Short-short #2: Establishing Shot

The café is small and non-descript, on the first floor of a faux brownstone in the faceless part of Greenwich Village. A railroad space with access to the backyard, also small, where an old greenhouse roof with most of the roof panels missing, offers a quiet refuge from the outside world. The cuisine is South Asian, as is the staff, and the portions are generous. He meets prospective clients here because it's both convenient and remote, and the laid-back atmosphere is disarming. Considering his line of work, that last point is important. Almost every first meeting starts the same, and…

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When Good News is also Bad News

The Good News: According to standards, India's early intervention and ABA therapy over the past two years have resulted in remarkable improvements in her speech and sociability, and she is ready to move on to a less restrictive environment for Kindergarten in the fall. Effectively, she is no longer considered autistic. The Bad News: According to standards, India's early intervention and ABA therapy over the past two years have resulted in remarkable improvements in her speech and sociability, and she is ready to move on to a less restrictive environment for Kindergarten in the fall. Effectively, she is now being considered a tempermental kid with a speech delay who…

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Vacations, Hurricanes and Moving On

Presidente InterContinental Cancun Resort The last time Salomé and I took a real vacation (without the kids), a long weekend in New Orleans back in 2005, we missed a devastating hurricane by about six weeks. Back in 1992, when I was still in the Army, Hurricane Andrew derailed a planned Labor Day weekend trip down to Miami Beach.  Katrina hit New Orleans on August 25th, Andrew tore through South Florida on August 24th...so the timing of our trip to Cancun this summer is just a tad worrisome: August 25-29. It took a couple of weeks for us to finally decide where to go this summer -- looking to…

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last.fm

last.fm Because there aren't enough distractions online, I've signed up for yet another one: last.fm. It's a social networking site that links people through their musical tastes, not via hyperlinked entries in an "interests" box, but by tracking everything you listen to on your computer and creating a personal radio station that others can listen to, potentially discovering new songs and artists. It also allows artists to upload their own music and make it available for preview and/or download, offering the potential for reaching new audiences in a way that's more organic than MySpace. So yeah, I signed up, set my Windows…

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Mission Accomplished, Coach!

Isaac @ Trophy Time The only thing cooler than handing out obligatory trophies to a group of kids who actually earned them, is having your son be one of those kids! (That's the trophy in the brown paper bag there, not the heirloom Gonzalez 40, thank you!) The Pee Wee Marlins' Tee Ball season came to a fantastic end this past weekend and they played their best game yet, hands down, on offense and defense. Even better, they did it against the Pee Wee Mets, the only other team I felt was as organized and, if I may say so myself, well-coached as we…

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