My hands are crawling with bacteria

All the soap dispensers in the bathrooms of the building where I work have stickers reading "not for antibacterial soaps." What's up with that?

Intern hazing

We finally got a couple of new interns at work this month, so hopefully now I'll have time for lunch breaks again, and maybe I won't be so exhausted when I get home from the office. We're always told that lunch breaks are required, but at the same time, there are so many things that have to be done "immediately." I hate putting work off for another hour when it already seems a couple hours behind.

Back to the subject of interns, though... The Huntsville Times entertainment staff picked up a new intern recently, too. Apparently, they thought this would be a funny assignment to send him on.

What a great way to break in the new guy.

Rickwood Classic

al.com had its annual company outing today. We went to the Rickwood Classic — the Birmingham Barons' throwback game commemorating the city's baseball heritage at America's oldest ballpark.

I thought that since Emily had been around while her grandparents watched numerous Red Sox and Braves games, she might take some interest in the game. That didn't happen. For the most part, she just ran around the stadium and asked me where Taylor was. On the way to the ballpark, I had told he that she would get to see Taylor there and that they could play together. Unfortunatly, Emily was expecting a different Taylor.




We stayed for four innings. In the time we were there, I think I got to see two plays. It was too hot and too frustrating to be chasing her around for any longer. When the Barons got a home run and everyone clapped and cheered while Emily continued to show a complete lack of interest, I knew it was time to go. She loves to applaud for music, but for some reason this didn't do anything for her.

I was glad I got to try Emily out on a ball game while the company paid for our tickets. Misty and I had talked about trying to catch a game at the Hoover Met, but this pretty much answered our question as to wether or not our daughter could handle it.

Asserting her preferences

Emily actually slept until 9:30 this morning. Even then, she only got up because I went and woke her up. She gets it from her mother — I'm awake before 6 a.m. most days, with or without the alarm clock.

When I lifted the groggy girl from her bed, the first thing she said to me was, "Daddy, I hongy." She then proceeded to place her order for breakfast: "I want butter and jelly," she said. "I want a 'sont with apples on it."

We saved the peanut butter and jelly for lunch, but I was happy to provide her with a croissant and some slices of apple (I wasn't going to put the apples on the croissant, however). I made myself a fresh fruit salad, in which Emily showed much interest until I added blueberries to the mix. "I don't like them, Daddy," she told me. "Yes, I know," I thought. Call me cruel, but I wanted to eat my breakfast without anyone screaming "I want it!" at me.

Everyone knows who you are

Reading the second issue of "Civil War" today made me think about that old Spider-Man theme song from The Electric Company.

Spider Man, where are you coming from?
Spider Man, nobody knows who you are...

I guess that's not applicable anymore.

I hope the writers and editors at Marvel know what they're doing here. It's dangerous tinkering with such a major element of an icon that's held for 40+ years.

I wonder if Peter Parker talked to Matt Murdock about Daredevil's public "outing" by the tabloids before he made his decision.

My thoughts on the "Civil War" story in general, will come later.

What I've been reading

Hello? Anyone out there? Anybody still read this blog?

I can't say I blame you if you've drifted away, what with my once-a-month updating.

My brother e-mailed me the other day asking if I was going to post about my family's recent trip to New England. His querry prompted me to think about my blog for a change, and I realized that it still had that putrid Daniel Handler book Adverbs listed in the "on my nightstand" section. Ugh. That book is the worst piece of shit I've read in years. It's like: What if you took a Neil Gaiman script and had it turned into a novel by Dave Eggers? It'd be terrible, that's what.

I'm really sick of stream-of-consciousness gibberish and other purposefully-crafted sloppy literary techniques being lauded as genius (and I'm not just speaking about Handler here, Safran-Foer, for instance, also comes to mind). It's not genius. It's a pain in the ass to read. I've got better things to do than muddle through some author's artsy attempt to look smart. Punctuation and grammar rules are there for a reason. They turn words into comprehensible sentences. Throw them out the window, and reading becomes a chore instead of a pleasure.

Currently, I'm reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, and it's fantastic. I'd been meaning to read it for years, but other things just kept pushing their way in front of it, somehow. It's about two Jewish kids in New York who create a superhero during the Golden Age of comics. The book paints a fascinating image of what the comic book industry was like in those days — so I'm getting a lesson in comics history along with the fictional storyline. It's really stirred up my passions to start reading comics again.

Ah, yes. That's where the quality literature is to be found.