Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

A Pricey Drive down Memory Lane

We sure love our pets, even long after they’ve moved on from this world. When we lost our Saint Bernard last September, after eleven memory-filled years together, we kept reminders of him around the house. Remy’s ashes now lie in a stately wood box up on the fireplace mantle. His leash still hangs by the back door, as if we’ll take him for another walk in the neighborhood. And the kids gifted us framed photos of our favorite moments with him. Having said all that, I never expected this under the Christmas tree…

No, this isn’t our Remy. Well, okay, it is Remy but not in the “fur” (so to speak). Instead it’s a remarkably accurate likeness based on digital photos… and it serves as a head cover for one of my golf clubs. The double-takes I get on the driving range are priceless. Those puzzled expressions from other golfers beg the question, Wait, where’s the rest of the dog?

If these doggy head covers really get popular, I’d love to see future versions get a little animated. Along with the photos, send in an audio file of your dog’s bark. Then design the mouth to open and close on cue. Remy may have been a “gentle giant” but man he had a ferocious bark. Talk about a great way to say don’t touch my clubs!

If I had any concerns about the money my wife spent on my Remy head cover, I’ve gained some perspective to make me feel better. Forget about golf clubs for a moment. Did you know you can now have your car customized as a memorial to your beloved pet?

It’s safe to say I will never own a Rolls-Royce. Even if I had the money for one I can easily come up with a dozen ways I’d rather spend that much dough. But the car-as-your-dog thing is apropos for those who have way too much money in their paws. Consider, you’re already spending upwards of $500K on the car itself so why not put another $100K into it for personalization?

The options for customizing your Rolls border on the ridiculous. You can choose the paint color to match your dog’s coat. You can have his image created in intricate wood veneer inlays between the seats. His paw prints – authentic reproductions of course – can be used to dot the pinstripes (which is nowhere near subtle with a paw the size of a Saint Bernard’s). And the possibilities with the leather seats are endless.

Candidly, when your world includes a Rolls-Royce the word “customization” really means anything you want. You begin in the lobby of a design studio, which is an unmarked ultra-secure building in downtown Manhattan. You’re escorted upstairs by an armed security guard. You then sit down to a team of consultants to fine-tune every little canine detail. Now walk away and let the Rolls-Royce crew create your personalized masterpiece. Time and money are no object so neither is negotiated. All that matters is having your dog in the details. And if you’re so inclined, those details can include real gold in the paint job.

As much as this makes for a good blog topic, I’m no fan of excess. If I’m spending six figures to embellish my vehicle with remembrances of my dog, I’ve lost all sense of fiscal responsibility. No thank you. I’ll limit my purchases to those little framed photo ornaments from Shutterfly or wood cuts like this one.

One of these days my wife and I will take down the wooden box of ashes and put away the photos of our beloved Remy. Even the golf club head cover is bound to deteriorate at some point. When all that happens, I hope I can still picture our good ol’ boy in my mind. Otherwise I might be telling myself, I should’ve bought a Rolls-Royce!

Some content sourced from the CNN Style article, “Want your Rolls Royce to match your pet Labrador?…”.

Fill ‘er Up

Several years ago at a banquet, I stood at the podium to introduce the evening’s guest speaker. After sharing some of her background and accomplishments, I went with the expected, “So without further ado, please welcome”…, and then I paused. And paused some more. I’d forgotten the speaker’s name. The silence, as the saying goes, was deafening. Eventually I found her name in my notes, but not without an uncomfortable gap in my speech. Perhaps a filler word would’ve smoothed things over.

Do you use filler words? Actually, let’s make that question a statement. You use filler words. Every now and then in conversation you’ll throw in the occasional “uh”, “like”, or “so”. Filler words do exactly what their label implies: they fill up the awkward gap of silence created by a pause. Every one of us can recall an experience where we’ve left out filler words in a vain attempt to keep the polish on our speech, but it’s a no-win situation. If you go with the pause your audience looks at each other with one of those Is he okay? glances. If you go with a filler word you’re hinting you’re not completely on top of your material.

The parade of filler words is much longer than the commoners I mentioned above. The filler “uh” comes from its own family, including “um”, “oh”, “er”, and “ah”; tiny signs of reluctance to say whatever comes next. And speaking of next, how about “very”, “really”, and “highly”? These three are fillers disguised as words of emphasis but are usually superfluous. Then we have “You know…” and “You see…”, which seem to politely draw the listener into the conversation. But sorry, they’re also fillers, allowing a pause at the start of a thought. Finally (as if there’s an end to this parade), let’s add “I guess” and “I suppose”, both designed to soften a response when what you should go with instead is a confident “yes” or “no”.

I deliberately skipped one filler here because it deserves it’s own parade. “Like” sprinted to the front and center of casual English in the last couple of generations, taking up a lot of the spaces “uh” and his pals used to fill. Some people use “like” so often it starts to feel like every other word they’re saying. But make no mistake – every “like” is simply a mini-pause to allow the speaker to reboot their thoughts.

Watch out, because filler words can be contagious. I used to work for a company where it seemed every one of my teammates couldn’t start a sentence without the word “So”. Somehow “so” sounds a little smoother than “uh” but it’s basically the same filler. Before I knew it I caught myself also using “so”, as if it was the only way to start a sentence. At least “so” has a built-in bonus: you can drag it out for drama. So-o-o-o-o…

Filler words somehow sound better with a foreign accent. The Irish “um” sounds like the more pleasing ehm. Even throwing in a bunch of “you knows” in the Irish accent seems to work. And speaking of accents, Hollywood (or maybe just Los Angeles) brought us Valley Girl talk, which includes a weird form of attitude along with its own set of meaningless filler words like “totally”, “whatever”, and “as if” (think Cher from Clueless). Valley Girl talk has had a remarkable run considering its roots were in the 1980s. You still hear the words today.

The next time you call out a friend with Hello? Is anybody home? for not paying attention, consider they’re trying to avoid filler words by simply not saying anything. That’s harder to do than it sounds. Try speaking for a few minutes without filler words. It’s so difficult it’s birthed a string of funny videos on TikTok. As for me, I’ll keep using my fillers wherever I need them. Especially when I forget the name of a guest speaker.

Some content sourced from the CNN Health article, “Should you stop saying ‘um’? Here’s what the experts said”.

A Triumph in Travertine

LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #8

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

A little over two months ago we set out to do the impossible: construct one of the world’s great fountains in time for Christmas. Today, a day before our self-imposed deadline we put the very last piece of travertine in place. Okay, so this Trevi Fountain is made of LEGO and we’re nowhere near Rome but still, we’ve had a nice little adventure from start to finish.

As is the case with many of LEGO’s models, the final pieces are meant for flourishes and ornamentation. Bag 14 – of 15 bags of pieces – focused entirely on the top center structure you see here. Everything was completed in a cool 23 minutes, finished off by the careful placement of those four tiny statues.

Today’s musical accompaniment was fitting. I chose Gabriel’s Oboe, a short but beautiful instrumental some of you may recognize from Amy Grant’s “A Christmas to Remember” album. It was actually written by Ennio Morricone for the movie The Mission. I listened to it twice. Then I went with Luigi Boccherini’s Minuet from his String Quintet in E Major, which some of you may also recognize from movie scores. I listened to it thrice. Finally, I concluded with Vivaldi’s The Four Seasons (though of course, only with the “Winter” movement).

Bag 15 – the final bag of Trevi LEGO pieces – was an adventure from the get-go. Thirty seconds after spilling the pieces onto the counter I heard a tiny “tap tap tap” on the kitchen floor, the exact sound of a LEGO piece skittering away. Sure enough, way over by the frig, the little guy was standing there looking up at me with a devilish grin. He’d rolled way, way across my kitchen counter and dropped to the floor before attempting his escape. Again with the runaway pieces, sigh…

The statuary of the Trevi is impressive and the LEGO equivalent is kind of fun. If you look carefully in the piles of pieces above you can see hairpieces, torsos, and horse heads. Fully assembled and installed, it’s quite the collection of humans and animals in and among the rushing waters.

Finally, here’s an interesting coincidence of timing. In just over a month – for the first time in its history – you’ll have to pay $2 to see the Trevi up close. The fee is designed to reduce the overwhelming flow of tourists in front of the fountain. A fee just to see a fountain may sound nit-picky but a trial run showed it works well to reduce the chaos. Trust me: pay the $2, spend as much time front and center as they’ll allow you, and gaze upon one of the sculptured marvels of Ancient Rome. I think you’ll agree; the Trevi Fountain is a triumph in travertine.

Running build time: 7 hr. 48 min.

Total leftover pieces: 44

Caffè Companions

My wife made a batch of rolled sugar cookies last week, cut into traditional Christmas shapes like bells, wreaths, and stockings. It’s the first time in a long time for these cookies, inspired by the assistance of our young and attentive granddaughters. Though the cookies never donned their frosted/decorated costumes, they sure tasted great all by themselves. Kind of like the biscotti I’m giving up in 2026.

Are you a fan of biscotti? They’re the small, oblong cookies that resemble tiny slices of sourdough bread. They’re hard and dry, with just a smattering of almonds or almond extract for extra flavor. Biscotti are meant to accompany a drink, just as two of them do every morning with my coffee. Biscotti ward off the nausea I feel when I down my vitamins on nothing but a cup of joe. Nice excuse for daily cookies, eh?

When the calculator (which doesn’t lie) reveals you ate over seven hundred biscotti over the course of 2025, you quickly come to your senses and declare a resolution for the coming New Year: Shift biscotti from “habit” to “occasional treat”. Yep, it’s time to cut down on carbs.

Before we seal the lid on the cookie jar however, biscotti deserve a little more attention to set the record straight. First and foremost, the pint-sized pastries I consume with my morning caffè are not technically biscotti; they’re cantucci. Cantucci contain ingredients like milk, butter, and flavorings, none of which are found in an authentic Italian recipe for biscotti.

Here’s another distinction. Biscotti were never meant to be partnered with coffee. They were (and still are) served alongside a glass of sweet wine as a light Italian dessert. Americans pair cantucci with cappuccino at upper-crust hotels and coffeehouses. You’re supposed to dunk to make them softer (and take the edge off the coffee) but I prefer to eat them just the way they are.

Biscotti translates to… not “biscuits”, but “twice-baked”, which is exactly how they’re made. First baked as a full loaf; then baked again as individual cookies. Now then, another Italian translation for you: Nonni means “grandmother”. Nonni’s also means a brand of biscotti (whoops, make that cantucci) you’ll find in your grocery store… and in my pantry. The Nonni’s version is an unashamed dessert cookie, with a layer of chocolate, caramel, or lemon frosting to add to the appeal. My advice: Nonni’s need to be put on a hard-to-reach shelf else they’ll become a habit just like the ones with my morning coffee.

In some Western European cultures biscotti are thrown into savory dishes, which I’m not going to get into because I find the idea unappealing. Biscotti are classy little sweet treats in my book – one of the two items in my “grown-up milk and cookies”. Alas, in 2026 it’ll just be “grown-up milk” for me… that is, as long as I stay away from my wife’s sugar cookies.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #7

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

Today we took a mini road trip, as I chose to build the fountain’s Bags 12 and 13 – of 15 bags of pieces – on the kitchen counter (instead of upstairs in the home office). Kind of fitting considering the counter is topped with white marble. Kind of annoying considering the laundry machine and dishwasher were running nearby the whole time, interrupting Arcangelo Corelli’s moving “Christmas Concerto” in G Minor.

Maybe it was the change of venue but some strange stuff happened today. To begin with, I couldn’t find the very first piece in the build at all, until I looked closer at the instruction manual drawing and realized I was after a tiny statue. Once I found him I was off and running, though I found it sad that one of his companion statues ended up being a leftover piece.

Thought you should know: the back side of the LEGO Trevi is a sheer wall of white.

Now for the strange stuff. I assembled a flat L-shaped piece on top of another flat L-shaped piece, only to discover they weren’t supposed to go together that way. No amount of fingernail dexterity could pry those two apart. Fortunately I found myself in the kitchen. Sharp knives everywhere! It took a careful pry without cutting myself but I finally got those two unmarried. Never let it be said building LEGO models isn’t a dangerous sport.

That little brown round one (nestled top left) was missing from Bag 13!

More strange stuff. LEGO left a piece out of Bag 13. Okay, technically they left it out. “Technically” because in my growing pile of leftover pieces I found its twin. But considering LEGO never leaves out pieces, I had to wonder: Did the little guy just wander over to my leftover pile when I wasn’t looking? Or is he somewhere in the trash right now, along with the cellophane bag of Bag 13? Maybe he’s resting quietly on the kitchen floor just waiting to stub my toe? Who knows. I’m just thankful I had a “replacement” from my leftovers. And I don’t think I’ll be building LEGO models in the kitchen anymore.

Next week: The Trevi is completed!

Running build time: 6 hrs. 52 min.

Total leftover pieces: 35 (including a lonely little statue)

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Priceless Hatches

I’m enjoying a couple of soft-boiled eggs right now, my every-other-day breakfast entrée. The timer I use to prepare them sits right in the pot of water, indicating when the eggs are cooked to perfection. I pay a little more than average for my eggs, to producer Vital who advertises “pasture-raised – tended by hand by farmers who care”. On the other hand, if I wanted to pay a lot more than average I’d simply go to a rare goods auction and buy one from Fabergé.

You wouldn’t have a Fabergé egg for breakfast, of course. No one would ever sink their teeth into a priceless work of art (well, maybe a banana), let alone one of only fifty that were ever created. One of the Fabergés – the “Winter Egg” – went under the auction block last week, with the winning bid confirmed in a mere three minutes. The buyer’s purchase of a single Fabergé for $30.2 million dollars is a new record; noteworthy considering how many times the eggs have changed hands in the last 140 years.

I can’t say why we Westerners even know about Fabergé eggs. Most hide in private collections or in museums you’ve never been to. The eggs were created in St. Petersburg, Russia in the late 1800s by jeweler House of Fabergé for the reigning tsars of the time. One or two eggs were produced every year as exquisite Easter gifts, from 1885 through 1917. Most are jeweled with diamonds and other precious gems, and hinge open to reveal delicate animals or scenes within.

The Winter Egg (1913) is described as “the most spectacular, artistically inventive and unusual” of all fifty Fabergés, which is quite a statement when any one of the eggs deserves the same praise. The Winter Egg took almost a year to design and create, and the value is evident in the details. 4,500 tiny rose-cut diamonds are married to a platinum snowflake motif to create the impression of a block of ice dusted with frost.

The Winter Egg hinges opens to reveal a hanging basket of wood anemones, made from white quartz and rare green “Tsavorite” garnets. I can’t imagine working with these expensive materials on such a small scale but maybe that’s because I don’t have the delicate fingers of a woman. The Winter Egg was designed and created by Alma Pihl, the only female jeweler in the House of Fabergé.

On a cruise around the Baltic Sea several years ago, my wife and I were fortunate to spend a couple of days in St. Petersburg, touring Catherine Palace and Peterhof among the city’s other sights. When we returned to the ship we were greeted by a local jeweler, who offered replicas of the Fabergés (for less than $32M, thank goodness). We chose the Imperial Coronation Egg (1897), inspired by the color of Tsar Alexander III’s robe. The Coronation Egg houses a replica of the imperial carriage, made with gold and platinum and detailed with rubies and diamonds (the original egg that is, not ours).

After learning a single egg can set you back $32M, I now look at my breakfast eggs a little differently. $10.99 a dozen? That used to be top of the heap. Now it’s just pocket change.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #6

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

There’s a moment in every LEGO build where you look at what you’ve constructed and think, Hey, I’m almost done! That moment was today. Bags 10 and 11 – of 15 bags of pieces – brought the structure of the Trevi Fountain to new, practically finished heights. The tiny, tiny pieces I worked through (so many of them I was afraid to count) resulted in the uppermost level of the backdrop you see in the final photo.

From my magic hat of Italian composers I somehow chose Claudio Monteverdi for my musical accompaniment today. You don’t know Monteverdi and apparently I don’t either. Had I realized his contribution to classical music was mostly opera (hard pass) I would’ve reached into the hat again. Alas, I was subjected to Monteverdi’s L’Arianna “lament” – equal parts sorrow, anger, fear, and so on. Those singers sure didn’t sound happy as I snapped together LEGO pieces, but honestly who knows? I don’t speak “sung” Italian.

Here’s an expectation with a symmetrical LEGO build. If you construct an element that goes on one side of the model you’ll be mirroring it on the other side before you know it. A hundred or more pieces went into the windowed wall you see here, and a hundred more went into its twin soon after. It’s repetitive yes, but at least you go faster the second time around since you just had practice.

A word about the little devils in this photo. Because they’re cylindrical they can roll. Because they roll they can hide under something. Something like a LEGO instruction manual. Once again I was fooled into thinking I was missing pieces… until I thought to look under the manual. Sure enough, there they sat just smirking at me. So I promptly arrested and cuffed them, hauled them away, and now they’re jailed in the backdrop you see here, without possibility of parole.

We’re just four bags of LEGO pieces from “turning on the water” of the magnificent Trevi. I’ll admit to peeking into the box at those upcoming bags. They are small, all four of them. Perhaps I’ll wrap the fountain construction in a single go next week. Even if not, conveniently, the final block of travertine would be laid the following week, just in time for Christmas. Now that’s what I call a gift!

Running build time: 5 hrs. 42 min.

Total leftover pieces: 32 (tiny, tiny pieces)

Some content sourced from the CNN Style article, “Faberge egg fetches record $30.2 million at rare auction”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Failing Asleep

I’m almost done with Dan Brown’s latest novel, The Secret of Secrets. The tagline on the front cover: “Author of The Da Vinci Code” was a good add, because that romp through Europe was written over twenty years ago. This romp, alas, is not really much of one. The story ping-pongs relentlessly between explanation and action – making for restless reading – but at least the premise is intriguing. What if the human conscience could operate outside of the human body? What if “you” could exist in both a spiritual and a physical form at the same time? Well, maybe I do, at least when I’m trying to fall asleep.

When you get to be my age – somewhere between “middle” and “senior” – you wake up at least once a night. Not for an outdoor stroll under the stars and not for a midnight snack. You wake up “to take care of business”. It’s an inevitable phenomenon as we get older, especially for us guys. And when I stumble out of the bathroom I also grab a quick drink of water. That one-two punch wakes me up, at least enough to get the gears turning and thoughts churning. Getting back to sleep can be a real challenge. There are nights I log many minutes memorizing the look of our bedroom ceiling.

Counting sheep has never been my thing, nor the “white noise” of those bedside appliances, but some new strategies have been an interesting experiment. The first is known as cognitive shuffling. It’s word play, where you take the letters of a word and spin off new words on each letter for a few seconds. I start with “piano” (my Wordle starter!) and then go “pepper, portray, people, ponder”, “illuminate, inch, icicle, ignite”, and so on. What does this do? It puts the mind in a random state, where you can’t concentrate on stressors like paying bills or fixing stuff.

The next sleep strategy is called “sensory grounding”, which means coming up with lists of things you can smell, touch, taste, hear, and see. It’s kind of like cognitive shuffling so I’ve never given it a try. Nor have I tried the breathing techniques, the calming playlists, or getting out of bed and writing down my thoughts on paper (to “release them from my mind”). All of those seem like a lot of effort just to fall asleep again.

Finally though, there’s a technique called “mental walk-throughs”. This one is more fun than word games and works pretty well for me. Think of somewhere you’ve been, preferably a long time ago. Maybe the neighborhood you grew up in, a house you lived in, or a store you enjoyed spending time in. Now take a virtual walk through one of those (and here’s where I sense my mind separating from my body). Look in several directions to see what surrounds you. Think about how you feel as you’re taking it all in. Trust me, it’s nostalgic, it’s calming, and it’s calming enough to put you back to sleep.

I read somewhere that The Secret of Secrets is already being made into a movie. That was fast. The ink hasn’t even dried on the critic’s reviews, but I guess having the The Da Vinci Code in your back pocket promises another profitable venture. Maybe I’ll buy a ticket and go see the show. It’d be another effective strategy to help me fall asleep.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #5

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

LEGO decided I needed a big helping of humility this week. Bag 9 – of 15 bags of pieces – brought me to my knees in one heart-pounding moment. Just as I was cruising to the final steps of the build (in a brisk forty-five minutes), my pulse went into overdrive as I realized the module I’d just constructed wouldn’t attach to its rightful place on the fountain. It just wouldn’t click in. In the land of LEGO this is very bad news. You might as well unfurl a big banner saying: Start over, Dave.

If you’ve built IKEA furniture, you know those do-it-yourself sets are engineering marvels. Everything goes together perfectly; not a piece out of place. So it is with LEGO. If one part of the model doesn’t “click” comfortably with another, you’ve done something seriously wrong and that, my friends, summarizes today’s build in a nutshell. The pile of parts above resulted in the module you see below… only it’s wrong… just slightly off from the way it’s supposed to look. My penalty: disassemble all those pieces back to the first step to figure out where I’d gone astray.

Just like the second time through Antonio Salieri’s Sinfonia in D Major, I took another forty-five minutes to reconstruct what I’d already built. The scene at my desk was an interesting disharmony of orchestral beauty, pinched fingers, and nasty thoughts. Thankfully (and with no surprise), once I got the build exactly as it was supposed to be, everything clicked together the way you see it here.

Bag 10 had to be laughing at me from inside the box. Bag 10 was scheduled to be opened and completed along with Bag 9 today Then it watched me fumble the football early on in the build. Yo, Bag 10, why didn’t you say anything? You’re a mean one (just like Mr. Grinch) but “I’ll get you my pretty”. Your time is coming… er, just next week instead of this one.

Running build time: 4 hrs. 33 min.

Total leftover pieces: 25

Some content sourced from the CNN Health article, “If worries keep you from falling back asleep, experts know what to try”.

An Unhealthy Modern Phenomenon

Somewhere in the wee hours of Tuesday morning I had a bizarre dream; one I retained well into my conscious hours. I was on some sort of overseas sightseeing excursion with others, and our group stopped for lunch at a historic convent. Egg salad sandwiches were handed out by the nuns and I promptly dropped mine onto the cobblestones. The dream only gets more disconnected from there but I’ll share one more noteworthy detail. My traveling companion was the actress Mary Stuart Masterson.

Got all that? Okay, now forget about everything except Mary Stuart. Masterson has had a respectable (if not award-winning) career as an actress. She was only ten years old when she first appeared on the silver screen, in the original version of The Stepford Wives. She went on to play colorful characters in Fried Green Tomatoes and Benny & Joon. But her most enduring performance – the one she will forever be linked with – was as “Watts”, the companion/tomboy of “Keith” in the high school rom-com Some Kind of Wonderful. Masterson’s turn as the loyal friend who quietly wanted to be more absolutely stole the show.

As if nuns and egg salad sandwiches aren’t enough, you’re wondering why Mary Stuart Masterson was sitting next to me in my dream. Actually it wasn’t Masterson herself; it was her movie character Watts. Which brings me to the Cambridge Dictionary’s 2025 Word of the Year. Would you believe Cambridge added 6,000 new words to its big book this year? 5,999 of them were runner-ups to parasocial, a word “describing a connection people feel with someone they don’t know (ex. celebrities, influencers, and other online personalities)”.

Blogger’s Note: WordPress needs to get on the ball here. “Parasocial” is underlined here in my draft post as being an unrecognized word.

Parasocial’s win as Word of the Year has everything to do with Taylor Swift. Her engagement to NFL star Travis Kelce generated countless claims of “heartfelt feelings toward a couple the vast majority had never met”. The same applies to Watts. I don’t know the first thing about Mary Stuart Masterson herself, but I know everything about Watts from watching Some Kind of Wonderful a dozen times or more.

“Parasocial” has actually been around since the 1950’s. In that era it referred to the innocence of television viewers connecting to television characters (or in my case, movie viewer to movie character). But today’s version of the word is described as “an unhealthy modern phenomenon”. Why? Because of social media. Because of artificial intelligence.

My example of Watts is one movie and one instance. I’ll finish this post and the “encounter” will fade into my memory forever. But social media – which brings the viewer constant feeds about the “viewed”, and artificial intelligence – which creates a sense of connection where there really isn’t one, makes it clear why there’s reason to be concerned. Are we really so desperate as to develop foundation-less relationships with strangers?

AI has already found its place on Spotify. Search for Xania Monet, the first artificially intelligent singer to grab a ranking on a Billboard chart (Adult R&B). Everything about Xania was created on a keyboard. But her face, her social media profile, and her voice suggest she’s a living, breathing human somewhere out there in the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if you can even chat online with Xania. If so, you’re developing a one-sided relationship (you) with someone who isn’t real whatsoever (a computer). Seriously, who has time for this nonsense?

Coincidence or not, one of the Cambridge Dictionary’s runner-ups for Word of the Year was “slop”, which in this day and age means “content on the internet that is of very low quality, especially when created by artificial intelligence”. Let’s declare “slop” a lot of what’s going in parasocial relationships as well.

The real message of this dictionary winner is clear. We need to remove the “para” from parasocial and focus on simply socializing with our fellow humans. It’s the only path to truly fulfilling relationships. Having said that, for some reason I’d love an egg salad sandwich right about now.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #4

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

The travertine is stacking up quickly as we continue our work on the LEGO Trevi Fountain. Bags 7 and 8 – of 15 bags of pieces – came together like the Domenico Scarlatti piano sonatas that accompanied them – seemingly simple on the surface but more intricate and involved the further we dove in.

The Trevi Fountain has some strange elements, made even stranger when represented by chunky LEGOs. Check out the shapes I assembled today (and don’t ask me what they’re meant to represent). Little LEGO pieces positioned in just about every point on the compass. My singular mistake this round – realized well after the fact – was putting the right piece in place, only the wrong color. Then when I came across another “right piece wrong color” I knew I had them transposed. Took a little disassembly to get everything correct.

A continuing mystery of LEGO sets is bags within bags. When I opened Bags 7 and 8, each came with a smaller bag of pieces like you see here. It’s not like the smaller bag represents its own unit of the fountain. You just tap into those pieces every now and then as the instruction manual demands. Yes they’re tiny, tiny but you also find tiny pieces in the bigger bag. Maybe someday I’ll tour the LEGO factory and solve this packaging mystery.

We worked with some surprisingly large pieces of travertine today – the entire wall of white you see behind the fountain and the white surround you now see defining the entire front of the main pool. Would’ve taken a dozen Italians to put these monster pieces in place on the real Trevi. And don’t miss the pink accent strips to the left and right of center (pink!) This fountain is turning out to be more colorful than I expected.

Running build time: 3 hrs. 5 min.

Total leftover pieces: 23 (10 more extras today!)

Some content sourced from the BBC.com article, “Parasocial is Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year”, IMDB, “the Internet Movie Database”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Cold Brew

Seemingly overnight, a new drive-thru named 7 Brew showed up next door to our local supermarket. A quick glance as I drove by suggested their slogan: “Come for the coffee, come again for the people” is on the mark, with more employees dancing around the drive-thru lanes than making drinks in the petite building itself. 7 Brew advertises an “experience” as much as it does a menu of coffee and energy drinks. It’s just the latest concept to steal market share from Starbucks.

Did you know today is “Red Cup Day” at Starbucks? Red Cup Day is the coffeemaker’s nod to the beginning of the holiday season. Buy a Starbucks “holiday” drink and you’ll also receive a festive reusable cup – more distinctive than the usual white ones. The red cups suggest Christmas comes early this year, and encourage the purchase of peppermint mochas, eggnnog lattes, and iced gingerbread chais. Somewhere in all that there might even be coffee.

I admit, the Starbucks Chestnut Praline Latte really is Christmas in a cup. The drink tastes of the same spices you’ll use with Grandma’s cookie recipes this season. And on a recent trip through Chicago O’Hare, my wife and I caved to a couple of Starbucks’ ever-popular Pumpkin Spice Lattes. But here’s my point. Starbucks is no longer my go-to for coffee drinks. It never was my go-to either, but there were plenty of morning commutes when I couldn’t pass up a Flat White and a couple of egg bites. Now I drive by without pause, the same way I’ve done so with McDonald’s for decades. It begs the question: has Starbucks become passé?

There are signs suggesting we’ve already put Starbucks in the rear-view mirror, even if 38,000 locations still dot the globe. Like 7 Brew, Starbucks has always tried to deliver an experience as much a drink. Come on in. Hang out for awhile. Even if you don’t, peruse all the “merch” while you’re standing in line. Chances are pretty good you’ll spend more on logo items and baked goods than coffee.

This year, Starbucks features a 20-oz. “Bearista” cup. It’s a refillable glass ontainer with a straw and it’s being marketed as a collectible. You’ll find these bears at your nearest Starbucks for $29.95. Or maybe you won’t, because they seem to be disappearing as fast as they’re put on the shelves. If you’re a little desperate, find one on eBay for $500 or more (coffee not included).

To me that’s a good way to describe Starbucks these days… a little desperate. They’re closing stores without drive-thru lanes, which suggests they’re trying to reduce the money they spend on leases. They’re laying off retail and non-retail employees, the typical corporate strategy to try to do more with less. And they’re coming up with bear-shaped cups the size of a Starbucks “Venti”, so you’ll purchase their largest coffee when you wouldn’t have done so with a regular cup.

If you think the “bearista” is cute – and would pay $29.95 for it – how about “Hello Kitty” products? Coming soon, you can buy a “plush” wearing a Starbucks green apron, and any one of five Hello Kitty containers, from water bottles to ceramic mugs. Each of these runs you $30 or more (again, without the coffee). Cats and coffee? It’s a ~~desperate~~ strange marketing strategy, perhaps aimed at a generation of consumer that seeks something more trendy than coffee in a red cup.

This year, the Pumpkin Spice Latte showed up on the Starbucks menu on August 26th; hardly what I’d call “fall”. Their Christmas-y drinks debut today, fully two weeks before Thanksgiving. That’s stretching the seasons a little. But let’s say I still splurge for a Grande Flat White, a couple of Egg Bites, and a slice of Iced Lemon Loaf. I’ll pay $20 before I even consider the purchase of a “bearista” or a kitty. It may be time to move on from the red cups. Maybe I’ll give 7 Brew a try instead. $7 gets you their smallest size… even pricier than Starbucks. No guarantee you’ll find any coffee in that cup either.

(Coming next week: more updates on the LEGO Trevi Fountain!)

Swimming Upstream

I can think of a dozen name brands I gotten hooked on for years, only to see them suddenly disappear from the shelves, never to return. Breakfast cereals. Hair spray. Cars. And what do we do when this happens? Simply find another brand and get used to it – easy-peasy. But when your streaming television service drops an essential channel, you can’t just jump to the next provider. Try that and you’ll hit your head on the cage they have you securely locked into.

Even if you’re not a sports fan, you’re probably tuned into my topic today. YouTube TV – which provides me the five channels of streaming television I care about (and 95 forgettable others), dropped ESPN from its lineup. It wasn’t like they warned us months ago they were renegotiating with Disney (ESPN’s parent), and that these talks weren’t going so well. Instead they alerted us last Thursday just before midnight – with an email coyly titled “An update on our partnership with Disney”. Then, the following morning, ESPN was gone. On Halloween. How fitting.

Without going into the weeds on why ESPN was dropped, let’s just call it the proverbial contract dispute. Disney wants one number. YouTube TV wants another. A stalemate akin to what we’re seeing in Washington right now. Yes, what D.C. is blocking is so much more important than a television sports channel. But when you’re a die-hard college football fan you can relate to losing an “essential service”.

Getting my ESPN back is not like choosing another breakfast cereal. If only it were that easy. Instead, we have to shift to an entirely different grocery aisle. Make that an entirely different supermarket. As soon as YouTube TV dropped ESPN, Disney was only too happy to promote its own streaming service. Sign up for Disney+, including ESPN and Hulu!!! Only $29.95 per month – a savings of $5/month!!! Only twelve months of subscription required!!!

All those exclamation points are a ruse, as if this is a service I can’t live without. Disney Channel? Not my thing. Hulu? I’m already getting enough entertainment on Netflix. I just want ESPN please. And apparently I should be happy to pay a minimum of $360 for it, in addition to my monthly $80 for YouTube TV.

Bless our tech-savvy children. We turn to them for all things electronic. I checked in with one of my sons – who is every bit the college football fanatic I am – and he came to my rescue. Fubo – a streaming service looking like a twin to YouTube TV – offers a free one-week trial that includes ESPN. It’s kind of like Congress signing a stopgap spending bill to keep the government open. Now I have another seven days to figure out what to do.

YouTube TV promises a credit if the lack of negotiations with Disney continues long enough (sorry, the same does not apply to our government). But I can’t necessarily wait for that credit. In one week I’ve got to decide if I’m a YouTube TV guy or a Fubo one. Can’t have both (at least, according to my budget).

Of course, it feels almost inevitable that Fubo will run into a contract dispute with Disney as well. So even if I go that route I could lose ESPN again. Maybe I’m getting forced into a Disney+ subscription after all? But another $360/year? No way. I’d sooner get on a plane and go watch my college football games in person. Er, assuming the FAA doesn’t cancel my flights. Swimming upstream indeed. Sigh…

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #3

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

We resumed our fountain build this week with more confidence than the last, accompanied by the merriment of Paganini’s Violin Concerto No. 1. Bags 6 and 7 – of 15 bags of pieces – were filled with tiny, tiny finger-numbing LEGOs, and at times I wondered just what the heck I was putting together. Didn’t look like the makings of a fountain to me.

According to LEGO, water is white and blue. I suppose the white is meant to be rushing water (as in “waterfall”) while the blue is calm water (as in “pool”). We shall see. But check out the look of the fountain in the final photo. Anyone else see a monster’s mouth with white teeth?

Since this is my fifth LEGO model, it’s high time I make the following proclamation: LEGO never leaves out a piece. Never. I still have moments where I’m searching through a pile of pieces in vain for the one I need. I almost get to the feeling of “it’s not here”. But suddenly there the little guy is, staring up at me as if to say, “What took you so long?” Some day I’d love to see how LEGO pulls this off. Thousands of pieces in every box, not a single one of them left out. That’s some logistical magic going on there.

I’m proud to say I made zero mistakes on the build this time around, a dramatic improvement from a week ago. Okay, that’s not entirely accurate. I left a piece off the back of the fountain, but immediately discovered my error when I added a section and realized there was nothing to support it. Fixed in a jiffy, but the merry instruments on Paganini’s violin concerto sounded even more gleeful as they saw my confidence take a hit.

Running build time: 2 hrs. 27 min.

Total leftover pieces: 13

A Bowl of Snowflakes

Part of the appeal of Halloween – at least for us baby boomers – is the thought of innocent days (and nights) from our distant past. Not only were we kids back then, we cavorted in full costumes through our neighborhoods without a parent in sight. Every house left a light on or a door open to welcome trick-or-treating. Every street seemed safe and inviting. And the treats were often as homemade as they were store-bought. Cookies. Lollipops. The odd neighbor doling out little sausages hot off the grill from his front yard (BBQ sauce optional). And the occasional popcorn ball.

Who doesn’t love a good popcorn ball? Me. I don’t. Popcorn balls may be a nostalgic Halloween memory but they’re also an insult to popcorn. Whoever invented them turned a savory snack into a sickly sweet one. We’re not talking caramel-, chocolate-, or even kettle-corn sweet here; just liquid sugar designed to act as glue to make popcorn a convenient handheld. Awful.

I admit it, I’ve become a popcorn snob the way some people are about coffee. There’s a way to enjoy popcorn and there’s a dozen ways not to. It’s a snack that deserves to get it right, because getting it wrong is anything but a “treat” (like popcorn balls).

Popcorn eased its way into our after-dinner desserts by necessity. One day (night) my wife and I sat there after the evening meal and realized we were having dessert way too often. It was always ice cream, cookies, or whatever else we could find in the pantry. Somehow a savory dinner necessitated a sweet dessert. Bad habit – very bad. Instead, make the dinner healthy enough, eat it early enough, and keep yourself off the couch watching TV. Then dessert rarely enters the conversation. Yeah, uh, we’re still working on that. The dinners are healthy, but we can never get them on the table – er, couch – before 7pm.

Popcorn to the rescue. It’s a dessert that doesn’t feel like a dessert. It’s not sweet, and with an air popper it’s all of three ingredients. Popped corn, topped with butter and salt. Make those first two “organic” and the last one “Celtic sea”, and it sounds like something that’s actually good for you.

Popcorn belongs in a bowl, not in a ball. We take the largest bowl in our kitchen, fill it almost full with popped corn, and call it dessert. Oh, right, but that’s just for me. Then we take the second-largest bowl in our kitchen and pop a similar serving for my wife.

Since I always aim to educate a little, here’s popcorn trivia worth remembering. One, the corn used for popping is not the same as the kernels on the cob (so don’t get any ideas). Two, when the kernels burst – literally inside out – you get one of two shapes; snowflakes or mushrooms. Snowflakes are what we have at night for dessert, and what you find severely overpriced in movie theaters. Mushrooms are what you find in a box of Cracker Jack or Fiddle-Faddle. Think teeny-tiny popcorn balls. As for the kernels that don’t pop? They’re called “old maids”. In the world of popcorn at least, you’d rather be a snowflake than an old maid.

Some more fun facts. Popcorn displaced movie candy during the WWII years because there was a shortage of sugar. Years later it’s still the more popular concession at the theater. On average every American consumes 58 quarts of popcorn every year. Picture those red/white striped cardboard containers you see when you purchase popcorn from a cart. Multiply by 58. You eat a lot of popcorn. But why shouldn’t you? It’s convenient, easy-to-make, and healthy as long as you use an air popper. Really healthy if you substitute olive oil for the butter, which a lot of people do these days. But I say ewwwwwww to that. Leave olive oil to the Mediterranean diet instead.

All this talk of popcorn has me thinking it’s time for dessert. It’s easy to forego the sweet stuff when savory snowflakes beckon. Just remember, it’s not a ball of popcorn, it’s a bowl. A proper presentation precedes perfect popcorn.

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LEGO Trevi Fountain – Update #2

(Read about the start of this build in Brick Wall Waterfall)

Let it echo throughout the streets of Rome, Dave is no Michelangelo (and yes, I know Michelangelo didn’t design the Trevi Fountain but he could sure sculpt). In today’s effort to rise the LEGO fountain from its foundation, I made countless placement mistakes. I got four steps into Bag 4 – of 15 bags of pieces – and realized I’d placed everything just a little bit off on the foundation. That meant breaking it all down, going back to the first step, and starting over. Can you imagine my fate if I made this mistake with the real Trevi? Placed and set the travertine just a little bit off? The foreman would have my head! (which is no joke, at least not three hundred years ago).

Frankly, everything seemed off today. I kept getting the piece placement slightly wrong, as if I refused to learn from my last mistake. At one point I turned two pages forward in the instruction manual instead of one, skipping a full two steps in the build. And the below photo is what “broke the camel’s travertine”. Tell me reader, what’s wrong with this picture? Five little leftover pieces and one BIG piece, that’s what. LEGO never throws in big leftover pieces. Sure enough, I paged back through the manual, and there it was. I’d overlooked the step where you place that arch. Never mind that it’s buried under “pieces” of blue water now. Leave it out and our beautiful fountain might collapse into a pile of very expensive rubble.

You know who’s laughing about all of my missteps today? The singers in the music I chose for my accompaniment: Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. His opera may be about money, disguises, lovers and all that, but it sounded more like getting scolded over and over through song. You got overconfident, Dave (tra-la-la). You’re no sculptor, Dave (la-ha-ha). Maybe LEGO isn’t for you after all, Dave (wha-ha-ha-HA!)

The gleeful singing in “The Barber of Seville” is all in Italian, so for all I know they really did change their tune to berate my amateur building efforts. I took that to heart. Bags 5 and 6 are gonna have to wait until next week. I sure hope the foreman won’t look at this decision as “getting behind schedule”. He might have my head!

Running build time: 1 hr. 44 min.

Total leftover pieces: 10

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.