95%

Since I didn't have enough material (or time) for the "100 things you don't know about me" blog post, I decided to put my own twist on the information. I hope it's not too boring.

95% of the time I eat a Hot Pocket, I scald the roof of my mouth.

95% of the time I can wake myself up from a nightmare if I don't like the direction it's going.

95% of the time I'm arguing with someone, the only reason I win is because I refuse to back down from my position and they get bored.

95% of Keanu Reeves' movies totally blow.

95% of Christopher Reeve's movies kick "A".

95% of the time I fold the toilet paper.

95% of the profanities I say are said for fun and not because I'm angry or frustrated.

95% of my time I spend at work is spent doing things other than actual "work".

95% of the time I ride the metal cart all the way to my car when I'm done shopping... even if I don't have any of my kids with me.

95% of the gas used in my VW Golf is spent driving to Layton to see movies with my best friend.

95% of my enamel has been slowly worn away and is now considered "filling".

95% of the time I'm not in the mood for dessert.

95% of the hair on my body can be found on my legs and in my butt crack.

95% of the church hymns I sing in Sacrament Meeting are really only lip-synced.

95% of fellow officers and agents I work with say "supposably" instead of "supposedly" and use "seen" instead of "saw" ("I seen him driving fast.")

95% of our home computer paper is spent printing off digital coloring books from PlayhouseDisney.com.

95% of my daily liquid consumption is in the form of Dr. Pepper.

95% of my wardrobe never gets worn and, instead, sits in the closet wishing they didn't have a collar so they could be included in all the fun.

95% of the times I cry, it has something to do with my enjoyment of being a father.

95% of the time I'm happy with the size of my "junk".

95% of the time, I'm too lazy to answer my phone if it's further away than arms reach.

95% of people doing the same job as me, make more money than I do.

95% of my poops resemble spaghetti in length and circumference (not color or taste).

95% of the time I watch the movies My Life, The Cure, An American Tail, or Life is Beautiful, I cry like a baby.

95% of the time I climb more than 30 stairs, I need to stop and rest.

95% of the time I can spell a word correctly that I've never heard before.

95% of the stories I tell have at least some form of exaggeration or untruth to make them more interesting.

I'm thinking about following up this blog post with a post called "5%". It will go through this same list of items, but focus on the remaining 5% instead.

Galactic Prophylactic

My birthday was yesterday, but I got stuck in some training for work that lasted for two days... the second day of which was my birthday. I'm such a poor planner that when my supervisor asked me last week if I'd be willing to participate in a UA Night (a night dedicated to drug testing probationers), I told him "yes" and that Tuesday was a good night to do it. It wasn't until later that I realized I had just committed myself to a work day lasting from 7 am until 10 pm... and that day was on my birthday.

Betsy was a little agitated, to say the least. She gets more excited for my birthday than she does for her own. She loves to decorate the house and spend the day doing arts and crafts with the kids and then give me the projects on my birthday. She asked me repeatedly what I wanted her to do to celebrate my "special day". I explained that I would only be seeing her and our kids for a few minutes in the morning... and our kids would be asleep by the time I got home. I convinced her to not do anything for my birthday and save the celebration for this weekend. She fought this notion because, after all, TUESDAY was my birthday. She couldn't grasp the reasoning behind my request to completely ignore my birthday celebration on the actual day.

Well, she fought the urge all day long while I was at work, but at some point in the evening she buckled. She knew it was too late to do much decorating, but she decided she would make me a small card. But when she finished the card, I guess she thought that wasn't enough. She felt like she needed to do me some sort of favor on my "special day".

When I got home from work at around 11pm, this is what I found on our kitchen table. I won't tell you what the card said, but I'm sure you can guess based on what Betsy had enclosed with the card. And those are pistachio's that Betsy spent quite some time cracking for me. I laughed the whole time I was eating those nuts. I pictured Betsy scanning the house wondering what she could do for me on my birthday when I wasn't there... then she saw our huge bag of pistachio's. Awesome.

This is just one more reason why I think I have the coolest and sweetest wife in the world. She can't help being thoughtful, even when she promises she won't be.

Picture Post

I'm going to be in training for the next two days and I won't be around a computer much at all. I wanted to get another post up this weekend, but it's been pretty crazy. I've decided to just to put up a couple of photo's instead of taking a huge amount of time telling a story. This first photo is of Betsy's birthday a few weeks ago. It's a family photo that I thought turned out pretty well.

Happy 30th, Boodle!



The second photo is from the fireworks tonight. In the past, we've had to bring ear plugs for our kids. Tyton was always pretty scared of fireworks. Then Boston came along and Boss didn't mind them as much, which made Tyton feel like he couldn't be scared of fireworks if his baby brother wasn't. Well by the time Season came, she thinks fireworks are quiet compared to the screaming and yelling and fighting she has to hear all day long while she's trying to sleep. I thought the look on her face was awesome in this picture.

Have a great week and I'll try to get another post up by Wednesday.

Mega Man 3

Boston missed his nap today, but Tyton slept just like he was asked. When that happens, we end up letting the child stay up later who took the nap as instructed. So Tyton was lucky enough to spend the evening with Betsy and I while Boston was sawing logs.

Tyton asked me nicely if I could go downstairs and play the Nintendo with him. We have an old school NES with a bunch of games I grew up with so it's not like I'm ever really inconvenienced when Tyton asks me to play with him. Usually we'll start to play Super Mario Bro's, but Tyton will have more fun watching me play so he'll die on purpose when it's his turn. I don't mind cause I'd rather play than watch him run out his time since he's too nervous to just jump over those effing turtles.

Tonight, however, Tyton asked if I'd play Mega Man 3. I put the game in, but it didn't work so I had to blow in the game and the NES system about 15 times until it worked. Once I started playing Ty asked me to play the Snake Man screen. I happily obliged, even though I was pretty sure that Snake Man is easier to beat if I had Magnet Man's special power which I could only get if I beat Magnet Man first.

Well, I'm sitting on the floor with my back leaning on the couch and Tyton is sitting on the couch watching me play. I didn't notice Tyton talking for several minutes because Snake Man is a pretty hard level to play after a 3 year sabbatical and I was in my ZONE. But then I start hearing him and I try to figure out if he's talking to me or to the game. He's asking questions like "Can't you go up a little then jump to shoot him?" and "Why do those guys keep flipping over you?". None of his questions really required an answer since he was asking them faster than I could have answered them even if I'd tried. Every time I died, I heard Tyton exhale in frustration and remind me to not make the same mistake again.

When I finally made it to the actual "Snake Man" my power was down to about a third and I only had one life left. Snake Man wailed on me pretty good and I died. I told Tyton that I was on my last life and he became visibly anxious. He started bouncing a little on the couch and then he really started talking.

I started playing my last life and I got into my groove pretty quickly and realized that I could beat Snake Man easily if I took my time and jumped over him every time he ran at me instead of just shooting as fast as I could. This process took significantly longer and Tyton was getting pretty impatient. He kept giving me updates on how much life I had and how much life Snake Man had, even though it was pretty easy to see in the top left corner of the screen. The closer Snake Man came to dying the more nervous Tyton was getting and he was bouncing higher and higher on the couch.

"One more hit, Dad! ONE MORE HIT!!!!"

Then Snake Man exploded and Tyton started cheering. I held up my hand for a High Five, but Tyton threw his arms around my neck and gave me the biggest hug, like I'd just cut the correct wire and saved the world or something. Maybe in his mind, I kind of did.

I love having kids.

Ggrraaffiittii

Another thing I don't like very much about blogging on KSL is when I feel like I've made a really good, well thought out, humorous comment... but then other "more important" news stories happen and the story (with my genius comment) gets forced to Page Two or Page Three. Very few people take their news perusal to Page Two or Three so my comment vanishes into the background of better news.

This comment was only on the front page for about 10 minutes. It's about gangsters spray-painting buildings and the personal property of others:

Everybody, Everywhere!

Betsy asked me to hold Season so she could go into the backyard and start cleaning up. I looked out the window a few minutes later and I saw Tyton driving her around in his Jeep and she was leaning over and picking up random items from the yard. I thought it was pretty funny... especially because the 5 minute clean up job ended up taking about 30 minutes.

Clean up, Clean up
Everybody, Everywhere!
Clean up, Clean up
Everybody Do Your Share!

Pectorals

Ever since I hit puberty I've had a desire for pectorals. There is something I admire about a nice set of pecs. Not the kind of pecs that can hold a pencil vertically while flexing, just the kind of pecs that make fellow Lagoon-a-beach go'ers think, "Those are sweet pecs!" (exclamation point optional).

I'm turning 31 years old this month. It's not really a landmark birthday, but now that I'm a full year into my 30's, I'm starting to realize that if I don't have pecs now... I probably never will.

Last year my best friend decided when he turned 30 he wanted to be able to say "I'm in the best shape I've ever been in". He didn't quite make it, but I was thinking the other day about how "in shape" I am. I'm definitely NOT at my peak now, so I starting thinking about when my "peak" happened and how I missed it. I decided it was when I was in the Police Academy about 9 years ago. It's not really much to brag about, though. Even though the physical part of the academy involved a lot of running, it was pretty simple for me since I only weighed 120 pounds (all you women out there who scoff and say "Well I weigh more than YOU"... please don't. I know you're trying to make me feel better, but for a dude, small is NOT good... it's like the complete opposite for women so please don't compare us. It makes me feel even more wussy than I already do. Imagine if we were hanging out and you said "I got on the scale the other day and I weigh 130 lbs", then right after that I said, "Whoa! I weigh LESS than you!")

I've never had a hard time with the push-ups or sit-ups, again, since I was only 120 lbs. The hardest part for me was running 1.5 miles in 12 minutes, and it really wasn't THAT hard. I think I actually ran it in a little under 10 minutes.

Well, I got an email at work the other day that invited me (along with everyone else in my department) to participate in our Be Fit program. The program, essentially, is a $75 incentive payment if you can pass the minimum physical requirements from the Academy. It is 30 push-ups in 1 minute; 30 sit-ups in 1 minute; and 1.5 miles in 16 minutes. I decided I was going to get an easy $75. It's been about 7 years since I've ran further than 10 steps and I've had absolutely no reason to do any push-ups or sit-ups. To top it all off, I've gained about 30 lbs to a whopping total of 150 lbs soaking wet.

I accidentally didn't show up for the Physical Incentive. I told my wife on Saturday that I had intended on making the easy $75, but had forgotten about it until it was too late. We happened to be outside playing in the sprinklers at the time and about 10 minutes later, Betsy made a playful comment about my "man-boobs". Seriously? Man-boobs? Me? It actually made me feel good. I was actually gaining enough weight that my breastess-ez were sagging.

Saturday night after the kids were in bed, Betsy made another comment about how I was visibly jiggling while I brushed my teeth. Then she asked if I thought I could actually pass the test. I laughed and told her I've never in my life struggled with the push-up or sit-up portion of the test. I've always been one of the few participants who could bust out all 30 push-ups with my hands forming the diamond in about 20 seconds. Betsy called my bluff.

I went into the front room and gave her my phone. I told her to tell me when it turned to 10:18 and I'd start the push-ups. I slowly got to my hands and knees and just as I took my first deep breath she said "Go!".

Thirty pounds and 7 years is a pretty big deal, evidently. I did the first 14 pretty quickly, but then I had to rest (you have to rest in the up position and can not arch your back or stick your butt up). The last 16 push-ups I did in 3 push-up intervals with about 5 seconds between each set. I wanted to die. After I finished I went into the kitchen to get a drink of water while Betsy was laughing. When I got back into the front room, I starting to explain to Betsy why it was so difficult for me, but she was still laughing. Turns out she was laughing because I was only saying about two words between each breath I was taking.

I actually think I could have got the $75, but I would have been miserable for at least 10 days. In fact, today is Tuesday and my arms still shake when I try to lift my Dr. Pepper to my lips... and I still cough whenever I laugh. I guess that's what happens when you use parts of your lungs that have been dormant for 7 years.

I think I'll just wait until technology progresses to where I can get pectoral implants. I'm happy with pecs that are strictly cosmetic.

PS That's not a photo of my man-boob. I trim my boobs every two weeks. I just found that photo on the World Wide Web.