Blog Number 330

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I made the mistake about a month ago of answering a question.  Let me explain.  Each morning, the wife and I get up around 5 am.  One of us usually puts on a pot of coffee and then we sit and drink a few cups together (I think I have blogged about the unfairness of the distribution of the extra/odd/"5th cup" of coffee).  Anyway, as we sit there and sip our "sweet nectar of life" that gets us up and going for the day, the range of subjects we talk about vary.  Usually we talk about church, home schooling issues, politics, our childhoods, etc.  Every once in a while I will get lost in a thought and she will see the far off look in my eyes and ask, "What are you thinking about?"  Usually I just give the universal male answer of, "oh, nothing".  This keeps me out of trouble.  This is the question that I made the mistake of answering.

On this particular morning I was actually thinking this: If our Sunday school (ABF) class were going to do a play based on a script from Gilligan's Island, who would be the likely cast members for the 7 roles of the castaways?  After the slightly awkward period of silence that usually ensues whenever I actually answer this question (my wife cannot fathom why I waste my time thinking about such things I guess), she formed a small smile and decide to play along.  I refused to tell her who would play each role (the Skipper, Gilligan, the Professor, Mr. and Mrs. Howell, Ginger and Mary Ann) until she told me who she thought would make the best cast member.  We debated back and forth the merits of our choices and the downfall of casting certain people in certain roles (Person A would not make a good Mary Ann as I cannot picture her in cut off jeans, etc.).  We had a laugh out loud good time and all was well until...

Fast forward a few weeks after this conversation.  I was coming back into our ABF class (before it started) with a cup of coffee when I overheard my wife talking to (the person that we cast as) Mary Ann about our discussion.  I think she was slightly offended in our choices and then someone else overheard the conversation and pretty soon the whole class joined in.  People wanted to know why we would even talk about this, why was I picked for this role or that, why wasn't I picked for this role or that one, why didn't I get a part, etc.  Mercifully, it was eventually time for class to start and the whole matter was put behind us.

From now on when the wife asks me what I am thinking about, I am gonna stick to, "Nothing".  It is just safer.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 329

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

I had a great idea the other day at work.  After thinking about it, it is a really selfish idea as it mostly benefits me (and those like me which, as you may have guessed, that is a small number).  First a little background.

We have a very nice cafeteria at work.  It is probably 3,000 square feet and contains tons of different things to eat.  It is more like a food court at a mall really as there is a place to get Italian, Mexican, burgers, deli sandwiches, soup, baked potatoes, etc.  Anyway, over by the soft drinks and energy drinks there are 2 microwave ovens.  Inevitably there is a line to use them.  Outside of the cafeteria is a small room with vending machines and in that cramped room are 3 more microwaves.  There is typically a line for those as well but since the room is so small, it is not a traditional line.  It is more like a bunch of people hanging around holding imaginary "take a number" numbers in their minds.  The cramped room microwaves are used less than the 2 in the vast openness of the cafeteria.

OK, now that you have a complete understanding of how my lunchtime starts off (either in a traditional line or holding an imaginary number) let me explain my idea.  There are 2 types of people that are in these lines.  The first type of person brings with them a frozen meal.  These typically take 5 minutes to heat up.  The second type of person (the group that I fall in) brings leftovers that were refrigerated and we simply need to reheat the food.  These typically take 2 minutes or less (in my case only a minute) to heat up.  I think it is incredibly unfair that those of us in the 2nd group should have to wait on those other folks in the 1st group so I am suggesting a microwave designated as "reheat" and one designated as "I don't care that I have to make you wait.  I am a very important person and that is just how it is.  I might even turn on my food and leave so that those that come after me look around at the others in trying to figure out who is using the microwave especially when the timer goes off and I am not there to retrieve my food knowing that no one will take my food out and set it aside and when I decide to return and free the microwave up I will more than likely check the food and decide that it needs 2 more minutes."  I might have to make the 2nd microwave type name a little shorter as it might not fit on the sign.

This is no different than the "10 items or less" lines at the grocery store.  I think that anyone using the reheat microwave for a frozen meal should suffer the same hateful stares that someone with a cartful of groceries tries to convince the rest of us that they are counting impaired (63 items, really, coulda swore there were only 9).

I shared this idea with a fellow re-heater person on Thursday and he was in agreement.  Once he left, a lady (also a re-heater) applauded my idea and even expanded on how we might sell this to management (increased productivity since less time was wasted in line, encouraging folks to eat leftovers and not expensive frozen meals thereby allowing less raises, etc.).  Since I only needed 55 seconds (including a pause, stir, reheat cycle), I did not have much time to discuss the further merits of this idea.  I guess that is one drawback of being a re-heater, you do not have time to socialize in front of the microwave.  Well, I take that back as I do have plenty of time since I am always waiting on some Lean Cuisine type person and their food but those folks do not care to hear about my ideas.  Oh well.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 328

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Well it is October already.  This year has flown by.  I normally do not say things like that but for the first time in my life, it seems like the year truly has gone quickly.  Part of it for sure is because of the car accident that my wife and kids were in around April and part of it (though it pains me to say so) is due to the fact that I am 39 years old now.  I have a theory about this (I know, I know, this shocks you, right?).  This does involve some math so if you want to skip down a paragraph or two then I won't blame you.

You see, my theory is that it is all relative.  Meaning that we compare current time to past time and the more past time there is (i.e. the older you are) the less current time seems to be in comparison.  For instance.  When I was 8, 1 month of time was about 1% of my life but now that I am 39, 1 month of time is about 0.2% of my life.  So, in comparison time seems quicker only because compared to past time, it is small (and getting smaller).  The bad news is that with every current passing second, that second becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of our past time.  This is a more sound theory than the theory I have about each of us only being given a certain amount of words to speak before we die (I think I blogged about that in the past).

Speaking of speaking words, I did manage to start back up on my Spanish lessons this past week.  It has been about 6 month since my last Spanish lesson.  I do remember how silly some of the phrases are in the software that I am using.  For instance, one phrase in this week's lesson is...

El payaso de la izquierda es bajo y gordo.
(Translation: The clown on the left is short and fat).

As you can see, a truly useful phrase that I am sure will serve me well should the need arise to speak Spanish at a circus.

Yesterday afternoon, the daughter and I went on a walk.  We cut across a vacant lot at the end of our street and into a (sort of) field.  I took along the camera to talk pictures of any interesting flowering weeds that we spotted along the way.  Ever since I took a summer class in college called Summer Flowering Plants I have been interested in flowering weeds.  I think it is all the days of driving up and down county roads at 10 miles per hour looking for more weeds that has somehow cursed me with never being able to just ignore the beauty of weeds.  Anyway, we did capture this picture while we were out.

Now I do not show you this picture for the flower but rather for my 6 (almost 7) year old daughter's foot.  It does not look as small as I remember it.  In fact, it looks like someone else's kid's foot really, not mine.  It could be the nail polish or that those are relatively new sandals but I just think that my youngest child is growing up at a faster and faster rate than I care to admit (sigh).

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 327

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

From time to time when I get home and log onto the computer I am met with this sight...

This (of course) is Notepad, the simple most important application that ever came (free) with windows.  I have used Notepad since Windows 3.1 days and still use it everyday at work (despite having Microsoft Word 2007 at my disposal).  Anyway, when I come home and someone has left a Notepad session open, I never know what there might be there.  In times past it has contained grocery lists, home school curriculum lists, copies of web pages or (at times) a song that my 10 year old son has written.  Tonight was a rare treat however as it contained this...

Face: Murdock, do you want to go to Burger King with me?
Murdock: Yeah sure face i love Burger King.
Face: We better take BA with us.
Murdock: I agree.
Face: Let's go tell go tell BA and Hannibal to come with us.
Murdock: BA! Hannibal! We're going to Burger King.  Come with us to be our protection.
BA: I'll come with you guys.
Hannibal: This is a nice place  BA you sit down first.  You're the king.
BA:  Thank you Hannibal .  You are very kind.  I would give my life for you.
Face: BA!  Look, there's guys coming with guns.
BA: I'll hide you guys.  Come with a plan.
Deke: Get off that chair,  I sit there all the time.
Grad:  You too, nerd.
Deke: What's your guys names?
Face: My name's Face and his name is Murdock.
Deke: My name's Deke and his name's Grad.
Face: Deke, you're very nice.  Don't you agree Murdock?
Murdock: Grad, I told ya you needed a little more salt. So here's some in your eyes.
Grad: Ah, my eyes!
Face: (Punch) How did that feel?  Don't come in here with guns again.

Evidently this is a scene from the script for a lost episode of The A Team.  I can almost see the scene in my head (really).  This MIGHT have something to do with the fact that we just finished season 1 of The A Team but I can't be sure.  Maybe tomorrow when I get home there will be more.  Who am I kidding?  It will  probably just be a boring grocery list.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 326

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Wow!  Two blogs in two days!  What am I thinking?

Recently my son purchased his first CD.  Now he has other CDs that he has from birthdays or Christmas or whatever but this is the first CD he ever purchased with his own money.  There are some teenagers that come to his Sunday school class and do a short praise and worship and one of the songs has a catchy chorus that basically says, "Life is good.  Eternal life is better" (repeat ad nauseum).  Anyway, after having heard him sing those 7 words over and over (and over) and over again (his sister usually chimes in as well), we discovered that it was actually a real song (and had other words).  The song is by a band called Stellar Kart and so we set out to find the CD that it came from.  Turns out they just released their 3rd CD but this song came off of their 1st one.  We found the CD at the local bookstore for $11 (with tax) but since he only gets $6 / week he asked if I could find it cheaper.  I searched and eventually found a seller on eBay that only wanted $8.25 for it.  Actually it was only $1 (with $7.25 shipping) so I bought it and we waited.  It took almost 2 weeks to arrive but when it did he was pumped.

I made a copy for my car as I was sure he would want to discuss my thoughts on the album.  Of the 11 songs, only 2 are better than average but I would like to call your attention to one song in particular.  That is their truly forgettable cover of "Livin' On A Prayer" (originally by Bon Jovi).  Wow, really hard to listen to all the way through.  They do OK on the chorus but the verses are a little rough (the lead singer does not have that great of a voice).  To be fair, they are not on a big label and this was their first CD so I am sure the budget was low.  My son is already decided to save his money for their other 2 CDs so for the sake of my ears I hope they got better.  If you head over to the Pure Volume site, they do have "Finish Last" off of their first CD so check it out.

I just finished a book (not any that were listed on my recent blog) called "A Bound Man: Why We Are Excited About Obama And Why He Can't Win" by Shelby Steele.  It is just over 100 pages but it was an interesting insight from an author who (like Obama) has one white parent and one black parent.  The books talks about many of the inner struggles Obama must be going through not only during this election season but for his entire adult life.  Anyway, it is probably worth a read if you can find it at the library.

Well, it is time to head to the front room and finish up the 2nd Pirates of the Caribbean movie that we did not get to finish this afternoon before church time.  I offer no promises as to the date of the next blog.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 325

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

Well another month has almost slipped by without a blog entry. I do not know why all of a sudden I am not in the blogging mood after having been so into it for the better part of 2 years. Maybe I am finally outgrowing the need to express my frustrations to an (albeit small) audience. I haven't really thought about it much actually until today (just now actually). The big news in our household is the arrival of our new dog...

Her name is Nina (long I on the first syllable like the number 9) and she is a Doberman. We purchased her from local a local breeder. In fact, they were the same folks that turned us on to Gabbi (our dog that was lost in the auto accident in April). We got our deposit in early and were able to snag our pick of the litter. You might be wondering about the name Nina, but before I go into that let me tell you some of the names that we were thinking of...

Latte: This was a close 2nd. Part of the reason was because of her coat's color and part of the reason was that (at $375) we were going to have to give up latte's for a while in order to pay for her.

Caspian: This would have been our pick if we ended up with a male puppy. It seems like a very noble name for such a noble breed. Having just now seen the Prince Caspian movie helped a little too.

Shelby / Sugar / Ginger / Princess: These were all the names our 6 yr old daughter added to the mix. We ruled out Sugar and Princess our of mere principal. Ginger was actually a name of the mother of one of the kids in her swim class. I guessed she really liked the name as there is no better honor (from a 6 year old anyway) than having them name their pet after you.

(Insert arbitrary German, female name here [Heidi, Helga, etc]): The wife was convinced that since the Doberman is a German breed that it had to have a German name. She fought very hard but in the end she was outvoted.

Meecham: OK, a little explanation here. A long, long time ago (like 20 years ago) I worked at a local bowling alley. They had the first automatic scoring system in town and so you had these monitors that hung 10 foot in the air to show your score. You had to punch your name into the lane system before you could bowl and when it was your turn it would display your name at the bottom of the screen (along with flashing some arrows in the row for your score). Anyway, one night I was bowling a few lanes away from some teenage girls that were also bowling and from my angle I swore that one of the girls was named Meecham. I thought that was such a cool / unique name. I wandered over to behind their lane to see how good they were bowling and then noticed that the name was actually Meagan and the extreme angle I was at had tricked me. Ever since then though I have remembered that name and swore I would name something Meecham. The wife did not like this name for a dog any more than she liked it for our daughter's name when she was born.

This brings us to Nina: We have not had good luck with dogs since we have been married. In our defense, we lost one dog in a car crash and had to get rid of two dogs due to moving. The other 5 were just bad dogs that we got mostly from the local dog pound. This dog (if we counted correctly) is our 9th dog. She is also the 9th born out of a litter of 10. So I decided that Nina (9-a) would be a great choice. I am also convinced (though I have no proof) that dogs respond to short names (1 or 2 syllables) that have a long vowel in the 1st syllable.

Anyway, Nina is doing great. She is very smart and has already (at barely 10 weeks) mastered the sit, lay, shake, high five and speak tricks. She is almost sleeping through the night and stays in her cage without whining too much. The 1st week was rough but she is shaping up to be a great dog. We don't want to have to go out and get our next dog (temporarily named Rin 10 10) anytime soon.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon

Blog Number 324

Greetings and welcome to today's random thought.

We had a great get together at our next door neighbor's house yesterday from around 2 until about 8.  Several other neighbors from our street were there along with friends of the hosts.  The July 4th get together was 2 doors down from us so I think (doing the math) that makes the next get together at our house.  Unfortunately the next holiday on the calendar is Halloween (which we typically do not celebrate).  Also, based on the amount of wine, mixed drinks and beer at the last two get togethers I think we need to start saving up in order to afford to host a party for our street.  The wife and I were talking over our coffee this morning and we decided it took us moving to Texas in order to make some true friends.  Back in Indiana, we had our family we could always rely on but here we have to rely on people who we have only known a year or two.  We decided it was a good thing.

We went to the Allen public library on Friday evening to return some books and check out some new ones.  Once I got home I started reading one of the 3 books that I checked out.  When I laid the other two books down on the bookshelf, I noticed all the other books with bookmarks in them.  Since then I have made a search of the house to see how many books I am actually reading concurrently.  Here is the list...

1. The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis - I read this to the kids one chapter at a time on some evenings.  We are almost 1/2 way through the book (pg 95 / 217).
2. Couplehood by Paul Reiser - This was a birthday gift from my mother.  I am pretty sure she got it at the Goodwill store.  I am only a few chapters in to this one but it reads like a stand up comic routine so you can just read it a little at the time as each chapter is not necessarily based on the last.  The book actually starts on page 145 (it is explained in the forward as to why) but I am about 1/2 way through it (pg. 197 / 348).
3. Dogs Don't Tell Jokes by Louis Sachar - This is my 10 year old son's book and I am reading it so he can narrate to me after he reads it.  Louis Sachar wrote Holes (which was turned into a movie a while back).  I am about 1/3 of the way through it (pg. 72 / 209).
4. You, Inc. by Harry Beckwith - Another book from my mother.  I think she bought this one in an airport.  I have not read anything in this book for better than half a year but it sits in my back bathroom ready for my return.  I am about 1/2 way through it (pg. 170 / 316).
5. King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table by Roger Lancelyn Green - I might abandon this one actually.  I just can't get into it really.  This one is hard to read if it is not the only book you are reading as the names are long and hard to remember.  I am only about 1/5 of the way through it (pg. 71 / 330).
6. The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings - Though I just started this one (it sits next to You, Inc. in the back bathroom) I really think I am going to like it.  Many of the books in this list (and many of the books in our house) are classics that we purchased for a ridiculously low price at the Half Price Books store.  In the last few months I finished 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and Treasure Island and these were both books from that store as well.  Somehow I escaped school without reading either of these books.  As for The Yearling, I am only about 1/7 of the way through it (pg. 48 / 354).
7. History of the Millennium (So Far) by Dave Barry - Another "mom" book.  Back in Kokomo, the wife and I would take turn reading chapters of Dave Barry's books to each other.  We had to take turns because it was to hard to read while you are crying due to laughing.  This book is a few years old.  I am about 1/6 of the way through it (pg. 35 / 208).
8. Religious Literacy (What Every American Needs To Know - And Doesn't) by Stephen Prothero - I like to peruse the 200 section of the library (200 being the Dewey Decimal system number for religious books).  I enjoy reading how other people view religions in general and my religion in particular.  This one however better get interesting quickly or it might not stay on this list for long.  I think perhaps the 18 page introduction (where he describes what the book is about and why he decided a book like this needed to be written) was a little long.  Still, since I deal with many countries on a weekly basis (Malaysia, Egypt, etc) where the dominant religion is not Christianity I thought this book would do me well..I am about 1/9 of the way through it though I just got it from the library on Friday (pg. 27 / 233).
9. All the Names by José Saramago - I just returned Blindness by this same author and it was excellent.  Saramago has a strange writing style that involves such quirks as infinitely long run on sentences (I think one sentence lasted 3 pages) and the phenomenal lack in the use of quotation marks during dialog.  He also does not start a new paragraph when someone else starts speaking.  So you have these tremendously long conversations between two or more people (or perhaps a character and his conscious) that do not stop when the speaker changes and seldom us the "he said" or "she said" to indicate who is speaking even.  This was very annoying at first but the story was so good that you look past it.  They are making a movie based on Blindness (trailer is here).  Anyway, All the Names is the book he wrote after Blindness but even though I am about 1/2 way through it I think I will give up on this one.  I did check out the sequel to Blindness though (titled Seeing) so I hope to start it soon (what's one more concurrent book really?).

I wonder if it is strange to have 9 books going on at the same time in my head.  I would think that since people can juggle the ongoing plot lines of that many TV shows, that I could do so with books.  I am running a little low on bookmarks though.

Thanks for reading my Random Thoughts.

Jon