• Arrive in Portland for a fun weekend getaway (up!)
• Oldest daughter immediately gets sick with a stomach virus (down!)
• Daughter recovers so we visit old friends, eat out, and see the sights (up!)
• Return to Seattle and get stuck in mammoth traffic jams (down!)
• A new work week begins (up?)
• Youngest daughter gets sick with a stomach virus at school, vomits twice at home (down!)
• Daughter still sick the next day but wife volunteers to stay home with her. Daughter recovers (up!)
• I get sick with a stomach virus (down!) but I don’t throw up (up!)
• It snows in Seattle over the weekend (way up!)
• But then it melts and a record-breaking rain storm overwhelms our downspout drain and floods Western Washington (way down!)
• Roto-Rooter clears our downspout drain (up!) but can’t do anything about the regional flooding (down!)
• Wife has birthday and we all go out for dinner and cupcakes (up!)
• Later that night oldest daughter vomits entire stomach contents in bed (down!)
• I’m cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night (way down!)
• The next morning she is fine and goes to school (up!)
• Today, youngest daughter gets knocked down in the school yard, hits head on asphalt, school calls to come pick her up (down!)
• The sky does not fall (up!)

So what next?

JULIA is five and walking alongside her dad, CARRICK. They are holding hands.

JULIA
If I invented something would I write a letter to someone about it?

CARRICK
(amused)
What do you mean?

JULIA
Write a letter about my invention, like what it does and what it looks like. With pictures.

CARRICK
(hesitantly)
I think that would be called a patent application…
Have you invented something?

JULIA
Umm… maybe.

CUT to CLOSE UP of CARRICK’S smirking face which he puts on to disguise the horror he feels within that his young daughter is thinking like an IBM engineer, or worse, a patent attorney.

DISSOLVE

–Lily, 7 years old

I am, as usual, speechless.

Also, I had no idea there were so many people searching for information about The Lucas Collection from Pottery Barn. Really, people, did you think to try potterybarn.com?

My six-year-old has been elected by popular vote to the student council.

Fellow citizens, hold fast your children, gather your animals under cover, and lock the doors. This may only be the beginning.

(However, there is some hope that the situation may not be all bad. When questioned as to her motives for running, she stated flatly, “Because you get a special lunch in the commons once a month.”)

At Dulles International Airport near Washington, one traveler reported that screeners were also making passengers remove all food items from their carry-ons for inspection, and one passenger was told to peel her banana. - The New York Times

TSA Screener: Next in line.

Passenger: Hi there, officer.

Screener: Sir, I’m not an officer and please refrain from chit-chat. (Reaches in passenger’s bag and finds something frozen solid.) Sir, what’s this?

Passenger: Well, I heard about the new restrictions against bringing liquids on board, so I froze my liquids before coming here. Now they’re solids! Swell, eh?

Screener: Sir, I don’t think we can let you on board with these, er, frozen liquids. We’re specifically not allowing liquids on board.

Passenger: But they aren’t liquids. They are solids. As solid as a rock! Get it?

Screener: Sir, don’t try to be funny. This is a matter of National Security. It’s possible these frozen liquids could contain dangerous substances.

Passenger: You mean like nitroglycerin?

Screener: Yes.

Passenger: What’s the freezing point of nitroglycerin?

Screener: Excuse me? I don’t know.

Passenger: It’s actually higher than water unless mixed with something like ethylene glycol dinitrate, about 45 °F. Pretty cool, huh?

Screener: Sir, how do you know so much about nitroglycerin?

Passenger: Read about it on the Internet last night as I was freezing my… er, packing my solids.

Screener: I see, well, I’m afraid I’m going to have to confiscate your solids. (Grabs the frozen items and dumps them in huge bin full of confiscated bottles of water, hair gels, and lip balms.)

Passenger: But isn’t it kinda risky to be mixing all those potentiallly dangerous liquids together like that, right here?

Screener: Sir, I’m just following orders.

Passenger: One last thing, is it okay for me to bring my knitting needles on board?

Screener: Sure thing, buddy. Now please move on. There are lots of passengers waiting behind you.

Me: Yeah, that’ll never work. eProject file uploads usually fail on files greater than 30MB. Try the new file transfer appliance and let me know if you have any questions.

Him: Thanks, but he wanted to get this file to the client yesterday so we decided to make a CD and Fed/X it to him.

Me: Wow, FedEx can deliver it yesterday? That’s fast!

Him: Yeah, they are fast.

I’ve learned it’s not about the gold. It’s about the spirit of the Olympics. I have no regrets. I tried my hardest and if I don’t win the gold, it’s O.K. I’ll be happy.
–Michelle Kwan, on her withdrawl from the 2006 Olympic Games, quoted in the Times.

Seems like every couple of months someone says to me, “So Bob, when are you going to retire?” No one can believe I’m still in the game. Those young’uns see me and just shake their heads. Kids got no respect anymore.

But I still got it. The checkout girls don’t call me “The Bobster” for nothing. Early in my career I held four world speed records. No one could stock toilet paper faster than I could. It was me who invented the “Four Corner Fakey.” That’s where you make a pyramid of canned goods, toilet paper, or whatever by building it from back to front, for speed. Boy, no one could match my speed with that move and it took some guys years to figure out how I did it. The “Fakey” got me promoted to Assistant Manager, the youngest at the store, ever.

I always took the job seriously, not like these newbies. I’d clock in and boom! I was in the zone. Single-minded and focused, you know? I could see it all ahead of time, which items to stock first, how many trips to the aisle it would take, the paths, patterns, and traffic conditions. And I had the moves, too. If you don’t have what it takes to compete at the highest level you’ll find yourself slowed down and driven off-course by some housewife with a cart full of rug rats. (Never had time for a wife myself. Too focused on my career, naturally.) I’ve seen a lot of wet-behind-the-ears clerks take some pretty nasty spills because they lost focus or didn’t have the touch. Some of them never recovered from the humiliation. Sad.

But all work and no play makes Bob a dull boy, right? So, yeah, I guess some of the stories you probably heard about me are true, like the time I partied with the gals at Applebee’s after closing, then got up the next morning for a six o’clock shift only to break the diaper stocking world record by .69 seconds! And my record still stands after 27 years! People think stocking diapers isn’t that hard but let me tell you it is. Those diaper packs are heavy, bulky, and slippery. And they fall off the shelves when you don’t stack them together just right. There’s a lot of running, too, because they take up a lot of shelf space. I consider it the main event. Nothing compares to the feeling you get after a good diaper run. You feel like that kid standing on the rail of the Titanic in that movie, what’s it called?

Anyway, there’s been talk about me retiring for years. Heck, last week Bob Costas showed up at the store and asked if he could do a “retrospective” of my career for NBC television. I told him I wasn’t interested. I wasn’t ready to pull a “Michelle Kwan” and just kick back, rake in the big bucks from my product endorsements. That’s not my style. I’ve got too much ambition. I won’t be content to rest on my five Employee of the Month awards. Someday I’m going to make Store Manager.

That’s right, I’m going for the gold.