Some Blog Site

One of my favorite magazines is WORLD magazine. They have a mailbag department where they print letters to the editor and they also print one picture in that section. The picture always has someone reading a WORLD magazine, and they usually show people in far-away lands.

I decided to take a picture of someone reading a WORLD magazine, but it was in my own front yard, not in some distant country. So I don’t know if it will even be in the running. In case it doesn’t get printed, here it is.

As you can see, I am going for the humor angle, rather than the normal location angle.

For those interested in the details of the most recent addition to our family:

• 11:00 am – I get a call from my wife. She is calling as she is leaving her doctor appointment for a regular, weekly check-up in the month before her due date. She tells me that we have to go to the hospital. The doctor said to be there in an hour because we’re going to have the baby today, even though my wife isn’t feeling any contractions.
• 11:45 – I get home from work, change my clothes, and help see the kids off to school with their grandparents
• 12:15 – We leave for the hospital
• 12:30 – We check into the hospital (sweet – they have wireless!) and get sent to a triage room to figure out if she really is in labor.
• 1:30 – They finally hook up monitors to see how contractions are going. There are some contractions – they’re just slight enough that my wife had been dismissing them or not noticing them.
• 2:00 – contractions are about every 4 minutes but not very strong
• 2:30 – contractions are more inconsistent, about every 7 minutes but stronger when they do happen
• 4:00 – contractions every 2-3 minutes, much stronger now, slightly painful as opposed to just uncomfortable. I enjoy watching the real-time graph that shows the baby’s heartbeat and the intensity of each contraction. Without that, all I have to go on is how hard she squeezes my hand during the contraction. But now I have some numbers to go along with it!
• 5:00 – It looks like the contractions are good enough, so they now decide that we are going to stay and have the baby. Up until this point, we didn’t know whether they were going to admit us into the hospital or send us back home until we came back with some real contractions. We get moved out of triage and into a normal room.
• 6:30 – contractions are painful, and my wife thinks she is ready to get the epidural.
• 7:00 – contractions are extremely painful now. We wonder where the epidural is, and we are told that they had two emergency C-sections come in and they have priority for the anesthesiologist. He can do the epidural when those are done, which should be soon.
• 7:15 – We are told that the lady next door also needs an epidural, and since she is farther along in labor (a couple of centimeters more dilated), she is getting her epidural first. We hear later that she delivered her baby about 10 minutes after she got the epidural. So if my wife had gotten hers first, then this other lady would not have gotten one at all.
• 7:30 – The anesthesiologist started the epidural. Due to my being voted Most Likely To Faint During An Epidural, I am relegated to the lounge for the next 15 minutes.
• 7:45 – The epidural is done, and I am allowed back in the room. It is more peaceful and less stressful than when I left.
• 8:00 – The doctor broke the water, and everything is ready to go. We know it’s close because the doctor starts setting up the table with all her surgical instruments and towels and stuff and she doesn’t leave.
• 8:25 – The fun begins – it is time to start pushing. Or – in my case – holding, watching, and talking. My wife does not think it’s fun, as this epidural isn’t as strong as the others, or perhaps it hasn’t had enough time to fully kick in.
• 8:31 – Baby is born. He is silent for the first few seconds, but then he starts crying like one would expect. It’s always amazing how the baby can go from not breathing air one second to breathing air the next second.

For those keeping track:

• Baby #1 – at least 90 minutes of pushing.
• Baby #2 – 20-30 minutes of pushing.
• Baby #3 – 6 minutes of pushing.

We can’t have any more kids, as the next one might be in the negative minutes of pushing, and I don’t want to find out what that means.

“As the pregnant woman approaches {the time} to give birth, She writhes {and} cries out in her labor pains, Thus were we before You, O LORD.”
– Isaiah 26:17

Now that it is March and not snowy outside, it is time to update Some Blog Site’s background photo.

This is of a cat stepping through the tall grass, and was taken in the spring a couple years ago.

The boys and I were playing on the couch two Sunday afternoons ago. Playing in close quarters, with boys who like to talk/yell, means that you can tell what they’ve been eating by the scent of their breath. The older one’s breath smelled sweetly fruit-like.

Knowing what they had for dessert, I said “Someone’s breath smells like Skittles. Who had Skittles for dessert?”

To which the 5-year-old replied: “I did!”

Next I smelled the 3-year-old’s breath, but his didn’t smell like anything. He had a Tootsie Roll for dessert, and apparently Tootsie Rolls don’t affect one’s breath much.

Then the older one wanted to smell my breath, so I breathed on him. His response was “Your breath smells like skunk spray!”

And the 3-year-old chimed in: “Did you eat skunk spray for dessert?”

I think they were being dramatic, as my wife hadn’t said anything about my breath. Or maybe she was just being polite.

For the record: All I had for dessert was some toffee brittle.

Here is a tip that I’ve found useful over the years:

When trimming one’s mustache with a beard trimmer or hair clippers, one must breathe out through one’s nose.

One must take a deep breath before starting to trim, then exhale slowly through one’s nose while the little clips of hair are being flung hither and yon.

One can trim the rest of the beard without checking one’s breathing. But if the mustache remains get inhaled into one’s nose, they can be quite irritating.

This is several months old, but there’s an emulator that turns your Pocket PC into a Commodore 64. This is only for PocketPC / Windows Mobile devices (PDAs and smartphones). Which means it might be hard to plug in the old joysticks I still have in my basement.

I have nothing but fond memories of the good old C64. Okay, I do still have the C64s themselves. Ahh, the good old days. Back when you had to choose between screen resolution and color depth. But there was still plenty that could be done with the limitations.

But the old computers don’t need to be relegated to the past. You can even play play Guitar Hero on one, well, almost.

So if you know anyone with an iPaq or other Pocket PC, tell them to get the Pocket Commode 64.

“The memory of the righteous is blessed, But the name of the wicked will rot.”
– Proverbs 10:7

We watched Space Chimps last weekend. We got it from the library, as we have found it easiest to rent/borrow movies from the library than from any other movie places. I hadn’t heard of Space Chimps before, but my wife said that Dove liked it. It was rated G, so I figured it should be okay for the 3- and 5-year-old to watch.

It was almost okay for the kids to watch. There was not much objectionable in the movie, unless your children object to giant carnivorous flowers and vines that try to eat the protagonists. And there’s some bully behavior, which you definitely don’t want your kids to learn. But, of course, everything works out fine by the end of the movie.

But until the kids were sure that everything was going to be okay, the dangerous parts of the movie had the kids moving from their own chairs to my lap, then from my lap to the couch behind me (next to mom). The many-toothed, large-mouthed plants were just the start. It was the long-fanged cave monster, chasing the heroes through the cave, that most affected the kids. But if you stop a movie at the scary part, I think that’s worse than continuing to watch it. If you stop it when they (or you) are scared, you are left with only your imagination. The damage has been done, assuming that it is only a scary part of an otherwise decent movie, and the best way to mitigate the damage is to finish the story.

Of course they make it through the cave okay, and of course the friendly aliens who were dipped into freezing liquid by the bully alien are just covered in a frozen shell instead of being frozen solid. I would not introduce the youngsters to liquid nitrogen after watching Space Chimps, as they may have the mistaken impression that if they get frozen by it they could just break out of it with no ill effects.

At the end of the movie, the kids were laughing and were able to tell me their favorite parts. Their favorite parts of any movie are always the slapstick parts. In this case, it was a chimp falling down on a treadmill.

Jeff Daniels voices the bully Zartog and does a fine job. I had seen his name in the credits and was trying to figure out which character he was, but I could not. Patrick Warburton, on the other hand, is much easier to tell. Maybe his voice is too distinctive, or maybe he gets typecast into these roles. If you know what Patrick Warburton sounds like (especially in other animated films – I’m thinking Bee Movie) then you’ll have no problem figuring out which character is his.

There were enough jokes and stuff aimed at the parents of the kids watching the movie. So it is entertaining for all. I did laugh out loud at a couple of parts, or at least chuckle heartily. Here was my favorite bit (might not be exactly right, but the general idea is there):

Two chimps, Ham and Titan, are in a spaceship heading back to Earth.
Ham, protesting: “But I’m not an astronaut.”
Titan: “Are you wearing aluminum clothes?”
H: “Yes.”
T: “Are you in outer space?”
H: “Yes.”
T: “Are you David Bowie?”
H; “No.”
T: “Then you’re an astronaut!”

“But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, And I will sit on the mount of assembly In the recesses of the north.'”
– Isaiah 14:13