April 1st thru the 11th

April 1st

B4 school we sat the kids down & told them plans for Lu to get her own room were scrapped because, vasectomy doc be damned, we found out we were going to have another baby. It was an April Fool's joke and they totally bought it. Still, their reactions were a surprise. YaYa was happy (!?), LuLu was upset, and the two little ones didn't know how to react but seemed pleased. It's a shame it was just a joke.




April 2nd

I just finished reading Felix Gilman's "The Half-Made World". It is a beautiful, lyrical novel that will never get its due because its part of the 'steampunk' genre. But know this: rarely did three pages go by before I was again awed by his ability to capture a moment or a thought with the perfect, economical use of words. Easily the best written book I've read this year.

Lisa, to a Lump dressed in a velvet skirt, mismatched oversized boots she borrowed from her siblings, no shirt, and a large multi-colored bow tie she swiped from a clown costume: "Lump, LuLu's friend is almost here to pick her up. Go upstairs and stay out of sight until they're gone. We need to hide your . . . odd ways."

Lump has dark, beautiful long eye lashes. You're welcome kid.




April 3rd my friend Erv's 37th bday

Maupassant used to advise, “Get black on white.”

James Thurber: “Don't get it right, just get it written."

Lisa bought the two oldest tiny cross stitch kits to entertain them while introducing them to the craft. Sadly, they worked on it for a day before misplacing bits of it.





April 4th

Gotta love the honesty from CBS during halftime of the NCAA Championship game: Worst half of championship basketball ever. Awful. Sad. A competition to see who can play worse. A horrible showcase for the NCAA, etc.

Not the greatest start to the MLB season, finishing today with a record of only 3 -1. Ah well, we'll do better. I speak of course, of my beloved Yankees. My hometown Brewers, OTOH, stand at 0-4. I do count myself as a Brewers fan, but 37 years of dissapointment has tempered my confidence. I'm not a Cubs fan - every half century or so I'd like to see a championship.

Arod, Greatest of the Great, sits at .357 with 2 doubles, 2 homers, 3 walks, and 4 RBI's in four games. I bow to thee!

Oooo! There might be a revival of the late great Goldman's store here in town

April 5th - my Mom's 64th birthday/voting day

00:12: Ok, bedtime folks. If you're in WI, please go out and vote tomorrow (unless you plan to vote for someone other than Stone and Prosser, in which case take a siesta from voting and relax at home with a beer. Go ahead, I won't mind - and future Milwaukee County residents will thank you!)


If you want my predictions for the local election: I think Prosser takes the W, Abele grabs the County Exec, and the Bay View hating Terry Falk keeps his school board seat.



[I was right on all counts, but what a rocky road it would be to get there]

Here are some nature shots I took on the walk home from the polling place





From Lisa: I love you hunny....


April 6th

"We've done really well with teenage death songs"
- Eddie Vedder, on "Lost Dogs" liner notes for 'Last Kiss'



April 7th

Justice David Prosser picked up more than 7,000 votes and took the lead in the Supreme Court case after a reporting flub in Waukesha County. Yowsas - great news, but cue the conspiracy stories.

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little.” - Edmund Burke

"I like my beasts fast and my bass down low, put it on my headstone yo!" - Lisa

We just finished watching Christina Aguliera in "Burlesque". I'm not sure why the reviews I read last year were bad. Sure, the plot was predictable, but what, you rented it expecting The French Connection? The music was good, the women were hot, and the romance was sweet. I liked it.

April 8th

Manny Ramirez has chosen to retire from baseball rather than face a ban for testing postive for banned substances. Wow.

off of work and straight to doc w/ Lump for an earache/drainage

[this was a bad infection. She'd complained her 'tooth' hurt for days, and we were waiting for her dentist to return from vacation to schedule an appt, but once her ear drained the way it did - ickily, it ran down her cheek - it was obvious her ear and not her tooth was the problem. She took antibiotics for ten days and on a follow up had a clean bill of health]

April 9th

"Unless you're ashamed of yourself now and then, you're not honest." - William Faulkner

You needed to contain a story like a disease, before it spread. - Edward Conlon

Superstition brings bad luck. —Raymond Smullyan


April 10th

"When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras"

A beautiful warm day, a fresh column off to the paper, a short day of work ahead of me, and then a day off w/out any (known) obligations Monday. Sounds good to me.


April 11th

"The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace," Chief Judge Alex Kozinski. "At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached." - judge rules Facebook settlement stands