Oh, how I miss you guys.

Hey everyone -  It's been a while since I posted, and I apologize for that. I have tried so hard to make the time, and then just as I'm gearing up to write, I get pulled away.  Work at DS has been absolutely crazy in the last few months, and I don't have a second from the minute I wake up until midnight to even talk to the folks that make DS such a special place. Anyway, here's some snapshots of some recent events in my life: My Daughter Turned 6:  In my family, birthdays seem to last for months, between the family parties, the friend parties, the gifts and so on. My daughter's birthday started with a wonderful dinner at our house, and ended with a 6-girl sleepover in a tent in our backyard. I wrote my first kid's scary story which was fun (a very, very obvious plot featuring a Chinese restaurant that cooked body parts), and the girls all got along and actually slept most of the night. Of course, brave dad that I am, I slept in the house while my wife manned the fort with the kids. 20th High School Reunion(!!!): So I dragged my entire family to New York for a few days in the city. Was the first time my kids were close to where I grew up, and it was weird. We went to a playground where I used to play as a kid, went to the Natural History Museum, took cabs around the city, and it made me feel like my kids were so mature and old, but didn't make me feel old. I'm happy my kids aren't growing up in Manhattan - I always find it a bit claustrophobic, and I feel like I spend my days going from cafe to restaurant and back to a cafe. As for the reunion, it was very surreal - so many folks looked exactly like they did in HS, and so many looked ENTIRELY different, to the point where you wouldn't recognize them. What pleased me the most was that folks seemed to be geniunely interested in each other, and they seemed like as a whole all of the folks I went to school with had become "good" people, and I was pleased to see there was less of a competitive focus than I thought there would be.  No more working out: Funny thing is, I'm healthy...and a disproportionate number of folks have told me how thin I look, although I think that's because I just shaved my head. I have been so, so busy that I haven't been able to run, hike, bike or anything, and the only saving grace is that I've been too busy to be stressed about it.  Anyway, there's so much more but I wanted to put something up. I'll close with this fantastic picture of my kids from their outing to Disneyland yesterday.