tagged: six random things

Alright. Time for some tagging fun. Raging Dad tagged me with the following Internet meme called Six Random Things.

Here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you.
2. Post the rules on your blog.
3. Write 6 random things about yourself.
4. Tag some more people at the end of your post.
5. Let each person know he/she has been tagged.
6. Let the tagger know when your entry is up.

And now for six random things about me:

1. I have a cat named Max who weighs 22 pounds. He is officially classified as morbidly obese. We have had him on a strict diet for several years and still be continues to expand like the national debt.

2. Once, while walking in the park, I saw a squirrel using a little twig as a walking stick. It was walking on its hind legs and holding the stick in its left front paw. I am not making this up. I saw it with my own eyes.

3. I played Hamlet in high school. Holding the skull was the funnest part.

4. My original career plan was to become a high school English teacher.

5. I am trying to learn how to speak Spanish.

6. I still have a comic book collection.

These lucky bloggers are next:

b at the good. the bad. the ugly.
jeremy at unhook me and set me free
angel at The Jackson Life

fun things to do while driving

I am starting year two of grad school, which means I will once again be driving between Corvallis and Portland two nights a week. Way, way too much driving in a straight line if you ask me.

I have a series of things I do to entertain myself during the drive. Ira Glass and the rest of the gang at This American Life soothe me as they deconstruct the lives of average people. I listen to a lot of music. I worship God and pray.

But we're talking about a lot of driving here. And at a certain point, usually with about 30 miles to go, late at night on my way back to Corvallis, I run out of normal, socially acceptable things to do and that's when the drive gets interesting.

So I present you with a list of alternative driving activities. Feel free to borrow these the next time you are on a solo long haul and run out of I-Pod files. I am not saying that I have actually done all of these, but I have done most. And I will probably get bored enough to try the rest.

1. Forget that you are driving a car and instead pretend that your are piloting a small, trusty space fighter. Your job is to penetrate the inner sanctums of a corrupt empire, and all cars in the opposing lanes are enemy craft trying to strike you down. Make your own sound effects and pretend that your headlights are laser guns. Fire them by flashing your brights on and off rapidly.

2. Take advantage of the fact you in a confined space by yourself, and try making a noise that you have never before made in your entire life. This may not sound that exciting at first, but think about it. Here you have an opportunity to break totally new ground, to emit a noise that you never in your wildest dreams imagined a human being could make. Reach deep down into your diaphragm and come up with the strangest, most terrifying sound that you can imagine. It may help to visualize a goal, such as a snuffleupagus stepping on a nail or something like that.

3. Take a trip down memory lane. Try to think of the most embarrassing, stupid thing that you have ever done. Once you locate this memory, it will start to trigger other embarrassing memories. You'll begin to recall all of the really awful, horrendous, totally humiliating things you have done and said. Soon, you won't be able to stop. By the time you reach the end of your trip, you will actually be talking to yourself, saying things like "I'm such an idiot" over and over again.

These are the tricks I am aware of to help fill those hours of desperation when you're in the car, staring at the bleak highway, passing mile after mile of featureless landscape. If you know of any others, please share them with me, because I will have PLENTY of time to give them a try.

one word

Here is a thought that I more or less stole from Jonathan Foer's book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (which is very good by the way).

Imagine that somewhere in the cosmos is a very large card catalogue. You know, like the old fashioned kind in a library. Imagine that there is a card for every person who has ever lived. There's a card with your name on it. In the very middle of this white card is a single word. It's the one word that best describes you. Who you are. What you stand for. What you care about most in life. Not a sentence. Not a phrase. One little word. That's all you get. And it's not what you want it to be, what you wish it would be, but instead it is an accurate reflection of reality at this point in time. An honest appraisal of you as a person.

I have to admit that I'm pretty sure mine is "money." I wish it wasn't. God is very slowly changing that, but right now it's still money. I worry and fret and obsess about money all the time. Am I going to have enough to retire? How am I going to send my kids to college? Am I ever going to sell my house? What if the furnace breaks? And on and on and on.

I have seen God provide for my family and I over and over again, amazing us with His goodness, and yet still I worry. I hope this changes. I really do.

So what's your word?

proud father of a pirate

I had a very proud dad moment the other day. J, completely of his own volition, decided to make his very first pirate flag. The good old skull n' crossbones. The Jolly Roger. The plague of the Seven Seas. I am so happy I could bust.

J has a little plastic pirate ship and he decided to use the skull and crossbones on the sail as a template for his flag, pictured below. He then found a stick and asked me to help him tape the two together.

Shiver me timbers little buddy. For his next version I'll need to find him some black construction paper and some white paint.

a summer of reading comes to a close

This is one of the best "reading summers" that I have had in a long time. I'm not sure if finishing a year of grad school made me crave some good, scandalous novels or what, but I didn't worry about the "intellectual value" of what I was reading and instead just chose books for their pure entertainiment value. Some of what I read is pictured, but here's the full list, in no particular order. Post a comment and let me know what you read this summer.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon

Dune by Frank Herbert

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

In a Sunburned Country by Bill Bryson

The Whiskey Rebels by David Liss

The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett

The Bible Salesman by Clyde Edgerton

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami

Wobegon Boy by Garrison Keillor

The Front Porch Prophet by Raymond Atkins

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini

okay, this is serious

Every once in a while, an issue of such gravity arises that I must take a public stand.

Now is one of those times. So I'm going to hone in on this serious matter with laser-like focus.

And there you see the issue. Did you notice that I used the word "laser" in that last sentence? Well, if you didn't, go back and look now. I'll wait.

Does something not strike you as odd about this word "laser?" This word which is used to communicate so many important ideas? Sound it out: "lay-zur." The centerpiece of this fine word is the crisp, humming "z" sound in the middle. Without this, the word would be nothing.

Why then, do we spell laser with an "s?" I plead with you - why? If ever a word in the English language needed to be officially re-spelled, this is it. "Laser" needs to be spelled with a "z."

I would not be on this moral crusade if "laser" were not such a important word. But it is one of the most vibrant, fecund, truly potent words that we posses. Think about it, have you ever used the word "laser" in a casual way? No. The answer is, no. You haven't. When you use the word "laser" it is because you have chosen to really say something. Something of substance. Something that should be written down and remembered by all who hear it.

"I'm going to fry your eyes out with a laser."

"Watch out, he's got a laser gun!"

"Would you like to go to the laser show with me tonight? It's going to be set to Def Leppard."

I'm sure you see what I mean by now. "Laser" works beautifully when spoken out loud, but loses its soul when written. It's time to change this.

So what do I intend to do about it? The only thing I can do: I'm going to start spelling this word the way it was meant to be spelled.

Lazer.

There. Let the revolution begin.

simplifying life part 3: being "too busy" is not actually that cool

Here it is: the final post in my series on how b and I have tried to simplify our lives over the last year. I saved this one for last because it has been the most challenging and most rewarding for me.

Our society is big on status symbols. Cars. Houses. Boats. Clothes.

And busyness.

In fact, I would argue that busyness trumps just about any other status symbol one can posses these days. Even people who don't openly desire big boats and fancy cars are lured by the coolness of being "too busy."

It works like this - the more obligations you have, the more demands on your time, then the more valuable your time must be. The more you reject pleasures like reading a good book, having coffee with a friend, or taking your kids to the park, then the more successful you are bound to be. The more devices you have strapped to your belt, beeping and squawking for your attention, then the more people will realize that you are a serious person who makes things happen in this world.

We've acquired the mentality of sharks - keep moving or die. Never stop. Never rest. Just keep doing. Keep succeeding. Keep conquering.

And here's the funniest thing. I am a Christian - a follower of Jesus Christ, whose entire life and ministry on earth was focused on rejecting the chaos of the world and focusing and the simple and the important - loving God and loving those around us. Yet modern Christianity in this country has become so infected with the "busy is cool" mentality that you can't really be considered a serous church member unless you are leading three Bible studies, helping with the youth group, street witnessing on Saturdays and running the annual bake sale. Many Christians are the most annoyingly busy people I know.

For the last three years or more, this mentality has dominated my life. I haven't been a workaholic, but that's only because b is good about pitching a fit when my life gets too full of obligations. She has had to be on her guard constantly as I have gone from one thing to the next in an ongoing attempt to achieve optimum busyness.

Slowly, over the last year, God has gotten my attention. This is what I have learned: it's good to serve and help people. It's good to volunteer. It's good to have a job and even to get promoted. It's good to pursue more education and to improve your skill. But when these things become objects in and of themselves, then you have lost the point. When you sacrifice time with God for the sake of "serving" God, then you have lost the point. When you sacrifice time with your family for the sake of getting a few more dollars into your savings account, then you have lost the point.

I lost the point. But over the last year I have gotten it back. And it comes in the form of a really good novel in a hammock on a summer evening. It comes in the form of playing lincoln logs on the living room floor with j and o for an entire afternoon. It comes in the form of spending my evenings worshipping God and praying. These are the things that matter in life. These are the things to fight for and protect.

The rest is just busyness. And busyness is just not that cool.

simplifying life part 2: simple food tastes good

This post is best told in images, so I will begin with a brief description of how we have simplified food for our family, and then I'll leave the rest to some gorgeous pictures that b has taken of the food she's been making lately and how that food is gathered and prepared (for those of you who follow her blog, some of the pics will be repeats - sorry).

If you had peeked in our cupboards and fridge a year ago, you would have found a pretty typical assortment of prepackaged foods and snacks. Frozen meatballs from Costco, pre-made lasagna, chips, juice boxes - that kind of thing.

And I liked it that way. I am a completely typical middle class boy - I like salty, fatty, easy-to-make food. When you're young and your metabolism burns everything up, you don't care about what you eat. When you get a bit older, your metabolism slows down, and you have kids who you want to raise in a healthy way, you begin to think differently.

When we decided to make an effort to simplify our lives, food was the first place we started. We settled on the principles of fresh, local and home made. Obviously not everything we eat falls withing these guidelines, but a lot of it does.

You can't get any more local or fresh than your own backyard, and that's where our eggs and some of our produce come from. B's 12 chickens (the ones that don't like me) are starting to produce eggs, and her garden has yielded a lot of tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini.

For other local food, we shop at the Corvallis Farmers Market and the Corvallis Co-Op. We also get a lot of good stuff from friends and family - like raw milk, pears, apples and berries.

It is so awesome to sit down to a simple, delicious dinner, knowing where almost everything on the table came from. And yes, simple fresh food does taste better (once you get used to it). I also don't think it's overly expensive - we spend less on food now than we ever have.

Two editor's notes on this post: 1) We still buy plenty of stuff at Winco and other grocery stores. We're not super hard core about everything having to be fresh and local, but we try. 2) I fully admit that this kind of lifestyle would not be possible without b's ingenuity and hard work. She is the one who raises the chickens, tends the garden, and pretty much makes all the food. The boys and I try to "help" but we usually get shooed out of the kitchen for making messes and eating stuff.

And now for the pictures:

simplifying life, part 1: hurray for cheap cars and walking!

As promised, here is part one in a three-part series on how we've tried to simplify our lives over the last year. This first post is about our efforts to simplify our finances.

For starters, there's Little Blue. She's old and a bit rough around the edges, but she's like a Timex watch - she can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'. I'm referring to the newest addition to a our family - a 1990 Toyota Corolla AllTrac Wagon (b and the boys are proudly posing with Little Blue in this picture). Little Blue has replaced Big Grey - a massive, gas-guzzling Lexus. We sold Big Grey (we never actually called him that, but I needed a name) a month ago, and we are thrilled to be driving Little Blue around now.

Little Blue represents a significant step for us in our quest to simplify. She may not be much to look at, but she is cheap, durable and friendly (or at least friendlier) on the environment. No status. Just practicality.

Walking is even better. The house that we are renting (the old one is still for sale) is within walking distance of my office. So I walk to work every day I can. My walks in the morning and afternoon are two of the best parts of my day. Instead of fighting traffic and paying for gas, I'm getting healthier and I have to time to pray and think.

Our decision to sell our old car and get Little Blue stemmed from a realization we had about a year ago: we had gotten caught up in the social climb - never happy with our current car, our current house, our current job, our current clothes, etc. Always spending money we shouldn't have been spending to look more impressive to those around us. It really started to wear us out. It wasn't good for us financially, spiritually, and even physically (because when you spend a lot of money, you worry about money all the time, which puts stress on your mind).

Our new frame of mind is this: let's be happy with what we have, and let's spend less than we make. Let's not worry as much about what people think of our house, our car or our clothes. Let's use our money in the way God intended - to take care of our needs and to bless and help other people.

And that's really the bottom line: God has blessed us with money. What we do with that money is a reflection of our relationship with Him. If we use all of our money to make our ourselves look impressive, to satisfy our egos, then we're not really honoring what God has given us. But if we only use what we really need and use the rest to honor God and help people, then amazing things will happen.

That's what we believe.

simplifying life: an intro

About a year ago, b and I read a good book called Tis a Gift to be Simple. It's about simplifying your life from a spiritual and Biblical perspective - learning how to live a life that is quieter, more thoughtful, more concerned with knowing God and helping people, as opposed to getting richer and gaining more status in society. I'm not talking about walking around in a burlap sack and eating nothing but bean sprouts here. I just mean pointing life in a different direction: away from "more, more, more!" and toward something far cooler and more fulfilling.

Ever since reading the book, we've been on a quest to simplify our lives. Everything from the way we spend our money and time to what we eat at the dinner table. I have to be honest, while I enthusiastically launched this effort with b, I was also wondering in the back of my mind if this would be like many other "self improvement" efforts - exciting and rewarding in the beginning, somewhat boring and tedious in the middle, and fizzling out to nothing in the end. I was also just a teeny bit worried about having to wear a burlap sack.

A year later, however, life for our little family has simplified considerably. And it has been such a blessing. I am so glad we made these changes, and I look forward to making more. We haven't succeeded completely - we still have a long way to go. But one step at a time, we are getting farther away from materialism and "the coolness of being too busy" and closer to the kind of life we believe God wants us to lead. And I still get to wear my normal clothes. No burlap sacks.

In a three-part series, I will be blogging about our efforts. I'll write about our successes, our failures, and our plans for the future.

Part 1: hurray for cheap cars and walking!
Part 2: simple food tastes good
Part 3: being "too busy" is not actually that cool

Look for Part 1 coming soon. Also - if you are taking steps to simplify your own life, I'd love to hear from you. And if you wear a burlap sack - send pictures!

an ode to Otter Pops

As summer winds to a close, I want to pay tribute to a very special treat that, for me, defines the very essence of this warm, sunny season. I am talking about Otter Pops. You know them: those long, slender, popsicle-like delights that come in a plastic tube. In the "summer sweets" category, they are absolutely without equal.

I love everything about Otter Pops. I love the way they are packaged together, like a string of colorful, delicious machine gun bullets. I love the way that my fingers ache with cold after holding one for a few moments. I love the fact that it is impossible to know what exactly is in an Otter Pop. I love the fact that I am probably better of not knowing.

Most of all, I love the fact that you are never truly done eating an Otter Pop. There is always a little more syrupy goodness to be sucked out of that plastic tube. Always.

One of the great skills that a person can posses is the ability to properly open an Otter Pop (a skill similar to the proper insertion of a straw into a pouch of Caprisun juice). Someone who does not posses this skill (someone like me), must either tear hopelessly at the end of his pop with his teeth like a fool, resort to scissors, or have a skillful pop opener open the Otter Pop for him.

The third option is always the best. When my family sits down to a round of Otter Pops, the boys and I diligently hand our pops to b, who possesses the magic opening skill. I don't know how she does it, but I am so glad that she does.

So here's to you, Otter Pops. Soon we will sadly resign you to the freezer in the garage until next June, when we will pull you back out, dust off the freezer burn and find that, miraculously, not a single iota of your sweetness has been lost.

worth it

This post is for all of you moms and dads out there who break your backs every day to take care of your families and raise your kids. If you are like me, every once in a while you wonder if all your hard work is amounting to anything.

A few days ago, I was in a serious funk. My tie felt like it was choking me, my head hurt, I was in the middle of a long, tedious project at work, and I was stressing about money in the back of my mind. It was one of those days when you just want to throw in the towel and go take a nap on a park bench. Then b sent me a link to this video. She caught j and o with their little toy guitars, having a jam session and singing Jesus Loves Me (or at least a very loose interpretation of Jesus Loves Me).

After I watched the video, my outlook changed. I suddenly remembered why I get up every morning and go to work. Why I go to school at night. Why I read to the boys before bed and pray with them and take them to church. I remembered why b gets up every morning and essentially puts everything she has, every last drop of energy, into raising j and o.

We do it for moments like the one in this video. Moments when we get to see our kids growing and maturing and demonstrating the things that we are trying to teach them. Moments like this refresh the awe in me as a parent. And they make everything worth it.

the chickens give me no respect

The following story is true in its entirety. You have my word, whatever that is worth to you.

Bethany went to the women's retreat for our church this weekend, leaving me in charge. This meant I had to: 1) feed, bathe, clothe and entertain our two boys; 2) feed, bathe, clothe and entertain myself (a monumental task in its own right); and 3) take care of the chickens

If you follow Bethany's blog, then you know that we have chickens in our back yard. I think we have 12. I can never count them because they're always running around like chickens with their heads cut off. Bethany and the boys love the chickens. I try to stay away from the chickens. I don't have a good vibe going with the chickens.

So I wake up on Saturday morning, start the coffee, read the Bible, pray, lounge around in bed for a bit, and then I remember that I have to let the chickens out of their coups and feed them. As I walk out across the cold, wet grass, I can the see the coups quivering like hives full of angry bees. The chickens are unhappy because I should have let them out sooner. Things are already off to bad start.

I open their little doors and they come waddling out into their pen, scorning me with their wee beady little eyes. As is typical, they immediately knock over their water and food containers and then stand there, waiting for someone to take care of the mess. Grumbling, I pick up the containers and carry them off to the giant garbage cans full of chicken food on the side of the house.

Two minutes later, I turn around and realize that I've left the gate to the pen open, and the chickens are wandering around the yard, looking fiendish. I try to chase them back into the pen. This does not work. You might think chickens are funny and cute in a silly sort of way, but if you haven't tried to catch one, then you have know idea what you're talking about. They have claws and beaks and they can slap you in the face with their wings. This is what they did to me.

Finally it dawns on me that Jackson, our four-year-old, has helped Bethany round up the chickens many times. I go inside, burst into his bedroom, and wake the lad from his cherubic sleep.

"Jackson, time to get up. I have a really important job for you. I need you to help me get the chickens back in their cages."

Jackson stumbles bleary eyed into the kitchen and begins to put his boots on.

"Dad," he says, "do you want to know another really important job?"

"What's that Jackson?"

"Don't let the chickens out of their cages."

I'm not making that up. He really said that.

I post Jackson by the gate to the pen so that he can herd the chickens into it as I chase after them. This works almost immediately for two of the dumber chickens. The rest run off to a different corner of the yard.

Suddenly, all the chickens freeze and hunker down to the ground. They are watching a little tuft of black and white fur peaking out from the grass a few yards away. It's Spider, our murderous, sociopathic cat. Spider is small and kind of cute to look at, but she's a born killer. She enjoys destroying life. She could easily kill a chicken if she put her mind to it, and I can tell she's putting her mind to it.

I look over at Jackson. He's wiggling and he has a grimace on his face.

"Dad, I have to go potty."

I send the boy back inside and I'm on my own again. Fortunately, the chickens are now terrified of the cat and they want nothing more than to be back inside the safety of their pen. All of them allow me to chase them back in except for one - the dumbest bird by far. It misses the gate and instead starts to careen around the yard like a chicken with its head - never mind.

I am determined to catch this rogue chicken with my bare hands and stick it back in the pen, but as I start off across the yard again, I feel a strange tickling sensation in my right arm pit. The tickling turns into a sudden, sharp pain. I start jerking around and smacking myself, as there is obviously something messing around in my armpit that should not be there. After a few seconds, an angry, disoriented hornet flies out of my shirt. It has left two red, throbbing bite marks under my armpit that produce a fresh sting even as I write these words.

Meanwhile, Spider has moved in closer for the kill.

I am tempted to look up into the heavens and ask God why he has decided to smite me this morning, but I think better of it and instead chase after the prodigal chicken with a new determination. As it tries to make a loop around the pen, it runs face first into a bucket with a loud, hollow "thwack!" and stops, stunned. I grab it, waiting to have my eyes clawed or pecked out at any second, race to the gate, and toss that sucker back inside. Spider slinks off with an air of obvious disappointment.

Mission accomplished. I stare at the chickens, using non-verbal communication to let them know that I am in charge and that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated during the remainder of the weekend.

They look back at me as if to say, "Go put some pants on and leave us alone, you incompetent ninny. If you are so careless as to leave our gate open, then of course we shall take the opportunity to prance about the yard on our skinny, yellow little legs."

I thought about ending this story by saying that I went inside to check out some good recipes for baked chicken, but that would not be true. Plus, I don't believe in being cruel to animals.

I just wish they would give me a little respect, that's all.

blogging: it's the new rage!

For those of you who like to be on the cutting edge of technology, I'm here to let you in on the very latest thing out there: it's called "blogging." You are, believe it or not, reading a "blog" right now. This is wild stuff, but trust me, once you get into it, you're gonna love it. This is my first "blog" and I'm having an amazing time already.

So what exactly is this phenomenon called "blogging" you're probably asking yourself. Just imagine your journal from high school, except on the Internet, where everyone in the entire world can read and make fun of it. Now who wouldn't be into that?

If you want to make a "blog" like the one I'm making right now, all you have to do is go to this great World Wide Web site called Blogger. Here's the "Web address" (which is tech slang for the code that you enter into your "navigation bar," which is tech slang for the little thing at the top of your screen that you can type in): www.blogger.com. Just drag your mouse across that sucker and than "copy/paste" it into that Navigation Bar we were just talking about. And bam! You're on the Blogger Web site and ready to bust out your own soul-wrenching, earth shattering, jaw dropping observations on the inner workings of mankind's dark universal soul.

One day I predict that we will be able to write the name of a Web site on our "blogs" and then people will just be able to click on the words and it will take them straight to the site! We'll probably call this "zipping through" or something like that.

So, if you're ready to take it to the next level with me as I "get my blog on," then be sure to post me a link or paste me a comment - it's your call.

Well, I gotta go now. My PC is running out of memory, or maybe RAM. I need to save some files to a floppy disk to free up space. Once I'm up and going again, I'll see you in the fast lane of the Information Super Highway!