I think I've finally found someone who travels more than Dan!!!

Here's the blurb Matt included with this flick,

"I had a great time making this. Hope you enjoy it.
www.wherethehellismatt.com
www.STRIDEgum.com"

Young girl who hypnotizes lizards, then dresses them up in funny outfits.

A funny moment at the Spelling Bee 2008.

david sent me this vid.

Harry Potter meme for the day.

The kids are going through the whole series right now. They've watched the mysterious ticking noise several times already. I have to admit, it IS a catchy tune....

*wanders off singing, "Snape, Snape, Severus Snape."*

Every December I'm inundated with catalogs and "Christmas" newsletters. I was a little dismayed last year to discover that though many are inundated with catalogs at this time of year, not everyone must bear up under the weight of the "let me catch you up on our entire last year of life" letter. As I was talking with a friend last year, she seemed dismayed when I complained to her about it.  We promptly discovered that it appears to be a predominantly Protestant affliction.  "Thank you, Luther!"  *shakes fist at the sky*  "Little did you know that posting your 95 theses on the Wittenberg Door in 1517, would lead to my overflowing mailbox almost 500 years later.  May your heavenly mailbox be forever filled with 'let me catch you up' letters!"
 
Don't get me wrong.  I love being updated on the lives of my friends.  But squashing an entire year of life into one letter that is sent at the same time as everyone else sends their letter, drowning me in tidbits of information, is not only unfair, but it pretty much guarantees that I'll promptly forget everything I read as I have to push it out to fit in the tidbits from the next letter. 

Every once in awhile, however, one letter shines out like a star among... among... um, light bulbs.  It's one of those letters that makes you laugh and cry and feel like you've actually just spent a few moments of time with the author.  Though I'm going to leave out the crying part of the letter, I thought the laughing part might be fun to share.  (All names have been changed (except for that of the dog) to protect the self-esteem of those mentioned.)

• It was the year of the dog.  Maria wanted a puppy and like all good parents we caved.  After all, she saved for most of it.  We went to the nearest pet store (the Amish) to pick out the perfect puppy.  The Amish raise various breeds from scary to scarier to Welsh Corgies.  So we decided on a Welsh Corgie, because they have cute little legs like me.  My wife researched them and supposedly they are really smart and good with kids.  If really smart means they like to eat poop, any kind, and suck on your feet, then we have a genius dog.  So Maria picked out the runt of the litter.  Cute, small, didn't move much like the rest of them.  It was a deal.  Our neighbor said to pick it up in two weeks.  So we waited in anxious anticipation.  Finally, the day came.  We drove to our neighbors ready for the little package.  Maria picked out a name, Sweet Pea, because the puppy was cute and tiny like a pea.  Our neighbor, not much for words of comfort, stated that Sweet Pea froze to death the night before. So much for Sweet Pea #1.  The good news was that his brother-in-law sells them too.  So we grabbed our crying daughter and drove to the next neighbor's house.  Maria quickly picked out another one, also, named Sweet Pea.  The catch was that Sweet Pea #2 was fifty dollars more.  I told the Amish man that his brother-in-law sells them for fifty dollars less.  He responded by saying, "And is is dead.  Correct?"  So i handed him an extra fifty.  Since then, we have decided that Sweet Pea is almost a fitting name.  She pees everywhere and she is sweet when she sleeps.

This made my day!

Dan was in New York and thought he'd stop by the Multiply office there. He decided that it might be nice to take some cookies.

My brother-in-law was a Mormon for awhile.  (Mo, for short.)  Mormons are required to store up a years worth of food, just in case.  When my brother-in-law moved in with us in August, he opened our fridge door and said, "Oh. So I see that you keep your years supply of food in the fridge." 

Yeah.  Our fridge is packed. 

Part of the problem during the summer is that:
1) We joined a CSA this year, which meant that every week we were loaded up with bunches and bunches of veggies, whether we'd eaten the ones from the previous week or not.   I did pretty good at keeping up with them.  But I'm going to have to make a New Year's resolution to do even better next time.
2) We don't buy bread that's loaded full of preservatives.  So if we don't eat our bread in a few days (especially in the heat of summer) it goes bad.  The alternative is to fridge it.  Which means more stuff in the fridge.  (I froze most of the bread, but the "current loaf" stayed in the fridge.
3) In the winter, if we get a milk delivery and I don't have room for the milk just then, I can leave the milk in the cooler on the porch and it keeps just fine.  But in the summer I have to get it in quick.  So there's less milk storage flexibility in the summer.

But to be perfectly honest, we've always been a rather full fridge kind of family.  We have sauces and jams and salad dressings that just plain take up too much space.  Not to mention the fact that we have to have room for 3 gallons of milk at a time.  The milk people only deliver twice a week so we get 3 gal. on Mondays and 3 gal. on Thursdays.   That's a sizable piece of refrigerator real estate. 

Last week we received our last share from the CSA.  So we're doing better on the veggie front. And I turned a bunch of our milk into cheese to help clear some space.  (Still not sure what I'm going to do with the cheese.  I'd love a bit of Saag Paneer, but I've never gotten the spinach part to come out right.)  I even pulled out several items that were turning into science experiments further back in the fridge.  (I had some canned pumpkin in there that turned into a whole magical world.  It was intense.  I should have taken pics.  I did call all the kids over and have them take a look.  We're talking several colors and textures and small bubbles of water coming up out of the whole fluffy mass. It was beautiful.)

After removing all that stuff, Ryan (the brother-in-law) baked some potatoes with cheese and ham.  When he was done he wanted to put the leftovers away in the fridge.  I kid you not, despite the mounds of stuff I had removed, there still wasn't room. 

We've decided that unlike a black hole, into which things just seem to disappear, our fridge is the opposite.  No matter how many things you take out, everything inside magically multiplies until the fridge is full again.  It's a miracle of science.  I'm going to notify Scientific American.  They'll probably come and do tests and research and make great discoveries about the creation of matter out of nothing.  Before long there will be pilgrimages to our fridge.  It'll be called the fridge of plenty ex nihilo (out of nothing). We'll have to make room for monks and priests and scientists and all those inspired and intrigued by the glories of our miraculous fridge.  When Jesus turned 5 loaves and 2 fish into a feast for hundreds, he must have had my fridge mysteriously hidden up his sleeve.

I've given up on clearing the fridge.  It's a hopeless task.  I suppose I'll get back to doing the laundry.  I swear there's more of it now than when I first started carrying it to the laundry room this morning.

Roman just put me on to this. It doesn't look like it'll ever play here in little old Fort Collins, but maybe I can netflix it at some point.

(The pic is from an underground Christian music venue that I used to be involved with back in SF. Some friends took Billy Graham's head and put it on Bruce Lee's body.) ;-)

I giggled in the beginning but by the time they were doing the Beatle's album cover with their walkers I was guffawing.

You can also see Grace smash up the dressing room, or watch The Who sing this live at the Monterey International Pop Festival.

How to say what you really mean when writing an email, without adversely affecting any possible future income flow from the interaction.

And now for something completely different....

I'm not a big Veggie Tales fan.  (In fact, I'm a bit of an unfan.)  But I've got to admit that "Silly Songs with Larry" rock.  So, without further ado, the "Song of the Cebu".



(I was looking for an old post on dried mangoes and came across articles on Cebu, which got me to thinking on the poor Cebu of the song.)

NewsGator is located in Denver, Colorado. The high altitude can start to affect your brain after awhile, making you do odd things, ... like sing songs about RSS feeds.

"Have you ever gotten one of those emails from Africa (do they ever come from anywhere else?) asking for help with a small financial problem? Mr. (or Mrs.) So-and-So (the 419 scammer) needs just a bit of money from you in order to unleash millions of dollars that he/she will willingly share with you.

Well the 419 Eater has had enough pleas for financial assistance. In a reverse maneuver, he plays a little joke on the African scam artist.

The story begins: "A slightly different twist on my now familiar artwork anti-scam. I manage to secure two pieces of artwork, but unfortunately due to the temperature and humidity fluctuations between here and West Africa, as well as rogue rodents, there are problems.

"John Boko is a 419 scammer. Initially he sent out a standard 419 scam email under a different name. I gave him my standard Derek Trotter reply..."

Click on through. It's an interesting read. ;-)
(The picture is one of the pieces of artwork that the Eater received from the Scammer.)

I was shocked and saddened by the recent revelation that Michael has been spending time on youtube and still hasn't come across impytherap.

After posting a couple of vids for him it dawned on me that perhaps there are others out there that have yet to have their own impytherap awakening. So, I thought I'd post a few of my fave's here.

The first video I came across was this one:



This is Nathan's favorite:



This is the girls' favorite. They like when the taller guy gets "kicked in the nuts."