Costco

There are certain things I can buy in bulk at our local Costco that I wish I couldn't. I mean, toilet paper is great cause you know you'll use it all eventually. Same goes for detergent and even blank cd's. But whenever I buy the huge bags of fresh broccoli it always turns brown and limp and a little slimy before we can eat it all. My wife and I both love broccoli so I think we eat it at a fairly quick pace. We've even accepted the fact that it makes our whole upstairs smell like farts, because we know how scrumptious the cooked broccoli will be with butter and salt and pepper all over it. I swear, though, that we don't get through half the bag before it starts getting brown and slimy.

Some of you might ask, "Why don't you divide the large bag into several smaller bags via Ziplock and store them in your freezer for later consumption?" Well... I could, but if I wanted to eat frozen broccoli, then I'd BUY frozen broccoli. Then you might ask, "Maybe, but don't you find it frustrating that frozen broccoli is 90% stems and 10% florets?" Yes, I do find it frustrating, but it's only one of the many reasons I prefer fresh broccoli.

Another thing I shouldn't buy at Costco, but I probably will for the foreseeable future, is pistachio's. Man I love those nuts. I have a few problems with them, though. First and most importantly, it drives me crazy when I get a nut that doesn't have even a teeny tiny crack. I close my eyes and try to think about Disneyland or something whenever I have to put a sealed pistachio on top of my pile of shells. What a waste.

Secondly, though... I can't stop eating them. They're so extremely good I have a hard time deciding when to stop. I just keep eating and cracking... cracking and eating. I'll eat them until my stomach feels like I put way too much Horsey Sauce on an Arby's Melt. The problem is, when THAT pain starts to fade, my stomach is gurgling and I know I'm gonna spend most of the night and following morning in our downstairs bathroom away from my family... per Betsy's request. The sad part is I think it's totally worth it. I'm like a social drinker who always gets hung over and tells everyone around them while echoing off the inside porcelain of the toilet, "I'm never ever ever going to drink again." Then they drink again that night. It's like I forget how miserable I am when I see that gargantuan bag of pistachio's in my cupboard. It also doesn't help that we haven't painted our disassembled cupboard doors yet so I can see everything in our cupboards every time I go into the kitchen.

And finally, I feel like I'm wasting something when I dump all those pistachio shells in the garbage. Betsy says she's never once thought about it, but I think about it every time I hear the sound of hundreds of pistachio shells bouncing and sliding off different pieces of garbage until they make their way to the bottom of the garbage can. I actually went so far as to google ideas people have had to recycle pistachio shells... and I'm not even the "recycle type". I mostly just found a bunch of people making fun of people like me who want to find ways to recycle pistachio shells. Screw them. I have hundreds and hundreds of ant boats to keep me busy.

Resemblance

Different people have told us different things about who Season looks like in the family. Some people say she looks like me. Others say she looks like Betsy. Betsy and I both think she looks a lot like Boston, but makes some of the same faces that Tyton made when he was an infant.

So we decided to post a candid photo of Season and then post equally candid (completely unstaged and never posed) photo's of the rest of us.

Luckily we happened to have similar photo's of the rest of the family already stored in iPhoto. It was actually a freaky coincidence. So what do you guys think?











































































Also... before you judge the massiveness of my muscles, remember that the bathwater has a magnifying effect. My muscles in the photo are deceivingly huge. I'm much less toned in real life.

"Over" population?

Quite some time ago I lived in a house with nine other renters. We were always trying to do something that no other renter had done. One night I was up pretty late after a date or group outing or something, and I stumbled across a late night/early morning program about starving children in one of the many Third World Countries. The program was successful at tugging at my heart strings and by the end of the program, I had called the toll free number and given the operator my credit card information so they could automatically withdraw funds from my account on a monthly basis so I could help “Feed the Children”.

They were very diligent in taking the money from my account. They were even more diligent in sending me personal gifts (i.e. Address labels, stamps, pens) as their personal thank you for my continued donations. This disturbed me. Where exactly was my money going? My monthly donation was being given straight back to me in a ruse to get more money. I don’t need address labels. I don’t need stamps or pens. I wanted to “Feed the Children”.

The more I reflected on the process of donations (as I stared at the magnet on my fridge of the adorable black girl that was supposed to be getting food) the more it perturbed me. I even went so far as to quasi-rebel. I started telling people that the reason we had so many starving children in the world is because we continue to feed them just enough to keep them alive and suffering. My simple solution was to stop giving them rice for a month or so. After that, we wouldn’t have any more starving people in the world and we would no longer be burdened with senseless late night programming and useless personalized knick-knacks.

There was a time when I was concerned about overpopulation of the Earth. It didn’t keep me awake at night, by any means... but when it was brought up in conversation, I thought about it. Then I took a sociology class at Weber State University. I read an article in a side column about the myths of overpopulation. There was a fact listed (now pay attention to this) that stated the entire world population could be split into families of four and each family could live on a 1/8 acre plot in Texas and not spill into any other state. Given, that doesn’t account for roads, forest, rivers, employment, or recreation, but it was a perspective I hadn't heard before.

Religion casts an interesting shadow on the supposed facts and information regarding population growth. Utah is predominantly Mormon and a Mormons are taught that one of the first and most important commandments is to “multiply and replenish” the earth. It is directly linked to the doctrine of spirit children in heaven that are waiting for a mortal body to inhabit. Mormons are taught to have as many children as your means will allow, assuming you are capable of providing and caring for them in righteousness.

This is a pretty big wrench that has been thrown into the inner workings of population control. Here is ones’ religion stating that they need to bring spirit children down into their families, directly opposing birth control, while scientists and researchers all over the world are crying wolf about population control and “zero growth”. What are the religious followers to do? Science is considered a blessing from God and information obtained in righteousness should be heeded. But what if that information is contrary to the teachings of ones’ church? Some would say, “Err on the side of conservation” while others would say, “Err on the side of obedience”.

And one last thing: Nobody seems to take into account nature’s ability to control the population as well as the likelihood of a World War assisting us in controlling the population. The recent tsunami and terrorist activities are prime examples of this type of elimination. It appears as though the production of nuclear weapons and bio-terrorism is also an extreme likelihood. It’s fairly safe to say that we live in an evil world and this evil is becoming more and more capable of destroying thousands upon thousands of people very quickly.

It may be a scary thought to consider, but from a religious standpoint, there is an Armageddon approaching quickly and that should help out the Earth’s population problem.

But that's just my two cents... or three.

By Request

Here are a few recent photo's of Season:

Nicholls Road

I have a lot of Mormon friends so maybe someone can enlighten me on what the actual Mormon beliefs are when it comes to the supernatural. I'm not down with horoscopes or palm reading, although I do totally dig on hand massages, and even though I know I'm a Cancer... that's pretty much where my astrological knowledge ends.

However, I HAVE seen a ghost. I'm not embarrassed to say it either. I know it wasn't a dream so all you nay-sayers can stop thinking what you're thinking. Here's the story:

I was a Senior in High School and I was cruising around Kaysville/Fruit Heights in the passenger seat of my friends manual transmission, dark blue, family van. My friend, Rory Powers, is driving and my little brother, Nicholas, is in the back seat. I don't know what we were doing or where we were going, but it was dark outside... probably around eleven or twelve. It was summer and we turned off Highway 89 onto Nicholls Road.

Nicholls Road connects Highway 89 to Main Street in Kaysville, but it's a pretty skinny road and it winds around all curvy like once you pass a baseball diamond on the north and a golf course on the south. Immediately after you pass these landmarks, the trees get really thick on both sides of the street and the road starts to get all twisty and turny. There are no streetlights either... at least there weren't any 13 years ago (Oooo... 13...).

So we start driving down this street and there is no other car on the road, which is normal for Nicholls. For some reason the meaningless, mid-pubescent banter stops and the car is completely silent. None of us are scared since we've nothing to be scared OF... yet. As we pass the golf course and diamond, Rory decided to throw on his "brights" since we're entering the particularly creepy portion of Nicholls Road. Well, you know when you turn your brights on, there is a split second when the headlights are marginally brighter than your actual high beams? Well in that split second, I saw a white figure standing off to the side of the road... not quite in the trees. It was there and gone so quickly, it didn't fully register that I had even seen anything.

A few seconds passed and I think that I actually had dismissed it as some sort of imaginary... something or other. But then my little brother leaned up from the back seat so his head was between Rory's and my own. He was very hesitant and he paused while he asked this question, but he asked it anyway. He said, "Did you guys... uh.... see that white... thing... back there?" It was obvious he didn't want to say the word "ghost". I looked at him as it actually sank in that I'd seen something. Rory did the same thing and we all laughed nervously as we admitted to having seen this figure in the road.

I've never bothered to research the history of Nicholls Road to see if anyone had died there, though it wouldn't matter much if someone hadn't. I mean... I saw what I saw. I'm also not down with the Wee-Jee board either or else I might have tried to give that a shot with Rory and Nick... deep in the trees on Nicholls Road. We could have asked the board a few questions, like "When am I going to die?" and "What are the initials of my future spouse?", then Rory would have pulled a mirror out of his pocket at exactly midnight, looked into the mirror and said "Bloody Mary" THREE TIMES. Then we'd drive around the local graveyard until we saw some dark figures following us then we'd have gone back to my house and tried to fall asleep on the trampoline until Nick started REALLY freaking us out by looking up at the stars and talking about where space ends while we all try to get our heads around the concept of "forever".

Seriously, though. I saw the ghost and so did my friend and so did my brother. I figure pretty much everyone has experienced something similar or maybe even cooler than this. I haven't seen a ghost since... although something even creepier happened when I was in about third grade. I don't have any witnesses and the older I get the more I think maybe I dreamed it. But that's a story for another day.

Honey Oat

It's only been the last few years that I've really found myself involved in politics. I don't know if it's just something that happens when a person hits 25 or if there is something else that triggers it at different ages for different people. It's not very often that I find myself involved in political discussions and I think that's for the best. I judge people pretty harshly and I usually don't need much of a reason. I judge my friend John every time he orders a sandwich on white bread. Seriously, John... you have six choices of bread here and you're choosing WHITE? You're an idiot. I really do think those words... "You're an idiot". Sometimes I even say them. He doesn't care, though. Now I actually think he prefers Honey Oat and probably orders it when I'm not around, but chooses White when I'm standing behind him in line.

I also found myself in a discussion the other day with someone who I've known for years. For some reason the topic of the Death Penalty came up and I casually mentioned that Utah doesn't execute enough dirtbag savages. The next thing I know, this dude is rambling on about how "killing is never a solution for killing" and "yeah, well, could YOU pull the trigger?" and "studies show that execution isn't a deterrent for violence". You know. All the usual criminal-lover rhetoric. The funny thing is... I don't like that guy very much anymore.

The abortion, socialism, and Feed the Children topics are pretty one-sided... at least in Utah. But then I started talking to a co-worker about Global Warming and he actually thinks that An Inconvenient Truth is fact. Criminy.

It makes me wonder if people like me less when they find out how I feel about random political issues. Then I think, "Yeah, but do I really only want to be friends with people who agree with every single thing I do?" Of course not. I love arguing. What on earth would we talk about. "Man I love Honey Oat." "Me too." "And I hate Pugs." "That's crazy. So do I." That would be so lame.

Then... about 30 seconds ago... I thought, how many anti-death penalty, pro-pug, anti-Honey Oat, and Pro-Global Warming people are going to read this post and decide I'm not as cool as they thought I was? If they're like me, they'll never frequent my blog again. But maybe I'm changing. I still hang out with John.

Graham

The following is a true story which may dissuade some of you from having children. It might also be one of those stories that you find so... I don't know... endearing, maybe... that it makes you want to have children even more than you already do.

I'm eating dinner with my family the other night. Since we've had the baby, there have been several neighbors who have graciously offered to bring over dinner. An offer we can't refuse. Well, the other night we had a neighbor bring over chicken kay-sah-dee-ahs. They were quite yummy, but my children are a little more picky than my wife and I.

They're surprisingly willing to try pretty much anything you offer them, with very few exceptions. (Semi-humorous side note: I had Tyton convinced that until he'd actually tasted poo, he's wasn't allowed to say something tastes like it. I told him that poo might taste really really yummy, but he'd never know unless he'd try it. Don't worry, I didn't let him.) Well, Tyton thought the dinner tasted okay, but when Boston put the first bite in his mouth, he gagged audibly and started scanning the living room for the garbage can among the newly rearranged furniture. I told him he could spit it out on the side of my plate, which he did happily... along with some of his spit and a bit of graham cracker I didn't realize was also in his mouth.

Well, I don't have much of a gag reflex. As long as I can't smell something gross, I can be looking at just about anything. So I scoot this blob of chicken-graham goop off to the side of my plate and continue eating. My boys continue playing with their trains and I keep watching Most Shocking on TruTV (previously Court TV).

Betsy wanders in about 10 minutes later... right about the time I polish off my scrumptious dinner. Betsy asks me if Boston thought it tasted good. I chuckle and start to explain his gag and subsequent ejection of said bite, but when I glance at my plate to give my wife the unneeded visual aid, I notice the glob of goop was mysteriously absent.

There was only one explanation. At some point I had stirred Bostons partially digested morsel into my own meal and consumed it along with the tortilla, cheese, chicken, sour cream, and the miscellaneous spices that comprised my kay-sah-dee-ah.

My wife was disgusted, but I was more surprised that I didn't taste even a hint of honey graham.