Saturday, 02 June 2012

My sister and her husband came over today. They really love this restaurant that’s about three blocks from our house, so we all walked there. Then afterward, they took some vegetation from our yard.

The previous homeowner, in his infinite foresight, decided that the best way to up the value of his property was to landscape the shit out of the yard. I’m not sure why he didn’t think, “hey, maybe I should rennovate the basement,” or “maybe I should fix the porch so it’s not sliding toward the river,” but, he didn’t. Instead, he thought: “you know what prospective home buyers hate? Yard. So I’ll rip up the grass and do a quarter-ass job of putting in all manner of shrubbery.”

I suppose that is a great idea, if you’re going to sell your place to a couple of senior citizens. But if you’re going to sell to a family, with kids, then they’re gonna want more land, and less oversized bushes. And, yes, I realize this means more area to mow, but I don’t mind telling Owen to do it. Not at all.

So, today, my sister and her husband took five bags full of mulch and at least five bushes with them.

I’d like to say the yard is looking better but, in fact, it’s probably looking worse. But I think that’s just a stage it’s going through on its way toward re-beautification.

Sunday, 03 June 2012

 Today Owen and I drove to the compost heap (which is what we call it, despite the fact that I’m sure it has a better name). I stuffed ten bags – of both the large plastic variety and the tall, leaf sort – into the car, which is quite difficult to do when there are two child car seats in the back taking up space already. I managed to squeeze two into the front passenger spot, and five into the trunk. I squished one right on Isla’s car seat, and another in the middle in the back. I shoved the last one right behind the driver’s seat, which meant Owen used it as a footstool during our drive.

At the heap, I extracted the organic matter from our vehicle, while Owen either dumped out the contents(in the cae of the paper bags) or ripped open the bags (the plastic ones) and let the leaves, sticks, weeds, clippings, and roots splay out onto the ground.

A woman pulled up next to us in her pick-up truck and began shoveling compost off her bed. She was friendly, saying to me: “I see you’ve got your helper with you!” (This is something that everyone says when they see either Owen or Isla standing, walking, squating, interfering, annoying, or genuinely helping either me or Jennifer when we’re doing stuff outside.) I made some comment about Owen enjoying the work, and she said, “That’s a blessing!” I smiled and nodded and mumbled something. I wasn’t sure what she meant – was it a blessing that Owen liked to help? Was she saying God or Jesus or some deity was manipulating my son’s brain so that he enjoyed engaging in physical activity?

Later, the compost heap’s version of a State Trooper came by and said hello, then he moved on to the woman unloading her pick-up truck and said, “Woe, you’ve got quite a lot unload there!” This was especilly funny because the woman, though slightly shorter than me, was approaching 400 pounds. Her arms were easily of greater circumference than my thighs, a fact easily verified by her courtesy to wear a sleeveless shirt.

Anyway, she kept working away and said, “Yes, I’m gettin’ it done with God’s help.”

I was going to say, “Hey, we have something in common! Looks like God helps you as much as he helps me!”

But I didn’t. Instead, I just thought, “I’m gonna blog about this.”

Yeah, I think that a lot.

Monday, 04 June 2012

 Today, Jennifer scored some free sod.

Turns out, someone who lived nearby just piled some near the curb and posted online for would-be sodders to come and get some.

This is good timing because, as I noted above, we are removing large samples of flora and attempting to replace them with lots of small samples.

The funny thing is, this doesn’t appear to be of the same species as the rest of the grass. So, if you come to visit, except to see rectangular-shaped portions of our lawn to be noticeably different than the rest. This is just fine with me, though. I don’t want to promote a monculture; I think the variety helps with the health of all the plants in the yard. I suspect that after a few summers, the foreign grass will meld with the natives and it will seemless fade from one variety to another.

I suspect that, just like the United States, this will take at least 300 summers.

Oh well. No rush.

Friday, 01 June 2012

It’s that time of year again..Jehovah’s Witnesses are gathering en masse for their yearly District Conventions. If you live here in Minnesota and you’re obscenely hard-up for entertainment, you can head down to Rochester on the 29th of this month for the first of three days of peace, love, and music at the Mayo Civic Center.

Of course, the most only interesting thing is: what are the new releases going to be?

You could travel down to Rochester, like I said, but I’ll spare you the cost of a hotel room and a polyester suit: There are three new releases. The first two are brochures.

One is called Good News from God. I mean, Good News from God!

The “good news” is that God wants you to live forever as his eternal servant. If you don’t want to be his eternal servant, he’ll kill you soon. Oh – and he’s gonna kill nearly everyone you know, too. But he doesn’t want to kill you. I repeat: that’s the good news.

The other brochure is Who are Doing Jehovah’s Will Today?

In case any of the convention attendees are not totally sure what the answer to the titular question is, the Watchtower Society made it really easy to find out by putting the answer on the cover at least eight times.

The brochure answers lots of burning questions you probably have about God’s will-doers, like “Why do we dress up for our meetings?” (page 11), “How is our worldwide work financed?” (page 27), and “Why do Witnesses shun their own family members?” (page oh – look at that – they didn’t really put this question in their brochure).

But, for me, the highlight of this year’s convention is the release of a new DVD, titled Listen, Obey, and Be Blessed. It’s for kids. It’s animated. And it teaches them to obey. It also features Sparklock, the Dark Lord of the Elementary School Playground.

Sparlock. No, not Spurlock. Sparlock.

Sparlock is a tool of the Devil, as his goatee clearly indicates. You can explicit proof of Sparlock’s demonism in this still from the movie: Little Caleb’s mom asks him if wants to be disobedient like Adam and Eve, and Caleb immediately begins imagining a serpent descending from the dining room chandelier:

If you want a full synopsis of the children’s video, THEN GO READ THIS. If you want to watch the video, good luck to you – the Watchtower Society (who, ostensibly want to spread their message), have ordered every uploaded version of their masterpiece in technological achievement removed from the internet.

Oh – but here’s a fun clip. It’s from “Lesson #2” on the DVD, titled “Obey Jehovah.” It features Sparlock. Have I mentioned that Sparlock has quickly risen on my list of best fictional characters of all time?

Obey Jehovah, Caleb!

(Clicking on the above link will open another tab. The video will play in that tab.)

Wednesday, 30 May 2012

So, last week, while wrestling with Hamline’s “convenient” on-line bill paying system, I also experienced full system failure of my hardrive at work. This is the third time that’s happened at work and the second time in the last 9 months. The IT guy, who did a great job of reimaging my laptop, attributed the issue to the anti-virus software. I asked the obvious question: “Can you just leave off the anti-virus software?” But he just chuckled at me like I’m some sort of Mac-using computer half-wit (Bingo!).

I lost about ten hours worth of work I had done over the past couple of days, and I lost a lot of non-essential files – for example, most of my Toastmasters speech outlines. Wisely, I back my stuff up regularly on the shared drive, so I was able to get most of my stuff back – even if it wasn’t always the newest version. I was surprised to find I had once dumped my entire iTunes library on there a few months back, so I was able to recover about 99% of my music. I also had a file titled “Favorites.” I didn’t know what this was, so I opened it (always a good policy when it comes to work computers).

Turns out, it was a file from about 4 years ago that I had saved of my favorite online sites. I clicked on each link to see if it was a link I still wanted. In some cases, the link was useful, but I could have figured out how to get there again even without the helpful link. Like, yeah, I think I could have found Wikipedia and YouTube even without the saved link. Other links were really helpful, like the one that took me to where I have to track my time at work, and the one where I can submit medical receipts for pretax dollars. Some of the links were defunct, and others were no longer relevant to my job.

But then, today, I clicked on this one: Jenz Daily Pics.

Wow! Did that bring back memories. I don’t think I’d been to that site in over four years.

It’s a site my wife maintained for one year: from July 1, 2006 to June 30, 2007. She took one picture a day and uploaded it to the site. It was fun to see all the different things we did that year, and to see how much Owen grew. In some ways, it was a good year for her to photograph, because, like I said, Owen grew so much, and we had two fun cats, and we did a lot of home improvements. In other ways, it was kind of a downer year – we lost a lot of friends that year (you’ll notice there’s not many in the pictures), and we didn’t go out of town all year (well, there was a trip to Rochester, Minnesota and another to Hudson, Wisconsin, but nothing big).

I scrolled through all the pictures and read all the comments. When I got to the picture for January 14, 2007, I came across her picture titled…

Is there anything cuter than this?

The answer is no…there’s not. Here’s the picture–>

So innocent, so pure. Memories of young boy, a sweater, a dining room chair, a house, and a hard drive that was.

Thursday, 31 May 2012

I am ending this very busy, ambitious, and eventful month on a high note. But first, some back story…

Back in October – or maybe it was September? – Owen and I were at the St. Paul Corner Drug Store for our weekly treat of ice cream. On the shelf to the left of the soda fountain were copies of the 2012 St. Paul Almanac. Intrigued, I grabbed a copy and thumbed through it.

“Hey,” I thought, ” I could write an essay for this thing.”

So I did.

Actually, I first got myself a copy of the 2010 and 2011 Alamanacs. I read some of the essays in those editions and then looked for more information online, and found THIS SITE.

The site’s been updated since then, but back in the fall of 2011, it featured a call for submissions for their 2013 edition. The deadline was December 15th, and the site said that if a submission is accepted for publication, authors will be notified by June 1, 2012.

Well, they waited until (almost) the last minute: at 10:05 this evening, I checked my email and saw that one of my pieces was accepted. This is really cool! These almanacs are really fun, they’re local, and they’re professionally made. Also, I get paid for my submission. That’s really exciting because, up until now, most of my payment has been in the form of free copies, meals, and hearty handshakes.

The only problem is, I submitted two pieces, and the email I received merely congratulated me on getting one accepted. So…I don’t know which piece they liked. Meh. Oh well. I’ll find out soon enough. And I’ll save the other essay and resubmit it later this year.