Asymptomatic

I feel obligated to write about the BBQ, even though as an event, I think it stands on its own. The people who came seemed to have a good time, and the people who couldn't come... well... maybe they had a good time, too.

First off, it was hot. Super hot. Outrageously hot. I wished we had enough room inside the house to hold everyone, but it all turned out ok.

About 45 minutes before the BBQ was to begin, the pig roast guy called to say that he'd had a little car trouble. Apparently, while driving to our house, one of the doors fell off of the company van. Fell off. Crazy. So that was our one thing that went wrong. Thankfully, things didn't get worse....

In case you weren't aware, we celebrate my birthday on Wednesday this year, June 4th. My birthday is not actually on June 4th, but that's the day I've chosen to celebrate it. I think I've finally gotten everyone on board with the idea.

This year's event is on the Saturday after, and is a bit bigger than previous affairs. It's the culmination of two years' worth of home building, having moved in two years ago August. It's the first time that Berta will be inviting work people over for anything. I've been inviting everyone I meet to come hang out. We're inviting our neighbors all over, too, which is long overdue - I think they secretly think we're weird for not having done so already. So it's not just for my birthday, although that's how the date was chosen, but also just a general summer party, probably the biggest one we'll throw for a while.

As a result of such the event, we've arranged for some special food and events. We ordered a pig from Brandywine Picnic Park. Just today I obtained a small moonbounce for the kids to play on/in. Berta got lamp oil for use in my flaming juggling equipment. I even ordered more than a few miracle fruit for our guests to try, although I've not heard anything yet about their delivery, so I hope they arrive in time or I'm going to have a lot of miracle fruit to eat by myself.

But one thing that's been occupying some significant mental time lately is the Pirate Quest. more

Staring at the walls in the office is not conducive to constructing posts. I'm not sure how I've even managed the last 9-10 years worth of posts. You'd think I'd run out of material.

I was mentioning to someone the other day that I paradoxically - since the walls are plain white and small - have a lot of good ideas while in the shower. I had another one of those days today. I must have come up with three or four solid ideas about things I wanted to blog, but simply lost them upon setting foot outside the bathroom. Less dramatically, we had plans immediately after I showered this morning, so I didn't really have a chance to act on my ideas.

So I was thinking, if I had some kind of device that I could use to record ideas while in the shower, or in the bathroom getting ready in the morning, I could keep these ideas and be able to act on them later in the day. I'd probably do well with something that is somewhat waterproof, but can somehow be erased. ...

With kids in the house, there's no shortage of odd things being left out in the yard. I'm always finding some toy or other out there, a stray toy golf club, a toy truck, etc. A recent thing that's been bothering me is this inflatable, red plastic ring that's part of this "waterpark" playset, looking like one of those hemorrhoid rings -- Only slightly embarrassing. But this morning, I found something quite unusual in my front yard.

The rules of our homeowner's association forbid making changes to the "openness" of the development. That means no new trees and no fences. As a result, our development is basically just a big open patch of land with houses in it. Our house sits at the bottom of one of the two hills in the development, and it seems like the unfettered wind is always ripping past our neighbors' houses and blowing things into our yard. The winter covers for the grill and the table never seem to stay on.

The end result is that I wasn't as surprised as I might have been when I found a tent in my yard this morning. Still, it was a bit shocking. Was it put there intentionally? Had someone moved into our yard? ...

I've had so much to say over the past two weeks, and no desire at all to write about any of it. It seems like I should do a dictation or something, and have my secretary write out my blog posts for me. Perhaps I will look into a service soon -- I've always thought that my blog entries would sound better if I read them instead of writing them. In any case, here's a brief summary of topics of things that I should have written about but didn't.

I got a shave two weeks ago - a real one in a barber's chair with a straight razor. I actually did write about this, but I wasn't near the internet when I did it, and I'm not sure where my notebook is at the moment. I'm sure that post will appear when I finally stumble across the notebook bag.

On that same day, I attended the PhillyCHI design slam. It was an interesting event in which we were broken up into small random groups and given the task to create a "table management system" for a fictional restaurant. Our group didn't do very well primarily because there was no cohesion between our members. We had some pretty good ideas, but they weren't realized because everyone wanted to go separate directions. Kind of stupid, really....