I Want To Go To Prison

This kid makes it sound so cute!

And so it goes.

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p.s. Don’t watch this video if you have a low cuteness tolerance

Aboot!

This is a follow-up to United Breaks Guitars.

I think this message by Dave Carroll is extremely charitable and I commend him for it.  He mentions that Ms. Irlwig, the customer service rep, is being treated unfairly in some places on the interweb and that she should be given a break.  My favorite part comes near the end when he says, ‘Aboot’.  You crazy canucks! 

For me, this protest as been the best kind.  There is no anger or malice, just frustration.  Anger and malice lead you to a place you do not want to go.  I’d like to offer Dave’s example to all my ‘angry’ friends out there. 

Now, if anyone needs me, I’ll be in the angry dome…

And so it goes.

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Hello, hello…

…is there anybody in there?

Hi kids!

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.

And so it goes.

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It’s Garbage!

 

A little update before we get down to business.  

I got our taxes done.  That was fun.  We are even getting a little bit of green back.  Work is going well.  We are not really seeing an improvement in the economy, but we aren’t seeing a decrease either.  I’ll take that.  

Noelle turns seven on Monday.  She has a blog now.  It is artbynoelle.wordpress.com

The matriarch of the family will be in town for a few days.  It has been over two years since I have seen her, so I am looking forward to the visit.  Ralphie will be in town for three weeks.  As usual, we are excited about that.

Joy has raised 2,605 of her 3,900 goal.  If you can, please donate to her cause.  You can check out her blog at birdtribird.wordpress.com for a link to her fund-raising site. 

The blog bug is currently napping while I draft new topics.  I usually go a few months without much and then explode for a month or so.  

Ok, on with the show.

There are six people in my house. Two thirty-somethings and four crumb snatchers. Between the six of us, we fill 1 60 gallon garbage can a week. Now that might sound like a lot, but a 60 gallon can is the smallest they have for the county. Each week I roll this thing out the curb and I am happy to know that there is still room. What is the secret? What about the rest of the waste of the house?

Let’s look at the kinds of waste generated. First there is green waste. These are food and compostable items. Next are the recyclables. Paper, plastics and glass. Finally, there solid waste. This is the stuff that ends up in the garbage can.

My compost pile in the backyard offers mute testimony to the amount of compostable items that we generate.  In boy scouts we had sign in the mess hall that read, ‘We Support Zero Ort’.  For the uninitiated, ort is food waste.  We don’t like to have any, but it happens.

The recyclables make up the majority of the volume of things that leave the house.  Cans, bottles, jars, paper and plastics go into a can in the kitchen and then out to the curb twice a month.  That is a 90 gallon can and there is rarely room.  

The rest is stuff that is not safe to compost or is not recyclable.  

So take some time and evaluate what comes in and what goes out of your home.  You’ll be surprised.  

And so it goes.

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Fantastic!

When I am not busy at work or rearing four kids, I like to take some time to play Fantastic Contraption.  Here is the idea:

You are given five objects.  A wheel that rotates clock-wise, one that rotates counter-clockwise, and one that is neutral.  You also have a solid rod and a liquid rod.  Nothing can pass through the solid rod while most objects can pass through the liquid rod.  You also have a construction area, a goal area and a goal object.  You simply try to get the goal object (a ball or square or combinations) into the goal.  

Observe:

or

and

The best part is that you can pay a one-time $10 fee and design your own levels and play other people designs.  

Hope this wastes a lot of time for you, because this is pretty fantastic. 

And so it goes.

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You’re It (Duex)

In my last post  I talked about the most common tags used to generate traffic to a blog.  I added these tags:

 beer, fermat, free beer, blog, jailbait, hanna montana, porn, pron, porn,Hanna M0ntana, tags, math, jail bait, Miley Cyrus

 

Now,  look at the traffic generated yesterday.  111 posts.  My average daily blog views were at about 13 per day.

 

Now, if were some kind of tagwhore, I would always add these tags, just to boost the numbers.  But I am not a tagwhore, so I wont always add these tags to boost my numbers; however, I will add them because it’s funny.  Maybe.

I do need to come clean on one thing.  Also pushed my blog out to alphainventions.com, a niffy little site that runs through a list of blogs for you to peruse.  If you have a blog, go there and add yours to the reading cycle. 

And so it goes.

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The old man and his blog…

As most of you loyal readers know, my little sister has a blog called Bird By Bird.  (If you don’t know that already, then you need to pay closer attention.  This is like at least the third time I have mentioned it here.)  Inspired by the on-line adventures of both myself and my sister, my father had decided to start a blog as well. It is called Kid By Kid.

As excited as I was to see my sister start to blog, I am even more excited to see my father start to write. He always has very interesting stories about his life and lessons. The stories I find particularly interesting are those that occurred before I came into the world. More often that not, I find myself thinking, ‘Oh, that’s were I got that from’.

It’s funny to see yourself in another person. This always happens with my kids. I will see them do something that I did when I was that age. Or sometimes I see them do something that I do now. It’s like have four trained monkeys around the house, copying your every move.  (Except for Leela, of course.  She can only copy major bodily functions)  I can only imagine what my parents think if they see one of their behaviors in their grand-kids. 

There have been times when I watched one of my kids do something that I do when I am frustrated.  That can be a little disheartening because you only want your kids to pick up your good habits. 

So go visit dad’s blog and ask him to write about the time he was stuck in Minnesota with a pair of Eskimos who only spoke French.  It’s an absolute riot. 

And so it goes.

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Happy New Years!

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.

And so it goes.

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