It's Deja Vu All Over Again!

The boys are leaving for camp in two days, so we've started the arduous task of schlepping in their trunks from the garage and getting them packed to go away for the next month. As Robin was going through Spencer's box filled with stationary and stamps (that largely go unused every summer!), she found a letter that she had written to him LAST summer. Gee - it sounded awfully familiar - she was packing up to leave one school and move to another, just as she is doing this summer! Here is an excerpt...

June 28, 2008

Hi, Spence!

Things here are very quiet without you and your brother. I'm still trying to pack up at school! I have too much stuff! The good news is that I am getting better at backing up the car into the driveway - the bad news is that I am quickly filling up the garage with my junk and running out of space, and I still have more to bring home!

What's really bad is that I have to move it all again in a few weeks to Greenwood! My office looks really strange - nothing on the walls, my shelves are all dismantled and for the first time in 6 years, I can see the floor and even my desk! Dad is trying not to think about how much stuff I have and how much I have spent on my classroom... Let's put it this way - I have an entire box of pens (mostly purple, of course) and another container of Sharpie markers in all shapes, sizes and colors. The crazy thing is that I'll still be going to Staples to take advantage of their Back to School sales! Right now, I'm in the middle of looking for my wrist brace, since I seem to have hurt my wrist while moving all of my stuff. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll find it before next Christmas!

Ya know... some things in life are best lived just once. Unfortunately - no one asked my opinion!

My Surprise School Reunion!

Note to "Life On The Beach" regulars - Today's entry is a bit of a departure from my normal fare. Instead of bitching about how the arrival of President Obama has done nothing so far to promote bipartisanship (it hasn't), or discussing the Postal Service's desire to go to five-day-a week delivery (a good idea), today I present an essay. It's part of a newly-launched writing project I'm doing with my high school friends on Facebook. Enjoy!



The date was September 8, 1993. I was at a pretty good place in life. I was the morning drive news reporter at WMAL and living in Silver Spring with my wife of three years, Robin. Robin and I had been living in our brand-new townhouse behind Leisure World for just under a year, and we were looking forward to the birth of our first child, who was due sometime around Thanksgiving. We were scheduled, in fact, to start Lamaze classes the following week.

Robin had a pretty rough day at work - not so much because of her job, per se, but because she just didn't feel good. Pregnancy did not agree with my wife. She never did quite get rid of her morning sickness, and she had been diagnosed with pregancy-onset diabetes, which meant she had to test her blood several times a day. Mama wasn't a happy mama! When Robin got home, she complained of feeling like she had to go to the bathroom, but that wasn't it. A call to the obstatrician confirmed that my seven-month-pregnant wife was likely in labor.

We took a drive over to Shady Grove Adventist Hospital to get Robin checked out, under the assumption that they would stop the labor and send her back home. But by the time we got to Shady Grove, it was too late to stop the baby. He or she was coming!

My brave wife allowed herself about 30 seconds of grief before she set her mind to the next task at hand - undergoing natural childbirth without a minute of training for it, We were taken to a private delivery room to await the unknown.

A couple of minutes later, a nurse came in, and introduced herself - "Hello, my name is Sue". I took one look at her, and smiled. "Susan Berenter! It's been a long time!" I had gone to school with Sue Berenter all the way from Kindergarten at Cresthaven through graduation at Springbrook. We had never been close friends, but you don't share schools with someone for 13 years without having at least some sort of bond.

As Sue and I quickly caught up on old times - what I was doing for a living, how long she'd been a nurse, etc., we heard a groan. Oh yes... Robin.

I introduced Sue to my wife, and Sue snapped instantly into professional mode. She did a great job of calming mother and father down, and giving us the five-cent Lamase "pant, pant, blow" course in about ten minutes. Then she went about doing what nurses do before a woman gives birth... Setting up warming trays and machines that go "BING" and all of that other good stuff - all the while encouraging Robin and keeping her calm.

I don't know if every childbirth goes like this, but it did for both of our kids. The nurse does everything until it's time for the Mom to push. Then - and only then - the doctor comes in and basically catches the baby. It was great having Sue as our delivery nurse, even if the reunion was in front of my wife's gaping ... uh, well... you know. It was comforting to me to have a familiar face in the room to help us in a situation we had not expected. And it was comforting to Robin to have someone who was so good at what she did. Sue was a real pro!

Bradley Philip Matthews was born at 1:49am on September 9, 1993 - two months premature, but at 4 pounds, 9 ounces and 18 inches in length, still quite big for his gestational age. Brad was in the hospital for two weeks and had to wear a breathing monitor for six months, but beyond that, he was a real trooper! And we have Susan Berenter to thank for that!

Thanks, Sue - Wherever you are!

Episode Three - Revenge Of The Luddite!

The Missus bopped me upside the head last night when I told her I had blogged about her yearning for a no-frills cell phone that just happened to be marketed to senior citizens. I guess I was supposed to keep that quiet. However, Robin may be getting the last laugh on this one - at least for now... Did you see what happened yesterday to the folks who lined up around the block to get the latest features-packed iPhones? The Washington Post reports:

The launch of the new iPhone did not go entirely smoothly yesterday.

Sure, it was no surprise that people waited in line by the hundreds to get their hands on the new smartphone, which sports a faster Web connection than its predecessor. The unexpected part was that the crush of people activating new phones, and updating the software on old ones, threw iTunes for a loop and left some without a dial tone.

One tech Web site called it "the iPocalypse."

John Carnett was about to go on a week-long business trip to Nashville, but for much of yesterday his iPhone was unusable and locked in "emergency" mode. An update left him, and other users, with a slick, cutting-edge touch-screen device that could be used only to dial 911.

Some users who tried to upgrade their iPhones early yesterday to sample a new line of software applications got an error message on iTunes instead. Some did download the latest software, only to find that their device get stuck.

"Any idea how many phone calls I've missed today? How screwed up my business is?" wrote Carnett via e-mail after several hours of trying to get his phone working. He later returned his phone to life.

Although Apple and AT&T, the iPhone's carrier, planned to require buyers to activate the new iPhones before leaving the store, some customers were told they could activate the phones at home as a result of the iTunes problem.

A spokesman for AT&T, Mark Siegel, said, "The iTunes software was evidently overwhelmed by incredible demand."

"Apple has worked fast and furious to try and resolve this issue," he said.

Apple did not return phone calls for comment yesterday and released no statement.

More than 400,000 iPhones were expected to be sold worldwide over the weekend.

Some iPhone buyers grousing online started to refer to their useless devices as "iBricks." As one person posted on Twitter: "I still gots me an iBrick. Fully 90 minutes of trying to activate at home has FAILED."

The iTunes problem wasn't the only complaint. Kent Jenkins is unhappy with his carrier because his 12-year-old son was turned away after waiting in line at the AT&T store in Waldorf for four hours, with birthday money and funds he had saved for Apple's new phone. Kent Jr. was told he wasn't authorized to activate an iPhone on his father's account -- even though his father said he'd called the carrier to avoid problems.

Some would-be buyers got tired of the slow-moving lines and dropped out. Arlington resident James Layman waited five hours at the Clarendon Apple store yesterday morning but left when he concluded that the new phone's activation issues meant he'd probably have to wait a few hours more before using the phone.

At Montgomery Mall's Apple store, about 150 people were in line at 10 a.m. yesterday.

Vick Chan of Germantown said he got the original iPhone when it launched last year, too. He took the day off yesterday to get one of the first of the new iPhones.

At the end of the line, by the Baby Gap, Dawn Simounet of Hyattsville said she waited at an AT&T store in Greenbelt for almost two hours before managers announced that the store was out of stock and only taking orders for iPhones that would be delivered another day. She decided to try the Apple store, which evidently had a bigger supply.

Online, at Apple's support site, iPhone users hotly discussed the headaches they were experiencing with iTunes yesterday. But users who got their phones working again reported that the ire disappeared as quickly as it descended.

"After six hours of lost time on the only phone I have (no office phone, no home land line, nada), I'm back up," wrote one user, identified as a resident of Virginia.

"All my angry thoughts at Apple are slipping away as I browse the apps. Whoa."

Return Of The Luddite!

As people are lining up around the block to get their hands in the new iPhone, a magazine ad for another type of cell phone caught my wife's eye!

The Jitterbug offers about a dozen buttons... the numbers zero through nine, "yes" and "no"buttons, and that's about it. The phone does NOT have text messaging, a camera or an mp3 player, or any other features for that matter. Plus - if you dial zero, a jitterbug operator will come on the line to help you figure out how to use your phone - just in case dialing a phone number and pushing the "yes" button to connect is too complicated.

Yes- the Jitterbug phone is being marketed to senior citizens - or, really, to the children of seniors, who want their parents to carry a cell phone in case of emergencies. Robin thinks the phones are neat because every time she gets a new cell phone, she needs about a week to learn how to use it. Plus, she's a luddite. In her defense, I must say that Modern cell phones are notoriously counter-intuitive, and their user manuals are usually difficult to read at best! I'm far more advanced technologically than my wife is, but there are buttons on my phone that I still have no idea how to use.

Still - if we want to avoid becoming our parents, we MUST learn and embrace new technology! My mother-in-law refuses to give up her dial-up AOL and progress to broadband, and I give her grief about it all the time... The millennials who responded in comments to this youtube ad for the Jitterbug phone thought it was hilarious that someone would buy what amounts to a black-and-white television in a high-def bigscreen color world. Their comments may show a lack of respect for their elders, but they are not wrong. We all have to move along to get along!

Olympic-sized Shopping!

With the kiddies safely off at summer camp, the missus dragged me out for a shopping decathon at Virginia's retail mecca, Potomac Mills. I had agreed to go on the condition that we would hit the road to return home by 3 pm in order to avoid the Sunday afternoon rush hour on I-95... Robin had other plans, of course, but she wisely kept them to herself.

We started the morning at IKEA, which had just launched its annual summer sale. I kid you not when I tell you she dragged me around that place for 2 and a half hours - We would have stayed longer, but my constant whining finally found its intended target.


Our next stop - the Mall... We broke this up into three pieces... Shopping first at one end, then driving around to the food court to cover the mall's mid-section. This took another four hours, and by this point, my feet were starting to bother me. Robin told me "It's only walking", so I had to explain to her that I have no problem with walking. I can do MILES of walking at a time... It's walking four feet, then stopping... walking four feet, then stopping that kills me... and my feet died a million deaths yesterday!

We had one more stop at the mall - Robin wanted to go to the far end to see Nordstrom Rack. I refused to go, but offered to drop her for a quick peek while I bought gas. After stopping at Costco, (3.92 a gallon - not bad!), I returned to Nordstrom Rack and waited another half-hour for my soon-to-be ex-wife.

So by now, it's 6:30 - time to hit the road, right? HA! We hit the new Wegman's instead. For the uninitiated, Wegman's is a supermarket on steroids... massive muscle-building, hairline-receding, testicle-shrinking steroids! Think about the largest Giant Food store that you've ever visited, then double the size, and you have Wegman's. About 60 percent of Wegman's is like a typical grocery store, albeit a grocery store with a massive selection!

The rest of Wegman's is like a massive gourmet food court. The seafood section has its own sit-down restaurant serving fresh fish. There is a sushi bar... A guy standing at a kiosk making fresh crab cakes... Another person tossing salads. A woman making custom cannolis... There's a sub shop next to a pizza joint. There were two buffets serving Indian and Chinese food, along with an upstairs seating area for at least a couple of hundred people! Robin and I enjoyed a chinese feast at 8 bucks a pound, then went grocery shopping.

There is a bit of nostalgia for us in Wegman's... The chain is based in upstate New York, where Robin and I both went to college... And for whatever reason, the chain carries some upstate New York delicacies - food you cannot usually get anywhere else, like Freihofer's Chocolate Chip cookies and Hofmann's Snappy Grillers - white hot dogs also known as "coneys" that I spent my college years consuming prodigiously at a legendary Syracuse hot dog place called Heid's of Liverpool. So we filled the cart with all this stuff, and finally called it a night - after 2 hours and 15 minutes of grocery shopping!

So much for getting home by 4 pm... We pulled into the driveway at 9:45 - exactly 12 hours after leaving the house... It was a shopping day that we never would have put our children through... It was enough to make me miss those little buggers!

My Wife Is A Photographic Luddite!

I may have mentioned before in this missive that Mrs. Matthews is technologically challenged. Several years ago, when I wanted to buy her a digital camera, she resisted mightily. She was far more comfortable with the idea of continuing to take her rolls of 35mm film up to CVS, wait two days and get back an envelope stuffed with twin prints that she could then quickly stuff in the nearest drawer, never to be seen again.

I am now proud to say, however, that Robin has acclimated to her camera, and she gleefully shoots pictures with reckless abandon. In fact, she has more than 300 snapshots on her camera now - and that number is growing because she has no idea how to delete any of them. She also doesn't know how to download them to the computer. She forces me to do the job instead!

I have been protesting against this for some time, of course. Robin has a Master's Degree in education, so she can darn well figure out how to maintain a digital camera. But her proposed solution to the problem is certifiably 20th century. She says she can just take her camera's memory card to CVS, and have the magic Kodak machine print out her pictures (even twin prints!) there! If she runs out of space on the memory card, she can just buy another one!

Fast forward to this morning... Robin needed to download some pictures to our computer for work purposes. I forced her to do the job herself, which was a big mistake. The 2-minute chore turned into a 20-minute computer lesson as Robin successfully downloaded the files, but then promptly lost them on the hard drive. I found the files, and also introduced the Missus to the phenomenon of dragging-and-dropping files and folders. Have mercy on her. She spent her learning-computers-in-the-workplace years raising babies instead...

Still, I sometimes think my wife doesn't need Windows OR a husband... She needs a HAL 9000... a computer that does as it's told!