I'm no tree hugger...

I've got something to share, and need to make a blog post, so this is it.  The thing I want to share is at the end...

The last couple of times I have been to the store, I have been asked if I want my stuff in bags.  (Things like big packages of diapers, boxes of Capri Sun, that sort of thing.)  I always say yes, and I always want plastic.  The bagger was a little annoyed at the diapers, and today the bagger was mostly just amused, I bought $60 in drinks.  (Pop, Capri Sun, Gatorade.  It was all on sale, and it is hot here.)  Why do I always want my stuff in bags?  Because we use the bags as garbage bags at home.  The garbage doesn't pile up, and is just the right size for Kate, Mary, or Emma to carry out to the can.

We have a recycle can, they come every other week to pick it up.  We easily could fill the can every week if they came that often.  We started getting the recycle can when our garbage can started filling every week.  It cost as much for a second can is it did for a recycle can so we tried it out.  So far so good. 

That's about as environmentally friendly as I get.  It doesn't bother me that I drive a car around.  I am not worried about my carbon footprint.  (Here it is.)  I once buried 150 pounds of burnt spaghetti in the middle of a forest.  And not very deep.  I am sure at some point a bear and some raccoons came across it and either had a feast, made a mess, or at the very least said "What in the world is this?"  I never went back to check on it after.  I really should have.

Game time

Catan: The card game



I won, beating Tara.  (Blue deck.)  The score was 12 to 11.  Tara was "cheating" by trading in mixed sets of resources.  (She claims it was a lack of knowledge of the rules.)  It had been a while since we had played this, it is really nice to be able to play the game on a table that is actually long enough to keep all the cards on...

5 Things

When we get to the point of not being able to get the girls to pick things in house, I sometimes have them go pick up 5 things and show them to me.  I don't make any big/small/significance assignments, I just have them bring me 5 things, then have them put them away.  Tara had a treat box that the girls can pick out of from time to time.  The treat box has things like comic books, little kid books, stickers, workbooks, stickers, pencils, sometimes candy, just little stuff for them to pick.  I usually tie performance with "5 things" to getting to pick out of the box.  This seems to be a fairly motivating thing for at least Kate and Mary, who try to outdo each other.  (Sometimes just the person in the lead at the end gets to pick out, sometimes those who do a good job get to pick out.  This keeps them on their toes, although it also gets Mary to try to keep bargaining to not be in the lead, but still pick out.)  It seems to work better than just telling them to clean up, since they can easily find and grab 5 things at a time that need to be picked up.  The fact that I made a competition out of it takes care of the rest.  Once they get all the big stuff, they start to say that everything is done, and I have to make suggestions at that point, but they eventually start tuning their focus and finding lots of stuff to pick up.

Today we "played" 5 things, you can see the results.  This might seem insignificant, until you consider these are sets of 5, and it was stuff the girls picked up and put away, in a house that wasn't that messy...

The 4th of July is coming

Enjoy.

Spending a day with Ruth

Today Tara went on a day trip to do a quilt shop hop.  She seems to like those things.  We loaned our big van to the ward for Youth Conference, so Tara took the Minivan.  Missy and Tara's Mom were planning to go with her, and Tara was taking the girls to her sister's house, so we were short 1 car seat.  I talked Ruth into coming to work with me to solve the problem.

We took Ruth's scooter with us, I figured she could ride it around the office.  In the morning, Ruth watched parts of The Tigger Movie, and did a fair amount of coloring.  We would have watched Shrek, but when we got to the office and opened the case, the DVD was missing.  Today was a "fun walk" on campus, which I had forgotten about.  Ruth did a fair amount of walking on it (maybe a mile total), and a fair amount of being carried.  I kind of hoped to have her get tired and take a nap this afternoon.  The wellness people that sponsor the fun walk gave her a balloon, and tied it to her wrist, but she was offended by the tying to the wrist, and make me old it.  After the fun walk, Ruth watched Doogle.

At about 2:30, she got bored and started riding her scooter around the office until she could tell I was not paying attention, and made a bee line for the door.  She started going down the hall a little and saying "Dad, I am all the way down here", then running back down the hall and into the office.  This was o, I guess, but the voice got quieter and quieter to the point that I decided I needed to go look for her.  She wouldn't stay in the room by that point, and I didn't really want to shut the door to bar her in.  (She seemed to like going out to the outside doors and hang on the crash bars for the doors.)  We ended up leaving.

Tara's little trip is until sometime after 8pm, so I took Ruth to Golden Coral for dinner.  She had a large variation of foods.  The waitress gave her another balloon.  I had a fair amount of the fish fry.  The fish was just the way I like it, crisp and brown on the outside, tender and flaky on the inside.  I did not like the fried liver pieces or whatever it was.  I tried a sugar free cookie, but it was hard as cardboard, if they are all like that, I will pass.

Afterwards, we were to Toys'R'Us to wander around.  Ruth bought a Disney princesses ball, (with her allowance money) got to ride in one of those silly little kiddie rides, and we almost won a stuffed elephant from one of those claw machines.  (I only on the only grab I tried, I had the elephant, and got it 2/3 of the way to the prize door, but the thing is designed to shimmy and shake on it's way over, and the elephant dropped back onto the pile.  It fell into a position that I didn't think it was worth 50 cents to try a second time...)

We came home, Ruth did 2 puzzles, then fell asleep on the couch.  I guess I can take going to sleep at 6:30pm as a fair trade for not taking a nap...

In Training

John and Jess were gone from work (to Boston) last week, which meant if something happened, I would get the call, time off for a new baby or not. I did get some calls, but not too terribly many, nothing that was incredibly hard to fix. John and Jess brought me back a Red Sox mini bat. This was very nice of them.

I clearly need to work a little on Adam's form, he is choking up on the bat a little too much.

He does seem to have pretty good form for bunting.

Ticket to Ride

Tara, Missy, Steve, and I played Ticket to Ride tonight after the girls "went to bed." The results? Not exactly what I thought they would be when the game was winding down. I knew Steve had the longest train, but he only had 5 tickets, which I thought would be a problem for him. Tara had 70 points just from laying down track. I had a ton of tickets, but in the last 10 hands, my game started to fall apart. I picked up Portland to Nashville, which I could have finished on the next turn, but Steve blocked Portland on that turn, so I didn't get it. I kept taking tickets trying to find New York to Dallas, which I already had, but Tara had that ticket in her hand.

1st - Steve - 130-something points
2nd - Me - 110 points
3rd - Missy - 90-something points
4th - Tara - 80 points

The real truth

I think Dora the Explorer's cousin Diego is really a communist. Just thought I'd share.

Age of Empires

Last week, I lamented that our weekly Age of Empires sessions were waning. Not many of my siblings have been participating.

This morning, I woke up at 8:30. I missed the game this week. I didn't realize it was Saturday. I guess skipping work for more than a week has me a little messed up...

Goal Tournament

Once a year, in our department at work, we have a little golf tournament. One year we got a sponsor to do some prizes, but that was the exception to the thing. The outing is always a scramble, since there are varying skill levels at play.

This year, it was a 2 man scramble, Steve M and I were on a team. We ended up 2 over par, which I thought was really good. We ended up winning by 7 strokes. The accomplishment for me was that I only lost 2 golf balls and 1tee for the entire thing...

I don't plan to make a habit out of it.

Parking ticket

On Wednesday night, I parked the minivan in front of the house at the street. I didn't think about it at the time, but the minivan didn't have a parking pass in it. Thursday morning, I had a parking ticket. (We have no overnight parking without a pass.)

I went in today it see if there was anyway to talk my way out of the ticket, but I got stonewalled. Drew didn't think I was going to be able to talk my way out of it... I asked if I could apply the $10 ticket towards my parking passes for next year, the girl just laughed a little and told me to talk to the city council about that.

Oh well, my (10 dollar) mistake.

Jury Duty

I got a jury summons today for federal court. My service is from September to December of this year. I hope they know what they are getting into. I don't know that anyone would want me to serve on a jury. Maybe I am wrong. I fully plan to try to pull the following 3 cards:

• Brother who is a cop
• Brother who is in the army
• I'm a Unix Systems Engineer

I'm banking #3 is my ace in the hole. I suppose the fact that it's a federal jury means I it would be a Grand Jury, right?

Election Judge training - part 2

I went this morning to the poll manager class for the elections, when I walked in the guy teaching said "John, I need to talk to you really quick." I thought it was a bad sign that he knew my name. (He was the guy from last year that did the classes. He had been talking with the county elections lady and told her I didn't need to be in the class, because there wasn't a thing he would say that I didn't already know. They excused me from the class.

What a deal! More than I had ever hoped for. The elections lady said they were talking about ways they could test out people from the 2nd class in the future. All my election judge training dreams are coming true...

Cammo Boy

Adam likes his arms to be free. He also seems to like to have his hands above his head while asleep.

Someone gave us this cammo blanker that is actually frogs. (Tara's mom, maybe?) He is also wearing cammo pants in this picture. Can you make them out? (He peed all over them shortly after this picture was taken. I need to devise some sort of shield for the changing table...)

Ruth spent an hour watching him sleep this afternoon. At least she is not trying to climb in with him at this point, like Lily has been thinking about. Lily has also tried twice to drink from his bottle.

A Father's Day travelogue

This morning, I got up not quite as early as other days. (7:00 instead of the 5:30am wakeup that was starting to be an annoying habit, since I wasn't really going to bed any earlier...) It took some convincing 45 minutes later to get the girls out of their beds, but they eventually all started moving. We thought Missy was coming over to do up the girls hair before church, but she didn't show, so I gave it a go. Tara usually asks the girls how they wanted their hair done, (ponytail, pigtails, headband, half ponytails, etc.) but I am a one trick pony. They all got a headband in the front, and a ponytail in the back. I was mostly trying to avoid the "we are a bunch of urchins" look. I think we did ok. Everyone was ready for church early, so we walked. Missy and Steve caught up to us, they got confused on the time.

The girls sang with the primary, Ruth went up with them, I couldn't tell where she was standing up there, but she came back so I guess there was no harm done.

Lily usually does pretty good in sacrament meeting, but at least once a week she either decides to try to escape, or starts crying for one reason or another. Today she fell and bonked her head on the pew in front of us. I took her to the foyer, she started jumping like a frog and saying "ribbit." Not sure who taught her that, but she thinks it is funny.

Today was "Nursery Appreciation Day", Lily got to go to nursery. It seems to be 5000% easier when they already have a sibling in there to show them the ropes. Lily went in, I asked Ruth to show her what they do in nursery, Ruth tried to do a hand stand. I asked Ruth if she stands on her head in nursery, she said yes. I let it go, when the toy cupboard was opened, they both went over and I left. The nursery leaders said Lily did fine. (Pretty much what I expected.)

Mary had a scripture for Primary, she changed it to a scripture and a talk. (She wanted to talk about what the scripture was talking about.) She did a good job. The primary does a thing for Father's Day called "Dad in a sack", where they have this 7 foot sack you come in under, the kids ask questions to see if they can figure out who it is. Last time I did this, the first question was "Do you have 5 girls?", and they fingered me. This year, Mary asked me the first question, she asked "Are you my Dad?" That was the end of Dad in a sack for me this year. I must have some sort of distinctive look while under a 7 foot sack.

My phone rang about 30 times during church. A server at work went down and didn't come back. There was a Priesthood ordination scheduled, the high counselor assigned to attend forgot and ended up 30 miles away. I had to find someone else to go over there in his place. There was another Priesthood ordination later in the day, the Elder's Quorum president in that ward got some people riled up about the schedule even though there was nothing to get riled up about. I ended up talking to 5 different people about it, getting everyone on the same page. 2 different people needed 'emergency' temple recommends done. One was a guy getting married on Friday, he was leaving for Mexico Tuesday. The other was someone who lost his recommend. I was sitting near the Elder's Quorum present in priesthood, he was surprised when the phone started vibrating yet again at 11:45. I thought about not answering, but it was Tara, so I did.

After church, I went to the hospital to pick up Tara and Adam to bring them home. Someone had given us a (new to us) baby seat a few months back, and I hadn't really looked it over before today. The thing is not a 5 point harness, and really is a little too big for Adam to be riding safely in. I have to go buy a new car seat tomorrow. (They say you are not supposed to us baby carriers that are older than 5 years old. That's really ok for us, because the one we had before was "well used" and looked it's age.)

At some point, Tara talked to the girls about getting my Fathers Day presents out. They got a big bag, and wanted to decorate it, so I took Adam into our bedroom to feed him there so they could decorate and put the presents in. Tara was worried that the presents weren't anything special, but she did bring me home a son for Father's day, which really doesn't happen every year... I got a book, a super soaker, and a little thing to hold the tools to make hats and scarves. (I need to finish Lily's purse still) The girls seem to enjoy getting sprayed by water, except for Lily, who wasn't really paying attention and only knew she was wet...

In the evening, I ended up playing Catan and a game called Blokus with Rob and his brother. (And (his friend? I don't think it's another brother.) Brett. I got worked in Catan, they all blocked me off. I took 3rd in Blokus, but didn't get a rematch. (It was my first time playing.) I think I could have taken them in a second game, and I am sure I could take them in the triangles version...

Anyhow, it was a good fathers day, for me at least. Also, I was only peed on once.

2008 Goal Update

Tara is taking a nap. Adam is taking a nap. Not all the girls are asleep yet. (It is 10:45 at this point. I ended up turning out all the lights on one or two of them twice this weekend...) I am awake. I guess that means it's time for some blog updates.

1. Post a goal update to the blog at least twice a month. 11 updates - Right on schedule.
   
2. Don't let a post go by without some progress to report.
   
3. Stain the play set. Complete. Put it in the books
   
4. Finish the retaining wall. I have talked about this here this week. The Bishop's wife down the street may want us to go down and get her some tan bricks, so I will see if they have any more gray bricks for me, but I am not holding my breath. I really kind of like the way the wall is actually going to shape up now.
   
5. Finish the mission journal. No progress.
   
6. Build a bunk bed for Emma and Ruth. Late Spring. Maybe I should have bought wood instead of stone this past week. But I didn't.
   
7. Stay under the 210 weight. Current weight - 207. I've been eating a lot of junk food the past couple of days.
   
8. Go to the temple at least once a month. This has not happened yet this month.
   
9. Take Tara somewhere for our 10th wedding anniversary. Still looking for plane tickets to drop for September, but I've sunk $1000 into this trip to date...
   
10. Read 18 books. 11 books completed so far, I should finish another one very soon, since I need to read it for work to write a paper.
    
11. Plant something other than tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans and peas.

Book Review

Bay of Pigs: The Untold Story
Peter Wyden

A couple of months ago, after Fidel Castro "retired" (I use the quotes because I think he had been out of the loop for some time.), all the 90 second news blurbs would talk about was the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban missile crisis. I realized that I pretty much knew what happened in the Cuban missile crisis, but any details about the Bay if Pigs were clouded, if present. I decided it was time to pick up a book on the subject. This book, which I found at the city library, jumped out I think because of the bright yellow cover, and the picture on the back with Fidel Castro and the author, with a caption attributed to Castro that says "He knows more about it than we do."

The author goes into fairly details account of the planning behind the invasion, and what happened during the invasion, both in Cuba and in the United States. The author clearly did very very thorough investigation on the topic. The book was written about 18 years after the invasion, it sounds like his research was done from 76 to 77. It looks like this book is out of print, but if you can find it, and are interested in what happened, this book is sure to answer any and all questions you might have.

Basically, during the Eisenhower presidency, some guys in the CIA worked on some ways to get rid of Castro, when it became clear Communism was the name of his game. Eventually, Cuban Americans were drafted to form an invasion force to take back Cuba. It doesn't look like their plan was ever all that good, (clearly not from the result) and really is kind of sad. The invasion went forward with no backup from American military forces, and the less than 2000 fighters got routed by the Cuban militia.

I was reading the book yesterday at the hospital, we had a resident doctor in the room waiting to make sure that Tara's doctor actually made it to hospital in time to delivery the baby. He started talking about the Cuba and the Bay of Pigs. In his undergrad, he made a trip to Cuba for something or the other, and started talking about a museum they have in Cuba about the Bay of Pigs. (He said he was a PolySci major. Nothing against PolySci majors, some of my best friends were once PolySci majors, but none of them became doctors...) Anyhow, he started talking them having the U2 fuselage there from the U2 that got shot down. I was fairly far into the thing, well into the actual attack itself, more into the retreat, and hadn't yet seen any downed U2, and didn't think 2 U2s were shot down over Cuba. Then he started talking about the movie 13 days. He was talking about the Cuban missile crisis. Maybe he wasn't the best PolySci major after all...

Anyhow, this is a well written that covers just about every detail relating to the Bay of Pigs invasion. If you are interested in the who, what, when, where, and how, pick up this book.

Visiting the hospital

I took the girls up to the hospital yesterday afternoon, it was kind of crazy, some of them were tired. Ruth kept trying to take off, it was kind of hard to keep everyone together. This morning I took them over again, this time I had Lily in a stroller and Ruth on a leach. Things were much easier. (Who says I can't learn?) We also had cartoons for them to watch while we were there.

I took Tara a couple of Netflix and my laptop, by the time I came back at 3pm, she had watched them both. I guess she was bored.

Things still seem to be fine.

Adam Roderick Payne

The hospital called us to wake us up at 5:15am today. We went in, and Tara had the baby at 1:40pm. His name is Adam Roderick Payne. He was 8 pound and 20 inches. (No rounding here. I figure he just likes nice whole numbers. He must have also been opposed to being born yesterday since 12 is not a prime number.) Tara and the baby both appear to be doing fine.

We have Whatchamacallit candy bars for anyone that stops in for a visit at the hospital, in honor of the fact that this baby came with a "Whatchamacallit..."

Baby? Not yet... (No room at the inn)

Tara was supposed to be induced today. For previous inductions, we have scheduled the date, and the hospital called us very early in the morning to come in. (Like the 6am timeframe.) We expected about the same treatment today. We had a babysitter at the ready for the early AM (Missy and Steve), an afternoon babysitter (Tara's mom), and someone to watch the girls overnight. (Tara's parents house, except they were worried about having Lily, I was going to keep her tonight.) Here is what really happened:

I got up at 5:30am (2nd day in a row, not sure it really suits me.) to take a shower and get dressed. Lily woke up pretty quickly after that. We were waiting for the phone call to go in. I did a lot of laundry. I loaded the dishwasher and washed the load. Lily like to watch a show while she drinks her morning bottle, but there isn't much on at 6am, so I played Mario Kart Wii while she watched. (I know, the sacrifices I make...) I tried to feed Lily Raisin Bran, she objected and flung it all out of the bowl onto the tray. I had breakfast. (Grits and a fried egg) I went out and weeded the garden. At 9am, I decided to lay back down, since getting up early was clearly a mistake. At 9:20, Lily and Ruth decided I shouldn't be sleeping, and I got up.

I worked on the wall. I helped Missy and Steve work on their Wii Decathalon entries. (I think they are hooked now.) At 12:30pm, I called the hospital, Tara was #4 on the list, and there were no beds yet. They figured it would be a while.

The tricycles came, I put them together. Tara's Mom had showed up to babysit, we decided to take the girls up to her place then. Tara took them up there, I was still working on the tricycles, and watching The Incredible Hulk on TV.

When Tara got home, we got burritos from Costa Vida, and watched disk 3 of Ken Burns' Baseball. At 6:30, I called the hospital back, Tara was next on the list, but the nurse needed to talk to the doctor. The nurse called back, and said there was still not a bed, and the doctor wasn't sure she wanted to get up in the middle of the night if she didn't have to. The nurse was going to call us to talk to us when a bed was available. This call was at 6:40pm, right as Indiana Jones was starting, so we didn't go the movies. We decided to wander around for a while. We wandered around Macey's for a while, they now carry Anchor Bar sauce. (I requested it 6 months ago.) They are selling it for nearly $6 a bottle, which I hear is twice the price. Not a good deal when you can get it imported from Buffalo once a year or so.

We went to the Good Earth, which is a "Natural Foods" store. I was looking for sugar free candy bars. Macey's had one, but it was $3 a bar. The onyl thing remotely impressive to me about Good Earth was their little section where you can get different kinds of flours and rice and stuff in bulk. They have lots of different rices and lots of different grains. They also had "Meat Gelatin". Emma's been talking about meat jello for years. Now I can actually make her some real meat jello. (I didn't buy it this time.)

The nurse called back at 9pm, and said it would not be until tomorrow. She explained that they start calling at 5:30am or so, Tara is #3 on the list. If we don't hear from them at 7am, we should call and see what's up. Tomorrow morning I am supposed to be at Poll Manager training, I expect to miss it. The girls will stay at Tara's parents as long as needed, except for Lily, who won't lay down up there. Tara went to get her. Missy and Steve say they can watch Lily tomorrow morning. (Steve wants to play the Wii some more.) I think everything is still all lined up, except at this point, Tara would be coming home some time on Sunday, so I am not sure at this point what we will do about church.

It's really too bad for Tara, who has been expecting to go in today. It's bad enough having to sit in the hospital room waiting to have the baby, but she's sitting at home waiting to sit in the hospital room to wait to have the baby.

Garden Wall update

Steve and Missy were over late this morning doing some laundry. They had planned to watch the girls for us while Tara had the baby. (At 12:30pm, I called over there. Tara is still 4th on the list for induction and there were no available beds. So much for the 6am trip to the hospital we were expecting. At the rate things are going, we will have ourselves a Friday the 13th baby, but that's not the point of this entry.)

When Steve and Missy got there, I was just getting ready to work on the wall. I still had 30 stones left to set. Steve helped, we ended up doing another 9 feet or so, but not to full height. I got to the point where I wanted the wall to start turning back towards the house. There is not enough dirt right now, so I didn't want to build the wall all the way up. The wall right now is just barely around the bend.

I can't do anything else at this point unless I get new stone. I need to call the place up in Lehi to see if they make Castlewall and see if they sell overruns, or just wait for the place here to make more stone and have more overruns. This last batch I got had a little bit of a tan tint on some parts of the stone, I think that's the only thing that made them overruns.

Doing the turn here is adding about 150 square feet to the garden, which is a lot, really. I will take part of it to put in a composting station, and we might do a little part for some other flowering tree and some flowers, but the rest of it will be garden space. There won't be any reason we can't plant corn, or anything, really.

The little red tricycles

Back in March, I ordered a couple of little little red Radio Flyer tricycles for Ruth's birthday. They got back ordered. Tuesday night, out of the blue, I got an email from Amazon saying the things shipped. They arrived today.

I was putting Lily's together as the girls were getting into the van to head up to Tara's parents house. I had Lily try it on to make sure it was the right size, and we almost couldn't get her off it. We will have to give her plenty of time to ride it around sometime later. Her feet don't quite reach the pedals when they are furthest away from her, but she'll grow into it.


These are labeled as "retro red", they have a nice retro look to them. Back in the day, I used to race around on a red tricycle. We also had a smaller blue tricycle, they were a matching set.

Blog Lists are live.

Do you like the new way that the blog lists I have here have been displayed for the last little while? (Sorted by the last update, with the title of the latest update for each blog.) This feature was released into the wild here on blogger this week. It's out of beta, and anyone can use it. Those of you who did want to switch because it was in beta can proceed.

I've liked it. It's kind of nice to be able to see the latest update from people. I used to use google reader, but I use it much less these days, and rely on the blog list more. Tara used to just hit every link off my blog every once in a while looking for new posts, but now she just sees who has new posts and goes for it.

Anyway, fear the beta no longer.

Birthdya present

My parents sent me a birthday card, and sent some money with it. (Thanks, by the way.) My Mom asked if I was going to do something fun with it, and in the haze I was in, I didn't really have a good response for her, but I do know what I will be doing with the money. The money will be used for "Lego Star Wars" for the Wii. I will finally be able to start honed the girls' light saber skills...

Sick day

I've been kind of sick for the last couple of days. Friday night I slept for something like 12 hours, last night I slept for 14 hours. I ended up sleeping through church. I ended up missing Saturday morning game time. Really the only thing I did yesterday was go to the baptism for one of Tara's nieces. (I took a nap after while people were talking at their house.)

Mostly its like a cold with lots of fatigue. I'd say it was the flu, except it's hard to tell if I have aches and pains, since I always have aches and pains. It's hard to tell if it's just allergies. As far as I can tell, I'd guess it was a cold with mild allergies. This afternoon, I've had some periods of standing followed by periods of sitting and lying down.

It might be the sick induced paranoia, but it seems like I get sick like this this time of year every year. Today is Stake Priesthood meeting, I missed it. If I remember right, I missed Stake Priesthood meeting this time last year because I was sick. Every couple of years, we are on a trip driving somewhere this time of year, and I always seem to get sick during the trip. (stuffy head, itchy eyes, that sort of thing.) Maybe I have some sort of biological time bomb in me that goes off the same time each year.

On Friday evening, I patched my laptop. I ended up updating the kernel, which broke the nvidia driver for the laptop. (An expected thing.) In the sickened haze I was starting in, I didn't get the thing fixed. I still couldn't pay the problem the attention it deserved on Saturday, the little time I had the machine on was spent in Windows. When I woke up this afternoon, my head cleared up enough to get my laptop fixed, which was good because I needed to finish the agenda for Stake Priesthood meeting. (I attribute the fixing of the laptop to the agenda problem more than anything else.) At this point I feel more focused, I think this has quite a bit to the fact that the Bishop came by a couple of hours ago to give me a blessing. (The blessing was a side effect of his visit, really.) This was good, because an hour ago, I got a call from Karl at work, he is oncall and had a problem he needed help with. I got the problem fixed, which is good because I think this problem has been happening for nearly a year, but they have been rebooting the server before I ever got a hold of it, so the real problem hasn't been fixed. I was able to find the problem fairly fast, which kind of surprised me at the time, because it wasn't something obvious, and it has been something that doesn't generate a log message. The fix for the problem was a piece of cake, just finding it was the hard part. (And everything makes sense in hindsight. I am fairly confidant that this has been happening a lot on this server for the past year or so.)

Wii Decathalon update

Another week has come and gone, and we have had another week of no one else showing up for the decathlon. People talk about it at church, but they must forget by the end of the week... Tara took advantage of the time to catch up, making sure she placed in every event. (She set a World Record in Rowing...) She vaulted herself way into 2nd place.

All the people that didn't come missed dessert. I made a Berry Yogurt cake. It might have had a few too many berries in it, but Tara and the girls seemed to like it. We have more cake, it's not too late.

Hockey & Basketball

The Detroit Red Wings won the Stanley Cup. Does anyone out there care? Has anyone out there watched any of the Stanley Cup playoffs at all? I don't think I've watched or followed any hockey since they had their little strike.

The Celtics and the Lakers are playing each other in the NBA finals. Tara is sure the fix is in. She is sure the NBA has rigged things to get these 2 teams in the finals. From what I saw, I would have to agree. I think they also pushed as many of the series to 7 games so they could milk it for all it was worth.

Anyway, the Cubs might have lost tonight, but they are still in first place, and have the best record in MLB. Ignore hockey, ignore basketball, go watch some baseball.

How does the voting process ever work properly?

I had to go to "Basic Poll Worker Training" this morning. I have been to this stupid thing at least twice a year for the last 3 years, since we started doing electronic voting. (I've also gone to advanced training each time, but that one is not as bad...) The problem is that the thing is mind numbingly boring at this point. They have maybe 5 minutes worth of new information, the rest is just repeat. In the advanced class, you set the machine up, run through the setup & tear down, and you are done. The basic class just keeps going and going. I know why they do it, it's because of all the people working as poll workers that are incapable of actually following directions, listening to what people are telling them, or anything. One guy today kept asking questions during the class that were answered just a few minutes before.

Sometimes I wonder how they actually get the election process done in some of the precincts. Back in the day, it used to drive me crazy to have someone wanting to do something not exactly right, but them also not listening. This doesn't mean that they were all bad, I worked with Richard and Narda Snow a few times, which was fine. I also worked with some people that drove me absolutely up the wall.

When our state switched to electronic voting, they started doing a Poll Manager. The Poll Manager is in charge of the process top to bottom at the polling place. I have been doing poll manager the entire time since they made the switch. (I actually put on my paper that I didn't want to help unless I was the poll manager.) I didn't want to have go back to having someone else doing something stupid, and not being in a position to do anything about it...

Anyhow, last time, lines were long all over. Our lines we kept down to 20 to 25 minutes at the most. (I heard one was 4 hours.) Anyway, this month is a primary election, things should be fine in our place, but some of those dudes I was with this morning were just completely clueless. I'm not sure how they will bee able to run a polling place, they just were not getting the concept for some reason...

On another note, people make a big deal about the security of the voting machines, but here is what we have: Machines that are locked, with me watching them all day long. A PCMCI card is used to store the votes, it is locked into the machine, and the machine also has a secured paper backup. The machines are not hooked to any network or phone line, so to breach the security of the voting machine, they have to get through me first. I actually told a guy that once, but I weighted 30 pounds more than I do now, maybe I am less imposing. I will have to practice my intimidating looks between now and the election.

I am an idiot

I have been trying to figure out where our money went since yesterday evening. We had less in our account than I thought we should have. It really didn't make sense. I went into our account this afternoon, and discovered the reason. Last Friday we got paid, and I sent out our mortgage payment. On Saturday, I realized that I hadn't paid the bills, and went through them paying them off. (We use online bill pay for as much as possible.) I also sent off the mortgage payment.

Yes, this means I paid the mortgage twice this month. That's where the missing money is. I went online to look at our mortgage account, they had both posts, and our next due date is August instead of July. I called them up to verify, the payment is applied to our July post, and we don't have to pay again until August. That means I can get the money back iff (That's "if and only if" for the non mathematically inclined) I remember to not pay the mortgage June 30 when we get paid...

2008 Goal update

1. Post a goal update to the blog at least twice a month. 10 updates - Right on schedule.
   
2. Don't let a post go by without some progress to report. Progress here, and non-Progress. Not sure if it cancels itself out or not
   
3. Stain the play set. Complete. Put it in the books
   
4. Finish the retaining wall. I bought a bunch of stone of Friday afternoon, and extended the wall another 11 feet. The stone place doesn't have much overrun material left, so if I finish now it might cost me more. They charged me less than a couple of years ago, so maybe paying retail for some of it keeps the cost balanced, but I will likely just do what I can and come back another time for more stone. (The 50 cent price point is very, very nice.)
   
5. Finish the mission journal. No progress.
   
6. Build a bunk bed for Emma and Ruth. Late Spring. Maybe I should have bought wood instead of stone this past week. But I didn't.
   
7. Stay under the 210 weight. Current weight - 203.
   
8. Go to the temple at least once a month. I was thinking about this earlier in the week, but then I kind of lost a couple of days there. And now it's June. That's 2 months out of 5 that I didn't go.
   
9. Take Tara somewhere for our 10th wedding anniversary. Still looking for plane tickets to drop for September, but I've sunk $1000 into this trip to date...
   
10. Read 18 books. 10 books completed so far, things should pick up more now that the city library has started their summer reading program...
    
11. Plant something other than tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans and peas.
I replanted some seeds, but those didn't really start. If I see nothing coming up tomorrow, I will plant some inside to get some starters going. I'm talking Zucchini, Cucumbers, and Spagetti squash here, so it's not like we won't get production out of the plants at this point...