Peeking from behind the barrier

See, I wasn't going to go an entire month without posting something. I just need to gather my thoughts a bit. It's been a wild month; travel, parties, gifts galore, excitement and bliss and wonder. Basically, all the reasons one would wake up every morning.

So today, the day after Christmas, I'm surrounded by the debris from the Mini-Humans' barrage of Christmas joy. Dora the Explorer is praising my youngest from the TV screen. The oldest just emerged from her room, wearing a new outfit. The Boy is trying to decide which of his new pirate ships should pillage the castle.

Had a good conversation with my little sister last night. She's going to give me a niece in May. It's the first time I've spoken to her since the news broke. Life has been kind of a struggle for her the last several years, to say the least. Much of the drama has been self-created, but that hasn't made it any easier. Anyway, for the first time in, like, ever, she has a reason now to believe in the future. I couldn't be happier for her.

No work Friday, no work yesterday, no work today, no work tomorrow. No thinking about configuration issues or search requests or integration with existing systems. See how I'm not thinking about it?

This is what contentment feels like. I feel the overall inspiration coming back. I'm starting to feel like Me again. This is a good thing.

Good stuff all around

Good suggestion from utexas.edu, which has resulted in dark text on a light-ish background. This isn't the final design -- in fact, it's still mostly the generic template you'll see on 24,695 other sites. But at least it's an easier-to-read generic rendition.

Good news from the Carolinas. Always glad to hear things are going well for Otis and his group.

Good company for Thanksgiving dinner -- The Wife and the Mini-Humans. We have no family nearby, and their visits to us are reserved for Christmas. We were invited to a friend's dinner, and The Wife (who doesn't give up traditions easily) was strongly considering it. She presented the idea to the children; the younger two were all fired up about hanging out with their friends, but the Old Daughter vetoed it. "Thanksgiving is for family," she said. "That's our tradition. We should stick to it." So noted. It's comforting that a kid who has seen so much change in her life can find something to use as an anchor. Further evidence that when it comes to her, I really have nothing to worry about.

Good story in one of the Edge of America's rags today, worth a look. Brian Griese is a son of privilege. Thankfully, he knows it, and chooses to use the gifts he has received for the good of others. Few causes are more noble than his cause.

Good to be able to paint the outside of your house in late November. Bad to have to paint the outside of your house in late November. But good to be able to do it.

Good to watch The Wife lounging on the couch watching her favorite movie, Gone With the Wind. A well-deserved reward for a great Thanksgiving dinner, and for making my life generally, well, good.

Good to hear good reports from Anytown about Thanksgiving. My grandfather got out of the house and went to the celebration, which probably wasn't easy for him. Today marked the first time since 1937 that he wasn't celebrating my grandmother's birthday with her. The aunts and uncles and a few cousins got together, and, I'm told, a reasonably good time was had by all.

Awful lot of goodness around. Be thankful for all of it.

Silent cry, invisible tear

Looks like bad weather today in my hometown, not unlike a November 24 from 17 years ago. Today's a little bit of a rough day. Not that every day since that day hasn't been in its own little way, but when those numbers all come together, a "1," a "1," a "2," a "4," for some reason, it's just a little bit rougher.

I miss my father. Yeah, I know, he's still here. But the brutal truth is, he's not. And I think that sucks.

It's OK for me to think that. And I'll be fine, in a while, for a while.

I just needed a few minutes alone with November 24 to tell it what I really think of it.

Yasser Arafat, 1929-not soon enough

Proving once again there is no justice in the world, gallstones got him before the Israelis did. The fact that his name is on the Nobel Peace Prize is an insult to the memory of Yitzhak Rabin and to Shimon Peres.

Speak ill of this dead bastard all you want.

Nothing matters and what if it did?

Click, Drag and Delete have been pretty busy tonight. I keep trying to write something coherent, but bullshit comes out instead. My tolerance for bullshit is pretty low, and getting lower all the time.

I've been trying to make sense of the post-election babble. What are people really trying to say? Because 51 percent of us were too stupid to vote for W, the country's going straight to hell in a handbasket? Funny thing; most of the people who seem to be the most blue about Kerry's loss have access to computers and a good command of the written word, and jobs that give them a platform to share their feelings. Most of the people who stand around with my wife waiting to pick up their kids from school couldn't be more pleased with the election results. I know of nobody among the rapidly widening circle of friends we're gaining here on the Western Edge who voted for Kerry. If they did, they're doing a good job verbally faking their happiness over the result of the election.

What does that actually prove? Well, really, nothing. My suburb might or might not be typical. I would lean toward "not." A majority of my neighbors are officers in the Air Force, who work at the nearby base that houses Central Command. Some of them are headed to Iraq soon. Some of them have had to send people who report to them over there. All of them have strong feelings about the war, for and against. All of them voted for Bush.

It seems very possible that we're outgrowing our little democracy. What "unites" us? Really, nothing.

It took the deaths of 3,000 people who decided to not skip work one Tuesday in 2001 to get us to unite for a common cause, and that lasted, what, about two months? Then we were back to bitching and squabbling and back-biting. And that's not the fault of the left; if we must resort to schoolyard discourse (and apparently we must), the right started the whole "we're perfect and you're stupid" thing. They started it ...

An aside that doesn't really fit in anywhere else in this rant: Stop trying to convince me George W. Bush is a knuckle-dragging functional illiterate. He's not the most articulate person who's ever stood in front of the Great Seal. But last time I checked, they weren't just handing out degrees from Yale, even to people whose dads went there. I dropped out of a not-very-prestigious state university. I'm not going to pretend I'm smarter than somebody who found a way to make it through Yale.

God knows there's hypocrisy to spare in both red and blue hues. Bill Clinton was a womanizer who got a hummer from a chubby babe right there in the Oval Office. His successor sat in that same Oval Office and sent people off to die for ... well, for ... well, to defend us against ... uh, dammit, we had to bomb somebody! Michael Moore is a lying sack of shit. So is Ken Lay and the rest of his Enron cronies. I'm not sure any of Moore's lies have cost anybody their retirement savings.

Bottom line: We're facing a pretty serious hero shortage on both sides. Why? Because the good people are too damn smart to get involved. Colin Powell knows better. You know somebody's gunning for Barack Obama, the latest political Flavor of the Month,; not to attack his political ideas, all of which are sound, but to find out which of his college girlfriends he cheated on or how many speeding tickets he has or some other indiscretion with an actual relevance value of zero. We're going to be stuck with Hillary Clinton in 2008, not because she's the best or the brightest, but because she has good "name recognition."

The pool of statesmen and stateswomen is pretty thin these days. Good leaders are out there, but they're too busy leading to get caught up in the smoke-and-mirrors act that is the United States political system. The truly intelligent and visionary people don't want to play the game -- or they get drummed out of the game. (See index entries "McCain, John, too much integrity for own good," and "Dean, Howard, too visionary and passionate to be taken seriously").

Besides, we don't really want a leader as our president. We want somebody who looks good on TV and who can quip one-liners. We don't want a human; we want an image. Is Arnold Schwarzenegger the governor of California because he has an advanced degree in international economics? No. Did you know he has an advanced degree in international economics? Probably not. Lots of people have degrees in international economics. None of them was the Terminator. You likely won't see any of them as the governor of California.

So, now that I've declared the Repbulic extinct, what do I care about? I care that I'm not paying more than my fair share of the tax burden. I care that the things for which I am paying those taxes are of the highest quality, and are being built and maintained by people who are themselves being paid a living wage. I care that my children are safe, and I know that's primarily the responsibility of my wife and me. I'm less worried about international terrorists than I am about the registered sex offender who lives eight houses away from us. I care that the person who's being paid to watch him while he's on probation is doing her job. (We checked. She is.) I care mostly about stuff that's happening within about a 12-mile radius of wherever I am at the moment.

The most important vote I cast last Tuesday wasn't for president; it was for sheriff and the county commission.

I'm not choosing to be isolated; I'm choosing to mind my own house, and to take as much control as possible of what I can see. I'm participating in the process, but only to the extent where it affects me. I don't care what they do in Boston. I don't care what they do in Wyoming. I'm not sure anybody else in my immediate line of sight does, either. My hot-button issue is not abortion, or gay marriage, or "moral values," whatever the fuck that means. My issue is taxes. Bush sees it my way on taxes. Therefore, I voted for Bush. It's up to the people I send to Congress to keep him honest. (My vote for Senate went to the Democratic candidate, who lost to her slimebag opponent by about 132 votes ... Oops, there we go with the schoolyard stuff again. My bad. But he is a slimebag.) Bush wouldn't have been able to send all those people off to die if Congress hadn't let him. Kerry wasn't going to do anything about it anytime soon. All things being basically equal -- and they were -- the Republicans keep my taxes low, I'm voting Republican. As soon as the Democrats find some way to make it personally beneficial for me to vote for them, I'll vote for them.

So much for "united" states, huh? That's pretty much what I'm suspecting.

A logical criticism for what I have just written would go as follows: "You wrote god-knows-how-many-hundred-words and I still don't know what you believe." If that's the case, you weren't paying attention, and I'll sum it up in a few sentences.

I believe in the power of the individual, and I believe in the power of integrity and vision. Few of the choices with which I was presented last Tuesday showed me any of that. I support integrity and vision, no matter what party provides it. Does that explain anything?

(I'm not sure that this was any lower on the bullshit scale than any of the stuff that fell victim to Click, Drag and Delete, but I needed something to show for the last hour of typing. If I lose my balance while standing on this fence, it's really going to hurt my nuts. Click "Publish Post" and go on to the next thing, I guess.)

A weekend in Florida

On a beautiful Saturday in November (and here in Florida, there is rarely anything other than beautiful days in November), here's the way my two days off are shaping up ...

Surrounded by chaos: I have four extra children this weekend. The three younger ones pair off with our three quite nicely, and the oldest one is 11-going-on-34, so she's actually quite helpful. However, there is no way to have seven kids in your house and have peace ? no matter the hour. One of the kids who isn't ours was in bed with us last night.

The kids belong to friends of ours. They're off at the husband's 20-year high-school reunion in Wisconsin. Compounding the pain: The Wife is off at a dog show. I'm not yet at the edge of my sanity, but I can certainly see the edge from here. Thankfully, I have a bottle of 80-proof Danish liqueur within easy reach, when it becomes necessary. (Memo to Department of Children and Families: For me, not the kids.)

The friends who left us their kids are the most interesting people I think we've ever known. He is a major in the Air Force, tall, good-looking, flies KC-135 airborne refueling tankers when he's not leading his troops. He went to the Air Force Academy on a wrestling scholarship. I forgive The Wife's crush on him. I can certainly see why. His wife is also good-looking and in excellent shape; she is a nurse, the PTA president, a volunteer for god-knows-how-many other causes and still manages to find time to raise four smart, well-adjusted, good-looking and talented children. Their son is 5; he plays on my son's football team, and also plays the piano and does complex math. Their daughters are 4, 8 and 11, and are all smart and talented in their ways.

I can get through all of that without having to mention that they also face with grace and aplomb the daily challenges of being an interracial couple. He's white and grew up in rural Wisconsin; she's black and grew up in inner-city Chicago. That's the only thing that visibly separates them from the rest of us average suburban folk. For them, however, it's a complete non-issue. Yes, they take some crap every once in a while, but not nearly to the degree that they would have, say, 30 or even 20 years ago. For all the backward steps the country is taking as this tilt to the right continues, we certainly seem to be making strides against the cancer of racism.

The price of victory: The Boy's 3-7 football team somehow managed to squeak into the league playoffs. This sucked, because we were more than prepared for the season to be over. The coaches are becoming more annoying, and getting up at 6 a.m. every Saturday is just getting old.

In a stunning development, our Broncos pulled out a most unfortunate victory. This means yet one more week of football practice and one more Saturday of being awake at an ungodly hour. Thankfully, we're playing the champions of the other division, who went 9-1.

This experience has certainly confirmed all of my previous bitching about organized youth sports. Two weeks ago, one of our team's assistant coaches was kicked out of the game for questioning the officials. A parent was kicked out of the stands shortly thereafter. They weren't being violent or belligerent, just annoying and immature. Their reactions were well out of proportion to the importance of a game involving 5- to 7-year-old boys.

Because the coach was ejected, he was barred from participating on the field the next week. So he instead sat atop the press box with a video camera ... and a cell phone. He was calling plays down to the remaining coaches on the field.

I can't imagine any circumstance under which that would have been necessary.

New arrival: We have a new Champion Dog wanna-be in our house. A cute little golden retriever puppy replaced The Wife's male dog, who had behavior issues that derailed his chase for a championship. I don't like dogs, at all. This is a well-known fact. However, I'm going to take a shot at getting off on the right foot with this dog. Maybe if I'm reasonably nice to it, it won't hate me so much. Wish me luck.

Well, kids are starting to holler at each other in the other room. Guess I should see what's going on. Where's that liqueur again?

What's new is old again, or something like that

It's time for a change here at Dateline: Anytown, USA. It's been a while, and the debris was starting to get pretty thick. I was writing my name in the dust. The stench was not yet overwhelming, but it was certainly noticeable. And the occasional cockroach crawling by was yet another sign that I needed to do some serious cleanup.

I had three choices:

1/Put in the necessary mental elbow grease to do the much-needed renovations
2/At least do the minimum to clean up the existing mess
3/Blow the whole damn thing up and start over

Because I'm lazy, and because I secretly enjoy a little bit of violence and mayhem now and then, I chose "3."

So much to talk about. So much has happened over the last several months. So many new adventures, so many new towns, so many takeoffs and landings. Lots of new people, which has been a good thing for me; I'm making progress against rapidly advancing agoraphobia. I'm not exactly a social butterfly, but I'm no longer actively avoiding other humans.

So much to think about. Wondering if my former Governor can fix in four years the damage he's done in the previous four. I earlier said I wasn't going to tell you how I voted. I'm going to go back on that, because it deserves some reflection, and because I kind of like pissing you off. I voted for Bush -- not because I think he's done a particularly good job, but because I think the Democrats can do better than Kerry, and I want them to focus on doing so in '08. Kerry didn't show me anything to make me think he was a better alternative, at least not in the short term. Remember, he got hornswoggled by that whole WMD thing, too. I have a history of votes that I question later: I voted for Perot in '92. I have a feeling I'm going to be questioning this one soon.

So much to be pissed off about. As mentioned in a post in the dusty forum, my former employer laid off a whole bunch of people last week. One of them was the best human being with whom I had ever worked. He was my boss when I had the boring job that I whined so much about. He was the only good thing about that job. He was also the only bad thing about that job. He never quite got his arms around the upper-management thing. After I left in '02, he got shoved aside and shoved aside and shoved aside until he finally was pushed off the edge. He's 43, with a kid in high school and a kid in middle school. I'd like to think he'll have no problem finding another job; he's smart and he's skilled. But it's not a great market for 40-ish white males, so ...

Some 60 people were excused from further participation. I know about 25 names. To a person, most of them were older people; some of them were people who hadn't kept up with the technology, some of them were people whose jobs had been kind of phased out as the newspaper reduced its coverage, and some of them were certainly less than competent. But I hate it when anybody leaves a job under any terms other than his or her own, through no real fault of their own.

And I especially hate it when good, hard-working people are victims of mismanagement by those in very high places. This newspaper pissed away more than $60 million over the last five years; $40-some million on a bad technology investment and the rest on refunds to advertisers after it was revealed they had been fudging their circulation numbers. Upper management was quick to say the circulation scandal had absolutely nothing to do with the layoffs. Upper management is, of course, full of shit.

Now, of course, the question looms: How in the hell do I wrap this up with something that'll make you come back for the next one? I've asked myself that question every time I've sat in front of this (or any other) keyboard over the last three years. I've never come up with a good answer for it. But y'all keep coming back anyway, for some reason. I'll keep searching for that answer.

This is only a test

If this were an actual post, it'd still be boring as hell. But it's not. It's just a test.

Meanwhile, back here at the funny farm ...
We're off to a good start with Election 2004 here in Florida.

Now hear this, America
The way I see it, folks, we have two choices:

We can let the ruling class decide who leads our country for the next four years

We can be the ruling class.

Choose the latter. Get the hell out and vote tomorrow.

As always, I don't care who you vote for, and I'm not telling you who I'm voting for. I do care that you put in the time and effort to make the decision. Don't leave it up to the radicals on either wing. You have an opinion; scream it from the rooftops. I want to hear you.

Dark day in Texas
Several friends got hit in a mass layoff at the Very Large Metropolitan Newspaper. I'm sad about it, and very pissed, because it's largely the result of high-level mismanagement.

More on this topic later.

Needing some music
My iPod count stands at 504 songs -- pretty weak for a guy who claims to love music as much as I do.

So: I'm asking for your help. Recommend five songs to me -- from any genre; you don't have to know or care what I like. I want to know what YOU like, and I want to share it.

I buy songs pretty much exclusively from the iTunes music store, but if you happen to spring a song on me that I can't get there, let me know where I can get it.

Anyway: Five songs, from each of you. Click on "Enlighten us" and enlighten my iPod before my next road trip.

For the record, here's five from my playlist:

Baby Girl, Sugarland: Newly created "supergroup" featuring three notable singer-songwriters from Atlanta's music scene. They put together a helluva band. Their CD is scheduled for release Oct. 26. Another good song, not yet generally available: "Down in Mississippi (and Up to No Good.)

Love Means Never Having to Say You're Hungry, Charlie Robison: From his new album, "Good Times." Raunchy, not-safe-for-the-minivan paean to ... well, let's just say you won't be able to hear this song without thinking about a certain Dixie Chick's, um ... well, just listen to the song.

Lough Erin Shore, The Corrs: Instrumental from an Irish band of siblings. The rest of their stuff is a little too poppy for me, but man, what a bunch of great musicians. Amazing violin, piano and tin whistle evokes the best of Irish music without making you think of "Riverdance."

Kick my Ass, Big and Rich: Actually, this whole album is worth a listen. Big and Rich is heading for some serious commercial success, which means you should take a listen before Nashville beats them down and turns them into everyothercountryradioact. You won't find too many albums that combine straight-up country, hard rock, rap in Spanish and Bon Jovi-style power ballads.

Pocahontas Proud, Gretchen Wilson: "I'm the biggest thing that ever came from my hometown," hollers the Redneck Woman, and it's hard to argue against that statement when one's hometown is Pocahontas, Ill. I like Gretchen Wilson mostly because she reminds me of every third girl I knew as a teenager in Anytown, girls from the surrounding small towns who drove Chevy 4x4s and would beat you up as soon as hold your hand. I like that in a woman. (A little bit about my taste in women: I think this picture is just about the hottest picture of any woman on the Web.) I like this song because I appreciate people who understand where they came from and are proud of it.

Your turn. Five from you.

That's him. The fat guy
I'm generally a pretty average guy. The one thing that has always made me different from you is that I'm really, really thin.

I didn't weigh 100 pounds when I graduated from high school. The first time I had my body fat measured, during a physical for my track team, my body fat registered 1.8 percent. I could buy my clothes in the children's section until I was 26.

Even with the inevitable settling that comes with adulthood, I still tipped the scales at around 130. (I'm just shy of 5-foot-7). I took great pride in being able to maintain a slim profile, despite eating large quantities of whatever the hell I wanted and drinking enough beer on some nights to make you puke just from watching me.

I knew it was going to catch up to me eventually, I really did. And I probably should be glad it took this long.

I stepped on a scale a few days ago for the first time since February. That time, I weighed 134. I almost had a heart attack when I saw the number that popped up the other day. (OK, the heart-attack thing might have been because of the clogged arteries, but anyway ... )

One-fifty-seven.

Damn near 160 pounds. Once again, just shy of 5-foot-7.

I knew something was up during one of my road trips earlier this summer. I packed my normal bunch of clothes, and suddenly, my slightly snug 31-waist pants didn't fit at all. They weren't "slightly snug," nor "really tight." They would not snap around my waist, despite my best efforts to suck it in.

This happened, I swear to God, overnight. I found myself in Washington state suddenly having to shop for pants. In a 33.

So, now, I'm faced for the first time ever with the idea that I might have to care about getting my weight down, or at least making sure it doesn't go up any more. I actually might have to start somehow forcing myself to eat fat-free stuff. (God, I hate fat-free stuff.) Two words: Light beer. A few more words: A lot less of it. And, oh yeah, exercise ...

Part of it is more of the Inevitable Settling, now that I'm closer to 40 than to 30. Part of it is my new job, where I find myself sitting a lot in 757s and in airports and behind desks, and eating restaurant food on other people's money.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not in danger any time soon of being the blubberbutt you see walking away in a TV news story about how we're making the planet sink because we're all so damn fat. And vanity was something I gave up when I started losing my hair, anyway.

The reason it concerns me, mostly, is because I have heart disease coming at me from both sides of my family. I don't really need to make things any harder on my ticker than my genetics already dictate they're going to be.

I'm easing into this. I'll mix a few diet sodas in with the four or five regular sodas, and maybe even a glass of water occasionally. I'll eat well one day, and like I usually do the next day. I had a morning walk for a while as part of my routine, but time and the need to sleep has been stealing that. I need to get it back.

And in that paragraph above, I just mistyped "steak" insead of "steal." And I paused for just a second and I thought, "Mmm, steak ... "

Innocence rules
The Old Daughter finally unleashed her first curse word.

She didn't say it to her teacher, or to her mom, or to her gramdma. Nobody heard it at all. She whispered it to herself in her bedroom. Several months ago.

We would never have know had she not come out of her room this evening, sobbing. "Mommy, I gotta tell you something," she blubbered. "I said a bad word. I feel terrible about it."

Then she told us the part about having whispered it to herself in her room several months ago. "I just" snif snif "wanted to see" snif snif "what it felt like."

I'm not too worried about teenagerhood, all of a sudden. I think she'll be OK.

And frankly, as far as I'm concerned, as long as she doesn't say it to any of the aforementioned authority figures listed above, she can say whatever the fuck she wants to say.

Too tired to duck again
I'd start an eyeofjeanne.blogspot.com, but geez, I'm so bored with the whole hurricane thing at this point. This one is probably going to hit us with more than a glancing blow. We're not prepared, other than what is left over from Charley and Frances and Ivan.

This whole Edge of America thing might be up for discussion soon.

Whew. OK
So perhaps I can go through the week without having to do another hurricane blog. Perhaps that damn storm will fall apart somewhere in the Gulf before it hits Mobile, Ala. For the sake of the Mobilians, I hope it happens that way.

Bringing an end to a month's worth of hurricane panic forces me to resume the focus on what we so loosely call "normal life." You know, that thing that involves a morning routine, then work, then an evening routine, followed by sleep, lather, rinse, repeat as necessary. That cycle seems refreshing now that "hurricane panic" isn't in the mix anywhere, at least for the moment.

It's September, which means it's time for football. Up until this year, it was the kind of football that kept my ass firmly planted on the couch on Sundays -- you know, the 1 p.m. game, then the 4 p.m. game, then, if my long-suffering wife had finally given up, the 8:30 p.m. game. This is followed, of course, by Monday Night Football, for which I probably won't last past halftime, now that I'm a member of the Real World, that World which is at work by 8:30 each morning.

But that routine has been shaken up a bit by Saturday morning football -- football of the flag variety, featuring kids ages 5 to 7. Mine is No. 14, the one on the bench checking out the cheerleaders.

The Boy's team suffered its first loss on Saturday, leaving them 2-1. They pretty much took it in stride, however; at least, the players did. All they knew was that when the game was over, it was time for Laffy Taffy and juice boxes. The coaches, of course, were deeply disappointed, and grumbled and mumbled about lack of execution and concentration to a bunch of boys who can't read, much less have any idea what "execution" means.

These coaches held the game up for nearly five minutes disputing a fumble call at the goal line -- in a game involving 5-year-olds. Talk about needing to get a grip.

But: These coaches had spent much of the week at their real jobs. One owns a construction company; he's been working his ass off helping people in Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte recover after Charley and Frances. One is a deputy sheriff; he spends his days dealing with "crapbags," as he puts it, and loves nothing more than to hang out with a bunch of innocent kids, hoping to play some part in keeping them from growing up to be crapbags. They can be forgiven if they want to win a football game a little too much. As important as their real jobs are, it's heartening to know that a little boys' game can be that important to them, too. If it helps them stay sane, I'm all for it.

As for me: I'm back on the road next week. Two days in Minnesota, three days in Illinois, in the never-ending pursuit of deploying better software. Thankfully, the hurricane threat in Minnesota is minimal. I'll miss next Saturday's game, most likely; unless we make dramatic improvements in the software in Illinois between now and then, I'll be landing at my home airfield just about the time the final horn blows. But that's OK; I'll still have Sunday, and I'll be able to explain to The Boy once again that guys in the NFL don't wear flags.

Surely they're kidding
From the National Hurricane Center ...

Hunkered down, again
Well, guess it's that time again here on the Edge. Go here for the official word, and go to eyeoffrances.blogspot.com for what it looks like from our backyard.

He's a divider, not a uniter
Singeth The Boy:

"This land is your land/This side is my land ... "

It's not really a new post
Mostly, this is just typing exercise. I just need to loosen my brain a little bit. And lucky you; you get to watch.

I'm on vacation this week, for the first time in a long time. It doesn't mean I don't still have a pile of work to do; that pile's still there, and it's still laughing at me every time I look at it. This vacation, for me, basically just means I work when I want to, and I can lean on my, "Well, I'm on vacation," reply if anybody asks anything about anything.

A smart person would have taken the battery out of his laptop and stored it somewhere off-site. But my intellect can certainly be called into question.

In totally unrelated events, my son is playing flag football. He's 5. I've ranted about the folly of organized youth sports before, but hey, when in Suburbia, do as the Suburbanites do. He doesn't get much playing time; he's a lot smaller than the other 5- and 6-year-olds on his team, and it's very possible he's a victim of his genetics in that he's not exactly blessed with natural athletic talent. His only appearance Saturday was on the kickoff team after his team's second touchdown. He did chase the returner with abandon, and almost ran him down, but it didn't matter, because the ball had been blown dead 30 yards back.

There was a little bit of miffedness among the family unit about The Boy's lack of playing time. Dragging him out of bed at 6:45 on a Saturday morning so he could play for one kickoff seems a little silly. But, as that discourse was being discoursed, the usual Perspective Builder came into sight: The team's waterboy, a crew-cut 5-year-old in an electric wheelchair, gamely wheeling himself around and spraying the players with water. Bet he'd be really happy to get in for one kickoff. Bet his parents would be positively giddy.

So, no more whining about The Boy's playing time. We can still whine about the coaches, for whom it seems to mean a lot more to be 2-0 than it does to make sure all the kids are learning how to play football. But I'll keep that waterboy in mind.

Saturday, of course, followed Friday, at which The Wife had to attend a hastily called parental conference for The Old Daughter, who had an incident of speaking out in class. This followed days of warnings about speaking out in class. She is genetically programmed to be a talker, and she's learning how to use that switch that tells her mouth to stay shut when her brain comes up with something it thinks needs to be said. But sometimes that's a tough lesson to learn.

And the Very Cool Mother-in-Law is visiting this weekend. We're about to launch another enhancement to The Freelance Gig in a couple of months. I'll be working my ass off -- while I'm working my ass off -- but the result is going to be very good, I think.

Finally, the 5-day forecast track for Frances is now touching the southern tip of The Edge. It's too early for action, they tell us, but you might want to check your hurricane shutters just to be sure.

There. My typing fingers feel a little looser, and more comfortable now.