Klingon War Ships

I don’t know why I typed that title in, it just seemed like the wrong thing to do. However, it is there, and I can’t help but to leave it. The snow is falling here and it is predicted that we may have lots of snow here before too long, which will be a real problem because I need to fly out early in the morning to arrive in Grapevine, Texas. Strangely enough if you swap the V and P in Grapevine you get grave pine. I don’t know why that matters, but in the theme of random tidbits, I guess I’ll just have to move on past that goofy observation. Maybe I can call in some Klingon war ships to clear out the snow or simply transport me from CO to TX. Of course knowing the Klingons I’d probably die in the process due to them just enjoying the general idea of inflicting pain.

[If I knew some whitty Klingon phrase, I’d put it here.]

Home? Where’s That?

Since Jessica and the girls left with my mother-in-law to go see Jess’ grandpa who is going to be with the Lord soon I’ve been alone. Well, only sort of. I’ve spent very little time at home the last 24 hours because I don’t deal well with being alone. However, our church body rocks because I’ve had to turn people down for lunch and fellowship after church. People knowing that I’m flying solo have gone out of their way to make sure I don’t get too lonely. It pretty much makes me feel like I’m not a total loser 🙂 However, Monday I leave to go to Texas for a couple days to work with one of my clients. As much as this is hard for me to be away from my bride and beautiful girls, it is a good thing, I’m excited to be able to go meet some fantastic folks that I hope to blog about in the upcoming days.

Tech Gangsters: IBM

Flickr Photo
You know things are getting pretty rough in the tech world when IBM employees start tagging utility boxes.

I’ve also uploaded some other pictures to the site (click the image above to see my Flickr photos.)

Prayer Request

One of the elders at our church, Hal, has just been diagnosed with acute leukemia. The doctors are predicting that if it goes untreated he may have aproximately one month to live. What is somewhat warming is the fact that Hal has spent so much time teaching others at the church about how God uses trials and suffering for our growth. I keep thinking, “Lord, I haven’t gotten to learn from Hal all that he knows so that I can pass it on.” Except that the doctors haven’t given him a treatment plan yet, so it could all turn around and be a non-issue if the cancer goes into remission.

Thanks everyone.

Randy (and the rest of the Petermans)

Tinkle, Tinkle, Little Star

A few annymous females that I lived with while growing up used to use a word for ‘urinating’ that was fun: Tinkle. What is weird is that in the English language we have such a large body of vocabulary dedicated to bodily functions in general. I recall hearing as I grew up about a contest they had at my dad’s place of employment that encouraged the employees to come up with other names for ‘cow pies’ and by cow pies I mean manure, cow poop, dung, cow crap, meadow muffins, cow frisbees, boot muck also known as fecal matter of bovine origin.

Another blog I once read had a listing of names for boy and girl private parts as well. What was funny was reading that many people used the same word to describe the front or back side of male or female parts depending on the family. Can you imagine getting married to someone only to discover that their ‘pom-pom’ was a completely different ‘pom-pom’ than your’s [don’t think about that too much]? And that is why I wanted to ask this question: if you are a parent, what sort of vocabulary do you have for dirty business in your house? We have stuck with as much of the scientific words so as to make it less of a shock when people use them in polite company or educational environments and they don’t snicker like a candy bar.

Randy Talks Trash Week One

Well, yesterday morning I taught the first of two weeks on biblical sexuality verses the modern American culture’s views on sexuality. In front of my parents. That was a little awkward. It was also awkward to have almost no comments during the class. No questions. I asked a few simple questions to see if that would prime the pump, but I’m pretty sure that most people were not going to open up and pour out their thoughts on the subject. In the end, it was a pretty safe PG class and I did get to use a few clean jokes. Is “clean sex jokes” an oxymoron?

Comings and Goings

Our friends the Whites are moving to North Carolina (which rhymes with “Don’t Move to China”) and so this last Wednesday I helped pack them up. Sad. I’ll miss them a lot. However, today my mother-in-law moved in and will be finding a place of her own eventually. She’ll be in the area so that will mean at least one trip a year that we can make to go visit others, hopefully. I can say that there will be lots of change around here since she brought her dog, Kicker, with her. warning! Randy is tired while writing the following: For those of you wondering how Kicker got his name it was me being a smarty pants. You know, the whole coming home after a bad day at work and kicking the dog sort of thing? Its different from that but along the same lines. Yes, it was a mistake in my youth – I wouldn’t name a dog Kicker or Deuteronomy. But others have, and I was not there to stop them, I probably encouraged them to name their dogs things like “Stupid Mutt”, “Horsey”, and “Lake Chichoe”. I was wrong, and I admit it.

America’s Next Top Squirrel Hunter

Note: This is just satire. Jessica asked me if I was insinuating that she was part of the dumbed down masses. I told her that it was satire to which she promptly told me that I could satire my way through three loads of laundry, washing the dishes and licking the toilette bowls clean. Very funny indeed. OK, she didn’t really say that to me. Which is fine because this is satire, its intended to be rediculous, and completely false. That’s what makes it funny [well, that and it would help if it was actually funny].

I don’t know about you, but I feel like the networks have exploited the reality television genre enough now that I’m ready for something more fake. Take for example the ‘Next Top Model’ idea. It is a copy of American Idol. Which is a copy of Star Search, which is a copy of the Ed Sullivan show which was a copy of the Magna Charta. And as all American and British historians know is a copy of the original Da Vinci Decoder ring rumored to be in circulation among a secret society of cracker jacks connoisseurs.

The problem is that the shows are not as real as real life which means they’re edited down and pieced together to be interesting to the dumbed down masses people who find them interesting. The problem is that reality is much more boring for most of us. But I’ve got an idea that will change all of this. Everyone needs to spice up their lives by doing something interesting and intense every day. That way it will force the networks to cut back on reality shows and hire people to write good television documentaries. I think that’s the direction television will go… if it starts moving backwards. Actually the new hit show will be much longer than most shows because it will be made for television movies – except they’ll be worth watching. And there won’t be any cliff hanger endings, you’ll feel good about how all of the loose ends are no longer loose and instead, much like Pamela Anderson, they’re wholesome and make you feel good about yourself, your body, your peers and world peace. Wait. No. That’s not right.

Run DMC Was Illin’

While I’m reminiscing I should call back to the days of 1986. Yes, that was a good year for baseball cards. Peter Rose was still Charlie Hussle, My grandpa liked the Giants and I gave him a batch of Oakland A’s baseball cards, and more importantly I was hanging out with the neighbor kid who introduced me to “Rap.” Specifically Run DMC’s ‘You Be Illin’.’ I think my brother and I walked around the house just saying, “You be illin’,” over and over again until our parents literally threatened to feed us to the trolls that lived under the bridge on the way to the park. I can remember getting a hold of a large cardboard box, spreading it out in our living room and, yes, you know what’s coming, breakdancing. Or at least trying. Basically breakdancing consisted of us doing strange contortions, spinning on various parts of our bodies, but not actually resembling that which was the current trend of break dancing. I can remember hearing stories of what must have been trillions of people dying or being paralyzed from doing a headspin wrong.

A short while later I went off of a jump on my bike and that same neighbor kid exclaimed, “That was bad!” To my horror he did not like my jumping technique or performance. I asked why to which he replied that bad meant good and that it was the new cool thing to say. I was relieved and quickly converted to defining all that was good as bad because everyone was doing. Now of course the Jewish boys down the street were not doing that because their rather orthodox parents would have pretty much uncircumcised them if they attempted to define what God had called good as bad and vise versa. Being protestant and all, I didn’t have a clue what the fuss was about. We used cool to describe things that were not cool to the touch, but certainly cool to see, feel, experience or wreck.

And finally, on this trip down memory lane… I once climbed into the bed of a truck that was parked in front of the house of this same neighbor kid. Unfortunately it belonged to the neighbor guy’s friend who was over who quickly came outside and chased me out yelling about how the truck was his. I ran home, slid underneath my bed and attempted to stop breathing so as to be nearly invisible if he came looking for me.

Good time.