It is Enough to Make Me Cry

This morning Jessica has been cutting onions up in preparation for dinner. She has been doing this upstairs in the kitchen while I am working in the basement about as far away from the onions as I could possibly be. However, the eye irritating sulphur has made its way down and is permeating the office, my eyes and the computers, who are also crying.

Sweet Release

One of the clients I work for in Texas (because I have so many, ha ha) is releasing a major release I’ve been working on today. Wow. This hasn’t been as stressful as about a year ago, but the last week has been a bit tense for me. I’ve not gotten the best sleep the last couple weeks on top of it (or because of it). Hopefully I will be able to get some good rest tonight as well as start working on the next project, which I’m looking forward to.

Prayer Request Update

A few weeks ago I posted that Hal, one of the elders at church had been diagnosed with cancer. Future updates from the doctor (that should have been posted here, but were not) revealed that he had a 60% chance of complete remission. This last week showed tests in one area of Hal’s marrow was completely clear of cancer cells! They’re going to do further chemotherapy as apparently there is a chance that his spine may possibly be dealing with cancer (I’m told that is rather common), but in the short term this is fantastic news. It is a praise at least, but do continue to be prayer for his recovery because the chemotherapy just saps all of the energy out of the patient.

Rattling My Innards

Last night, for Jessica’s final part of her Birthday celebration we went to Rodizio in the LoDo part of Denver with our friends Craig & Krystal. It is a Brazilian grill. I have been to two of these before Rodizio, in Texas and knew that we were in for a treat. If you’ve not been to a restaurant like this before then you need to understand that this is an all you can eat food fest. This particular restaurant had various meats, seafoods and veggies that they served to some tables. Somehow our table only got meats. When you want their meat servers to bring various types of meat to your table you flip over a little wooden object that has red, yellow and green sections painted onto it. You flip this so that the green side is facing up into the air. As Craig said, this is turning on the meat spigot.

Between January and April they have ‘wild game’ feature meats. Yesterdays was Wild Boar and Rattlesnake Sausages. I had several rattlesnake sausage bit (they didn’t give you a whole sausage unless you asked for one, which is fine by me) and I quite enjoyed them. Our waiter was a young, spunky guy whose nametag read “Jeffizzle.” He had a funky liney beard. That’s the only words I can think to describe it shortly because the longer description would be a small 1/8th inch (2 millimeter) wide band that ran from his sideburns down around his chin up to the other side. Its an accent piece like a necklace, only made of hair. Yeah, it looked a wee weird.

Side Story
Craig had somehow escaped all of the noise about Brokeback Mountain in the last 4 months and found himself watch the video while exercising yesterday morning. He got 28 minutes into the film until the two men make lip contact. At which point he had to stop working out, had to go pour bleach into his eyes, and had to go find out more about the movie to see if this was just a funky one-time situation. To his dismay it was not and so he promptly wrapped up the DVD and sent it back to NetFlicks. I tell you that to tell you this. Jeffizzle was not afraid to break out into what he called his Brokeback Mountain routine when we had finally decided to turn off the meat spigot and survey the dessert options. He outlined the various options that were available for us in decadent desserts and when reaching a point in the dessert selection switched to a super accentuated ‘s’ lisp and described the dish in rather sensual terms. We chuckled and he moved on into the next item in his regular speach pattern. Craig was probably mentally having flashbacks of the morning and wanting to run for the Rockies, but restrained himself.

When it came time to pay the bill we did so with a slightly liberal tip, but one that reflected the service and the length of time we had squatted at the table [definition: squatting is sitting at a table for a particularly long time at a restaurant. This can prevent wait staff from serving other customers at that table and possibly decreasing their income from tips for the year]. As we left we hit the restrooms to do what people do there and happened to pass the waiter showing off our receipt exclaiming, “I went brokeback on another table again and look at this!”

We then strolled through part of downtown Denver to walk off some of the protein we’d glutted ourselves on. This is always fun because there are pan handlers, vagrants, other strollers and lots of carriages waiting to draw you. Lights, busses, some cars, cops and shops all looking particularly metropolitan make for a fun walk. As is always the case I ended up talking about programming practicies with Craig who patiently teaches me all about the things he learned by actually going to school for his carear path. He’s also got a lot more life experience in coding than I do so I have to say that I like to be a sponge when he shares things. Fortunately some of the things he shared with me last night were things I knew which tells me that I’m starting to have some competance in the area of coding after 5 years 🙂

We had a good time with the Kaes’, Jessica got to have a fun meal, and in the end we really enjoyed a great downtown Denver experience.

My Since Relyest Apologies

So, when I was in 7th Grade my English teacher, Mrs. Daniels, taught us to remember how to spell sincerely. She said to remember that it it was spelled like a compound word: SinceRely. My sincerest apologies for the negative bent the more recent blog posts have had. I really should be writing happier stuff, funnier stuff and have more Abby and Evie posts.

I was chatting with a friend this morning and said that I realized that I was being negative. It is easy to be negative, especially when you think you’re being funny. Being funny and being negative are actually two dangerous things. You can be negative and you can be funny but you can be more of one than the other and the scales have tipped to mostly negative recently.

So I beg your forgiveness and hope that you will find it in your collective hearts (but seriously, if you collect hearts, um, where are you storing them? Do you have a walk in fridge?) to keep reading this funky blog and the silly stuff that spills from my fingers. Don’t worry, I have paper towels nearby to clean up the mess.

How Often Does This Happen To You?

This morning Jessica showed me two pictures of different hair cuts. She was about to leave for her hair appointment so she wanted to have my backing on her choice to get a mohawk. OK, the pictures weren’t of mohawks. But they were of girls who had the exact same hair cut to me. They could have been twins, I swear. But they weren’t. In her detail oriented eyes they were different cuts with similar styling. To me in my hairblind eyes they were both blonde, both looked like they’d been airbrushed/photoshopped to death and were under studio lighting. Their hair? I didn’t care about that part of the picture because I was distracted by everything else.

Sometimes being a man is completely insane because I just can’t think clearly about what Jessica is presenting me. I think I’m going to use my digital camera for good [instead of evil?] next time and we’ll scan in the photos of the styles she likes and then shoot some pictures of her head in the same angle and then I’ll morph the pictures together so that we can pretend what Jessica would look like with her hair done by professional hairdressers every morning instead of by herself while Abby and Evie vie for attention 🙂

Worst Defense of Movie Theaters I’ve Read

Mark Cuban, who is always referred to as the billionaire [apparently he doesn’t have value as a human being outside of his money to the editors of every major publication], is in charge of several media production companies. He has been pushing to get movies out on DVD at the same time they’re put on the silver screens so as to reduce piracy. The theory (that I agree with) is that if you release things to the masses in multiple formats they are less likely to steal the content from somewhere else. Wired magazine interviewed an opponent of this idea, the CEO of AMC movie theaters. In short it is the silliest defense of ‘the old way’ I’ve read yet. Sure, its possible that Wired edited the guy to look like a moron, but if you look at the text its clear that something is not right about this guy’s logic.

First he’s saying that the theaters only want to carry the best products, by which he means movies, and that Mark Cuban’s company’s movie wasn’t quality enough for his theaters. Then he’s saying that ticket sales were down last year because the quality of the movies were down. But then he sites that the quality of the movies were derided by reviewers. Does he know why there are movie reviewers out there? Because there are so many movies released that the masses have to get help to know which ones might be worth their time. If fewer movies were released, but had quality behind them, then I think folks would be inclined to go see them and reviewers would review them well because they were quality movies. You can’t seriously tell me that a movie theater that played “Kung Pow: Enter the Fist!” has discernment to say no to ‘Bubble’, Cuban’s movie [let it be known I own Kung Pow, but I consider it to be a goofy movie that few would enjoy unless theyr’e goofy like me].

In short its a political move but he’s dancing around like Mike Tyson before he bites your ear. Or in this case, your pocketbook.

A New Car Seat for Abby

Two days ago Abby’s car seat started giving us serious grief and she rode him in the car with only a four point harness instead of 5 points. That was less than ideal but I disassembled part of it and tried to fix it. To no avail. So yesterday evening we dropped her off out our neighbors’ place for about an hour and ran over to Target (our favorite French store) and picked up a new one. Dang. Not only are there lots of options, but you can pay a lot of money for a really uncomfortable looking [and feeling] seat. Kudos to Target for having them at eye level so we could touch, smell and taste these expensive safety restraints.

We chose one that has cup holders. But in Abby’s case they’ll probably just hold her miniature stuffed animals most of the time 🙂