Happy Mothers Day!

To all the mothers in my life, a heartfelt thank you for all you do. This is meant for everyone but is especially aimed at Tutu, who did such a great job with me, and Franny, who is proving to be every bit as good with my own kid.

Franny and I (and the Mizz of course) spent the morning hanging out with a very expectant 2nd time mother friend of ours. She's officially due in three weeks, but she was pretty early last time and is pretty much ready to be done now.

Franny got the obligatory flowers, but they came in the form of a boatload of seeds to expand our garden. She also got some tomato seeds and a large planter to grow them in. These are definitely for her. I prefer my tomatoes in the pizza sauce or ketchup forms. This evening I got to add the elbow grease to the present and get to work tearing up our yard. I always forget the poor quality of our soil based on the number of rocks in it. Franny and the Mizz helped load rocks into a bucket. The Mizz occasionally decided it was much more fun to take the rocks back out of the bucket and drop them over the fence onto the sidewalk, and Franny got some exercise running around the fence a bunch of times to retrieve them. Right now we just have some bare dirt with at least the big rocks removed. Now we just have to wait a little while for something to start growing. We're hoping for flowers, but based on my track record, I'm thinking weeds. We'll see what happens.

We also got another tidbit of good Mothers Day tidings. Marketing Mommy's sister Eleanor just had her first today. In an odd bit of irony, she's currently living in Australia, so I'm not sure a) whether Mother's Day is celebrated down under, or b) due to the dateline, exactly which "today" it even was. But congratulations anyway, and we'll give you credit for good timing.

Where have I been?

I've been out of touch for a few days. Not long after I posted that last video, I found out that my great aunt had passed away. I spent a couple days moping around a bit. It wasn't a sudden thing, but it was still unpleasant. I'm going down to Colorado in a couple days for the funeral. :(

I have been doing a few things in the meantime though...

Franny and I watched Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. I didn't have too high an expectation for this film, but I was still disappointed. What a bore. There were a couple of funny moments (the "interview" with Alan Keyes comes to mind), but for the most part we just sat there waiting for something funny to happen. This movie was billed as using a boorish character to bring out the worst traits in people. What could have been a clever way to expose prejudices and hypocrisy mostly just degenerated into poop jokes. I imagined more. He did have a good time poking fun at antisemitism though. The actor is Jewish (In fact, his "Khazak" dialogue is actually Hebrew.), and had a field day bringing out the most outrageous stereotypes. "One of them had taken the form of an old woman. You could barely see her horns." Mainly though, the movie just wasn't worth the effort.

Since I worked two straight weeks in Idaho, I took a couple days off this week. I accompanied Franny to the rhododendron garden on what turned out to be a meeting of her moms' group. It was exactly what I always expected. It took almost five minutes to get down to discussing the latest birth story and nipple pain. Apparently I can't be disturbed anymore. Joys of parenting. Actually, Mizz and I had a good time wandering around chasing geese and ducks and identifying every tree, rock, and pine cone. I also got the job of steering him through the goose-poop minefield. The rhoddies were nice too.

Franny showed me an interesting article. It claims that Jews as a group are demonstrably smarter than average, and attempts to explain why. Um.....nuh uh. (Mizz will be at least half smart anyway.)

Alma had this great video on her blog. I liked it mainly because I see too many of these shows when I'm travelling. There's Pimp My Ride (the MTV original), Overhaulin' (a similar show with a joke's-on-you twist), and something on CMT where they do the same thing to semi rigs. Anyway, this video does a pretty good parody of the characters that seem to be represented in all of them.



(I just realized; I should really expand my blog reading beyond my wife, her friend, and occasionally her friend's husband. From what I hear, there's a lot of stuff out there on the internets.)

Working at home isn't as interesting as travelling, since I see this stuff a lot. I did get to take a new route through the Columbia Gorge yesterday though, since they have closed an exit I really need for a few months. Something about the bridge cracking and starting to slide down the hillside. Anyway, the detour took me along the old road that FDR christened the Columbia Highway long before the interstate bypassed most of it. I had no idea how many falls there were right near the road; more remnants of the Missoula floods, I suppose. Now I have to go back sometime when I have the time to take the family and stop and see things.

Here's one for Marketing Mommy

I just thought of Alma when I saw this cool ad-related video.



There should definitely be more skateboarders on walls.