The State of Adman

Hello everyone!

At the beginning of this year, my company announced, much to our happy surprise, that they were increasing the number of half days. Typically, the day after Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve would be half days. With the change, we basically get a half-day before every holiday (I think it was six new half-days), including this previous Friday! Given the free afternoon, and that Diana was going to be hanging out with my mom and her mom, it seemed like a perfect time to get away and play a little golf. Thankfully, Iwan and Little Buhr thought that was a good idea as well, so we hit up Lomas for pretty much the best day of golf ever.

Iwan was in charge of the scoring. Since we were playing multiple types of games at once, this was no small feat. We played normal stroke play (with Iwan giving me and Little Buhr strokes), as well as match play. We also played “Bingo, Bango, Bongo”, where you get a point for being first on the green, closest to the pin, and longest putt. We also played “Wolf”, which is too complicated to explain here. Most important to me, however, was straight up stroke play against Little Buhr.

Little Buhr and I have recently found ourselves in somewhat of a Tournament of Champions. On a recent Mammoth trip, we played many games of 9-ball. Over New Years, we played at least a dozen games of ping pong. We recently went bowling. In each of those events, he absolutely creamed me, and I loved it. We even did a Rock Band drum battle (him on Easy and me on Expert), and he beat me there, too! I’m used to being pretty competitive in games like these. At least, I’m certainly NOT accustomed to getting crushed over and over again. So I’ve kind of entered into my own personal challenge against Little Buhr, just for fun. He is now my nemisis (which, I should say, I mean as a compliment).

We talked about this previously, and he said we should hit the golf course and that I’d probably beat him there. And so we did.

We had a ton of fun golfing on Friday. I was putting my shoes off, hitting multiple 15 footers, as well as probably the longest putt of my life, all the way across a huge green. I think I had 3 birdies. When it came to the 18th hole, I did some quick addition and saw that I was winning by two strokes. However, I finished the last hole with a 5, and Little Buhr was putting for 3, and he made it. After he made the putt, I said that I thought we’d tied, but when Iwan added up the scores, I’d actually won by a single stroke. So, a point for me in a long string of losses. I know he likes tennis, so maybe that will be our next challenge. Oh, and we also talked about kicking field goals. I think we need to arrange a field-goal kicking contest, too.

Saturday, we visited my parents who were in town for the weekend, and it was nice to see them. Allison is in a stage where she’s a little leery of anyone besides me and Diana, but she did ok. I met up with Baditude and others for some gaming later that night (Shadows over Camelot and Bohnanza). Both games require a lot of communication between players, which rubs me a little bit the wrong way. I don’t like trying to convince someone what the best move is. I don’t like other people telling me what to do, and why it’s in my best interested to do that. I don’t like seeing people make moves that are “obviously” (heavily arguable) a bad move. So many “I don’t like” statements makes it sound a little stronger than I feel, but I think I prefer games where each player makes his own decisions. A little table-talk is good, but not too much.

The gaming went late into the night, when I got a call from Diana. Little Allison was not sleeping very well, and Diana needed a break. I came home and helped out for the rest of the night while Diana slept, and Diana took over in the morning and let me sleep late. That worked out pretty well.

In spite of some sleeping issues, Allie has been doing absolutely great. She has two new tricks: spitting and sitting. She’s discovered that, like a trumpet player without a trumpet, you can make a pretty cool sound if you purse your lips together tightly and blow air out. There was one night when she was lying in her crib, happy as a clam, spitting all over the place. I took a video of it, just to get the sound.

Her other cool move is sitting up by herself. In the course of a week, she’s gone from not being able to sit up at all (no balancing, just toppling over) to staying up by herself really well. And even if she does fall over, you can tell that she’s trying NOT to fall over by throwing her weight in the proper direction. It’s pretty cool, and fun to see her sitting up like a big girl.

Sunday was a quiet day, mostly recovering from the night before. Diana and I have been watching “Band of Brothers” again, which we’re really enjoying. Monday was a day off from work, and we walked around Encinitas and had a nice family day. We also watched the latest Jason Bourne movie (Bourne Ultimatum?), which I thought was good-not-great. What’s funny is that walking around Encinitas, we went into a bookstore and Diana saw the Bourne Ultimatum The Book. She read the back cover synopsis, and it sounded TOTALLY different than the plot of the movie. The book sounded like David Webb was living a quiet life until some bad thing happened, and he had to “reprise” his role of Jason Bourne one last time. Uh, what? Anyhoo, that was crazy.

Work has been going well. Our mandate of 50 hours a week has been cut to 45 hours a week, so that’s pretty cool. My Rock Band careers are continuing along (Guitar on Expert and Drums on Hard). I’m replaying Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and loving it all over again. I still simply can’t believe how much content is packed into that game.

So, there you go. Did I forget anything?