Any day that ends in a shower of sparks can’t be all good.

After a couple more episodes of SportsNight in the morning, I met my friend Julie at Red Robin by the Oregon Convention Center. We had a enjoyable and leisurely chat about work, life, etc. She’s in town for a convention of museum directors and art gallery management types, apparently the largest confab of any kind that the convention center has seen. Her conferences on copyright, art labeling, hazardous materials, and so forth all sounded interesting to me. Next time the group is in town, I’m gonna have to crash the party.

One downside to parenthood is, understandably, the sleep deprivation that builds up over the course of the weeks. This manifests itself in strange ways. Today, it was me forgetting to pack dress socks. So I’m in this relatively nice get-up while wearing stylin’ white athletic socks. If this is a start to a trend, I could be in trouble. Next time I may very well show up without pants.

Other example of sleep deprivation occurred when I went to pick up my sister-in-law Christine at the airport. I blissfully drove down I-84 right past the I-205 (airport) turn off and didn’t realize there was a problem until I was half way to Troutdale. The last time I missed an I-84 turn off was Erin’s and my fifth anniversary. I kid you not when I say that we almost ended up in Idaho. Again, I’m not sure this bodes well.

Christine and I had a very pleasant drive down I-5, and I thankfully didn’t miss any more exits. After Christine was settled in and able to greet Erin and meet Jonah, I slunk off to the office to try to catch up on all the business, correspondence, and bills that had accumulated over the course of the past few days.

Now the smell of smoke is never a good thing with electronics. It means something’s burning. Today, that something was my 19″ Princeton monitor, which died in a shower of sparks. Fortunately, Trinity�connected to the CRT at the time�seems to have suffered no ill effect from the experience. Me? I’m a little bummed that my technology budget for the year is going to have to increase from somewhere between $500 and $1300 dollars. Otherwise, honestly, it was a pretty good day.