Category Archives: News

Things, Goings On, and Stuff I write

Happy ‘Versary, Jessica

Jessica and I are celebrating our universary today. That is to say that today, or tonight, at approximately 10:20 PM mountaint time we will have been going out for 11 years. It was actually closer to 9:20 Pacific time that I asked her to go out with me, but we’re ahead a time zone so I had to bump the hour upt for scientific accuracy. Jessica was so nervous that she asked her mom if she thought it was a good idea for her to risk her friendship with me because if the boyfriend/girlfriend thing didn’t work out she didn’t want to lose a friend. Of course this tidbit of information made me think things wouldn’t last longer than 2 weeks, but I was wrong and now we’ve been ‘more than friends’ for 11 years. I can only imagine what the next 11 years will be like. Abby will be 14, Evie will be 11, and I’ll be 39. Jessica will be a gorgeous 38 and Goldy the goldfish will more than likely be flushed. However, we’re a happy family and after 11 years of being together I can say that I am thankful to God each and every day for my bride 🙂

Oh, and the rumors are all lies, I never married my sister [MP3].

Race Card Drivers

No, the title is not a typo. In fact its a play on words. If you read this site normally that will be as surprising as waking up in the morning and discovering that your breakfast cereal has indeed not changed into a leprechaun. My friend Robin just sent me a link to a new reality series called “Black. White.” wherein families of (wait for it…) black or white ethnicity go under the not so careful eye of makeup artists to look the opposite color. What the heck? Why do we need this on television? Why do we need to see if people can cope with being in a different environment? Who is driving this issue of racism and segregation so that it will not die?

Sure, it is convenient for marketers to be able to use demographics to discover white or black or hispanic or Hawaiian or Japanese or Chinese or purple dinosaurs [with inordinage influence on children] neighborhoods so that they can sell racially targetted products, but do we need to further the concept of American inequality? This is just more postmodern drivel wherein we will discover that many people don’t know what other people go through and that someone somewhere is putting us all down so that we can be in perpetual victim mode. But not me, I’m done. I’m not going to watch this show or any of the other shows that make a big deal out of race. In fact I will go so far as to say that if more shows come up I may start writing the networks and let them know that the only thing that is real about reality television is that it really stinks.

I Finally Get It

Growing up my dad would tell the story of my first time to a movie. He took me to see “The Fox and the Hound.” I heard the story of my explanation towards the climax of the movie possibly 50 times or more in my life. I never understood why my dad told that movie so often. Friday night I learned why. We took Abby (and Evie, but she slept the whole time) to see “Curious George.” For the record I think they should have called it Curious Jorge the Intrigued Monkey, but they didn’t because apparently this is based on a book series that I found completely mind numbingly boring as a child and that book series was not called Curious Jorge the Intrigued Monkey. But I digress.

Abby just glowed and glowed throughout the movie. As event took place she would exclaim various things. She smiled a lot, but she sat still on my lap through the whole movie. It was wonderful to see her excitement and enjoyment of the rather goofy cartoon. And, in the end it was way better than the books.

One Hundredth

I’m watching Olympic luging right now (commercial break+computer recording=breathing room). I can’t imagine that many parts of my life are critically evaluated by one hundredth of a second. At work we’re glad when computers operate relatively closely performance wise and we never focus on hundredths of a second by itself. Sure, when you’re iterating through something that has thousands of lines or hundreds of thousands of lines you have to think about one hundredth being multiplied into seconds and eventually into minutes, but I won’t be getting a gold metal – just a “Wow, that’s fast.” verses a “It gets the job done.”

I don’t know that I do anything in one hundredth of a second, but it sure is nifty to have that sort of accuracy when measuring luge speeds.

UPDATE: They actually were keeping track of things to the thousandth, but the difference between racers was hundredths of seconds at times.

Yeah for White Powdery Stuff!

No, I’m not talking about cocaine, sugar or baby powder, I’m referring to snow. We got some last night and its still falling ever so daintily from the sky as I type this. Abby can’t wait to play in it, and I can’t wait to drive in it. It always makes Jessica nervous when we have snow, but I quite enjoy the fun of the challenge. As I wrote before: drive carefully!

Unsuper Bowl

I used to watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. This year, they stank. This year I was actually watching the superbowl for the athletics and physical abuse that is the National Football League. However, the two teams really didn’t deliver on the intensity that I had expected. I’m just glad that in the end I got to have fun at our friend’s house and that we got to eat smoothies.

I actually had to drop Evie off in the kitchen with Jessica because she was too distracting to watch the game. No, not because she was being awkward its just that she’s so darn cute. I had to have Jessica hold her so that if Craig asked, “Randy, did you see that?” I would be able to answer, “Yes.” Instead of hoping John Madden would talk over an instant replay. Of course he might say, “Could you feel that [insert football player’s name] was going to do that as the play started?” Or maybe, “Well, you know you’ve got to be a good quarterback to be called a good quarterback.”

To that I say, “It’d have to be a good game for it to be called a good game.” It was an OK game, but it was surely not as exciting as playing the drums in High School while the home team got beat to smithereens by anyone and everyone that came to play us. When you play the drums you’re cool, and you never lose because people want to hear you groove.

Personality Cult: Rachel Ray

How bad do we have it for the food network in our household? Jessica was told by Abby that she shouldn’t talk to Abby for a while because Abby was on TV like Rachel Ray.

Abby was cutting things (fake things with a fake knife) for a while and talking as she did so and then she stopped and said, “OK, don’t go away, I’ll be right back but we’ve got to take a quick brake.”

I do so hope that she starts picking up on more Alton Brown 😉

Girls of MySpace or I Just Want You For Your Bloggy

As I have been in practice of doing in the past I like to highlight the morally corrupt practices of Playboy seeking out possible pornographic material in the marketplace that is today’s culture. In the past they’ve looked for ‘women’ [I think they redefine it to mean purely gender and have no moral conotation] at Home Depot, McDonalds, Starbucks and Enron. Now they’re after women on a blogging service. My Space is the place for people to find blogs, but over time has also gotten its share of adult content. Why Playboy continues to operate is clear: most men are willing to look at naked women most of the time. Why women continue to pose for Playboy is beyond me. Women are special and should not be treated like so much skin and fatty curves and instead should be treated with respect.

Yes, I’m a huge fan of marital sex, yes I think that sex is healthy, no I do not think that men should be searching for pornographic material, whether its on a blog or on a site dedicated to adult content.

PAL

Last night at dinner I was helping abby with letters and I wrote PAL. She identified the letters “P-A-L.”

Then I asked, “What does that spell?”

“Pal.”

And thus I am now the father of a girl who has far more knowledge of letters and words than I expected of a 3 year old. Not that I thought Abby was dumb, but this is rather amazing for my brain and heart. She’s growing up fast!

Splinter

While in Washington [state!] over the holidays I helped install a beautiful wood floor at my in-laws. I got one splinter in my left ring finger tip. That little piece of wood has been in me for more than a month and it has been irritating me. This morning if finally came out of me and it was like a limp noodle when I pulled it out. My body had had enough of its craziness and decided that playing the guitar was way more important than hurting.

Sure, I could have pulled it out earlier, but I’m not a big fan of needles and tweezers digging into my flesh for a small piece of wood. Heck, it wouldn’t even help start a fire let alone be worth doing anything else but throwing away! So, I just let my body do its thing until they come out. Yes, I could get an infection and lose my finger. Yes, I could have the splinter work its way through my body and come out of my head 30 years down the road. But most of the time, to my knowledge, my body just rejects them and pushes them back out.

And I’m OK with that.