Just as well, too, as even with the special room rate, it cost me over $150 for a single night's stay. The normal rate would double the tab, but you know what? It was totally worth it and was probably the very nicest place I've ever stayed on my travels.

Seems to me that'd be fun to do here on my blog to, so without further ado, here they are...

The first one is easy, and I'll use it as a demonstration of what I mean:

(1) Larry was determined to do anything to avoid being the black sheep of the family.

Now, what's your best caption?

Read on for more...

Now anyone with a research background will immediately glom onto the fact that they have committed the cardinal sin of assuming causality from correlational data, but it's so darn interesting that I'll let it slide anyway :-) In a nutshell, the problem can be explained thusly: poor people have above-ground pools, while rich people have in-ground pools, therefore getting an in-ground pool must make you rich." See the problem?

Anyway, we're not interested in pools or money, we're interested in picking up that sexy possibility on an online dating service like Match or eHarmony or... etc. That's what they looked at, and if we can even just look at the correlational data and if we can make the assumption that the people that use OK Cupid are sufficiently similar to those that use the more mainstream sites, well, let's look at what they found...

I was back in Las Vegas a few weeks ago for the Consumer Electronics Show, and my friend Jessica who works at Cirque sent me tickets to see The Beatles LOVE again, and it was just as wonderful and entertaining as last time, if not more so since I had more of a sense of what was going on.

This time, though, I paid attention to what on my film blog I'd call the "story arc", the order in which scenes and acts were shown on stage. Given the backstory of the Fab Four, it was considerably more insightful and thoughtful than I expected...

Nonetheless, here's the question of the day:

Dave, I'm struggling with a co-parenting issue and looking for a fellow attachment parent to run a couple things by...like hockey tournament in Colorado Springs during my weekend in Feb. and he wants to come and get his own room. Not really my cup of tea. So, what is in the best interest of my son and MY best interest feel competing. Then again, the 30 minute hockey tournament 2 mornings during the weekend is really cute but not worth driving to the Springs with girl du jour. Motivation unclear, in my opinion.

Marketing talk, for sure, but the basic concept is just hilarious: it's a sort of two piece belt that mama wears around her belly that plugs in to an iPhone or other audio device. As the headline says: Talk to your baby in the womb using an iPhone. Wow!

On the left I have an actual product picture from the Ritmo site, and I've also embedded a video. Every time I look at the photo on the right, I think "darn that little monkey, calling me again!"

Now, in reality, I realize that the fetus can't actually initiate calls (not yet, that might be v2 of the Ritmo product for all we know), but jeez, isn't this just a little bit over the top?

More seriously, I've just been using an attachment parenting approach first with my children when they were young, and now as best I can as a single dad who has my kids approximately 50% of the time. It's not easy, though Linda and I are at least in pretty close sync about what we are and aren't okay with from a parenting perspective.

Anyway, back to the email I received. Here's what the gal asked:

"I am new to the whole Attachment Parenting thing and I came across your blog when I googled AP. I am reading Naomi Aldort's book Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves. I agree with most of everything I have learned so far, but I am already kind of stressing myself out which in turn is going to stress my boys out, which defeats the whole point.

My problem is I have four-month-old twin boys. I read the other day that if you leave your baby crying it will increase the cortisol in the baby's brain and could cause problems later in life. Now when I'm feeding one baby and he other baby goes off I feel bad if I can't get to him right away. I have trouble trying to carry them both at the same time?? I tried a Moby wrap but that didn't work to well. Right now I take turns carry them each in the sling at different times.

I still have a lot to learn about AP and I'm trying to take a deep breath and relax and do the best I can. Do you have any ideas about how I can do AP type things with both the boys???"

Just as importantly, I know what I don't like and am comfortable saying so. Want to go ski the black diamond slopes in Aspen? I'm not your man. Want to go sky-diving? I'll see you on the ground and good luck to you! Going to see a movie? Going for a hike? Need a pal at a local rep theater production? Having a spontaneous weekend somewhere? Now we're talking...

But here's what's baffling me: if I'm seeing someone, if we've been dating for long enough that we've reprogrammed our phones to have each other on speed dial (I know, quite trés modern, eh?), what's the word we should be using to describe each other?

This casting call, from an LA-based freelance casting associate, does sound kind of interesting, with its emphasis on " America's most outgoing families to compete in exciting outdoor challenges". Is it going to be of reasonable quality? It'll take a year for us to find out, I imagine, but if your family is picked, you do get $5000 compensation, plus I presume gear, visibility, lodging, food, and perhaps some nice trips too.

Check it out: and if you do apply, please leave a comment letting us know how it went!

Late afternoon we talked about how we were one bed mattress short for things to work: We have three mattresses and one air mattress but adding her would make five and unless the girls were willing to share A-'s (big) bed, we needed to get an additional bed.

That's what they wanted, no problem, so we stopped by Linen's Etc and I spent $200 buying a new aerobed + two anti-allergenic blankets on 50% off sale (we needed more blankets anyway) along with a hot air popper.

On the way home, A- asks "can we watch a movie tonight, Daddy?" to which I said "no, that's not going to work out."

She was clearly not too happy with that answer and after a moment's thought...

What do I mean by that? Simply that they aren't responsive to babysitters, don't listen, and generally are anxious and upset if they're with someone other than Linda or I. Not during the day, I'll note, but I'm talking evenings, bed time.

As I have written before over the years that I've run this blog, bedtime has been a perpetual challenge and frankly it seems like bedtime problems are a great unspoken problem for parents in our society, particularly those of us that are trying to create a "safe container" for our children. (do I sound like I live in Boulder, Colorado, or what?)

Probably makes me sound a bit paranoid. Ah well, can't be helped, I'm just being transparent. My kids have never been vaccinated for anything and they've had remarkably healthy childhoods and when they've gotten sick, they're returned to health quite quickly. Correlative? I don't think so, personally.

Anyway, the "plague" of H1N1 aka swine flu raises an interesting question: should I get my children vaccinated from this flu strain?

No surprise, Linda and I decided not to have the vaccination, either for ourselves or for the kids. (at least, I assume she hasn't had the vaccination. I know I haven't been vaccinated)

But what to do instead?

Most dads don't have it that easy, and there's little more intimidating than a little girl asking you to "do that pretty braid like mommy does" or "fix my hair for photo day".

Turns out I'm not alone in my misigivings and angst in this area: a chap called Craig Lawrey contacted me a few weeks ago about a book he's written called Does Your Daughter Have Dad Hair?

To my surprise, they informed me that Jif actually is a gluten-free product. Now, before you say "well, yeah, it's peanuts and oil", you should know that just about all foods on the shelf now have the ambiguous "natural flavoring" and that's often where gluten is hiding, as an additive or flavoring. As I've learned, if it doesn't say "gluten free" you can't assume that it is, even when the ingredients are listed and there's nothing that's obviously a gluten product.

Turns out that Jif, while gluten free, has more ingredients than you might expect:

The challenge with peanut butter, of course, is to keep it creamy even as the natural tendency of the peanuts is to have the oil separate and the nut butter to coagulate and eventually become this thick glop. I've tossed more than one jar of all natural peanuts-only peanut butter for just this reason, and bet you have too.