Closure

As I sit in my quiet office again after a day spent with (by some estimates) up to 2 MILLION people on the streets of San Francisco in recognition and celebration of the Giants winning the World Series, I'm struck by a great many thoughts.

- I can finally shave again. I am NOT a beard guy!
- The rest of the country doesn't "get" San Francisco or the Giants and that's not only okay, its kind of how I/we like it.
- All the pain and all the suffering since 2002, 1989 and all the other years when we had a helluva team that just couldn't get it done.
- Ashkon. I'd heard him mentioned on KNBR but hadn't had a chance to listen to and enjoy his rewrite of Don't Stop Believing until just the other day. And I've since played it at least two dozen times and maybe more, for myself and for others. I downloaded it and have it loaded on my iPhone, I have it on my MacBook Pro's desktop. It will be rotation for a long time. Listening to it gives me goosebumps!
- The nearly totally united city joyous in celebration, strangers hugging and giving high fives.
- Spontaneous chants of "Let's Go Giants" breaking out on BART and in the streets.
- The smell of fine Northern Californian marijuana wafting freely through the crowd. (How did Prop. 19 fail?)
- Yahoos using the winning of a championship as an excuse to break stuff and riot in SF.
- The lovable assortment of goofballs, misfits, castoffs and freaks that are the Giants. Seriously, these guys have more character in their long hair and fearsome beards than the Dodgers have in their entire baseball system.
- And I keep thinking about my father.

One of my Favorite Quotes

This is widely attributed to Mark Twain but there's some evidence that he may not have said it. Either way, it is one of my favorite quotes of all time.

"When I was a boy of fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

I never felt anything like this about my own father. Its hard to think of a highly educated industrial chemist as being ignorant. My dad was the kind of dad you could ask almost any question that a child will come up with, things like "Why is the sky blue?" or "Why does milk curdle if you add orange juice to it?" and he would give you a fully reasoned explanation. Sometimes going so far as to describe the chemical processes at work.

My dad was awesome. I still miss him everyday.

My Father's Day Fun

I did not get a nice long bike ride through Nisene Marks today which was one of my Father's Day wishes. But that's okay, I'm still cleaning out from this spring cold I had earlier this week and biking is a lot less enjoyable when you're horking out lung butter all the time. I will be bringing my bike to work this week though so I can get a ride in after hours.

Nope, instead we did some major damage on the mess that is our garage. Well, my wife actually did most of the work on the garage itself, I did a few projects, made a run to Orchard Supply with Grady and played with the boys.

My main project was removing the skanked fabric covers on the bunkbeds. The slats are all held together on a frame and that frame was covered in what was once a nice floral print. Those days were long gone though and it was nasty with stains and broken slats and worn out cardboard. I removed the million or so staples holding the fabric to the frame first with pliers and then with a screwdriver which made it about ten times faster and better since more of the staples pulled out.

After getting the two slat frames ready and figuring out how many replacement 1x4's I'd need, Grady and I went off to OSH. In addition to the boards, we got a cool coiled up hose that's see through so its like a 50 foot long crazy straw! And a spearmint plant so we can have some kickass mojitos whenever we want them. Which reminds me, I still need to get a dwarf lemon and a dwarf lime tree!

Getting the broken slats removed was really easy as they were basically stapled in with these big staples. I could just pull the broken stubs off, then I flipped the whole thing over and pounded them out with a hammer. The new boards got cut down to the right size and I screwed them into place. It was actually alot faster and easier than I was expecting which is always nice.

Not much more to go before the bunk beds are ready to put into the boy's room. We need a new mattress for Sully but then we'll be really close to being good to go. I'm excited about getting them!

After I was done with my stuff, I helped organize my bike and motorcycle stuff, designated some stuff for the upcoming yard sale, some for Ebay/Craigslist and called in an order from one of our favorite Mexican places. My wife got the vegetarian taco salad and I tried the Al Pastor Chimichanga which was full of win!

After dinner all four of us went for a hot tub, the boys had a ball swimming back and forth between us, jumping off the sides and just being the funny little guys they are.

When it came time to put Sully down for bed, I read a book to him, skipping pages as I could barely keep my eyes open. When the book was done, we closed our eyes together and I feel asleep half on and half off his bed. Not for a long time but fifteen or twenty minutes.

Now the house is quiet, save Nande's somewhat freaked out whuffles after each of the fireworks explosions goes off. Oh, did I not mention the idiots around here have been shooting off fireworks randomly for the last few days? Yeah, with the super dry conditions, the fires burning all over the state and these fools are still lighting them off.

When I checked in on my internet stuff, I came across a great deal! Two years of Wired for a shockingly great deal of $6! Today only and today's just about done. I am very, very pleased!

Time for this tired but happy poppa to call it a night. Tomorrow's the start of a good week, I hope. I hope all the dads out there had a great day, just like me!

Mark Twain on Fathers

"When I was a boy of 14 my father was so ignorant that I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished by how much the old man had learned in only 7 years."

Being around my family always makes me think about my father more than I usually do (and I think about him often since I see him in my children everyday). I miss him not having gotten a chance to meet my two sons because I know how happy he would have been and how happy he would have been for me.

I don't really have a point in this post, I just like the quote and have had my dad on my mind alot lately.