We are here on Earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don't know.

Another WH Auden quote for you...

We're off to Oregon in the morning. Should be fun. Well, at least it'll be a long drive. I mean, at least there's that to look forward to.

My 22 month old daughter now says, "Wassup?"

-The Krunchy Krab

"No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible."

First off, I cannot claim to have coined the great quote in my title, it was said by WH Auden. It is one of my new favorite quotes, however.

You remember my post about my wife's new Franciscan monk dishes? For those of you who think I'm out of my mind, we have the official Franciscan dish guidebook, and it features a picture of a monk.

Anyway, my wife now has a corresponding post on her blog. So it appears our bedroom will follow suit, matching our new everyday dishes. Now, I'm not complaining, but my life continues to diverge, decoratively speaking, from how I would normally choose to decorate it. I sleep under 4 pictures of hearts formed by rocks and rice cakes. There are teacups and saucers displayed prominently in our dining room. We have plants. Some of our windows are adorned by curtains... some of those are even lace.

I will admit, my wife has given me the square foot right next to the front door, so my glass display cabinet with some of my collectibles is the first thing people see when they come in (besides my daughter jumping and yelling at them from the top of the stairs). I also have the garage... but half my storage out there is consumed with strollers, playpens, and other baby apparatus.

I know that as soon as I publish this post, my wife will ask for the computer so she can read my blog, and I will soon have pointed out to me just how many decorations I have on the walls. Oh yeah, I have about 30 4"x4" photos in frames in various locations.

But I'm not complaining, really I'm not. And no, I have no idea where I'm going with this. Hmm... maybe I'd better reboot my blogging gland. If I feel so inspired, I'll probably post again tonight. Maybe I'll bake something.

-The Krunchy Krab

I know...

I'll blog again tomorrow, I promise. I'm tired right now.
-The Krunchy Krab

Uh, those of you with hearing aids may wish to remove the batteries.

If you are in a boat and you throw a suitcase overboard, will the level of the water increase?

-The Krunchy Krab

Wait! I can't miss a day!

Ok, I don't really have anything to say, so maybe it doesn't count. But I can't have an empty day in my blog! I mean, at least not since I started blogging every day for four days. Right?

-The Krunchy Krab

We're goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo, how about you, you, you?

I asked my daughter (22 months) this morning if she wanted to go to the zoo today. Here is our conversation:

"Do you want to go to the zoo today?"

"Ok"

"What do you think we'll see there?"

"Zoo?"

"Will we see animals?"

"Yes"

"What animals will we see?"

(Silence)

"Will we see a lion?"

"Yes"

"Will we see a firetruck?"

"No"

"Will we see a giraffe?"

(Imitates a giraffe eating leaves) "Arthur?"

"Yes, we might see an aardvark there. Will we see a monkey?"

"Yes"

"Like Curious George?"

"George?" (Runs and gets a Curious George book and starts reading it. Conversation is over.)

Oh well, at least I can have any conversation with her now, albeit a distracted one.

-The Krunchy Krab

So, what? You're like caped crusaders for mental health?

I have a friend who has made more than 1000 posts to his blog. I have to say, that seems insanely out of reach for me. Yes, he had a big head start on me. And he hasn't taken long breaks from blogging like I have. But still.

We're going to the zoo tomorrow. A friend called us today, her company is having a company picnic there, and she had three extra tickets. It should be very fun, I'm sure my daughter will have a blast. She knows most of her animals.

It's friday! That's a good thing. It's been a long week.

Wow I'm tired. I can't think of anything else to write.

-The Krunchy Krab

When in Charenton, do as the Charentonians do

Where is Charenton you may ask?

That's what I asked as well. And why am I blogging about Charenton?

Well, Charenton is right there

in Louisiana. I've never been to Louisiana, but they have a city called Charenton there.

Ok, ok, I'll get to the point. I track stats on my blog, which tell me various things about the people who visit.

When I logged in to my stats today after driving home from work, I noticed I had a visitor! (I don't get very many, so I get very excited when I do get one)

My usual visitors are from Bothell, Seattle, Olympia, and Spokane. I'm pretty sure I know who 3 of those 4 are. Thank you for visiting my blog! But today, I noticed I had a visitor from Charenton, LA. Ok, so that's not so weird, Blogger does have the random blog button. But then I noticed how they got to my site. (If you're the person from Charenton, I hope it's alright that I'm talking about you) They found my site through a Google search for "t". That's right, apparently this person typed "t" into Google, and found my site.

That's one method of driving people to my site that I hadn't thought of. I went to Google and searched for "t", but I couldn't find my blog - I went through the first 65 pages of results.

So, I suppose if I want to maximize my hits, I need to think outside the box for my advertising. I should drop a lot of letters if I want to b a popular result on Google. Hopefully, I'll c an increase in my stats soon, otherwise I'll be as sad as when the Seahawks d fence is on the field. Speaking of fields, a moving magnet generates an e field, and my camera has an f stop setting. G, it's not proving that hard to use single letters in this blog that I write. Ok, I know I skipped the h. The Mariners just won, on a shutout by Felix Hernandez and a save by J J Putz. K, I know this is getting l - l - lame to read. But just remember that drugs are bad, M kay? Ok, I'm lazy and am getting tired of this. n o p q r s t u v w x y z. There. Now I should get 26 times as many hits right? Great! Of course after reading this post, I'll probably lose at least two of my regular readers, and my wife doesn't count because I've disabled stat collection for our computer. Oh well.

-The Krunchy Krab

You may have noticed

I know I've been particularly bad over the years at updating my websites and blog. I am attempting to update much more often now. How often will that end up being? Only time will tell.

-The Krunchy Krab

Your work is puerile and under-dramatized. You lack any sense of structure, character, or the Aristotelian unities.

I have to say that my life is now somewhat complete. I have finished school, held down a somewhat wide and interesting array of jobs, had a cat and a goldfish, travelled, bought my own lawn mower, and started a wonderful family. There was only one thing missing, but no longer.

My entire life, I have only been waiting for someone to make an M&M look like Lurch. I am also particularly fond of the Gomez M&M, but really, it is Lurch that does it for me.

-The Krunchy Krab

Hmm. We see you have boom-boom sticks. Bye bye!

I'm attempting to discover what in my life is marching forward, inversely proportional to how my hairline is marching back. So far, I've identified the following possibilities:
1) My nosehair. I haven't visually confirmed this, but it's always worried me that I may someday grow nosehair.
2) The mileage on my truck. I'm beginning to reconsider whether I want to make it to 200,000 miles or not.
3) The number of toilet plungers I own. This one seems a little far-fetched, since I didn't own a toilet plunger until 2002, and my hairline has been in a steady retreat since 1995.
4) My progression towards becoming a superhero - Engineering Man. Right around the same time my hair began to make its not so hasty exit, I became interested in engineering. I wasn't monitoring my hair closely enough at the time, but I think my hair began to fight back for a short time while I was working at Target in 2002. Alas, I was unable to conduct a proper extended study before I left Target, and started marching down the road of baldness again when I left.

So, I suppose right now that number 4 is the most likely explanation. I guess it doesn't matter though, at some point, it will all have to come off.

-The Krunchy Krab

Ahh, memories...

It's been a long time since I visited this site...

I was particularly happy with how this one came out.

-The Krunchy Krab

I know you've been wondering... Which Jane Austen character am I most like?

I scored highest as Elinor Dashwood, As Marianne's older sister, Elinor lives at the other end of the emotional spectrum. She rarely reveals her intense feelings and is more concerned with being honest and loyal than having what she deserves. Even though her intentions are pure, she sets herself up for loss by constantly placing other people before her own needs. Overall, Elinor is gentle and rational but is just as capable of radical emotions (despite her withholding them) as her sister.
Elinor Dashwood 78% Elizabeth Bennet 75% Jane Bennet 69% Emma Woodhouse 50% Lady Catherine 50% Charlotte Lucas 41% Marianne Dashwood 34% Which Jane Austen Character are You? (For Females) Long Quiz!!! created with QuizFarm.com

One step forward, two steps...

We went to visit some friends tonight who are moving from North Seattle to Camano Island. They have lived in their current house since my wife was born, and so they have a lot of "stuff" that won't fit (space or stylewise) in their new house. So, they invited us over to have a look to see if we wanted anything.

My loot: A standard letter sized envelope, a lawn aerator, a 45 record player, a 2.5 inch long antique iron, and a mini calendar from 1952.

My wife's loot: About 50 Cabbage Patch dolls (the older good kind) with about 12,000 shoes and outfits. BTW, they're all lying naked on our floor right now, my wife apparently decided to undress all of them. She also took about 75 books, a "beaver muff" (I don't even want to know), a honey jar, a miniature crystal creamer, 63 franciscan monk dishes (I've been told several times that they're original), and a serving tray made out of butterfly wings.

Here is my wife with her new dishes surrounding her.
Aren't they pretty? Those monks sure knew what they were doing.

On a somewhat more interesting note, I found a 1954 newspaper from Sao Paulo stuffed inside the back of the butterfly wing tray. Also a Seattle times from 1965.

The best part of it all though, is that these friends can't take their really cool white wood with paned glass sides display cabinet with them. So... we are storing it for them for who knows how long. I can finally take the rest of my cameras out of storage. Oh yeah, and my wife will have some display room as well :) At least she'll have a place to put those dishes.

-The Krunchy Krab

A burger a day...

I don't even remember how we got on this subject, but Holly and I were talking about (oh yeah, I just remembered how we got on the subject) McDonalds and the meaning of their signs that say "Millions served" or "Billions served" or even "Billions and Billions served".

At first we considered the possibility that each individual McDonalds has a sign based on their individual history. Consider this for a McDonalds that has been operating for 50 years:
1 billion hamburgers = 20 million hamburgers per year = 54794 hamburgers per day.

At first glance, that didn't seem too unreasonable for a large McDonalds in a good location. But if we break it down further:

54794 hamburgers per day = 2283 hamburgers per hour = 38 hamburgers per minute.

That's roughly a hamburger every 2 seconds. Every two seconds. 365 days a year, for 50 years without stopping to qualify for "Billions served".

Obviously then, it must be that the signs are representative of some larger entity than a single restaurant. Why then, do different restaurants have different signs? Ah, that is something to consider in another post.

Something about the image of McDonalds workers scrambling to serve a hamburger every two seconds without stopping for 50 years was very humorous to me. When could they train new people? I suppose if they started at 16 and worked until they retired, serving hamburgers without sleeping or eating, they wouldn't have to train any new employees...

-The Krunchy Krab