Father's Day!

Yesterday was Father's Day, of course, always a fun occasion for us dads. I'm generally not a huge fan of fake holidays but I usually find a way to make peace with them if they're all about presents for me.

In any case, I thought I'd share my take for this year as I think at least some of the items I received have a broader interest. It's also worth noting that in my family we usually take an attitude of enlightened self-interest for fake holiday gift giving -- in other words, the giver is allowed to give something they themselves would be interested in. We've come to calling that practice "Pulling a Daniel" after my younger son, who seems to have a particular gift for it.

Here goes:

• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto
  by Michael Pollan. This one was from my wife, who also has an interest in food and sustainability issues.
• Reinventing Gravity: A Physicist Goes Beyond Einstein by John W. Moffat. From my older son, Sam, who's a serious physics nerd-in-the-making. We definitely share a love of popular science books.
• Blood Mountain by Mastodon. This one was from my younger son, who shares my love of heavy music.
• Finally, my wife and I are going to an Ontario Beer and Cheese Tasting on Wednesday at our local local food shop, Culinarium, which is right around the corner from out house. Now this one should be fun!

We actually spent most of yesterday running a yard sale to get rid of a few years of accumulated junk, especially about 10 boxes of book. It went very well -- we made a few hundred bucks plus we got rid of a lot of stuff.