Around this time last year, Paulette came up with the idea of taking the kids down to Mt St Helens as a kind of family field trip. Alex's school has the kids do show-and-tell, and encourages them to talk about things that start with the "sound of the week" -- that would be the letter of the week, but that's not how they teach reading at his school, they teach sounds -- and the letter V (or, rather, the sound V) was a few weeks away. Paulette's idea was that we could see the volcano one day, and then spend the rest of the weekend visiting friends in Portland, OR and hitting the Saturday Market.

A side note about the Portland Saturday Market: ten summers ago, some friends from my Cornell days and I converged on Portland for a mini-reunion that we have every year (each year in a different city), and we went to the Saturday Market as part of our weekend. While there, I saw a photographer's exhibit that was simply breathtaking, and I very much wanted to buy one of his custom-framed prints. It was amazing. But, I was also only two months away from getting married, and I wanted to make sure that Paulette wouldn't mind me blowing a big wad of cash on a piece of art just before we dropped an even bigger wad of cash on our wedding.

As it turned out, she and I have very similar tastes in art, but since we'd never really acquired any art up to that point, I wanted to clear it with her. The photographer didn't believe in having business cards -- he said he never sold any of his work by using them -- so I figured I'd just run back down to Portland to pick up his stuff on some future weekend.

I've never seen him at the Portland Saturday Market since then, but whenever I'm down there, I always look. I don't know his name. But I know I'd recognize his work if I ever saw it again. It was that amazing.

Anyway, circumstances interfered with the Mt St Helens trip last year, but this year, we made it happen... and, just in time for hitting the letter 'V' again this year. Or the sound, 'V'. Whatever. Paulette and I bundled up the kids in the minivan for what is expected to be our last family adventure together before the anticipated arrival of Baby 3.0.

We left after work on Friday, April 18th. Let me make a comment about April in the Seattle area: it never snows. At least, there's no record of snow accumulating in Seattle after April 1st. In late April, the tulips are already in bloom, and most of the trees have already flowered if not grown their leaves. As we were getting ready to leave, I had to snap a photo of the blanket of snow threatening our tulips. Crazy, crazy.

We drove down to a town near Mt St Helens; the plan was to make a hotel there our base of operations and we went back and forth between points Washington and Oregon. The hotel was ready and waiting for us, we all got a good night's sleep, and had a pleasant breakfast before heading off to the visitor center at Mt St Helens.

The lava caves we had hoped to visit were closed due to snow. In fact, so were just about all of the vantage points except for the main visitor center, which was far enough away from the mountain that the snowfall (it was still snowing) made it impossible to see. There was a little movie about the big eruption in 1980, and a scale model of the volcano and surrounding area that you can walk through. Nolan loved that part, while Alex preferred the movie.

We had a good visit at the center, but I was nonetheless a little disappointed that we didn't get the see the volcano.

After a refreshing dip in the pool and hot tub at our hotel (Nolan and Alex both absolutely love swimming. However, Nolan is still learning, so the hot tub was more agreeable to him because he could stand on the bench seats and didn't have to worry about actually swimming swimming), we headed down to Portland to visit with our friends Bjorn and Kirsten.

We had a fantastic evening. Excellent conversation, excellent food at a local Italian restaurant that was kid friendly, more excellent conversation, and just an all-around agreeably relaxing time was had by all. I've been a little out of sorts lately, and there's nothing like a pleasant evening with old friends to put one's mind at ease.

I must mention (if you haven't visited the link already to Bjorn's site) that Bjorn has an airplane named Superboy. In fact, if I recall correctly, Alexander's first plane ride was in Superboy. Bjorn loves to fly, and he told us he'd be happy to take us for a look at Mt St Helens if the weather for the next day turned out to be as good as the forecast claimed.

Although we have a lot of friends in Portland and surrounding areas, we ended up not making any other plans for the weekend, since we weren't sure how the kids would do on the trip. Sunday morning, we went to Saturday Market (I love saying that -- "Sunday, at the Saturday Market..."), and Alex was pretty obviously not happy to be dragged around while his parents wanted to look at the artsy-fartsy stuff on display. I did not find the photographer I'd been looking for these past ten years, nor did I expect to, but I can still hope that someday I'll bump into him again.

We had an appropriate lunch (Mmmm... outdoor market food) and then phoned Bjorn to see if he was still up for a plane ride. Silly me. The boys love airplanes, and Bjorn loves to fly. The weather was cooperating, so *of course* everyone was up for a ride.

Bjorn was so gracious with the kids. He had Alex help out by checking the fuel and plugging in the rear headsets. The plane may not look big, but it was able to hold me (and I'm pretty big) and Paulette (who is flying for two) and Nolan in the back seat, while Alex flew shotgun in the co-pilot's chair.

As it so happened, we flew up into a big bevy of clouds, but we found a hole that enabled us to get up above the cloud cover. ("Why not just fly through the clouds?" "Because the temperature up here is below freezing, and the plane would ice up very quickly if we tried.") At this point, it became obvious that we might see nothing but overcast skies (well... undercast, I guess, since we were above the clouds) blanketing the mountain, but what the heck, we were already in the air. So, we headed to Mt St Helens to see what we could see.

Keep in mind, just getting the boys up for a flight made for a wonderful time, and Paulette and I enjoyed sitting next to each other in the cozy back seats. But if we could actually get some snapshots of the mountain while we were there, well... so much the better. In fact, I should make this point if it hasn't become obvious already: Mt. St. Helens was the McGuffin for our trip. It was the excuse; it was not the reason. The reason was to get us out as a family, enjoying some different scenery and different settings. The goal was to leave work and the daily chores behind for a little while. That said....

Miles and miles of big, white, fluffy clouds rolled by beneath us while Alex enjoyed being the co-pilot and Nolan played with his trains. Then we saw a break in the clouds, near where the volcano should be, and lo and behold... Wow, what a view. We were so close to the crater, we could see the plumes of steam roiling up into the air. (For those who don't know, the volcano is still active... it's just not erupting at present.)

We snapped our photos. Alex would have some neat print-outs for his show-and-tell that week. All-in-all, though, it was just cool the way the weekend all came together. We had some pleasant quiet time as a family, enjoyed a soothing, low-key visit with gracious friends, and then had a private tour of a snow-capped volcano. A magically delicious weekend.

If a picture's worth a thousand words, let me leave you with this:

My wife and I often enjoy picking up college courses recorded by The Teaching Company. We recently picked up a new geology course that has the latest research on the state of the field these days.

Wow, what a fascinating topic. It's amazing how much there is to learn, and how we know what we know, and how the development of the field has affected our understanding of biology, cosmology, and so on.

We picked up the course on DVD (some courses are also available in audio-only formats), figuring that the visual nature of the lectures might be of interest to our budding young scientist, Alexander. By way of planning for an upcoming family outing to Mt. St. Helen's, we skipped ahead to a lecture regarding the eruption of this volcano in 1980.

The volcano and its activity since its most recent eruption are fascinating, but the lecturer also went into the tectonic activity that makes this region ripe for a catastrophic earthquake. I've known for years now that when Mt. Rainier blows, we'll likely have a couple of months warning, but the eruption could produce lava flows (floes?) as far north as Seattle. In fact, we live in an area that was partially hit by Rainier two eruptions ago.

[For those who don't know: Mt. St. Helen's is south of Rainier, putting it closer to Portland, OR, but still rather nearby.]

What I didn't know was that our local region was wiped out by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake just over three hundred years ago. Because of the way the Juan de Fuca fault works here, we are already entering the "danger zone" for the next catastrophic quake. That said, it's more likely that the next big one will hit in 100 to 200 years (these big'uns tend to hit four-hundred to five-hundred years apart), but we're still entering dangerous geological times.

The instructor of the course gave a compelling argument that Seattle and Portland are likely to be destroyed within the next couple of hundred years.

This isn't necessarily as scary as it sounds. History contains several examples of cities destroyed by a catastrophic event, only to be rebuilt. Such examples include San Francisco after it's big earthquake (and subsequent fire) of 1906 and the devastation of Tokyo and Yokohama following the 1923 Great Kanto earthquake.

Then again, the above mentioned earthquakes measured a mere 8.0 on the Richter scale, and they *did* kill hundreds of thousands of people. I don't know if I'd necessarily prefer to be hanging around when a 9.0 hits. While Seattle and the surrounding areas will certainly be rebuilt following a major volcanic eruption or earthquake, I might be inclined to miss the main event that leads up to a new and improved city.

For all that, though, when it comes to being the most dangerous city in America, Seattle certainly stakes a strong claim, geologically speaking.

Los Angeles, eat your heart out.

Hi, all. This is an open request for any reader(s) I may have in the NYC area.

Have you seen or might you see Simon Lovell's weekly Saturday evening magic performance, Strange and Unusual Hobbies? As a student of magic, I've enjoyed his lecture notes, but I've never had the chance to see him in person. He seems like quite the entertainer.

I'd love to hear a review from any of my friends or passers-by to this site. It may be another year or two before business takes me back to NYC, but I can live vicariously through y'all in the meantime.

Thanks!

On Sunday morning at around 3am or so local time, I complete my fortieth lap around the sun. I am officially older than Jack Benny.

A few friends came over while I prepared a batch of jambalaya, which I made spicier than usual (but still not spicy enough). Several of our guests have kids Alex & Nolan's ages, so the kids all played upstairs while the grown-ups enjoyed grown-up conversation downstairs. It was an enjoyable, low-key affair. Good food, good friends, kids safely (for the most part) entertaining themselves. It had snowed the day before (very unusual for this part of the country at this time of year), which leant to the "lazy Sunday" quality of the day.

All-in-all, not a bad way to mark the occasion.

Someone asked me if I'd be picking up a fast car or a motorcycle soon. There were other references to middle age thrown around. Friends of mine who have known me long enough will note that I've been in a mid-life crisis since approximately seventh grade, so I've gotten most of the living-dangerously urges out of my system, I think.

Our house saw another rite-of-passage by Monday morning. Alexander woke up having lost his first baby tooth. By the end of the day, Alex had lost a second tooth; both had been loose for a quite a while. In the morning, the tooth fairy is probably going to have to pay a little visit. What's the going rate for a tooth these days? Is it still a quarter?

My little boy is growing up. And I've aged gracelessly into a fat old man. I guess that means my parents are older than dirt. Bwahahaha.

(Hi, Mom.)

Now that I think about it, Jack Benny accomplished a great deal by the time he was 39. I guess I'd better get cracking.

I'm thinking of you. I've been thinking of you quite a bit lately.

For example, Amanda, when you kindly sent me that "What's up?" e-card out of the blue; you got me thinking of you.

And Kevin and Brian and Greg and Andrea and Allen and others: when you post comments to my blog or drop me an e-mail, you get me thinking of you. I have some of the coolest friends around. Even if I'm terrible about responding. [sigh]

This is funny. A friend of mine from wayyy back (Hi, Jeff) posted a comment to an essay I'd listed here regarding something I'd said that reminded him of something Scott Adams had posted on his own blog. That was at least a year ago, if not longer. Now I'm reading a Scott Adams book of things he posted to his blog, and it's got me thinking of you.

My mom needed some tech support for her website recently, and so she phoned me. And e-mailed me. I finally woke up at around noon, found the messages, and then helped her out. (Woke up at noon? Yes. See what time I'm posting this to my website? I'm staying up way too late, and getting up late is working out okay with regard to our child care / work schedule.) So, yeah, mom. When I do tech support over the phone, I'm thinking of you.

The kids have been sleeping in the big bed in the guest room upstairs lately. There's a painting in the guest room of trees on rolling hills. When I put the kids to bed, and I see that painting, I'm thinking of yew.

I get e-mails all the time from (alleged) Russian women who "saw my profile" on the internet. That reminds me... I haven't had shashlik in a while. Shashlik was my favorite lunch during my summer in the Moscow. Shashlik is made of marinated mutton. Great. Now I'm thinking of ewe.

When I think of bad puns (which, admittedly, is all the time), I occasionally remember how a certain someone used to admonish me that "puns are the lowest form of humor." Oh, the bitter irony of how my sense of humor sometimes makes me think of you.

...

Memory triggers are on my mind. I just recently completed a short story that takes place in the world where my next novel is set. A world where the main character will spend the entire novel exploring the relationship between our memories and our sense of who we are. Hokey as it sounds, dear reader, as I prepare to embark upon this new novel, I'm thinking of you.

My business finds itself in the unfortunate situation of having to move. Our landlord is selling the building, and so we need new facilities. Now. We need to be out by early January.

I've been coordinating the move, and it's quite a bit of work. Finding a new space took a great deal of time and effort, and now getting movers, getting the phones switched, etc., isn't letting me relax. Now add to that the Christmas rush. And add to that the fact that I'm doing more of the heavy lifting at home these days, as well, and you've got one busy bee at Casa Rousselle.

Paulette and I have typically shared the chores at home (still do, actually), but she's somewhat more tired than usual, and I'm the guy to pick up the slack. Why is she tired? Well, that's the other busy-making thing going on: she's busy making Baby 3.0. Good news, to be sure, but exhausting, and so there's no end of stuff that needs to be done at the Big Red House.

So that's why I'm not posting much on my blog. Well, that, and my proverbial dog ate my blog posts. And I'm bummed about the news regarding Anita, a friend of ours here in town. And I need to go Christmas shopping.

But other than that, not much going on here. How's by you?

Some old friends have been on my mind lately. As luck would have it, Paulette and I had a wedding to attend recently that allowed us to not only visit with many dear friends at the reception, but also to visit with others who live in that part of the country whom we also have not seen in years.

While we had a great time catching up with so many, the trip was a bit like trying to see seven countries in five days. We spent a lot of time in the rental car, cramming in as many get togethers as we could, and we were lucky that the boys put up with it all as well as they did. Being on the opposite coast, changes in the weather and time zones also played havoc with my sense of time.

I only checked my e-mail twice during the trip, and wouldn't you know: I received a message from one of my aforementioned old friends who has been on my mind but who was not a part of this particular whirlwind tour. (We weren't hitting her particular state/commonwealth.)

She is one of my dearest friends who knew me from grade school, and she wrote with news that certainly demanded I get back in touch with her. Because our schedule was so packed, I didn't get a chance to phone until all the travelling was finally done.

What somehow escaped my addled brain was that with the travel being done, I was back in my home time zone. So I phoned at what should have been a normal time to chat locally, but was, well, not such a normal time to chat where she was. Woke her up. Probably woke up the kids and hubby, too. Oops.

I've heard of dialing drunk (something I've never done, since I don't drink), but this was worse. This was a case of dialing stupid.

Gary Larson drew a Far Side cartoon years ago in which a child was trying to enter the Midvale School for the Gifted by pushing on a door marked "Pull". I'm that kid. But what's worse than catching yourself in a brain fart is realizing that there are witnesses. Unlike a friend or two of mine from the past who screen calls (and, interestingly, never seem to be home when I try to phone them... or e-mail them... or drop by unannounced... or stalk them at work...), this one answered the phone.

"You sound sleepy. Did I wake you?" I asked, thinking it was three hours *earlier* where she was than where I was.

"Well... yeah," she answered, from three hours *later* than I.

For those of you counting at home, that's a six hour mistake.

During our recent trip, it was great seeing so many people who are so close to me in my mind and memories. But nothing really turns back the clock like making a bone-head maneuver like that. 't really takes me back.

Long time, no write. I know, I know. There's just so much going on, that I haven't had the time to string together even a few coherent sentences. Here's a snapshot of that which is afoot:

* The boys: Alex and Nolan continue to amaze and astound me with how fast they are growing, how quickly they are changing, and how much they are learning. Both are in a bit of a boundary-testing phase at the moment, which is unfortunate for their beleaguered parents, and Nolan simply can't fall asleep in any kind of reasonable fashion. That said, they remain generally happy and intellectually engaged, and it's amazing how they are developing very different personalities from each other, even though they both seem to have very similar temperaments and skills.

Both have excellent language skills, for example, but have been developing them in different ways. Alex developed a speaking cadence and mannerisms before filling in with words (he would "babble in paragraphs" while his vocabulary was still catching up), while Nolan is soft-spoken but assembles complex sentences with words chosen both carefully and correctly. Nolan clearly understands more than he lets on, whereas Alex is a pro at shooting from the hip.

They remain, in every way, amazing to behold.

* Casa Rousselle: not much going on with the house these days, but car woes are interfering with scheduling on the home front. My VW wagon is over eleven years old at this point, and it's showing its age. We may have to take it out back and shoot it, given how miserable it's been. We have frequently been reduced to having only one car, and it's increasingly difficult for me to be able to work from home on those days when I'd prefer to do so. [sigh]

* Work: in addition to the database work I've been doing as a gun-for-hire, I began the process of buying out my former business partner in a small business a couple of years ago. The business is finally starting to find traction, and so we have just recently hired our first new full-time employee. While things are slowing down as we bring our hiree up to speed, the long-term gain should be huge. Who knows... I may even be able to take a vacation sometime within this lifetime.

* Writing: I have written only one new short story this year so far (although I have a second one worked out in my head, and will probably commit that to paper before too long), but it appears that my third "pro" publication is going to hit the bookstores in the spring of 2008. The irony is, that particular work is being culled from my time at Cornell in a "Best of" anthology, and as luck would have it, the editor selected items that I'd co-written with a friend *during my high school years*. Funny that my third pro sale should come roughly twenty-two years after the pieces in question were written.

* Journey of a thousand pounds: I'm currently down about 25 pounds since I began skipping the sodas on April 1st of this year. I recently fell off the wagon (again), but I'm generally pleased with the three-steps-forward, one-step-back progress that I've been sustaining.

* My life in politics: Having served as president of my home owners association(s) on-and-off for the last seven years or so, I'd stepped aside at the beginning of this year in what I figured would be my final turn as board chair -- I'd decided that there was a lot to be gained by simply being the "board member without portfolio." Nothing doing. The fellow who took my place stepped down soon thereafter, and the then VP didn't want the job, and the next thing you know, everyone's asking me to step back in. So, I picked up the gavel once more. I'll comment more in the coming weeks about the many adventures I've had on the board, and why local politics is simply crazy, crazy, crazy.

In fact, I expect to comment on all of these facets of my life in more detail in the coming weeks. Like Alex, I feel the need to babble, and I know the words will come.

I won a bet a few months ago. The bet was with a fellow named Allen, and the wager was a copy of the final Harry Potter book. Because I won, Allen was to buy me a copy of the book on the day it was released.

Since then, I proposed that our community throw a "Harry Potter Party", which I may have mentioned in a previous post. The events committee in our neighborhood said it sounded like a great idea, and so they began the work of organizing it. One task fell to me, however, and that was to attempt to secure some copies of the book to give away as prizes. Although there is a small amount of money in our event committee's budget that could be used in that direction, it's always better to try to get donations, when possible, so that the money can be there for the next event.

Our neighborhood supermarket was very generous (Thank you, QFC!) in donating three copies of the book toward the event, and I picked them up about ten minutes ago, so that I'll have them in hand when I go to help set up for the party in the morning.

So here I am with three brand new copies of the book... a book that I am eager, eager, eager to begin reading. But these copies are for the party, and Allen won't be bringing me my copy until sometime tomorrow -- likely, after the party. But I want to read a copy now!

I thought about leaving them in my car, but it's raining tonight (unusual here, for this time of year; summer is the "dry season") and I don't want the humidity to warp the pages. So, here they are. Sitting on the kitchen counter. Calling to me. "Allan... Allan! Just one little chapter. What could be the harm? Nobody will ever know!"

That, ladies and germs, is how I came to be a hundred pounds overweight. "I'll just have one bite of that Ben & Jerry's. No one will ever notice." How does one bite become a hundred pounds? The same way one little chapter becomes staying up until the time my alarm goes off, the book half-read, and me having to buy another copy to hide my crime.

Nope. Better to just go to bed. I'll get my own copy tomorrow. No borrowing any sneaked peeks tonight.

Nor, for that matter, any ice cream.

Will power. It's not just for breakfast anymore.

Went to the dentist today to have some work done. When the procedure was pretty much completed, the dentist asked me to bite down on this little paper thingy that stains your teeth, thereby revealing how your bite is lining up. So I bit down, but didn't seem to quite be able to close on the paper thingy. Tried again, with no luck, and then third time was the charm.

Well, the bite needed adjustment, so he made some tweaks, and then got another paper thingy for me to bite on, and the exact same thing happened. Only this time, I began to have an inkling as to why it was so hard to clamp down on that paper thingy. Something was in the way, perhaps? Hmmm. Near the very end, the dentist's assistant was looking at my mouth and said, "It seems you've bitten your tongue."

I didn't see it in a mirror until later, when I checked out the damage in the vanity mirror of my car. Oh, yeah. Pretty obvious.

"I'm going to feel *that* in about an hour."

Boy, did I ever. And it made talking after the anesthetic wore off *very* difficult. Putting me in a situation where I'm not able to speak, especially when there's stuff I need to communicate with others, is just plain mean. It's like the poor Italian in the joke:

Q: How do you torture an Italian?
A: Tie his hands together and then ask him to explain something!

Happy Mothers Day To Youuuuuuu,
Happy Mothers Day To Youuuuuuu,
Happy Mothers Day, All You Moms Out There,
Happy Mothers Day To Youuuuuuu.

REV. EVELYN L. MARING, 85, of Tonawanda, NY died Wednesday, April 4, 2007 at Elderwood Crestwood Nursing Home in Niagara Falls.

She was born October 9, 1921 in Huntington, WV to William L. Dial and Grace Trainer.

Rev. Maring graduated from Huntington East High School. She studied at West Virginia Wesleyan College, Asbury College, Morris Harvey College, University of Pennsylvania and Drew University. In the 1970’s, she felt the call to preach and went to Duke University Divinity School where she took the Course of Study for Ministry.

For thirteen years she and her late husband, Rev. Dr. Robert M. Maring, served as missionaries of the World Division of the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries in the Methodist Church of Pakistan. She received her license to preach in 1976, was ordained Deacon in 1977, and she served as pastor for six different United Methodist churches in West Virginia until 1987 when she and her husband retired from the West Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church and moved to Port Charlotte, FL.

In addition to her calling as a Methodist minister, Evelyn was a talented artist (sketch and painting), calligrapher, and organist/pianist.

During her 20 years of retirement, she was active in the Port Charlotte United Methodist Church by singing in the choir, assisting with communion and speaking on missions there and in other local organizations. She was a Chaplain and past President of the Port Charlotte Woman’s Club and former Secretary of the China-Burma-India Veterans. Evelyn was a world traveler, having visited over 75 countries with her husband and hosting tours to many of them through Educational Opportunities.

She is survived by her only daughter, Karen (Lee) Rousselle of Tonawanda, NY; two grandchildren, Allan (Paulette) Rousselle and Sandra (Michael) Hanagan; 4 great grandchildren, Alexander and Nolan Rousselle, Devon and Sierra Hanagan; a brother, C. Harold (Jackie) Dial; and 13 nieces and nephews.

In addition to her husband and her parents, she was preceded in death by a sister, Letha Schultz and a brother, Luther Dial.

A memorial service to celebrate her life will be held May 9, 2007 at 1:30 p.m. at the Port Charlotte United Methodist Church with Rev. Douglas H. Zipperer officiating. Inurnment will follow at 3 p.m. in Restlawn Memorial Gardens, Port Charlotte.

Memorial contributions may be made to the Mission Fund of the Port Charlotte United Methodist Church, 21075 Quesada Ave., Port Charlotte, FL 33952 or to the Alzheimer’s Association, 225 N. Michigan Ave., Floor 17, Chicago, IL 60601-7633 or on the internet at www.alz.org.

This morning, my grandmother Rev. Evelyn L. Maring, retired Methodist minister and former missionary to Pakistan, died in her sleep. She was 85 years old. This marks two years -- nearly to the day -- since my grandfather, her husband of 63 years, passed away.

In addition to her calling as a Methodist minister, she was a talented artist (sketch and painting), calligrapher, and organist/pianist. She leaves behind many dear friends and family members who cared a great deal for her. As was true of her husband before her, she leaves the world a better place for her having been in it.

October 9, 1921 - April 4, 2007

[Scene from the movie Young Frankenstein: Dr. Frankenstein and Igor are exhuming a dead criminal]

Dr. Frankenstein: What a filthy job.
Igor: Could be worse.
Dr. Frankenstein: How?
Igor: Could be raining.

This past Monday, my faithful laptop "iCarumba" blew itself out. Luckily, the hard drive survived, but the computer was left otherwise completely toast. I've been planning for months to buy its replacement, knowing that the end was near, but I kept delaying. I got almost exactly four years and one month out of that piece of equipment; the longest I've ever kept any one machine as my primary computer. I'd say, "it shall be missed," but that would be a lie. It was underpowered from the day I bought it, but I was too cheap to get the machine I really wanted and too cheap to buy its replacement before it finally forced my hand.

So when that little piece of hardware shrugged off its mortal casing, I ordered its replacement and had it the next day. When I haven't been tugged hither and yon at work or by the kids, I've been spending my time migrating my expletive from the old machine to the new one, and learning my way around the new 'un. It needs a name. Since it runs both Mac OS and Windows, I've been thinking of calling it's respective incarnations "Jekyll" and "Hyde", but which would be which?

This week also struck me with another bout of vertigo. Ah, nostalgia. The first time I encountered this kind of inner ear imbalance problem, I was a grad student at University of Effing Pennsylvania. I've been struck by it several times since then. I don't get sick often, but every once in a while, this ton of bricks lands on my head. Symptoms: if I move my head in relation to the ground, I feel like I've been whacked in the back of the head, I get dizzy, a sudden headache grabs my brain, and occasionally I even feel a little nauseated. In short, it's just like grad school, only all at once instead of being spread out over several semesters.

As we are nearing the end of March, my database clients all have much work they want me to do (very lucrative) and my other business (not yet lucrative at all) has enough orders on the books that, if I were to put in the effort to fill them all, we could close the quarter in a strong position. But demands at home and sleep deprivation and this vertigo thing and my computer... well, today was finally the day I gave up on the hope of having a record quarter.

Alexander cried tonight (I'm composing this on Thursday night/Friday morning) because I wouldn't play Crazy 8's with him after he hit his brother during their nighttime routine. It bums me out when Alex cries, but the idea is for *me* to manipulate *his* behavior, not the other way around. Besides, he needs to understand that hitting his brother is a bad idea. Nolan is very clearly going to grow up bigger than Alex, and paybacks can be a bitch.

Yet for all the deadlines, physical discomfort, and mechanical inconveniences of the week, I approach my 39th anniversary on this planet with my morale intact and a quiet sense of optimism. Sure, I may be fat. And my hair (what's left of it) may be turning from blond to brown -- thereby calling into question the real cause of my vertigo. But I'm doing okay.

After all, it could be worse....

--Allan (in Seattle. Where it never rains.)

Having spent most of my adult life alternating between the East and West Coasts, and having recently spent a very quick (alas, too quick to be able to catch up with dear friends of mine who live there) trip to my old stomping grounds on the other side of the country, I thought I'd share a few thoughts with regard to the East Coast versus the West Coast.

Northeast: lots of old buildings, some several hundred years old.
Northwest: an old building is more than twenty-years old.

Northeast: In the allegedly suburban areas, the streets are narrow, and the buildings are packed tightly together. Traffic is awful.
Northwest: In the suburban areas, the roads are wide, and the buildings are spaced out more. Traffic is awful.

Northeast: Drivers will deliberately veer into your lane, or accellerate, or decellerate, just to prevent you from executing the turn that you signaled, to the point of intentionally running you off the road and killing you.
Northwest: Drivers will inadvertantly veer into your lane, or accellerate, or decellerate, thereby accidentally running you off the road and killing you.

Northeast: Streets wander around aimlessly, street signs are often lacking, and any given town is likely to have fifteen streets with exactly the same name (such as "Spring St." in Boston).
Northwest: Streets are aligned to a grid, street signs are everywhere, and any given town is likely to have fifteen streets with confusingly similar names (such as "NE 90th St", "NE 90th Way", "NE 90th Ct", "90th Way NE", "90th St NE", and "90th Ct NE" in Redmond).

Northeast: In the winter, the trees all look dead. In the fall, everyone acts as though the Northeast is the only place that leaves change color.
Northwest: In the winter, the trees are all lush and green. Then again, they are lush and green all year long. They are evergreens. Except in the fall, when they change color.

Northeast: Chinese food.
Northwest: Thai cuisine.

Northeast: Dunkin Donuts
Northwest: Starbucks

Northeast: The "Big Dig" was a fiasco.
Northwest: Hey! Let's submerge the Viaduct on Seattle's waterfront!

Northeast: Snow. Cold snaps.
Northwest: Wind storms. Earthquakes.

Northeast: During non-peak travel times, the typical flow of traffic on the highways (where the posted speed limit is 60 mph) is approx. 80 miles per hour.
Northwest: During non-peak travel times, the typical flow of traffic on the highways (where the posted speed limit is 60 mph) is approx. 55 miles per hour.

Northeast: They still haven't learned that highway on-ramps are for accellerating and merging.
Northwest: They still haven't learned that green lights mean, "Go."

Am I missing any?

Here's a handy How-To for any of my faithful readers who have ever wondered how best to book a flight using frequent flier miles.

Step 1: fly so often on a given airline that you rack up a couple hundred thousand frequent flier miles. Or, get a credit card that rewards you with frequent flier miles, spend lots of money on it, and see where that gets you. Both methods are equally problematic.

Step 2: use the website of your airline-of-choice and pick "redeem miles". For the sake of this handy guide, I used American ("Come sit on the friendly tarmac with us.") Airlines, but I'm sure most airlines are equally problematic. Enter your Frequent Flier number and password. You do have these handy, don't you?

Step 3: Enter the desired dates of your trip out and back.

Step 4: The dates you have selected are not available for 25,000 miles. Nor are any other dates that could possibly work for you, and your travel plans are pretty flexible. So, select the "Anytime miles" level of 50,000 miles.

Step 5: Now the dates you desire are available. Select them and click continue.

Step 6: You see a list of available flights. Begin making your selections.

Step 7: Your phone rings. It is a client/customer/co-worker/family member. Answer it.

Step 8: Conclude your phone call. Resume making your flight selections. Click continue.

Step 9: You see a message that says, "Your session has timed out. Please start over again." Or words to that affect.

Step 10: Repeat steps 3 through 9.

Step 11: Twice.

Step 12: Repeat steps 3 through 6. When phone rings again, ignore it.

Step 13: After choosing your flight preferences, click Continue.

Step 14: One of the flights you chose six seconds ago is no longer available. Go back to choosing your dates, extra miles level, and select new flights. Click continue.

Step 15: Congratulations. You've selected a flight that hasn't overbooked yet. But you're being charged $110. Ten dollars is for converting your miles. The other hundred dollars is because you are booking a flight that takes place soon.

Step 16: Utter profanities. Then get out your credit card and enter payment information.

Step 17: Click OK, even though it isn't and you aren't.

Step 18: The evening before your flight, go back to the site to print up your boarding pass.

Step 19: Your flight information cannot be retrieved, but a message tells you to call customer service at their toll free number. Call.

Step 20: Navigate your way through their automated touchtone maze. Get hung up on by their system.

Step 21: Twice.

Step 22: Call again. After a few minutes, get through to a person. Tell them your story.

Step 23: The first flight in your trip has been cancelled. Because of bad weather? No. Because they don't have a full crew for that flight. But, hey, they can book you on a flight a few days later.

Step 24: Inform the helpful agent that a few days later is not going to work for you. Why she tries to find alternatives for your originally scheduled flight, ask: if nothing suitable can be found, and you have to arrange to fly a few weeks later (your next available opportunity), can you get your mileage back in the meantime and get reimbursed for the fees you paid to redeem your miles?

Step 25: According to the rules, you cannot get your fees back, even if the airline doesn't provide you with what you were paying for (which was, in essence, a ticket within a short time window). Ah, but that's okay, the friendly agent found you an alternative outbound flight (on a different airline).

Step 26: At the appointed time, go to the airport. Since you are not flying on the airline that lists you as a frequent flier, you are now once again eligible for random heavy-duty screening at the security line.

Step 27: Be randomly selected for heavy-duty screening at the security line. Try to act like you are not offended by the way the search is conducted, even though you know and everyone else knows that this kind of search is meaningless in the grand scheme of things, and wouldn't even prevent the kind of attacks that brought about this random heavy-duty screening in the first place.

Congratulations, you're now on your way. You have secured a flight using your frequent flier miles.

It may take you a few more or a few fewer steps than twenty-seven. After all, your mileage may vary.

Many years ago, after a long term relationship I'd been in started heading south, I came to the conclusion that I needed some good advice because whatever I was doing simply wasn't working. But to whom do you turn when you need some good advice? For whatever foolish reason, I decided that the best people to get advice from would be... people who had experience with making long term relationships work.

That ruled out taking advice from the likes of John "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, and Psychobabble is from Uranus" Gray. True, his specials on PBS or cable or whatever were entertaining, and from interviews I've heard, he sounds like a smart enough fellow. He's also been divorced (from another alleged relationship guru, no less) and spent almost a decade as a celibate monk (his term, not mine) for the Maharishi Yogi Bear guy (you know; the alleged spiritual guru who snookered the Beatles, etc.). John Gray may be a fascinating conversationalist, but I just don't think I'd be looking for relationship advice from him.

[While tooling around the Internet to fact-check today's brief missive, I came across an assessment that I rather liked. The writer panned his books, but recommended an interview with him that Tony Robbins had recorded. "Just two guys talking," was the way she described it, and she said it was much more worthwhile. Having heard the interview, I'm inclined to agree.]

Instead, I ended up taking the advice of people who had demonstrated more success (and less tendency toward cults), and because I successfully pulled that relationship out of its tailspin (at least for the most part), the experience reinforced my tendency toward choosiness in where I go to find good advice.

As circumstances would have it, I am aware of at least three friends of mine who are currently going through a divorce. As I recently had lunch with one such friend, I found myself constantly starting to say something and then stopping. I am *extremely* unqualified to utter anything that would count as advice to my friends who are going through this, because I have no personal experience whatsoever with divorce.

[Well, except for one thing: I am expertly qualified to give advice on password security issues because of the nature of my day job, and it seems to me that anyone getting a divorce is well advised to be aware of certain password security issues that make them potentially vulnerable to their future ex-spouses... but more on that in a future post.]

So instead, I offer my friend what little support I can, and I ask the same questions that I'm sure they have been asked a dozen times before. How does one go about finding a lawyer to represent you? How does one know if the lawyer is a good one, etc.?

But it occurred to me later: if you want to make sure you're getting good divorce advice, should your lawyer be divorced, him/herself?

As I write this at the end of the day-after-Christmas, snow is gently falling on my neighborhood on the Ridge. Because the hour is late and Christmas has passed, the strings of lights and other illuminated lawn decorations have gone dark. The scene out my window is absolutely beautiful in its silence and tranquility. Any moment now, I expect O-Ren Ishii and The Bride to solemnly step out and begin their dignified sword fight to the death, as they did at the House of Blue Leaves.

Here are my notes on Christmas 2006:

* Both of our sons are into planes, trains, dinosaurs, cars, and the space shuttle. In an effort to try to minimize fighting over the same toys, they both were presented with the exact same space shuttle toy (complete with "crawler", fuel tank & rocket boosters, cargo bay arm and satellite). Does that mean they don't fight over the toys? Of course not. The most common fight is over which shuttle belongs to whom. Alex is particularly concerned by this; Nolan is the unwitting mixer-upper.

* The boys also each received one model F-16 jet plane each. But they have different paint schemes. No fighting over those at all. The irony being, of course, that they are fighter planes. Go figure.

* This isn't the first year I've thought this, but here goes: it would make a lot more sense to spread out the distribution of the gifts over several days, rather than opening them all on one day. I think the kids would get more out of it, and it might nip the otherwise inevitable post-holiday let-down.

* Alex has been unusually reluctant to do what I ask/tell him to do these past few days. His teachers warned us that this is a common behavior at this time of year for kids this age, and will likely clear up when he gets back to school after the winter break.

* Nolan's verbal skills are absolutely exploding right now. (No, not literally.) Go, Nolan!

* I had a very busy day at work today. It felt good.

* Santa gave me a very nice pair of gloves. And an excellently framed copy of my first professionally published short fiction.

* The movie Cars, which was given to boys on DVD this Christmas, is an excellent movie, but just a wee bit too long.

* Did I mention that a couple of weeks ago, I was Santa Claus for our community-wide holiday party? I got to ride in a fire truck, which was quite a perq, and lead the lighting of the Christmas Tree. Wow, do kids dig Santa. Alex and Nolan were there, too. Boy, was that surreal. Watching my kids see me without really seeing me. Alex spoke to me briefly. He said he wanted a Spiderman this year. I told him that I seemed to recall giving that to him last year (which we did, on a tip that that was what he'd asked the school Santa for last year), and that he might enjoy some of the other things he'd be getting this year. It occurred to me to mention that he broke the Spiderman from last year, and he should take better care of his toys... but that might have been a little over the top, even for me.

* Santa couldn't judge any of the homemade cookies for the cookie contest, because Santa's beard and moustache were sewn just a little too tightly to allow cookies to be consumed without destroying the illusion. Alas.

* I still have yet to mail out several gifts we'd bought for good friends of ours who live out of town. And I have yet to write our annual Christmas letter. Eeek!

As I write this, the kids and Paulette are asleep upstairs, and I see the gently falling snow outside my kitchen window. It's so unseasonably peaceful after such a busy, bustling few weeks. And I can't help but wonder... will we still have power tomorrow morning?

Ah, Redmond.

Late last week, while I was out of town on business, a brutal wind storm swept through the region I call home, knocking down a large number of very tall trees and thereby making many important roads impassable, destroying more than a few houses, and leaving roughly a million people in the region without electricity (including, alas, my wife and children).

Some folks never saw any interruption to their power supply, of course, while others in the region are quite possibly going to go without for more than a week (and possibly much more, although that remains to be seen). While my own house and business had power restored this past weekend, I have family in the area that is likely not to see power resume until Thursday, and still other friends who are being told to wait until next weekend. (I began writing this on Monday, by the way, and those estimates remain unchanged as of late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning.)

There have been two interesting side-effects of this massive power outage, beyond the expected traffic snarls and the grocery stores having to throw out all their dairy products. Oh, and the run on flashlights and batteries at the region's Home Depots, et al.

The first side effect of note: gas lines. In fact, many of our traffic snarls are being caused by very long lines at the proverbial pumps. The region was warned a day or two in advance that this storm was coming, but folks apparently failed to fill up their tanks and, worse yet, failed to get gas for their back-up generators. Power generators are not uncommon around here this is a heavily wooded region of the country, the power lines are typically left above ground, and storms like this are not rare. QED. But this power outage has been longer than we'd typically have to deal with; even folks who were appropriately stocked up with a reserve of fuel for their back-up generators have been running them for a while, and had to fill up on gas. Hence, gas lines.

The second consequence has been smoke. After the wind storms passed, we've been left with very still air. At the same time, residents who have wood-burning stoves have been using them to heat their homes and apartments. *Also*, we've had more than a few idiot locals who have decided to dispose of the debris on their property -- including green wood -- by burning it. This was just made illegal in our area last year, but some locals still do it. With all this burning and with the air not moving, the Redmond basin and elsewhere are being treated to a rather sooty haze. Asthmatics, beware.

Throughout my life, I've enjoyed several opportunities to experience polis interruptus. A blizzard or three in Buffalo and Boston, a tornado in Florida, severe flooding and severe drought in a number of places, a wildfire in California, an earthquake in Seattle. I also had one near miss with a terrorist attack in London (I had been at the building one hour prior), and another near miss with a falling boulder at Multnomah Falls in Oregon (missed getting squashed by two hours).

And given all of these hits and near misses, how prepared am I for emergencies? Well, granted, there's not much prep work you can do in anticipation of a boulder falling on your head. But with the recent (and truly sad) story of a family of four getting stranded in the mountain roads of the Oregon Coast, you'd think I'd have thrown a box of Luna bars in the back of my Suburban Assault Vehicle, along with tire chains, road flares, and the Boy Scout's Official Handbook.

Nope.

Oh sure, I've taken CPR and emergency preparedness training (then again, I had those classes just before that earthquake, and I could probably use a refresher. But what if that brings on another earthquake?) -- yet, have I ordered a backup power generator for *my* house? Have I picked up a defibrillator and taught Alexander how to use it?

Truth be told, I haven't even gone Christmas shopping yet, and I've not only known that Christmas *could* happen, I've actually known the date it *will* happen. For quite some time, I've had this knowledge.

Just as the earthquake waited for me to get my emergency preparedness training, and just as the malls *should* still be open on Christmas Eve (I hope), so, too, I imagine that future crises will belay until I am adequately prepared. (This last windstorm struck, for example, while my minivan sat awaiting my arrival from San Francisco *with a full tank of gas*, and far, far away from any trees that could fall on it.)

I've got history on my side. I've got piles and piles of data to show that I've done okay with only adequate (or sub-adequate) preparation in the face of adversity, and most years I still manage to get some presents wrapped and under the tree before Christmas day has come and gone.

But correlation does not prove causation, and it turns out that another windstorm is heading our way. Tonight. If you don't hear from me for a few days, you'll kno---az4z/!dDD

Last week I was in downtown San Francisco to teach a database class. In the middle of one of our sessions, an air raid siren began to blare. I stopped my lecture and said:

"That can't be good."

"Oh, that," one of the attendees said, not phased in the least. "It's just Tuesday at noon. That happens every Tuesday at noon."

"What? San Francisco gets bombed?"

No. Apparently, they test their air raid sirens every week.

"Yeah," chimed in another. "If they *didn't* set off the siren, *that* would have been cause for alarm."

It's all so clear to me.

So, if you happen to be in San Francisco on a Tuesday, and noon comes and goes and you don't hear an air raid siren, then, well... duck and cover.

The secret to success in comedy, according to Steve Martin, is

timing. Now, I've been meaning for years to remark upon Seattle's self-proclaimed number one television newscast and their penchant for always leading the news with something weather related. I first moved to the area sometime in -- oh, I don't know, 1995?

And I first started maintaining my blog (originally known as an "online journal", since the term "blog" hadn't yet been pimped at the time) a year or three after that. All the while, I've been kicking around the idea of pointing out this silly habit of the Seattle infotainers to lead off their alleged news broadcasts with talk about the weather.

And here it is, years later, and I finally get around to mocking these guys, and what happens? Their silly report about snow just south of Canada actually presages an actual weather emergency for the area. Okay, it's a minor weather emergency compared to many that I've been through (blizzards, cold snaps, tornados, etc.), but it's still relatively nasty. The entire Puget Sound area has been pretty much shut down for this entire week so far, and there have been a few weather-related fatalities.

While we were only hit with a dusting of snow both where I live and where I work, the hilly roads and the dearth of any kind of heavy equipment to clear the roads has left a treacherous ice field between home and office. That doesn't stop me, of course -- I grew up in Buffalo, NY, where winter driving is one long, controlled skid, and besides, my current vehicle is an All Wheel Drive minivan (I'm *so* Seattle Yuppie) -- but it nonetheless means I actually have to pay attention while I drive. And that's tres un-Seattle.

Luckily for me, everyone else is afraid of the weather, so they stay at home altogether. That means I get to skid my way down the ridge without having to worry too much that there'll be another car at the bottom to block my path. Whee!

The kids are already blase about the whole deal. Oh, sure, the first morning, they wanted to get out and play in the snow. But when Alex learned that there wasn't enough snow to even make so much as one lame snowball, he was pretty much done. Nolan seemed to enjoy the change in scenery, but otherwise didn't know what to make of it all.

But while the kids have put it all into perspective by getting on with their lives, I'm happy to report that the local news station of record has not been so enlightened. Every single news story for the past week has been weather-related, and every single forecast has warned us that "things are going to get worse before they get better."

How many ways can you say, "Major employers in Seattle have decided to close their campuses?" Or, "People who drive too fast on the ice are getting into accidents?"

Watch the local news and count the ways.

I don't have a department (category? room?) in this House of Cards named "irony", but if I did, that's where I'd have to file my entry for today:

I really dig this post by my writing buddy James Osborne. Among other things, it's about blogdeath. And the only thing worse than blogging about blogging is blogdeath. Or, perhaps, blogging about blogging about blogging about blogdeath.

Help! I'm trapped in an ironic loop!

Tonight's top story on the local news: SNOW!

SNOW! SNOW has been spotted fifty miles away, mainly to the north and along the Canadian border in the higher elevations of the mountains.

One town just south of the Canadian border actually saw flurries on the interstate in the evening. SNOW ON THE INTERSTATE! AHHH!

Local news is a very funny thing in the Seattle area. The most-watched local news is a television station that, whenever possible, has the weather as its lead story for every broadcast. If it rains, it's newsworthy because, well, it's rain. If it doesn't rain, it's newsworthy because it didn't rain. Snow is cause for a special edition of the news (even though it snows here every winter; we live in a snow-capped mountain range, for crying out loud), as are thunderstorms, hail, sleet, warm temperatures, cold temperatures, el nino, la nina, the "pineapple express", high winds, low winds, no winds, and average winds.

I'm not making this up. This is the kind of thing that sounds too goofy to be true, and yet it amazes me how reliable it is.

When the Seattle Seahawks made it to the NFC Championship game last year (for those readers who don't follow football, this was the game to determine who would go to the Super Bowl), I was curious to see how they would work the weather into the lead story. And they did. On the night before the game, they talked about how the stadium was preparing for the game. The lead story was about how they had painted the grass with the "NFC Championship" logo and had to use special fans and tarps to enable the paint to dry despite a light drizzle.

Yes, that's right: the night before finding out if the Seahawks would go to the Super Bowl, the lead news story was not only about the weather, it was also about WATCHING PAINT DRY.

I'm sure Seattle is not the only town in the US where so little of note is happening that the weather is always the lead story. But what amazes me is that this is true even though Seattle's weather is so inescapably boring.

To paraphrase the allegedly Chinese curse: "may you live is mostly cloudy times, with occasional flurries along the Canadian border."

Paulette and I took the kids with us when we went to this year's WorldCon (The World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention), which we attended to reconnect with the science fiction writing community. This is the first time we flew with both kids.

Luckily for us, we had booked direct flights. Luckily for us, it turns out that both kids were just fine on the flights both on the way down and on the way back, even given the couple of hours we spent sitting at the airport waiting for our flights. (The flights were on time; we had simply chosen to arrive very early in order to reduce the likelihood of other logistical problems.) Luckily for us, the flights were on time and pretty much event free.

Unluckily for me, I was still recovering from The Cold That Wouldn't Go Away, so I was dreadfully congested and the resulting pain in my sinuses during takeoff and landing was brutal. But hey, luckily for me, I at least could take my sinus medication that I had with me. We couldn't bring the kids' sinus medication with us on the main cabin (but, again, we were lucky that they didn't end up needing any).

My sinus woes notwithstanding, everything that could go right for us with regard to flying did go right for us, and I know just how lucky we were. Their were so many potential failure points, it's amazing we got through unscathed.

Flying with children on a commercial flight these days is obnoxious even under the best of circumstances. Consider:

• You are not allowed to bring any liquids with you through security (except for baby formula, if you have a baby with you, or prescription medicine with your name on it). Children's Benadryl or other decongestants for the kids are, by necessity, in liquid form. And they are not prescription. If you have any reason to believe that your kids might have clogged sinuses, you'll have to try to take care of business before you check your bags and just hope the medicine doesn't stop working before you land. If, like us, you'd prefer not to medicate your kids unless it's proven to be necessary, then you just have to hope it's not necessary.
• You are also not allowed to bring creams. This would include the kind you use to treat diaper rash. So, again, you have to take care of business before you check your bags and then hope that in the time you spend waiting for your plane, and then for the duration of the flight itself, and then during the time waiting for your checked bags, your kid's diaper rash doesn't become so unbearable that he or she feels the need to complain about it loudly. In our case, Nolan *did* have a very nasty diaper rash. But, again, we lucked out and he didn't complain about it while we were at the airport or stuck on the plane.
• If you have connecting flights, the odds against you getting away unscathed from giving up your creams or children’s medicines go up exponentially.
• Don't forget to follow TSA recommendations and get to your airport a couple hours before your flight's scheduled departure!

Nevermind that flights these days are inevitably overbooked, and that crowding also has an impact on your and your children's comfort. If the trends in "air safety" continue, you can bet that families will be doing much less traveling by air in the coming years and that, consequently, we will begin to transform into a less mobile society than we've been trending up to this point. (Whether that is a bad or good thing is another matter, entirely).

As I've noted elsewhere (and often), I have a few friends who happen to be conspiracists. They believe that every upheaval in our society is the product of some massive, secret coordinated effort. In order to know which group is massively coordinating in secret to bring about the upheaval, one is supposed to look at who benefits (since, as we know, conspirators are perfect in their ability to bring about their desired goals).

I must therefore conclude that the most recent terror plot that was thwarted by the British authorities was secretly set into motion by Evian, Colgate-Palmolive, and Vidal Sassoon. After all, who has benefited the most from the new security restrictions at airports banning bottled water, hair gel, and toothpaste?

Alas, our next scheduled family flight will involve multiple connections.

Yippee.

I've received a number of interesting responses to my Ken Lay Shoulda Faked His Own Death tidbit, many of which were not posted to the comments section for that entry but were, instead, sent to me privately. No doubt, they wished to be shielded from the Real Killers.

As regular readers of my blog will attest, I am not generally given to believe in conspiracy theories whereby a bunch of people get involved in hookwinking everybody else, and those everybody elses are none-the-wiser (except for all those everybodies who believe it was a conspiracy). Unlike Oliver Stone, for example, I do not believe that the FBI, the CIA, the Mafia, the pro-Castro Cubans, the anti-Castro Cubans, the US military, the Military Industrial Complex, and Bob Guccione all worked together to kill President John F. Kennedy. Rather, I believe that the assassination was the work of one lone gunman: the Cigarette Smoking Man.

Likewise, I do not believe that the Trilateral Commission was behind New Coke, or that some Vast Rightwing Conspiracy created James Carville as a shill to discredit Democrats. The problem with most conspiracy theories is that they rely too much upon the competence of the conspirators not only to carry out their nefarious schemes and benefit from them without any fallout from the Law of Unintended Consequences, but also to get away with their plots and keep them all entirely secret.

That said, while it's fun to imagine that recently-convicted-yet-legally-exhonerated-because-he-died-before-sentencing Ponzi schemer Ken Lay could have faked its own death, the idea collapses under it's own weight. The problem is the definitive autopsy. Even if the Federalis who owed Kennyboy a debt or two chose to "look the other way" in the case of any dispute, the fact is that there were/are simply too many people who have a vested (and legal) interest in making sure that the body really did belong to the Kenster.

As my wife pointed out to me, that list would include:

• the prosecuting attorneys
• the judge in this most recent case
• his life insurance policy holders
• his own attorneys
• his heirs
• his bookie
• thousands of reporters who would love to crack such a case
• and millions of his victims who'd like to know for sure that the perp is well and truly dead.

In the comments section to the aforementioned essay, one of my brilliant readers notes that if Ken Lay's heirs didn't bump him off, they should have -- and, it would be cheaper for them to cover up the murder than it would be for Kennyboy to cover up a faked death.

Another reader suggests murder by non-heirs:

What if [Ken Lay's] death was done as retribution for the complete debacle. Maybe a higher power decided that ol' Ken had a good run, had taken the fall for the Enron fiasco and now it was time to sweep the disaster under the rug for good to avoid further investigation. If there were other parties who were involved in Enron but due to their power had remained untouched by Ken's finger of death they certainly would want to move past this issue. And what better way to do that than to eliminate the "responsible" party. America's conscious would be soothed that Ken is in a warm place and would be more interested in the bumblings of the Bobagadooch in the not so round office. Then the trail would end and no more would come of it.

This theory would give credence to a covered up death (few witnesses, cremation) but would also allow for a gory autopsy to confirm, at least in the public's eye, a full death.

The autopsy, as reviewed by many medical professionals, indicates that Mr. Lay died of heart failure resulting from years of gunky build-up in his arteries. Sure, he *could* have been bumped off and enough of just the right people could have been bought off to endorse the long-standing heart disease scenario. Anything's possible.

But even though it lacks the sexiness of a good juicy conspiracy, I'm inclined to go with the 'natural causes' explanation. Hmmm. Natural causes. There's something else the Cigarette Smoking Man knows something about...

This idea was presented to me over dinner recently by a smart fella who, I gotta admit, made a compelling case. My humble essay is simply a re-framing of his idea:

Imagine that you are Billionaire Arch-Villian Kenneth Lay. You have an effload of money. You are the smartest man in any room you walk into. And you've just been convicted of the sodomization of thousands of shareholders, customers, and government agencies by way of your Ponzi scheme corporate shell, Enron. Sentencing has not yet been completed, and you are out on bail. Oh, and you have a cadre of wealthy and well-connected friends, including the former governor of your home state and now President, who has a cute nickname for you.

Oh, and you don't want to go to jail.

How much would it cost you to fake your own death? How many people would have to be bought off to make that happen? One to pretend to have found the body and phone it in, one to three medical personnel to declare the body belongs to Ken Lay and the body is dead? Was there an autopsy? Does the county coroner need to be bought off? I'm certain the funeral director and one or two members of his/her staff would have to be purchased. Let's guess that anywhere from four to twenty people would need to be bought off. I'm guessing we'd actually come in at the lower end of that range, because the fewer people involved, the better.

How much, exactly, would it take to buy off a doctor? Even one with a decent reputation, who presumably would have a higher price? Would three million do it? Five? I doubt a mortician would require anywhere near that much.

Avoiding any kind of investigation would be easy. You've got friends in Very High Places, remember.

So, a few people say they saw a dead body, and that the body was Ken Lay's. Nobody official questions whether they are telling the truth because, hey, there's no reason to suspect otherwise, and nobody would order an investigation in any case. Even at five mill a pop for twenty co-conspirators, you're talking no more than 100 million at the absolute most to pull this off.

Chump change.

Hmmm.

So when my friend mentioned this theory (actually, he's quite convinced that Kennyboy is alive), I thought to myself: what would you expect to be true if the man in question did, indeed, fake his death?

Well, you'd expect that the body in question would be cremated. That there'd be very few witnesses to his death. That there'd be no autopsy.

Well, guess what? The body was cremated before the funeral.

There were very few witnesses to his death.

And there was an autopsy. A big fat autopsy complete with gruesome details and blood samples and all kinds of verifiable stuff. This doesn't rule out fakery completely, but it certainly ups the price and increases the likelihood of some piece of the conspiracy breaking down.

Ken Lay is almost certainly dead. But if he didn't fake his own death, he oughtta have.

Some (alleged) chick has staked a claim at "myspace", this online community thing, and posted an unused e-mail address at one of my domain names which means whenever someone updates her (if she is, indeed, a she) "space" by posting comments or the like, I get the notifications.

I wanted to put a stop to this by following the link that myspace puts into the notification e-mails, but then I'd get asked for a password, which of course I don't have. Well. Since the e-mail is coming to me anyway, I simply clicked on "I forgot my password", and lo and behold, the password was e-mailed to me. I logged in and checked out this (alleged) chick's settings. I figured that if I could find an alternate e-mail address or something, I could just remove the address that is dropping mail into my e-mail box and set up everything to go to "her" other address.

Myspace has made the news a bit lately because it is a community that attracts teens, and there have been some infamous recent events where adult predators have been posing as teens on the online community to set up real-world meetings with actual teens. This kind of nastiness aside, there are other kinds of pretenders who create an alter ego on this or other on-line communities to pose as someone they are not, often to become a disruptive member of whatever groups they end up joining. It's all very strange and clearly involves people who have much more free time than I have, but it is also the reason I put my tongue-in-cheek when I allude to this chick as an (alleged) chick.

That all said, after poking around this account's settings, I've come to believe that the account really was set up by a high school-aged girl who lives in some other state in some town I've never heard of. The account settings that are not revealed in the public areas of myspace (but which I can see, because I have the password) lead me to believe that this girl typed in an e-mail address at one of my domains as a simple mistake (and no, I won't post the details that lead me to this conclusion), and there are other indications that this is not a hoax identity.

This leaves me with a quandary. I was unable to find any other e-mail settings (apparently, you can only set up one e-mail address for your myspace account), but I have the girl's name and hometown... and, of course, complete access to her myspace account until she changes her e-mail address setting. It's not enough for her to change her password -- every time she changes her password, I'll get the e-mail that confirms it.

So... do I have a moral obligation to notify her that she has given a complete stranger access to her myspace account? Does being a good citizen require me to try to track down a home phone number or contact her high school or e-mail one of her "friends" on her contact list in order to get word to her that she's made this error? (Words cannot convey how resistant I am to that idea.) Or, does being a good citizen require me to dead-letter an e-mail address on one of my domains, the electronic equivalent of turning a blind eye?

What do *you* think?

Who would do such a thing?

The Top5 Humor List folks have put together a blantantly anti-Valentine's Day site called Bad Cupid. Take, for example, their Valentine's Day Breakup Haikus (please).

What kind of a sick-o would contribute something like this?

Or this?

Or this?

What kind of person would write such things?

I'll never tell.

I take this brief break between having wrapped and set up all of the presents for the kids under the Christmas Tree and the carnage that must inevitably follow when the kids discover said gifts, to wish you all a Merry Christmas.

If, however, my wishing you a Merry Christmas is in any way troubling to you -- whether because you observe neither the religious nor the secular traditions of this holiday or because you simply prefer to take offense where none is intended -- then allow me, please, to wish you a Happy X-akkah, or a Happy X-zaa, or a Happy X-tivus, or a Happy X-stice, or a Happy X-Year, or simply a pleasant weekend, whatever your inclinations should favor.

As for me, I have enjoyed spending the 24th in the company of my family and good friends, and I look forward to enjoying more of the same on the 25th.

"May your pleasures be many; your troubles be few...."

Yesterday was a day that will live in infamy.

Today ain't so hot, either, historically speaking.

In honor of John Lennon, who was killed on this day in 1980, let us pause to reflect upon how much he and Marx contributed to modern culture.

Am I the only one who finds Barbara Streisand's Christmas Album to be the absolute height of irony?

A quick update on life at Casa Rousselle:

When you have a couple of kids in the house, a cold can take root in the home and never quite get away. A cold has been bouncing back and forth between Paulette and Alex for weeks now (mostly manifesting itself as sniffles in Alex and sore throat in Paulette), but a few days ago it got everybody and it got worse. Congestion. Coughing. Even some more unhappy bodily reactions that I shan't go into. Plenty of physical discomfort to go around.

And yet, we've been doing okay, by and large. Nolan started crawling -- the real deal, not just his "commando crawl" with arms only, but getting his legs into the act -- on the Sunday before Thanksgiving. His two lower teeth are in, and he remains happy as a clam. (How happy are clams, anyway?)

Alex is developing an interest in time -- mostly motivated by his dawning comprehension that Sesame Street can't just appear on the TV on demand the way his favorite videos can (with his parents' cooperation).

We had an excellent Thanksgiving get together with my aunt who lives thirty miles or so away.

Life is generally good. We have much to be thankful for -- especially when it comes to our good health (current colds notwithstanding), our happy children, our comfortable living quarters, and having so many good friends and relatives in our lives.

Time-wise, we remain a bit extended. We hope to get our "Change of Address" announcements (we moved in March) and Nolan's birth announcement (he was born in April) mailed out sometime within the next couple of weeks. This clears the way for us to get our holiday cards mailed out sometime in mid-2007.

But enough about us. How are you?

PS: For the first time I can recall *ever* in my life, I have managed (with my wife's prodding) to purchase a Christmas tree during the Thanksgiving weekend. Yikes! Alex has already announced to us several times today, "I want presents." His wish list on my Amazon account will no doubt get quite a work-out....

I love playing with the English language. Here are some words I made up for various things I've written:

• abusual: dangerously atypical
• bootishly: the way people walk indoors in Buffalo, NY in the winter
• misanthropomorphic: to hate animated Disney animals
• posteriority complex: obsessed with the quest for the callipygian ideal
• pyronecrobestiapedophilia: an alternative lifestyle even PETA wouldn't approve
• therapologist: someone who defends psychiatric counseling

I'll post others as I remember them.

So, my wife and I bought the TV show "24 - Season Two" on DVD and spent a couple of weeks watching an episode or three each evening after the kids were put to bed. Having now seen the first two seasons this way, I must heartily recommend "24". Wonderful fun, with an emphasis on plot reversals:

In a "reversal", the plot or action suddenly veers off in another direction from what was expected. The reversal can be good *or* bad. It doesn't always have to be bad. A really good reversal changes the goals/questions for the characters involved.

If you are a writer or an aspiring writer, you could do worse than to take in how 24 approaches plot reversals (regardless of how you evaluate the plot holes).

As a friend of mine commented recently, watching a couple of seasons of 24 back-to-back can give one an acute attack of paranoia. These episodes are all about conspiracies within conspiracies, and they can make you a bit jumpy.

Inspired by the gleeful paranoia-euphoria of being fresh off of season two of "24", and thinking of a couple of very dear friends of mine who live their lives in such a state, I pounded out my little tidbit, "Choose Your Own Conspiracy". It was a lark, intending to mock how quickly and irrationally we can sometimes resort to blaming conspiracies when simpler, more credible forces are more likely at work.

One such friend (ie, one of my friends who sees conspiracies within conspiracies as being rather pervasive) posted a response chiding me for being naive. I'm going to repeat her comment here because it deserves some elucidation:

Much like a child who is completely unaware that he is, in fact, the reason why his parents got divorced, you are happily clueless.

You are blissfully unaware of what is going on around you and your own culpability therein.

You won't even acknowledge a conspiracy that was so clearly pointed at you!

It is arguably amusing, but very, very costly.

Now, this sounded to a couple of other faithful readers like an "insane" slam from "the angry left". At first blush, it certainly seems nasty.

It was none of these.

Like many shouting matches that pretend to be reasoned debate on the talking head news shows, the conversation here is falling apart due to lack of context. Let's back up a little bit and provide that context.

Jehan and I used to work together for a well known national brand that she occasionally refers to as "thatplace.com". She and I have spoken often and at great length about the different kinds of conspiracies that may or may not be plausible in the realms of politics, racial profiling, and the day-to-day grind on the job.

I've never been public about my reasons for leaving thatplace.com except in the vaguest of terms -- and I intend to keep it that way -- but it is not perhaps much of a secret that before I left, my successful team was reorganized out of existence, much to the dismay of my team and myself.

Jehan was a member of that team, and remains one of the most talented devs I've ever had the pleasure to work with. Like most of my former team (and myself), she eventually left thatplace for much the same reasons that the rest of us did. She and other members of my former team showed an amazing amount of loyalty to me and to each other, for which I will always be profoundly grateful.

Jehan's and my on-going conversation has included reflections upon things that happened to me during my last few months at thatplace. It has always seemed to me that those things were obviously part of the larger reorg (and aftermath) that engulfed our entire division of the company. There were, it seemed to me, sound business decisions behind the reorg, however much I may not have agreed with them.

My friend and former co-worker believes otherwise. She believes that the events that unfolded were designed not for business reasons, but for personal and political reasons. To be blunt, she believes that I and my team were not collateral damage, but deliberate targets.

Our (hers and mine) long-running conversation on the subject gets further complicated by two things: my position is reasonable and requires no evidence, whereas her position is less reasonable, requires evidence, and yet she nonetheless has enough evidence to make a compelling case.

Now, re-read her comment above. See how context changes everything? She's not raving about vast right-wing conspiracies (which is what I believe some readers have come to think). She is mocking me for mocking conspiracy theorists. Here, I was mocking those who would be so paranoid that they would see a conspiracy in the destruction following a hurricane. She counters that I would be so blind as to deny an obvious conspiracy that targeted me directly and personally... insofar as she believes this is exactly the case.

Did this clear anything up? I hope so. Now, let's get down to business.

One of my faithful readers is another friend whom I met in a completely different context, named Allen. Since very, very few readers of my blog could know the circumstances to which Jehan is alluding, it is only reasonable that her remarks should be misinterpreted by many of my readers. But Allen went so far as to label her response as being from "the angry left".

Allen, you're a good man and I love you like a brother. (You know, the brother who moved away to Canada like some commie-symp blue-stater, so we don't talk about him so much at the dinner table; that kind of brother.) But just as the "angry left" was being ridiculous to keep crying about some phantom "vast right-wing conspiracy", so too is it ridiculous to cry about some phantom "angry left".

Not all who oppose us are necessarily part of a unified enemy. Sometimes, we are opposed by our dearest allies. Not all who disagree with us oppose us. Intelligent people will disagree about the best way to accomplish common goals.

It's true that Jehan's remarks did read a little harsh, and I appreciate your standing up to defend me. But, well, your remarks were a little harsh, too.

Can't we all just get along?

As part of my high-tech whirlwind database life, I occasionally travel to locales far and wide to teach accountants and IT professionals at law firms how to use a database language called SQL (structured query language). Sounds exciting, doesn't it? This is excitement personified.

When a law firm hosts one of these classes -- which is to say, when they provide the training facilities and allow others to attend -- they are accorded a couple of "free" seats in the class. Typically, the employees of the host law firm who attend the class run the risk of getting less out of the class than their counterparts who travel from nearby towns to attend.

Why? Because when a person attends training within their own firm's offices, he or she is often called away for a quick-emergency-meeting or to put out this-one-little-fire or something along those lines. Their training time is not respected by their colleagues because -- Hey! -- they are there at the office anyway, so what harm could it be to pull them out of the class for one teensie-weensie-moment.

Attendees who pay full fare and come in from another firm are not at their office mate's (or boss's) beck and call, and therefore can't be pulled aside to attend to a quick little problem.

For lack of a better term, I'll call this the "locals' lament". It's convenient geographically and economically, at least, for you to be the host but the distractions of being on your home turf keep pulling you away.

So it is for me and this year's North American Science Fiction Convention. My wife and I attempt every year to attend the annual World Science Fiction Convention (typically held during the days leading into the Labor Day weekend) because it features a strong track for professional writers in the field. When "WorldCon" is held outside of North America (this year's was held in Scotland), there is a smaller version held on our home continent, the aforementioned "NASFiC". This year's NASFiC is being held in our home town.

Should be convenient, no? Should make our lives easier, because we don't have so much to arrange in terms of travel and taking care of the kids and all that stuff, right?

Nope. Just as we missed the World Horror Convention when it was held here a couple of years ago, we find our attendance at this year's NASFiC very, very challenging. Difficulties and distractions at the office and at home have led me to miss all of the ceremonies, panels, and parties thus far. Yesterday, I left work in time to make dinner with some friends in town for the Con, but that's the most I've managed so far. Instead of our annual week-long participation, it looks like Paulette and I will be able to get two days this weekend at the most.

Next year's WorldCon will be held in LA. We look forward to having it away from home again (as usual), so that we can once more take full advantage of it.

I love this word:

Schlimmbesserung

This is a German compound word that means to correct a mistake with another mistake. (The transliteration is "bad bettering" or "bad improvement".) This came up recently on an e-mail list where everyone was correcting everyone else's spelling of a given word, and each got it wrong, in turn. Very funny.

On the recent "California Condor" joke/story I posted where a friend of mine said that he made it up all by himself, a reader rebutted:

The condor/eagle/owl story was surely not made up by your friend. I saw that in Maxim I belive about 2 years ago, I