Lost in Iowa

I know, I know.

2011-11-13T18:20:00.004-06:00

First, let me start out by saying, I'm pathetic. I'm a simple, boring, childish man. I know this for one simple reason, and that is because I'm going to write about White Castle, again. I am now in Chicago, staying at a hotel I stayed at 2 years ago. This year, there is one important difference. That difference is, I did a search to find the closest White Castle to this hotel, and was happy to learn there is one .8 miles away. I all ready ate there and had only been in town for one hour. I think that because 5 of the past 10 posts have mentioned the WC, I have a problem. There would be no issue if I planned all trips around a disc golf course, which I love to play, but that I work everything around a fast food restaurant, is both sad and probably dangerous. I'm all ready not skinny, so these frequent trips to a place that is not only unhealthy, but also reeks havoc on my gastrointestinal track, is a sad state of my life. Will I change anything regarding this scary obsession? Not likely.

I decided to drive here, about 5 hours, instead of flying so I could avoid 2 airports, security and being trapped in a tube with sick people. It never fails that I end up sitting next to Carol Cough on every flight. My last trip from Akron, was finished off with a 45 minute flight next to a lady that sneezed and coughed the whole flight. I was kind of hoping those little masks would drop out of the bulkhead so I could breath some fresh air, but no luck. I'm not a nosey person, but I watched as this lady took breaks from her germathon to circle and highlight damn near an entire book. She kept underlining and circling and writing all over the book she was reading. At some point, don't you just give up on highlighting the entire book, and just say "The whole book is important." I hope it was her book or the next person to try and read it, will be confused and distracted.

While traveling by plane, I really like to people watch. It's one of the reasons I don't mind getting to the airport a little early. If you keep your eyes open, you can see alot. Here are a few things I remember from my travels over the past two months.

I heard a dad in the Houston airport, tell his kid that jet lag would go away in a few minutes. I'm not sure if he has no idea what jet lag is, or if he was just trying to calm his son.

I heard the same kid that was being duped by his father on the jet lag thing, call his brother a "Fucker" on two occasions. The kid was maybe 12 years old.

I listened to two ladies, probably in their 40's, try to figure out Angry Birds on their phone. It was funny to hear them discuss the strategy in flinging the birds, but they were way off. It was hard to listen to them, and not run over and take the phone away and show them how you REALLY do it.

A guy got on the plane in Houston and was so drunk, they tossed him from the plane. I knew he was in trouble when the medical staff came on board and asked him where he was, and he said Des Moines. Oooops. That is your destination, not your current location.

As I sat in one of my planes, waiting to taxi, it began to snow inside the plane. No lie, there were flakes of snow blowing out of the air conditioner and started to accumulate on my leg. Maybe it never got measurable, but still, it shouldn't be snowing inside.

One flight had the flight attendant slamming the overhead door 10 to 12 times, because it wouldn't latch. That's fun when it is right by your head and she decides she is determined to get this thing to close, but this method only. Not move things that might be blocking or check to see if the latching mechanism is stuck, no, lets just whack-a-mole this thing until it stays shut or falls off the hinges. It finally shut.

Question. When did flight attendants stop being friendly? I remember as a kid, flight attendants were nice, helpful and always had a smile. Today's flight attendants don't smile, seem to all hate their jobs and act like everyone on the plane is 2 seconds away from snapping and tossing their complimentary Coke right in their face. Can we crack a smile, or say something that is sincere and not the canned "Bubbye, bubbye, bubbye"? (I'm not sure how to punctuate that sentence, since the last bubbye isn't a question, so I put the question mark on the outside of the quotes, but that doesn't look right. Please pray for my kids, dad will surely get them an F in English class.)

And my favorite story from the airport, involved this couple:

I saw this couple in the Houston while I was waiting for my flight back to Des Moines. What caught my attention was, firstly, they looked so cute. So nicely dressed and both looked so sweet I just wanted to give them both a hug. I learned my lesson last time, unsolicited hugs in an airport gets you a visit with the TSA. I tried to explain that a hug is not the same as a bomb in your underwear, but they weren't hearing it. I watched as Dorthy pulled out a bag and began to divide the contents inside between the two of them. There were two sandwiches, a bag of apple slices and some cheese. I watched as they shared their lunch together and again, wanted to give them both a hug. I know her name was Dorthy, because it was hand written on the bag they were eating out of. As they ate, they whispered to each other and he was obviously funny, because she giggled repeatedly and he smiled, knowing he still had it. Again, my mind is screaming to run over and hug them. Finally, Dorthy noticed that I was watching them and said to me, "Stop staring at us, you fucking pervert!" So sweet. But I decided against the hug.

OK, maybe she didn't say anything to me, but I so wanted to hear a second old lady cuss that I almost coaxed it out of her. Honestly, I got a warm feeling in my heart as I watched them. I imagined that they have probably been married for years, and obviously still love each other. It made my day. I hope that when I'm there age, which doesn't seem to be that far off, that Marcy and I will look that cute, as we board a plane for destinations unknown. Mainly because my mind will be numb by then and I will have no idea where I am going. Maybe that isn't such a bad thing.

Hey granny, watch your mouth.

2011-10-20T21:55:00.000-05:00

When I travel, I love to watch the people. I’m always fascinated to see what people will try to get through the security check. In LA a few years back, the TSA people were very interested in what a lady had in her bag, so I watched as they opened it and pulled enough electronics to open a Radio Shack, including one of those old fax machines with a phone receiver on the side. Not sure why that material couldn’t be shipped, or checked in with her other luggage, but it amused me. Almost every time I travel, I see someone get busted trying to get a bottle of water through. Even with 30 signs and recorded voice messages blaring every five minutes throughout the airport, they feel this rule doesn’t apply to them. Today, the lady in front of me INSISTED she didn’t have a bottle of water that they just saw on the x-ray. They started pulling her bag apart and showed it to her. She claims she didn’t know how it got in there. OK, is this one of the people we need to go over the “Did someone, other than you, pack your bag?” I always thought that was a stupid question, but now I want this lady pulled aside and strip searched, just to be sure she doesn’t have any explosives she “didn’t know about.”
My favorite thing from today was when the airport personnel wheeled a little old lady to the terminal and parked her just across from me. She appeared to be in her 80’s. She tried to strike up a conversation with a lady sitting near her, but the lady said she spoke very little English, just French. That didn’t stop grandma from continuing her conversation with Frenchy. Grandma said, and I quote, ”This is the first time they let me leave my shoes on at security. They usually make me take them off and they are a bitch to put back on.” Now maybe your grandma cusses, but mine didn’t, so I damn near shit myself when I heard her. My grandmas were very sweet and proper and I don’t think I ever heard either of them say anything stronger than “shoot.” This little tidbit made my whole trip.

I usually roam through the gift shop of every airport I’m in, if I have time. That includes the Des Moines airport, as I leave. I’m usually at the airport way too early, paranoid I will miss my flight, so time is rarely an issue. Today I watched as a man, probably in his 60’s, moved every black cover from the dirty magazines so he could sneak a peek. He didn’t choose one, but that would have made a good photo if I could have got him to pose with it. I always buy a Coke after the security checkpoint, since they find the bottle I’m trying to sneak in every time. The rules shouldn’t apply to my precious Coke.

The last couple of times I have flown out of DSM, I went out of the B terminal, but today I got to depart from the A terminal, which was recently redone. I think they did a pretty good job. They added a bunch of chairs that have power outlets built in. They have network USB outlets as well, but I’m not risking my work computer by trying it out. Not sure what it does, but curiosity is not going to kill this cat. I looked to see if they had free wireless, but no go. I did find a “Hotspot” that was unsecure and thought about trying to connect, but I’m too chicken.

It’s was a beautiful day in Des Moines, sunny and in the 40’s, which is fine by me. It was a little windy, so my hair was a mess by the time I got to the terminal. I forgot that the DSM airport is also in the midst of a major redo in other parts, so now they have a second floor enclosed walkway to get from the parking garage to the terminal. Now it won’t be nearly as cold getting inside during the winter. I have to say, for a small airport, it is really nice. If I had to compare to the other airports that I have been in, to this one, DSM would be in my top 5. Another nice one is the Minneapolis airport, which I was in a few years back. The other airports I was in today were Chicago and Akron/Canton. Yes, I’m in Akron Ohio, don’t be jealous. It’s rainy and cold here and the temps are supposed to be lower than at home. That sucks, would like to be home on the nice days. I’m only here for a few days, so I better soak up Ohio.

Father of the Year, and other crap.

2011-10-09T16:54:00.003-05:00

I told this story to my sister-in-law the other day, and she felt it was worthy of a post, so here it is.

Makiah is really into playing football right now. He plays with his friends every day after school. He loves to go in the front yard and play catch, so we do it often. The neighbor kids come up and I'm throwing the ball to 5 kids, who are knocking each other out to get the ball. They play during recess at school, so one of the neighbor kids took his ball to school. I happen to be picking the kids up from school that day, all three of mine and the three neighbor kids. While I'm on the playground, waiting for all six to show up, Makiah gets the football and wants me to throw it too him. He takes off across the playground, and I do the typical guy thing, and have him go deep. I can throw it far, right? He runs about 20 yards out and I give the ball a chuck, and drill him right in the eye. Now he is trying to not cry, all the while holding his eye and walking back to me. He holds back the tears, and we load up the van and head home. He thinks he needs an ice pack, but I distract him with the promise to play catch in the front yard. We head out, the neighbor kids show up, and we start to play again. It's a lot of fun, and the game is going well, until I plunk him in the eye again. Again he holds back the tears, but if he ever goes blind in one eye, you might be able to look back on that day as the cause. My Father of the Year award has been put on hold.

Just to prove that I will point out my own dipshit moves, as well as those around me, I will share one of my biggest dumbass moves in quite awhile. I went to lunch with a few coworkers on Friday, and one of them drove. I volunteered to ride in the backseat of his truck. It is usually difficult for me to ride in backseats because of my long legs, but I seem to always end up in the front, so I figured it was my turn. When we arrived at the restaurant, I was trying to figure out how to pry myself out of the truck and knew I needed leverage. I grabbed the door jamb and started to pull myself out, when the front seat rider closed his door, which shared the same jamb I'm currently using. Yes, now my hand has been slammed in the door. I think I yelped like a beaten puppy, but I can't say for sure. I tried to pull my fingers out of the bear trap, but nothing. I have now began my "My fingers are in the door" cry, which my front seat mate hears and begins to pull frantically on the door, which is locked. The driver has begun his walk into the restaurant, keys in his pocket, when he hears the front seat guy yell to unlock the door. The driver is fumbling for his keys and not really sure why, so I reach into the front seat to free myself. I try to grab the lock to manually undo it, but it's one of the new cars that when locked, the knob is virtually inside the door. This makes it hard for a thief to use a coat hanger to unlock, but when you are an idiot with your fingers slammed in a door, it's a bit frustrating. I'm able to get enough of a grip on the lock, lift it and my front seat mate finally releases the metal death grip on my phalanges. From the get go, I didn't think anything was broken, and I still don't, but the "bad finger" is purple and sore. The other fingers had deep grooves on them on Friday, but they all seem fine now. I felt like a 5 year old, getting their fingers closed in a door, which I have seen. The difference? Their fingers are small and their bones aren't brittle. I got lucky.

Houston, we have a, well, a sight.

2011-09-18T20:13:00.003-05:00

So here I sit in my luxury Hilton Hotel room, eating my room service pizza and watching Sunday night football. There are no kids, so it is quiet. Marcy isn't here, so the thermostat is set at 65 degrees, and I'm considering moving it down to 63 degrees. Do I like to travel? Yes and no. Yes, because of the things above, but no cause I actually miss my family. And, because I like to go into work. I keep caught up on my work and I like my co-workers. The main thing I like about my work trips is, I get to meet the people I normally work with via email and phone, in person. I get to get my hands on my inventory, so I can be certain that all is good in the world. Most people complain about the travel part, but I have been pretty lucky. I did miss a connecting flight in St. Louis once, the last flight to Des Moines for the evening, and had to drive home at 3am. That wasn't fun. I have never lost my luggage, knock on wood, and haven't been bumped and my plane has never crashed. What I have gotten, is entertainment.

My trip started off at the kiosk you now have to use to check in to your flight, since there are only 3 people working in the entire Des Moines airport, they typically focus on fueling up the planes and throwing luggage around. When I got to the kiosk, there was a couple, man and woman, who were traveling together, but were each at a different kiosk. I waited as they struggled to figure it out. I was about to push them out of the way, but the lady finally gave up and let me go, while the guy raised his hand like he was in kindergarten and the teacher was going to ask him what he needed. I checked my bag and got the heck out of there before he started looking over my shoulder to see how to work the dang thing. DON'T CHEAT! Figure it out on your own. I got up to security, which in Des Moines, is typically a 10 to 20 minute process, but usually 10. They only had one line open so we were headed for a 20 minute line, when a miracle happened, they opened a second line. Wow, that was a first. The people in front of me poured to the new line, so when it came to me, I had to decide, move to the new line or stick with the old one. I chose old one. Wrong choice. Not because the line was slow, but the lady in front of me was showing me parts of her anatomy I didn't need to see. When I got into the line, she was wearing a coat, like a suit coat. I was busy taking my shoes off when she removed the coat, so I missed the tease part of the strip tease. When I looked up, I saw that this lady, who was a bit overweight, had removed the coat and was wearing a "shirt" that didn't have a back. It had like straps that were holding it "closed" but there was a ton of skin. How do I say this? She had back boobs. I hope I'm not breaking any news to you, but if you get overweight, you can develop boobs, on your back. They aren't real boobs, so I don't think she was breaking any laws, but wow, that is a shocker to look up to. Who the hell wears a shirt with no back, let alone on a plane? People watching is my favorite thing to do at an airport. What people choose to wear, fascinates me.

My flight is on time, so we board. I have to almost crawl to get in this tiny plane, but I find my seat and sit down, just as my window mate shows up so I have to get back up and bang my head on the roof again. Flight takes off, seat belt light goes off and my seat mate has to pee. I let him out, cram my legs back into my seat and wait for him to get back. I pry myself out of the seat to allow him back in, then squeeze back into my seat. About 10 minutes later, he decides he needs something out of the overhead, so we go through the routine again. It's a 2 hour flight dude, get the shit you need and sit down. No upsie downsie. The other problem with these tiny planes, the dude next to me was about my height, so we played footsie all the way to Houston and his hairy ass arm was hogging the arm rest. This plane has 2 seats on one side and one seat on the other. I try to get the one seat whenever I can, but couldn't on this trip. On my flight back, I have the single seat.

Before you take off, the flight attendant always gives you the safety speech. I stopped listening to it years ago. I think I know what to do. If the mask drops, scream "we are all going to die," remove your seat belt and proceed to run up and down the aisle ripping all the masks out. I might have mis-understood the directions, but that is the gist of it. I'm not listening to the lady today, but out of the corner of my ear (is that a saying?) I thought I heard her say something about asparagus. Surely she didn't, but maybe she was trying to see if ANYONE was listening. There was no reaction from the rest of the plane, so she either didn't say it, or nobody was listening.

When I travel, I try to dress to be comfortable. I watched a show years ago that said you should always wear long pants and tennis shoes on planes. The long pants protect your legs if there is an accident and the tennis shoes so you can do wind sprints on the movable sidewalk that is in so many airports now. OK, that isn't right, it's actually because a sandal exposes your toes, if there is an accident, and flip flops can come off and if you have to run over fiery wreckage once you have been de-flip flopped, it can hurt. All of this is to cover your ass on a worse case scenario, but jeans and tennis shoes is how I want to dress anyway. Since the weather in Houston is in the 90's, I wore short sleeves. I also don't get could easily, so I'm usually good. A lady who sat two rows up from me, apparently, doesn't have the same temperature tolerance that I do. She was wearing a stocking cap that looked like one of those sock monkeys. It was pulled down over her ears and it was hilarious. Looked like she was heading to Alaska in February.

When we got to Houston, I was waiting for my luggage when I watched a guy grab a suitcase and moved it a bit, so he could get the handle of his suitcase. A guy right behind him, angerly told him not to touch his suitcase, seeing as the case that guy one touched, was guy two's. It seemed a little harsh, seeing as how guy one didn't chuck the case across the airport, he barely moved it. I guess travel makes some people a bit edgy.

I had a little luck on my side as well. I was standing in line for a cab to go to the hotel, when a van pulled up with one of those scrolleing message boards on the side that listed my hotel. I knew my hotel had a shuttle, but when I tried to call from the booth, I sat on the phone for 5 minutes and nobody ever picked up. I decided to take a cab, until this little miracle pulled up. I checked with the guy, he said he did go to my hotel, so I skipped the long taxi line. I'm glad I was able to find the shuttle, my hotel was farther than I thought and it saved my company some money.

All in all, a good trip. I'm off to my warehouse in the morning and will probably sweat like crazy in the 90 degree, un-airconditioned, Texas warehouse, so wish me luck.

Random pictures, hilarious comments

2011-09-05T21:01:00.010-05:00

I always new there was a reason I had three kids. Now don't get me wrong, I love the them, but normally, they spend most of their days at home making messes. Their idea of cleaning them up, isn't on the same scale as mine, but they try, sort of. The reason I had kids? So someday, they can do the jobs around the house that I don't really want to do. That is why my parents had me, but as a kid, I never really appreciated all that they did, so I never quite got the whole having kids thing. I thought they were lazy, turns out they were just smart. My kids aren't very old, but they are just old enough to think helping daddy around the house is fun. I'll milk this until they are fully trained, then BAM! it's their job. My plan is moving along just swell. Here is Makiah mowing the grass.

You can see that he appears to be struggling, which he was. I keep cheering him on, and pulling the mower back into line. It seems that when you push with all your might, you tend to lean to your strong side. The lines in the yard aren't exactly straight, but if you look closely, half of the grass is dormant, so whatever. I didn't take very good care of the grass this year, so it's a bit weedy and a lot dry. Hey, Iowa is the Alaskan tundra in the winter and the Arizona desert in the summer. Just so Makiah didn't feel like he was having all the fun, I had Max working as well.

This is our pool, that he is power washing the mud off the bottom so I can roll it up and put it in the garage for the winter. Then, next spring, I will roll it back out and spend several hours looking for holes that happened when we power washed it and rolled it up. WTF! Mason hasn't exactly jumped on the bandwagon yet, but I'm dreaming up some jobs for him.

I found this picture from earlier this summer.

Now this picture cracks me up. Mason is holding my BB pistol and Makiah is holding my Red Ryder, single pump, BB rifle, the same gun from A Christmas Story. I have not shot my eye out, but the kids will at some point and Marcy will give me the "I told you so" speech. Bring it. I'm working with them on gun safety, with guns that probably won't kill them if they break a rule. Since both guns are single pump, that means two things. One, they can't pump either one of them, so I have to do it, so I always know when we are live. Two, since they are both single pump, not a lot of power. We shoot cans in the backyard, with my wood privacy fence behind the cans to stop the strays. The first time we ever shot them, two summers ago, Makiah was a dead eye. He hit the cans with every pull of the trigger. The cans were about 30 feet away, so not bad for his first attempt. This year, his eye is no longer dead. We could have thrown a handful of BB's and had the same result. Oh well, they haven't shot me or each other, or an animal, so we are good.

I found this shot that I took as I passed a car on the way home.

If you see that white dot, just to the bottom left of the gas door, that is her gas cap dangling there. Not sure why I thought this was funny but I did, and do. Maybe because I have never done it. I never lost a gas cap, when they weren't attached, back in the day. Now that I've said that, this will happen to me. There appears to be something under the wheel as well, but I'm not sure what it was. I would have gotten a better look, but I hadn't looked at the road in a few minutes trying to get this shot, so I thought I might take a gander at where I was in the traffic. Safety first.

Another shot happened near my office.

This is probably hard to see, but it is burned into my brain, so let me describe. This truck is all decked out. It has the huge CB antenna. It has large wheels. It has fricking smoke stacks on both sides of the cab. It sounds like across between a Harley motorcycle and a funny car. A deep rumble. Then, to top it off, it has a Rascal Scooter strapped to the back. Hilarious. At least if his truck breaks down, he can continue his trip and a whopping 3 1/2 mph.

And finally, I took this picture on my last trip to White Castle and was going to sign off my last post about the WC with it. Well I forgot, so let me sign off this post, with a very sad shot.

That was close!

2011-09-03T14:17:00.003-05:00

Have you ever had something that shook you, and I mean shook you to your core? Well I had that happen to me last Sunday. Marcy works with a lady who lives on an apple orchard. They have about 1000 trees on their property, but don't pick or sell the apples. I got the impression that they have a lot of family and friends that come out and pick them, but they must leave a bunch that just don't get eaten. It was Sunday morning, and we decided to head to the orchard to pick some. Now the weather outside was frightful, OK, not frightful but as I was typing the first part of that sentence, the song just jumped in. It was a cloudy day, appeared to want to rain, but we were determined to get a bunch of apples, the rain be damned. We found the orchard, about 10 minutes from our house, and hit the trees to get our bounty. It started to sprinkle, but what I've always tried to teach the boys is, a little rain won't hurt you, it's the lightning that will sting a bit. There were apples every where. I tried to convince the boys, that just because the apples were low enough on the tree that they could reach them, didn't mean they needed to be picked. The first bunch of apples picked were the size of golf balls. I reminded them, the bigger the better. (glad I said it and not Marcy) They started passing on the golf balls, and started picking reasonable apples. Then we went over the condition of the apple. "Don't put an apple that is half rotten in with the other apples," I said. All three boys had either a bag or bucket to carry their treasure, and they were starting to fill up, well, some were. After walking around for about 15 minutes, I noticed that Mason had one lonely apple in his bag. I asked him why he only had one, and he said it was perfect, and he was only picking perfect apples. I wished him luck. The friend of Marcy's said that there were bigger apples on the other side of the road, so we headed over there, and she was right. As we crossed the road, the rain picked up. We were all ready soaked, so why stop now. After just a few minutes looking for bigger apples, it happened. My memory is a little foggy, but what I remember is a flash of light. Not from a flashlight, or from a camera, but more like the sun just landed in a farm field in Iowa. It was bright. That scared me, but the BOOM that followed just about cause my bowels to release. To say I was startled, would be an understatement. Like saying Katrina was a big storm, yeah, no shit. As soon as the boom happened, I knew that lightning had just struck nearby. My first reaction? RUN!!!! I yelled to the kids, who were now all crying, RUN!!!!!! And they did, but the little bastards dropped their apples, so I yelled to get your apples. Looking back, was that wrong? Should I have nearly sacrificed one of my offspring so I could pack an apple in my lunch? Huh, maybe, but at the time, "Get your apples." They took their hands off of the ears just long enough to pick up their apple bags in their now shaking hands, and run, still crying, to the van. Now my sprint, which wouldn't exactly be one for the books, consisted of a 6 foot 4 inch, slightly over weight, 42 year old, slightly frightened man, running at full speed, bent at the waist to get under the branches and trying not to turn an ankle on all of the previously fallen apples. I was doing my best to get around the trees and not running into one of my kids and knocking him down in his terrified state, loosing any chance of father of the year. BUT, they were on their own. I can't run my 6 foot 4 inch, slightly over weight, 42 year old, slightly frightened body, running at full speed, bent at the waist to get under the branches and trying not to turn an ankle on all of the previously fallen apples AND carry a crying 5 or 9 year old. Mason was at the van, so one kid was safe. Marcy was running at my left, van to my right, so her chances of beating me to the van were next to zero. I love her, but I'm not above smashing her to the ground so I get my butt into the van before the next lightning strike. I knew I had a little time, but mother nature has no rules on the amount of time between strikes, so I wasn't going to rely on history. I'm happy to say that we all made it to the van and I didn't have to sacrifice any kid or my wife, to be safe. We drove up to the house, and were greeted by Marcy's friend and her daughters, who had been riding a four wheeler around when the strike happened. The pointed out where it had struck, since they had a front row seat to the actual landing zone. It appears the strike hit about 300 yards from where there are now 4 or 5 pee stains. A little too close for comfort. As a storm rolled in today, Makiah was in the house at the first flash of light. I think he has a new respect.

Bucket

2011-08-20T10:23:00.000-05:00

So I mentioned awhile back that I didn't have an actual bucket list, but I think they can be good ideas, as long as you don't see your life as a failure if you don't accomplish your list. Marcy and I started discussing our mental lists on the way to MN and realized that most of our list was comprised of travel, which is probably common. Although I don't actually have the list written down yet, I'm thinking I will just add a menu choice of "Bucket List" on this blog and add as I think of them. Seeing as how my memory isn't always what I want it to be, this will help me to remember my choices.

First off, I want to take a 2 week vacation, with no agenda, no destination and not even a direction. Load up the car and roll the dice. Roll a one, you go North, roll a two, you go east and so on. You say there are six sides to a dice and four directions, well then, plug something into the other numbers regarding roads that leave from your current spot. Is there a road that goes NE from where you are? That's a five on the dice. I think you get the point. Now, to figure out where to go, hit the next visitors center and start pulling brochures, or cheap hotels have the brochures as well, like the Super 4 we stayed in the other night. Ask the kids, what do you want to see? The worlds biggest ball of twine? Lets go. Can you imagine the blog posts I would have for a vacation filled with the worlds biggest this and the worlds smallest that? If you don't have an agenda, there isn't as much pressure to be "there" or see "that." Would it work? No idea, but it sounds like fun to me. My kids might not see the thrill in it, but if they are helping in the decisions, maybe they would enjoy it. "Where are you going on vacation?" Where ever the road, and dice, take us.

There are several places in the US that I want to see, the Grand Canyon from the ground, Glacier National Park, and Alaska. Those are the ones I have thought of so far, but I'm sure I will remember more that I have read about before and have just forgotten.

I've all ready cleared some off my list, and even did a few things that I would have had on my list, if I had had one. I've been to Hawaii, which definitely would have been on my list. I went to South Africa and got to ride around in an open air jeep with lions all around. I walked up to a Cape Buffalo, one of the big five African animals, and didn't shit myself. OK, maybe a little, but we were close and that was one big ass animal. That was probably something I never would have put on my list, because I would have though it was out of reach. I guess that isn't the point of the list, maybe you should shoot for the moon. Maybe not the moon, although that might not be out of the question soon. I was excited to hear what Marcy's list would look like as well. I was happy to hear we both had Grand Canyon and Alaska on our list and she had a different national park, but we are in the same category anyway. She liked my roll the dice vacation, so maybe I will start to refine that idea, so if we ever have the money to do it, we can. Now that I'm learning her list, I hope to be able to make some of those come true. I hope my surprise trip to Hawaii knocked a entry off her list. I know she would love to go to South Africa, and since I now have a connection to make that happen, the money is all that separates her from a pant load of crap after she sees what I saw.

Lesson learned.

2011-08-19T07:48:00.003-05:00

So our hotel last night, which turned out to only be a 4 on the super scale instead of an 8, was close to the Mall of America. We decided to head over to the mall and find a place to eat. Largest mall in America, surely we can find a place to eat. We ended up at the Rainforest Cafe. If you've never been to one, they are all right. Food isn't bad, although expensive, and the atmosphere is pretty cool for kids, which we were without, so not nearly as impressive as it would have been. Their mascot is a frog, which Marcy loves, so we can at least go through the gift shop and see 100 things Marcy would like to have, but not buy. So I titled this post "Lesson Learned," so what did I learn? Well this place has large fish tanks all over the restaurant, and our table pushed up against one. Here is my dinner view:

As you can see, not bad. I like the blue fish, no idea what they are called, but they relax me with their smooth swimming and soothing blue color. OK, it's a fish, it's mesmerizing to watch them, I think I dozed off three times at dinner. So this seat just appears to be the best in the house, which is what the waiter said when he sat us there, but I'm here to tell you, not the best seat. Why you may be asking yourself? Well, because every kid in that restaurant wants to come see fricking Nemo, who is a foot from my dinner plate. The whole meal I have kids standing right behind my chair, openly praying that they might be able to find Nemo in this tank of fish. My mind wanted to comment to Marcy after we began eating "This fried Nemo is the best." Somehow I don't think my comment about eating their favorite movie character would have gone over well, so I stifled the urge. Along with these kids, came the parents, so I really felt I was in some slow, small, eating contest. I mean I had an audience, all be it not all of them were looking at me, but it sure as hell felt like it. One of the kids brought his grandma over and they were at the edge of the tank in front of me, so every bite I took, I'm looking into her eyes. I wanted to say, "Hey granny, divert your eyes and get junior out of here so I can continue my inappropriate conversation with my wife!" I can't have a conversation like that at home with my kids around, so we wait until we are in another state and someone else's kids are around. Maybe our conversation wasn't inappropriate, but if I think you are listening, I just might turn it that way. This is also one of those restaurant's that make a ruckus and sings to you on your birthday, which I hate. Not so much when they do it to someone else, but I don't want some waiter singing a birthday song to me and I don't want to be at the table if they are singing to someone else. I told Marcy if they come back out, they had all ready been out twice, that I wanted her to jump into the group of waiter/waitresses and start singing along. They can't kick you out for that, can they? That would make for a great blog story, but an embarrassing police report. They didn't come back out, so the world missed out on Marcy's public singing, but there is always next time. All in all, not a bad meal, but if you ever go to a theme restaurant, without kids, and the waiter says "This is my favorite table," ask to be moved. You are welcome.

Not again.

2011-08-18T15:42:00.002-05:00

Oh yes, again.

I can't help it, I have an addiction. I have no idea why, as soon as I hit the Twin Cities, I start jonesing for a Slider. I made Marcy take this picture just so I could post it on Facebook to gross out one friend and sent it via my phone to my brother Brian and a co-worker. I tried to get Marcy to let me take a picture of her fake eating one, but I don't think she could get the burger near her face without gagging. She doesn't eat meat, which I'm not sure what is on a Slider could technically called meat, but it's close. Like John Capparulo says, "It's playing the fucking part." So as you can tell, I'm back in Minneapolis for a quick trip, then heading home tomorrow. We are staying in a fancy hotel tonight, I think it is a Super 8, which I think means on the super scale, its an 8. Not bad, that's how we roll. I didn't bring my tux, so I hope they don't look at me funny when I stroll through the lobby.

On our drive up, we were passed by four motorcycles that said "Patriot Guard." I see them on TV all the time, escorting our fallen soldiers with Old Glory flying high. It puts a lump in my throat and a tear in my eye every time. I wasn't sure if it was them until they were passed, or I would have made a lame attempt to show them I was proud of what they do. I'm not sure if other countries have the same kind of group, but they should. The best thing I have ever seen them do, is stand between the protesters from that church in Crazyass, OK, or where ever they are from, and the mourners of a soldiers funeral. I know they have their beliefs, and their rights, but I wish an out of control semi would take them all out the next time they protest one of our men/women in uniform. So this group passes us and all I can do is hope they are at the next stop we are at so I can take a picture of them and thank them. Next stop, no luck. As we start up again, I see a few more, then we go under an overpass and I see a firetruck covered in flags parked above. The fireman were out, so I knew the funeral procession was coming from behind us. We passed 5 or 6 more firetrucks, flags a flying, and my heart pounded. THIS is true American pride. I'm a big fan of America and this was about as good of a display as I had ever seen. I so badly wanted to stop and stand on that overpass and place my hand on my heart as our hero passed under me. Time didn't permit it, but it was on my heart and that soldiers family, who ever they were, are in my prayers. God Bless the men and women who fight for us, and God Bless America!

I had, the time of my life.

2011-08-15T18:05:00.004-05:00

Saturday night, I spent the evening with a bunch of people I worked with 10 years ago, or more. This company was my first "real" job, whatever that means. I'm pretty sure the hours I spent at Taco Bell, serving tacos to the inebriated is considered a real job, but since I had no intention of it being my career, I always looked at it as a temporary stop on my road of life. I lucked into my job at CE, my best friends mom worked there and knew they were looking for someone in their production area to label computer diskettes and pack programs into boxes to ship to customers. It wasn't rocket science, but it got my foot in the door. I put in 15 years at the most fun place I've ever worked at. So Saturday night, a group of former CE employees got together to reminisce and catch up. I remember so many funny stories that one night wasn't enough to get them all back out. Of course, there were a bunch I had forgotten and enjoyed the refresher. Here's a few samples:

Here in Des Monies, there use to be a place called Big Daddy's BBQ. Now Big Daddy was know for making some incredible sauce, HOT sauce. So when a new guy joined the CE team, and started bragging about how hot he liked his food, it was suggested that he be taken to Big Daddy's and taught a lesson. The next time I saw that guy, he had black circles around his eyes and looked like he was dead, up until he came back to life and came to work. I asked him what happened and he said he was in the hospital because after he ate 1/2 of the sandwich at Big Daddy's, he threw up so much he burst the blood vessels around his eyes. He told me he still wasn't right, on the stomach and pooper side, but at least his tongue wasn't numb anymore. What a glass is half full kind of guy. There was one thing I learned from that. Don't challenge Big Daddy. You will loose.

My favorite story EVER from CE, was when we had a computer programmer visiting us from China. He was leaving our building for lunch with a bunch of other programmers. He came down the stairs and made a sharp left turn to head out the door to the parking lot. Unfortunately, the doors were not located at the sharp left location he was attempting to exit. No, the doors were actually about six feet to his right. So where did he attempt to exit? Through a 8 foot by 12 foot sheet of glass, which thankfully did not shatter when he smashed his face into it at full speed. It sounded as though he hit it three times, perhaps his head was bouncing off the glass, but it sounded horrific. I happen to be upstairs, just out of view of the impact area, but as soon as I heard it, I ran out to look over the balcony, to see the guy run out to his lunch group like nothing happened. I asked the ladies at the front desk who appeared to be in shock. They told me what happened, so I headed over to the glass and found a perfect face print on the glass, including forehead, nose, cheeks, chin and even eyelashes. To say that he hit it hard would be the understatement of the year. I laughed so I hard I nearly pee'd myself, and I wasn't alone. I think productivity was done for the day.

There were tons more, like putting a motion activated recorder, that when placed behind a toilet, scares the crap out of people when they go to use that toilet and it says "I'm watching you." Removing the pins from the hinges on a door, so when the person opens that door, it comes off the hinges and smashes the guy in the face. Many things were shrunk wrapped, which if you don't know what that is, wrap something in Saran wrap, and then heating it until it is super tight. Now imagine everything on your desk being wrapped, individual pens, stapler, tape dispenser, keyboard, mouse and anything else we could get our hands on. We covered a guys office floor and chairs with computer diskette labels. It was actually pretty cool looking and the guy loved it. Taught him to lock his office when he went to lunch though. We boxed up a girls car when she left it in the parking lot and went out of town. We had several days to work on that one. We had a big snow one year and a guy had left his car in the parking lot. After the plow truck sort of buried his car, we got out our shovels and finished the job. His car was buried under 3 feet of snow, then we watered it so it was icy.

I slept at the office on numerous occasions. One night, we were working late and it was about 2am. The cleaning crew was just wrapping up and getting ready to leave. We had spoken to them several times, so they knew we were there. I was using the restroom, when I heard over the loud speaker, "You have violated a restricted area, the police have been notified." I thought that was odd, so I headed out to the alarm panel, just in time to see the cleaning people look at me, then run for the parking lot. Somehow, they had forgotten we were in the building and set the alarm on us. Nice.

Everyday at this place was an adventure. The thing I remember most was, it was a family. We were together so much, it was our home away from home. How do I know it was family. Ask anyone who worked there and they'll tell you the same thing. It was a unique place, nothing I had heard of before or after. What group has a work reunion, 10 years after it, in all honesty, died. Half the people at that reunion were either laid off or fired. You get laid off from a company, do you go back to see the people that did it? I suggest that this might be a first. Do you hug your co-workers? I did. Do you tell your co-workers that you love them? I did. Still do. It was a great time in my life, a time I will never forget. Plans are in the works for next years get togther, and I can't wait. Hopefully more people can make it and more stories can be shared.

Pepper soup, pepper pancakes and pepper pie.

2011-08-14T13:07:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure if I mentioned that we planted a garden again this year, but we did. This years attempt includes zucchini, tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, squash, cucumber, green peppers, yellow peppers, red peppers, jalapenos and sweet potatoes. We have had a pretty good year, with a few exceptions. The first garden we ever planted, we had so many cucumbers that I was hauling several a day to work to give to co-workers. The next 2 years, next to nothing. The first year we had a bunch of tomatoes, but none turned red, so basically a flop. The first couple of years we have had a few green peppers per plant, but not as many as we want, so this year we planted 4 green pepper plants, a yellow and a red. The green pepper plants, at today's viewing, have approximately 10,000 peppers growing. That might be a bit overstated, but there are a ton. I might just be hauling these in to work, if they grow big enough and we can't keep up with eating them. We are going to have to get creative in our recipes and include peppers in everything. Do you think the boys will eat peppers in their cereal? The yellow pepper plant has 2 yellow peppers and a bunch that are still green and growing. The red pepper plant waited the whole summer to give off its first pepper, so it better be good. The cucumbers are a huge disappointment. We have 4 plants and have gotten a total of 2 good cucumbers and one shitty one. I'm not sure what the deal is, except for that the sweet potato plants are right by them, so maybe that has something to do with it. We learn new things every year and try to incorporate that into next years garden. For instance, the zucchini plant grew so big, it smothered the life out of 2 squash plants, killing them. We got bugs that ate the few squash fruit from another plant, before I even noticed they were there. The jalapeno plant is plugging right along, producing just enough for me to eat and they aren't too hot. In fact, could be a bit hotter for my taste, but no complaints. I almost forgot, Max brought home a pumpkin plant that we planted in the garden with little hope of it doing anything. It has grown and wrapped itself all around the garden and now has 2 little pumpkins that are starting to grow. The problem is, the plant has attached itself to the top of my rabbit fence and when they start to get bigger, they are going to either fall off due to the weight, or they are going to rip my fence down. I've considered cutting the little grabber vines that caused the vine to be at the top of my fence, and then lay the vine on the ground. I need to figure out if that will hurt the plant if I cut all those little vines. They grow fast and hold tight, so it would take a bit of work. This vine grew about a foot a day for over a week and the grabber vines grew faster than that. I'm sure if you sat there and watched them at peak growing, you could see them move with the naked eye. My scheduled didn't permit me to sit and stare at my garden for a day, so I missed it. Should have gotten NatGeo to film it. All that being said, it's been a pretty good year so far. I'm anxious to see if the sweet potatoes come out and whether we get to avoid buying Halloween pumpkins, because we grew our own. A pumpkin with a fence growing through the middle of it will be hard to carve. Here is a shot of todays tomato harvest.

Excuse me? Are you serious?

2011-08-13T14:13:00.000-05:00

I just had to comment on an article I just read, about a kid who plotted and stabbed his teacher. The puzzling part of the article, was when the judge made a statement that just floored me. The defense attorneys ask for the teen to have a mental evaluation, which seemed reasonable to me. The judge agreed to the evaluation, and said, "to see if he is a threat to himself, or the community." Did I miss something? Didn't he all ready kill someone? I guess that isn't a threat, it's an action, so the statement is valid. OK, he killed someone, perhaps we should take away his "Happy camper" button and send him to his room, WITHOUT supper. Or maybe we should have a professional take a look at him. Yeah, lets do that one.

Add it to the list.

2011-08-12T14:00:00.001-05:00

Have you ever had one of those days when you are getting all pumped up for something that is happening that night, only to have the rug ripped out from under you and the whole thing goes into the crapper? Welcome to my Thursday night. I'd been looking forward to last nights concert from the day I heard about it. Got more excited when I purchased four tickets to attend the concert and spent all day Thursday at work talking about it. The concert, was Casting Crowns, which is one of mine and Marcy's favorite bands. We have probably seen them 12 times over the years, and never get tired of them. They are kind of our Grateful Dead, because we would, and have, traveled great distances to see them. Last night they were the opening band at the Iowa State Fair. Now the Fair Grandstand isn't my favorite place to see a concert, since the last time I saw them there, my seat was right behind a poll. That whole night, I could hear the lead singer, but could only see him if he ventured to the fringe of the stage. So you can tell I didn't get to go, and I'm guessing that you are slightly interested in why I couldn't go. I'm not full of myself so that I think you won't be able to sleep if I don't spill the beans, but I do know you will be disappointed in the reason, since it wasn't because I was arrested in a pre-concert road rage accident and it wasn't because something "better" came along. No, we missed the concert due to a sick kid. Not just sick, but strep, the fun one. What are you going to do? It's way to late to trade the kids in for a couple of ponies. No, we have them, for better or for worse, and last night was one of the "worse" nights. I felt sorry for Max, he felt like crap, but he could care less that Marcy and I were going to miss our only night out, for just the two of us, all summer. With our current schedules, me working days and Marcy working nights, quality time is next to zero. Summer is drawing to the end, the boys will be back in school, and hopefully Marcy will be able to get more day hours so we can go back to being a family. I'm happy to say that Max is doing better after the antibiotic kicked in, but the two tickets to Casting Crowns at the Iowa State Fair are still in my wallet, I don't have the stomach to throw away the $70 that I spent on them. Perhaps I can come up with a craft that I can incorporate them into, along with the other things my kids have cost me. I'd have to include about a pint of blood in the craft, to cover the cuts and bloody noses they have given me. There would be a lot of sweat, for pushing them around the yard in a wheel barrow in a dead sprint, with them yelling "Faster, Faster, Faster" and "Don't stop, keep running." Kiss my ass, dad is pooped. Ala Mike Tyson, there must be a piece of my ear. No, they didn't bite my ear, but it has nearly been ripped off numerous times during wrestling matches or the dismount of a shoulder or piggyback ride. My hair. Nearly 25 minutes of every movie we have tried to watch together, and then you can take another 15 minutes off for every movie I have watched with Marcy AND the boys. My ability to read, poop or talk on the phone without someone asking a question or telling on their brother(s). I'm not sure how you could incorporate any of that into a craft, perhaps a collage? No wait, that would be gross. That all being said, I love those kids and would trade everything I have for them, so I guess I will let this incident slide. This time.

I can't remember if I ever told the story of when I met the lead singer of Casting Crowns, so here it is. We were at Sonshine Festival a few years back and noticed the lead singer walking around in the crowd. We said hello, recognizing him and he said he was looking for his drummer. I love their drummer. He is hilarious behind the kit and can play really well. We started looking for him, hoping I could meet him as well. The funny part was, the lead singer came over to us as we were chatting about the drummer being lost in the crowd, and introduced himself to us. He said, "Hi, I'm Mark." First off, great name, kudos to mom and pop Hall for naming him that. Second, no shit, why do you think we are here. Couldn't have been a nicer guy for the couple of minutes we spoke with him, and to be humble enough to think that someone at a Christian Music festival wouldn't know who he was, was refreshing. There were probably a lot of people in MN that year who wouldn't be able to pick him out of a line up, but HE didn't know that, he just didn't assume we knew who he was. He didn't say he was the lead singer of Casting Crowns, he was just Mark. (again, kudos) I like humble people. I like people who I look at as role models, to have no idea people look at them that way. Our encounter was topped up by a rogue football that came into the crowd, struck a girl in the back of the head and then landed in Mark Hall's hands. The girl turned around, rubbing her head, to see Mark holding the football. I told him, "You better get rid of that ball, you look guilty." He then went into his best "I didn't do it speech," but even he wasn't buying it. I'm not sure if that girl ever believed him, or knew who he was, but I got a good laugh out of it, and that's all that matters.

Is she dead?

2011-08-09T20:11:00.000-05:00

OK, this may be the scariest looking woman I have ever seen, the one on the right. I realize the one on the left is hot, and soon to be wealthy.

This is Maria del Rosario Cayetana Alfonsa Victoria Eugenia Francisca Fitz-James Stuart y de Silva, the Duchess of Alba, and she is 85 years old. It appears that the MEANT to say that she has been dead for 85 years, so her actual age is un-known. Now I'm no model, not much to look at, but I'm also not worth 850 million to 5 billion dollars. That is the range of her wealth that I found. That seems like a huge range, but once you get 300 million dollars, it's all a blurr after that. The story I read was about her marring a guy 24 years her junior. My first thought was, he is in it for the money. But just look at her, who wouldn't want to wake up in a cold sweat and check her pulse every morning. I think she was the crypt keeper back in the 90's. The story goes on to say that she is giving all of her money to her kids before she gets married to prove the marriage is for the right reasons. I wonder if she would like to adopt a bald man from Iowa? Would I have to kiss her good night? Never mind, I'll stay poor.

RIP!

2011-08-08T18:20:00.003-05:00

It's always a sad day when you loose a member of the family. You might not even be that close, but when they pass, it hurts. We have been expecting this for quite some time, he lived longer than we were told he would. I'm not sure how old he was, but I've personally known him since May 31st, 2010, when we proudly brought him home. If you are a long time follower of this blog, you may remember the day he joined our family, I wrote about him then. Of course I'm talking about Kirby, the green anole. He just might have been the most worthless pet you could own, but I've had other that would fight for the title. Lets look at the looser pets I have encountered in my 40 plus years.

1. Green anole. First off, it's a small lizard, so I'm always worried he will get out and crawl into something that we can't find him in, and then die and put out way more smell than the size of his body would suggest. He eats crickets, live crickets, which you have to keep in a cage, also inside your house. The possibility of the crickets getting out is a scary prospect as well, they might breed and then we have an infestation. Probably the worst thing about the anole is, they don't like to be handled. That means, he stays in the cage like a fish. The only time we actually touched him, was when we cleaned his cage, and he would flip out, and change color to try and hide. He appeared to be breathing so hard that his little lungs would explode. The only good thing was when we would feed him, if we could stand perfectly still for about 10 minutes, he would then eat the cricket, which was fun to watch. Basically a boring pet.

2. Fish. Do we really have to discuss this? I mean, the tank looks good and some of the fish look cool, but it is a pain in the ass to clean, keep the chemicals right and try to keep the fish from eating each other. I had a piranha that I thought would be soooo cool. I was wrong. He wouldn't eat if I was within a 5 mile radius. I tried everything, but no go. With the crickets and the piranha, I think I have a Mutual of Omaha thing going on.

3. Hermit crab. OK, they do no tricks and they bite. They don't eat live things and when they come out of their shell, they are hideous. You can't really hold them, but if you do, they go into their shell and you never see them.

4. Hamsters. These, on the surface, seem to be good pets. I mean, they are furry, they can do things that are semi interesting to watch, you can hold them, they stuff huge amounts of food in their cheeks and sometimes they do flips on their little running wheel. If you total all that up, seems like you have a winner, but lets look at the other side. The worst thing is, they bite. In fact, they make the hermit crab seem like a slug in comparison. I had tons of hamsters, mainly because they have the life span of a week and a half, and since you have $2000 invested in a habitrail that covers your entire room, just giving up on the species as a pet is out of the question. So you buy animal after animal after animal and before you know it, your backyard in a pet cemetery that would give Arlington National Cemetery a run for its money on the number of tombstones. The scariest thing is, they are like little prisoners and they are constantly trying to escape. They gnaw holes in the end of the dead end tubes and escape. I spent everyday after school inspecting all of the tubes and houses, looking for the hidden escape hatch that was in progress. I'm just glad they didn't have the ability to make shanks or I may never have been able to write this blog. They would have snuffed me out in my sleep on one of their jail breaks. I woke up one night and one of the escapees was crawling on my chest. Looking back, I know how close I was to death, gives me the shivers.

The boys have all ready asked for a new pet, but dad is putting on the breaks. I need to get over this loss before I try to move on. You just can't replace a beloved pet, by just bringing in someone new. So if we just went out and picked up, say, a dog, would that make the pain go away? I guess it would.

Kiss the frog!

2011-08-06T10:09:00.006-05:00

If you know me, you know I'm not a political person. Don't get me wrong, I vote and I pay attention to who is running, but not usually until the media and the people have beaten a few down and they have dropped out of the race. Living in Iowa, we get a crap load of people who are running that most of the country doesn't get beaten over the head with. By the time your state has their primary or caucus, the back of the pack have fallen off to the wolves. Your welcome. This means, we get political adds for people you didn't even know were running. We get visits from EVERY candidate. Even John Huntsman might show his mug around, but my guess the other 49 states in the country will barely get a glimpse. I happen to know who John Huntsman is, because his family made their money in petroleum products, like plastic, and my company use to sell Huntsman Plastic. Every year we got a Christmas card with a picture of the whole Huntsman clan, and there are a shit load of them. Anyway, back to not being political. Since my interest in politics is only ankle deep, I don't go out of my way to meet candidates, senators or councilman/women. I don't have anything against them, just get a bile taste in my mouth when I see them, going around pressing flesh for your vote. I guess I would put them in the category of a salesman or a lawyer, not bad people, but their occupation has a slimy feel in my mind. During this time of year, the candidates are all over Iowa, showing up in the least likely of places to meet the people. Having a family, and little money, we are rarely in the places they are working the crowd, so the number of politicians I have met is a big zero, but the ones I have been around increased by one last night. I have no opinion of Michele Bachman, politically, and can't tell you what she stands for, believes in or her voting record. I don't know if she beat puppies when she was little or even if the story she told last night is true, but I'm leaning towards the story, not the puppy beating. She seemed like a nice person, believes in God and I felt like she genuinely wants to help us in the US get back on our feet. Can she do it? No idea. Will I look into her more? I'll see if the people and media spit her out the back of the caucus circus before I even start to ask, who do I want to vote for. Regardless of all of that, last night at Spirit Midwest music festival, she showed up to give her "testimony" during one of the band switches on the outdoor main stage. We didn't know she was going to be there, and because it was pouring rain on us when we got there, the crowd was small. Here is a shot from just before she got there.

As you can see, not exactly a sell out. I guess, since it was free, not a bad turnout in the monsoon. In this picture, the rain had stopped, but just 15 minutes earlier, we were in the rain forest. The rain was warn, really warm, like someone was peeing on you. Not that I would know, just saying, it was warm. There was no lightning, so I was fine standing in it. Since we haven't had any measurable rain in Des Moines since 2003, it felt great. I wish it could have waited a few days so the festival could have been more successful, but mother nature and I aren't on speaking terms, so I was without influence. So as we are listening to Tim Cooper and friends on the stage, standing in a warm piss bath and totally enjoying myself, being outside, I see a huge crowd. Ok, maybe is was 15 to 20 people, but look at the picture above. This is a crowd about to double the population of our area. I figured the band at the other stage just got done and the people were heading over to watch the Sidewalk Prophets play, which was who I was waiting for. Then I saw a guy I recognized from TV and I knew he was a campaign manager for a political candidate, I just couldn't remember who. I figured it out fast. Michele was signing autographs and when the crowd parted, I saw her coming right towards us. Do I get star struck? A little. When my brother Brian and I went to watch our favorite football team, the Washington Redskins, play the Chicago Bears a few years back, we stayed in the team hotel. When their bus pulled up, we both were like little school girls and chased the guys, some that were younger than me, around the hotel lobby. I got a whole book of autographs, but at the total expense of my dignity. I might have been blushing when I chased Clinton Portis to the elevator and blocked the door, just so I could get him to sign my book. Now he and his friends could have shoved me out of the elevator and left, and had every right too, but he signed it. So when Michele came across the field, I had a bit of a desire to run up and have my picture taken with her, mainly so I could post it on this blog, but I was more concerned that her security people would see my bald head approaching and assume I meant harm, and the picture on the front page of the Des Moines Register would be of some thug in a I love Jesus shirt, bending my arm behind my back while I cried like a baby. My decision? Hang back and see if she comes to me. Not so much. She scooted to my west and headed for the stage. If you have ever seen a candidate work the crowd, you know she isn't going right to the stage. Plenty of time for photos, autographs and talking to people who want to say they SPOKE to a presidential candidate. The other half of this long as story, is my boys are frog/bug freaks. They would spend 98% of their time catching frogs and bugs if we would let them. The other 2% would be beating the crap out of each other, but that percentage is negotiable. While I was listening to the music, my boys had located the creek, I think they have a part of their brain that just makes the ability to stay out of a creek, impossible. While they were in the creek, they located a small frog. They caught said frog and proceeded to run all the way across the festival grounds to show me, since I haven't ever seen one, today. Once they arrived, about the same time Michele arrived, Marcy decided that Max should show Mrs. Bachman the frog, since these things are only native to Christian music festivals in the greater Des Moines area, she might leave our state without seeing one. Max isn't shy. If you have ever met him, you are his best buddy and he will share everything. An example of this, Marcy was at our local grocery store one day when a lady she didn't know said, "Hi Max, how is your summer going?" Max shared his summer up until that point and moved on. Marcy stood their a bit dumbfounded, but asked the lady if she was one of Max's teachers, which she all ready knew she wasn't, but seemed like a good ice breaker. The lady said, "No, I teach 5th grade math." Well Max is my kid, so advanced math is not in his future for my soon to be 1st grader. So Marcy asks, "How do you know Max." Her response, "Everyone knows Max." Future politician? I hope not, I have skeletons in my closet. So Max heads over to meet Mrs. Bachman and show her his frog. (That sounds horrible) She, of course, is very sweet to him, looks at his frog and talks him up a bit. She could have freaked out and shoved the frog out of her face, but that looks bad on the Internet the next day. Here are the shots we took.

What we don't have, is a picture of the frog that Max and Makiah went back to the creek after their photo shoot and found, a much larger one. Max brought it over to us and Mom encouraged Max to take it over to show Michele, again. He did. This time, he held the frog up and the cameras went off. Look for that shot on the Internet, it just may show up. That was the end of The presidential candidate and the frog, but I will now make jokes about another incident that occurred.

As Marcy was leaving the area, a lady stopped her. I assumed she was getting Max's name so they could caption the picture, we have had this happen before with a photo of Makiah that was published from a local Des Moines Menace soccer game. When Marcy came back, she showed me the sheet the lady had given her to fill out, in support of Michele Bachman and to participate in the Iowa Straw poll coming up. We can put that away, Marcy is even less political than me, but I found the pen the lady gave her interesting. I assumed it would be a "Michele Bachman for President" official campaign pen, but no. It appears that they either purchased pens from Courtyard by Marriott, or they stole them. Now I don't want to get a big Watergate thing going here, but that seemed odd to me. I'm sure it was probably this ladies personal pen, which WE stole, but it seems like a candidate pen, might be an inexpensive idea. Even if you don't fill out the sheet, you might pass that pen to someone when they need to write down your favorite recipe for grandma's chicken noodle soup and they say, "OH, you support Michele Bachman for president?" Why no, we stole that. Just saying.

With the evening political visit over, we settled back into our night of music, and the band I came to see, Sidewalk Prophets. I had been looking forward to this since I heard they were going to be there. I'm a huge Christian music fan, and these festivals get you up close and personal to these inspirational bands. The lyrics in Christian music are safe for kids, so I don't have to worry about what my kids hear. Now we still listen to other stuff, my kids love Boom-Boom-Pow by the Black Eyed Peas, and there are words in there that I don't want my kids singing, but lets be honest, their mom says that shit all the time. See, she has me saying it. Anyway, I had never seen SP before, so I was excited. Our friends Michelle (not Bachman, we are just frog buddies) and Andy showed up to listen with us. After a half hour sound check, they started up. They were worth the wait. I loved their music and their raw approach to the set. They looked almost uncomfortable with the attention, but not in a bad way, in an unworthy way. They won the Dove award for Best New Artist back in 2010, and they deserve it. The first song you heard, if you haven't got fed up with my music and turned it off, is by the SP. I hope you enjoy it. Marcy and the kids missed SP because they were in the car. It seems my love of music festivals is not shared by my offspring, once the sun goes down and they can no longer play in the creek. Oh well, I don't mind going back to the "kids go to sitters while mom and I rock it out in the rain" format that we have followed for the past several years. Some day, I hope to hit the mosh pit with my boys, but I'm guessing the Red Hot Chili Peppers will be long retired before that happens. And my walker will get in the way.

"Better get a bucket....

2011-08-01T18:30:00.002-05:00

I'm gonna throw up." That is a line from a Monty Python movie from when I was a kid. I can't remember which movie it was, but that line always comes to mind when I am making any kind of throw up joke/statement. You might think that I would rarely use that line, since vomit doesn't normally come up in everyday conversation, but I'm not your average fella. What brings it to mind in this particular post, is our recent trip to our local amusement park, Adventureland. I've decided that I will no longer attempt to be 14 years old. When I was a kid, I could ride the spinning rides all day long, no problem. Now, not so much. During last years trip to Adventureland, we were a good half day into the fun, riding all kinds of rides, when I realized that I suddenly had a bit of uneasy, rumbling around in my stomach. Now, I wasn't really close to spewing, but I was a lot closer than when I got on that damn ride. It was spinning around, and all I could do was pray I didn't become every ones going home story. You know, your in the car, all laughing and talking about their day, and telling the story of the guy who hurled all over the Lady Luck. Just because I can no longer go round and round, doesn't mean we don't go to the park at all. No, the kids love it there, so we go and I sit on a bench outside the ride and wait for the kids to come running off. Yesterday, my company had a family event at Adventureland, where they paid our way in, fed us lunch and even gave us $25 spending money. I sent a thank you email to the president of my company today, thanking him for not only SAYING they are family oriented, but backing it up. They have more than proved it to me over the past 2 years of my family issues. I always remember when I was interviewing for another job, several years ago, and the people I spoke to assured me they were a family company. When the offer came in, I started my negotiations by asking for more than the one week of vacation they offered. I was told they didn't give a second week. I turned the job down, thankfully. I told the guys I interviewed with, that when they say they are "family," then they should give you more time with your family. I realized that "family" to them, was your work family, not blood. Off subject by a few hundred miles, lets go back. So the kids are riding all of the spinning rides and Marcy and I are watching, and sweating, since the heat index was over 100, again. Luckily, there is a lot of shade, so we didn't bake completely. The day was going along just fine, until Makiah and Max decided to ride the Lighthouse. This thing spins around, and then makes this God awful noise that sounds like it is going to launch the cars into space, then it attempts to do that. Thankfully, the arms are attached to the base, so you don't go to high, but the thing spins faster, perhaps to lessen the disappointment that you didn't wing off into the log ride. The ride finally stopped and both boys ran over to my shaded bench. Makiah appeared to need a bucket and Max was crying, begging for a bucket. They never chucked, but I thought this would tell them that lunch, then round and round, don't go together. They decided to give it a rest. That lasted 2 minutes, and they were back on the spin rides.

Another option to this park, other than the vomit rides, is its water park. There are a bunch of slides, the now obligatory Lazy River and a big climbing, sliding water spraying thing. It's pretty fun, but on a 100 degree day, pretty crowded. We knew this would be the issue, so we decided to get there when the park opened, 10:00am, and do our swimming before we met my company for lunch at 12:00pm. We got there and walked into the main chair area and set out to find a few chairs. Now there are 5 of us, but I knew we would be in the water most of the time, so we decided to just score 2 lounge chairs to hold our stuff and for us to sit on, during any breaks. We find 2 chairs together, drop our stuff, slather in sunscreen and get ready to hit the Lazy River. Just before we left, I pulled our 5 towels out and tossed them on our chairs, so people would know these particular chairs were taken. My "assumption" was, that people would realize this and that any chair with out a pile of towels and shirts, was open. So we headed out, swam for awhile, then decided to hit the chairs while the boys played on the big climbing, sliding water spraying thing. When we get to our chairs, we see that someone has taken one of our towels and put it on a third, previously unoccupied, chair. Someone had grab a towel from our pile and placed it on a chair. I thought that weird, but had several possible justifications in my head. None of which I really believed, but I couldn't figure out why someone would move our towel to give us another chair. Today, someone suggested that, since all of our towels matched, that maybe someone thought they were water park towels. Could be, but it was on my stuff, so keep your hands off. I felt so violated. Marcy and I shrugged it off, left the towel and went back to swim. I came back a while later and now there was a shirt and a pair of shoes, on top of the towel. OK, now this is bull shit. First, not your towel. Second, who puts their dirty shoes on top of the towel on the chair? Why wouldn't you put your shoes under the chair like, oh, I don't know, like EVERYONE AT THE POOL? I think we are dealing with a pysco or at the very least, a severely stupid person. I grabbed my towel and momentarily thought about tossing the shoes into the Lazy River, but decided that if this person is choice one from above, there is no way I'm giving him a reason to follow me home. I never did see who did it, they never came back, but I was almost tempted to stay there all day, just to get a peek. My stomach over ruled my curiosity, and we went to lunch. I guess my life philosophy is, don't touch other peoples stuff. I'm thinking about having t-shirts printed up.

Damn your old!

2011-07-28T18:49:00.002-05:00

My 25 year class reunion was last weekend, man it seems like just 24 years ago I was walking down that isle, getting a piece of paper that hasn't really helped me in my life. Maybe it was a factor in getting my current job, but I'm not sure. Since I don't have that piece of paper from a higher institution, I'm always afraid that I won't be hired for something, even though my work ethic and pure briliantness far exceed many that I know with that piece of paper that I am missing. I've never understood the requirement from some businesses that you HAVE to have a degree to even be considered. I mean, I want my doctor, dentist and proctologist to have a degree, but my customer service agent at Verizon doesn't need that 4 year degree to help me, they just need a brain. When my last job was winding down and I was in search of a new job, I was eliminated from even being considered to work for Wells Fargo here in Des Moines because I didn't have a degree. I was applying for an entry level customer service position, even though I had been the customer service manager at my previous job. I talked to the HR lady and was told the reason I wasn't going to get an interview. My thought? Your loss, I'm one hell of a catch. I was fortunate that when I was brought into CE Software as a production guy, that they saw my sweet muscles and brain and promoted me several times to do a crap load of jobs. Those were good days. My current company brought me on because of my experience and, I can only guess, my charm, and hasn't regretted the lack of paper. I mean, so what if I had a degree in say, criminal justice, if I'm not in the criminal justice field. How does the degree help? It only shows you that I can show up to enough classes to get that piece of paper, not that I have the brain to use that information. But I digress. Back to my high school reunion, which I did not attend, by the way. You might ask, "Why didn't you go?" Well I'll tell you captain inquisitive, because contrary to some peoples belief, high school wasn't a bucket of fun. I hated it, with all my being, and did everything to not be there. Looking back on it, I wish I would have seen the need to do better, so I could move on to the big school, go thousands of dollars into debt, just so I could get a degree in something I would never do as an actual job. Do they offer degrees in shootin hoop and hanging with friends? I was fricking awesome at that, but beyond that, struggled. My main goal as a father is to instill in my kids the importance of a degree, so my kids have that, so they will have the chances that I didn't have. Because so many places eliminate you without the degree, at least they can get a foot in the door. I was in a Facebook group for the reunion and all of the people listed were the same people that wouldn't give me the time of day 25 years ago. One of my current friends was one of those people back then and his recollection of high school is much happier than mine. He was at the reunion, I've seen the pictures, and appeared to have a good time. I'm pretty sure if I attended, I would have been known by 2 people, and that makes for a dull evening. My class was over 400 people, but of the 50 or so that attended, none were friends of mine during those 4 years. Reminiscing would have taken .2 seconds. In 2 weeks, there is another reunion, but this time for alumni of my first real job. I can't wait. At this job, I not only had the chance to show my work abilities, but I got to be a person, something I never achieved in high school. When I think back, I remember the days I spent at that job, having the time of my life. I was extremely fortunate to get hired there, at the base of the mountain we climbed. This company was one of the leaders in e-mail, before you even knew what email was. Cutting edge software design, with a leader that would make you think of Steve Jobs, only a bit quirkier. If you didn't know him, you would have thought he was "out there," but he led a team of VERY young people through some of the craziest times in my life. If you ever wanted the definition of a fun place to work, it was CE Software. We put in a shitload of hours, and loved ever minute of it. We made a butt load of money and the company treated us like kings. Now, I love the company I work for, but CE will always be a special time in my life. As I come together with these nuts on Aug. 13th, I guarantee you that my face will hurt, my sides will ache and tears will roll down my cheeks. Just like old times.

It just got warm.

2011-07-16T16:09:00.002-05:00

What can you do in Iowa on a 96 degree day? Well, you can tube down the Des Moines river out of Seven Oaks Recreation in Boone, Iowa. This was the second time we have done this, the first being two years ago, and I was a bit nervous going into our first trip with three young kids. I had no idea how deep the water was, how fast the water would run and what kind of obstacles we would encounter. My fear was that the water would be high, the flow would be fast and there would be a bunch of stuff in the water to try and avoid. All of that was true. When we pulled up to the launch site, I about shit myself. That wide, brown torrent of death was looking back at me, and I'm pretty sure I heard it laugh. The kids were 3, 7 and 8 and I had no idea how we were going to keep track of them and keep them all alive. Well they all seemed to survive and in fact, Mason was jumping off his tube and swimming around all by himself, something I wasn't willing to do. This year, I went into the trip with a little less fear, a little less apprehension and a little less ability to hold my pee. Mistake one of the day, I downed a bunch of water so I wouldn't dehydrate, seeing as how all the weather people were predicting 110 degree heat index. That means I will be peeing on myself for the next few hours, not something I'm happy with or proud of, but what the hell are you supposed to do? This year, we got to the start point and the river looked the same as last year, but I wasn't worried. OK, maybe a little, but I heard no laughing from the river, so I was ready to take the plunge. Last year, they had lots of rope to tie all the tubes together, but when we asked today, they said it was a "liability" issue and didn't want us to tie up. Well that doesn't fly with parents with small kids. I found a few strands of rope and another guy with us found some more. The Seven Oaks people do tie your cooler to one raft, so you don't loose that, but I guess the kids aren't as important. They said that we couldn't tie up because if one person got stuck, everyone got stuck. My thought was, yeah, so you have people to help you get unstuck. If you get wedged on a tree, and everyone else makes it by, you spend the next hour trying to catch up to the group. We got about 200 yards down river and we all paddled to the side and tied as much of our group together as we could. We used our stolen rope, shoe strings and a t-shirt.

The float was smooth with few obstacles on the first half. Our main goal this year, was to make it to a sand bar so we could stop, get off the rafts, and do a little playing, eating and just hanging out. Last time, we had this same goal and failed miserably. We only saw a few sand bars and they were always on the opposite side of the river we were on. We tried to paddle over, but never made it. I'm happy to say that, even though we never made it to a sand bar, we did in fact make it to a rocky beach that we were able to pull ourselves out of the water on to and spent some time playing. There were tadpoles and frogs, so Max and Makiah were in heaven. There was a lot of mud, so Makiah looked like he had black socks on when we left. As we were trying to re-tube everyone, the tubes with people on them were trying to pull the tubes people were still tyring to get on, down the river. I hopped off my tube, holding on to the long string of tubes and tried to hold everything up so a few in our group could tube up. The ground was about 2 feet under the water and it was rather large, sharp, rocks. I was pulled off my feet and landed with my right arm down on the rocks and cut the palm of my hand, my wrist and my elbow. Nothing major, but seeing as I have my hand in less than desirable water, (somebody pee'd in it)I'm guessing I will need to have something amputated soon. There are 2 things that stand out to me as highlights of the trip. The first is the Kate Shelley High Bridge, which is the tallest double track railroad bridge in America. It really is quite spectacular, and you get to see it pass over your head. Max LOVES trains, so to be able to see 5 trains cross these bridges in the small amount of time it is in your view is pretty cool. The second thing is, on one of the road bridges you go under, there are hundreds of those mud bird nests, stuck to the underside of the bridge. It's really cool to see them flying around and diving into the mud homes. I might be the only one in our group that really enjoyed it, but I did.

We managed to hit the landing dock, loaded up the bus and headed home. The thermometer on the van said it was 88 degrees when we headed home at 1:30 pm. By the time we hit home at 2:30 pm, it was 96 degrees with 107 heat index. Why it couldn't have been that warm when my ass was being drug down the river, I have no idea.

Really? Is that 100% effort?

2011-06-20T12:45:00.002-05:00

I've written before about how I try to take care of my lawn and landscaping. I don't have the nicest yard on the street, but I try to make it as nice as possible. I have no issue with someone who decides they don't want to put the effort into their yard. My opinion, it's your yard, do as you please. Of course, I'm not trying to sell my house, which means my opinion might be different if I was trying to sell. But with that said, I guess my next opinion would be, if you ARE going to do something in your yard, wouldn't you try to do that thing correctly? Here is my example. My neighbors on either side of me are the "I'm not going to do ANYTHING to my lawn" kind of people. Fine. They mow the yard and one even puts down fertilizer, but that is it. On one side of me, they have a riding lawn mower, so they mow fairly regularly, but they never trim. That means, along all of the fences and around all bushes and trees, the grass is waist high. I understand it is another step, and it takes another piece of equipment, but don't you think you would give it the old college try and see if you can whack a path through the bush? Here are a few shots of their back yard through the gate.

You will notice that at the top of the hill, just through the gate, they missed a huge section of grass. You can see the semi-circle of mowed grass and the rest is untouched. You can see the build up around the tree in the back, which isn't landscaping rocks, it's just 5 years of unmowed grass, piled upon itself. I'm not sure if you can see, right at the bottom of my wooden fence, that the grass is about 10 to 12 inches high. I should have taken a picture of the edge of their driveway, where the riding mower couldn't get right next to the concrete, so it left a mohawk right done the middle of their side yard. They never mow around their mailbox, but since that piece of their property is connected to mine, I just mow that while I'm mowing my yard. Again, the fact that it looks like this doesn't bother me, its the lack of effort that I find disturbing. I know they aren't out doing good deeds and just don't have the time. No, they are in their basement smoking weed. I guess that explains alot right there.

Is this June? Feels like March.

2011-06-15T12:48:00.001-05:00

Summer is in full swing, now if the weather would just realize it. I'm not complaining too much about the temperature, I like it a bit cool, but the boys are tired of breaking the ice to be able to get in the pool. Perhaps that is an stretch, but it's not pool hot weather, if you know what I mean. That doesn't mean I get to skip cleaning it, so I'm out there skimming and changing the filter, but the boys sure aren't getting their monies worth.

The boys are back home and enjoying their summer. They brought Grandma, Aunt Stacie and Cousin Elaina with them, which has been great as well. Now that Marcy is working even more nights, it gives me adults to talk to, which may push my breakdown out just a little further. The Mt. Pleasant crew has been busy, painting our front room, helping sort toys and working on re-finishing furniture. I have a desk that my parents got from our church in Washington, DC from when I went to Sunday school there and when they retired and moved to NC, I snagged it. I started preparing it to be re-finished last year, but as with so many of my projects, got put on the back burner. I'm happy to say that the crew finished it off and it looks great. It's a small desk and it looks like the kids aren't as interested in it as I had hoped, but that just means I get it to find a place for. I'll work it out. That desk, plus my friend Chad visiting Washington, had me reminiscing about my days spent in the DC area. I saw so many interesting things and people when we were there. I had conversations with hookers, all be it from a distant church window, and still wonder what they were thinking yelling things to a couple of boys hanging out a church window. Saw many a crime being perpetrated and was even once concerned that I might be involved in gun play. I watched a man snort cocaine off the top of a newspaper rack, on the side of a busy street, and had a Chinese lady yell at my brothers to "Leave tip on table." I got to go through all of those great DC museums and monuments, see tributes to fallen soldiers and walk through Arlington National Cemetery to see what sacrifices had been made for me to be who I am. Maybe I don't write this blog if I'm in Iran, and have had my hand cut off for stealing those cigarettes that I stole when I was 10 years old. I got to walk along the Potomac river during cherry blossom time, and that is gorgeous. I met Jacques Cousteau, Lady Bird Johnson and even the great Muhammad Ali. I sat with the former director of the FBI, Clarence M. Kelly, and repeated my name to him 5 times, but he still signed my autograph to "Martin." I have to say, it was a great place to live, for the years I did, but I wouldn't want to move back.

Update on the ants, the score is now ants 2, Mark 1. I spent about $12 and was able to get rid of the ants, so far (knock on wood). Since I worked my magic over a week ago, I have seen one ant, who was eliminated. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that his buddies don't come looking for him.

This weekend, we are heading to a lake with my brother and his family for a little vacation. It should be fun, and hopefully I don't get burned.

SORRY!!!!

2011-06-13T09:08:00.003-05:00

If you received an email from me, trying to get you to buy anything, it was a virus on my computer, sorry. Why do people spend their time creating problems for others? I guess I will never understand. Just so this doesn't happen again, I'm going into business selling replica watches, weenie pills and "enlargers." That way, next time you get an email from me selling any of those mentioned, it will look like a business transaction. Try explaining that to people. Having the email sent to my close friends and family isn't that big of a deal, most people have received them and just toss them out and then send me an email that says, "Hey dumbass, you have a virus." The bad thing is when it sends an email to someone I haven't spoken to in several years, and this is our re-acquaintance. Or worse, starts sending penis enlargement ads to my pastor friends. I guess that is better than having it send an enlargement email to somebody from the gym, where you might have seen the said object that needs to be enlarged. Might make the next run in a bit uncomfortable.

A little has happened since I posted last. Normally you say "A lot has happened," but not much has, so I modified. First, on our way home from dropping the kids of at their cousins house, we were doing about 70 mph in the dark, around 11pm, when a group of deer showed up in our headlights. There was a group of three standing on the white line on the left side of the car. On the right, on the other white line, another deer that had just crossed the road. There was no time to stop, so we headed between them and prayed neither side felt the need to taste our bumper. Luckily, nobody moved, only my bowels, so we shot through the gap while cursing and praying to God. Then, yesterday, Marcy and I were heading to some friends house and pulled up to a 4-way stop. A car approaching from our right seemed to be going pretty fast, so we waited to see if they would stop. They did not. We watched as a car with three teenage kids and one adult blew through the sign and continued on their way. On the side of the car, "Student Driver." Haven't laughed that hard in awhile. Can you say "F" on that drive. Reminded me of the girl I drove with in drivers Ed, oh so many years ago. She scared the crap out of me every time we got in the car. The third kid in our car only showed up once, then never returned. I have no idea if it was because of Thelma's driving (Thelma and Louise reference), but I like to think that he was smarter than me and got out while the getting was good. No need to get an ulcer in high school if you can avoid it.

In summary, I'm not suggesting you need enlargement, or weenie pills. Kids can't drive and deer are fricking daredevils. That is all

Summer!

2011-06-08T08:08:00.001-05:00

Summer is here, the boys are out of school, soccer season is over and the heat has set in. I was able to get the pool set up this past weekend and the boys decided they wanted to get in, despite the near freezing temperature of the water. I had to stick my hand in the water to apply a patch and when I was done with the repair, my arm was numb. The boys plunged in soon after that and spent the rest of the day swimming. If I get in that water, I lose body parts that won't return until Fall.

The other night we took the boys to Mt Pleasant to hang with their Aunt and Uncle, cousins and grandparents. To say they were excited, would be an understatement. They love to spend time there, lots of things to do that we just don't have at home. Plus, built in playmates that don't curse at them or cause any of the other issues we seem to have with neighborhood kids. As the day went on Monday, I started to dread losing them for the week. Yes, they drive me crazy, they are messy and loud, but I sure do love the little buggars and miss them when they are gone. I love the fact that they get to spend time with family and build a relationship with them, which I wasn't able to do very much when I was a kid. The distance between me and my extended family was large, physical miles that is, so getting close to them was difficult. I hope we can continue to build the family bond that we want, despite the physical miles between us. The other part of that sadness was that we learned this past weekend that Makiah's soccer coach of three years will no longer be coaching and his team will be disbanded. Makiah has loved his time playing and loved his coach and team. The team has gotten so much better over the past few years, it's sad that they will no longer be together. I won't see the parents that I have been sitting with for the past few years, and they were some very nice and supportive parents. They never complained about the coach, or playing time for their kids, or about any of the other kids. It was a joy to be around them, and I will miss that. Makiah is at the stage now where he doesn't want to play at all. Seems he isn't big on change, especially radical change, so he wants to end on a high note and retire his stained jersey. Marcy and I have decided to give him a little more time to consider before we push for a decision. We have until the end of the month to either sign up or let the deadline pass. Maybe he will take the Fall off and then be ready to go in the Spring, who knows.

The boys all got their report cards and next year teacher assignments. Makiah has a new teacher to the district, so who knows how that will turn out. She is a "Miss," so maybe that means she is young and will be fun for the kids, but she could be like other teachers we know and a task master who makes school a chore, instead of fun. Mason, of course, is breaking new ground since he is our first 5^th grader, so we have no idea what he is getting into. This will be his first male teacher, so it will be interesting. Max's teacher is the same teacher that Mason had in first grade, so we know her and like her. Max's best friend didn't make it to the same class, so that will be an issue for him, he will be extremely sad. Might as well start learning now, life isn't always what we want it to be, but we plug on.

We have friggin ants again. Damn these things drive me nuts. We had them last year, so I had a company come out and get rid of them, once I had exhausted my attempts to rid my home of them on my own. After a short time, they were gone. Now that our financial situation is at the point that I need to be Joe Exterminator, I have set off to try to get rid of them on my own without spending they same amount of money I would have spent if I would have had a professional do it. So far, Ants 2, Mark 0. I bought some little ant feeders, which is poison, not food, (I'm well aware that if you feed them food, they will stick around) but they seem to have received the email from the head ant telling them that these little white food containers are in fact, poison. No takers. I also bought some spray to spray on the outside of the house, just like the pros use, but that hasn't seemed to slow them down either. I'm going to try one more time with something I can do on the inside of the house that won't kill me, Marcy or the kids, and if that doesn't work, sell my kidney to afford the pest guy to get rid of the ants, again. There aren't a lot of them, but just enough to annoy you and worry about leaving any food out.

New law, spread the word.

2011-06-02T20:21:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I figured out that we need a new law on the books. I'm not big on adding a bunch of un-needed laws, made to make people feel good, but not enforceable, for the most part. Iowa has a no texting law, which is a good idea, but very hard to enforce, unless you are actually in an accident and they can prove you were texting. The new law I am proposing, is that law enforcement vehicles are no longer allowed to hang a U-turn, unless they are then going to pursue someone. Happened to me yesterday and I damn near shit myself. I was speeding a bit, down a back road by my office. I wasn't killing the speed limit, but when you see a cop whip around right behind you, you just assume he is coming after you. As it turned out, he wasn't after me, or anyone for that matter, so I say we stop this practice before it gives me a heart attack.

That is all.

Pick a subject dude!

2011-05-19T22:13:00.002-05:00

I recently spent a little time in a Target store, and noticed a few behaviours that weren't new to me, but seeing as how I was really paying attention to the people around me, screamed "annoying" to me.

The first one is, the kid yelling "mommy" 100 times in a row, without mom, who is right next to him, acknowledging he is even there. This kid was on a roll, never even taking a breath, rapid fire mommy, that would have made any auctioneer proud. Perhaps his mother was deaf? I wanted to be, after a couple of minutes of this. Is it so hard to say "what?" I have first hand experience in this activity, since our kids can do it to Marcy at nearly the same rate as Target boy, and she doesn't hear a peep. The string of mommies is usually followed by my, "MARCY, ANSWER HIM!!!!!" It must just be a mom gene.

Next up, the family that feels that yelling to each other across 5 aisles is the proper way to communicate in public. I'm not sure what would lead a person to believe that the people of Target want to hear that grandma wears a size 7 shoe. Thank God they weren't in the personal hygiene section. I guess the reason people feel this is ok, is the same reason they feel it's absolutely fine to have a loud, often times graphic, cell phone conversation around people they don't know. Technology is great, but some people are too stupid to use it correctly.

Most of my time was ok, plus I got to eat at the first drive thru Chinese place I have ever seen around here. I'm sure they have them all over the place, but not in Des Moines, they are awesome.

While I was sitting in my truck, listening to an interview with Demetri Martin, he made a statement that made me think it might explain why I am so tired lately. He said "It is physically exhausting to make decisions." Well that would explain alot about how I have been feeling lately. I've changed a few things in my physical life, reduced the amount of Coke I drink, started doing the elliptical every other day, been riding my bike with the kids and increased my water intake, so I hope all these changes start to make a difference. As I sat there, a guy pulled up and sat in the parking lot, for some reason. I was way far away from any store, so he wasn't parking, but instead, stopped right in the aisle. Here is a shot of him sitting in front of me, blocking traffic. He sat there for 10 minutes and I have no idea why he didn't just pull into a spot.

I have to say that Makiah played goalie in soccer last week, and he was fantastic. I don't think I have ever seen him attack the ball like that before, jumping on it and stuffing kicks, it was amazing. He isn't the most aggressive player, so to see him go after it like that, made for a good day.

I had a great joke to play on my friends Michelle and Andy, but didn't pull the trigger on it. They got married two weeks ago, then headed out for their honeymoon. Michelle had asked Marcy and I to move her bed to their new house, so when they got home, they would have a place to sleep. We did, and as we were making the bed, I suggested to Marcy that we mess the bed up, then leave a note saying we "broke it in" for them. I thought it was hilarious and I think Marcy would have let me write the note, but alas, my memory at this age isn't what it use to be, and I forgot. Dang it.

Survive this!

2011-05-16T12:40:00.001-05:00

If you know me, you may know that I love the show Survivor. I'd say I love reality shows, but to be honest, I don't watch them all, how could you. I know a lot of people hate reality shows, but I think the main problem might be the title they are grouped under. Lets be honest, very few reality shows are anywhere close to actual reality. I have a hard time thinking that Survivor is anyone's reality, unless you are homeless on some island, with a bunch of other homeless people, who get together to play games once a week. I don't actually consider them real, but entertaining instead. I don't think "Entertaining Shows" has quite the same ring. The thing I like about these shows, is watching how people choose to interact with other people. The shows producers throw together the most abrasive personalities, and then toss in a crazy person, just to mix it up. I love it. I would be quite happy if Survivor was on once a week, every week of every year. I love for the person considered the villain, to stick around and just piss people off. Why? Not sure, perhaps I just like to see how a person who is called every name in the book, will respond. I don't typically watch the Apprentice, but I have this season because I wanted to see how Gary Buesy would blend with the other cast members. If you have seen him in interviews over the past few years, you know that the curb to the head has loosened a few screws. He is obviously very intelligent, and a philosopher, but the elevator doesn't always go to the top. Sometimes it is stuck in the basement. But he is entertaining and when he gets on one of his rants, if fun to try and follow his logic. The previews for the show showed Meatloaf blowing up and threatening to kill Gary, so I was hooked just trying to see that. The funny thing was, after Meat threatened to kill him, Gary stood there with a dumb look on his face, basically asking for it. I think I might walk away and let the Meat cool down, but Gary was right in his face, turning up the heat. Good TV.

So last night I watched as Rob won Survivor, and I couldn't have been happier. So often, the best player doesn't win, but in this season, they got it right. I still think that the ultimate Survivor, would be for the contestants to be on their own for the first weeks of the show. Drop them off at their camp with a camera guy and sound guy and see if they can survive on their own, only seeing the other cast mates at challenges and Tribal Council. You wouldn't get the people interaction, but you wouldn't get the alliance situation that I get tired of. If you don't watch the show, you just wasted five minutes of your life reading this, and I apologize for that, you can't get that time back. Rob was my favorite player this year, but a lot of that is because I have been watching him play this game for years, since he has been on the show four times. It's hard to believe that this show has been on for 22 season, so 11 years, and I've seen them all. I'm hooked, what can I say. Since I love the show so much, people have suggested I should try out for it. Couple problems with that.

1. I can't not eat. Could I use the time without food? Sure. Would I be a pain in the ass, whiner, bitch after the first day? Without a doubt.

2. My sinuses. I have horrible sinus trouble and the 3 days I would spend out there before my stomach growls forced the other people to vote me out, would be enough to make my head explode.

3. Feelings. This might be the biggest problem. If you watch the show, then you know, people are mean behind your back. On the show, I'm sure they would be all nice to my face, since I'm not one to just flip out and cause them to be mean to my face, but those little behind the scenes interviews would be brutal. They don't show the ones on TV where the person says, "Mark is a great guy, really smart and deserves to win this game." Nope, the ones they show on TV say "Mark is the dumbest, most uncoordinated spaz I have ever met." I'm not saying it wouldn't be true, just not what you want to watch on national TV.

4. Too trusting. As I watch the show, I see how people can lie right to your face, then stab you in the back not five minutes later. In the show, I see it's need and value, but I'm not sure I would be very good in doing it, but I most certainly wouldn't see it coming towards me. If I make friends with someone, I count on them keeping their word, and that just isn't possible in this game.

5. Scheming just isn't my thing. Some people have the ability to see someone elses move before they even do it, and then block it. I'm not that guy. Sure, I can sit home and yell at my TV "You idiot, he is going to cut your throat," but I've had the advantage of watching THAT guy TELL me he was going to do it. He doesn't tell me if I'm sitting next to him, so I'm lost. I'd be the guy that walks around oblivious to the group that forms behind him and points in his direction while making the throat cut motion with their finger on their neck.

6. Puzzles. Yeah, not sure I excel while under pressure.

Those are a few reasons why I couldn't, but there are many more. The other show I love is The Amazing Race, but lets save that for another time.

DON'T PICK THOSE!!!!!

2011-05-10T20:35:00.000-05:00

One of the things I like to have, is a green, weed free lawn. I know it's superficial and totally unnecessary, but I like it. I like lush green grass that you can take your shoes off and walk through in your bare feet. As we stand now, not in the budget to go with a professional company like we used to, so I'm on my own. I haven't had time to go get fertilizer to apply myself, so I spend a little time every couple of days digging dandelions out of the yard. Since I have used a professional company for the past few years, I have a good base to start with. So what do the boys decide to do? They pick every dandelion in the neighborhood and bring it into my yard. As if I'm not fighting a huge battle without the extra "help" from the boys. Our next door neighbors yard is covered in the yellow flowers, and white puff balls, and the kids love to bring them home. Frankly, I think I'd rather they brought home a snake than the damn weeds, and the snake would make me scream like a girl. I've taught Makiah and Max on how to dig the weeds out of the lawn with my trusty weed prier upper, and so far, they are excited to hunt them down. Hopefully, that will last all summer, since my lawn care situation will not be improving any time soon.

Thanks

2011-05-09T22:49:00.000-05:00

A while back I posted a thank you to my mom, for all of the trouble my brothers and sisters must of caused her since I was an angel. Now that the big one is in the books, I thought I would post a thank you to the others that have made a difference in my life, specifically over the past few years. As you know, my life and the life of my household has not been the cake walk I had always dreamed. As the days past by and we come to a turning point in our house, decisions have to be made that will change our lives. We wouldn't even be where we are, if it wasn't for the kindness and generosity of family and friends who have drug us through this past year plus, even when I was screaming and trying to claw my way in a different direction. I won't name names, so as to protect the innocent, or those that would like to stay as far away from my life that is a flaming ball of crazy.

I've admitted to the guys in my small group and I think I even posted it here, I have a hard time asking for help. I would say that a hard time is probably, no, is, an understatement. That being said, I have "allowed" many people to help my family in ways I never thought I would need. Humbling? To say the least. Am I learning to accept? Ummmmmmmm, lets say it is easier now that it was when this all started.

I can't tell you how many phone calls, Facebook messages and emails I have received, just asking how I'm doing. Some are expected, from family and the very few close friends I have, but some have come out of the blue. Some from way back in my past, and they touched me dearly. Some people were in contact with me nearly ever day. I'm horrible about reaching out, it's a self esteem thing, but was always happy to get an email that was just saying hello. Sometimes I'm guessing in return, they got alot more than they had bargained for, but I never heard a complaint. My friends and family have saved my life, and that's as close to literal as I can be. There were days when I didn't think, mentally, I could go much more. I still feel that way at times, but what are you going to do. You are dealt your hand, and you choose, do you play your hand and see where it goes, or do you fold and hit the road?

So to all of you that have helped me through this past year or so, thank you. Thank you for lifting my spirit, for calming my nerves and for reminding me that God is there for me. I wish I could better express my gratitude, but this is as good as I get. It was just something that was on my heart, thought I would spew it on my blog.

Technicolored yawn

2011-04-29T11:16:00.000-05:00

Yesterday was spent at home, with a sick kid. Makiah woke up and said he didn't feel well, so Marcy took his temp. 101.6. We'll that's not good, so we checked it again later to see if it went down, and it had, 101.3. Still not good. Marcy was heading up to MN, so Dad is staying home. First, we had to get the rest of our stuff that we were selling in a garage sale, down to a friends house for the big weekend. I loved having my truck so I could haul all the big plastic toys, houses and picnic tables from the back yard. Our kids have out grown all of that stuff and it was nice to get it off my grass. I think my friends are going to be pretty upset to find, that if that stuff doesn't sell, they now have become my donation site. That crap was delivered on a one way ticket, so enjoy. We aren't even that concerned with what money we make, but every little bit helps. Marcy went through tubs of baby clothes, some that had gone through all three boys. I'm not sure why we get attached to some of them, but I guess we have memories of them in a certain shirt or sleeper, and just can't let it go. We have several outfits that we just couldn't part with, but I don't know what we will do with them. My choice? A sleeper with Snoopy as the Red Baron on it. I can see all three boys in it in my mind and I always loved it. I've heard of people making blankets with scraps of cloth from old clothes, maybe we can find someone. I wish my grandmother was still alive, I'd have a blanket in a heart beat and I'd never sleep without it. It's funny that we call them garage sales in Iowa, but a lot of places call them yard sales, mainly because they don't have a garage. Most of the stuff you are selling in a garage sale is in the driveway, so maybe we should start a driveway sale sign business. After dropping off the stuff, I made it back in time for the end of the first puke show. So glad I hurried back. There were several encores, so I got my fill. His temp yo-yo'd throughout they day, but the curtain had dropped on the show by lunch. I gave him a big pepperoni sandwich and a beer to sooth his stomach.

There are advantages to being home on a week day. I have time to write on my blog, which I enjoy but sometimes can go weeks without having the time. All of the laundry gets caught up, though that isn't something I really enjoy. If it's a nice day, I can sit outside, read a book or just listen to the birds. I got to order a Vito from Jimmy Johns, one of my favorite sandwiches, and they deliver. Of course, there are some bad things. I've mopped the kitchen floor more than I would like too, due to the last minute sprint to the toilet that finished a bit early. I gave him a bowl, jeez. I'm bored out of my frigging mind, since I can't leave and it's too wet to work in the yard. I'll be behind when I get back to work and that is never fun. This isn't exactly quality time I'm spending with Makiah. I don't want to get to close and get what he has, or be in the splash zone.

Waaaaay off topic, but splash zone brought me back. I went to Seaworld in Orlando years ago with Marcy and Mason, he was a baby, and the in-laws and nieces and nephew. I didn't know they had rides there, but they do. On one particular ride, called Journey to Atlantis, you get in a boat and start tooling around the ride. You go up this little hill, about 5 feet tall. As we topped the hill, I thought, "Why in the hell did they put this hill here?" As we hit the bottom of the hill, the nose of the boat we were on, lets just call it the Titanic, went under the water like a freaking submarine and filled the boat with what must have been thousands of gallons of water. Now I'm in the front row, so I just took a bath sands the soap. I shit you not, water to my waist. My niece was sitting next to me and must have been 9 years old and I was concerned she was going to drown. Now I'm thinking, "Why in the hell did they put that hill there?" but with an angry tone. The rest of the ride was great, a regular water ride until you come out of the building and then it turns into a roller coaster. "A what?" you say. You heard me, turns into a roller coaster, only to crash back into the water and now a boat ride. Scared the crap out of me. Good ride though. Here is a picture, but it's hard to see anything.

You can't see my pants, but they are wet, trust me. Next, it was off to watch Shamoo and the Killer Whale show. That was cool, always wanted to see Shamoo. When you get to the arena, there is a section labeled "Splash Zone" and of course, that is where the kids wanted to sit. I wanted them to think I was a cool uncle, so I headed down to the Zone for a little splashing. Well Shamoo is a big son of a gun and when he/she lands in the water, he/she turns the Splash Zone into the Bath Zone. I wasn't that worried, since I had all ready taken one bath in Atlantis, but the Shamoo bath was a little different. First, it was salt water. Second, technically, it was concentrated whale piss. I mean, when you are in the ocean, you have billions of gallons of water to dilute the whale urine, but in this tank in Orlando, you got what, maybe 100 gallons? My math might be off, but you get the idea, high concentration of wee-wee. Now my chances of drying out before we head home hover around the 2% mark. I bought a new shirt to help speed up the warming process, but Seaworld doesn't sell underwear, or socks that fit a man. Baby socks yes, bigfoot socks, no. I had a great time on the trip and hope to take the kids there someday, but by the time I can afford it, I'm guessing they will want to bring their kids too.

DUDE! Stay on track. Jeeeeez!

2011-04-28T09:39:00.001-05:00

I was watching the show "The Voice" the other night, and the music really got me thinking about my change in music habits and what songs or concerts that stand out to me. The music you hear from this blog, if you haven't paused the player, is some of the music I like. Of course, it's a small taste of what I like, but it's a glimpse into the changes I've gone through, if you would listen to all of them, which I don't suggest you do. I was looking for new music to put on my player, actually I was looking for the Celo song Forget You, but couldn't find it, only the not made for radio version of the song, Fuck You. I've mentioned before that I'm not offended by language, but it's hard to listen to that version all the way through. As I tooled around looking at music and artists, I came across some oldies, at least for me. Tears for Fears and "Don't You, Forget About Me" and I flashed back to Breakfast Club, one of my all time favorite movies. I happened upon the Ani Defranco section. If you haven't heard her, I'll say she is what you might think would be sung in a smokey bar in New York City. Soulful, hip and fantastic. That made me remember when I went to Ames to hear her sing. I took my girlfriend at the time, who just happened to be a fan of Ani's, to what might have been described as the largest gathering of lesbians in the history of Iowa. Ani is gay, but I'm not sure why that causes so many gay people go to see her. Gay or not, she sings beautifully, but at her concert, I felt a bit out of place. I loved the show, and thought it was funny that she asked the crowd to not clap to the beat, because it throws her off. I had never heard anyone say that at a concert and I've never heard anyone else say it. One of my favorite groups is Red Hot Chili Peppers and I've had the pleasure of seeing them in concert as well. The sad thing is, the music isn't what I remember the most. No, my most vivid memory is of the college students that sat in the row in front of us, showing up reeking of alcohol and then puking on the floor in front of them. The worst part was, people walking down the isle to get out of the row, kept slipping in the vomit, several almost falling completely on the ground. As if the the technicolored yawn (that is my favorite way to say barf) wasn't bad enough, one of the guys thought he lost his glasses in the dark auditorium and spent half the concert searching for them. He later figured out that in his inebriated state, he had forgotten that he didn't even bring them. He figured that out during the encore. Of course now, most of my music is in the Christian category, and yes, it can rock as well. I've been surprised over the years at just how hard the music can be. You can hear some on my blog, that maybe you never thought could be Christian. Some of it you may have heard on regular radio and never knew that the words were God or Biblically based. Some songs aren't as clear cut, but the bands are. I look forward to someday getting back to Sonshine Festival and seeing a lot of bands live in the three day event. Next to my mission trips, it's the most relaxed I get all year, and re-charged. Since I'm not currently attending a church, my batteries get a little low. I hope my distaste for church buildings and the politics will subside, but just when I think it is getting better, I learn some thing new that makes me sick to my stomach. That happened again this week, it just won't end. Tangent. I seem to get off track a lot, but I'm guessing you have picked up on that if you have read two or more of my posts. I guess with all of this, I just realize that I reminisced a lot lately. I hope that doesn't mean my end is near, I still have so much to see and do. That reminds me that I want to start my own bucket list, I gotta get on that. I've been dreaming about friends from long ago, day dreaming of trips past and hearing music that sends me into flashbacks. It's all good, I've had a good life and know that I'm blessed, even when my heart and stomach have been handed to me on a platter. Lets end this wild ride here, I don't think there is another direction I can take you today.

A glimpse into my life.

2011-04-28T07:36:00.001-05:00

This is brief, but you will see what I see on a daily basis. This is a conversation with Mason a mere 10 minutes ago, so 7:15ish am.

Mason: I need a cat prop for my play.

Me: What's a cat prop?

Mason: Either ears or a tail.

Me: OK, when do you need it by?

Mason: Tomorrow.

Me: There isn't any school tomorrow.

Mason: Oh, then I need it for today.

Me: Mason, how am I going to come up with a cat prop in an hour.

Mason: I don't know.

Thank you for sharing in my life today.

Just asking, part 2.

2011-04-27T20:33:00.001-05:00

I wrote about atheists last week, but didn't realize that the billboard I saw was for an actual meeting here in Des Moines for a bunch of atheists. I read an article in the paper as to why they were meeting, which if you remember, puzzled me. As it turns out, according to this article, they want to organize so they can influence legislation that supports their beliefs. I guess I understand that, but here is a question that came up. On WHAT, do you base those beliefs on? Most documents that were written to found this country, are based on Biblical principles. Like it or not, God is mentioned in most. So my question is, do the atheists have something to base their beliefs on? Scientologists have the writings of L. Ron Hubbard. The Mormons have the Book of Mormon. Is there a book of atheism? Perhaps there is an "atheism for Dummies" I could take a look at. I'm not interested in converting, just interested on what makes you an atheist. Is it just a non-belief in God? No idea. There was another group that was included on the billboard, unless the name was just another name for atheists, and it was freethinkers. I'm not sure what that is, but it sounds good. Can you be a freethinker AND part of a group? If you are thinking free, I guess that doesn't mean you are alone, it's a hard title to decipher. I wonder if they have a book?

Getting old

2011-04-26T19:42:00.001-05:00

I glanced at something today that said personal creations, but I saw personal cremations. I thought that seemed a little weired when I read it.

And nobody died.

2011-04-23T21:19:00.002-05:00

Our week without TV is now done. Yes, I know it wasn't a full week, I'm well aware there are 7 days in a week, not 5, but the challenge we were sent was technically only for 5 days. I was surprised at the lack of whining, complaining or begging that went on. I mean, I never did any of that and that surprised me. I figured I would sneak a peak on Wed., since my favorite show is Survivor and I rarely miss it, going all the way back to the first season. I even told Marcy when I proposed we do this, that I was sneaking down after the kids went to sleep on that night to watch it on the DVR, but the guilt was too much. Mason bet me that I would crack before him, and even though I'm not as competitive as I use to be, I wasn't loosing a bet over TV. Is it bad that I encouraged my kid to bet? I'm guessing he can tell his counselor at 1-800-BETS OFF when he gets older that his dad got him hooked on gambling. The weather was horrible, so a lot of the things we had planned went right in the crapper. We were going to go for a bike ride, lots of walks, plus anything else we could think of to do outside. It rained almost every day, and the day it didn't, we took a walk to a near bye park, Marcy and I were in our heavy coats. It was a bit of overkill, but since I have lost a total of 2 pounds lately, that layer of body fat on me is dangerously close to making me only slightly obese. I've cut my Coke consumption down to one or two a day and increased my water intake to a 50 gallon drum, or so it feels. The water bill at my office has got to have doubled over the past 2 weeks, I feel like I would get more done if we would just mount my laptop over the urinal. I'm told this side effect will subside as my body gets use to the intake, but I haven't seen that yet. Back on the TVless week,I'm proud of the kids for taking the challenge and getting through it. In my naive world, I thought they would realize how little they actually needed the box, and vow to turn it on much less, without Marcy and I telling them to turn it off. When I proclaimed this belief, I was quickly shot down and told it was the hardest thing they had ever done. I guess that is good on one hand, at least they haven't had to deal with anything tough so far in their lives.

Just asking

2011-04-21T19:09:00.002-05:00

What's up with the atheists? I don't have a problem with them, or their beliefs. That I have a different opinion, is irrelevant. My issue is more with their methods lately, of recruiting new members, or non-members, I'm not sure how to classify. I would think that if you were an atheist, that would mean that you didn't have to get up early on Sundays, would always volunteer to work Christmas and wouldn't end up with 30 packages of peeps in April. I guess there is an actual organization, which strikes me as funny. You have group meetings, just to say you don't believe in God? Seems like a waste of time, whats the advantage? What do you gain by trying to convince someone that there is no God? Seems odd to me. There are billboards in the Des Moines area that say something to the effect,

Know there is no God? So do we.

OK, so now what? Why do you pool your money for that reason, to buy a billboard? Am I alone here? Again, I'm ok with them not believing, I've been there, before I started my own research, but I don't understand the recruitment. There seems to be so much more you could promote that you DO believe in. Why pay for a sign of your negativity? Sounds a bit insecure or unsure to me. I personally don't believe in UFO's, but I will promise you with 100% certainty, I will not spend one dime to promote that belief. You just heard my whole anti-UFO speal for free, exactly what it is worth.

Here is a question to ponder, something that I have discussed with "non-believers" as well. When you are involved in a serious moment, life or death, what is going through your mind? Lets say someone close to you was just in a serious, and I mean serious, accident. What is happening in your noggin? I can tell you what I'm doing, I'm praying. I'm praying to God to heal. I'm not saying it will happen, me and God aren't on a "I owe you one" basis, so His will be done. But that doesn't change what I'm thinking. I've asked my "non-believer" friends:

Me: What are you thinking in times of tragedy?
Them: I'm talking over my fears, concerns and wants. What I wish would happen.
Me: Yeah, it's called prayer you dip shit. OK then, who are you talking too, yourself?
Them: No, I believe in a higher power.
Me: Yep, me too, His name is God, what is your higher powers name?
Them: They don't have a name.
Me: Well call him God and get off your "I just want to be different" horse, it smells.

The second person I asked had a sad answer.

Me: What are you thinking in times of tragedy?
Them: Nothing.
Me: Nothing? Mind is blank?
Them: Yep.

That is sad, and a little scary to me. I don't want to be alone in my time of need, and with God, I never feel totally alone. To an atheist, this whole post is ridiculous and they think I'm nuts, but I'm fine with that. I wrote once that I heard Bill Maher make a comment on his show once that struck me as funny. He was talking to a Born Again, and he said to the guy, "What if your wrong?" The guy had the perfect response, "What if you are?" I guess if I'm going to be wrong, I'd rather be wrong living my life following the teachings of Jesus, than being wrong and living my life through the teachings of society. I've been in that school, it sucks and the graduation party is hell.

Are you stupid?

2011-04-19T11:03:00.000-05:00

Let me start off by saying, I love my job. I love the company I work for and the people I work with. That being said, some of them do things that I either don't understand, or they are not thinking.

1. I get emails from lots of people who are pointing out a task that needs to be done. That is all fine and good, but occasionally I get the infamous "See below" direction. I have no problem reading the previous email, or even a couple, but I get a string of back and forth emails about a subject, that at times, can be several pages long. How am I supposed to decipher what of those emails, is what you are wanting me to "See?" I count myself as a pretty bright guy. I mean, I've never shot myself, or even seriously injured myself in several years, so I would think that I could figure out a small mystery buried in an email. But sometimes, there are several paths these emails take and I'm not sure which direction I need to go. I usually have to ask, "see what?" and look like a total ass, because I don't say, "Hey, shoot a brother a clue on what you are talking about." I want to say "Are you stupid? Do you see that you have been having a conversation with subject "B" for a month, never figured anything out, then toss it over to me to break "it" down." Sorry, no comprende.

2. My cube sits by a door that leads outside. In the spring, summer and fall, this is a great seat. We prop open the door, since none of our windows open, and let in some fresh air. It's like working in a Vegas hotel, none of the windows open and I'm guessing it was to avoid former employees from escaping, but I can't say for sure. The time that my particular seat sucks, is in the winter. Where do I live? Iowa. What happens in Iowa in the winter? It gets cold as ass. Now put me in dress pants and business casual shirt and what do you get? Pneumonia. This isn't the front door, but a side door that leads to our loading dock. So why does it get opened 100 times a day to freeze my giblits off? Couple of reasons. The first is that truckers can't seem to figure out the 5 signs posted on the door telling them that this particular door is not an entrance. It is locked, so you have to have a pass key to open it. That, however, doesn't stop a truck driver from pulling on it like it's some sort of bar game to test your pulling strength. I swear I think they are going to pull it off the hinges. They give it a tug, and the lock informs them that the signs weren't shitting them, it's NOT and entrance. For most people, that would be the clue to follow the sign that has arrows pointing to the right, to the actual door they need to use, but alas, it does not. They take the grip of the lock as a challenge and tug again, again, and again. Hello, dip stick, the door doesn't unlock if you jerk on it 5 times, it's frigging locked, period. They finally give the cupped hands to the glass to look in and try to get someone to open it. I have taken to ignoring them in hopes that they will look at the sign and follow the directions. Sometimes, this just doesn't happen, so I have to open the door, let in the cold, and tell them to go to the other door. Since most of these people don't speak English, I have to break out my sign language skills and make the "You are at the wrong door" hand and arm motions, trying to get them to go to the next door. Usually, I just give up and point them through the indoor path to the warehouse, which they always seem to understand. Go figure. The second reason this door is repeatedly opened, is our warehouse people think of it as their personal door, to open and close as much as they like throughout the day. They have jeans and sweatshirts on, so they aren't nearly as cold as I am. They use it to go to lunch, come back from lunch, and to just meander outside every 20 minutes. Not sure why they can't use their door, but hey, lets not be door snobs, lets use them all. I've spoken to the guy who is the biggest offender, but he seems to forget and continues his laps. He goes out my door, walks over to the warehouse door and back into the building, only to repeat the circle 10 or 20 times a day. This guy does the Indianapolis 500 everyday, as I sit in the pits, not happy. Third reason, smokers. Lets not get into a long post on how the smokers get away with hours of breaks a day, that I do not, since I gave up the habit so many years ago. The area outside my door has a little roof, so it is protected from the rain. Their normal smoking spot does not. Every time it rains or snows, the smokers decide that my door leading to the covered area is their new found paradise, so I get the arctic blast several more times. This time, the blast is now menthol, so I have that going for me. I guess I see their point. I mean for health reasons, you don't want your smokers standing in the rain. That might make them sick.

3. I deal with a lot of outside people. By that I mean, they work outside of my building. Most of them are in warehouses around the country. We don't own the warehouses, we just contract with them to provide services for us. Some of them are great. You ask a question, they send you an answer. You ask for a service, they give you said service. But then there are some that treat my emails as a disease that needs to be eliminated as soon as they receive it. No need in replying, this email must have been sent from the devil and it's best to just get rid of it before it infects our whole system, or makes us work. I have a couple of warehouses that ignore my first 2 emails completely, so I schedule out 3 emails, which is when I know they will respond. I've been asked, why don't you call them? Good question. The answer is, because they don't answer their phone. Or if they do, they have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about. The biggest problem is, they will deny they ever spoke to me, if it comes down to a he said, she said, situation. I want the email response for my records, so I plug on. I can't tell you how frustrating it is to try and do the best job you can, but the people you rely on for the information to do your job correctly, could give a rats ass whether you get the correct info, or any info, at all. Someone needs to invent an email attachment that when they open it, my hands spring from their screen and strangle them until they submit to my will. Or maybe I could just use their keyboard to get what I want. Yeah, maybe that would be better.

Why is it so quiet?

2011-04-18T10:00:00.000-05:00

This week is National Turn off the TV Week, or at least that is what I have been told. Normally, I'm against giving things up or doing things because of the date, like for Lent or New Years resolutions. I don't think they work very well, or at least that is my experience. If it is something you want to do, or need to do, why wait for these dates, just do it. (Nike will now be asking me for royalties)I guess if you need the push, you have two times a year to do something, even if the whole Lent thing is really just for Lent. Anyhoo, back to National Turn off the TV Week. I mentioned to the boys that we were going to give this a try, and to say it didn't go over well would be an under statement. I will say that, even when the TV is on, it is usually just background noise and the kids aren't watching it, but tell that to three kids. Marcy and I know that we can't just say no TV, we have to have different activities to take the place, or give the illusion of replacing. We have some ideas, but weather will be the final judge on some of them. I'm really hoping that we can have reading night, where we all sit down and read books, silently, but I'm guessing I will be the only one that wants that. Wish us luck.

911, what's your emergency?

2011-04-17T09:38:00.006-05:00

OK, so it isn't an emergency, so I called the regular Police phone number and was disappointed to learn that the "regular" line is either busy, or they put you on hold, for extended periods of time. Why was I calling? Well, we seemed to have a drunk driver that went down the major road two houses from ours, jumped the curb and hit a no parking sign.

It ripped a huge chunk of the fender off, which is now laying on the curb as well, along with a lot of plastic chrome and light lenses.

They hit it hard enough to snap the 4x4 post the sign was mounted to.

I have no idea if this was involved in the accident, but this was among the carnage.

Coincidence?

My biggest surprise is the difficulty I've had trying to call the police. I guess I assumed that if you called, you would get through and you could let them know. I know this isn't going to be high priority, but when my mailbox was hit, for the second time, they came out and filled out a report and followed up on a few leads, but never caught the person, which meant I was out the money to fix it, again. I figured that since this was city property, they might just call in all resources and the SWAT team. The scary thing is, this was close to my house. If it was a drunk driver, they could have hurt someone, since the sidewalk, you can see it on the right of the first picture, is used ALOT and at all hours of the day and night. It isn't unusual to see someone walking their dog at 12 or 1am, trust me I've seen it. This makes me think back to when our mailbox was hit, in broad daylight, where my kids and the neighbors kids play. That could have been a tragedy, luckily, it wasn't.

I've given up on trying to call the police. Maybe someone else called, who had nothing better to do than sit on hold for an hour. I have better things to do, like this blog. Wait, maybe I should try to call one more time.

Like I said, Ahhhhh, Spring.

2011-04-10T15:00:00.004-05:00

What does spring mean in my house? It means 2 boys and one wife will be covered in mud for the next 3 to 4 months. I'm not married to your typical girl. Nope, she is more comfortable wading around in creeks and sloping around in the mud that she ever will be any where else. This morning we woke to temps in the 60's and the sun shinning. Now most families would see this as a time to sit on the deck and read the paper this early in the morn, but not my wife. Her thought is, lets see if we can get muddy enough to be unrecognizable. To be honest, the only one that got really muddy was her, but we had left the camera in a safe place several hundred yards back. I did alert the clan to a new place to explore, which we had never checked out before, and that is where Marcy stepped off a log and buried her foot up to her ankle in mud, that appeared to be like soup. No need walking around in it, so off to wade in the creek to wash it off. Here is a shot of the crew, minus Mason who stayed home and minus Marcy, who is taking the shot.

Man that's a big dumpy dude in the back. Like a Bigfoot, you never get a clear shot of his face, but perhaps that is best. So you might be able to see that little container that Makiah is holding. It contains this:

Yes, that is a very large bull frog that Marcy caught, and was very proud of. Like I said, not your typical girl. It's probably one of the things I love about her, and definitely one of the boys favorite qualities of mom. Dad gets bored after stomping in the creek and pond for a hour or two, Mom can go all day. If you hear the story of the capture of this frog from Marcy, please know that she is a HUGE liar. I am not afraid of frogs, however, ones that are large enough to make me their bitch, I prefer to stay clear of. As she brought this bad boy to shore, I was doing my best to get out of her way, which appeared to her that I was running away to keep my pretty little pigtails clear of Froggy. In fact, I was trying to keep Froggy's liquid that he was flipping everywhere out of my eyes, I've heard it's poison. There was no screaming or even a whimper, but had she gotten any closer I was 100% sure that she and that frog were going back into the pond, pronto. I can only be pushed so far, then I push back. We took Froggy and 6 or 7 of his little brothers and sisters, plus two embryos, home to show the other neighborhood kids, then Froggy was released and the other frog kids went with a friend to visit a school this week, before they are sent home. Makiah saw a snake, or at least he claims he did. The disturbing part of that is, he saw it on the trail I just went down, 3 feet ahead of him. There is a lot of grass and stuff, so it's possible. Had I seen that snake, two kids and a wife are on their own to fend off the snake and get their asses home, cause I'm gone. Would I feel bad after that type of move? Nope, when it comes to snakes, you are on your own and I've made that completely clear to all of my family. No exceptions.

Ahhhh, spring.

2011-04-07T21:11:00.003-05:00

So Spring has sprung in Iowa, and it’s a great time of year. The trees are starting to bud, the flowers are starting to come up, and all of the kids are out playing every night after school. The bikes are up and down the street, the ramps are in place for the jumps and inevitable injuries, and the neighborhood kids are starting the soccer, baseball and football games. Max had me take off his training wheels and was cruising up and down the street like a pro. It’s the fastest I have ever seen a kid ride after taking off the extra wheels. He still drives like a drunk old woman with cataracts, but has had no major crashes yet and every time he falls, he laughs. That’s a good start.

The sport of choice in my house is soccer. Makiah and Max are both playing on teams, so we try to practice games in the back yard. Last night, we were in the midst of one of those games, when the neighbor kid wound up and kicked the ball at me. I’ll say that I was a bit shocked to receive such a kick, right in the twins. I yelped like a spanked puppy, and the knees buckled, but I kept on my feet, kept the ball out of the goal, and most importantly, kept the tears from flowing. Next, I had to pull out my Oscar winning performance so the kid didn’t think he got me. I tried my best to convince him that the shot had actually been taken in the gut, but he knew. Another kid would yell, every time someone other than me got the ball, “Kick it into his nuts.” Yeah, funny, sorry your parents have to have a size 11 1/2 shoe removed from your ass. That kid never making it into my yard again would be fine by me. Nothing pleases a kid more than knowing he has caused you damage, especially in that area. Hilarious.

I had one of those moments today, that kind of puts things in perspective. There was a story on the radio about an accident that occurred in Altoona, the town my brother lives in, and a person was killed. My first thought when I hear that town mentioned, is hoping my family is safe. Turns out, the person killed was a family member of a girl I work with. This guy was driving along, probably heading to work, when a selfish 19 year old kid, in a stolen car, t-boned the car caring my friends brother-in-law, killing him. The kid got out of his stolen car and ran into the neighborhood near bye, which is my brothers area, and tried to steal another car. Luckily, he was caught, but that won't bring back my friends family. I haven't heard all of the details, but will that help? Will that make me say, "Oh, that's why he did that, OK, we'll let it slide." Nope, pretty sure my opinion will stay the same or, my guess is, I'll feel more disgusted with the people who do this sort of thing. It wasn't that long ago when a kid from MN drove to a small town in northern Iowa, and held up a convenience store. After he was handed the money by the clerk, he proceeded to shoot her in the head. He then drove to another small town a few miles away, and did it again. He was finally caught, before he could kill someone else, but that was a sad few hours in Iowa's history, that stretched into months of grieving. Iowa is a pretty safe state, so maybe people who live in big cities are use to this sort of behaviour, but we Iowans aren't. This kid was taken to jail, and as the cameras focused in on him in his cuffs and shackles, he was smiling. Not a smile as a forced smile for the camera, but more of a devious smirk. The kind that when you see it, you know that person has no remorse for what he did. Not only sad, but really scary to know people like this exist. That people have no regard for someone elses life, is a sad state of the union. Both of these situations just prove the old saying, "you never know." You never know when your time on this earth is up. You may be in perfect health, then some dumbass kid runs a red light, and then you are gone. You never know when some vital part of your body, might just quit working. I've lost a lot of people in my life, but never to an accident like these. Is that harder or easier than watching the person you love die of a disease? Not sure you can have a winner in that contest, so lets call it a draw. What does that all mean to me? Hmmmm, thanks for asking. It means that you have to live each day like its your last. I know, corny, cliche and waaaaay over used. But does that make it less true? You have to plan for the future, but you have to live today.

Sorry.

2011-04-01T16:30:00.000-05:00

This is a public apology to my mother. My mother passed away 13 years ago. I didn't have kids at that time, so I had no idea what she went through with my brothers and sisters. I know that I wasn't half as bad as them, but still. Here are the things I feel I MIGHT have caused my mother some stress.

I'm sorry about the bathroom. I'm sorry that I probably wasn't the best aim in the world, and wasn't the one who had to clean that bathroom. I have three boys, who I can only assume, pee with their eyes closed. I can't prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt, but I think, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you just see the bathroom, you will agree. They use 2 bathrooms, and both need to be sterilized regularly. I wish everything was tile and there was a drain in the floor. I would put on my hazmat suit and power wash that baby down.

I'm sorry that my brother and I use to argue. Constantly. I had no idea what that was probably doing to your mental stability, when you were yelling at us to get away from each other. If I remember correctly, you mentioned that we should get away from each other a couple of times, but we didn't listen. No, we continued to complain that the other one was bothering us. If I had hair, I would be pulling it out every time I try to reason with my kids, that it is so much easier to just walk away. That seems to fall on deaf ears, as it did oh so many years ago when you proclaimed the same thing.

I'm sorry that I did very dumb things, both to myself and to others. I'm sure you were up many a night, wondering if I had a brain in my head. I tried many things, that I thought I could do, only to be injured either physically or mentally. Yes, now I know that I can't fly with wings made of garbage bags. I know Evil Kenevil had a motor on his bike that he used to jump things. I now know that your chin, is NOT the human equivalent of an air bag. It took a long time to figure that one out. I see my boys are heading down the same road I was on, but maybe its a boy thing. Makiah cut his stomach a few weeks back when he tried to jump his bike over a ramp and onto another. He doesn't even know who Evil Kenevil is.

I apologize for all of the times I tried to get one past you. How I would fake sick so I didn't have to go to school. (shut up Lisa) I'm sorry I milked it when I was sick, to either get out of something, or to just plain be lazy. I could turn a hang nail into a month of "whoa is me." Sorry about "mis placing" several of my report cards, but really Fairfax county schools, you are going to send them home with the kids? Not a good plan.

I'm sure there is a lot more I need to come clean about, but these are the ones that I'm now dealing with, so I will just admit to these for now.

I have a hobby.

2011-03-28T20:49:00.000-05:00

I saw this at a local book sale I was at, thought it was funny.

I guess I didn't know that humor was a hobby, learn something new everyday.

I go to this book sale with some friends from work, twice a year. They have thousands of books and its very hard to come out of this sale with only a few books. The books are cheap, so most trips I can buy 4 or 5 books for under $20. This trip I picked up a 515 page story of a guy who walked around the world, for $1. I also picked up a travel book with mention of Glacier National Park, which is on my bucket list, for $.50 and a book on bad trips for $4. I usually spend my time in the adventure book section, since I love to read about crazy people who do crazy things, like climb Mt. Everest or follow the Amazon river from source to mouth. I'm currently on my second book on the Amazon death wish trip. This guy makes it and the group from the first book I read on the subject made it, but they both wrote of several expeditions that lost members trying to accomplish this monster task.

Speaking of a bucket list, am I the only one that doesn't actually have a list? I'm guessing no, but I'm learning the more and more people actually have a list. I'm not sure if the lists were inspired by the movie or if the had them before, but I think I need to come up with one. I had a conversation with a friend today, and she told me that with all of the stuff I have been through lately, I need to take care of myself and my needs/wants. Of course, that is easier said than done with a job a wife and three kids to take care of, but she has a point. I certainly can't go out every night, or buy the toy I want, which is actually a shed so I can put all of our crap in it and get my truck back in the garage and help me with storing the gardening stuff, but maybe I can find smaller things to do. I actually think planning a vacation to Glacier, even though I can't take it yet, would be extremely relaxing. I'll get that list started and maybe someday, I can cross a few things off.

Fricking Iowa!

2011-03-25T22:53:00.000-05:00

Don't take my post title as me changing my over all feelings of Iowa, just know that there are times when the weather is beyond understanding. People make fun of weather forecasters for their wrong predictions, but in reality, it is a tough thing to predict, weather that is. So last week, we enjoyed 70 degree temps, sunny skies and a dream spring. Then, Tuesday, we had what typically happens in Iowa in the spring, storms and yes, tornadoes. We had several near our home that touched down and did damage, but nobody was hurt, so not too bad. Then, this morning, this is what I woke up to.

It may not be much, but dang, lets be done with the white stuff.

I mentioned last week that I was going to The Container Store while we were up in MN, so I know you have spent many a sleepless nights, wondering how it was. To a person like me, it's like crack to a junkie. What I would have done for a few more dollars to purchase the must needed 5-section Cutlery Caddy. I need these things, they are very important to my survival. OK, the store is full of crap that would make an overly organized person pee in their pants, but for me, it was like the feeling I used to get when I was a stumbling drunk. I guess it's a good thing they don't have this store in Des Moines. Otherwise, you would find me out front asking people to buy me a Automatic Sugar Dispenser and bring it out to me, since I would have been band during the Grand Opening for caressing the Rhombus Storage Totes.

Just outside the store, there was this gas fireplace that we were able to sit at and warm up after our walk around the lake.

Minneapolis is a great city to visit, just not sure the traffic and snow are what I would be looking to increase if I was looking to move.

I wanted to add another "proof" that Iowan's are nice people. Somebody has knitted a handle warmer for the night deposit slot at our local library.

I'm not sure this is necessary, but some nice person has seen to it that nobody gets stuck to the metal handle in February. Tell me someone in Chicago would do that.

If you read my Facebook post last night, then you know I had a run in with a Chinese delivery guy. He showed up at 7:30pm last night, well after we had eaten. When I went to the door, he was ready to take my money and leave me the food, cept I didn't order anything. I LOVE Chinese, so I was tempted to just pay for it and see what my surprise snack was, but I figured it must be a neighbor and when the whole story finally came out, somehow I would be made out to be the bad guy. I decided to come clean and tell him it wasn't mine, but his little delivery ticket appeared to have my address on it, so he wasn't leaving my house without a very good explanation or a police escort. He kept pointing to the address, which might have had my number on it, but I couldn't tell for sure. The guy didn't speak very good English, so every time I said I didn't order anything, he pointed to that ticket like I was going to suddenly remember that I had indeed ordered and would be happy to pay for the mystery food and give a big tip. Maybe I was hungry and subconsciously placed my order. If that is the case, and I have this power, I can get in a lot of trouble. I finally saw a phone number on the ticket and told him he should call that number and then slowly closed my door, while he was still pointing to the scribbled address. He walked back to his car and I watched to be sure he wasn't getting anything that may have caused damage to my house. He sat in his car for a few more minutes, which I can only assume he was attempting to contact the rightful owner, then he drove off. Whoever finally got their food, just a bit colder due to the 5 minute arguement.

Check the back of the toilet.

2011-03-18T16:00:00.000-05:00

If you saw my Facebook post last night, then you know that Marcy found a $20 bill in the coffee maker in our hotel room. My hope was that some paranoid millionaire stayed in the Marriott Towne Suites on his last trip to Minneapolis and he hid his millions, that he carries in cash with him at all times, all over the suite that is now mine. I've looked in a few places, I couldn't help myself, but no luck. I still need to cut the mattress open, so I'll let you know if anything changes, or, my next post will be from Jamaica.

I dropped off Marcy at her morning appointments and was going to bring the van back so I had it until my appointment at 1pm. At the place Marcy goes, there is one of those traffic round abouts in front of the building. I hate these things, because we don't live in London and most of the people trying to drive on them have no idea HOW to drive on them. There are stop signs at each entrance to the round about, so we stopped. There was a taxi approaching the entrance to our right, so Marcy started to go, then stopped. I said, he has a stop sign, so she started to go and dude just blew the sign. I guess that red octagon was confusing, maybe we should make them a brighter color than red and make all of the stop signs in the country look they same, so as to not confuse people. Marcy was able to stop and the driver looked at us with a scowl, which you would when you have just broken the law and almost t-boned someone else. I mouthed, "You have a stop sign" while pointing to the sign. Needless to say, he was unfazed. We pulled to the front of the building and Marcy stopped about 3 car lengths behind him. I suggested she pull up, but that wasn't happening. I told her I needed to have a conversation with the guy, she suggested I did not. I wouldn't really, I'm like a poodle, all bark and no bite. I was wearing my dork hat, so maybe he would just think I was special. Here is a shot of me in my dork hat.

I guess if I was going to say dork about anything, it would be my fat face. Look at that double chin. Holy crap that's a mug, I'm not sure how Marcy keeps her hands off of me, but she manages.

My trip to MN has been pretty relaxing, mainly because I've done nothing. I've read a little and will do more of that today. I've written a little, which is probably done unless I get that Jamaica money. It's a bit colder here today, so not sure I will do much hiking, but Marcy and I are going to a storage store today, which feeds my anal organization issue. If I had my way, our entire house would be a series of labeled, plastic tubs and cabinets, everything in its place. What I have, however, are several plastic storage containers, stacked on top of other containers, with little to no clue what is in them or if they will continue to stay in the vertical position. If I had to guess, I would say that I have at least one Lego in every room of the house, including bathrooms. Are they playing in the bathroom? I don't want to know. Marcy may have to pull me out of the store kicking and screaming that "I NEED THAT.' It's a lot like our trips to Victoria's Secret.

Is this normal?

2011-03-17T20:14:00.000-05:00

What is my deal? Why must I hunt down the Castle at every stop I make, and actually plan my trip around a quick lunch there? I mean, sure, it a nutritious and all. Lets do the break down. First, you start with a pure, 100%, beef like substance. Next, you add fresh, dehydrated onions. For God's sake, there is a pickle on it, that's a vegetable, right. Throw in the cheese like substance and a now soggy bun, you are talking about natures perfect food. I'm not sure what my fascination is. Maybe its a psychological trigger back to my childhood, where we had these and my brother and I had competitions to see who could eat the most sliders. In these battles, I am current champ with 9 gut busters. That isn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, but if you have ever eaten that many, you know the damage it does to your insides, so you are taking your life into your own hands when you consume this much goodness. Not to mention the harm you do to those around you with the aftermath. Today, I stuck to my normal number, five. If you ask me if I had fries with that, then you my friend, are not a true slider fan. Why in the hell would you contaminate the brew in your gut, with potatoes and more grease? Stupid question. They should remove the offending vegetable from the menu. That is my opinion. And yes, I will be going back tomorrow for a double dip.

For as much as I love Iowa, it is always fun to get to Minnesota for a few days. The city is set up kind of crazy, compared to Des Moines, even though we are heading down the same path. The Minnesotans put there housing, right smack dab in the middle of their business districts. In Iowa, for the most part, you have housing in one area of town and businesses in another, so if you want anything, you have to travel. But up in the great north, you can step out of your house, walk 20 feet and you are at a restaurant, or store, or bar. I'm not sure I would like to live so close to the noise and hubub, but it would be nice if you cracked open the fridge and had a carrot and ketchup. You could be seated in a dining establishment in a matter of moments, chocking down a burger from Applebee's, and might not even have to put on pants. I've never seen a sign that says "No shirt, no shoes, no pants, no service," so I'm guessing pants are optional. You might not want to hike a couple of miles, pantless, but walking right next door might not be out of line of the things you would do for a Klondike bar.

On this trip up, we were walking from the building we were visiting to a Panera Bread to get Marcy some lunch, since I had all ready chowd down at the Castle, and we came across a large pile of snow with an interesting pink glove inbeded in it. I decided that this appeared to be a keeper and bent down to pick it up. Well Marcy reacted like I was scooping up a pile of dog shit, totally flipping out like I was going to acquire some hideous disease that would eat the flesh off my fingers. My thought was, claim this one and wait till spring to see if the other one surfaces so I would have the matching pair. They were pink, so I wasn't going to wear it, but I was thinking about a Christmas present. Granted, they would have to be laundered, but a quick run around the washing machine and you have a slightly less offensive gift for the one you love. OK, maybe not love, but certainly like enough to give a used pair of gloves. The chances of the other glove showing up, or not being claimed by some other Christmas savvy shopper, were slim, but if you don't score Lefty, you'll never know if Righty will complete the set. Needless to say, Lefty is still sitting on it's perch is St. Louis Park, Minnesota, if you are interested. I guess the thing I hadn't considered, was when this snow melts, and Righty shows himself, will the former owner still be attached? I certainly don't want to be in possession of Lefty, if Righty is the prime piece of evidence at a crime scene. I guess you all will not be receiving a sweet pair of gloves for Christmas.

If you've ever been to the twin cities, then you know that they are really set up for outdoor activities. Minnesota is "The Land of 10,000 Lakes," and there is a paved trail around all of them. I can't speak for all of them, but the one that Marcy and I walked around, was fairly clear of snow. You have to remember, no matter what the temperature it is at your part of the country, the northern states are still in winter, even if it is close to the end. At home, all of the snow has melted and the temps have been in the 50's. I heard it was getting into the upper 60's today, and since in was in the mid 50's when we left, I'm sure it did. However, as we drove north, the temperature dropped until we got here and the thermometer read 42 degrees. The hotel we are staying at, has row houses right next to it, then it is right back into the businesses. I decided to let Marcy have the van for her afternoon appointments, so I walked over to the Quiznos to pick up my dinner. Like I said, there are sidewalks and trails everywhere, so I wasn't worried about having a paved trail all the way there, about a mile or so. The weather is beautiful, so I put on my stocking cap, which I learned today that Marcy thinks I look like a dork in, and my headphones and started my hike. I saw a funny thing as I walked, that I see at home as well, and it cracks me up. I passed a woman, I'd guess in her late 20's to early 30's, and she caught my attention for her very short shorts, Ugg boots and bag of dog crap she was carrying. I'm glad to see that she is a responsible pet owner, but it makes me laugh to see someone who appears to be trying to look sexy, carrying a bag of shit. I see it in my neighborhood all the time. I don't live on a street with expensive houses, but they are right across a cross street. I see the rich ladies, in their nice, stylish clothes, their french cut nails, there expensive hairdo's, walking their fluffy white dogs, carrying a big bag of poop. I will say that most of the walking I did today was dominated by the doggy poop hop skip and jump. I guess the lady with the shorts was an exception to the rule in MN. Getting back to my walk, I made it all the way to the shopping center that housed the Quiznos and a few other stores, and started to try and plot my path from the side walk, through the parking area to the opposite side to my dinner. The public works department might clear the sidewalks well, but the owners of this particular shopping center, sucks at it. The trails I was on kept disappearing into Mount Everest size mountains of slowly melting snow. I kept walking further and further from my destination, so I decided to go off road and cross a grassy knoll so I could get to a concrete oasis I saw a bit closer to my objective. As I stepped off the safety of the semi clear sidewalk, I sunk into the uber soft tundra of what I now call, the Costco swamp. I have one pair of shoes with me, and they are now in danger of become water socks at a rapid rate. I tried my best Jesus move and took off running to try and stay on top of the water. As I said in an earlier post, I am NOT Jesus, so I did not achieve my goal of keeping my shoes dry. I will say, do to my incredible speed and cat like reflexes, the full depth of the swamp was not felt in my Reeboks, so I should be good to go tomorrow. I made it to my destination, purchased my yummy food, and headed back into the parking lot. Using the information I gained from my first summit attempt, I worked my way back to the southern tip of the lot, and arrived safely at my hotel for dinner. As I cut through the Costco lot, side stepping the swamp, a gentleman was walking to his car, which was parked as far as you could get from the store. He was carrying his purchases and his eyes were locked on me. I know I'm tall and not the smallish of people, but am I that scary? My newly discover dork cap was on, so the bald head was not a factor, which it is in a lot of children encounters. I have frightened many a small child when I wave from the heights that I do. Maybe it's because they can't see my face in the clouds, I don't know. If this guy had mace, he had it at the ready. I'm pretty sure this guy was ready to toss me his pizza and whatever else he was carrying, and he would run off into the hills. I tried to give him my best "I'm not going to hurt you" smile, but it didn't appear to calm his nerves. I think he snarled at me. I wanted to do that thing you do to kids when you are acting like you are going to run after them, by kind of jumping at them so they will react, but I'm allergic to mace and didn't want to go through that again.

What's that thing hanging down?

2011-03-16T07:54:00.001-05:00

Do you see anything wrong with this picture? Could it be, that this particular "wireless" mouse has a wire, which would make the "wireless" a false advertisement? Or perhaps their web guy doesn't fully look at the pictures when he types the description. I don't know, but I hope this isn't the new thing, wired wireless. Sounds like a step backwards to me.

New truck?

2011-03-12T17:05:00.000-06:00

When people get a new vehicle, they go to great lengths to protect that vehicle, and I don't blame them. I guess I have a realist attitude, my thought is, it's probably going to get scratched at some point. I'm not parking in a field in Illinois so I can be sure that when I go into the store, that nobody will scratch my paint. For those that do, more power to you. If there is a space at the back of the lot and you want to hike it to the mall with your backpack and tent, be my guess. My question is, at what point do you decide to NOT do that anymore? There has to be a time when you say, screw it, I'm not catching a cab from the mall parking lot to the door anymore. When does that occur? After the first scratch? After the first year? After it's paid off? Somebody please help me here. There are some people that decide they are just going to go ahead and park sideways and take up several spots, so you won't be able to park near them, and they won't have to hike it in from the back forty. Here is an example.

Normally, this pisses me off to no end. If your vehicle is so damn precious, then leave it at home and walk. I can't tell you how badly I want to squeeze into that spot on the right so he, and I KNOW it's a guy, can't get out. Now, I would be doing this just to piss him off, so not a good idea, but would he have the right to be mad? I mean, he isn't parking between the lines, so why should he be mad at me if I did the same? I'm guessing he wouldn't see it that way. There were plenty of spots and he wasn't right up front, so this particular incident didn't really bother me, but it was a good example of what pushes me to want to do something that will only end up in me getting my ass kicked. So instead, I just write about the person here. But someday, someone is going to push me so far that I, I, well, I don't know, but I'm guessing I will say something that isn't very nice to them, under my breath when they are nowhere near me.

I'm not an expert, but......

2011-03-11T09:37:00.002-06:00

You know I'm not a political person, although I do vote. I don't watch very many debates. I don't try to convince my friends that this person will be better in office than that person, its just not in me. I just don't think, that in the long run, the people we vote into office will put the good of the people, or the country, first. I feel that they are normally more concerned about being re-elected or toeing the party line, whether the party has a clue about the American people or not. I have lots of other opinions, but I'll keep them to myself. The big issue right now is going on in Wisconsin. I won't pretend that I have a clue as to what all the hubub is about, and honestly, I don't care to look into it. Does that make me a bad person, or bad citizen? Maybe, but I don't live in WI, so it isn't really my business. The same thing appears to be going on here in Iowa as well, and unfortunately, I don't have any more of an opinion about the issue here, as I have about WI. The politicians here are fighting over a bill, that both sides agree, has 0% chance to pass. Seriously? It has 0% chance to pass, but you have so far spent 2 entire days debating and a third today, with no end insight? Normally, I would say, the more time they are tied up debating the 0% chance bill, the less damage they can do on other topics, but in this case, they let $14.5 million dollars from the federal government get away , that would have gone to the unimploied of Iowa, because they were too busy pissing in the wind. Maybe there is more to it, but that is how I see it. I just read that the Republicans have finally gotten to a "sick of it" point and are forcing a vote to end the madness. Hey wait, somebody got their head out of their ass? Mark it on the calendar. Of course, the Democrats are pissed, so now they know how the voters feel. Just so you know, this is not at shot at Democrats from some holier than thou Republican. I'm a registered Democrat, but I vote on everything and person, as a separate issue, regardless of what my "party" thinks. They aren't always right. I refuse to vote party line, for anything. The whole thing is a mess.

On another note, Libya. This is a mess. Here is a question. First, we know that we don't like Momar, not a good guy. There are all kinds of leaders that aren't good guys, but we can't do anything about all of them. So why do we feel the need to step in here? Now I'm not for people being killed in a war like this, but this is an internal issue, Libyans against Libyans. Now, put the US in this situation. Lets say one of the thousands of Militia in the US, decides they are going to take over the government. Our government starts to fight back. Do we allow another country to step in and say, while fighting this uprising, "You can't do that." For us to impose a no-fly zone, seems that we are sticking our nose into a powder keg of problems. I'm glad to hear that our President is hesitant to start off, so lets hope that one of the other countries that are hot and heavy on this plan, takes the lead. It does seem a bit unfair that the government of Libya has planes and the rebels do not, but if you pick a fight with a bully, he is going to use all his weapons, not hold back because he feels sorry for you. All of this being said, I understand that the government is corrupt and they are just trying to get a voice. That's awesome and totally understandable, and I know that America is all about democracy in the world, but maybe on this one, we don't run out onto the field first.

Alex, I'll take "What is frustration?" for $200.

2011-03-10T16:13:00.000-06:00

What was your favorite toy when you were a kid? Rhetorical, don't tell me, I don't really care, but I'm going to tell you mine because I know I'm so interesting and you are dying to know. I had two favorites, as I come to think of it, Matchbox cars and Legos. My brother and I had hundreds of Matchbox cars and dug roads into the side of the hill in our backyard in Virginia. We had a whole city set up with those roads. Each of us had our own "houses" which were parking lots for the cars that lived at that "house." We would play for hours, running our own soap operas as the cars went from place to place, had races, police chases and all of the activities of a real town. There were a lot of accidents in that town, as I remember, which scratched a lot of paint. None of that would have been a big deal, until I found a book one time that showed pictures of old Matchbox cars and what they are worth today, in mint condition. Lets just say that if I had taken better care of those cars, my butler would be typing this and I would be sipping a beer, no, champagne, and laying on the beach in Maui. OK, maybe not Maui, but at least St. Petersburg.

Next favorite toy, Legos. I loved the ability to make whatever my mind could think of. We had a good sized box full of every shape, size and color that the Lego people made. The sets you bought back then weren't nearly as detailed as the sets of today. My kids have a Lego plane, that took me hours to build and they smashed on its maiden flight that, tragically, did not end at the airport. Had our own episode of Lost in the family room, without the tropical back drop. The blocks back then were simple, so everything you made had a square feel to it. If I had made a plane out of Legos back then,you wouldn't be able to tell it was a plane since it looked like the Winnebago I made the day before. They really only had one kind of wheel, so every vehicle started with the same base, so the wheels would actually roll. They were fantastic and we didn't care that what we built, didn't look like what it was, you had to use your imagination. Today's kits look exactly like what they are supposed to be, the detail is amazing. There are moving parts, hinges and all kids of wheel options. We didn't have doors when we were kids. We made everything with a gaping hole in it to allow the Lego guys to get in. That proves troublesome when you make a plane, seeing as how cabin pressure is hard to control with a four lego wide opening on the side. Don't even think about putting in an emergency door in the back or you'd have a wind tunnel ripping you and all of your in flight reading material right out the back. As always, when you have something that is fantastic and popular, there will be knock offs. Over the years, I have seen several different companies try to make the same kind of block, but not quite as good, so not quite as expensive. The current brand is Best-Lock Construction Toys. They offer several different sets, but the two I want to discuss are the garbage truck and the backhoe.

Lets start with the garbage truck. My youngest son loves anything construction or in his eyes, anything related to construction. Maybe it is just working trucks, because he loves garbage trucks. When he isn't in school, he is so excited on trash day so he can watch the garbage truck come down our street and pick up or trash. I'm glad he is so easily entertained, but the Best-Lock system has a few issues. Here is a shot of the completed truck.

Good looking truck, right. This truck lifts in the back so you can dump the trash out. The problem is, every time you lift the back end, the whole thing comes off. This does not sit well with a five year old. I've put the damn thing back on 100 times and we've had it for 2 weeks. I put it on, I get the "Thanks dad," then he leaves the room, only to return a minute later with two pieces of truck instead of the one he left with and a not so happy face. The first thing I say is, it's not my assembly skills that are the issue, its a loose fitting Best-Lock material. I'm not sure he believes me, so my man card is in question, in his eyes. Seeing as how the dump ability of the truck is the main reason he wants to play with it, kind of takes the fun out of it.

The backhoe. Now this truck is very basic truck. The main draw is the scoop on the back, that is where all the action is. One problem and I think you can guess it. Yep, the whole scoop detaches from the truck, but at least it only does it when you are trying to use it. Wait, that isn't a plus, is it?

I think Max has given up on this one all together, since the back usually comes off while you are transporting it to the play area from the fix it shop on dads lap. I'm seriously considering super gluing the pieces together that would make the garbage truck and backhoe work properly. That will limit the kids ability to be creative in the future, but I'm starting to not care.

Not the "Next blog" crap again.

2011-03-09T15:51:00.000-06:00

I've talked about the "Next Blog" button, so lets not re-hash that. While doing this, I've told you that I've found some good blogs and some bad blogs. I wanted to share one of the good ones. If you have ever read anything on this blog, that you found slightly amusing, then you will probably find this blog just as slightly amusing. But if you have ever read anything that you thought was hilarious on this blog, like I have, then you will love this new one. The author appears to be from Vermont, according to her profile, but little other info is given, probably to avoid stalkers. I find her witty, funny and very entertaining. I'm no reviewer, so you will have to check it out for yourself. I'm not suggesting that you have so much free time that you can follow a blog of someone you don't even know, but if you want a laugh, I suggest you give it a try.

Closed captioned for the hearing impaired.

2011-03-08T15:29:00.000-06:00

Question. When the closed caption thing is happening, how is that happening? I mean, is someone watching the show I am, perhaps a few seconds ahead of me, and typing it in? Or do they have a script? If that is true, how do they do it for live events? The reason this came up, was because I had my TV on mute and the words were showing up from the closed caption. The funny thing was, it wasn't just the words, it had the person who said them listed. Not that that is huge, but it was a soap opera, so does that mean that the person doing the closed caption thing, has to watch the show and know the characters? If this was for Survivor or Amazing race, I'm in, but if I had to do it for a soap? I think I'd rather be unemployed. Perhaps I should look into this and, oh wait, nope, I just turned the mute off, curiosity gone.

MMA, testosterone for all.

2011-03-07T09:21:00.000-06:00

I had the pleasure to attend a local MMA event here in Des Moines the other night. I've mentioned before at how I love MMA. I was a huge boxing fan, but grew weary of paying $50 to watch a fight, that regardless of what happened in the ring, the winner would be whoever Don King thought it should be. That was years ago, so I can't say what it is like now. I'm the kind of fan that wants to see the competition settled on the field, in the ring, or in MMA's case, in the octagon. I don't want to hear about groups of millionaires, or billionaires, fight over the scraps of money, that is more than I will make in a lifetime. I can't tell you how pissed I will be if the NFL season doesn't happen. I use to be a baseball fan, until they went on strike. They lost me and I haven't been able to make the come back. I got off track there, lets see if I can get back on topic. So back in my boxing's heyday, I watched Mike Tyson fight, and that was some exciting nights. If you blinked, you might miss the whole thing. I can't tell you how many fight parties I hosted that ended early because Mike knocked the guy out as he stepped into the ring. The replay time was longer than the actual fight. Of course, in those days, I drank my sorrow away, so I rarely remembered the fight the next day anyway. That was 20 years and 2 livers ago, now, if I'm not home by midnight, I turn into a pumpkin. Sad. So at the fights the other night, I came as close to being in a fight as I have for a lot of years. Was I running off at the mouth? No. Was I disrespecting someones momma? No. Then what was my offense, you might ask. Luck of the draw seating assignment. Let me be clear, the chances of me actually throwing a punch were slim to none. I wrote in a post a few days ago, running to me is only acceptable if there is food at the end, or if the chaser has ill-intentions. The latter case would have applied here and I would have flipped the table in front of me and ran like a little girl, and yes, cried. To be even further clear, the actual potential fight was between a man in his 50's and a drunk 20 something year old kid. You see, these MMA fights bring out the testosterone in people, and that includes women. These two people were rooting for opposing combatants, and none to friendly about it. Let me show you how the cheering escalated. This is a sampling of the yelling, mainly directed in the direction of the ring, but most suredly pointed at the dude on either side of me. Let me also mention that dude 1 was sitting with dudette 1, so they teamed up for most of this.

dudette 1- "Get him Nate." (seems innocent enough)

dude 2- "Kicks his ass Tony" (whoa, we are escalating a bit, but still civil for a guy who has had 13 beers)

dude 1-"Kick his F'ing ass Nate." (you'll noticed I have withheld from typing the full F word, just in case I have any young readers. Well, if I do, they might want to stop reading now)

Now the action in the ring has started, and Nate has taken Tony to the ground. If you don't follow MMA, you may be nervous about this sport with a comment like that, but it's ok, this is normal. So at this time, Nate is on top of Tony, which I know, sounds bad, but again, it's ok.

dudette 1- "Cut him the F open!" (OK, this is getting rough)

Now dude 1 and dudette 1 are yelling right in my ear, standing a foot or two behind me. Dude 2 is yelling in Chad's ear, a foot or two behind him. The words are flying, but mainly thrown at the ring. Now Tony is having trouble getting Nate off of him, so dude 2 is getting pissed.

dude 2- "All he can do is wrestle, get the P-word off of him." (OK, I'm not typing that word or I'll get all of the porn searchers coming to my blog and that's not what I want to read in the comments section of this blog, "Where are all of the P's?")

In MMA, wrestling is part of the game. Sometimes it is the boring part, but if you are an MMA fan and not a drunk want to be, then you understand that. As I write this, I see that the seriousness of the situation is not coming through. This is a HEATED exchange, and now the comments have started to be pointed at dudes and dudette and not the fighters in the ring. Can you say uncomfortable? Now dude 2, who is in his 20's, asks dude 1 if he wants to get "knocked the F out?" That would be an easy answer for me, it would be no, but I have a feeling that a smartass response would be ill advised at this juncture. Dude 1 doesn't appear to want to get knocked the F out, so he mumbles something and moves a little farther away. During all of this, Nate "Teddy Bear" Williams has commenced to submit Tony "friend wants to knock you the F out" Crowder, and the match is over. Dude 1 finally walks away and the testosterone level drops by alot. It's amazing what a combat sport and a half a keg of beer will do to a persons ability to be an ass. Chad said he witnessed a fight in the stands at the last show he attended and the first show I ever went to, I witnessed the closest thing to a near riot as I ever had. I guy got hurt in the ring and when fans starting yelling that he was a faker, the dudes mom took offense and was threatening to kick all their asses. Well the crowd, fueled by the ever present beer, egged her on until she went after a group and all of her family decided to join in. We finally got tired of waiting for the ambulance to pick the faker up, so we left and passed 10 more cops on their way in. There were very few blows thrown, but you could smell the stupidity in the air.

One thing that we noticed last night, which we have noticed in the past, is that women like to wear their slutty best when they attend the machismo fest. There are a lot of guys with puffed out chests, big biceps and liquid nerves, walking around. These aren't the guys in the ring, but mainly guys who want you to THINK they are fighters, which they are not. Just because you go to the Y and shoot hoops, doesn't mean you go to a gym and "train." Chad and I had the discussion, just because you have muscle, doesn't mean you can fight. If you don't have cardio, you better hope you get in a quick shot or the guy you are fighting that does have cardio, will kick your ass and choke you out, period. Back to the girls. There are more breasts showing than any Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue ever thought of including. Not a big deal, since I'm not 12, I've seen them before, but I'm amazed the amount of breasts that you can see. And the skirts. Good Lord, how can you even sit down without giving Hugh Hefner a cut of the show. The funny thing is, this is March in Iowa. It wasn't freezing last night, but on bare legs and breasts, seems to me that it would be a bit chilly. We heard a girl exclaim to her equally slutty dressed friend as they stepped into the cold Iowa night, "I hate Iowa." Well if I was naked outside at midnight, in March, I'd hate Iowa as well. But lets be realistic, you should be more angry at yourself for squeezing on your Barbie clothes and heading out into public. Obviously the short skirt and push up bra didn't work, since you are leaving the fights without a guy, but with your friend, who is limping because her hooker boots are hurting her feet after 4 hours of standing, since I'm guessing she couldn't sit down with that, well, lets call it a skirt, but that is being generous. I know I sound like and old man, but I guess when you get to a point in your life when that kind of display seems ridiculous, I just have a low tolerance for complaining. If you don't like Iowa, move. I'll help you pack. I'm guessing all of your clothes will fit in a shoe box.

Chuck a what?

2011-03-05T14:15:00.000-06:00

I found this on Amazon when I was trying to figure out how to spell squirrel. What is our fascination in housing the animal kingdom? Do we feel they wouldn't be able to find their own residence unless we slapped a few boards together and ran it up a flagpole for them? Or are we such "lovers" of nature that we want them RIGHT outside our windows? I, for one, don't want any bird living anywhere near me. Why you might ask? Lets just say that I probably should have been in therapy for the past 20 years to get over my bird fears.

Example 1: When I was a kid, my brother and I were feeding some ducks and geese, and when I say some, I'd guess there were about 7,000 in the area we were in. Don't scoff at me, you don't know. My brother and I were attempting to feed these creatures with, perhaps, 4 slices of bread. Kind of like Jesus feeding 5000 with the bread and fishes. One problem, neither my brother nor I, are Jesus. In fact, remembering some of the words that came out of my mouth that day, I might just have some splaining to do to Jesus when I finally see him. "Uh, well, there were a lot of them and they appeared to have fangs." Not sure that will fly, but back to the story. As we fed these birds, they kept getting closer and closer to us. As we were just about out of bread, my ASSumption was, that the birds would see that we no longer had the material they desired and would turn and waddle their feathery butts back to the water and be on their duck way. Oh no, these vicious animals closed in on us two defenseless children and proceeded to back us up. We backed up until until we ran into a picnic table, at which point I clearly stated to them, that we were out of bread, but would be happy to bring more next Tuesday. (Warning, obscure reference that if you got, just dated yourself gramps) They continued their screams from hell, or honked them, if you prefer, until they burned that sound into my brain. I still have nightmares of that sound, AND what happened next. One bit me. That son of a bitch stretched out his beak, for what I thought was going to be a kiss, and it bit me. I've been scared ever since.

Example 2: In high school, my friend had a bird. I'm not sure what kind it was, I think it was some sort of bird from hell. Whenever I went to his house, the first thing I did was check the cage. If Cujo wasn't in the cage, my head was on a swivel looking for him. I know Cujo was a dog, but if you saw this thing, you would have seen the sheer madness in its eyes and thought to yourself, "This is an animal that only the devil himself could love. And my friend." I think birds are like cats. They know if you don't like them and they make a b-line right for you. Perhaps Cujo just liked the high perch, because he constantly tried to land on my head, which made me bob and weave like a prize fighter. The worst part was, if you were trying to compete in say, a ping pong match, I was at distinct disadvantage. The bird stayed off my opponent, while dive bombing me so I nearly had to hit the deck every time I took a swing. I hit the deck, my friend smashes the ball in an otherwise futile attempt to beat me. I would have been undefeated in my high school basement ping pong career, had I had the guts to smash that bird with my paddle. I did not, so I was not. Hard to win when you are cowering under the table with pee pants and a snot bubble. Plus, hard to return to high school with a reputation like that.

Example 3: My first "real" job, excluding my paper route, was working for a moving company loading trucks. On slow days in the summer, my other job was to mow the "grass" around our warehouse. I say "grass" because, I feel "hay field" would be closer to the truth, but that might be too generous a description as well. While mowing, I noticed a couple of what I called barn swallows, diving down to eat bugs that were being stirred up as I mowed. As I mowed, they seemed to be getting braver and braver, as they were diving right in front of my mower, and I could see them out of the corner of my eye, diving behind me. I was starting to get a little un-nerved, when PECK! Son of a, one of those birds just pecked me on the head. Did I have bugs in my hair? Was I getting close to their nest? If you are a dumb enough bird that builds your nest on the ground, WHEN YOU CAN FLY, then you deserve to get your home mowed. I see birds in the road as I approach and they run out of the way. Really? You have wings and you are going to run across the road? Stupid animals. This dive bombing incident reminded me of example 4.

Example 4: In the third grade, my friend Ronnie and I were walking home from summer school. Shut up, I'm smarter now. We saw a little baby bird in the driveway of a house, and it was kind of flopping around, so we walked up to get a better look. It appeared to be hurt, but before we could fully asses the situation, we were both attacked from the air by a larger bird. I'm not sure if this was a set up attack, you know, while our attention was on the bird on the ground, another bird would swoop in and steal our wallets, but something smelled fishy to me. Ronnie and I beat a hasty retreat and stood at the end of the drive rubbing our newly pecked heads. As we stood there, the lady of the house, threw open her door and started yelling at us to leave that poor bird alone. We weren't trying to hurt the bird, quite the contrary, but she steam rolled out with her hands flying and yelling all kinds of hurtful accusations at us. As she approached the downed bird, she too was pecked on her noggin, which sent Ronnie and I into a roar of laughter. She ran back to her front porch, turned and looked our way, and without saying a word, went inside and closed her door. Ronnie and I felt lucky to get out of there with just our pride hurt, so we made our way home and hoped that we had just given that bird some sort of human disease that would avenge our pain.

So you can see, I'm not going to bring these animals, whether it be birds, squirrels or any other of Gods creatures, closer to my home by providing housing. Although, as a kid, my parents had a martin house, attached to a pole cemented into the ground. One evening, just as the sun was starting to set, I watched a neighbor kid about knock himself out when he ran into that pole during a near deadly game of hide and go seek. The near death wasn't his, it was mine when I couldn't breath because I was laughing so hard. Gee, I wonder why I don't have very many friends?

Last thing, are we serious about the name of this one? Nutsie? Give me a break, how about squirrely? Or Kevin, the tree rat?

Is this Heaven? No, its friggin Iowa!

2011-03-04T09:02:00.003-06:00

Before I start, I'll apologize for the news anchor person switch from bad news to "funny." I started writing this before I learned of Frankie's death, but life goes on, right? I mean, I wasn't even close to Frankie, not sure I could call him a friend, I'm sure he didn't know my name. I, after all, spent one week a year for four years there, but he saw hundreds of people come and go and I didn't do anything to make myself memorable, like letting his mule out. (Chad will get a good memory out of that one) This was a man that made a huge impression on me. He taught me what sacrifice is, even though he didn't feel like he sacrificed anything. Maybe someday I will follow in his footsteps, in a different way. Now, on with the nonsense.

Iowans are a strange bunch. Not in a Charlie Sheen/Gary Busey kind of way, although we have those kind of people as well, but more of a "what the hell?" kind of way. Come to think of it, that is what I say every time I hear one of the above mentioned guys speak, but at least they have an excuse, head trauma and drug use, probably both for both of them. The things that I see that jump out to me are usually weather related. I'm not suggesting that some of the things I attribute to Iowans, aren't found in other areas of the the country, or world, but if you see any of these, ask the people where the come from originally. I bet they say Iowa.

First up, jogging. People jog every where at all times. The issue with Iowa, which I have mentioned before, is it gets fricking cold in Iowa. Not just cold, I understate the oppressive nature of that word. When I say cold, I mean that if you aren't careful, you can loose a limb on the way to get the mail at the end of the drive. And that's with your Carhardtt jacket, Under Armour hood and Sorel boots. That being said, there is nary a day that I don't see some crazy person jogging in January (Is nary an actual word? I mean very rarely, but nary seemed smarter, until I mentioned that I don't know if it's an actual word. Kind of kills the "smart" part, forget I questioned it.) I guess my theory is, running is something you do when someone is chasing you with ill intentions or if there is food at the end of the sprint. And in my case, it better be a person with a knife or a truck with some sort of sugar treat. I would have said gun, but lets get real, if they have a gun, is my fat ass going to be able to get away with my pathetic 10 yard sprint before I fall to the ground, begging them to put me out of my oxygen deprived life? But the people I see running seem to have neither of these motivations. I mean, I don't see anyone chasing them, but perhaps they are so fast, they have blown away the would be attacker and now are just showing off. I say, stop right there and break out a Hostess pie. I bought a few of these recently, and by a few I mean 10, and was shocked when Marcy read me the fat content. I'm not a calorie counter, but wholly crap, according to Marcy, when I finish my 10th pie, I should be ready to contact the Biggest Loser people and get signed up. Without that bit of info, my guess is they would have been gone in 6 or 7 days. With that info, I still have 3 left and it has been 3 weeks. I'm still going to eat them, but I'll ration them so I don't explode. Frigging Marcy ruins everything. Next thing she will tell me is that my Coca-Cola habit isn't healthy. Please, that will never happen. Notice I said Coca-Cola instead of Coke. That could be taken as the wrong Coke and I get Googled right into jail. What the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah, joggers. So when the temperature heats up, to say 5 degrees, Iowans hit the trails and you see them running everywhere. You can see their breath as you pass by in your warm car, or as warm as it can be with the windchill at -25 degrees, and it appears to be turning to ice as it leaves their mouth and drops to the ground. Haven't these people heard of a treadmill? Or perhaps a life. Just saying.

Another thing Iowans do that you might not see in your area, is when we see the slightest glimpse of "warm" weather, the shorts go on, the jacket gets left at home and car windows are rolled down. Sounds like the thing to do, but it will only be 38 to 42 degrees. For us, that is usually a heat wave in winter and we take full advantage. There is usually a run on hamburger and steak, since that means grilling dinner. I'm guilty of this. As soon as I can dig my grill out of the snow, that sucker is going on and we are living the life. This years winter has actually been mild, so I have grilled out quite a bit and as the days creep further into March, I see my outdoor life coming back quickly.

When you have a lot of snow, that means you have a lot of salt and sand on the road. That means, your car, regardless of the color you purchased, is now brown. When the temps get anywhere near the freezing mark, the line at the car wash is 10 deep. We have a car wash right by our house with 6 bays, and on a warm day, you better pack a lunch if you are going to wait in line. I go either really early, like on my way to work, or really late, like when I'm coming home from clubbing. There is a weired thing that happens when you wash your car in the winter in Iowa. Your vehicle gets an inch thinner. If we could figure out a way to capture that dirt, perhaps we could sell it back to the city and they could then re-apply it to the streets. Circle of life.

One thing that Iowa is famous for, is potatoes. Crap wait, that's Idaho, we are famous for meth labs. Wait, that isn't what you want on your tourist brochure, lets go with corn. I know what you are thinking, "Corn? Who gives a flip about corn, my state of (input state that doesn't know crap about corn here) has corn." Yeah, if you like ass corn. I've been fortunate to travel this great country of ours, and a few others, and the one thing I can say is, Iowans do something to their corn that makes it better than any other corn on the planet. If you say different, I will sock you in the nose and jam a Iowa corn cob down your throat, then you will see. Wow, sorry about that venom, not sure what happened there, but it's good corn. I've made the mistake of buying corn in other parts of the country, with the anticipation of having a great experience, but sadly, there is a huge difference. I still remember my first trip to Iowa. As we drove along Interstate 80 which splits this state in half, I looked out the window and asked, "What the hell is wrong with their dirt?" Kids, such quizzical minds. My parents told me it wasn't dirt, it's what you call soil. Never heard of it. We were moving to Iowa from the great state of Virginia, where we had brown dirt. This stuff out my window looked like they were growing corn in coffee grounds, black as night. If you've never seen actual soil, go to your local Home Depot, unless you have been previously banned, and break open a bag of potting soil. That my friends, is what we grow our Iowa Sweet Corn in. Yeah, I capitalized it, what about it. You have never put a sweeter thing in your pie hole, unless you were eating a Hostess pie. (I think I need a snack, second reference to the pies) If you think I'm exaggerating, come visit during the Adel Cornfest (you heard me, a festival of corn) and you can pay your $5, or whatever they charge, and then you eat corn until you spew corn out your nose. It's like a beerfest, only chunkier. They give you corn, you get it dunked in a coffee can of butter, or whatever they choose to melt the truckload of butter into, and then slip into a world of cornadise. Yup, that's paradise with corn, look it up, its a real word. Comes after nary in the dictionary. Just writing this has me jonesing for some ISC (Iowa Sweet Corn), I can't wait for summer. This is the one food that if we don't watch Makiah, he will eat all 2 dozen we just bought. Smart kid, he is a true Iowan.

The best thing about Iowans, is their hearts. There are great people all over this country, but I'd put us up, percentage wise, against all other states. The willingness to help your neighbor is amazing. They are always willing to help, whether it be as simple as making you a dinner when you can't make it on your own, to shoveling your driveway when you can't. I do my darndest to live up to the name Iowan, which I claim to be, but I'm just an east coast transplant, so sometimes, I revert to my east coast ways. Please don't write me and tell me you are from NY and you are very nice, including only flipping off middle aged people and not teens and the elderly. You got me Gandhi, your the best, I'm just saying that in MY experience, I have found a much higher percentage of "nice" people here, than I have anywhere else. Now, the level of crazy is a lot less here, which takes away from the daily entertainment factor, if your scoring at home, so you pay for all the normal niceness. I remember once when I was in downtown Washington, DC, I watched a man argue with a squirrel, and it appeared the man was loosing the argument. I can't say for sure, since I don't speak squirrel, but the tone the man had, seemed to indicate a loss was on his horizon, if you don't include the argument itself, which to me reeked of loss. I also watched a guy pull up to a stop light and 4 guys ran up to his car and popped all four hubcaps and took off, in 4 different directions. I can't say for sure, but this seemed to be a planned out maneuver. The man jumped out and yelled, but quickly realize he could only run one direction and IF he was to catch the guy, would now have one hubcap of a 4 cap set. That is IF his car was still there when he got back. Instead, he put his tail between his legs and got back into his car, and ran the red light. Now, that was not nice. At the time, I didn't see the brilliance of it, but lets call it what it was, genius on the robbers part. Same city, different year, I was eating at a Roy Rogers Chicken and Roast Beef Restaurant, when I noticed several people removing their car top carrier just outside the window. It wasn't until I heard some dude just coming out of the food line yell, "HEY, THEY'RE STEALING IT!" did I realize, not their car top carrier to be removing. The guy dropped his tray and ran outside, just in time to watch his carrier go down the street and around the corner. That was not nice at all and makes for a horrible tourist testimonial, but not something I will forget about my life on the east coast. I got to watch it, through the glass window, like I was watching it on TV. Do these few instances make the entire east coast, less friendly? Yes, case closed.

Obviously, this isn't the whole list, I'll have more someday, but that ought to hold you. Like you were asking yourself, "I wonder what Iowans are all about?" We're all crazy.

Glory to God and thank you Jesus!

2011-03-03T11:39:00.004-06:00

Today is a sad day. As you may know, I did mission work in Juarez, Mexico for several years. The mission I served at was run by Frank Alarcon, or Frankie to everyone. This was a man who gave up everything he had, to serve the poor people of Juarez. I'm sad because, Frankie is no longer serving the mission from here on earth. He is now seated at the feet of Jesus, the one he had dedicated his life to serve. Although I haven't seen Frankie in several years, I will never forget his stories, his heart or his dedication to the people he loved, even when the violence around him increased by 1000%. He never packed up and crossed back over to the US, which he could have done at any time. No, instead, he hunkered down and expanded his mission. He is a true hero to me, sacrificing his health and retirement portion of his life, to improve the lives of those that couldn't find help anywhere else, and couldn't catch a break in life. I will never forget him, and neither should you. Here is a link to an article about him and I will always have a link to his mission on the right of this blog. Here is an article that was written by a reporter for the Des Moines Register that I had the pleasure to serve with.

God bless Frankie and God bless the people of Juarez.

East siiiiiiide!

2011-03-01T19:32:00.002-06:00

Back in Jan. of 2008, I wrote this post. As a refresher, if you don't have time to read it, it's about the intersection outside of my window at work. In the winter, it can be an exciting way to spend your lunch, just watching people approach the 4-way stop intersection doing 40 mph and then try to stop, on a dime, on solid ice. My office is located on the east side of Des Moines, which isn't a bad part of town, but if you had to name a part of town that you might say had the most crime, chances are, you would say, the east side. Today, we were treated to a police foot chase that ended not far from my window. I looked out just in time to see the two cops tackle the guy and then wrestle with him for a few minutes trying to get him handcuffed. I have no idea what he did, or what the other 3 guys that were being arrested did, but it was like a real live version of Cops, one of my favorite shows. Side note, my favorite show was when some "tough" dude was in his ex-girlfriends house, refusing to leave. The cops went in, asked him to leave, and when he refused, tazed him. His reaction was to scream like a girl, piss himself, and then hit the floor. That's must see TV. Today's show was a bit less exciting, but fun all the same. I brought up the story from 2008, then told this one, to show why I love where our office is. It would be great if it was on the west side of town, so I didn't have to drive very far to get to work, but I'm sure it would be less eventful.

For God's sake!

2011-02-28T17:06:00.000-06:00

How old am I? Forty something, right? So why in God's name have I not figured out how to shave like a man and not a 16 year old boy with his first Bic? Does Bic still make a razor? I've written about my shaving mishaps before, but I'm sad to say that I still haven't figured it out. I will say that I no longer do the old shaving cream and razor thing and I long gave up on an electric razor when I started shaving my head. An electric razor just doesn't seem to work on my melon, I've tried it. I tried waxing my head as well and to say it failed would be an understatement. My current method is soap and a razor while showering. Seeing as how I have zero hairlines that I need to shave up to, it's basically a free for all, except for ears, nose, lips and the whole eye area. Seems like it should go pretty smoothly, but I'm sure you can tell that if I'm writing this, it doesn't go well. I am very consistent in my slicing of my lip and more commonly, my neck. Of all places to cut, why is it my neck? And of course, when you cut your neck, it bleeds like crazy and then is clearly visible for the rest of the day, and usually the week. I've tried to come up with a good story about how I received the cut, like from a broken bottle during a bar fight. Or perhaps from one of those lions I got to hold in Africa, or better yet, from that cubs angry father. Nope, I cut myself shaving, again. Is there some sort of class I can take so I can stop the madness? Perhaps at the local community college or an adult ed class given at the local high school, "Things your dad should have taught you 25 years ago." There are a few things that could be tossed in there along with the shaving. Like how to make your grass green with no fertilizer or water, unless it rains. I don't think we ever did either of those things to our lawn as a kid and all was fine. Now, if I don't do something, I have a dried out hay field, without the option of bayling it to make a few extra bucks. On top of the slices I make, where I'm cutting too much, I leave enough stubble to make it appear that I didn't actually shave, just took my razor and shaved off my skin. It's really coming to a point when I just want to go Grizzly Adams and let everything go wild. That would be the scariest thing you have ever seen, since my facial hair grows like that same 16 year old I mentioned at the start of this post and most of the hair on my head has long tired of the world and has decided to stay buried in my scalp. I guess I will just have to keep trying, or perhaps come up with better excuses. I'm not sure people would believe me if I said Marcy did it, she doesn't have a mean bone in her body, but I might just have to give it a try.

Hey, cut and paste does not a blog post make.

2011-02-27T17:40:00.000-06:00

As I write this, the missionaries who served in El Paso Texas, the same mission that I spent 5 years of my life serving, are now either home or traveling back to the great state of Iowa. I was fortunate to serve the people of Juarez Mexico for the first 4 years of that and then the people of El Paso on my final year. For the past 2 years, I have been unable to go do to some family health issues and now, financial issues. I know some day, I will be back to serving in some capacity, and believe me, that will be a happy day. I miss it. But as I tell Marcy when we are fretting over figuring out what to do or how to do it, "This is where we are now." By that I mean, our situation will change, like it has so many times before, and we will have opportunities that we don't currently have. As I think back to the many mission trips I have been on, I never want to forget why I go. I was reading an old post on my South Africa blog and found the following post. Remember that this was a few years back when I was raising money for that trip, but there is a lot of info that I wanted to re-post, even if it is just for me. Enjoy. Or skip, whatever.

I've had a few questions posed to me that I thought I would answer on the site, so any of you that have the same questions, can have them answered.

1. Why? Why do you go and why South Africa? Since this is 2 different questions, lets answer each one separately. (her I go with the numbering thing again. This time, I'm throwing in some letters as well)

a. Why? Well, the short and simple answer is, God told me too. "Holy crap, this guy is nuts!" Yep, I would have said that myself just 7 short years ago, but here is what I have learned. God speaks to you, if you choose to listen. What did he say to me? No words, but an overwhelming feeling like I've never felt before. An emotion that I can't explain and a desire I couldn't deny. I'm the first one to think it must have been gas, but no, to powerful for that, and much higher. No, this was a full out command from God, telling me I need to move, to get off my ass and do something bigger than me. I've always been a fan of me, doing whatever I wanted and not apologizing for it. Now, it was time for me to do something for someone else, but not just anything, something big. My first venture on this journey was a week in the Appalachian mountains building a wheelchair ramp for a lady, with a group of people I met in the van ride from my West Des Moines home to Jonesville, VA. Spending 2 days in a van with people, lets you get to know them pretty well and I'll tell you I fell in love with them right away. You see, they had that same feeling as I did. I'm not sure it was the same experience as mine, but similar. The thing I remember most about that trip, was something the lady we built the ramp for said as we watched her wheel down it for the first time. She said, "You gave me my life back." We did what? We just nailed some boards together, I didn't know it would actually be appreciated. Her husband had to carry her down the steps before, so if he wasn't home, she couldn't leave her front porch. If her granddaughters were playing in the front yard, she could only watch from 4 feet above, but now, she could be right with them. I knew right then why God had sent my selfish ass. I knew my life would never be the same, and it hasn't been. The next year, as I began to prepare for my second trip to Appalachia, a new trip was started, this one to Juarez Mexico. Never heard of it. Again, God spoke to me and told me to give it a try. I went to the informational meeting and it scared the hell out of me. They wanted us to go to the most violent city in North America, stay in the old garbage dump, and build a house for a family I had never met and probably wouldn't be able to communicate with, because my dumbass never took Spanish in high school, so I only new words from the Taco Bell menu. I was pretty sure that Taco Belgrande wasn't going to be helpful in Mexico. The title of that trip was, "Step out of your comfort zone." That was an understatement for me. I like my schedule. I like to know what I'm doing, when I'm doing it and for how long. I'll tell you, that trip had none of that. It was totally out of my control, but for some reason, it didn't bother me. That was 4 years ago and I have gone every year since. That was a long winded answer for a three letter question.

b. Why South Africa? I learned a little about the AIDS epidemic this year from a traveling information thing. (not sure what category to put it in, calling it a show seems to lessen it's impact) They talked about all of the children that have lost their parents to AIDS and how their own family, aunts and uncles, wouldn't take them in because they were afraid that the kids had AIDS and would give it to them. I would like to think that my family wouldn't do that to me, if I was in that situation. These kids then have to fend for themselves. As you went in to this "show," you were assigned a child. You listened through a MP3 player as you walked through this child's life. These were actual kids telling their stories, not actors playing the part. Heart breaking, to say the least. I was moved. I kept asking myself, what can I do? I don't have money right now to sponsor a child, I'm committed over my head as it is. So I did nothing. Then, I saw the opportunity to GO to South Africa and see and do, what I felt in my heart I was supposed to do. So here we are, me trying to go, asking for you to partner with me, so I can help a few of the millions that are hurting.

2. Why bother? You can't make a difference. Oh how wrong that statement is. You heard what the lady in Jonesville, VA said. Last February, as we handed the keys to a new home we had just built, I watched a man, his wife and 2 daughters hold each other and cry. People had walked into their lives, built them a house, handed them the keys, prayed for them, then walked out, asking nothing in return. Imagine if someone did that for you, ala Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. How would you feel? I can't imagine, but I'll tell you how it feels to be the one who hands them those keys and walks away. Incredible. Did we solve the economic problems of Mexico? Hardly, but we changed the quality of life for that family. We prayed with them everyday and told them that we didn't come as Americans, big brother of the north. We came as followers of Christ, to share his love and live out his plan for us.

3. How does your family feel about you being gone so long? How do you feel about that? I guess I can't speak with 100% certainty, but this is what they tell me. Marcy backs me 100%, because she knows I'm following the plan that God has laid out for me. She knows I'm not faking it to get out of the house, because believe me, it would be a hell of a lot easier to stay home, watch Survivor, drink a beer and yell at my kids to stop hitting each other(I enjoy all of those things). The boys are always excited because they know I will bring them something back, so that is an easy sell. If you ask them what I do when I go away, they say to help people. If you ask them, who told me to go, they say God. I feel I need to lead by example. If I want them to help others, I need to do it. How do I feel? I'm extremely sad to leave them and I miss them a ton when I'm gone. I do feel that the week (or weeks) I'm gone do way more to teach them about who God wants them to be, than the time I would have spent with them during that time.

4. What about local missions? Why not help those? Good question. There are two main things about that. The first is, there are a lot of people who help and can donate food, or volunteer to serve meals at a shelter downtown, or volunteer at any of the other local charities or missions, but not everyone can, or is willing, to travel too far away places to do Gods work. Does that make me better than those that don't go? Or make the work I do more important than someone who helps at home? Not at all, both of these things are important. I hope that the people that are called to help locally are answering the call. These are just different ways to help people, no better or no worse. The second reason is, focus. When I'm at home, I have a hundred things pulling me this way and that, as I'm sure you do as well. It's very difficult to work another commitment into the schedule. Is that a lame excuse? Yes and I'm aware of it, but there is truth to it as well. When I know I'm going on a trip, I get everything I need to get done, then I leave. Then, for the next week, I focus. I focus on the reason I'm there. I become immersed in it. I focus on the people I'm there to serve and the people I'm there serving with. I pray, a lot. I listen to my fellow missionaries and I learn. I laugh. I relax. I have no TV, no newspaper, no phone, no appointments, no meetings, no distractions. I have God. I have life. A life most of us know nothing about, because it is poverty, it is dirty, it is real. I see happiness, in the midst of what we would think would be misery. But I also see people who struggle to feed their children, clothe them and put a roof over their head. I see people who give me far more than I could ever give them.

5. Are you scared? Shitless, times 100.

6. If you are scared, why do you continue to go? If you have seen the trailers for the Bill Maher movie, Religious, there is a clip where he is talking to a guy who looks like the stereotypical Jesus, and the guy asks Bill, "What if you are wrong?" Bill isn't a believer and I'm guessing his movie tries its best to disprove all religions. Bill replies with something that I just don't get, he says "What if you're wrong?" Really? That's your comeback. I'll tell you, if I'm going to be wrong, I'd rather be wrong listening to God, than ignoring him. Once you come to your judgement day, what will your come back be to the question, "Why didn't you listen to me?" I'm sure these words coming from God would be a lot scarier than those same words that came out of my mothers mouth, about a million times. This isn't a blind faith, I've done a little reading on the subject, and will continue too, because it's still a little confusing to me.

7. Is it safe? As safe as it can be. I'm not fully up to speed on South Africa yet, but I know in Mexico, we take care. We stay inside after dark. We stay in a group. We haul all of our own food and water. We take precautions and I've never felt unsafe, excluding the first time I went and spent the whole time wondering what in the hell I was doing in a country I didn't speak the language and building a house that I had no skills to offer.

So I hope those people had the experience of a life time. I hope they enjoied their time and were able to see the difference they made in the people they served lives. I hope they have been challenged to do it again, or to do something else, whether it be local or global. I wish they weren't needed.

And your point is?

2011-02-26T14:12:00.002-06:00

Very few of my blog post have a point. Don't get excited, this one doesn't either. A few observations I had this week.

First, I've mentioned in the past and even just a few posts ago, about the "Next Blog" button at the top of my bolg that I like to hit. Something else I noticed other than the numerous knitting blogs, is that the format of my blog is a bit dated. I'm amazed at some of the backgrounds, apps, video's and other things that people have figured out how to get on their blog. I've been doing this blog since July 21st, 2007, and I just figured out how to put music on my blog. Perhaps I need to look into the other stuff available, but then again, I'm not trying to impress anyone.

Along that music line, I noticed something on my own blog. One of the songs I added to my playlist, is "I'll Fly Away," which I talked about on an earlier post. The version that you may be hearing now is by Jars of Clay, I don't think they have the old school groups on the site I pull my music from. I love the song and Jars does a good job with it, but there is an issue with putting that kind of music on MY blog. As I'm re-reading what I wrote, I realize that my post talks about crapping my pants, as I'll Fly Away plays in the background. I guess it isn't a big deal, but my words take away from the song and I felt a little uncomfortable reading the words I wrote, while "To a home on God's celestial shore" is sung in the background. Maybe I need to switch over to some Red Hot Chili Peppers when I write stuff like that.

I learned a new lesson this morning, that you may or may not have ever experienced, depending on where you live. We had a little snow last night. Enough that I wanted it off my driveway, but not enough that I need to use the snow blower. I headed out with my new shovel, since my last shovel was ground down to the handle. My new shovel was made here in Iowa and I was told by the hardware store guy, that it was indestructible. I won't doubt him, since he knocked the crap out of one of the shovels at the store to show me. I told him I was sold, but would buy the next shovel on the rack and not the one he just beat into the floor for five minutes, just in case. The boys "helped" and we got our driveway cleared. Our neighbors a few doors down are out of town, so I told the boys we needed to clear their driveway as well. Here is the part I learned. When you clear someone else's driveway, you have no idea where the rises in the cracks of the concrete are and are in imminent danger of causing bodily injury to yourself as you push your shovel through the snow. One raised piece of cement and you drive your shovel into it, which causes the handle to hit you in the pinatas. Luckily, their driveway was in much better shape than mine, so I didn't have that many rises, but one is all you need.

Another example of how I'm a bad influence on Marcy. We took the boys out to lunch at a place that kids eat free on Saturdays and met some friends. That was great. These were kids that Marcy watched when she did in-home daycare and of course, they are all grown up. On our way home, we were sitting at a red light when I looked over and saw a lady in the passenger seat with their Schnauzer dog sitting in between her and the driver. I told Marcy to try and get the dog to bark. I know, childish, but in my head, I hear that dog bark and watch the lady shit herself and probably beat the dog. OK, now that I think about it, could have been mean to the dog, but at the time, I thought Marcy would laugh and give me the "That's mean," speech that I've heard 1,000 times. To my surprise, she started making faces and barking at the dog. The lady didn't see us, but the stubborn dog wouldn't bark. He made a move that made me think he was going to, but alas, we left the light disappointed. Marcy and I had a good laugh. I asked her, of all of the things I've asked her to do, what made her pick that one to try. Maybe she is loosing her ability to deny me my laughter. This could be good, I've got all kinds of ideas. My little brother and I, when we were kids, used to take the little packets of Koolaid and slip them in grocery carts when the carts owners weren't looking. In those days, the customer didn't empty their cart, the checkout person did. We thought it would be funny for people to either notice at checkout, or even better, when they got home, that they had these little packets. We never got to see the end result, but it was a challenge to get them in the carts un-noticed. Plus, we were laughing so hard, people probably figured it out later, but it was harmless and amusing, to us. I know my sisters are going to want to tell the story of this same brother and I knocking over an entire rack of socks at a store, but that has nothing to do with anything. That was an isolated incident of extreme embarrassment, for all of us. The socks were on those funny little hangers they use to come on and I think they might actually be on dress socks. That rack fell like a tree and the socks, surprisingly, scattered like marbles on a tile floor. There were fricking socks everywhere. For some reason, our decision to run and pretend we knew nothing of it, did not sit well with our sisters, so we had to "hang" them back on the rack. And by "hang" I mean we set up the rack and tossed the socks on it like were decorating a Christmas tree with wet towels, then we ran. I felt sorry for the poor low person on the roster who had to re-hang all of those socks. This happened 30 years ago, and I'm guessing they almost have them all hung back up. I'm amazed at how many socks fit onto one of those racks, who knew?

I'm going to toss a mini rant here at the end. On this same drive home from lunch, we came upon a long line of cars and wondered why the traffic was so backed up. I watched as the stop light that everyone was waiting at, changed from red to green, to yellow and back to red in the same amount of time that it took you to read that. I'm not exaggerating. You had about two seconds to stomp the gas and try to get through the light before it was red again, and I'm guessing the guy behind you was right on your ass trying to squeeze a second car through a light that one car couldn't get through legally. I was surprised to see there wasn't a cop sitting there issuing tickets to everyone who went through the red. One town over and the lights have cameras that catch red light runners, so my guess is, when they get this idea to head quarters, those lights will be switching just as fast, and that city will have 5 brand new schools, 2 new libraries and the fanciest police station you ever did see. Why can't we get, with all of the technology we have, lights that don't make you wait 1/2 hour when there is no one else around and .34 seconds when you have a mile long line trying to get home. Is that too much to ask?

I'll take two please.

2011-02-20T16:59:00.004-06:00

I love people who invent things, especially if they are useful things or one of those, "Ah, yes, I need that" thing. Years ago, the new invention and joke to some, was the snuggie, or slanket, depending on whether you bought it from Target or Walmart. Two companies came up with the same idea, or one stole it, and they were off. My guess is, the snuggie people had more money or better lawyers, because I haven't seen a slanket in years. So where will the next great invention come from? Will it be in the medical field? Perhaps a new life saving device that one day, will allow thousands of people to be relieved of some sort of pain. Perhaps it will be in the food industry and we will be able to feed the world with no effort. Nope, I found the next great invention and it's called the Forever Lazy adult onesie. This will change the way you sit around and get fatter by doing nothing. Now, we won't have to bother with those cumbersome snuggies, that come open when you stand up. Nope, now you can wear your blanket like an infant, all covered up, even with a hood and a trap door so you don't have to take it off to shit. Somehow, I think if you try to go to the bathroom with the trap door, your going to need a new FEL (That's ForEver Lazy for those of you who are not cool like me), because there is no way you accomplish this task without ruining FEL #1. I say #1, because, according to the commercial, you get 2, yes 2 FEL's for the price of 1. Perfect, I may just poop in the first one so I can get that full infant feeling. Somehow, I think this thing came out of one of those weired fetish things, where someone likes to be treated like a baby. Not an expert on those, but I did see that on a CSI one time, but it was WAAAAAAY over the top, so I'm not sure how truthful it was. We have several snuggies in our house, but I can say that I've never worn it in the method in which it was designed. Somehow, I don't think we will be purchasing one of these. Just in case you think I'm making this up, here is the link and below is the picture.

Me, Me, Me

2011-02-18T19:00:00.000-06:00

Let me start off by saying, if any of the comments in this post sound like you, they aren't directed at you. If any of the comments in the post sound like me, keep it to yourself, I have a fragile ego and will cry if you tell me the truth.

I've mentioned before that one of the things I like to do when I have a free moment, is to hit the "Next Blog" button at the top of this page and look at what other people are writing. There are a lot of blogs out there, some are really good and some are really bad, it's all in the eye of the reader. I've read a few that are deep and the writing is fantastic, should be in a book or a Christmas card, but then there are those that are jibberish, literally, or filled with nonsense because they can be. Some people just write to have their words on the Internet, or so it seems, but there appears to be no other reason that they have spewed their words on the keys that we now read. Most of those I can tell after one post, and I hit the next blog button right away. There are others that I get sucked into and end up reading a bunch of posts, and if it wasn't for my remote control life, where you just keep flipping the channels and never really watch anything, I might get to know these people, in a blog kind of way. There are a couple that I have even saved as favorites and I go back just to see if what I read was a fluke or if it is actually good. Don't for a second think that I'm putting this blog in either of those categories, it is what it is. I'm horrible at English, as my grades from school will attest, and I never took a writing class that I didn't struggle with. No, I just like to put down my thoughts in hope that one of my 5 readers will laugh, cry or think. Whether they think I'm crazy or think that I'm a genius, is neither hear nor there, it is what it is. Another type of blog that I find that surprises me, are blogs on knitting, sewing or any of the thread arts. I'm amazed at how many there are. I swear that I run up on at least one on every trip I make on the next blog trip, sometimes several. I'm not sure what the connection is, thread and blogs, but they apparently go hand in hand. Try it sometime, hit the next blog button 20 times and see if you find one that mentions some kind of sewing, that is going to be my new game. Maybe 20 is too low, there are a lot of blogs out there, but there are a lot about sewing. Another type of blog, is the doting parent blog. Holy crap, there are a lot of those. I think it's the sign of the times, that we put our kids up on a pedestal and think they are God's gift to the world, instead of what they are, which is God's gift to us, the parents. I know I'm guilty of writing things about my kids, but most of what I write is about funny things and fewer of the "Tommy went poopy on the potty" posts. WOW, thanks for sharing. I'm amazed at how much parents of infants talk about poop anyway, but to roll up on a blog about it, is not exactly a good way to spend an afternoon. I can usually only get through a few sentences and then I start to gag. I'm not saying these blogs don't have their place, quite the contrary, I think they are fantastic, just not for me to read. That is one of the things I love about my blog. I'm able to share family information with my family for them to read, when they want to. Not all of my family reads my blog, and my feelings aren't hurt. My guess is, they've read something that I have written and either gaged or were completely repulsed, either way, it is what it is. I'm not going to lie, or change my beliefs, but I don't expect you to change yours for me. I'm not a expert on anything. I'd like to think that I know how to do my job and I hope my company thinks I do it well. I'd like to think that I'm raising my kids to believe in God and family and that the best way to live your life, is by trying to be happy and making others happy as well. I know that sounds corny, but it is that simple. What do you gain if you bust your ass everyday, giving up nearly every simple daily thing, just so you can live in a huge house, drive 5 fancy cars and have every toy imaginable. The old bumper stickers that say, "Those with the most toys win" are way off. "You can't take it with you", that is the bumper sticker I live by. There are a bunch of Christian songs that address this exact thought, but you get the idea. I have nothing against those that strive for the all mighty dollar, but it just isn't in me. I currently don't know anyone in that category, but most of that is probably because I don't get out much. My life is a lot simpler and over the past year I've learned, everything you have or have planned for, can go away in the blink of an eye. Then you have what? Well, if your lucky, like I am, you have friends that truly care about you. You have family that will rip out their liver and give it to you, because you need it and you have a wife a kids that you can eat mayo sandwiches with. OK, that is a bit much, but the feelings are not. If you have an immediate family that says, "I don't care what stuff we have, or the bills we owe, I care about you." It keeps you warm at night.

Who lives in a pineapple under the sea?

2011-02-16T16:55:00.001-06:00

Since this is our first trip down the fourth grade road, we are learning the cool things that they get to do. We know the big fourth grade bike ride is coming up this spring, and for valentines day, the parents get to go in and decorate their kids desk as a surprise. I am about as artistic as a pile of, well, I'm not artistic. When the day came around, we decided that since my idea of decorating is toilet paper and candles, and both are frowned upon in the school, especially together, that Marcy should handle this one. We didn't know what to expect or what to do. The notes from the teacher warned to not get too carried away and be sure that all kids are equal. They didn't want a parent to try and "win" and bring in an X-Box for their kid when nobody else would be getting that. Marcy was smart enough to take a few things and then see what everyone else did. She said that it was crazy, that kids desks were covered with stuff and I'm guessing, didn't fall into the "don't get carried away" column. Here is a picture of Mason's desk:

I'm glad she took stuff because we would have felt bad if all he had were those chalk hearts, when the rest of the kids got chocolate and champagne. He was really happy with his desk and was surprised as well. Now when Makiah hits the fourth grade, we will have an idea on what we need to do. I'm thinking a laptop and big screen TV, we are going to win next year.

How old are you?

2011-02-15T18:27:00.002-06:00

What did I learn about myself today? Well, I'm not as much of a big boy as I thought. The background on this is, I thought I broke a tooth on Friday night while preparing popcorn for family movie night. I bit down on a kernel and then began chewing on something that didn't quite break down as I had hoped. The pieces seemed a little sharp, so I spit one out and noticed it was white and hard, which kernels aren't usually white. I did what you always do if you break a tooth, you start probing your teeth trying to figure out which one is the casualty. I found it and went to the mirror to check it out. I could see silver under it, so I figured it was an old filling and I broke the tooth around it. I called Monday and set up an appointment at my dentist to have it looked at and they got me in this morning. I got up and showered and had breakfast, before I brushed my teeth. You always brush for a half an hour to try and make up for any lapses you had since your last checkup. I normally brush my teeth before I shower, then eat something on the way to work or at work. I always thought I did this to save time, turns out, there is a much bigger reason. As I began to brush my teeth, the toothpaste and spit mix started running down my chin and onto my work shirt, which happened to be blue. It appears I brush my teeth like a kindergartner. The sink my kids use is covered in toothpaste. Even the mirror appears to have smear marks, which means they are using their brushes as paint brushes. I've asked for this practice to stop, but I won't hold my breath on that one. I tried to get the paste drips off my shirt, but failed. I didn't realize I had failed until the water I put on them dried, revealing the paste marks as I'm sitting in the dentists chair, unable to change my shirt. Turns out I busted a crown and it has to be replaced. Maybe the next lesson Marcy and I take can be "Things you should have learned to do properly when you were 5." I wonder what that would cost.

Happy Valentines Day Baby!!!!!

2011-02-14T06:00:00.000-06:00

I wish I were smooth, or that my last name was Hallmark, because I have so much I want to say, but not sure my feelings will be clear. I've had one hell of a year. We've been through a lot. Life isn't easy, it's hard, really hard. I've had some pretty big scares over the last year, life threatening ones, but I made it through. It wasn't my health in question, it was my heart. Not my physical heart, I'm assuming that is fine, but my emotional heart about gave out. It's one of the most emotional draining things I have had to do, and that is watch someone you love struggle with their own life, worth and dreams. I have been fortunate to be married to the love of my life for 11 years and have been blessed with 3 kids. As we struggle to keep our heads above water through this time in our life, my love for Marcy hasn't diminished, it has grown stronger. I see the beauty of not only her physical being, but her heart, which was the first thing that attracted me to her. I was fortunate to spend the past several weeks staring into her eyes and wondering what she is doing with me, as I stepped on her feet and led her through the steps we learned like I was piloting the S.S. Minnow. (Com'on, you got that reference didn't you) On the nights she is in Minnesota, my heart feels so empty, along with our bed. I pray for the day when those trips won't be necessary, I know she does as well. Through all of my frustrations, stress and overbaring organization, I hope that my love has shown through. I hope she knows that I would die for her. I hope she knows that my life is for her, that without her, I am lost. I hope she never forgets what a beautiful person she is, what a great mother she is, and that I love her. I tell her that, but now you know as well. If you don't have someone in your life to share today with, never fear, I love you as well. Happy Valentines day!

Inspiration

2011-02-13T10:06:00.004-06:00

As you know, I'm a Christian music fan. I'm on the board of a local station, listen to that station exclusively when I can and attend as many local concerts as I can. The best thing about the music, is the lyrics have so many life lessons that you can relate to and that can inspire. I'm not saying that other forms of music can't do that as well, but they can be hit or miss. I'm a fan of the Black Eyed Peas, and they have a few songs that are inspirational like "Where is the Love," but you can't tell me that "Boom Boom Pow" brings you closer to God. I like the song, just not an emotional attachment for me. Whenever a song hits me hard, I like to share it with you, and I have a new one. It's by a band called Santus Real. I've seen them in concert a few times and really enjoy their music, but their song "Lead Me" has hit me square between the eyes. Here are the lyrics, but you really need to go to this link and see the video. Or, I just figured out how to put music on my blog, so pick it from the list in the player at the bottom of the page and read along.

I look around and see my wonderful life
Almost perfect from the outside
In picture frames I see my beautiful wife
Always smiling
But on the inside, I can hear her saying...

“Lead me with strong hands
Stand up when I can't
Don't leave me hungry for love
Chasing dreams, what about us?

Show me you're willing to fight
That I'm still the love of your life
I know we call this our home
But I still feel alone”

I see their faces, look in their innocent eyes
They're just children from the outside
I'm working hard, I tell myself they'll be fine
They're in independent
But on the inside, I can hear them saying...

“Lead me with strong hands
Stand up when I can't
Don't leave me hungry for love
Chasing dreams, but what about us?

Show me you're willing to fight
That I'm still the love of your life
I know we call this our home
But I still feel alone”

So Father, give me the strength
To be everything I'm called to be
Oh, Father, show me the way
To lead them
Won't You lead me?

To lead them with strong hands
To stand up when they can't
Don't want to leave them hungry for love,
Chasing things that I could give up

I'll show them I'm willing to fight
And give them the best of my life
So we can call this our home
Lead me, 'cause I can't do this alone

Father, lead me, 'cause I can't do this alone

I'd love to add a few lines here that would express the feelings I get when I hear this song and sing the lyrics, but I feel I would only reduce the power of these incredible lyrics. I hope you enjoy it.

The lights go dim.

2011-02-11T17:18:00.003-06:00

No, that isn't a comment on my brain power, it's in reference to my dancing. The lessons are over and now I must take my new "skill" and apply to my life. How am I going to do that you might ask? No idea. I have no plans to hit the local clubs so I can foxtrot around the 20 something year olds, although that would be hilarious to have on tape. OK, just dated myself with the "tape" comment. Do they even make recorders that record on tape? If they do, I'm guessing you can pick one up for a few bucks and the tapes are free, if you can find them. Maybe I could try out my east coast swing to a little techno music after a few hits of LSD and a glow necklace. Wait, I don't do drugs and the pretty lights would only distract me. Maybe I could go to the place I saw on the news the other night. It's a YMCA in Boone, about an hour from my house, where a little old man has organized and run a sort of dance club, every Thursday night, for the past several years. They did a story on it and the guy said, the first night he set this up, it was him and 8 ladies. This is a smart man. Now there is a regular group, looked to be 20 or so people, and they turned it into a potluck. I think the older couples would be pissed at the "young kid" crashing their dance, and might even try to take my girl, so maybe I should stay clear. Plus a belly full of potluck and I might have a hard time dancing around. I'm not big on potlucks anyway. You never know what people put in their dishes, kind of freaks me out. Getting back to the use of my skill, I guess it will only come in handy at weddings, which I do have one to go to this spring. Maybe I should practice every night from now until then, so I don't hurt anyone.

I was driving home from work today and listening to a Christian station on the radio, when what song came on, but a re-make of I'll Fly Away. Man that brought back memories of my grandmothers house when I was a kid. She always had the hardcore Christian station on, the one that preached fire and brimstone at 2pm on a Tuesday. The music back then sounded like it was right out of the little country church my grandparents went to, and some of my family still attends. The music wasn't as polished as it is today, but the people singing it meant what they were singing, you could tell, and that made it sound better than it actually was. At the numerous funerals I attended in Tennessee for my family members, there was a choir from this little church that would sing, behind a screen so you couldn't see them. Again, not always the prettiest voices you ever heard, but the songs sound great. My favorite, which has been sung at every funeral I have been to, is Amazing Grace. I can't hear the song now without getting choked up, let alone sing it. Hearing I'll Fly Away today, took me back to a time when I didn't have any bills, or responsibilities or any idea of how good I had it. I spent a lot of my summers as a kid down in TN at my grandparents house. My brother and I got to run up and down the mountain across the road from their house, following pig trails cut into the dirt. We used tobacco sticks as horses and hay bale string as the bridles. We played in the creek, probably filled with pig piss and God knows what else, but still fun all the same. I tell the boys about chasing pigs and playing in the hay loft and they think my story about my brother and I trapping the baby pigs in the barn and then them ripping the barn door off when they tried to escape, is like a story in a book. They want me to tell it over and over again. It's funny how things trigger your memories. I know that not all triggered memories are good, but I can tell you that today, I had an extra smile on and said a little thank you prayer to my grandparents, for being fantastic people and for giving me a lifetime of good memories, that I now get to share with my kids. May God rest their souls.

Blizzard, dancing and love

2011-02-02T18:10:00.004-06:00

The blizzard has come and gone, and was far less damaging than predicted. The worst part, as usual, is the pile of snow at the end of the drive from the city plowing the street. That one was about 3 1/2 to 4 feet high. It's hard to see, but I took this while standing in the street and looking back at my house. Hopefully you can see the pile at the end of the drive.

The drifts were bad, but my snow blower worked right through it and I didn't throw my back out. Then I gave my neighbor the blower to do the rest of his drive and then shipped it down the street to another friend who did her drive and another neighbors. The last neighbor is a Redskin fan, so he is always welcome to whatever I have, got to take care of family. The city of West Des Moines, as usual, did a fantastic job clearing the streets and the Des Moines plows had the Interstate clear down to the concrete. Like I said in my last post, Iowan's know how to take care of snow and this storm was the proof.

I know you want to hear about my dancing, so I thought I would give you a quick update on that. We have moved from the foxtrot to east coast swing. I have to say, I thought I was going to suck at this, and as usual, I was right. Really got mt feet on backwards and struggling to just not spin Marcy into a wall or run into another couple. I think I will be able to get good enough at least to dance at our friends wedding, but hopefully everyone will be drunk before I get out there and they will think I'm doing it right. I am enjoying it, but the teachers don't get my sense of humor. There were several times when I made a joke and Marcy laughed, but they did not, just stared at me, or worse. Example. We were working on the guy turning during the east coast swing. When you do this, the guy brings his hand up over his head, but close to your head, so the guy teacher said that you should give yourself a Mohawk and rub your hand across your hair. He said this several times, then looked at me and grinned and apologized, seeing as how I have zero hair. I was laughing, but said I was starting to get offended by his comments. If you know me, you know I'm always cracking jokes, so I was kidding. The lady teacher apologized for his comment. Really? I'm supposed to think he was intentionally being mean? Marcy and I were still laughing and now even more, but the lady just apologized again. The couple are a bit odd. Nice, but odd.

And finally, I have been overwhelmed with praise and kind words from my blog readers. Here are a few quotes:

"Love it! You should publish!"
"My favorite blog! It will always make you laugh!!"
"Whoever gets on first when you post gets to read it out loud.... we fight for it :)"

OK, so all of those quotes are from family, that doesn't diminish their power does it? Maybe it does, they are from family after all. The day after Marcy posted my blog address on her Facebook page and these quotes were made, I received this comment to a post I made August 17, 2007.

"What a great web log. I spend hours on the net reading blogs, about tons of various subjects. I have to first of all give praise to whoever created your theme and second of all to you for writing what i can only describe as an fabulous article. I honestly believe there is a skill to writing articles that only very few posses and honestly you got it. The combining of demonstrative and upper-class content is by all odds super rare with the astronomic amount of blogs on the cyberspace."

Now I don't know if this is one of you screwing with me, or if there is actually a non family member who liked what I wrote. I hope nobody is screwing with me, because that actually felt good to read. I know I'm not a writer, and when I go back and read my stuff, I'm amazed at my grammar errors and broken statements. I don't know how you guys follow some of my thought strings, perhaps you can't and just don't tell me. The odd thing was this comment was from a post in 2007. Did I hit my peak way back then, but every post since is crap. Ouch. Regardless, I think I'll have to start a "Review" section of the blog. And the funny thing about the Facebook post was, after she posted it, my daily hits on my site went from a normal day of 5 to 8 hits, to 32 hits in one day. Wow, I was able to offend or bore 6 times as many people in one day. That's got to be a record.

Brrrrr, I can't feel my face.

2011-02-01T18:00:00.000-06:00

I've written alot about the joys of living in Iowa, both truth and sarcastic. I'm sure I've made it quite clear, that overall, I do love Iowa. Of all the places I have lived, it's my favorite when you factor in traffic, people, crime, and overall living happiness. If it weren't for Iowa, I wouldn't be married to my beautiful wife and have my three kids. That's not to say that I wouldn't have similar things, but that is an unknown, what I have is real. What is known about Iowa, in the winter, is you never know what you are going to get. I'm not even going to do the "Life is like a box of chocolates" bit, too used. The worst part of living in Iowa is baring down on us as I write this, a blizzard. For those of you who have never experienced a blizzard, or haven't in so long that you don't remember what it feels like, let me give you a refresher. IT'S FREAKING COLD. Lesson over. Current conditions are snow and 40 mph winds, which is a bad combo in any state, but once you get out of the Des Moines metro area, it's dangerous. The wind blows the snow across the roads, and you can hope that the snow sticks to the road, because if it doesn't, it just gets polished into a nice sheen for you and your car to slide down. When it comes to snow, we Iowan's are familiar with the stuff. We can handle it, we know how to get it off the road and most of us know how to drive in it. I would make fun of those that don't and appear to be parking in the grass on my way to work as they have slid off the highway because they thought the snow meant speed up, not slow down, but I won't tease them. No, my fear is I will end up in the ditch and have to eat crow in a future post. Not that I'm unfamiliar with the taste, just want to avoid when I can. This morning, I ran to the gas station to get gas for the snow blower, seeing as how the 6 inches that are coming are more than I want to shovel, and passed a street where a Mayflower moving truck was in the process of loading a house for it's move. My guess is, the people have had it with Iowa winters and are moving south, but that's just a guess. When I saw that truck, with the doors open and stuff in the back, my heart sunk for those movers. I was a mover once, in a life a long time ago, and moved people in the rain and snow. It sucks. Today, however, isn't snow, it's a blizzard, and I'm guessing that "sucks" isn't a strong enough word for what it is. I wish I was there when they carried out the sail, I mean mattress, and tried to get it on the truck with 40 mph. I moved someone in the pouring rain once and by the time you got the boxes from the truck to the house, they were soaking wet and starting to come apart. That was a hard rain. I've moved people in the snow where you had to clear the snow off the boxes before you brought them into the house, plus you couldn't track in snow, so I carried the box from the truck to the door, cleared it off, and the "inside guy" carried into the warm house. That's what happens when you are low guy on the totem pole. Tomorrow will be a challenge to get to work, I'm guessing, but I'm sure things will be back to normal on Thursday. As normal as they can be in AntarcticIowa.

A proud day in history.

2011-01-23T12:34:00.004-06:00

I'm not a builder. I like to think I can build things and fix things, an have a pretty good record in doing those things, but I need guidance since I've never been formally taught. Like I said, I've had pretty good luck in my attempts, but there is one thing that I have attempted, on several occasions, and have failed miserably. The task I speak of, is installing doors. I've mounted two doors in my basement, and both work like crap. Oh they are functional, but they aren't flush and they sure aren't pretty. Both attempts ended with the phrase, "That's good enough, I give up." Spring ahead from those attempts, to yesterday, when I once again, prepared to tackle my nemesis, a door. I will say, that do to an incredibly stupid math error on my part, I bought the wrong sized doors and brought them home and got them in the basement, before I realized my mistake. A small fit and several curse words later, I'm on my way back to the store to get the correct sized doors. I nervously bought the doors, loaded them in the truck, brought them home and carried them into the basement. I stuck the first one in, and it fit, minus a few shims. I worked on getting it all square, shimmed it where I needed and it all seemed good. I drove a few nails in and all still seemed fine. I put the rest of my nails in, added the door knob and shut the door. Holy crap, it works. It doesn't drag, it lays flush in the frame, and it closes without having to do any lifting, tugging or kicking, unlike my other attempts. I can't believe it, I have successfully installed my first door that works.

There is no trim around the door, but it functions, and that was my goal. We have a friend staying with us for awhile, and I figured she might want to be able to close her door. I have one more door to install, and if all goes well, maybe I will attempt to fix the others. Who am I kidding, that sounds like frustration just waiting to happen, I'll pass.

I was going through my phone and found this picture I took awhile back.

It's hard to read, but that says "Pecker's Trucking." Struck me as funny.

OH NOOOOOOOO!!!! Wait, nevermind.

2011-01-19T13:39:00.003-06:00

So you know we have a pet anole, a lizard for those of you with a public education like me who didn't know what the heck it was when I was told we were getting one. His name is Kirby, and he is actually a she, but that isn't important. Kirby is an odd pet. He doesn't like to be held, so he lives in this tank that we throw crickets and meal worms into for him to eat, but unless we are cleaning his tank, he stays solo. Anole's don't drink water out of a bowl or out of one of those hamster things, so you have to spray the sides of the tank and the leaves we have in there for him and he drinks off of those. When you spray his tank, this thing flips out like it is acid rain. Running all over the tank until he finally calms down enough to hide under stuff. He does this without fail, every time, like it had never happened before. I feel sorry for him because, for an anole, he seems puzzled and terrified. Yesterday, I was walking by the tank and Kirby was laying at the top of his cage, asleep. I knew it was time to water him and since he has no job, wife or kids, I don't feel too bad about waking him up from his nap. I squirt the water into the tank, and he doesn't move. Oh crap, here we go with the "You see kids, things die" speech that I was hoping I wouldn't have to give again until Mason turned 21 years old. Since the anole's only live a few years in captivity, probably not gonna be able to hold off that long, but I can dream. I kept squirting and he kept on being dead. Crap. I sneak over to Marcy to fill her in and tell her to get her speech ready. We decide to wait until the boys go to bed and then check everything out. An hour or so later, I walk by the tank and that little shit is sitting at the bottom of the tank, unlike his dead position at the top. His eyes are open and he is far less dead than when I saw him last. Not sure why the water didn't freak him out, so I squirted it in the cage to see if he was just use to it, and he flipped out. Maybe he is an actor and is trying out for the Geico commercial, I don't know, but I got to put my speech away until later. Maybe I should figure out how to deliver the speech without saying, "Life sucks kid, get used to it."

Pins and needles?

2011-01-18T12:22:00.002-06:00

I know, you are so excited with the anticipation of hearing a detailed description of "Mark's dancing, the early years." If you read my earlier post, you know I called for the divorce of Marcy for even thinking of signing me up for an activity that I would rather, well, do anything else other than dance. You've heard the old saying, "He has 2 left feet." That would be a compliment to me, I have one left foot and some sort of a hoof. I've never had much success with dancing. I always feel as though the paramedics will rush in, assuming I'm having some sort of seizure, and I will wonder why they are breaking up my best dance ever. So Marcy signs us up to take Ballroom dancing lessons, which right away sounds better than freestyle dancing, or whatever that is called that people do at clubs. I haven't been in a club for years, don't miss it. We were supposed to start last Monday, but my prayers were answered, and weather blew in that closed the dance place. I thought God would answer my prayers again last night, it rained during the day and then started to freeze, but it was not to be, class was on as scheduled. Seeing as how we had the huge temperature switch, my sinus's decided to give me the "going to puke" feeling, but I knew I had to fight it back. Marcy would NEVER believe that I was sick, she would assume I was faking so I didn't have to boogie. When I was a kid, I would have gone that route 100% of the time, but as an adult, I don't play that game anymore. I went to my room after I got home, closed my eyes and prayed I would either throw up and get it over with, or the nausea would subside enough that I could go without fear of having to mop up anything on the dance floor. My trick worked, some, so my head wasn't pounding as much and I was only slightly concerned about adding a new dance on my first night of class, the slip and dodge. We arrived at the dance studio and I was pleased that after everyone arrived, there were a total of 4 couples, us, our friends Michelle and Andy and two other couples. This doesn't include the instructor couple, who were busy putting on their dancing shoes, literally. Ever gone somewhere to do something, and someone else walks in with a really cool something that would make what you are doing better? Shoes would have been it, since you weren't supposed to dance with "street" shoes on. Looks like the sock hop is happening here tonight, so we ditched the shoes and the four couples nervously waited as our instructors introduced themselves. The one wall is all mirrors, which is what dancers want so they can watch themselves and others, without turning their head. For me, very distracting. I mean, there is a 6 foot 4 inch bald dude that won't take his eyes of me, kind of creepy. I still found myself turning my head to look at the instructor, when I just had to look straight ahead and I could see him in the mirror. Our first dance? The Foxtrot. I'm not sure how it got its name, I'm guessing a fox doesn't walk like this, but it is a fairly simple thing to teach a beginner. Before I had even come close to figuring the basic step out, they added a turn and then a promenade. I didn't do too bad, only stepped on Marcy a few times, but dance like what you might think if Frankenstein were to foxtrot. I feel stiff, that's what she said, and jerky. I have to be conscious of my stride, since one step of mine is two of Marcy's. There is a turn that we do that I go backwards and if I take my normal stride, I will drag Marcy across the floor, and that isn't exactly Dancing With The Stars worthy. There is a lot to remember, form, steps, direction, count, beat and I'm sure week two, they will add a lot more. What did I learn? I learned that when told exactly what to do when I dance, I'm not horrible. I learned that since I lead, paying attention to where I'm driving is important so I don't slam my wife into a wall, because I failed to "turn." I learned that there are worse things I could be doing, but I get to spend an hour looking into my wife's beautiful eyes. I don't want to end on a sappy note, so I will add the best part of the night. As our instructors were teaching us a step, I heard the woman slip a fart out. It was loud and she did the nervous, put your hand up by your mouth as if to say excuse me. Nobody reacted, maybe they didn't hear it, but I have an eye/ear for those sort of things. I asked Marcy after class if she heard it, which she had but didn't know where it came from. I know. I didn't react, but on the inside, laughing my ass off. Yes, I'm 8 years old, still funny. I told Marcy last night, and I feel it is my duty to report, I had fun. We'll see what next week brings.

Push #4, to be totally pissed off.

2011-01-10T16:24:00.000-06:00

I discussed this with one of my sisters the other day, and she has the same gripe, so I don't feel alone in this gripe. Why can't we have people answer business phones anymore? I know, it's a way to cut costs, and those that propose it will tell you that it is more efficient, because you can direct the caller to the correct department to get the help they need. That sounds good on paper, but I freaking hate these things. Here is my latest run in with "efficiency." I am a member of AAA. That is AAA, not AA. It was time for me to renew my membership, so I wanted to call them so I could also add Marcy to the coverage. I usually don't have her on the account, because it costs more money and usually, we are together, so if there is an issue, I can cover it with my card. With Marcy traveling to MN alot, I wanted her to have an account so there wouldn't be any issues if she needed help. I called the main number and oh how happy I was to hear, "For English, press one." Crap, here we go. I start down the press this press that road and get to the services menu. This is where they list all of the services they offer, which I don't remember what they all were, but the first was for information regarding their insurance and once we got down to number five, that option sounded the closest to what I wanted. That is part of the problem, sometimes the choices are vague, so I'm not sure if I want number 4 or number five, but I'm positive I don't want 1, 2 or 3. I have to push a few more buttons, but I feel I'm heading to talking to someone to give this business my money, which is what they want. After I push what I hope is my last button, the recorded message comes on and says "Our insurance office is currently closed, goodbye." HOLY SHIT,I have no idea how I got to the insurance office, but I can say with 100% certainty, I NEVER pushed a button that the recording said was insurance related. Now they just hung up on me after I worked my way through their verbal maze like a rat, only to find out that the cheese isn't there, it was closed. Now I'm not an expert on efficiency, but I'm pretty sure that this would not fall into that category. If a customer calls you, and wants to not only give you the money they owe you, but more money, hanging up on them should be waaaaaay down on the list of possible outcomes to a phone call to that company.

Another issue with these things, are they can't always understand what you are saying. I had called a place and they said to say the option I wanted, which I did. I apparently was asking for either something they didn't do, or were trying to frustrate me enough that I would hang up. It was working, I was about to hang up, when I decided, instead, to just yell a curse word in frustration, and see what happened. It said it didn't understand. My 10 year old would have understood that word, it meant I was pissed, so they obviously decided to not recognize those words because I'm guessing I'm not the first to utter it at the recording lady. I decided to try a new trick and I said "operator." It understood, but tried to get me to just speak my way through by asking me if I wanted one of "the following categories." I just kept saying operator until some lady actually answered the phone, and I think the first thing I said to her was "operator."

I know that I've had some of these things actually work, but I just think it would be so much easier to tell one person who answers the phone, who I want to talk to, and they connect me to them. Done, game over and I don't have callouses on my pointer finger for pushing 100 buttons to get to a place that a halfway intelligent person could have gotten me to in 2 seconds. I'm just saying.

Shocking news

2011-01-08T15:58:00.002-06:00

In the winter in Iowa, it gets cold, not news to those of you who live here, have lived here, or anyone who watches the Today show. It isn't a secret, and we don't want it to be. This is how we keep the thin blooded trouble makers out of our state. There is a reason our crime rate is lower than all those warm states, the criminals don't have the cojones to stick out an entire winter where it is common for the snot in your nose to freeze your nostrils shut. For days. I bring this up because, the consequences of the cold is, you have to run your furnace quite a bit so your ass doesn't freeze to the toilet seat when you try to relieve some of the hot coffee or hot chocolate that you have been consuming to keep your organs from seizing up. The byproduct of the constant furnace running, is the air in the house is now dry, which in turn electrifies all fabrics and hair in the house. Taking off a hat or moving fleece pants will cause any nearby hair to stand at attention. I wear fleece pants and my leg hair tries to escape from my leg, or at least that is what it feels like. To combat that, I run humidifiers in the basement and one upstairs by the bedrooms. It helps, but doesn't eliminate all of the electricity. I was changing the tank on one of these one day, when I noticed something floating in the base unit. I stuck my finger in the water to touch it, and got one hell of a shock through the water in the tank. It may have been the total surprise of it that made it appear worse than it actually was, not sure. This thing is plugged into the wall, so that carpet static shock was a bit unsettling. Today, I was again working to get the humidifier working and went into the bathroom to fill the tank. I knew the static buildup was high, so I didn't want to touch the light switch, get shocked and piss my pants, so as I usually do, I figured I would use something in my hand to actually turn on the light. Today's choice, a half full can of Coke. To my surprise, the current from me walking into the bathroom had built up enough that the spark traveled through the can, shocked me and I wasted part of my can of Coke, which you know, is a sin. It is like the 5th Beatle, that is the 11th Commandment, you don't always see it, but you know it's true. Now I'm afraid to touch anything for fear that either it, or I, will burst into flames. If there were hidden cameras in my house, pointed at the light switches, you would be very entertained to see the lengths I will go to so that I don't get shocked. Don't think that these are little shocks, these are visible electric current, arching out of my light switch and into my body. That can't be good.

Back, Mexico and divorce

2011-01-05T20:13:00.004-06:00

Sorry about the lack of posts, both of you must be pissed:) Life is crazy with work and the kids and trying to keep the house in order. I had a back spasm the other night that was the worst pain I have ever had. My back is still bothering me, but it helps to have a friend that is a physical therapist, who is willing to work on me for no charge. She worked on my back on Saturday and when she was done, it felt great. The attack happened at 2am, so I'm always a little nervous when I go to bed that I will be woken up with the pain. Since Marcy isn't home 2 nights a week, it's just me and the boys, and they can't help. Last time, I was home alone, which wasn't fun.

I was having some flash backs to my Juarez days today. I can still see the area we worked in so vividly. The time I spent there was some of the best times of my life. I can still see out the little window that is above the urinal. I can see the dirt streets and hear the people talking outside the barred windows. I couldn't understand them, but I could hear them. The dirt always built up in your nose and we joked about blowing out adobe huts when we got back to El Paso. I can still see the garbage coming up from the ground, the glass that covered every step you took. I can still see the garbage that self combusted and was smoking just a few feet from the house we were building. And the dogs, man there are a lot of dogs. I can still see my smashed thumb from the time I hit it with a hammer, then hit it again. I'm not sure if that mission will ever be able to cross the border again, which is a shame, because the work we were able to do helped those families, and it changed my life. Even though I will probably never go back, the people, the sights and the sounds will always be with me. They're burned into my soul.

And finally, I have some bad news. I think Marcy has done something that I think you will agree, is grounds for divorce. I know what you are thinking, not Marcy. Yes, Marcy. I just don't think I can take this, it's just so mean. What has she done? She signed us up for dance lessons. I know, I know, you can't believe it, but it's true. Apparently I need to learn the foxtrot, but I've actually gotten through 43 years without having a clue as to what that is, so I don't think I need to know it to finish off whatever God has in store for me. Do me a favor. If you see me out, walking around, hit me with your car. I don't want to die, but give me a good clip that might knock me out of this hell that is approaching. Can you do that for me?

OCTOBER!

2010-12-15T17:25:00.012-06:00

My last post was a long way back. As you may know, my life has been crazy. Not in the way where people say their lives are crazy because they are busy, but crazy in trying to be a part time single parent (thankfully, its just part time), trying to stay caught up at work, which is extremely busy, which I am thankful for, and trying to deal with extreme disappointments that came out of no where, from a source I never expected. Life, it is what it is. They say what doesn't kill you will make you stronger. Just call me Popeye. Since I'm not going to use my blog as a whine fest, or call out those people in my life that have disappointed me (I celebrate Christmas, not festivess, and if you didn't watch Seinfeld, then you don't know what that is), I thought I might share a few more mug shots that made me laugh.

First of, this nine year old must have been caught skipping elementary school.

And this years award for hairiest guy goes too:

Can't you just see the attitude in this picture? I'm guessing there were some naughty words during her arrest, just guessing.

You'll never guess what this lady was arrested for. Prostitution. I hope at the end of the day, she is still broke, cause that is scary.

Bad Santa.

Is this the second coming of Jesus?

I'm not sure this guy understands he has just been arrested.

Not sure what happened here, but is that Linda Blair?

Two things here. He appears to have either a bandage or piece of paper on top of his head. Second, is that his lip or is he sticking out his tongue?

And finally, the most inappropriate comment of the day, "Don't make me tell you again!"

Disclaimer: beating a woman is never acceptable, it was a joke, so don't post nasty comments.

Can you post a picture like that?

2010-10-27T10:05:00.003-05:00

If you know me, you know my sense of humor can be called, juvenile, at times. When I hear my 5 year old say “crap,” I think that is funny, inappropriate for a 5 year old to say, but no less funny. When I wedged a Lego between my toes and it hurt like hell, and I let it be known by saying “Fucking toy,” I meant it. When my then 5 year old son repeated it from the next room, funny. When mom heard me say it and then him repeat it, not so funny. If I hear a name of a person that seems close to a word that might be considered naughty or questionable, that’s funny to me. Example, we have a teacher, I’m sure a fine teacher, whose last name is Spick. When I was growing up, not a nice word. So to hear someone has that word as their name, funny. It’s like if you met a guy and his name was Richard Penis. I would laugh for a week on that one. I’m giggling now and I just made it up. So why am I bringing this up? Well, I was working in our garden the other day, getting more vegetables out of it than we have in months, when I saw we had some more carrots to dig up. There were several that had grown together, so I worked hard to get them out, and this is what I saw.

Right away, I see legs, and more. Maybe the “normal” person sees some carrots grown together, but I see a big carrot penis, I’m sorry. I wish I could stop it, but I can’t. You might ask, why is it a big deal, this defect you have to see odd or funny things in objects that are neither funny or appropriate? When I held the carrot anatomy lesson up to show Marcy, she knew exactly what I saw in it. That’s a bad thing, because before she met me, I guarantee you she would have thought nothing of it. I’m a bad influence on my wife, I know that, and I apologize. But come on, I’m not wrong that it looks like a carrot dude, who I might add is very un-proportionate. Right?

I solemly swear

2010-10-17T09:58:00.003-05:00

Today, I make this promise to both of my blog readers. This is my last picture of my office bathroom. This month. Our "Never out" toilet paper dispensers have been replace with your standard holder. We all ready have one causualty.

I'm amazed at the trouble we have had in this department.

You tell me

2010-09-28T19:22:00.000-05:00

What are they trying to sell here? This was an add I found on the internet.

Don't ever say that they don't use sex to sell. Not that you would say that anyway.

Mystery

2010-09-27T18:12:00.001-05:00

Every Friday, we get donuts at our office. It's a great perk from a company that all ready supplies me Coca-Cola all day. Notice I didn't just say Coke, for fear of a random search that would lead to a visit from the local authorities. Most Fridays, after the first wave of employee's have taken their donut of choice, there are always a few stragglers that weren't selected, either because people are gone so there are extras, or because that particular donut just doesn't appeal to anyone. Now the rest of the day, those donuts just sit there, getting dry, hard and having little chance of being taken. But there is something that happens to these donuts, that confuses me. If you watch them, they start to disappear, not one at a time, but piece by piece. Here is a shot I took after the first wave. You will notice that there is a knife in the box, which is weird.

I left and came back awhile later.

You can see that we have lost a piece of this donut. I came back a bit later and you can see we have a second victim.

A little later and you can see that a second attack on this cherry filled donut has occurred.

Then we have a third victim.

You can see that some of the "bites" are small, so I'm not sure why they are doing it. I mean, would you go into an office break room and pick up a donut that has been hacked up by who knows who? My thought is, either take the whole donut or stick to the diet you are trying to be true too. As the day goes on, these donuts disappear, so maybe other people don't mind eating them. Or, my guess is, the same person comes back again and again, taking it piece by piece. Maybe they think that if you take the entire day to eat a donut, that it somehow will not register the same number of calories. Here is my thought on all of this. Take the fricking donut to your desk and hack it up at your leisure, but I guess that's just me.

Dude, you said no more.

2010-09-26T17:55:00.006-05:00

Hear me out, I'm not in the same shitter, this is different. Apparently my pictures and confusion has struck a cord with people, or at least Chad. Maybe we shouldn't judge the level of interest in this subject by him, since he was the one that took a picture of me using the facilities in South Africa.

That being said, Chad sent me a photo of another confusing placement of a toilet paper dispenser.

I've seen paper towel dispensers that aren't that high. I'm not sure if they were just trying to get it over the handicap poles, then didn't want to mess up the tiles, or if the guy hanging it has a torso that is 6 feet long, so this is the proper height while he is sitting down. Perhaps he only stands to get his paper. I'm not sure, but I did find this was worthy of a post, fits right in with most of my posts for the past month. I'm now on a mission to document all of the crazy stuff I see in bathrooms, so lock the stall if I'm with you.

No bathroom mentions in this post

2010-09-24T08:52:00.000-05:00

I learned something yesterday, that I will need to keep in mind going forward. Makiah has never been to an actual football game and hasn’t seen very many on TV. Those that he has watched, I wouldn’t say he watched with undivided attention. This helps me in this way. I was mowing the grass last night and came across a football in my path, so not wanting to kill the engine to move it, I whistled for Makiah who was playing nearby so he could come move it. Is that lazy? Of course, but that isn’t the issue. He grabbed the football and I decided that I would show my manly manliness and whistled for him to toss the ball to me. I then killed the engine, which I was too lazy to do a minute ago, and punted the football across the yard. Now I have a pretty big yard, and Makiah was mightily impressed, giving me an ego boosting “Whoaaaaaaa!” I started the mower and proceeded on my way. The issue here is, Makiah’s perception of what is a big kick. Since he hasn’t seen a real game, it appears I’m the Worlds Best Punter, which is where my lesson comes in. I should NEVER take Makiah to a real football game or allow him to watch any punting on TV. I will keep my status as the Worlds Best Punter, he never needs to know the truth. A dad always wants to be the hero in their kids eyes, this is one way I can pad my stats and hopefully help make up for the lost points when I can’t do something. Perhaps he will think, “At least he can kick a football really far.” As long as he never sees a real kicker, he will never know that my 10 yard punt will get you nothing. Except for maybe a contract to kick for the Washington Redskins. Sorry, still bitter about last week’s loss.

Dude, get out of the bathroom.

2010-08-27T17:58:00.006-05:00

So my last post, looks like I posted it in 2009, was about the new bathrooms at my office and how I couldn't quite figure out how the paper towel dispenser worked. Well I'm here to tell you the mystery will not be solved on my watch. Apparently, the dispenser wasn't a hit, so we changed over to these:

The old new dispenser was cast aside like the old one that was replaced just a week ago.

I was told that this next picture is the definition of irony. First, a close up.

Now, the irony.

I promise, this is my last post about the shitter.

Can you spare a square?

2010-08-17T15:35:00.000-05:00

Our office recently updated and remodled our bathrooms. They are really nice, but I have a few questions.

1. Why is the toilet paper roll so far away from the toilet?

Most people are going to have to get up, just to get some paper. Seems like there should be a stud a bit closer to attach this to.

2. This is our new paper towel dispenser. I'm not sure if you can see it or not, but there are actually 2 places for the paper to come out, but only one button to push to get it out.

If it alternates, depending on the weight it detects, won't they both run out at the same time? Does one side go completely out before the other side kicks in? We will see.

I was reading an article about a marlin that "attacked" a boat. The problem with this is, the marlin was being caught by a person on the boat, so they are pulling the fish to the boat. Now they act like it's some big surprise that the fish came to the boat. Isn't it animal instinct to either flee or fight, and since it's flee was being taken away, it "attacked?" I guess I'm not surprised, but I don't fish, so maybe all the beer they drank before hooking this clouded their brain. Here is a shot of it.

In case you missed it, here are a few shots of the loading dock at my office last week. It flooded 3 days in a row, the last was the worst.

This is our parking lot.

That's our Fair.

2010-08-15T14:16:00.002-05:00

I went to see MercyMe and the Newsboys the other night in concert at the Iowa State Fair. I’m really please that the fair continues to bring in Christian acts and love to see that they are well attended. I hope they continue to bring them in. We got to the fair a little early so I could check out the photography that is in one of the buildings. A friend of mine had submitted a few shots and I wanted to see them in a “art show” format with a bunch of other photos. She is very talented and actually sells her stuff on the Internet, here. My favorite picture is Morning Glory Bee, check that one out. She also has pictures hanging in the WDM library, so I check them out whenever I go. Anyway, I saw two of her shots, one won Honorable Mention, so that was cool. I was amazed at some of the youth photos and art, I hope their parents are encouraging them because there was some really cool stuff. The best thing about the fair is people watching, which we were able to do as I ate my $5.00 walking taco that had $1.50 worth of ingredients, at best. The girl asked me what I wanted on it, and since it was $5.00 no matter what, I said to put it all on. A second girl brought it over, which the order taker girl looked at it and told her to put jalapenos on it as well. I guess the second girl thought she said “Put ALL of our jalapenos on it” because I got a Doritos bag full of peppers. I didn’t notice it until I got to my people viewing spot and sat down to eat. I LOVE jalapenos, but this was too much, even for me, so I had a small pile at one end of the bag when I was done. I hope everyone knows what a walking taco is, or I’ve just confused you with my Doritos talk. I could have been a salesman for walking tacos that night, because everyone that walked by said, “Ooh, walking taco.” Back to people watching. My favorite game is, “What were they thinking when they chose their outfit for the day?” Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for being who you are, but a bit of modesty or intelligence, ok. For example, I’m way past my 155 pound days, I’m in the 220 pound days, which means that no shirt, no service, no appetite. I’m well aware that I no longer have the body to walk around in public with either no shirt or very little shirt. No, my wardrobe now consists of shirts that are long enough to cover my gut, and, I wear a belt that keeps my pants up high enough so you can’t see my underwear, or worse, my ass crack. This brain cell has been lost on a number of my fellow Iowans. The 20 something girls with their bellies, live it up girls, show it off, cause it won’t last. But the 30 something and even 40 something ladies, let’s try to keep the gut covered, with a second shirt if you have to. I know it’s hot, but if it is so hot for you that you can’t keep your clothes on, perhaps you should stay home today. Now, if you have the belly to show, think about whether others even WANT to see it. Another thing. If your breasts are double D’s, perhaps a bathing suit top, short shorts and flip-flops isn’t the best outfit for a family event. I’m not a prude, in fact these are the subjects of my favorite time at the fair, just think you might want to tone it down a bit in a family setting. On top of that, there are a lot of drunks there and you are setting yourself up for some cat calls, but perhaps that is the goal. I know those Luggs boots, I think that is what they are called, are popular, but they look like they would be really hot on a 110 degree day. I saw a bunch of teenage girls wearing them out there, made my feet sweat just looking at them. (Man, that sounds bad out of context) Don’t think I’m just picking on the ladies, the dudes had a lot to be desired as well. There were several guys with no shirt on. I’m not offended by a shirtless guy, but a shirtless sweaty guy walking in a crowd is worse, to me, than a shirted sweaty guy walking through that same crowd. You get too close and you got sweaty guy sweat all over you and that ain’t good at any time, let alone while you’re trying to eat a walking jalapeno taco. I mentioned that I wear a belt, which a lot of the guys at the fair do as well, but the gut causes the belt to be completely ineffective. My understanding is, that a belt is supposed to hold your pants up, but 98% of the large guys wearing belts are also showing 98% of their ass. I’d rather see a 40 year old belly, than a 50 year old crack. Maybe it’s just me. My boss had called me and told me he saw a picture of me at the fair. I instantly wondered if it was in one of the barns, but he said it was in the Varied Industries building in a booth for Blessman Ministries, the organization I went to South Africa with. Since we were there early, Marcy and I headed over and found the booth. We were looking at the pictures when a guy who was manning the booth came over and asked if we knew someone in the photo. Little bit. We were fortunate to be in the booth when Doc Blessman and his wife, Beth, came by. He told us about the next project and how they were going to try and use the bricks I've talked about before. The machine that makes the bricks was outside, so we were able to see that as well. It was really cool, I wish I could go to help them with the building, but I think a trip of that size is a bit out of my price range at this point. It would be cool to be on the first crew that built the Abods and the first crew to build with the bricks. Maybe I start playing the lottery.

Welcome back

2010-08-02T16:20:00.003-05:00

No, this isn't a tribute to the show Welcome Back Cotter, which I was a huge fan of back in the day. I recently saw the show again and laughed exactly zero times, so I'm not sure what I saw in it all those years ago. The thing I remember the most is an episode in which Vinny Barberino, played by Mr. John Travolta, was trying to get his friend Freddy "Boom Boom" Washington off drugs. He pretended to take drugs and wanted more, so he kept saying "Gimme drugs, Gimme drugs." It was by far the worst acting I had ever seen, and it now makes me laugh because I love John Travolta so much. No, this Welcome Back refers to us being back in the hospital. It seems that Marcy just can't get enough of tubes up her nose and jammed in her arm, so we are back. This time, we are in a brand new hospital located in the actual town we live in, so no need to bother with that 15 minute drive to the down town hospital. It wasn't a bad drive, I'm obviously kidding, but this new hospital means I have a few minute drive to get home to take care of what ever I need to. I must say, this place is amazing. The lobby looks more like a fancy hotel than a hospital. They have a coffee bar as soon as you walk in, but it looks like a bar in a fancy hotel, and I don't mean coffee. A few things are the same. They tell Marcy over and over again to get some rest, then come in every 5 minutes and wake her to see if she needs anything. I don't think I will ever understand that. The room is bigger than the ones down town and the couch is a lot longer than the ones in previous rooms. It isn't any more comfortable, in fact less comfortable, if you can believe it, but at least I can be uncomfortable with my legs fully extended. It also isn't very wide, which I am, so if I lay on my back, one shoulder touches the back cushion and the other hangs off the butt cushion. They have a flat screen TV and a DVD player, so at least there is a little entertainment during daytime TV. The elevator has a dark wood in it, but it smells like cedar. When your hospital is fancier than your house, you start to think about moving in permanently. I took this picture of the toilet, which has a unique design. I'm sure it is to hold the "hats" that catch all out put, if you have to have that measured, but to me it looks like a guys head. Do you see it?

I thought about putting something in the toilet, then make no mention of it to see what comments I got, but that was even a little too gross for me, so I skipped it. Your welcome.

Now this is what you call misc.

2010-07-26T19:02:00.005-05:00

As I'm sure you have noticed, I'm posting as often as Haley's comet comes around. It's not for the lack of stuff I want to write about, I just can't seem to find the time. If you thought I had run out of stuff that pisses me off, or makes me laugh, let this post put that out of your mind. I apologize for the randomness of this, but I have the time, so I'm cramming it all in.

I have to ask, does this add make sense? I went to an MMA bout a month or so ago and we sat at a table with a bunch of sponsor cards on the table. This one for a local bar made me wonder if I'm missing something or if this is just stupid.
"Thirsty Thursday, $10 All you can drink, free"
Am I missing something? Is there a new definition of "free" that I'm not aware of? How is $10, free? Inflation is a bitch.

I'm not sure how it works in you area, but here in Des Moines, there are a few convenience stores that have air for your car tires. Near my house, there are 3, 2 are free and the other costs $1.00. I'm a cheap ass, so I go to the free ones, but 95% of the time, they are broken. What is up with things that they are so fragile? Are they made by Fisher Price? Why can't they get these things up and running, and keep them running. This wouldn't be such a big deal, if I could find a different one that worked, like by my office. There is one free air pump by my office, which is broken as well. I don't have an issue with paying a dollar, but I never have a dollar in change in the car and I'm too damn lazy to go inside, just for change. I did find one that worked in MN, but I didn't have my tire gauge, so I couldn't use it to its full potential. Why is the air such a big deal? Well my car has a warning that comes on when a tire is low, but it doesn't tell you which one. You can't shut that light off until you get the air right, but I can't do that, so I have to look at that light every time I get in the car and it's starting to drive me nuts.

On my trip to MN a little while back, two things stuck out to me. First, in a stretch of 6 miles, I know it was six miles because it was in a construction zone and the sign said 6 miles, I passed 3 state troopers. That might not be a big deal in a lot of places, but in the middle of know where Iowa, it seems a bit extreme. I passed one 20 minutes before the zone and I passed 2 more after the zone, before the IA/MN border. That is 6 cops on an interstate cutting through some of the least populated areas of Iowa. Second, I have a very embarrassing thing happen to me on the drive up. I watched in the mirror as I was approached from behind by a disturbing sight. Then, in a flash, it whizzed passed me and I snapped this photo, if you can see it through the vapors.

Yes, that is a Smart car, and I think being passed by this type of car basically makes you an old man, so that's not good for me.

Also, while in MN, we went to a lake that Marcy visits regularly when she is up there. I have to say that the people of MN really know how to get the use of their 10,000 lakes (That is what there nickname is, if you didn't know) The lake we walked around had 2 paved paths, one for walkers and one for bikers/roller bladers. That is an awesome idea and the lake was packed with people getting use of both lanes. There was a ton of stuff to do, swimming, boating along with the previously mentioned walking, biking and roller blading. We walked around to a path that led you to another lake that had this:

A really cool place to listen to music just off the late. We sat for a short time and listened to a dog with a high pitched bark try to drown out the symphony that was trying to interrupt his repeated barking. If your dog won't shut the hell up when in public, why would you take it to a concert? Just because you can? Seemed a bit rude to me.

I mentioned in an earlier post that we are now playing slug bug. I wanted to say that MN has a crap load of Bugs and PT Cruisers. Marcy and I spent the weekend beating the crap out of each other and I noticed something on one of my sightings. I turned and punched Marcy in the arm and pointed to the Volkswagen. When I looked in the car, I saw that they were watching us and laughing. I realized that the people who were in the car must actually like watching people punch each other, just because they are near with their car. Kind of makes you want to get one, doesn't it?

We took Makiah to Toys-R-Us the other day to pick out his birthday present. While we were there, Marcy spotted this sign:

OK, why would you even print a sign that brags about saving "over a dollar" on a nearly $100 item? If you can't see it, the original price is $99.99, so while the savings IS over a dollar, its over a dollar by $.01. Hardly seems worth the paper it's printed on. Are they f'ing with us, or are they seriously promoting a $1.01 sale on a $100 item?

We have a 2001 Dodge Caravan. It has been a good car, but is starting to fall apart. One thing that broke a few years back, is the passenger side window no longer rolls down. It hasn't really been an issue, until recently, when the air conditioner went out. Now, we only had one window that goes down and the back of the van on a 100 degree day gets a bit steamy. We went down to Mt. Pleasant to pick up the boys, who had spent a week at Uncle Rob and Aunt Stacy's house (which they loved) On the way home, with one window down and the wind blowing in air that felt like it was coming out of an oven, Makiah informed us that he was going to throw up. I don't know if it was all because of the heat, but it certainly didn't help the situation. We pulled off the highway in Oskaloosa to get the boys something to eat and to cool off a bit. As we were approaching the turn into Mcdonalds, the van died. This is never a good thing, but at this time in our lives, a big car repair bill was not something I wanted to think about. Marcy got it started, but the van coughed and sputtered and wanted to die again. I told Marcy not to turn in front of the on coming traffic, seeing as how it might die and we would get t-boned. We drove a little further at a blistering pace of a few miles an hour, where it died again, right on the railroad tracks. I've heard about cars getting hit by trains and I could never figure out how. Now I know one possibility. Marcy got it going again and I shut off the "air conditioner" that was currently blow warm air. The van stopped sputtering and we were able to get it out of the road. Long story just slightly shorter, we were able to get the car home without an further incident. It was starting to get dark, so it was much cooler. I was terrified to take it to a mechanic so they could tell me I could pay $800 to fix the window or $1000 to fix the AC. I have no idea what it would have been, but I didn't want to hear it. We had been talking to Marcy's dad, while in Mt Pleasant and on the drive home, and he said he would help us get a new safe van for, really, Marcy and the boys to ride around in. I rarely drive the van, except for the last 6 months, so I was glad that they would soon have a safe reliable vehicle to get to MN and school. Marcy's parents picked out a van and kept it a secret from us until they showed up with it. It is fantastic, lots of cool features including dual dvd players to keep the boys occupied on trips. I got to drive it for a few days while Marcy was out of town, but she has it now and I'm guessing I'll never drive it again. But that's ok, the best features are aimed at the passengers, and that is what I will be soon.

OK, I'm tired, that is enough for now.

Day one complete

2010-07-15T17:29:00.002-05:00

Well day one is in the books and I can't tell you how glad I am that I scheduled this. Todays course had 21 holes and is built around a campground. There are several ponds that come into play, but they are pretty easy to navigate around, or over. I had printed off a map from the Internet, but left it in the car and was to lazy to walk back to get it, even though it was only a short distance. My hope was that I would be able to figure it out just by looking, which for the most part, I was. The first 14 holes are in and out of the woods, but mainly in. The last 7 are out in the open, so you don't have to be as careful and can just throw the disc as hard as you can. I loved the course. I met the owner of the campground and talked about the course and the improvements that he has made and is currently working on. Some of the holes still have dirt tee boxes, but most are concrete and the rest are framed up, just waiting to pour the concrete. He said he is holding a disc golf tournament in Sept., with music and other activities, sounds like fun. I'm not really into tournaments, I just play for fun, but he is calling it "Discstock," so I bet it will be a drunk bash. I'm going to try and set up a weekend trip with friends to hit a few courses each day, maybe we start or finish here. The owner asked me if I thought of any changes he could make. I suggested he have the snake removed from the 7th fairway, scared the crap out of me. He reminded me it was just a garter, I informed him I could care less. To me, a garter is the same as a rattler. Got the heart rate up. I should have asked him if he could do anything about the skeeters, they are as big as sparrows.

The day continued to heaven, lunch at White Castle. (Yes I'm aware that I have an issue here) I had forgotten that I left my GPS in the van, which Marcy now had in MN, so I had to rely on my memory from 4 months ago as to where it was. I am totally motivated when it comes to the Castle, found it on my first try in a city I have no idea how to get around in. I remembered how to get to the hotel and they allowed me to check in early. I was able to hit the pool and hot tub, which I had all to myself, so the morning and afternoon were great. I really enjoyed my day and I'm looking forward to my trip to the other course tomorrow. I was going to try and squeeze it in before my meeting, but I think I will save it until after. I might be able to hit the Castle before I head home on Sat. Keep your fingers crossed, all of mine are.

Officer, I was just playing a game.

2010-07-14T20:01:00.003-05:00

Wow! Has it been that long since I have posted anything other than mug shots that I make stupid comments about? Apparently so. Well here is my new post, but I'm guessing it won't be any smarter than "Sweet hair."

Little tip for you. I found a perfectly acceptable way to beat the crap out of your husband/wife, and the police can't do anything about it. You may have done it as a child. It has recently been made popular again by a commercial. If you haven't all ready guessed, its Slug Bug. I'm guessing you played it when you were a kid, but maybe you out grew it. Lets just say it is running rampant in our family, but luckily the kids haven't figured out that you are actually SUPPOSED to hit the person. They just say "Slug bug" and call it good. Marcy and I are in the front seat beating the shit out of each other. I know eventually we will be pulled over by the police and I will be removed from the vehicle, at gun point, for abusing my wife, which I am. I would like to point out that she is beating the crap out of me as well, but she isn't as good as I am at the game, so I'm guessing whoever called the police after witnessing our game, only saw me winning. Now I'm not one to promote abuse, in any way, but this one. Marcy has added a new twist that she learned from a friend, called Cruiser Bruiser. Same concept as Slug Bug, only for PT Cruisers. You would be amazed at how many Volkswagen bugs and PT Cruisers there are on the road. You'd also be quick to realize that it is much easier to excel at this game if you are ridding in the passenger seat, so you don't have to deal with those pesky road rules you have to pay attention to if you are driving. Marcy and I walked down to a nearby restaurant last night for dinner and then over to the library and then home. If people were watching us, they might think we were fighting for the number of times we hit each other. Luckily, we made it home, but there were police all over our neighborhood. Hmmmmm?

As I write this, I am preparing for a Disc golf outing that will take me to a few courses in MN that I have never played before. They will be my first ever "Pay to Play" courses, which I normally would be against. One of the things I love about disc golf is, it's free to play. Why would I pay to play a course when there are so many free ones nearby? Well, because the pictures of one of the courses makes it look like a real golf course. Most courses are in public parks and are basically paths cut through the woods, paths mowed in the grass or just baskets placed around an all ready established park. All that is great, but some don't get the care that would make them even nicer. I'm not complaining, if a disc golfer is one thing, its adaptable. If you want to play, and the course isn't a priority of the parks department, you have to deal with obstacles in your path, like picnic tables, playground equipment and an occasional person. You also have to deal with flooded tee boxes and fairways. Some of the courses don't have concrete tee boxes, so they are usually mud. A true disc golfer shrugs this off and throws from either the middle of the mud, or steps three feet to the side and throws from the pile of garbage that people left behind, and the parks department doesn't feel the need to clean up. The course I'm playing on Friday looks like Tiger Woods might step out of the club house to play a round. I'll try to get some pictures and update you on my day. Tomorrows course is a big one, 21 holes, but looks like a lot of fun. I have my sun screen and bug spray all ready to go. I'll haul some water with me, since the heat index was 116 degrees today. Maybe it will be cooler in the north. Wish me luck.

Not again...

2010-07-06T18:00:00.010-05:00

Here are a few more criminals.

First off, this guy was REALLY resisting.

Dude, dude, dude looks like a lady.

Excuse me sir, can you please look up?

Sir, can YOU look up?

This guys got fricking horns or something.

Song from the 80's or 90's, "Turn around, bright eyes."

SWEEEET HAIR!!!!!!!

Oops, she forgot her teeth.

And finally, this is an awesome mullet soul patch combo.

A few new ones

2010-06-25T11:10:00.005-05:00

First, this is a girl. Second, I hope they serve donuts in jail.

Aaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!

This is an amazing flat top head.

Did you ever see the movie Beetlejuice?

And finally, this guy thinks he is on American Idol.

Good book

2010-06-17T13:20:00.002-05:00

How do you rate a book? Is it by the way it makes you feel? By the amount of new information you learn? Or some other emotion? The kinds of books I read are either biographies about people I find interesting, about travel, or, just plain funny. I love Bill Bryson who combines travel and humor. I've read most of his books and recommend them to people who like smart, funny writing. I also like Dave Barry, who was a writer for the Miami Hearld, I'm not sure if he still is, but he also writes books that I find hilarious. I use to find out about a lot of the books I've read from a syndicated radio show, Mancow. That show is no longer on in the immediate Des Moines area, so I've had to look at ather sources for my reading material. I found an article the other day in the DSM Register about a guy from Ankeny, Iowa, just north of me, who wrote a book. The story sounded good. He left a good job with a company in Denver to become a truck driver so he could write a book about all of his adventures. I pulled up his website and found that his humor might just be right up my alley. I'm a few chapters in and I have to say that, so far, I was 100% right. How do I judge a book? If it makes me LOL (Laugh Out Loud), its a good book. It made me cry last night. Marcy even made me read it out loud, she said because she wanted to see what was so funny, but my guess it was to see how far off the deep end I have gone. She thought it was funny, but since there was a lot of the "F" word, not as big a fan. I hope the rest of it is just as funny, because it is one of those books that I just don't want to put down.

Lizard update

2010-06-13T09:53:00.002-05:00

Due to popular demand, with half my reading audience requesting it, I decided to post a lizard update. OK, it was one request, which technically is a third of my readership, soooooo.

I must say that I was a little skeptical about a lizard. What can you do with a lizard? Is it like fish, you just watch them? Turns out, you can do very little with a lizard and yes, they are like fish, although watching them eat is far more interesting. He doesn't move much, so sitting in front of his tank for an extended period of time just isn't a good use of your time. It is pretty cool to see him in different parts of the tank and changing colors to blend in. We have a smaller tank that we now keep his dinner in, crickets. We buy crickets at the local pet store. I was keeping them in the bag I bought them in, but was realizing that several were dying before I could feed them to him. I had the idea to put them in this other tank and feed them so we could get our monies worth. Turns out, we pay almost $5 for 36 crickets and he is eating about 5 crickets a day. I certainly didn't want to get 36 crickets and only be able to feed him 30 or so. I read on the internet that you can feed the crickets pretty much anything, it's called gut loading, then that food is transferred to the lizards. Since we always have carrots, apples and strawberries in the house, that is what I have been feeding them. It seems to be working. Since I started this new system, we haven't lost any of the crickets to an early death. We are hoping to catch our own crickets in the yard soon, so we can cut down on our purchasing of crickets, but I need to read on the internet to be sure that "wild" crickets are safe for a lizard. I would think so, but you never know. He seems to be doing well. He has been taken out of his tank twice and has escaped from the kids hands both times. Thankfully, Makiah is very good at catching him, so we don't have any dead lizards in the vents, yet. Today we are going to work on cleaning out the cage, hopefully we don't loose him.

We won! Well, I didn't win.

2010-05-31T14:22:00.003-05:00

Per my last post, we have a new addition to our family. A green anole named Kirby. Here is his first baby picture.

When he first got home, the boys moved him from his small traveling cage to a 10 gallon tank that was all decorated up for him. He has a climbing area, a long stick that goes down to the ground, he is lying on that in this photo and then we have a bunch of fake leaves for him to hide in. I wasn't there when he was moved, but I understand there was an escape and a re-capture. I got home and went right to the tank to check out the little guy, but couldn't locate him. The boys were gone and to be honest, I wasn't 100% sure what he looked like or how big he was. I texted Marcy that I was getting concerned because I still hadn't located him after a 5 minute search. Finally, I located him in the leaves. It was a lot smaller than I had anticipated. (That's what she said)Sorry, that is my The Office quote that I'm addicted to and I can't help myself most days. I typically say it under my breath, but this one had to be published. I was glad I finally located him and now would have an easier time finding him since I knew what he looked like. He is a pretty cool little guy. I'm amazed at how much of a range of color he actually has. He goes from a dark green to a dark brown and blends in to the leaves very well. I fed him some crickets and watched him eat one, pretty cool. I know the boys are going to like watching him all summer, or until they get bored with him and he becomes my responsibility. Probably next Tuesday.

You may have seen that I actually had a night to myself the other night and I can't tell you how good it felt to just have to take care of myself. I didn't have to figure out what to feed 3 of the pickiest eaters in the world. I only had to do a few dishes, clean up one mess and I didn't have to tell one person not to do that. I love my boys, but we have been together alot for the past 4 months and I needed a break. I made myself a great dinner, no peanut butter or jelly involved and watched a pretty funny movie, Zombieland. I didn't have to argue about brushing teeth at bedtime and I didn't have to get out of bed 5 times to tell anyone to go to sleep. It was a break. I picked them up from Michelle the next afternoon and within an hour, we were arguing again. Ahhhh, parenting.

Funny thing happened on Saturday. Our cellular phone contract is up, so that means we get either new free phones, or new inexpensive phones. I went into the local Verizon store to learn why Verizon changed their plans, so if I got the same phone I currently carried, I would have to change my plan and it would cost me an extra $10 per phone per month. The guy was very helpful and explained they added a "limited" data plan to those phones, my guess was to get people hooked on using email or internet on their phone and then they will bump up to the full data package, which is $30 more a month. My current financial situation doesn't have room for an extra $20 per month, let alone $60 a month. I found our new phones and was getting mine set up, but the guy was going to re-activate Marcy's old one since she was in MN and unable to get her new phone. She would be able to go into the store when she got home and have her address book and stuff moved over. When the guy tried to re-activate her phone, it said it was on the "lost or stolen" list. Flash back to Sept. of 2009 when Marcy lost her phone, so I called Verizon and had it de-activated. She found it a short time later, so I called Verizon and they re-activated the phone. Now, after she used the phone for 8 months, they are telling me its still on the lost or stolen list. Nice list. The phone is on it and can still be used? Doesn't sound like a good system. Long story short, they couldn't re-activate her old phone, so now she is without one. I activated her phone and decided to overnight it to her, which wouldn't get there until Tuesday because of the holiday. I get to the shipping place and the guy says UPS and FedEx have all ready picked up, but I had 20 minutes to get to the post office. I went as fast as I could and made it with 2 minutes to spare. Now I just hope it actually gets there, especially if Marcy is able to come home next week, I want her to have a phone for the drive. I tried to do something nice by getting her a new phone and end up making it so she has no phone. Strike one. Since she didn't have a phone, I couldn't even tell her what had happened. I tried to call the place she is at, but since they are technically closed, I was in voicemail hell. Luckily, she borrowed a phone and called me and I explained. Wouldn't be my life if it went how I wanted.