Today my blog celebrates its second birthday. Yeah! Now, on to weightier things:
Today I strolled down to Barnes & Noble to pick up a book for my boss. She can get a little stressed out and I feel for her sometimes. I decided to get her a book for the next time she has a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. The book I got her was Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. This was a book that I had when I was a kid. For some reason, it always stuck with me. I am sometimes surprised with the things I cherish from my childhood. Now that my kids are reaching the same age as I was when these things were important, I try to pay special attention to what they are doing and experiencing.
My sister is a children’s librarian and she has introduced us to several series of books. The series that know will have an indelible place in my children’s life is a series of book about a Pigeon by Mo Williams. I am eagerly awaiting his next book, Naked Mole Rat Gets Dressed. (Actually, it is already out. I just found out about it tonight).
I just got done working out. I like to watch Modern Marvels on Netfiix while I am attempting to forget that I don’t like to exercise. During this last round I watched an episode on the history and building of the Empire State building.
This particular episode brought back memories of when my sister graduated from Swarthmore in 1997. While my brother and I were in Pennsylvania for the event, we took a day to ‘tour’ New York.
The morning of the big day we bought tickets for the Peter Pan bus line that left Philly at 7 am. Over the next two hours we traveled in relative silence, passing through the NJ turnpike into New York City.
Over the next six hours my brother and I did/visited the following:
Went to Grand Central Station
Took the ‘A’ train
Observation deck of the Empire State Building
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral
Ate pretzels from a vendor
The Rainbow Room
Carnegie Hall
Ate at a diner
Listened to street musicians
Said ‘hi’ to some rabbis
Bought a ’silver’ jewerly box
Saw a homeless guy make sweet love to himself
Watched a living statue scare people
Saw a man with AIDS asking for money. (We gave him some)
Yelled, ‘Hey, youse guys!’ A number of people turned around.
Went to central park. (Damn that place is big!)
Ate dirty water dogs at the park
Took a nap under a tree in the park
During those six hours we literally ran from place to place so we see as much as we could. This trip was really about saying that we did all things listed above. Some of it was planned, some of it was not, but it was all very memorable.
I have a few good friends who live in New York now (hi kids!). Our corporate offices are in New York, so I imagine that I will make it out there sometime to say hi to them. I am sure they can show me a few things I missed…
And I can’t mention New York without mentioning Fester Peabody al Efreamei VI. He taught me the term ‘dirty water dogs‘ and introduced me to Sabrett’s Onions n’ Sauce.
Sorry for the long absence, but I have not been feeling particularly inspired lately so I took a break. It would be a shame if I were to pump out poor quality posts just to fill pages. My loyal readers are used to only the highest quality posts. On that note, did you hear that the ghost of Elvis married another ghost?
Personally, I was shocked. How could he do that to all of us loyal, living fans. Whatever.
Noelle was in a her annual talent show at school. Here is the video.
It is really neat to see Noelle perform like that. The best part is that she does not even seem nervous. There were other kids who did similar acts, but none of them did it with her verve.
Tonight we are enjoying a rare Sacramento thunderstorm. The kids think it is great. I don’t ever remember having these storms when I was growing up. Curse you global warming!
I am will be continuing my ‘This is my life’ section, with 1980-83 on deck. Highlights include a six week trip to Kentucky, my first grade graduation and the time I boiled water to make tea and managed to trip while holding the pan and scaled myself. All this and more, next time, on Fermatd.
As I promsied earlier, I am going to start bloging about my life. Here goes.
The 70s
I was born, at a very early age, in a sleepy little bedroom community on the outskirts of Sacramento. My father owned a plumbing supply store and my mother was a nurse turned stay at home mom. My older brother preceded my arrival by several years and he was none too happy about having to share momma, or so I’m told. My mother and brother were always very close, so my intrusion into their circle was bound to be disruptive.
My first real memory is from when I was between two and three. We were all in the backyard and my brother was hunting paper turkeys with a toy archery set. I remember him wearing a pilgrims hat and that the turkeys were set in big juniper bushes.
My second memory is from little later in life. I am not sure how old I was, but I think it was between three and four. I was in our next door neighbors yard and I walked up to a big white German Sheppard. His name was Tyson. I said ‘I love you, Tyson!’ and he proceeded to reward my affections by removing most of my scalp. I rolled around on the grass yelling, ‘Fireman! Fireman!’ because I seemed to know that is was you were supposed to do. A quick trip to the ER, a hundred or so stitches and some plastic surgery, and I was as good as new. One particularly odd experience was that I remember watching myself run to my mom in the hospital. It was like I perched where a security camera would be and I could watch the whole thing. I am fairly sure I was not running anywhere afterwards.
Next I remember riding the bus to kindergarten. Every morning I would walk about ¼ mile to my bus stop on the corner Star and Camellia. As a parent, I could never imagine sending my five year old son that far on his own. Times have certainly changed. Our bus driver was an older African American man who liked to joke about stopping at Kentucky Fried Chicken whenever we dropped some off on Kentucky Street. It was not until years later that I found out it was Kentucky Street, so the joke never made sense to me until then.
I went John Holst elementary, which is now closed. My teacher was Mrs. Nightingale . We did circle time and learned shapes. For some reason I vividly remember learning about ovals. On our birthday we got to choose two or three friends to go to the school kitchen to help make carrot cake. Each kid got to drop one stick of butter into the pan.
After kindergarten, my parents decided to put me in a transitional grade instead of sending me straight to first grade. My teacher was Mrs. Flemming. Every year for our birthday, she would put on an obnoxious amount of lip stick and gives a big kiss on the cheek. Again, I could only image what people would do these days if that happened at school.
One day, Mrs. Flemming needed to write a note home. Being an adult, she wrote it in cursive. I tried to read the note on the way home, but was unable to since I could not read cursive. I concluded that cursive was a code that adults used when then wanted to communicate with each other but not have the kids understand the message.
That year I also created a silhouette of my head by shining an overhead projector light on the wall and having Mrs. Flemming trace the shadow. The picture was then transferred to a piece of black on construction paper and x-acto knifed and put on a piece of baked clay with a clay flower. The picture had a very nice cowlick, which I cut off a few years later. Looking back, I wish I had kept it. It added character. Especially since Sammy sports one of his own now.
Now that I have kids who are old enough to remember what happens to them, I am always careful to make sure they are memories worth having. Not that they are all good memories, but memories that will shape and guide them through life.
Those of you who know me, and now those of you who don’t, know that I generally eat raw foods as much as I can. That being said, I still love one animal based slice of goodness. I speak of course of Bacon.
Check out this story this story. Note to my raw and vegan friends. Don’t watch. Just don’t do it. If you do, don’t blame me later.
A few years ago I decided to deep fry a turkey. Just for fun, I bought a pound of bacon to deep fry afterwards. Once the turkey was done, I dropped the bacon into the oil and it sank like a rock. About two minutes went by and the bacon started to float to the top of the oil, looking golden and perfect. I plucked it out of the oil onto a paper towel lined plate and let it cool for a minute or two before devouring. Tasty.
Bacon has a very loyal following in other places than my stomach. I became a fan of bacon on Facebook. Then there is BacoNation. If you like pigs that poop bacon, this is the place for you. It was on this site that I first encountered the term, ‘food porn’. Good stuff.
Let me give you a brief history of bacon:
The earliest recorded history of bacon dates back to the year 3200 BC where cave painting show us pictures of man making bacon. It was initially unclear as to what man was making, but microscopic images revealed that the man was smiling, so it must be bacon.
Flash forward several hundred years to the area now occupied by the North Eastern United States. One of the natives of the area was chasing a wild pig through the forest when it collided with a maple tree, felling the tree in the process. The sap leaked on the pig as the man slaughtered it. The maple syrup made the bacon extra tasty.
Moving on to June 14, 1215, the nobles and along with King John prepared to sign the Magna Carta. When it was discovered that no bacon was available for the signing, it was delayed to June 15.
Prior to the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette was misquoted as saying, ‘Let them eat cake!’. The French folks got mad and over threw the government (or something like that. Look it up). What she really said was, ‘Let them eat bacon!’. Had they heard correctly, she would be been installed as Queen ruler over all the land.
That brings us to today where bacon, better know as pork bellies on the CME, are traded daily.
And that is about all I feel like making up tonight. Good day.
Well, tonight we say good-bye to a rather tumultuous year, at least for our clan. We saw the loss of a job, an unanticipated move, the gain of a job, the blessing of a better place to live and the great blessing of another child. There were also the incidental victories. I got my second Bag ‘o Crap from Woot and I and won my fantasy football league.
Looking back at the year, I feel the same way a forest must feel after a fire. The fire hurt, but now there is room for growth and renewal. In 2009 Sammy will start kindergarten and Mary will start pre-school. I will continue (God willing) in my new job and Casey’s Speech-Pathology practice serving the Catholic Schools will grow. We will wrap up the year with our first Christmas in Boise and our first Christmas in Idaho since Casey and I were married.
We lost our dog, Cassie this year. She was a good dog. A good dog. Noelle started wearing an eye patch to help with her Anisometropic Amblyopia. For each day she wears her patch, she gets a gold dollar to use to buy a hamster. The hamster won’t live as long as the dog (at least I hope not. I don’t want a 16 year old hamster).
We are going to strive to cut our current garbage output from four bags a week to three bags. We have cloth diapers for Leela and Mary will be potty-trained this year. We tried last year, but it just didn’t take. Too much going on.
We replaced our dinner table one that will allow us to seat all six people and keep food on the table. That may not sound like much, but it is really a huge deal to us. Ralphie and Steve were nice enough to provide the table.
Ralphie was able to spend a month with us while Leela finished cooking. The kids loved having Grandma Ralphie around for so long. So did we. Mary is still asking, ‘Where did Ralphie go?’.
This year my blog enters its third year and I will pass the 100 post mark. I don’t know if that is really a big deal, but hey, I am running out things to say.
I hope all of you have a wonderful 2009 and that it is full of the Lord’s blessings.
I am going to kick things off tonight with a more somber picture. Well, actually, it is a painting.
This is called ‘Walking to Emmaus’ from Luke 24: 15-30.
Isn’t it a great piece of art?
Oh, it is by Fritz von Uhde (1848 – 1911)
This is Sammy and Mary, shortly after Mary was born. Sammy has a strong attachment to his baby sister. When I pretend to eat Mary, he usually kicks me in the stomach.
This was taken about 9 months ago. Noelle was trying to spell Sean.
My
playing my old git-box.
Christmas day, 2006 on our way to Kennewick. I had just taken Mary out of her sling. She loved that thing!
GiGi (great grandma) and Mary.
Papa and Mary
Hairy Mary, saying Hi!
This is Joy and her hubby Nate. This was taken at mom and dad’s at Christmas two or three years ago. The are Mary’s godparents.
Noelle and Mary. Mary was only about a week old.
Not many of you know this, but I used to be an actor in Hallywood. I never made it big because I thought I was in Hollywood. Boy, that was a waste of about five years. Anywho, the guy in the picture is Chris, my stunt double. The lady is Janel. She is Sammy’s godmother.
My
