You’ve likely heard your mom say it at some point. I know Cat and I heard it many times in our years together from various people. We mostly relegated it to the “eh, over exaggeration” category and moved on. But it’s absolutely, one hundred percent true. What is?

Enjoy your child while it lasts. Everything moves so fast, it’s over before you know it.

When this happens to you before you have kids you’ll nod at whoever tells you this and mentally shrug it off. I did. I was secure in my knowledge that time flows as it always does regardless of whether you’ve spawned offspring or not. These “parent” types don’t have any arcane, forbidden insight into time and the passage thereof.

But that’s horseshit.

My daughter is now a little over 3. I now have complete conversations with her. I play games with her. I see that she has emotions and character and a fascinating complexity that, frankly, was unimaginable even a year ago. This is the same girl that seemingly yesterday couldn’t grasp the concept of swallowing baby cereal and is now having existential discussions with me about the pig in the tree outside our house (pigs apparently do fly in our neighborhood).

I simply can’t keep up with her. She’s potty training now, she’s infinitely more capable of feeding herself and doing things that are non-trivial, and she’s a genuinely funny little human being. And she’s getting older with each passing second. In less than two years she’ll be in kindergarden. In another few years she’ll be graduating from high school. Shortly thereafter she’ll be graduating college and finding her own way through life.

So now I have to try to memorize every damned thing I can. It’s really true, folks. They’re gone before you know it.

Ah July 4th. A day for celebrating our independence from those jackass limeys by sweltering in the heat and humidity and imbibing fine liquors from Mexico… at least if our house is any indication.

We invited some friends over to the casa for some barbecue and margaritas as is our wont. People of conscience will typically, if told that they will be provided with margaritas, bring tequila with them in exchange. This is a thoughtful gesture that is usually made somewhat less useful by the selection of tequila they bring. I’m picky. If I drink certain kinds of tequila I will have grave regrets on the following day. I’m getting old, my body and aging liver can’t deal with the abuse levied by the cheaper tequilas. So it’s always a bit unnerving when someone says “okay, we’ll bring some tequila!” Oh joy.

So imagine my utter awe when our guests arrive toting nothing less than Patron Anejo! Sweet creeping cucarachas! Patron! Anejo! Hand-bottled in hand-blown bottles! By hand! I was actually a bit intimidated. Clearly these were people of class and erudition and me, a mere lowly fuckwit, had received them into my house. Would my measly Sauza-filled margaritas even rate at this point? I was tempted to pour out the pitcher and start anew.

But wait. Sully Patron Anejo with mixers? What kind of slope-foreheaded cretin ruins a carefully crafted tequila with friggin’ Cuervo margarita mix? So I did not. We drank it clean, in shot format. (Aside: it’s oddly comforting if slightly awkward doing shots with your mom in evidence. Even in your thirties. That was a first.) The accepted way of drinking tequila shots involves salt and limes and the meat of the hand and licking and stuff. I did the initial part but once that Patron hit my palate I forwent everything that traditionally followed. It was just so rich and smooth and good. Oh sweet agave! Oh righteous shot!

The only suck is that it will disappear. And to acquire more would entail me forking over solid sheaves of cash because that stuff is expensive. Unless… I… invite certain someones over for margaritas again. Ha-HA!

Our house has been a work-in-progress since we moved in. From the painting to the — oh dear Lord please don’t remind me — wallpaper removal it’s been an almost constant effort for a long time.

That said, it’s rare that you can really remember how far you’ve come. Sure, you can look at your house and say “oh yeah, that wall was covered in a bowel-weakening, floral-patterned mess before we moved in” but to actually picture it in your mind as it was so as to appreciate its current state more is non-trivial. But thanks to the miracle of modern technology, I have been privileged to experience the transformation in ways not possible mere seconds ago. Witness! Merely rollover to view the horror!

Some explanation may be necessary. See, the picture that shows up originally is our house as it existed Sunday. The rollover picture is the house as it existed the first time we visited it before purchase. If you look carefully in the rollover you can actually see the very wallpaper that so tormented my eternal soul!

The latest addition is the mantel. I mentioned previously that earlier this year Cat and I tiled the hearth and fireplace surround and the only remaining thing to do was a mantel. I drew one up and tried to work out in my head how I would implement this thing that existed only in my head and, now, on this paper. I’m not a woodworker extraordinaire so this wasn’t necessarily a slam dunk. Therefore, the idea languished and my confidence waned as I stared at the mute expanse of screwed up wall surrounding our fireplace.

Then Cat called this mantel store and this guy came out, measured it, looked at my drawing and said “I’ll be here to install it tomorrow!” Huh? And sure as anything he walked in the next day with the raw mantel as you see here (close-up available below), hung it up in about 10 minutes and charged us a few hundred bucks. So, something that would have taken me several weekends and much cursing was accomplished in less than 24 hours for, honestly, less than it would have cost me in material and abject suffering. A little bit of paint and it was just done.

So in evidence we have the new mantel/fireplace complex, the luscious Silestone counters, the prettier cabinet knobs, new carpet, decided lack of wallpaper, new paint, and oh so very much love. It’s odd, there’s so many little things it’s sometimes hard to remember them. Like if you look carefully you can see a speaker next to the couch where I ran some wiring through the crawlspace and up the wall in some nice, professional-looking jacks. In essence, the mantel was the veritable capstone of a load of work.

I guess now it’s time to start redoing stuff. (My dimpled, white ass.)

As zygotes, we humans have precious little control over our environs. We are cast out of the womb into whatever vile place our parents happen to call home. Until a certain, accepted age is reached we still have very little input into our destiny, being told what to do, where to go, how to live and — perhaps most importantly — where to live.

As a direct result of my own particular womb choice, I grew up in Pensacola, Florida. Pensacola’s claim to fame is its white sand beaches which are, in fact, exceedingly gorgeous. You’ll note that I don’t mention a whole lot about hockey. Pensacola can not currently and especially could not in the 70’s claim anything at all with respect to hockey, save perhaps “The Place Least Likely To Receive 18 Inches Of Snow In April.” Indeed, hockey never even appeared on my radar until the 80 Olympics and then only because one of my teachers had her picture in some magazine.

To say that I am now a fan of the sport would be accurate. I love watching it. I love playing the video game version of it. I lament with admirable vehemence the fact that I don’t know how to play hockey. Ask Cat. It’s gotten to be an inside joke between us, though it’s reached the point that every time I say “I wish I played hockey” she elbows me in the trachea because she’s heard it so often. It finally occurred to me that I, being of sound mind and body, could do something about this.

You gotta start somewhere

This past Saturday marked my initial foray into hockeydom. It will end only when I hoist The Cup as a walk-on for the Hurricanes sometime before I die. Admittedly, the vast majority of the players are younger than me and have what can only be described as an infinite head start. But I’m a quick learner.

I took the first class of an adult “learn to skate” program. There were 6 of us out on the ice. Though I had only been on ice skates about two times previously in my life, I did honestly pick it up pretty quickly. We did basic skating crap forwards and backwards, started cross-overs and stuff and it was a blast. Then there was some basic stick-handling and passing instruction and that did it. What incredible fun! I have 6 more of those classes, then I’ll probably try to get some Stick & Puck things under my belt for practice. Perhaps pick up a more advanced hockey skills related class. Then who knows? Maybe I’ll work my way up to a league sometime.

Then comes the walk-on. I mean, since I have an “in” with Kevyn Adams and all. It’s all about contacts, baby.

My gaming time is a treasured time. I can forget the cares of the world for a while and do something utterly useless but somehow gratifying. Recently, hockey via NHL2K6 on my beloved Xbox 360 has scratched that particular itch and I was only a few games into my season — at a dismal 2-4-1 record to start I don’t think my imaginary Canes are going to reproduce the real Canes’ successes this year — but ready to bring the pain to the hapless Senators. The game started well and I scratched out a goal in the first and took it to the first intermission feeling good. Then the screen froze.

“Huh?” I sat for a while staring and clicking morosely at random buttons on the controller. “Great, thanks 2K for a buggy, freeze-prone game.”

I got up and turned the power off and back on again and was faced with the ball-shrinking horror that all 360 owners fear: the infamous 3 blinking lights of infinite pain and suffering. “Oh you have got to be f*@king kidding me,” I muttered as I began yanking cables and hard drives off the thing. It started up again and I thought everything was going to be okay. But of course it wasn’t. Subsequent sessions with the 360 got shorter and shorter as the freezes and those foul, vermilion sprites winked at me with increased frequency. Last night I resigned myself to attempt a hard drive reformat — words I never thought I’d utter in relation to a goddamned gaming console — but the horrid thing was implacable in its unwillingness to boot.

Prophetically, when I bought the thing I decided to go against my baser instincts and purchase an extended warranty. Given the drive problems of the original Xbox I figured a bit of CYA was in order on this new toy. So, today I’ll walk into EB Games and walk out with a new console. The largest point of suck is that I will lose all of the progress in my games. So, my storied run in NHL2K6 will have to begin anew, my almost complete PGR3 will be no longer, and I’ll have to start from scratch again on everything from Halo 2 to Ghost Recon:Advanced Warfighter. That’s a bit disappointing. Hopefully, though, this new one will last me a bit longer than 8 months.