Mowing the Lawn

This is day 53 of dieting and I finally fell off the wagon. I was doing so well up until this point.  There have been frustrating times.  Times when it would have been easy to bury my stress beneath a mound of flap jacks or in a giant bowl of chow mein.  Times when I could have given into the siren song of humus or the cold indulgence of ice cream.  I've stared awkwardly at fruit.  I've dreamt of chocolate lava cakes. But I had persevered until this evening.  And I have—or used to have, rather—twenty seven pounds to show for it. Cumulative Weight Loss: No one's perfect. I get that. It's just how I fell off the wagon that bothers me. I was pushed off by this guy: "Little Caesar!?  Really?  The creepy little purveyor of bad pizza?" I know.  What can I say?  He got me.  I didn't intend for it to happen. I can't believe it myself.  I've had so many opportunities to cheat.  So many better alternatives than ...

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.

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...

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...

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."

Oh what do you do in the summertime, when all your family leaves? When boredom sets in? When you can't stand to look at another Kakuro puzzle or watch another minute of basic cable? When you've read the online edition of the Economist from cover to virtual cover? Well, if you're anything like me, you wonder why the packaging for the Safeway Select™ Supreme Pizza shows 13 black olives on the pizza while the actual pizza cooking in your oven right now has 44 olives on it (not counting the 17 that you already put down the garbage disposal). Or, if you're like me, you spend a few minutes while writing a blog post trying to figure out how to type the ™ symbol. It's Option-2 on a Mac keyboard in case you're wondering. Perhaps you spend countless minutes each evening positioning and repositioning the sprinklers in your yard in the hope that sprinkler configuration #429 will finally be The One that gets it just right. Or maybe you'll amuse yourself by saying sil...

(Here's my response to Thelma's moment of irrationality .) Of course it will fit.  All of it.  Every last bit, whether put there for reasons selfish or charitable, whether soft-sided or hard, whether it causes me to roll my eyes or jump for joy that we're finally getting rid of it.  It will all fit. Packing is my super power.  Superman defies the laws of gravity.  Spiderman defies the laws of good taste.  (A unitard on a grown man?  Really?)  I defy the logic of constrained spaces.  Neither trunk, nor satchel, nor man-made bin of any kind has yet to conquer me. Lest you forget, we successfully stuffed two small children with car seats, a television, expansive diaper bags and two weeks worth of essentials into a 95 Saturn for a cross-country trek. Lest you forget, that same 95 Saturn magically expanded to hold a 6-foot oak table on another occasion.  Lest you forget, I lived in London for two weeks out of half of a carry on bag so I could subsequently stuff it so full of you...

Thelma claimed recently that I'm " just as lackadaisical " as she is when it comes to ensuring our children have good oral hygiene. Phooey! On a scale of 1 to 100, where 1 is lackadaisical and 100 is totally enthusidaisical, Thelma is a 4. I'm a 7, easy. Seven and a half, probably. That's almost twice the enthusidaisitude, which of course means I only need to worry about my kids brushing their teeth half as often as Thelma. (I know. Enthusidaisical is not technically a word. Yet.) Besides, I don't even like teeth. I mean, I like the purpose they serve. No one wants to gum a steak or drink a margarita pizza through a straw. But teeth are a source of physical and emotional pain. There. I said it. My teeth hurt my feelings sometimes. They have no sense of propriety. No self restraint. They just pop out one day and shove other teeth around in the process. One day you're a cute little kid. The next day you're a freak of nature with two ivory ...

Note:  A selection of photos from Day 3 are posted in my Picasa public gallery . As a missionary I learned to warn people that as soon as they began to feel God's spirit more fully in their life, they could also be sure that temptation and trial were just around the corner.   One follows the other .  Light and dark.  Good and evil.  Chocolate and Kraft macaroni and cheese. So, I should have figured that something would come along and try to spoil my fun now that I'm a full three days into this vacation.  It happened tonight.  I saw hell.  It looks like a rainforest, the food is overpriced and the waiters are dressed in khaki.  Thankfully, I managed to buy my escape for $65 plus tip. The Rainforest Cafe may seem like a nice place to eat, but I've said the same thing about KFC on occasion.  That doesn't make it right.  The food was OK.  I had a mild paella with muscles, calamari, shrimp and andouille sausage.  Unfortunately, I was sitting across from a pair of animatronic...

All I could see was "is that chicken?" I had just pulled the mail from our mail cubby. One of the great, modern suburban tragedies is that mail boxes have been replaced by the oversized mail cupboard with each house allocated a puny cubby. It's depressing to the very core. Bland, file-cabinet grey. Institutional locks. Our particular version is tipped slightly to one side from a collision with a car. The whole scene resembles a lopsided morgue refrigeratior for mail. (My personal favorite, by the way, is the KH500 with the 26-gauge, corrosion-resistant, stucco-embossed, coated steel interior walls.) Insert key. Open door. Slide out letters. Shut door. Remove key. Try not to drop key in the strategically-placed storm drain directly below. Throw mail away. Curse Wilmington, Delaware, for the avalanche of credit card applications. There is, occasionally, some mild drama when you're anticipating a package. The package—if it's a respectable package of a ...

"I'll be fast," she just said. "It doesn't take me long to be eloquent." Thelma is writing a blog as we speak. She is itching to get something out. I can guess what it is . We just returned from dinner with my parents and siblings to celebrate my mother's 60th birthday. Thelma and I walked into the Olive Garden lobby a fashionable ten minutes late at 6:40. My brothers had been there since 6:00. By the time we arrived, the natives were already restless. By seven o'clock the situation was becoming dire. We had been told repeatedly that a big party was getting ready to leave and we couldn't be seated until they had left. Meanwhile, numerous smaller parties were coming and going all around us. At 7:15, my brothers told me I needed to go deal with the situation as the oldest. I did my best to make the host and hostess uncomfortable about the situation. When that didn't help, I asked to speak to the manager. Restaurant or retail manager...

What is the funniest show you are not watching on television? Mayne Street . It's an ESPN production, it's not about sports, episodes are about four minutes long and it's only available online. The web series stars Kenny Mayne as himself: an oddball sports reporter whose dry wit makes him seem more suited for a good British sitcom than SportsCenter. You can subscribe to the video podcast , but you'll find a nice set of extras at the ESPN.com video page for the show. Here's one such extra introducing the cast of characters. Kenny Mayne came to fame in the late 90s when his humorous style of describing the daily sports highlights began to upstage the actual events. While other sports anchors might describe a homerun by saying a player "hit one deep", Kenny Mayne was saying things like, "Your puny ballparks are too small to contain my gargantuan blasts! Bring me the finest meats and cheeses for a clubhouse feast!" He has talent and humor to sp...

What has our family laughing this weekend? This parody of the Lawrence Welk Show from a recent Saturday Night Live. Having watched this video a dozen or so times now, I'm not sure which is funnier: the video or listening to Emma and Mark imitate it?

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!"

"You know how Emma wants to learn Latin? We might find out that your Yale diploma is a certificate of participation." This is the type of loving, supporting comment I get from my wife after suggesting we move the futon into our newly painted room if the green couch doesn't match the walls. "Maybe when I die your next wife will let you do that. But probably not."

And the apologies just keep on coming.  First, I was unduly rough on Canadians. Now I owe Bob (er, NBC) an apology for getting upset about the Visa commercial they played. Turns out it didn't give away the ending after all. I got an email from Richard Sandomir, a reporter at the New York Times, who asked NBC about it. (Yeah, I roll with the big boys.) According to NBC, the Visa commercial congratulated Michael Phelps on winning his 10th Olympic gold medal, making him the most decorated gold medalist in Olympic history - not tying the record for most decorated gold medalist in one olympiad. Still, I'm not letting Bob entirely off the hook. Even a mental super hero like me has a hard time keeping all the records straight and Bob doesn't help any with all of the hype and promotion.  "Phelps is now only one win away from becoming the first left-handed athlete from North Baltimore to simultaneous break a world record and expend 1392 calories in the second 50m of the 4...