What? Al Pacino and Robert De Niro are going to be face to face in a movie again for the first time since Heat? And the movie’s coming out next month? Why didn’t anyone tell me this?
Too bad I can’t say the word “righteous” with a straight face.
When the boy yawns, it’s contagious (as to be expected.) Yet, he himself seems impervious to anyone else’s yawns.
When he wakes, he stretches his arms above his head like I do. But it’s doubtful he’s ever seen an adult wake up and stretch (especially given his limited eyesight.)
He has known how to pout from day one.
If you’re looking to scare a couple of new parents, refer to the bump on their kid’s head as “a hematoma caused by shearing of the skull during delivery.” Then shrug and say, “That’ll go away.”
If we were stranded together on a desert island, and we were trying to decide who stays and who gets eaten based on the useful skills we each might be able to provide the group, my skill would be the ability to repair a fence. You know, in case we need to keep the Others out.
1998: Having told my British, German, Italian, Portugese, and Czech flatmates that Mexican food is the finest food on the planet and that surely they must try it, we head out that night to what must be the only Mexican restaurant in Edinburgh. It is run by a Spanish family. When giving the waitress his drink order, Dave, unknowing that the Tequila we speak of is meant to be served as shots, asks for “a bottle of Tequila.” I’m pretty sure we talked him out of it. Still, I don’t quite remember the rest of the evening, except: the food was bad, or at least not Mexican; and once we got back to the flat I used the phone in the hallway to call a national park in Costa Rica to find out why a certain girl hadn’t called me first. She wasn’t there, and she didn’t get the message.
2008: I wake up late to find that my wife and son have let me sleep in. In the living room, the kid is playing in his little chair and smiles when he sees me. My wife is making birthday brownies. We open my present, which is both a surprise and what I wanted. Later, we pack up and head off to lunch at a local restaurant specializing in barbecue. I think that barbecue might rival Mexican food for the title of finest food on the planet. The kid falls asleep in his chair and we have one of the first leisurely lunches we’ve had in a long time. The grilled tuna sandwich is incredible.
The new design is courtesy an entirely new content management system under the hood. Also, most of my technology-related posts will be over at returncontrol.com from now on.
For those who are interested, I’m now using WordPress, and like it much better than Movable Type 4, which was a nightmare after the upgrade from version 3. Will write up more on my experience making the switch later (and post it to returncontrol.)
Is everyone allotted a finite number of strange coincidences? If so, I feel like I should be running out of them soon.
For instance, the other day I got a message on the answering machine from an old friend and colleague. I didn’t have time to call her back because I was finishing up some work and then running off to a dublit event in the city. Then, on my way home that night, guess who I ran into at the BART station?
Weird.
Need to find all the squeaky spots in your floors? Simple: Just walk around the house with a baby you’re trying to put to sleep.
As I was shivering at the pool today, I realized that I haven’t had a true, warm, sunny summer in a decade — literally, a full 10 years! In 1998, I spent the summer working in Scotland (more on that later). And by 1999, I had moved up to San Francisco, where all the tech startups in the world can’t solve the problem we’ve got with miserably overcast and chilly summer weather.
Maybe it’s time for a long vacation someplace where the people wear shorts in the summer and worry about tracking sand in the house. Where do you go with a two-month old?
Some friends are doing some cool stuff this week:
Ben, who runs Virtually Blind and is an expert on legal issues in virtual worlds, has had an op-ed piece about the future of the Internet published in the Wall Street Journal.
Maggie, of Mighty Girl fame and a former colleague at Web Techniques, has launched Mighty Haus a new shopping blog focused on cool stuff for your house. As the tagline says, hooray for stuff!
Jeff, who runs the Digital Camera Resource Page, one of the top digital camera reviews sites, got to play professional sports photographer for a day at the Bank of the West Classic tennis tournament at Stanford. Love the photo of the flying braid.
bookmarked