Sometime between the last time I checked and this weekend I became old. Prior to this weekend I was a spry, mostly-virile, marathon-running, occasionally-carded 36 year-old. Suddenly, this weekend, the entire world decided that I was astonishingly old. You're all in on this for all I know.

This morning I ran in a 12K relay race. Each member of a 4-person team ran a 5K leg. All things considered it's a pretty silly way to spend Sunday morning, but I am compelled. Anyway, I met up with my relay teammates on Saturday afternoon to discuss our race strategy. I'm not quite sure exactly what strategy one needs in a race of that length, other than Finish-Your-Leg-As-Fast-As-You-Can, but that's what we were there to discuss. Afterwards, two of the teammates confessed that they were having a dinner party that evening and would be consuming adult beverages. Our captain heard this and lamented, "Great, our team has two drunks and...", and at this point he looked squarely at me, "and an old guy.".

That's me. I'm the old guy. Honest to god, I really have been carded several times over the last few months.

So, the next day we ran our race. We didn't win. Afterwards, I congratulated the race coordinator on a fine event and said my goodbyes. The coordinator urged me to stick around for the award ceremony because perhaps I had clinched one of the fastest times. I assured him that this was not the case. At that point he gave me one of those face-scrunched-up, are-you-sure expressions, and said, "Not even for your age group?".

This was getting weird. Conspiracy weird.

That afternoon I took the kidlet to the park. At one point we were playing with a group of other kids and we were exchanging our ages. One kid was 4, another 6, one 8, and the oldest was 13. I confessed that I was 36. The thirteen year-old's eyes bugged out of her head. "36????" she gasped, "That is OLD!! That is graduated-from-college old!". Indeed.

My daughter turned to me and said, "Daddy, you're the oldest person in the whole park." I looked around. She was right. Later, however, some wrinkly grandmotherly woman came in. She looked fairly decrepit and probably unseated me as Oldest Person In Park. She was, like, 37 or something.

Today I was many men, all of them cartoonishly super-heroish.

In the morning, I was Amazing Chore Man. I multi-tasked my way through gardening, laundry, bill-paying, and kitchen clean-up. Meanwhile, I hummed the Enjoli jingle. Mmmmm, bacon.

After lunch, I was Amazingly Stereotyped Hippie Man. I drove my Car Share car to the Rainbow Cooperative where I purchased a vegan cookie.

A few words about the Rainbow Cooperative though, if I may. It's a great store, but it's totally loony in there. Many items come in bulk. Instead of grabbing a factory-packaged box of Cheerios, you fill your unbleached, recycled, reusable, organic bag with spelt or musli, using the whittled-by-indigenous-peoples, non-rainforest-wood, unbleached, recycled, reusable ladle. Interested in massage oils? You're in luck, there's an ENTIRE AISLE of them. Rainbow doesn't have brand names like "Coca Cola" (corporate pigs!), but you can stock up on a dizzying array of organic soy-based products.

It's the sort of place where you'd bring your empty tube of Tom's of Maine toothpaste to refill it from their bulk bins. It's a hoot and a half.

After my trip to Rainbow, I popped over to a new sports equipment store here in San Francisco. I'd never been to this place, but I knew it was a big store and I was a bit peckish, so I was expecting to pick up an energy bar for a snack. This is where I became Amazingly Stupid Man. Right after I walked into this warehouse-sized store, I spotted a wall that said DELI. "Oooh, a deli in the sports store", I thought, "I could go for a deli snack." I was dismayed to find no such deli though. Just sporting goods underneath the sign. Immediately afterwards, I spotted a wall that said BAKERY. "Oooooh, baked goods sound tasty", I thought as I salivated. Somehow, however, there were no baked goods. Just sporting goods. Then I spotted the PRODUCE wall. "Well", I thought, "produce would do in a pinch". Surprise surprise, no produce there.

A smarter man would have figure out after the DELI sign that these signs weren't to be trusted. Apparently this store is in an ex-supermarket, or they just like screwing with idiots like me.

When I got home, I popped open a bag of my organic pretzels and had a snacky.

I have a theory.

I believe that Michael Moore and Rush Limbaugh are the same person. He's some sort of political schizophrenic. Either that or there was a horrible transporter accident (substitute Kirk's goatee for Moore's scruff and baseball cap).

I don't have access to fancy DNA tests, and frankly, I still haven't completed my plan to get the DNA samples, so to prove my theory, we'll just have to have an old-fashioned weigh-off. Scales do not lie, my friends. If the weights match, it is a factch.

A free GMail invitation to the first person who can prove that they saw Rush and Michael in the same bat place at the same bat time.

I think every parent has their own stupid little games that they play with their kid. It might be a peekaboo derivative or some clever twist on Itsy Bitsy Spider. My daughter, Blanda, (see previous post) and I have our bits of schtick too. My personal favorite is a bit where I declare my butt to smell oh-so-sweet and I offer a whiff to Blanda. She marches right over, takes a big dramatic whiff (it's handy that she's pretty much butt-height), and proclaims, "Roses!"

I enjoyed this game on many occasions. I like to think she enjoyed it too. I certainly smelled her butt many times during diaper checks during her younger years. Why not play a game that returns the favor?

One day, however, when I announced the pleasantness of my rump aroma, Blanda came over for her confirmation, took her whiff, and proclaimed, "Tacos! Daddy, your butt smells like tacos."

We haven't played that game since.

I'm not good at naming things. Well, frankly, it's really more of a difficulty with making any sort of decision at all, but for the sake of brevity, I'll stick to the naming issue for now. Stay on target.

Most of my life I just named things "Hank". My first car? Hank. Second car? Hank. Motorcycle? You get the idea. Thankfully I haven't had to name that many things in my life. I never had many pets, but the one I did have was a fish named Rover. Rover predated my Hank-fixation. Regardless, it's still a pretty crappy name. What points it gains for inappropriateness, it loses for general lack of creativity. Ditto for the Hanks.

Imagine the pressure I felt when I had to name my child! Screw that up and your child is scarred for life. So, the wife and I scoured baby name books, baby-name-generator websites, and lists of brand new Eastern European countries (coochie coochie coo, Moldova!). One of the websites, whose link I have lost, was particularly entertaining. You'd select the gender of the to-be-named child and it would display one of the thousands of names in its database, along with some sort of smiley/frowny face which indicated the rating that previous visitors had given that name. The first three girl names out of this contraption were: Blanda, Ted, and Dyella. Let the record show that Blanda had warranted a rating of Aghast Face. We were compelled at that point to use Blanda as the name-in-progress, but none of those names, not even Ted, was destined to be the final name for our sweet baby girl.

We did eventually find a whole set of names we liked on a list of boy's names. Even then, however, we were paralyzed by indecision, and did not actually choose a name until days after our daughter was born. Finally, after several days in the hospital, with the nurse tapping her foot, pen poised over the birth cetificate, we chose a name. I won't mention it here but I think you'll all be able to guess it when I tell you that it starts with a consonant (and not that wussy Y, either (man, I hate that Y. I oughta kick its ass)).

Although I am pleased with the name of my daughter, who will now be referred to as Blanda (long live Blanda), my overall naming record is still pretty dismal.

So, when I was forced to choose a name for this blog, it took me days to actually complete the form. I shall not dwell upon the fact that the current name indicates that I pretty much gave up, rather than that the days were filled with quality creative thinking. Hence *Insert Funny Blog Title Here*.

When my wife first read my blog, she assumed that "*Insert Funny Blog Title Here*" was a command for her, rather than an actual blog title. She immediately crafted and fired off a list of potential names for the blog, including:

"Little Bloggy Wets A Lot"
"Bloggy, Like a Fox"
"Thump Thump"

and my personal favorite

"I Am Prepared to Give Up at Any Time"

So, I'm going with that last one. That phrase is my personal motto. It always gives me comfort knowing that quitting is an option. Ahhhh, the sickly sweet stench of low expectations. Smells like happiness.

I was going to close out this entry with a joke about my upcoming vacation to the Republic of Blanda, but I can't be bothered to craft the transition.

When my daughter was much younger, she was a very serious child. She wasn't really into the laughing/giggling thing, she rather preferred to frown or cry. This drove me nuts. I'd go to herculeanly-silly neck-wrenchingingly-slapsticky efforts to eke a chuckle out her. Sometimes it worked.

When she got a little older, I quickly introduced bathroom humor. It's much easier than flinging yourself around the room and it's a classic. Typically this would take the form of me inserting the word "poop" into inappropriate places, like song lyrics:

"Twinkle twinkle little POOP!"
or
"She'll be poopin' round the mountain when she poops!"

This didn't always get a laugh, but it would usually result in a satisfyingly (to me) silly conversation.

Those days are finally over though. Now, when I bust out a "The itsy bitsy POOPY went up the water POOP", she just looks at me sternly and says, "That's potty talk. When you talk like that it means you have to poop or pee. Go poop, Daddy."

This smells like school learnin'. Boo for school.

First off, I would like to thank all zero of you that emailed me and requested a GMail account. I'm happy to report that I was able to supply all of you with what you requested. Makes me feel all warm and gurgly inside. Or perhaps that's just poor digestion.

Speaking of food....

We all have our pet peeves. Some people get road rage, other folks get their undies in a bunch over the situation in Iraq, and me? I go berserk when confronted with poorly constructed food items.

Pull a piece of pizza from the box and have the cheese and toppings slide off the piece? Grrrrrr! Makes me want to throw the pizza against the wall.

Bite into a sandwich only to have the between-the-bread stuff squirt out the back? AAAAAAAAAH! Kill sandwich! Kill sandwich!

Peel a hardboiled egg and have the bits of shell come off in teensy-weensy pieces, with little bits of the egg sticking to the shell? RARRRRR! Me want to squish puny egg in bare hand!! ME HATE EGG!!

I'm a bit baffled as to why structurally unsound food affects me so deeply. So far, I've restrained from actually hurling my food across the room or squishing it, but it's difficult. Perhaps I should ask my parents if I was tormented by too-clever food items at a young age.

So far my daughter shows no sign of this particular personality defect.

Today, *Insert Funny Blog Title Here* is proud to present its first (and probably last) contest. Behold:

Rule #1: First person to email me wins.
Rule #2: Uh....man, I didn't think this through
Rule #3: Anyone married to me (or even thinking of divorcing me) is disqualified

The Prize: Your very own GMail (that's Google's new email) account.

I know *IFBTH* (rolls right off the tongue!) isn't the first blog to give away a GMail account. Nor is it the best blog or funniest blog to do so. It's certainly not the blog with the most content or best links. It is, however, the very best blog that I write, and, hell, you're here. So there.

I've had my GMail account for about a month. It rocks. Here's the scoop:

The Bad: They display text ads when you read your email. They are, however, much more innocuous than the FLASHING ads that Yahoo displays. They are easy to ignore, just like the ads you see when you use Google's search engine.

The Good: 1 Gigabyte of free storage space. That's a lot of bytes.

The Good: Google's excellent search algorithms to help you find old emails

The Interesting: No more folders. Just apply labels to your emails. You can apply multiple labels to any email which solves the which-folder-should-I-put-this-in dilemma.

The Interesting: Emails are grouped into conversations. You forward, you reply, you forward again, that whole thread is lumped together into one "conversation".

You can read more HERE.

Email me and win (except you, wife. You lose. You still have me though. We'll consider that to be the second place prize. Congrats).

Theoretically, my job as a parent is to raise a happy, healthy, and, productive child. That's all well and good, but my super-secret goal (shhhhhh!) is to raise a cool kid.

[Pop psychology factoid: Parents inevitably try to fix their own failings through their children.]

So, when my daughter recently began doing some trash-talkin' during a heated match of Scrabble Junior, I was beside myself with glee. She was waggling her derriere at my wife, squealing "Kiss my booty butt!". My wife was, appropriately, both amused and disdainful. I think she made some comment about not encouraging this behavior, but the carpet fluff that got lodged in my ears, from rolling around with laughter, prevented me from hearing well.

Another important lesson in raising a cool kid is being careful what they watch on TV. Many parents claim to do this, but few truly understand how to use the television as a teaching device. Early on, my wife and I recognized the danger of Barney. That insipid beast would have no part in influencing our child. As it turns out, however, Barney is not the only danger on television. Much of the programming aimed at younger children is filled with lessons, morals, do-gooders, and other garbage sure to get your child beat up on the playground. Although our daughter seems to eat up this crap, we've been tempering it with some small helpings of Looney Toons. Finally our child will understand the true meaning of humor. Let Acme anvils and dynamite feature prominently in her dreams.

Sleep well, sweet girl. You are the coolest.

The most interesting place I ever lived was Barrington Hall. There was a saying there that "Those who know don't tell, and those who tell don't know." (I think it was our equivalent of "What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas."). I guess this entry means that I don't know. Oh well.

I attended college at the University of California at Berkeley. After a year in the dorms, a friend and I decided to seek housing at the UCB Cooperative system. The Co-ops were like a cross between a dorm and a commune. They're a group-living situation for students where everyone is supposed to chip in work-wise. Every resident had to perform 5 hours of work per week for the co-op. Typically this was cooking or cleaning duty, but other jobs included house management or some other co-op overhead position. There were 18 separate houses in the co-op system, and aside from a small hired staff, the students ran the joint (joint is an appropriate word). Aside from the groovy vibe one got from living in a co-op, the main advantage was price. They were half the price of the dorms.

As you can imagine, a cooperative housing system in Berkeley is a bizarre place. In any university town, the co-ops will attract the funkiest and the left-est. In Berkeley this was true too, but the funkiest and the left-est of Berkeley take it to a whole other level. Now, among the 18 houses, several were themed. One was vegetarian, another celebrated African American culture, a couple were women-only, and then there was Barrington. I think its theme was drugs although that was not explicitly indicated in the brochure. So, many of the residents of Barrington were the hardest-core hippies that UC Berkeley had to offer.

You with me so far? Berkeley attracts the funkiest hippies among universities. The co-ops attracted the funkiest hippies among Berkeley, and Barrington attracted the funkiest hippies among the co-ops.

That's where I lived. I was a nice clean-cut boy from the suburbs.

I didn't really choose to live in Barrington. When I signed up for the co-ops, the application asked me to put the 18 co-op houses in order of preference. I was well aware of Barrington's reputation, and it was obvious to me that this was not a place where I would fit in. Consequently, I listed Barrington dead-last. Apparently comedy trumps rationality in the co-ops, so I was assigned to Barrington.

Some pictures of Barrington can be found here, but they don't really do it justice.

So, a few days before my sophomore year, I reported to Barrington hall. I wandered the halls and noted that virtually every inch of wall space in the halls, common areas, stairwells, and dining rooms was covered in murals. Maybe "noted" is a poor choice of words. That kind of implies that some level of observational skill in my part. Let's just say that the murals jumped right out at you. Barrington was many things, subtle wasn't one of them. I believe I only stepped over one collapsed/sleeping body in the hall that day.

I reported to the office to get my room assignment and met Gerg. Gerg had a certain punk chic going and his name was Gerg. Gerg. I suspect his name was actually Greg and his spelling/pronounciation was a form of rebellion, but Gerg is all I ever knew him by. Gerg seemed friendly enough and didn't actually appear alarmed by my suburban non-chic. I filled out a form and Gerg handed me a room key, saying that he had found a room I'd like. Gerg gerg gerg (I can't stop typing his name).

I went off to find my new home. I was stunned by it.

The door to this room led directly into the room's closet. I exited the closet and entered the "main" room itself. It was about 6 feet by 12 feet in size and had one small window overlooking a narrow alley.


The only furniture in the room was a dinghy half-deep mattress, and three dressers. The mattress was laying directly on the floor. I'm not quite sure why there were three dressers, but I assume a couple of them were to make up for the absence of a desk, which should have been present in a student's room. These pieces of furniture almost completely filled up the floor space. Had the window actually overlooked anything cheerful, it still would have been awkward to vault over the furniture to get there.

Oh, and the walls. They were painted totally black. The ceiling too. Black. Technically the floor was not black, but years of grime and abuse made it close enough. The whole room was completely black. Except... Except on one wall, painted in blood red, were the lyrics to the Rolling Stones' "Paint it Black". Seemed like a lot of effort for a mediocre statement, but there it was.

Over the next several weeks, I tried to explain what this room looked like to various friends. Eventually, each of them wanted to see it in person. Without fail, each time I brought the person to the room, (having already explained exactly what the room looked like), they'd double up in laughter and exclaim, "You told me what it looked like, but I never believed it was this bad!". I always found that exchange to be satisfying.

I lived in Barrington for a year (most of it not in that room) and at the end of that year, I sought out Gerg (gerg gerg gerg) and asked him about my first day there. I reminded him that he had assigned me that room and he had said that he thought it was a room I would like. I asked him if he had been screwing with me. Gerg said no. He said he thought it was a cool room. I suppose it was. Much cooler than I was.

My year at Barrington was a hoot. I always wanted to jot down the bits of it that I found most amusing. I'll probably occasionally add chapters to this thread. Thanks, Blogspot.

Well, it's been four days since the marathon and I'm still limping. There's progress on this front though.

Today, for the first time, I walked down stairs without grimacing. It still hurt, but I was able to hold my poker face. This is an important skill for reasons that elude me.

On Tuesday I had lunch with a friend who had also run the marathon. We both limped out of the restaurant like we had sticks up our rumps. Here in San Francisco, when two men walk like that, it tends to have a certain comedic connotation. If this had been a cheesy movie, a moustached and chap-wearing man (think Village People) would have come into the frame, made a noise like "Mmmmmmm" and winked into the camera. No such thing occurred. Apparently I'm still not in the movies. Weird.

I went to San Diego this weekend to run the San Diego Rock 'n' Roll Marathon. This was my fifth marathon and the second time I had run this particular race. For the first time, however, I was trying to run it fast enough to qualify for a spot in the Boston Marathon. At my advanced age, I needed a time of 3 hours, 15 minutes and 59 seconds to qualify. That's a tough goal for me, about 11 minutes faster than my best, but I was motivated and felt well-trained. I'm committed to qualifying for Boston sometime this year, so if I could do it in San Diego, then I don't have to run another damn marathon this year. Here's my trip report.

Flew into San Diego on Saturday afternoon and checked into my swanklicious hotel. This hotel is much fancier than most hotels I've visited in my life, so I was looking forward to a luxurious stay. Of course, being a dork, the first luxury I tried was their "High-speed" (quotes used to indicate irony) Internet service.

The first indication that this was going to be a less than stellar experience should have been the fact that there was no mouse, pointing device, turn signals, divining rod, or any other device used to indicate direction. Unfortunately I didn't notice this until I had already plopped down my $9.95. As it turns out, that was really the least of my problems. To best describe this experience would really require all sorts of angry hand gestures, so I'll just let it suffice to say that I tried to blog from there, but I gave up after one sentence.

Anyway, the rest of Saturday went ok. Visited the marathon Expo, ate my required pasta dinner, and drank lots of water. Aside from a little more walking than I had hoped, Saturday went well as a pre-race day. I didn't sleep super well (because, well, you know, I'm itchy), but I never do before a big race.

Popped out of bed at 5:00am on Sunday and did all my pre-race prep. When the gun went off at 6:45am, I was ready.

The San Diego Rock 'n' Roll marathon is a pretty fun one, as far as marathons go. Although the course isn't particularly scenic (quite a few miles of it run on highways), there are about 30 bands along the way and a similar number of cheerleading squads. Music and cheerleaders are GREAT distractions. If you're smart, and I was, you write your name somehow on your clothes or body so that the spectators can read it. That way you get treated to many folks yelling "GO MIKE!", or "LOOKING GREAT, MIKE!". I can assure you that cheerleaders never yelled such things to me during high school.

The first half of the race went right according to my schedule. I was a little ahead of pace, but not too much. I was slowly banking time that would enable me to slow down my pace a bit, if needed, in the second half. Two things disturbed me though:

1) At the water stops you get handed a paper cup with water or gatorade. After drinking it, you can either drop it on the ground or throw it away. For obvious safety reasons, the garbage cans are located off to the side. So, as a minor form of entertainment (and during a marathon, anything other than pain qualifies as entertainment), I try to lob my empty cups into the garbage cans. Last year I was unstoppable. I was the Michael Jordan of the marathon. Shot after shot, SWISH! Close shots, far shots, even a fabulous hook shot. This year, however, no such luck. Now, I'm not a superstitious man, but the shots weren't falling! That's a omen!

2) Around the 10 mile mark I noticed the need to have a bowel movement. This is kind of unusual for me during a race, but not unheard of. The need, however, just got more and more intense. By mile 15, I was occasionally running with my butt-cheeks clenched. Now, in general, my running form is very poor. I am routinely mocked by my running club for running in a heavy-stepped, pigeon-toed, arms-flailing style. The last person who attempted to analyze my gait was stumped and eventually just referred to me as "a freak of nature!". Butt-clenching, however, was never really one of my issues.

My pace started to slow shortly thereafter. I was slowly eating into the time I had saved in the first half. I knew this would happen, but I thought it would happen later in the race.

By mile 20, I started eating into my saved-time more quickly. The whole way I'm computing and recomputing my pace. It soon became obvious to me that I was going to miss my qualifying time by a minute or two. Meanwhile, I still REALLY had to go to the bathroom. There were occasionally port-a-potties alongside the way, but I didn't want to take the time. I spent a couple miles considering if it was worthwhile to just take a dump while running. I decided that having my shorts, legs, and shoes covered in feces was just a little too nasty.

So, at mile 23 (23 FREAKING MILES!!!), I gave in and ducked into a port-a-potty. It appeared that its prior occupant was a male who was uninterested in taking the time to either lift the seat or bother aiming. So, I got to spend a bit of time, wiping down the seat. Then, I did my dirty business and cleaned up. Of course my exhausted legs cramped up a bit during this brief sitting spell, so I had to spend a little time stretching my quadriceps. Three minutes after entering the port-a-potty, I was back running. Three minutes. That's an eternity. Although I felt much better, some quick computations soon revealed that it was pretty much impossible for me to qualify for Boston at this point. My pace was still slower than it needed to be. The last few miles were hard and I had pretty much lost my motivation now that my goal was unattainable.

I crossed the finish line about 5 minutes behind schedule. Gak.

I take solace in a few things though:

1) This was about 5 minutes faster than I had ever run a marathon before.
2) I beat more than 97% of the finishers overall, and more than 95% of the runners in my age/gender group.
3) I beat a Starfleet Ensign, and a Starfleet Captain and a former All-Star NFL running back. Starfleet's finest, indeed! Hah!
4) My goal was to qualify for Boston sometime this year. I still have time. I'll probably try to run Chicago. It's a very flat course.

So, what does a smart runner do after a marathon? They take an ice bath! It's hell getting in, and I scream like a little girl, but there's nothing better for sore, battered, and inflamed legs. When I got back to my hotel, I hobbled around the floor looking for an ice machine. There was none to be found. I limped my way down to the front desk. The very polite hotel employee ignored my appearance and stench.

I leaned in conspiratorially and said, "If I were an ice machine, where would I be?"

She leaned back slightly and said, "Not in this hotel, sir."

I was stunned. A nice hotel with no ice?!?!? Before I could summon the energy to look shocked, she continued, "But I can send up room service with some ice, if you wish."

"That would be great!" I exclaimed, "but I need A LOT of ice."

I staggered off while I heard her phone the room service folks. She asked them to send "a lot of ice" to my room. Five minutes later, room service arrived. This poor bloke dragged a giant metal bucket filled with ice into my room and said, "Someone ordered A LOT of ice? Where do you want this??"

I showed him to the tub, and he was on his way (appropriately compensated for the effort). Then the ice-bath-induced squealing began. It's hell, but it helps. I hobbled much less the rest of the day. I'm still hobbling though, and it's two days later.

So, that's it. No running for me the rest of the week. Hopefully I can summon the energy to train all over again for Chicago. Boston or bust, baby.

As it turns out, there's lots of annoying things about being a parent that no one warns you about. Today, as with most days, my brain is enduring a low-grade attack from one of the more common child-annoyances: kid songs! Throughout the last several years, my brain has been filled with unending repetitions of things like:

- Nursery rhymes
- The theme song to Blues Clues
- Most songs by The Wiggles (fruit salad, anyone?)

Recently, my daughter has been enamored with the album "No" by They Might Be Giants. This album gets points for being by a band that I like, but it's still kids music and thus has the ability to lodge itself in my brain and NEVER LET GO! I submit as evidence, this snippet of the song, "In the Middle, In the Middle, In the Middle" (requires Windows Media Player)

Go ahead, click on it. Listen to it a few times. Let that puppy wedge itself deep inside the crevices of your brain.... There you go. Ahhhhhhhh. Welcome to my world.

Another thing about child-rearing that I wouldn't have guessed is how my sleeping patterns have changed. It's not so much that we get woken up on a regular basis (that part I kind of expected), it's that my sleep is generally more fitful even when the kid is sleeping well. I used to sleep like a baby (well, we know that's an urban legend) ...like....well, like the dead. Now, the slightest noise wakes me. "Wha! Huh! Is that the sound of the baby dying?!?! Oh, it was just the noise of my digital alarm clock ticking over to 3:00am...........WHAT WAS THAT? DID SOMEONE FALL OUT OF THE CRIB???? Oh...3:02". That's my new sleeping pattern. What it lacks in sleep-efficiency, it makes up for in excitement.

My final surprise about being a parent is how often my penis gets mocked. It's not the wife doing it (at least not in front of me), but rather my sweet little daughter. On the occasion where she sees me naked, she'll nearly always loudly exclaim, in a sing-songy voice, "I see your penis, I see your penis". This is usually accompanied by pointing and giggling. This behavior is somewhat annoying, but at least it only happens in the confines of the house. The other day, however, we were strolling through our neighborhood grocey store when my daughter suddenly and loudly broke out into poetry, "DADDY IS FROM VENUS! HE HAS A PENIS! DADDY IS FROM VENUS! HE HAS A PENIS!"

I wasn't quite sure how to respond. First off, she got the whole, Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing wrong, but that seemed too complicated to explain to a four-year old. Secondly, although I want her to be comfortable with the human body, I'd sure appreciate it if she talked about something else.

The other grocery store patrons did a mediocre job of ignoring us.

On one final note, I'll do my best to have fewer crotch-n-penis themed posts next week.

My timing is impeccable.

Yesterday I finally got around to informing Tony Pierce, author of the busblog, that I planned to link to him. Tony is perhaps the most prolific blogger around and his is a worthy blog. Being the linkmaster that he is, Tony gave me a link in his blog. The busblog gets approximately 8 gigazillion hits a day. When he links to someone, a tiny fraction of his readers wander over. That means that yesterday about a dozen people came over and read this blog for the very first time.

What was yesterday's post about? My itchy crotch! How delightful!

Good busblog fans, I apologize. Of course those people will never be back again and will never see this apology, but I feel better just having made it.

ps. It still itches.

Woooooo! Approximately 18 years after graduating from high school, I have finally moved up from geek to jock. Get this.

You know that lovely leg and crotch itch I have? Jock itch! J-O-C-K itch! I have not heard back from the New England Journal of Medicine on this one issue, but I'm pretty damn sure that you can't get jock itch unless you are a bonafide jock-o. I've never been so pumped about a rash. Bring it on!!

I also had a dream the other night about getting breast implants. I don't dream very often, or at least I don't remember my dreams very often, so I'm pretty sure this dream has important meaning. These weren't small little A or B cups. These were some sizable breasts, perhaps in the D cup range. All the more meaning. In the dream, however, I was mostly concerned about the timing of getting these breasts. What sense does it make to get big breasts right before running a marathon? For god's sakes, I don't even own any sports bras. My running coach always tells us not to do anything new right before a race. No new foods, no new running shoes, and certainly no new breasts. He's never specifically mentioned the new breast issue, but I'm pretty sure he'd agree it was poor timing.

Anyway, with these new babies, I'm thinking that I may switch over from jock to cheerleader. I can make my tour through all the cliques. I look forward to reporting from the stoner perspective another day.