Nine glorious and long years ago, I married my first and current wife. This week we celebrate our anniversary.

We have tentatively agreed not to exchange presents this year. We're about to add a room to our house and so we prudently decided to spend our money on the project rather than on gifts. Although we are still going out to a nice dinner, I agreed to the no-gift deal with great trepidation. I don't mean to be sexist (which is a not-so-thinly-veiled way of saying, "Hey, I'm sexist!"), but dames dig gifts, right? I oughta give her something.

I informed her the other night that I was considering changing the sheets on our bed. This is a chore that gets performed every ewwwww-I-can't-stand-these-sheets-any-more in our house. It's about that time.

"Baby," I said lovingly, "I'm gonna change the sheets for our anniversary!"

I checked the chart. The first anniversary is something paper, 50th is gold, and 9th is clean sheets. Hoo hoo!

Anyway, not only will I be giving my sweet baboo clean sheets, but I will also be giving her something else and equally priceless, RIGHT NOW! In honor of our 9th anniversary, a truly momentous milestone, I think it's time to give my wife a name in this blog other than "Wife".

I've written before about how I'm not very good at naming things. Throughout my life, however, one name has come up time and time again when I needed a moniker for something that I cherish. Honeypie, in that spirit of respect and love, I do hereby christen you "Hank".


Happy anniversary, Hank. I love you.

I've never been in a hurricane, but judging by the swath of destruction I've seen in the news, they seem nasty.

Thankfully we never get hurricanes here in California. Nor do we get many tornados or sand storms or blizzards. We just get earthquakes.

I know people who are deathly afraid of earthquakes. They dread spending any time in California for fear that the earth will split open and swallow them up.

Having lived in California for more then 30 years, I gotta say that I'll take earthquakes over any of the other natural disasters that hit this nation. I know that you don't get the advanced warning with earthquakes that you do with hurricanes, but that may be a blessing as well. There's no terror before the fact, just a quick shake and it's over. The vast majority of the earthquakes I've experienced have either been kind of fun, or I haven't even noticed them.

Also, earthquakes in this country tend to be less deadly than other storms. Seems like we lose about 50 people a year from Category 4 or 5 hurricanes. The only earthquake that I can recall with that kind of deadly force was the one in October of 1989 that happened during the World Series. About 50 people died in that one.

As it turns out, I don't really have a point to make here. Just that if you must experience one natural disaster this year, make it an earthquake.

I hope folks stay safe from Hurricane Katrina. For updates, check out Hattie's blog.

I just returned from a two day trip to Reno. The main purpose of the trip was to conduct a draft for the fantasy football league I participate in....

....

See, this is the part where you feign interest in my fantasy football draft.

....

Uh, for example, you could ask if I like my team, or if we got any big-name players.

....

*sniff*

Well, let's cover other aspects of the trip then. The other attendees on this trip were a bunch of great guys that I used to work with at Hewlett Packard, back before I became a work-at-home hermit. Some of these guys I've barely seen in the last 10 years. In that time, I've gotten married, had a kid, bought a house, run marathons, and done various other life-enriching/ruining activities.

So, after a weekend of getting back in touch with these fellows, what astute observation did one of them make to me?

"Mike, Stan and I were talking about you. We both agree that you haven't changed one bit. Not physically or mentally. You're exactly the same!"

This coming from a guy whose idea of a good time used to be getting his dogs stoned and now he's an award-winning vintner. I have no idea if I should be offended or appreciative. For the time being, I'm going with "hmmmph".

Gambling was fun, as always. Although I got my butt whipped at blackjack and poker, I had a great time taking in the casino ambience. One cocktail waitress charmed our table of geeks by making a "Lost in Space" reference (just a standard "Danger, Will Robinson", but still). We applauded her geek chic and suggested that we'd be even more impressed if she tossed out a few Star Trek quotes. She paused for a moment and then overconfidently threw out a "Nanu nanu".

Naturally we were horrified. She was one Shazbot away from losing her tips.

At one table we were introduced to a fellow player who claimed to be the owner of a brothel. You know, I took a couple of career aptitude tests in school and never once did "brothel owner" appear as a career choice. I should have known not to trust the tests since, in all seriousness, the results indicated that I should consider being a bus driver or a member of the clergy. I think it's safe to say that I'd be a better brothel owner than clergy member.

In general in Reno, it's pretty easy to spot the locals, even those who aren't pimps. Almost all of them have a haggard and bedraggled appearance. If you took a cowboy, housed him in a trailer park to break his spirit, and then made him smoke 2 packs a day for 20 years, you'd have a good idea what the locals look like. And the men ain't too polished neither.

*rim shot*

My favorite part of the weekend may have been playing poker with the boys. The casino didn't have a poker room, but one of the guys had brought his own case of poker chips. All we needed was a big room with a round table. It just so happened that we knew of just such a place. We had conducted our fantasy football draft in a casino conference room hours earlier, but our reservation had ended and the rooms were in a locked hallway. My coworker, Al, went to go check out the situation while the rest of us played blackjack. He came back a few minutes later.

Al: Ok, we're all set.
Me: The conference room was unlocked?
Al: Sort of.
Me: What do you mean "sort of"?
Al: It's unlocked now.
Me: You unlocked it?
Al: Ok.
Me: Al, what did you do?
Al: I've had some experience with doors like that. I learned in college that if you simply apply enough torque to the handle, there's usually some plastic in the lock that will snap.
Me: You're my hero.

So, we skulked back into the conference room and held our own poker tournament for the next 4 or 5 hours. Everytime I walked in and out of that room, to get drinks or to go to the bathroom, I smiled at the broken door. Mind you I'm not endorsing vandalism, but I'm pretty sure the casino can replace the lock with the money that I donated to their blackjack tables. We'll call it even.

I didn't do too well at poker either. In fact, the only gambling where I won any money was on my baseball bets. I placed 12 bets during my 2 days there and ended up with 30 cents of pure unadulterated profit. If I could keep up that pace for an entire baseball season, I'd take down a cool $27. Easy money, baby. Day jobs are for chumps.

And on a final note, I am going to say one thing about my fantasy football team. Since I am basically ignorant about the NFL, I usually help our team make at least one totally bonehead move where we draft someone who has recently been jailed, or died, or maybe developed a limb-threatening case of gangrene. This year, mostly due to luck, our team is surprisingly able, and fully-limbed. Look out, world!

Two notes on my personal development:

First, note that I graduated from college 15 years ago with a degree in electrical engineering. In those 15 years I have made use of that degree approximately zero times. Once in a blue moon, someone asks me a question about electricity and I never know the answer.

Today, at 4:21pm (PST), I finally used my degree.

Our family owns a cheap card shuffler. You divide a deck of cards into 2 stacks, and the shuffler will merge them together. My daughter brought the shuffler into my office this afternoon, explaining that it was broken. Rather than merging the two half-decks together, it was shooting them apart.

I rubbed my temples a bit, massaging stagnant blood into dormant neurons. I then invoked the holy name of J.J. Thomson and conjured up images of plum pudding. Then, EUREKA! Inspiration struck.

Using all the powers of my brain, I popped open the battery compartment and turned the batteries around. Voila! See, if the batteries are reversed, then the voltage is reversed, then the motor goes backwards, then your cards get strewn across the carpet.

So, what's lamer? That I think that flipping the batteries on a card shuffler validates a previously unused college education? Or that I'm blogging about it? Please go to http://www.lameOrNot.com/ogblay and vote.

On a parenting note, I think I've mentioned once or a thousand times that my daughter, Daisy, was a VERY screamy child. She was what babyologists refer to as a Super Screamer. It wasn't that her screams were particularly loud or piercing (although they were), but rather that they were nonstop.

Now, most of the time when a baby screams, it's considered to be "crying", and that traditionally invokes some sort of sympathetic response in parents. They make with the "there there" and the comforting and the nurturing and such.

That was never my response to Daisy's cries. My response was something more along the lines of "OH MOTHER OF GOD!! PLEASE MAKE IT STOP OR KILL ME! UPON FURTHER REFLECTION, LET'S GO WITH KILL ME!!!". Then I'd rip out my hair. If Daisy had had hair, I probably would have ripped hers out.

After the first couple years, Daisy probably screamed and cried like a normal kid. However, the memory of the 24x7 crying stuck with me. So, every time I heard her crying, it was like someone sticking knives in my head. Whereas my wife would provide sympathy, I'd just whimper and seethe. This is generally considered to be an atypical response.

Recently, however, now that I'm beginning my 7th year of parenting, I'm beginning to hear the cries as actual signs of sadness or need, and not an as attack on my brain. The cries appear to be evoking the correct emotional response in my brain, which is weird.

I feel so human. Welcome me.

Things that will be different in my next home:

1) The tile in the bathroom will have a curly-hair pattern to camouflage the omnipresent pubes.

2) The floor in my office will be 100% level, ensuring that I do not accidentally roll away from my desk, which, while comedic, reduces productivity.

3) The distance between my house and the neighbors house will be greater than the current one centimeter. Just as I don't care to hear the sounds of them making a midnight snack while I lay in bed, I suspect they find that snack less appealing upon hearing the gruntish sounds of my lovemaking.

4) The house will be located outside of San Francisco's foggiest neighborhood, ensuring that I get at least a few hours of sunshine per week in the summer.

5) Smaller (or at least more concretey) backyard. Screw yardwork.

Daisy: Daddy, want to play a game?
Me: Ok, what game?
Daisy: Let's pretend that I'm a kid just waking up in the morning, and you're my dad.
Me: Hokay
Daisy: And then we'll pretend that you're helping me get dressed and after that we'll pretend to have breakfast, ok?
Me: ....
Daisy: Ok, daddy?
Me: Do you realize that we're just pretending to do the things that I'm normally hassling you to do during the school week?
Daisy: ....
Me: Why is it fun to do these things as a pretend game but not for real?
Daisy: You're not playing this right.

Today was national Eat Like A Pig Day. Being patriotic, I celebrated the traditional way and ate a gut-busting (resulting in subsequent butt-gusting) quantity of food. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the holidays.

The day featured a larger than average breakfast, 2 buffet meals, and 3 desserts. Hell, let's break it down:

Breakfast (at home):
- 2 mugs of coffee
- Bagel with cream cheese and lox
- Remaining half of my daughter's bagel with cream cheese and lox (this garbage-style of eating where you clean the food from another's plate is especially pig-like and is entirely celebratory for national Eat Like A Pig Day)

Lunch (at fancy Sunday Brunch place):
- Mimosa
- Eggs Benedict except with crabcake instead of ham (one egg)
- Prime rib
- Salmon (small piece)
- Half a dozen large shrimp
- A couple slices of cheese
- Bowl of seafood stew
- Biscuit
- Leftover bacon from my daughter's plate (oink!)
- A small chocolate pastry
- Two chocolate covered strawberries
- A few slices of pineapple and some blueberries
- Cup of coffee

Afternoon
- A fig and some grapes (gotta watch my girlish figure)
- A slice of chocolate cake

Dinner (at mediocre salad buffet restaurant)
- Lemonade
- Plate of salad, including lots of beans, veggies, and tofu
- Generous helping of chinese chicken salad
- Bowl of chicken noodle soup
- Ice cream cone

According to my calorie calculator, that comes to infinity plus one calories. I am the ugly American.

You know, it's only 8:30. I think I have room for a fourth dessert.

Such a good holiday.

This is how I roll.

It's Saturday night and, as we all know, I'm a hep cat. Am I out clubbing? Am I partaking in one of San Francisco's hot new restaurants? No, sir, I am not. I am at the mall.

Technically speaking, I was at the mall. Now I'm at home blogging about it, which is probably the only thing more pathetic than being at the mall on a Saturday night.

Pimpin' ain't easy.

The highlight of my trip was playing hide and seek with my daughter amidst the clothing racks at a department store. She's not supposed to hide without informing us first, but she had wriggled into a rack of clothing without parental consent. I saw her feet sticking out below the skirt hemlines, so I quietly backed up to the rack and then let out a silent but deadly fart. She soon emerged from the rack.

My parenting skills are modest yet effective.

While huddled around the campfire last weekend, we all shared our worst camping experiences. Here are my top 3:

1) The best part of camping is the campfire. Eating campfire-cooked food that's only been dropped in the dirt once or maybe twice is immensely satisfying and flavorful. Then, the conversations around the fire almost always have a richness and seem to engender comraderie more than those during a regular day, which typically involve me making the same excellent jokes over and over.

So, the first time I went camping with my good friend, Clint, one summer during college, I was looking forward to sharing the experience with him. Clint is one of the most mellow and laid back guys I know, so camping seemed like a great activity to do with him. Also, Clint was a much more experienced outdoorsman than I was, so I counted on him to lead the way on campsite-choice and similar issues.

We were driving across the country and had stopped at a campsite in Nevada our first night. I popped out of the car like an eager puppy and asked if I should start gathering wood, or maybe licking my testicles.

"Nah, we don't need a fire."

"Huh?" I whimpered, "No campfire? How will we cook our food?"

Clint rummaged around in the back of his car for a minute while I pined for my campfire. After a few moments he pulled out....(wait for it).... a can of cranberry sauce and a can opener.

"Here," he offered, "We'll eat this."

And so we did. And then we went to sleep. And then idealism died. And I still hate cranberry sauce.

2) About a decade ago I worked for Hewlett Packard. One summer a bunch of fun co-workers planned a camping trip to Yosemite, which I gladly signed up for. Yay, fun people! Yay, Yosemite! All good things. What could go wrong?

Due to schedule conflicts, I had to drive down to Yosemite by myself, which was about a 3 hour drive. A few minutes into the drive, I started to feel a little under the weather. As the minutes went by, I felt worse and worse. After about 2.5 hours, I knew I had come down with some nasty flu and would be vomiting very soon. Camping seemed unwise. Driving back home seemed impossible.

I pulled into the first motel I found and staggered into the front office, suggesting that they should give me a room IMMEDIATELY. They were almost quick enough. I stumbled out of the office and promptly puked into the bushes. I gagged my way to the room, where I spent the remainder of the night puking and shivering. It was one of those nights where I was too exhausted to even press buttons on the TV remote, so I ended up watching whatever channel the previous people had watched.

The next morning I checked out of the hotel and drove verrry slowly, so as not to disturb my delicate tummy, into Yosemite. I found my friends' campsite and left them a note, explaining my absence. I then gingerly drove through Yosemite, doing my best to enjoy this world-class park from behind my windshield.

It was a long ride home. It was my only trip to Yosemite as an adult.

3) My original camping buddy was Dan, a good chum from high school. We first went camping the year after graduation. We had a glovebox full of mix tapes and a cooler full of cokes. It was innocence personified. Nary a dark thought in our minds.

After finding a beautful campsite that afternoon, we pitched our tent, made our campfire, bbq'ed some burgers, and had a great time. That evening we snuggled into our sleeping bags and happily went to sleep in our tent, nestled among the trees in the great outdoors. It was peaceful, bordering on idyllic.

Until the night terrors.

In the middle of the night, Dan started to scream. He bolted upright and started tearing his way out of the tent, while screaming incoherently. It took what seemed like forever to get Dan calmed down. During that time he had literally torn a hole in the side of our nylon tent in an effort to get away from the truck that he had dreamed was bearing down on him.

We patched up the tent in the morning with long strips of duct tape, but Dan's psyche was still wounded. He woke me again later that trip, screaming about squirrels under his sleeping bag.

There were no squirrels.

With raising a child, it seems like there's always the Problem Du Jour. They're usually less tasty than soup, but sometimes just as ephemeral.

In the past I've written about some of my parenting issues, like when my daughter refused to poop, or when I feared she was becoming a social outcast (still in progress), or when she developed a fondness for puking on me.

(Apologies to anyone who followed that last link. Apparently I never wrote about her fondness for puking on me, but symmetry demanded a link going somewhere....)

Today's issue is that Daisy, at the tender age of 6, is turning out to be a not-so-nice child. I mean, she says her Pleases and Thank-yous with regularity, but when she's interacting with her peers, her tone and manner can border on mean-spirited. This is a rather unpleasant turn in the development of our child.

I know, I know. It's hardly headline news that Mike, the surly curmudgeon, is raising an eye-rolling and sarcastic child, but I'm honestly surprised. I will admit to being a somewhat gruff father, and I'm more than willing to accept the lion's share of blame here, but it's still disappointing to hear the tone of voice she uses with her playmates.

Regardless, we have now embarked upon a niceness campaign in the house. We've suspended Daisy's playdates until she demonstrates to us that she's capable of removing the edge from her otherwise sweet little six year-old voice. Truth be told, we're not quite sure how to encourage niceness. Most of the time that she interacts with her peers, we're not around to monitor it (summer camp, school, etc), so it's hard to tell if we're succeeding here. However, we're doing our best to persuade her that being nice is an imperative part of having friends (even if the mere existence of my friends proves otherwise).

On a lighter and unrelated note, here's something that amused me.

My wife prepared Daisy's lunch yesterday, including zucchini sticks and some dip. Daisy doesn't really care for zucchini, so my wife called her over to test and see if the dip made the zucchini experience more palatable. Daisy carefully dipped the zucchini and gingerly chewed a bit of it.

"Hey!" she said, raising her eyebrows with surprise, "Not baaaad!" She nodded her head approvingly while my wife and I happily looked on with nutritional glee.

"Oh," she continued, "I still have my gum in my mouth," bringing instant clarity to the situation. She spat out her green apple gum and then found that the zucchini was then slightly less pleasing. It was, however, still acceptable.

The moral of the story is to wrap your vegetables in gum.

First, I think I've finally come to terms with s'mores. My main problem with them is the marshmallow. I can't summon the words that adequately express how I feel about these squishy little monstrosities, but you'll get the idea of it if you slowly and repeatedly pronounce the word. Marshmallow. Marsh-mall-ow. Marshmaaaaaaaaallllow.

See? Nasty.

I feel about marshmallows like I feel about mayonnaise. Sometimes, in the smallest possible doses, they help make certain foods yummier. For example, marshmallows are required for Rice Krispie treats, which are delicious. Mayonnaise is required IN SMALL DOSES on some sandwiches, especially those with tuna fish. In general, however, I do my best to minimize my intake of these white and gooey substances.

Maybe this is why I'm not crazy about sucking penises. If I were a chick, I'd opt for spit.

But I digress.

So, not only do I have great disdain for the foam-pillow texture of the marshmallow, but its cloying sweetness leaves me slightly nauseated. Consequently, I'm not a big fan of s'mores, which is minorly problematic because they are the dessert of choice around the campfire.

I believe, however, that I've finally discovered the solution to this problem: bittersweet chocolate. Bittersweet chocolate, unlike its milky cousin, cuts through the sickening sweetness of the marshmallow, creating a superior s'more experience. Of course this may just be one example of how bittersweet chocolate makes everything better.

Finally, I failed to mention that we took a lovely hike on Saturday. The ocean was about half a mile from our campsite, so we hiked down, climbed around on some rocks, found dozens of crabs, some starfish, a couple sea anemones, and were about 20 yards from a group of sea lions. I can't even say anything grumpy or smarmy about that. It was downright nifty.

Although I've been camping about a dozen times, every time I go, at least one acquaintance says to me, "You? You're going camping? I never pictured you as the 'camping' type."

Apparently I don't give off that outdoorsy vibe.

But, to be honest, no one is more surprised than me. Although camping is somewhat fun (honestly, Colby, with the right crowd it's a good time), it requires more preparation, planning, effort, and old-fashioned gumption than it's worth. I'm always acutely aware of the effort-to-reward ratio in life. It's the reason why I don't buy pineapples, or wipe my ass that one last time. Diminishing returns, my friends.

Note however, that camping and being a computer programmer do have one thing in common: lack of hygiene. When we got to our campsites, the other two families we camped with were dismayed to find that there were no showers available. Me? I'm thinking that it's only a 48 hour trip and it wouldn't have been the first time in my life (or this month) that I went 48 hours without a shower. Yes, I know that's nasty, but I work at home and some days I just don't need (or get around to taking) a shower. Usually those aren't the same days when I skimp on the ass-wiping.

Overall, camping went pretty well. There were other kids for Daisy to play with and it was only a 2 day trip, so there wasn't enough time to get bored. You know who loved the trip the most though? Mr. (Rick?) Raccoon and his raccoonny friends. Well, it's not so much that raccoons love camping as they love stupid campers who don't store their food well. Each night when we gathered around the campfire, the raccoons would sneak over to our other picnic table, located about 20 yards from our firepit, and would steal our bread/cookies/joy-for-life, etc. You'd think that we would have learned to store our food better after the first night's thievery, but we city-folk learn slowly. The raccoons would climb onto the table, grab an entire loaf of bread (still in the bag) and quickly waddle away. We were left shaking our impotent fists at the woods.

The only other issue we had was the weather. As it turns out, if you go camping during the summer on the northern coast of California (here), the weather will suck. It will be somewhat foggy and chilly. We spent much of our time there huddled around the campfire. There are worse ways to spend a weekend though.

I took an epic shower when we returned and have removed most of the soot and stank from my body.

We're going camping this weekend. This promises to be a pain in the ass...more trouble than its worth...dirty fun.

Yes... fun. Lookit me smile so big it's practically stuck on my face!

Back on Sunday. Hold down the blogspot domain for me. Thanks.

Went into the corporate office today for a couple of meetings.

The better of the two meetings featured our Vice President of Product Development. She's pretty sharp, but doesn't always realize that in a company like ours, where layoffs are more common than profits, employees will try verrrrry hard to read between the lines of executive-speak.

For example, we have company-wide meetings every month where the executives come out and do their standard rah-rah stuff to convince us that the future is bright. Then, without fail, we lose our quarterly battle against Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. So, in order to reconcile our results with the rainbowy picture painted by the executive team, we peons must figure out the secret executive code. Usually we're left discerning how many O's we heard in "good" or whether this month's "very ecstatic" is measurably better than last month's "incredibly exciting". Linguistics ain't easy.

(Note, I do not blame the executive team for blowing sunshine up our asses. That's their job. I think if they came out each month and glumly said, "More of same, you worthless chumps" it would probably be slightly more demotivating than the current situation.)

So today the VP kicks off the meeting by explaining that she didn't have a prepared speech, but wanted to spend the time "responding to rumors".

"Responding to rumors"? What does that mean? Let's run it through the Executive Speak Filter:

Beep. Blinky light. Boop. Ticker tape....

"There are rumors. Be afraid!"

Aaaaaah! Rumors! Rumors are never good. Of course very few of us had actually heard any rumors (well, at least any that we could repeat in a Family Blog such as this) but one quick-witted employee wisely turned the issue around and asked, "Uh, we haven't heard any rumors. Can you just respond to the rumors that we should have heard?"

That's brilliant. I wish I had thought of that. The VP lobbed herself a few softballs and went onto the next question where someone asked about whether we were shopping our company around to prospective suitors. The VP responded with something like this, "Certainly not! We have no intention of selling this company. We're very excited about the market. That being said, we are a public company which, technically speaking, means that we are for sale at all times. And there are always people talking and deal-making, but mostly just to jockey for position in the industry. Honestly, it's hard to imagine what kind of deal would make sense."

Hmmmm. Let's see what the Executive Speak Filter says about this one:

Beep. Blinky light. Boop. Ticker tape....

"Deals make sense"

Another employee jumped on this immediately and asked, "Well, what kind of deal could you imagine that would make sense?" We're a tough crowd to fool. To her credit, the VP ran down the list of possible suitors.

But, for the record, I would like to say that everything in this post is totally made up, and I LOVE MY JOB and it would suck to get dooced.

Some people get to my blog by googling on Dean Karnazes. As you may recall, he's the fruitcake who aspires to run more than 300 miles without stopping. Specifically, these people google on Dean Karnazes Height. What they see on the google results page is my blog description that says that I'm "funnier than Dean Karnazes".

What's the deal with Dean's height? I'm guessing that he's a short man, as well as unfunny. So, diggity dang! That's another way in which I kick his ass. Being of average height, I probably tower above the munchkin. Hah!

I love that my blog description says that I'm funnier than Dean. I think I could come up with a slew of similar comparisons to various famous folk:

"Tanner than Nicole Kidman!"
"Faster than Strom Thurmond!"
"Hairier than Marilyn Monroe!'

Is there any logical reason why this should make me feel superior? Probably not. Will that stop me? Probably not.

That's all I have today. As you were.

What's one more post about grocery shopping between friends?

As I've mentioned before, I have created pre-printed shopping lists that show all the items that I regularly buy. The items on the list are sorted so that they appear in the same order as the aisles in my local supermarket. This allows me to go through the store (North to South) and pick up every item I've check-marked that week. It removes the need to scan all the way through the list each time I go into an aisle. It's what we in the software business refer to a a one-pass algorithm (please, refrain from spontanous applause until the end of the post).

This system works pretty well. Really, there's not much that can screw it up. Not much at all. I mean, a supermarket would have to do something totally absurd to mess this up. They'd have to... I don't know...maybe MOVE EVERYTHING AROUND FOR NO APPARENT REASON.

Yeah, that'd do it.

And that's what Safeway, my nearby supermarket, has done. I wandered through their aisles this weekend, befuddled and distraught.

All the items that require refrigeration are still in the same place. Apparently whatever motivated the Safeway brass to screw with me, wasn't worth unplugging freezers. Everything else, however, was fair game. If they had undertaken this effort to more logically store their wares, then I'd understand. Maybe they could have alphabetized their products, or even sorted them by shape. That would make sense to me. Tortillas would be next to paper plates and cucumbers would sit alongside dildos. So easy!

Of course that's not what Safeway did. They utilized an organizational system known as R-A-N-D-O-M.

You know how the wine used to be in the same aisle as the liquor? Now the wine is in the bread aisle. What's the theme here? Biblical foods, maybe?

Want to know where the cookies and crackers are? They're in the meat aisle. This one makes sense IF YOU ARE A CRAZY PERSON WHO EATS COOKIE BURGERS.

Dog food? Next to the greeting cards. "Hey, baby, happy anniversary! Here's a card and a chew toy."

I was confused for a split second about why the diapers and baby food were in the same aisle as the coffee, but then I remembered what it was like being the parent of a newborn. It's clearly the "AAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!" aisle. I'm down with that.

So, now I get to make a new list. Booooo. Inefficiency is evil.


ps. I miss Webvan.

Today we grabbed a couple friends and headed down to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which is an excellent place to spend a few hours. They have a tremendous number of fish there, which is a pretty good quality in an aquarium.

They also have a lot of buttons. I learned today that you can take the most spectacular, colorful, impressive, gigantic, shark-filled, fireworks-included exhibit in the world, and if you put it next to an exhibit about...oh, let's say cardboard, that ALSO FEATURES A BUTTON, then my daughter will immediately gravitate towards the button.

I can recall being a button-obsessed child. I can recall dreaming of playing in a room filled with buttons, where each one did something unexpected and fun. One button would drop confetti and another would throw a creampie in my face, etc. I spoke of this button-room often. So, I can appreciate my daughter's interest in buttons, but it's still amusing to see her bypass a million-gallon fish tank in favor of a sign about jellyfish that lights up when buttons are pressed.

Sometimes, however, there were no buttons, so she enjoyed the fishies. At one point we gathered in front of the Kelp Forest tank to see the divers feed the hundreds of fish in that tank. It was really crowded and hard to see, so I gave Daisy the choice of either sitting on my shoulders, or utilizing her nimbleness and small size to scoot to the front of the crowd by herself.

Bam! Right there! Stop!

Did you catch that? Let's replay this in slow-motion. This is why I'm a lousy parent. I basically asked my child, if she'd like to slip through a large crowd of people into some place that I can't get to. So, off she went, slipping between people, deep into the mass of potentially dangerous aquarium customers. About 60 seconds later one of our friends asked me where Daisy was. I pointed vaguely into the direction of the crowd and the stupidity of my actions began to slowly dawn on me.

I spent the remainder of the presentation trying not to panic. I've never lost anything important like a kid before. I know that I get pretty paranoid when I can't find my wallet, because it is a royal pain in the ass trying to replace my ID and various cards. There's phone calls to make, and forms to fill out. So, I sat in front of that Kelp Forest, panicked about the immense stack of forms I'd need to fill out in order to report a missing child. I mean, she's bigger than 100 wallets!

Meanwhile, our friends and my wife scattered around the crowd trying to find a location that gave them a better view of the crowd. Thankfully my wife spotted Daisy before I crapped in my pants. When the presentation ended, Daisy came straight back through the crowd to where she had left us. I gave her an extra big squeezy hug and put all thoughts of forms behind me.

The rest of the day went pretty well. I immensely appreciated the irony of sitting down at the aquarium restaurant and deciding between the various types of fish on the menu. I'd just spent morning learning about the fabulous world under the sea, and how fragile their environment was, and what beautiful creatures they were, and now it was time to eat them.

Yay for the delicious Monterey Bay Aquarium!

Various unrelated thoughts:

1) Although I rarely attend my running club's weekly track workouts, last night they also held a Running Form Clinic. Since my form is spectacularly bad, I decided it would be high comedy to attend the clinic. I've had several people try to analyze and fix my gait and none have been able to even figure out exactly what it is that I'm doing wrong. They can see that I'm awkwardness incarnate, but they just can't figure what to how to fix me.

When the coach saw me walk up, he shook my hand and said, "It's nice to see you out here at the track!"

"Well," I replied, "I'm eager to have you fix my running form."

His eyes bugged out and he busted up. "Sorry, Mike, but I'm not a miracle worker!"

Sure enough, I was held up as an example of what not to do. I'm happy to give back to the running community any way I can.

2) I dreamt last night that my parents had amassed $15,000,000,000 somehow. I spent much of the dream thinking about much better my life was going to become. When the alarm clock went off this morning, I was distressed to find that I was billion-free again. This is why I much prefer bad or scary dreams. Then, when I wake up, I'm overjoyed to find that I don't have cancer, or that I'm not married to Rush Limbaugh. Good dreams just depress me.

3) I'm the #3 link on Google if you search on Illegal Gerbilling. Damn, I'm proud. Screw those wusses who only enjoy legal gerbilling. U.S.A.! U.S.A.!

4) We stopped by a friend's house tonight. They had a big box in front of their driveway, filled with packing peanuts. Our two kids had a blast jumping into the box and flopping around in the packing material. Our friend looked somewhat embarrassed at what passes for entertainment and declared, "This is the city kids version of jumping into a pile of leaves." I feel so ghetto.

I'm not a particularly bad computer programmer. Generally, if I poke at the guts of a computer program long enough, it yields to my will.

However, just because I can write software does not mean that I'm skilled in all things computery. When my computer breaks, or my DSL shuts down, I'm typically dumbfounded. If rebooting my one debugging secret doesn't fix the issue, I'm stuck.

Let me be more direct here. I can't fix your computer.

I mean, I'm willing to try. I'll poke at it pretty good, but there's virtually no chance that I'll be able to fix it. If you ask me to fix it, here's the conversation that we will have:

You: So, what's wrong with my network?
Me: Geez, I'm not sure.
You: Well, what do you think is wrong?
Me: Man, it's hard to say. Everything looks ok. I mean, it's all plugged in and I see blinky lights.
You: Blinky lights?
Me: Yeah, those guys there. See? Blinking.
You: That's the sum total of your computer networking knowledge? Look for the blinky lights?
Me: No. I told you. I checked to make sure things were plugged in too.
You: Didn't you get a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.
Me: Yes.
You: Don't you sit in front of a computer all day long?
Me: Yes.
You: Don't you write computer programs?
Me: Yes.
You: ....
Me: I could reboot it again.
You: Nevermind.

See how frustrated you get with my ignorance?

So, anyway, you shouldn't assume that just because I write software that I know how to fix your computer, or give you an orgasm. It's like assuming that the car wash guy can fix your muffler or that the obese gentleman can prevent your souffle from falling, or give you an orgasm.

But you can always ask.

For some strange reason, my daughter rarely flushes the toilet. Fear of loss, perhaps? Regardless, it led to this exchange:

Me: Oh, look. Poop in the toilet. How lovely.
Daisy: Whoops. Sorry.
Me: Ok, from now on, everytime you forget to flush, I'm chopping off one of your arms.
Daisy: No way! I definitely wouldn't be able to flush then!
Me: Sure you could. You could flush with your feet, your tongue, or even your butt.
Daisy: Are you really going to chop off my arms?
Me: No.
Daisy: What if I hit you?
Me: No, not then either.
Daisy: What if I destroy the house?
Me: Baby, you get to keep your arms no matter what. I'll find other ways to punish you, but they won't include chopping off your arms.
Daisy: What if I destroy the house, and outer space, and the whole universe?
Me: Look, how about we just agree that you won't do those things?
Daisy: (heartfelt laughter) Oh, daddy. I'm already planning to do them tomorrow.

Be afraid, people.

My daughter is taking swimming lessons at the Jewish Community Center and I tagged along for the first time this weekend.

Thankfully the JCC does not test ones Jewishness as an admittance requirement. Although the facility caters to the Jewish community, it is available to anyone. Despite my Jewish credentials, had there been some sort of Yiddish quiz, or persecution-complex test, I would have most probably failed it. I'm what my Jewish acquaintances refer to as a "bad Jew".

Once upon a time I was a Jew in good standing. Our family would attend synagogue on a semi-regular basis and I was dutifully sent to Sunday school each week where I learned some Hebrew and lessons from the Old Testament and the Torah. Once I was 12, my lessons got bumped to twice a week so that I could prepare for my Bar Mitzvah.

Although my parents weren't religious, they felt it was important for me to have this cultural grounding. They felt Jewish and wanted to pass that onto their kids. I didn't quite understand it, but I was an obedient kid, so off I went.

Going to synagogue was torturous for me. I never really felt that whole "God" thing and it certainly didn't help that half the ceremony was in Hebrew. Maybe they're doing a better job of marketing Judaism to kids these days. There's probably Extreme Torah Reading and large chalices of Mountain Dew in which to dunk your challah. Back in my day, however, it was just like being lectured to, for an hour or two, in a foreign language.

The Bar Mitzvah was a whole other kind of torture. In this ceremony, where a 13 year-old boy is suddenly declared to be a man, the boy has to sing a section of the Torah and give a sermon. Considering that this required several skills that I did not possess (i.e. reading Hebrew and singing), this was challenging for me. Thankfully the Rabbi gave me a recording of my Torah section to listen to and an English explanation of the text.

Typically kids who aren't good at reading Hebrew prepare for their Bar Mitzvahs by learning how to read Hebrew. For some reason, I decided that was a poor strategy. Instead, I decided to memorize the series of meaningless sounds on the Rabbi's recording. I don't know if you're familiar with Hebrew, but it seems to mostly consist of a bizarre "HCH" sound, similar to the last sound in the word "Blech". Like that, but an entire language of it.

So, anyway, I spent weeks playing this damn tape. I'd play a few seconds of the Blech singing, practice, rewind, listen, and repeat. Eventually I learned the entire thing, which was probably about 5 minutes long. I also had to make up a sermon to go with it. I believe the topic was personal responsiblity. Inexplicably, I crafted a speech about picking your dog's crap, thrilled that I was able to use the phrase "pooper scooper" in front of the the entire congregation. This was high comedy to my 13 year-old brain (and still elicits a minor chuckle from my near 40 year-old brain).

I made it through the ceremony, only mildly embarrassing my parents. While I chanted my unintelligible and bewildering throaty syllables, the Rabbi followed along, pointing to the words in the Torah as I sang them. He was unaware of my complete inability to make use of his assistance (I think).

Days later my parents sat me down for a talk. To the best of my recollection, this was the conversation:

Parent X: Mike, now that your Bar Mitzvah is over, you get to decide what you want to do about Sunday Sch...
Me: I want to quit!
Parent X: ool. Take your time and think about...
Me: I WANT TO QUIT!
Parent X: whether you want to continue your education.
Me: QUIT QUIT QUIT!
Parent X: You could decide to finish up this year and
Me: Nope. I quit!
Parent X: ...
Me: I quitty quit quitterstein!
Parent X: You're finishing this year. THEN you can quit.
Me: Deal!

After that year, aside from one poorly thought-out attempt to pick up Jewish chicks in college, I never set foot inside a synagogue or Jewish-themed building again. That streak came to an end when I visited the JCC this weekend.

Although the JCC was a perfectly nice place, I don't quite get the idea of having a large complex, a jewplex if you will, for a community of people. I mean, I get the idea of having a synogogue, or a meeting room, or even a nice deli, but why do religious groups need their own yoga classes or swimming pools? I guess I just don't feel the sense of community that would cause me to post an ad on Craigslist that said, "Looking for swimming buddies. NO FORESKINS!"

Regardless, the JCC accepts us all. I thank them with guarded appreciation.