Some Blog Site

My earlier post had been about some new chocolate (or chocolatey) cereals. Phoebe had commented that another cereal has joined the breakfast game: Kellogg’s Frosted Mini-Wheats Little Bites Chocolate.  I have now had a chance to try it.

First of all, cereal names are starting to get way too long. I have thus abbreviated Frosted Mini-Wheats Little Bites Chocolate to FMWLBC. Perhaps the long name contributes to what some are claiming is an identity crisis.

Second, it has a decent taste but that comes at a price: calories.

My updated rankings are:

1. HBOwrcc – it has decent taste with the best nutrition
2. CChex – it has the best taste with the worst nutrition
3. FMWLBC – it has good taste with the worst nutrition
4. SKCD – it has the worst taste with the worst nutrition

And here is the nutrition information:

The only redeeming nutrition factor is that it has a lot of fiber. But there are less-sugary ways to get fiber in your diet if that’s what you want. The other plus is that it uses real sugar and real chocolate, with no corn syrup.

Here are some more conversations that the children had recently:

Growing Up

“Someday I will be taller than mama.”
“Yes, someday.”
“And I will be taller than you.”
“Oh, maybe. If you keeping eating your food, then you’ll keep growing.”
“No daddy, that’s only at birthdays!” (that you grow)

Zero is the New Thirty

The oldest has taken to adding 30 to all the kids ages, so they’re comparable to our (his parents’) ages. But he leaves our ages intact. I suppose it’s a good thing that he doesn’t add to those.

5-year-old: “I’m 35, you’re 33, you’re 33, and the baby is 30.”
(One of the 33s was for me and the other one was for the 3-year-old. But the 3-year-old disagreed with the baby’s new age)

3-year-old: “No, he’s thirty-zero.”

Chapter 1: Off to the Store

The kitchen lady at the local home-improvement store insulted me. I won’t say the name of the store, but the lady was wearing an orange apron.

This last weekend, I went to the store for some cabinets to put in the new laundry room. Kitchen cabinets work well above the washer and dryer, for storing bathroom, laundry, and even some kitchen supplies. We were ready to put them in, so I just needed to buy them.

I found the cabinets. We had already decided on 12″ deep and 30″ tall and 60″ wide. They don’t sell 60″-wide cabinets, but they did have some that were 30″ wide. There were three of them on a shelf, and the shelf was about as high as my waist.

The first cabinet was upside-down. The “This end up” wording was upside-down and the arrow was pointing down. Not trusting that one, I decided I wanted the two cabinets behind it. So I took the first one off the shelf and put it on my flatbed cart. Because of their size, cabinets are a little awkward to carry, but it’s not really a problem. They weigh around 40-50 lbs – about the same as the 5-year-old I had with me at the store and am used to carrying.

Chapter 2: The Plot Begins

I moved the unwanted cabinet to the end of the cart and put the first good one at the front of the cart. As I was getting ready to put the last cabinet on the cart, the lady who patrols the kitchen center stopped by.

“Do you need any help?” she asked.
“No thanks,” I replied.
“We can get someone to lift those for you.” she continued.
I responded with something like “it’s just this last one; it’s no problem.” but she would not give up.
“Well then, I will hold the cart while you put the cabinet on it.”

What was going on? I don’t like to be bothered at stores. I like to get my merchandise, buy it, and leave. And I don’t want to wait for help.

So I grabbed the cabinet and put it on the cart while she held the cart. It’s not like the cart was prone to rolling. It hadn’t budged while I put the other two cabinets on it. If the store had a policy about customers handling large items, she should have said so. And if that were the case, then why would the store put large items in the aisles for customers to take?

But she didn’t say anything about store policies, so my only other explanation is that she had lived through a really bad cart-rolling accident and has vowed that she would never let that happen again.

I wanted to show her that I knew how to lift things properly (so that she wouldn’t worry so much about me), so I used my legs and not my back when lowering the cabinet. I didn’t want to have to deal with explaining that I didn’t want the one cabinet and would be putting it back on the shelf, so I said “Okay” and waited for her to leave.

Chapter 3: The Plot Thickens

She, however, was not done yet: “Now when you check-out, there are people there who can help you load these into your car.”
“You have to be kidding!” I said to myself. Outwardly though, it sounded a lot like “Okay.”
“Just ask at the check-out, and they’ll help.”
“O-kaaay.”
“No sense in having you lifting all these things – have the young guys do the work instead.”
“What!?!” – “Okay, thanks.”

First she insults my physical capabilities and therefore my masculinity by implying that I can’t handle lifting a cabinet. Now she insults my appearance by calling me old? I am in my early 30s, and I am guessing that she was in her late 40s. So she should have known better.

If you are in customer service at all, here are some tips:

1. Don’t imply that a guy can’t do something (especially if he has already done it twice). If you must try to help him, say that it will make the task go quicker, not that it will help him.
2. If a person is old enough to have kids, never make him feel older. Always err on the side of youth. Aim for compliments, not back-handed insults.

Finally, after I started browsing for small cabinet accessories, she left. I glanced around to make sure the coast was clear, then I hoisted the upside-down cabinet back onto its shelf. All by myself. Yes, I flipped it over so it was upside-up.

Chapter 4: Free at Last

I then went over the water-softener salt section and tossed eight 40-lb bags of salt onto the cart.
With my back bent.
So there.
Okay, maybe I didn’t exactly toss them. But I did move them from the pallet to my cart.

We checked out, and I forgot to tell the cashier lady that someone was to help load my stuff in my car. I half expected that the kitchen lady had called the front of the store to have someone waiting for me, but no one said anything so I just left.

I rolled the cart to the minivan, tossed the salt in the back of the van (it actually was more of a toss this time), and put the cabinets in the middle of the van (after making sure the 5-year-old was in his car seat and buckled). No one came running out of the store to say anything, so I was home free.

In case you’re wondering, my arms and back are just fine.

“How long will you torment me And crush me with words? These ten times you have insulted me; You are not ashamed to wrong me.”
– Job 19:2-3

I heard an ad for a new book entitled “Peaks and Valleys” by Dr. Spencer Johnson, the same guy who wrote “Who Moved My Cheese?”.

I haven’t read the book, nor did the ad make me want to read the book. But the ad did get me to think about its description of the book’s results: how to “have more peaks and fewer valleys” in your life.

I can somewhat agree with the other descriptive points: “get out of a valley sooner” and “stay on a peak longer”. But more peaks and fewer valleys? Every peak requires a valley, and every valley requires a peak. You can’t have more peaks than valleys, nor can you have more valleys than peaks.

Well, I suppose that, depending on where you start and where you end, you can have one more of one than the other, but the difference can be no more than one. You can’t have many more peaks than valleys.

And staying on a peak longer just implies that you aren’t moving. You can loiter at the peak I suppose. Stay on a peak longer – if you’re happy where you are, then just don’t do anything different, and you’ll stay on that peak.

But these self-help/motivational-type books don’t want you to stay still – you need to go go go do do do be be be. So how do you stay on a peak longer while still moving?

To me, it looks like a plateau. But no one in that industry likes to have people plateau. “If you’re not advancing, you’re declining” or “if you’re not improving, you’re regressing”. I like plateaus though – they’re safer. You’re less likely to fall off a plateau than a peak, and the view from there is just as good.

The only way I see to have more peaks and fewer valleys while not plateauing is to have one big incline, like this:

But then you don’t really have a peak, since you never get to the top. And you never get to rest. And if you slip, it’s a long fall back all the way to the bottom with no valley to catch you.

“Why do you look with envy, O mountains with many peaks,At the mountain which God has desired for His abode?Surely the LORD will dwell there forever.”
– Psalm 68:16

I read an article about how a family went one month without spending any money.  It was more of an experiment or challenge than anything else.  It was not a viable long-term lifestyle, as it depended heavily on favors and free Costco samples.  But it did highlight what were needs and what were wants in that particular family.

The idea of not spending any money might appeal to many of you.  Go ahead and eliminate wasteful spending, or frivolous spending, but don’t aim for zero spending. 

If everyone stopped buying things for a month, what would that do to the economy?  You might be better off temporarily, but in the long run it would make things worse for everyone.  Yes, you should not spend excessively.  Yes, you should be thrifty when possible.  But other people’s livelihoods depend on your spending. 

Would you want everyone to boycott your business?  Then don’t boycott everyone else’s businesses.

“these he gathered together with the workmen of similar trades, and said, “Men, you know that our prosperity depends upon this business.”
– Acts 19:25

In a shameless spoof of MckMama’s Not Me Monday (via Four Now’s Not Me Monday), I am posting a Not Mine Monday. I am calling it Part 1 because I am planning on making this a regular somewhat occasional feature.

• My child did not come to the edge of his bed as I was about to finish changing the sheets and draw on the new clean sheets with a crayon. He would not do that, since he knows that crayons are for paper only.
• My child did not take the infant’s Boppy, put it around his own neck, and run around pretending to be wearing a life jacket in the water. He uses things only for their intended purposes.
• My child did not threaten to stay up until midnight because he was unhappy with our choice of bedtime for him. And I most certainly did not reply that he could stay up as late as he wanted as long as he was quiet and stayed in bed. That was not us – bedtime is always a smooth, orderly, and on-time process in our house.

But if our children did do those things, we would still love them.

Okay, I’ll throw a Not Me in here too: I did not use the infant’s burp cloth to wipe up the floor when his spit-up landed there. And I did not absent-mindedly wipe the infant’s face with that same part of the burp cloth that wiped the floor. Only sterile products go near the baby. If I had been holding the baby at that time, I would have thrown the burpey (burpee?) in the wash and gotten a new one. And cleaned the floor with a floor-cleaning thingy.

“and the priest shall take holy water in an earthenware vessel; and he shall take some of the dust that is on the floor of the tabernacle and put it into the water.”
– Numbers 5:17

We were about 5 minutes into a 45-minute van ride with the family, and the 5-year-old wanted to know some math answers.

“What’s 100 plus 100?”
Sometimes we ask him to figure out the answer, sometime we try to explain how it works, but for some reason this time I decided just to answer him.
“200”
“What’s 200 plus 200?”
“400”
“What’s ” (at this point I knew that my training in base-2 numbers would come in handy. As a software engineer, I have 2-to-the-X down pretty well) “400 plus 400?”
“800”

(Condensing the story here. When we made it to 12,800, I decided to call it “128-hundred” for quicker calculation and pronunciation, and I continued that way.)

“What’s 512-hundred plus 512-hundred?”
“1,024-hundred”
“What’s 1…what’s 1 hundred…what’s that number?”
“One thousand twenty four hundred”
“What’s that number plus that number?”
“2,048-hundred”

We continued like that, with his question of “What’s that plus that?” the rest of the way. Then we got to “65536-hundred”. After he asked me what that plus that was for 65535-hundred, I gave up. Mainly because I have 2^X memorized for X from 0 to 16, but this answer was 2¹⁷, so I would have to think about it.

I replied with “I don’t know.”  I expected that he would be disappointed, but he was rather pleased.  “I can count higher than you!” he said, with a grin on his face.

I let him enjoy his victory.