still working on the living room, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel...

reading news about Mumbai. hard to make sense of everything that did happen and is still happening

OW! and so we're playing our newest family fun game: Was that sick wet pop *REALLY* my knee?

to my Indian friends: I hope everyone's families in Mumbai are okay following the attack.

good morning everyone! should be a great day today. I hope yours is too.

I just signed up to be a tester for the new Mini Electric. I hope they pick me. I HOPE I HOPE I HOPE. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!

my kids are getting savvier. when I separated them to ask who did something they individually responded "I did."

the kids have a friend coming over. wife's volunteering at the school. I'm working from home. more remodeling tonight. typical day. :)

back from the conference and prepping for a conference call. it's CONFERENCE DAY!

on my way to my daughter's first parent-teacher conference.

I am up and out of bed but I make no promises on being awake. That's too much to ask.

You Just Don't Understand

Friday night, as I was getting ready for bed, I turned to my wife and said "I need to get to sleep and get up before Owen."

"Why?"

"Well, if I get up before him, I get to put snow in his pants.  If he wakes up before me, he says he's going to put snow in my pants."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's a deal we made with each other."

"You are not doing tha...why would you even agree to that?"

"Honey, I think you just don't understand the intricacies of a father-son relationship."

"Yeah, I must not."

I ended up getting up before him, but no snow was put into anyone's pants.  We had a snowball fight instead.

I can't find the right words for my mood right now. not settled but not agitated. not happy but not sad. not contented by far...drifting.

almost time to head out. guess I should put my eyes in and feet on.

dreaming of a curried chicken ravioli in a korma sauce...

it's started snowing again! so beautiful.

nutty day at work. too many irons in the fire and I'm trying to juggle them all.

The Only Dad at the PTO

I've decided that next year I want to be the president of the local Parent Teacher Organization.  At least, I think I have.  We have a very good one, an active one with a lot of volunteers that work hard to support the school.  And yet, the meetings are frustrating.  

They run long.  People mumble or speak softly and fast.  No one wants to second a motion so I constantly do.  People hardly ask questions.  They just listen.  

I know I am looking differently at this because I am the only father there.  I'm the only man there.  I want to be involved and so I go every month.  But I see that the mood changes.  I know that the atmosphere is different when I'm there.  And I worry that if I become president and try to run meetings then it will affect how individually involved the other families are.  Because while the meetings are painful, the moms who volunteer really do a lot of good work.

I told my wife that she should be president.  She is more organized than I am.  She can be just as direct as I can be.  More so sometimes, and she would make sure that everything got done like it needed to.  But I think she's afraid of upsetting someone.  Maybe that's the difference here.  Maybe that's why the women are quieter and things take longer because they're not going to be direct and instead put their energy into the actual volunteering.  Maybe my leadership would upset that balance and make things fall apart.

Maybe I shouldn't run for president after all.

once the kids saw the few flitting flakes of snow in the air they were outside in barefeet and short sleeves to catch them on their tongues

I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of tweets suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

good morning everyone!

BusinessWeek has a genuinely interesting 'article' about Twitter imitators: http://ping.fm/oK9qB

you know you love your daughter when you're trying to work but you put on the HSM soundtrack for her to sing along with anyway.

Ramen is clearly the lego of foods.

just now getting to eating lunch. the day's scheduled is all kinds of crazy

Frank Zappa, you're one of the best reasons to get up and fire up iTunes.

good morning everyone! I hope you all had great weekends.

omg, Band of Horses is *THAT* band. I should have known. @hearsmusic thanks for pointing me in their direction. you rock as always!

happy Sunday y'all!

The Mentalist may not be great, it may not be serious, but it is a lot of fun to watch.

it's quitting time. see you all later. have fabulous Friday evenings!

it is completely a Radiohead kind of day.

feeling a little better now. still, I poop on this day.

ugh. what a topsy-turvy day. can I have a reboot?

this morning I dreamt my alarm had a "Denounce" button instead of a "Snooze" button. not sure what it would do but I liked it.

played Wii with the kids. watched Criminal Minds with my wife. off to bed early tonight. working tomorrow from KoP.

back from the doctor. nothing serious, thank God. no real answers either though. just wait and see.

my computer's crapping out more rapidly then I had hoped. :( currently uninstalling all non-essential software and praying.

I was tempted to put "Senior Pool Boy" as my official title on my year-end review. Probably would not have been one of my better choices.

working several things at once. trying to get a few things done before my doctor's appointment.

getting ready to head home and play with the kids. best time of the day.

ever since we've started recycling our cardboard we've cut our garbage output in half. our next goal is another 50% reduction.

thinking about firearms

every time I listen to Steve Burns first album I'm so enthralled. I think he must be a magician or alien or some such to be so captivating

meeting in about an hour. hoping my kids will be quiet while on the phone. slim chance.

I deem it absolutely weak that Outlook 2007 cannot grok custom SharePoint fields for Tasks. Epic Fail.

sometimes the noises my son can make are frighteningly inhuman.

I just can't wrap my head around the idea that AIG is going to get EVEN MORE money. wtf?

working two projects at once again. times are good.

Thoughts on my own Death

I just finished up a post about the album "Haunted" by Poe on Last.fm. The album crushes my heart every time I hear it because of the end. It is a gentle lullaby sang by Poe to her deceased father with recordings from her father talking to his kids when they were little.

Being a father I'm so deeply and personally attached my children (normal) but to the point that sometimes at night I think about the million things I could have done with my kids and the fact that I didn't get to. I think about the fact that I have to travel to work tomorrow and I could die and never see them again. I think about the fact that I could be at work and something could happen to them, and I yelled at them today. I spanked Owen. I flit through the untold horrors that could befall us all and cry. I weep like a child out of regret and fear and anger and disappointment. I weep in the middle of the night out of terror. For no reason at all.

I lost my father when I was 16 and I know how damned hard it is, and I can't bear to think about my own children having to go through that when I pass away. It is perverse that the one thing I wish I could help them with the most, the one thing I wish I could shield them from and keep them away from is the very thing that takes me from them.

waiting for word on something work-related so I can go to bed. then I get up in a few hours. bleh.

my son just came home from preschool with a black eye. he swears it was an accident, but I'm not convinced.

my day just got a lot better. w00t!

it is absolutely gorgeous outside. I am happy to work from home today.

just about time to make dinner. shrimp and tilapia with salad. yum.

seriously, there are groups that ALREADY are seeking Obama's impeachment: http://ping.fm/qtof5

at work and caffeinated but feeling disconnected. maybe I'm just hungry...

in KoP. heard the phrase "Dress like the job you want" several times from different sources this past week so I dressed a bit more formal

watching the queued up Colbert Reports on our DVR.

gah my mood is on a rocket sled headed further downhill by the second.

I wish Visual Studio would give me a flowcharting tool that would grok a method and display the decision trees.

listening to the Amelie soundtrack because I could use some joy this morning.

we didn't change the clocks in the house and put the kids to bed at 7.30. told them it was 8.30. now I'm ready to go to bed. *yawn*

we split the tournament. the kids played with a lot of heart. I'm happy. and exhausted. I'm going to crash on the couch now.