Personal

[At left: me with my lovely wife Erika. Given how serene we look, it should be obvious that the photo was been taken prior to the beagle or the boy entering our lives.]

For those of you who found my blog biography to be insufficient, click here for the really exhaustive and silly biography. There's a slightly grainy picture of me skydiving somewhere on the page, and another photo of me having cocktails in the castle where The Sound of Music was filmed. See if you can find them!!.


OUTSIDE INTERESTS

Um... yeah, I used to have these -- ultimate frisbee, hiking, biking, travel. Of course, all of those were in the B.C. (Before Children) era. Now, unless I'm traveling, my outside interests are confined to going to the children's park.

SPORTS

One of the results of being raised in middle of Connecticut is having schizophrenic sports affiliations. So, I'm a Boston Red Sox fan, but I'm also a New York Giants fan. Go figure.

FAMILY

Here's a pic of the Drezner clan (circa November 2004).

The family that blogs together stays together. So far, my brother and cousin Andrew have joined the blogosphere (you can read about the latter's blog here). Who's next?

Oh, and be sure to check out why my brother is the smart one.

My wife and I agree that Sam, Lauren and Chester are the photogenic ones in our family. Well, to tell the truth, I still insist that Erika looks darn cute on a tricycle, but I digress. Here are some photo links!!:

Lauren at two days old
Lauren at two months old

Sam in bed
Sam eating his muffin bar -- the 3-year old equivalent of crack
Sam in our backyard
Sam in our backyard again
Sam smiling at the camera
Sam holding his favorite stuffed animal, a giraffe. He calls it "Giraffe." (emphasis on the third syllable)
Here's another picture of the two of them.
Sam being tickled by Erika
Sam with his uncle and aunt-to-be
Sam and his brand new bed

Chester in the backyard
Chester smiling
Chester napping -- for a beagle, all it takes is 20 hours a day of beauty sleep to look this good!!

And, for good measure, here's a picture of Chester and Sam together.


MY DESERT ISLAND COLLECTIONS

An old standby for BBC Radio 4 is their Desert Island Discs program, in which celebrities are asked to pick the eight songs they would bring with them if they were to be stranded on a desert island.

Expanding that idea a bit (and given the low order of probability of ever appearing on the show), here are my desert island CDs, DVDs, and books, with a few explanatory notes. Remember -- these are my favorites, not necessarily what I think is the best music or movies ever -- though there is some overlap:

CDs
The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out
Frank Sinatra, In the Wee Small Hours
The Who, Quadrophenia
Led Zeppelin, Physical Grafitti
Peter Gabriel, So
Suzanne Vega, 99.9F°
Joan Osbourne, Relish
Norah Jones, Come Away With Me*

*Yeah, yeah, I know everyone and their aunt bought this, but all I will say is this -- the moment "Don't Know Why" came on our stereo, Erika and I stopped what we were doing and started slow-dancing. Any album that can have that effect goes on the list.

DVDs
Casablanca
Stalag 17
Rear Window*
The Lion in Winter
Sleeper**
The Hunt For Red October***
Say Anything
Starship Troopers****

* The first time you see Grace Kelly appear on the screen.... sigh.
** The hardest I have ever laughed in my life was the first time I saw the first 15 minutes of this movie. I still have to suppress a chuckle whenever anyone mentions Albert Shanker.
*** One of the few movies that's better than the book. Plus Sean Connery's Russian is so God-awful bad that it must be heard repeatedly.
**** "We're in this for the species, boys and girls."; "We're looking for a bug no one's ever seen before. Some kind of smart bug!!" Now that's great bad dialogue!!!

Books
The Old Testament
Milan Kundera, The Joke
John Le Carre, The Secret Pilgrim
P.J. O'Rourke, Parliament of Whores
Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs
Tibor Fischer, Under the Frog
Allegra Goodman, Kaaterskill Falls
Alan Bennett, The Clothes They Stood Up In

Restaurants*
New World Restaurant**, London, UK
Joe's Stone Crabs, Miami, FL
The Elephant Walk, Cambridge, MA
Hotel Ristorante -- Villa Crespi, Orta San Giulio, Italy
Lucille's Creole Cafe, Boulder, CO
The Coyote Cafe, Santa Fe, New Mexico
The Bubble Room***, Captiva Island, FL
Fátal, Budapest, Hungary

*So bringing restaurants to a desert island really stretches this concept out a bit. Sue me -- it's my desert island. This list is in order of when I first ate there, by the way.
**Until I go to Hong Kong, this will be the best dim sum I've ever had.
***Their ice cream cake is perfection.