Why my home will never look like the Pottery Barn catalog

In addition to Christian's curiosity, here are a few more reasons.

- PB's exorbitant additional shipping charges
- Daniel
- Michael and Joseph's abundance of shoes, and unnecessary school papers
- My shoes (size 13)
- Junk Mail (note that PB catalog does not have a junk mail organizer, nor do you see any junk mail in the scrolled iron bins and other fancy containers. Curse you ValPak!)

But I do recommend Craigslist.org (newyork.craigslist.org to be specific). Lots of cool stuff there. Even from PB.

This post, regarding our forthcoming fifth child, will only be read by Josh Stanley

There. Happy now, Josh?

Juliane invented a cool way to tell our kids about #5. She said she was making them a "very special lunch." She then proceeded to serve them baby food, and waited until they figured it out.

It took a while.

Home Depot should hire the actors in their TV commercials to work in the store.

A friend of mine recently went into Home Depot, and upon becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack of competent service, screamed out, "For crying out loud, your tagline is "You can do it. We can help!!"

Amen.

I wonder if they rotate groups of Home Depot employees who are told that items are located on different aisles, just to mess with you...or make you spend more time in the store in search of a toilet tank handle, hoping you'll buy duct tape and an extension cord.

I think they ought to replace names on the name tags with phrases like "I dunno" or "over there" or "we carry every single part except the part you're looking for"

I think instead of employee training, they should just make new hires (and current ones) watch their commercials over and over until it begins to sink in. "Oh, I'm supposed to actually be like that?"

They do have self-service checkout. Nice idea, but there's always a glitch, and some physical person has to come and fix it. And scan your items for you. And help you pay. So, it's like regular service, except you bag the items yourself.

I'd also like to know who's the cross-eyed guy in charge of stocking the shelves. Trying to find Items and corresponding price tags is like playing Concentration.

But I like the music.

Spammers are like terrorists...

At least in the buzzkill area.

So, if you look at my last post, Afroflyjetcito, you'll see a cute kid in his high chair. Upon posting that blog entry, I immediately received two comments. I was a bit excited, like, "Wow, people are just WAITING for me to post such interesting content. That's great!"

So, the first comment went like this:

"Hey, you have a great blog here! I'm definitely going to bookmark you! I have a atlanta adult services [name of incredibly innapproriate site/blog]. It pretty much covers atlanta adult services related stuff.Come and check it out if you get time :-)"

Apparently, someone took a look at my entry and said, "Hey, here's a guy with a cute kid. He must like porn. I'll send him a cool link." Talk about shoddy target marketing. Then again, I don't think a lot of porn guys actually went to business school, so you can't really blame them.

Then, I got another one from a self-proclaimed Hurricane Katrina prayer/healing minister. He must have thought, "Hey, here's a guy with a cute kid wearing a ski cap that's too big for him. I wonder if he's a refugee. I'll send him a link."

Now, I can understand that point of view a little better than the porn thing. But still...

So, now I've had to resort to a word verification step in order to have people post comments and avoid automatic spamming. It's a slight extra step, but I think your comment is worthy enough to go through the trouble.

Afroflyjetcito...

I may be biased, but this kid is pretty good-looking, and he's got street cred, to boot.

Terrorists are such buzzkills

A few weeks ago, I went on a bike ride with my brother-in-law, who had just purchased a shiny, new road bike. Shiny red, in fact. We started out at 104th and Broadway, then made our way north to 178th, then headed across the George Washington Bridge. Talk about a great view—Manhattan on one side, Palisade cliffs on the other. I thought, "Hey, this would be a great picture."

Then I saw a sign forbidding cameras on the bridge. Oh, come on!!

Patriot act, Schmatriot act, you can look at my library records all day long (I haven't checked anything out in years, but still...) or tap my phone or put a magnetic reader under the skin of my forearm, but let me take a silly picture!

Gracias, Mr. Terrorist, you ruined my Kodak moment.

Jumping off stuff...

My wife and I took our older two boys hiking last week in the Adirondacks. We did a four-mile stretch into a great campsite called Kelly's Point, on the shore of Long Lake, and spent the next day and a half jumping off a 12-foot rock into the water.

I always judge the relative value of a hiking trail by how much you can jump off stuff, whether it's a rock, a bridge, rope swing, moose...

We saw an eagle swooping around the lake in search of prey. We also saw about 8-9 13th graders in the campsite next to us who drank beer, shot off bottle rockets and talked about the High School Football glory days that never really were...quite sad, truthfully.

This was Joseph's first hike and he did splendidly. No tears, but quite a few frogs. We ate like kings, and laid out on a big rock and gazed at the stars. I did see one of the brightest shooting stars ever, like a firework.

Ah, camping...

Don't mind the smell, it's just my thighs burning...

I have a gym membership. At least, I'll have a gym membership until the middle of next month. I requested a cancellation, but you have to give 30 days written notice in order to cancel. I guess their thinking is that you'll reconsider during the 30 days and change your mind, figuring that if you have a gym membership, even if you don't go, you'll feel better about your health and well-being.

So, I bought a road bike recently, a Trek 1000, a step down from the Nimbus 2000, but a good bike nonetheless. I'm amazed at how much faster it rides than my old mountain bike. And I find it much easier to exercise with the wind blowing in my face as I dodge cars, pedestrians—and death—minute after minute.

So I've been going on small rides here and there: 6 miles, 7 miles, etc. Feeling good. Having fun. Even did 23 miles one morning.

Then my buddy Jason, who's a big road biker (referring to his enthusiasm, not bulk, although he has nice calves), he invites me to ride one morning, and proceeds to torture me for over 2 hours as we head up to Armonk, through Greenwich, and back down to Mamaroneck. 32 miles of thigh burning country roads. It was a good hurt, though.

We got to ride down some killer downhill sections, even hitting 40 m.p.h. a couple of times. Then, an 18-degree uphill that just about did me in. As I pulled into my garage, I was feeling really good about myself. Until I hopped off the bike and tried to walk upstairs with extreme Jello-legs.

Can't wait to go again.

La Ciudad de Nuestra Senora, la Reina de los Angeles.

Bit o' trivia. The name of this posting is the original name for L.A., and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest name for a city. The translation: The City of Our Lady, the Queen of the Angels.

No wonder L.A.'s so pretentious.

After spending a few weeks there on business, I liken L.A. to Diet Coke. The first taste makes you think, "Why would I ever drink something like this." But then, over time, you see other people drinking it, you get used to it, your taste buds start looking for acceptance, and before you know it, you've metaphorically drunken the Kool-Aid and now you're an advocate who can't be seen in public wihout a shiny silver can in hand.

I'm not so good at analogies.

We stayed in some pretty posh places, including Shutters on the Beach in Santa Monica and the Sunset Marquis up in Hollywood. Saw some celebrities, including Nicholas Cage, Noah Wyle, Billy Zane, Justine Bateman (remember Mallory from Family Ties?), Audra MacDonald (she's on Broadway, kinda embarrassed to admit knowing who she was).

We also saw a lot of people who thought they were celebrities. That was entertaining. And I must say, if I ever become homeless, I'm moving to Santa Monica. Sleep on the beach, people watch all day long...those guys know how to live.