Enotes

Happy New Year. Or happy new year, however you choose to look at it. As I watched the big ball drop on Tuesday night in Times Square, I jokingly asked my daughter what life would be like if we did that for the change of every month instead of year. "Three...two....one....HAPPY APRIL!" Seems silly, of course. But so does, when you think about it, going through all the expense and effort to mark the start of a new year. Or New Year. It's perhaps too cynical---even for me---to say that January 1 is "just another day," but it truly is. It is different, however, in one respect: It's the one day when no one has ditched their new year's (or New Year's) resolutions---yet. Ahh, about those resolutions. There's a funny commercial playing on TV right now where a small boy calls it the New Year's " revolutions." I kind of like that. You do have to revolt, in a way, if you're going to commit to doing something different fr...

The first thing I saw was a jug of wine on the kitchen table the size of the Detroit Zoo water tower in Royal Oak. And there was barely any wine left in it. That's when I knew it would be a fun night spent with family. We're Italian---my wife more than I---and we spent a glorious Saturday evening last weekend visiting with aunts, uncles and cousins that we haven't seen in years. Probably not since the last family funeral; that's typically how it goes. It used to be that we saw each other at weddings and baby showers. We approached the condo of our cousin and I saw the huge jug of wine on the table. More than a dozen heads, some bald and those that weren't, were mostly gray, bobbed in the front room at the dining table. The food was going, the wine was going and the conversations were loud---mainly because half the folks could no longer hear. Our family is getting older, and it's somehow up to people our age (my wife is 51 and I'm 50; our daughter is ...

This is Dream Cruise Week. Not sure what that means, other than this is the week leading up to the Dream Cruise, down Woodward Avenue. It's also time for me to reflect on my experiences at the Cruise, which began in 1995, the brainchild of a plumber from Ferndale named Nelson House. OK, ready for my experiences? Well, back in 2003 or 2004, my family and I decided to head into Royal Oak to eat at Siam Spicy on Woodward north of 11 Mile. And we forgot that it was Dream Cruise Saturday. And we in our 1992 Mustang (I still drive it) got accidentally caught up in the Cruise as we turned north onto Woodward. People hooted and hollered at us from their roadside seats. They thought our car was part of the Cruise. Little did they know, we were wayward souls looking for some Thai food, with timing that couldn't have been worse. That's it---that's the depth of my Dream Cruising. The Dream Cruise is one of those events that I think I should give a go one of these da...

If there's anything I am proud of as a husband and a father, it's that we still manage to eat dinner together at the same table on most nights. No TV trays (remember those?), no scurrying off into the front room or the bedroom. Just plunk your butts down at the dining room table and share in the food bounty. It's a nice time. The audience is captive, number one---and I am specifically referring to our 20-year-old daughter. Dinner time gives me at least a 15-minute window with which to work. It's when I can get caught up on her college studies (though she is now done until Fall term), ask about her Internet life (she's addicted to Tumblr and YouTube), and various and sundry other topics. It's rather old fashioned---my wife literally calls people to dinner. She doesn't use a metal rod and a triangle, like in the Old West, but the premise is the same. "TIME TO EAT!!" Which, to me, are three of the loveliest strung-together words in the E...