just don’t work well. It didn’t for Romeo and Juliet anyway.

Chris and Len. Batting practice.

Six years in a row now, we’ve had wonderful weather for Memorial Day.  I’ve taken notice of this mostly because our church has an annual get-together, and the activities always involve lots of outdoor sports such as volleyball, wiffle ball, basketball, and croquet.  I ran my smoothie stand again, with smoothies featuring the not-so-secret ingredient of cabbage, something that has become a tradition for our Memorial Day picnics.  Scores of people enjoyed enough delicious food to feed a crowd twice our size.  Then we worked it all off with competitive games of volleyball and basketball.

This has become one of my favorite days of the year.

Today, as in previous years, I sat on the grass under the blue skies, filled with warmth and satisfaction, listening to my dad give a great presentation on some of our war heroes.  I wondered if things may be desperately worse at some point in the future, and perhaps I would be dreaming about these days when I relaxed under sunny skies with my friends, well-fed and content.  It sure makes me thankful that we have these days of peace, decadence, and happiness!  God is so good to us.  He’s given us here in America an extended age of blessing for Christians that is unprecedented in history.  But to whom much is given, much will be required, and I pray that we as a church and I as an individual don’t fritter away this time of opportunity.

For all the traveling I’ve done, the only place that ever required an entrance Visa in advance of my trip was Australia.  The airline informed me of this requirement, and as I recall it only involved a simple online application.  My visa was issued electronically, free of charge.  As I started looking for accommodations in Moscow, I noticed some advertising Visa support.  The thought of a visa requirement hadn’t even occurred to me.  I did some Googling and discovered that there’s a whole morass of visa requirements that evoke thoughts of a soviet Russia.  First of all, a basic tourist visa application costs an astonishing $131!  Granted this seems to be based off of reciprocity with the US, so we seem to be screwing them for the same amount of money.  Next, a visa application must be accompanied by an official “invitation” from a Russian government-recognized tour agency.  These must also be purchased, and starting at $30, these “invitations” don’t seem to exactly exude hospitality.  Suddenly my trip to Russia doesn’t seem quite as cheap as it did when I booked the tickets.  The application itself is a densely populated, two-page questionnaire.  Beyond all the basic information, you must provide medical insurance policies, your parents’ full names, a list of all dates and places visited outside of the US within the last 10 years, list of current and previous two employers with supervisor names and contact numbers, list of all educational institutions attended, list of all professional and charitable organizations you’ve ever been a member of, and a litany of other questions.  You must also supply two current passport photos, copies of your flight itinerary and hotel reservation confirmations accounting for every night of your stay.  I had to gather all of this and deliver it to the Russian consulate in New York along with a money order for the application fee.  I would leave them my passport and application with a prepaid FedEx air bill so they could return my passport with the visa.

The visa takes about 10 days to process, and my flight departs on April 14, so I got a jump on the process by visiting the consulate on Friday.  I drove into Manhattan, parking my car on one of the quiet side streets off Central Park about a block away from the consulate.  As I approached I saw a line of people standing outside the door waiting to be admitted.  Dressed in long winter coats and ushankas, it looked like these people were waiting to buy a loaf of bread.  This was only the first stop in what I had scheduled to be a pretty busy day, but suddenly I realized, duh, this is Russia!  These people are used to 4 hour church services, endless lines, incomprehensible red tape, and implacable bureaucracy.  Someone at the end of the line had some sort of sign-up paper, but when I spoke with her she told me that for visas I could go to the other side of the steps where fortunately there was no line.  The door was still closed and locked, but she told me to just ring the bell.  After a couple of rings, another lady at the front of the line told me that ringing was of no use.  He would just come whenever he feels like it.  So I leaned against the cold granite of the building while the people around me stood nearly silent.  Only a few spoke quietly to each other in Russian.  The world around me suddenly seemed a bit more chilly and grey.  I found myself staring at the door knob which seemed curiously out of place.  The door was dark and heavy, but the shiny brass door knob looked like typically cheap fare from Home Depot.  The odd thing was that it was mounted backwards so that the lock knob faced me and the key hole faced the interior.  I’m sure they use a dead bolt for the door, but I wondered if I could maybe lock them in?

Fortunately I only had to wait about 10 minutes before someone came to the door asking for visas.  I slipped inside and to the visa room on the left where steel walls painted dull beige and thick glass provided a floor to ceiling barrier between me and the person taking my paperwork.  I’d expect this sort of arrangement at say a Western Union in Harlem, but I wondered what sort of security issues they expected to deal with inside the visa wing of a consulate?  I passed my paperwork through a change trough to a young man who looked things over and told me to come back in 10 days to pick up my visa.  I pointed out that I had provided a prepaid FedEx return air bill so I wouldn’t have to make the trip back into the city.  This seemed to cause him some confusion and he left for a few minutes before returning with a receipt and reassurance that everything looked OK.

That wasn’t so bad, after all.

As I drove back north on Park Avenue, I suddenly remembered that I had given them a second printout of my application.  I had realized that I missed a blank on my original, so I corrected the error and made a new printout.  I’m pretty sure, however, that I forgot to sign and date the new printout.  By this point, unfortunately, I could not turn back.  I had to rush back to CT to pick up one of my roommates and bring him to the Newburgh airport.  I hope I didn’t just waste $131.  Guess I’ll find out in the next week or two.

In the past seven years, I’ve been to Europe 6 times and to Australia once.  Travel is always a bit of an adventure, but these places are not exactly exotic.  I’ve begun to thirst for something a bit more foreign.  Specifically, I’ve decided I need to visit a true third-world country.  Well, Russia isn’t exactly third-world, but it does seem to offer quite a bit more adventure.  I’m three weeks from embarking on my trip, and this is already proving to be true!

About a week ago, I connected with a missionary in Moscow, hoping to visit his church during the one Sunday I’ll be there.  He mentioned that getting a visa is “not a very fun process, but it is worth it.”  I believe him.

Welsh Rabbit - safe for bunnies.

I came to the conclusion recently that I’ve been in an eating rut. My daily routine relegates dinner to an afterthought that always catches me off guard as my roommates arrive home well past 7, and I suddenly realize that I should probably start thinking about eating.  So then out comes the Tader Joe’s tomato soup and grilled cheese or some other simple, fool-proof meal.  Grilled cheese and tomato soup is a great staple for bachelors.  The ingredients are simple: bread, cheese, tomato soup, and butter.  Plus I’ve got a handy panini-maker which saves me the step of even having to flip the grilled cheese. I must say, I’ve done plenty of experimenting, and I do believe I’ve finally found the ultimate combination for grilled cheese!  Want to know what it is?  Sorry, this post is supposed to be about Welsh Rabbit.

Anyway, maybe this monotony explains why I’ve been eating out far too often. Dining out requires no planning, effort, or talent.  It’s the easy way to throw variety into your diet without pulling out a cookbook.  When I realized, however, that I spent more at restaurants in the past year than I did on all the utilities in my house combined, I figured it might be a bit more prudent to start taking a look at some of those cookbooks and recipe binders that have been collecting dust on my shelf.

I started out last week by making one of the recipes that my dear friend, Joscelyn, had hand-written for me as part of a house-warming gift several years ago.  I chose it primarily based on the merits that it appeared to be rather quick and easy.  Plus it involved chicken–something very approachable to a bachelor like me.  Less than an hour later I sat down to what I’m happy to say was a very satisfying meal of chicken marsala with sage.  Now that wasn’t so hard!

Today, I followed up with another recipe somebody clipped for me from a magazine: Welsh Rabbit.  OK, at first I thought, uh, rabbit?  Sorry, I passed on buying any of that when I was at Arthur Ave a few weeks ago.  But then I read the recipe and saw that it doesn’t call for any meat products at all.  Just bread, cheddar cheese, tomato soup… hey, wait a minute!  Oh, and Worcestershire sauce, onions, pepper, and chives.  Dice the onions, chop the cheese, throw it all in a skillet with the soup, Worcestershire sauce and pepper; stir over medium heat til it’s all melted together.  Toast the bread, ladle the red goop onto the bread and put under a broiler until it starts to bubble; garnish with fresh chives.  Voila!

Now that wasn’t so hard either!

Welsh Rabbit - safe for bunnies.

Yup, I still bleed red.

Skiing, snowboarding, rollerblading, boogieboarding, mountainbiking…  I’ve always had a thing for recreational sports that present a risk for injury.  On Saturday, I found a new one… ripsticking!  It’s sort of a cross between a skateboard and a snowboard.  Or maybe a better analogy would be it’s to skateboarding what rollerblading is to rollerskating.  I was never much good on a skateboard (OK, so I suck), but I found the ripstick to be much easier. In only a few minutes I was zipping around the driveway at my friend’s house.  But before long, I was reminded of what it’s often like to be a kid again.  I cruised down the hill on their long driveway, perfectly comfortable with the ride.  At the bottom I swung to the right a bit to give myself a wide turn to the left.  I swung just a tad too wide, however, and the front wheel slipped off the edge of the driveway into the grass.  The ripstick stopped dead, and I kept going.  Two scraped palms and a skinned knee later, I found myself getting reaquainted with peroxide and neosporin.  Ah, this is the stuff of 10-year-old summer afternoons!

And the best part is still the same thing today as it was years ago: I got a cool injury to show off!

Ripstick

Just Looking, Thanks.

I’ve heard about The Little Italy of the Bronx for several years now, as one of my clients gives a couple of walking tours there each year.  I maintain the web site for her, so I’m familiar with the tour descriptions.  So, I’ve had it on my back burner list of things to see at some point, but as every venture into the city seems to bring me only to Manhattan, Arthur Ave seemed to be stuck on my back burner.

I was talking with one of my new clients about restaurants as we sat over lunch in Darien a few weeks ago. He was a bit surprised that I knew exactly where to eat down in a town more than 30 minutes from my house, and I confessed that some of my friends and I have an informal restaurant club of sorts. His eyes lit up and he said that he and his wife liked to do the same thing.  So we began exchanging recommendations.  I gathered that he tends more towards steak houses and Italian food.  We exchanged stories about eating at Peter Lugers and Sparks, New York’s top two steak joints, but then he mentioned some great restaurants in Arthur Avenue.  I told him that though it is on my list, I had not yet been.  So the next thing I knew, he invited me to join a group he was taking down on his annual trip the Saturday before the Super Bowl.

And so I went.

Arthur Ave is indeed an interesting destination.  The atmosphere is the first thing you notice about the place.  As I entered the door to the market, I saw a cluster of old Italian men gathered to one side, laughing over a game of cards, and saying things like, “fugetaboutit!”  At a table across the aisle, a man carefully rolled cigars.  Then I started seeing the rest of the mayhem that is the main market at Arthur Ave.  People crowded the aisles, barking out orders to attendants behind rows of hanging sausage, meat counters, produce stands, and barrels of olives.  The variety of food is not something you run into every day.  I’m not sure I could tell you anwhere else you could go and find freshly killed rabbits, pigs feet, cow tongue, ox tails, kidneys, and… um, hand-rolled cigars all in the same place.  Fortunately for me, anyway, there was also some wonderful fresh mozerella, pastries, made-to-order pasta, and other more “normal” fare.

I filled up a few shopping bags full of stuff I knew I’d actually eat, dropped it all off in the back of our limo (yes, we rode in style!) and went in to enjoy an Italian-sized feast at Dominick’s.  Here’s a restaurant that lives up to the uniqueness of the area.  One noticeable difference is that the place has no menus.  You sit down and the waiter asks what you want to eat.  Just tell them what you’re in the mood for, and they’ll make it for you.  The place is packed pretty much all day too.  We had a very narrow window of time to get a table, and that was at the odd hour of 3:30.

So, now I’ve been to Arthur Ave.  I’m not sure I’ll just scratch it off my list though.  The pasta I brought home with me was phenomenal.  Does it seem excessive to drive a full hour just to buy your noodles?  Probably.  So, guess I’ll just have to pick up some cheese while I’m at it.

No cow tongue though.

I’ve been slowly putting together a digital audio workstation so I can start working on my own recordings. I’m using Cubase 4, a Presonus Firebox audio interface, a Presonus Faderport controller, Steinberg’s The Grand for my piano virtual instrument, and a Korg SP-250 keyboard. I just purchased some NHT M-00 active studio monitors (and the NHT S-20 sub) which I’ve heard great things about, but FedEx isn’t due to deliver them until sometime next week. So, for now I’m still using headphones, which actually work pretty well.

It’s pretty exciting to see this all coming together. I’ve been tossing it around in my mind for about 4 years now, not sure whether I should make the investment in time and money. Lots of people continue to ask me for my CD, as if I just have one. Sessions at a studio are pretty expensive, although I got a pretty decent price from Brightwater Digital in SC (they record a bunch of stuff for Majesty Music). Still, I liked the thought of being able to record songs over time, without the need to get an entire album’s worth practiced up to perfection. Oh, and speaking of perfection… it doesn’t really exist when I’m at the piano, so I dreaded the thought of endless takes as I tried to get a song perfect. So, I became interested in MIDI recording.

MIDI recording allows me to play something on the keyboard and simply records each one of my keystrokes as an event. The brilliant thing is that if I make a simple mistake, I can often just go into the MIDI track and delete or move the erroneous note. No need to record another take! The actual sound of the piano is being generated by the computer, using The Grand virtual instrument. The Grand is essentially a massive collection of recordings of an actual piano. Each note was recorded at various velocities and then cataloged into a complete sampling of that instrument. So now my MIDI recording, which is essentially just a stream of commands to play various notes at various velocities, triggers the recorded sounds in The Grand, producing a remarkably authentic-sounding recording.

Yeah, yeah, I know. This is all boring technical stuff, and if it works, that’s cool, but it’s not like the rest of the world needs to read about it. OK, fine. If a picture is a thousand words, then what’s a recording worth? I’ll spare you the words, and just let you listen to a sample of some doodling I did a while back as I tested all this stuff.

I think it sounds pretty convincing, myself… and I’m a pianist! I’d love to hear what you think.

The Grand Doodle