End of January, I'll be out there to help her pack up, then there's a flurry of trips back and forth in early February and (by Valentine's Day) she'll be out here pretty much full time, excepting work-related travel and (of course) the wedding in April.

That second sentence is a very good one to both type and read, but the simple fact is it's the first sentence that I keep thinking about.

Kate heads back to New York tonight.

We've been doing the long-distance relationship thing for a pretty long time -- 22 months, almost -- and I think we've managed very very well, but I have to tell you, I'm spent. It's gone past challenging-but-fun and into circumstances-clearly-unnatural-and-unwelcome.

I will proudly and smugly relate tales of our early trials and adventures for years to come, but the end of that phase and the beginning of the next could not, now, come a moment too soon.

January: Goodbyes are a total crap idea in general, and I'd rather have no part in them.
February: This year has been so much more full, that it makes it seem as though more time has been compressed into the same number of days.
March: So we ate, we danced, I proposed, she shrieked and cried and finally said yes, then cried some more, said some very funny things, and then we resumed dancing.
April: I'm getting married in exactly one year.
May: I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth this evening. You should watch this movie.
June: As she moves that elbow, even the tiniest little bit, it starts again - surprised and hurt and confused, like she can't understand what she's doing wrong - and my heart, people, it is breaking, breaking, and broken.
July: Your religion (or, more broadly, your faith) is like your car.
August: Been too tired to blog, but I finished the Triathlon.
September: I found my dogs!
October: So let's say you're folding your laundry, naked.
November: As Kate mentions here, the most recent anthology from Wicked Words finally hit the US shelves this week, and reviewers have been very friendly to the story we had in the book.
December: I have a literary agent.

I will be the best Daddy I can.

I feel like I did pretty well on this -- we had our good days and bad, but there were many more of the former than the latter. I really, truly look forward to every day with Kaylee and (thanks to the set-but-totally-flexible schedule Jackie and I use) it's rare to go more than two days even on my 'off' weekend without seeing her smiling face. (Less, if you count the pix that arrive regularly on my phone.)

She likes playing with her daddy. She asks for hugs, and sometimes even KISSES. (And she helps with home improvement projects! Video of that forthcoming.)

I will embrace the little details of my life, and remember that it is in the small moments of our lives that we create the best memories.

You know... this last weekend, my plans got interrupted. I'd been expecting to spend my day a certain way, and circumstances, logic, and just good planning dictated that we junk our plans and do something else.

Two or three years ago, I would have been so annoyed by the stuff I WASN'T doing that there would have been no way I would have enjoyed what I WAS doing. In fact, there would have been a very good chance that I would have managed to make the whole activity less fun for everyone else, on top of it.

Instead, I settled my annoyance down, and said to myself "look at this rare, once-in-a-year chance I'm getting today -- something just like this will never happen again -- I am so lucky." And I had a great time, with unexpected goodness and, I'm told, a very contented and happy look at the end of the day.

I'm going to call this a win.

I will get a professional literary agent to represent my work.

Done! Hooray! Now for the next round of (thankfully minor) revisions...

I will get paid for fiction I've written three times this year.

Didn't quite pull this off. Sold two short stories, and in fact sold everything that's been submitted this year, which speaks to not-enough-submitting; something I need to work.

I wrote in December that finding an agent was going to count as one of my 'sales' for the year, but since it had a resolution of its own, I don't think I'll count it twice, no matter how good it feels. So, fail.

I will tip the scale at... let's say 170.

Erm. Not quite. I did get down to around 178 in October, but mostly I've been floating in the 180s this year, USUALLY on the low end, but regrettably and annoyingly higher as the year comes to a close. Lose.

What oh what shall my resolutions be for the New Year?

• I will be the best Daddy I can. -- There is no reason to abandon a perfectly good resolution.
• I will be a good and attentive husband, and remember that it is in the small moments of our lives that we create the best memories. -- That means "no bitching about having to run to the store for the third time today... as long as I don't have to go alone."
• I will find a publisher for Hidden Things. -- That is, after all, what's "next".
• I will finish another book. -- Too long working on short stuff; I'm itching to dig into a big story again.
• I will get paid for fiction I've written four times this year. -- I see no reason not to raise the bar just because I didn't hit it this year.
• I will tip the scale at... let's say 175. -- I want my weight back down, but I've got a better sense of what's comfortable for me. Ideally, I'd like to hit this target weight around April, since we'll be going to either Cabo or Hawaii for our honeymoon... and there's the small fact of a summer Triathlon or two to prepare for...

And there we are. Rather: there we were, and off we go...

Heading back to Denver. Missing her already.

Here's a news flash: the most time-wasting thing I do from day to day isn't World of Warcraft. Or Lord of the Rings online. Or prep for face to face games.

Or even checking email.

What is? Reading Google Reader.

At any given moment, SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE, is updating a blog that I probably enjoy reading at least some of the time. That means that, at any given moment of the day, I can fritter away anywhere from 2 minutes to 20 minutes to TWO BLOODY HOURS "getting caught up".

"Getting caught up" is a good way to never actually get caught up on the things that actually NEED catching up on. Reading. Writing. (ahem) Working.

So, while I certainly haven't dumped my dear, beloved Google Reader, I did go through and cut down the sites that it's picking up for me, in an effort to reduce the amount of noise coming through and focus on the signal. Popwatch -- love yah, but you gotta go. LJ WoW Community -- you're history. Boingboing... you're on notice. The Twitter feed is down to the three posters who really add to my day.

I guess that's what it boils down to -- paring the noise down as much as I can to the signal that actually fills my day up with awesome, rather than frittering it away on the trivial. (Boingboing, you're on notice.)

So let's say you're folding laundry naked.

...

JUST BECAUSE, OKAY? THAT'S NOT THE POINT...

Anyway.

So... let's say you're folding clothes as God Intended, and you're working through a stack of onesies or those toddler jumpsuits where the leg seam snaps together all along the seam.

The clothes are probably all inside out and stuff, and you're pulling them rightside out, and getting them straight, and then your instinct is to give them that two handed... bed-sheet-straighting whip, right? To get the last of the tangles out.

Resist that instinct, soldier. Resist it.

The bottom of those little outfits smack right against you're... umm... upper thigh... area.

And, as I mentioned, there are always a lot of snaps right there. It's like a Hello Kitty o' ninetails.

I'm just sayin'.

On this, Blog Action Day, the topic is the Environment. Of course, we're supposed to talk about the real life environment, but there are some lessons that we take from fiction.

Namely, hobbits.

I've been playing a lot of Lord of the Rings Online, and during that time I've been spending a fair amount of time in the area of the game built to represent the Shire. This has been a kind of geeky paradise for me, because I love love love Tolkien's work and seeing it realized more fully in a virtual setting is just tons of fun.

But while I'm geeking out, I'm looking at the hobbit-houses in the game and thinking "man... wouldn't it be great if you could live in a house like that? Forget about how awesome it would be... just think of the savings on heating and cooling... look at the profile of the thing... it's just such an excellent DESIGN."

So... half geek and half responsible eco-parent. Okay. Fine.

Now, we can't bulldoze all the houses and buildings that are out there, of course, but how excellent would it be if someone out there was at least trying to provide a solution like this for NEW housing. If you can't get the government to do a damned thing about Global Warming, make changes on a personal level, right?

Personally, I want a real, beautiful hobbit hold, but if not that, maybe Earthship?

(Thanks to the WoW Insider poster that linked to this earlier.)

My first decade:

Age 1: My mother hates my name. She calls me "The Baby" for sixth months after I come home.

Age 2: Potty training takes an amusing turn one evening when I try to switch from the the baby seat to the grown-up toilet in mid-usage. The resulting antics reduce my parents to tears of laughter.

Age 3: I fall out of my bunkbed in the middle of the night and hit my head on a cast iron tractor on the floor. I still have a scar on the very top of my head from that cut.

Age 4: I climb the tree next to our house and am disappointed I can't QUITE reach the telephone lines leading in from the road. Probably for the best.

Age 5: I accidentally spray a stream of superglue into my sister's eyes (while trying to glue the lid onto the tube as a joke on my mom).

Age 6: I get my first bike, a red banana-seat Schwinn that still shows up in my dreams regularly.

Age 7: My first BB gun, a spring loaded Daisy rifle. I experiment with finding out what happens if you pull the trigger while the cocking handle/triggerguard is hanging down instead of in place. The answer is that the handle snaps back into place and smashed two of my fingers so hard the nails go black.

Age 8: First year in town school. My third grade teacher thinks I'm a genius, because I'm racing through through coursework so fast. The truth is, my last year in the country school, the teacher had me doing the third grade assignments so she wouldn't have as many different assignments to grade, so I've done all this work before.

Age 9: 1980. Mrs. Danburg. I get in the habit of writing notes to the teacher at the top of my worksheets, sometimes using the space for my name instead of actually putting my name in. This confuses and angers the one substitute teacher we had that year. "Who turned in the homework signed 'The Hostages have been released!'?"

I remember thinking that it wasn't fair at all that the hostages were freed because of President Carter, but it was President Reagan in the Oval Office when they got out.

Age 10: Mrs. Krull -- exactly as mean and harsh as she sounds. I am a bit too... chatty to get on her good side. I am not, however, one of the kids who get whacked with a flyswatter for not paying attention in class. Debbie did. Mrs. Krull REALLY didn't like Debbie.

It's funny, the things that your mind mulls over while your body is protesting an early morning bike ride. Today, this is what I got.

Your religion (or, more broadly, your faith) is like your car.

• It's very important to you, and not really that important to other folks, even folks who are close to you. They might, in fact, forget what brand, make, or even color your car is, even though they've seen it a number of times, whereas you have gone so far as to give it a pet name or personalize it in a number of different ways.
• Part of the reason for that is because much of the time you spend in your car is spent alone. It's just you and the car. Yes, you bring along other people sometimes, but that's usually on the weekends, and it's never the same as your personal time. ((In fact, you might find yourself thinking that you're a much better driver when you don't have all the other distractions in the car with you -- I seem to have all my 'close calls' when I'm driving someone somewhere.))
• Unless I'm in the market for a new car, I'm probably not that interested in being sold on your model of car, though I might love you hear you gush enthusiastic about it.

In short, your car really matters to me:

• If you hit me with it.
• If I'm riding with you.
• If you're in an accident when I'm riding with you.
• If you're trying to get me to buy the same model.

Also... no one likes car salesmen, especially pushy ones. (Atheists, I'm looking at you too. Just because you're running on biodiesel with no middle-eastern dependency doesn't mean you aren't in a car.)

Finally, and most importantly, there are lots of cars I find too staid, too ostentatious, too big, too ugly, too flashy, or too trendy to own, myself. Doesn't mean I don't like the people driving them. In fact, the car you drive influences my opinion of you about as much as your religion -- until you get in my face about either.

And when it comes to impressing me, the car almost never does. The driver is the one that matters.

Thanks to Jackie, who got me thinking about this in the first place.

Channel 93.3 Welcomes: Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth

Tuesday, October 2nd
Wells Fargo Theater - All Ages - 8pm

On Sale Monday.

I think we should go. Yes, everybody. Some of you have to be curious about what could have possibly gotten me started recycling after all this time.

Who's in?

I don't like to talk politics. Frankly, I don't keep up on it enough to approach the topics with the knowledge I prefer to bring to a conversation.

With regards to the Scooter Libby thing, I will not -- cannot -- be as eloquent as Olbermann or, for that matter, ***Dave. I can't give anyone political theory or talk precedent or compare events with any other events. I have nothing but Wikipedia-gained pseudo knowledge in that arena.

I can tell you what I feel. That's it. I can tell you what I think.

I don't think Bush should resign.

I think he's an embarrassment as a President, and I feel like personally apologizing for our leader whenever I travel abroad.

I think he's lied baldly and badly to a public that wanted to hear promises of safety and so, swallowed it. I think that in instances when he should have acted for the nation he has instead acted personally, politically, and selfishly.

And I think that with this last little Scooter Libby thing (and it *is* little, compared to the wartime loss of life in the many many thousands (if you count the 'enemy' casualties that no one seems to mention) that never needed to happen), he took the law into his own hands and publicly wiped his ass with it.

I don't think he should resign.

I think he should be impeached. Resignation is something of a noble, falling-on-the-sword act reserved for the likes of Nixon. Bush isn't responsible enough. He's not smart enough. He's not (and this is sad, when you consider the competition) man enough.

He needs to feel the scorn of the people he's supposed to represent to the world. He needs to know that his support, beyond the billiards room of cronies he keeps around him, is gone.

He needs to be castigated.

But all that? It's not about him. It's about us. We, as a people, need to collectively act to dump some chlorine into that particular pool. Better yet, some lye.

It's not enough to have a bad tenant move out with a modicum of grace -- we need to go through the effort of kicking him out, then cleaning up the horrible mess he left behind, because we've been lazy; we fell down and then we've just lain there, bitching quietly as our freedoms and our world shrink by inches. That is the kind of work we need to do to make up for our collective lethargy. Contrition. Penance.

Apology.

So the nice thing about Snapfish is that I can order prints online and go pick them up within an hour at the local Walgreen's.

The nice thing about Flickr (which I'm using for posting to the blog, thanks to Dave) is that I can order the prints online and pick them up within an hour at the local Target, which is just as close and somewhere I visit a lot more often for other reasons.

So last night I ordered a few prints from Flickr for a Target pickup.

This morning, I need to drop Kaylee off at daycare, but Target is kinda-sorta on the way, and I thought it would be cool to grab the prints and give one to Josie, since they're fun.

I decided to stop at Target before dropping off Kaylee, and have the picture for Josie this morning instead of this afternoon.

Whydidnti 1.

We went inside and walked over to the photo desk (Kaylee marching proudly along, holding my hand, in her little pink and white sandals), which was manned but still dark at 8:45, and asked after the pictures. They'd gotten the order, but the printer wasn't warmed up yet: could I give them 15 minutes?

I could have run Kaylee to Josie's at this point and come back. I opted not to.

Whydidnti 2.

I decided to kill the time by wandering through the store -- maybe pick up some picture frames for the pictures we were about to get. I was going to grab a cart for easier Kaylee-portage, but she really REALLY wanted to walk by herself.

"I'm beeg girl!"

So of course we walk, holding hands the whole way.

Whydidnti 3.

We get back into the media section and we're looking at the books, and naming all the animals on the front of the kids books, and she steps up on the kind of little step thing, so she can point at one. I reach for another book with my not-holding-hands-hand just as she steps back too far, into empty space off the edge of the ledge, and suddenly all of her weight and falling momentum is on the hand I'm holding.

And of course I hold it when I feel her fall. She twists kind of back and away from her arm, too, because of the way she's going over.

So she doesn't fall. No.

But I hear one of those knuckle-pop sounds from her arm, and she's crying and holding her elbow.

So I hold her, and wait for the little pain to go away, and distract her with a book.

And the crying doesn't stop.

And when it does, as soon as she moves that elbow, even the tiniest little bit, it starts again -- surprised and hurt and confused, like she can't understand what she's doing wrong -- and my heart, people, it breaking, breaking, and broken.

She wants to read the book, but turning the pages hurts too bad. Wrist is okay, shoulder is okay, but that elbow. Could be anything from a sprain to "this won't heal without surgery," and believe me when I say my mind has played over every option, there, and it's all my fault.

Whydidnti, Whydidnti, Whydidnti... so many things that could have been just a little different and this would never have happened.

Doctors appointment in a half hour, which will be x-rays, probably, and more crying. Marking the middle of a terrible, terrible day.

Been listening to the Avenue Q soundtrack in the car for the last couple days. Great stuff.

One line, though: one line really gets me.

In "I wish I could go back to College," Nicky sings a little throwaway line:

"I wish I had taken more pictures."

I hear you, little puppet guy. I hear you.

So I finally watched An Inconvenient Truth this evening.

You should watch this movie. You really should, and you should do it as soon as you can.

Afterwards, I went over to the An Inconvenient Truth website and, curious, checked out how many tons of CO2 I'm creating all by myself right now.

All I can do is wince.

The national average for the U.S. is 7 tons, and we're the worst country in the world by leaps and bounds.

I'm coming in at around 25 tons -- pretty close to 26.

Granted, more than half of that is due to all the airplane travel I do every year (roughly 72 thousand miles a year, on average), and I won't apologize for that, thanks, but even with that discounted, I'm still well above the (abysmal) national average. I am going to do something about it. By hook or by crook, by increased efficiency (I'm going to see how much I can negate on my own) or simply by putting my money where my mouth is (you can pay non-profits on a monthly schedule essentially enough to negate your CO2 emissions, if becoming 'carbon neutral' is impossible to do alone) -- one way or the other, I'm committing to canceling out my personal carbon emissions.

This is a completely unremarkable lifestyle change. I'm simply doing the best thing for my daughter.

I do that all the time.

Over on knife-fight, one of the posters with whom I strongly identify posted a great thing about his daughter.

She likes putting her hair (and mine) in colorful bows, she loves "I'm the momma and you're the baby" games not only with dolls and stuffed animals but with me as the kid and even with implausible objects ("What does the mommy tree say?"), but being girly does not make her weakly. She loves her "soccer class" (i.e. running around and yelling while the coach smiles benignly), idolizes Buffy the Vampire Slayer (we have the musical's soundtrack on CD and play it for her often), and often plays with various "swords" (usually plastic spoons) and spins tales of bopping various monsters, dinosaurs, and bandits on the head.

There was only one time when she said, "I want to be a princess for Halloween." My heart sank, fearing that she'd finally been brainwashed by the Disney "look at me! I'm pretty!" machine. Then I thought to ask her what a princess does.

"She talk to the King," my daughter said.

"Okay," I said. "Then what does she do?"

She thought a moment. Then, with joyful sincerity: "She bop 'im on the head!"

Damn straight.

So I'm getting Kaylee dressed this morning. I pull her shirt down over her head (which is when, every day, she waits for her face to be obscured and says "Where's KAYlee?!?" -- adorable, but not the point of this story) and she gets her arms in the sleeves.

I reach around the back of her shirt to snap up the neck, and she throws her arms around my shoulders and says "I lahv you, Daddy." She squeezes. "bery bery much."

Obviously, my heart breaks, explodes, and grows three sizes, all at once. I hug her back a bunch and tell her the same, and I get it back again.

Once the whole dressing thing is done, I set her down on the floor, and he heads off for the stoop out front to pick out shoes.

She spots one of her (many) stuffed Easter bunnies; one she hasn't played with for awhile.

"Look, Daddy!"

"Yep!" I say. "That's a bunny."

"Bunny!"

She picks up the toy, and looks at it, and then gives it a big hug.

"I lahv you, bunny." She says. "Bery bery much."

Right. Okay then.

Three days ago, I wrote this:

For Kaylee, "bedtime" means quiet self-play, or sleep, and not much else. It definitely doesn't mean "get back up because I don’t want to sleep yet." I won't be very happy the first time she tries that move, I'm sure.

Guess who climbed out of her bed tonight and went exploring around the house about an hour after bedtime and is VERY unhappy about being put back in her bed?

Whales could once hear each other's songs clear across the world during the days of sail. They no longer can, due to the noise polution of modern ships.

There are certain assumptions I've encountered about Working From Home, and I'd like to set the record straight.

The fact of the matter is that, if anything, I work harder when I'm in my home office, simply because the modern workplace is all about Perception. I don't mean "noticing things," I mean "what everyone else perceives about you." When you're not in the office you have to work twice as hard, simply to make sure that everyone knows you're working. If they don't, you could SAVE THE COMPANY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, and they'd still think you were slacking off.

People seem to think that it's all a big joke -- that when I say you're working from home, what's really happening is that you get up, check email and return a few messages to generate the impression that you're hard a work, then trundle back off to bed to sleep another four hours, followed by a leisurely brunch while getting caught up on your favorite blogs (either nude, or in your pajamas).

That is simply not the case.

...

Except for today.

Today, that's totally what happened.

After a lot of crazy running around on Thursday afternoon to fix a shopping error I'd made a few weeks ago (*), I climbed aboard the midnight flight on Frontier out to NYC for a busy weekend.

Friday consisted of a couple business conference calls (I'd expected one and got ambushed by the other), then some book rearranging at Kate's place of work, then an evening viewing of 300, which we both really enjoyed. I hope to see it again on the IMAX here in Denver, but regardless, a really fine movie. We ate dinner with Keeley and Paula at a place called... Cup, I think. Or Dish, or Bowl or "We can't get your order right, or even take it in a timely manner;" Something like that. Walked back to the apartment, lazed about, and finally decided to play some BANG while watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (which we only made it probably a third of the way through before everyone crashed).

Saturday (one year since my first trip to New York) involved a lot of sleeping in, then breakfast brunch lunch bagels with Keeley and Paula, and from there over to Manhattan to see Avenue Q, which is a great musical that had both me and Kate laughing a whole lot. Think Sesame Street with an R rating, and good enough to win a Tony. Outstanding cast, great sets, great music, and awesome seats about six rows from the stage, center-right. Excellent.

After that, we did a little clothes shopping (at my request!), ironic window browsing, grabbed some lunch supper, then headed back to Queens to get ready for evening activities. Said activities involved going to see Double Down playing at Swing 46, which has a great ambiance, a draconian coat-check rule, mediocre service, good food, and fun dancing. So we ate, we danced, I proposed, she shrieked and cried and finally said yes, then cried some more, said some very funny things, and then we resumed dancing.

(Surprised by that little inclusion in the night's festivities? So was she. :)

Sunday, we got up at stumble-mumble o'clock and took a train from Grand Central out to the Village of Rye Brook, which is where Kate grew up. I got a tour of that township, nearby townships, and a small part of Connecticut; the evening wrapped up with corned beef, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, Irish soda bread, and pretty much everything else you'd expect in a classic St. Patrick's Day meal in an Irish Catholic household. (Yes, St. Pat's next weekend -- they were having the meal early since both Kate and I and her brother's family were there).

Then back to Queens, some Battlestar Galactica watching, and not quite enough sleep before the flight back this morning.

Yeah... busy weekend. :)

(* - There's a longer story here, but in this footnote I'll simply note that the Shane Company is pretty awesome.)

Confessions of an Empty-Nester -- talking about the lifestyle changes that came about when a couple moved from their suburban home and into a condo in the city.

Our genuine interactions were with family and coworkers, the only people who saw us stripped of the [cars] that clothed and protected us. Our neighbors [...] were virtually strangers. Now, we stand face-to-face with people in our building's elevators, at our corner hangouts, and on the sidewalks. We chitchat and pet our neighbors' dogs. We exchange 'good mornings' with the people we pass everyday on our way to work.

This brilliantly sums up the difference I've found between, say, Highlands Ranch and, say, around Kate's place in Queens -- I've talked more with the guys that run the deli around the corner from Kate's place (where she's lived only a few months) than I have with any of my neighbors (whom I've shared a street with for something like five or six years). The ladies in the bakery in Queens ask me when I'm bringing Kaylee back to visit (she got a couple free cookies last time she was there, on the 'Cuteness Discount'.)

I've thought of it as a difference between Denver and NYC, but that's not the case -- it's a difference between the Suburbs and the City -- just working downtown in Denver for the last four months or so, walking everywhere, I'm becoming more familiar with the local business owners and the people who inhabit my 'regular' blocks than I probably ever will be with the people who live around my house.

Tasty food for thought.

Thanks to Rey (ages ago), I got into blogging. Not too very long after that, ***Dave got into blogging and, between the two of us, we've co mutually explored what blogging is about -- what's good about it, what's bad about it, and what the dangers and pitfalls are to the medium. These discoveries became (for me) informal guidelines to follow when blogging, then good rules to observe, and finally (at least for me) the unconscious, inarguable constraints that are "just part" of blogging.

Usually these little rules come after a painful episode where something bit you in the ass:

• You said something about someone who was pissing you off, because you wanted to vent, and they saw it, or a mutual friend did, and drama drama drama.
  
• You bitched about work, and a coworker read it, and showed it to your boss, and drama drama drama.
  
• And so on.
  

What's interesting about this -- or why it came back up to the forefront of my mind, now -- is that some folks I know have recently started blogging (or LiveJournaling, or posting on their MySpace page (why MySpace? WHyyyyyyyyyy?), and are running headlong into The Problems with Blogging.

Veteran Bloggers, see if this sounds familiar?

"I hate having to edit myself on my blog. It's MY blog."

Hmm... let me see if I can find...

... ah! Here it is:

average bear: Bi-monthly self-indulgent whining post

I think the great secret to blog longevity is this: whenever you have one of those days where you think to yourself...

"why am I doing this anymore? this isn't what I started this for; it's not personal anymore, it's not private, it's not really the Journal that I hoped it would be..."

...that you take no significant action whatsoever in regards to those questions. (Honestly, those 'self doubt' days are the worst times to make decisions about anything.)

See, eventually the mood passes and you can get on with what you've been doing.

My current conundrum:
- I want to have a place where I can literally write exactly what my day's been like, what I did, et cetera, without alienating my friends or editing myself.
- For something like that, it would really be best to write the whole thing offline.
- If it's offline, what's the point?

I wrote that about four years ago. I bet I could find a statement similar to that boldfaced line (if not the whole thing) on ***Dave's blog... or really anyone's blog.

That's the main problem of course -- you're essentially (unless your one of those money-making superbloggers) talking to your friends and coworkers when you write on your blog, also (secondarily) to the world in general, and at some point, you realize that talking about how you love spending every night poking your cat with a barbecue fork... you're going to run into problems with the people you know.

There's an old internet-forum rule for discussions that goes like this: "If you wouldn't say to someone's face whatever you're about type in a message -- don't type it." The blog corollary is: "If you wouldn't say this to a room full of your friends, commingling with your coworkers and some family members -- well, don't blog it."

Ugh. Rules.

That's the most annoying Problem with Blogging, but there are more. How do I know? Easy: I did a Google search for "the problem with blogging" and collected some other thoughts on the subject. Here's what The Internets say:

The Problem with Blogging...

• ...is that occasionally, a reader will send you something that makes your head explode.
  Yep, just when you thought you were going to have a nice easy day of talking about the Grammys and posting links to boingBoing articles, someone points out something incredibly stupid about the war in Iraq, and you just have to post something angry that ruins your day. The other aspect of that is when you get someone who comments on your blog with something so... umm... frustratingly... challenging that you just wish you'd never seen it.
  
• ... is that it's so shamelessly self-indulgent.
  Heh. Yeah. To blog is to admit that you like talking about you, and stuff you're interested in, and everyone else.... well, they can get their OWN blog!
  
• ... for me, "Gone are the days of writing."
  and...
  
• ... is one sets a standard. And sometimes it's hard to maintain.
  Blogs are time-consuming. This post will have taken me more than an hour, almost two, to get together, tweak, comment on, and format. One post. It bites into the time you have in a day, and if you build up a habit of high-quality (or high-quantity) posting that happens to be time-consuming -- that means that you're either ALWAYS going to be taking up that much time, or you cut down on the blogging and find yourself posting apologies for not keeping the flow up at it's accustomed level. I distinctly remember someone, last year, saying to Jackie "Hey, where have your Quote of the Days been?!?" and her "I'm sorry! I'm really busy!" reply. I've been there. I've done that. It kinda sucks.
  
• ... is that you can never see what goes on behind the scenes in the lives of these people.
  The toughest things about blogs are that people who usually mean well think they know how your life is going and what's going on with it, based on your blog, and the fact of the matter is this -- it's better than nothing, but everything that anyone puts in a blog, that you read, is taken out of context. Always. For all intents and purposes, there are no exceptions.
  
• ... is how easy it is to be misinterpreted.
  Heh. See above. The blogging format encourages you to write quickly and informally, which sometimes mean you don't choose your words quite as carefully as you might. This can leave you wide-open for flames and criticism, by people who sometimes get what you're saying and sometimes don't.
  
• ... is that it creates a culture of impermanence.
  
  
• ... is that it creates a culture of gossip.
  Something that seems to have dribbled onto the blogosphere from Web forums.
  
• ... is that it creates a culture of spin-control, revisionism, and censorship.
  Blogs tend to get quietly, retroactively edited for content by people who've said things they later find inconvenient, and visitor comments that don't suit the blogger's agenda get quietly deleted. God knows I've done it, as much as I don't like to. History is written by the victor, and if a blog page is exclusively "yours," well, you're always the winner, aren't you? The ability to authoritatively 'publish' your version of history is a terribly tempting thing.
  
• ... is that it creates a false sense of connection to your friends, without the same level of communication that talking face to face/phone calls/even email afford.
  Yeah... nothing more to add there.
  

I still enjoy blogging. It's incredibly valuable to me as a scrapbook, daily notebook, daily snapshot, and a public journal.

Aside from the problems, there are great, great things about blogging...

... maybe next time, I'll post about THAT.

Happy birthday to Kate, who is spending her Special Day stuck at La Guardia airport. Her flight has been waiting to take off... for... four hours, so far.

I really hope the flight finally goes. Yes, we have dinner reservations, and we're supposed to be driving back to South Dakota tomorrow night with Kaylee, all of that stuff, yes, sure -- that's all true.

But aside from all that? I just want her to be here.

I've had years in my life that have just flown by. Years where it hardly seemed as though January had started before December was over. I don't even remember being 33 or 34, really.

By contrast, it feels like I've been 35 for years. I stop when someone asks me my age and think "Am I STILL 35? It seems as though I should have had a birthday by now." This year has been so much more full, that it makes it seem as though more time has been compressed into the same number of days.

I feel like I'm living my life, instead of just... getting to the next day, and that is very good birthday.

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."
-- Peter Drucker

A few months ago, my boss gave me a new project to work on; something he'd sort of hand-picked as a project that needed doing and one that would also have me working on a daily basis with the big movers-and-shakers in the company -- there are reasons for that, mostly having to do with 'making you indispensible' down the road. I like how this guy thinks.

Anyway, the project developed in odd ways, and what looked like it was going to a full-time gig turned out to be... not. Really, really not. Like... I have so much free time on my hands that I honestly don't see the point in traveling all the way downtown five days a week -- I can do 'nothing' right from where I am, thanks. This was also presenting problems with the people I was supposed to be impressing on the project -- with nothing to produce, it's hard to be productive and make a good impression.

So... I did the thing that people, in my cynical experience, rarely-to-never do in the workplace: I went to my boss and said "this project isn't enough work."

The danger there is that he might not have another project for me right away (I was suppose to pick something else up in March), so I'd be left having announced that I'm not occupied full-time with what I'm working on... "and so why are we paying you 40 hours a week right now?"

Luckily, that didn't happen. He had a couple other things for me to start getting ramped up on -- the upshot being that while I still don't really have much more to do than I did, I'll probably go from 'nothing to do' to 'too much going on' sometime next month -- and I might have even earned brownie points for coming up and saying "I need more to do." Maybe. We'll see.

In the meantime... well, I have a book revision to do. :)

There are (at the very, very least) two things that I'm absolute rubbish at:

1. Staying in regular contact and communication with people who are geographically seperated from me. (Bonnie? Virg? Feel free to back me up on this.)
2. Saying goodbye. Goodbye's are a total crap idea in general, and I'd rather have no part in them.

These days, I have to (a) be very good at #1 and (b) deal with the second thing on a distastefully regular basis.

Some days, like today, it really really sucks.

Via Dave (but not strictly following the same rules for sentence selection), my 2006, summarized with one sentence from one blog post, per month.

January: I've never seen Casablanca. I've never seen It's a Wonderful Life. In fact there are a ton of classic films for which I couldn't even summarize the plot.

February: I've been on my new job 12 days.

March: "To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." -- Bertrand Russell

April: Started another Storyball project this month.

May: Today was the final divorce court hearing, rubberstamping everything. Comfortingly anticlimatic.

June: Dear World, I am on the ropes, I swear. You don't need to pull out the end-of-Rocky2-punch, okay? I fucking give. Love, Doyce

July: Placeholder post to talk about how Kaylee started walking one month ago, yesterday, and has quickly become a motorscooter of walking mobility.

August: My last day with my current company is today. My new job (longer commute, but otherwise what looks like a pretty significant improvement in other ways) begins on Monday.

September: The Saturn basically blew up on Friday morning. Dave loaned me his car in the meantime (thanks, Dave!), and by Saturday at noon, I had new car.

October: I have nothing more to add here. Prague is great.

November: I'm thankful for the wonder that is my daughter. Every day is a new smile, a new private joke, a new giggle, a new way she's growing up and watching and learning and shining like an amazing shining thing. She is my Falling Down. She is my saving grace.

December: Kaylee and I are taking our first airplane ride together this Friday!

So in this post, last January, I made a couple new year resolutions. Let's see how I did:

- I will be the best possible Daddy I can be for Kaylee, and the best partner I can be for Jackie.

I think I do okay as a Daddy. Kaylee seems satisfied at least. If you substitute "co-parent" in for "partner", I'd call that part a win as well -- sometimes you have to cut your losses to get the most out of your successes. We did that, and I think it was for the best.

- I will embrace the little details of my life, and remember that it is in the small moments of our lives that we create the best memories.

I really believe I'm doing that. Granted, those special people in my life make that easier -- Kaylee can make even a trip out groceries fun and heartwarming.

- I will get paid for fiction I've written three times this year.

Hmm... Nope, but unlike previous years, this isn't for lack of trying -- I am proud to have submitted work to both short story publishers and agents and gotten a bunch of it rejected, because it means (a) I'm trying! (b) I'm learning! (c) I've had some successes! One short story published, and an agent who read the first fifty pages of Hidden Things and now wants the rest (after suggesting some changes that I'd already decided would be really good ones to make, after some feedback from Matt).

- I will be physically fit.

As of Monday, I'm down to 185, which means I've lost about 20 pounds in the last three months. I wouldn't call it my 'ideal' high school weight, but it definitely ONE of the weights I was in High School, and I'm still going down. Also, I'm dancing regularly and enjoying that tremendously.

So here's some stuff for the New Year:

I will be the best Daddy I can.

I will embrace the little details of my life, and remember that it is in the small moments of our lives that we create the best memories.

I will get a professional literary agent to represent my work.

I will get paid for fiction I've written three times this year. (No reason to lower my expectations. :)

I will tip the scale at... let's say 170.

... and I'll remember it's not important that I meet each resolution perfectly, but that I try -- even if I fail.

It's all about falling down. :)

Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs. You'd never know they were flourescent, the glow is warm and natural. (You can get them at Home Depot.)

If every American home replaced one light bulb in their house with an ENERGY STAR, we would save enough energy to light more than 2.5 million homes for a year and prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions of nearly 800,000 cars. This is an easy, inexpensive thing to do.

This suggestion entirely stolen from Ali at Lies, All Lies, who suggests giving them as stocking stuffers. For myself, I think I'm going to use them downstairs in the 30-bajillion recessed-lighting fixtures the last owner installed.

In no particular order:

• I'm thankful for the wonder that is my daughter. Every day is a new smile, a new private joke, a new giggle, a new way she's growing up and watching and learning and shining like an amazing shining thing. She is my Falling Down. She is my saving grace.
  
• I'm thankful that Jackie and I get along as well as we do. It's not perfect, but compared to what I see between other divorced families, we're the Cleavers. That we could put aside the inconsequential crap and focus on Kaylee and being good parents for her and coparents toward each other is something of which I'm not unreasonably proud. We are pretty awesome coparents.
  
• I'm thankful for my friends who have been understanding, supportive, giving, thoughtful, caring, loving people so far above and beyond the call of duty that I know I'll never be able to repay their kindness.
  
• I'm thankful for my family, who still know me best of all.
  
• I'm thankful for discovering New York City, and for Kate showing me the town and sharing her friends with me.
  
• I'm thankful for having a new job and new responsibilities at that job. For all that it's sometimes a hassle, it's also let me stay in the house I love, take care of Kaylee, get a new car, travel a fair amount, and even visit Prague.
  
• I'm thankful for Kate, who not only helped fill up my days with honest-to-god living (not 'getting by'), but showed me how I could do that for myself.
  
• I'm thankful that I've been losing weight at a healthy, sustainible rate for the last couple months (down to 190 on Saturday; take THAT, holiday temptations!)
  
• Finally, I'm thankful I not only survived this year (which seemed like such a terrible, frightening task in the morning light of January 1st), but actually started to enjoy more and more of each day.
  

It's been a year of Falling Down -- trying things, failing, and getting back up and trying again... sometimes getting it wrong, and wrong, and wrong... and finally right.

It's been hard, and painful, and discouraging, and sometimes despressing, but it's also been wonderful, magical, and happy -- filled with moment-by-moment delights that buoy me beyond any expectations I could have had.

Crazy as it sounds, it's been a good year.

"Hate is just another natural resource, like natural gas. Neither is healthy if I decide to internalize it, but recognizing it's out there in the world gives me something useful I can take advantage of."
-- Rob Donahue

"If the human mind was simple enough to understand, we'd be too simple to understand it."
-- Emerson Pugh

This thought, reapplied, sums up why I (a) believe in God and (b) have exactly zero interest in any organized religions: "If God could be understood by humanity, it would not be God."

There is a lot -- a LOT -- more that I could write on this particular topic, but I'll leave it here: in an infinite universe, the idea of God seems not only possible, but likely. While I have nothing at all against anyone who wants to join together with others in trying to understand this phenomena and (more importantly) help each other live by a philosophy of mutual weal instead of woe, I feel no great inclination to be part of that (especially as embodied in Western Culture), because I think the former is patentedly impossible and the latter, while commendable, does not (for me) require 'the Church' in any of it's near-infinite incarnations.

The following isn't about me. This is an email sent to me by a friend, on a very particular kind of anniversary, and it ought to be shared.

Some of you know who this is, or can guess, or don't know that you know them -- I'm not going to say, or confirm -- I'm not entirely sure it's relevant to the text.

26 years ago today, I developed symptoms of cancer.

It was a Thursday, that week we were off school for state-wide in-service, the night before I'd played Star Wars with my first cousin in his unfinished basement, it was his birthday and he had just turned 5 and I was 7. It was 1980, well before many of you were alive.

I woke up to watch Captain Kangaroo, one of Canada's greatest exports, and was unable to move my legs, for you see, my femurs had swollen from the cancer in my bone marrow and locked my hips up.

We traveled to Pierre SD where we discovered my White Blood Cell count was very, very high and I wouldn't stop bleeding. I spent the night in the hospital there, but they didn't know what I had. By Friday morning I could get up, shuffle around and make it to the bathroom.

Then we went to Sioux Falls South Dakota, they diagnosed me and gave me six weeks to live. Somehow they got an IV in my right hand, I remember fighting off many doctors and nurses.

My Grandmother's brother was a top Doctor at Rush Memorial in Chicago and he got me referred to the Mayo Clinic, one of the best medical centers on the planet. There they saved my life, my doctors were some of the primary specialists in juvenile oncology and they kept me alive. I still have the book they gave us, Leukemia and You, one of the best written and informative books I've seen to describe how cancer and chemotherapy work, I keep it beside my desk.

First I was told I wouldn't make it to my birthday in February 1981, then I was told I had 5 years tops, I'm a part of the first cohort the CDC and NCI tracked from 1976 to 1982, I think my tracking number is like 8232. I testified via video tape to the Senate for funding cancer research in 1985. I lost my hair (it came back thick and curly), I lost the ability to have children and every day I live in pain from the treatments and radiation. The cancer never goes away, we just beat it back enough that my body shuts it down if it creeps back up. I'm sure there are blasts floating around doing bad things in my body...

White blood cells are crazy little guys, more like amebas, autonomous and able to leave the blood vessels and hunt. I have an electron microscope photo of a WBC in attack mode going after a germ.

At the juvenile oncology floor at the Mayo Clinic (Floor 12 East it was), there was a play room and on the bulletin board kids put up their pictures, the survivors would update. When I went in 1991 and put my graduation photo up I wept. There were no other photos of survivors who were older than about 12-13. It's like being the survivor of an elite unit in war and no one else made it out alive.

26 years now, and I don't regret a thing. Next time you see a sickly kid with that chemo/radiation skin and maybe a bald head don't pity them, walk up to them and say, "I know someone who has made it for 26 years with cancer. You can do it too!"

The most recent reappearance of his cancer was a tumor that had to be removed directly from his carotid artery. Following the risky surgery, he writes:

Oh it's a big scar, und Baron von Underbite class scar! I could be like a former Waffen SS officer who was then in French Foriegn Legion in French Indochina with this scar and then I was in the Sinai in '56 and spent some time in Algeria before I bought a bar in Corsica. It's that kind of scar.

There's a level of 'fight' in some people that's so intrinsic, I don't even think they see it anymore.

I'm heading into Target tonight to get some last minute stuff before the trip -- granola bars and the like -- and there's an ambulance parked outside on the curb. They're clearly off duty and at the end of their shift. The woman in the passenger seat is checking her french braid in the side mirror, to see how it's holding up.

When I come out, my throat tightens and my pulse steps up, just for a second; the ambulance has its flashers on.

I see a woman and her daughter -- maybe five years old -- walking in front of the ambulance and into the store. The girl is staring, grinning and open-mouthed at the same time, at the ambulance lights. The two in the vehicle smile back, and wave, and shut the flashers off.

"Did you see that, Mommy? They turned the lights on for me!"

And they're past me, heading inside.

I'm walking the other way, past the front of the ambulance. The pair inside are talking to each other; smiling, tired, shaking their heads, watching the girl as she disappears through the automatic doors. I'm smiling too.

It's a special thing, when those lights come on and nobody's hurt; when something bad becomes something good.

Brought to you by the letter "K" and... the other letter "K", we present...

"Cute" vs. "Fucking Horrifying"

Cute: Babygirl helps you unload the dishwasher by pulling out a spoon ladle and handing to you.
FH'ing: Babygirl helps you unload the dishwasher by pulling out a Henckel and running into the next room with it.

Cute: Babygirl walks up to you in the kitchen with her sippy cup, lifts it high into the air, and drops it onto the stone tile with giggle.
FH'ing: Babygirl walks up to you in the kitchen with your empty wine glass, lifts it high into the air, and "OH MY GOD NO, BABY, NO... SWEET... dammit... mother of... whew..."

Cute: Babygirl coos and reaches down to pet the kitty.
FH'ing: Babygirl reaches down to pet the kitty, when the cat is two steps down on the INCREDIBLY LONG STAIRWELL INTO THE BASEMENT.

Cute: Babygirl bangs herself in the face with balloon and giggles.
FH'ing: Babygirl tries to bang herself in the face with -- SWEET MONKEY LORD WHERE DID SHE GET THAT FORK?

Cute: Babygirl giggles, says "ow", and then pulls mommy's hair.
FH'ing: Babygirl giggles, says "ow", and pulls my chest hair. :(

Cute: Babygirl pulls a pretty little baby picture (from an advertisement) out of the trash and says "ooooh."
FH'ing: Babygirl pulls a... -- no, there's no way to say that well... there just isn't -- and says "ooooh."

Cute: Babygirl feeds herself, rocking back and forth in her chair.
FH'ing: Babygirl feeds herself dog food, rocking back and forth on the floor.

Cute: Securely fastened to the changing pad, babygirl throws her head back and arms outward, bungee-jumping messiah style, and hollers "Aaaaaahhhhhhhh-AHH!"
FH'ing: Stand precariously on my lap, she does the same exact thing.

I'm going very very gray, very very fast.

... and then there are friends.

Level one:
"Hey, you're going to Destination X anyway, can you swing by the Casa, which is on your way, and pick up Kate, who also needs to get there?"
"Sure."

Level two:
"Hey, my car's broke down, can you swing out and give me a ride back home?"
"Sure."

Level three:
"Hey, my car's broke down, can you --"
"How about we bring you one of our cars to use for today?"
"Umm... wow. Sure. Yes. Thank you."

Level four:
"Hey, my car's broke down, can you --"
"How about we bring you one of our cars to use for the weekend?"
"Umm... wow. Sure. Yes. Thank you."

Level five:
"Hey, my car's broke down, can you --"
"How about we bring you one of our cars to use? We're good without it til Wednesday."
"Umm... wow. Sure. Yes. Thank you."

Level six:
They show up and help you push the car to a better place on the side of the road.

Level seven:
They get a can of your favorite soda and leave it in the car for you, cold and ready to be opened.

Level eight:
They suggest how and who to call to get your car donated to a charity (which you were going to do anyway), thus saving on the big towing fee.

...

Dave and Margie are... somewhere around Level Ten. I'm unspeakably lucky to know them, and frankly I just don't say that enough.

Thank you, Guys!

((And thanks also to Jackie for calling around to check tow service info and the like while I was stuck on the highway with no yellow pages.))

At times, there is nothing in the world so genuinely heartening as someone who wants to call you when they are feeling bad, because you can make it better.

Very very good piece from Real Live Preacher today. I encourage the going and the reading.

The roles I play in the world are strong, powerful, and demanding. They require much of me. Perhaps all of me. If these roles were gone, what would be left?

As I said back in December (I had a quote and a link to my original post all done up, but I lost it and I'm not going back -- you can find it by searching the site for 'grocery', of all things), there's a lot in my life... a lot OF my life that I've been fighting against for the last couple years instead of embracing; things that, as I percieved them, were taking away from the 'good' and 'fun' things I wanted to do instead (largely empty and ephemeral things, come to that).

The *best* (/irony) part of all that being the simple fact that every one of these things I fought against were in turn things to which I'd willingly given pieces of myself -- that the fights against them were so vicious stems largely from the fact that I was waging war against myself. Time with my loved ones, even if it's in the grocery, or working on the lawn, or shampooing the carpets in the house, or walking the dogs around the neighborhood, or doing dishes, or laundry, or just straightening up and dusting.

Those things aren't distractions. They aren't pulling you away from your life -- they *are* your life. Resent them at your peril -- hate them enough, and you'll end up at the end of your path hating yourself.

Hate enough, and you'll find that each one of those tasks you once thought dull and boring are exponentially more horrible, undertaken alone.

I'm no great thinker on this topic -- at best, I'm offering warnings about a minefield from the bottom of one of the craters, that's all -- but I'd like to think I'm finally getting to the the realization RLP wrote out today: embrace the things to which you have, over the course of your life, commited your time -- take them on, take them over, and for your own sake find the good in them. Every single moment, from pushing your child in a grocery cart, making up eggs and bacon on a tiny stove on a Sunday morning, to wiping sweat and sludge out of your eyes while you re-sod your sodding yard...

That's you.

This week, I brought in a big 'bargain store' box of chewy trail mix bars that I picked up this weekend and later decided I didn't want around the house, tempting me. I simply opened the box and left them on the table in the center of my 'pod'.

Every time someone takes a break, wanders over, and grabs one, it makes me smile. Just a little, and internal, but... yeah.

Today was the final divorce court hearing, rubberstamping everything. Comfortingly anticlimatic.

We now return you to your (semi-)regularly blogged geekfest.

Three... crushing demoralizing disappointing setbacks this week in different arenas.

*brushes himself off.

I've lived in Colorado over a decade. That said, I don't feel I know it as well and as much as I love it; as well as I ought.

I believe I'd like to fix that.

The end.

"It really doesn't matter if the person who hurt you deserves to be forgiven. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself. You have things to do and you want to move on."
- Real Live Preacher

I had a few slings and arrows cast my way early this week.

You know what? *wave hand* Doesn't matter. ((Sorry only that it distracted me a LOT from what I was doing -- and should have been enjoying -- at the time.))

My friends are still my friends, my life is still *my* life, and my family is still my family, even if we're a little non-traditional, broken, and weird sometimes. You don't like it? Tough.

Kaylee is amazing, just so you all know. We're taking her in for six seven-months-old pictures tomorrow night. I'm jazzed. :)

Happy Valentine's Day I mean... Happy Kate's Birthday to everyone.

"Most of us are just about as happy as we make up our minds to be."
-- Abraham Lincoln, b. February 12, 1809

I try to find a good Abe Lincoln quote to remember every February 12th. On this, the birthday that I've dubbed the "Halfway Point", the above stands out for me -- it seems the best thing to remember when you've got a long road ahead of you and the lights at either end of the tunnel are the same distance away.

Or, as Lori sent to me, once upon a time:

Some things have been leaping out at me to catch my attention lately that do not do so, normally. Quotations. Horoscopes. That sort of thing. Today it was this:

"Most people would rather be certain they're miserable than risk being happy."
-- Robert Anthony

Hmm. I like it. Never heard of Robert Anthony, and Wikipedia was damnably silent on the subject, so I simply dug around for more of the guy's quotes -- found a couple that really resonated with me.

"The one who loves the least, controls the relationship."

"When it becomes more difficult to suffer than to change... you will change."

There's some others as well, but these are the one's out there that I liked the most today -- dark, cynical, and very DIY.

Works for me.

Gave my two-weeks notice at work today. Both my boss and the VP above her talked with me for awhile, and they both had all kinds of good things to say... how much I've changed things for the better, made good things happen, and made the new direction for the team even possible...

And they just have no way at all to entice me to stay, financially speaking. Not even close.

Three years here, almost. Good folks to work with.

Just... kinda sucks.

From the WIST mailing list & site (which I HIGHLY recommend):

It takes as much courage to have tried and failed as it does to have tried and succeeded.
-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A very good quote, when you're working with the idea that "it's all about Falling Down" -- I like it anyway.

This puts me in mind of my 'collegemarriage' -- to quote Thomas Hobbes: "nasty, brutish, and short", and yes, even undertaking the thing owed more to the ignorance of youth than courage, but for all that, there was a belief that it would work, that it could work.

It didn't, but it was a brave attempt.

So... tell me about a courageous failure.

(At least one) job interview from last week went well, and they made an offer.

And... I took it, and start February ninth. However, I might burn a bridge and blow them off in a few weeks if the other, cooler job comes through (pesky something-or-other there about 'another round of interviews').

So... the new place is about 4 minutes drive from the Casa (the Next Big Building West Of The AMC, for those cool enough to know my neighborhood) and in case there's any doubt, I'm totally doing it for the money.

There's some minor risk involved, but after a few days of bugging people around here for an opinion pondering, I decided to jump.

It's all about Falling Down, right?

"I am tired so very tired of always questioning everyone's motivies. I want to start looking at things in a more positive light. "

Very very intelligent thought, yesterday, from someone I admire a whole lot.

Going to have to work on it. I've been taking stock of the last two months, and... damn.

- One two three of my closest and dearest friends in my life stood in front of me, looked me right in the face, and lied to me.
- I've found my words, privately-shared in emails, discussing very close and important things to my daily life, stuck up on a public website that's run by someone ELSE.
- I've found out that people I've known for years -- how they think of --

Well. You know? It's not important. I can't be "right" and be "happy," because you can only be "right" if the person you disagree with *cares*. I could put a laundry list up, and it wouldn't do anything but make me unhappy.

So... explanations:

If you say or do something and it seems to you that I'm questioning your motives (or, worse, attributing motives without even questioning), the reason is because I've become almost maladaptively conditioned to wonder why anyone I know does anything.

Because I used to think I knew, and I don't.

I have to stop trying to know, because I can't. That's wasted work.

I need to learn to be okay with not knowing. Otherwise, I can't trust anyone (even myself), and I *need* to trust people.

Even myself.

Failure is an opportunity.
If you blame someone else,
there is no end to the blame.

Therefore the Master
fulfills her own obligations
and corrects her own mistakes.
She does what she needs to do
and demands nothing of others.

-- Tao te Ching, verse 79

I may not be totally perfect, but parts of me are excellent.
-- Ashleigh Brilliant

So... a new year.

I'm not fond of resolutions, and generally I ignore that little tradition, but I'm making a couple this year, in order of importance to me:

- I will be the best possible Daddy I can be for Kaylee, and the best partner I can be for Jackie.

- I will embrace the little details of my life, and remember that it is in the small moments of our lives that we create the best memories. ((Sure: no one likes going grocery shopping. When is grocery shopping not grocery shopping? When it's time with your family.))

- I will get paid for fiction I've written three times this year.

- I will be physically fit.

Hythia talks about lack of focus, or maybe fear of success and failure?

Which I understand, really: fearing both success and failure is really just fearing change.

One of the taglines that rotates through on this site is "It's all about falling down."

It's something I heard often when I was young and in sports and protesting that I *was* trying. "If you were really trying, you'd be falling down more."

They meant, I suppose, that failure is growth, and it's that fear of failing (taught to us since ... I don't know, since we were BORN, or at least kindergarten) that keeps us from doing anything at all.

Fear of failing. Fear of success. Fear of change.

Lots of stuff I want to change right now, and some of it might mean losing touch with people I really care about, and that's something fearful...

But the possible net gain is so important and huge...

And even if I fail -- if that change and effort, even if successful on a personal level, proves not to be enough -- I will know that I'm willing to make that change and take that risk, and that's really something too.

That's something I want to be true.

I've looked at the last couple years and I see a general reluctance to really embrace my life -- and by that I mean just the general day to day business of living which is really where all the precious, important things happen: time spent (even in a grocery store) with my wife, a chance to see my daughter smile at the christmas lights while we're driving and running errands, the sounds of the neighborhood I live in while I'm walking the dogs...

I resisted all that -- looking for something 'good' to do.

I was, in short, an idiot. All the effort could have gone into something good -- something better.

Because letting go and falling headlong into your life -- being fully present and realizing that this is the special moment that the world and your decisions have given you, right then, right now; that moment, this moment -- that doesn't take any effort at all.

None.

It's as easy as falling down.

It's your life, and it's all about falling down.

This blog is in a very real sense one of the few places I can reference back in later days and see when and how something took place, from my point of view at the time.

In order to maintain a record of this week, I'm using it strictly for that purpose with this post. Comments aren't enabled.

Justin asked yesterday to move back to South Dakota. As we honored his request six years ago to move here, we're honoring his request now.

On Friday (11/11) I'm going to drive him and his stuff up to North Platte and transfer it to other people's vehicles.

I am going to miss him. Small words because no words are big enough.

I can barely function right now if I think about it at all, so I try very hard not to when I'm around people.

That's where I am.

When I look back and read this -- remember not being able to listen to the radio, or get breakfast, or look at anything he's touched without intense, blinding pain.

That's all there is.

Saturday Morning: Baby Safety Course.
Saturday Afternoon: Nap, filled with dreams from the Baby Safety Course.
Saturday Evening: Labor false-alarm, which didn't help things at all on the "sleeping peacefully". Bed at around 3 am.

Sunday Morning: Awake at 7. Stared at ceiling til 9, waiting for stores to open.
Sunday Noon: Go and buy a lot of baby-proofing stuff. Come back and apply it.
Sunday Evening: Yeah, didn't get much sleep here, either.

7 days.

Because folks have asked: The Baby Registry

28 days to go.

In theory. More info, probably, today.

((Note to self: make new "Baby" blogpost category.))

So here's some stuff that's happened with me in the last couple weeks, in rough chronological order.

1.
In having a conversation with someone about something else entirely, I recognized something they were describing as something that I've been dealing with for most of my life: Dx-level anxiety attacks, but so infrequent (once a year or so) as to be... something curious and strange and sometimes a little scary -- but basically just this mystery about Me. I never knew what it was... I had only figured out how to work around it.

Mystery solved. It's a goofy thing to be happy about, but it's just amazing to be able to look back at these episodes that I've never really told anyone about because they're weird and hard to explain and they make people look at me very strangely when I *do* explain them, and now I know the why. It's awesome.

2.
A college friend, my age (who can identify himself here if he likes, or not), had an MRI last week and found out that his massive headaches over the last month were the result of a stroke. There's a lot of scary stuff there, and (re)raised thought of mortality for me, as well as making me think about the persistence of friendships in the face of... a lot of crap that doesn't really matter.

3.
Someone said something to me last week that gave me an angle on something that's been bugging me with the story revision I'm working on. More important, actually makes me *want* to work on it... I hate TeH Revisshun, so that's really something.

4.
I made a friend of someone a couple months ago who thinks like me. I don't mean "agrees with" -- I mean "processes data the same way." Experiencing that, you really begin to understand exactly how much of your waking life is spent dealing with people who just aren't *able* to see things the same way you do, and how much of an effort that is every day.

5.
My daughter...

My. Daughter.

Hmm... I'm going to put number five in a new post, because I just read 'my daughter' for the first time, and I want to sit and read it some more.

Thursday last week was Bring Your Kid to Work Day. Jackie drew the short straw.

During the day, one of Jackie's co-workers, also a Dad, came over and, quietly, smirkingly, informed her that it was clear we were raising an all-American boy.

Why's that?

Because when Dad sent his (same age as Justin) daughter down the hall to make photo copies, Justin checked out her ass.

Yes, right in front of Dad.

*facepalm*

Boy claimed innocence in the face of our teasing; doesn't know what we're talking about, but it doesn't hold water.

Me: "So... was she hot?"
Him: "... I think she must work out or something."

Yeah. Innocent.

I'm listening to someone on the other side of a cubicle wall tell his coworker that the tsunami before-after pictures and the photos of the hundreds-feet-tall waves are 'obviously doctored' as 'there's no way those waves could get that tall'.

I don't know how to tell him he's a moron without actually telling him he's a moron.

Maybe I'll just print the Enchanted Learning webpage out and staple tape it to his forehead.

Jackie asked me today how my writing's going.

My reply: "You bought me City of Heroes for Christmas; that's how it's been going."

Her: "What do you mean?"

Me: "I mean I haven't put away laundry since Christmas."

I've been touting the coolness and wonder that is CoH for the last couple weeks, so let me even the playing field for those of you who feel tempted by my recent rave reviews.

The top 10 list of things I (at least temporarily) forgot to do since installing City of Heroes.

1. Send in the Mortgage payment.

(Honestly, I could stop there, couldn't I?)

2. Take care of stuff for a co-worker's birthday.

3. Take prescribed medicine.

4. Sleep.

5. Check e-mail. For two days.

6. Blog. Anything.

7. Caulk the tub.

8. Go to the gym.

9. Write

10. Eat.

Things I just decided not to do at some point while playing City of Heroes.

1. Sleep. (Repeat offense)

2. Put away laundry.

3. Go to the gym. Or move from my desk. At all.

4. Watch a "do not miss" tv episode.

5. Walk the dogs.

Justin's school has MLK day off.

Today is one of those days where I decided, shortly after getting home for lunch, that it would be

Much.

Better.

if I turned around and went back to work.

Sometimes little decisions like that draw the distinction between teen parenting and brutal homicide.

Busy, or hectic, or lazy times at Casa del Testerman these last few weeks.

Too many antibiotics -- I don't think I've ever felt really motivated to chew my way through the whole treatment cycle before, but I do this time.

City of Heroes is quite fun and addictive, yes... but I've found that there are several things that distract me from playing it. Good to know that the grip isn't total.

I need to get to the gym. Between the holidays and not wanting to get sweat in my head wound, there really hasn't been a good time to go since New Years. Ugh. Head wound's pretty well closed up now, though, so time to get back on the training cycle.

There's other news to share, but I want to make sure that everyone local gets it from my actual talking mouth before I broadcast it here, and I just thought of someone who hasn't yet, so that waits. Neener neener.

Your D*ll Order Has Shipped

I know there's some saying about people who try the same thing twice, expecting different results...

Justin got bit by a dog last night. Chocolate lab tied up outside the grocery store bit him in the face when we bent over to tie his shoe.

He's okay. Scrapes bruises on the outside, some deeper cuts just inside his mouth.

By the time he found Jackie in the store and brought her out, the dog and it's owner (whom Justin never saw) were gone.

This illustrates, no offence to purebred owners, why I prefer mixed-breed dogs... especially over the very popular 'family' purebreeds.

... and of course, I'll twist it around so it's really about me.

I realized this morning that one of the reasons I was hoping Kerry would win was so I could back to ignoring politics -- the big "problem" with Bush (for me) is that the guy draws attention to himself -- he forces me to notice what he's doing. Sure, I might go a week or two in relative peace and quiet, but sooner or later he trips into another china closet (or one of his staff does something that looks suspiciously like sneaking in and emptying one), and I'm back to shaking my head and trying to figure it out. I was looking forward to being able to ignore the presidency.

That's a pretty crappy thing to realize about yourself, but there it is -- I was hoping to make a choice, see it through, nod to myself, and go back to sleep. It wouldn't have worked anyway -- no one could have single-handedly righted what's wrong, partly because just over half the country doesn't see the wrongs as wrong. Clear separation of church and state. Flailing economy (typoed, but I like the way it looks). The right of two people who love each other to be together in a legally acknowledged union regardless of their beliefs, race, background, or gender. The right of a woman to make her own reproductive choices. A war entered on false pretenses. These are problems, and part of a longer list.

About half the people in the country think Bush is the guy to see us through. So be it. I suppose that in a way this is a good thing -- with Bush around, I'm unlikely to forget that any of this is going on. I keep looking on, like during a car wreck or reality television.

I wish I got it. I wish I at least understood what just over half of the country sees in Bush. I mean, I know some of the people who voted for him, and the ones I know fairly well I can say are smart people, so there has to be something there -- something appealing. Look at his really *close* supporters and you see a lot of loyalty, and that's got to come from somewhere -- it can't all be cronyism and payoffs. I wish I could see it. I don't.

(Side note: I can't be entirely bitter -- I think pretty much everything but the presidency and the electoral vote split went 'my way' on the ballots (except for that NUTJOB Tancredo who aired an ad yesterday that compared Mexican immigrants to Chechen Muslim rebels, I-shit-you-not) -- heck, Colorado has the first Democratic majority in the House and Senate since 1960.)

Anyway.

Abroad, we're in a war in Iraq that will be a nightmare if we stay and a nightmare if we leave. It's very unlikely to improve and it for damnsure isn't spreading peace out in ripples to the rest of the Middle East. Bush got us in there, and I suppose it's just as well that he be left to sort it out. That's just.

At home, we've got (actually, *had* for the last two years, but who's counting?) a Republican majority in D.C. Great. This is where they can really step it up and push all the agendas they think will solve everything. Show the country what you're talking about. Show us it works. Or try it, fail and face the fallout -- I'm good either way.

Well, that's not true. I'm a little nervous about how things could go -- my cynical brain cells keep whispering to my paranoid brain cells that we've got a group in charge that's mostly religious fundamentalists steered around the stage by corporate mouthpieces. Mostly I ignore both of sets of cells. Mostly.

Four years before Hillary Clinton runs. And hey, maybe Nader will be too weak to stand by then. That'd be alright.

Can the Democratic party grow a backbone in that period of time? Maybe if they back more stem-cell research in Cali.

Maybe it'll be McCain and Jon Stewart on the third-party ticket. :)

You know the guy who wallpapered his cubicle in plastic American flags after 9/11 and still hasn't taken them down? The one who sends out the emails with the crappy photoshops of Hillary Clinton with horns and a pitchfork?

He voted. He went early, actually.

The lady who mass-emails everyone in the building with the joke about how voting for Bush is like running in the Special Olympics?

She's voting over lunch.

That jackass with the website who never talks about politics and has never voted before but decides to make a big deal out of it simply because it's his first time at the polls this year?

He went this morning. Took him twenty minutes to find the right building, but he voted.

Think of the most annoying person you know. Think about how they're going to vote. Realize that they will be heard.

Go. If nothing else motivates you, remember you can vote opposite some guy you don't like to cancel their vote out.

It's the American way. :)