Happy 14th!

Look how tall he is.

And with his "Hill Valley High" t-shirt. It makes me smile just to look at him.

His birthday party today had a "Portal 2" theme, complete with Cave Johnson audio greeting and repulsion gel for beverages (Orangina laced with red food coloring). If you have to ask, you're not cool enough to have been invited.


There was a little Twister..


...a little multi-player gaming...


...and a little more multi-player gaming...


...followed by pizza and Portal cake.


He is a good guy. He is a very good guy. I knew my life was blessed the day he was born.

A Wrinkle in Time

Samuel and I went to an event today celebrating the 50th anniversary of the book, "A Wrinkle in Time." There was a Q&A with several notable children's authors including Lois Lowry ("The Giver"), Katherine Paterson ("Bridge to Terabithia"), Rebecca Stead ("When You Reach Me"), and R. L. Stine ("Goosebumps").


Cool to see four great authors in the same place at the same time, and even cooler to be there with Samuel, who seemed to enjoy the event despite the lack of pyrotechnics or DeLoreans.

I was thinking, maybe he won't be a scientist or an engineer after all. Maybe he'll be a sci-fi writer. Whatever. It's just nice to sit next to him and see him happy.

"What if someone burped into a trumpet?"

Carriage houses!

You know what's great about living in NYC? You can be walking along minding your own business and suddenly look down a block you've never looked down before and see an entire row of restored, turn-of-the-century carriage houses.


I felt like I'd accidentally wandered onto the Universal Studios backlot.


I started taking pictures with my cell phone, fearing that if I came back tomorrow I'd find only Starbucks and Duane Reades.


Then I thought, you know what would look really cool in the vacant lot at the end of our block?



Add it to my post-lottery to-do list.

"I have an idea for a TV show"

Ethan: It's called "Will That Shoot Out of a Cannon?"

Todd: Sounds good so far.

Ethan: Every episode they put three different things into a cannon and shoot them out and see what happens.

Todd: I love that idea. I think I would watch that show.

Ethan: Me too. Dad?

Todd: Uh-huh?

Ethan: Do you think it would be illegal to shoot a pig out of a cannon?

Todd: Probably. I don't think they'd let you do that.

Ethan: Even if you got him to sign a release form?

Colbert interviews Maurice Sendak

I'm not a big laugh-out-louder, but I laughed out loud watching this.

The Colbert Report
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Hurray! A real royalty check!

I got a $35.16 check in the mail today from Penguin Group.

This means two things:

1) "How About a Kiss for Me?" was a gargantuan financial mega-hit--perhaps the most successful book in Penguin's history, who knows? I am like Dr. Seuss, only more successful.

2) I can now drop little lines at cocktail parties like, "Well, we haven't yet decided what to do with the royalties from my first book. We've talked about re-doing the bathroom." (It's true: we've been talking about re-doing the bathroom for years, and the $35.16 will pay for a new shower curtain.)

I went online to see if I could figure out how many books earn out their advances and actually generate royalty checks for their authors. The two ballpark figures I saw were "3 out of 10" and "less than half." So I was high-fiving Kahlua and Bailey and tossing out dog treats, and we were all very excited. Then I went to another site, which said that most kids books earn out their advance because the advances are so small. And I chose to ignore that as "outlier data."

Only remaining question: what color shower curtain?