I had a super geeky weekend.

On Saturday afternoon, I went to KublaCon. Despite the fact that I still cannot get Chaka Khan lyrics out of my head (KublaCon, gonna rock you, gonna rock you KublaCon (join me in my hell)), the convention had nothing to do with old-school funky tunes. There was, perhaps, a funk in the air, but it was unrelated to boogie.

KublaCon was one of those places where I instantly felt healthy and normal as soon as I walked in the building. Note that I am clearly a geeky guy. I'm a computer programmer by trade, I play competitive Scrabble, and I'm enamored with baseball statistics. There is no doubt that I am a geek. However, at a place like KublaCon, I'm the least geeky guy there. It was as though you could get $5.00 off the admission price if you showed up exhibiting one (or more) of the following characteristics:

- Morbidly obese
- Morbidly emaciated
- A man wearing a skirt
- Sporting an image of a Middle Earth character...somewhere
- Wearing +3 chain mail

The wife and I paid full-price admission, although she longs for Gandalf undies.

Last night our daughter spent the night with her aunt. Being the hot married couple that we are, we spent the evening indulging one of our dirty little habits. We started off with a sexy sexy game of Scrabble (I won). Then we went to go see a romantic little film called Word Wars. We finished up the evening with a hubba-hubba round of Scrabble (I won).

Needless to say, I am sore.

Actually, I am kind of sore. For some strange reason, most of the lower half of my body is EXTREMELY itchy. It starts at my ankles, meanders intermittently around the legs, engulfs the crotch, and hints at starting up the stomach. If it weren't for the fact that it is so satisfying to scratch these itches, I'd consider getting it checked out. I can't quite figure how I got this condition. It's as though I slept with some STD or poison-oak ridden hooker, but I have no recollection of such an experience. You think I'd remember that.

There you have it, a thoroughly geeky weekend. A gaming convention, a hot night of Scrabble, and a rash that just won't quit. Who doesn't want to be me, eh?

GAH!

What's more annoying than watching a slow download? That's right, nothing. I'm currently watching the "progress" (quotes used to indicate irony) bar and it ain't doing much. So far, it's been over an hour, and the bar has moved about four little chunks. I guess that the whole bar is about 75 chunks long. Yay, I'm 10% done! Doing some quick math indicates that this download will complete by the time I am dead. I hope that my daughter will be able to use this program in my memory. So far I don't know if I've made much of a mark on this world, but completing this download will justify my existence. Must....stay....alive.....

I can see the "progress" of each file.

1174k bytes....
1177k bytes....
1180k bytes....
1180k bytes....
1180k bytes....

It's 2004, I have a reasonably fast DSL connection and I'm watching kbytes dribble in. Shoot me. Shoot me now.

Oooh, 5 chunks!

What was the analogous annoyance for folks before the age of the Internet? Waiting for someone to fetch your file from a large filing cabinet? Nah, too short. Waiting 6-8 weeks for something to get delivered? Nah, you don't actually sit and wait for that.

I'm guessing that it's analogous to having some horrible terminal painful disease and waiting for death, glorious death.

Crap. I give up. Who needs updated software? Back to work.

All of a sudden everyone loves poker. Celebrities love it, strippers love it, and obviously dogs can't get enough of it. Poker is the new black.

My wife, however, will tell you that she's been playing poker for decades (not that she's very many decades old, mind you), and now that our child is old enough to sleep for hours at a time, we've decided to start playing again. A semi-regular monthly game has been scheduled and we've gotten a few games in. Our cast of characters includes:

The rookie: She professes to be totally ignorant of poker and then wins the most money

The analyticals: Our circle of friends has many computer programmers. We can be consistently counted on to lament how statistically anomalous it is that we lose so many hands. Of course by "our circle of friends", I mostly mean me.

The shark: This guy brings his own set of poker chips (complete in cool metal case) and knows all the lingo. "Are we playing with the Wheel?" "You've got the stone cold nuts!" "Dealer chooses Dirty Sanchez" (Ok, I'm not positive he said that last one)

It's been a lot of fun. Much more fun than playing poker in a casino. I only tried that once. It ended up that I got sat at a table with Judge Mills Lane. Have you ever tried playing poker against a Judge who once took on Mike Tyson? It's not a lucrative venture. Other folks at the table rarely called his bluff, and when we did, he was never bluffing. He had the nuts.

My daughter's soccer season ended this last weekend. The last game of the season was a good one, a virtual clip-reel of soccer hijinx. It featured the following highlights:

- One player on the opposing team aimlessly strolled about the field, clutching her stuffed owl. I liked her. She made my kid look like Pele. Go Owly!

- We aren't allowed to keep score in these games, but if one were to have kept score, hypothetically speaking, they would have hypothetically noticed that we kicked their four-year-old asses.

- My daughter did her usual soccer shtick. She kind of just orbited the soccer activity, only springing into action when the other team was driving for the goal. Then, she'd plant herself in the goal in a statue-like imitation of a goalie. Occasionally, she'd actually defend the goal. Usually not. Mostly what she did during the game was run her mouth. "Coach! I kicked the ball! Coach, do you see my dad over there? Yay! Go team! Coach, my mom brought snacks today. Popcorn! Yay! Go team! Coach, is it snack time? Wooo! Soccer! Coach, there's a clover on the field! Yay clovers!!"

Her mouth gets way more exercise than her legs. Yay mouth!

Afterwards, the team had their end-of-the-season pizza party. Every kid on the team got a medal. And a hug.

Statistic Of The Week: On Saturday I spent more hours running than I did sleeping.

Sometime between the day before my child was born, and the day after she was born, I somehow became a bad sleeper. Reasons why are a bit hazy. Anyway, I'm not very good at it any more. I usually can fall asleep the first time, but if my daughter wakes me I inadvertently wake up, then it often takes me hours to fall back asleep. Generally I psyche myself out of being able to fall asleep again. I'll look at the clock and say "Ok, I can get four hours of sleep if I fall asleep NOW........ Ok, three and a half if I do it NOW". That can go on for a while. It's basically a big stupidfest in my brain. I'm anal-retentive about time and schedules and this is one of the places where it really kicks me in the ass.

I doomed myself on Friday night. You see, I'm going to run a marathon five weeks from now, and I had a big 20-mile training run scheduled for Saturday morning. While getting ready for bed on Friday night, I told myself that I didn't have to get a full nights sleep to have a successful run. "Really, I only need about four hours. So, as long as I'm asleep by 3:00am, I'll be fine!".

That was it. Once I had uttered that "3:00am" deadline, there was no way I was going to be able to fall asleep before 3:00. In fact I watched 3:00am go by, verrrrrry sloooooowly. I watched all the hours between 11:00pm and 5:00am go by. They weren't as quiet as you might think. I enjoyed the following during my nocturnal idiocy:

11:00 - 12:00 : Worried about preparation for the run. Marveled at how awake I was.
12:00 : Kid woke up and needed parental reassurance. Wife provided desired reassurance.
1:00 : Experienced the smoke detector randomly going off. My wife, apparently, burst out of bed and ran straight into the wall. I missed this bit of hilarity during my own bit of confused panic
1:01 - 2:00 : Noted that 3:00am was approaching.
2:00 : Kid woke up from bad dream. Needed snuggling. I provided requested snuggling.
2:00 - 3:01 : Watched 3:00 go by. Constructed new sleeping plan which merely required going to sleep NOW.
3:02 - 4:00 : Rotated through all my favorite sleeping positions including the Flemish Hypotenuse
4:00 : Kid woke up and said she couldn't sleep. I gritted teeth and attempted to provide comforting presence. After several minutes of this, kid urged me to go back to bed.
4:10 - 5:00 : Panicked

I fell asleep around 5:00 and the alarm went off at 7:00am. Two sweet sweet hours of sleep. Mmmmmm.

Somehow, I did manage to complete my 20 mile run in about 2.5 hours. Granted, I ran a bit slower than I planned, but all things considered, it was a successful run. Five weeks to go. Tick tick tick.