As I flipped around the channels Sunday afternoon, I hit an HBO showing of The Blues Brothers Movie, coming in right at the end of the Cab Calloway "Minnie the Moocher" number. My son was coloring, but when Elwood and Jake got in the car, I called him over.

"Come watch one of the best car chases ever filmed."

He came, sat down on the couch, and I unpaused the movie. "It's 106 miles to Chicago. We've got a full tank of gas, a half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses." And the fun began.

I have no idea how many cars got smashed in the process of making that sequence. I could probably look it up on IMDb, but I'm too lazy. "A lot" is an exact enough number for me. I also got to see the falling/flying station wagon. And I got to share it all with my son.

That was a good Sunday.

On one side of the range this evening, a triple-bag cup of tea, steeping in preparation for being poured over massive quantities of ice for my nightly tumbler of iced herbal tea (tonight was Stash's Lemon Ginger with a little extra lemon juice).

On the range, a pan with about 12 cloves of garlic slow-cooking in oil over low heat to be used in a pork marinade. I'll marinate the pork overnight and use it in a stew tomorrow.

On the other side of the range, 6 baby bottles in an assembly line to get filled with formula. Normally I make the bottles right before I go to bed, but that's the kind of thing you think about as a dad... "I should probably make the bottles before I handle the raw pork."

For fun, I like to write little songs for my kids. This is the latest one and is sung to the tune of "The Blue Danube" by Strauss. In case you're having trouble imagining how it works with that melody, I got out my el-cheapo USB microphone and recorded an mp3 of "Volcano Smokeys Pizza Place". Please understand that the mp3 is just for demo purposes and any criticism of my singing is completely missing the point.

Volcano Smokey's Pizza Place by Greg Bulmash is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://www.brainhandles.com/contact-us.

At Volcano Smokey's pizza place
There was a din-o-saur meeting space
Where all the triceratops would go
To see the famous singing bronto
The T-rex would play the stand-up bass
While raptors on drums would rock the place
The dinosaurs danced with such grace
At Volcano Smokey's place

Pterodactyls flew through the dusky blue
Shining spotlights in the twilight
By the gingko roots they played silver flutes
On pizza they dined while the starlight did shine

The big sauropods stomped
Little fabrosauri romped
And the allosaurus chomped
On a big plate of pasta all covered in cheese

In moonlight, as the dino-band played, love entered the room
Indosaurus danced with Vulcanodon and swept away the gloom

They danced 'til night was done
And nobody had to run
All the dinos had some fun
At Volcano Smokey's great pizza place.

So, you know how when you put a kid in daycare, they'll bring home every flu, cold, and stomach bug known to man? Our baby must have set a record. On his second day of daycare, our two-month-old started throwing up, had to see the doctor, and had to come home.

Took him about 36 hours to recover (mostly), and everything seemed to be on the up and up, until Saturday morning, when my older boy and I were struck down. He threw up all over his toys while I... let's just say I was thankful the Immodium worked.

My poor wife. She hasn't had any symptoms, but she had to contend with a two-month-old who is needy at the best of times, a barfing four-year-old, and her back-up was running a 101 fever and sleeping all day, getting up here and there to drink some Gatorade or ginger ale.

Right now, I'm watching the baby so my wife can get some sleep. She put him down at 9 and went up to bed, but he's been up and down for the last two and a half hours. I think I finally got him down for a good nap. So far he's been good for about 30 minutes.

This will not affect the next chapter of Hell on $5 a Day. I've basically got the next three chapters ready to go (18 still needs a little work), so don't worry.

The thing that bugs me was that I was going to start a new diet on Monday, and have been prepping a diet blog to help me stay the course, the way publishing my novel here has been helping me stay the course with that.

But even if I'm feeling better, you don't radically alter your diet right after a stomach bug. Gotta give your body a couple of days to recover its equilibrium. On the plus side, if I move my start date to the next Monday, it means I can have some beer while I watch the SuperBowl.

Now I've got to go deal with the little man who's trying to pry my head open.