I've known this day would come for a while now. My mom has been pestering me about our family tendency toward high cholesterol for years now, but it's never quite made it onto the list of my real concerns. After all, it's not like I was gorging myself on deep-fried or packaged foods, the ones you're always hearing derided on the news. True, I eat fast food a couple of times a month, but it hardly seemed like a regular occurrence, especially compared to the junk-laden diet the "average" American purportedly has. I eat my vegetables, and, heck, I've even been going to the gym semi-regularly.

I probably ought to explain a bit. About six months ago I found out that my primary care doctor was moving to Chicago, which necessitated me finding a new one. I already knew who it would be, since one of the covering doctors I'd seen at the same clinic had struck me as pretty good. I dragged my feet about setting up the new patient appointment, though, which meant I didn't actually get around to meeting the new guy until last week.

We ran through all the normal questions—family medical history (diabetes, cancer, high cholesterol), current problems or medications (none), diet and exercise (OK), weight (could stand to lose some more), and so on. Nothing surprising, and, as always, the vitals and physical were fine. He asked me to stop for a blood draw on the way for metabolic and lipid screening, as well as a vitamin D screening since I mentioned I spend most of my time indoors.

"If anything comes up in your labs I'll call you tomorrow, otherwise you'll get the results in the mail in a week or so," he said.

Tomorrow came and went without a phone call, so I assumed the labs had come back fine, just like always. That turned out to be a little premature, though, as the phone rang on my way out the door Friday morning.

"Turns out you do have a vitamin D deficiency," the doctor said after the initial pleasantries. "I sent a prescription for a loading dose of vitamin D to your pharmacy, so you can start that today or tomorrow." I let my breath out, a little surprised at the tension I'd felt when I heard the doctor's voice greeting me. Vitamin deficiency; I can deal with that.

"Everything else looks fine," he continued. "Liver looks good, HDL cholesterol and lipids are good, LDL is a little borderline but not too high. Sugars are good. Go fill the vitamin D prescription and when the report comes I'll include instructions for the supplements you'll take after you're done with that."

And that was that, I figured. Take a big vitamin dose for a few weeks, some supplements after that, and try to get outside more. Not so bad.

The report showed up in yesterday's mail, and just like the doctor said, there was a vitamin D deficiency and my LDL cholesterol was a little into the "borderline" range. And then there was the recommendation below the table:

"We'd like your LDL to get below 130, preferably below 100. Avoid red meats, eggs, and deep-fried or fast foods. We'd also like to maintain your lipid level in the current range. Avoid desserts and creamy foods."

And just like that, the good times were over.

I told Juliette. "Avoid red meat, desserts, and creamy foods?" she said. "Yikes. Avoid things that taste good, I guess."

I always knew I'd get the "change your diet" note from a doctor eventually, but I figured I had at least until I was 40. Images of thick rib-eye steaks and greasy french fries immediately started dancing in my head, taunting me.

"Well," I said, "I guess this is a good thing, really. Now that it's coming from a doctor, maybe we'll actually have the motivation to stick to a good diet." Juliette agreed. And as we talked about it, the number of changes we'd have to make would be pretty minimal. A little less beef, a little more lean poultry. We already eat a lot of vegetables and don't use a lot of dairy when we cook—in fact, it's pretty common for us to have one or two completely vegetarian meals a week. Nor do any of our normal recipes call for more than a tablespoon of oil. We'll just start skipping desserts again and try to be a little smarter about when and where we eat out. No big deal.

Still, I'd be lying if I said this wasn't weighing on me at all. As much as I love food, it's going to be hard to make even the little changes we talked about. I'll just have to keep reminding myself why I'm doing it.

Along with an old notebook and assorted random crap, my foray into the office closet also turned up a matched set of Cross pens that were given to me by a friend for being in his wedding. Juliette and I usually acquire pens the usual way, from hotel desk sets and in promotional brochures, so these Cross pens were a significant step up from the other writing implements we had lying around the house. Figuring that they were better used than sitting in a box collecting dust, I brought them out to the kitchen and put them in the pen cup that sits on our counter.

A few days later I was getting ready to write some thank-you notes to my grandmothers for the birthday money they sent me, and it occurred to me that it was as good an occasion as any to break out the good pen. And damn me if they weren't a lot nicer to write with than the cheapo ballpoints I usually use. pen was comfortable in my hand, with a nice, solid weight to it, and the ink flowed smoothly, neither puddling nor thinning despite having been sitting unused for nine years. (My goodness, has it really been nine years?)

Of course, the effect was kind of ruined by the chicken-scratch quality of my handwriting.

I practically never write anything by hand these days. Grocery lists, credit card receipts, Post-It reminders, and the occasional greeting card are about it. I suppose I do use paper and pen for calculations and schematic sketches at work, but that hardly counts in my mind. I do all of my longer writing with a keyboard, and these days even my notes are mostly done on my laptop or phone.

My thoughts tend to move pretty quickly, and the fact that I can type at 100 words per minute helps my words keep up with my brain. By contrast, using a pen feels like trying to run in a swimming pool, and often by the time I finish a sentence I've lost the beginning of the next one. I really don't think I'd be able to get anything done if I had to write it all out longhand.

Still, I can't help feeling like we've lost something by moving away from the analog world of handwritten letters. There's something undeniably special about getting a real letter in the mail, even if the only people that ever send me letters anymore are my grandmothers, and occasionally my father-in-law. There's a certain weight to it, some extra connection granted by being able to hold in my hands the same piece of paper that their hands touched.

My grandmother's script feels a little antiquated, I suppose, but it's also both elegant and familiar. I can't see it without seeing her. Seeing the loops and curves of her letters makes me think of her hands, her hair, the smell of her perfume, the feel of her dining table, where she probably sat while she wrote. I don't get that from an email.

My own handwriting is a jumbled and sloppy print. Letters lean this way and that, drifting away from the lines on the page until finally forced back on track, and the ink tends to drag between strokes. It's all over the place, which I guess isn't too far off the mark, considering the mind that produces it. I sometimes wonder if it would still look that way if I hadn't abandoned pens for computers. Most likely it would, and anyway, typing is simply too convenient for me to regret the change. I do wonder, though.

Will my son learn to write neatly? Will he look forward to handwritten notes from his grandparents? Will his children do the same for notes from me? I hope so. And, fortunately, Juliette's printing is much nicer and more legible than mine.

Have you seen the double rainbow video yet? It seems to be making the rounds; in the past few days I've seen it mentioned at least six or seven times on Twitter, Facebook, and various blogs. You've seen it, right?

OK, if you haven't seen it, take three and a half minutes and watch this:

If you're like, well, just about everybody, your immediate reaction is to laugh. The phrase "rainbow-gasm" might come to mind. You might idly wonder whether the guy is on drugs. And, yeah, it is funny, and I was thinking all the same things, but I'd like to take a second here and ask you a serious question.

Have you ever, in your entire life, been that happy about anything?

I have known some truly joyous moments. I remember the swell in my chest when I saw Juliette walking down the aisle toward me. And sometimes when I look at Jason, I'm so happy it feels like light is going to shoot out of my torso like a weird, Japanese-man version of a Care Bear Stare. For the life of me, though, I can't recall a time when I was so overwhelmed with excitement and beauty that I completely lost my shit. It strikes me as kind of sad.

For that matter, I don't think I've ever seen anyone I know be that happy, or even heard anyone talk about having been that happy. It's not even surprising to me, either. Being so thoroughly overjoyed and effusive just isn't socially normal. That's why it's funny. And even at that, we're only able to laugh at it because of the separation provided by the fact that it's a video. If you saw someone freak out like that in real life, you'd probably be uncomfortable. I know I would be.

Stop and think about that for a second. What does it say about our collective priorities and values that we'd feel weird about someone being really, really happy near us? Isn't that at least a little bit messed up?

I wish I were the kind of person who could get so worked up over a rainbow. I'd love to know what that feels like. I don't know if I ever will, but it seems like the kind of thing that might be worth working toward.

Yesterday, Marc Hirsch of NPR's pop culture blog, Monkey See, took the opportunity presented by the DVD release of Mad About You's fourth season to delve into his memories of what he called "the perfect relationship sitcom." It's a good article that I largely agree with, and well worth a read for fans of the show, but what really got me thinking was when he talked about season four's position as the tipping point of the show.

Hirsch writes:

that time long ago when I claimed Mad About You was perfect? Was Season 4. . . . The quality of the show would get wobbly in about a year; once baby Mabel became a concrete entity, rather than a vague idea that existed as a single possibility among many in some nebulous future, the tone turned brittle and, worse, the focus shifted exclusively and irrevocably from the couple to the child. In short, it became a different show.

It's that part about the focus shifting from the couple to the child that got me, because the thing is: that happens in real life, too.

Anyone who has kids (or who has close friends or relatives with kids) knows what I'm talking about. Before you have kids, your relationship is about yourself and your partner. You talk about each other, do things with each other, and basically spend all of your energy and attention on each other. But then the first kid shows up and things change. Maybe it happens right away or maybe it takes a few months, or even years, but one day it hits you that it's been a week since you talked to your spouse about something other than your child

Maybe you remember yourself saying, "That's not going to happen to us. We're going to make time for each other and remember to be a couple." And maybe you have made time for each other and you are still a couple, but even then you eventually realize that you have to make time for each other, and that you're now thinking of yourselves as still a couple. There's just no way around it; having kids changes your focus.

And what's really interesting to me is that Hirsch says—and I agree—that that change is one of the things that killed Mad About You. Because as much as that show was about bringing you into Paul and Jamie's marriage and (like any good story) making you identify with the characters and build a relationship with them, ultimately what that relationship was based on was your interaction with them as a couple, and not as parents. And where that puts you is a lot like the position your friends without kids stand once yours comes on the scene.

You know that one, too, if you have kids. You have all these great people in your life who matter to you, but suddenly your child arrives and things are different between you and them. Now you have to be home early for your child's bedtime, and you can't go out to places that are too loud or too quiet, or otherwise inappropriate for kids. Even when you get together at one of your homes, you just can't give your friend the undivided attention you used to—one way or another your kid is going to interrupt you. Probably a lot. Maybe you feel the strain in trying to keep up the relationship, and it makes you sad. Maybe you're too focused to notice. I guarantee the friend notices.

When you add it all up, maybe Mad About You turned out to be even more perfect a relationship show than Hirsch realized.

Juliette has made cleaning out the office closet one of her summer projects, which meant that this past weekend I had the opportunity to go through some boxes that I haven't opened in probably five years.

I always love these little trips down memory lane, rediscovering all the little treasures from my past. Being able to touch them, having a physical connection, always brings back the associated memories much more strongly than just thinking about them.

For example, there's the rocks that I found under the deck at the cabin my family used to rent in Tahoe every year. Turning them over in my hands, I remember how fascinated I was by the flat orange color on the top and the clear, ice-like crystal structure on the bottom. More, I remember the bite of the cold air in my nose, the crunch of snow under my feet, and the layer of pine needles and fir cones that littered the ground under the deck.

I especially enjoy it when these little forays into my "treasure boxes" turn up things I thought I'd lost. I actually let out a little cry of joy when I found a big stack of old RPG manuals and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles graphic novels that I thought had been lost or donated years ago.

On the other hand, there's also a certain embarassment that comes with some of the things I find. I have a tendency toward being a packrat, and why I save some things baffles even me. A selection of some of the useless or forgotten things I don't know why I saved:

• A mostly full box of perfectly good staples, tucked in between some old harmonicas instead of, you know, being put into a stapler.
• My "Intro to Systems Engineering" notebook, completely blank.
• Ten or twelve rolls of old Pez, most of which weren't even still packaged with their dispensers.
• An old micro-butane torch I bought for a project for my high school physics class, long since empty and broken.
• A bunch of empty cigarette lighters.
• A giant pile of old homework, some of which dated back to my freshman year of high school.
• A 1985 nickel.
• A green permanent marker that looked like it was about 15 years old, completely dry.

I started having flashes of those hoarder interventions you see on TV, with the host aghast at the piles of garbage and the hoarder breaking down in tears saying "I don't know why I kept it!" I shuddered and made a silent vow never to become one of those people. Not that Juliette would ever let that happen, anyway. But still.

Anything I found that I couldn't remember at all and had no immediate use, I tossed. I actually even got rid of some stuff I did remember, deciding that I didn't really need it or wasn't going to use it. By the time I was done, I'd cut my pile of stuff by almost half.

This is a big step, people. I may actually turn into a grown-up yet.

Seven years ago, today, I got all dressed up and then proceeded to have the best day of my life. Tonight, Juliette and I are going to celebrate the occasion by getting dressed up (though to a lesser degree than we did that day seven years ago), dropping off our son at our friends' house, and going to a fancy restaurant for a nice meal and some time alone with each other, like real couples do.

The seventh anniversary isn't one that people usually make a big deal over. Traditional folk give each other gifts of wool or copper; modern types give each other desk sets. I don't know about you all, but I had to look those up. All those anniversary gift themes tend to run together for me—I have a vague recollection of paper for the first, silver for the twenty-fifth, and gold for the fiftieth, but in between it's all fuzzy.

I'll tell you what, though: the seventh anniversary does have a bit of a special note in our case. This will be our first time celebrating an anniversary when we've been married longer than we were dating.

Actually, the day we passed our dating time happened a few months ago—March 16th, to be exact. Neither of us noticed at the time, but then we'd just had Juliette's birthday and anyway, these days our attention tends to be taken up a bit too much by everyday life to notice obscure milestones passing.

It's kind of an odd feeling, realizing that we've now been married longer than we dated. I've always thought of us as having been together forever, but only recently married. Now, though, and forever after, the bulk of our relationship will have been post-wedding. Even having done the math, I can hardly believe it; it still feels like just the other day that I saw her walking down the aisle toward me.

There are still some big moments to come, of course. In 2012, we'll have been together for half of Juliette's life. In 2013, half of mine. In 2020, we'll have been parents longer than we were together without kids. And, of course, there are all the normal birthdays, anniversaries, graduations, weddings, and so on.

The past seven years have been filled with work and play, laughter, tears, time together and apart. I've come to understand that the most important part of life is the people in it, and so spending your days and nights with good people who you love and who love you is crucial. Me, I couldn't ask for a better person to spend my time with.

Happy anniversary, Juliette.

4:26 PM, June 17th. Roger Ebert says via Twitter: "Find me a person who would value any video game above 'Huckleberry Finn,' and I'll show you a fool.'

4:28 PM, June 17th. I respond: "So tell me, which movie should I value higher than Beethoven's Ninth? Or higher than 'Huckleberry Finn,' for that matter?"

Ebert doesn't respond.

6:37 AM, June 22nd. Ebert quotes a Morning news article: "Video games don't yet (and maybe never will) replicate the experience of reading a good book."

9:37 AM, June 22nd. I respond: "Movies also don't replicate the experience of reading a good book. You of all people should know that."

Ebert doesn't respond.

9:41 PM, June 22nd. Ebert links to a survey he created, asking people whether they value Huckleberry Finn or a great video game more.

10:06 PM, June 22nd. I ask him: "Which do you value higher, Huckleberry Finn or a great movie?"

Feeling frustrated and pissy and degenerating into passive-aggressiveness, I follow that with: "I'm not really sure why I bother asking, since you clearly aren't interested in a dialogue. Or even intellectual honesty."

Obviously, Ebert doesn't respond.

Why on Earth am I talking to Roger Ebert? Why do I even care what he thinks about video games? Why is it so difficult for me to just accept that he's more or less being a troll at this point, and then move on with my life? Why am I becoming the kind of guy that people feel the need to throw that XKCD link at? I don't know, but for whatever reason, this whole Ebert/video game thing really has my panties in a bunch.

Well, that's not entirely true. I know why. Here's a man who can write a sensitive and honest appraisal of race and racism, who is willing to share a wonderful and personal remembrance of his father. A man who can produce writings that are familiar, insightful, and that inspire me to be a better writer. That he can also be pigheaded and unreasonable frustrates me.

Maybe I'm looking for someone to idolize. I don't have a lot of heroes, so maybe that's a void that I want to fill. Maybe I just want people (and, by extension, the world) to make sense. Maybe this is just the family tendency toward obsession and compulsive behavior coming out. I don't know.

What I do know is that trying to get anybody to be what I want them to be is a waste of both my time and theirs. Roger Ebert doesn't know me and has no reason at all to care whether I read his blog or follow him on Twitter. It's time for me to stop acting any other way.

What about you folks? Do bloggers and Twitterers ever get under your skin this way? What do you do about it?

"Raising Respectful Sons: A Father's Reaction to the 'Slampigs' Scandal":

Back in the early stages of my wife’s pregnancy, before we knew we would be having a son, people often asked me whether I wanted a boy or a girl. My response usually went something like this: “Well, I’d be happy either way, I think, and I don’t have a preference, really. I don’t want one more than the other. Honestly, though, the idea of having a daughter kind of terrifies me.” That’s the thought that occurred to me again Monday morning when I ran across this article in fellow Life As A Human author Schmutzie’s Twitter feed.

Somewhere around 10:30 or so every evening, my dog, Cooper, lets me know that he has to go out. By this time, Jason has been in bed for several hours, and usually even Juliette has said her goodnight. I will be sitting alone on my living-room couch, the room dark except for the one dim lamp on the side table. Sometimes I'm writing and sometimes screwing around on the Internet. Sometimes I'm just putting off going to bed. The house is quiet, except for the sound of Cooper breathing, and the occasional smack of Jason's foot against the side of his crib as he rolls over in his sleep. I'm usually oblivious to the world, ensconced in whatever it is I'm doing on my computer. Then I'll catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye, and I look over to see Cooper staring at me expectantly.

"Do you have to go outside?" I ask? He responds by running to the back door and sitting, his nose pointed at the door handle.

I unlatch the door and slide it and the screen open. "OK," I say, and Cooper rushes out, his fur tickling my leg as he brushes by me.

As I step outside, my yard is a featureless shadow—my eyes haven't adjusted yet, and not much light makes it out from the lamp in the living room. I step over to the edge of the patio, feeling the cool grit and cracks in the concrete under my feet. I cock my ear toward the side yard where Cooper does his business, listening for the telltale trickle. The evening air is cool but not cold, and has that subtle scent that I can never quite pinpoint or define, other than "Southern California on a summer night."

In front of me is the fence that separates my yard from the neighbor, which reaches to just below my eye level. There are never many stars out, and never any really bright ones, not like the ones I used to see back home. But when I look out over the tops of the yards in my neighborhood, south toward the shops and movie theater, eventually toward downtown and then Mexico, there's this soft orange glow that warms the bottom of the marine layer fog, silhouetting the rooftops and palm trees and eucalyptus that surround my house.

Looking out at that light, the surest sign that I live in a city now and not the little country town where I grew up, I sometimes feel like I ought to feel resentment or disdain. After all, this is another part of what we call "pollution." I never do, though. I just can't deny the beauty of it, different from what I ought to be used to, what ought to feel normal and right. A sense of peace, calmness comes with that sight.

I've been realizing that this moment has become one of the high points of most of my days. I rarely think about it until it's happening, and my immediate reaction when I notice Cooper looking at me is annoyance at being interrupted. Then I step outside and my attitude shifts.

It's a lonely time, though. I always find myself wishing that someone were still awake to share it with me, someone other than the dog, who, well-meaning and affectionate though he is, can't really appreciate the spectacle. At least he can't tell me about it.

It's usually not long before I close up my laptop and head to bed. When I slide under the covers, the sheets are already warm from the heat of Juliette's sleeping body. It's not as familiar or fulfilling as a hug, but I don't want to wake her, so it will do.

Yesterday I finished and sent off my latest piece for Life As A Human, an examination of the game Heavy Rain and why it appeals to me. (It hasn't gone up yet as of the time of this writing.) This is now the second article I've written for them about video games, and so far I'm the only one there to write on that topic. It makes some sense, probably, since I think I'm the only guy of my generation (or younger) writing for that site, but it's still a little odd for me because I haven't been much of a gamer for quite a while now.

The last game I played while it was still current and a big deal was probably Mass Effect, back in '07. Which I loved, don't get me wrong, but even at that point I was pretty far behind most of the rest of the gamer world. Consider this (non-exhaustive) list of hugely popular or influential games over the last five or ten years that I did't play (it's lengthy, so feel free to skim or skip): both Deus Ex games, Grand Theft Auto 3 & 4, all of the Metal Gear Solids, all of the Elder Scrolls games after Daggerfall, both Gears of War games, all of the God of War games, all of the Halos after the first, Shadow of the Colossus, both Bioshocks, Braid, Fallout 3, Flower, Heavy Rain, Uncharted 2, all of the Final Fantasies after 7, Super Mario Galaxy, Katamari Damacy, Little Big Planet, all of the Battlefield games, both Modern Warfares, Dragon Age, all of the Splinter Cells, Mirror's Edge, Left 4 Dead, Spore, Civ 4, Geometry Wars, Dead Space, both Assassin's Creed games, and basically all of the post-SNES Zeldas.

I'm obviously aware of the gaming industry, at least to the point where I know what I'm missing, and yet I spend less and less time actually playing games. The "pile of shame" I listed up there—slightly misleading since I don't actually own them—gets a little bigger every year, and it's to the point where I don't think I'd ever actually be able to catch up.

Moreover, I'm finding that I care less and less about the fact that I'm missing out. As with most of the things that have fallen by the wayside in the past couple of years—games, TV, movies, etc.—the pull has slackened a lot. In some cases, like with TV, it actually feels like kind of a chore to keep up, and I actively look forward to the ends of series that I've been following for a while.

The strange thing is that even though the allure of games seems to be falling off for me, my interest them isn't. I spend rather a lot of time each week reading gaming sites, listening to gaming podcasts, and thinking about games and the game industry. It seems that I've become more interested in games as a phenomenon than as art or entertainment that I actually intend to experience. Which seems a little perverse, if you ask me.

My relationship with art and media is always changing as I age, which is, I suppose, inevitable. But it leaves me curious to know where it will go from here. Will I ever get back into gaming? Is it something that I'll eventually abandon entirely? What is it that's holding my attention about gaming now? I don't know, but it's interesting to think about, anyway.

What do you think?