Problems with comments on this blog

It looks like Blogger has an issue with comments on blogs for some users. I had someone tell me a couple of weeks ago that they tried to make a comment, but something happened afterwards and it didn't work. Tara tried tonight, and it didn't work, either.

I was using the "embedded comments form" layout, and it looked like it was blocking Tara from making comments in IE, but not Firefox. It looks like it's a known issue that blogger is working on. I changed my comment method to do a pop up window for comments, I hope that doesn't offend too many people out there. (I know there are a few of you out there that are offended by pop up windows...)

Anyway, sorry to those that tried to comment and couldn't. Carry on.

Restaurant Review

Chen's Noodle House
Orem, Utah

It has been a while since we went to a restaurant that we hadn't been to for a while. There is a little Chinese place behind the mall in Orem that hides behind a tire store. When we drive past it, I think we should stop there someday, until the other day, we never had.

We went, I didn't know what 'noodle house' really meant, but it turned out the place is a Chinese restaurant, much like many others around here, except this one has big windows and lets in plenty of light. (I am not sure why most Chinese restaurants around here are in places with no windows, except for the fact that the rent in those places must be low.)

Anyway, the food was pretty good. Our waitress tried fairly hard to be helpful, even though I was being a tiny bit difficult when ordering. (I got the Kung Pao Chicken, but was tempted to get their Seafood Soup, maybe next time...) The food was pretty good, not too sweet, not too greasy, and mine had lots of fresh vegetables in it. I didn't taste tons of preservatives that you sometimes taste. I thought it was pretty good.

All in all, the food was pretty good, and not too expensive. It's a place to stop at again someday.

A revisiting of my goals for 2011

I haven't really focused on how I have been doing on my goals this year, I think as a result, I haven't done a very good job finishing any of them so far. Here is what I wanted to to, and how far I have gotten. They are still good goals, but unless I focus, I won't finish them this year. I might need a little inspiration on a couple of them. Here is what I wanted to do, and how I have done so far:

Do something significant I've never done before. I wanted to participate in a demolition derby, but I decided that I didn't want my thumbs broken in the derby. I also sold my old truck. It worked out anyway, since I was going to participate in the July 4th derby in Delta. (Noel was born on the 4th of July, I don't think Tara would have appreciated me doing that with her there to drive me to the hospital...) Now I am left without a good idea. Tara is taking a trip later in the year, and will be gone for three weeks. Does watching the kids for that long count? I'm not sure...

Go somewhere I have never been before. I generally stay in about a two mile radius of my house. I may be turning into a hermit. I went to Atlanta in May, but I've been there before. This one won't involve going anywhere too far away. I wonder if there is somewhere here in Utah I would want to visit.

Read twelve books. I have still not gotten back in the habit of reading like I used to yet. Having said that, I have read six books this year. This is a little surprising to me.

Do twelve small projects around the house. I haven't done too many house projects this year:

• I put a new front door on the house
  
• I put some 'dressers' in before the baby was born
  
• I made a swing for the tree in the front yard
  
• I did a big one a few houses down, that I'm gonna count...
• I fixed up the little baby crib for Noel
  

Now that I actually look at it, I'm at five. I'm actually a little surprised about this as well. Finishing the rest doesn't seem so hard, I have a few started already. I have to remember the 'before' picture, though. Half of them could easily be done outside, but I need to get out there and do them. It's kind of warm out there right now. Yes, I am whining...

Walk 200 miles. I have gotten in 49 tracked miles so far this year. Not great, but it's something. I am almost to the point that walking to my office from home doesn't trash my ankle for the rest of the day anymore. This is a good thing. 150 miles is 100 trips to my office, but I don't think there are that many work days left in the year, and I am not currently walking there every single day. This one can only be done if I focus.

Can anyone out there help me with a little motivation? Help would be appreciated...

Rejected!

The Credit Union I belong to has recently added a service where you can add your own custom image to you debit and credit cards. I have been thinking for a while about what picture I can put on my cards. Over the weekend I had a good idea:



I uploaded this Superman symbol for my debit card. I had to shrink the image a little so I would fit, but the preview of the card looked pretty sweet.


I uploaded this Bizarro symbol for my credit card. I had to blow it up some so it would fit. I liked the contrast there: Superman = Good, Bizarro = Bad. You have two cards in your wallet. Are you more likely to pull out the Superman card or the Bizarro card? (The Superman card, of course.)

Anyway, I was really hoping they would just have some automated system that spit out the card and mailed it out to you. Today I got an email saying that my 'MyCard Design' had been rejected. To quote the email:

Please carefully review the image guidelines below before submitting another photo. NOTE: Downloaded images from the internet are usually copyrighted and will probably be denied. To ensure that your custom card request is approved and processed in a timely manner, please review the following examples of prohibited items

Then they listed about twelve different generic rules about what you can't have on the card. (No naked or half naked people, no copyrighted materials, no people doing illegal activities, no celebrities - such as cartoon characters, no half naked celebrity cartoon characters, etc.) Oh well, it was worth a shot.

No I am left with still not knowing what pictures I want to put on my debit and credit card. (Well, I know which ones I want, I don't know which ones I want that they will actually let me have...) Any ideas?

Multiple Choice Quiz

Look at the picture above. Then decide which of the following is true:

1. Someone fed these flowers Gatorade
2. The dye from these flowers is flowing back into the case
3. Adam has started potty training
   

An odd mostly uneventful night...

Wednesday night I went down to the girl's camp for gate duty. I've been down there other years for pre-camp setup and down for a day of visiting, but this is the first time I went down for gate duty, and wasn't really sure what to expect. Last time I was down there, we stayed in an A frame cabin, I only had a sleeping bag, and slept on the floor. The guy that went down with me snored louder than anyone I ever heard before, which is saying something. I didn't get that much sleep that night, and slept off and on the rest of the next day.

This time, it poured down rain here at home in the hour before I left. The rain set a record. I was worried about being cold and wet, but the camp is about 70 miles South of here. (The weather said it would get down to 47 degrees. I didn't know much about what gate duty entailed, I envisioned sitting in a camp chair at the gate at a campfire, and staying up all night. We kind of heard we would be up all night.

The guy that was supposed to come down with me had to bail, instead of having me find someone else, they got someone to go with me. I didn't know anything about the guy. I ended up borrowing Drew's new truck, (which is nice, by the way) and we headed down.

The guy was a little - I don't know - off, I guess. Maybe I shouldn't say that, but I say a lot of things I shouldn't say. He was kind of squirrelly. He would talk a mile a minute about stuff, and flip topics here and there in mid thought. Then he would decide to read, spend five minutes reading, and eventually start talking like crazy again. All kinds of topics. When we got to the camp, we had about a half hour before going down to the gate, and we visited with the young women. One of them offered my a licorice, I said 'no thanks'. She offered him one, and he went into a several minute monologue about wheat allergies and how licorice has wheat, but no one knows. Later, he told me he needs to learn to just say 'no thanks'...

The caretakers at the camp told us to drive down, close the gate, back the truck up to it, go to sleep, wake up at 6am, and go home and go to work. Not exactly what I was expecting, but it sounded ok to me. We ended up letting a couple of people out, a couple of people in, and generally tried to sleep. At midnight, we had lights shining in our faces, because someone needed to get in.

A little later, the guy that was with me woke up and insisted that there were four guys coming up the road with flashlights. He jumped out of the car and was yelling at them, trying to turn on his little light to see them. He insisted they were there, so I turned on the headlights on the truck. No people. He got back in the truck, and said 'Sorry, sometimes I do that when I am asleep.' I told him if he did it again and ran into the woods, I wouldn't go off searching a five mile radius looking for him. He promised not to. The term may be 'odd duck'.

Anyway, Drew's truck is nice to drive, not so nice to sleep in, but we didn't have too much trouble, and the assignment was way easier that expected. All in all, it could have been much worse.

Some thoughts on food

I was having lunch with my friend Scott today, we talked about how we both have to rotate different foods in and out of our diets. Then we started reminiscing about our Freshmen year of college, when we lived in the dorms and could eat whatever we wanted three times a day. (Buffet style. The restriction was one plate of food at a time. Not much of a restriction...) And then have ice cream on top of that. (And I ate plenty) Scott was disappointed the day they served jambalaya (he is from New Orleans), and it was not that good. I remember the days they brought in the personal 6 inch pizzas, and I would eat 4 or 5 of then at a time. With fries.

A few days ago I was thinking about all the differing kinds of foods I have eaten in the past. I'm not saying the scope is necessarily the same as others reading this, but I think I've eaten a lot of different stuff, and I've definitely eaten a lot of it...

I am sure my Mom could tell stories about amounts of food she had to make day after day that would frighten the tar out of young couples with small kids. I had four younger brothers, we ate plenty of what she made day after day. (And as far as I remember, as long as it wasn't "green banana soup", we liked just about all of it.) The coneheads had nothing on us when it came to mass quantities. I'm sure it wasn't up to par with families with four future college football players or people like that, but I have seven kids, mostly girls, and I don't think we will reach those kinds of quantities any time soon. Oh, also, if you didn't eat fast, sometimes you didn't get seconds. I always wanted seconds, so I ate fast. My Mom always tried to serve me last, so the other kids got a chance...

When I was 14 or something, I washed dishes at a fancy restaurant down the street from my house. (I think it was called 'Warren's' or something like that, but it's gone now.) Anyway, work consisted of washing pots and pans while watching them cook the entrees, and washing dishes while watching them make the desserts. It all looked really good. The entree chef every day would find something new I hadn't tried to sample. (For example, one day he said "have you ever tried smoked duck?" Then he would slice me off a piece to try. Every day was different.) After the dinner rush was over, the entire crew would sit down and eat a meal together. Something different every night, something in a pot, always really good. I don't remember how much they paid me an hour, but it was always in cash and it was always provided in a small brown envelope. I don't think I made tons of money there, I don't remember exactly how long I worked there, but I think I eventually left for a better paying job.

I worked at a scout camp in the summers, in the kitchen. This had definite food related advantages. We would get up plenty early to get breakfast ready for the scouts, after serving and cleaning, we would eat. For breakfast, I many days would get a box of lucky charms, a big clear bowl, and some milk, and would go to town. Usually this would be associated with people sitting around watching me eat. I think I may have been some sort of side show freak. One time Roger made "Chocolate Fest" for the camp staff. I went to town. I've talked about Cadbury Creme Eggs here before. I am sure there are people out there that have a "John Payne eating at the camp - mass quantity" story...

I worked at Wendy's for a while in High School. I mostly worked nights. If you worked a full eight or ten hour shift, they either gave a steep discount for a meal, or comped a meal, I don't remember which. On full shift days, I would go to town on the salad bar they had there, or get a double combo, depending on my mood. Most of the time, I worked the grill. On nights when I closed, I generally ate a spicy chicken sandwich after the store closed, and then made a "giant fry ball" with the left over fries. That's right. Giant Fry Ball. Multiple nights a week.

I served a mission for my church in San Fernando California. There are people from all over the world in the San Fernando Valley. We ate all kinds of food. The members of the church often liked to feed the missionaries, and they always assumed we were super hungry all the time. This was fine by me. In my first area, we were eating at the home of an Italian family, who made a giant pot of spaghetti. They served us on platters. (Full on platters, heaped with food.) I ate two plates, they wanted me to eat a third. As I was finishing my second plate, my companion was finishing his first plate. They asked me if I wanted more, but I said "No, I think two plates is my limit, but Elder Meier here told me earlier that he was really hungry today, so I am sure he would love a second plate." Elder Meier could barely finish his first serving, and wasn't happy I did that to him... On my mission I had foods from all over the world. At one point I am pretty sure a Philippino family servved me a stew that had dog meat in it.

After my mission, I was enrolled in school, although I spent more time in other endeavors a lot. I had two jobs, one of which was on a framing crew. I estimate I had a 6000 calorie a day diet. A typical day involved going to work at 6:30am, taking a break at 9am to go to the gas station. I usually had a big breakfast burrito with tator babies, a large soda, a candy bar, and some other snack to take back to the site. We would stop for lunch, and go somewhere for a full on lunch. Mid afternoon, back to the gas station for either another soda or a gatorade, an ice cream sandwich or Klondike bar (usually a Klondike bar), a candy bar, and some other snack. After work, a full on dinner. Then sometime at night, some sort of snack or ice cream, or whatever. I burned off every calorie I ate back then.

We used to go to a place called 'Brick Oven' at the end of every semester to take dates, tell stories, and try to eat everyone else under the table. My friend Jonathan would always try to out eat me, but he never could. I would pound it down. One time we went to a place called 'Leatherbee's', that had a 25(?) scoop dish. I ordered one, and talked Jonathan into one. I finished mine about 45 minutes before he finished his. I shivered all night after that.

Then there is all the random stuff I have eaten. If I am hungry enough, I will eat anything. One of the guys at work a few years back had these 72 hour kits that were 15 years old. Every time he went out of town for training or vacation, I would get hungry and think about eating one of them. One day I finally did. It was nasty. One time we had a student that left a burrito in the freezer of our little fridge at work. The student went on a two year mission, and came back to work for us. The little freezer had been frozen over for a long time. He thawed it out, and found his burrito. He let me eat it. It was kind of freezer burnt and was missing some of it's flavor. I added pepper. A few months ago one of my students had a box of wheat thins on his desk. They had been there for a while, and were well past the expiration date. I decided to help him out by eating them for him. They were slightly rancid. It didn't stop me from eating most of the entire box. (The aftertaste was worse than the initial taste. I kept eating to avoid the aftertaste, and I was hungry.) I bought him a new box.

I am sure there are plenty of other stories. Lots of differing foods I have eaten. Plenty of times eating way too much. (Like 24 1/2 large wings at Wingers. The 1/2 wing was because I dropped one in mid-bite...)

These days, I try to do better. My doctor has me rotating in and out things like wheat, gluten, milk, and something that I for some reason can't remember right now. (edit: eggs.) I have been doing this for 2 months now, and feel physically better than I have in years. I try not to go to town quite as often. I mostly sit on my rear end all day long, and don't get tons of exercise. I still don't do very good. Last week, a store around here had 8 pieces of fried chicken for $5. I think I ate the equivalent of an entire chicken. A small chicken. (I like fried chicken...) Today I had a 9 inch Philly cheese steak sandwich with heaped with jalapeno and banana peppers. It was tasty. I did walk 1.5 miles to work this morning. But I also ate a bag of chips and salsa from Cafe Rio while I typed this... Some day I will learn. Or not.

What in the world is going on around here?

We seem to be attracting random junk around the house. Not that we don't have tons of random junk in the house, but usually we know the source. Lately we have found some random stuff around the house.

For a few weeks about a month ago, we would have a random article of clothing on sidewalk right in front of the house. A sock one day, little boy's shorts another day, a glove, a winter hat, that sort of thing. If I picked up the clothing item, another one would show up the next day. If I left it sitting there, nothing new would appear. It was weird. I asked the neighbors if any of the clothes were theirs, but they disavowed any knowledge of it. I personally think their dogs were getting out and leaving us gifts, but the neighbors would have to acknowledge that their dogs get out...

Last Thursday, when we got home from a baseball game, in our laundry basket by the washing machine, there was a pair of size 4T Fruit of the Loom boys briefs. Now, Adam is not potty trained yet, and we have superhero under roos waiting for him, not white briefs. No idea where these came from and why then. Tara has a theory about them getting mixed in with the kids clothes when her parents were watching them after Noel was born. I personally wonder just what in the world the girls are doing when we are gone from the house...

Today Adam brought me a cassette tape labeled "En Vogue - Funky Divas". Tara disavows any knowledge. I am completely confidant that this is nothing I have ever had in my possession. Seems kind of random. Amazon tells me this was 1992. How did it get in my house, and where did the boy find it?

We have some friends moving tomorrow. They've been packing for something like a week. I'm firmly entrenched in the idea that if we ever move, I will just sell everything we own, not pack anything, and start over. Seems an easier way to go...

Stuff this!

My kids are clothes stuffers. You give them a pile of clothes, pre-folded and ready to be put away, and guaranteed, the clothes would end up stuffed somewhere. I suppose this is ok, but the dressers we had we $100 Sauder "some assembly required" dressers. The sides are press board, the bottom is a different kind of press board. This is perfectly fine for someone like me. I set clothes in, the drawers open and close, no problems.

For my kids, who can't stop stuffing, the bottom of the drawers inevitably fall out the bottom. The kids end up stuffing more until the drawer one below opens at the same time as the one that is stuffed overfull. For a while, I was taking broken drawers and using a liberal amount of Gorilla Glue to the drawer to hold it together. This generally works well until they stuff and break the bottom by breaking one of the sides of the drawer. That usually ends the life of that drawer.

With the baby coming, we needed another dresser. I had a plan to build a 'stuff proof' dresser, over engineering the thing to handle any amount of clothes they could try to throw at it. I had a definite design in my head, and I figured that I could make the sides of the dresser a little bit different for each dresser that I made. I planned to put a little bookshelf on top of the dresser with a couple of shelves for the girls to put books on.

At the end of May, I got side tracked by a project down the street. By the time that project was done, I didn't have time to make a dresser. Tara and I spent some time going to different stores looking to find a dresser to purchase, even if it meant the same kind of dresser we already had. We couldn't find any. Most 'some assembly required' dressers these days are only 3 1/2 feet tall, with three drawers in them. Not what we were looking for. Pre-built dressers were the same size, but three times the cost.

After wandering around for a week trying to find something, I had an idea. I got metal shelving, and some laundry baskets, and made a makeshift dresser. It's nice and tall, and has tons of space. The kids can generally see the clothes, which is nice for them, and as you can see from the picture above, they continue to stuff, but it doesn't matter. (The clothes in these baskets was nicely folded and put away two weeks ago, but it doesn't take long to end up all over the place, I guess.) They can stuff these as much as they want, I don't see them breaking the baskets any time soon. Each shelf is rated for 350 pounds, so they can stuff full of chain mail if they want, and it still should be fine.

I liked the thing enough to make four of these. We found the baskets at Walmart. We cleaned out three different Walmarts here in the valley of this type of basket, and still needed about 6 more. A week later, one of them had 4 of them. I took them. Then another had 10 of them, I only bought two. I took secret pleasure in screwing up Walmart's inventory system around here by creating a one man run on the product, then having Walmart over stock the things, and I won't be buying any more. (I bought 16 of them in total.) Now, any time I go to Walmart in the next two months, I plan to walk by the laundry baskets, and if they have 8-10 of these on the shelf, I will just laugh to myself.

I gave Drew three old dressers with the remaining drawers. Hopefully he was able to build one good one, and hopefully his kids are not stuffers...

The calmest baby in the world

Noel is now 2 weeks old. She had a checkup today, and has just about regained her birth weight. She has also grown nearly 2 inches. (I've been telling people that she eats like a Payne...)

If you look carefully at this picture, you can see that she also has a heat vision power, like some of her sisters before her...

She seems to tolerate noise fairly well. I think the volume level in the house went down for the first week, but went back to 'normal' since. Some of Noel's siblings just don't have a volume control on them. Or a mute button.

She likes to sleep on her side. She also likes to kick her blankets off. Maybe she just gets too hot. If she can, she will wedge herself against one of the sides of whatever she is laying on. In general, she's a really calm baby. We hardly hear a peep out of her, unless she is hungry or bored. She also has a slow burn. Having said that, last week she gave me a look that I know I have given other people before. The look of "don't you dare bother me." I backed off...

We will try to remember to take some pictures here and there. No promises.

Book Review

Called of God by Prophecy
Dennis Horne

In the church, we belief that a man must be called of God, by prophecy, and by the laying on of hands by those who are in authority, to preach the Gospel and administer in the ordinances thereof.

This book addresses this topic, giving lots of examples in the history of the church, in explaining the topic. Now, usually in the past when I have come across a church book that gives so many stories about things like this, I tend to not like them so much, because usually they just leave the stories there, and have no narrative. The stories are not there for any good reason than to be there. In this book however, the author is explaining points about being called of God, and has a narrative in the chapters of the book. He uses a lot of little stories, but these are there to reinforce points in the book, and he does it in a way that becomes faith promoting, rather than just being sensationalistic.

I like this book, the author does a very good job in explaining the topic. Being one that has both received and extended callings in the church, it was a good reminder that at all times, we try to receive revelation through the Spirit before calls in the church are extended to people. As a result, we can move forward with faith and confidence in the church when we accept calls and extend them, knowing that the revelation has occurred first. It's been a good thing for my in the past year in the Bishopric of the ward to extend these callings, praying about them first as a Bishopric, and proceeding from there. I also have enjoyed seeing people that may have been hesitant at first to accept a calling, going ahead and trying, and really coming to enjoy the calls that were extended.

Anyway, this book is a really good treatment of the fact that in the church, we are called of God. Those in a position to extend calls would do well to read this book.

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