...---...

more colder than it has ever been...
winds blowing so very hard...
beagle frozen to the bones...
yetti in the backyard eating our yews (dang you Pearl!)...

no place for a healthy and happy human life...
stay away from midwest...

signed,
popsicle

The Namesake

When I was growing up, I had certain people in my life who took a serious investment in my happiness. I would call these people friends, but in many ways they feel more like family since they have been around for so long. In 2000, this couple became pregnant and despite being significantly close to the due date, they traveled to a basketball game that I was playing in (in Montana in the winter) to catch up, take me to dinner, and notify me that they were planning on naming their unborn son after me. As a then-18 year old, I hardly grasped the significance of their gesture, and simply told them that I was honored that they would think to do so.

Now, more than eight years has passed, and today is my namesake's birthday. I had the chance to get together with him over the summer to waterfight, shoot some hoops and in general learn about what a wonderful kid he is becoming. Utterly cerebral, he promises to be something truly amazing in the future, an engineer perhaps. He also has a gentle spirit with a rhetorician's guile, not to mention a jumpshot that would make most kids his age jealous.

I always blush when his parents say that they hope he turns out to be half the man I am (becoming). Although it is an amazing and kind gesture, I think, what a gift to be symbolically connected to someone whom you admire at age 8, someone who you hope your son turns out to be like. To put it somewhat differently, in naming him after me, his parents meant to honor me, but I am finding that as this young boy grows up, I am honored to be attached to him.

This post, then, is meant as a touchstone for him. Something to read now look back upon later so that he knows he was loved in more ways than he probably could understand at the time. That is how reflect now on his parents, and someday I hope he thinks of me in a similar way.

Happy birthday, lil' K. We love you so much.

hell hath melted (over)

P is out of town today taking classes, leaving me to ruminate in silence with the beagle. To pass the time, I have been feverishly composing the final synthesis for my doctoral exams. Ok, maybe not feverishly, but I have been working on it pretty hard. As I looked up while thinking through a particularly unimportant problem in composition theory (let's be honest) I noticed that the sun was out and that the 4-inch thick layer of snow in our backyard was beginning to melt. Excited and needing a break, I said to myself, I think I am going to head out and *run* some errands, but Bru heard me say run, got uncontrollably excited, and so I changed my plans.

Poor Bru has been pretty cooped lately because it is not healthy human, let alone healthy beagle weather. So instead of running to get groceries, I put on my eskimo gear and took Bru for a *run* around the lake. It was good to get out, the weather wasn't bad, and Bru was so utterly content to be outside that he ran alongside me the entire way (a feat, to be sure!). Well, he took a quick poop, and made an additional pit stop to bite into the frozen fish head laying on the path, but for the most part he was wonderful. Now, he is tired, as evidenced by him sleeping on my shoulder as I type this post. Such an amazing thing to have a good, and tired puppy.

In other non-related news.

[1] We finished LOST, and are eagerly awaiting the season premiere on Thursday. My theory, if anyone is interested, is that all the characters suffer from acute melancholia indicative of post-traumatic stress disorder. The island may be a psych-ward. Think about it before you reject it, this is advice that the skeptic P refuses to follow.

[2] A new and wonderful restaurant opened in uptown Normal this week. Tasty burgers and good onion rings. P got the pasta, wasn't as good if you ask me, and horked my onion rings.

[3] I keep wanting to buy a Ninetendo Wii but can't beat the losers to the register. I keep calling random stores hoping that they will have one in stock, but alas no luck. The news is always, had some on Thursday, they sold out before we even put them on the floor.I wonder, if I am so eager to buy the Wii, does that make me a loser by default? My answer is no, because I am only casually shopping, although I will admit to some sale associate harrassment in an effort to secure information on potential shipping dates, but that is just good researching. P's answer is a decided YES! even though she totally wants one too.

[4] P made cous cous with all kinds of fancy crap in it and it is pretty good. You should try it.

[5] *Sniff* I need a shower, bad.

[6] If a Depew is reading this post, please update your blog. I know you are busy, but come on, it has not been passable lately. You got us into this mess, hold the line or get served!

[7] Husky football season tickets are now in the J family again. My dad is the best in the world, bar none. I get to go out to Oklahoma next fall to watch them play. It will be my first trip to Washington in more than four years. I may never return.

[8] My parents have put their house up for sale in the VA which means they are on their way back to the NW here shortly. Lucky (in the Napoleon Dynamite voice).

Hasta!

Thoughts on Siberia

I am no Russian historian, but if I remember correctly, Siberia is the place where conspirators against the communist regime were sent to be punished and tortured. It would seem that part of that punishment was Siberia's extremely cold weather which would freeze the poor bodies of these individuals and render any hope of happiness utterly impossible. You can imagine my excitement, then, when Sam Champion from Good Morning America announced that today would be an extremely cold one for the midwest. As he explained and I am not exaggerating a cold front has been building up in Siberia and a wind current has pushed those temperatures down through Canada and right into Normal. Ergo, I am in Siberia.

Having been here three years now, I can confidently say that I have never felt cold like this before. In most cases, the cold is a kind of bone-chilling, grab a cup of hot soup, get inside soon lest you lose your ears kind of feeling. This, however, is something different, and I am not willing to spend more than a minute out in it so that I can describe it more accurately.

At least the sun is shining, though.

You Know You're Funny When (?) . . .

The saying goes: when you make someone laugh so hard they pee their pants you know you are funny. But what happens when you tell a joke that makes someone laugh so hard they fart in public? Is that more/less funny, and does the gender of the farter matter?

My view is that if you tell a joke that makes a guy laugh so hard he farts, you aren't as funny as you would be if you told a joke that made a girl "holding it in" fart. But isn't that sad, why aren't girls afforded the same farting privileges as men? I am such a fascist.

As it turns out, I made a girl laugh so hard she farted in public last night. Thoughts? Congratulations?

The Status Quo

No clearer indication that things are back to "Normal" than freezing @$$ temperatures outside (1 degree), P upstairs composing a paper that reflects on her educational practices as a "servant leader" (bleh) with candles lit and a quilt wrapped around her waist with Enya or Yanni or some other y-named performer who sold their last name (at Walmart for 3.29 on a rollback special) playing in the background (she is into a new age writing practice that she is now calling, humorously enough, post-process (my dissertation topic)), Bru passed out on the couch, and me click-clacking blogs between studying for my doctoral exams. We did, however, purchase all three seasons of LOST on DVD, which let me say has been the highlight of the week. If you haven't seen it, see it, now, seriously, no, I am not playing, don't make me stick P's Tai Chi moves on you, you heard what happened to Pearl (the yetti).

Not much else. Gonna go to the library, maybe fold some laundry and may organize the closet, but there might not be enough time. . . never enough time.

Ding, Dong, Ditch

There was something eerily suspicious about the fact that all of our bags arrived in Chicago and were the first ones out of the carousel. Then, when we walked outside, our shuttle was waiting for us, took us directly to our car, and we got out of the lot without any difficulty. It looked as though we would arrive home well before ten o'clock . . .

Then the blizzard hit . . .

For nearly three hours, P and I lurked down the interstate at about thirty miles per hour, getting passed by massive trucks, and counting how many cars had swerved off the road. At about twenty-one cars, and ten miles from home, a twelve-foot Yetti jumped onto the interstate, picked up our truck and tossed us into a ditch filled with snow. Pissed at the Yetti for his severe act of aggression, P jumped out of the car (in subzero temperatures) tackled the Yetti and wrestled it into the super-secret Tai Chi sleeper hold she calls the praying Tiger. Meanwhile, I attempted unsuccessfully to remove the truck from the ditch, so we called Triple-A to see what might be done (since the Yetti's feelings were hurt and thus was no longer willing to help us out, let it be known that I just wanted to talk it out with him). As we were on the phone with Triple-A, Joe from Joe's towing offered to help us out for a minor fee and so we said yes, get us out of the ditch. So he did. And we crawled home to safety.

If THESE shenanigans don't provide further evidence that we don't belong here, I don't know what else would. Fortunately, no one was hurt, except of course, the yetti, whose name we came to learn was Pearl.