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personal

How you do anything…

…is how you do everything

My trip to Austria highlighted the fact that my life is very different now than when I was younger.

For one, the only real luggage I have is not one, but two garment bags – the first being the red one I brought all over the world for close to the past 30 years.

Still works great, btw.

The second is in the form of a shoulder bag.

The reason both are garment bags is because, in my youth, couldn’t imagine a scenario where I wouldn’t need a suit, or at least a nice dress shirt, when I traveled.

This time around, I had nonea those things and the rolling garment bag left a lot to be desired.

The Firecracker’s stuff didn’t fit it all that great and there was a lotta wasted space because of how it’s configured.

So, I started looking for luggage.

Jesus christ, are there a lotta options out there.

To narrow things down, I started only looking at luggage that had “YKK” zippers on them because that’s an indicator of quality to me.

What I noticed was that they were, by-and-large, about 20-30% more than luggage that didn’t have – or didn’t state that they had – YKK zippers.

This just supported my decision to buy one from that group because of another saying I like:

How do you do anything is how you do everything.

In other words, if a company cares enough to spend the extra money to use YKK zippers in their luggage, they probably care enough to do other things right and more thoughtfully.

Obviously, like all sayings, there are exceptions to it but it’s generally true, for the most part.

Been telling the kid things like this now that he’s getting older and can understand such things.

And this particular saying is pretty applicable to him because of his personality.

    • On the positive side, the kid is relentlessly upbeat and excitable.
    • On the negative side, because of his joie de vivre, he tends to rush at things and not really focus when he needs to.

So, I’ve been trying to tell him to slow down, which is hard for a kid like him.

It’s a work in progress.

Him: Done!
Me: That was fast. Lemme see…OK, well, you got every single thing wrong here.
Him: What?! I added up everything and checked my answer.
Me: Yes, I see that. Your math is right, but the instructions said round your answer to the nearest 10. You didn’t do that. So, yes, you got all the *math* right in all eight of them, but you got the *answers* wrong in all eight of them.
Him: That’s not fair!
Me: Listen carefully, kid: Life’s not fair. Accept that and your life will be better than most people. Now, slow down. Notice things. If you do that, you’ll be different from most of the world.
Him: What if I don’t wanna be different?
Me: Look, if you’re different, you can be irreplaceable. And if you’re irreplaceable…your life will be better still. And that’s all I want for you. Slow down.

This is the one I got.

I like red.

Location: 18th Street, getting floored because of my dislocated toe
Mood: ouchie
Music: Yeah, I want that red velvet (Spotify)
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Trying to not be heated

Fiddling

The kid started swimming lessons again.

He seems to be enjoying himself.

While he’s doing great, I’ve been sick lately.

Spent most of the week in bed but one thing I had to do was crack open my computer because it was randomly shutting down.

Figured the CPU was overheating so I slapped on a Noctua heatsink and fan, which seems to have fixed the problem.

Speaking of overheating, evidently, the idea that humans are, on average 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit is a relatively modern conclusion.

The very latest health research seems to indicate that the new average is about a degree cooler at between 97.5 and 97.9 degrees Fahrenheit.

At least since 2019, I’ve been averaging about 97.3 degrees but lately, I’ve been drifting even lower – above is what it was this morning.

There seems to be two major theories for this:

    1. People are larger now, which generally results in lower body temperature, and/or
    2. People are just less chronically inflamed.

Can’t speak for the world-at-large but I gotta think that my lower temps are because I’ve lowered my overall inflammation since I wasn’t super big to begin with.

When Alison first got sick, I did a baseline reading for myself and found that I was consistently around 97.9 degrees but, since her illness, I spent a good amount of time and energy trying to reduce my inflammation overall, resulting in temps I wrote above.

This past week, I’ve been ridonk sick with some weird cold. Mainly fatigue and coughing but my temps maxed out at 99.6 degrees.

Kept wondering if I had a fever.

Technically speaking, a fever is anything above 100.4 degree Fahrenheit.

But the question is is, if I’m a full degree lower than normal, is a fever now something above 99.4 degrees?

In any case, I’m better today; the last four days were spent in bed but today I felt well enough to cook for the kid – the Firecracker spent most of the week cooking for him.

As the years go on, more and more people ask me how I stay so young looking.

Obviously, genetics have a lot to do with it. So does the fact that I’ve been on a diet for 36+ years.

But, in terms of recent changes I’ve made, that’s all been focused on my reducing my systemic inflammation to try and combat cancer.

The unexpected benefit is that I think I’m literally slowing down my aging even more.

In any case, reducing my inflammation means:

Just like my computer shutting down when it overheated, I think that people don’t realize just how damaging being inflamed – thus, over-heated – is for their overall health.

These are the kinda things I think about when I’m sick.

Her: How’s the patient?
Me: Blargh.
Her: Are you resting? No computer fiddling?
Me: There might be some fiddling going on.

Location: home, making a rasher of bacon because I’m cranky and it’s easy
Mood: see above
Music: they always say, “Don’t it always seem to go'” (Spotify)
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Just wear a hat

That doesn’t make any real sense

The mayor office announced congestion pricing the other day.

There were more cops than protestors but I suppose that’s a good thing.

At least everyone was dressed warmly – it’s been brick around here, lately.

If I told you that I opened up a can of coke and was shocked that no soda came out anywhere but the hole on top, you would think I was just being strange.

Obviously, if I opened a can of soda, the only place any soda would come out of would be the hole I created when I opened the can, yeah?

Conversely, if I didn’t open the can of soda, no soda would come out.

All this seems elementary, no?

But what if I said to you something like, “You should wear a hat because most of your body heat comes from your head?”

To me, it sounds precisely the same as if I said, “Most soda comes outta the can from the hole you made.”

Do you know why most of your body heat comes off your head when your head’s not covered?

Because: Your head’s not covered and the rest of your body is.

Like, if you go out into a wintery day, fully dressed, including gloves and boots – guess where most of your body heat would escape?

That’s right: Your head. Because it’s not covered and the rest of your body is.

So, it’s technically true that, “Most of your body heat comes from your head.”

But that’s super misleading.

It has the air of truth but only a little bit of actual truth to it.

It’s more accurate to say, “Heat’s gonna escape from your head because that’s the part of your body that’s not covered up.”

This has driven me mad for decades.

DECADES!

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

Location: next door, having my third plate of shrimp and checking out heavy machinery
Mood: warm
Music: Baby, you can steal my sheets (Spotify)
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Purple (Potato) Eater

Unlimited food and Listerine

Me: 10 mins to next train!
Her: Boo!

Been on a different quest lately, this time to find purple sweet potatoes – that is to say, purple fleshed sweet potatoes, versus just purple skinned sweet potatoes.

I’d been searching for it for a while now, including at various green markets throughout the city, but it’s almost always the purple skinned but white fleshed variety.

With that said, after leaving the gym this past Saturday, it was a 10-minute wait until the next train, so I decided to look around for paw-paws.

No paw-paws were to be found BUT I came across this tiny little sign on a small table with purple potatoes and grabbed a few pounds of it.

With that in hand, I decided to continue looking for the paw-paws when I came across some Adirondak Blue potatoes from Cornell University.

Me: Are these sweet potatoes or just regular potatoes?
Him: Just regular ones. (long pause) Except they’re purple.
Me: Noted.

These I’d never heard of, so I picked up some of these as well.

Him: I dunno. One out of ten?
Me: (shaking head) No, man. It’s one outta three.
Him: GTFOH.
Me: (shaking head) For real, man.

Alison’s sickness has had a profound effect on me as a parent.

The reason why I’ve been searching for things like purple sweet potatoes is their amazing health benefits – particularly because those that eat it as a staple carbohydrate often life to 100.

I cannot tell you how many times during a week that I meet people that think that I live a particularly rigorous life, when it comes to diet and exercise but what is now normal for most Americans.

But the normal American diet and lifestyle means that one outta three people will get cancer in their lifetime.

That’s just insane. That means, outta a group of a dozen friends FOUR will get cancer in their life.

So, I do what I can so that the kid’s lifestyle is as anti-cancer as I can make it.

Nuthin’s guaranteed in life but I’m trying to do whatever I can to make this kid’s life better.

He’s my treasure, after all.

Hopefully, his seeing me drink predominately green tea and eat things like purple sweet potatoes and head to the gym four times a week will have a lasting effect on his own choices.

That is, of course, if they actually like it.

Me: What do you think?
Him: (makes a face) I don’t like it.
Me: (to Firecracker) What about you? What do you think?
Her: I dunno. It has an aftertaste of…Listerine?
Me: Wha?! I don’t taste that all. You’re crazy. (much later) OK, I taste it now.
Her: See! I told you! Listerine!
Me: (grumble) Lemme think about this…

The kid(s) have been talking about going on another cruise non-stop.

Honestly, I kinda wanna retire completely just so I can go on cruises indefinitely.

Great views, unlimited food, exotic locales, unlimited food, instant vacations, unlimited food…

Really, what more could one ask for?

Location: this evening, sitting on at playground, hearing a teacher at a French school talk about the wild horses in Chincoteague, Virginia
Mood: sore
Music: It’s a hunger that never ends, it’s an urge you can’t comprehend (Spotify)
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Emotionally is a different matter

Intellectually, I know

My buddy Ricky stopped by my pad the other day because he was in the neighborhood…

Me: The Firecracker baked cookies, you want one?
Him: Sure! (later) Is that real milk [in the coffee]?
Me: Shoot, yes. I shoulda thought about that.

…and Bryson gave me a ring to see how I was doing. I’m guessing they read up on my mom and wanted to make sure we were all ok.

Bryson: Dude, next time, before you rent a car, gimme a call. I’m happy to pick you up and get you to your mom.
Me: Thanks, man. I appreciate that. But, what’s going on with you?
Him: Nah, man, I didn’t call to talk about me, I called to check in on you.

I’m grateful for old friends that check in with me to make sure that I’m ok.

Speaking of being ok, I’ve been seeing a therapist for some time now.

She asked me this past week the details of what happened with Alison.

Me: Oh, I thought I told you.
Her: You only told me that she died and your struggles with everything. You never told me the details.

So, I did.

About halfway through it all, I realized that she was crying. By the time I wasdone, she was pretty emotional – well, as emotional as a professional can get.

Her: (drying her eyes) That’s a lot for you to have dealt with.
Me: She dealt with more.
Her: Well, thank you for sharing with me. And you should be kinder to yourself.

Told her that I felt guilty that I was alive and got to spend alla this time with the kid and she didn’t.

She only got to hold him once.

Just writing that sentence fills me with both sadness, anger, guilt, and a bevy of other emotions I can’t fully express with my limited vocabulary.

Her: There’s useful guilt and useless guilt.
Me: (nodding) I know. Intellectually, I know. Emotionally is a different matter.

Such a different matter.

Location: In my head again for a bit
Mood: worn-down
Music: My mind, it likes replaying my regrets all night. My pain, I hide (Spotify)
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Critical thinking isn’t the most important thing

It’s issue spotting

Me: Hello, hot blonde.
Her: Hello, handsome old Chinese man.
Me: The “old” was really not necessary.
Her: But accurate!

I’ve said repeatedly that my major goal for the boy is teaching him critical thinking.

Unfortunately, the recent (massive) hurricanes and flooding happening here in the US – and abroad – around has made me reassess the contours of that.

I recently decided that critical thinking is secondary to a more basic skill: Issue spotting – which is determining if there’s even a problem in the first place.

Came to this realization seeing how many people I know in life that deny climate change.

As an aside, all self-identify as Republicans and many have a religious bent, which makes me feel all the more foolish for ever voting republican and ever being religious at all.

In any case, back in law school, I remember that everyone is taught two basic skills:

      1. Issue spotting, and then
      2. issue solving.

It’s always in that order because all law school exams – especially the bar exam – essentially tests on both whereby, if you’re unable to spot the issue in the first place, your chance of correctly answering the question is nil.

This is where I’m finding we are as a society; half of the people are concerned about answering the issue, whereas the other half denies that an issue even exists, often pointing to one lone dissenter and ending the argument there for them.

There’s no ability to critically think about a solution because people can’t even see that there’s a problem that needs solving.

This is terrifying, on so many levels.

And it’s happening everywhere and all at once.

Me: You don’t think it’s an issue that you’re 35 years old and have nothing saved for retirement?
Him: (puzzled) Retirement is like 30 years away; I have plenty of time.
Me: JFC…sit down. I need to explain a lotta things to you.

Location: my stoop, chatting with a friend that stopped by to check up on me
Mood: beyond busy
Music: don’t overthink it – like all my problems, I don’t have one (Spotify)
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My 18 Year-Old Toilet from Hell

Believing it

I think people move a lot in NYC – or in general.

Like, the Firecracker’s moved six times in the last decade.

Me: Wild.
Her: Yup.

My college buddy and I moved into my current apartment waaaay back in 1996, but we ended up buying it in 2004, which is still almost 20 years ago.

Been here ever since.

Anywho, in November of 2004, we gutted one of the bathrooms ourselves and hired a contractor to fix it up, including putting in a new toilet and vanity.

We ended up buying the Kohler Rialto K-3386 for $349, which is roughly $19 a year, amortized across these 18 some years.

Now, the seat on that bad boy cracked so I decided to just swap it out – the first time since it was installed in 2004.

Welp, that started a long journey that ended up with my getting rid of the entire toilet.

See, the reason we got this toilet was because it was the absolute smallest toilet you could buy that was still mass produced.

BUT, because it’s so small, it had a special mechanism to attach the lid to the toilet. I did not realize this until it was too late.

Evidently, I’m not the only one.

I’m living in an interesting period of my life right now in that I’m aware that I won’t be here forever.

After all, Everybody knows they are going to die, but no one really believes it.

Figure that, at some point, this pad will be the boy’s and I wanna limit his frustration.

Was gonna buy the kit to replace the toilet but, having read up horror stories of people doing all that only to crack their decades old toilet, I just decided to toss the whole thing.

Enter my buddy Wally who said he would do it for free.

Him: Just the hands-on experience is enough.
Me: Absolutely not!

I’m frequently surprised how many really lovely people I’ve met in my life, and he’s one of them, for sure.

So, last weekend, he and I discovered just how gross removing a 20 year old toilet could be.

Yes, this is super gross looking – that’s what bits of wax ring looks like over a flange after 20 something years.

One thing that we did was remove the old wax ring that seals the gap between the flooring and the toilet.

Him: Sorry, I got some on the floor.
Me: Dude, no need to apologize, this stuff is getting everywhere.

What shoulda been like a two-hour project, turned out to be four hours because so much had rusted in place and needed replacing.

And at least three hours trying to clean up the ridonk mess. Ridonk.

Buuuuut, afterward, this is what my bathroom looked like.

It’s a slightly longer toilet – 27.5″ from the wall versus 25.5″ but it’s now dual flush and is probably gonna be good until I’m 70.

I’m aware the flaps are up on the bolt for the seat. Too lazy to retake this picture.

Then it’s the kid’s problem, not mine.

Boy: That’s so cool!
Me: Glad you think so, kid.
Him: I’m gonna watch YouTube.
Me: (sighing) Yup.

It’s fate after almost 20 years of loyal service – oh, the ignominy!

Location: the kid’s BJJ class, watching him take an elbow to the face (accidentally)
Mood: panicked, not about the elbow
Music: I’ll be back home one day, before long (Spotify)
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Decisions are processes, not events

Coffeetime?

Me: Man, this coffee is great…wait, what time is it?
Her: (checking watch) 3:23?
Me: Dammit!

When we were out in Long Island, the Firecracker and I chatted about being parents, which we usually do.

The most important thing for me, as a parent, is to teach the kid how to think critically think.

Again, how to think, not what to think.

The recent Titanic sub disaster made me think a lot about smart people making terrible decisions.

James Cameron, the director of the film Titanic – and an amateur sub enthusiast himself – said that he knew exactly what happened to the sub before alla the details were even out.

It’s easy to call the CEO’s decisions things like stupid and moronic but it’s a lot more complex, and dangerous, than that.

Because people seem to look at decisions like singular events:

      • I decided to go to law school.
      • I decided to have waffles for brekkie.

But they’re not that at all: All decisions are the cumulation of processes in our heads:

      • I decided to go to law school because my dad wanted me to and I didn’t feel I was ready to stop learning yet. And each of those two reasons had many reasons beneath that; my dad felt that lawyers and doctors were the best professions that two children of immigrants could have. Plus, I spent my life alone with books, so I wanted to find a way to continue that.
      • I do occasionally have waffles for breakfast, but only when I haven’t had carbs in a while so I’m in a relative deficit of carbs and can “afford,” to splurge on something like waffles. But if I do that, I then have to be in the gym for two consecutive days.

Sometimes these processes happen in the blink of an eye, sometimes, these decisions take weeks, months, or even years to fully happen.

The CEO most likely made a series of smaller poor decisions based on various cognitive biases that he had – the worst decision being to use carbon fiber for the hull instead of metal – ultimately resulting in the disaster.

What I’m hoping to give this kid are good tools to process each step of any decision as best as he can.

Which is not, at all, to say that it’s or I’m perfect.

I’ve made some terrible decisions in life; decisions that I still ruminate on late in the night when I can’t sleep.

And I try to figure out which tool I ignored, disregarded, or am simply missing.

For example, I have a rule where I never have coffee/caffeine after 3PM.

But I can’t tell you how many times I’ve disregarded that rule for one reason or another – societal pressure, sunk cost bias, confirmation bias, optimism bias, overconfidence, etc – with disastrous results.

My son will make bad decisions in life. That’s what people do and that’s part of how we learn.

I just hope that (a) they’re not decisions that he can’t change later on and (b) he continually makes more good decisions than bad ones, and (c) he gets better at making good decisions as he ages.

I’m still working on alla that myself.

Me: I guess I’ll just toss it. Seems like such a waste.
Her: Do you want to be up all night?
Me: (sigh) Fair. What a shame…

Location: bed, waiting until noon to leave
Mood: headachy
Music: Feel the heat increase and my mind’s racing (Spotify)
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Dinner with my mom’s BFF

My mom’s tribe

After we finished our coffee, we drove by this once-small mall that I used to go to – it expanded quite a bit over the last few years.

Me: When I used to come here, there were only two stores. Now look at it.
Her: Wow, it’s definitely not two stores anymore.

She wanted to get some decorations for her place for the coming holidays.

Her: I always wanted the space and money to have holiday decorations for all the holidays.
Me: That’s tough to do anywhere, let alone Manhattan.
Her: Oooh, look! Halloween decorations!

Afterward, we went to have dinner with my mom’s best friend, her daughter, Mary, and her daughter’s boyfriend.

I met Mary when she was like two years old, and she and my sister were great friends. Her dad, Nick, passed away a few years ago and I told you about him.

Actually, ran into her once years ago not too far from my pad and she got to meet my son, but he was maybe two years old himself at the time.

In any case, my mom’s best friend had been wanting to see my son for a while so we went to have dinner at her house.

We were supposed to order food in, but Mary’s mom had clearly spent all day cooking because there was so much killer food, including appetizers of meatballs that my kid devoured.

Me: Your mom was a major reason why I was fat.
Mary: What?! You can’t blame my mom for that.
Me: I loved everything she ever made, have zero self-control, and can’t take personal responsibility for my actions.

The kid actually ate so many of the meatballs that he didn’t want dinner, which I kinda figured.

The Firecracker and everyone got along just swimmingly, which I knew they would.

Mary said I helped her with her SATs, which I vaguely remember, but it seems like lifetimes ago.

Afterward, we all talked about how we met.

Me: I can’t stand the apps but it’s a part of modern life now.
Mary’s Boyfriend: I didn’t mind the apps that much.
Me: I do have to say that you meet people that you’d never meet otherwise.

I think it’s amazing that my mom and her best friend met and kept in touch all these years.

When my dad died, she was a constant source of comfort and the same was true when Nick died.

Find it pretty adorable that these two immigrant women who speak broken English found each other and have been in each other’s lives for all this time.

Like I said, we spend our lives looking for our tribe.

My mom and Mary’s mom found it in each other, and I think I’ll be forever grateful for that.

Me: Thanks so much for everything! Let’s do this again soon – 30 years is way too long.
Mary’s mom: Yes!
Me: I’ll schedule you in for 2033. Maybe August…

Location: surrounded by kids and water
Mood: excited
Music: bring back the water, let your ships roll in (Spotify)
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It’s time to come home

Not that lawyer any more

Me: The problem is that you’re homeless and a stranger in a strange land. You’re not valued by him and never will be. But your friends and family are here.
Her: I can’t afford to live in NYC any more, Logan. I don’t have a job and I’m not 20 anymore.
Me: Plenty of people – your parents and mine – came here with less and spoke even shittier English than you…
Her: (laughs)
Me: …they all survived. They all thrived. It’s time.

A dear friend of mine, who moved away to be with the man of her dreams suddenly found herself in a nightmare.

She gave up everything – her home, her friends, her family, and her job, to be with this fella.

That’s her story to tell so I’ll end that part here.

But I told her things that I never told anyone.

Never told you either.

Because I not only lost both my families in 2017, but I also lost my career.

Never told you, but when I lectured in Malaga, over a decade ago, my topic was the right of publicity versus the right of privacy.

In it, I wrote about Gwen Stefani/No Doubt legal case where she allowed her likeness to be used for one thing but not another.

With the rise of computational power, we’re rapidly coming to a point where we don’t need an actual actor or singer but merely their likeness to create art. And that will open up a whole new world of possibilities, both for good and bad. – Logan

Right now, a major part of the whole writer/actor’s strike is the fear that their likeness will be used by a studio for, potentially, eternity.

Watched one lawyer talk about it, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t angry and jealous – because the focus of my entire practice was going to be about the intersection of the rights of publicity and privacy.

I knew a decade ago that this current AI crisis was coming and I wanted to be at the forefront of it all.

Her: Holy shit, you were ahead of the curve, Logan!
Me: Yeah, by over a decade. I’m gonna be honest with you, I threw myself a pity party last week thinking that coulda been me.

That fucking cancer took almost everything from Alison and me.

12 years of work, poof. Gone.

I’m still a lawyer but I’m not…that lawyer anymore.

I secretly used pictures of Alison throughout my lecture.

But Alison and I were dealt our shitty cards and we had no other choice but to play them.

After all, that’s what Alison did. Felt I had to respect her sacrifices and do the same.

I just said that the fucking cancer took almost everything.

Almost because I still had the boy.

Somehow, through all my chemicals and madness, I sobered up enough to remember him and how much he meant to Alison, and me.

Knew I had to make a home for him with me, however incomplete and inelegant that was.

That kid saved me and, together, we made this sad place – which was full of some seriously unspeakable and fucked-up things – a happy(ish) home for both of us.

And I told my friend all this just to let her know that it’s possible.

It’s possible to overcome the blow, even when it seems so unlikely.

Me: I’m not making light of your situation. It’s gonna be shitty and hard. But I just want you to know that you can survive this. You can survive this blow. Because, somehow, I did.
Her: (silence then laughing) I can’t believe I’m saying this but you’re making a lotta sense.
Me: (laughing) I’m as surprised as you are. (pause) Listen, X, it’s done. That place isn’t your home, not anymore. But here, you matter to a lotta people. Me included.
Her: (sighing) OK, Logan. Lemme think about it.
Me: Do that. It’s time to come home.


Location: home, waiting for people to pick up things up
Mood: better
Music: I only wish my words could just convince myself (Spotify)
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