Kids got advent calendars from grandma. I never did these as a kid myself, but the kids enjoy them and think they’re fun.

I miss the late 90’s era Internet boom.  Not just because I miss my own stock options doubling in value every 12-18 months (God knows I miss that, especially these days what with 2 kids and all), but more because I miss all of the crazy insanity of the time.

Here are some of the companies I miss:

• HomeGrocer.com – I bought into the whole marketing schtick of the guy driving the big truck with the orange on it.  Amazon.com now has “AmazonFresh” which brings back some of the missed glory from this company. 
• Webvan.com (after they killed HomeGrocer.com) – Safeway and Albertson’s delivery are but a pale immitation of HomeGrocer and Webvan.
• Kozmo.com – I personally loved how you could order a SINGLE ODWALLA JUICE and get that delivered to you NO CHARGE in under an hour!  It was insane!  It was the most incredibly decadent service you could imagine, and it was real for a time.  I’m sure it scaled better in places like Chicago and NYC where people lived vertically rather than places like Seattle where people live more horizontally.
• Amazon.com – Yes, I know Amazon’s still around.  But somehow I miss the times where the future was questionable for that company.  Back then there was this seat-of-your-pants manic-ness about Amazon that somehow doesn’t exist today.  It’s a great ecommerce site.  I buy a higher percentage of goods from Amazon more than any other non-grocery retailer – web or bricks-n-mortar.  Now, AMZN is also a platform company.  There’s a great future in their EC2 and S3 platform play. 
• MyLacky.com – We didn’t use this company much, but being able to outsource things like dry cleaning pick-up and house cleaning was pretty nice.  If we had a dog, we might have even outsourced dog walking.  Problem was, that they were not hiring ‘cheap’ labor.  There was no way this business was going to scale.

I’m sure there’s a whole ton of other companies that I’ve already forgotten about that seemed to good to be true.  Of course, they were, I suppose.  There’s a few that are still around (e.g. Amazon, OpenTable, eBay, Netflix, Buy, etc.) and I suppose those brands that have made it this far are likely to be fairly solid by this point.  Still, I miss the 90’s.  Especially in the current days of doom and gloom.  Back then, it was small guys giving things away for free so they could survive.  These days, it’s the big guys giving things away for free so that they can kill off the rest.

Nerdgasm alert!  Hooking up Twitter to my blog.  Now I can spam the world in yet another fashion.  BTW, this is clearly the best part of actually writing a blog: fiddling with Wordpress itself.  Content is a means to an end. 

Boy, when I geek out on Wordpress, I go all in! Now publishing blog posts from my phone! Now I really have mo excuse not to post more.

So, upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress, which is the first such upgrade since I installed Wordpress oh so many moons ago.  I’ve also gone with a new theme.  A white one to contrast the black one that I’d used for so long.

And to commemorate the occasion….  a new blog post!  Hopefully, there will be more blog posts than Wordpress updates, although dedicated readers will have heard that song and dance before.

Much has changed and stayed the same since my last blog post.  Hopefully, I will find the time to write them down.  That’s it for now!

I had every intention of entering a post into the “StuffWhitePeopleLike” contest in order to win a copy of the book and to also have a post featured on the site.  But they closed the contest at the beginning of Friday rather than the end of Friday, so I was unable to submit an entry.  I have to be honest and say that I may not have had time to pull it together regardless, but I like to think I could’ve.  I had several ideas ruminating in my head on this one. Some of these included:

1. Montessori preschools
2. Moby
3. Going to Late Night/24hr Restaurants in Ethnic (non-white) Neighborhoods
4. Exotic Hot Sauce
5. Adoption (but not of white kids)

I felt like I had a couple of thoughts on these that might elicit a chuckle or two, but the one that I had finally settled on was this:

Being a “Foodie”

White people are obsessed with food, though most of them don’t have the personal time, energy, or skill to make themselves a great meal on a daily basis.  Keep in mind that white people also hate corporations, so relying on those awful corporate purveyors of fat, calories, and over-sized portions is anathema to the typical advanced white person.  No McDonald’s, TGI Fridays, Applebee’s or KFC for Taite, Amanda, and the kids tonight (NOTE: For some reason, though, In-N-Out burger is exempt from this scorn because… well…. because the burgers have lettuce in them.  Or something.  Who knows?) !  No, none of that kind of food for the advanced white person because they are likely to be “Foodies.”

Foodies like to believe they have an advanced palate and that food is more than just nourishment, it is an experience.  They obsess over the minutiae of food preparation by world-class chefs and marvel over all steps of the food preparation and presentation process so that they can appreciate the holistic experience of consuming extremely expensive food.  However, many foodies are quick to point out that the “Foodie Experience” is not solely about consuming very expensive food. 

Foodies will invariably point to street food in exotic countries as part of the foodie experience, largely because there’s no multi-national corporation backing the local fast/street food.  And the fact that you can eat at a cart and not get sick – without even needing to pass a health inspection! – means that the raw ingredients used MUST be fresh and, therefore, good for you (many of these foodies will overlook the amount of carbs consumed from a noodle street cart in Tokyo, but will peel off the bun as if it were a soiled diaper from a hamburger purchased in America).  Another bonus of the street cart experience is that the foodie also feels like they’re really helping out the poor street vendor when they hand over a few coins to them and utter the few words of thanks they learned from their Fodor’s Guide.  If the white person comes back multiple times to eat at the same cart, they will feel like they’ve somehow bonded with the poor local and that the street vendor will remember them for the rest of his/her life because of the shared experience of eating some noodles or other exotic local delicacy.  It’s truly a win-win situation.

But a foodie cannot eat of street food to the exclusion of other food experiences, so it’s off to the white linen tablecloth establishments eventually.  Foodies can smell a corporation a mile away (again, turning a blind eye to the fact that ALL restaurants are corporations, just not big multi-national conglomerations), so even though a place might have flavorful food, there will always be something slightly off at the place that serves not only Thai but also Korean and Japanese fusion at the same time.  Those are places that are fine, if you’re “just slummin’ it” but those are never places one goes to have a Foodie Experience.

When engaging a white person you suspect may be a foodie, you should casually test the waters by mentioning a local sushi establishment as one of your favorites.  Be sure to know the name of the one with the least amount of seating and the highest per-roll cost.  That is typically a safe bet.  If the white person’s eyes light up and they start going on about the “rice preparation being the key” and so forth, then you know you’ve hit a foodie.  At that point, you should casually mention how you prefer the omikase since you “trust the sushi chef implicitly” and let on your distaste for fancy rolls with non-traditional ingredients.  From there, you can launch into the local donut shop “that has no parking but is so worth it anyway” and then move on to the 5-star restaurants in your local city.  At this point, the white person will have a tremendous amount of respect for your taste and intelligence and will likely invite you out to a “tasting” at some point in the future.

In my infrequent forays into blogging, I have yet to write about politics (I think).  Over the years since I was first able to cast a ballot, I have drifted ever left-ward in my political leanings.  I think perhaps that history may be more unkind to George W. Bush than the present.  It’s very likely that he will be remembered as the Worst President in American History.  Whether that mantle gives him any more comfort than being seen as one of the most Forgettable Presidents in American History only he can decide.  Perhaps it’s better to be remembered infamously than as just another name in a list that might be on the exam.  Who’s to say?

There’s no doubt that there are millions of people around the globe who feel Bush and his administration has set America and the World back.  And who knows how he might feel about that.  But I have to think that there’s at least 1 person who is pissed as hell.  And George will probably never live it down, and perhaps he even feels a little bad for the guy.  That person is, of course, Jeb Bush.  The likelihood that the country will allow another Bush into the White House after the debacle that is the GWB presidency is the lowest it has ever been.  And if it werent for the generally anti-intellectual sea of which the electorate is made up of, I would say that it’s impossible for it to ever happen.  But sorry to say that in American politics, nothing is impossible.  Nevertheless, Jeb Bush has got to be hoppin’ mad that his big brother has pretty much single-handedly killed his presidential aspirations.  Not that I worry too much about that, of course.

As a parent of a 2 and 5 year old, I go through the entire gamut of emotions nearly every day.  Children have a way of affecting you like no other power on Earth, but I have to say that a couple of things really stand out.

The first – and most clearly the best – feeling a parent gets from their child is an enormous sense of pride and love as they learn and grow and accomplish things for the first time.  These highs are pure joy, even for little things like drawing a recognizable face – complete with almost-round head, 2 eye-like things in roughly the right place, and a line or oval-shaped thing for a mouth – for the very first time, to more technically accomplished things like riding a bike without training wheels.

The other feeling is the most incredible, deepest heartbreak that you’ve ever felt because your child is/has experienced pain or sadness or frustration in his or her life.  The feeling a parent gets is overwhelming when your child is him/herself in pain either physical or emotional.

Over the last several days, I’ve noticed a story that’s been unfolding with someone whom I really only know by face and name, though we share many of the same friends.  Ellen and Matt K. had to let go of their daughter Emma, and I can only barely imagine a fraction of their feelings right now.  As a parent I can almost feel by proxy the heartache, sadness, and rage, but also the deep calm of having their other daughter Ella by their side.

Sometimes it is hard to reflect on a day-to-day basis when you’re dealing with noodles on the floor, tomato sauce on the doorway trim, snot being licked off an upper lip (our daughter’s own,fortunately), or a particularly insistent need to have scrambled eggs for breakfast rather than cereal, that these little frustrations will pass and that there’s another opportunity for joy to be had right around the corner (if nothing else, the immense joy of watching your child sleep), all that on top of whatever highs and lows one might have had at work that day along with any personal stresses stringing you out.  It is all too easy to forget. 

But due to the loose fraternity and sorority that parents share as cohorts and commiserators, it is at these times that we are reminded harshly that all of these experiences are really joys in that we would not trade them in for the alternative.  So, my heart goes out to the Kowalczyk family in this time, and I know that we’ll all hold our kids a little tighter.