A Nice Evening

My son, I'll call him TB, surprised me tonight. He's five years old. LBB is out tonight for a saturnalia with some other hens, so I'm on duty. Apparantly, she bought him some new school shoes today. He found them in his bedroom, and within seconds of finding them, rather than focus on his awesome new find, he thought about calling his Momma to say thank you.

I nearly fell over. Not only because of the thankfulness, but because he wanted to talk on the phone. My small boy is coming out of his shell, and in impressive ways that make me proud. We made the call, and the bonus for him is that he has probably tightened that wrap around his Momma's finger even tighter.

We had fun tonight: played a whole lot of foosball (sad to say, our skills are about even), watched a bit of America's Funniest Videos (we like to watch the skiing accidents and people falling on their toosh), and we read a few Richard Scarry stories.

I put him to bed and TB said, "Daddy, can I please stay up with you, only until Momma gets home?" No, sweetie, you can't. But I can't explain how happy it makes me that you want to . . .

As If She Needed Further Evidence

My wife, LBB, is ever so close to thinking that Bono is the second coming. Now here's validation for that belief . . .

Personally, I think U2 is pretty good, and certainly have to be admired for their work toward African relief, but when it comes right down to the music, ever since Zooropa, they seem to have two or three great songs on an album, and then a whole lot of mediocrity.

Sorry, sweetie.

Dodged It

Whew! After getting a bit of advice and doing a bit of research, and suffering through a bit of trial and error, I found that it was quite easy to restore the Outlook Express .dbx folder that contains the inbox my dumb-ass "deleted" the other night.

I thought I was going to suffer the frying pan to the skull for that one.

I'm In For It

I believe I just accidentally dumped all 250 messages in my wife's in box while trying to remove MY Outlook Express account. This could be a problem.

Brrrr . . . .

Just checked the weather, and it looks like the wind chill tomorrow AM is going to be one degree. Not three, not two. One.

I remember when I first learned about the Celsius temperature scale. It made perfect sense because water freezes at zero, boils at 100. What is Fahrenheit based on? Thanks to Wikipedia, we can find out anything! Back in a minute . . . .

. . . apparently there are several theories, one, that Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit based zero on the lowest outdoor temperature he could record, and 100 was his body temperature. He didn't like negative numbers. Well, I say there's no appreciable difference between one and minus one. I'm done with winter. I don't know how I survived four years in Rochester, NY. I haven't bought a heavy winter coat since I left there seventeen years ago. Now I'm complaining about the winter in Virginia. I'm no longer a tough guy.

The Realist Begins Online

How many millions have been here before: about to dive into the public miasma and make a first blog post? Yes, the banality of it all is enough to make me run away. Fact is though, I like writing, I have a monthly column, and more practice should just make perfect that much better, right?

I've cruised through a number of blogs, many irritating, many hilarious, many very artistic, many very sad. Many spouting views I strongly oppose, but if I enjoy the style, I'll go back for more. I am someone who, up until very recently, mostly shunned the home computer because I look at one all day at work. Usually, I find myself well behind the curve of change. Once again, I am. I have a 3-to-1 VCR to DVD ratio in my home, which means I have too much of everything, but also means I have some catching up to do. I have a thousand CDs, and no iPod.

The place we live is similar, about 5-10 years behind. Don't get me wrong, I love this city, but we are a little slow on the uptake. Did I come here because I knew I would fit in? Or is this what I've become as a result?

Example: we just had our first Panera Bread and our first Carrabba's go up here in town. In fact, I think we just got the concept that people will pay a bunch more for upscale restaurants in the parking lot than for anything in the food court. Do I like this development? Not really. I'd rather hang out downtown. But I just offer this as an example that my life, my city, and my blogging, probably lag laughably behind the crowd.

But so it begins. And thank you to the wonderful folks at the South Roanoke Circle for encouraging all this nonsense.