I’d like to thank everyone for their advice. The Shop-Vac idea was a good one, and I rented one from Action Rental. Only $20/day, and I spent a few hours vacuuming the ground. I got up a lot of glass, as well as leaves, dirt, bugs, twigs, and who knows what else.
I did a large chunk of the lawn, and what I could of the sidewalk and the little grassway between the sidewalk and street. I had two full (and heavy!) trash bags full of stuff.
There is still glass left. I’m sure I didn’t find all the small pieces. And there is some in the street where the blood is, and back behind all the thorn bushes near there fence where I can’t get at it.
Elaine did some detective work – it is really nice to be married to a smart lawyer!
She called the City of Ann Arbor and was told she'd connect her to Parks & Forestry to ask about the removal of the tree, and she gave her the number of Community Standards to inquire about the glass and other car debris.
The person at Parks & Forestry gave her the name of the guy at DTE whose crew took down the tree - they're responsible for removing it. She called it and left a voice mail message.
The Community Standards number is a division of the police, and she left a message, including asking how we can figure out what happened.
So, onward.
And now I need to stop this entry. Cassandra is crying up a storm, so I’ve only been able to write a few words every five minutes.
Nevertheless, I adore my family!
On my way to work the other day I noticed a bunch of Detroit Edison trucks outside my house, off to the side, but still right on my property. There was a downed power pole, and a downed tree. And blood in the street.
Apparently, the night before, around three in the morning, a drunk driver plowed into said pole and tree, wrecking their minivan.
As far as I have heard, both occupants are fine. The van was taken away. The tree and pole chopped up, and the power lines repaired. We didn’t have any loss in power.
However, right now, there is a ton of wood on the sidewalk and street, blood in the gutter, and shard of glass all over my lawn.
The wood will hopefully be carted away by the city. The blood will be dealt with during the next rain storm.
I have no idea what to do about the glass.
I’ve picked up all the large shards and threw them away, but there are pencil erasure sized granules and bigger over a pretty large area and I don’t know how to take care of it. It would take me literally weeks to pick them up by hand.
The best idea I have is to just take a shovel and throw away the top layer of grass and dirt. It will leave my lawn bare in that area, but that is better than leaving glass all over. I can sweep up the sidewalk. But the part between the sidewalk and street can’t be shoveled. I suppose I can do that by hand.
What a mess.
I’m glad the people in the van are fine. I wish they’d come by and clean their mess up.
A friend of mine ("Hi Parsla!") sent me some very information that she learned from AAA. I’ve always been curious about how much it costs to run a car per mile traveled.
It isn’t just the price of gas.
It includes how much you spend on insurance, license, taxes, and registration. It depends on how far you drive. It includes upkeep and maintenance.
It turns out that even with higher gas prices, the cost to run your car is pretty much the same this year as compared to last year (56.1 cents/mile compared to 56.2 cents/mile). Other stuff has actually gone down enough to compensate for the driving.
Course, those above numbers are just averages. If I drive a lot, the cost per mile actually goes down (because insurance, for example, is a fixed cost). Then again, there is more wear and tear on the car, so maybe it doesn’t go down that much.
My mother-in-law has been disappointed that I've not had any close up pictures of Cassandra on this website.
Yeah, yeah, I know, I've been very lax in getting lots of the kid’s pictures out. I have a bunch saved, and they are finally on the computer and catalogued. So hopefully, I'll get the side links updated with Marcus and Cassandra pictures in the next few days. Oh, also, the check is in the mail and we will not raise taxes.
Anyway, without further ado, here are some close up pictures of my beautiful daughter Cassandra!
This is the back of her head:
This is one of her ears:
This is her one of her elbows:
This is one of her eyes:
This is one of her feet:
This is one of her hands:
This is one of her knees:
This is her lips:
And this is her nose:
There you have it! And now no one can say that they don't know what my daughter looks like.
Now there is a title for a blog, no?
But don’t worry, this entry isn’t about what you think. Unless, that is, you think I’ll be talking about homoerotic behavior, then of course you’d be absolutely wrong.
No, this entry is about babies. Specifically, it is about my lovely, albeit currently hairless, daughter.
She’s going through a growth spurt right now, which makes her fussy and cranky and causes her to cry a lot. Before that, she’s been wiggly and crying a lot. I thought things were going well for the past few days because she would manage to sleep five to six hours in a row. This means that when I’m ready to go to bed (say, at 12:30 AM), I just bring her upstairs and put her into her room, and pray she stays asleep for another two hours.
Lately I’ve been very lucky.
Now, she is still sleeping well, but something happened that gave us cause to worry. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that something didn’t happen. Two days ago we realized that our lovely Cassandra hadn’t pooped in over 24 hours.
Pee? Yes, plenty of that. Also, plenty of spitting up. But no poop at all, and she has been, for lack of a better word, normal in that respect.
I grew a little concerned. What happens when a baby doesn’t poop for a while? Does she save it all up and go non-stop for days? Does she explode? Does she get all fussy, cranky, and start crying?
Frankly, is there anything that doesn’t make her fussy and cry, aside from my lovely wife feeding her?
If she doesn’t poop, yet everything else is okay, does that mean she is fine and we are just overly worrying? Or do we bring her to the hospital for a round of useless tests that will allow them to be able to tell us with 95% confidence that Cassandra is a girl?
We did call our pediatrician. He said that going a day or even three without pooping (yes, I like typing that word) is perfectly normal for a baby who is breastfeeding, especially when going through a growth spurt.
If we were really worried, we could either give her a sip of apple juice, or provide her with some rectal stimulation to help start the flow again.
Ewww.
We decided to just wait. And yesterday, wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, our daughter gave us the gift of an incredibly super duper poopy diaper.
I can’t say that I blame her. The thought of someone stimulating my rectum to remove my incontinence is enough to make me die … and so it did. I exploded in my rush to the bathroom. I was just too late and held it in too long.
There are lots of wonderful things I can say about Parsla that she would predict. That in many ways I consider her to be my twin. That I really like her look and style.
That she drives me crazy when she takes things apart that she really shouldn’t! “Parsla, please don’t break the building.” “Parsla, that is a permanent fixture to that car.” “Parsla, please don’t cross those wires, it is dangerous!”
But I’m not going to talk about that any more.
Instead, I’m going to talk about an aspect of hers that I really admire. It is a combination of her bluntness and her, well, not quite empathy, but she has a power to see through a lot of the crap that is going on and get to the core understanding of things, events, and people.
When combined with her bluntness, it means that she will speak her mind, usually revealing the truth or things that need to be said. Oh sure, she isn’t perfect, but way far more often than not she is right on the money, and I find myself saying, “Oh…right. Why didn’t I see that?”
And it is that ability that I really admire and respect in her.
Oh, and I’m also glad that she is my twin, because the assassin got confused, and accurately fired a 22 right between her eyes, killing her instantly.
Lately, Cassandra has been feeding at Midnight, and then would stay awake until the time for the next feeding, which would be around 2 AM.
On weeknights, I watch the Tonight Show until 12:30 AM, and then M*A*S*H until 1 AM. After that? There is nothing on I want to see.
Nothing.
I need something on, because usually by this time I’m holding her so she doesn’t cry and wake up the whole house. So what am I stuck with?
The Disney Channel.
It starts with Boy Meets World. I have to admit, it isn’t too bad watching the adventures of Cory and Topanga. It was on for, what, ten plus years or something? The stories, as the character have aged, aren’t as light as I expected, and the writing isn’t terrible. I especially liked what has been running lately: they just got married and realized that they are on their own and have no idea how to survive that way. The next few episodes weren’t happy ones.
After that, though, I’m stuck with Lizzie McGuire.
Yes, that is what I’m watching with a screaming baby in my arms. The stories are usually worse than The Brady Bunch. I want to scream at her for being hung up on the “hunk” who has an IQ lower than most pieces of broken Styrofoam. And don’t get me started about her little brother.
I think I’d go nuts watching it if it weren’t for one character: Gordo. He is the voice of reason. He seems to never lose his cool. He knows how to enjoy himself, but doesn’t give in to what is popular unless it is something he likes anyway.
I kinda wish I was like him when I was younger.
And for the life of me, I just don’t get why Lizzie doesn’t get over that idiot jock and realize that Gordo is the guy for her. Arg!
Just thinking about this dumb television show made my brains ooze out of my ears, causing me to have a long and painful death.
"We can handle conflict or disagreement if it is all contained within
a larger overall agreement between the players. Do not argue just to
argue, and find the solution if you must disagree."
- from The Second City Almanac of Improvisation, by Anne Libera
This quote hit me in many ways. Not just for theater work, but in life. I can have a disagreement with my wife, but we have the overall agreement to love each other.
People in an SCA group can have conflict, but there should be the overall agreement to respect each other and that we want to have fun in the SCA.
In business, if everyone is looking for a win-win situation, the conflicts can be worked through.
Yes, a very good quote for me to think about.
I'd think about it more, but when I went outside a tree branch fell on me and caved in my skull, killing me.
I dreaded going to get my car repaired.
There are tons of things wrong with my car. I’ve talked about it in earlier posts about how much I hate it, how there are just minor little things that are annoying but don’t hurt the functionality. And it is all paid off, which makes it easier to deal with.
But when a break light goes out, that is something that needs attending to because you can’t signal a turn, police will pull you over, and everyone in the world will tell you that your break light is out.
However, I didn’t want to get it repaired. I wasn’t sure it was just the light because the turn signal was rapidly clicking, and who knew what was causing that. I also felt that if I brought it in to any repair shop, especially the Ford dealer (where I was told it would be simple), they would find other things wrong. A simple repair job would turn into something very complex.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cohen, but we discovered while changing your break bulb that your alternator is about to die, your carburetor is falling apart, your middle electrothroddle is about to go on the fritz, and several of your cam shafts are loosing their threads. Total cost? $182,000. Without labor. Please leave your car here for three months, and we’ll call you when we find more things wrong.”
So I put it off. For months.
Well, since I had a day off with family here, I figured I’d get this taken care of after dropping Marcus off at Daycare. Maybe I’d get lucky.
Surprisingly, I was.
The Ford dealer service area took my car in right away. And not only did he explain that the faster clicking was due to the bulb being burned out, but he only charged me for replacing the bulb, AND he showed me how to do it myself.
Awesome!
It was literally fifteen minutes and $2 later that I drove out with my car fixed and a smile on my face.
Until the semi ran a red light and totaled my car, killing me instantly.
I've had enough of all this, so I am making a decree.
No more @$%^@#$ snow until next winter!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Got it?
I don't mind flurries, but if there ANY accumulation then someone is gonna pay.
I'm just saying.
The SCA had a Known World Symposium for Exchequers and Seneschals this weekend. As I’m the emergency deputy for the Society Seneschal, I was invited to attend. The fact that it is being held in Vegas had nothing to do with my desire to go.
You know, serve where serve I may and all that.
Of course, I’ll miss my family. But I have to admit that the thought of some uninterrupted sleep sounded pretty good too.
The flight out wasn’t great. No first class seat. A very full flight so no room to spread out. And, once again, the deicing of the wings took far too long. My flight was supposed to leave at 3:30 PM, with it arriving by 7 PM. I don’t think I got in until past 8 PM Michigan time, and to the hotel itself until sometime after 9 PM.
Now, the driver of the shuttle was something else. He knew binary quite well: either full acceleration or full breaking. Nothing in between. He drove incredibly fast, yet it took forever to get to my hotel. I don’t get it. He also wasn’t happy. Constantly cursing and grunting and yelling at the traffic.
What a wonderful trip so far.
One thing I’d like to mention here is that as soon as I got to Vegas I felt, well, dirty. It isn’t called Sin City for nothing, and the way it is presented with all the bill boards and lights and casinos and sex shows … well, how can you not feel like you are doing something immoral just arriving at this town. Even on the airplane, everyone assumed you were going to Vegas instead of a variety of other reasons, like visiting family or going on a business trip.
Ah well. I got over it quickly.
The hotel was nice, very typical for what goes on in Las Vegas. What I found interesting was the coupon book they gave you. They have discounts for just about anything you might want at the hotel: massage, shoe shine, food, and, of course drinks. You could literally get ten mixed drinks per booklet, and they gave me two.
No, I didn’t use up those tickets. I didn’t even try. I also didn’t pay for any drinks.
I caught up with all my SCA friends, and by that time I was ready to eat my cell phone. My last meal was over nine hours ago. A bunch of us went to a pretty good steak place and I stuff myself quite happily. I had good conversation about current SCA, um, activities, and some stories about the past.
Since LV is on PST (three hours earlier), it was still a bit early in the evening after dinner was done. So what is a guy to do but hit the gambling tables?
Before I went on this trip I thought about what I’d play. The safest is blackjack. If you are careful you won’t loose to much, and if you can keep track of the cards you have a chance of not doing too badly.
I find blackjack a bit boring.
Craps is fun. Tons of fun. Last time I played, though, I did quite poorly. And if you start off unlucky, the money goes away very quickly. Course, if you are lucky, there money comes in nicely.
Then I remembered: Texas Holdem! I’ve been playing that with friends, as well as watching it on television. I could do pretty well with that!
So that is what I figured I’d play. I even did some online research and read a bunch of articles. The main thing that I learned was that the game at the casinos is much different from Celebrity Poker Showdown. In CPS, everyone starts with the same amount, there are five players, the raises are unlimited, and you play until one person has all the chips.
At the casinos, you start with whatever you want, there can be up to ten players, you can only raise a certain amount (with four raises allowed bet), and you can stop at anytime. That means that bluffing is harder. That also means that, because there are so many other players, you need much better hands to win. If there are four parts of a straight on the table, odds are someone has the fifth card. If there is an A, K, 5 on the table, and you have a K 7, you can bet someone else has an A.
But I’m smart, I’ve study, and if I wait to play only good hands, I can probably beat all those other players who have the same inflated opinion of their poker playing skills.
I played for three hours and lost $100 at the $2/$4 table.
That isn’t too bad. I have a stake of $300. At one point I was down around $140 and made it back almost even before it went back down to $100. Sure, not great, but I had fun.
By this time it was midnight. By the time I got to my room and asleep it was 12:30, which is like 3:30 AM EST. I was exhausted.
Oh, and while playing the lights went out in the whole casino. Twice. It is fun playing which large alarms are going off.
And, aside form literally waking up every freaking hour for absolutely no reason at all.
I woke up tired. No, still exhausted.
I went straight to the meeting, which lasted until a bit after 5 PM. Lunch was good, and actually, the meeting was worthwhile. Not only did I learn more about inter kingdom and society stuff, I got to meet a ton of pretty neat people too.
Afterwards we went over to a different Casino and had an international buffet. It was delicious!! When dinner was done I had about 40 minutes before I needed to get on over to the Penn and Teller show.
Naturally, I played more Texas Holdum. They didn’t have any $2/$4, the minimum table was $3/$6. What the heck.
I was on fire. The cards were great, I’d like to believe I played well, and the table was fast. I won and won and won. I folded bad hands early. When it was almost time to go I played one more hand and won that too.
I ended up $200 ahead, so a total of $100 for the weekend so far.
Now if only I could stop myself from gambling anymore!!
The Penn and Teller show was everything I hoped it would be. I ran over to where their theater was. While the real show starts at 9 PM, the entertainment starts at 8. They have a jazz pianist onstage performing at that point. And every so often Penn would come out and play the bass, or Teller would play the xylophone with him.
Also, two magic boxes were out on stage. You know, the kind of boxes a magician crawls inside of and they disappear. One was made out of wood and the other was clear Plexiglas. I went up on stage and checked out the boxes, then went back to my seat.
It was then that I realized that I could have juggled up there. I mean, why not? As long as I was quick and not rude, they wouldn’t care. The problem, though, is that this was the one time I didn’t have my balls with me (please, responding to that line is way too easy, and extremely old).
I didn’t let that stop me. I took off my socks and balled them up, then put my shoes back on. My friend Ghita gave me one of her socks, so now I had the three (soft) balls to juggle.
I went back up on stage, examined the boxes, turned around, and saw that I was alone. So I took the balls out, walked to the front, and juggled for about twenty seconds. I got some applause, bowed, and got off the stage fast.
And that is how I opened for Penn and Teller.
Hey, you got to start somewhere.
Unfortunately, the person with the camera wasn’t around, so I didn’t get any pictures.
The show itself was wonderful, and it was everything I hoped it would be. Their style is that, in general, they don’t do showy “Las Vegas” types of magic. Instead, they do very solid entertaining pieces, and half the time they let the audience in on it and show you how it was done. That demonstration is usually even more entertaining that the original bit. Other times they do leave you in awe, and that was fine too.
Their patter (Penn’s words, and Teller’s body and facial gestures) were highly entertaining, and I think I learned quite a bit from them. Penn used many words that I didn’t expect from a magician, like ‘topological’ and “serendipity.” His vocabulary was rich. I had to laugh, though, when he said, “This is Vegas. I’m sure there are no Ph.D. in higher mathematics sitting in the audience.”
Teller did some bits all by himself, using audience members, and never said anything. Well, except during the “Teller’s Monologue” bit, where there was a wood chipper on stage so you couldn’t hear what he was saying. It was fun and entertaining, except for the poor bunny that accidentally fell into the chipper.
One of my favorite bits was the simplest. While Penn was in a straight jacket on a ladder with a noose around his head behind a screen (except for his feet), Teller did some shadow animal puppets that were absolutely incredible! The forms he created and the story he told with it were impressive, and quite frankly I didn’t care at all were Penn ended up or even if he could escape.
After the show they both head out into the lobby for pictures, autographs, and conversation. I spoke with both of them. I asked Teller if he was still wearing the tie that he cut (because it got caught in an animal trap) and he gave it to me. For fun, I got them both to sign it. I thought about selling it on E-Bay, but there were some Exchequers who really wanted it so I gave it to them. I’m not really into collecting things like that.
I also got to ask Penn to confirm something for me, and yes, he and Teller used to practice and perform with Michael Moschen, the artist who invented crystal ball contact juggling.
I am very proud of myself. After the show, I went back to my hotel and went straight to my room. I didn’t gamble at all. I was exhausted, and felt that being ahead in the gambling was a great feeling. Getting a good night’s sleep would be even better. And this time, I got a full eight hours, waking up only once at around seven.
The meeting the next day was fine, and we even got done a half hour early. I shared a cab with some friends and went to my flight.
The flight left early and we landed ten minutes early too. It was, as before, completely filled. I didn’t get much sleep, but I got a lot of reading done (yes, more Spaceship Porn), and that is always positive.
I made it home by 10 PM, took out the trash, said bye to my inlaws who were kind enough to help Elaine out all weekend, hugged Cassandra, and began my nightly baby duties. Later I woke up my wife and got to see her, and in the morning I got to see Marcus Man. I missed them so much.
All in all, though, it was an excellent weekend.
(I’m sorry about the lack of pictures. I expected them to be emailed to me by now, but alas, it was not to be.)
Most of the activities I listed in ten (well, fifteen) things I had written about before. Some I can’t really expand on. But the one that created an avalanche of responses (well, two) was “took my last undergrad exam wearing just a bathrobe.”
That is what people fixate on?
Well, it is a story.
This was my last year in undergrad, at Drexel University . My last exam for my entire college life was in the late morning for my History of Science class, Part 2. It was one of my favorite classes I think I’ve ever taken.
The first part of that class earlier in the year was a typical history class, though the subject matter was incredibly interesting. It had a fantastic teacher who let us ask questions and explore ideas. In fact, I distinctly remember one class where early on two students got into a debate about the origins of the universe.
One student said that because of how complex the universe is, there was no way it could have come into existence without god. Another student (well, me) stated that it doesn’t matter how complex it was, or how improbable it would have to be to come into existence randomly. The fact is that we are here, and it doesn’t need to have a god to put it in motion. (And please, don’t use that statement to infer what my beliefs are. You would probably be wrong.)
The great thing about the teacher was that he not only let us have our very civil debate, but he then tied it into philosophy and cosmology, and how those ideas changed over time.
The second semester class wasn’t a typical history class. Instead of going in historical order, he spent most of the time talking about a typical Renaissance scientist. Unfortunately, I forget his name. He was a real person, and though he really didn’t do much, he was still interesting. He had a huge library and had read all of the books in it. He wasn’t a scholar on one subject, he basically knew them all: physics, mathematics, biology, etc. They dabbled and experimented and questioned.
The final itself wasn’t a joke. However, I wasn’t worried. I knew it would be essays and constructively supported arguments more than “this happened at that time.” So I was quite relaxed about it.
That morning I was sitting on the porch of my fraternity house with my fraternity brother, Dicey, who was also in the class. Dicey was very fun person. He was also in the theater (and I have a great story about a show we were in together). That is how we met, and I got him involved in the fraternity (Alpha Phi Omega). I distinctly remember one night were four us, including him, pulled an all nighter studying while playing Reach for the Stars and listening to Les Miserables and Into the Woods.
I guess I wasn’t in a typical fraternity.
So there we were, in our bathrobes relaxing on the porch sipping lemonade in the middle of West Philly.
West Philly is a dangerous place. The University of Pennsylvania’s campus was isolated, but Drexel’s wasn’t. It was a dirty, graffiti ridden neighborhood, where crime was rampant and most of the assault news stories took place within a mile of where I lived. I didn’t bother to keep even my old falling apart car there for fear it would get stolen.
But heck, I was graduating soon, and it was a pleasant sunny day. Dicey and I had a half hour until our exam and he suggested we get dressed and go. I looked at him and ask, “Why? Why not just go in our bathrobes?”
He looked at me, thought it over, and laughed. “Why not indeed.”
So the two of us walked down 34th street in just our bathrobes and sneakers, with no socks or underwear. I had my house keys in a bathrobe pocket, and a couple of pens.
Not many paid us a second look, as in college life odd sights are fairly typical.
The test was as I expected. I had to learn to sit carefully so I wouldn’t flash everyone, and wearing just a bathrobe did tend to focus my concentration.
We both ended up with an A in that class.