Does this smell funny to you?

So times are tuff for a lot of people. I feel blessed that I have a job that seems secure, or at least as secure as a job with a company that is owned by a Belgian that is dependant on oil, can be. I'm not rich, never will be, unless you are interested in buying Diaper Boy, the game. I do, however, recognize that I need to tighten my belt, which is getting harder and harder with the ever growing belly that resides, well, around it. One way I've done this is to not eat lunches out as often. Most weeks, I eat out once or less, a far cry from 1 year ago. There are always exceptions, like getting up a 5:30am and being so damn tired that I walk out of the house without filling the cooler I call a lunch box. I'm just glad that I at east remembered to put my pants on before I left, perhaps I should put my pants in the fridge to help remind me. One of my new food staples is yogurt. I've never been much of a yogurt fan, but never hated it either. As long as it's fresh, I feel fairly safe in eating it. I had a really bad experience with a spoiled dairy product that I didn't know was spoiled until I had half a pint down my gullet and realized something was amiss. Said dairy product made a second showing in the sink as I used every stomach muscle I had to retrieve it. Seeing as how I worked at a restaurant, I caused quite a commotion in the kitchen. Today I opened my yogurt to see a slight "liquid" that was covering the solid lump below. I checked the date on the lid, May 19, 2008. Since today is April 23, 2008, I figured it was probably good and began to stir. I must have stared at it for a couple of minutes, thinking in my head "Do I try it?" Milk regurgitation was flashing before my eyes and I really didn't want to go down that road again. I gave it a sniff, smelled OK. I touched my tongue to the spoon, nothing revolting. I decided to dive in and keep my fingers crossed. I have little experience in the yogurt arts, so I'm not real sure how bad it can look and still be good, but I think this was ok. If you never hear from me again, seek out the AE container in my trash at work and sue the piss out of them, so maybe you won't be poor like me and forced to eat a rotten milk product for both health and economical reasons.

What time is it?

So we were awoken to a storm this morning at 3:30 and I haven't been able to go back to sleep. It hailed for probably 5 minutes, which left a huge pile of hail stones outside our front door. I took a picture of it, but it is still at home on my camera. Here is a picture I took with my phone at 6:30am. The pile is smaller, but you get the idea.

The boys were none to happy about all of the racket and came running into our room. By the time we got them back in their beds, I was wide awake. The worst part of the deal is the boys never went back to sleep either, pray for their teachers today, they will need it.

I think they are missing the point.

I read this article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080420/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_clashing_christians

The gist of it is, a bunch of "Christians" got into a fist fight on the site of the tomb of Jesus. I'm not sure, but since these two groups are on the same side, they might want to try and work things out peacefully. If you are standing on holy ground, you might want to follow the teachings of the one you are proclaiming to believe in. Just a thought.

Love and the Pope.

First off, the Pope is in the US and I heard something that I thought was weird, tell me if you agree. During his visit to Washington DC, he was given a 21 gun salute. Does that seem a bit inappropriate to you? I don't see how the leader of the Catholic faith, which teaches peace and love, should receive a blast from 21 guns to celebrate his visit. Release 21 doves or pet 21 kittens, but the gun thing? I guess our president is from Texas, maybe he had something to do with the selection. Perhaps it was a cabinet position called the secretary of parties, and Cooter had some extra ammo laying around. Seems like an odd salute to me.

I found proof that you can die of a broken heart. This is the first paragraph of an obituary in the Des Moines Register yesterday:

Colleen Wilbert went to be with her Lord April 13, 2008. Her husband, Robert Wilbert, joined her on April 15, 2008. They passed away at the Carlisle Care Center surrounded by their loving family.

As sad as this is for the family, how heart warming is the actual story. Sounds to me that he was so much in love with his wife, that after she passed, he just wanted to be with her, so he joined her. If my perception of the events is wrong, don't tell me. I want to believe that he loved her that much. (tear)

This is cool

It's called Freedon Ship, and if you haven't heard of it, it's a floating city. I'll include the website for you to look through, but I'd love to see this thing happen. I wouldn't live on it, but I think it would be cool to see. It's a huge "boat" that is actually a city, with a runway on the top deck and they claim a marina out the back. You can buy "property" on it, prices vary, see your real estate agent for actual price list, or stay in the hotel. It's supposed to have a shopping mall and a casino, 2 things every city needs, if you ask Iowa government. I'll say that the drawings make the thing look kind of ugly, but I'd visit given the chance. Does anyone else see "Titanic 2" in the future?



http://www.freedomship.com/

Not sure how many stars that is.

I don't know if you read the comments section of my blog, but if you don't, you have missed a great review. The highlight is, "This post is likeable." I about cried myself to sleep with the amount of kindness shot my way. I mean, likeable, please, I'm not all that. And to see that I'm read around the world means my opinions are wasting time in different languages and time zones. If I can just get a few billion more, I just might be able to shut down society for the 2 minutes it takes to read one of my posts, but I dream. I went to the blog that was attached and there was a great picture of a steak, which was nice, but I couldn't read anything else. I'm guessing they have advertisers that pay for each hit they get, so I tossed a few pennies in their pocket for the review, anything to help. Then, to top it off, I got a hug. You have got to love the Brazilians, so affectionate. Plus, anyone who will review a blog about kids with diapers on their heads, I like. My kind of people.

Part of my life.

If you know me, have read this blog, or are in my family, then you know my history of sinus problems. We'll yesterday was one of my banner days where I woke up with a sinus headache and I know, the rest of the day will only get worse. I spent an hour outside with Makiah and Max, throwing snowballs at each other (yes, we had snow AGAIN), then and hour laying in bed with a queasy stomach and that headache. I know my only relief will be to toss my breakfast and sleep, so without my permission, my body did just that(sorry, no pictures). I usually have a issue like this once a year, where it gets this bad. I hope this was it, cause that is a crappy way to spend a Saturday. I'm feeling a bit better today, but going without food for a day does a number on your strength.

I learned last week that one of the 2 guys that works for me is leaving to follow his true job path. I hate to see him go because he is a good worker and a friend, but I also know that he wants a career in accounting and we just can't offer that right now. Now I'm back to trying to hire another person to replace him. I've had pretty good luck at hiring in the past, but it's always a little nerve racking making sure you get the right person. I'm still waiting to hear what my travel schedule is for the rest of the year. Loosing a guy will make that even tougher, so we'll see how it goes. I do know I have a trip to Southern CA in Jan. to do a physical at one of my warehouses. Marcy is going with me, so I will work a few days and then we will spend a few days sight seeing. It's a good way to get my airfare paid for and some of the hotel rooms. That's a long ways away and we still have to figure out childcare, so keep your fingers crossed we get it figured out.

I just realized it is a little more that 2 months until we leave for the beach. The boys are really excited and have all ready asked about our next trip to the beach. I begged them not to worry about the next trip until we complete the first one. I have a bunch of brochures to look through to see where else we will go on our way down, but have yet to get them out to see if there is more we want to do. I'm hoping to have a better idea of what we are going to do over the next week, I'll post it when I figure it out.

The game will be sweeping the country!

I'm excited to say that the boys have invented a new game that will be sweeping the country in the months to come. I haven't actually found a publisher yet, but I've seen how it's played and only a fool would turn us down. It's called Diaper Boy and here are a few pictures of it in progress.You tell me you aren't just busting at the seams to get your hands on this game? The actual construction of the game seems to be rather simple, a couple of pull-ups and no fear of looking like an idiot as you run around with a pull-up on your head, and in some cases covering your face. We will have to put a disclaimer on the box, stating that this game could cause serious injury when you collide with kitchen cabinets that you didn't see because you had a diaper on your head. But other than that, I think we are golden.

Review this.

So I was reading an article about the compound that was raided down in Texas of the offshoot of the Mormon church. They were talking to a lady who was once a member, but later blew the whistle on them. She mentioned that she wrote a book called Escape, so I went to Amazon.com to take a look at it. I like to read the reviews by people, not reviewers, to see what the consensus is. Most of the books I look at, have reviews that are leaning heavy to "like it" or "Hate it," with very few in between. The first review that came up seemed to be quite long, for an ordinary person. If you have ever read the reviews on Amazon, you know that when a person reviews, everyone else has the ability to see all previous reviews by that person. I was interested in this persons review history, to see if they regularly write long reviews. I was amazed at the length of the reviews, and also by the number. This guy had 38 pages of reviews, his profile says he has 376 different reviews. Holy crap, this dude likes to review stuff. There weren't only books, but Cd's, DVDs and I even saw one for a remote control. The reviews were too long to read, but I'm guessing with the experience he has, they are pretty good and detailed. Don't know exactly why I'm sharing this, just thought you might want to know that there is a guy out there that will review everything. I hope he doesn't read this blog, might not even get a star, especially now.

I'm Absolut-ly pissed

So I read the following article:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080408/us_nm/mexico_absolut_dc

To give you a brief summary, Absolut vodka has pulled an ad showing a map from 1848 with most of the western US still under Mexican control, with the words "In an Absolut world." I'm assuming that they were implying what a perfect world it would be if the map were current. This ad was only shown in Mexico, mind you. Apparently, people, and by people I mean Americans, are offended by this because they are calling for a boycott of the vodka. I must really be getting more and more easy going in my old age, because I don't find the ad the least bit offensive. First off, the map is history, not a dream. Second, the ad was aimed at Mexicans, which I would think a majority would agree with what the ad was implying. Are Americans afraid that the ad will spark some kind of revolution? I don't think a vodka ad will cause the Mexican government to attack the US government to get back a bunch of desert. OK, maybe they want southern California, but Arizona? You think the Mexican army stands a chance of getting more than 1 mile into Texas before every armed Texan unloads the strong box of ammo they have been saving for just such the occasion? They would have to come up through CA, where they could throw burritos to distract the surfers and pretty much walk in. I know people are concerned about the US bashing that takes place in the world, but come on, lets not blame a liquor ad for a much deeper problem. If you are going to pour your vodka down the drain, don't do it because of a map from 1848, do it because it tastes like crap and you don't need it.

My little Al Bundy's.

These were taken at 2 different times, but same result, gotta love boys. No, they didn't learn this from me.

Rehoboth Choir

I've written about my trip to the Navajo reservation, but not sure that I've said too much about where we stay. It's a Christian school called Rehoboth and they have a choir that includes a lot of Navajo kids. They were on tour the last couple of weeks and made a stop in West Des Moines to sing at our church services and give a concert Saturday night. People in the church were hosting them in our homes, so as to not incur hotel expenses. We had two kids stay with us, Xaiver, who is Navajo, and David, who is not. Our jobs as host involved showing up at church at 11:30 on Saturday morning with a pizza to share, meet the kids, have lunch and try to get to know them a bit, and then pick them up and take them home after the concert to sleep. Our boys made signs with our Rehoboth boys names on them and were really excited to meet them. They were also excited to have the guys stay in their room, because that meant they got to sleep on our floor, which they love for some reason. So as the Rehoboth kids were coming in, Mason and Makiah were holding up their signs, all though Makiah had his backwards to begin with and then had his fingers covering the name for a brief time. Once we got that settled, we met Xavier and David and sat down to talk and have lunch. We only got to know them a little bit and most of my questions were about their tour they were on and what they had seen. They seemed to have had a good time, spent quite a bit of time at a Lakota Tribe reservation in South Dakota, did a concert in northern Iowa, one in Pella Iowa and then ours. They were leaving Sunday morning, heading back to NM, the tour finally over. As soon as we got them home, Makiah started giving them a tour of the house, like they had never been in one before. He pointed out the kitchen table and chairs, and even the bar stools that could be used to sit at the counter and eat, if they so desired. It made me laugh, he doesn't have a real grasp that other people from other states, live like we do, tables and all. Marcy and our boys hit the hay around 10ish and I stayed up the David and Xavier to watch a little SNL. I'm amazed at what a comfort that show is to me. Even when it isn't funny, I watch because I always have. When it goes off the air, whenever that may be, I'm sure I'll have a grieving period. This particular show was all right. David wasn't able to speak much because he had a throat issue. He had swelling of that thing that hangs down in the back of your throat. I'd say what it was, but I'm afraid if I tried to spell it, it would be incorrect and I would actually spell out a part of the female anatomy, which is what it sounds like when you say it out loud. Besides, you know what I'm talking about and probably don't know what it's called and would accuse me of the female body part so I'm actually saving you the embarrassment. Anyhoo, we stayed up until 12:30am, which is way past old guy bedtime, so I was really tired all day Sunday. I went to church at 10.00am Sunday to help stuff some lunch bags for the kids while they were on the bus, got home in time to feed the boys, play outside and just as I sat down to maybe catch a snooze, Marcy got home and reminded me we had to be at a friends house in 45 minutes for our small group meeting, damn! I would have gotten to sleep early that night, but Marcy and I are also taking a marriage class on Wed. nights, and we hadn't done our homework yet. That is another thing, when I agreed to this class, I was not informed of a book, which came with the class, or of the homework. I assumed the class would be someone telling me what I should be doing for my wife and me realizing I suck as a husband, isn't that how most talk shows go? I love Marcy and try to do things to make her happy, or at least not make her mad, but whenever we do one of these classes, it points out all of the area's that I "need improvement." After our homework, it was really late, but I think I have a whole list of new area's that I'm bad at that I didn't know existed, Yea! I kid, I think the class will be great and want to do whatever I can to avoid the big "D," after all, I already had one of those and I'm not really interested in signing up for another. Love you Honey!

My day

Well it's a beautiful day in Iowa, high must have been in the 50's, which doesn't sound as good to those of you in the deep south or even the east coast, but since we had snow yesterday, it's pretty good. One of the best things about it warming up, is grilling. Now I'm not much of a gourmet, but sitting on my deck, cooking some food, drinking a beer, is a pretty good life if you ask me. We have a store here in Des Moines that really does have a great selection of meat. With all due respect to my former in-laws who have a grocery store with a butcher shop (it's excellent), I go to Fareway because its on my way home and the New York strips are to die for. So I get my steaks and I'm in line to check out, which of course is the slowest moving line of them all. When I go to the store with Marcy, I make her pick the line because I guarantee I will pick the molasses line. So I'm standing in my non moving line, when I notice the line 2 registers away has nobody in it. I've fallen for the "empty line" before, where you leave your line only to find out that the person in the "open" line is just admiring the cash register and not actually waiting to help anyone. Now you have lost your spot in line, so you can either slink to the back of the line like an idiot (everyone else has moved up your body void and look the other way when you try to make eye contact to see if you can get your spot back), or you can act like you forgot something, make a lap around the store and try to find a different line further down away from the snickers, that's laughter not the candy bar. I notice out of the corner of my eye that there is a line, with an employee standing there, that appears to be open. I look over hopefully and I hear the girl say something but I can't quite hear her. Now I'm looking right at her, trying to pick up her conversation to see if she says anything that makes me believe she is working. She says something again and I notice she is slightly cross eyed and is actually talking to me. Apparently she is telling me she can help me and I'm just staring at her like a freak. I walk over and give her my steaks to ring up, but I'm slightly embarrassed because I'm pretty sure she knows why I didn't respond. After all, she wasn't looking at me, as far as I could tell.



When I get home, I'm trying to cook the steaks, plus some chicken kabobs and clean the house, all at the same time. We are having two kids from Gallup NM stay the night with us and I'd like them to be able to walk to their room with out any safety gear. Max doesn't think that is necessary, so he keeps adding to the mess as I subtract from it. The steaks are cooking, I'm scrubbing a toilet, when I see smoke coming from the grill. I wash my hands and run out, lifting the lid so the smoke rolls out and notice that my steaks are on fire. This is not a good thing since I'm not actually trying to make them Cajun. I move them up and let the fire burn out and head off to do the rest of my business. After awhile, I notice the steaks are on fire again. This is not turning out to be my best grill night. I get the fire out and after 2 fires, they still don't look too bad. As I cut into them, I thank God for making up cows and all of their tasty goodness. And for making Fareway.

Drive thru etiquette

I've touched on some of my drive thru experiences at fast food places, but I saw something today that reminded me of a few more.

1. After placing your order, if there are no cars immediately in front of you, go ahead and pull up somewhere near the car that is in front of you. I got behind grandpa today, who after placing his order, decided to pull up about 25 feet short of the guy in front of him. Wouldn't be a big deal, but seeing him pull forward, I pulled up to place my order to find myself only able to pull the front fender of my car to the speaker. This in turn signaled to the lady inside that I was ready to order, which I was, but now I need to yell my order since my window is closer to the dumpster than it is the speaker. Pull up, that's all I'm saying.

2. While waiting for the person to take your order, try to refrain from spitting or putting your chewed gum on the speaker or the box that the speaker is in. Most places have a trash can accessible from your car, see if you can get it in there. I don't know how many times I've looked out my window to order, only to see a nice, semi frozen loogie, hanging from the speaker. I know it's kids, I'm assuming some 80 year old lady isn't coughing these things up and firing them out the window, but I could be wrong.

3. If you pull up to a McDonald's drive thru, you have exactly 30 seconds to figure out what you want. I mean, the menu doesn't change on a daily basis, you know what they have. You wouldn't be going there if you didn't know what they had and I'm guessing you thought, "Hey, I'd like a Big Mac," not "Hey, I think I'll drive to McDonald's and see what looks good." Come on, order and move on, I've got some grease to eat.

These are the only one's I can come up with right now, but I'm sure I'll see more next time I go. If you have one, put it in the comments section.