Vive la Montréal

MONTREAL -- Imagine Boston translated into French, with an attitude straight out of San Francisco. That's Montréal, our little pocket of Old Europe right here in North America.

I'm making what should be my last trip up here for a while. The project is just about wrapped up. It took longer than it normally would partly because of its size and scope, and partly because of the language thing. They're serious about speaking French up here. It's the law.

But, even if you don't parler, you can get around just fine. This is the city where everything's pretty much OK. One of the main downtown streets, Rue Ste.-Catherine, cuts through the campus of a major university and is home to a large mall and several beautiful 17th-century cathedrals. Also, strip clubs. And not subtle strip clubs, but big, huge, flashing-signs-with-neon-naked-women strip clubs. Mall, cathedral, strip club. Restaurant, electronics store, strip club. That's Rue Ste.-Catherine.

I found myself walking Ste.-Catherine on Wednesday night, because that's where I emerged when I got off the subway. Two young women walked by, smiling, laughing, holding hands. A couple of blocks away, the homeless guy sat with his bucket and his cardboard sign. The sign read, in English, "I need to smoke a JOINT -- Please Help." At least he's honest. I didn't contribute to his stash, but he was good for a laugh.

I found myself oddly surprised at how many of the homeless people have dogs. I saw four or five, bundling up in their makeshift quarters in storefronts, getting ready to call it a night. Nobody seemed to mind.

I turned the corner and fell in behind three large young men, who were smoking and talking hockey. My nose quickly picked up the fact that one of the men, shall we say, was not smoking a Camel. That smell is just as illegal up here as it is in the U.S., but hey, it's Montréal, everything's OK here.

I stopped into an Asian restaurant, where the Hispanic waitress greeted me in French. I ordered my poulet avec riz and was, as always, very pleased with the meal. Food is plentiful here, and all of it is good. Even the fast food seems to be better. Not sure why; it might have something to do with the French thing. Something about a "McPoulet Croustillant" makes it so much better than the typical crispy chicken sandwich.

The architecture is old, but everybody here is young. Even the older people look young, stylish, quick to smile. Billboards for pop stars and new movies and iPods are everywhere. Global warming and "America's war" are big topics of conversation here, especially because so many Canadians are dying fighting our battle in Afghanistan. There are three major political parties in Québec: Liberals, Conservatives, and the Bloc Québecois, which advocates the secession of Québec from Canada, among other things. Most real Québecois are torn on the issue, it seems; they're protective of their culture, but they also think of themselves as Canadian. And the conversation always turns to the laughter of concession when somebody utters the phrase "the Québec military."

I'll fly south tomorrow, leaving behind the predicted ice storm and the 4:30 p.m. sunset. I'll miss it, but I feel better knowing that a place like Montréal exists.

"Technical entrepreneur." Yeah, right

I like cars. I like cars a lot. Over the years, the fact that I like cars has caused me to make some really bad financial decisions. I don't care. I still like cars.

This is why I'm so interested in one of my semi-neighbors. Why a semi-neighbor? Because he paid more than $350,000 for the average suburban house across the street from me in my average suburban subdivision. He doesn't live there. Neither does anybody else. He just parks his cars there. Two in the garage, three in the driveway.

But these aren't just cars. We're not talking about Tauruses and Camrys, or even Camaros and Mustangs. Here's the current roster:

-- Aston Martin DB9
-- Maserati Quattroporte
-- Chevrolet Corvette Z06
-- Jaguar XK-R
-- Jaguar X-Type

You added correctly: That's more than $450,000 worth of cars parked across the street from me.

They're all his; they have actual license plates on them, not dealer plates or temp tags or anything. The 'Vette and the Aston Martin usually live in the garage; the Jags and the Maserati are parked outside, with covers. The Maserati's alarm has been intermittently going off all morning. We're not sure why.

The guy is a nice enough older fellow, late 50s probably, tall, an ex-Marine who is now, as he puts it, "a technical entrepreneur of sorts." I'm fairly certain that's neighborhood-ese for "Internet pornographer." Occasionally, you'll find his teenage son or early-20s daughter in the driveway, shining the wheels on the Maserati or one of the Jags. (The daughter drives a late-'90s Cavalier, by the way.) He lives in another house elsewhere in our neighborhood with his wife. He occasionally comes to his car-house to "watch TV so it doesn't bother the wife."

Oh, and none of these cars is his primary transportation; he has a Dodge Durango for that. He drives the Aston Martin every two weeks, "whether I want to or not," he says, because the battery has a tendency to run down if he doesn't.

"I like cars," he said to me one Sunday afternoon. He even went out of his way to compliment my car, a car that would be distinguished in just about every field other than his driveway. I was somewhat honored, actually.

When I grow up, I want to be a "technical entrepreneur of sorts."

A cartload of crap

I've been to Racine, Wis., a time or two, but I've never had a need to have any dealings with the Modine Manufacturing Company. I'm guessing my needs for thermal management are covered by my air conditioner and my car's radiator.

I would likely still not know of Modine Manufacturing were it not for a link on my favorite media news site. Apparently Modine was offended by a perfectly accurate headline in the local rag on a story about how the company laid off 50 of its workers recently.

The headline: "Modine fires 50."

Modine President David Rayburn apparently took offense at such a direct headline. He was clearly annoyed that the page designer didn't have enough space to allow the copy editor to write "Modine takes account of the interests of all its stakeholders, relieves 50 workers of further participation."

Rayburn writes:

We thoroughly evaluated every position here in Racine, to determine its place in the new structure, and to eliminate redundancies. We offered early retirement packages, and then made the tough decision to eliminate 50 positions. We acted responsibly. We acted in the best long-term interest of all of our stakeholders - customers, suppliers, employees and shareholders.

Whatever. I write back:

Dear Mr. Rayburn: Fuck you.

Come on, man. Grow a pair. Sack up and tell people the truth: "Because of poor management, unrealistic profit goals, and an inability to anticipate changes in the global market for thermal management, we got to November with a realization that we need to find a way to keep more of the money we're making for ourselves. Because of this, we have determined that 50 of our co-workers are no longer necessary to the operation. Therefore, as the holiday season begins, we have decided to take what we were going to pay them next year and keep it for ourselves. Nothing personal; just business."

Instead, Rayburn figures shooting the messenger is a better plan. "I was very disappointed to see the large headline in the newspaper on Friday, October 27, "Modine fires 50," Rayburn wrote in his letter to the Journal Times of Racine. "These employees' jobs were eliminated, based on a business decision, carried out after careful consideration. It was very insensitive to these employees' hard work and service to characterize their situation in the sensational way you did."

My guess is the copy editor wrote "Modine fires 50" because "Modine shitcans 50" was a character or two too long. I again offer Rayburn an alternative: "It was very insensitive to make such a big deal about our bad business practices. It makes us look like cold, unfeeling bastards who would fire people in Q4 rather than take a risk of our bonuses being lower."

Figuring those 50 jobs averaged about $40,000 a year in salary and benefits, the cuts in Racine saved Modine $2 million for fiscal 2007. This doesn't count the savings from the 45 positions opened by early retirements that were not filled.

According to the AFL-CIO's Executive PayWatch Database, Rayburn earned just shy of $2.7 million in total compensation in 2005. One suspects it never occurred to Rayburn to try to get by on $700,000 next year in order to save these jobs.

There are other ways to keep labor costs down. Measurable performance goals and tough evaluation processes would help minimize dead wood. Realistic profit expectations would keep greedy stockholders and boards of directors at bay. Executive pay is horrendously out of control in all industries; would be nice to see some stockholder outrage against THAT.

Listen, I understand that it's just business. It happens in my current line of work, and it's happening a lot in my former line of work. People get laid off every day. But, Mr. Rayburn, save the bullshit. Just stand up and say, "We fired 50 people today , because we thought our chances to make money would be enhanced by their absence."

Oh well. At least Modine is creating opportunities in China and Mexico.

Meanwhile, here in America, we'll just keep telling the middle class that they're unnecessary.

Why I hate America

I don't, really, but now that I have your attention:

Can somebody explain to me why, after three and a half years of Republican bumbling, stumbling and fumbling, during which they gave us an unnecessary war and took away our civil liberties, during which the United States has become a worldwide punch line (or the nation that others fear most), that the GOP was still not in serious danger of losing Congress ... until it was discovered that one of its Congressmen was overly electronically friendly to teenage boys (most of whom, I must point out, were of the age of consent in many states; doesn't make it any less creepy, but it also doesn't exactly make him a pedophile)?

That's a long question, but there's a short answer.

We're stupid.

Ribbit

When you live in Florida, you accept that you're going to find critters occasionally in places you don't expect to find them. We've had plenty of untimely sightings of the 2-inch cockroaches euphemistically known as "palmetto bugs"; we've had a lizard or two pop up in the house; and not too long ago, we had a snake in our son's bedroom. (The Boy thought it was pretty cool.)

But I certainly did not expect to be awakened from a my-flight-landed-at-12:40 a.m. fog at 7 this morning by the Old Daughter screeching, "There's a frog in my toilet!"

Thank God she tends to look down before she sits down. (That's great advice for anybody to follow, by the way.) Try to imagine, if you will, the feeling of little amphibious toes tickling your butt. Yeah. That's an image you didn't need. You can thank me later, when that pops back into your head as you get ready for some relaxing commode time this evening.

Anyway: Because "that's why I got married," said The Wife, I had to go in and deal with the frog in the toilet. After verifying that he was still there, I did what any manly dad would do: I closed the lid on the toilet and flushed.

No such luck. That's one smart frog: He was clinging to the edge of the bowl. I prodded him gently with the toilet brush, and the sumbitch jumped nearly 6 feet from the rim of the toilet to the top of the mirror over the vanity. Pretty impressive, I thought. I opened the door to the outside and prodded him a few more times. Jump, jump, and he was outside, none the worse for wear.

That's a happy ending for all involved. So imagine my surprise when, in the midst of work that I shouldn't have had to be doing at 9:30 p.m., the Old Daughter screeches, "There's a frog in my bathroom!"

Holy shit. I have Instant Replay on my day! And today's the worst damn day for Instant Replay. I would pick about 1,000 other days I'd rather go back and relive.

So, I grab the broom, and once again help Kermit hop to his semi-natural habitat.

Now, all this begs the question: How did a frog find its way into our house? Is he coming up through the toilet? (The palmetto bugs occasionally make their way up through the drain.) The door to outside wasn't left open. There are no windows. There are no openings in the ceiling. And when I asked him as he was hop-hopping outside, the little bugger didn't even have the courtesy to say, "Ribbit."

Pretty rude, I think. Next time, he just might get flushed.

Freefall

If the Dow was dropping as much as the value of human life appears to be dropping over the last few years (see: 9-11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Sudan, Bailey, Colo., Nickel Mines, Pa., etc.), we'd be in sheer utter panic.

But since it's a bunch of soldiers, a couple hundred thousand Africans and a few children we don't know, well, it's just another news story.

What five years can do

Five years ago, I was one of the top news editors for the eighth largest newspaper in the United States. I was 33, and had been a professional journalist for more than a decade and a half. I had assembled sections for some of the biggest stories ever -- the first World Trade Center attack, the Branch Davidian siege, numerous World Series and Stanley Cups on impossible deadlines.

All ego aside, in whatever newsroom I was working, when something big broke, I was the go-to guy on the production side. I don't know much, but I will put my newspaper production and design and decision-making skills up against anyone anywhere in the world. I know how to put out a daily newspaper.

At 9:34 a.m. CDT on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001, I was summoned to work early to put out the most important edition ever of the nation's eighth largest newspaper. I covered the 34.8 miles to work in 32 minutes, hitting my car's electronically governed 112 mph limit on the way.

As I pulled up to the building, with the newspaper's big Gothic nameplate on the side, it started to hit me. I pulled my car -- somewhat more slowly -- into a parking spot, near the news helicopter pad for our TV station. I got out. I closed the door. I began walking to the employee entrance, just like any other day.

Then I stopped.

A thought kept ringing in my head:

I don't know how to do this.

I stood there, on the top floor of that parking garage, for probably three minutes. Just stood there, the staircase down to the door in front of me, the car behind me. To my right was the skyline of the eighth largest city in the nation. A city that, for all I knew could have been the next target, being as it is a symbol of American consumption and oil power.

There I was, the Go-To Guy, just standing there. I don't know how to do this.

I took probably 100 deep, deep breaths. Somewhere around breath No. 45, I thought about going back to the car, back home to my family, and pretending it never happened. That thought went away before breath No. 46 came out. But I still stood there for another minute and a half. I don't know how to do this.

It was 10:01 a.m. My deadline for the extra edition we were publishing was 2 p.m. A quick review of a post from 2002 tells the story something like this:

I got out of the car and stood in the parking lot for a second, trying to get my pulse rate back down to normal. It hit me then that this was the Biggest Story Ever. I don't know how to do this, I thought. I don't have any idea. It was as if my brain had been wiped clean of everything I had learned over the past 16 years.

As soon as I was in the building, I was herded to a computer terminal and told I was designing the cover of our Extra edition. Deadline was 2 p.m. God only knew what more would happen between now and then. I didn't worry about it. I started designing, and fast, because everybody on the newspaper's masthead -- the publisher himself, the editor, the executive editor, the managing editor, and assorted others -- was standing behind me.

I hit the button on that page at 1:58, and turned my attention to the regular paper. The final page count was 48. I don't remember a lot of specifics from that exercise. We were just hunting and gathering and trying to determine what was true and what wasn't.

Back then I wrote, "I stood there for a second." I remember now it was much longer than that. Over and over in my head, I don't know how to do this.

I was responsible for the front page, back page and two inside pages of that Extra edition. I did the other pages fast enough to be able to spend time on the details of the cover. I remember fussing for several minutes over the spacing between the words "of" and "terror" in our main headline, "Day of terror." I switched the main photo five times, as a different photo editor brought me a new and better photo for the front page.

The front page I did that morning -- with the entire masthead of the nation's eighth largest paper standing behind me, watching every mouse click -- is now hanging in the Freedom Forum's Newseum. Everything on the page was spelled right. The words "of" and "terror" were properly spaced.

The main story was being written and revised right up to the point when I hit the button to send the page. It went out two minutes before deadline.

It was, in short, the culmination of everything I had learned and everything I had done in 16 years in journalism. I was handed a monumental task, and I delivered at a level that I never had before and never did again.

I worked more than 14 hours each of those first three days; then, one night, I broke down. Cried like a baby. I was able to ignore the full impact of what happened to our country, to a bunch of people whose only crime was not calling in sick on a beautiful Tuesday morning. But I could only ignore it for so long.

Dick Cheney tells us that the administration policies are working, and proof of that is that we haven't been attacked in five years. Excuse me, Dick, but we also weren't attacked in the 60 years before Sept. 11, 2001. Dumbass. The administration has accomplished nothing, and in many ways has made things worse. We've created chaos in a little country that had nothing to do with the attacks. We're stirring up shit in another. Meanwhile, the man with the money behind what happened is still out there, somewhere, with full ability to do it again if he wants to.

As for me? That was probably the beginning of the end of my journalism career. I damn sure never want to be part of another story that big, or that awful. The stories in the years afterward -- Afghanistan, Iraq, the threat from North Korea, day after day after day of human suffering and awfulness -- I just didn't want to know anymore. I still do know, of course, but on my own terms.

I'm not the go-to guy anymore. Journalism is a young man's game. I aged a lot those last few months of 2001. I just hope the young people who are taking it over learn to ask the right questions and don't accept everything that's being handed to them. It's more important that they know how to do it now than it was for me to know how to do it then.

Afghan Hall of Shame

The Soviets. The Taliban. The Americans. You pick which has contributed most to the ruin of Afghanistan. It's a long read,and it's disturbing.

Eerie déjà vu, updated

You've got to be kidding. Surely that thing'll take a turn ... or dissipate ... or something ...

MONDAY UPDATE: That post was written when the forecast had it as a Category 3 barreling straight into New Orleans. Then it looked like it was going to pull a Charley on us. Now it looks like a lot of rain on Wednesday. Fingers crossed ... and exceedingly relieved that NOLA appears to have been spared.

The tide is turning

Newspapers really are dead.

Relaxing under the family tree

This past weekend in Missouri wasn't nearly as somber as I expected it to be; perhaps not even as somber as it should have been. That's OK, though. Nobody is particularly worried whether that's the way Grandpa would have wanted it. That's just the way we are.

We said our goodbyes to Grandpa in proper fashion, complete with taps and a 21-gun salute to honor his time in the Navy. The service was in a beautiful setting; out in the hills of southeastern Greene County, in a tiny little cemetery bounded by what could only be described as a meadow. There were even butterflies, dozens of little yellow butterflies flying about. It was bright, and quiet, and peaceful, the way a peaceful rest should be. My dad's father was 89, and he had earned a peaceful rest.

After the service, we repaired to the home of Grandpa and Grandma's fifth son, the Uncle Who Made Good. Downstairs, a pool game broke out; upstairs, 20 or 30 family members, many of whom I actually knew, were eating, talking, occasionally shrieking with laughter, and generally enjoying each other's company. This is a very, very good thing. Frankly, it's hard not to enjoy yourself around this group of people, no matter the circumstances.

"Diverse" doesn't even begin to describe the family into which I was born. My dad was one of eight children (the oldest died very young, several years before my dad was born.) Six boys, two girls. Seven of those eight produced 20 grandchildren. Ironically, the first-born of my generation also died young. Born in 1964, he died in his late 20s of cancer.

Among the remaining 19 are a doctor, a TV reporter turned marketing guy for a worldwide poker outfit, the journalist-turned-software-guy, a banker, a receptionist turned mortgage processor, at least three high school dropouts, a vice president of a renowned national museum (thanks to the wonders of Google, I just discovered this fact a few minutes ago; more on that later), a couple of good ol' boys, and a few who are still struggling to find their places in life. One of them actually has no biological connection to the rest of us (yeah, we'll come back to that one, too.)

All of us have a talent of some sort that sets us apart from the rest of the world:

Two of the high school dropouts, sisters in their early 20s, are fantastic singers; one of them is a very good mandolin player.

Cousin Otis's writing speaks for itself, but I'll speak for him to remind you of his National Headliner Award from a few years ago.

The banker has a great deal of technical acumen, more than the one of us who actually makes his living as an IT guy.

At least two of my cousins are capable of growing ZZ Top-style beards (I, meanwhile, can barely grow facial hair at all).

My sister is an uncommonly beautiful woman who graduated from college with a GPA that was within a short reach of 4.0.

Pretty much any of the boys can pick a guitar. All of us, with the possible exception of my sister, are comfortable speaking in front of large groups of people. I guess we came by that naturally.

And I can say this with little fear of contradiction:

I haven't talked to the ZZ Top-bearded cousins or the mortgage processor cousin or the high school dropouts more than maybe five times in the last 15 years. We're not people who would associate with each other if we weren't related. But: If I called one of those people in need of something, they'd do whatever they could to help. As I would for them.

That undeniable bond is what Grandma and Grandpa left behind. That's a success that can't be measured in dollars or square feet or any other of the empty units of measure to which we too often attempt to ascribe importance.

-----------------

A couple of mentions above begged further explanation. I'll try to explain here.

My two oldest living uncles are, shall we say, men of mystery. Each has been married several times; one of them, well, a few more than several.

This particular uncle, T, is not somebody who has lived life by the book, unless that book was written by somebody like Hunter S. Thompson. He is emphatically not a role model. Where there is family controversy, T is at the center.

Uncle T is 63. He is currently on (we think) his eighth marriage, to a woman who is younger than me. About a year ago, she gave birth to a child. Said child is credited as Grandchild No. 20, despite the fact that he very, very obviously is not biologically related to us. None of us tans like that, nor is any of us capable of growing an afro, and amidst all the diversity of my cousins, one common thread is blue eyes. But, the conventional wisdom goes, she had the kid while she was married to one of us, so he's one of us too.

Among this black-sheep uncle's other children is M ... who is the aforementioned VP of the renowned national museum.

I don't know her; she grew up with her mom in a town 100 miles west of Anytown. She's three years younger than me. Grandma sent her Christmas gifts every year, and occasionally received pictures from M's mom. (As I pointed out in my tribute to my grandmother, one of the most striking aspects of her funeral service was the number of her sons' ex-wives who came to pay their respects.)

The last time I thought about M was 17 years ago, when she graduated from high school. Grandma proudly told me that she recorded one of the highest ACT scores in all of Missouri. M is now 35; she lives in a large city on the East Coast under her maiden name, behind which there are many letters. I'm not sure if she's married.

None of my cousins nor I have seen M since probably 1972, if even then, which means she would have been a baby and none of us would be old enough to remember having met her. But if she had been at Grandpa's funeral -- or if she came to Anytown for Christmas -- there'd be a seat for her, and she'd be immediately mobbed by 20 people wanting to hear about her life and asking her opinions and making sure she had plenty of food and drink. Somebody would say, "You're a lot bigger than last time I saw you." One of the ZZ Top Beards would give her a big, vaguely frightening hug and tell her he loves her.

It's an undeniable bond. Fascinating, sometimes infuriating, occasionally a bit unnerving ... but always undeniable. It outlived my grandparents, it will outlive all of us, and it will always be one of my favorite things about being me.

Grandpa, 1917-2006

It wasn't easy to find prosperity in northwest Texas in the late 1930s. It wasn't easy anywhere, really, as the Depression still had most of the world in its firm grip. Those of us who grew up in the world those people fought to build will, hopefully, never fully understand.

It was in this environment where a 21-year-old man with a bit of a reputation for trouble married a sweet young redhead, and, with very little in the way of raw material with which to work, began building a family.

The sweet young redhead who grew up to be my grandmother went on to the next place two years ago. Wednesday, my grandfather joined her.

The first few of his 89 years were pretty hardscrabble. I don't know a lot of the details of his childhood, but he once shared with me some stories of his teenage years. They made mine look pretty tame and boring by comparison. Tales of freight-train rides, of dodging the law (sometimes not so successfully) in Bonnie-and-Clyde era Texas, of never turning down an opportunity for a fight.

He took his attitude to the Navy just in time to wind up on a ship in the Pacific during World War II. He told me about getting in trouble for fighting and gambling. He was able to channel the former into a bit of an amateur boxing career while he was on the ship. My grandfather was not at all a big man, but what he lacked in size was apparently made up for in scrappiness.

He was father to three boys when the hostilities began in earnest in 1942. One more came along during the war, and one more was born a little more than a year after V-J Day. The oldest died in 1943. My dad was the second of a set of twins born in 1950, bringing the child count back to six when the decision was made to leave Texas.

At the end of the road was Springfield, Mo., home to Baptist Bible College and a newly opened paper cup factory. Grandpa spent his time studying at the former and working at the latter. He put in nearly 30 years at the paper cup factory, while learning the Bible and spending some of his free time as a preacher. It was never easy; two more children, both girls, came along during the 1950s, but the house didn't grow at all; still four rooms, still dirt floors, still outdoor plumbing on the unpaved Kansas Avenue. The poverty didn't really let up until the kids began leaving home.

He had mellowed quite a bit by the time I was old enough to hear his stories. I'd sit in the tiny living room on Thelma Avenue while he sat in his chair facing the TV and Grandma sat on the couch, shaking her head every once in a while at some tale he was spinning. I do suspect that the basis was in truth, but that details might have been altered a bit for entertainment value or might have, um, changed a bit with time. I was OK with that. I loved the stories, loved to hear of the fighting spirit and sheer willfulness that was at the root of my genetics.

He believed every word he said, certainly. He wasn't somebody with whom you were always going to agree. He didn't hold that against you, but you also weren't going to change his mind on most things. You might be right, but you certainly weren't going to prove him wrong.

Even in the last few years, he enjoyed a good debate, and he could battle as well with words in his 80s as he could with his fists in his 20s.

The spirit was silenced two years ago, when Grandma went on. The body, which has a tendency to keep running on sheer willfulness even after the spirit is gone, finally and mercifully gave up today. He's earned his rest.

A better obit can be read here. As for me, well, I continue the fight, in my own way. But I know from where the spirit is seeded.

I feel better, and I don't know why

This week was supposed to be a week for big things. Without the distraction of work, I was going to sit down tonight and rattle off a long and impressive list of accomplishments.

I was going to start a Self-Improvement Plan. You know, eat less, exercise more, be generally more organized and more disciplined.

I did actually do a small part of that: I haven't had a sugared soda in five days. This is a big, big step for me; I love the soda, love the CO2 bubbling in my mouth, love the sugar dissolving my teeth. Love everything about it, except the gut that those 150-calorie-per-serving delights have left me with. I have a refrigerator full now of various diet sodas. The goal is to wean myself off of soda entirely. A few weeks of repulsive diet sodas ought to do the trick. We'll see. I've tried this a few times before, and have not been successful in the least. I now understand how hard it must be for a dedicated smoker to quit smoking.

As for the other parts of the SIP: Nothing. Still ate crap, in copious amounts; exercised not at all. But I really did think about it ...

We began painting the exterior of our house during Thanksgiving weekend. Of 2004. We were going to finish this week.

Didn't happen. Too damn hot. And even if it had been 72 with no humidity, well, it still probably wouldn't have happened.

I was going to think about work not at all.

... until the phone rang Wednesday. Small problem, easily resolved. Then Thursday. Bigger problem, but also solved in one call. Then Friday. Real big problem. Had to intervene. Multiple calls, incoming and outgoing. So much for vacation. At least I was able to handle it all remotely; back in the newspaper days, I would not have been able to avoid dropping everything and going into the office for an issue of that magnitude.

I didn't go to the high school reunion.

Now I kind of wish I had. The committee just sent an e-mail a few hours ago with a link to the pictures (technology rules!) I was stunned at the number of people I didn't recognize at first or second or third or fourth glance. Where the hell did all those 38-year-old Realtors and teachers come from? I saw about 70 faces in the pictures, and was able to get solid ID's on about 15 of them -- and at least five of those I could only recognize because I could read their name tags. As Joe Walsh sang, everybody's so different, and I haven't changed.

Yeah, right.

---

I certainly wasn't bored this week. I did get to see the wonder of the Young Daughter becoming a first-class swimmer. I did spend a lot of time just hanging out with The Wife, and she in turn was able to catch a little bit of the break from some of her routine. I read a couple of Bill Bryson books. I had a great motorcycle ride last Saturday.

But other than that, I accomplished nothing in the last week. I crossed nothing off my to-do list. And I'm OK with that. I needed to waste a few days. I've spent a pretty long stretch trying to cram 1.6 days into every one day. I think I was owed a few. We're even now.

Just sit down and write

My life doesn't really allow much time for calm reflection. As I write this, I'm in an almost-empty house. It's basically pretty quiet, except for the two 5-year-old girls screaming at each other at the top of their lungs. Well, actually, it's just the Young Daughter who's screaming. She does that a lot. That's how she earned the nickname Diva of Decibels. The other little girl, YD's best friend, generally gets her points across more quietly.

The rest of the group is out at a local water park. YD and I aren't much into water parks, so we stayed home.

I'm on "vacation" this week. It's my first extended time off since last year's family trip to Washington, D.C. It comes at the end of a(nother) marathon travel stretch, the kind of travel I thought I was going to be able to avoid after having been promoted. The deal was that, rather than project trips lasting 5-8 days, I'd be doing support-type stuff and management schmoozes lasting a day or two each. That's basically true. However, I just did five of them in the last three weeks.

My 20-year high school reunion will be held this weekend in Anytown. I won't be there. A small part of me wishes I was going; I'd love to renew some of those connections and hear what these people are up to. But that small part has been drowned out by the larger part, the part that doesn't want to see the interior of another aircraft for a good long time. I'm tired of talking to my wife and kids on the phone.

I'm still taking the week off. There's a garage to clean, walls to paint, kids to watch. It's nice to prioritize those sorts of things above work, for a little while.

I've been thinking a lot about writing. I've been thinking I just need to sit down and tap keys for a while, just to see what comes out. I've certainly had some interesting experiences the last few weeks, the kind that in years recently past I would have chronicled almost immediately.

In fact, I just spent the last 20 minutes chronicling one of them before giving it the Click-Drag-Delete treatment. After writing it all down, I decided it just wasn't that interesting.

Not all that long ago, I had a voice in this forum. I can go through the archives and see that time was when I could sit down and construct a series of coherent sentences. I've learned many things in the last two years: How to install and manipulate a database, how to manage an enterprise-wide software installation project, how to get a flight on another airline when my originally scheduled flight is hopelessly delayed, how to read and speak rudimentary Danish and French.

Somewhere along the way, however, I seem to have forgotten how to appreciate the things going on around me. That's a skill I need to regain.

Data transfer interrupted

I am reachable, by one medium or another, pretty much 24 hours a day, every day. The only time that I am completely out of pocket is during the one or two hours that I am on an airplane going somewhere.

Being constantly available, of course, does not mean that I am providing better service. It just means that I can half-ass more stuff. It means that I can be in a meeting while driving a rental car from a customer site to an airport. It means that, while a customer is paying some absurd sum for me to be on site, I can simultaneously be helping two other customers who are not paying for the privilege.

This is a true story, and yeah, it's a little gross, but it's an illustration of what American business has become: Yesterday, I was on the phone with a customer and answering an e-mail ... in the bathroom. Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.

And don't think that I don't know where to find the "Ignore" button on my phone. There are plenty of unanswered items in my Inbox. At some point, I do have to sleep. At some point, I'm with my family, and that means With My Family. At some point, the sign has to turn around to "Closed." But every one of those Ignored calls and unanswered e-mails is still a tiny little failure.

One thing that makes my job extremely complicated is that the European co-workers on whom I depend heavily have a minimum of five weeks of vacation. Over there, it's acceptable to basically accomplish nothing in June, July and August. Over here, it's not acceptable to be unavailable while you're in the john.

I'm not complaining. I have a family which is very well-provided for. My roof covers a large number of square feet. The bills are paid and times are largely good.

But I know in some way, I'm paying for all this prosperity. And I also know I'm not the only one. This is the way We live. I just wonder what the end result really is.

As the fog descends ...

What would be fun, really, is to sit here and write while I'm at the complete edge of exhaustion, just to see what would happen. I've been in constant motion since last Wednesday: fly, drive 2 hours, meeting, drive 2 hours, fly ... one-day weekend lull ... fly, drive an hour and a half, meeting, drive an hour and a half, fly, get another rental car, hey! why is there a traffic jam in downtown Boston at 11:30 at night? lost in Boston, find freeway, drive an hour and a half, meeting, and eeew, that was why there was a traffic jam in downtown Boston.

So I'm in New Hampshire right now, with another day of meeting, fly, drive in front of me. And yeah, with the downtown Boston tunnels closed, it's going to be a bitch getting into Logan. Tomorrow's flight goes to North Carolina, where thankfully the meeting will be held in the same city in which we're landing. Then, fly and drive home Friday night. Weekend lull, then off to Southern California next week. Fly, drive an hour, two days of meetings, drive an hour, fly.

Then, a week of vacation. No plans, just vacation. The plan does not include moving eight miles a minute, as Seger once sang.

So writing all that was a long way of saying no, I'm not going to go to the reunion. That would be another three days of flying and driving, and I'm just not up for it. I can come up with more reasons to not go than reasons to go.

The fog is coming faster, the eyelids are getting heavy, the thoughts are coming both fast and slow at the same time. It's like the gears are turning without any actual power, the perpetual-motion brain that is spinning 7,600 rpm on the way to nowhere. I'm pretty sure I've forgotten why I'm in New Hampshire, and why I'm going to North Carolina. I'm just here, typing, not even in full control of the text I'm currently entering. I wonder how much longer I can do this.

Ken Lay, 1942-2006

Another thief bites the dust, and far too soon ... I really wanted to see that bastard suffer as an old, formerly rich man in prison for a while. Too bad Enron pensioners can't be made beneficiaries of his life insurance policy.

Resetting

Technical difficulties. Testing only.

Four days in Paradise

It's been a helluva fun weekend. No details are really necessary ... it's just been a wonderful string of perfect days. Such a string deserves to be acknowledged.

No greater love

Back in the late '80s, the high-school girl who would become my wife was simply a tall, skinny girl named N, who was around our house a lot, a friend of my little sister. N and my sister were part of a larger group of girls, whose main recreational activity during their junior year in high school involved driving around in somebody's 1965 Mustang and teasing fraternity boys at college parties.

Among this group of girls was a girl we'll call Marie (not at all her name, but it's better than a pronoun.) Marie was a bit spoiled, and she knew it, and she was OK with it, best I could tell. I didn't know Marie as well as I knew my sister's other friends, but what little I knew of her suggested she was the one of that group with the "reputation."

She was also the one who ended up pregnant that year.

Marie was by no means the only person I knew in high school who became pregnant. She was the only person, however, who ever showed a visible sign of it. Marie chose to carry the child the term.

I can't imagine this was an easy decision, even for a girl who herself was adopted. She had to put up with the stares and the pointing and the ostracism and the talk of those who simply said it confirmed her "reputation." None of that mattered to her.

As the rest of the group drifted away from Marie, N stuck by her. This foreshadowed the adult N, by the way; the girl who stuck by her friend in a tough situation became an intensely loyal woman, a woman who people can depend on no matter what. This is cool, and is one of the things I love about my wife. Back in 1987, though, she was just a girl who was trying to do the right thing.

Marie's child was born on N's 17th birthday. N was there for her at the hospital. I'm pretty sure he was the first newborn boy she ever held.

A few days later, Marie's child was headed home, home with his new parents. Marie went home, too, back to her parents. She was back in school a few weeks later.

Even at 17, a girl has maternal instinct, and that instinct would rebel mightily against separation. Marie had to be convinced that he was going to a better place, a place with people more qualified than she was to provide what that baby needed. I can imagine nothing more beautiful, and more painful.

Life went on. Marie never quite reconnected with that group of girls; she had been forced into adulthood, and acted accordingly. She and Natalie were still close, sort of, but nobody would ever fully grasp what Marie had been through, and it probably didn't matter to Marie if they did. They all graduated from high school a year later and went their separate ways.

Marie contacted my wife by e-mail several years ago. The electronic reunion was brief; a couple of messages exchanged, then life moving on.

Natalie still mentioned Marie's boy on his birthday the first few years we were married, but hadn't for many years. As I was giving the new Dixie Chicks album its 249th spin on my iPod, I gave a close listen to "Voice Inside My Head," a heart-shredding song from the perspective of a woman who gave a child up for adoption.

Immediately I thought of Marie, a person who I hadn't thought of since we received that e-mail four computers ago. I did some quick math, and I said to Natalie: "Remember Marie's baby?" She said, "Yeah, he was born on my birthday."

I said, "Yeah. He would have just graduated from high school a few weeks ago."

"Oh. My. God."

My wife has recently developed excellent research skills. If your name has ever been snared by Google's spiderbots, she'll find it. She found Marie. Marie is now living in a large East Coast city; she married exceedingly well, has two little girls and by all accounts wants for absolutely nothing. They're exchanging e-mails again.

That little baby boy that N held is off to college, or a job, or the military, or whatever. We'll probably never know. Life went on, and it went on very well for Marie, which is as it should be.

Marie called upon some serious strength that day 18 years ago, and that strength is having to carry her through the rest of her life. I admire her, and other women who made the same decision. Unplanned pregnancy brings up complex questions that can't be answered the same way for every person. They most definitely cannot be answered politically, or through legislation.

The 16-year-old Marie, even though she likely didn't know it at the time, came up with the right answer for her situation. Things worked out for her. Hopefully they worked for that little boy, too.

I still have to think that no matter how gilded your life is, though, that's gotta be a hard memory to carry with you, and that you wouldn't be able to help but wonder how things might have been different if ...

20 years now; where'd they go?

Rumors keep circulating that my high school class is going to have a 20-year reunion this summer. A few days ago, I received an e-mail detailing the program. Looks like a lot of fun; a golf tournament, a cookout, a trip to a Class AA baseball game in Anytown. I'm still not sure I can bring myself to go.

For one thing, we're 1,400 miles away, and even with the absurd amount of airline miles I've amassed in my recent travels, it's not enough to get all five of us there. I'm not sure I can pull off going to Anytown without my wife and kids; the rest of the extended family back in Anytown would be profoundly disappointed. Plus, I have a fair amount of business travel scheduled for July. Since my recent promotion, I'm not doing as many five-day trips, but I still have to do a lot of one- and two-day schmooze-fests, and I have many of those in July.

For another, I don't need people pointing out that 20 years ago, I had hair past my shoulders and weighed 100 pounds. I have dramatically less of the former and quite a few more of the latter now. I'd take the under on how quickly I get sick of people pointing those facts out.

I rather liked most of my high school classmates. I had a lot of friends in high school, many friends who crossed many of the different strata of a high school class. You remember The Breakfast Club? At one time or another, I would have hung out with all five of them.

I'm kind of ashamed of myself for not having kept better track of these people over the last two decades. I've done quite well over the last 20 years, in my career, as a husband, as a father. The thing I sacrificed to do all that was my friends. Truth be told, I was like that before I left Anytown, probably, but I became even worse when I could use distance as a weak excuse. I'm a shitty, awful, rotten friend. Too busy for this, too busy for that, too busy to send a simple e-mail or Christmas card.

In short, I suck. I'm not sure how squarely I want to face that fact.

So I toss this out for feedback: Should I go, or should I clean out the garage that weekend?

Summertime, summertime, sum-sum-SHADDUP!

No vacation here, sorry. Still trying to figure out the mysteries of ASCII characters 0D and 0A. For now, everybody's having fun around me. Oh well; my time will come.

I was right, I was wrong

SPOT ON: See the post headlined May 23: iTunes downloader ready. I was right; The new Dixie Chicks album is damn good. It's an exquisitely manicured middle finger standing tall against the crap they've had to endure over the last three years.

And it is, thankfully, more than that; it's a nice transition out of the hard-core country world into tunes that cross many lines. "Easy Silence" showcases the voice not of Natalie Maines the Texan, but that of Natalie Maines, the former Berklee student.

All that said, it's hard not to point out that the Chicks have been the top album download on iTunes all week while the president's approval rating struggles to stay above 30 percent. Take that, rednecks.

EATING MY WORDS: I wrote this in February 2002 after the Super Bowl. Musing about the commericals:

Cadillac has finally figured out that its customer base is, like, almost dead. The average age of a new Cadillac buyer is 69. The marketing folks catch a clue: Cadillac cues up the Zeppelin, finds a '59 Eldo, and voila, a star is born. Not crazy about the CTS; it's kind of a funny-looking car.

Well, maybe, I might have to amend that: Everybody else's CTS is funny-looking. The one that'll be in my driveway for the next 39 months looks pretty cool.

On the clock

I have 20 hours to complete two PowerPoint presentations for an upcoming conference. During that 20 hours, I must also have dinner, sleep, have breakfast and get children ready for school, and I'll lose one more hour to commuting.

How do you like my chances?

Flight 93 tapes out

First gut response while the CNN babe is reading her transcription of the Flight 93 tapes released today in Alexandria, Va.:

Am I to believe that, under moment of great stress and trauma, that these hijackers would be sending their final prayers to Allah ... in English?

UPDATE: The New York Times notes that the hijackers were indeed speaking Arabic. Which still leads me to wonder how a presumably non-Arabic speaking CNN reporter would know just minutes after the tapes were released what was being said. No tinfoil-hat stuff here, just saying ...

Sad and pathetic

A lot of heavy stuff here lately ... time for a chuckle in my most favorite way -- at my own expense.

Funny scene on the streets of suburban Tampa on Friday afternoon:

Guy in a black 2006 Rapidlyagingdudemobile, late 30s, sun shining off his receding hairline, windows down, 7-speaker Bose cranked up to the max, just absolutely rocking out ...

The song? "Behind these Hazel Eyes" by Kelly Clarkson.

Hi.

Simple rule

And one that would save me a lot of money: When you're not hungry, don't eat.

The latest

The Wife was telling me a story the other night about one of her dogs throwing up.

The Young Daughter observes this mess and says something along the lines of, "She must not have taken her medicine. When I take my medicine, I don't get sick."

The Wife was quite surprised by this. We had no idea that The Young Daughter had drawn the connection between her medications and her episodes of the past few months, which were usually punctuated by vomiting unconnected to any real nausea or upset stomach or carsickness or any other condition that usually generates vomiting.

Among the medicines she's taking is Thalidomide, the drug immortalized as one of the memories of the '60s in Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire." (Third verse: "Starkweather, homicide, children of thalidomide.") Baby boomers remember that the drug was originally the miracle cure for morning sickness, with the unfortunate side effect of horrendous birth defects. The drug was taken off the market in the United States until 1998, when it was approved for heavily controlled clincal trials. There are those, including one of the doctors that we are seeing, who believe it might be effective in treating neurofibromatosis.

I, of course, am in favor of most things that might help. Research seems to indicate that only serious side effects of this particular treatment are in utero. The Young Daughter's 5; that's not a high risk. But that doesn't make us any less apprehensive about it.

In two weeks, The Wife and The Young Daughter are traveling to Birmingham, Ala., to meet with the man who literally wrote the book -- actually, several books -- on NF1. Will he have some answers? We don't know. But we'll keep asking the questions.

------

I am reminded of a story from May 2002 (click here and scroll down to May 10, 2002), back when I had no understanding of the realities of this situation and wanted said understanding even less.

The link to the press release in that post was active until fairly recently. It's been awful quiet out of Dr. Parada's office lately. He said "five years." He has one year and one month left to restore my faith in the medical profession. The clock is ticking.

The clock is ticking, goddammit. Find a way to fix this. Now.

I stand and salute

From our wire services:

CHATTANOOGA, TENN. -- The only U.S. conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor in the Second World War has been buried at a national cemetery with a 21-gun salute, although he refused to carry a weapon while serving as an army medic.

Desmond Doss, 87, died March 23 in Piedmont, Ala., where he and his wife, Frances, had been living with family.

A horse-drawn hearse delivered the flag-covered coffin to the gravesite Monday in the Chattanooga National Cemetery. Military helicopters flew overhead in a tribute formation.

Doss was ridiculed for his beliefs but "remained true to his convictions even when it was not the most popular thing to do," said Patti Parks, a retired U.S. navy commander and director of the Medal of Honor Museum in Chattanooga.

Doss, who refused to carry a weapon during his wartime service in the Pacific, was the subject of a book, The Unlikeliest Hero, and a 2004 documentary, The Conscientious Objector.

Medal of Honor Society records show he was among 3,461 recipients of the highest U.S. military honor.

While under enemy fire on the island of Okinawa, Doss carried 75 wounded soldiers to the edge of a 120-metre cliff and lowered them to safety, according to his citation.

During a later attack, he was seriously wounded in the legs by a grenade. According to the citation, as he was being carried to safety, he saw a more critically injured man and crawled off his stretcher, directing the medics to help the other wounded man.

"He wanted to serve. He just didn't want to kill anybody," said a veteran who attended the service, Fred Headrick, 85. "Most all of them (Medal of Honor recipients) received their medal for killing someone. He received his by saving lives."

Now this dude's a hero. There's a way to be a patriot without killing other people in the process.

Why I hate technology

I'm so disgusted by this story. I would be just as disgusted if the guy wasn't a high-ranking federal official in an agency entrusted for securing the safety of the American people. If he is found guilty of the crimes for which he's charged, he's both sick and stupid, and I hate the fact that my wife and children share a planet with people like him.

The Wife and I have been batting around the idea of letting the Old Daughter have limited, heavily guarded, heavily filtered Internet access on the computer in her bedroom. The Wife has always been staunchly 100 percent opposed to it; I was 99 percent opposed to it, thinking that there might be an argument in favor of letting her have some freedom to do research, play her games, e-mail her friends, etc., without having to use the centrally located desktop in the living room.

The Old Daughter, of course, is 100 percent in favor of having Internet access in her room. We were almost ready to bend; I proposed that as long as she was fully open to random and unannounced searches of her browsing history, e-mail sent items, and the rest of her hard drive, I would consider it. The Wife reluctantly agreed to that proposal.

I've changed my mind. If I caught something in a history or a cache, it's too late. That toothpaste doesn't go back in the tube. I'm now back to being firmly opposed to letting children have Internet access in a non-common area of the house.

In my house, at least, I'm sure the problem wouldn't be outgoing material. And if an indecent proposal did make its way in, I'm sure it would be reported the second it hit the screen.

But we can't take the risk of letting the sick and the stupid into our house.

Another day, another airplane

Sitting in coach Sunday afternoon, on an airline where I don't carry Gold status. It's much more entertaining to people-watch in coach. In first, you see several variations of the same person, either the old white guy in a suit or the overdressed 50-ish woman self-consciously knocking back a bloody mary before takeoff.

From Seat 7D, I quietly look around from under the earbuds, only seeing, not hearing. It's much easier to make up stories about people when you can't actually hear what's going on ...

-- At the bulkhead, there are the young parents with the 5-month-old baby. They're trying desperately not to be Those Parents. They're both looking around just the slightest bit; whenever they make eye contact with someone, they give the apologetic "I'm sorry she's so loud" look. They're doing fine, though, in comparison to ...

-- ... The Militant Single Mom, three rows back and across the aisle. She sits in the middle as her kids (I'll call them Tyrone and LaKeisha) fight over the window and the aisle. Tyrone and LaKeisha are generating enough volume to get in under my Shure E300s. MSM, meanwhile, doesn't give a shit, and she just absolutely dares you to say something about it. Her big brown eyes are spitting fire; it might be directed at the kids, and it might be directed at you. Best not to find out. It's all she can do to get these kids back home. She's been taking crap from them for an entire week of "vacation," and she doesn't care at all that you're going to get two hours of it.

-- Taking a deep breath and running his fingers through what is left of his hair is the guy on the aisle across from MSM and her brood. He's wearing a white polo shirt with a logo of some small software company, as anonymous as the one for which I work. Clearly, he's carrying the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. It's written all over his face. I'm reading it line by line. He's been traveling too much and working too hard, his marriage is faltering, and he'd rather be getting an ice-water enema than making this particular trip. Two things are true about a business guy traveling on Sunday: 1/he's outbound, not inbound, and 2/he's leaving behind stuff he'd rather be doing and stuff that, in the scheme of things, is more important than whatever he's headed off to. Both, I can tell, are true of this guy. He's been sitting in his seat quietly enduring MSM to his right and the baby up front; he gets his laptop out of its briefcase and taps away idly on it. If I got out of my seat to go to the bathroom, I'm pretty sure I'd see a typical business traveler's work: a half-hearted game of solitaire.

-- The Young Lovers, he in a New York Giants jersey and gym shorts, she in a pink sweatshirt and flip-flops. Their spring break didn't go well. They probably won't be talking come May. Wonder who paid for this trip.

-- The old fellow next to me has a hospital bracelet on. He apparently broke his arm during his Florida business trip. He takes up way more of his middle seat than a guy his size normally would. He looks very fragile. I'm scared to bump him for fear he might shatter.

Turn off your electronic devices, turn off your brain, watch as everything that's really important to you disappears at 1,000 feet a minute. Sit back, relax and enjoy the flight as best as you can.

My life, brought to you by iTunes

A tremendously fun meme. Simple rules:

1/Get your iTunes library.
2/Set it to shuffle
3/Ask the questions below and hit Play (or next)
4/Whatever song comes up, go with it.

Q) How does the world see you?
A) The Road Goes on Forever / Robert Earl Keen
This is a song about a girl I knew back in Anytown. Several of them, actually. However, the story never ended as well for any of them.

Q) Will I have a happy life?
A) Drinkin' on the Job / The Rainmakers
Now there's an idea.

Q) What do my friends really think of me?
A) Manic Depression / Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble
They could certainly be excused if that's what they thought.

Q) Do people secretly lust after me?
A) Free Bird / Lynyrd Skynyrd
Yeah ... probably not.

Q) How can I make myself happy?
A) A Million Miles Away / The Rainmakers
This song is a really really deep song about a guy who could be recovering from a traumatic experience, drug abuse, or homelessness. I always took it as that he was contemplating suicide, but that might be reading a little bit more into it. It does feature one of Bob Walkenhorst's very cool turns of phrase:

And the landscape in the dark,
it could have been New Zealand
New York, or New Mexico
So what else is new? Jim thought

Q) What should I do with my life?
A) More than a Feeling / Boston
Ah, a great song from the speakers of the Trans Am in the mid-'80s. Not much guidance there, though.

Q) Will I ever have children?
A) I Know My History / Van Zant
My history would suggest that I'd have a big family. By 21st-century standards, I do.

Q) What is some good advice for me?
A) The Three Fine Daughters of Farmer Brown / Eddie from Ohio
Hmm ... nah, that would probably cause trouble.

Q) How will I be remembered?
A) Creepin' In / Norah Jones
That's me, sneaking into places where I don't belong, over and over.

Q) What is my signature song?
A) Small Town Jericho / Sugarland
I always wanted to live in a small town. I never have. And I think it would be too late now. If you weren't born there, you'll never belong.

Q) What do I think my current theme song is?
A) Take Me Down / Kelly Willis
I don't believe the words you're saying
And I know the game you're playing
So it's only just for now
That I will let you take me down

Q) What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
A) Wide Open Spaces / Dixie Chicks
I lived in one place for 25 years. I haven't lived anywhere else for more than three. Might explain a lot about a lot.

Q) What song will play at my funeral?
A) The One That Got Away / The Rainmakers
The old man's lament.
Well I did this and I did that
And I guess I did OK
I did whatever I had to do
And I did it my own way
Whatever hand I drew
Whatever hand I played
From place to place
I come face to face
with the one that got away"

In a lot of ways, that's strangely appropriate. I've never felt I've made the most of the opportunities I've had.

Q) What type of men/women do I like?
A) If I Wanted To / Melissa Etheridge
Odd that she'd pop up in that spot.

Q) What is my day going to be like?
A) Snakedance / The Rainmakers
This is the lion's den ... And yeah, I knew that before I came in.

From largelypro.com (and please note: the fact that the blogger had a close association with a band that popped up repeatedly in the above list had no influence on the content).

A small request

If you are the praying type (and it's cool with me if you are, or not), I'd be grateful if you'd send a few our way.

May 23 ... iTunes downloader ready

This oughta be good.

Getting what I pay for

I'm going to blame my extended absence from this forum on Blogger's recent tendency to lag -- apparently for as long as a day or two -- before posts actually show up. Yep, that must be it.

Arrgh

Here we go, devolving back into monthly mode. I hate it when that happens.

Quick hits:

-- The Wife's Champion Dog had another litter of puppies. These dogs are apparently all the buzz in the world of dog-show people (at least, those who show her breed.) This is a very good buzz, and very good for The Wife and the Champion Dog. Five years ago, when she first got into all this, I wondered why the hell she was doing it. Now I understand. Very cool.

-- The Old Daughter recently won her school's spelling bee. Normally, this would not sound all that impressive -- hell, back in '82, I won my junior high's spelling bee -- but she did it 1/against a whole bunch of kids, way more than the 10 or so I beat and 2/she's in sixth grade, and given her July birthday was very likely the youngest kid in the competition. The win qualified her for an appearance in the county-wide spelling bee, against 45 other kids, most of whom were also in eighth grade. Her exit was far too early -- she got tripped up when the reader gave an obscure and kind of odd definition of the word "regency" -- but she'll be back.

-- I will be spending a good portion of my next two months in Montréal (I am there, in fact, as I write this), one of North America's most fabulous cities. Every time I'm here, I'm busy as hell and don't get much of a chance to see/enjoy much of anything. Plus, it's colder than crap. But one of these days, I'll share with you some of the wonders of this city.

Crawling back into my hole. I promise I'll try to come out before next month.

Coach of the Century

I love this story; stop me if you've heard it already.

I've found my new favorite basketball coach. His name is Jim Johnson, and he coaches high school hoops in a little town outside of Rochester, N.Y., called Greece. The school's name is Athena.

For their last home game, against a somewhat overmatched opponent, Johnson let student manager Jason McElwain dress and sit on the bench in uniform. I was a student manager; I would've probably given my right nut for the chance to do that.

With 4:30 to go and his team way up -- they eventually won, 79-43 -- Johnson put McElwain into the game. The fans go nuts, chanting "J-Mac! J-Mac!" It probably could have been interpreted as teasing. This was, after all, the 5-foot-6 student manager.

He gets the ball and throws up an air ball on his first shot. Then he missed a layup. So much for the nice ending; sit down and grab your clipboard, kid.

Not exactly.

Over the next four minutes, the kid hits 7 of 11 shots, including 6-of-10 from behind the 3-point line. The manager scored 20 points in four minutes, and set a school record for most 3-pointers in a game. I would have given both my nuts and a few of my toes to do something like that.

The manager scored 20 points in the only four minutes of high school ball he'll ever play.

Oh, by the way: The kid is autistic.

"I've had a lot of thrills in coaching and I've coached a lot of wonderful kids, but I've never experienced something like this ever in my life, you know other than my own personal family things," Johnson told WROC-TV. "My emotions, I couldn't stop crying."

I love this story. I hope this was the breakthrough moment for this kid; experts claim that high-functioning autistics can have experiences that actually help unshackle them from disease.

"This is the first moment Jason has ever succeeded and was proud of himself," Debbie McElwain, Jason's mother, told WROC. "I look at autism as the Berlin Wall; he cracked it."

For his sake, may that be the case -- and may he keep finding hammers to chip away at that wall.

Yep, definitely on a fast train headed way South

(somewhat continued from previous post)

Kids received money in the mail today for Valentine's Day from various relatives. Have no idea when the hell that tradition started; all I know is that it started about 25 years too late.

Anyway, each kid netted about $9 or so. We took them to Wal-Mart so each could buy $9 worth of toys.

The Old Daughter looked, and looked, and then found what she wanted:

Chips.

Yep, poker chips.

I got The Look again.

Instead of the bedtime story, The Boy and the Old Daughter opted for a few hands with me. Says The Boy, with an evil not-yet-7 smile: "Bluffing is fun. I like bluffing."

God help us all. God help me when The Wife delivers my well-deserved beating for my bad influence.

I suspect I'm going to Hell for this

Grandpa Mike was teaching the kids to play five-card draw. They were using K'Nex (think Tinkertoys of 2006) as chips. They were enjoying that, and then I came home. I said, "Let's learn a new game."

"Cool," said The Old Daughter, 11. "What's it called?"

"It's called Texas Hold 'Em." I dealt the pocket cards, explained terms and the betting, and set down the flop. The Wife rolled her eyes. The Boy, not quite 7, said, "Hey, this looks fun."

The Boy bluffed his way to win two consecutive hands, one of them after he stared down his sister, who folded to his pair of 4s. Grandpa Mike won a few hands, I held out until the river for a flush to win one, and then it was dinnertime.

Didn't think much more of it until a few days later, when we were driving to Lowe's or Home Depot or Chili's or somewhere suburban in the minivan. The Wife said, "It's awful quiet back there; wonder what's going on?"

The silence continues for a few seconds. Then, the Old Daughter's voice: "Now, here's the flop ... "

Yeah, I got The Look. You know, the look one's wife gives you after it becomes completely evident that you've corrupted the children in some fashion; the look I get when The Boy knows the words to "Bohemian Rhapsody." I'm pretty sure I deserved The Look. I'm not going to worry about it, at least not until my two older kids show up to the table in sunglasses.

Best of ...

Digging through the back issues, I found this from Aug. 29, 2002. No particular relevance to anything, other than a reminder that if you must wage war, there are plenty of things against which war should be waged. Here's one of them.

"There is never a shortage of bullshit"
Thus declared The Wife a couple of days ago. She noted that while we suffer deficits of many necessary things, there seems to be a perpetual bullshit surplus.

This is reality. Some people deal with it by meditating, or smoking weed, or lighting incense, or getting an occasional massage and spa treatment.

The Wife, right-leaning person that she is, has declared war.

"I am declaring war," she said, "on bullshit."

Now there's a war I can get behind.

This is a noble cause. Instead of obsessing and bitching and moaning and freaking out over things over which we have no control, now would be a good time to simply choose to not worry about them. Many things are just not going to get any better. That's OK, 'cause they're really pretty good. Let's say I take that excess energy freed up by ceasing to acknowledge bullshit and devote it to things that really matter, and who knows? Maybe I'll take less aspirin.

I know I won't be able to dodge the opponent every day, but it'll at least know I'm there.

The War on Bullshit is on. All are invited to join the effort.

We're still accepting volunteers.

You heard it here first

Steelers 24, Seahawks 20.

State of our Union: Fashion-challenged

So, Cindy Sheehan was arrested at the State of the Union shindig, and all I can think is, "Dear God, she wore a t-shirt to the Capitol?"

Karma bites man

We have a customer in a very average little town in northern Illinois. I think it's actually Illinois' second or third largest city, but let's just say it ain't Chicago. It reminds me of Anytown, only without the life that a major university brings (which, in Anytown, is the only life you'll find.) I absolutely love the people with whom I work there; to a person, they're the smartest and most fun group with whom I've had the privilege to associate. I've made some friendships there that transcend the job, and that's very cool.

But, other than those folks, the place has nothing which distinguishes it from any other very average town in the Midwest. Except this: from city limit to city limit, restaurant service is horrible. Upscale joint, local dive, national chain, doesn't matter. I've taken to calling the place the Land of the Eight Percent Tip.

And so it was that I found myself at a Steak 'n' Shake very late one night last week, and the shake I ordered never arrived. For me, it was just steak, no shake. So I dutifully put the 8 percent on the credit card slip, sighed and shook my head, and walked out the door. I got my keys out of my pocket, pointed them around the parking lot in one of my typical attempts to identify which rental car is mine, and then felt a chill of a high-20s evening.

That chill shook me a little bit; just enough to make me drop my keys.

In a storm drain.

I knew it was going to happen the millisecond they left my hand. And all I could do was calmly think, "Yep, they're gonna land in the drain." I could see them down there; about five feet down, just far enough to where getting them out was going to be a project.

After determining that the cover of the drain was indeed cemented down, and that I was indeed cold, and that it was indeed 12:30 a.m. and it was doubtful that anybody at Alamo Rent-A-Car was going to care at that hour (or perhaps at any other), I went back into the restaurant ... and pleaded my case with the kid to whom I had just granted 10 percent. I told him my tale of woe. He went to the back of the store and came back with a broom handle, a long hook-like rod and one of his friends.

We poked around in the drain for about 10 minutes, when the friend came up with an idea. In the absence of a flashlight (nobody had a flashlight!), the guy went back into the restaurant and came back with several paper placemats and a Bic lighter. He lit the paper on fire and dropped it in the drain. "Hope there's no gas in there," he said as he dropped it.

The idea was genius; not only did it warm us up, but it gave us sufficient light to coax the keys onto the hook with the broom handle. The waiter nudged, I hooked, and we brought the keys back to their rightful above-ground place.

I was, of course, grateful; so grateful that I gave the kid all the cash in my pocket, which meant that his 8 percent wound up being closer to 100. Being a kid -- and probably on some level aware that I had basically stiffed him -- he took the cash.

Good for him, I say. And from now on, I ... well, I'll probably still meet bad service with a bad tip. But I will add a new procedure to the travel system -- the keys stay in the pocket until I get to the car.

Fisher Price's My First Poker Blog

The casino in our city, Saturday night. Sat down at a $2 Texas Hold-'em table, started off with J-Kd, flop came up 2c-4s-9c, turn showed 6-c. I folded. It only got worse from there. But it's been a while since I had that much fun losing that much money.

The experience was diluted a bit by having a fight break out at the next table over, which was kind of distracting. The dealer at our table very much had a show-must-go-on attitude, which I guess he's trained to do, and kept slinging cards while he was yelling for security and we players were all watching for the inevitable firearm.

I take consolation in the fact that I never had good cards; I never folded too soon, basically. Had I played a little more pessimistically, the chips would have at least lasted longer, but I still doubt I'd be bragging about my winnings. I allowed myself to get rushed into a decision a few times, which seems to be the key difference between playing online and playing live (and with real money). I needed to give myself that extra second or two to think about what I was doing, and to get a read on the rest of the table.

But the fact that I've spent that many words analyzing what was possibly the weakest performance in the history of poker suggests that I'll probably be back.

-----

Overall, The Wife and I had a horrendously unsuccessful night at the casino. It was her first time in a casino, my fourth. The other three times (twice in Kansas City, once in Denmark) I came out a little bit ahead, mostly by playing blackjack. The Wife is apparently not Lady Luck. I'm not going to say how much we lost Satruday, lest people think we suddenly have a lot of disposable income and start calling us wanting loans. All I can say is thank God we have a big tax refund coming.

We spent most of the night giggling at our incompetence. We were flummoxed by the bingo game on the slot machines. We weren't sure why it was there, but we noticed that it seemed to change when we touched the screen, so we preceded every play on the slot machine with three taps on the bingo card.

In our state, gambling is only legal on "Native American land," which means the tribe buys up a few plots in the hotel district, plants its flag there and waits for it to start raining money. I consoled myself as we walked out, having drunkenly decided that I've made my reparations to the Indians for how my people treated them 150 years ago. We're even now.

-----

(To the overly sensitive, politically correct or Native American among us: That was a joke. Lighten up.)

-----

I'm not an early adopter; I'm just catching on to this poker thing. I'm playing at one of the few online sites compatible with Macs. I won my first few hands, then buzzed through my fake bankroll with alarming speed. Thankfully, refilling is as easy as clicking a button, and I'm now comfortably a few hundred fake dollars ahead.

Poker is a game that's well suited for my conflicting personality traits. I don't trust anybody and I tend to over-analyze situations, but I'm also one of the most optimistic people I know.

I do prefer to take my risks in environments I control (which is why I have no qualms with riding a motorcycle 140 mph but won't get on a rollercoaster). Ultimately, knowledge is control.

Thankfully, there are plenty of sources of knowledge out there. Cousin Otis has managed to make a career out of this, having extracted himself from the grind of mainstream journalism to become a globe-trotting poker blogger. That's so 2006; writing online about a game that incredible numbers of people are suddenly watching on television. Cards on TV? My parents played cards in the kitchen when I was a kid. My dad and mom and aunts and uncles would get together nearly every weekend to play canasta or some other equally uncool game. I can't imagine watching that on TV.

But I found myself on a Song flight recently with the little TV in the seat, watching ESPN during off hours. And there it was ... guys sitting around the table playing cards. After having successfully ignored the poker boom in the last two years, other than to occasionally marvel at the blogs, I found myself mesmerized. I found myself wondering why the hell So-and-So called with 5-2 offsuit. And then, I went online.

It'll be a long, long while before I'm comfortable using my kids' college money on a card game. But I now understand the appeal, and it probably won't be long before I'm seeking out a game.

Way, way too close to home

You probably heard about the school shooting in Central Florida on Friday. Kid takes gun to middle school, brandishes it, school clears out, cops chase kid into bathroom, corner kid. Kid points gun at cop, cop shoots kid. Kid is on life support as of this writing.

If we hadn't made the decision two years ago this month to uproot our lives and change my career, The Wife and I would have been among the frantic parents in the mob scene outside the school Friday morning. That was the middle school the Old Daughter would have attended.

-----

This spurred a discussion in the house this evening. The Wife was mortified that the SWAT team shot this poor kid, who just had a little pellet gun. "They didn't have to shoot to kill," she said. "They had him cornered in the bathroom, for Pete's said. Why didn't they just shoot him in the leg or something?"

I pointed out that it was a pellet gun made to look just like a 9mm Beretta, and that the cop did exactly the right thing. "A kid takes a gun to my kid's school," I said, "I want him taken out. I want the cops to drop him. I don't care if he's 15." If a SWAT team had been able to get to Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold a little sooner, maybe that's 12 other families who would have been spared the unspeakable grief they've dealt with the last six years.

I'm probably closer to wrong, and she's probably closer to right. A kid dying is a tragedy, and I hope this kid holds on and gets treatment and becomes a productive member of society. But dammit, my first priority is my children's safety.

My kid was safely in her own middle school Friday, 100 miles to the southwest of the horror, and knows nothing of this incident. But we've already had to explain more to her this year than we've wanted to. An eighth-grader at her school committed suicide earlier this year. It was not that long ago that we were having to teach her how to tie her shoes; now we're having to show her some of the world's darkest corners.

I know that's the only way that she's going to grow up with the ability to understand and deal with such things. But it's not right, and it's not something for which I'm prepared as a parent.

I graduated from high school in 1986, which wasn't exactly the Little House on the Prairie era. In the approximately 2,160 days in which I attended public schools, I never once thought for a second that somebody might get shot there. We lost fellow students to car wrecks, childhood diseases and tornadoes, but not suicide.

I try not to believe the world is a worse or crazier place now than it has ever been. Days like today test that belief.

And then God said, "Let there be California"

I was headed home after our Southern California project got off to a rough start. The Co-Worker, who's managing the project, stayed behind another day. She suggested that I relieve my stress by taking the Pacific Coast Highway rather than the customary freeway route, U.S. 101 and I-405, back to Los Angeles International Airport. I asked if she was sure that it was faster. "Oh, yeah," she said. "And beautiful, too."

As I drove through Oxnard, apparently a military and agricultural outpost, I wasn't so sure. Looked like any other surface-street alternative route to me. At this point, it's just California 1 South, Oxnard Boulevard.

Then, my rented Chrysler Sebring convertible made a slight jog to the right, and the truth was revealed.

Oh. My. God.

I just don't have words. Thank God I was wearing sunglasses, because I was literally near tears as absolutely breathtaking scenery led to even more superlative sights. On the left, a mountain rising to the amazingly clear blue sky; in the middle, me and the Sebring; on the right, the Pacific crashing into the rocks stacked at the side of the road.

I see now why people overpay to live in Southern California. I appreciate why people build those houses in Malibu atop those cliffs, despite the very real possibility that they'll slide off into the ocean someday (and ultimately, I'm not so sure that would be a bad thing.) I wonder why anybody who is recruited to attend Pepperdine University, whose campus runs along the east side of the highway south of Malibu, would turn it down.

There are just no words. It was epiphany-level beautiful.

In a way, Los Angeles might be the true Anytown USA. It was disconcerting to be on a road for the first time and see so many familiar exits: Mulholland Drive, Wilshire Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard, Santa Monica Boulevard ("All I wanna do/is have some fun"). You want diversity? I looked to my right at one red light in Santa Monica, and saw an early-'70s Vega with the old blue California license plates, belching gray smoke from its exhaust pipe directly onto the shiny new Rolls waiting behind the Vega at the light. That's not a sight I'm going to see back in Suburbia; nor, likely, was it a sight I was going to see on the 405.

I live in one of America's versions of Paradise; it takes much more than a 69-degree day in January to impress me. I certainly came away impressed, and then some.

My next car

The first car I remember really wanting was a 1970 Dodge Challenger that was for sale on my walk to school when I was a 15-year-old, license-less, car-less high school sophomore. I, of course, had no access to the $1,500 that was going to be necessary to buy it. But, man, it looked sweet: 340 six-pack, big rectangular exhausts, all stock, well preserved.

Now Chrysler goes and shows me this. I would camp out at my local Dodge dealer if that came to fruition.

If only

I deal with buggy software a lot (and not just the stuff I install and support.) The latest buggy piece of software with which I'm dealing is a program that syncs my Blackberry to my Mac. Somehow, rather than syncing, it cleared my calendar.

The more I look at it, the more I like the way my new calendar looks.

Happy New Life

Just in time to get that all-important '05 tax deduction for our good friends C and L, little Teagan comes along at 8 pounds and 5 ounces Saturday afternoon. She's got three big brothers, which, over the course of the next 20 or so years, is either going to be the best thing that ever happened to her, or the worst. Welcome; it's going to be a fun ride.

After the fireworks, smoke

It's 1 hour and 11 minutes into the first day of the first year of the second half of the first decade of the 21st century. Suddenly, for reasons I don't quite understand, I feel a lot older than I did an hour and 11 minutes ago.

Year-end meme

Everybody's doing it, and I'm still feeling too lazy to come up with my own stuff. So:

FOUR JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE
Actually, I've only had three. I was lucky enough to get the one I really wanted rather young:
-- File clerk in a collection agency (the agency was owned by my uncle; my role basically was to be The Boss's Nephew. People were much nicer to me at that job than at any of my subsequent jobs. Go figure.)
-- Journalist
-- Software guy

FOUR MOVIES YOU COULD WATCH REPEATEDLY
I'm not a big movie fan; I've probably seen fewer than 50 movies all the way through in my entire life. Short attention span, or something. Anyway:
-- Stripes ("Someday, one of these men might save your life." "Then again, we might not.")
-- The Lion King (I'm a sucker for triumphant-return stories, I guess)
-- Bull Durham ("Don't think, Meat. You'll hurt the ballclub.")
-- The Incredibles (or, really, any Pixar movie.)

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE LIVED
I spent the first 25 years of my life in my hometown, Anytown, USA. The places I've called home since then:
-- Cincinnati
-- Orlando
-- Dallas
-- Tampa

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH
This will be a struggle; I watch very little TV. Let's try:
-- Monday Night Football
-- M*A*S*H
-- Law and Order (the original, not SVU or CI or any of the other initialed ones)
-- Sheesh. I can't come up with a fourth.

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE BEEN ON VACATION
Exotic locales such as:
-- Houston
-- Washington, D.C.
-- St. Louis
-- Charleston, S.C.
I didn't get out much.

FOUR WEB SITES YOU VISIT DAILY
-- msnbc.com
-- nytimes.com
-- poynter.org/medianews
-- blogs.silconvalley.com/gmsv, the best tech news site out there.

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS
-- Ribeye steak, medium
-- Crab legs
-- Anything Mexican
-- A viciously hot stir-fry that The Wife makes, with beef, chicken or shrimp. Bad for the digestive system, good for the soul.

FOUR PLACES YOU'D RATHER BE
I'll limit this to places that I've never been:
-- Australia
-- Hawaii
-- Italy
-- Somewhere up in the mountains, say, Colorado or Wyoming

OK. I think I'm the last one to have done this, but if you haven't, well, you should.

iChristmas

Among the family's Christmas haul: a 12-inch iBook G4 (for The Wife; welcome to the Mac side!), an iPod Nano 4 GB (also for The Wife) and an iPod Shuffle (for the Old Daughter.)

Steve Jobs owes me a Christmas card.

Merry Christmas, from the archives

While I recharge the batteries and get ready for another Christmas Eve, I present to you this forum's first-ever Christmas post, from (unbelievably) four years ago, when life was a lot different. We never got a chance to do that "one last time" gathering; Grandma went on to her much-deserved rest in 2004, and the little house in Anytown is on the market, if not already sold. A reminder that while the holidays are wonderful, they sometimes make me wistful.

All the best to you and yours, and enjoy this blast from the not-so-recent past.

Christmas, Anytown style

Here's how it was: Christmas Eve, any year in the 1970s. Eight adult siblings (including my dad) and their spouses, probably 20 cousins (including me) ranging in age from 10 to just-born, a few ex-wives of the aforementioned siblings, and my grandparents, all packed into their house, which seated maybe six comfortably. Big, thick cloud of smoke hanging over the proceedings (apparently, back in the 1970s, secondhand smoke wasn't bad for kids). Somebody's dressed as Santa; one of my uncles, but I'm not sure who, and I certainly wasn't going to make my way through the crowd to figure it out. Not much food around, and certainly nothing I liked. We're supposed to start opening presents at 5:00, but it's 5:20, and one aunt-uncle-cousins bloc isn't here yet. They're always late. There's a Christmas tree in the corner, but you can hardly see it because it's covered with those shiny silver icicles. Small flashing lights on the tree inside, big flashing lights on the evergreen in the front yard, big flashbulb going off every once in a while on someone's Polaroid. If it's not snowing and it's above 20 degrees, a few of us will venture outside every once in a while to get away from the smoke and the noise. Back inside, the late arrivals have showed up. Wrapping paper is flying, cousins are hollering, and toys are piling up to the ceiling. If you have a cousin of the same gender and in the same basic age group, you got the same gift as he did. Conflict avoidance, of course. You can't play with anything, though; there's no room to play with anything. The family wasn't well-off, by any means; my dad and two of his brothers worked in the same factory, and they were on strike that winter. Or sitting out a temporary layoff. Didn't matter; none of the kids would have ever known the difference.

Here's what it became: Christmas Eve, sometime in the late 1980s. Same family, same gathering, although in the slightly larger house of the Uncle Who Made Good. Some of the cousins, such as myself, are in their late teens or early 20s. We're bringing girlfriends or boyfriends to the gathering, and we're not staying very long. We're getting gifts we really don't have a lot of use for, in complete honesty. And I can only stay until 6, because I have to go to work. There's more food around, but I've already been to one of the few places in Anytown that's open on Christmas Eve, probably the Waffle House. I leave, not particularly filled with Christmas spirit, but more relieved that I've made my appearance.

Here's how it is: Christmas Eve, 2001. The siblings are getting older; all the cousins are grown and many have kids of their own. Some are in Texas, some in Colorado, some in South Carolina, one in medical school. A few are still bumming around Anytown, doing the best they can with what they have. The Christmas gathering is a much smaller affair in a much bigger place, at the palatial estate of the Uncle Who Made Good. It'll probably be the only time my grandparents get out of their house all year. Phone rings a few times; it's the cousin from Texas or Colorado or South Carolina calling to wish the gathering a merry Christmas. The same aunt-uncle-cousins bloc, minus the cousins, will be late. Or they won't show up at all, which'll make Grandma sad, but probably nobody else will miss them. My own kids wouldn't have a clue how to conduct themselves in a large, loud group like the one I grew up with. It would just freak them out. We'll have our own gathering here in Texas; wrapping paper will fly, toys will pile to the ceiling; it'll have everything but the cloud of smoke.

Maybe soon we'll get that whole group together one last time. Maybe we'll do it at my grandparents' little house in Anytown. Until then, I'll count the memory as one of my best gifts of this or any year.

Cheap space-filler

A meme, via largelypro.com, basically just so I can say that I have a December post.

A is for Age: 37. The same age my Dad was when one second of inattention behind the wheel changed our lives forever.
B is for Booze: Macallan, 12 year. Disposable income is fun.
C is for Career: Software guy. Install it, teach it, document it. But I still think of myself as a journalist.
D is for Dad?s name: Same as mine, which explains how my credit report once showed a Sears account that "I" opened in 1978, when I was 10.
E is for Essential items to bring to a party: A four-pack of Grolsch swing-tops. Great conversation starters.
F is for Favorite song or music: I have a different favorite song every day, but one sticks in my head more than most. On June 1, 1986, the day I graduated from high school, I had the house to myself for a few minutes before I had to leave for the ceremony. I turned on the stereo and Boston's "Don't Look Back" was on. I closed my eyes and listened to it ... then, during the bridge, for reasons, I still can't understand, I jumped as high as I possibly could and let out a yell, because finally, my life was going to go forward. It's not even that band's best song, but whenever I hear it, I always remember that moment.
G is for Goof off thing to do: Not much time for that, but when I do, it usually involves idly surfing the Web.
H is for Hometown: Springfield, Mo., aka Anytown USA. Haven't been there since my grandmother's funeral in 2004.
I is for Instrument you play: For the last 25 years, it's been guitar. At times in my life, I have also publicly played violin, viola, cello and bass.
J is for Jam or Jelly you like: Welch's grape jelly. Accept no substitutes.
K is for Kids: Three, 11, 6 and 5, girl, boy, girl, respectively.
L is for Living arrangement: Plastic white suburbia, wife, her four dogs, the kids, and a cat who we can't persuade to leave.
M is for Mom?s name: Stephanie. Named for her father's political hero, Stephen Douglas. Explains a lot about her father.
N is for Name of best friend: Natalie. Thankfully, I'm also married to her.
Overnight Stay in a Hospital: Three days after getting smacked down with the flu last February in New Hampshire.
P is for Phobias: I'm afraid of water, and dogs, which explains why I have a house with a large swimming pool and four golden retrievers.
Q is for Quote you like: "Two elephants for a quarter is only a good deal if you need two elephants and you have a quarter."
R is for Relationship that lasted longest: The Wife and I began Year 16 in October.
S is for Siblings: A younger sister.
T is for Texas, ever been? Lived there for three years. Many things to love about that place. Many things to hate. It's a land of extremes.
U is for Unique trait: What makes me unique? Hell, I don't have a clue. I'm a pretty average guy.
V if for vegetable you love: Will eat just about any vegetable cold, or steamed. Once they lose their crunch, though, they lose me.
W is for Worst traits: Procrastination, and a tendency to shut down when I get frustrated.
X- is for X-rays you?ve had: I have a fuzzy memory of that hospital stay mentioned earlier involving X-rays, but I'm not sure. The source for this meme points out that this is a rather desperate attempt to come up with something for X. I agree.
Y is for Yummy food you make: I'm not much of a cook, but I can grill a steak as well as anybody and better than most.
Z is for Zodiac sign: Cancer.