Man in Tights

I am all by myself tonight. The girls are asleep and Tegan is fighting her sinus infection problems, so everyone is upstairs.

What am I doing to pass the time? You're reading it!
What else am I doing? Experiencing the glories of the original Superman movie, complements of the A&E network. Right now I am watching the Superman/Lois flying scene and she's about to start thinking in her head "Can you read my mind?" (Oddly, Lois thinks in rhyme. A signal of the regrettable madness that would later cripple Margot Kidder?) Remember that this scene comes right after Superman has started exposing himself as a superdude all around town and catching the bad guys. So, "Supes" thought it was best to use the Daily Planet's best reporter to present his heroic manifesto to His chosen city. Also recall that during her brief question and answer session on her penthouse balcony she asks him what color panties she is wearing (Dirty!). And he can't answer at first because she is standing behind a lead planter. But he later answers "pink" when she moves (Perv!).

Anyway . . . speaking of Superman. Did you know that "Superman Returns" opens in a movie theater near you next year. It's been in the news lately--on the cover of Entertainment Weekly. There are also lots of details on this informational website, or through my sometimes nemesis James Lileks, who mentioned this interesting video in this post.

Right now I have switched from Superman to FX to see what trouble Morgan Spurlock is stirring up on "30 Days." In this episode, a Christian from West Virginia is going to spend a month living with a Muslim family in Dearborn, Michigan. During this time he will pray 5 times a day, wear some Muslim clothes (at least while traveling through the airport from WVA to MI), grow a beard, study the Koran, etc.

The Christian (named Dave) has just found out that while his Muslim host is at work--he appears to be a doctor--he has to leave the house. He can't stay at home alone with the host's wife. So, he is shopping for proper Islamic clothes.

While watching the show I also checked my news feeds and found a story on an reality show that I have heard about, but just realized that it is similar in some ways to Spurlock's "30 Days." Strangely, it has received controversy but I don't think the FX show has.

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Oh, another thing that I have been meaning to post, but didn't. I found this website a few days ago and found it rather interesting. I am not surprised that my ecological footprint is bigger than it should be. If everyone lived like me we would need almost FIVE earths! (And I even carpool almost every day and generally go everywhere with my wife.)

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I should be working on my work project . . . doing some research of Mongols. But I can't get myself to care about it right now. I can't force myself to cut my mind off from everything else and sufficiently emerge it in that "work" mindset. It is so much more interesting and distracting to work of this post and contemplate the trials of Muslims in America. The drawback, of course, is that my laptop is heating up my thighs.

Podcasting and audio ramblings

Stress, Lies, and Stomachaches

Today felt like one of those kind of days.

Last Friday when I got home there was a message from Ruth's pediatrician, reminding Tegan and I that Ruth had her two-year-old checkup on Monday. I noted it at the time and hoped that I would remember. I didn't do anything to make that happen except refrain from deleting the message from the answering machine.

This morning, in the daily grind of getting the kids ready for school and getting ourselves ready for work, I almost forgot. As we were exiting the house and getting in the car I remembered, but I didn't know what time the appointment was for. So, I ran back inside and listened to the message again (hooray for foresight!). It was for 1 pm.

Tegan had already started stressing about work, so I felt that it was my turn to take one for the team and take Ruth to her appointment. I knew that I had one meeting with my team at work, but that was in the morning. Other than that (and Tegan's softball game in the evening, I was golden . . . or so I thought.)

When I got to work, I discovered that an email sent on Friday (when I was out doing market research) was up in the air. Schedules had to start getting finalized on the massive project that I am overseeing this year and so the painful finalization was getting underway. I had already set up an informal meeting with the members of my team and this little meeting turned into a larger meeting with my manager and other people in the workflow. I got a bit stressed about it all, mostly because it was forcing me to confront what I had accomplished with this project and what has not been done. And in the process of getting these ducks in a row, I immediately began worrying about whether I was doing everything right. And since dates were finally being discussed and finalized . . well, it was all a bit disconcerting.

I am always on the edge of being worried about stuff, ready to worry about what I am doing wrong, ready to second-guess myself and assign blame (to me). So, when meetings get these sorts of decisions out in the open, I worry about it.

But . . . after all of that, I think things went fairly well. And the members of my team got a chance to hear some things discussed that I hope will let them see that what they are doing is important. It might sharpen their work habits a bit more.

And then, I had to take Ruth to the doctor. This involves picking her up from daycare, driving about 15 miles to our old residence in Hilliard to see our pediatrician. Even though we don't live there anymore, we haven't had reason to go to another doctor (except for days like today when I have to devote about two hours of my day to the trip down, the visit, and the trip back). And to make things even more exciting, I had to get back by 2:30 for another meeting that I had forgotten. And that was going to be tight. If I got stuck in the waiting room for any reason, I was seriously screwed.

Luckily that didn't happen and Ruth is in fine shape.

But, all the quick driving back and forth and the underlying stress of the entire affair, plus the extreme heat of a June afternoon brought back some bad memories.

Out of nowhere I started thinking of that very bad day three years ago when Tegan and I found out that she was having a miscarriage. She had not been feeling well all weekend and so we went to the doctor and heard the very bad news. After that, we had to schedule the grim procedure of completing the process that Tegan's body had already begun. And that meant some scrambling about.

Because Ariel was in daycare that day and this appointment was stretching into the afternoon, we had to figure out what to do about all of this. We had to go to the hospital and were able to contact our friends J & J. They graciously accepted the responsibility of looking after Ariel that night because I wasn't going to let Tegan go through this alone and I didn't want Ariel around for this. In order to make all this happen, T and I had to drive from the doctor main office to our house, throw some clothes together for Ariel, get her from school and take her to our friends house.

It was all this driving and stress and fear that brought these memories back today. I remember driving quickly (and probably angrily); I remember worrying that I was going to overheat the car (I think I did screw up the brakes that day). The whole experience was something I didn't want to remember very vividly . . . and some of it came back to me today. I wish it hadn't.

Sunday update

If you haven't read my post from earlier today, you really should read that one first. Otherwise, you'll simply be LOST.

So, after everyone rested, we gave Ruth her cupcake and let her open her presents. The main present was a LeapFrog item called a Word Whammer. It allows the child to spell three letter words by putting a magnetic letter in one of three slots. The machine can sound out each letter and if the word forms one of about 350+ words, it will pronounce it. Of course, there are limits to these words. Some three-letter words (such as ass) for example, have been blocked from pronunciation by the fine people at LeapFrog. It will still pronounce each letter, but won't go any further than that, so DON'T TRY IT!

(Oh, and by the way, that also goes for God. It wasn't spelled out as such in the instructions, but we experimented and found it to be the case.)

After all that was over, Tegan needed to do some work and so I took the girls to the mall to let them play. They had a pretty good time and I think that they are learning to play together more. They enjoy playing tag with each other more, even though Ruth refused to put down her other birthday present (some Dora the Explorer books) while she was running around. She looked kind of funny trying to run and climb amidst all of the other kids while carrying her little box of books.

I tried to get the books away from her, asking kindly mind you, but she didn't want to give them up. So, I just let her go about her business.

So, that's it for today. . . . Yeah, this post just sort of petered out into nothing.

Sunday Silences

Today is Ruth's second birthday. Tegan is trying to get her to take her afternoon nap right now and when she gets up (and when Tegan gets up from her own nap) and when Ariel and I are done "resting" then the four of us will gather to eat some special birthday cupcakes and open some birthday gifts. It should be an engaging afternoon.

My primary feeling right now is, I am tired! Ariel got me up at 7 am yesterday and 7:30 this morning. I was busy last night with Spec, getting my laptop and iTunes up to speed (thanks my friend). Tegan is just generally tired . . . she never gets enough sleep when she is trying to keep up with work. So, overall . . . tired is the emotion of the day around here.

We thought out going to Comfest yesterday (a community arts, music, whatever festival) but by the time Ruth was done with her nap it looked like it might storm a bit (it never really did). But it was awfully hot and humid. So we decided to go to the (indoor) pool instead. Our membership is about to expire there and we want to maximize whatever we can before we waste all that money we shelled out last summer. And, remember, we thought it might rain a bit.

We got there at 5 pm and found out that they close the pool between 5-6:30 . . . so, we managed to make the kids understand and then went and got some food to kill time. When we got back, approximately 6:15, we let the kids play a bit on the jungle gym in the lobby of the community center. And then we played in the pool for about an hour and a half. It was especially nice since Ruth got wet and played a bit in the pool this time. Maybe we'll make her feel comfortable in another month or so (and I'm only half kidding there).

So, that's where we are today. I hope whomever reads this is having a nice weekend.

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One good bit of news, well actually two good bits of news.

Number one, thanks to hard work by Tegan and phone consultation with her dad, we have the internet all complete and everything is completely up to snuff. That means that we also have the laptop working wirelessly (I am writing this on the couch listening to Mulan sing). The other bit of good news is Blogger related. You may remember that I was a little disappointed that the Apple web browser (Safari) didn't display all of the buttons that I had grown accustomed to using when making my new blog posts. Well, I downloaded Mozilla Firefox and am using it to write my new blog posts. All of the buttons are there and everything is as I remember it. Which is good and will help me do things I had grown accustomed to without relearning stuff.

Also, Blogger has mentioned on its news page that they have upgraded your ability to post pictures. You can find pictures on your own computer and select and format them without having to use a different program (such as Hello) to get pictures on the web. So, that streamlines things even more. The picture that was put at the top of this post was added through this new picture button. It was done much quicker and I hope it encourages you all to add more images to your posts.