What a fant-axe-tic story

Upon further review, that last post was a bit of a downer.

So how about this for a little pick-me-up:

Not too terribly far from here a guy got arrested for carrying a battle axe.

Which I imagine wouldn't be all that weird if there were some sort of medieval fair going on.

But this guy was carrying it through a stranger's backyard. At 3:20 a.m. Dressed in a black jumpsuit and hood.

Where do you even get a battle axe? And how does that become your go-to weapon?

I'd probably carry something a little less conspicuous. Like a mace. Or a big rolling catapult.

Alrighty. Enough foolishness. Class is about to start so I'm going to run.

Take two of these and call me in the morning

Please excuse me while I wallow in self-pity for a moment. I'll get back to our regularly-scheduled nonsense soon.

My body has this cool thing it does a couple times a week. It produces this pain in my head that won't let up unless I throw a handful or two of Advil at it.

If I'm really lucky, the pain is almost incapacitating. All I can do is get in bed and try to sleep it off. This happens every few months.

I know. It's awesome.

Last night was one such night.

Yesterday's headache came on while I sat in a meeting that was scheduled to last from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. When the meeting let out at 5:30, I could barely see straight. And I was an hour's drive from home.

I got home as Wife was putting dinner on the table. The kids were in their seats, digging into spaghetti and meatballs (a household favorite), and both greeted me with big smiles and enthusiasm.

I did my very best to reciprocate, but I just couldn't muster the energy to be the daddy they're used to. I made it through my plate of spaghetti and then threw in the towel and headed to bed.

Wife woke me up about 9 p.m., worried that I wouldn't be able to sleep later if I went much longer.

Luckily the headache was gone, and we were able to salvage some semblance of an evening together. But the kids had long since gone to bed.

There's still plenty I have to learn about fathering, but one thing I do know is that 15 minutes a day with the kids won't cut it.

Today I'll get by the house for lunch and will spend 45 minutes or so with them. Then it's off to class tonight. Another missed dinner. Another missed bedtime.

I'm starting to think I'm stretched a little too thin, since I have much to do and none of it is getting done particularly well. Never mind the three headaches a week.

I'm planning to tell you next week about the concept of a time bank account, so let me turn this post into something positive by using it to tee up that idea:

You can bounce a time check. You can keep yourself afloat on borrowed time. You can end up bankrupt if you don't manage your time.

More about that next week.

Okay. The pity party is over. Life is good. I am richly blessed. You'll have a healthy dose of my usual fluff and nonsense coming at you over the next few days!

That's a wii-ly big screen

When I stopped by the house for lunch today, I noticed my neighbor's car in her driveway.

I thought that was a little unusual, since she's a partner in a big law firm in town and pulls long hours and seldom comes home during the day.

When I got home from work tonight, her car was parked on the street, along with her husband's, and there were a dozen or so others on the street as well.

I looked down their driveway to see a big, inflatable movie screen going up.

"That's nice," I thought. "It must be their little girl's birthday party."

That's why she was home during the day today. And that's why all the cars.

After we got the kids in bed, Wife and I went outside to throw the frisbee for a few minutes.

I noticed that more cars were parked on the street, but I didn't hear any kids frolicking.

And we all know how kids love to frolic.

Another neighbor came down the sidewalk with his little girl and stopped to peek at the big movie screen. He walked down to where we were and told us what was going on.

There were no kids. There was no birthday party.

Just a big group of adults.

Playing Wii on a screen 20 feet tall.

Mountain Weekend, Part One

I mentioned previously that each Memorial Day, we get together with friends from college.

This tradition dates back to January of our senior year (1998), when a handful of us headed to the mountains for a ski trip. In the nine years we've been out of school, we've reunited a total of eight times. Or 8.5 times if you count the time the guys got together for a golf weekend.

Back in college we dubbed the trip Mountain Weekend. The name is basic and has stuck throughout the years, mainly because each year we wind up staying someplace in the mountains. Part of me thinks that if we decided to do Memorial Day at the beach next year, we'd still call it Mountain Weekend.

But I digress.

Anyhow, Friday kicked off Mountain Weekend 2007.

By 11 a.m. Friday, after a few hours of wrangling Son and Daughter and their toys, we dropped the kids off with my dad, Papa Don. Since my mom previously committed to work at the church on Friday, Papa Don closed his office to keep the kids by himself all day.

Closed his office. To keep the kids. By himself. All day.

My kids have awesome grandparents. My mom and dad and Wife's mom are always doing this kind of stuff. We're blessed, blessed, blessed.

After we unloaded the kids, we started on the hour drive to hour destination, stopping in a little town along the way at a great lunch spot.

We got up to the house around 2 p.m. and walked around opening up windows, pulling out the deck furniture and checking all the bedrooms. We discovered we were missing a few things, so we made a run down to the grocery store for ice, lemons and fresh flowers.

Wife got all Martha Stewart and cut the fresh flowers and made a little vase for every bedroom and bathroom.

Eventually we started fielding phone calls from our friends on the road. Some were getting close and others were stuck in traffic. But by 6 p.m. the first of our guests arrived.

My college roommate TR and his girlfriend CL were the first to arrive. MB and his wife CB were only a few minutes behind. RD and her husband RD rolled in with their 6 month-old daughter around 7:30.

By eight o'clock we headed out for our dinner reservation. The meal was good but the restaurant was off its game.

The private, intimate room we had been promised at the restaurant turned out to be noisy and cramped. But the company made up for it and we wound up having a good time. Another couple, SP and her husband PP, met us at the restaurant.

When we got back to the house, everyone was pretty well worn out, so we hit the sofas and started Anchorman. Within about 30 minutes, everyone was asleep or too tired to watch anymore, so we called it a night.

Coming up on Mountain Weekend, Part Two: quiche, golf, shopping, holy guacamole, and more golf. You won't want to miss it.

We're back

You can exhale now.

We're back from our mini-vacation.

And, contrary to the impression I may have made with my previous post, there were no illicit drugs involved (unless you count the homemade guacamole our friend R made one night - it was addictive and intoxicating).

So the government blog-reading agent assigned to this blog, I apologize for getting you all excited about nothing.

I'll post some recaps when I have a little more time. I hope all of you had a nice holiday.

Happy Memorial Day

The kids are off to a weekend with the grandparents:


So we can spend a weekend with:


Okay, not those Friends per se. Our friends from college. Five couples in all.

Each Memorial Day, we try to get away to a place in the mountains:



So the guys can play a little golf:


And the girls can do a little shopping:


Okay, it looks more like this:



Saturday night we'll make dinner on one of these:


Tonight we're going out for dinner at a great Italian place near the house:


We usually have one or two of these:


And if that doesn't do the trick, there's always this:



I'll tell you all about it when we get home.

HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY WEEKEND!

I may be the next (Secret) Assistant to the Regional Manager

My brother sent this to me Tuesday night. I still chuckle every time I look at it.

Thanks, Hermano!

At least we're not them

In a roundabout way, it looks like I have been an innocent bystander to some rough marital discord.

I've been looking at the search keywords which have brought visitors here and there are some alarming patterns.

Here's a handful of the results I'm getting:

• wife vs babysitter
  
• "every conversation is a battle" wife


• can i mow the grass while im pregnant


• is cutting the lawn okay when pregnant

And, naturally:

• fecal decorations

The thing is, I can totally see how this could be. There must be a very troubled couple out there turning to Google, and in turn, my blog for help. Here's how I think it went down:

Husband makes a comment to his Wife like, "Why can't you be more like Suzy, the babysitter?"

Wife goes off. Says something back like, "If Suzy's so great, maybe you should just run away with her. At least that way she won't be getting paid to watch the kids!"

Husband shouts back, "Maybe I will! But not before weighing the pros and cons using anecdotes retrieved using a quick Google search!!!"

So he types in wife vs babysitter, does his research, and the next day goes back to talk to his Wife.

"You're right," the Husband tells his Wife. "I was out of line. I've just been under a lot of stress."

"I understand," says his Wife. "How can I help?"

"Maybe you can start cutting the grass for me," he says.

And that comment launches a meltdown of apocalyptic proportion. I'll spare you what I imagine this man's Wife would say, but the gist is that the Wife is eight months pregnant and shouldn't be cutting grass.

Once again, the Husband trots back to his trusty computer, types in every conversation is a battle, wife and gets his research on.

Wife, meanwhile, decides to do a little studying of her own and searches for can i mow the grass while im pregnant, and gets information verifying that no, she should not be mowing while pregnant.

She takes what she believes to be solid data stating her case to Husband. He says the American Academy of Obstetrics is the world's biggest group of quacks.

His Wife is royally po'd by his reply. She storms off, presumably to her own computer for another Google search.

He goes back to the computer, types in is cutting the lawn okay when pregnant, and finds archives from the East German Olympic Committee listing all sorts of activities pregnant women can do, such as:

• pole vaulting
• luge
• hammer throw
• landscaping

He files the information away in his mind for later use. He goes to his closet to get his pajamas.

When he opens the door, he finds the product of his Wife's search: fecal decorations.

To be fair, I'm not entirely sure this is how it all played out. But as I run all the scenarios in my mind, this one makes the most sense.

Threads for your 50 lb. two year old

My good friend Mark sent this picture to me with the following message:

I saw this sign and thought, "do they have anything for small babies?"

Which I thought was pretty funny.

When Mark and I tried out for the golf team in high school (we didn't make it), we'd drive through a neighborhood each day that had signs that read:

SLOW
CHILDREN
PLAYING

We thought that was pretty funny, too.

Our Daughter, the gourmet

Daughter has always been good at entertaining herself.

She has given up on her afternoon nap, so she typically spends an hour or two on her bed looking at books or playing in her room alone.

This also comes in handy in the morning, because rather than escaping her room and coming to peck me and the Wife on the head, she'll grab a book or some toys and party with herself.

During this alone time, she likes to cook. In fact, when I went to get her up from rest time one afternoon, she had set her little table in her room with a placemat, plastic silverware, a plate and cup.

So I guess it's about more than just cooking. It's the entire dining experience.

But getting back to the story, we never know what Daughter is going to have prepared for us when we get her up.

She's been on a beverage kick for a while. Most days she's made imaginary lemonade, hot chocolate or tea.

For a while she was cooking breakfast pretty consistently.

But yesterday she stumbled upon a recipe that just might turn the culinary world on its ear.

I'm actually a little reluctant to tell you because I think this could be a money maker for us. I can see TGI Friday's or Chili's or Flinger's - really any of the chain places with ridiculous desserts like Extreme Double Fudge Peanut Butter Brownie or Radical Caramel Apple Cinnamon Pie on the menu - jumping all over this.

Okay, you talked me into it. I'll tell.

When I went up to get Daughter yesterday morning, she had made me a big bowl of:

Chocolate Chip Soup.

How about that? A chocolate chip product that you don't even have to put forth the effort to chew?

This has "American Success Story" written all over it.

Thank you, Daughter, for this creation. When we make our chocolatey millions, I'll buy you a jet ski.

Fall TV, Part II

A few more networks have rolled out their fall lineups in the past few days.

Here are some of the highlights:

Fox will be airing a show called Back To You, starring Kelsey Grammer as a newscaster trying to rebuild his career.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that his character is going to be a stuffy, uptight guy that talks with a partial British accent. Just a guess. We'll have to tune in to find out.

CBS is using its new show Viva Laughlin to revive the prime-time musical genre, which we all know died with Cop Rock a few years ago. But this is a musical mystery, not a musical cop show, so I'm sure it will work this time.

CBS will also be introducing a show called Moonlight, which features a vampire investigator who "uses his vampire senses to solve crimes."

I wish I were making this up.

One bright spot for me is news that the CW network is going to have a show from the creators of The O.C. which focuses on "privileged prep school students in Manhattan."

As I've written before, no one does brooding teen drama like the CW. I like this show already.

Noticeably absent from this year's lineup were new shows featuring limping doctors like those on CSI, ER and House.

Limping doctors appear to be more prevalent on prime-time TV than in the general population, which leads me to believe that pretending to be a TV doctor must be very hard on the legs.

But now they seem to have cured that phenomenon because, like I said, no new shows with limping docs.

So there you have it. Although the fall offerings look a little rough at this point, I don't underestimate my own ability to get sucked into watching pure garbage.

For that reason, I'm reserving the right to post again this fall raving about the musical mystery show and that awesome vampire.

Daughter, don't forget your TPS reports

Daughter, all 3.5 years and 32 pounds of her, is seeking some independence these days.

We're constantly being told that she wants to do things "allbymyselfalone." And that's fine most of the time.

Dress yourself, kiddo. Wash your own face, sweet pea. Carry your own plate to the sink, little helper. I'm good with that.

Other times, it's not so great.

Like when she wants to use a public restroom by herself. Or walk across the street by herself. Or light her own cigarette.

Calm down. I'm kidding about lighting her own cigarette.

I do that for her. I'm not an idiot.

All of that is to say that there's a lot more down time for Dad at bedtime. I spend most of the time barking out orders and she gets her stuff done allbymyselfalone.

Tonight, once she was out of her dress and shoes, I told her to remove her underclothes and put them in the hamper.

"Great plan, Daddy."

I loved the reply, and especially the good attitude behind it.

But I'll admit, the wording of it made me feel more like I was talking to a business associate than my 3.5 year old daughter.

Fall TV, Part I

Just when I thought there was some hope for civilization, I'm smacked in the face by proof to the contrary.

The TV networks are trotting out their fall schedules. And it ain't looking good.

I had an inkling that things might get worse before they got better when they started running promos for this new Bingo Night show. The fact that this show is coming to air means that in some studio office in L.A., this conversation happened:

TV show producer: "I've got an idea for a show that not only captures the thrill-a-minute excitement of elderly people, but the high-stakes drama of bingo."

Network executive: "Brilliant! Where do I sign?"

I haven't checked to be sure, but if I had to guess, I'd day that Bingo Night will air on Friday nights. That's where they dump all the stuff that's too boring or odd to mingle with the other programming. Kinda like how the Atlanta airport staffs Concourse C.

See, the TV networks haven't figured out that there are actually people in the key demographics at home on Friday nights.

We're home on Friday nights because we're tired and our kids go to bed at decent hours. Not because we don't want to miss a new episode of Las Vegas.

Anyhow, I picked up on a few other clues in the fall schedules that tell me things are not right in this world.

NBC has renewed all the Law & Order shows. And ER.

ER debuted when I was a freshman in college. Back then, I had a Jansport backpack and two pairs of shoes to my name. Now I'm married, employed, have two children and a house. In other words, a considerable amount of time has passed. Yet ER lives on.

I also noticed that one of the networks has picked up a sitcom called Cavemen based on the cavemen from the GEICO commercials. That just seems like an awful lot of effort for something that you know is going to fail.

Despite the many strange shows to be hurled at us this fall, I was glad to see that The Office and 30 Rock are safe. I suppose there is some hope for mankind after all.

Who needs a pedicure...

...when you can have a kitchen appliance?

I am nothing if not ridiculously romantic.

Which is why I got Wife a coffee maker for Mother's Day. And a Tivo for her last birthday. And some windowbox planters last Mother's Day.

Is that swooning I hear out there?

So yes, I got Wife a coffee maker for her special day, along with some fancy coffees and two new mugs.

Giving an appliance as a gift for Mother's Day was a risk, I know. You have to be real careful about what the message behind the gift is when you give it.

For instance, as much as the little lady might want a KitchenAid mixer, the message behind that gift when you buy it for her is: "Here, honey, make some stuff for me to eat."

If she wants a KitchenAid mixer, encourage her to go pick one out for herself.

Anyhow, morning coffee is a nice part of our day. Most days, Wife is able to enjoy hers in bed while I get dressed for work. We both get a lot of enjoyment out of that time together and the coffee itself.

While we've never had what you'd call a ghetto coffee maker, we've never had a really nice one. I decided Wife should enjoy a well-brewed cup of coffee each morning before she starts her day with the kids.

Now a lot of folks would have you believe that the quality of a coffee maker is directly related to the number of buttons, toggle switches, timers and milk-steamers attached thereto.

In my opinion, that's a bunch of hooey.

I think less is more when it comes to your coffee maker. I don't need my coffee maker to talk to me or tell me what day it is or to make the silly noise that steaming milk makes.

I need my coffee maker to make a kickass pot of coffee.

That's why I bought a Bunn. No frills. Just proven coffee-making ability.

Bunns are what most restaurants use. It's also what we use here at the office.

They even make a coffee machine that ties directly into your plumbing, so that when you want a pot of coffee, you just rig up the coffee grounds and push a button and in 3 minutes you have coffee. No fiddling with the water.

But I can't swing that one yet. Maybe when I'm king I'll have someone put that in the palace.

For now, we're beginning a long love affair with the new machine. We had some decaf last night and our morning coffee today. And it was good.

As I look back, these past few gifts haven't been all bad. The Wife now has windowbox planters full of pretty things to look at, a Tivo to maximize the few moments she gets to put her feet up, and now the promise of a good cup of coffee to start each day.

Never more beautiful...

...than when she became a Mommy.

First-time Mommy:

And the second time:

Happy Mother's Day!

Expanding our horizons

Can anyone guess what the image above is?

Okay, I'll make it a little easier on you. Let's do multiple choice. Is it:

1. A picture I drew after daydreaming about how great it would be to see the Sesame Street gang on Hollywood Squares?
2. A preliminary sketch of a totally-original game I'm trying to invent called Mic-Mac-Moe
   
3. A potty chart, drawn by Daughter, to track her "performance" in using facilities beyond the four walls of our house?

If you guessed Number 3, give yourself a hand. You're right. More on that in a minute.

If you guessed Number 1, that's a very, very good guess. I daydream about a lot of cool stuff.

If you guessed Number 2, maybe you can help me put those hosers over at Tic-Tac-Toe out of business by buying my awesome, original game.

But getting back to Number 3, Wife is working with Daughter on expanding her potty horizons. She's been a consistent performer here at the MBI Estate for months, but restrooms at school, in restaurants, or in friends' homes haven't seen much action.

Wife suggested to Daughter that a chart might be helpful, so that after a certain number of successes, Daughter gets a prize.

After Wife suggested that, Daughter took it upon herself to draw the chart. I thought it turned out well, considering it was drawn with 3.5 year old hands. And, as you can see, she's on her way to her first prize.

I may get her to draw me a chart. There are a few key things I need to be working on, too.

Like getting Bert and Ernie booked on Hollywood Squares.

Bloggin' to the Idols: Barry'd alive

When they announced last week that tonight was Barry Gibb night, my thought was: that's a very, very poor choice.

And boy was I right.

In summary, everyone gets a free pass tonight because they had to try to sing this silliness.

The only thing that could have been a more bizarre choice of theme would have been Bjork Night.

Cross your fingers and hope for better stuff next week.

Tuesday round-up

Not too much to report from the MBI Estate. Here are a few things going on:

My next course in my MBA program is a marketing class. For the past few nights I've had my face in a marketing textbook.

I tell you this just as a fair warning that if you feel a weird urge to buy something from me during the next eight weeks, you'll know why. Granted, I don't sell anything here (other than endearing family stories and a rockin' good time) but I think that's beside the point.

While I've done a pretty poor job of making the rounds to the blogs I like to read, I have been keeping up with folks via my Google Reader. Here are a few good posts from the last couple days:

Clare's Dad needs help. You might have the answer.

Big Mama has a great story about a recent trip to the car lot. If I go to hell (and by "if" I mean "when") I'm going to be forced to buy cars all day. That's why I buy cars this way.

Runaway Mommy has a great post on how to take care of your child's teacher. Teacher Appreciation season has rolled around, so the advice is quite timely.

So there you have it. Blog to you later.

Daddy vs. the buffet line

You never know where the other person is when you call them on their cell phone.

Wife and I hired a babysitter to keep the kids while we went to a banquet at the local university. It was a big dinner the school does every year on the night before graduation. The alumni association hands out a number of awards. This year, Wife's mom was one of the recipients.

Our table was at the front left corner of the room. Located conveniently between the buffet and the stage. Once the 500 people in attendance were seated, they began to call tables to the buffet line.

The strategy was to call tables individually so there wouldn't be a big bum rush for the food, but they called the tables in such rapid-fire succession that the entire room was in a huge line for food.

Like I said, we were seated close to the buffet and were the first table called. Wife's mom beat me to the line, but I gave the Wife a stiff-arm and got the second spot.

I'm kidding. I didn't push the Wife to gain advantage. I was just faster.

My chivalry is something to behold isn't it?

Anyhow, just as I anointed my leafy green salad with a second ladle of ranch dressing, my phone began to ring in my pocket.

Getting back to my earlier statement, you have no idea where the other person is when you call their cell phone. That's why our babysitter couldn't have known that I was the second person in a buffet line 500 people deep.

Daughter is in this weird phase right now where she not only wants to do everything by herself, but wants Wife and I to be at the other end of the house while she does it. She loses her gourd if we're within about 50 feet of her while she puts on her pajamas or brushes her teeth.

So at the very moment that I reached for my dinner plate to begin piling up squash casserole and pork roast, the babysitter apparently set foot into Daughter's invisible, nebulous no-fly zone, thereby triggering a huge meltdown.

Our poor babysitter. Once she got me on the phone, she was stuck between a stammering, distracted father and a wailing, tooth-gnashing preschooler. That's a tough spot.

Luckily for me, Wife quickly took notice of what was happening. She grabbed my dinner plate and carried it to the table while I bolted from the room to handle the crisis.

I talked through the problem with the sitter and assured her that she had done nothing wrong - and that she was welcome to call me again if things didn't improve.

Fortunately, the phone didn't ring again. And thanks to the Wife's earlier intervention, I didn't have to take a spot at the back of the buffet line.

How's that for teamwork?

Wanted: Computer help

During the very first course in this MBA program I'm taking, one of the assigned texts was Steven Covey's The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

I read it, enjoyed it, and retained some of it.

One of the habits I remember is: Begin With The End In Mind. That's the idea that things make a lot more sense if you know what you're trying to accomplish.

Some of the other habits, I think, were:

• Be proactive
• Never wear white after Labor Day
• If you see someone driving at night with their headlights off, never flash your lights because it might be a gang initiation and you might get shot

Like I said, I can't remember all of them.

All of that is a roundabout way of asking you for some help.

Our home computer, a Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop we got in December 2004, is very sick. You can just tell when you look at it.

You know how when a golden retriever gets old his face gets all white? And his hips wear out, so it takes about five minutes for him to either stand up or sit down?

That's where we are with this laptop. The end is near, but I just don't know when that last day together will be.

So here's the question:

Beginning with the end in mind, that this thing is going to die a very terrible death soon, what can I be doing now to protect what's on this computer? How can I preserve all the family photos and the fortune in iTunes music I've accumulated?

I need help!

Thai-ing up loose ends

Since the entire blogosphere* has been begging** me for an update on our date night Thursday, I can't keep you in suspense any longer.

* By "entire blogosphere" I mean: three of you
** By "begging" I mean: have casually asked

So without further delay: We had a very nice time. Thank you for asking.

True to form for our previous attempts, there were some roadblocks we had to overcome. About an hour before we were supposed to leave, the skies opened up with an It's The End of The World As We Know It thunderstorm.

Heavy, heavy rain. Lightning. Thunder. Nasty stuff.

But I made it home and Mimi and Papa Don were here, ready to tend to our little monkeys.

So we hit the road for the 25-minute drive to the next city up the road where the little Thai place is. The drive gave us a chance to decompress a little before we got into the heart of our time out.

For dinner, we opted to order a few appetizers and soup. We chose wisely, because we were stuffed when all was said and done.

In summary: The weather was okay. The food was great. The company was wonderful.

Golden oldies from the Inbox

You find some interesting stuff in your old emails.

Consider this little gem. This is a job offer I received (and accepted) a few months before Wife and I got married.

I can't seem to reach you on the telephone. Your
answering machine doesn't work right.

Anyway, I'm offering you the job at $350 a week.
You would start next Wednesday.

Please call me to confirm.

They really rolled the red carpet out for me, didn't they? A jab at my answering machine and $350 a week? Where do I sign?

If I had been a more assertive person at the time, I would have told them that I could probably afford a better answering machine if they would pay me more than $350 a week. But coming out of a job where I was earning about $300 a week, I thought $350 would take care of every champagne wish and caviar dream.

Plus, I really needed a job.

The job turned out to be the worst, most dysfunctional working experience I have ever had. The email offer should have been a clue. I spent about two years there before landing more of a career-type position. That move, in turn, set up a number of experiences which developed into where I am today.

I found a few other great old emails. I'll trot out a few more in the near future.

We're off to Thai one on

No time for blogging tonight, folks. Daddy's got a date!

I am trying, for the third time now, to take the Wife out for Thai food.

We tried this the first time on St. Patrick's Day, only to discover the Thai restaurant was closed for a private party.

Thai restaurant. Irish holiday. Closed.

We tried this for a second time about three weeks ago. That time, our children threw a wrench in the works by catching rickets or scurvy or some other horrible malady which kept us home.

Maybe the third time will be the charm.

My kids are what? Who is this?

I got the following phone call at lunch today:

"Your children are buck n@ked and running through my mother's yard."

Luckily it was the Wife on the other end of the line and not some random neighbor.

Son went to Nana's this morning while the Wife took Daughter to her ballet class. It works better that way since Son (19 mos.) simply can not be managed while the ballet class is going on.

On a few occasions, child care has been unavailable, so Son has had to tag along to the ballet studio. While Daughter learned pirouettes and plies, Son would bang stuff together, fall off of stuff and make a big commotion.

Which makes Daddy proud. I don't need anyone mistaking him for a ballet dancer. We've already scarred him enough with this little incident.

But getting back to the story, Nana had Son out in the yard with her while she watered plants and did some landscaping. They had dragged a hose and sprinkler out to water some new plantings and Son apparently wasted no time before taking a run through it.

If you've ever been around a toddler, you know how quickly things can unfold in this sort of situation, so within roughly .0009 seconds, Son was completely soaked and there was no choice other than to make it an all-out waterfest. Off with his little seersucker jon-jon. Off with the Pampers.

Just a soaking wet little cherub running through his Nana's garden.

It wasn't long before our little ballerina arrived on the scene, and it took no time for her to shed the leotard and hit the sprinkler herself.

Wife, a little overwhelmed by the cuteness, grabbed her cell phone and called me.

"You have got to come see this," she said. "Your children are buck n@ked and running through my mother's yard."

I had just finished putting a hurtin' on a couple hot dogs at our house, so I rode up to Nana's on my way back to the office.

Wife was right - the sweetness of it was almost unbearable. It was childhood at its very best.

I'm glad I got to see it.

I drove back to the office still grinning from the scene. And praying that Nana had been liberal with the sunscreen.

Bloggin' to the Idols, Part II

Here's my second installment (read the first installment here) of live American Idol commentary. Except this week it's not-so-live, thanks to the fine folks at Dell, who have made me a special computer that just shuts off without warning. Which is an awesome feature.

But on with the show.

You could almost hear 99.9% of the American Idol viewing audience say "Bon who?" when they announced tonight's theme.

Jon Bon Jovi - What's up with the eyebrows, Mrs. Jovi?

Phil Stacy - He sang the song from Young Guns. I'm not much of a Phil fan, but he's been figuring our what works for him over the past few weeks. This was pretty good.

Jordin Sparks - That's a pretty awesome head of Slash hair. I'm glad she took a stab at rockin' out instead of picking a tried-and-true slow, cheesy ballad. Slow, cheesy ballads do very well on Idol.

She did well, but - borrowing the lingo of Randy Jackson - it wasn't good for me, dog.

Lakisha Jones - She set the bar pretty high for herself by promising a little sump'n sump'n during her little chat with Ryan Secrest. That's a big promise. But did she deliver?

First, a word about the power of Sassy & Soulful (trademark pending) singing. I really think that you could get on stage and sing "Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree" and do fine with the voters as long as you absolutely belt it out and throw in a little attitude. Because you're Sassy & Soulful.

I thought Lakisha hid behind Sassy & Soulful and didn't really do as well as she could.

Blake Lewis - Wife is wearing a sourish grimace as we watch because it appears her beloved Blake, for whom she would trade me in a New York minute, has dyed his hair. Apparently the brown hair is ruining her crush.

Just a point of clarification: I have brown hair.

I thought Blake's performance was the most creative American Idol has seen, which is great. I liked it.

Chris Richardson - Mr. Jovi didn't seem to be offering a ringing endorsement for Chris. Since I am not a Chris fan, I was actually expecting him to stink it up out there. But Chris held his own and put on a good show.

Melinda Doolittle - She always owns the stage and owns whatever song she's singing so there's not much I can offer about Melinda. I guess I was a little disappointed to learn that Bon Jovi, the band who brought us classic phrases like "Your love is like bad medicine. Bad medicine is what I need" is now offering up a little ditty called "Have a Nice Day."

They're kicking off two tomorrow night. It'll be Chris Richardson and Lakisha Jones.