Barbershop Duet

For some reason it seems today was a day focused on the subjugation of hair. First Poppa came over and much to L and N's amazement and excitement, trimmed off his beard right while they watched and applauded. Then I came home from work, and not knowing of the day's earlier scalping, sat N down for a good, much-needed hacking.

(Stacy made me promise to go gentle on him, which I feel I can say that I did, at least relatively speaking.)

Poppa before.

Poppa after.

N before.

N after.

Not wanting to be left out of the act, I went and trimmed my bushy eyebrows - my "Einsteins" as Stacy calls them. Does that count?

I Miss My Wookie.

1/21/2009 UPDATE: The video is back up! Woo-Hoo! Our pointless life now has, if not a point, at least a soft round nub again!

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Curses! The Moosebutter video has been taken off of You-Tube for "terms of use" violations. What will we do? L, N and I are huddling in a small group humming the Indian Jones theme song softly to ourselves, but it is slight comfort.

Stacy seems obnoxiously giddy right now. I can't wait until "the man" starts burning all the copies of "Little House On the Prairie" and we'll see who's laughing then.

At least I have the MP3 version on my iPod...

Another Hair-raising Tale

Sometimes I'm simply at a loss to explain things. L came up to me this morning to show her new hair accouterments. "She braided me these before she died," she told me. "She maded them long."

"I don't follow," I said, confused, "Who made those?"

"Mommy."

"Mommy died?"

"Yes. She's never coming back. She's already got another child."

I can't even begin to guess where Freud would take this...

Meanwhile Stacy wishes to assure everyone that reports of her passing have been greatly exaggerated.

Plane-ly a Disaster

I think they've figured out what got sucked into those Airbus engines the other day...

(N has to claim the rats living in his hair as carry-on luggage.)

A Light in the Darkness

L came running up to me this morning all excited. "Daddy! Daddy! My Ariel cup glows in the dark!"

"Really?" I said, suspicious. "Let's go in the hall and turn out all the lights and see it."

We did. Total darkness.

"No wait," said L, "Turn on the lights and you can see it better."

John Williams Is the Man!

I generally avoid posting outside content on this webpage. I would rather keep the posts focused on things that transpire here with the kids or on things that affect my family. That precludes adding links to most news events or passing along every vapid internet joke, etc. Sometimes, however, that line is blurred and the outside world comes over like a bully and beats up those of us hiding out in the inside world. Sometimes there's something that goes on out there that gets absorbed and in-grained and grafted-in to what's going on in here.

I'm an engineer by training and trade and therefore a little less socially adept than most. I wouldn't go so far as to say "nerdy;" I perfer to think of it as cool-challenged. And so when I first saw this video on You-Tube, unlike many of you, I thought it was absolutely fantastic. It made my day. I found I was playing it all the time. (I'm not even remotely a Star Wars fanatic, though I will admit to having a man-crush on John Williams.) Soon, every time I turned it on there would be a scampering of little feet and L and N would soon be on my lap watching with me. Each time Stacy would roll her eyes and I could tell she would be having that mental "You knew this about him when you married him" conversation with herself.

So here it is — a musical tribute to John Williams and Star Wars by the a-capella comedy troupe Moosebutter:

I came to realize the full impact of the video on our family the other day when I walked past N's room an noticed him sitting on his floor playing with his blocks singing "Kiss a wookie, kick a droid," softly to himself.

Friday Night and All is Well

It's Friday evening - the tenderloin of the weekend. I have a moral obligation to make the most out of it by wasting it. It's 10:15, it's been a brutal week, the kids are asleep, and I'm thoroughly exhausted; I have nothing in particular that I have to do, yet I just have to do something. Stacy is already in bed, but that is not an option for me. To go to bed now would be essentially criminal; it would be wasting a night set aside for wasting, but wasting it in the worst possible way to waste something: unappreciatively. You see: its Friday. If I go to bed it will very quickly become Saturday, and we all know that Saturday gives rise to Sunday and in the blinking of an eye (im nächsten Augenblick as the Germans would say), it will be Monday again and my life will sink once more into chaos and despondency. Friday night is this rare ephemeral, transitory spot that is neither weekday or weekend. It is a gift — a gift that must be spent foolishly, though introspectively.

On Saturday there will be things to get done, jobs to complete. I will want to be productive, efficient, competent, thorough. But Friday night is a different animal. Friday night is subversive, selfish; it is to be squandered greedily, but with intent and purpose and filled with self-awareness. It is to be flagrant and flaunting, yet solipsistic and self-conscious. On Friday nights you have to regularly stop what ever you are doing to waste the time and say to yourself: It's Friday and I'm enjoying wasting it. You have to put these little mental chalk marks on the night; these little reminders to yourself that you were there and experienced it. Markers of the time.

I have to consciously indulge in each little moment. Each ticking of the clock is to be thought of as a little pearl, a little poem. It says "I - don't - have - to - go - to - work - for - two - whole - days!" And the best part is that since it's still only Friday night, I haven't really even started! I don't have to be depressed yet at how quickly the weekend's flying by because it's still FRIDAY and it doesn't count! It's not borrowed time, its stolen time! It's like playing the quarters you win from a slot machine: it wasn't really yours to start with, so you can spend it extravagantly! - you can waste it! - but you've got to waste it with a sweet savoring of every little coin. It's like maple syrup - you don't need much, just one night, just one little drip, but you'd dang well better lick the plate clean.

What will I do to savor this fillet mignon of time off? Easy: Surf You-Tube and Wikipedia! And with each click of the mouse I will think: I didn't waste a bit of my weekend vegging on the computer, because it's still Friday, and the weekend hasn't really started yet!