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Dad/kid camping trip Saturday night: Rained Out.

Now before you pseudo-psycho "I drink my own pee when I camp" outdoorsmen get all fuckity with me, understand that we six dads had 16 boys and girls ranging from age 5 to age 13, and it rained so hard that all of the paths turned into rivers flowing directly into the tents. Everything and everyone was soaked, inside and out. So the decision to pack it in was a pretty easy one to make, because while "sticking it out" might sound fun and adventurous in spirit, dealing with cold, wet, miserable children all night when you could have avoided it is just plain stupid.

As one of the other dads and I were on breakfast duty, we did have everyone over to my house in the morning for the breakfast burritos we were planning to make in the mountains. We even cooked all the stuff outside with our camping gear, just to get in the spirit. Yep. That's the guys we are.

Then went back into the mountains with the family for a vacation, except that I only got to go for one day because I had to drive back down Monday and hop on a plane to Cincinnati for a work thing. Family stayed in the mountains until today. Work thing went well, but yeah, I'd have rather stayed on vacation.

Okay, I better get going. I just knew you were missing me, so I thought I'd drop you a quick line to let you know I'm back.

I Peed for 92 Seconds

Yesterday afternoon I had a meeting with the Big Boss. My review with my immediate supervisor had gone extremely well last week, so I thought it would be a good idea to get some face time with the BB.

While walking to his office, I realized I was in that purgatorial moment where you kinda have to pee, but not bad enough yet to bother you. Were I sitting at my desk, I'd not get up and go yet. Were I walking directly past the restroom without needing to be somewhere within the next minute, I'd go in. In this instance, however, I was in neither position. I was on my way to the BB's office, and would be right on time without any delays.

"It's only a half an hour," I thought to myself. "It won't get too bad."

Fifteen minutes into the meeting I realized I'd made a mistake. A really big mistake. My water bottle is a cool old canteen that holds about one liter, and I was on my third canteen since 1:00 (it was now 3:20). The meeting was going really, really well, with the topic of my eventual promotion being the focus, so I couldn't very well cut it short and say, "Thanks, BB, gotta pee!"

I stole a glance at the clock on his wall. Only 10 more minutes, I thought. I can do this.

Forty minutes later the BB looked at the clock and said, "Wow, the time flew. I gotta pee."

After sitting there for 45 minutes, sweating, cringing, crippled from the pain, I stood up, managed a smile, and said, "Thanks BB. Me too." He led and I followed, hobbling along with the familiar I've-had-to-pee-for-an-hour stride.

Once in the men's room, he took the left urinal and I took the right, leaving the center urinal vacant, as guys do. The relief was more than I could bear. I started to cry.

Yes, I literally had tears in my eyes. When the BB finished, flushed and went to wash his hands, I was merely a third of the way finished. I stood there, tears rolling down my cheeks, counting off seconds. Sixty-five. Sixty-six. Sixty-seven.

"Talk to you later, Jeff," the BB said as he walked out.

A choked "yep" is all I managed in reply. Seventy-seven. Seventy-eight.

After a full 92 seconds, I was finished. A minute and a half of peeing. While washing my hands, I looked at my face in the mirror. My eyes were bloodshot and wet. My face was flushed. I started laughing at myself. While walking out, a co-worker walked in and saw me.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "That was just really awesome."

Wrong Number for the New Millennium

Anyone getting wrong-number texts these days? I've gotten a fair amount. It's such an interesting phenomenon. Back when we used to actually call and speak to people, we were instantly informed of our mis-dialing.

"Sorry, wrong number."

With texting, however, the sender assumes the text was received by the right person unless you, the unintended recipient, lets the sender know.

You've gone from the immediate and effortless response, "Sorry, wrong number," to a series of choices:

1. Respond via text message.
2. Respond via phone call.
3. Ignore.

Last week, my ten-year-old daughter received a wrong-number text that said, "What? You want to suck my dick when?"

She showed it to Mom, who showed it to me, who was faced with the three choices.

I quickly eliminated #3. Couldn't let it go. So I opted for #2 and called the dude. Oh, I called him after I used the Internets to get his name. He was maybe 15 or 16. I scared the shit out of him, so that was fun.

The other day I got a wrong-number text that was full of entertainment. Here's what it said (written exactly as it appears on my phone):

"Chris hit a shot fir at bat to rite 7 0 us 4th Hes in rite"

Again, I ruled out #3. But this time, I opted for #1. Thought long and hard about it, then replied:

"Tell Chris 2 stop dragging dick Wish I was dere Score more 7 0 not enuf Drink Ovaltine"

I didn't get a response.

Man, I love modern technology

I'm a Swingin' Guy

I played 18 holes yesterday afternoon with my boss, and his boss, and another boss. It was a really great time. Well, other than the golfing part.

I SUCK.

I golf maybe once or twice a year, and it's typically some organized best-ball scramble event where lots of beers are consumed and lots of laughter is generated. And, because I'll typically have one good shot per hole, I'm a decent member of a best-ball foursome.

But playing 18 holes in a foursome and playing my own ball the whole time?

I SUCK.

The other three guys were bumming when they double-bogeyed a hole. The couple double-bogeys I had were miraculous. I even bogeyed one par-3, though a real golfer would have parred it with the drive and chip to within four feet of the hole I had. But no, those were anomalies. My drives were flying... to the left and to the right. After almost every drive (and I always hit last), I'd hear the same thing from the guys standing behind me.

"Whoa."

"Where'd it go?" I'd ask.

"To the right."

"How far?"

"You'll probably want to drop."

I SUCK.

But, lucky for me, the other guys weren't typical uptight golfers and we still had some fun. Plus, no one is going to laugh at me harder than me.

The best part of the day, however, was when one of the course monitors was sitting in his cart watching us, waiting to tell us we needed to move things along, and I had a 110-yard chip that landed about 3 feet from the hole. As I was walking to the hole, he said, "Nice putt," then asked us to pick up the pace a bit. Then he drove off.

And I three-putted.

I SUCK.

Great Birthday / Not So Great Day After Birthday

I got a pair of Bill's Khakis for my birthday. I've always wanted a pair and now I have some. They're the most comfortable khakis ever. My wife is the greatest! I also got the complete Strangers With Candy series on DVD, which is about as twistely hilarious as you can get. It was a very nice birthday at home with the family.

We'd planned to go out to eat, but Maddie hadn't been feeling so hot so we ordered take-out Thai food from the place down the road for our birthday dinner. We've eaten there a few times and always liked it, and Wednesday night it tasted particularly good.

Apparently food poisoning tastes particularly good.

Everyone who ate the Thai -- my wife, both step-daughters and myself -- spent all day yesterday violently ill. I've never experienced anything like that in my life. Normally you'd think three bathrooms is enough for a family of five (one of which is an infant), but not yesterday. No, there were times when each bathroom would be occupied and someone else would be hurling in a pot next to the bed. The only one who was unaffected was little Sam. He just hung out in Mommy and Daddy's bed all day happy as can be.

I came into the office this morning but I still feel like crap, so I'm going home.

Blech.

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My earliest memory.

Ms. Gekko has a post up asking about our very first memory. While I have flashes of images from when I was very young, I think the first complete memory I have is of an event that happened when I was maybe four years old (PJ, I'm sure you can verify or correct this!). Remembering this, er, memory has brought me great joy, so I thought I'd share it with you so that it may bring you great joy as well.

We lived in a small house on a dead-end street in Lansing, Michigan. Because of the cul-de-sac, the cars passing our house were never going very fast. I'm not quite sure how I got out, but I was wandering around in the front yard like a puppy. Every so often a car would pass and I'd stop and watch it go by.

Then I decided it would be a really good idea to throw a rock at a car.

I found a big rock, picked it up with two hands, and stood at the edge of our property, watiting for the next car to come by. After an eternity, a car finally turned onto our street. I waited patiently, right at the side of the road. Seeing me standing there, the driver slowed down as he passed. I lifted the rock up over my head and let it fly with both my hands.

Boom! The rock hit the passenger door, and I started giggling. The car stopped and the driver got out, just as my mom came running out of the house thinking I'd been hit.

"What happened?" she asked.

"He threw a rock at my car!" the guy said.

She asked me if I threw the rock at his door (which dented it, btw). Yes, I said, and giggled some more.

I can't remember anything else that happened during the next two years of my life.

But I'm still giggling about that rock.

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20 jars of homemade strawberry jam; chasing criminals

That's what PJ made for us while out here on her visit. She packed her pressure cooker and another great big pot in a large duffel bag, hauled them 1,200 miles from Michigan to Colorado, and canned 20 jars of jam. DEE-LISH-US. You should all be incredibly jealous.

On a separate note, I chased a car full of criminals -- on foot -- Saturday night. You heard me right. Let me tell you my story.

My buddy Dave and I performed with an improv comedy group Saturday night. After the show, as we left the theater and walked into the parking lot, we witnessed a silver SUV back out of a parking space and smack dab into the side of a parked car. The assaulted car was hit hard enough to make a splendid crunching sound as it was rocked from the impact. The silver SUV pulled forward a bit, then stopped. We figured the driver would get out, survey the damage, then at worst leave a note.

Nope. The driver of the SUV decided he couldn't be bothered with such petty things as ethics or law, so he hit the gas and fled.

Without taking a moment to think, I took off on foot after him. I was carrying a duffel bag in my right arm and a sweatshirt in my left, and was sprinting toward the SUV. The driver or his passengers must have seen me and figured that I was trying to get their license plate number -- exactly my intention -- so the SUV picked up speed. Yet I continued my mad dash, gambling that stop signs, other cars or pedestrians would force him to wait long enough for me to catch him.

Unfortunately, he barely yielded at the stop signs and no one got in his way. He turned right down the last aisle that would lead him to the road, so rather than try to continue to tail him, I took a shortcut down an aisle closer to me. I was running parallel to the SUV, knowing he'd turn right at the road and I, hopefully, would be waiting him.

Everything seemed to be going right for the sonofabitch, though, and he got to the road and passed before I could reach the sidewalk and get within view of his plates. My last chance was the traffic signal about 50 feet away. The light was red, and there were cars blocking all lanes. I sprinted down the sidewalk, squinting, the numbers and letters on the plate still too blurry. The car in front of the SUV turned right. I pushed harder. The SUV pulled up. I wasn't going to get there. The sonofabitch was going to get away. He turned right, and I lost the plate.

Dave was standing right at the corner. He pointed at the SUV as it drove by and yelled, "You hit that car, you fucker!" Then he calmly looked at the license plate and memorized the number.

But wait, it gets better.

Being that we were within a shopping plaza-type location, with a movie theater, restaurants, and a Dave & Buster's arcade, we figured we could find a security guard somewhere. I walked around for a bit, then finally walked into Dave & Buster's where two police officers -- one male, one female -- were standing in the corner. I explained the situation and gave them the license plate number and vehicle description. The male cop was writing everything down and the female cop was listening. They asked where it had happened, and I said, "On the other side of the building. I think the car they hit was illegally parked. It's a silver Chevy Malibu."

The female cop looked at me and said, "You've got to be kidding me."

The punks in the SUV had pulled a hit-and-run ON A COP'S CAR!

The first thing I said after that was that, on second thought, the car probably wasn't illegally parked. Then I started laughing and said it was hilarious. Hilarious in an ironic sort of way. She didn't find much humor in it, but the other cop sure did.

I took them to the car, where Dave was waiting. They called in the plate, got the name and address of the owner, and said that the police department would pay him a visit that evening (at about 1 a.m.). Dave and I got to fill out witness reports, which was cool. I made sure to write that I chased on foot at breakneck speed.

At 1 a.m. I looked at the clock and smiled.

Karma's a bitch, innit?

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Scardy cat, scardy cat.

PJ has a post today about irrational fears of little critters. As with all of her posts, it's fun stuff so do go read it. Go ahead, I'll wait...

Welcome back. In the same spirit, I thought I'd talk about the one and only one critter I'm afraid of -- cockroaches -- and also tell a story about another critter -- spiders -- that I'm not afraid of, but had a ghastly experience with once. No, this kind of spider, silly.

First: cockroaches. I've been deathly afraid of cockroaches since the 1982 movie Creepshow. In Creepshow, a guy lives in a germ-free, cleanroom-type environment. Everything is sanitized and antibacterialized. But these damn cockroaches keep sneaking in. He tries to kill them with spray, but as we all know, cockroaches ain't dying by no spray. In the end, they kill him and live in his body. YUCK! So I started having nightmares about cockroachs. I'd dream I was in a big silo-type thing, standing with my arms widespread in the Jesus Christ pose, and the silo was filled with cockroaches. They completely covered me head to toe and kept crawling all over me. There were so many they were too heavy for me to move, so I just had to stand there with the roaches pressing down on me. Yeah, I'm afraid of cockroaches.

Second: the spider story. In eighth grade I went to summer camp with my best buddy of the time, Chuck. One day we went on a day-long canoe trip from our lake, through a winding marsh, to a neighboring lake. It was a splendidly adventurous trip. At one point along the route, however, we arrived at a road that crossed the marsh we were paddling through. We had two options: get out, lift the canoe and carry it across the road, or canoe underneath the road through the culvert that allowed the water to continue flowing. We of course chose the culvert.

In order to get through the culvert, Chuck and I had to get up a head of steam, then duck down into the canoe so our heads weren't decapitated. Once we got into the culvert and looked up, we saw literally thousands and thousands of spiders all along the metal. At first glance, I thought it was pretty cool. Chuck, however, did not. He freaked out and started yelling and kicking -- yes, kicking -- the spiders. This generated two results, neither of which were positive. One, it slowed down our momentum, which, had he left well enough alone, would have carried us all the way to the end of the culvert. Two, it caused many of those thousands and thousands of spiders TO FALL RIGHT THE FUCK ON TOP OF ME. I was screaming at Chuck to stop kicking, he was screaming at the spiders, and the spiders were scurrying about on top of me.

Then, when we were maybe half the way through, the canoe bumped into the side of the culvert and stopped moving forward. Chuck stopped kicking, thank God, and I managed to swipe most of the spiders off of me, but we were stuck there. "Dude, what do we do?" he asked me. I suggested we use our paddles to push against the side of the culvert, propelling us to the end. It worked quite nicely. Until we got to the very end, that is.

With daylight taunting us, we stopped once again right at the mouth of the culvert. The top edge of the culvert was bent down toward the water, causing the front top of the canoe to catch and halt our movement. We tried pushing as hard as we could with our paddles, but to no avail. The only option was to push the canoe further down into the water, lowering the top below the bent culvert end and allowing us to exit. Keep in mind, there are still thousands and thousands of spiders on the inside of said culvert.

Chuck and I wiped at the spiders directly above us, causing them to fall into our boat and on top of us, then pushed hard against the top. As we did so, spiders immediately crawled along our hands and down our arms, but we pushed until the tip was low enough, then shove the canoe out of the culvert and into the lake on the other side. We both jumped out of the canoe without a word and frantically brushed at our bodies to get the spiders off. After visualizing the spiders getting into our clothes, we stripped down to our bare-assed nothingness, through our clothes into the canoe, and swam along side it the rest of the way to the beach.

I'm still not afraid of spiders, really, but I sure as shit don't like them getting on me. And if I see a cockroach, I'll run away screaming like a baby.

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Tears of a clown.

I seem to have developed horribly oppressive allergies in my mid-30s. They hit me with relentless fury last September while visiting Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States of America. It was particularly dry there, which is to say it was as it always is there, and a certain type of weed had taken to flight. Every time I stepped outside my eyes teared up and my nose factory produced an endless supply of drip, which was particularly annoying while Julie and I walked up and down Canyon Road visiting the art galleries. Upon returning to Denver I visited an allergist who, after poking and prodding me with needles, told me I was, and I quote verbatim, "Horribly allergic." When I asked him to what, he said, "Everything." He prescribed Zyrtec D and shots twice a week. I got two shots and then stopped getting shots. Too expensive, too time consuming.

One year later I'm wishing I'd continued with the shots. I'm taking the Zyrtec twice a day, supplementing that with antihistimine eye drops and an antihistimine nose spray. I'm the Mel Gibson of histimine haters.

Yet I'm still miserable. I'm on the verge of sneezing every waking moment. I hold off sneezing as long as I can, however, because if I sneeze once, I will sneeze at least 20 times. Unlike much of what I write, that was not an exaggeration. It's kind of like when you're tying on a good one, drinking like a fish as you like to say, and you resist the urge to pee as long as you can because you know that once you open the spigot you will be opening it every four minutes. I have a 20+ sneeze attack at least twice a day.

My eyes look like they belong on a zombie in a George A. Romero flick. They are completely bloodshot and constantly weepy. And they itch. Oh, do they itch! Yet scratching them only makes them more bloodshot and does nothing to alleviate the itch.

The eye drops and nose spray help a tad, but they don't last very long. Can one overdose on anti-histimine? I may be close to knowing the answer.

It's been raining a bit lately, which helps. Helps me, at least; it doesn't help those of you allergic to mold in the least, but right now I can give fuckall about that. I'm just hoping, praying and wishing upon a star that the worst is behind me and I can stop looking like I have the bird flu.

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I get a kick out of you UPDATE

I had to get a tetanus shot yesterday because I gashed myself with a bit of hard metal, and now my arm hurts along with my ankle. That's just plain wrong.

I get a kick out of you.

Call me Hopalong. This past Sunday I was moving stuff around in my garage and accidentally kicked something hard and metallic. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but I know it was part of the bike lying on its side that I was trying to step over. Based on the amount of pain, the gash on the protruding bone on the inside of my ankle, and my subsequent inability to put much pressure on the foot, I believe it was either the sprocket or pedal. Whichever it was, it hurts like hell.

Of course, being the manly man that I am, I kept working in the garage. A wicked Colorado Storm* was a-brewing and I needed to get shit cleared so I could move the cars into the garage before the hail came a-calling. At one point I carried something inside and my family saw the blood running down my ankle and pooling inside my Keen. They freaked. "It's worse than it looks," I said. At the time, I really thought it was worse than it looked. I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, so I got the garage cleared and the cars under cover.

I finally cleaned the wound and saw it was deeper than I thought, but didn't think it needes stitches. I covered it with Neosporin® and a Band-Aid® and wrapped an ACE® bandage around it, expecting to feel good as new Monday morning.

Couldn't walk Monday morning. Ouch fucking ouch best describes how it felt when I put pressure on the foot. So I got X-Rays. Not broken, quit complaining you big pansy. You should have gotten stitches though, idiot.

Now I'm a hobbler. A cripple. My office is, of course, at the top of a flight of stairs. Shouldn't the ADA apply to me? I'm supposed to play hockey tonight, and if you saw my Thursday 13 last week you know how much I enjoy that shit. Can't walk, can't skate, can't play.

Ouch fucking ouch.

You may now post your sympathies in my comments.

*A Colorado Storm happens when the skies are blue and the weather is beautiful. You look away for a moment, then look back at the sky to discover it's turned completely black. The temperature drops 45 degrees and lawn chairs start blowing across the road. A bolt of lightning strikes the person standing next to you and locusts carry children away. Then bowling ball-sized hail plummets from the sky at the speed of sound, demolishing busses and government buildings. Four minutes later, the skies are blue and it's beautiful again.

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Kicking Maynard

Fifth grade was a monumental transition for me. After four years of attending a private Lutheran school with only five other kids in my class, I moved to Riley Elementary, our neighborhood public school. I suppose calling it a neighborhood school is pretty deceiving, given that there was no neighborhood. We lived in the middle of the country in rural Michigan, and Riley Elementary was a few miles away in a different middle of the same country. Our neighbors were soy beans and corn fields, not much else.

Luckily I'd gone to public school kindergarten, so I knew some of the kids in my new school. Chris Ingle, Randall Schmidt, Cory Henningson, Tim Boak... they welcomed me back into the fold pretty quickly. In this tribe of Riley renegades I became Kosmo the Funny, never backing down from a challenge to make someone laugh. Typically my humor was sophomoric and harmless, consisting of a repertoire of characters each with their own distinctive contortion of voice and face. Sometimes, however, when one of my characters seemed to be letting me down, I'd shift to a crueler brand of humor at the expense of certain classmates. It's not something I'm proud of, and those memories have certainly molded me into an adult who shies away from insult comedy, believing it not only to be cruel, but to be a complete cop-out; it's an escape hatch from a lack of good ideas. Don't get me wrong; some people are just plain douche bags and they get what they deserve. But the rest of you are relatively safe from me.

When you're 11 years old, however, you're far from enlightened. So The Boy With Lice and The Girl Who Smelled Like Pee were easy targets. Especially The Girl Who Smelled Like Pee, because she smelled like pee. All the time, she smelled like pee. Contrary to what you might be thinking, this wasn't an "I just peed in my pants" pee smell. This was a "someone just peed on me" smell. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about; every school had one. I'd say things like, "I'm hungry for a snack. Who wants some peeeeeee-nuts?" The gang would laugh. "What's your favorite bird? A peeeeeee-cock?" That got a huge laugh, and it was worth double points because I said "cock" as well.

Like I said, I'm not proud of it.

There was another kid in our class by the name of Earl Maynard. Earl was the quintessential farm boy. When he got to school he'd already been up for a good four hours milking cows or feeding pigs or slaughtering chickens. We knew this because he didn't bother to really clean up afterward; he just came to school in his bib overalls and torn flannel shirt.

One quick side point: It's not like the rest of us were high-class richies. We were all country kids well below the middle-class line. Which goes to show that any society will develop a class system, regardless of how close those within it really are to each other.

Back to Earl. He was a pretty big kid. Not big as in fat, but tall and solid. Like I said, he was a farm boy. His most distinctive feature by far, however, was his feet. They were enormous. At 11 years old Earl Maynard's feet were probably a size 13, all the more accentuated by the fact that he wore big steel-toed shit-kickin' boots every day. He had a slow, lumbering walk, and his movements resembled what I imagine a dump truck would look like if it drove with triangular wheels.

Thus the game Kicking Maynard was born. The object was to sneak up behind Earl during recess and kick him in the ass with the side of your shoe (using the point of your shoe was forbidden, as that would have been cruel). The kicking itself wasn't really the fun part; no, it was the ensuing chase. Earl would turn around and take off after whoever kicked him, stringing together curse words only a true farm boy would know how to combine properly. The combination of huge feet and huger boots made for a ridiculous sight, a dump truck with triangular wheels trying to chase a Firebird with positraction. When Earl got tired and gave up, someone else would sneak up and kick him, starting the farce all over again.

It was glorious fun.

One particularly balmy spring day we'd been playing Kicking Maynard for a good 15 minutes. Our stomachs were hurting from the spectacle, he was to the point of repeating curse words he'd used earlier, and the bell signifying the end of recess was just about to ring. Always needing to get the last laugh, I decided that one more kick was needed to cap off the game. I crept up behind him and WHAM! I got him good. Now one thing about Kicking Maynard is that when you're the kicker, you don't get to see his initial reaction because you're turning on a dime and hightailing it out of there. On this occasion, I wanted to see his reaction up close. So I stood there a fraction of a second longer, watching. He was exhausted, so his turn was slow. "Fuck you, fucker dick!" he yelled as he turned. His face was red, his eyes were open wide, and his bottom jaw jutted out so that his lower teeth practically covered his upper lip. That was my cue, so I turned and took off. Being one of the fastest boys in school, I knew I could afford that extra moment. Laughing hysterically, I began my sprint. Catching me was out of the question.

Unless I tripped.

I tried my hardest to pull out of the tailspin. I didn't go down right away, stumbling along, my legs trying to catch up with my tumbling upper body. But my feet crashed into each other and onto my knees I went.

Pain. The sharpest pain I could imagine exploded directly on my tail bone. I screamed and fell on my side. Again, the pain, this time in my ass crack. Tears poured from my eyes. I could see my friends staring in horror. There was nothing they could do. Earl had pounced on me like a wolf on a rabbit, bringing his leg as far back as his quad muscles would allow and driving the tip of his steel-toed boot into my rear end like a psychotic construction worker behind the controls of a wrecking ball.

I'm not sure how many times Earl's boot connected with my ass before the playground attendants pulled him off me. I do know, however, that it was more than a week before I could sit without feeling like my seat was a large hot coal.

That was the last time Kicking Maynard was ever played at Riley Elementary School. I didn't even pick on The Boy With Lice anymore. It was a life-changing experience, I guess.

But The Girl Who Smelled Like Pee? Come on; she did smell like pee.

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"I see something sticking out there!"

With those six words, the sonographer laid all bets to rest. We'd traveled in a pack that day, my step-daughters and the mother-in-law in tow, all of us with our own preconceived notions of what was going to be going on down between this little alien's legs. We'd taken to calling it Monkey*, because calling it It was too creepy, and the politically correct "him or her," "he or she" and "his or hers" were way too much effort when all you wanted to say was, "Monkey rocks." But now Monkey was going to lose his (or, as far as we knew at the time, her) androgeny. This was big news. At home was an envelope containing five scraps of paper, each containing one of our gender guesses (except for Maddie's whose, we found out later, said, "Boy or Girl," because she just couldn't bring herself to play favorites). I'd guessed boy, but only because I had to make a guess. I had no feeling, no hunch one way or the other.

Given that I'd been living in a house with three females, most of our friends and family had been hoping for a boy, for me, they said. It was an assumption pretty much everyone was completely comfortable in making:

"I bet you're hoping for a boy!"

I'd smile and chuckle and say, "Yeah. Or a girl. I don't really care."

"Yeah, you gotta say that, I know, but come on, deep down inside you're hoping for a boy, aren't you?"

"It's my first kid. I just want the kid. Don't much care what it's sex is."

"Whatever, dude. I know."

Even Julie kept asking me if I had a preference. I'd say no.

"Whatever, dude. I know."

But standing in the ultrasound room, watching the sonographer squirt the KY Jellyish goop on Julie's belly, I started wondering myself. Did I have a preference? In spite of all my insistence to the contrary, was I secretly hoping for boy? A mini me? A little man I could take fishing and to hockey games; play catch with a buy a little set of tools for; teach to play the guitar and advise on the ways of the opposite sex?

No. Because I could do all that stuff with a girl, too. A little girl. A daughter. A mini girly me. I could get used to that. I was already in a house with three women. I grew up with my mom and two sisters. I had some experience with this. Girls are easier. They don't start breaking stuff the minute they can walk. They don't turn everything into a gun. They don't kick and hit and spit. "You know what?" I thought. "I do have a preference. I want a girl! Come on, sonographer! Show me a vagina!

"I see something sticking out there!"

It was pretty quiet in the room then. No exclamations, no "Whup, dere it is!" or anything like that. I kept looking at the image. The unmistakable shape of boy parts sticking out from the unmistakable shape of my son. I looked around the room. Everyone was looking at me, smiles of curiosity on their faces. I looked at Julie, who was still looking at the screen.

"I can't believe it's a boy," she said. "I don't know how to raise boys. Just girls."

I looked back at the screen, then back to Julie. I smiled a smile that pushed the boundaries of my face.

"You just leave it me. I got a few ideas."


Monkey's due May 6.

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*Thanks to Maddie for the name. Monkey rocks.

Holy crap, I'm back.

One of my many New Year's resolutions was to reanimate Boiled Dinner. Using the past five years as my basis, I'm tending to follow through annually with 22.5% of my New Year's Resolutions. Given that I had four this year, and one of them was to do what I'm doing right now, that's 25%. I can blow off the other three, and my average will still rise. I am feeling really fucking good about myself right now.

I just finished eating a most delicious salad that I assembled by my own self at the fabulous Whole Foods (aka Whole Paycheck) behind my suburban Denver home. I do appreciate a good salad bar. I'm the kind of guy who makes the salad as large as the container. I am unable to fill only half the container. As I'm making the salad, I believe I'm filling half the container, but when I'm finished I'm like, how the hell did that happen? I filled the whole container. So it was a huge salad, it was, with the following ingredients:

• Hearts of Romaine Lettuce
• Cheddar Cheese
• Jack Cheese
• Blue Cheese
• Parmesan Cheese
• Ham, Cut Into Cubes
• Turkey, Cut Into Cubes
• Fresh Croutons. Well, As Fresh As Dried Bread Can Be
• Boiled Egg Bits
• Mushrooms
• Tomatoes
• Organic Ranch Dressing

It's a fabulous list of ingredients, isn't it? Do me a favor: Take another look at the list and see if you see celery on that list. I'll wait.

No? Didn't think so. That's because I didn't choose to put celery on my salad. However, as I was chewing my final bite, I tasted an unexpected taste that I hadn't tasted during this particular salad excursion. Celery. Somehow a chunk of celery made its way into my salad. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it came from the hearts of romaine lettuce bin. That singular, surprising flavor completely ruined my entire lunch. All of the glorious ingredients I'd so painstakingly mixed together into the taste I desired were trumped by the taste of celery which, I'm not afraid to tell you, I fucking hate. There are four -- yes, merely four -- tastes which I fucking hate, and those are lima beans, avocado (and no, I wouldn't like your guacamole either), beats and celery. And one of them showed up in my salad. That, as the kids like to say, is a pisser.

Oh, I'm in some new ads for Frontier Airlines. Check them out here. Just click on the TV. I'm the reporter.

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Guyalogue

My buddy Brad called me the other day. While talking, I heard a "beep" through the phone. His cheek had hit one of the buttons, causing it to beep. Happens all the time, no big deal, I said nothing, he kept talking.

But then it happened again. "Beep."

"What the fuck are you doing?" I asked.

"I bumped the button with my cheek."

"Yeah, but you did it twice, asshole."

"Fuck you, it was an accident."

"Fuck you, don't do it again."

"Whatever."

Then our conversation picked right up where we'd left off, something about the upcoming hockey playoffs.

Guyalogue.

My word.

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Kicking and drooling.

I was recently on a flight back to Denver from Chicago. It had been a hasty trip of only 24 hours, so I was pretty damn tired. I'm typically not one who sleeps on planes; I think anyone who can regularly sleep sitting up is a freak. But on this day, I found gravity unusually powerful up around my head area. So rather than fight it, I welcomed the chance for sleep.

What I did next, everyone at some point in there lives has done to one level or another. The concept is entirely familiar to all. Boiled down to its most base level, I did the "Dozing Kick Thing." Where you're in that lucid state between awake and dead to the world, and you jerk your leg as you suddenly wake up. Embarrassment sets in almost immediately, but as you look around you see that not a soul is looking at you. Not one person noticed. Not even the people sitting next to you. You thought you'd kicked, but you really hadn't, at least, not to any noticeable level. So you smile, close your eyes, and slip away once again.

That's kind of what happened to me. Except for the whole "nobody noticed" part. Because for some reason, when I kicked, I also yelled, "No!"

More like, "NAAAAHHHHHO!" And I kicked the seat in front of me.

At this moment there was no need for me to look around to see if anyone was looking at me. I just kind of knew they were. Everyone. Staring. All with the same "What the fuck was that?" look on their faces. So I quickly looked at the guy to my left and stared at him with a "What the fuck was that?" look on my face. He turned and looked out the window immediately, probably because he was petrified of me, but it gave the undoubtable appearance of guilt. "What a freak, this guy," I sent to everyone via espMail. They got it loud and clear. And I slept like a baby the rest of the way home.

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