Closing time

My heart is broken. As a result of the virus and the new world order, one of my favorite restaurants in the world is closing. I first wrote this post about five years ago to the day. And if anything, I love this place even more now than I did then. And as you'll see, I loved it a lot then.

I feel terrible for the entire Walt's Wharf family—chefs, waitstaff, hosts, bartenders. There was never one minute where I didn't feel welcomed and wanted.

It's become a perfect storm for the seafood restaurant (and many others). Because of this bitch virus, the governor's stay-at-home directive and the very real uncertainty of how long they'd have to stay closed, the business simply wasn't sustainable. So after 50 years, 50 years!, they've been forced to shut their doors for good.

I can't remember all the lunch meetings, family dinners and special occasions that were celebrated there. But I'll never forget the meals and the hospitality. I just wish I'd know the last meal I had there was going to be the last meal I had there.

In my dream life, some rich benefactor comes in and saves Walt's Wharf and it just keeps on going. But dreams are just that.

As a certain gravel-voiced singer from New Jersey I'm fond of says in one of his songs, "Is a dream a lie that don't come true, or is it something worse?"

In this case, it is.

Thanks for everything Walt's Wharf. Dining out definitely won't be the same without you.

Sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name. Then, sometimes, you want to go where no one knows your name but you want to go there anyway.

I like to think of myself as someone who likes to mix it up every now and again. Who maintains an air of unpredictability. An edge of danger. I keep spontenaity alive.

I also like to think of myself as six-foot three, one eighty, blond and ripped. But that's not happening either.

Come to find out I'm actually a creature of habit. Today we met some friends for lunch at one of my favorite places, Walt's Wharf in Seal Beach. It's been there forever, and it's always great. At least what I always order is. Because despite a wide variety of fresh seafood, and a wine selection second to none, I have the exact same meal every time I eat there.

Cup of clam chowder with Tabasco. Small Walt's salad with a salmon filet on top. Iced tea. I wanted you to know in case you're buying.

It's a sure thing every time. The problem is I feel like I should try something else. Logic would tell me if my usual choice is so good, other items must be just as good if not better. On the heels of that, I think this meal makes me happy and what am I so worried about.

Besides, since when did I start living my life according to logic? Not a Vulcan, hello.

I'm not going to say feeling bad for having the same great meal at a nice seafood restaurant is a first world problem, but, you know, draw your own conclusions.

Here's what I'm trying to say. If you want to meet me for lunch at Walt's, and you happen to be in a hurry, don't worry. I know what I'm having.

Clean machine

Having followed this blog for some time—and don't tell me if you haven't, I'm fragile right now—I bet you were expecting a picture of an In-N-Out Double Double with animal fries instead of the one you're looking at. I know. I'm as shocked as you are.

But the truth of the matter is I may have finally reached the point where I've decided to turn over a new arugula leaf.

One day I was talking to my friend Maria, who I work with, about the meal she was having. She'd prepared it herself, and not only did it look healthy, it looked delicious—two things I usually find mutually contradictory. Don't get me wrong, I suppose given enough lifetimes I could develop a taste for tofu and sprouts, but frankly I don't see it happening in this one.

Anyway, faced with going to the same five places around the office I always have lunch, and, you know, the chore of finding yet another thing to have off Wahoo's menu (the citrus slaw is overrated), I told Maria if she ever wanted to make a side gig out of it, I'd be first in line, cash American.

The good news is she took me up on it, so today is the first day of the rest of my life. Or at least the rest of my week. We've embarked on a pilot program—as a trial run, she's going to prep healthy, clean-eating lunches for me all week long, and I'm going to eat them.

Today's menu was Grilled Wild Shrimp & Veggie Quinoa salad with feta and pine nuts in a lemon vinaigrette. It was gluten free, sugar free, high protein, high fiber and low sodium.

I'll bet you feel healthier just reading that sentence.

Now look, I'm not going to go to extremes here. I'm putting off the Iron Man Marathon, the triathlon and tryouts for the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo until we see how the week goes. I'll let you know.

What I will say is there are cupcakes in the kitchen at work, and after my custom-made, healthy lunch today I don't even have a hankerin' for them.

In fact, right now the only thing I'm craving is lunch tomorrow.

Resist the urge

Let's say you're at the Rose Bowl with a close friend, and you have something you have to talk about with them. Something personal, private. You figure with all the hootin' and hollerin' at the game, the two of you can have the conversation fairly discreetly.

I'm guessing what you don't do is run down to the center of the field with your friend, position yourself in front of the same microphone the sixth-place runner up on The Voice from season three used to sing the Star Spangled Banner, and have that private conversation loud and clear in front of 90,000 people.

Because if you did, it'd be that kind of squirmy uncomfortable and even irritating for the thousands who paid triple scalper prices to be there to watch the game, not listen to your sad life problems.

That's more or less what it feels like when people at work hit Reply All to work emails.

First of all, I love email as much as the next guy. Alright, not so much the ones trying to sell me Viagra or send me my hundred-million dollar inheritance from an Egyptian prince once they receive my bank account and social security numbers. Who falls for that stuff?

By the way, that check should be here any day now.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Emails that aren't strictly business matters at work are for the most part unnecessary. You know the ones I mean. The one or two word ones, that, for some reason, the people sending them feel need to go out to all 245 company employees in the email directory.

"Have a good weekend!"

"Great job!"

"Did the client see it?"

"Lunch?"

"Can you believe this weather?"

"Did you see La La Land?"

"Want to go for a walk?"

How about a long one off a short plank.

For whatever reason, people are too lazy to look at which button they're hitting when they reply. At least I hope they are. It's just too sad to think they want everyone in on their conversation.

And by the way, if the two people who are engaged in the conversation and are replying to all with their personal chit chat are actually friends, can't they just pry their fat derrieres out of their ergonomically enhanced Herman Miller Aeron chair and walk fifteen feet down the hall to the long, open office seating table and talk to their friend face to face?

Don't get me started.

The most wonderful time of the day

I think breakfast has been hogging the spotlight as "the most important meal of the day" for far too long. It's a new morning in America. And as the sun rises on this new morning, we skip breakfast and go straight to the rightful holder of the title: Lunch.

There are a couple things I look forward to everyday as I make my scenic, freeway-free commute to work. One is the end of the day, and the other is lunch.

Neither ever gets here fast enough.

There's a strange phenomenon in advertising agencies I've talked about before here and here. People take themselves way too seriously. They think they're contributing something—shall we say, more meaningful—to society than they really are.

One way that kind of thinking reveals itself is by not going to lunch.

Apparently some agency people have talked themselves into thinking the work they're doing is too important to stop for lunch (it isn't), if they take a lunch break they'll fall behind (you won't), and that they can't go to lunch because what if the client calls? (News flash—the client's out to lunch).

You see these people in the kitchen between 11:45a.m. and 1p.m., loitering in front of the bad coffee, next to the dirty microwave waiting for it to ding. Then they're back at their desks, typing that Powerpoint presentation with one hand and eating Stouffer's Lasagna, again, with the other.

From where I sit, at the restaurant down the street waiting for my food to be brought to my table, it's a sad existence.

A few agencies I've been at cater lunch in every day. It's positioned as a nice, money-saving perk for the employees. But don't be fooled. Their intentions aren't that altruistic. They knows people take shorter lunches if they don't go out, so they can get more work hours out of them. As if just being there actually equalled productivity.

Anyone who's ever worked with me can tell you that's not true.

Personally, I have to make a break from the compound everyday. I spend too much time there already, and if I don't get out, feel the air, the sun and walk around a bit, it just feels like I'm biding time until my parole hearing.

I understand not wanting to spend money eating out every day. By the time you've split the check with the person who had a three-course meal while you had a cup of soup, and add tax and tip, you feel like you need a co-signer just to pay the check. But I think the more important thing to ask is what's the psychological cost of not going out for lunch at least once in awhile?

I have no idea either, but I'll bet it's pretty high.

What looks good?

As someone who's binged Breaking Bad ten times, seen every single show—not tour, show—that Bruce Springsteen's done in Los Angeles since '78, stays standing at the craps tables long after my legs and budget have given out, and drinks Coca-Cola with the same joy and frequency as Eric Northman necking (see what I did there?) on True Blood, there's a slim to none chance of anyone ever accusing me of doing things in moderation.

But even with my compulsion to over-enjoy things I like, there are places I firmly believe a little moderation is in order. Menus for example (Menus? In order? Thanks, I'll be here all week).

I think the number of items listed on a menu should be like the food itself: not too little, not too much. Just enough to satisfy. When I'm hungry, I don't want to sit down with a spiral-bound menu the size of the yellow pages and read through it. I want to see sections I like, find the item, get the order in and start scarfing.

Of course what makes a monster menu easier to navigate is the same thing that makes shopping on Amazon quicker: knowing what you want going in. If the menu's that big, they'll either have whatever I'm in the mood for or probably be able to whip it up.

At the restaurant, not Amazon.

For my dining dollar, the best menu in town is In-N-Out.

Simple, friendly, easy to navigate in a hurry, it's essentially the same as it was the day they opened in 1948.

They're a little sly about the fact they have more items than they list, but with the tiniest bit of detective work you'll find the additional dishes on their not-so-secret hidden menu.

What's great about the hidden menu is when I ask for something no one around me sees on the displayed menu, I feel like a real insider, a person in the know. It makes me feel special.

Okay, it's just a hamburger place, but I'll take my self-esteem where I can find it.

Where was I? Oh right. To the everyday diner, the regular In-N-Out menu is a quick glance and an easy decision, which is exactly the way menus should be at every restaurant. To be fair, I suppose there's a certain mood-setting that happens when you have to ponder the menu for a while. But if I'm at a restaurant, my mood is already set on hungry.

I'm not gonna lie, after all this talk of menus and food I'm starving. It's probably time to drag myself out and get something to eat.

Right after I finish Season 4, Episode 7 of Breaking Bad. Again.

Headline story

Every copywriter has one. A headline they want to use, wish they'd used or are waiting to use. Usually these headlines, often never presented or sold, do nothing more than amuse the writer to no end. But here's the deal. If you work in an agency owned by a holding company (almost all are), with knit-capped, British-accented account planners droning on about consumer insights ("they want to 'engage' with the product - is social here?"), where every third word in kick-off meetings is disruption, then sometimes a good laugh is all you can hope for.

At one of the many agencies I work at fairly frequently that has a Japanese car account and is near a mall (no, not that one- the other one), I went out to lunch with a couple of my fellow copywriters. We went to this sushi place I can never remember the name of. It's one of two sushi places we lunch at. There's gas station sushi, the restaurant in the strip mall behind the Arco station with no parking, then there's the expensive sushi place in the industrial park with lots of parking. Who needs names? The expensive sushi place is where we were when this exchange took place.

The three of us wound up in a discussion of headlines we've always wanted to use. We all tossed out ones we'd thought of, and then my copywriter friend Victoria had one that still makes me laugh just thinking about it.

"What's wrong with you?" I almost did a spit-take.

I know, onscreen it probably doesn't come off that funny, and you did have to be there because ninety-percent of it was the way she delivered it. Without missing a beat, and with that annoyed I'm-asking-you-honestly-because-I-can't-figure-out-what-the-hell-you're doing-or-saying tone of voice. Plus the fact it just struck me as a perfect line for any client or product.

I don't usually invite my readers (pauses to laugh for imagining this blog has readers) to chime in, but I'd love to know some headlines you've always wanted to use. Post them here in the comments, or on my Facebook page where you probably linked from.

Just to make it interesting, when I get a good number of lines - assuming I get any - I'll put 'em to a vote. The writer whose headline gets the most votes wins a free lunch at the expensive sushi place with the good parking.

It's not like you were going to be using them anyway. So dust 'em off and send 'em in. If you don't, it means Victoria's going to be enjoying another sushi lunch.

And I'll be sitting here waiting to ask you one question.

Goodbye Garry

I had lunch with Garry Shandling in New York.

Years ago, the wife and I had gone back to visit our friend Kevin, who was living there and working on SNL at the time. We were going to meet him and his wife at the time for lunch at the now defunct Cafe Des Artistes. When we were confirming lunch, Kevin said, "I hope you don't mind, but I invited Shandling and one of his writers to join us."

We were good with it.

We all met at the restaurant, and there was an additional person at the table who I didn't know. Come to find out later he was the president of PETA, which Kevin's wife was very involved with.

Shandling sat next to my wife, and, either not knowing or not caring, spent most of the lunch talking to her and hitting on her. As you might imagine, it was hysterical.

I don't remember many of the lines, but at one point, obviously for the PETA president's benefit, he asked my wife, "I want to get a new haircut, but I'm nervous about how it'll look so I want to try it out on my dog first. Is that considered animal testing?"

A few weeks later, the wife and I were shopping on Montana Avenue in Santa Monica (where we lived at the time), and we wandered into this antique furniture store. We were looking at one of those two-person desks when Shandling walked in. We reminded him we'd all had lunch in New York, and had a nice conversation with him for about twenty minutes.

Here are a couple things he told us: he started out as a copywriter in New York, and ironically had written on Suntory Whiskey - an account I'd worked on at Wells Rich Greene early in my career (stops to laugh hysterically for using the word "career").

Early in 1998, I sat down and wrote two episodes of his influential and landmark Larry Sanders Show. I thought they were pretty good, and I asked Kevin if he'd read them and, if he liked them, would he mind passing them on to Garry.

Well, there's good news and bad news. The good news is Kevin liked the scripts. The bad news was it was right at the point when Garry was pulling the plug on the show. In comedy, timing is everything.

A couple years ago, the wife and I saw Shandling again at Kevin's birthday party. While it was a star-studded affair, we both felt a personal connection to him. We didn't know him well, but we'd been fortunate enough to spend time on the receiving end of his remarkable humor and unmistakable kindness.

I could go on about how revolutionary both It's Garry Shandling's Show and The Larry Sanders Show were, but you'll be hearing and reading a lot about that in the coming days. Besides, the work speaks for itself.

Sadly, and all too soon, as of this morning the world is a far less funny place. However, if you know anyone in heaven, you might want to let them know there's going to be a killer set tonight around 9pm at The Laff Stop on Cloud 9. Two drink minimum. Look for the brick wall and the mic.

You're in our hearts forever. Goodbye Garry. Rest in peace.

Out to lunch

If you know anything about me, and if you've read this blog for any length of time you have no excuse not to, you know I'm pretty much of a social butterfly. I wouldn't go so far as calling myself a people person, but there are people whose company I enjoy immensely.

One way I have of showing it is by scheduling lunch with them.

Here's the thing: besides my brutal good looks, my keen insights, my Twain-like humor (I was going to say rapier wit, but sometimes that word gets misconstrued) and my keenly honed sense of modesty, I believe the most valuable thing I have to give is my time.

Well, that and my Spiro Agnew wristwatch. That reminds me, I have to check eBay later.

Anyway, there are only five lunches in a business week, so I find myself being extremely selective whom I choose to dine with. I have a small circle of repeat lunches I try to have because I enjoy them every time. You gotta eat, but you don't gotta eat with just anyone.

As fun as it would be, I'm going to show a little restraint (just to see what it feels like) and not name names. But you know who you are. You're the people who always have a standing reservation on my lunch dance card, no matter how full it is or how far away you are.

I don't mean to sound like I'm saying people should be happy and grateful they're having lunch with me. In fact, I'm saying just the opposite.

If we're having lunch, I'm the one who's thrilled to be there. I value our friendship. It's something I've carved out time for, and you can bet I've been looking forward to it since we made the plan. Sure I'll have the occasional casual lunch with someone in the outer circle, but my heart's not really in it. If there's a raspberry tart for dessert it's a little better, but still.

Not only am I giving my time, I'm aware you're giving yours. I'm flattered and honored. And if you enjoy our lunches half as much as I do, then I enjoy them twice as much as you do.

It's just that simple.

Exit strategy

This is the good part of freelance. And the bad part.

This week, I wrap up four months at the agency I was booked at for five. Whole other post.

Anyway, what it means is it's time to start planning my exit strategy, something I've done many times before. It's never the same routine, but it does involve many of the same components.

I'll begin by sending out a few emails. Then I'll graduate to a little dialing for dollars, you know, the personal touch. And of course, a little social network networking is always a good thing. This is what it looks like to me as Friday rapidly approaches.

Once Friday is past, I know from experience my priorities will shift, and my first week off will begin to look a little different.

First order of business will be a long overdue lunch with my great friend Carrie. Then, as long as everyone's working and I'm not, perhaps a matinee or two are in order, just to stay current. Of course, we all know Breaking Bad isn't going to binge itself again, so I'll have to - yes, have to - devote a few hours to that. If there's nothing else to do, I may read Siegel's book again. Then there's always all those things I was going to do over the Christmas break that still need tending to.

The way it usually goes is when I'm finally ready to tackle those odd jobs that've been piling up around the house, I'll get booked for a gig and have to put them on the back burner. Again.

Here's the thing: I'm not one of those people who goes crazy when they're not working. I can not work with the best of them. I put the call out to the universe, and so far it's always answered with fun, lucrative, challenging gigs and a vast selection...er...large number...um....wide variety....ok, a few great people to work with at each agency.

Of course, once the call to the universe is out, I hope I don't have to answer it at least until I'm done with Season 5.

Office space.

It doesn’t happen often, but like the Harmonic Convergence, total eclipse of the sun, Halley’s Comet and client approval, if you wait long enough you’ll live to see it.

Dust off those childhood dreams: NASA is now accepting astronaut applications for the upcoming Mars mission.

No doubt, despite the stringent requirements, they’ll be inundated with applications from hundreds, make that thousands, of unqualified people who haven’t seen Gravity and think space travel is as easy as booking a flight on Jet Blue. It's not. For starters, the baggage fees on the Mars trip are much steeper.

I think if NASA wants to thin the herd down to uniquely qualified candidates, the one place they should definitely start recruiting from is ad agencies. Here’s why:

Creative people are used to keeping themselves amused during long assignments that seem like they’ll never end – and often times never do.

Agency people know how to subsist on to two-day old bagels, cold pizza and pumpkin muffins so hard you could slay Goliath with them. Dehydrated, freeze-dried, bite-sized foods coated with gelatin would be like dinner at Morton’s.

The part about wearing a suit they’re uncomfortable in, even for a short time, is something they’ve done before. And sadly, peeing in that suit isn’t anything new either.

Experience being trapped in a small space with three other people you have to pretend to like? Check.

Having no choice but to accept and make course corrections from nameless, faceless voices on the other end of a speaker is something creative people do all the time.

Once there, agency people have all the knuckles and know-how needed to make a great commercial to recruit future astronauts for subsequent missions. The toughest part will be going without a trendy restaurant with an outdoor patio for lunch.

Finally, agency people will give the Red Planet a short, memorable, meaningful tagline that can be used on t-shirts, mugs and banner ads no one clicks on.

No doubt with agency people steering the ship, NASA will have the right people for the job.

As long as the job doesn't start before 10 a.m.

The someday lunch

I understand some things are extremely difficult in life. There are challenges we all have to overcome, sometimes against seemingly impossible odds.

From health issues, to business dealings, family discord, freeway traffic, account planners and bad customer service, there's no shortage of situations lying in wait to test our energy, resourcefulness, commitment and patience.

But I'm thinking lunch shouldn't be one of them.

If you were to ask most people I know about me - and I hope to God you're not doing that - I think the majority opinion would be I'm a bit of a social butterfly. Not exactly a people person, but I do like to chat it up. And I love an audience. If they're laughing at my jokes I love them even more. Which is the reason I didn't love the audience the one time I tried standup at the Comedy Store.

I may be getting off point here.

Anyway, be that as it may, I'm not an easy lunch. I'm selective about the company I keep during lunch hour, especially on days off. On days I'm working, I don't care nearly as much as long as I can get the hell out of the office.

Here's the thing: I have a great friend I love having lunch with. We schedule it as often as we can. Notice I said schedule, and not have. This most recent round has gone five or six times, and we have yet to hit a day that winds up working. For one legitimate reason or another, one of us always has to jump the lunch ship.

It's not like we've never had lunch. We have. Which is why I look forward to it so much, and am disappointed when we can't manage to pull it off.

But I'm convinced persistence will rule the day - I know eventually we'll get together. And when we do, I'll have more stories to tell, and more stories to listen to. Plus by then I'll probably be a little thinner.

So maybe this postponing business isn't so bad after all.

Snow balls

I'm going to cop to a little bait-and-switch on this particular post. It's not about snow balls. Well, it is - just not the kind pictured here.

I'll try to be delicate.

I'm lucky enough to have a nice Japanese luxury car. It has many features designed to make the driver, and the ride, as comfortable as possible. One of those features happens to be perforated leather seats, which come that way from the factory - although with a dog and kids, they'd eventually wind up that way anyway.

The seats are perforated because they're both heated and cooled, depending on which makes you more comfortable on a hot or cold day. I've used the seat heater many times. Since I've owned the car, I've never used the seat cooler. Until today.

Now, I'm not the only one who drives my car. My wife drives it, and so does my son. Both of them have a habit of leaving the seat heater on when I get the car back.

Today, I was driving up to Marmalade Cafe to meet my good friend Carrie for lunch. As I was flying up the 405, riding on rails and listening to Tony Bennett singing For Once In My Life, it suddenly dawned on me that, how shall I put this, the jewels were a little chilly.

Not knowing the seat cooler had been left on high, and never having used it, I wasn't familiar with the sensation. And frankly, it wasn't my first thought.

My first thought was that something was terribly wrong with the boys.

After a quick investigation - which must've been very entertaining for the cars next to me - I finally figured out the seat cooler had been left on.

Oddly enough, once I knew nothing was wrong, it just felt right.

Danny

I don’t know if other industries are like this, but the ad community is a small one. Especially in L.A. Because of that, you wind up seeing a lot of the same faces at different agencies around town. Sometimes a good thing, sometimes not.

In the case of Danny Alegria, it was more than a good thing: it was a blessing.

Danny either worked in the studio or was the studio manager at three agencies I had the good fortune to work with him at: DBC, DDB and Y&R.

Ad agencies just love their initials don’t they?

Danny was always a bright light in what could be a dark environment. Being in the studio, he was ground zero for stressed out account and creative people throwing fits when it came to getting something they usually needed yesterday out the door to a client, or materials for a big presentation or new business pitches.

Regardless of the pressure and tantrums that came his way, he had a good word for everyone (something extremely difficult to do at agencies). And there was never a question about him getting what you needed done.

Even though I’d known him for years, I’d never really sat down and talked to him until one very slow day at Y&R about nine or ten years ago. We wound up sitting down and literally talking for over three hours. He told me about his time in the Navy, his background as a singer, his years as a jockey, exactly how horseracing worked (not the way you’d think or hope), his family and more.

I couldn’t believe this fascinating person had been steps away from me for years, and yet only now was I just discovering who he was and learning about him.

I had always loved horseracing. In fact, when I was in college I loved it a little too much, to the tune of rent money on occasion. Danny and I made an agreement we’d take a trip out to Santa Anita, and he’d give me the lowdown on the horses and be my betting Yoda.

Sadly, we never got to make that trip.

Danny was diagnosed with cancer. But like everything else in my experience with him, he handled it with grace, honesty and dignity.

He would post unflinchingly on Facebook about how he was doing - the progress of both the treatment and the disease.

As to be expected with cancer as widespread as his had become, there were good days and bad days. But even on the bad days, the really bad ones, there would be a thread of optimism.

On one of his good days, he invited me to come see him give what he knew would be his last singing performance. I wouldn't have missed it. Not only did I get to see Danny perform, I got to see a lot of long, lost friends from agencies past we'd worked with over the years, who were also out in force to show support for him, and his talent that we didn't get to see nearly enough.

Danny was in great form that day, but it tired him out. It was easy to see the toll his cancer was taking.

I would text back and forth with him. I told him I'd come out to where he lived in Riverside and take him to lunch, or if he wasn't up to going out, bring it to him and we'd eat at his place and talk about the race track. I believe he was confined to his bed at that point, but even so he just told me he wasn't feeling well, but as soon as he rallied we'd do it.

Shortly after that conversation, on July 10, 2012, Danny died at the age of 60.

For me, it's certainly a personal loss, as I know it is for his family. But it's bigger than that: it's a global one. The world simply can't afford to lose people as decent, caring and loving as Danny always was to not just his family and friends, but everyone he encountered.

His Facebook page is still active, and every now and then I find myself re-reading some of the posts he put up as he was going through his ordeal. They are honest, inspiring, funny, heartbreaking and hopeful. I'm also friends with his daughter on there, and though I've never met her in person I feel as though we have a strong connection.

She is funny, bright and optimistic. Just like her old man.

Not a day goes by that I don't think about Danny and the meal together I was so looking forward to.

It's comforting knowing he's finally resting in well-deserved peace.

And that he's making heaven a much more rockin' place.

Let's do lunch

Like most parents, I want my kids to realize all of their dreams and have all the things I never did. I want them to have a really good life, one that brings them as much happiness as humanly possible.

I also want them to be better people than I am. From the looks of it so far, that's going to be a cakewalk for them.

The other morning was my turn to drive the kids to school. They go to school seven and a half miles from our house, which for those of you keeping score is a fifteen mile round trip. Don't get me started. Anyway, at the freeway offramp we use to get there, there's always a homeless person sitting there. It's not always the same one. They, along with the standard-issue sad-eyed dog and cardboard sign, usually work the ramp a few days in a row before the shift change.

I call it Homeless Depot.

This particular morning my son had to bring a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts to school. We bought two dozen, because we wanted to have a few for ourselves on the way up (we love donut mornings around here). By the time we reached the red light at the top of the offramp, we had half a dozen extra donuts left.

My daughter said, "Dad, give him the donuts."

It took me a minute to realize who "him" was, but then I handed the donut box out the window to the homeless man who gratefully blessed our day and took them.

The next day before she left for school, my daughter put together a lunch for our homeless friend. A real lunch - sandwich, plenty of snacks, several water bottles. My wife took her to school so I didn't actually get to see her give him the lunch, but I heard all about it. He was visibly touched. My daughter and him exchanged God-bless-you's at the same time.

One of my daughter's many strengths is her kind and caring heart (definitely from her mother's side). It's hard to conceive how so much love can fit in one little girl.

But it does. And it only goes to prove what I've known since she arrived.

That she's as beautiful inside as she is outside.