A letter to the Mountain West Conference

Dear Mountain West,
I am tired of watching football games on "The MTN." that look like they are being streamed on a very poor internet connection. Is it a camera problem? Do you need someone to buy you some new ones? Are you sending the signal from the stadium through someone's cell phone? Half of the time the picture quality is not good. This has been a problem since this television network started. I'm not sure what we as consumers need to do to get this problem fixed, but your broadcast quality is not good at all...

Birthday party

Tonight we had cake and ice cream for Tara, Emma, Kate, and Tom. (But I forgot about Tom's birthday. Good thing we are not there yet.) Here are a select few pictures from the event.

"I want him to hold me"

Lily often wants Adam to hold her. You can see the results of one of the successful requests...

Emma on the first day of school

The Adams

Adam's Uncle Adam came for a visit this week. He ended up having 2 more days worth of leave than he expected.

On Wednesday, I skipped work. Drew, Adam, Tom and I went up to a place called "Rocky Mountain Wingshak" for lunch. Their wings were good, but the 'hot' wasn't all that hot, really. I tried the 'Hot garlic pepper' wings, which were pretty good.

After that we went up to Cabella's. It was my first trip up there. (I had been waiting for the lines to die down.) The only thing I have to say is that those 3 brothers of mine are gun crazy. There is no way we could have guns here, Mary, Ruth and Lily all have even chances of getting into something like that.

Then we came down and played Mario Kart Wii for a while.

Adam had a broken rib while he was here, and wasn't all that comfortable.

Kindergarten birthday party

Emma had a little thing for her birthday yesterday at school. Here is a badly focused picture of it. (I used my cell phone.) Emma is in the very middle of the picture way in the back of the class. (With the crown on her head.)

Queen of the one liner (for the day)

Yesterday morning, Tara was at my office for a few minutes, Jeff was going on about wanting to just start offending everyone at work until he gets fired. (He said something in an oncall report this week that got someone riled up.) Tara was walking out as he was saying this, and said "Trust me, that doesn't work."

Everyone in the office thought that was hilarious. The fact is Tara beat me to it, they were very impressed she would say it.

The final Seven Peaks trip

On Monday, I took Ruth over to Seven Peaks. It took her a little bit to warm up to being in the water, but after that, she started getting braver. She liked the wave pool. but the waves were strong enough that they eventually started knocking her over. We were in the wave pool 3 times when the waves were going, and had to get out all three times before the waves were over.

Ruth really liked the "tadpole pond", where the water was 2 feet deep. It was just her speed. She liked going up to the "Mushroom area" of the space to look down on everyone and splash them. She also like going down the slides from there.

A season pass for next year is $40 through next Monday. It might be worth it to get one if the girls are all going to get free passes again, we could easily surpass $40 on adult passes, since Tom is not likely to be working at the place next year, and we won't be getting any free adult passes. (On Monday, I got them to take an all day child's pass for me, since we were there for the "half day" rate...)

September Goals

I'll keep it (sort of) simple for September, and post 4 goals:

1. Read 5 books. 3 of these are already in some form of being worked on. 3 of these, but not the same 3, are library books due back at the library fairly soon.
2. Sell the minivan. This one is not totally in my control. I'm tired of the extra car payment that I have been making, and wouldn't mind at all if I could stop.
3. Finish a detailed design paper at work. I've got a project that has been dragging on for about 10 months at work, the last 5 months or so have been my fault really. I did a proof of concept, and was supposed to write the detailed design after that, but other things kept getting in the way.
   
4. Enjoy our vacation. It should be fun.

That's it. It doesn't seem like a lot, but it really is quite a bit to tackle. I am sure the paper is 2 full weeks worth of work, the vacation is 10 days. If I do nothing this next month but get these done, I will not be upset at all...

Damage!

Last Tuesday, while driving around after finding Seven Peaks closed, I accidentally scraped the side of the car on a cattle guard or a big truck in a parking lot. The only thing the van did to the truck was leave some white paint on the cattle guard. The van was left with a bruise...

I left a note on the truck explaining what happened, along with my phone number. The owner of the truck never called back. I guess they agree with my assessment of 'no harm dune', at least on their end of it.

Emma's Birthday

Emma's birthday is tomorrow. (That's right all you "fans of Emma", tomorrow is the day.) I have a Disney Princesses game for the Wii that I think she will like. Stay tuned.

Last night Missy gave Emma a dress. (We think Missy made it for her.) Emma wore it to church today.

Ruth insisted that I also take a picture of her.

The bane of volunteer movers

I got called late last night to go help someone move this morning. The High Priests group leader thought it would take about an hour.

I got there at 8am, and was the first one there. This was a single parent, I waited for someone else to show. It turned out that this lady had not packed a single thing. She was in an apartment complex for the Summer that housed single girls in the Fall and Winter, so I know she had known for quite some time that she would be moving. This is my least favorite thing. I think it's ok to not pack if you are going from one apartment to another in an apartment complex, or if you are moving half way down the street, but when you are moving 20 miles away, and you want people to come help you move, you should at least pack your stuff and not expect the volunteers to.

It could have been worse. When I got ready to take the couch, she told us that all the furniture stayed in the apartment. All the furniture. This was nice.

It could have been worse. Once on my mission, we went to help a family move, they also hadn't packed anything, but had 12 rabbits in the house. It was nasty, dirty, and disgusting.

We were done in 2 1/2 hours. Better than expecting an hour and taking all day long...

Sleeping through the night.

3 or 4 nights ago, without any transition or warning, Adam started sleeping through the night. At least that is what I have been told. That's good for Tara. Now if only the Olympics would wrap up so we can go back to our normal life. I keep falling asleep on the couch, which isn't all that comfortable in the morning or all that restful, really.

Seven Peaks revisited

I ended up taking Mary and Emma both to Seven Peaks this afternoon. Here we are getting ready to go. I am the one on the right.

It was a risk taking both of the girls, but the place was only open from 4 to 8. I was a little worried about keeping them both together and keeping them both above the water. I ended up getting both of them life jackets to wear, this helped a lot. I guess Mary had been practicing at Missy's old place, she didn't do too bad.

Both of the girls really liked the wave pool. We easily spent half our time there in the wave pool. Emma liked wading out to the 3 foot mark, and let the waves push her back to the beach. I tried to take them over to the lazy river, Mary really wanted to go around it, but Emma wasn't really all that sure. (The water was cold, which didn't really help.)

At about 6:30 or 7:00, Steve Lee came up and said hi. He was there with 2 of his girls. (6 and 4 years old, I don't remember their names.) I hadn't seen Steve in years. He lives up in North part of the valley, and I think he said he works doing capital investment for some Japanese companies. I could be wrong about that, I was also busy trying to keep an eye on Emma and Mary at the time, who were headed different directions in the pool. It sounds like he is doing well, anyway. I thought about asking if he still heard from Zippy, but didn't get around to it.

The girls had a good time, I think I wore them out.

Laptop payback

I've said it before - I feel sorry for the student that gets my laptop after I am done with it.

My laptop is trying to punish me for something. A few of weeks ago, I noticed that they thing only lasts about 20 or 30 minutes on it's battery. I thought that was kind of weird, then a couple of weeks ago, I noticed the thing was generating a charge on the outside of the lid. It is not a strong charge, but it is definitely there. Yesterday I started getting shocked from the corner of the laptop at the wrist rest. Not a lot, just enough that it starts to sting after a little bit. I don't think I feel it in the keyboard or anything like that, but I should probably get the thing looked at, since the shock on the lid would be a bit stronger for the girls if the touch it in the right spot. (There are 2 spots where the monitor hooks to the base where the charge is stronger.) I guess there is a chance that the minor charge could built to a serious one also.

The big problem is that anything I do will end up with them wanting to take my laptop away. This is sometimes a multiple day adventure. They give you a smaller laptop as a loaner, but it always has a smaller keyboard, which is harder to type on, and they always have Windows preloaded on it...

Maybe I can convince them to just order parts without taking my machine. That's after I convince them that the thing is building a charge. (It resets when I turn it off, and I don't know if it does it when I am plugged into my port replicator at my desk. I have to see if I can find a voltmeter somewhere.

Now that I'm thinking about it...

• Tomatoes - We have a lot of tomatoes. I picked about a third of a bushel today. We have 6 different types of tomatoes this year. At the BBQ on Saturday, I grilled some tomatoes. I sliced the tops off them, put some ranch dressing on them and topped them with cornbread stuffing crumbs. Them I let them cook on the grill until they were tender. They were pretty good.
• The misguided trip to Seven Peaks - Ruth was pretty upset that she couldn't go in. She didn't seem to understand that they were closed. This afternoon she told me they had to be open by then, and was ready to go again. I really need to fit in a couple trips for the girls in the next 2 weeks before the place closes. Emma was kind of ticked off that she wasn't going, I told her she could go for her birthday. I am sure she will stick me to it. We took the girls to lunch instead. We went to Village Inn. The girls enjoyed it, but Ruth broke all the crayons they gave her, then peeled all the wrappers off. Lily got herself soaked to the elbows in Strawberry syrup.
• I made certificates for the Wii Decathlon awards ceremony. We had a brief awards ceremony, with silly little medals and necklaces. I was going to make little flower bouquets to give them, but I ran out of time. I will post a copy of the certificate later tonight after Stake interviews. If you are reading this after I post the cert, you already know this...
• I need to sell our minivan. Does anyone out there want to buy one?
  

Too tired for updates

I've been a little lax around here lately, it has a lot to do with the fact that I have been completely lazy around here lately. Some topics:

• Olympics - There were a number of races, mostly swimming, that made me rewind what just happened with the DVR. The race Phelps won by a hundredth of a second was amazing. I still wasn't sure still myself that he had won until Sports Illustrated came back the next day with the picture showing his fingers touching just before the other dude. (Soon to be a trivia question - "Who was the dude the Phelps beat by .01 seconds in the 100m freestyle swim during the 2008 Olympics?" - you can't remember without looking at this point, can you? US Men's volleyball finally got a better time slot than midnight. They've been on during the day a couple of times in the last week. In unrelated news, some people in Hong Kong have entirely too much time on their hands.
• Gmail - They are up to 7GB 'per person', but there is an exploit out for their service where people can get your information from it. I have switched to SSL for all gmail functions, and encourage everyone to. (It's found under "settings" at the top of the page.) I also had to disable Firebug for gmail. If you don't know what that is, don't worry.
• BBQ - On Saturday, we had a BBQ to celebrate the end of the Wii Decathlon. The Bishop ended up winning. Tara made me invalidate all my scores. We had 50 or 75 people over, a bunch of them kids. I think everyone had a good time.
• Laziness - I've been really, really tired the last couple of days. I slept in pretty late this morning, when I went to take my medicine, I realized I had not been taking enough thyroid medicine. The last time I refilled, they had to give me a smaller dosage, I was supposed to be taking 2 pills a day instead of one. I switched to the new bottle a few days ago, and realized the mistake today. Hopefully I won't be so run down now.
• Goals - I've been thinking that setting goals for the year, seems like a long duration. I think I will switch to a set of yearly, quarterly, and monthly goals instead. Stay tuned.
• Vacation - I had planned to take one of girls to Seven Peaks today, after waking up late, I decided that I could take Ruth in the morning, and Mary after school. We got Ruth all ready, and went over there, the place was closed. Because school started, they are running 4pm-8pm for the next 2 weeks. That kind of messes up my plans. It is only a month until Tara and I head out for our trip. I wanted to do a conference call yesterday with Rob, Russ, and Jonathan, but I didn't get it done. I guess it will have to wait a couple of days at this point.
• Not sure what else to say, sorry about the lack of updates...
  

10 year anniversary

Today was our 10 year anniversary. Tara has survived that long so far with me... I took the day off work, we got Missy to watch the kids all day. We stayed pretty busy.

This morning we headed up to the temple and did a sealing session, which was nice.

For lunch, we went to Chili's. I had the express lunch, and had Enchilada Soup. I may pay for that tomorrow. It was good food, I just don't know what was in it, I don't know if how I feel right now is a result of what I ate today, or if it's from forgetting to take my medicine today...

We wandered around Toys R Us for a bit, then went to see Prince Caspian. It's definitely a movie the girls should not watch in a dark theater, they younger girls maybe not at all. Just too intense at times for them. They know the story inside and out, but the movie at the theater would scare them.

After the movie, we went "golfing", which is code for miniature golf. Trafalga has an "outdoor date deal" where for $20 you get 18 holes of miniature golf, racing in the little race car things, a batting cage session, 8 tokens for the games, and Dippin' Dots for each of us. I let Tara have my Dippin' Dots. Tara won the mini golf by 3 strokes. I won the GoKarts. (They were rickety little things. It took me a few rounds around the track to figure I was 90% sure the thing wouldn't shake to pieces, and wouldn't tip over, then I rarely took the foot off the pedal. I passed Tara 5 times.) Tara ended up beating me on Dance Dance Revolution, Skee Ball, Hoop Shoot, and likely many other things. The place also has a family golf deal, for $20, up to 8 members of your family can come get in 18 holes of golf. Not bad.

For a late dinner, we went to Mimi's Cafe. Tara had a sandwich that was bigger than her head. I got the blackened salmon. Mine was good, I ate some of the sourdough bread at the restaurant, I may also pay for this later.

The only downside to the day is that the keys to Missy and Steve's car got lost in the last 4 hours they were here. We can't find them anywhere. They took the truck to get home, but they will very likely have a ticket on the car in the morning. I took my laser level outside, and used it as a sort of flashlight, looking for something in the grass that reflected different. I found a bunch of little pieces of granola bar wrapper out there for some reason, but no keys.

Helping people move

I get directly asked more these days to help people move than I have in a number of years. This, I think, is in part because people have forgotten how badly I broke my ankle back in the days, in part because they don't know how badly my muscles and joints hurt sometimes, and mostly because of the truck.

Missy and Steve moved to a new apartment yesterday. The new one is very nice when you compare it to the old place they lived in. Or when you compare it to 90% of the apartments in the area, I think. Steve came over in the morning to borrow the truck, and let me know they could use me at 11:30 or so. (Or sort of told me. We need to work on his asking people to come help move skills, I think.) I fished for a little information, it turned out that it was going to be Steve, Drew, me and one other dude doing the work. I might have ditched out if it weren't for this, I wasn't exactly feeling at my peak this weekend. I would have taken the big van if I had the energy to get the seats out, but I took the minivan over, and we got them moved in 2 1/2 trips.

The deed is done. At least until the next time someone is moving and needs people with trucks to help. (I'm ok with this, really. I was just pretty sore yesterday morning before starting... I don't mind helping people move, as long as I don't have to lift one end of a piano. I am also ok with lifting one end of a piano, but I have been banned for life from doing this by Tara.)

The Olympics - an update

AKA - what else I have seen so far...

• Is it just me, or are there a lot of world records being broken this year in the swimming events? I don't know how many races I have watched, but I have seen a number of them broken. The Men's 4x100 freestyle race was pretty impressive. (Not just the finish, but the number of teams that were so far ahead of the world record.) The look on the trash talking French team's face was priceless. Tara didn't let me call her brother after that one. The U.S. already has 8 medals in swimming alone.
  
• Bob Costas thinks he is so funny. (I know this is not new.)
• When the Cubs are down by 8 runs, it makes it easier to watch more of the Olympics, and less of baseball. This is what happened yesterday, the Cubs came back and won again today.
  
• The Equestrian events are not all that exciting without some sort of commentary to go with it. (It's wholly possible that equestrian events are not all that exciting with commentary, but I didn't watch it with commentary.)
• Why is it that indoor volleyball is always broadcast on TV at midnight? This is what they kept doing last time too. Ryan Millar was sort of in our ward (half the year, anyway) 4 years ago when they were in the Olympics, I always stayed up to watch those games. He's back on the team, they came in late last night. I fell asleep in the middle, just like I used to do 4 years ago. (They ended up beating Venezuela, but I only watched about 1.75 of the 5 matches they played.)
• Handball is not a game similar to racketball, at least not in the Olympics. It appears to be something of a cross between soccer/lacrosse and basketball. I need to do more research on this, I only spent about a minute or two on it. Stay tuned.
• It's early yet this year, but I always compare the US medal count to their medal count from the 1984 Olympics. That is the first Olympics I remember. I remember sitting on the floor in the house in Buffalo for a long time just watching race after race. It seemed like the US won everything. (They pretty much did, since the USSR and all the Eastern Bloc countries boycotted, but I didn't know that at the time, and was enthralled by the thing.) Every Olympics since then, I start thinking about how different it was in the 1984 LA summer games. I guess I always will, even if I know the reason why things were different all that time ago.
  

Restaurant Review

Pei Wei

Last night, we went up to a birthday party for Tara's little niece. We took food for the girls to eat on the way up, but didn't really do anything for Tara and I. Sometimes these little birthday things have some sort of food portion, but this one didn't. (That's ok.) After the party, we drove towards home, but not really on the freeway, we were looking for a place to eat. It turns out that Pei Wei has just started moving into the area.

Tara had that Thai Dynamite Chicken entree, I had the Spicy Korean chicken. Mine was good. Tara liked hers. Mine was very flavorful. I didn't think it was incredibly spicy, but it had a lot of flavor to it. (It did get spicier when it was mostly just sauce, but not much.) I would definitely go back sometime and try another flavor there.

The only other thing to say is that they didn't really have their hours listed anywhere. We got there at 9:50pm, someone came in at 9:59pm, but the place closed at 10pm. When we first saw it from the road, it was difficult to tell if it would be open or not when we came back around to look...

Sleep deprivation testing

NBCOlympics.com has a schedule for the Olympic events, including television and internet feeds of different sports. Up at 1:30 in the morning? Watch rowing live online. (Windows and Mac only. Discrimination!) We have fencing and handball starting at 5am. NBC is all Olympics during the daytime this weekend.

I have to say, rowing really needs a commentator during it. I'm not a fan of commentators who just talk because they enjoy the sound of their voice, but the online feed is just a feed, with no bells and whistles. You end up with 6 or 7 minutes of rowing. Followed by 6 or 7 minutes of rowing. Then another 6 or 7 minutes of rowing. No talking. The only break in it was when one of the heats had a boat where the little number and sensor fell off before the heat started, and 2 dudes had to reattach it. Then another 6 or 7 minutes of rowing.

You would think I would get bored of this and stop watching it, but I haven't. I have watched heat after heat. I'm thinking about watching everything. (Sleep can wait for later, right?) I need to find a spare machine at work, so I can have Olympic events going on it under Windows, while I run Linux on my laptop. (I am assuming streaming events through VMWare, which I don't currently have installed, will have similar performance problems on VMWare workstation as MLB.com or Netflix streaming has...)

The US guy got worked in his heat. He was in first at the midpoint, but must have run out of steam. I hope this isn't a spoiler. (You could have watched it live, you know.) One other thing interesting about single skulls: They have a path on the bank by the race. Every heat had a dozen or two people on bikes running along side the guys that were rowing. Are these just Chinese citizens? Coaches? Scouts? Reporters?

Game Time

Cities and Knights of Catan

I have been waiting for a while to play Cities and Knights of Catan. (Tara thinks it takes too long to play.) We played tonight while watching the opening ceremonies for the Olympics. (Quite a show. I want to know how they did that Olympic cauldron at t he top of the stadium. It looks like they rolled the thing up or something.)

Anyhow, I ended up winning 12 points to 10 points. That's Tara's anniversary present to me...

Restaurant Review

The Commons
BYU Campus

The Cannon Center at Helaman Halls has been replaced with a new eatery called The Commons. It opened less than 2 weeks ago. The place is much larger than the old Cannon Center, they have designed it to look a lot less like some sort of barracks cafeteria. They have little tables to eat all over the place. They have lots of different food stations - cereal, burgers, salads, desserts, and a couple of entree sections. The place is organized to break up the table sections so it doesn't seem as loud and noisy as the old one. They have big giant picture windows on the North side of the cafeteria, it kind of reminds of the scene from Ghostbusters where Rick Moranis runs to the restaurant at Central Park for some reason.

The food was good, they have it set up to make the food just before you go get it. This makes it much fresher and hot. There are people in the inside section of the salad bar, continually refilling the stuff, so it doesn't get messy or nasty. I thought the place was well designed to limit the noise from the mass of diners, and I like the new tray return. (You have to see it, I won't describe it here.) The place looks much more like a campus cafeteria now, and lots less like a high school cafeteria like the old Cannon Center did.

Good Blog Fodder

I have finally discovered a good use for the airlines. They are good for blog fodder.

I've been looking at flights to Orlando for a couple of months, prices have been higher than I've been super happy about. Add that to the myriad of extra fees the airlines have been coming up with, and it can be very easy to get into trouble. Yesterday I bought our tickets on Southwest airlines. The price was about $30 more or so than I could have gotten, but they won't be charging us for things like the following possible fees:

• "Carry on medical equipment fee" - assessed for holding my Bi-Pap in my arms while traveling so it doesn't get damaged.
• "Sitting together fee" - For having the gall to purchase 2 tickets next to each other on a plane
• "Kitty Hawk Commemoration fee" - no explanation, just a fee. Like the "Safe Driver" fee I pay to register my car.
• "No Fly fee" - For every time they have to clear me to fly. Just a fee for people like me, who have problems getting checked in, but have no paid to get into the (recently reported comprimised, but then again maybe not) "Clear" system.
• "Baggage handling fee" - for when they start charging for all checked baggage. Did I hear an airline already started this?
• "Because We Can fee" - trust me, it's only a matter of time.

I took my parents and Grandmother to the airport this morning. When they came over for me to drive them up, my Dad gave me a hat and white noise machine of my Moms to store in the house until she comes out next time. I took it to a cubby in the back room and headed out of the house. I decided that the hat would get smashed there, and went back to move it to my closet, where it would be safer. While taking it to my closet, I noticed something brown in the hat. It ended up being my Dad's wallet. Extra round trip to the airport avoided.

When we got to the airport, there was some confusion about "Northwest" and "Northwest operated by Skywest". There were no signs for Skywest, I dropped them off at terminal 1. While driving up to terminal 2, the Skywest signs finally showed up. I called my Mom's cell phone to let them know they were at thee wrong place, but her phone started ringing in the car. She had forgotten it. I drove around the airport to get to the parking to go in.

I met up with them, they had discovered the mistake as well, or were directed away by the Northwest people. When we got to the Delta/Skywest counters, all the very helpful Delta employees were sticking to the single "Have you tried checking in at the kiosk?" question/answer/party line. (Q - "Is this where we check in for Skywest?" A - "Have you tried checking in at the kiosk?") I was able to help Grandma get checked in at the kiosk, I tried getting her to take one bag as carry on so she didn't have to pay $25 for it, but she didn't want to deal with it.

The kiosk refused to acknowledge my Mom and Dad's existence. The baggage collection counter lady didn't want to acknowledge their existence, either. I assumed is was a taint from their association with me. We went back to the Delta ticket counter line, and after getting past the "Have you tried checking in at the kiosk?" question, they were directed to another line, where all they had was one employee at the counter, talking to some other dude. It appeared to be a shorter line, but it nearly turned out to almost not be a faster line. Eventually another employee came around, and asked us if we had tried checking in at the kiosk yet. My Dad's reply was "Yes, we are frustrated and disgusted now." When she got around to looking up their reservation, she was very clear to say "I don't see anything wrong with your reservation here", implying my parents had done something wrong trying to check in. (See? This is where a future fee will be assessed. "The airline has decided that you are too stupid to check in on your own." $25.)

I hear there was more hijinks the rest of the trip home. Their flight was delayed a long time. Their luggage didn't make it home. I will leave the rest of the details for them to describe, if they want to. We'll see what happens next month when Tara and I actually try to take a trip...

It Lives!

Drew came over this morning to get me motivated to fix the truck. (He wanted to help so that Steve and Missy didn't rent a Uhaul for their relatively small apartment of stuff this weekend when they move.)

Drew looked at fuses, but didn't get anywhere because the ignition fuse was covered over. I figure it's a plot to sell more of them. We fiddled with the cables to the starter for a little bit until the point that I nearly shocked myself.

After that, we disconnected the battery and took the starter off. It was heavier than it looked, but came out very easily. At least easily when there were 3 or 4 hands doing it. Having the truck lifted off the ground would have made it even easier, and if I had been doing it all by myself, I would have underestimated the weight of the starter, and likely would have tore some cable letting the starter down off the truck. As it was, I held the thing while Drew disconnected the cables.

We took the starter down to AutoZone to get tested. It failed, of course. In a fine display of salemanship, the kid went back to the shelves, got the replacement starter, and put it on the tester to show that it worked. (It was kind of interesting to hear the starter fire up in that little machine.) The new starter cost $60, and we got it back in without incident.

The drivers side tire was a little low, and the truck was in desperate need of a washing from sitting under the tree so long. I took care of both of these things, the truck is ready to roll again... (Thanks Drew.)

Crispy chicken tacos

This afternoon we watched a show where the guy was making a crispy chicken strip salad. It looked good, we fell asleep before the show was over. When I woke up, I was thinking about crispy fish tacos, and figured I would make crispy chicken tacos for dinner. They were pretty tasty. I planned to do what the guy on the show did, and make a breading with crushed tortilla chips, but the chicken strips we had were already breaded.

The recipe:

flour tortillas (we used the 'cook it yourself' tortillas from Costco)
breaded chicken strips - I was going to make a crushed tortilla breading, but the chicken strips we have from Maceys already had a breading on it, so I went with it
cole slaw
cucumber - cut into little spears

Fry breaded chicken strips until golden brown. Slice chicken rstrips into smaller pieces, long and skinny is ok. Holding tortilla in taco shape add chicken, then cucumbers, then coleslaw, and a little more chicken on top. This of course assumes that your flour tortilla is big enough to hold all that stuff.

Catching up to current

Only 2 blog posts this week? That is because I have been very, very lazy.

My parents and grandma are in town this week. They came for Adam's baby blessing. (More on that soon.) The Stake President had back surgery Wednesday afternoon, which afforded me all the time in the world to go up to the airport and get them. I took Adam and Ruth. Traffic wasn't too bad, but there is still no way I would commute to work for a living.

I have been trying to keep the President's schedule cleared so he has recoup time. One of the wards keeps calling with stuff. They haven't gotten all that far. Now I have someone that needs an interview next Sunday between the hours of 11am and 1pm. I say good luck to him at this point...

The truck has been not starting for a good 2 weeks now. Last week Chad got under there, he had a similar model/year truck before and had starter problems. He thought the starter cables were a little loose, and suggested pulling them off, cleaning them up, and tightening them down really well. We also tried tapping the thing just in case the solenoid was stuck open and the tapping loosened things up. The truck almost nearly sort of tried starting up while we were fiddling with it. A couple of days ago, I tried tapping less gently, which didn't seem to help all that much, except we got 2 more of the "almost nearly sort of" action out of the thing. (Drew said he is coming tomorrow morning to help work on it so that Missy and Steve can move on Saturday without having to rent a Uhaul. This would also ensure Adam has something to drive round when he is out here next month.)

Anson was over here the other day, Drew stopped by. Anson kept asking Drew if he had shot any bad guys. I guess this is a daily question. Drew doesn't seem to like the question all that much, I think it is hilarious. I think I will start asking Drew that question every once in a while. I'm pretty sure none of the girls really knows for sure what I do all day, and I don't know what questions they would ask if they did. At least they are generally happy to see me when I get home.

Kate is headed into a 2nd/3rd grade mixed class. There are mixed feelings about this. I am a little concerned that she is less than a month away from 9 right now, and there will be 7 year olds in the class. I plan to go have a little chat with the principal of the school, if for no other reason that the principle of the thing. Last year they asked us to move Mary to morning from afternoon kindergarten, I just want to establish the fact that we are in charge of things, they are not, really. We will see how things go.

We blessed Adam today. You spend 6, 7, 8 months or so thinking about what you want to say in a baby blessing, then you get there, and end up saying two of those things, the rest just comes in the moment. I'm not sure I remember all of what I said this morning. Tara, Mom, and Grandma all seem to indicate it was a good blessing, I guess I will leave that as the measuring stick. We didn't take any pictures. I fully intended to cooperate, Grandma Oaks wanted to get a picture in, but I wanted to wait for Tara to be ready so I didn't have to go through it twice. Time got away from us, and we didn't get any pictures in. We will have to stage a picture in the next few days so Adam doesn't get a complex when he is older. (Especially since he has a different blessing outfit that his sisters had...)

After church, we had a little luncheon. We still have turkey, potato salad, chips, cookies, brownies, and cupcakes left over. Come over and have some.

Kongregate.com released an update to a game. I have been trying to figure it out. Drew also talked me into signing up for a Facebook account. Facebook is kind of interesting. People you hadn't talked to in years show up there and find you fairly quickly. There are a couple of pending ones that I am not exactly sure I know, I'm trying to figure that out. They also have a dumb little game that I have been playing, trying to catch up to Drew, Amy, and Adam.

We started getting tomatoes out of the garden yesterday, I also picked one today. In about a week we will be filthy with them around here. Same with the green beans. The peppers, onions, squash, and zucchini all have a way to go. (The pheasant set some of them back a ways.)

Yesterday I did something like a dozen loads of laundry.

It's about time to get serious about trying to sell the minivan, I guess.

I will try to be less lazy about this blog in the next week.

Really cool technology note of the day

They have yet to send us the owners manual for our DVR. They have left me to discover features one at a time. This is not necessarily a complaint. I just discovered a new feature. I can pause live running TV. I just hit pause, and come back to it, where I can resume where I was. The DVR records at most the last hour of the current channel. (Change the channel and start from zero.) Miss what they just said in a show? Hit rewind. Phone ringing? Hit pause. I like it.