Having Fun

It's Good When You Like Your Work

2009-06-22T00:10:00.000-07:00

I may have said this here before, but I work mainly from home. I work as a copywriter, so telecommuting is a real option for me. Fortunately, I love my work. Recently, that was driven home to me.

I got a project to do, writing Internet content, on a variety of subjects. It was great. I must have turned out 15,000 words in 3 weeks. I was on a roll, in the zone, working at a furious pace, and loving every minute of it.

The drawback, of course, is that I was glued to my laptop during that time. My friends complained that they could only reach me on email, and my wife, well, when she resorted to emailing me, I took a day off.... But the point is, when your work is fun and appealing to you, you can do anything. I got that project in, 3 days early, is the shape the client wanted, and netted myself a nice bonus (5 cents per word, you figure it out).

I'm taking a few days off right now, resting my fingers, and doing some light reading and blogging, but I'm also thinking about work. I checked my calendar; I know what's coming down the line, and I'll be ready. I have a talent for researching web content articles, and fitting keywords into them during the writing process, and then for turning out a readable product. And my boss knows it. So maybe next week I'll be hitting another zone in content writing, but that's OK with me.

I like my job, so I can take whatever it can deal. And what can get better than that, in any profession?

This May Sound Familiar

2009-06-14T00:34:00.000-07:00

...because I think I've written about it before. So what? It's my blog, I'll write what I choose. We took the kids to the park the other day, to get one last go in before the end of summer. A five year old, a three old, Mom, Dad, and a soccer ball. What could be better than that?

The girls played well together, like they always do... I love to watch them. They get along so well, even though they are so close in age. I watch them, and I realize that my wife and I must be doing something right after all....

The kids kicked and chased the ball, and climbed on the slides and monkey bars, and my wife and I sat in the shade and watched them, and actually had time to chat. It was great. The only thing we forgot was the picnic lunch.

So, about two hours later when the kids were hungry, we packed it in and went home. On the way, we stopped for groceries to make dinner: salad greens, chicken breast, cucumbers. All very simple, and happily, the girls' favorite stuff this week. We had dinner together, as a family, which is sometimes far too hard to do these days, but which is always worth it when we manage it.

All in all, it was a great day. Just fun with the kids, on a late September weekend, and some real quality time as a family. When we put the kids to bed that night, our 3 year old said, "Mommy, you're my best friend."

That was worth the price of admission.

My Three Year Old Went to Preschool

2009-06-01T00:38:00.000-07:00

At the start of the school year, I had the greatest pleasure that a parent can ever have: I got to watch my 3 year old start school.

We enrolled her in a preschool because it was time. We found one that focuses on the basics: helping kids learn to play together, to follow instructions, to learn in a group, to make friends; in short, to do all of the things that we do with her as a family, but to reinforce it by putting her with her peers.

She was so excited that first day, she couldn't wait to get there. We bought her a backpack, and a little sectioned lunch tray for her snacks, and she was ready! That morning, she put on her favorite little dress, asked Mommy to make her hair pretty, and ran to the car. It's a good thing she doesn't drive yet...

When I got her to the preschool, I walked her to the door. We had to go through the playground, and she just knew that this is the best part. She kept pointing to playground equipment and saying, "Daddy, I will play here, and here, and here...."

At the door, she turned to me and said, firmly, "Bye, Daddy!" and ran inside. I watched her new teacher give her a hug, and show her where to put the backpack, and then she ran to the other kids. It was great to see her bloom like that, so quickly. She felt so big to go to school.

Her enthusiasm hasn't faded, and it's really wonderful to watch. I just hope she can keep it as she gets older. I'll do my best to help her, and I'll love every minute of it.

An Evening in the Kitchen

2009-05-24T05:11:00.000-07:00

I like to cook. I don't know if I've ever mentioned that here before, but I know I've talked about food. Food is important to me. I'll admit: I live to eat.

So last night, I decided to cook up one of my favorites: fajitas. I don't pretend that what I cook is anything genuinely Mexican (I spent a weekend in New Mexico once, and once went to a house party in Detroit's Mexicantown neighborhood, but that's as close as I've ever gotten to Mexico), but let's play Let's Pretend.

So, I bought some shoulder steak, and asked the butcher to cut it up into thin slices. I also picked up half a dozen mild Cubanelle peppers, a few red bell peppers, a couple of big Vidalia onions, three large tomatoes, two dozen soft corn tortillas, and a great big honking jar of hot salsa.

The actual cooking didn't take so long. I chopped the veggies: the peppers into strips, the onions and tomatoes into little cubes, and then sauted them all in a big frying pan. I sauted the steak strips in a separate pan, and mixed the meat and veggies when they were all done. All of this took about 45 minutes. Total. And then dinner was served.

My kids liked the meat, and poked at the veggies. They didn't like the tortillas. My wife liked everything. So I guess this meal was a success.

The key here, though, is that the actual cooking was easy to do. You see, while I like cooking, I like eating even more. You wouldn't know it to look at me, though: I eat healthy, and stay fit. Which is also fun, but that's for another post.

MP3: Can't Live Without 'Em

2009-05-17T00:53:00.000-07:00

I work from home, as an Internet writer. Sounds glamorous, but what it really means is 8 to 9 hours a day in front of the computer, working on projects that thousands, or even millions, of people will see and never know that I wrote. It can seem a little thankless.

Fortunately, I enjoy my job. I love writing, I love the every-changing online world, I love being part of the cutting edge, even if that part is a little dull to some. And, it pays well. And, I don't have to go to an office, dress up nice, or spend my mornings primping, shaving, grooming, etc. I can go two days without shaving, work in my underwear, and never comb my hair... not that I do that, though: my wife would freak. But I do get to spend the summer days wearing shorts and a T-shirt even while I'm working.

I telelcommute, and meet with my clients (some of whom are on the other side of the world, while others are merely on the other side of the continent) via webcam. Messenger, AIM, and Gmail chat are my best buddies.

And so are my MP3s. That's what I really want to talk about. What I love most about my work is that I can choose the working conditions. And I choose to have a soundtrack.

No matter what my mood, I can find some music for it, to make my workday a little more pleasant. I can sit back and listen to the Rolling Stones, or Bob Dylan, or Billy Joel. If I want something more eclectic, I can put on the mix files my cousin sent me. When I'm a little down, I'll put in Cyndi Lauper; when I'm feeling mellow, U2; when I want to rock, Bruce Springsteen.

Life has a soundtrack, folks, and if you listen closely, you can sing along with it. And the best part is, I don't need headphones.

Happy listening!

Those Sunday Mornings

2009-05-11T00:32:00.001-07:00

Last Sunday, I got up early (at 4:30, no less!) showered, cleaned up the late-night dishes in the kitchen, went out to the all-night grocery store down the street and picked up some staples (flour, backing powder, vegetable oil, frozen blueberries), and came home to make some coffee and start breakfast. By 7, when the kids got up, I had blueberry pancakes waiting for them.

That was a good morning. Almost as good as my breakfast date with my wife. She was pretty amazed when she got out of bed an hour after the little ones, and saw how everything was quiet, the kids were eating, and the second batch of breakfast was still warm.

She loves blueberry pancakes.

So after that morning, I got to enjoy a lazy Sunday. The kids ran around the yard, and my wife took out her sewing machine and made a skirt. I took a nap on the couch.

For lunch, we ate the leftover pancakes, cold, with blueberry jam. It was perfect. Only fresh blueberries (instead of frozen) could have improved that day.

So what do you do to fill those weekend hours, when you haven't got anything productive planned? A quiet day at home, doing things with the family, left me feeling recharged, despite getting up at such an unholy hour. Fun and relaxation come in so many different varieties; which one we actually need at a given moment can be hard to figure out.

I'm Getting all Introspective

2009-05-02T23:53:00.000-07:00

I had a birthday a few days ago. My wife and I got a sitter, and we went out to dinner. I didn't know it, but she had phoned ahead to the restaurant (it's a place we go pretty often, they serve a good roast salmon, and even better desserts) and ordered a small cake for our table, with candles and two good bottles of lambic ale. The waiter brought it out when I tried to ask for the dessert menu. It was cute, and fun.

But my birthday got me thinking. I might be 35, but when I shave, the guy in the mirror is still 25, and I can't quite figure that one out.... sometimes I even wonder where the kids came from (yes, I do know). I had a good time at that birthday dinner, but I just started wondering when my definition of 'fun' started changing...

...Once upon a time, fun meant hopping in the car and driving really fast with a bunch of the guys, maybe passing a joint around, stopping for late-night munchies at Denny's or someplace similar, or hitting a concert at an outdoor amphitheater and drinking beers on the hill while yelling all the lyrics way off key.

...And later, fun was [text removed to keep this blog family friendly].

...And now, fun is playing with the kids in our family room, or in the park down the street, or having a quiet dinner with my wife, or going to a bookstore.

When did my life grow so sedate? And why don't I mind it so much? Sometimes, I get all misty eyed, when I think back to the "good ol' days," but were they really so good? I guess I must have been looking for something... I sure was expending a lot of energy back then. Sometimes I look at my oldest daughter, who looks just like I did at her age, and I'm certain that whatever I was looking for back then found me, instead. It's not a bad thought, just a realization that my youth is behind me.

Life is not sedate, but it's pace does change. And so do its entertainments.

Showing your Face, online

2009-04-26T03:20:00.000-07:00

Facebook is such a lousy excuse for a life. Yet you use it, don't you? Perhaps even a lot? Well, guess what? So do I.

My new favorite Facebook-related time-waster is the Pieces of Flair application. I've always been the type of girl to affix that sarcastic pin to the lapel of her jacket or to some piece of her backpack and Pieces of Flair makes that hobby virtual. So now, instead of or along with tapering an article of clothing with expressions of self, you can do so online. This is where the fun of it is for me - that for a shy, introverted type like me, Facebook is a place of my own, in which I can express myself and my own personality (which most people simply seem to think isn't there) to the hilt if I so desire. It's almost like advertising yourself: see! I am a human being with a spirit and a sense of humor, just like you! It's just that I don't show it so easily in a large, crowded group of people.

It ain't a disease, people. I don't need medication for it. And I'm certainly not the only one. Presumably, people that you don't know or only slightly know regularly check your profile for updates; you know, because we're all voyeurs. The fun of Pieces of Flair for me is that I can put up virtual buttons for every side of myself - the place I live, my loves of singing, dancing, and reading, movies I like, sarcastic comments I would actually make, and so on and so forth. It's a no-pressure online environment in which people may get a chance to see you for who you really are.

Date Night, Redux

2009-04-19T00:23:00.000-07:00

My wife and I had another Date Night. Well, we called it Date Night, but we actually went out for breakfast. We had pancakes.

We both believe that it's absolutely vital for a couple to do this periodically, just go out together and have a date, even though it's been years since we've actually dated. It keeps things fresh. It keeps life exciting. It reminds us of why we got married in the first place.

So the other day, we dropped the kids off with my wife's sister, and we went out for pancakes. I had chocolate chip pancakes, my wife had blueberry. We both had plenty of maple syrup. Afterwards, we wandered around our little suburban downtown, at 11am on a Sunday morning, and just held hands. Once, years ago, when we first started seeing each other, we wandered around the same neighborhood sharing a cigar.

We didn't have a cigar this time, and we've changed a lot since then. She's gained some weight, and I've gotten a little grayer, but somehow the couple we see reflected in the shop window is still 22. It's funny how that happens, isn't it?

With fun times, there isn't always a lot to say. After all, how much can you say that the day was good, and the company was better? But this was the best of mornings, and I know we'll do it again.

Fun With Pets

2009-04-12T06:51:00.000-07:00

I have a pet parrot. I'm 34, and I've had this bird for as long as I can remember. My parents got her, when I was 5, she'll be 30 next year. She'll probably live another 30 years.

There's something to be said for having a pet with you for your whole live. You really get to know each other. My bird is a White-Fronted Amazon, a bit smaller than a common crow, and while she doesn't talk, it's clear that she understands a lot of what we say to her. She likes to click, whistle, chirp, and mutter under her breath. Sometimes, you can almost understand what she's saying. I guess that's her talking. It must be what we sound like to her.

White-Fronts are the smallest Amazon parrot species. They're from Central America, and they live in the rainforest canopy. This means, for the pet owner, that you need stuff for them to climb on. Fortunately, I'm pretty handy, have a decent size house, and was able to convert a small room (it was desinged as a little office, I guess, and it has good window with southern exposure) into a bird room: the room is criss-crossed by perches, and has two large, parrot-safe potted plants in under the window.

Sometimes, I go in there, sit down, and just talk to her. She'll dangle upside down from some of the ropes I have hanging from the ceiling, and chatter at me in her wordless parrot lingo. We get along pretty well.

Sometimes, she'll climg down to me, and sit on my shoulder or arm. When she does that, she wants to be groomed and scratched behind the ears. It's a bonding thing. I understand that dog owners have something similar.

Tennis, Anyone?

2009-04-05T03:18:00.001-07:00

My wife plays tennis. She was actually on her college tennis team, and was pretty good. I've never picked up a racket before in my life. Can you see where this is headed?

Last summer, she took me out to the tennis courts to teach me the game. At least, that's why she said she was taking me. I think she just wanted to whoop me at tennis.

It wasn't pretty. I'm not terribly coordinated, and while I can hit a softball pretty well, a tennis ball is a lot smaller. And I never really appreciated just how much short-burst running is involved in this game. ESPN just doesn't make that clear.

And I never realized just how hard you need to hit that little ball. There's a reason why Stefi Graff grunts like that. Wow. That's some tiring stuff.

Still, I have to admit, that my wife is in pretty good shape. After two hours of lessons, I was bushed, and she'd barely broken a sweat. A lot of times, fatigue depends on what you're used to doing.

Next time, I'll sign her up with me in a co-ed softball league.

Bathtime

2009-03-29T00:54:00.000-07:00

Anyone reading this blog, even semi-regularly, will know that I have kids. The little ones are 6 and 3 now, and they seem to get cuter every day...

Yesterday, I was giving them a bath, and unfortunately, there was only one rubber duck in the tub. Conflict erupted almost immediately, as did a column of water about the size of the Empire State Building.... as well as a chorus of giggles and squeals.

I have to admit, seeing them there, laughing like that, each with her hand on a duck and most of the bathwater swirling down the drain in the center of the floor, it was hard to suppress a smile. But I did. And took away the duck. And ran a new bath. And sat there and supervised them as they got to work with their bath scrubbies. Neck, armpits, tummy... and then they washed each other's back. Sometimes, I can't believe I got so lucky, to have such great daughters.

It get's better, though. Right before I put them to bed, my wife went in to take a bath. And as she did, the 3 yr old followed her, took the rubber duck off the sink, and gave it to her. Because you just can't have a bath without a duck.

Improving a Rainy Day

2009-03-22T02:02:00.000-07:00

If you read this blog enough, I'm sure you've noticed that a lot of what I see as fun revolves around my wife and kids. I guess that makes me a Family Guy. Fifteen years ago, I don't think my friends would ever have chosen me for this role, but as it's turned out, I was the first of my 'crew' to get married, the first to have kids.... You never know what life will bring you.

I got a chance to teach my older daughter that lesson last weekend. In simpler terms, we spent the afternoon playing Chutes and Ladders on a rainy day.

Everyone knows that game; it's a childhood classic. And for grown ups, it's enormously annoying. I mean, there's no real point, the climbs and falls are completely arbitrary, and there's no skill involved. You can never predict what will happen.

Which makes it perfect for a 6 year old. Little kids haven't got the logic skills or patience for more advanced games. What they're really after is the time with a parent. So, between rolling the die, and helping her count out the squares, I got some quality time with my daughter on a rainy day. My wife had taken the little one out to buy some shoes and a potty seat, and I was supposed to take the older one to the park, but it started raining, and the drizzle turned into a full-out thunderstorm, one of those midsummer storms that just blasts in out of nowhere with a lot of noise, a hard rain, and even some hail.

Chutes and Ladders, and some time with Daddy, kept her from getting scared by the thunder and lightning out the windows, and winning one and losing one taught her, in a subtle and fun way that was completely unlike the weather outside, that you never really know what life will bring you. When the game was over, she gave me a hug and helped to make dinner. Definitely a good day.

So Just What is Fun, Anyway?

2009-03-16T01:35:00.000-07:00

I'm writing this blog about fun, but what is fun, anyway? I'm not sure that I've ever bothered to define that..... So let's try.

To start with, fun is hardly an absolute concept; it changes with every person, with every situation, with every circumstance. If we pick up a dictionary (Webster's New World Dictionary of the American Language, second college edition, 1984, which I have on my shelf) we'll find among the definitions for "fun" the following: "a source or cause of amusement or merriment, as an amusing person or thing."

Hmmm. I don't think that helps too much. Dictionaries are too formal, anyway. So I googled "fun definition," and I found this: "Recreation is the use of time in a non-profitable way, in many ways also a therapeutic refreshment of one's body or mind. While leisure is more likely a form of entertainment or rest, recreation is active for the participant but in a refreshing and diverting manner. ..." Maybe the Internet is too formal, too.

Or, more likely, maybe defining something as amorphous as "fun" is harder than it looks. How can we define something, in a way understandable to everyone, if the very concept is experienced differently by everyone? Even the question has to be phrased in a convoluted way, if we try not to be completely self-referential when talking about the concept.

As you can see, the difficulties here are many. Is there a way out of this?

Well, yes, there is. We can just admit that "fun" is a purely self-referential concept. There is no activity, which one person defines as fun, which will not be though unutterably dull or useless by at least one other person. Fun is defined internally, by the person engaged in it, and that's that.

So now let's get back to the fun!

It Was Date Night Again

2009-03-08T00:24:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, it seems that my life is just a series of recurring events. Fortunately, "Date Night" is one of those recurring events. If you've been reading here, than you'll know that Date Night is when my wife and I go out on a date. We get a sitter for the kids, and we just take off for two or three hours.

In order for Date Night to work, there are rules. These rules change from time to time, as we figure out what works and what doesn't. Last night, the rules were:

1) No talking about the kids. This was important, as said kids had been driving us nuts.

2) No talking about work. This was important, for the same reason.

3) No buying cigars. Last time, we shared a stogie and then tried to kiss....

So what did we do for Date Night? We recaptured our youth; we went to the roller rink! Ah, the joy of strapping wheels to your feet, and trying to stay upright for two hours.... What could go wrong? Well, considering that my wife is an excellent roller skater (and ice skater), and that I am not, I'll leave that question to your imagination. Suffice it to say that I will be invoking Rule 4 next time:

We always alternate who chooses the date.

Otherwise, it's just not fair, is it?

Mobile Phone Games

2009-03-02T00:06:00.000-08:00

I got a new cell phone recently. Nothing to sneeze at really, but it's better than my last cell phone, gets a better signal, is significantly smaller and lighter, and, well, it's my new toy. I'm having some fun with it.

So the best part of this new cell phone is, it has some games on it. It's not like I never knew about mobile games; of course I've heard of them, I do live in the 21st Century, even if I am a little bit of a technological idiot. But there are some things that just don't "click" for me, and games on a cell phone were definitely on that list. They weren't important to me. I needed a cell phone to make phone calls (rad idea, isn't it?), or to store phone numbers (but only as a backup to the PDA, which is itself a backup to the old-fashioned pen and paper). I have been known to use the cell phone as a small hammer, when I needed a tack to hold securely in the wall. Definitely not a recommended use.

I'm digressing a lot here. I meant to talk about cell phones and video games.

I like video games. I really do. So while I was playing with the new cell phone, I was happy to discover.... a built in games folder! With two games already uploaded! I would have played them longer, except the phone rang. It was my wife, asking for someone's phone number.

Another Basement Find

2009-02-22T03:39:00.000-08:00

So, I've written here before about finding some good books in a box in the basement. Well, I'm still cleaning out the overstuffed storage space in the house, and this past weekend I found a real treasure: Wally Pleasant's Houses of the Holy Moly. I haven't heard this music since (my restless) college years, and I couldn't wait to try the tape in an old boombox. It worked.

Yup, a tape that had sat in a box in the basement for 6 years (the box was labeled 2002) worked, and I sat back and took a break from housework on a Sunday afternoon and listened to some wonderful, funny old songs, like "Stupid Day Job," "Dysfunctionally Yours," and "I'm Nice." It really took me back....

To 1996, when I was first introduced to the music of Wally Pleasant by a coworker who was also nice enough to copy the Holy Moly CD onto a tape for me. A few nights later, I went with a bunch of my coworkers to a bar at 9 Mile and Woodward where Wally was playing. We tossed back a few (too many) brews, and enjoyed an evening of comedic college alt-rock-folk. It was something normal to do, when you're 22....

Listening to this tape, it seems that Wally really captured something of those years. It felt good to hear it again. I wonder if I'll ever find the Wally Pleasant CDs I bought in the late 90s? I think they died in the car accident, though...

If you want, you can check out some samples of Wally Pleasant's music here. It's definitely worth a look.

The Toast of the Town

2009-02-14T23:53:00.000-08:00

The other night, my parents came over and stayed with the kids, while my wife and I got out for a while. We played a game we hadn't done since college. We call it 'Toast of the Town,' and it goes like this:

Go out late at night, to all of the late-night breakfast-type restaraunts you can find, and order toast. You can order coffee with it, but no meal. I'm talking places like Denny's, or Ram's Horn, or Sunshine Cafe.... any of those chain-type places, or the Mom-and-Pops that sometimes take their place in smaller towns and suburbs. IHOP is particularly good for this.

See how long you can go on toast and coffee, before you start feeling nauseous. Of course, back in college, there were a couple of bottles of Boone's Farm to go between breakfast places, and at the end, that famous Moons Over MyHammy if your stomach hadn't completely turned yet, but you get the idea. Eating wasn't the point.

I'm not sure what the point was, anymore. We didn't get very far. At the second place, we stopped and ordered pancakes and scrambled eggs and hot chocolate, and sat around remembering what happened when. It would have helped if the scrambled eggs were better.

Anyway, none of that matters. It was another sort of date night, at one in the morning, and every couple really needs that. It doesn't just keep you together; it's also fun.

A Day With the Kids

2009-02-08T01:48:00.000-08:00

So I'm home from work today. The kids have chicken pox. Both of them. At 5 and 3. Oh, the joy is never ending. And yeah, that's sarcasm.

My wife escaped to her job. I have more sick time piled up, so I'm with the kids. I took them to the doctor, who confirmed that, yes, they do have chicken pox, and no, there's nothing much I can do about it, and then I brought them back home. We stopped for calamine lotion on the way, and now they're covered with little pink dots. They each have some footed pyjamas, which is good, because those'll help stop them from scratching everything, and spreading it more. In the meantime, they itch. And scratch.

And ask questions. Like this one: "Daddy, what is a chicken pox?"

That was fun to explain. "Well, it's a disease..."

"NO!"

"...that lots of children get when they're little. Even your Mommy and Daddy had it."

"What does it do?"

"You know the little red bumps on your body? And your sore throat?"

"Yes."

"That's what chicken pox does. And once one kid in a school gets it, they all get it."

"You mean the one kid shares?"

Sometimes, it's really hard not to laugh. But I managed to keep a straight face, this time, and told her that this isn't really like sharing, even if she did give it to her sister. Ah, well, she'll learn. I'm gonna go set up the oatmeal bath.

File Sharing

2009-02-01T03:49:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, I'm a little behind the times. That's OK, though, because my wife is usually right up to speed. To give an example:

We've all heard of file sharing, music downloading services, and other fun internet based bypass routes around copyright laws. You know, things like Napster. I never got into that, mainly because I'm not that computer savvy, but also because, as a writer by profession, I have a certain respect for copyrights. Anyway, my wife is not a writer, has no such qualms, and is more computer-knowledgable than I am, so she found some free file sharing services and set them up on our home computer the day after we lost our CD collection in our stolen car (which is a whole 'nother story altogether!).

Yesterday, she sat me down and showed me how it works. Today, I have a dozen great tunes that I'd thought I'd lost forever, unless I shelled out the dough to buy the CDs again.

We had some fun last night. She showed me how to search the file sharing service, how to set up the server, how to select songs for download, how to connect to the system, and then we sat down and looked for our mutual favorites. I didn't expect to have a good time doing that, but I did.

And then she showed me that the same system can be used for movies and TV shows. Never again will I have to be without Star Trek!

From the Mouths of Babes

2009-01-25T06:13:00.000-08:00

I've mentioned here before that I have kids, and it's appropriate since there is very little out there that's more fun than a 5 year old and 3 year old. Provided, of course, that they're on their good behavior.

When that happens, the entertainment is endless. Last night, my wife and I were puttering around our place, tidying up, doing dishes, and other sundry fun chores, and we had the TV on for background noise. It was showing some documentary about a ballroom dance program at an urban elementary school; I don't know the details because I wasn't paying much attention to it. But my kids were entranced. The show had music, and dancing, and young children, and it had my kids' attention.

Pretty soon, they were trying to ballroom dance around the family room. My older daughter was leading, and the younger was following with enthusiam to make up for her lack of rhythm and balance. It was adorable. I made sure to get the digital camera, and send pictures to the grandparents. I already had an email back this morning, from my Mom, that she had the nicest surprise in her inbox at work today...

The funny part, to me, is that about half the housework never did get done. We both had to stop, to watch the kids dance and laugh and sing. When we put them to bed, we told them how proud we were of them, and how much we loved watching them dance. It's definitely something we want to encourage. It's a sense of uninhibited fun that neither of us has, but that can only serve the kids well in their lives.

Spare Change

2009-01-18T00:27:00.000-08:00

As a kid, I liked collecting all sorts of funny things: interesting leaves, funny looking pebbles, every brand of bottle top I could find, whatever. These days, I've pretty much outgrown that. My wife still gets on me about never throwing things away, but for the most part, I try to focus on what's important. I do have a coin collection, though.

I'll be the first to admit that it's not a valuable collection. There's nothing there that's worth more than the face value, and face values are mostly pretty small. It's just a collection of odd coins that I've come across over the years.

I started with Bicentennial quarters. You remember those. They're the ones with the drummer on the back, and "1776-1976" stamped where the date should be on the front.

I also have some half-dollars. Two are actually special; they're from the mid 60s, and from the look of the edge, they may actually be silver half-dollars. The third is a Bicentennial coin, with Independence Hall on the back.

The Post Office stamp machines give dollar coins in the change, and from those I have some Susan Bs from each year they were issued for circulation: 1979, 1980, an 1999.

My favorite coins are the foreign coins. I have a Honduran 20 centavo that someone gave me in change once, thinking it was a dime, and a Spanish 10 peseta that I got the same way. I also have a Russian 5 ruble coin, a Polish 1 zloty coin, and a 20 eurocent coin.

I think the only ones of any value, though, are the pennies. I have eight or ten wheat pennies, from the 20s, 30s, and 40s, as well as a 1904 Indian head penny. I even have a Canadian Centennial penny.

And that's about it. I'll admit, it's a pretty childish collection. But then, I take a certain childish pleasure in keeping what are, here in the Midwest, some pretty unusual coins. Besides, they look cool.

I Started Something

2009-01-12T00:02:00.000-08:00

Back in college, I used to write. Mostly bad poetry, but also some very good short stories. About 10 years ago, I even started a novel. I guess everyone says that, sometime: "I'll write a novel one day," or, "I'll make a movie." It's that Andy Warhol 15 mintues dream that we all have.

So anyway, mine was to write a novel. I started it, and like most people who start novels, I never finished it. I never really got beyond writing a few scenes, actually.

But I never throw anything away, and more to the point, I never delete a file, so I found the disks the other day. They were stacked up on top of my desk hutch, and covered with too much dust. I brushed them off, and warmed up my old laptop which I haven't used in a while because it's too slow but had to use for this because my desktop hasn't got a floppy drive.

On the second disk, I found the dozen or so short stories that I wrote in college. I started reading them, editing them, and generally enjoying them. I felt ten years younger.

I don't think I'll do anything with them, but it was fun to relive an old hobby for a while. Who knows, maybe I will finish it one day, now that I've found it....

I Found the Time,,,

2009-01-04T22:53:00.000-08:00

...to curl up with a good book. I don't often get a chance for that, but it's something I love to do. It was one I hadn't read before, and it definitely wasn't happy, but I also couldn't put it down. Since those are things I look for in a book (especially the first and last), I was in reading heaven.

The book was Nevil Shute's On the Beach, about the world post-atomic apocalypse. It was written in 1957, and parts of it are definitely dated, but the story itself has held up well.

It set in Melbourne, Australia, at the beginning of 1963, just about a year and half after the nuclear holocaust has wiped out the northern hemisphere. The war wasn't planned, grew out of a local conflict in the Middle East, and some of the bombing was done by accident, because no one knew exactly what was going on. In many ways, it would fit right into the modern world. We learn these details later in the book, as the characters talk about them amongst themselves, trying to make sense of what has happened, and what will happen.

What will happen is this: the wind pattern is following a normal shift, and carrying the radioactive dust and fallout into the southern hemisphere. There is no way to stop it, and no way to survive it. Everyone in the book will die, of radiation sickness, by the end of August. It's Australia, so that makes it the last winter, and the last springtime, and then goodbye. Radiation sickenss is a nasty way to go, so the Australian government made cyanide suicide pills available through pharmacies. None of this is hidden in the book; Shute doesn't play us that way. Rather, he writes about people's reactions, desires, and eccentricities in the face of absolute doom.

And in that sense, the book grips you. You read of the American submarine captain, who has convinced himself that come September, he'll go back home to his wife and kids in Mystic, Connecticut, and the Aussie girl who falls for him, and the Mary, the young wife who won't face what's happening, and her pragmatic husband, Peter, the naval officer who wants to be productive more than anything else, and John Osborne, the scientist who buys a racing Ferrari and gets out on the motor circuit... These people are like us. They have desires and hopes and dreasms, about home or the garden, or winning the Grand Prix, and suddenly they have to face the loss of those dreams, and everything else.

So what do poeple do? I won't tell everything. I will tell you that I couldn't put the book down, and I actually cried at the end. And that's a good read, to me.

Zoos

2008-12-21T01:46:00.000-08:00

Last week, I took my older daughter (she's almost 5) to the zoo. That was an experience.

She's old enough now to start learning a bit about the animals, instead of just ooh-ing and ahh-ing at them, so as we walked through the zoo, bundled up in our coats, I told her some interesting facts about the animals we saw, and she told me what she knew about them.

"Daddy, a zebra can run very, very fast."

"An elephant nose is a trunk, so an elephant eats with his nose."

"If a snake bites you, you'll get blood, and it will hurt."

And of course, she had questions:

"Daddy, what is that baby camel doing?"

"It's nursing. Its mother is giving it milk."

"You mean like Mommy gave me milk, and gave my little sister milk?"

I was pretty impressed that she realized that it was the same thing, and I told her so. She's a smart cookie, that kid. As we started down the path, we heard a rooster crowing, but couldn't find it. Eventually we realized that it was up in a tree. Neither of us had ever seen a chicken in a tree before, so we sat on a bench and watched it for a while, until it flew down to get something to eat. Neither of us had ever seen a chicken fly before, either, but we have a pet bird at home, so my daughter knew all about flying birds. She told me how the chicken used its feathers to fly down. I'm just glad she didn't ask why it was in the tree in the first place.

All in all, it was a pretty great day.

Birthdays at the Office

2008-12-09T23:07:00.000-08:00

Last week, we had the quarterly birthday celebration at work, and went out for lunch. I didn't know this, but our supervisor called ahead to the restaurant and arranged a cake, with candles and a singing waiter, to be delivered to our table. Apparently, that's just what they do, 4 times a year, to acknowledge the birthdays. It's good for office morale, especially for the relatively new guy like me, who's birthday is coming up in a few months.

It was a fun lunch, and the best part was, it came out of petty cash. We went to a Mongolian-style barbecue, took over 3 tables, and absolutely didn't talk shop. We told all the dirty jokes that we can't tell at the office, we talked about our vacation plans, we talked about our kids, and we came up with the weirdest possible combinations of ingredients to take to the grill.

That last was pretty good, actually. I don't know if you're familiar with Mongolian barbecue, but the way it works is this:

There are tables full of ingredients. One table for meat, poultry, and fish ingredients, one table for vegetable ingredients, and one table for spices and sauces. You pick up a bowl, fill it up with whatever you want, add the spices and sauces you want, and take it to the grill.

The grill is about 7 feet across, with 5 or 6 grillers, who take people's bowls on a first-come, first-served basis. They dump everything on the grill, and use long wooden sticks to stir and mix it. When it's done cooking, it goes back in the bowl and you go eat. There are dishes of tortillas at the tables.

Definately a good meal, and definitely party food. And if you don't like it, there's no one to blame but yourself.

One last note: I have no idea how much is genuinely Mongolian, or even if Mongolians like to barbecue. But it was a good birthday celebration.

What do You do for Fun?

2008-10-06T05:16:00.001-07:00

So. I've been spending some time with this blog, just talking about what's fun, what do I do for fun, why I find it fun, what sort of things I'd change to make them more fun, and quite a bit about my kids, who are still little, and therefor a lot of fun to spend time with.

But enough about me for a day. What do you all do for fun? Comments are welcome, and I'd love to get a bit of a discussion going about what's fun and what's not, but mainly, I'd like to get some ideas. Sometimes, it seems that trying to enjoy life is like running your head into the brick wall of the DMV beauracracy; if you do it long enough, and with enough persistence, you'll eventually make some progress.

So what makes it so hard to enjoy life? Is it the ratrace of work? The never ending mountain of laundry in the back room? Or the fact that no matter how much overtime you put in, there're always more bills to pay and not enough money to pay them? How do you get around all of that? How do you escape?

I spend a lot of time with my kids, or with my friends. I try to make time with my wife as good as possible. I try to never lose sight of what's important, and to never forget about what's not important. It's not secret, that, but it does make life a little better.

So what do you do?

Why Does He Do It?

2008-07-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday, I dropped in on an old high school buddy of mine. I didn't call first, though. If I had, he would have gotten out from under his car.

You see, fixing that old car is what he does for fun. It's a '67 Pontiac something or other, and it's been in his garage for as long as we've known each other. His dad bought it in 1982, and he sort of inherited it last year. He says that he'll get it going, as a memorial to his dad.

I can respect that, but I don't think that 25 years in a garage, with a couple of guys tinkering on it one weekend a month has done much to improve the drivability of this vehicle. Of course, wild horses couldn't drag that opinion out of me within 10 miles of my friend. It's a good thing this blog is sort of private, isn't it?

So there I was, sitting in my old bud's garage, with my feet propped up on the rear bumper of this car, beer in one hand and scratching his dog behind the ears with the other hand, and wishing that there was better heat in there. His wife was in the kitchen, baking cookies with their kid. If it weren't for the beer, I'd've felt like I was sitting inside a Norman Rockwell painting.

But then, what's wrong with that? Small town America might be fading, and it's hard to find it in the suburbs, but it did exist, and it still does exist, and there was something bright and beautiful about it, for all it's provincial garb. And maybe that's what his car project is really all about.

It's a July Free Slots Tournament!

2008-07-07T06:32:00.000-07:00

Every now and then, I get online and play the Internet casinos. OK, so maybe it's not the smartest thing to do, but I make sure to follow some simple rules: I never, ever pay more than my budget; I never, ever chase a loss; and I always have a good time, win or lose. It works, and it saves me the airfare to Vegas or Atlantic City, or a drive downtown or across the river. And of course, the games are a lot of fun.

Mostly, I'll play blackjack or video poker, but sometimes I'll get to the online slot games. This month, that's a sure thing.

One of my favorite online casinos, All Jackpots, is running a great promotion on their slot games. It's called the Free Slots Tournament, and the "kicker" is that the entry fees for the tournaments are waived, so you can get into them anytime you want, just by playing the slot games.

This is a great promotional gimmick. The games are great, if you're just looking for a quick escape, and the prizes are real. I even won $100 dollars on the second tournament I entered! Just because this is gambling on the Internet doesn't mean you have to lose money; as long as you set a gaming budget and stick to it, you can have a great time without breaking the bank, and there's always the chance to win a big prize.

There is one thing: before you play, make sure to read the terms and conditions, and the tournament rules. You're playing online, after all, and it's not like you can ask anyone what the rules are. So make sure you know in advance. You'll have a better time, and there won't be any surprises. But mostly, just have fun. Online casinos are escapism, pure and simple, and there is a time and place for that. Enjoy it!

Lazing the Day Away, with Trains

2008-06-26T06:38:00.000-07:00

So last Sunday was one of those long lazy days that can do so much to recharge the batteries. I had nothing much to do, and nowhere to go, and no one to meet, and I made sure to take the absolute fullest advantage of it.

In the morning, for a few hours, I took out the old Lionel O-gauge trains that have been sitting my basement ever since we cleared out my parents' basement two years ago. I don't normally like tasks that involve lots of packing and unpacking, but this one was genuinely fun. Probably because I never knew what I would find in each new box.

There were 50 or 60 pieces of track, two big engines and a smaller steam engine replica, about two dozen boxcars and flatcars, and four cabooses. There was even a box of landscaping materials and buildings, all to the same scale as the trains.

Once I had it all unpacked, and out on the floor, I set up a loop of track about 3 feet across, hooked a control unit to it, and plugged everthing in. I tried out all three locomotives, and all the cabooses; I was pleasantly surprised to discover that they were all in working order, with no burned out lights or malfunctioning horns. Other than a strong smell of ozone when the trains were running, everything seemed tip top.

With that in mind, I started planning the next project: I'm going to get the trains back in operation. Dad would appreciate it.

Music For Free, Sort Of

2008-05-15T04:50:00.000-07:00

It's getting late, and I've spent way too much time tonight sitting at the computer. I really shouldn't have, because I've got to work in the morning, and it's not like I'm doing anything that can't wait for the weekend, but it's like this:

My wife set up a music file sharing server on our computer. Some of her co-workers recommended it to her, and the other day, when I got home, I found it all set up, and downloading.

That was it, for me. This wasn't the sort of thing I'd've set up on my own, but now that it was there, on the computer, it was too good to pass up. So I asked my wife to show me how it works, and I set it to start downloading some of my favorite songs. This would be a big day.

You see, a few years ago, I lost my CD collection. It was in my car, we were in an accident, and the car was totaled. When I went to the junk yard to sign over the title and collect our stuff from the wreckage, I didn't see the discs. I figured they must be a home somewhere. About six months later, when we moved to our current place, I still couldn't find the discs. Now I think that the guys at the junkyard got themselves a music collection. But I have digressed....

eMule isn't the fastest system, but works reasonably well, and after a few days of patience, I found that I had half a dozen of my favorite songs back, and available to listen to. And if you ask, yes, getting the music was worth the wait. After all, free is definitely a better deal than a record store can offer.

Well, almost free. It's polite to keep the downloaded files accessible to other eMule users; after all, this is a file sharing service. But I don't think that sharing is too high a cost.

A Wedding

2008-04-23T05:33:00.001-07:00

I went to a wedding last weekend. I didn't know the bride or groom; rather, my wife and I are friends of the groom's mother, and she invited us. I must admit, it was really nice to see how happy she was; and how many people were there to share it.

So, it was quite a party. I should have expected it, since it was thrown by two Jewish mothers, but the food was excellent, and extraordinarily plentiful. There was a little chicken and angel hair appetizer that was amazing. And the bar was well stocked. I had a few too many rum-and-cokes, which might explain why I felt the way I did at work all day today.

Getting home at 2am might also help to explain that. I haven't been out that late since college, and I'm really not used to it. The day after the affair, my eyes felt like a pair of cracked ball bearings, and I had aches in places that I'd forgotten I had.

It was worth it, though. My wife and I arranged a sleep over play date for the kids, with some friends of ours, and then we went out had a great time. We drank, we danced, we called a cab to get home.... For a night, we felt like we were 20 again, and it was a wedding, so love was in the air.

I must admit, even though we were there for a friend, and we were thrilled to see her on her great day, I think that the best part of the night for me was getting a chance to just cut loose with my wife. We haven't had a chance to go out and dance since our older daughter was born, and she's almost 5 now. Look at this; I'm even measuring the times of our lives by the ages fo our children! That's a sign that we needed a night like that.

So here's to the newly married couple, and to their unlimited future together, but also, here's to me and my wife, who feel like a couple of kids again!

Try the Slots Tournament for Free

2008-04-08T05:55:00.000-07:00

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Ever Play 21? Why Not 21 Trivia?

2008-03-18T05:22:00.000-07:00

I was websurfing the other day, and found a fun little trivia game, completely by accident. It's called the 21 Trivia Competition, and it's actually a competition. I think it's sponsored by an online casino, but it seems pretty harmless. It's a simple raffle drawing, basically, but with a twist.

The twist is, before you can enter for the prize, you have to play a trivia game about the number 21. The questions are bunched in groups of 3, and you can't go on until you complete a group. Each set of questions is harder than the one before. Sounds pretty simple, doesn't it?

Well, it is. The rules of the game even allow you to go googling for the answers (in fact, they encourage it!). I don't think they want anyone to get any wrong answers, really. Because once you've gotten to the end, and answered all the questions, you can enter the prize drawing. The prize is $21,000, which of course is a thousand dollars for each question, so that's a pretty good rate, I think.

And now, you ask, did I play the game? Yes, I did. And I found all 21 correct answers. Some didn't need much finding (3 times 7 is ?), but some were a bit of a challenge. And did I enter the drawing? Yup. I actually did. So now I wait.

Keeping it together

2008-03-16T08:04:00.000-07:00

I have a large plastic container hidden deep in my closet underneath piles of other random things that seem to have no other place. This plastic box has a green handle that pops up for easy carrying. The box is rather heavy, although all that is in it are photographs, spanning my entire life; obviously from the days before digital photography.

Do you have an old repository of photos and aren't sure what to do with them? Go out and buy a photo album or even just a sketchbook, or even a notebook, if you don't mind lined paper. Then, go through your photos and categorize them and place them in your new scrapbook!

Scrapbooking - makes you think of old age, of lace, and flowery things, perhaps? Not at all. For those who like it simple, just paste in your photos and give them dates and captions. If you're a little more artistically inclined, try cutting things out of your favorite magazines, phrases and pictures in bright colors and gluing them around your photos in interesting and creative ways. And nothing says that your photos need to be glued straight, or in a line in the center of the page. Be different, be unique, do it your way.

In the end, you'll have volumes of visual testimony on your own life. And not only will it be yours, it will be a valuable resource for generations to come. The more I get into researching family history, the more I wish that my ancestors had preserved something attesting to their identities and lives.

So give it a try. You have my word.

A Good Read

2008-01-22T01:30:00.000-08:00

The other day, I started cleaning out the boxes of stuff in the basement. These are the boxes left over from the last two times we've moved, and for some reason never quite unpacked everything. Just to put in perspective, the last time we moved was 2002, and before that, 1998. At least one of these boxes had been sealed up for 9 years.

Most of the stuff in the boxes was just crap. A lot of old college papers, some old newpapers that I don't remember why we kept them, and a few odds and ends. God bless the Hefty trash bags, because that's were most of it ended up.

But one box, a fairly small one, yielded up a bit of treasure. It had books. About thirty of them, mostly paperbacks, and some that I had been looking for since the last time we moved. Finding them put me in hog heaven.

Among the books was one of my all-time favorites, The Caine Mutiny. I hadn't read it in years, but I still remember the story. It used to be one of those books that reread every year, just so I don't forget it. The movie was great, too, with Humphrey Bogard as Captain Queeg. Unforgettable.

So the last few nights I've been sitting up on the couch after everyone has gone to bed, and I've been reacquainting myself with a favorite book. Does it get any better than that?

Who Blogs for Fun?

2008-01-03T01:17:00.000-08:00

So, I have been keeping this blog for a while, talking about all sorts of things that I do for fun, or have found to be fun, or just plain like, but it never occurred to me to blog about ... blogging! Let's face it, I wouldn't be keeping this blog if it wasn't fun, or if I didn't like it.

So what's fun about it? I mean that question, but only in a semi-serious way.

What's fun about blogging? I'm sitting here, at a computer, throwing my thoughts into the void, and sometimes I even wonder if anyone reads them. The truth is, though, that readership isn't really relevant: I would do this anyway, even if I knew for a fact that no one would ever read it, or ever care.

So why do it?

Well, it's a good way to keep a journal, for starters. And it's a good way to organize some thoughts. I have a private blog, that no one will ever see, where I keep the dark and dirty secrets or the serious ventings and rantings that I know my wife would never like, and I also keep a semi-private blog, where I post pictures of the kids for friends and family to see. And there's this blog. The one that's public.

I keep this one because sometimes, I just need to shout from a rooftop. Maybe what I have to say isn't earth-shaking, shattering news, or even of any particular importance, but we live in a world where it's increasingly hard to say anything, and increasingly hard to get noticed in any way. So maybe this is just my way of bypassing the standard routes.

The internet makes it possible. Anyone can publish virtually anything (which is not always good; look at the rampant anti-semitism on Wikipedia, for example), and that has introduced a new sort of freedom to the freedom of speech.

And maybe that's why I do it.

Nah. I just like to talk.

Date Night

2007-11-27T07:12:00.000-08:00

My wife and I went out on a date last night. An honest to goodness date. We arranged a baby sitter for the kids, and then I knocked on the front door, and told my wife, when she answered, that I was there to pick her up. It's a funny little ritual we have, and we start all of our dates that way. It makes us feel like we're in high school again.

Which is the point of date night. We do it to break the routine of grown-up life. It doesn't matter where we go. Sometimes we go out to dinner, sometimes we go mini-golfing, last night, we went bowling. Occassionally, despite our low-brow tastes, we get ambitious and go out to a fancy restaraunt. We've even gone to plays and musicals; Rent and Les Mis were date nights for us.

What's important for us, is to do something that we don't normally do in the routine grind of our lives, and to do it together. We want to make sure that we can keep ourself feeling young and fresh about each other.

So, last night, we went bowling. To put it in perspective, I am probably the world's worst bowler. I once bowled a 12, and I was stone cold sober at the time. My wife's not so bad; she's pretty reliable about rolling a 120, which means I've never beaten her in all the years we've known each other. Between you, me, and the Staten Island Ferry, I think that's why she keeps playing the game.

Last night was fun, though. We got to wear silly shoes, and through heavy balls down a slick wooden lane at a bunch of 10-pins, and drink a few brews while were doing it. What could be better than that? We had some laughs, which is what we were after.

That's what makes the pick-up ritual so important. We'd both had lousy days at work, but we'd planned date night well in advance. We knew it was happening. When I knocked on my own front door, and told my own wife that I was there to pick her up for her date, it helped us to get outside the pattern of the day, and start something new. I have psychologist friends who've told me that we're tapping into a vital principle of relationship building when we do that.

I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know about that. What I do know, is that we never talk work or kids on a date night, and always start date night with the same little ritual. And that among our circle of friends, we're one of only three couples that's never been divorced.

Scavenger Hunting at the Grocery Store

2007-10-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

So I took my daughter, the four year old, to the grocery store yesterday. I was getting ready to head walk over (it's right across the street), and she was begging to come with me. So, I let her come. And did not reget it.

To start with, she was on her good behavior. She listened to me, she did what I asked her to, she helped to push the shopping cart, and she even helped to find groceries.

That last was part of a scavenger hunt. As Dad, I held the list and navigated us through the store. As the scavenging hunter, she looked on the shelves for the items I told her we needed next. It actually was a workable system.

Some things were easy. Noodles, for example, were very easy for her to find. She loves them, and recognized them right away. She even knew which shapes I should buy.

Oatmeal was a little harder. She knows the Quaker Oats container, but it was buried in the cereal aisle. She had to look down the shelves on both sides, twice, before she found it. She wanted the really huge size, but we only needed the smaller one.

She couldn't find grated cheese. I have to admit; that one was the "trick question." It was at the cheese counter, and was grated fresh for each customer. I held her up, so she could see what the cheese counter lady was doing. They both liked that.

We went through the whole store that way, and she managed to find about two thirds of the items on our list. I was pretty impressed with her. Normally, she's not so well behaved at the grocery store, but this time, with something important to do, in a fun way, everything worked out just fine.

Heck, even I had fun.

I Got a New Digital Watch

2007-09-19T08:24:00.000-07:00

I got a new watch. It's digital, it's Sony, and it has more features than I will ever need in my lifetime.
There's an alarm, of course, and stopwatch and timer features, but also a multiple time zone feature which will allow me to set the watch, in advance, for up to 10 cities. There's a calculator option, as well as a calendar.
And now I'm sitting her at my desk, it's getting late at night, and I'm trying to figure all of these features out, without using the instruction book. This is an uphill battle, to say the least.
But for the moment, it's entertaining. And it's keeping my mind off the serious issues in life. And no, I really don't want to talk about those. I know that some people use their blogs to talk about all of the "big issues" that are happening in their lives, but that't not me. I use this blog talk about fun stuff.
And right now, that means my new watch.
I just made it beep, twice, very loudly. Not much else happened, though. Trying the other button, the screen flashed the world "error" at me.
Setting the time, which I did earlier today, was easy. Setting the multiple time zones was also pretty simple. Getting the watch to cycle through the times, so I can see my local time again, after checking on DC, London, Rome, Jerusalem, New Dehli, Tokyo, Honolulu, and Los Angeles is not so easy. The watch doesn't want to stop scrolling.
I'm thinking that if I can't this working pretty soon, I'll either break down and open the instruction book, or I'll open the back of the watch and pull out the battery.
I don't really want to do that, though, because I'll lose the current settings, and invalidate the warranty for 500 meter water resistance.
Ah, decisions, decisions....

I Went Out on a Date

2007-09-04T03:38:00.000-07:00

Karaoke night. What else is there to say?

Yup. Like the title says, I had a date recently. With my wife. It was a lot of fun. We arranged a baby sitter, and then we went out to a little bar and grill not far from where we live, where they have Rolling Rock for a dollar, and the best chicken fingers in town. And karaoke.

We didn't know about that last. We found out that it was karaoke night when we got there. After a brief consultation, we decided not to sign up. This had more to do with my wife's perception that I cannot carry a tune, and my perception that she cannot carry a tune (honestly, I am not sure that either of can, but we both think we can), than it did with any sense that karaoke isn't fun.

Because it is fun. It's a lot more fun to sit and watch, though. Especially when there's dollar beers to be had. So we just found a table in a relatively dark corner, sat back with our chicken fingers, barbeque sauce, honey mustard sauce, and Rolling Rocks, and watched the show.
And what a show it was. If we thought that we can't carry tunes, we soon got a lesson in poor singing. Now, maybe it's not nice to have fun like this at other people's expense, but these people were volunteering for it. First, they were drunk enough to act stupid unselfconciously, and second, they were belting out 80s and 90s hits like they thought they were stars.
I think I know how the judges on American Idol must feel, when they get those contestants who are bursting with enthusiasm, but have no skill at all. It's scary.

It was also a blast to watch. Especially because we knew most of the songs, and were mostly sober, so we could just sit back and sing along quietly with each other, while all around us, drunks were making fools of themselves. A sociologist could have written a paper on it...
Eventually, it was time to go home, and so we did. But we'd gotten out together, and had a good laugh, and that's what really counts, of course.

We Won Wow

2007-08-28T07:22:00.001-07:00

It's time to head back to the softball diamond.

Well, the perfect record's gone. Our half-assed softball team actually won a game.

We didn't mean to; after a summer of straight defeats, we'd sort of come to a conclusion that it'd be sort of fun, in a really perverse way, to finish the season (it ends the last weekend of this month) with that "perfect record." The catch: we couldn't throw a game. We were hell-bent on finishing the season with no wins, but our pride prevented us from losing on purpose. Every game had to be honestly played.

Well, that came back to us, and we won't have that perfect record.

Last weekend, we won. Admittedly, we only beat the team with the league's second worst record, so that now we are tied for the bottom spot, but we did win a game. And it wasn't even a close call that could have gone either way. It was a blowout that called in the fifth on the mercy rule. Going to bat, at the bottom the fifith, we were ahead 23 to 1. Our opponent hadn't even had a hit since the third inning.

Some of the guys on the team were genuinely upset. I guess they felt there's a sort of cachet to finishing 0 and 17, but the rest of us just shrugged that off and let the losers buy us some beers. It actually felt pretty good.

Summer Festivals - Festivals rock.

2007-08-20T02:44:00.001-07:00

It's summertime, and all over the place, towns are having, planning, starting, or cleaning up from, their summer festivals. You know what I mean; those outdoor art fairs, and carnivals, dance festivals, and what have you that it seems every town in America puts on in the summer.

'Til recently, I lived in suburban Detroit, and had the good fortune to get to choose from some really good festivals, all just a short drive away:

There was the great Ann Arbor Art Fair, the smaller Royal Oak Art Fair, an even smaller (but still fun) West Bloomfield Art Fair, and for the last several years, the fun Arts, Beats, and Eats in Pontiac.

There are others, but those are the ones I usually went to. Of them all, I think that Arts, Beats, and Eats was my favorite. You can probably tell from the name, but it wasn't just an art fair. Restaurants from all over the Detroit area had booths there, and there were scores of musical performances as well. Last year, I stayed up late to see Verve Pipe. They're good, but I think that they were better back before they got big. One of the best shows I ever saw was Verve Pipe at a cheesy little meat-market of a dance club in Kalamazoo, back in 1993, I think. That rocked.

There was plenty of good stuff in the art booths, too. I found some really cool earthenware goblets, with food-safe glazing, and bought six, just to have set of wine cups. They're nice; heavy clay with plenty of heft.

And I'm starting to go on and on. I wanted to talk about summer festivals in general, not this one in particular. Anyway, I'll talk more about this later.

Ciao!

This is Something I Have Wanted for a Long Time

2007-08-09T06:07:00.001-07:00

Don't tell anyone this, but I have a deep, dark secret.

I wasn't always such a cool guy. In my youth, I was even a geek.

Yup, it's true. And my inner geek is still with me. A few days ago, it got out.

You see, while I was web surfing, I found this page: http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/infocom/

This web page is geek heaven. It's all the great text adventure games by Infocom in flash format. I'm sure you remember the text adventures; you were given scenarios, written out (hence the name, text adventure), and you told the game what you wanted to do. I used to love these games, Zork, Planetfall, and the rest, when I was a kid. And now I have just found them again, for free...

It's been at least 20 years since I've played the, of course, so I didn't really remember the walk-throughs. That was no problem, though... A short Google search later, and I found the solutions to all of the games on that site. The solution pages also had links to maps, and other information about the original Infocom releases of these games.

I'm not sure that Infocom (or at least, it's game division) exists anymore. These games are all from the 1980s (a few are from the early '90s), and of the pages I found with other game-info, the most recent was last updated in 2000.

So try out these games; they're a blast. Some of the puzzles are pretty simple, and others will keep you up at night. And you'll notice that I didn't include any link to the "cheats!"

Painting the Rooms

2007-08-02T04:05:00.001-07:00

Even the worst household chores are better when you do them with your kids.

Last weekend, we painted my daughter's room pink. There are three things you need to know about this, to truly understand how this impacted me.

First, I hate house painting. I just really hate it. It's the one chore that I absolutely cannot stand. My wife actually likes painting rooms, and she truly enjoys planning out the colors, and has fun with the whole process. For me, though, it's the only chore that will always be just another chore.

Second, my little daughter looked up at me, with her big brown eyes, and asked, "Please, can you paint my room pink, Daddy?"

Finally, my daughter's four. And she's a really big girl, now. And because she's four and really big, she insisted on helping.

Put all this together, and it means that I spent last Sunday afternoon moving furniture, spreading dropcloths, pulling pictures and posters off the wall, and, after all that, washing two gallons of pink matte finish off a four year old. Oddly enough, the room looked pretty good at the end. You can't even tell which parts I painted, and which parts she painted.

That part, her help, actually turned out better than I expected. For a hyper little kid, she listened very well, paid attention to what she was doing, and kept at it, putting a coat of pink on the lower half of one wall, for almost 20 minutes before she got bored. I guess even a four year old can get the nose to the grindstone if it's a grindstone they like. I'll have to remember that particular lesson in parenting.

We didn't even get any paint on the floor. So even though I don't like house painting, it was still a pretty good Sunday.

There's a National Ice Cream Day?

2007-07-29T05:18:00.000-07:00

I love ice cream. Really, I do. Every now and then, I'll swing by 31-Flavors and pick up a pint of my absolute favorite, World Class Chocolate. It's a little bit of heaven down here on Earth.

So, when the opportunity presented itself (in other words, when she got old enough to appreciate it), I took my older daughter with me on a special, super-secret, late-night (8:30, but it was past her bedtime) ice cream run. We even had Mom's approval, because she'd eaten a good dinner, and taken a good bath. The kid had, not the Mom.

I gotta say, parenthood delivers a new lesson every day. I was really impressed with my 4yr old's behavior at B&R. I was afraid she would demand extra ice cream, or want a flavor they didn't have, or just throw a tantrum, but she didn't. She tasted 5 different flavors before setting on bubble gum (it's vile, but it's also pink!), and then ... she insisted on a cone.

I should have seen that coming. After all, I had a cone (with World Class Chocolate, of course).

I got her the cone, and we sat down. She looked confused. I showed her how to lick the ice cream around the edges, to avoid a mess, and five or six napkins later, she'd caught on. It was very cute; I was sorry I didn't have my camera with me.

And there we were, out past bedtime, eating ice cream, and she told me all about her day at the summer day camp.

"Daddy, I colored a beautiful flower, near a rainbow, and then I wrote "Mommy" on it. And then I played dress up with another girl, and then we all went and played in the water."

I hope that we can make this father/daughter night a regular thing, because it sure was a lot more fun than playing poker or baseball with the guys.

Of course, I don't think I'll tell anyone that!

Playing for Peanuts - Another Softball Game

2007-07-18T05:17:00.001-07:00

Yup, me and the guys played another softball game.... And had another loss to our "perfect record." It's a good thing that we're really just there for the fun of it, or this would get very frustrating very quickly.

The last game was rather amusing, though. Our shortstop hurt his wrist, but didn't want to leave the game, because we didn't have an extra guy to take his place, and the catcher lost his glasses, but couldn't leave either, for the same reason. So we had a shortstop who couldn't throw, and a catcher who couldn't see. It felt like we were Charlie Brown's baseball team out there....

It did lead to some amusing antics, though. Our shortstop managed to make three tag-outs, and as Yogi Bera (was it Yogi; I don't remember) once said of a particularly inept catcher, "You gotta have one, or you'll have a lot of passed balls." At least there weren't too many passed balls. Although the catcher did tag out the ump at the plate, because the other team's shirts were a similar red design.... Erik (he's the guy who's work is sponsoring this team, remember?) wanted to go crawl under a car in the parking lot, after that one.... Poor guy is managing us.

We had a practice two days after that debacle, and Wade brought us new T-shirts. They are emblazoned with the name, The Peanuts, on them. Very apropos, I think....

Softball Night

2007-07-12T04:14:00.001-07:00

I think I've mentioned that the guys and I stopped our regular card night; Erik had told us that his department at work was putting together a softball team for a city league, and needed some extra guys to fill up the roster. We all jumped at it, and now we play ball every Sunday and Tuesday. I'll be honest. We suck; haven't won a game yet.

That's not important though. We have a good time, and even though we have a perfect record (haha), we're not getting blown away. Game scores are usually something like 7 to 5, or 9 to 8, and we usually only have two or three gross errors in a game. I'm not so sure about the guys from Erik's work, but me and the other non-work guys aren't there to win, anyway. We're just having a good time.

We've got the minimum number of players on the team, nine guys out of eleven permitted. Our roster has 1st, 2nd, and 3rd base, shortstop, pitcher, catcher, and three outfielders. League rules permit a fourth outfielder and a DH, but we just couldn't get the players. Fortunately, everyone's able to commit to the games, so we haven't had a forfeit yet.

There is one other team in this league (20 teams, total, I think) that also has only nine players, and they have had to forfeit a game when a guy couldn't make it. I heard that after the loss was recorded, they put their shortstop in a shallow left position, and played the game anyway, just for kicks. It's that kind of league.

I Have Discovered Online Video Games

2007-07-09T04:10:00.001-07:00

I've always loved video arcades. Maybe I've mentioned that already, I don't know because I don't feel like reading back through this blog right now... Anyway, I love video games. Back in college, I could blow whole rolls of quarters at the arcade, usually on pinball, or a monster game called "Rampage." It's been a while since I really played my heart out at an arcade....

And it will probably get to be a longer while, because I have discovered the amazing world of free online video games. Wow. The choices are limitless. Again, wow.

In the last week, I've found game sites with versions of Missile Command, Pac Man, and even Space Invaders. I felt transported back to my youth, but without having to beg for change. My wife muttered something about "colossal wastes of time," and said that the yardwork had better get done, but fortunately, it was raining....

...And I got to lock myself in the study and play games.

So what are the pros and cons of online video games? Well, the biggest advantage is that you can find practically any game you want, for free. All you need is a good computer, a high-speed internet connection, and a flash player, and you're good to go. Most of you probably know that already.

Make friends with Google. It'll help you find the games you're looking for.

There are drawbacks, though. Going to the video arcade used to be a social thing, but internet games are a solitary endeavor, so once the novelty wears off, there's not much incentive to stay online...

It was fun while it lasted, though!

A Day at the Zoo

2007-06-21T04:42:00.001-07:00

Well, a half a day at the zoo, because my daughter is only four, and didn't quite make it to lunch.

We had a good morning, though. We started at the aviary and butterfly garden, which were close to the main entrance. My big girl loves butterflies, and, as I thought she would, she loved the butterfly garden. Her eyes lit up when we went in and she saw what was there: dozens of colorful butterflies, flitting around bright tropical flowers.

I had to tell her not to chase them, or to try to catch them. She's only 4, and rather exuberant at times. Still, once she managed to slow down, she was very well behaved. I took her to watch a particularly large butterfly eating from a flower, and explained how it drinks nectar. She leaned over to watch, and was careful not to get too close.

And when a butterfly landed on her, she stood very still until a docent waved it off.

The aviary was less exciting, actually. Most of the birds stayed up high, in the dome, and were hard to see. A small duck did walk right across her feet, though.

Later, we went to the penguin house. She loves penguins almost as much as she loves butterflies, and pressed herself up to the glass to watch them swim. I think one penguin was watching her, in return.

After the penguins, we saw the seals. She loved them, especially when they went into the water and started spinning over and over. We had a special treat: it was feeding time, and we got to watch them go after the fish. Some of the seals were content to eat in the water, but one of them flopped out of the pool and started chasing the zookeeper who had the bucket of fish. My daughter liked that one the best.

When we got home, she took a nap. She doesn't do that too often, so I guess all the fun wore her out. She's a good kid.

The Second Poker Night - Poker night, revisted

2007-06-14T05:03:00.000-07:00

We did it again. Us guys got together for another poker night. Well, euchre night, anyway, since we didn't want Wade to win again, and there were only four of us this time, but you get the idea.

Anyway, the card game didn't go to well; no one really wanted to play. So we put Rambo on the DVD and turned on Wade's flat screen LCD TV. I tell you, that guy's got too much money. Maybe I'll get a sex change, marry him, and divorce him, just to finish paying off my house...

Well, not really.

Anyway, about halfway through the movie, we got bored with it, so we went out to the yard, beers in hand, and got some baseballs and gloves out of the shed. Honestly, I don't remember the last time I played pickle. I just feel glad that I still remember how to field and throw. So while we're out there in the backyard, tossing the ball around, Erik says that some guys from his work are looking to put together a softball team and enter the city league, and did we want to join, 'cause there weren't enough players in his department.

It didn't take long for us all to agree. I had a voice mail from him this morning, that the first practice game is next Sunday, and the first regular game is next Tuesday night, at the Civic Center. Apparently, there's only 9 guys on the team, so no one is allowed to miss a game.

And for the next few months, we'll have baseball night instead of poker night.

Fixing the Yard

2007-06-06T05:58:00.001-07:00

I spent last weekend in the front yard, cleaning it up for the spring and summer.

I'll be blunt: this is not my usual definition of fun. It's definitely not something I'd have chosen to do on my own. But... my wife wanted the yard cleaned, and she wanted a tea-garden on the side of the house, and a landscaper just wasn't in the budget.

So I was out there, raking leaves and twigs, bagging them, and mowing the lawn. And then the fun began: I got to play with the pick-ax.

There was an old flower bed on the side of the house that my wife wanted to have cleared, so that she could plant a tea garden. While she went to Home Depot (or whereever; it might have been English Gardens, it doesn't really matter) to buy topsoil, mulch, and plants, I had the priviledge of wreaking destruction on the overgrown weeds that had taken over this old bed.

Not only did it turn out to be sort of fun, but I got a good workout and a bit of a tan, too. By the time my wife got home, I had the bed cleared, and the old border-stones set back in place. We worked together to put in the topsoil and spread the mulch, and then we got the various herbs (18 plants! what kind of tea does she want?) out of the car and into the ground. By evening, we were watering the new tea garden.

Married couple spring project number X, completed!

We Went on that Picnic

2007-05-27T03:34:00.000-07:00

A few posts ago, I said that I liked picnics. I even started out with my wife on a picnic. It was time to go on one again, and last weekend was too beautiful, so we took advantage of it.
I packed the portable grill, a cooler full of hot dogs and Cokes, and some fishing gear into the back of our snazzy little Focus hatchback, packed the kids into their car seats, and the lovely wife and I took off for the nearest State Park at 10:30 on a Sunday morning.
Our timing was perfect. It was early in the day and early in the season, so it wasn't crowded. We spread out our blanket under big oak tree, not far from the little pond with the fishing pier, and fired up the grill while we watched our daughters, 4 and 2, run around in a sand pit.
When the grill was ready, and the little one was napping, we showed our older daughter how to cook a dog on a skewer over the flames. I even had a chance to sneak a kiss or two with my wife, and remind her that our first date was exactly 9 years ago. She smiled, and said she knew.
After lunch, I took my 4 year old to that little fishing pond, helped her set up a rod, and cast for some fish. She wasn't scared when we caught a koi, but she wouldn't touch it, either. She said it was "Eew." When I threw the fish back, she said he was swimming home.
Good intuition on her part, because it was time for us to head home, too. It was a great day, though. And a lot of fun.

The Art of the Couch Potato

2007-05-09T04:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is fun, but my brother has raised the act of watching TV to an art form. He's got a couch that is exactly 6 inches longer than he is tall, and I know for a fact that he consulted a seamstress to have custom made cushions. He's got TiVo, so he'll never miss his favorite shows. He's got an arrangement with Sam, down at the corner store, so he'll never run out of his favorite chips, either. It's scary, the amount of effort he has put into watching TV.

He recently got a dog, a big, friendly Rottwieler, and he taught it to facilitate his television habit.

The dog can fetch the remote control. My brother keeps a roll of paper towels under the cushions of the couch, for slobber control.

The dog can also open the fridge, and get a beer. He can only manage the long neck bottles right now, but my brother is working with him on picking up cans. He (my brother) keeps a bottle opener and a tube of non-water hand cleanser in the end table drawer, to reasons of sanitation during beer drinking.

The dog can even close the door on the fridge, after safely delivering a beer.

My brother has told me that if he could teach the dog to go and actually buy the beer, than everything would be perfect. I wondered, but not out loud, if this had anything to do with his divorce?

She Taught Me How To Dance

2007-05-02T06:05:00.001-07:00

I was watching my daughter yesterday. She was dancing, which is nothing unusual for her.

Dancing is a very special thing for her, and she does it a lot. For her, a dance involves a lot of wide, sweeping arm movements, a gentle sway back and forth, and turning in a circle. If the music speeds up, she'll run around in a big circle. My wife jokes that whatever she does, she does in three steps: talk about it, sing about it, do an interpretive dance.

You might have guessed already, but the kid is just 4. Right now, dancing is her life. I think it helps to calm her down, and make sense of the world. Or maybe she just thinks it's fun. Sometimes, she'll dance with a wild abandon that any mosher would envy, and other times it looks like she's following well-defined steps.

Now, for my part, I have never been much of dancer. I haven't got a good sense of rhythm, and I am very self-conscious aboug how I look on a dance floor. I think I can use some lessons from my daughter.

For her, dancing is pure freedom of movement. Watching her, I can see that her dance is highly formal, but also highly free-form. It's relaxation, translated into movement.

Or maybe I am analyzing this too much. After all, she is only 4.

I hope she never loses this dance.

Driving at Night

2007-04-26T05:06:00.001-07:00

I used to go driving.
Doesn't sound special, but it's something I would do, years ago, from the time I got my license at 17 until I was about 24. I would go out at night, mostly in the spring or summer, and get in the car, and go. To this day, I am not completely certain why I did it.
I do know that I got a feeling of deep calm when I was on the freeway late at night, with no other traffic, and just the dashboard lights on my face. My old car had good suspension; I felt like I was floating down the road.

Sometimes, I would set the cruise control and let my mind drift, keeping just enough focus to follow the curves. If it was a cold night, I would turn on the vent, but usually I'd just crack the window. Sometimes, especially in spring or fall, there was a night-mist on the road. Those were the times I liked the driving best.

I can't do that anymore; I'm grown up; responsible. A husband and a father. But there are nights, when the baby gets colicky and can't sleep, that I do the only thing that helps: I get her in the car seat, and I drive out onto the freeway. It only takes 20 minutes, but it works every time.

I don't know if any of this is fun, but in my introspective moods it does help to bring back that sense of peace. It's getting late now, and the baby is crying. I have to find my keys.

Poker Night

2007-04-19T06:42:00.000-07:00

Last week, a friend of mine called me up, and said that he was starting a poker night. Just a guys' thing, every Thursday night when his wife was went out with her friends. I told him I didn't play poker. I remember his answer:
"So what? Neither does Jeff, but he'll be here. The point is, the Rolling Rock, the Rocky movies, and 3 hours to talk about sex and sports."
Who could resist that? I showed up on Thursday night, at 7, with a six pack of Rolling Rock long-necks, and an unopened deck of cards.
Now, I was expecting a fun evening. I got a bit of a surprise. There were 5 of us there, and we've all known each other since college. Four of us are married, three to our original wives. One is on wife number 3. One is a bachelor. He said after watching Wade's divorces, he didn't think he could afford to give houses to women he doesn't like.
Wade was the poker man, and the whole thing had been his idea to begin with. He dealt the game, and walked us neophytes through it. After two hours and four beers, I didn't really remember the rules, and anyway, we'd run out of matchsticks. Wade had them all. I guess being a neophyte doesn't help on poker night.
All in all, it was a good night. It brought back memories of college dorm bull sessions, and gave us all a chance to pretend that we were 20 again. It was definitely fun enough that we'll make it a regular thing. After all, what can be better than escaping from the daily grind once a week?

Kids Allways Know How to Have Fun

2007-04-05T07:19:00.000-07:00

I was watching my kids playing together, and it occurred to me that here are two people who always know how to have fun. They don't need a TV.
The older one is almost 4; she's in charge. The younger is almost 2; she doesn't want to follow. It makes for an interesting dynamic, but there's no fighting, and remarkably little crying. I've even seen them share. Well, I've seen my older daughter share.
Their two favorite games seem to be kitchen and dress up. The kitchen can be set up anywhere; the older one spreads out a cloth (that's the oven/stove/counter), and the younger one puts anything on it (blocks, necklaces, foam letters- it's all food). Then they'll invariably bake a cake. And want the parents to taste it. It's always delicious.
Dress up is even more fun to watch. They have a two piece black dress that was their aunt's dance costume when she was about 6, and now it's a princess dress. The older one likes to pin the big matching bow to her hair. Once they're dressed up, with the elder in the dress and the younger in the jacket, they start accessorizing.
They have a small box of costume jewelery, and they take turns pulling out plastic beaded necklaces and bracelets. By the end of their playtime, I have a hard time finding them under it all. But it sure is fun to try.

Spring is Here

2007-03-29T08:28:00.000-07:00

It's springtime, finally. I saw the first robin the other day. I think I'll have to set up a picnic soon.
Picnics are always fun. My first date with my wife was a picnic. We took a basket of sandwiches, a bottle of wine, and a blanket, and went out to my old college campus on a weekend afternoon, and sat out by a little lake. We watched the birds and the clouds, and the wind in the trees, and by the time we'd finished the first sandwich, I knew I was going to marry her.
We don't live out that way anymore, but there's a park not far from here, with a pond and some good shade trees, and we still have that old rough blanket...
It's getting time to call the babysitter and go out for a weekend afternoon, to have a picnic and watch the birds and the clouds. Maybe it's escapist, maybe it's overly nostalgic; I don't know or care. But a picnic with my wife, to celebrate the start of spring: that's fun.
When the weather warms up a bit more, I think I'll take the kids out to that park. There's a small fishing pier on the pond, even though I don't think there are any fish in there, but it's the perfect place to teach a 4 year old how to fish. There's no risk of actually catching anything.

What Do I Do For Fun?

2007-03-25T04:18:00.001-07:00

Ok. So I've started talking about fun. But before I start exploring the depths of fun, what do I do for fun?

Well, that depends, on a lot of things. If you'd asked me in college, you'd've gotten some answers that I don't think I can put in a family-friendly blog, but those aren't the sort of answers you'll get from me today.

I like baseball games. Going to them, spending an afternoon at the ballpark, especially in August, when the hot dogs have been boiling for 4 months. Don't try to get me to watch the games on TV; it's just not the same.

I like taking my baby for a walk. She's just started walking, so once we hit the sidewalk, I put her down and let her go. She's incredible to watch, as she pokes into everything she sees, and tried to chase dogs. Usually, she gets tired after about 15 minutes, but it's 15 minutes of solid fun.

I like the music of Bruce Springsteen, especially when I'm driving very fast with the windows down and the stereo up. Those things just seem to go together, and to equal fun.

I also like pina coladas, and getting caught in the rain. But let's not go there today, shall we?

So let's start exploring fun. Why do we want fun? What does it mean to say, "Let's go have some fun?" And were is the best fun packaged and sold?

Greetings for the First Time

2007-03-21T06:38:00.001-07:00

And...

We're on. Live. Blogging.

Welcome.

I'm not sure how you got to this blog, but I'm glad to have you here. It's nice to cybersee you.

I've never written a blog before, and I don't know the rules, so bear with me. I thought I'd write about things I know- just a choose a topic- and see what happens. The topic here will be "Fun."

I just thought of that. Clever, huh?

Seriously, though, let's talk about fun. What makes things fun? Why do some of us call it fun, and others call it boring with a capital "B?" What, exactly, do we call fun, and how does it change? I'm a historian by trade, and this how I think...

I want to make this blog public, and open to comments. As I explore the subject of fun, feel free to chime in, and add your own $.02. You can even tell me where the 'cent' symbol is on a keyboard. Learning that would be a little geeky, and it would appeal to my love of trivia. Is that fun?

You get the idea- I want to talk about fun things in a fun way- explore the history of fun- determine the idiosyncrasies of fun- and most of all, have fun doing it.

So I'll be back later, with a post on something I have found fun. I'll talk to you then.