Are We There Yet?

There are few things more amazing than seeing someone else discover something entirely new for the first time. We live in a world so complex that things such as HarleyFest can be "organized". It's pretty easy to take some of the simpler things for granted, especially once you learn a little bit about the world. Even if you've never taken a single chemistry or physics course, you still know more about these things than you could learn in at least the first few chapters of each textbook.

Last night, I was giving my one year old a bath. She was enjoying the water as usual and likes to show off these days by putting her mouth up to the water and blowing bubbles. I took the cup we use to pour water over her and started pouring a thin stream of water in front of her. Of course, she doesn't know about the four states of matter (although they only taught 3 when I learned them) and what they mean to our world. She just knows she can sit in the tub when it's full of water and she can pick up her rubber ducky to chew on his beak. So as this thin stream of water is hanging in front of her like a thick, glistening strand of silver thread, she does what any of curious baby would do.

She tries to grab it.

But of course, you can't grab a liquid as it's being poured. So she holds her hand in it for a while, almost as if she's trying to decide for herself if it's really there. After a few moments of alternating between "grabbing" at it and letting it splatter against her hand, she looks at me with a question on her face. I can only smile and tell her it's water.

It doesn't make much sense to a one-year old though, does it?

I love holiday weekends. I especially love holiday weekends with family. There's nothing like good conversation, good times, and good weather.

Did I say nothing? Because I meant "nothing...except for good food". I think our founding fathers forgot Article VIII of the Constitution, "Holiday Feasts". In fact, I'd be willing to bet that it goes even farther back than that. I think that when Moses came down Mount Sinai, he had a 3rd tablet with the 11th Commandment, "Thou shalt eat everything Mom cooks on all U.S. Federal Holidays". Moses, being the good man he was, took this to heart and found himself starved and tired half way down Mount Sinai on Labor Day. Wouldn't you know it? The First and Original Grill-master, AKA God, had anticipated this. The 3rd tablet was really a succulent, smoked piece of brisket.

I think the rest is ancient history.

The other day, I was playing a great game of Malarky with some members of my family. If you've never played Malarky, it's like Balderdash except instead of making up definitions of little known words, you make up explanations to life's imponderable questions. An example question would be, "What's the cottage in cottage cheese?"

Anyway, my Mom is having a hard time with certain aspects of the game. Since only one person will receive the correct answer to the question to be presented to the group, the whole idea of the game is to bluff as convincingly as you can. Players vote on what they think is the correct answer with points being awarded for getting votes for your answer as well as for voting correctly. Thus, the best way to get lots of points is to present the most convincing answer (correct or incorrect) so as to get the most votes/points.

In case you missed it: confidence is key.

After a round of the game while we're deciding how to vote, I was holding on to the chip to vote for my Mom's answer. I looked at my Mom and noticed that she was having trouble deciding on who to vote for. As if my thoughts had a psychic effect on her, she verbalized her difficulty in deciding who to vote for to the rest of us. Seizing the opportunity to get a few laughs as I changed my vote, I dumped her chip on the table and promptly informed everyone that I was thankful she confided her uncertainty to everyone else as I was going to (incorrectly) vote for her up to that point. We all had a few good laughs at this and my adjusted vote ended up garnering me a point for a correct vote.

Little did I know that the joke was on me. After scoring was done for the round, my wife promptly informed me that my vocal decision to change my vote from my Mom to someone else had a side effect. As I was going to vote for someone else's answer, it became obvious to her that I did not present the correct answer either. She then changed her vote to someone other than me - effectively negating the point I earned in changing my answer. Had I quietly changed my vote instead, I would have ended up with an additional point.

While it was all in good fun in this case, there's a moral to the story. While a situation may seem funny to you, pointing it out to others can make you the butt of the joke instead.

Wow....two weeks since my last post. What can I say other than I have been very busy. I'm winding down on one project that has consumed my life this month and hope to finish up another important project soon as well. I should have more time to post the thoughts and miscellaneous items that have been queuing up in my head since that last post.

Anyway, a few things remain at the fore front of my mind after the early morning I had and I thought posting them here might help me focus on my code a bit better.

I was awakened at 2:45am this morning to my cell phone vibrating. That can only mean one thing - our DSL at my office was taking some time off for a nap and I was going to have angry customers in the morning. I called SBC to find out what was going on to learn that there was planned maintenance on our network scheduled for 3:00-6:00am and they are, of course, very sorry for the inconvenience. The funny thing is that I found out earlier this morning that a co-worker knew about this scheduled maintenance in advance. How? His SBC dialer told him. Nice to know that residential customers are informed of SBC planned maintenance, but the business customers (who pay 5x more) don't get a single heads up notice. There isn't even a web site I'm aware of where I can find this information, unlike for my RoadRunner cable connection at home. The woman I spoke to on the phone actually said I had to "roll with it". Right. I'm sure my customers would love me to quote her on that one.

Everything was fine in the land of DSL by 3:30am and I played two quick rounds of "Dead Man Walking" in Max Payne 2 to bleed off some stress before attempting to sleep again. As my luck shortly informed me, it was not to be so. My 15-month old daughter decided now was a good time to wake up and demand attention. Letting her cry in her crib for a while did nothing to abate the pleas for help, so I obliged and brought her in to bed with me.

Of course, she wanted to cuddle with her Mommy, who is 8 months pregnant and can't sleep on her aching back WITHOUT a 20 lbs. wiggle worm burrowing in to her. She eventually warmed up to the idea of cuddling with me. As I'm laying there in bed with her, her foot kept rocking back and forth into my leg which did nothing to encourage a visit from Mr. Sandman. I was getting slightly annoyed and was about to shift her in to a position where she wouldn't be playing hacky sack with my knee when I realized something.

My foot was doing the exact same thing.

My wife will be the first person on the planet to tell you that I am a fidgeter. I'm NEVER holding completely still for long. My hands are tracing lines on the wall, poking at the bars of our headboard, or petting our cat while we're in bed. Before I doze off to sleep and when I wake up, I'm always ticking my foot back and forth at the ankle like some kind of human grandfather clock. And now my daughter's curled up in to bed with me doing the same thing.

I wrote a while ago about how the introduction of something new to my daughter was an incredible and amazing experience no matter how simple of an explanation it has in the adult world. It's funny because now I realize that it shouldn't have been so shocking to me as I was just as awestruck at 4am this morning as she was in the bath tub that night watching as I poured water out of a cup in front of her. I shouldn't be so surprised that my daughter has traits from me. Common sense says that it will be true and if I was that lacking in common sense, I'd have the little bit of genetics I learned in biology to provide some backup for the left hand side of my brain.

People are always saying that my daughter has my wife's eyes and cheeks. She's got my temper and my wife's stubborness (lucky her). I've heard them all a thousand times. But it runs deeper than the things that any patient observer could relate to me after spending an hour with my family. It's moments like these in the early hours of the morning that really make me appreciate what it's like to be a father. It's almost enough to make me forget that I spent the next two hours sleeping on the couch with my daughter so my wife could get some sleep.

Almost. ;-)

Are we there yet, indeed.