For years, I had been talking about hiring a recent high school graduate to work for me, doing all the chores around the house I needed done. I'm not talking laundry, dishes and windows, I'm talking painting, digging, building, smashing, carting, gardening and the other project that I've been meaning to do for the longest time. If said person could program, too, well, then, so much the better.

This past summer, I was fortunate to hire Kyle Smith for the whole summer. He was returning from France, where he had spent the previous 6 months teaching English in a French school, maybe high school. Because of the timing, he was unable to find a "real" job in his chosen profession (aerospace engineering), so my summer job offer was sufficient.

I have to say, the summer was quite enjoyable having Kyle around. There were certainly the many jokes about my cabana boy, including some about how I made Kyle prance around in a leather thong, fanning me all day. It wasn't quite like that, though (darn it).

Kyle helped me with the garden. I returned the favor by poisoning his family. He built a walkway for my side garden, and a fence around the main garden. He knocked up concrete, painted the ceiling and living room trim, dug up the front yard fence, planted a few trees, walked the dogs, learned to program, researched open source e-commerce packages, developed a stock market watcher, and listened to me rant about things.

He also made me laugh on quite a few occasions. At one point, Mike, Kyle and I went to some restaurant in Willow Glen in San Jose, where Kyle decided to eat the 2 pound sandwich. Mike was excited to see him try.

Kyle was unsuccessful in his conquest.

I went to my nutritionist, Marina Rose, yesterday. I've been seeing her off and on for the last five years. We discussed the results from a urinalysis I had done last month. The results were, uh, interesting.

Turns out that, just like five years ago, I have difficulty digesting carbohydrates; wheat and milk are bad for me; blah blah blah.

Unlike five years ago, at least I'm absorbing my vitamin C and calcium.

Whoo.

Five years ago, I had ice cream almost every day. I ate chocolate every day. I had pasta probably 3-4 times a week. I ate meat a lot. I exercised less. Crap, there's nothing health wise I did better five years ago than I do today.

And the test results are very much the same.

So all those supplements and all those vitamins and all that worry about what I'm eating?

For naught. Just one big gigantic bunch of bull.

There was one change though. The acidity of my urine is about 5.3. Normal pH is 4.6 - 8.0, so my pH is within the normal range, but low. Acidic urine is typically indicative of kidney attempts to regulate the blood pH, and can lead to kidney stones.

This revelation, coupled with a sore spot on my back (middle, near the spine, ongoing since December) which might be symptomatic of kidney issues, means that I need to watch my urine acidity.

Great. Checking my pee. Whoo.

I wonder if all that cranberry juice I've been drinking to keep away a urinary tract infection hase caused this issue.

Bah.

I received an email from a high school boyfriend tonight. It was one of those non-committal, probing emails that opens the doors to reunion while still leaving the possibility of non-action, should contact not be desired.

When I saw the email in my inbox, I was quite surprised. Oh, sure, my email address is out there on the 'net. I try to keep my site off most search engines (doesn't always work, judging by the spiders that crawl my site), but the only email addresses that are public are the one on my resume, the one on the about page and the one from the BAYU (Bay Area Youth Ultimate) site, off the SFUL site.

In other words, you can find me if you try, but you have to try a little.

The email's subject line was:

Is this the Kitt...

Hmph.

How many different ways could I finish that sentence for him?

Was this email going to be a dagger through the heart, or an extended hand to connect after, crap, 17 years. 17 years. SEVENTEEN years.

I am officially old enough to call all those high school punks young enough to be my children. I am now officially "an adult."

Of course, I bought a bundt cake pan two weeks ago. That event truly marked my transistion into adulthood. I mean, come on, who buys bundt cake pans? Everyone I know who has one received theirs as a gift from their mothers or mother-in-laws. So, see, I must be one of them! An adult!

But back to high school.

And that email.

So, how could I have finished that email?

Is this the Kitt ...

• who broke my heart in high school?
• who my mom still hates after all these years?
• who geeked out with me in high school?
• who played baritone in the high school band?
• who was the high school football manager?
• who went off to California for college after high school?
• who dated me?
• who hung out with Brad, Scott, Jen and me?
• who was a complete bee-yotch to me our senior year in high school?

Yeah. Any of those would have worked.

Today was the final tournament of SFUC. Yesterday, the tournament was a beach tournament, 5 on 5, because the fields were too wet to play on. As I wasn't particularly interested in playing beach ultimate, and neither was Kris, we stayed home and worked on the backyard, which is a jungle.

Getting up to go to the tournament was rough this morning, as we were getting up at 8:00 am! 8! Ugh. Still, we rolled out of the house at 8:30 and arrived at the fields at 9:30, just as the first games were getting started (1/2 an hour late).

My team won our first game (in pre-quarters), so we had a two round bye until the quarter-finals. Great. For someone who would rather be home sleeping, or at least just working in the back yard, this was a little torturous.

But only a little.

True to form, I had a book with me (The Reality Dysfunction, Part 2: Expansion), and read during the byes. I sat at the sideline of Kris' games (we managed to play only one of six rounds at the same time), so that I could watch him play. When he was on the field, I would watch. When he was on the sidelines, I would read. Worked out well.

At the end of the day, Kris asked me if I noticed when he was playing in the sunshine.

Huh?

He went on to explain that, at one point when he was on the sideline next to me, he positioned himself so that he was casting a shadow over the book as I was reading. He then shifted back and forth to cause the shadow to flicker on the book as I read. Had I noticed?

I had not.

Not only had I not noticed his doing this at the time, I also disbelieved him when he told me he had done so.

So I told him about the first time I knew of when I didn't notice the world while I was reading. I was 11.

No surprise to anyone, I've been a bookworm my whole life. As near I as I can tell, I've always loved reading. So, when the family was all gathered in the family room (oh, to have a house big enough to have a separate living room and family room!), I would sometimes read when everyone else was watching TV (I still do this: "TV is a waste of time, but reading is productive!").

It was one of these evenings that, while I was reading (a Nancy Drew book, actually, probably borrowed from my friend Jenny), everyone in my family jumped up and ran out of the room.

I noticed the movement, and puzzled, stood up to follow them out of the house. Everyone was in the kitchen, which looked out over the front yard (which, as this image shows, is about 3/4 of an acre deep).

There used to be a huge tree at the very front of the yard, about 10 feet from the road. The tree trunk was about 3 feet in diameter, so it was a good sized tree. About once a year, someone would come around the curve too fast, stare at the tree as they came around the bend in the road, fixate on that tree, see nothing but that tree, and plow right into it.

This particular night, it was several young men (I don't recall the age, but I don't believe they were underage) who met the tree. They had been drinking (an open six-pack in the backseat), and driving. The driver came around the bend too fast and wrapped his car around the tree.

Turns out, the whole family heard the screech of tires and the loud crash of the car.

Except me.

I never heard the sounds. Our neighbors many many houses over came out to see what was going on. Some were over a quarter mile away and still heard the crash.

Not me.

My dad commented to his dad sometime after that how he wished he had the ability to block out the world when he read. He didn't understand how I did it. He was glad I had the ability to become absorbed in books, as it meant I could concentrate well. But he didn't understand the gift.

I related the story to Kris after he told me he had shifted his shadow while I was reading.

I never noticed.

I think I'm a night owl. Actually, yeah, I am. Given that I hit my stride at 10pm, go to bed at 2am, and can't stand getting up before 10 am, I'd have to say yeah. And now I have the graphical proof to prove it!

At the bottom of the pages of Photo Matt, there's an image showing the post times on Matt's site.

Cool!

So, I searched for a bit to find the source to generate the image and the originator's site (Sanjay's Coding Tips - thanks, Sanjay!). Of course, the code is written for WordPress (i.e. not Drupal), so a little rewrite was needed. Well, that and installing GD. A couple hours and a bit of fudging later, and I now have a blog post time image. Whoo!

I haven't made the code robust enough for general consumption yet. If you want a copy, drop me a line and I'll send you the Drupal module.

Oh, so close! So very close!

When playing the license plate torture game, I thought the best license plate to see would be a non-vanity, 2 character license plate: one where all the numbers were the same, and all the letters were the same. Some would be better than others (5SSS555 and 2ZZZ222, for example), but even so, a 2 character plate would be awesome.

Well, I came close today.

While at lunch, Mike and I pulled up behind a mini-bus with a government license plate. The number was 1112212.

Now, technically, it satisfies the two characters requirement. But it's not a passenger car. So, I'll keep looking.

The closest passenger car I've seen was a 4MMK444.