A whole lotta blah

I need to thank everyone who has told me they read my blog.  I'd never know if you didn't tell me, so it's nice to know that at least a few people enjoy it. 

That being said, I also must say that it can be overwhelming as an amateur blog writer to hear people tell you they like what you say.  It causes me to put the pressure on myself to "bring it" every time.  I can't even count the amount of times I've written a blog, read it, then deleted the whole thing because it wasn't up to the standards I think you expect from me.  I try hard not to repeat myself, to not use the same analogies or anecdotes more than once, and to not write "I hate my job" every day, even if that's how I'm feeling. 

Basically, that's my way of saying thanks for sticking with me....and now we'll return to your regularly scheduled blog....today with bullets!

• It's no secret that I love TV.  Fall premiere week is right up there with the opening weekend of college football and Christmas as things I look forward to every year.  I try to watch as many new shows as possible this first week, then pare down my list after giving everything a shot.  Sometimes it works out well.....this strategy turned me on to some shows I probably wouldn't have given a shot based on the promos alone, like Journeyman and How I Met Your Mother.  Sometimes it is a huge waste of time, such as any show that stars Christian Slater (the forgotten, My Own Worst Enemy) or Jerry O'Connell (that awful show about carpooling.)  Last night gave me one of each -  Hawaii Five-0 was awesome, The Event was awful.  The whole premise of The Event seems to be to show you as little as possible about the plot, blow your mind with some crazy plot twist with thirty seconds left in the episode, leave you with a little nugget of info and some music to let you know how important what just happened was, then show you scenes from the next week.  The other 55 minutes are filled with so many flashbacks and story arcs that you need to rewind constantly to review.  Anyways, the best thing I can say about the Event is that it Event-ually ended.  (Insert "Hey Oh!" sound bite here)
• Jonah started little kickers soccer last weekend.  The plan was to use soccer as the carrot at the end of the stick in potty training, but Jonah still shows absolutely no interest in using the facilities.  He seriously seems to feel that he's wasting his time using a toilet when his diaper works just fine.  We've tried just about every reward we can think of to kick start his use of the toilet, but nothing seems to be working.  So we dropped the soccer restriction, realizing that holding him out was basically punishing him for not agreeing to forced potty training.  He was super excited, and apparently we were too.  We showed up twenty minutes early.  I think the coach (a girl named Michele that was born in the 1990's...yikes!) was a little curious as to who the people were who showed up so early the lights had barely been turned on, but everything was cool after that.  Jonah was so amped up he was running around like he was avoiding gunfire - top speed, but never in a straight line.  At one point, while we introduced ourselves to the coach, Jonah started doing "snow angels" on the field.  Rachel made a comment about Jonah becoming the kid who chased butterflies in right field, but I said he was just practicing his goal celebration.  Jonah, upon hearing the term "goal celebration," got up and kicked a ball into the goal.  He then ran around like he'd just won the world cup, arms outstretched, yelling "Gooooooaaaaaaalllll," before chest bumping the wall and falling backwards as if he'd been knocked unconscious.  This was the definitive "why didn't we have the camera rolling" moment of Jonah's life. 
  
  Finally the other kids showed up.  I've talked before about how you hardly ever see both parents with the kids at the park in Albany or at the McDonald's play place.  It was the same at the Corvallis Sports Park, with Rachel and I being the only set of parents who were both on the field with our kid.  I, being the judgemental douche that I am, immediately assumed that these were kids of broken homes or had a parent that just didn't care enough.  Then I heard someone say that their other kid had a volleyball tournament across town.  Why didn't anyone tell me that families may have more than one kid with multiple obligations on the same day?  I immediately realized that I was going to hell.  
• This was a class of four, but we already got a taste of what kind of names we can expect Jonah's friends to have when he starts school.  I can understand avoiding uber-popular names like John, Sarah, Jennifer, etc. but that doesn't mean you need to start converting last names into first names, or just straight creating names.  The other kids were named Calvin, Rayner, and Lennon.  According to www.babynamewizard.com/voyager (one of my favorite websites) those names ranked 231, 818, and 951 respectively in terms of popularity in 2009.  Rayner actually wasn't on the list, so I used the closest name, Raynard.  Raynard was 818.....in the 1960's.  Ooof. 
• Why is it that people baby-talk animals?  Do animals respond to that better?  I realize that dogs can hear sounds that are inaudible to humans, but that doesn't mean you should try to alter your voice to that pitch.  I was at work today and a lady brought in her dog.  People literally stopped their normal person conversations to say "Well hewwwo widdle dawgie!  Who's a good dog?  That's wight, you are!  Yes you are!  Yes you are!"  in that special voice reserved only for dogs and babies.  Maybe they're the same thing.  In fairness, this dog was a baby.  It will be  celebrating its six month birthday on Thursday.  And yes I know this because this information was offered up for no apparent reason.  Again, I don't understand people who go gaga for animals.  It's ok to love animals, just don't "wuv" animals.  That's when it gets creepy. 

Animal people....SOOOOOO creepy.

I'm all for pets.  I love pets.  But they're pets!  They do not think like humans do.  You can't have conversations with them.  You can, but they don't really understand.  They understand treats and belly rubs.  They don't understand that you had a bad day because your boss made you work through your lunch and as a result you didn't get to watch Judge Judy today.  All that "Man's best friend" stuff is crap.  You put food in front of me that I don't have to work for, give me a warm, comfy place to sleep and play catch with me every day and I'll probably be your friend too. 

I used to think that this sort of behavior was limited to household animals.  My eyes have been opened now, and I see that this sort of behavior extends to all sorts of animals thanks to webcams.  We have a lady in our office who will not start working until she's watched video of a panda at some zoo.  There's a "Raptor Cam" that shows some eagle's nest that people go absolutely apeshit for.  And now there's OctoCam - a live streaming video of the octopus at the Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport.

Correction, there WAS OctoCam.

Apparently the octopus died a few months ago.  According to the website, he had thousands of internet followers across the world.  Thousands!  Thousands of people would get online to watch an octopus in a tank the size of a large hot tub float around and eat an occasional crab.  According to the website, that occasional crab is what did him in:

• It appears that Deriq succumbed to a massive coccidian ( a type of protozoan) infection that resulted in severe damage to his liver, intestines and heart. This particular parasite generally has a crustacean as an intermediate host. Consequently, Deriq probably became infected through his food source (crabs). This infection is common among many species of wild and cultured octopus.

Really?  His name was Deriq?  Was Derek not available? 

While reading about this, I discovered that Derek....I mean Deriq... has a facebook page.  Yes, an octopus has a page....with 321 people who "like" him.    I'm now fascinated with this page.  There's something funny about seeing "Deriq, the Internet Octopus commented on Stacey Johnson's photo."  Among the highlights from his facebook page:

• His interests include sleeping, changing colors, and swimming.  So basically "doing things essential to survival."  Again, animals are not people.  They don't have interests.  They like to survive.
• Sometimes Deriq likes to speak about himself in the third person, such as "Deriq is feeling frisky this morning!" other times he speaks in the first person.  No word yet on how this octopus accesses his laptop from the tank. 
• Some comments on his page include:

Sheila Hagar Deriq!!! So happy to hear from you. I am going to send you a picture of Gilligan, my desk beta fish...he is a huge fan of yours.

(She totally did send him a picture of her fish.  Deriq commented, saying he was *waving* at the fish.  My guess is he wanted to eat Gilligan, but whatever)

Alexa Joy I love it when he puts his suction cups on the camera! XD

 

Susan Steffen Lagerquist Deriq, we will miss you!! Thank you, Deriq for opening our world to your world. You were on my computer daily. Have fun chasing the heavenly crabs.

  Adriamarie Bruns- Arboleda I'm Heart broken, I actually watched him pass away. I knew something was wrong. I will miss him as I watched him everyday while drinking coffee. I am so sad now.

Dorothy Worlein I'm so sad to hear about Deriq. I loved watching him on the octocam every day from my place of work. I will miss him.

 

Nothing like publicly saying you're a slacker, and yes I see the irony in the fact that I'm writing this blog from my desk at work.  I guess I could issue the disclaimer that everyone I support is on the road right now, so there's not much work for me to do, but really if you're reading this it's because you're my friend and don't judge me like that, right?  Right?

Oregon State.....Them's the Ducks, right?

Another story from the trip to Wisconsin I forgot to mention:

I happened to be wearing an OSU polo on Sunday while traveling home from the Midwest.  At the Madison Airport I was stopped while going through security by a TSA employee.

"OS...what school is that?  Oklahoma State?"

I said "no, Oregon State....same colors, so I'll give you partial credit."

"Oh, why'd I think you all wore green?"

"That's University of Oregon,"  I said without even a hint of a smile on my face.  I think he got the point that he'd just offended me, because he just handed me back my ID and didn't say another word. 

---------------------------------------

While waiting at the gate in Minneapolis for our flight to Portland, a guy gets up from his seat a few rows over and walks right up to me. 

"You on your way home from the game?"
I have no clue what the hell he's talking about.  At first I think he's talking to my wife, who is sporting her Wisconsin gear, but that makes no sense either as the Badgers played at home. 

"Ummm.....what?"  I said, mainly because I was completely flabbergasted by this guy.

"From Tennessee?  Did you go?"

At this point I realize the guy thinks I'm a Ducks fan on my way home from Knoxville.  I just kind smiled and shook my head, and he says "oh, just wearing your colors eh?  Well good win yesterday!" and heads back to his seat.  Rachel just starts laughing and says "you guys need to market better, honey."

 I realize that in pretty much every state in Big-10 country they only have one major state university (Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio State, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Penn State really have no major in-state rivals in football), but do Florida and Florida State have this problem?  Do people not know the difference between Washington and Washington State?  What made this all the more frustrating is that there were at least three Oregon fans wearing green and yellow on our flight who were in fact on their way home from Knoxville.  I don't know if any of them saw this drama unfold, but I'm sure they were high-fiving themselves on the inside. 

I'm not going to sit here and say that I know everything about sports.  There's a few schools out there whose logo I don't know off the top of my head, or if you said "what are the school colors of San Diego State, it might take me a second to remember."  But I'm not going to walk up to some guy and start talking about his football team unless I'm damn sure I know what the hell I'm talking about.

In the words of DMX:  "It's better to be thought dumb and remain silent than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Back on the Grind

As always, I came back from Wisconsin feeling fat and happy.  Rachel's sister Colleen got married over Labor Day weekend up in Appleton, which is a pretty cool city.  It's a little bigger than Albany, but without the meth problem (at least from what I saw.)  I mean, it had a performing arts center, where actual performers come to perform!  None of that community theater stuff with a bunch of amateurs.  Not that I have anything against community theater - it's just that I'd rather watch someone who sings/dances/acts for a living than someone who sells refurbished furniture live out his dream of playing Hamlet on Broadway. 

Back to the wedding.  Jonah was the ringbearer, but right before it was time to walk down the aisle, Jonah got cold feet and didn't want to go by himself.  So I got to be the ringbearer-bearer, which was alright, until we got to our seats and Jonah decided he wanted to check out the pond that was just behind the altar.  I followed him up there (outdoor weddings provide a myriad of problems for people with small children, fyi) at which point he tries to make a break for it.  I was able to corral him and distract him from his unhappiness with my iPod, so score one for technology.  Unfortunately, the ceremony was starting, so there was no going back the way we came.  So we made this huge loop around the wedding and rewalked up the side aisle as quietly as possible, although Jonah kept asking why there was no sound on the iPod.  We finally get to our seats, and to his credit, Jonah stayed quiet, only whispering when he wanted something.  Unfortunately, I missed almost the entire ceremony because my focus was radar locked on Jonah, making sure he didn't make a break for it or get upset at anything. 

Halfway through the wedding, Jonah hands me the iPod and says "Daddy, I want to stand by Mommy."  Rachel was a bridesmaid (or is it bridesmatron because she's married?  I'm not real hip on the proper wedding lingo), and the original plan was for Jonah to stay up there next to Rachel and the Jr. Bride (which apparently is like a flower girl, only without flowers).  I said alright, and he quietly took his place with the rest of the wedding party. 

When the wedding ended, Jonah and Carley, the Jr. Bride, headed down the aisle, but not before Jonah got a fist bump from his papa.  Then they danced down the rest of the aisle, with Carley twirling Jonah and Jonah giggling the entire time.  It was completely unscripted and pretty cute. 

After the wedding, the wedding party all hopped on a party bust to go drinking prior to the reception.  I mentioned to Rachel that I'd never heard of this happening before.  She said "it's a Wisconsin thing, honey."  Ok then.  Things got off to a rocky start when the driver of the party bus clipped a parked car while picking us up.  He came to a stop, opened the door and said "alright, are we ready to go?"  Greg, the groom, said "ummm, you realize that you just hit that car right?" Of course he hadn't, and we sat their for an hour while the cops showed up to sort out the situation.  I'm not sure if cops are required to show up at fender benders in Wisconsin, or it was because this was a bus, or it was just a slow crime day (of which I can imagine there's quite a few in Wisconsin), but it provided for a couple good pictures of the bride frisking the groom while he had his hands on the hood of a police cruiser. 

The reception was a lot of fun.  I had a great time, but not quite as great as Rachel and Jonah.  Rachel doesn't drink often, but she's the good kind of drinker, the kind that just gets extremely happy and wants to dance....and dance she did.  At one point Rachel's mom requested "Unchained Melody" because she wanted to slow dance.  Rachel starts yelling about how her mom's "putting everyone to sleep with this lullaby!" and requests the DJ play "Pour Some Sugar on Me" when the song is over.  When Rachel's mom pointed out that people were leaving the dance floor when Def Leppard came on, my wife turned into a rap hype man, running through the reception hall from table to table urging people to "get on up and dance!"  I overheard a few people say "who is that girl?" which made me laugh.  At one point I turned to a guy standing there and said "you see that one out there dancing by herself?  That one's mine, buddy!"

I also found out that I'm the third best dancer in my own family, as Jonah danced his little butt off.  He was twirling glow sticks and chasing the laser lights on the dance floor until after midnight.  He did take a brief break before coming back down from the hotel room to rock the party in his Buzz Lightyear jammies.

After that, the week was pretty low key, with a lot of laying around the house and playing in the yard.  I did get to experience the Richland County Fair, which is like any other county fair, except with lawn mower races.  Jonah and I watched the 10-11 year old race.  Picture kids on lawnmowers painted like race cars whipping around a dirt track at about 30-40 MPH and you might have an idea of how awesome this is.  What made it more awesome was how into it the crowd was.  I also loved the PA guy who kept saying things like "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Lawnmower Racing at its finest, right here in Richland County!" which is now my favorite thing to say in my bad Wisconsin accent. 

The only other major highlight of the week was a trip to Madison to see the Badgers play San Jose State.  However, when we got there, the tickets we had bought on StubHub wouldn't scan.  The pimply faced kid at gate six kept telling us that the tickets said "transferred."  I asked what that meant, and he said he didn't know.  So we were referred to a supervisor, who didn't know either.  Then were sent to customer service, which informed us that the season ticket holder who purchased the tickets had requested that the tickets be transferred to himself, thereby initiating a set of electronic tickets which automatically voided out the paper tickets that we now had in our possession.  Essentially the guy had requested duplicate tickets, then sold both sets online.  Anyways, the ticket office told us they were sorry, but we weren't getting in with those tickets.  So I called StubHub, which took the better part of half an hour.  I can't say anything bad about StubHub though, as it really wasn't their fault, and they tried to find us a way into the game.  When they didn't have any luck, they offered me a full refund and told me that if was able to purchase tickets outside the stadium to call them back the next day and they'd work on compensating me for those as well.  Right about this point, the guy in the Wisconsin ticket office came out and said that he felt really bad for us, and to go to Gate 8 and they had some tickets we could use.  Very classy move, and I was very impressed with the level of service I got from both StubHub and the University of Wisconsin.  Goes to show that customer service isn't dead quite yet, only in the cable/satellite television industry. The tickets we ended up getting were in the players family section, which was about the tenth row behind the Badger sideline.  So we ended up seeing the game for free with better seats than we ever could've dreamed of having.  Sure we missed the first quarter, but I call that a win in my book.