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?

My Problem with Pro Sports

.I'm a sports fan.

Okay, I'm a nutty sports fan.

All right. I will admit it. I'm a completely over-the-top sports nut.

I bought an XM Radio a couple of years ago, but it wasn't for the commercial-free music or anything like that. It was because I was tired of not being able to hear my favorite sports talk show on the way to work because of bad reception.

I selected XM over Sirius because of the better (in my mind) sports programming. I chose Major League Baseball, the NHL, the PGA Tour and Fox Sports Radio over the National Football League and NASCAR. Of course, in the post-merger era, it doesn't really make a difference, but back in the day it was an important consideration.

But as I said, I have a problem with pro sports. I live in a city with awful teams. I come from a city with lousy teams. I went to college in a city with one of the worst professional football teams in history. I lived for five years in a city with only one major league sports team. That team--the Stockton-Malone Utah Jazz--was pretty darn good, but the lack of other teams to root for wasn't. And I'm still pretty angry about the uncalled foul that Jordan committed on Bryon Russel to get clear and hit the game-winner in the clincher.

I'm not a front-runner. I know lots of people who are Steelers fans and Red Sox fans and Laker fans and Detroit Red Wings fans just because those are the teams that are winning right now. Heck, my own kids will come into the living room to find me watching a game, ask me who's winning and then declare that that's who they're cheering for. If Latvia's playing Ecuador in a women's water polo exhibition game--I'll only watch if it's a close game near the end because I have my standards--and Latvia has a one-goal lead, I worry that my son will go online in an attempt to buy the commemorative pink water polo helmet with the Latvian flag emblazoned on the side.

Unlike my son, however, I am true-blue with the teams I've rooted for all my life.

(At least he's learned that there are certain teams that he is not allowed to cheer against even if they're getting slaughtered and others that he must not cheer for even if they're winning. Those, of course, are Dad's favorite team and its arch-rivals. I'm glad my children aren't like the son of a dear friend of mine, who is a Dallas Cowboys fan specifically because his dad likes the Redskins.)

At a certain level, it's fun to cheer for a bad team. It's a good time to be completely myopic about their talent level, their coaching and their prospects for the future. It's quite enjoyable to totally overreact to every little piece of news that comes out of team headquarters. But when a team is consistently bad, it gets a little bit tiresome. Clearly, overreacting to wins beats overreacting to losses, and by a wide margin.

Fortunately for me, my teams have won championships and gotten some accolades. But it certainly seems pretty long ago and far away, especially when the NBA finals are starting and my team couldn't inbound a ball or make a half-dozen more free throws to be there. It's an empty feeling.

But there's always next year.

Sumer Is Icumen In

Here in Montgomery County, MD, we're finally seeing the end of spring and the beginning of summer. And as I do each year about this time, I find myself returning to the same three thoughts:

• Why, when we're a full week past Memorial Day, are the schools still open?
• When are those of us who have to schlep to the office going to be able to enjoy the easy summer commute?
• How soon will fall and winter get here?

The first question is the real conundrum. My problem is this: our kids, being homeschooled, have completed their studies for the year. Well, at least my son has. My daughter still has to finish her speech about recycling. By the time it's done, I'm afraid the paper that she's writing it on will have biodegraded to nothing, rendering the speech moot. But setting that aside, my kids were done with school more than two weeks before the ones I see waiting for the bus when I leave my house at 6:30.
This year, school ends on June 16th. I'll say that again, with feeling: this year, school ends two full weeks after Memorial Day. I ask you, how many kids will actually be there on the last Monday and Tuesday?
Why is it that school has to last so long? When I was a kid, we were out of there by a couple of days after Memorial Day, if I remember correctly. I've asked people why school ends so late in the spring. Of course, right-thinking folks--most of them--say "YEAH, WHAT THE HECK ARE THEY THINKING DOWN AT THE SCHOOL BOARD?!?". The universal response from those who agree with this lunacy is that the school year has some extra days so that they don't run out of time to complete the educational process if there are a lot of snow days during the winter.
Fine. I guess I can accept that, especially here, where they have occasionally closed the schools because one nutjob TV "meteorologist" whispered in a cue-card guy's ear during a commercial break that the highly experimental weather modeling software that his six-year-old son programmed himself on his GameCube predicted a half-inch of snow tonight in one out of 67,000,000 trials.
A couple of years ago, I'm pretty sure that they actually extended school a couple of days because of a glut of snow closures, some of which were quite unnecessary. It seems, however, to be a one-way game. If they need to extend school, they do it with great gusto. But do they shorten school if there's still a balance in the snow-day bank when May rolls around? Of course not.

Great. Now I'm all angry. I guess I'd better move along.

On to the second question. I've lived in three cities where I had to deal with rush-hour traffic on a daily basis. Here in the Washington, DC area, there is an enormous difference in the traffic load during the summer and the other seasons. I don't remember it being that way in Denver or Salt Lake City. My 28-mile commute takes 40-45 minutes in the fall, winter and spring, barring bad weather or the rumor thereof--see the discussion of question one above--and about 30-35 minutes in the summer.
Needless to say, I can't wait for the summer commute. It seems already to be loosening up pretty well, but I'll be really glad when it's fully developed.

And now, the third and most controversial question in our house. I will freely admit to being one of those odd sorts who prefers winter. I used to live in Phoenix, where there are two seasons: real, real hot and December. I thought that I was missing the change of seasons when I lived there, and I still think that's true to a point. But the fact is that I get more excited with the onset of autumn than I do when the thaw begins.
Mrs. Dad Run Amok doesn't see it that way. She thinks that Arizona sounds just dandy. I can respect that, if for no other reason than the fact that I could play golf year-round if we lived down there. Actually, I don't get to play much as it is, but if we were in Arizona, I could be not playing golf year-round.

Finally, if you get the reference in the title of this post, mad props to you. For the rest of you, there's always Google

Wildlife in Maryland

Okay, kids, here's today's story of life in suburbia. There is this cat who lives somewhere nearby. It's a very healthy cat and a very friendly cat. It comes up onto our front porch and does the classic cat begging maneuver of rubbing against our legs looking for a scritch behind the ears. In general, it seems to be a fairly well-adjusted example of the feline species.

But there's a problem: it ain't our cat. We'll go weeks or months without seeing it and just figure that it's gone back wherever it lives to stay. Then it'll show up again for several days in a row.

Today it decided to take a shot at being our cat. As my wife was bringing things into the house, it launched itself through our front door in front of her. Let me say that we're generally in favor of furry creatures of all kinds. Some are cute and cuddly, some are majestic and regal, and some taste really good. But we are not cat people. Three of us are horribly allergic, and one of us (your humble narrator) wears his cat allergy as a badge of considerable pride. So this clearly will not fly.

Fortunately, local law enforcement (our neighbor who is a police officer and not allergic to cats) was able to subdue the suspect and eject it from the premises. I was not there to see it, but I'm told that the miscreant went very quietly and our friend didn't have to draw her sidearm. As I mentioned to my wife later, breaking and entering is a criminal act, but we decided not to press charges. However, if the little feline felon comes back, he's getting dropped in a doggie crate until the dog catcher can come and take his little heinie away.

Emily's First Recital

On Saturday, we went to Emily's first-ever recital. Man, those things are LONG!! Even with each kid playing for a short time--I think the longest piece played was less than five minutes long--we sat there for nearly two hours. We left before the intermission. That's not a typo: we left before the intermission.

I'm happy to say that my daughter acquitted herself very well. About three bars before the end of her performance, she began to crack a little bit of a smile. Like her dad, she's a bit of a perfectionist and she has frequently ended practice sessions in tears because she couldn't master something. Yeah, we're talking about practice...(sorry Mr. Iverson, but I couldn't resist). We even witnessed two tearful outbursts about the piece she later played so well at the recital.

But on Saturday, I saw that little smile. She knew that it wasn't a perfect performance, but she knew that it was a very good one. Maybe she'll catch a bit more of the fire and really want to become a good musician.

The Cast of Characters

As long as I'm writing a blog about my family, it would probably be a good idea to introduce them. So, without further ado:

• Dad Run Amok - I'm a fairly typical 40s-ish man with an office job and a family. I love to cook and I enjoy tinkering with our computers. I'm a database developer by day and a fairly serious amateur musician on the weekends (mainly at church).
• My Wife - Amy is the fabulous woman whom I married in August of 1996. Her job is to try to keep me focused on one or two things at a time and to run our little homeschool. She's got quite an artistic streak and hopes to illustrate my children's books, if I ever get around to writing them.
  
• Emily - Our daughter, born in 1999. She's a budding musician who has a great many friends. She's either with a friend or with her nose stuck in a book.
  
• Ryan - Our son, born in 2001. Ryan is a very intelligent and soft-hearted boy. His passions are monumental and rotate between Star Wars, Pokemon, Sonic the Hedgehog and other videogames.
• Tom and Jerry (also known locally as "the gentlemen" or "the fellas") - These are the two gerbils who live in the aquarium in our dining room.
• The Big Silver Bus - The family's primary mode of transport: a Chrysler minivan.
• The Shiny Gold Car - My Saturn
  

Post the First -- What This is About

Okay, everybody has a blog. I've got one friend who has two blogs. I'm sure there are people out there who have more than two. But I don't have any. I've tried using Twitter. Hate it. Way too much noise for way too little signal (although I'm sure that there are plenty of people out there who think the same thing about the Intarweb in general).

I started in on a blog a long time ago, but I don't remember what I possibly could have written about. And that is the problem with a blog. As I mentioned to my two-blog-having friend, I'd love to write a blog if I had something to blog about. Then I promptly forgot about the conversation.

Now we pick up the story this morning. As my wife (who isn't running amok, by the way) and I drove to church, she pointed out that I have two really cool kids and quite a bit of stuff happens around here. A lot of it is conversation. I'm not one of those dads whose stock answer is "go ask your mother." It is, in fact, quite the opposite. If my kids foolishly ask me a question, they're most likely going to get an answer that falls into one of the following two categories:

• Silly answers for silly questions. For example: "Dad, are we all going to the restaurant?" --asked during the walk to the Big Silver Bus and right after the kids' miniature impromptu celebration about our big night at Red Robin. Answer: "Well, I'm going to the restaurant, and Mom is going to the restaurant, but you and your brother will be sitting in the car and staring at each other."
• Waaay too much information: For example: we were in the aforementioned Big Silver Bus the other evening and my daughter asked me: "Dad, how fast are you going to go? Four or five?". The question came about because she was watching the tachometer and couldn't understand it. By the time we got where we were going, 20 minutes later, the kids had received an education not only about what a tachometer does, but also about what a transmission does and why a car can go in reverse or sit at a stop light with the engine running. My wife's quip toward the end of my lecture: "Well kids, that's your science class for the week!"
  

I guess the point here is that I love my kids. I love teasing them and I love teaching them. I enjoy answering questions when I know something about the subject and I love looking it up when I don't. This blog will be about the things that we do and the things that we talk about.

I'll also blog from time to time about stuff I've cooked for the family, places we've gone, places we haven't gone and funny things that we all do.

One day I hope to take all of my answers to all of their (non-silly) questions and bind 'em all up in a book. And maybe a cookbook. And maybe a memoir...