Blogging since 1998. By David Wertheimer
I turned 35 Saturday.
Tough birthday, really, leaving the coveted 18-34 demographic, barely a year after becoming a homeowner, gray hair fully on display, fatherhood looming large.
But whatever. I’ve got my Wii, I frolic with my dog, I maintain a youthful exuberance whenever I can. Heck, I play with Facebook for a living. I can stay young.
Facebook, on the other hand, has my birthday in its database. It knows the truth. And first thing Monday morning the site starts serving me ads like this:
Ripple effects, the story of my newly replaced iPhone, on the Ai blog.
My del.icio.us feed hasn’t posted here the last few days, a glitch I need to investigate. It’s a good excuse for me to remind my less geeked-out readers (hi, Mom!) of the numerous places you can find me online. In 2008 it’s not enough to blog… you also have to
…twitter: sporadic, text-message-length observations and wisecracks
…be del.icio.us: this is where I store links I find interesting, often with comments (the “links for” posts on this blog come from here)
…have a second blog: AIAIO, the Ai company blog, where I tag-team with Loren Davie, our director of technology
…flickr: an assortment of photos, usually one-offs taken by my phone
At some point I’ll harness the proper use of FriendFeed and Tumblr and get everything in one place. In the meantime, feel free to explore and follow along.
Ah, the babymoon! Had a great time.
First, an explanation. A babymoon is the last-hurrah vacation taken by a husband and wife expecting their first child. We’ve been using it for weeks to describe this most recent vacation, but no one’s ever heard of it. (Kind of like furnident, which at one time was on the Internet solely on netwert.com.)
So: the babymoon. St. John. Pretty terrific. Water bluer than blue, weather pitch-perfect most of the week. Went from a good resort to a great one and ate like kings. Snorkeled, then snorkeled with a prescription mask, which was quite the upgrade. Sailed, windsurfed, stargazed, relaxed. I think I even got something resembling a tan.
Thus, the babymoon, with small suitcases and days on our own agenda. Now we’re home, entering the stretch run of life as DINKs (we all know that term, yes? double income no kids?) with birthdays bookending the next three weeks, one last self-indulgent gasp before our slice of life evolves. Which, if the kicking is any indication, it already is.
Shiloh Baptist Church is a 69,000-square-foot facility housing a 100-year-old congregation of African-American Baptists in Plainfield, New Jersey.
In short, exactly not the place you’d expect to find two pale Manhattan Jews on a Sunday morning.
Yet that’s where we were, as my wife and I attended the dedication ceremony of an old friend’s son yesterday. Impeccably dressed and smiling, we attracted curious, friendly gazes from ushers the instant we walked in, then sat down in the balcony to watch the service.
This was my first Baptist experience of any color, and frankly, it was pretty great. Shiloh’s pastor is expressive and upbeat, and the congregation participates vocally and cheerfully.
The whole service was a visual and aural treat. The pastor was loud and soft, happy and sad, unfailingly optimistic. The sterotypical “get a witness” and “amen” utterances were in full effect. People clapped, waved, assented, took notes during the power-of-positive-thinking sermon. A farewell ceremony to a retiring volunteer nearly moved the pastor to tears (“Can I get a tissue before I cry up here? … thank you God amen”). The choir, 40-strong and accompanied by a three piece band—organ, drums, sax—sang with smiles and moved in unison.
At the end of the regular service, the baby’s dedication was called, and our entire party marched down from the balcony to stand in front of the pulpit, in solidarity and ceremony with the family. I felt, well, white. But I also felt proud and warm to have been invited and participated in the ceremony. The pastor knows my friends and has an obvious love for children. He wore a huge, genuine smile throughout the dedication as he held the baby. The rest of us did, too.
After the service, we all went to lunch, where I met up with my gang, the first time in a long while that we’ve all been somewhere together. We toasted the baby, saw each other’s kids, congratulated one another on new jobs and promotions and pregnancies, and made plans to do it again, for the Super Bowl this coming weekend.
Congratulations, then, to Jerome Lonnie Jones III, and to his parents and grandparents, who have brought their first child into a wonderfully loving existence. I could hardly imagine a more uplifting day.
I go whitewater rafting most every summer with my friends from high school. Some years back, a bunch of us bought baseball caps to commemorate the trip. Mine is red with two oars and, in big letters, “HUDSON RIVER.” I wear it often, particularly on weekend-morning dog walks.
Walking in Riverside Park yesterday, with a calm Hudson River a few feet away, it occurred to me that my hat now lacks a certain panache.
For the third straight year (and prompted by Jason for the third time as well) here is my list of travels for 2007. Per tradition multiple-visit locations are denoted with an asterisk:
New York, NY * (home base)
Livingston, NJ *
New City, NY *
Palisades, NY
Miami, FL
La Fortuna, Costa Rica
Playa Conchal, Costa Rica
Half Moon Bay, CA
Dallas, TX * (N.B. I flew to Dallas four times in 2007, and never stayed longer than 18 hours)
New Paltz, NY
Marco Island, FL
Lake George, NY
Rockport, MA
San Francisco, CA
Yountville, CA
Healdsburg, CA
Mystic, CT
Edgartown, MA
Chatham, MA
Palm Beach Gardens, FL
Last year I was able to extend my streak of international travel to five years (and seven of the last nine) thanks to the Costa Rica vacation. I’m probably not straying too far in ’08, though.
Tonight is New Year’s Eve, and for the seventh consecutive year, Amy and I are doing very little.
This year, in fact, we’ll be up to even less than usual: for five years we were relaxing in Florida with family; last year we toasted with my brother and sister-in-law in their apartment. This year, we think we may see a movie, then get some tastily greasy Chinese food, break out the Monopoly board, give the dog a bone and chill. I’d put 50/50 odds on Amy even being awake at midnight.
For years I’ve had mixed emotions about this. I have been quite happy not to bother with pricey restaurants and myriad “what-are-YOU-doing” conversations. Yet while being in Florida over the holiday week was nice, I will admit to also feeling like a bit of a dweeb watching Julie Andrews movies with my half-asleep nephew on New Year’s Eve. I’d been culturally intimidated: during the western world’s communal party, I had elected to stay home.
At last I am past the hang-up. Tonight, a cold, boring Monday after a week’s vacation, is not a big deal, even if I am part of “the only species on this planet that celebrates not the passing of time, but the way it has chosen to mark the passing of time.”
This year I learned about big deals. Finding, buying and moving into a new apartment, assuming jumbo-mortgage-level debt for the first time: now that’s a big deal, not to mention stripping paint and caulking and installing closets and learning all new restaurants and shopping routes. And that was done way back in April.
Transitioning into a terrific new job opportunity and a chance to redefine one’s career–and no longer waking up with work headaches in the morning and putting on suits for an hour-long intra-Manhattan commute? That’s a big deal.
And it goes on. Wife gets a promotion, a commercial on the Super Bowl and work nominated for an Emmy. Brother gets married. Father-in-law has successful heart surgery. A close friend passes away at 33. These, dear reader, are big deals. (And the biggest deal of all doesn’t even hit until next summer, although you can take a guess.)
So: no more internal apologies. This evening it’s roast pork mai fun and Guitar Hero 3, and tomorrow we’ll enjoy a nice, uneventful day off. Not a big deal. But a nice one, a peaceful, happy end to what has been an amazingly eventful 2007.
Update: The two of us wound up at the movies and eating dinner at “low key and local” Cafe Lalo in an unexpected and fun night out (and home before midnight, woo!). For the curious, yes, the theater was jam-packed at 10 p.m. on New Year’s Eve.
I have been married for four years and cohabitating for five. My wife and I have bought and raised a puppy together, traveled around the world and integrated with each other’s families. We share a home, a computer, chores, jokes and our deepest, most emotional thoughts.
Through it all, we have had separate CD collections.
This afternoon we had two 9′ tall bookcases installed in our living room. The one on the left has the express purpose of holding music, for despite my embrace of technology–including a first-generation iPod and an extensive MP3 collection–I still maintain a library of 1200 CDs, the majority of which are in our apartment. Amy, to her credit, has a few hundred discs of her own (and also to her credit, she tolerates the sheer bulk of mine).
So it was sensible enough when, as I began carrying music from my old racks to the new bookcase, my wife said, “Let’s keep all our CDs together.”
You’d think we’d have tackled this years ago. After all, we share a common iTunes library, Amy having given up on a her-only subset on her side of the Mac.
But even today, I paused. My collection is going to cheerfully swallow hers. The crazy category system I created, to avoid alphabetizing a thousand CDs, will turn my wife’s Cheryl Crow discs into “female vocal” and her Melissa Etheridge into “rock/alternative.” I suspect Amy will never even attempt to find her music in the sea of CD spines, much less succeed in locating her albums.
And her tastes create confusion in areas I had reconciled on my own. Peter Gabriel? For me: classic rock. To her: “Classic rock? Really?” Where does her Maroon 5 disc go? Seal? Barry Manilow? (Seriously, Amy–Barry Manilow?)
So far I’ve managed to integrate her classic rock with mine (though not, it should be noted, her Peter Gabriel discs), which has already thrown my organization out of whack, as the category has doubled in size. It’s kind of fun. And terrifically nerve-wracking.
My wife and I are deeply connected in our values and desires. We do not share much in the way of musical taste. But somehow, in some way, her Deep Forest and my Kiss CDs are going to find a way to coexist.
Going from a conservative consumer-products company to an Internet agency is about as startling a contrast in work environments as one could imagine.
Number of people not wearing jeans today: 1 (me)
Number wearing leather-soled shoes: 1 (me)
My office welcome: an interoffice email announcing my hire, which included a photo of my dog that the office manager grabbed from this website, followed by several enthusiastic replies from coworkers with photos of their own dogs
Suggestions from the team: install any apps I want on my computer; ask for anything at all from the Staples catalog; install AIM right away so the office can IM you
Number of challenges to play foosball and Guitar Hero: 4
Common space: the table and chairs behind my desk are called “belly dancer corner,” so titled because of the belly dancer hired for the co-owner’s birthday who performed on the table
Prominent page on the Ai office wiki: “Rubik’s Cube Solution Times”
I have office whiplash. In such a good way.
I am pleased to announce that I report for work tomorrow as Director of Strategy for Alexander Interactive.
Ai is a boutique agency based in the Flatiron District of Manhattan. Founders Alex Schmelkin and Josh Levine have built a fast-growing, fun-loving company around their individual talents, Alex as a developer, entrepreneur and client contact nonpareil, and Josh as the talented and dedicated creative director. I have been their client, colleague and friend since 2005 and am delighted to join their company.
My focus will be multifaceted, including but not limited to client business analysis, project vision, and information architecture, and a little corporate strategy as well. I’m also going to dive headfirst into the Ai blog, giving tech lead and coauthor Loren Davie a run for his money, and bringing the company into the greater industry conversation about online trends and opportunities. All of this is remarkably close to my dream job description at this phase of my career. Plus they have a foosball table.
The adjustment to a new business culture is going to be pleasantly overwhelming: jeans instead of suits, cubicles instead of an oversize office, 70% male instead of 80% female, and a shift from the geekiest person in the company to one of the least geeky. I missed the dress-your-coworker Halloween party but I did crash bowling night a few weeks back. It’s gonna be a blast.
Ideapad © 1998–2024 David Wertheimer. All rights reserved.