The wife and I had a date night last night.

We started off with a nice dinner at Range, which was one of SF's hot new restaurants about a year ago. Apparently it's a little less hot now, because we were able to walk in and get a table without reservations. Hurray for being one step behind the coolness curve!

Dinner was tasty, the cocktails were thirst-quenching, and I romanced my wife with conversational gems about Ruby, the new computer programming language I'm studying. She got to hear sweet nothings about how easy it was to write certain types of software and seductive murmurings about syntactical oddities. It was a nice meal.

After dinner we were feeling frisky so we looked for a place to partake in one of our favorite activities, Scrabble. As luck would have it, we were a mere 2 blocks away from Ritual, the top-rated coffee shop in San Francisco.

I'd never been to Ritual before. Sure, my worldly friends had spoken highly of it, but it was always out of my way. Finally, my time had come.

The first thing I noticed about Ritual was that I was obviously the least cool person in the room. Granted, this is a feeling that I get fairly often, but it was more apparent here than usual. I would have bet money that Hank and I were the only people there without pierced genitals. It was like one of those rides in an amusement park where you have to be a certain height, except here you either had to be either pierced, tattoo'ed or at least use a Mac. It's miraculous that we weren't lynched.

The coffee was pretty good, but I don't know if I can tell the difference between good coffee and great coffee. My neighborhood coffee shop is also listed in the top 10 of the top SF coffee shops, so I do drink a lot of good coffee. Would a man with a coffee cup glued to his cheek drink bad coffee?

Anyway, the Scrabble game turned out well. We tied at 385 points each.

After we got home, I fired up my laptop and amorously cooed at my wife. "Baby, would you like to see that Ruby source code I was talking about?"

"Is it as exciting as it sounds?" she asked warily.

"Yes! You sounded pretty interested during dinner!"

"Oh baby," she explained, "that was just the booze."

All in all, not a bad date night. I still got it.

I do most of my grocery shopping at Safeway, which is a big chain market. A couple of years ago some Safeway executive genius decided that what Safeway customers most wanted was to be relentlessly chatted up.

As near as I can tell, all the Safeway employees have been instructed to talk to every single customer at every available opportunity.

The produce stockers are always very chatty. It's hard to maneuver through the faux-barrels without someone robotically asking me how things are going. I know they don't really want to know how things are going. They know that I know this, but still we must dance this dance. Hey, produce guy, things are going goddamn ducky.

Then, should you spend more than 20 seconds perusing a shelf, a nearby clerk will suddenly activate, asking if there's anything they can help you find. This almost always happens when I'm discretely browsing something like the tampons section. Today it happened when I looking for nail polish remover (astonishingly, nail polish remover is NOT near the nail polish or the make-up, instead it's in the coffee aisle, next to the diapers. Duh).

I like my grocery shopping to be as efficient as possible, so these little courtesy chats do nothing but annoy me. Hey, cereal stocking clerk, you really want to know how I'm doing? Go ask the produce guy. He's got a two-year history on my emotional state.

The checkout process is a comedy of constantly repeated courtesy comments. Both the cashier and the bagger will each utter the following sentences AT LEAST once:
- How are you today, sir?
- Need any help out today, sir?
- How is your last name pronounced?
- Have a nice day, sir.

I should just walk up, and immediately scream, "ANNOYED! NO! SMITH! OH, IT'S TOO GODDAMN LATE FOR THAT!"

What part of taking my money requires the correct pronounciation of my name? I've had sex with people who couldn't pronounce it*, so I think you should be able to bag my groceries without insight into my ancestral lineage.

I don't blame the clerks. This behavior is unnatural and is clearly being demanded by insane management. I just don't get why. Who is fooled by this fake courtesy?


* Entirely false.

Last weekend we threw a birthday party for Daisy, inviting all her little friends to go bowling. Today we threw her a birthday party where we invited all our relatives. Wheeeee, the fun never stops. Apparently Daisy is taking after our friend Nrd2, who celebrates her "Birthday Month".

Daisy had told Hank weeks ago that she really wanted someone to throw her a surprise party. Hank, never one to turn down a challenge, decided that we should do exactly that for Daisy.

The problem is, how do you surprise someone who not only asked for the surprise, but also keeps getting reminded about the party by every forgetful relative who says things like "Hey, see you next week at the party!"?

Thankfully, surprising a 7 year old is about 1,000,000 times easier than surprising a 40 year old. All you have to do is not mention the party for a couple days and the kid will completely forget. So when I brought Daisy home this afternoon, after an outing of errands and rollerblading (which went spectactularly, might I add), and when her cousins and other relatives jumped out, threw confetti, and yelled, "SURPRISE!", Daisy was geniunely astonished and delighted.

Her jaw dropped, she emitted high-pitched squeals, and she was generally word-free for about 30 seconds until she finally turned to Hank and screamed joyously, "YOU REMEMBERED!"

Thankfully this will be the last birthday party for Daisy for the next week and a half, at which point we'll be visiting her grandmother and aunt in Vermont. After that, birthday month will start to wind down.

Meanwhile, as if Daisy's birthday wasn't enough, she's attending two birthday parties for friends tomorrow. Consequently today, we had to go shopping to buy presents for the kids. One of them, her friend Kelli, loves to play pretend and dress-up with Daisy, so we went in search of dress-up clothes at Target.

All the dress-up clothes at target are for 4 year-olds. Kelli is an exceptionally tall 7 year-old, so that wasn't going to cut it. We bailed on the toy department and made our way over to the girls' clothing department to see if we could find fun dress-uppy clothes there. As it turns out, they did have fancy dress-up clothes, but only for kids who enjoy dressing up as hookers.

Frilly micro-mini skirts, feather boas, and spiky heels. The clothing department was a crotchless-panty away from being Hookers R Us. Charming. What happened to capes and witches outfits? Does anyone play doctor any more?

I was on a tight schedule, needing to get Daisy home at Suprise Party O'Clock, so I stuck with the dress-up plan. Sorry, Kelli. Happy Whore Day.

I've been a little distracted this week.

Every once in a while I get some stupid idea that I can make money with some ridiculous scheme. In the past I have seriously considered the following:

• Counting cards and playing blackjack for big bucks (apparently I must move my lips when I count, because I've been tagged as a Counter more than once)
• Writing a book (Obviously I have a lot of important things to say. Have I told you about my daughter's Tamagotchi?)
• Becoming a professional poker player (because my quasi-autistic people-reading skills are worth gambling my livelihood on)
• Going into sports photography (Because I what I lack in artistry, I more than make up for in sportiness)

All of these ideas went where they belong: nowhere. But, now I have another idea. I've decided that I can make money making bets on baseball.

Nevermind that I don't live anywhere near a sportsbook. Nevermind that online casinos aren't legally allowed to do business in the United States. Ne-vuh-mind.

In the past I've been somewhat successful making baseball bets when I happened to be in a casino. I usually just eyeballed that day's matchups and picked the ones that seemed like good bets. My choices were mostly based on statistics, and partially on gut feel.

That worked ok (with my limited number of data points), but what if I could remove the "gut feel" part of the process, refining my technique so that it was 100% based on statistics and algorithms? What if I could write a computer program to tell me when the odds were in favor of me making a bet? I'd have to be some sort of computer programmer who was comfortably familiar with baseball statistics.

Hey, that's me! I'm a computer programmer who's comfortably familiar with baseball statistics! Me, Mike!

So, I tinkered with the idea in my head for a couple of days. I considered the fact that I could write the program using technology I was familiar with (Java), OR I could use this effort as an excuse to learn new technology (Ruby and MySQL) . It would make the writing of the computer program take a lot longer, but I'd have new technical skills under my belt by the end.

So, now I have this ENORMOUS project to do. It involves a computer language I know nothing about, requires statistical analysis skills far beyond what I possess, and the logistics of legally making money at this are sketchy at best.

This can't possibly go wrong.

Back when we had a nanny for Daisy, we had crafted a form for the nanny to fill out each day to give us some information about how Daisy was doing. Mostly we just wanted to know if she had napped much or pooped much so we could be on the lookout for super-cranky baby, super-poopy baby, or the dreaded super cranky poopy baby.

Now the shoe is on the other foot. Daisy has requested that I fill out a similar form during my daytime "watching" of her Tamagotchi, "Tommy". She'd like to know how many times Tommy electronically pooped, how many pixel-meals he ate, and how many virtual time-outs I gave the little bastard. You see, I'm in charge of taking care of Tommy while Daisy is in day camp.

Let me tell you how much joy this brings me. Negative one million. That's how much.

Daisy loves the little monster though. As soon as she woke up the morning after Tommy was "born", she cooed at the crappy 16x16 pixel image of him sleeping and excitedly announced, "Tommy slept through the night!". Having heard many times our tales of poor-sleeping babies, Daisy was immensely appreciative of Tommy's virtual accomplishment.

I promptly took lousy care of him the first day. I was unaware that the empty Hearts on the "Hunger" meter meant that he was famished. Consequently, I accidentally starved the bastard for the first 20 hours of his life. I couldn't understand why he was incessantly beeping at me and I punished him with a flurry of time-out presses.

Apparently if you raise them poorly they become ugly instead of cute. Now, our little bastard is fairly hideous, but Daisy still loves him. Meanwhile, my finger is poised over the Reset button in case he becomes any more annoying or unattractive. That's one advantage he has over a "real" child.

I can't wait to see what tomorrow brings. Negative two million, probably.

t's never easy to tell what birthday present will be most warmly received. Which do you think a 7 year old girl would appreciate the most:

1) New board game
2) Rollerblades
3) New book
4) Make-up kit
5) Tamogotchi (hand-held electronic virtual pet)
6) Beading kit
7) Doll clothing kit

(Most of these gifts were from her party and not from her parents)

I'll let you contemplate

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I was betting on the Rollerblades although I suspected the make-up kit would be a contender too. As it turns out, the damn Tamogotchi was the winner. Do you know what those things are? Basically, it beeps at you until you press some incomprehensible sequence of buttons, which "pleases" it.

It beeps if it's "hungry" or "bored" or takes a virtual dump. Then, you get to "care" for it, which consists of the loving pressing of the appropriate buttons. I'm looking forward to really hammering on the "discipline" button, but I'm waiting until Daisy isn't around to view the carnage.

I can't believe I bought her a toy that basically just beeps. And that she LOVES it. More beeps. Great. I is dumb.

I'm not a religious man, but on select occasions I become very pious.

I prayed to the almighty about every other month when I was 18. Those times coincided exactly with the occasions when my girlfriend's period was late.

These days I pray about once a year. This year's version of the annual prayer went something like this, "Oh, Lord, please don't let any of these children die during Daisy's birthday party, either from my vengeful hands, or from a misthrown bowling ball. Thanks, Lord." My rabbi would be proud.

So, Daisy's 7th birthday is this week and we threw her a party this weekend. Her birthday parties are always a pain in the ass.

Actually, the first few years weren't too hard. Throwing a party for a one-year old is pretty easy. They can't really explain any of their demands and they don't have any friends to invite, so you can just invite your own friends over, drink booze, and call it a day. A toast to Daisy!

That scam worked for a few years, but by the time she was turning four, she had attended enough birthday parties to know that she wanted one filled with her own damn friends and more juice than beer. I grudgingly agreed. Thankfully she just wanted to have her party held in our local park so that the kids could play at the playground.

This turned out to be more work than I thought. My wife cooked up tons of food for kids and their parents to eat for lunch, and we planned some activities for the kids to play, and we had to jump through absurd hoops to reserve a picnic table at our park. I carried heavy coolers many yards, interacted with many annoying children, endured the violence and tears of the pinata, and swore I'd never do any of that again, but found myself doing the EXACT same thing again the next year, and the year after that. It's hard saying "no" to cute daughters when they make not unreasonable birthday requests.

This year, inexplicably, she wanted to have a bowling party. Although it was going to be more expensive than a party in the park, it seemed to be a lot less effort. No coolers! Built-in entertainment! Easy peasy!

As it turns out, it was STILL a pain in the ass. We had 22 kids bowling, and at any given time, someone needed help. Either the scoring computer wasn't working, or the kids had jammed the pin machine by rolling dozens of balls at once, or somebody was whining because the computer just gave them an X instead of points for their strike. Also, I still had to lug heavy coolers around wherever I went. I'm like Job that way.

Meanwhile, I'm panicked that someone is going to drop a bowling ball on their toes, heads, or, knowing how elastic small kids can be, their gonads. Thankfully, only two kids got injured, which is less than 10%. I'm not sure whether God intervened or if it was just how the numbers worked out. Either way, 10% ain't bad.

So, happy birthday, Daisy! You're all 7 and crap!

I eat 3 Powerbars a week, one before each run. I've been doing this regimen for years. I've probably eaten 750 powerbars.

Mostly I eat the Chocolate flavor, but I've tried them all. It doesn't really matter what labeled flavor is. They all basically taste like ass with sugar. Cookies 'n' Ass, Chocolate Peanut Ass, Cinnamon Apple Ass, Ass 'n' Ass, whatever. I don't eat them because I love the taste (of ass), I eat them because they're supposed to be a pretty good source of fuel for running.

But the running is good, right, Mike? You enjoy the running?

Oh, god, no. Eating the chocolately assy Powerbar is probably the best part of my runs. A friend asked the other day what I think about when I'm running. My answer was basically this, "I mostly spend the whole time contemplating how much I'm hating that particular instant, how tired I am, how hot I am, how pained, or how just plain weary. I distract myself about every 30 seconds by looking at my watch to see how many seconds I have left. I might look at my watch 100 times on a long run. I hate every moment of most runs."

She looked at me like I was an idiot. She suggested that I take up biking, or hiking, or any other form of exercise. I shrugged off all her ideas.

I'm going to run until I can't run any more. It's going pretty well.

One of the delights of being a parent of a six year old is watching the puppy-like and unabashed enthusiasm with which they greet everyday life.

"Tacos for dinner? Hurray!"

"I can watch another TV show?!" Thankyoudaddy! THANK YOU!"

We took Daisy to see Cars a couple weeks ago. This is easily the worst of the Pixar movies (which still makes it a lot better than 90% of the other "kids" fare out there), but I don't think Daisy has ever seen a movie that didn't thrill her. When the lead car in the movie took the lead in the final race, Daisy was unable to control herself. She shot her arms in air, screeched with delight, and bounced up and down in her seat. She couldn't have been more excited had she won the race herself.

This weekend I took Daisy to a friend's house. He had recently set up a 3-foot deep kiddie pool for his 4 year-old son. Daisy splashed in that thing like it was the first water she had ever seen. The next two hours were an ear-splitting chorus of:

"Look at me!"
"DAAAAADDY! I'm swimming!"
"I'm a demeeeeentor.... I'm doing the huuuuula!"
"Yippeeeeeeeee!"
"BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH!!"

That's what three freakin' feet of water does to her. What's going to happen the first time she has caffeine? She may explode.

So, I'm wondering, when does this end? How much longer do I have to be greeted with excited hugs when I bring home gum from the grocery store? When do they become jaded? If the answer is teenage-hood, then I can accept that. If the answer is 7, then I'm sad.

I got nothing today. Let's do links.

You know those word verification tests that blogs often use to verify that it's a human leaving the comment and not a spam bot? (They're also called CAPTCHAs, which is an acronym for "completely automated public Turing test to tell computers and humans apart"). Well, here's another take on them.

Basically the idea is that a computer wouldn't be able to tell "hot" people from "not" people. They show 9 images from HotOrNot and ask you, the designated human, to select the three that had been previously identified from HotOrNot as "hot". The test works surprisingly with the female version. As long as you select the three thinnest women, you'll always agree with their results. The male version was tougher for me. From this we can learn that I have unusual tastes in men.

Unrelated, Google is sending me inappropriate hits.

I am mortified to report that my blog is the number one result for the words rump aroma. I guess I'm Feeling Lucky.

Another google phrase that sends people here is the question What is Pablo's Theory? Apparently my blog supplies the answer to that question. Pablo's Theory, as it turns out, is that I am gay.

That concludes today's gay ass themed post.

Ahhhhhh, Hank returned home today. Ahhhhhh. She's tired, but she seems to be in one piece, both physically and emotionally.

Daisy also seems to have come through her mother's absence unscathed. As it turns out, taking care of a well-behaved six (nearly seven) year-old for a few days isn't the hardest thing I've done. Taking care of a screaming infant for one night was harder.

I wouldn't say that I did a GREAT job of caring for Daisy. She was a little less bathed than I would have liked, but given the questionable hygiene of her father, that was to be expected.

My best parenting moment probably came on Saturday night as I contemplated what to make her for breakfast the following morning. I had been planning to make her a fun treat by cooking up a batch of chocolate chip pancakes, but as I contemplated the ingredient list, I had a genius-level thought. It was one of those moments when everything comes together in crystal clarity, enabling a profound mental breakthrough.

When it comes right down to it, is there that big a difference between chocolate chip pancakes and chocolate chip cookies? Why not just bake cookies for breakfast? Why the hell not?

Really, the main difference between the two is that cookies have more sugar, but when you consider how thorougly Daisy immerses her pancakes in maple syrup, I'd doubt if she's getting more sugar from cookies. Therefore, since pancakes are a perfectly acceptable breakfast, and since chocolate chip pancakes are just a smidge worse nutritionally, and now that we've realized that chocolate chip pancakes are essentially the same thing as chocolate chip cookies, then I am feeding her a nutritious breakfast. QED. Those Cookie-Crisp people were ahead of their time.

I sat on the couch quite proud of myself. I imagined telling her that we were going to have cookies for breakfast, and I imagined cooking them with her. Then, I imagined having to explain myself to Hank, our friends, and the blogosphere. I grabbed the laptop and started writing my defense. I wrote these paragraphs:

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that I'm a bad parent for feeding my daughter chocolate chip cookies for breakfast.

You're thinking that I'm creating food dependencies by repressing her sadness using cookies, feeding her unhealthy meals, and spoiling her all in one fell swoop. You're thinking that I'm not thinking. What you fail to understand is that these were freshly made chocolate chip cookies. Check and mate.

I mean, they weren't 100% home made. There was a box involved, but when it comes right down to it, did you see the box pressing the right buttons on the oven? No, that was me. Well, technically it was Daisy, but still, she's part of the home in "home made".

That's as far as I got before realizing that I was getting ahead of myself. Might as well actually live the event before I write about it.

So, I went to bed, woke up on Sunday morning, and.... couldn't pull the trigger. I made her chocolate chip pancakes instead.

Sorry, Daisy.

Hello new readers*,

Welcome to the All Sad Things Blog. Last time we covered the death of a family member. On today's agenda we have "Puppies With Cancer" and "Biting Into A Cookie That You Thought Was Going To Have Chocolate Chips But Instead Only Had Crappy Deceitful Raisins". It'll be a four-kleenex post.

Are the new readers gone yet? Good.

When sad things like death happen, my technique to deal with it is not to deal with it. I can eke out an "I'm so sorry" to the affected parties, but anything more soulful is a bit beyond me. Besides, who is going to believe me when I say something like "You'll be in my prayers" ?

So, Daisy and I have been emphasizing normalcy the last few days. Piano lessons, Tae Kwon Do, and all the other usual routines have been followed. This morning we got up and decided to go to our local diner for breakfast. After waking up Pablo with an ill-timed text message, we met up with him for a stroll to the diner.

Daisy digs her "Uncle" Pablo partially because he agrees to her every suggestion. Not only did he skip down the hill with her, hand-in-hand, but then after breakfast, at Daisy's urging, he attemped to race me home, running up the hill, while hoisting Daisy in his arms. I kicked their asses.



Normalcy is good.

*Blatantly and cheerfully stolen from Ze Frank.

Hank's father died last night.

I talked to Hank a couple times today, and she's doing ok. Obviously it's pretty sad that her father has passed away, but really Alzheimer's had taken much of him away about a decade ago.

Daisy is handling this whole thing well. She had really only met this Grandpa once, and he was past the point of being able to converse with her. Daisy knows this is a sad time, but she's pretty easily distracted by the goodness of her everyday life. I don't know if it has set in that the person who died is her mom's dad.

Meanwhile, our friends are popping up all over the place looking to see how they can help. Since Hank is on the other side of the country with her stepmom and various relatives, there's not much that our San Francisco friends can do for her. Instead, they're graciously offering me their time, energy, and food. Sometimes I forget that my friends are there to do more than just amuse me. Today they're not letting me forget.

I'm pretty self sufficient though. I got Daisy off to day camp this morning, with a proper lunch packed and everything. Breakfast had been stuffed into the correct orifice and all went well. Really, the only thing that's suffering a bit is my work.

Today during a weekly teleconference call, I had to admit that I had not done the research into the items that I had been assigned. I apologized and explained that I had been focusing on other activities and deadlines, which is entirely true. I considered however, as I was making my excuses, playing the Death Card. Who's going to blame a guy for not doing some research when there's been a death in the family? Instead, I exercised a modicum of restraint and kept a sliver of dignity. It was a close one though.

As Daisy would say, "Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!"

My dear wife, Hank, is leaving us for a few days. She's traveling to the East Coast to be with her family as her father's health has taken a rather drastic turn for the worse. Hank is holding up well, but she's sad, Daisy is sad, and I'm sad.

I'm going to put on my big boy brave face and take good care of my daughter though. I'm going to stuff food into her cryhole every few hours, scrub her down every now and then, and smoosh her into her bed every night. These are things that good parents do. I will be a good parent.

Also, since I'm as bad at replying to "condolence" type comments as I am to offering them, I'm going to ask that no one make any such comments here.

On an unrelated note, Mike Duffy has proved that his blog is aptly named and he has convinced me that the hubcap mentioned in my last post is not a hubcap, but just a paint can lid. Consequently there's no need to me continue revoking Daisy's driving privileges.

Sometimes we find strange things in surprising places, like pubes in our keyboards. Generally I chalk that one up to my occasionally-naked work ethic and my frequent shake-your-thang compiler dance. Other times there is simply no reasonable explanation. Like with this:


That's the roof above my living room. That circular object is a very rusted hubcap.

I know trash pops up in weird places in a city, but a hubcap on my roof? The only way onto the roof from my house is out our bedroom windows.

My investigation into this incident began by quizzing Daisy since her room looks over that part of the roof.

"Daisy! How did that hubcap get on the roof?

"I don't know."

"Did you drive the car out on the roof and leave the hubcap there?"

"No."

"Did you?!?!?!"

"No Daddy! I don't even know how to drive! I'm 6! And our car doesn't even have rusted hubcaps!"

"I'll know if you're lying!"

"DAAAAAAAAAAADDY!"

A dead end. Another possible explanation is that maybe our new neighbors hurled the hubcap out their window. Considering how neat and tidy they seem to be, it would be out of place for them to keep something that rusty in their house, let alone start flinging it around like a frisbee. It's very very odd.

Anyway, it would take me a full minute to get out on the roof and retrieve it, so the hubcap is going to stay there for a while. I figure that puts me one busted-toilet-on-the-lawn away from being full-fledged white trash.

Yeeehaw!

I don't know anyone in San Francisco with a pool in their backyard. I'm sure there are such people, but they stay clear of me and my kind.

Thankfully, people in the suburbs are less discerning. One such family actually invited us to their house yesterday to frolic in their pool. After a brief effort to wash off our city grime and urban flava, we bridge-n-tunneled it to the fair city of Lafayette for an afternoon of splashing and barbecuing.

We had a lovely time, but Daisy was a bit frustrated by the swimming. Although she has logged quite a few lessons under her tiny belt, she's still not a functional swimmer. If you tossed her into a pool, it's unlikely she'd be able to swim to safety, unless she was maybe two feet from the edge, and she had her goggles on, and no water managed to leak into her goggles, or nose, or ears, and she forgot that she always freaks out, and mermaids nudged her gently, then maybe she'd make it. Maybe.

She had been making progress (slowly) in her lessons, but she was often in tears during class, either from the lack of success or just from the effort. So, we decided to take a break for a while. This troubled me.

You see, I never learned to swim as a kid. Apparently I just freaked the hell out when my parents brought me to my first lesson and they couldn't bear to watch me cry that much. My father then tried to teach me himself, but during each session I'd howl and beg him to hang onto me, ensuring that I never slipped underwater. He never did break my trust, but I feared it each time. Whenever my family took a trip to the community pool, I badgered my father to skip the lessons until my family just caved. They figured that I'd learn when I was ready. They underestimated my stubbornness.

My inability to swim was a great source of embarrassment to me, so I never told any of my friends. I approached the end of each school year with great trepidation. Although I looked forward to a school-free summer, I knew that summer came with pool parties and other swimming invitations. Each year I'd construct a variety of excuses and lies for why I couldn't join my friends at these events. I convinced myself that I couldn't possible take swimming lessons at that point, because people would find out that I had been lying all those years. I hated it. I don't think I was actually fooling anyone, but I hung onto that facade desperately.

When I was about 24 years old, and living by myself, I realized it was time. I signed up for some adult swim lessons at a nearby pool and was finally ready. I was really nervous that maybe I was going to be the one person on the planet who couldn't actually swim. Over the years I had developed a pretty good theory about the potentially dense nature of my very skinny body which I was fairly certain would drag me down to the bottom of any pool, but I was willing to at least test this theory in adulthood.

The first moment that I had my face in the water with my eyes open was a revelation. I think the underwater darkness was what had freaked me out all those years. I had never tried to open my eyes before. Once my eyes were open, being underwater seemed much more natural. I was amazed to be able to swim and float on my back by the end of a few classes.

I'm still a really crappy swimmer, but I enjoy it now. I don't know if my parents should have forced me into those lessons or let me be. Maybe it would have saved me years of grief, or maybe it would have traumatized me. Who the hell knows. Parenting is a dark art.

So, on the car ride home from the 'burbs yesterday, when Daisy said, "I'd like to sign up for more swimming lessons." I sighed a big sigh of relief.

I wrote a post the other day bitching about how my new cleaning lady mismatches my socks. It's this type of scathing journalistic expose that my blog routinely traffics in. Apparently it creates bad karma though. The next morning she left the house without locking up. However, all the socks were matched.

Then, all day long, Google's blog search engine sent hits my way from people looking for the latest information on Star Jones.

Star freakin' Jones. For the blessed among you who don't know who she is, she's most famous for 3 things:

1) Being the overweight one on a talk show called The View
2) Losing weight
3) Getting fired from The View

Given that #2 and #3 negate #1, I think she's now anti-famous, but I'm really not in charge of these things. I'm just amused that people came here looking for Star Jones information when I merely selected her because I was looking for a simile for my mismatched black socks. Since she had been both fat and thin, she seemed like a mismatch all rolled into one person. I could have gone with Oprah, Al Roker, and even Nell Carter was one good diet away from being the joke centerpiece of that paragraph. Instead, my blog is Star Jones central. Go figure.

I'm just rambling today, but according to my blog notebook, I'm now officially all out of sock-related stories.

So, the other day we're rushing around trying to get ready to visit some friends who had invited us over for dinner. I went into Daisy's room to ensure that she was getting dressed. While nagging her, I picked up a nerf football in her room and began tossing it to myself.

"Daddy, do you know how to throw that?"

"Sure."

"Throw it!"

"You know, it's really not a good idea to throw balls in the house."

"It'll be fine, Dad."

"Well... ", I looked to see if the hallway was clear, "I suppose this is a pretty soft ball. Ok!"

I dropped back into my best Joe Montana and gently lofted the ball out her door. It bounced awkwardly in the hallway, and then disappeared into the bathroom making a weird SPLUNK sound. I stared dumbfounded for a moment, shaking my head at the fact that my six year old daughter had convinced me to throw a football in the house.

Daisy and I crept across the hallway fearful of the damage we'd find. I peeked into the bathroom while Daisy shielded her eyes. I quickly spied the football. It was making gentle circles in the toilet bowl, like the world's most painful dump.

I busted up while Daisy went to go tell on me.

"MOM! GUESS WHAT?!?! Dad threw the football in the toilet!!" she screeched.

"What?!?! Why?!?!" Hank asked, exasperated.

"Nevermind," I cleverly parried, "Let me clean this up."

"There's no time. We'll be late!"

"Look, our friends have two kids. They'll understand. I'm sure if we made them guess why we were late, they'd probably guess 'Football in the toilet?'. We've all been there." I explained.

As it turns out, they didn't ask.

"I'll be perfectly honest with you, Mike. I didn't think you could do it."

My wife said this to me the other day. Was she referring to:

A) Sex
B) Reviving our lawn
C) Staying married for 10 years
D) Replacing a lightbulb

All good answers, no? My proficiency in any of those endeavors is suspect. I'll let you contemplate the answer as you scroll down

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The correct answer is B!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Oh. Another post about his lawn. Joy." Screw you and your sarcasm.

Lawn Blogging is the next big thing on the Internet and I'm on the cutting edge. No pun intended!

Lawn Blogging has all the thrills of watching grass grow, but none of the pesky annoyances of actually being outside. This is technology in its purest form, bringing together people and my lawn. It's what the Internet is all about.

So, as you may recall, my lawn looked like this about a month ago:


So very dead.

Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I hate my lawn. I hate having a backyard. I hate the fact that if I don't take care of it, it's a visual blight for my very nice neighbors. Gardening is one among many household maintenance chores that make me resent ever buying a home. If it weren't for the financial necessity of owning a house, I'd rent again in a heartbeat. I'm missing the gene that makes me proud of owning land, that precious component of the American Dream. That gene, along with the ambition gene, and the aren't-babies-cute gene are just plain missing from my chromosomes. I'm borderline sub-human.

But, I do have shame. I have a lot of shame. It bubbled up my esophagus each time I looked at that so very dead lawn. All the Zantac in the world couldn't fix this.

I had two choices. One was to try and revive the lawn. The other was to just pour an assload of concrete over it. I was all ready for the concrete option, but bags of concrete are really heavy. Have I mentioned that I have little computer programmer arms? They're not really concrete-bag sized. They're more grass-seed bag sized. So, I got a bag of grass seeds.

I spent hours raking up the dead weeds, breaking up the dirt, and pressing the seeds into the soil. I fondled the seeds and massaged the soil. And, yes, it was the type of massage with a happy ending.

After weeks of daily watering (which is really a pain in the ass when the sprinklers haven't worked in years), my lawn now looks like this:


Hooooo hoo! Look at that baby! All green and crap! I know that there are still dead patches, and even a few weeds are trying to bust through, but it's MOSTLY alive! Like Frankenlawn!

Don't worry, I'm still working on it. There's more Lawn Blogging yet to come, my friends.

My 4th of July was so wholesome, I nearly crapped an American flag.

Some friends live on a block in Noe Valley (an upscale neighborhood in San Francisco) and hold an annual 4th of July block party. The date roughly coincides with the birthday of their son, so they invited a bunch of friends to join them. This year we made the cut.

The street was blocked off so it was safe for kids to play. Dozens of them ran, skated, and scooted all afternoon. There was also a big bounce house, a water balloon fight, and a kid-friendly rock band called Playdate that was fronted by the birthday kid's mom. I roamed outside for hours, chatting with other parents, grooving to the tunes, and soaking up the surprise sunshine.

I marvelled at how Norman Rockwell the whole scene was (assuming that Norman liked to rock) until Daisy burst the wholesomeness bubble.

"I'm the bartender!" she announced, stationing herself in the garage, behind the table of appetizers and booze. Several other six year olds joined her, to form the cutest and most illegal bartending crew you've ever seen.

Mostly they poured water, but soon their skills escalated. After a while they mastered the bottle opener, but I really didn't begin to worry until Daisy politely approached me and asked, "Dad, you like tequila, don't you?"

"Well, yeah, but not now."

"We got a bottle. You like tequila! I'll get you some!"

"It's ok, sweetie. I really don't want any tequila."

"Are you sure? We've got tequila. You like it!"

I assured her that I was not interested in doing tequila shots, and she eventually gave up. Other parents looked at me with facial expressions that were half bemused and half aghast. "She's a bit of an enabler," I explained.

Daisy went back into the garage, but soon reemerged with bottles of Corona in each hand. They were professionally garnished with slices of lime. She and her bartending crew then began going from person to person, offering their refreshments. The party host looked on nervously. "Oh, ha ha, I hope there are no police around," he muttered.

"The police can't stop this sort of thing. They might shut down this garage speakeasy, but these kids will just open their operation in some other garage. You know how kids are." I explained.

He nodded knowningly.

Although no one got busted, I guess it wasn't quite the wholesome 4th of July it could have been. We did go see fireworks though! It was blustery. Welcome to summer in San Francisco.

In my seemingly neverending quest to visit every crappy amusement park within driving distance of my house, today the family went to visit Bonfante Gardens, a theme park is located in the metropolis of Gilroy.

Oh? You non-Californians haven't heard of Gilroy? It's one of those towns so desperate for commerce that they have an annual festival celebrating a product that happens to be monetized within their city limits. It's like San Francisco's Sperm Week or Colma's Death Days. Gilroy's crack marketing team latched onto the concept of alliteration during the festival development and narrowed the festival choices down to Gilroy's Garbage Festival or the Gilroy Garlic Festival. It was a close vote.

Anyway, now Gilroy has another international sensation, Bonfante Gardens.

Obviously I entered the park with my mocking sensors turned way up. Crappy amusements parks are blogging gold. Gilroy is blogging platinum. Together? Blogging riches beyond my wildest dreams!

As it turns out, Bonfante Gardens is a pretty nice place. :(

The rides and attractions are mostly geared towards little kids, and given that I was toting a timid six year-old around, that's pretty much perfect. And there are trees and shade almost everywhere in the park. The place is landscaped beautifully. Large and graceful were spread throughout the park in a way that even Disney could learn from. The South Bay Area gets pretty hot during the summer, but I suspect this was one of the most pleasant places to spend a summer afternoon. Also, although everything was overpriced, the place is non-profit, so the money will go back into the park rather than stockholder's pockets (I never make money off the stock market. No reason anyone else should).

Finally, if you could have seen the glee on Daisy's face when she splashed in their little water play area, you would have lost a little cynicism too.

Maybe I really am out of things to complain about. Gah!

At the end of this blog post I will be officially (although admittedly temporarily) out of things to complain about.

We've had the same cleaning lady for about 10 years. She's great. Let's call her Perfecta. She cleans the hell out of the house, she's better at organizing things than we are, and she'll offer to keep an eye on my daughter when Daisy is out of school. Also, she's really nice. And she arranges the stuffed animals all cute! Doggies and kitties living side by side in harmony!

A couple weeks ago Perfecta started bringing a helper along because she has more work than she can handle. I applaud her efforts to expand her business, but this new helper is not so good.

Yes, that's what this blog post is about. I'm complaining about minor changes in the staffing of my weekly cleaning crew. Life is hard here on the foggy edge of the Western frontier.

What doesn't she do right, you ask? Does she fail to scrub the toilets or mop the kitchen floor? No, she does those things, but it's the little things that have gone awry. Like with my socks.

I have probably a dozen pairs of white socks. At the most hurried of glances, perhaps these pairs look alike, but they're not. They weren't all bought at the same time, and some are Nike socks while others are Target socks and yet others are Nordstrom socks. Not every pair is unique, but an iota of effort will enable you to distinguish the Nordstrom socks from the Target ones.

The new cleaning lady will sometimes just mix them up. I might find a plush but well-worn white sock paired with an thin and anemic white sock. It's like Laurel and Hardy in my sock drawer! Totally unacceptable. She does the same things with the black socks. Like the fat Star Jones married to the thin Star Jones. Does she think my feet won't notice the difference? They totally do! One foot is all, "Woohoo! This fat Star Jones is sooo cushy!" while the other foot cries, "Damn these pointy Star Jones hips!"

And the dishwasher! Who on earth loads glasses on the bottom rack? No one! Well, no one except the new cleaning lady. To tell you the truth, I'm not exactly sure why glassware needs to go on the top rack but EVERYONE ELSE ON THE PLANET KNOWS THAT GLASSES GO ON THE TOP! She's a cleaning lady. She's supposed to have majored in this stuff. Perfecta always put the glasses on the top.

Perfecta asked me the other day if everything was going alright with the new cleaning lady, and I assured her things were ok. I didn't tell the truth because the new cleaning lady was standing right there and I felt awkward complaining about her. Also, what kind of asshole complains about barely mismatched socks? Do I want to be that kind of asshole? No, I'd rather be the kind of asshole who just bitches about it in his blog.

From this we may conclude that everyone has some sort of happiness equilibrium level. No matter how crappy life is going, you can always find something to cheer you up. And no matter how great life is going, there's always a salad fork mixed in the stack of entree forks.