AC Capehart capehart

There are plenty of What’s your [insert topic] name? memes running around — we even did these before we had the internet to do them with. At the time, the memes (though we didn’t call them that) were the specific rules that made up your name. For example your soap opera name was made up of your first pet followed by street you grew up on. My soap opera character was the androgynous Buffy Green.

OK, so this is kind of a Sam post. But since two of these happened today, I thought they should go up. Carolyn and I were walking toward the post office. I was carrying Sam in the baby björn, and an older woman in one of those golfcart/wheelchair hybrids rolled along toward us. She stopped her cart to ask, in amazement, “Is that a real baby?” How do you answer these things?

A reader suggested that maybe it had been far too long since I talked about my darling daughter. And yeah, she’s right, it has been. I’m stuck seeking part 2 of the virtual lives thing, and I didn’t want to interrupt the flow. But, oh well. Sam rocks. She came to watch me play soccer this evening. It’s so great to have her and mom there. Unfortunately, they are usually ready to go before I am, and since I bring the soccer ball and the cones, when I leave, the party’s over.

I wanted to jot down some quick notes as I play Second Life about the nature of online relationships. As I started to write, I felt like I needed to include a little back story. Writing this intro paragraph, I realize that already what follows is too long for a single blog post, and I’m not even out of the back story yet. That said, I’m not going to break it up further.

OK, it’s not that I’m always the last to know things. But it seems like I don’t act very quickly on things that I do hear. (Recall being amazed at photo postage when I saw it — only 6 months (or more) after I first heard about it). Well, it’s happened again. Pandora has been floating around in my periphery for some time now. It’s a “music discovery service” that I just “discovered”One of my favorite David Sedaris quotes concerns qualities he was looking for in a boyfriend — “He must not say he ‘discovered’ a restaurant that was right there in the phone book all along.

Today, I’m another year wiser, more mature, experienced and centered. I’m also another year heavier, achier, creakier and more forgetful. I’m never really sure what to make of birthdays any more. Somehow, I still have this expectation left over from childhood that they will be magical and wondrous in unimaginable ways. Needless to say, they end up being like most every other day, but for a scattering of presents, well wishes, and maybe a nice meal out.

The Pennsylvania Turnpike is an expensive but expedient way for us to get back to the Philadelphia area where Mom-mom and Granddaddy live. It is narrow, busy, and often under (much-needed) repair. When we were in Pittsburgh for Carolyn’s birthday last year, we picked up whatever the local City Paper-style paper is called. In it, there was an article or editorial lambasting the Pennsylvania Turnpike which, among other things, called it a blight on the face of Pennsylvania.

Dear Sam, When I started this, “monthly” seemed like the right time frame. In fact, it seemed a little aggressive. Thinking about my own life, it seems that little actually changes month-to-month. Maybe my vocabulary increased by 1 word (this month, it was papabile), maybe I put on a pound, (or took if off if I was lucky). I was worried that I’d have nothing to say about your growth.

I’ve got a number of unwritten posts in my head. (Albeit a small number.) Still, I wanted to get this one up now because it’s just too cute. The website she’s playing at is kneebouncers.com which I first wrote about here. She still doesn’t have the responsive nature of it down. She pretty much mashes the keyboard and watches the screen, but I’m pretty sure she knows that it reacts to her.

I’ve been to the west coast twice in the past 5 years. Each time I’ve been out there, I’ve lost a grandmother. I’m all out of grandmothers. Indeed, Ruth was the last of my grandparents to die. What follows was sent to me by one of my uncles, titled “Ruth’s magical journey of magicalness.” While no life can be adequately expressed in text, especially in just a couple of pages of text, I find that this does give the reader a nice overview and glimpse into life of an extrodinary woman.