brain dump

what’s new, and not so new…

+ We went out to lunch with family yesterday and Chad (my wife’s brother) and Dawn told us that they are expecting their 4th (and last) child. Pretty exciting stuff. Baby’s due in August, they think. Chad is hoping for a boy to even out the numbers, but right now Vegas has the odds on his third daughter entering the world. Chad and Dawn are “namehiders”, which i always give them a hard time about. So even if they find out what they’re having, they probably won’t tell us what it is called until it’s born. Congrats!

+ Just finished reading Dave Eggers’ “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius”. Overall, I really liked it.  I enjoyed his writing style a lot. It’s very “stream of consciousness”. He would go off on tangents in his head for pages at a time, and most of them were fun little digressions from the story. Occasionally I would tire of how long he would linger on things, but for the most part the book moved the story along fairly well, and kept me interested. The story itself was pretty sad, but the levity that his writing brought to it made it enjoyable. As far as what I can take from it in terms of my own writing, his book showed me that it is possible to write in your own style and write well. Good writing isn’t just about fitting a cookie cutter template, it’s about putting yourself on paper in a way that is unique to you, but also done well.

+ My Super Bowl prediction is Pats 37, Giants 17. I’ve got a few other predictions listed at the end of this piece that another writer wrote for Burnside this week.

+ Speaking of football, when my buddy at work went to Vegas in October, I gave him $20 to place on some games for me. I was going to have him put $20 on the Giants to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl, (they had started off so badly and were starting to look better) , but when i saw that the odds were only 8-1, i decided to go with some games for that week (which lost). Had I not been turned off by the 8-1 number, I would have made $140 with the Giants in last week. Guess that’s why i don’t live in Vegas.

+ Signed Parker up for teeball this past weekend. First practice will be indoors in March. He’s so excited to play, and I am too. Should be a lot of fun.