Xander and Lucas: Funny Stories Part 2

My wife related this story to me:

So we got home a little while ago and Xander asked me for "Chocolate Bread" (which is Bread with Nutella for the uninitiated). I made it for him and sent him on his way. About three minutes later, he comes up to me and says he wants more. I know he has a history of dropping food and throwing perfectly good things away (silverwear, food, etc.) so I ask him "What happened to your bread?" and he responds saying "It's in my tongue" as he points to his open (empty) mouth. I just laughed and made him some more "Chocolate Bread."

Story 2:

Xander goes to music class once a week, but this week we couldn't go on his usual day, so instead we went to the class the day after. He wanted to wear his Bugs Bunny Halloween costume but it was dirty so he settled for wearing his Yoda costume (it was Halloween). He was so excited to have it on!

On Thursday's there is another boy at the class that is Xander's age so they were doing way more running around than singing and dancing today. So he was running up and down the halls with this other kid and I lost track of them for a bit. Then he comes running back into the music room without his costume on! I guess he just decided to take it off? He brought it back to me and said, "Mommy, put my costume on!" Like I'm always just gonna be there to fix his problems! :) Oh, and he calls his Yoda ear hat his "Yellow Hat." That made me laugh.

Xander and Lucas: Funny Stories Part 1

Our children sometimes do some funny stuff.

This is a story Vanina told me about Xander:

"So I brought the vacuum out and when Xander saw it he sprinted for the recliner and jumped up on it looking back at the vacuum. I began vacuuming and as I got closer to the recliner I saw a wrapper from one of Xander's snacks on the floor. I asked him to get down and grab it and he just shook his head.

I finally had to just grab it myself and I finished vacuuming and turned off the vacuum. While I was putting the vacuum up Xander jumped off the recliner, came up to me and said, with a serious face, "That was close!"

Here's another story Vanina related to me:

"Ok, so i was in the kitchen making Lucas's bottle and both of the boys were on the blanket.  I then hear Xander starting to get upset. I don't remember what he said now but something to the affect of "Lucas is eating it."  So I don't know how this happened exactly (if Lucas stole it from him or if Xander offered it to him) but i walk into the living room and Lucas is stuffing his face with Xander's Nutella bread.

Xander had almost finished it so the bread was separated because that's what he does when it's almost gone and Lucas had nutella all over his fingers. He had such a tight grip on that piece of bread.  He cried when i took it away. Luckily his bottle was done by that point and I was able to stick that in his mouth and he forgot about the Nutella but we did have to go wash his hands because they were covered."

I love my boys!

Test of the Email Blogging System

This is just a test of the Email Blogging System. If this had been an actual emergency, instructions to scream your head off and go down fighting would have ensued.

A great quote....

I just wanted to pop in and make a post...surprise! Life is busy, blah blah blah.

I needed to get this quote in here to preserve it so I can refer back to it later:

"Your self-doubt just ain’t that effective. Or accurate.

It’s like the weatherman. It’s rarely right and yet we listen anyway." ~ Chuck Wendig

So awesome!

Carry on.

Dreaming in Chinese

My best friend's native language is English. However, at some point in his life he was exposed to a lot of the Spanish language such that when he is drunk he can speak fluent Spanish. This may seem odd, but as scientists are discovering every day, the brain has strange powers (2nd paragraph).

Last night I dreamed that I was in China, the reason I was there was not clear but it had to do with work (not my current job, some other job I had). The entire dream was in Chinese. Now, let me be up front and say that I do not speak Chinese. I can count the number of words of Chinese I know on one hand. The dream clearly was in a language I do not speak, and everyone in the dream was Asian (besides myself), and the town I was in looked like downtown Hong Kong (big Chinese neon billboards and all) and yet I was able to read and understand everything I saw on the billboards and everything I heard people say.

This is difficult to explain but what I'm trying to say is that people were speaking Chinese words in my dream and I understood them when I heard them. My brain was doing the translation from sounds to understanding the same way it does it for me in the other languages I speak (English, Spanish, French). Very strange stuff indeed. Maybe this article explains it (again 2nd paragraph but also the last 2 paragraphs as well).

On a completely different topic I found these two quotes online and thought they were hilarious so I have to share them. The first one is a biblical reference to Ruth and is a warning for women who are getting impatient to find their "True Love" or are just lonely and want companionship:

"To all the girls who are in a hurry to have a boyfriend or get married, a piece of Biblical advice: 'Ruth patiently waited for her mate, Boaz.' While you are waiting for YOUR Boaz, don't settle for any of his relatives; Broke-az, Po-az, Lyin-az, Cheatin-az, Dumb-az, Drunk-az, Cheap-az, Lockedup-az, Goodfornuthin-az, Lazy-az, and especially his third cousin Beatinyo-az. Wait for Boaz and make sure he respects Yoaz."

And another one that I think many people (on many levels) can relate to when they think about their upbringing (and if you can't, you are blessed):

"I was raised in the valley
There was shadows and death
Got out alive but with scars
that I can't forget."

Hard? No. Impossible.

[Note: I wrote this post about a month ago, in the middle of the end of the semester blues. I finished the paper I mention below. I still haven't gotten the grade back yet, but you know what? It's done. So very done. :)]


Writing is a funny thing. Sometimes it comes easy, sometimes it doesn't come at all. The range of difficulty encompasses everything in between (and maybe something outside that) as well. I've often believed that only in writing does man truly find in himself something deeper, everything else one might do or be is just a shadow of that deeper aspect. Who's to say if I'm right or wrong? Everyone who reads this I suppose; however, I will simply agree to disagree with you.

A life's work can be anything, it's true, but only in hearing about it, reading about it, or seeing it do you really get a glimpse of it; if not a complete understanding. Those three: hearing, reading, and seeing, are just a form of storytelling, implicit in the way our senses work. We tell ourselves stories all day everyday through our senses. That's all writing really is: storytelling.

If I could tell you a story now, I would (and who knows maybe I am already), but none come to mind. I sit here after a full day of ostensibly working on a research paper, but all I've done is learn how much I didn't, and that made it all the harder.

"Like a face, getting forced to the floor." That's a line from a new Chevelle song that just came on right now and it made me smile sadly. Sadly because it reminds me so much of what it's been like to try and write this research paper. I have a weak idea, and less interest in it than I do in watching the paint peel on the wall near my cubicle. That makes the writing go beyond difficult; into the range of near impossibility.

What men think about...

This made me laugh. A pretty funny version of how to prepare your daughter for certain things in life.

Lol!

Brain Lag

I'm sitting in my office right now listening to a Paul Oakenfold "2 Years of Cream" set, trying to write.

I'm no stranger to writing, in fact I've written a few lengthy items of late. The type of writing that I am trying to do today though, it's a whole 'nother ball game. I'm trying to write a Theory Paper on Competing Network Logics. The main crux of the problem I'm having is that I feel exhausted.

The sad thing is, I have all afternoon just to write this paper. It's not due tomorrow or anything like that but it is due sooner rather than later. I am in crunch time as next week is the end of the semester and this paper does not give a rat's about my finals or my problems to anthropomorphize it a bit.

So, since I haven't written in this blog since our little baby was born, I thought I'd use it as a way to "jog my brain" and get me on track. I can tell you though, right now I'm not feeling any better than I was a few minutes ago. It almost feels like every thought is swimming through syrup in my brain. No, not the yummy maple stuff you are used to either. I'm talking about a cranium sized electrified fence worth of ozone and scorched smelling protein soup that anything less agile than electrons would stick in like a quagmire.

I can't talk about my brain anymore so I'll talk about something else. Baby Alexander is doing great. He's pretty much the cutest child I've ever seen. If you don't believe me I'd usually say I'd fight you if you don't agree, but that's not the case here. If you look at him you can't help but agree with me, you lose all free agency in the face of his cuteness and are rendered helpless to his overwhelming cute power. In the absence of his immediate presence you may attempt to disagree, but I have a thousand pics worth of his cuteness on my iPod Touch that will argue that you are wrong better than any of my words ever could. So no, I don't need to fight are argue with you, I'll just flash you a pic and rest my case.

He's over 9 Lbs now and gaining. He's still short for his age, and looking chunky to prove it, but it only adds to the overall effect: he's super cute. I went in to say goodbye to him this morning and I almost didn't leave for work because I was captured in the tractor beam of his utter adorableness.

So yeah, he's pretty awesome! You should come visit him.

Ok, I'm off to write a paper...or at least some words.

Waiting...anxious...

It's currently 1:31am. My wife has just been admitted to the Women's Care Center at Northwest Medical Center here in Tucson for an emergency C-section.

They stuck me in this cubicle to wait so I hacked in to their computer (it wasn't hard) so I could post this. You'll see it when you wake up, and by then we'll be parents.

They tell me Vanina has something called HELLP Syndrome, a form a pre-eclampsia. Her liver functions are way off, her platelets are low, and her blood pressure is skyrocketing. All of that means little to me, really, when compared with what really matters: Vanina has a TON of pain in her chest (from the liver) and she can barely breath (BP mixed with the platelet thing).

The cause of all this: her unborn child. No one seems to know what exactly causes pre-eclampsia. The treatment is to deliver the baby. So that's what they're going to do, in a few minutes.

Pray for a healthy mother and child.

(slight pause here as the doctor came and talked to me)

OK, so they are having trouble putting in the spinal anesthesia. They decided to do that instead of an epidural. They didn't say exactly what the problem was but if they can't get it to work, they'll have to do general (put her out). I hope they don't do that, it will make this experience even more stressful than it already is right now.

I can't write about it any more, it's making my head spin.

Writing usually helps, it's not doing squat this time.

I'll post more later (today? tomorrow? not sure when but soon-ish). Call me if you need a quicker update.

Tucson, First Impressions

So Tucson is...nice. Ha! You thought I was gonna say HOT!

It does get hot here, I'll grant you that, but it's like I told my wife the other day, here's a direct quote: "It's hot here, but it's not as hot as I thought it would be. I mean, I've been walking around in the sun and it's 105 degrees and I don't feel too uncomfortable. I'm sweating but I don't feel like I'm going to die."

We keep the air condition in our house at 78 degrees. I feel comfortable when it is set there. If you would have told me a month ago that I would feel comfortable in my home at that temperature I would have laughed at you. It was that hot in our house in Utah and I thought my eyeballs were going to melt.

The house, our first home by the way, is awesome! My wife picked a good one. We are gonna do some painting next weekend but that's about it as far as fix it up.

It is monsoon season around here. It will be blue skies (more on the sky later) one moment and the next it's raining so hard that the storm puts out the Clock Tower at our local shopping center and they have to use the Emergency Broadcast System to let us know whats going on. NO, it was NOT a test of the EBS, it was for real. I happened to be parked just below said Clock Tower at the time of the storm too, lucky for me the wind was blowing west instead of east. If it had been blowing east I'd be looking for a new car probably (you should have seen the debris all over).

Besides the weather, school starts on Monday. From what everyone has told me (and what my class syllabus look like) this semester will be the toughest one of my entire program. I suppose I should be grateful because I will know if I'm cut out for this by January. If I can make it through to January then I will definitely be graduating with a PhD in May of 2016.

Wish me luck!

That's it for now, oh wait, I almost forgot. This is what happens when you leave a box open on the floor around here.

Yes, nap time inside a box is better than nap time just on the floor I guess.

I forgot to talk about the sky too. The sky here is larger than life. Think about the colors from movies like Mulon Rouge, The Lovely Bones, and The Warrior's Way (that last one is an awesome Ninja vs Cowboys movie, if you like that stuff). When seen in HD these movies make the colors pop out and invade your living room. Well, the sky here is almost the opposite. It looks so full of color that it's unreal. The blues are too blue, the evening sunsets are too full of violet and orange and red. It's like some director told the CGI guys to use too much color to make it look larger than life; except that it's the real sky you are seeing up there. It's almost indescribable.

You just have to see it for yourself.

Order Up!

The book is ready. If you have a hankering for a Science Fiction Novel, and can stand reading something not on the New York Times's Best Seller list, then I'd suggest you run on over to CreateSpace and order yourself up a piping-hot plate of Alterity, my first novel!

Here's the link:

ORDER ALTERITY HERE!

Enjoy!

P.S. I know it's kind of expensive, I did not set the price. Blame that on CreateSpace and their ability to grab me by the short hairs when it comes to setting the price. I apologize for that.

The end is in sight...

Hi all, it's just after noon on Tuesday May 31st. I am sitting at my desk at work, thinking about how in 74 hours I'll be done with this job forever. (When you say 'forever' in your mind as you read this please try to make it sound like this: for-ev-AAAAAAHH).

[Intermission]

Ok, it's now 3:20 pm. I had to go do an inventory audit with the corporate auditor that is here from Minnesota. It went ok.

Unfortunately, since it took three hours, now I'm tired and I don't feel like writing so much.

So there it is. A short post...with the end in sight.

Cheers...

On Dreams and Sleep...

Last night was rough. I felt like I fell asleep soon after laying down but when I woke up I felt tired. That may have to do with the dream I had though.

I dreamt that I was living in New York City, with some roommates. These were people I do not know and have never met, but they were in my dream regardless. One of my roommates had to get up early for work and he needed quiet late at night so he could sleep. I remember going to bed and then waking up when I heard someone in my room. Then I remember getting shot twice in the chest.

I felt my lungs filling up with blood and I couldn't breath. I remember that feeling lasting longer than I thought it should, I was drowning in my own fluids for way longer than it should have taken for me to pass out and die. I called out to my roommates but the only one to hear my pitiful pleas was the noise Nazi roommate.

He just banged on the wall and told me to be quiet.

Then I woke up, and I woke up tired. Every morning around 5:20 something or so, as I'm getting ready, I tell myself the same thing: tonight I'm going to bed earlier. I go to bed at 9pm on most nights and it seems like I'm still super tired either way.

I ask myself if going to bed earlier is really going to fix things anyway. I mean, I get 8 hours of sleep by going to bed at 9pm, but I wake up tired every day. Is going to bed at 8:30 or even 8pm really going to make things better? I kinda doubt it, but I suppose it's worth trying once or twice.

My body just isn't built to get up before 6am. I've noticed on the days where I sleep in later and get up either at 6am or just past 6am, the whole day feels better. I know I'll definitely be getting up at or past 6am after June 17th.

Anyone got a time machine I can borrow?

Email and the Pre 1970 generation...

What is it about “older” people and forwarding random stories, chain letters, gossip, pointless videos, and sob stories through email?

Am I the only one who has experienced this phenomenon?

There are quite a few older members of my family that "keep in touch" with me via email. I put that phrase in quotes because their definition of keeping in touch is very different from mine. I define it to be sending a message that includes some form of the following:

- A short greeting
- Questions about the well being/life of the person I'm contacting
- A summary of the current events in my own life
- A short farewell

Notice how none of those things are random. No stories about kitchen fires, no Microsoft money making schemes, no video attachments that just may save your life (unless of course these things are part of my life). Nope, nothing like that. Just plain old, "Hi, I'm doing ok, I hope you are too."

See, I get at least three or four of these random forwarded emails from "older" family and friends a week. The craziest part of all this to me is that, if these people picked up a phone (landline or otherwise) and called me, I highly doubt they would spend the entire conversation telling me about some dumb advertisement or infomercial they saw recently. And yet that is almost exactly what they are doing when they send me these emails.

I realize that some of you would say the destructive power of the "send to all" button is perhaps mostly to blame for this problem. I feel that is quite the cop out though. It's the same thing to say that guns are responsible for all the shootings that take place.

Just because it's there doesn't mean you have to use it!

Does this happen to you too?

Language...

Those of you who know me well know that I don't curse very often. Like most human beings, I am susceptible to many human failings and cursing is one of them; however, I still rarely do it comparatively speaking.

My current job makes me wish I was a sailor.

Every day something happens and my face starts to feel a slow burn and all these colorful words pop into my head. Words usually reserved for drill sergeants and professional sailors.

I thought I'd write a little to blow off steam, but it's really not helping. Which is sad, because writing random crap on my blog usually makes me feel better. I'll start to go off on one tangent or another and end up in a totally unexpected place far from where I thought I'd end up. The view from that new place is usually interesting and different, it brightens my mood while shedding new light on the day.

Today happens to be the first really sunny day of spring here in Utah, and all I can see is shadows.

I find out the sex of my first born child one week from today. That's a happy thought, one that usually makes me smile. Right now it's like a snowflake trying to put out a raging forest fire for all the good it's doing me.

In my life I have used words as both sword and shield, armor for the ages. But right this moment I feel defenseless.

On working, waiting, and writing...

I don't even know what to write about right now. I'm at work and I just needed to get away for a moment or two (Or quit altogether, I haven't decided yet)...

Since starting to write that Nanowrimo Novel, I've found that it's a little bit easier to get lost in my own head when I'm sitting at a keyboard typing something into a blank word editor. I used to stare at the blank page, wondering how I'd ever be able to fill it.

Now, I type and type and get lost and wonder if what I'm filling it with will ever be worth something to someone. Sometimes I look at what I've written and break the rules set by people like Stephen King: those rules say write and write and write with the door closed. Don't worry about the critics or the writing. Just get the details of the story down and leave the rest for editing. I look down and I wonder how any of this is going to matter. I stop myself before deleting though, just because I don't want to make the time I spent writing feel any more like a waste of time than it already does.

Yesterday was a 2nd rock bottom at work. I don't know what happened, I thought Tuesday was bad, but Tuesday was a "bright sunshiny day" compared to yesterday. Maybe it's the weather. Now that I know I'm moving to Tucson, every time the Utah weather reminds me that Spring is just a word and nature doesn't give a damn about that word, I'm also reminded of how long two months can be when all you can do is watch the clock and pray.

I've spent a lot of time reading the Penny Arcade blog in the last few days. Jerry Holkins has an interesting way with words, one that I would never attempt to emulate but that helps me think about the possibilities of the sentence differently. Sometimes I'll be reading one of his rants and he'll say something like, "I don't think we're quite ready to play that game yet. In fact, I don't think I would be ready until I've played n + 1 games. Where n is the number of games you could possibly play in a lifetime."

Think about that sentence for a minute...Yeah it's different, that's for sure. I don't make value judgements on whether or not it's a great group of sentences or not, that's not for me. What I do though, is evaluate it against all the possible sentences that could push me to have a better understanding of the possibilities in writing, and I say it's way up there on the "Opening up my eyes" scale. It's like he took a rant and pulled a theorem out of a math textbook to describe some aspect of his life. This I like, it's something that helps me to be a better writer.

I've been thinking about writing much more during the last six months, but even more than that during the last six days. Since I've decided on a PhD school, and the lion's share of work in a PhD program is writing, I've been fixated on the topic and what I can do to be successful. Obviously, writing every day is part of the success program. Not so obvious is what more I can do to fine tune my writing. I'm still working on it, but I've got some pretty good ideas.

Vanina says I'm an amazing writer (the current blog notwithstanding). I tell her she's pretty amazing herself, but that I'm not done getting better at writing yet. Hell, I haven't even finished my first book yet (working on it, I'm on the very brink, but that is probably 20 thousand words or so, so I guess it depends on your definition of brink).

PhD school will require a whole new level of writing. I'm excited and anxious about it all at once. I love putting pen to paper (metaphorically) and seeing the results afterwards. In fact, I always find it fascinating to go back and read something I wrote, whether from five days ago or five years ago. It's almost like reading a letter from someone you've known your whole life. It's obviously your writing and your thought process, but it seems like it's coming at you from a whole new direction. It's a deja vu experience, without that whole "glitch in the matrix, oh crap they're coming to kill us" feeling.

Ok, I better get back to trying to finish my Friday. I hope all of you are having a better work week than I am. Even a better day today that I am would make me happy.

And the winner is...

Unversity of Arizona! I have decided to attend the Eller College of Management for my Strategic Management PhD. As you may or may not know, I received offers from Northwestern's Media, Technology, and Society Phd program and from the University of Arizona. My wife and I spent the entire month of March both deciding and waiting to hear back from the rest of the schools. All of those results produced rejections unfortunately, so the choice came down to just the two schools. In the end, we decided that Tucson, and the University of Arizona were right for us. I'm so excited for the fall! I can't wait to start this new adventure!

Snow and Lightning

Vanina and I just got back from an Caribbean cruise this past weekend. The week before the cruise we checked the weather and rain threatened at all three ports of call. That information turned out to be wrong, thank goodness. All three ports, Cozumel, Grand Cayman, and Jamaica had good weather during our day in port. It was cloudy in Cozumel and for part of the time in Jamaica, but the sun shone and we both got tans (and burns) for our time in the sun. The day we returned to Salt Lake City it was raining. A few hours later that rain turned into snow. After spending a week in the tropics, snow was the last thing I wanted to see. The only good to come out of it is that it reminded me of something I have been meaning to blog about since February. Around the 1st or 2nd week of February it snowed here in Salt Lake. That is nothing out of the ordinary for this valley during winter, however during this snowstorm I heard thunder. I had never heard thunder during a snowstorm before so I immediately went to the window to check it out. As I was looking outside, sure enough I spotted flashes of lightning lighting up the sky. I couldn't believe it. Lightning during a snowstorm! It was pretty amazing to behold. All of the snowstorms back home (in D.C.) are full of wind and ice, but never lightning. Thunderstorms are common occurrences during the spring, summer, and fall, but all of the storms in the winter are sans lightning and thunder. The main reason I wanted to document this experience is that I'm now into my fourth decade of life on this planet and I thought I had experienced all the types of weather that I was going to experience. Lightning in a snowstorm was totally, unexpectedly new. Its nice to know there's still something new under the sun for me to experience every now and again. Here's to the new!

All Time Low...

I hit an all time low today. When I was getting ready to go into work this morning, late as usual, I actually considered taking my Nintendo DS to work. I have never considered doing such a thing at any job I've had. That is how bored I am with this job.

The realization that I have reached such a low point at this job hit me like a ton of bricks. I hope this is pretty much rock bottom here, because if it is there is only up after this right? If not, I'm pretty worried about how bad it will get.

On a completely different note, I always see my neighbors across the street standing on their front porch to smoke cigarettes. They come outside, light up, and finish a cigarette, then they go back inside the house. I understand wanting to keep your house from smelling like crap and what not. However, when I was getting into my car this morning at 6:31 a.m. I saw my neighbor out on the front porch smoking a cigarette. It is by no means warm outside here in Utah, at least not at 6:30 in the morning. Also, I have never seen them leave for work that early, or anything like that.

Now, I don't mind getting up at 6 in the morning if I have to go to work (any earlier than that and I start to get real cranky, though). All I can say is, if I had to get up at that hour, not for work, but to go outside and smoke a cigarette? That'd be the day I quit.

I'm just sayin'.

So Tired...

Both Sunday night and Monday night were tough ones for me, sleepwise. I had trouble sleeping both nights, tossing and turning and what not. I also had very strange dreams, ones that I only vaguely remembered, but still haunted my waking hours.

Last night I finally fell asleep and only woke up a few times during the night, but slept through for the most part. When I woke up I hoped I would feel refreshed, but today was the worst morning yet this week.

It snowed three or four inches overnight and as I was out there cleaning the snow off the cars I was in a half daze. When I finally finished cleaning all the snow off my car I was trying to open my door and it wouldn't budge. I thought, "Crap! My door is frozen shut." I went to the passenger's side door and met with the same problem. I was about to go back in the house and get my wife to take me to work until I realized that I had not unlocked my car. Once I took care of that, the door opened just fine.

What is amazing to me about this story is how I was able to get up, get ready, make breakfast, and clean snow off the car and still basically be sleepwalking for how useful my brain was through all that. The simplest act of problem solving was beyond me this morning. What should have taken me two seconds took two minutes to figure out.

In most stories, even fictional ones, there is a grain of truth. All the zombie movies had to come from somewhere, I think zombies do exist, but only for an hour or so every morning. There are millions of them across the world. The true un-dead are the working world just after 5am.