I’m going to put an end to any fears you may have while reading this: what you are about to hear (assuming you talk to yourself as you read) is going to sound a lot worse than it actually is.

Last week, Kaylee contracted an illness called Fifth Disease.  Now, here the point where you’re probably panicking: “did he say disease?!  Oh no!  The sky is falling!”  No, it’s just a virus.  And a weak one, at that.  It was named around 1880, and was given that moniker because it was the fifth common childhood “disease” on the list.  And, clearly, it wasn’t severe enough to actually be called something unique, like most of the other ailments on the list.

Fifth is caused by the Parvovirus B19 strain.  For anyone familiar with Parvo, you’re probably immediately thinking “dog.”  The difference between the Parvo that infects dogs and the one that infects humans is in that “B19″ part of the name.  So, no, Kaylee did not catch the Guatamalan Canine Flu.  What she caught is more closely related to measles or rubella, only far less so.  And it’s related to Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease, but only very indirectly.  To put to rest any fears you may have, let me put it this way: Parvo is to the other illnesses listed her as spitball is to ballistic missile.

Symptoms of Fifth are:

• Mild fever
• Sniffles
• A bright red rash on the cheeks, generally only present in children
• A splotchy rash over the rest of the body, similar in appearance to the illnesses listed above
• Joint pain, primarily present only in adults
• Itching on the rash, generally only in people older than 10

At this point, you’re wondering how she could have been exposed to a virus that causes an illness you’ve probably never heard of unless you are a parent and your kid has had it.  Well, chances are you’ve been exposed to it — by adulthood, 60 percent of us have been exposed to it, caught it and become immune.  It’s not exactly a rare virus.

She started showing the rash Friday (10/10), the day after her physical and a vaccination she still needed to be caught up on.  So, I figured it was a minor reaction to the vaccine, and just kept a close watch on it.  Aside from some redness, she had no problems — not even an itch.  Red cheeks and a few splotches on her arms, and that’s it.  But by Saturday it had spread over the entirety of her arms and was creeping across her back.  I had Nurse Neighbor come take a look, and we then proceeded to research.  A quick google of “red splotches on a toddler’s arms and cheeks” immediately brought me to Fifth/Parvo.  When I saw the symptoms, I remember that Kaylee had a runny nose most of the week, and that her temp had gone up ever so slightly Wednesday night — so slightly that I didn’t even bother checking to get the actual number.

I also remembered another symptom I had seen in her: Thursday night, after the physical, she was complaining about knee pain.  I figured it was from the injection, which was in her thigh — sore muscles from a shot.

Sunday, the rash got even worse, but she still wasn’t itching.  Now, the good part of all this is that, once the rash appears, the illness is no longer contagious.  Double-Plus-Good for me (any George Orwell readers remember where that came from?).  Of course, I figured there was no way on God’s Green Earth that she’d be allowed in school looking like that, even if I told them no one would catch it.  And, of course, I still was only basing the diagnosis off of things I found on the Interwebs.  So, a quick trip to the doctor Monday morning confirmed my diagnosis, and she was back to school, none the worse for wear.  All is well with her world.

But not mine.

Remember that “60 percent of adults are immune” comment?  Well, it would seem that I’m in the minority.

At first I thought it was just heat.  After all, I’d been in the office/studio/gameroom writing and recording a song.  That’s the hottest room in the house, especially with a computer, a printer and recording equipment running.  But, eventually, I came to the realization (after a closer look the next day revealed red splotches on my arms that continued to grow as the day progressed) that I, too, was pleading the Fifth.  Or, more correctly, Scratching the Fifth.  I’ve got the itch and the need to scratch it.  Everywhere.  Constantly.  It actually woke me up at least five times last night.

So, give me another three or four days before you call me or text me or even talk face-to-face with me about anything that may be annoying.  Because, given how annoyed I am at the moment with this itching, I may just have to give you a serious beat-down.

I enjoy my life.  There’s not much I have to complain about, aside from a pending divorce.  But of the few things about my life that I could actually say suck — and it’s generally a relative concept, as in, “relative to winning a million dollars on the same day a Belgian supermodel falls in love with me, not having a garage is kinda crappy” — there’s one that stands out and truly pains me every day.  It’s the fact that I can’t save the world.  By God, I’ll try my best, but I’m just me.  And the only man who can do it hasn’t come back yet.

But, yes, not being able to fix what’s wrong truly burdens my heart.  I see so much war, crime, bigotry and just general hate in the world, and I want to tell these people that it is the meek, humble and compassionate who shall inherit the earth, not the dictators and warmongers.

But there is something I can help fix, and I’m going to do all in my power to do so.  And you can help.

You all know I’m a single father, and we’re hundreds of miles from our nearest family.  My life revolves around that little girl, and I spend most of my time worrying about her.  When she has the sniffles, my heart aches for her.  When she cries for her “Dedo,” I want to cry too.  All minor, passing afflictions, to be sure, but she’s not just someone who depends on me; she’s part of me.

It’s that build-up that brings me to Katie Fitch, a beautiful little three-year-old from Florence, South Carolina.

See, Katie has hepatoblastoma.  Don’t try to say it, or you might wind up with your tongue in a splint.  But, essentially, it’s a cancerous tumor of the liver.  Cancer.  In a three-year-old.

My next-door neighbor and close friend is a pediatric nurse who deals with cancer patients all the time.  I have no idea how she can see this stuff on a regular basis and be anything more than a basket case for her entire shift — I merely read a story about someone and almost broke down crying in part because of the innocent child being afflicted with such a horror, and also because I can’t do anything about it.

Katie’s family is taking donations; you can contribute directly from the Web site they’ve set up for her.  I ask anyone who can give to do so.  Help make a future for someone who doesn’t even really have a past yet.  I implore you to find some way to scrape up a donation, even if it’s only a few bucks you scraped together by foregoing a cup of coffee, a Big Mac or a pack of cigarettes.  And please, tell your friends and family.

None of us can save the world.  But if everyone tried to save a small slice of it, we wouldn’t just save it — we’d make it infinitely better.

You can read all about young Katie and make a donation at KatieFitch.com.

Do I really look that old?
We often develop close relationships with the people around us at our jobs.  Those relationships, though (in Information Technology, at least) are usually tightly based on alcohol consumption, and not so much on actual personal knowledge of one another.  On my birthday a week ago, at a small celebration in my honor held by my manager and open to my coworkers, a friend speculated on my age.

He guessed 35.

D’oh!

I decided to let him live, but that wasn’t a decision I came to lightly.  I think it was based largely on the fact that there were several witnesses (if you so much as say “cake” in an IT department, you better have experience running with the bulls in Pamplona).

And They Partied On…And On…
I vowed this year that I would make up for last year’s birthday — the only way my 27th could have sucked worse is if someone had kicked me in the cajones, repeatedly, the entire day.  So, with that in mind, the party kicked off on Monday, August 11.  A trip to the beach — the Outer Banks is my new Favorite Place On Earth™ — launched the festivities.  A week of U.S. Olympic triumph, presumably in my honor, then ensued.

We won’t go into all the details — no, there was no debauchery, but there was food, music, general fun to be had by all, and even a $10 prize for finishing third in a beer pong tournament at a local bar.  I finally let the party give up the ghost on Monday, August 18, sometime around 11:45 p.m.  And, I’ve got to say, I think it ended a little too soon.  I had a semi-crappy 19th birthday too, so I still have a little bit of karmic make-up to do.

I got out tonight.  It doesn't happen often — the last time I recall getting out with friends was no more recent than early June, if that — and that's fine by me.  First of all, I'm a father now.  No, scratch that…I'm a daddy now, and that more than fulfills my desires in life.  Aside from an impending divorce, things in my life are wonderful.  But it's always a good thing to get out of the house with people whose vocabularies extend beyond the monosyllabic.

We went to a fancy-shmancy place downtown in the state-famous Glenwood South district.  Think of Amsterdam's red-light district, but without the illicit debauchery.  Okay, so if you take away the debauchery, you're pretty much left with the top floor of a college library.  Scratch that comparison.

The place was called The Red Room.  As far as I know, it's still called The Red Room, but I haven't been there for about an hour.  Crazier things have happened.  Anyway, it's one of those places that is as far from a Texas steakhouse as you can get: modern decor, dim lighting, no stuffed animal carcasses on the walls and portions that make Weight Watchers' meals look like a Thanksgiving feast.  The guy sitting next to me ordered — I kid you not — roast duck with bananas drizzled with chocolate.  Thus the name of this post; get your heads out of the gutter, you sick freaks.

We hung around until about 10:00, then went downstairs to a place called Hi5.  Again, a nice place.  A beer, one drunk guy who clearly had passed "three sheets to the wind" right about the time we were placing our food orders upstairs, and 30 minutes of dancing later and it was back to The Red Room — which had transformed itself over the course of half an hour from a modern, high-priced restaurant to a typical college-town bar.

One member of my entourage (we'll call it that because it gives me a significant ego boost) was meeting a friend at Hi5, and he came along with us back to Romper Room.  I mention this not because that part was significant, but because I realized this evening the fine line between a guy dancing because the women are, and dancing waaaaaaay too much.  It's okay for a guy to dance in public given the following conditions: 1) the hands stay below the shoulders at all times unless he is "raising the roof" — and this has to occur at precise times and only during a select group of songs; 2) there must be a beer in his hand at all times; and 3) he must never, never dance to the point where he breaks a sweat in an air-conditioned room. 

Now, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt because we were there with the best-looking women in the place.  Sometimes a guy has to break the rules to please the gals.  But I've got to deduct a point or two based on the fact that the group had dwindled from about nine women and four men to six women and one man (me); when this new guy joined the group, I no longer had the inherent appearance of the ladies' gay friend.  But the testosterone-charged scales were in a precarious balance that was teetering on the edge of over-estrogenation, and it collapsed spectacularly about the time it became obvious to anyone within a 20-foot radius that he had broken a sweat.

I would like it to be known that I think nothing less of him, and he seems to be a pretty cool guy.  Sometimes, in the presence of women, you've got to bite the bullet, put your testicles on a shelf someplace and dance the night away.  Mind you, I refuse and my left knee does too.  You just have to be careful not to cross the line, and all will be well.  But there's a rule here that needs to be remembered in the future: men sweat; women and dancers "glisten."

Other Ramblings

In computer programming, circular dependencies create catastrophic results.  In the District of Columbia, they're called "Democratic Stump Speeches."

Brilliant.

That is how I describe Barrack Obama.  Yes, you are reading InvertedMind and, yes, you read that right.  He is a brilliant, brilliant man.  No one on earth is as clever at distracting Americans from his inability to do anything but pander to the people.

Here's an example: Obama has proposed a second round of tax rebates, $500 for individuals and $1,000 for families, to offset the cost of rising gasoline costs through the end of the year.  Sounds like a good idea, eh?

Slow down, Speed Racer.

This is the same man who has already stated he would raise your taxes.  And don't think it's just your income taxes, either; he wants to increase the "death tax" — if your loved one dies, you get taxed even more on the inheritance, and just because the money changed hands!  So let me get this straight: Obama wants to give out money to the people, who he wants to tax more, so they can foot the bill for the government, an entity that will — if B.O. gets his way — increase its own budget shortfall by $50 billion with the proposed tax rebate.  To simplify things further, he wants to pay you so you can afford to pay him to cover the cost of his original plan to pay you.  It sounds complicated, so it must be a good thing!  Friggin' brilliant.

Oh, and one of the main points Obama has been pushing is balancing the budget.  In a recent independent analysis of his proposed tax changes, the deficit would increase by $3.3 trillion over the next 10 years.  People, I implore you: stop being caught up in his charisma and recognize the constant contradictions in what he says.  Our nation depends on it.

InvertedMind's Other Works
Note to all fellow Steelers' fans: The Steel Tradition, which I write for at MVN.com, is moving to www.SteelTradition.com.  Update your bookmarks, and visit regularly.  Your visits will help pay toward Her Cutness's college fund!

That's all I've got for this week, folks.  It's 1:25 a.m.  Maybe you'll get some bonus posts in the next few days.

I took a break last week.

SuperDad I ain't.  I do what any good parent would do: I take care of my daughter, I love her endlessly, I ensure she is happy and healthy and I — GASP! — discipline her.  But even Delta Force takes a break to recharge from time to time.

But I've come to realize that, as an adult, "taking a break" really means "taking time to do what you didn't already have time for."  Rarely does that include "party like a rock star" or "go bungee-jumping."  So I spent the weekend…cleaning.  Top to bottom.  Front to back.  I am no longer embarrassed by the thick layer of dust that had managed to settle on the unused surfaces in the room.  Of course, I was appalled to see that, 24 hours later, the dust layer was regrouping for a counter-offensive.  I'm reminded of a bit of Simpsons humor:

Homer: "All work and no play make Homer…something-something…"

Marge: "Go crazy?"

Homer: "Don't mind if I do!"

Being a parent is a great thrill, but it can be maddening at times.  Even more so when you're doing it alone.  Sometimes God is the only friend you have to talk to about it, too (of course, that's never a bad thing).  But I had friends helping me enjoy my time off, from Wednesday evening through Saturday night, when I went out for a beer and a plate of hot wings with a neighbor from down the street.

I do have one question for the universe, though: why does it always rain when I am picking Her Cuteness up from her mother?  I kid you not, every single time — every one — it has rained at some point during the drive.  And Monday was nearly a monsoon.  It was one of those rains where you wish you had yet another speed for your wipers: intermittent, slow, fast and my-windshield-will-explode-if-it-comes-in-contact-with-water.  Granted, it saved me from having to perform one of the tasks I ran out of time for over the weekend, in that I no longer need to wash my car.  I may need to repaint it after the pressure-washing it took, but at least it's clean.

Other Ramblings…

Note: These are a little old; I didn't get around to posting this last Friday, so the links are a little more stale than I would prefer.

• There's grand theft, theft and petty theft.  Then, there's just plain stupid: from the What-Is-This-World-Coming-To department, we have a case of a crook knocking off a 12-year-old girl's lemonade stand. It's hard to imagine there being a happy ending here, but there is: the girl proceeded to chase the robber into a nearby house, where he hid for an hour before giving it up.  Had he gotten away with it?  He would have walked off with a whopping $17.50.  Instead, he gets the grand prize in the stupidity contest: a felony robbery charge and $50,000 bond.  Now, if he could just find a way to steal another $49,986…
• Democrats responded to President Bush's call to lift a 27-year-old ban on offshore drilling by offering up an idea (if it can be called that) of their own: the government should take ownership of all refineries so they can better control the output.  I'm thinking of a word for this…let's see…Hugo Chavez recently did this exact thing; Fidel Castro has done it; Stalin and Lenin did similar things in other industries…ahh, yes, it's called Communism!  You know, that thing we spent 30-plus years fighting with a cold war?  That concept that the government should run your life completely?  That thing that is just one step further left than Barrack Obama has already gone?
• The housing market is still pretty ugly, but at least the Department of Justice is looking into the causes.  They've recent;y rounded up and formally charged over 400 people with varying degrees of mortgage fraud.  Of course, when the chairmen of both the Senate Budget Committee (Democrat Kent Conrad) and the Senate Banking Committee (Democrat Christopher Dodd) received "special treatment" from the former CEO of the worst-offending lending institution in the entire country that included ridiculously favorable terms (not to mention the fact that Countrywide as a corporate institution has contributed more than $20,000 to Dodd's campaigns which, if I'm not mistaken, is against campaign finance laws), it's hard to have much faith in the government to do anything of merit to fix the problem.
• And, finally…may God bless each and every one of you.

When I went to bed Wednesday night, there were scattered thundershowers in the area.  It was humid as all get-out, too, and temperatures have been well above normal for the last week or so.  Added up, it came as no surprise when I woke up Thursday morning to what appeared to be a moderately dense fog hanging over the neighborhood.

I live on a golf course, which means a lot of wide-open grassy areas.  Plants transpire a lot at night, so it adds moisture to the air.  When there's a layer of warm air trapped close to that moisture by a blanket of cold air above, you get fog.  Conditions were absolutely perfect for it.

What did shock me was the smell when I walked outside: the unmistakable smell of burning wood.  My first reaction, of course, was to turn immediately and look to see if my house was on fire.  No?  Good.  There had been a fire in the neighborhood last fall, and conditions are even more conducive to flame-ups right now than they were then, so it then dawned on me that we may have another unfortunate family elsewhere in the 'hood.  Fortunately, no — as I looked around, I saw no columns of smoke rising into the sky.  But it had me puzzled.  What was burning?

I got my answer a little after I arrived in the office.  It turns out, there's a wild fire burning out on the coast to the southeast of Raleigh.  Wednesday night, as I watched the radar to see if we were going to get some rain, I noticed it was all moving in from the southeast.  Two plus two?  Holy crap, it equals four.

So, Raleigh spent Thursday and, to a lesser extent, Friday blanketed in a layer of smoke that cut visibility down under two miles in some places.  And it really ticks me off, because my subconscious mind is confused: it smelled like mid-winter, but it's a week away from the beginning of summer.  And it made its way into the office, too.  Shorts and the smell of a wood fire.  I'm quite conflicted.

In other news, an impromptu street show broke out Thursday as I returned to the office from Subway (in the aforementioned smoke screen).  Apparently, the movie Diary of a Mad Black Woman has a live, off-Broadway version, and it came to the corner of Fayetteville and Davie streets at 11:45 a.m.  At first, we thought she was yelling at someone in particular.  A quick glance behind us proved that she was, in fact, yelling at a lot of people.  None of whom, by the way, were visible to anyone else.  It's things like the smoke and an apparently schizophrenic woman that can really throw you off-kilter for the remainder of a day.

Other Ramblings

• I don't know much about Camille Paglia, but what little I've seen up to this point shows that she leans almost as far to the left as Hugo Chavez — which is the likely reason for her apparent belief that Barrack Obama is a very centered candidate (in reality, some of his ideas are so far out in left field that, if he was playing for the Chicago Cubs, he'd be playing his home games in Comiskey Park while the rest of the team was at Wrigley Field).  However, she had what may go down in history as the best Clinton-related quote ever:

  "Hillary for veep? Are you mad? What party nominee worth his salt would chain himself to a traveling circus like the Bill and Hillary Show? If the sulky bearded lady wasn't biting the new president’s leg, the oafish carnival barker would be sending in the clowns to lure all the young ladies into back-of-the-tent sword-swallowing. It would be a seamy orgy of scheming and screwing."

  I am infinitely proud of the fact that I've finally been able to use the phrase "seamy orgy" on this site without it reflecting on me.  That's been a life-long goal of mine.

• California is finally responsible for something good besides Happy Cows.  Administrators at a Cali high school had police inform students that some of their classmates had been killed in accidents involving alcohol over the weekend.  It was all a ruse, though; the goal of the exercise was to scare the kids away from driving while intoxicated.  It worked — some kids wound up in hysterics.  After finding out the truth, many students protested the apparent cruelty of the act.  I, for one, applaud that school.  Kids today believe they are invincible, and have an utter disregard for others.  Maybe this sort of thing needs to be widespread.  I say it should be expanded: make the kids watch autopsies of victims of drunk driving.  Make them realize how fragile life really is before it's too late.  Kudos, El Camino High School of Oceanside, Cal.
• And, finally…tomorrow is Father's Day. Being a dad is the thing in my life I am most proud of; the fact that I am managing to do it on my own is just gravy on the 'taters.  There is no job in life more draining, but none so rewarding, either.  And I'm not going to candy-coat this: it's nice to have the world revolve around me for a day, too.

  
  

Note: I think I'm going to go back to the one-big-post-per-week format for Mindless Ramblings.  My schedule is too hectic, but I also know there are, indeed, a faithful few who visit the site regularly and hope for updates.  There is also a major site update in the works.  More on that to follow.

Time for a little catching up.

Yeah, I've been largely absent lately.  It's more a result of just being too busy.  Unfortunately, this blog takes a back seat to my work at MVN.com, if only because that one actually has imposed minimums for posting.  So, what has InvertedMind been up to?

First of all, let me just say that driving long distances alone with a two-year-old does one thing well: it sucks.   It's not that she's bad; it's that she's two.  She's needy.  And her whining could strip paint off concrete sometimes.  Late last year I bit the bullet and bought a portable DVD player, and that's become my best friend on long drives. 

In fact, it's not the actual driving that makes my brain want to beat its way out of my skull; it's the bathroom stops.  When you have two responsible adults in the car, you can quite easily take turns watching the youngster while you alternately evacuate.  But when it's just you, all you can do is strap them in a stroller, hope to God the handicap stall is free, squeeze in tightly, and wonder if you can actually pee with an overly curious toddler sitting next to you.  The phrase "performance anxiety" comes to mind.

And let's not even get into a deep discussion of the mess.  After a trip north, my car resembles the business end of a garbage truck.  Dry cereal, crackers, gummies…it doesn't matter.  I could give her two pretzels and — somehow — the back seat would look like an explosion in an Italian restaurant by the end of the trip.

Oh, speaking of MVN.com (second paragraph): my co-writer, James, was in a car accident a few weeks ago that left him with severe injuries.  He is expected to make a full recovery, and no injuries are life-threatening, but among his wounds are two broken arms.  I'd like to take this time to call for prayers for Jimbo's recovery — and for his wife, who is probably forced to wait on him hand and foot.

In other news, I was in Delaware this past weekend for one of my two annual trips to Dover International Speedway for the NASCAR race.  Let's just say it's a good thing the part of the trip that is most enjoyable is actually the tailgating.  Otherwise, it would have been a long, boring day.  For a better idea of what the day consisted of, check out my blog over at FoxSports.com.

This summer is looking like it may be a first in more ways than one.  For one thing, there are currently at least four movies I want to see that are in theaters right now: The Happening, Get Smart, The Black Knight and The Love Guru.  And the other first?  Of those movies, half of them are not comedies.  Shocking.

Other Ramblings…

• Why does the state of Kentucky get labeled as a place for nothing but the reddest of necks?  Well, all accusations of rampant inbreeding aside, it's possible it could be a result of their naming a town Rabbit Hash.  Or, just maybe, it's because that town's mayor  was a Black Labrador Retriever.  Ol' Junior Cochran just died, though; I hear the race for his replacement will be a fight between a gerbil and a bent paper clip.
• The Pittsburgh Penguins' run to the Stanley Cup Finals was a sight to behold, losing just two games in the first three rounds.  It looked, though, like they were going to get blown out in the finals after Detroit won the first two games.  The Penguins fought back, though, bringing the series back to 3-2 after putting up two games for the ages — including a triple-overtime defeat in which Petr Sykora actually called his game-winning goal.  Not since Babe Ruth's rumored calling of a game-winning home run has such a ballsy call been made and answered.  I'm reminded of Seattle's Matt Hasselbeck's overtime call of, "we want the ball, and we're gonna win!"; Green Bay proceeded to score on their first drive of overtime, forever making the Seahawks' quarterback look like a complete idiot.  Yet another reason we salute you, Brett Favre.
• Shania Twain's husband, Robert 'Mutt' Lange, left the drop-dead gorgeous — and, from what I hear, incredibly gracious and personable — country music star recently, providing irrefutable evidence that "Mutt" is not an endearing nickname, but rather a reference to his cognitive abilities (as if his sense of style wasn't indicative enough).  Single, desperate, delusional men the world over salute you, Mr. Lange!
• Sunday's forecasted high temperature is 102 here in Raleigh.  Relief is on the way, however; by Tuesday it should be back down to a refreshing 97.

Upon further review, the price of oil went up last year as a result of high demand overseas.  Unfortunately, the only explanation for this year's jump is greed — and not by the oil companies, most likely.

The actual price of a barrel of New York light sweet crude oil — down to the penny — is controlled by trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX).  There are people there buying at higher prices on speculation that prices will rise.  They're doing this because of the perceived weakness of the dollar, but apparently don't realize that their pumping of money into oil is actually accelerating the weakness of the dollar.

See, one of the key factors in the value of a nation's currency is the level of inflation.  As oil prices artificially rise (more on that in a minute), so do the prices of nearly all other goods — after all, it costs more to make them and to ship them if oil is more expensive.  These prices are artificially high — the increase is not a result of supply versus demand.  So the rate of inflation increases.  As the dollar can buy less and less because of inflation, its worldwide value drops, making the whole thing entirely cyclical.

These speculators on Wall Street are simply in this to make a buck, and they are the only ones who stand to gain from oil prices going up (aside from Exxon-Mobil, BP-Texaco, Royal Dutch Shell, etc.).  And not just from speculation, either: remember, this is New York City.  There's a pretty good chance most of these guys actually live in NYC, so they never have to drive to work (or to a restaurant, or — GASP! — a gas station.  They don't care about the pain we feel at the pump, because they never feel it themselves.  And don't kid yourselves: most of these dollars going into oil are coming from hedge funds, and rarely is a hedge fund manager not a multi-millionaire.

Oh, about the supply/demand wackiness: a report out earlier this week (I wish I could still find the link) showed that gas consumption has been on a steady decline since about August of last year.  We have used approximately 8 billion fewer gallons of gasoline so far in 2008 compared to the same period in 2007.  And, yet, your price at the pump rises every day. 

Cutting demand will certainly cut gas prices.  But, unfortunately, the dent it will make will be small, and may even be covered by the jerks on Wall Street who don't drive anyway.

Edit: Did I actually spell it "porkshops" in the subject?  Yikes!  Fixed now.

Thank you, Alton Brown, for the head start.

Pork chops are my nemesis.  I've grilled them.  I've baked them.  I've Foreman'd them.  No matter what, they wind up about as dry as cardboard in the Sahara during a seventeen-year drought.  You could soak up spills with them.  And that's shocking, because I've come to realize that I'm a damn good cook.  A little arrogant?  Maybe.  But I've always had great reviews.  My chili won second place in a cook-off, and a certain group of people used to excitedly ask if I was going to make said chili when I would come to visit.  I know what I'm doing.

But the chops…man, the chops.  Thanks to the long-term breeding of American pigs, we get pork that's leaner than a marathon champion.  Lean means very little fat.  And very little fat means very little flavor.  And almost no moisture.  And the one time I tried brining my chops first, they came out tasting like someone left them out in the sun sitting underneath Shaq's left foot for a day and a half.  It turns out I had a few things wrong: the ratio of the ingredients, and the wrong cuts.

I hate bone-in meat.  It seems like too much work for the reward.  So it was a real kick in the cajones when I realized that pork chops are better with the bone intact.  And about an inch thick, just like a real, good T-bone steak.  Anything less than that, I can confidently say from much experience, is best used as a coaster.  So say it with me a gazillion times to make sure you've got it right next time: bone-in and an inch thick…bone-in and an inch thick…

But I want you to see…err…taste for yourself.  So plan a romantic dinner for two (yes, this is for two; double the brine recipe for four) with your spouse or significant other and follow these instructions (changed considerably from Alton Brown's recipe on Good Eats):

1. Use center-cut chops.  They will be made primarily of a single muscle, meaning consistent flavor, consistent cooking throughout, and less connective tissue to carve around while eating.
2. Combine 1/2 cup salt, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1 teaspoon of mustard powder, 1 teaspoon of ground black pepper, and 1.5 cups of almost boiling apple cider vinegar and stir until the crystals dissolve.
3. Add two cups of ice cubes and stir until melted.
4. Submerge the chops completely.  If they won't go comepletely under, flip them halfway through brining.  Leave submerged for two to three hours.
5. Turn on grill to high heat and warm for ten minutes.  MEANWHILE, in the kitchen, hold each chop on end with the bone against the plate or cutting board, and insert a boning knife straight in through the layer of fat on the outside; push down until you feel the bone.  Swing the knife upward along the bone and also along the other side, being careful not to cut clear through at any point.  This will be a pocket to hold the filling.
6. Stuff thin-sliced apples and dried cranberries into the hole.  If you desire, spoon a small amount of brine into the pocket as well, to add a little moisture (the cranberries will soak a fair amount from the meat, so this is probably a good idea).
7. Place in center of grill.  After two minutes, rotate 90 degrees.  This is purely for aesthetics; it created those nice little grill marks on the meat.  Cook this way for another two minutes, then flip and repeat the process on the other side.
8. Move meat to top rack and turn heat to medium-low.  Allow to cook for up to another five to six minutes.
9. Eat soon after removing from the grill.  Pork dries out quicker than other meats.

If you do it right, I promise these will be some of the best chops you'll ever eat.  I shared them with my next-door neighbor andher first thought was that it didn't taste at all like a pork chop –it was that good.  The meat has just the right level of saltiness, and the sweet fruit inside is the perfect compliment.

Maybe I'll actually follow through one day with that promise to write a cookbook… 

More than once, I've arrived at the sitter's house to tales of horror.  The worst of these were a result of her getting bored while laying down for a nap and proceeding to finger-paint with whatever she had available — usually found in her diaper.  That's what I would call being a kid.  Today, though, she got ballsy.

Saint or Sitter (SoS): "Did you go poopy?"

Her Cuteness: "No."

Conversation over, right?  Well, yeah, at least the pleasant part.  The little turd Her Cuteness turned away, waited for the sitter to do something else, and then reached into her pull-up (clearly, elastic was not our friend today).  Out came a fist-full of excrement, that then got ground into the carpet, and onto the coffee table, and — according to the debriefing — over everything else within reach until the sitter saw what was transpiring.

Okay, let's back up a step: a trend we've both noticed is that her mood changes dramatically after her nap.  Most kids go from whiny, tired messes to adorable little angels after a good snooze.  My daughter, though, turns into a cross between the critter from the movie series Predator, Fred Sanford and Archie Bunker — only with a less sunny demeanor.  Do not — I repeat, not — turn your back on her at this point.  You can literally hear All Hell Breaking Loose™.

I tell you this, because there are three simple signs of A Bad Day at the Sitter's House (I think I'll trademark that phrase, too):

1. My lovely daughter wearing different clothes than what I dressed her in that morning;
2. A little blond monster cooped up in a Pack-and-Play in the livingroom;
3. My Little Ray of Sunshine mysteriously sitting quietly on the couch when I arrive

There's one sign far more telling, though: the volume of her ecstatic cry of "Daddy!" when I ring the doorbell is directly proportionate to the amount of trouble she got in that day.  If I can clearly hear her over the television and four or more other rowdy kids, I know not to make eye contact with SoS. Today, she was louder than ever.

Okay, I got her out of there in one piece.  I was royally ticked because, on top of the poo-painting, there were other incidents we won't even get into.  But, she's two now.  Lately we've been getting uber-serious about her behavior, and today she spent 10 minutes confined to her room.  I let her out and gave her some grapes — but, if you asked her, they were undoubtedly sour grapes.  Dad's not happy at this point, either, but he let's that slide — that is, until she picked up the bowl and threw it across the kitchen when I wouldn't give her more grapes before dinner.

Use the potty before bath time?  Nooooooooooo.  Give her a pacifier?  Not a chance.  After her bath she spent another three minutes on the couch in timeout, and nearly made me melt when — without my prompting or prodding — looked at me with soggy eyes and said, "I sorry Daddy."

So we went through our nightly ritual — an episode of Garfield and Friends while she lays in the dark on the couch.  She went to bed pretty easily.

Too easily.

Up.  Down.  Up.  Down.  Then, after 20 minutes of no noise, I hear the sound of her bedroom door open.  I'm angry at this point, but when I saw her I had the hardest time staying that way.  There, on the dark side of the bedroom doorway, I saw my little blondie with her shirt collar pulled down around her waist and only one pants-leg on.

Damn, that cute smile.

After a lengthy fight (okay, it felt like an hour but really covered about 53 seconds), I got her back to bed.  Five minutes of babbling later, I went to her door to tell her once again to be quiet and go to sleep.  Darn, if the little girl didn't figure out the fake-like-you're asleep maneuver.  I saw her rapidly roll over and close her eyes as I swung her door open.

Amazingly — and finally — she fell asleep just like that about 10 minutes later.  Holy crap and Hallelujah.

Valentine's Day is almost upon us.  I have a love-hate relationship with that day: I love to hate it.

Call it sour grapes.  Call it whatever the heck you want, honestly.  The day excites me about as much as repeatedly slamming my head in my own car door.  My utter hatred for it dates waaaaay back, and with good reason: for some reason, growing up, I was always single — or, at least, alone — on February 14th.  Prior to 2004, the year I got married, I happened to be seeing someone precisely once in my old-enough-to-date years.  And I hardly call sitting in a coffee house at a table with my then-girlfriend and my own mother a good V-day date.

Even when Wife #1 and I met face-to-face the first time, I went to visit her the week before Valentine's Day.  Sure, we had a nice celebration the night before I returned home, even though she had to attend a class for the early portion of that evening, but we weren't physically together on the actual day.  And there were even obstacles during the three she and I spent together, but we won't get into that.  The bottom line is this: Valentine's Day despises me, and I spurn it.  It's a two-way hatred that burns almost as deep as the fourth level of hell.

Okay, I admit that I'm actually looking forward to it this year.  Do I expect it to be much different than what seems like millennia past?  No, that would fit the definition of insanity.  But, barring some strange twist of fate in the next 24 hours — and given my track record on February 14, I'm not yet ruling out the possibility — I'll be spending a peaceful Thursday night with someone whose company I rather enjoy, preparing and cooking a lasagna together and enjoying a quiet evening with a movie and a bottle of wine.  If you ask me, that's the way to spend it.

And it sure beats the year I sat at a restaurant with my friend, Joanna, and flipped off all the happy couples who came in to eat.