It's 2011: Where's My Flying Car?

I mean, at the very least, there must be a hoverboard or something on the way. Christopher Lloyd taught me that. Where we're going, we don't need roads.

It's a new year, and the kids are sleeping.

Damn, that felt nice and relaxing to type. In fact, I like that feeling so much, I'm going to type it again.

It's a new year, and the kids are sleeping.

Aaaaahhhh....

Although Benjamin and Kristopher are getting to be a lot more fun during the day, it's still nice to have a time when they're asleep and not either demanding attention, screaming their heads off, or (more likely) both. Kris and I have a little game we play now where we mimic each other, and then he laughs and farts on me. It usually starts out with him grabbing my finger, then I stick my tongue out at him, then he sticks his tongue out at me, then I make a fish-face, then he makes a fish-face, then I touch my cheek, then he touches his cheek, then I very slowly say either "Daddy" or "plutonium," (I'd be overjoyed if either was his first word, but I'm leaning toward the latter) and that's when he always laughs and farts on my leg. Sigh.

Benjamin, on the other hand, isn't quite as good at playing the game with me. Although he inherited most of his looks from the Pulver side of the family apparently (with the exception of his eyes), he also seems to have inherited both my attention span and my unfortunate tendency to be magnetized by shiny objects. We'll start the game and he'll get the first few tongue-sticking-out bits right, but then he'll notice the texture of the bumps and lines on the ceiling or the light reflecting off that Marvin the Martian cell on the wall, and forget all about our game. He does still fart at the end, though, I guess to let me that he's sorry for not finishing.

But there's no game-playing going on right now - everyone's asleep, as Debby finishes singing a song from Mary Poppins and some really cruel lullaby involving sticking your baby up in a tree with some furniture and watching it all come crashing down. I don't get how this is supposed to be soothing, but perhaps repeated singing of this lullaby explains how violent TV shows stay on the air. Or maybe people hitting their heads like that explains why Kenny Chesney has so many fans.

Speaking of bad music, I just saw a commercial for the Grammy awards, and I have to ask: am I the only one who finds it terribly depressing? Call me a pop culture snob, ("Okay, you're a pop culture snob." Thanks for that.") but are Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga really the most talented musicians the world can come up with to honor? Seriously, pitch correction technology is the worst thing to happen to the music world since Yoko Ono. In a time when Bruce Springsteen, John Fogerty, Metallica, Delain, Within Temptation, Amy Lee, Rush, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Natalie Merchant, Darius Rucker, Reba McEntire, Buddy Guy, and Quincy Jones all have relatively recent album releases, I'm supposed to get excited by "Baby, Baby, Baby"?? Please. Where would these people be without audio processing and pitch correction, I wonder?

Debby and I made it to church today for the first time since the kids were born - we found a nice Methodist cathedral up on a hill (I didn't even know there was such thing as a Methodist cathedral). The sermon was the kind of thing I really enjoy: biblical scholarship, getting into the original Hebrew of the Bible and talking about how it's commonly translated and what it's really meant to say. I think the kids enjoyed that part, since they were pretty quiet during it. Kristopher let out a big poop during "Joy to the World", though, so maybe he doesn't like Christmas carols. And both boys started screaming while we were taking communion - I guess they wanted some body and blood of Christ, too. They seemed happy enough later with some soy milk.

I'm heading back to Tech tomorrow to have a discussion with a professor about a paper Tech wants me to submit to the Academy of Management for inclusion in their next conference (can you imagine... me, speaking at a conference??!? Will wonders never cease?). I'm honored that the school thinks my paper on authentic leadership, self-monitoring, and self-delusion is good enough to even be considered for inclusion - but it will be tough to get it accepted, given that I'm just a doctoral student rather than a full professor, and given that it's a theoretical paper without data to back it up. Still, I've really bought into the logic lately that you'll miss every shot you don't take. So I'm going to give it a shot - I think my comrade Kerry is, as well. Hopefully we'll both make onto the agenda for the conference and get to speak in beautiful San Antonio. I haven't given a presentation there in years, but I remember they loved my Alamo jokes.

So wish us luck!