Blog Number 253

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

We have hung a sleigh bell on our back door so that the dog can ring it when she needs to go outside.  "Needs" is the word we were thinking however our dog "wants" to go outside a lot.  I will give her credit for learning what in the world the bell is for in the first place.  The whole thing works pretty well as the bell can be heard from even our back bedroom.  But again, our plans were that she would ring the bell when she needed to go outside, not every time she gets the hankering to go outside.

Take the morning for instance.  She goes outside about 5 times in the 45 minutes or so that the wife and I sit around talking and drinking coffee.  There are times she comes in, makes a lap of the living room and then rings the bell again.  I think it is annoying, the wife says that she is just acting like a little kid that does not know what she wants (whatever!).  That and the fact that when she wants in, it is a relentless digging on the back door window or our bedroom windows (if she can tell we are in our bedroom).  When we moved into the house, the back window screens were damaged and laying in the garage.  It was our guess that the previous tenant had a dog that also used the "dig relentlessly into the back window screens" method.

When the wife lets the dog out in the morning or evening, she will turn the outside light on for the dog.  However she (and the kids) are not very good at turning the light off when they let her inside the house.  The kids are bad about leaving lights on anyway so that is par for the course.  The wife is only bad about this one light.  I egg her constantly about it and she is showing signs of improvement.  This morning she tried a new technique.  She did not even bother to turn the light on at all.  Whatever works I guess.

On the tooth front, the son's tooth is still a tooth having not turned into money despite being under his sister's pillow.  He has mentioned this to me but she has not.  I am still not sure what I will say to her if she brings it up.  I will have to let you know when the time comes.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts,

Jon

Blog Number 252

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Continuing on with her trend of trying new recipes, the wife has tackled black bean soup and corn chowder this week.  Now, I have had both of these items in restaurants or out of a can but never out of our crockpot.  Neither of our kids are big soup fans but my wife (as my wife is very fond of pointing out) is not a short order cook (and usually follows up that sentiment with something like, "this is what we are having so eat it or go hungry").  We have made a conscious effort not to have picky eaters in our house.  So much so that if we come across something that the kids refuse to eat (say at a restaurant or over at a friends house) we will eat that item for every meal for a week.  Cole slaw was a big one the kids did not like, 6 or 7 straight dinners with coleslaw as a side dish and voila, the are ok with it now.

Anyway, neither of the kids cared for the black bean soup that we had on Sunday.  They sat at the table picking at their bowls for about 1 hour.  Finally I took the bowls from them, placed them in the refrigerator and announced that those exact same bowls would be heated up for their next meal (be it dinner or the next morning's breakfast - not an uncommon event as the daughter recently had potato soup for breakfast).  They ended up eating the rest of it later that evening albeit slowly.

Last night was corn chowder.  They were making about the same amount of progress as with the black bean soup so I asked the daughter to go to my bedroom and bring me the clock that dings (we have a kitchen timer that you can set for up to 1 hour than it will ding - they play with this a lot for some reason).  Upon hearing my request, the son started digging into the chowder (much to the confusion of the daughter).  She came back empty handed so I had to head to the back of the house to look for the timer.  During my search, the wife explained to the daughter that daddy was going to set the timer and if she did not have her chowder finished by the time it dinged, there would be consequences.  I came back and set it for 15 minutes (which is plenty of time) but since the daughter still does not grasp the concept of time that well she started shoving chowder in her mouth like she hadn't eaten in a week.  We tried to convince her that she had plenty of time and she did slow down a little.  7 minutes later, the bowls were empty.  The chowder was quite good (I had 2 bowls and it will likely be my lunch today).

The timer though might stay on our kitchen table for the time being just in case the kids need encouragement.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts,

Jon

Blog Number 251

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I have taken it upon myself to read the Mission Earth series by L Ron Hubbard.  This will not turn out well and let me tell you why.  First of all, there are 10 books (volumes) that total about 4,000 pages (containing 1.2 million words) so odds are I will not make it through the entire pile before losing interest or wanting to read another book more.  Secondly, the Frisco Public Library only has the first 8 books.  So, even if I do stick it out for the first 8 books, I will then be forced into searching and (gasp, maybe) buying the last 2 books to see how it all ends.  Either way, I will have something else to gripe about.

People who know me well wonder why in the world I would read a book or books written by the father of the Church of Scientology.  To me, he is just a science fiction writer.  Also, I was getting desperate last month at the library when 15 minutes of wandering around looking for a good book resulted in an empty book bag.  Then there they were.  8 books all of approximately the same shape and size giving me the promise of not having to look for a book for a long, long time.  The first book took me about a month to finish.  It was about 550 pages but I only read it sporadically.  Fortunately for me, the library does not have any late fees.  They just don't allow you to check any more materials out until all the late books are returned.  No problem for me since this is the only book I wanted to check out and would not need another book until I was done with this one.  I am about 25% through the second one and at this rate it should take me the better part of 2008 to finish the series.  That is assuming that I can find books 9 and 10 somewhere without incurring too much of a hit financially.

On the tooth front, the kids both slept in a tent last night so the son's tooth did not make it underneath the daughter's pillow.  They got a nice sized pop tent for Christmas that they have taken to sleeping in on the weekends (inside the son's room).  They would probably sleep in it every night if we would let them.  But for now, the son's tooth is still a tooth.  I will have to keep you posted.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts,

Jon

Blog Number 250

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Another day, another biscotti with my morning coffee.  There is enough left to last us about 5 more days however I fear that the wife is going to bring them to our ABF class tomorrow AM at church.  Sometimes you just don't wanna share (is that so wrong?).

The daughter lost a tooth on New Year's Eve and another one on New Year's Day.  In fact, they were both top, front teeth.  Those tend to bleed a lot when they come out so mi hija was freaking out a little as they were coming out of her mouth.  Once they were out and the bleeding had stopped, she was already counting her money.  I have mentioned before that we do not do the tooth fairy thing but rather tell the kids that the teeth just magically turn into money.  The daughter told me (in no uncertain terms) that she believed that one tooth would turn into $2 and the other would turn into $5!  Shock of all shocks when she awoke the next morning and came into her room, there was a $5 bill and 2 $1 bills in her hands.  She was pumped as she came in to tell us, "See, I was right!"

Now, the son has figured this whole thing out.  I told him that the tooth only turns into money as long as you believe that it will.  He thought about this for a day or 2 (as he lost a tooth about 2 weeks ago and it has remained a tooth this whole time despite being under his pillow for several of those nights).  Evidently after thinking about it for a few days he has had a personal revival in his belief of the magic teeth.  He has told me several times of his newly redound belief but the tooth still stays there unchanged.

This morning he called his sister into his room and then asked us to come in a few minutes later.  He thinks he has found a loophole in the system as he announced to us that his tooth would be underneath his sister's pillow tonight.  He reasoned to us that since she still believes that it (her belief) should count for something.  He also told us that he believed that his tooth would turn into $4.  Now the wife and I have a quandary.  What to do?  Do we leave the tooth as is and try to find a way to explain that to the daughter or do we exchange the tooth for money and let the son think he has found a work around for his non belief?  I guess we have the whole day to think about it, I will let you know.  For now though I think I will distract the wife and grab another biscotti.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 249

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

The wife likes to cook and even more so now that we are in this nice house that has a big kitchen.  She also likes to experiment with cooking and I get/have to eat her experiments.  Some are great, some are not so great.  For instance, she attempted tiramisu one time.  Not finding the exact ingredients and also wanting to make some substitutions to make it more healthy, she assembled it.  The result was not tiramisu.  The result was not even close enough to tiramisu to be confused with tiramisu.  I think she tried to replace too many ingredients really.  In fact, I don't think there was a single, major ingredient that was what it was supposed to be.  I ate most of it (partly because it did not tast that bad and partly because that is what a good husband does).  In the end we threw the rest in the trash.

Then there are times like yesterday when she hits it right on the nose.  I came home from work to freshly made biscotti.  It was the perfect combination of crunchy and chewy and she even melted and spread chocolate on one side.  It was great with our coffee this morning.  The biscotti was not made for me though.  A friend down the street had invited her over for coffee in the afternoon and the wife thought it a perfect time to test her biscotti skills.  She said it was easy to make, just time consuming.  Even though it was not made for me, I still get to eat the bulk of it and given her love for this treat I can imagine she will be making it very often (attn. wife: hint hint).  The stuff is expensive to buy in the store and truth be told, the wife's is much better.  Here's hopin' this ain't the last I have seen of homemade biscotti.

It seems weird that today is a Friday since I only had 3 workdays this week.  Try as I might, I cannot wrap my head around this being a Friday which is a pity as usually you look forward to the weekend and I part of the enjoyment of the weekend is having just worked 5 days.  This 3 day week has ruined my looking forward to it.  I guess I shouldn't complain too much (but faithful reader,  you know I will find something to whine about).  Anyway, I hope you enjoy your Friday even if I don't enjoy mine.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 248

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I just realized that December was a rather sparse month for blog entries.  My apologies to you.  I also realized (not just realized but realized yesterday) that I forgot to mention that the wife made bacon wrapped green bean appetizers for the New Year's Eve party.  These were the hit of the party (food wise) so I don't know what I was (not) thinking.  We had first tried this at a Christmas Eve dinner hosted by my cousin and her fiancé.  Very tasty indeed.  Basically it is a 1/2 slice of bacon wrapped around 3 or 4 fresh green beans with some butter and brown sugar thrown on top.  Very tasty and easy to make.  I just hope (but I fear) that it will not be 2009 before I see them again at our house (note to wife, this is a not so subtle hint).

It is Thursday early AM at the time of this blog which means the wife, kids and dog are piled into the minivan to go fetch our raw milk.  It is one of the few times I have the house to myself and it is almost too quiet.  The cat is here (I think) but he is in hiding.  I appreciate this quiet for about 10 minutes then I have to have some noise (radio or CD) or else I might go crazy.  Maybe some day I will get used to the quietness of an (almost) empty house but I doubt it.  I think I used to like quiet (before marriage and especially before children) but that has been so long ago that it is but a distance memory.

Everybody is back to work at my place of employment.  The building was very vacant the last week of the year (and quiet).  Everyone is returning to their filled up email inboxes and trying to wade through them.  That is the thing I dread most about vacation / holidays - the huge pile of unread emails.  Trying to figure out which ones still need your attention and which ones the sender chose to follow up with your out of office backup person.  It is a great feeling to catch up but you can only get this feeling after having been way behind.

Anyway, faithful reader, I will make every attempt to find relevant things to blog about this year.  You will notice that I have started a counter for 2008 blogs (this is #2).  Hopefully this will shame me into blogging more often.  Time will tell.  Until next time...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 247

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Well it is the new year and our "party" went well.  It was not until around 12:30 AM that we realized that all we did for the 5+ hours we were together was talk and eat.  I mean, we did not play cards, we did not play any board games, we literally hung out in the kitchen and ate and talked or sat in the living room and ate and talked.  The menu was quite good though...

• Swedish meatballs (my all time favorite)
• Chips & salsa
• Mini pigs in a blanket
• No bake cookies
• Peach cobbler (which we never go to really)
• Chocolate sundae cake
• Ice cream
• Sun chips
• Veggies and dip
• Cheese and crackers along with some lunch meat

I think that was it, I am still a little tired so I might have missed something.  When it was getting close to midnight, I was looking frantically for a clock that showed the seconds so we could count down til the new year but my search came up empty.  We had bought some sparking apple cider and sparkling grape juice to toast with as the new year rang in but they did little good without a countdown.  I looked for a radio station that was counting down but could not find any.  Finally (in desperation) I turned on the TV to see what I could pick up with no antennae.  The only station that would come in had "Feliz 2008" at the bottom of the screen.  Despite my 6 lessons in Spanish, I could not understand but a few words but there was a countdown so it would have to do.  We gathered the kids and poured the sparkling drinks and counted down (10, 9, 8, etc.) and then Feliz 2008!

The son was excited as this is the first year he actually made it until midnight (his previous record was around 10:30).  It helped that there were a few kids over and he kept busy.  The daughter crashed before 9 and was oblivious to it all.  We helped load the guests into their vehicle, put our kids to bed, did a little cleanup in the kitchen and then hit the sack.

New year or not, Señor Gato woke us up at 5 for his breakfast.  Things are back to normal now.  I have to head back to work tomorrow with no more holidays for a while (sigh).  Here's hoping the new year is great for you faithful readers of the blog.  I have not made any new year's resolutions per se but I am sure the wife has made some for me or for the family in general.  I will have to let you know when I know.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon