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So tonight I got to say goodbye to my old friend the 1998 Saturn SL2. He has only been in my garage for 3 years. What a lazy bum right?!?! Can you tell that the dust loved him more than I? He didn’t even let me move him that whole time.
In case you were curious, back in 2006, when I was driving him to work every day, he wasn’t very nice to me. He made me replace his alternator, starter, and battery, only to find out that the problem was a batter cable the whole time. So, to punish him, I let his clutch plate go bad, bought a new one, and then set that on his hood for the next 3 years. That’ll teach him.
Well, tonight I decided I wanted my garage back! Not really … my neighbor, who has been jobless for the last year (has had over 40 interviews, and like 20 second interviews), finally got a job today and told me he wanted my car. I jumped at the chance to get a parking space that keeps the snow off my working car, so say goodbye with me, for tomorrow he will be towed to get fixed.
The good news is that I had like 8$ in quarters hidden inside. It was like finding food in your ear! Score! We wheeled him out to the curb, where he belonged. Oh yeah, and pray that he doesn’t cost too much to fix, otherwise the deal goes south and I get him back!
So we had this room that was both poorly designed and damaged. We decided long ago that we wanted to modify it, even before the water damage to the walls. Finally, with Owen looming, I got started on it sometime in May. I tore out the walls and then decided what else to tear into that we were going to modify. Along the way, like any project, I ran into many oddities which made the job take that much longer.
Add in the fact that nights were almost impossible to work, due to the proximity to Sam’s previous room, and the project dragged on and on. Almost every time I thought I had a weekend to work on it, some plans came up and it went another week without getting any closer to completion.
6 months later, the experience held many choice phrases, cuss words, sore muscles, bursitis, swine flu, colds, mold, paint, new tools, ingenuity, grit, determination, to name a few. The end result was finished 2 days after Sam turned 3. He moved in Monday night after I put his new bed together.
Here is a little album for you so you can see what it entailed:
So I was a latecomer to the Online Personal Finances world, relying on trusty old Microsoft Money for the last few years. I begrudgingly read and re-read the announcement from Microsoft that they were ending support for Money and that it would no longer sync with my bank’s register. When it finally went kaput a couple months ago, I didn’t know what to do. I have never been one to “balance” my checkbook, but I found it now almost impossible for me to track our money use. I guess I wasn’t technically sitting at my checkbook and adding the numbers and cross-checking the balances, but I was entering ALL my online (or otherwise) transactions into Money and letting it do all the work for me. This has allowed us to keep a good eye on our finances. During Money’s tenure on my computer, we have taken our credit card debt to zero and have made a massive dent in our medical debts.
Now, three-ish months later, our savings is down to $100 (down from a wopping $1100). What is the cause? Well, we have been lazy with food, which leads to eating out too much. Add the extra expense of a new baby and diapers and supplies, etc. and it starts to add up. While all this helps add to it, I think the largest cause for me is the lack of a flippin account register so we can keep track of outstanding expenses.
As soon as I knew Money was going to go away, I started looking for an alternative. They offered a $10-off coupon to move to Quicken, but that will still going to cost me $70 or so. This was not money we had. Isn’t it ironic that I needed to spend money to start saving money again?!?!?! Well, like I was saying, we didn’t have the money, so I didn’t exercise my option to opt-in to Quicken. During all this, I have been hearing about Mint.com and even talking about it at work with my boss, who uses it, and others. I decided to give it a try when all other options were out of reach. I mean, how could you say no to free, right?
So, I started with the iPhone app (ps. don’t suggest ways on how I can be saving money without an iPhone; Annelise doesn’t have one, and mine is paid for by work  ). I downloaded it and tried it out a bit. It was nifty to have an app on my phone which I could check and get my bank info. I even liked that it had alerts and reminders. After a little learning curve (my bank needed to ask questions every time I wanted it to sync, which I could only do on the webpage), the iPhone app finally started to work in my favor ….. to an extent. There seems to be one glaring feature with Mint.com: no way to track outstanding transactions. There is no flippin’ register!!! I mean, what??? C’mon. I figured I would endure it and see if it was coming down the pipes or something.
Well, here I am, no longer a Mint.com n00b, but I am still not satisfied. I’ve checked out it’s features, and appreciate that it is free, but I can’t use it like this. So, tonight, after seeing transaction after transaction pull from my savings in yet another between-paychecks-fiasco, I decided its time to do something about it. Mint.com had to go, or I had to find out if they had this feature, but maybe I was just missing it. So, I looked …. and looked …. and looked. Nothing to be found. Okay, so I found their forum, and feature suggestion section, and started to read. Practically every other thread in there has to do with this feature, and it was suggested about 8 seconds after Mint.com opened. That was it, I knew it had to be a conspiracy at that point. Many other features suggested long ago had made it, so why not this one? I read one of Mint’s replies where they explained that it was “tricky,” which is absurd. I’ve made plenty of data-driven webpages and could code this into theirs within a day, no matter how they were designed. Unacceptable. And, to make matters worse, that reply was from 2008; so here they are almost 2 years later, and it hasn’t been done.
So, I did one more search, because I had read that Quicken Online had this feature. Here is where things got weird. I couldn’t find Quicken Online anymore. I know I saw it back when I was deciding whether or not to go with Mint.com. I think Microsoft even offered it to me, back when it gave me the deadline until Money was going to go dead. But here I am tonight and the site won’t even come up. There are links to it on Quicken’s website, although they are hard to find. The problem was that it was gone. There was only links to Mint.com which were active. This is because Intuit (who own’s Quicken) bought Mint.com a month ago. I knew this, and had not heard anything yet. There has been a lot of speculation as to what would happen to Mint.com and Quicken Online, and would they stay free, etc., now that Intuit owned them both. Well, I did see one link on their page which caught my eye:
Quicken Online + Mint.com = The Best of Both
I took a read and finally found the answers I sought to all my questions. Quicken Online is gone, Mint.com is here to stay (and still free), and the best features from both would be merged. This includes “[t]he ability to enter and manage cash purchases or checks that haven’t yet cleared.” Finally!!!! 2 years in the making and it took Intuit to finally make Mint.com a legitimate app. Without a check register, in my opinion, Mint.com was only a fake contender. Now it really might be something I continue to use. I was even willing to pay for it if it was a “premium” feature or something. Heck, I could rattle off 20 premium features that they could still add to it and get people to pay for it, while still keeping the core app free.
Anyways, it’s time to get back on track. Now I just need to wait until “early next year” until they release the new features and the new iPhone app.
This is a copy of the post I wrote on Annelise’s blog:
Born: Sunday, June 14, 2009 @ 10:30 am
Weight: 8 points, 4 oz.
Length: 20 inches
Description: Sandy Blonde Hair, chubby arms and legs
Story
It all started for me at 3:30am, when Annelise woke me up and told me she hadn’t felt the baby in over 30 mins, and had barely felt him over the last few hours. Since I had less than 1.5 hours of sleep at that point, I was a bit out of it (”dazed and confused” comes to mind). We called our doctor, and he said we could drink something cold and wait a bit, or head to the hospital to have things checked out. We decided that it would be best to just head to the hospital at that point. She had been up and about for those 30 minutes trying to wake him up by doing things.
We arrived at the hospital at around 4:15am, and had the nurse hook up the monitors to check things out. Thankfully, we immediately were able to find the heartbeat, and he started moving as soon as we were situated. Due to him moving around a lot, it was difficult to get a good baseline, since the monitors kept showing gaps. They decided to keep us an hour, and then another hour. Finally, they decided to wait til 7am before decided to send us home, or to induce. I stayed awake the whole time, but just barely. I was concentrating on the heartbeat.
Let me stop here and go back to the morning trip the the hospital. Since I was groggy, it was easy to let Annelise assume I wasn’t talkative because of the grogginess, but I was really running scenarios in my mind. I had put my ear up to her belly for a few minutes and couldn’t hear anything. Fear is an interesting thing, and it can do magical things to you if you let it. And by magical, I really mean crazy. I spent that time deciding what type of mourning parent I might be asked to become, and how I might be able to pull it off. I like to prepare myself for the worst, but never let that actually make me lose my wits. I was just logically trying to prepare my mind, so if something were to happen, and these fears were to fruit, I would at least have a leg up. Now, I mention all this because it comes into play later. You’ll just have to keep reading to find out how.
7am comes and they decide to tell us that we can stay and they will induce Annelise soon. At this point, we decided I should go back home and get the cameras, which were left from our hasty departure. We also thought it would be good if Sam did not wake up in his second floor room, only to find that nobody on floor 2 (our room) or floor 1 were around. Mormor (Mom’s Mom in Danish) was in the Basement sleeping, and we had given her the monitor before we left, but we still didn’t know how Sam would take it. We both assumed he would go searching for us in our room, and then go back into his room and cry on his bed. Luckily, we were both wrong, because as I was headed home, Sam had woken up and went looking. Before leaving, I decided to not lock the gate at the top of the stairs, in case he wanted to go searching for Mormor or someone, and he could go down. Well, he had taken that opportunity and gone looking for us down on floor 1. Thankfully, Mormor heard him looking for us and went upstairs to meet him. When I got home, there they were sitting on the couch, watching TV (at least 30 minutes before he usually gets up, the twerp).
I showered and grabbed the Cameras and had a small chat with Sam before heading back to the hospital. I reminded him that his baby brother was coming today; telling him it was Baby Owen’s birthday (Sam loves birthdays). I reminded him that he had a present to give to his new brother, and that I would be back later to come and bring him to meet his new brother. I then headed back to the hospital. Oh, and when I say on facebook that I was driving, literally, I was driving to and from, with my phone in hand typing the updates, so everyone would know! I took the opportunity to call and get a sub for my class at church (@7:45am, sorry, I had no other choice!). Annelise called a minute later and said that they had just broken her water and had started the Pitocin. I was rounding the corner to the Hospital, good timing.
The whirlwind then begins. It’s about ten after 8 by the time I get upstairs. She started Pitocin at around 8, and by 8:30, she had gone from 3cm to 6cm. The Doctor wasn’t there yet, so they stopped Pitocin at this point, to make sure she’s not ready before he got there. He shows up, checks things out and decides to wait for the baby. Without Pitocin, 30 minutes go by with nothing. During this time, the epidural has come. By now its after 9am. They decide to start Pitocin again. Another 30-40 minutes go by and now she is to 9cm. I was getting pretty tired by this point, and each time they would leave the room, I’d sit and watch the monitor, starting to doze. Then, when they would come back in to check on things, or help Annelise roll over, to better situate the Baby’s heartbeat and stress, I would go back to full alert. Any who, who really cares about me in this story!
By now, they had come in many times because the Baby’s heart was going all over the place. For the most part, this was normal, but it was spiking and then dropping during a contraction. The nurse explained that most likely the cord was probably wrapped around something. Lots of maneuvering later, things seemed to be steady and she was ready to go. It was close to 10am by this point. That bustle of activity starts up in the room, and the NICU crew brings in some equipment. Apparently earlier during one of the nurse’s checks, she saw a little bit of Meconium, which is not usually a good sign. She didn’t see any more later, so it was just to be safe.
If the previous two paragraphs was the beginning of a whirlwind, this one is the beginning of a whirlwind and something else much faster. The doctor comes in and we are ready to go. The heart rate had dropped lower than they normally like, so it was time to get moving. The next contraction is the start of the pushing. He pulls out the vacuum suction doohickey and decides its time to help things go even faster. After the first round of pushing, I can already see the head. The next contraction and round of pushing show the ears, and by the third round, it was over. It took about 10 pushes and a matter of minutes (that you can count on two hands).
The story doesn’t stop here. The baby came out pretty quiet and a little blue. The cord was indeed wrapped around his torso, but not his neck. Okay, they’ll just grab him and work their magic. That’s just what they do. The NICU crew had him for a good couple minutes before we finally heard some noises. They had to use a respirator for the first 30 seconds to help him get breathing. After that, things seemed fine. I got to go over and get some pics. After about 10 minutes, they allowed me to hold him, and I took him to see his Mom. This is when he got his name, Owen James Briggs. About a minute into Mommy time, the nurse wasn’t liking his color. She called in some of the NICU crew to come take a look and they decided his capillary action wasn’t quite fast enough. It was most likely a volume issue, not something wrong with his heart, they said. He just needed more fluids.
So, a couple minutes later, Owen and I went off to the NICU. This was an interesting place. Obviously it’s not a place you want to be, but should you ever need to be there, there is no better place on Earth for a baby. (Here is where I could go off on a rant about home-birthing, but I’ll refrain). There is an amazing amount of staff in such a small place, all dedicated to helping your baby. Our mission here was to get an IV drop into Owen. Attempt 1 was in his hand; no go. Attempt 2 was in his head; strike two. Attempt 3 finally worked in his head. This is where the catheter from the pics come from.
They also wanted to get some tests while he was there, and draw some blood. They pricked his heel, to no avail. Finally, after a second prick, the got almost a full tube full (those tiny pipet looking ones). This victory was short lived, however, because in the rigamarole, it clotted and was unuseable. Someone had to come back multiple more times to get more blood for a CBC and for the standard stuff. They also did a blood culture to check for infection. All of this took about 4 hours. All the while I stared at the only thing I could, the monitors that were telling me his heartrate, oxygen saturation level and his respiration rate. One of the nurses told me what levels to look for, so I spent four hours of inflicting my will upon the numbers. I couldn’t go anywhere else in my mind, I had to sit there and will the numbers to do my bidding. Small battles were lost, but I (Owen, really) came back strong and regained the lost ground.
By 3PM we had won the final battle and conquered the NICU. He sat there under a heating lamp while I worked the numbers. We were an unstoppable team, and he taught me many lessons during that short time.
Now we can go back to the car ride. Because both Annelise and I had already accepted the worst possible outcome, we never once worried. What seemed like 5 minutes passing by without a peep right after he was brought into this world, but neither of us bothered to worry. We both just watched and waited. Maybe the whirlwind happened so fast we had no time to drop into despair, but it never came, not even once. I surfed the waters of the NICU like I was standing upright on a tiny canoe during the rainy season. The rapids were tough, and most sat down and held on, but I alone stood to surf it out. That’s how it felt, and those words probably make no sense, but they will be there for me to remember.
I have no idea what it was like for Annelise to see here baby for 5 minutes and then not see him for hours. I do know that whatever overcame me, also overcame her. Anyone that knows her knows that anxiety is practically a constant, but not today. That special calm (known as the Spirit of God for those who know it) swept through the halls of the Hospital and helped us come through without a scratch. I have had many many experiences with less potential to cause worry and stress do far worse. We floated through on a pocket of air. It was easy as pie.
I went home once we knew all was well to get Sam and introduce him to little brother. This went better than we could have expected. Sam was very quiet and gave Owen a little monkey as a gift (something Annelise had prepped him for). He was very sweet, and wispered because Owen was sleeping. He was a little uncomfortable, but warmed up through the visit. Afterwards, we celebrated with a guys night out to McDonald’s and got him some scumptious, now with white meat, chicken nuggets. He was awesome. I prepped him for bed and Mormor and autie C came back from meeting Owen to help do the rest. I returned back to the Hospital and Owen is being a champ.
Now, having only got 2 hours of sleep so far this weekend, I am growing weary. The Spirit doesn’t last forever; for we are merely mortals. That being said, there is an angel sleeping in our room tonight. His name is Owen James Briggs, and he has already done things his older brother never has. What a little miracle! Time for sleep for the three of us!
So now that the new webhost is up and running, I decided to check out some galleries. I have played with a number of them before, but decided to start my search from scratch again. The one that I had played with before was not super user-friendly, and wasn’t easy to integrate into the blogging software (wordpress/mu).
This time I took a different approach, and I might have found something really cool called Jalbum. Now, if anyone has heard be rant about programming languages, you know I hate java. Everything about it just irks me. So, I am hessitant to share this, but so far, it has passed the first few tests.
Jalbum is a program you load on your computer like picasa or the adobe or kodak album products. It allows you to mess with your photos and compile albums. What it also does, however, is to either allow you to publish it to their site, or plug in your own website (in this case http://gallery.briggsfam.com, which I had ready to go). The result is a webpage that turns into a gallery: Sample Gallery I made of some Sam pics
What is also possible, however, is the ability to load skins and mess with a ton of features. Not all the skins are created equal, but so far everything has been free. I found one skin, however, that allowed me to load that gallery into my post here, as you see below:
One thing you won’t notice unless you play with it is the ability to add your own mp3’s to it. I added a song if you can figure it out. (P.S. I am anti-embed auto-playing music into blogs, so I won’t break my own rule just to show you that I could do it too.) Hint, think Madagascar.
All in all, it’s a powerful little album. If we (Briggsfam bloggers) decide we like it, I will create a button to put on the backend of wordpress to allow you to easily embed a Jalbum album into a post on the blog. Since it’s late, I will leave it all cool and mysterious for now. I can make a step by step video on how to do it easily enough if someone is interested.
For non-Briggsfam bloggers, this can be open to you as well, so if you are interested, let me know what questions you have and I will explain them with a follow up.
P.S. Annelise says “No baby yet.” This is what I do while I’m waiting for the new one to arrive …. any minute now.
Here is a little taste of what I do at work. Tonight Mike and I started on this at 5 and finished at about 10:30pm. It would have been done quicker except that we had to keep track of 3 separate departments amongst all that mess. It turned out good in the end. We replaced 5 old switches with 3 new ones and rewired the entire closet. Here is the before and after:
Job Stuff
Job drama is past (for now), then job success. Things have been going well lately, at least for a couple months since that last post about what was going on. I got a nice raise, which showed me that I was appreciated at my job and felt nice. That was the pouring of the good. I got the new iPhone, and things were just looking up.
Then all sorts of things start to go wrong. 2 weeks ago, the network went down completely for a few minutes, we fix it. The next week, our main application went down for about 3 hours. It was up, so work continued, but it was barely useable, and definitely in a read-only capacity. Not fun times. A few other issues coming and going make me forget the good times which were just a few weeks ago.
So the tally is job drama, job success, job beat down.
Health
Sam was never really getting better. I was sick again for the 7th time this winter and Annelise got it too. I had to work 60 hours that week, so I just fought through all the coughing and congestion. I’m pretty sure I’ve had the same ear infection that Samuel had, but it’s hard to tell, cause I don’t feel it (just hear it sometimes, like water in my ear).
Then, Sam gets better, and starts acting like a new boy. Annelise and I still have aches and pains, but Sam being better makes us all feel better. He is the only one who has come around though. Annelise and I still have back pains, and other various pains (she wins though).
Weather
After an entire week of beautiful weather, with temperatures ranging from the 50’s to the high 70’s, we thought spring was here. Then comes a cold weekend with some cold rain and a little snow. It starts to go away again, then wham! It comes back and dumps for a day or two. Snow again.
Car
Financially, things finally started looking up. We’re completely out of CC debt and we’ve been talking about fixing the house (finally) and getting a second (working) car. We haven’t been able to decide though, and still haven’t nailed down a target budget. We’ve had on-and-off success with the Toyota, since no mechanics believe that there is a problem with the tire (even though I feel it every time I drive). Two tire places agree that there is nothing wrong. They’re all morons (except you, Dear; you’re just mistaken )
We have our eyes set on an Uplander, but who knows at this point?!?!
House
I start opening the damaged wall to look at our options upstairs and wham! Mold. It’s mild and the roof is now fixed, so it will not be spreading any time soon. It will definitely slow down the build out process. Which reminds me, I need to take some “before” pictures.
Then the ice-maker in the freezer decided its really trying to fill a swimming pool on our kitchen floor (again, for the third time). Luckily we were gone for only 15 minutes or so, so we stopped it before it was able to leak cause any damage. Apparently when a piece of ice gets lodged in there when it is trying to fill the tray, the stupid mechanism isn’t smart enough to stop the water flow anyways. Of course not.
Electronics
Servers are going wacky at work. Our DVD player mysteriously decided to stop reading discs. MY XBOX 360 IS SHOWING THE DREADED Red Ring of Death TODAY! Still under warranty (which will take 3 weeks). Both my screens on my PC went black yesterday (thankfully only temporarily).
Life
I’m sure there is more. There always is. I can’t decide whether this has been a barrage of blessings or trials (which, depending on how you look at life are the same thing). Usually, however, it is easier to tell. This all seems to be mixed together this time :), instead of clearly favoring one or the other.
Conclusion
Nothing in life is certain. Successes come and go. Trials come and come again, yet never really go. Just when you think you see a pattern, it’s gone and all has changed. The trick is to really live each day, but do not try and predict what will happen. As I say every Wednesday night “Be Prepared.” In the end, I still have a job, we are happy, warm and safe. The baby is healthy. That’s all that matters.
Well, its not like people actually use this word, but I sure do. And, I’ll have you know, I do have occasion to grace the world with a few of these choice words. Today’s word is: PLOW!
Plow, as in: Utah, go plow yourself! That’s right! I said it. Plow the plowing plowers and all their plowing plows. It’s apparently a dirty word here, since nobody seems to even talk about the fact the the roads are never plowed! GIVE ME A BREAK! I’ve had it up to here and I am at my wit’s end. Speaking of having enough of the snow, I have decided that I might only be able to bear so much more of the snow.
Now, for those of you who don’t know me, I grew up in sunny southern California. I saw a few icicles growing up on my house, and some frosty dew, but never snow (thankfully). The few times we ventured out into the stuff, it rarely turned into a good experience. I do not like skiing, and the couple times I went snowboarding, I came back battered and bruised for days afterwards. Part of the skiing dislike probably comes from my first day learning to ski, which was probably one of the most frightening and miserable days that I have experienced in my entire life. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I am sure of the fact that if I was to choose “the worst” day I have ever had, that was it.
A close second was my first experience of memory in the snow, which is remembered by my whole family. That fateful day, we were driving past the San Bernedino mountains, and I being a child who watched television, knew that Santa’s Village was supposedly up there somewhere. We decided to stop on the side of the road to play in this devil’s playground known as snow. I don’t recall what our purpose was, but I’m not sure it really mattered. Becky and Mom decided to stay behind as we boys decided to climb the side of a mountain.
For those of you outdoorsy-types, lets just say that we were on an East-facing slope as the sun was going down. (For the non-outdoorsy-types, this means that it is in the shade for the latter half of the day, and gets dark, and thusly cold (meaning icy) much before the sun actually goes down). Mix that, with an incline between 45 and 60 degrees, and you have a recipe for fun-filled day in the sun deadly ice-laden snow. My goal was to find Santa’s Village; that’s all I remember. Ryan and Dad might have had other, grander, goals, but I knew those Reindeer had to be up there somewhere. At no point while it got darker, colder and icier did we think that we would be in peril.
At the point where we were finally slipping more than we were able to ascend, we decided to turn back. This quickly turned into a contest to see who could slip/fall either without the notice of the others, or with the most grace. We slid from object to object. Trees were definitely preferable over those larger, harder objects known as the noggin-busters (boulders). We would pick one close, and then slide on our butts to the next tree down. If we grew adventurous, we would try and navigate two or three before catching ourselves. After a few too many spills, my Dad decided to check his trusty fanny-pack for supplies. This was the era of MacGyver, afterall, and we were Cub/Boy Scouts (Be Prepared … to die?). Out came a small nylon rope cord. It was probably a half-centimeter in diameter.
It gets better. With our trusty cord, we lashed ourselves together. There was probably a good 40ft or so of this cord, so there was enough that we could wrap it around our waists and then tie it off. We spaced maybe 10ft between each of us. After we made sure we were all secure, we began the descension. Lightest went first (me), followed by Ryan, then Dad. He acted as the anchor, holding on to the nearest toothpick or noggin-buster to keep us secure. After a few slips and feeling the lovely yank of a small cord around my waist, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere. Ryan and I had some fun sliding and getting tangled up around as many trees as we could. Dad was there to keep us safe.
But “What happens,” you ask, “if Dad slips.” Ryan and I were not naive enough to doubt our Dad. He was the anchor. Well, “was” is the proper word there because the tense changed rapidly before either Ryan or I could react. The achor became a weight, and just like a couple of floaties tied to a fishing line, we started to sink as the weight flew past us at high speed. Now just think of a pinball table after you send the pinball to the top, and just at the pinnacle, it starts to descend, crashing into the bumper pads as the ball comes hurdling toward it’s goal. Now imagine a ball with a string wrapped around it, and two little lightweight balls, of inconsequential mass, tied to the larger pinball as it ricocheted its way down the table. Now you know what it must have looked like for the birds, or maybe even a passing plane. Sounds like fun? Think again. I’m pretty sure we were all crying and shook up by the time we all got wrapped around a tree large enough that our combined weight and momentum didn’t snap it in half. Needless to say, at that point, follow-the-leader was no longer an option, and Ryan and I were no longer playing. I think Dad grabbed our pants at that point and we all went down side-by-side on our butts the rest of the way. We were one big wide-load-of-a tobbogan that made its way down to the bottom.
When we finally got down to the bottom, things weren’t much better. Apparently Mom and Becky didn’t fare much better just playing down by the car. Becky climbed up only a few feet, and slid down, only to catch her wrist on one of those noggin-busters. She tore off a large chunk of skin which left a scar that is still there to this day, about an inch in diameter. Dad, Ryan and I lived to tell the tale, and were only left with emotional scarring (that I am aware of), but this was the beginning of my experiences with white death (aka snow).
Don’t think I am going to lay off now, while the going is good. Did you know that “snow” is mentioned in the scriptures 28 times? In those 28 instances, snow is mentioned without a reference to its color only a handful of times, and then mostly in company with other pestilences. Psalms 148:8, for example states that “Fire, and hail; snow, and vapour; stormy wind [fulfills] his word.” How is it then that people associate snow with peace, silence, tranquility and beauty? It’s a farce I tell you! It’s a dirty trick meant to entice you to hurdle yourself(ves) down mountains, or go outside and play … only to lose a digit later. If you count water as a form of snow (or vice versa), then it has killed more people in natural disasters than all others combined. Alright, alright, now I’m stretching the truth a bit to serve my needs, but you get the point.
When people complain that Christmas is supposed to be white, while longing for the snow, I’m sure they’re conveniently overlooking the fact that when Christmas is “white,” it also means that they are stuck in their house trying not to freeze to death. According to the data I could find, it seems that about half the world is used to snow, and the other half doesn’t know much about it. See for yourself:
I am curious to run a poll and see who likes snow and who does not. I would imagine that if the sampling were high enough, it might tend toward 50/50, like the white on the map. If you want to be scientific about it, go right ahead.
So how did this all begin? Well, on Saturday, we spun off the road in the car. I did it on purpose, sorta, but the car might not have liked it. On Friday, while I was in a Doctor’s office that I was working in (doing computer stuff), one of the employees came running in with her three-year-old in her arms and a huge gash on his head. They gave him almost 30 stitches while he screamed for about the next hour and a half. For a father of a child about the same age, the screams were agonizing. The kid had been sledding with his family and took a noggin-buster to the head. Today, I couldn’t get anywhere because the busiest street in all of Utah had yet to be plowed. Later, my massive 6-mile commute down a 4-lane highway, which normally takes me 12-15 minutes, took 45 minutes today. Again, it was because nobody decided to plow, or if they did, it was before the snow came dumping down. How is it that the best-plowed place in all of Utah County happens to be the church parking lot behind my backyard, but my street never sees a plow other than my kind neighbor and his children, who shovel my driveway because I am a lazy !@&#&?
Anyways, enough is enough. The house goes on the market later this year. I’ve had enough signs to know when its time. Oh, and it’s been a MILD winter this year?!?!? Yeah … like I said, enough is enough. Here’s a pic of my back porch a few minutes ago, (the one I enter and exit by ever day) mere hours after the last time I cleaned it off:
Porch, go plow yourself!
UPDATE: 10:30am right now. On my way to work today, I saw my first plow in 2 weeks. Too bad his plow wasn’t engaged and he wasn’t plowing. Maybe some day the roads will get plowed. Can someone tell me whether or not Utah plowers are part of a union, and if so, are they on strike?!?!
I wanted to share an article that I came across today, while reading more about Prop 8 (trying to catch up, since I’m 500+ miles away). I thought it was a good one, and thought I might just quote it in its entirety, and call it a day. We’ll see:
Last week in a Denver suburb, someone lit a Book of
Mormon on fire and dropped it on the doorstep of a Mormon temple, presumably as
a statement about the church’s support of Proposition 8 in California, an
initiative that amended the state constitution to define marriage as the union
of one man and one woman. In a move that may make gay-rights supporters’ heads
spin, the incident is being investigated as a hate crime.
The outbreak of attacks on the Mormon church since the passage of Proposition 8
has been chilling: envelopes full of suspicious white powder were sent to church
headquarters in Salt Lake City; protesters showed up en masse to
intimidate Mormon small-business owners who supported the measure; a website was
created to identify and shame members of the church who backed it; activists are
targeting the relatives of prominent Mormons who gave money to pass it, as well
as other Mormons who are only tangentially associated with the cause; some have
even called for a boycott of the entire state of Utah.
The wisdom of hate-crimes legislation aside, there
is no doubt that a lot of hate is being directed at Mormons as a group. But why
single out Mormons? And why now?
Dozens of church bodies — including the Catholic Church, the Orthodox Christian bishops of
California, and a wide variety of evangelicals — supported the proposition. It’s also worth
considering that, while gay-rights advocates cannot discuss same-sex marriage
for more than 30 seconds without making faulty analogies to Jim Crow-era
anti-miscegenation laws, some 70 percent of blacks voted for Proposition 8.
While there have been a few ugly racist statements by gay-rights supporters,
such vile sentiment has been restricted. Not so the hatred directed at Mormons,
who are convenient targets.
To date, 30 states have voted on initiatives addressing same-sex marriage, and in every
state traditional marriage has come out on top. But somehow the fact that Mormons got
involved during the latest statewide referendum constitutes a bridge too far? In
truth, Mormons are a target of convenience in the opening salvo of what is sure
to be a full-scale assault on much of America’s religious infrastructure, which
gay activists perceive as a barrier to their aspirations. Among religious
groups, Mormons are not the biggest obstacle to same-sex marriage — not by a
long shot. But they are an easy target. Anti-Mormon bigotry is unfortunately
common, and gay-rights activists are cynically exploiting that fact.
There are no websites dedicated to “outing” Catholics
who supported Proposition 8, even though Catholic voters heavily outnumber
Mormons. And the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is not remarkably
strident in its beliefs on the subject. So far, no gay-rights activist has had
the brass to burn a Qu’ran on the doorstep of a militant mosque where — forget
marriage! — imams advocate the stoning of homosexuals.
Churches oppose same-sex marriage in part because it represents an implicit threat to
freedom of conscience and belief. California already had one of the broadest civil-unions
laws in the country. There was little in the way of government-sanctioned
privileges that a state-issued marriage license would confer. But the drive for
same-sex marriage is in practice about legislating moral conformity — demanding
that everybody recognize homosexual relationships in the same way, regardless of
their own beliefs. Freedom of conscience, or diversity of belief, is the last
thing the homosexual lobby will tolerate: In New Mexico, a state civil-rights
commission fined an evangelical wedding photographer $6,637 for politely
declining to photograph a gay commitment ceremony. In California, the state
Supreme Court ruled unanimously against two San Diego fertility doctors who
refused to give in-vitro fertilization to a lesbian owing to their religious
beliefs, even though they had referred her to another doctor. And just this
week, evangelical dating site eHarmony, which hadn’t previously provided
same-sex matchmaking services, announced it had been browbeaten into doing so by
New Jersey’s Division on Civil Rights and the threat of litigation. The first
10,000 same-sex eHarmony registrants will receive a free six-month subscription.
“That’s one of the things I asked for,” crowed Eric McKinley, who brought the
charges against eHarmony.
Where do they go from here? Gay activists are already using the legal system to try to
revoke the tax-exempt status of the Mormon church. If you believe that churches and
synagogues, priests and rabbis won’t eventually be sued for their statements on sexuality,
you’re kidding yourself. Chai Feldblum, a Georgetown University law professor
and gay activist who helps draft federal legislation related to sexual
orientation, says that, when religious liberty conflicts with gay rights, “I’m
having a hard time coming up with any case in which religious liberty should
win.” A National Public Radio report on the conflict noted that if previous
cases are any guide, “the outlook is grim for religious groups.”
Given their cavalier disregard for the freedom of conscience, it’s little surprise
that the gay lobby is equally disdainful of democracy: They began pursuing legal
challenges to Proposition 8 practically before they were done tallying the
votes. Lamentably, the state attorney general defending the will of the people
will be former Jerry Brown, the liberal former governor who was an open opponent
of the measure and tried to sabotage it. The legal challenges will be heard by
the same state Supreme Court that overturned California’s previous law
forbidding gay marriage back in May. There’s a real possibility the will of the
people will be spurned a second time, democracy be damned. They’ve already
burned the Book of Mormon. The First Amendment is next.
Hmm, on second thought, who can call it a day after that?!?! When even Chuck Norris decides to chime in (thanks for the heads up Dad), I figure I’ve at least got to chime in. The above article is very similar to what Michael Rowland, one of my old Bishops, already said, but differs in a few regards: Firstly, they’re a national online magazine, and secondly, they aren’t LDS. Those are two important distinctions. The support and arguments mean a lot more coming from people not “of the faith.” Actually, there has been quite a bit of support from other Christian groups since this happened. This is nice to see, since typically, anything regarding the Church in the news has historically not been very favorable.
Even the traditional LDS rumor mill is trying to come up with some nice stories to be FWD’d around to friends and family, but some end up being true: This one for example written by an LDS police officer in the LAPD. (Sorry Mom, maybe its because Dad taught us to be immediately skeptical through years of practicing law and dealing with MMM.) I had to think that one was Mormon folklore until I read it for myself from the true source.
It’s obvious that Prop8 is now effecting all of us here in the USA, whether Californian or not; whether we know it or not. (yeah, yeah, I know if someone doesn’t know it, I can’t make a real case for it being obvious, but I don’t want to modify that sentence)
Now, what is truly at the heart of Prop 8? This is where we invite logic to leave the premises, so we can try to understand the reasoning of the “No-on-8″ proponents. I am so bold as to say that because anyone who has the faculties to wade through fact without biases can see: this had absolutely nothing to do with gay-rights. Let me explain.
I invite everyone to go back to the very distant past (aka 1999) when Assembly Bill 205 was passed. Check that link for more details. That single bill gave same-sex couples “most” of the rights assigned to married couples, including, but not limited to: access to family health insurance plans, spousal insurance policies, parental rights for children born into the “partnership,” rights to sue for wrongful death of a partner, rights to wills and trusts, pension benefits, the right to legally take either partner’s surname, property rights, alimony and divorce. Someone else is free to compare this list more exhaustively to the one accompanying actual marriage and point out those rights missing that were being fought for in November. Last time I checked, when people fought for rights, they listed them. I have yet to see a list of specific rights that were being fought for.
Straight from the No on Prop 8 website we read: “Prop 8 would eliminate the fundamental right for same-sex couples to marry.” Ironically, that is almost completely correct. We (since I’ll cast my lot officially in the Yes on 8 side) absolutely want to make that distinction. The right to MARRY is what is being fought over; NOT the right to civil “unions.” As we have already seen, they already had the rights, which were numerous. Marriage is what is being contested here. Despite there being a few mentions of “same-sex” on the wikipedia page, it is clear that throughout all of recorded history, regardless of era, government, location, etc, Marriage has always been defined as being between a man and a woman. Any argument for anything contrary is clearly grasping at straws.
Living in Utah, I have to admit I live in a pretty sheltered world. With Prop 8 making the news, I have had numerous discussions over it, and have to admit: at a cursory and casual glance, relying purely on the logical arguments, that it would be easy to side with the No’s. I have had to actually get off my butt and do some research on my own to make up my own mind. Just like everything in the Church, we are asked to follow the recommendations of our leaders, but when it comes down to practice, every church member is free to choose. As such, many members drink caffeinated beverages, or watch R-rated movies, while others do not. This comes down to choice, which is a very highly regarded “right” the Church believes that each of us has.
I called a friend the other day, who is not affiliated with the Church at all, but who happened to express some Yes-on-8 views which I thought were very powerful. This friend has heard much of the anti-Mormon rhetoric that is going around, and has had to listen to many No-on-8 opinions. He told me that his defense was as follows (I’m paraphrasing):
Just as you (LGBT individuals) have the right not to be called names or discriminated against, I also have rights. You find it offensive when someone crosses that line. I also find it offensive when someone crosses a line where my rights are defined. For me, that line is Marriage. When you want to redefine my word for what marriage is, I am offended the same amount as you might be if you were called an ugly name. For you to change what I believe in is to cross a line that I have a right to. My right has been here since the founding of this country, and even longer, so who are you to come along and change it!?!?
I have had a number of conversations with Yes-on-8 individuals, and not once had I heard this argument. Moreover, this one happened to strike me as the most powerful one, so let me try to explain. Let me start with a quote, again, from the No-on-8 website, wherein they declare what it is that their side is fighting for: “DIGNITY AND RESPECT.” They say that without marriage, they cannot achieve the same “dignity and respect,” which they believe is their right under the constitution. Hmm.
My first response to that is: “What?!?!? Are you kidding me?!?!? You’re after dignity and respect, and you fight for it by trampling the dignity and respect of those who oppose you both before and after you lost?!?! Someone tell me if I am crazy, for I surely am about ready to jump up and down in hysterics.”
Okay, I’ve gotten ahold of myself and am ready to proceed. The No-on-8 website continues on to say that the only right they are lacking when comparing domestic partnerships and marriage is one envolving emergencies. Apparently, they do not have the right to go into an emergency room and see to a parter’s care. I make that jump in logic since it is the only right (fiscal impact is not a right) mentioned on the entire page which directly compares itself to its marriage-based counterpart. That strikes me as an extremely weak argument. No wonder they lost!
Now, back to my friend’s argument. In his brief few sentences, he definitely touches on dignity and respect, but in the correct sense(s). The word “dignity ” comes from the latin root “dignus ,” which, in turn, means “worthy.” I’ll refrain from making the obvious pious connection with that meaning, and let you draw your own conclusions. Now “respect ” is also interesting, as its latin derivative is “respectus,”which means “looking back.” Looking back would imply history, and the history of same-sex marriage is not on their side.
The final chink in their mail, and what I see as the major stumbling block, of the No-on-8 argument is where they say “WE DON’T NEED MORE GOVERNMENT IN OUR LIVES.” This strikes me a hugely ironic, since they are relying completely upon “government” to give them what they did not already have, and to now take away what is rightfully someone else’s. What a waste of time and space. Talk about pitiful. I mean, what else is there to do? We love them, we help them, but the only thing left to do is pity them. A second grader could have come up with a stronger argument. It is painfully obvious that that is the level of opponent we have here. Just take a look at the tantrum-like reactions after the vote was decided. Its purely foolish and childish.
I am sure there are some Yes-on-8′ers who would not deign to respect and dignify the LGBT community in their fight for rights, but they are rare. What is more likely is that there are many who are ready and willing to give them the final rights they seek, as long as they stop trying to change what we believe in. This is what it really comes down to in the end. They victimize themselves and whine like little children until they get what they want. Be ready for a long battle people, it ain’t over yet.
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Oh, and despite this being rather crass, I just can’t resist showing what Stephen Colbert had to say on this topic. I think there is some merit in here, albeit amongst a barrel full of laughs, and I will end with his humor:
Next topic: Gays and Mormonism, do they have a place together? I was going to try and put these two topics together, but it would have made for the longest post ever. Because of that, I decided that it deserves its own post. ‘Til next time.
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