The Spirit of Christmas Long, Long Ago and Far, Far Away

Nothing says the birth of Christ like a statuette of Darth Vader wearing a Santa hat and building a snow Death Star. See! Even Darth has a softer side. Wouldn't you just love to play outside on a cold winter's day with Darth? Then afterward coming inside and reading the Nativity story out of the Bible.

Great quote

I read this today and couldn't help but pass it along:

"We've tried to have patience. Some of us have also tried patience's little helper, Xanax."

Ah, Xanax. I've never tried it, but I have friends who swear by it. In fact I once witnessed someone mix, contrary to the explicit instructions on the bottle, Xanax and alcohol. That was an interesting night at the ballet/downtown fountain/picking up clothes strewn at the freezer section of a 7-11/sitting in the police precinct. Needless to say, I'll stick to Diet Coke with a Diet Coke chaser. Man, that stuff will MESS YOU UP, but you'll still be dressed and have a clean police record in the morning.

Yee Haw!

Outdoor Life magazine just named my hometown (or at least the town nearest the hamlet where I grew up) of Lewiston, Idaho the #2 best city for hunting and fishing. (You can read about it here.) Not that I do either. In fact if it were up to me to have to kill things to eat, we would most likely be vegetarians.

Anyway, this comes as no surprise to me. Growing up, lots of the guys in high school had gun racks and gun mounted on their trucks that they drove to school, you're hard pressed not to see the hides of various animals drying on peoples houses, sheds, etc., and dogs trolling the streets with an elk hoof clenched in their jaws. Yes, it was quite the metropolitan upbringing there in Idaho. And to top it off, we got to miss several days of school every year during the county fair to show our animals! (And yet we NEVER got to miss school for the symphony, opera, or the Gaugin exhibit... namely because you'd have had to drive to Seattle to got to any of those things, and if you were going to drive THAT far, you'd be more likely headed to the Blue Mountains in Oregon to go hunting or to Montana for the Belt Sander Racing Grand Prix.)

The immortal words of MC Hammer

After having experienced perfect strangers coming up to her and touching her belly, I've found the perfect t-shirt for her:



Yes, the words of MC Hammer come to the rescue once again.

And my two suggestions were met with skepticism and dismissal:

1. If someone touches your belly, grab their crotch. When they react in surprise/horror, just tell them, "Oh, I'm sorry. I thought it was inappropriate touching day."


2. Have a t-shirt printed with "I have leprosy."

Daylight Savings Time

I think that daylight savings time is just a conspiracy by the caffeine providers in this country to drive up demand. I swear getting up just that ONE HOUR earlier feels like I may as well have to get up at 2:30. Thank heavens for bottomless refills at Noah's or I would be screwed.

And to make matters worse, one of my coworkers had her last day on Friday and I got an email from her after I inquired on her transition to non-work life + daylight savings time. She replied that when she eventually got out of bed, she had to worry about making coffee, what kind of omelet she was going to make, and getting ready to watch The View. Arg. Now I know how Margaret felt our last semester at BYU when I was just there biding time. (I had an extra semester left on my scholarship, but was done with my classes, so I just filled my schedule with whatever so I could stay in Provo with Margaret. I'm sure that the scholarship wasn't designed for such abuses, but whatcha gonna do?) I only had classes on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, giving me a 4-day weekend every weekend for the entire semester. And my Wednesday schedule started at 2:00 pm. I was always trying to get Margaret to go out at all hours of the day and night, as I didn't have to worry about getting up before noon, while she was trying to cram four years of schooling into three. Needless to say, Margaret didn't get as much sleep that semester as I did. In fact she's still trying to catch up on sleep a decade later!

Rumor mill

After that last post, I noticed a large uptick in the number of comments from the internets. And over the weekend, we got calls from our family about the birthing education class "outbursts." Evidently word travels fast! My favorite was from my mom. She responded to my "Hello?" with "I heard about Margaret causing a ruckus in your class... she's going to be such a good mother!"

Here we were thinking we needed to read tons of books and have a crib that a baby can't fit her head through the bars where it turns out all we need is sarcasm. And with that as the criteria, we're going to have the best parenting skills EVER!

Rabble-rousers

Well tonight we're off to our next childbirth education class. (Nothing says "exciting Friday night" like childbirth education... I'm sure everything will be back to normal after the baby is born and we can go out on Friday nights and stumble home on Saturday morning when the sun comes up. Right? RIGHT?!?)

Last week's class was an eye-opener. Not only did we realize that we were actually quite versed in childbirth technique, nomenclature, and logistics (you can't come from a Mormon family and NOT be!), but some of the people in the class were COMPLETELY CLUELESS! One person asked about the safety of walking around while she was in labor because she was worried that her baby would just fall out of her. I responded, "You should only be so lucky!" Margaret got targeted by the teacher (who is a little hardcore on the natural EVERYTHING) as a trouble-maker right off. Someone in class asked what kind of formula the teacher would recommend in case of low milk production or some other problem. The teacher looked horrified, replying, "You don't even want that in your HOUSE! It's like having cookies in the house while you're on a diet. If you have formula, you'll just end up using it!" To which Margaret spoke up: "And THAT would be the END OF THE WORLD!" (I wasn't in the room at the time, being that they'd separated the genders at that point, but I imagine that line being uttered completely dripping with a level of sarcasm that only a decade of living with me could have trained her for. Does my heart proud!) Later, after being told by the teacher that women only are in ACTUAL pain only two and half hours of a fourteen hour labor. (She was only counting the 30 to 60 seconds of pain from contractions, etc., saying that between them, a woman was FIIIIINE!) Well, Margaret had to speak up again, saying that that was like saying, "Here, let me punch you in the face. You'll only feel the strike for one SECOND!" Needless to say, the teacher wasn't amused.

I thought it was awesome. Plus, anything we can do to spread the word to the more inexperienced people in the class that using pain medications doesn't mean a woman has "failed" is fair game. (Actually, I don't even feel I have a say in THAT matter. I didn't give Margaret the right to tell my dentist not to give me anesthesia when getting a filling, and I'm not about to tell the doctor how much pain she should go through.)

Good ol' Portland

Walking to catch the train this morning, I was treated to the sight of angels walking the street. Yes, ANGELS! And the kind of angels that you are likely to make it to the Celestial Kingdom, namely young, toned, athletic, flexible angels. What are they doing here on earth, you ask? Evidently they're on loan to the Cirque du Soleil here in town, so if your prayers to win the lottery are a little slow coming through, it's because God's call center is a little backlogged from being understaffed at the moment.

American workmanship

On the way to the gym to just sit in the hot tub do my 4-mile sprints and 250 pull-ups, I saw this sight. If I've told people once, I've told them a thousand times: don't make turns in an American-made car. You never know when a wheel is going to come off one of those suckers from the G-forces involved in a 90º left-hand turn going 10 MPH!!

Construction injury

After working all weekend on getting the moulding up, I finally sustained an injury. Was it from the circular saw? Noooo. Was it the air compressed nail gun? Noooo. Was it the orbital sander? Noooo. Was it playing with rewiring some outlets? Noooo. It was... wait for it... a gash on my hand sustained when I was reaching for some frickin' SANDPAPER and I ran my hand into a piece of moulding!

I'll post some pictures this week. (Of the construction progress, not my horrible mangled and disfigured hand.)