{"id":2360,"date":"2004-10-26T09:36:22","date_gmt":"2004-10-26T14:36:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/gazette\/2004\/10\/26\/non-essential-updates-and-pith-less-insights\/"},"modified":"2023-10-12T09:03:16","modified_gmt":"2023-10-12T14:03:16","slug":"non-essential-updates-and-pith-less-insights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2004\/10\/26\/non-essential-updates-and-pith-less-insights\/","title":{"rendered":"Non-essential Updates and Pith-less Insights"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Ever had a conversation like this with one of your kids?<br \/>\n<em><br \/>\nUncle Eric, when are we leaving for school?<br \/>\n<\/em><span style=\"font-size: revert; font-family: var(--list--font-family); color: var(--global--color-primary); background-color: var(--global--color-background);\"><br \/>\nWell, when do you want to leave?<br \/>\n<\/span><em style=\"font-size: revert; font-family: var(--list--font-family); color: var(--global--color-primary);\"><br \/>\nUm&#8230;I&#8217;m supposed to be at school for practice at 7:30.<br \/>\n<\/em><span style=\"font-size: revert; font-family: var(--list--font-family); color: var(--global--color-primary); background-color: var(--global--color-background);\"><br \/>\nQuick glance at clock. 7:26 a.m. Hmm.<br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-size: revert; font-family: var(--list--font-family); color: var(--global--color-primary); background-color: var(--global--color-background);\"><br \/>\nAnd I was supposed to know this exactly how?<br \/>\n<\/span><em style=\"font-size: revert; font-family: var(--list--font-family); color: var(--global--color-primary);\"><br \/>\nI guess I forgot to tell you. I didn&#8217;t notice what time it was.<\/em><span style=\"font-size: revert; font-family: var(--list--font-family); color: var(--global--color-primary); background-color: var(--global--color-background);\"> (This from the only 15 year old boy in existence who looks at his wristwatch every ten minutes to make sure he&#8217;s on schedule.)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">As we pulled into the school parking lot at 7:45, I say to the nephew as he gets out of the car, <em>You&#8217;re gonna blame this on me, aren&#8217;t you?<\/em> He grinned and replied, <em>You know I&#8217;d never do that.<\/em> Translation: You are <em>so<\/em> blamed for this.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">As we pulled away and headed for the next dropoff point, I asked the niece, sitting in the passenger seat, <em>You&#8217;d blame me for this, wouldn&#8217;t you?<\/em> She smiled sweetly and said, simply, <em>Yes.<\/em><\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">Well, what good is an uncle if you can&#8217;t blame him every now and then for your own sins? I&#8217;ve read the job description.<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">I voted yesterday, along with a steady streams of fellow citizens, 90% of whom were women, 100% of whom had grim expressions on their faces. I have no explanation for that phenomenon. For all I know, I had an equally grim expression on my face. However, I always try to smile at the election workers, so they won&#8217;t judge me too harshly for <em>never<\/em> carrying my voter registration card. In Texas, we can vote using a driver&#8217;s license as identification, but it makes the guy look me up on the computer to confirm my address and precinct. I suspect they get tired of that. But, really&#8230;expecting me to actually <em>plan<\/em> my voting activity in advance?<\/li>\n<li style=\"margin-top: 1em;\">I suspect that we Americans take for granted the relative ease of casting our ballots. Nobody shot at me yesterday. I didn&#8217;t have to look around for suspicious vans idling near the polling place with no drivers inside. I&#8217;m pretty sure no one was surreptitiously taking my photograph in order to better identify me with my ballot, so my name can be placed on The List for Future &#8220;Consideration.&#8221; Yep, we&#8217;ve got it pretty cush. Easy to take for granted, isn&#8217;t it?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ever had a conversation like this with one of your kids? Uncle Eric, when are we leaving for school? Well, when do you want to leave? Um&#8230;I&#8217;m supposed to be at school for practice at 7:30. Quick glance at clock. 7:26 a.m. Hmm. And I was supposed to know this exactly how? I guess I&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/2004\/10\/26\/non-essential-updates-and-pith-less-insights\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Non-essential Updates and Pith-less Insights<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kitchen-sink","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2360"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12706,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions\/12706"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ericsiegmund.com\/fireant\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}