In Years Gone By

Maybe you've done this: One day you take a look at your closet and decide it's time to clear out some junk. Maybe it's Spring Cleaning time. And in the process of throwing out the pants you'll never fit into again, the single socks, the utterly-beyond-redemption underwear and out-of-style shirts, you trip over an old, dusty cardboard box. And in that box are some faded family photos that have followed you on every move from your first apartment, gathering dust, never looked at.

So you take them out and spend an emotional half-hour (or maybe a whole day) going over them, your original task forgotten, drifting in a timeless universe of your own creation, remembering things that you should never have forgotten, and other things that you wish you could forget.

Maybe there is a bottle of wine involved.

So anyways, I recently re-discovered this blog thingy. Covered in dust, the Blogger UI completely unrecognizable from the last time I visited here, but still here, and so I thought I would reward that stubborn continuity with a splinter of attention, and, I dunno, blog something.

Here are some things:

About 2.5 years ago, Wife gave birth to a beautiful baby, who changed our lives. Again. Thing 2 is a hilarious character, who daily challenges us to be the better versions of ourselves. He loves to watch Top Gear, and can identify about a dozen car brands on sight. He's bossy, opinionated, loud and hilarious. Everything I love about my wife, in a convenient pocket-sized format.

About 1.5 years ago, PerpetualStartup finally disintegrated into its component molecules. When the dust settled, I was out of a job. Just in time for Christmas.

About a year ago, I got a job offer from Amazon. I decided, on a lark, that it would be fun to pick up the wife and kids and move across the country to Seattle, which is in the United States. As with any life change of this magnitude, there have been some growing pains. But we have grown, which is also important.

We don't have any family here, and all our old friends are three timezones away, which casts a sort of dark cloud over the whole move (Seattle readers will pause here to roll their eyes. "Another comment on the weather!"), but I now regularly see IronMan, who flies down to Seattle from Victoria occasionally on business. So there's a silver lining (for me, anyway).

Seattle, on the sunniest day of the year.

About three months ago, Thing 1, who is now 9 years old, (OH-EM-GEE), learned to ride a two-wheeler without training wheels. It is only due to my own parental negligence that this has taken as long as it has, but basically, it went like this:

1. We bought him a bike
2. He rode around with training wheels for about a day, then we took them off.

And now we go on semi-regular bike rides along the canal, down to the lake to watch the sailboats and sea-planes, and feed the geese and whatnot. He's super proud of his new bike-riding skills, and so are we!

About a month ago, I took the family back to Montreal, which had attained a sort of mythic status in all our minds that Seattle was having a hard time living up to. Many things were as we remembered them (friends, family, horrible construction delays and crumbling infrastructure). Some things were not-quite-as-mythic as we remembered them (the food, the weather). We had a wonderful, relaxing time, and I got to see The Boxer and The Directrix, along with a smattering of the PerpetualStartup crew of old. I think this mini-vacation gave us a dose of medicine for our homesickness, while at the same time somehow making us appreciate Seattle a little more. Maybe that's just me, though.

About a week ago, Thing 2 told me "Daddy, I want a BMW."

Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Les Paul Died today.

ThinFast is leaving for a couple years, and this makes me very sad. She was my favorite work-friend-who-is-a-girl-but-only-in-a-totally-platonic-way-honey-i-swear. I'm sure there is a word for that in German. She refers to me as her "work husband".

Ironman, my brother-from-another-mother, having cast his eyes longingly to the West for many years now, has finally caved, and weighs anchor for that halcyon coast in a little bit. Gone forever. How fucked up is that?

These are the types of events that could make me cry, if I weren't already an emotional cripple. As it is, I’m feeling pretty hard-done-by at the moment.

Wife (whose charity and patience I can never hope to deserve) keeps trying to get me to talk about my feelings.

Which, perversely, is hard to do without making everything somehow worse.

Obélix, recent hauptmann to my obergefreiter, has also been very supportive during these trying times, asking me how I feel, gifting me with desserts, trying to fondle my buttocks, "do [I] need a hug?", etc. Like his fictional namesake, he is enthusiastic, sensitive, fiercely loyal, energetic, and sometimes a bit soup-au-lait. A really good guy, in general, though a little naive. For example, he thinks he’s sneaky. Thinks I don’t know that he reads this blog (hah! piégé, mon ami!).

Obélix has a healthy appetite for good food. He eats the way the rest of us wish we could. So it was almost painful to watch him try to negotiate our communal platters of Ethiopian food last night, when we hit the town for a last hurrah, to wish ThinFast bon voyage (and for God’s sake, a speedy return, please!). Poor guy.

Well, I thought the food was great. After getting our hands dirty at the restaurant, we hit up Pang Pang Karaoke with about ten other people, and all crooned at each other until our throats were raw.

Surprise of the evening: SoftServe, who you’ve never heard of, but who’s been with PerpetualStartup since that ill-advised foray into the sleazy world of Precious Metals Redistribution. This guy has a voice like velvet, drizzled with honey, rolled into a fine cigar, and smoked with 12-year-old port. We were all suitably impressed. Still waters indeed.

Anyways, so that’s basically it. Pretty down in the dumps. But on the up side, Wife is once again knocked-up. That's right, I've been busy manufacturing replacements for all those bastards who are leaving.

Screw you guys!

Also, Directrix will be returning to PerpetualStartup in September (probably), so that'll be another friendly face.

P.S.: It has come to the attention of the editorial board that there has been a recent precipitous decline in the quantity and quality of intellectual content in this blog. So, next time I'll try and give you something educational. We'll start easy, maybe some Cantor Set Theory or something.

Blessed Miscreancy, That Abides No Demarcation

Where am I, you ask? That this call to action should awake me from my slumber and renew the vital juices of my pallid, hunkering muse; this is your wish, is it?

I picture this deviceful anthropomorphism as a sort of shriveled salamander, crouching blind by some bio-luminescent underground lake, awaiting only the siren call of Yog-Sothoth to manifest a magnificent rebirth. No sound penetrates the Stygian darkness. No light falls on these unseeing eyes. It is the long, dark twilight of the soul.

Alright Boxer, you win. I'll blog something, I guess.

But hey, enough about me! How have you been? Google Analytics still periodically deposits a tangy and pungent digital turd in my inbox, so I know someone's reading this stuff. And to you I say: thanks for not giving up.

Here's a run-down of some random stuff that's been going on:

• Brother's completed his transformation and emerged from his Chrysalis a full-fledged American (or landed immigrant, or migrant worker, or something. I can't really get my head around the legal details). The whole family recently trucked off to Jersey for the foreseeable future, which is kind of sad. Son has been clamoring for his cousins ever since.


• Speaking of Son, he's turned Six! It puts me in mind of not-too-long-ago, when Six Years Old was the sort of unofficial demarcation between baby and childhood. Put away childish things, boy. You are of two worlds, now. Not man, not child, but some curious alloy, and subject to all the many challenges, and not very many of the rewards, of both your constituent metals. Here are some pictures of Brother and I, at a similarly tender age.


• That ridiculous Gold Buying thing is over and done with, but I'm not really allowed to talk about it.


• ThinFast has announced her departure from PerpetualStartup for the sunny shores of (ugh) Toronto. Her reasons are her own, but we are all very sad to see her go.


• Many other interesting things happened, but their respective statutes of limitations have expired, so I will light on them but briefly: IronMan and Goldylocks had a beautiful baby boy. The family and I visited The Boxer's farm and milked the chickens (turns out Son has a little crush on BigKid. His eyes still light up whenever I mention her!). Winter finally ended, and the rainy season began, with no end in sight. We've pulled Son out of his English/French/Greek school in favor of one that won't cause him heart palpitations every time we mention it.

...Meh, and that's about it for now. But wait! Big things coming.

Big, HUGE things!

We Are Confronted With Insurmountable Opportunities

ThinFast is headed to Vegas this week, for reasons entirely unconnected with CTIA. And next week, IronMan tags along with Pow for reasons that are CTIA-related.

I don't know why you would even care, or what would impel me to write about that, but there it is.

Son has, of late - but wherefore I know not - lost all mirth, foregone all custom of exercise. He's never been an enthusiastic scholar, but something (we think) happened last Wednesday at school to make him truly dread the engine of his education. Thursday morning, in the car on the way to school, he complained of a stomachache. When that didn't work, he basically freaked right the fuck out, so Wife, motherly pity in her heart, brought him back home.

And again on Friday.

Nearest we can glean from his sobbing attempts to explain through periodic panic attacks, the teacher yelled at him, or gave him a time-out, or some such, and he doesn't know why (because it was all in Greek). So now he thinks she hates him.

As I may have previously mentioned, Son is a sensitive soul, prone to emotion and histrionics. He gets this from his mother, of course (oooohhh, no you di in't!).

The sewn seeds of long and patient discussion and emotional exploration have born the fruit of increased confidence (to gratuitously torture a metaphor), and yesterday I finally managed to convince him that it was okay to go back to school, that his teachers don't hate him, and that as long as he tries his hardest, we're very proud of him, etcetera.

I rode in the back of the car with him all the way to school, talked him through the inevitable nervous stomachache, and watched my brave little boy confront his fear and enter the yawning maw of the dread portal of the kindergarten with head held high, walking as if a condemned man, to meet his executioner.

Later in the day, the school called us to say he was running a fever, so wife went and picked him up and brought him home.

Le Bilan

O, for the joys of higher education. Wife stopped by Son's school today to pick up The Report Card, and arrived home in tears after talking with the teachers, who feel he needs to be "evaluated" by an Ergotherapist.

Evaluated? (Visions of hot lights and uncomfortable probes danced in my head.) Ergotherapist? What the hell, they want to make him more ergonomic? Improve his posture? Does he have carpal tunnel syndrome or something?

I took a look at The Report Card, and obviously it was time for a Long Talk. I put on my Serious Face and called Son to the Big Bed. (You can tell I was serious by the copious use of capitalization.)

Gone are the days of grading by percentages, letters, numbers, shapes, happy faces, mysterious odors, or anything resembling your old school rating systems, though our particular school does provide a fairly simple "1 to 4" rating, except for the final grade, which is "Tuna to Chartreuse". So simple, even a parent can understand it.

1 is good, and 4 is bad.

I tried to explain to Son the difference between English, French and Greek, as The Report Card indicated he seems to get them mixed up.

"Think of all the words you know. There are a lot of them. They buzz around in your head like flies. Some of the flies are red, and those are the words you use with Mommy and Daddy. English. Some are Yellow, and those are the words you use with Mme Lianne. French. Some are Blue, and those are the words you use with Yaya. Greek."

Then we tried to think of some "Blue" words, and some "Yellow" words. In the end, I think I just confused him more. I've been a little leery of trying out metaphors on him ever since I explained to him that his conscience was a little voice in his head that always told him right from wrong, and that he should listen to his little voice.

And then he went around telling everyone he heard voices in his head, telling him to do things...

Another thing that caught my eye: Son has missed 13 days of school this semester. I often bust Wife's (figurative) balls about keeping him home from school on the slightest pretext, so it's nice to have actual, shocking statistics to back up my arguments. He missed fully 25% of his school days this semester. I cocked an eyebrow at Wife, but did not belabour the point. Discretion is the better part of continued survival, after all.

I don't think I missed 13 days of school between grades one and eleven.

Maybe it's time to think about outsourcing this parenting thing.

My own performance evaluation is coming up at work (or so they've been telling me for the last three months), and I do not anticipate superior results.

Imagine an architect. He's gone to school, got his Master's degree, apprenticed to all the greats in his field, built stunning edifices of surpassing elegance. Now the firm has been handed a contract to design and build the 2012 Olympic soccer stadium in London. This is his big chance. This is where he gets to make a name for himself.

"No," say the powers-that-be. "We will hire an overpaid, unskilled consultant for this job. Your responsibility will be to sharpen his pencils."

After a sufficient period of drunken mourning, the architect thinks "Oh well, at least I have all my other projects".

"Think again," say the powers. "This stadium project is too important. we want you to transfer all of your projects to other architects and focus one-hundred-percent on sharpening those pencils."

And every morning, the head of the firm says "These stadium plans are terrible! Make those pencils sharper, dammit!"

PerpetualStartup has some sort of scheme going on where you buy a Valentine's card for a co-worker, and the profits go to charity. I got one for ThinFast, Queen of HR, whose brainchild this is, because I think she needs cheering up.

ThinFast gave a seminar today on Leadership. This was similar to the "Situational Leadership" seminar of last year, and the "Leadership in Action" seminar. Since so much of the material had already been covered, this one only took three hours. I took copious notes, against the possibility that I might be given the opportunity to, you know, actually lead someone at some point.

So far, in my brief experience as manager, I've had my entire team laid off, my product line closed down, and new employees fired out from under me by Obelix. I used to be a software developer, then I was a manger, then I was a developer again. And now I sharpen pencils. Perhaps I may yet aspire to be a leader of pencil sharpeners, a fisher of men, with a destiny ouside the ken of mere mortals. But I doubt it. I'm thirty-five, and I sharpen pencils.

IronMan recently returned from a trip out west with a gift for me of a cubic metre of hot-smoked wild pacific sockeye salmon, hand-smoked by the official smokemeister of an indian reservation. Artisanal style. Delicious. Like a heavenly marriage of sushi and cigarettes. Two of my favorite things!

Welcome! To the World of TOMORROW!

In the lead-up to xmas, I could see the fever of avarice burning like a cinder behind my spawn's eyes, alongside the twin spark of Christmas Magic. On the one hand, this was a season of joy and love, and decorations, and angels, and Baby Jesus, etc. On the other hand, PRESENTS! I WANT MORE PRESENTS! WILL WE HAVE MORE PRESENTS TOMORROW DADDY? It was this promise of Christmas Magic, brought to you by the good people at Toys "r" Us, that put me in mind of all the promises-of-a-brighter-tomorrow that we've been fed over the years. Or maybe it was too much listening to Obama.

Retro-futurism has always sort of fascinated me. Well, to the extent that I pretend to be fascinated by any one thing, for purposes of blogging. It's 2009. We're living in the fucking future right now. So why is everyone still waiting for their flying cars? Their personal robot maids? Their jet-powered roller blades?

What nostalgia-for-futures-lost powers this endless undercurrent of proto-optimism? I can remember that beautiful hover-car like it was yesterday. Or tomorrow. Or something. The sleek lines, all that gleaming chrome. The promise of a brighter, antimatter-powered future. It seemed to stand in for all the things that I hoped and dreamed of for myself, my family, and humankind in general (as much as I loathe humankind).

I didn't really want to blog about this, but then there was that other blog post, and I can't go and delete it, because it's, you know... out there now, and that would be editorially inconsistent or something. So here, by way of retroactive cancellation of my previous crowing, is the anti-announcement: That whole pregnancy thing... didn't really work out.

And that's all I really want to say about that.

Hole in One!

Huh. Yeah, it's been a while, and it's likely to be another while, or maybe even two. So here's the bullet points - the highlights, if you will - of my Awesome Rise To Power (as foretold in revelations, movie rights optioned to Universal):

- Wife is pregnant. Which is AWESOME. Well, it's awesome for me, but she's going through hell. Hospitals and everything. So I guess it kind of blows. I'm conflicted.
- Yesterday was my 35th birthday, and it sucked. I worked an eighteen hour day and got no presents. Was supposed to do breakfast with The Boxer, but it didn't pan out due to unreasonable amounts of snow.
- Ironman moved to the West wing of PerpetualStartup, and now I work for Obelix. So far, so (mostly) good, but the workload is killing me.
- I haven't started my xmas shopping. And yes, I use "xmas" in the ironic sense, intended to piss off Christians (or "Xtians", as I like to refer to them). Spread the holiday cheer.

These are the dark times, the calm before the storm, the darkest before the dawn. I am become death, destroyer of morale, a horseman of the apocalypse.

But, like, on a bike. Horses are expensive, apparantly.

...but delicious.

Speaking of delicious, Ironman treated me to a birthday risotto at Bueno Notte this noon. Yum.

And that's the nutshell. I know I'm forgetting something (natch), but whatever. It can wait until next fiscal quarter, when the terms of my release dictate I must once again blog what passes for my thoughts, fodder for the brave brave souls of Homeland Security surveillance units everywhere.

The question for you to ponder over the course of these arctic frigid freezing windblown arid icy killing months of perpetual darkness: Zombies vs. Vampires. If a zombie bites a vampire, the vampire will turn into a Zombie Vampire. But if a vampire bites a zombie, the zombie will turn into a Vampire Zombie. In the end, no one wins, and everyone is twice as hungry as before. This is a maquette of the futility of war.

You're welcome.

And so, in the spirit of the holidays, I bid you a cheery Kwanza, and a happy new year. Wait... Is that mistletoe?




....hey, where are you going?

The Time For Questions Is Over. Now Is The Time For Unbridled Optimism

Son (aged 4) lost his first tooth yesterday (I'm so proud)! So last night we sent the tooth fairy an email together, and wrote a little note and stuck it to his door.

And in the morning was a shiny new dollar, and a thank-you letter from the tooth fairy, extolling the virtues of flossing, and encouraging continued good will toward members of the professional order of dental hygienists.

But what stuck with me after that was how we (Son and I) had started the day talking about how he's a "Big Boy" now, and the tooth fairy was going to bring him a dollar for his tooth, to celebrate, and somehow this devolved into a discussion about How Can We Extort More Money From The Tooth Fairy? Son wanted a minimum of fifteen dollars, and a toy to be named later. I tried to explain to him that baby teeth were a commoditized good, that it was a buyer's market at the moment, and that enamel futures were rated "underperform". My protestations fell on deaf ears, as they always do, and we lay down for bed-time with visions of avarice dancing in his big blue eyes.

To distract him from his inevitable disappointment (The tooth fairy has bills to pay, after all), we spoke instead of What Does The Tooth Fairy Want With All These Teeth, Anyway? Son and I came up with the following:

- Use them to build a house (a gruesome image of a castle made from drawn teeth briefly assailed me, but I pressed on)
- She grinds them up and uses them to fertilize her garden (or the Amazon Rain Forest)
- She grinds them up to make snow.
- She puts them in a machine (the purpose of this diabolical engine is, as yet, unknown)
- She eats them. ("She eats teeth?" I asked. "Yes, they're good for your bones!" explained Son. This is logic I cannot refute).
- She makes affordable and unique costume jewelery, which she sells on a blanket at the park on Sundays.
- She plays dice with them.
- She is building a Doomsday device, powered by teeth.

Wife chimed in with:
- She plants them in new babies' mouths, to make new teeth. It's like recycling!

Here we face the thrilling diversity of human experience. It's obvious that Wife and I have a very different thought process (hers tends more toward the sunny, happy, "Whole Foods" approach, mine is a little more macabre). I wonder which path the boy will choose?

We are abjured, nay, forbidden to refer to him as "my baby", "my little boy", or any such term of endearment containing the words "little" or "small". Having lost his first tooth, he is now officially a "Big Boy", so of course he wants beer. To be clear, I rarely, if ever, have beer in the house. It's just a habit I never got into, so I'm not sure how he made up his mind that beer = grown-up, but there it is.

Other Cute Things The Boy Has Done Recently:

- The other day we were wrestling, and he wanted to eat a cookie. "You can eat a cookie if you can get out from under me," I said, pinning him for a three-count. He squirmed and kicked, and rather than fight me off with brute force, somehow squicked out the side and slipped out from under me all sneaky-like. "You're Sneaky!" I exclaimed. He giggled and struck a kung-fu pose: "Sneaky like a NINJA!".

- Wife came back from grocery chopping with a pair of sunglasses for the Boy, as well as two dollar-store water pistols. First he grabs the pistols and yells "FREEZE, Sucka!", then puts on the sunglasses, snaps his fingers and points at us: "looking good, ladies."

The Second Rule of Fight Club

I recently told the 14-year old daughter of a close friend: "There are only two emotions that men are allowed to admit to: Amusement and Anger. If a guy talks to you about feelings other than these, he's probably in love with you."

Of course I delivered this in a sort of semi conspiratorial "don't tell anyone I told you this deep dark secret" - kind of way. I'm sure she didn't believe a word of it, which is good, because I'm not sure if it's true or not. Either way, it's sad.

Why do men hate "the talk"? Why, when Wife says "Sweetie, I want to talk" (italics hers), do I role my eyes and suppress a pained groan? Surely we could all benefit from getting in touch with our feelings and having a good cathartic buchke over lattes and facials?

Ick.

One of the many reasons primitive man-monkeys like me don't tend to talk about our feelings could be that we're not a hundred percent convinced it's going to solve anything. For me, talking is all about communication. Specifically, communication of a problem. Step 1, communicate the problem. Step 2, identify and communicate the solution to the problem, or if there is no apparent solution, solicit additional information. Step 3, high fives all around, followed by beer. Note the conspicuous absence of any discussion of my mood.

This is not what women mean when they ask you to talk about your feelings. In fact, this is the opposite of what they mean.

As a "for instance", when I come home at night, one thing my survival instinct has taught me is to ask Wife "how was your day?". During the course of the ensuing epic monologue, many conflicts will be introduced, heroes and villains will rise and fall, and the emerging topical thread will contribute itself to Wife's Bildungsroman in subtle and meaningful ways.

Here is a list of things I must not say during this conversation:

• "Hey, I had that exact same thing happen to me once, let me tell you all about it."
• "I know exactly how to solve your problem. Here is the answer..."

Here is a list of things I probably should say instead:

• "Wow Honey, that's awful! No wonder you're so upset."
• "That bitch! I hope you told her to go to hell!"
• ...and any other topical expressions of sympathy in that key.

This shows Wife that not only am I tuned into the conversation and actually listening to what she's saying (the male communication), but I'm also tuned into her feelings about the whole thing (the female communication).

And voila, we've just talked about our feelings. More specifically, she's talked about her feelings, and I've listened. You would think that this is only about 50% of what women want out of a conversation, but actually it's closer to about 90% (not to put it all in cold, logical, male numbers or anything, but there you go).

But before you walk away from the conversation feeling like you got away with something, be aware that the eventual "talk" gets longer and more traumatic every time you avoid it. Really, it's best to get it out in small, preferably daily, doses.

It's in our nature as men to think of this as a painful but necessary task in the maintenance of a meaningful relationship. Like replacing the brakes on your car. Costly but rare. We should instead maybe think of it as a frequent, automatic, almost instinctual thing, like applying the brakes on your car. We've just about evolved to the point where we can handle that.

And maybe someday, there won't even need to be a wife or girlfriend in the room to force us to talk about our feelings...

Stop and Smell the Leaves

Buried in the warm, loamy compost of complacency, I've neglected you. But Boxer has awakened me from my blogging interregnum, and reminded me of my never-sleeping duties.

The air conditioner still has it's place in my bedroom window, more as a monument to wishful thinking than pragmatism, but even I, with my limitless powers of persuasion, can only lie to myself for so long, and one day soon I'll break down and admit it: Summer is over. In the meanwhile, don't tell me. I want to let myself down easy.

This was the end of my first week back at work after a longish two-week vacation. Family and I spent three fantastic days in Niagara falls, feeding belugas and swimming with dolphins and discovering new phobias (heights) and obsessions (water slides) and whatnot. A thoroughly enjoyable (and, when solitary, boring) vacation that saw me return to work refreshed, bright-eyed, and ready to re-commit my life to the furthering of corporate objectives, etc, etc.

Son absolutely loved, went ape shit for the water park / resort that we stayed at, while in Niagara falls. Oh yes, there will be pictures, fear not.

Last night saw the launch of an exciting new product pilot here at work, so I was at the office from about midnight to four a.m., along with a handful of other people. During this time slot, we pulled in a whopping seven dollars in revenue, most of which I found between the cushions of the couch I was sitting on. So yeah. Time well spent.

I've a feeling the twofour of red bull, heaps of pizza and junk food, not to mention my expense report for parking, will burn through that windfall rather quickly.

When I was leaving, a planned Hydro power outage left me stuck in the elevator between the first and second floors, along with IronMan. I called upstairs to Lipstick and Tortoise, who wisely took the stairs. Five minutes later, the power was back on (wehter because Lipstick pulled in some favors at Hydro HQ, or by blind luck, I won't ask). This is one of those stories that is more humorous in memory than in life.

All the recent frantic scrambling and layoffs, trying to suck the last of the blood from the stone that is our chosen market, has resulted in various initiatives to strike out into new product lines. Memo to the chiefs: may I suggest Organ-legging? Panhandling?

And now, as the week, and the season, draw to a whimpering end, and I must close one eye to prevent double vision due to exhaustion, it may be time for another vacation.

"Autumn is a second spring when every leaf is a flower." - Albert Camus

Batting .750

This weekend, Wife, Son and I piled into the car and struck out to visit my parents in Corwnall, Ont. There was a local fair, with rides, fireworks, and musical extravaganzas, featuring such high-profile Canadian Has-Beens of Rock as Tom Cochrane, Sass Jordan, and April Wine. Ten bucks gets you a five-day pass, and they also have hot-air balloons! Of course we got rained on, so the balloons and fireworks were cancelled.

At some point, we borrowed some windbreakers from my parents, since the show was by the water. Pictured here is Son, indulging his nostalgia for the great old days of hockey by representing for the noble Nordiques du Quebec. The jacket's old, borrowed and blue. All that's missing is something new, and he's ready to get hitched!

So, according to Pablo Neruda, "Laughter is the language of the soul". And we've all polished that old chestnut: "The eyes are the windows to the soul". And the Three Stooges, arguably the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century, frequently gouged each other's eyes with the goal of evoking laughter. Soul + Eyes + Laughter. Full Circle.

I just know this means something, but what? This is a perfect illustration for the limits of my capacity for reason. I'm perfectly able to detect the presence of some deeper meaning or pattern, just not what that important, life-altering message might be. There is always a missing piece, always an incomplete understanding. We have the old, the borrowed, and the blue, but the new, the final tantalizing nugget, is always missing. Good thing I've never read the bible, it'd probably drive me nuts.

This evening, Son and I invented a new game called "Hugs & Kisses", which is meant to replace our previous favorite "Knees & Knuckles". The object of this new game is for me to "kiss" him, by blowing a raspberry on his tummy, and for him to "hug" my neck until I pass out. This game still retains the entertaining core of our Ur-Sport, "Kick Daddy in the Balls". We've toned it down a little in deference to Wife's express desire for a kinder, gentler Son, but ultimately I think we've made it pretty clear that such is The Manner in Which We Role, and to divert these potent energies to a course inconsistent with our masculine imperative would be to break faith with the father-son bond.

So when Wife catches us in the act of tumbling around on Son's bed, bruising and contusing each other, I try to cover:

Me: "We were just, uh, checking the sheets for crumbs, because, uh, Son was eating toast in here before..."
Wife: "Why the hell do I bother?"
Me: "If loving me is wrong, you don't want to be right."
Son: (giggle).

Go Nordiques.

"The Man"

So the Liberal budget will pass, as we more or less knew it must. the PQ, who cannot be seen to actually agree with the liberals on anything (since they're the opposition), must instead abstain from the vote in sufficient numbers to allow the Liberals to push the budget through. Public gets tax breaks and a bit of education & health spending. Not enough to make any difference, mind you, just enough that neither party needs to accept responsibility for the decline of Quebec health care.

And we may need every penny, if assholes like this continue to mock Darwin. America is so busy locking out the terrorists, they've forgotten to lock in their Typhoid Maries. Here's one case where the almost total lack of air circulation on your average trans-Atlantic passenger jet may have come in handy - slowing the spread of a deadly airborne disease.

There are one or two interesting personal developments at what passes for my place of employment. Boss, having called me into his office this morning and asked me to shut the door, peppered me with a rapid-fire breakdown of several changes that will be coming down the pipe in the days and weeks to come. I won't bore you with all of it, but weighed collectively, the scales seem to tip slightly to the right. Which, if I understand correctly, means six more months of winter.

To the extent any reader of this drivel is capable of giving a shit, let me explain what I do in as vague a manner as possible (to avoid professional and legal repercussions). I work at Company. Company produces digital content for a specific medium. You may already have purchased one or more of our products without even realizing it (unless you're a crotchety old bugger with no interest in this medium, like me).

At Company, I work in the technical department, developing application servers and publishing systems and distribution platforms and revenue-sharing systems and statistical reporting tools, and all manner of Java tchotchkes that appear amazingly, stunningly boring to the uninitiated. Actually, it's not too bad. And I'm moving up in the world, apparently.

Viz.: One of the changes announced to me today was not so much a change as a clarification. It seems "dev team leader" is not a per-project appointment, but an actual job title, and so a person I had previously assumed to be a co-worker actually reports to me. This has supposedly always been the case and I was simply unaware of it until now.

Rest assured, I will make up for lost time. My dictatorial rule will be decisive and merciless.

Ironman

Let me pause before going further, and introduce Ironman. No less deserving of praise than The Boxer (whom I have described elsewhere as something of an amazement), Ironman's a bud, a co-worker, a prince among men. We often enjoy a café-allongé avec lait (It's not as gay as it sounds) at the local Portuguese pastry shop, where we speak of many things (fools and kings), a lot of which will get us sent straight to hell. His sense of humor dovetails nicely with my own, and when we blather, no shortage of lowbrow bon-mots are born. His employees love him, and are planning a monument in his image, to be cast in bronze and erected in the center of his feifdom (the QA and Porting departments here at Company).

One important change is that Ironman who, while technically much higher than myself on the corporate ladder, was not in my direct chain-of-command (and therefore was fair game vis-a-vis the occasional water cooler, "working hard, or hardly working"-type conversation) now assumes responsibility for activities with which I am more than tangentially involved.

This is not so much a promotion for him as it is a reallocation of responsibilities. No one's getting a raise, no one's getting a title change. And for once I'm okay with that.

Ironman, you will now be known as "Boss Jr". How do I feel about this? TBD, as they say.

It is a recurring theme in my parental neuroses that Wife and I are not "active" enough. This sedentary lifestyle of ours, I intermittently obsess, is affecting Son's development. We are setting a bad example. We are creating a Couch Potato. So an announcement on the radio this morning twiddled my knobs sufficiently that I may actually follow up: This Saturday, at Centennial park in Beaconsfield, some sporting goods store will be sponsoring an educational Kayaking "experience" for the whole family.

Whether said experience involves any actual kayaking, or is more "multimedia" in nature, remains to be seen, but wouldn't that be a cool outing for a four-year-old? Kayaking? I can tell you, it'd be pretty cool for a thirty-three-year old. Maybe Son and I will sneak out of the house and give it a go. Wife will absolutely plotz.

Remember that one whitewater rafting day-trip we did Honey? Where you spent the day in the hot tub while I whooped joyfully down the foaming and turbulent Rivière Rouge? It'll be just like that, only more polluted water, and I'll have our child with us in an easily-capsizable kayak! You'll love it!

Maybe we'll just wash the car or something instead.

Unless it rains.