Embarrassing moment of the week:

So I put my daily energy drink in the freezer this morning, thinking about how great it would be to have a slurpee with my lunch. Well, as always happens, I forgot about it, and the thing froze - not completely, but not far from it.

Anyway, so I'm in my office shaking and rolling this thing around, and I open it up so that I can push in the little bit of frozen energy drink from the lid so as to access the melted guarana and passionfruit goodness inside. What did I forget? That the thing was full to capacity, and I mean CAPACITY, as in not even a little air bubble under the lid as usually happens with bottled drinks, and so when I pushed in the little cylinder of ice, a jet of orange liquid covered me, my desk, and my chair, in such a way that it now appears that I had an "accident" on my jeans and on my chair. Oh, the shame.

The good news is that there's still 85-90% of the home made slurpee left to enjoy.

In other news, do you know who I saw on the news yesterday? Talk about an unlikely pair of people to be sitting next to each other, chatting: Jon Voight and Oliver North. What the?!?!?!?

Okay, so it's been an exciting week.

In the first place, this weekend Monterey Peninsula was host to both a major bullet-bike race (hit play on your copy of Al Hirt doing his cover of "Flight of the Bumblebees"), and the Salinas Rodeo (pronounce Ro-day-o), which amounted to, for those of us who didn't attend either one, increased yet somehow enjoyable traffic, as hives of motorcycle enthusiasts, riding everything from the largest highway bike to the meanest 80cc, zipped up and down the freeway, through the town, and over the lovely canyon road that Sheri and I take to work. Though the bikers were out in droves, I didn't see an increase in the number of horsey enthusiasts, though that could be that they just blend in better with the local peeps.

What kept Sheri and I so busy that we chose not to patronize said events? That's right, installment seven of Everyone's Favorite Secret Crush, Mr. Harry Potter. We originally had planned to digest this final tome nice and slow, so as to savor the outcome of the crazy story, but two days in and we've already blown it. We're more than half way through, and Sheri has accidentally seen a couple of things at the end that I forbade her to tell me about. I've got some cute pictures of my preggers wife that I'll post soon.

Speaking of pregnancy and related events, one of my favorite morning past times has become putting my hand on Sheri's tummy before she wakes up and feeling little Sweet Pea play the drums against the port side of Sheri's uterus. She's got impeccable rhythm, I tell you. I can't wait to meet her. She's going to be one jazzy babe. I'm never going to sleep again.

Let's see...anything else? Oh, yeah. I got published! Ch-ch-check it out. And Sheri and I watched "The Odd Couple" over the weekend, which seems like it would be much funnier as a play. I think that Walter Matthau was born looking like an old geezer.

End Transmission

I think NPR is turning into a comedy station. I keep hearing these comedic gems to and from work. My question is what sort of demographic NPR is aiming at.

On the one hand, you have very high-brow, news-savvy humor, straight from the horse's mouth:

Condolezza Rice: "I wouldn't call the efforts in Iraq a faliure, no. And I wouldn't say that none of the recommended policies have been implemented. There are a couple that definitely have been considered. I would call them a work in progress. There are definitely a small number of areas in which the forces are making some headway in a small scope of efforts."

And on the other hand, you have the lowest-brow, most juvenile humor on the market:

Conversation between (The) Mr Rogers and a Mercury 7 astronaut:

"So how do you go to the potty on your way to the moon? A young friend of mine wrote to me, he was very concerned about that."

"Well, it's a lot like it is here on earth; it's just when you make a BM, you keep it in a plastic bag."

Be honest. Which one made you laugh harder? Remember, that was the Mr. Rogers.

I'm not sure my profile photo gives people an accurate picture of me.

Here's a better picture:



This is how I looked growing up:



This is my wife, Sheri:



Coming in October, our daughter, Siena (hopefully she won't be this big when she's born:



And, this is how I'll probably look in about 30, 40 years:



End Transmission.

Several items to report this session, most of them from our trip to sunny Vegas to see Sheri's cousin get married. Let's get going:

1) Sheri's cousin got married. We drove to Vegas to see it.

2) All in all, it was a very enjoyable vacation. I'm usually not a big fan of Vegas, and I find myself getting tired of all the humanity there after a couple of hours; I mean the mindless entertainment, the nonstop driving you to spend and forget your troubles. It didn't help when, at the Hilton where we stayed, our bellboy kept saying in this dead, droning voice,
"ALL SHALL BE ASSIMILATED..."



Just kidding. It was a lot of fun.

Highlights of the trip:

a) see above photo
b) riding the Manhattan Express rolly-coaster
c) a great moment of nostalgia: When The Shblogger and the Boy who was a Ferre and I went to Vegas when we were sixteen (I still don't know how I talked my mom and dad into letting me do that) we spent a proper day or two in the arcades at Circus Circus and the Luxor building up our stockpile of arcade tickets, which we blew entirely on little green army men (note: these brave soldiers all met a dramatic fate when we put them under our windshield wipers on the way home and watched them blow away, one by one [or by the bunch, if we needed to get something off the windshield]). Well, this time 'round, my wife, my mother in law, my sister and two brothers in law did a near re-enactment, blowing our tickets this time on six matching wristwatches that didn't light up enough for you to be able to see what time it was.
d) The wedding was cool.

3) Sheri's mom threw her a baby shower the day after we arrived in St. George. One thing's for sure - our pea will be the best-dressed little bean on the PLANET. Thanks to everybody, especially Debbie, who put the shindig together, and to my parents, who took time out of their AMAZINGLY busy "retirement" schedule to come down and say hello.

4) We had a bit of car trouble over the course of the trip: Jeers to the Honda mechanic who kept me waiting (and eating doughnuts) four hours for a simple diagnostic on my car, and who was prepared to charge me $1500 for replacing my ABS system (not my abs, which do need an overhaul, expecially after all them doughnuts, blush) when it didn't need to be replaced. Cheers to the Honda mechanics here in Monterey, who ended up digging a little deeper and charging me about a tenth of that to fix the real problem, and who was willing to drive me and Sheri to and from work today.

5) I was on the phone with said wife today when we both looked around in search of the person who was rolling a boulder outside our respective offices. It took us a couple of seconds to realize that we had just survived our first California earthquake. 4.3, 25 miles away.

End Transmission.