I made the obligatory cute little executive joke: “It took nearly as long to write this report as to have a baby. Difference is, I’d quite like to have another baby.” Boom-tish. Brought the house down. Thank you very much, I’ll be here all week.

After I’d finished the presentation, I sat in the audience with a small bud of relief unfolding in my heart. My life need now no longer be dominated by the convergence of the incumbent network and systems management frameworks with the pure-play application performance monitoring startups. Thank you, kind fates.

I’m getting a cold, so I’m grumpy and withdrawn. I’ve been reading all around the end of the Victorian era in my efforts to avoid writing about it, but this won’t work much longer. I hadn’t read Wharton’s The Age of Innocence before: what a brilliant book. Ellen Olenska is the grown-up version of my beloved Judy from The Children. I love Wharton’s sly wit and compassion. I think she, and not ‘Enery James, is Jane Austen’s true heir.

(Could you do a PowerPoint as the basis of a stand-up routine? I’ve been thinking about it ever since I noticed that Muddy Waters has opened a new branch on 29th Street, under the new apartments. Ironic use of clip-art, as in Get Your War On. If done well could be hilarious. Would they publish such a thing in McSweeney’s?)

I’ve also been watching far too much TiVo. I am rotting Claire’s tiny brain. (At least I haven’t dropped her downstairs yet, as another parent of hers who shall remain nameless has done TWICE.) She’ll never get into Stanford at this rate. She’ll have to settle for UC. (Jeremy hates it when I say that; too much pressure, he says. Oh, and Brad deLong had a wonderful post the other day about soft marking at Stanford… yes, Chelsea, I AM looking at you.)

Anyway, TiVo: you can always tell when I start yearning for horses again. I sit through mediocre but pretty films like Seabiscuit (Tobey Maguire is my boytoy) and utter drivel like The Man From Snowy River (Tom Burlinson is totally funny-looking.) Claire hugely enjoyed Seabiscuit. She got on her Radio Flyer rolling pony, Najih, and rode him around the living room. When Seabiscuit starting rearing onscreen, she watched, round-eyed. Pause for thought.

Then lo and behold, Najih’s front wheels were in the air.

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