Where do you stand on the refill? The refill typically occurs at breakfast and is considered a sign of an efficient server. Personally, I do not want the “secret sauce” of my coffee mixture (86.473% coffee / 13.256% half and half / .271% Splenda) altered by the illicit introduction of fresh, black coffee. The result is a warmer, but just not the same cup of mutated coffee. Do you want to drink mutated coffee? Of course not.

Refill recovery from this jolt is possible, but tricky, dangerous, and not for the jittery. The first repair involves carefully raising the half and half ratio back to 13.256%, but who’s kidding who? I’m not Enrico Fermi, nor am I working with a graduated cylinder, so the goal is short of elusive coffee fusion, and simply to approximate “my color.” Once in a while I’ll nail it, but most of the time I’m probably drinking a sub-par 12% cup. Now there’s adjusting the level of sweetness. My patented formula never involves a whole Splenda pack and the conservationist in me wants badly to perform this chemical gymnastics without sacrificing another poor Splenda. I wouldn’t want the “Save the Splenda” nuts after me. Since my formula requires exactly 92.6% of a little yellow envelope, the remaining 7.4% goes in the mix. Next there’s the single turn of a tea-spoon (Hey, is it still a teaspoon when you’re drinking coffee?) and the tentative taste test.

[This is a commercial break to tell you I’m listening to Wilco’s “Handshake Drugs” from their live “Kicking Television.” To borrow a quaint little phrase from Megan and whatever culture it is she lives in, “Wilco is the shit.” Come to think of it, I have yet to ask Madison what she thought of that Wilco show she attended with her mom and me in June.]

The taste of mutated coffee is, well, a decaffeinating experience, not the exhilarating rush of that first sip at home each morning. You know. Yes, you do. Some mornings you just nail it. It’s the moment your brain smiles at the notion you concocted just the right amount of pulverized beans, water, and complements of choice from the Periodic Table of Java Elements. That’s the start of a good day and no one is going to spoil it with an unauthorized refill.

Now, back to our commercial programming of some robust mid-tempo rock…

There’s something about it. Maybe it just conjures up the aural imagery of the GnR song (or its images of Stephanie Seymour), but regardless of why, my world is soaking in it today. It wasn’t an ideal day for errands, but there’s a plane to catch and a family that will thrive (and eat) while I’m gone, so I spread breadcrumbs at the bagel store, Macy’s, Home Depot, the grocery and the dry cleaners. Counting the aftermath of bringing all the booty into the house, my Saturday stops included 22 trips back and forth to the car. There’s no way my body dodges raindrops, so I caught a few. They were cold, but not stinging. The stinging stuff is still aging in oak casks for winter whipping. The droplets felt good on my face, but now they’re not so appealing between the weave of my pullover.

Many of today’s treks were fruitful, although the only fruit involved this day were a dozen or so fruit-fly infested apples past their prime that subbed as Tom Brady aerials from my deck out into the woods. I’d say my passing accuracy was far less than the 74.2% Mr. Brady takes into Indy tomorrow, and my “receivers” were barely swaying.

Oh, bargains. Macy’s was having a huge sale, plus I had a 15% off card. Pants… shirts… Red Sox “2007 World Champions” hat for Dad… Done. I entered Home Depot in search of a 4’ pressure treated 4×4 which would have cost me over $12 (they only sell 8 footers), but left instead with 3-5’ 2×6’s from the “scrap” stock for $3.03! Finally, on my last stop at the drycleaners I was informed I had pre-paid for my shirts. Nice.

Yeah, the material is wanting today.

If all goes well, I’ll be in the Sports Book at the Venetian with some work pals by kickoff for tomorrow’s Pats-Colts tilt. I expect another statement game by the Pats and the end of Indy’s short run as the best team in football.

WTF happened to October? The 50th of my favorite month of the year has passed and now it’s time to begin dressing in layers, getting through “the winter seasons cruel embrace*” and looking forward to Spring Training. November will be busy. I’ll be in Vegas for our annual customer conference and will venture to Gotham City for an encore viewing of “Mary Poppins” for Kyle’s 16th birthday… Thanksgiving at Mom’s…

October was a blur because so much happened:

• A child was born
• Two holes were cut and one was a whopper. One hole disappeared.
• A palatial estate in the form of a crib was an investment
• Over 20 PowerPoint presentations were prepared. 3 were given.
• Frequent-flyer miles were accumulated
• 49 candles blazed
• The Patriots won 4 more ballgames
• The Sox won 11 in the post-season
• Many doctors were consulted
• I lost a Lexus… at least on paper
• A birthday card from Kyle said, “You’re my best friend.”

* From William Topley’s “Drink Called Love”

During the Spring and Summer of the season, Yankee fans like to give us a wink and remind the Nation of past Fall failures. That act is now officially over and those days gone like the Yankees in the first round.

Go ahead, say it: “World Champion Boston Red Sox.” Again.

Last century kinda started like this too, but then the Red Sox blew it by sending a young pitcher to the Yankees for money. I hope they don’t make the same mistake this century with Alex Rodriguez.

Perusing the Denver Post’s coverage of World Series Game 3, I found this gem by loopy “MountainLippy:”

“hey, trim $100 million off your payroll and then give us a call…nice “bought” WS win. By the way, just how fat and how ugly are the people in Boston???? **** on a sausage, at the end of the day we’ll still have the Mountains, great weather, our health….and thankfully we won’t live in Boston.”

I mean, who complains about payroll? Doesn’t the recent ineptitude of the New York Yankees prove that payroll doesn’t win championships? When the Yanks won banners 24-27 in the late nineties, their payroll was south of $100M. Since then it’s swelled to $160M; they’ve won nothing and they are in shambles.

Yeah, some of us are fat and ugly, but the Italian sausages outside Fenway kick ass. Oh, and maybe if the Rockies were eating boogers, they could pitch, hit and not choke on Rocky Mountain Oysters like the one Matt Holliday spit when he was picked off in game 2.

Oh, and what’s with the towel waving in Cleveland and Denver? Can you imagine that silliness occurring in Boston or New York?

Actually I’ve only two and while cradling my new grand-bundle-of-joy I’m quickly reduced to the cliché of the one armed paper hanger. Last night as I left-handedly clutched Madison against my chest I pondered how to simultaneously hold her bottle under the PUR water dispenser spout while moving the handle to um, dispense the H20. I needed a third hand, but lacking one, I eventually stretched my index finger enough to nudge the handle forward for flow. I’m also wondering is there a bottle warmer technique or contraption superior to submersion in a boiling pan with intermittent temp checks with a semi-sterile finger? Today I learned room temperature formula works just fine. I ran that by Megan, but she’s still watching the pot…

Oh, and the third hand would also help me to blog while loving this grandfather thing.

All these years… 49 to be precise, I thought it was so cool to share a birthday with “the Mick.” Today I discovered Tom Petty turns 57 and Snoop Dogg will undoubtedly celebrate his 35th by emptying several firearms. Sadly I must also report actor Viggo Mortensen was also born on this day in 1958 and looks better than… Well, he looks like freakin Aragon and I don’t.

Anyway, enough celebrity nonsense. Christopher Wren would have been 375 today. Why is he important? Well, he designed 53 churches in London, including St Paul’s Cathedral. Of course St. Paul’s was the sight of a famous royal wedding in the 1980’s, but more important to me, it was on the steps of St. Paul’s the scene was set for the song, “Feed the Birds (Tuppence a Bag)” It is a song I’ve heard Kyle sing many times and one that will always have a home in my heart.

The song was penned by the Sherman Brothers (Richard M. Sherman & Robert B. Sherman) and was said to have been the favorite of Walt Disney himself. Wikipedia attributes the following recollection to Robert Sherman:

“On Fridays, after work, [Walt Disney would] often invite us into his office and we’d talk about things that were going on at the Studio. After a while, he’d wander to the north window, look out into the distance and just say, ‘Play it.’ And Dick would wander over to the piano and play ‘Feed the Birds’ for him. One time just as Dick was almost finished, under his breath, I heard Walt say, ‘Yep. That’s what it’s all about.’”

Happy Birthday and thank you, Christopher Wren.

“Oh, sorry. She’s your baby.” Gigi’s reaction was to run toward cuddling when the nurse asked “Do you want to hold the baby?” “Grammy” deferred to the new dad, as did the new grandfather, “the Big Papi.” At 3:47PM today, Nearly 49 years to the day my mother delivered me to the adoring masses, my baby really took one for the team and pushed a healthy, beautiful baby girl into our family. Baby having always seems to involve statistics… Weight, height, trust fund balance. All I’m going to say about Madison Olivia is that she taught her mother never to have sex again and she entered this world like her mom: hungry.

Lately my mind has been like a dryer, mechanically turning and doing its duty, but with the erratic thumping of a sneaker tumbling and banging around with random abandon. The Chuck Taylor is fear and it’s fucking with my fluff cycle.

Tonight I read Kyle the 30th and final chapter of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” and I could barely choke most of the words from my vocal chords. As I struggled, Kyle looked at me with odd curiosity. Without plot spoiling, I’ll just say the pages painted images of a funeral at the shore of the brilliant, sparkling lake aside Hogwarts.

This boy, who is so loved by so many is struggling with things he doesn’t fully understand and that those who love him cannot control.

“…he must abandon the illusion …that the shelter of a parent’s arms meant that nothing could hurt him. There was no waking from this nightmare, no comforting whisper in the dark that he was safe really…and he was more alone than he had ever been before.”

– J.K. Rowling

Writing is tedious without inspiration; more so sans subject. Over the past few years of this blogaholic existence, I’ve bookmarked things I could later wax on. “11 Most Important Philosophical Quotations” is one of them. Charitably making the top ten (“This one goes to 11”) is this post title by Heraclitus (ca. 540 – ca. 480 before year 0) [As an aside, can I still use the term “BC” if I believe JC was just another guy?] Anyway, as you can see by the not so Polaroid accompanying this babble from your not completely evolved ape, Heraclitus, or “Clete” to the old boys back in the Athenian hood, was an intense dude.

The point is that our lives, our reality flows and is impermanent. This morning I spent over an hour researching “Developmental Dyspraxia” in an effort to figure out what ails my son. The condition does sound dead on, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve spent countless more of my finite time searching for “the answer.” It just doesn’t matter. The next hour I spend reading to Kyle and the hours later today we pick pumpkins matter. Enjoy the beauty of the river and don’t dwell on why it runs.