Holly has a new post up at her site. It’s a cute story about Aaron. Everyone go look all at once and crash her server!
Present Tense
(PAST IMPERFECT)
Monthly Archives: July 2008
How to Make a Girl Who Just Joined the Swim Team Happy
With an athlete like Aaron in the family, Kennedy is always getting the short shrift. It’s not that Kennedy isn’t an athlete. She just has a much different approach to sports than Aaron. But swim team is the right sport for her. With all the kids milling about, the meets feel more like afternoon picnics than sporting events, and Kennedy really thrives in this kind of environment. She’s also pretty fast in the water.
I was explaining all this to my in-laws last week at the reunion. Kennedy was within earshot. I said I remembered standing on the side of the pool and noticing an enormous rooster tail of water making its way from one end of the pool to the other.
Grandpa Jim raised his eyebrows and nodded his head.
I told them I couldn’t figure out what it was, but it looked like a motor boat and it was getting all the parents in front of us wet. The rest of the swimmers were cheering.
I asked Holly what it was and she said, ‘Silly man. That’s your daughter.’
All the in-laws smiled and politely shooed off my tall tale, but I didn’t care. I was watching Kennedy, who looked up at me with her googly eyes and a smile that just wouldn’t quit.
Call it!
Just saw Dark Knight. Someone should make a movie where Harvey Dent faces off against Anton Chigurh. Now that would be an awsome movie.
Huckeba Sager Hood River Family Reunion
Every other year my mother-in-law and her sister organize a family reunion at a different destination. This year it was in Oregon’s Hood River valley.
We had a great view of Mount Hood from our front porch.
The Colombia River wasn’t a far drive.
We hiked up Beacon Rock, which has a lot of man-made switchbacks, rails, and bridges and looks a lot like a pachinko machine.
Some of us leapt into adventure on Hood River.
Others of us were content to sit on the sidelines.
Never disparage the sidelines. You never know what sights you might see. This woman and her three cattle dogs stole my imagination.
But the highlight of these sort of things is always meeting family and friends for a few days.
Company Picnic
I took the kids to the company picnic yesterday. Thirty-thousand geeks, 3 days in July, 1 farm nestled in the foothills of the Cascade mountains: Big fun.
The afternoon started off with motorcycle daredevils on a twenty foot ramp.
The sky grew dark, but no daredevils were lost.
The children were impressed.
In boot-camp, they said the smoking lamp was lit and it meant you could have a cigarette whenever you wanted to light up. The first time I heard it, I wanted to know where this lamp was. I wanted to keep my eye on it. On the way to the park, I told the kids that if they ate a good lunch, the soda lamp was lit for the rest of the afternoon. Both their eyes got big as cans of pop. Neither asked to see the actual lamp.
We played games.
We waited in lines.
Went on rides.
And then the soda lamp was extinguished.
Raymond Carver on Insight
What good is insight? It only makes things worse.
-Raymond Carver.
I found this lovely Carver quote in a wonderful little book about how to write memoir by Abigail Thomas called, Thinking About Memoir.
In Celebration of Weapons of Mass Destruction
Aaron has a knack for hitting the ball. He’s so good, his nickname is A-bomb. He made it into the Little League All Stars this year, so earlier this month, we deocrated all our cars for the big tournament. Recently I’ve been getting strange looks at stop lights.
On my driver’s side rear window, I drew a little mushroom cloud and wrote, “GO A-BOMB!”
Tracking Visitors to Your Blog
Last week I was traveling for business (something I rarely have to do) and I learned that I am not the only one from my company that visits my blog. How did I know this? I use three different packages to track visits to this site. Why three? Each offers something a little bit different.
SiteMeter: Gives me immediate feedback about visits. There is even a link that tells you who is accessing the site right now(it shows visits from the last 20 minutes). Once I emailed a story submission to an editor who I knew lived in a certain town in Massachusetts. Later that week that very same Massachusetts town lit up on my SiteMeter chart. Not long after, that very same editor offered me some good news about my submission. Gotta love that kind of feedback.
WordPress.com Stats: This is an essential add-on widget for WordPress. The user interface is good for getting an idea which blog posts are most popular and seeing which strings are used in searches on your site.
Google Anylytics: Good for analyzing trends. Lovely user interface. For some reason the cities and towns that light up on SiteMeter don’t always light up on the Google Analytics map. I have no idea why this happens, but it’s annoying. I haven’t spent much time with this yet.
You never know what you’ll find when you start tracking visits to your site. I had always thought all those visits from my company’s domain where my own visits. As for you visitors from the company (you know who you are), leave some comments already. I know you’re out there.
Page of True Stories
I added a page to the site where I can showcase my writing.
I added one new piece and put some links top stuff I’ve already discussed in other posts. The title of the new essay is 20/20. This one earned kind comments from an editor who rejected it. I hope you like it.
On the new page, I’ve got links to the New York Times article and to my essay on Brevity. I believe my Brevity story is going to come down at some point, so I thought I’d get some other stuff posted. I added two stories from my childhood memoir project that I previously posted, but now on pages of their own.
Things still looks a little sparse, so I’ll try and get some other stuff up soon.
Ramblin Man
I got The Complete Led Zeppelin for $9.99 at Rhapsody, RealNetwork’s music service. That’s 165 MP3 files encoded at 256 kbps with no DRM for less than 10 dollars. It must have been some sort of goof up because they have raised the price to $59.99. I love MP3 with no DRM. You never know when a DRM provider is going to change the standard, go out of business, or abandon their technology.
Present Tense 