Things are getting busy.

• Work is heating up, which is never pleasant (although Pablo has it worse than me!).
• Daisy's school year has started, which means that we get up earlier in the morning and are generally a little more rushed.
• I'm still working on my idiotic project to predict baseball winners (and so far in its first 2 days of predictions, it has done laughably poorly).
• I've got a PTA Bored Meeting this week.
• And I'll be out of town this weekend for my 10 Year Anniversary!

Anyway, try to manage your days despite the crushing depression caused by my light posting schedule.

At dinner I'll usually do my shtick, attempting to entertain the family. More and more often these days, however, my efforts are met with Daisy exclaiming, "Daddy! Quit it!" Sometimes there's also the merest hint of an eye-roll.

Yesterday, I tried to figure out when this behavior had started. I decided that it had probably been going on for a month or so. So then I thought back to what might have occurred a month ago. That's when I remembered. Daisy turned seven a month ago. I'm no longer funny.

When she was five, we had a conversation that I wrote about nearly two years ago in this blog post:

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

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

"Seven," she ominously replied.

Two years to go.

Holy crap! I'm not funny to seven year-olds! She was right! That's just spooky.

Last night we held our irregularly monthly poker night. We broke out the booze, some new decks of cards, and our fancy poker chip set.

As with any good poker chip set, it comes with an extra poker chip marked with the word, "Dealer". This chip is supposed to sit in front of whomever is acting as the dealer during that hand. It's a handy visual reminder.

That chip isn't the perfect device though. It's a little small, could easily get lost, and frankly, does nothing to remind me of the last 10 years of servitude I've spent at my corporate job. Wait a minute! I have just the thing! After a quick modification with my handy dandy Sharpie...


Ahhhhhh, absurdity eases the pain of life. So heavy! I look forward to finding many more inappropriate uses for my crystal plaque "award". Thanks, Company B!

Roughly 10 years ago I quit my job at Hewlett Packard to become employee #00000001 at a startup that two of my HP buddies had founded the year before. By charging embarrassingly high consulting rates, and selling the odd piece of corporate software every now and then, we grew the company and paid ourselves decent bonuses each year.

We got acquired by a 200 person Silicon Valley software company about 4 or 5 years later. (Had we been savvier negotiators, and had I sold every last bit of stock ASAP, I might have made a million dollars. Instead, by a variety of circumstances, most of which are my fault, I still have every one of those shares of now greatly devalued stock, and now I'm a thousandaire.) A few months after being acquired by Company A, Company B came along and gobbled up Company A. I've been an employee of Company B ever since.

Company B ain't a bad place to be. I'm pretty sure that the stock will never make me rich, and I often wonder if they have what it takes to succeed in the marketplace, but overall my job is pretty good. Still, I'm a reasonably bright guy, so I sometimes wonder what a more ambitious man would have done with the last 10 years.

The Human Resources department in Company B decided that my official hire date would be the date that I joined my buddies' startup. Because of that odd bit of HR accounting, I'm now one of the longest tenured employees in Company B. This week I got rewarded for 10 years of good attendance. Seat time counts in corporate America.

I received a big heavy box in the mail on Thursday and it contained the following two uh.... awards:

The "crystal plaque" is engraved with my name, Company B's name, and a somber reminder of how I've spent the last decade, the phrase, "10 Years of Service: 1996 - 2006".

Just in case, however, I'm too thickheaded to really understand the concept of 10 years of my life passing, they also thoughtfully included an ugly clock, whose sole purpose seems to be to really drive home the "Hey, Mike! Tick tick tick!" message. Nicely played, Company B. Nicely played.

I can't imagine what I'm supposed to do with these things. They're really heavy and heavy objects often fool me into feeling guilty about throwing them away. Even the packing material alone consumes so much space in my trash can, that it will be hard to fit all our normal weekly trash.

I don't know how much these things cost, and I don't mean to be an ingrate, but I would have gladly taken the money instead. Maybe I'll let them know that before my 25 year "anniversary" so they can save the shipping costs on my Geritol and Commemorative Tombstone "awards".

One of my favorite places in San Francisco is a little chocolate store that we've been visiting on a regular basis for years. When we walk up to the store, Daisy runs ahead and leaps through the doorway. She's always greeted with a hearty Norm-esque "Daisy!" from the proprietor. He gives her a free piece of chocolate (dark chocolate because of her dairy allergy) and regales us with amusing stories from his life.

When we visited the store on Sunday the owner had something different to say. He explained that earlier in the day a woman had come by who was doing a documentary on chocolate. She was an accomplished documentarian and spent some time interviewing his customers. The store owner suggested that he had one more customer, a sweet and articulate 7 year-old girl, who would undoubtedly make for some great footage.

So, he hooked us up with the documentarian and we chatted on the phone earlier this week. Helping her with this project sounded like fun, so I cut out of work for a long lunch today and took Daisy down to the chocolate store to be interviewed.

First the documentarian wanted to get a bunch of footage of us walking down the street. She struggled to keep up as Daisy skipped along the sidewalk. We did multiple takes and Daisy hammed it up a bit with some faux enthusiasm about the storefront windows we were passing.

"Oh, daddy! Look at those great running shoes! You like running shoes!"

Eventually we got to the store and the documentarian interviewed Daisy about chocolate. She asked Daisy how chocolate makes her feel, and what she likes about it, and any other open ended question she could think of. I tried to stay out of their way, but occasionally I'd guide the conversation into a more fruitful direction.

After over 30 minutes of footage, including hearing Daisy describe how chocolate makes her feel about 10 times, I decided to put things in perspective for them.

"Hey Daisy," I instigated, "Tell her if chocolate is your favorite dessert."

Daisy smiled sweetly and shook her head. "Oh no," she explained, "My favorite is vanilla ice cream."

There was a brief moment of silence while the woman, who has bet the next stage of her film career on chocolate, absorbed this comment.

"So.... you prefer....vanilla? Over chocolate?"

Daisy nodded. I could almost hear the videotape screeching to a halt. Things wrapped up pretty quickly after that.

Afterwards I asked the woman if she'd like to hear my favorite chocolate story. I plopped down on a nearby bench with Daisy on my lap and told her of the time I was a student at Berkeley and one evening I had the....uh....munchies. I couldn't decide whether to eat a salty snack or a chocolatey snack. I pondered this and suddenly had an epiphany. I would have a salty chocolatey snack.

I got out the Hershey's chocolate syrup, a spoon, and some salt. I made a spoonful of syrup, sprinkled with it salt, and downed it. It was pretty good, but maybe a little too much salt.

I prepared another batch with a little less salt and downed that. It was even better, but still just a hair too much salt.

The third batch was the best yet, but it needed just a scooch less salt.

It took maybe five iterations of this before I realized that the chocolate was best all by itself.

I don't think the documentarian was impressed.

Following Janelle's lead, I upgraded my blog to the Blogger Beta. I'm not exactly sure why I did it. There was no feature that I wanted to use, but I was starting to feel like a Luddite. I mean if Janelle, a lowly furniture designer, was going take the technological leap, then I, an illustrious computer programmer, would be leaping off the Empire State Building right behind her, hoping to pass her on the way down.

The move to Beta seemed to go smoothly last night, but then I noticed something odd today. My sitemeter, which tells me how many people visited my blog (and thus how many people love me) was reporting very low numbers.

For example, yesterday, before I did the move to Beta, I had about 60 visitors. That's a score of 60 Loveworthinesses. Today my Loveworthinesses score will probaby be in the 30s (and a bunch of those are me loving myself). This will be the lowest Loveworthinesses score I've had on a weekday in a long time.

Is it coincidence that I stopped being loved exactly when I moved to the Beta Blogger? Or am I just inherently less lovable now?

What if my blog smelled lemony? Maybe that's a Beta feature.

Often, when I'm going grocery shopping, I'll be forced to decide, "Which fruit do I want Daisy to smell like?"

Most of the hair products that we buy for her have some fruity scent. Currently her shampoo smells like watermelon and her detangler smells like green apple. The combination is disturbingly similar to the fruit salad we often order at our local diner. Although I do kind of love fruit salad, it's a totally different love than I have for my daughter. Very confusing on sleep-deprived mornings.

It's not just the children's hair supplies that are afflicted with fruity odors, it's a fairly large percentage of all cleaning supplies. Who decided that my laundry is supposed to smell like grapefruit, or that my dishes should have a lemony zest? Most of the time I'm eating foods that don't need lemon. I blame the marketing people. Pawns of the lemon lobby, they are.

And, as long as I'm yapping about grocery stores, can I say that it's odd that the power bars are in the ice cream aisle? What if I'm in that aisle and I only have enough time or money to pick one product? Power bar or ice cream? Power bar or ice cream?

Am I the good exercising Mike or the evil dessert-scarfing Mike? How do I decide? Have I grown a goatee? 1000 quatloos on the evil Mike! Now I'm just mixing my references.

Anyway, life is challenging in odd ways.

Although camping isn't always the most luxurious and restful way to spend your leisure time, I was reminded that hotel and motels stays can be equally distasteful. Here are my two worst experiences.

When I was going to college at Berkeley, for a while I had a girlfriend attending college at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, which was over 200 miles away. Occasionally I'd come down to see her, and we'd stay in some cheap motel since her sorority was rather strict about allowing boys in the house.

I researched these hotels carefully in my AAA book, looking for something both affordable and pleasant. One evening my gal and I strode into a motel I had carefully chosen for a romantic evening.

Ok, so sure there were some stains on the carpet and bedspread. We knew this wasn't a five star hotel. No big deal.

Alright, there were a few dead bugs. Not a show stopper. We'd seen dead bugs before. I scooped one into the trash bin. "Look!" I exclaimed to my wary girlfriend, "That's what trash cans are for!"

The bathroom was really the kicker though. First, there was a puddle of water in the corner. Some exposed wire snaked out of a hole in the bathroom wall, and the end of it dangled alarmingly into the puddle. We stepped gingerly past the electrocution feature and noticed that the sink contained a sizable helping of vomit. It would seem that the previous room guests had recently consumed some broccoli. Apparently it did not sit well with them.

The toilet, however, in what I can only describe as the ironic punchline, was wrapped by a paper strip upon which we read the slogan, "Sanitized for your protection."

I got my money back.

Years later I took a trip to Reno with my Hewlett Packard coworkers. To save money a bunch of us all crammed into one cheap hotel room, with a couple of us crashing on the floor in sleeping bags. Late late one night, after we all returned from the casino, we were sleeping peacefully and dreaming of doubling down when someone started pounding loudly on the door.

"Hey! Open up! Open this goddamn door!" someone yelled from the hallway. This roused us and we all laid there sleepily for a moment while the would-be intruder started rattling the door. A few more voices joined in the chorus, "Open the door, you assholes! I'm going to kill you!"

Abruptly, the door popped open a crack. The flimsy chain lock was the only thing keeping the door from completely opening. A large hand awkwardly reached into the room, fumbling and grasping to release the lock.

I laid there on the floor, totally stunned by what I was watching. I was frozen by fear, praying that the lock would hold. One of my coworkers grabbed the phone and began to dial the front desk, as though that clerk was going to save us from these murderous intruders.

The ominous hand kept jiggling the chain while we all watched, mesmerized and terrified. The yells from the hallways got louder and suddenly the chain popped off. Several large men stumbled into the room from the hallway, and I stared at them fully prepared to defend myself by peeing into my sleeping bag.

The men took a couple steps into the room, looked around, and then one of them said, "Whoops! Wrong room. Sorry dudes." On that anticlimactic note, they shuffled off.

The front desk clerk never arrived.

The next morning we regaled each other with stories of our bravery. One guy bragged about his quick reaction to the phone. Another demonstrated how he popped out of bed and almost got to the door in time. I explained how my bladder was at the ready. Amusingly the fourth guy in the room slept through the whole thing. He was a good sleeper.

I'll bet he likes camping too.

Yahoo! I'm home and done traveling for the next 12 days. Precious precious 12 days. We loveses them.

Many of you (4) responded to my camping blog post with comments of support. I thank you. The rest of you (X - 4, where X is maybe a couple dozen) either hate me or love doing dishes in the dirt. The former is forgiveable.

In honor of you wackos, I present the top 5 reasons why I hate camping:

5) Packing. When one travels to normal places, one packs normal things, like clothes, and maybe some snacks or entertainment. But when you go camping you have to pack pretty much everything required for human survival. I think maybe a good rule of thumb for vacations would be that you should pick destinations where you don't have to pack your own dishes. Or furniture. I like traveling to places that already have luxuries like can openers. And fire. Let's just say that anything that was invented by cave men should already be present at my destination.

4) Chores. I'm not a big fan of chores. I do a lot of them around the house and under the best of circumstances they're not much fun, but cleaning things like dishes IN THE DIRT is an order of magnitude more frustrating. Did you remember to pack dishsoap? Sponges? A dishwashing machine? If you're washing more than one dish, then where will you put the clean wet ones? You can't really clean dishes when camping, you just swap one type of grime for another.

3) Food fights. For two years running now, animals have stolen or eaten bags of our groceries. Call me spoiled, but I prefer vacations where you don't actually have to fight animals for food.

2) Bathrooms. Even though we selected this campground partially because they had flush toilets instead of pits, the bathrooms were still NASTY. They had coin-operated showers at this one, but judging by the amount of dirt and slop on the bathroom floor, I'm suspecting that you'd emerge at least as dirty as when you started. The urinals were similarly vexing. Not only was there a pool of fluid on the floor around them, but the urinals themselves seemed to be positioned and angled for maximum splashback. It was the Grand Theory of Urine Conservation in action. I couldn't really get rid of the urine, I just moved it onto my pants and shoes.

1) Sleeping. Often when I go to the movies, I'll sit there amidst my fellow man and contemplate how much I hate him. I hate the talkers, and the loud eaters, and the baby-bringers, and the cell phoners, and pretty much anyone who makes an impression on me. Camping is a lot like that, except that essentially you've invited that movie theater full of asshole strangers into your bedroom.

Last night was especially annoying. Our neighboring campsite kept up a jolly conversation until nearly 1:00am. I MIGHT have been able to sleep through this since I was totally wiped out from sleeping like crap the previous night, but sometime after midnight, a child began screaming.

These weren't ordinary screams. These were the blood-curdling screams of a child who was being slowly consumed by a giant squirrel or at least dismembered by a campground hatchet murderer. The kid sounded about 10 years old, and was screaming like that, at the top of his lungs, for about 20 minutes. The screams were both terrifying and tremendously annoying. I was aghast that someone was slaughtering this child so late in the evening. Campground signage had been pretty clear that 10:00pm was the beginning of quiet time.

Anyway, that combined with the car horn sympony kept me awake into the late hours. Then, when daylight broke, I was delightfully roused by the campground squirrels who apparently took a break from stealing our food long enough to climb into the campsite trees and drop acorns on our tent. Those little scamps.

Later that morning, we investigated into the murder of that annoying child. Not only was he still alive, but all of his limbs were disappointingly intact. Apparently some moisture had gotten into his family's tent, and his sleeping bag had gotten wet. I took this opportunity to instruct Daisy that should her sleeping bag ever get damp, she should respond by informing me rather than screaming bloody murder for 20 minutes. We practiced this skill.

Next year for our annual camping trip, we're renting a house.

Hoooooeeeee, I'm a crappy sonofabitch today.

First, I had to go into the actual office, surrounded by humans all day. My journey into the heart of Silicon Valley was rewarded with a 6 hour long meeting where I got about 2 weeks of work added to my plate. Fun!

After that, I'm at Daisy's Tae Kwon Do class chatting with one our friends, and I'm telling him about our Vermont trip. Since I had just written a blog entry about it, I re-used all that material in our conversation. The Lake Champlain stuff, the maple syrup stuff, the 7 miles to get a quart of milk stuff, all of it. Shortly afterwards, he asks, "Hey how's that blog of yours? How can I find it?"

So, now he's going to see that basically I re-use all my material. Sorry, man.

Now, I'm at home and can prepare for.... our annual camping trip, which I also hate. Well, I don't actually hate it, but I've come to the conclusion that I'm just too damn lazy to camp. All the packing, and preparing, and the general uncomfortableness that comes with sleeping all smooshed in a sleeping bag in a small tent, it's just more hassle than fun. Plus, we JUST got home 2 days ago from the damn Vermont trip. We still have suitcases full of dirty clothes.

Anyway, if you think I'm happy about this, imagine how happy Hank is to have me around.

Good times.

Many people are proud of where they live. There's civic pride from New York City to Los Angeles and everywhere inbetween. I'm sure even folk from Buttlick, Kentucky brag about their town and it's world-class dingleberry collection. Bravo, Buttlickers.

Vermonters are no different.

While we were there we stayed with Hank's mom, who has a house right on the shore of Lake Champlain. Lake Champlain is a perfectly nice lake. Daisy had a heck of a time fishing there and we even ate a few of the undersized fish she caught. I'd go so far as to say that it's a good lake. It is not, however, a Great Lake.

There are only 5 Great Lakes in the United States and it is a source of great indignation to all Vermonters that their very good lake is NOT one of the 5 GREAT lakes.

"There should be SIX Great Lakes!" the Vermonters will demand.

"Oh, is it the next biggest lake?" you'll innocently ask, "Is it bigger than Salt Lake?"

"Salt Lake?!?!" they'll bluster, "Is NOT a fresh water lake."

Ok, so it's the 7th biggest lake in the U.S. That's a good lake.

And, of course, Vermonters are cuckoo for maple syrup. Don't get me wrong, I like maple syrup, but it just seems like a silly thing to get all riled up about. You start squeezing chocolate chip cookie dough out of trees and then come talk to me. THAT would be something to be proud of.

We went to a country fair in Vermont and there was a Sugar House with all sorts of maple syrup products. Maple pops, maple cotton candy, maple sugar candy, maple dental plans, the works. There was also a big sign showing all the major brands of "maple" syrup and listing the percentage of true maple sap in them. As it turns out, Mrs. Butterworth and Aunt Jemimah don't really have any maple syrup in them. They, along with every other major brand you've heard of, had a big fat ZERO next to them, while the unknown Vermont brand in a Lake Champlain-shaped bottle had 100% maple syrup. Ok ok ok, your special brand of syrup has more maple sap than the ones made by Unilever. Those Buttlickers don't know what they're missing.

Hank grabbed two jugs of maple syrup for us to stick in our already heavy suitcases.

"But, babe, we can buy REAL maple syrup in San Francisco too." I implored

"Not like THIS maple syrup! This is LIGHT AMBER." she explained in the same borderline-hostile tone of voice one would use with a small child who had stuck crayons up their nose one too many times.

So, the next morning we had some pancakes, and I wasn't in the mood for syrup, so I just spread a little butter on them, and my wife asked, "Aren't you going to use any maple syrup?"

"Nah, not today." I answered, realizing as the words left my mouth that I was figuratively crapping in Lake Champlain.

My reply was met with a heavy silence. It was as though I had killed Jesus again. I ate the rest of my breakfast wordlessly.

The last thing that Vermonters are really proud of is how inconvenient their life is. If, for example, you live in Hank's mom's house and you want to run to the store real quick for a carton of milk, you've got to drive 7 miles each way, mostly on dirt and gravel roads. God forbid someone in your house has a dairy allergy and you need soy milk. That's a one hour sojourn to the nearest supermarket in the metropolis of Middlebury. I'm pretty sure this is how the Pilgrims lived.

Everything is far apart in Vermont. It's as though the buildings actually repel each other. This, combined with some crazy nine-story height limit on their structures and a fierce fear of convenience, ensures that nothing is nearby. Ever.

It was, however, pretty and green. I'll bet Kentucky is too though.

Oh, it's good to be home.

I sure do hate flying on airplanes. I don't mean the normal amount of I-Need-Material-For-A-Blog-Post-So-I'll-Pretend-To-Hate-Kittens kind of hate, but the real deep-seated Maybe-I'll-Blow-Up-This-Plane kind of hate. Grrrrr!

As I previously mentioned, we flew out of town last Thursday, which, apparently was the first day of the Orange Alert because some bozo tried to bring liquid bomb ingredients onboard an airplane. The Department of Homeland Security, the only organization that was previously unaware of the explosive power of Mentos and Diet Coke, chose that day to stop all passengers from bringing any liquids or gels onboard an airplane unless the substances were in an appropriately labeled prescription bottle.

So, last Thursday, the nation's travelers all spent a few extra minutes removing all liquidy substances from their carry-on bags. When I stopped at the baggage check-in line to move my daughter's toothpaste from her carry-on into our to-be-checked baggage, a New York Times photographer swooped down and asked if he could photograph me moving the contraband from one bag to another.

I did my best to be photogenic whie moving toiletries around. Short of squirting toothpaste in Hank's face in a mock money-shot, it was the best dramatic interpretation of the new security restrictions I could muster. Afterwards he interviewed me for a bit of biographical data, so I eagerly searched the NYT website the next day for my article. Sadly, no mention of my name, nor images of my annoyed mug were featured in the paper. Damn you Alex Quinterla!

When we finally boarded the plane, Hank and I were delighted to find that nearly all of the overhead bulkhead bins were empty. Apparently everyone else normally packs their carry-ons full with gallons of shampoo, toothpaste, and liquidy deoderants. Our book, game, and snack-filled carry-on bags had much more dedicated space than their human counterparts.

Anyway, these new restrictions will work great at stopping all copycat terrorists who never got a prescription filled in their lives. Nice work, Department of Homeland Security!

The whole experience just reminded me of how similar airline travel is to a Rube Goldberg device. In order to get from one place to another, you stand in one line, move toiletries from one bag to another, stand in another line, wait incessantly, contort your body into unnatural position for an eternity. Meanwhile your luggage gets conveyed, thrown, squished, searched, and trampled. Then, miraculously and idiotically, you're there! Voila!

At one point, after dashing from one airplane to another in Chicago's O'Hare airport, and making our plane with 3 minutes to spare, I asked the flight attendant if there was any chance our luggage would also get onto the plane. He grimaced and asked unironically, "Do you believe in the power of prayer?"

I knew then that airline travel was not for me.

When archeologists from the future dig up airplanes from the past,
they will correctly determine that the machines are a torture device
or maybe a jail.

Home soon.....

Holy crap! My mother-in-law has DSL! Sure, it's the clunkiest DSL I've ever seen, but I'll take it over the 17K dial-up I normally get here.

My time here at the computer is limited, so I'll keep this short. Today we went to one of the places where Hank spent many happy times with her family when she was a kid. We brought some of Hank's father's ashes and spread them throughout the gardens and theatrical areas. Hank, her sister, a family friend, and Daisy all pitched in, grabbing handfuls of ashes and spreading them around.

It was a bit surreal seeing Daisy cavalierly toss the ashes. Afterwards, she enthusiastically remarked, "I LOVE spreading ashes!". I suppose it's good that she didn't quite internalize the gravity of the situation.

In other news, Vermonters are freakin' bonkers for their maple syrup.

Gah!

Everytime I step into a major airport I regret it. Today's bonus fun
game is that we aren't allowed to bring any liquids onboard. No
bottled water. No gel packs for Hank's back. No toothpaste in our
toiletries bag. I guess someone figures out that water is made from
hydrogen and hydrogen can be used in bombs.

The terrorists have won.

Well, tomorrow we leave for Vermont. Hank is determined to get onto that airplane no matter how many pieces her spine is in. It seems to be in fewer pieces today than yesterday, so I guess that's good.

Daisy is really looking forward to the trip. She gets to spend time with relatives who spoil her, there's a friendly dog involved, and we'll celebrate her birthday for the third damn time. It's good being 7.

We'll be staying with Hank's mom in her lovely house on Lake Champlain. Although it's a charming place, it's not particularly well-connected to the Internet or even modern cell-phone networks. I'm bringing large quantities of tin cans and string in an effort to continue blogging from this cyberdesertish location. If that doesn't work, I'll try to bribe Mabel, the town phone operator, with maple sugar candy, or Ben & Jerry's or something.

On a mostly unrelated note, what's the thing that has brought Hank the most comfort the last few days? Her stressed husband? Looming travel? No! It's the chillow! Just the thing for an aching back.

Tomorrow morning we were supposed to depart to Vermont to spend a week with the in-laws. Flights were booked. Cars were reserved. Accomodations were arranged. What could possibly go wrong?

My wife WHOM I LOVE VERY MUCH has this endearing habit of sabotaging the very vacations she has planned. Of course many people have traveling idiosyncracies. Some people travel with sleep aids, like a special pillow or stuffed animal. Others have kooky superstitions about airline travel. Hank's charming idiosyncracy is to wait until the final days (or minutes) before the trip and then manifest some situation which makes me beg her to cancel the trip.

The fun part is that I never know in advance what crazy gambit she'll employ. Will she hide the suitcases? Will she get arrested. Who knows!

This time she unhilariously threw her back out. She's been fairly immobile for the last four days and is under doctor's orders not to fly anywhere tomorrow. So, we loaded up the medicine cabinet with all sorts of prescription goodies and delayed our flight by 24 hours. Hopefully the extra time and pharmaceuticals will enable her to spend 6 hours sitting in an airplane seat. If not we've got a week to kill and a bottle of Vicodin.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

At some point almost everyone realizes that there's a hole in their life. In some way they feel unfulfilled. I may have even written about these holes before, but this is a topic that bears revisiting.

Some people cram their holes full of religion. Others stuff babies into their holes. My own fulfillment technique consists of inserting large quantities of chocolate and booze into my holes. That's worked pretty well for me. Until today.

Today I discovered that I have a new hole. It's an au pair shaped hole.

I discovered the hole while attending a birthday picnic with Daisy. Other attendees included some acquaintances of ours who have two small children. They recently decided to hire an au pair to help out with various household and childcare duties. Naturally, the most qualified applicant was a smoking hot, busty, 22 year-old woman from Colombia with a penchant for tiny and tight clothing. They brought the au pair with them to the picnic.

I wasn't at the picnic very long before I discovered my au pair hole. Although Daisy doesn't require too much childcare any more, and we do a decent job of staying on top of the housework, I'm pretty sure my life would be immeasurably improved by an au pair.

I'm going to have to figure out a way to make this happen. This could be even more satisfying than the Chillow.

It's Friday afternoon and I hear a vodka martini calling me, so I'll make this quick.

The chillow works. It is cooling and soothing. Five seconds after slapping my face down on that pillow, my cheek felt cool and happy. That's good news.

The bad news, however, was that on a cool night (which we've had about a week of now), it's a bit too chilly. Not a lot too chilly, but a smidge. Also, my pillow was slightly less comfortable with the chillow inserted in the pillow case. Instead of it being pillowy soft, it was chillowy firm.

So, I think I won't use the chillow in bed most nights, but on those hot sultry sweaty nights (cue the porn music), the chillow will be my cheek's best friend. And when my office gets a little warm, then I'll do what I'm doing now, which is introducing the chillow to my other cheeks (bom chicka waaaaah waaaaah).

Now, excuse me please, someone is calling me.

Although some people are all cultured and chick-magnetty, I am not.

For example, one of my attractive physical traits is that I am a sweaty guy. I sweat at my desk, I sweat while driving the car, and charmingly, I sweat while sleeping.

That last one kills me. I live in a foggy and temperate city, yet if I dare put a blanket on any part of my naked body above my feet, I'll sweat up a storm. Is sleeping such a workout for me? Apparently it's a real ass-kicker.

And of course, I'm in constant search for the elusive cool spot on the pillow. Some nights, there is no cool spot.

Actually, let me restate that. Some nights there WAS no cool spot. Tonight, there's a big pillow-sized cool spot because I just bought me a Chillow!

Chil-low! Chil-low! Chil-low!

The Chillow is basically a flat heavy bag that's mostly filled with foam. You pour 10 cups of water into it, and then, assuming you don't leave it in the sun or oven, it's naturally cooler than your body temperature. You put that baby in your pillowcase for an all-over cool pillow. Ahhhhhhhh. And with all the water in it, it should be a pretty good heat sink, sucking up my potential sweatiness all night long. (Cue the porn music)

Actually it's not really my head that gets sweaty. Usually it's my ass. (Cue the funkier porn music) I guess the Chillass isn't out yet though. Anyway, until then, my sheets (and wife) look forward to a less-sweaty night. I'll let you know how it goes.