My falling muscles still really hurt. Earlier I spent a few minutes itemizing every part of my body that hurts and and it was an impressively long list. Some of the pains were easy to diagnose. For example, my ass hurts because I kept landing on it. Other aches were tougher to figure out. Why were my triceps so sore?

Later, I was playing with Daisy on the floor and I tried to push myself off the floor. Ow! Triceps are apparently the muscle that I exercised each time I tried to get up after falling on my ass. It kind of surprised me that I would be so sore from the simple act of pushing myself off the ground, so I tried to compute how many times I fell.

I snowboarded for about 3 hours. The majority of that time was spent listening to an instructor, being on the chair lift, or resting. So, maybe I actually boarded for 15 minutes or so. I probably fell every 15 seconds. So 4 times a minute for 15 minutes is 60 times. Also, sometimes the wind literally blew me over when I was just standing on my board, and there were a few other times when I just sat down for various reasons. Let's say I had to get up off the ground about 75 times, all in all. I guess that's like doing 75 repetitions of some horrid tricep exercise. When I think of it that way, it makes sense that my weeny little computer programmer triceps would be sore.

The next question to ask, of course, is why did I fall so damn much? Here was the basic problem:

Primarily my instructor was trying to teach us how to do turns (heel edge and toe edge turns, I think they're called). She stressed that we should get going straight downhill, with our boards flat, and then press down on our toes to turn right or lift our toes to turn left. This all made sense in theory, but in practice it didn't really pan out.

You know how elevators work? You walk up to an elevator and press the Up or Down button, and then you wait. Maybe the elevator comes immediately, maybe it takes a couple minutes, or maybe it's broken and it never arrives. That's EXACTLY what my turns were like. I'd press down on my toes and wait. Maybe my turn would start in a second or two, maybe it would take 10 seconds, or maybe it wouldn't happen at all. Meanwhile, my board is pointing straight downhill and I'm PICKING UP SPEED. This generally caused me to panic within a few seconds, which invariably led to a spectacular crash.

But, enough about snowboarding. Let me tell you about the ad I found on Craiglist last week. It basically described a computer programmer with my exact qualifications and then said this:

We're working for a software company looking to interview java app developers in the SF area to learn more about what you think of things. If you fit the specs, we would love to talk to you at your home-office. You'd receive $200 for your time (less than an hour.) The interview would be video-taped, but only for internal purposes - it would never appear online or on TV.

$200 for an hour of my time? To hear me talk? Everybody has a price and mine is apparently well under $200. I replied to the ad and we're all set up to do the interview tomorrow morning.

When I replied I suggested that perhaps we should choose a location other than my home office, which is an utter pig sty. It's messy and cluttered and probably a bird flu vector of some sort. The interviewer responded, adamantly assuring me that a messy office was a good thing and that my work environment was an important part of the interview. In fact, part of the interview would include "a brief explanatory tour of my workspace". That should be amusing.

Here's a picture of my "workspace". You'll just have to believe me that it looks much worse in person. I'm really looking forward to this part of the interview:

"Uh, here are the sweat stains on my chair. This pile of paper contains candy wrappers. DON'T LOOK IN THAT DRAWER!"

I'm sitting here debating whether I should clean up in the slightest. Also, what should I wear? Usually during the AM hours, I'm in my bathrobe, but it might be a bit too ratty, even for cinéma vérité. I could just wear jeans and a t-shirt, the standard programmer uniform, but maybe I'll compromise and go for a sexy set of pajamas. Oh, decisions decisions!

When I told my coworker, Al, about this interview, he was skeptical about the video taping. I believe his exact reply was, "Hm. I'm pretty sure they're going to ask you to fuck something."

For $200?!?! Not bad!

I have returned from the Lake of Tahoe! Limbs intact! Sanity intact! Pride int... Limbs intact!

We spent the weekend up at Squaw Valley with a mom and her five year old son. The trip started off on a pretty good note, because the other mom volunteered to drive both kids up in her car in the morning, explaining that it was easier to manage two kids than one. This is a common theory espoused by many parents. The idea is that a single kid requires entertaining, but multiple kids will amuse each other.

So, the wife (and for any new readers, I refer to her as "Hank") and I got to drive up by ourselves. The tone of the weekend was set early on in the drive with this conversation:

Hank: I think I've figured out a way to avoid Lake Tahoe trips in the future...
Me: What????
Hank: I know how to avoid them now.
Me: I thought you loved these trips! If I don't like them, and you don't like them, why have you been forcing me to go on them all these years?
Hank: Well, it just sort of happens.
Me: How does a Tahoe trip "just sort of happen"?
Hank: I don't know. A friend will start talking about how we should hang out together more and pretty soon it's a Tahoe trip. Anyway, do you want to hear my new idea?
Me: Yes. Yes I do.
Hank: I'm going to say that I don't like skiing. Isn't that good? That should work.
Me: That's it? All these years of Tahoe trips could have been avoided if you had just said, "I don't like skiing."
Hank: Yeah. Good, eh?
Me: Well, let's practice this skill. We're going to do a role play. I'll pretend to be your friend Ella (who is a hottie), ok?
Hank: Uh...ok.

(role play begins)

Me (as Ella): Oh, hey, Hank.
Hank: Hi Ella
Ella: Soooooo, I was thinking....Do you want to kiss a little?
Hank: (laughing) No thanks.
Ella: Weird. Whatever. Anyway, we sure are good friends.
Hank: Yeah
Ella: And our kids suuuuure do get along well. That's so great. Don't you think that's great?
Hank: It is really nice.
Ella: It is! And I really enjoy our time together, don't you?
Hank: I do too.
Ella: Gosh, oh, I have a GREAT idea! Does Daisy like playing in the snow?
Hank: Uh....yeah
Ella: Super! I'm totally going to plan a Tahoe trip for us! Oh, I'm so excited! Let's kiss!
Hank: Um, I'm not really into chicks.
Ella: Huh? Oh well, anyway, I'm glad we're all going to Tahoe together. Yay!
Hank...
Ella: (puckering)
Hank: You're doing this all wrong. Ella is not pushy like that. This is dumb.
Me: Your new idea sucks.

So, don't expect any more Tahoe posts from me. As you can see, Hank has a bold new plan that does not involve kissing her hot friends. I'm all for not going to Tahoe anymore, but we might be throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Anyway, it was fairly relaxing driving up to Tahoe without a small child in the back seat. Meanwhile, our friend's plan of having the kids entertain each other was working pretty well, until it didn't. At around 5:30pm, the kids exploded into exhaustion and frustration and suddenly it was much more difficult caring for her own kid and our kid. Hank and I were still about 10 miles away from their Tahoe condo when we got a call from our friend, urging us to hurry along.

I picked up the pace a bit and promptly got pulled over by the California Highway Patrol for my first speeding ticket in 15 years. Doh! The CHP officer however, despite not being named Ponch or John, was super nice and polite. If you only get one speeding ticket this year, I highly recommend the stretch of Highway 89 about 5 miles north of Squaw Valley. Top notch manners on this guy.

The rest of Friday evening was fairly uneventful and we kicked off Saturday morning by signing the two kids up for ski school. This seemed like a good plan because it would entertain/teach the kids and allow us grownups to ski as little or as much as our bodies could handle. The plan came to a crashing halt when my wife informed the school administrator that Daisy has a serious peanut allergy. The school instructors weren't comfortable with administering the medicine (only needed in case of an emergency), so they told us that the only way Daisy could attend class was if one of her parents stood nearby at all times, ready to administer medicine should one of her classmates thrust peanuts into Daisy's mouth. After several minutes of futile argument, we conceded and I agreed to spend my Saturday standing next to ski school.

I watched Daisy not eat peanuts as she snow plowed and as she parallel skiied. I watched her not eat peanuts on the rope tow and on the "magic carpet". I watched her not eat peanuts during break time when kids were fed non-peanut juice and I watched her not eat peanuts during lunch when they ate non-peanut hot dogs, non-peanut french fries and non-peanut oranges. Basically I watched Daisy not eat peanuts for 6 straight hours on the most perfect skiing day you could imagine. Clear skies, sunshine, warmish weather, and plenty of snow. Nary a peanut in site.

Ski school was occasionally entertaining though. I enjoyed seeing the various techniques employed by the kids as they learned how to snow plow down the gentle slope. Some kids cried their way down the hill, while maintaining perfect "pizza slice" form, but you could hear them bawling the whole way. Another kid kept reciting some personal mantra each time he skiied by, "I am powerful. I can achieve anything. There are no barriers...." He spooked me a bit.

Daisy did pretty well. I only laughed at her twice (from a distance, of course). At one point the instructors introduced the kids to a simple slalom course, explaining that the kids should ski to the right of the first obstacle, to the left of the second, etc. Daisy ending up focusing so hard on the obstacles that she kept plowing straight into them. I could almost see her thinking, "Don't hit the cone! Don't hit the cone..." Bam! Down went cone #1. BAM! Look out, cone #2.

The other amusing time was on the rope tow. This was a simple device where the kids would grab onto a handle and then get pulled up the slope. Sometimes a kid would lose their grip or fall during the ascent. It was not big deal, but it would prevent them from making it to the top of the hill. One time Daisy was ALMOST at the top when she stumbled. She was, however, determined to reach the mini summit, so she hung on for dear life, getting dragged through the snow on her belly, with her skies flapping in the snow still attached to her feet. She made it to the top though.

Our friend's kid was in the same class. He kept amusing me by accidentally skiing backward on about a third of his attempts. He eventually got pretty good at it, learning an awkward backwards snow plow.

The tiniest kids were the best. They were mostly incapable of doing a snow plow, but they were great at pointing downhill and nonchalantly barreling down the slope. Invariably some instructor would have to fling themselves in front of the speeding toddler. That's good comedy. Peanut-free too.

More tomorrow.

I am pleased to report that I completed a session of snow boarding today WITHOUT breaking my collarbone. However, that's all that went well.

Snowboarding is hard because it uses an important muscle that I rarely exercise -- the falling muscle. Ok, ha ha, I kid. There is no one falling muscle, there are like 5 of them. Today I exercised my falling forward muscle, my falling backwards muscle, my slide on your side muscle, my face planting muscle, and my AAAAAAAAAAAH muscle. It was a pretty good workout. I will be sore all over tomorrow.

First, I took a two hour class at the top of a VERY windy mountain at Squaw Valley. The teacher, who had a penchant for understatement, kept saying that it wasn't normally this windy. Of course not! Who would expect it to be windy at the top of a 7000ft mountain in the middle of winter? I'm sure it's usually quite lovely.

She also kept saying, "Lean on your front foot, Mike!". The other two variations of this were, "Ok, try leaning more on your front foot" and "Alright, how about leaning less on your front foot?". None of these requests really seemed to help me steer the snowboard. It pretty much went where it wanted to.

Snowboards really have two major problems. First, there's no way for a beginner to stop other than crashing yourself into the icy snow. In skiing you first learn how to snow plow, but in snowboarding, you pretty much learn how to point downhill and go. Stopping is for olympians. The other problem with snowboards is that they slide in all directions. Just because I'm LOOKING to the left,and LEANING to the left, and my board is POINTING to the left, doesn't necessarily make the board go to the left. It goes where the hurricane-force winds blow it.

After my lesson, I spent a little while over at Papoose slope. "Papoose" is a Native American word for Watch The White Man Exercise His Falling On His Ass Muscle. I must say, it's an aptly named hill. I fell down that hill a couple times before deciding that I'm really really awful at snowboarding. I called it a day at that point.

Considering that it was my first day snowboarding in8 years, and I sucked pretty bad 8 years ago, things went as well as could be expected, given that I'm an uncoordinated spaz. Now, it's snowing. Hopefully that won't impact the ability of my city-trained car from being able to drive home tomorrow.

More bitching later.

So, it's a gorgeous day at the base of this mountain, and I'm decked out in my ski clothes and what am I doing? Am I skiing? Am I snowboarding (aka face-planting) on thispicture-perfect day?

I am not.

Instead I am watching Daisy take ski class all day. Is that because I am a super concerned and involved parent? No. It is because the good people here at Squaw Valley ski school believe that Daisy will start stuffing peanuts into her every orifice if I am not here to supervise.

Wheeeeeeee!

(Update: I posted yesterday this from the slopes on my phone. I cleaned up the formatting today)

Well, I'm in Lake Tahoe for the weekend and this trip promises to be filled with blog worthy annoyances. Thankfully, this condo has internet access so look forward to extra snark.

An important part of being a resident of the United States of America is having a favorite pizza place. It's like being addicted to oil, or making fun of Canada -- it just defines who we are as a nation.

So, we all have our pizza allegiances. There's the near-religious battle about thin crust versus thick crust and the minor skirmishes about Mom and Pop Joint A versus Chain X. When it comes right down to it though, we're just talking about minor variations in the ratio between dough, sauce, and toppings. Yes, quality of ingredients is imporant, but I'd bet that most of people's favorite joints have fairly fresh ingredients (except for the Domino's morons. Hah!). Maybe this pizza debate is a non-issue.

So, do we call it a draw? Do we treat pizzas subjectively, like paintings, expecting that each person will have their own opinion of the relative merits of a given pie? Or do we adopt our abortion-hardened battle stances and wage a holy war?

Personally, I'm going with option B.

Zachary's pizza, available in 2 locations in Northern California (Berkeley and Oakland) is THE BEST PIZZA, BAR NONE. No ifs, ands, or buts, this is the very finest pizza in the world. Allow me to explain.

Zachary's pizza is a Chicago-style deep-dish pizza. You may have had deep-dish pizza from other places like Pizzeria Uno or some dump in Chicago, but those are irrelevant. To be honest, it's not even really fair to call Zachary's pizza a pizza. Not because I don't think it qualifies, but rather because no other pizza could possibly match it in deliciousness. Yes, the crust is both crisp and flaky, yes the cheese is melted, and yummy, yes the toppings are fresh and tasty, but it's all in the sauce.

Zachary's pizza is layered...nay, SMOTHERED, with the most mouth-watering layer of perfectly-spiced stewed tomato pieces. It's heaven. It's ambrosia. It's indescribable by hack bloggers. I don't know exactly what makes it so delicious. The taste is so rich, I can only assume they've added something insanely decadent like baby harp seal fat.

Damn, I LOVE baby harp seal fat.

I had often heard the expression "pizza pie", but it never really made sense before eating Zachary's. This, my friends, is a pizza pie.

Look, if you don't believe me, believe their list of awards.

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, and you have not yet tried Zachary's pizza, then you MUST make your way to Zachary's presently. This is not up for debate. Even people who hate pizza often enjoy Zachary's.

There. Done. Discussion over. That's it. Now, let's go back to making fun of Canada, eh?

Before Daisy entered preschool, for about two and a half years, she had a nanny we'll call Julia. She was an excellent nanny and an all-around sweetheart, but we haven't done a very good job of keeping in touch with her the last few years. We got back into touch with her recently, because some very good friends of ours are due to squirt out a baby any day now and they're considering hiring a nanny. We introduced them to Julia, which led to this conversation:

Good friend: Julia came over last night to see where we live.
Me: How'd that go?
Good friend: Pretty well. And she sure speaks highly of you and Hank.
Me: We all got along pretty well.
Good friend: She kept going on about how nice you guys were. Even you.
Me: Yeah yeah.
Good friend: She thinks you're a lot nicer than you really are.
Me: I suppose that could be true.
Good friend: Julia talked about whenever she was feeling under the weather, you'd buy her juice with lots of vitamin C.
Me: Yes, I did!
Good friend: She was really impressed by that.
Me: I'm a thoughtful guy.
Good friend: You just bought her that so she wouldn't get sick and need time off, huh?
Me: Maybe.

This is what my FRIENDS think of me. Don't they know that I'm just a big cudddly teddy bear?

On a totally separate note, the Safeway supermarket near my house carries about 10 different varieties of lube. Do all supermarkets carry that kind of lube selection or is it just a San Francisco thing?

I'm pretty proud of the meteorological scoop documented in my last blog post. Although it was chilly today in San Francisco, it most assuredly did not snow.

What, however, would be a good activity to do on a wet and cold day in SF? That had already been dictacted by a conversation I had with my darling six year-old daughter earlier that week.

"Dada, Mom and I have a question for you..." she began

"No!"

"Daaaaadaaaaaaa!"

"Now what?"

"Can we have a dessert party on Saturday night, with ice cream?"

"You know that it's winter, right? The middle of winter?"

"Yes."

"And so you've decided that the correct course of action is to invite people over for ice cream? Because people want to be cold on the inside as well as the outside?"

"Yes."

I checked the date on my calendar and performed a few quick calculations. Blast! I only allow myself to be a cranky bastard 364 days out of the year and Daisy had caught me on the ONE day when I felt the need to be agreeable.

"Bah! Grrrr! Brrrr! Why on earth? Ice cream?!? I mean, of all the reasons to have a party! What is the matter with you people? Gah!...........ok."

"Yay!"

So, Daisy and Hank skipped around to all our neighbors' houses and invited them over for a 7:00pm Saturday night ice cream party. Logistically this ended up working well because another neighbor was hoping to host people at their house at 8:00pm to show off their honeymoon photos and videos. This meant I would only be forced to share my house for about an hour. I am fully capable of creating a grinlike expression on my face for an hour.

Thematically, the whole evening hung together because the neighbors' honeymoon photos were from Antarctica.

Yes, that Antarctica. I know, I think it's weird too. As near as I can guess, their short list of resort destinations must have included:

- Antarctica
- Inside an active volcano
- The Mariana Trench
- Center of the Earth
- Iraq

I'm hard pressed to come up with any other list of vacation options where Antarctica is the most romantic honeymoon choice.

Anyway, the ice cream party went well. We had nearly 10 different flavors of ice cream, 4 sauces, 4 kinds of sprinkles, and whipped cream. Neighborhood kids shrieked and hurled themselves into furniture, fueled by sugar highs and whipped cream propellant. Grownups gathered around the homemade hot chocolate, pouring in ever greater amounts of Peppermint Schnapps. Or maybe that was just me. My grinlike expression was Schnapps-fueled.

After our kitchen was coated in 15 different kinds of sticky, we all moved two doors down for the Antarctica show. The pictures were pretty interesting. Glaciers, as it turns out, are more colorful than you'd think. And all the islands around Antarctica are teeming with penguins, just like in that damn documentary. They march, and regurgitate fish, and stand around for months at a time.

It seemed like a pretty good trip, but I think I'll still save my vacation dollars for the other 6 continents/core-of-the-earth. I should also budget some money for a nice hot-soup party this summer.

My neighborhood is all abuzz with rumors that it might snow in San Francisco in the next day or two.

Let me tell you something.

It has snowed in San Francisco. Probably once in the decade that I've lived here. However, I'm going to go out on a meteorological limb here and make a bold prediction. Please make sure you're seated. Those of you who have weak hearts or have been recently "seasoned" with buckshot should click away now.

It is not going to snow in San Francisco this weekend. You heard it here first.

Although my first effort at contacting people through my blog failed, I'm going to try it again. I have apologies to make and closure to seek.

1) Hey Diana Morrill! Remember me? We met through Maria Vourvoulliaiforgethername in college. For years afterwards we'd hang out on occasion and swap stories about failed relationships. I'd tell you about my girlfriends who had threeways with my friends (without me!) and you'd tell me about psycho boyfriends with guns. Where did you go? Although I don't have good ex-girlfriend stories any more, I can tell you HILARIOUS stories about how cute it is when my daughter mispronounces words. Email me for guaranteed yuks!

2) Hi Michele van Gelderen! I just want you to know that I know that it's my fault. I was a lousy friend. I'm terrible about returning calls or remembering people's birthdays or expressing basic human kindness. I hope you found excellent new friends, and not just Super Jews. You deserve it! I'm a jerk.

3) Hey Mario from Davis House. I can't remember your last name, but you lived in Davis House in Berkeley when I did (and I think in Barrington too). Anyway, I just wanted to apologize for threatening to call the police on you. Somehow, the vast vast power of being elected House Manager went to my head. I was a jerk. The next time we're at a party together, you can totally sell beer. I'll even buy one!

4) Hola Lucia from Davis House. Honest to god, I was not cheating on you the whole time during our relationship, just at the very very end. I would have broken up with you immediately at that point, but it was midterms week and all, so I waited until the end of the week because I thought that would be more considerate. That may have been poor judgement on my part. And then that day at the bar, years later, when I poured that salt in front of you, that was because I mistakenly thought that you had poured an entire cup of salt in my spaghetti that one time as retribution. See, I was riffing with you! To make peace! Jokes make everything all better, right? Anyway, I completely understand why you dumped that beer on my head. I was kind of a jerk.

Whew, it felt good to get all that off my chest.

You know what? I'm kind of an inconsiderate jerk. You know how I can tell? Technology.

A couple of my coworkers have replaced their old-school phone-company phone lines with Vonage. This is a nifty little product that lets you make your phone calls over your broadband internet connection instead of over a phone line. The quality is almost as good and it's lots cheaper, something like $20 for unlimited calls. For folks like us who work at home, and make toll calls for hours at a time, it's a big money saver.

The problem is that Vonage, or as I like to call it, the Jerkometer, uses technology (voice over ip) that is just a hair slower than regular phone calls. The end result is that there's a half second delay between when someone says "Have you tried rebooting?" and when you hear it.

"Only half a second?" you say, "That's not much. What could go so wrong in half a second that would illuminate your jerkhood?"

Everything.

I'm one of those people who interrupts a lot. When a neuron fires in my brain, it's imperative that I inform everyone IMMEDIATELY.

"Hey! What if we replaced our entire business application with half a dozen minimum wage clerks?"
"Guys! Guys! I just ripped the NASTIEST fart!"
"BLAH BLAH ME BLAH BLAH NOW!"

I converse like I drive in traffic. When I'm ready to change lanes, and I change lanes A LOT, I wait for the smallest opening, and then I'm gone. Now, imagine that my car is sluggish, but I'm still driving like it's a sports car (those of you who know me, please humor the implication that my normal conversational abilities are Ferrari-like. I write my blog posts James Frey style). So, I see the opening, but by the time I change lanes, the opening is gone. I end up slamming my car into theirs. Blood and carnage ensues.

That's what my conversations are like now. I try to deftly insert my important conversational snippet about flatulence and I find myself talking over my coworkers, who are blabbing on about CPU cycles, or some such nonsense. In the beginning, I was annoyed by my coworkers ignoring me. Then, I was annoyed by Vonage, which was clearly causing these conversational collisions.

Then, after weeks of this behavior, I realized that I was the only one who kept doing this. It was always me talking over someone else and not the reverse. I'm the annoying one. I'm the inconsiderate jerk.

This is just one more reason for me to hate phones. Or be a hermit. They're both pretty good solutions.

Note: This is a true story. Although I've screwed up a few of the minor details, I've been telling this story this way long enough that I'm no longer interested in nailing down the tiny errors.

I have a great last name. I won't write it here in this blog, but I can tell you that it's meaningful to me because my father chose it. This is the story of my name.

Long ago, in Hungary, my great grandfather was born under the name of Spiegel. Due to a falling out with his family over an inheritance, he decided he no longer wanted to carry the family name. Instead, he adopted the nickname he had been given as a child due to the color of his hair. He chose the last name Szöeke, which was a Hungarian word for "blondie".

Flash forward about 50 years, and my father is a child being raised in France. His name is Jules Szöeke. Jules, as it turns out, is an unfortunate name to have in France. For example, here in the U.S., you could have the name "Dick", but you'd hate it because although it's a perfectly valid name, it's also a commonly utilized synonym for penis. Similarly, in France, "Jules" means pimp.

As you might imagine, growing up as the "blond pimp" wasn't always pleasant. Pimpin' ain't easy, my friends, not even in France. He endured this nickname throughout his childhood but brought the teasing to an end by moving to Israel when he was 18 years.

The language spoke in Israel, of course, is Hebrew, which has its own alphabet and set of sounds. My father translated his name, Jules Szöeke, into Hebrew phonetically, so that the end result would still sound somewhat like his old name, but without all those troublesome whoring connotations.

The Hebrew alphabet, however, has a few quirks. One of those quirks is that none of the 22 letters in Hebrew are vowels. Although vowel sounds can be indicated by placing some dots beneath the letters, typically Hebrew is not written this way. Instead, fluent readers recognize the words just fine without any of the vowel sounds being explicitly indicated.

So, my father's name, like all Hebrew words, was frequently written without the vowels. The problem was that since his name was completely uncommon in Israel, people would read the words incorrectly. Instead of seeing the letters as the unfamiliar phrase, "Jules Szöeke", they would instead interpret them as better known words. The end result was that folks would read his name as "Rest in peace, chamberpot". This was entirely incorrect.

After all those years being tormented as the blond pimp, now my father was a dead piss pot. This was neither a welcome change, nor an improvement. He decided to take matters into his own hands. It was time to change names.

He dropped his first name in favor of a common Israeli name, but choosing a last name was more difficult. After scouring the dictionary for a while, he eventually came across a word that appealed to him. The definition said something like this:

Found in ancient texts, scholars do not know what this word means.

Hazzah! After a lifetime of having names that meant something unfortunate, this name meant nothing. It was unteasable! Not only did the name not mean anything, but it was documented in the dictionary as such! It was the perfect name. No one could ever make fun of his name's meaning again. He made a small spelling change to it and it's been our family name ever since.

Despite a family history of changing names, I'll be keeping this one. Thanks, Dad.

Oh, as a public service, I must announce that the final two hours of Arrested Development are being aired tonight on Fox. If you like the funny like I like the funny, I recommend watching. It'll be baffling if you've never seen it before, but consider that to be your penance for helping cause the demise of the best sitcom in recent years.

First, in what is becoming a semi regular occurrence in this blog, an apology to Pablo.

Pablo, you hear my whining and complaints in person on a regular basis and then you have to read about them all over again in this blog. I apologize for not being an interesting-enough person to avoid repeating myself on a regular basis. At least you can consider yourself lucky that you're not my wife. She hears all my stories about eight times each. I think she could tell the story of my family name (Oh, man, I just realized that I've never told THAT story here. Soon, my pets.) better than I could at this point. Plus, she also has to see me naked. *Shudder* So, be happy about that, Pablo.

Today I'm complaining about doctors.

Hank has been sick this week. Just like last time, she called the advice nurse to see if her condition warranted a trip to the doctor's office. Just like last time, the nurse replied that something was "going around" and that Hank should get some rest and drink plenty of fluids.

Genius.

I can't remember the last time that a doctor was able to actually assist me. Even when I snapped my collarbone, they just shrugged their shoulders (an act I was unable to perform at the time) and said there was nothing they could do. They recommended taking it easy for a couple months.

Don't doctors go to medical school for four years? What on earth are they learning? I'm guessing they cover "rest" in the first...gah...year? Then maybe "fluids" in year two? That leaves two more unexplained years. Maybe they spend that time watching E.R. or Grey's Anatomy to learn all the jargon they'll need in order to sound professional.

"Sexy nurse! 2 CCs of speculum! STAT!"

To be fair, there is a very narrow band of sickness that doctors can treat. I think the total range of sickness goes something like this:

0. Tip top shape
1. Common cold
2. Flu
3. Bacterial infection
4. Somethingosis (e.g. tuberculosis or halitosis)
5. Cancer
6. Limb chopped off
7. Death

Doctors are good at levels 3 and a bit of 4. When antibiotics got invented, that was the golden era of medicine. They've been resting on their laurels ever since. Aside from a few other diseases, like bad breath, they can't do squat. You get sick? You're pretty much on your own, sport. Have some juice. Slowly!

I can't wait to ditch my meat body and get uploaded into a computer. Then, my health will be the capable hands of nerds. Besides, nothing ever goes wrong with computers.

Among the atrocities in San Francisco's Unified School District are its Physical Education (PE) program. Kids in first grade, like Daisy, get two sessions of physical activity a week. These aren't the same types of PE classes that I had when I was a kid. Instead of playing dodge ball, or running laps. they're doing "sensory motor" activities or developing a "healthy lifestyle". I have no idea what the latter program is for. I guess they practice not smoking.

I'm not sure if this lack of PE is due to insufficient funds, or just not enough time in the day, given all the standardized tests they must teach to. It's all well and good to say that no child should be left behind, but in a footrace, all these kids are coming in last.

On top of this, Daisy's particular school has virtually no play facilities. There's no field, and only a small climbing structure. So, the kids there don't get a whole lot of exercise. My personal theory is that the conservatives are deliberately depriving the schools in liberal districts from PE money so that the red state kids can beat up the blue state kids. It's pretty clever.

Anyway, this drives the wife and I to get Daisy as much exercise as possible. She's done a smattering of swimming, ballet, soccer, and gymnastics over the years, but she eventually tires of these activities and we have no desire to force them upon her (unlike piano lessons, she's stuck with those!). Every once in a while she even gets a hankering to go for a run with her Ol' Popster (that's me!), but she generally likes the idea of running more than the actual running. I can relate.

Daisy's most recent physical activity is Tae Kwon Do. The class is pretty fun to watch. It's a beginner's class, so the kids seem to range in age from 4 to around 8. Watching those little four year olds practice their kicks and punches is damn cute. I don't know how many more years of this they'll need before they can actually injure another human, but I'd say it's at least a few.

The instructor told a story about one of his teenage girl students who was hanging out with some girlfriends at the Metreon in downtown SF. They were accosted by a bunch of guys who proceeded to harass them and eventually one of the boys hit one of the girls with a bottle. The Tae Kwon Do student sprang into action and took out all 5 guys before security could arrive. Apparently the security guards caught the whole thing on their security cameras and it made for a pretty good video.

Daisy is totally digging Tae Kwon Do. The fierce expression on her face as she screams her Hi-Yas is priceless. You go, girl! It'll be nice if she sticks with this long enough to learn how to actually defend herself, but for now I'm content to let her get the exercise and the enjoyment. I know she'll be attending classes for at least six months, because I paid for that much up front, but after that, who knows?

Hopefully Daisy will never need to defend herself physically, but it would be excellent if she could learn the skills. Somebody has to protect me from the red staters.

A new era of parenting has dawned in our house, a great and magnificent era.

The roots of this new era are alluded to in one of humankind's most sacred texts, the Old Testament. As I recall from Genesis 1:1, on the first day, God created photons. The next few days were a blur of land, heavens, plants, animals, and chocolate. On the sixth day, God created man.

Do you know what God did the next day? He rested. Do you know why God rested? Because God was very very tired from having all those little'uns running around. Kids are exhausting!

Now, do you know how God was able to get away from it all and enjoy some quality God time? I'm suspecting he shuffled Adam and Eve off to a sleepover.

YES! Daisy is now old enough and brave enough to go sleep over at her friends' houses! Hooooo hoooo! For the small reciprocal price of taking care of some other parent's bundle of joy another night, the wife and I get to enjoy a kid-free evening. Such a deal! It's like one of those deals where you can buy 10 CDs for a penny, and all you have to do is be a member of the CD club for a year or so. The only difference is that I don't have to send in a postcard each month saying that I don't want their crappy CD of the month. Hoooray for crappy and outdated analogies!

Don't get me wrong. Daisy is a great kid, blah blah blah, but sometimes it's nice to have the house just for the grownups. I get to do exciting grownup things like eating spicy food! Mmmmmm hmmmmm, soooo good.

Hooray for the parenting sabbath.

Unlike my normal well thought-out blog entries, today I'm just going to ramble. Yes, ramblin' thoughts from me to you. It's kind of just a weekend summary, but not nearly as interesting. Buckle up, kids.

Friday was a typical work-at-home day. After brushing my teeth in the morning, I didn't really look at myself in the mirror again until it was time to take a shower at the end of my work day. I noted that several tufts of hair were sticking straight up.

At this point I recalled that I had actually been out of the house for lunch with my buddy, Pablo. He said nothing to me about my wayward locks. This is probably due to one of the following reasons:

1) He's even less observant than I am (unlikely)
2) We don't really have a hey-let-me-give-you-hair-advice-or-maybe-a-blowjob kind of relationship
3) Since Pablo's hair was similarly tousled (but on PURPOSE, in a stylish way), perhaps he wrongly theorized that my hair-do was also intentional.

Beats me.

Friday was also my parents anniversary. A few days earlier, my sister called to remind me. My sister and I aren't terribly alike. She's not a computer nerd and I'm not....well... well, I'm not very grown up. We do, however, get along pretty well. One of the facets of our relationship is that we each have our own roles. For example, one of her responsibilities is to remind me of our parents' birthdays and anniversary. We had this conversation last week, and in fact we've had it once a year for the last 5 years or so.

Sis: You know it's mom and dad's anniversary on Friday, right?
Me: Oh, yeah, right! I forgot.
Sis: Now, do you remember which anniversary it is? Is it their 50th?
Me: Oh, crap! I hope not. Man, you asked me that same question last year. Maybe I wrote down the answer...

(I didn't)

Me: I can't find it. I have no idea if it's their 50th, or maybe 49th, or some other year.
Sis: We have to know. It's ok if we don't do much for them on their 49th anniversary, but we have to do something nice on their 50th for sure.
Me: I know. I know.
Sis: Ok, how will we figure this out?
Me: I'll call them and ask them.
Sis: Excellent. What will you say?
Me: I'll say, "Hey, you guys! Your anniversary is coming up! Congrats!"
Sis: Good, and then what?
Me: Then, I'll say, "Wow, how many years is it now?"
Sis: Ok, what if they say, "50".
Me: I'll say, "Whoa! 50!"
Sis: Good. That's good. Now, you realize that you cannot implicate me in this. You cannot let them know that I do not know how long they've been married.
Me: I know. This is my job. I'm the designated idiot.

It's my burden to carry. Also, it was their 48th anniversary. I wrote it down this time.

On Saturday, the wife and I helped host a baby shower. Other folks were in charge of bringing food and decorations. The wife and I were tasked with making our house presentable and baking a cake. Since I'm an idiot in the kitchen (not a designated idiot, but a regular one), I was tasked with making all the clutter in the living room disappear. This took many hours. I could describe it, but I did a decent job of describing a similar task in an earlier blog post. Let's just say that the garage was so crowded afterwards, that not only was it difficult to open the car door, but when I did manage to drive the car out of the garage, and close the garage door, it crunched an old baby-stroller, which pressed down onto the hose faucet, which then spent the next two hours flooding our garage with water. The living room looked nice though.

The baby shower was crowded, long, and boring. I don't know how all those people feigned interest in baby gifts, but I wasn't born with that gene. "Oh, look, another baby toy/sleeping-device/onesie/decapitator! This one is yellow! Lovely, just marvelous." The whole experience was horrible and testicle-shriveling.

Today , I ran in a half-marathon race. I was hoping to set a personal record and finish it in under 90 minutes, and I was super pleased to accomplish that goal. The race went so well, I'm not sure how I could run one faster. That might require actual dedication to this lame-excuse-for-a sport. So, just as I retired from marathoning, I may retire from half-marathoning. 10Ks, here I come! At this pace, I'll be running the 100 meter dash exclusively in the next couple years.

And just like that it's Sunday night.

How do these things happen? I'm guessing that some person who hates blogging thinks up a boring set of questions and then injects them into the blogosphere, preventing valuable information, like how Blogger X decides whether to part his hair on the right or left, from getting out. It's an insidious form of censorship. I blame China. Or maybe Google.

Then, somehow, the meme winds its way through cyberspace, eventually landing here. Using my vast powers of deduction, I have recreated the final link in the chain that brought this latest atrocity to my blog. I believe this conversation occurred earlier this week:

janelle: Hey, you know who's really dreamy?
Sarah: Alton Brown?
janelle: More dreamy.
Sarah: Oh, Mike!
janelle: Mmmmmmmmmmm hmmmmmmmmmm
Sarah: Super dreamy.
janelle: I'd love to talk to Mr. Dreamboat, but I'm so intimidated by his dreaminess.
Sarah: I know! Me too! What can we do about it?
janelle: Well, I remember when I was in elementary school, I'd pinch and poke a boy if I liked him. If only there was a blog version of that.....
Sarah: Oh ho ho! Are you thinking what I'm thinking?
janelle: Tickle fight?
Sarah: No! Let's tag him with one of those annoying memes! I just got one today!
janelle: Ooooh! That's a great idea! We'll BOTH tag him!
Sarah: That's what he gets for being so dreamy.
janelle: Super dreamy.
Sarah: Now, what was that you were saying about a tickle fight...
janelle: Tee hee hee....

And so it appears that both janelle renée of Just Thoughts and and Sarah of Sara with No H have tagged me with one of these damn question sets.

So, because I'm a big fat dreamy sheep, I must.....

Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot.

1) corndog
2) Marginal Utility
3) Sara with No H
4) Just Thoughts
5) I Am Prepared to Give Up at Any Time

Next, select five people to tag.

I refuse! If I had not refused, however, then I would have tagged

1) Dolface
2) Jen
3) Tasty
4) Tinyfeet
5) Vixen

What were you doing 10 years ago?

February 1996: Life wasn't so different, really. I was living in sin here in San Francisco with Hank, my soon-to-be-fiancee. I was still working at Hewlett Packard, but was carefully eyeing a start-up recently launched by two ex-HPers, dreaming of dot com riches. (Damn that bubble!)

What were you doing 1 year ago?

February 2005: This, except without this especially crappy blog post. I was living in this house, with this family, working this job, and running fairly often. Life doesn't change very quickly for me. The only significant difference was that I was looking ahead to the Boston Marathon, and wondering what running goal would be next, not realizing that next goal was Never Run Another Marathon. Ahhhh, the sweetness of realized goals.

Five snacks you enjoy:

1. Pretzels. I usually have a bag of them here in the office. (Damn, this IS an exciting meme!)
2. Tortilla chips. Ok, there's a bag of those too.
3. Dark chocolate. Mmmmmm, so good. More of an evening snack
4. Chocolate cake. The frosting has to be good though, creamy and rich, please.
5. Chocolate ice cream. The best flavor in the world is Godiva's Chocolate Raspberry Truffle

(Seriously, this is the crap I eat.)

Five songs you know all the words to:

1. "Happy Birthday"
2. "The Itsy Bitsy Spider"
3. "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"
4."Row Row Row Your Boat"
5. John Cage's 4'33"

(This is pretty close to the complete list. I'm not so good with lyrics.)

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

1. Quit my job
2. Solve the financial dilemmas of my relatives
3. Hire a gardner
4. Hire a financial planner
5. Ask for three more wishes.

Five bad habits:

1. Too much TV
2. Checking my blog stats and email all the time
3. Ignoring the giant stack of snail mail for weeks (or months) at a time
4. Tormenting telemarketers
5. Kryptonite

Five things you enjoy doing:

1. Scrabble
2. Reading sci-fi
3. Reading blogs
4. Finishing a run
5. Orgasming

Five things you would never wear again:

I don't get this question. Would it be because the clothes are too small?

Five favorite toys(/games):

1. Cards
2. Scrabble
3. Laptop
4. Kapla
5. Daisy

Oh, good god. That was horrible.