• Sweet irony

    This political season is much like other political seasons; the hacks are out in full force repeating the sound bites like dolls with pull strings. My favorite is the line about government run health care, shortages, and rationing.

    While there is a rational explanation, and it is only one isolated example, I think it is just precious that the industrialized world’s most free market driven (flu) vaccination program is also one of the industrialized world’s only (flu) vaccination programs suffering from shortages and rationing.

    I’m a big fan of irony when it works for me; but alas, irony is but one of life’s many bitter mistresses.

    (Source: “Critics Call for Govt. Control of Flu Vaccine” on NPR’s “All Things Considered”, 10/25/2004.)

    **Note: the above link likely won’t work for more than a week or so after this post.

  • No Alex? No Nomar? No problem.

    The other day I was talking with a coworker about how I always manage to get on the wrong end of a rivalry, or in other words, the only team that saw it as a rivalry. Dunedin High School versus Clearwater (basketball and football), UF versus FSU (the last fifteen years or so in football), Red Sox versus Yankees, Rays versus, well, I guess we don’t really have a rival there, but you see the pattern.

    But you know what? Being raised in the Boston area and the Tampa Bay area has really worked out the last several years. Think about the Patriots (twice), the Bucs, the Lightning, and now the Red Sox. Three years or so, and five championships? Not a bad run, is it?

    The Red Sox? Sure, they’ve got a big payroll. But hey, they’ve been trying to buy a championship for years (80 plus?) – they did it this year.

    I’ll let others, more capable than me, talk about the significance. I’m just going to sit in front of the TV for a while and nurse my voice back to health.

    After the game, the Sox manager was asked how he wanted this team to be remembered.

    “As winners.”

  • Glass shelter

    Do I have faults? Do I do and say stupid things? Does a newborn baby cry in the middle of the night? Do I have funny looking toes?

    As Beth and her peer group might say, “Duh?”

    One of the most rewarding means of compensating for our faults is pointing them out in others. In that vein, let me tell you about Cheryl, and the great egg debate. As it turns out, Cheryl fancies herself the household egg expert. Because I can be a wee bit competitive, this is a source of friction. Combine this with a husband’s natural proclivity to avoid “women’s work” and you’ll find yourself right in the thick of Sunday’s Kauffman Family Smackdown. You see, Cheryl once accused me of never making our daughter eggs when she asks for them. Never? Why them is fighting words! You see, Cheryl once told me that Beth hated eggs prepared in the microwave. Yar, that be a challenge me boy!

    So Sunday Beth asks me to make her some eggs. Unbeknownst to everyone, I mixed up a couple of eggs and nuked them up good. Like every college student worth his or her weight in salt knows, the best meals are those eaten in the container they were prepared in. So I stirred up the bowl of gelatinous cooked egg goo that came out of the microwave, and served Beth a reasonable facsimile of scrambled eggs. Cheryl was standing there next to me as I gave the bowl to Beth. I whispered in her ear, “I just gave Beth microwave eggs. I want you to watch this, but if you say anything to Beth you’ll be sorry.” (That’s husband speak for “I have no real power over you, but I like to pretend I do.”)

    Beth took the first bite.

    “Beth, how do you like MY eggs?”
    “They’re hot.”

    “Yes, but how do they taste?”
    “They’re hot.”

    “Yes Beth, so I gathered; but if they weren’t too hot do you think they would taste good?”
    “Yeah.”

    “BOO YAA, HA HA HAAAA!” I said to Cheryl, in a manner as mature as I could muster in my moment of triumph.

    It was one of those moments where your life feels like a Rocky movie. You know, where you take an inhuman beating for an hour forty-five, and then somehow score the improbable knockout in the last ninety seconds. The only thing missing was Survivor playing in the background as I mixed up the eggs.