Blog Number 246

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Well it is New Year's Eve.  A family from our ABF is coming over tonight.  It should be interesting as both of our families usually fall asleep around 10 PM on New Year's Eve.  We will have to see if we all make it.  We have the coffee pot thoroughly cleaned so we should be good to go.  Also, we found the 4 missing cards from our Uno deck (Can't you tell how exciting this party is going to be?  4 adults passed out at the card table at 10:15 after a rousing game of Uno?).

Christmas was very basic this year.  I mean we did not go anywhere or even wrap any gifts (some of the gifts shipped from Kokomo arrived wrapped but as a family we did not wrap any)...

Pretty boring, huh?  No matter, the kids had a great time "unboxing" their Christmas gifts.  The highlight was the Easy Button (from Staples) for the son.  It was the best $5 I spent all year long.  The look on his face when he found it in his stocking was great.  My favorite gift was the new CD by Tree63.  I already have several songs memorized and I have only owned it for a week.  Before the morning was over we had to reset our counter...

Notice that there are 366 days left (due to 2008 being a leap year).

Once again, I won the "who gave the best gift" contest that the wife and I have each year.  She received a Peyton Manning jersey and then subsequently bowed down before me to announce that I had won the contest for the 10th time in 11 years.  She will enjoy wearing this to our Superbowl party and to our church's annual Jersey Day service (where everyone wears their favorite team jersey).  She vowed to win next year (as she always does).  I have a slight advantage in that I am impossible to shop for but so be it.  The game is what it is.

I hope that each of you faithful readers have (had) a great Año Nuevo (New Year).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 245

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Sorry for the long delay between blogs.  It is not for a lack of things to blog about really, but a lack of free time to blog.  The whole family went to a Christmas party that was at my manager's manager's house.  Since I just switched managers, I did not know a lot of folks there but my wife wanted to go anyway.  The highlight was the gift exchange part of the evening.  Everyone who wanted to brought a gift and then we drew numbers to see who would go first.  When it was your turn, you could steal someone else's gift or pick out a new one.  If you had your gift stolen then you got to steal someone else's or choose a new one.  Once a particular gift was stolen twice it was "frozen" (meaning it could not be stolen again).  At any rate, we were number 22 out of 25 so I thought we were in a good position for a nice gift.  Once it was our turn, we stole a Pirates of the Caribbean 3 DVD.  The #23 person immediately stole this from us (freezing it).  We then opened a new gift (a few Starbucks gift cards were already frozen).  We got a nice book of Escher drawings which person #24 then stole from us.  People were laughing at my frustration.  In the end, we ended up with some snowman picture holders.

A couple of weeks ago we were at another party for people in our ABF (Sunday school class).  I decided to continue a tradition that was part of a Christmas party that we went to every year that we were in Kokomo.  Each year there were 3 jars of candy and each person could venture a guess as to how many pieces of candy were in each jar.  The person who was closest won the jar.  This was always a lot of fun and the winners were held in high regard.  Try as I might, each year I failed to come even remotely close on any jar.  I finally won after 5 years (last year) and I wanted to see if it would be as much fun being the person in charge.

Step 1 - Buy some candy

Step 2 - De-bag the candy

Step 3 - Get some jars

  __________

Step 4 - Fill the jars

 __________

The pictures are a little deceiving as the jar on the far right was the biggest.  Jar 1 ended up with about 180 pieces, jar 2 had about 50 and jar 3 had a little over 500.  I did a 4th jar that contained only gumballs (so the little kids could play) but did not get a picture of it.  It had about 75 gumballs in it (my daughter guessed 4,000 - hey think big!).  Anyway, it was not as big of a hit as I had hoped but I had fun filling the jars.  For the record, my wife was nowhere close on her guesses (though closer than the daughter).  I hope to do it again next year.  There was a gift exchange at this party and we did get the best gift (a t-shirt of the "I triple dog dare ya" scene from A Christmas Story) so the evening ended well.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 244

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

We are trucking right along in our Spanish lessons.  I now can say incredibly useful phrases like "La mujer está saltando" (The woman is jumping) and "Los niños están caminando" (The children are walking).  I say book the trip to Argentina now, I know all that I need to know!  The wife and son are taking the same lessons and I am trying to stay a lesson or two ahead of them so I can help them out if needed.  Also, I have the unfair advantage of talking to folks from Argentina on an almost daily basis so I can practice (and show off).

The dog (el perro) is growing like a weed.  She has about doubled her weight since the wife and kids brought her home.  She does have this annoying (to me) habit though of licking.  I suppose all dogs do this but I am not around all dogs.  Most of my time around the dog is planning ways to avoid getting licked (or splocked as I call it).  My wife has informed me of the various reasons why dogs lick but I am not buying any of it.  I have my own theory.  I think that her tongue just itches.  I mean, she will lick anything (and I mean anything, I will forego an exhaustive list of all things licked thus far but trust me, there are some humdingers in the list).  No, she cannot be licking for any of the reasons that my wife suggests   My "tongue itch" theory makes sense and covers the reason why she licks all the things that she does.  If there were a dog manual (that dogs are given when they leave their mothers and come to their new homes) I know there would be an entire chapter (perhaps several chapters) on licking.  It would be behind smelling in the list of importance but it is up there above chewing and biting.  Here is how I think the book would read (translated from the original dog language).

Chapter 2: Licking

From the moment you wake up until the time that you close your eyes for your next nap (see Chapter 7: Napping), your tongue will undoubtedly itch.  There is no use complaining (literally whining) about it but here are a few tips on controlling the ungodly itch.

• Lick things (all things).  For reasons beyond our dog comprehension, humans allow us this pleasure for our entire lives.  I have heard of a few owners who have caused a dog or two to stop licking but this is rare.  Odds are that you will be allowed to lick just about anything so abuse this privilege as much as you can.
• Lick certain things. 
  • Your crotch.  If you are alone you could literally lick this part of your body until you are out of saliva.  Be careful though as there have been a few cases of rashes breaking out down there.  Also, it is addictive and some dogs will find that they cannot be stopped even when disciplined by their owners.
  • Human flesh.  This is perhaps the best thing to lick of all.  There are certain chemicals in the human skin make up that alleviate the never ending itch.  If you have an adult male human in the house, lick his flesh every chance you get.  The adult male human flesh is the most potent antidote to the itch that is known to dogs.  Thank the bone gods if you have an adult male that will allow you to lick him.

Now this is just an excerpt of the dog manual as the chapter on licking is quite exhaustive (as those of you who have dogs can well imagine).  At any rate, I feel for our dog.  I know how I feel when I have an itch that I cannot scratch.  I will have to keep you posted on how she does.  Until then...

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 243

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Somehow (and I don't know how), our dog has begun to join me on my morning walk.  I try to get up around 5 AM and have a route in the neighborhood that I travel around x amount of times (x, for those of you who forget algebra, is an unknown number).  The x depends on several factors but mostly revolves around the weather conditions (especially the wind as I am not a big fan of wind, I think it goes back to my younger days when I had much longer hair).  Anyway, someone (specifically the wife) suggested (this is a code word for "do it, there will be no discussion on this matter") that I take the dog each morning with me.  Gabbi (our dog) has inherited a feature from our cat in that around 4:45 it is imperative that at least one human should be awake and getting the the necessary chore of getting the animals some food.  The cat can be contained in another room and made to leave us alone for the most part but the dog (for now) is in a crate in our room at night so when she gets to whining, well someone has to get up.  So, I get up, get ready and grab the leash and now have a walking buddy.

I wanted to share with you an experience from Wednesday night too.  Wednesday evenings we drop the kids off at our church for the AWANA program and this leaves the wife and I for our only alone time for the week.  It lasts only about 1 hour (not including drive time) and we typically go to the Super Target and sit in the Starbucks that is located inside the store.  Anyway, we are sharing a venti Gingerbread Latte ($5 with tax!) and I am doing what any husband of 10+ years would do at that time.  I am half listening to the wife and half watching the shoppers as they meander by us.  I try to catch the key words of what the wife is saying since there is usually a pop quiz later and over the years I have done OK (probably a solid B average).  Anyway, at one point when I was not paying particular attention I did hear the phrase, "...there is now scientific evidence that milk thistle helps purify the liver..."  At this point in time I know that my quiz score will be low as I had no recollection of any conversation previous to this phrase that would indicate that how we got to a place where this phrase would fit into a normal conversation.  I froze and did the unthinkable.  I had to ask her to repeat herself (indicating that I was not paying attention).  I had to do this you see or else I would have lowered my pop quiz average something fierce.  It seems that milk thistle really does help (this ends the educational part of this blog, well it ends the blog too I guess).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 242

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Monday was my daughter's 6th birthday.  As I have mentioned before, our tradition is to have the birthday person pick a restaurant for their birthday dinner.  Once there, the birthday person gets the only menu and they get to order the entire meal for the family.  There are no rules however if you make a poor (or cruel) choice for someone you have to keep in mind that their birthday will come around eventually and payback will be allowed.  Anyway, the daughter picked Macaroni Grill (she has expensive tastes).  I had never been there before but the wife and daughter have and the birthday girl had her heart set on some fettuccini.  For those of you who have not been to this restaurant chain, they have butcher paper on the tables and give you ample crayons to draw and color while you wait for service / food.  I have to admit that I had too much fun with this and colored more than both kids put together.  When it came time to order our 6 year old did a great job.  She is typically quiet and the place was a little noisy so she had to speak up above her normal volume.  She ordered her fettuccini and a pizza for her brother (solidifying a good meal in July when he turns 10).  The menu had a thing called a Mama's Trio so she ordered that for the wife (logically since it said Mama right there on the menu!).  For me she ordered Chicken Cannelloni.  Everything was delicious (including the leftovers that I had for lunch yesterday).

One of the reasons that I invented this tradition is so that we are forced to try new dishes at restaurants.  Other than me, the rest of the family plays it fairly safe when eating out.  The kids stick with pizza, chicken or burgers.  The wife orders chicken 95% of the time.  I on the other hand am the adventurous one (though the wife will sample my food but that does not count as being adventurous since she has her dish as a backup in case she does not like it).  However on Monday, I was the only one that got to try anything new (the Mama's Trio was just chicken, chicken and lasagna).  The wife's birthday is in 10 days so we will do it all over again soon.  We started with her birthday last year (avoiding having a then 5 year old order for everyone since she could not read very big words then) so now we have completed the first year of this "tradition".  I put the word in quotes since I don't think you can consider it a tradition until you have done it twice.  Maybe next year at this time I can fully consider it a family tradition but for now, it is just something we have done for each family member.  I am guessing though that wherever we go for the wife's birthday dinner, she will order chicken.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 241

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

We are back in Texas again.  We cut our vacation short a few days.  Since we had most of the family at our house here in October, the trip back was not as needed as trips in the past.  Also, we were missing the Texas weather incredibly.

On the way up to Kokomo, we stayed at a Ramada Inn in Joplin, MO.  Joplin is about 1/3 of the way there (if you are coming from Texas) and (of course) 2/3 of the way home.  Splitting the 15 hour drive up into two days seemed like a great idea especially given the wildcard of having a puppy with us on the trip (the cat came too).  The only bad thing about travelling with the dog was that her "breaks" did not happen at the same schedule as ours.  Furthermore, she tended not to want to take care of business near heavy traffic (like say at a gas station).  As a result of this we made several other stops along the side of the road.  Our typical stop went something like this...

1. The dog indicates to my wife that a stop needs to be made (this is done via some sort of Vulcan mind meld as there were not many outward signs that I could see).
2. I find the next exit and then pull over to a grassy area.
3. The wife exits the car with the dog and they proceed to walk around a grassy area and do everything but what we stopped for originally.
4. The kids and I watch from the car and try to offer moral support.  This is done mostly but us chanting loudly, "Squat!  Squat!  Squat!"  Sometimes we even did a cheer, "Give me a S.  Give me a Q!" etc.
5. Sometime later, squattage occurs and we are back on our way.

The other problem with our 4 legged travelling companions is that the cat is not a big fan of the dog (this I know shocks you).  The cat spent most of the trip sitting on top of the luggage in the back of the van and looking out the back window.  From there, he was safe from the dog since she spent most the trip on the wife's lap or at her feet.  On the few occasions we had to leave them in the car together, madness ensued.  Though these stops were short (often only 10 minutes), the situation we returned to would take us hours to replicate.  The cat was invariably on the dash peering out toward us.  He was keeping watch for his rescuers it would seem.  The dog would be trapped somewhere in the middle or back of the van trapped or stuck or hung up in some way.  The cat would have a smug look of satisfaction of a job well done (but this is his usual look anyway so it is hard to tell if he was experiencing any satisfaction).  The van was pretty packed on the way up and even more so on the way home (as the kids got some Christmas presents while we were up there) so the predicaments that the dog found herself in were increasinbly complicated on the way home compared to the way there.  At any rate, we arrived home yesterday afternoon.  After unpacking, cleaning out the van and then getting a very late lunch, we headed to the grocery stores to restock the fridge / pantry.

We are all very thankful to be home and in a heat of frustration I made a promise that I was "never driving to Indiana again."  Time will tell if I fulfill my promise or not.  All I know is that we drove the car around last night and that is the only vehicle I am getting in for a while.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon