On this day in:

1945 — the Atomic Age dawns when the Enola Gay drops its payload on Hiroshima at 8:15 am local time, killing 140,000 people
1970 — the Cronk Age dawns when Andrew slithers into this world
1991 — the Information Age dawns when the world wide web goes live

I feel like my life is so busy that I ought to have plenty to write about.

I could write about Kris’ tom-astrophe last night — all of her ginormous tomato trees collapsed under the mass of an overhead watering, which resulted in a panicked and futile attempt to stand them up again — but she’s prohibited me from mentioning it.

I could write about poor Tiffany’s nightmare evening — she came home to find big, lovable Porter (my favorite of her four cats) with some sort of respiratory failure, rushed him to the vet, learned he had lymphoma, and had to put him down — but the thought of it makes me sad.

I could write about my sleep problems — I got a new mask for the C-PAP machine but it sucks, I haven’t been getting to bed on-time, and my rest has been fitful — but that bores even me.

I could write about all of my weblogs — Animal Intelligence is now up and in testing, Get Rich Slowly was on Metafilter yesterday (which makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside), and Four Color Comics is experiencing a re-birth — but I write about that sort of stuff enough already.

I could write about how I’m starting another diet, about how the kittens and the chicken continue to live in harmony, about how Simon climbed on to the roof of the house, about how I’ve been rather busy at Custom Box lately, about how Kris and I have learned we need a picnic table at Rosings park, about our upcoming trip to San Francisco. I could write about all of that.

But I’m tired. So I won’t.

Suddenly my friends and I can’t spell. Our e-mail exchanges have become ghastly sights. I’ve always had a problem with homonyms — how many times have I used ‘through’ when I meant ‘threw’? — but now the problem seems to have exploded, and just when I’m writing more than I ever have before. Worse, I’ve begun substituting unrelated words for the words I intend. And sometimes my mind is racing so far ahead the I end up using words from later in the sentence before they’re needed. It’s very, very strange.

Here are some real-life examples from recent e-mails, both from me and from friends. I’ve bolded the offending words:

John David Roth: If I were to do an external hard drive now, I’d go for a laptop-sized drive, actually, which I think is 3-1/2″. By the drive, mount it in a case (sold seperately), and voila!

Paul David Carlile: (in reply to the above) Thanks. I know understand better what you mean.

John David Roth: Huh. Comments on Mefi Projects on world-viewable. Who knew? (should be “aren’t”)

Joel Alexander Miron: Wow, so JD one the league (right?) with the sixth-most points? Truly he was the Pittsburgh Steelers of 2005.

Tiffany Sue Gates: They think that I stained my
back…

Tammy Lee Jata: And heres the third time. We’re coming and most likely so will shelly and justin.

Etc. Etc. Etc. These are but a few examples.

I guess it could be worse. I guess we could all b l33t. or we cud do lik teenz whn txting.

I haven’t had a chance to watch as much of the World Cup this year as I had hoped. I did watch today’s game, though, and wow. It was great. Germany did not deserve to lose by two goals. The match was phenomenal. Italy outplayed the Germans in the first half, dominating possession, but were unable to put anything away. I thought Germany was the stronger team in the second half, but again they were unable to score.

During the first fifteen-minute overtime period, the game began to open up. Neither team seemed to want the game to go to penalties, and both sides made attacks on goal. Still scoreless heading into the second overtime period, things got even hotter. Still, the match seemed sure to be headed to penalties until Italy’s Grosso tucked in a beautiful goal in the 118th minute. Germany pressed in desperation, but this just freed Italy to make a strong counterattack and score a decisive second goal with seconds remaining.

A fantastic game, well-played by both sides.

Dreams are so strange sometimes. I’ve had some odd ones the past couple nights.

Earlier this week, I dreamed of my childhood friend John Kern. Or more precisely, I dreamed that he had a sister named Starla. Starla Kern had won $1,000,000 doing something unusual (the details of which are now sketchy — winning a reality show? defeating Godzilla?), and that she was all over Portland-area news stations. They referred to her as “Starla Kern, formerly of Wilsonville”, and parenthetically mentioned that her brother, John, had ghost-written Tom Clancy’s The Hunt for Red October. (In non-dream life, John has served aboard submarines.) After the big to-do, I bumped into Starla at an ice cream parlor, and we reminisced about old times.

But that’s nothing compared to what I dreamed last night.

I dreamed that we were with Jeremy and Jennifer, staying in a yurt at the coast. From the campground, we could hear the ocean. Kris and Jenn had wandered off to look at some foxglove while Jeremy and I tended the kids. He and I were seated around a campfire, drinking Jack and Coke. The kids were running up a bluff to a cliff that overlooked the sea.

“Be careful,” Jeremy said as he poured himself another drink. Hank and Scout laughed as they raced up and down the slope. Then, without warning, brother and sister joined hands and leapt from the cliff to the beach below. Emma landed first, and she rolled out on the sand, giggling. Harrison landed with a sickening crunch as his legs snapped beneath him. He began to scream. Emma began to scream.

“Damn kids,” said Jeremy, taking another sip of his drink. The screaming bothered me, though, so I went over to see if there was anything I could do. As I neared them, a giant crocodile sprang from the surf and charged the children. Emma moved aside, but Harrison’s legs were rubber. The crocodile gobbled him down.

“Jeremy,” I shouted, “a crocodile just ate your son.”

“Damn it,” he said. He got up and strolled over, drink in hand. The crocodile idled at the base of the cliff, a big grin on its face. I could hear Harrison inside, screaming. Emma was clinging to my pants and crying.

When Jeremy reached us, he handed me his Jack and Coke and marched up to the crocodile. He wrestled with its jaws, but the animal only got a quizzical look on its face, and then gobbled him down, too. Or mostly down.

One arm still protruded from the beast’s mouth. In a valiant feat of strength, Jeremy forced open the iron jaws. “My drink,” he gasped. “Give me my drink!” I walked over and gave him his Jack and Coke. He drank the entire thing before the jaws snapped close again. The crocodile winked at Emma (who was still crying) and then sank beneath the surf.

I wonder what I will dream tonight…

When I went downstairs this morning, I knew I needed a quick breakfast. I have a full day today: garage sale, opera, helping Jason and Naomi move. What did we have that I could scarf down and get good nourishment?

My eyes fell on the chocolate cake.

Chocolate cake for breakfast? Damn straight.

Nutrition! Eggs, milk, and wheat!

Is there such a thing as adult-onset Attention Deficit Disorder? If so, I have it. I can’t focus on anything. I read somewhere today (on the internet) that many others experience this, and that one theory is that it’s the result of being stimulated by too many electronic devices. That seems plausible, but I really don’t know because now I need to go check on another web site.

Also: one difference between me and Kris, part 10,734. I can come home in the middle of the day, and Kris will have every light in the house blazing. They will have all been on since she got out of bed. Kris can come home at 10 p.m., and I won’t have a single light in the house on. It won’t even have occurred to me to turn one on.

Owning a small manufacturing business is interesting. Mostly, Nick and Jeff and I have things in-hand. We’ve been doing this for too many years, and we know how things work. (One reason we have so much slack time in our jobs is because of this: we’re familiar with them, and we’ve built our own little systems to handle formerly-lengthy chores quickly.)

There are times, however, that we don’t know what to do, times when we’re out of our element. There are times I feel like a minor league player who’s making a brief appearance with the big league affiliate because the star catcher has broken his thumb.

For example, I often feel out of my element where pricing is concerned.

Our company doesn’t play games with prices. Our prices are based on how much our material costs, how much labor goes into producing a box, and then a certain (smallish) set profit for each order based on a variety of factors. We don’t arbitrarily raise and lower prices for individual customers. Our prices are fair, and a reflection of the cost of doing business.

Our suppliers, however, do not seem to operate on the same principles. Their pricing schemes are often baffling, whimsical even. Why does one particular grade of corrugated cost more than another? Why this much more? Why does one supplier charge 20% less for this grade but 10% more for that grade? Why will another supplier refuse to ship us board specified in the traditional manner, only shipping us new-fangled board? Why can this supplier get us material overnight, but that supplier takes a week?

More to the point (and the reason for this entry), why does one supplier increase its prices (citing market conditions), while two competitors do not? What do we do when our primary supplier is suddenly charging ten percent more for material than its competitors? Do we just ditch our primary supplier, a supplier with which we’ve had a strong relationship for twenty years? Do we begin to spread things around to the alternate suppliers? What happens when our primary supplier then responds by lowering prices? Do we suddenly drop all the business we’ve moved to secondary suppliers?

I am not fond of price whores, businesses who shift from one company to another based solely on pricing, and I don’t want ours to be that sort of company. Good business is based on more than just the lowest price. On the other hand, I don’t want to pay too much; paying too much takes money out of my pocket and out of the pockets of my customers.

Mostly I am able to make quick business decisions. That’s one of my roles here, I think. But the Big Stuff — stuff like price increases, and new buildings, and equipment purchases — that stuff freezes me in my tracks. I play dozens of scenarios over in my mind, trying to predict every possible outcome, both the good and the bad. What is best for the business? That’s the question I’m always trying to answer.

I don’t have to deal with these sorts of situations often. When I do, they’re perplexing.