Over at the DG, I write about my sense of fashion ... or lack thereof.

Here's an excerpt:

"The other day it was raining pretty heavily, which prompted me to do what I usually do when it rains: wistfully think of my old umbrella.

I can’t remember what happened to that umbrella, but I know where it came from: My good friend Matt gave it to me because I was wandering around without an umbrella. “Here, take this,” he said.

Even then it had seen better days: The metal tips were poking through the fabric, which was faded and frayed, and I worried about accidentally stabbing someone.

I seldom remembered to take the umbrella with me when I left my apartment, but I found it moderately useful on those rare occasions when I did. It was nice to go for a walk and not be dripping wet by the end of it. Still, I never came to regard the umbrella as essential, and when it disappeared I didn’t replace it. It rarely rains all that hard, anyway. The other night, I went for a walk in the rain and managed to protect myself just fine by wearing a hooded sweatshirt."

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There is truism out there that says that people dies in threes. I must confess that I have succumbed to agreeing. Just this week, three famous people died. Each made their mark in the arts, beginning in the 60s: Horst Faas, Vidal Sassoon, and Maurice Sendak. As a child of the 70s, I can remember when my mother read “Where the Wild Things Are” while wearing a bob.

Two people that made a bigger impact in my life died this year. I knew both for only a short while, but they were people who helped me through some hard questions. While their memories have remained in my mind, the news of their deaths was the first time that I had spoken about either of them in years. This story is both a recounting of my own history but also a warning for a reader – you should realize that you can have an impact on a person that you barely know.

I met Dave when my parents hired him to remodel their bathroom. Dave was about 35. In spite of his age, he was just starting his own carpentry business. He had lived a hard life. He learned to be a carpenter during his two-year stay in a rehabilitation clinic in the Bay area.

He worked in our home for about three weeks. My parents were expanding their bathroom into the last seven feet of their bedroom. Looking back, I wonder if my parents realized that this carpenter-in-recovery was also going to be a counselor to their son.

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My first car was a 1995 Ford Escort that I acquired during my senior year of college.

The engine blew at 150,000 miles, and I left it at a garage in Tarrytown, N.Y., called Stiloski's.

(Meanest garage in the world, by the way. Don't ever go there. Someday, in a small act of revenge, I'm going to write a novel that features a villainous character named Stiloski.)

Saying good-bye to a car is weird. It's kind of like the end of a relationship. You spend all this time with the car, and invest a lot of energy and time into, and then one day you basically leave it for dead. This year, I got rid of my 1997 Subaru Legacy. As I was driving to the dealership to turn it in, the song "How It Ends" by the Denver band DeVotchKa came on the radio. It was pretty bittersweet, and I almost cried.

Anyway, today The Awl ran a nice piece titled "It's So Hard to Say Goodbye to Your First Car."

You can check it out here.

Over at the DG, I write about my insatiable greediness.

Here's an excerpt:

"The other day, I set up a new CD rack to accommodate my ever-growing music collection.

My CDs now span an entire wall — albeit not a very big wall. And the racks are only a few feet high, so this isn’t as excessive as it sounds. But my CD collection is likely to keep growing and at some point I’ll need to get another rack, and then what will I do? I’m running out of room for my CDs. And the situation is only going to get worse, not better.

One option, of course, is to stop buying CDs altogether and stream everything on my computer. I’m not quite ready to make that step, despite eye-rolling from friends who are opposed to things like clutter. I happen to like having a large CD collection, and I’m always updating my list of music, both new and old, that I want to acquire.

Years ago, my mother questioned the size of my CD collection. Which is funny, because it was so much smaller back then. She said, 'Don’t you think you own enough CDs?' My mother might as well have been speaking another language. The idea that there was a limit to how much music one could, or should, own just didn’t make any sense to me.

Click here to read the whole thing.

I'm afraid of tornadoes. My grandfather died when an F-5 tornado hit Massachusetts in 1953, and my mother, grandmother and uncle were all injured. I've covered the aftermath of a tornado that hit Tuscaloosa, Ala., and I'm worried about friends in the South when subsequent tornadoes have hit.

Which might explain why I appreciated John Hawbaker's essay about living in tornado country at The Morning News.

Click here to read it.

Over at the DG, I write about my recent stint as a potential juror.

Here's an excerpt:

"I’ve never wanted to serve on a jury.

For one thing, I never like having my schedule disrupted. But it also seems like an awfully big responsibility, and I tend to shy away from adult responsibilities. But when I received my recent jury summons, I was curiously neutral about the whole thing. The thought of spending the day at the Albany County Courthouse didn’t bother me at all, and by the time Monday morning rolled around, I was sort of looking forward to it. Which might be a sign that I need a vacation, now that I think about it.

Of course, I didn’t expect to end up on a jury.

Bad as I am at math, I understood that I was one of 106 potential jurors and that the odds of not getting picked were in my favor. I also felt fairly confident that nobody in their right mind would want me on a jury, and as I filled out my juror questionnaire my confidence grew. I happily listed my occupation as a reporter, and although I’ve been told that being a reporter doesn’t automatically get you stricken from a jury, I figured it couldn’t hurt.

My friend Hanna agreed. 'When I had jury duty, the first thing they asked me was whether I read the newspaper,' she said. 'You’ll be fine.'"

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In my column over at the DG, I write about habits - about how difficult they can be to break, and also to establish.

Here's an excerpt:

"A while back, I wrote about giving up soda for Lent.

My goal was to kick my habit of drinking soda all the time — something I wasn’t sure I could do unless faced with a very specific, time-sensitive challenge. Lent gave me a start date and an end date, as well as a sense of purpose and sacrifice. Unlike my previous attempts to stop drinking soda, something actually seemed to be at stake here, although what exactly that something was it’s tough to say. Perhaps pride. Having made such a public pronouncement of my plan to stop drinking soda, I didn’t want people making fun of me if I failed.

Quitting soda wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be, but it did require me to develop new habits. Instead of buying soda on my trips to the vending machine, I bought iced tea. Instead of buying a soda with my launch, I bought seltzer water. Occasionally, I bought coffee. But mostly I drank water. Lots and lots of water.

And I got used to it."

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Over at the DG, I write about my sister's baby shower, and my plan to buy non-pink, non-frilly clothes for my soon-to-be-born niece. 

Here's an excerpt:

"Well, I survived my sister’s baby shower.

As baby showers go, it wasn’t bad.

The people were nice, the food was good and there was a relaxed, comfortable atmosphere, which probably stemmed from the fact that the shower was held in the home of a friend.

Of course, I was required to do certain things at the shower, like let my pregnant sister Rebecca boss me around. What I found strange was that every time I asked her whether she needed something, she burst out laughing. This made me realize that nobody really expected me to fulfill Rebecca’s every command, and that my willingness to do so took everybody by surprise. Really, it wasn’t hard — all I had to do was refill the occasional glass of water."

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Over at the DG, I write about why I try never to say never.

Here's an excerpt:

"At this stage in life, there are certain things I’m fairly confident I’ll never do, like own a motorcycle.

But you never know.

Maybe someday I’ll decide that I really want a motorcycle, and purchase one. That’s what my friend Bruce did. One day he said, 'I saw this cool motorcycle online, and I bought it.' Now he says things like, 'I think it’s time to get out my bike,' and 'I think I’m going to go for a long bike ride tomorrow.'

Will this happen to me? I doubt it. I don’t really care about motorcycles, although there’s a part of me that thinks it would be fun to ride one around.

My friend Kristina was pretty leery of motorcycles — until she married a motorcycle-loving man and bought one for herself. Then they got divorced, and she sold her motorcycle. Kristina’s life has changed so much since then that it’s difficult to remember that she ever went through a phase where she was married, lived and worked in New Hampshire and rode a motorcycle. Now she lives in Guam and runs marathons. What will she do next? I have no idea. But I wouldn’t rule anything out."

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Over at the DG, I write about my greatest phobia: math.

Here's an excerpt:

"I’ve got a number of phobias, and I’ve mentioned a few of them before: crowds, public speaking, karaoke.

But I’ve rarely discussed my biggest phobia, which is math.

Unlike my fears of crowds, public speaking and karaoke, I’ve always felt a little bit ashamed of my fear of math. I don’t think there’s ever been a subject I’ve worked harder in for less satisfying results. Numbers have always confounded me, and I suspect they always will.

Years ago, I read the book 'Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and Its Consequences' in an effort to get a handle on the problem, but it didn’t help. Instead, it just made me depressed. The author, John Allen Paulos, makes it clear that incompetence with numbers is nothing to be proud of and that there’s real value to understanding concepts such as probability and coincidence and knowing how to work with and interpret statistics."

Click here to read the whole thing.

Life is a fragile thing. Or so they say. Or at least that’s how it seems to me these days. My body is weaker and more brittle than it used to be, and my care of it has accordingly grown more cautious. But that isn’t how things used to be. Life used to be extraordinarily difficult to extinguish. Let’s admit it - we lived with reckless abandon as youths. We placed ourselves in petrifyingly precarious situations, and played daringly dangerous games to amuse ourselves. Somehow or other most of us are still among the living. Life is fragile these days, and that is a sobering thought. But let’s take a minute to celebrate just how tenacious life was when we were young. We can do so by remembering some of what we have managed to survive:

1. Infanthood is exceptionally dangerous. I’ll tell you why. I’ve always thought that the most dangerous thing you can do is to place your life in the hands of another person. After all, most people are pretty inept. This is one reason I have such a fear of flying. I don’t trust that the pilot is going to be paying sufficient attention while the plane is taking off or touching down. I don’t know anything about flying a plane, but when it comes to landing a plane I’m flying in, I’d like to handle that myself thanks, because I don’t trust you, pilot. The same thing goes for surgery. I’ve never liked the idea of getting unconscious while a relative stranger prepares to cut you open with a knife.

But infanthood is more dangerous than either of these things. It is not simply your livelihood being in the hands of another person for a short period of time. Rather, it is your livelihood being in the hands of one or two extremely sleep-deprived people for 24 hours a day, for about twelve months (I guess that’s how long we’re considered infants). I’m amazed my own son made it to twelve months, and my wife is a great mother, and I at least have made an effort.

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Over at the DG, I write about how much easier it is to connect with friends these days, and how much I still enjoy the random, unplanned encounter.

Here's an excerpt:

"Last week, for reasons that are too convoluted to explain, I found myself roaming around the Palace Theatre searching for my seat.

I didn’t have my ticket, but I knew I was seated somewhere in the balcony, with my friends Bruce and Anna. The opening band had just stopped playing, which gave me a small window of time in which to locate my seat, and my friends. Once the headliner, the alternative-rock band Jane’s Addiction, took the stage, it would become much more difficult to hear and see them.

Not being able to find my friends is always a source of anxiety, and although technology has made it much easier to track people down, there are limits to what it can do. Maybe Bruce didn’t have his phone on, or wouldn’t think to check his messages. Maybe he’d turned it off for some reason. Worried that he wouldn’t get my message, I headed up to the balcony to search for him.

I heard someone call my name but it wasn’t Bruce. It was the New England Sports Fan Friend, waving to me from his seat. He was there with his wife, his sister-in-law and another couple, and I ran up to say hello. 'I’d love to stay and chat,' I said, 'but I need to find Bruce and Anna.'

As I turned to leave, I heard someone else call my name. I whirled around and was greeted by an old high school classmate — someone I probably hadn’t seen since the mid- to late 1990s. I was confused. Did the New England Sports Fan Friend know my old high school classmate? And, if so, how? But he seemed as baffled as I was. 'This is the row of people who know Sara Foss,' he cracked.

I exchanged a few words with the high school classmate, then rushed off to continue my search. I ran into my friend Sue and her crew, as well as a former colleague. But not Bruce and Anna."

Click here to read the whole thing.

I've given up drinking soda for Lent.

Since I drink soda all the time, this is a huge challenge.

But it's getting easier.

Over at the DG, I attempt to explain what I'm going through.

Here's an excerpt:

"Since entering the work force, I’ve developed a terrible habit.

When I’m on the job, I drink soda constantly.

Specifically, Diet Coke.

I’ve always understood that this isn’t exactly healthy, but for the most part haven’t really worried about it. My theory is that it’s hard to get through life without developing one or two bad habits, and that as bad habits go, consuming copious amounts of Diet Coke is fairly innocuous. I’d never been a smoker, and I rarely drank coffee. Nor do I gamble or abuse drugs. Overall, I’ve always considered myself pretty vice-free.

A spate of recent articles about the pernicious effects of diet soda has caused me to re-evaluate this opinion.
A new study in the Journal of General Internal Medicine found that drinking diet soda every day is linked with a higher risk of stroke and heart attack, and a study presented last year at the American Diabetes Association last year showed that drinking diet soda is linked with having a wider waistline. I found this last bit of information particularly galling, because of course I was under the impression that drinking diet soda would help me avoid having a wider waistline."

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In my weekly column over at the DG, I write about the challenges and joys of making new friends. This is something I have to keep doing, because my friends keep moving away. In fact, I've finally concluded that I'm attracted to the sort of people who are more likely to move.

Anyway, here's an excerpt:

"My biggest complaint about the Capital Region is that people seem to come and go so quickly.

After I moved here, I worked hard to make friends. And when you’re an introvert, making friends poses a bit of a challenge.

But I’m actually pretty decent at it, having gone to camp as a child, moved once as a child, attended college in Ohio and spent the fi rst three years of my professional life working in Alabama. At all of these stops, I made friends quickly and easily, and often with people I didn’t expect. In fact, I would say that’s been one of life’s biggest lessons: to keep an open mind about the Friend Potential (FP) of the people I encounter.

For instance, I wasn’t sure how I felt about my college roommate when I met her. She was a gregarious extrovert from South Dakota, while I was a reserved New Englander. I assumed we would learn to coexist, but doubted we would ever be close — we were too different. But I soon learned that having an extroverted roommate was useful, because extroverts attract people. And we had more in common than I initially thought: similar values, tastes in music, senses of humor, etc.

But if there was a lesson to be learned, I didn’t learn it."

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Last week was kind of lousy. The Patriots lost the Super Bowl, and then I came down with a horrible plague. Both events caused me to look for scapegoats. Which isn't unusual: When bad things happen, people often look for scapegoats. The question is: Why?

Over in my weekly column at the DG, I ponder this question. 

Here's an excerpt:

"I came down with a nasty little plague this week, and I immediately went looking for someone to blame.

Who was responsible for my sickness? Where had it come from? How did I get it?

As usual, Facebook offered some clues.

When I glanced at the site on Monday evening, I noticed that my cousin was complaining about having a stomach bug. I had seen her two days earlier at a family gathering. But I didn’t blame my cousin. I blamed her 1-year-old daughter. Little kids are germ magnets, and it seemed highly probable that the lone child at Saturday’s party was the culprit.

Being sick makes me sad, and throughout the week I was often struck by pangs of sorrow. But when I wasn’t feeling sorrowful, I felt angry. And in my angrier moments, I wished there was someone I could lash out at. A 1-year-old child was not a suitable target.

Then my dad informed me that my entire family had gotten sick after Saturday’s get-together, except for my youngest sister, Lesley, who had been sick prior to the event. 'So this is Lesley’s fault?' I asked. For some reason, I found it strangely satisfying to blame Lesley for the plague.

Is it normal to look for a scapegoat when you’re sick?"

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