You'll Shoot Your Eye Out Kid!

It's officially Christmas in our house now. At least in my book. Technically speaking our house has had decorations up since the first week of November when we hosted our annual "First Christmas Party" for our closest friends but tonight we brought home our Christmas tree. I'm not talking about one of those fake plastic trees that Radiohead sang about but a for-realsy tree.

For me that's when Christmas really starts. Nothing says Christmas like letting a fir tree slowly die in your front room. Really a weird tradition when you think about it but I love it. I grew up with live, I mean dying, trees at Christmas and if at all possible it's a tradition that I want to pass on to my son. That smell when you walk in the house after a long day...that's the best.

Obviously Christmas is much more than a tree, there are a lot of other wonderful traditions that make this time of year the best. Everybody thinks of Church pageants, houses festooned with lights (yep, I just used the word festooned), and of course the biggie, Christmas music! I've been listening to Christmas music since the day after Halloween. It's a necessity

Injury Report Status - Questionable

Injuries are inevitable. Everybody gets injured at some point. Most people can't go a week without some sort of injury. Some are just minor annoyances. Something like a paper cut. It's rare that a paper cut turns out to be life threatening but they are definitely annoying. I once got a paper cut when licking an envelope...that was seriously annoying. Along with those are the ones that are simply really infuriating. Like when you smack your head on something or bite your tongue. Biting the tongue ranks up there with one of the most irritating injuries you can inflict upon yourself. Think about it, your tongue never leaves your mouth, it's always in the same spot, you know exactly how it and the rest of your mouth functions yet you can still manage to get it between your teeth right when you bite down on that potato chip. Then you just feel like an idiot. I mean what can you say, "Gee I didn't realize my tongue was in my mouth while I was eating, darn!" No you can't, all you can do is feel dumb...and irritated.

Other times you might be afflicted by a more serious injury but hopefully it happens when you are doing something really cool or, I don't know, saving a baby from a burning building. Sports injuries fall into this category. They can be seriously painful but you have a really cool back story that you can share.

"Dan, why are you on crutches?"

"Well," says Dan, "I sprained my ankle last night in my hockey game."

"No way!" says the interested friend. "What happened?"

"I was on a two on one breakaway with my line mate and he passed the puck behind me so I twisted and reached backwards to try to slide the puck in the net. When I did that both feet went out from under me and I ended up going horizontal in the air and slammed feet first into the boards behind the net. Hence, severely twisted ankle."

That's actually a true story and one of my better ones. At least from the

You've Got Handwritten Mail

I heard on the news tonight that, on average, a person receives a handwritten letter in the mail once every 7 weeks. I can attest to the fact that I certainly don't meet that average. A handwritten letter is incredibly rare around here. Take away some cards I recently received in the mail for my birthday and I can't remember the last letter or card I received.

I remember shortly after high school I had a number of friends move away for various reasons and we used to write letters and send postcards to one another. Granted, we were all guys so it wasn't like we did it a lot but it was at least consistent. Then email happened and the pencil and paper collected dust.

It's kind of a shame really. There's just something about a handwritten letter. I kind of miss it.  Even something as simple as the sound of a pen or pencil scratching away on a piece of paper is much more interesting and authentic than the click-clacking of a keyboard. And if you really get in to it, there's an endless array of stationery and writing utensils to choose from. Heck you could go old school and get yourself a fountain pen and take handwritten letters to a whole different level. Find yourself some parchment and you're really hardcore.

Autumn? I've heard others talk of such a thing.

Last Friday (9/23) was apparently the first day of Fall. Some people called it the beginning of "Autumn". Here in Phoenix we called it... Friday. When it's 100+ degrees outside the last thing you think about is "fall".

If you live in the Valley of the Sun long enough though you get accustomed to our seasons. We don't have 4 like most of the country, I mean why would you need four of them? That's really twice as many as is necessary. In Phoenix we have two. The first season is known as "Extreme Summer" and it lasts from May until September, sometimes longer. It's a fascinating season. You can do things during that time of year that you can do at no other time. Like what you ask? Well, let me just tell you. If you would like you can bake cookies in your car. You can fry an egg on your hood. You can make sun tea in 3 minutes. If you want to test your inner strength you can get the mail barefoot. It's the same as one of those coal walks without the pesky need for chopping wood and waiting hooooours for it to burn down to coals. And while you're doing the "grab the mail" coal walk you can kill another bird by getting an instant tan at the same time. The great thing about all these is that they are all huge money savers! It's like extreme couponing without the paper cuts! Win-win really.

The description or name of the other season is a little more ambiguous. It just sort of creeps up on you without any fanfare. You realize that last Thursday it was hot and this Thursday, well it's not quite as hot. And before you know it it's 71 and you're looking for a long sleeve hoody because it's "freezing" outside. At least that's what I do.

The other main difference between Extreme Summer and the rest of the year, other than the less hotness of it, is the light. The light is different in the non-extreme part of the year. During the summer the sun beats down mercilessly directly overhead and then all of a sudden one day it's still 108 but the sun is shinning in through your side window in your car and your left thigh feels like it's melting. That's when you know it's fall. Not when the temperature changes. No that's not a good test at all. The real difference comes down to the light and shadows. The fact that you actually have a shadow is the real key.

Maybe instead of Groundhog Day we need another holiday around the end of September. Something with a coyote or a snake or something. We'll take the coyote (or the snake) and shove it out a door into the sun. If the unsuspecting creature sees his shadow then we know the season has changed. If he instantly bursts into flames then it's still Extreme Summer.

I guess that's what it boils down to when it comes to seasons here. Either it's coyotes-burst-into-flames-in-the-sun season or it's not.

I'm glad we're moving into the non creature burning season. It's my favorite.

Better Than Jason Bourne

What weighs roughly 15 pounds, is basically immobile and could be used to break a suspected terrorist into admitting his next attack? You're probably thinking, "That's easy, it's a loudspeaker playing Celine Dion endlessly." Well, you would be close but it's actually a 3 month old baby!

Forget water boarding suspected spies or terrorists to get info, just force them to care for an infant for about two days. After a couple of days of that I bet they would be willing to sell out their sweet, old grandmother and her famous hummus recipe for a few hours of uninterrupted sleep! That, or they would be so delirious from the lack of sleep that they would tell you the secret knock to get into their fancy terrorist cave in the mountains of Afghanistan without a second thought. That's assuming that terrorist caves have some sort of door. Maybe they don't, having never been to the middle east I'm not really sure what they do. Maybe it's just a beaded curtain or a burlap sack or something. Whatever it is, I'm pretty certain you need a secret password of some sort to get in and a terrorist having to sleep with an infant nearby will give that up in a heartbeat.

Heck, if you catch me or my wife at the right moment we'd probably give up our bank account and social security numbers without even knowing we did it!

By the way, I was up early again this morning when our very own rooster known as Baby J woke us up and I was thinking about this email I received from the deposed prince of Namibia. He told me he needs somebody to send him some money to get out of the country. He promised once he was out and had access to the royal family fortune he would return the favor. I think it's a really great opportunity and how often to you hear from royalty? Does anybody know where you go to wire money to Namibia?

Anyway, all that being said, I don't want to give the wrong impression. Our son is amazing and I wouldn't trade him for anything...maybe that's sleep deprivation talking.

So This Is It

Ok, so here it is my first real post. I have exactly 20 minutes before my lunch ends and I'm functioning on very little sleep so I think in hindsight I'm going to look back and wish this wasn't my first real entry! I'm new to this whole blogging thing but I would think you would want your first entry to be something really profound, witty or insightful. Unfortunately what I'm going to have is a rushed/sleep deprived attempt at...something.

Anyway, to get to the point. I was talking to somebody this morning about the whole idea of keeping a blog and what the point of it is. And we both sort of came to the conclusion that it seems the overall intent is to try to get a whole bunch of "followers" to read whatever it is you have to say. Which is exactly why I've been so hesitant to start one because on the surface that seems like an incredibly conceited thing to do. I know that's not the case for a lot of people but to me it almost seems like you think so highly of what you have to say or of your writing skills that you assume people will want to read it on a regular basis. It appears so self-promoting and having had issues in the past with my own arrogance and pride I always worried that this would just be feeding those negative aspects of my personality. Of course, I have a wonderful wife who I'm sure will point it out to me if I start venturing too far in that direction. At least I hope she will!

With that being said, when I logged in a few moments ago I saw this little notice on my dashboard that indicated I had one new follower! It was the weirdest thing to see that because I actually got kind of excited. Wow, somebody actually wants to read what I have to say! It is a really cool feeling and incredibly humbling at the same time. Of course it may only take a few entries for my one follower to become no followers so we'll see how it all goes.

Anyway, I want to say very special thank you to my very first follower. Thanks CLR, and thanks for your encouragement to get me writing again.

That's Strange

Well, if you've stumbled upon this post than that's mighty strange because nobody knows about this place yet. Anyway, if you're here I might as well tell you that I'm currently in the construction phase of this page. Which basically means I don't know how to use it yet and I'm still tinkering with settings. It probably also means that I haven't actually written anything yet. Other than this. So since you stumbled along to this space by accident I imagine you'll want to stumble away now. Hope you enjoyed your stay.