Do it for Florida (should be a bumpersticker)

Received the following in the mail today.

Those poor Floridians (not to be confused with flouridians or midi-chlorians). I didn't realize they had so much as at stake. Had I but known...

Senator McCain's campaign has taught me that there are two people you should vet extensively for competency: the VP and the mail boy.

mw

Random thoughts from this past week

• Pacifiers and caps to root beer bottles - both useful items. Not interchangeable.
• Facebook is the social revolution that allows you to be friends with people who wouldn't give you the time of day in high school.
• We recently had a Halloween party at work and I understand (no, I didn't go) one of the door prizes was a case of bottled water. Frank Herbert, you are a prophet.
• There is an appalling number of people in the world not eating a doughnut right now. Mainly because I'm one of them.
  
• I ate all of our good Halloween candy this past week with no guilt. I grew up choking down pillowcases of Tootsie Rolls, Jolly Ranchers, and Smarties. I consider it my turn.
• It's been 15 years, and Radiohead's "Creep" and Beck's "Loser" still seem to resonate with me. Why is that?
• At what point does Senator McCain pull out of the last three states he is still campaigning in and spend the remnants of his war chest on Metamucil?
• Governor Palin is purportedly contending to be the new face of the Republican Party in the event they lose on Nov. 4. Her opposition includes John Cleese, Tina Fey, and Joe the Plumber.

mw

To Tiffany's point...

Yes, we are LDS.
Yes, we are a family.
Yes, we carved pumpkins this week.

Well, pumpkin, actually, and a rather diminutive one at that. However, when asked if he wanted one of the larger ones, Caleb's response was, "No. That too heavy." Since I was carrying the pumpkins, it makes me wonder at his opinion of my abilities.

mw

We named it Steve

"I wouldn't be so afraid of it if I just knew what it was called."
"Let's call it 'Steve'."
"Steve?"
"It's a nice name."
"Yeah, I'm much less afraid of 'Steve'."

I started with pruning the peach tree.

Our new home came with a very productive and woefully neglected peach tree that looked like it hadn't been pruned since Moses first planted it. Saturday morning I grabbed my pruning saw, my pruners, my Boy, and my wife's gardening gloves and went to work. The only problem was that on the one side, there was an overgrown rose bush with foot-long thorns that made it hazardous to prune that half of the tree. After reaching around it for ten minutes or so, I decided it would easier to simply prune the rose bush, then finish the tree. Well, I got a bit aggressive on the pruning of the bush and left about one inch sticking above the ground.

Had that been the whole story, Steve never would have come into being. However, as I was...um..."pruning" the rose bush, a neighboring rose bush kept poking me. Deliberately. Enough so that, when explaining my ensuing actions to Neesha, the phrase "It kind of pissed me off, really," was my sole justification. Seven rose bushes, one shrub shaped like a flying saucer, one ugly tree, two very dusty bushes, and prunings from five other trees later, Steve was born.

mw

A man should be able to...

Hold a newborn baby. Psychologists tell us that babies are born with two natural fears while all others are learned: falling, and loud noises. As such, newborns should be wrapped tightly and held against the chest. They like tight spaces and rhythmic movements, so tuck them snugly in the crook of your elbow or neck. Rock back and forth like you're bored without getting too crazy with the hips. Imagine how relaxed you would be riding Space Mountain without a restraining bar, and you get the idea. Your motion should be more subtle, somewhat reminiscent of your days as a Jr. High wallflower. No one has to notice except the baby. Don't breathe all over them.

mw

Keyword: spam

Those of you who use a Gmail account have probably noticed that Google will feature an article over your messages based on keywords it finds within those messages. For a pay-per-click model like Google, it's a brilliant idea. For me, it's an annoyance, though I must confess I have followed the link a time or two. However, I believe Google needs to work on their keyword optimization when users are emptying their spam folder. A sampling from the last five minutes:

• Spam quiche - makes four servings (I don't know that I can think of four people I dislike enough to
• Spam breakfast burritos - serve with salsa (if you are wondering what type of salsa see the next item)
• Spam salsa (I wouldn't have thought this was chemically possible)
• Spicy spam kabobs (I know I'm alone in considering shish kabobs an overhyped, underperforming food served at barbecues, but surely we can agree on this one?)
  
• Vineyard spam salad (does this mean it is best enjoyed *cough, cough* with an exquisite Pinot Noir or Merlot? Probably for the best, if so)
  
• Ginger spam salad (not quite sure if 'ginger' is used as a noun here, refering to the spice, or as an adverb, describing how it should be eaten)
  
• Savory spam crescents (I've always wondered at recipes whose titles tell you how wonderful they are)
• French fry spam casserole (the combination of two questionably edible substances: spam and the French)
• Spam vegetable strudel (I like strudel and consider it the best thing the Hapsburgs ever did for Western civilization after codifying inbreeding, but I think this has forever scarred our relationship)
• Spam veggie pita pockets (best thing since they put spam in your pocket...just not the same)
• Spam hashbrown bake (okay, this one actually sounds kind of good, but only if you cover it with maply syrup)
• Spam skillet casserole (and the win streak ends at...well...one)
• Spam Swiss pie (nuts, and I already used the edible joke on the French)

And the list goes on, but my train is about to arrive. If you get bored, go to your spam folder in your Gmail account. Good times.

mw

Random thoughts from this past week

• If people who stood in the middle of the aisle talking on their cell phone, oblivious to all around them trying to get around them, were a race, would genocide be such a bad thing?
• The makers of Viagra, Cialis, and other such drugs caution that if the effects of their product are observed for more than four hours, you should call the doctor. I'd pay good money to listen in on one of those conversations.
• On second thought, no; no I wouldn't.
• Cuil is a new internet search engine. Think more Google than Yahoo!. I don’t think it’ll catch on. Turns out people would rather Google themselves than Cuil themselves.
• The BCS is to football what Paris Hilton is to Audrey Hepburn.
• Candidate campaign speeches with one month left to go: grab your digital thought-a-day calendar and turn it to "shuffle mode".
• I'm going to start announcing my daily accomplishments via SMS. 160 characters, including spaces, will be ample.
• McCain strategists recently revealed that they had a response had Obama elected to pursue his rumored 50-state strategy. I wonder if they called it their 13-colony strategy?
  
• AP headline: "Stocks Plunge Drastically Downward". These guys must be paid by the word.
• Having one of my rare good hair days. Please try to see me before I move.

mw

And now for something completely different

Back when Senator McCain picked Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate, all I kept reading in headlines was "McCain picks Palin." I thought it kind of an odd choice that raised a lot of questions distracting to the campaign. For instance, why not John Cleese? It wasn't until I had a moment to actually read one of these articles that I discovered that Sarah Palin was the Republican nominee for veep, not Michael Palin, at which point I thought it kind of an odd choice that raised a lot of questions distracting to the campaign.

Several weeks, one debate, and four Katie Couric interviews later, Governor Palin decided to appear on SNL. Yes, the same SNL that had, with cameo appearances from Tina Fey, been lampooning her for the past several weeks. Maybe he picked the comedian after all? Truly, nobody expects the Alaskan politician.

mw

Things we've learned after one month

She loves to have her hair washed.
She doesn't like taking a bath.
She loves riding in the Baby Bjorn against Mommy's chest.
She doesn't like the sling Mommy made for her.
She likes it when Daddy sings I Will by The Beatles. She is also a fan of Billy Joel and Pearl Jam.
She doesn't like Elton John.
Elmer's Glue is great for sticking cute, little bows in her hair.
Elmer's Glue is not so hot at keeping her pacifier in her mouth.
She likes her bouncer, but not the cradle. The crib is tolerable.
Little girls are just as sweet as little boys.

m&n

Pack's Pumpkin Patch

m&n

Um...checkmate?

Ego? What ego? pt. II

Monday's child is fair of face.
Tuesday's child is full of grace.
Wednesday's child is full of woe.
Thursday's child has far to go.
Friday's child is loving and giving.
Saturday's child works hard for his living.
But a child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blythe, and good and gay.

It's an old nursery rhyme. I don't remember how it came up, but Neesha was reciting it yesterday morning, which made us wonder where our family members fit into the mix. Caleb was a Sunday child, and Ainsley was a Tuesday baby. These were easy enough for us both to remember, but we had to pull up the computer's calendar to see on which days of the week Neesha (Friday in 1981) and I (Wednesday in 1979) were born.

Neesha: Were you born in 1980 or 2099?
Mark: Huh?
Neesha: The calendar only goes back to 1980, then jumps to 2099. I guess that means you are older than the computer can calculate.

Wednesday's child, indeed.

mw

Ego? What ego?

I normally sleep in a pair of blue basketball shorts and a t-shirt with the John Maynard Keynes quote, "In the long run, we are all dead" on the back which I won at a WSU economics party {insert nerd jokes here}. I share this with you to deepen our relationship and to explain why this morning, when I woke to the first snow of the season, I was looking for additional clothing to wear before I went downstairs with The Boy. What I found was an old pair of tan pajamma pants and my lucky ACE sweatshirt, light gray. The story behind the pajamma pants is that they are about two inches too short in the legs and about ten inches too wide in the waist. Similarly, the sweatshirt is two inches too short in the trunk and the sleeves, but is too small across the shoulders.

Me: I look kind of funny.
Neesha: Mark, nothing you have on right now fits you.
Me: What do you expect? It's hard to fit my amazing physique.

*long pause; longer than appropriate, if you ask me*

Neesha: You do have an amazing physique.

mw

What's for dinner (with all apologies to Tiffany)?

Upon changing one of Caleb's diapers...

Me: What have you been eating?
Caleb: I no eat poop!

Reassuring to know his mother feeds him well.

mw

He doesn't know any better, but still...

This morning The Boy curled up in my lap while I tried to start catching up on the blog. After sitting quietly for some time...

The Boy: This is my daddy.
Me: Yes, I am. I am so glad to be your daddy.

*pause*

The Boy: You're a good daddy.
Me: *trying to be tough and not get choked up*

mw

Blogging the vice presidential debate

I don't know why they still have vice-presidential debates. It seems the measure of success here is trying to get "people to choose between the lesser of who cares; of setting the bar so low you can barely trip over it."

Having said that, this year's debate did have two twists in it. After the train wreck that was her series of interviews with Katie Couric (you can see them on YouTube - good times), I do not think it was possible for Governor Palin to lose anymore credibility. To make things more interesting, Neesha and I were also listening to the Utah-Oregon State football game. As such, some of the random thoughts I had below during the debate may be a bit confused.

• We're thirty minutes into this thing and I'm coming to realize that neither of the candidates are going to talk about themselves, only their running mates. The result is that this is likely to be a 90 minute "My father/pa could beat up you father/pa."
• Forgive me for being a snob, but why can't these debates have a simple Lincoln-Douglas structure? The format they are using doesn't leave room to say anything except sound bites from their stump speeches. Make that Obama's and McCain's stump speeches.
• I wonder if Governor Palin has read McCain's stump speech? Perhaps she just saw it here (mental note: never speak in front of a blue screen).
  
• Governor Palin is doing much better than I expected after I what I saw in her interviews. However, the first several sentences of each of her responses remind me of a tour guide, announcing the same dates over and over again. She struggles, though, as she moves from prepared facts to vague platitudes, though she skips the analysis well.
• Brian Johnson (Utah's QB) just threw an interception that Oregon State returned 26 yards for a touchdown. You know, if it wasn't for our offense, we'd have a pretty good defense.
  
• Happily, Oregon State muffed the kick-off coverage on that one, allowing two remarkable feats for Utah's return team: first, David Reed caught the ball and held on to it and, second, he returned it 79 yards to the OSU 15-yard line.
• Senator Biden's grin is largely reminscent of a morning talk-show host. I wonder if Al Roker would like to be vice president?
• Utah just had to settle for a field goal after starting a drive on the other guy's 15-yard line. What do Andy Ludwig and the Bush administration have in common? Neither one knows how to finish an offensive series.
  
• Senator Biden just gave a completely unambiguous answer on gay rights. I had to check to make certain I was still watching the debate. Whatever your position, its nice to hear a straight answer. As an aside on the follow-up questions, if you have to announce that you are tolerant of gays, that's a good indication that you aren't.
  
• Did Governor Palin really just do a shout out to her brother's third grade class? I can just see her and her nifty eye wear on the floor at the UN Security Council asking Israel for a holler back.
• I'm pretty sure Senator Biden is playing Sudoku while Governor Palin is speaking.
• Johnson just got sacked again. I think Governor Palin can empathise.
  
• "Well gee whiz golly-darn rootin' tooin' yeehaw doggone bless-your-heart shucks there, Gwen. I ... uh, what was the question?" Some of Governr Palin's responses taste more of hayseed than of substance.
  
• "Dick Cheney is the most dangerous vice president this country has ever had!" Clearly, Senator Biden is overlooking Aaron Burr. He actually killed the guy he shot.
• "We're gonna learn from the mistakes of this administration in our administration." It's a little disheartening to discover that they haven't yet learned those lessons, that it's just something on the honey-do list.
• Why is Oregon State even in this game? Oh, yeah...Johnson spotted them two touchdowns.
  
• I thought it odd that Governor Palin started giving her closing statement with over twenty minutes to go. Turns out she knew what she was doing. This debate is pulling a The Lord of the Rings by dedicating 45% of its time to ending the story with 14 false endings.
  

In the end, this vice presidential debate was the same as every other. I still have not fully made up my mind as to which candidate I want for president, but I definitely know who I do not want for vice president.

mw

Got milk?

Me: Caleb, you need to finish your milk before you get down from the table.
Caleb: I did.

* I point to a full glass of milk by his plate*

Caleb: Oh, that milk?

*stares at it for a second*

Caleb: Is that the milk we're talking about?

mw