Today, Paula is substitute-teaching at St. Pius X–she’s in for, of all things, the gym teacher. It’s her first substitute job, and the circumstances could be better–the kids have been off for a week because of the hurricane, and phys. ed. is not her strong suit (she had to look up the rules for kickball online last night, and get a briefing from our 7th grader which he called “Kickball for Dummies”). But at least it’s convenient in some strange sort of way–both of our boys go to St. Pius, and neither of them has gym today.

So, I got to take our daughter Zo? to preschool this morning. It was my first trip back to the Wee School since Jonah, now in 4th grade, graduated to kindergarten. Same place, some of the same faces, but a different crop of pre-schoolers and parents. Well, different in their actual identities, but the same in their cast roles.

There’s still the neurotic, pushover mom, who told her manipulative, clinging son that his friend was coming to school today (when she wasn’t) and watches from 20 feet away as he dances at the parking lot curb waiting for her car to show up, and then screams bloody murder when she finally decides to go pick him up and bring him in and deposit him and split. Different woman, different kid, same script, same roles.

The drill of arrival at the Wee School is familiar–find your kids cubby, and watch as she pulls a token with her name on it and slides it under the classroom door to announce her arrival. The laminated construction paper tokens are familiar; they’ve downgraded the backing that holds them to the door from a magnet to velcro, but the idea is still the same. Zo? quickly found her pink crayon tag on the door and slid it under, then climbed back up on me and told me to knock for her.

Ms. Karen, who has been pre-school teacher to all three of our kids now, greeted me warmly. It’s been five years since I saw her, and she’s still the same enthusiastic, warm, pre-school cast woman she was then. She gushed about how tall Kevin, our 7th grader, had gotten–she had been his pre-school teacher 10 years ago, and had seen him when he came in for the open house. She still gets Jonah’s name wrong, calling him Noah.

In two years, we’ll have completed another cycle through the Wee school, and Zo? will start pre-K at St. Pius, following her big brothers’ footsteps. Kevin will head to high school, and Zo? will take his place back at the bottom of the stack. It’s the circle of daycare, and we’ll have completed our third cycle.

Looks like my kids may be home from school Thursday and Friday, thanks to that hurricane headed our way.

It’s my birthday.  Again.   And now that I stand on the
cusp of 40, I think I’ve finally outlived the juvenile drama that goes
with birthdays–the buildup and hype, the anticipation, and the
inevitable post-birthday letdown with the return to normalcy. 

After all, most of the smaller things that I desire (music, 
books,  and the like) are well within my own reach, and those
things that aren’t impulse purchases that I find somewhat desirable are
just shinier, more expensive versions of the things I already
have.  Once I realize that, my desire for things rapidly turns to
indifference.

Sure, another guitar
is always nice.  But, as I tell my wife frequently as we stroll
through Ikea, “Where would we put it?”   (This generally
results in our escape from Ikea for under $200).

Maybe a newer, faster Mac G5 dual processor so I can videoconference
and render DVDs of my latest documentary epic at the same time. 
But where would I put it? Would that really make me happy?  (Well,
it would make Steve happy, probably)

Not any more happy than I am on average,
probably, based on what Jon Gertner reported in last Sunday’s NY Times
Magazine.  It seems that people just don’t get happier in the long
term from the acquisition of things, or the accumulation of more
money…they just get used to it.  (As the father of two boys
caught in the endless Nintendo upgrade loop, I could have saved Harvard
a lot of research investment on that point).

The Buddhists are right–things own you, especially Things on a macro
level, like houses, cars, and stock portfolios.  They require care
and feeding that distracts you from the rest of living.  And the
higher-end they are, the more care and feeding they require.

So, if you want to give me something for my birthday, give me an
extended deadline, or a day off in the park on my bike.  
Sure, maybe a new mountain bike might be nice (considering the terrain in the park) but my current ride
is more than most guys my age have indulged in.  Give me a
hand-drawn card, a Manhattan, a Che Guevara t-shirt from a Cuban thrift
store.  Give me a few minutes of intelligent conversation.

Save that other stuff for when I turn 40.  (Or, if you’re in a rush, for Christmas.)

You
wouldn’t believe the size of the spiders we saw on the Eastern Shore
and the Outer Banks this August.   It left me wondering if
there was a direct relationship between the record mosquito population this summer and the size and health of the coastal arachnid population.

I thought about this again the other day as I watched Eight-Legged Freaks
on HBO (David Arquette’s best outing yet–though that might not be
saying much). The movie was a great way to waste 99 minutes of your life;  I particularly enjoyed the  trapdoor spiders in the movie, and the “Gremlins”-like sound effects used to represent the scampering spiders as they overran town.

The movie reminded me of the giant orb spider (about 8
inches from leg tip to leg tip-sse the second photo at right) I saw in the brush when we stopped  on
the eastern shore of Virginia l–it looked like it could eat small birds that flew into
its web.

And
I wondered: is this what global warming has in store for us? Wetter
springs, more mosquitos carrying West Nile Virus (or malaria, or
whatever), and bigger and bigger arachnids that will one day start
snatching family pets and dragging them into their sticky lairs? 
Will I have to face down a thirty-foot mutant tarantula in my lifetime?

Probably not.  But it’s fun to think about, in some perverse, geeky,  sci-fi schlock way.

Photos of our week in the Outer Banks are posted online here

Over the weekend, my disk quota on my hosting and mail account with Toadnet mysteriously exceeded its ceiling. And rather than just shutting down uploads to the site, the host overwrote any files that were already on the site that had been changed with blank pages. In other words, my weblogs on that host were essentially wiped from existence.

For this, and dial-up access from the road, I’ve been paying $50 a month.

So, the time has come to completely pull the plug. I just redirected my domains to a new domain name server at my bargain-basement hosting service, where my disk quota is larger by more than a factor of 10 and my hosting bill is $8 a month. I will no longer suffer in the name of supporting locals. As soon as the DNS refreshes, my move of all my weblogs (except for the one hosted by Userland) will be complete.

Due to circumstances beyond our control, we’ve had to move Gallagheria to www.thepacketrat.com/gallagheria/. Please reset your bookmarks.