Bananagrams

This evening, Madeleine saw the Bananagrams bag perched on our corner shelf and insisted that I get it down.  I distractedly supervised her playing (just to make sure she didn't eat them) but was mostly talking with Christy about the day.  Madeleine happily picked them up and climbed on the couch and walked around the room jabbering.

Then dinner was ready.  I didn't want her to confuse the tiles with food, so I asked for them so I could put them away while we ate.  She gave me the six or so tiles in her hand, and I was astonished: all of them were the letter O!  She had sifted through the pile for all the Os she could find.  How did she learn that?

My other thought was: "She already likes to organize things.  Just like her mom.  And dad.  This could be bad for all sides."  :)

Goodbye Readers

Goodbye readers!  It's been fun blogging all these years.  I'm glad you've been reading along.

But on July 1, Google Reader is going away.  Too bad.  Alternatives can be found by searching for RSS reader, but I haven't found a more simple version than Google Reader.  Every other reader adds too many frills.

I'm not going anywhere, and neither is this blog (until Google retires Blogger).  But I might start publishing to Google+.  If you want to find me this might be a link to the right place.

Shade

A while ago, I was day-dreaming about the ideal house.  My ideal house would make use of geothermal energy, solar energy and probably wind.  As I was dreaming, I tried to work through the best way to shade the house in the summer, and expose the house to sunlight in the winter.  You could build a structure around the house that would be just the right shape, full of celestially-based angles to offer shade in the sun and sun in the winter.  As I was wondering, I found myself saying: "What would be perfect is something that was opaque during the summer and transparent during the winter.  I wonder if they make something like that.  I wonder how expensive it is."

And then I thought:

"Leaves."  Oh yeah.  What a great solution!

Best Birthday Present Ever

For my birthday my brother, Dan, got me the best present I've ever received.  At Sunday dinner, he disappeared for a bit then came back with a little puppy:

That's a real puppy.

Thankfully, it was just a joke.  Though it was a nice puppy.  Madeleine liked him. (her?)

KitchenAid

This lady loves her KitchenAid:

I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine how I came across this video.

Fact

I have a very cute daughter.  Here's proof:



I can't believe she's already a year old!  At this rate, she's gonna be two soon.  And then three, and then she's off to college.

Speaking of college.  I ran into this video while I was looking for the other one.  It's my former roommate playing a nice polka.  He's a talented guy.  Enjoy:

Priestcraft

...priestcrafts are that men preach and set themselves up for a light unto the world, that they may get gain and praise of the world; (2 Nephi 26:29 in the Book of Mormon)

At work, I spend time reading about new developments in technology (especially in security and web-related things).  As with anything, people have differing opinions.  And there are several people with a lot of clout, whose opinions are widely accepted and defended by others just because of who they are.  Those with clout also tend to receive more coverage (their stuff is shared more).  As a result, they have the ability to shape public opinion to some degree.

This week, after reading an article written by one of these influentials about the novel idea of taking a break from work (I think it is referred to as vacation in some circles), and after reading the comments in support of this breakthrough, I realized something:

Priestcraft doesn't usually start because someone promotes themselves as a light.  Priestcraft grows from others promoting someone as a light.

Its beginnings are benign: a sincere compliment; a "you should see the great thing they did" to a friend; sharing and praise.  And it is then that the person being lifted up makes the choice to remain humble or become self-serving.

From this, I learn two things:

1. As an other I need to be careful how, who and what I praise.

2. As the lifted I need to choose to be humble despite praise.

Pistols and Prophets

Throughout most of one of last week's dreams, I was carrying a pistol around.  On the back of the pistol was a white switch that let me toggle between "Altoids" and "pistol."  Apparently, the pistol could either dispense Altoids or fire bullets.  It was a very frustrating weapon.  I never used the gun for shooting or for freshening breath because I couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger while pointing at my hand (waiting for an Altoid), and I was embarrassed to fire at criminals (what if an Altoid came out instead?).

Very frustrating.

---

Yesterday, I was skimming through the pictures in President Hinckley's biography when I happened upon a picture of Elder Neal A. Maxwell when he was called to be an Apostle.  I instantly missed him -- what an exceptional man!  And then, Elder Bednar spoke about him last night in the CES Fireside.  Here is the last talk Elder Maxwell gave in General Conference:

Our Garden

While we were visiting family in Florida for the Holidays, Alicia showed us her garden.  She had tomatoes, lettuce, blueberries, beans and a weed.  She asked, "How's your garden doing?" forgetting, I think that we live in Utah.

Our garden this year got a late start.  These little guys showed up in July:

It was a pretty hot summer, so (with the late start) I wasn't sure we'd get anything.  Thankfully, though, it has been bitter cold for the past little while and we are reaping a great harvest:

Yum

 Alicia, we'll send some of them back with your parents.

Mia Love

Mia Love recently lost to Jim Matheson in a Utah congressional race.

One day last week while we were eating, Christy said out of the blue: "Mia Love's coming over to feel Madeleine's hands."

Huh?  What?

I muddled around in my head trying to figure out how we knew Mia Love... and why she was coming over to our house to feel our baby's hands.

Then I realized that she was talking about a little girl in our neighborhood named Mya, who loves coming to feel Madeleine's hands.

!00th post1 sort of

This is supposed to be this blog's one hundredth post.  However, after deleting all the unpublished drafts, it turns out that this is only the 95th post.  But such a mistake plays nicely into:

Even Numbers

Why are even numbers so attractive and desirable?  In this context, I don't mean even as in "divisible by two," but any number that is "nice."  for instance 100 is a nice, even number.  But in the context of weeks, 7 might be considered an even number.  Hmm... maybe using even to describe 7 will be confusing.  I need a different name: maybe roundish?  K, let me start over:

Roundish Numbers

Why are roundish numbers so attractive and desirable?  When we're doing push-ups, why is the goal 25 or 50 or 100 (or 10 if you're as strong as me)?  Why don't we set out to do 38 or 99 or 57?  If you told someone you did 99 push-ups, they'd ask why you stopped.  Or that girl who set out to make 1000 paper cranes -- why 1000?  Why do I celebrate my 100th blog post as remarkable and not the 95th?  Why was breaking the 4 minute mile more remembered than the 3 minute 54 second mile?  And while we're on the subject, why is running a mile more notable than running 1.1 miles or 0.9?

Is there something intrinsic in push-ups that demands we do multiples of 5?  Is there a physical limit built in to the body that prevents it from running a mile in 240 seconds?

I've come up with several reasons why I think we like roundish numbers:

1. It looks nice (seeing the odometer roll over to 1,000,000 just looks fun)
2. Roundish numbers tend to have shorter names: one hundred, ten, one thousand, quarter century.
3. Math is a little easier on some roundish numbers.

The year is ending soon (we're in the 10th month), which means it will be time for people to start talking about resolutions.  I challenge you to make non-roundish resolutions.  Resolve to lose 3.4 lbs (or gain 7.6).  Resolve to run 0.4 miles every day.  Actually, instead of resolving to run 0.4 miles every day, pick a landmark and resolve to run to it and back -- don't bring the measurement into the resolution.  Celebrate someone being born on a day other than their birthday.  They're just as alive today as they will be then (although birthdays are actually tied to something real -- the position of the earth relative to the sun).

I don't think roundish numbers are bad (Remember, I celebrated my 10,000th day of mortal life.), I just think we shouldn't limit ourselves to them.

Printing from the bathroom

Right now, our printer is in the bathroom:

Earlier, Christy was blending tomato soup out in the garage.  The reason for both out-of-placements is simple: we're crazy.

And the blender and the printer are loud.  And Madeleine was sleeping last time we used both.

But mostly we're just a little insane.

Essence of Childhood

On my way home from work today, I stopped at the store to purchase some baby soap sans scent.  I looked up and down the soap, shampoo, deodorant and band-aid aisles for too many minutes, only finding stuff for kids, but not babies.

"I guess Harmon's doesn't target my demographic," I concluded.

After giving up, I walked toward the bread, when both Lo and Behold showed me that there's a separate aisle for baby needs.  Who knew?

During my study of the various bottles, I came across a bottle of "Baby Oil" like this one:

"It would be so fun to put one of these over by the olive and canola oil," I thought as I laughed.

But really, it's terrible.  Making baby oil should be illegal.

Wicked Disco

In church today, a 10-year-old girl talked about when she had just moved into their house.  At the time she was two.  She was playing downstairs and accidentally set the downstairs kitchen stove on fire.  As a two-year-old, she didn't understand fire (so she said).  So she went with her mom to drop off the older kids at school.  When they came back, her mom, following an impression, went downstairs and, in the words of the girl telling the story, "She screamed."  The fire had spread to half the kitchen.  Mom put it out, and she was very glad.  All ended well.

I imagined little Madeleine setting fire to our house.  Right now, her crying is the most unpleasant thing she does.  I can't imagine when she starts burning down our house, or driving our cars through walls, or leaving the bath water running, or...

---

I substituted as the pianist in Primary today.  The teacher asked the kids, "What kind of music can drive the Spirit away?"

A girl piped up: "Disco!"

---

Later, the teacher asked, "What are some things that drive the Spirit away?"  Autumn answered, "When someone has worked really hard on a Math assignment, and they've put a lot of time into it, and then you take it and rip it in half."

"Oddly specific," I thought.