Catching Up…

Tuesday, 28 June 2011

So, I wanted to start off this post by saying “Worst month ever,” but then I decided that would be a gross exaggeration. Instead, I’ll just say this has been a terrible month – the worst one in the past year, that’s for sure.
Let’s see…where did we leave off?
Ah, yes: Since my birthday (June 11th), during which time we had a sick baby at home, Jennifer and I both got sick. In fact, I can’t ever remember being as sick as I was on the 17th. I felt it coming on in the afternoon of the 16th – while I was still at work. I barely made it home. My wife was sick. I tried helping with the kids, but I did a lousy job. Two hours later, I had to leave for class, where I pretty much just sat and had the cold shivers for 2 hours.
Stayed home from work on the 17th.
Was still really sick on the 18th. We were both too sick to take Owen and Isla to a birthday party we were invited to. Owen also had to decline an invitation to spend the day at a classmate’s home. Tried laying in bed again, but healthy kids have zero compassion for sick adults, so when my wife said she was feeling sicker, I got out of bed and tried helping with the kids.
Attended the Pride Parade in Minneapolis on the 26th. About halfway through, I got a migraine (my first one in, like, two years) and we had to leave early. Thought I was going to throw up on the lightrail.
With my headache barely kept at bay, I managed to get to work on the 27th, but a persistent pain in my skull rendered me useless.
Then there’s the house-hunting ordeal. As I’ve stated before – I’m not talking about. It’s been terrible. Contact my wife if you want info.
Through all of this, I’ve been enrolled in an accelerated summer class at Hamline. I’m not entirely certain if it’s been the accelerated pace or the content itself, but this has been the toughest class yet at Hamline, and undoubtedly one of the three or four toughest college classes I’ve ever had. Did I mention that, while sick, I had to read the 300+ page Pride and Prejudice? That godawful pile of shit might be the worst novel I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. Thinking about it makes me nauseous.
Anyway, I’m back here now, and I’ll try to maintain this blog again.

Wednesday, 29 June 2011

Okay, so now I’m realizing that this month hasn’t been an incessant barrage of crappy experiences. In an effort to reclaim something positive from June, I will now list a few good things:

-Owen graduated from Kindergarten. In between his sickness and his parents’ sickness, Owen successfully attended the last two days of class. Jennifer and I showed up a half hour before class was done on the last day, and we joined in the celebration. The teacher played a QuickTime movie of the year, then passed out cards for the kids. We had snacks and juice and got to look at Owen’s bigger projects for the year. We took a picture of him standing by his ‘desk’ and then took him out to eat, where we gave him a small gift.

-Owen lost his first baby tooth. About a week after Kindergarten was done, Owen lost the tooth. It had been loose for over two weeks, and he refused to help it along. It just kind of fell out one morning. He put it in a special box under his pillow and, in the middle of the night, I swapped it for some gifts and a gold coin (no, we do NOT do the tooth fairy).

-Here’s my latest book review: REASONABLE ATHEISM. One of the author’s wrote to me thanking me for my even-handed analysis of the book.

-One Father’s Day (June 19th), I was still sick, but at least well enough to function. My sick wife took Owen out to the store, and they returned with a present for me, accompanied by a homemade card from Owen. So, that was nice. Owen had also drawn me a picture two days earlier to help me feel better. It seemed to work.

-One of my quizzes was selected for the front page on Sporcle earlier this week. Here it is: LANDLOCKED AND ALONE. Pretty cool to know that 20,000+ people have played a quiz I created.

-An extremely condensed version of my book has been accepted for publication in an upcoming issue of FREE INQUIRY. I was given the option of submitted either an excerpt or a condensed version and, though I would have preferred an excerpt, I really couldn’t find a ~2,000 word chunk of the book that was capable of standing on its own, so I gave them a condensed version. An “extremely” is a perfect word; the version appearing in the magazine will be approximately 1% of the total length of the actual book. I just set up an algorithm in Word to select each 100th word, and then I mailed that to the staff at Free Inquiry. It doesn’t make any sense, of course, but they liked it.

-My daughter was kissed by Al Franken. Damn. Twenty years ago, while watching Stewart Smalley, I never would have thought that one day I would have a daughter and that that daughter would be kissed by Al Franken who, by that time, would be a senator. And why would I think something like that anyways? Yeah, so, I know it’s a cliche’, but I held Isla out from the crowd and Senator Franken planted one on her cheek. He’ll get my vote again in 2017. Unless Michele Bachmann is running against him.

-Finally…

My good friend Tim Galdunick is now a father! His wife gave birth to Charlotte Elizabeth on Tuesday morning. HERE IS THEIR BLOG POST ABOUT IT. I’m very happy for Tim and Madie, and I hope that they find parenting to be as life-changing (in a good way) as Jennifer and I have. I would love to post some sort of congratulatory comment on their site but, despite the fact that they say they’d love to hear from people, I don’t think they want to hear from me. Oh well. If you know Tim and Madie Galdunick – or even if you don’t – please go to their site and wish them well on their new adventure with Charlotte.