What do Barry Bonds and I have in common?

We've both had steroid injections in the butt.

"Poison delivery service! A gift-basket of free poisons is on its way."

I have poison ivy. Or poison oak. It is mostly on my forearms, which have been blistering up the past couple days, but also I have some on my forehead (which looks pretty much like a sunburn) and on my belly (which looks like my arms, except no blistering).

To answer the important questions at hand:

a) No, Benji does not have it.
b) No, we are very confident Benji does not have it.
c) Really, we've quadruple-checked, and Benji does not have it.
d) No, I cannot give it to him at this point; one you know you have poison ivy/oak, you are no longer contagious.
e) No, Kim does not have it either.
f) I got it on my arm from pulling weeds, some of which must have been poison ___. I assume it got on my forehead due to me using my poisoned arm to wipe my brow. I, um, guess I got it on my belly after I came inside and took off my shirt.
g) We're sure Benji does not have it.

Word problem.

Matthew is a composer. Today, Matthew received his first substantial royalty check, which came with a breakdown of how well his two pieces sold over the past two years. Matthew is not sure how proper it is to divulge those sales numbers, but he can give you these facts:

* Matthew was expecting the arrangement to outsell the original piece by 325 copies.

* The arrangement sold 120 fewer copies than Matthew expected it to. However, the original piece sold 225 more copies than Matthew expected it to.

* Together, Matthew was expecting to sell 575 copies.

* Matthew was wearing blue as he opened the envelope containing the royalty check.

Please solve for the number of copies Matthew actually sold of each piece. Keep in mind that not all information given in the word problem is relevant to the solution.

Here is the evidence. Draw your own conclusions.

Kim and I have gotten a few iTunes gift cards through various promotions, and after about half a year of occasional purchases, I've finally gone through my first $25 on what seems an odd mix of tunes -- a mix that I'm sure says something important about me, but I'm not at all sure what. If you figure it out, let me know.

From that gift card, $10 was spent on one album: Arsis Handbell Ensemble's "Awake, My Heart!," which is both the best handbell album I've ever heard and otherwise unavailable in America. The other $15 were spent on 15 singles:

* "The Avalanche," Sufjan Stevens
* "Brothers on a Hotel Bed," Death Cab for Cutie
* "Everything In Its Right Place," Christopher O'Reily (piano Radiohead cover)
* "I Don't Know What Else to Do," Aloha
* "King of the Road," Roger Miller
* "Mr. Blue Sky," Electric Light Orchestra
* "Missing Summer," Greater California
* "Never Knew," The Rocket Summer
* "Rhapsody in Blue," Columbia Symphony Orchestra and Leonard Bernstein
* "Señorita," Justin Timberlake
* "Silent All These Years," Tori Amos
* "Someone in a Tree," from the musical Pacific Overtures
* "Strange Fruit," Billie Holiday
* "Trip to Little Big Horn," Marty Stuart
* "Who Are Parents?," Danielson Familie

Of course, I could be wrong about the strangeness of this list -- maybe most Justin Timberlake fans also like Roger Miller, ELO, Stephen Sondheim, and the Danielsons.

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Also, Benji has now climbed an entire flight of stairs. Twice.

Dogs' dentists.

For a number of reasons -- Benji not as much among them as you might imagine -- Kim and I see very few concerts by people who aren't local musician Susan Greenbaum and her band. However, as I mentioned before, a local big-time concert series has been using relatively obscure Christian artists (Ashley Cleveland, Lost Dogs, the less obscure Phil Keaggy) as opening acts, so I paid my $10 yesterday to see the Lost Dogs open for someone I've never heard of. (The weather was iffy, so Kim stayed home with Benji; hopefully we can all see Phil.) I was surprisingly happy with the set list: It was less current-heavy than I expected, with three of the dozen or so songs from to Dogs' best, long-ago album Little Red Riding Hood (including my favorite Dogs' song, "Eleanor, It's Raining Now"), the two best songs from Gift Horse, and a 20-year-old Daniel Amos cover (???). And while the new songs were a bit too three-chordish for my preferences, they were at least good three-chordish. All in all, a very good performance, even if it started 35 minutes late and lasted less than an hour. Bonus: One of the news stations was taking footage before the concert -- something about if the weather was going to keep people away -- and my back and side were on television for about one-and-a-half seconds. Yay, I guess.

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Today, I went to the dentist. For the second time in two weeks. (You can guess where this story is going, no?) My old dentist was, as dentists go, very laissez-faire; as long as I didn't have any cavities, hey, who cares if your gums bleed or your teeth aren't appropriately calcified or...oh, sorry, my seven seconds looking at your teeth are done, I need to see another patient now, buh-bye. I never really had a strong opinion on this orthodontic approach until the dentist retired and I went, last week, to Kim's proactive dentist for the first time.

After this appointment, I had the following:

* a admonition to floss my teeth
* a admonition to rinse with ACT Mouthwash once a day
* a prescription for a *second* mouthwash for my gums, which I need to rinse with twice a day
* an appointment to come back in three months to see how this new mouthwash is doing
* a recommendation to buy a $100-dollar toothbrush
* an appointment to come back today to fill what were either three tiny cavities or three precavities or three somethings (I lost track along the way)

So I had my whatevers filled today. Yay. Woo hoo. Aw yeah.

I think I am going to coax my old dentist out of retirement.

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Oh, and how did the comma in this post's title get so high up? Huh.

Take me out to the ball game

Right before our big visit to the Midwest, we took Benjamin out to enjoy his first baseball game. Granted, it was minor league and the Braves lost, but it was still a very successful outing. My parents were in town that weekend and Benjamin loved sitting on Grandma's lap while Grandpa explained the fundamentals of the game. And while he didn't get to have the classic "peanuts and Cracker Jack," he did have dinner at the game (a bit complicated with no high chair, but worked OK) and enjoyed feeding himself "puffies" while we had our peanuts.

I know you all think I'm crazy, but I think he actually was watching the game at times. When he'd hear the crack of the bat, he'd look towards the field and watch what was going on. He also did a lot of people watching (which is one of my favorite things to do at baseball games, too). I hope this has prepared him for his first major league game later this year when we'll go up to Baltimore to see the Blue Jays.

Time to buy a new fish.

The National Weather Service believes that the current tropical depression over by the Carolinas has about a 30 percent chance becoming a tropical storm and hitting Richmond. Boo weather.

Reviewlets of things I saw on my vacation.

The Break-Up (Peyton Reed, 2006), C+

I dunno. Have to give Reed and the screenwriters a good deal of credit for making a movie where the two romantic protags clearly should not be together -- and, more importantly, a movie that realizes that the romantic protags should not be together -- but c'mon. This oscillation between ultraserious relationship delving (a shockingly large portion of the film) and outlandish farce (John Michael Higgins, Justin Long) simply Does Not Work. All that's really successful is the middle ground, typical romcom stuff, except even that takes on much different implications when we're not rooting for our couple to stay together. (Okay, what's most successful is Vincent D'Onofrio and Jason Bateman's dry humor, but that's a bucket-drop.) Based on what little I'd seen of him before, I thought Vince Vaughan might be one of the greatest American comic actors. Now I know: He's not.

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Napoleon Dynamite (Jared Hess, 2004), B+

Not since Punch-Drunk Love four years ago have I been this conflicted about a rating a film -- no wonder, I guess, since not since Punch-Drunk have I watched a movie so aggressively sui generis. Other than a couple standard romantic plot points that Hess still manages to make unique, practically nothing in Napoleon Dynamite has been seen on screen before: Not a school where even the bad kids say "darn" and "gosh," not a creepy chat-room romance that turns out downright normal, not a bust-enhancing door-to-door salesman, not...well, anything. I wish I could say it all works, but Napoleon's dance program and Napoleon and Deb playing tetherball (particularly how he keeps smashing the ball past her as the film ends) made me forget any misgivings I might have had about, oh, I don't know, certain attempts at time travel. The cult of Napoleon (and Napoleon) both makes perfect sense and no sense at all.

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"Corner Gas" (season 1, episodes 1-2; 2004), B

Hard to judge a show based on only its pilot and one other episode, but it's clear there's a lot to like about "Corner Gas," particularly Brent's droll, sarcastic, Lorelai-esque humor. ("Arrested Development" was the comparison Ed and I bandied about when watching it, but in thinking about it more, I think "a less serious 'Gilmore Girls'" is probably more apt.) Supporting cast a little weak, or at least they are two episodes in, and like nearly every half-hour comedy in the world, it has no idea how to deal with serious moments (like the naming of the restaurant). But still: a B only two episodes into a sitcom is very, very encouraging.

The next-best thing to being at AGEHR National.

So this week in Milwaukee is the annual national conference for AGEHR, the American Guild of English Handbell Ringers. I was there when they had it in Norfolk, Va. two years ago, and I would have loved to go back this year except for the cost of (a) getting to Milwaukee, (b) getting a hotel room in Milwaukee, (c) paying for the conference, and (d) paying for daycare for Benjamin for probably three days. (All told, it'd certainly be upward of $1000.)

One of the annual events at this conference is an unpublished music session, where composers at the conference bring in their compositions and arrangements that haven't been accepted by a publisher, and some volunteer ringers play through the pieces and then offer critique. (My "There is a Balm" arrangement was one of those played at Norfolk, where it received both some "ehs" along with some very positive defenses.) The organizer of this year's session was worried that there might not be enough pieces for this year's session, so a few weeks ago he put out a call for people who *aren't* attending the conference to send him their unpublished pieces. So to help him out, I sent him an arrangement of "Morning Song" I had written, with the caveat that -- since I'm not going to be there -- go ahead and drop my piece if you end up with too many for the session.

Last night, I received the following e-mail from a publisher:

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Hello Matthew -

I just received a call from [someone else at publisher, hereby known as SEAP] who is in Milwaukee -- and she is raving about your composition - Morning Song - which was played in the unpublished reading session.

She called me and ask that I tell you that we would love to publish it -- she is very excited about it! Looking forward to your reply!

Thanks so much.

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And then this morning, I received another e-mail:

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Hi Mathew -

I'm [name elicited]...[SEAP]'s friend. We have traveled to Milwaukee together where we both attended the Unpublished Music session tonight. [SEAP] WANTS "MORNING SONG" for [her publishing company]!

You may contact her through email to me...or call her on her cell phone. That number is XXX-XXX-XXXX....

Congratulations on a wonderful piece!

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Well.

Next he'll want to go on Apollo's Chariot.

Benji's first amusement park ride.

What will be The Greatest Cinematic Adaptation of a Book Ever.

This will be so awesome.

Swim, Benji, swim

Benjamin loves his bathtime so much that we decided to give swimming "lessons" a try for him. And Saturday was his first class. Both Mommy and Benji had a good time. He didn't splash as wildly as in the tub, but he seemed really content and happy in the pool.

This was not true of all of the other babies. One in particular was really upset and cried most of the half hour. Benji kept watching her crying and almost seemed to be laughing at the crying baby. He's done this before with other crying babies, too. Apparently we have a sadistic baby that laughs at other babies' pain. And then I laugh at him since it's so funny to watch him laugh.

Anyway, swim class was a success. We have six more Saturdays left. I think he'll be ready for the pool at Disney World and Mommy will be comfortable taking him in.

Uneven lists, or, sorry Opie.

Regular or semi-regular HPS commenters I saw on our recent Midwest vacation:
moM, daD, Ed, Annie, dad, Lisa, Alex, Andrew, Kaly, Megan, Kim

Regular or semi-regular HPS commenters I did not see on our recent Midwest vacation:
Opie

Agh. So close.