So, I was heading out the door today, and Harrison was standing there looking at me, and he says, “Bye Bye Mommy.”

He is out of his mind.

He knows what noses, eyes, cheeks, TV, food, shoes, door, shirts, dirt, snow, water and chocolate are, but he consistently calls me Mommy and Amanda Daddy. He has GOT to be doing it because we get that “what the heck?” look on our faces every time. I skooched over to him earlier and said “Okay YOU are Harrison. And WHO am I?” I repeated the question a few times. And I KNOW he knew what I was asking. He got this smile on his face, hopped down from the couch, got on all fours, started acting like a dog and tried to lick my leg. At which point I ran screaming.

Oh man it’s been windy the past few days. Windy windy windy. An apocalyptic, homicidal wind. Like the Kahoonah Winds on Maui in that one Magnum P.I. episode. So I’m driving up the street after work, and Paul has got his sprinkler going again, and the wind is blowing the water all up onto his roof and off into the ether. Despite that, his yard is turning all nice and green. Mine on the other hand, is still drab, prickly, and yellow. I checked some websites about how to water a lawn during drought to keep it dormant but not let it die. And it pretty much boils down to watering at half the normal amount. So I’ll be watering 3/4” every Monday and see how it goes. I was going to start this past Monday, but I woke up at 4 am and I could hear that the wind was blowing what sounded like trash cans and loose lumber down the street, so I went outside in my next-to-nothings to turn off the sprinklers just as they were getting started. Fooey.

At work, the lady who takes care of our video conferencing, is on vacation. So I get to be runner up troubleshooter for that infernal contraption. Video conferencing is my mortal enemy. Which is of course why I’m the backup guy for that mess. As is to be expected, it goes on the fritz today and won’t get a signal to the Sunnyvale office. And so I get to stand up in front of everybody pushing buttons on the remote, tugging on wires and shaking my bag of bones at the screen. Finally, somebody in the room lost faith in me and went to grab one of the video guys to help. Imagine that, one of the VIDEO guys helping out. Well he tugged wires and messed with the remote too, but I guess he got the right ones because it started working. Man, I’m glad I was there to make a difference.

I was eating a pear at my desk and thinking about how I must be adding at least 6 or 7 hours to my normal lifespan by being so healthy at that moment. And when I was done, I reached over to the stack of spare fast-food napkins to wipe my mouth off and caught myself lingering over the smell french fries on the napkin. There’s got to be something perverse about that.

Greasy lips part wide
Beef, cheese and Pepsi engulfed
Where floss dares not tread

Jeremy