another one of those A-to-Z thingees

..wherein I participate in the kind of game that keeps the regular bloggers blogging up a storm and drags the very-occasional-bloggers back to blog on their blogs now and again. Blaaaaaaaahg!!

I actually have a real post welling up in me that I might get out tonight… political convention season usually gets me ready to rant a bit.

A – Attached or single: Attached… see here.

B – Best Friend: I’d have to be purty dang lame not to list my wife here. Besides, she’s, like, groovy.

C – Cake or Pie: I haven’t heard any albums by “Pie” — is this a real band? — so I’ll have to go with Cake here.

D – Day of the Week: Thursday; I like anticipation.

E – Essential Item: Stringed instruments.

F – Favorite Color: Blue.

G – Gummy Bears or Worms: it’s Gummy Venus de Milo or nothing for a Simpsons freak like me.

H – Home town: [redacted, just in case indentity theives are aggregating A-to-Z posts for helpful details]

I – Indulgences: Sweets of all kinds. I never met a chocolate chip cookie I didn’t like.

J – January or July? While in Texas, January, I guess. Probably the other way ’round when I lived in New York.

K – Kids: Two of them, currently 3.5 and 17 months — want to babysit? Please?

L – Life is incomplete without: the L, the I, the F, or the E.

M – Marriage Date: [redacted; see H]

N – Number of Siblings: one biological, one in-law.

O – Oranges or Apples: Oranges, oranges, oranges and graphic design. [$1 to the first person besides my wife to correctly name that Web history reference.]

P – Phobias or Fears: Phobias and Fears themselves, thanks mainly to that famous FDR quote.

[I should point out here that the post with which Sarah tagged me for this activity is missing Q, R, and S. So I get to skip ’em too.]

T – Tag Three: Just to be a punk, I’m gonna tag corporate blogs only: Flickr, Adobe, and Google.

U – Unknown fact about me: I’ve won a pinball tournament.

V – Vegetarian or Oppressor of Animal: Carnivore all the way.

W – Worst Habit: Cigarettes (currently out of the habit again, thankfully — as of, uh, today).

X – Rays or Ultrasounds: [WTF?]

Y – Your favorite food: A three-way tie: pizza, steak, and Oreos.

Z – Zodiac Sign: Aquarius.

my quotable daughter

Violet, age 3½, said this tonight:

Someday when Graham gets older we can break him and make him into another thing. Like a desk. Or a vanity. Or a chair.

We’re still laughing at this one two hours later.

river float gig

I’m pretty excited about a really unique gig I’ve got coming up this Saturday; check out the details.

There are some new (extremely rough) rehearsal demos over on the band site as well.

we tweet, therefore we are

I’m snipping this and posting it here just so I have a place to refer people when they ask, as they sometimes do, what the hell the appeal is of Twitter (for me, at least). This nails it:

Twitter is a social network, yes, but it’s a social network without the superpoke scrabtaculous zombie noise and, for that, I’m thankful, because I’ve got work to do. Yes, I could spend days tidying my profile and scrubbing my friends list, but to what end? I want to know more people, and sure, it’s interesting to see what they’re up to, but what I really want to know is what is going on inside their heads with a minimum of fuss.

I want to see how they see the world. This is why I follow people on Twitter. This is why they follow me.

Here’s the full source of that nugget, by He Who Blogs Under the Name Rands (his book’s website is a knockout as well).

Facebook fatigue is setting in very, very deeply already for me, and I just can’t help but feel like its dominant position will come crashing down hard in the next 12 to 18 months.

Twitter and I will still be here when the dust settles, I hope.

what do you make of this?

Received via IM from my buddy Dave this morning:

so, i lost my wallet LAST SUMMER in the adirondacks. a state trooper from up there woke me with a phone call at 6 am to say it was in an envelope that was tossed anonymously to the front door of the police station THIS MORNING. although soaked, the wallet still had $53 in it. To make it a real head scratcher, i was sure there was at least $80 to $100 in there when i lost it. who steals half the money?

Can anyone explain? I’m not in the mood to figure out what is going on with humanity this morning.

when too busy to blog…

…at least make a few minutes to give kid pics the old LOLcat treatment.