Category Archives: uncategorized

Touchstone Magazine (I don’t read the magazine, but I do occasionally read the editors’ Mere Comments website) has an interesting write up on what has become one of my favorite films (and I know I’ll annoy Mike to no end by saying this): Napoleon Dynamite.

Jen and I watched it a few months back, and we laughed hysterically through the entire movie. Now, this may just be because we had watched The Squid and The Whale the previous night, which would make any movie look good by comparison.

But I digress.

Berry College professor Michael Bailey examines the film and finds much deeper than one might expect. Upon reflection, I think he may have some very good points, that the film makes some statements about isolation and family.

From the article:

Napoleon is, in effect, the anti-Ferris Bueller. He doesn’t want to have fun so much as simply to survive. He has no friends (at least at first), he gets bullied at school, and he is scared of chickens. In his fantasy life, in contrast, he is a superhero who shoots wolverines, joins gangs who want him for his skills, and forges alliances with wizards and our “underwater ally,” the Loch Ness Monster.

Seek happiness all you want, the movie seems to suggest, but if your heart is decroded, you will still be miserable, a man in body, perhaps, but still just an unhappy boy on the school bus.

It’s an interesting read.

Some Flash games I’ve been digging lately:

Red
Splash
DrawPlay
N (of course)
Sling
Zwok
Blue Print
Cube Field

Rock on.

Bacon……..

I’ll admit it: I don’t like Halloween.

And no, it’s not a religious objection or anything like that. I help my daughter get dressed up and I take her trick or treating and everything. We walked all over our development tonight, along with three other families. And this past Friday, I dressed up like a pirate and went to a costume party in my neighborhood.

I just don’t like Halloween.

It’s been six years today since we lost our son. He was stillborn on October 31, 2000. And every Halloween since, I can’t help but think what he would been like, what he would have looked like.

Honestly, I don’t think about him too much anymore. Too much other stuff to do, with work and church and family. But on Halloween, I can’t help it. Once or twice tonight, I almost turned back and went home, just to sit and be alone and think about him. But I figured that wouldn’t be very productive, and I didn’t want to leave my daughter.

So yeah, I don’t like Halloween.

In fact, I hate Halloween.

It happens every morning.

Actually, it happens every nine minutes every weekday morning.

I try. I really do. Every time it happens, I promise myself it will be the last time. But alas, I always fall back into my old ways.

It starts at 6:00 AM, when my first alarm goes off. I wake up, reach over to the clock, and push the big button on the top in order to shut off the noise before it wakes up my wife. I know it won’t wake my daughter. After seven years, she’s become impervious to the alarm clock.

But once the clock has been silenced, I lie in bed and stare at the big green numbers. And I think, “I could get up early today. Get my shower and then maybe make breakfast for everyone. Maybe even get to work early. Yeah, today, I’ll turn over a new leaf. In fact, I have time to take the dog for a walk before my shower. I’m going to do this every day from now on! This is the start of a new….”

And then I fall asleep again.

I know that it goes off again at 6:09 and 6:18, but I don’t really remember it happening on any given day.

And at 6:27, all I know is that I’m clawing at every button on the clock in quiet despair, because my brian is too mushy to get the right one. Sometimes I turn on the “nap” feature, which then panics me because I don’t really know what it does.

At 6:30, my second alarm goes off. My wife bought me the dual alarm clock a few years ago. Most people buy them so that each spouse can have a distinct wake up time. Not me. I have one because I have actually outslept my old alarm clock. It stopped trying to wake me up several times.

There’s another alarm at 6:36, and another at 6:39. That’s about the time I think, “Okay, no more fooling around. If I don’t get up now, I’m not going to….”

And then I fall asleep again. Until 6:45. At which point, I disable all alarms and climb out of bed to begin my morning routine. Or, if it’s an especially bad day, sometimes I unconsciously disable all alarms and then go back to sleep, only to be awakened some time after 7:00 by the cartoons my daughter is watching.

Now, before anyone tells me that I need to get more sleep, let me just say: “No duh.”

But the fact is, I usually feel better on less sleep, within reason. Less than about four hours, and I’m worthless. With between four and five hours of sleep, I can get up pretty well. Anything between six and nine hours, and I feel like a zombie in the morning. With nine and up, I’m a bit groggy, but generally okay.

1. Star Wars: The Mandalorian Armor by K. W. Jeter
2. Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire by Steve Perry
3. Star Wars: The Truce at Bakura by Kathy Tyers
4. Star Wars: The Courtship of Princess Leia by Dave Wolverton
5. Star Wars: X-Wing: Rogue Squadron by Michael Stackpole
6. Star Wars: X-Wing: Wraith Squadron by Aaron Allston
7. Star Wars: X-Wing: Iron Fist by Aaron Allston
8. Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command by Aaron Allston
9. Star Wars: The Paradise Snare (Book 1 of The Han Solo Trilogy) by A. C. Crispin
10. Star Wars: Rebel Dawn (Book 3 of The Han Solo Trilogy) by A. C. Crispin

Yes, I’m that much of a nerd.

But I only spent five bucks.

The 2006 Mounvtille Garage Sales were today. Just like last year, Jen and I, along with some other members of our worship team, not to mention a few new friends, played alongside the praise band from St. Paul’s United Methodist Church.

And it rained.

We had just finished our sound check, when I felt a few drops on my head. Now, understand that my head is more sensitive to the rain than most, at least since I started shaving my head last August.

Click the image for a few more pictures.

So we pulled everything back a few feet in order to enjoy the modest protection afforded by the tarp hanging over and slightly behind us.

But anyway, we pressed on. And why not? We were set up, we had practiced, and we were among good friends.

And it turned out pretty well. We each did two sets, and the moment the fourth set ended, the sun came out in full force. Which was, you know, a little bit annoying.

But a good day, nonetheless.

A few days ago marked the fifth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attack. Politics aren’t really my thing, so I don’t have a whole to say about it.

I will mention that September 11, 2001, was the day we got our dog Jack. We had been to the Lancaster Humane League the prior Saturday and found him there among his fellow canine inmates. The good folks at the Humane League asked us to return on Tuesday morning.

On Monday, September 10, I arranged to take the following morning off of work so that I could along with my wife and daughter to bring Jack home.

I woke up late on September 11 and ate a leisurely breakfast with my family, which was a special treat for me. While we ate, my father-in-law called and said that we should turn on the television to check out what was going on. He told us that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. We sat and watched while we finished our breakfast, unable to make sense of the situation.

We left the house shortly thereafter and went to the Humane League, where we picked up Jack. He was scrawny and dirty and seemed to have some bladder issues. But he was gentle and friendly, and neither he nor Grace feared the other. We took him for a short walk, and we all decided he was the dog for us. When we went back inside and did the paperwork, we watched on the small television behind the counter as the second tower collapsed. By now, we were hearing rumors of two more planes that had been hijacked.

On the ride home, we listened to the radio in disbelief as we heard about another plane hitting the Pentagon.

When we got home, Jack tried to run away for the first of many times. By that time, most of the local schools were dismissing their students. I called my boss to tell him I wouldn’t be in the rest of the day.

I remember that my grandparents stopped by with my aunt and uncle, and my father-in-law stopped by later. It seemed like people wanted to be around other people. I had always wondered about my parents’ ability to connect with other people of their generation simply by talking about where they were and what they were doing when they heard about President Kennedy being shot. Suddenly, I understood. This would be the day that defined and connected my generation.

Slate is hosting Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colón’s extremely well done graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Report. It’s well worth checking out.

So we’re going to the beach for the weekend in a few weeks. Jen’s aunt and uncle co-own a beach house in Ocean City, New Jersey, so we after the rental season winds down, we usually get a free weekend in the fall. I think I’ve probably written about it before.

Anyway, this leaves us with what is becoming a common conundrum: what to do with the dog?

We used to call my mom’s neighbor, but she recently adopted Max, and Jack and Max kinda get along, but they’re not good buddies or anything, so that may not be a bad idea. We had a very nice girl from our church watch Jack over the summer, but she’s gone away to college.

But I digress.

Thinking about a dogsitter recently got me thinking about some of my own dogsitting experiences.

About thirteen or fourteen years ago, Jen and I were teaching fourth grade Sunday School at the church we were attending. One Sunday, The parents of one of our students asked me if I’d be willing to watch their house and take care of their dogs while they went away on a trip. I love dogs, and I knew they had a big Rottweiler (among some other pooches), so I agreed.

They lived in a big old house in the country, about a half an hour’s drive from my parent’s house (this was before I had moved out). I was kind of looking forward to a weekend of relative solitude out there by myself with just the dogs. So I packed up my Macintosh Classic (thinking about lugging that thing around like I used to makes me so glad to have a laptop now) and headed out to the country.

On Friday night, I settled in, made some dinner for myself, fed the dogs, and sat down at my computer for a couple hours. Two of the dogs were hunting dogs, and they lived outside (note: these were not my dogs and if you want to point out that pets belong inside, you won’t get an argument from me). But Tasha, the big Rottweiler, lived inside. She was a really cool dog. She was big and strong enough to treat me like a squeaky toy if she wanted to, but she was very gentle and playful.

Anyway, I eventually decided to get some sleep, probably some time after midnight. I stretched out on the couch in the living room, with Tasha on the floor next to me. As I started to drift off, I noticed Tasha moving. Having grown up with dogs, I figured she heard or saw something, and she went to check it out. She went to the back door, then to the front door, then to each window on the ground floor. Then she stared out one window for a few moments before lying back down.

About an hour later (sometimes it takes me a while to fall asleep), she did it again. Back door, front door, each window, staring out the window, then lying back down.

It took me until about the third or fourth time that she did this for me to realize that she wasn’t merely checking out a sound she heard. She was on patrol. She was the guard dog, and she apparently took her job quite seriously. I think that inside her big old doggie brain, I wasn’t there to take care of her. Not at all. You see, inside her big old doggie brain, she was there to take care of me.

Well, the PowerPoint/Keynote tip that I posted on Friday saved my butt this morning.

I’m currently in charge of A/V stuff (music, sound, video, computer) during my church’s Sunday morning services. Wherever I can, I use Keynote for the presentations. This morning, Luis was scheduled to spend a few minutes at the end of the service sharing about his recent missions trip to Peru. My pastor told me that Luis would have four or five pictures to share on the screen.

Luis showed up with a USB drive containing 55 pictures.

Now, this is a good thing. He had lots of great photos of the trip to share with the congregation. But I was left with only a few minutes to get 55 pictures into this morning’s Keynote file.

Using Friday’s tip, this was a breeze. Each of the 55 pictures was imported and placed onto its own slide in about 90 seconds. In fact, the only obstacle I ran into was trying stop one of the kids from making shadow puppets in front of the projector while I worked on it.

So in the end, Luis shared some really interesting pictures with us. It was very humbling to see the circumstances in which many Peruvians live. As Jen and I contemplate moving or renovating, it was striking to see homes with no roofs, or with walls made out of cardboard.