Brad to the Bone

Did you take a picture of my funkle?

2009-06-03T00:09:00.001-07:00

2009-03-21T22:31:00.001-07:00

Black Belt!

2009-02-22T20:06:00.002-08:00

Last Friday I earned a Black Belt in the venerable Chinese art of Shaolin Kempo.
I'm the one on the left.

Youre the Best Around - Joe Esposito

2008-09-03T21:14:00.001-07:00

Pregnancy a Cause of Obesity?

2008-07-16T15:19:00.000-07:00

Soon to be 6 year old Henderson resident Ben expressed his concern today over the apparent increase in girth experienced by expecting mothers. "Moms are fat when they have babies", he said in a statement made to his father as they waited in line at a local Wendy's drive-through.

While young Ben has never experienced pregnancy firsthand he was intimately involved in his mother's first pregnancy 6 years ago, and has been witness to pregnancy's waist increasing effects on many occasions.

Ben, who has often expressed desires for a little sister, went on to say "I hope my mom doesn't have twins. I don't want her to look like the people on Wall E- on the ship". (Note: Pixar's latest masterpiece, Wall E, features morbidly obese characters aboard a space-cruise ship.)

When asked if there are other causes of surplus portliness Ben only replied "Your face".

You punk.

2006-12-19T21:20:00.000-08:00

I taught Jared to call people a punk. Now both he and Ben run around calling people punks. One time a guy at the store touched Ben’s Mohawk, and Ben said “Don’t touch my hair punk!”, and I’ve heard him say “Out of my way punk!” to kids at the playground, so I started telling them that punk isn’t a nice word and that they shouldn’t say it, so Ben started whispering to Jared “Tell Daddy he’s a punk”, and of course Jared would say it. Then Jared started whispering the same thing to Ben, which is hilarious. And if you tell Jared he’s punk he says “You punk”, and “You are.”

Then a few weeks ago I was carrying Jared, and I said “Jared you’re heavy.”

So he said “You heavy”.

And I said “You are”.

He said “You are”. And so on.
Anyway all that is funny, but it leads to something funnier. A few days ago Marie was getting some Yogos ready for Jared, and he got all excited, and started waving his hands in the air, and I said “He’s pumped!”.

Jared shot right back with “You punk Daddy. You are. You heavy. You are. You punk.” And the whole time he was pointing his finger right at my face. It was so freaking funny.

It’s crazy how cute Jared is, and he’s always saying funny stuff. Ben says funny stuff too, but It’s just funnier for a 2 year old to say funny stuff. Like the other day he walked past me and said “Right back Daddy. Poopy diaper. Wipes.” He’s telling me that he’ll be right back, because his diaper’s poopy. He’s been telling me for a long time when he’s poopy, and then he’ll go to his room , and dump all the diapers on the floor.

Blue Belt Test

2006-11-08T22:47:00.000-08:00

I tested for my blue-belt today. In the karate style that I study blue is the fifth belt. Every belt test is difficult, and not just because you have to know your stuff, but each one is also an intense physical workout, and today’s test was the worst one yet.

Normally people test on a Saturday, but for blue belt you have to do some sparring as part of the test, so Sensei tested me during a normal class, so there would be people available to spar.

First we did some jumping jacks, then he said to do 10 push-ups, roll over and do 10 crunches, then 10 push-ups, then 10 leg-lifts. Then he had as do what he calls running jumping jacks. You have to run across the dojo, and do 1 jumping jack. That’s one. Then back across the dojo, and another jumping jack. That’s two. We had to do 10, and when we finished we had to do the highest “form” that we know. Whenever you see some Karate guy on TV practicing his moves, and it looks sort of like he’s fighting someone who’s not there, but it’s obviously a choreographed set of moves, that’s a form. I have about 5 forms. Next he lined everyone up, and they took turns attacking me (about 5 people), and I had to use specific techniques to defend myself. Then more push-ups, and crunches, then more running jumping jacks, and repeat the rest of the steps.

After a few rounds of that I was pretty tired, and would have been happy to call it a day, but that’s when Sensei told us to grab our sparring gear. First he made me spar everyone in turns. A few rounds of sparring can be exhausting. One guy even had to quit, because he was tired. He was like the third guy I had to fight, and he quit because of fatigue, and I had to keep going.

I got so tired that most of my karate training went out the window, and I was just trying to get close enough to lay one on whoever I was fighting. The good fighters took advantage of my desperation by backpedaling, and peppering me with punches to the head. I did pop most of them a good one though. Out of the five of them, four had to stop, because I hit them hard enough to ring their bell. The one who I never hit hard was the guy who got too tired to continue. They were landing five blows to my one, but the one I landed was hard. It was the only way I could fight at that point. Take a few punches for the chance to unload one big one.

Once I had gone with everyone once, or twice. Sensei started to double them up on me. That’s when it got really tough. I was already getting killed by everyone one on one, because I was too worn out to fight, and then I had to deal with two guys at the same time.

At one point I thought to myself that I really wanted Sensei to let me stop, or I might pass out, but then I thought if I pass out I’ll get to stop, so that’s not so bad. One or two rounds later he finally did let me stop, and I got my blue belt.

Heroes

2006-10-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

The new TV series "Heroes" is awesome. If you're not watching it yet, you must be dumb.

Ender's Game

2006-09-21T17:23:00.000-07:00

I finished “A Clash of Kings” book 2 of the Song of Ice and Fire series, so I went out and bought book 3, but I didn’t start reading it yet, because book 5 isn’t even out yet, so I don’t want to read the first four books, and then have to wait forever for the next one, and then wait some more for the next two, so I read a book called “Ender’s Game” instead. It’s by a guy called Orson Scott Card, and it’s about a 6 year old kid named Ender who is recruited by the military to join their “Battleschool”. Ender doesn’t know it, but he’s humanity’s last hope in the war against the alien “Buggers”. It’s a GREAT book. As great as Song of Ice and Fire is, Ender’s Game was a welcome break from 900 page books that aren’t over by the last page. It’s only a little over 300 pages, and has a good, solid ending. There are a bunch of sequels though.

AWESOME!!!

2006-08-27T02:10:00.000-07:00

If you don’t want your stuff to get ruined, you shouldn’t have kids.

2006-08-22T02:27:00.000-07:00

About a month ago I bought a Nintendo DS lite for 120 dollars, and Ben likes to play with it. Today he was playing with it in the living room, and I was in another room. He came into the room where I was, and handed me the DS, and said "Daddy can you fix the DS?" He had tried to open it farther than it's supposed to go, and he broke the two halves apart. Now it's destroyed. It won't even come on.

Eyes on the Road Please

2006-07-09T02:21:00.000-07:00

I was watching the UFC fight tonight (technically yesterday), with my Bro. In-law, Scott, when Marie came in to tell him that some lady just crashed into his parked truck. Can you believe that crap? What was I just saying about morons, and crashing into stationary objects? (See yesterdays post about crashing into walls). The lady’s BMW was busted up, but Scott’s truck only suffered minor damage. She said that she was looking down to fasten her seatbelt, and get this, she’s an accident lawyer. Ha! That’s funny.

The BMW symbol broke off of her hood, and I tried to keep it, but Marie made me give it to her. I don’t know what for. She has no use for it. The thing was busted anyway.

Oh, and the Ortiz/Shamrock fight ended quickly with Tito winning by ref stoppage, and Silvia beat Arlovski in a boring fight. Not the best UFC pay-per-view I’ve seen.

License and registration Please

2006-07-08T01:26:00.000-07:00

My Mom came home the other day, and said there was a guy ranting on the radio, about how the Mexican border patrol is “racial profiling”, because they're not stopping anyone, but Mexicans. They were being racist, and he was outraged.

Is this guy the biggest effing moron of all time? It’s the Mexican freaking border patrol! Their job is to keep out the illegal Mexicans. Un. Be. Lievable.

This Looks Like a Good Place to Park

2006-07-08T01:16:00.000-07:00

It’s about 12 AM. I’m sitting on the couch watching cooking shows where people show me how to cook stuff that I’ll never try to cook, because if I did it would suck, and if it didn’t suck, I’d still be the only one to like it, so what’s the point. That’s when I hear tires screeching loudly nearby followed by a thud. “Someone just crashed” I said to myself. “I bet they crashed into my freakin’ wall”.

I go outside and there’s no visible damage to the wall, so I take a peak over, and sho nuff there’s a car parked with it’s front bumper pressed to my wall. The reason it didn’t bust through the wall is because the ground is a few feet lower on that side, so there’s a lot of earth bracing the lower portion of the wall, but there’s a decorative wall only a foot in front of that. It’s about 2 feet tall, and 6 feet wide, and it sits right under the sign that says Amber Ridge, the name of the neighborhood. Well that wall has seen it’s last days.

I ran out there to “see if everyone is OK”, but really to make sure they don’t try to get away with crushing the wall. I half expected it to be some retarded teenagers. Teenagers are infamous for their inability to avoid large, stationary objects. There weren’t any teens, just full growns. People were rattled, there were crying women, someone was making excuses, everyone was shook up. I got a license plate number.

There are only two ways to explain how someone could drive into a cinder block wall. 1) the person is drunk. 2) the person is a complete moron. My guess? That lady was wasted. She better fix that friggin’ wall.

You Go To Hell, and You Die!

2006-07-07T02:13:00.000-07:00

Kenneth Lay, the Enron boss who was supposed to go to jail, up and died without even giving notice. He was supposed to go to jail, but he got out of it by dying. Can you believe the freaking nerve of that guy?

They interviewed former Enron employees on the news, and these people were actually pissed that homie kicked before he went to prison. One lady said "I wish he would have at least served a little jail time". HE'S FREAKING DEAD LADY!!! What more do you want from the guy? He's dead, as in not alive, as in no longer freaking living! Un-freaking-believable.

Ketchup

2006-06-22T22:35:00.000-07:00

Tommy called me last week, and rebuked me for slacking on my Blog, so I decided to play a little catch up (ah, now you understand the cleverness of the title. Yes I’m good, I know). This entry is essentially an excerpt of a letter I wrote to my Brother Kevin, who is serving a mission in Colorado.

I bought Ben The SpongeBob movie on DVD the yesterday, and he’s watched it almost 1,000 times already. Kid is really digging on SpongeBob these days. His tastes are really fickle though. He’ll love something one week, and watch it until the disc wears down to a wafer, and then the next day it will be something else. One time he watched Aqua Teen Hunger Force with me, and the next day he asked me if he could watch “the food guys”. I didn’t let him though. It’s a little inappropriate for him. The one we watched had their neighbor guy whizzing in a cup, because he was too lazy to get up. I already have enough problems with Ben wanting to go outside to pee in the dirt. I don’t need him learning more places to pee besides the toilet.

I could let him watch ATHF anytime though, because Cox cable has this InDemand thing. You turn it to channel 1, and there’s a crapload of stuff that you can pay to watch like movies and fights, but there’s also free stuff. That’s how we watched ATHF in the first place. I’ve been using it a lot lately to let him watch cartoons that we don’t have on DVD (like SpongeBob before I bought the movie).

A few weeks ago we took the boys to the Doctor for a routine look under the hood. A nurse asked Marie if Jared says 10 words yet. Marie said no. Since then, I swear, Jared has learned 30 words. His favorite thing to say is “no no touch”. He says Papa (grandpa), grandma, Momma, and Daddy, night-night, kick kick (that’s from swimming at Colleen’s pool) and some other stuff too. It’s all very hard to decipher by untrained ears though.

Speaking of Colleen’s pool, it’s been finished for about a month now, so we go over there a couple times a week. Ben loves to swim. Almost every day he asks “Can we go swim in Cotleen’s pool?” He wears those inflatable floaties on his arms, and he swims around the pool all by himself. He can go for hours.

His Birthday is next month, and he specifically requested a Chuck E. Cheese Hulk party, so that’s what he’s getting. He keeps telling everyone that he’s going to get “Party Mario 7”, for his birthday, but lately he seems to want “The Hulk Game”, instead. He’s into the Nintendo. He kills is at Mario Sunshine. He can do the back flips and everything. He knows how to fetch the right fruit for Yoshi, and he can get a few of the Shine Sprites without any help. If you saw him play you’d be impressed, and I’m talking about when he was only 3 ½, because he hasn’t been playing it much lately.

RIP Koonya

2006-04-27T00:30:00.000-07:00

Koonya was put to sleep last week. The cancer finally got the best of him, and it was time to let him go. It was really sad for everybody. Ben didn't understand that Koonya was dead. He kept telling me not to be sad because Koonya would wake up, and that being sad is "against the superhero code."

We'll miss you Koonya.

Funny Stuff That Ben Said Recently

2005-12-12T16:51:00.000-08:00

He fell out of the shopping cart at Wal-mart, and later when I asked if his head hurt, he said, “Nope, it’s all fix”.

He calls Marie and I by our first names at least a couple of times a day.

He dropped his sucker, and it broke, so he ran to tell me, “I dwop my fweakin’ sucker!”

He asked me to put a movie on for him, and I told him to ask his Mom, but he said, “No, she’s crazy”.

Then a minute or two later when she was putting the movie on for him she asked “Am I crazy Ben?”

To which he replied, “No, you’re a genius.” We were both stunned, and we were asking ourselves where he learned to say that.

A few minutes later we got our answer as we were listening to his movie (Beauty and the Beast), and we hear a conversation between Belle, and her father. The father calls himself crazy, and Belle replies, “You’re not crazy you’re a genius.”

2005-12-12T12:05:00.000-08:00

We got Koonya’s biopsy results last week. He does have cancer. The Vet. said he would live another few months if we didn’t treat it, but he could make it up to a year with Chemo. Call us heartless, but Chemo. is very expensive, and we don’t see the point in spending all that money on a losing cause. If it was a person, sure we’d do everything we could, and a lot of people would do everything they could for their pet, but that ain’t us. Sorry Koonya, we’re going to miss you.

2005-11-30T19:48:00.000-08:00

I noticed a few days ago that Koonya has large lumps under his skin right by his jaw. Last night the skin under his jaw got swollen, and started to hang like jowls, so today I took him to the vet. The prognosis isn’t so good. The vet. said that it’s a good chance that he has lymphoma, a type of cancer, and that if he does, it’s not so much a question of whether he’ll survive, but of how long he’ll survive. Depending on the type and severity of the lymphoma he could live for even another year with treatment, but eventually it will kill him. He said that remission is very rare. If it is cancer, and it goes untreated the vet, gives him a few weeks to a couple of months. If it’s not cancer then Koonya should be fine. He’s scheduled for a biopsy tomorrow morning, and in a few days we’ll get the results.

How do You Spell Relief?

2005-11-26T20:53:00.000-08:00

I bought some of those new-fangled soft-chew Rolaids today. When I got them home I had to try them even though I didn’t have any heartburn, but then my tummy felt weird, so I ate a couple of jalapenos. I feel much better now.

Next Week I Go Pro.

2005-11-26T00:39:00.000-08:00

Marie and I went bowling today to celebrate our 5th anniversary. Romantic, I know, but the movie we wanted to see was sold out. In two games I had 10 strikes, that’s means half of my frames were strikes! In the first game I had a streak of 6 consecutive strikes, and ended with a score of 212. That’s my second highest score ever. The second game wasn’t so impressive, but I got 4 more strikes, and came real close to getting a strike every other frame.

On a side note, if you like being too crowded to move around when you go bowling than you should definitely try the new lanes at the Sunset Station. I hate elbow room, so I had a blast!

Back to the Gym Again.

2005-11-23T17:06:00.000-08:00

Ben’s been going to preschool for a couple of weeks now, and as it turns out, there is a 24 Hour fitness about 50 feet from the community center that has the preschool, so I’ve been working out again. It’s perfect, because Ben gets to go to preschool, and I get to go to the gym without paying a retarded 3 dollars every time, because they let Jared use the 12 dollars a month, or whatever it is, that we pay to use the Kid’s Club there.

I also have a new workout strategy. I used to do 40-60 minutes of low intensity cardio followed by 3-4 sets of one exercise on a major muscle group (chest, legs, back). That wasn’t working so great, so now I do 1-2 exercises 3-4 sets each on a major muscle group, plus a few more exercises on the smaller muscles (biceps, triceps, shoulders, calves). I follow that with about 15 minutes of moderate to high intensity cardio.

The theory is that by working more muscles I’ll increase my lean body mass, which increases metabolism, and the higher intensity cardio will improve my cardio-vascular health, which also increases metabolism. The idea is to make my body more efficient at burning calories when I’m resting, whereas the old way I was trying to burn all of the calories by working out. We’ll see if this way works better.

2005-11-21T01:14:00.000-08:00

Everyone Should Be Lucky Enough to Have an Uncle Brad

I didn’t write this, Kelly Parker did on her blog, but since I’m involved, and it’s so freaking funny I just had to put it here.

Saturday, November 12, 2005
SAILOR MOUTH
I’ve often joked (kind of) about wishing I had a “meal-time nanny”. You know…someone else to prepare the food my kids won’t want to eat; someone else to cajole them into not only picking up the veggies on their plate, but to actually put one or two pieces in their mouths; someone else to argue about how many bites is sufficient for a treat and someone else to scrape the mashed-up, dried noodles off the tile floor.
Mealtimes with young kids just isn’t my favorite thing.
Last night was no different, nor did I expect it to be. It was Friday, which meant House Church potluck – a bunch of different dishes brought by a bunch of different people which we all share and happily eat. Well, most of us.
During the course of dinner, I saw Gabriel playing around on his stool, his plate pretty much untouched. Nothing out of the ordinary there.

Here’s the scene:
ME: Gabriel, stop playing around and get busy eating.
GABRIEL: But I don’t want to eat that crap!
ME: (standing there, mouth agape, eyes bugging out, momentarily speechless) What?
GABRIEL: I don’t want to eat that crap!
ME: (absolutely mortified) That’s not the way you talk about the food that people have made for you to eat blah blah blah. That’s your dinner and if you don’t eat that, you’re not getting anything blah blah blah!

I couldn’t believe what I had heard, nor could Kenny when I repeated it to him a minute later. Where had we gone wrong? The kid’s only three!
We make a point to regularly fill our house with friends and family, food and fellowship; a place where we speak freely of living a life modeled after Christ, and yet, all we manage to pass on is trash talk?
Clearly, we could now see that we were failing miserably as parents.
A little later, as I was helping the boys get ready for bed, the subject of “bad words” came up again. My composure regained, I was ready to tackle the situation a bit more positively, perhaps even teach him a timely little lesson about thankfulness and all that junk.

Scene #2:
ME: Gabriel, you said a bad word tonight, didn’t you?
GABRIEL: Yeah, but Uncle Bad put that crap on my plate and I didn’t want to eat that crap.
ME: Huh?
GABRIEL: Uncle Bad put that crap on my plate and I didn’t want to eat it.

Suddenly, it dawned on me. Uncle Brad, notorious for torturing young children, had been trying during dinner to get Jake and Gabriel to try some of the CRAB that someone had brought to share. Despite Gabriel’s refusal, some still wound up on his plate.
I breathed a little sigh of relief – so we weren’t the worst parents in the entire world, Supernanny wasn’t on her way over that very second. He was still just our sweet little picky eater.
And really, I couldn’t blame him for the not-wanting-to-try-seafood thing – I wouldn’t want to eat that crap, either.

Now that is some funny mama-jama! OK in my defense- I do not torture young children… well OK, I guess I’m guilty on that one (I threw an orange at my nephew Josh today, and he cried. I wasn’t trying to hurt him though, and I did offer him a free shot, but he wouldn’t take it.), but Gabriel didn’t refuse the crab. I asked him if he wanted to try it, and he said yes, otherwise I wouldn’t have put it on his plate. No, I’m serious I really wouldn’t have. He only refused it after it was on his plate. He should’ve tried it though, it was really good crap… er crab.

Now I’d like to share another excerpt from Kelly’s blog. In this one I impart some of my expansive wisdom to young Gabriel.

Monday, February 14, 2005
NICE
“Nice” is a hot topic in our family. Kenny and I are constantly extolling the virtues of “being nice” - talking nice, playing nice, being nice to friends, siblings, etc.
“That was so nice of you to share with her.”
“Do you think that was a nice way to talk to me?”
“It’s so nice to see you kids playing quietly together!”
And the list could go on and on.
Consequently, Gabriel also talks about “nice” a lot. Mainly, he concerns himself with “nice guys” and “not nice guys”. In his world view, you’re either one of the two and he’s determined to find out which one. This entails nonstop questioning:
“Mama, he a nice guy?” “Mama, he not nice?” “Why he not nice?”
I try my best to explain, in three-year old terms, about moral character and making good choices, about how some people might choose not to be nice and the reasons why, and why we should choose nice instead.
Usually, my explanations are followed by a barrage of more “whys” and “how’s”, leading me to believe that he’s either
a. not fully understanding me or
b. trying to drive me nuts.
Yesterday, Gabriel was playing Star Wars with his Uncle Brad when I overheard this conversation:
Gabriel: (pulling out an action figure) Who’s he?
Uncle Brad: He’s a _________(some guy who’s probably not even in any of the movies that only a Star Wars dork would know.)
Gabriel: He nice?
Uncle Brad: No, he’s not nice.
Gabriel: Why he not nice?
Uncle Brad: Because there have to be not-nice guys so that the nice guys have someone to fight.

And that was it. End of story. No “whys” or "how’s” following that answer. His explanation seemed to make perfect sense to Gabriel.
Now, why didn’t I ever think of that?

Hey, that was some easy blogging. I need to torture Kelly’s kids more often, so I can copy and paste her entries instead of having to come up with my own.

Loompa Land

2005-11-21T00:38:00.000-08:00

I saw “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” starring Johnny Depp last night. It was good. I was surprised at how much I liked it.

It’s Just That Good

2005-11-21T00:37:00.000-08:00

I read a really great comic book last week called “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale”. I decided to read it because Wizard magazine gave it the number 1 spot in their list of the top 100 comic book stories of all time. It beat out “The Watchmen”, which is pretty much the best comic book I’ve ever read, so I gave it a shot.

It’s an amazing true story about a holocaust survivor. The book was written by the survivor’s (Vladek) son- Art Spiegelman. It goes back and forth between Vladek’s telling of the story, and Art’s time researching the story by interviewing his father.

Everybody knows how brutal the holocaust was, but I was still surprised at some of the things that happen in the story, but mostly I was amazed at Vladek’s ability to survive. The guy was incredibly resourceful. He narrowly escapes death I don’t even know how many times.

I convinced my Mom and my Dad to read it, and when they’re done, Marie even agreed to give it a shot. Even Kelly Parker said she would give it a try. None of them will be disappointed. A well written comic is just as great as a well written novel. They’ll all see. I know Doug wants to read it too. If it was easy to find I would tell him to just go buy it, because he’ll want to own after he reads it anyway. Hopefully everybody else will hustle up, so he can have a turn soon.

Preschool Ben

2005-11-09T00:00:00.000-08:00

I decided to stop making the biggest mistake of my life, and I let Marie talk me into putting Ben in preschool. It’s only about 20 minutes away, and when we move into the new house it will be even closer. Today was his first day, and it seemed like he really enjoyed it. He hasn’t got to play outside, or with other kids very much since we moved in with my parents, so just getting him out of the house, and putting him in a social situation is worth it, plus they learn, and do crafts, and have stories, so I’m really glad he’s going.

They must have sang the “If You’re Happy and You Know It” song, because he was singing it tonight. He knows the words pretty good too, considering that he only learned the song today.

Popular Baby

2005-11-08T23:59:00.000-08:00

I was eating lunch today at Panda Express, and the checker, 3 customers, and the girl cleaning the floor all told me how cut Jared is. They didn’t just say “Cute baby”, and move on either. They all stopped to talk to him, and tell me how cute he is, and they ask me how old he is, and what his name is. It happened at Wal-mart too. In fact it happens everywhere I go without exception. The kid is just that cute, and don’t say it’s because he’s a baby, and people think babies are cute. These people are genuinely impressed by his excessive cuteness.

Save the Pizzas!

2005-11-08T23:58:00.000-08:00

OK, I usually try to make these things light-hearted and fun, but today I need to discuss something that is very serious. People are ruining the pizzas. Yes, pizzas are senselessly, and illogically going to waste. You can see why this is an important subject. Pizza is one of the greatest creations ever conceived by man, and it is imperative that we all do our part to put this mindless pizza wasting to an end.

You see, pizza is dough, tomato sauce, cheese, and then toppings, and in the last year or so I have personally witnessed pizzas numbering in the hundreds become rendered useless by the neglectful practice of the OPWOT, or ordering pizza without toppings, commonly referred to as a cheese pizza.

Please people, if your dull, lifeless tastebuds can’t handle a little flavor, do the rest of us a favor, and order a pepperoni, and pick the pepperonis off, or maybe styrofoam, or cardboard would be more pleasing to your child-like palette.

I’m hoping everyone who reads this will help me in this noble effort to put an end to the OPWOT, and save the pizzas!

Special Delivery!

2005-10-10T22:01:00.001-07:00

Update

2005-10-10T22:01:00.000-07:00

Just to update some previous posts. I replaced my missing football game by buying a used copy for 15 bucks, and Ben has gone #2 in the toilet twice since his last accident. It’s been almost two months since I hurt my big toe, and it still hurts when I bend it, so I think it’s safe to say that I did break it. I forgot to tag someone when I was it for booktag, so I tag Marie, but she doesn’t blog, and she probably won’t read this to discover she’s it anyway, so I also tag Tommy. If Tommy’s already been it than he can tag someone else, I guess.

Bug-phobia

2005-10-10T21:52:00.000-07:00

It’s six AM. I’m jarred from my sleep by the terrified screams of my three year old son Ben. “What’s going on?” I wonder. I gracefully spring from my bed. I can see the hall light creeping under the bedroom door, and I take a guess as to what is happening. “He woke up, and looked for us, and then he panicked when he didn’t find us”, I think to myself. I quicken my pace toward the source of the dreadful cries, intent on comforting my poor naïve child. He must be terrified. My poor child thinks he’s been left alone, and he’s terrified.

I turn the corner, and find myself in the living room. Ben is in view now, but something isn’t right. His Grandpa is with him. Why is he crying then? They’re both in the kitchen. Ben is still frantic, but Grandpa is calm, and composed. What could be wrong?

As I approach I ask what’s going on, and Grandpa tells me what happened. “A fly landed on him while he was eating his cereal.” Oh, no wonder he was wailing at 500 decibels at six in the morning. I’m back in bed, asleep before Ben can say “There’s a fly in my Corn Pops.”

Facial Tick

2005-10-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

I think I developed a facial tick today. Ben took my football game out of the Nintendo and can’t remember where he put it. I probably spent two, or three hours looking for it. Have you ever lost something that you really didn’t want to be lost? Then felt the intense frustration that comes from not finding it? After awhile it becomes less about wanting the thing back, and more about how crazy it is that you can’t find it. I mean where could it possibly be? I’ve looked everywhere in the whole stinking house. He’s never lost one of my games like this before, usually he takes the game out of the Nintendo, and puts it in a game case, but not this time. I need Marie to get home so she can use her magical woman power to find it in two seconds, and point out to me that it was right under my nose the whole time.

That’s not the sole cause of the tick though. What put me over the edge was when Ben pooped his pants. It wasn’t so much that he pooped his pants, but what really chapped my butt was that he took his underwear off in the bathroom and made a big poopy mess. He got poop on the floor, and the rug. That’s when I felt my eyebrow start to twitch. I think I might be recovering already though. Somehow, writing the word “poopy” has a way of cheering me up. Now if I could just find that filth, flarrin’, flarrin’, filth football game.

Dear Tech Support

2005-10-02T00:24:00.000-07:00

My Mom forwarded this to me via Email. I thought that it was good enough to hold on to.

Dear Tech Support,

Last year I upgraded from Girlfriend 7.0to Wife 1.0. I soon noticed
that the new program began unexpected child processing that took up a

lot of space and valuable resources. In addition, Wife 1.0 installed
itself into all other programs and now monitors all other system

activity. Applications such as Poker Night 10.3, Football 5.0,
Hunting and Fishing 7.5, and Racing 3.6

I can't seem to keep Wife 1.0 in the background while attempting to
run my favorite applications. I'm thinking about going back to
Girlfriend 7.0, but the uninstall doesn't work on Wife 1.0. Please
help!

Thanks,
A Troubled User.

Dear Troubled User,

This is a very common problem that men complain about.
Many people upgrade from Girlfriend 7.0 to Wife 1.0, thinking that
it is just a Utilities and Entertainment program. Wife 1.0 is an

OPERATING SYSTEM and is designed by its Creator to run EVERYTHING!!!
It is also impossible to delete Wife 1.0 and to return to Girlfriend
7.0. It is impossible to uninstall, or purge the program files from
the system once installed.

You cannot go back to Girlfriend 7.0 because Wife 1.0 is designed to
not allow this. Look in your Wife 1.0 manual under
Warnings-Alimony-Child Support. I recommend that you keep Wife1.0 and

work on improving the situation. I suggest installing the background
application "Yes Dear" to alleviate software augmentation.
The best course of action is to enter the command C:\APOLOGIZE
because ultimately you will have to give the APOLOGIZE command before
the system will return to normal anyway.

Wife 1.0 is a great program, but it tends to be very high
maintenance. Wife 1.0 comes with several support programs, such as
Clean and Sweep 3.0, Cook It 1.5 and Do Bills 4.2.

However, be very careful how you use these programs. Improper use
will cause the system to launch the program Nag Nag 9.5. Once this

happens, the only way to improve the performance of Wife 1.0 is to
purchase additional software. I recommend Flowers 2.1 and Diamonds
5.0!

WARNING!!! DO NOT, under any circumstances, install Secretary With
Short Skirt 3.3. This application is not supported by Wife 1.0 and
will cause irreversible damage to the operating system.

Best of luck,
Tech Support

Going in the Toilet: Reloaded

2005-10-01T23:58:00.000-07:00

Ben finally pooped in the toilet again today. It was almost a month ago that he had his big breakthrough by going in the potty, and he hadn’t done it again since. He kept on finding somewhere to hide, and going in his underwear, which is massively disgusting to have to clean. At first I took the hard line by punishing him. I was giving him cold showers, and yelling at him. When that didn’t work I knew I was doing something wrong. I looked on the internet, and all of the advice I found there said that I should act like it’s no big deal that he a had an accident, and that I should just encourage him to use the toilet next time. It was about a week ago that Marie, and I adopted this new philosophy, and today it paid off. Whew.

On a related note, I’ve been trying hard to be more patient with Ben. He can cause me to get enormously frustrated, and I tend to be stern with him, because of it. I realized recently what I’ve always known: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, so I’ve been making a greater effort to be calm, and encourage him to do what I want rather than barking orders, and of course loads of praise always helps. One thing I learned from “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie is to give people a reputation to live up to. For example, with Ben I would tell him how great he is at pooping in the potty, even though he was failing miserably at it. It really works well on kids, and I suspect that it works great with adults as well.

Laundry Duty

2005-09-30T23:04:00.000-07:00

Today I told Ben to go fold the clean laundry, but of course I was only kidding. His response was “I already did it. I help Uncle Tean with the landries.” It took me a second to figure out what he meant. Last week we were at the Torkelson’s (Marie’s sister’s family) house for their son Danny’s birthday. Apparently Ben helped his Uncle Dean with the laundry while we were there, thus his reasoning that he was exempt from laundry duty, because he had already fulfilled his obligation by helping Dean last week.

Entertaining Exercise

2005-09-22T17:10:00.001-07:00

I had the best workout of all time today. I managed to combine exercise with one of the all time laziest of lazy activities- playing Nintendo. I ran on the elliptical runner in my parents’ room, and I plugged my Nintendo into the TV, and played a game of NCAA Football ’05. I ran for 55 minutes, and they flew by.

Working out while watching TV is fun too. Yesterday, and the day before I watched The Sixth Sense while I ran. I’m gonna borrow “Lost” from Doug, and watch it during next week’s workouts.

Bye-Bye Big House

2005-09-22T17:10:00.000-07:00

We moved out of the Big House last week, and into my parents’ house. It was a load of fun living in the Big House, and we’ll miss it. Ben still talks about Jack and Gabriel everyday, of course it’s only been five days.

Life at my parents’ is fun. The house is way smaller than the Big House, so it’s a little cramped, but on the upside everything is always really close. In the Big House if I needed something from the kitchen it was like “OK I need to pack a bag for the trip to the kitchen. See you in a few hours Honey.” Here if I need something from the kitchen I can probably reach it without leaving my seat.

Koonya’s not diggin’ it here though. He spends his days chained up outside. I’ll be happy for him when we have our own house again, and he can have the freedom to go in and out whenever he wants.

Camera Shy

2005-09-15T10:45:00.000-07:00

Jared crawled for the first time a couple days ago. Of course, when we got the camera out to record it, he decided that he was done crawling.

They’ll Be Out of the House Before You Know It.

2005-09-06T12:33:00.000-07:00

Ben pooped on the toilet two times last week. Jared is getting really close to being able to crawl. He can get up on his hands and knees, but he doesn’t go anywhere yet. He is also getting really good at sitting up by himself.

The boys and I went swimming yesterday with their Grandma, and Grandpa Linford. We went to a place called Warm Springs. It’s about a half hours drive north of town. Ben had loads of fun swimming. He really liked the slides. At first he insisted on being held even if he was in water that was shallow enough for him to reach the bottom, but after my Mom dunked Jared a few times, (she even dunked him and let go, so that he had to get himself back up to the surface) Ben got a little more brave. I started pushing him a foot or two away from me, and letting him swim back (he was wearing a floatie). After a while he was having so much fun swimming that he wouldn’t let me hold him anymore. He spent about a half hour swimming around the pool without any help.

Then on the drive home he had to pee, but we were in the middle of nowhere, so I had to make him pee on the ground. At first he refused, but when I started to put him back in his car seat he relented. The lesson learned here Ben is that if you’re a boy, the world is your potty.

Who Needs Diapers Anyway?

2005-08-26T11:57:00.000-07:00

Ben wore “big boy” underwear all day yesterday. I didn’t keep track of the number of times that he used the toilet. It seems a little pointless now.

He did have one accident though, and I’m still waiting for him to go #2 on the toilet.

Get That Man a Napkin

2005-08-25T18:16:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows that Spiderman is Ben’s favorite. A few months ago he learned about Venom, one of Spidey’s coolest villains, and he’s been a huge Venom fan ever since. I got him a Venom comic book, and he asks me to read it to him every night before bed. Last night he observed that Venom has green slobber drooling out of his mouth. “He slobbering. He need a burpie”.

Looks Like I’m Gonna Stay Fat for Awhile

2005-08-24T20:14:00.000-07:00

Jared’s 6 months old now, so I can take him to the gym, but they want me to pay them 3 bucks per visit to watch him. Ben is 4 dollars a month! If I go to the gym 5 times a week it will cost more than 60 bucks a month for Jared. My membership only costs about 20 duckets a month. How does that make one lick of sense?

Ballpark moments

2005-08-24T20:12:00.000-07:00

Marie and I had dinner with her Dad yesterday, so I was talking to him about baseball, and I remembered a couple of cool things that happened at ballgames that Marie and I have attended.

We lived in Phoenix Arizona from February 2001 to July 2003. While we were there we went to a handful of Arizona Diamondbacks games.

During the seventh inning stretch of the first game we went to together we were singing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”, and Marie said “root root root for the Cubbies”, the Cubbies! Apparently she’d heard the song plenty of times from Cubs fans, or Cubs games, and it didn’t occur to her that rooting for the Cubbies is inappropriate at a game between the D-backs, and the… I forget who, but it wasn’t the Cubs.

We took Ben to a game when he was very young. He was starting to learn to clap, but it was hard to get him to do it. During the game I noticed that when the crowd was cheering Ben was clapping along. It was way cute.

I discovered the beauty that is Brat’s and Sauerkraut at a D-backs game. I loved it so much that I wanted to go to games just to get it.

Finally, my proudest sports moment. The D-backs had only recently acquired a guy named Shea Hillenbrand, and he was doing tremendously well at the plate. The other team was intentionally walking the guy that batted before Shea, and Marie said “They’re walking him to get to Hillenbrand?” She knew it was a bad idea, and then guess what Shea did. Yup, he hit a Home-run. I was very impressed that Marie had actually learned something about strategy in a sport. Not that Marie’s dense or anything, it’s just impressive, because she’s so not into sports.

Record Breaking Day

2005-08-24T20:11:00.000-07:00

Ben peed on the potty nine times on Monday! That shatters his previous record of, what was it, two? No poos on the potty yet though.

Here’s Water in Your Eye.

2005-08-17T01:14:00.000-07:00

Today was Loredana’s birthday party number four. For the uninitiated, Loredana is one of those Citizen people that live with us. As always, summer parties in the “Big House” have water activities outside, which means that Uncle Brad (that’s me), gets into shenanigans with the kids, and sprays them with the hose. For the second consecutive party I succeeded in spraying Emma (another one of those Citizens), in the eye. She really hates when I do that (I don’t do it on purpose).

In an effort to calm Emma down I decided to demonstrate the harmless effects of getting water in one’s eye. I sprayed the hose directly into my wide open eyeballs, and said to Emma, “See it doesn’t hurt”.

“You closed your eyes!” She protested

“No I didn’t. They were wide open. It even stings.” Ha! I’ve got her now.

“See.” She says matter of factly.

“Oh.” I guess she got me.

Late Night Ponderings

2005-08-15T00:23:00.000-07:00

At night Marie feeds Jared in bed, and they both fall asleep. Sometimes I’m the one who puts Jared back in his playpen. When I do, I pick him up to put him back, but he’s so sweet, and beautiful that I just want to hold him for a little while first.

Tonight I sat in a chair and held him, and stared at his sleeping face, and I thought about life. I’m terrified of losing someone that I love. I always have been. Nothing scares me worse, especially when it comes to my boys. I pray every day for the safety of my family, and the people that I love. One of life’s great injustices is when a parent outlives his child. I beg my Father in Heaven that it’s a lesson that I don’t learn from experience.

My cousin Kent died a few months ago. It hurts me just to think of the pain that his Mother went through.

So, I’m still staring at Jared, hoping that I go before he does, and I start to think that maybe birthdays aren’t as overrated as I’ve come to think. I guess that every year you can add to your tally is cause for celebration. Right? Life is a wonderful, beautiful thing. I’m just happy I could be here.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

2005-08-12T16:38:00.000-07:00

The other day I slipped on the stairs, and my big toe rolled under my foot. It hurt somethin’ fierce, and now it has a big purple bruise. I wonder if it’s broken. I’m not gonna bother with the doctor though, because I’ve busted my toes up before, and they told me that they don’t even do anything for it. Busted toes are a surprisingly low level of pain anyway. Don’t get me wrong it hurts, but compared to other bones I’ve busted like a foot, or finger it’s not so bad.

Potty Animal

2005-08-10T20:34:00.000-07:00

I’ve been trying to potty train Ben lately. About once a day I take his diaper off, and let him wear his “big boy” underwear. After about an hour, or so I put him back in a diaper. Well yesterday was a day of firsts.

It was the first time that he told me that he needed to go pee. In the past I either made him sit on the toilet every half hour until he peed, or he just peed in his underwear.

It was the first time that he peed twice in the same training session.

It was also the first time that he pooped in his underwear. Poopy underwear is no fun to clean up. I sure hope that the experience helped him to learn that pooping on oneself is a bad idea.

I'm It.

2005-08-09T00:18:00.000-07:00

I got book tagged, so here goes.

How many books do you own?
C’mon, how many people actually know the answer to this one?
It’s a lot.

What was the last book you bought?
How to Win Friends and influence People by Dale Carnegie.

What was the last book you read?
Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover

Name 5 books that mean something to you.
A Return to Christmas by Chris Heimerdinger
A heartwarming story about a family who loses their three year old son in a tragic accident, and how they cope with the unbearable pain. I read this thing in one sitting. (Fiction)

How to Win Friends and influence People by Dale Carnegie.
If you want to go anywhere in life you’d be well advised to read this book a few times. (Non-fiction)

Embraced by the Light by Betty J. Eadie

A woman dies in the hospital and visits heaven before returning to finish her life here on earth. They call it a near death experience, but it’s more like a died and came back experience, If you’ve ever wondered what heaven is like, or what happens to you when you die you should check this one out. It was awesome reading about this ladie’s account of heaven, even if it’s taken with a grain of salt it’s still a fascinating read. I read this baby in one sitting too. (I’m not bragging that I read books in one sitting. I’m just saying it was too good to put down.)
(Non-fiction)

The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis
This is a series of seven books, but I love them all too much to pick one. Four children discover the magical world of Narnia when they walk through an enchanted wardrobe. These are my favorite non-fiction books ever. I never read any of them in one sitting, but I did read one a day for seven days in a row once.
(Fiction)

The scriptures (The Bible, and The Book of Mormon). I didn’t want to put the scriptures in here, but it just didn’t seem right to not mention them, since they’ve had more impact on my life than anything else. Besides, I don’t remember the name of that really cool financial book that I read.
(Non-fiction)

Somebody Has to Cook.

2005-08-01T23:52:00.000-07:00

Last week I made dinner for the “big house” crew. That’s The Parker family, the Citizen family, and my family. 14 people total. If you don’t already know (where the heck have you been?), we all live together (on purpose), in a ginormous, 6,ooo+ square foot house.

Each week one family is assigned to cook for everyone. Cheryl generously takes everyone’s turn, and does it every week when she can. She has a new gig that makes it hard to do it every single day though, so the remaining two families have to pick up the slack. Well it was technically the Linford family’s turn to go, and by Linford family I mean Marie. Oh, but have you already forgotten? Marie has that sweet new gig at Pulte, and doesn’t even get home before dinner starts sometimes. That’s where I come in.

I’ve been watching ludicrous amounts of the Food Network, since Marie started being the bacon bringer homer, so I’ve been printing recipes and salivating over all of the yummy stuff that they make on those cooking shows, and last week I gave it a shot. I made four dishes: Pasta Pomodorini, Tomato Avocado and Red Onion salad, Olive Oil Braised ‘Taters, and Grilled Asparagus, and all it took me to make it all was about two and a half hours.

I liked it all, except for the asparagus, which I burned. Most everyone said it was pretty good, which I appreciate even if they were lying (I’m not saying they lied. I’m just saying that I appreciate the compliments even if they did). Hopefully next time I make any of those dishes I’ll make them better now that I’m a seasoned veteran.

Gone Fishin'

2005-08-01T23:51:00.000-07:00

We got back from our annual family reunion trip to Fish Lake, Utah yesterday. It was boat loads of fun, like always. People always ask me how many fish I caught, and the answer is always that I didn’t even go fishing. My new joke is that not going fishing at Fish Lake is my new annual tradition. I used to go fishing there. The first nine or ten times we went to Fish Lake I went fishing and caught a grand total of less than zero fish. How can you not catch any fish at a place called Fish Lake? Well I pulled it off. I was the only one too, because my relatives always caught plenty of fishies. Then one year I caught two fish, and unceremoniously retired from fishing.

Now I spend my Fish Lake days sitting around with the other non-fishers shooting the breeze, and catching up. It’s the only time I see a lot of my extended family, so it’s fun. I also have a tendency to play a little volleyball. Some people don’t like to be on my team, because I can give people a hard time for screwing up if they’re consistent at it, but I just like to think that mediocrity isn’t my thing, and they can play on the other team if they want to be satisfied with not being good. Of course that attitude can backfire when everyone gets too mad at you to play right. One of these times I’m gonna remember that it’s just a fun pick-up game of volleyball, and I’ll try not to take it so seriously.

Last year my brother Kevin and I put a bunch of useless crap in a root beer can and buried it in the dirt. We called it our buried treasure, and referred to the junk inside as “highly valuable”. We marked up a bunch of trees with clues on where to find it. The clues are mostly arrows pointing in the right direction and a number, indicating the amount of steps to take in that direction. I dug it up this year. I had to do it myself because Kevin’s on his mission to the foreign land of Colorado, but I buried it again, so he can dig it up with me in two years. I got a pretty good chuckle out of seeing what we had put in there, stuff like matches, jelly beans, and coupons for toilet paper. What really made me laugh was a note that I had written on a napkin. It was a quote from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. It goes like this (try to read it with your best French accent, it’s much funnier), “I fart in your general direction! Your Mother was a hamster, and your Father smelt of elderberries!”

After I was done with last years buried treasure I made a new and improved buried treasure for this year and buried it in a different spot. It’s so much fun that I think I’ll bury at least one treasure a year from now on.

Fun With Words

2005-08-01T23:49:00.000-07:00

English is tough. There are a lot of words that are spelled similarly, and people have trouble keeping track of them all. Here a re a few of my favorite ways that people find to muck up our language:

To, two, and too.
Correct usage- I too will send two letters to you.

Their, there, and they’re.
Correct usage- They’re having too much fun over there in their underwear.

These ones are symbols, not words, but people mess them up all the time.
“, and ‘
“ means inches, and ‘ means feet, so a 6” tall person would be incredibly short.

Anti-siphon Valve

2005-07-24T00:29:00.000-07:00

Anyone who’s ever fed solid food to a baby knows what a messy ordeal it can be. You put the food in the baby’s mouth, than the baby swallows half of the food, and spits the other half out, than you scoop the spillage up with the spoon, and stick it back in the baby’s mouth. Kinda gross when you think about it. You would never spit half of your burger back on the plate only to scoop it up and finish it off later. Well my boy Jared seems to have inherited his Daddy’s big brain, and has discovered a solution to the problem. Once the food goes in he plugs his face shut with his thumb, trapping all of the food in his head until he can swallow it. I’m tellin’ ya, the kids a genius.

Spell Check This!

2005-07-24T00:28:00.000-07:00

Spellchecker thinks I’m an idjit. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some spellchecker, but that fool don’t know the first thing about the more subtle variations of spelling in the English language. Most of my posts are full of what spellchecker thinks are errors, because I like to spell it like I say it. Know what I mean? Here’s a list of words that spellcheckface thinks I don’t know how to spell:

Kinda (kind of)

Tellin’ (any ing word spelled in’ really)

Ya (you)

Idjit (idiot)

Spellcheckface

And that’s just the ones from this post and the last post. Here’s more from past entries and whatnot:

Benglish

Da (the)

Wanna (want to)

Happenin’ (pesky ing words)

Poo

Poopy

Shart

Rashy

Superheroey

Pic’s (pictures)

S’posed (supposed)

Prob’ly (probably)

Wanna (want to)

Buttload

Dunno (don’t know)

Anywho, you get the point. This post alone has 26 spelling errors according to the spellchecker. Guess I shoulda tried harder.

Only Dorks Go to Comic Conventions

2005-07-18T23:03:00.000-07:00

Got back from the San Diego Comic-Con a couple of days ago. I had bucket loads of fun. I got to meet the creators of Invincible and Walking dead, and The Goon. I saw tons of cool toy prototypes, and I spent about 200 bucks on toys and stuff. We went on a Saturday. Mental note: never go to the Con on a Saturday. Next year I want to go on Thursday and maybe Friday too if I can, and by “if I can” I mean if Marie will let me.

I took a bunch of pic’s of Ben standing with (or near) his favorite superheroey types. He had fun, but not as much as me I think. He slept in the stroller for a couple of hours. Don’t even ask how bad it sucked to push a stroller around in a densely packed crowd of 10’s of thousands of people, but at the same time it was a life saver, because I hauled all of my junk around in it, so I can’t complain too much.

Here are the pictureses.

Being shy with She-ra

Being shy with Spiderman

Being shy with a different Spiderman

Green Lantern

If you don't stop with the shyness Harlequin is gonna cap you.

"I'm not even gonna stand close to those guys."

Thing, Vader, Batman, and slightly shy He-man.

Adam the Alien sketch by "Invincible" artist Ryan Ottley.

He-man by Ryan Ottley

The Goon by "The Goon" artist/writer Eric Powell. He did this one in about 2 seconds. He wasn't doing sketches, so I feel lucky to get anything at all.

Zombie by "Walking Dead" artist Charlie Adlard,

My son won this bad boy at the Tower Records/BCI MotU costume contest. He dominated the junior division by being the only entrant. It's a framed 10 X 13 print of the DVD cover signed by Lou Scheimer.

Them's the pic's. Even though Ben looks super shy in every picture, he actually freaked out if I didn't let him get a close look at every superhero that he recognized (which is a lot). He only pulled the shy act when he got too much attention.

The crew at BCI took a lot of footage of him, so hopefully he'll make it into a future DVD documentary. *crosses fingers*

Poo Happens

2005-07-13T20:07:00.000-07:00

Ben pooped no less than five times yesterday, and today he’s pooped three more times and it’s only four o’clock! Plus one poop this morning by Jared and that makes nine poopy diapers that I’ve changed in about twenty four hours. UGGHHH!!! Plus, some of Ben’s poops have just been little sharts, which you might think are better than big poops, but you’d be making the biggest mistake of your life if you thought that. See, the sharts are stealthy poops. They have a near indiscernible scent and are invisible from outside of the diaper, so Ben runs around with no poopy diaper symptoms. Meanwhile the poo is doing what poo does when it’s allowed to make extended contact with diaper wearing bums, it eats them! At least that’s what it seems like, because now he has a nasty, nasty rash that makes him walk around like he just got off a horse. Than he poops another twenty times, and do you think he enjoys it when I wipe his nasty, rashy bum? Oh no, he kicks and screams, making the chances of me wiping his poopy bum without getting it on my hands, and on the changing table, and on his feet, and whatever else you can think of, in the neighborhood of almost zero. Than I have to apply the ointment. Can I just say that if the neighbors can hear Ben scream, it should only be moments before Child Protective Services knocks on my door.

The good news is that Jared can hold his own bottle now, as of yesterday, so while I was changing poopy diaper number nine Jared fed himself.

Party Animals

2005-07-09T23:52:00.000-07:00

Ben’s birthday party was today. His birthday isn’t until next week, but we’ll be in San Diego (woo-hoo!), so the party was today. It was a happenin’ shindig too. We had water games outside, a SpongeBob piñata with the most righteous candy ever (because I picked it out), and Ben got a gazillion toys, and by a gazillion I mean about 20. He dug it though. He really likes getting new toys, but who doesn’t.

Mr. Mom

2005-07-09T23:49:00.000-07:00

Marie started her new gig at Pulte this week. So, now after one week of being a stay at home dad, I am now a seasoned veteran. It’s only slightly more stressful to have to be in charge of both kids at the same time, and get some chores done. OK actually it’s a little tough, but it’s nothing a grizzled vet., like me, can’t handle.

Oh by the way, Richmond called and said I could start working for them right away, and I told them that they are beneath me, and I would never work for their filthy, petty organization. Translation: they told me they hired someone else.

Serenity

2005-06-29T01:25:00.000-07:00

When I saw Batman in the theater there was a preview for a movie called Serenity. I’d heard of the director (Joss Whedon) before, because he writes a comic that I like called Astonishing X-men (he also created Buffy the Vampire Slayer), so, I was intrigued.

Turns out that the movie is based on a TV series by Mr. Whedon called Firefly. I had heard rumblings on the internet about Firefly. Apparently people dig it, and the critics liked it, but it got cancelled during it’s first season.

Like any responsible American would do I decided to investigate, so I ordered up the DVD’s on Blockbuster Online. I’ve watched the first seven episodes and guess what. It’s good. It’s a space western about a group of smuggler types. I like it a lot. Too bad it got cancelled. Hopefully hype from DVD sales, and the movie will be enough to warrant a second season.

At least if it doesn’t work out I still have the new Battlestar Galactica (best show on TV by the way).

Mere Mortal

2005-06-27T22:04:00.000-07:00

"It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible Gods and Goddesses. To remember that the most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship.

All day long we are in some degree, helping each other to one or another of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with awe and circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal."
- C.S. Lewis (not a Mormon)

Skydiving

2005-06-27T00:09:00.000-07:00

At church today, someone gave a talk on obedience. He mentioned something about parachuting. I don’t remember exactly what he said, because as soon as he mentioned it I started thinking about how parachuting relates to the atonement.

When you jump out of an airplane you fall. It doesn’t matter whether you are aware that you’re falling, or if you choose to believe you are falling. The truth is that you are falling, and when you hit the ground you will die. You cannot fly, and you have no ability to slow your decent. You are powerless, by yourself, to prevent your death.

Fortunately for you, you have a parachute, but merely recognizing that your parachute has the power to save you will not end your plight. No amount of confession of your helplessness can save you. Recognition of your predicament is only the first step you will need to take if you want to live.

To save yourself you will have to act. All it takes is one simple pull of a ripcord, and your parachute will deploy, but even after the ‘chute is deployed are you safe? No, there are many things that can still go wrong. A gust of wind can blow you off course, and perhaps send you off to land on hazardous terrain, but if you keep your wits about you, you have the ability to correct your course. Again you have been required to act.

It is also possible for you to endanger yourself through your own carelessness, or even willful sabotage of your life-saving parachute. What if you were to take a knife to one of the ropes that tether you to your ‘chute. Sure it would be a terrible idea, but what if you did it anyway? You’re parachute would not be able to catch enough air to safely let you down. You would hit the ground hard, and it wouldn’t be very fun. You’d probably die.

Maybe you don’t want to actually cut through the rope, but it’s fun to just cut it a little bit? You could use a butter knife. Than you’d be able to slash at your rope, and yet it would stay attached, what harm could a little slashing do? It’s only a butter knife, and besides, all of this falling business is a little boring. You need a little fun, a little excitement. You know when to stop. You’d still be safe, or would you? If you kept at it long enough you still might cut through the rope, and send yourself plummeting to your doom. The parachute would be powerless to help you. You would have done it of your own will, and choosing.

Fortunately again, there’s always the backup ‘chute, or you can always just decide that cutting the ropes isn’t such a good idea, and you can stop doing it.

If you are prepared, and you use the parachute that has been given to you. Which parachute is free by the way, you can land safely. Have you saved yourself? No, you have been saved by the parachute. The parachute did the work, all you did was enable it, you would never have been able to survive without it.

We are fortunate that we have an infinite supply of parachutes, and we have been given the instructions on how to use them safely. There are people who know how to use them, and can help us. We have to use a good parachute though. One with holes in it will hardly do, and we have to obey the safety rules. They may seem restrictive, but they are in place to help us arrive safely on the ground, and we have help. We have been promised that there will be no winds, or any other adverse conditions that will be more powerful than we are able to overcome. We are even blessed, from time to time, with favorable winds that blow us to the best landing spots, and make our descent all the more enjoyable on the way.

I love skydiving, and I love my parachute. Wish me a happy landing.

Hulk Out

2005-06-27T00:08:00.000-07:00

In an earlier entry I mentioned Ben’s new habit of vigorously shaking as a way to voice his disapproval. The other day we found out just exactly what he’s doing. He started doing it for no reason, and he told his Mom that he’s turning into the Hulk. Sometimes he’ll even do it on command now. He did it earlier today, complete with muscles flexing and everything. I think I hurt myself from laughing so hard.

Size Matters

2005-06-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

Speaking of laughing until it hurts. My Mom told us about a time this weekend when she changed Ben’s diaper. He pointed to his twig and berries, and proudly declared “That’s my penis.”

“Yes it is.” My Mom observantly replied.

“ It’s a big one.” He proclaimed.

I swear I didn’t teach him to say that.

I wanna be Rich… mond!

2005-06-23T21:49:00.000-07:00

I had a job interview with Richmond American Homes today. I thought I did well, but you can never tell with these people. If I was them I’d hire me :] Hopefully I’ll hear back from them soon.

Who’s your Daddy?

2005-06-19T23:17:00.001-07:00

It was Father’s Day today. Since I’m a Dad, that means that I got stuff. I got two ties, one’s blue with a floral print. The other is blue with those diagonal stripes that ties often have. I also got a shirt that says “Best Dad Hands Down!”, and it has Jared and Ben’s handprints on it, thus the “Hands Down”. Then I got “The Neverending Story” and “The Dark Crystal” on DVD. Both are great movies that I really dug when I was a youngling.

Batman Begins (to rock!)

2005-06-19T23:17:00.000-07:00

I saw “Batman Begins” a couple of days ago. It was righteous! The previous Batman movies pale by comparison. In fact, they no longer exist as far as I’m concerned. This is THE Batman movie. I’m not a film critic, so I’m not going to try to sound smart by describing the great performances, and the subtext, and all that mumbo-jumbo. I just like to say that it was good.

Zombies are cool.

2005-06-19T23:16:00.000-07:00

I started reading a comic book called “Walking Dead”. Robert Kirkman writes it, so I checked it out, because I really like “Invincible”, which he also writes. It’s about zombies. It’s a lot like a zombie movie, except it’s much more epic, because it’s a comic, and it can go on forever, unlike movies which inevitably come to an end. It’s really good, but I still like “Invincible” better.

Lark Boy and Shava Girl

2005-06-17T12:29:00.000-07:00

I took Ben to see “Shark Boy and Lava Girl” yesterday. He liked it a lot. The rest of the day he kept telling me that he wanted to watch it again. He even sat through the whole thing. When he saw “Robots” in the theater he got bored towards the end, and started messing around, and getting out of his seat, but this time he didn’t.

Yellow Turtle

2005-06-17T12:16:00.000-07:00

Tonight I read Ben an alphabet book for his bedtime story. I read the T page, “T is for turtle a fellow who’s slow.” I was reading about umbrellas on the next page when Ben interrupted to say “He not leddow. He’s gween.” (He’s not yellow. He’s green.)

Who da man?

2005-06-15T00:38:00.000-07:00

About 6 months ago is when Ben stopped saying “Iname!” pronounced eye-na-mee. At least I think that’s how it’s pronounced, no-one knows for sure really. He used to say it whenever he got in trouble. After you would tell him that he’s not allowed to do whatever he was doing he would yell “Iname!” to voice his protest at being corrected. What he meant by it is anyone’s guess. He could have been trying to say “Be nice to me!”, or it did sound a little like “I’m the man!”. Sometimes Doug or I would argue with him. This is how it would go.

“Ben get down from there.”

“Iname!”

“No, I’m the man.”

Even more emphatically “INAME!”

“No, I’m the man.”

“INAMEEE!!!”

We still don’t know what it meant, and now that he’s a little easier to understand, he’s given up on trying to say whatever it was that he was saying. Maybe he thinks that we finally got the point.

His new thing is to look you dead in the eye, with a perfectly straight look on his face, and the he shakes his head really fast, but very subtly. The movement is so small that you can barely notice it. It’s kind of like he’s shivering. Apparently in his world this is a good way to voice displeasure, and in a way he’s right, but that’s my fault. See, instead of chastising him like I would for having a verbal outburst or for hitting something, I laugh at him. Yes, I laugh. I can’t help it. I try to keep a straight face. I even try to pretend that the face shaking makes me angry, but in the end I burst out with laughter, and then he laughs, and we’re both laughing, and I’m saying to him “Wait, aren’t you supposed to be in trouble?”

No More Revenge

2005-06-12T23:02:00.000-07:00

I finished the Revenge of the Sith novel today. It started out really good, but about a fourth of the way through it downgrades to just OK. I still liked it a lot though. Between the novel and the movie I’d have to say that I prefer the movie, but the novel makes excellent supplemental material.

If I was Invincible, and Other Grievous Yarns

2005-06-09T23:23:00.000-07:00

I picked up a new comic book called “Invincible” by Robert Kirkman. It is too good. The last thing I need right now is another comic to have to buy every month. I must be up to around 20 by now. I convinced Doug to give it a try, and shockingly enough he agrees that it’s great. He was skeptical at first, but the kid knows a good comic when he reads one, so he came around after he read it.
I’ve also been reading the novelization of Star Wars episode III: Revenge of the Sith. It’s crazy good. After watching the movie I knew that I needed to get inside Anakin’s head to be able to really appreciate what happened to him, so I thought I’d try the book. Boy am I glad I did. The book explains the motives and personalities of the characters in ways that just aren’t possible in a visual medium like movies. The character development really makes it great, especially with Anakin.

Please Bless Jared, and Jared, and Jared.

2005-06-09T23:22:00.000-07:00

Ben has been (notice I didn’t say Ben’s been?) saying his night time prayers on his own lately. They usually go something like this “Mommy, Daddy, Jaiwed (Jared), Jaiwed, Babiel (Gabriel), Keddy (Kelly), Denny (Kenny), Babiel, Jake, Emma, Dana (Loredana), Chewyl (Cheryl), Doug, Keddy, Jake, umm Jaiwed, Amen.”
He used to say stuff like TV, and Spiderman. At least he has a little better priorities now

1,2,5,9

2005-06-09T23:21:00.000-07:00

Ben finally counted to 10 yesterday without messing up. I’ve been torturing myself by reading him the same book about counting nearly every night for what seems like months. It’s good to know that my hard work has paid off.

Blog-head

2005-06-09T22:51:00.000-07:00

OK, so I've been getting into this Blog thing. I’ve posted a few times and I hope to keep posting. But I couldn’t just be happy with posting could I? Nope I gotta try to mess with the HTML code, or whatever code the Blog template uses, to customize things. Man that Blog code can be finicky. Especially when you don’t know what it all means, but being the credit to cognitive learning that I am I’ve figured it out. So now I have a link to another Blog of mine which will contain lists of all my favorite things of a pop-culture variety. Hopefully I will enjoy it, as I’m likely to be the only who cares.

Nubian Princess

2005-06-07T20:31:00.000-07:00

Kelly the yellow one with the pointy things is called a Naboo Starfighter. Yer welcome.

A Roll’s a Roll.

2005-06-07T20:13:00.000-07:00

Jared rolled over for the first time yesterday. He’s been holding his head and chest up off the ground when he lies on his stomach. This morning I was lying in bed, and he managed to prop his head up and look at me from his basinet. All the more impressive considering that his basinet lies perpendicular to the bed with his feet closest to the bed, so he not only had to get his head high enough to see me, he had to turn it all the way around. Not Exorsist style head turning, of course. He had to twist his body around a little bit too.

Benglish. or Captain Kevin.

2005-06-07T20:12:00.000-07:00

Ben’s been (Ben’s been, that sounds funny), watching Peter Pan lately. Today he told me that the crocodile (I only recognized the word as crocodile due to my vast experience in the art of Ben-speak) is going to eat Kevin. It amazes me that I was able to decipher what he actually meant at all. It sounded something like this “Cackendier is coming eat Kevin". Keeping in mind that I’m being generous with his pronunciation of “Kevin”. Kevin, by the way, means Captain. I don’t know if he can’t pronounce Captain, or if he thinks the guy’s name really is Kevin. Either way it’s pretty funny if you ask me.

It's somewhere in Pennsylvania.

2005-06-05T19:49:00.000-07:00

Mental note: Next time you have sugarless candy, be sure to chase it with a shot of Pepto.

Does Sponge-Bob get cavities?

2005-06-04T01:18:00.000-07:00

I spaced out today when I was getting Ben ready for bed. I accidentally gave him my toothbrush with the grown-up toothpaste, instead of his Elmo toothbrush with the kids toothpaste.

As soon as that stuff hit his tongue he made a funny “this is really gross”, face. He was spitting toothpaste, and looking at the toothbrush like, “what is this junk?”. Then he looked at me and said, “I want Sponge-Bob toothpaste”. I could hardly contain my laughter as I realized my mistake, and to make matters worse he told me, as I prepared his toothbrush, “I no like that toothpaste. It’s hot.” So funny.

Toejam Casserole

2005-03-13T19:45:00.000-08:00

People do not understand 4 way stops! When a Northbound traveler wants to continue north, and there's a southbound traveler who wants to turn left. The guy going straight has the right of way! People are always getting mad at me for not yeilding to them when they want to turn, and I'm going straight. A guy even shot me the bird once. The nerve!

Shiz, and Shinola

2005-03-08T03:00:00.000-08:00

F-words! I just spent about an hour babbling about freakin' grammar, only to discover that pressing the back button before publishing posts is a bad idea.

My not new Blog

2005-02-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

This is still my Blog. It's not new anymore.

My new Blog

2004-08-05T17:54:00.000-07:00

Hi. I have a Blog. This is my Blog. It's new. Thanks.