great weekend

more to come

grand slam

southwest burger. two miller lites. sam's uptown cafe. 8 june 2013.

because this stupid app didn't save a post i spent half an hour writing, you'll have to guess why I posted this fucking picture.

addendum: in an odd reversal, what began life as a column is now a blog post. an expansion of the effed-up blog post, but this one nearly made it to print:

As a young – or rather, mostly green – father to a pair of toddlers, I’d be remiss to take a day off and leave all the child-rearing to their mother.

So kicking up my heels and sitting in front of the tube all day Sunday probably isn’t in the cards for me – not while the eldest is bent on teaching the youngest one-word lessons in capitalism (“Mine!”) and the youngest is learning how to crawl onto chairs in order to summit the dining room table.

I suspect if I asserted my rights to a lazy, leisurely Father’s Day, my wife Kris would ensure it would be my last.

But … Sweet woman that she is, the missus took the kids to her parents last weekend while I tended to some work and she got an extra set of hands to wrangle the young ‘uns.

Being that she tries to keep the family eating healthy, her last words as she left me to fend for myself were, “Don’t eat a lot of crap.”

I told her I’d do my best.

And I meant it. I had visions of a quick trip to the grocery store for some easy-to-throw-together ingredients – chicken breasts, eggs, bacon, some Pillsbury biscuits – and I’d whip something up bachelor style as I worked my way down my to-do list.

Well … things being the way they were, I wound up downtown for the long haul and knew I had to squeeze in a meal somehow that would bridge the lunch I missed and the dinner on the horizon.

My mind gravitated to an old haunt with a great grill. So I hoofed it to Sam’s on Capitol Street and ordered a pepperjack cheese and bacon burger – the Southwest -- with fries and a Miller Lite.

I hadn’t been there in ages, I figured; what was the harm? I’ll swing by the grocery store after Mass on Sunday.

Given that I didn’t finish all my business Saturday, I was back in the office the next morning to finish it. I needed a Tudor’s biscuit. A Mickey combo – Canadian bacon, egg and cheese – with a side of hash browns and decaf.

I never did make it to the grocery store. And I remembered that Sam’s made a really good reuben.

I fared no better Monday. I’d promised Kris I’d tidy up and make the living room a little less lived-in from the explosion of toys that the youngsters detonated.

There were heat-and-serve rolls in the freezer that made for breakfast as I made my way through toys and books and laundry. At the end of the day, I had to make sure that Recovery Sports Grill’s fish and chips were as tasty as the last time I had them. They did not disappoint.

I’d like to say that the bar food trifecta ended there, but I wound up going for the Grand Slam with a return to Sam’s for another reuben on Tuesday, too.

Kris and kids are home now and I’m eating like a grownup again. While I enjoyed being able to work unencumbered, I was really missing the sound of their tiny voices and their tiny hugs.

While I was working straight for days on end, I suppose you could say I did get my time to take it easy, even if it was only being leisurely with my diet. Not a bad Father’s Day present.

as kris is my best editor, i presented it to her thursday before submitting it to the paper. she scrunched her nose at the end and said, "it's too ..."

that's all i needed to hear. "self-indulgent," i finished. kris nodded. 

a better blog post than a newspaper column. i'll have to agree. so i snuck off for an hour off copydesk to bang this out instead.

fatherly words

after mass today, having watched me struggle with an exceptionally squirmy little boy during the service, the grandfatherly gentleman at the opposite end of our pew shared with me a good observation about parenting: the hours are long, but the years are short.

(i was relieved that the boy's back and forth in the pew wasn't annoying him, as the fellow smiled and spoke kindly to the boy as he stacked missals before mass and returned them after the service. after sharing his words, the parishioner offered his bona fides as the father to six kids.)

absolute lifesaver

the stack exchange answer page. a real lifesaver.

this url -- http://webapps.stackexchange.com/q/27414 -- led to an answer that spared me no small amount of remorse and heartbreak.

somehow, through multiple "ctrl+z" strikes, the entire contents of this entry was replaced by this entry.

thinking it was a browser glitch, i didn't notice what had happened to the entry and closed out of the browser entirely, thereby negating simply clicking back a few pages to find the original entry, then copying and pasting.

when i reopened the browser it was only then that i realized what had happened.

for the better part of half an hour, i rooted through my history files trying to find some image of the page to copy and paste.

my last act of desperation led me to search "finding cached pages" in the google, which led me to this page.

google's cached page from 3:56 a.m. saturday.

i republished the blog entry, copied the url, and pasted it into the google cache url. and, heavens to babbage, the original post appeared, with links and photos intact. i merely had to copy and paste into the composing field, click "update" and the entry was restored.

all the links worked (i discovered a bit of missing html code) and then i went back and made the edits i was trying to make before i cocked the whole thing up.

thank you, google, for your code and your cache. this was a very important post for more reason than you could know.

the kids

julia and the boy, november 2011.

the boy enjoys the company of his friends and cousins.

his oldest friend is my friend carrie's girl, julia.

on more than one occasion, he has said, "i need to see julia." (usually when he is facing the prospect of his bad behavior preventing that very thing.)

they've played together regularly since carrie moved back to town. lots of tutu- and tiara-wearing for the boy. dolls, too.

they seem to enjoy each other's company.

so it's going to be a little strange for the boy to wind up only seeing her a few times a year.

we'll see them on our beach trip next month. and then again in october, for carrie's wedding.

and then ...

who knows? they'll grow older. julia is almost four years older than the boy, so it's likely she'd have outgrown him as a playmate, but i'd like to think that they'd have remained friends if by no other means than by continual contact.

as it is, well, maybe they'll sort of be like those cousins you only see a few times a year.

i guess i'll just have to be the guy who documents who his first best friend was.

julia and the boy, october 2012.