As I've mentioned before, my wife and I love playing games. We're doing our best to pass that love onto our daughter. Unfortunately, I've learned that five year-olds SUCK at games.

Tic tac toe? They might as well throw darts at the board.
Go Fish? Major suckage.
Monopoly? You're lucky if they roll the dice right.

My goal with any game against my daughter is to let her win some of the time. I want her to enjoy the game and feel the excitement of winning, but I also want her to learn how to be a graceful loser. As it turns out, making her lose is pretty damn easy, but letting her win actually requires some effort on my part. I had never realized that there is strategy and subtlety to games like Go Fish that I was using without even thinking about it. For example, in Go Fish it is unwise to keep asking for the same card over and over again no matter how pretty it might be. This wily bit of strategy still eludes my daughter. Hang in there, sweetie.

I look forward to the day when I can lose at Hungry Hungry Hippos without having to secretly tip the board so that the marbles roll towards her hippopotamus. Let all the hippos have a fair chance at the tantalizing white marbles they so hungrily covet.

I can only dream of the day when I can guiltlessly kick my daughter's butt at Scrabble.

Man, that was a pretty good weekend. Let's review.

First off, let it be known that I passed a parenting milestone this weekend. I actually uttered the phrase, "Don't run with scissors!". I thought only cartoon parents did that, but there was my daughter ACTUALLY RUNNING WITH SCISSORS. Today I think I'll say something like "When I was a kid, we didn't have chairs!" or something like that.

Went for the previously-mentioned run on Saturday morning. Most of it was supposed to be done at an easy pace, and I actually followed those instructions for once. Jogging at an easy pace is easy! Who knew? I was running along, saying "hello" to all who crossed my path. I've never been such a friendly runner. I was the freakin' ambassador of the trails.

That afternoon my daughter scored her first goal in soccer! Now, granted I wasn't there to view it, and rumor has it that she actually kicked it into the wrong goal, and it may have been accidental, but STILL! This is progress, my friends. If Mia Hamm and Pele had a daughter.....

Then, on Saturday night, we hosted our monthly poker night. I cleaned up! Aside from one, straight-from-the-bowels-of-hell game called "357", I did very well. Last time my wife and another friend were bragging about how they had finally figured out how to play Texas Hold 'Em. It was most satisfying to whip their tushies. A more humble man would credit the excellent cards that I was dealt all evening.... *sound of crickets*

I also got some nice feedback on my blog on Saturday. Mad props to Rodney and Tamra for stumbling across this blog and commenting nicely. We'll forgive Rodney for his propensity to reward blogs in foreign languages. Please note that this is my first time using the slang "mad props". I'm trying to up my cool quotient. More on that shortly.

On Sunday the wife and I went to the Folsom Street Fair for our Date Night. The Folsom Street Fair is probably the raunchiest of San Francisco's street fairs. It's one of the rare places where you see people pay to sit in a cage, or get flogged. Ok, let me rephrase, it's one of the rare places where I see people pay to sit in a cage, or get flogged. I can't speak for the rest of you. Perhaps you all live in dungeons. Freaks.

Sadly, for me anyway, the ratio of exposed breasts to exposed penises was pretty low. Mostly there were a lot of exposed male butt cheeks. If you love male ass, then this is the fair for you. It's a great place to play "What Just Happened to That Ass?!?!" Common answers to this question at the Folsom Street Fair are:
- Just got whipped (These asses are detectable from their small bloody welts)
- Just sat on wicker (Note the distinctive wicker pattern carefully preserved in the butt flesh)
- Just caused grimaces (These are the pimply asses. No one likes a pimply ass)

The wife and I were dressed totally inappropriately. I had a nerdy button-down shirt on, and the wife was wearing khakis and some scarfy thing. It's hard to believe that I've gotten even LESS cool as I've aged. I started at zero. I guess I'm at like -48 now. Opposite of mad props for me.

Out of all the bizarre things we saw at the fair, only one actually made me raise in my eyebrows in shock. Some guy was wearing a "Got God?" t-shirt. In this place, that was the strangest thing there. He stood out worse than the nerd in the button-down.

The only bad thing that happened this weekend was that the Giants lost 2 of 3 to the hated Dodgers. One week left. 2.5 games out of first in the NL West, and half a game out of the wild card. Cubs, I know you guys are all lovable and crap, but please lose the rest of your games. Love, Mike.

Two weeks to go until the Chicago Marathon. Tick tick tick... This is the part of marathon training that I like best. It's called "tapering" and it's the period of time where you spend more time resting and less time running. Mmmmm, resting. I thought I'd take this opportunity to do a bit of reflection and self-analysis. Let's speak to my body and see how it feels about running. We'll start at the bottom:

Feet: We're against this whole running thing. Pound pound pound, that's all we get. Sometimes we muster up some blisters, just to screw with Mike, but overall we're getting the worst of the whole deal. Running sucks.

Knees: Oh, someone cares what we think? We're touched. Anyway, we're just biding our time. Remember this Mike, every knee-stressing mile you run brings you one step closer to being hobbled in your old age. We'll see who gets the laugh last, bastard.

Penis: Frankly, I find running to be a bore. There's not much for me to do. Occasionally during the long runs, I do get a bit chafed, and that's fairly unpleasant during....

(Geez, sorry about that. I had no idea he'd get into the whole chafing thing. Sorry, moving on)

Heart: I heard a theory once that everyone gets a fixed number of heart beats in their life. Sooo, all this exercise is really bringing you closer to death, Mikey. Irony kills.

Lungs: Thumbs up for running. Sure, it's a little gaspy, but it beats smoking.

Nipples: You'd think that we nipples would be ambivalent about the whole running thing, but frankly we're with the penis, figuratively speaking. Good god, the chafing! The worst is when Mike gets into a hot shower afterwards. Ohhhh, the burning! For the love of god, the burning!!

Mouth: In a word, "Icky". First there's the nasty food he stuffs into me, Power Bars and Goo. Have you ever had goo? I can't even describe it. Imagine toothpaste but in "flavors" like chocolate. Listen, I have had a lot of chocolate in my day and it's NOT SUPPOSED TO BE GOOEY! Then, to add insult to injury, evey once in a while a bug flies into me during a run. I hate bugs.

Brain: Boooooooring. Mike goes on these long runs and I'm all "Tired. Tired. Hurts. Whoops, don't trip. Tired. Hurts. Tired." There's really nothing for me to think about. Mike is all "Look at the pretty trees, brain" but how long can you do that for? I'm a finely honed analytical machine! I can do math! Man, one of these days I am just gonna check out of here. Bastard.

So, there you have it. I didn't read all the details, but I saw something about thumbs up. Woo! Thumbs up for running!

My father, who is in his 70s, is in pretty good health, yet he still calls me every few months with assorted instructions for what to do upon his death. This has been going on for years. Apparently he has some files on his computer that contain important post-death information and he's concerned that I won't be able to get at them. These phone calls are always about some spreadsheets that he has filed away, and backed up, and backed up, and backed up.

At first I thought these files were merely going to be some savings account numbers and what-not, but with all the phone calls over the years, the suspense has been building. Maybe there really is a big secret locked in that PC of his. Maybe he's Batman, or perhaps I'm the long-lost prince of Luxembourg. I could go for that.

Today he called because he was concerned I wouldn't be able to turn on his computer and associated peripherals "if you ever needed to". That's his code for "when I die." I restrained myself from reminding him that I've been working with computers for nearly 25 years. After all, you don't want to piss off Batman. I am, however, pretty good at turning computers on and off. It's one of my main debugging techniques.

Dad, I promise I'll get to those files, even if I have to use a sledgehammer. Don't die for a long time though.

Previously I had written an introduction to my year at Barrington, but, as it turns out, there's lots more to say. I recommend reading the previous Barrington post first. If, however, you refuse, then here's the management summary:

I lived in the Barrington Hall Cooperative in Berkeley, California during my sophomore year of college. It was an exaggerated stereotype of life in "hippie" Berkeley, replete with copious drugs, psychedelic murals, and entrenched filth. I was a squeaky clean boy from the suburbs. Fish out of water hilarity ensued.

Without further ado, I present Barrington Hall, den of iniquity extraordinaire, chapter two.

When we last left out hero (that's me), I had been living in the all-black room for about two weeks but eventually I was given the chance to move into a much less frightening room with a friend of mine. Barrington was laid out as a set of suites, about 40 of them, with each suite consisting of 3 bedrooms and a shared bathroom. My friend and I would share one double bedroom, but we had no idea who would be in the other suite rooms. We didn't really know anyone, but we did know that there weren't very many clean-cut geeks like us in Barrington. I was a naive electrical engineering student and my roommate was a nice Jewish boy (soon to be a doctor!).

So, we apprehensively knocked on the suite door, semi-frightened of what we'd find on the other side. Would it be a member of one of the various bands who lived in Barrington, infamous for their non-scholastic lifestyle? Perhaps it would be some guy frying on acid with ferrets wriggling out of his pants (this was a more common sight in Barrington than you'd think).

Instead, a fairly scraggly looking guy opened the door. Aside from general unkemptness he wasn't overtly frightening. What I noticed first was his nose ring, which apparently required constant attention from his fingers. We introduced ourselves and he eyed us up and down. After a brief moment of contemplation (spent fingering his nose ring) he declared, "I hope you two aren't allergic to nudity." and off he went into his bedroom.

We had already viewed our bedroom and the bathroom in the suite. Our bedroom was pretty pleasant, considering that this was Barrington. The walls had a cool grey cave-ish sponge pattern on them, and it was big enough. The bathroom was pretty nasty though. The best part of it was the toilet. On the toilet tank someone had written in permanent ink "Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water..." Then, you'd lift the lid and see that they had painted Jaws-like teeth on the toilet seat. So, every time I had to take a dump for the next year, I warily lowered my ass onto those teeth. They never bit, but it wasn't the nicest toilet I've ever used.

Piet, the nose ring guy, turned out to be a fine suitemate. He and his wife lived in this dinky little single room in our suite, and, as promised, were naked a non-trivial amount of time. Luckily, my roommate and I were not allergic. My favorite memory of Piet was during Halloween that year. That afternoon we heard him calling to us from the bathroom. We found him immersed in the tub, which was filled with dark blue water. "I'm dying myself blue!" he proudly blurted out. Unfortunately the dye didn't really take. He ended up just being kind of a dingy grey for Halloween, dingier than usual.

Piet was a nice guy although he fiddled with that damn nose ring every time I talked to him. It was hard not to stare at it. We had several conversations where afterwards I couldn't recall what he had said because I had just been repeating "Don't stare! Don't stare! Don't stare!" in my head the whole time.

Our other suitemate was a great gal named Kim, who was the first out-of-the-closet lesbian I had ever met, and she was hot! My roommate and I spent countless hours fantasizing about hot lesbian Kim. We imagined the many things this woman would teach us. Surprise surprise, none of that ever came to fruition. Kim was a topnotch suitemate though, a small island of sanity in that place.

Sadly, Kim moved out after one semester. She was replaced by a gal named Aquarius (which is not her real name, but you'll just have to trust me that her hippie parents gave her an even better name). Aquarius was a spitfire, a smart, violent, feminist stripper. Well, she wasn't a stripper yet. That came later.

She was an extremely well-spoken person, who managed to create drama and danger wherever she went. On more than one occasion our suite got woken up in the middle of the night by some angry woman, banging at the suite door, demanding her boyfriend back and swearing at Aquarius. My roommate and I cut her a wide berth. We had a healthy fear of her, despite her diminutive size. I had never met someone who yelled and got into physical confrontations as often as her.

About two years later we heard through the Co-op grapevine that Aquarius was earning extra money as a stripper at Market Street Cinemas here in San Francisco. A lot of people would probably not understand how a staunch feminist could justify a job as a stripper, but I have no doubt that Aquarius would have been able to explain it. My theory is that she valued power in all forms, and being a stripper allowed her to have power over weak lustful men.

Anywho, the allure of seeing our ex-suitemate as a stripper was undeniable, so we curious and lustful men travelled down to the "theater" one evening to see her act. We were terrified that she'd see us there and beat us up, so we tried to keep a low profile. Aquarius was introduced by the announcer as "the young busty one", and that she was. The act itself was fine, neither the best nor the worst stripper I've seen. If you dug short busty gals, then you'd probably dig her. Her big move was biting her own nipple, which wasn't terribly erotic to me, but I mostly just felt uncomfortable in this strip joint, fearing that Aquarius would spot us at any moment. The act was coming to a close and it looked like we'd get out of there unscathed, when one of our more idiotic buddies screamed out "Aquarius!!!". I'll never know what kind of deathwish motivated that bastard to draw her attention to us, but she looked right at us.

As the song ended, we sat in stunned silence for a few moments, and then gathered our things to go. We made it halfway out, when we heard Aquarius screech our names. She came flying towards us, with her arms outstretched, to...give...us....hugs. She was, apparently, pleased to see her old suitemates. We chit-chatted awkwardly for a few moments and then made a hasty exit. That was Aquarius. She was nothing if not unpredictable.

She also had a crapload of cats. Well, it didn't start that way. She originally moved into the suite with one cat, named Bad Attitude, but she didn't have it spayed, and soon we had a litter of seven kittens. She named them after the Seven Deadly Sins, although one of them eventually got renamed as Stupid. That one was my favorite. I miss Stupid.

One cat was bad enough. Bad Attitude had the worst gas that you could possibly imagine. He'd slink into our room, hide under the beds until we forgot about him, and then unleash the most horrific farts I had ever smelled. I don't know what she fed that cat, but it was something unearthly. So, eight cats was a few too many.

I had already had a run-in with fleas in the room. Apparently the crappy mattress that I was given had come filled with fleas. It took me a while to figure it out (having never seen fleas before), but eventually I figured out that these tiny insects leaping about my bed were little beasty fleas. I resolved to get rid of them by using a bug bomb, but my roommate didn't think that was wise. He was worried about the health effects of having those toxins in the air. The irony of being concerned about toxins in that environment somehow eluded him. Anyway, I managed to change his mind when I started catching the fleas and placing them in his bed. Bombs away.

There you have it, nudity, unrequited lust for lesbians, crazy strippers, a crapload of cats, fleas, and a toilet painted like Jaws. This was just the stuff in my suite. More about the rest of the building another day.

I've been waking up at 4:00 or 4:30am most nights for the last week. It's really annoying. Usually I try to battle back asleep, which generally takes the better part of the rest of the "night". Today, I just didn't have the energy, so I have sought solace in the Internet. Good morning.

Action packed weekend, it was. And, as we all know, when I start speaking like Yoda, that means it's time for WEEKEND ROUNDUP, this week featuring multiple genitalia references! Please, keep your arms and legs inside the tram at all times, you should.

I kicked off the weekend's festivities by going on my final long training run for the upcoming Chicago Marathon. I ran around Lake Merced 5 times for a grand total of 22.5 miles. I averaged just over 7.5 minutes per mile, which is a little slower than I'd like but if I close my eyes and pretend that I ran a bit faster, then I'm really pleased with my time. I've chosen to go with that strategy for now.

Unfortunately, when you spend nearly three hours running, you miss out on big chunks of your weekend. I missed my daughter's first soccer game of the new season. My wife reports that they got slaughtered as usual, although in "micro" soccer, one does not keep score. At one point my daughter slipped and fell onto the ball. She was laying on the ground, crying, so my wife came out to get her. Upon hoisting her up, my daughter screamed for all to hear, "Owwww! I fell on my VAGINA!!".

I imagine many households wrestle with the words used to communication information about genitalia to their children. We've gone with the clinical approach although I lobbied for "naughty bits" early on. I lost that argument. I learned early on in the child-rearing process that when my wife and I disagree about parenting, she wins. It's best that way.

I caught up with the family after my run and had to take an ice bath. This is turning out to be a ritual for me after any run longer than 20 miles. It's super therapeutic, like applying a ice bag to your entire lower body, but getting into an icy-cold bath is always unpleasant. My wife stationed herself by the bathroom, announcing, a bit too gleefully, that she wanted to watch me get into the water. I did my best to get into the water as stoicly as possible, in response to her enthusiasm at watching my pain, but it's hard to keep a good poker face going when you're plunging your crotch into ice water. I kept from screaming like a school girl, but that was about all the stoicness I could muster.

My daughter wandered into the bathroom, mid-bath, and stated very matter-of-factly, "I can see your penis." "Yes, there it is," I replied, wondering at what age this type of interaction becomes inappropriate/criminal. "Are you going to wash your stinky ol' penis?" she asked? At this point I changed the topic and we moved on.

Soon we were off to SBC Park to see the Giants play the San Diego Padres. Had I run my 22.5 mile run a bit faster, or had we spent a bit less time discussing my penis in the bath, perhaps we would have arrived at the park 60 seconds sooner, allowing me to see Bonds hit his 701st home run. Aside from that moment, which we missed, the Giants put on their usual "Oh-Mike-is-in-the-stands-so-let's-suck-today" performance. It's getting spooky. I know they can win games, I've seen such things on TV, but damned if they can do it when I'm in the stands. Note to self, don't go to playoff games.

Sunday was Look How Cultured And Old I Am Day. We caught a matinee performance of Dame Edna's new show, "Dame Edna: Back with a Vengeance". As it turns out, much of the humor in this show comes from Dame Edna bantering with the audience. Who knew that making fun of old people was such a good source of humor? The audience really was old. I'm pretty sure that the only people in that audience younger than our group were kids brought to the show by their parents. I guess, now that grey hairs run rampant on my head, I might as well enjoy old-people-style entertainment. Bring on the Golden Girl reruns! Bea Arthur still has it. And then there was Maude, indeed.

That evening the wife and I went to go see Hero. Take Kill Bill, put it in China, replace all the squirting blood with flowing curtains and dazzling leaves, and you've got Hero. Or just think of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. I guess that would be easier. Either way, I really enjoyed it. Beautiful film.

That concludes this episode of Weekend Roundup, it does.

For geeks like me, gadgets are like crack. Last week, I took a big hit off of the PDA/Phone pipe. Aaaaah, the rush.

What that means is that I bought a Treo 600. It's a Palm Pilot and a cell phone, and a camera, and potentially a fly swatter. Fear me, Musca Domestica! Now that I've had this device for about a week, let's review it.

So far, I'm quite pleased. I was looking for a Palm Pilot that was not too big, because I really wanted to carry it around with me all the time. One of the smallest Palms I saw was the Treo 600. Since my cell phone battery was pretty close to needing replacing (and they're nearly as pricey as a phone), it seemed like a reasonable time to hop on the convergence device bandwagon. So, now instead of carrying a small phone, and a medium-sized Palm, I just carry the medium-sized Palm. It fits in my pockets reasonably well and doesn't look absurd when I hold it up to my face (despite what some of my so-called friends say).

This baby lives up to the billing. It's a nice marriage of phone and organizer. The keyboard, although it's small, is much faster than using Graffiti. The screen has so-so resolution, and isn't terribly big for a PDA, but it gets the job done. I love the fact that the phone has a decent quality speakerphone. None of my previous cellphones had that.

So, what's wrong with this device? First, the camera SUCKS. Thankfully, I didn't buy it for the camera, but the pictures are truly abysmal. The colors are all off, so if you take pictures of humans (and we do loves the humans!) be prepared for them to look ghoulish, or at least near-death. They'll also look blurry and underlit due to the slow shutterspeed and lack of a flash. Here's a picture I took of my blog.


Hello blog! It's almost like I'm in an Escher painting. Spooooooky.

Also, the ringtones are not so pleasing to the ear. Being a fool, I browsed Sprint's ringtone selection and chose Black Dog by Led Zeppelin. Zep! Zep is cool, so if I put Black Dog on my cell phone, then I am cool too. It's the Associative property or something. See?

Regardless of the soundness of my argument, the ringtone sounds like crap. Take Black Dog and then play it on a $5 organ, then run that through a tinny speaker, then puke on that. That's my new ringtone. Hello! When your phone makes you long for the Muzak version of Black Dog, then you've made an unfortunate choice in phone sounds.

Overall, I give this device a rating of 293.1. Your mileage may vary.

Yesterday someone got to my blog by googling Neif Perez Marital Status .

Well, well, well, how about that, little Neifi? Look who's suddenly Hubba Hubba material. Now that he has been picked up by the Cubs (and has hit 2 HRs in the last couple days, as many as he hit all season long with the Giants), he's marrying material. Attaboy!

Unfortunately, I must inform you, dear Neifi Perez Marital Status seeker, that I am unaware of his availability. I would encourage you not to be fooled by his recent heroics with the bat though. I'm fairly certain that they're unrepresentative of his abilities with any sort of stick. Best of luck to you and Neifi.

Probably the cutest thing that I saw during my days of single parenthood was my daughter's ballet class. Picture about 15 five year-old girls wearing tu-tu-ish outfits, spinning, jumping, and giggling. Just impossibly cute. There was also one boy in the class. He was grinning from ear to ear the whole time. Either he really loves ballet, or he realizes that he just stumbled upon the greatest opportunity to meet five year-old chicks around.

Hats off to the instructor of this class. Teaching kindergarteners ballet is akin to herding cats. There were very few moments when all the kids were paying attention to her. Distractions for the kids included:

- Staring at themselves in the mirror
- Inventing new ballet jumps
- Lifting their skirts over their heads

My daughter enjoyed all these activities.

There were a couple of small windows through which the parents could view the proceedings. I stayed glued to the window for most of the class, wondering how many more years of this achingly cute behavior I get to watch.

Day Four! The last day of single parenthood!

The wife just called. Her flight has landed and she'll be back at home in less than 30 minutes. That gives me precious little time to screw things up enough so that she'll never leave again. Perhaps if the child is screaming, and the house is a mess, and the bank account is overdrawn, she'll learn her lesson once and for all. Then again, maybe something more dramatic is required.

Where did I leave the matches? Welcome home, wifey.

Day....thre...e....

So....cold.......so.....hun.......................gry.

Wife........distant......mammory.....................

Oh, I jest. Such the kidder I am. The child and I successfully made it through Day Three of single parenthood. I am the alpha parent.

Today's main event was a birthday party for another five year-old. This party featured booze and clowns, a winning combination for parents if I ever heard one.

The party started at 10:00am, and they had orange juice on the table along with chilled champagne, a bottle of vodka and a big batch of what looked like bloody marys. Oh, and they also had a bunch of food for kids blah blah blah. Anyway, even though I wasn't going to start up some heavy boozing with a full day of parenting ahead of me, I was impressed at the thoroughness of their party preparation. Vodka is rarely featured at the kindergarten-age birthday parties I frequent.

The highlight of the party, from my perspective anyway, was the arrival of the clown. This poor guy was dressed up in full clown glory, novelty shoes and all, standing in the sun on a hot San Francisco day. The sweat started pouring off him mere minutes into his routine. He managed to keep his composure though.

Soon though, he asked for some audience participation. Since the willing audience consisted entirely of five year-olds, anarchy immediately ensued. One child launched himself at the clown's oversized shoes, hell-bent on squashing them. Another child wrapped himself around the clown's legs and would not let go. The clown attempted to joke himself out of this, but these kids were not easily removed from his body. At this point the clown broke down and begged for "a clown's assistant" to come forward and help him. I can only assume that this was a plea for parental assistance. Unfortunately for the clown, no one budged. All the parents watched this abomination dispassionately. I don't know if that was the booze settling in, or if the parents were just so pleased to have someone else bear the brunt of misbehaving children, or if this just seemed like entertainment that was too fine to interrupt. It was the latter for me. Regardless, the clown was forced to physically rip the children from his various limbs. Amazingly, he did so with no obvious malice. Make this reason number 56 why I will never be a clown.

The other bit of "entertainment" was the pinata. Pinatas have somehow become a staple of children's birthday parties. I don't know who originally thought that giving five year-olds bats was a good idea in a party setting, but the kids wield these babies like Charleton Heston. From their cold dead hands!

One day, after some kid accidentally maims another during an unfortunately pinata incident, the press will pick up on this and a national outcry will ensue. Until then, we're stuck with the pinata.

As near as I can tell, there are two kinds of pinatas: the kind you bash with a bat, and then the pacifist kind where you pull strings at the bottom and one of the strings unleashes the torrential stream of goodies. This pinata appeared to be the latter kind, but that didn't stop each of the kids from wailing on this poor image of Spongebob with their plastic bat. Meanwhile, my daughter kept saying "Pull the string! Pull the strings!" but she was mostly ignored.

Each of the kids got two or three turns at poor Bob before they eventually tried yanking on the strings, but nothing seemed to release the candy from its squarepanted jail. Finally one of the parents yelled out, "Let the kids at it, Lord of the Flies style!" This is a quote you rarely hear at a birthday full of five year-olds, yet somehow it resonated with the parents. Within the minute, the children had been encouraged to tear at the pinata with their bare hands. Soon treats and toys spilled out and the children dog-piled to get at them. The meeker children (ok, just my kid) got left out and many tears were spilled, but we eventually got the goodies distributed in a reasonable fashion. Civility reigned once again.

After all this, the rest of the day was pretty easy. Three down, one to go.

Day Two of single-parenthood has completed! Two down and two to go.

I am happy to report that yesterday was noteworthy for NO PARTICULAR REASON. My daughter's teacher did not have to pull me aside to lecture me about inappropriate language. I did not feed my daughter any foods to which she's allergic. Really my only mis-step was telling her a bed-time story about aliens. This scared her somewhat despite the fact that the aliens had extra arms (which were used for hugging) and the biggest smiles that you've ever seen.
My daughter, as it turns out, likes extremely tame bed-time stories. They need to be about sunshine and lollipops and rainbows and crap like that. I guess I'll tell some story about a rainbow that eats a lollipop...on a sunny day.

Well, I made it through Day One of single-parenthood virtually error-free!

- Picked the kid up from school on time (ok, accidentally left her lunch box at the school).

- Took her to ballet class (ok, called one of her friend's mom by the wrong name).

- Stuffed her cry-hole full of burrito for dinner (ok, there was something in the burrito that she was allergic to, and I kept talking about stuffing things into holes during dinner. I'm pretty sure this will result us getting lectured by her teacher in the upcoming days about my daughter's new-found infatuation with discussing her "holes").

- Bathed her (No errors! Child is both clean and undrowned).

- Told her some stories and tucked her in (No errors! Child is both asleep and not overtucked).

So, I'm 2 for 5. That's 40%. What is that, some sort of low F? F---? Oh well.

I would have shut up about cramming stuff into her holes except that she found it so damn funny. I'm a laugh whore, and, consequently, a lousy influence on my own child. I am fairly certain that she will dangle a carrot in front of one of her school-mates tomorrow and suggest that he cram it up his sneeze-hole. This is almost guaranteed.

A few days ago I asked my daughter how old she'll be when I'm no longer able to make her laugh. "Seven," she said definitively. My wife nodded in agreement. So, I've got two more years of making this schtick work and then I'll need a new gig.

Two quick thoughts. First, a coffee-inspired Ode to Caffeine:

Caffeine, oh caffeine
You had me at AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!

Second, I am alarmed to report that my wife is going to see her dad, leaving me in charge of the child for 4 hot-dog and where-the-hell-does-your-mother-keep-your-underwear filled days. More panic-stricken posts on this as the situation deteriorates develops.

I ran nearly 20 miles today in some ass-melting heat. Granted, my ass did not actually melt, but I don't think anyone would have been surprised if it had.

I hate running in the heat. I've been spoiled by the San Francisco fog for lo many years now, so when it gets hot, I just kind of wilt. Whatever the opposite of a hothouse flower is, that's what I am. Some sort of coldhouse flower, except that instead of being pretty and floral-smelling, I smell more like tacos or sweat. I'm a sweaty coldhouse taco flower.

When I run in the heat, the sweat drips down my face and dries there. By the time I'm finished, I usually have little patches of salt up and down the side of my face. Today, due to the ass-melting heat and the salt-pill that I took, I produced extra quantities of salt. After 20 miles, I looked like a human salt lick. I could have rented myself out to bars, to accompany those women who try to sell you shots of tequila. All we'd need is someone flavored like lime, and we'd be the human body shot brigade. If this were 1998, I'm sure I could get VC funding for humanBodyShotBrigade.com. I miss the dot com bubble.

The salt even permeated my hair, giving it a more salt-n-pepper look than usual.

Speaking of which, the grey hairs, which normally only hang out in the above-the-ear region have encroached upon the frontal area. BACK, damn you greys! Looking in the mirror the other day, I spotted a bold white hair sticking right out near the front. It's bad enough that they've created a new settlement, but must they stick out all Einstein-crazy? I promptly plucked that bastard, but then found that he had a couple friends. This is not a battle that I want to fight. Not only will I lose, but I feel uncomfortable plucking hairs. I'm not quite ready to be that vain yet. I don't wish to be a plucker. Frankly, few words ending in ucker sound very nice.

My daughter started kindergarten this week. I am pleased, proud, and terrified that she's doing so at a public school here in San Francisco.

She likes her teacher well enough, and so far no one has beaten the crap out of her, but still she has already realized that kindergarten is not as fun as preschool. After the first two days she confessed that she'd rather not go.

I pulled her aside and explained that she'd need to keep going to school like this for about 13 years. Then, there was college, which was more fun, but was also harder. Then, after that, you spend nearly the rest of your life working at some boring job. I socked her lightly on the arm and told her to buck up. Death rescues us all eventually, I cooed.

Ok, I didn't do or say any of those things, but that's what I was thinking. Instead, my wife made some nice-nice and said some encouraging things. Makes me wonder at what point you explain the drudgery of life though. Is that covered in elementary school or does this burden fall to the parents? What are they teaching these kids?