Praise for the wife, dirty slivers, and dead Congressmen

Lisa has spent all week volunteering at a Girl Scout day camp with our three oldest kids (Smiley is allowed to participate because of her presence). She returns each evening, we all have dinner, pack up some items for the next morning, and then 5/6th of this household retires to bed by 7 p.m. Obviously, I'm the little sliver of insomnia in the bunch.

Lisa will be taking the camera tomorrow so I hope to post some pictures of the camp soon . But I want to take this opportunity to say that Lisa often gets screwed here on the blog. She doesn't like to take a camera along ("You don't need pictures to remember something," she says) and she doesn't blog, so by default most of the memories here are my own.

Judging by the tales told over the dinner table tonight, those three kids are having the time of their life this week. They've also got a heap experiences over the last seven years that wouldn't have taken place without their Mom's efforts. So if this carnival ride of a life sometimes appears to have only one operator, think again.

* * * *
That sliver underneath my fingernail caused my finger to turn red and swell. Lisa told me to go to the doctor before I had to have it cut off, but I refused. "Worse comes to worse," I said. "I'll just look like a yakuza."

Then, two days ago it just spit out the splinter. Plop, one minute it's red and hurting, the next there's a dirty piece of wood in my palm and the pain is gone.

Cool. In like, a totally boy kinda way.

* * * * *
Some neat experiences of late:


* I met the wife and daughter of one of author Michael Connelly's research staff. He lives locally, but does a lot of legwork to flesh out the background for Connelly's novels. They said the author is a gem and a genuinely nice man, one who flies out his researchers for a party at the start of every NFL season. He also named a character in The Brass Verdict after their husband/father, but for the life of me the name escapes me right now.

* I ran into the editor-at-large for two national magazines (and yes, I asked: the magazines aren't hiring, they're cutting staff).

* Finally, I bumped into the daughter of former Congressman and local icon, the late Clement J. Zablocki. I told her how, just weeks before his death in 1983, I appeared on stage with her father.

I was (or so the press was told) the youngest Cub Scout in the District at that moment. Whether that was true or not, I leave to my diligent future biographers.

Anyhow, I was handed a hatchet and charged with cutting the ribbon to open some now forgotten Scouting event. I couldn't get the hatchet to cut through all the way, and so Clem came up, wrapped his hands around the handle, and together we got it done.



His daughter smiled when I told her the story. "That was my father," she said, a wistful look in her eyes. "He was a good man."

As she left I realized that the memory meant more to her than it did to me. To have someone relate a positive story about your father nearly three decades after he passes away . . . well, I'd imagine it doesn't happen often. I'm glad I overcame my original hesitation and approached her.

BTW - that scouting event was also host to my first television interview, one I never had a chance to see because it was broadcast on that fancy dancy new thing called Cable. :)