Pet Cobra

Friday Free-For-All

Another Dawn Patrol, another disappointment. Wind - wind! - and general lack of size or shape made for dismal conditions. Still, paddling and catching a couple of knee-high duds beats brooding over the shitty email my boss sent me yesterday. So, for discussion:

Bill Frist is flipflopping, altering his stance on stem cell research and breaking from the Bush camp. Is this a crass attempt to regain some sort of legitimacy as a physician and pander towards the electorate in preparation for the next presidential election, or is he just an opportunistic jackass? Discuss.

John Roberts: yes or no?

Johnny Depp or Gene Wilder?

Tom Wopat or Johnny Knoxville? John Schneider or Stifler? Catherine Bach or Jessica Simpson? Willie Nelson - genius casting. Burt Reynolds - are you fucking kidding me?

Did you watch the controversial new show "Over There", and if so were you as underwhelmed as I was?

What kind of car should we buy, given these two choices: Nissan Altima or Mazda 3?

Perspective - the Cure All

If, say, you email your boss and ask if there's anything you can do to help lighten the load of your co-workers by taking on some of their tasks, on a busy day of one of the busiest weeks since you started your job, and your boss responds to your offer by saying that you need to really worry about what YOU'RE doing and proceeds to offer a point-by-point nitpicky breakdown of things you could be doing much better (even though you're on pace to hire TWICE the number of people your predecessor hired at this time last year), and upon arriving home find that your dog has managed to claw and chew his way through the door that leads to the garage, leaving it a tattered wreck and leaving you with one more thing to pay for, you could do the following: pick up your kid, smile as he waves and says "Byeeeee!" to Mommy (whose boss is forcing her to attend yet another networking function that evening) without being prompted, go to Red Robin and order him a kid's meal (chicken strips and milk) and yourself a burger and a much needed beer and watch with delight as he smiles at the waitress, waves at the other little kids in the restaurant, tries to color the kid's menu with crayons and puts them down nicely even when it's clear than he's frustrated at how difficult it is to hold onto the crayons the right way, eats his chicken strips without throwing them and grinning his little grin offers you a bite, laughs at the purple balloon tied to his wrist, and when the waitress stops to check on you and asks "How's everything?", you can look at your marvelous little son, who seems to come through for you when you need it the most, and say:

"It's just perfect." And mean that in so many different ways.

Under My Skin

At first glance, it would seem to my fellow surfbloggers that I'm really not all that preoccupied with surfing.

Wrong.

My fixation has taken on an insidious form. Thanks to Swaylock's, my head is filled with thoughts of rocker, vee, pinched rails, skinning, Fred Tools, planes, sanding...

I'm neck deep in the most fascinating aspect of the sport - shaping a board. This particular mix of physics and art is a heady one. Shaping is an artform unknown to those who don't surf, and it's even a mystery to a great many to those who do. Although I haven't paddled out as often as I planned to this summer, I'm actually pretty satisified with my surfing; now I'm looking to fine tune it, to become a better longboarder. And to me, one way to achieve that is to get an insider's knowledge of the craft of making a board. My obsession with buying one has fallen by the wayside. Now I'm all about creating one. To the point that I've convinced myself that if Dale Velzy himself were to rise from the grave and offer to shape me a new ride, I'd politely decline, and ask him if I could borrow his tools.

A challenge, both mental and physical, that I'm anxious to take on.

Comments

Here's a question: ever tune into a blog just to read the comments? I do. I think blog commenting is fascinating. Some people's comment boxes become chat rooms; before she shut hers down, Dooce's comments were out of control - the "regulars" chatting away about nothing (well, in her case, usually some sort of scatological topic). Some people's comment boxes become altars to the writer, heaping praise upon them without really COMMENTING. Some become soapboxes for dissenters to voice their opinions. I don't get a gazillion comments per post (LURKERS - I EMBRACE YOU! BREAK FREE FROM YOUR SELF-IMPOSED CHAINS OF SILENCE AND VOICE THY THOUGHTS!!!!), but I find that the comments I do get are always thoughtful, entertaining, and  usually add something to the blather I put forth. (Thanks to my regulars - please keep them coming!) I was pondering how odd it must be to get massive amounts of comments. Then again, it's odd to realize that there are hundreds of people out there that I've never met who now know that I take a dump every time I go to La Jolla Shores.

Scary Monsters

No blog entry yesterday. The only thing I could think to write about was Six Feet Under's Sunday ep, featuring the most disturbing scene of any show this year - Nate's potentially life-ending seizure ("My arm's numb...numb arm! NARM! NARM!"). And nothing was inspiring me today.

Until...this.

Now, if you were a boy in the Seventies, you knew about Bigfoot. Bigfoot was one of the stars of the great "documentary" show In Search Of..., with your host Leonard Nimoy. There was Bigfoot, and the Abominable Snowman (aka the Yeti), the Loch Ness Monster, and UFO's. And these were some scary motherfuckers. Because THEY COULD BE REAL. I even visited Loch Ness, when I was about 5 years old, one of the few things I remembered about my time in England, because It. Was. Spooky. Gray lake, deep fog, and old castles. Did not see the monster, unfortunately. As a kid I wasn't too concerned about the Yeti, because he lives in the Himalayas. UFO's were scary, and I had the documentation to prove it - dozens of issues of UFO magazines. Plus they tended to abduct people in the rural parts of the country and the Midwest, where we lived. Bigfoot, though - Bigfoot was the worst. The first time I saw that famous home movie starring the Wild Man of The Mountains I had nightmares for a week. (Apparently, the Himalayas were far enough from the Midwest, but the Cascades were just a day's hike for the Sasquatch).

Nowadays, of course, we know it's a joke...but still...

Sleep, Or Lack Thereof

Yesterday, Beth was in the grip of the bug that Lucas brought home from Day Care, and I caught it as well. Which made last night a whole heap of fun. For her, there was the throwing up. For me, there was the ounding headaches and rapid temperature changes - I was freezing one moment (quite a feat, what with the muggy 80 degree weather and all) and burning up the next. This went on all night. Oh, and then there was the dog. Pacing (nothing grates the nerves quite like dog paw-nails clacking across Pergo floors), breathing heavily, and jumping on and off the bed throughout the night. This due to the thunderstorms off to the east. Needless to say, no surfing for me this morning. Yawn.

I'm Not an Athlete. I'm a Softball Player.

Yesterday had its share of madness. First, the Little Man is under the weather. Beth called me shortly before noon to tell me that Lucas had a fever of 102, and that she was going to go pick him up. She had meetings that afternoon, so I took the rest of the day off to stay at home with him. (New parents - you may notice, in reading this and my wife's blog, that the kid gets sick a lot. Yes he does. So will yours, when you send him/her to daycare. Your kid, like mine, will be around other kids who carry all kinds of foul diseases. Daycare centers are like leper colonies with Legos. ) He slept most of the time. I watched "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban" (far and away the best of the movie adaptations, primarily due to the acting - David Thewlis and Gary Oldman are both excellent, adding a level of depth to the movie that the other two lack. Doesn't feel like a kiddie film.) and DVR'ed episodes of "Blackadder II" (one of the funniest shows ever). Beth got home at 5:30, then it was off to my first softball practice of the season.

My fielding was a bit rusty - I took a hard hit line drive to my forearm, and have a nice red softball-shaped welt as a souvenir. I usually play first base, but may need to move to short because we don't have a lot of good fielders. The hitting, though - the hitting was ON. Took about 30 pitches, popped up two, the rest were line-drive rockets, going exactly where I wanted, to both fields. All would've been doubles at least, had this been a real game. It was hotter than a plate of  fresh bear shit (nice!), some 88 degrees at 7:00; the post-practice beer I had (courtesy of our team captain, who brought a cooler to the field) went right to my head.

Whatever thoughts I had about surfing this morning vanished. My shoulders and back are stiff. I'm feeling pain. From SOFTBALL PRACTICE. That ain't right.

The Mouth is a Window on the I.Q.

So yesterday we go to Souplantation, the all-you-can-eat salad bar/feeding trough restaurant. We ended up sitting next to a family - Dad, Mom, two-year-old girl. Dad's a real winner. He launches into a ten minute tirade about his job, every other word being some variant on "shit" or "fuck", loud enough so that Lucas and every other impressionable young kid (there were quite a few) within a twenty yard radius can hear. Not to mention his own daughter.

Now, at some point, most of us will slip up and drop an F-bomb in front of our kid. But I've got a real problem being around people who curse profusely in my kid's presence. (And yeah, I totally passed judgment on this guy for swearing in front of his little girl. What the fuck kind of parent does that? Oops. Well, Lucas can't read.)

So an informal poll - would you have said something to this guy? Me being me, I made some snarky comment as we were leaving, something to the effect of "let's get out of here before Lucas adds some new words to his vocabulary", loud enough for him and everyone around to hear. (Yes, I was bigger than him.)

"We got Aquaman!"

Feelin' like this guy today:

Closing deals, putting out fires, impressing the boss, keeping the people happy and in line...yeah, I'm Gold. Always a good day when the missiles are flying at you from all directions, and you manage to shoot 'em all down. Call me Helen Keller, 'cause I'm a fuckin' miracle worker.

eBay of Plenty

I've come to the sobering realization that I'm on way to becoming an eBay addict.

I spent WAY too much time this weekend scouring eBay for deals on surfing gear. For starters, there's the Rich Harbour Trestles Special; a 9'2' shaped by Rich, in excellent condition, currently at $350. Had it been any other model (the Trestles is very, very similar to my board, except that it's a singlefin), I'd have thrown caution to the wind and put a bid down. I looked at rashguards, wetsuits, fins, wall racks, you name it. I also found myself looking at softball gloves (I'm on the company team; our first practice is this Thursdays, and if I don't end up playing first base I'll need to get a "regular" fielder's mitt), sunglasses, jeans (my concession to Beth - I've come to see the value of a good pair of jeans), rugby shirts (not much in the way of deals - I've wanted a Bath Rugby jersey for a while, and while I can get one for $25 USD, the shipping would cost that much).

Other than that, the weekend was well spent. Saturday was spent at the beach with the parents, then back to my Grandma's place to barbecue. Post Dawn Patrol Sunday (Surf? Sucked.) was spent lounging about; got caught up on some reading (Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke, is highly recommended for you Potter geeks out there; I like Harry as much as the next guy, but Clarke's story is much more sophisticated, literate, and original) and laundry. Then dinner with the fam at Bali Hai, the kitschy Polynesian-themed restaurant with the great view of San Diego Bay.

Ok - gotta go - eBay time. Wouln't want to miss out on any deals.