This is the time of year I really start to feel divorced from my fellow man. Evidently there’s a basketball tournament going on now? I dunno. I watch the comments go by on my Twitter feed and it’s like watching a game played on another planet.

So, how was your weekend? I took a yoga class for the first time in at least a year. It was the same as it always is: It feels like nothing more than a lot of stretching until the next day, when it feels like you have hamstring cancer. I hit the market. Made cookies. Made macaroni and cheese. Made chicken. Made a salad with the leftover chicken. Slept late (clear til 7!) and watched the news of all the same-sex marriages going on until the court of appeals issued its stay. Watched “Nebraska.” And little by little the weekend slips through the fingers, and here we are at Monday again. Oh, look, snow flurries on Tuesday. But! Almost all the snow is gone from the yard and now it’s…well, it’s still frozen mud. But little by little, the earth thaws.

If only it were happening a little faster.

What did the weekend’s news sources cough up for bloggage? Let’s get started:

Here’s a lovely piece by Brian Dickerson at the Free Press, about how the judge in the SSM case found himself becoming acquainted with the world of gay families — in his own office. It’s a very human story, but don’t read the comments, because many of them are horrible and hateful.

Don’t read the comments on this story, either, about changes in the food industry pushed by the first lady. Where does the world find these people?

This story on Upworthy will make you vomit. It did me, anyway. Metaphorically, of course.

Time to watch “Girls” and see what the week brings.

I guess it’s a measure of how brutal the winter was that the arrival of spring yesterday passed unnoticed by me. Current temperature: 37 degrees. Signs of spring so far: Pretty much zero, unless you count potholes, which are epic this year. I heard the beeping of the cold-patch truck coming down my street today, which will have to do in place of birdsong.

But I know it’s only a matter of time, and before winter slips entirely away, I’d like to give a shout-out to a few of the items that made it bearable this year. Cue the montage!

These shoes:

In a cold, wet climate, it’s more important to keep your feet warm than your head. These were my birthday present last fall. If I’d been buying them for myself, I’d have skipped on the shearling lining and gone for Thinsulate, but Alan is a sweetheart and splurged. L.L. Bean. I stepped into a few drifts that came over the top, but the shearling never really allowed the loose snow to penetrate to my feet. So kudos to these workhorses. A key supporting role was played by…

These cleats:

These seemed a little bit of overkill when I got them. They were another present from Alan. I’d asked for Yaktrax, but Alan decided these were sturdier. They are, and though they hurt my knees when I wore them on dry pavement, they were essential on snow and ice. We had LOTS of ice this year, at least three storms that started as rain and turned to snow, followed by a deep cold snap. All that slush froze solid into icy lumpy fuck, and walking was absolutely treacherous. But not with these cleats! Of course no footwear ensemble is complete without…

These socks:

Rag wool for the Bean boots, which run a little large, and merino for when you don’t want to feel like you’re wearing carpet on your feet. These are Smartwool knockoffs from Costco, but I have lots of the original. I’m wearing a pair right now, in fact. Moving up from the feet, we have…

These longjanes:

Capilene from Patagonia, and I also had some silky polyester ones from Land’s End. I went days without taking them off for anything other than a shower. When I had to go outside, I threw on…

These pants:

More L.L. Bean classics. They are frumpy as hell, adding 10 pounds at least. The rise is so high, and the zipper is so long, that I felt like someone’s grandpa every time I put them on. But low-rise jeans that hug your butt don’t come with fleece lining. I may have looked unfashionable, but goddamn I was warm. Which brings us to the star of the show…

Ladies and gentlemen, the parka of tribulation:

Sturdy enough to stand up on its own, surprisingly heavy, the North Face McMurdo parka came to me a decade ago, via eBay. That was the year I was in Ann Arbor, and I was seeking to duplicate my college experience, when my very first down parka protected me through the fearsome back-to-back winters of the late ’70s. I think I paid about $100 for it new with tags, two-thirds below its retail price, probably because it didn’t include the fetching coyote ruff for the hood. It’s so warm it becomes uncomfortable when the temperature is much above 20, but as I’ve been whining for months, we didn’t have too many of those days. In most winters, this is a specialty item worn for only a few days. This year, it was my main coat. I just put it back in the front-hall closet, where it lives in the off-season. I think of it as you might a spouse you’re divorcing, but don’t actually despise. You respect and admire the work it does, but if it’s all the same, you’d rather not see it for a while. A long while.

Supporting roles were played by hats, several pairs of gloves, scarves and sweaters, but you don’t have to see everything in the closet today. Yesterday I wore a lightweight trench and was perfectly comfortable. Of course it rained.

Bloggage for today:

I had fun reporting this graffiti story for Bridge.

I’m only about halfway through this Grantland story on the world’s greatest juggler, but I’m enjoying it very much. No transsexuals in this one (so far), but a great lead:

I feel like I should let you know what you’re in for. This is a long story about a juggler. It gets into some areas that matter in all sports, such as performance and audience and ambition, but there’s absolutely a lot of juggling in the next 6,700 words. I assume you may bail at this point, which is fine; I almost bailed a few times in the writing. The usual strategies of sportswriting depend on the writer and reader sharing a set of passions and references that make it easy to speed along on rivers of stats and myth, but you almost certainly don’t know as much about juggling as you do about football or baseball. We’re probably staring at a frozen lake here.

A few juggling videos are embedded below. I hope they help. We may fall through the ice anyway.

And finally, one for March Madness: What white people don’t see, watching basketball.

A great weekend to all. It’s supposed to be sunny and over 40. Spring!

One reason I’ve been feeling so scattered this week is a big life change: I’m going to work again. Same job, new office. In Detroit. It really is the best of both worlds: We can work at home or at the office, and no one is expected to be there five days a week. This week I’m trying for three, and that is just about perfect: Enough face time with my colleagues to feel like we’re a team, enough alone time to seriously concentrate and keep the dog from flipping out.

But man, it’s been a while since my commute has been more complicated than walking from the breakfast table to the spare bedroom. Get this: It turns out that if you work in an office? You have to wear pants. Every day. I know, right? Seriously, though, it’s so complicated: Breakfast, coffee, paper, shower, grooming, dressing, and then? The commute, parking, and so on. How do you people do it? I used to have this down, and now it’s like writing checks with my left hand.

Sooner or later it’ll come more easily. I might even take the bus.

Meanwhile, such fun: Elevators, restroom keys, takeout menus. The mundane details of adult life.

Our office is a few steps from Comerica Park. The first rule the building manager offered: Get here early on opening day or you won’t find a parking space. Which is in less than two weeks. The snow is thawing, but the forecast is not universally cheerful until then. It could be a fairly horrible day for baseball.

And now it’s home, and the great indulgence of the working mother: A rotisserie chicken, which I accompanied with a couple cut-up sweet potatoes and some broccoli, roasted together in the oven at 425. It kills me to think of all the time I’ve spent screwing around with vegetables, when oven-roasting with some olive oil and salt works for almost all of them. And it makes the kitchen nice and warm on the chilly evenings.

So, some bloggage? Sure:

Half of all Americans subscribe to some medical conspiracy theory. You mean, like the government might have let a group of African-American men carry syphilis through their lives, just to see what the disease could do? No! That could never happen.

After the bang-up job he did in 2008, why would Hillary hire Mark Penn again? It is to puzzle.

Finally, in food news, the Obamas are losing their pastry chef. And if you like the idea of oven-roasting vegetables, you might enjoy this piece on cooking an entire meal on a sheet pan. Both NYT links.

The hump has been cleared, and the week is on its downslope. Enjoy it.

I feel like I’ve been half-here for a while, but there you are. Sometimes life intercedes. Tonight was the annual college fair for the two Grosse Pointe high schools, always an event. We picked up flyers for the obvious bigs — OSU, MSU, UM-Ann Arbor, Wisconsin — and a few long shots — UVA, Kenyon, Wash U., Vanderbilt — and went to the presentation by Michigan, everybody’s first choice. Today the potential student’s major of choice is music production; at Tulane it was astronomy. In other words, pretty typical 17-year-old and that? IS FINE. There are kids who know who they are from toddlerhood, but not in this house. And that’s good.

Which is why I’m advising a big school with a comprehensive menu of course offerings. It’s nice to be able to change your major without having to change your school.

My orthopedist and his son were sitting in the Michigan presentation. The man who spent parts of not one but two office visits complaining about Obamacare. To me. Yeah, that guy — my former orthopedist. For the record, I didn’t decide not to go back simply because he harangued me twice about Obamacare, nor because his head physical therapist had Fox News blaring in the therapy room, where he and some old fart were loudly discussing the shortcomings of the Kenyan BENGHAZI pretender BENGHAZI in front of several other patients, all African-American. No, it was because he suggested that we could lower health-care costs with tort reform. I replied that I thought that question had been settled by medical economists years ago, and that all the fuss over medical malpractice is really over, what? One percent a year? Maybe? At least some of which is caused by truly incompetent doctors?

That earned me a mini-speech about the artificial-joint companies being sued unjustly, and I thought, man, life is too damn short for this. No wonder this guy wants to replace my knees.

And then we went out to dinner. Nothing like contemplating college to raise a powerful thirst for chianti.

So once again I have little to report. My mind is taken with local matters. Except for Dogeweather, of course, which makes me feel equal parts delighted and a moron. Today I was working with Wendy sitting next to me, and she became bothered by something outside. She stood up and looked out the window for a while, hackles raised. All I could think was so hackles and much fierce, in Comic Sans, in color. Yes, I spend too much time online.

Happy Wednesday, all.

I spent an hour or so last night on a rant, but it lost focus and veered off into the weeds, after which I was too beat to start anew and ultimately just went to bed.

So open thread today, with some conversation-starters:

Puppies in Vegas! Imperiled puppies!

A good John Carlisle column, about a man with autism and his obsession with electronics.

So, what do we think of the new FiveThirtyEight?

Sunday was the St. Patrick’s Day parade here in Detroit. It would have been nice to go. but parades have to have at least a minimal festive atmosphere, and it was 9 degrees when I got up and barely nudged above 20 the rest of the day. So much for the parade, then. Maybe next year.

Kate and I went bike-shopping for her; my favorite used-bike shop had a lovely aluminum-frame Trek road bike, like new, on sale for a killer price, and I wanted her to check it out sooner rather than later. She took it around the block and said, upon returning, that it was a nice bike and also that she couldn’t feel her ears: “Not the outside part, the inside.”

We bought the bike. I asked them to install a second set of brake levers on it, and the guy said it might take a few days. Take your time, son; this spring is still a ways down the road.

And that was about as exciting as the weekend got, although it was lovely and restful and included dinner with friends and a trip to the market and the usual activities. The week ahead will be busy and, if all goes well, should fly. I could use a flying week. Also a warm one.

A few bits of bloggage today, starting with the obvious troll bait: The impending death of Fred Phelps. He may well be gone by the time you read this, and I hope it’s a reflection of my state of mind regarding the relative importance of Fred Phelps that I seriously couldn’t care less. I guess the Westboro Baptist Church was remarkable at one point, but they managed to alienate pretty much the entire world, both right-wing warmongers and left-wing gay sympathizers (and left-wing warmongers and right-wing gay sympathizers), and everyone in between. In the end, the Westboro Baptist Church consisted of Phelps and his extended family, and not even that — the news of his health problems was communicated by one estranged son and confirmed by a second estranged son, with the added detail that Phelps himself had been kicked out of his own tiny church sometime last year. So, mission accomplished! You went looking for rancor and found it, and will now die alone with only hospice nurses attending. May this be the last bit of attention paid to them.

More interesting, in terms of high-profile deaths, is Gene Weingarten’s brief appreciation of Joe McGinniss. It is lean and honest and absolutely correct that McGinniss was unfairly maligned by Janet Malcolm in a lengthy New Yorker profile. It also gives credit where it is due, for “Fatal Vision,” McGinniss’ famous, and infamous, examination of the Jeffrey MacDonald murder case. I’ve always said that a writer’s first duty is to tell the truth, and sometime during what was supposed to be a sympathetic examination of the wrongly convicted MacDonald, the writer became convinced otherwise. And so, as Weingarten writes, what was he to do?

What was McGinniss supposed to have done when he realized, midway through the reporting, that the man he was writing about had lied to everyone? That he had killed his wife and older daughter in a rage — and then calmly, methodically hacked to death his sleeping two-year old, stabbing her 33 times with a knife and ice pick, just to strengthen his alibi? Was McGinniss required to dutifully inform the murderer that he now believed him guilty, and invite him to withdraw his cooperation if he wished, possibly killing the book outright, but certainly killing it as a meaningful, enlightening, powerful examination of the mind of a monster?

There is an implicit covenant between a writer and a subject; in return for whatever agreement you might make for the telling of the story, the subject must tell you the truth. If he lies, all deals are off. It is impossible for a subject to be less truthful than Jeffrey MacDonald was with Joe McGinniss: he misrepresented the central fact of his story, his own guilt.

Exactly.

And while we’re tangentially on the subject of God’s feelings about fags, I also recommend this piece about Scott Lively, the American evangelical minister behind Uganda’s draconian anti-gay laws:

Lively is not the only US evangelical who has fanned the flames of anti-gay sentiment in Uganda. As they lose ground at home, where public opinion and law are rapidly shifting in favor of gay equality, religious conservatives have increasingly turned their attention to Africa. And Uganda, with its large Christian population, has been particularly fertile ground for their crusade.

His influence in Uganda is bad enough, but this is the clown behind this charming bit of amateur historical research:

Opponents likened Lively and his colleagues to Nazis and lobbed bricks wrapped in swastika flags through the windows of businesses supporting the measure. OCA’s aggressive campaign, likening gays to pedophiles, was also blamed for a steep uptick in gay hate crimes. In the end, Measure 9 was defeated by a 13-point margin. Undeterred, OCA began promoting measures barring special protections for homosexuals on the city and county levels. Lively, who bristled at the Nazi comparisons, also threw himself into studying the Third Reich and eventually grew convinced that gay men—some of whom occupied senior posts in the Nazi regime—were the driving force behind the Holocaust. “Everything that we think about when we think about Nazis actually comes from the minds and perverted ideas of homosexuals,” he told an Oregon public access television station in 1994.

Surely a closet case himself.

Finally, where is the plane? Where is the plane? And happy St. Patrick’s Day. Hope it’s a little warmer where you are.

There’s a place in the meat mall that has the world’s prettiest corned beef. Here’s the line. Everybody’s Irish on St. Patrick’s day.

I don’t think it’s any secret that most people who write for a living eventually want to write books. At least one, anyway. There’s something about that ISDN ISBN number that says: Ah, immortality.

But alas, it seems your best shot at author-hood these days is to be a troll. From Amy Chua to the Princeton Mom, the path to success is: Needle the shit out of people. Chua:

The “triple package” is touted as the combination of magic ingredients that enable certain ethnic groups to achieve extraordinary success in modern America. Chua and Rubenfeld identify three key qualities: a superiority complex, a sense of insecurity and “impulse control”.

It should not surprise you to learn that both Chua and her husband, who is Jewish, both come from certain ethnic groups that achieve extraordinary success in modern America. They just want to help! As to the Princeton Mom, aka Susan Patton, well, she’s a real piece of work:

“Marry Smart” (which Patton plans to follow with Parent Smart and Work Smart) advocates starting the husband-search during the college years. Its advice ranges from practical (“plan for your personal happiness with the same commitment and dedication that you plan for your professional success”) to old-fashioned (“it’s the lonely cow that gives away free milk”) to charmingly kooky (an ode to her “lifelong imaginary friend” Caroline Kennedy) to shockingly offensive (a chapter entitled “Birds of a Feather” denounces interracial and interfaith relationships). She also questions the legitimacy of date rape. “‘Date rape’ is like ‘politically correct,’” Patton tells me, as she holds out a bone for Lucille. “Either something is correct or it isn’t. Saying something is ‘politically correct’ is like saying you ‘almost won.’ You ‘almost won’? That means you lost.”

What helpful advice for young women. What a penetrating, forward-thinking insight for a rapidly diversifying culture. What crap.

Oh, but why start the weekend off on a sour note? My workplace officially moves to the D today, it’s Pi Day, and there’s no reason not to spend some time thinking about, oh, the missing Malaysian 777, for instance, which now could be en route to Mars, for all the rest of us know.

The search for a missing Malaysian jetliner with 239 people on board could expand west into the Indian Ocean based on information that the plane may have flown for four more hours after it dropped from radar, U.S. officials said Thursday.

A senior American official said the information came from a data stream sent directly by engines aboard Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. If the two engines on the Boeing 777 functioned for up to four additional hours, that could strengthen concern that a rogue pilot or hijacker took control of the plane early Saturday over the Gulf of Thailand.

The sea is so, so big. Who knows where the thing is?

As to the Ban Bossy movement, I have nothing profound to say, only that any writer who voluntarily gives up standard language ought to get their card pulled. What a waste of time. Maybe that’s Sheryl Sandberg’s next book.

Finally, I bid you all a great weekend. I think I will…pine for spring.

Not much tonight, I fear. Everything got pushed back today because of the snow — Kate’s bass lesson, dinner, the usual. So I don’t have much time tonight before bed will beckon.

Tonight’s low? 1 degree. Fuck me running, as Ashley Morris liked to say. But I’m still swimming tomorrow morning if it kills me. And it may well.

So, linkage:

The economics of the sex industry. Shame on you, Atlanta! You too, Dallas.

Here’s a picture of Kate in New Orleans that I just found on my phone. The ghost of the record store:

And that’s it. Back tomorrow.

OK, OK, I know: Too much bitching about winter this year. But now that we’ve finally had a few days of thaw, when all of the season’s accumulated trash and dog crap and uncollected leaves are daring to emerge — let’s call it The Season of Muddy Paws — guess what’s in store for tonight?

At this point, I’m too numb to complain. And I’m not entirely convinced this will even arrive; seven inches just feels like garden-variety sky-is-falling weather terrorism at this point, but who knows? I’ve been getting up early to exercise the last couple of weeks, and I’m setting the alarm. Swim today, spin tomorrow. It’s good to start your day knowing you already got the physical jerks out of the way. (EDIT: I turned off the alarm and slept another hour. Not sorry I did, either.)

Yes, it’s another of my occasional flirtations with the pool. It’ll be the best thing ever until it isn’t anymore, but I’m paid up at Kate’s old middle school to swim twice a week for half an hour through the middle of June. Gotta get my money’s worth.

So. The internet exploded yesterday when the video of the president meeting with Zach Galifianakis dropped. You can watch it here if you weren’t one of the 7 million who watched it yesterday. I will cop to laughing, mainly because I’m a longtime fan of public-access television, and “Between Two Ferns” is a better parody than “Wayne’s World” by a long shot. I thought the only thing that could have made it funnier was a piece of freestanding lattice with a light aimed at it, casting shadows on the seamless paper behind them, because Depth. My earliest instruction in television, at WARL, my high school’s closed-circuit station, included lessons in how to add depth to the set, and if ferns weren’t involved, ficus trees were, and yes, there was a lattice. So already I’m giggling, and then the pixelated graphics came up, and without the president opening his mouth, I’m pretty much in his pocket.

Of course, not everyone was. According to Wonkette, Jim Avila of ABC News asked this question at the daily White House press briefing:

“How much discussion was there in the White House about the dignity of the office and whether or not, in order to reach these people who don’t watch us at 6:30, or who don’t watch this briefing … how much the dignity of the office might be lost? This is an interview like no other probably ever done by a president.”

When all else fails, invoke the Dignity of the Office, yes. Because Bill Clinton never played sax with Arsenio Hall, and George Bush didn’t walk an aircraft carrier flight deck in a jumpsuit– or should I say junksuit? And never mind the nominees — Bob Dole in a Viagra commercial and all the rest of it. Yes, by all means, sitting down with a comedian is leagues different from sitting down with Jay Leno, because he’s practically like David Frost, right?

I liked the plaintive little line about “these people who don’t watch us at 6:30,” too. I haven’t watched network TV news in probably decades. It’s not just the kids, Jim.

That Wonkette post includes a great visual punchline, which I encourage you to check out.

OK, so what else? I see a few of you picked up on Neil Steinberg’s excellent blog yesterday, but if you don’t read the comments, you missed it, so click. It’s a second-day column on the reader reactions to his first-day column about guns. Word:

This is, at bottom, a religious issue, if not religious, then certainly a matter of faith. Their faith is not in law, not in God, not in society, but in guns. There is certainly a religious fanaticism to all this. It’s a passion, almost sexual in nature. No wonder they don’t want anyone drawing attention to it. They are like onanists caught in the act, blustering through their embarrassment, hurt and humiliation, shouting at the intruder. Go away. So faith and a kind of twisted psycho-sexual fixation. Guns give comfort and security to people who obviously sorely lack both. You can’t argue that. Guns are owned by people who feel they need guns. I know gun owners on my block. Lots of guns. Yet we live in the same peaceful place. We’ve talked about it. Nobody is going to yank that blankie from them. One reader wrote to me that Obama was to blame for the sale of 100 million guns, and I wrote back asking why, given that he has done absolutely nothing to restrict gun sales and no rational person believes he ever will.

And the reader said, not realizing how right he is: yes, but they were afraid he might.

My favorite silly blog, Animals Talking in All Caps, took a months-long break a while back, while its proprietor moved to Scotland and began a new life there, but it appears to be back, oh it’s back and it’s so, so wonderful.

One for you cat lovers.

Also, don’t miss Ta-Nehisi Coates on the singular gall of Condi Rice and especially — especially — Emily Bazelon, who read the briefs in support the Hobby Lobby birth-control case so the rest of us don’t have to. These people are out there, folks:

The Beverly LaHaye Institute, the research arm of Concerned Women for America, drives home this point, arguing that the government should have considered:

the documented negative effects the widespread availability of contraceptives has on women’s ability to enter into and maintain desired marital relationships. This in turn leads to decreased emotional wellbeing and economic stability (out-of-wedlock childbearing being a chief predictor of female poverty), as well as deleterious physical health consequences arising from, inter alia, sexually transmitted infections and domestic violence.

And so, as the AFLC argues, contraceptives of all kinds aren’t medical or related to health care at all. They are “procedures involving gravely immoral practices.” Protected sex demeans women by making men disrespect them. (Just as Pope Paul VI did decades ago, the AFLC presents this as true inside marriage as well as out.) By separating sex from childbearing, birth control is to blame for the erosion of marriage, for the economic difficulties of single motherhood, and even for the rotten behavior of men who beat their girlfriends and wives. Birth control is the original sin of modernity. Its widespread availability changed everything, for the worse.

Whew. I’ve known some anti-birth control activists in my life. An amazing number had fertility problems in their own marriages. Not too Psych 101 there at all.

The week is at its midpoint! The snow? We shall see..