Let's Get Un-Busy

Cripes, it's been a hectic last few weeks. Let's see...

Nicole and I took the girls to a ballgame - well, really, they took us, because they won the tickets through the library's summer reading club. It was Ava, Veronica, and Nicole's first trip to the new stadium. Of course, Ava's too young to remember her lone experience at old Busch. In retrospect, taking a ten-month-old baby to a Cards-Cubs game was not the greatest idea - the noise freaked her out and Nicole had to leave with her during the first inning. Even though she's three now, we almost went through the same thing this time. Ava made it through the top of the first without getting spooked. It was the cheers for the Cards coming up to bat that started the waterworks. We had just managed to get her calmed down when Albert Pujols came to bat. Of course, he promptly hit a home run - probably the only time I've ever rooted for an Albert Pujols fly ball to stay in the park. The place went nuts. More tears, but she handled it OK and we got to stay. The calming presence of Veronica helped immensely, I think. I found myself sighing with contentment, sitting there with my family at the ballpark on a hot but lovely summer night. It's not so bad, this whole fatherhood thing.

One of my favorite things about my neighborhood is the Festival of Nations at Tower Grove Park. This year the girls and I watched some Vietnamese lion dancing, some burly Scots in kilts tossing the caber (a big log, basically), and an Appalachian musician playing her autoharp and hammer dulcimer. And the food, by jiminy, the food... We got the delicious Argentinian empanadas we always get at these things, some Albanian tiramisu that was just OK, and some of those Mexican fruity drinks (watermelon and mango). We also went to the Japanese Festival at the Botanical Garden. Since we went in the morning and one of us is pregnant, Nicole and I skipped the boxed sake this time. But not the pocky.

The Help played a show on Sept. 2 at the Bluebird with the Humanoids and the Nevermores, two bands I'd been anxious to rock in close proximity to. Decent-ish turnout, hot lineup, and we all got paid. You can see a video clip of two of our songs at LoFi St. Louis (we're playing "All I Want For Christmas Is A Billion-Dollar No-Bid Contract" and "Pyongyang Fun City") - thanks to Bill of lofistl for adding the news crawl of companies that received no-bid contracts for the war in Iraq. Brilliant idea.

I guess this is Soccer Week. This past Monday I went to the Collinsville City Council meeting where they voted on various items related to a possible MLS stadium there. Looks like we'll soon have our own MLS team, probably, it seems, I'm hoping. I joined some of my Internet soccer peeps to chant like a fool afterwards - if you looked over Roche Madden's shoulder on Fox 2 that night, you could just see me in the crowd of goofballs behind him. Tonight I'm probably going to see SLU play Loyola, which'll be the first SLU game I've seen in a couple of years.

Otherwise, it's been all work, work, and work again. Woot is exploding (we just launched our partnership with Yahoo! today - scroll down to see it on Yahoo! Shopping). I'm tired, but at least I'm not bored.

Next post: pictures!

Oh My Aching Neck

Got ahold of some flu yesterday - fever, aches, weakness, the whole bit. Stayed in bed most of the day, submitting to Nicole's conscientious care, was feeling better by nighttime. Woke up and the fever was mostly gone. Unfortunately, I couldn't turn my head to the left without excruciating pain in my neck. Consultation with Nicole's nurse stepmom, books, and the Internet confirmed that doctors can't do anything about it. Only heat, ibuprofen, and time will help. If my neck, shoulders, and back are not perfectly aligned, it hurts. So I'm walking around like C-3PO.

I really hope this blog doesn't turn into a litany of complaints...I'll post about something happy next.

Third-World Ameren Strikes Again

Ameren UE, our local electricity monopoly, has a record of service and reliability that is the envy of the nation. Unfortunately, that nation is Bangladesh.

Last night, 4000 more St. Louisans were without power for six hours, for reasons known only to the Ameren Kommissars. My family was 3 of those people - just what I wanted to come home to after a business trip. By my count, this is the sixth (yes, 6th) significant power outage at our house in the last 15 months. And I live in one of the most densely populated areas of the city, not at the end of a dirt road somewhere.

Hey, I understand. Things happen. Things particularly happen to you, if you're an utterly incompetent corporate monopoly. But I do have a few questions:

How many elderly people has Ameren killed, through a combination of rate increases and recurrent summer outages?

Do you think Ameren CEO Gary Rainwater feels even the slightest twinge of guilt about this, when he's zooming around in his corporate jet and lounging around his vast mansion (address unlisted, unfortunately)?

How many times has the power gone out at the palatial home of Ameren CEO Gary Rainwater?

How long does it take to train a monkey to answer a phone and say "Sorry for the inconvenience"?

Is Ameren CEO Gary Rainwater seeking psychiatric help for his pathological greed?

Does the concept of "executive responsibility" mean anything more than the responsibility to demand ever-higher rate increases?

I await answers from Ameren CEO Gary Rainwater. I think I'll be waiting a long time, but I've gotten pretty good at that - I'm an Ameren customer.

(This is a reprint of a post I made in the forums at stltoday.)

The Wading Game

How do you enjoy being outside on a 95-degree Sunday? We took Ava to the wading pool in Tower Grove Park yesterday. It wasn't too crowded, so we staked out a shady corner of the pool, dunked our feet in, kept a water bottle close at hand, and hardly noticed the heat. Ava made friends with another little girl who had a little toy turtle with her. Ava didn't bring any toys, but a leaf she found floating in the pool served just as well - Ava called it her "water leaf" and hung onto it most of the time she was in the water. A couple of unruly hoosier kids were terrorizing large parts of the pool, pouring buckets of water on strangers and helping themselves to other kids' toys, taking advantage of the hesitancy of yuppie parents to discipline children. Their chain-smoking, snaggletoothed, prison-tattooed mother sure as hell wasn't going to say a word. I don't get how some parents can just sit there while their kids are acting like such bastards. I was ready to make a scene if they came within ten yards of my kid. Luckily, they stayed away, and we were able to have a nice time without having to yell at anybody.

Oh My Aching Calves

Riding a bike really helps you get to know the topography of your town. I now understand that Grand and Morganford each run along ridges, while Roger and Kingshighway are at the bottoms of valleys. In a car, you'd barely notice. On a bike, those slopes are brutal - especially if you're out of shape and riding a heavy-frame one-speed. I rode for a mere half-hour Saturday night, and there were times when I felt like I was dragging the bike uphill. Ugh. Now, I was trying to push myself, taking the slopiest routes I could find. But I must've pushed myself too hard, because when I rode Monday night, my legs immediately started hurting. I guess the real lesson here is: I am ridiculously out of shape. I wonder if I could ride an exercise bike while I work...

Melting Away In Clearwaterville

I'm not sure why this seems so significant, but I was mildly freaked out to see that my parents drink beer on the rocks now. Part of it is simply that it's a change - I can specifically remember my Dad scoffing at the idea of putting ice in beer, many years ago. But more than that, there's something really "Florida" about it to me. I don't think I've ever seen anybody in St. Louis drink their beer with ice. Maybe most people in Florida don't either, I don't know. Maybe Florida has nothing to do with it. Maybe it's just a personal quirk of my parents'. But it's not one they picked up in St. Louis. There weren't many people more saturated in St. Louisness than my parents, and ice in beer seems like one more way they're turning into Floridians. Time marches on. Or melts into something else.

Birthday Girls (And Now, Boy)

My daughters each had birthdays last week. Can Veronica really be 11 now? I hope she likes the graphic novel I picked out for her - I'm really excited that she's into comics. She's got more natural writing talent than I ever had at her age, especially in terms of understanding emotion and plotting. So I'm trying to turn her on to stuff that will deepen that understanding, and show her the possibilities of storytelling. At least once a day, I'm surprised and delighted by Veronica's intelligence and wit (not to mention how tall she keeps getting).

Ava turned three ("free", as she pronounces it). It's funny how she reacts to presents: she rips open the paper and then just stares at the present, dumbfounded and overwhelmed. People might mistake it for rudeness, but she's just too excited to show any emotion. She's so sweet and imaginative and sensitive and smart. I couldn't be more proud of my girls - my greatest accomplishment.

Oh yeah - on Ava's birthday, my sister Lizzie had her first child, a baby boy named Isaiah Jordan Toon. (The names "Kareem", "Magic", and "Bird" didn't make the cut, I guess.) He looks like his mom. Welcome to life, Isaiah! And happy birthday, Ava and Veronica!