eric nuzum dot com

"My Dad thinks I look like a Bog Man!"

sad downtown statue
Originally uploaded by ericandkatherine

Here is a free piece of advice from me.

No pregnant woman, no matter how great a sense of humor she has, wants to hear any joke/compliment/random observation that indicates that she is somehow larger than she was before she became pregnant.

I learned this, in full effect, after my wife spent dinner expressing her dissatisfaction at not being able to fit into any of her clothes. After dinner I was standing behind her and said, "Oh honey, your butt doesn't look that big."

I meant it as a compliment.

She did not hear it quite that way.

Every Tuesday we take a picture of Katherine's belly. At their request, we email this photo to our parents so they can follow along with Katherine's progress. Since we were in Iceland on vacation this past Tuesday, we posed Katherine on a glacier for her photo. After struggling with a Nordic keyboard in an Internet cafe (not only is everything in Icelandic, but you have to do weird combos like CRT-ALT-Q to get an "@" symbol), I sent out the weekly picture.

The next day I got an email from my father-in-law, saying "The picture looks more like the 'Bog Man.' What happened to my lovely daughter?"

Katherine noticed me wincing while reading his email (of course, I had announced to her that I got an email from her dad) and took the phone from my hand to read it.

She was not pleased.

I know this because she told me so...a few times. "My Dad thinks I look like a Bog Man!" She said...a few times.

Several hours later we were filling out postcards to send back home. At the bottom of the one sent to her parents she added "Thanks for the Bog Man comment, Dad." I think she even added a smiley face. If given another minute with that card, she probably would have traced the outline of her middle finger on it as well.

So we send off the postcard. Later that night I was back at the Internet cafe when I got an email back from my Dad, saying "I think you attached the wrong photo." It seems that while struggling with the Nordic keyboard and Icelandic menu prompts, I had mistakenly attached Photo 1119 instead of Photo 1199.

So instead of sending off the photo of my pregnant wife on a glacier, I sent the picture above on the right--one of several forlorn statues littered around downtown Reykjavik.

It does kind of look like a Bog Man.

So I wrote back to my father-in-law, starting the email off with "This isn't funny now, but probably will be funny later..." I then explained the whole situation and gave him a heads up about the coming postcard.

He wrote back, "Actually, I think it's very funny now. It isn't the first time your wife has been angry at me for something I didn't do."

Facebook knows me better than I know myself

1965 Motor Trend Classified Ads
Originally uploaded by coconv

Like many people, I have a Facebook page. Like many people, I put a lot of personal info on my Facebook page. Like many people, Facebook mines that information to decide what ads it should place on my Facebook page.

It got me wondering...does Facebook know me better than I know myself?

Yesterday I noticed the three ads Facebook was pimping my way: a subscription to "Chilled"--a magazine for bartenders, an ad for a depression support group, and a guide to solar power.

I mean, think about it. Facebook knows what you do for a living, the things you like, where you went to school, and on and on. So how does it summarize you? What dispassionate assessment does it make of what you might need or covet?

Well, obviously, Facebook thinks I'm a sad drunk interested in green energy.

And the shocking thing (at least to me) is,that isn't that far from the truth.

So I started asking around to my Facebook friends--what is Facebook trying to tell you through its ads?Here is a collection of what they were seeing:

• The ads on my page keep telling me to go back to school.
• They think I need a face lift or a diet.
• They think I like big-boobed women and referee shoes
• "Are you Authentic or Real Straight?" I don't think it's questioning my preference for jeans but to see if I'm gay.
• Ads on my page: frozen yogurt, guns, and houses. yes, please, and thank you.
• Restaurants, embryo donation and photo printing.
• Art camp for kids, Shaker's Vodka and Real Estate dot com. Get drunk, send the kids to camp and move!
• I get liposcution, permanent wrinkle removers and how to meet an older partner if lonely!

Truth hurts, I guess.

Fini

bring me to heaven printed out
Originally uploaded by ericandkatherine

After almost two years, twelve research trips, four reams of paper, two toner cartridges, and six liter bottles of Grand Marnier--the first draft of my ghost-themed memoir, Bring Me To Heaven, was turned in to my publisher last week. 106,459 words, 345 pages.

While it is complete, it is still far from done. There will be months of editing, revising, rethinking, fixing, tweaking, fact-checking, and correcting--but the basic shell is there. There are a lot of parts I really like and some parts that need a lot of work.

Since turning it in, I've been trying to adjust to life without it, as--towards the end--it was taking up almost every waking non-work hour (and then some). I'm pretty tired and burned out and grateful for a break.

Within a few hours of turning it in, we started to take apart my office, which will shortly be converted into a nursery (all my stuff is going into a room in the basement). Emotionally, as well as physically, it really feels like the end of one part of my life and the beginning of another.

Expect more here (and more regularly) soon. Now I'm taking some time off from words for a bit.