You Will Know

Huh, again?

2009-09-26T16:45:00.001-04:00

Huh?

2009-09-26T08:17:00.003-04:00

Liam discovers the difference in his face and mine

2009-07-10T12:04:00.002-04:00

Re-trekkin'

2009-05-15T12:18:00.005-04:00

J. J. Abrams and Paramount have effectively restarted the Star Trek franchise. I think.

I didn't much like the idea Paramount, and fans, tried before: forget Next Generation, DS9, and Voyager, and go back to before. Enterprise had the problem that we really couldn't encounter much that was new; if we did, it would conflict with the timeline. There was a fan group that had a few (horrible) episodes with Kirk & Co. played by new actors. Same issue. We know what happened up through DS9. Can't we go forward? I didn't think we'd written ourselves into a corner. Yet.

But they pulled it off. I think.

SPOILERS BEGIN.

The time tampering will make the Federation so different that we really don't know what will happen next. Everything else in the universe should be the same; we'll only encounter Romulans and Klingons as major powers for a while. Maybe the Federation's enemies will be better able to take it on, now that it's weakened. (I hope they can resist Enterprise's temptation to almost meet the Borg, or the Cardassians, or the Dominion -- yes, I noticed the throwaway line at the bar -- but not really meet them so they can be a surprise for Picard and his cohorts in Next Generation.)

But.

MAJOR SPOILERS BEGIN.

The movie was flawed by being a sci-fi action flick rather than a Schindler's List. Yes, I know it was supposed to be. But the bad guy blew up a planet with 6 billion people on it. I'm supposed to be happy about Kirk, Spock, and Bones being together, after 6 billion murders?*

Usually we get the prospect of some planet being destroyed (usually Earth), so we can be on the edge of our seats, but it doesn't actually happen, because we want to have fun, not grieve the dead. I lost track of how many times the original Kirk saved the Earth from inevitable destruction. But Earth never encounters any serious damage until the Golden Gate Bridge becomes twisted metal in DS9. That's it; we don't even lose San Francisco.

So although I think they've effectively restarted the franchise, I'm not sure. You just can't be jolly and look for adventure when half the basis of the Federation has been slaughtered. It should be dark, and it won't be (because Star Trek is about optimism). In every film, won't I be saying, How can you people forget so quickly?

And I could tell the writers didn't get what they were doing either. Nobody except young Spock even looked upset. There was no moment of horror, watching it all happen. The aged Spock (Nimoy) was cracking jokes while his home world was up in the sky being vaporized.

*Someone's already mentioned the example of this: Star Wars, and the planet Alderan. And, yes, Star Wars was jolly and exciting and when Luke & Han were getting their medals, nobody was shedding a tear for Alderan. But it was off-screen. We'd never been there. We didn't feel like we knew those people. And Star Wars was sort of cartoony. (You blow up a planet, and it looks like you put a stick of dynamite in the core? Really?) This felt different to me.

Caught in the act

2009-05-04T14:38:00.000-04:00

This is kind of fun.

R.I.P.

2009-04-24T20:16:00.003-04:00

My best friend in my early college years just hanged himself.

I haven't spoken to him in, oh, 15 years or more. (He broke off the friendship. I don't know why. I think it was lack of interest, not that I did something he was horribly offended by.) I see or talk to his parents sometimes. I know he's divorced, and that he was manic-depressive, and his mother said they'd known for a while this sort of thing was a possibility. Screwed-up brain chemistry finally went too far? Did life with his new wife still not seem good enough? I'll never know.

I know all about depression, but I never went that far. Obviously. So I can't say I don't know why people do this. But I can say I don't know why something doesn't stop them -- something like knowing how much it will hurt their family.

Sad, sad day. R.I.P., David. And may God explain to you the error of your ways, because if He doesn't, when I get up there I'm going to knock you silly.

Liam on April 7

2009-04-09T10:49:00.002-04:00

This is what Liam's doing, that I don't know what it is.

The big 0.5

2009-03-22T17:26:00.000-04:00

Separated at birth?

2009-03-17T18:49:00.001-04:00

Caught!

2009-03-17T18:37:00.003-04:00

Whoever it is.

Another milestone

2009-02-26T14:29:00.001-05:00

The "Winnie the Pooh" mobile

2009-02-23T16:54:00.002-05:00

I used to think they made baby music that way because parents think it's cute. But he loves this kind of thing.

Liam learns to count!

2009-02-17T15:16:00.001-05:00

Isn't it delightful?

2009-02-11T16:53:00.000-05:00

Dinner music

2009-02-08T15:52:00.002-05:00

When the bottle has to be refilled and reheated, we get some dinner music to fill the time.

At long last, baby pictures again

2009-01-06T16:41:00.003-05:00

Liam finds lots of things funny now.

Liam's first political cause: "Feed the Children."
Especially this one.

Liam gets checked out by the Magi.

A quiet moment with Pappa.

Liam as the incoming New Year.

He's real, and he's coming. You better watch out

2008-12-16T22:52:00.002-05:00

OMG!

2008-12-15T22:37:00.002-05:00

Letters to Liam

2008-12-10T14:55:00.001-05:00

My blog about raising the baby boy is at http://letterstoliam.com. (I'm not sure my adoring fans here ever knew about it unless they're also in Facebook. Sorry for the oversight.)

Liam's baptism

2008-12-07T20:44:00.005-05:00

I'll have more later at Liam's blog. For now:

We had a big blowout, and yes, he did get baptized. Several said, "He did so well!" I said, "What do you mean? He remembered his lines? Stood up at the right time?"

I got two answers:
a) He only screamed like someone was pulling his toes off four times, and
b) He didn't make his own, um, contributions, to the baptismal water.

I'm going with answer b).
What goes down......must come up screaming. Three times. (The water wasn't cold, but it was chilly for a baby.) He was awakened by being dunked in cool water -- wouldn't you scream?

When Fr. pulled him out, he was fine. Then Fr. put him back in! Twice! Each time he screamed till he was out, then went peaceful. (One more complaint when Fr. drew the sign of the cross on his forehead.)

My parents got their first chance to hold him, and based on Dad's continuing soft smile, it was better than Christmas.

The way it is at our house

2008-12-04T23:49:00.000-05:00

Infant classification: a pictorial guide

2008-11-22T17:04:00.007-05:00

As a guide to new parents: this is how to tell what kind of baby you have, in a convenient pictorial guide.

Hungry baby	Wet baby
Poopy baby	Fussy baby
Tooty baby	Baby who has adopted a resolution to be held 24-7

Edit: we not only saw him track something by turning his eyes and his head today...we also saw him apparently purposefully reach for the toy he was tracking. :)!

Liam's 2nd birthday

2008-11-15T21:17:00.001-05:00

Friday, Liam passed his hearing test in both ears. He was so worried!

He continues to put on weight.

...and today, he has something else to celebrate.

I never expected these things

2008-11-09T14:13:00.009-05:00

"Sucky" as a compliment
"Giving someone the finger" as an act of kindness
Riding down the road with my arm flung into the back seat, and my finger in a baby's mouth
A baby boy with cheeks the size of Margaret's when she had her wisdom teeth out:

Liam today

Margaret then
Rolls of fat on someone containing my genetics

The bottom line is, he now knows how to stay awake enough to eat. He hasn't gotten the part about getting it directly from Mommy -- not completely, anyway -- but he does know how to eat, and how to holler when he's not eating. At the beginning we made him eat. Now we're wondering how long we can trick him with a pacifier. Answer: not at all. It doesn't taste like a finger, so there's no point. Yuck!

We've also become experts at baby soothing -- as much as you can be from a video, anyway. Wrap him up in a "baby burrito," turn him a certain way, and he'll usually shut right up. This is delightful at 11pm when he was yelling -- and now, as long as you sit up holding him at a precise angle, he's quiet. Whoa, nelly, how wonderful. We'll take it.

I have warned him, "In this house, you never know when somebody will turn you into a baby burrito. It could happen at any moment!" (He initially objects to the burrito, then goes calm as soon as he gets turned at the right angle.)

He said, "In this house, hollering is something that might happen at any time, too!"

Purple slippers

2008-11-06T17:26:00.002-05:00

I don't want the last thing on the blog to be election-related. Everyone's sick of it (or else still partying). But I absolutely can't find anything else happening in the world or in my world, unless you want to talk about flu.

So anyway: the topic is changed. I just don't know what to. So I'll have to go with a classic:

Why McCain will win (and no, I'm still not saying if he will)

2008-11-03T18:25:00.003-05:00

So...why is a McCain win still possible? My best guesses:

Polls. They've consistently shown Obama ahead, but polls always show Democratic Presidential candidates doing significantly better than they do on Election Day. In 1984, Time released a poll shortly before the election showing Mondale easily defeating Reagan. In 2000, Gore was supposed to handily beat Bush. Kerry was ahead in '04, as I remember.

I don't know why this is, but I thought earlier on: if Obama can lead by double-digits, McCain's in trouble. But if it's only about a 2% lead, Obama's in trouble. So far poll numbers have bounced between those extremes.

Media. The US media have also lost the faith of their readers and viewers. We're disgusted with what they did to find ways to harm someone who dared ask Obama a tough question ("Joe the Plumber"), and the way they put Palin's minor children up for public humiliation. And we're leaving in droves. And ignoring them in droves.

Obama's vagueness. When Obama first announced, I went to his web site to see where he stood on the issues. When I was done, I knew less than when I started. According to the buzz I heard on (Democrat-friendly) radio and Internet, the multi-network infomercial had the same effect. It's unnerving to vote for someone who won't clarify if the change he can believe in is a new ban on puppies or making possible Mexican food served on plates that aren't hot.

Obama's specificity. When Obama gets specific, he tells rural voters that they're bigots; Christian voters that their attachment to God is because they need a crutch in tough economic times; and he tells us that he intends to redistribute our wealth. Not a way to win votes. (McCain had the luck or good sense to insult a few specific conservatives, rather than everyone in an entire area.)

The overall strategy. Obama's campaign manager said early on he wanted to make this campaign about personality, not issues. I'd say he succeeded. But no matter how charismatic Obama is, we've seen the Obama/McCain show for months, and a Presidential debate is still as fascinating as a lecture on verb forms. Especially when the script is the same each time. (Click on the video. Trust me.)

Why Obama will win (not the usual reasons)

2008-11-01T12:08:00.007-04:00

I don't know for sure Obama will win (despite my map), but if he does, this is why:

Money. He's spent way more than McCain. I can't find the totals I want, but I could find this, that Obama spent in Oct 1-15 about 10 times what McCain spent. Advertising helps.

Why is he able to spend so much more? I am sure there are several reasons, but here are two:
- McCain and Obama both promised to use federal matching funds for their campaigns, which limits their spending. Obama then changed his mind. McCain didn't.
- Federal campaign finance law, IIRC, requires that only US citizens can donate, and you can only donate so much. From what I've read, the Obama campaign isn't screening who it gets donations from via Internet -- and it gets most of its money these days from Internet, with donors calling themselves A Hitler and jasdfasdf, or such.
Bush's (un)popularity. As Mark Steyn says, Bush's popularity is somewhere between that of Robert Mugabe and the Ebola virus.
Impending recession. Recessions get parties thrown out of power. It's pretty reliable.
Charisma. Obama has his people excited; McCain is about as charismatic as, oh, tofu. Even Republicans don't really like him, and the feeling's mutual.
The media -- as everyone from Rush Limbaugh to Dan Rather now agree -- have become an advocacy group for Obama. They're pretty effective now at keeping news out of the news if it might harm Obama's chances.

Did you know the Iraqi occupation is ended in 13 of Iraq's 18 provinces? Check the Beeb -- but don't bother with the front page of any US paper. Did you know there's a draft agreement to end the rest of the occupation by June? (US troops would stay 2 years beyond that, but not occupying Iraqi cities.)
Obama's grassroots organization. The map of Obama HQ's in my state (Virginia) looks like a map of, oh, McDonald's locations -- that is, they're all over. McCain has 21.
Obama's great at behind-the-scenes organization too, so I hear, explaining why he did better than H Clinton in caucus states, whereas she did relatively better in straight primaries.
Race. Sure, we have speculation about the Bradley effect, which is the notion that people who won't vote for a black candidate often won't admit it to pollsters. But: black turnout is typically low; yet blacks turn out and bloc-vote when it's a black candidate in a groundbreaking race like this one. Are there more covert white racists switching sides than black voters deciding not to stay home this time? Unlikely.
Weather, and yes, I'm serious. Fine weather is predicted in all the big swing states. Good weather increases Democrat turnout relative to Republican.

So my question is: with this host of electoral advantages (especially the campaign spending gap and the incipient recession)...

...why isn't Obama 20% ahead in the polls, right now?

Good question. Tomorrow I'll speculate. (Or maybe you will, right now.)

My predictions for the election

2008-11-01T12:03:00.002-04:00

Make your own, at NPR.org.

Then count 2 points for each state. If you get less than a B, hang your head in shame and never blog again.

I've done this every year since 1984.

It changes how you think about things

2008-10-30T11:10:00.006-04:00

Now that much of my time is spent in baby classification ("Are you a wet baby? A poopy baby? A hungry baby?"), I have come to wonder...

...when they were making that 1970's sitcom The Facts of Life, what sort of sick joke was it to name one of the girls "Tootie"?

Isn't this worse than a poll tax?

2008-10-29T09:24:00.004-04:00

State Board Agrees With Clothing Ban

A report from right here in the Burg:

The State Board of Elections decided today to adopt a ban on clothing, including buttons and hats that directly endorse a candidate or issue.
The ban is effective within 40 feet of a polling place.

I wish I'd voted absentee!

Yet another monster

2008-10-28T22:13:00.003-04:00

I swear, the only thing that will stop my late grandmother from posting a reply saying "Aww, he's just so precious!" is that she wasn't Internet-savvy. Even being a late grandmother wouldn't stop her with this picture!

The kind of people you meet in Lynchburg, cont'd

2008-10-26T15:44:00.004-04:00

Once again, he just can't wait

2008-10-21T17:20:00.004-04:00

We just had the Early Intervention people over. Liam's officially a newborn, because he was due last week, but he made all his 1-month milestones, including "letting his head flop backward when you sit him up" and "letting his legs flop forward when you hold him prone" (it means "not palsied"), but also such things as "turning his head toward a bell," "grasping Poppa's fingers," and "picking his head up."

"Making kissy-faces at Mommy" wasn't on the list.

This actually happened

2008-10-20T12:04:00.002-04:00

The election was decided today

2008-10-17T14:12:00.006-04:00

...I'm afraid.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Supreme Court sided Friday with Ohio's top elections official in a dispute with the state Republican Party over voter registrations.

The justices overruled a federal appeals court that had ordered Ohio's top elections official to do more to help counties verify voter eligibility.

...

About 200,000 of 666,000 voters who have registered in Ohio since Jan. 1 have records that don't match. (Link.)

Ohio is a swing state and is likely to come down to a few ten thousand votes; there are 200,000 registrations that look wonky; and the Court has ruled that they can remain. (Strictly speaking, they didn't say that Ohio is complying with the law, but rather that there's no legal way we can force it to, Ohioan or not.)

As close as it is, and as big as Ohio is: as Ohio goes, so will go the nation.

A friend of mine on Internet has offered a further dire prediction: if Obama loses, there will be riots, especially if it's close (and it will be).

If McCain loses, we already have massive vote fraud as an explanation.

Whoever wins, it looks unlikely that the losing side will accept it as a democratically decided election.

Was winning really worth it?

2008-10-15T22:01:00.002-04:00

Echo-cardiogram report...

2008-10-13T18:29:00.001-04:00

..."completely normal."Whoo-hoo! Whoo-hoo!

Poppa, the human pacifier

2008-10-12T21:38:00.001-04:00

Look at Liam and you'll see why. It was the only way to keep him quiet.

Liam's daily life

2008-10-09T21:29:00.003-04:00

Eating. He'd much rather have a finger than anything else. (Hey! He's actually awake! And he's wearing clothes -- what's up with that?)Out for a walk.
Out for a drive.
Oh, no! It's Liam's invisible twin!

Firsts

2008-10-08T18:33:00.002-04:00

Rolling over. Twice. (I'm sure he didn't know what he was doing, but he still did it.)

Firsts

2008-09-28T17:07:00.002-04:00

Liam's full of firsts -- breath, meal, nap, etc. -- so I'll go with mine and Marisa's.

10. Set the alarm three times in one night. (For feedings.)
9. Got defensive (me) when people with unwashed hands wanted to touch my baby.
8. (Gross-out warning) Saw someone pooping. If you know what I mean. (Didn't expect that.)
7. Said phrases that make me sound like a grandmother. ("Are you a sweet baby?")
6. Diapered a doll. (For practice with "Snappi's.")
5. Listened to Fiddler on the Roof. We're trying to expand his horizons. That music is so annoying.
4. Had someone eat my finger. (With a little syringe and tube to deliver formula.)
3. Listened intently to someone else's breathing.
2. Cheered when someone picked up his own head.

and the number 1 is

1. Eagerly wiped someone else's butt.

Some things I noticed from being a father

2008-09-27T13:03:00.003-04:00

As Marisa observes, everyone in this house drinks his/her own type of milk. (I almost said "drinks his/her own milk," but Marisa notes that that could take on a whole new meaning.)

Marisa: lactose-free, fat free, practically milk-free.
Me: "Active lifestyle" milk, which I think means it's for old people.
Liam: Marisa.

I now know that "That sucks!" is a compliment.
We have been engaged in baby classification schemes. "Are you a sleepy baby? Are you a poopy baby? A kick-y baby? A wet baby?" These categories are fluid, especially the last one.
Dressing someone else is a weird experience.
Poop is a wonderful thing.

Liam's one-week birthday

2008-09-22T18:29:00.003-04:00

"I have to go to the doctor again?" Liam said.

The bottom line: classic Down syndrome, not the kind that's hereditary so any possible brothers or sisters (or cousins) should be affected. "OK" muscle tone for a Down's infant; "nothing to worry about." No signs of problems with heart or GI.

Liam insisted that we go out for Thai afterwards, so he got his first big day out, as his one-week birthday celebration. He slept through it, of course.

Rural America on ice

2008-09-20T14:55:00.003-04:00

My Alaska, and Sarah Palin's, deserves better from America.

Not really about Palin, so I'm still not getting too political. A nice article about how Alaska really is pretty Northern Exposure, and the rest of us could learn from its tolerance.

The lab results are back

2008-09-19T18:39:00.002-04:00

They counted 47 chromosomes.

Our world isn't ended, but it's been an unhappy day.

September 15, Part I

2008-09-16T20:26:00.007-04:00

It's September 16, and Mommy and Liam are both napping.

(Surprised? We were too. He's nearly a month early, but he's not being incubator-ed, and we apparently get to go home tomorrow.)

I'll make several posts on this big event, I'm sure, but for now I'm just posting baby pictures. That and saying, we are so converted into parents. Delighted to see poop, and fretful when they take the baby away for an hour for his "car seat test" (how do you fail that?) and hearing test. It's not quirky, and I like to post quirky things on these pages, but I can be mundane and typical for a while. (They tell me I won't have the energy for anything else!)

The baby shower

2008-09-14T18:19:00.004-04:00

Game: can you guess the circumference?I'm not sure I want to know...

Gas prices: a spike from Ike

2008-09-12T21:32:00.002-04:00

Gas prices are up to $4 (from $3.50) in the Burg today. Places that only raised it to around $3.70 had long lines, and at least one mega-station is out of gas.

They can't all have been running on fumes. I saw on gasbuddy.com there's a station in GA up to $6.

Oh, come now. There's going to be gas next week. If they were buying it before it went up, I'd get it; but they're buying it at the higher price.

Everybody I hear thinks they're crazy. We'll see.

The Palin Show, or Who let the dogs out in Minneapolis

2008-09-06T03:35:00.010-04:00

My adoring fans know I don't take politics head-on here, but I do look at the edges, and...I'm going to look a little further in today, in considering what people have been saying about Palin.

They said that her baby boy Trig is actually her teenage daughter's. This is based on a 2006 pic on the daughter that people perceived as having a tummy bulge. It turns out to be chronologically impossible.

That she should be home taking care of Trig and her other 4 (although one's a soldier and presumably can take care of himself) instead of having a career in politics.

That she covered up the thing about her daughter. (How you cover that up, I don't know -- that particular truth will out!)

That she's responsible for her daughter's problems; daughter made a mistake because Mrs. Palen was a bad parent.

That daughter has problems because she doesn't know how to use "protection."

That social conservatives would reject Mrs. Palin because of Miss Palin. When they didn't, that social conservatives are hypocrites for not condemning a 17-year-old girl in the media.

That she's not a woman at all, because of her beliefs (that's from NOW).

That Mrs. Palin's children are fair game because they were present at the convention.

Enough, already! They aren't fair game.

I'm not saying I'm shocked -- but I am dismayed. The level of viciousness with which they're attacking her family bodes ill for the country. It endangers not just her family but others', from now into the indefinite future: oppose the establishment and they'll try to hurt your family. Also Also, I'm not looking forward to years of Palin Derangement Syndrome. Palin made a hurricane hit New Orleans, and blew up the levees when it had passed -- that sort of thing. (Yes, I did hear both those things about Bush.)

The ironic thing is that mostly what they attack her for is one thing: being female. Jung was right. Shoving something into shadow doesn't make it go away. Her opponents talk the talk about hating the repression of women, but when the person they want destroyed is a woman, they go right for her ovaries. Not her policies.

And...

...it's all a sideshow, anyway. She's running for VP. That's sort of like running for dogcatcher, except dogcatcher has actual responsibilities. (Yes, I saw the speech.) Unless McCain keels over (could happen, I know), it won't make any difference except in people's perceptions.

But maybe that's what they're all fighting for. If we have a female GOP VP, it's going to take a lot of air time to convince swing voters that conservatives don't like uppity women. (I am sure it could be done.) And if she ever made President, it would be over. I don't think Labour even tries convincing the UK that Tories don't want women in leadership. After Thatcher, there'd be no point.

Our very first poopday card

2008-09-05T17:45:00.003-04:00

"Get ready for a new kind of download!"

Would you vote against a female Chuck Norris?

2008-08-31T20:12:00.001-04:00

Sarah Palin facts

I assume this is about the Beijing Olympics

2008-08-29T08:01:00.002-04:00

It took me a moment.

Now, a gripe against non-local doctors

2008-08-19T10:41:00.002-04:00

So two days after the surgery I contacted the Vidalia doc's office to find out: this appointment somebody notified me of after I regained consciousness. Is it worth another 20-hour round trip? His staff wouldn't answer any questions and he never returned my calls, nor those of the referring physician.

Friday I started bleeding again (don't worry, it doesn't seem to be serious, according to my GP). As I was supposed to, I called his office and reported it. "Either I will call you back or the doctor will," the receptionist said. It still hasn't happened. The referring physician also can't get any answers. The Vidalia doc did call in a prescription for me (so the pharmacist tells me). Too bad it was for something I told him earlier I had a bad reaction too.

I'm tired of griping. Let's hope the local specialist I see Wednesday will be both skilful and, well, un-flaky.

One long gripe against local doctors

2008-08-07T21:03:00.006-04:00

For about 2 years I've had a cluster of symptoms. I promise this is as explicit as it will get: ah, urgency, and pressure, and achey feveriness reminiscent of UTI, but that's not what it was. No bacteria showed up on the culture.

Med-center doc: "Oh, a week of Cipro won't get it? Sucks to be you." (I paraphrase somewhat.) Internet agreed: chronic abacterial prostatitis, no cure, no treatment, no prospects of it getting better except temporarily.

Dad: "I've always been able to fix this with the right cocktail of antibiotics." We tried it, and it worked.

Temporarily. It came back a month before the wedding. Went away again. Came back. I went to a local doc, who did a test and said, "Hm. It's not chlamydia? Ah, well -- I give up."

So I went to a specialist -- Fagerli, in C'ville. He said, "You've been on a lot of antibiotics for a very long time. We need to look at other options." "A lot of antibiotics" meant two, and "a very long time" meant 3 weeks. (The course of treatment is 4-8 weeks.) Meanwhile, he ordered an ultrasound of the abdomen, to get a look at the prostate. This is sort of like taking a detailed picture of your toe in hopes of getting your ankle in the shot. After that, he said, "OK! Now if you want to do anything, I could give you some invasive surgery that has to be repeated about every two months. Shall we?" Again, I paraphrase somewhat.

So I dropped him like a hot rock and went to another specialist in Lynchburg. He said, "Why don't you take this over-the-counter stuff and talk to me in 6 months if it doesn't get better?"

Lordy. Dad (also an MD) said, "I have a specialist I refer to down here, if you want to come." In the City of Onions (Vidalia).

So I did. The doc said, "Wouldn't it make sense to find out what's wrong before treating it?" And, "Why did they take an ultrasound of the abdomen to find out how big the prostate is?"

So he ordered an ultrasound of that (normal), and stuck a fiberoptic camera up where the sun don't shine, and said, "Lord -- what the hell is that?"

A sort of diverticulum, looking like a volcano -- a place for trapping liquid and growing baceteria, explaining all the symptoms, including the occasional recurring infection to give me fever, lethargy, and acheyness. "Want me to laser that out?"

I did.

So, after 2 years and 2 specialists, I found a doctor who wanted to find out what the problem was before treating it or giving up! If I'd known there was such a thing as that camera, I'd have asked for it at the beginning.

Now the volcano's gone, and I have this in its place.

It looks like the alien levels in the game System Shock II. But it feels like...nothing at all. Nice.

Finally, I'm thinking with Portals

2008-08-07T15:34:00.000-04:00

This game rocks.

The prototypical baby face

2008-07-19T22:23:00.006-04:00

I kept hearing from the crew in Georgia that all babies look like a local man named D. W. (R.I.P.), but unfortunately nobody had any pictures. "No problem," they said. "Just look at a newborn baby, and you'll know what he looks like. Well, except Taylor. He looked like a white George Foreman." Which is pretty disturbing.

But I saw a 6-week-old today, and she looked just like this. It was amazing.

It's a wonder any of us make it. You start out not knowing how to eat, how to smile, and you can't even pick your head up, and on top of it you have to look like Dwight D. Eisenhower, even if you're a girl. No wonder they cry.

Bouncing baby Boomer

2008-07-03T21:13:00.003-04:00

Jonah came from the belly of, well, not a whale this time. (She's actually quite petite.) I have a new second cousin. No pictures posted yet.

The manliness of...d****it!

2008-06-27T06:35:00.005-04:00

A recent survey at ArtOfManliness has me thinking about cussin'. (Not feeling like it, just thinking about it. Actually I feel pretty chipper today.)

(Further note: I'm not thinking about "swearing." Southerners don't call it "swearing" when we say naughty words, unless we add a vow, as in, "I swear I will finish this d@#$! thing if it's the last thing I do!" More sensitive Southerners limit themselves to an occasional "I Suwanee to my soul!")

People responding to the aforementioned survey answered: whether it's manly or good to cuss depends on context; or, if you're going to cuss, just do it, don't say "dern"; or, cussin' is unacceptable. But before we answer what people should do, let's see what they really do, and not just in English:

In Japanese, it's grammar, especially verb forms, not (usually) particular words, that make language less polite. And in Japanese just as in English, men are known for being a little less polite in their speech than women. Cussin', or its cultural equivalent, is characteristically more male than female.

Even English-speakers who would never cuss still vary their politeness level for context, by way of contractions or slang. Cusswords are just the way we get to the lowest politeness level.

I'll also offer opinions about pseudo-cusswords like "dang" and "holy moly":

People all over the world use euphemisms, partly because we don't always want the full emotional impact of a more vivid word. For example, last time you were on a road trip, you likely said, "I need to find a bathroom soon," rather than describing what you really needed to do. (I hope!)
Everyone I've ever met uses either euphemistic cusswords or the real thing. My sainted grandmother said "Oh, Lordy!" and your little cousin probably says something like, "Oh, pooey!"
It's cultural. I won't stop saying "dang" because it's regional for where I'm from, and "dag nab it" is just too funny to drop.
It makes just as much sense as the real thing! Come now -- when you say "that damned cat," are you referring to eternal punishment?

I conclude that "real" cusswords aren't always irredeemably awful -- and toned-down ones aren't either. Speaking well is an art, requiring a variety of techniques. (And if you get it wrong, you haven't become unmanly -- just wrong.)

Now, style is another matter. A gentlemanly style doesn't involve cussin' a blue streak in mixed company. A ladylike style, ditto. Mixed company or not...I find it hard to believe my wife and her friends at their last movie night were saying, "G--D---it! Can anybody get this f---ing DVD player to work? If I don't see a chick flick PDQ I'm going to lose my f---ing mind." And if anybody knows better...don't tell me.

Although I hope they were able to find a movie with fewer than one occurrence of the F word per minute. Sometimes it's a challenge.

We did the sonogram, so...

2008-06-25T12:19:00.001-04:00

What happened at the wedding reception

2008-06-13T11:31:00.001-04:00

Wildlife, and crystal skulls

2008-05-31T15:23:00.003-04:00

Last week I was up on the Blue Ridge. I found a quiet place to sit -- with the goal of reading and thinking, not observing wildlife -- but I still had 2 deer walk by me some 15 feet away. I don't think they ever saw me.

Then it was a coyote, following the same path. I picked up a stick just in case. He decided to retrace his steps, quickly.

The next day I climbed to Buzzard Roost -- site of a certain fateful event some 11 months ago -- and found out how it got its name. 5 buzzards took off and rode the thermals. Sorry, dudes.

While sitting in the shade, two male homo sapiens came up. Like the deer, they didn't know I was there, so they spoke freely. It went something like this:

"Yeah, man, it's like, the Maya built all this stuff, and they knew all these things, and they said the world is supposed to end in 2012. The Milky Way and everything are going to be lined up, and the earth flies off its axis."

"That's 4 years. I hope I get laid before then."

"It's pretty amazing --"

"Because I've just had this really long dry stretch."

"Yeah, it sucks."

"But if they know all this s****, then I guess maybe somebody did visit them back when, because how else would they know?"

"Yeah. And the crystal skulls, they say there's computer data in them, but we're not advanced enough to be able to read it yet. They knew more than we do."

"Yeah, they're amazing. Say, did Josh ever hook up with Jennifer? 'Cause he like talks about her all the time. He's all like, 'Do you think she likes me?' and I say, 'She put on that dress just for you -- duh,' but he doesn't get it. I don't think he's ever even taken her out!"

I think the planet is doomed, but not because the Milky Way's lining up.

Checking on the weather

2008-05-28T07:26:00.005-04:00

The sweetest thing anybody's ever said about me

2008-05-23T09:52:00.002-04:00

And no, it wasn't her. It was an unmarried female friend, to another:

"We'll find our 'Will.'"

(This vies well with what they were saying about my friend Dave: "When a man does something I don't like [like being 5 hours late for a date, say], I ask myself, 'Would Dave do this to Sheila?' Proposing to her by getting her first-graders to hold up signs saying WILL YOU MARRY ME didn't hurt either. Dave has raised the bar.")

Hearing things like this help me be motivated to keep the bar high.

Shame on this excellent team

2008-05-06T10:58:00.006-04:00

Vantage Point, PG-13. We see the assassination of the U.S. President speaking at an anti-terror accord in Madrid, followed by a deadly explosion right under the podium, all from the point of view of a news producer who's struggling to see it all.

Rewind to half an hour earlier. We see it all from the perspective of a Secret Service agent, still twitchy from taking a bullet for the President previously.

Rewind to half an hour earlier. We see it all from the perspective of an American tourist with a video camera, trying to protect a little girl separated from her mother while finding out what he can about who done it.

Every time we go a little further, learning more about who did what, who's lying, and what the terrorists' real plan is. It's an hour-and-a-half car chase, with plot twists and turns to keep your interest.

Now I'll start griping.

Having a cutout character give the bad opinion (that we should retaliate) and having the good-guy President recite the right opinions...not great technique, but OK. (The advice sounded really good: that we should be powerful rather than act powerful. Until you realized that the way to be powerful was to not have any power.)

But the dirty pool was at the beginning, when we saw the news producer censoring the very existence of anti-American protests ("censorship": their word) while a heroic reporter pointed out that the American public have a right to know. The reason this is dirty pool is that Europeans already think the American media lie to us, not in the way we might think they do, but by protecting us from hearing opinions dissenting from the war on terror -- according to what I've read. This film tells them clearly: yes, it happens. (The film is fiction, but it's supposed to be relatively realistic, and there's nothing to indicate that the news producer is about to be humiliated by having every other US network cover the protest while she covered it up.) This encourages non-Americans to believe something about America that the producers know full well isn't true.

Shame on them.

Four stars.

What to say to a pregnant woman

2008-05-05T16:10:00.007-04:00

Many friends have asked us if we want to find out if it's a boy or a girl. Oh, come now, I say -- we already know that. What else could it be?

I tend to be relaxed about "things you get tired of hearing." When you're a child, "Do you like school?" Yes, it's a boring question, but the person asking doesn't know what else to say to a twelve-year-old, never having been one himself. When you're a young adult, it's, "When are you going to get married?" When you're married, "When are you going to have a baby?" (We cheated almost everyone out of that opportunity!) Nobody means any harm by these questions. They're just interested in you, and "Are you getting any?" is too over the top.

All joking aside, I do have this gripe: when a woman's pregnant, all the horror stories about what can go wrong in childbirth get aired. I say, "Let's not say anything else to scare the pregnant woman, OK?" and someone says, "Oh, that reminds me! Did I tell you about my sister's baby, who turned out to be twins and they forgot one of them?"

She's going to remember those stories when she's in labor, so they're contributing to her stress at the precise time she needs way less of it. If you care, save the time-I-almost-bled-to-death stories till afterwards.

Meanwhile, we just had our last checkup. It started at 3:50 and was over at 3:51. I'm not sure I'm reading the bill right but I think that amounts to $240.51 per minute. No wonder the baby's heart rate was 179.

Or maybe it's $5 per minute, plus $470-something for "Everything's fine." That's a very nice thing to say to a pregnant woman.

Queen Tummy and her appeasement

2008-03-30T14:21:00.004-04:00

Things not to bother with, regarding morning sickness (or, more accurately, "morning, noon, and night sickness":

10. "Preggie Pops"
9. Frozen lemons
8. Non-frozen lemons
7. Thinking about lemons (seriously, one of the books, the author thought lemons were good for everything)
6. Hypnotherapy. ("Relax...and let go" is a really bad idea here)
5. Ginger ale that doesn't have any ginger in it
4. Emetrol. It's concentrated sugar water. (That always helps little kids not feel sick, right -- lots of sugar?)

OK, now a few of things that help (if not enough, at least some):

3. Acupressure, on the interior of the wrist. Because, you know, if your wrist hurts it's a distraction from your tummy. I hope that's not it!
2. Ginger candy. Mmmmmmmm
1. Ginger ale with real ginger in it. (Pretty good, too.)

Why waste time?

2008-03-21T09:43:00.005-04:00

(If you can't see the YouTube video, click here.)

Mr. Gore warned us this would happen

2008-03-11T17:13:00.005-04:00

Global warming isn't just causing problems here on earth. Notice the dust clouds from this catastrophic avalanche of dry-ice snow and dust, from the northern polar ice cap, which is disappearing due to the current Martian warming trend. (Yes, I'm serious, about everything but the Gore comment. Cool pic, huh?) No Martians were reported killed.

The hot topic at CNN: teeth and nostrils

2008-02-29T11:37:00.009-05:00

CNN ran this picture as their top story about a week ago: Hillary Clinton with her mouth open. Notice also the angle of the shot, up into her nose, the same way you'd see a monster in a horror movie. She looks worried, too. Soon a youthful Jamie Lee Curtis will put an end to her slaughtering cute teenagers, or even worse, she'll get stuck for the rest of her working life pretending to be a Yankees fan.
Today, CNN continued its reporting on the issues with this picture of McCain with his mouth open, from an angle so you can check the cleanliness of his nostrils.

To be fair, that picture was in the article; the top political story of the day was this shot of McCain looking worried -- and no wonder! "Ohio critical for McCain to win war-weary voters," it says. McCain has only 1033 of the needed 1191 delegates. With only 824 left to go, can he beat out #2 Huckabee, who's neck-and-neck with nearly 250 delegates? Notice the dark clouds closing in on every side. Poor guy.
Obama was strangely absent. Now, we all know a lot about Obama's position on politics -- he supports change, and he's opposed to the lack of it -- but don't we need to know more about the really crucial issues, like the appearance of the inside of his mouth and nose? And what can be done about those ears?

Well, if CNN won't cover it, at least we have Time to address the nostril question. But he looks cool and collected and has his mouth shut, so I think it's pretty clear now who would make the best President. I wonder what Obama's first official actions as C-in-C will be. (Admit it: so do you.)

Because Crotalus asked...

2008-02-14T14:41:00.010-05:00

Marisa and me at Tulum, a Maya ruin in the Quintana Roo state of Mexico, overlooking the Caribbean.
This is the main temple.

This researcher has a message for computer science students. Please forgive the bad sound quality.

This is the car we drove. Yes, I know there's no license plate. The police didn't seem to mind.

At El Cedral, one of the two Maya ruin sites on Cozumel, on Ash Wednesday, they celebrate mass in the church...
...then they go next door for what's commemorated on this pedestal: the pig sacrifice.
At the hotel.
How to know if it's going to be a busy day downtown.
Wildlife sometimes appeared in our room.
One afternoon the AC unit wasn't doing anything, so I punched buttons at random until it started blowing air again. Then it started throwing out ice chunks. It looked like someone was inside the unit, throwing snowballs at the vent.

I voted. For endless change!

2008-02-11T14:16:00.001-05:00

At last, a candidate we can all get behind, if not fully calculate.

Top 10 things to say before, or after, a wedding

2008-02-08T11:16:00.001-05:00

10. "Oh, yes, I knew...but I don't like to say anything. [With a brave little smile] Good luck!"
9. "Aren't you going to just live together first?"
8. [At the reception] "Who's that girl over there? She's hot."
7. "Dr. Briggs [that's me] is the best professor ever!" [The other professors heard it all!]
6. "Is this your first time?"
5. "Good luck! You'll need it -- half of all marriages end in divorce!"
4. [Later] "It was really beautiful: it was almost like a religious service!"
3. [Later] "Did you have the full beard on the day of the wedding? I guess you must have."
2. [By the priest, later] "I'm really happy to see you're still coming to church a month later." (It must be a rarity!)

And now, the "aw, isn't that cuuuute..."

1. [After the wedding, said by a little girl] "Mommy! I saw a real princess today!"

When I recounted that, another girl turned to her mother and said, "See, Mommy, I told you!"

Club Maya

2008-02-05T14:44:00.000-05:00

When we got out of security and customs at the Cozumel airport, we found a group of vultures, sorry, men, standing near the rental car desks, and wearing shirts saying Tourist Advisory.

As it turned out, Sr. Guerrera advised us to take a significantly discounted rental car! and a bottle of tequila we didn't really want! and tickets to Tulum, the coolest Maya ruin site, with bus fare! and did we want anything else? Just sign here, right below the part that says we agree to attend a 90-minute presentation.

OK. It was a good deal on the rental car.

(At least, it would have if there'd been insurance included. As it was it would have been cheaper to rent it ourselves. I'm not sure if this is Senor Guerrera's fault, or that of Omar, the Hertz clerk who later told us, Guerrera was wrong: "no insurance" doesn't really mean "fully insured," and I'd be happy to sell us insurance for the week for only $80. No, $120. No, $100. You have to pay cash. Ignore the sign behind my head that says "Absolutely no cash payments." And when you take the car back, you must come back here, so I can mangle the paperwork and prevent anybody from finding out what I did.)

So we took the ferry to the mainland, and a taxi up to Club Maya, a resort so luxurious it didn't even have a beach. (It was luxurious, though. At least, I think you could drown in that arena-sized pool without anyone noticing.) Roberto, our inquisitor, took us to breakfast, then showed us the rooms.

Admittedly, they were elaborate and huge. Of course, as honeymooners we'd have wanted "snug" and "cozy" and "located within a few miles of something we'd want to do."

Roberto and his coworkers were, apparently, trained by North Korean inquisitors in how to break the will of prisoners, but were unable to use the most fruitful techniques of torture, hunger, and sleep deprivation.

"Don't you see yourself staying here once a year, and saving scads of money?" he said.

"No," I said.

"Why not?"

I knew better than to give him anything. "I just don't like it."

"What's wrong with it?"

"It just doesn't appeal to me?"

"Why not?"

"I just don't like it."

Occasionally I'd throw him something. "I'd much rather go camping," I said.

"But you're married now," he said. "You have to think about the outrageously luxurious lifestyle your wife wants to pay for." (I paraphrase slightly. But if you know Marisa...the idea that she won't be happy until she's shelling out hundreds of dollars a night for a room is, well, not entirely accurate.)

"Are you kidding?" I said. "It's all I can do to get her to agree to bring a tent!"

Then they took us back to the huge room where land sharks circled around hapless vacationers, mostly with firm convictions (like "ain't no way in H-E-double-L I'm buying anything with these vultures breathing down my neck"), but occasionally, sadly, falling prey to the best deals imaginable.

Roberto then showed us the numbers. I looked intently at the paper, paying absolutely no attention to the figures ("Hm. Spell CLUB MAYA backwards and you get A YAM BLUC!") . Marisa actually paid attention. Apparently we had a chance to put down $20,000 as a down payment, and then pay off the rest of the $60-$100 K in 60 days. What a deal. And here's the kicker: after doing this, we still wouldn't have a place to stay. All we'd have would be the right to pay for the room (at a decent rate, admittedly), and a responsibility to pay for its cleaning once a year!

People fell for this?

"So, on a scale of 1 to 10," Roberto said, "how ready are you to give us huge sums of cash?"

"-1," I said.

"All right, then," he said, "I'll get the manager."

He did. The manager looked it over, and said, "So you realize that you can trade your right-to-give-us money privileges to resorts all over the world, including where you're staying now? You like that, don't you?"

"Actually, it kind of sucks," I said.

"You must like staying there," he said. "You are there."

"Hotwire.com put us there against our will," Marisa said.

"All right," the manager said, and got up and left.

This got us the chance to sit longer with Roberto, and have two other managers come over and argue with us about how dumb we were to prefer our current hotel -- and how if we liked it they could get us back there once a year.

"We didn't buy the place," I said.

"We recycle," the manager said. "Don't you want to save the planet?"

"No!" I said. "I hate the idea!"

"We agreed to be here for 90 minutes," Marisa pointed out. "It's been 2 hours and 45 minutes."

The manager disappeared.

"I've done something to offend you," Roberto said mournfully. "I'd be happy to get someone else to go through it all again with you --"

"No," I said firmly. "We love you to death. Really."

So after one more non-manager who was supposed to get us our "Get Out of Purgatory Free" card -- but instead repeated the incredible deal we were so foolishly letting slip by -- then one more manager came to argue with us, and I said,

No. We agreed to be here 90 minutes.

"That's 90 minutes per person," the manager, Brigitte, said.

That made me lose my cool, but I still repeated myself.

"You'd really rather stay at that resort you're at now?" she said.

"I'm not going to discuss the resort I'm at now, or anything except leaving."

She wrote "$100" on a paper and said, "You wouldn't even take a camping trip from us for $100?"

Right now, I thought, I wouldn't take the whole resort from you if you offered it for a quarter, you cranky old hog. "No," I said.

So we got out, with a bottle of tequila we didn't need, and paper saying we wouldn't have to pay for the rental car, and once outside --

"We won!" I said "We won! We won!"

And so we did. I actually felt kind of nice about our having gone into the giant's den and come out not only without our bones ground to make his bread, but having taken his harp, his goose, and his bottle of tequila. But now that I have proved my mettle on the field of war...no more timeshare adverts (No! Roberto's ghost says. It's a membership! We don't actually provide you with anything of value, so it's a way better deal!), even if they offer to pay for the whole trip.

M.A.R.I.S.O.I.D.

2008-01-19T09:12:00.000-05:00

Something disturbing happened this morning. Around 8:30 a.m. local time, I found there was a woman in my house. I knew it couldn't possibly be Marisa, since she's always at work by 6:30 or so. "Who are you," I said, "and what have you done with Marisa?"

Then she told me.

Get Your Cyborg Name

I have to admit, they do impressive work.

Music in the Burg

2008-01-18T11:03:00.000-05:00

OK, I may as well tell the world. Everything's cool in Paradise, except for that hip-hop music that she insists on playing at 3am, so loud you can *see* the windows vibrate. When I ask her to turn it down, she gets visibly upset and says, "Don't mess with my art!"

But how can I say no -- to that, or the reverse bungee jumping trip Saturday -- since she agreed we could return the hippopotamus I got her for Christmas, despite her saying that only a hippopotamus would do?

A more serious, or at least less silly, note: if you're in the Burg, check out 101.9, I think it is. Country gospel folk. I don't like any of the 3, but the combination is pretty good.

2008-01-05T07:39:00.001-05:00

Why I got four hours sleep the night before the Big Event

2008-01-05T07:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I felt peaceful while my bride was getting a little freaked over logistics details. (OK, I did wake up thinking, "This is my last day!" And it's a little sad. When I dropped her off, she said, "This is the last time you'll have to do this!" Any "last" is a little sad, no matter how much nicer the new thing is. I honor the sadness of not driving into that apartment complex with her any more, while recognizing driving home with her is much nicer.)

Things progressed in terms of decor, etc., but we did leave her bridesmaids working on flowers while we left to crash, because we were wiped.

But the bridesmaids didn't work on flowers for long, unfortunately. Just as I got done with placing everything I had to carry to the church in one box, taking the dried Christmas tree out of the house before it did spontaneous combustion, made sure my house guests were no longer sleeping on the floor...got some ice cream and put my feet up...one of said house guests came upstairs, said he felt awful and needed to go to the emergency room. I thought a moment and called up one of the bridesmaids, who's a nurse. She told me where to take him...then they came over and took them themselves so I could go to bed. Lord, they're going to be zombies tomorrow. Thanks, Kim, Meg -- you are life savers!

I'm afraid John was probably admitted to the hospital last night. I'll get the details later. Of course he kept apologizing for messing things up. The things we feel guilty for.

The upshot of it is that after spending a day on making sure the right things happened, and that the marriage license shows up at the wedding (so we don't have to make everyone wait an hour while we go get it)...after two sleeping pills and a self-hypnosis I was able to get to sleep. For about four hours. Then I was sproing! awake again.

At least Marisa won't have to worry that I'll sleep through the alarm!

If you pray, pray for John -- away from home, feeling awful, and hospitalized. So will we.

2008-01-03T22:37:00.000-05:00

2008-01-03T00:09:00.000-05:00

2008-01-02T00:06:00.000-05:00

The sweat lodge tonight was exactly what I wanted. Special thanks to James, who worked all day setting it up. What a gift!

2008-01-01T00:27:00.000-05:00

2007-12-31T01:54:00.000-05:00

A few updates

2007-12-06T22:56:00.000-05:00

Since we think our friends are super, we've decided to go with a superheroes theme for the wedding. I'm renting a Batman suit. Marisa has opted for Catwoman over Wonder Woman, on the grounds that it'll be January.

She wanted a little more stylish entrance at the church, and I have just the thing. I'm going to install a toy dog on the back dash. Its eyes will light up when you hit the brakes. Since it'll be on Epiphany, the last day of Christmas, one eye will be red and the other green.

This regards a different holiday, but...how much trouble do you usually go to for a spouse's Christmas present? I'm happy to get her pretty much anything she wants, but I distinctly heard her say something about wanting a hippopotamus for Christmas -- that only a hippopotamus would do -- and something about that being stuck in her head and it was making her sing to think about it. If she really wants it that much, I guess I'll have to try! (Won't she be surprised when she unwraps it!)

Why I couldn't stop laughing in church

2007-11-12T22:26:00.000-05:00

Facebook has a gadget that lets you tell the world your mood. You click on an image paired with a word (say, a frowny face and the word "mad"), and there you go.

But I couldn't find one quite to my liking for feeling "love," so I googled "love." Naturally, the first link was to Wikipedia's incredibly dull and clinical entry on love:

Love has many different meanings in English, from something that gives a little pleasure ("I loved that meal") to something one would die for (patriotism, pairbonding) ...

As I explained to Marisa, I find the Wikipedia entries to be useful (often), but the style is boring and flat. You could look up "boogers" and get something like "Boogers. Boogers are dried nasal mucus..."

...but it was OK, I added, because when I clicked over to images.google.com, as I intended all along, I found a nice site with pictures of cute animals: puppies licking each other's faces, that sort of thing. "Pictures that illustrated the concept," I said.

"Which concept?" she said. "The one about boogers?"

I almost fell off the sofa.

Unfortunately, the next weekend, I remembered this when I was sitting in church. I thought I was going to have to leave the sanctuary to avoid laughing out loud when the priest was talking about remembering those who had gone before and other things you really shouldn't laugh at. Everything made it worse. "We live in joy" (because we're about to get our faces licked!). "Remember those who are less fortunate" (because they don't get their faces licked? or because they licked someone's face and got a little more than they bargained for?). I don't know how I made it through the service without embarrassing myself.

So I thought I'd make a blog post and embarrass myself here. Still, I shouldn't be too ashamed. It's infantile to laugh like this, but it's good for the health. (Unlike, say, licking puppies' faces without looking carefully first.)

10 Things to Know About Me

2007-10-31T23:21:00.000-04:00

This is an idea from batmarg's LJ account. She didn't tag me, but it looks like fun. Maybe I'll tag somebody myself.

10 things you probably don't know about me. (I'll make an exception for batmarg, who probably knows half of this.)

I make eggs Benedict for myself, a lot.
When I'm feeling tipsy, I often say, "OK, I'm feeling it. Ask me anything you want, and I'll tell you the truth." And nobody has anything to ask!
If I diet hard, I lose about 3 pounds. If I eat like a pig, I gain about 3.
I can't get enough kakuro.
I have Orson Scott Card's phone number on my cell. (Yes, there's a sound reason, and no, I've never called it!)
I filled up on music somewhere around 1990. Now I just want the stuff I already heard. (All the new stuff is the same as what I know, anyway.)
I like Vista. I know this makes me something awful, but I still like it.
I don't want to hear another thing about Portal until the semester's over and I have some time!
One of the most fun parts of my job is taking horrible, grokky, incomprehensible code (from textbooks or the web) and making it beautiful.
I think Facebook would be a lot more fun if people would write notes to accompany their status so we know *why* our friends are feeling blue or happy or whatever. (Yes, Katie, that's a hint!)

Great Mother, Great Father

2007-10-02T19:15:00.001-04:00

...now published at IGMS. Check it out!

A connoisseur of workshops

2007-09-16T21:00:00.000-04:00

I ought to be, as many as I've been to.

Many are spinoffs from the ManKind Project: a men's organization centered around personal growth (but that hardly does it justice), and being all male, it's a little rough at the edges. OK, very rough at the edges. There's also a noticeable New Age contingent, although you might run into Catholics like me, Protestants, Jews, or staunch atheists. Venues tend to be done on the cheap.

But this past weekend I went to Engaged Encounter* with my fiancée, and it was a great weekend. Almost every session was like this: someone presents an issue important for married people to think about (joint decisions, how to support each other, etc.), then you and your honey take 20 minutes to write letters to each other. Great way of getting to honesty with things you hadn't thought of, or were avoiding. Engaged Encounter is Catholic, but non-Catholics are welcome.

*In case you click on that link, well, we all know that the HTML "blink" tag is 3vil.

Anyway, it was a big shift from MKP. I noticed several differences. The top 10 were:

10. More women (duh)
9. When you turn the H knob in the shower, hot water actually comes out
8. Hardly any gay people. I'm still trying to figure out why
7. Less brown rice, more things that make you fat
6. Wine
5. Fewer bodily noises
4. Fewer raucous laughs after those bodily noises
3. Fewer people denying the bodily noises and having nobody believe them
2. Less grunting
1. More kissing

Not bloggin' much...

2007-09-08T00:17:00.000-04:00

...because I'm doing the Facebook thing instead. Bloggin' per so, though, is not usual. Instead, it's terse updates:

Will is happy to be back at work.
Will is eager to see his honey who's flying back in tonight!
Will is grinning, but impatient with this whole "120 days" thing. (A reference to the time to the big event!)

It's the greeting card version of blogging: one line, and sign your name! Still, it's fun.

Wisdom teeth

2007-07-31T13:55:00.001-04:00

Someone who must remain nameless because this is the Internet...just had her wisdom teeth out.

To make her feel less self-conscious about her vastly swollen jaws, I am posting a picture here of me when I had mine out.I am doing this just to make her feel better, of course, because that's just the kind of uncle I am.

Wood that flies

2007-07-20T10:27:00.000-04:00

Last night when I got home, it seemed that the wind must have picked up while I was out.
Bummer about Richard's front yard. That tree was as big around as me!

Yeesh. Look what happened to my garden. (Mostly repaired.)
That branch must have flown at least 20 feet! (Lower right is the garden, upper left is the nearest similar branch. But it's from a different tree -- it was thrown there.)
There are two trees down in my backyard. Here's one:
Here's the other. Dead center on the trailer.
No, it's one tree, from my other neighbor's yard, just as big as it looks. But when this happened last night I was at Walden, about a mile away. It didn't sound that bad.
1 trailer destroyed: $200 (approximate)
fuel for Steve's chainsaw: $10 (also approximate)
lost garden produce: $5, given my usual rate of success
having nothing hit the house bigger than walking stick: priceless

Tips for Protestants at Catholic weddings

2007-07-15T22:15:00.000-04:00

The first tip is for everyone: Saturday January 5 is the day!

But since some in my family have expressed a little concern about how to behave at a Catholic wedding, I'm going to go ahead and give a few other tips to help things go more smoothly.

A Catholic wedding is a church service with a little something extra (something about rings or vows or something). The order of worship is found in the "missal," a tome found where you'd expect to find a hymnal. Unfortunately, the liturgy is found at random locations within that missal, and possibly some other volume you won't have, and you can't find how to flip back and forth to the right pages without a secret decoder ring we don't give to Protestants. You are expected to stand, sit, and kneel at various points, and repeat words of liturgy, and if you get anything wrong the priest will stop and stare at you until you get it right.
The word "missal" is Latin for -- appropriately enough -- "missle." When the priest walks down the aisle carrying a book high over his head, you are expected to throw your missal at him from behind, and then look innocent and point to someone else.
During the goat sacrifice (note: it's really rude to ask about the goat sacrifice, so if you so much as mention it, everyone will probably just deny it), the responsive reading is to baa-a-a really loud. (If you can't find this in the missal, well, I told you you can never find anything in the missal, didn't I?) If you don't do this everyone will be insulted, so don't be shy. Belt it out! (If you do this at the wrong time, however, such as during my wedding, you may become the sacrifice.)
Although people up north are used to big blowouts after the wedding, the current wedding chic in Virginia is store-brand soda water like "Dr. Thunder" and "Big K," "Cheetos," and whatever we can find on sale at Sam's Club. If you're really hungry you can ignore the "Limit 2 please" sign in front of the Cheetos. I'd like to do more, but when fashion says Cheetos, who am I to argue?
At the reception, telling the bride how lucky she is brings a lot of good luck, especially to the groom. Telling the groom how lucky he is brings a lot of nodding, especially from the groom.

The Odd Couple

2007-07-07T23:36:00.000-04:00

No, that's not a reference to me and my beloved, but to the Neil Simon play, which we saw tonight. (Come on. I can't announce earthshaking news in every post!)

The actors brought the characters to life, and the characters were rich and deep and brought out the play's theme with subtlety and skill. It was agonizing.

Simon didn't content himself with showing his theme; he had Felix say it explicitly at the end, when he reached the happy ending of going to live with two hot British chicks while he was still married to someone else:

"Marriages come and go, but the game goes on."

Every character assumed that marriage was temporary and not worth lifting a finger to preserve, thus explaining why their romantic relations made them so miserable. Well, everybody except Felix (before the end), and he was clearly a nut case.

It was like watching a religious play, for a religion that I didn't subscribe to and had little sympathy for -- say, one that showed us why human sacrifice wasn't so bad after all, and only an OCD control freak who alphabetizes the dishes would object to it.

So, what kind of culture was in Simon's head, to write from such a perspective?

Wikipedia can answer that. He's now on marriage #5. He was still on #1 when the play came out in 1965. Remember the 1970's, when this idea caught on -- how happy it made everyone, when their marriages broke up? Yeah.

It was hard to watch characters put themselves through hell, and laugh. Maybe the next Simon play I see will be a comedy about people who hit themselves on the head with bricks, because concussions and contusions are what life's all about. I might laugh more.

2007-07-01T16:01:00.001-04:00

(These comments added the following Tuesday...)
Thanks to everyone, for the good wishes and for your enthusiasm!

The date is tentatively early January, but we have to confirm the church and the priest. Workin' on it. I think we'll get confirmation in a couple of weeks.

At the very least, I've found a sure way to make both friends and relatives read my blog. However, it's not a method I can ever use again!

Life lessons for the young

2007-06-04T23:00:00.000-04:00

Weekend before last my nephew's uncle (one that's not me) told him, "You have a lot to learn." The statement puzzled me. I mean, it's obvious. He hasn't had calculus yet, or physics. Of [i]course[/i] he has a lot to learn. Why didn't the other uncle whip out a textbook and enumerate the lessons he meant?

Then I got it: it was life lessons this [i]particular[/i] nephew needs. He and I have this running joke game, in which each calls the other ugly, stinky, etc. Except that when I say those things they aren't jokes.*

So here's my attempt to help: life lessons the nephew needs.

Soap is cheap. You can use as much of it as you want. Please.
Dental floss isn't meant for your toes -- but if you need it, by all means, use it.
Just because the dog licks you doesn't mean you have to lick him back.
Mouthwash does look pretty in those bottles in the cabinet, but it's even nicer when you put it in your mouth!
When someone points out that you have an overpowering presence, it's not always a compliment.
Same goes for "interesting and funny" if it refers to the shape of your head.
Recycling is fine, but shouldn't apply to Q-tips.

I'm sure that he'll be properly grateful for my advice. Next time I see him maybe he'll get a really nice bag for me to put over my head!

* I wish I could take credit for that joke, but actually he came up with it.

Happy birthday to me

2007-05-30T10:20:00.001-04:00

Isn't she pretty?

The haggard look in my eyes is from lying awake at night thinking about her.

The happy look in my eyes is from lying awake at night thinking about her.

Naughty Santa

2007-05-29T23:05:00.000-04:00

(I'm going to have to take recent events out of order, because of the need to post pictures.)

I went down to St. Simons to hang at the beach with family, and...hard as it was to be away from home (more on that later), it got even harder when I got involved with Santa's nefarious, I mean glorious, deeds.

There was a Santa doll in a glass curio case where my niece and her cousin slept. One night Santa came out of the case and took up residence on a table placed right next to their bed so he could be looking at them when they got up. I had absolutely nothing to do with it, but they insisted on believing that Santa did not get there by himself because he's just a doll. (In which case, what's there to be afraid of?)

The next morning I woke up and saw Santa looking at me. This was not a problem because I have been good unlike Certain People Who Shall Remain Nameless.

He told me that I was Santa's friend and for Christmas I would be getting iPods and kisses but those Certain People if they don't straighten up ain't getting nothing but reindeer hairballs and elf poop. I left before I saw where he went next but I strongly suspect he ended up in their bed, and that everyone else was soon awakened by horrified screams. Possibly with good reason:

He'll seize you when you're sleeping
He'll grab you in the bed
And if you try to get away
He'll knock you in the head
You better watch out!

I'm not taking any chances. Santa, you rock. Really.

Do I want a dog?

2007-04-26T19:51:00.000-04:00

Or a cat?

I went to the pound today. (They found me walking outside my yard without a collar, so...) I met:

Diamond, a black-and-white shorthair. She was yowling. I thought she was saying, "I want you to let me out of this cage and pick me up!" but it turned out to mean "They took my kittens away! Where are my kittens?" Poor thing.

Nameless cat. "I like you," he said, "but don't pick me up. I'm serious."

A Doberman. "If I act tough enough you won't hurt me! That's why I'm barking nonstop, showing my teeth, and slinging drool! Want to take me home?"

Martin, a brown lab. "Yes! Yes! I need fingers to lick!"

A host of beagles. "Another human looking at us? Whatever."

Nameless humane society person. "Stop touching the dogs, please. You might end up liking one and taking it home."

Max, a chow mix. "Wait till she leaves the room and rub my ears. Please?"

I didn't bring any home, but Martin might get another visit. I hate to deprive a dog of licking opportunities.

Nappy-headed what?

2007-04-14T20:31:00.000-04:00

I am, like all the country's talking heads, quite concerned about the David Imus scandal . (Donald? Dwight? It's not like I'd ever heard of him before, and -- admit it, you hadn't either.) It is crucial that we determine whether the basketball team in question wears nappy-headed hose.

And yet the punditocracy keeps avoiding that central issue. Back in the CBS forged documents scandal, I saw Eleanor Clift on Fox News, telling us we should stop distracting ourselves with questions about media ethics and get back to the question of whether Bush was a nappy-headed ho, or something like that. Clift was right then and she's right now. I don't know whether Dwayne Imus should be fired for apologizing or whatever it was; I just want to know the answer to these questions:

What does napping have to do with it? Was Doogie Imus saying that this ball team doesn't hustle like it should? (Am I going to be in trouble for saying "hustle"?)
How could a seasoned sportscaster like Imus think that they are wearing hose? It would be too hot!
Did I misunderstand his comments? I looked up "ho" in the dictionary, and it said
ho (hO), n. 1. A greeting or call, as in, "Land ho!" Which leads to my final question:
Did Sharpton fire Imus for being unable to distinguish a ball player from a sea greeting? Would a pirate sensitivity class fix the problem?

I want to know the answers to these questions, so I'm looking forward to another week of nonstop coverage.

The secret of Lost

2007-04-05T14:49:00.000-04:00

The reason for the mysteries of ABC's edgy show Lost are now revealed. I can't claim credit; perhaps my source will come forward in the comments section (not the tail section). Here it is:

I have discovered the secret of Lost.......
It's a tv show and they can do whatever they want!!!! Aren't my powers of deduction astounding?

I am stunned and envious!

But I still don't think that can explain Hurley and the numbers. I mean, you couldn't just make that up!

OK, now I'm worried about illegal aliens. The tentacled kind.

2007-03-14T18:58:00.000-04:00

No wonder Dave's
looking freaked.

Apparently there's a near-total news blackout (now protested by inquiring minds) on the disturbing events around Homestead, Florida. Ever since Hurricane Eve hit, things have been strange. People have disappeared and been replaced by human-alien hybrids. Murders have gone unprosecuted. There were lights in the water, and things that grab you and suck your DNA out. That kind of thing.

I've been watching it on rented videos, so I'm not totally up to date, but...Dave's blog hasn't been updated in over a year (since the show was canceled). Amazon pretends they've never heard of the book Robin Hood and the Cambrian Explosion. The military, the sherriff's office, the park service, and apparently even ABC programming executives are all in on it. I'm getting pretty worried, because I'm sure the finale will be a cliffhanger.

Sherriff Tom Underlay, looking at the crowd at the grocery store: "They're all hybrids. The people, not the cars."

You Will Know

Huh, again?

Huh?

Liam discovers the difference in his face and mine

Re-trekkin'

Caught in the act

R.I.P.

Liam on April 7

The big 0.5

Separated at birth?

Caught!

Another milestone

The "Winnie the Pooh" mobile

Liam learns to count!

Isn't it delightful?

Dinner music

At long last, baby pictures again

He's real, and he's coming. You better watch out

OMG!

Letters to Liam

Liam's baptism

The way it is at our house

Infant classification: a pictorial guide

Liam's 2nd birthday

I never expected these things

Purple slippers

Why McCain will win (and no, I'm still not saying if he will)

Why Obama will win (not the usual reasons)

My predictions for the election

It changes how you think about things

Isn't this worse than a poll tax?

Yet another monster

The kind of people you meet in Lynchburg, cont'd

Once again, he just can't wait

This actually happened

The election was decided today

Echo-cardiogram report...

Poppa, the human pacifier

Liam's daily life

Firsts

Firsts

Some things I noticed from being a father

Liam's one-week birthday

Rural America on ice

The lab results are back

September 15, Part I

The baby shower

Gas prices: a spike from Ike

The Palin Show, or Who let the dogs out in Minneapolis

Our very first poopday card

Would *you* vote against a female Chuck Norris?

I assume this is about the Beijing Olympics

Now, a gripe against non-local doctors

One long gripe against local doctors

Finally, I'm thinking with Portals

The prototypical baby face

Bouncing baby Boomer

The manliness of...d****it!

We did the sonogram, so...

What happened at the wedding reception

Wildlife, and crystal skulls

Checking on the weather

The sweetest thing anybody's ever said about me

Shame on this excellent team

What to say to a pregnant woman

Queen Tummy and her appeasement

Why waste time?

Mr. Gore warned us this would happen

The hot topic at CNN: teeth and nostrils

Because Crotalus asked...

I voted. For endless change!

Top 10 things to say before, or after, a wedding

Club Maya

M.A.R.I.S.O.I.D.

Music in the Burg

Why I got four hours sleep the night before the Big Event

A few updates

Why I couldn't stop laughing in church

10 Things to Know About Me

Great Mother, Great Father

Would you vote against a female Chuck Norris?