Didn’t make it to the farmers market today.

Rough week, rough night, and we needed more rest.  Bought fruit at the grocery store, and I had to spit out and throw away a nectarine that tasted like what I imagine the inside of a [cave] tastes like: mooshy and bland.

My punishment.

Lovely to not be dangerously hot outside.

Which meant, today, that Charlotte and I could have breakfast with Grandma and Aunt Sheree and that we get to take a walk later to see Aunt Frannie (Frances, same as Charlotte’s middle name) and Aunt Patti.  We we get to see Uncle Joey later, too, and Uncle Tom and Aunt Heather and Auntie Wu and Grandpa this weekend.

I’ve never liked hot weather.  But 100+ degree heat indices (and even temperatures!) are dangerous for a baby and have kept us indoors a hell of a lot this summer.  It’s even very hot when we do to the farmers market on Saturday mornings very early.

There’s escape this weekend in the form of temperatures in the mid-upper 8os, less humidity and, well, the sheer desire to go the hell outside!

Third trip to the repair shop.

So.  Got my camera back yesterday.  I think  for$400 a point-and-shoot that’s not waterproof ought not to have to be repaired after two months.  Certainly not again a few weeks later.  And definitely that they should actually fix it this time.  And then, after the third trip in, one’s camera really, oh, really should not come back with a cluster of dead pixels, a vertical  line in the images and moisture in the lens!  No, indeed.

I demanded my money back, and I hope I get it.  I’m buying something else.

Had good coffee.

I love being a father; I really do.  But I also love getting a coffee and shooting the shit with my pal.  Tonight I got to do both.  Even though it was hot, we enjoyed nice coffee standing around a NO LOITERING sign.  It was fantastic.  Charlotte had a short walk with Mama and got to hang out, since Mama worked very late last night.

I’ve had a rough couple of weeks at work (etc.), and I thought aloud tonight to the Mrs. that I would love a cigarette tonight but that I wouldn’t smoke one.  I did smoke in the past.  Not that far past.  The last time I smoked was June 2009 at a party, and I don’t, uh, remember smoking it very well.  So, to indulge my desire to smoke, I ask if I can light my pal’s cigarette (my brother seldom lets me, you punk!).  It’s fun.

I got a thousand bug bites on my feet and ankles.

And, in the weird light tonight, I noticed that I’m more tan than I’ve been since, well, my early teens.  At my age, that’s probably not the brightest idea.  But, well, whatever.

I am officially between pairs of glasses.  My ultra bullet-proof lenses cracked, from going in and out of the heat and AC this summer, I think.  Turns out that our improved health insurance means my glasses, whatever I want, are $25 (+$50 if I want Transition, and I do).  Awesome.  Only I don’t have time to go to the eye doctor this week or next or last week.  So I’m squinting a lot.

I’m officially finished my AmeriCorps time in two weeks.  My office becomes a library after tomorrow.  I think I might be off-campus the week after, my last week.  Bizarre.  I didn’t accomplish much this year, after a great year last year.  I think I might actually take my Dell Mini outside of my apartment, after owning it for almost six months.  That might be exciting.

I have been drinking more coffee than usual, being online less than usual and reading more than usual lately, though.  That is excellent.

I am in my underwear on my couch now, since Charlotte’s asleep, enjoying the AC and wet hair from a shower.

And now I will stop revealing things for the evening.

Where are all the pictures?

Well.  Long story.  But it involves my camera being en route to/from Canon.  Again.  Yes, again.  They typed “glass” where I typed “lens,” and the person doing the fixing thought it meant “LCD.”  Boo.  At least they didn’t make me pony up for shipping again.  Bums.

Says WeatherDotCom:

“Dangerous heat index. Outdoor exposure should be limited.”

This is the story of Baltimore’s summer this year.  Everyone who called this year’s snow “piles of global warming” with snark and sheeplike repetition: up yours.

Ultralight bags ain’t no wudderproof.

All my shit got wet at the farmers market last week (read: diapers, extra baby clothes, etc.) and at work last week (read: books, Moleskine journal, etc.). Ultralight backpack I bought from REI with a giftcard.  It’s a great bag, but even the rain that gets under my umbrella finds its way into it, when I’m holding Charlotte and concentrating on keeping her relatively dry.

Despite their new offerings only sometimes being good, I find myself missing my Timbuk2 bag that I got last year.  Damn their constantly new custom bag offerings that have us all owning a few bags that are each, on their own, supposed to last forever!  I have two smalls and two mediums.  That’s kinda dumb.

“I know you don’t wanna hear it.”

“This jerkass thing I am going to say.  I know you don’t wanna hear it.  And I know I have no business saying it.  I think I’m vaguely aware that I’m very stupid also, or, at least, that you’ve got [quite fucking literally] 50 IQ points on me.  Well,  I know you don’t wanna hear it.  But I’m going to say it.”

Why are such people always the ones you are stuck tip-toeing around, ones you can’t just tell to fuck off?

Screw cable.

I meant to share this story around when Charlotte was born.  It’s been sitting in my bookmarks ever since.

Make no mistake: The big cable, satellite, and telco carriers are still sitting pretty with more than 100 million TV subscribers. Nevertheless, a new report claims that more and more viewers are “cutting the cord” in favor of watching their favorite shows via over-the-air antennas (remember those?), Netflix, or the Web.

(Read the whole story.)

We don’t have cable and never have.  We have a TV we bought in 2004 (a tube!) and a digital converter box.  Nothing special.  We do get two PBS stations, though, since going digital.  Awesome.

How are you? Good, how are you?

I hate when you’re behind someone in  line at the cafe’ and the person behind the counter says, “Hi, how are you?” and then the person to whom he or she is speaking ignores the question and says, “Ah wunta lahtay wiff noh fohm.” (In perfect Baltimorese, of course.)  I could write a few long posts on people’s selfishness and condescension when there’s a counter between two people (both sides’ jerkery, that is).  What’s not as bad, but still annoying, is when someone asks how another person is doing, and he or she just answers the question and doesn’t return it. “How are you this morning?” “Fine. Where are those folders I asked for?”

In an attempt to make everyone think I’m nice (and perhaps to make myself nicer in the process), I always answer and always return.  Call and response style.  And yesterday, I’m pretty sure that someone with whom I work made fun of me for it. I fully realize that “well” is the correct response, not “good.”  But we don’t speak in proper English, do we? And they weren’t making fun of my responding with “Good,” but with the fact that my consistent response to, “Hi, John[ny]. How are you?” is, “Good. How are you?”  I mean, if I was being implicitly accused of being formulaic and insincere for responding to the same question in the same way, I could certainly charge the same person with asking the same question.  If my static response is insincere, what would that say about the static initial question?

And let’s not get started on the sheer stupidity involved in getting annoyed at a constant response to a constant stimulus. Let’s not get started. (I do that too much to get started getting mad at other people for it.  Heh heh heh.)

Cover this blog in oil!

While I recuperate from a very fun weekend wherein I thought more about swimming, bookstores, summer ales and fresh vegetables than I did about the oil spill in the gulf and all of the other disturbing things going on in the world, check out your favorite blog as a victim of corporate greed, government mismanagement and personal stubbornness to stop driving everywhere.  Cover Pragmatik in oil!  (Click here!)

Dropping out?

I wonder if it might be good for me to drop out of all this internet/cyber crap.  Digital cameras, Facebook, blogs, Flickr.  I spend a lot of time putting [carefully selected parts of] my life on display and checking out other people’s.  I don’t think this is healthy for me as a father struggling to live in the proverbial moment.

Then again, this could be brought on by my frustration over having to send my relatively expensive camera to Canon again, after they got crap under my lens last time they repaired it.  And the sudden jolt when I realized that I won’t have my camera Friday when my old friend comes to town — as if it didn’t happen if I don’t record it all as a JPG.

I sent paper cards to a few folks recently, folks to whom I used to write regularly.  And it felt great.  I miss spending time reading books and writing, rather than reading about pens and authors’ silly personal secrets on the web.  I used to write more than I read about pens and Moleskines, and this is no longer anywhere near the case.

I was going to start a serious, full-time dad blog latter this summer.  Now, I don’t know.

It feels like the whole world is online, though, and you miss everything if you’re not.  But then again, what are we really missing?

I’m spending too much time consuming and not enough time creating.

I need to write more.

Not blogging; not journaling.  Writing.  There was a time in my life when it was all I wanted to do and all I thought I was good at.  Then I met other “writers” at college, started dating a writer, majored in philosophy, and that was that.  That was thirteen years ago.

I never even tried.  Not really.

Judging questionable judgment.

So, if someone with questionable judgment questions your judgment, is that something you can take as a compliment?  Especially if said person has been absent at your truly spectacular lapses in judgment?

Paternity jokes.

In case anyone was wondering, joking with someone that his daughter looks like his brothers is not very funny, if you’re imply something else. Commenting that she looks like men in her father’s family is one thing. Of course she looks like my brothers and I and our father.  But for someone to joke that one of your brothers actually fucked your wife and made your daughter –  Well…