Funmurphys: the Blog

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas!

Why have a merry Christmas? God loves you. No matter what, God loves you.

Merry Christmas!

Lecture Vs. Conversation

I hate to tell Steve, but newspapers don't control the national conversation anymore - they're still stuck in national lecture mode. At this point, they just hope to remain a part of the national conversation.

The Phone Bill Is Here, The Phone Bill Is Here!

I suppose most people first look at the amount they owe when they get their cell phone bill. Not The Murphy Family. We look at the minute usage first thing. And why not, the amount hardly changes. This month we were even more keenly interested because there was a new entrant. In the early days of our cell phones, there were only two - one for me, and one for the funWife. The results were predictable - she always had 10x the minutes used I did. The reason was simple - I only used it to take calls from her. She used it to make calls to everybody. That and I'm a man of few words (at least when I speak them, not write them).

But then we got one for the female Fruit of the Murphy Loins, and the two women vied for first place. I would have thought that a teenager would beat a, well, not a teenager anymore, in the talking on the phone derby, but the fFotML isn't a big phone talker. It could be that in that regard she didn't fall from my tree, or it could be that other options like IM and more recently Facebook allowed her to communicate with her friends in a way other than talking on the phone (I'm not even going to mention texting, and yes, we have a special texting rate fee just because of her).

Then my numbers came up when I started to actually call people with my phone. OK, not really people, just the funWife, and I did so on special occasions like when I was dispatched to the store and couldn't remember what she wanted. I quickly learned to call and instead of admitting the real reason, I'd ask if there was something else she wanted in the hopes that what she told me already would come up:

ME: "Is there something else you wanted from the store?"
Her: "As long as you're in the baking aisle pickup up an 8 oz bag of chocolate chips, why not stroll over to the diary section and pick up some yoghurt because you ate the last one."

ME: OK, I'm looking at the green beans in 8 oz cans, and they have all natural, low sodium, with bacon, with onions, cajun, with potatos, and lite. Which one do you want?"
HER: "Just buy plain"

But when we added my father to the mix, we got a real surprise. When we went to open bill, we figured "how many minutes can an old man use?" We expected that he might beat me the first bill just because he'd be calling for novelties sake. Well, he was numero uno - he beat the gals hands down. We just had to know. It wasn't like we were close to our minutes, but how was he averaging 10 minutes a day on his phone? As it turns out, my parents were using it like an intercom. Kind of like the communicators with the original Star Trek cast, only younger. And then lots of months he would inadvertanly use some odd service - texting, email, ringtones. He had a blast with that phone without even realizing it.

So now the male Fruit of the Murphy Loins has the phone (my mother's arthritis doesn't allow her to use the phone). So yesterday we got the first bill. Let me just say my son talks on the phone like me, only less so because (1) fewer people call him, and (2) he doesn't have a brother in California. The only call I could think of was when he was coming back from the Truman Library to let us know to pick him up. I didn't think he'd even break the 2 digit barrier on minutes. Ha, shows you how much I know, he was in contention for numero uno. I was in such shock, he might have even BEEN numero uno. Once I recover, that boy and I have to talk.

Face to face, I don't want to run up his minutes.

Murphy Family Sayings

A Simple Proposal

I have not paid close attention to the Presidential race so far. It's far too early. However, I know the general outlines of what people will complain about - too much money will be spent, the campaign will go on far too long, too many people will be bothered by pollsters and candidates alike, and too many states will bypassed because they "aren't in play". I have a rather simple solution. I propose that in return for a small renumeration from all the other states, but large enough to eliminate our income tax, presidential elections be held in Missouri alone. We are the Bellwether State after all -- Missouri has voted for the winner of every Presidential race in every election of the past century except one (1956). And in the last half-century, not only have we picked the winner, we were amazingly close to the popular vote.

Think of all the advantages - far less money spent, a much shorter election, nobody outside Missouri disturbed by either the candidates or the media, and nobody has to feel like they've been unfairly ignored by the candidates (ignored yes, unfairly, no). All this and the same outcomes! What's not to like about it?

We Dodged An Icecicle

It's the Most Busiest Time Of The Year, and the Murphy Family is no different. We've been fortunate here in St. Louis to have missed the worst of the ice and instead just suffered from ceasless overcast and light rain for the past week. A couple of days I went to work with no ice on the trees in my neighboorhood but ice on the trees where I work - that's how close to the edge we were on temperature. Normally we talk about how changable the weather is here, but lately its been all too steady.