Cerebrate Good Times

I’ve seen the “25 things about yourself” blog post on quite a number of friends’ blogs, but I had resisted posting my own because I thought it was unoriginal. But I guess nothing else about my blog is that original anyway, so here we go. Oh, and just for fun five of these things are going to be a total lie. See if you can guess which ones. 1. I like to drink milk when I eat pickles. 2. I have no nail on my right pinky toe. 3. I know from personal experience that fried chicken intestine tastes like bacon. 4. I always carry a couple tissues in my pocket. 5. My favorite Bugs Bunny character growing up was Marvin the Martian. 6. I am a cat person (not that I would put them on nanny-cam or anything). 7. When I was about 5, I stole a pack of gum from the supermarket. I didn’t get caught. 8. I once flew a kite from inside a moving car. 9. My favorite drinks are milk, grape juice, and ginger ale. 10. I once dug up a coprolite . 11. I received two black eyes in a f...

Last night I mowed the lawn at our new place for the first time. It had been a long time, but that was how I made money in the summer growing up, so it brought back a lot of memories. Of course, the memories just involved walking around on the grass with a lawnmower, but still. I really like the smell of fresh-cut grass. I was also remembering a couple of lawn-mowing terms I picked up from my parents as a kid. Mowhawks occur when you leave a little strip of crass uncut in the middle of the lawn. And when you use a setting on the lawnmower that's too short, we called that scalping. Why we used these terms related to American Indians, I have no idea. And that's probably the worst post title I've ever come up with.

On Friday after work I was in a hurry to pack because we were going to southern Utah for the weekend. I decided to bring my black suit for Sunday. When I put it on Sunday morning, somewhere in the back of my mind I thought that something seemed off, but I forgot about it. It wasn't until this morning that I realized what had happened. I had packed some black work slacks with my black suit coat instead of the pants that actually match the suit. I'm not sure if it was noticeable, but I still felt kind of stupid in retrospect.

A few months ago I wrote a post about how it gets a little tiring to hear so much about breast cancer when there are plenty of other things out there that can kill you. And some of you were at least mildly offended by that. So, to make peace with all of you, I am going to run in the Race for the cure on May 9. The website does a marvelous job of making you seem like a terrible person if you don't set a donation goal for yourself when you register. While I'm not big on passing the guilt buck, it's time to see if the rest of you are to this cause beyond questioning my sense of ethics. Visit the website to make a donation to the cause through me, so I don't seem like a misogynistic slacker. That link should take you to a page where you can search for a participant. I'm on a team called Hope Hunters (I had nothing to do with that name).

I have never considered myself a perfectionist, but I guess I'm a little unusual in how I use a microwave. First of all, I think it’s wrong to use a microwave when you could use an oven or toaster oven (I love my toaster oven), but there are times when there’s no choice. So when I have to use one, I very carefully consider the cooking time and the power. I thought everyone did this until someone at work told me he heats it on high for a while and the just stirs it around. But I would rather heat my food on a lower power for longer, which makes it more even. (Also, if you spread the food in a ring around the outer portion of the plate so there’s nothing in the middle, you won’t have a cold portion in the middle to deal with.) And once I figure out how to microwave something perfectly, I remember it so I can repeat it the next time. So, as far as neuroses go, is this one a low/defrost, medium, or high?

We had been having a rather cold and wet spring, with snow falling up to last week. Then, starting Sunday, we've had truly gorgeous weather. So naturally, on the first beautiful commute day of the spring, with nary a cloud in the sky, I found myself in a traffic jam as soon as I hit the freeway on-ramp yesterday afternoon. Then after finally navigating around that accident, I was treated to two more on the way home, so my 20-minute commute turned into 50 minutes. Then this morning I heard about two more accidents yesterday with multiple fatalities. I understand that these things happen. What puzzles me is that we had weeks of horrible, wet weather with nary an accident, and now on the first work day after the weather turned everybody was so busy staring up at that puzzling (yet vaguely familiar) blue-colored sky that they got themselves killed.

They say you shouldn't eat raw eggs because there's a potential for salmonella poisoning. But think about how many people eat raw cookie dough by the pint. I'm sure someone started that guideline in order to avoid being sued, but have you ever known anyone who has gotten sick from raw eggs? I certainly don't. In fact, I'm pretty sure you stand a better chance of food poisoning from random produce items, given recent food recalls. On the advice of my attorney, I should state here that I'm not that I'm endorsing the consumption of raw eggs.

I'm excited to try out my new fishing pole on Saturday. What does that make me? a. a geek b. a nerd c. an old man d. weird in some other way

I’ve mentioned this before, but as far as I can tell it’s not on this blog anywhere. For anyone who has kids or will have kids, distraction is a vital tool. Last night we were trying to get Sam to go to bed. I had read him a few books, and Katie was going to take over. She told him to stay in bed while she went to get another book. He got out of bed, though, (and disobeyed in a number of other ways) so she told him we wouldn’t read anything else to him because he wasn’t being good. He screamed for half an hour about wanting us to read to him ( Fox in Socks , if you must know), until I started asking him questions about the books we had read already. He ended up telling us all about the stories we had read, calmed down, and fell asleep shortly thereafter. I’m told this works on grown men too, but I don’t believe—ooh, a peanut!

I don't know if this happens to everyone, but sometimes as I drift off to sleep I have the strangest ideas. Last night I started thinking about a bank where pirates would deposit their ill-gotten gains, which of course is called "booty." Then I thought "Booty Call" would be an awesome name for such a place, but that sounded weird for a bank. So maybe it would just be a great name for a store where you could buy various pirate paraphernalia.

This afternoon Nathan and I were revising the old "When life hands you lemons" axiom. Here are some of the highlights of our conversation: If life handy you lemons, it hates you. When life hands you lemons, it's to distract you from the speeding bus coming up behind you. When life gives you lemons, sell them for money. And then go buy drugs. When life hands you lemons, somebody else probably got lemonade. When life hands you lemons, you'd better hope you're not allergic to citrus. When life hands you a lemon, its probably because you're a bad person. When life hands you lemons, they're probably poisoned or something. When life gives you lemons, it means that it's time for you to go on a murderous rampage. When life hands you lemons, sell them to people with scurvy When life hands you lemons, throw them away and buy your own damn fruit. Life is one big lemon. Deal with it. If life gives you a lemon, eat it and remember that some kid somewhere has...

Cucumbers or pickles? That is, if you were to eat one now, would it be a plain cucumber or a pickle?

Ah, popcorn. What a delightful treat! I used to eat it more than I do now, probably because it's an unnecessary expense on a finite grocery budget. But on occasion, I treat myself. Popcorn is marvelous, but it also has a dark side. Literally. If you leave it in the microwave even a few seconds too long, you end up burning half the bag. So I tend to err on the side of early extraction. I would rather have only half the bag be popped than have even a couple burned kernels. I don't know if it's just me, but burned popcorn is one of the most horrid flavors around. If there are very many burned pieces, I will toss the whole bag and start again. This morning at work I decided to microwave some. I am always amused at how the smell can permeate the whole building and elicit comments from so many people. I decided it would be fun to microwave a bag and hide it somewhere, so nobody knows where the smell is coming from.

Today Jer and I solved the problem of funding NASA. They are always having budgetary crises, and the problem is that people are too focused on the problems in their lives to want a lot of government money to fund boring space exploration. But more private donations would help them out. I propose that NASA hold telethons similar to the ones PBS does. But instead of sending you ballet tickets in exchange for your donation, NASA would perform crazy publicity stunts once certain goals were reached. For example, they could send a pig out of the airlock on the space station to see what would really happen to someone exposed to the vacuum of space (hint: explosion). I think there are a lot of similar stunts they could do that would have people paying more attention to them, rather than just experimenting with the effects of weightlessness on tiny screws. Just a thought, NASA. Call me if you want some PR help.

You know how the more you see a word, the stranger it looks, right? Well, the word I'm having that experience with today is "horde." And I only had to see it about three times to feel that way.

The house we moved into was previously occupied by older people. So there were a few interesting things left behind out in the yard, none of which we would go out and purchase. "Dad, this is creepy." Everybody knows elephants are what every yard needs. Yes, this is some kind of gnome, and yes, it's screwed onto the tree itself. I have no idea what this frog is doing in the planter, and I don't know what it's doing with its hands. This raccoon appears to be hitchhiking. Every garden needs a peacock, right? In case you have a very important visitor.

I was talking with my friend Nathan about how April Fool's Day can be dangerous not only because of pranks, but because of actual happenings that may be mistaken for pranks. Here are some things which, if someone tells you on April 1, you're better off believing, even at the risk of humiliation (particularly if the individual telling you has a badge and a gun). "There's a flash flood heading this way!" I'm afraid the test came back positive." (Hmm, I just might call some random strangers out of the phone book next year and try this one.) "You were going 25 mph over the speed limit." "You're under arrest."

Okay, I finally have a few pictures to post of our new place. This is our sweet backyard, complete with carpeted decks, a fountain, and a playhouse (with a doorbell!) for Sam. You can't really tell, but it's an interesting green color. This is our crazy messy living room. After 4 days, it still looks pretty much like this. I suspect someone else is sneaking more boxes into our house. This is the newest addition to our family, a chinchilla given away by my friend Krista's family, as she suggested in my pet post . We asked Sam what we should name it, and he suggested Filfer (which is what he wants to name everything these days), so we decided to go with it.