Liloia.com

Grr

This goes out to the guy who always calls me at 4:30 in the afternoon 3-4 times a week with a huge problem to fix. If only he could hold onto that one problem until the next morning when I inevitably end up solving it anyhow, I would be a much happier guy. Especially on Friday afternoons!

Happy Halloween

What a great night. The weather was perfect, everyone was friendly and we had a great time! We went trick or treating after work today on a street near Trevor's school for a while, if only Halloween always took place in the warm nights of Spring. What? It's not Spring? Oh, ok.

Well anyway it was a fun time and we got to get out and see some of the neighborhood. One thing that I was feeling in the air tonight....I want a house. Seeing everyone's well manicured lawns and decorated porches only made me all the more jealous to have one of these places for myself. Maybe someday.

The anomaly is systemic

As much as I loved seeing The Matrix: Reloaded at Jordan's IMAX last night with the Web Team, I could have gone my whole life without seeing Lawrence Fishburne's craggy face 50 feet high.

Pumpkin Cutting

This weekend we made the trip down to NJ for our annual pumpkin cutting party. For my family this event tends to eclipse Christmas. This is the one event that everyone tries thier hardest to make the trip back for and attend.

It was a great time. We got to see Christine who now lives in NC and my grandmother who doesn't get out a whole lot. Fun fun.

Lobster Mania!

Tonight after spending the evening at Trevor's school for a Halloween party, we swung by Lamberts to pick up some pumpkins for tomorrow's annual Liloia pumpkin cutting party.

We spent some time outside selecting our pumpkins and then headed inside to see if there any other items that we wanted to pick up. There as we walked in was a group of young men all standing in a circle around the seafood case along one side of the store.

As we walked towards the display (I wanted to grab some shrimp), the group parted and we were faced with what was quite possibly the largest lobster I have ever seen. It was so big that Trevor wasn't comfortable coming within 5 feet of the thing.

We all looked at the impressive crustacean, and then continued on with our shopping. After we got into the car, Tara and I looked at each other and said almost the same thing. We HAVE to blog this, and we NEED a picture of it! So I ran back inside with my camera phone and documented this Boston-Metro event!

Here is the conversation as it went in the store on my second trip in.

Dave - "Um, this may sound weird, but can I take a picture of your lobster"
(I thought this burly guy was going to deck me)

Dave #2 - (his name was Dave too) "Yeah sure!"

Dave #1 - "How big do you think it is?" (yet another question that sounds weird)

Dave #2 - "This one is 13 pounds...hey you wanna see the other one?"

Dave #1 - "The other one?"

Dave #2 - "Yeah, the other one is bigger. Maybe 15 lbs!"

I have to say that this was possibly one of the coolest things that I have seen in a long time. Their claws were so big that they couldn't use rubber bands on them. In the pictures you can make out the DUCT TAPE that was needed to control these monstrosities. Dave was a pretty big guy, and the lobsters look big even against him. Do yourself a fovor if you are ANYWHERE near Norwood. Swing by and see Dave's Amazing Lobsters. I took the liberty and named them Fred and Ethel.

Dave - Thanks for being such a good sport!

Do I even need to say anything?

CNN.com - Lightning strikes actor playing Mel Gibson's Christ - Oct. 24, 2003

Neither rain, nor snow, nor bus fight...

Did you know that a grade-schooler's backpack works just like a USPS mailbox? I can magically put a note for someone across town into it and just as magically one will return to me.

Oh you've heard of the Post Office, FedEx, UPS... but I've discovered the Elementary School Mail System. Dave calls it "the underground railroad for grammar school" but I think we're heading into Pony Express territory with this one.

Say I want to send a note to another parent, Mrs. Smith. This is what I have to do.

— Write my note and put it into an envelope labeled with the name and teacher of Mrs. Smith's child. How I get this information is anyone's guess.
— The note goes into my child's bookbag, who brings it to school. Or leaves it on the bus, or uses it to wipe his nose.
— His teacher takes the note and (presumably, since I've never seen this magic in action) sends the note to the office.
— The school administrator puts the note into Mrs. Smith's child's teacher's mailbox. Still with me?
— Mrs. Smith's child's teacher gets the note from her mailbox and gives it to Mrs. Smith's child.
— Mrs. Smith child brings the note home in his backpack and gives it to mom. Or wraps his leftover Ritz Bits with it.

It's an intricate system with many opportunities for error — and you thought they were just learning long division...

Help Me!

Ugh! I am on the most boring conference call ever! So far it has lasted over an hour and it seems like it will last at least another hour. My level of involvement in this is very low, but at any moment there is a chance that they will turn to me and ask for feedback on what they are talking about. What does that mean for me? It means that I have to pay attention to the call and listen, but that I am basically just sitting here at my desk.

I tried to do some other work at the same time, but for some reason I can't focus on anything that has any complexity associated with it. Hence, I came to our blog instead :)

Now they are discussing numbers. Not anything interesting like financials or anything, but discussing the difference between the numbers 1 and 2. I wish I was kidding. Okay, so maybe I am kidding a little bit.

Help me.

Comment from England

Name: Mirella
URL: http://England

love from the bigest of the bigest fan
Mirella age 19

I received three (3) copies of this comment today. It makes me indescribably sad that this self-professed nineteen-year-old:
1) Can't tell the difference between Liloia.com and DavidBlaine.com. I mean, at the very least she should notice that Liloia is a much shorter URL and doesn't have the words "David" or "Blaine" in it.
2) Posted thrice. She posted the comment once, watched it show up on the page, posted it again, watched it show up on the page, posted it again, watched it show up on the page, then presumably left the computer to lie in a sunbeam or count spilled toothpicks.
3) Has not mastered punctuation. That has to be the longest run-on sentence ever. I may be a comma-lovin' fool, but I've at least found the Shift key.
4) Posted her URL as http://England. Wow, a comment from the entire country of England. I think that beats Strongbad's email from the entire town of Cory, North Dakota.
5) "i hope you recover and you are allowed to eat bibi" What is this "bibi" she speaks of and is it good to eat? Even if Mirella says you can eat it, should you really trust her? After reading this letter, I wouldn't put it past Mirella to be sticking things like retaining bolts and dryer lint in her mouth.

OH. oh.

I should write back to Mirella. Yeeeeessss.

Dear Mirella,

Thank you for writing to me at my personal web site. Not many people know that not only am I Public Masochist, David Blaine, I am also David and Tara Liloia. I'm proud of you for uncovering my secret life as two upper-lower-class Bostonite bloggers.

I don't usually write back to fans, but the candor and earnestness of your letter was strangely provocative. I deleted the first two copies, but the third lodged itself in my brain and drew me close to your words. You are persistent and that's one quality I can't help but identify with.

As someone who pushes the envelope as a profession, I empathize with your desire not to conform to social constructs like punctuation and capitalization. It pleases me the way you taunt death by spelling his name "deth". I can only imagine the twinkle in your eye as you do so.

Thank you for your well wishes and the hope that I have eaten Bibi. The Bibi is not quite ripe yet (due to an unusually rainy summer), but I hope that by the Spring it will be ready. Perhaps you would like to join me in the eating of the Bibi?

As far as being old enough to try the stunts I have mastered, I think I can confidently say that you are ready now. If you have a large block of ice, an airtight Plexiglass box or some other dangerous tool, please use it on yourself. I think you will be pleased with the results. I think we all will.

Yours truly,
David Blaine

Fun with demographics

Dave turned to me last night with earnest wonder in his eyes and said, "You know, VH1 is really starting to get good."

Just wait, Dave. As you pass through the years from 26-38, it will get even better until finally becoming crap again just as you hit 40.

We watch it...

so you don't have to!

Tonight Tara and I stopped all of the important things going on in our house (hah) to spend a few quality minutes watching The Next Joe Millionaire. All during the day I heard many people proclaiming how they weren't going to watch this show because it looked "horrible" and "pathetic". I'm sorry, weren't you the ones talking about Friends the other day and telling each other what the Osbournes or Anna Nicole did last week? Don't get me started.

C'mon, for as horrible as Fox is and as crazy Rupert Murdock continues to prove he can be, how can you miss this on purpose? They get a bunch of horrible, trashy european women who proclaim that they are looking for love, and then watch their reactions as they tell them that David Smith is worth 80 million dollars.

The guy they picked for this show is far better than Evan Marriott. He is genuine and actually has a head on his shoulders. He doesn't dress differently from his actual personality so therefore his performance for the women is much more real. I find him to be more interesting to watch and judging from the previews he will actually have a hard time with the decisions he is making and the games he is playing with the women on this show.

Onto the ladies..(can I say that again?)...ahem. My original statement about them is 100% accurate. Most of the group is what I would deem to be Eurotrash. Vapid, heartless women who are cattier than a box of kittens, wearing kitten masks and....okay so the reference is horrible but you get the idea. They are all bucking for his cash (heh) and fighting with each other. I predict tonight that this will be a far better season than the first.

Not to mention that their different cultures and languages are adding to the game at every turn. Each one has their own preconceived notions of the United States and cowboys, which is pretty funny. Plus the themesong on the fox website cracks me up. Do yourself a favor and check out an episode or two.

Get PowerPoint out of school

Teaching PowerPoint in elementary school is like teaching kids how to pick their noses. It has no place in the classroom because:
1) They can figure it out for themselves given a little experimentation.
2) Sure, everyone else does it, but that doesn't make it tasteful.
3) There are better ways to get the task done.

Throwing a PC and some office software into a classroom doesn't equate to teaching children how to use technology responsibly and productively. (I spoke to a woman from Intel about this at BloggerCon.) Millions of office workers have already been trained to drift into slumber at the sight of a bullet point fading onto a gradient-blue background. Do we really want to be passing on such a lowest common denominator skill set to a fifth grader? Showing them how to make something blink in a slide is nowhere near as valuable as teaching them good oral presentation skills.

Recently, a teacher had to go around to each child's computer in the lab to ensure they had typed in whitehouse.gov (the actual white house site) and not whitehouse.com (pornography). Instead of teaching the children how to vet sites on their own, it was done for them. Are we going to stand over their shoulders for the rest of their lives typing in URLs or are we going to show them that typing "whitehouse.gov" and "whitehouse.com" into the Google Search box, you can quickly see from the descriptions which site is legitimate without viewing the content of either?

Our school spent thousands of dollars on an interactive white board. I have to wonder what pressing educational need was filled by this expensive tool. Here's the marketing propaganda from the interactive white board site:

• Touch the screen to control your computer — Which assumes that teachers are already using the computer as a teaching tool. Kind of hard to do given that the location of most computers in the school were in the far corner of each room.
  
• Write in electronic ink — Because regular ink is so 1984.
  
• Save, print or e-mail notes — Because all students are wired and accept class notes via email, integrate them into MS Project and schedule homework in their Palm.
  
• Highlight key information with easy-to-use tools — Easier to use than say, a highlighter?
  

I'm no luddite. I'll be the first in line for a refrigerator that emails me the groceries that I need to pick up on the way home from work, or better yet, sends it to my cell phone. That technology that will streamline an existing task, not invent a new task just to throw some silicon at it. In this case, let's start spending money on getting classrooms out of hallways and save the interactive white boards for a Fortune 500 conference room.

Too much Ampheta in my Desk

I use Amphetadesk at work for monitoring incoming feeds from our sister publications and today I finally caved and set it up at home. Clicking through IE favorites to each blog on my morning reading list was becoming a tedious chore as the list swelled with BloggerCon attendants and other tidbits of good reading.

But I find that Amphetadesk displays about 20 posts from each feed on the main channels page. I went into settings to scale that back to one or two (if I'm checking them every day — and I am — just a couple of posts will keep me up to date), but there doesn't seem to be a setting for the number of items displayed from each feed. Anyone have a clue about this? Will it limit items to only the most recent after using it for a while?

I've been toying with the idea of just building my own aggregator that does everything just the way I want it to. I've been working on aggregating feeds at work this month, I wouldn't mind putting that knowledge to use while it's still fresh.

I hate Aaron Boone

I can't believe it. As of the 8th inning it seemed like a lock, and we were this close (You will have to imagine my fingers very close together). Why did we leave Pedro in there for so long? I think that is going to be the question that many people will be asking over the next week or so.

I don't want to watch the Yankees beat the Marlins. We all know they are going to and I don't want to watch it, but over the last few weeks the excitement of watching the Red Sox battle their way into this has made me addicted baseball. If I know it is on I will want to watch it, maybe I should just stay away from the TV altogether for the next week. That will make fantasy football tough, but it might be worth it.

Who's the ding dong?

Twenty-seven seconds into the main title from the movie Spacecamp there are two chimes that precisely emulate the two-tone doorbell at my in-laws house. Every time the song comes on, I look up — as if to answer the door. When I'm really not paying attention, I tense up, waiting for Mollie's shrill barking to pierce my skull. Why do I do this? It's not even my doorbell.

One baseball post.

After reading this great profile of unfortunate Cubs fan Steven Bartman, I've decided that he's getting a raw deal. This is what he had to say about his life-changing moment:

"I had my eyes glued on the approaching ball the entire time and was so caught up in the moment that I did not even see Moises Alou, much less that he may have had a play.... I am so truly sorry from the bottom of this Cub fan's broken heart."

How about instead of playing that gut-wrenching tape of him knocking the ball away from Alou, the major networks start playing tape of the fans who called for Bartman's "lynching" shortly afterwards? Because it's plainly in the public interest to identify these murderous fans and not the mild-mannered man who kept his eye on the ball.

Mind the gap... or not. Your call.

My train was an hour late getting home tonight, thanks, in part, to the actions of one boneheaded commuter. To begin with, the train engine started smoking. While this is normal on steam engines, it's apparently not nearly as good on an electric train. So we stopped to put out the fire and mill around and whatever else they were doing up in front. And this is where the wacky Twilight Zone stuff started happening.

From what I was told by some nurses on board, a man got off the train after repeated warnings on the loudspeaker NOT to get off the train. Did I mention these warnings were pretty stern (as stern as you can get while dropping your "R's"). Apparently, the warnings applied to everyone BUT one guy who, for whatever reason, left the train. The smoking engine was quickly fixed and the train started moving. After this guy's first brilliant decision to disregard the loudspeaker, he came up with another stunning move. He ran after the train and tried to jump onto it. Hang on, I think that sentence deserves its own private line with walk-in closets and heated garage.

He ran after the train and tried to jump onto it.

I don't know about you, but my fantasies of being James Bond, Macgyver or even The Greatest American Hero ended in 1987. I can't jump onto a moving train. And neither, apparently, could this guy. The phrase the nurses used was "caught between something." I shudder to think what things one could become wedged between on a moving train. None of them are good.

The train lurched to a stop again and we waited for 15 minutes before being told to disembark (you see, this time they WANTED us to leave the train). I could see two ambulances, a fire truck and emergency personnel carrying a stretcher and backboard. How's that whole jumping onto a moving train thing workin' out for ya man?

And just so we're all on the same page... I have sympathy for the people who had limbs aputated out of the blue during yesterday's Staten Island ferry accident. They're heading home after a rough day in the city and *boom* disaster strikes — no fault of their own. But this guy... he brought his woes upon himself.

Editorial assistance provided by Tara. I described the story and she ghostwrote.

Take back the words.

I'm glad I caught David Weinberger's JOHO newsletter that was filtered into my spambox this morning. He and Dan Gillmor have created a site called WordPirates "where you can register and discuss words that you feel have been taken over by commercial and political rapscallions who twist them to their own nefarious purposes." It's a great outlet for all of those cultural and literary pet peeves you've been harboring.

I wonder if "intensive purposes" will find a welcome home there? It's not as much a co-opted word, as one that's been created out of ignorance. In a hundred years or so, we'll all have some "intensive purpose" to motivate us, no? In the same vein, I see "irregardless" was submitted. I'll pop my intensive purpose in there and see what comes of it.

Irregardless, I did add another pet peeve phrase into the "E" section which should be trackbacked if I've done everything right.

I screwed up.

I tinkered with the old "green monster" CSS so much that it was loading with excruciating slowness. So we're starting fresh with this new template. Still us, just speedier and less green.

Props to the Firdamatic design tool for making this easy.

I'm tinkering again, so you can choose to either ignore the broken stuff or bring it to my attention.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

The guy next door is in his backyard smoking a big fat stogie and the stench is sailing right in through my open window (it's a beautiful windy October day and I'm pretending that keeping every window open will clear out all of the germs that have been plaguing us for a month). He has the right to smoke in his own backyard and I have the right not to gag in my bedroom, right?

But it bites.

Then again, maybe he thinks the same thing about the off-key renditions of Björk songs that come out of my window and assail him in his otherwise peaceful backyard.

...if you sing Björk songs off-key, can anyone really tell?

Great Night

Tired. That's the word of the day. We ended up staying up until after 2 AM last night chatting with Tara's parents. It is probably one of the things that I miss the most about living in New Jersey. When we were in the area it would not be uncommon on a Friday or Saturday night for the four (or five if Bryan was around) to sit around and talk for hours and hours.

I miss that a lot. Part of me wishes that we were at a point in our lives that coming back this way would make sense, and that we could be nearer to our families again. But we aren't. We love living in Norwood, I love my new job and Tara is doing well at work. I guess we will just have to wear a path in route 95 between Massachusetts and New Jersey. :)

Power Mac

We are in NJ this weekend hanging with Tara's family. Lots of fun, plenty to chat about, since we haven't been back in a few months. Tara's dad and brother are starting a photo studio in the next few weeks, which is really cool.

Bryan (her brother) has put a lot of work into this, and it totally prepared. I am really jealous of them, I would love to be starting a business of my own. I wish them the best. They bought a slew of equiptment for the office including two flat panel Power Mac's.

These puppies are totally sweet. I can't believe that haven't become a Mac addict before. Clay, you were right about Mac's, they rock. It is a little hard to understand and obviously I don't know where anything is or how to configure any of it, but the interfaces are great and the computer is fast! I may have to walk out of here with one them!

First Night

Today at approximately 4:15 I started the first day of my vacation. This is the first full week I have had off in over a year and I am really looking forward to doing...absolutely nothing. I intend to spend a day or so with Adam in Somerville, depending on when he kicks me out of his apartment.

Tonight we went over to Finbars for dinner. I love their Shepherd's Pie, which goes perfectly with a few pints of Bass Ale. Ok, anything really goes well with Bass. I keep hearing that Shannon and Luke go to Finbars a lot, but we are yet to see them there, we need to try to coordinate a group meal, it would be a lot of fun.

We are heading down to NJ for the weekend to see Tara's family who we haven't seen since Sean and Alli started college in September. Although it seems like they might not be there this weekend. :( Maybe some other time.

I will be in enemy territory watching the Red Sox beat the Yankees on Saturday and Sunday. It's a good thing I won't be at my parents house or else we would be sleeping out on the street!

Breaking Science News

Scientists think universe shaped like soccer ball

Manchester United elated.

Keep your fountain pen...

Aaron Fuegi saw the earlier part of the Neal Stephenson Q&A at Harvard that I was too late to catch. He offers Neal's take on writing longhand versus typing. I hate writing longhand. It's like nails across a chalkboard or chewing wool socks. I get so preoccupied with how absolutely awful it feels to hold a pen and form the letters that I can't acutally write anything. Of course when inspiration hits, I'm not quite as picky. I'll use a fingernail on a styrofoam Dunkin Donuts coffee cup if that's what it takes.

Aaron also left before the signing portion. Rollercoasters and food I tell you... that's the way to run a signing.

No Linkin Park for Neal

I went to see Neal Stephenson speak at the Harvard Coop tonight. He's the author of Snow Crash and Cryptonomicon — two of my top ten favorite novels. (I don't really have a concrete top ten favorite novels list, but that sounded good.) I had never seen Neal in person until tonight — he looks like an evil magician... as if he could put his fingertips together, chant a little something and bunny rabbits would appear out of a dog-eared copy of Zodiac on some hippie's lap.

I drove into Boston because as much as people say it bites to drive in the city, it bites even more to be a slave to the commuter rail schedule. Dave will back me up on this. While the public transportation advocates were waiting for the T to South Station, I was already on the Pike, having a quiet moment with Chad Kroeger.

I did not get anything signed because:

1) Who wants to stand in a two hour line that doesn't have either food or a roller coaster at the end of it?
2) I would not be able to stand myself in the morning if I went all fangirl and said something like, "Oh my god, you're like my favorite author ever!" instead of something clever and memorable.
3) The West Wing was coming on at 9.

But I did get to hear most of the Q&A session from the second floor balcony of the Coop. Neal explained that he prefers instrumental baroque music for editing, but various genres for writing itself. Interestingly, any songs with spoken words in them are too distracting as a writing background. No rap metal for Neal.

BloggerCon: A Blogger in their Midst

First, a hearty thank you to Dave Winer, Wendy Koslow, Adam Curry, The Berkman Center and everyone else who made a free Blogger Con Day Two a reality. There's no other way I would have been able to attend if not for their hard work and generosity. I'm saving my lunch money in order to attend the entire conference next year.

I took notes in Halley Suitt and AKM Adam's sessions in my POP-70WR wireless notebook. (Plain old paper, 70 pages, wide ruled.) It was bad enough that I was very late to Halley's session, I didn't want to subject the crowd to the hostile squeaky gerbil in my ancient laptop. I missed most of the juicy Glove Girl discussion, but I did catch most of the "perfect blogging tool" conversation. Some of the amenities that bloggers added to the pot were access control (who sees what), reputation manangement (finger files, feedback ratings, etc. — more on this in Joi Ito's session), and a model employment agreement for bloggers.

I was drawn to Halley's session because I see bloggers around me being silenced because of corporate ties. The Hartford Courant asked Denis Horgan to stop publishing his insightful and entertaining blog with the vague claim that it created a "conflict of interest."

Recently, I held back from commenting on a recent firing because I work for a company that is somewhat involved on the periphery of the story. I'm smart enough to keep company confidential things to myself, but I'm reluctant to post my own opinions and risk being asked to stop.

On a side note, Halley is quite a stylish and charismatic woman. Of course, that comes with the caveat that my mental picture of every blogger I read is either of a teenage boy or a teenage girl. In Si's case it works, but certainly not in Halley's. My only regrets were that I missed the beginning of the session and that she ended slightly early. I had prepared by reading the case study and everything. I could use a little more Halley in my life... then again, couldn't we all?

More Blogger Con notes to come...

Back in Shelton

I am back in Connecticut for work again this week. For the most part this trip is not so bad, I have some friends here and things are going well. I realized after I was more than halfway down 95, that I had forgotten my cell phone charger and my laptop power cord. Grr. I nabbed a power cord from someone else around here, but no luck for the phone. I am only here for 2 days so I am leaving my phone completely off except for when I absolutely need it.

CHB - good luck on the new weblog, and the new goals. We are all rooting for you! Let us know how you are doing!

Begging off BloggerCon & K2's party

I have lots of notes to post from BloggerCon Day Two, but I'm tired from the 80 minutes of walking I did today. I apparently left my car as far away from Pound Hall as it is possible to park and still be within city limits. I think the problem is that I was sucked in by a Crate & Barrel with little regard to where I actually had to be for the conference. It didn't help that I wandered Harvard Yard for 40 minutes looking for a hall that was nowhere near my location.

Two people asked me for directions while I was wandering... and since I have a compulsive need to at least appear like I'm helping people, I gave out random directions with enough confidence to fool the tourists.

So because I'm tired and achy, you get K2 party notes instead.

The gathering at K2's house was excellent. I didn't leave the kitchen the entire time, but that was fine because it's about 3500 square feet. You could easily fit a camera crew in there to film a cooking show. My entire apartment fits in her kitchen. I feel compelled to warn her that I know of at least three people plotting her early demise in order to have a chance at that kitchen.

Kathleen had set up the ingredients, recipes, and tools for mixed drinks and I ended up trying all of her suggested cocktails. I enjoyed mixing the drinks and ended up making concoctions for several people. My favorite was the Absolut Hunk (recipe below), followed by the Absolut Cosmo. Dave liked the Beau Fashion. I did the whole sugar on the glass rim thing. It looked spiffy.

Recipe for the Absolut Hunk — featured in an episode of Sex and the City

4 parts Absolut Vanilla
1 part simple syrup
1 part fresh lime juice
1 part pineapple juice

Pour Absolut Vanillia over ice in a shaker. Add simple syrup, fresh lime jiuce and pinapple juice. Shake, strain, and serve in chilled martini glass. Garnish with lime.

Shrek Author

This is one of our favorite authors when reading books to Trevor. We are fans of the Shrek movie, but we didn't realize that this was the guy that wrote Shrek until relatively recenly. We are big fans of the Dr. DeSoto books as well as some of his others.

'Shrek' author dead at 95

Bus vs. Ambulance

Yesterday I was walking to work and a yellow school bus had stopped a few blocks away. The driver had put out the stop sign and all the cars in either direction were stopped waiting for the children to complete their entry and the sign to go back in.

From the other direction, screaming up the street came an ambulance with it's lights and sirens going. Cars around it were pulling off to the side and getting out of the way as quickly as possible. As the ambulance approached the bus the entire scene in my head froze as if someone with the power to stop time just did.

Which of these municipal forces would emerge as the victor in this power struggle? Which vehicle's governmental regulations and motor vehicle laws would overpower the other? Which was more important, the children’s safety or the ambulance passenger who was potentially in critical condition?

I asked around to some people about this issue, and 100% of them all agreed that the school bus held the control and the ambulance should stop for it.

Time is unfrozen, everyone begins moving again, and what happens? The ambulance speeds past the school bus without even hesitating. I guess the driver doesn't like kids..

Five, four, three...

Much to the delight of the teenagers sitting next to us in Taco Bell, Trevor and I had a debate last night about whether the Five Second Rule applies in restaurants. The object in question... a soft taco which had opened up and fallen onto the floor meat side down.

I was staunchly opposed, citing the fact that hundreds of people ate here a day and besides that, it was just nasty.

His compelling argument stated that there were only a couple of hairs and one gritty thing in the hot sauce that could easily be picked out. And anyway, it was on the floor for, like, only two seconds.

I won.

Is she a ninja?

Shopping for shoes last night, Trevor spotted a muslim woman wearing a veil. I could see the question forming in his head and I managed to remind him to speak quietly (Trevor has shouting issues).

"Mom, why is that woman wearing a hood?"

I explained that in her culture it was polite for women to cover their hair and not show it off. She believed that if her hair was uncovered people would only think about her beautiful hair and not other things. Oversimplified (maybe even wrong — hey, I'm not muslim), but I was straddling a line between truth and kindergarten-level comprehension skills.

He thought for a moment, then got a big smile on his face.

"They're right, Mom. I'm not wearing a hood and I'm thinking about my hair, RIGHT NOW!"

When Tigers Attack...

Was anyone really surpised when this happened? I mean they DO work with TIGERS

Roy of 'Siegfried & Roy' critical after mauling

I just hope that no one in my celebrity death pool sees this..

Wired

I can’t do it. I can’t chill out. Ugh. This afternoon I took some time off that I was owed from last week. We were at quarter end and as a reward (I don’t know what for) the management (people who no one actually is certain exists) gave us the afternoon off. For most people that meant they could leave right after the company barbeque that took place that afternoon. For me it meant staying late.

Normally I would have been allowed to go home, well, ok let me rethink that one. If my current boss was making the decision she would have let me go home. She is really great. We work very hard, but she is very accommodating. Last week when this occurred however, she was out of town in Europe and needed me to cover for her. Not a problem. I actually don’t mind working at all. It is nice to be in the office when it is quiet, I tend to get a lot more done in the same amount of time.

Back to the matter at hand. I took the time that I would have gotten last Friday, today. I went out to lunch with my friend Chris, and of course we talked the entire time about work; my work, his work, so on and so on. That was a lot of fun. Thanks for lunch man.

Then I am left to my own devices for a few hours while I wait for Tara to get done at work. I had Chris drop me off at her office, since it is a whole lot closer than anything else is and Tara and I share a car. I found myself in the parking lot of a Stop and Shop making phone calls for work. Checking voicemail, returning calls, it was pathetic! The only way I was really able to pacify myself was to sit in the parking lot, take out the laptop and do what I am doing now, write something. Anything to keep me busy. It’s almost like my mind feels like it is missing something and focusing on my work is how I will fill that need, I don’t know. I do know that it feels good to write.

I am actually going to take a vacation in about 1.5 weeks. I am scheduled to do absolutely nothing and it sounds great, but I am a little concerned that I may go batty. Adam called last night and I told him about the vacation, I may go up to Somerville and hang out with him for a few days just to get out of my routine. Sleeping, now that sounds like a fun idea. I could sleep for days and days and days.

Any suggestions on how I can unwind and let go of things a little bit?