The government in the United States seeks to protect us from ourselves. We're not allowed to smoke pot or drive without our seatbelts, and almost anything you could fall off of has a guard rail or a sign instructing you not to fall.

Sadly, there is no such safety net to prevent dumbasses like me from buying a house. There is no homeowners aptitude test, nor special restraining device. All it takes is marrying a wife who has a lot of Hewlett Packard stock and you too can own a home, regardless of your ability to actually maintain said home.

So, anyway, our garage door has been acting all crazy. One of the wheels routinely pops out of the track, and about half the time when you're trying to close the door, it'll make it almost all the way down, shudder a bit, and then reverse course and come back up. This is cool behavior for a yo-yo, but annoying behavior for a door in your house, unless you like your doors to Walk The Dog.

I tried to figure out what was going wrong, but I had no clue. I did notice, however, that the track was a little warped. I figured that this was probably what was causing the wheel to pop out, and that was probably causing some sort of stress which was making the door unhappy about closing. Garage doors are sensitive that way.

So, we called a Garage Master to come over. He spent about, oh, 10 seconds, analyzing the problem and then did two things that any homeowner with a brain would do:

1) He oiled the track. WD-40 all over that bastard

2) He turned a knob on the garage door opener

I don't know if you've ever looked at a garage door opener, the actual device that hangs from the roof of a garage and opens the door, but it's mostly a black box. There aren't a jillion buttons or switches on it. As it turns out, there's basically just one knob and it controls how easily the door will refuse to close. Ours was set to the lowest setting, labeled "Wussy". The repair guy moved it to "Don't Be A Damn Wuss" setting, near the middle.

$85 later, our door operates like a dream. I is dumb. I even own WD-40, but it never occurs to me to use it to fix things. I kind of just figured it was for decorating my shelves to make me look manly. It failed.

The repairman also noticed that the wood in our garage door is fairly rotten and needs to be replaced. He generously offered to write up a quote for me. At this point he realized that I had no clue what was going on in my garage so he did his best to fill the air with bluster.

"Oh, and you see this spindle here? On the OUTSIDE of the track? Man, I don't know who did this work, but if I replace your door, I'll put that on the INSIDE of the track. It's a cleaner look. Very sweet. You are going to like that."

You know, all this time, I felt that something was wrong in my life, and I couldn't quite pinpoint it. Unsatisfying job? Life without spirituality? No, it was the placement of that goddamn spindle. I cannot freakin' WAIT for that baby to move three inches to the right. It's going be very sweet. I am going to like that.

On the positive side of things, the two guys from the advertising agency are coming back to interview me again tomorrow for another $200. I can't wait to take that cash and ask an electrician to turn on some lights on my house. It gets dark at night.

Being a certified D List Blogger, I get a lot (almost none) of fan mail. Here's a near perfect copy of a recent one:

Dear Mike,

You are awesome! And handsome! And cleversome!

I'm curious. I loved your old posts about Daisy being a singing/song writing virtuoso. Does she still make up her own songs? If so might I request, as one of your biggest blog fans, posts on that subject?

Also, here are naked photos of me.

Love,
Bruce

Thanks, Bruce. Nice gams! Anyway, most of Daisy's musical endeavors these days revolve around her piano playing and imaginary dance shows. I did, however, put the question to her....

Me: Do you have any new songs, like your old classics "Snap On Those Ol' Western Boys" or "My Heart Is Not A Two Week Old Steak?"
Daisy: (thinking) Hmmm....Um...Yes, I do, but it doesn't have a title.
Me: Could you think of a title for it?
Daisy: Ok...It's called, "I Believe in My Dreams", but that title doesn't have anything to do with the song.
Me: That's fine. It doesn't have to. Can you sing the song for me?
Daisy: Well, it takes a lot of space.
Me: You need a big space to sing the song?
Daisy: Yes. There's a lot of jumping and running.
Me: Well, could you manage to do it here in our living room anyway?
Daisy: I guess so.

Then she thought for a moment as though perhaps maybe she was making up the song on the spot.

Daisy: Ok, the first part has snapping, but pretend that's drums.
Me: I'll snap with you.

She snapped for about 15 seconds, seemingly thinking up the lyrics. Wheels were clearly spinning. And then she launched into song.

I believe I can
Jump to the moon
I believe I can
Fly to the sun
I know these things aren't reality
But I believe in my dreams

Much more finger snapping ensued, and then there were a few more verses similar to the first.

And that, Bruce, is the current state of the Daisy song union. Thanks for asking! Also, you should check out that mole on your upper thigh.

I was in Reno last night with five of my coworkers, for our semi-annual night of bonding, blackjack, and boozing.

Al kicked off the gambling festivities by suggesting that perhaps we should adopt made-up personas for the evening. Often when we engage the dealers and fellow gamblers in chit-chat, they ask what we do for a living. The answer "computer programmer" either brings all conversation to a grinding halt, or it opens the floodgates for people to ask questions like, "Why is my computer slow?" or "Have you seen that dancing hamster web site?"

People, I'm in Reno to get AWAY from dancing hamsters. Besides, if I found out that a fellow gambler was a proctologist, I wouldn't be waving my ass in his face, asking for a free exam. My momma didn't raise no proctology-moochers.

So, Al pretended to be a horse whisperer, Pablo was a masseuse, and I became an importer-exporter. Naturally, this was the first trip on record when no one actually bothered to ask us what we did for a living. Too bad. I mean, the comedic possibilities with the importer-exporter thing are practically endless, or maybe beginningless. I get those two confused some times.

I was still able to do one of my favorite blackjack activities though: relentless faux flirting with the dealers. This is satisfying for a number of reasons:

1) Unlike all the other women I've tried to flirt with in my life, dealers are being paid to put up with me. This increases their tolerance of my inane behavior tremendously

2) Almost every single sentence that comes out of my mouth at a blackjack table is a joke. This makes my flirting as harmless as it is annoying.

3) Everyone at the table, including me and the dealer, knows that I'm going to my room alone at the end of the night. Hell, everyone in the casino knows it: the pit bosses, the janitors, and certainly the eye-in-the-sky monitors. I put out that I'm-not-getting-laid-tonight vibe.

When I wasn't busy enthralling the ladies, I was eating a ridiculous amount of food at the buffet. After eating two heaping platefuls of food I was completely stuffed. Only then did I numbly realize that I hadn't had any dessert yet.

I grimaced, contracted my stomach, farted a few times, and made the tiniest amount of space, just enough to cram in two chocolate chip cookies, a slice of chocolate cake, and some weird dense bar with M&Ms in it. None of those were terribly good.

We stumbled back to the table and I moaned about how full I was to everyone who would listen. "Ohhhhhhhh, would you please rub my belly?" I mewed pitifully at an off-duty cocktail waitress. It was a near highlight of my night when she grudgingly agreed, giving my engorged stomach a couple quick rubs.

I still got it.

Our final dealer of the night was the best of the bunch. She was a sassy, smart, and statuesque blonde, who gave us advice on drinks, blackjack, and bears. One day she will either be running that casino, or maybe an astronaut. Her only flaw? Man hands.

Final tally? I won $58! (not including room charges, car rental, gas, or meals).

This weekend we attended the annual fundraising auction for Daisy's school. I gave a decent overall description of the auction after last year's event.

Fundraisers such as this are a typical way of raising money for schools, both public and private. Even Daisy's preschool, which was an unstructured, counter-culture, vegetarian, hippie haven, had an annual auction. Their auction featured items like:

• Aunt Mildred's tofu-spinach cookies! Best you've ever had! *
• An evening in Grandpa Moonbeam's hot tub! With Grandpa! (clothing discouraged) *
  
• Chest of children's hand-me-downs: includes Baby Birkenstocks, "Somewhere In Texas A Village Is Missing Their Idiot" onesies, and hemp diapers. Worn with love. *

Even when we were considering sending Daisy to private elementary schools, I noted that they had fundraising auctions. At the ritziest of these schools, I viewed their auction catalogs while waiting to be interviewed by one of their techologists. Their catalog was filled with slightly more upscale items like:

• Lunch with Mayor Gavin Newsome
• Wardrobe consultation by professional wardrobe colorist
• Cryogenic Chamber. Includes liquid-nitrogen cooled money chamber. You can take it with you! *

The catalog of donations for Daisy's actual elementary school has items that are more mainstream. There were gift baskets, restaurant certificates, wine, etc. All in all, about 1000 items were donated. Roughly 20 of those were art projects, created by the various classes at the school.

These art projects are what pulled in some of the big bucks. Each classroom has one or two parents who help with art activities on a regular basis. For the auction, they'll work on a special project. For example, the parent will get each kid to scribble some piece of art in a theme, like gay marriage. Then, the parent will take those homoerotic scribbles, transfer them to pieces of highly polished Italian marble, and build a house from that marble. This house then gets auctioned off as "children's" art.

Although many of the parents at the auction can't afford to bid more than a few dozen dollars, all it takes is two sets of parents from each classroom who have thousands of dollars, or are drunk and have credit cards. These parents then get into a bidding war, fueled by booze, competitve spirit, and a desire to bring home Junior's Gay Marriage Italian Marble Mansion *. This happens with almost all of the kid's art items so they raise a lot of money. A couple of the projects went for $5000 each. Some of them were HIDEOUS.


My wife, Hank, as it turns out, is one of those classroom art parents. She has spent months working on the art project for Daisy's class, and designed it to look nice in our house. She had each kid draw a nature-themed picture on copper plates. Hank then used a variety of chemical processes to etch the drawings into the copper. These plates were then wired together as seen on the right. It's quite lovely.

Thankfully this particular art project can be split into more than one piece, so Hank strategically partnered with another set of classroom parents who seem to have a sizable "art" budget. This allowed us to purchase Daisy's art while continuing to make our mortgage payments. It would suck if the bank foreclosed on our house, preventing us from actually having a wall to hang it on.

Nice work, Daisy! The auction raised over $150,000.

* Not actual auction items. Everything else in here is true.

Living in a big city, and having wordly friends, my life is a cornucopia of culture and art. The living room of my house is a virtual stage, brimming with performances from singers, dancers, and multi-disciplinary artists of every kind. My farts are melodious and my crap is festooned with colorful bits of semi digested gourmet meals.

Whoop. Hang on.

Sorry, I was writing about someone else's life there for a minute. In my life I only have one artistic friend. Her name is Johanna and she needs your help.

Johanna is collecting apologies: yours, mine, and anyone else's for a book she's creating. She'll take these apologies and print them into a hand-crafted art book using invisible ink. Under normal light the pages will be blank, but when viewed under a black light, the apologies will be revealed. I wrote about a similar project she did about a year ago, creating a book of secrets. I saw the book at a showing and it was excellent.

I urge you to go to her web page, read about the project, and make any apologies that have been weighing on your conscience. No Hail Mary's required.

What do you get out of this?

• You get to make that apology that has been festering in your soul like the pint of semen in Rod Stewart's stomach.
• Your apology might end up as a piece of art! How cool is that?
• You get TWO brownie points towards being my friend.*
• You get to help out a geniunely nice person.
  

Thanks!

* Redeemable at participating bloggers only. Dates and times are limited. Definition of "friend" varies depending upon your physical attractiveness.

Daisy's report card came home this week. Her first grade class doesn't give out letter grades but rather a series of minuses, checks, plusses, and stars. Additionally, the teacher makes some comments in the margin. The comment on this quarter's report card said:

Daisy adds majical spice to our class room. She is amazing :)

Ignoring for a minute that my daughter's teacher misspelled the word "magical", I'm mighty pleased with this comment. I have no freakin' idea what it means, but it pleases me. Magical spice! Is it a sweet spice? A savory spice? I don't know, but my daughter seasons the class room with delicious sorcery. She gets it from her old man.

Meanwhile, she got a good mix of checks, plusses, and stars. I don't know if Stanford will reserve a spot for her based on this particular report card, but it looks pretty good to me.

Actually, I forbid her from going to Stanford. Not because I'm a cheapskate (although tuition and boarding at Stanford this year is $31,200), and not because my alma mater, UC Berkeley, is Stanford's rival, but merely because I'm petty.

Back in my senior year of high school, I applied to about half a dozen colleges, including Stanford. I received my acceptance to Berkeley at around the same time I received a letter from Stanford indicating that they couldn't yet accept me, but they'd be willing to put me on their waiting list. The letter explained that they couldn't tell me how many people were on the list, or how high on the list I was. Furthermore, they wouldn't be able to officially accept or reject me until well after the deadline for replying back to Berkeley.

The letter instructed that if I wanted to stay on the waiting list, I should return the enclosed postcard, otherwise I'd forfeit my place on the list.

I debated this briefly, but considering that Berkeley was MUCH more affordable, and I needed to make a decision about Berkeley before I'd even know about Stanford, it was an easy choice. I'd go to Berkeley and there was no reason to send the post card back. I most certainly did not want to receive an official rejection letter from Stanford. I ripped up the post card and threw it away.

Two months later I received another letter from Stanford. I'll have to paraphrase it, but it said something along these lines:

Dear Michael,

It has come to our attention that you did not return your waiting list notification card. This was to be your indication that you wished to remain on the waiting list. In its absence, we have assumed that you intended to stay on the list.

We regret to inform you that we have rejected your application to Stanford.

Sincerely,
Some Pompous Jerkhead

Bastards! I threw that post card away on purpose so that I would NOT have to read a letter like this.

And that, Daisy, is why you will never go to Stanford.

You twisted perverts.

Let first say that I get a lot of sick bastards coming to this blog via various twisted search criteria. There are many different search combinations of Daughter Poop Panties Whoops Cheerleaders that seem to lead here. Also, there appears to be something called Blay Boy Sex that is very popular with our Arab visitors mistakenly arriving at this corner of the ogosphereblay. I'm not sure exactly what that is, but it sounds suspiciously like AMBLA.

I'm not talking to those people though. I'm talking to you other perverts. Two of you in particular. First up is the perv who got here by searching on Raisin Porn.

Raisin porn? Raisin porn?!? What the hell is that? What possible overlap could there be between sweet wholesome pornography and evil devious raisins? It's not even that you're bold enough to screw a raisin, you just get off on seeing other people do it. You are pathetic. Although this blog is the #1 result returned by MSN for Raisin Porn searches, this is no home for you. I recommend Fresno.

Next up is the would-be terrorist who is obviously crafting the most dangerous weapon ever conceived of by humankind. You seek to combine the most insipid agricultural species known to man with government regulations powerful enough to fell the mightiest of corporations. I speak, of course, of the person who searched for Sarbanes Oxalis.

Demonspeak! My wife can attest to the countless hours she has spent battling the onerous Sarbanes-Oxley requirements at her job. It has consumed and spat up entire departments of employees. Meanwhile, I have documented my endless and futile efforts against the evil and relentless Oxalis weed in my very own backyard.

But to combine those two is evil genius on a super villian level! I'm not sure you even comprehend the monstrosity that you are creating. It's appetite for financial requirements documentation will be INSATIABLE! It will destroy the corporate landscape, world-wide, leaving behind a never before seen swath of destruction and vitamin C filled stalks. Good for scurvy, but very bad for business.

I would kindly suggest that you find a more productive outlet for your criminal tendencies, like maybe fucking raisins.

I woke up on Sunday morning to a familiar sound, "Da da!" Was it the cry of a 20th century European art movement? No, it was my daughter calling to me from her bedroom. I took a peek at the alarm clock as I got out of bed. 8:00am. Hey, that's not too bad. Sometimes she wakes me up a lot earlier.

I opened her bedroom door and found her sitting up in bed, with her bedside lamp turned on, and a book sitting in her lap. She beamed at me.

"Did you wake up earlier and just decide to read to yourself for a while?" I asked, confused.

"Yeah! My book is great! It's about a magic treehouse! Want me to read to you?"

"Yes. Yes I do."

Ahhhh, we're finally at the day that I knew would eventually arrive. Daisy's ability to read has finally improved to the point where she can read something complex enough to be interesting. Her reading has attained escape velocity, leaving planet Dr. Seuss far behind.

Today she woke up sneezing and coughing with a low fever so we kept her home from school. She spent the first two hours happily sitting in bed, poring through stories about the magic treehouse. This made it pretty easy to keep an eye on her while still getting in a full workday.

This parenting thing just gets easier and easier! By the time she's a teenager, I can't imagine I'll have any problems at all!

The pictures from the Moussaoui trial crack me up. It's not that terrorism is hilarious (although Einstein did prove that Humor = Tragedy + Distance), but rather the choice of technology.

I can sit down at my computer and pull up video footage of almost anything. Want to see about 100 different videos of people farting? Ta dah! Many billions of dollars of infrastructure have been built so that I can have hot and cold running fart videos on demand. It's a rich media world we live in.

But what about the biggest trial of the year? What techology is utilized to transmit these vital images to the justice-seeking citizens of the United States? Is it high-resolution images, transmitted across optical networks? Or maybe a cutting-edge compressed video stream, based on sophisticated imaging algorithms?

No, it's some dude and his colored pencils. Granted, it looks like a pretty sweet set of pencils, but still. We could replace this courtroom artiste with a $25 digital camera and get better pictures.

I'm sure there's some arcane law that prevents cameras from going into the courtroom, but it just looks like the photographer lost his lens and sheepishly turned in a drawing instead. "Sorry, boss, couldn't find my camera. I drew a purty picture though."

This reminds me of an English class I had in high school. Our teacher put a very strong emphasis on creativity and encouraged us to push the boundaries on our essays. A friend and I often just skipped the essay part entirely and turned in some other form of expression. These included:

• An interpretive dance
• A music video
• A sock puppet lip-synched musical

But that was high school. I don't think that would fly in my current job. I can't imagine my boss would be happy if I said, "I know you were expecting me to write a computer program to process this data, but I created an ice cream sculpture instead. It was delicious."

I've wandered off topic, but that's why courtroom artists amuse me.

Today we celebrated the 75th anniversary of my father. Happy birthday, old man!

He doesn't actually read this blog because I've never told him about it. I'm pretty sure that if he did read it, he'd be fairly disappointed in my subject matter, sense of humor, and bosom fixation. He'd be left wondering why I waste my time on this and where his nice boy went. Those are good and unanswerable questions, so, let's let a 75 year old man enjoy his retirement, while his son enjoys his bosom fixation. Everybody wins.

Buying a suitable present for my father is damn near impossible. The man doesn't seem to have any respectable hobbies. He neither golfs nor speaks incessantly about breasts. What does he do with all his retirement time? Well, I think he spends many of his hours backing up the data on his computer, but he's already got all the gear he needs for that . (He has shelves covered with old floppy disks, drawers bursting with computer tapes, and a closet filled with zip disks. Additionally, although his latest computer has a dual-disk RAID disk array, he still performs comprehensive backups onto zip disks. I have no idea what all this "data" actually is. I sure hope it's porn.)

So, what do you buy for a guy like that? The one other activity we thought of that he enjoys is digital photography. He takes a crapload of pictures of his grandkids and lots of images from recent trips. So, the wife suggested that we could buy him some nice picture frames. That sounded better than buying him a book about the persecution of Jews, which is what I do most years.

We bought him a couple of nice-ish frames and wrapped 'em up all purty. My father carefully fingered the wrapped presents during his party today and correctly deduced what they felt like. "Oh! Pictures of Daisy!" he exclaimed happily before carefully removing the wrapping. The frames, of course, did not contain any pictures of Daisy BECAUSE HE ALREADY HAS A ZILLION OF THOSE, but rather of stock B-level photo models. He looked minorly disappointed and everyone laughed at our lame gifts.

Sorry, Dad. I'll do better on your next 75th. Love you!

Some good friends came over last night with their two week old baby. It brought back memories.

First, it's a pleasure to hold a small infant who is sleeping or at least marginally content. My parental "bounce" walk is still in good shape, so I'm reasonably capable of utilizing contentment inertia to keep a baby in that state. Although newborns are fairly shriveled and ugly, there's something endearing about their inability to comprehend the world around them. At this age you still have to wrap them up like a burrito, preventing them from repeatedly and unintentionally smacking themselves in the face with their own arms. They look so surprised when it happens. "Who did that?!?! WAAAAAAAH!" Good stuff.

Second, when the baby started fussing and the parents were unable to figure out why, I recognized the strained undertones in their voices. It's the frustration of having to solve a puzzle while being too exhausted to even think. Meanwhile the puzzle only has one clue, which is the sound, "WAAAAAAAH!". Baffling, it is.

I recall those days, constantly going through my internal checklist of why-is-the-baby-crying reasons:

Hungry?
Wet diaper?
Tired?
Needs to burp?
Too hot?
Too cold?
Too tightly wrapped?
Too loosely wrapped?

Once you've exhausted that list, your brain either freezes, or you just start making up weird reasons:

Prostate cancer?
Baby is mocking me!
Coulrophobia?
The terrorists have won!

Then you either jiggle the baby or feed the baby. That's what our friends did. They're fast learners.

Babies are hard.

This blog change took me way too long.

I seem to have passed some arbitrary threshold recently and I'm getting more traffic from Google and Yahoo. Let's abuse this.

I've inspected the top recent search terms from Google, Yahoo, and Technorati, and consolidated my own 10 top list from those sources. I will now pass judgement on those things that appear to be currently occupying the hive mind. Clearly my opinion is sought.

1) NCAA

My understanding is that there is some sort of basketball tournament this month involving U.S. colleges. Historical research indicates that this tournament used to occur in February and was referred to as February Foolishness. Before that, April Assinineness. I have no idea what they'll do now. My verdict? Boooooring.

2) American Idol

This is some sort of television show that does not involve political satire, outer space, or backstabbing alliances thus it falls under my radar. There is very little truth to the rumor that I slept repeatedly with Paula Abdul. I can, however, nearly confirm that Simon Cowell likes to have his butt bit. My verdict? Well, this is a very popular show. Then again, Bush was elected President twice in this nation....

3.14) Pi

I'm guessing this was a top term because March 14th can be written as 3.14, and is thus referred to as Pi Day. Pi is, of course, my favorite number of all time. For a long time I had the first 100 digits of it memorized, which prevented me from getting laid for a very long time. Now I just have a random 100 memorized. My verdict? Worth your searches!

4) World Baseball Classic

I love that they're calling this first-time tournament a classic. This is just like my six year-old daughter pronouncing some song she hears on Radio Disney as a classic. My verdict? It's appearance on this list is classic.

5) Peter Tomarken

Peter Tomarken??? I had to Google him myself. Apparently he was the host of a game show named Press Your Luck and he died two days ago while piloting a plane. Since he apparently was doing so as part of a charity effort, I will refrain from making the obligatory joke about him pressing his luck. Verdict? Somber.

6) Butik Batok

Ok, now I think these search engines are just making stuff up. Hang on..... Oh! It's some Singapore sex video! Well, this cements it. I am currently the only person that doesn't have a sex video circulating on the Internet. Verdict? Oh, Hank......

7) Natalie Portman

People are searching for her because there's a Saturday Night Live clip of her doing a hardcore comedy rap. It keeps getting removed for legal reasons and then reappearing. It's popular because it demonstrates one of the basic tenets of comedy: A fish out of water. See, she's a cute, petite, princessy gal who is rapping about sex and violence while saying naughty naughty words. Verdict? Not bad, but would have been funnier had she also slipped on a banana peel. Comedy gold.

8) Wafah Dufour

This one is great. Wafah is the niece of Osama bin laden. She's also an aspiring pop singer, a future reality TV star, and she likes to pose for provocative photos. Once I film my sex video with her, she'll have 100% coverage on the Internet. Verdict? Super star!

9) Isaac Hayes

This one is also great. So, Isaac is the voice of Chef on South Park. His character is known for his chocolate salty balls, sleeping with all the women of South Park, and his common sense. Isaac is now quitting the show, claiming that the writers have gone too far in their mockery of religion, that it has now crossed the line into bigotry and intolerance. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, creators of South Park, have retorted that Isaac didn't mind when they made fun of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or Mormonism. It was only when they took aim at Scientology that he became indignant. Isaac Hayes's religion? Scientology. Verdict? Hah! Hah, I say!

10) Britney Spears

Britney Spears is a worldwide fascination. Between her white trash husband, and her remarkably elastic breast size, she's a perennial top search topic. Personally, I'd rather look at or listen to cardboard. My verdict? She's a child.

Let the hits roll in.

An Open Letter to the Crazy Bad Breath Lady:

Dearest Crazy Bad Breath Lady,

As you know, I took Daisy to Tae Kwon Do class today. I got there before you and settled into my seat. It was much more crowded today, but there were two empty seats between me and the next person, some pretentious all-black wearing poser. I didn't deliberately leave an empty seat open to me, but the other choice would have been to squish between two strangers in the other row. Given that I hate, you know, people, I gravitated towards the empty area.

You came in with your son a few moments later. As you strode across the room, our eyes met briefly and we smiled at each other. You came towards where I was sitting and....kept going. You settled into the seat RIGHT NEXT TO poser guy and immediately started gabbing with him.

Poser guy?!?!?! He was wearing cowboy boots!

Oh, crazy bad breath lady, what happened? What about the connection we shared? What about you being sort of crazy and me recognizing that, but tactfully not mentioning it? Was that not a special bond?

It's hard being dumped by a woman I hardly knew, but it seems to have come to this. It's even harder having to crawl back to Hank with my penis tucked between my legs. (Seriously, it is hard to crawl that way).

So, next time, don't be all sitting next to me, and breathing on me, and gabbing away, no matter how fresh your breath might be. You could eat a gum factory and there would still be no room in my heart for you. This thing we shared, the you-being-crazy-and-me-politely-not-mentioning, it's over! Well, maybe that part isn't over. I'm not going to tell you that you're crazy, but our special love is no more. Poof! Gone.

Love,
Mike

ps. I liked your hat

pps. Goodbye.

Reaching the bottom of the blog-topic barrel in 3...2...1....

So, the weather here in San Francisco has been really weird for the last couple weeks. I blame global weirding.

We've generally been seeing gloomy, and sunny, and rainy all in the same day. It's been this way for about two weeks now. There has also been sporadic thunder, lightning, and hail.

On Friday night, for example, it started to hail a lot. Normally it hails for one or two minutes, and then it turns into rain. This time, however, it hailed for quite a few minutes, and amazingly enough, it stuck. Roads, rooftops, yards, and cars were all covered with a layer of hail.


All the kids in the neighborhood streamed out into the street. Soon there were hail ball fights and some small hailmen were built. Bits of the ice even managed to stick around until the next day. I've been in San Francisco for about a decade and I've never seen anything like it. This is what my front "yard" looked like.

Meanwhile, other neighborhoods in San Francisco saw none of this. We have friends who live about a mile away and didn't get any of it.

Kooky.

(Update: After I wrote this post yesterday, I looked out the window at the backyard because it was suddenly sunny again, and I noted that it was raining in my neighbor's yard, but not in mine.)

I took Daisy to Tae Kwon Do this afternoon and there was only one other student in the class. I sat in the back of the room, in the middle of a row of tightly spaced folding chairs. The other kid's mom sat a couple chairs away. She smiled warmly at me.

"Small class today," I said, whipping out my best I-can-interact-with-humans small talk.

The woman promptly scooted over RIGHT next to me and started to gab. Although I am a poor observer, I quickly noticed a few things about her. First, she was not hideous. Second, she was sitting very close to me. Throughout the remainder of class, she stayed close, occasionally brushing against me.

Naturally, I was consumed with the possibilities. Well, not ALL the possibilities. Ok, really just one possibility. Telling my wife. I couldn't wait to get home and brag to Hank.

I tried to commit my conversation with the woman to memory so that Hank could enjoy every minute of it. Unfortunately, I was soon distracted by a couple of odors. Not only was her breath a bit stale, but she also gave off the unmistakable stink of crazy. Not completely batty, but clearly a bit off. I decided I would bury this detail in the retelling.

After dinner, I discussed the class with Hank.

"There were only two kids today in Tae Kwon Do class. Just Daisy and Tim.", I said casually.

"Yeah, small classes on Saturdays sometimes."

"I chatted quite a bit with Tim's mom." I sputtered, unable to keep a lecherous grin off my face.

"Oh? How did that go for you?" Hank asked, .01% concerned and 99.99% bemused.

"Pretty well, actually. She's a touchy-feely gal. She sat VERY close to me during class," I bragged

"I see."

"But, I decided early on that I wasn't going to sleep with her."

"Well, I'm glad for you. I'd hate to see you investing all that time in a relationship only to make that decision later. That's very efficient."

"Ok, she smelled and I think she was crazy."

"Better luck next time."

I still got it.

My goodness! What a belated blog birthday celebration that was! Whooooooeeeee, we raised the ROOF on this blog! I'll be patching that roof hole with HTML all week.

But I got lots of nice blog birthday wishes in the comments. My favorite comment was from Victoria Winters, who wrote, "You're younger than I thought you were!"

This does not please me because I have some vain hope that my appearance is youthful and vigorous. I work at home and I'm married. I'm all done trying to look purty. The comment pleases me for another reason entirely.

This blog is filled with posts about juvenile annoyances, boobies, and a childish approach to relating to mankind. The writing style is immature and the grammar is hopelessly naive. And the humor, around which most posts are centered, is best described as stunted.

However, despite all this, despite the generally infantile subject matter, style, and jokes, somehow....somehow.....I exude oldness. It doesn't matter what I write about, I've just got that old vibe. You can practically see the wavy stinklines of mothballs coming off this blog. The stench you smell, my young friends, is me rotting from the inside out. Honest to god, this pleases me.

So, that was my favorite comment. Also, the one from Styro where she says, "Relurking shields UP!", for obvious reasons.

On a barely related note, I received an email from a fellow blogger today, but rather than send it from her blog account, she sent it from her personal account. Consequently, her real name was visible in the email header. Naturally, I googled her, and replied from the safety of my ogblay email account, mocking her breach in anonymity.

So then, funny story, she replies back to me, showing how my anonymous email ogblay account plainly lists my real name as the sender.

Doh!

For two years I've been replying to the occasional email from that account, and apparently my name has been stamped into each of those emails. Nice. All you psycho people who have viciously sent me email and then cleverly extracted a reply from me, well, I hope you're happy now. Also, if you know of any jobs with com-pu-ters, you should recommend me. I'm clearly skilled with the computers.

Happy belated birthday to blog,
Happy belated birthday to blog,
Happy belated birthday to IAmPreparedToGiveUpAtAnyTiiiiiiiiiiiiiime,
Happy belated birthday to blog!

March 3rd marked two years of this drivel. My blog is now officially a toddler in its terrible twos. That explains a lot.

It doesn't really explain why I do this though. Why do I blog?

Am I trying to document my everyday life? If so, this blog would be even more inane. More posts about computer programming, running, and getting Daisy ready for school/bed/dinner/outings/drudgery-of-everyday-life.

Am I looking to land a book deal? Ok, I confess. Yes, that's what I'm trying to do. I just know that there's a big book market filled with ex-marathoning, software-developing, awkwardly parenting curmudgeons looking to plunk down mega bucks for some hardcovers I'm gunning for that niche.

Ok, there's really no good reason for this. I guess I just like the sound of my own keystrokes.

In honor of this momentous anniversary, I present a picture taken mere minutes ago in my own very bathroom. Nice tile, eh? In exchange all I ask is that if you have a blog and you've never commented here before, drop me a line. I'd love to read your drivel.

Two down, N to go.

An Open Letter to the World:

Dear World (minus Hank),

I don't want to watch the Oscars with you.

I know you'd love to watch them with me. We have a biggish TV, an entire bin of chocolate, and of course my rapier-sharp wit. Frankly, I'm chuckling just thinking about all the funny things I could say. Good one, Mike!

Anyway, it's not that I don't like you (although given that there are over 6.5 billion people on the planet, I probably don't care for nearly 6.5 billion of you), it's just that I don't trust that we have compatible Oscar-viewing styles. This is very similar to my I-don't-want-to-eat-Chinese-food-with-you rule. It's not that I don't like Chinese food, in fact I like it very much. I just don't like what YOU order and Chinese food is often shared family style. How about you go eat your moo shoo or your sweet and sour pork with someone else? My Kung Pao and I are very happy together.

The Oscars are a three-to-four hour event and I'm interested in less than an hour of it. With my Tivo remote in hand, I can deftly fast forward through the who-died-this-year montage, the we've-still-got-some-more-clips montage, and nearly every single speech. I don't care who won for best sound editing or best editing of sound.

I just want to see the pretty ladies in too-small dresses, Jon Stewart make with the funny, and a very select number of speeches, clips, or introductions. If I have to take a survey in my living room each time I want to skip over Randy Newman singing his latest nominated song (accompanied by interpretive dance), I will grind my teeth down into little nubs. Considering that I only go to the dentist once a decade, that's problematic.

But, hey, if you want to watch the Tony Awards in my living room, go for it. I'll be upstairs, at the computer, bitching about something else in the blog.

Hugs,
Mike

Last night was our somewhat regular monthly poker game. After a brief consultation with Google that the expression is "Beer before liquor, never been sicker" and not "beer after liquor, never been sicker", we busted out the martini classes at the beginning of the evening.

Martinis get me drunk pretty quickly. Maybe it's that the vodka affects me more strongly than beer, or perhaps it has something to do with our oversized martini glasses, but I was feeling no pain pretty early on in the evening. A couple hours later I was slurring my words and had completely forgotten the most important rule of drinking. That rule is: Drink Lots Of Water.

Thankfully I didn't start puking, but I did wake up this morning with a sizable headache. It has been quite a while since I was hungover. I had forgotten how unpleasant it is.

Unfortunately, when I got out of bed, our house was already filled with activity. Hank had invited some other parents from Daisy's school over, so that they could work on a school project. Meanwhile I had promised Daisy that I would go buy bagels for breakfast, so I was forced to actually be productive and social on a day when all I really wanted to do was moan helplessly.

The whole day was pretty busy, filled with houseguests, errands and chores. My hangover did eventually subside, but I never really felt 100%. Thus I ended up cheating today's guests of being able to enjoy the full magnificence of my awesome wit. Poor bastards.

We never got to the beer.

Who's in the mood for some sweentess? Some sugary, syrupy, tooth-melting sweetness? Me too. Look out, folks, 4 out of 5 dentists recommend skipping this blog post.

So, as you may recall, I spent the weekend in a condo in Lake Tahoe with my daughter, my wife, a friend, and her son. This was the first time our family had gone on a trip with their family.

The friend explained to us early on in the trip that her son, who we'll call Buster, wasn't quite as quiet as Daisy. He had what she referred to as "boy energy". We were somewhat familiar with the concept having heard other parents refer to this difference between the energy and behavior of boys vs girls.

It turned out to be an eye-opening weekend. Now, Buster certainly is a bright and loving child, but he was also definitely a bundle of "boy energy". He constantly sought to test limits and push boundaries. The difference between his behavior and Daisy's behavior was vast.

Now, Daisy sometimes errs on the side of being overly cautious. For example, when she and Buster were in ski school on Saturday they had lunch with the other kids in the cafeteria. I was discretely standing off to the side (watching her not eat peanuts). At one point during the lunch hour, a ski school employee turned on a video in the corner of the room. As soon as Buster finished his hot dog, he popped out of his chair and wandered over to the TV side of the room. Slowly, all the kids at Daisy's table made the same migration. Eventually, Daisy was the last person sitting there. Why did she remain seated? Because no one had told her she was excused.

Finally, she did go, but it took a while. So, Buster felt free to leave because no one had told him it he couldn't. Daisy, on the other hand, was reluctant to go without someone telling her it was ok.

Ok, in this example, clearly Buster had the right idea. But, after spending 3 days of watching him constantly test the limits of what he could get away with, I have to say that I am IMMENSELY grateful for a child like Daisy. During most of my interactions with Buster, he tried to get away with something.

We walked out of that condo at the end of the weekend and I immediately told Daisy what a great child she was. My love for this kid grew visibily over those 3 days. I've been holding myself back from piling on extra desserts and filling her room with new toys. I look at her anew now, and she seems miraculous to me. I've been overcome with appreciation for her enthusiasm, kindness, and her willingness to listen to her parents. I tell you, I've been staring at all gooey-eyed ever since the weekend. I think I'm beginning to creep her out.

She just came into my office just now and saw a big stack of Post-Its. Her eyes lit up and she exclaimed, "Oooh! Post-Its!".

Just Post-Its. That's all it took. I'm a lucky man.

I had my big interview today.

As I mentioned in yesterday's blog post, I had replied to a Craiglist posting that was looking for a computer programmer with my qualifications. They wanted to interview said programmer about programmer stuff for an hour and the gig paid $200. Seemed like easy money, although I was baffled why anyone would pay that much just to talk. Still, as long as I stuck to my principles and didn't kiss them on the lips, I figured it was worth doing.

Turns out the ad was posted by an advertising agency here in San Francisco that was trying to figure out how to market a new piece of software to computer programmers. Since they knew nothing about programmer "culture", they sent two fresh-faced and earnest gentlemen to my house, equipped with notepads and a video camera, to try and get into the mind of Mike, Alpha Programmer extraordinaire.

They set up camp in my office and started to ask me questions:

What does a programmer do?

I did my best to give them a non-technical answer to this. They seemed like sharp guys so it wasn't like explaining calculus to dogs, but I still did a pretty mediocre job of it.

How did you pick the tools that you use?

I talked a lot about a program I use called Eclipse and they were really curious about what made it special. I think my answer (that it was free (as in "free beer" and "free speech"!)) wasn't really what they wanted to hear. In hindsight, since they were trying to learn how to market a commercial product, I can see why.

Where do you get your information? What websites? Which magazines?

They actually videotaped me showing the bookmarks menus on my browser. Thankfully the one bit of cleaning I did before they arrived wasn't the bathroom, or vacuuming, or straightening my desk, but rather I organized my bookmarks. So, when they wanted to see my browser "favorites", I proudly showed off my menu. When they asked what was in my "blogs" folder, I was a little more hesitant.

Where do programmers hang out? Either online or in person.

Hang out? Hang out?!? I stumbled on this one. For the "online" portion of the question, I talked a lot about how much I love instant messaging. For the in-person part, I was stymied. Is there a Peach Pit for programmers? Eventually I just explained that I had a kid and a wife, and if programmers wanted to come hang out with me, they'd pretty much have to do so in my living room.

How do programmers talk to each other? Is there special jargon? What do they talk about?

I really felt like screwing with them on this one. "Yeah, guys, when we really dig something, we say, 'Whoa! Nice Dirty Sanchez!'". In the end, I just explained that I wasn't one of those guys whose IM messages looked like "c u l8r, u l33t hax0r", but I browsed one of my chat sessions for them. They videotaped me paging through a detailed discussion of last week's Battlestar Galactica episode. That pretty much cemented my geek credentials

Then, they wanted to get some "day in the life" footage. They asked me to pretend I was working for a few seconds. That was easy since I typically pretend for about 7.5 hours a day. Then they wanted to shoot some footage of "me coming home". I'm sure top marketing analysts will spend hours pouring over the footage of me taking off my shoes, getting a drink of water, and checking my blog stats.

Finally, they peeled off two crisp $100 bills, thanked me for a wildly informative session, and off they went. And I never had to kiss them on the lips.