[Author’s note: the following is a painfully true, 100% accurate story and it’s the reason I knew at an early age that I would NEVER become a scientist.]

When I was in tenth grade, I had a science experiment to do and I was running very short on time. It was due in a couple days and I had only barely started on my experiment. I decided to do an experiment involving “rust” and the rusting process, and how some elements can accelerate the rusting process while others tend to inhibit or decelerate it.

Anyway, I had one final experiment to do — to test the rust-inhibiting or accelerating effect on metal of boiled linseed oil. I had never heard of linseed oil (I was just reading from a book of high school science projects and one of them was about rust). So I made sure to precisely follow the experiment’s procedures as set forth in the book. One of the elements it suggested using to test the rusting process was “boiled linseed oil.”  So I went to whatever store sells linseed oil and came home and began the experiment at about 4:30pm. I should note at this point that my father, for reasons still unknown to me, chose this day of all days to come home at 5pm rather than his usual 6:30pm. The relevance of this point will become clear in a couple paragraphs, so be patient.

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As far as I know, I am not the strongest man in the world. I doubt I would ever be mistaken for the fastest either. But I think I can say with a high degree of confidence, that if there were a category in the Guinness Book of World Records for the world’s MOST INFLEXIBLE HUMAN BEING, my picture would appear.

Our family recently joined a health club. What a terrible mistake that was. This past week, I took my very first YOGA class ever. Oh My God. Somehow – don’t ask me how – I made it through it. But if you’re over 50 and have never tried yoga before, let mine be a cautionary tale. Don’t even think about trying yoga – unless you enjoy intense pain coupled with public humiliation.

My competition in the class looked harmless enough: 15 women of various ages and sizes and three men of Indian descent who appeared to be in top physical fitness. These 15 women and the three Indian men (who, as best as I could tell came straight out of yoga central casting) all came equipped with their yoga mats, matching yoga outfits and bare feet. There was this one lone middle-aged white guy who came in without a yoga mat, wearing a dorky T-shirt that read “I’m in shape. Round is a shape” and sporting conspicuous white socks and sneakers. That middle-aged white guy would be me. In retrospect, I’m surprised an alarm bell did not sound the moment I walked through the door, declaring that a yoga pretender was attempting to break into this yoga sanctuary. I had absolutely no business being there.

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Whoever opined that “television is a vast wasteland” never watched an episode of Pimp My Ride or the equally thought-provoking Lingerie Football. If you ask me, the quality of television has never been better.

The proud tradition of erudite TV programming is nothing new. The birth of excellence in television can be traced back to September 14, 1965, when the much critically heralded classic sitcom My Mother the Car first aired. Fans and critics marveled over the course of 4 months at the antics of a middle-aged man (Jerry Van Dyke) whose deceased mother comes back to life in the form of an antique car. Some jaded media scholars believe television reached its nadir with the introduction in 1991 of the pioneering Jerry Springer Show, where dysfunctional families with 4^th grade educations discover on live TV that Shatiqua’s recently paroled boyfriend has been sleeping with her sister, Jazmine and their mother. But if you ask me, that was the start of TV’s true golden age.

Over the decades, Americans’ television tastes have become increasingly demanding. How else to explain such highbrow entertainment as Jersey Shore, My big Fat Obnoxious Greek Fiancé, Teen Mom, The Real Housewives of Orange County, or my own personal favorite, Dog the Bounty Hunter. The Brits can have their BBC series Masterpiece Theatre. I’ll take our American-made COPS any day. Did you see the last week’s season premier episode where this 46-year old crack-addicted, welfare fraud mother tries to offer sexual favors from her 19-year old daughter to an undercover cop in return for crack? You can learn so much about the frail human condition from COPS. We are all just one sex-with-my-teenage-daughter-in-return-for-a-hit-of-crack-cocaine away from a long, lonely stay in the Graybar Hotel. Just one tiny mistake away.

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For families everywhere the arrival of September means “welcome back to reality” time. School starts this week for most American teenagers, and summer is rapidly vanishing in the rear view mirror. If your summer was like mine, it won’t make for an enthralling Holiday letter come December – which is why when it comes to retelling the highlights of your summer vacation, if you weren’t able to afford an exotic, envy-inducing summer vacation, then at least make sure you have an exotic, envy-inducing story about your summer vacation.

When it comes to summer breaks, our family’s summers are consistently quite lame. Take this past summer, for instance. It consisted mainly of listening to our girls whine “there’s nothing to do” and “I’m boooooooooored” – God knows, life is boring when you live in the scenic Pacific Northwest with all its mountains and lakes. Heaven forbid your kids actually go outdoors, ride a bike, swim in the lake or clean their room.

As any loving parent would do, in an effort to insulate ourselves from their constant whining and badgering to “take me to the mall” or otherwise entertain them, we loaded up our kids’ summer with a series of week-long summer leadership / character-building camps and a couple of obligatory annual pilgrimages to visit elderly relatives. That’ll teach ‘em to whine about being bored.

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Recently, my daughter Rachel and I took a vacation to visit friends and family in the Eastern USA. As part of our holiday adventure, we spent a night in world-famous Niagara Falls, NY. This short visit was a high point of our vacation – except for one small disappointment – our accommodations at the Quality Hotel and Suites, Niagara Falls, NY. (Yes, it’s a real hotel.) If you would like a relaxing, restful, clean hotel room for an evening, might I propose an alternate place of lodging? But if unexpected surprises are what you look for in your vacation destination, then the Quality Hotel and Suites, Niagara Falls, NY may be just the thrill ride for you.

Below is a copy of my actual thank-you letter to the hotel after our recent stay. (Disclaimer: the photos below are not actual photos from the Quality Hotel and Suites, Niagara Falls, NY and were not included in the letter I sent. I include them here to give you a sense of the adventure we experienced. – tj) Read More…