Durango

I spent the first five years of my life in Tulsa, followed by four in St. Louis and one in suburban New Jersey. But Durango is my hometown.

Durango is where I went to junior high and high school, where I fell in love and learned to drive a car and ran cross-country and wrestled, where I discovered slow dancing and French kissing and Tickle Pink wine and ELO and Billy Joel and The Cars, where I filled loose-leaf notebooks with creative ramblings about love and sex and the absurdity of religion and how great my life would be if only I lived in New York City instead of Durango.

How nice it is to be back in Durango, to be with a family I love and that loves me.

About this year's photo

If only Dion would have me, I'd actually be in a doo-wop group. But you gotta start somewhere, and we have an album cover.

The photo was inspired by album covers of the late '50s, like these...

I loved the line "They sing...they swing" in that perfect '50s font.

Mello-Kings, anyone? Bueller?

Pink dress and a red curtain background? Had to have it.

Jennifer doing her karaoke version of "At Last."

We used a stock image for our background, but we shot ourselves individually against the burgundy drapes in our living room, to make the Photoshop cropping less noticeable.

Don't ask me how I happened to have a vintage blue sparkle smoking jacket in my closet. Let's just say this probably confirms for you how cool I am. But I only had one, so we had to share.

Little grown-up boy. Looks like Kevin Bacon in "Diner."

"Ticket please? Enjoy the show." Samuel's audition for "Fast Times at Ridgemont High."

"When that shark bites..." Todd's audition for "Beyond the Sea," in which an aging Kevin Spacey tries to play a 37-year-old.

I will leave you with some uplifting holiday music. Long live Dion. Long live Doo-Wop. Long live Rock'n'Roll.

And the holiday photo looks like...

Putting the final touches on the newsletter (TarpStreetJournal.com), will hopefully be up by tomorrow night. And now...bedtime.

Bailey is sad

He's sad that we're throwing out the last of the Ethan's PJs. Ethan is too cool and grown-up for PJs now--only boxers and tees. But these monster and robot PJs were still in his drawer when I was putting laundry away, and I laughed imagining him wearing them.

But it was a wistful laugh.

Decorating the tree in the lobby

It's an annual building ritual, similar to the Halloween party. Everyone meets in the lobby and decorates the tree. The kids (and those of us who wish we were kids) cut out snowflakes and paper chains.

For some reason, the Christmas tree committee (which consists of one person) decided the tree should be in the middle of the lobby this year instead of in the alcove by the front window--which is the obvious place for it, hence the word "alcove."

But I'm not gonna be all Grinchy about it.

Busy weekend

I took Samuel to a doctor's appointment on Saturday morning so that Jennifer could sleep in. Afterwards we had donuts and hot chocolate. Nice to hang out with that boy.

Saturday night he and Ethan went to a school play with some friends from Calhoun School, which is on Ethan's list of possible high schools. Meanwhile Jennifer and I got a Christmas tree from the corner, lugged it home and set it up in the living room.

Jen decorated it while I worked on concepts for our holiday photo. Usually we bounce around three or four concepts, but given the late date, I honed in on one, then stayed up 'til 4am creating the background in Photoshop. Next weekend: take family photos and insert...

Shhh! Keep this a secret!

Babies and dogs are the two greatest inventions ever

My Ethan Saturday

This is actually a good picture of Ethan, because when you look at him, this is generally what you see.

Jennifer is in Illinois this weekend visiting her parents, so it's just me and the boys.

Ethan and I had a high school admissions interview yesterday--one person interviews him while another interviews me. It's like on "Law & Order" where they interrogate the suspects separately.

He's got nine schools on his list: four public, one specialized public, and four private. Don't ask--it's a complex process involving Nobel Prize-winning economists and game theory. I believe there's a 99.9% chance that he'll go to high school somewhere. So we're not stressing about it.

Last night Samuel went to a movie with friends, so Ethan and I had a sushi dinner at Haru.

Yeah, he spent a fair amount of time playing a game on his phone, but it gave me a chance to check the scores in the Iowa-Michigan State wrestling dual. We got plenty of time to talk--about high school, politics, philosophy--things we don't talk about on a regular basis.

He's a good guy to be around. He's a good guy.