Last night I had the strangest dream about being in our basement when all of a sudden, a black kitten with mange jumped out of the door to the furnace room and started running around. Neither Margaret nor I wanted to touch it, but it still needed to be put outside, so I kind of pushed it with my foot and booted it out the door. When I woke up, I started wondering what that was supposed to mean. I concluded that it meant one of three things: 1) the kitten symbolized children and Margaret and I both knew we had to deal with it but were loathe to touch the situation, 2) there's a hole in our basement wall that feral cats can get through, or 3) the kitten's mange symbolized my hair loss and how I don't want to confront that. It's probably the latter, since I just have to suck it up and boot the cat out of the house--just like with my youthful hair gets booted down the drain. Oh well--altering your genetics is still a few years away and my HMO probably won't cover it when it does become available--they're so cheap that they even charged me a $50 co-pay when they treated my rickets with leeches!

Actually, I was finally snapped out of my denial that I had inherited my grandfather's scalp just a few years ago. Despite years of my brother taunting me, I never thought it was THAT bad. Well, one day at work, someone I was meeting with had brought in her young daughter. A few days later the woman called to follow up on our meeting and she told me that her daughter had talked about "how funny that guy was." When she pressed her daughter about which guy she was talking about, the little girl replied, "you know--that half-haired guy!" I had to laugh, but it was then that I realized that I would never have George Clooney's hair unless it was glued to my head.

Speaking of halves, one time my niece was introducing Margaret and me to her friend and she said, "This is my uncle Jeremy. He's half Indian and half human." When I told both stories to my grandmother, she said, and don't forget: you're also a half-wit. Thanks B!

Oy, this blog keeps coming back to bite me in the ass. I was at a party a few nights ago and someone said, "I read your brother's comment online and he talked about you knocking yourself out with a garden hose. What's THAT story?" Arg--something I thought was comfortably buried in my nerdish past that I've taken years to erase being thrown back in my face--and at a social setting nonetheless. Now that you've heard about the story, I may as well fill you in on the sordid details.

One day, my mom had charged me with watering the lawn. I was moving the sprinkler from one location to another and was pulling the hose when it got caught up on something. Being the lazy teenager that I was, I decided to try to whip the hose off the hang-up rather than walking back and freeing it. Unfortunately I grabbed the hose not at the end but about 10 inches from the end. Suddenly, as I stood there whipping it up and down and back and forth, something hit me so hard on the head that I couldn't hear out of my right ear, my vision went black for an instant, and I could barely stand up straight. I was standing near the road in front of our house and thought that someone must have thrown a rock at me as they drove past. I stumbled back to the house, all the while telling myself my name, address, phone number, and preferred brand of bacon bits to confirm that I didn't have amnesia. I'd seen enough movies and soap operas to know that even the slightest blow to the head is enough to make someone forget that he's a rich baron that drives racecars and is a double agent between the US and Canada. Unfortunately I could well remember that I wasn't wealthy royalty but a pimply teenager into computers and science--at least the injury could have made me think I was a British agent for a few minutes. When I went in the house and told my mom what had happened. She was (understandably) freaked out and rushed me to the clinic in town. As we were sitting in the examination room, I had some time to think about what had happened and my original thought that someone had thrown a rock at me just didn't seem to add up. One, a rock thrown that distance would have left more than a series of threaded lines on my forehead, and two, I wasn't even facing the road. It was then that I realized that I had hit myself with the wicked strike of a whipped garden hose. I sheepishly told my mom what I had just realized and she said that we'd stick to the thrown rock story when we told the doctor what had happened. And that's exactly what we did. The story was safely lost to history until my brother dragged it back to the open--thanks Jarrod! Now the internets know why I have a slight bump on my forehead and why I'm into whips and chains. Now if nothing exciting happens next week I might tell you about hanging upside-down from the swingset at school with my pants around my ankles.

I'm anxiously awaiting the newest annoucements from Apple today. What kinds of wondrous products will The Steve be unveiling? An iPod that filters out beggar's requests while you're walking down the street? Extending the "Undo" functionality into other aspects of your life?--THAT would be worth any cost! Imagine spilling milk: no worries, just hit Apple-Z and undo it. How about your life's savings invested in Enron: Apple-Z and you're not destitute anymore. The possibilities are endless!

It's amazing how far computers have come, though. I remember getting my first Mac back in high school. It had one megabyte of RAM and I saved up and bought an external harddrive that held 40 megabytes! I couldn't imagine filling it up, either. How times have changed--now my cell phone has more capacity than the old harddrive and everything is in COLOR! Ugg--how old am I going to sound to my kids when I talk about using black and white computers and at a time before the internet had even been thought up! They'll think that an old Apple II was the kind of computer that the Founding Fathers© used to write the Constitution. (And a little-known historical fact was that the Bible was written on REALLY old technology--an IBM Selectric TYPEWRITER. And if you don't know what a typewriter is, it's like a computer that doesn't have a screen, can't correct errors, doesn't spell check, can't print out multiple copies of a document, and takes almost three weeks just to load Age of Empires. Hey, that's why they called it the Dark Ages, not because Christian fundamentalists stifled scientific progress and learning.)

This weekend, Margaret and I were shopping for a baby present for my sister. We wanted to get something that she wouldn't be able to get in rural Idaho--something like a flush toilet or a touch-tone telephone. We decided instead to get some clothes (ok--you CAN get those in Idaho--but they're mainly the "swaddling" variety). There's a trendy shopping district here in town that is fun to look around in, but the trendy factor jacks up prices 112%. We went to a little children's clothing store where almost all the clothes are French. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a knit onesie for $120! Why would someone pay that much for something that the baby will grow out of in like 20 seconds, isn't formal enough for a christening or even Olive Garden, and most likely will poop all over? I guess it's for all the parents out there who think that, "there's nothing too good for our little Alexandra." What they don't forsee, though, is their little angel turning into a she-devil when they tell her they can't afford to send her to even a community college because they spent all their money on her baby clothes so their friends would feel inadequate.

I remember when I was in high school and HAD to have all my clothes brand-name. I bought a pair of Ralph Lauren Polo socks for something like $20 and my little sister (who was only 8 or 9 at the time) said, "WHAT! For $20, I'd just sew the logo on MYSELF!" Geesh--if I'd have listened to her words of wisdom then, I'd have saved a fortune over the course of the rest of my school years.

This morning was a sad day for Margaret--Noah's ran out of their pumpkin dough and today was the last few remaining bagels. When we went to the register to pay, the person behind the counter said that there was a bag there waiting for us. The guy handed it to Margaret telling her it was for their best pumpkin bagel customer. When Margaret opened it up, it was the last six pumpkin bagels! Now she'll be able to get her fix for a few more days before having to go cold turkey until October. After we were done eating, the baker asked if we'd tried the cheddar bagels, which are the pumpkin replacement. I said I hadn't, so they gave me one of those to try. I swear, it's a good thing that we're not on Atkins, because this morning would have killed us!

Someone just told me that now I should change my Indian name to Stands with a Fist... Full of Pennies.

I'm sure most people have heard of the fabled payments that the government showers onto Indians. Well, yesterday, my aunt found a website that listed all the Bureau of Indian Affairs' "whereabouts unknown" individuals and my brother's and my name was on the list! It is a list of all the people that the BIA has Individual Indian Monies accounts for, but don't know where to send the money. I was kind of excited to call and give them my current information--thinking that the family's lost millions were somehow restored and sitting in the US Treasury, waiting to be dispersed. I called and patiently went through the automated phone tree and finally got to talk to a live person. After giving her enough information to prove that I am who I said I was, she got my new information. I then asked her if she could tell me how much was in my account. She looked and said that the check that they would be sending to close the account was... wait for this... TWENTY-NINE FRICKIN' CENTS!!! What a phenomenal waste of my time and government spending--they'll spend three times that processing and mailing the check. I think I'll just keep the check and when I meet someone who thinks that the government just gives money to the tribes, I'll pull it out and show him just how much we get. Either that or I can use it to buy a pound of onions--those are always useful.

Ugh! Nothing like a two-week vacation to help you feel refreshed, invigorated, and completely SWAMPED when you come back to work! I was just getting used to forgetting what day of the week it was, when BAM! work rolls around and reminds me. I think the Europeans are on to something with their long holidays and decent work hours.

Speaking of European vacations--when I lived in Norway, I got transfered to the Great White North, several hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle (and I'm not talking about the restaurant). It was so depressing to be that far north in the springtime, because the sun only came up for about a half and hour each day. We'd wake up at dark, work for a while, head home when it started to get light out, eat lunch while the sun was up, and be back out working by sunset. Well, we only had to do that one day--I got into a horrible sledding accident and hurt my foot. Sledding, you ask? Yes--SLEDDING. They don't use bikes up there, since the roads are a perpetual ice skating rink that are hard to traipse on foot, let alone a wheeled anything. All the locals use something called a "spark," which means "kick" in Norwegian. It looks like a dogsled without the team of dogs to do all the work--unfortunately, THAT job fell to the rider, who stood on one runner while kicking with the other foot. Well, this was fine going on level areas, but the first hill we came to, we had no idea how to slow the thing down--I went first and got going so fast I couldn't control it, was about to enter a highway, so did the prudent thing and wrecked into the biggest snow drift I could see. I didn't come out unscathed--I ended up hurting my foot bad enough that I couldn't go out and do any missionary work for a month and finally ended up having to move to Oslo to have physical therapy. Now I wouldn't advocate having a serious accident in order to take a long vacation, but as injuries go--developing tendonitis in my foot turned out to be just what the doctor ordered to restore my sanity.

My grandmother gave me a gift card for Powell's Books here in Portland for Christmas and I've been itching to spend it since I opened it. For those of you who haven't heard of Powell's, it's nothing short of a temple to reading--I think the library at Alexandria was their Egypt branch. Their downtown store covers several blocks and is 6 or 7 stories tall. We have one in our neighborhood that isn't quite so large, although it extends the entire width of a block, which it accomplished by tearing out a house on the street behind the store and building on. Now that's some SERIOUS book lovin'! I love shopping there, just to have access to the sheer volume of books--but there is one serious drawback--the SHEER VOLUME OF BOOKS! I go in and get lost, browsing away until I've noticed that it's dark outside, I'm starving, and I have a light beard. This afternoon, I went down to buy a book that was reviewed in the newspaper, but when I got there, evidently everyone else who read the review had beaten me to all the copies. I decided to look around for something else, but not knowing what I was looking for, I started randomly browsing the shelves. BIG mistake!--the last time I did that I came home with the Aneid in the original Latin! This time was no different--I could feel myself getting overwhelmed to the point that I couldn't make a decision. I finally just picked a genre and looked at the recommendations in that section--I picked Sci-Fi, and the recommendation said, "if you don't buy this book, I'll put it in your hand to make sure you get it." That sounded compelling enough, and after several hours of thumbing through books, I was ready to leave. All's I know is that that review better have been legit and not some creative way to con me into buying the book.

I swear--people like to extol the virtues of massive selection, but I've gone to the video store too many times and been so overwhelmed by the choices that I've left without a movie. Curiously, this NEVER happens when I'm buying a candy bar--when I see the chocolate aisle, no matter how overwheming the number choices is, I can still muster some deep source of strength and conviction that helps me decide on a type. My stomach is much more decisive than my brain is, obviously.

How embarrassing! After always telling people here in Portland how easy it is to navigate around Salt Lake with its grid street system and mountains that literally jut into the city, I made myself look like a gawking Idaho farmboy--wait... don't say anything there--and kept refering to Salt Lake's east side when I was really talking about the WEST side! Maybe it's just from cultural bias--being from the American West, I always assume it's better than the East. Out here we've got our wide-open spaces, laid-back attitudes, and a small pocket of neo-Nazis in North Idaho that we don't talk about. Anyway, I've fixed the mistake--ahh, gotta love the internets for being able to revise history!