First thing this morning, I popped over to my buddy Eric’s blog and read his latest post on how he and his wife Audrey picked their new baby’s name. It is a great name. I highly recommend you check it out and read the whole thing. The most telling thing about the post, though, is what it says about the author. Eric is the engineer’s engineer: Teutonic roots, born in the seat of automobile engineering and manufacturing in the Midwest, Rose-Hulman graduate, given to mathematical descriptions of virtually everything. I can think of no better way to illustrate his engineerness (if that is a word) than to just quote from his post:
My formula for dealing with females is as follows. First, you analyze the situation and reach a conclusion. Then, you take the inverse of the conclusion and multiply it by the degree of uncertainty (a mood-based variable). For instance, if a female asks you how she looks, the analytical left hemisphere would interpret this question as a solicitation for feedback on improving her looks. You conclude she is asking you to identify necessary improvements. But with my formula, you would invert that conclusion and it becomes “no improvements are necessary.” Secondly, you ascertain her mood. If she is really happy or really sad, the degree of uncertainty is very high. In the case of very high uncertainty, the answer to her then becomes, “Wow! You look absolutely fabulous.”
On another note, we had a marvelous weekend full of social activity. We had three families over for dinner on Friday night, vegetated together as a family on Saturday, and then went out to dinner after meeting on Sunday with a couple of families. We were with our good friends Gary and Sidony and their two children Warren and Kiera on both Friday night and Sunday. Sidony is one of those mystical types who has premonitions and dreams that, whether they are really true matters not so much as that they make for great and often scary stories. Some, mostly female, members of our family love to listen to those stories, but then are scared to death to be anywhere by themselves for the next several months. I am trying to look at the up side to the situation. My hope is that the extra trips to the second story of our house to accompany the fearful will translate into some lost weight.
Weight loss note: Lyle is in an amazingly good place in the whole weight loss death match after having gone through a whole round of conventions. Bryan hits another milestone. Ken tanks again on the weekend with another round of carbo-loading.