This may explain some things

"Dad, there are some things that smell differently than they taste. Like rubber. And cleaning supplies."

Water-park-less weekend

We'd planned to rent a car and go to Mountain Creek water park on Saturday, but Weather.com said there'd be thunderstorms Saturday afternoon, so we changed our reservation to Sunday.

Then Weather.com said, no, wait, Saturday will be great, but there will be thunderstorms on Sunday. So we cancelled the reservation completely and just stayed in the city.

Turns out Sunday was great too, and now I kinda feel cheated out of a water park day.

But...

1. We saved $300 on a rental car and water park tickets. So, okay.

2. We went to a new water-feature playground in Brooklyn (Pier 6), and we had a pretty good time for the cost of a subway ride.





3. Kahlua and Bailey got haircuts, and they look good.

Proof that social media has jumped the shark

Wanna piece of me, Kathie Lee?

My book has only been out for 9 days, and it appears to be like those movies that go straight to DVD. It's hardly in any Barnes & Nobles, and not in any Borders. So I sent out an email this afternoon to 150 people, imploring them to buy it, and it catapulted it up to #34,307 on Amazon. Hey, spam works.

So I said to Jennifer, "I hate to do this to myself, but I want to see how that compares to Kathie Lee Gifford's children's book."

I saw it at B&N a couple of days ago and was annoyed that hers was out on the table and mine was tucked up on the Authors A-Z shelf, spine out, where no one could see it. So I put one of my books over hers just to protest the unfairness of the universe.

I just looked hers up on Amazon, and it's #38,660.

Ka-BOOM, baby, and the lights go out!

This may be the high point for me, which is sad, but I'm declaring victory.

BTTF LA trip

Samuel, Ethan, and I just got back from a 3-day trip to LA. Officially it was for me to conduct a sales training meeting at my company's LA office. But as if that weren't thrilling enough, the other 57 hours were spent visiting as many shooting locations from "Back to the Future" as we possibly could.

We didn't make it down to Whittier (home of "Hill Valley High School"), but we managed to hit most of the other locations (Universal City, Pacoima, City of Industry, Pasadena, South Pasadena, and Burbank). We definitely put some miles on the rental car. Ethan only got car sick once, bless his heart.

We arrived back in NYC on the redeye early this morning. We're exhausted.

Roll tape.

My book is out

It came out yesterday and immediately rocketed up the charts to #60,843 on Amazon before settling back to a somewhat less impressive #252,440. Apparently a few books sold during any 24-hour period moves you past quite a few others. And vice versa.

Interestingly, Amazon now says "only 4 left in stock--order soon (more on the way)." If it's almost sold out but only ranks #252,440, that's not good, is it? It means they ordered, like, 6 books. And 2 of those orders were from me. And the other 4 were almost certainly from my mom.

Even worse, I walked over to Barnes & Noble on 82nd & Broadway, and they said the book has not yet arrived in any B&N stores in Manhattan. Jeeze.

The good news is that my mom emailed me a photo of the book on display in Maria's Bookstore in Durango, Colorado. So that's the first official sighting.

More to come.

"Dad, if you had a camel..."

...what would you do with it?

Todd: I'd ride it across the desert.

Ethan: I'd probably sell it.

Camelbeach

And the award for first outdoor water park of 2010 for the Tarpley family goes to...Camelbeach in the Poconos.

It's one of the few water parks in the tri-state area that we'd never been to, so we decided to honor it with our presence this year. Like Mountain Creek in NJ, it's a ski resort in winter, converted to a water park in summer.

It was just under a 2-hour drive from Manhattan, and we arrived just as the gates opened at 11. There were no lines when we got there, so we spent the first 30 minutes rushing from the bottom of waterslides back to the top in mad glee, trying to squeeze in as many rides as we could before the lines came. But amazingly, they never really did. Definitely a change from overcrowded places like Splish Splash on LI.

Summer is here, life is good, and there's nothing in the whole world like a water park.