Not very appetizing

Heavy hors d'oeuvres has officially been added to the short list of things I hate, joining Jay Leno, chunky peanut butter, neckbeard and any "Saturday Night Live" skit with Jimmy Fallon. (Except "Cowbell," of course. Everyone was laughing during that one.)

I came to this realization a few weeks ago after attending a pre-graduation reception on the campus of The George Washington University. (Motto: We Cannot Tell A Lie - Tuition Is Pretty Expensive.)

Before I continue, let me state unequivocally that I had a lovely time, the people I met were friendly and the rooftop view of The Mall made a great background for photos that could easily achieve Facebook profile picture-status. That said, I had two main problems with this shindig.

First, the dress code was "business professional." Not be confused with "business casual," of course, or "casual professional" or "Kris Kross," which is when you wear a smoking jacket backward. Even now, I still have no idea what that means. Note to Event Planners: Just tell me on the invitation if I need to wear a coat and tie. I'll take it from there.

The bigger issue, though, was the reception featured heavy hors d'oeuvres, the cocktail hour's annoying cousin.

I like a good cocktail hour. It's a chance to ease your way into a party, scope out the lay of the land, drink and mingle. The night is still full of possibilities, so everyone is in a good mood, and getting another drink is a great excuse to leave a boring conversation. Plus, if you're lucky, there will be pigs in a blanket and/or egg rolls. People would never eat regular-sized hot dogs and egg rolls together, but make them miniature and watch the plates fill up.

Heavy hors d'oeuvres, on the other hand, is French for "you're not getting dinner." That means more focus on eating and less on schmoozing. The actual food also seems bigger, like appetizers on steroids. The food needs a plate that becomes difficult to use once you put even one item on it because there is most likely a drink in your other hand. If you're without a drink, you still have to fully commit to your plate because whatever is on there probably requires a fork or your fingers to consume. Much of the freedom and enjoyment of the cocktail partygoer is thanks to the toothpick.

Put this all together, and there I was at GW, furiously wiping my hand on a napkin to get off the grease from my 18th piece of coconut-breaded chicken to shake hands with the guy I just met while also keeping an eye on the beer I momentarily placed next to the vegetable platter. That it was my 18th piece is a bit of exaggeration, but not by much; heavy hors d'ouevres typically lack the variety of the cocktail hour, forcing you to stick with what's working. If you disguised any type of competitive eating contest as heavy hors d'ouevres, everyone could find their inner-Kobayashi.

I was the bad kind of full by the time we left, the kind where you still feel hungry but the thought of actually eating something else makes you feel a bit queasy. But seeing the graduate-to-be beaming at the start of her big weekend was better medicine than Pepto-Bismol, and, besides, the drinks were free.

Also, I was properly dressed in my coat and tie.

Fine print

I've read newspapers my entire life and have wanted nothing more professionally than to write for one. Beating deadlines, asking the tough questions, wearing a fedora with the "Press" card sticking out from the side - what's not to love about the life of a newspaperman? (That term is no longer politically correct, of course. We in the business prefer "stewardess.")

Sadly, I might be the last of a dying species. More people are getting their news online than from any other source, according to various reports I've read online. The Internet is fundamentally changing journalism, and all of us in the newspaper business are still trying to figure out just how big we need to make Sudoku puzzles in order to turn a profit.

The death of the print newspaper is a matter of "when," not "if." Some people believe the last print editions will roll off the presses by the end of the decade. I already can see myself shedding a tear in my flying car when that day comes.

So I decided recently to begin preparing for the worst. I gave up up reading newspapers for one week. This meant no sports section with breakfast, something else to occupy my time in the bathroom and purchasing wrapping paper for the first time.

My ban included one important exception: I still read the comics every day. I can imagine a world without newspapers, but I choose not to think about a world without Beetle Bailey.

I began my newspaper fast on a Sunday, my big newspaper reading day. Big Newspaper, probably fearing the loss of one of its last young, loyal subscribers, somehow convinced the Obama administration that night was ideal to announce Osama bin Laden had been killed. I sensed this was not going to be easy.

Yet somehow I managed to avoid reading newspapers all week. The hardest part was picking up the newspaper on my doorstep each morning. It practically cried out for my warm embrace, but I quickly threw it in my recycling pile and zeroed in on my Cinnamon Life.

The best part of the week was not dealing with newsprint. There are so many fingerprints on door frames in my house I could hold several sections of a forensics class. (My mom, in her infinite wisdom, always wondered aloud why my dad and I didn't use doorknobs. I'm not sure, but I believe it's related to the fact neither of us can find things we're looking for that are directly in front of our faces.)

Not reading newspapers also cleared my schedule. As a journalist, I find newspapers to be a sort of continuing education resource, so I tend to read every word of most stories to see what works, what doesn't and maybe pick up a story idea or two. Sections of Sunday papers might last me until Friday. Naturally, I spent much of my free time trying to cut down the pile of Esquires I had yet to open.

Interestingly, I didn't read more news online as I thought I would. I wondered if my consumption of print media fed my consumption of Internet news and vice versa, a chicken-and-egg kind of relationship. Or, perhaps more accurately, a dodo bird-and-egg relationship.

That was the sad realization I had at the conclusion of my experiment. There will probably be a point in my lifetime I won't even have the option of giving up a newspaper. It'll just be gone, like Beetle whenever Sarge is in a foul mood. Call me a romantic with blackened fingertips, but I find something very comforting about holding the daily paper in my hands.

So I will keep reading newspapers until the last one rolls off the presses. I just need to figure out what to do with all of this gift wrap.

Winning putts

We were at the miniature golf course in Ocean City and I was dreading what I was about to say, even though I already knew how she would answer.

"Are we keeping score?"

Unlike Charlie Sheen, I have a complicated relationship with winning. (That joke already sounded dated in my head but I still wanted to see how it looked in print. Thanks for the memories, Charlie.) I can be a competitive person, but I'd rather give others a chance to win first before I crush them.

I feel it most when it comes to trivia-related games. Over the years I have retained gobs of information, some of it useful, most of it useless. I like to think I would make a great lifeline on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire." (That's two dated references if you're scoring at home.)

I try to walk the fine line between "smart" and "know-it-all" without coming off as a tool. Part of me wants to scream out that James Polk was president during the Mexican-American War, part of me wants to let someone else share the knowledge with the group. My competitive streak is similar when it comes to sports. Well, at least for the one sport where I consider myself an old pro.

I've played miniature golf for as long as I can remember. Summer weekends meant going to Ocean City and playing miniature golf Saturday mornings and many times Sunday on our way home. My brother and I have played every golf course on Coastal Highway dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

And we never kept score, unless our grandfather was with us. He would keep score with his unique system: we shot a 2 on every hole no matter how many strokes we actually took. Mulligans were encouraged, and afterward he bought us sodas. To this day, I can't see orange soda without thinking about golf balls.

That's why scorecard sticklers during a round of miniature golf amaze me as much as the people who bring their own putters or spend minutes standing over and lining up each putt. But I know I'm in the minority, so I simply try not to pay attention when friends want to keep score - even as I secretly want to win.

So when I asked her about keeping score, I already knew I'd have a golf pencil behind my ear for 18 holes. We decided to play one of the newest venues in Ocean City, an indoor track I never played before built where two of my favorite outdoor courses once stood. They paved paradise and put up something slightly less than paradise.

I threw out the score card after we finished, so I don't remember what happened hole-by-hole. (Afterward, however, we did get margaritas with dinner.) What I do remember is around the start of the back-nine she asked me for the score. Hers was probably much higher than mine. At the time I definitely shot more birdies and pars than she did.

What she didn't know was that I was using the Grampa Scoring System. After taking a stroke off here, after honoring her mulligan there but counting mine, I announced she was only down by one shot. The look on her face was a weird mix of anger, shock, irritation and amusement.

"Keep score for real," she said.

So I did. And I won, fair and square. Just like the United States did in the Mexican-American War. Which officially ended in 1848 after the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Duh.

Gas pains

We have early front-runners for Parents of the Year. I followed them into a gas station recently.

Dad was driving a blue, compact car with enough dings to make you want to check the nearest customer service window. Mom sat in the passenger seat, with Junior and Sis in the back seat. Sis sat directly behind Mom on the same side of the car as the gas tank (more on that in a bit).

Anyways, I got out of my car and started filling up. Actually, that's not true: I had to punch in answers to approximately 8,429 questions before I could start pumping gas. No, I don't have a reward card, Yes, I think Christina Aguilera on "The Voice" is looking like a blond Snooki, No, I don't want a car wash, Yes, this is a credit card, No, I really don't want a car wash.

Adding to my misery was the crappy music blaring in my ear from a speaker directly next to the keypad. Because paying $4 a gallon isn't enough, I was stuck listening to "Hotel California." Show me a gas station where paying is simple and there is no music playing, and I'll ask how you built your time machine because we must be in 1957 or 1964.

Once I correctly responded to the pump's final question (No, I don't think those buttons make you look fat), I was ready to go. And that's when I saw Sis, out of the family car. I'm guessing she was in middle school, or one of those girls in elementary school who dwarfs over every boy in her class. She was wearing a pink tutu over black tights and an old T-shirt.

It's been a while since I did a plie, but I don't think you wear a tutu for rehearsal. Maybe she was asserting her independence and wearing whatever she wanted. We've all been there; Jason Segel has told the story of wearing a cape when he was a boy, and, thankfully, I've burned all the pictures from my Kriss Kross phase in 1992. So I wasn't going to blame the parents for Sis' fashion decision.

I will blame them for what Sis was doing outside the family car - filling the tank. Maybe she drew the unlucky seat closest to the gas tank and therefore had to pump the gas. Maybe she insisted on pumping the gas the way she insisted on wearing a tutu. Whatever the reason, pumping gas would seem to scream "direct parental supervision." Yet Mom and Dad remained firmly planted in the car, staring out into space.

Dad was in such a trance, in fact, that he forgot to turn off the engine. The only time I've ever seen gas poured while a car is running is during an auto race, and even then the guy doing it and everyone around him wears a flame-retardant suit.

So, to recap, we have an underage girl in a tutu pumping gas into a running car five feet away from me. I was alternately watching my pump and trying to memorize the license plate on the family's car for a police report or call to child protective services.

Then I noticed Sis watching her pump and nozzle, giving a little extra squeeze when the gas shut off. That's when I realized she's done this before. So, Mom and Dad, for making your daughter your own personal gas attendant, you are slam-dunk finalists for Parents of the Year.

Sis closed the gas tank and hopped back in the car. The family drove away, probably back home so Junior could change the car's oil and rotate the tires.