Conversations With Emily #7132897

While watching the finalists line-up for the 110 meter men's high hurdles.

Me Oliver looks like he's dirty, but I have to cheer for him. He is an American afterall. (Editor's Note: Dirty = performance enhancing drugs. Click here to judge for yourself.)

Emily What about Urkel? Aren't you going to cheer for him?

By Urkel she, of course meant Dayron Robles, who won the event.

Click here to judge for yourself.



Urkel indeed. She called the winner of the race. She made an Urkel reference.

Well played.

Uncle F

I am an uncle to yet another child.

Click here for pictures. Emily sure looks comfortable holding eight pounds of human, compared to me.

No word yet what the new baby's name is. For now, I'm calling him "Q." And no word yet what will happen the the name of the blog, "followart." Art is Q's older brother, so the name of the blog will have to be changed. It just to show how much more complicated life gets when you double the number of kids you have.

Family Matters

The last time I posted about family matters, I was writing about a kid at work who wanted to show me his Urkle impersenation.

Fortunately, this post will not be Urkel related. Rather it is a post to plug my aunt-in-law's blog. A few things worth knowing about Aunt Deb: she is one of the in-laws I have who will watch sports with me, she is running her first marathon this summer, and she's good people.

Click here to check it out. She was even thoughtful enough to write this post calling me out, for calling her out for the lack of posting on her previous blog.

Conversation With A Kid With Asperger Syndrome #1

At work I see a lot of kids with Asperger Syndrome and some high functioning autistic kids. The bulk of what I work on with these kids is social skills. If you want to know more about Asperger Syndrome, wikipedia has a pretty good entry about it.

Or you can just go to Silicon Valley and meet the locals. Then you see the syndrome up close and personal with every person you meet. Even cheaper, rent Napoloean Dynamite. That movie is an outright celebration of Asperger Syndrome.

Anyway, here is a conversation I had with a high school senior today who has Apserger Syndrome.

Kid: "What did you do this weekend?" We have worked long and hard on how to start a conversation using an appropriate question.

Me: "Well let's see. It was pretty cold, so I stayed indoors a lot. I watched some movies and the Super Bowl of course."

It is now the kid's job to ask a follow-up question based on what I said. As you will see, he jumped the gun and transitioned to what he was dying to talk about. But at least he used a transition. It was a clumsy transition, however. We are still working on how to smoothly transition from one topic to another.

Kid: "Hmmm. Hey speaking of TV, do you watch Family Matters?"

Me: "Wait. I thought we were talking about my weekend. You need to find a smoother way to get to your topic of choice. and be patient." All the while, I'm thinking, "WHAT THE FUCK?!?!?!? Family Matters? Was that the show from like 15 years ago with Urkel? Well my question was about to be answered.

Kid: "I know. I know. Sorry, but I couldn't help myself. It's just there is this show Family Matters, and it has this guy Urkel and he is HILARIOUS!! He's SO FUNNY!!! He's a genius."

Me: "Excuse me. Did you just say Urkel is a genius?"

Kid: "Well a comic genius. Can I show you my impersentation of him?" This is progress. Last month he would have broken into his Urkel routine without asking first. Now he knows better.

Me: "No."