Father and Daughter

Someone pointed this out to me today. It's a simply beautiful film that won the Oscar for Best Animated Short in 2000. Make sure you have a tissue handy if you've ever lost a parent.

There's Something Funny Afoot

The word "Hung" has been vexing me of late.

No wait, don't hit "Back".

I worked late the other night and hit McDonald's on the way home. As I paid at the drive through window, I looked up at the fella handing me the bag. His name tag read, in large letters, "HUNG".

I chuckled and am pretty sure he noticed. I'm such a dick.

The next night, I was watching "Top Chef" with the DW and there's a guy on there named "Hung". The NEXT day, I get an email from an Asian distributor who's interested in our products. His name is, yep, "Hung".

Maybe I'm being insensitive. Perhaps in other cultures the name "Mark" means "hung like a Rhino". Maybe not. It just dawned on me that if my name was Hung, I would search the world looking for a job who's nametag had the format "Hi, I'm XXXX. Can I Help You?"

Whoa Nelly

I was recently asked to describe what I do in the course of a single day. I suspect some subterfuge here as this recent several weeks is exactly the wrong time to ask what my day consists of.

To be honest, there's no way to answer that question. Let me just start by telling you what getting off the elevator feels like.

First, climb to the top of a 30 story building. (I don't work in a 30 story building so let's be careful not to mix the metaphor here.)

Next, have a helicopter place a Hummer H2 on the roof next to you.

Then, tie a rope that is exactly 29 stories long to your ankle and the bumper of the Hummer.

With the Hummer in neutral, push it off the roof.

Wait for it.

That describes the sensation of starting each day.

The Birthday, Part II

So yesterday was my birthday. I guess you never really know how you're going to spend a birthday until it happens. Here was my day:

1) I cleaned the house top to bottom while the DW was out at garage sales.
2) Then I went out and worked in the yard.
3) I bought a Bowflex at a garage sale. The guy had $200 on it. Jen talked him down to $150. I went over and got it for $110. Heh. I love doing that shit.
4) Jen made lasagne and we called some friends to join us. Erika had never done DDR before so I showed it to her and kicked her skinny ass. Good times! (Walk This Way by Run DMC was the clincher.)
5) Jameson gave me a Spider-Man pool toy. He picked it out himself. :)
6) Bailey gave me a camping lantern.
7) Jen gave me a .50 cent card she pulled out of the emergency card box in the garage. Awesome.

All in all, not a bad birthday. The kids made it great.

Life, The Universe and Everything

I awoke today to my birthday. I am now 42 years old.

42.

I'm sure all of the readers of this blog all know the true significance of this number. For those of you who don't, you may study up here.

Quenching the Thirst

It's hot here in Seattle today. I'm mean, dog-wiping-ass-on-carpet hot. Not that I mind too much. There are indeed mushrooms growing in my brain from my last two years in the Seattle sewer (lest you think I'm actually living IN a sewer, that word is pretty much how I describe this city) and the heat of my last two weekends and now today just help burn them out for a time.

Anyway, the high today was like 100 degrees. To hear the newscasters describe it, would sound like this:

"...and now we check the weather with KOMO 4's Steve Pool..."

"HOLY SHIT!! THE GOD-DAMNED SUN JUST LANDED ON THE F'ING SPACE NEEDLE!!!! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!!! IT'S THE HOTTEST DAY IN THE HISTORY OF EVER!!!"

And I'm not making this, a reporter on the radio this afternoon actually said, "...that diet soda could be deadly to you today...".

Unfreaking-believable. Bunch of coffee-swilling weenies.

It reminds me a lot of when Deb and I were on-air and 2 flakes of snow were forecast. The local media went into "white death" mode with a bunch of "FIRST ALERT WEATHER SHIT" every five minutes. Great stuff.

But the reason for this post is how I'm beating the heat. It dawned on me as I sat in my 89 degree house (sans AC) at 11pm, that I was thirsty. Ah, what to quench my thirst?

I drank two glasses of Gatorade (Lime) and let that sit. Nope. Not quite.
Then I drank some water like a good, healthy American. No effect.
So I decided to risk death and try the diet soda. No death but still not quenched.
I just polished off a glass of chocolate milk.

I think I'm gonna barf. If I do, I'll take pics and post.

What's worse, is I see a bottle of lemon juice next to the sink and my brain is working on something it won't let the rest of me in on.

I'll keep you updated unless the diet soda does me in.

Hybrids: Do They Have The Same Power As Conventional

I've been considering purchasing a hybrid vehicle due to the ever-increasing gas prices. Hybrids are part battery powered, part combustion engine driven. Once the car is up to speed, the combustion engine kicks off in favor of the battery engine. The big concern, is whether or not the hybrids have the same power (or "balls" to use the technical term) as a standard 4 or 6 cylinder engine.

Well fortunately, we have proof that hybrids such as the Prius have the amazing ability to do over 100 mph. This was recently tested and proven in a high-speed car chase with Santa Ana Police by Al Gore's son, Al Gore III. A documentation of the research is located here.

Now, it should be pointed out that several chemical compounds, such as marijuana, Xanax, Valium, Vicodin and Adderall which were used in the testing process are not necessary to achieve the same results in subsequent experiments.

Testing of this nature is also very expensive, as noted by the $20,000 donation that Al Gore III is expected to pay to continue his research outside of a 6x8 concrete and barred facility in Santa Ana.

All I can say is thank God we have Americans like Al Gore III to risk life and limb in this way to prove conclusively that we can all convert to gas-efficient hybrid automobiles without sacrificing the power that our automobile conscious society has grown to expect.

Geeking Out

I don't usually talk about comics on my blog (even though it is a requirement for my job to read them now) but this one was too cool to pass up.

For year, the comic book super-heroes always said "Man, we'd be screwed if these jackholes ever got organized." There have been lame attempts over the years. The Legion of DOOM. The Sinister Syndicate. The Frightful Four. But DC finally hit gold (yellow, to be precise) with the Sinestro Corps. The first issue came out last week and it's a great read.

Take the biggest, baddest bastards in the DC Universe, plop them in the anti-matter universe, and give them all a Yellow Power ring as equally powerful as the Green Lantern's ring and you've got one helluva set up. I'll leave out the big surprise at the end in case anyone wants to read it. Honorable mention goes to Green Lantern #17 when a yellow ring "chose" Batman because of his ability to "instill great fear". Man, great stuff. This is why I keep reading. Well, that and the tax write-off.

Beating Stress

It's no secret from my last two posts that I have been under a great deal of stress lately. Work, weather and pretty much everything else has just beaten me pretty much as low as I have been of late. To remedy that, we lucked into an invite to a weekend getaway by a friend of Jen's.

We traveled to a town called Quincy, in mid-Washington state. It was about a 2.5 hour drive into the more desert like part of the state. If you haven't been to Washington east of the Cascades, it literally is a desert.

Quincy is down on the Columbia river, sandwiched between two sheer cliffs. The scenery is amazing. What's more amazing, is that this Twilight Zone like community is one giant party. People are friendly. There's one store, and one large winding switchback road that takes you from the cliff top to the bottom. I hiked that this morning and let me tell you, it was brutal. Picture 2 here is roughly how high we went.



We spent a lot of time in the community pool, had some amazing food, met a lot of new people and enjoyed the miracle of God's palette. The best thing is that it was hot. And sunny. I got way too much sun, my hair bleached a little and I'm burnt. I was using SPF 60 sunblock and still burned. Welcome to the desert, beeyach! It got a little cloudy at night but we still got to see two meteors, two killer sunsets and an awesome full moonrise.



Actually, the best thing was that there was no Internet, TV, and my cell phone wouldn't work. For some reason, Jameson wasn't enjoying it as much as we were.

Now we're just hoping to go back. Soon.