Ah! C****! I had something important to say,

but I just had to go run and fish the toddler out of the toilet. Of course, my contribution was laughter. Next time remind me to grab the camera.

She forgot to ask someone to put the baby seat on the potty.

Traumatized for life, I'm sure.

I'll just put this here.

You Have a Phlegmatic Temperament

Mild mannered and laid back, you take life at a slow pace. You are very consistent - both in emotions and actions. You tend to absorb set backs easily. You are cool and collected. It is difficult to offend you. You can remain composed and unemotional. You are a great friend and lover. You don't demand much of others. While you are quiet, you have a subtle wit that your friends know well. At your worst, you are lazy and unwilling to work at anything. You often get stuck in a rut, without aspirations or dreams. You can get too dependent on others, setting yourself up for abandonment.

What Temperment Are You?

I took this test twice. I swear I gave the same answers both times, but I got Melancholic the first time. I like that one better.

Thanks, Blue.

Oh yeah! Compare my calves to previous pix.

In Which I Earn My Title

Here's some free advice I got in the Pathway to Prosperity eCourse [don't forget the link, Al]:

When we contemplate the fact that the universe is abounding in all good things, material as well as spiritual, and compare it with man's blind eagerness to secure a few gold coins, or a few acres of dirt, it is then that we realize how dark and ignorant selfishness is; it is then that we know that self-seeking is self-destruction.

Nature gives all, without reservation, and loses nothing; man, grasping all, loses everything.

Yeah, so we can all just lie down on the lawn and let nature take its course.

Look, I don't need to be inspired to sit around mooning all day. I'm way too given to that already. More than anybody I know! [Except my sister, she's worse than me.] I need to be convinced that it's worth my while to get off my damn duff and do some damn work!

I already know the pathway to internal peace, I found that decades ago: climb a tree in the woods and listen to the birds sing. First rule of Peace is "shut up."

Now, let me deal with the strawman, "man's blind eagerness to secure a few gold coins, or a few acres of dirt."

A few acres of dirt? How about a few acres of wheat, or strawberries, flowers or apple trees? Human eyes see the prize. Dirt is more than just dirt. And so is money more than dirt.

I forget who said it, but someone advised a young man, many years ago, to strive to be a millionaire, not just for the sake of aquiring money, but for the virtues it would teach him. Let me try to list them: patience, persuasion, cooperation, prudence in saving and investing, judging character in potential partners. Hard work. Honesty.

Even Mafia dons exercise these virtues more than their opposite vices. If they didn't they would be ousted (and/or killed) and replaced.

Butterflies, Birds, Flowers, Rainbows and Hot-Air Balloons

My top five favorite things to look at. The order varies moment to moment.

Butterflies
Birds
Flowers
Rainbows
Hot-Air Balloons

I also like knots (oddly enough, they don't teach you how to tie a net, which is what I was looking for).

I'm also "right partial" to babies and good-lookin' women, but those go without saying. Try not to treat the latter like the former. Full grown (and even half-grown) women don't let just anyone check their diapers, for instance.

WOW!! Look at this!!

Treasure Island was my favorite book when I was a young teen. I've said that my youth was spent in a tree (one tree or other, mostly either a white pine or an oak) out in the woods. The fact is, I brought along with me the fabulous adventure stories of Robert Louis Stevenson and Mark Twain.

Although, I have to admit, I've never gotten beyond my beloved Treasure Island, as far as Stevenson is concerned. When I think about it, I have trouble believing that anything else matters. We own Kidknapped, but I haven't read it.

AM1500 just got the Twins for next year. Dave Thompson is talking about his favorite Twins memories.

I have to agree with him... Hell, I'm happy to announce that he agrees with me, that Jack Morris' performance in the 7th game of the '91 World Series is the greatest sports performance that I will ever witness.

God bless Jack Morris!

Guess who said, "What the Hell! It's only a game!" Hint: that's in reference to the aformentioned Game 7. He emphasized and repeated it because the reporters didn't seem to get it, but I agree with him that it was funny.

An Interesting Insight from ETR

How is it possible that billionaires have the best employees, contracts that favor their companies, and business strategies that bring them tangible financial benefits year after year? The answer is simple: They see more in people, contracts, and the various business strategies that are offered them throughout their careers.

I don't think I should quote overmuch from Early to Rise, since they charge for their services [Maybe not. They seem to have gone FREE on me since I subscribed. Hopefully they'll renew me at that rate, but I don't regret having paid for what I got.], but this goes well with a point made the other day in a letter to another contributor:

From a letter written to Bill Bonner at The Daily Reckoning...

"I'd like to share a grammar school lesson I got in the fifth or sixth grade of Catholic elementary school. Bear in mind that this was the fifties, and the boys were taught by the Christian Brothers. These guys were tough. Many of them, if not all, were WWII or Korean War vets. And, they had answers for most tough questions. They also were pretty blunt. And, not a lot of patience for distinctions that did not make a difference. Strangely, they took a pretty strong position on [the subject of equality].

"Jefferson wrote 'all men are created equal.' To these battle-hardened vets, there was nothing 'wrong' about this assertion. Quizzically, they would say, 'All men ARE created equal. But, all men are NOT born equal.'

Whoops! I got my dates backwards. This one is from today, the first quote is from 7/22/06.

They also have a nice quote by Ben Franklin:

The Quotable Mr. Franklin: On Doomsdayers ...

"I saw in the public papers of different states frequent complaints of hard times, deadness of trade, scarcity of money, &c. It is always in the power of a small number to make a great clamour. But let us take a cool view of the general state of our affairs, and perhaps the prospect will appear less gloomy than has been imagined."

(Source: The Compleated Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin, compiled and edited by Mark Skousen)

I'm a big fan of Skousen as well as Franklin.

My Favorite Poem

I suppose it's neither a very bourgeois nor philistinish to post on such a topic, but I'm in the mood, and those who know me will understand its meaning to me:

"Terence, this is stupid stuff:
You eat your victuals fast enough;
There can't be much amiss, 'tis clear,
To see the rate you drink your beer.
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make,
It gives a chap the belly-ache.
The cow, the old cow, she is dead;
It sleeps well, the horned head:
We poor lads, 'tis our turn now
To hear such tunes as killed the cow.
Pretty friendship 'tis to rhyme
Your friends to death before their time
Moping melancholy mad:
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad."

Why, if 'tis dancing you would be
There's brisker pipes than poetry.
Say, for what were hop-yards meant,
Or why was Burton built on Trent?
Oh, many a peer of England brews
Livelier liquor than the Muse,
And malt does more than Milton can
To justify God's ways to man.
Ale, man, ale's the stuff to drink
For fellows whom it hurts to think:
Look into the pewter pot
To see the world as the world's not.
And faith, 'tis pleasant till 'tis past:
The mischief is that 'twill not last.
Oh I have been to Ludlow fair
And left my necktie god knows where,
And carried half-way home, or near,
Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:
Then the world seemed none so bad,
And I myself a sterling lad;
And down in lovely muck I've lain,
Happy till I woke again.
Then I saw the morning sky:
Heigho, the tale was all a lie;
The world, it was the old world yet,
I was I, my things were wet,
And nothing now remained to do
But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still
Much good, but much less good than ill,
And while the sun and moon endure
Luck's a chance, but trouble's sure,
I'd face it as a wise man would,
And train for ill and not for good.
'Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale
Is not so brisk a brew as ale:
Out of a stem that scored the hand
I wrung it in a weary land.
But take it: if the smack is sour,
The better for the embittered hour;
It should do good to heart and head
When your soul is in my soul's stead;
And I will friend you, if I may,
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East:
There, when kings will sit to feast,
They get their fill before they think
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink.
He gathered all that springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.
They put arsenic in his meat
And stared aghast to watch him eat;
They poured strychnine in his cup
And shook to see him drink it up:
They shook, they stared as white's their shirt:
Them it was their poison hurt
- I tell the tale that I heard told.
Mithridates, he died old.

-- A. E. Housman

I got it here, where you can read some commentary on the background and imagery.

Aw! It's kid-pix! Dagnabbit!

But she's so cute!



Do you still doubt it?



But she's one of those damn Canada lovers!



You know my answer.



I gotta teach her real American values!

My Father-in-law gave me a power mower.

My lawn was out of control. It's possible to keep control of a lawn with a reel-mower, but not if it rains for a week in the Spring. Once the grass goes to seed, it's pretty much impossible to get a reel-mower to cut it.

God bless my Father-in-law!

It's a 1971 Briggs and Stratton motor on a True Value body. I got out of the power-mowing racket because I couldn't work on my last one. The manual said that I should send it back to the manufacturer for the problem it had. BS!! It would cost as much as I paid for the mower to ship it back to them, let alone the the cost of the repair!

I brought that thing home and cut everything on my land down to two inches high. Now, if I feel like it, I can pull out the the reel-mower and keep up with the growth, but it took the 1971 gas mower to make that possible.

Learn some German via the Lord's Prayer. Pentacost is coming up.

Or "das Vaterunser" as they call it. [The Father-our; pronounce it doss Fotter-oonzer. Throw those "r"s back into your uvula and try to roll them there. If you can't, don't worry about it, most Germans can't either. I was taught to do it by a Danish girl named Merete.

My pronunciations are based on the simplest, standard (Midwestern-) American English rules.]

Matthäus 6:9-13:
Ma-TAY-oos
Matthew

9. Unser Vater im Himmel!
Oonzer Fotter im Himmel
Our Father in [-the] Heaven

Dein Name werde geheiligt.
dine nomma vair-da ge-HILE-igt
your name be hallowed

10. Dein Reich komme.
dine rysh (long 'i') coma
your kingdom (empire) come

Dein Wille geschehe
dine villa ge-shay-a
your Will happen

wie im Himmel so auf Erden.
vee im himmel zo ouf AIR-den
as in heaven so on earth

11. Unser tägliches Brot gib uns heute.
Oon-zer TAYG-lish-ess brote gip oonce hoy-ta
Our daily bread give us today

12. Und vergib uns unsere Schuld,
Oont fair-Gip oonce oonz-er-a shoolt
and forgive us our debt [yes, just one]

wie auch wir vergeben unsern Schuldigern.
vee oukh veer fair-GAY-ben OONzern SHOOL-dig-ern
as also we forgive our debters

13. Und führe uns nicht in Versuchung,
Oont fyoor-a [merge the 'yuh' and 'oo' sounds completely; actually, "furra" wouldn't be the worst butchering of that word I ever heard] oonce neesht in fair-ZOOKH-oong
and lead us not into temptation

sondern erlöse uns von dem Bösen.
Zone-dern air-LERZ-a [make that "ER" in there sound Valley-Girlish, not Bostonian] oonce fun dame BERZ-en
but redeem us from the evil [or evil one]

Denn Dein ist das Reich und die Kraft
den dine isst doss rysh oont dee kroft
because yours is the kingdom and the power

und die Herrlichkeit in Ewigkeit. Amen
oont dee HAIR-lish-kite in AY-vig-kite. Ah-men.
and the glory in eternity. Amen.

At my church we celebrate Pentacost by reciting The Lord's Prayer in any other language we happen to know, all at once. They print up a sheet with about 20 different ones.

Running stuff

Hey! The City [Duh! But just try to navigate their frickin' website. Here's the Google search I did to find this: "'brooklyn center' walking path map"] has the distances for my run to and around Palmer Lake:

Community Center to Palmer Lake
1.0 mile

Palmer Lake Loop
3.1 miles

So that's 5.1 Miles right there. Now I just have to figure out how far it is from my house to the Commity Center. I figure it's close enough to just call it a mile.

MapMyRun.com says it's 1.1 miles, so I ran a full 10K in an hour.

Now all I have to do is multiply that by 4.

Since this is where I come to express my... Well, my bourgeois philistinism

Jim Daniels is offering a special report on how to set up your own internet business, including a website. If you click on the golden key, the report is free.

Notes on The Revolution and other events in American History worth celebrating.

Thanks for this link Kyle.

The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first battles of the American Revolutionary War. They were fought on April 19, 1775 in Middlesex County, Province of Massachusetts Bay within the towns of Lexington, Concord, Lincoln, Menotomy (Arlington), and Cambridge, near Boston. The battles marked the outbreak of open armed conflict between Great Britain and its thirteen colonies in the mainland of British North America.

The Boston Tea Party would be a good one to celebrate. "The incident, which took place on Thursday, December 16, 1773, has been seen as helping to spark the American Revolution."

The Day King James II abdicated in 1688. Wikipedia: "...on the 28th [of December] William accepted the responsibilities of government." "On February 13, 1689, Mary II and William III jointly acceded to the throne of England."

I've mentioned Constitution Day "It took effect on March 4, 1789 and has served as a model for the constitutions of numerous other nations."

Whoops, I need to make a change at the store.

The Bill of Rights should be mentioned. "These amendments came into effect on December 15, 1791, when ratified by three-fourths of the States."

VE Day - May 8.

I don't need to commemorate No Pants Day.

I jogged on Saturday.

15 minutes was what I planned. We had company over for the weekend.

I put my shoes on in front of my father-in-law, answering questions about practical household matters as I did so.

I may not have answered his last question or comment as I headed out the door.

I started my run at 8:32. I reached the Civic Center at 8:41 and the foot of the 694 foot-bridge at 8:42. That was half-way to where I figured to turn around, as I figured it at that point.

"But this is where it just starts to get pretty!" said the devil on my shoulder.

He was right!

When I got to Palmer Lake, I took a right. I knew I was making a commitment to run all that way around it. But I said to myself, "Almost 18 minutes. Halfway there!" I had changed my mind from a 20 minute run [oh, yeah! I originally planned a 15 minute run! What happened to that? ...Um. I don't know.] to a 35 minute run. I read somewhere that 35 minutes is the magic training number.

Well, I tell you something about magic training numbers. Somewhere between 18 and 25 minutes, my breathing and stride fell into a rhythm and the next c. 40 minutes were very easy.

A jogger is never forced to say, "I have to get up this hill fast!" or "I have to be the fastest here!"

Saturday, I learned I have it in me to achieve this goal.

Now, I have to DO it.

The kids are having a battle on the spare bed

with a dead exercise ball. I'm gettin' the crap kicked out of me here, and I'm just a bystander trying to blog.

There are a number of products that I actually believe in: Viadent toothpaste, Zim's Crack Cream, any kind of Vitamin E, CoQ 10, liquid minerals, garlic cloves, Listerine, Aveeno, fish liver oil...

But, exercise balls arent't among them. We have two and one's dead flat and one's mostly flat.

Maybe [note the spelling of that word, Ron] they're not designed for truly fat people who have young children.

Naturally, since the Weatherman predicted scattered showers

and thunderstorms, it's been simply raining cats and dogs all day. If these are scattered, they must be huge.

I can't hear any rain on the glass spires of the roof of the atrium because there are too many jovial people greeting and joking and laughing out there.

We're expecting In-laws tonight. The house is a mess. Somebody I know keeps saying that if I'll get the children out of her way, she'll clean up. I think her method is to sit in her chair and brood about how she never gets any help. Then she does laundry until her aches and pains drive her into bed. I don't know how we produce that much laundry, but we do. We always have clean clothes to wear anyway.

I play with the kids until story time, get them ready for bed and put them there. Neither of them ever gives us any trouble about bed-time.

Then, I suppose, Somebody expects me to start house-cleaning, but there's no way I'm going to begin any physical work after nine. OK, I'll fold a basket or two of laundry if you ask me to, or make a bed so we can get in it...

Oh, whine, whine, whine...

Did I mention that it's raining?

Steve reminded me of something.

We had a few difficulties of our own at easter. And I've got pictures.

Who's the first to show up when the camera comes out?


Easter Ham!


So we finally get the whole family together and what do I get?


To be fair, neither The Accountant nor I have any idea how that last picture came about, but it was too effin' hilarious not to post. Of course, the kids, who are obviously hanging their heads in shame (or embarassment for us), might have a different story (that they're not telling us).

Couldn't have had a nicer early spring day!

We went out to Wagner's Drive In for dinner this evening. The wife and I had Double California Burgers and a family-size order of onion rings. She had a chocolate malt and I had a blueberry shake. The kids had identical orders of hamburgers with Rootbeer Floats. And, of course, they shared the rings.

There were several classic cars, and a couple of those kit pseudo-classic hot-rods (that are still pretty cool), there--a black and cream '54 Chevy and purple '49 Ford...some kinda souped-up Willys (I didn't get over to that one).

Then we popped into Walmart & bought grilling supplies for the month. We do charcoal on a Weber Kettle. I have no idea why anyone would spend a thousand dollars on a gas grill. The best tasting thing I ever ate was Johnsonville Brats grilled on a Weber.

Might be why I married the wife, come to think of it.

I'll be darned!

"Canadian diamonds are the best quality diamonds in the world… even better than African diamonds."

Peter was referring to the physical characteristics of the diamond. But he also mentioned that buyers prefer Canadian diamonds for another reason: they don't want to support civil war in Africa and will pay a premium for a clear conscience.

I didn't know they had any.

I've been saying, since my first daughter was born, that I'm movin' to Northern Saskatchewan. Now I find that there's money to be made there.

I should run up there this summer and ask 'em if they've got some hard work they need help with for a week. While the wife and kids check out the local Mennonite, Hutterite and/or Amish communities to see if they have room for another family.