Sunday, March 29, 2015

Entry 278: Fantasy Baseball Draft Preempts Blog Post

I forgot to write a blog post this weekend, and by the time I realized it, I was riding shotgun on my way to Maplewood, New Jersey for an annual fantasy baseball draft party.  Now it is 8:25 p.m., and I am thoroughly exhausted and in no condition to coherently write anything longer than a paragraph.  I did not go to sleep until four in the morning (which, surprisingly, was two hours earlier than last year), and I came home in the afternoon to a pregnant wife and a two-and-a-half-year-old with a new favorite game he simply calls "tackle."  Also, I drafted Troy Tulowitzki in the first round for the second year in a row, and I'm not feeling good about it.  Overall, it's a night a crossword puzzle, a 30 for 30 documentary, and an early bedtime.

Until next time...

[Update: "Overall, it's a night a crossword puzzle, a 30 for 30 documentary, and an early bedtime."  Apparently a paragraph of coherent writing was overly optimistic.]


Saturday, March 21, 2015

Entry 277: Madness ... of the Child-Rearing and March Varieties

S returns from her work trip abroad on Sunday -- none too soon.  The little man is doing a pretty good number on me.  Don't get me wrong, I'm holding my own, I might even be winning, but he's wearing me down in the process -- Pyrrhic victories.  The in-laws are really helping, but there is only so much they can do -- or more to the point, only so much he'll let them do.  For example, he absolutely will not let them change his diaper (and heaven forbid he start using the toilet consistently) nor will he let them dress him.  So baths and bedtimes are almost entirely on me.  I'm just doing a lot more child-rearing than usual.  It breaks down like this: When S is here we split it more or less 50-50; if you catch either or us on the wrong day each of us will argue we do way more, but objectively, it's pretty much down the middle.  When I'm alone, obviously it's 100% on me, and when the in-laws are here, it's about 60-40.  Now, that 40% is very much appreciated, but its not 50% -- that's all.

Also, he gets too much iPad and too much junk food when Ava and Thatha are in town.  I don't say anything because it's one of those things where its better to let them do it their way than to risk coming off unappreciative.  However, I do think it's strange that my in-laws don't like him going outside when it's windy, but have no problem letting him stare at the iPad while eating chocolate chip cookies.  Well, to be fair, they probably do have a problem with it, but it's the only way they can keep him in line sometimes.  Plus, when it's 6:00 a.m., and I want to sleep for another hour or two, it's not like I'm protesting when my mother in-law puts on Curious George so that he will leave me alone.

Another thing I don't like is that my in-laws want me to take them to a store every weekend.  Last week it was the Indian grocer; this week it's Costco.  These place aren't very close and they are madhouses on the weekends.  If you factor everything in -- D.C. traffic, parking, lines, etc. -- you're looking at a solid two-hour trip.  They don't really get that I structure my entire life specifically to avoid doing things like this.  But, like I said, S is coming back tomorrow, and also like I said, I'm very appreciative for their help, so ... I'm just venting.  I mean, if you can't vent on your own blog with a readership in the low double digits (at best), then where can you vent?


[This is one of my son's new favorites: "I wanna watch 'Clippard' the big red dog."]

In other news, I'm feeling pretty good because I just finished a book I've been working on.  I found a publisher and everything.  Yeah, that publisher is me, but still ...  I'm not expecting to sell many copies.  But I didn't write it to try to make money.  (I did not quit my day job.)  I wrote it because I wanted to do something creative and because it was fun.  That last part -- fun -- gets short shrift sometimes, I think, but it's important.  It's what keeps me going during those moments of self-doubt.  Whenever the question comes up in my brain (and it inevitably comes from time to time), "Why am I spending so much time on this?  Who's going to actually read this?  What's the point?"  The answer can always be: Because you enjoy it!  I mean, writing is just the flip side of reading and nobody ever questions why they read.  It's the same thing with crossword puzzles.  I like making them more than I like solving them.  So even if they never get published, it's not anymore a waste of time than is doing the puzzle everyday.

With all that said, I still do want as many people to read my book as possible, and I'm contemplating different ways to best market it.  I'm guessing my marketing campaign will be pretty weak because I don't really know how to do that, and I specifically don't enjoy things like that.  I did however buy some cheap ad space on a popular baseball website, so we shall see.  (Also, big thanks to BJ for getting somebody at his website to agree to review it.)  At a minimum I would like to make back the $300 I spent on the cover (and a big thanks to LB for the back cover photo), so if you want to buy a copy, by all means, please do.  Just search my name on Amazon or click here.  And if you like baseball, you can even read it after you buy it!  One thing that's nice about my book is that it's a series of short vignettes, so it doesn't take much commitment to start it.  It's meant to be read a few paragraphs at a time.  It's a great bathroom book for a baseball fan.  And if you think I wrote it that way because I don't yet have the skills to put together a full, cohesive narrative, then you are absolutely right.



In other other news, it's March Madness!  This first weekend is up there on my "Favorite Sport's Weekends of the Year" list.  In fact, it might be my very favorite.  It's either the first rounds of March Madness or the open weekend of the NFL season.   Although this year, I might have to throw in golf's U.S. Open, as well, since it's being played in my home town -- my real home town, not Tacoma or Seattle, which I sometimes claim for simplicity.

Anyway, every year my office does a March Madness pool, about 15 people, or so.  It's not a traditional office pool; you rank teams instead of filling out a bracket.  It's a lot more skill-based the way we do it.  I'm currently in the lead and if I win, it would be my third in a row (out of only four times total).  In the 16 years they have done it, nobody except me has ever won back-to-back and only one person has won three times total, so a victory would bring me some serious office cred.  I'm joking -- but only kind of.  It's supposed to be for fun -- and it is -- but it's a tiny bit competitive too.  The winner gets a little trophy that's displayed in our office.  I've been bragging about how I have an almost unbeatable ranking algorithm (Nate Silver!), and so if I back that up, then people at my office (including my bosses) think I'm smart.  And if my people at my office (including my bosses) think I'm smart, then that can only mean good things for me.

I love the tournament because I can monitor the games online and then if they get interesting I can watch the ending.  Well, this afternoon I won't be able to do that because I'll be at Costco.  But usually I can.

[I Googled "March Madness" and this is the first action shot that appeared.  It is a pretty cool one.]

Alright that's all I got.  Until next time ...

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Entry 276: In-Law Reinforcements

It was an up-and-down week alone with the little guy.  Half the time he's a happy, fun little boy; the other half he's an intransigent little pill -- so basically he's your typical two-year-old.  His pill mode has two settings: whiny and meddlesome.  When he's in whiny mode, he makes that incessant "fake crying" noise that every toddler I've ever known has in his or her repertoire in some way -- "e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e" -- and then he acts pouty and inconsolable about the smallest affronts, like I gave him the one-fourth cup to play with and he wanted the one-third cup.  When he's in meddlesome mode, he just won't leave you alone for two seconds -- if you go to the bathroom, he's banging on the door (or coming in if couldn't get it locked in time); if you send a text, he wants to see pictures on your phone; if you are trying to make dinner he wants to stir the pot and cut the vegetables.  The worst one is when I'm trying to sleep in the morning, he comes into my bed and lays down on me -- not by me, on me.  For some reason, he wants to use my neck and head as a pillow.  I think it's because when he was really little I used to let him sleep on my chest, but now he's too big for that.  Whatever the reason, it's not a very pleasant way to be prodded out of bed.

But last night, thankfully, the in-laws came for reinforcement -- none too soon.  Not only does it take some of the burden off of me to constantly entertain him, but it also just makes him happier which is good.  (They dote on him, like you wouldn't believe.  It's a bit much, even by grandparent standards.)  Also, it gave me a chance to play poker last night, which I haven't done in ... I don't even know how long.  I won $70, which is pretty sweet.  I'm not great at poker, but I'm good enough not to blow it if I get good hands, and last night I got really good hands.  I twice beat flushes with full-houses -- and I made a sweet call on a friend-of-a-friend who went all-in on a huge bluff.  The primary purpose of poker is to shoot the shit and drink a couple of cold ones with mates, but walking home with a decent chunk of loot in my pocket is a nice cherry on top.  Maybe I'll use my winnings for a date night; it's just about the right price for a sitter and a movie for two.  Actually, who am I kidding, we live in DC, it's more like a sitter and a small popcorn.



Anyway, I did something else this week that I haven't done in many years: had my eyes examined.  I've been wearing the same two pair of glasses since, let's see, 1998, maybe, so I decided it's time to get new ones, and if I'm going to get new glasses, I might as well get a checkup to make sure nothing has changed.  Nothing has.  I still have an astigmatism due to a toric curvature of my lens.  I can see quite well at long distances, but I still need glasses to prevent headaches/eye fatigue when reading or working on a computer.

The place I went, according to Yelp, is "a great optical boutique" called iGlasses.  That name was probably much less misleading twenty years ago or whenever it opened, because now it just sounds like Apple's response to Google Glass.  I really like it, but it's a strange place.  The reception area is run by young, trendy people of indeterminate race and gender, and they were bumping that type of music that's like Latin/techno/R & B/trip-hop/dance all rolled into -- that type of music that makes any white person over the age of 30 go crazy if they listen to it for longer than 15 minutes.  But then all the optometrists seemingly are old Jewish men.

The examination room was the polar opposite of the reception area; it looked as if it had been set up in 1971 and hadn't changed since.  When the door closed behind us, drowning out the last of the *ootz, ootz* coming from the radio, it was like I had stepped into a David Lynch movie -- all these beige machines, a shelf of old optometry books, big, dusty framed degrees hanging on the walls, and an old man with translucent orange hair, bracelets, and pinkie rings, reeking of cigarette smoke, instructing me to read row after row of letters and then taking notes by hand on a legal pad.  But the doctor was actually really kind and efficient (and funny -- he cracked a few legitimately good jokes), and I was out of there in no time at all.  


The really trouble began when I had to pick out frames.  I'm terrible at stuff like that.  I just don't have a discerning eye when it comes to fashion.  I pretty much let S pick out all my clothes, and before we met I'd go shopping with whomever I was dating at the time.  The stretches between girlfriends were tough.  I'd sometimes have to up my game just because I needed some new jeans.  So with the glasses frames, I just threw myself at the mercy of the woman helping me.  She told me that I should pick out a few frames and that she would pick out a few frames.  So I pretended to browse the wall of glasses for a few minutes and then said, "I'll just go with what you got" and then chose the one she liked the best.  Hopefully she and S have the same aesthetic.

Okay, that's about all I have time for today.  I'll leave you with Lil' S's new favorite YouTube clip.  


I never realized until recently how weird the lyrics are to this song.
Who can take a sunrise
Sprinkle it with dew
Cover it in chocolate and a miracle or two 
The candy man is covering a sunrise with chocolate and dew and a miracle (or two)?  That's not a mixed metaphor; that's putting a bunch of metaphors into a blender and hitting the "puree" button.  

And then this is the next verse: 
Who can take a rainbow
Wrap it in a sigh
Soak it in the sun and make strawberry-lemon pie 
This verse is worse than the first, because it's not clear whether or not the strawberry-lemon pie is a product of wrapping a rainbow in a sigh and soaking it in the sun, or whether or not the candy man makes each one separately.  Also since when is strawberry-lemon pie candy?  Pie is the milieu of the baker, not the candy man.  

For the sake of completion, here's the final verse.
Willy Wonka makes everything he bakes
Satisfying and delicious
Talk about your childhood wishes
You can even eat the dishes
Who can take tomorrow
Dip it in a dream
Separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream
I would say the "eat the dishes" line was chosen solely because it rhymes with "delicious" and "wishes," but later in the movie, Willy Wonka does actually eat his dishes, so well-done there.  But still, I prefer this song much more.



Until next time ...

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Entry 275: Snow Delay

I must send my regrets, Crocodile DG fans, this week's entry is being delay by snow.  How can a blog entry be delayed by snow, you might ask?  It works like this.  When it snows, daycare closes, but I still have to work.  It's one of the downsides of being able to telecommute.  Usually it's not a problem, because S can watch the little man upstairs while I hole up in my makeshift office downstairs.  Sure, every so often I have to take a ten minute break to attend to the escaped child pounding on the door ("Daddy, I'm here.  I'm here, Daddy.  Open da door.")  But for the most part it works out fine -- well, for me anyway.  S usually isn't super stoked about this arrangement.

[A scene from my yard a few days ago.]

However, on Friday, we had a unique situation where daycare, which follows the schedule of D.C. Public Schools, was closed, but S's office, which follows the schedule of the Federal Government, was open.  To make things even more annoying, S usually doesn't work on Friday at all, but yesterday she had an important meeting scheduled that would have been canceled had the Federal Government been closed, but it was open, so the meeting wasn't canceled.  This meant that during the workday yesterday, I had to split time on parenting duty with S (and S had to listen to me rant about DCPS having their own snow-day protocol instead of just following the Federal Government's).

While on parenting duty, doing work is absolutely impossible, which meant I had to make up my work during other times when I'm normally not working, and ... well, you see where I'm going with this.  I'm short on free time at the moment.  And to make matters worse, S left for Africa today for work for two weeks, so I'm on dad duty all by myself.  I really only have to get through this weekend -- during the week he'll go to daycare (no snow in the forecast, thank god) and next weekend the in-laws are coming up for reinforcements -- but this weekend, as it just so happens, is happening right now.  So here we are.  There is a mound of dishes in the sink, a bucket of Hot Wheels scattered on the steps, and possibly a small piece of poop in the bathtub drain (I'm really hoping it's a bit of a Kit-Kat bar I gave him for using the toilet).

And that's how a blog entry gets snow delayed.  On the plus side, I built a cool little snowman today.