Hair today, gone tomorrow

"Give me all your candy!"

The boy needed a haircut. It was getting a little crazy.

Someone mistook him for a girl yesterday at my office. I think because of the curls.

The giant head of curls

I cut his hair tonight. Tara tried evening a few places out. Some people call it confidence, bravery, or boldness when you barrel on ahead and do things you don't know how to do. Others call it stupidity. I don't think we did a terrible job. And his hair will grow back.

All the curls are gone. We'll see if they grow back or not. Adam behaved himself pretty well for his first haircut...

Things a sleep deprived mind thinks are funny

AKA: "Just wait until they are older"

Tara I am sure has more to expound on this and more, I will let her talk about them in detail on her blog. (Coming soon, I think, at sparbowl2.blogspot.com) I've gotten some sleep this week, but not enough, five things that strike me as funny:

1. Abbott and Costello. I just finished watching "Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein". Tara declined to watch.
2. Yesterday morning (Late morning) I woke up to go to work, I couldn't find my sneakers. I had to wear my boots to work, covered in dirt. Last night I couldn't find the sneakers, and again this morning (not so late), I couldn't find them again. Day two of boots to work. Tonight I was making dinner, Lily was in the kitchen bugging me, I asked her if she knew where my sneakers were. She told me they were in the closet. I told her to go get them, she took off running, and had them for me in about 2 minutes. Turns out she put them away for me in the closet with all the kids shoes. Who knew?
   
3. Emma lost her winter coat a few weeks ago. Tara was pretty sure she left it at the school, but couldn't get the girls to look very hard for it. They claimed it wasn't in the lost and found. It has gotten cold here, this was starting to be a problem. The other day Emma brought her coat home from school. It's location? On the hook in her classroom. They didn't think to look there...
4. We have a friend that was co-owner of a jewelery store here in town. A couple of months ago we went over to look at rings, Tara lost another one. We asked for Rian, the owner guy only said "Rian doesn't work here anymore." Kind of weird. While we were there, other people came in looking for Rian, same response. Rian ended up leaving to open a new store, which he recently got going. I drove by the old store dropping off the Netflix tonight, the old store has a bus stop in front of it. Today, on the 7x5 foot ads on the bus stop, on both sides of the thing, was a giant picture of Rian advertizing his new store. Very nice touch, Rian...
   
5. Tara bought some halloween costumes on the internet. Two of them were Star Trek uniforms. (Original series. What parent would like their child wear a red original series uniform???) Anyway, they opened them today, the costumes were pretty big. Tara tried one on, asked Emma how it looked. Emma's response? "Captain Kirk is climbing the mountain. Why is he climbing the mountain?" Absolutely hilarious.
   

Mary's 8 year birthday party

When the girls were little (or at least littler than they are now) I established that they could have birthday parties where they invite friends over when they were 8 and 16. (We still do cake and ice cream for family every birthday.) This idea seems to have been taken without complaint. Frame of reference can be a wonderful thing.

Mary is turning 8 soon, and had a party on Saturday. It's taken me this long to recover to post pictures. She invited 16 friends, we only gave a few days notice, and figured a few wouldn't be able to come. No dice, they all showed. 16 kids, plus our 6, made for a crazy pile of kids.

Tara had all kinds of activities for them lined up, pumpkin decorating, haunted house crafts, that sort of thing. My job - running to the store for more pumpkins, making home-made root beer, and buying 7 pizzas.

Anyhow, I think we did ok, Mary indicated that the party was better than she expected. Some pictures:

Book Review`

Tarzan of the Apes
Edgar Rice Burroughs

I have a confession. I have never watched an entire Tarzan movie, no matter what format. I have watched parts, but never a whole thing. I know the basic story, but that's about it.

Having said that, I picked up this book on a deal. (Dover Thrift Editions are great.) I read the book on my way back from Oklahoma. I thought it was pretty good.

Tarzan grows up among apes, fights cannibals and pirates, and has a wild time. It was an interesting story, even though it clearly showed some of the prejudices of the day. (Cannibals and gorillas are bad. Rich American dudes are jerks. Pirates are stupid. That sort of thing. Maybe not much has changed, I guess.)

I thought the book was good, lot of action, a well told story. It is clear that the author intended to write more books after this one, which he did. Again, maybe things haven't changed that much.

Will I read more Tarzan books? Maybe, but not right now. For one thing, there are no other Dover Thrift editions in the series right now. I would have to go down to the library and look for them...

New Muppet Videos - for Halloween

Enjoy!

Restaurant Reviews - Because what good is a vacation away from the kids if you don't eat like you are on a per diem?

Three restaurants from Oklahoma - but first - My Mom is at our house watching the kids for us, which is very nice of her. This time last year, she came out to watch them so we could go to Orlando. (That was also nice.) The kids got her sicker than a dog last year, this year we were hoping everyone would stay healthy for her. They even got sick two weeks ago, so we were hopeful. No dice. Adam got sick, and got her sick. What's wrong with those sicko kids, anyway? It's the curse of having 4 kids in school...

Also, just about everything out here in Oklahoma has a drive through. I'm not sure what the deal is. Little Caesars Pizza - drive through. Ice Cream and dairy - drive through. Flower shop - drive through. barber shop - drive through - just stick your head out the window, they will take the sides down and a little off the top. Why so many drive throughs? It's not necessarily a bad thing, just not something I've seen before.

Golden China Buffet - Moore, OK

Tara's brother John was supposed to work late tonight. We decided we would take Jani and the kids out to eat while he was gone, we decided on Chinese food. Then John came home early, we decided to take him with us anyway.

This place had a smallish buffet, John and Jani were most impressed with the potstickers. Tara and I liked the Mongolian BBQ (called a hibachi here, but not what I would concider a hibachi grill.) All in all, the food was pretty good, it would have been a lot better had the soups been a bit fresher, but it wasn't bad.

Our waitress was very nice, she even went and had them cook up more potstickers for John when he asked, and brought a pile of them to him when they were done. John left saying they would come back again, I think Jani should hold him to it sometime...

Vans Pig Stand - Norman, OK

Eat the pig. Be the pig. Love the pig.

That's not really their motto, but it would add to the charm if they added it. Maybe I should suggest it. Tara saw this place on ESPN one time, and thought it would be a good place to try out. I was thinking we would go to a Soul food place that served 'fried chicken and waffles' and 'roast pigs feet', but Tara decided the Pig Stand was the way to go. Plus we could drive through Norman and see what the Home of the Sooners was like...

This place was pretty good. I had the 2 meat plate with brisket and ribs, and had fried okra and curly fries as sides. All the food was good. I also liked their "really spicy" sauce, which was more spicy than sweet. And it has been a long time since I had fried okra.

The 2 meat plate was a lot of food, we ended up having to wander around several store to work off some of the food. A really good meal if you ever find yourself in Norman.

{Norman appears to be a small Southern town with nothing in it but houses of various types and tons of churches. Until you drive right next to the University, which is smack dab in the middle of town. I'm not sure there is anything else out there. Tara says maybe that's why they are so crazy about their football here. I could be off base. Any Oklahoma people can feel free to post a comment flaming me for my comments...}

San Marcos - Oklahoma City, OK

This is John and Jani's favorite Mexican place. The food was good, I had a burrito, Tara had the beef taco salad. (Tara would try something different than the salad next time.) I think I ate 3+ baskets of chips by myself, the salsa was really good. They also put little cheese dip things down, I ate too much of the cheese dip.

I tried to order creme filled churros for the group for dessert, I was shot down because every meal comes with sopapias, a fried bread with cinnamon and sugar on them. All in all, it was a ton of food for not a lot of money, really.

I think I would pass on the cheese dip next time. I had a gut ache for most of the day the next day. I am blaming it on the cheese dip, not the 3 baskets of chips I ate...

Wings

We introduced John and Jani to wings last night. I think we made converts, although they aren't ready for anything incredibly spicy...

Book Review

700 Sundays
Billy Crystal

Tara bought me this interesting little book about Billy Crystal's childhood. I read it on one of the planes I was on the other day. (I slept the rest of the time, one flight was only 25 minutes one was 70 minutes, both seemed like nothing with the nap...)

Anyway, Billy Crystal's father died when he was 15. He worked 2 jobs the better part of his life, and spent plenty of time on Sundays with his boys. This book was about Billy's years growing up.

He had an interesting family. (I think that could sum up any comedian's family. Interesting.) His dad and Uncle were big in the Dixieland Jazz scene in New York back in the day. The family owned the "Commodore" label, and produced lots of Jazz music. He has some pretty funny stories about the rest of the family.

He once wanted to be a baseball player, which is no surprise to people that know a little bit about him, and ended up playing a lot of baseball with his brothers. He talks about how his dad threw curveballs to him every Sunday for months until he learned to hit them.

The book is funny, interesting, and just a little bit sad (The sad part when his dad dies and the effect it had on him.) It was a quick little book, worth the read if you come across it. I guess there is a play of the same title that Billy Crystal wrote, I think the book is based on the play, or both are based on real life...

Oklahoma City National Memorial

We went into downtown OKC this afternoon to to see the memorial down there.


It was a nice little thing they have done there. There are little chairs to symbolize each of the people that died in the explosion, a reflecting pool, a little orchard, and things like that. Tara was inpressed at how thoughtful the memorial was.

I wonder how many people really member the Oklahoma city bombing. It has been more than 15 years now since it happened, and 9/11 clearly dwarfs it in scope. Do people out there really member what happened? They had a bunch of ceramic tiles that little kids had done and sent, some of the kids were as little as two years old. Do those kids even remember making those tiles and sending them?

I remember where I was when the bombing happened. I was on my mission, serving in Saugus, California. All the missionaires in the apartment decided to go down to Shakey's pizza for lunch. (All you can eat pizza.) When we got there, the TVs were all on CNN, which was showing the coverage of the bombing. It was kind of shocking at the time. We all went first thing the next morning to the Red Cross to give blood. One of the missionaries in the apartment had never given blood before, and was kind of nervous about it. He was a motormouth to start with, and jabbered non-stop the whole time he was giving blood. He had everyone in the place laughing, which was kind of good, because the only thing anyone else was thinking about was the bombing...

Tara's brother told her that the memorial was almost shut down a couple of years ago because of a lack of funding. It sound like the place is on their own for donations, and don't get any federal money. (They do have two National Park rangers on site, but it sounded liek the site itself was on it's own for upkeep.)

Anyway, the site was interesting, those who find themselves in Oklahoma City in the future should stop for a few minutes to look around, even if they are just driving through. 30 minutes total would do it, unless you want to go into the museum too.

The problem with superpowers

Having some minor annoyances with technology in the house this today. I've been sick, only worked about 4 hours today. I had about 12 to 16 hours of work I could have done. It would have gone lots faster if I could just communicate directly with technology. I am sure it would go faster, even though I type fairly fast. Tried spending a lot of time watching baseball today. I was worried about lunchtime, because TBS kept cutting out. Seems to have been fine during the games. If I could have talked to the DVR, it might have been able to explain it's failure to record Smallville tonight. And the wireless could explain to me why it keeps dropping. I could tell my cell phone who I don't ever want to talk to, and when to go straight to voicemail because I am sleeping. Diagnosing problems would be sweet. I am sure there would be some drawbacks, but you really could curse out a server properly...

Other potentially useful superpowers, and the problems with them:

Heat Vision - I think Superman uses this ability way too infrequently. It doesn't seem to bother him any. I would really say I have a short fuse, just a fast burn rate. I am sure there would be a couple of accidents at work. I would also not be able to drive, because if I got cut off, the lights would light right up, and I would end up melting my wind shield. It would be fun to melt some knuckle head's tire at a read light, though.

Super hearing - I have six kids in the house. It's too loud as it is. Super hearing would be a big, big problem.

Mind reading - Sometimes I really don't want to know what other people are thinking... I have enough problems with the things I think.

Super speed - This would have to be coupled with super healing I think. For one, I hurt bad enough as it is. For another, I am sure that tripping at super speed would cause a number of divots in the ground, not to mention what creating the divots would do to me.

Teleportation - I think about this every time I drive across Wyoming. It would be nice to just pick the things up you need, and teleport to the other side of the country. Makes vacations a little easier... In Wyoming, I tend to think that it would even be nice to teleport the car to the top of the next rise. (Like some sort of line-of-sight ability) The problem I see with this kind of thing? Teleporting a van with all it's contents must be pretty tiring. Would you be able to drive? What about all the other cars on the road? How would you maintain your speed, and ensure that you didn't drop on top of someone else? What about normal teleportation? How do you ensure the landing site is clear? I am also sure that teleporting into a wall is pretty painful...

Time travel - Lots of benefits, but way too many paradoxes involved...

Flight - Not likely to be fun in cold, wet conditions.

Invisibility - What happens if you turn invisible, then fall asleep somewhere inconvenient?

Super strength - Hurting people the the problem with this one, even accidentally. And smashing my desk. And I don't think typing would work very well. All my keyboards would get bashed up.

Telepathy - I speak my mind enough, I don't need to be transmitting things wirelessly.

Spiderman's abilities - This might not be bad, but there aren't too many tall buildings where I live. Wouldn't be any fun.

Iceman's abilities - I always thought they ended X Men 2 wrong. The dam was bursting, they had Ice Man there! Make him freeze everything, they get away, he is left looking like ice. Much better ending. Tara gets cold, she wouldn't like me as Ice Man. She would never get warm.

Shape shifting - I am sure this one would hurt, but it might be kind of cool to turn into an elephant once in a while, or a mouse, or an old tire. You really could be the proverbial fly on the wall...

I'm sure there are others. What have you got on your list?

The fact that I think this is funny must say something about me...

Case in point

Tara talked about "Adam the waddling penquin" today on her blog. I got it on camera tonight.

He has also decided that sunglasses are best worn under the chin. This is one confused little boy. I think Lily is feeding him bad information when we are not paying attention...

Restaurant review

Tonight Tara and I went out to dinner. We have this babysitter locked up for every Thursday night since the school year started, which has been kind of nice. This was the first Thursday we didn't have anything planned, so we went to grab something to eat, and then went to Walmart to buy diapers. We live an exciting life.

Anyhow, the first place we went to was a place called "Communal" in downtown Provo. A guy that lives a block or so away from us just opened the place. We went in, they have an a la carte menu, it appears it is family style. The problem was that there were only like 4 veggie dishes, 4 main course dishes, and stuff like that, but they all seemed to be too fancy for my tastes. (Really, most of them seemed to have something in them that I couldn't eat.) The squash had apples, a couple of the entrees sounded like they had stuff in them I shouldn't eat. The owner wasn't there, so we left. I figuere I can always talk to him about his menu sometime soon, and see what is really in those dishes, and maybe come back another time.

We ended up going to "Pho Noodle House" up in Orem. They had a 'normal' bowl, and a 'large' bowl, you could choose from about 18 different beef combinations to go in it. I had "steak, brisket, flank". Tara stuck with "steak". (We both passed on tendon this time.) The soup was good. I added hot chili sauce to mine, which helped to clear the sinuses. The 'normal' boup was a very big bowl of soup, the 'large' bowl turned out to be more along the lines of a vat of soup.

Anyhow, the Pho there is just the the Pho I had the last two trips to NYC. We'll have to go back again. The place was sort of busy, at least for an out of the way soup restaurant, but I am sure a big bowl of Pho will sound good sometime during the Winter, when it's absolutely freezing out.

Fall Harvest Overload

This is always the time of the year when the girls start getting a little tired of {Tomato Stew, Spaghetti, Chili, Taco soup} meals that we make to try to keep ahead of the tomatoes we are pulling out of the garden.

Yesterday afternoon, I was pulling tomatoes out, Emma came out to help. I asked her what she wanted to eat with the tomatoes, she replied "Tomato Pie".


I had never heard of tomato pie, but my good friend Google had all kinds of interesting things to say about tomato pie. Turns out it is something made in the South. (Emma's just showing her long lost roots.) I made tomato pie for the girls for dinner tonight. They also had chocolate chip zucchini bread and noodles. (I figured I could sneak in tomatoes and zucchini into the dinner if I made bread out of it...) They seemed to like it. Wasn't all that complicated, either.