Here's my homage to Margaret's visit over President's Day:



When I take you out, tonight, with me,
Honey, here's the way it's goin' to be:
You will set behind a team of snow white horses,
In the slickest gig you ever see!

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry
When I take you out in the surrey,
When I take you out in the surrey with the fringe on top!
Watch that fringe and see how it flutters
When I drive them high steppin' strutters.
Nosey pokes'll peek thru' their shutters and their eyes will pop!
The wheels are yeller, the upholstery's brown,
The dashboard's genuine leather,
With isinglass curtains y' can roll right down,
In case there's a change in the weather.

(For those of you scratching your heads, go see Oklahoma.)

Here's another cool couple of pics:


The main activity of the weekend: bleaugh! waves! run!


K-Ro & SherBear


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Recognize this fellow? He's John Krasinski, and I've found him out. Let me explain:

One of my favorite things to do is to delve into the minds of the writers/creators of films and television. Example: my brother pointed out to me that the writer of "In the Line of Fire" was most certainly a NY Giants fan. Furthermore, he most certainly hates the Denver Broncos. Existing evidence follows:

1) The antagonist of the film, an assassin making a play for the President's life, is from Colorado.

2) Clint Eastwood makes a comment to one of his mates on the secret service that he owes him $20 from Superbowl XX (Broncos V. Giants, and Adam you can tell me if I got the right SB.)

3) The President travels to Denver to make a campaign speech, which he begins with, "Today we are standing on the shoulders of GIANTS!"

Call me crazy.

Okay, back to the point: And this is a follow-up from my last post, as you will see. Well, John Krasinski is involved in a project to develop David Foster Wallace's book, "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" into a film (or a TV series, I'm not sure which.). As a matter of fact, he's both writing and directing the project. Do you think he's a fan?

Here's the proof: on last night's episode of The Office, JK's character (Jim Halpert) leaves an office party to go outside and shoot hoops with his work colleague, a man by the name of, you guessed it, David Wallace. Coincidence? I think NOT!

Furthermore, John K. is in The Office with Steve Carell, who was in Little Miss Sunshine with Greg Kinnear, who was in As Good as it Gets with Jack Nicholson, who was in A Few Good Men with Kevin Bacon.

ps- I still need to post about Margaret's visit (which will undoubtedly contain chicks, ducks, and geese) and I need to find a way to commemorate Ash's third birthday. Ideas?

As today is an eventful day, that being the birthday of not only the author of the book "Fight Club," which is a totally creepy movie that makes you simultaneously want to run and hide and to face the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, a movie that has a great soundtrack and reminds me of some of my favorite people, but also the birthday of W.H. Auden, and most importantly my favorite author of all time, David Foster Wallace, who penned the imposing Infinite Jest, I felt it fitting to write my post today a la DFW, that is to say, one unending sentence that seems to go round and round a hundred million little things while at the same time getting nowhere, the funny thing being that even writing this way reminds me of that summer that I spent lost in the pages of IF, feeling a strange bond to a young tennis star, but only because I had taken tennis lessons for a few months as a little kid, as it seems everyone did in the eighties, and as such coming to the realization that I had no reason to feel such bond as a) previously stated, I had no bent for tennis b)I was not addicted to cannabis c) I did not have any little brother to speak of, let alone one who was half my height and looked like a dinosaur due to his unusual birth defects, including t-rex arms and homodontia, an affliction that I confess would be kind of cool to have, much cooler than having t-rex arms, which as you can tell by watching the preview to the latest Pixar film on apple.com would be a real pain in the bottom, especially when you're trying to grab something that's retreated into a remote corner, and for the size of your head and the positioning of your body makes it impossible for your teensy arms to extend far enough to grab your subject and make whatever escape you see fit.

End transmission.

This is the famed Dick Feynman, winner of the Nobel Prize for something or other, one of the many fathers of the atom bomb, author of one of my favorite books: Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
In it, he describes how, as a child, he was sucked into the world of science, literally by the power of word-of-mouth advertising: he had no money to buy a brand new radio, so he found an old one on the street and decided to fix it up. It didn't take long for his siblings to find out that he could fix a wireless set, nor to begin to bring their problems to him. Pretty soon it was all over the neighborhood that there was this boy who was really good at fixing wireless sets, and was willing to take on any job where an electronic device needed to be fixed. Though, by his own admission, Mr. Feynman started off knowing no more about how to fix electronic devices than the people who were asking him.
I'm somewhat proud and somewhat saddened to say that I'm passing through a similar circumstance.
The other day two boys that I share a workspace with were having some technical difficulties with their laptop. It just wouldn't connect to the wireless internet, no matter what they did. I was fly on the wall to their conversation and in the back of my head I remembered that people on my school campus had had similar problems in the past. I also remembered how simple this particular conundrum was to fix; though it was so stupidly obvious that nearly everyone, including the technicians at the computer lab, overlooked it.
So I took a chance and walked over to the laptop in question and pushed the little button that enables the computer to seek for a wireless internet signal. And just like that, I became the Office Computer Expert.
Since then I've been installing software, connecting printers, setting up machines on the office intranet, all kinds of stuff that I have no idea even what I'm doing, but that I can manage simply by brute force.
Of course, this is cutting increasingly into my Project Managing time, for which I was hired. The season is approaching when I need to pin down a summer internship that will look good on my resume and hone my skills. Will I be able to remain employed here? If so, in what capacity?

End Transmission.

Here's a strange dream story:

Recently I've found out that I'm one of those people who can count sheep to help me sleep. And it really helps.

So the other night I wake up at some unknown hour unable to fall back asleep. So I try to do the usual, but this time, instead of sheep, my brain starts counting something else: everything that I could possibly imagine wearing a t-shirt.

It started with a sheep in a t-shirt
Then it was a dog in a t-shirt
then a bear
Then a table
Then a tree
Then something else...

I have no idea why.

ps- I think my office building is haunted. The past three times I've gone up the stairs something has followed me that I can't see.

Warning: The following post contains an off-color joke (that's really funny).

A man and a woman meet at a party.

"Hey, there, what's your name?"

"Carmen," she replies.

"That's a pretty name. I'll bet it's a family name, right?"

"As a matter of fact, no. I came up with it for myself, actually. It tells people the things that I'm interested in most: cars, and men."

"That's very interesting," says the man.

"So, what's your name?"

"Golftits."

I had one of those moments yesterday when I realized that I am becoming my father. When I was young, it was standard practice on the ride home after a winning University of Utah game for my father to listen to the Bill Marcroft post-game show at head banging levels. This would change to NPR in other circumstances. I remember on several Saturday occasions being able to distinctly hear, "You're listening to NPR, this is Scott Simon," from the living room (NOT near the driveway).

So the other day I get into my car and turn it on and I'm physically taken aback at how high I had the radio on. And do you know what greeted my ears? "You're listening to Morning Edition, I'm Peter Segel..."

I journey further on into the depths of nerd-dom...