Um, ow.

We have this plastic ball. It's made up of ten half balls, in decreasing size. They nest. If you stack them, you get a tower of nested hemispheres. If you click them together starting with the two smallest half balls, you can continue to add hemispheres of injection molded polystyrene, until you have one ball containing all the other part-balls. It tends to be heavy. And it's not cheaply manufactured -- the pieces snap together firmly.

So Houston ran over today and said "Daddy! Do you think this is a whole ball or just empty?" I was lying on the ground at the time, playing with Zane or something. I gushed some enthusiastic response, and Houston said, equally enthusiastic, "I'll show you!!!!!" and he proceeded to try to break the hemispheres of the ball apart. It broke apart. The heaviest portion of the ball flew at my face and struck it. I rolled on my tummy and said, also enthusiastically, "OW!!!!!" and writhed around for a minute, trying to make the intense, white-hot pain subside. It did, but in the meantime, Houston said "Oh Daddy!!! I"m so sorry!!!" He did a great job being sympathetic. But Katrina flew to my side and crouched down near to where i was grinding my nose into the carpet and said with perfect loving horror, "Daddy! Daddy! Are you okay?" and i could feel her hands fluttering on me, and her little breaths puffing. Oh man, is she ever a cutie.

She's the one who ran immediately to get the bandaid, while Houston looked mortified and followed me around. Poor kid.

Which brings me to two questions; how come sometimes the only response you can have for pain is to writhe? Does rubbing your feet together actually HELP the pain go away? And also, how come people curse when they get hurt? I couldn't think of anything but writhing and saying "OW!"

Work...

Two years ago was a particularly bad time for me at Wedgwood, or rather... i wasn't at Wedgwood at all for a bit. It sucked. So last Thursday a kid spat on me several times. Gross. Today the same kid threw water on me. Not so gross, unless fluoridated city water grosses you out. The kid in question is on the fast track out'o'here, which is nice, but it's interesting to be experiencing personal attacks again. I'm happy to say that i'm genuinely dealing well with this. More stressful is the fact that EVERYTHING is more expensive now, and we're still getting paid the same.

There's lots of differences making work more tolerable now. It's not as relentlessly horrible. There's some clear solutions. There's a more consistent and supportive team at the boy's unit. And i totally don't feel like i'm the only one holding kids accountable. Not that i was, but sometimes that's how it felt.

And another awesome stress free area: our cars are AWESOME. Totally kick butt. Not a single problem or hint of problem from either of them. Except the bald and wobbly tires on the minivan. And the AC doesn't work. Besides, that, totally perfect. Thank you, God!!!

Aww!

Isn't he cute? I like my kids.

Zane's hooked up.

Today we had our dedication service for Zane. So he's hooked up with going to heaven and stuff now. We can cut out our devotions after supper now, so that'll save some time.

Ha! Just kidding...

At our church, we don't baptize infants. The do "believer baptism", which always made sense to me, which always made sense to me when i was little. But there's lots of Biblical support for baptism of non-believers; children and members of households which choose to follow Christ. And when i was a kid, the defense of believer baptism was filled with straw man arguments; "Those Catholics think that sprinkling water on babies gets them saved! As though an infant can Trust-And-Believe in Jesus-Their-Personal-Savior." So now that i'm a grown up and can weigh the views myself, i must say i would rather have Zane be baptized. But dedication is as close as we can get, unless we abscond to some sufficiently liberal infant-baptism church (Episcopals? My buddy Christian is one of them) for a kind of one-afternoon-stand of spirituality. But no... that would be weird.

So we acknowledged Zane's status as a divine image bearer, and promised, with God's grace, to introduce him into a loving, Christ following environment. Karen wrote the actual covenant that we stood up and read, and it was awesome. I tried to put in my in put, but in spite of my palindromic deftness, i was utterly useless. I hope she posts the text of the covenant. And she took some excellent pictures, which are in a gallery over here. Really, i shouldn't have posted at all today. Just linked to Karen's blog. Oh well.

Between the asbestos and E. Coli

Between the asbestos and the E. Coli.Yeah, that's where i spent most of my day. I come from the school of hard knocks, if you weren't aware of that fact.

Our drain clog was epic. I can confirm the presence of Zane Diaper, and many tree roots, and it was very much a ton of hard work to get it all out. I thought it was hard work to get the dishrag we accidentally sent down the drain a few years ago, but this was more. I had to put the snake in there about five times to extract all the plug. The, ahem, material i pulled out filled one of those plastic over-one-gallon buckets. All the way, plus a dome of filth.

What grosses me out a little bit is that the snake machine i rented was used for countless other sewer augering jobs, in countless other sewers, and there's lots of nooks and crannies in the snake for biohazard materials to nestle. The snake is fundamentally a very tightly wound spring; it's like a truly monstrous guitar string. So i wore gloves and grimaced every time i was spashed with stuff. I think the grimacing will protect me. Plus, none got in my eyes or mouth.

I'll be okay. The asbestos part comes in with our heating ducts, which are wrapped in asbestos cloth. It's totally fine... the asbestos is only a risk if it's deteriorating, and it's all very tight and sound. But still, Yikes, it's a carcinogen!!! Come on, i tell myself, they used to make gloves and aprons out of the fuzzy blanket like stuff. If i come down with stomach illness in the next few days, or lung cancer when i'm eighty, i'll have today to thank. Thanks, today.

I think i'm alone now...

That picture shows our coat rack. I don't think i've ever seen it so empty! That means nobody is here at home but me. I'm LONELY!!!!!!!!!!! The solution: play computer games. Or maybe go to sleep.

Our basement has been flooding recently. I choose to blame tree roots. Along with some extra fibrous flushable materials we've flushed in the past month. Rats. So one of my coworkers loaned me a handheld snake today, which is about thirty feet long. But it's not long enough. Which means that tomorrow morning i'm going to have to go to U-Haul to rent a proper, huge, electric powered roto-rooter thing, which will probably be 100 feet long, and will most definitely get the obstruction out. In the meantime, i'm not drinking any water, because i don't want to flush.

I just realized that statistically, those who rent roto-rooters from U-Haul will have worse body odor than those who rent anything else.

"See, with me it will be summer all year long."

Ever since we discussed having kids, Karen and i seriously thought about home schooling our kids. We reasoned that since we're both at least double the IQ of most Mensa members combined, and we're really good with computers, that we could teach good. I imagined teaching my kids about the Bernoulli Principal, and how people, even college profs, use it to explain lift, and how they're all WRONG. But then, after homepreschooling him for a year, Karen and i decided all of a sudden to send Houston to public school.

And i'm glad we did. See, i did explain the fallacy of the Bernoulli Principal to Houston, and turns out he didn't really care. This stuff is important to me. But so is making models. I was younger than Houston when i assembled my first plastic model. It was a Sopwith Camel, and it was covered in cobwebs of plastic cement and i had some irrelevant parts left over like "The Engine". Hey... i couldn't read yet. But Houston doesn't love plastic models. So you know what? He's his own person! Shock! Gasp! Faint*!

The most awesome thing about public school (and all not-at-home school) is the socialization. Houston is so much better in social situations now than he was before going to school. He gets along! He can resist negative peer influences like "Hey! Let's hit each other with swords!!!" and he'll simply not. And he has a best friend! And my chest swells with pride to say that it's a girl. He's his own person, but i'm glad he can get along well with girls, as i have always done. Her name is Summer.

So Houston wants Summer to come over for his birthday party. The deal was that he was allowed to have a sleepover. Now we're progressive people, open minded and stuff about gender roles. So while we initially were maybe probably okay with that, we did change our minds. Mostly because we don't want to have to tell him all of a sudden when he's in high school that it's not okay to have slumber parties with all his female friends. But also, we're going to be so much more freaking out about sleepovers than most parents because of Karen and my experience working at Wedgwood. Bad stuff happens.

*Okay, today in Italy, the Prime Minister resigned after a vote of no confidence was passed against him. One of the other members of parliament who belonged to a different party crossed over to support the dude, and for his pains, was spat upon by one of his co-legislators. Spat! So he responded by fainting, and being carried out on a stretcher. That is so awesome. Nobody in the States ever faints when someone spits on them. I know this because a kid spat on me a bunch today, so i got to do a load of laundry at work. So some other Italian politician got to call a snap vote or something, and everyone was so happy they broke out bottles of Champagne. Then the chairperson told them off for acting like they were in a bar. Isn't that awesome? American politics is so depressing in comparison.

Snow Day!

I think it's a rule that if you have a snow day, you are required to go sledding. I know we did. And yes, that *GORGEOUS* picture is of our tiny little hill in our neighborhood, the one we visit very frequently. It's a cute, friendly hill with amiable borders and cooperative grades. And today it was extremely attractive. That's Katrina making crop circles.

So here's how we all did. I managed to go over that jump thing without falling twice. Less ambiguously stated: i fell often, and didn't fall on two occasions. It helped when i built a snow ramp OVER the roots which kept grabbing my snowboard edges. But i didn't get hurt. Go 35 year old me.

Houston, on the other hand, was fairly adventuresome, but he would cry every time he got hurt or didn't get his way or was uncomfortable. To be fair, he did bonk his head on a tree, and got snow in his face. But it's hard to be patient with him when i see him walk away from spectacular accidents with a mere grimace and some blinking. I want to say "Houston, i know you're tough and resilient, so quit whining!" But then he'd crumple in chest wracking sobs. There's a catch-22 for ya.

Katrina was little miss autonomous. While i was dealing with one of Houston's Moments, she tried to climb the slope again. She appeared to be stuck in some kind of behavior loop, because she'd get mostly vertical, move up the hill, and collapse on her tummy. There was a perfect Katrina sized hole in the snow where she belly flopped about a dozen times, bravely attempting the ascent. I expected her to sound frustrated when i arrived to help, but she just said "Hi Daddy", and we used each other for our extra legs and made it to the top. Then we went shopping, got a pizza, ate it and the kids went to bed. Karen and i have been enjoying what silence there is between the noise of my keyboard strikes ever since. Oh yeah, and i filed our taxes. It's totally fun if you use something like this.

Catching up

While i've been blathering on about politics and volcanoes and food, Karen's brother Jim went and got engaged! To Alisha, who can shoot lasers from her eyes!!!!!! And my mom had a birthday! So congratulations are in order for my mother for still being on the earth when it crosses the same spot around the sun as it crossed when she was born, and also to Jim and Alisha for getting engaged! We're super happy.

In other news, it's bitterly cold here in Michigan. Wow. Oh yeah, and last Thursday i stopped by Eerdmans Books to drop off the books Karen and i made. To, you know, publish. They haven't contacted us yet, but maybe if enough people call them and say "Hey... do you have a book about, i dunno, a giraffe who walks all over the world and a bunch of animals follow him home? Cause i'd totally buy one of those", maybe that would improve our chances?

Tungurahua

That's the volcano upon which i was born! It's Tungurahua. When i was in my infancy on its temperate slopes, it wasn't active. But so far this century, it's been rumbling and complaining, and might just obliterate my birthplace one of these months. Thanks to things like seismographs and smart fellas with laptops and spectacles, few people are likely to be surprised. Or killed. Which is more important, i think.

It's kind of cool to have the little village where i was born feature in international science news now and then. And oh man, from Wikipedia's article, Baños looks like a stunningly beautiful place to visit. Or live. Or relocate there permanently. When western civilization falls, maybe that's where we all should move.

Those rascally terrorists!

Karen found this one in the wild today. Um... yeah. Barack Obama is a "MUSLIM" extremist, with an extremist father, and is infiltrating our government to the highest level. No... no he's not.

What trips me out is the idea that anyone even believes this. Some terrorist organization has this Barack "Saddam" Hussein Osama -- oh wait... Obama -- to somehow become a Senator and then go through the primaries and maybe get elected as president of the US for... what? Is that how terrorists work? We see dozens of examples of terrorism per week on the news, and it's always suicide bombers or rockets fired into civilian neighborhoods. They're not masters of nuance. They seem to struggle with the concept of subtlety.

And that's the whole point. You don't influence policy through terror by sneaking around, lulling your enemy into complacency. You scare them. And if we're believing stuff like this, i guess enough of us are terrified that they've won a little victory.

Party!!!

First off, let me celebrate my Mum's birthday! It was yesterday. I'm a bad son for not calling or even emailing. Sorry, Mum!

Today was our Christmas party from work. We're all resiliently humored adults, and we're steeped in the vapors of sexually deviant thinking for most of our time on the job... so we had some interesting white elephant gifts including a made up analogue to the linked dessert, Striped Vagina. Also, we had a return of Christian's hair, and a tape which i can't even describe here. Yeah, i can say "vagina" and link to a "dick" page, but i can't describe this tape. That's how wrong it is. Also i can't talk about Pokemon.

My children were awesome at the party. Everyone agrees that Zane walks funny. He steps forward by jerking his thighs up and out about diagonally from where he's headed, and straightens and steps in a quick flop motion. It works great for him, and he's astonishingly stable, especially considering how totally tipsy he looks usually. But you really haven't seen how funny it is until you see him walking naked. It's totally funny and cute. But no videos, sorry.

Houston told me that the BBC news reported this while he was listening: "Um, they are going to drop money out of helicopters! The news said that the... (pause)... gov-ern-mint was going to drop money out of helicopters because they wanted to help people! You should tell Momma." I'm thinking the much-reported economic stimulus package barged its way through Houston's filters and came out the other side looking like helicopters dropping money. They're also dropping rifles because they're testing them, he says. I remember being five... the whole world was such a mystery.

Voting for Uncommitted...

Yesterday i voted for the first time in a presidential primary election. This year is an amazing year to vote for a Democratic nominee, because two of your choices are historically significant. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. We've not had a woman or a non-white run competitively at any level in a presidential race yet. However, stupid Michigan had to go and mess it all up for us, and shove their way to the front of the line, which the hall monitor said was against the rules, so we got punished by having Clinton be the only front runner on the ballot. So i voted "uncommitted", which isn't true. I'm totally rooting for Barack Obama, so i'm grumpy that i couldn't vote for him.

See, the president of the USA is a weird position to have, or try to get. People act like the issues are really important. And they sure are. I don't want my government telling me to, say... wear tighty-whitey underwear. That would suck. But the issues which politicians use to woo our votes are so carefully and earnestly debated, that we find our nation so evenly split that general elections are won and lost with two or three percent splits. This just doesn't make sense to me.

I refuse to be interested in who's Pro Choice, Pro Gay, or who says they'll "bring jobs back to America"... like anyone can POSSIBLY promise to do that. Year after year, term after term, the voting public swallows gilded starry eyed campaign promises, and we are always quietly disappointed when things turn out to be a little more complex than "a thousand points of light".

The respected purveyors of made up news which is truer than the "real" made up news have firmly established that what we're hearing in political rallies and debates is bullshit. Yes, yes it is. The recent hoopla about Obama and Clinton's "bitter squabble" over race is very much made up. They're not "bitter", and the words they're "slinging" back and forth are in response to the "outrage" from blogs and talk radio shows and news goons, not because Hillary is racist or Barack is playing the race card.

The president does, in my opinion, serve as kind of a personality for our nation for the time they're in office. GWB is a proud, hotheaded cowboy. So our country has gone and dropped billions of dollars worth of munitions on the frontier of "democracy". Before Bush, Bill Clinton was a slick, wickedly intelligent schmoozer. But our country balanced its budget... and other stuff, but i wasn't paying attention.

Barack Hussein Obama should be our president because we, as a country -- more importantly, we as the world -- need a face and a name to distance ourselves from the kind of closed minded nationalistic policies which have gotten us into this disastrous (criminal!?) war in Iraq, our spending habits as a nation and individually are ludicrously irresponsible, and the social ills which are destroying us go on unchecked because we're mostly happy spending up to our credit limit and watching awesome movies. But the fact that Barack looks and sounds so unlike our standard American politician, he really is our best hope for waking us up in the US, and easing the fears of the people we share this planet with. I can imagine being an Arab in Iran, for instance. I'm working a job, feeding my family, hanging out with my wife and friends... and the president of the US comes on the news. If it's George W Bush, i feel sour ill feelings towards him, because he looks and sounds like The Enemy. But if it's Obama's face and name on the screen, my eyes and ears are open. I'm ready to listen.

Oh, and who else thinks Hillary Clinton is kind of the same old deal we've always had, just she's a woman?

Lazy sleepy headed loser

Karen's been cleaning the basement for the past two days while i've been watching Zane, mostly. Well, behold the hidden areas of our house which have been mostly messy since before we moved in, probably! She was counting on me to help after the kids went to sleep, but i accidentally fell asleep with them on our bed. I think i expected Houston to never fall asleep, since he requires at least an hour of wiggle-around-time before finally settling down.

So, the areas of the basement which require my attention remain as they were. Yeah. I'll be needing to get to that.

And... does anyone else put off going to the bathroom as a way to motivate themselves to complete a task? Like, "I'll go pee right after i get this coffee started"? Because i do. I really have to go now.

Katrina

Here's a few things about Katrina for me to remember in twenty years from now. She's going to be four in one month, and of our children, she's the one who loves cuddling most. At least, cuddling with me. She likes it when i "make a little hole" out of my arms and legs for her to nestle into. She has always been floppy and flexible, and so she can curl up into a little bundle which fits quite nicely into my arms and crossed legs. She'll then pop her thumb into her mouth, put her head onto my chest, and often mumble around her mouthful of thumb, "I love you, Daddy." So she's a cuddly cutie-pie. And she's extremely generous. She gives away almost all her candy, whenever she has some. Her coin jar is always almost empty, the money evaporates as gifts to Houston and me and Karen, even though we try to surreptitiously replenish it.

Oh, and she has been saying Mom and Dad for a long time, even though we've always been Mommy and Daddy to Houston. Mom and Dad are Karen's parents. She still says "got for" instead of "forgot". That's probably not going to continue into adulthood.

My son!

That guy is Zane. He's my son. He wanted to vacuum.

I love vacuuming. I try to vacuum when Karen's not home because she thinks our living room, which is not very big, should take less than half an hour to vacuum. I know, however, that half an hour is how long it should take if one hurries. See, carpets are filthy. There's years of grime and sand and dander and hair and dog saliva and flakes of child snot nestled inaccessibly down by the woof and warp of our carpet, and without vacuuming, the top layer may appear only "dirty", but the lower strata are truly, deeply dirty.

This is the correct* procedure for vacuuming. Position the business end of your vacuum in any corner of the room, and prepare to drag it backwards. Proceed backwards at a nice, steady two seconds per linear foot. When you've gone back far enough, go back up to where you started, and vacuum half of what you already vacuumed, and half non-vacuumed carpet. Continue, turning around as necessary, until the room has been covered. High traffic areas like where everyone steps the first time onto the carpet will need at least four repetitions of this, from all four directions, if possible. I prefer eight.

*In other words, "my".

Many who know me and my messy inclinations might be surprised. Yes, i'm messy. I'm a whirling vortex of chaos. Untidiness incarnate. But i'm mostly clean. A clean whirling vortex of chaos. Untidiness incarnate who usually smells only faintly, and of soap.

Blinking

Houston, munching a bagel: blinking many times a second, looking around with a grin on his face.
Me, looking at him, amused and intrigued: "What are you doing, Houston?"
Houston, speaking around a mouthful of asiago cheese bagel: "I'm blinking all at once."
Me, thinking that he can't possibly mean what i think he means: "All at once?"
Houston: "Yes, all at once. Then I will never have to blink again!"
Me: roffle

I've added "blinking" to the things you can't repeat in order to avoid doing them in the future. Like washing dishes or taking showers. I've never made jokes like that to Houston. He's funny!

Bernays

Okay, so there was this dude named Edward Bernays who masterminded some massive shifts of culture like making it acceptable for women to smoke in public. He said that if we can understand how the subconscious mind works, we can control it, and get people to do whatever we want! Like, oh, buy lots of disposable cups. Or SUVs.

So with really smart people making huge changed in culture, what does that mean for our current culture? How much of what we think of as American culture has been knowingly manipulated for the benefit of rich powerful corporate types? Obviously, our addiction to consuming stuff is quite beneficial to rich powerful corporate types, and that's what advertising is for. It's propaganda designed to influence our choices. But what about social problems? What about racial inequalities?

Who controls sentencing for drug offense laws? The ones which carry prison sentences for crack and fines for pure cocaine? Who controls big media companies? The media companies which decided to publish and distribute hateful, sexist, anti-authoritarian music targeted to young black people? Who decided to ignore "black on black" crime in Compton? Could it be that through subtle, insidious manipulation, the interracial problems in this country were actually created? On purpose??? The more i think about it, the more i think it might just be true. But if it is true, i'm filled with despair, and all i can do anyway is seek out the messages we receive and fight against them tooth and nail.

egg rolls

I think Karen's writing about it right now, but seriously, Houston can READ. Like, we were walking out of Ace Hardware's bathroom, and Houston glanced backwards and said "Gentlemen. Hmm." Yep. He continued to read all day. Cone. April. Mountain. Bagel. At home he read a whole kid's book. He's joining the ranks of the literate, people!

I am so totally proud of him. It warms my heart.

Yesterday i made egg rolls. Please allow me to boast about getting my whole family to eat cooked cabbage. Who eats cooked cabbage anymore besides the English and old people? Except in egg rolls. So here's a totally easy recipe:

Brown and shred (or chop and brown) two boneless skinless chicken breasts. Add salt and pepper, and certainly chopped or ground ginger because that tastes great in egg rolls. Put a nice dollop of peanut butter in with the cooking chicken too because we don't use peanut oil around here (Canola kicks butt, even though it can also be called "Rape Oil"... jeez) but the Chinese do, so the peanut butter adds that flavor for you.

Once the chicken is nice and shredded, add one pound of coleslaw mix, the pre chopped kind that has carrots and stuff already in it. Yeah, add that in, and put a lid on it to let the vegetables get hot. They don't need to get totally mushy, but it's nice to have the egg roll filling be hot when you drop the rolls into the oil to fry them so they don't soak up hundreds of calories worth of oil. Anyway, add soy sauce and whatever else tickles your fancy -- bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, pinto beans (no, not those) -- at this point.

When the filling is nicely cooked, roll them up in good quality wrappers (the ones at Meijer are not good -- not square, too thick, and inconsistent. Family Fare has better ones). The rolling part takes practice. Someday maybe i'll make a video. Fry them in oil of rapeseed on pretty high heat until they get yummy and golden brown on all sides! And feed them to your kids! We can't get enough of 'em!

Steering Wheel!!!

Yeah, okay, i was going to go to bed much earlier than this, but Houston wanted to play a computer game today. He likes Midtown Madness 2, the one where you're driving through San Fransisco or London. Well, he wanted to play with my super awesome Logitech WingMan Formula Force steering wheel, which you'll remember is the first force feedback wheel which used cables and pulleys to move the wheel instead of gears. Ewww, gears. Anyway, back in 2000, this steering wheel was totally top of the line. Huh... it's still number five on the list of best force feedback wheels.

So i started playing racing games myself. Turns out having a quality force feedback wheel along with a killa computer and graphics card can be a delicious, immersive experience.

And that black and white picture? Katrina wanted to play outside with her umbrella. She twirled and squealed and looked insanely CUTE, and acted likewise, until she tripped and splatted directly onto the rotten-leaf-detritus-covered sidewalk and besmeared her insanely cute clothes. She screamed indignantly because she hurt herself a tiny bit, but mostly because she was furious -- HOW DARE THE SIDEWALK GET MY CLOTHES DIRTY??? It'll wash out, honey.

What the?

It's over sixty degrees Fahrenheit right now. It's January. There's thunder and lightning going on. Um...?????

Um, whoops?

Um, yeah. Benazir Bhutto was assassinated two weeks ago, and she's got the cover of this week's Parade magazine which is in the Grand Rapids Press. There's no mention of her tragic death or the chaos Pakistan was plunged into as a result. So the first thing i did was look for the publication date, and sure enough, it's for today, January 6th, 2008.

Of course, after a quick search, i found that the magazine was printed six days before the assassination, and would have needed to be withheld from circulation or simply sadly outdated. I think there must have been some tasteful way to notify readers of the little magazine, which tends to be light fare anyway, with a whole page celebrity gossip feature, for example. So the people who turn to the Parade article might be among those who aren't aware of her death. But you can't put a big orange sticker on the cover saying "Um, she's dead now."

I bet there was lots of news covering events in Pakistan in the Sunday paper, but it tends to get scattered all over my in-laws' house, so i didn't even get to see the "The World In Sixty Seconds" column. I hope i'm informed enough for that to contain nothing shocking.

The Parents back home

My parents left our house this morning, with sorrowful backwards glances and, um, munching pork rinds. Probably. And they made it home safely. So we spent a lot of time cleaning up! Nine people is a lot of people to live in our big but poorly organized house. Like, we have three closets, total. And a grand total of three interior doors, not counting the one which leads to the basement. That's what i mean by "poorly organized".

Well, Karen did most of the cleaning. She rocks. And speaking of rock, check out the song i have ready for sampling up there on the player! It's by Pendulum, and it's really cool with bass and loudness and stuff. It starts out kind of hip-hop, but don't let that scare you off, it turns nice and D&B'ey after the little prelude. Antony hooked me up with it. Awesome.

Funny dog

My dad just said something like "Poverty is good. When you're poor, you realize the contingencies of life, and how you need other people in community to survive. When individuals start getting money and realize they can do whatever they want by themselves, that's when things start getting sick." So, like, my dad is smart and stuff. And i agree!!! Anyone want to move to the country (or inner city) with us and start a community house? We could live on, like, $20 a week each... He also pointed me to this documentary, which i totally plan on watching once i get a block of time available. Oh man, i wish i could be a teacher and my job could be to get smarter all the time.

But even though my dad's smart, he has that chihuahua Katrina's holding.

The Parents Visiting

They arrived this evening! Antony and Josiah are visiting too! I seem to remember not being very good at doing good posts when they're in town, and now Antony is trying to get to sleep behind me, so i'd better not write a long post. Since my keyboard is really loud and all... IBM Model M, thanks for asking. January 13th, 1993 vintage. Oh wow, it's about to be fifteen. Its quinceañera!