Scott Sherman Online

Good Eats, Good Company

I'm writing this at a California Tortilla restaurant. This shizz is da bomb. For $8, I just had a delicious steak fajita platter that really hit the spot.

Assuming I don't get violently ill later, I'll be coming back.

I'm here alone, enjoying my own company, because my partner's taken the kids to NY to visit his parents.  I love my family, but I also love the occasional opportunity to send them off and have the house - and the restaurant - all to myself. 

With the kids gone, I'm going to buckle down to finish the digital photography book I've been working on for a couple of months now. I plan on marketing it on line as an e-book, so that you can download it right away and have it in your hot little hands. Well, in your hot little hard drive.

It's geared to DSLR users, and I think it answers a lot of questions that new and intermediate users have. 

I hope its a good read, but the writing is tedious. I'm doing a lot of research and fact-checking because I want to get it right. And since those aren't my strong points (lounging and the memorization of useless trivia, are) its slow going.

Speaking of getting it right, as I write this, I'm listening on my MP3 player to the latest episode of The Digital Photography Show - #63. It's pretty much done, but when we were taping it yesterday, I remember thinking "I have to go back later and cut that part out."

Of course, now I can't remember what the heck I was supposed to cut out.

So, I'm listening to the whole thing to catch whatever it was that had me worried. The ironic part is that its our longest show ever - an hour and half.  So, for those of you who say you want a longer show, you got it. For those of you who are easily bored - listen in two or three parts.

So far, I haven't found anything that I need to take out, and seeing as how I'm hardly paying attention to it, there's a good chance I'm going to miss it. If you hear something crazy this week, please forgive me.

Botox Blues

I'm writing this from the hospital where my oldest son, Sasha, is undergoing his twice-yearly Botox injections.

Sasha has cerebral palsy, and the Botox relaxes the spasticicity in his muscles so that he can walk and stand. Even with the medicine, he still wears braces and walks very clumsily. But he's better off with it than without it.

The procedure is no fun, though, and I'm sitting in the waiting room having just held his hand as the sedation took effect.  He tried to be brave, but as he lay in the bed, waiting for the IV to be inserted, tears leaked from his eyes and he whimpered like a baby. Tears filled my eyes, too. It's so hard to watch.

But I told him soon he'll go to sleep and that I'll see him in his dreams.

It's hard for Sasha to have cerebral palsy and it's sometimes heartbreaking to be his dad. We so want the best for our kids. But here at the pediatric ICU, you can't help but feel lucky that you don't have it worse as you pass rooms where a team of doctors huddle around a child so small that you almost can't see him or you meet parents waiting for their daughter to be done with her third brain surgery. 

Then, all you can do is share a sympathetic smile and think guiltily to yourself I guess I don't have it so bad after all. 

And you wait for you child to wake up so you can hold him and kiss him and tell him that you love him. Like parents do, everywhere, everyday, all over the world. Like I am right now.

You Know You've Been A Parent Too Long

This morning, I was singing along to "I Love Rock and Roll" and, at the chorus, enthusiastically shouted:

"Put another dime in the juice box, baby!"