Today

My daughter’s half birthday was yesterday and while we sat in Chiptole eating Steak Fajita Burritos I fed her her first real food-green beans! Of course part of it went up her nose and on her hands and on her clothes and on her parents. We then went to Target and found a soft puppy bed that we laid the baby in so she could sleep while we shopped. She’s my little person, and she talks now. We go back and forth and talk to her and she talks to us. We took her into the shower earlier that day and pointed at her foot and said “foot” before the kid proceeded to say “foot”. Now it sure sounded like “foot” but surely at this age she just was beginning to mimic our words and sounds.

We then went to a friend’s house so he could figure out why I was not online at home. I took my routers and laptops and everything with me. Part of the problem could have been that someone hacked my router and seemingly removed my MAC addresses from the router’s hardware. We flashed the firmware after the Indian guy from Linksys told us in noncertain very-accented terms that we could screw it all up. They wouldn’t understand that my friend is a network administrator. Eventually I think we fixed it all, and then I bought him dinner. ONE pound burgers! How fun. And speaking of fun…

While sitting in the sports bar eating these burgers Penn State was playing on the big screen. It’s been a decade since they were undefeated, and they walked into the biggest game of the year against Ohio State yesterday. The score was 10-17 in the fourth quarter and I was buggin’. So finally it’s the last two minutes of the game and Penn State got the ball and I was almost yelling at the screen to hurry up, score, and tie the game. But we didn’t… they spiked the ball, ran down the clock, and began to cheer, while jumping around. It was then that I realized I am an idiot and didn’t realize that Penn State had the 17 and Ohio had the 10 points! This is where I cheered and jumped in my seat and got dirty looks from the wife who was trying to enjoy a dinner with her friends. So we won. And I remember walking College Avenue on Saturdays and going to The Brewery, Café 210, Zeno’s with all of the alumnus and current students milling back and forth with some blue painted faces getting drunk and hugging and spanking asses in a very masculine way. My best friend is there now drinking Forbidden Fruit, Sweet Tarts, and all 100+ Zeno’s beers down in the basement where he took me for my 21^st birthday late on Wednesday night in November years ago.