A good Saturday

It's been a good day so far. I started out by sleeping in until about 7:30, an unknown luxury for me. Then I spent the morning with my daughter while my wife got some well deserved rest. Once my wife was up, I went to work. I started by weedeating the weeds along our back fenceline (you'd have to have seen the before picture to believe how bad it was) so I could get to the small trees growing right up against the fence. Now, these plants aren't intended to be trees - they just grow that way because we're too lazy to cut them more than every few months. To give you an idea of how bad the weeds are, we had dandelions that were 10 feet tall (no exaggeration) and had stems (STEMS!) that were more than 3/4 inch in diameter. I'm really not kidding.

About midway through

Anyway, so that was a big project. Once the small (5 feet tall) weeds were out of the way, I could get at the 10 foot tall weeds in back. These required my chainsaw. Yay! I like using my chainsaw. Less than 5 minutes later, the trees were all bowing to the supremacy of my rotating blade. It was very much a Tim Taylor moment.

We have one of those giant green yard waste bins on wheels - I think it's 96 gallons. I put all the fallen trees in the bin standing up, and it looked like a giant flower arrangement. Once I cut them all in thirds, our yard waste bin was stuffed full.

There, much better

The trees out of the way, I set out to clean up our Christmas tree. I know, I know. I had already chainsawed it into pieces :) but had left all the branches attached and lying in the yard. Those are all cut into pieces now too, sadly though they were too small for the chainsaw, I had to use hand tools for that. The branches and logs were picked up, and I raked the pine needle carpet into a pile. Finally, I got the lawn mower out, and sucked up as many of the pine needles as I could, and then attacked the fenceline. I love the mower.

So now, I have about half of my fenceline reclaimed, I got to use my chainsaw, and I got some exercise in the process. It was a good day already. But now, we have friends coming over, which will be fun. It's shaping up to be a good evening!

-The Krunchy Krab

Welcome to a new dawn.

I walked downstairs today to the vending machines at work to see if anything sounded worthy of supplementing my lunch. I know, I know, vending machine food is bad for you and overpriced. But I usually don't have any change anyway, so it's a rare occasion that I get anything.

Anyway, while I was scanning the typical offerings, my eyes came to rest on a new product - Sun Chips Cinnamon. "That sounds interesting" I said to myself. My immediate thought was, "Those probably taste so bad that it would make for a great blog." I'll give you one guess as to the truthfulness of that statement.

My experiment was destined to be an unpleasant one from the very start. You see, the people who load our vending machines have devised a clever plan to make more money - they load the bagged items into the chutes such that they always get stuck on the way out. Now, it is possible to make the machine dispense what you have purchased, but you either have to risk making the Darwin awards for toppling a vending machine over on yourself, or you have to buy at least two of anything you want. I happened to have a little extra change, so I opted for the latter choice, planning to hawk the extra bag to my co-workers... "Come and get your Sun Chips! Half as much for half the price!" or something along those lines.

My purchases dispensed, I made my way back up to my desk and opened the first bag. I have to admit, they smelled good... but then cinnamon is a popular air freshener, so that's no big surprise. In went the first chip. As my mouth exploded with flavor, my brain began processing - "Hmm... tastes kind of like a churro. A flat, dry churro. Not too bad, really. Oh wait, all the cinnamon flavor is gone now... hey, this tastes like a corn tortilla covered in cinnamon... Blech!"

For all of you who have wondered what goes on in my brain, it is usually dialog like this.

And so I proceeded, consuming chip after chip, to see how quickly I could swallow the chips once the cinnamon and sugar flavor was gone. The result: Not quickly enough. When the aftertaste of regular Sun Chips hits your mouth, there is just enough of the cinnamon and sugar flavor left in your mouth to make it gross. I was now presented with a moral dilemma: Which of my coworkers do I dislike enough to sell this to? One name immediately sprung to mind, but he is out for the week. So in the end, there I was, stuck with an extra bag of flavors that go against everything God intended.

So, I brought the extra bag home. I figured, maybe my tastebuds aren't sensitive enough or refined enough to properly appreciate what must be the complex layering of flavors. I had the perfect sample set at home: My wife and my daughter. You see, if I eat a single Nacho Cheese Dorito, then go out and mow the lawn, chop some wood, and start a campfire, upon entering the house again my wife will descend upon me and begin sniffing around my face. After about 15 seconds of sniffing, she will declare something like, "You had a Dorito." Now, I figure anyone that sensitive will be able to shed some light on the intricacies of flavor in the new Sun Chips cinnamon chips. Then there is my daughter, who will be 2 in less than a month. Her taste buds are so new, that I suspect if there is a commercial for Doritos on TV, and she runs down the hall from her playroom to the living room yelling "Ahh!" (like she always does) with her tongue hanging out, she will taste them. (The Doritos).

My experimental subjects chosen, I proceeded with testing.

I pull into the driveway, and walk into the house. My daughter is asleep, and my wife smiles and says hi.

Me: "Try these."

Wife: *Crunch crunch* "Huh, not bad."

Ok, not quite as much feedback as I was expecting, but I still have half my experiment to go.

(My daughter gets up and starts yelling and jumping)

Daughter: "Chips! Chips! Peeese!"

Me: "Do you want a chip honey?"

Daughter: "Ok" *Crunch crunch* "More peese!"

Me: "Do you like the chips?"

Daughter: "Ok"

So the results of my test are somewhat inconclusive. I can only make one recommendation regarding this new product: Give them to your spouse and children to free up the better snacks in the house for yourself.

-The Krunchy Krab

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

Quote is from George F. Will

I suspect that the residents of the town of Keizer in Oregon are actually secretly trying to get free advertising for Pfizer... you will understand when you visit this link.

Apparently, piercings are the proposed answer...

Now all they need is to stage a commercial with old people dancing amongst the pillars, and their sales will be sure to ... ahem... rise.

-The Krunchy Krab

Digging through the archives

I must face the truth, I am a recovering pack rat. I used to be the sort of person you would see on Clean Sweep, and I'm sorry to say I dragged my wife into the insanity, but we've mostly dug ourselves out from under that after 5 years of marriage. We've still got a ways to go, but lately I've been spending a few hours each evening digging through my remaining "miscellaneous" boxes in the shed - stuff I've been carting around since high school. It is a random conglomeration of stuff - computer parts, old papers, wires, toys, tools, etc. Each night I part with some forgotten treasure, which I've told myself dozens of times over the years that I should keep.

Of course, this post is about something I've decided to still keep - my button collection. I took pictures of a few - the box I found contains 154, which is by far the bulk of my collection. I used to have all of them hanging on my wall, pinned to a large piece of posterboard. Now, as you see some of these buttons, they may not seem all that strange to you until you consider that I collected most of them before the 8th grade, and the box has remained relatively untouched since then.

Without further ado, here they are:















Ok, I'm not going to argue about my political views when I was 14, because I don't think I had any. I only got these because I was a button collector.

This was taken on my high school graduation cruise... my wife asked if it was my graduation from the 8th grade, because we look so young. Nope, high school graduation.


The vacant look in my eyes is probably due to the fact that I was on night 6 of staying up 7 days straight... I went home and slept about 14 hours.













When my sister was in high school, we had a Japanese exchange student stay with us for several weeks - Yukari Kawamoto. Then, the next year, my sister went to Japan as an exchange student, where she lived with the Takahashis.


Turns out they're EXTREMELY wealthy, and the daughter, Emi, has maintained contact with most of our family over the years since - visiting several times, on the first such visit, she brought her whole family and her brother, Naokazu, gave me this button, and a Tokyo Giants signed baseball (no, I don't remember who signed it).











Not sure where I got this button, but I have found several occasions to wear it over the years.













Once again, I think I was 8 when I got this button, so I'm not trying to make a political statement. We had a guest pastor from Namibia give a sermon at our church, and I received this from him. What I remember most about him was telling how cows were worshipped as deities in Namibia, and so he always did a double take when in the states and he heard someone say, "Holy cow!" - he would respond "Where?"














I have no idea.

















I was 11 when I bought this. I wondered for years why the woman who sold it to me looked at me so strangely.
















I'm seeing a trend in political buttons - I also have some buttons from politicians who ran successful campaigns, and they show no signs of rust. Despite my small sample size, I am forced to draw the conclusion that if one wishes to win an office, it goes a long way to spend the extra money to get high quality campaign buttons.














This button is pretty old - I'm not sure how much it's worth, but I believe it's 40+ years old. It's one of the more well made buttons in my collection.













Now, before you begin thinking I'm weird... oh wait, too late for that. My sister has worked for a podiatrist for about 16 years, and so in high school I did a job shadow following one of the doctors in her office. Thus, the "Toeby" button.














This is from my Dad's Air Force days. He gave me this when I was 12, and then gave me his duffel when I was married... to keep our tent in.


















Again, I have no idea. I had no idea when I got it, have not developed an idea over the years, and even now cannot think of what this could possibly mean. At least, not any ideas that I can write about.












This button was released as part of the original Pac Man advertising campaign. It's pretty cool.






Ok, there you go... another montage of pictures, and a brief look at the variety of my childhood collectibles.

-The Krunchy Krab

A look back...

I used to have a website, called Moedaddy's world of satire, back in college. I was recently digging through my archives and found all my old webpages. Thought this might take some people back... (click on the image to see it full size, you can zoom in even further to the full size version to make it more readable)



Now, as hard as it may seem, the International Dutch Oven Society, of whom I am making fun with this webpage, still exists - 8 years later. You can find it here - they no longer have the same pictures up, and I think the board has changed, but it appears to still be going strong. If you want a chuckle, take a look.

I'll probably be putting my website archives up again soon, I'll provide a link to them when I'm finished. Have a good evening, everyone.

-The Krunchy Krab

I'm sorry sir, but your office visit today does not include a free rectal exam

I feel compelled to point out that as of my 100th post last night, I had made exactly 50 posts in 2006, and exactly 50 posts so far in 2007. Kind of weird, especially when you consider that puts me on pace to make exactly double the number of posts in 2007 as in 2006. This means that my blogging is loosely following Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors our technologies are capable of cramming into a certain area will double every two years.

In our mail yesterday I received the most disturbing piece of mail I have ever received. It was an invitation to my 10 year high school reunion. Surely it hasn't been a decade since I graduated. I can't be that close to 30, can I? Ugh. I show all the signs - receding hairline (those troops have been retreating since high school), young children, I pay money for plungers and toothpaste, and if I don't mow my lawn, it doesn't get mowed (note the use of the word young in front of children).

Oh well, it will be good to see some of the people I haven't seen in years. I imagine it will be a little like the reunion episode on Everybody Loves Raymond, except I won't watch everybody's purse.

Well, I need to go clean up the tortilla chips my daughter just sprayed across the carpet.

-The Krunchy Krab

My Real 100th Post

I thought I would provide a montage of some of my favorite pictures and memories from over the years. This should be enjoyable. A note, the caption/discussion of each photo can be viewed below the photo. Hopefully that will avert any confusion. I'd hate to have you looking at a picture of my wife while I'm talking about my cat, and wondering what kind of person I am. Anyway, without further ado here is a brief history of my life.

I was born in 1978, right about the same time as Microsoft. It was a good year for the world.

When I was in my pre-teen years, I joined the KCPQ Kids Club. This is a scan of my membership card. I'm not showing the back because I don't want you to be able to forge my signature, and also the secret code decoder is on the back.

This was our cat when I was growing up. Her name is "Boo" It started out as "The Little Baby Boo-Boo" and was shortened over time. She died a few years ago.

As you can see, this is a picture of my friend and I in April 1993 - towards the end of the 8th grade. I'm wearing my typical B.U.M. T-shirt (I had no other brand of T-shirt)

Fast forward a couple of years to college. This is a picture of another friend and I at a fourth friend's wedding. These friends are getting complicated.

This is a picture of me, freshman year at college. I was entering the Electrical Engineering program, thus the weird symbols above my head. They were actually drawn there for the class pictures.

This was mostly what I did in college. In case you're wondering what that is, it is marshmallows - we had "kneaded" them for several hours to make them into stretchy sheets, that felt kind of like a sticky latex glove. They tasted much better though.

This is a sized down version of my Junior design team picture. I was too lazy to crop it and make it appear larger. Our group name was "WTF" which any network gamer will immediately find amusing. It did in fact cause quite a gasp and chuckle in class when we announced it. However, we did have to tell our professor what the letters stood for, so we said it meant "We Three Friends" Ha!

Shortly after I arrived at college, I met this nice lady and at the end of our junior year, I professed my undying love for her. We remained good friends after she politely told me no way, and I managed to win her affection later that summer.

And there was much rejoicing on my part, since now my undying love was being returned. About this time, all our friends started getting married.

And everyone jumped for joy.

Enter the digital age. Being a computer jock, I soon acquired my first digital camera and began snapping pictures of everything that moved. Also, stationary objects. If it existed, I have a picture of it. But I soon ran out of things to photograph. No problem, let's go to Europe!

This is an Austrian poopsmith. I kid you not. Ok, maybe a little. This guy does walk around behind the tourist buggies in Salzburg and scoop the poop. But I don't know if there's even a German word for poopsmith.

While in Europe, one must try out the automobile-shock-absorber-turned-kid's-toy. I had no more luck dismounting this toy that I do dismounting American versions. Yes, I had to be rescued shortly after this photo was taken.

We were all very tired when we returned. Some more than others. I should never have put down the camera.

The trip to Europe was a result of my research in grad school, which I was midway through by this point. Day in and day out, I slaved away over electronics in a laboratory, emerging only to attend classes and ride the bus to pick up my wife.

I was lucky, in that my wife worked nearby at Children's Hospital. We were able to commute together, which made life good.

But there was something missing... and then we realized what it was. A baby! So we had one. Here she is. Isn't she cute?

I think she warrants a second picture. Awwww.

And thus ends my brief history of life. I took the above picture at Carkeek park two years ago. I hope you've enjoyed this look into what makes me tick. Thank you for reading my 100th post!

-The Krunchy Krab

Not enough hours in the day...

I imagine with the title of this post you think I'm going to write about how busy I am, there's not enough time to get everything done that I want to... well, I'm sorry to disappoint. If you had asked me a year ago, I may have said that, but I would have been wrong.

You see, I realized something. God created the days, and He set their length. God created us as well, all of His creation was designed to operate together. Who am I to ever question how long the days are? No, I realized that if the day is too short for what I am trying to fit into it, there are only two possible reasons for why:

1) I waste large amounts of time. I know I am guilty of this.

2) My priorities are wrong.

I think everyone is guilty of the first crime... but this isn't really the big problem. No, number 2 is definitely my stumbling block, and I have no doubt this is behind most people thinking there aren't enough hours in the day.

By priorities, I am not speaking of being efficient with my time by working on the most important task first, etc. That plays more into the first reason. No, I am speaking of the larger Priorities of my life. Yes, I meant to capitalize that.

How we use the time allotted to us will reflect our priorities in life.

Just something to think about in our spare time.

-The Krunchy Krab

Yay! 100 posts!

This is technically my 100th post, according to Blogger, but that is only because I have two draft posts sitting, waiting to be published. So, while I will briefly celebrate this pseudo-milestone, I will be much more magnanimous in my celebration post when I actually reach 100 published posts. Stay tuned, sports fans.

-The Krunchy Krab

Happy Independence Day!

Looks like it's going to be a great day. I think we're going to head up to Anacortes for the day... wish I didn't have to work tomorrow :(

-The Krunchy Krab

They just don't make them like they used to...

Remote controls that is. I just got this cool remote that my brother purchased for me (he's a low voltage electrician... translation: He gets to install really cool A/V equipment in rich people's houses. Ok, I know he does more than that, but that's all I'd want to do)

It's proving fairly complicated to program, especially since none of my devices (except for my Xbox) are explicitly built in. That's kind of nice though because it forces me to customize it a lot more by learning from my existing remotes and picking and choosing which buttons I want to bother to program.

The coolest thing? Well, one of them? Macros - My main menu has "Activities" that you select. If you hit "Watch DVD" it will turn the TV on, turn the DVD player on, hit channel 3, switch to DVD, and eject the tray so you can insert a disk. It even controls our fan, and I set a macro to automatically turn it to the lowest setting (which I think helped my wife be more accepting to the idea of a new remote)

Anyway, It'll probably take me a few more days to finish programming the thing exactly how I want it. :)

-The Krunchy Krab

A look back to college

Back in college when I had time to work on an actual website (translation: I had no real job), my web design went through several phases. Some of you (my three loyal dedicated readers) will remember them I'm sure. First was the coffee background, with my statistics about my air hockey matches with Mr. Science, then came my random site, very much like a blog but more clunky (clunkier?) and then I switched to my professor quotes.

I still have backups of these sites somewhere, which I hope to find soon and post some snippets of, for nostalgia. But I was remembering back to the inspiration for my random website... I stole my color scheme from a website called Monzy.com - stole is a term I use more loosely than Mr. Monzy would, I'm sure. I liked the shade of blue he used, so I used the same shade of blue. How did I find Monzy? Well, I had a friend from high school that went to the same school, Carnegie Mellon, and he sent me a link to his page.

I'm sure that by linking to him here he will track the traffic coming in to his site (which he has converted to a blog as well) and he will once again come to visit my site, just as he did back in 1999. (At least, my stats tracker back then told me he visited)

His site is amusing as usual. He even took the time to repost all his old hard coded html blogs into properly timestamped blogs when he converted his site. I highly recommend reading his post in October 1998 - he probably won't believe I remember that, but I have repeatedly referred to some of his Halloween costume ideas in years since.

Anyway, I'm going to go try to dig up some of my old websites... hopefully I'll find something interesting I can put up here.

-The Krunchy Krab

Another interesting search

Apparently, my random posts are generating more search based traffic than I realized. I received incoming hits from Google searches of:

1) "Throw a suitcase overboard"
and
2) "antique beaver muff"

So apparently I just need to keep doing what I'm doing. Of course, if I can't keep the visitors adaquately entertained so they keep visiting, it will not create a trend of increasing visitation. So, I have to make my blogs both random and interesting.

This will take some serious research and fierce determination. I believe I am up to the challenge.

-The Krunchy Krab

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

A new dawn

This morning was a life changing experience.

You see, last night I took my socks off before I went to bed. Now, normally that would mean that I would have to squeeze through to the dresser by my wife's side of the bed to get a sock from the bottom drawer (our bed is arranged diagonally in the room, so the corner is hard to get past)

Opening a drawer in a dresser without slides right next to my wife's head would normally wake her up, but not this morning! Our lives have new meaning now. My socks are stored in the cabinet by the door, per my wife's organizing craze yesterday. I was able to pick out my socks without disturbing my wife. Of course, she woke up anyway, but at least it wasn't due to the socks.

-The Krunchy Krab

I'm seriously tripping...

My wife just told me, "I'm moving our socks. It's going to transform our room."

I can only begin to imagine what will await me when I attempt to slumber tonight.

-The Krunchy Krab

The end of an era

I found out today that my piano teacher, Colleen Lauderback, passed away on Saturday. I don't know any other details besides that.

I started taking piano lessons in the third grade, and at the time, I vowed I would continue them for 4 years and then quit. I ended up continuing beyond high school. There was a core group of us that started taking lessons about the same time, and we all continued through high school. Myself, Peter Springs, and Kara Durbin (Munce). We added a few to our group along the way. Most students tended to only stay a few years, so we were always "the advanced kids"

Anyway, I have a lot of memories of recitals throughout the years. We helped set up the chairs, the refreshments, and decorate, and then helped take everything down. Colleen would take pictures with her Kodak 110 camera, and Wayne would sit on his designated chair in the kitchen.

I could always drop by the house unannounced and just walk in. She loved cows. Everything was cows. I think she was "Miss cowgirl 1947 Skagit County" or something like that. Everytime I see something with cows on it, I am compelled to buy it for her. I think I probably still have a few things lying around that I never got around to giving to her.

Several times she had me come play the piano at her church, where she was the organist. She always told me I should take organ lessons, that she would pay for them if I wanted to take them. I never took her up on the offer, but I should have.

When I was raising money to go on my trip to France, she gave me money even though I didn't ask her. As I was leaving the house, Wayne grabbed my arm and gave me more.

She wrote me a glowing recommendation letter when I was applying for colleges. In it she said that when something needed to be done, I would say "I'll take care of it" and it would always be done. I hope to live up to that.

I am glad that I had the opportunity to involve her somewhat in my life after high school. I would occasionally visit when I went to Anacortes, and I had her play the piano at my wedding. Her arthritis prevented her from playing like she used to be able to, but it didn't matter. I am glad that she was able to meet my daughter, even though she was quite young, about a year and a half ago. I suppose I will always regret not going to visit her more often, but I am glad that I did visit.

I am very trusting in the power of God to prevail over death and sickness. I tend to assume that people will get well, and that people won't die. Obviously, that can't hold true forever, and I guess I've come to realize that over time.

So, I am very glad to have known Colleen for the past 20 years or so of my life. I pray that she was able to realize just how many lives she has touched over the years, including mine. I will get the itch to play Christmas music in August, and might even take organ lessons someday.

So, thank you Colleen, for all you have done for all of us. You will be greatly missed here, but I'm sure heaven is filled with great piano music now. :)

Surprise, surprise

For the last 20+ months or so, we've spent the better part of our free time reading to our daughter, who is now 20+ months old (I don't want to do the math). Reading to her, taking care to show/say her letters and numbers to her, shapes, colors, objects, etc. Until recently, it seemed to be to no avail... then she slowly started to recognize her numbers, and we got excited.

But she never seemed to remember them with any consistency, until suddenly one night she started bringing us numbers and telling us what they were. It was very cool, and of course we were proud.

But tonight, well, tonight was a good night. She has these magnetic letters on the refrigerator that pop into a base that says the letter and what sounds it makes. She's played with it since Christmas, but we never really thought she was getting it until tonight. She started grabbing letters, saying what they were, and then putting them in the base and making it say the letters.

To go one step further, we started asking her to find letters... and she was fairly impossible to stump! It was amazing... she knew almost every letter, and could find them on the refrigerator where they were upside down and out of order.

Her lexicographical evening complete, she is now sleeping peacefully.

I declare today, Sunday May 6 to be alphabet day!

-The Krunchy Krab

It just doesn't add up... or else I'm losing my mind

Ok, so I made some Jello Jigglers this afternoon, and as I was reading the package for the 40th time whilst stirring for 3 minutes, I noticed something. The directions say to pour it into a 13x9 inch pan, and then when it has firmed up, to cut it into 1 inch squares.

Now, correct me if I'm wrong (and I hope I'm not wrong because I know the math to calculate the dynamic motion of the sugar molecules as I'm stirring them into the boiling water) but if you cut 1 inch Jigglers out of a 13x9 inch pan, you will get 117 Jigglers.


Now look at the second line - "Makes 24 servings (1 piece each)" Does that make any sense to anyone else?

Ok, so I've come to a few possible conclusions about their meaning:

1) This means that there are 24 servings left for the adults after leaving the pan on the counter in the presence of 2 teenage boys for 1.5 minutes. Seems unlikely that they would leave 24 servings... my guess would be 3.
2) The person writing the top half of the instructions has an obsessive compulsive disorder where they are inclined to divide all numbers by 4.875. This also seems unlikely since it doesn't take anywhere close to 48 minutes 45 seconds to prepare the Jigglers.
3) The instructions are written for preparation on earth, and to be consumed at warp speed, where the theory of general relativity states that 117 Jigglers will appear to be 24 Jigglers as you approach the speed of light. Surprisingly, of the three conclusions I've reached, this one makes the most sense.

Therefore, the only possible conclusion we can draw from this is that Jello is from aliens, and the Men in Black movies are real. I wonder how many times I've been flashy-thinged.

-The Krunchy Krab

Aren't they cute?

I had to share these... my daughter recently had a friend over. They had a ball. They both LOVE wearing sunglasses. Take a look.

-The Krunchy Krab

I know it's been awhile

I've been mourning Georgetown's loss. I'm over it now.

On to bigger and better things! Like fantasy baseball!
Of course, I'm mourning there too, since several of my players are from the Mariners. It would be fine, of course - I was winning week 1's matchup with flying colors, and then they had game after game after game that was postponed. I lost last week's game, and I'm sure this week's is shot. I'm currently establishing the low bar for my league.

On a more humorous note - we have a very heavy couch. We recently lost one of our remote controls, and so I hoisted the couch so my wife could look underneath. It's a sleeper sofa, so it is very heavy. Anyway, my wife did not find the remote, but she did find this:

I don't know that the pictures do it justice. It's quite funny.... I'm performing caropractics on it to try to straighten it out. Ha! I have no idea how my 20 month old daughter got it under there.

My wife just informed me that these cars are advertised as "soft and squishy" and "this is why we don't have a cat." I'm still trying to figure out what that means.

-The Krunchy Krab

J Wallace is the man.

Seriously. Yesterday, I called both games wrong, since Duke is still hurting me, and Ohio State pulled their game off with flying colors. But today was good :) I called both games today, and my finals winner is still in it. My finals choice is Florida vs Georgetown, with Georgetown winning. We'll have to see how it goes.
-The Krunchy Krab

Back on track

Well, I picked all the sweet 16 games correctly, so now I'm back on track. Of course, I did miss the UCLA game, since I had Duke picked to make a Final Four run through that bracket. But besides that, I can still get all the points from here on out. I shot from ~500000th place to 73,000th, and from 21st out of 23 to 4th in my league. Good times.

-The Krunchy Krab

Woohoo!

Picked every game right today... except of course for the UCLA game - Duke was supposed to run through that bracket to the Final Four. Tomorrow looks hopeful as well :)

-The Krunchy Krab

Doing a little better

Well, I got a lousy 20 out of 32 matchups right in the first round: 62.5%
The second round was terrible yesterday, but much better today. I got 11 of 16 matchups correct: 68.75%

Now I get to wait a week to see if I do any better. My only consolation is that roughly 20% of the top 15 (out of hundreds of thousands of players) have chosen the same finals winner as I have.

-The Krunchy Krab

This is just terrible

So much for March Madness. Last year, I did pretty well at predicting the NCAA tournament... not so much this year. 12 of my first round picks were incorrect. That's right, 12. But that's not what really hurts - and I'm sure this is hurting a lot of people right now. One of my Final Four picks lost in the first round. Yes, I suppose it was putting a little too much faith in Duke to expect them to reach the Final Four this year, but you can't ignore history. This will be the first time in more than 10 years that they haven't reached the Sweet 16.
Anyway, Duke's loss kicks my incorrect picks up to 15 already, so I'm just slightly above .500.

The only good thing? Every winner of my lost picks in the first round is now scheduled to lose in the second round (Besides Duke). So theoretically, I could still be perfect from here on out. Right.

Grr...

-The Krunchy Krab

Johnson & Johnson said it right

"Having a baby changes everything"

That's the line from the Johnson & Johnson commercials. And it is true.

Some may argue it, may say they won't let having a baby change their lives, at least not too much. And I do believe in trying to "add" the baby to your life instead of making your life suddenly revolve around him or her.

But there is always that aspect of change in every corner of life. Once a single drop of red falls in the white paint, no amount of mixing can make it go away.

Take for example the sight afforded me when I entered my house this evening. I came up the stairs, and could hear "Da da! Da da!" and the thump of little feet, which I have become quite used to. I round the corner and see the baby gate at the top of the stairs:

In case you're saying, "Big deal, there's nothing amiss..." Here is a close-up:

Having a baby changes everything :)

-The Krunchy Krab

There's a new bad call brick in town

I have a friend with a very cool device - a bad call brick. It's a foam brick that has "Bad call brick" written on the side, designed for throwing at people, tvs, etc that have recently displayed signs of being less than intelligent.

It is unfortunately a low-tech device that was destined to be replaced. Oh sure, it still has its uses, but the computing domain now has a higher tech solution.

Enter the ScreenSmasher. This device is a foam mallet that plugs into your USB port. When you get overly frustrated with your computer, which everyone does, you simply pull out your ScreenSmasher and begin smashing away. There are sensors in the mallet that detect when you wish to annihilate your computer, and your computer responds by displaying broken glass and making a shattering sound. It shatters more with each hit until it explodes.

Ah technology.
-The Krunchy Krab