Starting Friday, Megan is going away to her childhood summer camp with her childhood summer camp friends for a long weekend of reliving their childhood summer camp memories. I never went away to summer camp as a kid and I’ve always been secretly¹ jealous of Megan’s halcyon summer days spent bunking in a cabin by a lake with oodles of other young people, whiling away the weeks with swimming, arts-and-crafts, and beans for dinner every night. She totally deserves this time away from home and I am very happy that she is taking advantage of this opportunity.

Mixed with that happiness, however, is the nervous dread of being Hazel’s sole caregiver from Friday at 4 p.m. until Sunday afternoon. It’s just going to be me and Hazey for something like 47 hours —plenty of time for ol’ Dad to screw up. I mean, I’ve seen Mr. Mom, okay? I know that, the first second of the 169,200 total seconds Megan will be out of town, the vacuum cleaner is going to explode or Hazel will eat a non-food item and need her stomach pumped or a superheated geyser will erupt in the front garden, totally messing up our hydrangeas. Megan assures me I can handle it, so let’s hope her prediction is spot on.

On her way to the grocery store, she called to ask if I wanted anything special food-wise for the weekend. I told her not to worry, as it is surely time that Hazel learns the dangers of fast food. Have you ever watched that old Donald Duck cartoon where Huey, Dewey, and Louie buy their uncle a box of fine Cuban cigars for his birthday? Donald spies the boys strutting proudly from a cigar store downtown and jumps to the incorrect conclusion that his nephews are planning to smoke the cigars themselves. As punishment, he traps them in their tree house and sadistically makes the boys smoke cigar after cigar until the entire box is empty, thereby making them associate the social evil of smoking with immediate physiological endangerment and severe gastrointestinal distress. If that’s not good parenting, I don’t know what is.

Likewise, to help Hazel dodge the cholesterol-soaked bullet of a poor diet, I owe it to her to feed her nothing but McDonald’s, Burger King, Taco Bell, and KFC² all weekend. To be fair, I suppose I’ll have to eat the stuff to. Maybe I can feign food poisoning to really drive the message home. If only we lived near a Sonic Burger; I hear that stuff turns even the hardiest constitutions into goose grease.

¹And by “secretly” I mean “loudly griped every time Pilgrim Lodge or other things pilgrim-y come up in conversation.”
²My more observant readers may note that I did not include Wendy’s in the fast food menu schmörgåsbord for this coming weekend. My reasons are twofold: 1) Wendy’s is slightly above really gross fast food in quality and is our quick road food of choice so any forced aversion pressed on Hazel now will just make family vacations in the future that much more challenging; and 2) the nearest Wendy’s is 28 miles away and high gas prices supersede well-crafted and scientifically sound fatherly life lessons.

Greetings from sunny Chattanooga, Teneessee! The last time I was in this state, Jim, his Cherokee Territory wife (Christina), and me were ascending its highpoint, Clingmans Dome, along a snow-strewn access road under a bright midnight moon. Following this summit, Jim got really, really sick from gas station Cheetos and we hunkered down at a truck stop just outside of Pigeon Forge (home to Dollywood and all things super classy) and I had the pleasure of using a truck stop pay-by-the-hour shower stall. Over vending machine peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, while Jim might have been dying in the back of the van, Christina and I spent the evening watching Top Gun on a ridiculously huge television in the trucker rumpus room. The year was 1998 and it was the first time I saw that movie. I was a deprived child.

Speaking of deprived children, Hazel should not be counted among their swarthy lot. She spent Saturday Running Errands With Daddy and had a hoot, as did I. We went to the post office and the grocery store and still had enough time (and baby energy) left over for a quick trip to buy Mommy a brand new Red Sox hat. Hazel bought it with her allowance, which I bestowed upon her as we waited in line at the register and summarily suspended before we had crossed the parking lot to our car. While Hazel is very sensitive to the fact of our taking away tangible things (toys she insists on banging against each other, our cell phones she likes to chew upon, nigh swallowed cat food) intangibles like the concept of allowance can be turned on and off like a faucet without any tantrumic repercussions. Until she figures out that money is special paper, things should be just fine.

After Hazel was put to bed and the rain delay was lifted, Megan and I settled in for a nice night of televised Major League baseball. I am no august sports fan by far, but seeing as how I own a Red Sox hat, and had bought a second one for my wife (Hazel somehow has the king’s share of Red Sox paraphernalia in our house with two hats and one outgrown onesie), I make the effort to watch a game when it is on a channel our rabbit ears antenna picks up (ABC, PBS, or FOX - CBS should the atmosphere by particularly benevolent). Saturday’s game was pretty tense; both the Sox and their dread rivals the Yankees played excellently in the field and kept the score low and close. After a second rain delay, we arrived at the top of the 9th with 2 outs, Papelbon on the mound. Just as he was to throw what could have been a game ending strike, FOX cut the feed and switched to stupid NASCAR. With a pox cast on Bill France, Sr., I shook my fist angrily toward the heavens before realizing that I could just check the live feed of the game online. Technology fixes everything.

Since watching car racing on television is tantamount to torture in our house, we turned the channel to PBS out of desperation and the Saturday evening movie was just starting: Penny Serenade starring Cary Grant and Irene Dunne. The entire movie is couched as a series of tedious flashbacks sparked by different songs being played on the phonograph in deliberate succession by Dunne’s character. I can’t remember her name, as another character’s fictional moniker far outshone her, that of the “aw shucks” best friend of Grant, Applejack Carney. I’m not officially calling dibs on that name should we have a boy next, but consider this a penciled in dibs. Beyond his name, Applejack is a fantastic guy, capable of fixing printing presses with his fist (à la the Fonz), bathtubs using no tools, and marriages with adopted babies. All in all, the movie features loads of chauvinism, a miscarriage, purchased Japanese children, and that great clomping around sound effect made famous by the Three Stooges. You can watch Penny Serenade in its entirety online — consider it for your next rainy day distraction or betting device.

Anyway, by the length of this post, can you tell that I’ve been cooped up on three separate plane flights today? I’m off to see what Chattanooga has in store for a simple Mainer. If I make it to Rock City or a Lookouts game, I’ll let you know.

Work is a bear right now, albeit a rather friendly bear that only chases you up gumdrop trees and, once cornering you, just mauls you a little bit with filed down claws. Still, I have a few things to report:

• I am addicted to blog theme redesign. I simply cannot help myself lately; I find a theme, bastardize the heckfire out of it, then move on to the next theme with nary a Dear John letter taped to the bedroom mirror or a very apologetic voice message. But I am thinking that my latest effort will stick for a while, so stay tuned for that.
• Every week, Megan and I have tacos for dinner. If it were up to me, we’d have Taco Night every night, but something about a well-rounded diet and a varying palette gets in the way. For years, we have gotten the same corn shells for our ground chicken masterpieces. We always buy the El Paso family pack, but seeing as how Hazel is not quite up to the gastroenterological challenge, we always have shells left over. So habitually, we seal them up in airtight containers for next week’s taco meat. And without fail, we are always greeted the next time by stale, hard, pierce-your-face taco shell. They just don’t keep.
  So the past two times, I’ve done an experiment. If sealing them properly makes them go stale, maybe sealing them improperly with keep them fresh. Call it Bizarro logic. And, true to form, these ill-stored shells have come back as fresh as if the cornmeal were flattened and crisped in far away Mexico. So remember El Paso’s new marketing tagline: ¡Say adios to common sense!
• At finally, and most importantly (if you can imagine something being more important than our dinner storage habits), my sister is currently in labor with her second child, soon-to-be my first nephew. Another of life’s hurdles is about to be effortlessly leapt by me, although since my sister has been in labor for over twelve hours, I really should just stay mum on that point. This is very decent of my sister, as I asked her many weeks ago to have the boy while we’d be visiting and attending a wedding in Manhattan, which happens to be this weekend. My family truly does spoil me.

So that’s it from here. I doubt I’ll post anything before next week, but if y’all would still bother to point your web browsers to this site, my self-inflating stat numbers would greatly appreciate it.

In celebratory honor of my completion of hundreds and hundreds of words worth of freelance lawn mower reviews, Megan’s new 17” MacBook Pro laptop finally being delivered, Hazel’s deft mastery of getting from the living room floor to the back of the futon using only guile and a well-placed footstool, and my possession of a soon-to-expire coupon, we went out for blunch this Sunday at Café Miranda. Blunch, of course, is a meal that is further down the road than brunch, but not quite all the way to lunch. The food was as excellent as it always is — my bacon and cheddar deep dish frittata stills haunts my taste buds’ dreams.

I am always terribly nervous going out to eat with Hazel for fear that we become Those People With the Screaming Nightmare Baby, but she has never been anything but perfectly well-behaved whenever we dine out. Still, I can’t shake the fear that she is just going to freak out one day and we have to run from the restaurant in shame, covering our heads from the onslaught of flung food from our fellow eatery patrons. And despite the surety of the two crotchety old people in the corner who just glowered at us the whole time, daring Hazel to act as badly as they pessimistically predicted she must, no major mishaps occurred. In fact, the worst thing that she did was continually request a sip of Megan’s Bloody Mary by way of repeatedly pointing at the large glass with the parsley poking from the top (and no, we didn’t give her any, though she did have two Burger King French fires this weekend that kind of shattered any illusions we had at not being bad parents).

After paying the check, Megan used the restroom and I prepared Hazel for leaving. Even though it is nearly April here and sunshine streamed through the front windows of the restaurant, a very cold wind continuously blew off the Atlantic, requiring that Hazel wear a few layers. I got her tiny zip-up hoodie on just fine, but her jacket gave me trouble. She just wouldn’t sit still and let me get her arms through the sleeves. As soon as I started attempting this feat, a rather vaudevillian version of “The Entertainer” came on the stereo. The feeling that I had now become that morning’s free show was impossible to shake.

Of course, I am overly self-conscious by nature, constantly assuming that people are meticulously monitoring my every move and action. Have you ever tried to walk normally when you are sure someone is watching you to see if you walk normally? Your legs and arms simply can’t get it together and you start walking like a mannequin with mismatched limbs come to life.

Or at least I do.

Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays. I attribute this to my love of mashed potatoes, a few days off from school/work, holiday television specials, and leftovers. Plus, this is a great lead-in to my birthday (November 30^th for all you last minute shoppers). Though I don’t really care for football, sitting around on comfy couches with family will most assuredly distract me from any substantial updates until next week. Plus, with freelance writing gigs coming in from Colorado James, I’ll have more than enough going on to keep myself busy.

But before any of the fun can begin, I need to make my grandmother’s recipe for stuffing. I’ve been coming to Megan’s family’s Thanksgiving meals since the turn of the century and I always weep inside because I won’t eat their stuffing. They put raisins in it for some wicked (meaning bad not good in this instance) reason. And as we can all agree, a Thanksgiving without stuffing is like a Christmas special without a forced celebrity cameo.

While I’m gone, have fun with the shop.mlb.com personalized jersey generator. Though I will never drop even $50.00 on a team jersey, the temptation to order one with a funny name on the back is tantalizing. And just so you know, while “BUTTCHEEK” and “PEE PEE” and deemed inappropriate, you can get “DOUCHE” or “FECES” blazoned across your shoulders. To quote the shopping program, both of these are a “great choice!”

Carving one more notch into my Stereotypical Dad belt, I have been away all week on a business trip. These business trips may become more of a regular thing as I pick up new responsibilities at work, which is a real mixed bag. One the one hand, earning more for performing more interesting work is a great opportunity. On the other hand, I don’t want to miss out on too much Hazel time. Luckily, it appears that she still remembers me, so I think we can make this work.

My final destination was Austin, TX, but flying out of the Portland Jetport necessitates connections if you want to travel more than 33% across the country. So to get to Texas, I needed to change flights in Atlanta. My seatmate was on his way down to Georgia for the National Convenience Store Convention. Yes, they have a convention for everything. It’s reminiscent of Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) and his favorite niche publication, Chewing, the magazine for gum enthusiasts. If you have an interest or profession, no matter how random, there’s most likely a journal or association dedicated to it.

I had roughly ten minutes to make it to my connection gate in Atlanta. Now I know this is a constantly cited piece of trivia, but yes, you can make it from one end of the Atlanta airport to the other in less than seven minutes without having to full-on sprint. I owe a huge thanks to the moving sidewalks and their ability to “increase my ambulatory efficiency” without the need for perspiration.

Without going into much detail, the company we seminar’d is a technological bigwig and their main campus definitely reflects that. The lobby of Building One is huge and shiny and architecturally interesting. It feels like the not-too-distant future. I half-expected to see a teleport bay off to one side. But the illusion was broken when I spied a plastic analog wall clock of the type that you can by at the supermarket for three bucks hanging askew behind the reception desk. The devil is in the details, people, and you need to hire a new set dresser.

The event went well and things look good for a prolonged business relationship, so huzzahs all around. But, the best part of the whole deal was eating dinner at a restaurant that offers meals in bucket form. Having the option to request “buckets ‘o’” food items really makes you feel like a winner. I may be a culinarily simple man, but never pass up a chance to eat out of a trough. Buffets and buckets forever