The statistics of your life.

One-third of Americans have consumed ground beef in the last 24 hours.

-- Good Eats

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More black men voted for Ruben and Clay during the last American Idol final than voted for Bush and Gore in the 2000 election.

-- NPR's Morning Edition

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By the age of 2, children can understand 70% of the language they will understand for the rest of their life.

-- Something my grandmother was told by someone at Piper's Gymboree class. This is weak sourcing, I know. Color me Ann Coulter.

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More than 100 million acts of sexual intercourse occur every day.

-- World Health Organization

***
BabyWatch Update: We had our 40-week appointment this morning -- and just a little progress. She's at two centimeters ... Baby's in a good, head-down position (occiput transverse) ... and we're still waiting. We scheduled the non-stress test for a week from today, which is significant because a) we don't really want a bad non-stress test, resulting in induction, and b) Piper came the night before her non-stress test was scheduled. Stay tuned....

The waiting is not the hardest part.

With each task we finish, we think to ourselves, "Okay, now the baby can come."

I thought this as I came from our garage this morning after having installed the base of The Expectant One's car seat.

We've thought it a dozen other times over the last two weeks: After we finished Piper's Christmas thank-you notes ... after I assembled the changing table ... after the basic painting of the nursery was finished (even if the sheep on the hills are only sheep torsos, sans legs and heads) .... when we found the tools for pain management during labor ... after the bags were packed for the "hostipal" (as Piper calls it).

And of course, none of this speeds up the process at all. "Zuzu" (her in utero name) is on her own timetable, and she's keeping mum to her Mum about said schedule.

Tonight, I'll do a grocery run, pick up some essentials we're low on in the house. I'll top off the gas tank. After dinner, I'll put some plastic over the windows in Zuzu's room to help with a touch of chill coming in (and to keep our gas bill, pushing $400 a month, a few dollars lower, we hope). And once I turn off the blow dryer on that project, I'll turn to Laura and say: "Okay, now the baby can come."

Who is "going forward with confidence and faith?"

Regarding yesterday's post-election predictions: There's a reason I'm a web designer/administrator and not a political analyst.

On the plus side, I clearly have a positive outlook on life. To a rose-colored fault.

I've listened to a lot of radio that involves callers phoning in today. Since I'm in the Chicago area, the majority of the calls have been from citizens who are in different levels of grief. Some are putting on a good face and saying things like "At least we still have John Kerry in the Senate, where he can keep an eye on Bush ..." or "It was a valiant fight!" Some are not sure how they're going to get through the next day, much less the next four years. The two calls that stuck out to me -- one on AM and one on FM -- both said the same thing, and it's where I am to. It's this: "I just don't understand."

When I heard this morning that the predominant issue for Bush voters was "moral values," I was dumbfounded. Moral values were important ... and so you voted for him? While John Kerry took a principled and difficult stand against a war that everyone hated (whether you liked his position or not, there's no question that it was principled), George W. Bush was best known by his Air National Guard as the guy who threw the best parties.

(And don't go telling me, dear Dubya supporters, that Bush's partying days are ancient history and that it has nothing to do with now -- not when, in the next breath, you're going to tell me that Kerry's anti-Vietnam stand was an affront to all current and veteran members of the armed services. You can't have it both ways.)

Moral values. And they pick him. I just don't understand. Reagan said it, and I'll make a small editorial change and repeat it. I'll speak for a slim minority of US citizens: "It's mourning in America."

Feeling positive.

I'll probably regret posting this in the morning, but ... I'm feeling really positive about the results tonight.

voted at noon today, and of my precinct of 515 voters, my wife and I were numbers 242 and 243. That's almost 50%, even before the big 4-7 p.m. rush. And based on reports I've heard, there are plenty of precinct with much higher turnouts than that. This can only mean good things, I think. It's gonna be an intense night.

I've heard a lot of people saying they don't think we'll have a new President for a few weeks. I feel like we'll know within seven hours. Maybe I'm living in a dream world. We'll see. My only "prediction" I'll make: After reading many reports on Florida voters (and talking with friends and family there), I think Florida is Kerry's. There are just too many pissed off people down there who want revenge on 2000.

We'll see.

How do you scare a terrorist?

Sounds like the opening line to a joke, eh? Well, I guess I'll entertain any good punchlines, if you can come up with one. I can't really do that at this point 'cause I'm just so frustrated.

The Chicago Tribune this morning had a front-page article on Kerry's loss of support from American women. For some reason, of all the election coverage I've read over the last year, this article has bothered me the most. It may be partly because anyone who knows most anything about Presidential elections knows that you don't become President if you don't carry the female vote. And the fact that Kerry is now blowing that is the most clear proof I've seen yet that he's not gonna pull this out.

But I think the thing that amazes me the most is that women -- or at least the women who were interviewed for this article -- indicate that even though they disagree with Bush on major social issues, all of those issues must be put on the back burner while we make our country safe. I'm just ... stunned. Speechless. Luckily, I can still type.

The fear-mongering has worked. Say what awful things you want about the Bush administration (and believe me, I have, though mostly to the inside of my car's windshield as I listen to news on the radio), but they are entirely superior to the Kerry campaign in absolute control of a message. They apparently have a majority of Americans convinced that America is safer when they are in the cockpit. But the notion stuns me ... Not that people would think that Bush is the better protector, but that anyone in the Oval Office would be a better protector than someone else.

Bush-Cheney have gone on and on about how Kerry's "flip-flops" mean that he would be wishy-washy on national security, and that somehow this would "send a message" to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that we won't strike back.

Think about that for a moment: Members of this terrorist organization happily take the wheel as they drive their [insert mode of transportation here] into [insert building here], taking their own life. They are willing to strap bombs to themselves and press the button as they call out a prayer. Do you really think they're scared of our reprisal?

All the terrorist organizations care about is how effectively they terrorize. If they are hunted down and killed in the aftermath, so be it -- they believe they die as martyrs and will be glorified in Heaven. The big, scary U.S. military machine is not their concern. Does Bush actually believe that Osama bin Laden thinks: "I better not blow that bridge up, because then America might really be mad and hurt me!" Umm, no. Their only concern is this: "Where are the weak spots in the borders of the U.S. that will allow us to strike?"

Now, is Bush any better at strengthening all weak spots than Kerry is? I suggest that there's no difference. In fact, I suggest that, as much as the workers under different administrations change, in the end, they are all getting essentially the same advice about protecting our country. In fact, when you get into the upper echelons of security experts in our government, I bet they are specialized enough that you would find the exact same people working for both administrations!

Richard Clarke worked for both administrations, and I bet that was because he was the best at what he does. Whoever the current equivalent of Richard Clarke might be (if there is one), if (s)he really is the best person for that job, I submit that a Kerry administration would be smart enough to keep that person on board. The whole idea that Bush is protecting us ... that Kerry would protect us better or worse, seems ignorant of the many, many advisors and aides to these men who shape their policy and tell them what to do and what not to do ... and to the thousands and thousands of people out there actually doing the protecting -- none of which will be out of a job based on who you vote for in November.

If you are honestly choosing to vote for Bush because you think that there will be any difference in the level of security under him versus a country under Kerry, then you have bought a line. You've been "handled." You've been manipulated. You just may want to look at some other criteria for who your next leader is going to be.

What to do when your baseball team has been blown out.

WGN radio personality John Williams is a bit of a trivia buff, in the sense that the most trivial things can sometimes fascinate him. This must be one of the reasons that I like John, because I too have this interest for useless information.

Many things about John's show frustrates me — he can be frighteningly shallow sometimes when he attempts to become serious — but for the most part, he is very fair and (to me, at least) entertaining. On several occasions throughout this baseball season, John has wondered aloud about the number of actual baseballs used in a regulation major league game. He asked one woman going to a game to count for him, but he never really heard back from her.

My wife surprised me with tickets to the Cubs-Expos match-up on my birthday (Labor Day), and while it was nice to see the Cubs win one for a change (I almost always seem to catch losses at Wrigley), in this case the Cubs were winning so handily that I was getting as restless as my two-and-a-half year old daughter by the seventh inning. So I let my mind wander, thinking about the "counting baseballs" thing. And i devised in my head a way to score the baseball. Not the baseball game — the baseball.

We caught another game on Sunday — Cubs-Marlins this time — and after having run a few test innings through the week, I tried a whole game of watching the baseball and home plate umpire Bill Hohn closer than the actual action. The result was a rather thorough report, which I compiled (with analysis) for John Williams and sent to him yesterday afternoon. He teased it at the end of his show yesterday, so it looks like he'll be talking about it on the air sometime soon.

If you're interested in useless information as much as the next person — and hey, you're already reading a blog, fer chrissakes, so you must have a little extra time on your hand! — you are welcome to download my report (in PDF format). (This document will only be available on the server for a limited time, so if the link doesn't work and you're interested in seeing it, click the "Email me directly" link on the left and I'd be happy to provide you with your own copy.)

I'm sitting in my basement ...

... working on some stuff for my "night job," and I've left the monitor on. The other end of the monitor is in Piper's bedroom. She has not made noise for an hour, since Mommy put her down. But all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she begins singing in a clear (and surprisingly in-tune) voice several verses of "Old MacDonald Had A Farm." I'm not sure if she had fallen asleep and woke up to sing this song, or if she's just been lying there thinking about things and decided she needed some music to accompany her thoughts. (The Justin Roberts CD that was playing has long since died out.) The real entertainment comes when she runs out of animals. Not that that should ever slow down a determined late-night "Old MacDonald" singer.

Old MacDonald had a farm, E - I - E - I - O
And on this farm he had a daddy, E - I - E - I - O
With a "Hi, hi" here, A "Hi, hi' there,
Here a "Hi," there a "Hi,"
Everywhere a "Hi, hi"
Old MacDonald had a farm, E - I - E - I - O.

It doesn't stop there: She continues with verses about Mommy, Gammy (Laura's mom), Gammy Jean (my mom), and Penny (Gammy Jean's dachshund). Penny doesn't get a "Hi, hi;" she gets the more apropos "Woof, woof." After a few more minutes of silence, "Rock-A-Bye, Baby" starts up, but I can already hear her starting to fade again. She barely gets out the last line — the one I modified to remove some of the morbidity of that song:

When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall And Daddy will catch you, cradle and all.

One of the greatest rewards of parenting is the knowledge that — for a few years, at least — there is one soul out there who believes you to be omnipotent. I certainly don't want her believing it for long. But it's good for her to feel that now, and hell, it certainly makes me walk an extra foot off the ground.

It's been a quiet coupla months in Lake Wobegone....

So we've quickly adjusted to many things ....

• The shock of being not just a homeowner, but a homeowner of a vintage (ca. 1925) home. In the first month-and-a-half, we had electrical and plumbing issues, at least partially related to the age of our home. "Well," our real estate agent said, "that's why I always say to put an extra 2% of your purchase price aside for situations just like this." Laura and I looked at each other and then simultaneously said to him: "You never told us that."
  
  
• The constant upstream battle against the "customer service" branches of just about every utility in the world. I have thought very seriously of starting a separate blog just for my remarkable travails with SBC, Comcast, AT&T Wireless, GE Medical Systems, ADT Security, Allstate Insurance, ComEd, NiCor, and I'm sure others that I'm way too exhausted/angry to think of at the moment. Then I realized that I'm barely keeping this blog alive, and the last thing I need is to start another blog I never write in.
  
  
• The reality that we're really going to be parents again. Yes, Laura is 22 weeks along. For those of you not into math, that would be a due date of around January 11. Every once in awhile, we look at each other at around 9 p.m., after we've put Piper down and we're trying to figure out if we can stay awake long enough to go water the yard in the dark or work on ridding the paper pile-up on our dining room table ... and we can't believe we're going to do this again. Early on, we asked Piper if she would rather have a baby brother or a baby sister. Piper was very clear every time we asked: "A baby sister." I thought it best that we find out the gender of the baby so that she would have plenty of time to adjust, lest she be getting a brother instead. But once again, Her Royal Highness will be getting just what she wants.
  
  
• The idea that summer is coming to a close ... and yet Chicago never really had it. It seems like all through July and August, we were setting records for new LOW temperatures. We had the occasional spate of warm days, but it was kind of a drag of a summer overall. I think Piper's three-day-a-week babysitter, Marta, has decided that this is the way Chicago is every year. She's moving back to Slovakia. And football's already here! I can't believe it. And speaking of sports ....
  
  
• The slow realization that the Cubs are not the team everyone said they would be. Hell, there are still baseball analysts that say the Cubs are the team to beat if they make it to the post-season. People, they've had 130+ games to prove that they're the team to beat, and they've been beat pretty well by just about everybody. What makes you think that they're going to make it past the first set of playoffs, if they get that far? I'm holding out for a miracle and a good, long winnning streak here in the waning days of the season, but the words "Wait 'til next year" are slowly coming into better and better focus.

I miss you all, and I'm looking forward to more writing here soon.

New home ownership and writing.

In short, the two don't mix. And it's too bad, because I have some great stories to tell about the move, about the settling in, about Piper and her New Back Yard®, and about everyday life .... Just the kind of stuff that leaves you hanging on my every word, I'm sure.

But hey, life is so busy now that we don't even have time to celebrate. Father's Day, Laura's and my fifth anniversary, Laura's birthday ... all have been put off until August. Which is okay, since the month doesn't have any other fun holidays anyway. So I hope things calm down soon, and I can settle in to my nice, new office chair and churn off a few hundred words here on a more regular basis.

Until then, imagine me organizing the pantry, weeding our yard, and standing in a mish-mosh of unpacked boxes in our utility room storage area ....

I guess they don't fall far from the tree.

Rumor has it that Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin's new baby was conceived in Fuji, while Chris was making a Cameo at a Gala celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Macintosh. Can anyone confirm?

Mr. Pronunciation Wanker Goes to Washington.

Less than three hours into the senate hearings on the abuses at Abu Ghraib, and I can bring you this completely trivial note: I have already heard nine ways to pronounce the prison's name:

1. aboo greb
2. aboo gah-reb
3. aboo gobb
4. aboo gah-rabe
5. aboo gah-reeb
6. aboo gabe
7. aboo grabe
8. aboo grob
   
   And my personal favorite:
   
   
9. aboo gobby

For the record, the correct way to pronounce it (as best as I can surmise) is version number one above.

Your Pentagon at work.

For all the media punditry filled with accusations about politicians and our government (no matter who is currently in office), it's still amazing when someone gets caught red-handed. One of those moments happened for me over the weekend when, while packing glassware for our move, I watched the April 23rd edition of NOW with Bill Moyers I had TiVo'd.

The subject was the current administration's rather embarrassing record on the environment -- admittedly an easy and frequent target, and one of those many issues where both sides can battle back and forth with their own version of the facts. But this time, Carl Pope, the executive director of the Sierra Club, caught the Pentagon in a bald-faced lie.

It's so deliciously evil that I just had to share it with you. Enjoy.

(I've edited the relevant portion of the original transcript for brevity but did not change any of the original context, and added my own emphasis in italics at the end.)

DAVID BRANCACCIO: ... I was just seeing a press release on Earth Day from the military, the Department of Defense, calling itself a good steward of America's environmental heritage. I was surprised that the department said they've dedicated nearly $4 billion a year to environmental programs. They talk about their work on the Red-cockaded Woodpecker preservation....

CARL POPE: ... The Red-cockaded Woodpecker is a very interesting story. Oh, in March, a month before we went into Iraq, the Defense Department, the Pentagon, went up on Capitol Hill and insisted that the military needed an exemption from the Endangered Species Act. And they got one. And the explanation they gave was they handed a fact sheet to Congress which said that at Fort Stewart, Georgia, where five percent of the world's remaining Red-cockaded Woodpeckers nest, protecting those nesting sites had interfered with training realism. Shortly after they got this exemption, the Third Army, which trains at Fort Stewart, went into Najaf and Karbala and was given instructions to not damage the Tomb of Ali, not damage the Tomb of Hussein, not damage any of the oil fields, not damage any of the villages. The Third Army fought superbly. It looked like training that way in Fort Stewart had helped them. And I went online and I found a peer-reviewed Army study which talked about the Red-cockaded Woodpecker and training realism at Fort Stewart, Georgia. It was the study on which the fact sheet was based, except the crucial paragraph in the study said protecting the Red-cockaded Woodpecker had enhanced training realism. And the Pentagon Congressional Relations Office just took the word "enhanced," substituted the word "impaired" and gave it to members of Congress as an argument for getting an exemption. The fact is, the Pentagon knows how to live like a good environmental steward. This administration doesn't want to let the Pentagon do that.

Beautiful, eh? And of course, here's one little TV show -- already dismissed by any conservative wing as being insanely liberal ... and God knows that the Sierra Club is no friend to the Bush administration ... and of course, absolutely nothing will be done.

It's enough to make me want to give up, but instead I decided to try to spread the word a little bit more through my small megaphone.

Life with Piper II

(Originally written back in February; edited today)

One of the most amazing things about being the father of an almost-two-year-old is the opportunity to see how the developing mind works. Um, Piper's, not mine.

Last night, she was having a hard time falling asleep. It was past 10:00, and she was still calling out and making noise from her crib in her dark room. Laura finally headed back there and spent some more time with her.

Piper said, "Martan." This is not unusual these days. She's talking a lot, introducing several new words every day, and she's not very good at pronouncing a lot of them. But we always give a good yeoman's effort to understand what she said. So Laura tried:

"Mittens?" she asked.

Piper shook her head, concentrated hard, and said the word again: "Mar .. tan."

"Marta?" asked Laura, referring to the woman who babysits Piper twice a week.

Again, a shake of her head indicated this wasn't correct. So Piper thought for a minute, and then locked eyes on her mom and said: "Gorilla."

"Gorilla?" asked Laura, and this time she got a nod. Perplexing at first. But then Laura traced back through the evening, and remembered the book that Piper and I were reading together before bedtime. There were lots of pictures of animals, and I was pointing at them and asking Piper what they were. At one point, I pointed at a red-haired primate. "What's that?" I asked. She thought for a moment, and then said: "Gorilla." To which I pointed, and said: "Orangutan." To which Piper repeated: "Ran ... tan."

So Mom said to Piper: "Are you saying 'orangutan?'" Piper enthusiastically nodded: "Yes!"

A dumb story, perhaps, but it amazed us. In her desperation to be understood, she asked us to recall something from earlier. By saying "gorilla" to Laura, she was really saying: "Do you remember earlier when I thought something was a gorilla, but it wasn't? That's the word I'm trying to say."

The resourcefulness of a toddler is practically the eighth wonder of the world.

Okay. Break's Over.

or, What I did on my Blog Vacation. By Me.

1. Bought a house. Well, I'd already mentioned that here, but we signed the contract on it after I stopped writing. All systems go for a June 17th closing, looking especially good since we ...

2. Sold our condo. In only a week, too! That was nice. A bizarre series of circumstances led us to get less for it than we probably deserved, but it's a long story and SO two months ago that it's not worth sharing here -- and consider yourself fortunate that I wasn't blogging at the time so that you didn't have to suffer through the minutiae of selling a home.

3. Made great advancements in Piper's potty training. You're thanking yourself for my lack of writing again, aren't you?

4. Ran again. Once. I felt like a 60-year-old. I was sore for three days. But the girl loved it. Of course, she was all snug in her jogging stroller. Tough life. And best of all ...

5. The Cubs are back in action. Good god, it's a wonderful thing. This is a subject you will not get to escape. Please remove me from your bookmarks now -- or trust that I'll make it as interesting as possible. The worst part of these three months off? Just before I stopped, I had finally caught up on reading Scandal's entire journal ... and now I'm three months behind again. *sigh* Time to dig in again ... Ahhhhh. It's nice to be back.

The trouble with Dennis.

I've had the most difficult time letting go of Dennis Miller. I've always respected him for knowing the limitations of his own talent, thus he is one of the few SNL alums to consciously not make a serious attempt at the big screen. Sure, he's had his missteps, but at least he is willing to take a few chances, and no matter how hard he falls on his face, he manages to protect himself.

And he is also not afraid to admit publicly -- very publicly -- that he has changed greatly in the last few years. He says that the events of 9/11 changed how he views the world and politics. What he means when he says this is that he has become conservative. Uncomfortably conservative. So much so, in fact, that he has stated in the pre-press for his new show on CNBC that he will not make any cracks against George W. Bush. He says he likes the President and he likes the job he's doing.

While any regular readers of this blog know, the value of Bush's presidency is an issue where Dennis and I will disagree. But the idea that a good comedian's politics would somehow make a subject -- any subject -- off-limits just seemed like a really, really bad precedent. I mean, it's not a censorship issue, by any means. It's Dennis' show, so whatever-the-hell he wants to do, that's his prerogative. And it's not like he'd be the first pundit-like semi-comedy, semi-news show to have an agenda. I just didn't see the move coming from Mr. Miller. So though I was surprised and perplexed by Dennis' decision to hold his tongue on all things Bush, I still had a little respect for the guy. What can I say: It's hard for me to say goodbye for good.

So I planned on watching the first week of the new show -- even if it was going to be a "Bush-free zone." I finally tore through the shows on my TiVo recently, so here's some belated thoughts several days after the event. Hey, it's the best I can do, what with the house purchase and all.

The first moment's of the series did not make me any less dubious. You pretty much expected one of his "rants" right off the bat, and a sort of rant came out in his preface, where a chimpanzee, which is credited as a "co-host" on the show, was used as a metaphor for all the balance Dennis hopes to bring to his TV audience. He hopes he can bring some levity and truth to the table, cutting through all the b.s. that we get all the time from politics. Again, these words seem much more hollow with his promise that the current administration will not be harshed on.

The chimpanzee (which he constatly calls a "monkey" over and over throughout the first week of the series -- I hope someone has set him straight by now) is a weak gimmick, and it's hard not to watch the "interaction" between Dennis and the chimp and wonder if, by Thursday, he was re-thinking the idea the same way that David Schwimmer has famously hated "Marcel" from his TV show.

Anyway, after the opening salvo, things got all soft as he lobbed Arnold Schwarzenegger some of the biggest softballs I've ever seen, basically framing questions in this basic fashion: "A lot of people seem to be upset about the Bush administration doing _______, but isn't he completely right to do it that way?" Keeping things nice and safe and basically handing everyone their talking points. Thus enabling them to seem quite earnest when, at the close of the interview, they each pipe up with "Congratulations on the new show, Dennis!"

Dennis attempts a sort of "Weekend Update" news segment he calls "The Daily Rorshach," but on three of the first four nights, it falls incredibly flat. The fact that they've gone without a studio audience makes things a little challenging for him, but we still hear the off-camera giggling of the crew, which always reminds me of the inane Talk Soup -- not a the type of programming that I would think a channel like CNBC necessarily wants to be likened to.

And then there's a panel each night, made up of one conservative (David Horowitz in the first week), one liberal (Naomi Wolf), and one celebrity, sometimes a politician and sometimes an entertainer from Dennis' past. (Martin Short sat in on Thursday night.) This could easily be the best part of the show, where there is the possibility of some good debate from some good minds. Unfortunately, Dennis (or his director) knows nothing about keeping things in any sort of control, and on most nights, when everyone wasn't talking over everyone else, Naomi was pleading with David to please, please, please let her finish her thought without him interrupting, and David insisting to Naomi that he wasn't interrupting.

Dennis was clearly uncomfortable the first couple of nights, but he was slowly finding his bearings by Wednesday night. The show might get better over time, but not without some changes. Like a small studio audience. Or perhaps less limitations on the subject matter. Dennis is still looking for a vehicle that fits as well as his HBO show was. Sadly, this isn't it. The good news, I suppose, is that I'm not going to have to keep watching. One week was enough to know that, conservative bent or not, this show was not a good exploitation of Dennis' strengths.

It's a hard breakup for Dennis and me. Luckily, he's trying to make it as easy as possible.