Lazy day. I slept for three hours in the middle of the day, and i still need more. Fighting off a cold, you know. Houston told me today "Daddy, it's good that you're not a daddy who doesn't love his kids." Yes, yes that is good.

Nostalgia that i remembered

I remembered what i was being all nostalgic about a few days ago. I remember being about 13, living in the Peruvian jungle, buying bananas by the stalk. The stalks of bananas are really big, like, one person can hardly carry the thing. We'd get them still mostly green, and as they ripened, from one end of the stalk to the other, Phoebe, JJ and i would gather on our large, concrete floored back porch, and munch away. My all time favorite stage of ripeness was when the part of the banana nearest the stem would be the palest greenish yellow, and the tip would be blazing yellow. With such an abundance of bananas, we'd be able to be quite picky about what we'd eat -- the bottom quarter of the banana often got tossed, since that's where the "sticker" resides, and if you're unfortunate enough to get one of those bites of banana that seems to make your mouth all chalky and bitter, well the end of the banana is where that evil resides. I think one of us ate a banana in, like, two and a half seconds.

In related news, i'm very very much looking forward to this weekend. I'll get to stay with my honey and my kids the WHOLE TIME!!! Yeah!

Well... geez, i uh...

I promised yesterday that i'd write something interesting today, so here goes!

Well, i went to a forum thing tonight, entitled "Does Hip-Hop Hate Women?" A catchy title, designed specifically to get people in the doors. See, an academic title like "Gender Issues in Hip-Hop Culture" wouldn't have drawn much interest, outside of academia, that is. The forum was fascinating, with the short answer being "Kinda" and the long answer being, well, longer.

I don't have my notes in front of me, but here's what i remember off the top of my tired, gotta go to bed, head. The masculine violence represented by some of Hip-Hop culture can be irresistibly attractive to Black women, since in this sexist, racist world, some women feel the need for someone who can "handle" himself on the streets, someone who can lend a kind of strength and protection. Black women allow themselves to be portrayed as promiscuous floozies in rap videos because American culture rarely celebrates Black women for their beauty and sexiness in wholesome ways. There's a yearning to be seen as beautiful and sexy (and valuable!) and these girls will take what they can get. Um... "Hustling" and "Thug Life" paradigms are not new to Hip-Hop, since throughout Black history there's been a certain admiration for the man who can make his way outside of the system. Mentioned were the legendary runaway slave, the tricky characters in Minstrel shows, the "number running" gamblers of the first half of the 1900s, and the drug dealers of today. Improvisation has been a huge part of Black culture, not only in these ways of getting ahead, but also in music (jazz), poetry (spoken word, rap) and sports (basketball, boxing). Physical and sexual abuse has been growing in the communities where Hip-Hop culture holds most sway, and the panelists lamented how little these issues are being discussed.

Things got really dynamic when the panel of experts took questions. The first one was from a "Hip-Hop Purist" who said he was offended by the title of the forum, and that Hip-Hop offers so many positives, and all the forum wanted to do was focus on the negatives. There was more to the question, but the panel's response made me forget. One of the ladys answered with passion, saying "how dare he" say that someone like R. Kelly (who filmed himself having sex with an underage girl and hardly got in trouble for it) or Mystikal (he and two friends forced his hairstylist to perform sexual acts for them because she stole from him) aren't Hip-Hop, when they've got as much a place to claim the culture for themselves as he does, and when Hip-Hop Purists ostracize certain artists, they're trying to avoid responsibility for that ugly part of the culture. She basically put the smack down on the dude, not least for which he called them "You Intellectuals".

I got to ask a question, wondering how much resistance there would be in the mostly white elite owned Hip-Hop music industry if independent artists began producing conscious music, directing anger at the system which allows the social inequities to continue rather than at the members of a rival gang... and the answer was kind of long and i don't remember much of it besides the one guy said music is entertainment, and it can't be conscious in every way, "I mean", he said, "I don't want a song about the fifteen minutes I spend sitting on the toilet when I'm about to wipe my ass!" There was more to that answer, but that was the funniest part.

A gay guy said his boyfriend listens to lots of Hip-Hop music and commented about the homophobia in Hip-Hop culture, and got a round of applause for being brave enough to stand up and say he's gay in front of, well, members of Hip-Hop culture. A girl asked about the internal conflict between wanting to look and act like the girls from the videos, but also recognizing the value of school, church and family. Another girl plead for answers about how to get this conversation going in the streets, in the very community where Hip-Hop culture is being lived out and (by the power of God) redeemed toward something healthier.

Well, maybe my post wasn't interesting, but at least it was long. I feel as though my obligation is fulfilled.

I'll write something interesting tomorrow, i hope.

I stayed away from home all day again today, but i went to a really interesting training. It was all about psychotherapy and spirituality, particularly Christianity. It was extremely dense material, so i actually took lots of notes and used my whole brain to attempt to absorb as much new knowledge as i could. It reminded me of school! I liked it. But i haven't seen my kids really since Monday, and tomorrow we'll all be busy, so sleep is the next train rolling into this station.

Busiest day ever!

Today i left the house at a little after eight this morning, and i just got home at about 11:40pm. That's, like, fifteen and a half hours. Wow.

So instead of boring my readers from current and future times by detailing what i did, i'll sum up: Hope to get a small pay raise. Gonna play guitar tomorrow. Won't see my wife and kids all day. Sad!

I really don't like spending very much time away from my family. I sometimes think about going back to school, studying to be a teacher (which i would LOVE!!!), but the time i would need to sacrifice is simply unacceptable. Not until the kids are more independent, at least. My priorities are just all totally messed up, i tell ya!

Frightened boy

Yesterday night, Houston came downstairs about seventeen thousand times, so today it was Decided that he would be going to bed really early. Which sucked, since today we had visitors who Houston really likes, and the poor kid had to trudge upstairs before they left. But while we were up there, Houston needed the whole floor area next to his bed to be covered by blankets. Huh? So we talked for a while about that.

Rewind with me: a few months ago we were cleaning up the basement. Houston and Katrina love being down there whenever they can, since they can gaze, mystified, at amazing devices like our enchanting gravity feed furnace and... the Laundry Machines. In my cleaning efforts i came upon a mouse skeleton. It was old enough to be completely dessicated and mostly bones, but it held together when i gingerly picked it up by the tail. So of course i showed it to Katrina and Houston -- it's a fascinating little mouse skeleton, after all!

But then tonight, Houston divulged that he's scared of a mouse skeleton being on his floor, and that's why the blankets need to surround his bed like Christo's islands. So we talked about that for a long time, how the skeleton is just a little mouse who died, and dried up and little parts of him got eaten by bugs. It's not able to move or hurt anyone... Houston wanted to see the mouse skeleton again, just one time, and then never again. Poor kid.

I can only take refuge in the fact that kids don't stay scared by stuff like that for very long. I was scared of The Wicked Spider when i was his age for what seemed like years, but was probably two weeks. And we'll give Houston sympathetic support when he's scared, and i'll work to demystify mouse skeletons for him, maybe by drawing one gnawing through a sleeping person's skull into their brain. Wait, maybe not that...

Choices

We played softball today at work, and as twilight fell, errors like "Not Catching The Ball Because It's Dark" tended to increase. So that's partially why i didn't properly catch a grounder to first base, and it bounced to where i could kind of dive on it, but then lie there maybe controlling the ball with my left hand, and then grope for first base with my right hand, trying to get the runner out. This choice was made in a flash, since the runner was sprinting toward me. It was made without all the information, since i didn't know for sure if i was properly holding the ball. It involved sacrifices, since i was kind of on my knees reaching out with my hands, grinding my face into the cindery earth of the softball diamond. It turns out i wasn't controlling the ball, so i didn't get the runner out -- though i did grab the base -- but that's a chance i judged worthy of taking, since if i had concentrated on getting a proper grip on the ball, i certainly wouldn't have been able to touch the base.

And here's why i really like working at Crossroads. I could totally relate that little story to the life these kids face. All the boys i work with have made choices, which led them closer and closer to some problematic sexual behavior. Step by step they approached whatever final choice found them looking at months of treatment in a residential setting. And each one of them continues to be faced with choices which lead them closer to or farther away from healthy living.

Um... in other news, we have the best looking kids ever. Source

Nostalgia that i forgot

Today when i was cooking a delectable omelet, featuring eggs, smoked ham and turkey, mushrooms, salsa (for the tomato, onion and jalapenos) and colby cheese. Yummmy! Oh yeah, and pepper. We use more pepper in this house than anywhere i'm aware of. I've refilled our little pepper grinder nearly once a month. Anyway, the omelet was amazing... and as i was cooking it, i was feeling really nostalgic. It was a good nostalgia, memories of my early childhood, and i thought how cool it would be to get those memories down somewhere. My blog! But then i forgot what i was thinking about. And i haven't been able to remember all day.

But i do remember that when i was about four, my dad designed a house in the shape pretty much like a larger trailer home. I got to be on the roof one time when they were putting shingles up, and somebody gave me a whole can of Mountain Dew. That's where the girl said "Open your mouth and close your eyes and I will give you a big surprise", so i did, and she put a mudball in my mouth. My mum, while we were living there, asked me if i would be able to be in the house all by myself while she went across the street to get a cup of sugar or something, so i stayed plastered to the sliding glass door watching for her return. I saw ball lightning on a telephone pole looking out that same window. We had a routine of "Min-C-Milk", which was a little children's vitamin C with a cup of milk that we did most evenings. It was incredibly exciting. I remember telling my family that when i shut my eyes, they couldn't see me. Also, i remember Phoebe chomping the whole end of a chicken bone right off, which i much later realized must be a dream, since normal three year old children can't do that. I had a dream about The Wicked Spider, which was on my bigwheel, and scared me a lot. I was sitting on the steps in our garage near where my bigwheel was kept when i tied my shoes for the first time, and saw a little lizard drop its tail. I spent hours banging nails into some leftover wood. I kicked a big rock in the hilly field behind our house, and it completely shattered, making me feel unbelievably strong until my mum figured out that it had been a mushroom.

Ahh, all good memories, but not the ones i was thinking about earlier.

So after hanging with the kids, i went to work where we saw a motivational speaker who i can't find anything about online, and a little later saw the movie Ghost Rider, which was okay, but there were a couple kids -- four and six, i'm guessing -- in front of us, and they were scared! I'm quite disgusted that they were taken there by their... caregivers... Jerks. Kids don't need to see people's faces turning into horrifying toothy demon masks or a guy with a flaming skull for a head. Good grief.

Post lite.

Hey! So what's up? Yeah... me neither. I worked two mornings in a row, and with my allergies* and all, i'm kind of tired. But there's this one computer which i want to fix, plus, i sometimes have a hard time thinking of stuff to write when i'm sleepy. So i'm not going to write much.

*i'm allergic to getting up before eight in the morning.

Yesterday was rainy! Today was more sunny. We watched Keith and Karla's kids. They're really cute, and variously call me Benito, Tomato, or Pehnito. Aww! And then Karen showed me this drawing that Houston had done of his dream where there was a marble in a box, and when it moved he had to die. Wow.

I'm proud to be a Christian (for once)

Today i heard THREE PEOPLE speak publicly, with frank honesty, about faith and about being Christian, and not once would i have been embarrassed to be associated with them! First, on National Public Radio (talk radio... only boring grown ups who take everything too seriously listen to talk radio!!! What's wrong with me?) somebody was interviewing Mike Huckabee, current Governor of Arkansas and 2008 presidential hopeful and... Baptist. He talked (very non-Baptist-like, in my experience) about taking care of the environment because we're supposed to respect God's creation, and supporting social services for children after they're born. These views contrast to more conservative platforms of "subdue thou all of creation" because, you know, the rapture is coming and everything's getting burned up anyhow, and the Pro-Life stance that we gotta keep people from killing the unborn, but once they are born, sucks to be them if they've got no responsible parent or they're addicted to crack. Those people should just pull themselves up by their bootstraps, right?

The second one was also on talk radio, where Richard Mouw, president of Fuller Theological Seminary, said that homosexual acts were "outside of God's will" in the exact same way that other sexual sins are -- pre- and extramarital sex, lust, that kind of stuff. And i imagined a wry smile on his face as he responded to the host "No, all gay people aren't necessarily doomed to burn in hell". I had to get out of the car, but i hope (hope hope) that he went on to say that sexual morality is something Christians are expected to observe, and Christians should never impose that morality on people who don't claim to follow Christ.

The third was at Mars Hill, where Shane Claiborne spoke. He's so progressive, one might even call him a Liberal! Eew. But Shane has this whole grunge homeless vibe going on, and he's all "comfort the poor" and "when you do unto the least of these" thing. I like him. Oh... and he has dreads.

And what i meant yesterday when i said that i think parentheses make my posts shorter and easier to read, i meant "i delude myself into thinking", not "i think". Sigh.

Briskness (and brevity)

Okay, seriously it needs to get warm. Once the snow (and the stuff in the gutters which might look like an unlimited supply of frozen frappuccino latte, but doesn't taste as good) disappears, i'm ready for the SUN! Along with some heat, please. One might think, based on today's picture, that it was warm and cheery outside. But no, it was harshly bright and briskly cold. The only way to be warm would have been to exercise vigorously (which i finally did, once we were a long way from home and Houston couldn't tolerate the inline skates for another microsecond and needed to ride in the stroller and Katrina was so freezing cold that i needed to carry her under a blanket while pushing my 50 pound eldest in the aforementioned stroller).

Also seriously, i need to organize my thoughts better to avoid those parenthetical chunks. I think putting stuff in parentheses will make my posts shorter and easier to read.

But yeah, it was quite brisk today. Houston climbed up onto that rail to look at the train tracks, while wearing inline skates. Adventure Boy!

But it was really good to get outside and walk, even though 45 minutes was all i could put up with. And then i went to work, where i bought some cheap Meijer brand crocs, which might not have the chic silly-trendy appeal of the originals, and which might not be as super awesomely comfy, but they were eight bucks.

Server Fixed!!!

I've had this new wireless router lying around for a while, and never plugged it in until last night, and ya know what? IT WORKS!!! Really well! We can -- okay, check this out -- we can download something and at the SAME TIME, we can check our email!!! Not to metion the fact that our server will probably stay up most of the time instead of the other way around. The internet may now join me in doing a happy dance. :)

Cute!

Um... i'm totally preoccupied by computer stuff, which is possibly the least interesting thing anyone could write about, so i'm not going to. So all i have to write about is my family! And it was pretty much a normal day today. Totally normal. Stuff was eaten, books were read. Minor victories included Houston saving "little buggies" and Katrina not having any underwear soiling episodes. Minor defeats included Katrina smashing Houston over the head with a picture frame, and me stepping on Graham's tongue.

Sunday

Last night, Karen kind of left us for a while (see her post for the full story. She took some cold medicine which allowed, nay obliged, her to get some sleep) so i wanted desperately to let her get total, peaceful, uninterrupted sleep for as long as possible. But typing on my insanely loud 1993 vintage keyboard (which, by the way, connects via USB and has white LED lights, neither of which were not even invented until years after the keyboard was made) would have kept her awake, since the aforementioned buckling spring keyswitch keyboard resides in the same room as our couch, where Karen was crashed.

So, i took the kids upstairs with me, with the idea that we'd have a big treat and all sleep in the same bed! Woo fun! We told "Why did the chicken cross the road" jokes. Houston's favorite two: "Because there was an alien chicken chasing him!" and "There was a meteor." Katrina generally repeated the most recent joke, and she didn't seem to think much of those either...

Here's my impressions of that night: Katrina is a snuggler. She fell asleep quickly, with her head on my shoulder. Houston is a WIGGLER. He was thrashing about, kicking the covers all over the place, almost as though he's undergoing... i dunno... electroshock therapy or something. So i tried intervening by telling him "You can snuggle with me." So he stuck his chin on the top of my head, jammed his poky knee into my back, and flung his arm right over my face. Yeah, he's not a very good snuggler.

Today we went to church, went to Karen's parent's house, we ate lots of food (i was trying to not eat anything for 24 hours before church, but i was mentally unprepared and ate some soda crackers) and played outside. I rode Jim's unicycle for a longer distance than i'd ever done before. Once you get farther than ten feet on a unicycle, the struggle to continue is totally a mental struggle. Until fatigue sets in. So now, Karen is asleep, but coughing as though she's got three or four cases of tuberculosis, and Zane is crying in his crib. Poor her and him!

Reading together!

Here's a picture! That's pretty much it. They were reading a very fancy dinosaur popup book that Mum gave me for Christmas sometime. It's cool. But it warms my heart to seek my kids getting along so famously!

Hillbillies!

Today i bought some $1.00 polyester weave -- the fake hair girls at Wedgwood buy tons of, braid into their hair, and then throw on the ground to wrap around the vacuum spindle and agitator brush, halving (quartering!) the life expectancy of vacuums on female residential homes worldwide. At least, where polyester hair is cool. Sheesh. Right, i didn't mean to talk about that... i meant to say that i bought the weave to make a wig type thing for Young Life Club today. It's hillbilly night, and so i got to act even more foolish and crazy than i usually do, hollering and whooping and using my best redneck accent, and i had that huge head of amazing hair! One of the pictures i took of myself looks unnervingly flirty, with the peeking through the hair... Eew.

I'm really bummed that i didn't take my camera, because i did a whole standup comedy routine that i would have LOVED to have on video. I told the dream joke, and a couple others, with outrageously wild gestures and mannerisms, and enjoyed seeing pretty much everyone laughing or at least looking at me like i'm a total freak. 'Sokay. But then, i realize how much fun we have at Young Life, and how one could argue that we're tricking the kids into getting our spiritual message. Kids come to Young Life Club because we're very entertaining, or at least we try very hard to entertain. And we're pretty cool people. I'm not bragging -- we're supposed to be role models, and at least fake like we're cool enough people for the kids to want to emulate. That goes doubly for staff who volunteer to lead Young Life. But here's where the ugly beast of cynicism raises its beskeptical'ed head. What are the kids who get Saved getting Saved into? What are they after? Our specific chapter of YL does a very good job of keeping club inclusive of kids from all strata, because it's the only thing they're allowed to do on Thursday night besides stay at home and watch TV. But many YL chapters are notorious for being preppy social clubs where you gotta Talk God to be included, and the leaders, many of whom are just out of high school themselves, buy into that with gusto.

And then i kick myself in the head and remind myself that God works in ways that i can not fathom, and God's message, and God's Kingdom advances like a steamroller in spite of our noblest, most misguided efforts to help it along.
___more___

Hair?

I'm reading The Devil Wears Prada right now, and besides being an extremely fast read and not very absorbing, it's overflowing with haute couture references and the kind of eyeball scorchingly gorgeous world parodied so flawlessly by Zoolander. So when i saw Katrina's slept-in hair today, i immediately put it in a sloppy, off-center ponytail (partly because the other kind are really really hard for me) and she looked, if i may say so, FABULOUS! Ahem... lemme scratch my armpit real quick... But then the ponytail fell out later because i didn't use enough (any) hairspray.

Besides that, i took care of kids, bashed my figurative "cleaning up" head against the brick wall of "messy house", and was interviewed by some PhD. student all about my participation in the online community which is Jumpcut, where you will all find an extremely cute video of our kids, when all the clips upload and Karen edits it. Link will be forthcoming.

Happy!

Oh man! My camera came today! I'm so happy!!! Except Karen says that's not really my happy face, that's my goofy face, but you know, whatever. So i took pictures of Zane with a flash, or at least used the flash while taking a picture of Zane, pictures of Zane and Katrina, and Katrina Kabina, a very distracted Houston, my car which i parked on a snowbank, and then was saddened by the pathetic state of my old camera, which is really broken. My new one is identical in every way, except differently broken -- the screen is garbled on my new camera, and the old camera makes this horrendous grinding of gears and freak out noises.

But recently, i've been thinking about this "happy" thing. I remember reading a study in Mumble-mumble (i think it was Scientific American, but it might have been Reader's Digest) about happiness, and how people on the way up the scale of affluence do tend to be happier, but they need to continue to increase their consumption in order to maintain happiness. Also, people who had become chronically ill or suffered a tragedy tended to return to the baseline of happiness within some time. So now that i have my stupid new camera i'm happy? And this past weekend i was all miserable because i had an upset stomach? What's up with me? I'm so shallow? Plus, i was reminded of how cynical i am two or three times today! I'm shallow and cynical!!! What's wrong with me? Oh yeah, i also got plenty of sleep and drank some coffee, which made me feel really weird. Like my body doesn't know how to handle caffeine unless i'm sleep deprived.

Starving!

I feel like my poor weblog is starving! Starving of interesting material, starving of bandwidth, and starving of pictures! Pictures!!! Karen has offered to let me use one of hers ever since the tragedy of my camera breaking (on my birthday!) so today i took her up on that offer. Thanks, hon! And i really like Houston's hair right now. It's so cute and shaggy and long! :) Ponytail-long might be a stopping point for the little boy's hair, but i adore the shaggy surfer look. And it's so cute and blonde!

Katrina's hair is really cute too, but Karen and i have been talking about when and how to get it cut. Katrina is just-three, and she's never had a haircut, not even a trim. Her hair has been an adorable little "Rachel" style shag, which also looks fantastic in pigtails or a ponytail or whatever. But it's just gonna get longer, and we don't want to get locked into Long Hair. I mean, it's kind of cute to say that she's never had a haircut, but once it gets long enough to not cut it for the sake of not cutting it? Too much, man.

I'm pushing for a bob, maybe a edgy, super stylish "razorback wedge", with no bangs, and very long, um, things next to her face. Whatever part of the hair would become bangs if they were cut short. Ooh, that would be cool. Heh... that reminds me, i was asking Beth if she wanted me to streak her hair (streaking is a hair coloring technique which leaves pieces of hair more colored on the ends, with roots untouched, looking more "fun" and "natural" than normal highlights) and she said something like "Yeah, my hairdresser friend told me that she'd been to a seminar about that", and i was thinking how weird it is that i'm not gay.

Server broken!

Yeah, nobody at all can read this right now. For some reason our little server has given up serving my page to The Internet. Perhaps a reinstall is in the near future.

But cute stuff happened anyway. While i was taking the kids with me to do a couple house calls for computer support -- one which made me $40, and one which i really WANT to do (install WinXP on a Vista laptop, which is proving extremely stubborn -- Katrina saw a little bit of playground equipment. She said "Awww! A little playground!" which sounds more like "Awww! A widdow flayfroun!" Houston responded "Yeah!" in his young attempt to support his sister, "but it's just in someone's yard, it's not just a random playground!" Random. That's so cute.

I also got enough sleep last night, and i intend to duplicate that tonight. :) Plus, my broken camera didn't arrive. Tomorrow? Please? Is there a patron saint of delayed packages?

Oh man!

I thought the broken camera i bought was coming in the mail today. Oh well. I promise that as soon as it arrives, i'll put a brand new picture up here. Perhaps even not of myself! Wouldn't that be weird?

And you know what my latest project is? No? Well, it's getting Windows XP installed on Keith's brand new fresh laptop. See, in order to install Windows XP on a modern computer, you need to first load drivers onto the computer using an antique thing called a "Flaw-Pee Drive" -- it's like a USB thumb drive except bigger, and holds a ludicrously small amount of data on a circle of plastic coated with magnetically reactive stuff. Yeah, they were really unreliable. Good riddance.

Oh yeah, so anyway, i've been learning how to build a custom version of the WinXP installation disk with drivers built in, and it's fun, but not easy. I think i got it.

Houston's Five!!!

Yes, yes he is. Five. Five years old seems so OLD! He can reason! He's got opinions! He can argue, and make some kind of logic work for him! His imagination and memory are

So it was a big day. It started with me going off to sniff two pairs of fragrances, the more grapefruity of which i preferred, and got fifteen bucks for my opinion, and then i came home and was shocked to find a five year old boy in our house. So here's the story this five year old boy came up with, in paraphrased, condensed form:

"I used to live in a block house, but it fell down. My bed was made of bricks. My clothes were made of wood, and i could only hold my arms like this and move this much." He jerks his arms back and forth stiffly, about an inch movement total. "My blankets were cardboard! My name is Bubbly Bubbie. My shoes were made of wood too! I didn't eat anything, i just drank." He also doesn't know what happened to the four year old boy named Houston.

After the fascinating story, we ate at Burger King where a kid named Raymond had his sweat pants waistband pulled up past his belly button, with his shirt tucked in. Yes, his grandparents had him for the day, which explains everything. And Houston was definitely the big kid on play area, because he was literally the biggest guy there. And he's pretty stinking funny. And the only non-family kid there after Raymond left was three. But Houston really is hilarious. He makes grown ups laugh with his silliness.

Then we shopped, i cooked, we ate, we played, i held Zane and watched Top Gear (British car show, so funny, totally recommend it) and then it was bedtime! I'm so incredibly proud of my son. He's everything i could hope for in a five year old son. I thank God every day for giving us Houston to take care of. ...i actually do...

Miracles

This got mentioned twice in recent conversations, so that means i have to blog about it.

God did and does miracles, right? Traditionally, miracles were though of as events caused directly by God's special force, God's direct, unexplainable-in-any-other-way intervention. But... what if God's miracles were all such minute and long term (and staggeringly unlikely!) manipulation of regular properties of physical objects, so that the miracle could be explained with physics? Now, having the Red Sea part, with "water on the left, and water on the right" seems a lot more unlikely than the usual illustration; monkeys banging on typewriters to get The Complete Works of Shakespeare... but perhaps...?

My coworker Mark said tonight: "So then, is that any less miraculous?" I think not. While i like the idea of God crashing in on the scene with Special Powers all over the place, obliterating sickness and stuff, the idea of God patiently crafting the universe with the meticulous attention to what miracles we're going to need is also pretty appealing. That idea paints a picture of God as a loving, nurturing caregiver versus a macho, lightning bolt flinging superbeing. You know, with huge muscles and gleaming white flowing hair and beard.

And then, would apparantly Godless evolution be so bad, so ...heh... evol? If God's work is done with infinite, meticulous care, then who's to say our observed universe was created exactly as evolutionists say? God's role in the world becomes far more necessary, in my opinion, if God is constantly providing the fabric just beneath the reality we experience. God's thoughts are the canvas our universe is painted upon. That kind of deep stuff is the domain of philosophy and speculative metaphysics, not the biology classroom.

More about me.

It's me! Houston (who makes me so proud) drew it, complete with silly hair and whiskers!

Yeah... yesterday i said this at the dinner table: "Yesterday i made coffee really strong, and i liked it." Realizing what a stupid story that was, i continued: "...and that was the shortest story ever." My brother-in-law appreciated me, at least, for my brevity. Earlier he was decrying American's linguistic habits surrounding "like" and "y'know". One can craft Americanisms using mostly those words. "Like... dude, y'know?" Depending on context, that might even make sense.

A late picture.

Yeah! A picture!

And i've been sitting here for over an hour, wondering what to write. Karen's helping me stay non-focused by having me bid on kids' clothes on ebay, and related to that, i've got a broken camera just like mine coming in the mail, so all you (weird) people who seek out my weblog for my startlingly creative photography can start visiting more often.

Oh yeah, while fixing Beth's computer, i found that the new power supply (great brand name, good powerful specifications) i got for her squeals! This super high pitched scream which pierces my ears and bores holes in my head! So i'm sending it back. Yech!!! Stupid near-ultrasonic noise.

Mmm, fresh Windows.

For a few months now, i've been running my computer with a crippled version of The Gimp, annoying video issues, nobody can see my machine on the network... all symptoms that a clean reinstall fixes amazingly well. So just today, i reinstalled Windows, and now it's, like, a pleasure to use! Yay! So far i've only downloaded and installed 18 of the most essential drivers, programs, and tweaks. It's so cool!

In other, infinitely more important and interesting news, we had Houston's party today! He's five! Or, at least, we've celebrated his fifth birthday. He's got one more celebration tomorrow, and then a few days later he'll actually be five! It's so great being five. We had eight kids in all, not including Zane, and two fathers not including me, and no other parents. How weird is that? We had a five year old's birthday party, and only dads came? Disclosure: parents were specifically not invited, and mothers the world over need more time to themselves, so i think those little things played in a little. What impressed me most about the party was that Houston planned a lot of the general ideas. Karen offered some options... from what i understand, it went something like "Houston, do you want to have a party about dog food? wood? babies? underwear?.... ALIENS???" and Houston chose that last one. But he had some original ideas of his own, like the "draw your family as though they were aliens" and "let's play telephone with four three year olds". I'm really proud of him.

I don't remember my fifth birthday. I remember my third and fourth birthdays, where a mean kid shoved me from my new tractor and sat in the dust crying, and learned my name is John, respectively.

Mmm, frosting.

We spent much of the day getting ready for Houston's birthday party tomorrow, so when i came home after work, i got to help finish the house decorations, and then decorate the cake. Houston had drawn a little scene with an airplane, a space ship, a guy jumping out of the airplane, and an alien. So i fixed up the chocolate frosting, which had turned out a very great deal like fudge (if eaten like fudge it was really delicious) but when i folded in some freshly whipped cream, it got to be a perfect consistency. And it was really good. So i will put a recipe to Juanito's Good Chocolate Frosting right here:

Some real butter
Some real cream cheese
Lots of powdered sugar
Some good quality dark chocolate (i heartily recommend Dove chocolate, since they make it with actual cocoa butter, not palm kernel oil or coconut oil)
Some whipping cream

If you are frosting one medium size cake, use about half a stick of butter and half a package of cream cheese and, i dunno, eight ounces of chocolate. Soften them carefully in the microwave (or in a double boiler if you love doing dishes and want to be all proper) and stir them up with an electric mixer. Add more powdered sugar than you think you'll need, mixing it as you go along, until it gets to be a nice thick frosting like consistency. At this point, it'll be the fudge stuff i talked about if you let it sit and cool for a while. But to get it to stay like frosting, take about half a cup of whipping cream, get it really cold (it doesn't whip properly if it's not really cold) and whip it until it's really foamy and whipped cream like. Then fold the whipped cream into the still a little warm frosting until it's nicely mixed, and use it!

I used a Hershey's bar of "Special Dark", which basically means not all that good... as blasphemous as this may seem, i don't think Hershey's makes very good chocolate. Too bad. Next time, it's nothing but Dove for me!

"I will NEVER do drugs!"

Today i took Houston to Young Life. Last time i took him he ran around a little more than i'm comfortable with, so this time i told him that the kids at Young Life were sometimes naughty, so i wanted to know where he was at all times. I feel conflicted -- my intention is totally not to scare Houston, i don't want him to be afraid of the kids, but i want to make him stay in sight. I'm not pathologically risk-averse like so many Americans, for whom any perceived (imagined) risk is unacceptable. But i know the kinds of things these kids can do, and the dynamics of Young Life and of course seeing a really cute kid like Houston would keep the kids' behavior very much in control. But still, i've witnessed some horrors, and i do not want Houston involved.

So anyway, on the way back from Young Life (during which, for the record, he remained fully, firmly in sight the entire time) Houston asked my why the kids were at Wedgwood. Well, i explained some of the dynamics of the mentally and emotionally impaired, truancy and running away, substance abuse and dependency, violence, neglect... and i totally and completely glossed right over the sexual offense issues. Yeah, he's not old enough. But the rest he listened intently to. Houston declares, in response, "I already love people and treat them right!" and "I will NEVER do drugs!" He's so cute. Oh, and now i can check off the "Talk to your kids about drugs" box on my "How To Be A Good Dad" index card. Now where did i put that thing...