Christmas means candy to me

Each year as a child we made candy and would share it with the neighbors. My wife and I have continued the tradition and worked several hours to get everything ready this year. I made the pecan brittle and divinity, Kinsey made caramels and fudge. Early reports indicate the candy was a hit, and what is better than making people happy with sweets.


Here's a picture of the pecan brittle done the traditional way in a 9x9 pan. This year I tried pouring it out onto a marble slab and I think I'll continue doing that in the future. You can get the pecans mixed in better, but you can't really get it to spread out anymore than it does in the pan. I guess the candy sets up too fast on the marble.

Oh my, there are so many leafs

It's almost a full week into December and I was raking leafs today because our tree just holds onto them until either there is a lot of wind/rain/snow to bring them down, or the new leafs start to come in.
Here's a picture of the boys playing in the leafs before I raked the first time almost a month ago. I have raked a total of three times now and filled about 25 bags. I hope I'm done for this year, but we have yet to see what kind of weather is to come and how much more the tree will dump on our yard. I'm praying for only strong winds that blow everything into neighboring yards.

Come on, everybody's doin' it

Since I've seen a few people advertising their blog reading level I thought I'd see where mine fell and where some of the others I read lined up. I'll just say that my blog is in line with my education. I wasn't really surprised by others results, but mine might have been just a little high, but I'm not one to complain about that. It's kind of getting that A when you were counting on a B+.

The most interesting thing I did was follow the links from blog to blog, you know, the link that says next blog, so I'm hitting totally random blogs and checking their readability. This is what I found. Foreign language, automatic genius, every time, I quit checking after about the fifth one. If you blog about solely about sports you're blogging at an elementary reading level, go figure, kids understand sports. The best result I saw was for a fifth grade classes homework assignments, it came in at the genius level. Those must be some crazy smart fifth graders.

Scarry

As my non-blogging sister has told the story, I loved a certain Richard Scarry book as a child and would get upset if she tried to skip a page or even condense the story a bit. I could read the same story to myself even before I could read. The story was Babykins and His Family. I almost got a copy from eBay, but was barely out bid.

I have been looking for those great out of print classic Richard Scarry titles and have managed to find a few. I check the thrift stores every so often and love it when I make a great find. Here are some of them.


The Best Mother Goose Ever is great because it isn't the sanitised version of all the old nursery rhymes that kids get today, I can really let my children know what will happen to them if they are naughty. Fun With Words is really The Best Word Book, but with a dictionary added to the back of it. There is a funny flickr site that compares the original and the updated versions of the Best Word book ever.

I guess my son is a little like me

I've been told I need to blog more often and am taking it to heart. In light of my last post I have decided to write a but about my own experience with stitches. Aside from medical procedures I've had stitches three times. I really don't have any recollection of the first two incidences, but they did leave some great scars that I carry to this day.

Annzy won't appreciate this, but she contributed to my first experience with stitches when she was done paying and I was not. The next happened not long after the first while I was playing at the neighbors house. In both of these situations my parents were unavailable and the Dildine family took me to the hospital. I guess I might have them to thank for my life today.

The third happened when I was in high school and my parents were yet again unavailable. I cut my head open on a nail sticking through a board in the orchestra pit of the schools auditorium. The nail was hording nothing together, it was just stuck through a board. The nail looke something like this.
I had to go to the school nurse and she tried to call my mom, but she couldn't be reached, same story with my dad, so my oldest sister was the next option. She was a teacher at another high school and was not accustom to getting calls during class, but in this case, an emergency, her classroom phone rang during the last period of the day.

She came and got me taking me to the doc-in-a-box where they told me I had a gash in my head about one and a quarter inches long. To numb the area the used cocaine as a local anesthetic, it was my firs and to date only experience with the drug. When my boy had to get the staples in his head I asked if they would use cocaine and the nurse just gave me a strange look and said they use a topical cream.

I think I ended up with six stitches and some really short hair right where the cut was. I think I was more concerned with having my hair cut than getting the stitches, but I'm a little strange about may hair that way.

Ouch, that looks like it hurt

The other night the boys were running around when the younger one came into the family room where his mother and I were sitting. He had blood in his hair and was very upset. We looked closely at his head and decided to take him to the doctor. Well, about an hour later he had three staples holding the wound shut.


The doctor said this would probably be the first of many with two boys, and he's probably right.

There's no sense denying the truth

My Sister was kind enough to make one last purchase for me as a microsoft employee with the associated discount. In the package I found a suprise, this.


I figured it would be fun to wear it to work and see what kind of reactions I got. Most people thought it was pretty cool and wanted to know where I got it. I was sure to tell everyone that my cool sister got it for me.

My Brother-in-law the writer

Here's a shout out to my BIL, he is the newest feature writer for the Utah Statesmen and you can find his first article here. He will appear every other Friday with some type of music review. This should be great experience for him even if he is going into technical writing. Come to think of it I'm related to a lot of technical writers. My sister and SIL are or have been technical writer and now the BIL too. I guess it's like me going into programming, my father did it some, my oldest brother did it, my next brother did it, one of my other brothers-in-law did it, so I had to do it too. Some things just run too strong in a family.

Don't forget to weigh in on my Halloween costume. you can still leave comments on the post below.

A New Month And A Question For You The Reader

So, it's October and Halloween is just around the corner. Each year we have a costume party at work and I have always participated, some years are better than others so far as my costumes are concerned. Fred Flintstone was the most popular costume I have ever had, and the cereal killer was the most disturbing.

The point being, I need an idea for a great costume. Dwight Schrute is what the DW thinks I should be. I think that would be fun, but there might be a better idea, and I would really love to win the costume contest at work. I've always thought the Charlie Brown ghost was a funny costume, but I wonder how many people would get it (for those of you who don't know, Charlie Brown's ghost costume had eye holes all over the white sheet) . Now then, Feel free to comment on what you think I could do for Halloween. Jason, please do not suggest Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz, because I simply will not do it. Another thing, I have started growing a beard for any ideas that might include that, but I have no problem shaving either.

Les Simpson - Le Film

I have finally seen The Simpsons Movie. It's a little embarrassing how long it took me to see it considering what a Simpsons fan I consider myself to be. I thought it was good, in fact I laughed as I read a comment on IMDB the other day stating something to the effect 'I'm glad it didn't suck.'

I guess when something has been in the works for so long and rumored even longer there is a lot of expectation built in. I have to say it was great to have a story that could be fully developed in a way that a 30 minute, or 20 when you factor in breaks, show just can't get into. Also, I think they were able to spend a little more time on the animation. I can't explain what the difference was, it just seemed to be of finer quality, or I just wanted to see it as such. See the movie if you haven't even if you don't like The Simpsons.

What happened to your trees?

For Labor Daywe went to Boise and we had a great time there with family and friends, well, I had a great time with family and frinds, Kinsey had a great time with family. The dive back form Boise was dreary and rainy pretty much the entire way. I think the storm was following us the entire way home. When we got home we found all to be well with our home, I've got to say that is always a relief.

The DW's mother invited us to dinner that evening, which was nice. We were in no mood to prepare a dinner and having an offer to get a home cooked meals is always appreciated. While we were having dinner the wind was crazy and there was a bit of rain with it. It was loads of fun getting the boys back into the car with the wind and rain! When we got back home we saw this site, two trees laying across the sidewalk.

One of the trees was completly uprooted, and the other was just about laying flat on the ground. I got my saw and cleared the mess that used to be our trees in the parking strip in front of our house. Since then I've had a few people question what happened to our trees. I guess it was an act of God.

How I love the Beatles

As I was siting here listening to Abbey Road I was reflecting on how much I love the Beatles and how long that love has lasted. I don't know that there has been any other group so long lasting in my eyes musically speaking, especially considering they haven't even produced an album together since Abbey Road.

One thing I love about the Beatles music is the number of renditions I have from other groups. I am not like my father who says he likes the Beatles music, just not when they perform it. So, what brings up the Beatles and covers of their music, I guess it's the new film Across The Universe that uses the music of the Beatles to tell their story. I've only listened to a couple of the songs from the soundtrack, and it's all right so far, it'll probably be a while before I actually see the film.

There are covers that I love and will probably always listen to since I can't really remember a time that I didn't listen to them, namely the Sergio Mendes arrangements, thank you Dad. There are others that I wish had stayed in the minds of their creators rather than being recorded. The soundtrack to another film, I Am Sam, has some great covers and others that bring to mind the sound of fingernails on a chalkboard. One of the play lists that I will probably never get rid of on my computer will be Beatles Covers just because it is so great as are the Beatles themselves.

Me and the Simpsons

So a coworker told me about this web site that lets you create a Simpson's version of yourself. I tried it out and thought it was fun. I've done the whole family now in fact. If you want to try it out go to simpsonizeme.com, I think this explains all the Simpson's look alike icons on some of the forums I visit.

The WohleHog

Last night I had a great time going to see Rush with a friend of mine. I think it's been six years since I've paid to see a concert, and this one was well worth it. One band playing for about three hours was incredible. My friend and I made one person particularly angry. When you go to a show like this most people stand, but I guess we were in the family section or something, and many people decided they would prefer sitting. One person behind us thought we were making too many people stand to see the show. He approached us and asked us to sit. The people immediately behind us said that they were going to stand even if we sat down, so we continued standing. A little later the man that talked to us about forcing everyone else to stand "accidentally" spilled some beer in our direction. We didn't see him the rest of the night, I think he was scared that he had hit too many people with the beer and would face dire consequences if he came back.

So it's been three years since I've done any work in the theatre and I guess I'm a little behind the times. As we were heading toward our seats we passed the sound and lighting consoles and there were three lighting consoles. I've seen two used, but never three. With the exception of ten follow spots that were manually operated, all the lighting was robotic. I guess that many lights makes it difficult for one person and or console to control all of them simultaneously, it could also have something to do with the addressing of teh lights, but what do I know. The picture above is the WholeHog III, that was what they were using to control the lights, just so you know what the title refers to.

Happy Birthday DW

Birthday cakes are very important in my family and my wife also has strong feelings for birthday cakes. I'm not too great at decorating cakes, but I'm related to plenty of others that are very talented in this area, fortunately the DW prefers the substance of the cake to its appearance. She chose an orange cake this year, fitting because orange is her favorite color. Being that it was a layer cake with orange flavored frosting I looked at the picture in the cookbook and tried my best to duplicate the cake. I think I did a pretty good job, but I won't know for a few more hours how well it really turned out. Until then, Happy birthday, may it be delightful.

That's how I fondue it

First off, let me apologize for the title that is very similar to a title that I used just earlier this week. Moving on now. We decided to have fondue and I thought the DW would just pick up a packet like we usually do and we'd go from there. To my surprise she bought the raw ingredients and we were making it from scratch. It's not that I mind doing this type of thing, but it has never worked for me before and I had just resigned myself to the idea that I couldn't make a basic Swiss fondue because it is always stringy and a little separated. I guess it's all in the recipe. It was great this time and we all enjoyed a nice dinner of cheesy bread, apples, broccoli and carrots.

That's How I Grill

So I got some cash to get a grill for my birthday. I got the one looked really cool, it also cooks better than the portable grill I had been using for the last five years. The elder of my sons likes it so much that he constantly requests that I grill things for him. The other day I grilled a couple hot dogs just for the boys, let me tell you I know what a grill is for. With the new grill I also have a lot more space than I have in the past. I've grilled things in pairs so far, a pair of burgers, a pair of chicken breasts, a pair of pork chops and a pair of hotdogs. Maybe I'll start gilling in greater prortions sometime soon, and maybe I'll have you over when I do.

What's in a name?

So I decided that since everyone else is doing it, why shouldn't I have a blog of my own. I started coming up with names.

First I thought of Linus Van Pelt because my sister is Lucy Van Pelt. I had my blanket for comfort as a child and all, but Linus was a middle child and I'm the youngest. That brought me to Rerun, but aside from being Lucy's youngest brother we didn't have much in common.

I then thought of my brother's title of More Evil and thought maybe I could be the Brother of All Evil, but he is not all evil (I don't think he that evil period) and I just don't want to make him sound worse than he really is.

The DW suggested something apple, computers and not the fruit, related, but that's just become another form f snobbery in the last few years and I don't want to sound like a snob. That's when my former profession in theatre gave her the idea that I come up with a name related to lighting design. In a way the DW's and my titles are related in a color sense, Orange and Other Bright Colors and my own Color Theory for the Color Blind. What better title for a color blind lighting designer (of sorts).

Enjoy!