Moved!

I'm dropping this blog and moving it over to http://jarrodandlynn.typepad.com/jrod_says See me over there!

FREAKY!

Remember that Dirty Jobs dream I wrote about earlier? Well, there's a freaky twist on it... A couple of days after I would have that dream, I would go on to read a section in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay that would be in almost that precise setting. It didn't occur to me until just now that I read that segment after I had the dream, and yet the settings are nearly a perfect match. What kind of strange trickery is at work on my mind? Are external forces massing against me? Perhaps it's time I brushed up on my occlumency!

Remember Riverdance?

What the hell was that about??

You don't even want to know stations that train of thought had to visit to end up there.

Pudding!

It's delicious!!!

Dirty Dreams

Last night, I had an extremely vivid, uncharacteristically detailed dream in which I was watching, and somehow peripherally involved in, an episode of Dirty Jobs featuring some sort of Arctic station.  We followed around the maintenance tech there, in chambers small and vast, some heated, some overheated, all of them metal-walled and extremely rusty and dripping with moisture.  There were even outtakes in this dream, with cameramen and audio guys slipping and sliding on frozen parts of floors and even Mike Rowe hitting himself in the head while pulling open a steel door.  Good thing he was wearing a bright blue plastic hardhat!

Where the hell did that come from??

Testing...1, 2, 3!

Just a test to see if this mail-to-blog thing is working. If it is, I
suspect you'll be seeing more of my random thoughts!

Weight Loss Blog

I've started a new blog specifically for the weight loss over at jrodshrinks.blogspot.com. There's not much there yet, but eventually will be pictures and such. See you over there!

That was fast.

After Gymboree this morning, we went to the mall to weigh me. Most household scales go up to a maximum of 330 lbs, which isn't close to what I need, so we use the scale at GNC. I'll use it for tracking my weight post-op, as well - as the doctor said, it doesn't matter if the scale is right as long as it's consistent. So, I know there are going to be some differences between the doctor's scale and the GNC scale, but if they were calibrated correctly, then in less than 2 weeks I've lost 28 pounds. So let's give ourselves a margin of error of 10 pounds between the two scales, which seems more than reasonable. That means I've lost somewhere between 18 and 38 pounds. That's astonishing. Now, there's no way I could keep it up... this diet is just too gawdawful. I've even cheated and eaten some turkey or chicken breast slices, or a few bites of cottage cheese... nothing bad for you, just not liquid stuff... but it's still not enough. I either need to have food, or get this surgery done so I'm not so hungry and unfulfilled all the time. Lucky me, surgery's just around the corner! People ask me if I'm nervous. The truth is, I'm really not. Lynn's been through it all already, with the same people, in the same places. She went through our cabinets and fridge today and got rid of most of the crap we don't need to eat so it won't be bothering me when I come back on Thursday. Honestly, I think I'm really set up for success here. I feel really good about it. And given how much better I feel at 28-ish pounds down, which is around an eighth of what I want to lose... I can't imagine feeling 7 times better than I do right now. But I look forward to it!

S minus 5 days and counting

The countdown continues. I continue to look forward to it mostly for the ending of this gawdawful liquid diet. This morning, Sydney woke up at about 6:45, as did I. But thanks to the Bi-PAP, I didn't have a pounding headache or anything. Anyway, I'm listening to her "talk" in her crib. She's babbling and making kinda-words, and then shes says, "Mommy! Daddy!" It was heartbreakingly cute. Then I had to poop. The weird thing about poop on this diet is that it can still be firm. You wouldn't think that, but with the protein count, I guess it does make sense. Plus the lack of fiber. But it is smoooooth. Then we got the tiny up. She had also pooped. Firmly. But damn, she's cute. We watched Children of Men last night. Really good, tense movie. A great example of what sci-fi can be in the right hands. Ah, well, another day. Time to go read to the tot.

S minus 7 days and counting

One week from right now, I'll be at Chapman Medical Center in Orange, CA, changing out of my regular clothes and putting on one of those ass-baring gowns. After that, I'll be filling out paperwork and getting poked and prodded for the next two hours. Many people will come by, look at the bracelet attached to my wrist, and ask me my name, my doctor, and what procedure I'm there for. I'll be weighed. An IV will be set up in my arm. The anesthesiologist will come in and check my vitals, allergies, etc. I'll be labeled "NKA" - No Known Allergies. At some point, Lynn will say goodbye as they roll me towards the operating room. She'll go into the Intensive Care waiting room (because it's closer to the operating room, and I'll actually be rolled by it when I am moved to my room). She'll sit there for an hour to two hours until the doc comes out and tells her how it went. At some point after that, she'll be able to come up and see me in the room, where I'll be living for the next 2 nights. I'll get a lot of sleep over the next 2 days, with my trusty Bi-PAP. Man, that thing's been great. It's stopped my snoring and pretty much eliminated my sleepiness in the middle of the day. Well, that could also be attributed to the pre-op diet. Either way, the change has been great! One week. One more week of this awful liquid diet. One more weekend of it. Then, at least I won't be hungry.

S minus 8 days and counting

A week from tomorrow is the big day. Which at the moment I mostly look forward to because it'll be the end of the liquid diet for me. Well, it won't, but it'll be the end of the liquid diet with this same stomach size. Yesterday was a bit tortuous on the diet front. We had "Gymbo's Birthday Party", a party at Gymboree basically show off all the stuff you get when you have a party at Gymboree. The playing and everything was fun, like a Gymboree class with a lot more people, but the food was awful.

• Pizza. From a new place call zpizza. 4 kinds of pizza. Plenty to go around. I couldn't touch it. It looked really delicious.

• Cake. Ice cream cake from Cold Stone. Enough to go around that they were begging the grownups to eat more of it.

It's all karmic payback for what I did while Lynn was on this diet before her surgery. I mean, I wasn't deliberately mean, I just ate regular food in front of her. Food she likes, like chili, and food she usually is meh on, like pizza. But after a few days on liquidity, pizza sounds like a buffet of all the foods you've ever loved. I did find a taste treat yesterday - protein shake made with Designer Whey vanilla, with some Cheesecake sugar-free fat-free pudding powder added. Daaaamned tasty. If I had an ice cream freezer, I think that'd make pretty awesome 'scream. On the babysitter front, we had 4 interviews this weekend, and we got 3 I would totally be comfortable with. I think pretty soon we're going to be able to go out on a date night! Woohoo! I'm so looking forward to surgery being done. The Bi-PAP continues to give me good nights of sleep, though I haven't had one all the way through just yet. I usually wake up at least once, usually needing to adjust the mask. But compared to what I'd been like before, it's staggeringly good. Well, the tot is fed and playing, time for daddy to go make up a cheesecake shake and pretend that it's enough to satisfy him. : P

The Thing That Sucks

I realized tonight on the drive home, one of the things that's hurting the most on this liquid diet: I enjoy food. It seems obvious, but I never think about it until I'm on some kind of diet. I like eating chili dogs. I like eating pizza. I like eating Kraft Tangy Italian spaghetti dinner. And more to the point, food has always been something for me to look forward to. At the end of the day, I liked to think about what I'd be having that night, whether it was something Lynn was making, or something I was going to choose for myself. Contemplating the possibilities was something to enjoy, too... "Ooh, I have cottage cheese, I could have bologna sandwiches and Doritos... or maybe I'll grill those cheese dogs..." Now, I got nothin'. I like the protein shakes I've been drinking, they do taste good. But there's no satisfaction of chewing, of feeling the food hit your stomach and, you know, stay there. I've kind of been eager to get to bed at the end of the day because just sitting around watching TV or messing around on the computer just habitually makes me want a snack. Having realized all this about myself, I think it does indicate something about the depth of my food-psychosis. I'm not sure what a "healthy" level of looking-forward-to-dinner is, but I'm pretty sure I'm beyond that. I think this two weeks will not just be shrinking my liver, but hopefully will shrink my cravings and my bad habits, making the post-op transition easier. Lynn assures me that, while cravings for certain specific foods do crop up from time to time, by and large your day isn't particularly influenced by thinking about your next meal. I hope that's true. I think it will be. I remember what it was like being on Phen-Fen - I just didn't think about food. I'm hoping that's how this will play out. Because at this very moment, food is about all I can think about. I think I'm gonna go to be pretty soon.

It comes in waves

The hunger will swell up and it'll be unbearable, and then I'll suddenly realize that it's been 30 minutes or more since I thought about it. But I know now that I'll be able to get through it without going completely f***ing nuts. I ain't gonna be happy about it, no sir. But I'll make it, yes sir.

Better and better

I feel even better this morning than I did the previous morning, and I can only remember waking up one time, and I'm not sure why I woke up that time... I do remember having a little leak in the mask which I fixed, but that's all. I think I had the bed set a little too soft still, as I'm feeling it a little in my back, so tonight I'll pump it up 10 and see how that does. If this improvement continues, oh man, how good will I feel in a few more days?

Neapolitan forever?

When they're coming up with flavors for protein shakes, why is it always chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry? Doesn't anyone ever suggest, say, steak and potato? Or meat lasagna? Pepperoni pizza? Chili? Mac and cheese? Dorito? Hmm, I think that turned into a list of Things I'd Really Love To Eat A Lot Of Right This Very Moment.

Good lord, Mabel!

I've already peed 5 times today! 3 times at work! Damn!

S minus 13

I'm hungry. No, I'm freakin' starving. I'm just guessing, but it's probably because I had about 810 calories yesterday, which is probably about 1/5th of a normal day for me. Yesterday afternoon, I thought it was going to be pretty easy... the hunger hadn't been too bad. But then towards evening, BLAM. Hunger. Hunger for anything solid, anything with flavor. I found myself wanting to have another chewable multivitamin just to have something to chew! We went to bed pretty early last night... I didn't want to be up thinking about all the food I couldn't have. I cheated in a small way, kind of like Lynn did. I had 3 slices of smoked turkey breast and 2 bites of cottage cheese, both of which have a high protein-to-everything-else ratio, so they're at least not horrible things to cheat on. And I accounted for them in my daily totals. I had 152 grams of protein, 27 grams of carbs, and 10 grams of fat. This is fairly similar to my goals post-op, but damn, there's no way I could stick to this on anything resembling a permanent basis. It's pretty miserable. I also drank 4 or 5 liters of sugar free drinks to help, and they do help some, so I'm gonna keep hittin' that. Last night's sleep was better than the night before, even, so far as I can tell at the moment. I still woke up a couple times during the night... once Lynn woke me up and the mask was completely off and I was on my side. Once I woke and had to poop. Wanted to know that, didn't you? But overall I think I'm starting to get used to it. I'm definitely glad Tracey, the tech, ordered the machine she did for me, as this allows me to exhale much more satisfactorily than the one they had me on during the titration. Less than 2 weeks 'till they cut my gut. I can't wait to have it done and over with!!

The verdict is:

I am MUCH less sleepy this morning! Yesterday, driving in to work, I was really sleepy. The night before had been one of the worst. I woke up several times, and fell asleep once sitting up, which gave an awful pain in the neck. On the way in, I was really close to nodding off. I was screaming and yelling, at nothing in particular, it just helped me stay awake. I was slapping my arms, hard, which also helped. This morning, my eyes were a little droopy. That's it. No long blink. No nodding. No nothin'. I think this Bi-PAP is going to change my life. I look forward to sleeping again tonight!!

S minus 14 days and counting

It's two weeks before my gastric bypass surgery. Today I begin my low-calorie, all-liquid diet that will shrink my liver to enable easier access to my innards in the laparoscopic procedure. I can't say that I'm looking forward to this part of the process - it was pretty miserable for Lynn, and she was able to eat small salads and carrots, which I won't be doing. But I know that it'll be worth it all in the end. Two weeks will be a good amount of time going towards breaking bad habits, not to mention the weight loss. Lynn lost 20 pounds just during that part. I've already broken one bad habit: soda pop. It's been around a month now that I gave it up and replaced it with Crystal Light sugar free flavor packs, and the generic equivalents thereof. Honestly, it wasn't even hard. I'm really enjoying the variety of flavors and the lack of carbonation. I'm glad I did it then, too, so that I don't have to do it along with everything else I'll be giving up. I got my Bi-PAP machine yesterday, too. It's like a CPAP, but more powerful and sophisticated. From what I gather, the difference is that the Bi-PAP actually has to detect when you breathe out and reduce the pressure, since the pressure they have me on is too hard to exhale against. It's a nice unit, doesn't look like a big ugly medical machine. Last night was my first night sleeping with it. At the moment, it feels like I did get a better night's sleep. My eyes are still a little tired, but let's face it - when's the last time I did get a good night's sleep? I have no idea. So it may take a few days to completely catch up. But I notice some big changes already:

• Almost no stiffness in any of my joints (part of that might be because I was back in my own, wonderful bed, but I don't think that's all it.)
• A general clearness of my thoughts so far.
• I don't feel like sitting down and napping already.

The bigger test will be the drive to work, if I feel sleepy during that. But again, I'm not expecting huge results already - it may take a few days. Also, Lynn pointed out that at some point, I did snore - which may mean my body started breathing out of my mouth rather than my nose, thereby bypassing the machine. She also said it sounded like the mask lost the seal around my nose and was making a loud sound, which drove her out to the couch. I told her that in the future, she can feel free to reseat the mask on my face - I'm probably not going to feel it. This is where the rubber starts hitting the road. Everything up to this point has been tests and theory. Now it's action. It's a weird but good feeling. In 2 weeks, my life will change forever, for the better! It's a bit like contemplating winning the lottery. I remember talking with people about winning the lottery and we'd go on and on about all the things we'd do with that much money. And you get really into it and then you have to come back to reality and realize that you didn't win. I've spent a lot of time thinking about the things I'll be able to do after surgery - riding a rollercoaster, shopping off the rack at Old Navy, standing on a stepladder with a 250-pound limit, using a scale with a 330 pound limit, riding in an airplane without a seat belt extension... scores and scores of things that thin, healthy people take for granted. Only this time, I don't have to come back to reality. It's really going to happen! The transformation begins now!!

Daaaaaaaaamn!

That is a big freakin' python!!! When I first saw it, I was, of course, terrified. But then my mind started telling me that I wasn't really seeing it, it had to be a Photoshop job. But no, the sucker's real!

FerroFluids are freaky

Don't believe me? See for yourself!

I can has cheezburger!

One of the funniest sites EVAR!

It's like Fifteen, but with more peeing

I'm on a mailing list with fellow 3D artists, some of whom are in their 40's and beyond. I, at 31, am one of the youngest of the group. Today, one of our compatriots turned the Big 4-0. One of the fellow youngsters on the board said, "Whats this 40 you speak of?" and asked me if I knew. I opined: "Seems to be a mythical creature that makes you angry, have to pee a lot, and imbues you with the sense that you know everything. It's kinda like "fifteen", but with more peeing." Seems pretty astute to me, but I guess I'll find out for sure in 9 years.

Incalculable Beauty

When I first started using Lightwave back in '94, I had an idea for a shot. A Tower, rising through the clouds, serving as a transfer station between atmospheric vehicles and those bound for orbit or the moon. We would start looking down on the clouds as a Venturestar-style ship bursts through the clouds. We pan up to follow it, revealing the tower puncturing the serene beauty of the cloud tops, and the moon in the distance, twinkling with the lights of the permanent settlements there. The ship approaches the tower as an orbital ships launches from it. That was the idea, anyway. I actually started the shot, but like so many big ideas back then, never finished it. Lightwave wouldn't have been up to the task, even if I had been, and I wasn't. But this morning, almost that very shot - minus the tower and the moon settlements - was sent to me by a friend, from the Astronomy Picture Of The Day. It's simply stunning, and I instantly made it my Windows backdrop. I'll do the same at home tonight. What gets me is that even in my wildest imaginings of this shot, I'd never pictured it being this beautiful. Marvel at it, and that we live in an age that can deliver these images to us. What a view!

Horribly FAT? No large fries!!!

I'm still fuming. People I've encountered in my 31 years on this planet have occasionally done some pretty awful things to me, often because I'm overweight. Naw, I'm not overweight; by any medical standard, I would be considered morbidly obese (oooooh! the morbidly obese people are hiding under your bed!) Two of the best of these involve a sometimes-friend/fellow student/college roommate named Ben. Ben was mostly an alright guy, if a bit of a twitchy Napoleon Dynamite sort. But on occasion, he could suddenly become this Asshole Rain Man and pull some really dickwad stunts. The first time was at OSSM, which we both attended. We were walking up the stairs to our dorm rooms, Ben behind and therefore slightly below me. He says, apropos of nothing, since we hadn't previously been talking about anything, "You know, I read in my biology text today that the skin of the penis accounts for about 1% of the body's skin. But since you're so heavy, it's probably a lot less than that." I was taken aback. Had I pissed in his Post Toasties without knowing it? No, I hadn't. Ben just lost his filter sometimes, and said things that people probably thought about fairly often, but of course would never say. Why didn't I paste the little mushroom-head right then, you ask? Well, at the time, I was going through an ultra-Christian phase (some kids get into drugs in high school, I got into God - I win) and so I just clenched my fists, said nothing, and trudged up to my room. I'm still a Christian, but nowadays, I'm not sure I would be able to leave that one alone. So, despite all this, when we all headed off to college, I accepted Ben's offer to room together at OSU. Mostly, so I'd know the person I was rooming with when I started out. After a few weeks there, getting to know where everything was and such, I come back to the room to find a voicemail message waiting. I get the message, which is a girl saying something to the effect of: Hey, I saw you in the cafeteria earlier and asked your friend who you were, I was wondering if you wanted to go out sometime. Now, as Aerosmith said, "I was a high school loser, never made it with the ladies." But in my case, the boys never told me the something I'd missed. I was girl kryptonite. I was the same polarity as every female everywhere, and I repelled them. It was pretty pathetic, I gotta say. So when I got this message, it was like a nukyular blast to my... heart. Yeah, the heart, that's it. I spent the next couple of hours on the proverbial Cloud Nine, basking in the fact that some girl was asking me out. Imagine it! I didn't even consider what she looked like or if... hell, if she was even human. She could have had 3 ears in the middle of her forehead, it wouldn't have mattered at the time. (My standards did improve - my lovely wife has only 2 ears, and they're right where they should be) Then Ben came back to the room from class, and I proceeded to excitedly relay all the glorious happenings in my newly-birthed (I almost said infant, but... no, that's just not right) love life. He sat there and let me open the release valve on all this energy and excitement that I had... Until he could take it no longer. And he busted up laughing. He'd set the whole thing up. The girl was a friend of his. It was all a big joke. That was the fall of 1993, ladies and gentlemen, and I can still remember the details of this saga to this day. These things will stick with me to my grave. The malice, the forethought, the planning... okay, it wasn't a lot of planning, but it wasn't like he ran up and pantsed me in the cafeteria or something. He had to think about it, recruit a co-conspirator, and execute it. Just to play a joke on his fat roommate. (At our 10-year reunion, I asked him about these things, and he professed to not remembering either of them. Considering the number of illicit substances he's put in his body since that time, I bought it. It probably wasn't a very significant event in his life, anyway. Nothing to store in the permanent archives.) I bring all of this up, because today, my wife and I were confronted with another Face of Evil. Malice aforethought. This morning we went apartment hunting. Our house is finally in escrow, and we've got about 30 days to find a new place to live. We had three places we wanted to see today, and so we started off by going to the one farthest from here, over in Canyon Country. We talked about grabbing some food somewhere, because neither of us had gotten to eat breakfast, what with all the getting ready and such. After viewing the first apartment complex, our route back home took us past the one stand-alone Arby's in the Santa Clarita Valley (the other's in the mall). We went in, had our Arby's, dealt with the squirmy child, and left. After saddling up the tiny girl, we were getting in the car, when Lynn says, "Why is there a note on my car?". Now, my first thought was, "Dammit, another parking ticket." An overzealous rent-a-cop employed by our HOA has been giving warning tickets to residents in our area, for no good reason. Lynn and I had both been hit by them in the past couple of days. I could see it wasn't yellow, so, no ticket. Then I thought, "Crap, someone hit the car and took off, just leaving a note." I was wrong about that, too. Here's the note we got: click the image or this line to see a bigger version In case it's too illegible, here's what it says: "Hi, Are you both going to set example & show your lovely child how to get horribly fat???!!? Please don't leave your child without a parent & you make them horribly fat, plase. No large fries, etc, etc, etc - take care" Love that last part. "Take care". Yeah, thanks for your support, asshole. What kind of person does this? What kind of person takes the time to write a handwritten note? What kind of person sees someone going into an Arby's and decides that they need to help these poor fat bastards? Save them from themselves! Yes, my wife and I are both MORBIDLY OBESE (ooooooooohhhhhhh!!!! Scary fat people!) We have also both started the process of getting lap-band surgery to correct the problem. Did our mysterious benefactor take that into account? All evidence points to NO. As Lynn pointed out, for all he knows, we could have already lost 100 pounds, and were just treating ourselves to a rare fast-food treat. But he didn't know. Because he didn't bother to ask us. He was a self-esteem sniper. A hit-and-run evangelist for the Radical Skinnies. He (or she - the handwriting could definitely be a girl) didn't really intend any help at all. He just wanted to make sure he "did his part to help us poor disabled folk". He just needed to be absolutely certain that we both know how fat we are, and that it's unhealthy. Yeah, no shit, Sherlock. I've been overweight since f**king kindergarten, thank you. I have encountered a mirror or two in my life. This jackass is just like the people who stand outside abortion clinics and scream at the scared girls and women walking in, telling them they're going to go to hell for being baby murderers instead of offering them an alternative. This guy didn't offer a suggestion beyond "no large fries, etc, etc, etc." Wow, that's a keen nutritional strategy, there, Billy Blanks. Never would have thought of that! Thank GOD you were here to tell me not to get a large fries! Think of what might have happened! Oh, the HUMANITY! Yeah, I'm a little pissed about it. The worst part was seeing how it made my wife feel. It hit her hard, I could see it in her face. This guy is the lowest of the low. Pond scum scrapes this m*********er off its shoes. I swear to you, if I knew who it was, I'd slam both his hands in a car door until his bones were the consistency of confectioner's sugar, so that he'd no longer be a note-writing burden on our society.

Hardy Har!

Later this week, I'm going to abandon my wife and daughter and go see Superman. I have to, you see. It's a geek requirement. I was planning on seeing it on the way back home. So this weekend as we were out and about, I told Lynn that I'd checked on the movie times. "Looks like the later ones are at 7 or 7:30, and then again at 10 or 10:30. So I guess I'll come home, do a little-" and then I gave her the universal hand symbol for sexual intercourse. She replied, "What, put your finger in and out of your hand?" Niiiiiiiiiiiice. Yep, that's what I gotta live with, folks. 'Course, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Warm Fuzzy

A couple of weeks ago, Lynn went down to her friend Maggie's for a KnB session (Knit 'n' Bitch, though almost no knitting actually happens). Several of The Girls from her boards were there. Anyway, she said that Maggie told the other girls, "You may think your husbands love your children, but you should see how Jarrod loves his daughter!" That just gives me a warm fuzzy whenever I think about it. I don't really make any conscious effort to be extra loving to her or anything, it just happens! I mean... she's mah babay!

I Miss The Bunnies

The other day, I finished reading Watership Down. I'd always heard of it spoken of as one of those books that everyone should read, but I'd never gotten around to it. I knew it involved rabbits, but I didn't know exactly how, and I actually though that Watership Down meant that there was a Watership, and that it was Down somewhere. More of a sci-fi angle. Not at all. But it was a truly great book, and I would recommend it to everyone. It's a harrowing adventure story that taps into something deep within us all. It's archetypal... you could easily switch out the rabbits for people or aliens or robots or fish, and it would be just as good and just as true. The mark of a truly great book, for me, is that I think about it a lot afterward. And I've still got Watership Down on my mind. It's lingering, and I don't mind except for one thing: I miss the bunnies. The book took me a few weeks of off-and-on bathroom reading to get through. With my schedule and spending time with Lynn and Syd, I don't always get as much time to read as I would like. So it was spread out, and I found myself thinking about them quite a bit even during the times when I wasn't reading. So it seems like I'd spent a month with Hazel and Fiver and Bigwig and the rest, and now that the book is over, I miss them. I liked "having them to come home to" so to speak. Knowing that at the end of the day, I'd have a little while to see how those brave rabbits were getting along in our harsh world. Well, they got along fine without me, but I'm still sad that they're gone. Seriously, though, if you haven't read it, go. Get it. You won't be sorry.

Crying Wolf

It seems to be impossible to get Wolf Brand Chili at any store here in California. There's some sort of Wolf Brand Blacklist going on, or something. The Hormel Mafia has put the lid on that can. What's a chili lover to do? Well, it's an open secret that many "store-brand" items are actually made by well-known manufacturers and marketed under various different brands. "Great Value" is Wal-Mart's brand. Ralph's, Albertson's, Vons, they all have theirs, too. So I took a stab: Could Wal-Mart's "Great Value" chili actually be Wolf Brand Chili, manufactured by Con-Agra foods? No, it most certainly is not. Con-ASSra foods, maybe. Nasty. The search continues. On another note: Restaurant Chili. Over the years we've been here, I've sampled the chili from various restaurants for their suitability. I was pleasantly surprised to find that there are several very tasty chilis in Southern California, each with its own special something. I list them here, in order of my preference: 1. Fatburger. SPICY. Strong flavor, great for fries. And the recipe seems to vary just slightly from store to store, which is nice. My fave. 2. Pink's. World-famous, this chili is smooth and thick and perfect for chili dogs. 3. Tommy's. Quite honestly, when you get your food from Tommy's, it looks like someone had a horrible bowel accident all over it. This is their chili. But don't let the fecal appearance fool you, this is another smooth, chili-dog chili, similar to Pink's, but blended finer. Also great for fries - sticks right to 'em. 4. Angel's Burgers. Their chili is tasty, but I rarely get it, because the kids who run the place at our mall are so bloody slow that I could go over and cook a pizza myself at Sbarro's and get back before they finish my chili dog. Angels' seems simliar to the old Swift Premium canned chili that used to be around. That was great stuff. 5. Foster's Freeze. Less thick and flavorful than those above, this is still a solid chili-dog/chili-fries chili. Which is what I order when I go there.

My Sitcom Life... or Wife.

Background: Outriggers can be lots of things, but in this particular instance, I'm talking about the hydraulic-powered legs and feet that come out the side of a backhoe to stabilize it. When I was a kid, they were widening the highway through Covington, and I was over at Jon Powell's house, which was right on the highway. They were working in the ditch right next to the house with a backhoe. Well, the operator didn't have his outriggers down, and he got himself up on both the front-end loader and the backhoe itself, and with no side support, it tipped over. It was hilarious. They had to bring another giant machine over and winch it back onto its wheels. CUT TO: INT. KITCHEN - NIGHT TWENTY YEARS LATER The wife and I are standing in the kitchen talking, fixing dinner. I went to move somewhere and bumped into her foot, which she had spread quite wide. I said, "Oops, sorry, didn't mean to bump into your outrigger, there." "Outrigger?" "Yeah, like on a backhoe." "I know what an outrigger is. This isn't an outrigger." To which I say, jokingly, "Yeah, true, you're not a backhoe. You're more of a.. front-hoe." WITHOUT MISSING A BEAT, she says: "Yeah, well, you're an ass-hoe." Hollywood, you couldn't possibly do better. Pack it in, buddy. My wife rules!

Re: Prose

I just finished reading Stephen King's Cell. Damned fine book. Everything I wanted it to be. Halfway through, it became what I call "unputdownable". Meaning I was reading on it just about every moment I could be, including holding it in one hand while I brushed my teeth with the other. He dedicates it to George Romero (he of Night of the Living Dead) and Richard Matheson (he of... well, read about him. You've probably seen this, or maybe this, or perhaps this.), and the dedication couldn't be more apt; the novel is like taking a cup of Matheson, a cup of Romero, adding just a pinch of Shirley Jackson, and putting it in the Stephen King blender. Now that's a smoothie. In any case, having finished that, I'm now reading Isaac Asimov's The Gods Themselves. And I must say, the contrast in style between these two authors couldn't be more striking. King is known, and oft-maligned within the "literary elite", for his folksy, casual prose. Most of his books read like Steve himself is sitting there spinning the yarn for you. He often rambles into the details and minutia of his characters, and I think that's a huge part of his charm, and the reason you end up caring so much about the characters. Just stop and think about the people in The Shawshank Redemption for a minute. Those men were all hardened criminals, people who we wouldn't normally take the time to spit on. And yet, you cared about them, didn't you? You cared about Red and Andy and Brooks, didn't you? Admit it! And why wouldn't you? You lived with them. You went through what they went through right along with them. You knew them. King does it so well, and Frank Darabont made it into the best book-to-movie translation to date. Asimov, on the other hand, is... not that way. Asimov has incredible ideas. Don't get me wrong, he deserves every piece of praise that is heaped upon him. Certainly he and Arthur C. Clarke and Robert Heinlein were the Big Three of Sci-Fi. Asimov came up with the Three Laws of Robotics - which are going to be something we're actually going to have to deal with in the next couple of decades. He has an asteroid, a magazine, and two awards named after him. But his prose is lousy. Not immature, not underdeveloped, just perfunctory, bordering on lame. He makes people say things that real people wouldn't say, or wouldn't say that way. I always end up picturing every man delivering dialogue in an Asimov story as someone doing an impression of James Cagney. "Myah, we gotta stop the Positron Pump, see? That's the way it's gotta be, see? Myah." I think he gets caught up in Captain Exposition-land a lot, and I'll grant that it's gotta be tough for him, because unlike most authors, Asimov's main goal was to get the idea across to you so you could think about it. Someone like Stephen King has cool ideas and premises, but the reason you keep coming back for more is his characters. Their interaction is what keeps the pages flipping, and they *do* talk like real people, and when they don't, it jumps out at you like a kangaroo on Red Bull. Whereas Asmiov's dialogue is more like a visual effect... it serves the story, it's necessary, but kind of a pain in the ass. He's gotta make you understand what's going on, and either he can just tell you, or he can have a character tell another character. Whichever you choose, it's going to be tough to be happy with the result. And, too, he was charting new territory in his work. It wasn't like he had decades of sci-fi authors from whose works he could draw. He was bleeding-edge. And so, we end up with prose that's more like a play, where people talk about what they're doing. "Say, Johnny, I was thinking about refugulating the alpaclameric reesensphere." "Say, is that the alpaclameric reesensphere that blophenates the precnoid ficlia?" "The same!" I spent like 10 minutes coming up with all those fake words. That is not easy.

You're standing on my neck

We began night #2 of CIO Operation: Heartbreak with great hopes. They lasted about an hour. Then, the Peanut spent about 40 minutes off and on crying, screaming, wailing, and shrieking. Then she went back to sleep. I'm chronicling all of this for a few reasons. One, if we ever have to do this again, I'm hoping to be able to remind myself that it was horrible, but it did get better. Two, a year from now when it's all over, I want to look back on it and have a good chuckle. "Remember how much that sucked and how much we wanted to die? HA! Ah yeah, good times... good times." Last night was amazingly horrible. Tonight, listening to her cry was not one iota easier. And it won't be for the rest of the night, either, I'm sure. The one weapon I do have against the crying is that I'm absolutely exhausted after the past night of barely any sleep. I find that I talk to the wife about this stuff almost to the exclusion of everything else. I think partly we're justifying the decision to each other, but we're also trying to strengthen each other, to help each other through it. And the thing I keep in the back of my head is that if we go in there now, if we give in and break down, then all the pain we've experienced up until now will have been for nothing. That is something I cannot accept. Our personal sacrifices in this ordeal will not be in vain. It's become cliche now, but truly, the only option we have now is to stay the course. It's just so friggin' hard.

Oh. My. God.

I've never done anything more difficult than what we did last night. Sadly, 30 minutes was not all she cried. She cried off and on until 5:30 or so, in my estimation. We had to go get her once, around 1 am... she seemed to be in a fit that wasn't going to go away. We thought she was genuinely hungry, but she really wasn't. Then after that soothing, she had kind of another fit, but she did calm down from it. My feelings are so mixed up. On the one hand, she doesn't seem to hate us this morning, and that's good. On the other hand, she wasn't quite as miraculous as some in the book - she didn't have many smiles this morning, though she was pleasant and not fussy, and lasted almost an hour and a half. On the gripping hand, we gotta do this again tonight. And tomorrow night, and so on. Plus naps. Sigh. I think (hope, pray, beg) that tonight will be a tiny bit easier, simply because we've lived through one now and can see that she's survived the night and doesn't hate us and all that. But if it's easier, it'll only be a little bit easier. Of that, I am fairly certain.

The Hardest Thing

The Peanut just seems to have quieted down after 30 minutes of crying. Okay, rewind.... You see, she's been very difficult at night lately. She's really too big for the Miracle Blanket and Boppy anymore, but she doesn't really like to lay on her back or side yet, either. For the past couple of days, we've been putting her on her side for naps and such, but she rarely makes it past half an hour at a time. Then there was last night. I'm still sick. I'm better than I was a few days ago, but I'm still feelin' the effects of whatever nasty bug blew through. Last night, we decided: no more Miracle Blanket, no more Boppy, she's going into her Halo sleep sack and that's that (oooh, big, tough parents!!!). I rocked her 'till she was good and asleep and put her down. She lasted about 2 hours. I went in and soothed her back down and she lasted an hour and a half. After that (this is about 1 in the morning now) it's all blurry, but we were up a dozen times at least. And mostly she slept on me in the glider rocker, that much I know. That's just not good, for either of us. Though it's damned cute, and more than a little addictive. The hard truth of the matter is that we haven't really allowed her the opportunity to learn how to put herself to sleep and put herself back to sleep, so it's not her fault. It's all on us. So tonight, we went through the usual evening routine - well, the routine when I'm at home for her bedtime - Mom gave her the bath, I took her in the towel and dried her and lotioned her chubby little legs. Then I fed her while her mommy put away her clothes and grinned at Her Royal Cuteness. I think, having resolved to let her "cry it out", or use the "exctinction" method - both of which sound like torture methods - we were both a little reluctant to start the night. Start the clock, as it were. But about 8 o'clock, I put her down, patted her on the back until she was good and asleep and closed the door. Went in, cooked spaghetti, wife scooped the pooper and then took the trash out, we sat down and watched the end of Family Guy and flipped over to some old Ren and Stimpy. 8:40 PM. The crying begins. We both look at each other. Any illusions of strength we had put up for each other earlier have vanished. I feel sick to my stomach. She looks like she's about to cry. I finish my spaghetti and read in the book, wanting reinforcement that this is the right decision. The monitor's on - the sound is down, but it still has a little LED cry-meter on the front that lets us know she's still crying it out. Plus, our walls aren't thick and our house isn't big - we can hear her. And feel her. It's horrible. The minutes tick by slowly. Eventually, I join my wife here in the computer room and pull the door closed. With my loud system, it's much more difficult to hear her. And then it happens... 9:10 PM. Sensors indiciate lack of activity from child's room. The C-meter rests at zero. Could this be mission accomplished? Only time will tell, but it's 9:30 now and still no activity from within the child's den. If it's true, the Peanut must really love us, because from everything I've read, 30 minutes on the first try is a very short period of time to have to endure. I hope she knows we really love her, because we really do. I truly believe that this hurt us much more than it hurt her. And I have to believe that we'll all be better people for it in the end. If not, then there's always ritual suicide, right?

I understand now...

...why my mother drinks coffee. She must have started when I was a baby. ...that parents can communicate with other parents on an entirely different level than non-parents.

FYI

God makes babies so cute so that you won't throw them out the window at 2 in the morning. I'm just sayin'.

Whore

That title got your attention, didn't it? You know, it's not always easy to come to terms with some of the more... unsavory parts of one's personality. I don't have many serious vices - I don't drink, don't smoke, don't do drugs, and never have done any of those things. But. I'm a bit of an attention whore. I know, I know, I'm sure that comes as a huge surprise to you all. But I am. I like being admired. I like doing things that people see and appreciate, which is obviously a big part of why I do what I do. I love it when people see my work and tell me how awesome a shot is, or how great that lighting was, or anything like that. I eat it up like candy - and I think we all know how much I like candy. So it should now be clear why I enjoy taking my daughter out on weekends so much. The public adores her! We get comments and compliments and cooing and ooing and aahing and eyeing everywhere we go. It's amazing! And I love every minute of it. Today we went to The Mall to get a picture with Santa. Of course when we hand her over to him, all the women in the area start Awwwwwwwwing. She yawned, and I heard someone in the crowd say, "Oh look! He's yawning!!" Never mind He's a She - it was still pretty funny. Afterward, we had to go to Gymboree - Wifey's orders - where more fawning commenced. After that, across the aisle to Baby Gap, where the ladies there actually stopped their work to come over and worship my daughter. One of them loved her so much she gave us an extra discount on the stuff we bought - can you believe that? Man, my head is swollen. This is like giving a kilo of fine, uncut Columbian Happy Powder to Robert Downey, Jr. It ain't right, but it sure is fun.

What it is

Sydney is 3 months old today. That's just astonishing. Astonishing, for the most part, because I've been half-responsible for the care and feeding of this human larva all this time, and she's still alive. Well, as I said, I'm only half responsible. Astonishing, for the other part, in how wordless being a parent can make me. I realize now that you could speak nonstop for weeks and week, write volumes upon libraries of books, dozens upon hundreds of trilogies of films, and never completely capture what it is to be a Parent. That never stops us from trying, of course, nor should it. Never mind what Yoda says - faced with the truly impossible, I believe there is nobility in trying. I love being a dad. I can't imagine being anything else now. On the set of Ghost Whisperer, I've met several other fathers, and have had lengthy discussions with them. Scott("A" camera)'s oldest boy is in the middle of potty training, and hit a significant milestone the other day. He shared the voicemail with me, and it cracked me up. I tell him how Sydney's really smiling now, really meaning it, and he tells me "Just wait, it gets so much better." And I wonder, if that's true, how my heart can hold all the love. Michael (Hair) told me about a special moment he had with his 14-year-old son the other day. Michael always lines up everything he's going to need to take with him in front of the door, so he doesn't forget anything on the way out. He's been struggling with his son for some time now to get him to be more responsible, more organized, help out more (what parent of a 14-year-old hasn't had that discussion?). So the other day, he walks in the house and sees all of his son's things lined up in front of the door, just like his Dad. It was an amazing moment, he said. All that time of trying to impress these things upon him, it felt like it was going nowhere, and then boom, in one magic moment, he sees that he really has been getting through to him. Makes it all worthwhile. That's the one thing I really love about being on set, is when, during the downtime, you get to chat with the crew. I love meeting interesting people, and most everyone there is interesting in some way or another. Wow, what a digression. While I'm here, then, I might as well mention that brining your turkey is the best thing you can do to it. It takes a little effort, but you will be richly rewarded with a moist, flavorful turkey. Do it!

The Death Of Children

I have several pictures of my daughter on my desk at work. 1. A five-picture frame of which 4 are pictures of Sydney. One of them is from the day we brought her home. 2. Currently, a soft pumpkin frame with her in her Halloween "costume" - a black onesie with a white ghost that says "Boo!". 3. My desktop background. Since I have two monitors, it's split - half is Sydney in one of my favorite pics of her, wrapped up in the miracle blanket, with a tiny smile. It wasn't actually a smile, because she was too young to really smile, but it looks like a smile. (The other half is the Battlestar Pegasus from season 2 of the new Battlestar Galactica. I just love that ship.) Anyway, I minimized a program, revealing The Peanut's tiny psuedosmile, and I got to thinking how much more red her skin was then, and then I looked up at the Coming Home picture and it was even more red, and her Halloween picture where her skin is very fair. And it hit me how much she's changed and how quickly. It's all gone so bloody fast, I barely remember some of it. And it makes me very, very sad to think that I've said goodbye to those little girls, and I'll never see them again except in pictures. It's like saying goodbye to a loved one every week or every day. No matter what happens from here on out, the little girl that's in that Coming Home picture doesn't exist anymore. She's changed and grown until you can barely recognize that they're the same baby. In the midst of all the happiness of watching my baby girl get bigger and more alert and smile and interact, there's a constant, low-level mourning for the ones I leave behind. And that's why I'm glad we're fully digital camera-ed. We've got the small Sony snappy cam that you can stick in your pocket and take anywhere. We've got the Sharp DV Handycam for video with sound. And we've got the nice new Rebel XT for the good, printable stuff. I got video of The Peanut *just* after she was born, when they were still working on her, and I'm so very, very glad I did, because there was just so much going on that I would never be able to remember it all, and Lynn couldn't be over there to see it all anyway. I didn't realize at the time how important that video would become to me, but I'm feeling it even now, and she's not even 3 months old. I almost can't take my eyes off that Coming Home picture today. When you lift weights, you gain muscle mass through minor injury. You work your muscle hard, until it tears a bit. Then it repairs itself and grows a bit bigger in the process, until you've got it as big as you want it. Being a parent is like that. I'm constantly ripped apart by saying goodbye to these little girls that I will never see again. But I'm rebuilt - bigger and stronger - by the new ones that I'm meeting every day. The ones that talk a bit more and cry a bit less, and absolutely shatter me with their smiles. Surely this is the most profound experience life on Earth has to offer.

Ah, the English...

I'm standing at the sink tonight talking to my wife, who's washing bottles. I had put the baby girl down in her Boppy and she was on her way to dreamland. We're discussing our day - or more to the point, I'm discussing mine, since I already knew all about hers. I mentioned that we had had an ice cream social - heavy on the ice cream, light on the social - most everyone had just gotten their scream and went back to their desks. Myself included. At this point, Wife starts mixing up some formula. She's got the shaker filled with water and is leveling scoops of formula into it. I mention that one of the stars of "Firefly" had been at the studio today. "For..." the wife says. "I'm not sure what she was there for, she was talking to some of the guys... It was weird seeing her in street clothes - I saw her on set one of the days I was up at Universal, but she was in full costume then, so she seemed in character. It's just odd seeing her in just jeans and a shirt - " "...Five..." she says. Only then do I realize she didn't care what she was there for - she'd been counting the scoops of formula. Much laughter ensued. I hope she got the scoop count right after that. :)