Frenzied Daddy

Swimming Lessons (1.4 MB, stand back). I should probably talk to Shane about video - editing software. This ‘video impression’ from ArcSoft came with the camera, but it’d be nice to add a soundtrack. Something super cheap because, well, I’m super cheap.

Got a calendar set up on the WishEase site; for people who are logged in, it’s a good way to see who’s birthdays are coming up this month (it’s filtered to ‘just people you’re watching’ ). The basic premise of the site is that you are keeping tabs on what your friends add to their lists. This adds some extra benefit in that it’s a more visual way of keeping tabs on when’s a great time to give.

Now, to find a list of appropriate gift-giving holidays.

Got an ad in the mail today- I signed up for it, so it’s ok. It’s from the mommytags lady, and she was sending us to this circle of love necklace.

Pretty, huh? Notice the chain it’s sold on? Yup- Ball (and) chain.

I heard about this cockatrice egg on the radio a few days ago. And I’ve been waiting patiently for it to show up on Oregonlive (the Oregonian’s online version) or some other mainstream media, to ‘cite my sources.’ I guess I haven’t been looking hard enough.

Republican John Lim is a clearcut on the forest of Republican respect. Now that hatred is part of the Oregon Constitution, it’s only a small step to creating laws based on discrimination.

Rep. Lim shows us that step. He wants to mandate preference for adoption to married couples. No matter that a mere seventeen kids (last year) were adopted by same-sex couples, no matter that thousands of Oregon kids will go hungry tonight. No matter that thousands of Oregon kids will be abused by their parents this year alone. No, he wants to keep the Evil Homosexuals™ from twisting the morality of our kids.

Please let Representative John Lim known what you think of his bill (House Bill 2401) ; rep.johnlim (at) state.or.us You can bet your sweet butt that I will be, as soon as I can speak about this coherently.

If you follow the first link above, Betsy (probably a pseudonym) shares Rep Lim’s telephone number. Yes, I’m sure it’s his office number, yes, I’m sure it’s publically available. It remains, however, against my principles to share telephone numbers on the web. Especially with such a … conflagrational issue.

Trying madly to catch up at work, I was laying on the couch last night, propping the nice warm laptop on my belly. I admit, this is not the most safe way for me to work. The thing I’m working on has some underlying timed events; every five minutes or so a process runs. I’m trying to work with the process; so I upload my files, make my changes, and then wait.

About four minutes later, Ms B turns to Miss B (they’re over at the computer desks) and asks “Is your father asleep?” Miss B slowly turns, gazes at me, I gaze back at her with my eyes wide open, and she reports this. Her mother goes on; “Oh I didn’t hear him typing or anything over there, I thought he might be asleep.”

Mom, he’s thinking. It takes him a while.

P-tang! Zrrp-ptow!

That noise, my friends, is the sound of my chest swelling with pride, my buttons popping off my shirt and zipping across the room, bouncing off the wall and smack back into my forehead.

Miss B has an ‘author’s tea’ today at school. She was chosen as one of the ‘foremost authors’ of the school, and as such, she gets a special ceremony today and lunch with the principal. We had a terrific invitation sent home with her (and we are instructed to bring cameras).

For work reasons (really!) I was browsing over WebPages that Suck. On there, I found a link to Seth Godwin, who thinks he isolated five (or maybe six) things that make or break a weblog:

1. Candor
2. Urgency
3. Timeliness
4. Pithiness
5. Controversy
6. ( maybe Utility)

Readers, I have done you wrong; I can only provide candor and the occasional timeliness. Granted, Seth’s talking specifically about “CEO Blogs” (shudder!) but his point alleges to cover all weblogs. So, from now on, I’ll try to be a little better about timeliness. I’ll work on the pithiness and controversy, but honestly, there’s no mark in his list for “family” or “community,” which to me is what this weblogging thing is about. Building our communities. And I’ll work on that, as well.

Oh yeah, and posting the requisite “cute kid” pictures.

If you were a tree, what sort of tree would you be?

This question was always a joke when I was growin up; people poking fun at some sort of ephemeral consciousness-uplifting / soul cleansing. Like psychaitrists, but different. I, however, often ask myself this question, and no, I don’t really know why.

The most recent time, was when I was waiting for Miss B outside school. I like to stand under the tree, under all trees really, and breathe with it; to vision my roots extending down to the water under the surface, and my leaves stretching up for the air and sunlight. And I asked myself this question, and came up with … well, let me preface.

In my youth, I’ve answered myself “a mighty oak.” I’ve always liked the oaks; their strong roots, their tall backs, their ritual symbolism, the protected feeling I get when I am beneath them. I’ve always wanted to be like one, but never really felt myself to be one. I generally followed that with “Well, ok, not a mighty oak. How about a birch tree- one of the first sorts of trees to enter a boggy area and make it safe.” Thinking of myself as inquisitive, eager, rather than slow, magnificient and protective.

And then a time came when I was “one of those scraggly pine trees on the coast, permanently hunched over from the wind, barely clinging onto the rock, growth stunted.” Lightning struck, and I became a barren stump, tall and clean like a giant’s broken femur sticking up from the ground. I toppled slowly, gathering momentum, until I landed with a tooth rattling crash, embedding myself in the muck around me. And then, rot set in; beetles and bacteria; I became a nurse tree. My creative bits returning to the forest floor.

Now, when I ask myself this question (I never really ask it out loud, it’s more of an internal barometer. And I probably would never answer someone straight; you’re seeing into my insides here) I see, as the nurse tree dissolves, new trees are born with the same materials that are decomposing. I still have the same internal parts I had “back a few years ago” but my surroundings are … healthier and more nurturing. I’m a little wary yet of some things, but I’m also planning completely new things; but all of these things are from the same parts of me that I had before, slightly changed and recombined.

I wanna design a site that looks like this.