A Father Again
I’m sitting in the waiting area of Gate E31 in Concourse E of the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Flight 237 to Stuttgart will be departing from Gate 31 at 5:45pm, but I’m not headed to the Vaterland tonight. I just settled down here because the gate area was relatively empty and I needed a place to sit down, spread out, power up my PowerBook, and finish answering the last my email. As soon as the area starts filling up with Germans in their Official American Summer Vacation Uniform (too-short shorts, sandals with black socks, no sense of humor) I’ll grab a bite to eat and head over to Gate 33 where my flight leaves in a few hours.
I’ve been in Atlanta for the past week attending the unfortunately-named SANSFIRE 2005 information security conference. The organization that conducts the conference is the SANS Institute and I think they call it SANSFIRE in an attempt to make it sound “hot.” But if you speak French, you could get the impression that the conference is entirely without heat. And in my mind, the word “sans” is forever be linked with Sans-A-Belt slacks…which are also entirely without heat.
[Aside #1: The German woman who just sat down across from me is the spitting image of Richard Branson.]
I’ll just be glad to be home. I’ve seen my daughters for a total of 24 hours in the last three weeks. They went to Hawaii with their mother for two weeks and the day after they got back I was on my way to the hot conference for information security professionals who wear trousers that require no additional fastening device at the waist.
Like all long breaks from parenting, it was great for about 48 hours. After that, it just sucks. Sure, you’ve got loads of bonus discretionary time, but what you find is that when you have loads of bonus discretionary time you’d like to spend it with your kids…who, of course, aren’t there…which is, of course, why you have the loads of bonus discretionary time…which, of course, you can’t spend with them…which sucks. So, as far as I’m concerned, the best present I’m going to get for Father’s Day tomorrow is the fact that I get to be a father again.
Comments
jenny
Sansabelt.
The sportiness.
The comfort.
The freedom to be who you want to be.
Kate
Ah ha! These are not unlike “Original BendOver® Pants.”
The world changes, day by day, but it’s nice to know that Janet and I still can laugh at “BendOver® Pants.” I think we might well laugh at ANY haute couture that involves Dupont Dacron®. There was a particular shoe brand we LOVED to mock as well - I wish I could remember what it was.
Erik
Leif left Thursday to spend the weekend at grandma’s house. Saturday I was getting plenty of things done in the yard. At one point, kneeling in a flower bed installing new sprinklers I stopped. I realized that not having my non-stop 4 year old around, to jump on my back at any oportunity, pester me to play baseball, practice soccer, push him on the swing and read a story, while I had so much stuff to get done was really lousy and boring. I like being a dad.
cooper
Sansfire = Nova! English is goofy if you know another language! As soon as I read it I laughed. It’s like driving through central Los Angeles reading the names of businesses started by non english speakers: Happy Teriaki!, Atch Kotch Restaurant, Hide Sushi Restaurant, Manna Japanese Grill and so on and on.
jenny
Kate, I’ll bet that the brand you’re thinking of is “SAS” shoes—they used to have a store in the mall. My french teacher always wore these w/”Suntan” colored nylons. Aaaiiiieee!
Amy and I still refer to BendOver Slacks any time one of us tries something on that makes her/my bum look like the bums they used to have on the “Underalls” nylons packages. (*tink-tink!*)
ames
I’ve never thought of Sans-a-Belt slacks as being “entirely without heat.” On the contrary, as sported by my high school driver’s ed teacher, they looked incredibly hot—in the literal, non-Paris Hilton sense. There’s something about the superstretch woven polyester content in both Sans-A-Belts and BendOvers. You might as well wrap the lower half of your body with Saran. Just looking at it makes me want to reach for some talcum powder.
Oh, and your girls aren’t the only ones who are glad you’re back!
Grettir
Perhaps they could incorporate that into their advertising…
Lillian
Damnitalltohell. I am now ALL about the Sans-A-Belt lifestyle. I was seeking diligently for my “LOCAL” Suddenly Slender Centre when alas your link clued me in to the closest one. Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, Hong Kong. I won’t be there until the leaves fall. Come to think of it, I’m not sure when they fall in Tsim Sha Tsui.
jenny
One summer when we were on vacation I had a mud-wrap at a very chic spa. First, hot mud (stinked like dirty pond scum), then plastic wrap, and finally, to top it all off, a heavy insulated silver full-body wrap like the “safety shields” they put on you when you get x-rays at the dentist. The attendant left me there for 20 minutes to bake.
After the 20 minutes were over, the meat thermometer in my mouth was reading “medium-rare” and I wanted desperately to run screaming from the room and plunge straight into the nearest Slurpee machine. But I was naked under the mud, so I didn’t. And darn it, the fool contraption didn’t even work!
Wait a minute–how did we get here talking about full-body wraps and Underalls? I’m afraid that I must assume full responsibility for both the digression and degredation of this thread.
Mimi
Grettir, this has nothing to do with your post, but have you seen “Ladies in Lavender”? Don’t worry, we won’t think you less of a man for having seen it, but when I saw it I was reminded of having seen some sort of Judy Dench proclivities you may or may not have expressed in the past and I wondered if you wrote the movie script under a pen name. Unmask yourself!
Grettir
And now you can live the Sans-A-Belt lifestyle for 69% less! But what, exactly, is a “French fly?”
Grettir
No, Mimi, I haven’t had a chance to see Ladies in Lavender yet…and I’d admit it if I had (though I’d have to refer to it as “that new Judi Dench movie”). It’s playing in Salt Lake City right now, but it’ll be long gone by the time I get up there again, so I’ll have to wait until it comes out on DVD.
And while I usually try to claim pseudonymous authorship of as much of other people’s work as possible (did you know I was a ghostwriter on the “Declaration of Independence”?), Ladies was written and directed by Charles Dance, who is too well known an actor for me to be able to get away with it.
Eleanor Roosevelt
Yo mama’s “Kierkegaard references” are actually out of context quotes from Spaceballs.
I think it’s time to write something new. I’m getting bored.
mary
Google definitions to the rescue: French Fly.
Not to be confused with Flench Fly, which is something you can get at McDonald’s in Hong Kong.
Grettir
OK, Mary, that was the funniest thing I read all week!