21 February 2010
We went out to dinner with my mom tonight. She said her husband complained she was spending too much money on her visit to Minnesota, so we paid for her, though she insisted on covering the tip.
We ate at the Olive Garden. I have an ambivalent attitude towards that place. I don’t have anything against it, really, but I don’t really have anything for it, either. I’m not a fan of Italian cooking. Spaghetti, throughout my whole life, has been the de facto dinner-to-make when we don’t feel like making anything interesting. Essentially, spaghetti is to dinner as a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is to lunch. And ravioli? Nothing special. Oh – and I pretty much detest lasagna. It’s one of the few food items that I will not touch, even if we’re invited over to someone’s house explicitly to eat it.
And, really, if we are going to go to an Italian chain restaurant, Tucci Bennuch, Macaroni Grill, and Buca all outrank Olive Garden in my mind.
So why did we go? What can I say? My mom loves the place, and the unlimited salad and breadsticks mean my son can eat all he wants at no extra charge.
22 February 2010
This morning, I found out one of my articles got accepted in The Secular Nation, which is the magazine for the Atheist Alliance.
That was pretty much the high-point of my day. I really had a tough time bringing myself to care about anything today. I did what I had to do at work, but I kept staring at the clock waiting for it to be over. During lunch, I made a cursory attempt to revise the paper that’s due in class this Wednesday, but I didn’t make much headway. As I was leaving work, I discovered my Pop-eye figurine – which had been sitting on my desk at work for over five years – was gone. Unless a co-worker hid it as a lame practical joke, or I somehow misplaced it, I’m gonna guess it was stolen.
Tonight, after Owen went to bed, I still didn’t feel like doing anything. I didn’t feel like surfing the web, updating this site, working on my schoolwork, reading a book, watching a movie, or even making myself a snack. So I went to bed.
So…bottom line: apart from some cool news @ 9:10 this morning, this was a completely bland day.
23 February 2010
I picked up Owen from my sister-in-law’s home this afternoon. Another obnoxious drive through Minnecrapolis (I’ll spare the details this time). I asked my sister if I could borrow her big book of baby names. Like my wife, she’s also pregnant, so I didn’t want to wrest the book from her unless she didn’t need it. She said she already had names picked out, so she didn’t need the book.
Technically, though, I don’t think I borrowed it so much as I asked for it back. Once she handed it to me, and I flipped through it, I realized it was the same exact book as Jennifer and I had purchased years ago (long before Owen). Jennifer must’ve given it to her sister to look through during her prior pregnancy.
Anyway, the book is called A World of Baby Names. I love this book! It divides names by ethnicity – so there’s a chapter of Czech names, a chapter of Native American Names, a chapter of names from mythology, and so on – 31 chapters in all. The cool thing about it is that I immediately know which chapters to skip (I’m not giving my kid a Biblical name). With other chapters, I read a few names and see if I like the ‘style’ of that nationality’s names, and then I continue (or discontinue) reading as warranted.
Thus far, I’ve only reached chapter seven (“English Names”), and I’ve discovered that I basically just hate nearly every name on the planet.
Funny fact: the author dedicates the book to her children: John, Brian, Joseph, and Anne. Do I really want to find a name from a woman who chose those names? Thankfully, almost apologetically, she quickly adds that her children were named before the book was written.