Saturday night turned out to be awful, with both girls being up for two hours in the middle of the night. It could have turned out better, but it’s hard to think on your feet when you’d much rather be in bed. Since Anna’s room is apparently infested with witches, we put a plan in place for Sunday night by which she could quietly come into my bedroom if she got too scared, which she did around 2am. Thankfully, she was quiet and composed, and the switch was made without waking up Tara.

On Monday I did make a point of discussing with Anna the significance of Memorial Day, but she refuted my romantic description of soldiers dying for our country and how her uncles and grandfather had been soldiers and had put themselves in harm’s way for our national defense. After further discussion, she began asking about the soldiers from other countries and what made them bad guys and our soldiers good guys. She’s six, ladies and gentlemen. I was caught completely caught off guard. I started to explain further, but in the end I punted and distracted her with the TiVo. Let no one say that raising a critical thinker is easy.

As much as I hate to write post that are just a event-by-event account of my day, I’m going to do it anyway. Jennifer left yesterday to go visit our newest nephew, leaving me with both of the girls. Anna has been particularly trying lately, so I know I’m in for a fairly rough week. To start out, neither one of the girls slept much last night; Tara woke up three times in the early evening, and then Anna came home from what was supposed to be a sleepover because she wasn’t sleeping either. She ended up sleeping on Jen’s side of our bed, and both girls decided to get up at the regular time despite missing several hours of sleep. Anna had her usual morning in which something upsets her and she explodes in a huge ball of fire and destruction. Normally calm Tara then becomes jealous of the extra attention paid to Anna and explodes as well. Toss in some more crying, hitting, attempts to run away from home, and it’s just another typical morning at weresotired.com.

I finally managed to gather up the girls to go to Pancake House, where we saw my boss, who later called me to say that he had found a Nintendo Wii at the store and picked it up for me. I’ve been looking for one off and on for months. After a failed attempt to go to SeaWorld and a stop by Target so that Anna could spend a birthday gift card, we picked up the Wii and went home for lunch. Tara took a nap while Anna and I learned a little bit about how to play the Wii Sports games. Two hours later we learned the important of tightening the wrist strap properly and called it a day.

After nap we visited the neighbors, who never fail to remind me that no matter how much you have going on, somebody else is bound to have more. After a quick dinner comprised of the last remains of food in the house, Anna decided to put on her best Stepford behavior and help out marvelously with bedtime. Hopefully she wakes up in that mood tomorrow.

Today we had the official part for Anna’s birthday with a whole bunch of Anna’s friends from school. We were in a horrible rush to get everything set and the house cleaned by the time the party started, and luckily the people and the bubbologist¹ were both a little late. I did take a few moments in advance to place a monolight on the landing upstairs pointed at the ceiling on half power so that I could trigger it with my cheapo eBay remote and light the whole place up. It worked excellently, providing nice even lighting regardless of where I was in the room. I definitely will have to buy another remote to trigger the other strobe. Click the cake for the set.

Jennifer and I celebrate twelve years of marriage this week; something like 17 years total together. That’s a lot. Over the course of an evening we discuss the following things we already know:

• We are lucky.
• We are happy.
• All we ever needed to know we learned from our six-year-old.
• Life is good.
• We are lucky.

In other news, we visited Spa Velía for the first and maybe not the last time for a couples’ massage. The place itself is very nice, the ambience is great, the massages are good (though we’ve had better). Throw in a couple or three martinis and a kickass NY strip on top and I really really have nothing about which I can complain. My life and my ability to appreciate it seem to get better with every passing year. Here’s to lucky thirteen.

I’m something like halfway through that part of May in which Mother’s Day, Anna’s birthday and our wedding anniversary occur with the span of like eight days. Even if I weren’t a forgetful procrastinator, it would be a tough stretch. Let’s break it down:

• Mother’s Day: took Jennifer out the night before for dinner at Mister A’s, and breakfast in bed.

• Anna’s Birthday: cupcakes, candles, big bag o’ presents. Party is this weekend, with Bubblemania performing. We let Anna pick the guest list for the first time.

• Anniversary: couples’ massage, dinner at Ruth’s Chris.

So far there haven’t been any (unwelcome) surprises, and at least I get things back my way with my birthday and Father’s day next month.

In other news, I added a new 24″ monitor at work, so when I get my workstation (two monitors), my other workstation (one monitor), my laptop, and my three prototypes all lined up, I have a desktop 8800 pixels wide, and, thanks to Synergy, my cursor floats smoothly across all seven flat panel displays. Ohhhh.

I’m home with the kids today, and I noticed while Anna was at school how Tara tends to chatter to herself when nobody else is talking to her. Some times singing, sometimes counting, and sometimes the odd phrase, “I need backup” or “why am I sticky?”

I volunteered to be interviewed in the form of five questions from loyal reader Sarah from Dreamdust. Without further ado, here are the questions along with their answers.

I turn up on your doorstep demanding a Tour of Dave’s Favourite Places. After you’ve removed the u from favourite, where do you take me?

Hrm. At first thought, I really feel like I never go anywhere. I’m a terrible homebody, though I suppose there some some places I really do enjoy, even if I don’t have a chance to be there often enough. I’ve already talked with Jennifer about this and for some reason she didn’t seem at all put off by the fact that that the first stop on the tour is:

• My bed. No, really. Bed is great, ask any parent. Nothing bad ever happens there, and I probably fantasize about napping at least 20 times in a given day.
• My folks’ cottage. We’ll all be going next month. It’s so relaxing to be out, away from the city, hanging out by the water or in it. Last year it was a little stressful because Tara was in danger of falling in at any time, but for this trip I think we’ll just have her wear a life jacket and loosen the reins a bit. There’s a tiny little golf course nearby where I go with my brothers and dad to talk smack and carve up the fairways. It’s a par 3 course, so the fact that we’re on the fairways at all should be a good indication of how (not) good I am at golf. However, I dare anyone to best me at holding down a hammock.
• Alaska in the summer. I’ve only been once, but it was just awesome. So pristine, so clear, and so unpopulated. I have something of a hermit side that wants to get away from all this technology and return to nature, at least until it’s time to use the facilities.
• Stockholm in the summer. I really like being surrounded by water, and each island in the city has a different feel to it, there’s every kind of activity within a short bike ride.

What’s the most manly, testosterone-filled, possibly even swashbuckling thing you’ve ever done?

This is a really difficult one for me, because I’m not a man’s man by any stretch of the imagination. When I think of swashbuckling, I think of Errol Flynn swooping in to save a damsel in distress, which is something I can’t recall having done. Actually, I take that back; just a couple weeks back I was with a group at a bar and one of the girls with us was being hit on by an annoying drunk soccer player. I swooped in and asked her to scratch my back or to help me find my contact lens or what were the names of her eleven children by fourteen fathers or something like that.

I’m not much of an athlete, and never played sports in school, but now as an adult I really get pumped up playing volleyball. There’s something about squaring off against a big hitter with the game on the line, jumping up and stuffing a hard hit back at him. You pump your fist and talk some smack and it feels pretty good. On a couple occasions I’ve stuff-blocked a former pro volleyball player. Then there was the time I was playing hockey and batted down a slap shot, just about destroying my finger in the process. Later, I had to poke a hole through the fingernail with a red-hot paper clip. That was pretty cool. What was the question?

Where do your moderate skills lie? This isn’t where you excel magnificently, or fail miserably; I want to know what you’re just pretty good at.

What an interesting question! I talk often about a few things–photography, cooking, playing volleyball–all areas in which I find much joy, work to improve, and yet consider myself to be moderately skilled, but I don’t think that’s what you’re after. The truth is that I’m a generalist. I like doing a little bit of everything, but I get really bored if I have to do more than a little. Thus, I’m moderately skilled at almost everything, because by the time I’ve developed a moderate amount of skill, I’ve moved on to something else.

You’ve been crowned King of the World and now there’s to be a suitably spectacular inauguration party. What’s on the programme?

It’s very hard to think of an answer for this because my mind immediately wanders to all the new rules I’ll be creating to outlaw all the things that annoy me. But if I must focus, let’s go with the following. The only appropriate venue for such an occasion would have to be Las Vegas. I’d just rent out the entire strip. Oh wait, I’m King of the World, they would just have to clear out to accommodate me.

I love all sorts of music, so the lineup must include

• A classic rock cover band. Not the original bands, because they’re always trying to do new versions of their own songs. I want the live performance to sound like the record.
• A DJ spinning mashups of opera and heavy metal. Or Evanescence. Same difference.
• A Terra Naomi or Margo Timmins or Sarah Maclachlan type performing with an acoustic guitar.

The menu would have to include some of that Wagyu beef that my palate and wallet have been fighting over. Anyone ordering their steak well done would be served a leather boot with A-1 sauce on it. There would be seafood risotto and corn dogs and pulled pork sandwiches, and a ridiculous array of desserts. I figure if I’m King of the World it’s ok if I pack on a few pounds, as long is my ordering-around finger is still in shape.

Since we’re already in Las Vegas, the entertainers would be there already. Penn & Teller would start out. Then there would be one of the Cirque du Soleil shows, but only for 20 minutes because they get boring after a while.

You admit to having a gadget fetish, so what are your current top 5 contraptions and why?

• My various computers. At any given time, I have five devices in the house running Linux (not counting my desktop nor my laptop) but I’m going to count them as one. I really enjoy fiddling with all of them. One of them serves streaming media to my TiVo and cell phone, and I’m adding a touch panel to control the stereo and serve as a digital photo frame and DVR.
• My cell phone. It’s a Nokia N80 that I got earlier this year and it totally rocks. I love that there are a ton of apps for it, and it’s without a doubt the gadget I use most often. I occasionally even talk to people on it.
• My Canon 20D. I really want a full frame camera, but I can’t justify it at this point.
• The widget that I’m developing at work. There’s nothing particularly interested about it, and it’s the cause of a lot of stress in my life, but I am learning an awful lot in the process of working with it.
• The all-important next gadget, for which I am always looking. For this reason, everyone comes to me for advice on which gadget to get, because I have researched all of them.