Hop's Thoughts

Saturday morning I awoke with a refreshed feeling. I decided on an early departure from my favorite watering hole and in return I received a decent night's sleep. Seven hours to me is the equivalent of a mini coma, minus any brain deficiency (although some would say it's already too late to save me). I lounged in bed briefly, got up and checked my e-mail, had some coffee and headed out for some breakfast. I stopped at a neighborhood deli and ordered my bacon, egg and cheese sandwich. I couldn't help but notice the woman standing next to her very muscular boyfriend. She was wearing black leggings and a heavy sweatshirt. A very attractive face and a very toned physique. She paced up and down the deli and I was admittedly too distracted by her appearance to pay any attention to the conversation she, her boyfriend and the man behind the counter were having. A few seconds later, a boy walked in with a high school football jersey on. The boyfriend wished him good luck and told hi...

My apologies for any Bronxville-ites who may be offended, this is absolutely a generalization. Today, I had some change I wanted to cash in and I knew that there was a bank on Bronxville Road, right on the Bronxville/Yonkers border that had a change machine. I jumped in my car and headed south on White Plains Road over to main street. I headed down the hill around the funeral home onto Midland Ave. As I crossed over the threshold into Bronxville the scenery changed quite a bit. No moms or babysitters pushing baby carriages, no landscaping trucks or vans with ladders on them. Nope, we were in Bronxville. On the maybe half mile stretch from the corner of ICS to Bronxville High, I must have passed seven women, all above average in looks, and two men jogging. Mind you it was about 2:15, schools were getting out, it was well past lunch. So nine individuals, with nothing to do in the middle of the day, but jog. Nice life, I thought. As I approached the track, I saw another half dozen or so. ...

I grew up in a bit of an odd house. While most of my friends were diving into a pepperoni slice in their 8-10 year old years my family had a different tradition. Escargot. Every week my father would bring home 18 deliciously prepared (and then frozen) snails. We had the special dishes and utensils for plucking the juicy mollusks from their protective shell. For every six shells we cleaned and returned, we received a free snail. So every two weeks, we'd have 24 of these delectable creatures. I loved them. Friends of mine could not believe I could eat this. Like everything you can't continue having the same thing every week for your entire life. The escargot soon lost it's luster and we moved on to sushi and sashimi. Each week my father would buy an assortment of sushi and a nice slab of sashimi grade tuna. I used to get excited as my mother or father would unwrap the paper to reveal the bright pinkish/purple meat. They'd delicately slice it into bite size pie...

Anyone who knows me well knows that I hate weddings. When my brother Owen, told me of his engagement, of course I was happy. His fiance, Diana, is a beautiful, loving, kind and most importantly, patient person. To be with my brother, one needs to be patient, or else they may become one. I looked forward to them setting a day and then it arrived. Sunday, September 13, 2009 at 4:30. I thought, what a perfect time, not to hot, not to cold, first week of pro football......the last one took a while to digest. Now my brother is not the big fan that I am, but he does have some knowledge of schedules, teams, etc. To me this was unfathomable. Had the lovely, Diana waited all this time to get back at me for some comment I made years ago? Did Owen, specifically choose this day as repayment for some older brother hi jinks? I could not understand this fate I had to incur. I felt like an overweight Nancy Kerrigan, laying helplessly on the floor screaming "why me, why me!" As the day appr...

Anyone that knows me knows I'm a huge movie buff. I will pretty much watch any genre, any language, and I steer clear of movies that feature Jim Carrey, Will Ferrell, and other idiots. Sure they are funny. I'll take your word for it. I've seen most of Carrey's movies and this is why I don't see them anymore. As our former president once said "fool me once, shame on....shame on you. Fool me....you can't get fooled again." Not sure what this means, but it makes more sense than most idiotic movies put out today. Trying to think of this list I went to IMDB's website and scanned the top 250 movies of all time, ranked by IMDB users. It's an interesting list with classic and newer movies, but definitely leans a little to the more popular blockbusters, most likely due to the age of most of the visitors. Doing a rough count I've seen 230 of the 250 listed and most I haven't seen were out within the last year or are foreign children's stories...

I hope you all have enjoyed your summer. I hope for those teachers without children, you enjoyed your freedom of schedules and paper correcting and relaxed on beaches and soaked up the mild summer sun. I hope those of you with children appreciated the added time with your little ones. I hope you parents, the real teachers, enjoyed some vacation time with your kids and in some way brightened their future with trips that may have taught them something about anything. Anything learned is important. I'm writing this not in a negative tone, but in a very positive one, but the reality is that our children are not getting smarter, they are getting dumber, by the minute. Parents working too many hours to make ends meat don't have the time or the energy to educate from home. Some teachers take tenure as an invitation to stop driving their students forward. I love children and I've worked with kids for twenty years now. Not as a teacher per se, but as a coach, a counselor, and most o...

Ever think about your death row meal? While reading Anthony Bourdain's book, Nasty Bits, he mentioned that this is a common game played among chefs when they get together. It's an ever changing answer depending on season or moods, but it's fun to think of. Primarily, the death row meal is a dinner, but I'd like to think of my death row day, minus the execution of course. For arguments sake, I'm throwing in Brunch and snacks. Being that I'm not feeling well and missing a BBQ, my mind is just stuck on food. So here it goes. Breakfast - my breakfast of course would start with nice hot cup of coffee with a dash of milk. I'd have two eggs over easy with home fries, two strips of bacon and a nice heap of corned beef hash. To be honest, I could even hold off on the home fries if I could double up on the corned beef hash. Brunch - I'm not a big eggs person for brunch. Sure steak and eggs is a wonderful meal on occasion, but I'm going for that traditional NY ...

In the wake of President Obama's speech to all students welcoming them back to school and stressing the importance of studying hard and staying in school. Republican politicians are up in arms over this, saying that the president is overstepping his boundaries and using this to push his policies onto children. Hmmm, did these same politicians have a problem when Reagan and Bush Sr. did this? Here's why we shouldn't be scared about Obama's speech: "I believe a case can be made that the decline in the quality of public school education began when Federal aid to education became Federal interference in education." Ronald Reagan "If you serve a child a rotten hamburger in America, federal, state, and local agencies will investigate you, summon you, close you down, whatever. But if you provide a child with a rotten education, nothing happens, except that you're liable to be given more money to do it with. Well, we've discovered that money alone isn...

Dear August, I'll start by saying I will not be as kind to you as I was to July. I have yet to see any silver lining in your month. Sure the month started off great. A new found beau, or so I thought, some warmer weather to stimulate the paycheck, and a wedding to look forward to. I couldn't wait for you warm embrace, but alas you let me down. I guess the first week you were as good to me as any week I've had. I felt my life had taken a turn for the better and was giddy with this new found hope. I went in with full knowledge this would be a difficult month, but was ready to conquer it and stay strong. I had prepared myself for many weeks without any contact with a special friend. Surprisingly the contact was almost daily and this is where things went wrong. As I've stated before, in this blog, I sometimes say too much. My emotions were out of whack and they continue to be this way. I've gone from my normal self to someone I don't ever want to be. I guess when yo...