I finally dug my grandparents’ silverware out of a box in the garage, cleaned it and stuck it in the drawer with the rest of the knives, forks and spoons. I informed the roommates via email:

A DIALOGUE, IN ONE SCENE:

You: “Hey, what are these new knives and forks and spoons in the drawer?”
Me: “It’s silverware — like, actual SILVER ware — that belonged to my grandparents, which I unearthed today in the garage.”
You: “You know there’s like four pieces of some things and eight of others, right?”
Me: “Yes. It already drives me nuts, like they left me with mismatched numbers specifically to mess with my head, so please don’t rub it in.”
You: “Can I use it?”
Me: “Yes … BUT it can’t go in the dishwasher, because the detergent will eat away at the silver. Hand wash only! Like Mr. Brooks’ nice glasses.”
You: “I’m just saying: There are only TWO TABLESPOONS, and like SEVEN KNIVES. So random and uneven.”
Me: [Plugs ears.] “La la la la la I can’t hear you.”

Imagine what my emails that recap the monthly bills are like.

WHAT SAM WORE: 1-24-12
The shirt: “South Austin Cock Fight” T-shirt, a gift from my friend (and Austin resident) Sharyn, over a ¾-sleeve waffle-weave T-shirt, on clearance at Uniqlo, New York.
The pants: Jeans by William Rast for Target.
The shoes: “Top Winner” sneakers by Puma, from the Puma store in New York.

What seems like a billion years ago, I decided out of thin air that I was going to make a quilt. The quilt above, to be exact.

Well, not really out of thin air; I saw one like it in a catalog — Pottery Barn, probably? — and thought that the price they were asking seemed insane.

I’m still puzzled by what made me think I was the person for such a project. For starters, I’m not a fan of craft-y homemade things (unless they’re food products). Even more of an obstacle: My sewing “experience” was limited to replacing the occasional button, which always left the undersides of the plackets looking like brambles of thread, not tidy rows or layers of stitches.

The “easy” part: I measured the dimensions of a flat sheet, then calculated how wide and long the “falling” parallelogram blocks needed to be so the quilt would end on all sides with entire pieces instead of fragments: 12 rows, 19 blocks long. To be safe, I gridded out the pattern using cut-up sheets from a yellow legal pad and laid out all the pieces on my living room floor.

“You know you have to leave a seam allowance, right?” my friend CJ said while I was bragging about my calculation abilities. “It’s a basic rule of sewing: You don’t sew pieces literally end to end, you have to leave a small amount of fabric on each piece so the thread has something to hold on to. That’s the seam allowance.”

Crap.

“No, it’s easy,” she said, seeing my crestfallen face. “You’ve already figured out the size the finished pieces should be, so just add an extra X amount on each side, and then when you’re piecing them together, make sure you keep the seam at that distance away from the edge of the fabric.”

What else didn’t I know? I decided to take my case to the professionals — the ladies of The Quilter’s Ranch, a store that occupied the space next door to our office in Tempe.

It was an odd juxtaposition of workplaces, for sure: Our coterie of culture-obsessed 20- and 30-year-olds putting out a weekly entertainment magazine, one door away from a shop that attracted women of a certain age, who flocked to the fabric and peered at the patterns. “What are they doing in there all day long?” we wondered aloud, and I have no doubt that they debated the same thing about us.

So I wandered in to the store one afternoon clutching my inspiration photo, my paper templates and a whole lot of nothing else. That’s where and when I learned that I should wash and dry the fabric a few times before it was cut (to make sure that shrinkage wouldn’t mess up the size of the pieces down the road), and that it would be better if all the materials used were of the same type (like cotton) to prevent different rates of growth/stretch/shrink down the road.

And just when I thought I knew everything I’d need to get started, the friendly associate tossed in a reminder to “make sure you cut the pieces along the same grain.”  (I’ll let Janet Wickell of About.com explain in more detail WTF that means, but suffice to say that cutting in different directions affect a fabric’s stretchability and sturdiness.)

Fabrics were washed, dried, ironed and finally ready to be cut into pieces. I traced my (resized) yellow legal-pad sheets onto sandpaper, then snipped out pieces to be used as master patterns when cutting fabric — the grit helped the sandpaper hold to the fabric, so my Man Hands didn’t need to bother and fail with pins. Oh, one more thing: I don’t own a sewing machine.

Here’s how dumb I still was: I didn’t think it would be a big deal to join together 228 pieces of fabric using just a needle and thread. “Each strip is only like 4 inches across!” I said. “How long could it take?”

Pardon my language, but fucking forever is how long it could take.

For weeks, every night after work I’d sit on the couch and stitch together the pieces that would become the “tumbling” rows. Those quilting grannies must have superhero thumbs, because no thimble on earth protected mine from the grief and soreness and blood blisters incurred by shoving a needle through two layers of fabric over and over and over and over again. I persevered until one day I was finally the proud creator of a dozen rows of blocks, 19 units long.

That’s when I realized that everything I had done so far constituted only about 1/3 of the required work . Yes, I had sewed together the (shorter) edges of the tumbling blocks, but now every (longer) edge needed to be connected to the diamonds of ticking-stripe material that would be positioned between the rows. Then the finished top would be attached on three sides to the material that would constitute the quilt’s bottom side, then the batting (the puffy stuff inside) could be added and tacked down, and then the fourth side could finally be stitched shut.

I was so mad and frustrated that I threw the pieces in my hall closet and left them there. For two years.

Any time I needed to grab a jacket, the vacuum, cleaning supplies or anything from the “junk box,” I’d have to confront the fabric scraps languishing and gathering dust in their crate, giving me the Unfinished Evil Eye. I tried to ignore them, burying them under tear sheets, but I always knew they were there. I wouldn’t use the front door of the office, in case the Quilter’s Ranch lady saw me and asked how it was going.

Eventually, forces conspired to get me to pick up where I left off: I had a week of vacation to use within the month or it would be forfeited … but I didn’t have money for any trips, so I’d be spending it at home. I’d also broken up with Trainer Brian by then, which meant I was living at Garden Place full time and seeing my possessions more often — including the ones that nagged me about unfinished business.

I begged CJ to show me how to use her sewing machine, and she agreed to let me borrow it for a week. My living room felt like a sweatshop, the amount of time I spent hunched over the humming machine. By the time I fastened together the final two pieces of the pattern, I was over this experience.

Here’s what conscientious quilters would do to finish their masterpiece: sew the top and bottom together on three sides while the pieces faced each other, then turn the quilt right-side out, add the batting, tack it down in regularly spaced intervals, then do some amazing inside-facing “blind stitch” on the only remaining open side, so a minimal amount of thread is visible.

Here’s what I did: stacked the three layers together sandwich-style and blew through them in a single pass on the outside, because I really, really needed to finish it before I decided that it would be better to just set it on fire, with myself wrapped inside. (Also, I wasn’t going to enter it in a quilt perfection contest.)

Then I folded it up and put it away because I was afraid I’d spill something on it, which would require me to wash it, and I was freaked out about that. I still am, in fact, because while I’d like to think it would hold up through a wash cycle with minimal fraying, I can’t forget the amateur hands and stitches that assembled it, and I really, really don’t want to have to go back and do more work on it ever again.

A funny thing: The pattern is a variation of a fairly common one called “Tumbling Blocks” but because I have always, always looked at mine from a strictly vertical perspective — maybe since I sewed it that way? — all that’s ever been visible to me has been falling rows of colored diamonds, such as what you see in the photo right above here.

So when I’d search “tumbling blocks” and the patterns seemed to show 3D-style stepping stones of squares like the design at right (click on thumbnail to see bigger), I’d think, “That doesn’t look anything like mine.”

Tonight when I loaded the top photo into this post, I suddenly saw the squares … and that if I had reversed the orange and red squares, the light/shadow effect would have been evenly applied across the board. Aaargh — so close!

But I’m not going to kick myself about it, because whenever I look at the actual quilt, only the diamonds are readily visible to me. The only way I can see the squares is to turn my head 90 degrees and slightly unfocus my eyes. Maybe it’s my brain’s way of keeping me happy with the work I did.

So, that Pottery Barn quilt? I don’t believe it was pieced and assembled by hand, but if it was, totally worth every cent. And I developed newfound respect for the people who created pieces like the hexagonal-patterned one entirely by hand — the electric sewing machine wasn’t introduced until 1889. Two incredibly sore thumbs-up to you, pioneers.

WHAT SAM WORE: 1-24-12
The shirt: “South Austin Cock Fight” T-shirt, a gift from my friend (and Austin resident) Sharyn, over a ¾-sleeve waffle-weave T-shirt, on clearance at Uniqlo, New York.
The pants: Jeans by William Rast for Target.
The shoes: “Top Winner” sneakers by Puma, from the Puma store in New York.

“What do you mean the Red Cross won’t accept blood from gay guys?” my co-worker said incredulously the first time I told her.

It’s not just the Red Cross; it and other blood organizations must follow FDA blood regulations, which since 1980 have banned “MSM” — men who’ve had sex with men, even once, anytime since 1977 — from giving blood. (The Federal Advisory Committee on Blood Safety and Availability upheld the regulations in 2010 but called them “suboptimal.”) Legally, even if I were a match, I couldn’t give blood to my own relatives.

Proportionately speaking, gay men are at a higher risk of having HIV; the FDA website says that risk is 60 times higher than the general population, although the number of actual HIV cases reported in 2009 reveals the ratio to be somewhere between 2-to-1 and 3-to-1.

The FDA says that “today’s highly sensitive tests fail to detect less than one in a million HIV infected donors” — but with 20 million transfusions of blood products each year, that means up to 20 people a year already could contract HIV from a transfusion, and the feds think the risk of MSM blood outweighs any possible benefit. And with the risk of lawsuits — “I went in for a knee implant and came out with HIV!” — care providers might consider it the cautiously prudent choice.

Technically, we’re not banned; we “self-defer” by identifying a characteristic that place us “at potentially higher risk of carrying a transfusion transmissible disease.” (Which still means they won’t take the blood.) Other people in the “self-deferment” category: hookers, IV drug users and people who’ve had animal parts implanted. We could lie on the form and give blood; by being honest, we take ourselves out of contention.

It’s not just the U.S.; many European countries, including Denmark, Iceland and Portugal, have the same permanent deferment, while others set the deferment for one to five years after “exposure” (aka: sex). Only Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain don’t use it as a criteria for refusal. (Thanks, Wikipedia!)

I’m not going to get into statistics and the unlikelihood of someone who is community-conscious enough to want to give blood doing so even though he knows he’s got HIV, and that pint being the one in a million that doesn’t get caught in screening. I know the odds aren’t one in a million, though. Maybe one in a million-million. Any sicko who really wanted to screw with the blood supply could lie on the form, anyway.

Me, I’m not going to lie. But that means every time I’m asked to give blood, I’ll politely explain that it’s not that I won’t give blood, it’s that I can’t. And neither can 9.5 million other honest men.*

Even if we had just given a pint a year each, that’s a lot of blood they won’t have to screen. More than 1,175,000 gallons.

* An estimated 19 million people in the U.S. have had sex with a same-sex partner, according to the Williams Institute on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy, so let’s split that evenly men-to-women, and you get 9.5 million.

WHAT SAM WORE: 1-17-12
The sweater: Cotton-cashmere V-neck from Uniqlo, over a long-sleeved cotton T-shirt from Banana Republic.
The pants: Modern-fit cargo pants from Uniqlo.
The shoes: Suede sneakers, on clearance at Banana Republic.

I haven’t turned on the TV at our house in about a month.

I was thinking about it yesterday on the plane ride home, when the woman next to me was watching Law & Order: SVU on her iPad. I briefly considered the type of person who pays to download SVU for later viewing, then thought, “Wait — is that show even still on?”

And then I tried to remember the last time I turned on the telly at our house … which immediately led to DVR dread: How many programs were backed up, demanding my attention?

We never turned the TV on during our entire stay in Hawaii because, well, we were in Hawaii, where there were beaches to be reclined upon during the day and restaurants and bars to be frequented at night. Even the day I was sequestered in the room thanks to an injured foot, I opted for Facebook and phone conversations instead of TV. (Which was probably for the best: What’s going to be on TV in the late morning of Christmas Eve?)

Then we came home and I was squarely in catch-up mode, trying to get through 10 days’ worth of laundry, say hi to everyone I hadn’t seen for two weeks during the holidays and, oh yeah, return to work, too. Right when I was caught up, it was another plane, another city — this time New York, where it was cold and I was peevish and gimpy but gamely determined to make the best of my time in the city, so no TV there, either.

Maybe I haven’t missed a lot. Don’t lots of series take big breaks over the holidays for exactly that reason, since so many people have other commitments and distractions? I guess I’ll find out when I finally venture into the living room and turn on the DVR.

Just not tonight. I’m not ready to give up the streak just yet.

WHAT SAM WORE: 1-11-12
The shirt: “Love My Dilly Bar?” T-shirt, a gift the Meatheads brought back from Chicago, layered atop a long-sleeved cotton crewneck by BDg, from Urban Outfitters.
The pants: Hipster boot-cut washed khakis from Gap.
The shoes: Jack Purcells by John Varvatos for Converse, from Nordstrom Rack.

My first mistake was reading it on an airplane, nowhere near either grocery store or stove. As Adler described perfect, simple meals such as poached eggs drizzled with olive oil and topped with grated Parmesan, cracked black pepper and fresh herbs, I could feel myself growing hungrier and hungrier.

An Everlasting Meal, like M.F.K. Fisher’s books, is less a cookbook than a reminder about how you should think about how you cook. Chopping carrots and onions? Those usually-discarded tops and ends could be frozen, then eventually gathered with other such castoffs to make vegetable stock, which in turn can be used as a base for soup, or thickened for a sauce. Stale bread can be turned into croutons or breadcrumbs … or bread soup, if you add some of that stock above, some cooked kale and maybe some fried pancetta. Then, save the oil from the pancetta for use when sauteing vegetables.

There’s a recurring circle of thrift that makes using every piece of a food less about necessity, and more about possibility. The book’s subtitle sums it up well: “Cooking with Economy and Grace.”

An Everlasting Meal also features some great writing, like this passage where Adler describes how to make an omelet (the bold is my emphasis):

If the top still seems too wobbly to be quite considered as creamy, smooth whatever still wobbles toward the pan’s margins, where it should finish cooking. Let the inside of the omelet still have softness to it. Whatever you put in an omelet will like having something to grab on to.

There’s also an excerpt from a cookbook by the divinely named Clementine Paddleford, who says that you should cook beans until they “have gorged themselves with fat and water and swelled like the fat boy in his prime.” Adler follows that up by saying that when they cook, “beans should look like they’re bathing. Their tops should stay under the surface of the liquid, or they will get cracked and leathery, and they shouldn’t ever be in so much water that they’re swimming.” Without references to X cups or Y ounces, you still know what you’re doing.

I couldn’t wait to get home and start trying.

But around Chapter 9, I started experiencing Adler fatigue. What at first seemed like a welcome return to simplicity now just seemed repetitive. How many times would she say that the perfect topping for Food X is a healthy drizzle of olive oil, a shaving/grating of Parmesan and some chunks of crusty bread?  I started getting more annoyed every time she referred to Parmesan, Parmesan, Parmesan. (It’s like the Marcia of cheeses: Kindle kindly tallies the four dozen times the word is used throughout the book, while mozzarella appears twice, cheddar once and brie never.)

Soon I was looking forward not to “finishing the book,” but just for it to end. Like an initially delightful new friend who overstays his welcome, A Neverending Feast had lost its charm, and I couldn’t wait for it to take its leave. As it turns out, I took my leave of it instead — I just stopped reading. I’ll pick it up in a week or so to see if I’ve warmed to it again.

What it did instill in me, though, was a craving for bread. I had lunch at Wildflower Bread Co. yesterday and walked out with loaves of rosemary sea salt and levain. Tonight after work I tossed a few slices in the toaster oven, added a generous smear of butter — no rubbing with a cut clove of garlic, as Adler keeps suggesting — and savored. (I just had a third slice about a half-hour ago, too.)

And then I started thinking: “Wouldn’t this be even better with a warm soft-boiled egg? Or soaked with some rich broth and topped with cooked greens, and maybe some bacon?”

It appears that despite my efforts, I’ve already taken Adler to heart. I suspect I’ll enjoy the last chapters of the book more than I thought I would.

WHAT SAM WORE: 1-10-12
The shirt: Dark blue plaid Gothics Mountain flannel button-down, on clearance for $19 at Abercrombie & Fitch online.
The pants: Slim straight jeans from Lucky Brand, Chandler Fashion Center.
The shoes: “Top Winner” sneakers by Puma, from the Puma store in New York.

So it’s time to confess how I really injured my foot: I fell down while trying to walk and talk at the same time.

No, really. I consider myself very lucky that gum-chewing wasn’t also part of the equation, or I could have been crippled for life.

It happened shortly after we left Doraku sushi restaurant in Waikiki. Yes, a sake bomber had been consumed, but it had arrived in its own single-gulp glass, pre-combined, so it wasn’t like we had each downed a big-boy bottle of Kirin and our own tokkuri‘s worth of sake.

• ASIDE #1: How cool is this ceramic sake bomb set from Purcell Living? The main container holds 8 ounces of sake, and the spines allow you to store the four beakers right on the vase.

It also was raining — real rain, not one of those moments of slight misty spatter that inspired a surfing instructor to say, “We call this blissing” — but the fall wasn’t really related to that, either. Sarah and I were deep in conversation, leading our pack of pedestrians (and possibly discussing some of them), when we got to a corner and I stepped off the curb.

On the left: How deep I assumed the curb was. On the right: How deep the curb apparently actually was.

|___________|               |                                |
|___________|               |                                |
|___________|               |                                |
|___________|               |____________|

When three feet of you is legs, it can be difficult to stop something that’s already been put into motion. Like a fall, for example. So unlike Wile E. Coyote, who at least gets to be suspended in midair for a moment while he realizes his imminent doom, I was already midstride toward what I thought was going to be my next step while my body was headed a lot farther down than it was planning to go.

So I landed on the foot wrong, and my whole leg from the ankle up went sideways. Ow. But I hopped up right away, we all laughed at the clumsy move — well, everyone did but me, smarting in my shame — and we continued on toward our destination. My foot was a little sore but I assumed I’d walk it off … although it wasn’t feeling much better when it was time to head back to the hotel. “I don’t think I’m going back to the dance club,” I said. (Our evening had gotten off to a rocky start there after a well-intentioned but uncomfortably received drag show.) “I don’t even like standing right now.”

The next morning — Christmas Eve — I couldn’t put any weight on it, which became my “oh crap” moment. Sarah had gone for her morning run and CPOS and Mr. Brooks had headed to the Navy base to pick up a few items, so I dialed the front desk and asked if by chance they had any crutches. “Is it for, you know, an old person?” the woman replied, which I briefly took offense at — hey, I’m barely in my 40s! — before I realized what she actually was trying to say. “Oh, no — I just injured my ankle and was hoping to grab a pair to help me get around.” They researched and came back negative; there was a wheelchair that a staff member would be happy to push me around in, but no crutches.

• ASIDE #2: On its homepage,  The Royal Hawaiian promotes itself as Waikiki’s finest luxury resort with “unmatched service.” If you checked in tomorrow at the lowest available daily rate, you’d pay more than $1,000 a night before taxes and fees. So in my mind, here’s what that answer should have been: “I’m sorry, we can’t find any crutches on site, but we’d be happy to find some for you.” That, of course, did not happen. Maybe “unmatched service” means “other luxury places do it better.”

Next stop: a call to the closest urgent care center listed on my insurance site. They would close at noon — whether that was regular Saturday hours or special Christmas Eve occurrence is unknown. They also didn’t have crutches on site — “We don’t carry stock here,” said the woman who answered the phone — and when I followed up, wondering if she could think of any nearby place where I could pick up a pair, she said, “You know, I really can’t think of anyplace.”

Urgent care in Honolulu isn’t very urgent.

I decided that if they were too clueless to even know where I could pick up a pair of crutches nearby, I wasn’t going to risk what would surely be a lack of knowledge of medical diagnostics. So I did a little web browsing, then called Mr. Brooks and asked if they’d be kind enough to stop by a store on their way back from the base and pick me up a pair of crutches.

Here’s how good of friends Mr. Brooks and CPOS are: They went to Wal-Mart the day before Christmas because I told them the store sold crutches. And when they got there, they discovered that the store does not have crutches in stock; you can order them online to be delivered to the store for pickup. So instead they went to a Longs Drugs that I had called to make sure it had crutches in-store — even when that store turned out to be smack-dab in the middle of Ala Moana Center. That’s when I forgave them for laughing at me for falling down, and even awarded them a credit balance in their karma score.

The plan for Christmas Day had been to head to the North Shore for a day of snorkeling and sun, but the beaches’ long stretches of deep sand would have been near-impossible for me to navigate, so I opted to stay at the hotel while the rest of the pack headed north. (I wasn’t too broken up about this, because the plan was also to leave at 6 a.m., and I was like, “There is no such thing as 6 a.m. on my vacation.”)

Waikiki has a meandering paved pathway along the beachfront, so I could still make my way along the waterfront and grab lunch. And since I had the whole day to kill, I made my way to Queens Beach, 1.2 miles, to people-watch and begin a rollicking game of “Speedo or Square-Cut,” in which I tallied the number of dudes sporting each type of swimsuit on this, commonly known as Waikiki’s “gay beach.” (I, for the record, had regular knee-length cotton shorts on, since I knew frolicking in the waves was not an option. Admittedly, they were the ones that tend to earn me compliments for a shapely backside, but still, neither Speedo nor squarecut.)

And later, I returned to The Royal Hawaiian, which has its own section of private beach that can also be accessed via small gate from the patio restaurant, so I was able to hobble down to a chair to bask in the sun for a while, even with a wrapped right foot. I sent the photo at right to Sarah as evidence that I was in fact able to enjoy the day, even if I wasn’t with the whole crew up north as they exchanged presents.

I kept using the crutches for a few days — and as a bonus, Sarah and I got to board the plane home from Hawaii with the rest of the passengers “who need a little extra assistance.” I still have one in my car, just in case something goes horribly wrong, but I’m happy to report I gave up using them back in 2011.

Back in Phoenix, I had the foot X-rayed; I knew it wasn’t the ankle that was affected because the pain was centered more in the instep and center of the foot, about an inch below and in front of the ankle bone.  The X-rays showed no bone fractures, so luckily it’s a matter of letting the muscles/tendons heal from the sprain.

I spent much of last week in New York, probably one of the walking-est cities in the nation, and while there were periods of “holy crap let me rest this for a moment” (and I was always a bit relieved to get back to the hotel and give it a break it at the end of the day) I was pleased with how well I did overall. Maybe next week I’ll be ready to hit a treadmill or elliptical again?

But first, today, I need to hit the shower. (My first back home after the trip to New York! Very excited.)

WHAT SAM WORE: 1-8-12 An exclusive look at his sexy sleep- and loungewear!
The shirt: Long-sleeved cotton T-shirt by Abercrombie & Fitch, a hand-me-down from Mr. Brooks that I have since turned into a painting shirt.
The shorts: Cotton jersey drawstring-waist shorts by Mossimo, from Target.
The shoes: Flip-flops by Quiksilver, from a surf shop in Hawaii (on my last trip there).

“It’s nice and everything, but our room looks out on the parking lot,” she said.

“Well, it’s not really a parking lot, right?” I replied. “It’s more like a porte-cochère, where you can unload and valet your car. Plus, how can you even see it through all of the tropical trees and plants?”

This wasn’t “not seeing the forest for the trees”; it was not even seeing the trees.

After Mr. Brooks and CPOS picked Sarah and me up at the airport that Friday, they announced a surprise: We would be staying at The Royal Hawaiian, while they had taken what would have been our room at the Sheraton Waikiki next door. We were delighted but, once in our room, wondered about the incentive for such a magnanimous gesture.

We figured it out later that night, when we met them for drinks at their room … on the second-to-highest floor, with a private balcony that opened to an ocean view. (It became our late-afternoon gathering point to watch the sun plummet with amazing speed out of horizon’s view. Click on the thumbnail of this or any other photo to bring up the full-size photo in a new window.)

Not that our room was shabby, by any means; Sarah and I agreed that we thought we got the better end of the deal, even without a sunset-ocean view. Our room may have looked out onto a shaded courtyard — no sunsets (and no sunrises, either) — but we appreciated the little touches, like the rich-looking pineapple-print foil wallpaper and the two free bottles of water they delivered each day during housekeeping. We unpacked our suitcases almost immediately in preparation for 10 days of delight. (That’s our room on Day 3, above, and an early-afternoon view from our window at left.) The trees swayed rhythmically with the breeze, the leaves quaked and rattled, and the pedestrians on the pathways below were suitably respectful in their volume levels, so we had no complaints at all.

The Sister did, however. Well, not really a complaint so much as an unending tendency to discuss all the negatives. No, there was nothing wrong with her room; she just thought that the view would, you know, be nicer, especially since Mr. Brooks had such a great one. She suspected that she was being passed over.

Sometimes she was: One night our server at the bar took orders for everyone at the table but missed her completely. But The Sister is the sort of person who, rather than jumping up and catching the server, will sit there not-so-quietly bemoaning her fate of being overlooked, to everyone at the table. Eventually I got up on my crutches and hobbled down to the server to add her drink to our order.

OK, so it wasn’t “eventually” — it was right away, because (a) I was able to catch the server before she placed the order with the bar staff, so we could get The Sister’s drink at the same time as everyone else’s, and (b) I was damned if I was going to listen to more complaining. When I got back to the table, The Sister was still going: “I know I have the sort of voice that doesn’t carry well, but I don’t understand why she just ignored me. I mean, what else can I do?”

Earlier in the trip, I had decided that this sort of behavior was unacceptable on my watch, and I had spent an entire day and night playing The Sister’s best friend and personal cheerleader: Let’s discuss things! Let’s reframe viewpoints! I bet I can turn that frown upside-down! By the end of the night I had her singing “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” in a gay-dive karaoke bar while Mr. Brooks twirled Sarah in the alley entryway.

I was stellar, she was diverted, and Mr. Brooks so appreciated my efforts that the following night at one of his favorite restaurants — The Shore Bird, where you “get” to grill your own food, a concept I despise — he cooked my steak for me. (Usually, the minutes I stand seething at the cooktop just make his meal that much more delicious to him.)

It comes naturally to me but it is also exhausting, and the next day when The Sister showed no signs of improvement, I decided that she, not others, should be responsible for her happiness or lack thereof.

I started off slowly: When she kept bringing up how much she’d like to eat at a particular restaurant, I called the place and checked if we could get a table for 11 people, then told her: “The only time they can get in the whole party tomorrow is at 8:45. If that’s not too late, you can call and make the reservation.” The next morning, The Sister asked Mr. Brooks: “Did Sam call and make that reservation?” Mr. Brooks, who had witnessed the previous night’s exchange, replied: “No, Sam did not.”

So by the bar incident, my sympathy was running dangerously low, and Sarah and I were playing a game we called “What Would The Sister Say?” in which we would stop what we were doing — sunbathing, shopping, eating in a restaurant, whatever — and challenge the other person to channel The Sister’s negative-Nelly attitude and harp about a minuscule less-than-ideal element in our situation. (“I just thought there’d be more sailboats” was my contribution to the above photo.)

The last day, we ran into The Sister’s family on the sidewalk and she mentioned that she was still looking for a memento for herself. She had seen a pendant in a couple of shops, but it was $200 and she was sure it wasn’t actually worth that much —

“Did you try negotiating with them?” I interrupted, already irritated. “Your niece did that on a bracelet and got about 1/3 of the price knocked off.”

Oh, no — she had seen the pendant for the same price at two different places, so that probably meant they wouldn’t negotiate. And back to harping about worth and being ripped off.

“You know, even if it’s not technically worth what you pay for it, there’s added value in its ability to commemorate the trip,” I said. “Every time you wear it, you’ll feel good about your vacation, and that’s immeasurable.”

Then she launched into a discussion about how she never wants to be ripped off, and how if something is expensive but she knows it’s worth it, she doesn’t have a problem paying. “I have some Yogo sapphires that I bought for $200, and I know they’re worth it,” she said.

I hadn’t heard the term “Yogo sapphires” since I left Montana two decades ago; it’s an attempt to distinguish the stones that are mined in a particular area of the state. Just like any other gem, there are high-quality ones and low-quality ones, and the Yogo name isn’t a guarantee of greatness. But I did not say anything, I just kept quiet while she went on about Yogo sapphires, Yogo sapphires value, Yogo sapphires, Yogo sapphires, including one where somehow or another they etched the coordinates of a Montana town onto the Yogo sapphire.

“Well, you’re not going to find Yogo sapphires here,” I said, finally snapping out of my ignore-ance. “So you’re going to have to find something else. Maybe it’s not jewelry. Maybe it’s not even tropical-themed. I bought a pair of sunglasses in San Diego, and every time I wear them, it reminds me of the trip.”

“Well, I want something that has sea turtles on it … ” she said, and that’s when I turned and walked away. “Good luck,” I said over my shoulder. “You’ve got about six hours.”

“She’s never going to find anything she likes,” Sarah said when we were out of earshot. “You’re absolutely right,” I replied, “and she’s going to make everyone miserable while she’s looking, which is why I had to get away.”

For our last hours, meanwhile, Sarah and I took one last stroll down Waikiki Beach, snapping surreptitious photos of hot boys to send to Tyra Sanchez back in Phoenix, who had requested one photo per day. (We saw the buff guy at right marching along pretty much every day we spent time on the public beach.) We also took a few last shots of Waikiki from the eastern reach of the beach before we started walking back down toward our hotel. We stopped for one last meal at the udon noodles place we had come to love — not just because it was delicious but also because a bowl of noodles was $3.75. (I took extraordinary pleasure in ordering the bukkake udon, because I am a 13-year-old at heart.) We also snapped the photo at right to send to Mr. Brooks and CPOS, whose last meal before the airport had not been from the udon place, as they had hoped, but rather at the tourist trap Duke’s, because The Sister had wanted one last slice of “hula pie” (recipe and photo here.)

Luckily, he didn’t hate us enough to not pick us up at the airport in Phoenix when we landed.  Then again, that may have been because he needed a ride back to the airport that night …

WHAT SAM WORE: 12-31-11
The sweater: Olive long-sleeved cotton pullover from Gap.
The shorts: Corduroy cut-offs from Lucky Brand, Chandler Fashion Center.
The shoes: Sneakers by Puma, my Christmas gift from Big Booty Judy.

We’ve been in Hawaii for like a day when someone starts giving me crap.

Mr. Brooks, his brother and CPOS had arrived a few days before Sarah and I did, and had made the acquaintance of a guy who by Friday apparently hated them. They suspect it was because he had been bragging about how much money he had spent on charity, in one of those “Pay $XX and we’ll put a handprint with your name on our wall!” sort of deals, and in an admitted effort to show him up, Mr. Brooks paid even more to buy the rest of the them.

Whatever. At any rate, our table is enjoying our first weekend in Hawaii when the guy walks by, stops and starts sassing the Brooks brothers: “Oh, God, you again.” Then he turns on me: “Ooh, are you wearing an Abercrombie shirt? That must mean you play sports! That you’re part of a team!” and continues on his merry way.

“That was weird,” we say, and I recall an online profile I saw with the headline: If I wanted to be read, I’d go to a fortune teller. Now I know what that the author felt like. But now that our little Words With Enemies game is over, things should return to normal.

Oh, but we’re not done. I run into him again as I’m coming out of the bathroom and he’s headed in. He sneers and says, “You look like the sort of person who doesn’t wash his hands.”

I have a reputation for equanimity but I am, secretly, a bit of a hothead. I’ve learned to recognize that my first-moment instant fury is rarely appropriate and to quickly temper it with logic, rather than lashing out. This, although it appears to start off as such, is not one of those moments.

“I’m sorry, we haven’t been introduced,” I say, offering my hand for a shake. “I’m Sam, and yes, they’re washed.” We shake, and then I follow up: “Here’s the deal. You don’t know me well enough to talk to me like a little [very dirty word that women in particular hate]. If you do it again, I will punch you in the [four-syllable dirty word] face.”

I didn’t have to, luckily. I’ve never been in a fight in my life, and likely would have failed spectacularly in any attempt to throw a punch. But he didn’t know that. If someone has enough fire to say something like that to you, they’re likely willing to follow up word with deed — and in this case, I think I would have been game to at least try, especially knowing that I had backup at my table a few steps away. (And by that I am referring to Sarah, not Mr. Brooks.)

I think we saw him one more night, and he probably was throwing us shade but still kept a respectful distance.  Do not mess up my vacation, people.

Up next: The many ways I did NOT sprain my ankle.

WHAT SAM WORE: 12-29-11
The sweater: Cotton V-neck pullover from Gap.
The pants: Slim straight jeans from Lucky Brand, Chandler Fashion Center.
The shoes: Leather slip-ons by Bacco Bucci, from Last Chance.

Awhile back, at some friends’ holiday party, I had the chance to see (but not meet) a guy who caught my eye. I put it aside for a while, then did what any ex-journalist would do in such a situation: research.

Nothing like the Full-On FOIA style of digging that comes instinctively to reporters (“Let’s start with a public records search and see where that leads us”). Just asking a few reliable sources for their input — background material, if you will, and maybe some local color. And rather than make it seem too much like an interrogation, I phrased it more along the lines of: “Hey, tell me five things about your friend.”

The way they responded was entertaining as well as informative — not only about him but them as well. One shot off five short answers …

1. [Occupation] 2. Funny 3. Clean freak 4. Considerate 5. Smartass”

while the other, after a precursive “Insufficient Data: Require Context for Processing” — savvy, that one! — tended toward longer but more incisive blurbs …

“Resilient, both physically (can take a headbutt) and emotionally (can be practical in the face of emotional turmoil), but goes from zero to Diva when he reaches his limit.”

I told them that reading the blurbs was so entertaining — how did his ability to take a headbutt become a known entity? — that I wanted to start asking them to “do the same thing for other people, selected at whim. ([Other mutual friend!] Mariah Carey! Aristotle!)”*

And then I thought: “Do I even know five things about Aristotle?” After ruminating for a bit, I decided to give it a test. Here goes:

1. Very wise Greek philosopher — big on logic and ethics.
2. Student of Plato. Or possibly vice versa.
3. Also: Not Socrates, so he’s not The One Who Took Poison or The Guy Who Came Up With That Method of Making People Defend Their Positions.
4. Also: Not Sophocles. (He wrote plays.)
5. And … that about does it. Aristotle Onassis was probably named after him. There, that’s five.

Imagine how smart I felt after pouring out such a wealth of exhaustive knowledge! I’m trying to decide how best to remedy such ignorance; it never hurts to know a little more about things.

Then again, I’ve stumbled through life this far and my inability to discuss Aristotelian treatises and dialogues hasn’t hindered me yet, that I’m aware of. Plus, even browsing his page on Wikipedia made my head hurt, so apparently I should start with some sort of Aristotle for Dummies. Maybe one of those Don’t Know Much About books has something. That seems like the appropriate amount to make me seem smarter than I actually am.

But in the meanwhile, I can’t wait to do my “5 things” about Mariah Carey.

*Also, I decided that although it sounded fun in principle, I probably wouldn’t like to hear what five things other people would say about me, unless I had given them advance warning the questions were coming, and possibly cash gifts.

WHAT SAM WORE: 12-13-11
The sweater: Navy/gray argyle cotton V-neck, from Old Navy.
The shirt: Long-sleeved waffle-weave hoodie, from Old Navy.
The pants: Boot-fit trousers from Banana Republic. (Selection inspired by above admission of pants laziness.)
The shoes: Loafers by Rush Gordon Rush, from Nordstrom.