Chrisaralex

Facing mortality

2008-03-25T07:37:00.001-07:00

It's been a long time. Way too long. And it shouldn't be news like this that brings my writing skills out of semi-retirement.

It's quite likely that I have ALS. This stands for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. It is better known as Lou Gehrig's disease. It is a neuromuscular disease, and while treatable, it is not curable.

Here's the kicker: it is nearly always fatal.

From my understanding of it, the motor neurons in the brain, and/or brain stem, and/or spinal cord just stop working. In my case, it's the first two. So far, only my mouth is affected; my speech is a bit slurred, and I tend to bite my cheeks or lip accidentally. Eventually, it will likely move to my limbs. And, eventually, it will probably affect my swallowing and breathing. Cognitive skills aren't impaired, which means you retain all your knowledge, intelligence, and awareness.

Not all is lost. There are drugs that slow it somewhat, new drugs being tested that may slow it quite a bit, and medical research is advancing all the time. Stephen Hawking has had it for 45 years, and he's done pretty well for himself. A cure will be found eventually, and there's no reason why I shouldn't be the poster child who benefits from it.

Meanwhile, I've had this sudden urge (completely reasonable, under the circumstances) to reconnect with old friends. If you know me, and stumble across this blog, please contact me. I'm not posting personal information here for the world to see, but if you know me or my family, I shouldn't be hard to find.

There is a new link on this page, the first link in the list. Please visit it. If you are able to donate, please do. (The red button on the link is for donations. The "Join the team" is to help solicit other donations.)

Again, if our lives have crossed, please get in touch with me. I'd love to hear from you.

These are few of my favorite things...

2007-05-14T15:12:00.000-07:00

I always suspected that eventually, some of my hobbies may turn into big-time, professional-type, money-making businesses. Two of these seem to have now done so, except for the "big-time", "professional", and "money-making" parts. I never expected that it would take having children to do this.

The first hobby is juggling. My friend Mark turned me on to it, or maybe I turned him on to it. I can't remember. What I do remember is working at Bob's Big Boy and spending my lunch hour in the walk-in refrigerator with three lemons. After months and months(and lots of bruised lemons) I finally got the hang of basic juggling and started on tricks. (Maybe Mark did catch the bug from me, because I distinctly remember the jealousy I felt (and still feel) when he quickly outclassed me.) I always imagined we'd hit the stage as a comedy juggling duo. Well, there's still time. Maybe after retirement. We can do a senile act. "Mark, what are we doing here in front of all these people with these clubs?" "Hell if I know. Seen my antacid?"

Anyway, I ended up getting a gig as a juggler. Unpaid. At my daughter's school. For the spring fair. And more than juggling, I'll be teaching it. Someone is bringing a boatload of yarn balls for me to use to teach kids how to juggle. Well, it's a start.

Another hobby of mine is decorating cakes, which until recently I thought I could actually make money from. I say recently, because I've just tuned into a cable show on the Food Network called "Ace of Cakes", and whereas I once thought I was getting pretty good, I now realize that in the grand scheme of things, I'm still only fooling around.

Anyway, I'm making a wedding cake. Sounds auspicious, until you hear who it's for. It's for Q and U.

No, that's not the initials of the bride and groom. Those are their names. Q and U.

My son is finishing up kindergarten. They have "Letter People", like Mr. M who has a munchy mouth, and Mrs. T who has big teeth. Well, the last two Letter People they are covering this year are Q and U. And next week, Q and U are getting married. The kindergarten is having a party, and needs people to bring cups and plates and juice and snacks. And cake.

I really don't think the teacher is expecting an actual wedding cake, but hell, why not? It's good practice, and I've never done a tiered cake before. It's a good way to try it. If it works, great, and if it doesn't, not a big deal. I won't have ruined someone's wedding.

Although I'm going to have to work a little bit to find an appropriate cake topper. A matched figurine set of a quail and a unicorn might be hard to come by.

3,2,1, Contact!

2007-05-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

This is an unusual post. Its only purpose is to appeal to one particular person reading this blog. Belgarion Longbow, you know who you are. I'd love to hear from you again, but for the life of me can't figure out how to use your comment to my last posting to respond or contact you.

Although I'm not going to put my email address up here, for anyone to see, you know my name and hopefully remember how to spell it. Look me up! If you happen to contact the people at the address I lived when we met, they will be able to tell you how to get in touch with me.

There are others from that same summer I am still in touch with who would also love to hear about/from you.

(I'm putting the onus on you because my last name is much more unusual than yours, and you are more likely to find me than the other way around. Besides, last time I heard about you, you were in Germany!)

Call, write, email, something! I look forward to it.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire

2007-05-08T01:06:00.000-07:00

I had just finished editing and posting that last entry when I hear rustling in the back room. I hissed at the cat that I thought was rummaging around behind the TV. Ten seconds later, that same cat comes out making a very strange sound. The only time I've heard it before was when he had caught a mouse. So I start flipping on lights and chasing him down.

I catch up just in time to see him drop my children's pet hamster on the living room floor.

Now understand, this would be exceedingly bad, considering that just this past weekend we held a funeral for the other hamster. Yes, a funeral. Graveside, with some words of condolence for the dearly departed, followed by sniffles and tears. I actually said Kaddish for a hamster.

Having dealt with it once already, I was in no mood to do a repeat performance. I grabbed the cat and held him still, wondering how the hell I was going to get the hamster back, since it had run under the chair (the chair which was next to the couch on which both of my children decided to sleep tonight).

I only had a few seconds to think about it, because that was when the hamster waddled out from under the chair and into my hand.

I must be really tired, because it took two of us to figure out what happened next. See, I had the hamster cage in the downstairs bathroom, with the door closed, because the wheel is squeaky and it was driving us nuts. So when I go back to put her in the cage, I see the bathroom door is still closed! Inside, the cage (which had been perched on the sink) was on its side on the floor. I figured, the hamster running in the wheel gradually edged the cage closer to the side of the sink until it fell over and made its escape. It was very thoughtful of the hamster (or, possibly, the cat) to close the door after herself, but how the hell did she do it?

It took both of us to realize that we're talking about a hamster. A rodent. A thing that can squeeze into tight places.

Like under a door.

Phone service at Ellis Island

2007-05-08T00:24:00.000-07:00

Today I spoke with a friend of mine about a cute little incident involving my oldest daughter. He suggested I write about it (I was about to say "blog it", but I'm still not comfortable enough with the format to call it that), so that's what this entry is about. Note that what I used to call "my daughter" I am now calling "my oldest daughter". This is another story that another good friend has told me I should write about, and I will, but I haven't figured out the words yet. Keep posted.

By the way, the words "cute little incident involving my daughter" are code words. They translate to "highly amusing anecdote to those people with children, and a really boring post to those without". You have been warned.

Anyway, I'm hanging about the house today with nothing better to do except wonder when the PTO will call me back when I glance outside and see a strange sight. All the lawn chairs and the bench have been lined up in two rows, one behind the other. Sitting in the second row is my (oldest) daughter. She is dressed in a petticoat, with a shawl around her shoulders and a bandanna on her head. In her lap rests a wicker basket, and her hands are neatly folded on the handle. She is just sitting there, seemingly doing nothing.

Curious, I call through the screen door, "Sarah, what are you doing?"

She answers, "I'm emigrating. I'm waiting my turn." And then, as I watch, she moves up a seat. And waits.

She's the only one out there. No one is there calling her name or stamping passports. She's the only child on our street (or town, or borough, or probably state) who plays "Emigration".

I felt like Gomez Adams. Strange and different, but a little proud to be so. What kind of child plays emigration? My kind, I suppose.

(On a related note, five minutes later I look out and my son is sitting on one of the chairs with a blanket around his head. "Alex, are you emigrating too?", I ask. The answer: "No, dad, I'm Luke Skywalker.")

-----

That's part one. Part two is the lovely experience I had with our telecommunications company over the past few days. I won't tell you which company it is, but I will say that it starts with a "V" and ends with "erizon".

Our roommate moved out. It was clear when he moved in that the situation was only temporary, but then again, that was seven years ago. Anyway, he left, and we didn't see a point to receiving phone bills in his name. So I called ~~Verizon~~ our phone company last Monday to have the name on the account changed.

They can't do that.

They can provide the latest in fiber optic communications, but they can't change the name on the account. What can they do? Close the old account, and open a new one.

I'm fine with that. They do so. Tuesday, our phone, TV, and internet go dead. I call (on my cell phone) to have the new account put up. Here's the gist of the conversation that follows.

Me: I'm calling to have a new name on our account. I'd like the same phone number if possible.

Sales Rep: Yes sir, no problem. We can have a technician out there Monday.

Me: No, that's not necessary. We already have all the equipment. We just need it turned on.

Sales Rep: We need to send out a tech, sir. Technically, we should have picked up the equipment when the account was deleted. Then we would send someone out there with new equipment.

Me: You don't understand, it was just working yesterday. Just turn it back on the way you turned it off.

Sales Rep: We'll have someone out there Monday between 8am and 5pm.

Me: Listen, if we didn't pay the bill and you suspended service, would you need to send a tech out to turn it back on?

Sales Rep: Of course not, sir.

Me: Then you can just do that, right?

Sales Rep: Would you hold a moment, sir? Thanks.

(Two minutes of conferring with his manager)

Sales Rep: Would you hold just another moment please? Thanks.

(Five more minutes of conferral.)

Sales Rep: Well, sir, when we delete the account we clear the posts and they need to be reset. The tech will be out there Monday. Thank you for choosing ~~Verizon~~ us.

Well, the tech comes, and I explain the whole thing to him again. His response?

Tech: Yeah, I figured it was something weird. On the sheet they gave me where it says "Problem description" they wrote "undescribable".

Anyway, what the tech expected to be an 8 hour day turned into a 40 minute day. Everything now works, hence I am able to post this blog.

Finally, a plea for help. I can't for the life of me figure out how to get this blog to accept the "tab" key. If someone could show me how to do this, I wouldn't have to keep skipping a line every time I want a new paragraph.

Berkeley Breathed, eat your heart out!

2007-04-29T15:14:00.000-07:00

So I've run across a website where you can easily make your own comic strip using predetermined figures, objects, and shapes. It's pretty neat, especially for those of us who are artistically challenged. Presented here is my first attempt. I know the sizing is a bit hard (it's easier to see by clicking on the image at the original website. It retells a scene that occurred last week while gaming.

Eragon review

2007-01-14T18:13:00.000-08:00

As promised, here is my synopsis of the novels "Eragon" and its sequel, "Eldest". There are spoilers here. You have been warned.

The first scene opens with a young woman on a secret mission to deliver an object of utmost importance to the resistance movement. This item has the potential, if used properly, to bring down the evil empire. Unfortunately, she is captured by agents of the empire, but not before she desperately casts off the object into the great beyond. While she didn't send it where she wanted it to go, at least it is temporarily safe.

Cut to a farm on the outskirts of civilization. A farmboy stumbles across this vital object accidentally. Near the boy's village, yet secluded from it, lives an old hermit who is more than he seems. Later in the story, it turns out he was assigned to stay there to keep an eye on the boy.

Danger comes to the village, so the boy and the hermit set off. On the way, the old man teaches the boy some of the old magical arts, but not nearly as much as the boy will learn later on. The man also gives the boy a special weapon with a sordid past.

The old man dies on the journey, before he can teach the boy everything he needs to know. However, later on the boy takes up with a member of another, older race. This person, despite being crippled, knows even more than the old man and teaches the boy much. The boy leaves his teacher before his lessons are over, however, with a promise to return to complete them. The boy learns how to use the old arts to perform incredible feats such as levitation, communicating telepathically with those close to him, and affecting the minds of others.

The boy eventually meets up with the young woman from the beginning, by rescuing her from the jail, right out from under the eye of the evil empire. He develops a bit of a crush on her, which is unrequited. Later, he finds out she is a princess associated with the resistance movement.

In the second portion of the story, the resistance movement is forced to relocate, since their home base has been discovered.

At some point, the boy receives a crippling blow, which is later repaired.

It turns out that the boy's weapon, given to him by his first teacher, used to belong to the second-in-command of the evil empire. It is later startingly revealed that this man is the boy's father.

During a major battle, just as it appears the resistance is doomed, help suddenly appears in the form of the boy's cousin, who comes unexpectedly from nowhere and distracts the opposing army long enough for the resistance to land a severely disabling blow. There is an evil counterpoint to the boy, someone who can also use the dark arts, on the battlefield, but he escapes in the confusion.

Now, some of you may be wondering whether I just described "Eragon", or whether this is a review of the classic "Star Wars" movies. If you are wondering this.....well, so am I.

Back in the saddle again

2007-01-03T21:05:00.000-08:00

It's been too long. Way, way too long, and too much has transpired. There's a lot that I could write, and I could conceivably fill several entries, but let's sum up and see what happens.

1. I'm out of a job.
2. We're having a baby.
3. We've lost someone dear to us.

I've considered leaving it at that, but I think I need to write more, so it's time for some detail. First, the job. As of the middle of October, I am no longer teaching. The reasons are complicated, and I'm legally bound not to discuss details yet, but suffice it to say I'm not happy with the situation. I'm working two part-time jobs, and it feels like I'm working harder than I was when I had a full-time and a part-time. My resume has been sent out, and while I probably haven't sent it to as many places as I should, I'm hopeful about the places to where I did send it. In fact, I've more or less placed all my eggs in one basket with one particular job opportunity. If it comes through, I'll be set for life. If it doesn't....back to the drawing board. I should be hearing any day now. Keep your fingers (and toes, and eyes) crossed.

Second, we're pregnant. On NPR recently they interviewed a guy from East Something-Or-Other University, and each year they compile a list of "banned" words. In other words, phrases or words they'd prefer never to have in the King's English again. Things like "awesome" or "TomKat" and so on. This year, one of the phrases that made the list is "we're pregnant". I know that technically, biologically, only my wife is pregnant. But pregnancy has been made into such a non-biological issue, what with having the proper car seat, the proper doctor, the proper clothing, the proper way to breathe, that there are plenty of books now for the father. "What To Expect When She's Expecting", and so on. And whereas before the dad was expected to pace in the waiting room and hand out cigars, now he is expected to attend the birth, cut the cord, and basically do everything he can except push. I'm all for that, and eager to participate as much as possible. As long as I'm involved, then, I may as well say "we're pregnant".

Oh, and it's a girl. Due early May.

Finally, just today we lost someone dear to us. Our good friend Keith, who we have known for about 15 years, lost his mother to bone cancer. She had been fighting it valiantly for years, and was a dear, sweet woman who made the best seafood chowder in all of New England. We will miss her much. If you are reading this, please hold Keith and his family in the light.

Topic for my next post: Griping about Eragon

The Deep Blue Sea

2006-08-09T23:18:00.000-07:00

Kids are astounding.

When my son was 3, we tried to get him to swim. Specifically, we tried to get him to dunk his head under and go down the "froggy slide", two accomplishments we thought a 3-year old should be able to handle. (The froggy slide, by the way, is a short 2-foot slide that lands you in 2-feet of water. It is shaped like a frog. You slide down its tongue and out of its mouth. Kinda disturbing, now that I describe it to a third party.)

Anyway, my son said he'd be glad to dunk his head and go down the slide....just as soon as he turned 5. No amount of cajoling could convince him to change his mind. That whole summer, he was perfectly happy just walking around the knee-deep section of the pool.

Over the winter he turned 4, and the next summer we again tried to get him to swim. Once again, he promised to when he was 5. We looked at each other knowingly, realizing in our infinite parental wisdom that he was simply stalling for time and that the next summer he'd delay it another year.

This summer *is* the next summer. Weather turns nice. We announce we're going to the pool; enthusiasm from the kids. We look at each other with a smirk. Can't wait to find out what the excuse is. Pack the towels, bathing suits, change of clothes, swimmies (they go around the kid's arm and keep him afloat), raft, inner tube, water bottles, grapes, crackers, and a book for Dad. Head to the Y, unload and head for the pool. Drop the stuff off and....hey! Where's my son?

"Look, Mom!", comes the yell. And he goes down the slide. And dunks his head. Time after time, all day. And the next, and the next. Just as he told us he would.

She's a Grand Old Flag

2006-06-28T13:54:00.000-07:00

In order for an ammendment to be added to the Constitution it first has to pass a 2/3 vote by Congress. It then goes to the states for ratification, where it needs a 3/4 vote. It is such a rare event that it has happened only 27 times in the history of our country.

This week, the Senate came within 1 vote of the 2/3 necessary to pass an anti-flag burning ammendment on. Both senators from my state voted for this ammendment. I am not pleased.

I'm not really sure what the arguments for this ammendment are. The ones I have heard are "People should be patriotic", "There are other forms of protest that can just as equally well express dissatisfaction", and "This isn't what this country has fought for."

One at a time. Yes, people should be patriotic. No, it should not be regulated or enforced. Shall we make it a misdemeanor to neglect to put your hand over your heart when reciting the Pledge of Allegiance? A felony to sit down during the national anthem?

True, there are other forms of protest that can be used. But this can be an answer to any form of protest. Let's make it a crime to picket; after all, you could always write it up on a blog instead. Have elected officials start turning away their mail; after all, can't these voters find another way to protest?

Finally, the argument that this behavior isn't what this country has fought for. Bullshit. This is exactly the sort of freedom this country has fought for. Now, I don't agree with people who burn the flag...I don't see the point of it. It never targets a particular agenda; it seem to be more of an overall "I don't like this whole country" statement. But our veterans and predecessors have fought for precisely this: the ability to disagree with our government. At the time of the founding of our country, it was a one-of-a-kind idea. It's the idea that, yes, people can express their opinion, even if their opinion is stupid. They can express it most any way they want, even if that way is stupid. There is not a clause in the Declaration of Independence that says "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal (unless we don't agree with their opinion or method of expressing it).....

My opinion? The politicians didn't really think this had a chance of passing in the first place. Ammendments are notoriously hard to pass. I think it is simply a diversionary tactic to draw attention from where it needs to be paid. After all, there is so much Congress could be working on: health care, the war, the economy, social security....why are they wasting their time with this? It's one more item in a list of items designed to detract media coverage from the fiasco in Iraq (just in time for November elections, too). In recent months, the politicos have rehashed gay marriage, illegal aliens, and now flag burning. My guess is there will be at least one more non-essential topic introduced as "of primary concern" sometime in the next couple months.

My faith in our system remains strong. My faith in our current leaders is faltering quickly.

Things I've learned from my kids

2006-02-13T14:49:00.000-08:00

The 15 essential steps to making hot chocolate

1) Put on the water to boil.
2) Go in the other room and forget about it.
3) Put on more water to boil.
4) Add chocolate, add to mugs.
5) Pour into different mugs because the first ones weren't the right ones.
6) Clean up spill.
7) Add marshmallows.
8) Add more marshmallows so that everyone has the exact same amount.
9) Clean up spill.
10) Add ice cubes to cool chocolate.
11) Add hot water to warm chocolate.
12) Clean up spill.
13) Mediate fight.
14) Clean up spill.
15) Got out and buy more paper towels.

Wind

2005-12-02T10:48:00.000-08:00

The wind blew me away today.
It picked me up off my feet and swept me past
the windows in the office building
Where the people work next door.
I didn’t have much time to see them
working at their desks
before I was carried above the rooftops
and the trees
into the clear sky.
Below me I could see the cars in line
at the traffic light
and the people leaving the luncheonette.
They looked happy
But rushed.
The wind whirled me in a sudden gust,
making me do a loop-the-loop
before setting me gently down right where I started.

Nobody saw it happen
And nobody would believe me if I told them.
But that’s ok.
I hope it’s windy again tomorrow.

Wedding Bell Blues

2005-11-09T05:32:00.000-08:00

Before I type up this entry, I wanted to respond to the anonymous person who wondered how a four-year old has homework. Trust me, we are not sadistic parents who send our young ones to a military-type school for purposes of whipping them into shape. On the day in question, I believe my son's homework was to bring something in to school that started with the letter "B". Not a big deal, really.

This past weekend, my sister got married. My little sister. My baby sister. My sister who needs love and protection and etc. Despite the fact that she's 28, despite the fact that she's a very independant person, despite the fact that her fiancee (now husband) is a wonderul guy, there's still a very small part of me that hates to see it happen. Good things aren't supposed to change. Good things are supposed to last forever. (Then again, sometimes good things get better.)

Rather than ruminate on the wedding (which was fabulous), I figure I'll just reprint the speech I gave. Why the hell not? This is *my* blog. I'm allowed to be selfish on it.

Oh, and one other thing I discovered this weekend is that giving a speech in front of 150 people is very different than talking in front of a class of 10.

Here's what I said:

I’d like to tell you a little bit about the bride. Rachel Heather Strieb…Alvini…. is the result of a carefully planned and executed scientific experiment that began over 28 years ago. She is a strong woman, independent and resourceful, well-able to take care of herself in the world. I can now reveal, on behalf of my brother and with all due respect to our parents, that Ron and I are taking full and complete credit for her many virtues.

We began our plan early on, when the subject was at a very young age. I distinctly remember overhearing Dad make the phone call to Nanny, asking her to come babysit so that he and Mom could go to the hospital. The baby was coming, and the ramifications were immediately clear: Ron and I were going to have someone else to beat up on.

It couldn’t happen right away, of course. Even at 7 and 5 years old, we knew there was no satisfaction in wrestling and pinning a newborn to the ground. It wasn’t long, however, before we found ways to test her regardless. We discovered that at a few months old, Rachel could belly crawl commando-style across the floor, exerting much effort to do so, if properly motivated. Motivation came in the guise of a big, clear ball with a sparkly plastic butterfly spinning in the center. The thing was at least as big as her head, and certainly too big for her to grab. But it was enticing. We’d place the ball about 5 feet in front of her and Rachel would spend 10 minutes working her way across the carpet, huffing and puffing, finally reaching out to the ball, only to have it slip through her fingers and roll further away. Another 10 minutes of entertainment ensued. Hours later, she would finally fall asleep from her exertions, mere inches from the toy. This is how Ron and I taught her determination.

As she got older and spent more time traveling in the car with us, she found out, as all youngest children do, that there is a hierarchy in the back seat. The smallest sits on the hump. Always. Without exception. Several years of this taught her gracious acceptance of necessary evils.

Only one thing breaks that hierarchy, and that is when the oldest child graduates to the front seat. Rachel wasn’t happy with this and often complained. “Why do you get to sit in front?” she’d ask. “Because I’m the oldest,” I’d say. The she’d ask, “When can I sit up front?” And I’d answer, “When you’re the oldest.” And so, of course, Rachel learned patience.

Then, of course, in the days before remote controls, little sisters made an excellent substitute. “Rachel, get up and change the channel.” “Rachel, grab me a soda.” “Rachel, all that Halloween candy will make you sick. Give it to me.” This phase of the experiment was carefully designed to educate her about leadership and how to listen to others.

Of course, we also labored to try to teach her how to appreciate a sophisticated and subtle sense of humor. The most memorable attempt was when we convinced her that she was left on the doorstep and the law said Mom and Dad were required to take her in. I also pointed out to her that the name “Rachel” really didn’t belong to her, as Mom and Dad had planned it for me. Since I turned out to be a boy, Ron got next dibs. The only reason she got it is because no one else wanted it. Although she didn’t seem to find the obvious comedic value in these examples, she managed to develop a sense of humor regardless. We theorize this is probably an inbred trait of younger siblings everywhere, in an effort to deal with the older ones.

So you see, Rachel, it was all part of the grand plan and it was all for your own good.

And although it falls to the brothers to protect their baby sister, eventually she grows up. Now that the experiment is complete, we can safely set Rachel loose into the wild. We feel safe doing so because she has found someone with as much daring, independence, intelligence, patience, and caring as she herself possesses. We didn’t think it possible for there to be someone like that, but there was and somehow they found each other. Billy is an astounding person, and I can’t say enough how glad I am to have him as a brother. The experiment is over, it’s a success…and Billy, she’s all yours. May the best day of your past be the worst day of your future.

Mr. Mom

2005-10-06T17:31:00.000-07:00

I have to keep writing. I know, I just posted a few hours ago, but it doesn't stop there and I just have to keep writing. Here's my night:

My wife went to work. Mind you, she's only been gone for 4 hours. In the time that she's been away,

--the Spiderman fiasco. See the previous post.

--my son spilled his milk. This was called to my attention by my daughter who yelled,"Dad, Alex spilled his milk!" I came in to see her pointing at the milk dripping down the side of the table. So I said, "Well, don't just stand there and look at it. Grab a paper towel and wipe it up!" So she does. Spilling her own milk in the process.

--I turned on the dishwasher and ten minutes later there was a river across the kitchen floor. I turned off the dishwasher, wiped up the water, opened the door, closed it more firmly, latched it, and turned it on. Ten minutes later, there was a river across the kitchen floor. Our dishwasher is dead.

--my son peed on the living room floor. He said he didn't have time to get to the bathroom. He said this while rooting through his Star Wars action figures collection which, apparently, he had plenty of time to get to. A man's gotta have his priotities.

--the phone died.

--ten minutes before bed, Alex says, "I have to do my homework." I say, "What is your homework?" He doesn't know. I don't know. He's going to throw a fit unless he does it. My wife knows. I need to call her. See the previous bullet point.

--I call upstairs "Alex, come down here please." He answers, "Dad, don't come up here." I say, "Why not?" He repeats, "Don't come up....uh oh. Um...you'd better come up here." When I get there, I find the entire bathroom floor covered in water. And, like Bill Cosby, I am compelled to ask, "What are you doing?" And my son sensibly answers, "I was washing the toothpaste off my foot." Of course he was. How silly of me to even ask.

I swear that this is all true, no exaggerations whatsoever. You couldn't make this stuff up if you tried.

Days of September

2005-10-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

Ah, what a flashback.

My son, Alex, was playing outside just now with his Spiderman action figure, complete with Nifty Web Action and Free-Movement Joints. He was making Spiderman fly from web to web in the manner of young kids everywhere: he was using his imagination. More specifically, he was tossing the figure in the air and filling in the rest of the details (the rush of wind, the web shooting from the wrist) in the second or two before gravity took over, bearing the piece of plastic to the ground. Then…..”Daddy!”

Spiderman is stuck in the tree. Pretty high, too. Completely out of reach for me. Of course, I immediately resorted to the first plan of action necessary in these cases. I threw something else at it. (Remember doing this as a kid? I sure do.)

I instructed Alex to go get a ball to throw at it. He returned with his (Spiderman) shoe. The left one, I think. Where in the mind of a four-year old is “ball” equated with “shoe” I don’t know, but it would do as a projectile. After several tries, however, it became apparent that Spiderman’s web was caught on a branch, and he wasn’t going to be knocked out of the tree.

Plan B involves a kitchen chair and a plastic light saber. The chair is positioned under the tree. With a flourish, Dad extends the light saber and climbs onto the chair. The four-year old audience holds his breath. And after a few tense moments, Dad becomes a hero. Spiderman is free.

I carefully instruct Alex not to throw him back into the tree. He nods carefully, and says, “Ok, Dad.” (You all remember the Bill Cosby skit, don’t you? You all see exactly what’s coming, right?)

Fast forward ten minutes. I’m cleaning the kitchen and realize it’s too quiet. (Parents understand this. Too much noise is bad. Too little is worse. It becomes an instinct to know.) I go outside to check on my darling son….

Spiderman is in the tree. So is the left shoe. And the right one is getting ready to follow it.

Koosh

2005-08-04T10:56:00.000-07:00

So I went to Target yesterday (or, as my wife’s cousin calls it, “Tar-jjay”, with a French accent. She’s not French, she just likes pretending that Target is posh). We originally went to get some tub lids. (We already had the tubs, but the lids were the wrong size, so we haad to exchange them) While we were there, we randomly picked up a few other things…a whole cartload, in fact. Most of it was picked out by my wife and kids. I was just along for the ride.

And then, in the toy aisle, I got my chance. In between saying, “No, you can’t have another Barbie doll” and “No, we’re not getting a Power Rangers mask”, I saw them, hanging on the rack.

Koosh balls.

If you don’t know what Koosh balls are, go to Target and get some. But you should. They used to be everywhere. And nowadays you only find them with plastic faces sticking out, or in oversize sizes, or something else strange. Used to be, they only came in baseball-size sizes, and monochrome colors. Well, here they were, hanging on the wall. Sure, they’re striped and speckled, but they’re the right size and there are no faces sticking out of them. So I bought one. In fact, I bought four.

The first thing you notice about Koosh balls is that they feel just awesome. They are incredibly easy to hold, and you can tickle someone’s cheek very nicely with them. Then there’s the smell. New rubber. Mmmmmm. Almost as good as new car smell. Almost.

There’s the fact that they jiggle when you hold them. They look a lot like sea anemones. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if anemones were the inspiration for Koosh balls. This calls for some research. And finally, they are the ultimate juggling ball. Easy to catch, and if you are barefoot and miss one and are talented enough (and I, ahem, am) you can keep juggling what you have while your toes pick up the one you dropped. Much better than chasing the tennis ball under the sofa.

It’s been years since I owned any Koosh balls, much less new ones. I’m sure I have a couple hiding in drawers somewhere. Mark and I used them all the time for juggling, both the normal ones and the oversize ones. It got to the point where we each had our favorites. I’m surprised we didn’t name them. (Say, Mark, how’s Sophia been doing? You know, the little yellow one with the red stripe?)

There are some little known things you can do with Koosh balls. You can “mate” them. At least. that’s what we used to call it. If you hold two close and lightly jiggle them, bringing them slowly closer together, they intertwine and get stuck together. Mated Koosh balls.

But for the best reaction (even better than juggling five of them, which Mark can do and I can’t, damn you sir), for the best reaction of all, try dunking one in water.

Time For Some Change

2005-06-24T11:13:00.000-07:00

For awhile now (months and months) we’ve been planning our vacation. To that end, we’ve been saving up in our own special way. What seems to work for us is that every time we need to purchase something, we use bills and not change. The change ends up in a jar, and by the time vacation comes around we have some significant spending money. We leave tomorrow, so today we need to cash in all that change.

Now, we know that some places charge to count your change, and while I am not a skinflint, I am morally opposed for someone charging me to take my money and turn it into my money. I have a similar feeling for those green change machines you see at the supermarket. And since I’m not opposed to rolling my own rolls of change, we decided to see how to go about cashing them in. First step: call the bank.

Knowing that we have a better chance at a bank where we have an account, we called them first. We have a branch of this bank within a 5 minute walk of our house, so Chris called there. They said they didn’t have a change machine, but the branch in Wayne does. Fine, we’ll call there.

Except that we can’t. The phone book didn’t list a number for the Wayne branch, it only listed a nationwide toll-free 800 number. So Chris calls that…..and someone in India picks up. That’s right, my bank’s information line has been outsourced.

Now, I only hear my wife’s half of the conversation, but it was pretty easy to put the rest of it together. See if you can do the same. (Sorta like Mad Libs, only crazier and true.)

Chris: I want to cash in some change for bills and wanted to get in touch with the Wayne branch to see if I can come in anytime to do that.

Pause.

Chris: About $200.

Pause.

Chris: Quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies.

(At this point I started taking great interest.)

Pause.

Chris: Christine (spells last name).

Pause.

I have a few questions for Chris, such as a) why does the amount matter? b) why does her name matter? and c) what types of coins did the bank expect us to be cashing in? But at this point Chris has put her hand over the phone to explain to me what’s happening. It seems the operator in India is calling the Wayne branch of our bank, the people we wanted to talk to in the first place, to get the answer to our question.

One more time. We had to call India so they could call Wayne, a town a mere 6 miles away, to get the answer to a question we wanted to pose to the folks in Wayne in the first place.

This is the reason that banks charge you to use ATMs. They probably have people come all the way from India to refill them.

So, a moment later my wife says “Thank you very much” and hangs up. It seems we can just bring in the loose change, anytime, and have it counted, for free. Just the way it ought to be in the first place.

Another one of those days

2005-06-22T17:35:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how to type officially, but I do pretty well. I use two fingers on each hand, plus a thumb. For those keeping count, that’s five digits.

I’m only typing this with four.

Today started out okay, but a little weird. There were no problems around the house, but the weather couldn’t decide what to do. For a few minutes there were some nice, big fat drops of rain coming down, but then the sun arrived. Later on, it rained again, then more sunshine. About 2 hours before going to work at the restaurant tonight I felt a migraine coming on. The Tylenol I took didn’t help much, so I laid down for about an hour. That didn’t help either, so I took some migraine medication just before I left for work. For a little while I considered not going to work, since the migraine was causing me dizziness and nausea, but I decided to override myself. I guess I should have listened to my instincts, because half an hour into my shift I sliced part of my finger off.

I was chopping lettuce with a chef’s knife and zigged when I should have zagged. I knew immediately it wasn’t just a knick, cause it hurt like….well, I don’t usually use language like this, but it hurt like a motherfucker. I got it under running water almost immediately, cursing the whole time. I knew it was bad when I looked over at my co-worker. He was staring down at the cutting board, and I distinctly heard him say “Oh, shit.” I remember saying “If there’s a piece over there, could someone please put it on ice?”, but they must not have heard me, or there wasn’t enough to ice down (or they were just too grossed out). The owner did an expert job of wrapping it (so the ER nurse told me later), and I kept it elevated and pressurized all the way to the hospital, just like my Boy Scout manual says. (All my first aid classes over the years prepare you to perform aid on someone else, but every time I’ve used it I’ve had to use it on myself.)

The hospital staff was great. They had it unwrapped and rewrapped before I was even admitted. A half hour wait in the waiting room, and I was shown into one of those curtained-off areas. I move for the chair, but the guy says, “Here please,” and motions to the bed. Then he says, “Lay back,” and so I spent the next 45 minutes feeling ridiculous, lying in bed with a bandaged finger. Unwrap, rewrap (not just the finger. Apparently, hospital protocol requires that they wrap approximately 18 times the area of the wound. So I look like the mummy about now.) And then home again, and here I am, awkwardly typing up the account. I am attending a black tie wedding this weekend (my first! (black tie, not wedding), and dancing should be interesting. Also, I have a (mostly) unwarranted reputation among my friends for being a klutz, and this isn’t going to help any. I’m prepared for the jokes.

What’s weird, as my friend Jon will point out, is that I can juggle three of these chef’s knives, but yet can’t chop lettuce with just one of them. On the other hand, in all the years of working in restaurants, this is the most serious thing that’s ever happened. A few steam or oil burns, a knick or two, but those go with the job. This is the first that I could accurately label “occupational hazard”.

Oh, and to the customers I left behind: enjoy your salad.

One of those days

2005-06-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

Just the phrase “one of those days” tells everything a person needs to know about the tone of the story that follows. Everybody has “one of those days”, some people always look like they are having "one of those days”, and many people spend a lot of their time trying to avoid having "one of those days”.

Yesterday was one of those days.

Like all of those days, it started out innocently enough. I was privileged enough to have been invited to the graduation of a former student, and looked forward to the trip. It was a lovely drive, and I didn’t get lost once. The ceremony was outdoors and, while warm, very nice. The students were, typically, more entertaining than the head of school (who gave a fairly depressing speech, all about the dark uncertainty of the times we live in), and there was a reception of sandwiches, pasta salad, and cookies afterwards. I greeted the family, gave my hugs to the graduate, and after a while, headed out.

On the way back, I decided to be smart and listen to the traffic report. Good thing too: there was an accident at the exit I needed to take, and traffic was blocked for miles. So I got off the highway early.

Now, mind you, this is not a highway I normally travel on. In fact, I don’t think it’s a highway I’ve ever traveled on. So, in choosing to get off early, I made what I thought was a wise decision: I picked an exit whose name sounded familiar.

Those who know me know that this is typical Michael-logic.

I picked the “Neshaminy” exit, because I had once heard of the Neshaminyville Mall. Thinking back on it, I believe the reason I’ve heard of it is from those car ads that are yelled at you from the radio. But it seemed like a good idea at the time, and as I wasn’t in any rush anyway, it turned out not to be so bad.

Keith would disagree. Keith is detail oriented, and anything that wastes time, space, or resources is an annoyance to him. So the fact that I didn’t use a map, the fact that I didn’t ask for directions, the fact that I got off the highway in an area that is totally unknown to me and decided to “wing it” probably bothers him to no end. The fact that I came from Newtown, got off at Neshaminy, and stumbled across Street Rd (a name I recognized, so why not follow it?) and took it to 309 (another route I recognized), the fact that I did all this instead of something more efficient drives him nuts and causes him to shake his head and cluck his tongue at me.

But it didn’t bother me, because I have a half-decent direction sense, and I knew basically where I wanted to go and which direction it was in, if not precisely which roads I needed to use to get there, and I was in no rush. And get there I did. I arrived at the intersection of Rt 309 and Rt 202, an intersection I knew. And behold, upon that intersection lay a gas station, and in the front of that gas station/convenience store was a banner that said, “Free soda and chips.” Well, I was hot and dehydrated, and free is a good price, so I pulled in. There were no parking spots, so I pulled into the business next door and shut off the car. That was the mistake of the day.

After getting my soda, I returned to my car to find it would not start. Nothing. Not a rev or a “grrr” or anything. Just a click and a hum. No problem, I’ve got jumper cables. So I go into the business I’m parked in front of to find someone to give me a jump. No one has a car. Back to the convenience store. Found a guy. Come back. Hook up the cables. Try the ignition: no go.

So he tells me there’s a Pep Boys about half a mile away. In yesterday’s weather (117° in the shade, 147% humidity) that wasn’t an entertaining thought, but I decided, what the hell. So I walk it. Arriving there, I describe my problem to the mechanic, and he suggests I bring the battery in to be tested first. Great. Now I have to walk back, remove the battery using nothing but my pocketknife, lug it back here, then haul it back and re-install it.

But wait! Inspiration strikes! Using the handy cell phone that I had previously sworn never to use (and now I swear, I’m getting one of my own), I call home to find that Keith and Jon are headed this way anyway. Yes, they can come this direction, yes, they can bring the toolbox, and yes, they can bring me and the battery to Pep Boys and back.

They arrive and we head back to the place where the car is parked….

Oh, haven’t I mentioned where the car is parked? No? I neglected that? Hmm, I suppose I should mention it. Ok, kids, cover your ears. Parents, turn the computer screen away from the young ones. Because yours truly chose to park (and break down) in the parking lot of Adult World. Yes, Adult World, conveniently located at the intersection of Rts 309 and 202, ready to serve all your video and pornographic toy needs. Special on DVDs, 2 for $15, all credit cards accepted, help wanted, apply within.

So we head back to Adult World. We take the battery out. Now listen carefully….three guys, one of whom is black with dreadlocks, are in the parking lot of an adult video store taking a battery from under the hood of a car and stashing it in the trunk of a second car. Fortunately, the police car didn’t do a drive-by until a moment after the trunk was closed (yes, I swear this is true).

By the way, taking the battery out wasn’t that easy. The bolts holding it in were rusted, and quite a bit of banging on them took place before even one of them moved. Jon regretted not bringing the WD-40, and I followed that up with a suggestion that we could probably purchase lubrication inside Adult World, but that was quickly overruled.

Back to Pep Boys, check the charge on the battery, prognosis is good (and bad). Good, because I don’t have to buy a new battery. Bad, because something else is the cause of the problem. So “Dave”, the sales guy, suggests I talk to “Lou”, the mechanic guy. (I put these names in quotes because nobody really knows who they are…the nametags mean nothing. I worked at a restaurant where, when you arrived, you just took a nametag out of a drawer and wore it whether it had your name or not. For three days I was “Sally”.) So “Lou” listens to my description and says, “Oh, that might be the starter. Find the solenoid on the starter and…” and I stopped him right there. I said, “Ok, I know from physics class what a solenoid is, and I can guess what the starter does, but I haven’t a clue what they look like or where to find them.” So he pulls out a box and shows me a brand new starter. It looks like the main engine for the space shuttle, and the solenoid is a brass cylinder mounted on the side of it. But he can’t tell me where in the car it is, even knowing the make and model. Apparently it’s a trade secret or something. So then I ask him, once I’ve found the solenoid, what do I do with it? And he says (no joke, this is word for word), “Oh, just give it a whack with a hammer or something, and it should start right up.”

Give it a whack? I came to Pep Boys, the king of automotive repair, where the store is lined with boxes of things I can’t pronounce and gadgets straight from a sci-fi movie, and this guy tells me to “give it a whack”? He looked at me strange, and I probably deserved it because by now I was giggling at everything (a half-mile in the sun will do that to you).

Back to Adult World, where except for me the parking lot has emptied out. (Although while we were there, I noticed a surprising number of women visit Adult World. I’ll have to ruminate on this in a later post.) Reinstall the battery. Now it’s time to find the starter.

In the next 10 minutes, my friends heard curses come out of my mouth that they’ve never heard me say before. Needless to say, I didn’t have a clue where it was.

Then…brilliant epiphany! My friend Tim is a mechanic and owns the exact same car, just a year older. I call and ask him about this. He describes the position of the solenoid, and check this out: it looks nothing like the mechanic described it. Not one bit. Thanks a lot, Lou.

And now, finally, came the only thing I did all day that made me feel smart. I took a look at the solenoid and said, “Hey, look! A wire’s loose!”

And then I drove to my friend’s house to relax. It’s really the only thing to do when you’re having one of those days.

Clean-up, Aisle 7

2005-04-18T12:03:00.000-07:00

Headache. Incontinence. Antacids. Greeting cards.

There is only one person in the world who could call me at 10:30 at night, say that something he saw reminded him of me, and proceed to use all of the words above in one sentence.

Mark and I do this. We see weird stuff, and then say, “Mike would understand.” or “Mark should really know about this.” And so we call across a distance of 430 miles to tell each other. We get a big laugh out of it, knowing that any FBI agents listening in would likely react with “What the fuck are these two talking about?!”

The above four terms were seen on a sign in a supermarket in North Carolina. They describe the contents of Aisle 7. Mark rightly called me, wondering if I could draw a connection between them. Before I could, though, I had to look up “incontinence”. (I didn’t feel too bad. So did Mark.) Turns out it meant what I imagined it did. Yuck.

My first thought was a new line of Hallmark cards. “Toilet Bowl Greetings”, we’d call them. Linking the above, our first printing would have to be….

“You make me sick to my stomach, but don’t let it go to your head, you little shit.”

Followed by…

“Roses are red, trees are green. Your trips to the bathroom are the longest we’ve seen.”

and

“For a very special occasion: the release of your bladder is a celebration to remember.”

So I started thinking, what other bodily-function-related greeting cards could we make?

“Glad you’re out of the hospital. Can we come over and see your kidney stones?”

“Sorry to hear about the diabetes. Hope the enclosed cheesecake makes you feel better.”

And of course, as long as we’re being politically incorrect, there’s the Mortuary Line.

“Sorry to hear about your husband’s passing. What are you doing Friday night?"

Now I can’t wait to go back to the supermarket.

Reread, review, relearn

2005-04-11T09:51:00.000-07:00

I see that I've said it, I can't say it any better. So rather than say again what I said, shall we say we see what I say I said?

See?

Things I've Learned From My Kids

2005-03-31T10:54:00.000-08:00

A promise doesn't count as a promise unless it's a "pinky promise".

Things I've Learned From My Kids

2005-03-30T00:15:00.000-08:00

Never try to play Monopoly with a four year old.

Things I've Learned From My Kids

2005-03-23T09:51:00.000-08:00

When you put grapes in the clothes dryer, you get raisins.

Exercise

2005-03-03T19:22:00.000-08:00

I’m making an attempt to get into shape. To be more specific, I’m making an attempt to get into a different shape than the one I’m in. Something not so blobish.

To this end, my sister and her fiancé pick me up each Thursday to go to the Y. This overcomes the first obstacle: avoidance is impossible. There’s only so long that I can hide in my living room, peeking out from behind the curtains like Boo Radley, while they annoy the neighbors by leaning on the horn.

We started out with swimming, since we’re used to that. (Ok, my sister and I are used to swimming. Her fiancé is used to imitating a golden retriever.) First day, we decided on a set of 20 laps, to be increased by 2 laps each week. No problem, right? After all, years ago when we were on the swim team, 20 laps was a warm-up before the real workout.

Go back and look at that last sentence. Take careful note of the phrase “years ago”. Now substitute “many, many, many years ago”.

After the first ten laps, I had some inkling of what that first protopod felt like as it crawled out of the primordial ooze onto dry land and gasped for a lungful of air. (Gasp is a more flexible word than you’d imagine. You can gasp in astonishment. You can gasp in fright. And you can gasp for oxygen. They all sound very different. When I gasp after 10 laps, it sounds like a sucking chest wound.)

After several weeks of watching us consistently outpace him (during which our laps increased to 34, and our lungs became accustomed to processing chlorinated water), Billy suggested changing things up a bit. So we played racquetball.

I had only been in a racquetball court once before and that was years (and years and years..well, you know) ago. Let me tell you, I had a blast! Like 3D billiards. Bank shot off the ceiling, into the corner, toe the line, and WHAMMO!! My point. All we need is to set one up in microgravity and I’m in heaven.

Three weeks ago it was skiing. I had never skied before. Ever. And let me tell you, I made the agony-of-defeat guy look good. I bruised in places I didn’t know I had. My doctor made me take a week off from swimming. And somehow (I must have been hypnotized), I’ve been convinced to go again. Everyone I’ve talked to says the first time is a different experience. Nobody I’ve talked to has said in what way. I’m actually looking forward to it, though, because the first time I was working too hard and didn’t take time to figure out if I was enjoying myself. I figure, if I don’t enjoy myself this time, that’s it for skiing.

Today it was tennis. The last time I played tennis was years, etc, with my friend Mark and his dad. At that time we were of the age where tennis was more like baseball.

“It’s a long fly ball over the center field fence. It’s going….going….gone!”

And then we’d laugh like maniacs.

"Common" sense

2005-01-27T10:12:00.000-08:00

I teach at a Quaker school. I also am co-faculty advisor to a new interest group on campus. Today we announced the existence of our group. Our announcement was very carefully phrased, having been written and re-written over the last few weeks, and reviewed by both students and teachers. We thought long and hard on how this announcement should be made. During the rest of announcements? No, we didn’t want it to be lost among the others. It was too important for that. Just before assembly? No, we didn’t want it overshadowed. After consulting with a Quaker member of the faculty, as well as the head of school, we decided to give it at the beginning of Meeting For Worship.

For those who are not familiar with Quakerism, MFW is a strange thing. It’s the Quaker version of a church service, but nothing at all like church. There is no pastor. There is no altar. There are no hymns, prayers, or psalms. Everyone sits quietly, praying by themselves or meditating. If you feel “moved” to speak, you stand, do so, and sit down. There are certain rules, which are really more like guidelines, to speaking in MFW. You are not supposed to respond directly to someone else. You are not supposed to rally for a cause. You are not supposed to prepare anything ahead of time.

So making this announcement was going against the grain in a couple ways. We were promoting a cause, and we knew ahead of time what we were going to say. But, carefully prepared or not, it was straight from the heart, so we knew it’d be ok.

But it wasn’t. Some people are upset that we “broke the rules”. Some think we should have made it just another announcement, along with the others. Some think we shouldn’t have carefully crafted what we were going to say. Fortunately, at least one person said (and, I hope, many thought) that it is the message that is important, not the means of delivery.

To take this to further extremes, there are those people whose religious zeal is so extraordinarily strong that they overlook the message that religion purports to convey. These are the people who refuse medication for their children, because “God will provide”. Does this mean that it’s no problem for them to go jump off a bridge, because if God really wanted them to live He would arrange for a miraculous rescue?

I don’t presume to know God’s thoughts. I wouldn’t dare to say I did. But I’d like to think that there are certain gifts God gave us that we should not squander. We have the power and ability to develop medical procedures to cure “incurable” diseases. If we can overcome the letter of the law (“Thou shalt not kill”) and obey the spirit of the law (“Human life is important”), we can see that from a few stem cells can come hope for millions.

God gave us the ability to reason. If you are religious, you have to believe that He did that for a purpose. If we let blind devotion overcome common sense, we insult God and His gifts.

Dealing with reality

2005-01-22T09:10:00.000-08:00

Maybe I'm getting more cynical as I get older. Maybe I'm being a curmudgeon. Or maybe I'm just paying better attention. It took 6 days before the U.S. promised any financial help to the tsunami-affected countries. When we did, it was $15 million.

Now, while $15 million would certainly solve a very many of my personal struggles, on a national scale it is a pittance. It comes to a nickel per citizen. Then critics in other countries called us "stingy" and rightfully so. So we upped the donation to $35 million. Finally, someone pointed out that the inaugural parties would cost more than that, so we finally pledged $350 million. (Even so, as a percent of the GDP we rank 27th among countries donating.)

I can't believe that after viewing the devastation, we can't do better than that. I can't believe that with people dying every day, our leaders don't have the tact and proper respect expected of them. It took an actual article in the media to convince Donald Rumsfeld to sign his name to consolation letters to families of casualties!

It is obvious to me that there is no compassion in the current conservativism. Any emotions shown are purely for political purposes. Any remorse is demonstrated only because citizens expect it, not because it is actually felt. Has our president shed one tear for any one of the brave men and women who have died in the Mideast?

I doubt it.

Oh yeah? Resolve this.

2005-01-07T06:26:00.000-08:00

It’s been 2 months, 3 weeks, and 2 days since I last entered anything here. So much for last year’s resolutions. Maybe I should make some new ones?

1) Stop wasting my YMCA membership. Get there at least once a week.

2) While I’m there, exercise a little.

3) Stay organized by keeping appointments in a calendar.

4) Find my calendar.

5) Write in this blog, if not weekly, at the very least monthly.

6) Figure out how to keep the archive list from running off the page. (Help, Mark! Help!)

7) Find a quiet spot to do a little reading on occasion.

8) Try to remember that it’s not a good idea to cross a busy intersection with your nose in a book.

I’m not going to succumb to temptation by listing it, but I was considering keeping myself confused for an entire year by including “9) Ignore all New Year’s resolutions.”

Off-topic, as if there was one, last night I finished a fantastic article in the February 2005 issue of Discover. It’s the cover article, and I suggest you find it and read it. It’ll really put a bee in the creationist bonnet.

I followed that up with a conversation on the phone that has me convinced more than ever that running, jogging, marathons, and Gatorade are best avoided.

Get out the vote

2004-10-15T06:20:00.000-07:00

I've never been involved in the political process to a great degree before. I've never written a letter to a Congressman, handed out flyers, or put a sign on my front lawn. I vote, sure, but until December, 2000, I never thought my one individual vote counted for much.

Boy, was I wrong.

And now I find myself galvanized. Never before have I been passionate about who I think should be in office. never before have I watched, enraptured, as the candidates battle it out in a debate. Never before have I yelled "You stupid liar! What the hell are you thinking?!" at a television commercial. But now I find I'm doing it almost on a daily basis. I find I need to know who's right and who's wrong. It's almost like a drug fix. And maybe it's because I'm a father now, but more than ever I find that I desparately want this country to be under the right leadership.

For God's sake, people, get out there and vote.

Roller Coaster

2004-09-24T13:40:00.000-07:00

Did you ever feel like you're riding a roller coaster without having set foot near the amusement park? That's how I've been the last couple weeks. No, this post isn't going to be some clever little ditty (except for the roller coaster analogy), no interesting stories, no insightful comments. Mostly, it's going to be a rant.

The first couple weeks of school are insane. Forms to be handed out, filled in, returned. Changes made to schedules, faculty, rooms numbers (I can't find anyone anymore). Field trips to plan, grades to enter, new computerized attendance forms to fill out. Parents to contact, assemblies to attend, advisees to advise. Oh, yes, and teaching to do, at some point.

Additionally, the way my school works, there is a progress report of some kind going out every three weeks. I can understand why. Parents pay quite a tidy sum to send their kids here, and deserve to know on a regular basis what the result of that is. I don't fault the system. But, hell, when I'm just starting to feel like I'm in the swing of things and then grades are due?

There are teachers here that make this job look amazingly easy. I wonder if they are like ducks, calm on the surface but paddling like mad underneath.

So back to the roller coaster. I realized this just now when it came to me that today is Friday. (All day yesterday I thought it was Friday. Have you ever done that? You know, where intellectually you know it's Wednesday but in your gut it feels like Monday? You can't imagine my disappointment when I finally realized that yes, I have to get up early the next day.) So the week is a roller coaster ride. Fast-paced, thrilling, full of hills and valleys, but they go by so quick that if you blink you miss them. And then on the weekend, you pull into the station and have just enough time to catch your breath and start to think about the ride you just had, when whoosh! You're off for another go around. Because on this roller coaster, the seat belts are locked in place permanently. You can't get off this ride.

Of course, this doesn't mean the ride can't be fun. It's just that sometimes you need to stop and catch your breath. And the times you need to aren't always consistent with the times they give you. (By "they" I mean, of course, "They", which are the same ones you refer to when you say "Why don't They time the traffic lights better?" or "It's ridiculous how They treat you when you answer the phone." and "Why can't They invent a Raisin-Bran-like product that doesn't get soggy in milk?" and so on (and by "you" I mean, of course, "Me".))

So, it's Friday, and in a couple hours the roller coaster will pull into the station. I'll have time enough to wave to the people on the platform, but that's about it, because in no time at all, it'll be Monday again, and we're off on another ride.

Get out

2004-08-27T09:32:00.000-07:00

I was out walking today, on my way home from work, and it wasn’t until I got home and inside that I realized what a beautiful day it is. About 75°, sunny, a few white puffy clouds, and a light cool breeze. Just perfect. And then I thought, how often does this happen? Well, I don’t know where you live, but where I am, here is southeastern Pennsylvania, the weather doesn’t really turn nice until late May or so. Once you get to the beginning of July, it gets unbearably warm and humid. There may be 4 or 5 days during the summer that cool off, and maybe another month at the end before the leaves fall and the wind picks up. That about 80 days a year, and that’s a conservative estimate. If you are lucky, you may live to the ripe old age of 90. So, if the seasons are perfect and you are in excellent health and a truck doesn’t run you over tomorrow, you might expect to see about 7000 beautiful days in your lifetime.

When you stop to think about it, 7000 isn’t a whole lot. 7000 seconds is slightly less than 2 hours. 7000 inches is less than 2 football fields. If you have a 50 gallon fish tank, I can almost guarantee there are at least 7000 pieces of gravel in it. 7000 blades of grass cover only a couple of square feet. The average American is $7000 in debt, not counting mortgages. And I’m sure that same American has at least 7000 pennies in his or her bank account.

7000 goes by quick. Placed in a row, that would only be 19 years of beautiful days. Now, 19 years may seem like a lot, but for those of you over 25, think about yourself and what you were doing 19 years ago. It went by quick, didn’t it? Cripes, My best friends in the world have known me for about 7000 days.

Now, I’m not suggesting you be pessimistic about this. Don’t get out your list and tick off another beautiful day (that’s 4,387 down, 2,613 to go….). But don’t forget either. And certainly don’t waste them.

What’s that? You have nothing to do on a perfectly beautiful day, except to waste it? Well, then, for your perusal, I offer this list of things you might want to spend such a day wasting.

Take a walk.
Fly a kite.
Spray the hose at your kids.
Go to the zoo.
Play baseball, frisbee, basketball, soccer, lacrosse.
Eat lunch under a tree.
Eat lunch in a tree. (Trust me, this is fun.)
Ride a bike, scooter, tricycle, Segway.
Put the top down on your convertible and go for a ride.
Put all the windows and sun roof down and pretend your car is a convertible.
Go swimming.
Write an article on how nice it is. But do it outside.

Summertime

2004-08-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

Well, I know that my schedule is generally different from everyone else's, but even if you're not a school teacher, I think that summer is still different. You might be in the office, but things are a little more relaxed. Rush hour isn't as tense, and you tend to enjoy going out to lunch a little more. (And if you happen to take an hour and a half instead of an hour, the boss is less likely to complain.)

But then you have the dog-days of summer, here in the middle of August, and if you are a kid or a teacher of kids (or a parent of kids), you start to look forward to September. And with good reason: cooler temperatures, pretty colors on the trees, the smell of new pencils and new notebooks, and Halloween on the horizon.

Keep summer in mind though, when sometime soon, deep in January or February, when the thermometer bottoms out and you slide across that intersection on a sheet of ice on your way to work, when two sweaters and a down jacket don't keep the wind out, when you leave home in the dark and return home in the dark. Just remember. Remember cool breezes and iced lemonade, remember hanging on the swings and playing in the pool, remember "five more minutes, mom, we can still see the ball". Remember the good ol' days of summertime.

Got a second?

2004-06-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Time is subjective. Einstein was right, and I can prove it without advanced mathematics.

Saturday night, my wife and I, along with our friend Jon and some others went to see the new Harry Potter movie, which, on the whole, we enjoyed very much. On the way back we stopped at a diner for a snack to celebrate my mom’s birthday. And on the way back from that, we totaled our car.

{A side note to those who drive, have driven, are learning to drive, or ever plan to drive: a flashing red light really does mean stop completely. A flashing yellow light really does mean slow down and use caution. We had the flashing red and didn’t stop all the way; they had the flashing yellow and didn’t slow down at all. Bang.}

(And for God’s sake, in case there’s anyone out there still too stupid not to, please, please, please wear your seat belts. They saved two lives this weekend and kept our kids from becoming orphans.)

So I was in the front passenger seat when I saw the image of a silver car in the headlights. I didn’t even have time to think “Wow, that’s way too close” before I felt the shock of impact. We must have spun around at close to the speed of light because I had time to think, “Say, we’re in a car accident, aren’t we? I hope it turns out ok. Maybe it won’t be as bad as it seems. I don’t want anybody to be hurt…” and so on. All that stuff about your life flashing before your eyes is nonsense, but there sure is plenty of time for it to do so, should it choose to.(On the other hand, I don’t remember actually spinning at all. My visual memory skips from “just before impact” straight to “time to get out of the car”. Let the Lorentz transformations explain that one.)From this point, everything proceeded in normal time for awhile. I dragged myself out of the car, helped my wife and friend out the passenger side (their doors were fused shut), and got ourselves to the curb.

{Another aside: I have discovered the ratio of angels to complete pricks in this world. While sitting on the curb, senseless from the shock, we were aided by one guy who appointed himself traffic cop, a woman who gave us a blanket (it was raining) and refused to give an address to which to send it back, and another young woman who, besides knowing first aid and being a nursing student, also called 911 and let us use her cell phone. On the other end of the scale was the prick in the SUV who honked at us because he wanted to squeeze between where we were on the curb and where my ruined car sat in the street. He came within 4 inches of running over my wife’s foot. Thanks asshole. Hope you got where you were going on time. You’re probably the same guy who doesn’t pull over for ambulances and passes school buses while they’re letting off children. Our good Samaritan “traffic cop” yelled at him for us. It seems, therefore, that the angel-to-prick ratio is about 3 to 1. This is gratifying, although I recognize it is an isolated case and I welcome suggestions for other values. I hereby dub this the “Strieb ATP (angel-to-prick) Ratio, and fully expect a commendation and byline in any updated texts on mass psychology. End of aside.}

So we sign all the papers needed and they lay my wife out on a stretcher because of neck and back and knee pain and they scrape the car off the pavement and onto a tow truck and we all pile into the ambulance and it’s off to the hospital.

Upon arrival, the check-in nurse asks, “What time was the accident?”. My initial reaction is that about 15 minutes have passed, but I thought in case it was 20 (you want to get these things right, otherwise I’m sure they chase you down and bother you for the rest of your life with notices in the mail) that I’d better check the slip of paper the cop on the scene gave me. (By the way, this little humdinger brought the attention of no less than 5 police cars, two ambulances, one tow truck, and as-yet-uncounted lawyers)

Imagine my surprise when I discovered that 50 minutes had gone by. And worse, this was only the first of several time expansions to come that night. For as we waited to be checked-in, and then waited to be admitted, and then waited for a physical, and then waited to talk to a doctor, and then waited for X-rays (and, in Jon’s case, CAT scanned and EKG’d, and in my case, given a tetanus shot), we glanced multiple times at the clock. After 20 subjective minutes, one hour had gone by. After one subjective hour, 3 1/2 hours had gone by. And after what felt like 2 hours since the accident, we left the hospital 7 hours after we got there.

Yet, at the same time, we spent an eternity waiting at the hospital for the next step. So is time fluid? Can it go fast and slow at the same time (so to speak) for the same person? Strangely enough, yes. But why? I haven’t the slightest idea. Someone make a phone call and get Stephen Hawking up to date on this. I want answers.

Friendship

2004-04-28T07:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes your friends are right next door. You can stop in anytime you want, because the door is always open. There’s a place set at the table, whether you show or not. You trim their hedges without asking, and when you arrive home one day, your lawn is mowed without explanation or expectation.

Sometimes your friends are all in one place. In the high school cafeteria, you swap lunch money from day to day without bothering to keep track, because, hey, I’ll catch you tomorrow, ok?

Sometimes your friends are under your own roof. If you are lucky, you’re married to a very good friend. They read your moods and know when to hug you and when to leave you alone.

When you were 5 years old, everyone you met was instantly a friend. A little boy seen briefly at the mall, a girl you climbed the monkey bars with, it didn’t matter whether you ever see them again or not. Instant bonding, quickly forged, just as quickly forgotten, but no less important.

Sometimes friends are always right there, even when they’re not right there. You lose touch for a week, a month, a year. Then you pick up the phone and begin exactly where you left off.

And sometimes friends know exactly when you need them. If you’ve been friends long enough, it almost defies explanation. You reach for the phone to call and it rings under your hand. Or you sit at home musing on how to get through a situation, and they call you with the answer from 450 miles away. How does this happen? One mind, living in two brains? I don’t actually mind not knowing. Just the circumstance is cause for wonder and joy.

Thanks, friend.

Age must give way to youth, no doubt. But not yet, not yet.

2004-04-26T09:52:00.000-07:00

According to Bartlett's Quotations, the above is ascribed to "Mason Cooley, U.S. aphorist".

According to Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, an aphorism is 1 : a concise statement of a principle
2 : a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment

In other words, Mason Cooley is a person known for stating the truth, I suppose. Man, I wish I could get paid for that.

None of this, though, has much to do with today's entry. I just liked the quote.

I’m getting older, but I refuse to believe it. So many things have happened lately to try to make me feel older that it seems the world is conspiring to age me 20 years in only a few months. And to make it more confusing, a huge part of me recognizes this, but another huge part of me doesn’t feel it at all.

For example, I’m buying a house. This is something that happens to adults. Last time I checked, I didn’t think I was that much of an adult. (Then again, I’m 33. Maybe I should check again.) When did I become one? I don’t recall waking up one morning and thinking, “Hey, looks like I’m an adult now!”.

To add to that, my daughter is now at the age where she’s pulling things that I distinctly remember pulling as a kid. You know, stuff like talking back, stomping your foot in a huff, lying to your parents, and being a tattletale on your younger brother. It’s the ancient parents’ curse: May you have children that treat you the same way you treated me. And it works. Parents don’t even need to announce the curse out loud. It just happens. And my parents have acknowledged that it happens not by gloating, but simply with a knowing smile and nod when I mention that their granddaughter ate all the popcorn and then blamed her brother. (This is another trap I’ve fallen into. When my children have done something good, they are “my children”. When they’ve done something questionable, they are “your daughter” and “your nephew”. When they’ve done something detestable, they become “the boy” and “the girl”.)

And to top it all off, my sister is engaged. She’s been seeing the guy for a couple years now, and he’s a fantastic person. I love him greatly, and he loves her greatly, and she loves him greatly, and everything’s just lovey-dovey. However, she’s my little sister. My little, innocent, youngest-sibling baby sister. And although we all knew it was coming, now it has happened, and that’s different. She’s not a girlfriend, she’s a fiancée. And in the fall of 2005, she’ll be a wife. And probably not too far after that, a mother. (I know, I know. That’s how these things happen. Intellectually, I’m fine with that. But please refer to the 4th and 5th sentences in this paragraph.)

And none of this mentions the fact that lately the topic of discussion among my friends and I has been back pain, how poorly we’re sleeping, whether or not our children are learning to use the potty (Not toilet. Adults use the toilet. Kids use the potty.), what music “kids these days” are listening to, how much better things used to be, what the political scene is, and when our next doctor’s appointment is.

Is this what it’s going to be like forever? I don’t think so. Life is what you make of it. Sure, there are responsibilities, and hard parts, and right now I’m in one of those, but it will pass, and things will get fun again, simply because I’ve decided so. And someday I’ll be a grandparent, and my kids will complain about how their kid destroyed the vacuum, and I’ll just give them a nod and a knowing smile.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go use the potty.

Pipe dreams

2004-04-19T05:34:00.000-07:00

As the sun goes down at night, I lay in bed and dream.
I dream of a house called Rental.
Upon leaving this poor man’s castle, the road of purchase winds down through the valley
and to the wood.
Thick tangled brambles rise up to bar my way;
Loan origination, escrow fee, survey and state tax roots trip my feet.
PMI, assessment, title examination, hazard insurance branches scratch my face.
A deadfall of title insurance blocks my way.
I work around it, only to find myself at the edge
of Downpayment Cliff.
Sliding down the gravelly slope, I hear the wolves moving through the forest.
Wolves with names, the names of Appraiser, Inspector, Broker, Lawyer, and Seller.
Racing ahead, I come into a clearing.
There is a house, the same house, but with a different name.
It is Mine.

A new dawn has come. Closure is here.

Strange brew

2004-04-14T05:45:00.000-07:00

Everytime I think my life is getting weird, something stranger comes along.

Life's valuable lessons

2004-04-08T13:24:00.000-07:00

In the past ten minutes, I’ve learned two valuable lessons. The first will save people trouble on a daily basis. The second will save America millions and potentially affect the outcome of the next presidential election.

We are leaving for the weekend to see some family in Connecticut, and so we are doing all the things necessary for such a trip. That is, my wife is panicking and I’m saying reassuring things like, “Relax, we have plenty of time.” Meanwhile, I’m actually doing some semi-constructive things, like trying to convince the kids to clean up (which is about as productive as trying to convince a cat to do something against its will) and doing the dishes. So I walk into the kitchen to do some dishes, and there’s a white foamy puddle spreading out across the kitchen floor. Like a mutant amoeba from a B flick, it extends its pseudopod towards me and (I swear) moans.

I remain nonchalant. In times like this, I am like a well-oiled machine. I know exactly what to do, and I do it right away. I call to my wife.

“Uh, Chris, we have a problem with the dishwasher.”

Mind you, this comes at exactly the wrong time. Our vacuum cleaner died, our clothes dryer died, and we’re trying to buy a house on a budget and a time limit. So the idea of needing a dishwasher is not a pleasant one.

Christine enters the kitchen. Now it’s her turn not to panic. She takes one look at the living, breathing creature coming towards me and says, “Oops.”

“Oops?” I repeat, in what is destined to go down in history as one of the most intelligent comebacks ever recorded.

“Yeah. Oops.”

“What do you mean, ‘oops’?”

“I mean, I guess you can’t put dish washing detergent in the dishwasher.”

So there’s lesson number one, folks. Don’t put dish washing detergent in the dishwasher. (And by this, I mean the stuff you use to do dishes at the sink. By all means, keep using the stuff meant for the dishwasher. If you don't use anything at all, your dishes get crusty. This too, I know from experience.(I don't know what happens if you use laundry detergent. A future experiment?)) If you do use dish washing detergent, then halfway through the cycle you can open your dishwasher to see a wall of white foam. Penetrate this wall, and you may be able to catch sight of your dishes (which, by the way, turn out sparkling clean). And most of all, if you choose to ignore my advice and use the detergent anyway, don’t bother filling the little time-release container in the dishwasher. Half the required amount is more than enough.

The second lesson came just after we had finished mopping up after the first (using the kitchen rug rather than a mop because “it needed washing anyway”). My 3-year-old son came into the kitchen with tears in his eyes. He had an imaginary scratch on his little finger that needed tending to. So of course, being the dutiful father, I gave it a kiss and said, “All better?”

He grinned, nodded, and ran off, happy as could be.

So I started thinking, why don’t hospitals take advantage of this power of healing? Imagine this. You fall down the stairs and hear a “crack!” in your leg. Searing pain lances up your thigh. You scream in terror, whip out the cell phone, dial 911. Four minutes later, the ambulance arrives amid a flurry of lights and sirens, and with an exhibition of the most amazing efficiency, stick you on a stretcher and whisk you off to the hospital. At 60 mph, they truck you down the streets, whipping around corners, calling ahead to give all your pertinent medical information to the ER docs. You back into the ambulance bay, they wheel you out, through the doors, down the hall, and into a private room. The curtain is drawn shut. A few minutes later, a pretty nurse comes in, looks at your chart, and says, “Well, what have we here?”

You say, through gritted teeth, “I think I broke my leg.”

“Oh, what a shame!” she says. Then she leans over and kisses it. “There. All better?”

And you hop off the bed, thank her, and walk home.

Think of how this would revolutionize the medical field! Insurance rates would nose-dive. The cost of medicine would beat Canada's. The only time you would be able to sue for malpractice would be if the doctor kissed your left wrist instead of your right. Medicare, HMO’s, long waits in the doctor’s office would all be things of the past. All we need is someone to promote it. So who’s it gonna be? I guarantee, whether it be Bush or Kerry, the sure route to the Oval Office is in the simple slogan, “Kiss a Boo-Boo, Make It Better”.

Life's Design

2004-03-26T05:11:00.000-08:00

I've just come across a website by linking through a friend's blog, and it resonated with me. It's intended for young fresh architects, but I think it is equally applicable to life in general. I've included it in the list to the right. Check it out.

Ignorance was bliss. Now it's a pain in the ass.

2004-03-25T12:05:00.000-08:00

I'm finding out that every day offers us an opportunity to find out how much we don't know. My wife and I have just been exposed to a situation that could turn out extremely well or extremely badly. Our landlords are going to be selling the house we are living in. Our choice is simple.

a) Move.
b) Buy the house.

Christine and I vastly prefer b). We hate renting, and have long wondered when we would get around to buying a house. Well, now it's time. And since we know so little about buying a house, we figured there'd be a lot of questions to ask. So the first thing we did was to compile a list of people we knew who were more knowledgable about real estate than we. That way, we could go down the list and ask them all our questions.

Of course, we hit a snag right off. As it turns out, we know so little about this subject, we don't even know what questions to ask.

This makes a phone conversation amusing:

"Hi, Dad? I need to know something about buying a house."
"Sure. What do you want to know?"
"Um...everything?"

So now I'm collecting terms I need to learn about. Mortgage brokers, interest rates, fixed-rates, FHA, HUD, county taxes, closing costs, and on, and on....and again, I can't even list all the stuff I need to learn about yet. I haven't learned what it is.

Some ancient sage said it. "The ignorant man does not know. The wise man knows what he does not know."

I think I'm somewhere in between.

Empathizing with Mahler

2004-03-15T05:59:00.000-08:00

I’m a lousy finisher.

I don’t mean that I’m not good at putting a nice veneer on a mahogany tabletop (although I’m not). I mean that I’m a pro at starting projects but lousy at finishing them.

These projects can range from the stupidly simple, like changing a light bulb, to the wickedly impossible, like landing a job with NASA.

Some of the projects I’ve begun and not finished include:

--cleaning my room and keeping it clean
--building a model train set in the basement
--emptying the basement so I can build that train set
--holding a yard sale
--learning web design
--writing a novel
--reading the Bible straight through
--saving up to buy a house
--getting to the last level of Midnight Club on the PS2

Ok, so maybe that last isn’t so much of a project as a pastime, but you get the idea.

In fact, this weblog itself is a project that is doomed to be uncompleted. I mean, how can you say a journal is ever finished?

In further fact, it’s unlikely I’ll even get to the end of this entry. Or even to the end of this sente

Smoke if ya got 'em

2004-03-10T05:36:00.000-08:00

I haven’t written in awhile. I’ve done this because, despite my stated goal, I haven’t had much to write about. But I saw a news article just now, and my emotions are up. Here’s the deal.

I’m generally a pretty sensitive person. When someone has a problem, I very often take it to heart. I like helping people, and I like seeing them be helped. But there is one group of people I have a lot of trouble empathizing with. I have a hard time understanding smokers who complain that they smoke.

I’m sure I’ll catch hell for this from someone, but I can’t help it. Close to half of the cigarette smokers I have met have essentially said to me, “Yes, I smoke, but I don’t like it. Gee, I wish I could quit.”

And my answer is, “No, you don’t.” If you wanted to quit, really wanted to, then you would. If you really cared that it was bad for you, you wouldn’t start in the first place. And once you’ve stopped, you’d keep temptation away from yourself to avoid starting up again.

It gets even worse. Now there’s a pill to help smokers quit. (Mind you, it’s only short-term so far.) This is in addition to those patches that advertise their ability to insert addictive chemicals directly into your bloodstream, rather than have you go to the trouble of smoking them. (Can’t they make a patch for crack users? Call it Cocanoid^TM. “Do away with all those clumsy tubes, syringes, and razor blades. Get your high with style. Talk to your doctor about Cocanoid^TM”)

So let me sum up. People choose, of their own free will, to take a drug that they know will create health problems for themselves and those around them and shorten their life spans. Then they can take a drug that will help them to stop taking the first drug. But it may be that, after all that, they’ll start taking the nicotine again anyway. I just don’t get it.

And before you start, let me say, no, I’ve never really been addicted to anything. I’ve never smoked, I only drink occasionally, I don’t do drugs. Some smart-ass out there will probably say “But you’re addicted to breathing and eating!” (I know this because, as I kid, I used to be that smart-ass.) Eating and breathing are not addictions. They are necessary for life. Smoking is not.

And here’s what really pisses me off. Phillip-Morris, to use an example (though I am sure they are not alone), makes a point of advertising how helpful their website is to help people stop smoking. If you go there, you can read about the ingredients of cigarettes, how they are bad for children, pregnant women, old people, young people, middle-aged people, addicts, and those who are just starting. They will tell you that smoking causes emphysema, heart disease, and lung cancer. They will tell about the negative effects of secondhand smoke. They will give advice to those who are addicted and want to quit. They will urge teens not to pick up the practice.

But, of course, they still want you to buy their product.

Hey, I have a brilliant idea! Let’s try this. If Phillip-Morris truly is concerned about the effects of cigarettes, if they want people to be able to quit, if they don’t want teenagers starting, if secondhand smoke bothers their conscience, why don’t they stop selling cigarettes?

Or is that too obvious?

To dream the impossible dream

2004-02-26T05:06:00.000-08:00

This morning, I awoke from a very vivid dream that involved myself, Buddy Hackett, one other adult, and eight kids aged 12-14 working a complicated con to heist a brand-new canary yellow Hummer from two middle-aged women who were out tilling the field in their backyard. So if your Hummer is missing, I apologize; I don’t know where Buddy put it.

The Day of the Doll

2004-02-23T05:10:00.000-08:00

I have experienced a new phenomenon, new at least to me, of which I have heard tall tales passed down from my parents of the horrors entailed.

Yes, I speak of the 5-year old birthday party.

The long-awaited day (and by long-awaited, I mean for the last 5 months) had finally arrived, and the birthday girl, resplendent in her pink outfit, eagerly awaited the arrival of her guests. Her mother had just left to pick up the balloons and pizza, promising to be back “by 11:30 at the latest” for the 12 o’clock fiesta. Her father (that would be me) was at the dining room table, frantically trying to finish decorating 17 heart-shaped cupcakes, complete with ribboned edging and individualized with the names of the guests (because, after all, doing individual cupcakes would be so much easier than doing one big cake). Her brother was busy spreading out all the toys we had spent the previous day picking up.

I look at the clock. 11:45. 13 cupcakes done. No sign of the pizzas, and more importantly, mom.

Again. 11:50. 15 cupcakes done. Still no mom.

And again. 11:57. The last cupcake is being finished. At this point, I’d skip the pizzas and feed them dried pasta if only mom would show up.

High noon. Cue the western music, the tumbleweed blowing across the front lawn. As I, in my icing-stained sweatpants and torn T-shirt rapidly clear the mess I’ve made on the dining room table, a car pulls up. Thank God! My wife (oh yes, and the pizzas) have arrived! I’m saved.

There’s a knock on the door. On my way to open it, I’m bothered by the thought that my wife, in all likelihood, would not knock at the door to her own house. With trepidation, I slowly swing it open. Our first guests have arrived.

It’s exactly noon, just like it says on the invitation. Don’t these people have any sense of propriety? Don’t they know that a 12:00 invitation means we won’t be ready until 12:15 at the earliest? Don’t they know that, without my wife at home, I am totally incapable of entertaining four 5-year old children and their parents?

And how do you manage to show up at exactly the correct time, anyway? Did they wait around the corner, watching the clock, timing the traffic, until, bang! Foot hits the pedal, car zips around the corner, and the car comes a halt as the clock strikes.

I mumble a welcome, take their coats, and retreat to the upstairs.

Returning downstairs, I am just in time to greet our next guests. Body count: one frantic father, one delighted birthday girl, 5 guests, 2 parents. No mom. I make another retrograde advance to the upstairs with more coats.

Twelve-ten comes. Mom (and pizzas) arrive. All is well with the world once again. I retreat to the kitchen.

The party itself went fairly smoothly, with the only hitch coming at 12:50 when my wife and I look at each other and use our telepathic abilities to read each other’s minds. And our thoughts are the same. “The party goes to 2, and we’ve run out of activities!”

Fortunately, 5-year olds are easily entertained. They spent the next hour playing with the presents received by the birthday girl.

Something needs to be said at this point about presents. Girl presents in particular. Specifically, dolls. How many does one kid need? She got “Betty Spaghetti”, “Polly Pockets”, the ever-present Barbie and accessories (don’t get me started on accessories), Madeline, and a Beauty and the Beast castle that involves the smallest dolls known to mankind. Electron microscopes have been used to paint detailed faces on a piece of plastic no larger than a cockroach’s spleen, then wired into a plastic casing, double wired, then taped. The plastic casing has more plastic casing fused onto it, requiring an Exacto^tm knife to open (if you ever need to give a gift to the parent of a young child, give an Exacto^tm knife. They’ll give you weird looks at first, but thank you profusely when the next birthday comes around). This whole contraption is wired into a box, which is then sealed in even more environmentally-destructive plastic as a deterrent to theft.

And each unwrapped gift results in more and more accessories. Shoes, necklaces, bracelets, dresses, hair things, stickers, and even roller skates are all apparently necessary to play with dolls in the right way. Never mind the fact that I have a perfectly necessary 150-piece bit set for a drill I have yet to purchase; why does my daughter need a roller-skating doll?

But she’s happy, and that’s almost what counts. I say almost, because the source of Sarah’s happiness is the scourge of my wife’s life. Chris and I are now finding doll pieces everywhere we go. In the middle of the night, it is not unusual to hear the toilet flush, followed by an “Ow! #$%^$$#!” on the way back to bed.

My wife thinks we need a machine like a metal detector, only it finds plastic. Just sweep it around the house, and it’ll make a noise when it finds a piece.

I say we already have one. (Or had one.) It’s called a vacuum. Just sweep it around the house. When you’ve heard the “Ccrrrkk. Gsshhh. Wrkkwk.” sound come from the vacuum cleaner, you’ve found a piece of plastic.

Only yesterday

2004-02-17T06:57:00.000-08:00

It seems it was only yesterday that my brother and I shared a room painted like the ocean. Nets hung from the ceiling with lanterns from ships and seashells caught inside. We fell asleep watching a big friendly whale smile at us from one wall.

It seems like only yesterday that we had to move to the “new house”, where my parents have now lived for 26 years. Not long after we moved, they brought my baby sister home from the hospital.

It seems like only yesterday when my brother and I played with Matchbox cars in the jungle that was our yard. The tall grass served as trees and the sidewalk was a canyon to be jumped over. I don’t know how many vehicles were lost in that yard.

It seems like only yesterday that I nervously asked Kim to the prom. So nervously, in fact, that she didn’t hear what I said but pretended to and mumbled an answer. I had to ask again two days later.

It seems like only yesterday that I aced a physics final by pulling an all-nighter. During one of my breaks, I walked out of the dorm and wandered the campus at 3 in the morning, a solitary figure without a destination. The snow, the icicles, the soft quiet hush of winter belonged only to me.

It seems like only yesterday that I first laid eyes on my wife. She needed a roommate and I answered the ad, showing up in an outfit that clearly demonstrated my complete lack of fashion sense. She thought I was harmless. I thought she was beautiful.

It was only yesterday that my daughter turned five years old. She politely requested a Madeline cake, and thanked everyone for coming. In the fall, she’ll be going to school.

I’m thinking of painting a whale on the wall of her room. Because eventually, tomorrow will seem like only yesterday.

Odds are

2004-02-11T05:00:00.000-08:00

I saw a documentary recently about pregnancy and childbirth. I already know all the basics of course, plus a little of the more advanced stuff, and it’s not the first time I’ve seen a documentary of this sort. But every time I do, I’m amazed all over again.

Do you realize the number of factors that all have to come together perfectly for a child to be born? It’s astounding. I mean, forget the whole sperm/egg ratio for a second and concentrate on post-conception events. The egg has to attach itself to the uterus wall, or else no baby. It has to divide properly, or else no baby. It has to be nurtured, protected, and so on, or no baby. During birth, there's an astonishing sequence of events that have to happen just right, or else no baby (and sometimes, no mommy either). And what are the chances of this all coming together? It's gotta be pretty slim odds, and yet it happens all the time.

During my wife’s first pregnancy, I came across this tidbit of information. Every four hours or so, the amniotic fluid in the uterus is completely exchanged. Like changing the oil in your car. Drained and replaced. But get this: scientists don’t know how. We’ve landed a couple of robots on a planet 80 million miles away, but we haven’t the faintest clue how this fluid process works. But it does. And if it didn’t….no baby.

Incredible things happen every day, if you keep an eye out for them.

I’ve dropped a glass in the sink by accident and had it bounce four times without breaking.

I’ve crossed the street, looked the wrong way, and been missed by a car by about three inches.

I’ve seen a 2 year-old kid tumble down five concrete steps, jump up, and keep going like nothing happened.

I’ve seen sunsets that you couldn’t describe if you tried.

I’ve watched two children…my own two children…be pulled from their mother’s body and take their first breaths on their own.

I’m not religious. I haven’t even made up my mind yet about the existence of God. But I absolutely believe in miracles.

Reasons to smile

2004-01-30T10:01:00.000-08:00

Well, the excitement never ceases. I have two reasons to smile today, and here they are in order of importance (least to most). First, I mentioned my newfound interest in weblogging to an acquaintance (whom I hope to upgrade to "friend") and she responded with a deluge of information, websites, ideas, and actual code. Turns out she's an expert on such things. And she's just taught me how to include links in my text, a MAJOR boost to my capabilities. So now I know two experts!

The other smile happened early this morning, 6:30 am to be exact. I was still mostly asleep, and had slept quite well. It was cold outside, and I was warm inside, which are wonderful conditions as far as I'm concerned. My head was deep in my pillow and the quilt was up to my ears. I dimly heard the phone ring.

The phone in our bedroom doesn't work, but the answering machine does, so if we are sitting up there we generally just listen to people talk and then go downstairs to call them back. Well, the voice on the phone came from 620 miles away to proudly tell me that Ethan Lee was born just 10 1/2 hours earlier, and that mom, son, and presumably father were healthy and happy.

I remember smiling broadly, and snuggling deeper into the pillow before drifting off again. I knew that there would be time to call later, that Mark wouldn't mind me not jumping out onto a cold floor at 6:30 to say congratulations. I had no worries; the sound of his voice said all was well. Better than well. Perfect.

But I couldn't remember exactly why I smiled until later.

I smiled because Dora was safe and the baby was here and my friend is happy.

I smiled because I have two of my own, and I love them.

I smiled because miracles like this can (and do) take place every day, and no matter how often it happens, it's still a miracle.

I smiled because it was cold outside and I was warm inside, and my wife was next to me, and my children were sleeping, and my best friend was happier than he's ever been in his life, and for just one solitary moment, every single thing was absolutely perfect.

Welcome to the world, Ethan. Have a nice stay.

That knowing smile

2004-01-29T09:20:00.000-08:00

What a weird week I’m having. First of all, I haven’t written in quite a while, which nearly blows my New Year’s resolution within the first month. Then, three out of the five school days this week were more or less cancelled due to snow. (I say more or less because on Tuesday we had a late opening followed by an early dismissal. So basically, I came in for lunch.) I have a friend whose wife is a few days overdue with their first child, and it being their first, they are probably completely panicked, not realizing that *nobody*’s baby delivers on time.

This reminds me, I’m definitely turning into my parents. See, Dora called my wife, basically saying, “Today’s my due date and there’s no baby….what’s wrong?!” While Christine was consoling her on the phone, I was standing by with that smile on my face. I’m sure you know which one. It’s the same one your parents gave you when you swore to them that “when I’m a dad, I’m gonna let my kids stay out as late as they want!”. It’s the slow, not-quite-sad grin that comes with a little shake of the head, with the unsaid words left hanging in the air like the sword of Damolces: “You just wait. You’ll see what life’s *really* like.”

And of course, now that I’m starting to know better, my parents have switched from the faint “You’ll find out for yourself” smile to the ear-to-ear “I told you so” grin. I can’t argue with them.. they did tell me so. The only recourse I can take is to smile at my friends, shake my head, and think, “Oh, they’ll find out soon enough.”

And there’s plenty of opportunity for this. Off the top of my head, I have 8 close friends who are either expecting or have children under 1 year old. It must be something in the water. A great side effect of all these little ones is that they act as a natural birth control. If we want a baby fix, all we have to do is volunteer to babysit.

Back to learning how to be a parent. No one’s written an instruction manual for this. Oh, there are plenty of self-proclaimed experts, and a family member of ours keeps sending us books by them, by many of them contradict the others, and I have serious doubts as to how many of them actually have children themselves. Or at least wait until they’ve grown and gone before writing the book. Maybe I should write one myself.

Another benefit of experience as a parent is learning to appreciate Bill Cosby more. Oh, sure, his stand-up routines were funny when I was a kid, but now they’re downright hilarious because they are *true*. He really hits the nail on the head, and really gets to the bottom of what parenthood is like. I have actually said to my children, “How many times have I told you….?”, as if I expect them to keep count. And upon arriving home one day, I asked my daughter “What do you think you are doing?”, when it was perfectly obvious that she was shoving a blue magic marker up her nostrils. (I then compounded the problem by asking her “Why?”. She looked at me as if I were a moron and the answer was self-evident. I never did figure it out.)

Big ol' thanks

2004-01-22T09:46:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned my best friend in the entire world, Mark Pilgrim. Well, thanks to him, I have now figured out how to add links to my weblog. So, check out his site, diveintomark. (And to humor me, get there by clicking on the link at the top right of my page!)

Nature abhors a vacuum. So does Alex.

2004-01-16T08:46:00.000-08:00

My son destroyed our vacuum cleaner last week. What’s even more amazing is that he did it practically single-handedly and with a bare minimum of effort.

My son loves goldfish. No, I mean the edible kind. No, not those, I mean goldfish crackers. You know, these little cheesy things vaguely shaped like a four-year-olds impression of what a fish should look like. They come in bags that are refreshingly old-fashioned. They are made of heavy paper stock, nicely lined with foil, only wrapped once (as opposed to the loaves of bread I buy, which have been known to have been wrapped three times for the consumer’s convenience), and have a nice simple design on the outside. They appeal to adults and children alike. You can try to eat just a few, but you’re not likely to succeed. In fact, the only way in which they are not a traditional, old-fashioned snack food is in the price. They cost about $9.00 an ounce. Which is why my son loves them so much.

To add insult to the injury done to my wallet, what he loves most about them is their ability to be easily crushed into seventeen million tiny pieces and pressed into the Oriental rug my wife loves so much. He does this every chance he gets.

Alex did this last week. How he had time, I don’t know. There are only four rooms on the first floor of our house, and two of them are open to each other. My wife must have been in one of them. And probably, she was moving around between them. But toddlers have this uncanny ability to know that once you walk out of a room, they have approximately 7.3 seconds to knock over the water glass, smear chocolate on the TV screen, stick peanut butter in the VCR, and shave the cat. What’s more, all this generally takes them only 6.8 seconds, giving them a full half-second to adopt an innocent “Who, me?” expression just before you return.

So my wife gets out the vacuum. It’s a stand-up, with more attachments available than the space shuttle. There’s the part that gets under the furniture. There’s the part that gets behind the bookcase. There’s the part that gets the cobwebs out of the corners of the ceiling. And there’s at least two parts for which I haven’t yet figured out a function. (Although one is good for getting marjoram out of a toddler’s hair. I know this from experience.)

This is not my mother’s vacuum. My mother’s vacuum laid down on the floor, had a retractable cord (which, if you weren’t careful, would whip you when it withdrew), was loud enough to hear down the block, and only had one attachment. As near as my brother and I could figure, the only use for this attachment was to chase my sister with and make her think we were going to suck her up with the vacuum cleaner. It was a mean vacuum. It could suck up marbles. It could probably suck up tennis balls, if we had thought of it. Nothing short of half a pound of PlayDoh would have jammed that vacuum. In comparison, ours is a 90-pound wimp.

So, my wife is vacuuming crumbled goldfish off the floor, using attachment number 7, when my son distracts her. Neither of us knows how he did this, but when she turned her head to look at him, she ran over a sock with the vacuum.

My son hates to wear his socks. He leaves them all over the house. This one he cleverly left in the path of the vacuum. I say cleverly, because he also hates the sound of the vacuum cleaner, and so I suspect deliberate sabotage.

The vacuum grumbled, and grinded, and did its best to suck up the sock. Its best wasn’t good enough. With a hack and a wheeze, it died. When I got home, the house smelled of burnt electronics. It’s not a very pleasant smell.

So now we need a new vacuum. I’m spending a few days thinking about ways to pay for it, where to get one, how much to spend, and so on. And as I ruminate, I walk into my house, and immediately detect the smell of burnt electronics. And there’s my wife.

“We have a problem with the dryer.”

Sam, I am.

2004-01-15T12:16:00.000-08:00

I am a 33-year old, lower-middle-class white male.

I am a teacher of science.

I am also a student.

I am a father of two.

I am a friend to my friends.

I am a colleague.

I am creative, intelligent, stubborn, and patient.

I am sometimes thoughtless.

I am often lazy.

I am a reader.

I am a son and a brother and an uncle and a father and a cousin and a husband and a grandson.

I am a carbon-based life-form, composed of billions of individual cells working together in a miraculous mechanism that keeps my heart beating, my blood flowing, my lungs inflating, and my neurons firing.

I am tired.

I am lousy at balancing my checkbook.

I am ignorant of the rules of hockey.

I am wondering why I am here.

I am pretty sure there’s a reason.

I am in love with my wife.

I am a Jew.

I am proud of my friends.

I am fascinated by watching people learn.

I am of average height, average weight, average build, average income, average intelligence, and average ability.

I am not average.

I am unique.

I am.

Soar like an eagle

2004-01-12T09:01:00.000-08:00

I used to hate football.

I couldn’t understand why people went to the games. I didn’t understand why people would argue over which team was better. I didn’t understand how people could remember the stats for 47 different players and the schedule for the 1967 Colts.

Of course, most of this disinterest was because I didn’t understand the rules of the game.

Now I do, and I’ve just spent an evening with family and friends, screaming at the television, moaning about dropped passes, and cheering at fake hand-offs and end-zone runs. To the uninitiated, I actually looked like a fan. Then again, to a real fan, I still look like a no-nothing novice. I’m like a 20-year old, stuck between the teenage years and adulthood.

Viewed objectively, it’s astounding how much money and energy is invested in watching 22 men pound the crap out of each other every weekend for 6 months out of the year. It’s surprising to see how energetic and fanatical the spectators get. And it’s startling to find that I am now one of them. I spent money on food to munch on, not just for myself but for 7 others as well. I fired up the surround-sound system, so we could hear the crowd yell in all its glory. I ran to the bathroom during the ads so I wouldn’t have to miss any of the game (just the reverse of what I traditionally do during the Super Bowl). And I screamed myself hoarse when the Eagles won in overtime.

Am I a jock? No way. Even if I wanted to be, it couldn’t happen. I’m too far along the path of geekdom to make the switch now. But I am a little wiser in their ways, and am starting to appreciate their mode of life. I learn a little more each game, and even though my team is still in it, I am looking forward to the next season already.

Go Eagles.

We Didn't Start The Fire

2004-01-08T09:57:00.000-08:00

I've made myself two informal New Year's resolutions. The first is to lose 20 pounds. The second is to write. Now that they are listed somewhere other than the inside of my own head, I suppose they are now *formal* resolutions.

I'd thought that I'd write every day. There are two schools of thought on being a writer. Most professional, successful, popular writers will tell you to write every single day, regardless of how good the result is. Only with practice can we be perfect. My own school of thought is: why write something if you know ahead of time that it's going to be complete garbage? Why not wait until you have something good to write?

After years of following my own advice, a bit of self-inspection has revealed to me that I am neither a professional, successful, nor popular writer. Hmmm. Perhaps my way is wrong.

So I choose to write today without having a topic in mind. The only thing I can think of is a rhetoric question that popped into my mind lately. Why is it so easy to set your house on fire, but so difficult to start a fire in the fireplace? (I don't know where this thought came from. It may be that I saw or heard it in passing. It reminds me of those Stephen Wright-type questions, like "When you ship Styrofoam, what do you pack it in?". I still haven't found out the answer to that one.)

And then I remembered that starting a fire in a fireplace isn't difficult for everyone. My best friend is quite good at it. Mark (http://www.diveintomark.org/) went camping with us a few summers ago, and quickly proved himself as Campfire Man. Campfire Man can gather wood like nobody can. Campfire Man can light a bonfire with a single match. Campfire Man can keep the ashes going all night, so that getting a fire ready for breakfast is a snap. (What Campfire Man can't do, as it turns out, is cook the steaks medium-rare. That's the only time I was allowed near the fire.)

So how did he achieve this greatness? Years of practice, I supposed. But no, he had not been camping before. Aha! He must have read a book on the subject. I looked up "Firebuilding for Dummies", but it doesn't exist. ("Camping for Dummies", though, does: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/104-1249955-2568737)

As it turns out, he could just do it. Like that 4-year old who plays Chopin like nobody's business. Or the kitten that somehow (hopefully) knows to use the litterbox instead of the priceless Oriental living room rug.

Now Mark has other talents too, ones he excels at. He's the best programmer and authority on Apple computers that I know. He can juggle 5 balls, and I can only do 4. He is a wonderful husband, and soon to be a wonderful father. Some of these he's had lots and lots of practice at. He's tried, failed, and tried again. Some of them he will have to practice at, and learn through experience (like to have a clean diaper open and ready to slip under the kid's butt as soon as the dirty one comes off. Trust me.).

But firebuilding just came naturally, and I'm really wondering how that happens. Does everybody have something that comes to them naturally? (And conversely, does everybody have something that they will never be good at, no matter how hard they work at it?) What happens in a person's brain that gives them the information, knowledge, and talent needed to succeed the first time?

I don't have the answers, but I'm awfully good at coming up with the questions. I don't know why. I guess it just comes natually.

See Spot run.

2004-01-07T09:52:00.000-08:00

I stopped home for a very rushed lunch today (two servings of Ramen noodles, chicken flavor, high on the salt, low on the nutrition. Only seven days to blow my New Year’s resolution to eat healthier. That must be some kind of record.) While there, my nearly-3-year-old son asked me to play with him. Sure, why not? I have at least 2 or 3 minutes before I need to be back at work.

Well, he decides that the game to play is with his nearly-5-year-old sister’s flash cards. So he pulls one out, looks at the picture, points at the word and says, “Daddy, what say that?”

Now, those of you with children may understand my reaction. Those without children but planning to have some will eventually find out. Those who don’t have children and never will, well, I don’t know if there’s a way to adequately describe my astonishment and delight. It’s kinda like describing a rainbow to a blind man.

See, I got a decent education. I came from an educated family. We had books all over the house, and I grew up taking literacy for granted. I’m still shocked (but a lot more empathic than I used to be) when I come across a post-adolescent non-reader. There are so many steps we take on the path to reading that, once we know how, we forget about. The very first step is realizing that those funny little squiggles on the page actually have meaning. I don’t remember realizing this for myself, but last year I witnessed my daughter’s revelation. Just like my son, she pointed to the book and said, “Daddy’s what’s that say?” And just like with my son, I was astounded, delighted, and proud beyond all belief. My daughter is recognizing that words exist! Quick, call the grandparents! Alert the media! Call a press conference and get it on the evening news! In my moment of ecstasy, I am quite sure that no other child has ever reached this epiphany, that mine is the brightest of the bright. Just hand her the Nobel Prize now and get years of anticipation over with early.

As I said, if you are a parent, you understand. And if you are not, at this point you probably think I am an incredibly pompous and arrogant individual. But just wait till *you* have kids.

The next step is one that my son hasn’t made yet, but I’m anticipating soon. See, three days after my daughter said “Daddy, what’s that say?”, my wife was reading Sarah “Alice in Wonderland” for her bedtime story. (Another point of pride…my kids refuse to go to bed without a story being read to them. And once I leave the room, my daughter takes books into her bed and falls asleep “reading “ them.) So after finishing the chapter, my wife comes downstairs and tells me that Sarah is mildly upset. Why?, say I. Because she wants to read the story for herself and can’t, says my wife.

Another milestone! The *desire* to read. And this is one that some never get. I think it may come from environment. I grew up surrounded by books, as did my wife. Both of my parents were teachers. I was read to all the time, and my parents were always in the middle of a book. Some don’t have that, and grow up without realizing how much reading has to offer.

So I go upstairs to read a little more to Sarah. As I sit down, she points to the front cover of the book and says, “What’s his name?” I answered, “That’s the Cheshire Cat.” And then she says, “Where’s his word?”

I nearly passed out.

In one week, this child has determined that 1) words have meaning, 2) she will someday be able to decipher that meaning, and 3) every object has a word associated with it.

And to think that I assumed that after seeing her born, everything else would be emotionally anticlimactic. Holy cow.

2004-01-07T05:43:00.000-08:00

Well, either I've discovered how to allow people to comment on my posts, or I've screwed everything up and will have to start over again. Somebody comment on this and let me know which it is.

2004-01-06T12:37:00.000-08:00

A good friend of mine has made the suggestion that I can write. I’m not sure if I agree with him. Another good friend has a weblog, and after viewing it for several months and talking with him extensively, he made the suggestion that I start my own. The problem with writing something on a daily, or even weekly basis, is that you need a topic to write on. You can’t write randomly (unless your name is Dave Barry. In that case, anything that comes out of your pen works.).

However, the only topic I feel even remotely an expert on is my own life. Sometimes *very* remotely. And how many people could possibly be interested in my life? Not many. But I don’t care. Because I need to write, and I need a place, other than the confines of my own computer screen, to display what I have to say.

So I'm trying this out. Since I know nothing about web design (yet. Who knows what the future holds?) I make no apologies about the appearance of the site. I have no control (as far as I know) if things accidentally get deleted. As yet, I haven't even learned how to change the color scheme.

But I will. So if you happen to tune in early, rest assured this site will look different in the future. I'm going to play around with it, more as I learn more, and if you like what you see then feel free to tell me so. If you don't like what you see (content or otherwise), be constructively critical....tell me what you want.

But I make no apologies if you don't get it. After all, this is my site.