Hats

Gone Cookin'

2011-04-21T23:44:00.002-05:00

I haven't blogged here in ages. You can find me over at my Wordpress blog cooking all of the recipes in Damn Good Food - Mitch Omer's cookbook.

The Mike/Mitch Project.

...and Straight on 'till Morning

2007-08-07T22:31:00.001-05:00

I'm reading Peter and the Starcatchers which is the origin story of Peter Pan. It's very readable. Melanie had a sleepover with two friends last night and stayed up until 5am. That is the last time I answer yes when a kids asks me, "Can I have soda?" at midnight.

Now More New than Ever

2007-08-06T22:33:00.001-05:00

If I can remember that these entries don't have to be heart wrenching stories that chronicle my angst-ridden existence I'm more likely to keep it up. Today was a Monday. Got to work late. Said more than I should in meetings. Snapped at coworkers who had too much on their plate just like me. Got home tired and managed to be pleasant, but not fun with Max and Sarah. Sarah got back from Girl Scout Camp today and she had a blast. You never know what that girl will like. Melanie had her B-day party a week late over the weekend. She took her 9 best friends to the Park at MOA and they rode roller coasters for the day. She had fun and that is what matters. I told Kira that next year I think we'll just take her out to dinner. The real reason I decided to write tonight is that I picked up my iPod for the first time in ages and it just seemed like the thing to do after I finished the dishes. On a whim today I applied for a job at Traveler's. It seemed like a good fit. I thought it would be liberating, but I only felt guilt. I can't hope to make the same salary anywhere else, but I figured it would be good for the psyche just to know I was qualified for another job.

E= mc^2 * 100

2005-09-29T01:07:00.000-05:00

100 years ago Einstein came up with an equation that millions of people have memorized, but only a few truly understand. For a brief period of time I wanted to be one of those people. Until my junior year in college I was planning on being a Physics major. It took me about that long to realize that I wasn't creative enough to be a physicist. Instead I am a dormant mathematician. I could follow a lot of the concepts I learned in my physics classes, but I often found I couldn't make the leap to real world scenarios. Or even the frictionless, massless scenarios that physicists like to pretend is the real world. I can remember wanting to study things like quarks and photons. In highschool I found out that the Air Force was working on anti-gravity. I remember thinking that this was something I wanted to be a part of. Skip forward to junior year and I spent a month using classical mechanics to explain the descent and shape of a rain drop. It was very shortly afterwards that I changed my major to pure math. I use logic almost every day in my job, but alas I have forgotten most of my mathematics.

It's been 20 years I wonder if they got anywhere with the anti-gravity stuff.

Who's You're Daddy Blog (or It's Not About the Kids)

2005-09-26T20:34:00.000-05:00

I never intended for this to be a blog about my family and children. I reread a chunk of the older posts only to discover I have created a Daddy Blog. I don't suppose there is anything wrong with that, but I always pictured my random musings would be more profound and too esoteric to include the mundane happenings of a Midwestern family by using a lot of run on sentences. I read about 6 or 7 blogs regularly and I must admit that I enjoy The Mommy Blog. She is irreverent, but you can tell she loves her kids. In case you have stumbled upon this her is a run down of the family. I have three children - Susan(10), Becky(6), and John(4). They amaze me each day by teaching me something I didn't know the day before. I like to think I am a good father, but I have the patience equivalent of a Peruvian gnat. Patience is probably the number one skill to be a parent and I was absent the day it was taught in kindergarten. My wife, Dawn, must have infinite patience because she puts up with all three of the kids and me. I tend to enjoy time with my kids one-on-one. John and I went camping this summer and we had a ball. He is probably the most laid back of the three. How many four year olds do you know that are willing to just sit and watch a campfire. He made up for it by getting up to go swimming at 6am, but even then he got dressed by himself. Susan and I have recently started playing tennis together. She is just good enough that we can hit the ball back and forth. I told her she should take lessons, but she just wants to play with me. I hope I don't instill too many bad habits. Becky just wants to be loved. She is the middle child and has embraced all the stereotypes associated with being such.

From the Ashes

2005-09-13T08:32:00.000-05:00

I have once again been inspired to continue my musings. Let me explain what has been going on this summer...no time for that let me sum up. Susan broke her arm on the playground some time in June. She was quite the trooper. She had a sleepover scheduled that night with two of her friends. We all figured for morale that we should continue with the sleepover. So her friends went with her to the hospital and when they all got home they acted pretty much like normal tweenage girls. Of course one of them had a new bright orange cast and the other two kept talking about how broken her arm looked in the x-ray. Of course the broken arm put an end to Susan's running for the summer. She was told to rest for a few weeks so she could heal quickly, which she did. When the cast came off 6 weeks later we just never go back into the running. I lost the itch myself and haven't been in ages. I went a couple times over the summer, but I am definitely no longer marathon material. There were three camping trips. One with just John, once with the two girls and once with the whole family. There must have been more, but the rest all blurs together. This past weekend we took the training wheels off of Becky's bike. We took bike's on our last camping trip and she was the only one with training wheels so I think that was her impetus to finally ask. We went up and down the street several times with me holding on to the seat. Let me tell you she still needs work on the balance, but her speed is not a problem. She continually asked me if I was going to keep holding on and I told her yes each time. Then I let go. She went a glorious five yards before veering off into the neighbor's lawn, crashing to the ground and bursting into tears. Becky was really mad at me all the way back to our yard. I might have exaggerated a little when I told her how long she had been riding by herself, but when she looked at the sidewalk where she had ridden she stopped crying and got a smug look on her face. She was still done for the day, but it bodes well for next time.

On the work front we are going to relocating to a new office soon. I will finally get my own office again and we will have a real IT Server Room with temperature control and everything.

Put Your Whole Self In

2005-04-25T23:57:00.000-05:00

I am trying to figure out what sort of serendipity caused me to do the Hokey-Pokey two nights in a row last week. On Thursday I went swimming with John and the teacher had us all splash around to this classic. Then on Saturday I was at the Frog and Princess Dance with my daughters where we "shook it all about." We also limboed, bunny-hopped and did the Macarena. This is the third year I have attended this Dance with Susan and this year Becky came too. This is her first year in the Girl Scout system, but I think she may have been a little young to appreciate things. She does like to dance though. I'll just say she has a style all her own and leave it at that. I did the whole dancing on the feet thing with Susan and I even tried to remember how to 2-Step. The theme this year was a Hoe Down and there was plenty of country music for us to enjoy. The radio is usually set to country in the van so the girls know quite a bit of country music. I think the three of us managed to have fun if each in our own way.

I got another run in on Sunday. It was a short one mile this time because Susan went with me. She and I are talking about running a 5K run together in the fall. Part of me wonders if it is just my idea and she is a willing participant, but I'll take it. It gives me one more good reason to go running.

2005-04-19T00:59:00.000-05:00

3 Miles.

My Wife's Sister's Cousin

2005-04-16T23:58:00.000-05:00

I guess I need to back track a little and explain about the nepotism. I was lucky enough recently to add a new position at our small company for someone to help me with my growing workload. Not to get too into this right now, but I am usually juggling about 11 different projects at a time. We had been kicking the idea around for this position since early last fall. At Thanksgiving Dinner I made a casual inquiry to my wife’s cousin, “So what are you doing these days?” He proceeded to describe to me the position that I was going to be creating in the coming year. I told him straight out that I was looking for someone to do the same thing at my company and I would let him know if the position ever became real. It did so I did.

I wanted everything to be above board so I interviewed him in February and had my boss interview him and we made an offer. I did interview some other folks too because I wanted it to be fair. He has been there for a little over a month now and I think it is working out very well. I am already noticing that I can get more done. I think I may be pushing him a little, but that could be a good thing. One thing I hadn’t counted on was having someone there to bounce an idea off of that actually understands. We worked on a project the other day and it was the first time in a long while where I felt I was working on a team effort and not just a Mike-will-do-all-of-the-work-while-everyone-else-watches effort.

There is quite a bit of my wife's family out here so there is a little concern that things could end badly, but not a big one. I was asked if it would be awkward at family gatherings if things didn't work out. I told them it would just be a good excuse for me not to go to them any longer. Don't get me wrong I her family is pretty amusing and I get along with most of them, but I am not really a large gathering type of person. I'm more of a one-on-one with a couple of beers kind of guy.

There and Back Again

2005-04-15T20:40:00.000-05:00

We finished. For the past few months I have been reading an illustrated version of The Hobbit to the kids. This is the second time we have attempted it so there was much rejoicing at our completion. It has been slow going and there have been periods of weeks where we read nothing. At one point I thought we were not going to finish again, but they kept asking me to read it to them. I have learned that it is best to stop reading before they get restless even if they don't want me to - one chapter at a time seemed to work best. Tonight we pushed it a little so we could get to the end and John was completely not interested. Of course he has fallen asleep several times during earlier readings and missed chunks of the story. Also if you haven't read The Hobbit in a long time you may have forgotten that the end really drags. Smaug is killed about 5 chapters from the end and everything after that is sort of boring if you're under 10. We made it though and while I have lost my patience with the audience a couple times I am happy to have shared this with them. It all started 5 years ago when I took Susan camping. We went for a hike and she asked me to tell her a story. Back then I used to make up short stories for the kids off the cuff. This time I wanted to go for a long hike and I didn't want to think too much so I told her the story of Bilbo Baggins. The next year we started in on the story of Frodo. I don't think we ever did finish my oral rendition of The Lord of the Rings, but we still look for elves whenever we go hiking.

I am thinking of sharing this blog with my sister. She and I are close or at least we used to be. I grew up as a military brat and we moved about every four years. To my parents credit we always moved in the summer between school years. When we would move Julie would often be the only person I would know until school started. I sometimes can't believe she and I grew up in the same house because we are so different, but we do understand each other. I remember that on 9/11 Julie was the person I wrote to about how it effected me because I knew she would understand. We've gone years almost without talking sometimes, but she is my sister. I didn't really mean for this to be a sappy entry about how I love my sister, but the thought of sending her the link for this blog crossed my mind. I am sure I will share this with others eventually despite my intentions. I just can't keep a secret even if it is my own.

Third

2005-04-13T23:54:00.000-05:00

John is our third child. I don't know if this is what makes him so even tempered or if it is just his nature. He has two older sisters who love him dearly and at times loathe his very existence. What can they expect he is a little brother after all. He has decided that he is a morning person and is always the first one up. Dawn is the morning person in our marriage and I am the night owl - in case you can't tell by the timestamp on the this blog. Rebecca is also a morning girl, but Susan is with her old man and will sleep in until a decent hour if it is quiet enough. This morning John was the first one up as usual and started to play his xylophone. I was just registering the first few pings when I hear Rebecca's plaintive cry -

"NOT AGAIN!"

You see this was how the household was greeted yesterday morning as well at the fun time of 5:30 in the morning. Dawn was kind enough to save us all from this unwanted concert. At various points in the day I would replay this in my mind and smile.

I went running tonight for the first time this year. 3 Miles.

Knowledge is Power

2005-04-12T23:45:00.000-05:00

It amazes me how many people are out there. We are so close to the images of the information age painted not by the newcomers like Neal Stephenson or William Gibson, but by the old-timers like Asimov and Clarke. This clean idea that everything you need to know or would want to know is accessible just by asking your computer. Communities are forming, but there are no false avatars only real people telling real stories. Even being in the IT industry I have to say I am a little surprised at how long this collective consciousness has been growing. Pretty soon HAL will be wondering what we are doing.

Today Susan won a city wide essay contest. She is mortified by this accolade and only the winning prize of a pizza party for her class is enough to make her willing to tell her friends. Of course Susan doesn't like pizza, but a party means no real school for an afternoon. I am of course bursting with pride. The grandparents have been informed and I am hoping they send her some congrats to further her embarrassment.

In case it isn't obvious I have not told anyone I know in three dimensions about the existence of this blog. When I began I thought it would be a good exercise in writing and I wanted to be able to just pour my thoughts onto the screen and not worry about what I said. The fear of discovery has still limited this, but I like my pseudo-anonymity. If I continue writing this long enough for someone to discover it then I will be pleased. If I continue writing this long enough to figure out how people do all of those fancy blogging things I will be amazed.

Six of One, Half Dozen of Another

2005-04-10T14:57:00.000-05:00

Currently there are six kids in the back yard making enough noise to raise a Dad on a Sunday morning. Dawn is off peddling some craft or another and I am home with the kids. I will concede now that it is a double standard for me to feel like I am babysitting, but I do. We've managed to have a good day so far. After lunch when I was abandoned I pulled out the coupons from the Sunday morning paper and invented the "Coupon Game." Each person picks a coupon and then we go to the store to buy it. We came home with Vanilla Burst Ice Cream, chocolate Lucky Charms cereal, and Ultimate Fudge Brownie mix. We had to go to two stores to find everything, but it killed an hour of my day and we spent less than $5. As much as a trip to Starbucks would have been which is my usual diversion. We got back, had a bowl of ice cream, and two hours later everyone is still outside playing. I turned my life into a commercial a little bit ago and took out cups of kool-aid for everyone. It was supposed to rain today so I was prepared for a long afternoon indoors, but at this rate it will be dinner time before I know it. Of course we are averaging a melt down every hours or so, but nothing that has brought a halt to the playing. If it does break up I still have my ace in the hole - we'll make brownies.

Go Fly a Kite

2005-04-09T21:37:00.000-05:00

Today was a lazy day. I slept in until around 10:30 and managed to avoid doing anything of note all day. I read a little bit while the little kids played outside and in the afternoon Susan and I walked over to the park and flew our kite. I bought this kite about 4-5 years ago and have probably managed to put it in the air about as many times. When I went to go buy it I remember asking the guy which was the easiest kite in the store to get airborne. He did not steer me wrong. You could tie this kite to a stake in the ground and as long there is some breeze it will take off. Susan kept the kite airborne for about a half an hour before she got bored watching the chimera-like tail dance in the wind. We pulled the kite in and started back to the house. About half way back the van passed us with the rest of the family on its way to meet us. Susan got in and John and Becky got out. They only lasted about ten minutes with the kite and John let go of the string twice. Luckily there was a playground on the walk back so they managed to have some fun on this outing.

I am fairly certain that the couple people reading this have given up on me by now, but I did promise to write about my car and about nepotism. I'll save the nepotism as a teaser on the off chance any one is reading this. Shortly before we left on vacation I got in my car to go to work. I drove about three blocks and noticed I was slowing down. I finally slowed down so much I could have walked faster. I managed to pull over to the curb and park the car before it died. I really had meant to get an oil change all that week. Dawn drives the company car because when we got offered a car form the company I work for the van needed to be replaced more than my commuter car. She gave me a ride to work and during the day arranged to have the car towed to the dealership. They put some oil in the car and were able to get things running again, but recommended about $1000 worth of work. We decided to drive the car home that night and postpone the decision until we got back from our vacation. "This will give us two weeks to think about it," says I. Flash forward two weeks, it is Friday and we are on the drive home. No thought has been given to this whatsoever.

~insert boring decision making process~

On Monday I drove off the lot in my newly leased 2005 Honda Civic. Mine is the value package and it is black. I won't get into the reasons right now, but this car is perfect for me because it is reliable and doesn't have any unnecessary bells and whistles.

It's a good thing

2005-04-07T23:37:00.000-05:00

For at least a year now our family has been following a tradition at dinner of sharing something good that happened to you today. I like it. I am a big fan of tradition and I love the fact that my kids will remember this when they are older. Of course John doesn't really get it. About 95% of the time he is my good thing because his answer will be "A good thing that happened to me today is that . . . Daddy came home!" Of course time can be a little nebulous for a three year old so "today" isn't strictly enforced for him. Usually I am the worst one because the good things that happened to me are usually the “ah ha!” moment at work when I solve a problem. Most of my answers tend to involve food. “We got donuts today at work.” “Laura brought in Bagels.” “George bought me lunch at McDonald’s.” Sometimes I will try and explain something I figured out at work, but it just sounds like technobabble to the kids. When someone is absent from dinner we will pretend to answer for them. When I am not there I hear the answers are quite amusing.

Susan answering for me : “I fixed the program on the server so the program worked and everyone could use the computer again.”

Rebecca answering for me: “I got candy at work today.”

John answering for me: “John came home!”

Afternoons in Mousetopia

2005-02-18T17:18:00.000-06:00

I am about to embark on the time honored tradition called the Family Vacation. We're doing it the old fashioned way and staying on the ground. The van has a built in DVD player with a six disc changer so I don't know if I can really get away with calling it old fashioned. It will be fun. The kids are at a great age and we are heading to a personal mecca that we share with many others in this world - DisneyWorld! My wife and I got engaged in front of Cinderella's castle at DisneyLand and we went to DisneyWorld for our honeymoon. Our house is adorned with Disnyania of various worth and quality. I've spent a great deal of this week finishing up projects at work so that I can leave with a clear conscious. I was at work last night until 8:30 and I worked from home on Wednesday night until 2am. Now I have to get home and do some packing. When I return I'll write about my car breaking down and how I used nepotism to fill the job opening at our little company.

Read All About It

2005-02-13T01:06:00.000-06:00

There is a taboo in our society that says men don't cry. I must admit to more water works than are socially acceptable. I don't brag about it, but there it is. I can remember a the first time I really cried as a "grown up". I was in the eighth grade and I had a paper route delivery the Altus Times. I am sure what happened is mostly due to lack of sleep, but it has stuck with me over the years. I would wake up usually around 6am and start folding newspapers. I can't remember why I folded the papers instead of using rubber bands, but I folded each one in a tri-fold that tucked into itself. A skill I was very proud of at the time. I would usually look at the font page while I was folding the papers and one morning the lead story was about a girl in a neighboring town. Her body had been found naked in a ditch along the side of the road. The girl in the story was about my age and it struck me as being incredibly sad. I sat there crying like a girl for the next ten minutes while I finished folding the papers. When I was done I wiped my eyes, stuffed the papers in my bag and rode away to deliver my papers.

Absolutely Corrupted

2005-02-03T13:58:00.000-06:00

For the first time since my career change I find myself in the position of hiring an employee. In my Barnes & Noble days I probably hired over 100 employees. I like to think I had a pretty good track record. Of course you can't count the girl who started working at a cross town bookstore and lied to my face when I asked her why she kept trading shifts. Or the girl who stole three credit cards her first day there to give to her drug dealer boyfriend. They are the exception that proves the rule. Ok, maybe they just provide the contrast to all of the stellar employees I hired who left within a year to work at a real job. The main difference I am feeling this time is I feel that whoever I hire will be getting a worthwhile job and I really need them to be able to perform. There are actual office politics involved. There is an internal applicant who has threatened to look elsewhere if she doesn't get a promotion soon. I like this person and I hope they do well in life, but I am not sure she is right for this job. Also there is "the friend" I have been asked to interview just as a formality. It isn't even a friend of the boss, but a friend of an employee that we told we would call if this position opened up. I have met her before and I know she isn't right. We are a small company and while we are growing at a good pace new positions don't come up all the time. I remember what it was like to look for a job and I am trying to keep that in mind, but I sure am enjoying being on the other side of the process.

Surrender

2005-01-21T18:54:00.000-06:00

I have been lurking on several blogs for the last month. The content of most of them makes my Midwestern life seem boring. Maybe that is why I am writing so much less than I thought I would. I have been very busy at work this past month. I expected to be, but I still thought I would have energy to write. I was supposed to go on a date with my wife tonight, but we got snowed out. Too much snow to be driving around just to have dinner without the kids. Perhaps the real reason I have been writing less goes back to my second posting. I got a TiVo last weekend and I have been glued to the television ever since. My brother-in-law likes to claim that TiVo is simultaneously the best invention in the world and the scourge of Satan. If television is an opiate then TiVo is taking it by injection. I think I may not have enough internal angst to write a blog. I don't want to spend my time critiquing the government. There is of course plenty to criticize and anyone is free to do so, but I don't know of a better one in the real world. I am leaning towards starting over completely on this blog and finding a focus.

Fuzzy Logic

2005-01-06T19:12:00.000-06:00

I have been wearing glasses for about ten years now. My father was a pilot in the air force and only just started needing reading glasses so I grew up thinking I had perfect vision and always would. I am a fair weather glasses wearer. I usually only wear them at work or if I am going to a movie. I have been saying for about ten years, "I don't really need glasses." Given the amount of squinting I have done in the last two weeks I could be wrong about that. I lost my glasses in Texas. I normally wouldn't even take them on vacation, but I thought there might be time for a movie while I was there. I did not discover they were gone until I had been there a couple days and my wife wanted to show my sister how out of style I was. Both the prescription and the style were out dated so I do need new glasses. I am going this weekend to pick them out. This means I have about another week of leaning in towards the computer screen. It is clear to me now that I do need glasses and I will be happy to see again.

My Real Life for a Change

2004-12-29T01:04:00.000-06:00

I've decided to go out on a limb and actually write about my life instead of these intangible thoughts. I just got back from spending Christmas in Texas with my parents. I am at home alone while my wife drives back with the three kids in our mini-van. I had to get back for work so I got to take the high road. Just so I don't sound like too much of a cad - it was her idea, well mostly. It's been five years since I have been with my Mom and Dad for Christmas and it is a big deal for my Mom. My sister and her husband managed to make it as well so the gang was all there. The kids had a great time and I was able to relax the way you can only relax when you go home again. Even though I have never lived in the town they are in now it felt just like going back to being a kid with no responsibilities. As a bonus the weather was nice. Santa was very good to the kids and I did all right myself. I appreciate things a lot more these days since it is unlikely I would go out and buy anything frivolous . We aren't exactly poor, but we are definitely on a budget. Which is really why my wife volunteered to drive because there was no way we could justify the expense of five airplane tickets.

While all of that is true it isn't really what I want to be writing about. I want to put down the memories of this trip so that if it takes another five years to make it out there I'll have something to look back at. John was perfect the entire time I was there. He is a very cuddly kid and on the day I had to leave he told me he was going to follow me around and just do everything that I do. It's very hard not to love him - not that I would try. Rebecca was her usual middle child self. Her best present was the time she spent with my Mom painting a wooden stable that she had received as a present from Santa. They spent several hours just the two of them in the kitchen. Painting and talking. Talking and painting. Susan just seems to get older everyday. She got a gameboy from Santa. She was stunned. This is Susan - she put a gameboy on her list for Santa in early November, but later she crossed it out because she thought it would cost too much. She has not asked about Santa, but I think she knows the scoop. I will stick to my guns just like my Mom did. It was always very simple growing up. If you said there was no Santa then no gifts. I still believe.

National Pastime

2004-12-20T12:13:00.000-06:00

I am not much of sports fan. I enjoy the occasional baseball game and I try and know who is playing in the Super Bowl. It just doesn't intrigue me. I played a little basketball when I was growing up, but by high school I had figured out I wasn't good enough to play pro so I gave it up. I ran cross country so that I could put something on my college applications and found that I enjoyed running. I have run off and on since then with this last year being a very good running year for me. I don't understand the fascination with watching sports that some men have. I got to spend some time with a very beautiful woman yesterday because her husband had abandoned her to watch football. He is notorious for missing gatherings because of his pigskin passion and often his wife will show up alone. This is not a tale of pining romance I just find it curious that he would want to watch football vs spend time with his own wife. Of course watching football, or sports in general, is just the cliche. I have been known to ignore my wife for equally frivolous activities. Take for instance writing blog entries that no one will ever read.

Polite Conversation

2004-12-18T22:44:00.000-06:00

This past year I have discovered that I am the only person willing to admit I am a conservative. There must be a lot of us out there, but everyone I talk to can't believe Bush got reelected and is so disappointed they are thinking of moving to Canada. I am of the opinion that it doesn't matter who is in the White House, but when I vote I want to vote for someone I like. Someone who thinks a little bit like I do. Maybe it is just the people I know, but it seems like all of the liberals I talk to are hypocrites. They are outraged by the state of this country and think the War in IRAQ is an embarrassment. They genuinely seem passionate about this until I ask them what are they doing to change things. Most of them are willing to admit that just voting for Kerry probably isn't going to change the status quo a whole lot. These liberal minded people complain that the government should step in to help people, but they have never volunteered for anything in their lives. Many of them are very well off, but they don't even make contributions to the Democratic party. Not that they should if they really wanted to make a difference. I am sick of talking about politics.

The Real Opiate

2004-12-17T08:38:00.000-06:00

It may set the tone poorly for me to begin confessing things so early, but it was the topic I thought of on my way into work this morning. I am addicted to television. It is a purely mental addiction and I have gone cold turkey with pleasant results in the past. I am considering giving up this guilty pleasure once again as I notice it has consumed a great portion of my waking life. It is eating into my sleeping life as well since I often find myself in front of some schlocky movie at 2 in the morning. Usually one I have seen before, but I still stay up until the end. I just can't seem to help it. At times in my life I have embraced my love of TV and I doubt I will ever give it up entirely, but I know I have hit my low when I start watching old Pauly Shore movies - I loathe Pauly Shore. I hope I get TIVO for Christmas.

Day One

2004-12-15T16:41:00.000-06:00

Having formerly scoffed at this form of writing I have recently come to enjoy reading a blog called Grape. After commenting on a stranger's blog enough times I decided it was time to go out on my own. I don't have any purpose other than to write more often. I am a little rusty, but in college I wrote volumes of pointless musings in the form of essays, letters and journal entries. It has been a long time since I have managed to keep up any sort of journal. Maybe this format will inspire me. I have learned that after a dry spell it takes me a while to get back up to full writing speed. I am sure my prose will improve again over time. Of course I cannot promise it will get any more interesting.