• Part-time cynic

    If best intentions hold steady, I’ll be returning to work in some capacity in less than a week’s time. A week is an important psychological boundary for me. When I thought to myself, “I’ve still got a week before I need to go back,” I felt comfortable in knowing that no matter how tired I felt at the moment, I still had a significant amount of time to build up strength.

    I think it’s analogous to the $999 price point for computers… or maybe not.

    In either case, I’m down to less than a week; so I decided to put myself to a test, of sorts. I decided to see how my body reacted to a little stress… so I decided to read some news… politics in particular. I’ve stayed away from serious news since that bad episode in the hospital (when rigors of news put me into a fatigue induced slumber for several hours).

    I’m happy to report that so far all systems are still functioning.

    I also feel compelled to share my favorite quote from today’s foray. There’s a column in today’s Washington Post (by Dan Froomkin) discussing the stink over White House staffers using private RNC email accounts to conduct official White House business… a possible violation of the Presidential Records Act. He brings up the White House defense that staffers used the private accounts in an abundance of caution “… in order to avoid violating the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of government e-mail for overtly political purposes.”

    Without further ado, here’s my favorite part, in Mr. Froomkin’s words:

    A cynic could even argue that Rove and his operatives have so intertwined politics and policy in this White House that it would be understandably difficult for them to determine whether they should be using RNC or White House accounts.

    Indeed.

  • One morning

    My glaring weakness as an office bound civil servant is my penchant for daydreaming. Something catches my eye, stirs a memory, and away I go… off to lands far and wide. It can happen at home just as easily as at work. In fact, I just got back from a flight from the inner realm a little earlier this evening.

    The catalyst for tonight’s journey was a photograph I took on a weekend getaway, about a year before our first child was born. We spent a weekend in Ft Meyers, a stone’s throw from Sanibel Island, at a resort just across the intercostal waterway on the mainland. The photo I was looking at is right above this entry… or was when I typed this… a shot of the clouds gathering off shore, a mile or two off the beach on Sanibel Island. While the selection of that picture has significance beyond the scope of this entry, it reminds me of one of my favorite mornings of all time.

    It was the first trip I took with my first SLR camera. I’d been dying to dabble in more serious photography (which I figured required something other than a point and shoot), and I had enthusiastically jumped at the chance to pick up an old Pentax that someone was giving away. As a recent college grad budgets were tight, we had aspirations of buying a house and having children, and I already had two relatively expensive hobbies (cycling and computing)… so I’d been waiting for an SLR for a long time. It’s only power requirement was a small watch battery for the light meter (everything else was manual). There was no built in, auto flash; there was no auto focus… and I loved it. If I wasn’t such a stickler for the instant gratification of digital photography, I’d probably still be using that old Pentax (out doors anyway… the external flash unit died six years ago and I just couldn’t justify the expense of replacing it).

    It was the first time my wife and I had stayed in an expensive resort (we were only there because we got the room for free). As I often did in the pre-children era, I brought my bicycle along. Cheryl was planning to sleep in, and I was in the habit of taking early morning, Saturday bike rides. So just before sunrise on our first day I walked my bike out the resort lobby in my lycra outfit, my cycling cleats clicking on the ceramic tile (in case I wasn’t conspicuous enough), sporting a backpack containing my newly acquired Pentax and lenses.

    I couldn’t take any pictures for about twenty minutes because of the change in temperature and relative humidity, going from the resort to the muggy early morning outdoors… all the lenses fogged right up. On other days I might have been frustrated, but it was an otherwise gorgeous Florida morning, and I set out across the deserted causeway heading out to Sanibel Island. The sun was just peaking above the horizon and I felt like I was the only person awake in the world. It was quiet. The water was calm; like a sheet of glass. I was on my bike traveling a road never before traveled, and the scenery was postcard Florida. After my camera lenses warmed up I’d stop and dismount to snap the occasional shot with the Pentax.

    Put together my love of bicycling, the excitement of exploration, the serenity of my surroundings, and the fun playing with my new (long sought after) toy… and you’ve got one hell of a morning.

    We don’t do that kind of thing often enough. Maybe that’s something we’ll have to change when I get better.

  • Are DVDs dishwasher safe?

    Long ago we realized that our DVD collection would take up less space in one of those CD books. Cheryl and I wouldn’t have so many movies we’d need a book, were it not for the kids. I’ve long ago lost count how many times we’ve watched Toy Story, and I’m getting there with Cars.

    Anyway, last night our climbing prodigy scaled Mount Counter-Top to reach the shelf suspended a few feet above it, in order to get at said book of DVDs. We knew this because of the conspicuously placed chair… and because of the array of DVDs spread out on Adam’s little snack table… with which he was sharing his ice cream. (All of this happened while I was fielding a quick phone call in the other room, so naturally I’m an accessory.)

    So tell me friends, what would you do with a few dozen DVDs dripping with melted ice cream?

    Bless my wife. She’s been working really hard this last month or so and she looked like she was going to burst a view rivets on the boiler… if you know what I mean. I on the other hand, had one of those parental moments when you really, really want to laugh… but you feel like you shouldn’t. We can’t exactly condone this behavior with a laugh… we’ve got to calmly explain that you can’t share your ice cream with certain things, DVDs among them. I had to tell him that he couldn’t climb up on the counters to get stuff (lest he get hurt) – even though I had vivid memories of doing the exact same thing.

    No, I didn’t put the DVDs in the dishwasher; but I had a little fun rinsing them off in the kitchen sink. Adam was in bed by then and I could do all the laughing I wanted.