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What a Day for Football
Yesterday sure was a good day for college football fans. I missed a good chunk of the day since I had to spend most of it in Omaha at a referee clinic, but I caught the 4th quarter of the Husker game and the entirety of the K-State/Texas game. I predicted a Husker loss when the score was 21-10, and I was very nearly proven correct. Thanks to an impressive two-minute drill and with a little help from an unwise ATM defender, I was wrong. Lordy, I hope we don’t have to pull that sort of a stunt against the Blundering Buffs.
I could tell from the start that the K-State game was going to be interesting. I even called my father right after the first Texas touchdown. “Dad, you’ve got to turn on the K-State/Texas game. Colt McCoy is done for the day, and it looks like it’ll be a doozy.” I was right. It wasn’t pretty, but it was a classic college game. I’m not Kitty Cat fan, but it was nice to see somebody from the Big XII North pull an upset this season.
We may as well begin pondering next week’s big matchup. Who ya gonna pick? Ohio State or Michigan? I think I’ll be a Wolverine for the day.
Kicked out of the office
Now here’s a problem I’ve never had before: I have too many vacation days at work, and I’m being encouraged to get out of the office before I lose some of the days at the end of the year. It’s a nice problem to have.
It looks like I have 8 days to use before next year. What should I use them on? I already (kiddingly) asked if I could take vacation and work at the same time, earning double pay, but that idea was shot down. I will probably take off the three days of Thanksgiving week (Thursday and Friday are covered). That leaves five more days. Take off a whole week? Take off Fridays through the end of the year?
And then there’s the question of what I should do on those days. I always have web work to do. There’s lots of work to be done in and around the house. I could be a bell ringer. Any other ideas?
A Little Work, A Big Audience
I have been doing some freelance web development work over the past month, and I’m preparing to do even more over the winter during the soccer off-season. One of the projects I helped with just went live. I didn’t do all that much work on the project, relatively speaking, but I’m excited anyway. Why? Because the site will probably be seen by a few hundred thousand visitors every month.
The site in question is Power Line Blog’s Power Line News. Like I said, my contributions were pretty small—I chipped in about five hours worth of work—but I’m proud to have helped the lead developer solve a few fairly big problems in that time. For example, I helped set up the system that fetches RSS feeds from other sites, and then automatically creates discussion forum threads based on the individual posts in those feeds. I don’t know who came up with the idea to do that (the lead developer? the client?) but it’s a cool idea that was fun to implement.
I have really enjoyed the freelance work I have done so far, and I’m really looking forward to a huge upcoming project for a guy in San Francisco. I don’t know where this road is taking me, but I’m sure enjoying the ride.
Watchless Sunday
I have been addicted to my watch ever since I first started regularly wearing one as a kid. I’m not run by the clock by any means—I’m notoriously inconsistent when it comes to getting places on time—but I feel naked without a watch on my wrist. I don’t realize just how often I look at my wrist until there’s nothing there.
So spending much of yesterday without a watch felt very strange indeed, but in a good way. Yesterday was a half work, half rest day. During the working hours it felt great to be driven not by a schedule, but by task-oriented goals. During the resting moments it was a relief to avoid constant “Only X more minutes...” reminders. Every time I looked at my wrist I saw only the long scar I got back in 9th grade when my friend Craig sliced me open with a mechanical pencil.
I definitely couldn’t get along without a watch most days. But perhaps I should make watchless weekends a regular occurrence. That might make for a nice change of pace.
Light Fright Night
It was another light Halloween crowd at 625 Elm Street this year. I counted eight doorbell rings, totaling about, oh, twenty or so kids. I don’t get it; there are lots of kids in our neighborhood. Where the heck are they? Does everybody go to parties and organized trick-or-treating events these days, rather than doing the door-to-door thing?
Oh well, I’m not complaining. The Missus bought some pretty good candy this year, so I guess we’ll just have to take care of it before it goes bad. What a shame.
Dennis Comes Home
It was a harrowing journey at times, but Dennis—my new laptop—finally made it home. Read on to learn about my adventures with Dell and UPS.
Watch Out World, He’s Mobile!
Robbie added a new trick to his repertoire last night: he rolled! Not just front-to-back or back-to-front. He actually rolled about six feet. That was just shortly after he pulled a front-to-back-to-front combo for the first time. Frankly, I’m not sure if I should celebrate Robbie’s new mobility, or lament the fact that the days of leaving him “just for a second” are over. Maybe we can train Daisy to grab him by the diaper and stop him if he starts rolling his way into trouble. Hmm…
But seriously, way to go Robbie!
In Praise of Avante Card
I don’t think I ever mentioned how Avant Card—that fantastic little card and gift shop on O Street—played a role in our adoption of Robbie. Here’s the tale:
The Missus and I already knew that we were being considered for the adoption of a newborn in Boston. We had only the barest details, so all we knew was that we might be chosen by the mother. Or not. We had already been passed over a few times before, so we knew not to get our hopes up too high.
Well, a few days later I received a call at work from the adoption agency with the good news. By coincidence, I was meeting The Missus at Planet Sub in only two hours. How could I tell her the news in a creative way? And by the way, how often does the dad know before the mom that they’re going to have a baby? This was new territory.
I decided to tell her with a card. I first said “I love you” with a card, so why not make greeting cards the medium of choice for big announcements? I really wanted a Mother’s Day card, since I was about to tell her she was a mom. But Mother’s Day was several weeks earlier. Clearly I needed a business I could count on. So I headed to Avant Card.
Surprisingly, the nice young lady behind the counter gave me only the tiniest hint of an odd look when I asked if they happened to have any Mother’s Day cards hiding in the back. She quickly began the search, and she came back a few minutes later, not with a couple cards, but with a whole friggin’ box of hundreds of cards. It took me a while to flip through them all—thank goodness they were sorted, so duplicates were all together—but I eventually found the perfect one. I paid, thanked her profusely, and left.
Not long after, The Missus opened the card and found out for the first time that she was a mom. Everything worked out just perfectly.
So there’s the story. Now you know one of the reasons I’m such so pro-Avant Card. Gotta love ‘em.
Late Night
Urgh, I’m tuckered today. I worked at the computer until 2:00am last night. A website client wanted some work done by yesterday, even though I didn’t even receive the bulk of the necessary material until 6:00pm last night. I could have just said “Yeah, right”, but a) I’m a pushover, and b) if I want that new laptop, I need the money. I was surprised to discover that I was able to cruise along pretty well until 1:15 or so. When Robbie started crying at 2:00, I took that as an invitation to shut down the computer and go take care of my sick kid.
And I’m glad I did. As it turned out, Robbie was crying mainly because he couldn’t sleep due to his cold. He wanted to cuddle, I wanted to sleep; I sensed a win-win situation. So I propped him up on my chest, propped myself up on the bed, covered up with a blanket, and watched as Robbie immediately passed out. I fell asleep a few minutes later, and I ended up having one of the deepest, most restful sleeps I’ve had in ages. It must have worked wonders for Robbie, too, because he was in fine form this morning.
It’s probably a good thing I got some practice at staying up late, because Saturday nigh I have two evening soccer matches, followed by a three-hour drive home. I figure I’ll pull into the driveway around 1:30am or so Sunday morning. Fortunately I’ll be traveling with a talkative guy, so I shouldn’t have to worry about dozing off.
Five and Fine
Robert is 5 months old today. The milestone, such as it is, serves as a good time to reflect back on how many strides he has taken so far. In one sense he’s the same little Robbie he was four months ago in Boston. But then I look at him when he’s all stretched out and I think: he’s huge now! And you know what sticks out most about him right now? His voice. Robbie’s voice is becoming less like an infant’s and more like a baby’s. When he cries it sounds like a child’s cry, not a newborn’s cry. When he laughs, there’s a hint of the sound of a toddler laughing, rather than just his previous infant giggle. And when he babbles, though he has a long ways to go, I can already hear how he is beginning to think about giving meaning to his sounds.
Unfortunately, Robbie is celebrating the start of his sixth month with a cold. It drove him nuts last night. At 4:30 he had had enough, so I went into his room and slept propped up with him on my chest. Well, I say “slept”, but there was little sleep to be had with Robbie snoring and snorting and tossing and turning. But he was doing it very cutely (?), so it was easy to forgive him.
I think The In-Laws will be very surprised how much he has changed when they come for Thanksgiving. There’s a good chance he’ll be sitting by then. (He can already sortakinda sit, but he quickly folds in half.) And sitting means joining the family at the dinner table in a high chair. He’s going to like that.
Identify My Lunch
Based on the ingredients and nutrition facts, can you identify what I ate for lunch today?
Ingredients:
- pork livers
- pork
- calcium reduced (?!) dried skim milk
- salt
- corn syrup
- water
- sugar
- ...and a bunch of preservatives
Nutrition facts per 2 oz. serving:
- Calories: 200
- Calories from fat: 160
- Total fat: 18g (28%)
- Saturdated fat: 6g (30%)
- Cholesterol: 85mg (28%)
- Sodium: 640mg (27%)
- Total carbohydrates: 2g (1%)
- Protein: 8g
- Vitamin A: 240%
- Iron: 30%
And by the way, it was goooood.
Collateral
A student came up to The Missus today and asked if he could borrow a pencil. She told him “Sure, if you hand over some collateral.” So he reached into his pocket and pulled out the only thing in there.
A condom.
Ahh, the joys of teaching America’s youth. On the plus side, at least he wears a helmet whle riding the village bicycle.
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