Updates

Sorry for the fall off in blog production. A number of family issues, one of which I'll tell you about shortly, kept me away from the computer. That, and indolence, laziness, business, whatever you want to call it. Thanks for the encouragement, Hack, to post--I'll try not to let June go by without posting more than once.

So the other Monday (Memorial Day) we were returning home from a trip to G-ma Fouts' farm, where we had spent the weekend. A peaceful place with waving corn, country roads, and comfort food, we were returning from the trip happy, satisfied, and slightly early in the afternoon, ready to do a bit of light gardening and visiting Linda and Ed for Budnt cake before putting the babycakes to bed. Well, that was the plan, anyway.

The reality was, I found myself in bed with incredible stomach pain. My best analogy for the pain would be if a 98-lb weakling was punching me lightly and repeatedly in the stomach, and then that weakling slowly started to gain muscle mass until he was as powerful as Mike Tyson in his prime and just as crazy (he is punching me in the stomach for no reason, after all). And for the medically inclined out there, he wasn't focusing on just one area, but working the whole abdomen.

So I tried to soldier through it at first, laying on the floor while Evie played on me and Megan folded laundry. Tried to get some rest in bed while the two of them went to eat that Bundt cake. Tried to take my mind off of it by playing a video game (Puzzle Quest, an RPG-Puzzle game where Bejeweled is the main engine). Eventually, I called my parents to ask for advice, and, alarmingly enough, they recommended an immediate trip to the Emergency Room.

By this time, the 98-lb weakling had worked his way up to middleweight class. I climbed into the car, Megan zoomed off, and we were on our way to the ER at Lutheran Hospital. By this time, it was 8 p.m. and I still had an article to finish up for Play Magazine that was due that night. After the preliminaries, they took me back to a room and I proceeded to writhe and groan while a nurse with tiny eyebrows stuck me first in one arm, then the other when my right arm veins decided they didn't want to be an IV site after all. After we were left in relative peace, I dictated the rest of my article to Megan, who relayed it to Linda, who proofread and e-mailed the article to my editor. Free to suffer in peace, Megan and I spent the next 7 hours waiting to be x-rayed and CAT scanned, and for a doctor to come and examine me. Thankfully, nurses with syringes of powerful painkillers made the wait much less painful, though not less fearful.

I was semi-coherent during this time. After the first shot of morphine, the pain subsided enough to let me sleep, then after the first scan they needed me to drink some stuff that would help my internal organs show up better. That brought the pain back on again, and another shot of morphine. After the second scan, the doctor said that they had ruled out any of the emergency causes of the pain (appendix, kidney stones, gall stones, etc) and that, since I was feeling better, they were going to discharge me and give me a perscription for Vicodin. When I asked about the pain, they said that I should take the Vicodin if in pain and see my family doctor ASAP for a referral to a GI specialist.

Somewhat disheartened, but mostly just tired, we went home at 4 a.m., woke Linda up and sent her home, and I rested for two days waiting for the pain to come back, which it never did. I still have the bottle of Vicodin, and a new appreciation for what Megan went through with Evie.

Oh, and my editor decided not to use the article. Good times.

A photo

Here's Evie in her favorite sweater at the playground. She's 13 months. Notice the tiny balls on her sweater--she loves to put them in her mouth, and will carry the sweater around with her even when she's not wearing it.

She's trying to put her finger in a little hole, by the way.

Quick hits

--So I'm completely, utterly enraptured by an online game known as Warfish recently. The game itself isn't much to speak of, it's mainly the chance to interact with friends like JS, ND, and even RD and CR. An online version of RISK, Warfish lets you play Risk at a distance with your friends. Turns aren't played concurrently, and they don't have to be played while anyone else is online, but sometimes, when JS, ND and I are all on at the same time, it can almost seem live, but you have to refresh your browser window in order to be able to see if anyone has moved yet. Sometimes I have to restrict myself from hitting that refresh button, just so that I can get some actual work done.

--For those of you following along, it's been almost a month since I've posted. Along with flagging discipline comes a healthy dose of guilt--credit my wife with getting me out of this funk and back into blogging, even if it's just, in her words, a short post.

--Evie's doing well. Her number of new words increases daily. Lately, she's taken to counting, even though she's not sure what she's doing, what she's counting, or even how to say the numbers properly. It is, as you'd imagine, very very cute. I'll have to see if I can get one of her most recent pictures up here on the blog. I'll try it in a post right after this one.

--If you're a praying sort (and I know a lot of you are), please keep us in mind when you talk to the Big Fella. Nothing major going on, but we're between churches right now, and are wandering in the wilderness as we attempt to find one.

--And that's a wrap!

A quick Evie story

So my daughter has just started figuring out how to control the sounds coming out of her mouth. She's the proud owner of several words: Mama, Dada, Baby (her first!), Baa (ball), Up (usually said in a whiny tone) and, her favorite, No. She loves putting a "b" sound in front of many other words. Thus, "Grapes" becomes "Bapes," "Cups" becomes "Beps," etc. etc.

One of our friends gave Evie a musical toy for her birthday in February--Lulu the Word-Spinning Spider. Lulu's pretty cool--she'll play a guessing game with her charges where your baby's tasked with trying to figure out what word she's spinning via a small light display on her tummy. Lulu will also walk you through each of the letters of the alphabet as you pat her tummy, or, in what's Evie's favorite move, she'll sing the entire alphabet song.

Evie loves music, and has begun singing along to some of her favorite lullabies. The other day, when we patted Lulu's tummy and she sang the alphabet song, Evie started to sing along. It went something like this: "Bee, bee, bee, bee, bee, bee, beeeee."

Basically every letter was a B--ya gotta love that.

Marketing . . . myself

Well, sorry for the lack of posts. In my defense, I've been busy delving into my sister's time sink of choice, Facebook, in the last couple of weeks. It's a nice way to share and show photos, info, etc. without the hassle of Picasa, Flickr, or whatever else I would need to sign up to use in order to post them here on the blog. So, check me out on Facebook for pictures, and continue coming here for random reviews, musings, etc.

In the category of musings, I find that my life has been somewhat taken over by a fun little Beta program called Warfish. Basically an online, very simple version of Risk, the game's free to play and allows me to test my mettle against two of my bestest friends, J and N. Sadly, our first foray into Warfish resulted in an early exit for me, but I can attest to the fun of playing the game against actual human beings rather than the computer I spend my time playing against in games that I review. I can actually remember getting the shakes as I was about to start one of my endgame turns--it was that fun. That was actually the turn where everything went south--a big gamble I took didn't pan out, and N ended up taking the game. So if you see an invitation to Warfish.net from me, accept it and let's play a friendly game.

Long week

Man, what a week. From client emergencies to late nights, this was one of the longest weeks on record. Not to complain or anything (because it's sure better to be busy than the alternative), but just to share with you my state of mind as I type away here for the next 4:30 or so.

I think I'm going to focus more on telling stories on this little blog of mine. I went to a presentation of a woman from The Radio Ranch the other day (yesterday) who talked about how marketing these days needs to be emotional, not just reasonable. She cited numerous examples of how creating these emotional ads helped get better results for clients, appealed to potential customers, etc. etc.

I wanted to ask her what to do with the individual who wants nothing to do with emotion, but instead wants to cram a list of features into a 2 x 4 inch newspaper square, or :30 seconds of radio time. I mean, we all have to eat, don't we, and since the client is footing the bill, it pays (pun intended) to listen to what they want instead of telling them that they're stupid and that their advertising won't work. I dunno--the client management part of my job is certainly the hardest part, and I speak of managing internal and external clients here.

So to finish up my story, I raised my hand, but she chose to answer someone else's question and I didn't have a chance to ask it in person. Oh well--I'm not sure she would have had a good answer for me anyway.

2 books, 2 weeks

Just finished two books in the last two weeks: The Life of Pi and The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. One's true, one's not, both deal with folks getting shipwrecked and having to subsist in extremely harsh conditions. And I enjoyed both immensely, but for different reasons.

The Life of Pi is lyrical, prosaic. It attempts to place the narrator's suffering in a philosophical context. As such, it takes on (at times) the feel of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel, usually when its protagonist, Pi, is undergoing the harshest suffering. Told from the perspective of someone looking back on their ordeal, there's no surprise that Pi survives the wreck. Rather, the surprise is that he survives with so much of his humanity intact, particularly when he survived on the same boat as a 500 lb. Bengal tiger for 200-odd days.

Essex, which is a true story, takes a more historical approach. Exhastively researched and entertainingly told, it's not just the story of a shipwreck, but also a lens into life on the island of Nantucket in the 1700s and 1800s. Philbrick (the author) clearly and cleanly lays out the story, drawing logical conclusions on what the men were most likely thinking and feeling from the time the boarded the ship, through their harrowing ordeal across the Pacific, and after they make it back to their community.

I highly recommend both books.

In other news, I'm open to suggestions for my next book--feel free to post your recommendations as comments.

Hopes and Dreams

Go Fla., Kans., G'Town., A&M!

Just got a call from a couple friends and a family member of mine (I swear I'm not making this up) who are in a bar, enjoying all of the games, and wondering where I am. As I told them, I'm at the same place I was last year--stuck at work and staring at a computer screen.

Let's not let this happen again next year, shall we, future Billy?

It's March, so get MAD!

Really looking forward to March Madness this year. It's an annual tradition here at my office--we get everyone in the office (and some who aren't) to fill out a bracket, and post them all on my wall. Then, as the games are played, my friend Mark and I highlight the winners and award points based on rounds, so for round 1, you get 1 point for a correct pick, round 2, 2 points, etc. You get the idea.

Last year's bracket was an absolute mess (thank you very much, George Mason). I think the contest came down to the 15-year-old daughter of one of our staff, and a former college basketball player who fancied himself an "expert" on the game. Needless to say, the 15-year-old ended up winning the whole shebang.

So as not to give anything away (to my Hillsdale friends who read this blog, despite the intermittent updates), I won't be posting my picks or even my leanings here until after the tournament has already started. Sorry. But feel free to post your picks in my comments section!

The Answers

Ok, here are the answers to my previous contest--looks like we had no winners this time. I'll also disclose (because I'm sure you're dying to know) which of these I've read and which I've just . . . skimmed.

Molly (Ulysses--skimmed)
Scout (To Kill a Mockingbird--read)
Benjy (The Sound and the Fury--read)
Ralph (Lord of the Flies--read)
Humbert Humbert (Lolita--skimmed, felt scummy after skimming)
Tom J. (Grapes of Wrath--read)
Daisy (The Great Gatsby--read)
(NO idea--haven't read Beloved) (Beloved--haven't read, probably won't after reading Jess' comment)
Caufield (Catcher in the Rye--read)
Big Bro (1984--skimmed, liked Animal Farm better)

Stay tuned for future contests! Someone'll win that no-prize yet!