This is GRENAMIER.COM

I just went to go check on my daughter, Princess. She fell asleep hanging on to a white hotel towel she calls her “blankie.” She always has her blankie with her when she goes to bed. Being a towel, however, it’s not warm enough so I usually put another blanket on her. Later, she will kick it off of her in her sleep and I’ll put it right back. Repeat ad nauseam.

Every single time I put the blanket on her, though, it reminds me of my paternal grandmother. When she passed away, part of the grieving process included a private ceremony for the family in the funeral home. After my Dad spoke, the funeral director brought a couple of very fancy blankets to the podium. He said (in a poor summary of a beautiful speech) that when we’re little and our blankets slip off of us in our sleep, it’s our parents who come in and put the blankets back so that we keep warm and stave off the cold. At this time, it was pretty much our last chance to be with my grandmother’s casket before it was sealed for the long trim back to her burial in Vietnam. Our last opportunity to say thank you and that we loved her and would always remember her. Also, these blankets he had with him, there at the podium, were for us to put on my grandmother to keep her warm for the long journey home.

Now, part of me thinks it feels a little weird to think of the deceased while I’m with my daughter. The rest, however, really just goes quiet and watches this tiny pink soul breathing under a pink blanket in a pink room full of princesses.

She just turned five. We (should) still have a lot of time left on this world together. For all the things I might do for her or that she might need from me, this blanket stuff seems like the simplest thing. Yet, ever since that speech by Mr. Lee, I feel like even these are some of the most important moments I’ll share with her.

And she’ll probably never know.

My wife is going to be away most of the weekend accompanying her brother in New Jersey. They’ll leave in the dead of night around 4 or 5 AM and be back on Sunday night.

The kids, Princess and Permasmile, finally fell asleep about half an hour ago so the wife and I are spending some quiet time together before we pass out from exhaustion.

I never like to be separated from any of the family by so much distance. Not that I feel afraid that something terrible might happen, but I tend to feel the absence, the sense of someone
missing and I abhor the vacuum even more than Nature does.

It also doesn’t help that a fairly sizable portion of me really wishes we could all go together. I live for long road trips in unfamiliar territory. With two kids and no time to get all of our ducks in a row, however, I know things are better the way they stand.

Now I’ll just have to figure out how to keep the little ones entertained tomorrow.

Just as I got started into writing on the blog, I got hooked on Twitter. Following other people’s feed and tweeting into stream just seems to fill in that silence.

No matter where you go, you need some background noise to give your space some texture. The web is still a very sterile place and browsing it is still an artificial experience. Twitter and Facebook may or may not change the world, but at least it gives you the feeling that there’s some life or movement under the surface.

If you want to follow my Twitter feed, look me up: http://twitter.com/grenamier

I promise you that it’s getting updated much more often than this blog does.

Fighter planes could be much faster and agile than they are now, but their limits exist in flesh rather than steel and composite materials. Human pilots turn into peanut butter if the plane goes too fast, so a jet designer has to take this into account.
Apple announced the new Shuffle today and it’s really, really small. I have to reserve final judgement until I physically hold one in my hand, but I wonder if Apple’s gone too far.
The Shuffle is now too small to hold buttons that human fingers can press, so Apple did away with them on the unit. Now you have a control on the headphone cord and a voice to announce the song titles.
As far as the headphone cord controls go, I can’t imagine you’re happy if you have a favourite pair of headphones that lack the controls. You’re going to have to get used to the Apple buds or hope that some good third-party replacements are available.
The voice worries me. I’m a fast reader so I prefer to read text over listening to a voice message. When you listen to something, you’re stuck waiting until the whole message gets read. I hope that this feature doesn’t become intrusive, especially on long song titles.

All that said, I can’t wait to see these at my local Apple Store.

Part of why I don’t blog much is that sharing what I think of isn’t an action that comes naturally to me. Another big reason, is that this blog has to compete with my Moleskine.

If you’ve read my little profile blurb, you know that I love classic low tech stuff. Like fountain pens scratching out lines in a paper notebook. When I have to get something out of my head and into text, my weapon of choice for the past few years has been a Moleskine notebook. Yes, they’re expensive, but something about the paper, and the bookmark, and the handy pocket in the back is like crack on the fingers. I’ve gone through a bunch of them, scribbling thoughts down whenever on a whim. Of course, a lot of whims happen at work when I have little to do.

There are some problems with recording my thoughts this way. First: the ink gets all over my hands because I’m a lefty using a fountain pen. Second: the notebooks aren’t very searchable without a multitude of Moleskine hacks to overcome the limitations of non-digital paper. Third: everything I write is hidden away under an elastic band, never to be shared or debated.

I’ve gotten over the first problem. In fact, I like the “lived in” look that the ink smudges give the paper. The second doesn’t really bother me too much either. After all, notebooks are what they are. People who spend a lot of time and effort in maintaining systems to make their paper behave like binary bits seem unsure of what year they’re living in.

The third problem, however, does bother me. Although a lot of what I write in the notebook is private and should never be shared (screw all you “radical transparency” types!), there’s a lot there that needs to get out and seen by others. Not just because I’m a narcissistic jackhole, but because a lot of these thoughts need the benefit of perspective and cross-examination. I’d like people to read what I write, give me some feedback, and hopefully I’ll learn things I didn’t know or see things I didn’t see before. Perhaps the people commenting might also come away a little different.

The blog can help me with this. I’ll keep scribbling in my Moleskine, but when I hit on something worthy of a closer look, I’ll look at it a little more closely. Shine it up and throw it on the blog for all of my 0 readers to see.

<sarcasm>I can just hear the anticipation now!</sarcasm>

My daughter’s birthday party is coming up on Sunday and due to various logistical reasons, we will have to keep about 8 little kids entertained in our little house.

I’m looking for game ideas! I already thought of one for a hot-potato type game based on musical chairs. While the music plays, the kids pass a big plastic Easter egg around a circle. Music stops and whoever’s holding the egg gets kicked out and gets a consolation prize. Repeat again and again. The last kid standing gets the egg and whatever prize is inside. The Princess has approved the game, but she wants more games!

Please, nothing that involves running around (no room) or any big mess (unless you’re willing to come here and clean up for us), or lots of fiddly little pieces that will just end up getting broken and stepped on.

And absolutely no pin the tail on the donkey!

You always know when “the media” has run out of things to report when it starts to report on how “the media” is covering the story. I put that in quotes because we tend to talk about the media as if they were one singular thing instead of a collection of mediums.

Anyway, I’ve hit that point pretty early in my blogging life. Not so much because I’ve run out of things to say, but mostly because I’m not sure of what I’m doing with this blog, and what I find publishable. Let’s face it, there’s a lot of noise out there. The Internet doesn’t really need any more narcissistic navel-gazers teetering on their pedestals.

This blog is intended to be about getting a lot of the half-thoughts swirling around my head onto the keyboard where I can see it and think about what I’m thinking about and why I think that way. I think about all kinds of things, so I can’t say this blog will be about anything one particular thing.

Be warned: I do think about Apple and football a lot.