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sculpture

i have a pretty boring life – i like it boring but i have to admit that it is boring. after raking my yard, sanding down an interior door, and wrestling with my kids the highlight of my day was reading 5 separate articles (about 40 pages or so) concerning the techniques and methods of creating psuedo-live rock for a marine aquarium out of cement. this is exciting stuff. because of this reading i now have the knowldge to create my own live rock that i can then “seed” with organisms from other live rock and thereby have brightly color algaes growing on my psuedo-live rock when my marine aquarium is set up. of course, i now have to make the molds for the live rock and actually mix everything together but i’ll do that next week. then i have to cure and “seed” the stuff so it will be about three months before i actually have my aquarium set up.

on the fun side, i discovered through my reading that one of the best ways to cure the cement psuedo-live rock and get rid of the nasty ph raising stuff that it releases for a short while, is to place the chunks of psuedo-live rock into the resevior of your toliet. this way the water “curing” the cement will change everytime the john is flushed. since, i have to make about 70 pounds of this stuff i will be spreading the psuedo-live rock out amonst a bunch of johns. so if you use the bathroom at my house, the church, or the student center there is a pretty good chance that you will be helping to “cure” my pseudo-live rock and get it ready for the marine aquarium. so if you are at one of those spots then go to the bathroom as often as you can. i appreciate your help in the matter.

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my new desks

just thought i would say that i haven’t been updating the blog recently because i have been working in our study. my father made us two mission style tables to replace our laminated computer desk and trashy table that we had our computers sitting on. before everything looked pretty trashy and just thrown together, now we are computerizing in high style. thanks dad.

of course, the reason i haven’t blogged is because of the fact that i had to remove the old computer desk and swap the computers to the mission style tables. it all looks great now – very mission like, whatever that means. now, i have a nice clean space in which to blog, and anyone who knows anything about me knows that i can’t blog in a non-clean blogging space. it essential to the creative process.

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it works!

spud gun #1

i took the boys and the potato cannon out for it’s initial trial run. this was the first time that my boys had experienced the joys of flying a spud over 350 feet. you should have seen their faces. there is just something about seeing a tuber travel through the air around 400 feet. when i told them what was going to happen you could see they’re disbeief. they were thinking “sure! i bet this potato is going to fly that far.” when i told them that the power for the experiment was going to come from a two second spray of hairspray their lack of faith in my common sense only increased. yet, all that changed when they pressed the ignition switch. when that potato flew my sons belief in me increased dramatically. they loved it and i had a blast introducing them to it.

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the dead housewives’

saturday i took pam to see “mona lisa smile”. i wasn’t really forced to go to this film because i’m not really one of those guys who absolutely refuses to go to a “chick flick.” as a matter of fact, i have actually enjoyed a few movies in my life time that many people refer to as “chick flicks” (i’ll never admit to which films these were though). of course, when we got in the theater it was a good guess that some of the guys there had been forced by their female companions to come to the movie. pam turned to me and asked “i wonder exactly how many of the guys here were forced to come to the movie by their dates.”

now, i view the role of a husband as being the protector and provider. therefore, when pam brought up the question it became obvious to me that my role in our relationship was to find out the answer to that question. i decided to ask the guys in the room “how many of the guys in the room have been forced to come by their woman?” it was a risky question because the women in the room could turn on me, but being the provider and protector in tails a bit of risk. so i took up my role and asked the question. immediately several male hands in the room went up and almost as fast several female hands popped, slapped, and hit their dates. truth has it’s consequences. thankfully the other men in the room, rather than me, had to pay the price for their truthful answers.

anyhow, “mona lisa smile” was pretty good though it was a direct rip off of “the dead poet’s society”. of course, “dps” was still much better than “mls”.

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sports parents

many of you (not really sure why i say “many of you” since basically only two people read this thing, but it still makes me feel better to say “many of you”) have heard the stories about parents being way too involved in the sports lives of their kids. you’ve heard of the football parents who started yelling fights with parents from the other team over a call made during the game, the baseball parents who beat up an umpire over a call they disagreed with, and the hockey dad who killed another parent over how his son was playing. these are all terrible events and awful examples of parenting. yet, i think i have found the worst. my kids, adam (9 – almost 10) and noah (7), joined a bowling league for kids. it’s allot of fun to go and watch them. they’ve gotten quite good. i think either one of my kids could probably beat at least half the members of the youth ministry without cheating. of course, there are 10 and 11 year olds there that are much better than either my kids or myself. i regularly bowl in the 160s and 170s. these kids are bowling 180 without breaking a sweat.

their parents are the ones i really enjoy watching because they get into the games more than the kids do. just like at baseball, football, soccer, and all the other kid sports you’ll have parents shouting out encouragement and others who are just shouting. the shouting is the same, but what is shouted is quite different.

“count your boards!”

“which point are you staring at?”

“remember your thumb is your steering wheel!”

“get serious! do you think this is a game?” (my personal favorite one)

it’s all fascinating to watch. on a whole most of the parents are very supportive of everyone and a great deal of fun to be with. it is a just a few of the parents who think this is the pro-bowlers’ tour. their the ones i try to egg on. i figure we’ll get on network news if we get a fight during a kids’ bowling league. then i can jump in front of the camera and say “i knew there was going to be trouble as soon his son aimed three boards off the first point rather than two boards off the second. rather amateurish. when the other players pointed it out the dad just went bezzerk. some people just can’t take the pressure of competitive bowling.”

it’s a dream i have. maybe one day.

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return of the idiot

midnight tuesday i decided it would be a fun thing to see the early viewing of “return of the king”. so i joined a few friends and went to the grand cinema to watch an excedingly long but still very good movie. the whole thing ended at 3:30 a.m. and i made it back home around 4:00 a.m. i went to bed and then woke up in the morning and went to work. it was wednesday which meant a busy day but i made it through it. that’s why at 8:30 p.m. i decided to take adam, my oldest child, to see “return of the king”. this time the movie ended at 12:00 midnight and we made it back home around 1 a.m. now i’m really tired and thinking that it was pretty stupid to stay out so late to watch a movie. i’m too old for this.

btw, “return of the king” is really good and if anyone is going late me know, i’ll consider going again.:)

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world library wrestling

last night i was going to a small christmas party to make an “appearance” (a.k.a. a very short stay just tell the people who were putting on the party that they are important to me and then a rush back home to go to sleep). pam, my wife, asked me if i could drop by the library and return a book on CD/DVD that was due today. it was overdue according to the note we received from the note re received in the mail which said it was due 10 days ago, but according to the stamp they placed in the DVD itself it wasn’t due until the 15th. normally this wouldn’t be a big deal. you are charged .05$ a day for an overdue book and i would gladly give the library .50$ as a contribution. the problem is that DVDs have a late charge of $1.00 per day thus making the late fee on the DVD we had $10. while i would gladly give $.50 for someone else’s mistake $10 is an entirely different story.

so i decided to go to the library and correct the problem. surely any reasonable person would see the stamp inside the DVD and realize the mistake an say “no problem”. of course, i didn’t realize that my problem would be that the library doesn’t hire reasonable people. i went to the jones creek branch of the baton rouge public library and presented my DVD. the male librarian took my borrowed movie/book and then asked me for $10. i told him that there was a problem because the DVD/book had been stamped as being due the 15th and thus not overdue. he said he would look at it and then immediately turned to his computer. he looked at it and then told me “nope, it was due ten days ago.” i grabbed the DVD and showed him the stamp. he looked at it and then said “the computer says it was due 10 days ago. that will be a $10 fine, sir.”

i could continue but i won’t. needless to say we went back and forth like this for awhile. he would say it was due 10 days ago and i would point to the stamp and say it was due today. after innumerable repeats of this scenario i became tired of the whole situation. i reach the conclusion that there were only three options:

1. be a wimp and pay the $10 fine.

2. be a wimp and never go back to the library and continually run from the library collection agency that would be after me.

3. take matters into my own hands and give the librarian an attitude adjustment.

option #3 seems the best so i grabbed that 70 year old man and began to hit him repatedly. he fought like a tiger, a very old tiger but still a tiger, and after knocking over 4 or 5 stacks of books he said i could take the matter up with the main library downtown. victory is mine … i think. it felt good to forcibly convince the guy to let me talk with another person. sometimes you just have to be forceful to get psuedo-results.

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baton rouge brainless driving

i believe i have finished yet another blogging hiatus – actually this was a blogging, journalling, and book reading hiatus – though i did get addicted to a magazine called “relevant” and read it constantly during this episode. these things happen to me every now and then. what happens during them is that my mind sort of cuts off for awhile – it is my belief that during these times my brain actually takes a small holiday to an meditterean beach and relaxes for awhile – this is good for my brain but bad for me. when it happens all i’m able to do is watching movies and play gamecube. i spend the rest of my time walking through life without a brain and therefore running into random objects and making odd sounds every now and then. i walk around all day dazed and confused function on my brain stem only and not participating in any high level functions of humanity.

the weird thing is that i have found through these episodes that you don’t really have to have your brain in order to make it through most of life. in fact, there are sometimes where it might be an advantage not to have a functioning brain – i found that without my brain i now actually understood the drive in window order speaker at burger king, a feat which i can’t do when my brain is working right. the fact that my brain was on vacation until earlier this morning didn’t seem to effect most of the conversations i had with people. i simply nodded and said “oh really” every now and then. this seemed to be all that i really needed to add to most conversations and thefore everything went well without my brain being involved in the process. hearing some people without my brain actually made what they said made sense for the first time.

the coolest of all things was that my baton rouge driving improved dramatically while my brain was off sunning itself. when i was driving without a brain everything all the other drivers on the road did made sense to me. now that i have my mind back from holiday i think half the drivers in baton rouge are homicidal, before i had my brain back i thought they were very good drivers. yesterday, a car racing to get to a stoplight before anyone else seemed reasonable to me. now it just seems stupid.

anyhow, now that i have my brain back from the beach – with a light toasting on it – i can begin to blog again (and journal and read books – though i will continue to read relevant because it’s a pretty good magazine). of course, i’m going to be shouting at insane drivers once again but that a small price to pay in order to have a brain.

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“the boys”

every friday mornng my dad, who lives in saraland, alabama, goes to the local krystal fast food resturant an eats breakfast with “the boys”. “the boys” are a group of 70 year old men who sit around, drink coffee, eat cheap krystal’s biscuits, and discuss the world as they know it. they solve all the world’s problems but then unfortunately because they are in their 70’s they quickly forget the answers to these problems before they reach the door on their way to solves the ills of the world. it has to be a tiring process knowing that you have just solved all the issues with which humanity regularly struggles and yet also knowing you can’t remember the solutions which you reached. life is tough for “the boys.”

being as this is the thanksgiving holiday i have been spending the week hoping between my parents, in saraland, and pam’s parent’s, in tilman’s corner, just down the street 15 minutes or so. since, i was in town dad asked if i would like to go with him to listen to “the boys”. you see, my dad is no where near 70 yet but unfortunately he is old enough that his memory has begun to fade. when he listens to “the boys” and then leaves he is only able to remember that what they said was really good. he simply can’t remember what was so good about what they had said and thus he can’t remember the solutions to the problems of the world that they reached. by going to hear “the boys” my role was suppose to be “the young one with the good memory”. “the boys” would discuss the problems, reach the solutions and then i being younger than either “the boys” or my dad would remember the solutions and bring them out to the world. the plan was that at 6:30 a.m. dad would knock on my door and i would go to join “the boys” with him.

i stayed up all night waiting for my dad to knock on the door, get me, and together with “the boys” solve the ills of humanity. at 6:30 a.m. i didn’t hear anything. i was afraid to get up and open the door. what if something had happened to “the boys”? what would become of the world? i waited. at 7:00 a.m. i was still expecting that at any minute my dad would knock on the door and th world would be made right. i continued waiting in my room listening to pam breathe until 7:30 a.m. then i opened the door and walked out into the world. i looked around hoping to find my dad, for i suddenly realized that i didn’t know where the krystals is that “the boys” met at. dad was no where to be found. he had already left to eat breakfast with the boys and had forgotten to knock on my door. apparently his memory is worse than i originally thought.

so the my strategy has to change a little bit. i now have to bring someone young enough to remember to get my dad to knock on the oor so that i can then go to “the boys” and be young enough to remember their solutions.

the world will have to wait just a little longer.