Marcus and I had a battle of wills tonight. He had climbed into his playpen, and he needs help getting out. We were horsing around, and I was making him giggle. He then pointed at me and said, “Mommy!”

I said, “No, Daddy!”

We played that game for a while, and then he wanted up and out.

I don’t know why, but I really wanted to hear him say Daddy. He’s said it many times before, calls me Daddy all the time, but this time he wouldn’t.

I told him I wouldn’t help him out until he said the word, “Daddy.” He kept saying “Mommy” a lot, then “Rus” a few times. But no “Daddy.”

Then he got ticked, and cried and cried and cried.

After a half hour…yes, a half hour of me asking him to say the word, and telling him that I’d help him out if he just said “Daddy,” … well, after a half hour, Elaine and I agreed that she should leave the room.

She did.

More crying.

And, well, another half hour later, in the big battle of wills, he finally said it: “Daddy.”

So I picked him up, hugged him, and brought him to Elaine.

She gave him a bath, and later (well, five minutes ago) they were on the glider and he had a bottle. We three did lots of kissing, and he said “Daddy” again and wanted a hug.

I love my little guy!

Last weekend with him was very cool, and what I was going to originally going to write about before tonight happened. I had to fix the bathtub. It could drain, but the level to plug the drain wasn’t working.

Through some intensive googling, I found a website that explained, with pictures, what needed to be done.

Now, Marcus usually likes to stay with Elaine more than me, but when I said, “Would you like to help me fix the bathtub?” he got all excited and following me upstairs to the bathroom without looking back.

He isn’t even two yet, and how he understands me is amazing. I asked him to put all of his bathtub stuff in his bath seat (they were in the bottom of the tub), and he immediately did it, quickly and correctly.

I then had him hold the tools and things, and taught them what they were: screwdriver and pliers. It was a ton of fun working with him!

The online instructions were good. I pulled out the plug (which was a bit of a struggle), cleaned everything off, adjusted it, and put it back down the tube. And, surprisingly, the tub drain worked perfectly.

Whew.

Marcus Man handed me all the screws and things, we finished putting it back together, and then we washed our hands.

I love my Marcus Man.

I used to keep M&Ms in my hair during high school.

I hate dogs.

I am a Republican.

I have had an affair with Natalie (and that is how she got her job).

I want to be a pretty girl.

I voted for Ross Perot.

I almost flunked out of the Ph.D. program.

I knowingly allowed the Exchequer to take money from Cynnabar.

I am gay.

I almost burned down a wedding.

I am a puppet master, with complete control over my friends.

I want to be Baron of Cynnabar.

I invented the Internets.

I once wrestled in pudding while only wearing my underwear.

My marriage and family are perfect.

I reject my Jewish heritage.

I’ve gotten ahead only by brown-nosing the right people.

I color my hair.

I only care about money.

I am only acting buzzed when I’m drinking.

I won’t fire my friends.

I’ve had people pay to throw pies in my face.

So I got an email from the EECS department that my email account would be moving from the mynah.eecs.umich.edu machine to the boston.eecs.umich.edu machine. You see, mynah was always a bit flakey (not that I noticed), and there were email problems (not that I ever saw), and so things had to be fixed (not that it was broken).

No problem. They’d move everything on Tuesday from 9 AM to 11 AM, and I wouldn’t notice a thing. I just had to make sure my pointers all pointed to the right places.

This is hard because, well, my email account is on a UNIX account. I used to be pretty good at UNIX, but now I barely know enough to get by. Still, I think I found the right lines in my .cshrc file to set the environmental mail parameter correctly.

Tuesday rolls around, and after 11 AM I log on, and hey, I can log on. And hey, I have mail! Excellent! I send some email and rush back to my meeting.

I get back hours later. Wait a second. No one is responding to my emails, to my direct questions. It is as if…

I send email to my work account. Nothing arrives. I do it several times. Nothing. I send email from work to school…that works.

Crud.

I send email to the EECS department. They have me check my files. I do. I tried, I really did. I even reconnected to mynah to see what was up.

Now that was odd. My mynah account was slightly different from my boston account. The environmental variables were slightly different, even though they used the same dot files!

Also, my emacs shell (which I use for reading mail, editing documents, etc.) was different. On mynah it was just black and white text. On boston all the color settings worked, which is cool because, in email, the subject line is one color, the to/from fields are another, as are the quoted parts in mail I respond to. It makes things much easier to read. So if I can stay on boston and see all that, it would be awesome!

Then I noticed something else: I could send mail just fine from mynah. I couldn’t read it off of mynah, but if I read it on boston then reopened it on mynah, I could respond and send no problem.

Nice.

I called the EECS department this morning and told them my woes. They admitted that others were having odd problems and they look into it.

A couple of hours later a vomit of email from my boston account reaches the rest of the world, and I see it all on my work account. Yay!!

All fixed. For a while. Then I couldn’t read email, but an hour later it was fine.

And now, everything seems to be working. I had to fix a flag on a reflector so anyone emailing directly to charles at umich.edu would work right, but that was easy. I also fixed the pointes on my yahoo mail account.

Then I realized…my blacklist on my blog, I haven’t seen anything from that in a while.

Darn, some spam got through I didn’t get any email. So I had to manually update the blacklist and remove the spam, and somewhere along the way I lost my entry about Jon Stewart. I blame the people at Crossfire.

Good thing I still had it saved, so rebuilding that entry wasn’t a problem, although the comments are unfortunately lost.

I do hope that my email has settled down. The colors are awesome, and I’m just thrilled that I’m reconnected to the world.

If you’ve emailed me and not reached me, please let me know through this or some other medium. Who knows what I’m not getting that I should, or if my links are really all properly set.

I’ve crowed about The Daily Show before, but now I’m going to recommend that you view this clip from Crossfire. Seriously.

Jon Stewart was fantastic, and he basically is a breath of fresh air on that show. Listen to him control the discussion and you’ll realize that he is not only very funny, he is also very smart. Incredibly smart.

The resolution of the video isn’t great (unless you pay for the service). However, the audio is just fine.

Enjoy.

p.s. Thank you, Patrick, for forwarding me this link.

p.p.s. I’ve had email problems, and I goofed up when deleting spam and lost this entry. Here it is again.

p.p.p.s. From an earlier comment, here is the transcript.

It is the year 2025, and you just received your officer’s commission in His King-Emperor’s Angrezi Raj (New British Empire). Your tour of duty takes you far past your homeland of India, over the cannibalistic tribes of Old Europe to the very wild frontier of the east coast of North America. Fortunately, by helium airship, the trip only takes a few weeks (with stops at various outposts). Your trusty breech loading rifle at your side, you feel that you and your men will do well. But one day, you’ll return to Delhi, hopefully a hero, with a great many adventures under your belt.

This is the setting of a very fun and exciting book I recently finished called The Peshawar Lancers by S. M. Stirling.

The premise intrigued my from the first. In 1878, a bunch of fragments from a comet slam into the Earth, starting at just south of Russia and all over Europe, then a kilometer wide one in the western Atlantic and tons more smaller ones all over North America.

This and the next four years of continuous winter cause populations to decline by almost 80% in many areas. North America (specifically, the United States) was wiped out complete, as was Europe. During the first two years a massive exodus from Britain occurred, bringing millions of upper class and skilled workers to India before starvation reduce that land to barbarism too.

It took fifty years from The Empire to get back to 1870’s technologies, and things took a slightly different path. More interesting, pure research didn’t happen much. Instead, people were generalists, which slowed progress greatly. Oxford (the new one in India) did have a huge Babbage machine, but there were no electronic circuits, and gas light was what kept the darkness at bay. Horseless cars were only now coming onto the market (about a 1000 in Delhi proper), and most of the lands were still very rural.

There are other major nations. The Nippon Empire suddenly found itself in second place in world affairs after The Fall, and strove hard to keep the pace. The French managed to keep their own empire (and seemed to have their own exodus). The Arabian states didn’t change much since the 1870s and fight among themselves and provide border problems for the British and French. And Russia made cannibalism a religion and are truly an evil empire.

What a fantastic place to set a role playing game! Most of the world is a wild frontier, with ancient cities overrun with barbarian tribes, weapons and technology mostly from the 1930s, but with medicine from the 1970s. Rich cultures interacting, and most places in the world able to be reached by airship – just be careful of those airship pirates that are out there.

The book itself is a rollicking adventure, with swashbuckling, daring escapes, and the obligatory beautiful Princess. The culture is heavily influence by India, so if you like reading about their gods, clothes, and food, you’ll find that as a bonus. (In fact, food was described way too much for me, reminding me of when Shawn would taunt me with what she’d be making every day, and I found myself eating more while reading it.)

If I were starting up a role-playing campaign, I would seriously considering using this book as a source. A game that provides a Kipling like adventure, with men in turbans and wielding pistols and swords and choras, and women in brightly colored saris getting their Ph.D.s. Keep that stiff upper lip, and give them what for!

Okay, so I didn’t speak before Congress, and the President was off in Ohio or Florida or some other revolving door state full of voters so undecided they can’t even dress themselves in the morning, so I didn’t meet him either. And while I do a great Jimmy Stewart impersonation, it wasn’t useful at this time.

I did, however, tag along for a meeting at the Russell building in the Senate for a meeting with a Senator’s aide.

The building was awesome. One of those typical federal government buildings, full of lots of white and black marble steps, another type of stone for the walls, and huge vaulting ceilings. The place itself was huge, with two levels above ground, and at least two levels below ground, with tunnels connecting it to other buildings. Very easy to get lost, but fortunately there were plenty of nice burly men with automatic weapons who were eager to help out, at least, once you stepped through the metal detector.

We went to the room that contained the Defense Appropriation Committee (I think…that doesn’t seem exactly right, but it is the best I remember). The room was both impressive and odd. Huge slabs of stone and the same high ceilings, with large stone archways. But the archways were lined with wood and filled in with glass doors. Through the doors you could see the room was stuffed to the brim with cubicles. Really. Wall to wall ugly, small, tight, confining cubicles.

There wasn’t an inch to spare anywhere. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a couple of years they just add a second story, or stack them together like sleepers in a Japanese Airport.

We went to a hearing room for our meeting. It wasn’t an official “this is on C-SPAN” meeting, just a total of six of us talking about business stuff. The room was huge and empty, with lots of tables and microphone cables running everywhere.

I’ve never been to the Senate on official business. I think the last time was probably in middle school or something. I didn’t see any of our elected officials, but I was surprised when I walked by an office that had two huge flags outside in an otherwise long dreary hallway and realized it was Sen. John McCain’s office. Yes, I stopped and peeked in. Wouldn’t you?

But anyway, it was cool to talk to people and learn more about how things really work in our government. I have the feeling I’ll be making more such trips in the future, if work continues to improve.

An aside: while walking around downtown D.C., doing what I like to do (girl-watch), I couldn’t help notice a new style that I just can’t stand. Really cute women wear a nice shirt, under a very nice sweater, and they don’t tuck in their shirt!! It sticks out the bottom over their pants or skirt. What is up with that?!?

(Now, if I get any comments at all, what will people comment on: the Senate or the fashion?)

Except for the time travel, giant whales, and an alien cloaking starship, our trip back to Philadelphia was just like that fourth Star Trek movie.

Oh, and there were no nuclear wessels.

This was Marcus Man’s first airplane ride, and he was all excited. We hoped that since the flight was at 10 PM, he’d fall asleep during the trip, but no, he stayed up the entire time. We had one accident of spilled milk (all over my pants), and another tantrum that lasted a couple of minutes, but he wasn’t too loud.

The lady next to us said barely a word and wasn’t pleased at all. The group in front of us said they enjoyed us interacting with Marcus and thought he was adorable.

My Mom and Dad picked us up from the airport, and everything fit into their trunk (two carry on suitcases, my satchel, a diaper bag, and the folding stroller).

We got in late and pretty much went right to sleep.

I love what my parents did with their house, decorating and such. They have a great place.

The next day my sister Golda and her husband Michael came over and we all went out for breakfast. It was great seeing them! They got Marcus some really nice stuff.

Then, oddly enough, we all fell asleep. Really. Marcus was out for a while with Elaine, and I think even I fell asleep.

My Mom’s side of the family came over: a ton of people, and it was wonderful seeing all of them! My cousin Lisa and her husband have a baby younger than Marcus, and it was fun to see them, plus all the other relatives. Lots of good food and people.

That was repeated the next day with Dad’s side of the family. Two of my cousins each have two kids, and I played chess and roughhoused with them. Before they arrived, though, Marcus was out for about three hours!

Everyone loved it when Marcus knew the answer to: what is the square root of four?

The trip back was easy. No traffic, and even though the flight was at 11 AM, Marcus slept from take off to touch down.

A great trip, and it was wonderful seeing all the family. That being said, though, I’m glad to be home, and so is Pythagoras!

Well, the show is over, and I have a few minutes to write it up. I was pleased that some of my friends made it out there, especially since it started a half hour late (6:30 PM), and went on for about four hours to show all six class performances.

We went on around 8:30. I’m not sure of the exact time, as I was more concerned with the show itself.

The set was strange. Another play was going on at the theater, so there was no stage left entrance, and it looked like the inside of a 70’s house. Very odd.

But anyway, on with the routines.

#1: Conductive Loves.

In this game, we are given topics that upset people or tick them off, and we are ‘conducted’ to give strong forceful individual discussions on how much we love that topic. So, if someone says “lousy drivers,” then that person will say how much he adores bad drivers who get into accidents and stuff.

Heather introduced us to the audience and did a fantastic job of conducting us. She makes great eye contact to let you know who is going to be picked next, and gives us a chance to prepare or shake our head no if we have nothing. My topic was ‘hip hop,’ and I think I did well by doing a Ben Stine type of monotone voice, saying something like, “I love hip hop. As you can tell by my pasty white skin and sharp clothes, I am definitely a hip hop kind of guy.” And so on.

#2: Cheap Seats.

Chris and I are movie reviewers, with four others acting out the movies we made up. We got five suggestions from the audience: a movie director (Spielberg), a title of a movie that has never been done before (Boink Me Silly), a foreign non-English speaking country (Albania), an object (bowling ball), and a film genre/style (Western).

So then we introduce three movies. The first one is based on the title, the second is a dubbed film, and the third is a kids movie. I pretended to be a high school student doing this for school, while Chris was my mom filling in for a friend. I think we have good chemistry and the audience enjoyed it. I especially enjoyed the movie acting itself, and it gave me and Chris a lot to play off on.

#3: Director’s Nightmare.

Three people pretend to be community theater actors and one is their director. The show is going on that night and they don’t even know the title of the play (gotten from the audience) and this is their last rehearsal. The actors pretend to be really bad but supportive, and they do a scene four times: straight, then with different emotions, different stereotypical characters, and finally in a movie/play genre: all given by the audience.

I wasn’t in this, but the audience seemed to enjoy it a lot.

#4: Laronde.

Six of us do improv scenes (with a place given to us by the audience), but we keep the same characters as we move the scene forward. This fell apart.

It felt like we didn’t know where we were going. We had a code word, poptart, that we say when we are lost and want someone to switch us out, and it felt like we were using it all the time.

And I messed up big time. I stepped right on one of the players lines while she was speaking. At the time I didn’t realize I was doing it, but looking back I obviously did, and that was wrong and unprofessional.

Yes, I’m still learning, and yes, people told me it looked fine, and yes, this will help me to never do that again, but I know I messed her up and wasn’t supporting the team.

We’ve done good Larondes in the past. It is a shame that, at least for me, I didn’t do well at all on the night of the show.

#5: ESPN

This is a great game. Many people play the roles of commentator, color commentator, two athletes with their own coaches, and the man (or woman) on the field. A fake sport is gotten from the audience (a physical activity), such as fishing, or extreme bowling, and we play out a competition for that sport. There are interviews in the beginning, and the game is explained by the announcer, and it begins. One of the athletes has an accident so the other one wins. Then the color commentator explains what happened, does an instant replay in slow motion, where something we didn’t see before happens, such as one of the coaches pulling out a gun and shooting the competition. A 180 degree view can be seen, with zoom in and zoom out.

I wasn’t in this, but I feel it was our strongest routine, and from what I could hear the audience loved it.

#6: Laugh Tag

This is an easy game: it is switch, but you end the scene when someone, anyone, laughs.

Bill introduced this game, and he sounded like someone giving a eulogy. He played it incredibly deadpan, and he was hysterical. People were laughing already, and the scene ended our show on a high note.

I stuck around for next class show. I was a bit disappointed that they were doing some of the major games we did, but it isn’t that big a deal.

Apparently we did really well as most people felt that way, but I wasn’t happy with the performance I did. I’ll need to figure out what to do better, and hope that it was just a fluke and try to do better on our next show.

Ever feel disconnect from reality? That is how I feel this weekend. Nothing terrible, or major, it was just surreal at times.

Saturday we had an improv class practice. Classes were over, but our troupe wanted to get together because our show is on Sunday (in about five hours from the time I’m typing this!! Ack!). It was at one of the student’s house, and she lives north of Detroit. So I left around 11 AM to get there by Noon, taking I-94 to I-75 North.

I made great time on I-94: no backups or anything, and I-75 looked surprisingly clear. That is, until I saw I sign I’d never seen before: left 3 lanes closed again.

Three lanes? At least there were four, maybe five lines (it varied), but of course traffic quickly slowed down to a crawl. Then when the that third lane merged into the one remaining one, that remaining lane just veered off to an exit ramp, and I was dumped into downtown Detroit.

Hmmm.

Fortunately my online map that I printed included the area where I was, so I could follow Woodward to her place. The delay didn’t bother me, but the layout of the streets did. There is a huge back up of cars wanting to turn right, but when the light changes to green, the head car can only go 30 to 40 feet before hitting another red light, so traffic just crawled.

But hey, at least I didn’t get lost!

Practice was good, and I’m very glad I went. Most of us where there by the time I had to leave, which was 2 PM. I needed to rush back and get to a baby shower of two of my friends. I got stuck in a traffic jam getting back, of course, with the same street problems I encountered before. And then on 94 there was another huge backup. I have no idea what caused it, but it lasted for three miles and thirty minutes.

The shower was fun. I think I got there at around 3:30, and it ended around 5. The food and company were very nice, and Marcus Man was having fun with one of the little girl’s there.

That night we tried to go out to eat. Elaine was told that she needs to get more protein in her diet, as that might help her from getting sick all the time. So we called some restaurants but all of them had a huge wait – on the order of an hour to ninety minutes.

One place said that in 45 minutes they would have lots of room (when the game was over). It was Damon’s. So three friends joined us to go out. Since it was six of us, they said it would take a little while to get us a table, but we were second on that list.

An hour and fifteen minutes later, we left without dinner. Everyone was getting seated ahead of. Apparently they didn’t have many tables for six people, as in, one or two, and they didn’t bother to tell us that. Marcus was very good during that time. Elaine was feeling worse and worse, so we just gave up.

Of course, as we were strapping Marcus into the car, that is when our table was ready, but it was too late. We went home, and our wonderful friends went to Whole Foods to pick up a really tasty dinner (with lots of beef for Elaine!).

It ended up being a good evening, but sitting around in a restaurant lobby all that time was really a waste.

Elaine woke up not feeling well, so I took care of the Marcus Man. We had fun, and I was getting all excited to watch Meet The Press and find out their take on the Presidential debates when the television turned off.

Hmm. Marcus didn’t have the remote.

Wait, all the power was out. I looked across the street and spoke to my neighbors: power was out from here to Carpenter Road.

Nice.

I still have no idea why. I called to find out, but there was, get this, a 155 minute wait to speak to an operator.

Nah.

When it hadn’t come on by 11:30 AM, Elaine took a shower (still had some hot water left) and we left for Grandma’s so we’d be able to feed Marcus Man and stuff. We were going to go there anyway later, to drop him off so Elaine could see my show tonight, so going there early wasn’t bad.

I got really restless though and felt like I needed to get back. Not sure what that feeling was, why I had it, but I just needed to do something. So Elaine is there sleeping, Marcus is there with his grandparents, um, marcusing, and I headed on home.

Power is back, the television was on, and the outside fridge light was on, as were some other things. So, I’m glad I came home.

It’s almost four now. I’m going to change into my suit and run some errands, then head on back to get Elaine.

Well, after I pet a squeaking Pythagoras!