on the walk home from the pool last night our four year old daughter asked:

“when you die, can i have all your credit cards and money?”

and she is our child we thought to be least menendezish…

during my time at ford, working on the assembly line making aerostar vans, i noticed the a curious coincidence between workers retiring and then promptly dying.

seems, i’m not the only person to notice this correlation between working later in life and promptly dying after retiring.

unfortunately, while the paper cites the benefits of affluence on longevity it doesn’t elaborate on what happens to fifty-five year olds, uninterested in dying but lacking sufficient means to retire, when they walk away from their jobs.

my new life plan in case you were wondering because obviously working will kill me.

it felt like a present just for me when the u.s. scored a miraculous goal in penalty time to advance in the world cup.

and thankfully the advertisers were there to share the moment with us…

“why does such a thing even exist?”

our six year old son’s response on being told that raising his middle finger alone can be construed as offensive to some people, like the older kid he had just met and unintentionally flipped off because he was holding a penny pinched between his other four fingers…

if asked, i would say i’m an effective multi-tasker. but like folks who believe they drive well while talking on a cell phone, i realize most, if not all multi-taskers, including myself, probably suck at doing more than one thing at a time.

the topic of multi-tasking and the bombardment on the senses by technology is of particular interest to me because i have the responsibility of raising two kids and i want them to grow up in the real world not a virtual one. so i pay attention to articles, like this one in the nytimes that discuss the effects of technology on our brains.

this article is especially fun because it comes with an online test. i find my results curious because they are at somewhat contradictory with the study’s findings and my self association with the high multi-tasking group. i’m left wondering, is this further validation that i am special, or am i fooling myself about the degree of multi-tasking i’m performing…

a friend tells me this site has become a bit of a “bitchfest” since we left home for california. that’s somewhat ironic since i have always considered the site something of a “bitchfest”, but in reflecting on his observation i have decided to note a few things that haven’t sucked:

1. we coincidentally arrived in california the same time as a friend from st. louis so we got to visit with them, meet their excellent new aid, and enjoy a sunday barbecue at his brother’s house.
2. my wife, with precision the military would envy, has gotten the kids library cards, in swimming lessons, to parks, scouted every grocery store in a ten mile radius and is now researching sailing classes for me. she is single-handedly keeping the family functioning.
3. the weather is excellent – i would have left the southeast with its heat and humidity for this weather alone.
4. we’ve been so busy i haven’t been able to keep up with the news from the gulf coast as the criminally evil, short-sighted, greed-mongering bp attempts to poison an entire sea.
5. did i mention my wife was researching sailing classes for me while i’ve been busy working with a startup company as we try to get it off the ground? she rocks.

the name of the show “wicked” is also the best way to describe ticket prices, and the ticketmaster surcharge for admission to the show…

it may sound like a small deal, but one of my favorite things about living in a large city is that folks know to stand on the right and walk on the right when riding conveyors or escalators.

it may take a day or two to get our feet on the ground here in california. as i mentioned yesterday, our lodging wasn’t exactly ready for us to move in. so instead of unpacking luggage and registering our kids for summer camps we thoughtfully composed a letter to our landlord and debated the efficacy of saying unkempt or calling out each pubic hair we found littering the bathroom.