Our Persisting Memories

Me Time can be hard to come by when you have children. Unquestionably it comes to some parents easier than others. I get me time , I just never do anything interesting. I surf the internet, encode movies, update programs, update my computer, tweak our blog, fiddle with photos, read, etc... I made a weird decision recently that it was highly unlikely, unless planned well in advance that Heather an I can have a date. Admittedly we have an easier time than most with out wide open baby-sitting options, but it's still difficult to have time to ourselves and go share an activity together that might not interest the kids. I have found that once the kids are in bed, as a grown up with a license, I can go to a movie. Heck, I can even go grab some sushi. Add that to the fact that we've done a robust budget and assigned ourselves an allowance of discretionary no questions asked spending for Heather and I separately, and you have a lone wolf ready to watch stupid movies on a whim, e...

Yesterday I was in Houston helping to wrap up my project and create training materials. I was scheduled to fly back home on the 4:30 flight to Dallas-Love Field. I arrived with plenty of time to spare. What I haven't mentioned is the torrential downpour that had been happening in north Houston on Thursday. Apparently the weather delayed the flight... and most every other flight flying into Houston. For the flights that it did not direclty delay it delayed the crew who were to work each individual flight so everything just went crazy. By about 3:30 my flight had been delayed until 5:11, which was fine. However the gate changed from gate b70 to b65 which was in another hub. So I walked there. Once I had arrived I noticed that the gate had then changed to b81, which was in another hub. I walked to b81 to find that the flight had been delayed until 8:20... OK. I waited in line and spoke to a service rep ho gave me a standby pass for the 6:30 flight (which was previously the 5...

37347|640 Yes, that is a paramedic van and a firetruck. Heather locked the keys in her parent's van with Sophia inside the van. I admittedly bent a knife attempting to break the window before we realized the fire dept might be able to get into a car without breaking something. Sophia had a good time but was pretty sweaty when we they got her out.

The Supreme Court handed down the 5-4 ruling that the Washington DC gun ban is unconstitutional. It also affirms the individual right to keep and bear arms. Read the decision here . It's all over everything so I'll refrain from posting a hundred links to reason, Andrew Sullivan's blog, Cato, and everywhere else. I need to go check and see what the kossacks think about it.

36284 Phoebe has found her voice---mostly in the evenings. It is usually after dinner and a bath but just before bed she just jabbers and jabbers with a few squeals mixed in. Phoebe turned 11 months this week. Still no teeth but getting very close on the walking. She is much more cautious than Sophia was. She can walk alongside me holding one hand. The farthest we have gone is from the couch to the fridge, which for a little girl learning to walk it is pretty far! I am so proud of her and just know she will be walking independently by her 1st birthday. BJ enjoyed a night out with himself and picked up some books at Barnes and Noble and then watched Incredible Hulk. He didn't seem too terribly impressed with it but enjoyed seeing a movie in the theater more than anything I think. The books purchased were: American Gods by Neil Gaiman (which I am reading and thoroughly enjoying right now) The Road by Cormack McCarthy (BJ currently reading),The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratch...

I love the internet. I love it's ability to find the idiocy of the world and clutch it to its bosom like a child. Denon just released the Denon AKDL1 Dedicated Link Cable . It costs $500. What sort of marvelous cable could this be that would cost $500.99 $499.99 (save a dollar by shopping amazon). Here's a picture. Yes, that's right. It's an ethernet cable, a 5 foot one. The best part isn't the audacity of a company to sell audio snake oil but the reviews being left . They're hilarious. Awesome. The internet stands triumphant. Read some of the reviews .

I feel like some explanation needs to be given to who this foul mouthed wonder is. I always say "those that know me know that I cuss", but it didn't really used to be like this. In fact, it was the complete opposite. In high school my friends knew that I did not cuss and that I did not like to be cussed around. So they would try and avoid using bad language around me. Even after high school I was on a good roll, but then we moved to Texas and it all drastically changed. In Phoenix I was a high school student and nothing else. No job, no car, no college admissions (since we were moving anyway), no bills, etc. I didn't even drive really. I had my learner's permit and drove occasionally with my parents in the car. We moved to Texas and I got a cell phone, I got a credit card, I got a car (that I shared with my sister) and the biggest one of all---I got my very first REAL J-O-B. Yikes! So the stress was immediately piling on. I was going to work through th...

I forgot to mention this last week. Sophia loves watering the flowers we have in our entryway/porch. One rainy day a week or so ago I walked out to see the rain. Sophia followed me since she was very, very interested in the rain noise. When I made it out the front door and stood looking at the rain, Sophia picked up her little watering can. "Water, please." "Water flowers." "Sophia, do you want me to put water in your watering can?" "Yes... water, please..." "But there's water falling from the sky." "RAIN!" At this point she walks out into the rain and holds the watering can out so she can fill it with water. 36140|640

I forgot to mention this little story in my weekly update so decided to post it entirely separate. Sophia, being the climber that she is, climbed up onto the couch armrest and promptly fell (very awkwardly it seemed) right off of it. She landed on the handle of her toy stroller that had fallen over and was facing upward. OUCH! Well, she was very scared and had an abrasion just above her hip. I went to calm her down and told BJ to get her ice pack from the fridge. Only seconds later I heard this loud crash and moan come from the kitchen, followed by laughter. BJ had slipped on a little bit of water and tried to brace himself (very unsuccessfully) on the counter and dishwasher. He had really hurt himself and would have cried but for the fact that Sophia had fallen only moments before and this injury came about in the process of trying to help his child. Sophia was still in tears while mommy and daddy laughed as we continued on with soothing the booboo.

36018 Sooooo anyone who know me well knows I have a "sailor's mouth" problem. I occasionally have it around my kids and have been working on not saying bad things around them, and then I can eventually work my way to not saying bad words at all. THAT will be a glorious day! Anyway, I am at my worst in the car because I HATE traffic and I think all other drivers are stupid but myself. Typical, right? On one particularly hard driving day something happened that caused me to say "shit" five times in a row. Sophia overheard me and and immediately started saying "shit". I didn't want to make a huge deal of it to bring a lot more attention to this new word of hers so I simply told her not to say it and went on with my exasperated attempt at driving. Days passed and no problems. This week we had return of 'shit'. I was driving to my mom's house for work and we went over a bump in the road. A soft voice comes from the back--"Shi...

I turned the square thumbnails plugin back on in our gallery. I like the look and the order it gives to the gallery even if it does crop a bit of the information off. The gallery is going to look a little weird for a while as the thumbnails get rebuilt. If you see something off just hit refresh and it should correct the issue. I had forgotten what a pain it was to switch square thumbnails on and off. I can't rebuild them all at the same time since my webhost has a limitation on execution time for any processes running.

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There's a great article in the latest reason magazine that has Ronald Bailey looking for a solution to global warming. As a reason magazine science correspondent he's about as libertarian as you can get. It was neat to see the author of Eco-Scam: The False Prophets of Environmental Apocalypse to then say this in 2005. Anyone still holding onto the idea that there is no global warming ought to hang it up. All data sets—satellite, surface, and balloon—have been pointing to rising global temperatures. In fact, they all have had upward-pointing arrows for nearly a decade. You can read the full text at reason online . Obviously they believe the private market should solve the issue, but there's no real reason for them to do so. Their proposals, spoken through clenched teeth it seems, are either a cap and trade system or carbon taxes. The only true effect of all this is to make a competitive market and begin to quanitify the negative externality of climate change as related ...

Monday morning I drive out to DFW Airport, with Phoebe in tow, to meet a friend from Phoenix who has a layover on her way to South Carolina. We enjoyed about an hour long visit over breakfast at the Hyatt. I do, however, have to add this extra bit to my story. I was not able to park on any of the ground levels because they were for one hour parking only, otherwise subject to tow. I was too nervous to park there knowing I would be longer than an hour and could not risk having my car towed. So I end up on the 4th level, get a tired Phoebe strapped into the (big) stroller, and start looking around for a garage elevator only to discover they don't have any!! Through the kindness of strangers I was able to make it down the stairs safely in time to meet my friend. We had to walk back through the garage and more stairs to get over to the Hyatt. We parted ways at the restaurant and so I was left by myself, no kind strangers in sight, to wrestle the stroller up several flights of st...

35624 This happened on Sunday the 25th, but is still worth mentioning. We went to church with BJ's parents because Michael was being ordained an Elder. I enjoyed a break from my normal Primary duties and actually got to attend Sunday School and Relief Society. It was nice for a change and I barely had to take care of Phoebe too! Also nice for a change. She fell asleep in Aunt Catey's arms during the 3rd hour she was so exhausted. I put the girls in their matching daisy dresses and they could not have been more adorable. We got so many compliments and oh's and ah's. On Memorial Day we had a BBQ at the Atchley's house. I wasn't there for most of it because I was out enjoying my birthday gift. An afternoon out shopping without the kids! I bought a lot of new clothes and a new pair of shoes. I was gone for 5 hours doing it and I loved every minute of it! Bekah and her hubby were in town for a few days and we enjoyed a visit with them and great food. 3569...

It had to be photography. I had to catch the photo bug. Heather thought playing videogames was expensive, but I haven't shown her the lens upgrades that will be coming in as my girls grow up. Here's the cheap list on what will be upgraded and in what order. I say cheap because the sigmas and tamrons are third party lenses that cost about 1/3rd as much as their Nikon counterparts. Nikon sb-600 Speedlight tripod lightstand (tripod for the light) clamps radio trigger Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di-II LD . (they just updated it so it'll autofocus with the d40) Sigma 10-20mm Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G AF-S VR Body Upgrade... probably to the successor to the Nikon d80 Another flash and lightstand Nikon 50 1.8 A macro tube Probably a Sigma or Nikon 70-200 2.8 Tamron 28-75mm f/2.8 (this would make a decent portrait lens so I've heard) Some teleconverters for the 70-200 My thought process ends here... but 5 years from now when I...

I take a lot of pictures. I take lots of terrible pictures and then delete them. Sometimes my constant photo taking leads to great shots. Taking digital pictures is great that way. I probably need to get rid of even more pictures but my girls are so beautiful and my webhost space so large that I keep a lot more than I probably should. This one would normally get tossed, except it's hilarious. My Nikon D40 has a interesting feature where it flashes twice. It's called i-TTL. The first flash is a test exposure to make sure the flash isn't too strong or too weak when it takes the actual shot. When taking photos indoors, I will set the iso to 800 or so and use shutter priority mode so the ambient light has a chance to fill in a bit. I'll usually flatten the colors since our yellow/burnt yellow walls look nuts when saturated. I can't bounce flash yet since I need an external flash first. The only reason I mention all this geek speak is to say that at 1/40 shutte...

This weeks issue of the economist has a write-up on the Libertarian candidate for president Bob Barr . They came to roughly the same conclusion I did regarding his ability to act as a spoiler for McCain. The article also perfectly sums up the problems Barr has regarding his personal record, not that any of that matters as much during a third party presidential run. In this case, his spotty personal history and close ties to traditional conservative values increases his chances of greatly affecting McCain. Just a funny note. The Libertarian party is pretty much nuts. As expected of a group that puts individualism above any sort of collectivist mindset, you get a bunch of disjointed single issue voters willing to vote for every conspiracy theory known to man. It's sad the party seems so crazy on the surface, since the CATO institute has the basic economic and social theory down without the frilly nuttery. Libertarians get the pot-smokers and government alien cover-up followers,...