Birthday Burgers, Proximate Relatives, Revision Deadline

And now, your general update on my wacky life.

Happy birthday to my son, who turns the ripe old age of 6 today! We spent the day having doughnuts with his class, visiting Burger King and Toys R' Us, and later playing with various bits of birthday-related booty and growing large on Alton Brown's "manly" sliders, homemade sweet potato fries and dark chocolate cake. All in all, a great time. ;)

I find myself going in cycles when it comes to food. Every time I get serious about trying to get fit and lose weight, I somehow wind up consuming my body weight in burgers and not getting to work out at all over the course of an entire week. I have somehow managed to lose roughly 7 pounds since the end of February (an accomplishment I am very proud of), but since I haven't worked out at all this week and ate at Burger King today, I think I may be back down to having lost only 2 pounds....but oh, well.

My Mom is moving to town, which will be fun: my wife and I have been trying to get our parents to move out to Washington since we arrived some 4 1/2 years ago. (Since my mom is getting here before hers, I'm pretty sure the DW owes me a plush banana.) My brother-in-law will also be coming into town for about a week: it'll be nice to have a fellow rivet-head* about.

In the meantime, various tax returns, company bonuses and funds from article writing have given us a nice financial push; my children continue to demand more attention and care than actually exists in the known universe; and my wife is as beautiful as ever. I'm hard (mostly hard) at work revising "Darker Sunset", with a self-imposed deadline of September 15th of this year. We'll see..it would be very nice to get the revision/type-up done once and for all so that I can actually work on getting this damned thing published.

*A rivethead is someone that listens to Industrial Music, particularly aggro-industrial music. If you actually needed to read this footnote, consider yourself lame.

Part 2 of My Latest DDM Article is Up

Check it out here.

RIP Gary Gygax

Thank you, Gary, for creating such an exciting and enjoyable hobby. D&D brought me together with people in the way few other things have. D&D was how my family spent their nights when we first moved to a city far from home; it was how I exercised my mind and relaxed all through school; it was the one thing that my friends could all share, even when we felt ourselves growing apart.

Thanks, Gary -- and I wish you nothing but natural 20s at that big gaming table in the sky.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/welcome

Movie Clip: The Wild Bunch (Final Shootout)

Why? Why not!!!

(WARNING: This clip contains graphic violence, and a higher bodycount than most Schwarzeneggar films.)

Sick & Sunny Day

I woke up this morning and was delighted when I realized that I was going to experience our second -- yes, SECOND! -- day of sunshine in Washingstone this year! My DS and I watched some TV and prepared oatmeal for the girls while we laid plans for our glorious day.

And then, against all odds, DS turned out to be quite sick. The poor guy had trouble keeping any food down, so instead of the afore-planned day outdoors we hung out and watched more shows, hoping to get the little guy feeling like a winner again (and intermittantly cleaning up his inability to hold down so much as a glass of water). In the midst of this, our durned dog made a run for it while my DW was off at the store getting food supplies for dinner, so my DD and I took turns trying to the fetch said canine while the other stayed with the ittle boy. Luckily, my DD found success and returned the dog home; I, on the other hand, only got a faceful of gravel, two scraped hands and what I believe is a disloctaed right thumb. Oh, the joy!

But the day was actually pretty good. The little man sat with me and we surfed Youtube for a while, and he seemed to be feeling almost up to specs by the time he went to bed. The Wife made some truly fantastic homemade chicken noodle soup and brought home some fun shows from the library. And my DD, having finally re-acquired her DVD player after nearly two months of being grounded, has once again vanished into the black pit known as "her room".

Among the many, many, many kid-friendly videos that my son and I watched on Youtube, we managed to stumble across this:



I remember waiting around on Saturday mornings with a blank tape in the VCR ready to tape this one if it ever came on during Saturday Morning Cartoons...and now, finally, after over twenty years, the wait is over. Ain't technology great?

I have a new DDM Article Up - Yipee!!!!

Check it out here.

Another Random Music Video

From the Violent Femmes!