Naked Olympics?

This article discusses a new Speedo swimsuit that is helping its wearers shatter records like crazy, as well as affecting (easing) their access to the Olympics. The article mentions 36 records, some of them simply obliterated it seems, in the last couple of weeks alone. I don't know about you, but as soon as I read that the suit "aids streamlining and reduces skin vibration and muscle oscillation", I think it shouldn't be allowed. Perhaps it is time for the Olympics to return to their naked roots?

Some of my friends may comment that I have distinctly mixed feelings about the current steroid scandals with respect to baseball. I think using them is wrong, for a variety of reasons, but I may not care as much in baseball. This is particularly true because current/recent players are being excoriated for it and people are claiming it taints recent stats compared to the past. I think that's disingenuous because there have been other substances used in eras past. Think of speed, coke, etc.

Amen, Sister

I have the same feeling from time to time!

The Wise One

Rachel and two friends, while playing after school one day:

Kelly (can't find something): My mom's going to kill me if I can't find it!

Emma: I don't think she's actually going to kill you.

Rachel: It's just an EXPRESSION, Emma!

New Addition

Our son, Zachary, was born at 3:52pm Pacific (daylight) Time on March 24, 2008. He was 7 lbs., 7 oz., and 19 1/4". For those who might care, his APGARs were 9 and 9. He is very cute and healthy, and eating and sleeping well.

Another Bird, More Similar Feathers

I was talking to a friend about coming for a BBQ today at 4 and asked how it would work for his son. AJ is 4 months old, so naturally what I meant was whether it was a good time with respect to naps. My friend, in just my sarcastic manner, said "I checked his schedule and he is definitely free in the afternoon and evening."

Birds of a Feather

A couple of weeks ago I was trying to talk a neighbor into interviewing for one of our engineering jobs. He's not going to right now because his wife is pregnant, and the baby is due in May. They don't know the gender, yet.

"Are you going to find out?"
"Well, yeah, eventually."
"Oh, yeah. You'd fit in fine at our office."

When else?

Rachel often spends Wednesday afternoons and evenings with my parents. The other night, my mother was getting out vitamins after dinner:

"What are you doing, Carol?"
"Getting out the evening vitamins."
"What about the evening dessert?"

Stick It to the Man

Thursday, we got something in the mail from the state controller's office, addressed to the previous owner, a woman who was in her 90s, living a convalescent home, when we bought the house 6 years ago this month. We opened the letter to make sure it wasn't something about the property that would matter to us.

It's not. It's a notice that some account is going to be turned over to the state later this year if they don't hear from her. At first glance, I thought it was about $39k, so I figured I'd call the realtor and see if she knew how to get in touch with him. This was easy; until we decided to put an offer on the house, she was also our realtor, and she has been the buyer's realtor for every property anyone in my family as bought in the last 25 years.

She said she'd do some searching; the family was actually represented by the second son and she had a fax that seemed to have been his. She told me his name and said she put out some feelers and to let her know if I found anything. I was going to leave it at that until I took a closer look at the letter. It turns out that it's not 39k dollars, it's 39k shares of Franklin CA tax-free income, a mutual fund worth $7 a share. If you don't feel like doing the math yourself, 30k shares would be 210,000 and 40k shares would be 280,000. Dollars.

I typed the name into Zaba Search, though I don't really think much of that organization, based on some of what they planned to do and how they planned to do it. They were going to allow anyone to write anything about anyone and have almost no way for people to refute the statements or find out who wrote it. Haven't paid much attention to find out whether they did.

The search turned up a variety of people with the name, something like 54 in the state, one of whom appeared to live in the Bay Area and be the right general age (71). I clicked on one of the links, to intellius.com, and got back an initial list of names. One of them happened to show that the first name is an abbreviation (Leo), and the 71 year-old I was looking at is named Leonard and happens to have lived in Berkeley.

I paid $7.90 to get a list of 14 of these Leonards, starting with that one. I probably could have stuck with the $2.95 version but figured I might as well splurge for the extra $5 to see if they had any address or phone number confirmation. I called the phone number (same area code and prefix of the fax number Gaby gave me) and spoke to the woman who answered.

I tried to establish some credibility by giving her my whole name (and by calling on my unblocked cell phone) and telling her that I'd bought my house in Berkeley from him. She asked me if it was a certain address, which is next door, so I corrected her. That seemed to do it. Leo was out at the time, but she's going to have him call back and was very appreciative - I think she thanked me about 6 times when we were getting off the phone, and I didn't even tell her how much it was worth. I did mention that it seemed as if it was a fair amount of money.

Trying to Organize

"Look rubber gloves!"

"I called to say hi and see how you're doing, not have you ridicule my collections of crap."

Waiting for Butter

Look! There is the plastic wrap for the butter. Waiting, patiently, for the butter to come back.

Really?

Yes! And it's going to be upset if it gets thrown in the trash, rather than used for the butter. Because it's waiting for the butter.

OK!

And this is NOT like waiting for Godot!