Vegas Bound and a head in a pickle jar.

Vegas Bound!
Yes! My honey and I are off! Not yet, exactly. I’m sitting at the computer typing. But later this morning we are ditching the brats and hitting the open road. We are heading for Vegas, back to where our little marriage shindig began more than 17 years ago.

That’s right, we are a Vegas couple. For about $100 and two nights lodging at a now defunct hotel/casino, we got hitched. No family, no friends, no caterer, no ugly brides maid dresses. It was me, my girl (she had been getting sick every morning for a couple of months – hmm?? What was that all about?), and an oddly fitting pair of white slacks and jacket that made me look like Leisure Suit Larry (you’d have to remember that old game).

The Candlelight Wedding Chapel provided the backdrop. Jim Hamilton married us with a chapel staff member serving as the witness. Jim, as it turns out, is quite the personality. If you saw Honeymoon in Vegas with Nicolas Cage and Sarah Jessica Parker, Jim makes an appearance at the end of the movie – actually marrying Nick and Sara in a chapel full of skydiving Elvis impersonators. Laura and I were in the theatre watching the movie and when Jim showed up, we felt like we knew a star.

He is actually listed in the cast here:
http://movies.msn.com/movies/movie.aspx?m=369663&mp=c

Another couple was getting married right before us – and another right after us – quite the assembly line. We kept seeing that couple, the one married before us, over the course of the night – at dinner and then at a comedy club. Each time we waved and giggled like we were part of some secret society. The society of knocked up girlfriends and misguided youth.

Now we are seventeen years into this thing and I think I like her! My wife, I mean.

We were in Vegas a few years ago with all four kids and stopped by to take a picture with Jim. Yes, he is still there – The Candlelight Wedding Chapel across from Circus Circus. It is odd because the chapel is actually pretty but it sits at the end of a strip mall and big souvenir store. It is so Vegas it is frightening!
http://www.candlelightchapel.com/index.htm

The picture on their homepage is carefully cropped but the parking lot/souvenir shop is just to the left of the picture and the Riveria on the right. I’m not knocking them, it was a good time.
In fact, Elizabeth Taylor was married there once – of course, one might be hard-pressed to find a place she wasn’t married.

Now I am back in Vegas to speak at a conference for the parent company of my publisher. This should be fun! As you have read, I’ve been in Cleveland with them, in New Orleans a few weeks ago, and now this. In another week, I am Boston bound!

After the pink Jordache garment bag incident (read about Cleveland in earlier entries), I am glad I am taking my wife. I am sure the Prentice Hall folks have wondered about my “flamboyance” at their events. This is perfect cover – uh, I mean, validation of my strong heterosexual alignment. I mean, she’s a good-lookin’ broad, this wife of mine. I know, I color her hair!

Matt, what about the head in the pickle jar?
Oh yeah, let's get to it.

With all the Terri Shiavo stuff rolling around the news (don’t do it Matt, don’t get political), we had a conversation with our children about end of life wishes. Both Laura and I don’t want to be “fed” if we are in a PVS. PVS for those who haven’t been listening to TV or radio is another acronym. Coming from a tech background and with the Internet, these have become quite popular. Persistent (corrected from Permanent) Vegetative State (PVS).

We, as with almost everyone, have our opinions on the latest news and events but took this introspective time to let our wishes be known with our kids.

My wife and I both agree, no PVS for us. We both agree, organs donated. My wife, cremated. I want to be cremated too but not my head. I told my kids I want them to keep my head in a pickle jar. It is a great conversation piece. They can transfer it seasonally to each of their homes. That is the great thing about four kids. Four kids, four seasons, one head in a pickle jar.

"Nice place you have here. Where did you get that couch – Ethan Allen, nice. Oh, what is that on the mantle?"

"That’s my dad’s head in a pickle jar. He wanted to be passed on to future generations."

"Wouldn’t a picture have been simpler?"

"Well, my Dad felt he wasn’t very photogenic."

"He still isn’t."

The fact is, we are hoping our deaths are not imminent. We just hope the fear and anxiety of the potential keeps our kids from fighting this weekend while we are gone. We are hopeful but not optimistically so.

We’ve even told them they could have a party – two kegs, even illicit drugs, our treat – if we don’t get the predictable phone calls. Yes calls, multiple. Each fighting incident involves multiple calls. That’s the problem with cell phones for each teenager. That provides three phones in the house – the home phone and each cell phone.

We’ve actually had it happen where I am on the phone with Jessica, Matt is calling on the other line, and Christopher and Sara, our babies are calling Mom on the home phone. I’m switching back and forth getting Jessica’s story and then Matt’s story and asking about those items Laura is feeding to me from Chris and Sara. There is no mediating between them in these cases. More often than not, we just put them on mute and carry on our conversation. If we hear a pause or scream, we interject a hearfelt - "stop it." or "listen to your brother."

Basically, cellular technology extends dysfunction. Geography is no longer an issue. It used to be that parents had to come home and simply pick up the pieces. Now they have to be involved. It is a burden that is not really fair. Fortunately, we signed up for the “family fight” plan. That means we don’t get charged for bickering between our cell phones. Our kids can call us repeatedly – again and again and again and again – about the same infraction. We don’t get charged to hear that Jessica looked at Chris wrong or that Matt is being a jerk and sent everyone to their rooms. Matt likes sending them to their rooms because that was our trump authority that we’ve given him.

There are two things we need to add to this situation, however.

The first is sound-proofing the rooms. When our kids fight, sending them to their rooms only means that they have to yell through the house to fight. Even though Chris is downstairs and Jessica is upstairs, they can still effectively trade barbs. Maybe an added intercom between their rooms would be in order.

The other thing they should add to cell phones is a master shocker! The owner of the cell phone account and any assigned roles, should have the ability to send an electronic shock to any of the other cell phones. That way, when we are trying to get a word in edge wise but the words, “but she said” or “but he said” or “you don’t understand” (we virtually never understand), keep interrupting us, we can send an arcing jolt of electricity from the earpiece to their ear!

I’m not sure it would stop their talking but boy would it be fun.

Okay, I have to go pack! See you in Vegas.

Book category, a new series of books, and some other thoughts…

Let me start by letting everyone know that Christopher is, once again, playing hockey and has perfect vision. We do have to check his eyes in 6 months and then every year for his birthday on the outside chance pressure starts building behind his lens. Not likely but it is on our calendar.

Curious Amazon book categorization:
My book, The IT Career Builder’s Toolkit, is a career manual for the technology professional – that is the computer industry.

On Amazon, however, they have it under careers / general, careers / job guides, and careers / guides. Those are all well and good but it is not under careers / computer industry. Were that the case, my book would have been number one in that category for the past 6 weeks. The impact on sales is not without consequence. Being at the top of a list that is frequented has its benefits.

Amazon, who can ship anything in 24 hours, can’t make the category change for 30 days. Ouch!

Today I checked my ranking and it was number 70 under careers / general. 5 places up from it at 65 was another important career title, The Complete Idiot's Guide To Amazing Sex (2nd Edition)??? No really, click the link and scroll down to find the "look for similar items by category" and the "similar items by subject" section. They are near the bottom of the page. I'm confused.

I’m not saying that great sex won’t help your career – I guess it depends on the career and with whom the great sex is with. But my question is how this book can get categorized under careers and my book can’t get categorized under careers / computer industry.

Also, I wonder if the proximity to that title has any chance of helping my title sell?

I did propose several new titles to my editor based on that title. They were:

- Computer Firewalls and Great Sex!: Safe Computing/ Safe Sex, the New Paradigm, First Edition
- Routing Exposed!: Your Complete Guide To Configuring Your Router in the Nude!
- The 100 Sexiest Geeks Of All Time (& Companion 18 month Sexy Geeks Calendar)

I don’t think they are going to opt on this series but boy, it could revolutionize the industry.

Depression for Dummies – revisited
I received a comment below on my Depression for Dummies post and it prompted me to change my blog's description/disclaimer above. I had to include the Stories and posts may be embellished to the point of unrecognizable fiction. Any relation to real events is probably coincidence unless it was a real event – in which case, the relation to real events is the event itself.

I don’t really know if the person posting, Mr. Anonymous, was serious or not. But his thoughtful response to my post below will help me refine my blog and ensure that misunderstandings are not my fault.

I still have to write about New Orleans – where I met up again with the folks from my publisher’s parent company. It was….interesting. It involved beads, bulls and Bourbon street.

Later.

Update plus semantic banter

I've been asked by a few for a Christopher update.

Chris is pretty good. Friday we returned to the Opthomologist and he is probably at 50% of vision for that eye. The doctor said that this is good and there is no bleeding or other signs of stress. They have prescribed a steroid for his eye. He is joining the company of Giambi, Bonds, and probably every other slugger in baseball. We are not telling him it is a steroid so that later, he can be ignorant as well.

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Just a passing thought. While driving in the car yesterday, the weather anchor on the radio said something like..

"There is a chance we might get rain."

Not to nit-pick language but..okay, let's nit-pick. (more a nit-picking below)

The words chance and might are unnecesarily redundant in this case. There is a 100% chance that it might rain every day - even here in Arizona. However, there is an x% percent chance that it WILL rain. Might already addresses the chance element. Either say, "It might rain today." or "There is a chance that it will rain today." or "There is a chance of rain today."

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Nit-picking. Until I had children, in particular, children who had been infected with head-lice, I never understood nit-picking. Of course, they tell you that head-lice is not a reflection of personal hygene but when you are at the store buying ointment, cremes, and combs, you may as well be approaching the counter with a girly magazine or even more nefarious, the latest issue of Cosmopolitan* (see my idea for a Cosmo article below) No matter what the box says, you feel a little trashy.

And after you kill the little critters (we called them crawlies, as in, "our little girl has the crawlies" - you get to nit-pick. You go strand by strand, removing these little white eggs that are stuck on your disgusting child's crawlie-infected head. You hardly want to touch the little freaks.

I told my wife that I felt like a chimpanzee family. According to experts, it is a communal bonding experience for chimpanzees. I don't know, I'll stick to family game night.

"Mom, stop nit-picking."
Family game night for the Morans

Fortunately, it has been several years since the last infection. Well, to be truthful, we just don't ever check when the school sends home the lice-infection notices. We leave such discovery to "trained experts."

Fortunately, with my haircut, it is not a problem.

* My idea for a Cosmopolitan article - same title as they ran last month and every month..
10 ways to make your man crazy with desire.

1. get dressed in the morning. It requires that you were, at some point, naked, which is a sure come on.
2. walk by - dressed or undressed - close physical proximity is a sure come-on;
3. undress even when you are sick with the flu and just finished vomiting;
4. leave your bra anywhere in plain sight;
5. give him a friendly hug & a kiss on the cheek;
6. hold his hand in public - a sure sign you are coming on to him;
7. take a shower - he knows your naked and therefore are coming on to him;
8. brush by him as you pass in the hall - another sure sign of you coming on to him;
9. ask him to carry the laundry - a sure sign that you owe him, big time;
10. get in to bed after an exhausting and stressful day and you just had a fight about money and threatened divorce and told him how he repulses you - hey, getting into bed is a sure sign that you are coming on to him.

Science experiments… an 11 year old, a magnifying glass, newspaper, wood, and a lighter

You can see where this is going, can’t you? Just based on the items mentioned in the title, it is fairly apparent that this was not a school-led science experiment. His school experiments seem to include items like food color, water, and a flower. Flamable agents and explosives almost never seem to make the school list – but I digress.

The ingenuity of children is really amazing. Using items he found while scouring around the yard, he was able to hypothesize and then test his hypothesis.

Both amateur and professional scientist will notice that safety goggles did not make it into his makeshift lab equipment list.

First off, let me head all those “better” parents off at the pass. Yes, we have warned our son about the dangers of playing with fire. We’ve done this repeatedly and on many occasions. However, we did not warn him at this particular moment and this particular time for this particular fire – apparently, that is where we dropped the ball.

And in his defense, he had not been able to find his magnifying glass for almost a year. The sheer excitement of the find clouded his judgment. Hey, wouldn’t it have clouded yours too?
Add to that the total lack of ants or other insects in which to steer the searing light of his hand-held death-ray, and gosh, what do you expect?

We were noticeably absent, having taken our daughter to gymnastics up the street. It came as a phone call from our 17 year old.

“Mom, Christopher really ‘f’d up his eye.”

Now, my son doesn’t gratuitously curse--much, so this got Mom’s attention. Not enough that we rushed out of gymnastics, however. She was worried but that had been tempered by the fact that we had been to the emergency room 4 times in the last month – officially, we have been automatically entered into the Frequent Trauma Program. We are just waiting for our discount cards.

When we got home we found out that Matt’s medical assessment pretty much summed it up. Chris had a small cut below his eye and his eyeball was a reddish tinge with blood pooling up in the space between his lens and pupil. This, we discovered later, is called Hyphema. Although a more accurate description is MomisFreakinga but we aren’t expecting a change to medical text just yet.

Christopher’s upper chest and neck were covered with black ash. Apparently, his little explosion was pretty severe. We went out to where he was building his little blaze to investigate and discovered a couple things..

There was debris behind me a good 8-10 feet.
Notice the brick barrier - Safety First!

1. It was still burning. Apparently, neither Christopher nor older brother had thought to put out the fire.
   
2. Small pieces of smoking wood had been blown nearly 15 feet away from the fire pit.

We rushed him to the emergency room and waited in various places. We waited in the lobby and then waited in his curtained room.

It was a busy night and although we were in the children’s emergency area, older folk were being put in there as well. On one side, we had a mom whose son has crushed his hand. I didn’t see anything but they brought in a portable X-ray unit and when the X-ray tech was speaking to the doctor she said something like…

“I’m going to film it this way because this part keeps flopping around and getting in the way.”

Any way you slice it that could not have been comforting to either the kid or the mom. Based on how it was said, whatever was flopping was not normally a flopping part of the body.

On our other side of us they placed one of the adult visitors. Not sure what was happening there except we heard terms like, blockage, backed up diarrhea, and enema. And then overheard the nurse say some choice phrases like…

“This lubricant will feel kind of cold.”

And

“You might feel some discomfort now.”

I turn around and there is Laura laughing like a juvenile - not good! Both of us carefully and quietly move our chairs as far from the curtain as possible. We were already dealing with one explosion.

Finally, Christopher was seen. They put some dye in his eye and looked at it with ultraviolet light. You could see a slice right across the front of his eye, from one side to the other. Also, the blood behind his lens was covering about half of the colored part of his eye. They took X-Rays and found no puncture wounds or debris in the eye – which is good.

He was asked how/why he did this and explained that his older brother taught him. We've always encouraged our older kids to tutor the younger ones but we think that warrants a friendly conversation, don’t you?

This morning, we had to go to the Ophthalmologist and they did much the same thing. A recheck is due this week but they expect several days of blurred vision. Chris’ eyes were dilated so he is wearing sunglasses provided by the Doctor’s office and cannot take part in physical activity. I guess that means he misses his hockey games for the next couple of days.

Cool!

Kind of funny phrase from Christopher. As the doctor was checking his vision using the eye chart, he tested his right eye first. Actually, amazing vision. He was reading stuff so small that they doctor pulled the chart away and looked at the line Christopher and shrugged - a little shocked. On his injured eye, however, things were much worse. He could only read the really big line with two letters.

When the doctor presented the next line, Chris said, "It's at this point that I can't see."

Besides some family memories, what did he learn?

Well, first of all, stand further away from the flame when you throw explosives into it. Also, shield your eyes if you are not wearing protective lenses.

Now pass those lessons on to your children.

We are exploring legal options. The list of people to sue is pretty well limitless in this case…

• The brick maker. There is no warning, what-so-ever on the bricks that inform us that they are not a shield against flying debris.
  
• The magnifying glass manufacturer. There is no warning on the magnifying glass that explains that using it to build a fire and then throwing a lighter into it can cause bodily harm.
  
• The lighter manufacturer for failing to note that explosive liquids explode.
  
• My parents. Yes, this one isn’t even a stretch. They failed to inform my wife and I that every stupid thing that my brothers and sister and I did growing up is destined to be repeated by the next generation. I should have realized this after my oldest son broke his hand jumping off the slide into the pool.

Thanks for reading - now off to the next minor emergency..

Being a moron and other anomolies

I had to re-post this entry because it was feeding strange to my other site??

My children are doomed! By birthright they have a name that is so close to moron that it is necessarily the target of the oh-so-clever group of people who realize that Moran and moron only require a single letter to make one the other.

Almost daily someone who learns of our last name makes the connection – geniuses that they are. For them, it is always new, exciting, and fresh.

When my wife and I were first parents, we would gush about our every action of our oldest child. His first cookie – isn’t that cute. His first poopie – isn’t that cute (that one got old quick). His first steps – isn’t that cute.

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Side note: In case you are wondering, grammatically “isn’t that cute” should be a question. But when new parents say it in regards to their child it is a statement. They mask it in a question to get your agreement but don’t confuse that point. Once, I answered, “no, it isn’t really all that cute.” The parent in question was shocked! Of course, I joked and laughed it off as me just goofing around. But really, their child wasn’t that cute – in fact, they were downright ugly. Yes, there are ugly babies.
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My mom used to say, “Look, it’s the first child to ever_______” add your own ending here. It was her way of pointing out that she had five kids and we all did the same thing. Basically, you had a sex and had a child – get over it, there are only about 80 million people who will do that this year (have kids, I mean). And I actually looked up this statistic…

Every time I hear moron, I want to point out that they weren’t the first to notice it. Am I angry about it? Do I sound angry about it?

Once, when Christopher received his first set of stitches at 9 months old, (isn’t that cute, look he’s bleeding profusely from his chin. Ahhh) my wife went back into the doctor’s office to hold him while they did the work. Laura is not real fond of blood but because she had handled the original emergency, felt she would be fine. I waited in the emergency room lobby with Matt & Jessica, our oldest two.

Sudently, an intern entered the lobby – the crowded lobby – looking curiously at a piece of paper – reading something and moving his lips, wordlessly, in practice. And then, he said it…

“Moron, is there a Moron here. Mr. Moron”

Laughter started in the lobby and I raised my hand..

“Uh, that would be me.”

As it turns out, Laura was sitting in the doctor’s office nearly passed out. She had suddenly realized that Chris was bleeding and remembered that she didn’t like blood. Moron!

And don’t get me started on the magically appearing “G”. Our name becomes “Morgan” more than moron. I think it’s an evolutionary process people use to ensure they don’t accidentally call us morons.

Chances are, if your last name is Morgan, you were probably a moron at some point.