Funmurphys: the Blog

Men and Women, Scene 537

So we parents are standing around the buses getting ready to take our kids off to the Tetons last weekend. My son graciously came up to me early, said "Let's get this over with now", and gave me a big hug. His friend had done the same to his mother, and then they got into a contest over what parents they could lift. Boys. So after they trooped on the bus, and then back off to get their picture taken, and then back on, the parents were talking. The moms were all worried - did I pack everything, what did I forget, I hope they don't get cold, how are they going to handle the snow, what will they do on the long bus ride, did I pack enough snacks, fret fret fret. The dads were all envious - what a great trip, wish I was going, what a great time they are going to have. Ah, the division of labor - someone to worry, someone to enjoy.

Scenes From A Marriage

Breakfast table 6:45 AM

Her: Oooh, what a beutiful pink sunrise!

Me: Red sky at morning, sailor take warning.

Long Pause

Me: But it sure is pretty.

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.

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.

Veterans Day Remembrance

My father never made a big deal about his service in WWII. He graduated in 1942 1/2 (apparently in the old days they had half years before inflation made them worthless), spent six months working at Ludwig Aeolian, which had switched from making pianos to making gliders for the war, until he could join up. When working with power tools he was known to bring up his coworkers at Ludwig who were missing fingers or parts thereof. There wasn't any question he was going into the armed forces, the only question was which one. He claimed he pictured himself walking all the way across Europe if he joined the Army, so he joined the Navy instead.

The other day my wife came across the letters he wrote and received during the war. My mother swooped on them, and then threw them out when she realized he didn't even know her when they were written. So my wife rescued from the trash and we started reading them last night. He did his basic training as a member of Company 683-43 at the Farragut training center in Idaho, which I didn't know before I read the letters.

MY FATHER'S FIRST LETTER HOME AFTER JOINING THE NAVY

At boot camp recruits were asked to choose three specialties, so my father chose quartermaster because he figured he'd have a chance to wheel and deal, gunnery because he figured if the other guy was trying to kill him he ought to at least get a chance to fire back, and electrician because that way he'd at least learn a civilian skill. So of course the navy made him a signalman and off the signalman school in San Diego he went.

As that school was finishing up, he had to choose what branch to go into. The first people to come in were trying to recruit for landing craft. He watched movies of the boats driving to shore with the coxwain behind a metal enclosure looking out a slit and the signalman unprotected next to him and then the signalman standing on the beach communicating with the ships offshore. He didn't think that was for him. The submarine people came in without any films, just that you got 1.8 base pay and 2 weeks leave for signing up. That sounded good to him, so he volunteered for submarines. He was ticked when he discovered that the 2 weeks leave would be taken off the back end of his enlistment, not immediate.

He was assigned to the S-45 which finished out the war training surface ships in ASW in the Admiralty Islands. Instead of depth charges, the ships would use hand grenades, and about the only excitement he had on the sub was when a grenade when off on the main induction hatch and seawater poured in. He told me just this year that on the way out or back they stopped off at Guadalcanal and while there a classmate working ashore asked him to go on a patrol. My father asked if they ever ran into any Japanese and was reassured when the answer was no, so he went. He was issued a rifle and they split into four columns and set off into the jungle. After an hour or so of trudging along, somebody opened fire on them without causing any casualties. After hunkering down and checking on the other columns, the leader had them all return to base.

I was surprised by the letters I've read so far - no real mention of the war beyond general terms, one mention to burn a letter because of the information in it. Mostly he followed the same interests then he had when I was around - classical music, model railroading, gardening, smoking. He wrote in late 1944 urging his younger brother not to enlist but stay in college since the war would be over before he would be in it.

Then it was back to San Diego, and when the war ended, San Francisco. The S-45 was decommissioned and he moved on to a fleet boat until he was discharged. I always got the impression that he enjoyed, or at least didn't mind the wartime Navy, but he made it clear he hated the peacetime Navy. There were way to many pointless regulations, like having to be in dress whites to draw from stores on the tender. No doubt there was a certain amount of feeling that now that the war was over he wanted to get on with his life, and being in the Navy wasn't part of it.

My father did what his generation did - they went off to war. Most had mundane jobs and saw little or no "action". Some never came back. But by and large they did what was asked of them, whether it was a little or a lot. And when they got home, they didn't talk about it, except amongst themselves.

So to all of you who served, no matter how much was asked of you, thanks. And most especially to you, Pop.

Life Insurance

I'm not one to bemoan insurance companies, only in part because the funWife is an insurance claims adjuster.

However

Yesterday I had my mother call back the two life insurance companies my father had policies with after over a week went by without the paperwork they said they'd send to process the claim. Both can pull up on their computer screens all the details with just a name and social security number; both say it takes 2 weeks (or more!) for the paperwork to arrive. Look, I have talked to old folks homes one day and had their brochures in hand the next via the US mail. The only thing that takes these companies two weeks to send the paperwork just so we can send it back with a death certificate is greed - they want to hold onto the money as long as they can.

I'm wondering if it takes 2 weeks to mail a letter, how long will it take to actually pay?

Salespeople

So I'm calling around looking for an independent or assisted living place for my mother, and the marketing department lady from one of them stops me as I start my shpiel and says

"I have two questions that are really important when it comes to finding your mother the right place for her to live"

"OK, what are they?"

"What is your name?"

"Kevin Murphy"

'What is your phone number?"

Oh yeah, those were a couple of penetrating questions that really cut to the heart of where my mother should live.

Salespeople.

Deaths In The Family

The blog has been quiet, but life hasn't been. My father passed away Oct 23 and my mother-in-law passed away Oct 26. My father died at home of a heart attack, and my wife and I were there. My mother-in-law passed away after suffering from Alzheimer's for years. We are all in God's hands.

Let's Go Crazy

Speaking of Apple, I too noticed a slow down in the iTunes store on Christmas morning when the Fruit of the Murphy Loins were trying to load up their new gifts.

Speaking of layers of editors etc. , I just had to laugh at this line:

That extravagant spending may not last forever: one analyst said that while Apple now has about 75 percent of the market for downloaded music, it could see as much as 5 percent of market share go elsewhere in 2007 because of increased competition.

Parenting Tip

There comes a time when your children get older and your old standby control methods don't work. Does a time out work on anyone past the age of ten? You might be inclined to panic, but let me tell you the technique I'm about to describe has far more effect on adolescents than any technique used at an earlier age. And it has the added bonus effect that it is even more effective in public, thus restoring the balance of power lost when your little darling figured out that they could push your buttons and you coudn't do anything about it without disapproving stares, leaving the store, or worse, a reference to child welfare. And the best part is, you'll actually enjoy discipline again!

So what is this technique? PDA, or as you'll soon discover, the threat of it. Yes, tell your adolescent if they keep that offensive behavior up, they are going to get a hug from mommy or daddy (don't forget, actually use the words mommy or daddy as the case may be just for the shock effect of the words), and for really bad behavior, a hug and a kiss. When in public, this has spectacular results. You will never have to give more than one hug, and that only in the case of the most hardened adolescent. An alternative is to threaten to loudly and publically call them by that pet name you have for them (if you don't have such a name, it's never to late to start one).

You may be thinking, how does this work in private? That's easy, just threaten to call all their friends and tell them how much you love them. In extreme cases, you may also be forced to threatened to send pictures of your little darling as a baby or small child -- I'm sure you have all kinds of pictures of them dressed up in extremely embarrassing clothes or doing extremely embarrassing things - a simple rule of thumb is the cuter you think the picture is, the more your child is embarrassed by it.

So for those of you parents at your wits end with how to keep control of bored kids during long shopping expeditions, remember that PDA is your friend. And it can even work for you parents (and I don't think you don't know who you are) who love to make empty threats over and over - at last here's a threat you might actually carry out! Good luck, and remember, one day they just might provide you with grandchildren, so don't alienate them now any more than you have to.

Funmurphys Meets You Tube

We got a new computer (another iMac), and the Fruit of the Murphy Loins found Photo Booth first thing. Then it was on to iMovie HD so we made a movie. Not a good one, it's a bit silly. OK, it's far too silly, but it's my only movie, so here it is.

That's 2 minutes of your life you won't get back.

Vacation Almost Collides With Terror Plot

I just returned from Europe yesterday, so thank you, Great Britain. We sure picked the right day to return home -- only turbulence to contend with.

The Murphy family spent a couple of weeks there, and we flew through Heathrow on our way over to Switzerland. We flew through Brussels on our way back. Security in Brussels was really tight -- flights to America were from one end of a terminal which was blocked off and had extra security - as I told my daughter, I've had less intrusive medical exams than that security screening. We were split into two groups, with my wife and son go through together, and my daughter and I together. My bottle of Pepto-Bismol (never leave home without it) was in my son's backpack, and boy were they interested in it. Now I know why since the terrorists were planing to use liquid explosives.

These Apples Fell Right On The Tree

My wife and I often say that our children our are clones because they look so much like us, but it extends to personalities as well. My son is very much like me in most ways, and my daughter is very much like her mother. I have simply assumed that this is true of most children. If my experience at Scout Camp is anything to go by, that isn't the case. In fact, my situation is downright rare.

Desktop Icons

My grandfather had a 2-1/2 foot cement statue of St. Francis in his garden, as did my father, my Uncle Sam and Uncle Robert, so it's something of a family tradition. But living in California I haven't had a garden except for a few years in the early 1980's when I rented a house in Menlo Park that had a backyard. The only thing I was able to grow reliably was bamboo (a prior tenant had planted it) which I attacked periodically with a shovel (and later Roundup) to little avail. But I didn't buy a statue of St. Francis because I was renting and a long way from owning a house.

Once I started working I began to accumulate knicknacks for my desk. In my first few jobs it was mainly functional items: a paper calendar (this was before the PC revolution put a calendar on the desktop on your desktop), pen holders, a ruler. Over time, and different jobs, vendors would deliver coffee cups and I had quite a collection: "the battle for the desktop" I would quip to them when they would give me a new one.

In the early 90's I had an office with a door. I would keep the lights off and set my screen colors to green letters on a black screen, it was very peaceful. My boss looked in one day and saw two glowing green eyes staring out of the dark office at him and asked "what is it you do in your Bat Cave exactly?" I still use Emacs with green letters on a black screen to do most of my writing.

I was out shopping with my wife at the Ave Maria Community Book Store and I saw a 1 foot tall plaster statue of St. Francis. It suddenly seemed like a good idea for my office. In part because it made me feel closer to my family, and in part because I erroneously ascribed the Serenity Prayer to St. Francis:

God, grant me
the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
the wisdom to know the difference.

When it was actually written by Reinhold Niebuhr. This was the early 90's at Cisco (when the Internet Gold Rush was just starting), and every time I looked at that statue it reminded me to have patience with the things I couldn't change and to focus on the things that I could.

I was in Weird Stuff Warehouse looking for some refurbished computer cables and I came across a red keyboard button marked PANIC. I had to have one, and actually bought a half dozen. One for my keyboard, one or two to keep, and a few to "install" on the keyboards of folks who would come to me with a complaint about the computer systems, "Here, let me upgrade your system with this PANIC button option, press it anytime you get into trouble. I use mine all the time." Weird Stuff no longer seems to carry it but these folks do.

A few years later after I was shopping with my wife in a craft store--the things we do for love--and stumbled upon a tipped over pail of milk..for a doll's house. Again, a reminder of another good aphorism "No use crying over spilled milk." Something I was wont to do (and am still so inclined). I keep that one perched on my desk as well.

So...what "icons" do you have on your desktop?

Good Parenting, Then and Now

Baby Blues has been running a series of comics this week on Good Parenting, then and now. Not only are they funny, they are sadly true. Childrearing has changed a lot since I was a kid, and I'm not sure it's all for the better.

Of course, even with our foibles, it's better than this craziness in Iran (via No Watermelons Allowed). I guess that answers the question, who could do this to a child.

Return Of The Native

The Murphy Family has returned from a brief sojurn in the desert. We spent 6 days in Albuquerque, New Mexico, soaking up the sun and enjoying ourselves. We got home last night, and after unpacking I downloaded 215 pictures from the digitial camera. Yes, that is a lot of pictures. No doubt it will take me months to post all the good ones for your viewing enjoyment. We flew there, and boy are our arms tired. OK, it really wasn't bad at all, even though we couldn't get a direct flight and sat next to babies on two of the flights. The lines at the airport weren't bad, the screeners seem more relaxed (but not less vigilant), and the airport in Albuquerque is really nice. It was cloudier than we anticipated, but we did avoid the hordes of spring break parties while enjoying sun and sand.

Bragging

I don't mean to brag -- OK, who am I trying to kid, I DO mean to brag -- but this was a weekend of notable achievements in the Murphy Household. First off, my daughter spent her first two and a half hours behind the wheel of a car and she didn't hit anything (if you don't count the outside of my brain smacking the inside of my skull while she learned how to brake properly). We even spent more time on roads than parking lot. In fact, we both had fun - something that is getting harder to do for this father and teenage daughter duo. I learned an important lesson - don't get too funny because when she's giggling she's not driving. We spent half an hour practicing right turns by driving around and around on a three street combo until we spent another half an hour practicing left turns by driving the other way. Then we drove to a couple of her friends houses just to show off.

While the father daughter combo was out and about, the mother son combo was in Jefferson City competing in the Missouri State K-9 Championship chess tournament where my son came in 4th in 6th grade and under. I taught him everything I know, and fortunately he picked up a lot more somewhere else. Yes, we own Searching for Bobby Fischer, why do you ask?

Why I Visit Hospitals

Tom McMahon shares what he has learned in the 15 years of life with a disabled son in a truly wonderful, makes the whole blogging thing worthwile kind of post.

One of the things he learned is that "Everybody will have a story. And Yours is not the worst story." So I'm telling you the story of why I visit people in the hospital. It's actually not a sad or bad story -- it has a very happy, ongoingly happy ending, but at the time I didn't know how the story would turn out.

When my daughter was three months old, she had to have an operation to correct a coarctation of the aorta. She spent about a week in the hospital. That was a very difficult time, and a big help to getting through it was all the people who took the time to come visit us in the hospital. And I'm not taking about just family. There were a couple of close friends from work, but we got a lot of visitors from our church, and people all over the area were praying for her. I ran into our pastor and a couple of elders in the elevator of the parking garage after I dropped my wife and daughter off -- they were there that fast and my first thought on seeing them was I wonder who they are visiting? Most of our visitors came after work, and we often had so many we had to move to a public area. It really helped to have people to encourage us, to share with us, and to just pass the time that crawls by in the hospital with us. Since we know what it means to have visitors, we try to visit people we know in the hospital -- we aren't always successful, and we could do a lot better. So far not one person hasn't been happy to see us, and not one hasn't said to us "You didn't have to come." No, we didn't have to, we wanted to.

Not That There Is Anything Wrong With That

After catching the last quarter of the thrilling Patriots-Bronco game Saturday night by accident (thrilling that is unless you were a Patriot fan, in which case you know now the feeling we Rams fans had after Super Bowl 36 when the clearly superior team lost), I made a point of watching the two games on Sunday. Well, I caught the last quarter of the Colts-Steelers game and it too featured not just an improbable Rockyesque storyline, it had more reversals of fortune than any movie script would ever load up on.

After those two games, the Bears-Panthers game was anti-climactic, but my son and I watched while listening to the Phantom of the Opera which he downloaded from the iTunes store using the gift certificate Santa brought for Christmas. I could only watch that clunker as long as the music was on - closing my eyes and listening to the music of the night was the only way to let my spirit soar with that all too earthbound contest. The women of the family were clearly alarmed at this development, and kept telling us they thought we were not just the only men, but the only people in the world watching that football game while listening to Phantom of the Opera, or any musical score for that matter. I'm all in favor of watching TV while listening to good music; my father and I used to watch The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo while listening to Beethoven.

Free Web Site With House Purchase!

We listed our home for sale 6 months ago the conventional way, with a real estate agent. Six months later, after several price reductions and about 30 showings, we have gotten zero offers. We moved out 4 months ago, so the house is empty and I'm getting financially tired of owning two houses. If what you're doing doesn't work, trying doing something different.

I bought the domain 5419omaha.com and put up a web page describing our house, with pretty pictures. Having your own web page for your house is cool, because you can post things that listing agents don't normally post, like the house location and elevation accurate to within 10 meters. And you never know when a potential buyer might want to look at a satellite view of the house, so I put that in, too. The web site is:

http://www.5419omaha.com/

I am figuring out a good way to list the house in the MLS (Multiple Listing Service), but with the web site we have a central contact point no matter what else we do. The domain will be posted on our front-lawn sign. If someone can't figure out how to browse to an Internet domain, then (begin snide comment) they probably can't afford the house anyway (end snide comment). Okay, okay, we'll include a contact phone number.

I tried to keep the write-up "normal", but some humor crept in despite my best efforts. I will have no use for this web site and domain after the house sells, so I figured, what the heck? Let's include the web site and domain with the house purchase! It's a gimmick, but hey - when conventional methods don't work, ya gotta try unconventional ones.

Since Christine is an ebay expert, I asked her to put a listing on craigslist.com. Then the very next day at work I saw a demo of some new Google map technology using AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML). The engineer used housingmaps.com as an example of placing overlays on top of Google maps. He moved the display over our town, and sure enough, there was a little balloon over our house for sale!

That was cool. Way cool!

That Has Made All The Difference

A coworker asked about the Pinky and the Brain action figures that I obtained indirectly from my niece Kelly. Another commented that he prefered Ren and Stimpy. Given the ages of the coworkers, I asked the coworkers if they were comparing the two as a parent or an adolescent. The preference for R&S was an adolescent one, while P&B was a parental one. They agreed that would make a big difference. Parenthood - one of the defining moments of your life.

Having children means that not only do you find yourself saying the same things your parents did, but agreeing with the values expressed.

Take Me Out

If you watched the Cardinals lose to the Astros Tuesday night on TV, you saw my nephew Zach. He was about 4 rows behind home plate, and offset such that the he was smack dab in the middle of the centerfield shot of the batter. My sister-in-law let us know he was on, and after watching him munch on the "free" food that comes with those seats for a while, my son got the bright idea of calling him on his cell phone. So we waiting for the commercial break to end and then called him. There is something oddly exhilerating about watching somebody answer their cell phone on TV when you are on the other end. But we kicked the exhileration up a notch when my son told him to wave and he did. That my friends is the pinnacle of interactive TV, right there. Watching your nephew/cousin wave to you live on TV.

I haven't ever watched a spectator in a crowd before (on TV, that is), and there were some things I'd never noticed before. Like how Zach would look to his left after every pitch - I'm assuming to see the replay on the big screen. But it was downright spooky to watch the people in the stands on a pop up - all their heads snapping upward and then tracking the ball in unison. After that, I'm kind of glad I never did watch the crowd in the TV picture before, although the scientist in me will now be tempted to start comparing crowd action during different sporting events.

Nap Time Is Over

For the first time in a long time, I had no children in sports, I had no duties in Scouting, I had loads of leisure time on my hands. No practices, no games, no event planning and preparation, just feet up. But then my daughter joined the Water Polo team at school. Now we're back to practices and games. At least I only have to pick her up every other night after practice. I'm forced to conclude all leisure is fleeting and advise you to gather your feet up time while ye may.

Rocky Mountain High

We spent some time in Rocky Mountain National Park last summer. The second day we went for a hike up to cub lake. We parked the car at the trail head in valley and started walking. You could look up and see where we were going:

At first we were stayed on the valley floor. It really was beautiful, surrounded by the mountains, walking through a pleasant meadow. Then we came to more rocky terrain, and started to wind our way around some rock bluffs:

We started climbing more, the trees and brush thinned and the rocks thickened. We came across this huge split rock, an example that water always wins:

We went from a dirt path to a rock path; we went from gentle ups and the occasional down to a steady uphill climb; we went from joggers to no joggers (at least that we could see). We were in a lush forest and felt good to be alive. My wife gently urged me on when I would stop to take a picture:

Up and up we went. The fruit didn't like all the stops the fearless leaders were making and asked if they could go on ahead. Begone! Still the trail climbed up. "How much further?" we asked people coming the other way. "You're almost there!" they would reply. A young couple passes us as we slowly pick our way ever upward. The rocks give way to dirt again and another jogger comes down the mountain. At last the path flattens, but no lake. But with the flat comes a second wind, and off we go, until at last our destination, Cub Lake, is in sight:

The sheer joy of arriving mingles with the serene beauty of the lake as we simply sit and admire the view. And eat apples and granola bars. A, lunch al fresco!

When we leave Estes Park and RMNP, we leave going over the top of the world via Trail Ridge Road. This road spends an inordinate time at or above 12,000 feet, which aggravates my acrophobia to near fatal levels. I have to admit, when we'd crossed over and were descending on the other side of the continental divide my fear was much less, apparently by giving it to my wife. I'm glad we stopped along the way to breath the frigid air and take in the view, although at the time when my wife would pull off a perfectly good road and head towards the brink of the precipice I thought my heart would stop it was beating so hard. Fortunately it kept going so I was able to get this wonderful shot of the valley below:

We went on to Glenwood Springs that afternoon, but our next installment will be about Elk.

USS Alabama

I read on One Hand Clapping that the USS Alabama in Mobile Bay was damaged. Amid all the death and destruction, I suppose that's really no big deal. But I remember the happy time and amazement when I visited it as a kid, and I remember the happy time and amazement when I visited it again with my kids. Here is a picture of my wife and son during our visit:

Back To School

The Fruit of the Murphy Loins moved up in school this year; one started high school and the other started middle school. I don't know if the change is more wrenching for them or me. OK, me. My father, shortly after my daughter first started school, mentioned that the drumbeat of time was at the loudest and steadiest when your kids were in school. And the drums are beating quite loudy and quickly these days. I was at my maudlin best when telling my daughter, after her first day of orientation, that she had taken a big step on the road to independence and leaving the nest (and me) behind.

I don't worry about the Fruit as much as my wife, but I do worry. I just try to take the occasional day off from worrying. I was nervous about my son, as he didn't have many friends on his "team". While he wouldn't comment beyond the standard "fine", he was full of spunk after his first day, so I'm worrying a lot less. I figure if things had gone poorly, he would have been hangdog. It seems the excitement of the new school with its expanded opportunities is beating the friends thing; I just hope he makes new ones before the novelty wears off.

My daughter went to "Spirit Night", and made it clear that she prefered that her parents not attend. So we didn't. The school held an orientation meeting for us parents earlier in the week, and the principle invited us to come up to school anytime. Why, it was fine with the administration and faculty if we came to freshman orientation the next day if we so desired, but he doubted our child would ever forgive us. I have come to terms with the fact that I'm a huge source of embarrassment to my daughter, if only because it's the best form of discipline I have, as in threatening to hug her if she doesn't behave in public or call up her friends and tell them how much I love her if she doesn't behave in private. She hasn't risked it yet, probably because she knows I would.

Lake Fun

Last weekend we made our annual pilgrimage to Lake of the Ozarks with our friends the Fischers. Once again they own a lake house so we stayed with them and always had a great time, despite the rain. The have a wonderful lake view from their house and a flat back yard:

We brought down a radio controlled boat I inherited from my uncle Sam and had fun Saturday morning sending it forth onto the lake while it was still calm. Mr. Fischer had more fun annoying his dog with it I think, but the rest of us preferred the lake cruises:

And after taking out the small pleasure craft, we set forth in the large pleasure craft to explore the lake. We trailed two inner tubes behind the boat that you could ride in while Mr. Fischer did his best to separate you from your ride. We also found a nice cove to just get out and splash about in. The currents in the cove were strong and erratic as measured by my position relative to the boat riding at anchor as one moment I would be well away from it and another I'd look over to see it looming over me. Having fun is tiring, as can be seen from this photo of two intrepid inner tube riders taking a quick break:

Our further adventures await below the fold:

We didn't spend all our time out on the lake; Saturday evening, after watching an intense storm from the dock, we had some fireworks of our own. I don't know how many bottle rockets were in the box, but there was enough to satisfy all of us. Not only is a tube conveniently set up lakeside to shoot them, Mr. Fischer showed off his bare handed technique, which he could use to shoot the rockets into the lake where they made a most satisfying glurg upon explosion. Their dog also likes bottle rockets so much they have to take care that he doesn't eat them.

And if that weren't enough, Sunday morning we ignored the weather and set forth to find Tunnel Dam and Lake Niagua. After you wind through Ha Ha Tonka Park on Hwy D you just keeping going, and going, until after passing the Dodge pickup minus bed for sale you find Tunnel Dam Road and a Dodge pickup bed spray painted "free". The road starts out as the best gravel road I've been on, but once the going got interesting it often became a red clay road. On several instances we passed heavy earth moving and grading equipment, but none were apparently used on the road we traveled.

Tunnel Dam is a feat of engineering and nature both: in the 20's somebody had the bright idea of using a cave through a large ridge between two sections of the Niagua river to generate hydro electric power. So after straightning the cave and installing a couple of generators, they built a spillway dam to provide 40 feet of water pressure to the turbines and completed the dam in 1929.

After passing the road down to the power generation plant (no public access) on side of the ridge away from the lake you come to a scenic overlook where you can look out over the dam and Lake Niagua from far above or cower in fear of heights. You then drop precipitously down the ridge and wind around in bottom land until you come to the Niagua river and associated gravel bars which based upon the amount and kind of trash is a popular local partying spot:

We pulled over, skipped rocks, looked for crawdads, and otherwise messed around. But we weren't done, so we pressed on towards our destination without really knowing how to get there. Fortunately there are not a lot of roads to choose from in this relatively underpopulated part of the world, so were able to make our way to the dam itself. Hint: follow the signs to lake bypass, not access. Here is a view of the dam from the base:

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There was a lone fisherman, whose Ford pickup had a bed, but who despite the weather was without a shirt, at the pool below the dam:

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We of course made our way to the top of the dam where you could look out over the lake and examine the logs at the top of the dam at your leisure. It was a beautiful view so naturally I'm not including any pictures in the hope that you take the initiative to go there and see for yourself. You drive through a grove of spectacular sycamore trees before arriving at the dam:

That wraps up the picture portion of our tale except for a final farewell:

Live And Learn

My wife isn't happy. Thankfully, it isn't with me, but some market research firm. We both are happy to do market research, in part because it pays so well when you do qualify. So she agreed to watch a half hour tape and answer questions the next day. We watched the tape which turned out to be a lousy TV sitcom I've never heard of. At first we thought the show was a pilot that we were giving feedback on, as they did ask a few questions about it in the material my wife was supposed to fill out afterwards, but when they started putting ads in during the commercial breaks, and she had to fill out pages of product info, ostensibly for the "prize drawing" she was eligible, I thought the ads were the real object of the research. And the next day the half hour interview with somebody with a strong Indian accent who claimed he was calling from Alberta, Canada focused almost entirely with a single Ore Ida ad which I didn't even remember (although my wife did). So she's unhappy she's out an hour of time over a stupid spud ad with nothing to show for it but a chance at a prize. I think we'll both be sticking to the research where there's an envelope full of cash at the end of the session, which helps one deal with such questions "if Ore Ida was a person, how would you describe him or her to your friends?"

Indianapolis

We spent the Fourth of July weekend in Indianapolis. We haven't had the time to take a vacation this summer between summer school, baseball, swimming, mission trip to Mexico, Boy Scout camp, and getting ready for High School and Middle School. So we decided to take a long weekend, and made the reservation at the Residence Inn in downtown Indianapolis Wednesday for an arrival on Friday. While that kind of short notice is normal in my business trips, it isn't for vacations. But we had a good time.

I was (pleasantly) surprised at the lack of traffic on a Friday evening rush hour in Indianapolis. The entire trip had an uncrowded feeling. I was also pleasantly surprised by the hotel, as it was located on the White River Canal which meant we could walk out of the hotel and enjoy a beautiful stroll along the canal while actually on our way to a lot of attractions.
View Of the White River Canal:

We went to the zoo on Saturday. We're spoiled in St. Louis with a great zoo that is also free. The Indianapolis zoo cost real money to get into and was OK.

We had fun, but I doubt we'll be going back for a vacation anytime soon - like maybe when pigs fly:

Yes, there is more if you can stand it!

Like any self respecting city (besides San Francisco) there is a river that runs through Indianapolis - the White River:

And they also have a public garden, though only 3 acres. For me this was the best part of the trip, although I am alone in that assessment.

To get to the Garden you had to go through a Butterfly house, something didn't exist when I was a kid but now seems to be everywhere.

They had lilypads, so I had to get a picture. You'd be amazed how many hits I get of my lilypad picture in Denver.

We also walked around downtown - we saw War of the Worlds at the downtown mall. In the center of the city is a memorial to Civil War and Spanish-American War veterans with a small museum underneath.

I didn't photograph the memorials to the USS Indianapolis or the Medal of Honor recipients along the canal. I was moved by the memorials and we spent some time with our children experiencing them and discussing them.

We did have some time for fun and games as we rented a four place bike (Lance Armstrong, eat your heart out!) and pedaled around White River State Park.

After the bike ride, it was back to the canal for a paddle boat ride. We wanted to go in the evening, but after a poor experience at Bucca de Beppo we got there too late and the waiting list was too long. So we enjoyed a midday ride, after which it was time to enjoy the Monkathon on USA.

I hope you enjoyed the pictures, and don't forget a new season of Monk starts tomorrow (7/8).

Be It Ever So Humble

I just got back from a long weekend in Indianapolis. The Fruit of the Murphy Loins are so busy this summer we couldn't find a week to get away, so we had to go for the long weekend. It's always fun to get away and nice to come home. The only down side was after not having comment spam for months, I came back to some pill pushing jerks leaving 34 comments.

On the way home I noticed a sign for the exit "Little Point". There are a lot of exits that should be so labeled, but I guess Indiana has the gumption to actually do it. Not quite as good as the last exit before going west over the old Dumbarton Bridge whose sign said: "A Street Downtown". Does it really matter? If you want to go downtown, go here. OK, it was A as in the letter, but as you drove by it wasn't the easiest thing to figure out. Or my favorite, the Exit Without A Name in Colorado (I was ready for it the second time we passed it):

One last non-trip tidbit: The neighbors who watched our dog thought the way he goes up and down stairs was so funny, they invited another neighbor over to watch. Trooper must have been showing off, because the other neighbor promptly fell down the steps just watching him. Thankfully, she wasn't hurt.

All Raise You A Painting

In answer to Busy Mom's question, no, I haven't bid on something on e-bay, immediately regretted it, and then paid for it twice. What my daughter has done, however, was win an auction for a Chinese watercolor painting as Mother's Day gift for our recently redecorated bedroom. So my daughter paid $3 for the painting, $17 for shipping, and now we're paying $75 for the framing. I wish I could have only paid for it twice.

As The Homeowner Turns

We're moving into a new house. As part of the move, we get to sort through all that old stuff we haven't even looked at in years and wonder if we should throw it away? I am convinced that this is what happened to the original copies of Flavius Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews. These great historical works were not lost in battle, or destroyed by fire. No - some Roman guy said to his wife while moving from one villa to another, "Why do we keep that old copy of Josephus? We haven't opened it in 10 years!" And so they tossed it into the paper recycling bin out by the curb. But I digress.

We bought our present house 10 years ago when we were first married. In those early days before children, my organized wife used to print out all the interesting and funny e-mails and place them in 3-ring binders. From the year 1995 I found this old story that I thought was worth re-running. The date is December 1995. The context is that I am a new homeowner, exploring a newly purchased house and learning/fixing what the previous homeowners have done. So take a deep breath, and step back with me 10 years into:

Chapter 5. Wherein it is told how Carl explores his attic some more, and what he finds there.

In preparation for the insulation fairies to come and blow an R50 layer of insulation up into my attic, I decided to go up there and prepare the crawl space by taking out things that didn't belong there, installing a few boards where they would need to step across a pipe, and so on. My key objective was to fix a vent from the stove. The previous owners had arranged for a pipe to come up from a fan over the range where the fan would spew the exhaust skyward. There's a nice-looking chimney vent coming out of the roof there.

Unfortunately, they had neglected to connect the exhaust pipe to the roof vent, leaving instead a 2-foot gap in the attic space between the top of the pipe and the bottom of the vent! I guess they just figured that the heatons and greasons would just know where to go. Or maybe they had been reading the book of Job and knew that "Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward." (Job 5:7)

In any case, I don't think I have 20 years of congealed bacon grease in my attic, but I wanted it fixed anyway. A bigger problem seemed to be that there was no valve to keep the cold air from outside (the attic) from creeping its frosty tendrils into my nice warm kitchen. In the mornings the stove top and kitchen floor were quite cold, and so as a temporary measure I had stuffed a washrag behind the vent grill and below the fan. But that solution wouldn't do for long. No - this sounds like a job for - Super Homeowner!

I put on my respirator and crawled up there, trailing a butterfly valve, a length of vent pipe, and tin snips, and a roll of duct tape. The pipe didn't line up with the vent, so I had to re-direct the air flow in a 45-degree turn toward its destiny. The butterfly valve is forced open by rushing air, and it closes when you turn off the fan (Yay!). A few strips of duct tape (you can actually use it for ducts) made quick work of any minor leaks and made my little interior chimney as stable as the day is long! I tested it and it worked. Hah! Score one for the good guys.

Well, as long as I'm up here, what else is amiss? On a previous foray into the Attic Of Doom I had seen something strange over against the eaves, in that narrow section where the roof slants down to meet the ceiling and everything gets wedged together. There was a board laid between the joists, and a hand mirror. Beyond that, right up against the eaves, was a lower section corresponding to the dropped ceiling in the kitchen above the sink. Hmmm . . . it looked as if somebody had wanted to peer down into the lower section. They had been unable to slide all the way into the wedge, so they had used a mirror to look downward. Hmmm again . . . the plot thickens.

I wedged my body onto the board and held the mirror forward. It was one of those magnifying ones and I couldn't see much. So I wedged forward some more, grunting and groaning, until my scalp was scraping against the roofing nails and my nose was brushing the joists. Unh, ugh, awh! I peered downward . . .

. . . and saw nothing of interest. Just some drywall covered with insulation fuzz. But wait! What is that running next to my ear? It looks like a rubber hose. Yes, it's an old garden hose running farther down into the wall between the studs. What on earth is that doing there?

Well, I don't want no unexplained hoses in our house! Somehow I pulled myself back from the abyss and freed my arms enough to pull on the hose. Gingerly I pulled it up out of the wall, taking care lest a spray of water should suddenly come gushing forth from somewhere. Easy, easy now.

There was something brown stuck near the end, looking like a hardened bunch of rubber or that foam they use to fill holes. In the dim light of the flashlight I couldn't really tell. I pulled up the entire hose and nothing horrible happened. Oh well, let's get out here and back into the realm of the living.

(This next part gets kind of gross, so if you're squeamish you might want to check out the Boulder Cam with Netscape instead or something.)

Back in the garage I looked at the hose and the brown thing. At first I thought it was some Alien child's toy, like the one that almost ate Sigourney Weaver. It had that weird skull and a tail and some claws. But wait! This . . . is . . . a . . . very dry, very mummified, and very very dead animal! Gross!!!

The dead body had absolutely no hair, but was all dry and stiff and wrapped around the hose in a death-grip. Yuck! I finally concluded that it was a squirrel. It was too big to be a rat, and the shape of the skull and length of the tail seemed to suggest a squirrel. I still haven't figured out how it lost all its hair.

I put the mummified body into the garbage, to join three dumb mice that I had trapped earlier that week in the Great Landfill In The Sky. So here's what must have happened: The squirrel got into the attic through the vents and somehow got trapped in the wall next to the dishwasher. The homeowners heard it scratching around and went up into the attic to try to fish it out. They couldn't, but they left a hose there in hopes that the squirrel could climb out of its own accord.

The poor squirrel never did make it out alive. It either starved there or died of thirst, but clutched onto the hose with its last strength in hopes of someday, someday, making it back to the light. The original homeowners forgot about the whole episode. But many years later, I came along, pulled out the remains of the squirrel, and gave it a decent burial. Whimper, sniff, sniff . . .

The attic vents now have screens on them. I also forwarded some postal mail to the previous homeowners and wrote a note on it explaining what finally happened to the squirrel that got stuck up in the attic, so at last they will know.

Whew!

Carnelian Down, Aquamarine to Go

This saturday was The Murphy Family 17th Anniversary, so we celebrated in style at Bristols. We had planned to go see a movie afterwards, but there wasn't much out we both wanted to see. Yes, I'd like to see Kingdom of Heaven, but my wife doesn't go for sword epics. I'd like to see Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, but my wife doesn't go for screwball British comedies set in outer space. She had already seen The Interpreter with my daughter, so I nixed that one. So we settled on Fever Pitch, despite my reservations that Jimmy Fallon could ever be in a movie that was worth seeing.

But after such a fine meal, we decided to skip spending 17 bucks to see a movie we weren't really interested in and rent one we did want to see instead. So we picked out Phantom of the Opera as we both enjoy musicals. I have to say that it makes a better musical than a movie (as soon as I saw Minnie Driver, I knew it wasn't going to be as good as I hoped), but I still enjoyed it. The thing about musicals is that they rely on great music and singing, and the characters and plot are just incidental. With a movie version, the characters and plot can be explored in greater depth, but so what? A movie version of Chicago makes sense because it's really a dansical, and so while again the plot and characterization is incidental at best, you can see the dance moves so much better at the movies than on the stage. And Moulin Rouge, which either you loved or hated (I'm in the love camp), was a creature all it's own.

Happy Mother's Day

To all you mothers out there, happy mother's day. You've made us all possible. Thanks.

In honor of the day, here's a portrait of a mother with children we hope you really like:

I Want Your Pity

I've been sick all week with a bad cold. Not enough to force me to stay in my bed all day, but enough to ruin the week. When I'm not hacking up a lung, I feel like I'm lost in the fog. The weather around here hasn't helped - what happened to those warm sunny days? Cold and wet is no way to go through life.

Hovercraft Hubbub

Since we were out of town last weekend, friends picked up my son's Science Fair project -- it made it to the Greater St. Louis Science Fair as both Fruit of the Murphy Loins' usually do. But this time there was something different - he was picked to be part of Discovery Channel Young Scientist Challange which I have to admit I'd never heard of before. The paperwork says there are 3,000-4,000 projects picked to enter each year, and that the idea is to extend to younger children the fun and excitement of Intel high school science fair. Near as I can tell, there were 47 projects picked from the GSLSF this year. So we're pretty happy.

We built a hovercraft (thus the title, Hovercraft Hubub - you can't go wrong with alliteration) and tested his hypothesis that it could carry two children (to wit, the Fruit of the Murphy Loins) in style and comfort. It sounds impressive, but it's a 4'x4' sheet of plywood, a shower curtain, a leaf blower, a coffee can lid, and assorted fasteners made from plans we found on the internet. It only "flew" inside our garage about 1.5" off the ground and didn't travel more than a couple of feet - although I spun it as much as the fruit allowed. I don't think we'll be winning the paid trip to Washington D.C., but it was a fun project to do and hopefully will encourage both the Fruit in their appreciation of the technical side of life. All the kids knew about it from the school science fair. When parents find out how easy it is to make and how well it did, I think there will be more hovercraft built at his school next year.

When An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease

I sometimes think the fruit of my loins are growing up in a different world than I did. Oh, it's still good ol' planet Earth, Terra to you SF types, and yet it's not. And of course, I don't think I grew up in the same world than my progenitors did, either. For instance, space flight was the realm of Jules Verne for my father; for me it was a prime time TV event -- the two things I watched on TV at school were the Apollo launches and day games of the World Series that the Cardinals were playing in. Now not only is the space program not big news, they don't even play day games in the World Series.

And that's nothing compared to all the other changes. Radio was the medium of mass communication for my parents; for me it was TV, and now it's the internet. There were no electronic gadgets for my parents growing up (the refridgerator is not a gadget, it's an appliance); I had the TV and the Hi-Fi; my children have so many I can't keep up. There are more ways to be bored than ever before.

Childhood itself has changed, though. At least I and my parents were allowed, nay encouraged, unsupervised play. In the summer my brother and I would set forth after breakfast, return home just long enough to have lunch, return home again when my father whistled to inform us that he was ready to eat dinner, and then venture forth again until long after sundown (unless there was something good on TV, but with 5 channels to choose from, that wasn't too often). Who let's their children play outside after dark anymore? How many children play unsupervised or without that modern invention, a play date?

Every sport my fruit play envolves an actual team with a coach, a league, and uniforms. I never played organized sports outside of school. We played in the backyard. We never had an umpire or referee -- we just argued and had the ocasional do over. At Webelos camp, when my son and his friends were playing baseball at the camp site one would call umpire. Call Umpire! I about fell out of my chair the first time that happened. And they still had about the same amount of arguing and number of do overs as we did.

I don't remember a lot of rushing around and business as a child, except at certain times like Christmas, or my parents stressing out over a general lack of time. Not too long ago my son asked when we had our next free Saturday, and I had to tell him it was at least 6 weeks away. Hope you make it, I'm not sure I will. We have tons more physical stuff but a lot less time. People get stressed because they can't get around to doing everything they feel they need to do, let alone just what they want to do.

And safety. Boy, are we safety nuts now. When I tell my kids when I was their age, we didn't have seat belts, or bike helmets, and that we roamed for miles without a parent around, or could be gone for home for hours without the police being called, they look at me like I'm from another planet. Yep, we were expected to have the sense of dog who knows how to get back to his food and bed without outside help. Kids didn't require constant supervision then, now they have to monitored in case something, anything happens.

One time I took my daughter and some friends to see a movie, and one of the parents asked me to see the movie with them because she was worried that otherwise they might be abducted. When I was a kid, we weren't constantly barraged with every kidnapping, abduction, school bus crash, or incident involving a kid that happened anywhere in the good old US of A. We aren't better informed now, we're just poorly informed on an enormous scale.

We didn't have extreme sports because we set up ramps for bikes or sleds without a second thought. I played iceless hockey just about every recess at school and was covered with bruises accordingly -- my brother was high sticked in the eye but when it healed he kept on playing.

We didn't worry about pesticides either on our food or in our homes, we worried about bugs in our food or in our homes. We didn't watch what we ate but we were somehow thinner. And that's the way it was.

A Look Back

I had a good Christmas. Since I realistically lack for nothing but time (and I'm sure if I had my priorities right I wouldn't even lack for that) I was happy to get a few things I wanted for Christmas, but more importantly to give a few things other people wanted. OK, I suppose if to love and be loved is a need, then I got to exchange something I and others needed.

My 2004 was a year like most of my others. The FunMurphys had a great time in Colorado this summer (you might get to see all the photos, you might not) switched jobs for the Very Large Corporation of America; the Fruit of the Murphy Loins are a year older and thus closer to the dreaded teenage years (OK, my daughter is already there, but just at the start), and I didn't wake up to find what little I had taken away from me the day after Christmas. I suppose that sums up my look back at 2004.

What Does the Moon Look Like Above the Overcast Sky?

I was faced with a variant of the "if a tree falls in the forest and there is no one there to hear it (or blog it)" puzzle tonight when my younger son came inside very upset because he had to draw a picture of the moon but it was too overcast to see it. To draw a picture of the moon you have to see it (those of you with small children know what I am talking about as Dave Barry would advise), fortunately some googling turned up the Virtual Reality Moon Phase Pictures (courtesy of the US Naval Observatory).

Christmas Report

We had a great Christmas! Lots of presents, snow on the ground outside, plenty of cookies, our gas fireplace purring in the corner, and the excited wonder of children to make it special.

However, we did not anticipate how much our 1.5-year-old Graham would want 5-year-old Simon's toys. Our usual rule is that they don't have to share toys on the first day of receiving them, but Graham was squealing and squealing for Simon's livestock truck and the toy Winnebago. So we made an exception to the sharing rule, since Simon had plenty of toys anyway. Graham finally opened up his own school bus and happily played with it for an hour. What a good little guy.

The Bane of Fathers On Christmas Day has changed from lack of batteries, to those pesky wires that they use to attach toys to their packaging so strongly that Jimmy Valentine himself couldn't separate them. Why do all four wheels have to be tied into the box? There was also a Hot Wheels dual racetrack with a hundred parts that I had to put together, but eventually I was able to follow the instructions to their successful conclusion. Good thing my brother sent us that package of sausage, cheese, and crackers from Hickory Farms!

By 10am our living room was completely filled with wreckage, so Christmas must have been a success.

I took Isabel (7) and Simon ice-skating yesterday on her new ice skates. She's a natural! I had to hold up Simon, since he is a little wobbly on his first time out. Me, I haven't been ice skating for 25 years. But I did okay. Ice skating comes back quicker than differential equations.

I played "O Holy Night" on my guitar for church on Sunday morning, all three verses. I even hit the Bm chord successfully a couple of times! I need to play with a group in order to get better, though, like I did for the Christmas Eve service. We had: me on 12-string guitar, a six-string guitar, a bass guitar, a harp, a cello, a flute, a bongo drum, and three singers. That makes good combo for Christmas carols.

That's Me In The Corner

There's somebody out there even more harried than me; more overwhelmed by the Christmas season than inspired by the Christmas spirit. We received a Christmas card today that lacked a return adress on the envelope or any writing (including who it was from) on the card. The funWife thinks she might possibly recognize the handwriting on the envelope. Actually, this is a nice gesture on somebody's part because now we can't tell who didn't send us a Christmas card this year. Not that that matters, we're relentless on sending out cards in the Murphy Family.

What a mixmaster our dreams are for our memories

It's a strange thing about sleep and dreams, I can go to bed worrying about a problem and either wake up around 2 or 3 and be unable to get back to sleep or wake up at 6 or 7 and have this plan fully formed in my head as to what to do. And sometimes I pull together bits and pieces of seemingly unrelated events and go on a tangent. Or they may be actually unrelated events but my well developed apophenia finds a connection anway.

I woke up this morning with the memory from one of my seventh grade Religion classes: Fr. Miles reading Genesis 46:4 and explaining it to us.

"I shall go down to Egypt with you and I myself shall bring you back again, and Joseph's hand will close your eyes."

which was juxtaposed with a remark a good friend of mine from college made the last time he was in town

"I was there for my father's last breath."

I couldn't remember my dream directly, but somehow it had combined those two memories.

As Fr. Miles explained, God is speaking to Jacob in Genesis 46:4, promising him that he will be re-united with his estranged son Joseph, who will be with him when he dies. That Joseph will close his eyes means that he will be with him when he draws his last breath.

So I e-mailed my friend and told him of my dream, and that I thought it meant that he had been a comfort to his father. I am not in the habit of dreaming about Bible verses, much less e-mailing people about them, but it seemed like the right thing to do.

When I first heard the verse and the explanation I was twelve. Four years later my grandfather was felled by a series of strokes over a period of about nine months, he never recovered enough from the first one to live at home, and the succeeding ones washed away his personality until there was nothing left. But after the first stroke I remember going to visit him in the hospital and hearing this terrible loneliness in his voice as he recounted awakening in the middle of the night in the intensive care ward and crying out for his children (and he named them one by one as he recalled it, moving on to his grandchildren). And I got a better idea of the comfort promised in "Joseph's hand will close your eyes," that Jacob would not die alone, and understood the comfort that my friend had offered his father sitting next to his deathbed for his last week.

Vacation Act 1 Scene 2

At the rate I'm posting the summer vacation pictures, I won't be done before the next one. Anyway, we crammed a lot into our first full day in Colorado. First, we went to the Denver Botanic Gardens in the morning. Then we went to Casa Bonita for lunch. The pictures from there didn't turn out, but it's a giant (and I don't throw that term around loosely) Mexican restaurant complete with game room, gift shop, and cliff divers. To walk off lunch, we visited Red Rocks state park outside Denver. After the park, we went and visited the Drews at their house in Boulder. They fixed us a mighty fine dinner and it was nice to meet Christina and catch up with Carl again. On vacation, you cram it in until you're exhausted, then you get up and do it again the next day, and the next day, until finally you get home and go back to work so you can rest up.

Yes, this is the location of Red Rocks Ampitheatre:

The rocks were a lot bigger in person:

We hiked down the hill in front of the rocks, and then back up the hill behind the rocks. The trail was only supposed to be a couple of miles, but there was no end in sight of the rocks as we were going down the hill, and we knew we couldn't be more than half way there until we circled behind and started back up the hill. It must have been the thin air and thick lunch:

Thankfully, the day was sort of overcast, or it would have been really hot that day. The rocks sure were impressive:

The Murphy Women are lookin' good through it all:

The trail at last came to an end, and so too do the pictures. I hope you aren't as tired at the end as we were, but the cold sodas on the back patio were delightful.

Whitewater Rafting

When we were in Colorado we went whitewater rafting on the Cache La Poudre river and had a blast. I can recommend Wanderlust rafting -- and try to get Kate as your guide, because she is not only good at the rafting part, she's a lot of fun too (if you value your dryness, don't splash her first) and good with children. Look for the green rafting helmet. They take pictures of your trip and for a fee will provide you with either individual shots or the whole set. I plumped for the whole set on CD so you don't have to. We did the taste of wild as the other trips had age restrictions that would have left the Fruit of the Murphy Loins behind.

Some people always seem to know where the camera is and play to it. The two littlest fruit are mine; I'm the guy with the Pancho Villa mustache (since trimmed, thankfully), and my better half is the gal behind the Foster Grants.

Stroke, stroke, stroke, ... Boy, that Kate sure was a slave driver!

Yeeaaaagghhhhhh!!!!! A trip like this lets your inner Dean out (whether you want it out or not).

The other Fearless Leader and Kate are chatting away like they're in the line at the grocery store. Women.

Whitewater is fun. No, they didn't teach us that display paddle position -- it just comes naturally.

Well, I made it all the way to the end without a gratuitous Clinton joke about Whitewater. Good luck on a speedy recovery Bill!

If you get a chance, you should go rafting too as it is too much fun to be legal for much longer.

Sports

My son is becoming an oddity for his age - he participates in three sports (baseball, soccer, swimming). I know it sounds crazy, but at 10 the pressure is on to specialize. I harbor no illusions that he is or will be a great athlete, so I'm happy that he continues to want to do all three. My daughter only swims, not out of a desire for specialization, but a lack of interest in other sports. We have simple rules -- if you want to play, fine; if you don't want to play, fine; but if you do join a team, then you need to be a responsible team member.

I'm not sure he's going to continue with soccer -- he liked baseball so much this season, he wanted to play fall ball but we had already signed up for soccer. The first year he played on a team, it stank -- they didn't score a single goal all season. The second year, the team got better -- they scored goals (Kyle got four, but who's counting) and they actually won a couple of games. The third year, last year, his team, minus its best players, merged with another team, and managed perhaps a few goals towards the end of the season. He decided to stick it out, and this year the team, minus a couple of its best players, again merged. So far, they've managed one goal in three games that weren't even close. He had hurt his ankle in the first game, but gamely played on until he couldn't run on it anymore.

We had a 7:30 AM game this Saturday, and when I woke him up to play he immediately started complaining about his ankle and limping about. When I pointed out that he had previously told me his ankle was fine and that he hadn't limped all week, he told me it had hurt but he just didn't say anything. We had a discussion, and the result was I made him go to the game. I tried to emphasize that as part of a team he shouldn't back out at the last minute. While keeping my game face on, I did worry that I was doing the wrong thing.

They didn't win, but Kyle got to play center forward and was around the ball most of the time he was in the game. He didn't limp at all, and didn't run any slower than normal. After the game was over and we were walking to the car, he said his ankle bothered him now, but hadn't during the game. I told him that it was because he was too busy during the game to notice, and asked if he had fun playing. "Yes", he said, "I had fun and I'm glad I came." Amazing -- sometimes I do make the right decision.

Wonderful Time Of Year

The Fruit of the Murphy Loins went back to school today, backpacks bulging to the brim with a long list of school supplies. Every year our district starts earlier and earlier, but doesn't get out any sooner in the spring. We had to warn the mom of a new middle schooler that if she went to the bus stop with her daughter as planned, a huge L would be permanently tattooed on her daughter's forehead.

The Other Fearless Leader starts back at her part-time temporary job on Monday. Normalcy has returned, which means I have to get up earlier so I can shower before my daughter and be ready to take her to the bus stop if the weather is inclimate. Ah, the simple joys of Fatherhood.

I keep repeating to myself, just because my kids are getting older doesn't mean I am.

Westward Ho

We drove to Colorado in our new mini-van for vacation. Yes, the Murphy Family is nothing if not utterly conventional. We live in the burbs. We have two loin fruit. I volunteer with the scouts and my wife sings in the church choir. If I were to go crazy and kill people, all the neighbors would say "he was always such a quiet man."

If you know anything about the drive from St. Louis to Denver, you know that there is plenty of time to contemplate the wonders of life as the heartland flows by. I can't remember any of that, so I thought I'd jot down random musings, insights, and amusing anecdotes from our journey.

Missouri is nicknamed the "Show Me" state. Billboard companies have taken us at our word and by golly show us every couple of feet along I-70.

When we passed a VW bug with Alaska plates before we even reached Columbia, my wife immediately started collecting license plates. No alphabet game for us (we could safely ignore the Flying-J stores whose signs are chockablock with otherwise rare letters). We came across plates from 48 states and several Canadian provinces. We bagged Hawaii on the way home when he cut me off at a toll booth leaving the Kansas Turnpike. Oddly enough, we saw a bunch of New Hampshires, but no Vermonts. Perhaps they're afraid to show their faces in the Midwest after that Howard Dean kerfufle in Iowa. No Rhode Islands either, but no surprise there.

Rural areas are now served by a multitude of porn supercenters along our nations interstate system. Sometimes the names were evocative like "Passions", and sometimes the names were utilitarian like "XXX". Cows and sheep can rest easier.

Whoever mapped out the route I-70 takes through Kansas City should be shot. I've never exited a road to stay on it so many times in my life before.

Kansas isn't flat, just empty. The green rolling hills without a tree in sight have their own beauty. Traffic on the highway dropped off noticably west of Kansas City, and there were stretches in central Kansas where the only man made object in view was the highway, and the infrequent interchange was with a dirt road. In the Missouri countryside, it seems somebody's house is always in view -- you can tell how long they've lived there by how many rusted out wrecks they have out back.

Wilson billed itself as the Czech capital of Kansas. I don't know if the people in Prague, the Czech captial of the Czech republic know this, but I'm not sure why we need a Czech capital for Kansas.

They are proud of their astronauts on the plains, as something like six towns along the way had signs letting travelers know that their favored sons were astronauts. I guess somepeople will do anything, no matter how dangerous, to get out of a small town.

We saw the World's largest Prairie Dog from the highway, but didn't stop at Prairie Dog Town in Oakley, Kansas even though it has farm animals with extra parts. I wanted to, but cooler heads prevailed. OK, the Fruit of the Murphy Loins let it be known that they weren't interested in either concrete or freak animals when they had all the modern comforts in the van.

They farm sunflowers in Kansas. Huge, beautiful fields of vibrant yellow right there for your enjoyment along the road. Makes me wish I could have gotten to Lompoc CA when the flowers where in bloom.

The Holiday Inn Express in Salina KS has a great free breakfast but a tiny swimming pool. The Fruit didn't even bother with the pool on the way home.

Cruise control is one of the great driving inventions of the 20th century. Not only does it allow you to put your feet up on the dash on a long trip, it lets you feel superior to drivers without it. Most people are predictable, they slow down going uphill and speed up going downhill. People on cell phones, however, go crazy and speed up and slow down based, near as I can tell, on whether they're talking or listening at the moment. Then there are the "sticky" drivers - when you go to pass them, they speed up so you have to take your foot off the dash, mash down on the accelerator to get by, and then slow back down when you finally manage to get ahead of them. Or they come flying up behind you, match your speed five feet from the back bumper, and stay with you for 150 miles before exiting. And it never fails that as you come up behind somebody going slower, somebody else comes up behind you going faster. Then the fun begins -- just how close will you come to the car in front before either getting in the passing lane or taking it off cruise.

Ah, the joys of the open road.

Who's Your Daddy

Tonight we went to a picnic for my daughter's "team" at middle school. The school breaks the class down into three teams - red, white, and blue - to divide up their teachers. My wife warned me beforehand not to do anything to embarass her. I pointed out that since she is 13, my mere existance is an embarassment to her.

Towards the end of the picnic, my wife made her wave to a couple of the teachers to let them know she is our daughter. As we drove away, I asked if I had done anything to embarass her. The answer was no. I then asked if her mother had embarassed her by making her wave. The answer was yes. For once I'm ahead.

So Long, For Now

The Murphy Family is leaving shortly for the mountains. I'm looking forward to the trip - I need a vacation, and I need it bad. You'll have to survive the next few weeks without new material here, and the comments should be turned off in a few days (thanks Tanya!) so that the place isn't overrun with links to an assortment of vices you could easily find without the purveyors spamming my site while I'm away. I promise pictures when (OK sometime after) my return.

Everyone Gets a Promotion

I called my father and told him, "we've reconsidered: you're not just a good grandfather, you're a great grandfather." My stepdaughter Veronica and her husband Jeremy just had a new baby:

Austin Michael Pruitt
July 13, 2004 at 8pm
7lbs, 11 oz 19 inches

People who say they sleep like a baby usually don't have one.
Leo J. Burke

"A baby is God's opinion that the world should go on"
Carl Sandburg

"Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

No Lemons, No Melon

I hope you had a great 4th of July, I know I did. The Murphy Family spent the long weekend at the lake, Lake of the Ozarks that is, and had fun morning, noon, and night. Having fun sure is exhausting and I haven't fully recovered days later. We were celebrating the Declaration of Independence properly, as we were aggressively pursuing happiness. Our friends the Fischers invited us down to watch fireworks on the lake and ride around in their boat -- how could we refuse? We wound up watching the fireworks from their boat anchored in the cove they were staying at. Most of the fireworks were provided by Red Oak resort, but a nearby marina, various other enterprises and individuals shot of plenty as well. There were so many from every direction, you didn't know where to look.

Suburban Nightmare

This morning my routine was just like every other workday morning - roll out of bed, shower, eat, make my lunch, head out the door for work. But then reality divurged from normal.

Somehow the gasket on the bottom of my garage door was shredded and laying on the garage floor. But it didn't stop there. Something gnawed on the bottom of the garage door. Something had gotten into the bag of sand I keep for gardening -- you never know when a soil emergency will strike. Something had gotten into the garbage in a desultory way. Something had shredded the gasket on my wife's garage door, gnawed on the bottom of the door, and defecated on a piece of the gasket. I had my suspicions, and when I discovered that something had knocked a bag of diatomaceous earth off a shelf and then walked through it, the paw prints confirmed it - a racoon had invaded my garage.

My wife had left the garage door open for a couple of hours after dark last night, and the bandit had made his way in to gorge on dog food, leaving little room for garbage. He must have been startled when my wife closed the door and frantic in his search for escape. I only hope he ran off this morning when I opened the door, but if I know his kind, and I do, he'll be back to feast on the Iams as soon as it's dark again. But this time, we'll be ready.

A Domestic Scene

This morning my wife had a concerned look on her face. "Should I be concerned?"

"About what?" I replied.

"That list of websites by the computer."

I thought a moment. Lightbulb goes off over my head. "Those are sites I had to blacklist from the blog. I get an email for each comment, I write down the URLs I need to ban, and then I use Blacklist to do it."

"Debt consolidation, online gambling, something about flirting - you can see why I was curious."

"Yep." I'm just glad I didn't have any nekkid wimen or male potency comment spammers recently.

I'm amazed how much comment spam I get here at a small potatoes site. I didn't get any when I was running Greymatter, but after my switch to Moveable Type it started. At first I used to ban IP addresses, but I noticed pretty quickly that spammers were changing their addresses the way a secure radio frequency hops. Thankfully Jay Allen wrote Blacklist for MT. While I still get comment spam, I don't get it from the same place twice. Of course, the real solution is the death penalty for spam - email or comment, but I don't think that will ever pass.

Kid's Game?

It's often said that baseball is a kid's game, or even a little kid's game, usually in response to a mental mistake on the part of a player. But baseball is better understood as a game you start playing as a kid to master as an adult.

OK, my son's baseball season has started. Each year they add more of the full rules -- last year the kids pitched for the first time, and this year the kids can steal for the first time. Baseball not only has a large set of rules (the coach was explaining the dropped third strike rule before the game, although the umps weren't calling it), it has even more techniques (each position has responsibilities that aren't spelled out in the rules and are much harder to learn).

And to top it all off, it's a difficult mental game. As the coaches stress to the kids, you have to know what you're going to do when you get the ball before the pitcher even delivers it. That would be easy except nothing happens for long stretches of time, and the mind tends to wander, especially those of children. So you trot out to your position at the start of the inning knowing where you are going to throw the ball if hit to you (infield to first, outfield to second) and you wait. And you kick the dirt. And wait. And you kick the dirt some more. And somebody hits the ball, but not to you. And you wait some more. And then somebody hits the ball to you, and where is that runner? Oops, held on to the ball to long and the coach is yelling. Do it as an adult, and the fans are yelling about baseball being a little kid's game.

My Next House

My next house won't have any wallpaper. We are redecorating our downstairs bathroom, and so step one is to strip the wallpaper, then paint the walls, then put up wainscotting, then put up crown molding, and then do a final spiff. The room is not even five feet square, so how long can it take? I took yesterday off to work on it, and I'm still on step one - yep, once again I'm stripping wallpaper and hating every minute of it. There is a new wrinkle this time; when they put the wallpaper up, they put up an underlayer of what resembles superthick dryer sheets. It doesn't come off in one pull - no, it come off in a minimum of two layers - sometimes more. In a couple of spots I've been reduced to scraping off a thick layer of paste with some fiber still embedded.

Given how busy this time of year is, it may not have been the best time to tackle this sort of project. However, we have a neighboorhood tradition of a progressive Christmas party (between Christmas and New Years so people are somewhat relaxed) and what with our new annex and updated master bathroom, we'll be a stop along the way. So we wanted to put the icing on the cake by redoing the downstairs bath. Ambition goeth before the late night cursing.

Time Flies Whether You Have Fun Or Not

The whole Murphy Family has been busy. School, Scouts, and Soccer have been pretty dominating. Work and real life have some terrible synchronicity where it seems they always get busy at the same time. Luckily, I've managed to have some fun -- our Cub pack won the "Best in Show" award at the Manchester Homecoming Parade. You can send me a big foam finger (index, not middle) for Christmas so I can hoot and holler "We're Number One!" while waving it about.

Recurring Themes

A couple of Fridays ago, the Other Fearless Leader and I were out enjoying an evening at the Muny, St. Louis' outdoor home for musical theater. The weather was perfect, an uncommon occurance in St. Louis in August. Before the show, most everybody sang the National Anthem, a practice that seems to have started with 9-11 and continues almost 2 years later - indicative of changes in American society. The lady in front of the Other Fearless Leader complimented her on her beautiful singing (a common occurance for her, but something that's never happened to me). I always smile while singing the National Anthem because it reminds me of the scene in The Naked Gun where Leslie Nielsen can't remember the lyrics.

Anyway, we saw South Pacific, and that reminds me that based on the recommendation of Geitner Simmons I'm reading Downfall: the End of the Imperial Japanese Empire which is mighty fine so far (I'm about 1/3 finished). And speaking of Recurring Themes, the book mentions that the Japanese thought they'd win the war because the United States, a decadent liberal democracy, wouldn't be able to stand the casualties required to sustain the fight. The longer the war went on, the more that idea became the only hope the Japanese had. Sound familiar, doesn't it? Not to belittle the hardships that our soldiers are experiencing today, but what the GI's had to go through in the Pacific theater was far worse - both living (and fighting) conditions and casualties. And if you want to talk fanaticism, Japanese soldiers routinely suffered 97 to 99 percent killed in action. Pardon my French, Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose (The more things change, the more they stay the same).

My Summer Vacation

I just got back from a great vacation in the Washington DC area. We saw most everything of cultural import in DC although only briefly. We weren't arrested at the Pentagon despite our wandering around, pointing, and general middle eastern appearance. We spent some very relaxing time at the beach in Delaware at my cousin Linda's beach resort eyrie. We got to have some fun with Linda and Bill at their house in Columbia, Maryland. Now we are back, but we are leaving again for a weekend getaway at the lake.

Anyway, more penetrating insight and boring personal stuff is on tap here, and once I get a hold of the bung puller, we can begin the pour. (The captain has to go down with the metaphor.)

And thanks again Linda and Bill for all of your kind hospitality - it made for an excellent vacation and we do appreciate it.

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Yes, we had fun getting the book at midnight, but I have to admit I'm getting old (forty has turned out to be a brick wall in many respects) so that when midnight rolled around I was far more excited with the idea of finally being able to go home to bed than the idea of getting the new book in my hands. Thankfully, our friends got there very early so we had a very low line ticket number. I have finished the book, even with my policy of letting the kids have first priority and giving it to them whenever they asked. So now my own mini-review, with no spoilers:

Just as Goblet of Fire was something of a departure from the prior books, so too Order of the Phoenix is something of a departure from all the others. My nine year old who is still toward the beginning doesn't seem to like it as much and calls it confusing. My twelve year old is much further along and seems pretty excited. I too wasn't as enchanted in the beginning, what with adolescent Harry, but I was very satisfied by the end.

I still found it a page turner throughout, and I like that not only do we get new, memorable characters, but all the old ones, and I mean all, have a role in the book. While it has a bit less whimsy, and had something clearly added just because it was needed later, it does have more rounded characters, more Harry and friends rather than just Harry saving the day, more backstory, and the book still shows that character matters. Children and adults who liked the earlier books will like this one too.

Harry Potter Mania

Yes, tonight you'll find me in line at the Barnes and Noble in Des Peres waiting to buy a copy of the latest Harry Potter. At least we won't be alone in our nuttiness -- not only will there be a huge crowd, but we will be with our friends the O'Briens (they're getting the line tickets -- we'll be at the swim team's pool party). My son paid in advance at school (the publisher is named Scholastic for a reason) so he has his certificate, wand, and ball cap. Now all we need is the book.

Father's Day

For Father's day the Fruit of the Murphy Loins gave me this wonderful glass 3-D picture/sculpture thingy. It's just the neatest thing, and yesterday I was close to obnoxious showing it off. The two of them are side by side and not arguing (the pictures were taken separately to achieve that effect) forever caught at this age. When you look through the back, as you move they follow you - not the creepy way with just their eyes, but the cool way with their whole faces turning. The day itself was busy, with church, visiting both Fearless Leaders' fathers, and a cub scout graduation ceremony in the evening (scheduling snafu two year in a row - next year will be different!).

Happy Anniversary

My wife and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary yesterday. We had an elegant meal at The Seven Gables Inn. I've been taking a class in Clayton this week, and so we met at the Galleria, got some shopping done (the route to a woman's heart, BTW), and then went to dinner. The food was excellent, the staff was helpful and friendly, and the company outstanding. If you're looking for a nice place to go, you should try the Seven Gables Inn. And I recommend marriage even more highly.

Congratulations, Becca and Steve

It's official - I'm not just a pretty good uncle, I'm a Great Uncle. Little Caleb Matthew Kinchelow arrived last night to great joy. Mother and baby are doing fine; no word on dad, but a great aunt and uncle are in shock. We're not old, we just feel that way.

Whew!

I've been in all day class the last three days, and tonight we have 5 twelve year old girls for my daughter's birthday party. Can you say head spinning? I though you could.

And So It Begins

Last night we had our first intergenerational fooseball game (I suspect of many). The Fruit of the Murphy Loins declared that their team name was "The Shockers"; the Murphy Fearless Leaders decided to remain nameless. Despite the confident predictions of victory by the Shockers, they in fact were the ones shocked as they went down to defeat. No victory dance took place as the victors were too old and tired to bother. Play of the game was characterized by observers, if there had been any, as extremely poor in every aspect but sportsmanship.

Home Improvement - Oh How I Love Carpet!

Yesterday had its ups and downs. Problems at my ISP knocked funmurphys offline. But back in the real world, they were working away on the annex. Jerry was restoring the fence and side yard to its pre-construction state, and freezing his feet off (thin socks); the unknown carpet installers were, well, installing the new carpet. So I came home not just to progress, but an inside that is almost done -- done enough to move the furniture back out of the garage, where it has been forcing me to park outside in the cold of winter, and put together the Fruit of the Murphy Loins fooseball/airhockey table they got for Christmas. So something for everybody. What did my wife get? She got to arrange the furniture at a 45 degree angle to the walls and stuff like that. The project is rapidly going from gigantic headache to party time. And the best part is, no more dust! Well, just the normal amount.

Home Improvement: The Dirty Little Secret

After the cost and delay of our room annex project, the thing that's disturbed us the most is the trash. OK, dust ranks up there, but we expected it. What we didn't expect was that nobody who has come to our house has felt the slightest need to clean up after themselves. The only guy who cleans up is the one who shows up in response to our complaints about the trash, and he doesn't do a particuarly good job of it. Old insulation lays where it falls. Spills of caulk, wall mud (I don't know the technical term, sorry), concrete stay where it falls. You know somebody's been there working by the pile of trash left behind. Soda cups from fast food places remain until we throw them away. Sometimes it seems like the workmen go out of there way to make a mess, and then ignore it. And it's not like they're working late and don't have time to clean up; it's simply beneath them. If the construction was self contained, it would be one thing. But we have to live in the other half of the room. Maybe next time, we'll stipulate women workers and see if they are any better.

Home Improvement - The Beginning Of The End

Our room annex construction continues. My wife has informed me that she doesn't care for the term addition. It seems that her childhood neighbors had an addition that was never finished - the husband took off before completion -- and served as a junk area. So I promised her I would call it the annex (somehow I figured festering sore was out of the question). When we started, the contractor said four weeks. In retrospect, that figure was unrealistic. But it set our expectations and we figured we'd be done by Thanksgiving even with inevitable delays, even if it took twice as long. When my daughter asked if it would be done by her birthday (in February), I asked which one. The whole thing started two weeks later than originally planned, we lost two weeks while we waited for new roof trusses because the architect got confused about inner and outer dimensions. We lost another two or three weeks (they all blur together after a while) because they didn't leave provisions for the heating ducts, despite our repeated attempts to get them to explain how they were going to hook the new ducts up to the old. Finally they cut up the new floor slab to put in the ducts - which gave us a heavy coating of concrete dust throughout the house. And both these delays slowed the project down even more because the next jobs didn't get scheduled until they were completed. And then the Holidays, which we were supposed to be done by, killed us. Firms wouldn't ship materials. Contractors wouldn't even start jobs if it meant they might have to work in a week containing Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Years - three more weeks down the drain.

With the holidays over, we figured the pace should pick up some. Yesterday, my wife had told me the electricians had been there first thing in the morning, so I knew some work got done on the addition, oops, annex. But when I got home, I was overjoyed just to see that the lumber sitting in the front yard for months had finally been hauled off. And then to go inside and see that the painters had been there, and finished - that was heart attack material. Three tasks in one day - I can almost believe we'll be done by the end of the week (the latest estimate). End of next week is more like it, but I can see light at the end of the surprisingly long tunnel. Why we only have the carpet, the bookshelves, trim and touchup, finish the siding (they ran out!), and rebuild the fence to go. Soon I'll have a brand spanking new room annex, and a sea of mud to go with it. Oh yeah, once it's done, I'll have to go to work. Furniture, decorations, and this spring, landscaping. Maybe I shouldn't be too anxious for them to finish.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to one and all. I hope you get what you don't deserve, have more fun than you ought to, do something for somebody else you wouldn't otherwise do, and think about things you normally don't. Its' a special time of year, after all.

St. Louis Christmas Lights

Our family enjoys Christmas light displays. In the Saint Louis area, there are three big displays -- Winter Wonderland in Tilles Park (McKnight Road just south of 64/40); The Way of Lights at the Our Lady of the Snows Shrine in Belleville, off of highway 15 just east of I-255; and Santa's Magical Kingdom which is on I-44's north outer road just west of Six Flags in Eureka. We've seen all three and enjoued them immensely.

But there are smaller displays put on by individual homeowners we like to visit, too. Some favorites have gone dim over the years, but we keep visiting favorites and explore looking for new ones. On Kinsale just west of Dougherty Ferry there is a very nice display - you can see it from Dougherty Ferry and there backyard display seen reflecting in the lake is pretty cool. A house on the corner of Oaktree crossing and Greenfield crossing (near the intersection of Big Bend and Sulfur Springs) is unlike any other I've seen. For one thing, they have their own radio station (101.5 I think); many of the light displays are synchronized with the music, and the guy makes his own unique light displays. A nearby street -- Red Oak Plantation -- is another annual destination for us. The houses all have big wrap around front porches and just about every house on the dead end street puts on an elegant light display. A house at the corner of Pierside and Morning Oaks (just east of Old State Road) puts on a display that's over the top. Way over the top. This corner lot is packed to the gills with every lighted decoration on the market.

Please share any favorite St. Louis area light displays in the comment section -- we'd love to check it out.

UPDATE: It's been a few years since we've had the time to drive around, so the information above may be out of date. I'm also including info from the comments from 2003 below, and this too might be out of date. So please feel free to share both your favorites or if any of the ones listed here are no longer on display in the comments section.

A big thanks to Linda Hansen for her list.

And Isiah Angeli left the following comment in 2007 on a different post:

wow there's this house at on Starview Dr off of Kerth and (I-55 SOUTH ) butler hill and they put up joy they have a home made star a nativity set and lights every way you look.

Home Improvement - Begin Again

For the last week I've had a nice concrete floor for the room addition, and nothing else. Work was halted because the roof trusses had to be re-ordered because of the measurement snafu. Today, the framers are supposed to show up and start. I have no idea what will greet me when I get home tonight. I guess that's the exciting part of home improvement. The giant ruts in the yard from the bobcat hauling concrete for the frost walls and floor is, I suppose, the lousy side of home improvement. Now I can relate when I read histories of WWII that talk about the overwhelming tide of mud in the Russian spring, since my backyard has turned into a vast expanse of churned up mud. I just can wait to get out there and re-grade and re-plant (hah!).

Yesterday work started on the bathroom. We are having putting in a new shower, new floor, and new countertop in the master bath. When I got home, I had a shower without walls and a floor of nothing but plywood. Frank Bielec would paint the tiles right on the subfloor, but I'm foolishly paying to have tile installed. Last night we began taking the old wall paper off the wall, mainly on the theory that with the toilet in the tub and the mirrors taken down, we could get to places we couldn't ordinarily get to (nor want to, for that matter). I have come to hate stripping wall paper off the wall so much, I have sworn to never again put any up. The prior owner put up some sort of plastic paper that has to be taken down twice - first the plastic front and then the paper backing. No doubt this was felt necessary because it was going up in a damp bathroom. After 3 and a half hours, I have a majority of the paper off. Needless to say, it's mostly the paper that's hard to get to or that stubbornly clings to the wall that is left. Tonight I have a cub scout leader's meeting, so I'm off the wall paper hook for tonight. I have a feeling the remaining paper is going to remain up until after the room is finished and I've regained my good humor enough to continue.

Murphy-Shafer Conclave Reconvenes At Home

My brother's family has returned home today, so now my life returns to it's reguarly scheduled paths. Yesterday we capped off the visit with a trip to Dave and Buster's, a Chucky Cheese's for grownups. They had sent me a coupon for $10 in the mail; when I bought a power card, it was my lucky day and doubled. So I raced, blasted, shot, and otherwise engaged in testosterone laden activity, until my gun hand gave out before the money did. So now Max and Mark return to their planet where everything is familiar, unlike this strange planet where so many things are different.

Halloween on Planet Murphy

Halloween was cold this year, and we didn't get many visitors. Most of the kids were neighbors, so I waved and chatted to the parent who was walking with them. Only two groups I didn't recognize. In St. Louis we have the custom that the kids need to do a trick to get their treat; almost always they tell a joke. After the hundredth house, that gets tiring for them, so the clever ones learn a couple.

My nephews Max and Mark went trick or treating with the Fruit of the Murphy Loins this year, and so were introduced to this custom. When they got back from entertaining the neighbors, Mark told us that in our world, we have square pizza with no crust, but in his they have triangles with crust; in our world, you have to tell a joke to get candy, but in his, you don't. Mark hasn't just travelled to a different city; the contrast between San Jose and St. Louis apparently is great enough, he feels he's travelled to a different world.

Family In Town

My brother and his family have arrived from San Jose, so I'll be enjoying Hallowing, my fathers birthday, and all the joys of family life with them for the next week. They'll mainly be trying to stay warm.

Home Improvement: First Hurdle

I had to say the construction project was going better than Dream House. Late this afternoon I got a call from my wife with the news that the Architect screwed up his dimensions - the addition was 16 inches too short and the interior wall would have a jog in it. Well, fortunately my wife noticed before they poured the concrete for the walls - just the footing is off. So now they’ll hand dig the footing and wall (in clay that is slightly harder than portland cement), repour the footing, and then pour the walls. They are also off by 8 inches away from the house, but I think we’ll just bank that for later consideration. Somehow, I have a feeling other things are going to come up.

Home Improvement: And So It Begins

Thursday we got a good news/bad news call about our home improvement projects. The good news was, they moved up our start date to Friday for the room addition, the bad news was they moved back our bathroom start date by a week. So I took Friday off so I could move the plants that were where the addition was going, and to get ready for the cub scout pack campout the following day. The builders came by, looked around, said piece of cake, and left. A fire inspector came by and said we didn't have a fire district permit. When I called the builder they said we did. Don't you just love bureaucracy in action - I wonder how much I'm paying for filling out all the permit paperwork.

Monday, they showed up, marked the underground cable and electric lines with spray paint, and demolished half the deck - the foreman told my wife that while using screws instead of nail is what he would have done, it made tearing the deck apart much harder. Tuesday they showed up, knocked down more of my fence than they told me, tore out the rest of the deck, dug and poured the footings, and tore up far more of my back yard than I expected. The hard clay - we've had a very dry summer/fall this year - defeated the first backhoe, pulling it into the trench when they tried to dig the footings. They had to get a bigger one to haul the first one out and finish digging. They poured concrete in the afternoon, so now I have a rectangle of concrete in a field of dirt for a back yard.

They also accidentally cut the cable line. So they had to call the cable company, who came out amazingly fast (my wife figures they must have "pull"). When my wife found out, she told the foreman that she was upset because she was going to miss Trading Spaces. The foreman told her how much he loved the show and that he got to meet Ty when Trading Spaces was filming shows here recently.

As many as the screw ups were, it is going smoother than any of the episodes of Dream Home I've seen.

Use 1002 For Duct Tape

There are a lot of uses for duct tape, and every handyman keeps a roll. Now there's a new use for duct tape - wart removal. My first thought was the painful one of yanking the tape off quickly, but instead it's a long term process of applying the tape for six days, soaking in water, and then scraping with an emery board, and reapplying the tape. Now I wonder what led them to try this therapy in the first place. I'm more than academically interested as my son is getting a wart on his forehead that he's having issues with. We tried the dissolving kind of wart remover, but all I'll say about that is thankfully no scarring occurred but the wart came back. We've been putting a band aid over it, and I noticed the other night it looks different. So before we jump to duct tape -- I'm not sure it comes flesh colored -- we may just stick with a band aid.

Such A Long Wait, Such Lousy Magazines

I took my father to the hospital for an MRI this morning. For all the bustle and self-important people striding about, hospitals always seem to function on their own time -- a notch or two slower than the Post Office. After my daughter was in the hospital for her heart surgery, I’ve maintained that a day in the hospital is like a week of real time.

They told my father to be there at 7 AM. They didn’t start the process for him until 8:10 AM. His doctor had sent over forms ordering a brain scan, but supplied some other material indicating back scan. After they got that cleared up, another doctor came out to ask a question because he couldn’t read the ordering doctor’s handwriting. We couldn’t understand him (I thought his accent was Eastern European), but after my father went on at great length about why he was there, he seemed satisfied.

As soon as my father went off to change into that delightful hospital gown, they asked a couple of the other people waiting if they wanted to go to the MRI facility in another tower because they were backed up at this one. As far as I could tell, 10 minutes after starting, they were already 30 minutes behind schedule. That’s the medical profession for you. They’re going to be there all day, so you might as well be, too.

I see two problems with our health care system, and no, it’s not the lack of health insurance for a lot of people or the lack of a single payer. The first problem is the whole third party pay for health care. By and large, the patient isn’t the customer, the employer or the government is. This leads to the crap you have to put up with a patient -- the wasting of your time on a prodigious scale, the condescension, the constant questioning if the treatment is the best or just the cheapest. The other problem is that we don’t have enough doctors. I know it seems like a crazy complaint for someone who, if you couldn’t tell, doesn’t care for too many doctors. But the point is, part of the lack of competition is the undersupply of doctors. Have you ever heard of an out of work doctor? The supply is carefully controlled just so that never happens, and not for the patients’ benefit.

Anyway, that’s the sort of stuff that goes through your mind as you wait around all morning long.

Home Improvement, the Beginning

We went to the neighborhood trustee meeting last night to get architectural approval for our plans to add on to our house. I was worried because a few years ago, when the other fearless leader was a trustee, neighbors of ours had a hard time getting approval for the front porch they were adding. They kept getting asked to provide better drawings. So I was nervous, but we didn't have any problems. They looked our drawings over for a couple of minutes, asked a few questions, and signed the drawings. I guess the difference was, our neighbors kept submitting something they sketched up, and we gave them real architectural drawings, drawn up by an actual architect (and paid for with actual money, too).

The hardest part so far has been getting a contractor. In the spring, we wanted to get bids on the addition. So we contacted a couple of firms that people we know worked for. We got them to come out, and then we had a hard time getting bids out of them, and when they did, the bids were astronomical. The same neighbors who built their porch knew a guy who wanted to do our addition. He called a couple of times, begging us to let him come out and bid. So after getting the astronomical bids, we did. Then we had a hard time setting a date to talk to him, and after he came out and we told him what we wanted, we never heard back - even after repeated calling. So we gave up on the addition idea.

This summer, we decided that since we weren't going to do the addition, we'd redo the master bathroom. The shower was in bad shape, the tile floor was in bad shape, and the other fearless leader didn't like the countertop. So we began our search for a contractor. We were pleasantly surprised with the first one we tried. He was polite, showed up on time, returned phone calls, and gave us a bid in a reasonable amount of time. The only problem was, he did things a certain way, carried a certain grade of material, and that's the way he did things. We decided to check with another contractor to better explore our options, and he was equally pleasant to deal with. We went with the second guy because we could get what we wanted. When my wife was complaining to him about how lousy the contractors we've dealt with this year (to get the carpet installed we had to issue two ultimatums and listen to a sob story about the contractor going to the hospital with our measurements), he told her they did room additions on the side. He gave us a reasonable bid, he seemed to check out, so now we're having the addition and the bath done. Can you say debt? I thought you could.

I think I'm going to steer my kids away from white collar work, and try to get them to become tradesmen. If you are competent in your work, punctual, pleasant to deal with, and give the customer what they ask for, you can clean up. It's too late for me, but like all fathers, I want my children to have a better life.

Sunday in the Park with George

OK, I took a little poetic license, as we weren't with George. But we were at a park this afternoon, enjoying the beauty of the day. My wife figured it would be nice to pick up some fast food for dinner and hit a park with the dog, so we did. We weren't as well prepared as another family that was there, with their table cloths and wicker hamper full of goodies, and us with just our sacks full of McDonalds, but even McDonalds tastes better al fresco. Trooper, our dog, was just happy as could be since he had a whole new set of plants to pee on. He rapidly reached the point where he would only squeeze out a drop before moving on, although he took just as long to sniff out just where he wanted to go. The Fruit of the Murphy Loins were happy to be able to frolic and gambol across the grassy field with the dog, enjoying the rare mix of sunshine and delightful temperature (rare for St. Louis, that is). The Murphy Fearless Leader even got into the act, running with the dog until they were both winded and tired. Fortunately, the sun was sinking even faster, thus providing a good reason to leave without any awkward embarrassment.

Block Party

We had our neighborhood block party Friday night. This was our sixth annual block party; our first one was in July, which given the heat and humidity in Saint Louis in July was a big mistake. Now its the first Friday in October, and you never know what the weather will be like. The weather this year was perfect -- cool and crisp -- and we had a great time eating, visiting, and admiring one of our neighbors new sports car. He's a bit old for a mid-life crisis, but better late than never, I always say. We like our neighborhood -- the builder left the original Oak-Hickory-Dogwood forest in the back yards, the houses aren't too close together, people are friendly and helpful, and there is a real sense of community.

Contrary to the urban myth of the awful suburbs, we're happy living here. We didn't flee the central city leaving it to decay - both my wife and I were born and raised in the suburbs, and have always lived in a suburb. Many urban advocates talk of central city in terms of small town life - Ray Suarez in his "The Old Neighborhood, What We Lost in the Great Suburban Migration" claims the virtues of urban living we're identical to a traditional vision of small town life - everybody knows you, you have to travel only a small distance to get everything you need, and a sense of community. I find those to be the same virtues of where I live, even though it's in the suburbs. Sure, there's parts of the city with "more action", but quite frankly I'm at a point in my life I've got more action than I can handle. Rather than denigrate suburban life, urban advocates would do better to improve modern urban life.