Housekeeping: Two Million Ways To Waste Your Time

Thirty-four months to the first million and twenty months to the next. When I started this blog I had no expectation that it would eventually attract a couple thousand readers every day of the week. It's not like Bark and I have done very much to make that happen. Rarely do we have more than a few new posts every week. Much of the credit has to go to the tireless and perceptive Tom Klockau. His classic curbside (wink) reviews are tremendously popular here, and with good reason.

As I did at the one million mark, I'll answer some Infrequently Asked Questions below.

Dude, is the book ever coming out? Short answer --- no time soon. I said that "2016 is the year of the book" but in reality that was at least two years premature. I've just been too busy to write the original content that would justify releasing the greatest-hits stuff in paper form.

And the album? It's possible that in 2018 I will do a four-song EP. The material is already written. I need to pick a month where Patrick is available and just get it done.

How are you physically? I'd just about recovered from the broken leg when I managed to crack a bunch of ribs and tear my shoulder at a skatepark around the end of June. For those of you who are counting along at home, that's between fifteen and seventeen fractures since January of 2014, depending on how many ribs I actually damaged. This is a low point for me physically and mentally --- I'm twenty-five pounds heavier than I was four years ago and I'm not nearly as strong. I'm hoping that I'll be injury-free in 2018 and that I will be able to slowly work on getting better.

And your passenger? She managed to go more than a year without surgeries, during which she became obsessive about the P90X program. At one point she could do fifty pushups in a row, followed by five pull-ups. We just took her into the shop for a quick tune-up and she will be back to twice-daily workouts in no time. She obtained her SCCA license and completed her first SCCA race this year.

And the boy? As my regular readers know, he is in the middle of his rookie Sportsman season, made more difficult by the ineptitude of his parental crew. He spends his spare time riding his BMX bikes, building levels in Little Big Planet, and programming video games on the MIT "Scratch" platform; his latest game has more than a hundred blocks and eight levels, one of which challenges the player to steer a small morsel of food from the mouth of a T-Rex to its cloaca. He thinks this is very funny, because he is eight years old. I also think it is funny and I have no excuse. He can hit a Coke can with a BB gun from about ten yards out. I've seen a lot of better parents have a lot of worse kids.

What about Bark? This has been a banner year for Bark career-wise and personally. I'm pretty sure he earns more money than I do and I know for a fact he is in better shape. However, I am still much taller.

What are your racing plans? We will be running Marilyn, the MX-5 Cup car belonging to Danger Girl, at the final two AER races of the season. Next year I hope to contest the entire regional SCCA schedule and get at least half of the AER schedule. However, John's kart racing is Priority Zero in 2018 so all of the above is subject to change. I'm about to turn forty-six and I have to consider the fact that whatever money and effort I put into my own career would be better spent on him.

Anything else? Not really. I've really enjoyed returning to BMX this year despite my injuries. I'm looking forward to a great year of riding. I still miss my friend Nick. I'm still overweight and I'm still not getting less sleep than I need and I remain the greatest talent to ever mash a keyboard in the automotive milieu. Most importantly, I remain pathetically grateful for your readership. See you again at three million!