March was really busy for Amy and Lee at their respective jobs, and it didn't help Lee that he was sick twice and battled allergies in between. Jada continues to enjoy her ballet class and Aaron starts baseball next month. Weekdays were a fire drill for us all, and weekends consisted of chores, play dates, and naps. Good times all around.
Twelve years is a long time. Twelve years ago, Bill Clinton was still president, the Nasdaq had just hit 5,000, and the Phillies' starting rotation featured such names as Schilling, Wolf, Person, Chen, and Byrd. (Mercifully, the immortal Chad Ogea had lasted just one season with the Fightin's, and 1999 was his last year with the team and for his career.) In my neighborhood, University City District was three years old, plans were underway for a new K-8 school at 43rd and Locust Streets, and plenty of three-story rowhouses could be had for under $100,000. 
As my life has gotten busier, my sports consumption has dwindled to almost nothing. My childhood self and even my self from a few years back would be mortified to hear that I watch no games live, hardly have time even to tape and fast forward, and have even shrunk back on consumption of the sports page and sports websites. At a time of unprecedented sports content and access, my interests have dwindled to select pro football games, marquee NBA match-ups, and playoff baseball. 
So I thought for the longest time that I wouldn't entertain any MLB predictions this year. I haven't followed trades or injuries, or read up on who's up for a breakout year and who's regressing to the mean. I couldn't even tell you half the starting line-up for the A's, and they're my favorite team. But hey, what's a fan to do in late March, when everyone's still in the hunt and hope springs eternal, then to make a few wild predictions and then see what happens come October? So here you go:
Dear presidential candidates: here's a 25-point toss-up. What is your plan to make America a place where innovation happens? I'm tired of your pandering on jobs and tariffs and subsidies, and I want to know what policies you will put in place to create a welcoming environment for our innate curiosity, creativity, and drive to make the world a better place.
Within the past week, I have read about a running shoe made out of two sewn pieces, a camera that allows you to focus after you've taken the picture, and a soccer ball that stores the kinetic energy from its movement to provide electricity, and I am heartened by the ingenuity and cleverness. But I am not sure that America is doing all it can to encourage such risk-taking and multiply such successes.
Maybe it was because it was 6 in the morning after a long
and busy weekend. Or that it was Monday
morning at the commencement of a long and busy week ahead. Or that I was bushed from running on the
streets and ending up at the Y to lift.
For whatever reason, I was flat on my back, looking up at the ceiling in
the fitness room after a set of crunches, gasping for air and feeling the
tiredness in my bones. But when I heard about
the shootings in Chicago this weekend, and especially that a six-year-old girl,
caught in the crossfire, was one of the fatalities, it really took the wind out
of my sails. I thought of my own little
girl, and of the horror this Chicago family must be feeling, and of the
senselessness of it all.
Since we're in an election year, here's a 25-point tossup. Rank the following in order of when you think they will happen next:
Conceptually, I am still in the Republican quadrant. In the economic continuum of unregulated to regulated, I prefer relatively unregulated, and in the social continuum of unregulated to regulated, I prefer relatively regulated. (Yuck, that visual to the right is really fuzzy. But I'm too lazy and uncoordinated to fix it. You get the picture.)
As a follow-up to my post last week about Aaron's struggles with letters and numbers, I wanted to talk about the importance of failure in a child's healthy development. Failure, of course, is scary and embarrassing for mature grown-ups; so why should we steer our kids in its direction and give them chances to meet it head-on? It's for these reasons we parents often trip over ourselves to sing our kids' praises whenever they do anything good, quickly shoo them away from the scene of anything they're bad at, and insist that their activities are similarly disposed. (Trophy for everyone on the baseball team, anyone?)
I got wind of this Philadelphia Magazine blog post because my colleague Kevin Gillen is quoted in it as saying, “If you go out in Northern Liberties or Center City on a Friday or Saturday night, the bars and restaurants are packed. You’re thinking, ‘Where is the recession?’” Indeed, for the demographic represented by the blog author and her friends, Philly is a great value compared to New York, DC, and Boston. 
Earlier this month, we closed our fourth refinancing on our house. Including the original purchase, that’s five transactions in 12 years. I guess that’s not unusual for most American homeowners, but for buy-and-holders like us, it seems awfully snazzy. Some of our triggers were quite common and some were unique to our situation:
Here are a few excerpts from a book I recently read, "Moby Dick," by Herman Melville. Again, I always go to sea as a sailor, bec...
