For the past decade I’ve been responsible for cooking the Seder dinner. It’s gotten more elaborate over the years – particularly the desserts because we get invited over to a friends house for one of the Seder meals.

Last year I created rosewater meringues dipped in rum syrup. It was delicate, light, kosher and surprisingly good. This year I made two deserts. One to bring to our friends’ Seder and one for fun. The one to bring to their Seder is the famous François Payard’s Flourless Chocolate-Walnut Cookies. To keep completely kosher, I had to grind my own sugar. Although the soft white powder looked good in the food processor when I was done … it was still very coarse. Other than that, the recipe was followed to a “T” (as in “Tanuch”) and came out very, very good. Our hostess will be pleased.

The second dessert I made didn’t turn out so well – Crème brûlée. The cream over-boiled, the custard didn’t set (even keeping it in the oven an extra 1/2 hour didn’t help), and because there was less custard (I lost about a cup of cream to it over-boiling), the sugar ratio was too high and made it too sweet. The ramekins were too small, so the extra 1/2 cup of cinnamon sugar spread amongst the 2-inch tops was too much and I didn’t have a torch.

Surprisingly, the top sugar melted perfectly in the oven at the high broiler setting. And other than it being to sweet, the flavor was spot-on. And they looked cool. At least they’re kosher. So I learned the following – watch your cream carefully … once it starts to boil, it can overflow or burn within seconds. I used 5 yolks … next time I’ll use 6 or 7 to help it set better. Some potato starch would have helped it to set, too. Finally, when adding the sugar on top, skip what the directions say and make the portions fit the ramekin size. A thin layer of sugar is better than a thick one.

It’s one of those things that when you tell someone you get one of two responses: “Yeah, Right!” or “Wow, Neat!”, though the first response is usually silently spoken behind a polite smile.

My grandpa would come home from work and try to describe what they were building and the details that went into it. Nobody at the time could understand what he was talking about “Your building a … castle? For real? You built a … tree? Why not just plant one?” He and Disney actually had a personal relationship as well. Disney would sit on one of the docks for lunch. None of the other construction workers felt comfortable enough, but my grandpa would sit right next to him and have lunch together talking about families and dreams.

Disneyland has far more educational value than half the school slums in our country, but you have to dig for it. Try reading a few books on how Disney performed his work before the next time you visit… or just to learn a few tips and pointers to improve your own personal business and achievements. Our family favorite is the “One-Up”.

When Disney walked into a room to see the story boards (a concept he invented and everyone uses today) he would listen to people’s ideas and envision something fantastic. When it came down to building the parts, whether it was a ride in an amusement park or a frame still for a movie, he would look at it and say to the engineers and artists … “That’s great. Now one-up it.” One-up means to overachieve… to excel.

When we build something we get stuck in the forest and can’t see it through the trees. When we step back we can see areas of improvement. “One-Up” means changing how we see things for a minute… to step out of our mind, or to step into a fresh mind depending on how you view it … and making the experience better.

With the common proverb (by Julius Caesar) that “experience is the greatest teacher”, it makes sense that walking through one of the greatest creations of the greatest teacher of details, magic and experience (speaking of Disneyland and Disney) would lend to teaching a thing or two.

I’ve been looking for an app that allows me to capture the essence of wines that I’ve tasted, display the results of others for wines I haven’t tasted, view the label, the price and the wine maker’s description in a clean interface. Data input must be easy and, because of the nature of wine, must have access to an extensive database. I would also insist on the ability to back up the data.

In the journey to find such an application, I’ve come across a good number of wine apps. Indeed, there are over 100 free wine apps in the app store, though I haven’t tested nearly half of them. I thought it might be of interest to others, as well as a brief documentation for myself, to post the brief findings of wine apps that I’ve toyed with. This post is a work in progress and has incomplete data. It will be updated as time allows. One of the most disturbing lack of features is the ability to back up your database. Without that ability it’s impossible to reach a 5 star rating. Nobody wants to spend hours scanning labels, entering their taste experiences and typing in their inventory to get it erased.

In a strange way this echos for me as well. I say “strange” because the posts epitomize womanhood, yet I’m a man.

There were long nights that felt like those that fall on the arctic where I would hover over the crib to soothe the baby, swaying like a drunk man from the lack of sleep. From her post I remember the same sand burnt eyes, the same smells and how that baby smell is like no other. I even recall the same confidence and fear that somehow intermingle at that time in life.

There was a tenderness both in me and in others that eroded over time. People seemed kinder and gentler then, and even euphonised their snide and hurtful remarks about our already large family (if you call two children a large family) if not withheld them altogether.

A little older, there’s already a longing for those times. I play with thoughts and memories like a young boy’s wish to travel back in time or to another world altogether, but unlike that boy I know each moment is different and there’s no return. My children are a little older now, so there’s still some magic left in my house, but at my age – at their ages – the end of that tunnel is blinding; it strikes me with a disquieted remorse that only comes out in deep quivering sighs.

As a man there’s supposed to be a hardened-steel strength that masks these emotions in some supernatural science-fiction Spock-like manner… but it still shows. Our wrinkled and melancholy eyes from the years of laughter and tears betray us to those who look deeply. Other men, thinking they were wild and free, were blindly shackled to a hard loneliness that comes from being childless, or shirking their children, and hardens even more with age until all that’s left is bitterness or, if they’re fortunate enough to possess a kind heart, remorse.

Geocaching is amazing fun! Combine book-smarts, an eye for detail, a trek off someplace you wouldn’t normally go, a treasure box and tagging … all with a GPS and that’s Geocaching. For those getting started, here are some pointers. First, you need to sign up at Geocaching.com then you need to look at the caches near your area by clicking on “Hide and Seek a Cache” then plugging in an address in the “Seek A Cache” section where it says “by Address”.

I suggest your maiden voyage is with a fellow Geocacher. If not, remember the following:

1. Wear clothes appropriate for walking in the brush, mud, sand, etc.


2. GPS can only get you so close. Sometimes it’s spot on, but most times it’s within 6 to 30 feet.


3. Look in spots where *you* would hide small bottles or containers. (for example: hanging on treelimbs, under piles of rocks, etc)


4. Don’t dig through garbage. When I started, I would find tons of trash. Remember that trash is temporary and usually more recent than a cache. Caches are hidden for permanence.


5. Bring a pen and some trinkets to trade.


6. Keep it safe. Don’t go for the cliff. It’s not there.


7. Get seasoned on a few regular sized caches before your first nano, if possible.


8. read descriptions, hints and look at photos BEFORE searching a cache. I’ve gone gung-ho to a GPS location a couple of times before reading and finding out it was a puzzle cache at some other undisclosed location.


9. Flashlights are helpful even in the daylight


10. Have fun.

Reflections and Resolutions don’t make a happy rainbow…. it’s more like an oily stain on the street that, after a dismal rain, makes a rainbow-like blob that mirrors the shoes on your feet.

I think of my regrets. I already have several this year. I think of beginnings and endings. Too many “should-a-done” and “wish-I-did” items to list. It’s always depressing, cold and ugly outside this time of year. But then I look at the other side of the same hand. I can overpower those regrets and move them behind me (even the ones I already have in the past 6 days). I can think of growth and changes. There are plenty of “like-to-do” and “let’s-try-that” items that life becomes exciting again. Besides, my awesome neighbor across the street snowplowed my driveway when me and my family were so dog sick we couldn’t even get out of bed to thank him. You just don’t get neighbors much cooler than that!

I’m lousy with promises to myself. I either get all emotional (good and bad emotions) and throw out my resolutions like baby with the bathwater or I get forgetful in my lethargic tired self after a long day’s work. How many times have I promised myself that I’d learn the violin… or that I’d stop biting my fingernails… or… no need to continue.

Nevertheless, I’ve learned that if I write down what I want to achieve it’s more likely (through some subconscious level) that I’ll achieve the goals, so here it goes.

1. Stop biting my nails. Fingernails… I quit biting toenails long ago.
2. Really enjoy life with my family. Drop the pessimism.
3. Take several pictures a day and post at least two pictures each day (one of myself and one of whatever) with a focus of improving and experimenting with style, light and composition… but no matter what, take some pictures and post two each day.
4. Play music more regularly … as in “play a musical instrument”… not as in “play the radio”.
5. Get my home office clean and dump out the old junk
6. Become more giving of my time, money, resources, etc.
– pick a charity to sponsor and give weekly/monthly to it.
7. Really apply myself to all the (Jewish) Holidays… including Shabbat. It’s so tough to push aside my desire to clean … but I’ll find a way.
8. Save Money and get as much out of debt as possible.
9. Finish the back yard… deck, garden and playground. We can only afford this because of doing #8.
10. Learn Hebrew. At least get good enough to say some phrases and read some basic literature.
11. (Re)read the books on my reading list:
– How to Win Friends and Influence People – Dalie Carnegie
– Getting Things Done – David Allen
– Six Attitudes For Winners – Vincent Peale
– Organizing For Dummies – Eileen Roth
– more to come…
12. Make some awesome preserves.
13. Blog more regularly… as in no more than 7 days between posts. If anyone besides my wife starts showing interest then I’ll blog at least twice a week.
14. Write up some reviews on the iPhone apps I’ve collected.
15. Try a food I haven’t had before (must be kosher).
16. Lose waist… I don’t mind having the same weight if it’s all muscle around my body, but this fat belly of mine has got to go!
– Better Food Habits (eat less)
– Exercise (move more)

That’s it for now.

I was bullied from Kindergarten all the way through High School. The bullying was directed by teachers – not just from other students or peers; Teachers were the main criminals. Who do you turn to when you’re six years old and your teacher is calling you names like “loser” and “a nothing – a nobody – that’s all you are and all you’ll ever be” in front of class. What about when you’re twelve and a teacher holds up a playboy in class, telling the girls that if they don’t look like that they won’t amount to anything in life? Or when you’re thirteen and your coach makes crude remarks about you in front of other boys in the locker room? What about when you’re sixteen and the teachers choose to look the other way while you’re getting the crap beaten out of you in the hall?

School is a crime against humanity. The system wreaks from the inside out. Although I don’t condone what happened at Columbine, those kids had enough. They talked and adults didn’t listen. When nobody listens, you have to make some noise… sadly, their noise was through bullets ending the life of others (both guilty and innocent of bullying). The big noise now is through Facebook announced suicides.

Although suicides are among people of all race, creed and color, the big craze now is in homosexual suicides. I can say from experience that this has been going on for decades and has only started getting recognition. When the other boys don’t know why you’re different, they just start assuming you’re gay and call you names and treat you accordingly. I was never gay, but apparently many guys in my class thought otherwise… or they didn’t know big words like “unique” or “introverted” or “sensitive” or “empathic”.

Last weekend I recounted to my daughter why I delved into the occult when I was twelve. It was to escape the pain… Even the memories are painful. Memories of having my face buried in a toilet full of feces then flushed… of opening up my locker to find it full of used condoms… of having a boy force his groin up to my face in gym class… of being physically bullied so much that I passed out in the school hall… of having someone dump a bottle of skunk essence on my head then being sent out of class because I smelt so bad it was disrupting… and the smaller continuous things like being flicked in the ear each day on the bus… having chewed gum or thumbtacks stuck in my seat… and all the degrading names… the list goes on. I felt like even God couldn’t do anything about it. The fantasy of the occult promised super powers and magic that anyone caught in the fabric between childhood and adulthood while in the midst of despair would reach for. I bit that apple, but it didn’t give me anything more than paranoia to add to the pain and darkness.

I certainly thought of suicide, and so did one of my friends who did eventually go through with it. My parents knew some of what went on and took it to the school council. They balked at my parents. If this were happening today, lawsuits would be involved. Back then, the council members were only embarrassed enough to make arrangements for me to cut gym class, but forced me into special ed because I was different. Had I lived in Colorado Springs back then, I probably would have gone through with suicide because it’s so common here that I would have had the “support” of both bullies and peers to “off” myself. (Sadly, Colorado Springs has the title for the second highest suicide rate in the nation. First billing goes to Las Vegas.)

If you want to do something about it, keep your kids out of school or become hot-damn determined to go to every PTA meet and visit campus weekly. It’s already been proven that kids can learn reading, writing, arithmetic and history through a better environment than what our government provides. Let me add that they can also learn more about life and live a happier one with some dignity intact by keeping them out of school. When my dad confronted the dad of one of the school bullies, merely stating that he needed to have a talk with his child, the parent’s response was a threatening “so what are *you* gonna do about it?”

When morally cheapened parents put their kids in a rotting system that spends every effort being politically correct and conforming children into the same mindset, teachers are robbed of their own human rights, are stripped of authority and anarchy inevitably takes over.

If children choose to go to college, warn them about fraternities and sororities that condone hazing, sexual misconduct and alcohol abuse. These debase human beings to the behavior of animals. There are so many great clubs and organizations that an “all boys” or “all girls” club is purely unnecessary and pointless. Better friends are made elsewhere.

… And when it comes to being bullied, it’s the hope from a good friend who stands up for you that makes living the next day a viable option.

Consider that there are alternatives to school. The most successful people in the world are the drop-outs: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Ansel Adams, Julie Andrews, Billie Holiday, Tom Hanks and a list of nearly a thousand others who make the top 1% of the world’s revenue and political influence. School is not for everyone, and it’s apparent that going to school could even hinder your child’s future success. I’m not saying these people weren’t educated – I’m saying public school’s version of “education” isn’t suited for the greatest achievers… In most cases that’s who the bullies pick on – perhaps because that’s who they fear.

They also poorly engineered a deck and built it without a permit and mounted it to the foundation of the house. What I mean is the numskulls took the protective siding off the house and without flashing or caulking just bolted the deck beams into the sill plate and stem wall. It’s now rotted and needs to be replaced. We knew the yard needed work when we bought the house, but the expense is insane! For removing rocks (that were put down directly in the dirt… that means without any tarp or weed guard), tearing down a rotting deck, removing several of the ill-placed deck posts, regrading the lawn for drainage and installing a new sprinkler system (the old one died) the cost went over $9k.

Word to the wise out there… clearing out a yard can be as expensive as putting in a new one. This holds particularly true if the previous owners didn’t think ahead, didn’t pull any permits, and didn’t do the yard right.

So since we have to invest so much money into the yard, I’ve thought of doing some magic on it. If Disney could make a castle look bigger than it really is, why can’t I make a yard look bigger, too?

The August 15th 2010 post on Ray Kleim’s Haunted Dimensions about Fred Joerger made me think about how this could be done. Objects at the back of the yard need to be slightly smaller and slightly up hill compared to items closer to the door and windows of the back yard. To avoid flooding issues, I refuse to grade the yard to slope uphill from the house, but placing items such as bird baths on a brick to raise it an inch is doable. Here’s the “formula” I discovered. Whether it’s the correct math or not, I don’t know. It’s just from observation.

The size of the distant item can be mimicked by a smaller yet closer item of size X when the percent difference of the two objects are reflected by the distance between them (Distance B) and the distance of the smaller item to the eyes of the beholder (Distance A).

Viewer …[distance A]… Small Item …[distance B]… Large Distant Item
Viewer …………………[Total Distance]……………… Large Distant Item

If the small item is 50% the size of the large item, distance A and B are the same. If the small item is 25% the size of the large item, distance A is 25% of the Total Distance. To create a perceived distance that extends my back yard another 5 feet, the fence plank dimensions along the back need to be reduced by a percent of B/T given that B = perceived additional distance and T = total actual + perceived distance.

Since my yard from the back door to the back fence is approximately 45 feet, the formula would be 5/(45+5) or 5/50 or 10%. So if the planks are 6′x6″, I would shave 10% off of all sides, making them actually 90% their actual size. This would require shaving roughly 7″ from it’s height and 1/4″ from each side of the plank. To make it look near perfect, I’d need to raise the ground along the back fence by 3″ to 4″. As mentioned before, I don’t plan on regrading the yard, but I could add a couple of inches more rock along the bottom of the fence.

What would all this achieve? The perception, from looking out the back windows of the house, of a yard that’s 225 sq feet larger than it actually is. The trade-off is that from the back of the yard looking towards the house, the yard would “feel” smaller.

Learn about forced perspective from the following videos:
LOTR Forced Perspective Moving Camera (and platform)

Ames Room Illusion – Temple Grandin

How do you date a ten-year-old? I have a few plans based on her interests. For example, take her on a photography walk at dawn after stopping to get some donuts. What about my other two daughters? There’s glow-n-putt … bowling. Hmmm the bowling alleys strike up memories of thick smoke and cursing old men, but they should have a family night that would omit both of these nasties.

A friend on facebook asked what constitutes a date to a guy. In her case a boyfriend asked her over to his place to watch some TV. This means one of two things to a guy: either he’s really wanting to hang out with her or he’s trying to put her in a compromising situation. She’s right to be offended if he implies this invitation is a date. It means he offers low standards to her.

How to plan a date:
1. Know her interests.
2. Plan a place and a time.
3. Give her anticipation.

Don’t get mad or irritated on a date – ever! Even if the waitress throws a plate at you and you see cockroaches crawling on the kitchen floor. Just politely excuse yourself. If the lady looks embarrassed then explain to her that she doesn’t deserve to eat at a restaurant where the business doesn’t give her respect.. that she deserves better. Apologize to her, and take her someplace else. It’s best to scout out the place first, then you won’t be in an embarrassing situation of paying a bill for food you won’t eat… but don’t even sweat it. She’ll associate your frustration with her, not the restaurant.

As my girls get more sophisticated, I’ll deliberately go into these situations to show them how a man should behave.

At a dinner talk my wife introduced the question “What shows more character: the way a person acts while being watched by others or the way a person acts when not seen by anyone?” My answer was “Neither. A person’s character is best seen when put in a nasty situation. The uglier situations are the most revealing.”

When my wife and I dated, I would take her up to the restaurant, glance around, check out the menu, check out the bathroom (people who cook your food spend time there and if it lacks soap, they didn’t wash) then on occasion, leave. She would get very upset. It was in her head that if you parked in the lot of a restaurant, a hidden obligation was set that you had to eat there. To alleviate her embarrassment, I would ask her to stay in the car and relax while I checked the restaurant out. After explaining to her that I wanted to show her a good time, and wrenching for days after going to a bad restaurant does not equate to a good time, she agreed to this solution.

It’s things like having the man think about and look out for them, showing responsibility and initiative, that my girls are being taught to look for…

For some reason I thought hair could grow an inch a month, and having a good employment from a company that seeks out ways to help the community, there was support from them as well as my family to continue after this goal.

The truth is that my hair grew out only a third to a quarter of an inch a month, making it a 30 month run before I could cut my hair without shaving myself bald.

I chose Wigs for Kids for several reasons. First and foremost, they ask no money from those who receive the wigs. Secondly, they focus their attention on children. I remember being constantly picked on and abused by my peers throughout the schooling years so this was a personal goal to help at least one child not suffer the humiliation I went through. Finally, because they have such strict requirements, very few of the donations are thrown away or sold. People who participate in Wigs for Kids don’t do it on a whim and are careful to make sure the hair gets to them in a qualified manner.

As an adult with a full head of hair I was criticized by those around me. Although it’s certain the judgmental behavior came from people of all ages, it was children who out of natural lack of verbal constraint audibly expressed condemnation. I felt a need to excuse my choices and told people at random why I was growing out my hair; it was often because of my fear of attention rather than my desire for it that people were told my motives.

Children usually don’t get that chance with their peers from whom biting harsh words are thrown. When dignity and support is torn from a child it ripples into the rest of their lives. Likewise, when support is given in the face of indignant situations, it can make a child stronger – possibly even a Tour de force that positively impacts other lives.

As it turned out, last weekend I reached my goal! To make the finish line even more emotional, the barber who cut my hair has a niece with leukemia. Even in rough economic times we can help. If you’re not growing out your hair, raise awareness. Pass around addresses to the facebook video or to one of the blogs or posts. Tweet it. Get people involved in hair clubs where, instead of trying to grow hair for themselves people are growing their hair for others.

Peace!