Category Archives: The Obvious

The things that are so obvious that it is funny.

Thirty

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So today I am thirty.  Thirty years of heart pumping, sweat inducing action.

Or sitting behind a computer desk typing.

The good thing is that I’ve learned some things since turning 18 and being legally an adult:

  1.  If you find a girl worth marrying – don’t wait!  The worst part of 18-21 was not being married
  2. Church legalism kills – I left a few churches and tried out many more.  If you find legalism – move on.
  3. Credit cards are not free money – they have cost me thousands of dollars in paid interest and interest unearned on investments
  4. Waiting to lose weight is a dumb idea.  I am finally down to below 170 after spending the latter half of my twenties above 170 and 180 and 190
  5. I stink at fulfilling new years resolutions like 99% of the rest of the Earth’s population
  6. If you find a company worth working for – stick with it.  I love working for my major client because they’ve got great character in the owners.  I can honestly say I love those two guys [and many of the employees there].
  7. Be patient.  With your wife/husband, kids, friends, relatives, co-workers, animals, other drivers and yourself.
  8. Keep smiling and laughing.  If everyone is laughing, they may be getting a break from a lot of hurt.  Or if they’re doing well before, they’re doing better now.
  9. Kiss your wife every day as often and as caringly [SIC] as possible.
  10. Spell check your blog.

My children are beautiful, my wife is amazing, my church home continues to amaze me, my job is going well and I’ve learned a lot.  Thanks for participating in my thirtieth birthday!

Oxygen

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I was recently in at the 16th street mall in downtown Denver and I saw an ‘oxygen’ booth selling oxygen for the partier who was trying to avoid a hangover.  Seriously, that was their gimmick.  But instead of fun happy looking people sitting at the booth two women who looked rather stressed and tired were sitting there with hoses around there face.  In the middle of downtown.  With hundreds of people passing by.  The weirdness did not stop there.  We passed the booth going South the first time.

Going North we passed the booth which had no customers, but the employee was standing there.  Next to his oxygen tanks.  Smoking.

Dumb!

Sealants

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Yesterday I went to the dentist and had two cavities taken care of.  Cavities that were not from bad brushing recently, but cavities from when I was a young teenager or tween.  The dentist I went to then was big into using sealants, which if you haven’t had or heard of are basically bits of melted plstic that are incredibly durable, and sealants last for around ten years.  Except in my case they lasted for 17 or so years.  So finally the sealants came out of my teeth and I had to have fillings put in.  My cheeks are sore from holding my mouth wide open for the 30 minutes or so that was required (with short breaks here and there).

I used to be afraid of the dentist, but the truth of the matter is that I’m really glad that we have the technology we do today to fix our mouths up.  Dental practitioners are still not all equal, but they all have access to some pretty amazing technology and I’ll take a few hours or days of discomfort for a life of teeth 🙂

Thankful Thursday: In-Laws

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Two of my four in-laws are in town this week and I’ve really enjoyed the time with them.  They put up with my craziness and sometimes contribute to it.  They’re neat folks, they both love Christ, and they both walk in liberty.  This morning they took us out to breakfast and then they’re off in the mountains with the rest of the family while I work (or blog as the case may be).  These in-laws are the ones I knew best during my dating and engagement to Jessica and so I have longer memories with them.  They’re a hoot to play cribbage with if you can get them to do so.

My other in-laws, who I don’t want to forget about in this post, are also pretty neat.  They’ve got two teenage girls in their home… so I’m watching carefully because eventually I too will have two teenage girls in my home.  Since I’ve known them a shorter amount of time (just shy of nine years of meeting in person) its been a different relationship because the time has been less and the frequency even lesser.  They also put up with my shenanigans and contribute to them on occasion.  These in-laws play a nasty hand of cribbage as well, but also will play Aggravation, Risk and Scrabble.

You can’t beat in-laws (its against the law [see previous notes about shenanigans and understand this is a play-on-words]), and I love mine.  I’m thankful for them.

August Was a Bad Month for Garbage Cans in the Peterman Household

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This last month our garbage cans were run over by friends and family.  Twice.  At the beginning of the month Jessica’s sister creamed them with her parents’ Buick (not pronounced like quick).  In the middle of the month my friend Tony nailed them as he was backing out of our driveway.

The good thing is that they’re rubbermades and they withstood the smashing.

In Case Your V@9!n@ is a Roller Coaster

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Why on Earth do advertisers demand that commercials have weird, weird, weird implications?  The latest maxi-pad (feminine napkin) commercial drives me bonkers!  Who decided that they should describe a woman’s body part as a roller coaster?  At what point in time does the average woman find herself in a situation where she thinks, “I have got to get a maxi-pad that can handle this Jennifer Garner/Alias type activity.  Periods & my daily commute simply don’t mix.”

This sort of thing scares me mostly because I know they’re working on a more extreme commercial with tree chippers and chinchillas.  I don’t know how they’ll fit, but its coming.

A Free Upgrade Wouldn’t Be Worth It

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When you read quotes like this:

I’ve been using Vista on my home laptop since it shipped, and can say with some conviction that nobody should be using it as their primary operating system — it simply has no redeeming merits to overcome the compatibility headaches it causes. Whenever anyone asks, my advice is to stay with Windows XP (and to purchase new systems with XP preinstalled). – Joel Spolsky

Its hard to want to upgrade.

AT&Ted Off

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So, in the continuing saga or me against AT&T I went into their store recently (as in Friday evening) and I asked an employee, “I have a weak reception area that I live in, do you know which phone you carry has the best antenna for improved reception?”  The perfect answer was given to me, “Do you have friends that have AT&T service?  You could invite them over to your house and see who has the best reception.”  If I didn’t want one of those blasted iPhones so bad I’d totally jump ship.

Yet Another Post in Which Randy Cries Like a Baby

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Today I got a phone call from AT&T.  Well, it was from a computer at AT&T.  Or at least I think it was.  It could be the nation wire tapping program just doing a routine monitoring of my line pretending to be AT&T.  But assuming its AT&T a recording, yes a recording, told me to call AT&T to ask them about my account.  It gave me the phone number to call, told me that I should call them about my account, and then gave me the number to call again.  Only I had no paper to write things down with so I hung up, tried to dial the number from memory and then got a wrong number message.

A recording!  Why is it that they can afford to do any number of things that are called advertising but they fail to offer the customer service experience that would make customers want to do business with them?  Can you believe that in a customer service scenario they chose to use an electronic device to 1) irritate me like nothing else and 2) cause me to have to scramble to remember a number and 3) use a recording to communicate ‘an important message’?  So I called AT&T’s customer service line that is published on their website and after a little pinball-like action through their automated system I arrived at a customer service rep named Leslie.  Leslie was nice and helped me the best she could, she helped me determine that something had shut off my auto-pay plan (which has worked for some time now without a problem).  Something had shut it off three months ago.  And after accumulating three months worth of bills they were kindly letting me know that, finally, I should pay my bill.  Three months!  A recording!  Agggghhhhhhh!!!!!

I don’t know who is responsible for the numbskullery that is their procedure and policy in dealing with billing snafus but this was a really irritating way to interrupt a Friday.  So I’m going to pay my bill and attempt to reset my auto-pay program, but this is just irritating.  Thanks for nothing AT&T.  A recording!

Reminder: Tonight is Feasting on Asphalt 2!

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Just in case you had forgotten tonight, Saturday August 4th, is Feasting on Asphalt 2 night!  We’re having my sister and her husband over and we’ll be eating jambalaya in celebration of Alton’s starting off his journey in the southern part of the United States.  We’re hoping that we can follow along on this culinary adventure every weekend with some parallel food based on our understanding of the different regions followed by watching the episode from the DVR (thus fast forwarding through the commercials that would keep us from the actual fun).

I guess this makes us junkies 🙂