Being Random

Our boy Carter called Brodi, 'mom' yesterday. So what? What's the big deal? Well, considering he hasn't done that in over 2 years, it was noteworthy. It hasn't started a trend though, he promptly called her Brodi a few minutes later. On another note--I think he knows how to say the word 'dad' though I don't think I have actually heard him say it for a long time. When I asked him why he doesn't call me dad, he said simply: 'Your name is Sam.' Good point and hard to argue with that.

Over the past year or so, it seems like every weatherman uses the phrase 'We are experiencing weather.' What? What does that mean exactly? Aren't we always experiencing 'weather?' If it is a nice 65 degree day, aren't we experiencing weather?

Roman Polanski is teaching us all that if you ever decide to rape (statuatory rape or any other form of rape), the best thing to do is to be very talented and be willing to run from the law for several decades. If you do both of those things, many people will say to just forget about the rape and let you move on with your life. Interesting.
**sorry for the political commentary.

2 New very entertaining shows on tv--

**Modern Family--about 3 different individual families (though part of the larger family with a dad and his new wife, and his daughter with her family and his son and his family) who are just going about their lives in odd ways. No laughtrack but that will be supplied by you laughing as you watch.

**Glee--Very entertaining. It can get a bit too sexy at times...and some of the interwoven stories are not favorite but the overall show of a High school glee club is funny and well done.

Is there a better meat than Chicken Wings? Seriously, that is a great breakfast, lunch or dinner. Only Ribeye steaks could top it.


Enjoy your day, though it may be hard as we are experiencing weather right now.

To hang or not to hang?

We usually grow some cherry tomatoes every year in our backyard. I decided to try something different--you know that infomercial with the upside down tomatoes, the Topsy Turvy Tomatoes? I wanted to give it a shot. I mean, c'mon, the all of the pictures on the internet show that this is THE WAY to grow tomatoes. I can safely say that this is turned out as a disaster to me. I dreamed of fabulous results like the pic on the left. It was not meant to be.

As you can see, it was not pretty. The ads talked about the plants producing 'miracle tomatoes.' Let me just say that if it produced miracle tomatoes, then miracles suck. I got about 6 cherry tomatoes out of this. It makes you question everything when a good old informercial at 3am may not be telling you the whole truth about how easy it is to produce high quality fruits/vegetables. Is that not the saddest looking tomato plant that you have ever seen? I am not quite sure how I could so royally screw it up, but as you can see, I did.

On the other hand, my other not-topsy-turvy cherry tomatoe plant went crazy and has produced hundreds of cherry tomatoes. I also get the feeling that when I am not looking, this plant just mocks the topsy turvy plant all day long.

Spider + Spider Traps = Hole in the Wall

If you haven't had a chance to visit my lovely wife's blog, then you need to, immediately: Brodi's blog It is fabulous, witty and always entertaining. This past Wednesday, she had a discussion of spiders which is worth a read.

Anyway, so here is my story--Before Brodi and I moved to London, we lived in a great little basement apartment in Holladay. It was a great place. Well, about 2 weeks before we were to move out, disaster struck. This was back in the 'light scented candles' everywhere phase that everyone seemed to be doing. Well, we had a lighted scented candle in our bathroom. So, Brodi and I are just hanging out and all of a sudden, we hear this big cracking noise. We go running in to the bathroom and the hot candle, underneath the huge mirror in our bathroom...well, it heated up the mirror and sent a huge crack right thru it. Yeah, there goes our security deposit.

Then, 1 week before we were to move out...Brodi is in the other room and I found a big spider crawling up our wall. I yelled to her that I found a spider, and being the cool man that I am, I needed to step in and save my wife and capture/kill/murder/mutilate this spider. I thought of slamming my shoe on it but realized that would leave marks of spider death on our wall. So, I had a genius idea. You know those sticky spider traps? The traps that are basically glue, a spider walks into it and is stuck to die? The pic on the left is not ours...but pretty impressive work of catching about 200 spiders there. Well, I went and grabbed one of these traps from the other room. My fabulous plan was to use the gluey part and basically touch it against the back of the spider as it went up the wall. Voila, a captured spider. My depth perception however was not as good as I thought. Yeah, I got the back of the spider as well as the wall with the gluey part. Crap. I was now in full blown panic. I slowly tried to pull it off the wall...to no avail. I tried a bit harder and yes, you guessed it, took out a chunk of the wall with it. Dead spider, chunk of wall. Egads.

Let me just say--Brodi was not impressed. I then spent the next couple of days trying to find the right paint and caulk to try and fix the hole in the wall. I finally got it repainted over the hole...but if you put down new paint next to old paint--pretty noticeable. So, I mixed in some dirt and dust and brushed it away.

We were never charged for the hole mistake. I don't know how except my mixture of paint, tv dust and garden dirt plus a bad mixture of caulk and water must have somehow covered up the fact that I put a 3 inch hole in the wall. I still haven't recovered from this mistake and I get the chills ever time I see one of those stupid glue spider traps (our boy's pajamas touched one of those accidentally...could never get it separated from the trap...pajamas went into the garbage) For some reason, Brodi did not leave me. I think she has stayed with me to see how many more genius moves I will attempt.

So, a confederate flag and a banana meet on the street....

You can tell a lot about people by the car they drive and/or by what they have their car. This truck (pic on the right), though it is hard to see, had a confederate flag on their car. Interesting. I have some idea what that means.

The car, pictured on the left, had a huge stuffed banana on the front of their car. I have no idea what this means. People are strangely fascinating.

Tall. Really Tall.

I saw this man on the Today Show this morning and it just amazes me. When I was a kid, I wondered what it would be like to be tall, like 6'6" or something like that. My main interest was from a basketball perspective. Alas, I am stuck in my 5'11" frame. After seeing this guy, I am pretty pleased to be my size. This gentleman is from Turkey and he stands 8 feet, 1 inches tall. This man will never know what it is like to drive a Toyota Corolla (he would never fit), nor will he ever be able to pass under a regular sized door. He would barely even fit in my basement.

As I mentioned before, I am totally fine with my height.

Funkiness downtown

The residential area just outside of downtown SLC, in the 300-800 South range and the 200-600 East range, there are some interesting homes and parks. Many of the blocks are split in half with a small road going in between with smaller homes along the line. There are several blocks where there is a small park right in the middle of the block, basically for these 10-15 homes to share and use. Anyone can use these parks, but I don't think anyone but these people in these homes even knows they are around. There is also a small park right on 600 South that is named after the first african american college graduate from a college in Utah. Unfortunate though that the monument to him at this park is shaped like a gravestone. I am assuming that he is not buried there.

There is a block around 700 South where there are a bunch of identical small single family homes painted in just about every single color you can imagine. And they are all next to each other and looking at each other. I have not looked at it during the nighttime, but I would not be surprised if all of these homes glow in the dark as well. Kinda cool though.

Can it get any cooler than just leaving your partially restored 40 year old car on your front lawn? It is actually kind of like having art right outside your front door. It would not be as cool if that car has been sitting there since it was purchased back in 1965.

Business Cards: How much are you worth?

Over the years, I have had several different business cards. The ones that I use now are pretty snazzy, good looking cards. The biggest problems that my current card has are:

• It can fit in a rolodex...not a good thing
• It does not cost $4 a card
• It does not have a cool pop-up feature

Basically, my card is crap. This man explains why:

See m

Coolness and ugliness and another Utah site visited

One of my favorite neighborhoods in the SL Valley is the Harvard/Yale neighborhood. A lot of my growing up years were in the Avenues and the Hogle Zoo area so I learned to love the tree lined streets and the old homes.

Over the past few years, there have been changes in this neighborhood as many of the homes have been torn down and new ones put up. For the most part, the homes are attractive and though large, still fit in relatively well with the neighborhood (an example of a nice remodel is the home on the left). Other remodeled homes though, have not fit in the neighborhood, at all. They call this home Garage Mahal (pic on the right). It is huge with 3 big garages sticking out front with a little door around the side. Yeah, neighbors were not pleased when this bad boy went in. The picture does not even do it justice to how strange this home is compared with the rest of the area. I truly cannot figure out what the builder was thinking with this thing--"Yeah, lets do something that nobody will like...lets build a house with huge garages about 20 feet from the street and that is really all people will see, big garages...how cool will that be?' Uhm, not too cool.

One of the fabulous features of the Harvard/Yale neighborhood though is the Miller Bird Refuge and Park. This sits on 9th South and it is fabulous to be able to go for a mini hike, see a great little stream, huge trees, birds and a nice hiking path all right in the middle of a great neighborhood. As usual, Carter is showing off his great, totally forced, smile on the left. The kids loved running around on the trail...Carter even asked a couple who were getting their wedding pictures done if they needed him to take their picture. Understandably, they told him that they were OK.



If you have a chance, you can check it out at 9th South and about 16th East...a little hike that you can do in 30 minutes. It is just another reason to really like this pocket of homes in SLC. You can check out more about this park here: http://www.utahbirds.org/counties/saltlake/MillerBirdPark.htm

Another first day of school

Beckham had his first day of preschool last week. He went to preschool last year but not for as long as he is going now. He was very excited about it.

What does this mean for us...both of our boys are gone for quite a bit of the day. I got this video from Cary of thelistoftheday blog (linked on the left sidebar). Hard to see the boys growing up, but a joyous occasion at the same time.

Loving the hate...or Hating the love?

I love books. I hate the library. That doesn't seem to make sense, does it?

Let me explain. I got two letters yesterday from the library telling me that if I don't come and talk to them, my library account will be sent to collections. Why? I have two overdue childrens books. Yes, I checked out two kids books--one about a dog in a taxi (pic on left) and the other one about some monster (pic on the right) and I can't find either one...if you happen to see one of these books on the street in my neighborhood, please pick it up for me. Anyway, these now cost me $18 a piece. I could have bought those for $6 a piece and I would not have lost them because I would have owned them. I don't ever lose things that I actually own...only things that I borrow.

Also, I think that I have turned in every book that I ever checked out from the library, on average, about 10 days late. So, I get fined. Time and time and time again. Lovely.

The best part, and the redeeming part of this whole 'ordeal', though is when I went into the library today to clear up my charges. The guy ran the numbers and it was around $40. So, I gave him $10 and asked if I could pay the rest later (all I had on me was a ten dollar bill). He said no problem. I must have looked like I was down on my luck because he then told me that he was going to put me on a payment plan for the final $30. I was thinking that he would bill me $15 a month for the next 2 months. But no. He proceeds to tell me that I am on the 10 month repayment plan of $3 a month. How awesome is that? I just had my library fine financed at 0% for the next 10 months. OK, I think I love the library again.

My bad laundry etiquette

So tonight, I went to go and pick up my laundry from the dry cleaners. I pulled in and I started giving the girl all of my shirts when I realized that the shirt I was wearing, I also wanted dry cleaned. So, I took off my shirt and handed it to her. It didn't even seem to faze her which I guess, means that other people must do it all the time. I will say though, she was wholly unimpressed.

Next time I will just give them the shirts in the bag.

Weekend roundup

This long weekend was crazy but entertaining. From Thursday to Monday, we did/accomplished/perservered the following:

• Utah's first win of the football season, beating Utah State
• Kennecott Copper Mine tour--pics and discussion to come soon.
• The Living Aquarium--pics and discussion to come soon.
• Ensign Peak hike--pics and discussion to come soon.
• Midway--party up there with biking, games, hanging out and sleeping over.
• Swimming--lots of swimming at my sister E's house.
• Family Dinner Party--hanging out with my siblings families.
• Watched lots of nighttime tennis for the US Open. My favorite female player bowed out quickly...Brodi's favorite male player is still rocking it.

Things missed:

• No salsa dancing this week.
• No marathons run
• Did not win the lottery
• Did not win any metrosexual awards

Hope you all had a good weekend with good times.

144 beautiful Diet Cokes

Now, most of you know that we enjoy a good diet drink (Tab is usually the beverage of choice due to its fabulous nutrional content) but Diet Coke is also a fan favorite of ours.

I have been known to buy many 12 packs of these drinks at a time. But even I have to say that I was impressed as I walked by this person's car...I did not know the person and I usually do not spend a lot of time staring into the backseats of peoples cars, but its backseat contents made me stop and admire.

Yes, there are at least 12 of these 12-packs in the backseat. The reason that I love this is I can just see this person buying all of these 12 packs, and as you can see by the picture, they are not put in the backseat in an orderly way--they are just thrown back there. What does this mean? The person was probably so embarrassed to buy that many that they filled the shopping cart, paid for it and then jogged out to the car with the cart and hurriedly threw them in the back of the car so that nobody could see what they just bought. C'mon Diet Coke drinker...no need to be ashamed, be proud of your Diet Coke consumption. Its truly a badge of honor to be able to drink that many before they expire...and yes people, soda drinks usually expire--usually within 3 months of when you purchase them.

Now, if that car had that many Tab 12-packs in its backseats, lets just say, I would have stolen that car within a minute and being in Tab heaven.