Hotbed of Genius

March Madness

2010-03-27T20:11:00.000-07:00

Sam got a basketball and hoop for his birthday and has a mean case of March Madness. He plays non-stop and says "ball, ball, ball" when he's not playing. We don't have the heart to suggest that he might want to pick another sport since he's going to be about 5'2 until his senior year in high school.

Baby Sam Turns ONE!

2010-03-18T21:31:00.000-07:00

Tireless, fearless baby Sam is ONE! He celebrated his birthday at Closing Ceremonies in Vancouver (pictures to follow). He loved it until Nickelback started to play, which shows we are raising him right.

Finally, we are not sure how Andrew manages to update two blogs on top of everything else, but thanks for your last few updates.

Not Apolo Anton Ohno

2010-03-13T15:49:00.000-08:00

Short track speed skating is definitely one of the most exciting events of the winter olympics. It was fun to see Ohno, but the highlight of short track that night was our favorite summer olympian...

The sporty scarf collection by Michael and Kim

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-26T23:19:00.001-08:00

From: Elton John and Family

Halloween 2009

2009-11-01T21:44:00.000-08:00

On the prowl...

Cruising in style...on the lookout for cute lionesses...

Check out the lion's fierce teeth.

Lion and "Captain America's Daughter" (Cousin Carly)

Six Months

2009-09-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

Summer has come and gone without so much as a post from us. Our blogging activity has been inversely proportional to the busyness of our lives. Please call for details, it was a fantastic summer. Best of all, Sam is now six months old. Our friend Nicole took some amazing baby pictures of Mama and Sam. As you can see, she's VERY good. Check her out at: nicolehill.blogspot.com

A Father’s Day Revisited; A New Father to Celebrate

2009-06-20T18:41:00.000-07:00

This is my first ever, and potentially only, blog entry. It’s part of my Father’s Day gift to Paul this year. Since I no longer have an income, I’m learning to be creative with gift-giving. I’m not sure that Paul will consider this a gift or not, but I’m hoping that by sharing my thoughts and feelings from the amazing ride we’ve experienced this past year, that he will see how much I love him and know how proud I am to say that he is my “baby daddy”.

This year, Father’s Day is special not just because it is Paul’s first official Father’s Day, but also because it is the anniversary of our discovering that Sam was on his way. A year ago, on last Father’s Day, I got out of bed and walked groggily to the bathroom to take what would ultimately become the most important test of our lives. Paul called after me to just wait one more day. I knew he was trying to protect me from the disappointment that had accompanied all the other negative pregnancy tests I had taken for the last 18 months. We had mentally prepared ourselves for the long-haul in infertility treatments, so when the pink double lines appeared on the stick, my heart began to pound: with joy or perhaps disbelief or maybe even a little from fear. It was so different than the feeling I had had all those other times, when my heart seemed to fall from my chest into the pit of my stomach. My hands were shaking as I took the positive test back to the bedroom to show Paul. He stared. “ I don’t know what this means” he said, “I’ve never seen one of these before.” “I think it means you are going to be a daddy” I replied, somewhat tenuously. And then we cried.

Somehow, Paul knew from that very first day that Sam would be a boy. He even said as we stared in disbelief at the positive test, “It’s a boy”. I don’t think it was wishful thinking or a lucky guess. I think Paul knew. As much as I had been waiting and praying and longing for that positive test, Paul had been waiting and praying and longing too. The long months took their toll on us emotionally but also brought us closer together. For two people that seemingly always got what they wanted, it was perhaps only appropriate that the one thing we wanted more than anything else continued to allude us. Now, when we look at our sweet baby, we can only think that we love him all the more because he didn’t come easy.

I’m not sure when Paul decided that he wanted to be a dad. Maybe he had always felt that way. But I know that for as long as I have known him, he has talked with excitement about being a father. I’m sure that this is a great tribute to his own wonderful father. Paul has proven to be a natural, he intuitively knows what to do with Sam and I love watching the two of them together.

Paul started taking care of Sam while he was still in utereo. Paul went to just about every single pre-natal appointment to make sure everything was alright. He cried the first time we heard Sam’s tiny heartbeat. He had my doctor wrapped around his finger and would somehow manage to talk her into doing extra ultrasounds so we could see the baby. In early February, I slipped and fell outside in the rain. I didn’t feel the baby move for several hours and finally Paul insisted that we go to the hospital. Luckily everything was okay, but Paul demonstrated his protectiveness of both me and the baby.

Sometime in mid-July we started calling the baby Phil. Paul would talk to Phil through my belly all the time. In the morning before he left for work, Paul would get down next to my belly and say goodbye to Phil. He would kiss my belly and then kiss my forehead. We, Phil and I, felt loved. Paul decided it would be a good idea to read to Phil. Paul loves reading and is usually reading 3 to 4 books at one time and he was eager to share this old passion with his newest love. Sometime in the early fall, he started reading the beautifully translated edition of War and Peace that I gave to him for Christmas the year before. He didn’t want Phil to miss out on any great literature. Luckily for all of us, the War and Peace phase faded by December. Then Paul started reading Chekov’s short stories to Phil. I am quite convinced that this delayed the baby’s arrival. Chekov paints a very grim picture of the human experience. Happily, I came home a few weeks ago to find Paul reading Sam Baby Animals, perhaps a better fit for a young, developing mind than 19th-century Russian literature.

In January, Paul began downloading all his favorite Pete Seeger children’s songs. He wanted to make sure he had them ready to share with Sam when he arrived. Now the two of them listen to “Wake Up” in the morning and “Take You for a Ride in My Car, Car” as Paul dresses Sam for bed. Paul dresses Sam a lot. Almost every morning, while I’m scrambling to get out the door for the mommy and me gym class, Paul is calmly dressing Sam, putting Sam in his car seat, and carrying Sam out to the car for me. The one time Paul couldn’t help, Sam had to go to the gym in his pajamas, and he still hasn’t forgiven me.

Paul's main responsibility is to play with Sam and he is great at it. They have all sorts of games they play together. They apparently even have their own language.

The two of them are destined to be best friends, and I can only watch with pride. I think those many months of waiting for Sam prepared Paul well for fatherhood. He is proving to be just as great a father as he is a husband. As with everything, Paul is exceeding expectation.

We love you Paul! Happy Father's Day.

Do These Cheeks Make Me Look Fat?

2009-05-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

Last week, Sam had his eight-week check up. The doctor said that he was in the fiftieth percentile for weight, but we're a little concerned that he is carrying 60 percent of that weight in his cheeks.

Kim and I have been trying to trace where Sam got some of his features. Here's what we've come up with so far:

Bright Blue Eyes: Color (Kim) Shape (Paul)
Perfectly Round Head: Paul
Handsome Chin(s): We're hoping this won't stay plural, but the main chin looks like Kim's
Rosebud Mouth: All Kim
Hair: Too early to tell, but we're optimistic that there are traces of Kim's grandpa's hairline (hope, hope). He had hair that would have made Ronald Reagan jealous. Not that bald isn't cool, we're just hoping he goes through his bald phase early. And only once.
Button Nose: No idea. One theory points to our fertility doctor, Dr. Farkas.
Irresistibly Pinchable Cheeks: Sorry Sam, you are cursed. All Paul on this one. Check out the comparison photos below of Sam vs. his dad back in the day.

Sam Meets More of the Tribe

2009-04-28T13:39:00.000-07:00

We took Sam to Utah for Easter Sunday, where he met dozens of Florences: grandparents, great-grandparents, uncles, and aunts. Oh, and cousins. Lots and lots of cousins!

Four generations of Florence boys: From left, Giles Jr. (Papa), Giles Sr. (Grandpa), Paul, and Sam.

Abby and Sam. I love this picture. I used to baby-sit Abby when she was this age, and now she's holding little Sam.

Did I mention cousins? They couldn't wait to hold him (except Henry, who can be seen in the background, sneaking Easter candy).

Check out Peter's strong move above, and the look in Abby's eye as she sees what he's up to.

Undaunted by Abby's rejection, Peter plots his next move.

Mellow Baby

2009-04-26T21:55:00.000-07:00

Sam is now eight weeks old, and Kim and I are just emerging from the fog of being the parents of a newborn.

Sam takes a bath almost every night, because when he does, he sleeps nearly twice as long. Bath time is the highlight of our day. Tonight Sam was even more mellow than usual.

PS--Special thanks to guest blogger Andrew, who got on the blog and posted as Samuel because Sam's parents were too out of it to post an update. Who thinks Andrew should be permanent webmaster of the Hotbed of Genius?

I Am Handsome, Sam I Am.

2009-03-11T01:58:00.000-07:00

My name is Samuel David Florence. This blog is now mine. You will hear less about interesting travels and good literature. I have officially taken over the Florence home and will now proceed to take over this blog. I may look small but I know what I am doing. Feel free to try to find a cuter face or more perfect head. Thanks for checking in. Back to eating and sleeping.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Stegner

2009-02-22T10:31:00.000-08:00

From Wednesday's New York Times. I wish I could have met this man before he died:

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Wednesday was the centennial of Wallace Stegner, the writer and uber-citizen of the West. His friends said he looked like God ought to look, and perhaps not since Eden was first sketched in Genesis has an author been so sternly rhapsodic about the land.

Were Stegner around this week to blow out the 100 candles on his birthday cake, it’s likely he would still be mad at the East Coast Media Conspiracy, and by that he meant this newspaper.

Wallace Stegner.

“It was The New York Times that broke his heart,” said Nancy Packer, a retired professor of English at Stanford, who knew Stegner well in the time he nurtured writers from Ken Kesey to Larry McMurtry here on the Farm, as the university is known.

Stegner won the National Book Award for“The Spectator Bird,” which The Times never reviewed. He also won a Pulitzer for his best-loved novel, “Angle of Repose,” which the paper only noticed after the award, and then with a sniff.

Even in anointing him the dean of Western writers, The Times couldn’t get his name right, calling him “William” Stegner. He died in 1993 at the age of 84.

Living and writing in the West, Stegner wrote, left him with the feeling that “I gradually receded over the horizon and disappeared.”

The fact that a writer of Stegner’s stature felt ghettoized with the dreaded tag of “regional author” raises the question of whether our national literature is too tightly controlled by the so-called cultural elite -– those people who talk to each other in some mythic Manhattan echo chamber.

Norman Maclean, the Montana native whose gin-clear prose makes “A River Runs Through It” an American treasure, certainly carried some of the Stegnarian chip on his Western shoulder.

After the success of his first book, Maclean was approached in 1981 by an editor at Knopf publishing, which had rejected the novel but was eager to take on his next project. Maclean wrote back in compacted fury.

“If the situation ever arose when Alfred A. Knopf was the only publishing house remaining in the world and I were the sole surviving author,” Maclean wrote, “that would mark the end of the world of books.”

Stegner felt similarly dissed, but he’s aged well — everywhere, perhaps, but Manhattan and Stanford, the cradle of the creative writing program he started.

I asked Tobias Wolff, the author of “This Boy’s Life,” and a former Stegner fellow who teaches at Stanford, if there was a class here devoted to his canon. After all, he wrote 35 books — novels, histories, short stories — and is the subject of two lengthy biographies, including Philip Fradkin’s recent tome, published by Knopf.

Wolff shook his head. “Generally, students don’t read him here,” he said. “I wish they would.”

Everywhere else, though, Stegner has grown in stature. For starters, there are rivers undammed, desert vistas unspoiled and forests uncut in the wondrous West because of his pen.

He influenced several presidents, from Kennedy to Clinton, to see that “something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed,” as he wrote.

How many writers of fiction can make that claim?

All over the West, Stegner centers, Stegner prizes and Stegner scholars produce work that follows his life theme: an attempt to get Westerners to make peace with their surroundings.

His prose was never Hallmark, and he was often blunt.

“The West is politically reactionary and exploitive: admit it,” he said in an interview. “The West as a whole is guilty of inexplicable crimes against the land: admit that, too. The West is rootless, culturally half-baked. So be it.”

This product of the hardscrabble, boom-and-bust, wandering man frontier — his dad made a living playing poker and selling bootleg liquor one year — has given us two of the most famous lines about the West. Both are grounded in optimism.

He called the West “the geography of hope,” despite many misgivings, and he dreamed of a day when Westerners would fashion “a society to match the scenery.”

Stegner certainly had the writerly credentials — Ph.D, a teaching stint at Harvard, short stories published in all the right journals read by all the right people. But he chose to make the cultural elite come to him.

And he grounded himself, spending nearly half his life in the Palo Alto foothills above Stanford.

On his 100th birthday, it’s worth remembering another lesson of his life — to choose authenticity over artifice. “If you don’t know where you are,” he said, paraphrasing the writer Wendell Berry, “you don’t know who you are.”

He knew — the where and the who.

Cidade Maravilhosa

2008-12-11T20:27:00.000-08:00

Last month I spent a couple of days in Rio de Janeiro. It was the first time I had been back there since the summer of 2003, when I lived there for three months.

One night I went back to my favorite place in Rio, a big rock called Arpoador (Harpooner) that juts out into the Atlantic Ocean, dividing the beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. I used to go there as often as I could to watch the sunset, and I managed to get there just in time to see it again.

There were probably 200 people scattered around the big rock. Some were fishing, but most were there, like me, to watch the sun set over the Dois Irmaos, or Two Brothers, the massive rocks that loom over the southern end of Rio.
As I sat there waiting, the sound of voices and laughter floated down and mixed with the noise of the waves crashing against the rocks below us, before drifting into the evening sky. But as the sun got closer to the horizon, the voices grew hushed and the crowd was quiet and we all stared in silence as the fiery globe disappeared into the sea.

Then, just as the top of the sun dropped below the horizon line, the whole crowd erupted in approval, and the evening air was filled with applause and cheers in appreciation of the show.

I love Brazil.

(The top photo is taken from my hotel window. The hotel was under renovation, so the whole building was wrapped in a semi-transparent gauze-like material. The photo that came out of it reminded me of a painting my brother might do.)

Thanksgivings Past

2008-12-03T21:55:00.000-08:00

Last week we spent Thanksgiving at the beach in Ventura and it was fantastic. As we were sitting down for dinner looking out over the ocean, I thought of Khartoum, Sudan, where I spent the first Thanksgiving of our marriage. I was working for USAID and left two weeks after our Honeymoon for six weeks in Sudan, where we were working on the Darfur crisis.

While in Sudan, we all lived in a house a few miles from the U.S. Embassy, which I called "Real World Khartoum." One man, Jim, had been there for months, and cooking was his outlet. He decided to prepare a big Thanksgiving dinner for all of us, and and he even ordered a Turkey for $300 that was flown in all the way from Amsterdam on the biweekly KLM flight.

Although the Turkey made the flight, it never made it beyond the airport in Khartoum, where overzealous Sudanese customs agents suspected our prize cargo of carrying bird flu and incinerated our turkey (along with Jim's last hope at sanity). Somehow a frozen Turkey from Amsterdam was a bigger threat and a higher priority for them than genocide in Darfur...

Since the embassy was closed on Thanksgiving, we took a rare day off (we were working seven days a week) and organized a trip to some pyramids along the Nile at a place called Meroe up near the Egyptian border. So I spent Thanksgiving morning on camelback riding through the Sudanese desert.

And when we got home, Jim had managed to find some chicken in a little market in Khartoum and we had a fine Thanksgiving after all. I don't think I would recommend Thanksgiving (or Spring Break, for that matter) in Khartoum, but it made for a memorable holiday.

Beijing Revisited

2008-10-14T21:12:00.000-07:00

Kim wanted to bring bring Shawn Johnson home with us. She is so tiny she easily would have fit in my carry on. On a somewhat unrelated note, we were thinking about bringing a few Chinese babies home with us at one point, but it turns out we won't need to steal one anymore.
Kim took this fantastic picture of Usain Bolt after he demolished the world record in the 100m. However, during this politically charged season, I must warn you: his first name is awfully close to "Hussein", which might mean he pals around with terrorists. Sarah Palin told me that.
They held the Olympic equestrian events in Hong Kong so we ended up going there for a quick trip. Too quick. That city is amazing.
This is part of the closing ceremony. I was told that BOCOG (organizing committee) built a replica Bird's Nest stadium on the outskirts of Beijing just so they could practice this show while the Bird's Nest was being used for Track & Field events. I would have believed that if the same people hadn't told me the Chinese women's gymnasts were all 16 years old.

Elizabeth's Wedding

2008-10-09T22:05:00.000-07:00

We were in Salt Lake in early September for Elizabeth's and Brady's wedding. I can't say much for the Florence boys, but the Florence girls sure turned out pretty well. Isn't Elizabeth a beautiful bride?

The wedding was beautiful and the reception at the Mountain House was perfect.
Mr. and Mrs. Brady Ashdown
Brady, Elizabeth, and the next generation of Florences. I love this picture.
Here is the original cast. From left, Nathan, Andrew, Elizabeth, Susanna, Paul, and Alex.

Beijing 2008

2008-10-08T21:50:00.000-07:00

We went to China for the Olympics. We took over 1,000 pictures but don't worry, I won't post them all. Even if I could figure out how to post more than 4 at a time on this blog. No wonder I don't post more often.
Kim (yes, I'm using her real name now. She never reads this, so it's not like it matters) doesn't like this picture, but I do.
There were 91,000 of these guys deployed in Beijing on the night of Opening Ceremonies alone. Sweet crowd control.

Kim fell in love with this guy. That's okay, I guess I did too.

Wanderings

2008-06-24T19:32:00.000-07:00

While the Hotbed has obviously cooled over the last few weeks, we have a good excuse. We were on the road for most of the month of May. I started the trek in the Middle East, where I made my way from Dubai to Abu Dhabi to Bahrain to Saudi Arabia to Kuwait to Qatar. After the Middle East I had some meetings in Paris, so Agnes met me there. For some reason it took me several days to convince Agnes to fly to Paris in the springtime where everything but the flight would be covered on the company's dime, but I eventually won out. I think she was holding out for better company, but she finally gave in.

For those of you are ever planning on traveling anywhere, talk to Agnes first. She is the ultimate traveler and a fantastic trip planner. We saw most of Paris in a few action-packed days. But keep in mind, Agnes' tours are not for the faint of heart. I think we walked about 20 miles a day. Luckily she let me stop for crepes, macaroons, ice cream, and a lot of other snacks along the way.

On the last day we were there, ALL the museums in the city were free and open until 2 AM. We would still be living somewhere in one of the museums like in "From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler" if it were up to Agnes. If you don't know that book, read it now.

As for Saudi Arabia, it has to be the strangest place I've ever been. The Saudis may not like Americans, but they LOVE American things, like Chevy Caprices and Applebee's. And while you can't get Applebee's riblets anywhere in the Kingdom (I think you can get beheaded for ordering pork), you can get jalapeno poppers.

Oh, and the next time you pay $4.50 a gallon for gas, try to think of a rich Kuwaiti or Saudi sheikh in his Prada ski suit learning to ski in the brand-new indoor ski resort in Dubai, and take comfort in the knowledge that you're paying for it.

Dream On

2008-04-11T22:21:00.000-07:00

This morning as I was getting up for work, Agnes rolled over and told me in a groggy voice filled with concern that she hadn't slept very well. The following conversation ensued:

Paul: Why didn't you sleep well?
Agnes: I was having some really bad dreams.
Paul: Oh really? What did you dream about?
Agnes: I dreamed that your mom died, and then we went out to dinner, and over dinner you told me you were a transvestite. And while you were telling me, the waitress told us that our car had been towed.
Paul: Don't worry, honey, two out of three of those things never happened.

Relieved, Agnes rolled over and went back to sleep. And I slipped on on my favorite pair of fishnets and stilettos and tiptoed out the door to work.

(Okay, that very last part isn't true, but the rest happened exactly as I described it here. Oh, and instead of "transvestite", she said "trannie")

Moving On

2008-04-02T22:04:00.000-07:00

Last week, after a magical year in Sausalito, we packed up and moved south across the Golden Gate Bridge to the city. Like many moves, this one came with mixed feelings. We love our new place in San Francisco, but we already miss our sleepy little town. I miss seeing the sun creep up over Angel Island as I get ready for work, turning the bay from silver to gold. And I miss watching the the evening fog spill over the headlands, tumbling down the steep green hills and getting tangled in the trees above our house. But I don't miss spending $4/gallon on gas and filling up the car every week!

Do You Know This Man?

2008-03-11T20:58:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a quick weekend getaway to the beach to meet up with family. Highlights included flautas, a long bike ride with Nathan along a 60-mile section of the Tour of California route, hanging with Nathan and Marian, freezing cold ocean water, hearing about GK and Susanna's New York adventures, racing Maisie on the beach, and of course, this dude on the left.

This is Paul, and we have the same name. Other than a professional baseball player that I found when I googled myself (come on, you know you've done it) he is the only person I have come across with my same name. His parents took a gamble by giving him this name, because besides meaning "Little One," it can carry a lot of baggage. But Small Paul has transcended all that, and at one month shy of his fourth birthday, is much cooler than I'll ever be. I won't claim that I'm his very best friend (according to Paul, that title belongs to the starfish in the red bucket he's holding) but we are pretty good buddies.

Tour of California

2008-02-25T21:42:00.000-08:00

Last week, the Tour of California, the biggest bike race in the country, rolled through our town. Actually, it started in our town. We spent the morning walking around checking out the action. To be more specific, Agnes followed me around while I gawked at the awesome bikes and at the famous racers who warming up on our street. At one point, Agnes asked me if I ever wished I was a professional bike racer. I guess the fact that I took over 200 pictures that morning answered her question.

There Will be Blood

2008-01-23T21:27:00.000-08:00

A couple of nights ago, my wife, Agnes (not her real name, but since she has banned me from mentioning her by name on the blog, this is her blog alias) and I were winding down in the kitchen late on a Saturday night. We still hadn't cleaned up from Christmas and Agnes accidentally swung her hand directly into the broken bulb of a battery-powered Christmas candle which had fallen and broken a few days before. I had picked it up off the floor and put it on the shelf, planning on throwing it away later. Unfortunately, I never got around to it, and the jagged bulb sliced deep into her left hand. By the time we got to the sink to wash it off, she was bleeding bad and it was obvious she needed stitches. It was almost midnight when we wrapped her bloody hand in a dish towel and sped to the hospital.

We got to the hospital, checked in a couple of times (this ER had a multi-stage check-in process for some reason) and waited for about 30 minutes before they took us down the hall past two sheriff's deputies and into a room. It turns out our new neighbor was a prisoner from San Quentin. He moaned and screamed for the next 2 hours as we sat and waited for a doctor to come stitch up Agnes' hand. After a while, an orderly or a nurse or a hospital technician (I'm not really sure if those are even real positions in the ER) came in and prepped Agnes' hand, brought in some supplies, and warned me that I was more likely to faint than Agnes was. We laughed at that, because you would have to be pretty lame to faint in the ER.

After a while, I started to get bugged because I forgot a book to read and I had already read all the latest articles on the '08 primaries on my blackberry and Prison Mike next door wouldn't shut up. Finally the doctor came in and she took off the bloody dish towel and started to stitch up Agnes' hand. I stood up to get a better view and was surprised at how ragged the cut was. That's all I kept thinking. "Wow, that's a really ragged cut." After a couple of minutes of watching, a wave of nausea hit me and it felt like someone had turned up the thermostat to 150 degrees. I took off my sweatshirt and felt like I was going to throw up so I sat back down. I started to feel even more dizzy and the doctor stopped stitching and looked over at me to see what was wrong. She told me to put my head down between my knees, and I heard her say, "Wow, he's really pale." I slumped over in my little ER chair but I felt like I was underwater and her voice had a strange echo. I heard the shuffling of feet and before I knew it, my head was cradled in the ample bosom of a large Hispanic nurse, who rocked me gently as she lowered me to the floor. I remember hearing her say "he's going, he's going," in her gravely smoker voice.

The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor, looking up at a semi-circle of doctors and nurses standing over me smiling. "You fainted," the bosom cradler proudly announced. As she shuffled off to get me crackers and apple juice, I heard Agnes, still being stitched up, ask me if I was okay. They helped me up and put me in a gurney directly across from her so she could laugh at me while they worked on her hand.

When they finished with her stitches, I overheard the doctor tell her two things: first, she couldn't believe my brother was an ER doctor, and second, I wasn't allowed to drive home. So after nearly three hours in the ER, I sheepishly walked out of the hospital and got into the passenger seat so my injured wife could drive me home with her one good hand.

As we drove, I told Agnes that my fainting episode qualified as one of my most embarrassing moments. Funny, my all-time most embarrassing moment was also in a hospital. I was eighteen years old, groggily coming out of elbow surgery, I awoke to a room full of 20-year-old nursing students, who were there to watch and learn how to take out a catheter. Sorry, I'm still not ready to blog about that one.

Identity Crisis

2008-01-07T21:23:00.000-08:00

My wife said I could have a blog for Christmas, but this gift came with a list of conditions I had to honor before the blog was born:

1. She would not post, read, be asked to read, be asked to visit, or even be mentioned by name in said blog. So as far as I understand it, this blog is basically the bastard offspring of a cyber pre-nup and a restraining order. Is that weird? I'm sure it will get weirder.

2. The blog must be called the "Hotbed of Genius."

Obviously, wife does not like blogs and has no interest in participating in what she has referred to as "online scrapbooking" or "glorified Christmas cards." But I do have to say that I like the name she gave to this blog. It came from a travel book we read while we were getting ready to go to Scotland in November. The book described Edinburgh as a "hotbed of genius," which we loved. Besides, it is better than the first name she suggested for the blog, which was "Stare hard, retard."

Maybe this blog is a way for me to come to grips with being in my 30s. These days I don't even recognize myself. I am losing my hair at an alarming rate (actually it is just migrating south to my back), I know what a 401K is (sort of), and I read Russian literature for fun. What went wrong?

So a recent work trip to LA only fueled my budding identity crisis. The meetings were held at the Disney Studios in Burbank, and on the first day I drove my rental car slowly through the striking writer's guild and made my way to the security booth. They asked for ID so they could print me a badge. The Disney badge they gave me had a photo and everything, so I was impressed (I am easily impressed). Only later did I notice my name:

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Paul Feorofe. I looked around at some of the other people attending the meetings, and the security guy got their names right, so I'm not sure what happened. And the guy in the booth took my name from my driver's license, so it wasn't like he was trying to read my terrible handwriting or anything like that. Other than the F, the dude wasn't even close. What kind of name is Feorofe, anyway? I think it might be Scotch-Romanian. Or possibly Comanche Indian.

So the next day I was curious if the dude in the booth would get it right. My interest was piqued when I saw that it was a different guard on day two. Would I be Paul Feorofe again? No, even better.

Paul Orekct. There's really not very much I can say about that, except that Paul Orekct is an awesome name. Maybe they were giving me a stage name. After all, I was in Hollywood.

Or maybe Disney just has a really awesome security program that is so high-level that they give you an alias when you check in. I guess it would make sense, most of the Disney guys I met with were former CIA people anyway. But still, Paul Orekct. That is fantastic.

So stay tuned. Paul Feorofe, er, I mean Paul Orekct may have more to say. Too bad Mrs. Feorofe-Orekct hates blogs, she might enjoy this.