Category Archives: Opinion

Pardon My Birds Nest

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The other night on Iron Chef, the show where Americans dub over Japanese chefs cooking things that most Americans are afraid to eat, they made Birds Nest Soup. I thought it was just some strange name for a noodle type dish. Wrong! It was actually swallows nests in the soup. Color me WASP but that just wouldn’t go into my mouth.

Yes, I’m probably closing myself off from a world of tasty and delicious treats, but I just can’t imagine taking swallow saliva, broth and other basic ingredients and calling it soup. Skip the nest, I’ll take the rest.

They Might Be Giants do the ABC’s

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If you have a child, children or a well pampered puppy then you probably have have enough kids CD’s that you feel like a chump for having bought them all. At our house we’ve got every single Veggie Tales CD they’ve made as well as several other ‘generic’ kids CD’s that makes us want to barf (the generic CD’s, not the Veggie Tales). We’ve listened to all of them many, many, many times and often find ourselves singing them when we’re away from the car. It used to be songs from other bands that we heard but now kids songs play in constant rotation in our mental jukebox. We’re nearly loopy from the loops of the CDs.

We’ve added another CD to our collection though which has been a nice reprieve from the repetition (for a short while). They Might Be Giants’ kids CD Here Come the ABC’s. It’s the same They Might Be Giants that a few of you might know, but with lyrics that are safe for most children and at least 1/3 domesticated, overly pampered, puppies. I will warn you though that you might get ‘E eats everything’ stuck in your head and find yourself in the same old rigmarole . However, its the kind of insanity that I can enjoy in regular doses 🙂

Public School Rant

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If you like public school, think its the best thing on the planet, love administrative mistakes and really wish you could make one, you probably don’t want to read this post. While I was in Inderana I was talking with my father-in-law (we do that a lot :)) about school and he has to pay $200.00 to rent the books for his daughters’ will use in school. $100.00 per student.

What the heck is up with that? Don’t we pay huge amounts of taxes for school already? When I was in College the school sold the books, but that was college. What is up with administration, beaurocracy, and schoolboards charging parents for student materials. The students are [appropriately] already having to bring in various other materials including paper, pens, pencils and food. Some people are getting government subsidies for school lunch programs and various other materials, but in general a large portion of students have things paid for by their parents.

Forget milk money, I’m going to find some poor helpless parent and bully them for their book rental money!

Life Aquatic

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We didn’t actually get to finish watching this movie. However, we didn’t want to. The DVD had more scratches than a rap album [wow, that was a lame comparison, sorry]. We kept waiting for it to take off, especially given the names on the casting list. After trying to clean the disc several times we concluded it could also be our DVD player, but I wasn’t ready to go run out and buy one tonight.

The acting on the movie was weak at best, Owen Wilson’s ‘accent’ was so fake I thought I was watching a mockumentary. Actually, I sort of was, but the funny lines died short of funny and the not funny lines didn’t carry anything. On top of that there was a topless gal in a few scenes which surprised us. I suppose they just missed the boat on this one.

It gets a one-third swordfish rating… whatever that means.

Rich Dad Poor Dad

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I just finished reading the book Rich Dad Poor Dad (Amazon Link). There’s lots of stuff to chew on in there. I didn’t get the impression of the book was about being one type of father or not, nor was it about being wealthy in the definition of “money out the wazoo.” Instead the real focus of the book was financial competancy. I disagreed with some of the author’s philosophy, but nothing severe enough to not recommend the book. In short my Christian worldview conflicted with some of his assertions, but over all the principles in the book seem sound and I’m really just left thinking about what I need to lear next. Not a bad place to end considering many books come across as having the answer. I definitely recommend this book and suggest that you give it a read through.

The book is very narrative and comes across more like you’re sitting at a table and your friend is sharing his life story with you rather than a list of ‘To Do’s.” Further, their is a recognition of your current situation. Rather than just saying that its time to jump out of your comfort zone and just do something he encourages readers to learn. I really like that. I’m ready to learn about lots of areas I know I’m weak in rather than just wallow in my inability. Being a self-starter type myself I found this book engaging because that is much of what the book talks about -> I’m not waiting for money to come to me, I’m not waiting to get filthy rich, I just want to take care of my family, my extended family as they get older, and be able to go visit relatives and take vacations to places I’ve never been. Oh, and it doesn’t recommend you leave your job, but be smarter with the money you make with your job.

One major focus is on assets. What assets do you have? I don’t really have any…yet. An asset generates revenue (by the author’s definition) where as a liability takes coninued resources. I’m going to have to look at my liabilities, see which ones can be trimmed and then start collecting assets – it’s just better that way.

This book gets 5 stars and I highly recommend it to readers of this blog.

Special Sauce

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For the record, fine employees of “Old McDonald’s” [as Abby calls it], the special sauce ceases to be special when my hamburger patties are swimming in it.

That is all… please carry on, only with less ‘special’ sauce.

There Are Holes in My Head

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But not in my teeth. Yet another nice dental office experience. In Texas we went to a really, really, really, really nasty dentist’s office. The office was nasty, the dentist was questionable. However, this office we’ve been visiting in Denver has us pleased and, even if they’re lying to us, they keep telling us we don’t have cavities 😉 They have a clean office where they do cleanings, fillings, invisilign and various other dental procedures with courtesy and such. Yeah for dental offices with ethics.

A Switch Draws Nigh

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We’re frustrated with our local phone company and their long distance service. We’re moderately pleased with their DSL service. However, when we moved they wanted to charge us $100.00 for relocating our DSL service. Jessica called and raised all sorts of noise and they eventually reduced it to $9.99. Why they can charge that much and get away with it is beyond me. Why they can drop it by such a huge percentage is also beyond me. We’re looking to switch to Comcast’s cable internet connectivity and then switching to Vonage so that we can start singing the annoying ‘hooting’ song from their commercials.

Anyone got any reasons why we shouldn’t do that? Is the service of either of these companies bad?