It is a state law in Massachusetts that if someone is waiting to use a crosswalk, an oncoming motorist must stop and allow the person to cross.

As you can imagine, it is likely the least observed law in Massachusetts (post-1900, at least). Consider that, today, when making the one major street crossing needed to get back from the train to the apartment, the car that finally stopped from me had New York plates.

I like to think they were from upstate.

Where law fails guile is often required, and I have developed a move that works if there's only one car to worry about (rather than a line of cars, where it works much less often). I make semi-eye contact with the driver, nod my head like I've been given a wave or other signal to cross, and then take a step or two. As the car continues to move I stop short and look back at the car. The driver, who has started to slow because it looks like I'm just going to cross, gets confused enough that he or she actually decides to let me cross.

The best part of this move is that its development was completely subconscious. I don't think I realized I actually had a regular move until this morning. When I had to use it against another uncooperative local driver.

In other news, I won't be watching the Presidential debate tonight, or any other night that there's a debate in 2004. They're second only to the conventions in terms of staging, and it's not like either guy will say anything to get me to watch or vote for them. Well, they could offer me a million bucks to call in and tell what color ties they're wearing. It's not like they couldn't afford it.

Two things to note how high school has changed.

1. About half of the female students wear some sort of flip-flop as their footwear of choice. Of course, I saw this in college, but I figured parents would intervene with high schoolers. Then again, if Newsweek had to have a cover article about getting parents to say no, I should be happy that these young women are wearing anything on their feet.

2. Both of the papers that Sarah gets from home had a front page story last week about a teacher exposed to mercury. Turned out that when he moved a cabinet he discovered a pan with what was called a dime-sized amount of the metal in it. I can remember handling more than that - without wearing gloves! - in my high school chemistry class. That may explain a few things, actually.

Considering that a friend of mine seemed to always have some length of magnesium wire (it burns really brightly!), I think the overall handling of materials in my high school wasn't so great. I'm sure you can't find any loose mercury of magnesium in the place, now. Probably for the best.

Good news today - we were able to get out and do some more genealogy without my body creating foreign objects.

We've started doing some work on my paternal grandmother's side of the family, as trying to farther back with the Coens would require access to records which are probably scattered around northwest Ireland. In the process, we discovered that, to some extent, I'm even more of a Mainer than Sarah.

Turns out that Nana's dad started out on Cranberry Isle, which is just to the east of Bar Harbor. Sarah lives 45 minutes to an hour west of there. I figure that gives me ancestral rights to call her a flatlander (a term not so lovingly applied to anyone who hails from parts of Maine closer to civilization than you).

So there's some Down Easter in me, which explains my fascination with Moxie and Crown Pilot crackers.

We got home from the library in time for me to see BC lose to Wake Forest - again. Welcome to the ACC. I did not get to see any of Notre Dame's win over Washington. I hope this means the Golden Domers have turned the corner for good, but caution still seems appropriate.

I also had quite the moment this evening when I ran into some former RA colleagues after eating out. We discovered that you can sum up a decade of life pretty quickly, a fact found mutually depressing. Not that it was the best time to get into deep conversation, I suppose.

Got to sub for the shop teacher the last couple of days, which was pretty good work. Worst part being that I had to show the same video to three different classes each day. There is now one episode each of Junkyard Mega-Wars and Mega Machines more or less permanently burned into my brain. If you ever need to know how to build a truck that can carry a vat of liquid without losing much, or want to hear about what might be the world's largest carrot harvester, drop me a line.

I also got to show another tape twice, but only once per day. So I'm less sick of hearing about Sky City, a proposed 3300 foot residential tower for Tokyo that would house 130,000 people. Let the dystopia begin!

But I shouldn't complain, it went pretty smoothly. I will note that the students were very adept at finding bits of wood and plastic to hit each other with, though once I confiscated a couple of pieces they tended to stop looking for replacements.

Next week I get to sub three days in an English class, but from talking to the teacher it sounds like I'll more be overseeing study hall. There will be some work assigned, but the teacher didn't seem to care what work they did as long as the assignments are completed on time. I suppose I'll get more reading done.

In Red Sox news, I was chagrined to read that the brain trust that runs MLB has banned Johnny Pesky from sitting in the dugout during games. Pesky himself seems OK with it - he spent half an hour talking to the apparatchik who sent him the letter - but from Pesky's comments it sounds like someone complained about his being there. I can understand that you don't want to give free passes for the dugout, but complaining about a guy like Pesky is a small, cheap thing to do.

It's good to know that the folks running the league are focusing on the important issues, like spare octogenarians in dugouts and pine tar that covers team logos. These are the issues that are tearing the league apart.

With the new TV season started, I've decided to change my approach towards reality shows. I'm limiting myself to one comment per week per show, tops. You may not even get that out of American Idol should it continue its trend of dullness. Maybe Ryan Seacrest's sunless tanners and hair lighteners will finally combine to make him the same shade of orangey-blond from head to toe. I'd write about that.

Anyway, America's Next Top Model started tonight on UPN. Too early to say much about it, other than they've bumped up the number of finalists to 14. That's a lot. It'll help fill out the season, but I blame The Apprentice and its large contestant base (or maybe just Mark Burnett - Survivor's got a big cast to start, too, don't they?). Regardless, it's been a pretty solid show for the genre, so take a look.

Speaking of The Apprentice, they've been trying to set up this guy named Raj as this year's Sam. Raj is a character, but he's so different from Sam that the comparison will never work (and to some extent I think they've discovered that, as they've moved on to trying to create this year's Omarosa). Anyway, in the first episode Raj shows up to the first task toting a cane, which Trump asks him about. I was praying he would respond with "You know the saying, Mr. Trump: everybody loves a cane" or that it was perfect cane weather.

Further evidence of Raj's dandyish mode of dress would be his collection of bow ties (with apologies to Monty) and that he appeared to be wearing spats in that first episode, too. Not while brandishing his walking stick, sadly.

A couple of weeks ago, I was walking past the Hotel Commonwealth in Kenmore Square and noticed a large, unfinished ground floor area of the hotel was being used as a wardrobing location for Fever Pitch.

While I know this is old ground for many of you, a quick digression.

Fever Pitch started out as a book by Nick Hornby, a recounting of his life-long fandom with the FA side Arsenal and how it impacted his life. It's a great read.

The book was made into a movie in 1997, with the lead ably played by Colin Firth. It's a nice little movie, a typically understated British film.

Now, of course, the Farrelly brothers have decided to remake it, putting the Red Sox in the place of Arsenal (not a bad choice if you're looking for an American team with obsessive fans, and both have red as a main color) and Jimmy Fallon in the place of Colin Firth (which is a real letdown, even if we're thinking in the Farrelly brothers comedy mode; it's not like they'd have cast Firth, but couldn't they have gotten someone a little closer to his level than Fallon?).

I bring this up today as Sarah and I were at the Sox game last night and was, along with the rest of the crowd, offered to stick around after the game to serve as extras for the filming of the movie's climactic scene. We were told what would happen, which seems stupid (though if you know the story it wasn't too surprising). More than a few people figured that now they didn't have to see the movie.

Jimmy Fallon had the mike at one point and got the crowd going with a "Yankees suck" comment, which was about the worst thing we'd heard all night, even sitting in the bleachers. We were sitting near entertaining drunks this time rather than obnoxious ones. They did get a little mouthy when they decided to taunt Larry Bigbie late in the game, but given that we couldn't really make out what they were yelling I don't think Bigbie was any wiser.

Got to do two things today that I hadn't before.

The first was sub in front of a regular class, as I got to fill in for a middle school foreign language teacher. This could have been dicey, given that it's been 20 years since my last French class and I've never taken Spanish. Given that I showed a video in three of the five classes, and there was in-class group work for another, the amount of damage I could have done was limited.

The first period did use a Jeopardy-style game to review several chapters. Having done this with various age groups, I would ask that anyone choosing to do this in the future:

a. Realize that a game-based review will naturally stir up competitive instincts. Have at least some detailed rules and maybe don't use gender-based teams. That just seems to make the competitive part of things worse.

b. Don't have the students make up the questions. Let's just say there was some widely divergent difficulties for questions worth the same amount of points. It'd also probably be a better review if the person making up the test created the questions, as they could then better reflect possible test questions.

c. Think twice about having students run the game. I understand the empowering aspects of this, but I found the students were more interested in getting their teams to win than actually reviewing material.

Continuing on the scandalous line, I also learned from another teacher that one of the regular subs from last year was dating a high school student in a neighboring town (she was 18, but still in school) and selling pharmaceuticals without a licence, if you get my drift. I could have Sub of the Year wrapped up already!

The other first was that I got to stand on Causeway Street in Boston in front of what used to be a McDonalds and enjoy the sunlight. For those of you familiar with the area, you know that that spot has been cloaked in darkness since sometime during Teddy Roosevelt's presidency. This section of the Green Line - from North Station to Lechemere - was the last section of elevated railway in the city.

Not that it'll be missed - in time. For now, I'm sure everyone who has to take a bus from North Station to complete the trip into north Cambridge wishes it were back.

Speaking of North Station, I appreciate the synergy and ease that one terminal for both Green and Orange Lines represents, but would it kill them to put in automatic token machines? Every time I've been through there, regardless of time, there's been a line to get tokens. I'm sure there's a perfectly bureaucratic reason for the lack of such machines.

Just as the George Harrison album promises, all things must pass.

I am now the proud owner of something that looks like a small peppercorn. Hopefully, it doesn't have any friends back at home.

Not surprisingly, I am feeling much better. Given how this one felt, I can only imagine what it's like having one that requires surgery. Let's hope that stays in the imagination. Ouch.

The next time I write here that I've been away due to a lack of things to write about, please find me and smack me in the mouth. Better yet, don't. Just wait. Something will take me down a peg. Yes, I managed to jinx myself.

Sarah and I had a pretty simple plan for the day - we were going to resume our genealogy work on my family. We were just about ready to head out the door when I started having some serious back pain and some pressure in an area where you'd prefer not to have any.

We decided to skip the research, and I took some ibuprofen and cozied up to a heating pad. This didn't help. The pain continued, and I started to have a nice combination of chills and sweats. When there wasn't any real change in my condition, Sarah made the executive decision to take me to the hospital.

So we got there, and I checked in with someone. I waited. I saw a nurse who took vitals and asked some questions. I waited. I then got to do the paperwork, and change all the info they had on me from my last visit, which was in high school. Then I waited. I got called, was given an exam room. And I waited.

Eventually, a doctor came by did some questions, etc., and from everything came to the conclusion that I had a kidney stone (for the record, Sarah came to the same conclusion consulting WebMD, though I wouldn't suggest doing that in lieu of actually seeing a doctor). They did a test and confirmed the doctor's thinking, and I got to have a CAT scan.

This was very interesting. I got to lie down on a platform which moved me through a doughnut-like ring that made up the bulk of the machine. I was told to hold my breath a couple of times while the machine took pictures. I noted the warning not to look at the laser the unit used for some purpose - and violated it repeatedly as for a fair amount of time the place where I could have seen the laser was in my line of sight.

For all that, the CAT was inconclusive. Pictures in the pelvis area weren't clear, so it could be hiding there, or it could be gone already. There's an easy way for me to discover this over the next day or two, but I'm not going to go there. If things aren't better by Monday I need to seek further medical attention.

I did get some pills for the pain, which help.

Oddly enough, while in the ER waiting room I ran into a friend of mine who's a former high school classmate. We got to talk a bit (his exam room was across from mine, and we both got to wait a bit), and it turns out that a former teacher at my old high school has recently released a book detailing her after-school work as a call girl. It should be noted that this teacher was not there during my tenure.

As far as that kind of sideline work, it beats painting houses, I suppose.

Sorry for the lack of posts, but there's been a lack of stuff to say. I've not been called to sub this week, so it's been pretty quiet.

One interesting thing from Sunday was that my church had its official welcoming Mass for parishoners from St. Alphonsus, a chuch out near the Beverly-Danvers line that was shut down. The main difference was at the start, when a procession of items from St. Alphonsus were carried in, such as their crucifix, a statue of the saint, and the church's records. There was also a little time for introductions, and as we've only been going to this church a short while (and usually don't go to the 11 AM Mass), most people thought we'd come over from the other church.

All in all, it went pretty smoothly. I don't think that's going to be the case everywhere. As I think of it, the closings are playing a little havoc with a friend's wedding. The bride's church in Gloucester is being closed, and their second choice was a chuch in Rockport - which is also being closed. Thankfully, they're leaving the building open for some sort of general worship space, and it looks like they'll be able to use it.

The last couple of years on this day I've done a rememberance thing using Sports Night, which in retrospect seems kind of odd. I mean, except for the establishing shots of New York City, the show could take place anywhere. There are plenty of other shows with more of a New York feel, so it's hard to say why I latched on to that one.

Anyway, I was thinking of doing something similar for Washington DC or Pennsylvania, but it didn't quite take. There's no show set in either location that I like that much, and listing my favorite shows set in those locations wound up being a pretty short list.

Instead, I am going to mention one of the more crass 9/11 things I've seen in recent days. There's been an ad on TV for a specially minted coin comemmorating the World Trade Center and the future building going on that site. The catch is that it's minted from silver recovered from Ground Zero.

The coin is minted by some outfit in the Northern Marianas Islands, not sure if it's governmental or not. Regardless, preying on the emotions surroundin 9/11, and using materials taken from what many consider sacred ground, really irritates me. The sad thing is they've waited long enough to make the coin seem almost dignified.

Couldn't they have just stuck to Liberty dollar reproductions?

So now that we've gotten the server issues solved, our dial-up at home is being cranky. I think it's more the BU modem pool than anything else, but regardless it's annoying. My sister in law just got DSL (she works from home), so I'll have to see how she does before taking the plunge.

So the reasonably big news is that I'm working again - sort of. I am substitute teaching at my old high school, making my first appearance in that role yesterday (this a scant week after applying). There were all sorts of deja vu moments, from the mostly familiar surroundings to the teachers who are still there when I was a student. They helped cover the moments when I had no idea what I was doing, which were legion.

I subbed for a resource room teacher, which is kind of like working a structured study hall (there's more that goes into it, of course, but from a sub's perspective it's the first way I'd describe it). Each teacher has one or two students per block that they work with to make sure assignments are being kept up with and to provide assistance if needed. One of the other teachers noted that the students work pretty independently, which was true to form (I also think they were more than willing to skirt things with a sub, which is hardly surprising).

I also got to take some class notes, sitting in on classes in science, history, and math. That was very odd, as I've gotten used to a greater amount of information presented in longer bursts. It was also a little disconcerting to have two of the teachers be younger than me, but that's one of those things that's just going to get worse.

Our school system regionalized with Essex (an even smaller town next to Manchester), and this year marks the first year that the towns have a combined middle school (previously Essex had their kids through 8th grade and then sent them to the high school). They've shoehorned the middle school into the old junior high wing, to which they've added on some "modular classrooms" (read: trailers). There are plans to build both new middle and high schools, but there are various issues holding things up (Manchester parents trying to minimize travel time to any possible school in Essex, and Essex residents trying to get beach rights in Manchester in return for such concessions).

The end result is that the school is pretty darn full, which makes traversing the hallways much more of a chore than in the past. And then there's lunch, which is more crowded and (I think) shorter than in my day. It was bedlam, really. Everyone really needs to suck it up and get some ground broken.

Anyway, as surreal as the day was at times, I am looking forward to going back tomorrow. Sarah thinks that I should venture into teaching full time, I'm still not sure. We'll see how it goes if I ever get in front of a live classroom.

As much as I enjoy using Blogger, the new navbar they let you use to have people search your blog content is really inelegant from an aesthetic perspective. From what I've seen, it just gets chunked on top of the page, covering the top part of the blog so you can't read what's under it. You think they'd work the code to have the bar fit in seamlessly on top and then start the blog. I imagine they'll fix that at some point, but until I see it fit in I'm not using it.

(Come to think of it, I've only seen it on Blogspot-hosted sites. Do you all get the choice to use it, or has it been thrust upon you?)

Blogging over the last week or so has been a little difficult, given that the site's been down. I kept up with it during the Olympics (though it may be of little interest now), but have taken most of this week off.

The problem, as I understand it, is that another site hosted on our server had a security issue, and the company in charge of things took the entire server down to check for problems and otherwise make sure it was secure to their satisfaction. Our original company got bought out, which from what I'm getting second-hand has been the start of our problems.

In any event, once you get to read this we'll he hosted elsewhere and will likely have a new domain name. That assumes the current jackasses actually allow us to get our files so we can transfer them over.

Not much new to report right now. Getting bored with home, especially as one of our neighbors in the next building over has a propensity for yelling. You've heard of indoor-outdoor carpet, she has indoor-outdoor voice. It is most often used when dealing with her son, who is like Dennis the Menace with a crew cut. He also has a little gang of friends, one of whom has a Razor scooter which sounds like it's about to lose a wheel. It's better now that school's back in session, but I hope they're going away for the long weekend.

(UPDATE: As you can see, I'm back. New host, new domain, which hopefully others will change their links to reflect in short order.)