Well before Avery was born, I swore to myself that I wasn't going to be one of those parents who overestimate their children's achievements. You know the type -- they tell you how little Johnny is such a great singer and then they lock you in a room while he wails Tom Petty's "Freefalling" into a microphone at the top of his tone-deaf lungs.

Pre-fatherhood, I didn't feel like I had to make a big deal out of the little things a child did. It was all a part of growing up and learning, after all, and greater feats would deserve greater praise, just like with an adult. But as a parent, I'm starting to learn that even my daughter's littlest accomplishments are worth lauding, be it holding her head up, wobbling on all fours, or talking.

Logically, I know that babies say things that sound like words before they know what they mean. It's repetition, it's practicing making the syllable sounds they hear us saying in conversation. But it's not talking.

Still, it becomes impossible to deny that Avery has been saying "Dada" for three days when she looks straight into my eyes and grabs my finger while she says it.

Needless to say, now every syllable out of Sed's mouth is "ma."

When I missed posting on November 2 by eleven minutes, I figured that as long as I put something up it would still count. When I missed Sunday by three, I didn't feel guilty about backdating my post so it still showed up on time.

But missing yesterday by nearly ten hours decidedly puts me out of the running for any of those fabulous NaNoWriMo prizes.

This sounds like as good a time as any for a hiatus. I feel like I'm struggling to write for a nonexistent, uninterested audience, and taking a few days off might help recharge things on both sides.

Besides ... blog posts? Where we're going we don't need ... blog posts.

Even on a Sunday evening in November, everyone and their mom's dog is at the Magic Kingdom. We decided to take Avery for another jaunt, seeing as she was griping about not getting to ride Space Mountain. It only goes upside-down three times; that's fine for a seven-month-old, right?

Of course I'm kidding. Space Mountain doesn't go upside-down. Everyone knows that.

When you've got a young child with you, though, you really begin to appreciate the resident pass. If we had to pay $71 plus tax every time we wanted to go to The Happiest Place In Bob Iger's Wallet (and trust me, that's a lot), we'd be pretty loath to leave when the kid started grumping it up. As it stood, we almost turned around and left as soon as we got there, and we wouldn't have had to feel bad about it. (Turned out all she needed was a milkshake.)

They say you can't spoil a baby, but I have a bad feeling about taking her to Disney World so many times as an infant. She'll have to learn that once we move home, it's not a trip we take just because it's Sunday. Earlier, the following dialogue took place inside my head:

"Mama, can we go to the Magic Kingdom?"
"No, honey, it's too far."
"But you have the day off!"
"This is true, but I still have to say no."
"We used to go all the time when you had the day off!"
"Sure, punkin, but that was when we lived closer than 2000 miles."

It'll be OK. After all, Albuquerque has its own amusement park. Who needs Big Walt when you've got Uncle Cliff?

I've read a lot of books, surfed a lot of blogs, and sought a lot of advice in general about parenting. But they've all basically boiled down to "you'll learn it by doing it."

Today we learned not to give Avery the ads while Dad's reading the paper.



I know newsprint is treated with crazy chemicals and easily dissolves, so I never give her those. But the glossies have heretofore seemed harmless. She likes to rip them up, she likes the crinkly sound they make, and sure, she likes to chew on them.

I didn't realize she was eating them until about fifteen minutes ago. I glanced up from my comics to see a Calphalon cookware set, 249.99, protruding from her lips. Maybe it was a one-time thing, that I reacted a mite too slowly this time to prevent the page from going down the pipe. All I know is that when I retrieved this strip -- which as it turns out was several inches long -- it was like pulling the cord attached to the bathtub stopper, only in horrible, horrible reverse.

Suddenly, the child's mouth was a vertiable volcano, erupting just-ingested sweet potatoes and bananas, pouring pahoehoe across her blanket, her support pillow, and herself. The blast came in three waves, reserving the last and greatest for when Dad had picked her up to soothe the impending eruption of dismay. It never came; Avery surveyed the swath of destruction with an impartial eye, as though saying, "Huh, look what I made."

We've been lucky, really; this is the first serious puke from the punkinhead, and the first time it's happened with solids. I know it won't be the last, and it's actually a little comforting to have broken that seal, so I'm not totally unprepared when she's six and chucking macaroni and cheese over the side rail of the Jungle Cruise. But hopefully now I'll have a little more parenting savvy when it comes to not actually causing the nausea.

Since I can't seem to write anything of interest to anybody this week, here's a video of me flinging Avery through the air with complete disregard for her safety.

I'll be honest -- the TV has been on more during the day than I'd like to admit. But when you've spent ten minutes in front of an open blog window trying to come up with a post topic, it can be helpful in just churning something out.

Since Consumermas is just around the corner, we're getting a lot more commercials for toys during mainstream adult programming. I try to let it go, but more often than not something catches my ear. Like the ad for the Thomas the Tank Engine Wheels and Whistles Sofa (which apparently has its own blog).

It's not often in the modern age of advertising that you'll see a commerical with a jingle that actually tells you how to play with the toy. But here it is, a commercial about a glorified toy box that you can climb in with your friends, make its wheels move and whistle blow by pressing a button, and drag your other toys around the house.

The best part is at the end, when the singers instruct on how to put it away:


Of course, I usually can't resist mentally altering that last line to "And your friends will all go, 'Holy shit!'"

I love all the spinoffs that NaNoWriMo has wrought. If it weren't for this bad boy, of course, I wouldn't be posting every day this month (despite missing the second by 11 minutes, and I'm still upset about that). But there's also apparently a NoBloShoeMo, where you post a picture and a story about a different pair of your shoes every day.

Well, I couldn't do that. I'm a dude. I'd be twiddling my thumbs for 24 days. Here's all I got.



My everyday shoes. NSS, Sports Authority, $19. I tend to gravitate toward skate shoes for my normal bummin'-around day-to-day wear shoes, because they don't chafe, they don't slip and they're pretty cushy inside. If that makes me a poser, then so be it.



These cheap-ass Target slides ($11) probably see the most action these days. A lot of days I don't have time to sit down and tie shoes (or even, indeed, shower) before Avery is demanding her daily walk or Kucha her thrice-daily ball game. So I step into these and get on the ball. It's time to replace them, but I can't find any sandals without that stupid little thong by the big toe right now.



I once had to wear these every day. These are the most expensive of all my shoes, at a whopping $30 at Burlington Coat Factory, and also the most uncomfortable. What's the message? I almost left them in the garbage can at my office on the last day of work, but then I wouldn't have any dress shoes for the periodic special occasion that demands them.



Back in high school, I wore basketball shoes as a matter of course. Now I only wear them to play basketball, which (sadly) hasn't happened in nearly a year. Eventually I'll get back to a time and place where I can join a pick-up game or even start shooting around in the driveway again. Clearance rack, Big 5 sports, $24.



The Big 5 clearance rack is my friend. Eighteen bucks for these puppies. I planned to get up off my ass and go hiking in the Sandias more often. That fell through -- we basically kept on going once a month, and here there are no mountains -- but I'm glad I have 'em because they make the dogs' extended walk a lot more stable. These are also the only brown shoes I own (not counting the slides), but only because they apparently don't make hiking boots in black.



There was a point in the '90s when everyone was wearing sport sandals. So I fell for it and got a pair ($22 at Oshman's), wore them just about every day in the summer of 1997, and promptly shelved them when my teen angst finally kicked in at age 20 and they were deemed inappropriate for mourning. Now I only wear them to the beach.

And that's it. Like I said, I'm a dude. Avery almost has as many pairs of shoes as I do, and she's been around for 1/60th as long. Chicks and their shoes, dude. Still, Sed might pull up short in this thing -- her shoes monopolize an entire corner of our closet, but I don't know if she has 30 pairs.

However, next year I'm all over NovemBeard.

After telling myself I'd do it for eight months, I'm finally half done babyproofing the house. Well, technically, it's more like one-third done ... I still have to install the cabinet latches and bookcase cleats, and then I have to go around and figure out if there's anything on a low shelf that Avery could get stuck in her throat. So maybe it's more like one-quarter done. Hey, shut up, it's more than you've done.

I did get the fridge door lock and the toilet lid locks in place. The former wasn't a big deal, but it's good to keep her from getting stuck inside. I was more concerned about keeping her from fishing for brown-backed corn trout, if you get my drift. In fact, the toilet latches were the first thing I installed.

I hope I haven't made a mistake. After all, in the middle of the night I'm going to have to wrestle with this thing, right? What if, in my walking-dead state, I can't figure it out and end up peeing in the sink? I mean after my wife kills me.

But then again, if I can't get into the fridge either, I guess I'd have no real reason to get the toilet open.

Since the baby came along, I guess I don't pet Kucha as much as I used to. At least that's what the evidence would suggest.

left: coffee cup; right: EXTREME DANDER BALL OF DEATH
While Avery was having fun in her exer-saucer this afternoon, the big dog came over for some snuggles, so I took the opportunity to give her a full-on rubdown. And this was my party favor, I suppose; my thanks for the first full-body massage Kucha's gotten in at least a few weeks. In the interest of full disclosure, she's still losing her summer coat, but jeez, I've seen entire dogs smaller than this. And this was just from one side of the dog.

You almost hate to throw something like this away. It's the kind of thing that demands a shrine, a testament to what one canine can produce when she puts her mind to it. Visitors should come from miles around to sing Kucha's praises and leave flowers and wishes that the Extreme Dander Ball of Death might, in its benevolence and generosity, grant to future generations.

Actually, that sounds like a lot of work. Excuse me while I go get the vacuum.

We all cheered when Lourdess went into remission from her leukemia last year. Cancer isn't fun, least of all for a kid, but she kept smiling the whole time, and it paid off because she beat it. Her father (a staunch born-again Christian) was, of course, quick to credit God for seeing fit to deliver his little girl from the disease.

I don't know about God, but someone has a perverted sense of humor, because she recently relapsed.

None of us can quite believe it. (That's why I haven't written about it before now -- denial, hoping that if I don't acknowledge it that it will go away.) Last time she was sick -- coughing, wan, tired. She was running around happily the day she was re-diagnosed. It doesn't seem real, but she's already finished her first week of chemotherapy. And if she wasn't sick before, she sure is now.

It's times like this when you're tempted to question the faith of the believers. If there is a God, and if he actually cares what his little human minions do running around on Earth, then why would he inflict such a terrible disease on a good little girl who does whatever her father tells her, worships in his house without fail and never misbehaves? But using such a horrible situation as a religious attack is dirty. We're all in the same boat, after all, and we don't need to be clobbering each other over the head with the oars.

Now I'm learning a relapse is even more desparate than the initial diagnosis. The first time, she had a 50% chance of beating it. But now -- if she goes back into remission after the first round of chemo, and if they can find a suitable bone marrow donor for a half-Anglo half-Filipino girl with what's apparently a rather rare blood type, then she has a one in three chance of survival.

Pretty shitty odds for someone who hasn't seen her tenth birthday yet.

Please keep Lourdess in your thoughts again. And if you know anyone who might be able to fill that role of donor, let me know -- I'm working with the family on harvesting potential donors that we could fly to Vancouver if they type appropriately. Watch this space for more information about that.

God or Lourdess or whoever is actually in charge of it willing, she'll make it through this time too.

On our afternoon walk, Avery and I encounter an ice-cream truck. The driver waves to us as she tools down the street, jingling music blaring from tinny loudspeakers, attempting to entice the neighborhood kids to raid their moms' cookie jars and race after her.

I know, it's November. But we do live in Florida, after all. And it wouldn't have even struck me as idiosyncratic if the truck's music wasn't "Deck the Halls."

Global warming? Maybe. The kid driving his minibike up and down our street for six hours was certainly doing his part.

Ever since I was little, I've been going to college basketball games. It made me a homer from day one. But I can't cheer on the Lobos from here and have them actually hear me (I probably could have when I was in college, but my voice is out of practice). Lucky for me, we live right around the corner from another Division I school -- the University of Central Florida.

Of course, basketball is of minimal importance in Florida, unless you're a damn Gator. We went to several UCF games last year in this dank little gym that couldn't have been much bigger than the one at my high school.¹ The men actually went 22-8 and broke several attendance records last season, all the while still failing to sell out the joint. Meanwhile, the football team was still drawing 35,000 during their 17-loss streak.

This year, the Golden Knights² are playing in a brand new 10,000-seat arena, and tonight the women's team christened it against Texas Tech. And since tickets are still only $5, I figured why not?

Big shock: They're charging for parking! At a women's basketball game! They have never sold more than a thousand tickets in the history of UCF women's hoops, and they're trying to make me pay for parking? When there are like 30,000 parking spots on the campus? Um, no. (I learned later that there was also a soccer game and what looked like a homecoming dance near the event garage. Still.) I parked in the free lot maybe 20 feet behind the garage instead.

The band looked huge in the new joint. Maybe because they have more room to spread out, or maybe because they've taken advantage of the fact that they have more room to add personnel. They played a lot of the classic stand tunes -- Hey Baby, Carry On My Wayward Son -- but had some unusual book selections. Carried over from last year, the apparent signature tune is Yellowcard's "Ocean Avenue." They also played "Lump" and (I wanted to shake the hand of whoever arranged this one, because it was just so bizarre) Alice In Chains' "Man In the Box."

I expected Tech to run away with this one -- they're a perennial tournament team, and the Lobos-Red Raiders³ game is a battle right down the stretch every year, while the Knights have a new coach, nine freshmen, and two returning letter-winners (who played a combined total of one minute, eight seconds, all during garbage time). So I was surprised when UCF was on top at the half, 33-26. Most of the Knights' points came on up-and-under circus shots, because (as was their problem last year) they dribble too friggin' much and find themselves out of position to pass. Their luck ran out in the second half, though. Tech started playing a smarter zone, packing the lane so UCF couldn't get down there and basically forcing them to pass, which I guess they don't practice. So the Knights were throwing the ball away on every other possession, leading to an easy Raiders fast-break lay-up.

Texas Tech's lead was about 18 when one of the referees had a meltdown with 1:31 left. This guy was calling traveling so much I thought he worked for Southwest. The teeniest little contact or dragged pivot foot would set him off; this game probably would have been 15 minutes shorter without him. Here, he just randomly decided to stop the clock in the middle of Tech bringing the ball down so three subs could check in. Then they had to stop play while he walked over to the scorer's table and made them adjust the game and shot clocks, which took forever of course, this being the first game in the arena and all. It went from 00 to 24 (where it was) to 45 back to 00 to 26 (where he wanted it) over the course of about five minutes. Six seconds later, the shot clock was still all tchwecka⁴, so they just turned it off for the remainder of the game.

Final score: Texas Tech 72, UCF 57. But the Knights showed some promise out there. Once they learn to pass, they could be pretty good. (About halfway through the second half, I got to thinking that Joi Williams should penalize any player who dribbles more than ten times on a possession -- one lap for every excessive dribble.) I'd go back.

---

1. Official capacity: 5,108.
2. I'm not being snarky for once; they dropped the "Golden" from their team name this year.
3. Glad someone's not afraid of adjectives.
4. It's a technical term; don't worry if you don't understand.

Avery has decided, in the last couple of weeks, that 4:30 in the morning is a good time to get up and play. You can almost set your watch by it -- just before or not long after Sed leaves for work, the punkinhead will start reaching for my nipple with both hands. She and I both know, through bitter experience, that it doesn't work the way she wants it to work, but it does serve as an effective wake-up switch, especially when she clamps on with her fingernails.

I know, I know, I'm supposed to ignore her wakefulness in the night. I'm supposed to demonstrate that dark-thirty in the morning is for sleeping. I'm supposed to get her on a schedule.

The problem is when the member of the household in control of what is still the preferred meal changes her shift every month (and dare I add gets cranky when she hasn't had enough sleep), how is the baby supposed to get on a schedule? We don't know when Mom's coming home today. It could be now. It could be later. She could be hiding in the coat closet, having gotten home an hour ago but desperately trying to squeeze in more studying for her upcoming board exam before we distract her. At any rate, we'd better stay up. And then when Mom gets up (whether it's four in the morning or five in the evening), it must be time to awaken for the day.

Plus, let's see you stay asleep after a baby has latched onto your poor nipple with her talons and refuses to let go until you pick her up.

I've read the baby books. They say Avery's supposed to be sleeping for fourteen or fifteen hours a day. Well, obviously she hasn't read them. I'd be surprised if she gets twelve. Some days it's less, when she fights her afternoon nap until nearly bedtime and then wakes up three times in the night because now she's overtired and can't sleep. And given that Dad has difficulty falling asleep before 1 am and posesses an uncanny inability to nap, this means all of us are operating on Exhausted Standard Time.

Watch this, though -- next month, when Sed's working a seven-to-four shift, Avery will probably only wake up for meals, playtime with Kucha and "Design On a Dime."

Reloading the music onto the computer is shaping up to be a long and arduous process. I have eleven CDs full of MP3s begged, borrowed, stolen (get outta here, RIAA, it's just a figure of speech) or ripped. And that's before filing them into genres. Although the way I listen to them (and given that iTunes doesn't care about directory structure) it probably doesn't matter anyway.

One of these songs, which I downloaded back when I still thought rap was relevant to my suburban Japanese-economy-car-driving lifestyle, is Warren G's "I Want It All." He was one of my favorites in high school, so this song caught my notice when it came out during my college years. The chorus background riff was awesome enough that the song entered rotation.

Now, perhaps my greatest downfall with popular music is I don't listen to lyrics. I have an ear for rhythm and harmony with a sprinkling of idiosyncratic humor. That's one of the reasons I'll actually listen to Eminem. So when this tune came up one day with Sed in the car, it didn't pass her notice that something was amiss in the chorus.


"One of these things is not like the other," she sang. "One of these things just doesn't belong."

But you know what? Come to think of it, if I cut a contract for a new record, I would throw out my underwear and socks and buy new ones. It makes sense. Damn the man, Warren.

Ordinarily, I don't like gum. I can't seem to chew it without injuring myself. It's not that I'm a particularly uncoordinated person -- I can drive for a lay-up, I can play a sixteenth-note lick, and I can make it to level 28 on Puzzle Bobble. But when I chew gum, my cheeks tend to get in the way, and I have to track down a trash can so as not to pulverize them into hamburger.

The only times I'll chew gum are when I'm playing softball or around Halloween. Both are times when it's OK to blow bubbles, which in my opinion is the only reason to chew gum in the first place. The softball thing showed up out of nowhere, honestly -- I'd never played before, then I joined a team and all of a sudden I had a pack of Hubba Bubba in my bag. My preferred chaw is Dubble Bubble, the old-school one with the wax wrapping. Which is where Halloween comes in -- after the descent of the trick-or-treaters, I mysteriously have a handful of the stuff left over.

This year, I found out Dubble Bubble comes in flavors. I'd only known about the pink cylinder before, but here for your elucidation are the flavors of Dubble Bubble.

Color	Official Flavor	Interpretation of Flavor
Pink	Original	Super Ball
Green	Apple	Nail Polish Remover
Purple	Grape	Wine Bottle Cork
Red	Watermelon	Ass

And yet, guess what I have in my mouth right now. Nostalgia, I guess. But oh, the bubbles, do they pop.

When we moved to Florida, Sed and I were planning to buy a house. Of course, I didn't have a job lined up at the time, so the amount they were willing to lend us was pretty pitiful. It still could have gotten us a place, but we weren't willing to live in the neighborhood affectionately known as "Crime Hills." So we found a rental.

I still wish we'd been able to buy, but when I see how many realtor signs have apparently become permanent installations, it helps make me feel better about not owning. In our neighborhood of about 50 houses, five or six of them are for sale. At least two have been on the market since I started my new job. Then today, Avery and I extended our walk and saw something around fifteen for-sale signs in the neighborhood across the street. There's a place between here and my former office that's had the same sign in front of it for nearly two years.

Like it or not (and believe me, I like it), we're going to have to move away from Florida in a year and a half. If we owned this joint, we'd have to deal with the hassle of realtors, a fickle buyer's market, and the annoyance of not getting our investment back so we could get a better place in New Mexico, and probably have to do it all long-distance. As it stands, we hit the end of our lease, thank our landlord for being so cool, and skedaddle on our merry way.

She might not have such a hard time of disposal, actually -- this neighborhood could go either way. Being so close to a major university, it has a lot of rental houses. In fact, over half the houses on our street are rentals. But given the sheer number of signs out now (and topping that off with the six or seven rental properties on offer), this market might just be saturated. Better to not have to deal with it.

Even so, I'm counting down to the time when I don't have to take care of someone else's house anymore. It'll sure be nice to make improvements to a place and actually see the return on investment for myself.

A lot of people hate Daylight Savings, and I'll admit I'm no fan of "springing ahead" and losing a whole hour of sleep. I'll also admit that "falling back" is a lot easier whether you prefer AM or PM -- if you're a morning person, you can have an extra cup of coffee and read the paper; if you're a night owl, you haven't squandered your entire morning.

But I still would rather be on Daylight Savings than standard time.

Seriously, who needs light at six in the morning? Some of us are still sleeping (or at least trying to, if a child is wriggling in the bed next to us looking for a nipple). It's far worse to get to work when it's still dark than to leave work when it's already dark. Now that's a waste of a day. (Obviously, I have less to complain about now that my office is the living room carpet, but I'd still rather have some daylight to play with the member of this household who does have to go to a workplace.)

I suppose it could be worse. I could be back in Japan. Seriously, the whole country is about a time zone off. The sun started to set at 4:15 in the winter. It was completely gone by the time I left work at 6. And if anyone ever needed daylight savings, it was Japan. One morning near the start of my stay when I had trouble sleeping (hey, you try flying to the other side of the globe and instantly change your internal clock) I went for a walk at about 2:30 am. By the time I'd gotten back to my dorm at 4, the sun was coming up. Yes -- four in the damn morning. But I suppose it doesn't matter too much, since Japanese people only go outside for about a week in the spring for the perfunctory cherry-blossom viewing. The rest of the time is spent in karaoke clubs and video arcades. (Not that I spent all my free time in karaoke clubs and video arcades. I was, uh, doing, uh, hey what's that over there?)

And now it's time to end this lame post. Get it? Time? Har! I kill me.

I must say, it is good to be back in the civilized world of modern technology again.

My brother, the king of kings, the god among men, FedExed the new hard drive to us overnight. My dogs actually woke me up barking at the delivery guy Thursday morning. By 11 that night, I had a working (though barren) system once more.

On the bright side, I had ol' lappy to light my way through the dark times. But sometimes you had to squint to see, because the bright side could get awfully dim. There's a reason I didn't keep up with this blog, for example. Thirty-two reasons, actually. That's how many megabytes of RAM Minako (for that is its name) has. Yes. Megabytes. For those of you keeping score at home, that's 1/32 as much as the desktop (Usagi, if you care, and yes, it's after Sailor Moon; now shut up). Minako had a hard enough time connecting to an SQL-driven bulletin board six years ago; you can imagine its pain attempting to slog through the Flash and AJAX of today.

Actually, you don't have to imagine. Here's what it looked like as I wrote this post.



Thanks for the memories, old girl. But I have to move on to the new blood. We had some good times.

I just lost at NaBloPoMo.

In my defense, my Friday did not turn out the way I expected. It was supposed to be an easy day full of relaxing uh ... relaxation with my wife and daughter; short Avery's doctor's appointment, we were going to go out and have fun and be a family.

(Oh, quick warning: This post could devolve from my usual style into LiveJournal-esque whining. But what the hell, maybe someone will actually read it and care.)

When did it go south? Seven in the damn morning. That's when the phone rang and Sed informed me that she had to cover a 24-hour call for one of her co-workers. So instead of getting out of work at noon, she'd be there until nine the following morning. As you can imagine, losing one-third of our party (who just happens to be the food supply for another third) put a crimp in our day's plans.

If you aren't keeping count, Sed did three days of call last weekend covering for the fact that two-thirds of her class was in Puerto Rico. Including yesterday (and the nine hours she's covering tomorrow!) she's been on four weekends in a row. She's done more call than anybody else this year so far. So why Sed? Because of six classmates, three were still out of town, one is at hourly capacity working the night shift, and the remaining not-my-wife doctor decided to be a total tool.

"I'd switch with you," she told Sed, meaning that Sed could work today rather than Friday and Sunday, "but my husband's birthday was Tuesday, and we're celebrating it today. And I'd cover you this afternoon so you could go to your daughter's appointment, but I have to go pick up the catering trays and the cake and stuff."

Thanks, tool! Message loud and clear: Your cake is more important than my daughter.

So I took Avery to her appointment by myself. I dealt with the aftermath of what are purportedly the worst vaccinations in a child's life. I attempted to soothe her through the ensuing fever and general pain by myself, without any lactating breasts. I forgot to ask the questions Sed wanted to ask. I spent an hour running around downtown looking for milk storage bags that don't exist, since Sed had only brought enough bottles to pump one time assuming she'd be at work for six hours. And now my plans for today are shot, because I have to be here for Avery while Sed gets her first sleep since Thursday night. All because some jackhole couldn't possibly celebrate a thirty-five-year-old's birthday if it's not the weekend.

Not that I am bitter.

At least I have my computer back. I can justify ranting when it doesn't take an hour to type the thing.

1. Just write about it. No matter how asinine, no matter how much of an inside joke, open up your blog client and punch it in there. An infinite number of monkeys updating an infinite number of blogs for 30 days will eventually write something profound.

2. Keep a list of post topic ideas. Whenever you think of something that would make a good blog post, write it down so you don't forget later. I keep a list of ptoential topics on a white board next to my desk. If you're having a hard time thinking of ideas, go pick up a copy of No One Cares What You Had For Lunch or another similar collection of writing prompts.

3. Come up with a theme. It's easier to think of something new when you're confining yourself to a set genre. This is where I'd link to examples if my laptop was not the slowest thing in the entire state (and I am counting all the retirees driving around Florida in this statement).

4. Moblog. Rather than confining yourself to the computer, write what you're thinking as you're thinking it from wherever you are. A lot of services support e-mailed, text-messaged or even voice blog posts.

5. Read. The best writers are usually the most voracious readers. The more you take in, the more you can spew out.

6. Specifically, read Catch-22. Matthew Baldwin over at Defective Yeti has declared it his official NaNoReMo 2007 selection. Keep up with him and link back to his inevitably hilarious commentary. (As an added bonus, Catch-22 is a modern classic, and I've not yet read it.)

7. Watch TV. Whether you like the boob tube or not, eventually something will piss you off so much that you can't help but furiously type a screed for all to see.

8. Take pictures. There's nothing in the NaBloPoMo rules that says your posts have to contain words. It just says you have to update daily. Besides, a picture is technically worth a thousand words.

9. Go outside. Not everything worth posting about happens in the home or the workplace. See a game, see a concert, just see stuff.

10. Make some new friends. In general, no one cares about third-party friends, but if you participate in different activities with them you'll have blog fodder.

11. Keep up on the competition. Lots of people are participating, so there'll be lots of posts flying around the verges of the blogosphere and lots of ideas ripe for the harvesting. Start with the official NaBloPoMo Randomizer, and sooner or later you'll have a topic. Plus who knows -- you might even fulfill the previous suggestion.

12. Take a class. No one is so thoroughly knowledgeable that they could not stand to learn something new. Not even teenagers. Study something you've always wanted to know, and share with others who might also like to learn.

13. Make something else. When you're stunted at the keyboard, exercise your creativity in the kitchen, the garage, the garden, or that blank wall you've always wanted to do something about. And then write about it.

14. Clean out your closets. Figuratively or literally, everybody's got crap piled up that's just bogging them down. Clear it out. Get rid of that useless anger toward your spouse or that manual to your first cell phone. (Lose the phone itself, too, by the way. Your enormous Motorola flip phone didn't impress anyone then, and it's not scoring you any points now either.)

15. Make shit up. You've totally had an imaginary conversation with the hottie in line ahead of you at the supermarket or the jackhole riding your bumper in traffic. Put it in your blog. Or even invent a totally imaginary scene -- let the hottie and the jackhole duke it out, for instance.

16. Hilariously overestimate your capacity for inventing new ideas about posting blog entries.

17. ...

18. ... um ...

19. ...

29. Quit and save your sanity. You could post every day for thirty days, but is it worth the toll it'll take on your mental state? Go outside and play instead.

30. Make asinine "list" posts. Even if you're swamped for ideas, they take no effort to write, less to read, and when you get to the end you (NOTE: come up with good kicker phrase later)