Friday, 14 October 2011

Despite having seen her in person on more than one occasion, the folks at Metro Urology apparently don’t know that my daughter is one year old. If they did, they would probably know that my daughter has extremely limited linguistic capabilities, that she is incapable of signing her name, and that she does not read the mail.

First, she received this letter in the mail:

Never mind the incoherence of first stating they’ve attempted to reach her by phone, then immediately saying she “may have been” called (which is it?), what gets me is that they tried reaching a toddler by phone. And, when that didn’t work, they tried reaching a toddler by mail. Surprisingly, they were unsuccessful both times.

But wait! There’s more:

Turns out, when my wife took Isla to the clinic, she paid a co-pay that didn’t need to be paid. So, being decent people, they sent a reimbursement check. To Isla. I kid you not. Here it is:

That’s my daughter’s full name: Pay to the Order of Isla F. [Last Name]. Twenty-five big ones. (I blocked out personal information that needs to be concealed when posting an image of a check online, according to StuffYouShouldObscureWhenPostingChecksOnline.org.)

What do you do with a check like this? Well, frankly, I have no idea what you would do, but I know what we did: we had Isla sign the check.

I’m taking it to the credit union on Monday to deposit it in her account.

Saturday, 15 October 2011

Today we ventured to the mega-mall. We went in to the Apple store along with my wife’s computer. The store was packed! There was standing room only, and I could hardly hear over the noise. I counted 20 employees in just the back quarter of the store alone. There were so many people, some of them were forced to hang out in the nearby Microsoft store.

My wife had already booked an appointment with the Genius Bar and, despite the congestion, they were only running about ten minutes behind. Once she was called over to the bar to figure out her computer problems, Owen, Isla, and I took off for Worst Service. I mean Best Buy.

At Best Buy, I went over to the ‘customer service’ counter to return some speakers I had just purchased three weeks ago. Best Buy is legendary for their strict return policies: you need to bring in a receipt, it has to have been purchased within the last 30 days, there’s a 10% restocking fee, and about half of the stuff in the store can’t be returned at all.

Anyway, I set the speakers on the counter. I had no receipt with me. The employee said he could try looking it up on his computer. His Commodore 64 couldn’t find the purchase using my check card, ‘rewards’ number, or phone number. After giving him a rough estimation of the date of purchase, he was able to find the transaction using my wife’s phone number (she give that out to lots of guys, I guess). After carefully inspecting the speakers for signs of DNA, the employee announced he would allow me to return it. And more good news: no restocking fee. Evidently, they’re not legally allowed to scam people that way here in Minnesota. Go Minnesota!

A few minutes later, my wife walked into the store and announced that her computer was fully-functional once again. We tried playing virtual table tennis on Best Buy’s Playstation, but the interface was so confusing and non-responsive, we gave up after a few minutes, happy to have our decision never to buy a Playstation reaffirmed.

Sunday, 16 October 2011

Today I bought a package of leaf bags.

Leaf bags are those large plastic bags with an opening the tapers off into ties so you can fill it with loads of leafs and then close it securely until you can find a time to dump them in the neighbors’ yards.

I’m a little disappointed at the packaging graphics. The box told me the brand name (Target generic) and unit count (32), but it failed to tell me these important facts about the product:

-To effectively hold open a leaf bag, you will need three hands.

-The bags will not work if wind speed exceeds 0.001 miles per hour.

Additionally, I think that leaf bags should come 98% filled with leaves. That’s about how full they need to be before they stand up and stay open on their own.

Maybe I’ll write to the bag manufacturers and suggest these improvements.

On second thought, my neighbor owns four cheap plastic garbage pails. He sets them in his yard and fills them with leaves with no trouble. They’re also reusable. I’m going that route from now on.

And now, a special offer from Zimmerscope:

FREE: Mostly full box of leaf bags. Perform best when there is absolutely no wind, they are 98% full, and your third hand has finished growing. Contact James for details.

Thursday, 13 October 2011

Back in the late 1970s, a Witness named Carl Jonsson wrote to the Watchtower Society regarding some discrepancies he found regarding the Society’s teaching that Jerusalem fell in 607BC and the overwhelming evidence that it did not.

The Watchtower Society gets many things wrong, and most of them are not that big of a deal. You might think that simply messing up the year in which a city was destroyed 2,600 years ago shouldn’t be a big deal either. But in this case, it is. The Society uses that date (607BC) to support their claim that we are now living in the last days (it’s a ridiculously complicated back-flip of logic that I won’t get into here). So…if 607 is wrong, so is their claim that the Last Days began in 1914. And more!

Anyways…

Carl wrote back and forth to the Watchtower Society. They were initially receptive to Carl’s research, but when it became clear he REALLY had studied the issue, they became defensive, encouraged him to back down, and refused to discuss the matter, especially as this would have revealed they had no evidence for their claim, but were maintaining it as a matter of tradition.

Carl’s correspondence with the Watchtower Society is AT THIS LINK.

As a consequence of Carl’s research, the Watchtower Society revisited their ‘support’ for 607, including publishing a new book titled Let Your Kingdom Come. More recently, they wrote another series of articles trying to defend their position, like THIS ONE. As you can see, there is, once again no evidence, unless you count “because it fits with our theology” as evidence.

I just discovered today that Carl has posted a critique of some of the Watchtower’s more recent articles on the issue. THAT CRITIQUE IS FOUND HERE. I’m not gonna mince words: it’s very dry reading. But it is fascinating, and I love how, by doing the very research the Watchtower Society recommends, you can’t but help come to the conclusion that they’re wrong about things. Like 607. And the Flood.

Good job, Carl! Keep up the good work.

Wednesday, 12 October 2011

Back in my pre-father days, I had this idea that, one day, when my kids asked me questions, I would know the answer. I think this stemmed from the incessant blank stares I received from adults when I asked questions that really shouldn’t have befuddled them. Questions like…

Why does the moon change shape?

How come so many plants are green?

Why does it look like wheels are spinning backwards sometimes?

How come the oil on the ground makes rainbow colors?

So, admittedly, I wasn’t surrounded by scientists during my formative years, but I don’t think my questions were that hard. And even if the adults in my life didn’t know the answer, they could have said something like, “Why don’t we go look that up?” Regardless, I promised myself that, one day, my children will look up and ask, “Why is the sky blue?” and I’m gonna tell them.

Well, I’m happy to say that I’ve succeeded in this goal…kind of.

Take today, for example. Owen asked: “What’s the name for a 1,000-sided shape?” I told him: “A myriagon.”

Okay, so don’t feel bad if you’re reading this and thinking, “Geez, I didn’t know that.” The thing is, you have to remember that I’m really good at things that serve no purpose in social or economic endeavors, so knowing the answer to this question is right up my alley. If, on the other hand, Owen had asked me to help him fix his bicycle, I would’ve been totally lost.

I’m getting off the subject here. The problem is, while Owen sure loves to ask questions like the above example dozens of times a day, he also asks questions that are not quite so easy to answer. These include…

1) A repeat of a question he’s already asked 100 times.

The first time Owen asked me to rattle off the names of gods, I thought if was a good question, and I supplied the best answer I could. But now he’s asked that question far too many times. The other day, at dinner, apropos of nothing, he asked the question again – as if it’s his way of firing up the conversation. I just told him I’ve already answered that question.

2) Questions that mistake observation for intimate knowledge.

Sometimes, I comment on the world around me, just to share note-worthy items with people standing nearby. Owen presumes this means I have complete knowledge over the item observed. For example, last time we stopped at the ice cream shop, there were four young girls sitting on the bar stools all eating the same flavor of ice cream. “Hey look,” I said to my son, “They all got strawberry ice cream.” Owen then asked, “Why did they all get strawberry ice cream?” So, for the thousandth time, I said, “I have no idea, Owen, I’m just pointing it out. Why don’t you ask them?”

3) Questions that are impossible to answer.

No, I don’t mean questions that are really really difficult to answer – such as, “Can you explain the relationship between electromagnetism and the strong nuclear force?” – I mean questions that are impossible to answer. These include such gems as…

“Are most kids younger or older than other kids?”

and

“What is the smallest thing in our house not counting really little things?”

I’m sorry, but I just can’t picture a day – regardless of the strides made in scientific advancement – that any parent will be able to coherently answer questions like these.

Monday, 10 October 2011

I wrote a thoughtful, fascinating, at times humorous post and then I clicked “Save Draft” because I had to leave my computer for a moment. WordPress then kicked me out of the program and made me log in again (I guess it had been a while since I last logged in). So, I re-entered my password, was brought back to the “Edit Post” page only to find everything I had typed was gone. So, sorry to disappoint you.

I don’t feel like retyping everything.

Here’s a recent book review I wrote: The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

And the podcast of my radio interview is online now. Well, it’s probably been online for a while, but I just realized it. Go here to listen to it.

Tuesday, 11 October 2011

Today I lunched at Edinborough Golf Course’s Girvan Grille in Brooklyn Park. You can tell just by the name of it that it’s a swanky place to dine, because the word “Grill,” in the name, is spelled with a British L and E. And, for some completely asinine, stupid reason, everyone thinks using the British spelling makes things better. I guess that’s true, if by ‘better’ we mean ‘pretentious.’

But hey, don’t hold that against Girvan Grille. The food was extremely tasty (walleye!) and the ambiance was spiffy. The prices were inflated beyond my lower-middle-class means, but I didn’t mind because – and here’s the best part – the vendor (who’s facility we had just toured) paid for me and the other five members in my group.

Sometimes, I just have to stop and look around and say, “goddamit, what did I do to deserve this?” Usually, I mean that in a negative way. Today, during lunch, while sipping on my $3.00 iced tea, I meant it in a positive way.

Friday, 07 October 2011

Today I found out that Mitchell Hurwitz, the co-creator of Arrested Development, has promised fans that new TV episodes and a feature-length motion picture are in the works.

I gotta say, I’m kind of disappointed.

The thing is, when we like something, we have a tendency to want more of it. But when it comes to TV shows and motion pictures, I’ve learned that it’s better to leave fans wanting more.

Here’s a brief list of TV shows that went on too long: Happy Days, All in the Family, That 70s Show, The Office, Friends. All of those sitcoms would’ve been better off if they’d stopped sooner. I’m sure there are more, especially in the drama area (e.g., Little House on the Prairie, CSI), but I don’t watch enough TV to add much to the list.

Movies are the same way. Too often, filmmakers try to cash in on a successful story by tacking on sequels. Back to the Future, The Godfather, The Sting, The Terminator, The Matrix, Superman, Grease, Star Wars, Spider-Man, Batman, and Jaws all come to mind. In some of these examples, the first sequel was fine, or even better than the first, but then the franchise went downhill.

So…Arrested Development, I love ya’, but I’m worried. I much prefer to leave you in the pantheon of shows like Firefly, Rome, Pushing Daisies, Freaks and Geeks, and Wonderfalls – shows that left me wanting more. If you can expand out a little more AND do it successfully (e.g., Firefly and Toy Story both pushed the boundaries with amazing results), then more power to you. I’ll be watching with a very critical eye.

Saturday, 08 October 2011

Today was a ridiculously productive day.

First, I took the kids with me to the pharmacy, where I dropped off a prescription. We then went to get the oil changed in our Saturn. While waiting for the oil change, we walked to the post office, mailed some mail, then spent some time at a park where Isla had a grand time discovering fallen leaves.

After picking up the car, we went back home where Jennifer was continuing to work on Owen’s bedroom. She took a break and got ready for the day. While she did that, I replaced an outlet in the living room.

After lunch, we drove to Krueger’s Christmas Trees where we selected our tree for this upcoming Solstice Season. We enjoyed some cider, then took a wagon ride and went on a half mile nature walk.

Next, we visited Lowe’s and plopped down over a hundred bucks on supplies for our house, including pruning shears, a gas tank, valves, caulk, a rake, and painting tape.

Then we stopped at the grocery store for some food.

Then we stopped at the same Walgreen’s Pharmacy I had been to seven  hours earlier. They still didn’t have the prescription filled, and they asked me to wait fifteen more minutes. I told them to screw it and left.

After getting gas, we arrived back home where I installed the valves on our sprinkler system. Owen raked some leaves and Jennifer did more work in Owen’s room. The Walgreen’s called and told me my prescription was filled. I said, “Yeah, and I already told you guys to cancel that. I’m gonna go to a more competent pharmacy.”

In the evening, Owen and I watched the Star Trek episode “The Counter-Clock Incident,” which means we have now seen every episode of the animated series and it becomes the next in a line of TV shows in which I’ve seen every episode.

Sunday, 09 October 2011

As I mentioned above (see above), I replaced two valves on our sprinkler system. I also had to glue in a new length of PVC pipe. The glue called for a two hour drying time and, since it was already 8:30 when I installed the pipe, I figured I would just wait until today to try out the sprinkler.

Success!

After accidentally bathing both my kids and the neighbor kid in cold water (I came around the corner to see them screaming at me to shut off the water), I managed to water my entire lawn, including the rose bushes. My neighbor expressed his jealousy at my sprinkler system, which made me feel like I had finally made it in life. He’s gonna have to try to keep up with the Zimmermans, I guess.

Keep up with the our family at my wife’s new blog.

On a completely unrelated note, learning Klingon may help with dyslexia.