How was your Thanksgiving? Lovely, that's just lovely. Mine? Not bad. My sister throws a mean Thanksgiving. I ate me a turkey.

Now that Thanksgiving is over, I can begin officially fretting about Christmas. Starting....NOW!

I was raised Jewish. My parents dutifully sent me to Sunday school, I was dragged to synagogue on a semi-regular basis, and I even had a Bar Mitzvah. It didn't stick. These days I am firmly agnostic. That's been working pretty well for me, except around the Holidays. What the hell does an agnostic celebrate come December? Agnosticmas? NoGodukkah? Usually I just wing it. If my parents want to give me a Hanukkah gift, groovy. I'll give them one too. Coworkers want to have a Christmas party? Okey dokey, I'm there.

Now I've got a family (have I mentioned them before? The wife and five year-old daughter?). My husbandly/fatherly duties demand that I officially celebrate some sort of holiday with the wife and daughter. So, several years ago, I set out to choose, once and for all, what I would be willing to celebrate, come December, with my family. It had to meet these criteria:

1) Not be Christmas - As a Jew growing up in these fine United States, I kind of got overloaded on the Christmas thing. The whole country goes bonkers for Christmas for a full 1/12th of the year. I also always resented how my favorite TV shows would get pre-empted by the same crappy Christmas specials each year. Although TiVo (glorious, wonderful TiVo) mitigates the pain, I cannot forgive Christmas (no offense, Jesus. Happy b-day).

2) Not be Hanukkah - Eight days, schmeight days. As near as I can tell, Judaism is kind of like Christianity, but in Hebrew. Ok, that analogy may not be perfect, but this is a blog, not Religious Studies 101. Either way, I can hardly impose Hanukkah on my family when I rejected Judiasm mere minutes after my Bar Mitzvah.

3) Have a tree: My wife, despite being unreligious, has fond memories of spending Christmas around that damn tree.

4) Have presents: Duh. The holiday will hardly pass muster with the child as a Christmas-substitute if there are no presents involved.

And so, Winter Present Tree Day was born, much to the amusement of my coworkers, and the chagrin of my parents and inlaws. To me, Winter Present Tree Day was the perfect holiday:

Take place in December? Yes! On Christmas Day, oddly enough.

Involves presents? Oh, yes.

Got a tree? Again, yes! The Winter Present Tree Day Tree is a noble beast, closely resembling the Christmas tree, decorations and all. It is gaily festooned with colorful bits of secular crap.

Perfect, no? It has all the bits that my wife loves and none that I resent. I realize that many will see it as a soulless and materialistic monstrosity, totally void of meaning or humanity. To that, I have no defense, but you should see the tree. It's really nice.

We celebrated Winter Present Tree Day for a couple years, replete with the annual visit to the tree lot, where my daughter would speak to the tree salespeople about her Winter Present Tree Day Tree. The salespeople always shook their heads in confusion.

The holiday never really caught on though. Perhaps we didn't manufacture enough of a back-story, or maybe my expectations of my daughter's enthusiasm were unrealistic, but it didn't seem to become the beloved family tradition I was hoping for. Between my daughter's toddler-like attention span, and my extended family's disdain for it, Winter Present Tree Day seemed to have run its course. It failed the worst test of all, it didn't play well to the key demographics.

Other holiday themes had been considered and discarded before we selected Winter Present Tree Day:

- Winter Solstice: Gah, waaaaay too New Agey

- New Years: This holiday is already filled to the gills with boozing and subsequent repentance. There's really no room for trees and presents and what-not.

- Festivus: Although I don't recall the episode, apparently this territory has already been covered by Seinfeld. George Costanza's father celebrated Festivus. It does not have a tree though, merely a pole.

- Internet Day: I loved this one. The tree could have been decorated with Cat 5 cable, strings of LEDs, and porn, with a big packet at the top. No one liked this idea as much as me, but let me tell you that the Internet deserves a holiday. Someone, make this happen.

So, upon the demise of Winter Present Tree Day, it was back to the drawing board to find a new secular holiday that would meet all my criteria, and yet have greater appeal to the family. From this herculean intellectual effort, Family Holiday came into our lives last December. Family Holiday is EXACTLY like Winter Present Tree Day except with one important difference. Whereas Winter Present Tree Day had a name which was a mouthful of irony, Family Holiday has a name that celebrates families! How's that for pandering to the all-important family demographic? Genius.

We celebrated Family Holiday last year and it went reasonably well. I kind of missed the tongue in cheekiness of Winter Present Tree Day, but it was for the best.

Now, let's skip to this year. About a week ago my daughter was sitting at the kitchen table and she declared, "I think I'll make some Christmas cards!"

"Sweet pea, we don't celebrate Christmas. We celebrate Family Holiday," I offered.

"But it's the same thing," she argued.

"No. No no. Noooooo," I parried, "It is NOT the same thing. Remember how we used to celebrate Winter Present Tree Day?"

"Yeah, but that was the same thing as Christmas, right?" she asked.

It would appear that Family Holiday had not made the impact that I was hoping for. In hindsight, I think it was poorly named. What's with the "Holiday" suffix? Pure idiocy. We don't celebrate Mother Holiday, Labor Holiday, Memorial Holiday, or even Arbor Holiday. I should have gone with Family Day or Family's Day. That would have sold better. My future, alas, is not in marketing.

Not all is lost however, just a few days later, my daughter told the wife that instead of celebrating Family Holiday, this year she wants to celebrate Winter Present Tree Day. Hoohoo! Apparently, it was NOT a complete failure. It had stuck!

So, it is with much joy, and little fanfare, that I do hereby declare December 25th, 2005 to be the third celebration of Winter Present Tree Day, a glorious holiday not seen in nearly two years. I urge you all to spend this holiday gathered around the Winter Present Tree Day Tree with your loved ones. Alternately, you could celebrate Internet Day, or perhaps NoGodukkah. Any of those will please me greatly. Traditionalists may also continue to celebrate the "old school" holidays. They can hop on this bandwagon another year.

Years from now, when my daughter, wife, and I attend our first-of-many family counseling sessions, this may be the first story we tell the therapist. Here's the conversation my five year-old daughter and wife had yesterday:

Daughter: Mom, I have a question about kissing.
Wife: Yes?
Daughter: You know how some people do this (tilts her head slightly to the right) when they kiss?
Wife: Uh...yes.
Daughter: Will you kiss me like that?
Wife: Sure.

The wife then tilts her head to the side and the daughter does the same. Their heads approach each other when suddenly my daughter springs her mouth wide open, her tongue dangerously coiled.

Wife: Aaaaah! (moving back) Sweetie, let's not kiss that way.
Daughter: Why not?
Wife: Well.... um.... where did you see people kiss like that?
Daughter: You and daddy kiss like that.
Wife: Oh... well... that's just for grownups. Only grownups kiss that way.
Daughter: (shaking her head in disbelief) I just don't understand why you won't kiss me that way.

And that's the story of how my wife and daughter nearly french-kissed. Man, if I didn't already get enough hits on this blog from people looking for various types of distasteful porn, the impressive collection of incestuous keywords in this post should pretty much put me over the top

One of my favorite bloggers contributed to an article at The Morning News about fatherhood. It's a roundtable discussion featuring several people funnier than I am. I wasn't invited.

Well, we don't need them. I'll ask and answer my own questions right here, somewhat inspired by The Morning News questions, but specifically tailored to paint a picture of me as the perfect father. Take that, funny people!

What was the biggest surprise about parenting?

I had no idea how hard children are to entertain. Just when you figure out what entertains a one year-old, the kid turns two. This vicious cycle will continue until I embarrass her so thoroughly in front of her schoolmates that she refuses to have anything to do with me.

Maybe my kid was just extraordinarily difficult. Perhaps other children get off on shaking a rattle or tickling Elmo, but my daughter had much higher standards. I had entire slapstick performances choreographed, merely to elicit the tiniest smile from her.

Then, as she grew older, and my bones grew brittler, the slapstick got shelved, replaced by "playing". My daughter loved pretend games, but they all had the same basic format. She'd want to pretend that she was some sort of baby, and I was some sort of daddy. The fact that she WAS A BABY and I WAS A DADDY didn't seem to detract from her insistence that we play this "pretend" game. Of course, we couldn't be regular babies and daddies. We'd have to be a baby kitten and a daddy kitten, or a baby aardvark and a daddy aardvark. At some point she ran out of animals, so it seemed like we'd be pretty much any random baby noun and daddy noun. Have you ever tried being a daddy coffee table? It strained my knowledge of the Stanislavski method.

Are you a good dad?

How would I know? I know she's a great kid. She's well-behaved, and smart, and fun, and creative, and loving. Can I take credit for that?

I make sure that her cryhole gets stuffed with food on a regular basis and that she doesn't get too filthy. Her clothes mostly fit and she seems to regard me with affection. I also keep the kitchen clean. Is that good enough?

I'm not so good at the whole emotional part of parenting though. When my daughter is crying, I'm likely to respond by merely asking her why she's crying. Meanwhile my wife scoops her up and gives her the sympathy and nurturing that human children seem to enjoy. Silly humans.

What's the worst part of parenting?

I hated being the father of a screaming infant. She screamed all the time for the first four or five months of her life. The screaming would start even before she opened her eyes in the morning and would continue throughout the day, sporadically ceasing during an hour of sleep here and there. It was a horrible horrible time in my life. I went from being a generally amiable guy to being referred to as "Mr. Surly" by my coworkers.

As it turns out, if you give me only three to four hours of sleep a night, for months at a time, I turn into a complete asshole.

What's the best part of parenting?

That's probably a tie between the enthusiastic greeting I'll get if I haven't seen her in a while (a while being more than 8 hours) and the tremendous joy I get watching her do something new.

I remember the first time she made it across the monkey bars, and the first time she jumped rope, and now I'm watching her learn to read. I don't understand exactly why this makes me proud. It's not like I'm the one scampering across the monkey bars. Nor is she doing something extraordinary. My understanding is that all kids eventually learn to read, at least the ones in the blue states (just joking, red states! I know you wouldn't leave your children behind). It is, however, inexplicably thrilling to watch.

Will you have another kid?

Can you promise me that the next one won't cry so damn much?

I went to Seattle this weekend. However, if you're expecting jokes about Starbucks and flannel, then you will be sorely disappointed. I won't stoop to that level. There's nothing but self-flagellation and dick jokes here (generally not in the same sentence (and, suprisingly, not at all in this post)). I aim high.

A good friend of mine moved to Seattle a few years ago and his wife was throwing him a surprise 40th birthday party on Saturday night. Having planned and thrown one of those myself this year, I was inclined to support this endeavor. Plus, good friends are hard to come by these days. When I was a kid, making friends was easy. My daughter is the same way. I can plop her down next to almost any other five year-old, and they'll quickly find something in common:

Other Kid Whose Is Not Yet A Friend: I have to pee.
My Kid: Me too!!
New Friend: (squeals of delight)

Boom, insta-friend. These days friends are harder to make for me.

Other Guy: ....
Me: ....

If you read between the lines, you'll note subtle differences between the two cases above. So, it's not surprising that I've probably only made one new friend in the last half-dozen years. I've probably lost a few due to lapses in communication. Anyway, boohoo for me, but the point is that I'll happily travel to Seattle to celebrate a 40th birthday.

The party was pretty fun. I saw some friends I hadn't seen in years and I met some folks that I had heard about many times, but never seen before. I did an ok job of socializing, but mingling at parties is not my forte. I'll happily chat up anyone that comes my way, but the art of approaching a group of people and inserting myself into the conversation eludes me.

I read this book recently, which was written primarily from the point of view of an autistic man. I was struck by how much I had in common with this man. We both have similar issues with understanding common social signals, relying instead on very literal interpretations of what people say.

I raised this topic with a coworker, commenting on how the book made me feel slightly autistic. I explained how the main character and I both had an issue with correctly interpreting people's intentions. For example, someone asked me a while ago if I'd "like to give them a ride home." Stupidly, I took the question literally, thinking they were curious to know if I WANTED to drive them home. I said, "Nope," completely misunderstanding that this was their polite way of asking for a ride home.

My coworker listened to my explanation and said, "It's not that you can't see past the literal interpretations, it's that you just don't bother to take context into account."

"Oh," I said, "So, it's not that I'm autistic, it's that I'm an asshole."

"Yes!" he replied, a little too quickly.

But I digress. The party went fine and I managed to mingle a little bit. The best part of the party was watching two little kids, one three year-old and one four year-old, flopping around in a little bounce-house with an overly affectionate cocker spaniel puppy. You mix kids, puppies, and bouncing, and you've got the recipe for Norman Rockwell freakin' cuteness. Just add paint.

One of the problems with my job is that it's totally baffling to everyone outside of my industry. My father, who is pretty technically savvy, futilely scours the business section of the paper, looking for explanations of what my company does. My mother, who has become Internet-savvy herself, long ago resigned herself to just knowing that I do something with computers.

This last weekend I was pressed to come up with a description of my job in 20 words or less. I thought of this on the spot and it'll do for now:

I write software (3) that helps make large corporations more efficient (10) in ways that are incomprehensible (15 down, 5 left) to people (17)... that have personality (20) !

Yes, it's the career that we all dreamed of as small children. Astronaut, fireman, and incomprehensible corporate efficiency programmer. I'm having my business cards reprinted.

It's not the telemarketers I hate, it's the telemarketing. I don't hate the players. I hate the game.

I just got off the phone with one of them. For a while it was practically a hobby of mine to make their job as difficult as possible. I'm never rude to them because I know it's just a job, but I take personal satisfaction in wasting as much time of theirs as possible. I figure the less efficient I made telemarketing, the less it will happen in the future. Call me a dreamer.

I have quite a few bits of schtick that I like to do. Usually these are unprepared because, frankly, it's just more satisfying to ad-lib it. However, I can recommend these approaches:

1) Politely say hello and wait for them to go through their whole spiel. When they stop and ask you a question, apologize profusely for being distracted and ask them to repeat it. Repeat this sequence as many times as possible before they eventually hang up on you. My record is 3.

2) Pretend to be slightly off. I like to affect a dumbish accent and then I'll periodically interrupt their speech with a loud, "HELLO!". This usually throws them for a loop while they scan their script looking for a good spot to restart.

3) Respond over-enthusiastically to every sentence they make. If they mention that they have a great offer for you, then scream "WOOHOO!" into the phone. Follow this up by slightly covering up the mouthpiece and yelling "MARGE! OUR SHIP HAS FINALLY COME IN!" to no one in particular. Repeat this as often as possible during their spiel.

My favorite interaction with a telemarketer went like this:

Tele-marketer: Good afternoon, sir. How are you doing today?
Me: Eh.
TM: Great. I must inform you that this call may be monitored for quality assurance purposes.
Me: (adopting my best paranoid whisper) What??? I knew it! I knew they were listening in!
TM: Uh...
Me: (still whispering) So, my phone line is tapped! Is that it?
TM: No, sir, I do not believe your phone line has been tapped.
Me: But you admit that you people are listening in. I knew this was going on. I told Marge!
TM: Ok, sir. Well, are you currently planning any home improvement projects?
Me: (whispering again) Is it Ashcroft doing this?
TM: Who?
Me: John Ashcroft! Is it Ashcroft listening in? ASHCROFT! CAN YOU HEAR ME?!?!
TM: Sir, I don't think we have anyone named Ashcroft in our organization.
Me: Oh, I doubt that very much.
TM: Would you like me to check with my supervisor, sir?
Me: Uh...yes. Yes, please check with your supervisor.
TM: Ok, hold, please.

And then I was on hold for nearly a minute

TM: Sir, I checked with my management and we don't have anyone in the company named Ashcroft. There is no Ashcroft monitoring this conversation.
Me: Oh. Well, I feel a little silly then. Sorry.
TM: No need to be sorry. It's ok. Are you currently planning any home improvement projects?
Me: (whispering again) Are you people spying on me?
TM: No sir, we are not spying on you. It's not our policy to spy on customers.
....

I forget how it went from there. It was very satisfying though. I don't smoke, but I lit up a cigarette after that one. Ahh, that sweet Laramie flavor.

Anyway, I just got off the phone with a telemarketer. It went like this:

TM: Good evening, sir. How are you doing tonight?
Me: Annoyed.
TM: Oh, I'm sorry about that. Didn't mean to disturb you. I'm calling from the Hamilton...
Me: (interrupting) You didn't mean to disturb me? Did you think I was waiting for this call?
TM: (nervous laughter) No, no, I didn't think that.
Me: Then you thought I was doing something else and wasn't waiting for this call?
TM: Uh...(scanning script)... no. I didn't think that.
Me: So, I wasn't waiting for the call and I wasn't doing something else. I guess I was just lying very still then?
TM: Um...
Me: (carrying most of the conversational effort at this point). I was just lying there then, doing nothing at all. Do think I'm lazy?
TM: (the nervous laughter again) No, I don't think you're lazy.
Me: What is it then? I wasn't waiting for the call, I wasn't doing something else, and I wasn't doing absolutely nothing. What was I doing? Was I in some sort of Heisenberg Uncertainty state until you called?
TM: I don't know, sir.
Me: Well, that settles it, doesn't it?
TM: Ok, well I'm calling from the Hamilton Corporation....

And off she went back onto her script, no worse for the wear.

Do I feel bad that she was raising money for the Special Olympics? Maybe a little bit, but it's not like she was participating in them. She doesn't get a hug. So maybe I'm a little rude, but I totally forgot to ask them to take me off their calling list. There's my kharmic retribution which I don't believe in.

I'd like to take this post and thank my reader(s?). Actually, it's not so much that I want to thank you all, but rather that I want to try and list you all. I don't know many of you by name, but I've studied the site logs and I think I can put the rest of you in a happy little figurative box.

1) Many of you have visited this site via hitting the "Next Blog" button. We've been through this before, but let it suffice to say that I feel for you. You've been through a lot of crappy blogs and now you're here. Prepare to be astonished amazed entertained mildly amused nonplussed mildly annoyed cheated and deprived of your very life force here.

2) Most of you have reached this blog because you were searching for something else and you mistakenly came here. For the most part, you were either looking for:

- Pictures from the Folsom St. Fair: Hah! Pervs.

- Information about Barrington Hall: Yes, I lived there too! I figured that since the place is no more, I could finally violate the "Those who know don't tell. Those who tell don't know" rule. Onngh Yanngh, baby. Here are my two posts, so far, about my time there: post 1 post 2

- Cheerleader panty porn: Some of you are looking for cheerleaders with panties, and others, no panties. All of you are very disappointed. Pervs.

3) My wife. Yes, a very small number of you (approximately 1.0239137) are my wife. Hey.

5) Edwina Swink. Edwina is the only person on the planet who has given me a non-pity-based permanent link on her blog. Hi Edwina!

6) A coworker. I've got 2 coworkers who have this URL. Get back to work, slackers.

7) That lady I played blog-themed Scrabble with on the Internet (note, there are no illegal Scrabble sites on the Internet). Scrabble is cool, kids.

8) Someone who found me through a post on the busblog or on the site by that guy with the tiny hands. Welcome. Stay a while. I'll get snacks. I've got these salt and pepper pretzels that are quite tasty.

That's about all of you. I thank you all for coming by. Even the pervs.

Did I miss anyone?

I have a few loose ends to tie up with my weekend discussion. This seems like the right place to do it. It's cheaper than hiring that damn skywriter again. Plus, I didn't care for his font.

First off, my last post made it sound like I really hated the Stinson Beach run on Saturday. It really was an excellent run and I had about as good a time as one can have during a brutal trail run where I often feared for my life. At one point, during a gentle downhill, I was cruising along and feeling good. A great song came on my IPod and I found myself singing along while running all alone on this beautiful wooded trail. It was a pretty good moment that I'll remember for a long time. It came to an abrupt end when I stumbled, pulled some muscle in my calf, and screamed in pain, but still.

That night we went out to dinner with our best friends and some visitors that they were hosting from out of town. Our friends, knowing that I tend towards social reclusiveness, did their best to prod me into talking, urging me to tell my weathered and worn stories. They turned the organ crank and off I went. On the plus side, they gave me tasty bananas. It was a pretty good evening though, right until my daughter exploded into tears of boredom. I guess she's heard my stories too many times.

On Sunday night we went to see The Incredibles. You are probably not familiar with this movie, due to the studio's total lack of marketing, but you should try to find an artsy theater in your area shows these types of independent films. It combined cutting-edge hair animation and hilarious Ayn Rand philosphy.

Oh-so-clever sarcasm aside, it was a good flick.

The best part of the trip to the theater, however, was the bathroom hygiene enhancement I learned. Frequent readers of this blog (that's you, wife) will recall my issues with urinals and public bathrooms in general. It's a constant battle against the forces of urine and feces in the men's room.

Anyways, the guy next to me at the sink did something I hadn't seen before. He grabbed his paper towels BEFORE washing his hands. That's brilliant because it has always annoyed me that I wash my hands in these filthy places, and then am forced to touch the same towel-dispenser that previous patrons have licked, peed-on, or had sex with. By getting his towel before washing his hands, this guy solves that problem. That is sweet. The only bathroom obstacle that remains is the door.

Finally, I got some feedback from the wife that my writing would be funnier if I let the readers infer a bit more of the humor. Too many words, apparently. On that note, I leave you with this joke:

Me: Knock knock
Overly critical wife: Who's there?
Me: Fed up husband
Overly critical wife: Fed up husband who?

This morning I ran in my first race since the Chicago Marathon. It was a brutally hilly 20 km trail run through the Mt. Tamalpais State Park.

I'm not really a trail running kind of guy. I'm not a big fan of hills and running on uneven surfaces requires more balance and physical coordination than I'm really capable of. Since nearly every inch of this trail was either uphill or downhill, each step seemed to require a skill that I do not possess.

The first 5 kilometers were uphill, some parts so steep that I had to walk them. We'll refer to this part as the "unpleasant part". I held my own here, but it was early in the run.

The downhill section started in the next 4 kilometer loop. This is where my awkward style of running really worked its magic on the damp course. I lumbered down steps, and slipped and slid down any significant decline, arms a flailin'. Meanwhile, other gazelle-like runners leapt past me. I think they were runners, anyway. This loop ended with a brutal 1/4 mile uphill that required walking again. I passed a couple of the gazelles on the uphill, but it wasn't pretty. We did this loop twice.

The last 7 km were mostly downhill. I spent this part of the race enjoying a newly-found tripolar aspect of my personality. My mood drastically swung between fearing for my life, loving the speed of going downhill, and wondering if I was lost. I only actually wandered off the trail once, but I worried about it all the time. My sense of direction is about as good as my balance.

At one point I took a fairly serious stumble and by the time I had righted myself, I had seemingly pulled a muscle in my calf. I screamed like a five year-old girl (trust me, I know what that sounds like), and spent the next two minutes assuring the folks running by that I was not seriously injured. After a few too many people had passed me while I was stretching my calf, (including this guy), I lurched forward, compelled, stupidly, by an overzealous competitive spirit. I managed to catch up to a couple of the passers.

It was, perhaps, the most dangerous run I had ever completed. It would not have been dangerous had I either decided to run within my abilities, or decided to ignore the runners passing me. Apparently both of these common sense alternatives eluded me at the time.

Oh yeah, and it was incredibly beautiful blah blah blah

Hello "Next Blog" visitor!

Before you hastily click the "Next Blog" button again, allow me to commiserate with you. There are an astonishing number of crappy blogs out there and you have probably visited a fair number of them in the last few minutes. I don't mean to boast, but if you speak English, my blog is one of the better ones that you'll visit during this "Next Blog" session. Most of the other blogs that you'll randomly visit this way seem to be one of several varieties:

- A blog that consists of only one entry. You've found someone's first, and probably last, post. It usually says something like: "This is my first blog. Prepare to be bored."

Thanks, done.

- A blog that is a thinly veiled attempt at marketing some cheesy product, usually totally unrelated to actual cheese

- A blog in some other crazy language. Blogs in Spanish??? What will they think of next.

My almost-amusing ramblings about my daughter and social life are nearly Shakespearean in comparison. There are many fine blogs out there (see my excellent Links list!), but you'll rarely stumble across them with that damn "Next Blog" button. I know. I've been there. It's a disease.

In fact, let's do an experiment. I'll now hit that button five times and I'll document the five blogs that I find. Let's see what the blogosphere is up to:

1) http://familie-dyka.blogspot.com/
This is some sort of Muslim blog that is in a foreign language that I do not recognize. It also plays music. I'm sure it's a fine blog if you speak its language, but I shall not be adding it to my Bookmarks.

2) http://mousewords.blogspot.com/
Hey, an English non-horrible blog! It's a combination of topical links and stuff about her cat. This is undoubtedly the finest blog we'll see during this experiment. Blog on, Amanda.

3) http://dichotomyinaction.blogspot.com/
Ok, this blog is fine too. You got your basic semi-amusing anecdotes and a bit of political commentary. This could be my blog (ignoring the fact that it's by a conservative woman). Crap, this is blowing my theory about the Next Blog button being boredom-in-a-button.

4) http://csresearch.blogspot.com/
Ok, here we go. This blog is a virtually incomprehensible list of links and references. You want to keep notes for yourself, feel free to do it on a notepad.

5) http://norwaymamma.blogspot.com/
Well, this blog was only one entry long. It's some lady using her blog as therapy. I got no problem with that.


Well, that was a crappy little experiment. But, "Next Blog" visitor, if you've made it this far, at least I can take consolation in that you've wasted your time HERE. I essentially proved my point with my own crappy post. Ta dah!

QED.

Today is Veteran's Day here in the United States of America. Traditionally, I have recognized this holiday by not noticing it. No disrespect intended to veterans (my father is one!), but I've just never had the day off, so I never knew when it was Veteran's Day.

The San Francisco Unified School District does recognize this holiday though. Although I had hoped that the veterans themselves would band together and keep an eye on my five year-old daughter while school was closed, no such effort was made. So, I had to do it.

Seems like I always say inappropriate things to my daughter on days like this. First, I accidentally terrorized her by informing her that one day the sun will burn out. Hey, she asked! I then tried to calm her by explaining that she'd surely die long before that was going to happen. Apparently trying to cheer up a child by referring to their eventual death isn't the correct strategy. Who knew?

I put the final brushstrokes on this parenting masterpiece of a day by teaching her how to open beer bottles. Hey, she asked!

So, in conclusion, Happy Veteran's Day

Yesterday my coworkers and I took our semi-annual trip to Reno for an evening of comraderie, booze, and cards. I like my coworkers a lot, and since we all work from our homes, which are scattered across Northern California, I don't see them very often. Consequently, these trips are a blast with lots of laughs. Much of that humor will lose its effectiveness in the transition from the blackjack table to this blog, not to mention the transition from boozy to sober, but I'll give it a shot anyway.

Last time we went to Reno, Coworker X sank to nearly unrecognizable levels of depression when it took him a whopping SIX HOURS to get dealt his first blackjack. This time he got one in a few minutes. He immediately jumped up from his chair and performed a cartwheel right there in the blackjack pit. It was, most probably, the first gymastic manuever performed by a 42 year-old computer programmer in the Atlantis Casino. Thankfully the pit bosses didn't see this unconventional display of excitement. They enjoy unscripted moments of spontaneous exuberance about as much as airport security guards.

In general, we're a pretty chatty bunch of gamblers. We'll engage the pit bosses, dealers, and cocktail waitresses in our witty geeky banter. Sometimes they love it and sometimes they just ignore us.

If the dealer seems to be enjoying us, I'll often ask him/her to rate us, as dealees, on a scale from 1 to 10. This exchange always either feeds my ego, or lets me delight in dealer-inflicted flagellation. One dealer yesterday, named Larry, was happily bantering along with us when I popped the rating question. He hemmed and hawed and toyed with us, refusing to give up a number. However, several minutes later, as I departed the table for the restroom, he called to me and mouthed "ten". Larry knows how to maximize his tips.

My interactions with the cocktail waitresses didn't go so smoothly. I started off by ordering a Jack Daniels and Coke. Because I'm so cool, I called it a "Coke and Jack". The waitress looked at me like I was from the Planet Geek (Greetings!), and made me explain exactly what I wanted. "Oh!" she finally exclaimed, "Jack and Coke!!" She shook her head exasperatedly and moved on to the more socially adept members of our table.

Later, when another cocktail waitress came by to deliver drinks, I noted her name-tag and thanked her by name. "Thanks, Holly!" I said, glad to have had a non-embarrassing exchange. Of course I promptly took it to the next obvious awkward level by following up with, "So, is it nice when customers call you by name, or creepy?"

She paused for a moment or two, and then said, "Well... I guess I've gotten used to it."

My coworkers unanimously agreed that that was code for "You are creepy." I called her "Miss" the rest of the night. I try to keep the stalker factor down to a minimum.

Finally, when the table talk would eventually turn to our professions, everyone at the table always wanted our advice on how to rid their PCs of spyware. Dealers, pit bosses, and blackjacks players of all shapes and sizes have tremendous issues with viruses, spam, and spyware on their PCs. Naturally they turn to the boozy programmers at the table to solve their problems.

An older couple at one of the tables really wanted to know how to browse the Internet without getting their PC mucked up with all the spyware. I recommended that they stop using IE and start using the newly released Mozilla browser, Firefox.

"Martha," the husband started, "can you remember that? Firebox. We need Firebox"

I did my best to redirect them to FireFOX and not Firebox, but I'm pretty sure that they're going to have a hell of a time browsing the internet with some sort of fiery box.

Anyway, I lost a bunch of money, but I had a great time. I'd like to thank all of my codependent coworkers. I'd also like to thank the Atlantis Casino for not yet noticing that I'm counting cards. It probably helped that I suck at it.

Is it possible to be a gay man without being attracted to other men, or having any sense of style whatsoever? If so, I'm a flamer.

It's not just that sometimes I accidentally find my pinkie sticking out when I sip my coffee. I guess that just could be me being pretentious. Phew!

It's moments like the one I had yesterday, on my weekly "Date" night with my beard wife. We were travelling up the escalator and she was on the step above me. I leaned in for a kiss and, unconsciously lifted my right foot behind me, daintily bending my knee and waving it behind me, like a teenage girl would, on her first kiss. As soon as I realized how effeminate my stance was, I stamped my foot down with the merest hint of machismo flair.

Maybe it's not so much that I'm gay (because, honestly, I'm not interested in other people's penises or their tushies), but rather that I'm just not so manly. Maybe Schwarzenegger was right. I'm a Democrat girlie man.

I've come to the conclusion that I have abnormal tastes in women.

Last night I helped my wife set up a computer programming environment (Eclipse!) on our laptop so that she could do some Java work at home. I gotta say, the very thought of my wife doing Java programming gets me all hot and bothered. I love it when she compiles.

On Halloween I saw one lady doing some difficult juggling. I found myself oddly aroused.

Long ago I realized that one of the major things I was attracted to in a woman was competence. You show me a woman performing some complex task efficiently, and I go all ga-ga.

On the other hand, I also like a nice rack. Luckily, my wife, she's got it all. Except the juggling.

Well, the American people have spoken. They have stood up and they have said, "Screw you, Mike!"

That hurts, America. It really does.

Makes me want to conduct an experiment I've been considering though. I'm a reasonably bright guy and I'm a liberal. One of my coworkers (we'll call him Bubba) is also bright and is a conservative. Bubba and I have political discussions fairly often and we disagree a large percentage of the time. This is to be expected, given the difference in our core beliefs. However, we disagree more than I'd expect from two bright and well-informed people. Not just on core-belief issues, but on the basic nuts and bolts of how this country is run. For example:

- I'm fairly certain that Bush's agenda is strongly affected by his faith.
- Bubba is fairly certain that Kerry has a troubling JFK complex.

- I'm concerned by the reported Republican efforts to intimidate voters in Democratic precincts.
- Bubba is troubled by the reports of prisoners and non-citizen immigrants illegally voting.

- I find that the Iraq war was started on false pretenses and am scared by the Bush Doctrine.
- Bubba believes that the Iraq war met a set of criteria that has been used for 200 years by the U.S. and any of our past presidents would have done the same.

None of these issues have anything to do with the core differences between a liberal and a conservative, but we each have fallen into the partisan roles adopted by our parties. When we discuss personal issues, we find much common ground. When we discuss our jobs, we make decisions by consensus. Time and time again, we act like intelligent people with reasonable critical thinking skills, UNLESS the topic is political.

I'm forced to conclude that the media, or at least our choice of media, is to blame. Bubba gets his information from his conservative sources and I do the same with my liberal sources. That has colored our views far more strongly than I would have previously believed possible. Nothing else explains why we disagree on political topics that have nothing to do with what should be our core liberal-conservative beliefs.

So, yesterday, I proposed to Bubba that we conduct an experiment. For a couple of months, he should only get his news from my sources: NPR, Salon.com, CNN, and the New York Times. Similarly, I'll ignore those sources and only get news from his god-awful sources. Christ, I don't even know what those are. I guess Fox News and Rush Limbaugh?

I doubt we'll pull this off, but it sure would be interesting. Intellectually, I know that Salon.com is a biased source of news, but I believe that I'm smart enough to take that into account when I read the articles. I'm definitely beginning to doubt myself though. Maybe I am a puppet.

OR, and we'll call this Plan B, maybe I'll just eat tons of leftover Halloween candy. I do loves the Tootsie Rolls

Wooo! Halloween! Wooo!

Ok, Halloween wasn't so wooey. Not even wooish. Now that I have a kid, zany Halloween parties have been replaced with trick-or-treating trips around the neighborhood. It's not so bad, but it surely makes for a less interesting blog.

Years ago, back when I was single, I worked with a gal named Spring Snuffin. I use her real name here because she has such a great name. When my friends have great names, it reflects favorably upon me. *preening* Also, I was dismayed to google her name and find no results.

Anyway, one year Spring invited a bunch of us coworkers to a Halloween party. She confided to me that one of her gal friends would be attending and this gal was a nymphomaniac with a fetish for young Jewish guys. Opportunities like this don't come along very often, so, being no fool, I dressed up that year as a rabbi. I had my yamulke, the crazy sideburns, some religious looking robe-like thing, and a book called "Being a Jew." Subtlety is for chumps.

Like almost all of my "I'll surely get laid this time" schemes, this one didn't pan out. The nymphomaniac didn't show up and I was stuck doing shots with the guy dressed up as the Pope. No sex, but we were only one Mullah short of creating some serious religious harmony.

This year the Halloween festivities consisted of the family accompanying our child out for an evening of trick or treating. She was dressed as a superhero of her own creation, Spirograph Girl! Spirograph's main superpower is pattern recognition. Oh, and she flies too.

Unfortunately our little Spirograph Girl is allergic to eggs, nuts, and dairy, which means that she can't eat about 90% of her Halloween bounty. I suppose that's for the best, but it is a bit sad when your five year-old turns down offered-treats because she's allergic to them.

The other sad bit was when I received confirmation that I'm only going to be able to make my daughter laugh for another two years or so. I had asked her a few months ago what age she would be when I would no longer seem funny. "Seven", she had stated. Well, at one point during Halloween, she was on a neighbor's doorstep with a couple other kids, waiting for the door to open. It seemed like no one was home, but one kid noted that he had heard some footsteps. I then noisily stamped my feet behind them. The eldest child turned to me and rolled her eyes. "Very funny. Ha ha ha" she sarcastically barked.

"How old are you?" I asked the girl.

"Seven," she ominously replied.

Two years to go.