The kitchen's almost done...

These projects always seem to be much more involved than I had envisioned and never seem to turn out as well as I had hoped. Stacie likes it, though, and that's really all that matters. If it had been entirely up to me, I probably would have just peeled the old wallpaper off and left it at that. All I have to do now is clean up all the scraps and junk and garbage from the project.

I'm now a metrosexual...

After years of making do with nothing more than some bargain brand dandruff shampoo, a bar of plain white soap and a tube of Chap-stick, I now find that I spend an inordinate amount of money on 'personal grooming' products. What's worse is that I spend an equally inordinate amount of time using those products...

It all started last year. Maybe it was a midlife crisis, I don't know.
I had decided to go back to school and had begun to feel a little, well, old for a college student. So, I bought some new clothes, test drove some sexy sports cars and started using Rogaine on my bald head. It's working, but it actually took a couple of months for Stacie to notice this last thing.
I hadn't really kept it from her - the bottle of noxious smelling stuff was sitting in the medicine cabinet the whole time - but I didn't say, "This is what I'm doing..." either.

One day she said, "What have you done to your hair? It looks fuller!"

Ahem...

So I've continued with that and I've gone on a weight loss and exercise program - about 45 pounds now - thanks for noticing, I'm getting my hair cut on a regular basis, coloring it too, don't forget the clean-shaven baby face, I'm using eye cream for Pete's sake, Burt's Bees instead of Chap-stick and I recently started using 'thickening shampoo'.

To make the effemination of myself complete, I just 'Naired' my back. Let me tell ya that stuff smells like death on a cracker.

But it works!

At least I recognize the irony of simultaneously trying to increase the hair on my
head while reducing the hair on my back!

Just for the record, it was 'Nair' for men...

The time-value of money...

I'm spending most of the weekend renovating the kitchen... Peeling off twelve year old wallpaper, spackling, sanding, re-painting, etc.

I love it.

With the new bright white contemporary look to the kitchen, Stacie's now talking about new appliances - refrigerator, dishwasher and so on.

Tomorrow, I start sticking that old wallpaper back on.

Comment please...

My hand coded comments form submission web/email thingy now works.

Try it out.

I've also been looking into third party scripts and codes as well as some full fledged application packages to manage my 'content'. So far, what I've written myself (which is what you are dealing with here) works better for me than any of those. There are no permalinks, trackbacks, nor automated anything (yet) but I don't really need those anyway. The products that are out there are either too complicated, too expensive or just plain don't work right.

I may start my own software company. I think I'll call it "DANG!".

DANG! software coming soon.

Art Ruch died earlier this month.

You can read about it here.

Funny, it doesn't look like me and I don't remember ever having a twin sister, several deceased brothers or residing in Canada...

(or having passed for that matter)

You find these kinds of things when you 'Google' yourself.

Of course I was just checking to make sure my new site had been indexed:)

This brings back a memory. When I was little, my dad took me to the cemetery in Belvidere where his grandparents are buried. Guess what my great-grandfather's name was. Uh-huh.

Just so you know, it's quite discomforting for a small child to see his own name on a tombstone.

Almost as discomforting as reading an obituary under your own name 30 odd years later.

That time of year...

Shelby 'Graduated'. She got her D.A.R.E completion certificate, all-year first honor roll and won the superlative of 'Most Dependable' which Stacie predicted.

Tad also had an awards ceremony where he was honored for yearly perfect attendance and an art award.

How'd I get such good kids?

Graduation...

My little baby daughter 'graduates' tomorrow... from elementary school. Stacie and I are going to the ceremony, of course.

Shelby seems totally nonplussed by the whole matter - she's much more interested in the various field trips she's been taking and by how much money I owe her for the odd chores she's done around the household.

Six more years and she'll be just as disinterested in her actual graduation and much more concerned about how much money she's getting from relatives she hasn't seen in months and her upcoming senior trip.

Then we kick her out of the house...

I kid, I kid.

Sort of...

I bought a suit...

This may not seem like a big deal to most men, but as I realized in the J.C. Penney checkout line, I have never bought a suit before.

Yeah, I had the cute little sailor suit thing going on when I was three and I think I once owned a suit as a teenager that was a hand-me-down from an uncle or somebody. And, I now have several nice sport coats and some good slacks. I even have something that resembles a suit: a matched coat and pants, but I have never gone into a store and purchased a proper men's suit.

How does does one reach the age of {almost 40} and come to the realization that one has never bough a presentable suit of clothes?

I don't know but I have one now - a gray Stafford blend. New shirt and tie too. I wore it to church on Sunday. Several ladies said, "You look nice."

Thanks.

Lt. Dan glanced at me and asked, "You preachin' today?"

That's a different subject...

See ya.

The DaVinci Code movie opened this weekend...

... to raspberries from the critics and boos from the religious right.

Being more of a religious left type and not much of a movie critic, I want to see it.

I never bothered with the book because I heard it was bad. I had hoped this would be a rare case of the movie being better than the book.

I guess not.

What gets me is the uproar over the book and the movie. Some seem to take both as personal attacks on their religious beliefs. Never mind that it's a novel! Dan Brown never claimed that he was writing history, theology, philosophy or anything other than cheap entertainment. As my pastor said this morning, "If you don't get upset about a Superman movie, why get upset about 'Code'? It's fiction!"

Something similar happened over a half century ago with the the publication of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ - although that book was much more a serious literary work than 'Code'. It also happened almost twenty years ago with the release of Scorsese's movie version of 'Temptation'. I remember the uproar and the protests which, of course, made me want to see the movie. I liked it. I thought it raised some interesting points and, where I disagreed, it only made my beliefs stronger. In the years that have passed since the furor over the Last Temptation movie, many conservative Christians have come to agree.
Maybe in twenty years time, some will have reconsidered DaVinci Code as well.

God loves you.

Bonds ties Babe...Barry Bonds finally hit his 714th major league home run. This is a milestone: only the third person to ever have achieved this feat. And I'm sure that Bonds will surpass Babe Ruth's record in short order. It's conceivable, but not at all likely, that he will catch Hank Aaron's record too. Hey, even if he retired from baseball today, it would be a major accomplishment.
BUT... what about the steroid allegations? Is it fair to compare Bonds to Ruth and Aaron? Those guys didn't have performance enhancing substances. Should they have two sets of records? Should they kick all the steroid abusers out of professional sports?
I don't know and, as far as professional baseball is concerned, I really don't care because I'm not a fan. But I know this: if Bonds and others took steroids, an awful lot of people in baseball knew about it and looked the other way. They gave their tacit approval for what was going on. I'm talking about teammates, managers, front office types, even owners. Now, because of the media scrutiny and all the record breaking, it has become an issue. It seems that those folks who have known about the steroid abuse in baseball all along now have very short memories.
So who are the bad guys in all this?
Peace and carrots.

New web presence coming soon...

I've started setting up my new "web presence".

These are just some q&d things I threw together to get the site online. Everything will be different (and better) in the end.

'm not too thrilled with the blog options I got free with my domain registration so I'm looking into something else – like writing my own code for this.

Otherwise, not much going on here in the strange world. I'm finding lots of things to do with the time I had been spending on the study of "ancient stuff" as Tad says.

I did hear one interesting bit of news today. Perry Farrells's new band is releasing their debut recording. I forgot the name, but the guitarist is my good friend Nuno Bettencourt, ex of Extreme.

O.K., he's not really my friend, but I did see Extreme in concert once...

The end of an era...

Most of the bonus I recently received had been allocated for various responsible type things; paying off some bills, setting aside money for the family vacation, home improvements, etc.

Yes, I know it is exciting being an adult. Some of my friends should try it.

However, I also set aside just a little of my bonus for something completely irresponsible and frivolous - a domain name registration and a hosting service.

I was shocked at how (relatively) inexpensive this is: think a family meal at a halfway decent restaurant.I

'm now waiting on my account activation and setup and all that jazz.

Then I have to create my site and upload it... So, in a few days, you all will be finding my incredibly witty and insightful comments on www.ARTRUCH.net.

Later...

My grade...

I got my final grade for Hebrew and Greek... a week late.

I got an A.

I would have had to totally bomb the final to get a ‘B’.

Unfortunately, I never got to see what my score was on that final.

At least I know that it was 10 or more out of the 20 possible points.

Here's to the mom's...

We had a nice weekend. Stacie would never tell me anything she wanted for Mother's day so I just took her shopping. The quickest way to a woman's heart is through a department store after all. And she needed some new clothes due to her continued weight loss.

The low point in the weekend came when Tad ‘had an accident’ in Goody's or J.C. Penney or somewhere. I kept thinking, "What is that smell?" It finally dawned on me. Off to the men's room we went. He's done this type of thing before... Stacie thinks he has some kind of condition. I think he's just too dang lazy to go when he needs to.

Back to the shopping. Actually, I think that's the only reason Stacie is losing weight. She knows that if she goes down a size, she'll get new clothes. Pretty smart.

We had planned a surprise Sunday dinner for our mom at Holly's house. That means I spent most of Saturday night and a couple of hours Sunday cooking barbecue. As I always say, the pig sacrificed much more than I did.The secret was protected well enough through the week. Everyone was in on it - even the kids. Kassidy and Shelby, especially, went out of their way to lie through their teeth to "B" to keep the secret. I think they delighted in the deception. Kassidy went so far as to say that "B" couldn't come into their house because it smelled like 'poo'.

I think they've got the wrong kid.

Funny thing is, mom came over late Saturday night to get Stacie to make a corsage for my grandmother. I had just taken the pig leg out of the smoker and put it in the oven. Mom walked in and asked, "Did y'all grill out tonight?

"Yeah, sort of."

It smells good."

Thanks.

Of course my dad was in on it too. They were driving around the countryside today waiting on the appointed time as my mother increasingly complained about being hungry.

Ha.

Dinner went well and I rushed off to work.

Later, I came home to find a very sweet note that Stacie had left for me thanking me for everything...

Sometimes I'm just amazed at how good my life is...

In the news, part... whatever.

Funny - in this story, Andy Borowitz imagines Al Gore losing the '08 presidential election to a sleeping pill.

Sad - the Elitist Intelligensia who call on upon the First Amendment to protect everything from child pornography to making artwork out of human feces wants to deny that same freedom of speech to John McCain because they don't like his politics.

Telling - "W" thinks Jeb would make a great president. Trent Lott doesn't think so. HA!

Cool - Roger Waters is going on the road with a live version of Dark Side of the Moon. Too bad Gilmour's not involved in the project.

Frightening - the only realistic thing scarier to me than a Republican controlled Congress is the thought of a Democratically controlled congress. Where are the Christian Anarchists when we need them . Tolstoy, anyone?

And finally, Seven degrees of Bush - Quick, what connection does the president of the United States have to Harlyn Geronimo? Easy, the president's grandfather may have robbed the grave of Harlyn's great-grandfather. That's O.K. though, them injuns is jus' godless heathrens.

They call me 'Speedy'.

The municipality of Winchester has this ridiculous rule that you can't drive double the posted speed limit.

I don't understand this.

I thought those signs with the numbers on them were just suggestions. I guess not.

Apparently, the WPD decided to take a day off from murder investigations, tracking down meth labs and arresting child abusers and rapists in order to harass speedy but otherwise completely safe and law-abiding drivers.

Your tax dollars at work!

But I had my day in court and it would have been a simple matter if Deputy Fife had written the correct court location on my citation.

He didn't.

After sitting through the initial docket reading in General Sessions, my friend Gena, who works in the court, realized I was in the wrong place and called me over. I showed her my ticket and pointed out where it said "General Sessions Court, Franklin County". She shrugged, pointed to the officer's name and made a funny face. I then hurried to City Hall, waited all of about 45 seconds, plead guilty, threw myself on the mercy of the court and was promptly sentenced to pay nothing but court cost - $64.75.

The whole thing took about 5 minutes - not counting the half hour I spent with the real criminals at the GS.

Thanks Barney!

Hey Buddy!

As I continue to lose weight, more and more people are noticing.

In the future, I'll share my elaborate theory about the different ways that people react to others based on things like weight.

Then again, I may save that for my dissertation.

At any rate, people I barely know are now commenting on my new svelte self.

Today, after my appearance in court, I stopped a local market to get a diet Mountain Dew. The guy who runs the place goes by a very English sounding name but I'm pretty sure his real name is Sanjay or Rajeev or something like that. He looks at my diet soda and then looks at me, "Hey you've lost a lot of weight, haven't you?"

Yep, thanks for noticing.

(Looking down at his own belly) "I may try that diet Mountain Dew."

Yeah, man, it has a lot fewer calories than Kingfisher.

'Wait' and 'Weight'...

While I await my final Interdisciplinary Humanities grade I've been pondering the significance of the many comments I continue to receive about my recent change in appearance.

I am still losing weight. Just at a much slower rate.

But I'm over the plateau and am now down to almost 200 pounds, a comfortable size 34 pants and a medium shirt.

People say, "You look different", "You look younger", "You've lost weight", etc.

Women say these things. Men I know just look at me funny.

I have a theory on this... I know, I have a theory on everything, but in this case it is cogent and I may share it in a future post.

I'm waiting for women to say, "You look hot!", "You look sexy!", and so on.I guess I'll have to be satisfied with "different" and "younger".

I'm O.K. with that.

Until next time...

Six months bloggin'...

So much for the elaborate post I had planned. I slept most of the day due to my late day yesterday. And I have more important things to do. It would have been quite funny. Maybe I'll save it for the next special occasion.

TschuB.

Checking in...

Just peeking in to say that I haven’t forgotten about me blog. I’ve just been busy. Things going on.

Such as finals week. And, as at midterm, my professor outdid herself. Here's just a small example:

"Suppose that instead of being executed, Socrates had been exiled to China.
There he would have encountered both Confucianists and Taoists. Which group
would he have found more congenial to his own way of thinking? Why would he not
have identified with the other group? Explain fully."

This is only one out of eight or nine questions available, four of which I can choose to answer. Hmmm... due Wednesday by midnight.

My lovely Supergirl thought somehow that all this was not enough on me so, in addition, she made me a "to do" list. I’ve almost got that finished though!

All I have left is "cure cancer", "end world hunger", and "create a lasting peace in the middle east".

In my spare time, I’m preparing a special post for my six month blog anniversary.

Yes, six months!

Time flies...

This is going to be good though. Trust me.

Later.