Mowing the Lawn

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."

The Democratic leadership in the Senate unveiled their health care bill on Wednesday: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.  With a name like that, what's not to like.  Who doesn't want to protect patients?  Who doesn't want affordable care? In my quest to know more about the bill, I'm steering clear of the radio, TV and blogs.  Tomorrow morning will find my radio fixed firmly on the sports talk stations.  I'm not quite ready to be inundated by punditry from the left and right.   Still, I want to know what the bill contains.  Until about an hour ago, everything I knew about the bill I had learned from NPR.  It will reduce the deficit by $130 billion.  It is 2000 pages long.  There aren't enough votes yet (60) to bring it up for debate.  I needed more, so I turned to the New York Times for an (unhelpful) overview and have been perusing the analysis from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Here's what gets me after a quick read.   The headlines a...

I'm cranky. Maybe it's because I'm in an airport for the seventh time in two weeks and I still have one more airport to go tonight. Maybe it's because I nearly missed my third flight in those same two weeks. Maybe it's because I gave myself a full two hours to make the 30-minute trek from my office to the airport, but it took me 90 minutes instead thanks to Seattle's fabulous new light rail system. Maybe it's because the lines to clear security were nine miles long and I had to be screened twice because of the mysteriously dangerous-looking fresh zucchini in my bag (which I had picked that morning from our garden). Maybe it's because I was a sweaty mess by the time I sprinted from one end of the airport to the other in just enough time to make my flight. Then again... I did make my flight afterall and that's something to be thankful for. Plus, the seat next to me was empty and I had a spectacular view of the Cascades. And we did take a flight...

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...

It seemed like an easy enough task when I planned it yesterday.  Fly from Seattle to San Francisco before breakfast.  Spend the day in San Francisco meeting with a client.  Slip across the bay to Oakland in the late afternoon.  Fly from Oakland back to Seattle and be home just in time for reading the scriptures and family prayer.  A perfect plan for an experienced traveler familiar with the Bay Area.  Sure, it would have been easier to fly down last night, but that would have meant less time with Thelma.  Besides, Braeden and I had finally managed to get a home teaching appointment with a new couple in our ward and we didn’t want to miss the opportunity. Simple?  Yes.  Doable?  Of course.  Doomed to failure and misery?  Apparently. I should have seen it coming when my alarm went off at 4:15 this morning.  Nothing good happens before 6 AM.  Nothing enjoyable happens before 7:30.  Case in point:  at 6 AM I was staring longingly out the window next to Gate N16 as my flight to San Francisc...

(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 ...

At the entrance to Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, there is a set of stone reliefs showing characters from The Wind in the Willows . The inscription below Mr. Angus MacBadger reads: Offers Sage Advice So Often Scorned. It inspired me when I read it. So, to wrap up our three days in Disneyland, I've compiled a list of lessons, tips and tricks Thelma and I have learned. Some funny, some practical. All 100% true. Let Thelma do all of your you planning. What looks and acts like a drain in the bottom of your Grizzly River Run raft also turns into a water spout when you plunge into the water below the falls. If you happen to find that drain/spout positioned between your legs as I did, it might be a good idea to put your foot over it. Two days in a row is not enough to see everything.  Three days in a row is too much walking and too many crowds. Take a day off between day two and day three. Your feet will thank you. We wish we would have inserted another day at the beach. Enter as early...

Note: More photos from Day 4 are posted in my Picasa public gallery . Ordinarily, when I think of Bliss, I think of a town in Idaho . For a while, at least, I'm going to start thinking of the perpetual looks of glee I've seen on my children's faces today. Today was our second day at Disneyland. Thelma, the master planner, had us up at the crack of dawn so we could enter the park an hour early. Brilliant. Peter Pan was a 20-minute wait instead of the normal hour or more. We were able to jump right on the tea cups, Snow White, Pinnochio and other rides. We took an extra long lunch break to rest our tired feet and go swimming. During that time we got the welcome news that we'd been moved to a larger hotel room. Braeden is the most grateful. Instead of sleeping on a few couch cushions lined up on the floor for a makeshift bed, he is now on the top bunk in the children's suite. Thelma is resting easier in the loft with a king mattress to replace the queen we h...

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...

As we walked out of the California Pizza Kitchen this afternoon into the brilliant Santa Monica sunshine, I noticed a sign on the church across the street advertising a "stimulus package for your soul". That's the perfect metaphor for these past few days.  Two days into our Southern California vacation and my soul feels light.  The hotel room may be a little bit small.  No matter.  The mattress may be a bit too hard and a tad narrow.  I'll manage.  I have sunny skies, big waves and a happy family.   The beach was our first destination yesterday as soon as we landed at LAX and picked up the rental car.  Thelma was smart enough to pack swimsuits separately so the kids could change into them when we got to the beach.  They couldn't wait, though.  No sooner had we parked than the doors to our rental car flew open and all three of our kids raced for the water.  Thelma called after them to stay out of the water.  I could tell she was frustrated and didn't want them ...

Good music is one of the joys of my life. What is it about good writing set to music or just the right combination of sounds that lightens the soul? Maybe that has something to do with why I enjoy folk music and the singer/songwriter tradition. The words and instruments seem more accessible.  While writing this post, I'm listening for the first time to a song called Gravity by Eddie from Ohio.  Why bury lyrics like these under an overproduced sound: I've got this fear of falling that I'm trying to overcome. You and I know I'd never jump. Whom I'm trying to kid. But just imagine the sensation. There's no such thing as an atheist on the thirty-second floor. As an adult, I've also developed an appreciation for the power and wonder of classical music, especially when I can listen to it live. Thelma and our kids probably remember the summer of 2007 when I returned from London positively brimming with excitement after attending a performance of Elgar's En...

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...

My wife is a blog hog—and a prolific one at that. On more than one occassion in the past few weeks, I've thought of posting to this blog about some topic only to find that she has beat me to it. The way our Christmas bear tradition was hatched in our poverty. My near-death experience with a pack of feral teenagers. The snowball luminaries I learned to make in Finland. It's that last one that really takes the cake. I knew I would have to be quick to the computer if I was going to write about it before Thelma did. But how quick? Impossibly so. Before I had my gloves of and had dusted the snow off my sandals, Thelma had beat me to the punch. Perhaps I'll start writing about what I'm going to do. I'm convinced that Thelma lives her life in draft. Somewhere in her mind she is always writing. She captures life in written form and then it's just a matter of finding time to get it down on paper. Dumbledore had a pensieve in the Harry Potter stories. Thel...

I was under strict orders from Thelma last night to come straight home with Braeden after Scouts. No dillying. No dallying. (Yes, I know "dillying" is not a word, but it should be.) I had every intention of being obedient when I set out from the Church. I let Colin Park ride in the front. Braeden sullenly slouched in the back seat because I had presumably ignored his cries of "shotgun" on the way to the van. I let Braeden move to the front after we dropped Colin off, but I let him know that his reaction was out of line. "Colin is older than you, he was our guest, 'shotgun' is not a binding legal contract..." And so forth. "But Dad, I just was looking forward to the two of us being together for a little while." I felt more than minor pangs of guilt. Here it was, about 8:30 in the evening, and I had given Braeden my undivided attention for about the seven minutes it takes to drive to the church building. That was all. That has bee...

Emma has started a blog. It's my solemn obligation as her father to brag a little. It is shaping out with a collection of her poetry. I'm really impressed that she can write poetry as she does at a young age. It's a talent that has always escaped me. Here is one of her pieces. A Tiger in the Sky A tiger is padding through the sky I hear him out my window He roars loud enough to be heard for miles Moments he scrapes the sky Once again he plays this trick Til he's moved far away What's the matter my dear friend? Can't you see it was just a storm? Emma's blog is a very exclusive place. Invitation only. If you ask nicely, I'm sure she'll let you in though. The poem reminds of Henri Rousseau's painting Tiger in a Tropical Storm (Surprised!) . Emma learned about it in school and she was able to see it when we visited the National Gallery in London. You'll want to visit the photo page at the National Gallery web site to get a good view of ...

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...

As we were driving home from Boy Scouts last night, I asked Braeden what he thought about the election process the day after. "I feel clean," he said. What a great answer. His whole life, he explained, he has only known one president. Now there will be a new president. There will be a chance to start again. A clean slate, I suppose. What makes it even more interesting is that I know Braeden preferred John McCain to Barack Obama. He's observant enough, though, to recognize the historic nature of the outcome. He's excited to show the rest of the world and elements of our own society that a person's race doesn't matter. People will judge you on the merits of what you say, what you believe and what you do. That is part of the greatness of America. It may have been narrowly applied by our founding fathers, but its a notion that can't be contained.