2000.03.27
It's 11:00 p.m., and my almost
four-year-old,
who was vomiting all yesterday and half of today, has just passed out. He spent the
last three hours talking to himself in his room, and making requests for all sorts of
nonsense.
We had a three hour visit to the doctor this morning, during which he vomited twice.
Fun trip.
I always heard that children made you old. Mine is going to put me in an early grave.
2000.03.23
OUCH.
And WRT my comments about the big ten, I guess I have some crow to eat.
Are your brackets getting you down? This cheers me up some: I don't
know if it's finally time for Bobby to say bye-bye, but at least he'll
have to sweat a little.
My brother sent me a recording of a really abusive Indiana pep talk. I'd
love to post it, but this is a family site.
2000.03.21
I'm waiting for confirmation on this, but it appears that if I buy
the
right digital phone, then my cellular phone company (GTE) will send me a
heads-up whenever I get an email.
My reading of this is that GTE will
extract the 'Subject:' header from email sent to a GTE email account, and will
send that to my cellular phone as a text message. (I hope it also tells me
who the message is 'From:'.)
If I bounce a copy of all my incoming email to GTE, my cell phone will page me
every time I get a new email.
Is that a good thing?
I used to get drunk with this guy when I was an
undergrad. Looks like he's still drinking.
And he's probably still an undergraduate!
2000.03.17
This afternoon at Rice I got roped into attending the Geology Dept. afternoon
seminar. It turned out to be pretty neat. Two members of the faculty are researching
the occurrence of jade in SE Asia. They recently spent some time in Myanmar, formerly
Burma. Today they presented a travelogue of their experiences.
If you are up-to-date on your current events, you know that Myanmar is marked
by civil unrest and a perpetual state of military dictatorship. The Rice group spent
most of their trip waiting on official permissions to visit various sites; in the end
they saw very little geology.
They did come back with a lot of pictures of temples and Buddas, and some interesting
observations of a very foreign culture. For instance: the mostly unpaved streets are
a mess, particularly during the long monsoon season. In context, the traditional
requirement to remove shoes and socks before entering houses and temples doesn't
seem so idiosyncratic.
2000.03.16
The first day of the tournament
is done, and I don't know about you, but I saw some pretty good basketball.
My picks aren't doing too badly. I messed up in picking
against Wisconsin and Purdue. But I nailed the Gonzaga upset. Easy one.
The three SEC teams that played today (all favorites) just squeaked by in their
games. My alma mater did not look real impressive! I mean LSU, not Texas.
2000.03.14
Christopher is getting much more proficient in his use of the term "damn it!"
This afternoon I took him grocery shopping (without a nap), and in the
middle of the meats section, he became agitated about something and stomped
around in a circle shouting, "Damn it! That is not the way they are supposed
to do it! Damn it, damn it, damn it!"
Practice makes perfect.
Drumroll please!
Wally Picks 2000 is pleased to announce that this season's Final
Four in the Men's NCAA Basketball Tournament will be
Stanford, Duke, Iowa St.
and
LSU
Sorry, Texas fans. I've been waiting a long time to cheer for the LSU Tigers again.
Yesterday my brother "Cheese" wrote to tell me if I didn't pick the Tigers to make
the Final Four, I didn't have any hair on my, um, posterior. I'll spare you any
description of the distribution of my body hair. But let me take this opportunity
to say
GEAUX TIGERS!
LSU to take it ALL!
You can find my whole bloody bracket right here.
2000.03.13
Well, it's NCAA tournament
time again, so I'm going to lock the kids in the closet and get to work sweating
over the brackets. As usual, Duke is the media darling. (Did you see that piece
CBS did on them yesterday afternoon?) Also as usual, I'll be cheering for all
those SEC teams, including, for the first time in too long, LSU. And I'll be
hissing all those over-rated big ten teams.
I'm not sure yet what to make of the Big East or the Big 12. We'll see.
Anyway, I should have my final four picks up by tomorrow morning, and I'll post a
link to all my picks for the tournament.
Don't just be a spectator. Mail me your
final four picks so I can ridicule them on the web!
2000.03.12
New pictures of the kids!
Uggghh, March 15 is the deadline for corporate tax returns, so Cindy is really
cramming on work. Last night I think she was up past 3:00.
This morning I tried to entertain the boys so that she could sleep in. It's
hard to simultaneously entertain a six-month-old and an almost four-year-old.
Of course, Cindy has to do this every day.
2000.03.11
It's springtime in The Woodlands, and new leaves are budding on all the trees.
I got a new Olympus
D-450Z digital camera yesterday. I'll try to get some family pics up later
this weekend.
NCAA Men's basketball
is having an exciting week! The conference tournaments
have been tumultuous, with upsets of Cincinnatti, Stanford, Flordia, Ohio State,
Tennessee and Indiana (yeah!).
The NCAA tournament brackets will be out tomorrow evening, so I'll have my
tournament picks posted by Tuesday morning.
NCAA basketball! Ya gotta love it!!!
(I think I had too much coffee this morning!!!)
2000.03.10
Oops, it looks like Cindy and I have taught Christopher his first swear
word: "damit!" He doesn't have the usage quite right, though.
Out of the blue, he'll announce to visitors (or strangers), "My daddy was
trying to get that damit broom that fell behind the dryer," or, "This morning
my mother couldn't find the damit hairbrush because I took it and didn't put
it back where it was supposed to be."
2000.03.06
President Clinton speaking this weekend at
a memorial service commemorating the 1965 voting rights march in Selma,
Alabama:
"Those of you
who marched 35 years ago set me free too on Bloody Sunday--free to
know you, to work with you, to love you, to raise my child to
celebrate our differences and hallow our common humanity."
It's kind of a sad to look around the community I live in today and note how
few African-Americans are mixed in with the rest of us. On the other hand,
there are surprisingly large immigrant populations from India and China. We
should keep in mind how much all of us living in this country owe to the civil
rights movement of the 50's and 60's.
