Mowing the Lawn

Speaking of getting an "F"... I'm reminded of one of my favorite Volkswagen commercials.  So many great aspects.  Removing the F from "flame" to make it "lame".  Sticking the F on the chest.  "You got an F."  "We just dropped it like it's hot."  Enjoy.

The book is now closed on Day 2 of trying to replace Thelma as homeschooler, mother, confidant, chef, tear dryer, maintainer of sanity, chauffeur, coach... I've earned an F for Failure to Perform, Forgetfulness and Lack of Fortitude. This is hard work.  In years past I would whisk the children from the Woodland Park Zoo to the Ballard Locks to the Vancouver Aquarium to swimming with Grandpa to the library to McDonalds and Alfy's and teriyaki.  It was high energy, but not terribly difficult.  Thelma would come home mildly disappointed to find that life with Dad had been nothing but fun and none of the kids seemed to have missed her. Things have changed.  Our children are older.  They have more commitments.  The school work is harder and can't be left for later.  I actually have to teach school instead of running a three-day stay-cation.  It's not that teaching the subjects is particularly hard.  I like doing math with Brae...

Day 1 in the books as a single parent while Thelma is away at BYU for her yearly pilgrimage to  Women's Conference .  Traditionally, life without Mom has meant an orgy of fast food and takeout.  No sooner had I dropped Thelma and my mother off at the airport then Braeden was calling me to see what I had planned for lunch. "I was thinking we could go to the Grand China Buffet," he suggested in his sweetest voice. I'm determined that this year will be different, though.  We aren't going to eat out every meal.  We're going to make our best attempt at cooking for ourselves, controlling our portions and choosing (moderately) healthy ingredients.  That's our plan and we're sticking to it... starting tomorrow. Tonight, it was the Grand China Buffet after all.  Braeden speaks of it in reverent tones.  Eight tables of Chinese and American food plus a Mongolian grill and sushi bar.  He must have been playing it up behind the scenes because E...

A popular refrain in the ongoing debate about the cost of health care in the United States accuses health insurers of making record profits at the public's expense. During a press conference last year, President Obama put it this way: "There have been reports just over the last couple of days of insurance companies making record profits, right now. At a time when everybody's getting hammered, they're making record profits, and premiums are going up." The inaccuracy of that statement is pretty easy to prove, but let's take it at face value for now and agree with the assertion that record profits are a bad thing, especially when the customers who fund those profits are hurting economically. (Let's also agree that President Obama doesn't really think we're all staggering around drunk when he says "everybody's getting hammered".) What then should we make of the fact that the Federal Reserve just announced record profits of $47.4 bi...

It's not exactly like making a secret wish and blowing out the birthday candles, but I've usually been hesitant to share my New Year's resolutions because experience tells me that I probably won't keep them.   I don't like goals--or at least the discussion about goals.  Anytime someone starts going on about the importance of setting goals I feel like I'm being forced to watch an infomercial or listen to a pitch for a timeshare at Shady Meadows Family Resort and Oil Change. For a few years I've tried to be cheeky about the whole thing.  "My New Year's resolution is to keep my New Year's resolution."  I know it's not particularly humorous, but that will teach people to ask. This year, though, I've tried something different.  I decided to set a goal and actually try to stick to it.  I'm proud to say--now that we are more than a quarter of the way through the year--that I have managed to stick by my resolution with near perfect accu...

(This is my experience evaluating Facebook for my daughter.  It turned into a technical exercise in CSS.  If you want the full narrative, read on.  If you just want the steps for using CSS to block ads on Facebook, jump ahead .) Emma asked permission to create a Facebook account so she can keep in touch with some of her cousins and friends.  Emma has been very responsible using our family computer and does a good job keeping our rules about what to do and how to behave online.  So, Thelma and I decided that it was probably OK once I had a chance to check out and become familiar with the privacy settings and parental controls. Even though I work for an online business and Facebook is a frequent topic of conversation when it comes to reaching out to and retaining online customers, I have to admit that I have rarely used the service.  I created an account for business purposes to become a "fan" of a client so I could keep tabs on some social marketing campaigns.  That's it. ...

Braeden has been bitten by the family history bug lately.  We spent a few hours this weekend signing him up for and exploring the new Family Search web site .  I haven't had much experience with the old site , but the new one feels fairly slick and isn't too hard to use.  It's a simple premise.  The site sits on top of a massive genealogical index maintained by the LDS Church .  You log into the site and enter your personal information.  Then you start building out your family tree one person and generation at a time.  If the person next in your tree is living, then you enter the personal information you know about that person.  If the person is dead, you search the index for a record of that person.  If you're lucky, the record of your ancestor will already be linked to other ancestors and your family tree will begin to fill in on its own.  You suddenly have access to the work of others and others can benefit from the connections and corrections you make. You will come...

My mother joined us for dinner on Friday night.  After the kids went to bed, we sat in the family room discussing this and that.  I started talking about something I'd come across the other day when researching words that have crossed over into English from the Chinook Jargon —a trade language that developed in the Pacific Northwest. Thelma commented that I know the strangest stuff and she has no idea where I get it from.  She told my mom how we had been visiting Vancouver earlier in the week to soak in the Olympic atmosphere.  As we were walking from the torch to the train station, we came across a small mass of people and cameras buzzing around somebody outside the media center.  We stopped to see who it was and I recognized the man at the center of the crowd as Gordon Campbell , the Premier of British Columbia. "I don't know how he knows this stuff," Thelma said. I couldn't tell if she was impressed or mocking me.  More than once, Thelma has reminded me that I ...

Check out the terrific set of maps  produced by the New York Times  about the 8.8-magnitude earth quake in Chile earlier today.  The set includes maps depicting the tectonic plates in the region, the approximate location of the epicenter and the predicted tsunami height and arrival times across the Pacific Ocean. I'm struck by just how quickly the wave moved.  I spent the morning refereeing basketball games and learned about the earthquake from Thelma.  I was surpised when she mentioned that a large wave was expected along the Washington coast later in the day.  That's fast.  Looking at the estimated arrival times, I wondered whether it would be quicker to fly from Santiago to Seattle or simply ride the wave.  Amazingly, the estimates were about the same. According to arrival data from the West Coast and Alaska Tsunami Warning Center , the quake struck at 10:34 PM PST on 2/26.  The estimated wave arrival time in Seattle was 4:41 PM PST on 2/27.  That is 18 hours and 7 minutes ...

As you will have read on Thelma's blog , we celebrated Valentine's Day by cooking and enjoying a seven course meal as a family.  Our children loved it.  It felt novel and luxurious.  They keep talking about "our seven course meal" as if it is something we now own—some badge of honor for us to proudly wear.  That night, Mark prayed and gave thanks that we were able to attend church and have a seven course meal. Thelma came up with the great idea close enough to Valentine's Day that I was willing to discuss and dream with her about how to pull it off.  Ordinarily, Thelma likes to plan our holidays six to eight months in advance.  I prefer to start thinking about things a few weeks ahead of time at the most. Thelma and I have had a few multi-course meals, but not many.  I'm sure any meal where some of your food is served at separate times technically counts as a multi-course meal, but I don't think a meal should really get credit just because the kid behind ...

I stepped out of my car yesterday and smiled at Thelma.  "It's a good grass day," I said.  She just laughed.  She humors my obsession with—and general failure at—trying to maintain a healthy lawn. There are two growing seasons around here.  From late Spring to early Fall the grass is usually growing.  The rest of the year the moss is growing.  (The weeds, of course, grow year round.)  We're in the thick of moss season now, but the weather has been unseasonably warm.  Already the primroses are in bloom, the tulips and hyacinths are peeking out of the ground and the grass is growing again.   Saturday, I dusted off the lawn mower and gave our yard its first clip of the year.  The air was too cool for the scent of fresh cut grass to linger, but I did get to stare and soak in the beauty of an evenly trimmed lawn.  I know my 2o1o grass growing adventure will be full of the inevitable frustration and fretting, but for a few days at least everything is perfect. I've deci...

Too often I find reporters trying to strike a balance in their reporting by publishing comments that have little news value.  For example, take the following quote from an article in the New York Times about possible Republican health care proposals .  The comment seems to have little to no news value and sullies an otherwise useful article about the types of proposals that might become part of bipartisan health care reform: Representative George Miller, Democrat of California, said, “If the Republicans’ health care plan was a plan for a fire department, they would rush into a burning building, and they would rush out and leave everybody behind.” The statement is inflammatory.  It is contradicted by the article.  It does not benefit the national discussion on healthcare.  It allows partisans a cute sound bite for avoiding the debate about whether our nation should invest in sweeping changes, incremental improvements or more of the same.  Surely there is at least one Democrat who can p...

I found myself with ninety minutes to kill in Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport this afternoon while waiting for a connecting flight to Grand Forks, North Dakota.  It was just enough time to learn a few valuable life lessons. There I was facing the semicircle of food court fare.  Should I have a hamburger from A&W?  It would probably taste good, it would sit in my stomach like a rock and I risked special sauce or some other condiment dripping down my front.  Maybe a prepared sandwhich from the cold case at the looks-like-a-Starbucks-only-more-expensive coffee stand?  No.  I've had the best at Pret a Manger and everything since just disappoints.  What about sushi?  I wan't to like it.  I really do.  But I don't.  Besides, it brought up bad memories of a run in with a bento box last week.  Pizza?  Maybe in hindsight, but the little express boxes looked like they had been baking under the heat lamp a little too long. I settled on the Chinese food.  Blah.  To borr...

My sister-in-law Jennifer posted a terrific story about trying to extract a wild cat from their house.   Read the story and then check out one of my favorite Super Bowl commercials about herding cats . "You see the movies, you hear the stories, it's...  I'm livin' the dream." "Anybody can herd cattle.  Holdin' together 10,000 half-wild shorthairs, well that's another thing altogether."