Attention family: I believe there would be a substantial increase in domestic productivity if everyone would stay in bed until there is at least some semblance of daylight outside. The reasons for being up before the crack of dawn are few, and I see no reason to repeatedly exploit them. The daddy is tired, and the mommy, moreso. Daylight Savings is coming in a week and if we persist in the whimsy of waking at, say, 4:47, when we move the clocks back an hour we will be inclined to wake at 3:47, and this is unacceptable. I understand you have teeth coming in. I hear you having the bad dream. And it appears you have wet the bed. I, too, have similar bothersome ailments. You getting me up in the middle of the night is one of them.

Can't you see how we trudge through our daily chores like mindless zombies? Don't you wonder why we are constantly dropping dishes and bumping into walls? Your daddy works with sharp-edged tools on a daily basis and needs to maintain his concentration, which he derives from full nights of undisturbed sleep. Your daddy loves you, little ones, and wants to hold you and tickle you and play with you, but he won't be able to do this if he accidentally saws his limbs off.

In the same vein, you should know that your mommy doesn't like screaming at you any more than you like to hear it, and probably even less so. Her patience is dangling from the end of a rope in a bottomless well. Be aware that this is not the woman I found and married before you were born. That woman was carefree, content, and from time to time wore makeup. I know it sounds like a distant fairy tale, but it's true. I believe peace and tranquility will one day return, my winsome queen will once again rule, and there will be harmony to the hinterlands, but as long as we're not getting a full night's sleep this nirvana is a useless pipe dream.

Virgil wrote that sleep is Death's brother, which is why siblings must never be allowed to fight. You kids don't know how lucky you have it. Don't get me started. And don't try to string us along by being intermittently cute -this isn't going to work anymore. You think you know how to whine? Because I'll show you a real whiner. The book will be published when you reach adolescence, the world will read it, and you will be shamed and embarrassed to no end. Think I'm kidding? Just stop and think about it. No, really. Just. Stop.

This is a simple plan that will have lasting effects: STAY IN BED, ASLEEP, UNTIL DAYBREAK. If you have to go to the bathroom, get up and go. There's no reason to come and wake us to say you need to go. Furthermore, it was only a dream, and that sound was nothing. Please, for the sake of all that is holy and pure, let mommy and daddy sleep. Don't make us beg.


~

How do you like our new washer and dryer? Nice, huh! Okay, so not really. But it would be, if we had found $2000 in change within the old dryer casing.

Our dryer broke, which surprised me, because my money was on washer failure. (Dryers are known to last a century, but washers not so much, the way men don't live as long as women. Anyway, you need both. You could get by without one or the other, but you'd end up dirty, wet, and miserable.) Mrs. Ditchman mentioned that the dryer wasn't getting hot a few days ago [SEXUAL JOKE DELETED] and I dismissed the notion. Later, when I ran out of clothes to wear, the issue reached crisis proportions. So I went out to the garage and took a look, thinking it was probably just a clogged lint vent, or something.

I took it apart and herded the dust buffaloes to some other corner of the garage. Then I put it back together, with the sum total of my efforts resulting in still no heat. Then I educated myself and reverse-engineered the thing, with the help of the Internet, and now I have it narrowed down to one of two parts: the gas ignitor or the thermal fuse. I'd test them, but my ohmmeter melted when I left it on my dashboard one hot afternoon. Anyway, it's probably just a ten dollar part. I may buy one of each and replace them both, because, hey, what the hell? Now I have to find an appliance parts place which I dread because in my experience these guys hate selling parts, since they make their money fixing the appliances themselves. But I, too, know the difference between $10 and $150, and with all those savings I could afford a new ohmmeter.

I was looking for the manual. I asked Mrs. Ditchman about it and she mocked me for even asking. Mocked me! Seems the dryer is one of the last remaining pre-marital possessions, and "I bought that dryer 15 years ago when I was young and didn't care to save that stuff," meaning the manuals. I looked anyway, and ten feet away from the broken dryer, on a shelf in the garage, is my box of manuals -because I save them all- and behold! At the bottom of the box: the dryer manual, c. 1996. I showed it to Mrs. Ditchman, commenting on how wise she was to marry me, a man who could meticulously organize her life. She said, "So, did you fix it yet?"

No, but it's clean. About 6 pounds of lint, enough to make a sweater (but we'd have no way to launder it.) This is all a pressing issue, since later this weekend we have family staying over and we can't all be standing around dirty, wet, and miserable now, can we? Although, a broken appliance never stopped us before. We could all just go camping.

~

How was the Home Show? It was like most all the other Home Shows, and thank you for asking. After sitting and staring at the booth filled with granite and stone, on the other side of the aisle, Mrs. Ditchman got bored and got up, went over there and started pricing stuff out for our bathroom. Mrs. Ditchman! Get back to work so we can afford that stuff!

Some weekends of business are trial and error, others are fail and folly. This one had a smattering of all the above, for better or for worse. I had completely forgotten that I had Daddy Night at the preschool, which the Little Ditchman was really looking forward to, so I rushed home after setting up the booth without doing the quality work I usually do. It was on Mrs. Ditchman to get down there early and touch-up the paint on the new (fancy) columns on Friday morning. She ended up being an hour late, since she backed the Tundra into the fairgrounds security vehicle (no damage, no worries) and we gave up trying to make it the nicest-looking booth EVER.

Booth competition is funny. A few years back there were six or seven dealers selling aluminum patio covers, which amounted to an atmosphere of demoralized sales. We stuck it out, and now we're down to three or so competitors at this show circuit. Some time ago, we decided to one-up everyone by displaying the new! 2x3 lattice style, which never really sells, but differentiates us from the other displays. Now, everyone is showing off the 2x3 lattice, but we have upgraded to the new! square columns. They can't keep up with the Ditchmans! (Next year, hanging flat-screen tvs with slideshows of wow-tastic patio installations.) Anyway, the current hot products are fake grass and solar panels, and it's, like, every other booth. Some fake grasses are nicer than others, but all the solar panels are the same ugly. Glad I'm not in that business. Yet.

Our business seems to be getting a reputation, at least amongst the other sellers. We do the best work (!) but we're not the cheapest, and we're not the biggest operation out there either, so Mrs. Ditchman has a sophisticated technical breakdown of cost-averaging, or some such thing, which makes us competitive -she is wicked smart. And highly attractive. I installed studio lighting in our display booth that highlights and compliments her pretty hair, and the customers line right up.

My wife has many adventures at the Home Shows, while I am home herding our offspring. On Saturday, she was pulling in to the fairgrounds and noticed one of our aluma-shade competitors in the parking lot. The way she tells it, he threw his truck into reverse for no apparent reason and crashed into the guy behind him. (I guess this would be called a front-end collision.) Later, she met up with Dr. Fix-It and went on the air on KCBQ to say how bitchin' and affordable our aluminum patio covers were. She texted me: Did you hear me on Dr. Fix-It? But I don't sit around and listen to the radio all weekend, so, No. This is the second time she's messed around on the radio, silly girl, hawking goods over the airwaves. (Meanwhile, who's manning the booth?) If we sell a single job from that, we're going back on KCBQ and buying ad time.

I ran into Dr. Fix-It later. No, really. On Sunday I drove down with the kiddies to meet her, and tear down our booth after the show was over. I found a great parking space behind a large truck right near the entrance, and while pulling into the space I rear-ended the guy -tapping his tow hitch and bending our license plate. The truck's owner was standing right there, and he had witnessed the whole thing. I warily got out of the car as he approached me. He took one look at me (or, perhaps, my shirt) and asked, "Are you Marci's husband?" to which I admitted so. He held out his hand and introduced himself.

"Dr. Fix-It," he said.

Nice guy. He wasn't worried about the damage, said it happens all the time, and, since he was Dr. Fix-It, it was assumed he could have managed the repairs himself. He said my wife was great on the radio, and I told him this came as no surprise to me. We chatted for a bit and I went into the big hall and did my part, shelling out five bucks for a bad domestic beer in a plastic cup and then tearing our whole cover down and loading up the Tundra. At one point, Mrs. Ditchman's name was announced over the fairgrounds P.A. system because she had won movie tickets from Dr. Fix-It. In the end, we celebrated with Pizza Port as we often do after the Home Shows. I forgot my wallet, so I couldn't refill my growler with the Poche Pale, (Grrrr.)

Did we sell any jobs? Is the economy rebounding? Are we back in business? Will we be able to live in Oceanside and tell the story for another few months? Will I live another day to drink a better beer? Time will reveal all. For now, we tighten our belts and fend off bankruptcy and foreclosure for another season, thankful that this weekend's accidents were little more then dentless, painless anecdotes to another humdrum work detail.

~

Home Show. Home Show! Oh, I was trying to be enthusiastic, there, but what's the use? Ditchman Aluminum, and all associated bank accounts, are approaching desperate levels, and that right before the holidays. It happens sometimes. Questions arise: if I put that extra coat of paint on the display, will it attract that one necessary customer who will provide work for the family for another week? If we invest in new hanging flowers, will it bring in the labours needed to resupply the Barbie accoutrements for the Christmas season? Will all that effort I put into the new slideshow compel wealthy San Diegans stuck in the sun to swarm like bees around Booth Space #265, all of them willing to shell out cash for shade?

No one can say, but we press on all the same. It slows this time of year, but it seems to be slowing sooner and faster this year, which frustrates. Mrs. Ditchman has a nasty cold which, I imagine, doesn't drive strangers toward our display and away from the other, lesser, aluminum patio covers in opposing booths. FREE VIRUS WITH EVERY ESTIMATE! is not a seasonal offer with selling power, unfortunately.

I am home chillin' with the chillun, which is great, though, demanding. I always forget that one cardinal rule, which is: WHEN ONE WILL BE HOME WITH THE CHILDREN, ONE MUST DITCH EVERY OTHER THING THEY WERE PLANNING ON GETTING DONE THAT DAY. If I don't keep this in mind early on, then the day is flooded with the frustration of a thousand distractions. If (on the rare occasion that I am thoughtful and wise) I give myself over to them the second Mommy leaves, and I remind myself that this day with them is a precious one, then the day usually moves swiftly and perfectly. I resolve to do that today. It's beautiful out, and dammit, I am going to enjoy it.

Or, I could just leave the tv running Playhouse Disney all day.

Got a call from my sister yesterday who said, "Go online and get SKYPE!" So I did, and minutes later, we were video chatting -she in my living room, I in hers in Hawaii! It's an odd experience, the video chat, as you sit and stare, thinking, Hmmm. Gee, your hair looks great. But it is a wonder, and a laugh. She got the kids and they waved. I took the laptop outside and showed her the garden watermelons. The Little Ditchman didn't get it at first, thinking it was just a bad quality video of her aunt, but when the screen started asking her questions and waving back, that cocked-head Golden Retriever look gave way to grand understanding. Then, when her cousin got home from school, we just left the computers running while the girls played dress-up and Duck, Duck, Goose. Now, I'm not sure how you actually play Duck, Duck, Goose on Skype, but the 3-year-olds figured it out. Then they played Hide and Seek, which is fun since the seeker just gets to point at the screen. So Skype is the babysitter-nouveau! Only problem is the time difference, as bath time comes 3 hours earlier here, at which point there is all manner of wailing and gnashing of baby teeth. Anyway, my sister said she'd make a virtual appearance at the Little Digger's party next weekend. We'll just leave the laptop at the door and she can greet people with cyber-aloha as they enter.

My neighbor, who is currently stationed in Guantanamo, has video Skype, too. They just leave it on all the time, I hear, and it's like he's home with the family, just doing business in his office while the kids do homework and mom folds laundry. It sounds nice, actually, and I'm sure it's the safest and most pleasant way to have your family join you at a military-guarded terrorist prison camp on the last communist outpost in the Western Hemisphere, at the far end of some desert island in the Caribbean.

Don't worry about me, today, though. I'll be fine. I'm enjoying almost every moment on this perfect fall day. Almost. Wish we could Skype that Hawaiian beach sand.

~

Does this concern you? The Chinese have created a Black Hole. A Black Hole! It sucks in and warps space-time! Light cannot escape! What do you do with your own black hole? I don't know. Hide things in it? Destroy the earth? Jump in, escape, forget everything.

And Al Qaeda has infiltrated the LHC which can't be good. What the terrorists will do when they get their dirty bomb hands on the elusive Higgs Boson particle is also unknown, but it no doubt threatens all humanity, if not the universe. European scientists are planning on firing up the LHC again next month, if you didn't hear, so the world may still end before Christmas. (The LHC broke down last year when they fired it up the first time, so it's been out for repairs since then. Some say it will never fire up, since that would cause the universe to implode, and thus we are living in a reality where the LHC will always break down. Like my boat.)

The tabletop Black Hole idea was from a few guys at Purdue, but leave it to the Chinese to run with the concept. Evidently, our scientists are too busy crashing junk into the moon and building bigger bombs. Why do I mention it? I don't know. It's just science. Bomb science. Projectile science.

It's all science, nowadays. I was reading about the chips they're planning on using in the new Mac Pros, which will have 6 cores and 12 threads for each CPU, and utilize 32nm engraving vs. the fat 45nm today. What does all this mean? Smaller and Faster. That's all, just smaller and faster. I have no idea how they do it. I was sewing a button on my pants yesterday and it took me twenty minutes just to thread the needle.

Does anyone out there know how anything works nowadays? Can anyone explain water pressure in a house? Does anyone know where the electricity comes from, or how the pictures go from nothing, anywhere, to a big flashing screen, sending the neurons in your brain firing off in uncontrolled nostalgic bursts? I could give you a vague generalization that would pass for an answer. Someone, somewhere, has all the answers, but as technology becomes more advanced, are engineers going to have to go to more school, or will they all be specialists? It seems that some day we'll all be inter-reliant, specialists in a world without know-it-alls, if we're not there already. And the robots will fix the robots.

I suspect we'll get the robots to do the simple stuff, too, eventually, but then only the robots will know how to do any of it, and something will be lost. Machines will one day be in the garden, but they will never express an honest admiration for the seeds. The fear is that we'll eventually be helpless and dependent, but I don't believe humans are so stupid, with our primitive pastoral sensibility. Still, civilization transforms itself, and old ways become extinct, like Huck Finn on that raft down the Mississippi, with the steam boat that powers through and destroys that simple dream of free-drifting downstream.

They say the tabletop Black Hole could revolutionize solar power. I hope so. I want to sit on my back patio, basking in the sun with my own little black hole, flipping bottle caps into in it and watching them whirl down, crushed into a singularity, while it all recharges the robot that will bring my pale ale. So, you see, the dream goes both ways, forward in time and back, to some event horizon where you have to choose between the dreams, lest you get sucked in one way, or the other.

~

Jonathan said it was a "negative split", which is a term I'd never heard before. I'm not inclined to the "negative split", and, I suspect, neither are most people, which is probably why I've never heard of the term. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was my first. I like the idea of it, and it seems perfectly profound: a negative split. As if running was a way of turning and fighting.

And no, really: I passed 506 people after mile 18! I found this out on a neat little graphic interface on the marathon race results page. It also says that 2 people passed me after mile 18, which makes me wonder about their stories. The application is called "RunPix" and it gives you all kinds of handy stats -like average pace, average speed, and a little map showing you where you were on the course when the winner broke the ribbon and made you anonymous.

As well as this:


These things are becoming so teched out, but I love it. There was a big screen at the finish, with all of us crossing the finish line, and it was visible in daylight. And the chips for the times are all disposable now (Why, son, I remember when you had to actually pay a deposit for those!) Mrs. Ditchman was checking the race web site on her iPhone to see what mile markers I was passing, and then she actually called me during the race. My iPod stopped, beeped, and there she was, asking me how the run was going. It was kinda fun, actually, since I was feeling so good. The only bummer was that Google Latitude wasn't living up to expectations so that she could track me in real time on a web map, like Jack Bauer calculating a terrorist intercept. (Still waiting for Loopt to come online for real and for free.)

Additionally, the good Sean was running the virtual half-marathon with us and we were exchanging messages and photos during the run, a thousand or two miles apart. What a future we live in! I sent him a pic of us in the post-race beer tent. He said we looked like we deserved another round. Too bad he couldn't buy us one. (But the technology is there!)

I admit I had a little trouble with the iPhone, actually, since I had forgotten to click off my Voice Activation module and the tiny mic was picking up my heavy breathing and interpreting it as "fast forward". Also, the "jiggle" function was not turned off and was thus shuffling the songs after fast-forwarding them. It took me a mile or two to figure it out.

It was really only the second time or so that I'd ever run with the iPhone, so I was working out some of the bugs on race day. Truth be told, I'm in love with my iPod Shuffle -the last generation. It's orange. It clips on my shorts and feels weightless, as I spring forward with music lifting my heels. I used to be against running with music, but I changed, and those days are now behind me. (Though, I must say running with music on during a race detracts from the experience. I've done two races now with an iPod and I keep the volume low and switch it off when I run past bands, turning it off entirely for the last couple miles.)

And I've used MapMyRun on the iPhone a few times to track my mileage, which is great. But I'm really waiting for a Special Edition iPod Shuffle that accurately tracks your time, distance, and pace on a Google map, and keeps a log of all your runs. Also, it must be tiny and have a clip. It would be an iPod just for runners, but it seems Mac has yet to get so targeted with their products. I'm just putting it out there.

All this tech gear, and I am reading that best-seller on running right now, Born to Run by Christopher McDougall, which tells the story of the Tarahumara Indians and their love for running -the purity and the camaraderie of it, and how they do it all barefoot in the wild. It's a good book, and it reminds me that none of this junk matters, that the reasons why we run are so soulful, so human, and so lasting, and that no bit of technological innovation will ever make them any moreso.

~

I indulged in the running of the 25th annual Long Beach Marathon yesterday, which was perfectly enjoyable, and I have little pain today as a result, as if to prove it. And I say "indulged" because it is tough on Mrs. Ditchman to get up pre-dawn and drag the children a hundred miles to a lesser-known city, and then haul through traffic and road closures, embattled with 50,000 other spectators and participants. She juggles the needy kin for a few hours, all to see me huff by in a matter of a few seconds, and then she puts up with my blabbing about it at race's end, standing idly on the other side of the beer garden barrier as I celebrate with a few draughts. She is a true champion for being able to negotiate it all. My champion.

The race was great, with perfect conditions and spirited participants. It runs around the harbor, past the Queen Mary, and then does a big out-and-back along the beach, half of it right on the sand (that is, on the bike path.) Most people run the half-marathon (about 10,000 runners), though there are a good 3000 or so running the full race, which also has an out-and-back course. Since I only trained for a month, (I ran no more than a single day in August) I had a modest time goal of beating 5 hours. I came in at 4 hours, 45 minutes.

It seemed a fairly well-run event. I could nit-pick ten or fifteen things that bugged me, but in the end everyone really seemed to be having a good time. I wasn't a big fan of the marathon course, though the half was nicely scenic. One thing in particular that I thought was a hilarious bit of planning was that one side of the 3-foot high beer garden barrier actually abutted a narrow part of the course at around mile 6. This means that if you were in the back of the pack, quick finishers of the half were already standing there wearing their medals and having a 9AM beer, roundly cheering you on. Something about it just seemed wrong, but it was altogether too funny for me to stop and contemplate.

I ran the first 10.5 miles with my old buddy Steve, (the guy who I mentioned last April who had run the Carlsbad 5000) who took up running again in his fifties after a heart valve replacement a few years back. It only took a little bit of prodding, but he was willing to sign up a few months ago and endure the rigor of all those training miles to work his way up to 13.1. I told him I would run with him every step of the way, no matter how fast or slow, and so I did.

He's been doing the walk/run method, which has always been a challenge for me, and it paid off. He had a respectable time goal of "just beating 3 hours" and came in at 2:51:21, limping to the finish with sore knees in the last couple miles. He loved every minute of the race, though I could tell he was beginning to feel the pain at about the halfway point. I tried to cheer him up and said, "Look at it this way: you've only got 6 miles to go. I've got 20." and then he nearly fell off the course, he found that so entertaining.

Running your first big distance race is a lot harder than running your 13th marathon, and a much bigger accomplishment, so I wanted to see him do it, and be a part of it. Steve actually thanked me for getting him out there, and then running it with him, and he was grinning from ear-to-ear in the beer tent, which was a pleasure to see. It's a sh!t-eater's grin, after your first big race, and non-runners can't understand it. But it feels fantastic.


As for me, I was challenged by a marathon where I walked most of the first half, which was the oddest strategy I've ever taken on. Coaching Steve on the power of Gu and all those running supplements, I was also taking in a bunch more calories than I am used to on race day, so it had the weird effect of energizing me all morning. At mile 11 I bid him goodbye, plugged in my iPod, and took off running -feeling like a million bucks. I ran all the way to the finish line, passing 506 runners after mile 18 (web site stat) and bounded over that final timing mat feeling like a Starr, myself. My feet were sore from being on them for so long, but I must say it was nice to finish a marathon for once where I didn't feel like I was going to puke and pass out. (Mrs. Ditchman chided me on this. She's been trying to get me to eat more Power Gel and take more walk breaks for years. Right again, Mommy.) For future reference, getting all that marathon's-end walking out of the way in the beginning is worth it. (It may have been the fastest second half of a marathon I've ever run!)

So I'm glad I did it, as always. Steve says he's gonna keep running. I reminded him that he was half way to a full marathon, and that if he quit now he'd have to start the training all over again when he does finally commit to The Big 26.2. The look on his face said he was going to go for it, since, who would want to go through all that again?

As for me, I'm already signed up.

~