Some Blog Site

In cooperation with LaanyKidsMom, here are some real entries for this week.

• Puppy Chow
  A church friend (that’s a friend from church, not a friend who is a church) made some Puppy Chow because she was to bring dessert to our 4th of July gathering. There was a lot (more than a gallon) of Puppy Chow left, mainly because there were so many other desserts. Competition is good. She decided she didn’t want to take any of it home, so we were cursed blessed with the leftovers.

  I had the joy this week of eating handfuls of Puppy Chow every night for dinner dessert after dinner.  But it was not just any Puppy Chow (officially called Muddy Buddies by the Crispix people, but that name is officially ignored by everyone). No, it had a secret ingredient that made it extra fattening tasty.

  Butterscotch.

  Add it to your next batch of Puppy Chow and be amazed.  I don’t know how much butterscotch to add, but I’m sure someone somewhere has a recipe for the Scotch Terrier breed of Puppy Chow.

  (Isn’t this little trick of leaving in the text you would like to say but striking it out so that people get an idea of the thought process behind the writing annoying great?)

  What else has brought me joy this week?

• Our Baby
  The baby (4 and a half months old) has started rolling over. Yesterday was the second time. When I would check on him before I leave for work, he would always be in the same position in which I put him the night before. A few mornings ago, he was on his back, looking up at the world. We tried, but he didn’t repeat it despite our efforts and coaching.

  Then that morning, he was looking up at me again, having rolled over from front to back. He did it again this morning. Apparently he likes to roll over only in the morning, because he won’t do it any other time.

  One more

• Golf Balls
  I don’t golf, but for some reason it’s fun to collect golf balls. Free golf balls. I certainly wouldn’t pay for any. Nor would I want any for a present, in case someone tries to get that idea. I don’t really collect them. If you want to help, then what I’m trying to collect is $20 bills.

  I go for the golf balls because my road borders a golf course. I’m sure if my road bordered tennis courts I’d collect tennis balls. But no, I got a golf course.

  I have now found golf balls on all of my runs this week so far. Since I run every other day and take weekends off, that’s only three runs. This morning I found not one but two golf balls. Extra joy!

  It’s like a prize for going running. Because, despite what other people may say, running itself is not a real prize.

Joy Found. Mission accomplished.

or “Have They Not Seen Mr. Holland’s Opus?”

My family went to the local Independence Day parade. The children, ages 5, 3, and 4 months, enjoyed the parade except for one part – the fire engines. The only time the baby cried during the parade was whenever a fire engine sounded its siren or horn. Why do the drivers of the fire engines insist on running their sirens during parades? The police cars don’t do it. Some classic cars honk their horns, but in those cases it is a song and the horns are much quieter than a fire truck’s siren or horn.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I give you this:

An Open Letter to the Fire Departments of America

In looking at a few other articles, I found what is now my favorite analogy on the subject: excess or gratuitous noise is the audible equivalent to second-hand smoke. It doesn’t bother the one producing it, but innocent bystanders suffer the consequences.

No one would be bothered if the fire engines don’t blast their horns or sirens at full volume during a parade. If anyone noticed it, I bet he would be pleasantly surprised (something like “Hey, that was nice that they went by without jolting us out of our seats.”). But most people would probably like to just observe the fire engines like any other parade entry.

A siren is about 120 decibels at 10 feet. That 10 feet is about the distance from the fire engine to the parade spectators. That means that permanent hearing damage will occur in about 10 seconds.

It is interesting to note that many fire departments now have the sirens at the trucks’ bumpers, rather than on top of the cab as was the custom for so many years. The reason was to reduce the noise level in the cab. So now the sirens are aimed right at the parade spectators – about the same height as a 3- or 5-year-old child. Even more reason not to sound off during the parade.

Keep the sirens for emergencies only, please, and horns only to catch the attention of people inside cars, with glass and metal to shield them from the noise.

“He who has ears, let him hear.”
– Matthew 13:9

That headline means “toys that are annoying”, not “how to annoy toys”. I don’t know that inanimate objects can be annoyed, which makes it even more frustrating because they don’t even know or care how bothersome they can be.

Our basement is used mainly for storage. As a set of toys phases out of daily or weekly use by the kids, we will put the toys in the basement. Sometimes we will pull them out again, and the kids will be pleasantly surprised by the “new” toys, or they might remember them and be glad to play with them again.

Other times, usually as a threat an enticement to clean up a room, we will say something like “Whatever is still on the floor when I come back is going down to the basement.” The kids don’t go down in the basement by themselves (too many spiderwebs), so sending toys down there is equivalent to banishing them from the house. “Them” being the toys, not the children.

I just reinstated one toy that had been put down in the basement. It had been put down there because it wasn’t being used much, and it took a lot of floor space. But for fun, I brought it up. My wife and I quickly remembered the other reason it had quietly disappeared into the basement one night: the songs.

There are four buttons on this toy, and they play a random assortment of songs. Loud songs. Loud songs that last way too long. The buttons are touchy, so that the toy is easily set off. Not as touchy as the radio controls in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (waving a finger near them would change stations), but pretty sensitive nonetheless.

And then a thought occurred to me: we have never replaced the batteries on that thing.

So I am proposing some sort of a law, like Murphy’s Law or Muphry’s Law or something: The battery life of a toy is directly proportional to how annoying it is.

The more annoying the toy, the longer the batteries will last. The more you want something to wear out so it will stop bothering you, the more it will just keep working. Conversely, the more you like something, the more quickly its batteries will die.

“He who blesses his friend with a loud voice early in the morning,It will be reckoned a curse to him.”
– Proverbs 27:14

There are normally two times of the year that promote wistfulness: the beginning of school and Christmas.

The beginning of school is a nostalgic time because I am not in school anymore. It reminds me of all the good parts about the end of August / start of September: cross-country camp, band camp, shopping for school supplies, shopping for clothes, new football season, etc.

But I am not involved in those things anymore, other than watching football on TV. That’s not the same, though, as being in the marching band at the game, going through the pre-game drill, playing for the tunnel through which the players run, etc. The same with cross-country and all the other school activities – the “back to school” days reminds me that part of my life is past and makes me sentimental. I’ll get to go through those days again, in a different sense, once my kids are old enough to be involved in those things. Right now, with kindergarten, there’s not much as far as extra-curricular activities.

And Christmas is obvious – the nostalgia evoked by traditions, family gatherings, and the end of a calendar year make one reflect on what happened or was done during that year. The non-obvious trigger for the wow-where-did-the-year-go wistful thinking is the summer solstice. June 21st or so – the longest day of the year.

Starting in January, I begin reminding myself (subconsciously) that the days are getting longer and that reinforces the thought that the year is starting and there are oh so many things that we can do this year. I know it really starts several days earlier around December 21st, but Christmas takes priority.

Then after June 21st, the days start getting shorter. They’re still long enough so that it doesn’t really matter, but it’s the thought that counts. You know the days are getting shorter, that means the year is waning.

They should move the summer solstice, or maybe move the calendar months. Really, the longest day of the year should be in the middle of July, so that the longest days of the year are evenly distributed throughout the whole summer. Or maybe even better, move the longest day of the year to be at the end of August, so that the days start decreasing in length once school starts.

Hmm…then the warmest days of the year would be during school. Cross-country would not be fun at all because it would be during the hot season. The wool marching band uniforms would be even worse.

Never mind.

“He made the moon for the seasons;The sun knows the place of its setting.”
– Psalm 104:19

I had my first experience with government-run health care, and I am very unimpressed. No, worse than that – I am worried that anyone wants to expand this level of service.

Our oldest child will be starting kindergarten this fall. One of the state’s requirements for children starting school is that they have a vision test on record with the school.

“Not to worry,” says the local county government, “we provide free vision screenings for any county resident.” I thought that was fine, so my wife called the county to schedule an appointment.

A little background information first:

This was last week, in the first half of June. We registered our child for kindergarten back in April or so. The school district said that he was penciled in but would not be officially registered until we provided the results of the vision screening. The students are assigned to teachers in mid August, and school starts right after Labor Day, in early September.

So the county health division was glad to sign up our child for a free vision screening, but the first opening they had was August 24th, only two weeks before school started. What good is that, if I want my child to be registered before the classes are setup?

I didn’t want to wait that long. I wanted to get everything set and out of the way. And I’m sure the school district wouldn’t want us to wait that long. They need to plan the classroom sizes and move teachers around if there are too few or too many students. They don’t want kids registering at the very last minute, after they have setup all the classrooms.

We called the doctor’s office. “Yes,” they said, “we offer vision screening. It should be covered by insurance, so it should be free to you.” Oh, and they could get us an appointment next week, while it is still June.

So we setup an appointment with the privately-run doctor’s office and will pay for it with our private insurance. I’m glad we have the private insurance and don’t need to use the free already-paid-for-by-my-taxes government services.

The government health department might be fine for those who really need it, but if you do use them, you need to be very prepared and schedule your appointments well before you normally would since they are so slow.

For a non-emergency situation like a vision test, it’s not that big a deal. What if there were an medical problem that needed attention? I would hope that the government service could act quickly enough to help. But so far, in both this country and others, government is big and slow. That’s fine for regulations and taxes and stuff, but not good for medical care.

“We waited for peace, but no good came;For a time of healing, but behold, terror!”
– Jeremiah 8:15

We spent some time in a touristy area last weekend, and it had an arcade. The kids enjoyed going through the arcade and playing some of the games, especially skeeball. We spent maybe $2-$4 total.

One of the games token-eating options, no matter what arcade, anywhere in the world, is always the bunch-of-tokens-in-a-pile-being-pushed-by-something game (apparently known as a “coin pusher” game). Here are some examples.

I’m always tempted to try those games because those coins are so precariously positioned that some of them just have to fall. But I know, from the couple of times long ago that I tried it, that it’s just a trap and chances are very good that the coin that I add will have no effect on the coins at the end – the ones that look like they are about to fall into the tray for me to grab.

For some reason, I thought about that today as I was trying to put a bottle back in the refrigerator. There is room at the back of the fridge, but I want to add the bottle to the front of the fridge since it’s a hassle to try to maneuver the bottle around everything that’s already in the fridge. I put the bottle at the front of the shelf and push, but nothing moves to the back of the fridge like I want. Instead, a couple of things move sideways and something falls over.

Just like the coin-pusher games (no matter how many coins you add to the back, no coins ever get pushed off the front), no matter how many items you put at the front of the fridge, the existing items never fill the back of the fridge.

Note: this applies only to the shelf that has the miscellaneous smaller items (hot sauce, water bottle, mayonnaise, A1 sauce, child’s drink from yesterday that he wanted to save but will never finish, ketchup, salsa, taco cause, soy sauce, Parmesan cheese, etc.) – our bottom shelf with the milk jugs and large items does not have this problem.

“He who tills his land will have plenty of food,But he who follows empty pursuits will have poverty in plenty.”
– Proverbs 28:19

I have a new pair of shorts that I have started wearing now that the weather is warm. These shorts have a different style back pocket flap – they use Velcro hook-and-loop fasteners instead of buttons.

I like to leave the pockets unbuttoned and tuck the flaps inside the pockets.  That way, I don’t have to fight anything to get out my wallet or pull out the receipt or whatever it is I have stuck in my back pocket.  Of course, pick-pocketers have an easier time too, but that’s a risk I’ll take here in the suburbs.

The problem with these shorts – okay, so my title is somewhat misleading as they are shorts not pants but a liked the alliteration – is that the rough side of the fastener is on the outside of the shorts and the soft side is on the inside of the pocket flap.

That works fine for when the flap is closed.  But when the flap is tucked inside the pocket, the rough stuff (rough stough?) is exposed and gets caught on things.  Mainly on my shirt.  If I sit down, the bottom of my shirt becomes fastened to my shorts.  If I sit on a carpet, then my shorts become fastened to the floor.

Please, pants and shorts designers, if you’re going to put Velcro® on clothes, design them so that the rough side is on the flap.

“Yet You would plunge me into the pit, And my own clothes would abhor me.”
– Job 9:31