Today’s my 11-year blogaversary.

I’m kind of surprised this blog is still going. But I like having it.

I “broke up” with my psychotherapist yesterday. I’d been seeing her for 11 years — longer even than I’ve had this blog — and it was time. I have not quit therapy, though; I’ve found a new therapist. I still have lots of stuff I need to work on in my life; it’s just that I no longer felt I was getting anywhere with my old therapist. I did a lot of great work with her — she was really good at helping me understand my past. But I have talked my past to death and I’m tired of it. And I have not been able to get myself to a good place in the present. So I thought it was time for a fresh approach.

It had been building up for a while. I had mentioned several times over the last few years that I was not satisfied with my progress. After my birthday and the new year, something clicked in me, and I decided it was time to think about moving on.

Last week, I told her that I was going to be meeting with a new therapist, but that I hadn’t decided yet what I was going to choose to do. She reacted a bit snidely: she said it was kind of like having an affair, like trying to escape the hard work involved in a relationship by looking elsewhere. I felt really surprised and insulted by that. I was not acting on a whim; I had worked hard in my therapy; I had been incredibly patient. Maybe too patient.

Her defensiveness only helped convince me that it was time to move on.

My new therapist is a gay man, which I hope will give me a fresh perspective on things. He’s also more oriented toward the here and now, as opposed to my old therapist, who was much more Freudian and interested in my past, my dreams, and so on.

About 20 minutes into my first session with the new therapist, he said to me, “You seem like someone who thinks a lot about things.” I had brought with me a short list of what I consider to be my main issues in life, and at the very top, I had written: “Overthinker.” Bingo! He got me.

He also asked me a question about something at one point, and as I answered it, I started to ramble. I’m very good at free associating; it’s a bad habit of mine. But as I began to yammer on, he stopped me and said I wasn’t really answering the question. In other words, he corralled me back in. My old therapist would never have done that; she would have just let me ramble on. It was refreshing to be interrupted, to be called out on my bad habits.

After meeting with the new therapist twice, I decided not to prolong it and to just take the plunge and quit my old therapist.

She was a bit pissy last night when I told her I was ending my therapy. I had only been talking for about 15 seconds when she took a blank sheet of paper from her stack of blank sheets and start writing up my final bill. I stopped talking and said, “What are you doing?” And she said, “I’m writing up your final bill.” So I looked at her and said, very firmly: “But I’m talking to you.”

I don’t know if I would have been able to be so assertive a few years ago. Maybe I would have; I don’t know.

She stopped writing and put down the piece of paper, and then we had an honest conversation about my decision.

It feels incredibly freeing to have quit. It was one relationship in my life that I had never really considered ending, because I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to survive without her and that I would miss her. Now that I’ve done it, it feels great. I will be able to survive without her.

It feels — like I said — freeing.

I made a resolution to cook dinner more this year and order takeout less. It’s not going great so far, as we just ordered Mexican.

The thing is, there are various vectors on the cook-vs.-takeout scale. Cooking is cheaper — unless you’re making a very complicated recipe that requires lots of ingredients, in which case it might be more expensive. Cooking is healthier — except that for dinner tonight I’ve ordered a vegetarian burrito with brown rice and a side salad, a meal that will contain more vegetables than what I might have cooked. Cooking is more enjoyable — sometimes. I like cooking, but only when I’m actually doing it — caught up in the slicing and the doing. If I think about getting ready to cook, including going to buy the ingredients I don’t have, it’s a pain in the ass.

I guess I have to decide why I want to cook more: because it’s healthier (sometimes). Because it’s cheaper (sometimes). Because I like the process of cooking (sometimes). Because I want to know what goes in my food (always).

Ah well — at least I cooked on Saturday night. Resolutions can be gradual!

Regarding the 2012 elections:

Pundits like to pontificate, and so do the rest of us. But really, there’s no way to predict what the 2012 election will be like, what the big stories will be, and what will ultimately happen.

It amazes me that pundits never talk about the effect of a running mate until summertime, when the running mate actually gets picked. It’s like collective winter/spring amnesia. The biggest game-changer in the 2008 election — other than the economic collapse less than two months before Election Day — was John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. That didn’t happen until the end of August, and it had an enormous effect on the race (though maybe not on the actual result), giving the GOP ticket a huge injection of enthusiasm. Palin seemed to dominate political news coverage for the next two months.

If things go like they always do, Romney won’t pick his running mate for another eight months. When he picks that running mate, it will change the story one way or another. So maybe we should all stop speculating about what this election will be like until that happens.

I tweeted yesterday that next year will be the first year since 1987 with four different digits.

Every year since 1988 has had a digit that appeared at least twice:

1988: multiple 8s
1989-1999: multiple 9s
2000-2010: multiple 0s
2011: multiple 1s
2012: multiple 2s

Next year, 2013, will finally break this pattern.

I was trying to figure out the previous record for a sequence of numbers with repeating digits. I think it was 1099 to 1202. Before that, 988 to 1022.

Meaningless trivia, but I still think it’s cool. Numbers are fun.

Here’s a list of the books I read in 2011. I do a similar post every year.

My reading is very important to me, because I love to learn. The difference this past year was that I got a Kindle in late 2010, so I was able to read big, thick books on my long work commute, and I was able to sample books I might not have tried in the past — hence, more fiction and self-help than usual.

That said, I’ve decided to make some of my reading from the past year private. I have tended not to disclose as much of my personal life on my blog as I used to, and some of the books I read this year were self-help books that I’d rather keep to myself. So… in chronological order, here are most of the books I read in 2011:

[private]

[private]

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace (started in late 2010, finished in 2011)

The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Gordon S. Wood

The Tragedy of Arthur, Arthur Phillips

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Guide, Nancy McWilliams

The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History, Rebecca Fraser

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, Christopher Clark

The Help, Kathryn Stockett

[private]

The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights, Robert Mann

Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television, Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik

If the Buddha Got Stuck: A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path, Charlotte Kasl

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chödrön

Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy From A Buddhist Perspective, Mark Epstein

11/22/63, Stephen King

Turning the Mind Into an Ally, Sakyong Mipham

[private]

The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

The Stranger’s Child, Alan Hollinghurst

A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War, Amanda Foreman (started a couple of weeks ago)

Happy New Year.

Today I went to the Metropolitan Museum of Art by myself and I had a great time. I spent more than five hours there, and of course even though I saw tons of stuff — mostly temporary exhibitions since I’ve seen many of the permanent exhibits before — there was a lot I didn’t get to see. I lingered for quite a while at some exhibits, and in other places I went through pretty quickly.

In order, I saw:

• the Annual Christmas Tree and Neapolitan Baroque Crèche
• Lisbon’s Hebrew Bible
• Victorian Electrotypes: Old Treasures, New Technology
• Art in Renaissance Venice, 1400–1515: Paintings and Drawings from the Museum’s Collections
• lunch in the cafeteria (OK, didn’t see this, I ate this)
• Duncan Phyfe: Master Cabinetmaker in New York
• English furniture, rooms, decorative arts, etc. (probably my favorite part of this visit, because I’ve been very much interested in British history lately)
• The American Wing
• Infinite Jest: Caricature and Satire from Leonardo to Levine
• The Renaissance Portrait from Donatello to Bellini (just opened last week; very crowded!)
• Photographic Treasures from the Collection of Alfred Stieglitz
• Stieglitz and His Artists: Matisse to O’Keeffe
• and finally, the Met’s newest high-profile permanent exhibition, the New Galleries for the Art of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, and Later South Asia, the highlight of which is the Damascus Room, a formal Islamic reception room that has been transported to the Met.

I also stopped along the way at one of my favorite paintings at the Met: The Storm, by Pierre-Auguste Cot.

It was a really nice afternoon. Visiting the Met is like traveling around the world, and through history. I adore it. I’m glad I live in the city that has the Met.

Today’s my birthday. I’m 38 years old today.

I’m not sure I like birthdays anymore. They’re just a reminder that I’m getting older. It’s silly, really, because I’m only one day older than I was yesterday, and the only reason I celebrate today is because the Earth is in the same place relative to the Sun as it was on the day I was born. But still.

Last year when I turned 37 I felt this *click* as I transitioned from my mid-30s to my late 30s. Last year I suddenly saw 40 on the horizon. I then realized I still had three years to go before I turned 40. So this birthday doesn’t feel as troubling as my last birthday because I’ve also resigned myself to the fact that 40 is approaching in a couple of years.

I don’t really know how to act my age anymore, and I haven’t for a few years. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m not in my 20s. But I’m not middle-aged, either. I don’t like getting drunk or staying out late like I used to. On the other hand, I still want to have a life, and I don’t really feel like I do. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life not doing anything new and not challenging myself.

Most people my age are straight and married with a couple of kids in elementary school or middle school or even high school. If I were straight I’d be a dad. But I’m not. So I never really know what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m not young but I’m not old. It’s weird.

On Christmas Eve I always wish I celebrated Christmas. I like the feel of Christmas Eve: the world seems quiet, people spending time with their families. Of course, that’s not necessarily true in New York, a city with more Jews than any other place in the world besides Israel, in addition to non-Christian Asians, and Muslims. On Christmas Eve much of Manhattan goes on just as it always does — maybe a bit quieter and emptier, but still displaying its essential New Yorkiness.

Christmas is weird, because in many ways it’s not a religious holiday. Christmas trees, candy canes, Santa Claus — what does any of that have to do with Jesus Christ or the Middle East? I kind of wish the holiday would go full-on secular so that I could celebrate it.

Oh, well. We’re about to head out for some Chinese food. Which I guess is close enough to celebrating Christmas for this Jew.

I don’t usually read much fiction. My reading tastes tend towards history and other nonfiction. But I seem to be on a British fiction kick lately; I’ve just read two new novels in a row, both by British authors. In fact, I’ve read five novels this year, which is a lot for me. I think owning a Kindle has made me more adventurous in my reading tastes, because I can download a sample of almost any book that seems interesting and try it out for free.

Anyway, as for the British fiction I’ve just read:

The Sense of an Ending, by Julian Barnes, is a great little mystery-box of a book. It’s very short, fewer than 200 pages, and I read it in an evening. I’ve never read a whole book in an evening, or even in a weekend — I’m a slow reader — but this just flew by. It’s a wonderfully constructed story about the unreliability of memory, and you have no idea what it’s all about until the end.

Then there’s The Stranger’s Child, by Alan Hollinghurst, which I just finished today and is a little more problematic.

I’m not sure what to think of it. It’s beautifully written, filled with wonderful little observations about the way people speak and comport themselves, but the writing is not paired with a sufficiently interesting story.

It starts out good, with tantalizing hints of a forbidden same-sex relationship, but — for an Alan Hollinghurst novel — the relationship isn’t explored deeply or explicitly enough. Still, I kept with the book through its time changes, and after about 150 pages I became more absorbed and was glad I’d stuck with it. I enjoyed the middle section the most, set in the late 1960s, because it focused on a budding romance between two appealing gay men and had a nice “comedy of manners” feel. But from there things went downhill; most of the last 150 pages consists of someone conducting interviews with various people for a biography. There is no sense of narrative propulsion, just one plodding interview after another. And because the biographer is trying to solve a mystery that we, the readers, already know the answer to, there is no suspense, either. I know “plot” isn’t really the point of this book, that Hollinghurst is trying to say big things about 20th century Britain, the art of biography, homosexuality, the class system, and so on. But there needs to be a good story to keep you reading, and there isn’t really enough of one.

At least there is the writing to fall back on. The descriptions of a middle-aged woman playing the piano and an elderly woman writing out a check at the bank are little gems, and there are plenty of nice social observations. Yet the book is at times over-written. At certain points I wanted Hollinghurst to stop describing the hidden shades of meaning in what a character was saying and to just get on with it already.

The book doesn’t exactly fly by, so if you’re in a hurry, look for something else. But if you don’t care so much about plot and are in the mood to slow down and enjoy some fine writing, this might work for you.

A few years ago I read Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty, which is a nice satire of Thatcherism in 1980s Britain, and includes a memorable scene where the gay young liberal protagonist accidentally meets the Iron Lady at a rich person’s house party while high on the cocaine he’s just snorted upstairs. That one was a little short on plot, too, but it didn’t feel as long as the new book.

I wonder what to read next.

“Going into a retreat is really about breaking down the constructs of ‘you,’ ” he said. “The whole idea is for you to take a very close look at the you you have become in your mind. The you you are in your real mind isn’t necessarily the real you.”

- Getting Far, Far Away From It All [NY Times]

Today is the 48th anniversary of the assassination of JFK, which means it’s the day when all the conspiracy theorists come out of their holes.

I don’t think there was a conspiracy at all. It seems pretty clear from the preponderance of the evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone.

And also, here’s a logical exercise:

There are tons of JFK assassination conspiracy theories out there. But if any one of the conspiracy theories is true, that means the rest of the conspiracy theories must be false. All but one of these conspiracy theories — all seemingly backed up by reams of circumstantial evidence and sinister occurrences — must be false. Because they can’t ALL be true.

Think about that. Most of the JFK conspiracy theories, by virtue of logic, MUST be false.

Once you realize that most of the theories must be false, you realize how silly this whole endeavor is. Because if we can conclude that all but one of these seemingly carefully argued conspiracy theories must be false, then there’s no reason to believe any of them at all.

If you examine any historical event through skeptical eyes, you will find seemingly strange occurrences, weird coincidences, and things that don’t appear to add up. If you examine anything down to the fractal level at which the JFK assassination has been examined, you will find something unexplainable.

I think the reason so many people under 50 believe the JFK assassination was a conspiracy is because the idea that it was a conspiracy is part of our cultural zeitgeist. They’ve been told it must be a conspiracy, and therefore they believe it is, because, “Hey, doesn’t everybody think so?”

No. Everybody doesn’t.

I don’t read much fiction, but when I saw that Stephen’s King newest novel was about a man who travels back in time to try and stop the assassination of JFK, I knew I had to read it. I’m a sucker for a good time-travel story, and I’ve long been interested in the JFK assassination, so this was right up my alley.

Well, it didn’t disappoint. Not only is it a thrilling read — it turns out to be a great love story, and very moving. It’s a long book — 850 pages — but I read it in a week, which is very fast for me. Whenever I had a free moment I just wanted to dive back into it. I started it last Saturday and finished it last night.

Time travel is my favorite sci-fi genre, because I love the theoretical implications. You really wouldn’t be able to go back in time without changing history. If you live in the past for any extended period of time, you’re going to have to eat and drink things, and buy stuff, and live somewhere. What if you buy something and that means, somewhere down the line, that the store runs out of stuff that some other person was originally supposed to buy? What if you rent a motel room and it turns out that someone else was originally supposed to rent it? What if your mere presence on a street has some micro-effect on the steps a man takes as he walks down that same street — either because he has to walk around you or merely notices you — and those micro-contortions cause the sperm inside him to jostle around slightly differently than they originally would have, so that when he impregnates his wife, a different sperm inseminates the egg, and an entirely different person is born?

You just never know.

11/22/63 doesn’t go quite that far. But at any rate, it’s terrific.

The only other Stephen King book I’d read before this was The Stand, a long time ago, and I only got about 1/3 of the way through it because it was too long. I’ve tended to dismiss him as a pop-fiction horror writer, but I really enjoyed this book, and I may have to read more of them now. Maybe I’ll work my way backward and read Under the Dome soon. (But right now I have a backlog of books to read. I still want to read the Steve Jobs biography.)

Also, it was refreshing to read a brand-new book. My reading interests are quirky, so most books I read are a few years old. It was nice to read a book that just came out.

Oh, and incidentally: the 50th anniversary of the JFK assassination is November 22, 2013. JFK was assassinated on a Friday, and the 50th anniversary will also, somewhat creepily, be a Friday. And Friday is the day when movies are normally released. So maybe 11/22/13 would be a good release date for a movie adaption of this book. Just saying…

Glee drives me nuts. It has some nice moments, true. But to get to those moments you have to wade through an enormous amount of ridiculousness.

Here are some things I hate about Glee:

(1) Blaine’s bow ties. I viscerally loathe Blaine’s bow ties. When I see Blaine wearing a bow tie, I feel almost… angry. Bow ties are for suits. You do not wear bow ties to school. You do not wear bow ties with plaid shirts or polo shirts.

But it’s not that I’m some fashion maven. Far from it — I tend to dress pretty plainly. And I think that’s the issue: I don’t like it when people try to get attention for themselves by dressing outrageously. Why can’t you just trust that people will get to know you and find out what a unique person you are? Why do you have to proclaim your individuality so aggressively?

From a production standpoint, I do not understand why the show’s costume designer thinks Blaine looks cool this way.

I also hate almost everything Kurt wears.

(2) The extremely unrealistic musical performance process makes me batty. I know, it’s just a TV show and I should just relax and enjoy it. I’m not usually one to point out plot holes in other shows, so I don’t know why it bothers me so much here, but it does. Maybe it’s because I did musical theater in high school.

If the production of “West Side Story” is opening in a few days, why are Rachel and Blaine standing around a piano instead of in a full dress rehearsal? And why aren’t they off book? And how did the musicians get permission to change the orchestrations? (And as Matt pointed out, why did they perform the film version of the show instead of the stage version?) And why did it take them several weeks to put together a production of “West Side Story” but they were able to throw together “Rocky Horror Picture Show” overnight? And why doesn’t anyone ever need to rehearse anything? And what the hell kind of glee club is this in the first place?

(3) The ridiculous plot points regarding adoption and congressional elections and a splinter glee club.

(4) The wildly uneven character writing. What are we supposed to think of Mercedes, who hides her extreme insecurity behind some diva attitude she learned from watching movies and other TV shows? Are we supposed to feel sorry for her? Are we supposed to dislike her? (Because I kind of do.) Or is every gay viewer just automatically supposed to love her because we’re all supposed to be stereotypical gay men and identify with divas?

Gee, you seem to dislike this show so much. Why do you keep watching?

Aw, heck. Because there are some good moments. The Kurt/Blaine/Sebastian plot last night was great, and it was nice to see Kurofsky again.

And the music performances, as ridiculously overprocessed as they are, are fun to watch. Sometimes.

There’s a good show hidden inside Glee. It’s too bad you have to dig so hard to find it.

Last night Matt and I went to see Queen of the Mist, a new musical by Michael John LaChiusa, starring Mary Testa, and produced by the Transport Group. The show is performed in a small school gymnasium, and the 100-seat audience is arranged on two sides of the gym, facing each other, in four rows of 12-13 people each.

Before the show, Matt wondered if any theater critics would be there, since the show is opening in just a few days. Sure enough, a few minutes before 8:00, I looked at the half of the audience that was facing us and spotted Ben Brantley, the New York Times theater critic. And then, three seats over from Ben Brantley, Matt noticed Roma Torre, theater critic for NY1′s On Stage TV show, which we watch every weekend.

They fascinated me. I probably spent half the show watching them watch the show. Every so often they would scribble on notepads. I tried to gauge their opinions of the show from their facial expressions, but it was hard; they both had these thoughtful, close-mouthed smiles while watching. I couldn’t tell if they enjoyed it or were just being polite.

As for my opinion: it was a decent show, but I found it a bit boring. The plot is thin; it’s about Annie Edson Taylor, the first woman to go over Niagara Falls in a barrel and survive, which she did in 1901. LaChiusa’s music was very nice, and Mary Testa is always great to watch. But the show could have been about 15 minutes shorter.

I find myself feeling that way a lot lately: most recent shows I’ve seen seem to run about 15 minutes longer than I want them to be. I don’t know what that’s all about.

We visited the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco earlier this month, and weeks later, I still keep thinking about it. Not only was it a moving experience, but it also gave me a new metaphor for thinking about a life. About anyone’s life.

The Walt Disney Family Museum was created by Walt’s family as a place to tell the story of Walt, as distinct from Disney the company, and it’s owned by a private non-profit, not by the Disney Corporation. In order to maintain that distinction, it’s located in San Francisco, rather than in Disneyland or Walt Disney World. Walt’s daughter, Diane Disney Miller, didn’t want people to rush through the museum between theme park visits; she wanted people to take the time to explore Walt’s life. In fact, the museum seems much more oriented to adults than to children.

The museum is located in the Presidio, an enormous, beautiful park, and as you walk toward the museum, the Golden Gate Bridge looms in the background.

The two-story building is divided into 10 galleries. Unlike most museums, where you can wander around and see things in any order you wish, there is only one way through this museum, as it tells the story of Walt’s life chronologically, gallery by gallery — sort of like a theme park ride. Each room is filled with fascinating historic objects — the first drawing of Mickey Mouse; colorful paint jars used by Disney animators; a two-story multiplane camera — and there are also plenty of sound recordings and video installations along the way. The museum starts with Walt’s birth and childhood, and then you follow the story as he reaches greater and greater heights: the creation of Mickey Mouse, the Silly Symphonies, the first full-length animated film in history (Snow White). After the lows of World War II – culminating, for the Walt Disney studio, in a labor strike against Walt — he regroups, taking his first steps into live-action films. You learn about his newfound love for miniatures and model railroads.

And then you enter the centerpiece of the museum: an amazing, two-story gallery covering Walt’s greatest decade, the 1950s, when he opened Disneyland and began his groundbreaking weekly TV show. The highlight of this gallery is a stunning scale model of Disneyland, known as “The Disneyland of Walt’s Imagination.” It’s not historically accurate; it doesn’t depict Disneyland at any one particular time, but is more of a composite Disneyland as Walt wanted it to be. Matt and I probably spent 10 to 15 minutes just looking at this model — we’d been to Disneyland itself just two days earlier, so it was especially cool to examine the model.

After the model, you can see clips of Disney’s TV show and the later live-action movies, and explore exhibits on Mary Poppins and Disney’s contributions to the 1964/65 New York World’s Fair. And then… in 1966, Walt dies, way too early, at age 65. There’s a TV clip of an obituary, and a wall of newspaper cartoons expressing sadness over his death.

I had no idea what to expect from this museum, other than that it was a must-see for Disney fans. It was a very profound experience. We wound up spending four hours there, and I didn’t even listen to all the audio or watch every video clip. In fact, somewhere around 1938, in the middle of the Snow White exhibit — not even halfway through the museum — my eyes began to glaze over. But then I got a second wind, and I was riveted again.

I’ve read two biographies of Walt Disney, so it was a weird experience to travel through a physical representation of his life. I felt like I was exploring a book brought to life. It also made me think of a recent article in the New York Times about how to memorize things: one trick is to conjure up a 3D model of a house in your mind and then mentally place the things you want to remember in specific locations throughout the house. Walking through the museum, I felt like I was in someone’s mental map of Walt’s life. I can remember things about his life much more clearly now.

And it makes me wonder what my life would look like if it were laid out as a building. I’m 37, the same age Walt was when Snow White came out. How far through the exhibit of my life would I be right now? How much is behind me and how much more looms ahead? Is there a fantastic two-story gallery in my future — filled not with fame, but with wonderful experiences?

I loved the Walt Disney Family Museum. I hope I can visit it again sometime.

A year ago today, Matt and I flew to Orlando for a week’s vacation at Walt Disney World. This past Saturday, we got back from a vacation to Disneyland and San Francisco, thus ending a big year of travel for me. Due to an unusually high number of work and personal trips, I traveled more in the last 365 days than I had in many years.

In the past year I’ve visited, in chronological order: Orlando, Florida; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Houston, Texas; Charlottesville, Virginia; Montreal, Québec; Kiawah Island, South Carolina; Santa Fe, New Mexico; Bethany Beach, Delaware; and Anaheim and San Francisco, California.

I really enjoy traveling. It takes me out of my daily routine, and I enjoy visiting places I’ve never seen before. When I travel, I really feel like I’m living.

I hope to keep doing it.

Matt and I are going to California on Sunday for a week’s vacation. We’re spending two days at Disneyland and the rest of the week in San Francisco.

I’m excited about our trip. First, Matt’s never been to the west coast, so I’m looking forward to vicariously experiencing his first trip to California. Second, while I’ve been to California a few times, I’ve never been to Disneyland! I’ve been to Walt Disney World in Orlando a few times, and I’ve even been to Tokyo Disneyland. But I’ve never been to the original Disneyland in Anaheim, opened in 1955, the only theme park Walt fully designed and had a chance to visit.

Matt and I went to Disney World last October, a little less than a year ago. So we will have been to Walt Disney World and Disneyland within the same year. (Not quite like visiting them within the same 24-hour period, but still pretty cool.)

The only thing I’m bummed about is that the Pirates of the Caribbean ride will be closed, because it’s supposed to be even better than the one in Orlando. I’m also a little worried that our time there will be rushed. We were originally just going to go to San Francisco, but then a few weeks ago, Matt suggested that since we were going to California, maybe we could go to Disneyland too. It sounded great to me. So we added it to the beginning of our trip, kind of as an afterthought. Fortunately it’s one of the least crowded times of the year, and we don’t necessarily need to see the stuff that’s duplicated in both parks, so we should be fine.

And oh yeah, San Francisco should be fun, too…

I got my first home computer in 1982. It was a present for my ninth birthday. My dad picked it out.

It was not an Apple computer. It was a TI-99/4A, from Texas Instruments.

A few years later, we got a home computer for the entire family.

It was not a Macintosh. It was a PC.

I was never a Mac person. I grew up on PCs. When I went to college, my dad got me a Windows box, a 486. In law school, I got a laptop with Windows 95 on it.

In 1999-2000, I used a Mac while working as an editor. I worked at a very small company — four employees — and my boss was totally a Mac person. The Mac I used at work had OS 8, or maybe it was OS 9. See? I don’t even know which OS it was. I didn’t particularly like using it. I was a PC person.

When OS X came out, it looked really pretty. I started to think I might want to get a Mac someday. But I was a PC person, and it seemed like switching to the Mac would be a pain in the ass. Plus Macs were so expensive.

I didn’t get my first iPod until December 2005 — the 5G, the first video iPod. I got my first iPhone, the 3G, in November 2008.

Finally, just over a year ago, in the summer of 2010, I bought my first Mac — the 21.5-inch iMac.

And I love it.

I wish I’d grown up on Macs. I’m free associating in my head right now: the mid-80s, the Macintosh, the 1984 Summer Olympics in L.A., Diff’rent Strokes and Family Ties, Ronald Reagan, the Star Wars trilogy, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Gremlins, a booming economy, optimism, being a kid, elementary school, computer labs, the Smurfs and the Superfriends on Saturday mornings, G.I. Joe and the Transformers on weekdays after school…

It seemed clear when Steve Jobs stepped down from Apple six weeks ago that the end was near. But it was still a shock to see the headline. Right there on the screen of my iMac, of course.

He was 56? That’s way too young. And yet sometimes I couldn’t believe he was only 56. He’d been around forever, for so long, that he had to be older than 56.

I’m sad that he won’t get to see how technology develops over the next few decades. He should have lived another 20 or 30 years. He should have been part of it, inventing the iTeleporter (nah, too long a name: the iPort?) or something nobody can even think of today.

But then again, he wasn’t an inventor. He didn’t create things out of thin air. He just made certain things the best things they could be.

The future was supposed to be about flying cars, and jet packs, and Dick Tracy-ish wristwatch communicators. Well, we still don’t have flying cars or jet packs. But we do have those crazy futuristic communicators, although we carry them in our pockets, not on our wrists.

I am not in love with my iPhone. But there are times when I use it, or just look at it, and I think: wow. Look at this elegant little device and the dozens of things it can do.

We are totally living in the future.

Thank you, Steve Jobs.

Lately I’ve been nerding out with a terrific book: Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television, by Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik. It’s an incredibly detailed history of American television, organized season by season. The first three chapters cover the invention of TV and the beginnings of TV broadcasting, and after that, each TV season is covered in great, engagingly written detail, one chapter per season, from 1944-45 all the way up through 2009-10. (So far I’m up to 1978-79.) Most chapters are about 7-8 pages long, but the book is 8 1/2″ by 11″ and the text is in two columns per page, so on ordinary-sized book pages, each chapter would probably be about 20 pages long. (The chapters have neat titles, too. Here’s an explanation of each chapter title.)

The season-by-season structure lets you follow the story of TV over the years: the rise of the networks, the completion of the coaxial cable that allowed live TV from coast to coast, the move of TV production from New York to Hollywood. You can follow the flow of broadcasting trends over the years: TV experimentation in the 1940s, variety shows and anthologies and Westerns in the 1950s, action-adventure shows and rural escapist sitcoms in the 1960s, smartly-written CBS sitcoms in the early 1970s, and so on. You can follow the changing fortunes of the big networks: CBS was king for the first few decades of TV, but in the mid-70s ABC suddenly rocketed to number one with entertaining escapism like Happy Days, Laverne & Shirley, and Charlie’s Angels. (That’s where I am right now.)

The book also covers government regulation of TV and the rise of public TV and cable TV, and it touches on national and world events when relevant. Did you ever wonder why network prime time runs from 8-11 pm (7-10 pm Central/Mountain), except for Sundays when there’s an extra hour? Did you ever wonder why TVs used to have both VHF and UHF dials? It’s in this book.

Each chapter also has a prime-time grid of the networks’ fall schedules for that season, as well as a sidebar listing some important events from the season.

This will sound silly, but I love this book. I’d always been a TV history nerd, but I didn’t know this book existed until a year ago. (It’s actually an updated edition; it was first published in 1982). I haven’t loved a book so much since The President’s House, a two-volume history of the White House, covered chronologically by presidency, that I read a few years ago. I guess I enjoy incredibly detailed, information-packed, well-written chronological narratives about topics I’m interested in.

Yeah, I’m a nerd, and proud of it.