Laughter helps.

Last Friday, we decided that on Sunday we would go out with the in-laws for our Sunday Night Dinner. I was thrilled because Ci Ci’s is one of my favorite buffet pizza places. I looked forward to that meal all weekend. I went to bed dreaming about the pizza buffet, and woke up smelling pepperoni. I even tweeted about it.

Sunday evening finally arrived and I drove down Providence toward joy (pizza is synonymous with joy). At a stoplight, my enthusiasm bubbled over and I rolled down the window and shouted “I love pizza!” The cop in the car next to me gave me the evil eye. I rolled up my window, locked the door, and hunched down as if I were driving through the projects.

My wife pointed to the light, which had turned green. “We’re going to C.C’ Broilers, not Ci Ci’s Pizza.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

“C.C’s” sounds exactly like “Ci Ci’s”

My heart was heavier, and my wallet lighter.

What Was Jesus’ Budget?

That’s the motto of my family’s finances. It means we try to live as humbly as possible because it forces us to trust God more. . . and that is a beautiful way of saying I’m a tight-wad.

One of the reasons I was excited about moving into a house, was I thought we could save money on car maintenance; our new house has a garage where I could do minor repairs.

When I was at the auto parts store picking out oil and a filter, I noticed one of the sales people watching me. He smiled (in retrospect, I think I remember saliva dribbling out of the corner of his mouth). “You doing an oil change?”
“Yep.”
He handed me a mountain of coupons. “We’ve got a special.”

I was flattered by his thoughtfulness (that’s probably why I ignored the saliva). He even helped me carry my oil out to my car.

On the way home, I started thinking. (I’m not much of an in-the-moment thinker. I’m more of an after-the-fact thinker, and my thought is almost always “Good grief, what did I just do?”)

I just spent $15 on oil and filter.

For the last 10 years I’ve paid the quick oil change places $17 to do the work for me. Plus, they would top off my other fluids, dispose of the oil for me, and once in a while you can find a $5 off coupon and get an oil change for $12. But wait, this deal gets better. While your waiting, you can read a couple chapters of a good book rather than getting covered in oil. Granted, you have to put up with the sales pitch where they try to talk you into flushing your transmission fluid, radiator fluid, and changing the air in your tires, but if you’re strong (or cheap, like me) you’ll be able to say no.

Oh well. I’ve got my work clothes on, so I’m off to get covered in oil . . . my wife just cleaned our bathroom, so pray for me.

Post Oil Change UPDATE
Good grief, what did I just do? I could have returned the oil.

I just bought some new shoes and they are ridiculously white.

There should be a paint called shoe white, and that would be the standard by which all other whiteness is measured; there could be a shoe white, and off-shoe white, and a country shoe white.

To slow down Global Warming we could build a huge barge, fill it with new white shoes, and float it to the North Pole to replace the melting ice caps.

I don’t know when different language skills are supposed to develop, but I”m constantly amazed by my son. Lately he’s been using similes.

» He bit the front leg off an animal cracker and said, “It’s like a drill.”
» I blew a raspberry on his belly and he said, “It’s like a lawnmower.”
» He crumpled his napkin and said, “It’s like a shovel.”

Okay, I don’t know what that last one meant, but 2 out of 3 is pretty good for a 25 month old.

Lillian has started waving and clapping. She says something like “Hi Da Da.” Which sounds a lot like “Bye Da Da.” So that’s what she does every time I leave the house and every time I come home.

She’s also finally over her “I only love mommy” phase, so I get to play with her a lot more now.

The Meltdown

My tire didn’t just go flat, it exploded. No hope for repair, no future as a tire swing.

I’m a handy guy, so I thought I’d change the tire myself. After my last flat, I even bought a 2-ton jack that I keep in the trunk of my car, most of the time. The only time I take the jack out is if I need the trunk space to haul stuff. For example, if I had just moved into a new house . . .

Luckily (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), I still had the scissor jack with the spare. So, I loosened the lug nuts, jacked the car into the air, took one lug nut off. That’s when I noticed the car shifting.

This was one of those slow-motion experiences. I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t sure what. I glanced back towards the trunk with my angry face–that’s the natural expression my face reverts to when I don’t understand what’s happening–then I realized the car was falling, and did a weird flop/hop backwards out of the way.

Here’s the kicker. Are you sitting down? The jack sunk two inches into the pavement. If you drive past our local library you’ll notice a huge divot in the ground. That marks the spot where my life as a blogger almost ended (of course, I’d probably also be excused from changing any more poopy diapers . . . no, not worth it).

The Insurance Company and their Outsourced Phone Service that Connects to the Outsourced Road-Side Assistance Company that Calls Someone Else to do the Work

I’ve paid five bucks a month for the past five years for Road-Side Assistance, and this is the third time I’ve ever used them; I think I’m losing that gamble.

I walked over to the library and find a modern miracle–a working payphone. I called my insurance company, gave them all my info, got redirected to the Road-Side Assistance Phone company, gave them all my information, got redirected to the actual Road-Side Assistance company, only to discover the operator couldn’t hear me. Eventually, she realized I’d called from a pay phone and explained that there is some technological glitch with payphones that makes it difficult for her to hear people who call from them. . .apparently cell phones have better connections than land lines. That amazed me, but for some reason it also made me laugh and everything started going back uphill from there.

I was at the library so I checked out a book and found a nice place to read (that’s all I wanted to do anyway).

In about 20 minutes, someone from a local tow company pulled up next to my car with AC/DC blaring on the radio and I had a flash back to high school. The repairman was a great guy, and he changed my tire in about 5 seconds.

The Moral of the Story

If you pay $60 a year for Road-Side Assistance, make sure you also pay $60 a month for a cell phone. Of, course that could probably all be avoided if you paid $260 a month for a new car. And while we’re spending money, let’s throw in $2600 a year for insurance that redirects you three times before sending someone else to do the work.

The Other Moral of the Story

It’s good to be the middle-middle man.

I’m trying to mow my lawn with a criss-cross pattern like a baseball field

A well mowed baseball field

My Lawn

It’s been a month, but I can’t make the criss-cross pattern stick.

Today, I tried mowing the lawn twice, once in both directions, but the second mowing pretty much erased all the lines from the first mowing. I’m ashamed of my failure, but I’m not giving up; I’m off to Google to see if I can find anyone else who has successfully turned their backyard into a baseball field . . . I do happen to know a professional baseball field maintenance worker (Dave do you think you can get me some base-line chalk?)

I was away on a retreat this weekend, and when I got home, I discovered I missed two very important milestones in my children’s lives.

1) Lillian learned how to crawl.

2) Isaac learned that it’s funny to spray people with the water hose.

Our move was a little stressful, as all moves are. Here’s a picture of our new home.

I knew this was going to sooner or later. . .

This morning, when Isaac got up, he said he needed to go potty. I was thrilled. When we first got his potty (he was 18 months), he started using it without being prompted, so I was hopeful-as any parent would be-that he would be easy to potty train. But then he lost interest, and according to the experts, he’s too young to potty train, so we haven’t pushed the issue. When he said he wanted to go potty this morning I hoped he was rekindling his interest. I took off his pajamas, and started pulling his diaper off when I noticed (not quickly enough) that it was heavier than normal and the weight felt different. I was so surprised I tried to hold it out away from me, and wrap it up all at the same time, which resulted in me flipping the diaper into the air and launching the poo across the room.

The End

Gerrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Yes, Flash web pages look cool, but they take FOREVER to load–and I’m working on DSL! Anybody who works with the internet enough to make a living building web pages should know better than to use Flash.

Why people, Why? Am I missing something? I can immitate the look of any Flash site using basic html and css. Maybe some of the video fetures would be missing, but who cares? Flash for web based games, okay. But do we really need things like Dr. Pepper’s floating bubbles menu? (Let me take this opportunity to apologize to Dr. Pepper. I love Dr. Pepper, and I hope this doesn’t strain our relationship. Also, I haven’t actually been to Dr.Pepper’s site in a while, so they might have fixed their page by now. . . but I doubt it.)

Maybe in a few years when our connection speeds are a million times faster, then Flash will be the way to go, and I’m sure Adobe will claim they were ahead of the game, which they are . . . but they’re too far ahead right now.