My brother and his wife came over to play cards last night. It's a regular Monday night affair. They come over, we play Spades, same teams: David and I vs. Heidi and Cindy. My brother and I, we discuss each hand as we are dealing the next. It occurs to me that, in some ways, we are so much like our parents. Funny.

I am such a dork. I sent my first fan email yesterday. I emailed pamie telling her how much I enjoy her journal and that she's inspired me to start OverFlow. Then, like a dufus, I asked her to look at my journal and give me pointers. That's like the Internet equivalent of "Gee, Miss pamie, I've seen all your movies and I'm a big fan. Would you mind looking at my script?" Clod. I'm a Clod.

I love my boots. My wife gave me these faux hiking boots for christmas and I wear them alot. I don't hike. I do like the feeling of wearing Big Shoes and being up high, if only an inch higher. I like the fact that if I happen by a trail and want to sponataneously hike it, I won't have to worry about my shoes. It's like I'm wearing two SUV's on my feet.

Mr. Freshpants is looking more and more like real baby and less like a miniature old man. He's starting to do all of that smiling stuff. He can be very charming. I've noticed that babies are like campfires. Entire groups of people can just sit around and look at a baby without saying anything -- just like a campfire. They also tell stories and say silly stuff around the baby -- just like a campfire.

It may be my boots or the fact that the Livestock Show and Rodeo is underway, but I'm in a country and western music mood. Trouble is I don't like C&W music very much. But I do like Lyle Lovett, and the Mavericks, and Asleep at the Wheel, and BR-549, and Allison Kraus, and New Grass Revival.... Okay, so I do like country and western. I just don't listen to it often.

Happy Valentines Day. I did end up making my wife a valentine anyway. Out of trash no less. Don't laugh at my bad poetry:

 I want to kill your roaches.
 I want to scrub your toilets.
 I want to argue with you about too-flowery wallpaper.

 I want to pace the floor with you waiting for 
 Hannah to come home.
 I want to pace the floor with you waiting for
 Hannah to deliver.
 I want to pace the floor with you.

 I want to feather our empty nest with my junk sculpture 
 And bad oil paintings.
 I want to share tea and clip coupons.
 I want to bicker with you about little things.
 ("Leave me alone woman! I like these socks!")
 And I want to love you through the big things.

 I look forward to a most ordinary life
 Lived in extraordinary joy.

 With you.

Laser Quest is a lot of fun and almost worth the six dollars per game ticket price. I want to go back. Today. This time without the little rugrats who rack up points by following me around the maze, waiting for my targets to get reactivated so they can shoot me again and chase me around waiting for my targets to be reactivated.... Oh, I held my own. I actually placed fifth in one game. But it was disconcerting to find my self being picked on by a bully of a seven year old girl.

We did the science fair project last night. I was worried because the chocolate looked the same whether we heated it up to 110 degrees or 140 degrees, whether we cooled it fast or slow. It didn't look like we'd get results to report, but after eight hours or so, the difference was striking -- the "good" choclate was shiny and brown and the "bad" chocolate developed grey streaks, dark brown spots, and light regions where the chocolate "bloomed". Chocolate facts learned:

• Always measure the temp when melting chocolate for use and never let it get beyond 115 degrees.
• One drop of water will screw up an entire batch of melted chocolate.
• Heat chocolate up to about 110 degrees and cool slowly by adding chunks of unmelted chocolate down to about 93 degrees -- perfecto chocolato.
• Good chocolate feels cool in your mouth because cocoa butter (more cocoa butter, better chocolate) melts below body temperature and draws heat away from your mouth. Thermodynamics, think about it.

Boy, did I ever get some clothes. I went to one of the two or three places I can shop -- I qualify as "Big and Tall" -- and there was a clearance sale. I bought mass quantities - five shirts and three pairs of pants. I don't usually shop like that, but I hadn't bought any clothes (other than underwear, tshirts, and jeans) in a long time. I was also getting disgusted with myself dressing like such a slacker at work. Actually, skinny guys who wear jeans, tshirts, and untucked dress shirts look like slackers. If you're fat and dress like that, you look like a slob. So I got some non-slacker, non-slob clothes. I'm obviously in my brown and black period. Everything I bought was brown or black in some way. I don't know what that means. Black, though. is very easy to match with. So maybe it's laziness?

Today is GirlZilla's belated birthday party at Laser Quest. It should be cool. I figure I'll have the same problem I had when I played paintball that one time -- I'm a big target. Doesn't matter if I wear camo or not, I'd just be a big, mottled green target. But, what they hey, if I am a big target, my daughter, I'm sure, will have all the more fun beacuse she gets to keep shooting her father.

And tonight, we do the science fair experiment. We have chocolate, we have a good thermometer, and we have procedures and a hypothesis. We're ready to go...

I have a confession to make. Other than this dance we're going to and the corsage I'm going to buy, I have made no plans for Valentines Day for my wife. I didn't write any poetry, I didn't make any art for her, nothing. I was going to make my own valentine, but I don't know if I'll have time. I may have to give Heidi a store-bought one, which I haven't done in years. Well, a really good, long, um, massage will probably make up for a store-bought anything. For my wife, actions are more important than declarations of love anyway.

Did you ever notice that people don't smile while they pump gas? just an observation.

Mr. Freshpants got me up at 3:00 a.m. I was all about to annuounce that he was Sleeping Though The Night (ta DA!), before he broke his four night, six plus hour streak this morning. Of course, he slept for four more hours after I hauled my ass out of bed to change and feed him. I usually like to combine our feeding time with some meditation -- candle and incense for me, Enfamil plus Iron(tm) for him. But when he wakes up this early, I just sit there trying not to fall asleep and drop him. Actually, the Zen folks would say that I'm getting better meditation that way anyway.

I made a few more inputs for Signs And Wonders, but the format still is wonky. There's some idosyncracies to posting with newsdawg that I have to master yet. I figure I'll show it to my supervisors this weekend, once it is more presentable.

My wife asked me today what my graduation date is. Whaaa? Graduate? Wow, I guess I am finally going to graduate. It hasn't really hit me yet. I still have so much of my project to do.... I am going to walk across the stage. I would generally blow off the ceremony, but I want GirlZilla to see daddy walk across the stage and get a diploma. Monkey see, monkey do, right? I sure hope so. If we want her to love learning, we need to be her example. So I'm going to put on the dorky robe and shake the dean's hand.

I have to go buy clothes. Our Valentines Dance invitations, my wife noticed the other day, say "Semi Formal." Apparently this doesn't mean I can wear a tux jacket and bermuda shorts. By this time tomorrow, I'll have some acceptable clothes.

Gawd! Yuck. I just followed my link to Signs And Wonders and it look really bad from here. I'll have to change the color scheme, cause it looks really annoying and amateurish. Oh yeah, I am an amateur....

After screwing up the news pages at the World Network of Religious Futurists' site for a few hours yesterday, I finally got something up for Signs And Wonders. Right now it's just a skeleton that I'll have to fill in. I'll try adding some actual content today. I had to figure out this Perl script called Newsdawg to get my site integrated into the automated news posting capability there. Now that I can post via the web and not ftp, content should come pouring out, right? Hope so. Gotta lot to do though:

• create a framework document for my environmental scanning.
• write an "About" page that amounts to a FAQ.
• write a "Sources" page, which amounts to a portal for religious futures.
• Promote the thing. I have no idea how to get readers to my site.
• Add a counter, integrate a search engine (Oingo's hot right now), and other typical web site stuff.

I came up with a good way to decribe my life. A friend asked me how I was doing and I put it this way: "It's like God said to me 'I will fill your life with all sorts of good things and cool stuff to do, but you can only sleep four hours a night. You interested?'" Yep, that's it. I'm challenged, fulfilled and happy... and dead tired.

Chocolate is a complex substance. I wish I'd read up on this before talking to GirlZilla about her science fair project. The idea sounded simple -- We were going to (try to) make a batch of chocolate and cool parts of it at different rates to see what happens. Well, it's hard to make chocolate. I guess we'll just start by melting some chocolate and then cool it at different rates. She's studying states of matter in her second grade science class, and I guess we could do the solid, liquid, and gas thing with water, but water's kinda boring. People love chocolate. This is her third science fair project. All three have been about food. Tells you a lot about us (heh heh heh) but seriously, kitchen projects are so easy to do because your kitchen is a little chemistry lab built in right off of the living room. It's perfect for kiddie science. Hmmm... since this is about chocolate, could we call it Chick Science? That's very 'unevolved male' of me, isn't it?

The dinner party went well, but it was a pot luck dinner (Catholicism's Eighth Sacrament) and the person bringing the green salad canceled out on us at the last minute. So, we had Heidi's roasted pork loin and an assortment of starches, but no vegetables. We all agreed it was okay just this once as long as our children didn't find out about it. And, as I predicted, we are not in Fresh House state. We are still in Rearranged For Party state with a Sunday's Worth Of Clutter delta. Heidi took advantage of the fact that we had both leaves in the dining room table to spread out one of those 1000 piece jigsaw puzzles she likes. What's surprised me is that GirlZilla is obsessed with the darn thing. I guess it's cause she's so goal-oriented and loves the little successes that come from finding that little piece with the dog's ear and the reddish corner. We have to pull her away to eat dinner, bathe, sleep, and go to school. Funny.

My brother's not coming over. No cards tonight. Bummer. This means I'll have to work. Heidi is reading us the second Harry Potter book. Girlzilla has read on her own already to chapter 13, but still likes to hear mommy read. She does voices, I mean good, rich, in-character voices. It's a family time treat, I'm looking forward to it, I'm a little embarrassed to say.

I know some hipper-than-thou types out there might gag a bit at my Domestic Bliss attitude about life, but tough. Put on something black, go pierce something, sip some absinthe, or whatever. You do your thing, I'll do mine. (ooh, such latent hostility to the cultural elite! Insecurity? Jealousy? Only my analyst will ever know. If I ever get an analyst. And I hope I don't)

Mr. FreshPants saw his mommy yesterday. They were happy to see each other. We sure hope she carries through and does what it takes to get him back. Yes, we are attached to the little guy, but we can't lose sight of the fact that the desired outcome is always returning the kid to his own (safe, sane, loving) home.

I took the arty doohicky to work. It doesn't go anywhere at home very well. Not that it exactly fits in here in my cube, but I have more empty shelf space (I took home or sold the other weird art doohickies that I've had here before.) Also, I'm not having fifteen guests to my cube tonight, all of whom would want to know what the hell that thing is.

In case you didn't catch it, we're having company tonight. Yep, we're having a Dinner Party (capital D capital P). This isn't just a get together where people sit around with their plates on their laps and talk and stuff. We are having Tablecloths and Napkin Rings and Centerpieces. We're going uptown with the dinner gig.

Our friends, God Bless 'em, are good people but having them over is making my wife nervous becuase, well, they're "Suburban Rich" (my term). You know, McMansion houses in upscale gated communities. Well, we live in a small tract house in one of the old neighborhoods they originally built when they plopped NASA out here in what was the middle of nowhere. It's old, needs alot of updating and repair, but I love my house. I love having big trees. I like the fact that we have exactly the space we need, but no more. When I leave for work in the morning, I always try to turn to my house, my home, and give it a nod of appreciation and thanks to God for such a gift. It is easy, though, to forget that our house is a gift because it pales in comparison to the McMansions that are going in like gangbusters here in Clear Lake.

Though I can understand my wife's nervousness. Previous Dinner Parties have been held in palatial homes with abundant space. We, on the other hand, will have to shoe-horn 15 people into our "quaint" home. There has been much brainstorming as to how to rearrange things to make the best use of space, much consulting about table settings, etc.

One thing I don't like about this dinner party is that we won't have a fresh house afterwards. We'll have to un-rearrange things to get it back to normal. I usually like having company because afterwards we have a house that is cleaner than it's been in months. There are times when Heidi and I look around at our mess and then look at each other and say "Yikes, wee need to have some people over or something." We keep the place generally clean, but we *really* clean for guests.

GirlZilla has decided to have her birthday party at Laser Quest this year. Thank you, Jesus. It's not at Chucky Cheese or McDonalds or something. I might actually enjoy this one. I do, in general, have a pretty cool daughter.

GirlZilla and I made a pretty wierd little arty doohicky Tuesday night. It's this big wooden box painted black with lengths of antenna grounding wire sticking out of a few dozen holes I drilled. Some of the wires have little red FIMO balls on them, most of the others have alligator clips glued to their ends. GirlZilla enjoyed helping me assemble the pieces, but she didn't get to see the finished product until the next morning becuase the production extended past her bedtime. When she finally saw it, she was more convinced than ever that she has a weird Dad. Though, on some level, I think she enjoys the fact that I'm weird.

When I conceived this piece, I was thinking "Message center" -- someplace to hold the twenty or so little slips of paper that hold reminders, phone numbers and other vital information around our house. We can finally have a place to put that kind of stuff so maybe I'll get in trouble less. Ya see, I am the main picker-upper around my house. I'm not a neatnick. I just like to have the clutter put away. This puts me in the position of being permanent scapegoat for anything that goes missing. It's a hazard of the job. My wife is the type to write vitally important information on backs of envelopes (junk mail no less) and leave them on horizontal surfaces around the house. It's one of our ongoing things. We had another "where's that envelope that was sitting here" episode on Wednesday night. Much grumbling all around. Good thing we love each other so much....

My mind is so overflown with OverFlow(tm) that, if I tried to write it all down, I'd have to list "online journalist" as my main occupation. Which would not please my boss. My candle isn't burning on both ends -- the whole sucker is on fire. Of course, saying that you're busy has no meaning any more. Everyone's busy. I've been trying to say that "my life is full" instead. It's true -- all the stuff in my life right now are true gifts to be thankful for. I just might not get around to thank you notes for a while.

Right now, I'm in the middle of getting Signs and Wonders up on the WNRF site. They're expecting me to get it out there soon so I'd better deliver something, huh?. Also my environmental scanning project with Enron is in full swing and I have gathered all my scan hits but now have them backlogged and need to enter them into the spreadsheet (which is the worst part). Work is in fever pitch, testing three applications before a delivery in three weeks (gulp). I mean, when you have to block off time in your schedule for sleep, sex, meals, and exercise and then go back and decide which you can do with less of, it's getting pretty tight. (So far, thank God, personal hygeine is not on the table. But I have read stories about female executives who get chronic constipation because they can't take time for regular elimination. It's definitely not that bad for me yet.) Though Mr. FreshPants is totally worth it, having a newborn infant in the house doesn't help the old schedule much either. Still, it's all pretty darn good and I can't complain. Tho I do anyway.

I can see this journal update thing is going to be hit and miss, feast and famine. I think about updating often, but apparently only get around to it every few days or so.

Church on Sunday was good as usual, after the scurry to get there on time of course. There is one point each Sunday after communion, when I'm kneeling there praying, when I start to focus on the others coming back, one by one, from communion. I am so used to sizing people up in a glance -- judging them, assessing their insides using their outsides. It's a nasty habit. A way to alleviate my own insecurity by comparing myself with others.
So, at that point in the mass, I try to reverse that and focus eyes of compassion on each communicant. What kind of joys light their lives? What problems weigh them down? How are we connected? I pray for them in that second and try to connect our souls. It's a humbling, yet surprisingly uplifting exercise.
Anyway, this Sunday there was this couple, older, she in a wheelchair, probably racked with dementia, unable to chew the piece of eucharist she held between her lips. I see them every week. But as they passed they touched me. That may be *me* in forty years (hopefully no sooner) giving selfless care to a woman I promised my life to, a woman who can no longer respond to me with conscious love. It scared me to think that I might be called to serve in that way. In that moment I had nothing but the deepest admiration for that old man. How many millions of heroes like him are there out there? It takes guts, I tell you, guts and love to change the diapers every day of the person you used to make love to, the love of your life. I just had to think a prayer for myself asking for God to give me the guts to be that strong if the time ever comes.... I also thank God that I have a person in my life who will take that kind of care for me if I should need it.

Okay, is that sappy enough for you? Well, I lost my bet on the Super Bowl. Mr. FreshPants gave me the Titans plus 51/2 points. I figured it was going to be a lock, but as it turns out, I didn't even cover the spread. Mr FreshPants tried not to gloat, but failed. It was a darn good game though. I enjoyed it. I went to two parties - first half at one and second at a coworker's house. It was a boy's night out, as I took Mr. Freshpants and left my wife and GirlZilla to do girlie things.

Went in to work on Monday to a dead network server. Hardware problems, out three days minimum. I turned around and headed home, figuring I could work on Signs and Wonders. I got a lot accomplished, getting the basic html design somewhat done. I'll tell you, I'm not a web designer by any stretch. I'll post a link to the site later, but you gotta promise not to laugh at my primitive design.

Maybe GirlZilla and I can do a little art project tonight. It's been a while since we've done any activities together. By the time I get home, her main concern is playing with friends. By the time she's wound down and ready for attention, I seem to have always ramped up on some project or other. The other day (Friday?) was good though. She helped me for several hours to put the foster kids' bunk beds together. What looked like a frustrating labor to rig up some cheap-ass bunk beds turned out to be a father-daughter project to rig up some cheap-ass bunk beds. I could tell she was proud that we did it together. Why can't I think to include her more often?

Renewal went very well. Renewal is what we call the meeting every year where we take stock, set goals, pick new leaders, and then have fajitas. We ended up with two couples to join our board who seem to be very dynamic and enthusiastic. Actually, we had a "field of candidates" who were all really good, and we had a hard time deciding who to pick. It's not always been that way. Slim pickins in years past, I'll tell you. It's harder and harder to find people to spend two years in a servant leadership position, what with the decline in volunteerism and all. I'll have to stop and explain Engaged Encounter for you some time. I can equally rant on about stuff I don't like and sing its praises, but it is a "home ministry" to my wife and I so we love it always, somtimes in spite of it's clinging-to-the-1970's ways.

This morning I'm up with Mr. FreshPants. He always wakes up first and wants to eat. Not that I blame him, but I am really missing going to bed with my wife. I go to bed early because I'm the designated "morning guy" and my wife comes to bed around 1:00 a.m. after finally putting the little guy to sleep. This arrangement works really well for alowing maximum sleep. Sleep is good -- any parents of newborns out there can verify that sleep is the social lubricant that keeps all of the parts of the family working together instead of grating on each other. But, ah, I miss going to bed *with* my wife. Not just for obvious reasons (I know what you're thinking.), but because we have some of our best conversations in bed, we take stock of the day and plan for the next. We cuddle -- she gets a back rub, I get my neck scratched, (I love to have my neck scratched. I'm a big sloppy mutt at heart, I guess) and I miss that.

Well, Mr. FreshPants will not always sleep from 1-4 a.m., so I guess it's just temporary. But it doesn't feel like it. I mean, when you dream about going to bed and sleeping, you know you're running a serious beddy-bye deficit. Mr. FreshPants is our foster child. I can't tell you much about him because of privacy concerns, but let's just say that he's a long term guest in our home until mommy takes care of some things. We love the little guy. We have an eight year old daughter we sometimes call GirlZilla. She's a blast in a lot of ways. I don't always mean "blast" to mean "fun", though she is fun a lot of the time. Sometimes "blast" means "intense". Like a little blonde tornado with superior verbal skills. You'll hear plenty more about the chilluns later.

I'm not going into work today. I'm going to work on the HTML for Signs and Wonders, I'm going to scan for the Enron project, and I'm going to church. Then I might go to a co-worker's Super Bowl Party. For the first time in years, I actually want to see the game more than I want to see the commercials. Hope y'all enjoy it.

Okay, so it's a slow start. I'm pacing myself. Actually, I'm targeting this to be up and running for the start of Lent. (Yep, I'm Catholic. More later...)

I want to update more often, but you wouldn't believe my schedule around here. In fact I gotta go to an Engaged Encounter meeting called Renewal right now. I'll be back....

Hello out there. I figure I'm just talking to myself right now, but that's okay. Right now I just need a place to put this voice. I call this journal OverFlow cause these are mainly those thoughts that slosh out of my brain because it's overfull and I can't hold them in. So here it is -- OverFlow.

I don't figure this to be some really detailed personal tell-all, tho I do intend to be quite frank. I am a relationship-centered person, so most of my personal details belong to others as well. I gotta respect that, so I will not satisfy your internal voyeur. I do hope to give you (me?) a sense of the real me and be genuine and stuff, but you won't read here what my wife said in bed last night. 'Nuff said.