Bless his Piscean heart, Gordon not only sent me a question, he encouraged others to do the same. (BTW, the picture looks better on his own page, which is where I stole it.)
1) Other than the mighty Fred Hembeck, have you met any of your fellow bloggers face to face?
Well, first off, Gordon, you have to stop referring to him as the "mighty Fred Hembeck" or the "great Fred Hembeck". He'll get a swelled head and be impossible to live with. Of course, I don't live with him, Lynn and Julie do, so never mind what I just said. (Actually, he's rather self-effacing.)
Of course, I know everybody in my FRIENDS' WEBSITES section; not all of those are blogs; blogger Amy Roeder was one of my competitors on JEOPARDY! I know Frank; he used to work in my office. I know Elissa, who does the Albany Public Library blog.
I have been reacquainted with a guy I used to know once upon a time, one Alan David Doane, the somewhat ferocious-looking man pictured here, who was a regular customer at the comic book store I used to work at, FantaCo. We're still in touch electronically, and he's turned me onto Beck. (For people of a certain age, no, it's NOT Jeff Beck I'm talking about.) He also exposed me to the current Green Day album. Of course, every day is a Green day for me.
(Dozens groan.)
2) What's the greatest thing about being a father? (As a godfather, it's made me more patient, appreciate children more, and basically helped me grow up a lot)
Well, I do notice other people's kids more, and I'm more positive towards them. I talk with them at church, on the bus, which I probably didn't do much before. (It wasn't that I didn't like them, it's that I wasn't part of the fraternity of fathers, so it didn't seem seemly, somehow.)
I'm very sympathetic to newer parents. I marvel how people operate with two or more of these small people. I was on the bus last week, and a woman came on, trying to collapse the baby carriage, and so she gave me her baby to hold for a few minutes. That sort of thing simply didn't happen that often, pre-Lydia.
As I think about Lydia, who's approaching her second birthday: it wasn't that I had had this compelling need to reproduce. I'd gone five decades without kids, and I'd pretty much figured that I'd go the remainder of this life's journey without doing so. She's a surprise to me, at many levels.
What I know is that that I miss her when I don't see her. She's funny and smart and interesting and unpredictable. So, I suppose it changed me because I found this other person who I really LIKE. Yeah, I love her and all that. But I really like her much of the time, especially now that she can tell me what's going on more often. My favorite thing she says: "I did it!" But where did she learn the universal shrug for "I don't know"?
***
One might consider asking you folks for questions as a bit of a cheat. Look at it from my position, though - all day, I answer people's question about business. This person is always asking weird questions that I find myself compelled to answer, usually on Monday, although recently she's done it on a Wednesday. One recent Thursday, she even named the post for me; that was a particularly good bunch of questions, BTW.
***
Tuesday, one of our SBDC centers got a phone call from a newspaper reporter wanting to know about the seeming drop in Hispanic business in the area over the past five years. Bottom line, I ended up talking to him, which always makes me nervous. Usually, when I appear in the paper, either:
1) I'm misquoted, or
2) I'm quoted correctly, but totally out of context
I'm pleased to note that I was fairly represented this time. The article is here, at least for the time being.
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