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The Magic Alley

We were on our way home when we noticed the fireworks. The closer we got to the house, the closer we got to the fireworks. I don’t know why they were lighting fireworks, but we pulled over to enjoy them. Zander and I love a good fireworks show – Actually, I think I love any fireworks show, even a bad one. At the end of this one, they lit up several large colorful fireworks and Zander yells in a very excited tone – “Its the magic alley, Daddy – the magic alley!!!”. It took me a second to realize what he was saying, so I asked him to be sure – “Zander, do you mean – the BIG FINALE?”

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Foggy Fog

There was recently a lunar eclipse but we weren’t able to see it due to an unusual overcast. Zander and I were watching the moon when it started but just as the eclipse started, we lost it behind the clouds. While explaining the eclipse to Zander, I told him that the moon was ducking behind the Earth – when it went behind the clouds, Zander says, “no daddy – it didn’t go behind the earf, it went behind the foggy fog.”

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God’s Camera

Zander was very interested in the thunder and lightening, during a recent electrical storm. It was right over us and more intense than I think I’ve ever been through. It was so intense, I actually was concerned about standing outside during the storm. Several times the lightening lit up the whole house, including down the hall ways! The following thunder would crack and bang so loudly that it rattled the windows and set off car alarms in the neighborhoods.

When I put Zander to bed, he was concerned about the storm and said he couldn’t sleep while it was happening. He kept saying “the lighting is going to die God, Daddy”. I was tired and just wanted him to stay in bed. After several times of explaining that God is in no danger, I snapped “the lightening is God taking pictures, Zander! He isn’t going to die from taking pictures.” (I know, I know, not a good way of dealing with it). Regardless, it seemed to work because for the next fifteen minutes Zander was quiet and stayed in bed. Then my wife heard Zander praying, “God, stop taking pictures, I can’t sleep!”

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Zander’s Prayer

In the car on the way home from church, Lexi started to cry and wouldn’t stop. I reached back to give her a pacifier but she was not interested. Zander is very compassionate toward Lexi most of the time, but he does get frustrated at her as well. Between her crying, his idol chatting, and the radio, I was getting audio overloaded. So, I turned off the radio and I asked Zander to quiet down until we got home. Lexi continued to cry. A few minutes into the Lexi only sound track, Zander says, “God, help Lexi – she doesn’t know how to be quiet… AND she is fragile.”

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Zander the chauffeur

On the way to church, Zander is chatting away as he often does about whatever is going on in his mind at the time (I wonder where he gets that from…hehe!) Usually his noises don’t bother me, but he kept making this clicking sound by sucking on his teeth that was really starting to get to me. I was going to ask him to stop, but thought I would take a look in the back seat at what he was doing first. His hands were in front of him as though they were on a steering wheel, moving back and forth a little, and he would ‘honk’ the horn which appeared to be beside his steering wheel instead of on it. Then whenever I would pull up to a stop and turn on my turn signal (yes, with the tic, tic, tic sound the car makes) Zander would start his ‘clicking’ sound.

I asked him what he was doing – he said “I’m driving you around Daddy!”. I’m glad I didn’t ask him to stop…

Let me start by asking – did you notice the new tag line for my site? “Attempting to Live Life On Purpose…” I think that is a better fit over my old tag of “Another way for me to avoid doing any real work”. I enjoy working and I don’t consider myself lazy as a rule (I do have my moments). Just wanted to point it out… Let’s move on:

I am going to cycle commute to work… Again… No, really this time! I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned it here on the blog, but I recently changed teams at work and I changed building that I report to – so now, instead of almost 19 miles to work each way, I have a mere 8.3 miles to work each way! The new building does have a shower and lockers and the bike route is mostly on-street bike lanes just as my old commute was. So, now I can get to work in about 45 mins instead of an hour and 40 mins.

I rode my bike to work yesterday, but I did not ride it home. I got caught up in the new job functions and worked until after 7:30 so I had Stephanie drive up and join me for dinner. The bike’s night lights (required for street riding) don’t have good batteries. Anyway, I also rode my bike to work today, this time both ways, and I was still able to get home in time to get to church! Stephanie and I have felt the pressure of being a one car family and my being able to ride my bike to work again should be a big help.

Plus, I’m training for the next D-Tour which is going to be riding along the Katy Trail in Missouri. Its a short 225 mile trail and I will be joined by my brother-in-law in Sedalai. It should be a lot of fun and we plan to finish in about five days. I think we might even be able to finish three days – since there are no mountains to climb. It all depends on how in shape the two of us are. Both of the scenic pictures in this post are from the Katy trail.

Back on point – My goal is to ride my bike several days a week. I even purchased a bluetooth headset to allow me to listen to music from my phone while riding without having to have the cable draped across the handle bars. I’m not excited about its performance so far… I’ll save that for a possible future post.

P.S. – I still owe Aaron Delong (http://tru-magic.com) a D-Tour AZ-TX, 2007 T-Shirt – which I am going to send him, as soon as I design them, have them made, and pay for them…

Hey – Pardon my dust while I work on the site. I just bought my wife a MacBook and thought I would apply a Mac Theme to the website. What do you think? Did you notice the sidebar is collapsible? Did you notice the Dock feature at the bottom of the page? I’m hoping to add widgets to the Dock and make the dock ‘stick’ to the bottom of your browser instead of the bottom of my page – so that no matter where you are on my page, you see the Dock. Maybe over my head, but we’ll see…

So? What happened to your New Year’s Resolutions? It’s February and most people have already abandoned their ‘resolve’ to lose weight, pay off debt, save more, read more, spend more time with family, give more to charity, volunteer more, watch less TV, go out to eat less, and spend less time online (don’t start that back up now – finish reading my blog first). If you haven’t already throw away your resolutions, then you may be on your way to atypical results! Want to know how I’m doing?

I’m going to tell you anyway – my goals were to lose weight, go back to school, pay down debt, get more involved in my church, eat out less, and read more – with an emphasis on my Bible reading. Lets start with the bad news:

• Bible Reading – I haven’t begun a Bible reading plan despite the best efforts from a good friend of mine, Jason. I have a bunch of excuses but no good reasons.
• Weight Loss – aarrrgghhh!!! I started out well with my diet, but haven’t lost any weight. I also planed to read some health and diet reviews from Ben at DadQuarters website. Stephanie and I rearranged our living room to put in my bowflex and we bought her an elliptical, but so far we have only used the new room a handful of times.
• Dinning Out – this is supposed to foster a few new living habits, like spending less money, spending more time with family, and losing weight. For most of January we did great, but we both have slipped back into our old habits over the last few weeks and go out to eat often.

Lets move on to the moderate to good news:

• School – I had to postpone my college start date until March due to money issues, but all has been resolved and we are moving ahead with March 1st as my start date.
• Church involvement – We have been attending the evening services more regularly, however over the last two weeks we have been out with sicknesses. Stephanie hosted her first scrapbook meeting and I filled out all the paperwork to host a small group at our home, and this week was to be our first meeting – however the small group is currently listed as a young adults group and as such our first meeting was a combined meeting with all other young adults groups. We do have at least one confirmed couple that will be coming to our group and the actual first meeting will be Sunday.
• Paying down debt – I’ve made a huge jump forward in this area because of our tax refund this year. Last year we owed several hundred s of dollars to the IRS, however this year we got several back. I used the refund to pay off three small credit cards we had.

So how about you? Have your New Year’s Resolutions been reduced to New-First-Two-Weeks-of-the-Year Resolutions? Or are you chasing “results not typical”?

I took Zander and Lexi to a local fast food place with a playground earlier this week. While they were there, I met Kattie who was only 10 weeks old and every inch of 2 feet tall. I met Delanie who was 4 and 1/2 years old. I’d like to say I met their parents, since I did talk with them, and I did learn their children’s names and ages from them. I even learned that the dad enjoyed his newborn tax deduction so much that he took the time to show me that they bought a shirt for her that has Tax Deduction printed on the front. But I can’t say I meet them – since I didn’t ask their names, they didn’t ask mine, and we didn’t exchange any contact information, despite the fact that they were about the same age as Stephanie and me and they have kids close in age to our kids, and even made a comment that their older daughter was really enjoying the opportunity to play with Zander since her only other ‘friends’ were unable to interact on the same level due to age differences. Why didn’t we exchange information? Why didn’t I get to know them? Maybe I thought I could just ‘tune in’ next week and they would be there – all my other friends are.

I never realized how much TV was a part of everyone’s lives until the recent writers strike. As I spent time thinking about that fact, I realized something that might ring true for many of you guys as well. We have replaced actual human interaction with TV personalities. Think about it for a second – doesn’t the cast of friends make for a great click – with you in it?

Beautiful people that are funny, cool, and fun to hang out with are willing to share their lives with you every week. They don’t reject you, they never leave you out of what’s going on, and even when they do leave someone in the group out – its never you. Whether its the cast of Cheers, Friends, Sienfield, The OC, Las Vegas, Law and Order, or even Lost – you get to hang out with the cool crowd and no one questions whether or not you belong.

What – you think you haven’t replace actual friends for TV friends? Maybe you watch reality TV instead? You get to pick one of the teams on whatever show and they won’t turn you down – and you get to spy on exactly how the other team or teams are doing. You watch your new friends compete, argue, make other friends, lose weight, race to a finish line, struggle to survive, or just face their fears – all from your sofa. And they think you are great. They never turn on you, or vote you off – even when they get Fired!

When I was young, I heard stories of women that got so wrapped up in soap operas that they actually believed the cast were the characters they were playing. At the time I thought, how absurd, but now I think we all have fallen into a worse condition – we know they aren’t real, but would rather pretend they are than to turn off the TV and go make new friends.

Today we lost our last conservative candidate in the Presidential race, Mit Romney. What’s left? A lot of people are talking about the Clinton/Obama race. Today it became Clinton/Obama/McCain. Over the next eight months we are going to hear alot about McCain and his brand of conservatism. Many will say there is a real difference between McCain and who ever is the eventual Democrat Nominee. I agree there is a difference – McCain is spelled different than Clinton, and McCain is older than Obama. Maybe I’m being unfair – maybe it won’t be McCain or Clinton – Maybe it will be JoHilary McClinton:

At least I hope so…

Just a quick note to say that I hope I am wrong about the American people’s willingness to elect a Mormon to the office of President. Since Duncan Hunter and Fred Thompson are both out, I strongly feel that Mit Romney is the only chance conservatives have left. A friend recently asked me why I was against Mike Huckabee and the best answer I could give was this –

“I don’t know much about him other than he was a Baptist Pastor, and he wants to go with the ‘Fair Tax’ plan, but Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Lora Ingram, Ann Coulter, as well as many other talking heads that I trust, tell me that he is bad for America and that he is not conservative. *”

On the surface, Huckabee seems like he could be a guy I could vote for, but I don’t have the time or the energy to look into every politician’s record that is running for office. As some point, I have to trust some of these pundits to inform me as to what is going on. While I never agree 100% with any of the talking heads I’ve listed above, I do tend to agree with all of them on quite a few issues – and when they all say the same thing – I have to pause and take note. They all seem to agree that Mit Romney is the only conservative choice left in the race for GOP nomination.

Rush Limbaugh recently said this on his show,

“I think now, based on the way the campaign has shaken out, that there probably is a candidate on our side who does embody all three legs of the conservative stool, and that’s Romney. The three stools or the three legs of the stool are national security/foreign policy, the social conservatives, and the fiscal conservatives.”

His website is quoted as saying “The choice is clear, but the decision is yours”. I have to agree. If you look back at my earlier post regarding Fred Thompson verses the rest of the Republican playing field, you will see that I didn’t believe Mit Romney had any chance of winning the general election – I’m still not sure that he does, but I am sure that if McCain is the nominee on the Republican ticket, we are in for a rough four years.

* On another note, I recently learned that Huckabee suggested that the reason Mit Romney is picking up in the polls is because of “the fact that Bain Capital owns a major stake in Clear Channel and is on Sean’s network, that maybe there’s a correlation.” Either Huckabee was outright attempting to deceive people, or he is completely ignorant – Mit Romney is no longer associated with Bain Capital, Bain Capital doesn’t own Clear Channel (yet), and Sean Hannity isn’t contracted with Clear Channel – only a few of their channels even carry Hannity.

Tonight could have been NFL history but instead was just another upset in the Super Bowl’s 42 year history. New England lost the championship in the last minutes of the game. I’m sure there will be many many blogs, news posts, and columnist that write about this game for the next few weeks – I’m not one of them. My wife was born in Boston and my In-Laws are all Patriot fans – ‘Upset’ doesn’t really describe the mood.

On another note, the commercials were not that impressive this year. Only a few of them were remotely funny and several of them were truly offensive with blatant sexual themes and some with gory content. In one commercial, a woman’s heart bursts out of her chest and rolls off her keyboard leaving a bloody trail. In another a man is sucked into a jet planes engine. I asked a friend of mine tonight – Am I becoming more sensitive, or are they really getting worse?

Last Saturday, my wife and I arranged to have Grammie Sackrider come over to watch the kids while we met another couple from the church to go hiking. When we went to get into the car, I noticed the console was opened up and all the trash (we use it as a trash can in the car) was pulled out and placed on my seat. My first thought was that Stephanie must have been looking for something, but when she said it wasn’t her, I quickly realized what had happened. My car was broken into!

This is the second time this has happened in my life. The first time, it was my grey Chevy S10 Pickup and even though the doors were unlocked, the thief crowbarred the lock off the passenger door (nobody said these guys were bright). That time, I left the detachable face plate attached – so my CD/Radio was stolen. This time the bad guy (or girl for those politically correct folk) got away with… trash. Well, to be honest I don’t know what they took, but I know what they left – an un-used, not-yet-activated credit card! It was among the ‘trash’ they pulled from the console. They didn’t even open the glove box which makes me think they were interrupted or got spooked.

I think they were looking for small electronics like a cell phone, iPhone, or iPod. No luck with my car since I don’t own any of those nifty gadgets (well, except the cell phone which was in the house and isn’t the top of the line anyway). They did take my son’s toboggan, but must not have realized when they took it that it was embroidered with Zander across it, since I found it a half a block away, left in the street unharmed.

I know some of you are thinking, “Dale, this guy could have all your identity information”. You’re right… but unless its an illegal trying to get a job, my info isn’t going to help much. I can just image the look on this crook’s face when he is declined a loan using my information! Ok, I’m kidding, but I do have identity protection so well see if anything shows up…

The family had a great time at the Glendale GlitterGlow Block Party on Saturday the 19th. It took a while to post but hey, better late than never, right? Anyway – we spent the afternoon celebrating my cousins birthday party and afterward we headed over to the Glendale GlitterGlow Block Party. They ask hotair balloon owners to bring their hotair balloons into downtown Glendale and light ’em up! There were clowns on stilts and food tents for over priced sausages and pastries, and trinkets that light up the night were on sell at every corner. The stretch of road lined with food tents was more than just overcrowded and after the initial awe from the hotair balloons wore off, the crowds were too much to bare. All in all, we had a great time and I’m glad we were able to go.