• The exception to the rule

    Sometimes the hit flows up-shill.

    Case in point:
    Beth has a class project for her “gifted” class. She comes up with an idea and makes a blueprint. When she gets to a point that’s outside her expertise… namely: designing her presentation props in Microsoft Office – she enlists the help of Cheryl.

    At this point, the assignment becomes Cheryl’s project. She takes the blueprint designed by Beth and enters the necessary data in a Word document. When she gets to a point that’s outside her expertise… namely: formatting the document so everything fits – she enlists the help of her husband.

    At this point, the assignment becomes MY project… and I want to know why I’ve got a school project due thirteen years after I graduated.

    If you do your child’s homework, they’ll get a good grade. But if you show them how to turn the computer on, they’ll figure out how to play a lot of online games and remember every fracking product web address flashed on the boob-tube… and you’ll end up doing the next damn project anyway.

  • Can you dig it?

    I think I could get into being a househusband. Aside from laundry (which I have to do anyway), it’s not so bad. Mind you, I didn’t say it would be easy. But there’s a certain pleasure to be had cooking a meal, sitting at the kitchen table waiting for the water to boil, watching the kids play in the back yard.

    Have I said this before? My deja vu alarm is going off.

  • Pain, pain, and more pain

    There is one reader that may feel me on this one. Before I get ahead of myself, let me lay it out for you.

    I’m in my office (no not now… I’m laying out the scene from earlier today), which isn’t normally such a bad thing… but I’d been away from it under the direst of circumstances: the dreaded sinus infection (with just a pinch of bronchitis for flavor). Due to various allergies and sensitivities, I’m down to one class of antibiotics in the bacterial sinus infection arsenal – and it tends to make me a little sick to my stomach. So I’m in my office, work piled up to my inferior nasal conchae (which of course begs the obvious question: “which is plural, ‘conchae’ or ‘concha?’”), I’m a little sick to my stomach, the air conditioning is out in my building, the morning sun (with an assist going to the heat running a full bore inferno) is heating things to a balmy 87 degrees (the way our buddy Dan would have measured them), and my sinuses are doing their impression Stomp.

    That’s the lay of the land.

    That’s when I got a call from a friend asking me if I wanted to go to a hockey game tonight. (Which is going to a frigging shoot-out as I type!)

    I don’t know about you, but I tend to make this long humming sound when my mind and my mouth don’t agree on a thing to say. Call it “mind to mouth feedback” if you will, or not… I really don’t care one way or the other. Anyway, I did a lot of humming before I came to an answer.

    I said no.

    There is no sane reason why this decision should have been hard. I should be sleeping right now, content that I made the right call. Instead I’m wide awake in a dark room, hunched over a computer, clicking the refresh button on my browser because I don’t have a stinking AM radio and the live stream peetered out on my ^&%%$#! internet connection; not to mention the @^%**&! game wasn’t on TV.

    Other than that I feel great.

    I see that the Lightning won it in the shootout, so that’s something I guess.