A Very Special Announcement

Greetings, dadrunamok fans! I'm very, very happy to announce that the Adventures of a Dad Run Amok has a new home. Starting today, you can visit me at

www.dadrunamok.com/blog.

This marks a huge step for me and I'm very excited to start building a web home for our family that is more than just the blog. Mrs. Dad Run Amok will become a regular contributor and even now is giving her input on some fun regular features.

This announcement also means that I no longer will be posting new stories here. If you've bookmarked me, please update your bookmark to the site linked above for all of the latest news and laughs from suburban Maryland.

We'll see you on DadRunAmok!

Ryan The Science Guy

Today my wife had to go to the lab to get blood drawn. The kids had the joy of accompanying her to the phlebotomy parlor.

After explaining to our son that she had had to give about six vials of blood and that it would grow back, she was treated to the following science lecture:

Red blood cells, Ryan explained, are easier to produce than white cells. Furthermore, he added, they last about four months, compared to about two weeks for white cells.

This was news to my wife, who asked him, "how do you know that?"

At this point, being the seven year old that he is, he broke into a full "Bill Nye the Science Guy" song and dance routine. Right there in the hallway outside the lab.

Hmmm...I guess educational TV actually is educational.

Flip It! Fold It! Fun!

One evening a couple of weeks ago Ryan and I had a guys night out. Since he's only seven, we can't get in too much trouble unless one of us ends up in the emergency room. But that doesn't deter us from having quite a bit of fun anyway.

The evening's festivities started with my wife and I sitting and staring at each other. Because of a lack of food in the house, she had decided that she and my daughter would also hit the road for dinner. Since the girls really aren't supposed to be part of a guys night, they decided to go get different fast food.

Anyway, we managed to get past the weirdness of the whole thing and the boys and girls went their separate ways in different cars. Of course, it got weirder (you knew that would happen, didn't you?) when Ryan and I finally figured out what we wanted to eat. You see, we each have the same opinion of the other's fast food choice, so we had to go through two drive-thru windows.

At this point, if you're scoring at home, I'll recap:

Number of people: FOUR

Number of licensed drivers: TWO

Number of cars used: TWO

Number of restaurants visited: THREE

This will get a bit stranger before it gets more normal...

Okay, steakhouse burger for dad and six-piece nuggets for son. Sprite for everybody. Fries for dad, none for son (he doesn't like them. I told you it would get stranger).

I have a problem with eating one restaurant's food inside another restaurant, even if I bought food at the second restauarant. So, we drove to the park and Ryan moved to the front seat. Crank the Christian rock station and have at the grub. Afterward, we played for a bit and then headed to the next place, which was...

wait for it...

ANOTHER RESTAURANT!!!

Actually, it was a coffee house: The Music Cafe in Damascus, MD--if you're in the area, stop by. They'd be happy for the business. Hot cocoa (with contraband marshmallows) for Ryan and un espresso doppio for Dad. We would have stayed for the live music but I didn't want to pay the cover charge.

But we did have some fun. Ryan brought his flip-n-folds with him. If you haven't seen these, they're little cards that you can fold around and over various ways to see different pictures. Ryan and I figured out how to make one and in typical Ryan fashion, within three days he had made at least 145,000 of them. I can't complain, though, because I got the greatest homemade flip-n-fold Father's Day card from him later. It's at my desk at work and I love folding it around and around. It has a limerick in my honor, which I will post at some point.

Ryan's flip-n-folds were now the basis of a card game. Inspired by Pokemon and Sonic the Hedgehog, Ryan had created a game with enough rules and exceptions to said rules to put the US Tax Code to shame. He then started teaching it to anybody who didn't duck quickly enough.

I think I won, but three weeks later, I'm still not sure. I think we'd be better off sticking with Cribbage. But of course, Ryan has his own special rules for that game too...

Exciting News for Dad Run Amok Fans

Stay tuned. In the next couple of weeks, I'm looking forward to launching the brand new dadrunamok website. I'm working with the staff (Mrs. Dad Run Amok) on content, layout and all that other Internetty stuff.

I'm excited to move to the next phase of bloggership...

Summer Camp

We picked Emily up from summer camp Saturday.

This is the first time that she's been away from us for an extended period. In fact, other than an occasional slumber party, it's the first time that she's spent more than one night away from the family. We've been gone for a weekend, but she always was with her brother or her grandparents.

Needless to say, we were a bit nervous about how things would go. As for Emily, she sort of oscillated between great excitement and sheer terror. At one moment, she was talking about all of the things that she and her buddies would do. Five minutes later, she would be in tears about something on the suggested packing list that she couldn't find (this was a couple of weeks before the actual BIG DAY, so there was plenty of time to find things).

Father's Day found us driving to the camp in Eastern PA. We left church a bit early to allow a good amount of time. We figured that three hours would be plenty of time to drive 130 or so miles. Turns out we were right, but only because of delays caused by driving through a major commercial area and a loooonnnnnng delay at a tollbooth. As it turned out, it took the entire three hours.

Anyway, we finally got there, got Emily set up in her cabin, realized that we forgot the camera, gave hugs and kisses and went home.

I think I should point out here that we always realize we forgot the camera. I think it would be easier to bring the camera than have to remember to realize that we forgot it every time we go somewhere.

The drive home was a different experience from the drive up there. Since we don't have a GPS unit, we're stuck with printouts from Mapquest or one of its cousins. If we're not in a hurry to get somewhere, we'll usually just toss the instructions aside and follow our noses to get home. We've had some interesting times trying to find our way to where we're going, but we've also seen some beautiful scenery. My wife and I both derive far less stress from being slightly confused about where we are than we do from being bumper-to-bumper with NASCAR wannabes. And on this particular trip, we found a place in Lancaster with very, very tasty pizza and cheap Yuengling beer.

Well, we survived the week without our daughter. And despite our predictions to our son that he'd be getting corrected twice as much since his sister wasn't there to catch some of the fire, it turned out that he got corrected a lot less. I'm not sure if it was due to the absence of his partner in crime, or to the fact that the house was generally quieter, or simply because we missed his sister, but I can say for sure he didn't get scolded nearly as often as he usually does.

On Saturday, we got up at the crack of doom, piled into the Big Silver Bus and took off for camp. We allowed ourselves four hours to get there, figuring that we only had about 160 miles to drive and we'd get there early. Turns out we were right: we got there about ten minutes early. Wrong turns and big garage sales turned out to be our downfall.

Anyway, we picked up Emily and her friend Kate and got them home. Again following our noses, we managed to make a three-hour drive in about four and a half hours, including another stop at the pizza joint in Lancaster.

We've decided that if the finances will allow it, we all will go to camp next year. Us adults can get our chance to go by volunteering to help out as counselors. Judging from the fact that Emily continues to regale us with camp stories, I think we'd all have a lot of fun. Us parental types may have to lie still for a while once we get home ("a while" being defined as a period of several hours to several weeks) but I think it would be worth it.

Metablogging

We now take you to a scene from a popular self-help organization...

Hi. My name is Dad Run Amok. (HI DAD!) It's been 16 days since I last blogged. It's a problem, but not the kind you would expect. Admitting that there's a problem will, I hope, be the solution and not merely the first step.

You see, when I first started this, I stated in no uncertain terms that I didn't have a blog previously because I didn't think I had anything to blog about. A half-dozen posts later, I thought I had hit my stride. Now, two weeks after the last little story--one which I thought was pretty good--I've managed an unfinished story about an evening out with my son and a lot of disjointed thoughts about trying to write in the voices of well-known authors.

No posts, however, have found their way onto this server. Like I said, it's a problem.

My hope is that writing a blog about blogging (a metablog, as I think of it) will help me to get through this little phase.

Doing what I'm doing, writing light and humorous little stories about my life and my family, seems like it should be so easy. I mean, there are guys who write about nothing in particular and get paid good money for it. I think to myself, "I enjoy writing, I can piece together subjects, verbs and their various adornments in an understandable and somewhat lively manner. And a lot goes on around here besides. So this oughta be easy."

Sure it's easy. So is bungee jumping.

I now have an even greater respect for the guys who do this a few days a week. The hosts of my favorite drive-time sports talk show say that any reasonably intelligent sports fan can put together a three-hour show or two, but it takes a real professional to actually be an on-air host. After the first couple of shows, will you be able to keep finding interesting things to talk about? Probably not. Keep moving, kid, and leave the tough work to the pros.

That's where I am now. I'm learning that it's not so hard to write a funny story or two, but that the real challenge comes in being creative day in and day out. How do guys like Dave Barry keep doing it?

(Please understand that I'm not insane or arrogant enough to compare myself to a guy with a Pulitzer on the mantle. Just want to make that clear at this point.)

So here I sit, having just written a new blog post that is essentially 500 words of whining about having nothing to say. Oh well, at least it's a post. Maybe tomorrow will bring a new story that all both of you will want to read.

The Grill Monkey and the Indestructible Piñata

The alarm clock announced its presence in the room Saturday morning by pontificating loudly on the latest stop in the President's trip to the Middle East and Europe (leaving the total number of days he's been in the Oval Office since his inauguration at approximately one. But that's a subject for a different blog entry). Ordinarily on a Saturday, I can just shut the stupid thing off and go back to sleep.

This Saturday, however, I was bound to let it wake us up. This was going to be a Hectic Saturday.

Fortunately, we had loaded all of our junk priceless treasures into the Big Silver Bus the previous night, so all that was left to do was to drive to the site of the big multi-family yard sale. Because of this and the magnanimity of my wife, I was able to stay in bed. Or so I thought.

The smell of coffee is a stern taskmaster. There is absolutely no way that I can stay in bed when the smell of coffee is insinuating itself into that drowsy, dreamy state that I treasure. I have to get up. I am compelled to pick my head up off my little pillow, put my feet on the floor and trudge downstairs to the kitchen. I can't help it. It's pathetic, really, but it's just the way that I am.

Alongside the alarm clock, it's a one-two haymaker that my desire for sleep cannot withstand. At least I get coffee out of the deal.

We're not here to talk about my problem trying to stay asleep, however. I came here to discuss my Hectic Saturday.

The garage sale went well, despite the lack of a garage. We were able to sell a bicycle and a weightlifting set, among other things. The money is going to help Christians in India, so that's a happy thing.

From there, we ran home, changed and ran to the park. This is where we ran into the grill monkey and the indestructible piñata.

I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point since I was a kid, they changed the basic nature of the piñata. Back in the day, they'd throw a blindfold on a kid, give him a long blunt weapon, spin him around three times and set him off in the general direction of the piñata with the hope that the mayhem and destruction be limited only to the candy-filled structure.

The piñata itself used to be made of papier-mache, a substance brittle enough to yield fairly readily to the cudgel-wielding kids. Today's piñatas, however, are made differently.

These days, they're made with a little flock of ribbons hanging down from the bottom. Supposedly, only one ribbon will actually tear the piñata open and the rest will just pull off easily without doing any damage. In practice it doesn't work that way. What's happened every time I've ever seen this type of piñata (if I can find some synonyms for the p-word, I'll work 'em in), the last ribbon turns out to be the magical one and it doesn't work. This leaves a parent to grab the thing and tear it open by hand.

I guess it's somewhat safer, but not much because the scramble for the tasty treats hasn't slowed down even a little bit.

My friends, however, did not utilize the ribbons. I'm very proud of them for this. They had the blindfold, the shillelagh and the line of kids bent on destruction. It was a very cute one of those things which I shall no longer name, sporting a picture of Tinkerbell on the top.

One kid hit low, tearing off most of the disused ribbons. A subsequent kid hit high, ripping the candy part from the Tinkerbell part. This was a happy thing for your humble narrator, because I was able to grab the little fairy and create lots of mayhem and funny situations. But it wasn't good for everybody else because our special party item was now lying on the ground, unbroken and no longer attached to the rope from which it was supposed to hang.

We tied it back up the best we could and the kids went at it again.

After the last kid tried, after most of the other kids had left to go play elsewhere, the piñata finally was opened. Was it a mighty blow from a child with a severe case of candy fever? Nope. One of the dads ripped it open by hand. Hmm...

"But what, O Dad Run Amok, of the Grill Monkey??" you ask.

Well, that was me. I love to grill so I took over for an hour or so. What can I say?