Mowing the Lawn

I'm nothing if not a humanitarian, so here's a bit of wisdom. It turns out that true bliss costs $100 plus gas. I'm not talking about in-the-moment bliss like Whac-a-mole or just-passing-through Bliss like the town in Idaho or even temporary bliss like the 90 minutes after you've had really good Chinese food . I'm talking about lasting bliss. The kind of bliss you can still feel when you close your eyes at night. The kind you think about the next day—that gets better the more you think about it. It's not true love, but it's a clear second. Yesterday Thelma fell in love with the raw beauty of Lake Chelan. I fell in love with the raw power of a four-cylinder, 1052cc, 20-valve, 110-horsepower, liquid-cooled, wave-running dream machine. For five and a half hours, it was the only thing between me and the lake. Throw my boys on the back and I'm in liquid heaven. I'm not exactly certain where my enthusiasm for wave runners originated. It must be...

Amazon.com Widgets To celebrate the first leg ( view map ) of our 2-day, 400-mile whirlwind of a family vacation to Lake Chelan, it's time for a road trip song. The song of the week is "Little Boy Blue (North of North Dakota)" from Jake Armerding's self-titled album. It was the last song I added to the iPod before hitting the open road this morning. Now, the lyrics may not fit the scene perfectly. June. North of North Dakota. But the sentiment is all there. Got myself a debit card, little bit of cash Petty on the speakers and I'm beating on the dash Daddy was a highway, Mama was a view I'm a little boy blue After dinner tonight I went night swimming with the kids in the pool. Braeden asked each of us what the best part of today had been. Mark and Emma named various things we had seen. For me, it was just spending time with Thelma. I'm a little bit of highway, shiny with the dew little bit of summertime, sitting next to you Never had a reason, ne...

It's just my luck that I would pick tomorrow, the day the earth is going to implode, to take my first real vacation in who knows how long. Check out the headlines. Fingers Crossed, Physicists Are Ready for Collider to Roll Worst Case: Collider Spawns Planet-Devouring Black Hole Researchers Set To Recreate Big Bang Scientists hope to find 'God particle' in mini Big Bang Will the Large Hadron Collider Destroy Earth? Scientists hope for surprises in Big Bang experiment They're doing WHAT! Anytime the world's top physicists feel the need to collectively cross their fingers, I start to get worried. What has physicists going to these extraordinary measures? At roughly 3:30 a.m. Eastern time, scientists at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, say they will try to send the first beam of protons around a 17-mile-long racetrack known as the Large Hadron Collider, 300 feet underneath the Swiss-French border outside Geneva. ( more ) The point of this 14 year...

My wife, the wit. Fatigued and sleepy, Thelma was laying in bed this evening longing for a water bottle from the kitchen. I started downstairs and told her I'd fetch it. "If you do, I'll be forever in your debt." "That must be some pretty good water," I joked. "No. I just don't have my own source of income." Well, at least I'm good for something. Then again, the bar might be pretty low. Earlier in the evening we were discussing the Hartman Color Personality Test. I found an example of the test online. During part of the test, you are supposed to select groups of adjectives that describe you most of the time. The problem, though, is that each of the groups always seem to include a poison pill. What group of words describes you most of the time? Smart, funny, dishonest. Logical, determined, prone to violent outbursts. Friendly, considerate, horrible body odor. Playful, spontaneous, still confused about why people insist on naming their c...

The lesson in Deacons Quorum today was about how to select someone to marry. John Thompson was teaching the lesson. He asked the class of 12- and 13-year-old boys to list the traits they wanted in a spouse. The boys were struggling with the concept and hadn't managed to offer up a single suggestion. One of them wondered aloud what would happen if the person you chose wasn't the kind of person you were looking for. I told the boys to think of a pizza restaurant. You don't walk into a pizza place and just take what they give you. You decide what you want and you order it. I told them it was similar to picking a spouse. Decide what you want and pick someone that seems to fit. Some of the boys took the analogy too literally. John asked again what kind of girl the boys would want to marry. Jared, sitting at the front of the class, shouted out "Spicy!"

John McCain gave a good speech on Thursday night. That's high praise considering his delivery often bordered on monotone and the speech hit a speed bump with a listless recitation of what feel like obligatory Republican bullet points: Lower taxes Strong defense A culture of life Judges who don't legislate from the bench Family values I'm for all those things, but I'm also for a little enthusiasm. In the end though, I thought Senator McCain made a better case for change than Senator Obama. What's more, he did it in a way that sounded more like a plea than a performance. It may have lacked flourish, but he made up for it in authenticity. Removed from the immediate aftermath of the speech, two things have stuck with me. The first is the way in which he openly criticized the Republican Party. "We were elected to change Washington, and we let Washington change us. We lost -- we lost the trust of the American people when some Republicans gave in to the temptation...

In keeping loosely with my previous blog, my song of the week is "Testing 1, 2, 3" from the BNL album Everything to Everyone . Amazon.com Widgets To be fair, though, I've really had the whole album in mind. Thelma and I have seven BNL albums in our collection. This is our sixth. It's a soft-sell criticism of celebrity culture, corporate excess and government policy, but somehow it still manages to play like a pop album instead of a lecture. "Testing 1, 2, 3" captures the internal thoughts of someone who wants to move beyond the identity everyone else seems content to affix to them. It rings true to me when I think about people who have an overly simple and static idea of who I am or what I stand for. Testing 1,2,3 Can anybody hear me? If I shed the irony Would anybody cheer me? If I acted less like me Would I be in the clear? I remember when Thelma and I were wrapping up our time in Provo. It was the summer of 1997. Braeden was just a few months old...