The new tribe bites so this will be my last blog entry

This whole thing has felt like a big bait and switch. I have not seen one positive comment about the new format and Tribe went ahead and changed it.

I will be keeping my blog on a paid site where you are allowed to say what you want and there are no ads. If you are popular, you end up getting your money back. If you are really popular, you get more than your money back. I don't play the game but it's there if you want to.

blogit.com/Blogs/Affil/?26562

There aren't any discussion boards or photo galleries, just blogs. But that's the part I am interested in. That's why I added people to my friends list, so that I would know when they updated their blogs. Tribe has shortened up that list to the point that I have to click on each friend to see if they have updated their blog. That's too much of a hassle.

I am not going to unsubscribe so that if people are curious about where I am, they'll be able to find me. Hope to see you all there. Let me know if you join up and I'll add your blogs to my favorites list.

I enjoyed Tribe but truly what I enjoyed was the people of tribe. Without you guys, there really is no tribe.

Another look at Wendover

Wendover really does seem to be out in nowhere but it's surprising how much of it is actually seen on TV. Every car commercial that you see where they drive on this big flat expanse is filmed out here.

A lot of films have scenes shot out here as well. Wind, Independence Day, and Con Air come to mind and there have been several others. Anthony Hopkins was out here filming something the week before I moved here. A massage therapist out here, Jo Black, had her picture taken with him.

Land speed records are set out here as well. The salt flats are just that, flat. Flat for car racing. Not actually flat because from one of the hills in Wendover, you can see the curvature of the earth. This year, they were able to create 13 miles of usable flatness for the speed trials. I believe the land speed record stands at about 763 mph.

Tomorrow night, Stardust comet collector will enter the earth's atmosphere over Wendover and land in the desert. I'm hoping the weather holds so that we have a good view of it. My wife and I are going to go out and have a watch.

Yesterday is over

That's how I feel. Yesterday is over. Nothing much more than that. It lasted for 31 hours and it finally ended. I didn't plan on being awake for that long. Rarely do I make plans to be awake that long. 24 hours, yes. 31 hours, no.

And even when I plan my 24 hour days, I still try to sneak in an hour or two of nap.

I would love to post something funny right now but right now, I'm still thinking about going back to bed.

That's the bad thing about deprivation, isn't it? It changes your mindset. People say that fasting helps tune your mind to God, it's a spiritual experience. Fasting makes me hungry and unless your god is a "double Whopper with cheese, supersized and what the hell is for dessert?", I wouldn't call that worship of any kind.

So it goes for sleep. I reach a point where I'm doing what I need to be doing but my mind is calculating how many minutes until I can get to bed and trying to figure out how much time I could sleep if I waited until the last second to wake up.

Okay, if I go to bed right now, and fell asleep instantly, and slept until 6:12, I could get 1 hour and 48 minutes of sleep. I usually do that for about 30 minutes and, worrying that I won't hear the alarm, wake up early so that total sleeping time is cut down to just the 48 minutes.

If I have one word of advice to pass on, it would be this. You can't hurry to go to sleep. It just doesn't work. The more you try to hurry to sleep, the less likely that you will actually sleep.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go have some lunch and rush off to bed.

My son has added a new skill

He is getting proficient with hitting people with a stick.

"That's my boy," was my response to the news that my wife broke to me yesterday. In actuality, I already knew about my son's new addition but last we talked, I thought we were going to keep it between him and me. All you dads out there know the talk I speak of, "Your mom doesn't need to know about this."

We'll have to work on the secret keeping or maybe, once again, it was the language barrier.

I'm sure that people think that I'm odd for how much I speak with my son. My wife thought it was odd at first but she has just gotten used to it. I say things, he says things, I answer and neither of us really has a clue what's being said. Although, through our conversing yesterday in the grocery store, we were able to find the oven bags for the turkey so you can't say that something isn't working out there.

Back to topic, my wife said that she thinks I'm going to raise a violent child. I don't think that just because I showed him the proper way to make a fist the day after he was born means that he's going to be violent (he kept putting his thumb inside his fingers when he made a fist, a sure way to break your own thumb when you hit...IF you hit someone).

I think that my training will give him the ability but not the tendancy.

Today, he started saying, "thank you," when you give him things. So add that to his vocabulary and toward nonviolence training.

So I Was Eating a Pop Tart Today...

My son's vocabulary is increasing. Nothing yet that really sounds like hocking out a good deep loogie but I am still betting that skill comes in handy. He does that sound quite a bit so I'm thinking I'm on to something.

We have Tek, kitty, cheese, uh oh, cheese, 'ey! (at the top of his voice), and I think I heard ball today a couple of times.

I'm waiting for him to pop out a verb so we can start working on a sentance. Not that, "ey, cheese ball! Hxkxxxkxk thplooooh," doesn't have its uses. I can think of dozens of reasons why someone might yell this out.

As soon as I teach it to him though, you know he's going to try it out on his mother. You can just see the picture as she gets home and walks in the house. Her darling little boy looks up from his blocks and yells, "ey cheese ball," and then makes the sound of a good wad of spit.

I'll be on the couch with a, "that's my boy," and a high five. He can high five so we've got that part covered.

Watched Another Movie Tonight

My wife and I decided to watch another movie tonight. I wanted to see Serenity but as luck would have it, the movie wasn't in. I try to rent one video once in a while and the dang thing wasn't even in.

We came home and had dinner and still in the mood for a movie checked what was on ppv. There's no doubt that we haven't seen whatever is playing so it's just a matter of what is on and will we actually want to watch it.

Garbage, looks yucky, probably sucks, sounds stupid and a whole host of other movies were available. We decided to go with Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

I know that I was recently complaining about the fact that there are no new ideas but I was interested to see Depp play the part.

It wasn't bad. We both enjoyed the original better because of Wilder and we liked the ending better in the first one. Depp was fun to watch and there were some funny bits.

Next month, I'll go looking for Serenity again or maybe by then it will be on ppv.

A Brand New Game

My son has started a brand new game in our house. The game is called, "Go To Bed".

Here is how the game is played. My wife gives my son a bath, puts on his pj's, and brushes his teeth. We take him to his bed where I read him a bed time story.

Tonight we read about the destruction of Sodom and Gommorah and about Abraham sending his mistress off into the desert with one of his sons where she thought they were certainly die of thirst. There is nothing like a bit of death and destruction, infidelity, and child abandonment for a great bedtime story.

After the story, my wife and I kiss our son on the head, let him know we love him, and wish him a good night.

All of this is much like setting up the Monopoly board, cards and money to begin the game. Now the game actually begins.

We close the door and step away. The door opens. I say, "Go to bed," and take him back to his bed. I go back out and shut the door and wait for the door to open and then I say, "Go to bed," and take him back to bed.

There is a small variation. Before he really starts to get tired, he will actually run back to his bed and flop on it, half in and half out of the bed. As he gets more tired, he tends to just lay closer to the door, and open the door while laying down.

Quite frankly, he would probably win this game except that my wife and I are a tag-team. So, I'll do it for a while and then, getting worn down, I'll tag her in and go take a break by doing something like writing in my blog. Then she'll tag me in and so on until we win.

There is a definate reason that parents come in two's.

Happy New Year

Another year gone, another year ahead. In the grand scheme of things, it's just another day but I suppose that we tend to look for starts and finishes. Today is a start. A brand new start, some say but the habits of all the yesteryears aren't so easily banished.

How about a resolution? I'm not really one for resolutions because most people tend to make wishes instead of resolutions with no follow through, or no follow through after the first week. Then it's back to the same ole, same ole.

I have decided to make one this year. One that I think I can keep. My resolution is to post to my blog more regularly. Not necessarily every day because my life right now doesn't seem to lend itself well to an "everyday" kind of resolution. 4 to 5 days a week seems do-able to me and if I hit and every day of the week once in a while, it'll be a nice bonus.

I would like to wish you all a Happy New Year.

Give me my Christmas present now!

We bought my son a little bed for Christmas. I mean, a little bed. I didn't know they made beds this small. You buy the frame and put the crib mattress on it.

You see, my son is a climber and we realized that it wouldn't be long before he was leaving his crib on his own. He has conquered many, many things in the house. He has been to the top of Reclineryama and nearly off the back a couple of times. Mount Windowsill has been no challenge and in fact, he's been in a couple of them. The next time I download pics off my camera, I'll show you one.

Don't tell my wife.

For the most part, we are on the same page about how to raise our young alpinist. On things like balancing on top of a ball, that was placed on a Tonka truck, that's resting on several stacks of multi-colored blocks, which were put on a chair, so that he can reach the knife set, we differ. She thinks that he should be immediately removed from the danger. I, on the other hand, think that a picture should be taken first.

"Hang on son, forgot to charge the battery!"

He's been on the table, on the counter, on the dog, and shows no sign of this being a quick little phase. Getting out of the crib was inevitable and we just hoped he would wait until Christmas.

You know I wouldn't be writing this if such a thing had happened. I'm lying in bed the other night and I hear the thud. Sure enough, out my son comes. Thinking that this is a possible fluke, I put him back. Maybe he somehow managed to get all the planets in alignment for just that moment. Kids are like that sometimes. They'll do something and you won't see it again for weeks. Not this time. He was screaming about how pissed he was to be going to bed and then thunk. Mind you, it's two hours past his normal bed time so he really had nothing to that mad about.

We take his mattress out and put it in on the floor. Time to start the new training and keep himself from eventually hurting himself. I put him in his new make-shift bed and close the door. He is still so angry that he's making all kinds of rabid animal sounds.

Thank goodness he hasn't figured out how to get enough leverage on a doorknob yet to actually get it open.

Never let it be said that God does not have a sense of humor.

The doorknob rattled a bit and click, the door opened. Perhaps a fluke. Yes, I am a little slow but I prefer to call it "hopeful".

I put him back and close the door. Sure enough, he opens it.

I'm a man and a problem solver. That means that I have access to Home Depot supplies and I'm not afraid to use them.

A little bit of duct tape and whammo, problem solved.

My contribution to my son's vocabulary

About a month ago, I came home from work and my wife said, "Watch this!"

She proceeded to fake a sneeze, to which my son echoed it back.

"I taught him how to pretend to sneeze," she said.

Usually, I'm pretty quick with a response but this one left me a little off guard. Lots of thoughts ran through my head and I couldn't figure out which one was the best one to vocalize. First thought, "Great" said with all my practiced sarcasm.

Sidenote: In our marital fight rules, sarcasm from me has been banned because of my so-called aptitude in said skill. This has resulted in many "don't you have anything to say?" comments because many times, all I have to say is sarcastic.

On with the story.

Next thought. What a wonderfully useless skill to teach our 18 month old son. Unless of course he goes into acting and manages to get a part in a cold medicine commercial, in which case, I will have to say, at that time, how profoundly intuitive the training was and, depending on the size of the check, how thankful I am that my son knew how to fake a sneeze at such a young age.

What if that led into something bigger. I can just see my son at the podium, naked gold man in hand.

"I'd like to thank the God, MTV, the academy, and all my fans for making this possible. Most of all, I would like to thank my mother for teaching me to fake sneeze when I was a toddler. Thank you all and God bless." <screaming applause>

A month later and an odd thing has occurred. My son, who as faithful readers know, has for the most part boycotted the English language. Other than the dog's name, Tek, and the ever so useful "uh-oh", speaks only in baby talk which somehow resembles Klingon to the point that I'm not really positive that he isn't speaking via communicator to some bird-of-prey orbiting our planet cloaked. This would also make me wonder more about the ridges on his forehead and the possibility that maybe I'm not the biological father.

Anyway, it's a month later and my son suddenly has added two more words to his vocabulary. "Ouch" and "shoes" are now said on a regular basis. Interesting. Ouch-shoe.

Hmmmmm. This makes me think. Not about apologizing to my wife for all those thoughts about the uselessness of teaching a fake sneeze. I am a man after all.

So we're driving back from Salt Lake City one day and I decide to implement my own plan about 40 miles out.

I teach my son how to fake the sound of hocking a loogie. For 40 miles, we practice this. Everytime my wife tells me to stop, my son does it for me. This, of course, makes me laugh and also makes me mimic it back to him. She tells me it's disgusting, my son does it again, I parrot it back to him. 40 miles.

Nearing home, I tell my wife that her fake sneeze has produced two new words in a kid that refuses to talk. I tell her that this new game may also produce a word or two.

She says, "Yeah, for all those words that start with the sound kxckxxk thploooooh."

I laughed so hard that I was crying.