My First Father's Day

Nothing against my dad but I never really thought of Father's Day as a big deal...that is until I became a father myself. Last Sunday was my first Father's Day and I must say, it was very special. I know that my son Nathan won't remember it because he's only a year old but my wife and I will.

At the store a few days before, Nathan picked out a new pop-up baby book which we read Sunday evening before bed. Heck, he even got me this really cool "My Dad Rules" coffee mug which I proudly display at work amidst my desk full of family pictures.

But, as with most holidays, there is always some unorthodox set of events that occur at the most inopportune time that make the holiday something to remember. In this case, many of the events didn't occur on Father's Day itself but occurred on the days surrounding it which made the weekend as a whole very long and of course, memorable.

Rather than go into a diatribe of details describing my extended weekend spanning the four day period from last Thursday through Father's Day and ending Monday morning, I would like to borrow and idea that the colonel used in his post describing his Father's Day.

Let's play: "Can you pick what event DIDN'T happen."

Here are your choices. They are listed in random order.

1. Gracie, my dog, ate 7 ounces of chocolate and had to be rushed to the emergency veterinary hospital

2. My wife threw up after eating dinner

3. The computer crashed

4. I ran two miles and then lifted weights for an hour culminating in five sets of pullups in my basement.

5. My dog developed a bladder infection

6. My wife, me and my son Nathan had brunch with my parents, sisters and brother along with his god parents. Everything was great. Nothing newsworthy happened.

7. I was locked out of the house

8. My one year old son vacuumed the family room with a real vacuum cleaner

If you answered NUMBER 3 then you are correct. The other seven items were all true .

UNBELIEVABLE Storm Clouds

Something you don't normally see in Ohio is a "Shelf Cloud" or an Arcus Cloud. Last night, a squall line developed around 8PM and produced a fast-moving Arcus Cloud. They rarely produce any rain themselves. Its the massive Cumulonimbus Clouds behind the Arcus Cloud that contain the rain/hail/severe weather.

Arcus Cloud - Northwest View

Arcus Cloud #2

Arcus Cloud - West View

Mammatus Cloud - After Arcus Cloud Passage

Television Viewing Habits

My television viewing habits have had a major overhaul over the last year since becoming a father. Come to think of it, "overhaul" isn't the right descriptor. The word "non-existent" fits so much better.


I went from not missing an episode of 24 to being 8 episodes behind with no appreciable chance to catch up on those episodes. For all I know, Jack Bauer could have changed identity again and I would be totally left in the dark as Season 6 begins next January.

Aside from 24 and other hit FOX shows like American Idol (not a big fan), I have no idea what shows are popular and what ones are not. Most of my family room time is either spent reading, vacuuming or watching PBS programs like Arthur or Clifford the Big Red Dog or Its a Big, Big World starring Snook and his friends.

Why do I know that?

Being a parent of an almost one year old baby, television becomes less and less a driving force in ones life. It's a shame really.

That's about to change.

After a year on hiatus, it's now time to rekindle the television experience. A solid recommittment back to the glory days of lounging on the couch spending good quality time staring at a box gleaming with moving color pictures of activity spanning a multitude of genres at the expense of house upkeep and paying bills. Look, not that my life has to revolve around television. But taking some time to reacquaint ones self with the remote is our American duty. Remember, nothing says "My brain is shut down until further notice" more than a day chalked full of television entertainment.

Popularity aside, here is my list (in no particular order) of television shows that I would watch if I had unlimited free time.

1. 24

The hit FOX show which airs on Monday nights at 9PM just ended its 5th season. Viewers have to suspend disbelief due to the inordinate amount of "stuff" that that happens in one episode (one hour of real time) in Los Angeles. If you've driven in L.A., try getting more than five miles in less than a half an hour. If the show took place in North Dakota, no problem. But L.A.? Nope. Not happening. Seriously, superb writing makes this show what it is along with Keifer Sutherland's innate ability in keeping his facial hair at 2 days growth.


2. House

Another FOX show I thought wouldn't last mainly because it was another medical drama. Boy was I wrong. Hugh Laurie who plays Dr. Greg House is masterful. After watching one episode, Mr. Laurie (born and raised in england) will make you believe that he is really from the states.

3. The Sopranos

Honestly, I've never watched an episode because I don't have HBO but I figure any show with gangsters (not gangstas) is good in my book.

4. Mythbusters

Create a show that revolves around experiments you always wanted to try as a kid but never had the stuff to do it. That's Mythbusters. What kind of gun if shot into a lake would not reach you if you were hiding from bad guys under the water? The answer awaits you on Mythbusters.

5. Family Guy

Yes, FOX has done it again with this irreverent animated comedy about a dysfunctional family with a talking dog and a baby that is bent on world domination. Add in a few 80s pop-cultural references and its a half hour of quality entertainment as long as your not easily offended.

6. Desperate Housewives

Okay, I put this on the list because its the popular thing to do. I don't watch it and I'm not real geeked up at the prospects of one day seeing it. Housewives in suburbia. That's all I know. But if Eva Longoria stays on the show then maybe a ten minute paroozing of this one hour drama will be in order in the fall.

7. Scrubs

Another medical show that I thought was doomed when it aired in 2001. For 5 seasons, its held its own on NBC and has become a cult favorite. The plot surrounds a young doctor who is trying to learn the ways of medicine, friendship and life. The characters all deliver their lines in a quick, sometimes sarcastic, comically steady tone. For instance, Dr. Cox played by John McGinley plays an intimidating character oozing with sarcasm but deep down, has a heart of gold. By far, the best character on the show. However, his perm has to go.

8. American Idol

So many parents are looking for a family oriented show versus content driven by sex and violence. Enter American Idol...or American Karaoke as radio talk show host Jim Rome refers to it. The plot: Get a group of singer wannabees who have no job, send them to Hollywood, tell them they are the best entertainers since Frank Sinatra and Bob Hope, give them a mic and have them sing. At the end of the season, every karaoker will end up going home dejected only to realize that they're only good enough to sing at Flea Markets and County Fairs. The winner, although not guaranteed, might actually have a singing career. after its all over. Last season, a grey haired 29 year old won the whole thing. Come on. The guy is really 48! Anyway, tune in for more wacky wannabee singer hijinx during season 6 starting in January of 2007.

9. The Daily Show

Forget the liberal bias or the conservative slant in daily news. The Daily Show hosted by Jon Stewart is the news stripped down and presented in a satirical manner with a ton of embellishment. In other words, it entirely fake but pure comedic perfection.

10. Lost

A very hot show. Survivors of a plane crash are forced to live with each other on a remote island. Gilligan's Island this isn't.

There you have it. But alas, I have no unlimited free time so all of this TV watching won't be happening. Well...maybe an episode of 24. After all, it was a cliffhanger. When do they go to the bathroom?

Brand New Weather Photos

There pics were taken last Sunday in the early evening. The weather setup: A piece of upper level vorticity came down from the north along the jet stream kicking off early evening thunderstorms which produced a few downpours and these cloud formations. Aren't you sorry you asked?

Mid-level convective clouds with blue sky & sunset. (Northwest view)

Brief sunny break. (Northwesterly view)

During a sunny break, the red portion of the light spectrum was filtered out as the cloud crossed it's path producing a red rainbow. (East view)

Future Fruits of My Labor

For the second straight year, our family garden, commonly referred to by many neighbors as "A Vegatable Eden" and others as "A Garden Experiment Gone Wrong" is planted, hydrated and thriving beyond expectations.

My garden isn't huge by any means but it does the job. Keep in mind, when it comes to gardens, size really doesn't matter. It's the quality of the food that the garden produces in August and September that is the barometer of a successful garden. After dumping 160 pounds of compost and other nitrogen rich additives, get ready for an endless supply of tomatoes, peppers and other viney fruit in roughly 80 days. Pictures will be forthcoming...



Notice the second picture. Yes, that is a tobacco plant. No, its not "Hippy lettuce" or "The Chronic" or some other illegal leafy plant, it's just straight-up tobacco. If all goes well, I plan on harvesting it and rolling a cigar in the fall. Then again, it might curl up, dry out and die next week. We shall see.

Memorial Day Pics and Others

8 days. This is by far the longest I've gone without posting anyting. I feel as if I've left world waiting with baited breath for something really, really good. Well, these pictures, in my opinion, are really, really good. Granted, they're not of the quality illustrated in the constipation pictures from a past entry but they have their own uniqute attributes that make them special.

The first few are my son at the Memorial Day Parade. The last two are of Nathan pushing a plastic child shopping cart around the house. Just when I was getting used to his immobile nature. Now comes his unchecked, free-wheeling, warp speed, biped motion. The ride for me now begins...

Nathan and Mommy at the Memorial Day Parade. Also, notice mommy's right tricep in the picture below. This muscularity is due to lifting and holding Nathan which is task not for the weak.

Nathan watching the parade

Nathan on the swing at the play ground after the parade ready for a cool beverage

Nathan's standing and ready for action in both shopping cart pics

Parking Dilemma

Tell me something. What infuriates you more than not finding a parking spot when your in a hurry, or even worse when its raining? Sure, its not the worst thing in the world but at the time, nothing could make your blood pressure go up more, aside from realizing after the fact that the store your hoping to do some shopping in is closed.

Here's my experience.

Late last week, the wife had me run to the grocery store for a few odds and ends. The grocery store and I don't get along (see this previous blog entry) so before leaving the driveway, I always have a plan of attack which includes mapping out in my head where the items are in the store, in what order to pick them up and most importantly, where the best parking spots might be given the day of the week, the time of day and the weather. All of this is done in an effort to expedite the process of grocery shopping which I dispise a great deal. My focus here is on parking so let's get to it.

I entered the parking lot of the grocery store and started my search for a spot. Like most people, I made a bee-line down to the spots closest to the store's entrance praying for that ever-elusive spot next to the handicap spaces. (Of course, 99% of the time they're occupied but I'd kick myself if I never bothered to look only to find out moments later that someone else scored the spot. Believe me, that's a let-down that I've experienced far too many times to let it happen again. So I had to eliminate that obvious close spot before taking the more realistic approach further away from the store's entrance. This time, no spot existed so I continued my search.

Up an down the rows of vehicles and still no luck. I could feel my patience running thin. After all, I came to the store for a handful of items and now, its turning into a grueling expedition analogous to climbing Mount Everest.

All of a sudden like a diamond in the rough, like a beacon of light shining down on a time of despair, (sorry, way too many metaphors) the front of a vacant parking spot glistened with my name on it. It was almost as if the Lord himself willed that spot to be vacant at that very time so that I would be privy to it. Feeling as if I won the lottery, I sped up to the spot giddy with excitement and started to turn the wheel when something became clearly visible in the spot. No, it wasn't a person or a shopping cart. IT WAS A CAR!

I slammed on the brakes only a few feet from slamming into a brand new Ford Focus! How in the hell is this possible? Granted, I'm not a fan of the Focus but if I would have continued into the spot, I would have been responsible for the damage to the car!

Back in the 1970s when the huge, gas guzzling Lincolns and Buicks roamed the streets, you knew when these behemoths occupied a spot. Their 8 foot long trunks would stick out giving an oncoming driver a conspicuous clue that the spot was not vacated. Now in their place, Toyota Corollas, Ford Focus' and motorcycles take up most of the spots.

The problem is you can pull one of these subcompacts into a spot and if surrounded by a truck and a Cadillac, the subcompact becomes completely obscured, totally hidden from aggressive parking spot hunters like myself. Is it my fault that the spot was too small? I say no. In principle, the designers of the parking lot spaces should be held liable for the damage due to faulty design.

We all know that there are more parking lots than ever before. However, what hasn't changed is the size of the parking spaces. Nope, these rectangular oases on the vast plain of asphault surrounding your favorite store, for the most part, have stayed the same size; their dimensions frozen firmly in place since the first strip malls reared their ugly head.

How many accidents are caused by this blatant disregard for parking lot space design etiquette? I'm sure the department of transportation has no such statistics illustrating this but trust me, it happens more often than you think.

Back to my parkin saga.

After a verbal tirade which included a multitude of four-letter words, I backed out and continued on my search for a spot feeling dejected and frankly stupid. Sure, some of this was my fault. I should have seen the car in the spot. I get that. But one simple fix if implemented could have eliminated my parking lot rage entirely. That is to create parking spots for smaller cars separate from larger cars. Sounds simple, right?

You know there would be an outcry because some people driving certain cars would feel that they would be singled out. Too many people would be offended and eventually it would snowball into a political issue which would ultimately result in an appearance by Jesse Jackson. A simple fix to a parking lot problem would end up being transformed into a metaphor of what's wrong with the country. As quickly as my parking space remedy was suggested, it would be swept under a thick bureaucratic rug never to be heard from again. Which brings me right back to square one: A man on a trip to the grocery store without a place to park.

So, what did I learn from this? Simple. Get a neighbor's handicap sticker that way you get the best parking spots ALL OF THE TIME!

The Face of Constipation

Tell me you've never made these faces before when things weren't "flowing easy". Yeah, you better believe I'm going to save these pictures until his high school graduation and his wedding day and bust them out for all of his friends to see!

The Anniversary of Perfection

If your not a baseball fan then you might not know what a "Perfect Game" is. Imagine getting every hitter out--all 27 of them. Since 1876 (the start of organized Major League Baseball), there have been more than 350,000 games played, a perfect game has occured only 17 times (0.04%). Of those 17 occurances, only 10 times in the American League since 1901. One of these occurances was on May 15, 1981 at Cleveland Municiple Stadium in front of 7,200 fans (more an 500,000 claim to be there) when Len Barker pitched one of these perfect games.

Now, an owner of a construction company in suburban Cleveland, he reminisces back 25 years ago about this great achievement that happened on the most imperfect of nights.

Below is a picture of the signed scorebook from that night.

Are you a "HIP" person? 6 Simple Questions

Signs that the younger generation sees you as not cool and totally oblivious to the main stream world around you:

1. When using a video camera, you keep the lense cap attached to the camera via the cord so that it dangles in front as you shoot a family reunion or Christmas party.

Just take the damn thing off the cord. Either that or buy a camera that had a lense cover built in. This will save you countless hours of ridicule by distant relatives who have nothing better to do on a two hour car ride back home.

2. You use the word "cool" and "awesome".

Yes, these descriptive words were super-popular back in the 1970s and 1980s but now in 2006, it's become so intertwinned in the lexicon of most people that everyone from Aunt Gertrude to Grandma Ester drops a "that's pretty cool" blast every once and a while. Here's a tip: If a relative born before 1950 uses "cool" to describe something, its probably a good idea to retire it from your repertoire.

3. You wear white socks that are higher than your ankles.

Don't reinact an episode of Eight is Enough by pretending your big brother David who always sported high white socks with three orange horizontal stripes on top. This is almost as bad a wearing black socks while mowing the lawn. This rule can be waved if doing outdoors work such as spreading mulch or using a chain saw minus the orange stripes.

4. You send forwarded emails.

As mentioned in a previous blog entry, performing this activity only reinforces the fact, whether true or not, that you believe this email thing is brand new technology. The truth: EMAIL has been around since the 1960s. The "@" sign was used in emails in the 1970s. In other words, sending forwarded emails shows your not hip. That's not good.

5. You don't know who Jessica Simpson is.

She's dumb but incredibly popular. (At the very least, she plays a dumb blonde on TV) A correct way to rectify this is to watch Entertainment Tonight. They're sure to have some story on her divorce from her "no talent" husband Nick Lachey. You'll get all of the information you need--and some you won't--on Jessica Simpson or enough to fill a few lines on a short answer test.

6. You wear shorts that show your legs above the knee.

I've made this mistake a few times and was corrected by my collegiate brother. This isn't 1990 anymore, or 1995 for that matter. Seeing your quad (quadricep) below the bottom of your shorts is almost as bad as wearing plaid shorts found at Goodwill.
Shorts must at the very least cover ALL of your leg above your knee. It doesn't have to necessarily cover the knee but it should be long enough so that someone doesn't mistake you for John Stockton--all-time NBA Assists leader. (See Picture Above) Styles have changed so step it up.