The wife sent some photos of a red spider in our front yard, on the porch, actually, to What's That Bug. Maybe we'll get an answer. Maybe we'll have to evacuate the house.

Speaking about evacuating the house, Yahoo! has a list of organizations collecting charity for the Katrina Hurricane Relief. I feel like I owe something, but I don't know what.

I watched my son on the swing yesterday. He is only four but he knows how to start himself and pump his arms and body on the swing. I thought about the differences between the way he swings and the way my daughter swings. She is three years older, yet she swings the same as she did last year and the year before--she's cautious, deliberate. My son, on the other hand is loose, assertive, and playful on the swing. He goes as high as he can go and tries to maintain the momentum. That tells me something about him.

In my men's group, our assignment for our next meeting is for us to prepare something that answers the question, "Who am I?" I've thought about this simple question before and this is probably the most difficult question for me to answer right now. So I watched my son on the swing, and my daughter as well, and I could apply their swinging style to begin to answer the question about them. What is it that makes me tick? What kind of swing do I swing? What tells about me the way the swing tells about them?

So earlier today I was looking for web sites that would answer some of my questions about education, and the most interesting thing I found was a scholarly review that discusses how choosing a child's first name affects their grades, performance, and promotion in elementary and secondary education. Don't believe me if you want, but check out the article. Figlio makes a good argument.

The kids, my wife and I went to my daughter's school for open house yesterday. Inside her new classroom, I showed my son a poster by M.C. Escher, a drawing of different color geckos. I was reminded of his work when I saw a Reuters photo later in the day.

Star Wars in Lego? Yes, Star Wars in Lego. Actually, they've created story boards for Episode IV, V, and VI.

And of course, I'd be remorse if I didn't post a link to the Star Wars Christmas Album--click the link where it says "click to begin listening ..."

Why all this Star Wars energy tonight? Well the CBC is showing The Empire Strikes Back of course.

Anybody looking forward to Prison Break?

I'm lazy, so here is a snippet from a letter I just sent my brother in Quatar:

"In a few minutes, a guy is going to come over to cut down 3 trees in the back yard for a bargain price. There is one tree (dead of course) that is leaning towards the neighbor's porch and I don't want anything to do with cutting that one down. So last night when I was cutting the lawn, a stranger came into the back yard & I shut off the lawnmower and he asked about taking down trees. His references was that he took down some trees for a backyard neighbor, and his price wasn't too bad, so by this afternoon I should be a few trees and a few dollars lighter."

And with that, have a good Sunday.

Babysitting the kids this morning. The wife is off with her women's group, discussing criteria for a new pastor at the UU Church. So I'm watching the kids and a friend this morning. Actually, in a few minutes, my son will have a friend come over as well, so it will be me & four kids. On the agenda is laundry and updating my blog. So I better get to work.

Went running this morning in the light rain. It felt good but I came back a little more wet than usual. The summer is coming to a close and the mornings are starting to get cooler and cooler. Hopefully we have a few more weeks of wet & sun so the garden keeps on giving us tomatoes & maybe even a cantaloupe or two. We have cantaloupe vines that must be 30 feet long, but only a few fruit.

My daughter and I might go see The March of the Penguins at the theater today or tomorrow. I finally got the green light from the wife. I'm looking forward to it a lot, but not sure if it's too mature for her. We'll see.

Went to my first high school football game tonight, at the Lincoln High School. We were behind 0-7 in the first half, 0-14 in the second half, and we left at half time. The kids did remarkably well and I think my son enjoyed watching the marching band before the game & at half time more than watching the football plays. Then again, football is a hard game to follow for someone who is isn't even in kindergarten.

Now I want to go to more of these high school games. And I think a half is just right.

Have you ever wondered if you could own a Picasso, but just didn't know where to shop? Well you could try Cosco. And if If you follow the link, then press "next product," you can view some other fine works of art for the affordable price of under $130,000.00.

I wonder if you need to be a member to get that deal!

Does anyone speak Klingon any more? If so, here is a link to popular Popular Klingon Fairy Tales.

And if you desire, you can translate that Fairy Tale into binary with the Binary Translator.

Enjoy!

Had a little run tonight around the neighborhood. I didn't feel safe, even though I was on the sidewalk; in fact, the sidewalk is precisely what bothered me. Once or twice I stepped and the concrete was an inch or two below where my foot expected it. So why not run on the street? you might ask (as my wife has already asked). Well, I had a plan to run the neighborhood on the outside sidewalk first, then the inside sidewalk second. That would give me two times around the neighborhood and I would run on the slant (sidewalks slant) to the inside the first time and the slant outside the second time.

Way too much detail--I can hear voices complain from the blogsphere.

The other thing that is new is that my daughter and I are on the final chapter of the Pony Pal book. Oh, and she got the teacher we requested for her 2nd/3rd grade class. That's cool.

I saw 2/3 of an awesome documentary on PBS yesterday, called Journey of Man. Sort of like a DNA detective searching out our roots.

Time for some comedy.

I was driving to work yesterday and I was slowing down to stop at a stoplight about 2 miles away from the plant. Some kids sped up on the right side of my car and stopped at the light. A different car sped up from behind me, switched lanes to the right, then switched lanes again to cut me off. Before you could say "kecelakaan", the guys in the second car accelerated through the red light. Okay, I've seen that before. But then in the next instant, the car to my right sped through the red light. Two more cars came up in the right lanes and sped through the red light without even slowing down. A few seconds later, the light turned green and a I proceeded. I felt that I would meet up with them a mile later, when they got stopped by cops, but I didn't get that pleasure.

Haven't you always wondered:

How much caffeine it would take to kill you?

or

Does there exist beer for kids?

or

At what point in a person's development do symbols begin to represent the world?

or

How to speak the language of the Xhosa--and how to pronounce those interesting clicks.

Got back from our second annual family camp outing yesterday. We could have stayed till Monday morning, this morning, but we all had enough fun & work at Camp Pinewoodfor one weekend. My daughter rode horseback five times, I went on two, my wife went on three, and little guy went on two rides. The highlight for me was when I completed the medium ropes course "blind"--I looked when I was on each platform and had to transfer my two lines, and before beginning the new element, but each element I executed with my eyes closed. For me, it was a good challenge.

The food was pretty good this year. I stocked up on a ton of fresh fruit and rediscoved the perfect peach. The problem with the peach is that there are perfect peaches and there are dry flaky peaches and not much in-between. So I had two perfect peaches and three dry peaches and none in-between. More about perfect peaches here.

I swam a little, rode Bee, finished two ropes courses, helped my kids with archery, canoed with my son, ran a few miles with a morning full moon over my head, fell asleep to crickets, sang songs and danced like a penguin at the first bonfire, and so much more. Okay, it was another great weekend.

So today I went to this store that caters to the Mexican population. I had to buy a few items so that I could make my perfect salsa and then I ask about chips and the guy behind the counter says they are $2.75 but he could sell them to me for $2.00. Sure I'll take them. Then I see the white peaches; I pick out two and he says that he will sell me the two for $0.75. Now I don't know if that's a good deal or not, but I had a bunch of change in my pocket and I pull out something close to $0.81 and say that should be enough. We had some camaraderie and I left feeling 2% more Mexican than when I walked in.

(My second smash single will be called "2% More Mexican". (Not!))

So I backed out of the store, came home, and made my first batch of salsa this year. I used the tomatoes from the gardens out back, but had to buy some green onions, lime, garlic, and whatnot. My wife was putting the kids to bed, and I was chopping the vegetables and I felt like tonight was an event, akin to the opening of the Octoberfest beer in late September, except this one has a more Mexican flavor. So now I have a quart of salsa to consume. Good thing my buddy at the grocery recommended some chips at a discount. Mmmm.

I could write a song about horses and riders and living life for what you believe, and a song about an artist singing, making 25 dollars minus expenses, singing a few sets at a coffeehouse in front of family and devoted fans. At the end of the song, I would write about myself on the road, questioning if I am living what I believe.

It costs too much
I can't believe
I don't have the luck or the time or the means
I'm stuck on a road that keeps wrecking my feet
I need your way out so I can believe, believe, believe.

No, that's no good. Maybe I'll just write a song about cooking rice at 9:25 p.m. so I can save leftover Chinese food.

I wonder if there have ever been people who've sold songs who don't know how to play a musical instrument.

If you are out there, please let me know.

Here's a picture from July 4th:

So my wife and I are watching Any Given Sunday on TiVo tonight and after about 45 minutes the recording ends. We are given the option to delete recording or to save it. Since there is little use in saving 45 minutes of a recorded movie, I told her to delete it--might as well. So after a 3 minute discussion, I jet out to the video store, where we have a free rental waiting for us, and I look for the movie in the two parts of the store where I think it might be and I can't find it. So I ask the guy behind the counter, who is polishing a CD, and he looks in the same two places, then he looks it up in the computer. "Sorry. We don't have any copies."

So I jet back home, tell my wife, and now she's watching Will and Grace. I'd rather be watching the track and field that was recorded over the weekend, but we settle on Grace and Will.

Family camp is this weekend and I look forward to running at 6:00 a.m., an canoeing, of course.

A pretty powerful answer to Cindy Sheehan here.

The tale of the farmer and donkey.

It's almost Sunday in Chicago.

I'm not in Chicago; I'm in suburban Ann Arbor, 12:47 a.m.. I just got back from seeing Emm Gryner in Port Huron. More about that later.

This morning began around 9:30 a.m. when me and the kids left for my daughter's horseback riding lessons, a few miles West of Chelsea. When we left the house and were safely out of the driveway, I called the trainer and told her that we were running about 15 minutes late. Not a big deal. When I was about 6 miles down the highway, I called her again to ask if she had a helmet, because I left my daughter's birthday present helmet at home. No, she didn't have one there, so I told her we would be about 20 more minutes late. Came home, got the purple riding helmet, then left down the road for the second time. The directions to her home were clear and we arrived about 35 minutes later.

The challenge for my daughter is being vocal with Misty. Now she can be very vocal with her brother, mother, and father, but with acquaintances or horses, she speaks as if she doesn't want to be rude. She's working on it, and I think that horseback riding is excellent medicine for her.

After the lesson, I was talking with her trainer and we started talking about breeding show horses and the arrangements it takes to breed with intention. She has two new horses that she bred to be show horses, one is a yearling and one is a foal. I learned that the foal has a million dollar father (as in prize money earned) and with a little luck, she can be a good show horse.

She told me a little bit about her story: that after she got married, she looked into what it would take to become educated as a veterinarian. She already owned several horses and wanted a practical profession. But after talking it over with her husband, she questioned what she really wanted. What she really wanted was to work with her horses full time, care for them, raise them, breed them, and with some luck, make some money off of them. She decided to follow her bliss instead of taking a route to material security.

Now an owner of 6 or 7 horses and 4 - 5 acres of land does not lack some degree of financial security. By the looks of the house, and the features I saw, I'm sure there is some comfort they enjoy. But I wasn't jealous of her property; I was jealous of her decision to live her life in accord with her bliss.

Around 6:30 p.m. I left the house and headed East on 94 towards Port Huron. Somewhere between two and ten detours later, I landed at the Raven Coffeehouse, a mere 20 minutes late, at 8:20 p.m., but because Tricia Concepcion was the first of three acts, I didn't miss either of Emm's sets. I enjoyed Tricia, but once again Emm made me smile and dance inside. I spoke to her between her sets and even gave her a recommendation, Hello Aquarius. Later, when she introduced the song, she dedicated it to "Dave from Ypsilanti" and went on to say that she liked towns that begin with the letter "Y". I didn't think about it until I was driving home but the three women who sang at the Raven Coffeehouse were starving artists. But like my friend the horse trainer, they continue to follow what makes them thrive.

So now I write a multi paragraph blog and I'm thinking about my wife and how she and Sue giggle when we're out having a brew, and I go on and on for minutes and minutes about minutia. Well my god! The beauty of the story is wrapped in minutia. I could go on for pages about the bar at the coffeehouse, with the sign in front of my face that said "Service/Price/Quality: Choose Two" or the postcards of Dali and 1950's movies under the plastic laminate, or I could tell you about the posters on the wall, like the Beatles in black and white, except for Paul's neck tie, or the poster of Marilyn Monroe naked on her red satin sheets. And I won't tell you the detail about the kid on his bike from whom I had to ask directions or the latin guy a few minutes later sitting on his front steps with a cell phone in his left hand who I also asked for directions, because, as you recall, there was construction on Military Street. Or the fact that when I left the coffeehouse and headed back to 94 on Military, that I could have sworn I saw the same boy on his bike that I spoke to earlier, asking for directions. No I won't bore you with those banal details.

Bliss, that's the theme of the night. Maybe my bliss is in the details.

Well, I have to get to bed. It's late and I have to go to work tomorrow.

I found this safe-for-work knock off of the window washer I posted yesterday: Imagination.

Which one is the knock off?

I wrote a friend earlier today--he's in Chicago--and I mentioned that I have a blog that sometimes even gets a hit. I belittle myself. He was a Philosophy major in college. Those are the ones who study cryptic text and pontificate with Platonic merit and when they are done with their degree, they are more than qualified to open a coffee shop. So I write my friend and share with him this link which is actually a subset of what is provided here.

I found something slightly lewd and marginally clever. I need to decide if I am allowed to publish a link to some boobs, all in decent taste, of course. Now I get to thinking about my audience, some 6000 of you, and the demographic of this population. Since we're all adults here, and since we're not reading my blog from work, I think I will give you this tasty treat: it's called [link has been removed by content editor because of unpopular demand].

Finally, even NASA thinks paper airplanes are important. There are other interesting aerospace links as well.

I received a post card from my brother today. It is a post card of the Sheraton Hotel, in Doha, Qatar. I've never been there, and it's unclear from the content of the post card if he's been there. He did write that it's over 110 degrees Fahrenheit.

Now I'm home watching the International Association of Athletics Federations on CBC. I'm glad we have TIVO: I was able to watch 2 hours of programming in about one hour last night.

I don't know where my inpspiration goes sometimes and I don't always find it in the same place. Today I happened upon my inspiration when reading something very small on the UUAA web page. I was looking at this page and towards the bottom is a sermon by Valerie Mapstone Ackerman titled "Why I Want To Be A Unitarian Universalist Minister". I didn't read the piece, but I think I know the thesis of her sermon. Then inspiration comes by and I say that her topic is the exact opposite of what I would deliver as a sermon. My sermon would be "Why I Would Not Want To Be A Unitarian Universalist Minister".

I would not want to be a UU minister for two reasons: 1. I do not hold onto beliefs very long. I was a Catholic for much of my developmental years. CCD, first communion, confirmation, and all that jazz. I was a born again, in the Christian sense, for a few other years. I was a devout atheist for a few more years. Now I'm just a good person. Maybe a humanist, or something like that. But I would not want to be a UU minister because my core beliefs change, and I think that is a good thing. 2. The second reason would not want to be a UU minister is that I do not want to profess that I have an answer. Ken Pfiefer, the congregation's previous minister, has 9 precepts in his credo. Those are his core beliefs. He would preach about them and share why they work for him. He would sometimes talk like they are universal truths, but he wouldn't force everyone to believe them. On occasion, he would use the pulpit to preach and teach some of his strong feelings: the war against terror, or gay rights, or liberal UU church tradition, for example. This second type of sermon, the preach to teach a universal truth sermon, is the kind that I could not perform from my pulpit. I am very much a truth with a small "t" person, a guy who allows each person freedom to think critically and make decisions about what they feel is important. As long as this small criteria is met, and as long as they love their neighbor as themselves, then I am okay with their belief system. So I would be a poor teacher of truth, except the high level concept about what it means to draft one's own truth.

So that is the end of my outline on "Why I Would Not Want To Be A Unitarian Universalist Minister". While I would like the stage, the preparation of a sermon, the reading, the philosophical discussions with others, and refining what I believe from week to week, I would not trust that I would hold one set of beliefs consistently and I also would avoid trying to teach anything close to absolutes when I preach.

Have you seen the new version of putt putt golf: Pitch N Put Golf?

Follow this link to view some photos from my digital camera.

(yea, right.)

Brought my kids to work yesterday. What? you ask, yesterday was Sunday. Well, yes, it was Sunday, but I need to work a few extra hours so I can have a day off next week when my daughter doesn't have camp or school. So my wife brought the kids to the plant, and they got to see my office, the computer room, and the warehouse that holds over 1000 coils of steel. I think they were most impressed with .... I don't know. My son remarked on how small my work is. What he meant was that the hallway outside my office is only about 25 - 30 feet long. I don't think he realized the size of the blue building outside where the steel is galvanized.

After the short tour, we went to La Shish for dinner. A little expensive and a little delicious. The restaurant is a popular lunch spot for a lot of the workers here in Dearborn, and on Sunday afternoon, it was popular with everybody except my kids.

Here are two photos of a storage box that we picked up at a garage sale. When I got to Lowe's I bought some discount paint and touched it up a bit. The top photo is before; the bottom photo is after.

The box now sits under my son's bedroom window.

My wife got the results of her MRI from her doctor. He said she had a bruised bone. That's a relief. I thought she had (see post below) something far more serious.

Communal white board or refrigerator with letters. Today is another Saturday, and another birthday party. This time, the parents instructed us not to buy any birthday presents for their daughter. That's cool. For the neighbor who had a party yesterday, we bought him a small gift plus a gift card for Toys R Us. Gift cards or cash make so much sense to me, now that I've been through two birthday parties for my own kids this year.

Peace.

I ran a short run yesterday. It was the first run I've had since I got sick a week ago. I decided to only run 2.5 miles, and when I finished back at the stop sign, where I normally stop, I decided to turn around and walk the short block around the neighborhood, about 1/2 mile. In a wet t-shirt and my blue shorts, I made my way on the sidewalk and felt pretty good about the 2.5 miles. When I saw our two story house in the distance, I found myself pulling on a leaf of an evergreen plant. It was much like the scale like leaf in this picture. So I looked at this leaf and wondered about the pattern. The pattern started broad, then sort of repeated more narrow, and narrow, until my eyes reached the tip of the broad leaf. I thought about the fractal patterns that exist in nature. Here is what the patterns do: they do what they are supposed to do. They go on and on with what is natural in their life, repeating their special trait. One philosophy of life is that we are creatures who are supposed to exercise what comes naturally. If music comes naturally, practice it. If art, science, math, communication, or whatever, comes naturally, then practice it. On the other hand, we are not like fractal patterns. We can learn. Humans separate ourselves from other animals by our ability to learn and pass, or teach, to others in our species. I suppose other animals can "teach", but humans seek answers, and ways to pass on information. This is not innate or instinctive teaching, but it is purposeful and with intention. So I am teaching myself manga. It might take 6 years until I can draw anything close to what I see in my instruction book or online, but at least I'm learning. What I'm trying to say is that the broad evergreen leaf showed me that I should continue on and on with my gifts, which is a trait like the fractal, but I should not stop learning: I should discover new skills that I can add to my internal design. When the skill comes easy, or if the desire is great enough, my pattern will change, and I can grow with a new design.

Ok. I think I beat that metaphor to death.

When I got home from my run, I went out back and watered the tomato plants. I smacked a few mosquitoes on my wet arm. I thought about how I just killed any chance he or she had at doing what came naturally.

My beautiful wife had an MRI of her ankle, and I was impressed with the write-up:



Procedure: Routine adult protocol MRI of the left ankle was performed
on 1.5 Tesla magnet.

Impression:

1. Nonspecific diffuse edema of the talar neck extending distally
into the talar head. No fracture line is identified. The findings may
represent ongoing stress related injury.

2. There is focal edema at the medial tibiotalar joint space,
involving the adjacent talar dome and medial malleolus without a
fracture line. Findings are also likely related to prior trauma.

3. The anterior talofibular ligament is intact, but is thickened and
demonstrates increased intrinsic signal compatible with prior injury.
There is no surrounding edema. The remaining ligaments of the ankle
are intact and demonstrate normal signal characteristics.

4. Small ankle joint effusion and edema in the adjacent Kager's fat pad.

5. No focal osteochondral abnormality.


===

End of write-up.

I was equally impressed, or even titanically impressed, with a dude's personal web page which details the anatomy of human beings like no other page I've seen. She found the anatomy of the Lower Leg Joints here. But hyperlinks abound if you surf to other pages on Dr. Norman's homepage.

Astronomers Discover "10th Planet"; some video of the object here; seems like a hoax, but apparently the timing of the press released was influenced by the actions of a hacker; and the "planet" probably won't be called Xena.

I began reading Pony Pals: A Pony For Keeps with my daughter tonight. This will be the third or fourth Pony Pals book we will have read. She came to me soon before the kids were going to bed and made me the proposition that we read the book together, left/right. In other words, she'll read one page & I'll read the next. We've done this before, after I put my son to bed, and it's a good ritual. So we read a few pages this way & we'll probably have the book done in about 10 nights with this method.

If you don't like ponies, you might not like cats either, so you might enjoy Feline Crisis. If you like FC, you might also like Rubber Band It.

And speaking of horses, there is always the ever popular Lemonade Stand, with an equine twist.

I'm a little under the weather today. My parents visited this past weekend and it was a good visit. I learned that my father doesn't like the choices at a deli, and would prefer a "family restaurant". Now I have a pretty good idea what his referent is for "family restaurant": a restaurant that serves loaves of bread when you sit down, along with some cold butter, and a menu that is 100 items long. I once found an item on the menu of a family restaurant that was meatless. On that particular trip, I bet my parents thought there was bound to be something a vegetarian could eat in a place where the menu was longer than a Tolstoy novel, but I learned that a restaurant with that reputation will not even carry a basic marinara sauce. Now my parents have good intentions when they took me to their family restaurants, and I had good intentions when I took them to Amer's Deli (link, link) on Friday. So what protocol should I follow when entertaining my parents? Choose a restaurant that is a clone of the restaurants they like in Chicago, or choose a restaurant that communicates something about the kind of meal I like?

I had a Number 61, and it was delicious. My son munched on some chicken salad, and my daughter ate up her red potato salad.

I think the most important thing is that my kids had a date with the grandparents, and hopefully some quality time.

Sometimes I find some new music at You Ain't No Picasso; sometimes I don't.