Author Archives: Randy Peterman

Meme-ify Me

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James tagged me in an interweb chain letter.  The last person who didn’t comply with the chain letter lived into their 100’s, and I don’t need that.  Here are my answers:

What i was doing ten years ago

I was preparing to get married while I worked at a Christian Bookstore called The Manger.  I was in Junior College, and I was pretty much ready to explode with emotions and hormones – and I wasn’t even a teenager.  I was the music department manager at the Christian bookstore, which was kinda cool, except that I would get advanced releases and by the time the customer would get the album to listen to, I was burned out on it.  They’d say, “What do you think of this album?”  I had to think about what I used to think about that album before it was old – even though it was brand new.  I also coudln’t get over the 60+ year old customers who would buy two of every gaither album, one for themselves to cry to at home, and one to send to their friend, relative or minister so that they could all be emotional together with the sweet gospel songs that they remembered from their youth.

Getting married was a major, major task, but I’ve written about that before.  Also, junior college was shelved to a certain degree and I took the lightest full load conceived of.  I took pottery with Jessica as one of my three classes.  Turns out it was one of the cooler classes I took that was outside of the history courses I took.

Five snacks i enjoy:

  1. Frozen Yogurt
  2. Goldfish crackers
  3. Graham crackers & milk
  4. various nuts
  5. chocolate bars (dark chocolate please, milk chocolate is a joke)

Five things on my to-do list today:

  • Finish the help file
  • Exercise
  • Spend time with the girls
  • Watch the last bit of American Gladiator to see which of the gals wins this leg of the competition
  • kiss my wife and tell her I love her… a lot (don’t take that the wrong way)

Five favorite recipes (re-interpreted to mean foods in this case):

  1. Smoked Ribs
  2. One Egg Pancakes
  3. Chocolate Lava Cake
  4. My Sister’s Cheesecakes
  5. My brother-in-law’s pork dish that is better than Texas de Brazil’s

Five jobs i have had [actually all]:

  1. Paper route
  2. Gopher for consulting firm
  3. Pharmacy
  4. Internship at a church
  5. Christian Bookstore
  6. JB Dental Supply phone customer service
  7. Software developer

Five of my bad habits:

  1. Fiddling with my nose [I rub it, blow it and touch it far too often]
  2. Running my mouth
  3. Running out of patience with the kids
  4. Eating after I’m full because it tastes so good
  5. Waking up in the middle of the night to check work email

All the places i have lived:

  1. Redwood Valley, CA
  2. Carson City, NV
  3. Philo, CA
  4. Sunnyvale, CA
  5. Carson City, NV
  6. Ft. Worth, TX
  7. Euless, TX
  8. Greenwood Village, CO
  9. Aurora, CO

Five random things:

  1. I love music
  2. I love photography
  3. I’d rather not be working some days, and some days I’m sad I’m stopping
  4. I wish I was a better evangelist
  5. I like the idea of going into medical research some day

Five Folks i Would Like to Know Better:

  1. Trint
  2. Dave O’Hara
  3. The Dave
  4. Jess
  5. My Sister

[I’m so totally going to get in trouble for some of these, and probably also for not asking you, instead of one of these people above]

The July Fireworks Series of Aurora

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The idiots specially gifted people in my neighborhood have been lighting off fireworks around my house for the last week just to make sure that their ears still work and that the fireworks continue to make loud popping sounds.  Their sober under-aged children might have some serious, lifelong emotional trauma if their intoxicated parents didn’t light off loud and visually stimulating fireworks from their homes on July Fourth – so they do it starting in June.  Last night for example I was doing an exercise that I like to call ‘sleeping’ and a neighbor was shooting off some sort of popping whirring thing (I grew up in Nevada where they kill people who have fireworks before the fireworks kill them, so I don’t really know which type of firework it was).  If it was before 10, I might have thought I was grumpy, but it was post midnight, so I figured that there was some special problem with their ears or fireworks because they were still testing them.

I’m considering buying some fireworks and lighting them off myself next year because there seems to be this sense of amazement and awe that can only happen if you do it at your house.  I have never wanted to do this.  Fireworks amaze the girls, and I love it that they’re impressed, but I draw the line at exploding them at my house because I like my house.  I want my house to keep not burning up, and continue not needing to be repaired due to fire damage.  I’m a selfish guy like that.  In a dry climate like Colorado, you could light a fire just by wearing corduroy paints that rub together a while and then sit down on some dry wood, so inviting danger to my house to come and blow up is not my first choice.  OK, I’m done considering this option.

However, my first choice is to let other people,  with fire fighters nearby, light off the fireworks.  Each year many cities across the country do this in a celebration called, “lighting your tax dollars on fire and sending them off to blow up,” and we live in one of those cities.  We’ve managed to never see the show they do because of rain or any number of other silly reasons, but this year, we just might go… that is if our neighbors don’t manage to blow us up first.

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At the end of the above video is a grape letting off a gaseous flame. I showed the above video to an 11 year old boy and he announced, “Oh! They made it better!” In boy terms there is nothing better than first making flames from a grape in a microwave – except to be able to make the flames float up in succession. That’s just magical.

The Fans Are Causing the Children to Not Lose Sleep

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By adding the fans into the girls rooms it appears, after a short run, that they’re sleeping much better and are actually sleeping in. I actually woke up a little worried that I’d slept past the normal start of my work day this morning because the girls hadn’t gotten me up. Furtunately it was only 6:58 or so 🙂

Here’s hoping that this keeps up and they get restful sleep.

They Are Growing So Up

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Tonight while going over an alphabet book with Evie we got to the Strawberries (and of course the letter S) and she said, “We have strawberries! They are growing so up!”  Her expression of their getting bigger and ripe is so fun.  She’s growing so up herself.  My two girls sure do bring me joy.

My Best Fan

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Evie Gazes
This evening, over far too many minutes, I installed a ceiling fan in Evie’s room.  I had to install a support rod with complementary electrical box first.  Insulation fell all over me – I itched then, I’m itching now.  I somehow missed one of the steps in the installation and had to back track to fix the missed step.  Screws fell from the fan as I was trying to put them in.  All sorts of frustrations.

It was all better though when Evie looked up at the spinning blades with Jessica by her side and said proudly, “That’s my best fan.”  She was so pleased to have a fan in her room that I could only enjoy the smile and the pleasure that my work, irritated as I had become, had brought about.  She loves that it spins and I love that she loves it.

Tomorrow night I get to install Abby’s, but I’ll be applying the lessons learned, so hopefully it’ll be less messy, and less irritating.  It’ll be my best fan for one of my best girls.

They Found Water on Mars

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Apparently Kristen Bell, AKA “Veronica Mars” is made up of 70% or so of water.  NASA, with millions and billions of dollars in research money sent an exploratory probe into Miss Bell and discovered that she did indeed have water in her and on her surface.  Unfortunately since she’s now on Heroes with the ability to throw lightning the presence of water on mars is less exciting because lightning usually comes with storm clouds and humans, who are typically made of at least 70% water, don’t usually count as a big deal when you find water on them.  You can read more about NASA’s non-discovery here.